The King sat straight on the throne while the Flint patriarch waited at the foot of the dais with his hands folded.
"If my family clears the anomaly without delay," the Patriarch said, holding the angle of a man who had done this many times, "I trust the Crown will honor our arrangement."
"You have my word," the King replied, "if your kinsman retrieves the core, that jurisdiction transfers to your house permanently."
"My concern this morning lies elsewhere," he continued, one hand closing on the arm of the throne, "two search parties went out after the princess, then neither of them came back."
"My forces can widen the grid by tomorrow," the Patriarch said in the voice he kept for offers that cost him nothing, "losing Her Highness would devastate the kingdom."
The King barely heard the measured and convenient offer, since the report that Gazel's detachment had been wiped out left him unable to care about territory while his daughter was missing.
The doors at the far end groaned open before either man could go further, so every guard along the wall turned at once.
Didi walked in unharmed with her head up.
The King was off the throne before anyone thought to announce her.
"Didi!" he shouted, dropping royal decorum on the third step down the dais to get his arms around his daughter.
The Patriarch stepped back to give them room, bowing his head to the depth protocol wanted from a guest with no part in this.
'She survived,' he thought while the King held her, 'so there goes a succession dispute I had already costed out.'
Then he saw the exiled boy come through the doors behind the princess, beside a wolf-eared girl who was watching the guards instead of the throne.
Annoyance got past his composure before he could put it back.
'I ordered that failure to disappear into the slums,' he thought, then Didi chose that moment to fix him with a stare no princess owed a guest.
Cold arithmetic replaced the irritation inside one breath.
If the boy had already told this court whose son he was, then quieting him before the story travelled was the cleaner of the two options left.
"I am glad you are safe," the King said, pulling back far enough to look at her properly, "though I would like to know who these two are."
"They are my saviors, Father," she answered, turning to put a hand out toward them, "this is Hajin, his companion Juna."
"They pulled me out from under the monster," she went on, her chin coming up a fraction, "then they walked me back to the capital themselves."
The face the King turned on them softened, before something heavier moved across it and settled.
"The news of your detachment reached me at dawn," he said, his voice dropping under the height of the room, "I am sorry about Sir Gazel."
"He was one of the finest knights this kingdom has produced," he added, the words coming slower than the rest.
The composure Didi had carried through the doors came apart, so Hajin watched water gather at the corners of her eyes while she worked to keep her face still.
"He died protecting me," she said quietly, her shoulders going down.
"He died doing the last duty anyone gave him, so his name will be carried that way," the King said, closing a hand on her shoulder before he turned around.
The King started toward Hajin, and a weight came down over the room with him.
Hajin stopped being able to move, since nothing about the man had changed except the air.
There was no weapon coming out, no mana gathering anywhere, though the pressure leaking off that body made the floor feel further away than it had been.
'Fuck,' Hajin thought, his breathing going shallow while the distance closed, 'how strong is this man supposed to be?'
'Why aim it at me in his own throne room,' he thought, 'unless the whole thing is a test.'
The King stopped in front of him, then reached out a hand slowly.
Every alarm in his head went at once, so he took a full step backward on instinct and left the royal hand sitting in empty air.
Sweat came up cold on his forehead, because he had just dodged the King inside the throne room in front of a wall of armed guards.
'Crap,' he thought, forcing his pulse down while he hunted for something that would sound deliberate.
"Forgive me, Your Majesty," he said quickly, gesturing at his own clothes with a bow that arrived late, "a man of your standing cannot be allowed to grab someone wearing this much dirt and monster blood."
The weight over the room vanished without leaving a trace.
Nobody spoke for a moment, then the King threw his head back and laughed loud enough to carry down the hall.
[ ashley: ] i have now watched a teenager dodge a king. chat, behave yourselves.
'Not the moment,' Hajin thought, sliding the panel to the edge of his vision without moving his eyes.
"You have fantastic instincts," the King said, the laugh settling into something friendlier, "with a good heart attached to them."
"Though for a boy trying to look unremarkable," he continued, studying the dirt on Hajin instead of his face, "you are carrying a very interesting power."
Hajin kept his head down while his hands closed inside his pockets.
'Can he sense the fragment?' he thought, running back over every step he had taken since the doors opened, 'or did he only catch the shift in my mana when the path changed?'
"Please stop teasing him, Father," Didi said, stepping between them with her arms folding, "he brought me out of that forest a few hours ago."
"There is no need to test the man the moment he comes through the door," she added, without moving out of the way.
"I am not testing him out of malice," the King replied, giving up a pace of ground, "I could not help myself."
"When an unknown boy saves my daughter, then walks into my throne room," he went on, spreading both hands like the point were obvious, "I have to know what he is built on."
A few paces off, the Patriarch had not said a word since the doors opened, though he had put his mana vision up the instant the pressure landed.
He expected an empty core and the residue of a talentless failure.
Instead he found a dense, sharp signature running clean circuits through a body with no business holding one.
His eyes narrowed by a degree, because he had seen that exact density before, in the mother.
'It is circulating flawlessly,' he thought while keeping his face exactly where it was.
'The core is not fractured anymore,' he thought.
'Did the slums wake a bloodline that never stirred once under my roof?'
A dormant line coming awake changed every variable on the board, since the boy had stopped being a forgotten stain on the family name.
He was a live political liability, standing four paces from the throne with the princess vouching for him.
While the Patriarch recalculated, a small blue window opened at the corner of Hajin's vision.
[ashley donated: 500 credits]
He almost reacted in front of the entire court, which would have been an interesting thing to explain.
[ ashley: ] that pressure was genuinely terrifying even through the screen. the king lives up to his title.
'Not now, Ashley,' he thought, pushing the notice away before anybody caught him staring at nothing.
A second panel opened underneath before the first had finished closing, carrying a status line he had been ignoring since the forest.
[ Stream Status: Active ]
[ Viewers: 187 ]
[ Soul Energy: 94 ]
[ Fragment Recovery: 0.012% ]
[ Rank Progress: 16,500 / 500,000 ]
[ Juna Wing Progress: 15,000 / 300,000 ]
'The count is nearly two hundred?' he thought, reading the row twice, 'and the Soul Energy climbed that far off people watching a rescue and a long walk.'
He put the panel away, though the numbers stayed with him longer than he wanted.
Juna leaned in at his shoulder, one ear still turned toward the dais while she pitched her voice under the room.
"Your face went strange," she said, watching him rather than the King, "you get that look when the invisible thing talks to you."
"It was a message," he said, barely moving his mouth, "somebody a long way from here thinks your King is impressive."
"Your King is impressive," she said, her nose working once, "he smells like the forest before a storm hits it."
"Then we agree on something," he said, still not taking his attention off the dais, "stay close until we are back outside those doors."
Across the floor, the Patriarch was already looking at him.