The change of scenery, from the damp dungeons to the castle's dining room, was like crossing between two distinct worlds, although neither offered the comfort to which Arthur and William were accustomed. The room was spacious, with bare stone walls adorned by faded tapestries depicting ancient hunts and the heraldry of the Wimbledon family. A colossal fireplace crackled at one end, vainly attempting to chase away the chronic cold that seemed to seep into the very foundation of Border Town.
In the center, a long table of solid oak, darkened by time, dominated the space. As the servants began to bring in the platters under the stern gaze of Carter Lannis — who positioned himself by the door like an armored statue —, the reality of medieval life hit the senses of the two strangers brutally.
There was no Hollywood fantasy movie banquet glamour. The main course was what appeared to be an entire leg of some wild animal, probably boar or deer, roasted until it acquired a dark, rigid crust. There were wooden bowls containing a thick stew of unidentified tubers, greyish-brown breads with the texture of pumice stones, and polished metal goblets filled with a cloudy ale.
William sat at the table, feeling his stomach rumble loudly after the morning's excitement, but his enthusiasm died as soon as he put the first piece of meat in his mouth. He chewed, chewed, and chewed some more.
"What the fuck..." William thought, forcing his jaw to grind the tough fibers. "This has the texture of a boiled truck tire. Where is the salt? Where is the pepper? My entire kingdom for a packet of Ajinomoto or a ketchup sachet from that corner diner. This is the Prince? The royalty of Graycastle? I ate better at the college cafeteria. If this is the glory of the medieval world, I am the god of cooking himself." He swallowed hard, hiding his effort, and took a sip of the cloudy ale, almost choking on the bitter, unfiltered taste that scratched his throat.
Arthur, however, chewed with calculated slowness, his expression indecipherable. His eyes were not on the food, but on Roland. The Prince, sitting at the head of the table, had barely touched his plate. Cheng Yan observed the two with the intensity of a researcher dissecting new specimens in a laboratory. He slowly swirled the goblet of ale between his fingers, the silence filling the room almost suffocatingly.
When the servants finally withdrew and the heavy wooden door was closed, leaving only Carter on inside watch, Roland interrupted the clinking of cutlery.
— "Minister Barov is busy with the mine reports, and I dismissed the servants so we can speak without curious ears," Roland began, his voice cutting the silence like a cold blade. He leaned back in his high-backed chair, crossing his arms. — "We had an interesting conversation in the corridor about logic and perspectives. But philosophy doesn't build walls, and it didn't convince me enough either. You mentioned 'ancient books' and hinted at prophecies. You demonstrated knowledge of the chemical composition of a revolutionary material. So, gentlemen... the theater is over. What are these ancient books, where did they come from, and how did you find them? And why should I believe a single word that comes out of your mouths?"
The tension in the room skyrocketed. William froze with a piece of hard bread halfway to his mouth, feeling the aura of authority emanating from the Prince. Roland was no longer the foolish noble; he was the brilliant mind of a 21st-century man demanding pragmatic answers.
Arthur slowly dropped his rustic iron fork onto the wooden table. He wiped his lips with a rough linen napkin, buying precious seconds. His mind, operating with the clarity and speed of his enhanced intellect, reviewed the script he had mentally drafted since they descended into the dungeons. The lie needed to be so spectacular that it bypassed the cynical skepticism of an engineer.
— "I understand your distrust, Your Highness. In a world where lies are currency in the court, the pure truth often sounds like the most brazen of inventions," Arthur began, his voice calm, velvety, and engaging, demanding attention. — "To answer your questions, I need Your Highness to expand the horizons of your belief beyond the borders of Graycastle. Beyond, even, the mainland."
Roland narrowed his eyes. — "Continue."
— "Once, in our ceaseless quest for knowledge, we were exploring the deep south of the treacherous Fjord Islands," Arthur narrated, raising his gaze to the stone ceiling, acting out a distant memory. — "The waters there are treacherous, a labyrinth of deadly currents. During an anomalous storm, of a fury that seemed almost conscious, our vessel was thrown against an uncharted archipelago. Seeking shelter, we entered a cleft in the face of a cliff, discovering a colossal cave."
William chewed in silence, trying to keep his face neutral without laughing, but his heart beat like a drum. "Here he goes HAHAHAHAHA," he thought. "The narrative freak show. Fjords? HAHAHA, does this place even exist in this world??"
— "The interior of the cave was not the work of nature, Your Highness," Arthur continued, leaning slightly forward, fixing his magnetic gaze on Roland. — "The walls emitted a faint, constant glow. And in the center of the main hall, on a pedestal of a metal that did not rust, rested two abnormal books. The texture of the pages... was not sheepskin or parchment. They were white, smooth, made of a material that would not tear. And the handwriting within them was perfect, uniform in a way impossible for the human hand."
Roland felt a muscle in his face twitch. "Paper? Mechanized printing?" The former engineer's mind tried to find flaws in the story. Relics of a previous civilization? Devices left by other interdimensional travelers?
— "We spent days trapped in that cave and, with no other alternative, dedicated ourselves to studying the tomes," Arthur's voice took on a tone of deep reverence, an award-worthy performance. — "The first book... was a chronicle of destiny. It revealed the future in a terrifyingly specific way. It described the Royal Decree of your father, King Wimbledon III. It dictated, with exactitude, to which inhospitable or prosperous territories each of Ayling Wimbledon's children would be sent for the battle for the throne. Everything written there, Your Highness... has materialized perfectly in the reality we live today."
Carter Lannis, by the door, emitted a low sound of disbelief, tightening his grip on his sword hilt. Speaking about the Royal Decree with such intimacy was dangerous.
Roland's breathing became imperceptibly heavier. "There is no way they could know the fine details straight from the court's decree, let alone isolated at the end of the world," Roland calculated. "Unless they are the King's spies... No, spies wouldn't reveal that."
— "And what else did this prophetic book say?" asked Roland, his voice deep, hiding overwhelming curiosity beneath a veneer of royal indifference.
Arthur smiled, a small smile, laden with a fateful weight.
— "The book also traced the endgame, Your Highness. It said that the Fourth Prince, the despised ruler of Border Town, would not only survive the harsh winter and the Months of Demons, but would also rise to change the laws of the world. The text clearly stated that Your Highness would be the only one to see the true value of the witches, would save them from the stake, and use them to build a new era. And, at the end of it all... the book claimed that Roland Wimbledon would win the Battle for the Throne, subjugate his siblings, defeat the Church of Hermes, and become the true Supreme King."
The silence in the dining room became absolute, cut only by the crackling of firewood in the fireplace.
Roland's mind short-circuited. A prophecy? A prophecy guaranteeing his victory? As Cheng Yan, a man of 21st-century science, the concept of "prophecy" made him sick. It was cheap superstition. But... he was inhabiting the body of a dead prince. He had just seen a seventeen-year-old girl summon flames out of nowhere in the dungeon. If soul transmigration and magic existed, why would precognition, or an advanced probability calculation made by a magical relic, be impossible?
"If these books predicted that I would save the witches, that would explain why they weren't surprised when I spared Anna," Roland analyzed, the gears of his brain spinning at top speed. "Their story holds up within the impossible new rules of this world. But what about the technology?"
— "Assuming I believe this convenient fable about my glorious future," said Roland, resting his elbows on the table and interlacing his fingers in front of his face, — "that doesn't explain how you know about exact construction mixtures. Magic and prophecies don't teach chemistry."
— "And that is where the second book comes in, Your Highness," Arthur replied immediately, without missing a beat, his eyes shining with contained excitement. — "While the first book dealt with destiny, the second dealt with studies. The knowledge of the physical world. However, its language was enigmatic. It contained many things we couldn't even begin to comprehend. There were illustrations of mountains spitting metallic smoke, carriages that moved without horses, and difficult words that seemed invented. Bizarre formulas formed by interlaced letters and numbers."
"Chemical formulas! Engineering equations! They found a modern manual!" Roland's heart leaped in his chest. He had to clench his teeth not to show the immense euphoria that washed over him.
— "But, amidst what was unintelligible to us, we managed to decipher and memorize some simpler excerpts," Arthur concluded, flattening his hands on the table. — "And it was in there that we acquired the information about limestone, clay, the firing processes, and finally... the recipe for creating the grey stone that hardens with water. Cement. We absorbed as much as we could from its pages during the storm."
William, who was trying to maintain his composure by pretending to wipe his mouth with the napkin, was internally falling apart.
"Holy shit. I'm sitting across from the greatest liar in the universe HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," William screamed mentally, his brain spinning with his friend's audacity. "This madman invented the perfect excuse! He justified why we know the story using the 'prophecy' of the first book, and justified why we aren't geniuses in every field by making up that the second book was too 'difficult to understand', so we only memorized the cement! He just covered all our bases. He turned our reading of the manga/novel into a sacred artifact. Oscar. The Oscar goes to this son of a bitch Arthur!"
Roland leaned back in his chair, his gaze lost in the dancing flames of the fireplace for a long time. He processed every word. If he were on Earth, he would have them both committed. But here... in this bizarre world where women actually possessed magic?
He looked at his own hand. The hand that had felt Anna's power. The real world, his old world, was left behind. Magic was a universal constant now. And if magic dictated the rules, Arthur's words were the most plausible explanation for the absurdity of the situation. Furthermore, the usefulness of those two was undeniable. They had practical knowledge he could exploit.
The Prince took a deep breath, recovering his sovereign posture.
— "That second tome..." Roland began, his voice betraying a fraction of the scientific greed burning inside him. He stared intently at Arthur. — "What other specific knowledge did you manage to memorize besides cement? And, most importantly... where are these ancient books now? If we send a fast ship to the Fjord Islands, can we retrieve them? With that collection in hand, Border Town would advance hundreds of years."
Arthur lowered his gaze, simulating a deep, reverential sorrow, like a priest mourning the loss of a divine relic.
— "That is the great misfortune, my Prince. And it is the reason we place so much faith in what we read," said Arthur, shaking his head slowly. — "As soon as the storm subsided and the first rays of sunlight touched the ocean, we decided to leave. We took the books from the pedestal. But as soon as we crossed the cave's entrance and left the mystical interior... the unimaginable happened."
Roland leaned forward, hooked on the narrative. — "What happened?"
— "They dissolved in our hands, Your Highness," Arthur declared, looking directly into the Prince's haunted eyes. — "They didn't turn to ashes or dust, but rather particles of pure light, which dissipated into the ocean wind, returning to the nature from whence they came. After we read their contents, the books vanished. They fulfilled their purpose. The knowledge was planted. It is precisely because they defied reality so spectacularly that we truly believe in those mysterious books. We believe in the prophecy that says you are the future, Your Highness. And that is why we crossed the ocean, and subsequently the Kingdom of Dawn, to be here, by your side."
The room plunged into a thick, monumental silence.
Roland closed his eyes and massaged his temples. The disappointment over the incalculable loss of the "science manual" was crushing, weighing on his shoulders like a lead anchor. However, Arthur's explanation plugged all the logical holes of the fantastical scenario they found themselves in. Magical books that disappeared didn't break the rules of a universe where girls could summon fire in the palms of their hands.
In the back of his mind, Cheng Yan accepted defeat in his interrogation. Could they be lying? Yes. But the story was perfectly cohesive with the new world, and their practical usefulness for creating cement nullified any desire to imprison them. He needed those two alive and comfortable to siphon out as much "retained" knowledge as they possessed.
Roland opened his eyes, finally allowing the mask of hostility to fall, revealing a pragmatic acceptance.
— "An inestimable tragedy for the world, without a doubt," said Roland, sighing heavily. — "The physical knowledge of a golden era, lost to the wind. However... the fact that you came to me cannot be ignored. Whether by the design of the gods, ancient magic, or an inexorable destiny, you are welcome in Border Town."
Roland stood up from the table, his cloak dragging on the stone floor, signaling the end of the audience.
— "That is all for today. This was a morning... revealing enough for an entire day," the Prince concluded, looking from one to the other. — "You may stay here, in the palace. You have my protection. Carter, instruct the maids to prepare two rooms in the east corridor next to the kitchen. Our scholars from the Kingdom of Dawn are now honored guests of Graycastle. Rest today. Another day we will discuss the minute prophetic remnants you still possess from the ancient books."
Carter Lannis beat his chest in a salute and opened the double doors, indicating the exit. — "This way, gentlemen."
Arthur and William stood up, gave short, graceful bows, and began to walk toward the exit, leaving an exhausted Prince Roland behind with his thoughts of limestone kilns and throne prophecies.
As soon as they crossed the threshold and entered the dimly lit corridor, away from the direct scrutiny of Carter who walked a few meters ahead, William nudged Arthur with his elbow, his eyes wide with shock and pure admiration, silently mouthing a swear word in disbelief.
Arthur didn't say a word. He merely adjusted the collar of his modern black cotton shirt, glanced sideways at his jaw-dropped friend, and let a smug, diabolically satisfied smile take over his face. The board was under his control. The Prince had swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sink
er. The revolution of Border Town would be theirs.