Rowena continued to look around, searching for clues as to what was going on, until she had to turn back to the two people now behind her. They seemed a bit surprised, but not at all frightened.
"Are you not scared?"
Iris blinked, looking at the young woman in confusion. "Should I be?"
You would think she would be, seeing a drake so soon after the incident at Eisenwacht, but there was nothing to worry about in her eyes.
"I don't know, that's why I'm asking," the now brown-haired girl admitted truthfully.
"Since the guards didn't alert the city patrol, there's no need to worry. It must be an expected guest." Expected, or at least authorized, though the difference was nil, since the common folk wouldn't have known either way. "Were you not aware?" Ansgar asked.
'If I had been aware, I wouldn't have asked, Sherlock.' She swallowed a biting remark, because the old man wasn't to blame for the situation. "I'll have to go and check. If we don't meet again, wait for my return after I have successfully traveled back from the Lodden Empire."
They bowed slightly. "I pray for your safe arrival, Young Lady Rowena." There was a mother's warmth in Iris's gaze as she said this, making it seem as if she meant it.
Rowena could only nod and return the blessing before hurrying off in the direction her second brother and the knight he had left behind had disappeared.
"Sir Yaakov, what is going on?"
The tanned night faced the chateau, his jaw visibly clenched, brows furrowed, but he turned to his lady with a gentle smile. "Nothing to worry about."
They hadn't been informed of anyone coming over on a Drake, but there was only one person who could have been given permission to enter their airspace on short notice anyway. 'No, it's actually two people, but one of them is highly unlikely to show up here right now,' Mizrahi thought, knowing the trouble that was up ahead.
"We need to go immediately. Where's Norina?" he heard the woman murmur in distress.
"Logan will bring her back. Sir Sean went back first, together with the young master. You don't need to worry." His intention was to calm her down so she wouldn't panic, but as he looked at her, she didn't seem to be panicking at all.
She was a little restless, granted, but not out of fear. 'I don't like being left in the dark like this,' Rowena thought as she continued to scan the area.
She had already gone through the possibilities, but what Ansgar had said made sense. This probably wasn't an attack, because everyone around them showed surprise and a bit of concern, but none of the people on the square were outright scared.
With that information, as little as it might have been, she could tell that there was no need to fall into a frenzy. But she didn't like being left out of the important things, especially when it was something big.
She was still new to this world, after all, and there were so many questions she couldn't answer.
Sensing her impatience, at least, he put a hand on her delicate shoulder. "Let's go, Lady Rowena."
It took them a few minutes to reach their destination, where they saw a drake racked up near the stables, though of course there was no stable for this one. It was as big as a pickup truck and, sitting on its hind legs, at least nine feet tall.
Someone had placed a huge bucket of what looked like drinking water in front of it. It was fascinating to Rowena, but she couldn't linger on it for long, because her eyes were on something else.
There really was a guest here - one who would surely be allowed to enter any day. When she saw his black hair, his red eyes, and the coat of arms with a two-headed lion on his black and silver uniform, there was no question who this "guest" was.
Since she had almost run all the way from the plaza without even using any Mana, she felt a bit out of breath as she stepped closer, trying to straighten her hair and her stature somewhat.
However, when he finally turned his head in her direction, she was met with an emotionless stare that made her shoulders jerk noticeably as she felt as though her face had hit a brick wall.
Shrugging it off, she greeted him politely. "First Brother, I see you are doing well. To what do we owe the honor of your sudden visit?"
The heir to Varnhagen, the young soon-to-be-Duke, Alan Beyer van Varnhagen, stood motionless for a few seconds, unable to answer.
"Why don't we go inside and sit down, brother?" Colin broke their staring contest and waved over a servant who was standing a few feet away, waiting for orders.
On the way inside, many things went through their respective minds, but most of them were far from one another. Rowena wondered why her first brother would suddenly show up at their chateau in the north. After all, he was supposed to be part of the delegation, so he should have been busy preparing.
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In the end, they weren't traveling for a joy ride, but for a diplomatic mission. She was a mere accessory to their envoy, but the deal she was supposed to adorn would be decided during their stay of a week or two.
Since it would take them a total of eight days to travel from the Territory down to the capital city of Lodden, it would be unproductive to come up north so shortly before heading south. The Varnhagen family wasn't that important in the book, and she didn't even remember everything about it to begin with, but the heir to the duchy was a rather solemn, efficient character, as far as she recalled.
There was already a lot she couldn't predict. In the original book, the whole conflict started with the Shifting Ages. When Celia had read it as a mere fantasy novel reader, she had thought it was a book inspired by history. After all, there had been such a shift when suddenly the steady onslaught of the Visitors had begun to increase bit by bit until it had become the so-called "Great Wave", forcing humanity to find ways to retaliate, but not without losing about a third of its population.
"Only a third," some people had said in Celia's time. But the reality was that the losses would have been much more devastating had they not been fighting the Visitors for centuries prior to the Great Wave - and had they not been warned by the slow growth of the enemy during the Shifting Ages.
At the end of the book, the Crown Prince would have fought side by side with his fiancée, Saintess Scarlett, and the holy sword forged by Ansgar, Ragnarök, against the Great Wave, after which everything calmed down again. No human enemies, as she had recalled before already.
'The same thing had happened in my world's real history as well – minus that mess of a Crown Prince, the Saintess, and this holy sword with that cheesy name to it of course.' Certainly, there were a few things that had happened in between, but the only thing that would be noteworthy was the speed in which those changes had happened.
Rowena paused for a second as she sat down on a couch in the chateau's main salon, struck by an epiphany. Until now, whenever she thought about the contents of the book, which seemed far away from her anyway, she hadn't really changed the way she looked at these events at all.
Simply "knowing" that her perspective had changed and actually changing it were two different things. In her case, she had made the mistake of not paying enough attention. Yes, the "Great Wave" had been a part of her history as well, but now she had to look at it from the perspective of being in another world.
Why should the same things be happening here? And why were they happening so quickly? She had already understood why the Saintess' Numbered would suddenly appear in this world, Pan had followed her seemingly easily as well.
As a reader, it wasn't unusual to read a book about a world with the same rules as her own. After all, most of the stories also contained humans who breathed oxygen to live. Seeing a Numbered, who had once been a great asset to Celia's world, appear in the book after her contractor had died and it had vanished from the face of her Earth, just seemed nostalgic.
Having it battle the Great Wave seemed logical. Having the Shifting Ages happen quickly and violently made sense, since it was a book and they needed to tell the story in a reasonable amount of time, they didn't have two centuries for it.
But now that it was here, it was no longer a story. Why would a real world share a historical milestone of this magnitude with an Earth that was completely different? This went beyond a simple copying mechanism, based on some kind of shared memory.
In other words, there was a reason behind the Shifting Ages and the Great Wave that followed as its culmination, changing the landscape and mindset of a world forever. Like a normal weather phenomenon, it would be the same in this world, since they largely shared the same laws of nature.
'So the Great Wave must have been something that simply happened, like rain falling from the sky,' she mused, finally lowering herself onto the sofa, 'but for some reason, the same thing seems to happen a hell of a lot faster and harder in this world. Was everything in the book really a natural disaster?'
Lost in thought, she didn't even notice her brothers looking at her in confusion while Norina, who had also returned, brought in a cart of tea and refreshments from the kitchen. It had been quiet in the living room for a while now, but they were just waiting for their sister to come back to reality on her own.
As a cup was gently placed in front of her, Rowena snapped out of her trance-like state, blinking in confusion and looking around as her cheeks turned redder and redder. "My apologies, I was a bit lost in thought, what were you saying?"
A bit irritated, Colin's eyebrow twitched at her nonchalant attitude.
"Nothing. We didn't say anything," Alan replied instead, his voice as cold as ever.
"Oh, is that so," she reached for her cup of tea, completely unaware of the fact, and basked in its delightful fragrance, "Great as always, Norina."
"Thank you, my lady." The blonde maid bowed and left the room, knowing this wasn't a conversation she was meant to hear.
The same was true for Ava, who had been standing by the cart helping to set the table, and Humphrey, who had arranged for an extra room for the night.
"The reason I came here," the oldest of the remaining people in the room began, ignoring the tea in front of him, "is the information I received about the alleged terrorist attack. I heard you were the one who conducted the investigation, Colin?"
With a sigh, he brushed his hair back with one hand, removing the magical coating in one motion, turning it back into its lavender shade. "You didn't have to come up here just for that. I have already compiled all the leads we could find. Wouldn't it have been better to spend the time sleeping?"
It was late in the evening, and even if she hadn't, Rowena would have had to return to the estate soon anyway, as they would have had to go to bed early to start their journey in the early morning hours.
"Since I was in the Granbell Mountain Range when the letter arrived, Father had to call me back from the front. I took a drake to get here in time to see the damage for myself."
"Damage," Colin repeated, as if tasting the word on his tongue, and looked at his older brother suspiciously.
'If he wanted to see the damage done to Eisenwacht, which was mostly focused on the graveyard anyway, he would have stopped his drake there, not in the middle of the capital.' It didn't seem to add up in his mind.
His gaze moved on, as Alan had begun to stare at their sister again. ''Damage,' he says, huh?' Colin thought he wouldn't try to pry into their business, but he brushed his hair back again, feeling his life energy drained by two irresponsible idiots at the same time. "The damage wasn't as bad as we first thought," was all he said about it.
'True, it must have mostly hit the forest behind the village. Lucky,' the young woman thought, oblivious to the glances her brothers shared at that comment.