Matabar

Ardan froze in place. Before him, scraping the ceiling with its horns, stood another product of Star Alchemy and the biological experiments of the Tazidahian Brotherhood. Its eyes glimmered, drunk on the scent of blood.

After he'd gained full access to the Grand's library because of what had happened at Baliero, Ardan had spent some time studying the particulars of chimerization. Seeing one now did not inspire much optimism in him. Amid all the humming steel machinery bristling with various valves, gauges whose needles hopped along their dials, flickering lamps, springs sealed behind glass, and long wires buried in stone conduits, the chimera was still the only thing he could really focus on.

Ardan managed to very quickly recall a description from a military catalog:

"Class: Guard.

Height ranges from two meters and seventy centimeters to three meters and forty-six centimeters. Beasts most likely used in its chimerization: an ox and a Kargaam Wandering Turtle. The introduction of multiple strands of giant mammalian blood is also quite probable. Implantation of blood from the sentient Firstborn races is possible. Final product was mutated under the following conditions…

*** CLASSIFIED ***

Characteristics:
Ability to protect assigned territory or object.
Distinguishes between 'ally' and 'intruder.'

Strengths:
Powerful jaws.
A sturdy shell resistant to small-arms fire and to Star Magic that utilizes less than three Stars.

Weaknesses:
Slow.
Unwieldy.
Poorly protected underbelly."

Reading about it in an edited military document was one thing. Beholding the monster in the flesh was quite another. Blocking the entrance to the technical room and nearly scraping its green scales against the ceiling, the Tazidahian creation growled and scratched the floor with its claws.

The beast, which was as broad as a fire truck, opened its lizard-like maw wide, its fangs jutting every which way and making it so that its jaws couldn't fully close. Its nostrils flared, spewing caustic, yellowish fumes like geysers. Because the chimera's mouth couldn't close, its tongue appeared to be swollen — an angry, pulsing stump of red flesh.

Its breath had a fetid reek to it that was reminiscent of stagnant water left out in the sun for too long mixed with the sour vomit of a drunk who'd overindulged in cheap whiskey and rotten eggs.

Its muscular forelegs, each ending in three hooked claws, were mottled with green skin fading gradually into a dense, turtle-like shell. But on the turtles Ardan had seen in textbooks, those shells had looked far more… organic. Here, a series of repulsive growths had seemingly swelled and fused, coalescing into a dense, bony second skin.

Even so, the creature's outline did indeed suggest that it could've been some sort of giant, nightmarish bull conjured by a lunatic storyteller. It had a short, green tail and two horns curving out just above its brow ridges — much like the bulls Ardan had grown used to seeing on Polskih's farm.

But…

"Holy… it's a Guard!" Milar roared. He leaped back, dropping onto his right knee and propping his elbow in place for stability. The captain took aim at something beneath the monster's belly.

He was clearly not aiming at the creature itself — which even Sergeant Boad's revolver might only have inconvenienced without putting it down properly — but at the generators.

The chimera bellowed, spreading its forelegs wide and letting out a thunderous, grating roar. It sounded a lot like tin roofing sheets rubbing together under a fierce wind in the working districts of the city.

"Hold it!" Ardan yelled.

Milar, who was about to pull the trigger, froze for an instant.

"Don't shoot!"

"Ard, you…" The captain trailed off.

Without listening to him, Ardan stepped forward, feeling the monster's hot breath wash over his face, smelling the stench of its drooling maw, and watching droplets of its acidic saliva corrode the floor. The claws were tearing into the stone as though it were cloth.

Even so…

"It'll…" Milar began, then stopped when he saw Ardan reach out and try to touch the beast's snout. Instead, his hand passed straight through its muzzle, meeting not the slightest bit of resistance. "…eat you," the captain finished belatedly, lifting his finger from the trigger.

"If it had been real, there would've been at least some risk of it damaging the equipment with its saliva," Ardan explained, moving his hand around inside the illusion. It was such high-level sorcery that it seemed tangible — even giving off auditory, tactile, and visual hallucinations. "They'd never place something like this to guard the generators with so much Ley energy at stake."

Milar holstered his revolver and swore under his breath.

"My heart nearly jumped out of my chest, Magister," he said, wiping sweat from his brow. "I thought I'd be the one delivering your death notice to Delpas."

At that moment, Ardan crossed some unseen threshold. The illusion vanished from his perspective.

"Hey! Ard!" Milar called out to him, sounding alarmed.

"I'm right here," Ardan answered. "That chimera illusion isn't meant to frighten us off, it's meant to hide whatever else is in here besides the generators."

"Besides… the generators?" Milar asked.

"Take a look."

Ardan kept his gaze fixed on a device in the center of the chamber and stepped aside. True to form, Captain Pnev was no longer hesitating at all in the presence of a "rampaging creature" that could have snapped their bones with ease — assuming, of course, the monster had been real.

"What is that?" Milar asked once he was beside Ardan.

They were both standing next to a tall, conical pedestal. Steel rings had been stacked atop one another, narrowing as they reached the "neck," like the layers of a metal cake. All the generators had cables that led from them to a box that sat atop the pedestal. And there were digits displayed on that box, shifting one after another, keeping time with an invisible heartbeat.

01:53
01:52
01:51

"Is that what I think it is?" Milar asked, voice tight.

"Depends on what you're thinking," Ardan muttered.

Something wasn't right here…

Setting his staff aside and hooking his grimoire back onto the chains at his belt, Ardan circled around the device, studying both it and the generators. The dials on those machines were showing the pressure in their spinning cylinders that were powered by sparks from Ley crystals. The crystals, in turn, were igniting a special mixture based on petroleum and an added dose of Ertalain oxide.

As the cylinders built up centrifugal force, they produced a sort of liquid, high-energy Ley state — a physical embodiment of Ley Lines in miniature.

The gauge read three hundredths of a bar, fluctuating only slightly, which was within normal parameters if Professor Convel's lectures had been accurate. Ardan knew these generators would run until all the fuel was burned away or the accumulator "wore down," at which point the specialized blades — activated by the unit's own vibrations — would fail to strike the necessary sparks.

Hence the constant, low-pitched humming.

If the pressure ever spiked higher than one-and-a-half tenths of a bar, it could trigger a spontaneous, unstoppable reaction in which the Ley would flare up at an astonishing rate. The resulting surge would unleash a Ley explosion akin to a Broken Seal effect multiplied a hundredfold.

Conversely, if the pressure ever dropped too far, the generator would lose power. The Ley-flame chamber would then cool off enough to sputter out, ceasing to supply energy.

That would require opening a special compartment, swapping out the accumulator, possibly the springs, and maybe even repairing the chamber walls. Arkar and Ardan had done such things more than once when the old generator at "Bruce's" had gone out — an event that happened regularly, and one the maintenance company was usually in no rush to rectify by sending a mage technician.

Topping off the fuel was the simplest part, though expensive. A twenty-four-liter canister cost nearly six exes — and that only lasted…

"It's a bomb!" Milar shouted.

"Probably," Ardan mused, dropping into a crouch.

But…

Pressing his cheek to the floor, he peered under the steel supports holding up the Yellow Star generator. In a potential explosion, that one would release the greatest burst of energy.

"Probably?" The captain echoed.

Ardan reached beneath the machine, feeling around for the oil pan designed to lubricate the unit's moving metal parts. The most common malfunction was a leak in that very same pan. It was so common, in fact, that new pans and bolts were practically sold by the dozen.

Ardan withdrew his hand.

It was dry.

"Damn it, Magister, don't just stand there without saying anything! We've got barely a minute and a half left on the clock!" Milar was almost whining now. "If it's a bomb, what's going to happen?"

Ardan straightened, glancing again at the little box. It resembled the ones that had been used to store the special glasses, only crafted not from wood, but from a silvery metal adorned with the same heron motifs.

"Nothing."

"A-Ard…" Milar sputtered, sounding every bit as rattled as the generator's hum. "I've told you how-"

"Right, sorry," Ardan said quickly. "Nothing will happen because we're at ground zero. We wouldn't even feel the explosion. We'd simply… disintegrate into tiny particles. They've got a fancy word for that in normal science — I can't recall it right now but-"

"I get it," Milar cut him off. "So-"

"We can't run. The blast would annihilate everything under the predefined dome. And we can't leave that dome without an original key, which we don't have. The vampires, on the other hand, did have one. And the moment the dome collapses, the explosion will sweep through a few city blocks as well."

While Ardan continued examining the box, Milar drew his saber and approached the cables leading from the stand to the generators.

"What if I cut them?"

"They might be carrying a charge, and cutting the circuit could set off the blast."

"Figures."

Ardan closed his eyes, letting himself sense the world around them. Immediately, he regretted it. The reality here was awash with vibrant Ley energy, courtesy of the generators — a kaleidoscope swirling in a cloudy lake of flickering color.

"What if I shoot the generator?"

"You might hit the combustion chamber," Ardan said heavily, rubbing his temples to alleviate his sudden, pounding headache. "The pressure would drop and the circuit would break. Or… we don't know what they've done to these machines. If we damage them even slightly, then-"

"I get it," Milar sighed, lowering his saber. "Eternal Angels, Ard, we've got thirty seconds."

Ardan bent over the box that served as a timer. The glass chambers inside contained metal coils that glowed hot, and depending on which of them the Ley-voltage passed through, the digits changed. The chambers seemed to be filled with a nonflammable, volatile gas, probably to make the numbers clearly visible.

That was if Ardan had guessed everything correctly. He'd never been overly enthralled by machinery or automobiles — both felt similarly soulless to him, whereas Star seals and their underlying principles were far more appealing.

"Ard! Twenty seconds!"

"If we hadn't realized that the chimera was an illusion," Ardan asked, running his fingertips along the fasteners that secured the cables inside the box, "what would you have done?"

"I'd have riddled these generators with bullets to hopefully drop the shield so that our people could help the wounded — who, by the way, aren't getting any better!"

"And if the generators are rigged with explosives, we'd have all blown up together."

"They probably are rigged!"

Ardan stood and stepped back from the pedestal.

00:12
00:11

"Everything we've seen so far, Milar — everything we've heard or felt — was all a lie, a mirage, an illusion," Ardan said.

"Magister, you-"

"That's not a detonator or a countdown mechanism, even though it's designed to look like one," Ardan went on, glancing up toward the spot where Anvar's body should have been. "It's a failsafe."

00:07
00:06

Captain Pnev, pale as the first autumn snow, lips blue and hands trembling, stared at the flashing numbers as they ticked down.

"Which means that, if we really had shot the generators… nothing would've happened. This device is what keeps the explosion from happening, not the thing that sets it off."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then-"

"Then my children will grow up fatherless because of you, Magister! And I'll kill you in the afterlife! Even if we wind up in different… different realms!"

00:03

Ardan squeezed his eyes shut. Milar began praying to the Eternal Angels. Perhaps he was thinking of his wife, their cozy apartment, the smell of oatmeal and freshly-laundered linens, something that reminded him of warm nights and his children's laughter.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And maybe Ardan himself was thinking of Tess' bed, how it smelled of comfort and safety.

00:02

Ardan's mind went on a journey, sliding down the slopes of the Alcade Mountains to revisit an old ranger's house, then racing with the eagles toward Delpas, to Stonemasons' Street, where he'd sit by the fireplace with his mother, his brother, Kelly, and little Kena, who always scrunched her nose whenever she was denied sweets before dinner.

And at last, his thoughts settled on the house at 23 Markov Canal.

00:01

He climbed the steps there and opened the door to the small foyer, near the bathroom, where a young woman stood wearing a simple dress, her hair a fiery red and her smile so warm that his heart quieted. Her eyes swept away his every worry, soothing his mind. It was a gentle peace, like the one from your childhood — hiding under the blankets with only your hair sticking out, dozing for hours on end in hopes you'd woken up too early and could now enjoy more of that cocoon.

He remembered a similar serenity in Ergar's cave, back when the snow leopard had hidden his heart away.

Now, instead of a blanket, it was the sight of those eyes, radiant with joy at his mere presence. It didn't matter who he was, what he wore, or how many exes he had.

He would pull her close, inhale the fragrance of her hair, and think only of how much-

"Ard?"

"What?"

Milar brushed fluffy snow off his shoulders. Ardan looked around — large, crystalline flakes had coated the floor in a glimmering layer, clinging to the generators and covering the walls in branching patterns of ice.

Faint, icy sparks still danced along Ardan's staff, crackling like delicate lightning.

"I-" Ardi began.

"We'll discuss that silly grin of yours, which made it start snowing in here, later," the captain cut in, pointing to the device. "Look."

Ardan approached the box. The spirals inside the glass chambers had gone dark, the room's humming had ceased, and the generators had fallen silent. Far behind them, out of reach, came only faint creaks and hisses.

Apparently hearing it as well, Milar glanced toward the source of the sound.

"That's…"

"A real bomb," Ardan said, voicing both of their thoughts. No sooner had he spoken than the metal rings around the pedestal vibrated, and new digits flared to life. This time, the timer started at one hour.

"There's not just a stabilizer here, but a failsafe as well," Ardan concluded, stepping away to survey the chamber.

"Explain?" Milar demanded.

"It was disguised-"

"I already get that part," the captain said, waving his hand around. "This contraption was siphoning off some of the Ley energy and is now returning it so the charge won't detonate."

Ardan nodded. Milar might've lacked a formal education, but as a first-rank investigator, he possessed a keen mind.

"Then tell me," Milar said, eyeing the box and the generators, "why would anyone design something that ends up saving us all? And most of all, why dress it up so it's indistinguishable from a real detonator?"

By now, the warehouse above was surely overflowing with guards, soldiers, and Cloaks racing to aid the wounded.

The wounded…

A failsafe that would save the city from an explosion that, once the shield had fallen, might've wiped out several blocks of the Financial District?

"We plan to keep casualties to a minimum."

If the vampires hadn't been lying, and they'd placed this box here, then what was the point of the detonator in the first place? Unless, by their twisted logic, "minimum casualties" meant blowing up the Financial District late at night instead of during the busy daylight hours…

Ardi choked on his next thought and darted to the threshold of the generator room. All at once, he smelled the chimera's foul stench again, felt its scorching breath on his skin, and heard its thunderous roar pound his eardrums.

He turned back.

In front of him stood the same Guard Chimera illusion. It was slowly vanishing, growing hazy and losing its crisp outline, and yet still it lingered — even though the generators had shut down.

Milar stepped up alongside him, a hint of awe in his voice.

"Well, I'll be…"

And together, they dashed back up the spiral staircase. Storming into the room where they had supposedly killed one of Aror's Eleven, they found…

Nothing.

The same ten people from before were sitting around the table, asleep. Gradually, the shards of glass that had seemingly gotten lodged in their skin and eyes melted away into nothing, the spilled blood dissipated, and all the torn flesh was replaced by calm, unhurt faces. It was almost as though all of them were sharing one pleasant dream.

Including that Second Chancery mage who'd seemed so unequivocally dead just moments before.

Even the cries of the wounded and dying from below had faded. In their stead came shouts of confusion or relief, soon drowned out by the barked orders of the guards and military forces flooding the old, abandoned warehouse like a rising tide.

Milar slipped his saber back into its sheath and dropped into a free chair — precisely the one where Anvar had sat before, next to the spot where his mutilated body was lying.

Or rather… had lain.

There was no blood, no mage's corpse — only a single card remained. A fortune-teller's card, the type used at fairs to amuse the crowds by "predicting" their future.

Ardan approached it, bent down, and brushed away some wooden splinters before picking it up. Turning it over, he smiled faintly. It showed a blind, deaf and mute jester raising a top hat in a courteous bow. Then the jester vanished, and a small note was now lying in Ardan's hand.

The note was written in crude, broken Fae:

"The game most beauty. You victory, young friend. Hope you use prize with reason."

"Ard, Milar? What in the name of the Eternal Angels happened here?"

Ardan turned toward the doorway that the vampires had left through. Framed there, in full combat gear — steel staff in hand, grimoire at his belt, with accumulator-tipped fingers, and wearing a black coat, black suit and black hat — stood Aversky.

"An excellent question, Edward," Milar replied dryly. "At the moment, all I know is that your protégé here just tried to sweep the floor."

Ardan glanced down at his hand. The note was gone, even though he was certain that he had felt the paper between his fingers and caught a whiff of its scent.

"Mister Aversky," he said.

"Yes?" The Grand Magister muttered, stepping past him to inspect the sleeping operatives (Din was snoring gently).

"You wouldn't happen to know anyone going by the name Black Top Hat…?"

"Ard, you're starting to annoy me," Aversky growled through gritted teeth. "What hat? By the Eternal Angels — I've never seen anything like this enchantment before. We'll need to get them to a hospital. I doubt I can lift these spells on my own."

"And your parents?" Ardan asked. "They didn't die at the hands of some unknown mage?"

"A mage?" Aversky's brow furrowed deeper, until it was nearly a single line. "They died of consumption, Ard, years before healers found a cure for it. Why do you ask?"

Milar and Ardan exchanged a look.

"Just because you don't know the rules of the game doesn't mean they don't exist."

"The Embers don't really exist, do they?" Ardan asked.

Aversky stepped up and waved his staff in front of Ardan's face, manifesting a variant of Elissaar's Seal. A ghostly hand flickered over the young man's head and body before returning to the Grand Magister, its palm filled with runic symbols and figures.

"You seem perfectly fine, aside from a few bruises," Aversky noted, studying them. "What embers, exactly?"

"The Embers of the Sidhe Flame."

"The Embers of the Sidhe Flame?" Aversky's scowl grew so fierce that his eyebrows nearly knitted together. "Never heard of them."

"And what about the wounded civilians downstairs?" Milar asked.

With an expression suggesting that he might slam his staff against the floor and unleash an offensive spell if pressed further, Aversky turned slowly. Milar raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"Downstairs, there are a couple hundred people just like these ten," Aversky said, gesturing toward the snoring Cloaks and guards, "and several hundred more who are insisting that their faces and eyes were in terrible pain, like they'd been sliced by shards of glass."

Ardi gazed at the intact spectacles resting on the faces of the ten perfectly unharmed operatives.

"Magister," the captain began.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Do you believe in altruism?"

While Aversky shifted his baffled, irritated gaze from one investigator to the other, Ardi simply stood there, staring at one spot — it had no meaning, he was just staring at it as he thought.

Their game had never truly been about the cards. And Ardi now understood that it hadn't really hinged on the meaning of anything said, either. In reality, all they'd been trying to do — he and Anvar both — was confuse the vampires.

Only, whereas Ardi had worked on Inasha, painting Anvar as a traitor, Anvar himself had pursued an entirely different goal. And all that talk he'd offered Ardan? It hadn't really been aimed at Ardi at all, but at someone else hidden from view.

Anvar had been convincing that second vampire of something. Convincing him that there was such a thing as the Sidhe Flame Embers — and, at the same time, that Ardi obviously knew nothing about them.

"No," Ardan finally replied.

"Then that means he needed something from…" Milar shot a glance toward Aversky, who was thumbing through his grimoire with single-minded concentration. "…those folks."

"Seems like it," Ardi agreed.

"But it had nothing to do with our situation."

"Seems like it," he repeated.

"Then why did he help us so much?"

Aversky was pretending not to hear them, probably because he was trying to retain his sanity.

Back when Ardi had been a child, he'd sometimes encountered puzzles he simply hadn't been able to solve. First, such failures would anger him. Then they'd send him into a silent, gloomy spiral that would inevitably become an obsession. He would spend entire days and nights wrestling with an especially tricky riddle, forgetting about sleep, food and water.

Only Atta'nha had managed to convince him to give up that habit. The she-wolf had taught her little friend that if he couldn't solve something at the moment, then perhaps the time was not yet right. One had to wait, like in a hunt — prepare more thoroughly, learn more, grow stronger and faster. Then, in the future, he would succeed. And if it didn't happen tomorrow, then it would come to him the day after. One simply had to be patient and not give up… but also not devote one's whole life to a single puzzle.

"I doubt we'll ever know the full story, Milar," Ardi sighed, looking over at Aversky. "Edward?"

"What is it?" Aversky grumbled. "And if it's more cryptic questions, let me warn you in advance: I was dragged away from…" His gaze flicked sidelong toward Milar, as though he were being mindful of the Second Chancery and its labyrinth of secrets. "…a certain experiment at a very inconvenient moment. So, don't expect me to be in the mood for idle chatter."

"Says the man who just treated us to an entire monologue," Milar muttered under his breath.

"My great-grandfather never taught anyone named Anvar Riglanov, did he?" Ardi asked.

Aversky stopped flipping through his grimoire.

"No, Ard. He did not. And if you want details about the Eleven, you'd better go ask the Colonel." Aversky thought about it for a second and then added, "As for that name you just mentioned… I've never heard it in my life."

"By the way, Edward," Milar interjected suddenly, "there's a bomb rigged to the generators downstairs. It should blow in about fifty minutes."

In just a split second, Aversky's face contorted through several expressions.

***

"Sounds rather intriguing," the Colonel said, leaning back in his chair and smoking a cigar.

They were sitting in the office of the Second Chancery's de-facto head. Windows with thick drapes, polished parquet floors, a massive desk, a portrait of the Emperor on the wall, shelves of books — it all made for a tidy, official space. And within it were three people, or more precisely, two humans and one half-blood.

Besides Milar, Ardi, and the Colonel, no one else was present.

Alexander, Din, Mshisty, and the others were in a military hospital, where both healers and doctors were tending to them. Aversky had stayed behind, helping the team of mages and sappers neutralize the bomb on the generators. They'd already removed the device, but had decided to investigate how it worked right away, as well as everything else about that Star Magic shield and the illusions.

The military and the guards were questioning the civilians using lists of prepared questions. Those who hadn't woken up had been taken to the hospital, too. As for the artillery cannons — already half-unloaded — they had hastily covered them back up again with tarps and carted them off to who-knows-where.

Meanwhile, the journalists had had all their film and slides confiscated, although surely someone had managed to smuggle out a snapshot or two. The incoming newspaper headlines were unlikely to be pleasant reading.

"Perhaps you should have told us everything as soon as you met Velena Emergold," the Colonel remarked, exhaling a cloud of smoke and leaning forward to pull a hefty folder out of his desk drawer. Judging by the dust haphazardly brushed from its surface, it wasn't referenced often. "Here is all the information we have on your great-grandfather's students."

He slid the folio across the table toward Ardi.

Loosening the ribbons, Ardi found… completely redacted pages. Apart from a few scattered words on each sheet, everything else had been painted over in black ink.

"Ah…"

"I agree that it's absurd, Corporal," the Colonel said with a smirk, "but those are the rules for accessing top-secret files: you can only do so if there's a need for it, and only in the archive. I'm just showing you that there is reading to be done if you ever request clearance… once and if you become a First-Rank Investigator, and at least a Captain in rank."

Ardi stole a glance at Milar, who conspicuously avoided meeting his gaze. The man had enough on his plate without taking on these extra mysteries.

"In short," the Colonel continued, "Anvar — let's call him that, since that's the name he gave you — mixed truth and lies in his story. There really were thirty-four apprentices. And indeed, any who failed their exams were sent off on various… assignments. But that was only because they were all employees of the Second Chancery from the start."

"Thirteen-year-old employees?" Ardi asked, incredulous.

"It was a turbulent era, Corporal Egobar," the Colonel replied without hesitation. "After the Dark Lord's Rebellion, our country had to deal with countless problems. We were seriously weakened. The foreign invaders who'd tried to bite off pieces of us during the unrest hadn't gone away. We needed special operatives. And Aror, for reasons known only to him, volunteered to help."

"But they were still-"

"Children, yes. Nowadays, a thirteen-year-old is a child. Back then, however… Let's just say I understand your point." The Colonel blew out another cloud of smoke. "But it was the fate of thirty-four children torn from their parents, declared dead to those families, and locked in a dungeon with the right hand of the Dark Lord — a bloody Aean'Hane who took thousands of lives. That… weighed against the fate of nearly two hundred and eighty million Imperial citizens."

Ardi said nothing. Part of him wanted to protest such a choice, and yet another part regarded it like a line in a history book. Two centuries ago was a long time indeed.

"Aror's students were shaped in a very particular way," the Colonel went on. "They were loyal to crown and country. Those who died did so as heroes."

"Romanticizing," Milar murmured.

And Ardi, for some reason, thought of his father. Once again, the watch on his wrist seemed to sear his skin — metaphorically, of course.

"At some point, only eleven of them remained, but… no one offered them any deals, Ard. At least not immediately. And no, the program wasn't shut down," the Colonel said, returning to his desk to collect his ashtray before moving back to the window. "On the contrary: the Second Chancery planned to continue it, with the teaching done by those who had survived all of Aror's exams. If he alone had managed to raise eleven monstrous mages of such immense power, then just imagine how many his own students could've trained."

Silence hung in the air.

"You tried to create an army of powerful Star Mages?" Milar asked.

"Not an army, Captain Pnev — more like a battalion. But you're on the right track," the Colonel said, flicking ash into the tray and leaning on the windowsill.

"And something went wrong?" Ardi asked, already certain of the answer.

"Yes, Corporal… Something always goes wrong. But in this case…" The Colonel sighed wearily. "One of Aror's students became convinced that their teacher was hiding something. A secret source of enormous power. Because as strong as the Eleven were, none of them even came close to Aror, let alone the Dark Lord."

"The Sword of Darkness and the Staff of Stars? That apprentice went after them?"

"No, Captain. Artifacts had nothing to do with it. To be honest, even I don't know what it was." The Colonel finally shut the window, shivering slightly at the chill before resettling in his chair — ashtray and cigar still in hand. His footsteps thumped heavily, like those of an overworked horse when it was dragging a cart. "We have no idea what really happened. Maybe Aror exerted some kind of influence over that apprentice, or maybe the poor man just snapped. One way or another, during one of the lessons, the apprentice attacked Aror."

"We're deliberately avoiding naming names?" Milar asked.

"Indeed, Captain. If you want actual names, you'll have to request clearance."

"No thanks," the captain shook his head.

"Then keep listening," the Colonel said, lacing his fingers together. "To attack Aror, the would-be attacker first had to slip into his" — the Colonel shot a glance at Ardi — "room."

"You mean his cage," Ardi refuted flatly.

"I tried to soften the wording, but if you insist — yes, his cage. The cage of one who had spilled rivers of blood, let me remind you," the Colonel said, flashing him a displeased look. "Naturally, that student was no match for Aror, who, in turn, managed to escape. And of course, that incident cast doubt on the entire program — and on the Eleven who remained."

"'Remained?'" Milar frowned, tapping the folder. "What happened to the one we're avoiding naming? The Twelfth?"

"He vanished along with Aror," the Colonel replied with a shrug. "And only after that did the Crown offer the mages a choice: serve us, or volunteer to have your own Stars damaged."

"What a terrific choice," Milar muttered.

"Remember, Captain, they were compromised and had been raised as loyal subjects. By my estimation, the Black House's management was still fairly humane at that point."

"And those who chose to have their Stars damaged… They were simply released?" Ardan asked in genuine surprise.

"They were," the Colonel said. "We had plenty of more pressing issues to deal with to bother worrying about them. With their Stars crippled, they no longer appeared to be any more dangerous than any other Grand Magister — and at the time, that was true enough. Now, two centuries later… Well, Aversky believes that, with Mshisty and two or three more Grand Magisters aiding him, he can handle any of the remaining six."

"And no one among them ever…?"

"Two," the Colonel answered. "Two of them got tangled up in dubious affairs. Which means that this so-called 'Eleven' is actually nine people in total. And in any case, Corporal, think carefully about why they hide from everyone — even the foreigners. Let's consider you, for instance. Suppose you turned your keen mind and Star Magic against the Empire and marched right up to, say, the Castilian embassy. Care to guess what would become of you?"

Ardi was aware of what the Colonel was getting at. They might promise him the sun and stars, but in reality, he'd find himself exactly where his great-grandfather had once been because traitors were never trusted — by anyone. Such was the law of humans, and indeed the way of hunters as well.

"I can see that you get it," the Colonel nodded. "So, out of the remaining nine, only six pose any real threat. But the fact that eliminating that threat might prove complicated doesn't mean the Black House can't handle it. As we've demonstrated time and time again. It's enough that for nearly two centuries, no real trouble has arisen from Aror's students. We treat their existence as… an error caused by turbulent times — one we strive not to repeat."

Still, Ardi didn't miss the pensive look the Colonel shot him as he said this. Because…

"Yes, naturally, we are searching for them," the Colonel went on, "but it's all part of standard procedure. It would be more accurate to say that we're looking for any foreign agents seeking them. The standard dance of counterintelligence. Think of their existence as one big lure. It's quite productive, actually."

Ardi was only listening halfheartedly by that point. Something else was gnawing at him…

"So, everything that you told us before we went into the casino was partially misinformation?" Milar asked.

"Who knows who might have been eavesdropping, Captain," the Colonel replied with an Anvar-like grin. "And besides, you don't have clearance. So, yes, I'm sorry, but everyone only gets to know what they need to know — no more, no less. That's how the job works."

…If one stopped to consider it, in the eyes of the crown, was there really any fundamental difference between those Eleven and Ard Egobar?