It was close to two hours after dusk, and the ballroom was getting filled with the essence of expensive perfume and crimson wine.

From money-dirty chatters and detrimental commentaries towards a certain class or the other, sometimes sparkled with a fun dose of narcissism and lack of self-awareness, the saloon had it all that could be expected from a rich folk gathering. Being a party sponsored by the duke of Goldblack, it was only natural that its tables were occupied by no other than members of the nobility, the military, and the important business owners of the region.

While laughter spread in most corners of the room, others were dressed in a more sinister undertone. The ladies and knights with their squires besides, speaking lowly with the barons and the earls about the tragic destiny that the some of the nobility's most proud members had suffered.

It had been in everyone's mouth, not without reason, the seemingly plotted death of more than one important figure from the great kingdom of Kulkus. With concerned tones and hidden blades of hypocrisy under their tongues, they spoke about the late baron of Saltbide, killed by one of his knights as he slept, the chevalier contracted by the slithery dark elves, or so they said.

Planning to continue the thread, the death of the knight Piston came to the table, which seemed to be part of a peasant uprising, although apparently supported by the Neirenian Empire to the west. "What about the death of the count of Berlera?" someone commented.

Although the assassination of the knight and the baron seemed grave, the death of the count took a much higher seat in everyone's podium of concern. This was especially so because, albeit evidence that indicated the prior murders had been executed by an outsider, it was clear to many that they were preventive measures taken into action by the crown to prevent their influence from diminishing.

This had become even clearer after the new baron of Saltbide, the one to ascend after the late Argrand, supported the faction of the King and his assembly.

However, it was a different tale with the count of Berlera. As one of the main supporters of the king, it didn't make any sense for him to be one of the targets of his purge. Even if he was trying to set a distraction, it would make more sense for him to kill off a minor noble.

On this occasion, the perpetrator had left no useful evidence either, aside from a singular arrow purchased in that same city. The only way an arrow could have entered the room would have been through the window of the room, sixty meters above the ground, with no points from which to shoot. The intervention of servants and knights had also been discarded.

The voices in the room were every minute more heated as the night grew darker, and they didn't calm down even when the plates and silverware were ready to use. Although the clacking and chatting were abundant in many of the tables, a particular array of people was rather silent and in a somber mood.

In a table close to the centermost piece of the room, a single glass of wine wobbled from one side to the other, moved by a pale and spotless hand, delicate long fingers gripping the bottom of the vase. The transparent curve seemed to distort the shape of the woman sitting on the other side of the table, dressed in a white long gown, baring her shoulders, and her disinterested gaze.  

The man holding the cup smirked before putting the cup against his lip in a dissimulated elegance, although sipping the entirety of the glass in close to a second, directly towards his throat. He let go of a small sigh of satisfaction, placing down the glass and pushing it with his finger.

"Valta, dear, is it that I'm unused to seeing you in such pure colors, or are you looking rather pale today?" Miel spoke as he crossed one of his legs over the other, and showed a smile full of contempt towards the woman on the other side of the table.

Chamgue and Loposia raised their heads from their plates. Their mouths full of food, they exchanged worried glances. Up until now they had been enjoying a quiet meal, so why did the general have to start his chat by directing himself towards Valta? Araba seemed to think the same, although he showed it with a content smile rather than with a nervous glance.

The woman, although bothered, didn't open her mouth. She kept herself sat, stoic, with her plate still untouched, counting the strands of hair in the balding Loposia as if to not look at Miel's face. The general was not offended by this, however, as he served himself another glass of wine. 

"Well, if you're not in the mood to dance with me in the ball and call it a courtesy act, you better be ready to dance with your pretty little fiancé, miss Lockhart." Miel whispered, smelling the fragrance from the velvet liquid. Araba followed the general's comment with his own.

"My, my. How has the sanctity of matrimony been tarnished! It is ridiculous that the daughter of a duke, and a possible future duchess, is to be married off to a simpleton like that! Woe me, who is alive to see corporations take over the role of those elected by the gods!"

"Hey, hey... don't tell me you believe that bullshit that nobles are actually blessed by the gods or whatnot, Araba." Miel pointed his finger at the priest, who simply shook his head with a smile.

"I simply spoke to follow my role, general." He stated as he raised his fork, gripping a piece of marinated beef. "I am simply sore that a beauty such as miss Valta is forced to marry a man who she does not feel any desire towards. It is a painful reality that parents still decide their sons' and daughters' spouses. Even if Feriphia accepted it, surely Teus and Huin would look down on such marriage."

"Huh... Is that so?" Miel sipped from his glass. 

Although the conversation had turned towards something pertaining to Valta's life, she didn't seem to be included in the conversation whatsoever. She was simply staring off into the distance with the beating wish that the night would somehow finish sooner, for Huin to drag the moon into the oceans.

The last few days had been rough enough with the assassination of the count being the only thing in her mind. She had parted towards Berlera with the news that she had been betrothed to the son of Aremeira Coals' headmaster, a private company owned by a minor tenant in the duke's territory. Their mines' efficiency had suddenly exploded and became the number one producer of coal in the whole country, sending the Goldblack duchy into an elevated status.

Since the country had recently opened trade routes of coal with the elven nation of Elvnhart, this meant that the existence of the company was essential to keep good relations with them.

There was a rumor that the sudden increase in production from Aremeira's mines was due to the discovery of an ancient underground catacomb from the age of the champions, which included several iron-type golems in its interior. That, together with the abundance of coal in their settlement, had brought them up the charts considerably.

Having an heiress to a duchy married to a company's successor meant that Kulkus was accepting, irremediably, that their country was not entirely controlled by the ones who said to be designated by the gods to rule the kingdom.

"How is it that Duke Panal didn't expropriate Aremeira from the coal mines, to begin with?" Chamgue asked as he placed the silverware vertically on the plate, the fork beside the knife.

"Only the person who discovered the golems in the first place can control them." Loposia cleaned his mouth with the handkerchief and threw it down towards the table. "And that person is apparently part of the Aremeira family. If he doesn't want to cooperate with the duke, then he won't."

"What about threatening him?" Araba placed his hand on his chin.

"Have you ever fought an iron golem, Araba?" Miel raised an eyebrow. "You wouldn't say those words if you had."

"Of course I haven't, general. Even if I wanted to fight, my body would probably give up first, hahaha. I'm more of a backline type of man myself." Araba closed his eyes and smiled as a reply.

"That's fine, that's where healers should be. If we used healers in the front they would end up as fodder before they could cure even one wound, and that shit sucks. Cavalry should be in the front, after all."

"Exactly my thoughts." Loposia nodded.

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"If I'm not wrong, general, there is a story about your victory against an army that had an iron golem in their lines. I had never asked about it since I always thought it had to be real, but it would be good to receive confirmation." Chamgue said by their side. Miel simply let go of a smile and opened his mouth.

"Ah, that... I think it was about six years back when the battles between the Neirenian Empire and the kingdom were at it's strongest. Neire was trying to make a line between their country and Wenders by conquering several forts under the mountain range of Frozt-Fohl. They never made their case clear, but they were probably attempting to separate the Clawgold clan from Kulkus so they would break their neutrality accord."

Wine poured from the bottle towards the glass Miel held on his hand, up to the last drop. 

"How did you end up so far up north?" Araba asked with real curiosity.

"I was still captain and my company was sent as a relief effort for one of the forts. I had only two hundred soldiers. One mage, only ten horses and fifty archers. The rest was infantry, pikemen to defend the frontlines. When we got to fort Risserstone, it was already taken. We decided to fall back and noticed the enemy was advancing south, and had already taken several small settlements too. We were lucky that none of them counted with strong squares or fortresses." The general said and drank from his cup.

"I remember we corralled a small skirmisher group with our little soldiers on the field." Loposia snickered. "We used two squadrons of pikemen to hold ten enemy horses from crossing a bridge, twenty-five pikemen with one mage behind them, and ten archers dressed as mages. When the mage threw his spell and the horses stopped in front of the pikes, they were soon to retire. We were expecting them a quarter of a mile away with twenty archers and five from cavalry. We took them down and retrieved the horses."

"Don't tell the small stuff." Miel smiled. "Long story short, we started two-hundred strong, but by the time we arrived at the next fort, we were three hundred and better armed. The city we arrived at was under siege still, but we waited for a week in the hills until the Neirenian army was driven out of the city. It was a window of one day and a half. We were still being received when there was already a Neirenian regiment outside of the city."

"That sounds terrible." Valta commented with a plain face and no change in her voice, clearly sarcastic. Miel, however, decided to pick the story from that comment of hers.

"It gets worse." He closed his eyes. "Not only were there a thousand soldiers outside, they also counted with an iron golem. Our defenses and our walls were useless to that fucking monster. Our pikemen in the fronts could stop the cavalry, but that beast advanced forward and turned our weapons into splinters, breaking the lines into pieces. It gave the cavalry freeway to enter and level our defenses."

"This madman here said that he'd take down the golem by himself!" Loposia slapped Miel on the arm. "And the freak actually did!"

"Well, I couldn't move for the next week. It's a good thing that the one leading doesn't have to combat in the frontlines." He touched his face as if he was remembering something from whatever age that had been, a somewhat warm smile adorning his lips. "After that, the morale of the enemy decreased considerably. Knights stopped following orders and trampled their frontline, including long-distance combatants. The city counted with a few mages that exhausted their magic energy to drive back the enemy from the walls of the city, and the rest was done by our cavalry chasing the infantry to exterminate it."

"So the captain that defended city Forzslown was you, after all." Valta sighed.

"We also helped in the reconquest of the other forts until Neire retired into their borders. Skirmishes are still developing up to this day in the north, and the issue with the monsters invading settlements keeps growing. Well, it's not something we haven't dealt with before, but it is still a pain in the ass."

The table nodded in accord to their general.

After a few more minutes of senseless chatter, a sudden silence enveloped the room. Miel and his group turned their heads towards the center table of the room, which was already being retired together with its chairs. The guests started to slowly stand up from their seats, manservants and maids from the ballroom began to retire every piece of furniture and cleared the room of any obstacle.

Once the floor was clean for the guests to enjoy their dance, a single sharp cord escaped the strings of a tainted-wood violin, being held by a master musician of Panal's court. Everyone directed their eyes towards the center, where a tall and slender man stood. He was wearing a regal expression with one hand behind his back and a charming smile on his face, looking rather elegant despite his advanced age. 

His fingers were adorned by enchanted rings plated in gold and jewels, and his robes were exquisite to match his contemptuous eyes. A golden collar held by fine strands of fur hung from his neck, falling over his coated cape that flowed from his shoulders to the floor. 

The man smirked as his eyes scanned the entirety of the room, as if to make sure that everyone had attended the meeting he had especially prepared. No one would mistake this man for someone else. He was indistinguishably the duke of Goldblack. As he spoke, an aged but powerful voice echoed in the room.

"My friends... Compatriots that attend from all surrounding places and insiders of my humble duchy, citizens, just as me, of this beautiful nation. I thank you dearly for your attendance to my yearly celebration to congratulate the harvest of this fall, and hope you are having a time as wonderful as you can. I am aware that the night is soon to end, but for the time being, I hope you continue to enjoy it."

The man made a brief pause to look around, and then continued.

"I am filled with overbearing joy today, and I am happy to announce the continued friendship and partnership between the duchies of Goldblack and Allice. Today, although the duke is not present, his daughter, a beautiful young lady of many talents, is present. I announce, with much content, the marriage between Miss Valta Arlen Louran Lockhart, daughter of Duke Paulrn, and John Joulren Aremeira, son of the famed lord Tonhlern Aremeira!"

There was a burst of clapping and cheering inside the ballroom for a solid minute, a minute in which Valta looked towards the face of the Duke, and only her hands were placed still in front of her body. She wasn't trying to be dissimulated with her discontent, and to be honest, no one in the table wanted to scold her for it. 

When the uproar died down, the duke raised his glass.

"Dance to your hearts's contents."

The music began to play and everyone scattered across the ballroom. Even Loposia and Chamgue parted from the group to search for a partner, which, for people like them, were not sparse. Araba had decided to bow slightly towards the general and exit the ballroom, and Miel himself wasn't much more enthusiastic about the dance either.

With a bottle on his hand, he looked towards Valta, and smirked. "Don't dance if you don't want to." He whispered before walking away and exiting the room.

A hundred dancing figures moved between the fluttering candlelight emitted by the expensive chandeliers, casting their shadow around Valta as the music played albeit her stillness. Her feet were indecisive whether to move or to stay, her hands itching to grab from her skirt and run, run past the hundred figures, and exit the cold room that surrounded her.

Her head was telling her she'd never do something as brazen, but her angered heart said otherwise. She had even pondered, at one instance, how easy it would be to murder that poor man when his back was turned, when he slept or when he drank, from somewhere, a drink she could have poisoned.

She had wondered several times what good would it do to stay or dance her remnants of emotion away, but the answer had always been that she was too tired to begin with. She was about to take one step forward and escape, when a robust and big hand grabbed her bared shoulder.

Her head was turned to see a tall and muscular man standing behind her, dressed in an elegant robe similar to a count's. The man showed her a bright smile and gently clutched her hand, covered in calluses produced by the constant pulling of a string. 

"You look beautiful tonight." He whispered to her ear. Valta stood silent until he grabbed her waist, and she began to follow the rhythm of his feet. "I am lucky to be betrothed to such a wonderful woman, I am to admit. Strong girls are always preferred to the weaker sort, if I am allowed to say."

They remained for one minute silent, until the song changed to one of a more romantic nature. He pressed his massive body against hers and smiled warmly, trying to be chivalrous although failing to see the discomfort she showed on her rigid figure. Thinking she was simply not used to dancing, he accompanied for a while longer in silence.

He buried his head on her head and smelled a fragrant, sweet odor that he could not distinguish. It was close to bitterness and yet, it reminded him of something much sweeter. He buried his nose deeper in his hair and clutched her waist tighter, even moving his hand slightly lower. 

Valta's eyelids twitched once, but refrained from doing anything as she felt the countless gazes fixated on her back. She gritted her teeth and held on, until, lowly, the man whispered to her ear:

"I can't wait for our wedding night..." His hand moved even lower, a twisted smile forming on his face. "When I make you—"

SLAP!

A crisp sound broke the air, and the music halted dry. All the eyes were centered towards the star couple of the night, only to see how the son of the Aremeira fell to the ground and hit his head in a brutal crash towards the ground. A tooth laying beside his face, a red palm decorating his cheek and his dislocated jaw. 

The duke opened his eyes in horror as he saw this scene develop. The man beside him, Lord Aremeira, let go of a panicked scream as he ran towards his son, and holding him in his arms, he directed a hatred-filled gaze towards the blonde woman.

"What have you done?! Have you gone mad?!"

Valta lowered her hand and looked at the unconscious man on the ground. She directed her face towards the duke of Goldblack, bowed down slightly as she placed her hair behind her ear, and then stood upright. 

"I am grateful for your invitation."

She said before turning her feet on the spot and walking towards the door, opening it slightly before going out of the ballroom. She looked to the right to see Miel standing there with a bottle, smiling at her as if he knew exactly what had happened inside.

"It seems like we share the same goal." He snickered. "I don't think it was never this easy to create an internal dispute."

SLAP!

Before Miel could react, he noticed he was already looking at another direction. He touched his cheek, which had started to palpitate with a red mark, and then focused his eyes on the woman in front of him.

"I'll do it one last time." She said in another voice. "Then I'm leaving. With or without Thom Arburson."