Chapter 108 — In which families are complicated (6)
Yet another type of silence engulfed the room.
This one crawled in, with a big and heavy body, carrying a cold and darkness of buried past.
About a hundred years ago.
One of the great clans that stood in the center of Rubrun’s politics was completely annihilated.
The family heads, their descendants, their trustworthy aids… All of them dead overnight.
The Black Forest family was eradicated down to its roots.
Much later, decades after the tragedy, the scholars attributed their fall to bad luck.
At the time, it was a custom that all family members, including extended family and non-biological family members, lived in one place.
The subsidiary families under the main family of the Black Forest also lived there.
Though their residence was enormous, they were still ‘in one pot’.
And that night, everyone happened to be there for a clan gathering.
Setting fire under the pot was much too easy.
Everyone died. No survivors.
Or that was at least what everyone were led to believe.
Seven, or Iben as he cared to reveal, looked at Crimo with a somehow empty look.
“Do you wish me to provide some other proof? Though I’m afraid that my face may be the only proof I have.”
He spoke with a calm, detached voice, carefully avoiding the burning gazes of shock.
Instead of replying, Crimo glanced at Scarlen.
Scarlen blinked, then coughed and asked:
“Sir, if you don’t mind, can you please tell me the names of your progenitors?”
When Iben recited the names of everyone three generations back, without single one missing, Scarlen had to nod.
After the tragedy, the Black Forest family records were mostly destroyed, the only authentically ones remaining in the Black Lake, Scarlen’s family, vaults.
While not a proof, combined with Iben’s face, it was enough.
Crimo bit his inner cheek as he very carefully chose his words.
“May I ask for what reason you waited one hundred years to assassinate, as far as I know, an unrelated Saint?”
Crimo expected Iben to perhaps laugh or spit out something like ‘Revenge’, but instead, the Iben’s slightly confused expression, became even more confused.
“So my calculations weren’t wrong…? It truly was… one hundred years?”
The mages who heard Iben’s mumbling were startled.
“Sir, did you perhaps lose a track of time?”
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Scarlen opened his eyes wide.
“I’m afraid so.”
Iben’s lips twisted, as he perfectly understood how nonsensical it sounded.
For a master mage, keeping track of time was like a heartbeat.
Whether awake or sleeping, they had to track it second by second, to make sure that the surveillance spell emits a searching wave every second or two, that the light spell kept over their experiments changes position every half-a-hour, that they take into account the movement of the planet for all of their teleportation circles…
The mind of a mage was constantly preforming multiple calculations, activating and deactivating spells, changing the parameters, and checking for inconsistencies, all depending on the time.
It was something so crucial that Vern was counting even in his death and after.
While mages were prone to sometimes lose count in extreme circumstances, for example, Crimo lost a few seconds during the earlier encounter, leading to instability of his spell circles for a short moment, to lose count for one hundred years was like saying that someone’s heart stopped for one hundred years and then started to beat again, as if nothing ever happen.
Though, frankly speaking, Iben’s existence itself felt like such an anomaly.
“Sir, can I ask what were you doing to lose track of time for one hundred years?”
Scarlen continued to ask, on behalf of his dumbstruck companions.
“That… I’m not sure.” Iben was once again embarrassed. “I don’t remember.”
Hearing that, Scarlen’s bewildered face turned to the one of deep and dark understanding.
“Ah… I see, you lost yourself…”
“Lost? You mean ‘that’ phenomena you told me before?”
Crimo asked, and when Scarlen nodded, his expression betrayed slight pity when he looked at Iben, but it was quickly hidden.
Sangria opened his mouth, as if to ask a question, but feeling the atmosphere growing darker, he closed it again.
Thankfully for him, Vern noticed his doubts.
“Demons, or those of particularly thick demonic blood, have a tendency of ‘losing’ themselves when put in highly stressful or deeply dark situation. At that moment, their ego quite literally dies, and they are left to act on their instincts and emotions, with no memories or reason… But that usually leads to quick death, most often by suicide. Is that correct?”
He turned to Iben for conformation.
Iben nodded.
“You know quite a lot, Lesser Lord Mage.”
“I had to learn.”
Vern unconsciously glanced to Crimo and Scarlen, before quickly retracting his gaze.
“But that begs the question of how did you survive for one hundred years in that state and even was able to attempt to take the Saint’s life.”
If Iben was ‘lost’ he should be by no means capable of that.
He would barely able to take care of his biological needs, so how could he plan and execute assassination on perhaps the most protected person in this country?
Iben let out an empty chuckle.
“I wish to know that too. The last thing I remember was trying to convince myself it’s all a nightmare and curling up in that black box, and the next I’m strangling some poor attendant out of his life in a fancy marble room.”
“… You came back to your senses just like that?”
“That’s possible?”
Crimo and Sangria were confused, while Scarlen looked at Iben with somehow amazed look.
“You were damn lucky to find a light at that moment, Sir.”
“I was… I survived by a hair’s breadth once again.”
He didn’t seem particularly happy about it.
“Then it means that someone set you up to kill the Saint?”
Vern was more concerned about his younger sibling’s safety, than how Iben managed to come back to his senses.
“It seems so. Even while in confusion I incapacitated the attendant, I felt strong resolve to kill someone in that bed. Even though I didn’t know who they were, they seemed to be some high-ups from Purplus, so I had no qualms about it at that moment.”
Iben shrugged.
Vern frowned, his stomach burning with anger at such a casual declaration of willingness to take a life, no, the life, the life of his brother, but he also couldn’t say he didn’t understand it.
If he was to wake up with a knife at the throat of a person, who seems to be related to the traitors, who brought death to him and his siblings, he probably also wouldn’t think much of it.
So he pressed his lips and shut his mouth.
Crimo was pressing his forehead with half-closed eyes.
So many things happened today.
So many things still had to be dealt with.
So many revelations had to be analyzed and chewed through.
Finally, he spoke:
“While I have multiple questions, it’s probably the best if postpone them to some other time. For how to deal with you, Master Iben…”
He examined the man for a moment and then sighed.
“Master Sangria, please lead Master Iben to my laboratory no. 9.”
“My Lord?”
“It’s the laboratory with the best defenses, and also have a small resting area.”
“What about your experiments?”
Crimo glanced at Vern and then dismissed Sangria’s concerns.”
“I have no longer any usage for them. Go now.”
“Yes…”
Sangria bowed and Iben also followed suit.
Just when the two were about to leave, Crimo suddenly stopped them.
“Master Iben. I have one more question, before you go.”
“Yes, Lord Archmage?”
“Who was the person, which you teleported?”
“…”
Iben hesitated.
It was different from previous hesitation, steaming from confusion and uncertainty of how to deal with this situation.
This time he was truly hesitating if he should say it.
“From what I learned about that person, if he wanted Lord Archmage to know, who he was, he would leave a clue. And in case he didn’t, I believe it would be best to follow his wishes and not to know.”
With such cryptic words, he disappeared.
In the corner, Vern nodded to himself.
‘Am seduced another man.’
Then he remembered the person who disappeared with Iben and thought.
‘Poor Master Sangria. His love once again hides his face.’
If Vern’s hypothesis was right, Sangria was truly unlucky.
*~*~*