The torrent of insults from both sides of the treeline continued to crash in like waves, scorching the Avalon garrison's last shreds of reason over and over again in the flames of rage.
The sentries on the city wall were busy leaning over the battlements, craning their necks left and right, desperately trying to spot those insufferably foul-mouthed Mason weeds.
Shoot them dead! Find them and put an arrow through every last one of them!
They paid no attention whatsoever to the fact that, in the blind spot where thick fog and darkness converged, a column of black shadows — as lithe and silent as hunting leopards — had already pressed themselves flush against the base of the city wall and were closing in, without a sound, on the copper-banded fir-wood gate.
Bardess made a hand signal. From among the eight hundred musketeers at her back, several dozen of the strongest elites stepped forward.
They cradled Irene's explosive charges against their chests, and in their eyes burned a fervor that bordered on the devout.
These improvised Black Powder charges had no precision fuses, but Irene had packed them with the highest-purity saltpeter and steel shot, and their casings were wound tight with hemp rope soaked through in tung oil.
"Set them!" Bardess ordered in a low voice.
The soldiers swiftly stacked the charges at the gate's hinges and into the cracks along the foundation. Then a fire-starter slashed through the darkness, and several specially made fuses let out a harsh, sputtering hiss — the sparks looking especially vicious against the backdrop of thick fog.
"Fall back! Take cover!"
The Avalon border soldiers who heard those words hadn't yet grasped what was happening when the explosions came, one after another.
"BOOM——!!!"
A detonation powerful enough to make an entire mountain tremble erupted in an instant, cutting the insults on both flanks dead in their throats.
Unlike the catapult impacts the Olan forces were accustomed to, this chemical blast — driven by internal pressure — released a terrifying kinetic force in a single heartbeat. The sound was deafening, like a massive hammer striking directly against the human soul.
A vast orange-red fireball erupted at the gate. The pressure wave hurled a column of smoke and splinters dozens of feet into the air.
Because Avalon's city wall was nothing more than ordinary ashlar stacked without Mason's black-stone cement bonding and reinforcement, the high-frequency shockwave instantly robbed the entire wall section of its structural integrity. The facing crumbled and shed like scales, and the already-loose stones came tumbling down in cascades from the violent trembling.
"What happened?! Has the Holy Spirit been angered?!"
One sentry was shaken clean off the wall by the force of the blast. His face had gone the color of ash. He couldn't feel his broken leg — he just clawed through the mud on all fours in a blind panic.
"The earth dragon has turned over! The Mason people have called down the devil's thunder!"
"Gods — the gate... the gate is gone!"
Another voice, ragged with terror, drifted from somewhere inside the billowing smoke.
"It's a Mason weapon! Something Mason invented to break through walls!"
"What the hell — are these people bandits?!"
From their perspective, the century-old gate — that gate they had always considered an eternal line of defense — had been reduced to a swirling shower of charred fragments in a single blink.
At the very epicenter of the blast, the handful of Avalon guards who had been posted behind the gate didn't even have time to scream. The shockwave picked them up and flung them.
The shrapnel Irene had deliberately packed into the charges did its work in that moment. Those high-velocity metal fragments, like the scythes of death, tore through their leather armor with contemptuous ease.
Several mangled bodies traced grim arcs through the air before slamming down onto the old road behind — and blood immediately dyed the drifting grey haze red.
The Avalon officer who had been roaring curses only seconds before was now slumped on the watchtower floor, staring with vacant eyes at the enormous black void that gaped below.
That instantaneous flip from the peak of rage to the abyss of terror had completely knocked out his brain's ability to give orders.
Willow stood at Sophia's side, watching the small mushroom cloud slowly billow upward, firelight reflected in the depths of her eyes.
My god... this is Her Majesty's efficiency.
Those garrison soldiers thought we were still playing a war of words. They never knew that every single insult, every syllable of abuse, was simply the accompaniment to this thunderclap.
Looking at that gate blasted to smithereens, I finally understand why Her Majesty has always complained about the walls of the old era.
Without cement to bind them, these so-called lines of defense are as brittle as stale bread before a scientific detonation.
With this thunderous roar, Her Majesty has told Avalon: the courtesies of the old age are over. This land is about to receive the cold Order of the Black Rose.
The gunpowder smoke had not yet cleared. The thick stench of black powder collided violently with Avalon's stale miasma above the rubble.
While the Avalon garrison was still drowning in the terror of divine punishment descending upon them, a sound like rolling thunder suddenly rose from within the mist — the heavy, unified beat of marching feet.
Five thousand Mason soldiers, wearing black duck-bill masks that left only their ferocious, murder-ready eyes exposed, streamed in through the gap that had been blasted out of the gate — an unstoppable torrent of silent reapers pouring out of hell itself.
"Charge! For Her Majesty!"
The lead swordsman kicked aside a still-burning fragment of timber.
The formerly tidy streets inside the city plunged instantly into utter chaos. The merchants who in ordinary times walked with their noses in the air under the fog's protection were now screaming, hurling down their carrying poles, and scrambling into the alleyways on hands and knees.
A handful of Avalon soldiers who hadn't lost their heads entirely tried to level their spears to resist. But against those trained Mason soldiers in peak physical condition, the effort was like trying to hold back a flood with dry twigs.
At the very instant long swords were about to draw blood and crimson was about to stain the streets, a clear voice carrying a strange resonance punched through the gunsmoke and battle cries and detonated across the sky above the entire border town.
Daphne, standing on the command platform at the rear, gripped her staff with both hands. Her jade-green eyes, lit by the alchemical flames, were sacred and severe.
She activated the voice amplification magic she had readied in advance, and her voice, bolstered by magic, carried an undeniable weight of authority:
"The Queen of Mason has personally led this campaign to Avalon's gates! The Light of Order has descended upon Avalon! Those who lay down their weapons and kneel shall be spared! Those who resist to the last shall be reduced to ashes!"
The words acted like an invisible barrier, slamming to a halt the last flicker of fighting spirit in the Avalon soldiers.
"Clang——!"
One Avalon sentry stared into the black muzzle of a black musket in his face — and into the pair of wildly ferocious eyes behind the mask — and his psychological defenses shattered completely. His spear clattered onto the hard stone floor, and his legs gave out beneath him.
"I surrender! I surrender! Don't kill me!"
Then, like a falling row of dominoes, the crisp sound of metal striking stone rang out in a continuous wave. Avalon soldiers dropped to their knees in droves along both sides of the street, trembling uncontrollably.
Avalon was a remote, miasma-ridden place — hot and humid in every season, swarming year-round with mosquitoes and venomous creatures — a land that no one in a hundred years had wanted. As a result, Avalon's soldiers had never received much in the way of real training. Put them on an actual battlefield, and they might well come off worse than the simple fishermen of Avalon, who at least had muscle from hauling nets every day.
However, when the Mason soldiers — who should by all rights have been cheering a great victory — looked at the carpet of surrendered men before them, that wave of battle-frenzy got stuck, strangely, right in the back of their throats.
One soldier who had already hoisted his great sword and leveled the blade at an officer's neck physically forced himself to hold back. The swordtip stopped half a centimeter from the man's skin, and the expression on his face looked worse than if he were crying:
"Why did you just kneel like that?! Where did all that ferocity go — the kind that looked like you wanted to turn us into pincushions?!"
My work points! My work points!
According to the rules Envoy Bardess set, one enemy killed is worth five points, and capturing a live squad captain is worth twenty.
I've been humping dozens of jin of rations and ammo across this whole campaign, marching through the mugwort stench — and now these fish were practically jumping into my net, and these cowards hear one shout and throw themselves on the ground?
Your Majesty, you're a little too merciful, aren't you?!
This isn't a battle — this is a field trip to Avalon to collect people.
My second boy back home is counting on me to cash in this military merit for a Royal City apprenticeship slot!
And these heads kneeling all over the ground — I can't actually violate Her Majesty's orders and lop them off, so my heart hurts worse than if I'd taken a crossbow bolt!
A few soldiers clustered together, staring at the piles of confiscated quality spears, grumbling continuously under their breath:
"Didn't you Avalon people always act like you had so much backbone? Couldn't you have held on just a little longer? Even two more rounds would've done it..."
"You, kid — in two more rounds you'd have put a musket ball in someone's head and gone to cash in your points anyway."
Willow accompanied Sophia as they stepped into this battle-scarred but now silent territory.
She watched the soldiers' expressions — desperate to kill but not daring to, aggrieved and put-out — and then turned to look at Sophia's cool, unchanged profile. The reverence in her heart rose another level.
Look at this. This is Her Majesty's foresight.
Killing these Avalon soldiers would serve no purpose beyond producing a pile of useless corpses.
But by having Miss Daphne call out 'surrender and be spared' at precisely this moment, Her Majesty has acquired an extraordinarily cheap labor force for construction.
Avalon's terrain is this complex. The roads that need to be built in the future cannot possibly rely solely on our own people.
These prisoners are the perfect gears for connecting Mason and Avalon in the future.
As for those soldiers who feel they got cheated...
Her Majesty has surely already calculated that the ransom value of these prisoners and the value they'll create in the future will ultimately come back as something far more substantial.
Her Majesty, by doing it this way, took control of the city's operations in the shortest possible time — without so much as a scratch of unnecessary damage to Avalon's infrastructure.
This precise control over both lives and costs — that is the true terror of the Black Rose.
As for the border gate that got blown off... it was too flimsy to begin with. Even if it hadn't been blown off, once Avalon was taken, it would have needed replacing anyway.
The battle in the border town was settled faster than anyone had anticipated.
Because Sophia's combination of demolition and psychological assault had landed so precisely, this gateway — which Avalon regarded as the lock of the mist — hadn't even had time to fire a signal flare before it fell completely under Mason's control.
Bardess moved through the carpet of kneeling prisoners, her expression cold and hard. Her jet-black fitted uniform looked especially sharp against the haze of gunpowder smoke, and her charcoal pencil flew across a piece of leather paper as several trained squad captains acted like the most meticulous of rulers, counting heads and cataloguing arms one by one.
"Envoy Bardess, total prisoners: three hundred and forty-two. Of those, two hundred and sixty are garrison soldiers; the rest are camp-following merchants and auxiliary staff."
A squad captain ran up to report, his eyes unable to fully conceal a look of pained regret.
"Nobody escaped — our people have every exit nailed shut, not even a fly got out. It's just... are we really not going to finish even one of them off?"
Bardess didn't look up, her tone perfectly flat:
"In Her Majesty's logic, a living labor force holds more long-term value than a dead trophy. Bind their hands and feet with the specialized rope, and lock them together in the stone buildings to the east of town. Remember — don't damage them. We're going to need them to build roads later. Oh, and the enemy corpses too — those are going to be their job to haul away."
Bardess looked outwardly placid, but inside, her inner self was jumping for joy.
This is amazing. Absolutely amazing.
The days I spent following that old fossil in Qubi — what a pathetic way to live!
Inside the town, spread out on the rosewood table that had once belonged to the Avalon officers, was the damaged map that Delilah had annotated.
Sophia rested her cheek on one hand, and in the candlelight, her pale-gold irises looked unusually deep.
"Your Majesty."
Willow set a bowl of warm, clear tea before her.
"As per your instructions, the prisoners have already been interrogated in batches. The routes they identified are largely consistent — pass through the Valley of a Hundred Herbs on the other side of this mountain, and you reach the heart of Avalon."
"Largely consistent?"
Sophia gave a cold, quiet laugh, and her fingertip tapped lightly on one of the forks in the road on the map.
"A person's survival instinct under extreme terror will make them tell the truth — but what if Avalon's leadership anticipated that terror, and planted a false truth in the heads of their common soldiers?"
"Pass the order — the First and Third Reconnaissance Squads are to depart immediately."
Sophia's gaze was deep and unreadable.
"Do not follow the prisoners' route exactly. Focus on verifying the vegetation density and the structural integrity of the ground along the way. I only trust the data the soil sends back."
Just then, Irene came burrowing in from outside with the energy of a spy who'd just cracked a code, clutching a freshly drawn soil survey report, a few slivers of blasted wood still caught in her pink ponytail. Those sapphire eyes of hers were burning with pure fanaticism.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Did you see that gate?!"
Irene bounced over to Sophia's side, not bothering to wipe the black soot off her face.
"I knew it — the defensive lines of the old era are an absolute joke against our explosive charges! That blast just now shook the souls clean out of the Avalon people's bodies! And the best part — not a single one of our people got so much as a scratch!
"Except for a few who screamed their insults so enthusiastically they went hoarse — every soldier's physical readiness is still in the green zone. Your Majesty, this isn't a battle, this is violent demolition tourism in Avalon! The efficiency, the cost control — Irene will never again dare call herself the sole logic grandmaster!"
"Your contribution was immense as well. The speed of this city-breach was so fast in large part thanks to your explosive charges."
Sophia's praise was unreserved, and Irene's grin grew wide enough to swallow her eyes.
Outside the camp, soldiers were leaning against walls and chewing jerky.
The great swordsman who had been agonizing over his work points was now directing several dejected prisoners in hauling heavy supplies.
"Alright, alright — drop the long faces," the soldier said, patting one prisoner on the shoulder, a magnanimous, boss-like warmth creeping into his tone. "Sure, I didn't chop your head off to cash in on points, but Envoy Bardess said that supervising your work and preventing you from escaping earns three points per day. It's less, yeah, but it's steady income. Slow and steady wins the race."
Prisoner: "..."
Why do soldiers from this country look at you like you're a walking silver coin?
Finally, one particularly bold and curious prisoner spoke up in a small voice:
"Mason big brother... can I ask — what are work points?"
That question got the Mason soldiers animated in a heartbeat.
They launched into a step-by-step lecture starting from work points, then chickens, then grain rations, and so on.
Watching the prisoners' eyes fill with awe, the Mason soldiers were practically bursting with pride.
They weren't worried about the prisoners learning all this and competing with them for work points — by Her Majesty's rules, these prisoners couldn't get Mason identity cards for the time being. That would only be considered after a sustained period of labor.
So the Mason soldiers shared the benefits of the work-point system without the slightest stinginess, and as they talked, the dead, grey look in the eyes of the Avalon prisoners gradually started to glow, which made the soldiers even more eager to hold forth.
The thin mist outside the city grew thicker and stickier as the temperature climbed, and inside the border town, a wild ambition was spreading like wildfire among the Mason soldiers.
Those Avalon prisoners who had been slumped in despair only minutes ago were now crouching against the base of the stone walls, mouths hanging wide open, the fear of the unknown in their eyes long since displaced by something absurdly close to yearning.
"You're saying... just by doing labor, not only do you get to drink meat broth every meal — but once you save up enough of those work points, you can even get chickens for your family?"
One Avalon prisoner swallowed hard, his voice trembling almost beyond recognition.
"And you can eat the eggs the chickens lay? And the tax is only a little over sixty percent? That's so little... Avalon takes ninety."
"Why would I lie about that? My family used to not be able to afford trousers. Now my wife is stitching shoe soles in a workshop in the Royal City, and the work points she's saved up are already enough to trade for a whole year's worth of grain from before!"
The Mason soldier idly polished his long sword, side-eyeing these ignorant country bumpkins who'd clearly never seen the world.
"So that's why you surrendered too fast — cost me five heads' worth of kill points. From here on out, put some hustle into it, and if anyone dares slack off on road-building duty, I'll treat you like a walking sandbag!"
The prisoners looked at each other, and in their formerly dead eyes, something bizarre began to kindle — a burning desire to become Mason laborers.
"Report——!"
Just as the atmosphere inside the city was turning strangely harmonious, the captains of the First and Third Reconnaissance Squads, caked in mud and carrying the chill of dawn, swept in through the broken gate like a gust of wind and came to a halt before Sophia's long table.
"Reporting to Your Majesty! The First and Third Reconnaissance Squads have completed the back-survey of the approaches to the Valley of a Hundred Herbs! Exactly as Your Majesty predicted, the three main roads the prisoners identified do exist, and both the subsoil depth and the vegetation density are fully consistent with the logic of large-scale transport. We compared the soil compaction levels — there are indeed recent tracks left by heavy wagons. They weren't lying!"
Sophia drew her gaze back from the map. Her pale-gold pupils contracted slightly in that moment, and the hand resting against her cheek lowered itself slowly.
"The honesty born of survival instinct — pitiable, but effective."
Sophia rose to her feet. Her silver silk battle robe swayed in the candlelight, trailing a wave of cold, commanding presence:
"Since the roads are real, then I will leave this fog no room to breathe."
Sophia walked unhurriedly out of the command post and stood at the top of the high steps, looking down at the five thousand Mason elites who had re-formed their ranks below, their eyes blazing.
"Warriors of Mason."
Sophia's voice rolled across the empty streets, carrying the cold clarity of hoarfrost:
"The scouts have returned. The road ahead is clear. Just now, at the gate, you felt regret because the enemy chose to surrender. So let me tell you — that was only Avalon's outermost layer."
She drew the long sword at her hip in a slow, deliberate motion, its tip pointing directly at the shadow of a tall tower dimly visible to the north:
"The real work points and glory lie beyond the Valley of a Hundred Herbs. The enemies there will not kneel as easily as these people did. Olan's war-hounds are waiting there for you to go knock out their teeth.
"Tell me — do you still have enough fight left in you to trade for a full year of salted beef?!"
"HOO! HOO! HOO!"
The roar of five thousand voices shattered the stillness of dawn in an instant. The terrifying battle-hunger born of longing for a good life sent the watching Avalon prisoners dropping straight to the ground in fright.
How can anyone love their country this much?
Aren't you all squeezed dry by your own country, suffering through the same grinding days one after another?
How do they have so much... drive?
By this point Irene had changed into her specially made work gear, her waist hung with an assortment of strange wrenches and powder canisters.
She watched the soldiers cracking their knuckles and itching to fly straight to the heart of Avalon right now, and laughed until her eyes disappeared.
Her Majesty calculated every single person's needs and materialized this entire war into one high-paying job.
Since the road is real, then what comes next — the Valley of a Hundred Herbs — is the personal showcase of my Black Powder and these work-point hunters.
Olan's bolt-throwers?
Against these Black Rose soldiers who've gone mad with the desire to earn money, they'll crumble like papier-mâché.
It's a good thing Her Majesty was born in this era. If she'd been born in a time of too much peace, she might never have had the chance to test her strength.
Then again, maybe not — someone as formidable as Her Majesty would surely be extraordinary wherever she ended up.
---
Deep inside Avalon's Royal City — in the altar hall buried within the belly of the mountain.
The air here was even colder and damper than outside. Torches mounted on all four walls flickered thin tongues of flame, casting the figures seated at the far end of the long table into something resembling wraiths in the underworld.
A strange, sickly-sweet, rotten scent of spice permeated the air — the signature atmosphere of Avalon's royal family when meeting in secret council with Olan's agents.
"...Once the cooperation is complete, the northern mist will become a complete barrier for Olan."
A female Olan official in a long robe emblazoned with blue heraldry was leisurely turning the pages of a sheepskin scroll in her hands, her tone suffused with a condescending sense of superiority.
"At that point, those impoverished little kingdoms will naturally come crawling to beg you to take in their displaced refugees."
The Avalon King sat on his throne. His face, slightly puffy from years of living in the hot, damp climate, creased into an obsequious smile:
"But of course. With the support of all you great lords, Avalon is already far from the barren wasteland it was a hundred years ago. As for those impoverished little kingdoms — they probably won't even survive this season's miasma."
A low, arrogant laugh rippled around the table.
In the eyes of these power-brokers, the so-called other small kingdoms were nothing more than sandcastles — dreams built on sand, ready to be wiped away at any moment by their traditional, dominant hands.
Just as everyone was sinking into the daydream of carving up the entire Northern border, the heavy stone door was pushed open a crack.
A soldier in leather armor, head bowed, let his voice echo awkwardly around the hall:
"Reporting... Your Majesty, a scout from the garrison says there appear to be a large number of unidentified black shapes moving in the distant mist. And just now, a... strange smell seems to have drifted through the air."
The Avalon King waved his hand impatiently, not even bothering to turn his head:
"Foolish. This is the Northern wilderness — isn't it perfectly ordinary to have a few half-starved wild bears or stray animals wandering about? Our Avalon miasma is the best barrier there is. Is something this trivial really worth disturbing these great lords? Get out!"
The soldier opened his mouth as if he still had more to say, but under the King's icy stare, he could only shrink his neck and retreat.
"Forgive the interruption, honored guests."
The King turned back and continued smiling apologetically at the Olan official and the elaborately dressed woman beside him.
"Those muddy peasants at the border — they've never seen the world. They spot a shadow and think it's an enemy raid."
The council hall resumed its previous rhythm. The officials discussed future tariffs; suggestions came up from time to time; everything seemed to still be operating within the bounds of a script they controlled.
However, only minutes later.
"BANG——!!!"
The heavy wooden door of the council hall — that door which symbolized the majesty of royal authority — was smashed open from the outside by some extraordinarily violent force.
Wood splinters flew, stone dust trickled down, and the quiet conversation was blasted to pieces.
The Avalon King slammed both hands on the table and shot to his feet. His puffy face twisted with fury:
"How dare you! Do you want to be thrown into the Pit of Ten Thousand Snakes?! Did I not say, do not disturb our honored guests——"
His voice cut off entirely.
Standing in the doorway was the very same soldier who had just been sent away.
But now his helmet was askew, one hand clinging to the doorframe in a death-grip, his fingernails split and bloody from clawing into the stone in blind panic.
His face had gone white as a sheet of paper soaked in standing water. His legs couldn't support his body — he simply collapsed onto the marble floor.
"They're here... Your Majesty... they're here!"
The soldier's voice had been scraped raw by sheer terror into something sharp and horrible, and it rang out through the empty hall in chilling echoes.
"Who's here? Has the Imperial Capital gotten wind of our movements?"
The King snapped, though a nameless cold dread was already rising in his chest.
"No... it's Mason!"
The soldier shook his head wildly, his eyes unfocused.
"So many people — packed together, nothing but people! They don't fear the miasma at all, not the venomous creatures either! They have weapons that make the sound of thunder... the gate is gone! The Valley of a Hundred Herbs garrison didn't even hold for a quarter of an hour!"
The moment the word "Mason" was heard, the air in the room froze solid.
Several pairs of eyes reflexively darted toward the elaborately dressed woman. On that woman's stunningly beautiful face, a brief, unmistakable flicker of unease appeared.
In the rotting, damp corridors of Avalon's palace, the sound of measured, heavy boot-steps was now echoing in perfect unison.
Mason's soldiers swept through like a cold black flood, led by Bardess, cutting off every exit to the outside world with surgical precision.
Those Avalon Royal Guards who normally thought themselves untouchable fell apart at the thunderous boom of the black muskets even faster than snowpack in sunlight.
Sophia walked unhurriedly through the center of the column. Her silver cape swept past the moss-covered stone pillars, and her pale-gold pupils were utterly without ripple — as if the panicking palace before her were nothing more than a derelict factory floor awaiting a final inspection.
"Move faster! If that person escapes, I'll personally hang you from the walls of Iron Throat to feed the eagles!"
Bardess drove a rifle-butt back into the spine of the Avalon defector who was leading their way.
That official was already drained of color, trembling violently as he pointed toward a rosewood door concealed behind an ornate tapestry:
"It's right there... right there! That is a secret passage leading to the underground river in the mountain's belly. Only the kings of each generation — and that honored guest — ever knew of it!"
Sophia tilted her head slightly and glanced at the closed door. The faintest curve touched the corner of her mouth.
"Bardess."
"Your servant is here!"
Bardess understood without needing another word. She lunged forward, every muscle in her body coiling taut, and delivered one devastating sidekick——
"CRASH——!"
That expensive rosewood door shattered like paper before the brute force, revealing a secret chamber within, decorated with such decadent, cloying opulence it had nearly crossed the line into rot.
At the center of the chamber, a pitch-dark secret tunnel had already been opened.
A woman dressed in layers of elaborate silk robes, draped in a fine fire-fox fur, was struggling to lift her skirts, half her body already plunging into the tunnel entrance.
When she heard the explosive crack of the door shattering, her body went rigid. That head of satiny long hair shook violently, looking wildly disheveled.
At the precise instant she gritted her teeth and was about to jump down — a pale, slender, ice-cold hand pressed down onto her shoulder with gentle force, yet with a weight of ten thousand jun behind it.
"Leaving so soon, dear elder sister?"
Sophia's voice brushed against the woman's ear — laced with a thread of teasing, yet cold enough to reach the bone.
The woman's body gave a violent shudder. She turned her head around slowly.
That face — once devastatingly beautiful in Mason's Royal City, now written over with terror and disbelief — had its carefully applied makeup smeared almost beyond recognition by cold sweat.
Sophia lowered her eyelids and looked into the woman's pupils, which had lost nearly all their focus from sheer fright. With a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, she tightened her grip and dragged her, inch by inch, back from the mouth of the tunnel.
"It has been quite a while, dear elder sister."
Sophia languidly smoothed out the cuff of her sleeve where a little gunpowder smoke had settled, her tone as light as someone actually strolling through her own courtyard garden:
"Back then you left in such a hurry — you didn't even say goodbye. After wandering through so many kingdoms and running all the way to miasma-soaked Avalon... I do hope you've found it comfortable enough?"
"So... Sophia..."
The woman's lips trembled. Her voice was so hoarse it was nearly inaudible.
"How is it possible... how could you possibly be this fast..."
"Fast?"
Sophia raised an eyebrow, and a flash of wry amusement crossed her pale-gold pupils.
"That's called Mason Efficiency. But rather than discuss the speed of my march, what I'm far more interested in is — after wandering out there for so long, do you happen to have anything for your little sister? A souvenir, perhaps? Or perhaps those secrets of Olan's that you have hidden on your person right now — is that the gift you're presenting to me for this reunion?"
Willow stood quietly in the doorway, watching Sophia play with her prey with complete and effortless composure, and the reverence pooling in the depths of her eyes was almost substantial enough to touch.
Her Majesty had seen every move of this coming, of course.
Why the forced march? Why the violent breach? Why the straight charge toward this hidden passage?
Her Majesty had already simulated, before she ever set out, the complete psychological trajectory of this fleeing elder sister.
Her Majesty doesn't care about Avalon's throne. She doesn't even care about those Olan officials. What she cares about is fitting the puzzle piece that once fell outside her calculations back, by her own hand, into the map of Order.
Watching that once-exalted princess tremble in Her Majesty's grasp like a startled little quail, I finally understand — what she called 'escape' was, in Her Majesty's eyes, nothing more than a year of free-range grazing.
The grazing period is over. Time to draw in the net.
Hailey peeked out from behind Bardess's legs, her little head craning forward, staring at the beautiful-beyond-reason, violently shaking woman.
Wow! So the villain Her Majesty has been hunting this whole time is Her Majesty's own real elder sister!
But the big sister looks so scared of Her Majesty — her eyes are practically falling out of her head!
____
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