Chapter Thirteen: The Night Before the Phoenix Battle
After that, I had a meeting alone with the queen in the castle.
I needed to report everything that had happened recently to her, hear reports from her side of things, and decide on the materials and other supplies we needed from Melromarc in order to prepare for the Phoenix battle—lots of things to do.
“We have the Phoenix battle in the next few days and more fighting ahead. How have things been in your lands, Hero Iwatani?” the queen eventually asked.
“I’m gathering quite a merry band,” I replied.
The main thing I needed to be careful of was that they didn’t think they could just do anything they wanted because they were allies of the heroes. I told the queen how Itsuki’s companions had done all sorts of shady things while they were traveling with him. Just like Witch, they were now wanted criminals, but they’d vanished completely—for the moment.
Then there were the guys who seemed to have been the Church of the Three Heroes. The ones who Motoyasu took care of. If anyone could tell me, I really wanted to know why I had so many enemies.
I’d recently been thinking of spending some money to hire a shadow human from Zeltoble, to be honest.
“I’ve also heard that Melty is helping to rebuild a town within your territory, the one that Count Seaetto used to manage. It sounds like a good experience for her,” the queen commented.
“I’d say Melty is a big reason everything runs so smoothly. She’ll make a fine queen,” I replied.
“For you to praise her so highly, Hero Iwatani, my daughter must be working really hard,” the queen said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I responded. She’d helped a lot with Motoyasu too. In the chaotic stable filled with the willful filolials that Motoyasu raised in the wild, Melty had stepped in and helped to start training them.
Maybe it was Motoyasu’s influence, but Filo’s Underling Filolial #1 had also started to look like a queen. I still hadn’t seen her talking though. According to Melty and Filo, aside from the three who formed Motoyasu’s direct retinue, all of the other filolials had been brought together by Underling Filolial #1 . . . whose name was Chick . . . apparently.
I guess she had some skills after all.
In order to fight the Phoenix, we’d also brought along the filolial army that Motoyasu raised. They were in competition with the Raph species, basically. Gaelion was going to talk with the dragons that the dragon knights rode and fought alongside them.
Command of the demi-human therianthropes was going well, with Raphtalia, me, Fohl, and Atla acting as representatives. Werner from Siltvelt was handling business too, by all accounts.
Then there was the Q’ten Lo contingent. Hearing that the new Heavenly Emperor Raphtalia was going to be fighting, some volunteers had expressed a desire to fight alongside her, and they’d already been added to our forces.
The queen was responsible for leading the humans.
Otherwise, the command structure was pretty solid.
There were many soldiers among the Melromarc forces who had experienced the fight with the Spirit Tortoise, so they should be able to keep up.
“Don’t you dare touch Atla!” I heard Fohl’s voice from the castle gardens. Huh? What now? He had been on standby in the garden . . . waiting for me, basically.
Atla and Fohl weren’t suited to this kind of meeting, so I’d planned on filling them in later. It sounded like something had happened first though.
I took a look out the window to see Fohl having to forcibly carry Atla away from Trash.
Trash gently extended his arm forward, seeming to cut the air. Then he muttered something to Fohl before turning his back and moving away.
Atla shook her head, while Fohl narrowed his eyes, thinking about something.
The queen came to stand beside the window with me and watched Trash with something indescribable in her eyes.
“I hope . . . he finds himself again—his former strength—as soon as possible,” she said. I’d expected as much. Somewhere deep inside she was still hoping that Trash would make it back to his old, intellectual self.
“If you ask me, I think it’d be more practical to take the Seven Star Weapon from Trash and give it to someone else,” I said.
“I am sorry about this . . . but if Trash could just return to himself, I assure you that he would be able to do ten times the things anyone else could with the Staff. Even if you order it, Hero Iwatani, I cannot have the Staff taken from him,” the queen affirmed.
Trash was apparently the Seven Star Staff Hero. I’d never seen him holding the staff and honestly wondered if the original king was dead and this was just a doppelganger.
Just where was he hiding the Seven Star Staff?
“Hmmm. But we don’t have much leeway. If an enemy appears that we can’t handle, and he won’t share the hero weapon power-ups, then we’ll just have to find someone else to wield it, even if it means executing him,” I warned her.
“I understand,” she replied. The queen was looking off into the distance but nodded at my words. I must have been imagining things, but for a moment those eyes looked just like Raphtalia’s when she was expecting something from me.
Having finished my discussions with the queen, I headed down to talk with Fohl in the garden.
“Master Naofumi!” Atla shouted. She was with him too, so . . .
“Atla, I’m taking a trip back to the village. Can you go and call Raphtalia and the others for me?” I asked her after lightly ruffling her hair to stop her from refusing.
“Very well! I’ll do whatever you order me to, Master Naofumi!” With that, Atla rushed off happily. It felt like I’d started to understand how to get her to do what I wanted, recently.
“Fohl, wait a moment,” I said. Her brother had been about to go after Atla, so I stopped him.
“Huh? What is it?” he replied.
“I saw you and Atla talking with Trash. What was that about?” I questioned.
“Is there any reason I have to tell you that?” he came back, a bit aggressively.
“Can’t you tell that he’s planning something? You know what he did to your people, right?” I fired back. Fohl quickly backed down. He had surely been told the stories when first meeting the queen. With seemingly no response to that, he started to tell me what happened.
“He started asking Atla all sorts of probing questions. Even started asking me the same thing. Things about our mother, stuff like that,” he revealed.
“Did you tell him anything?” I asked.
“No, I turned him down . . . but—” Fohl’s reply was cut short for a moment, as though there was something else he couldn’t quite say. “He looked even older than before and seemed so listless.”
“I’m not surprised,” I commented. According to what I’d been told, Trash’s younger sister had been a lot like Atla, which meant he probably empathized with Fohl.
“After seeing us together, he stared off into the distance and told me that I have to protect my sister, no matter the cost, or that I’d regret it. I mean, talk about stating the obvious,” Fohl continued.
“I see.” It might be obvious, sure, but Trash was definitely placing himself in Fohl’s shoes.
I’d seen this story before.
I didn’t want to know the details, but apparently Trash was a pretty capable fellow, back in his youth. Everyone in Siltvelt—his enemies at the time—had said the same thing. So it had the ring of truth to it, although I didn’t exactly see where it was coming from.
Meanwhile, Atla was probably physically much stronger than Trash’s sister had been and had a personality that was a bit like hers. But also, she was a bit different. Hmmm, maybe I could taunt him a little with that next time I saw him.
But I really wasn’t seeing much of him recently.
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