Chapter 99: Knight Fulgur

Jeanne’s eyes swept across the ruined village and settled on the largest tent in the makeshift encampment, where soldiers bearing House Versys’s own Magic Archer corps had clearly only just arrived, their gear still being unpacked from mud-spattered carts.

It wasn’t only Versys, either. Looking more carefully, Jeanne counted several other command tents staked into the churned ground, each one flying the banner of a different Seven Pillar house. Melampus. Pneuma.

The whole clearing had been transformed into something between a military camp and a refugee ground, tents arranged in loose, overlapping rows around what remained of the village’s central square, cookfires sputtering against the damp, soldiers moving between supply wagons with the brisk, practiced efficiency of people who’d been doing this for days already.

Jeanne dismounted first, boots sinking into mud still soft from the storm. Elder Petrovel peeled off almost immediately to coordinate with the rest of the Phantom forces already on-site, working out the logistics of folding their own three hundred into whatever joint plan was already taking shape.

She hadn’t gone more than a few steps before a soldier wearing Phantom colors, one of Ulrich’s own men, intercepted her, snapping into the deepest salute he could manage.

Jeanne returned the nod, her eyes drifting toward the Sarnel tent, searching it for any sign of Ulrich himself and finding none.

"Where’s Captain Ulrich?"

The soldier told her the captain had gone out scouting personally, taking stock of the situation inside Korven’s own borders.

"Ulrich went himself?" Something in that detail didn’t sit right with her. "Did he see something out there that warranted it?"

The soldier admitted, with obvious discomfort, that he wasn’t able to answer that yet.

That alone was answer enough for Jeanne. If something had pulled Ulrich out to scout the city with his own eyes rather than trust it to a subordinate, it had to be something dangerous.

"Give me a full report. What’s happened here, and which of the Seven Pillar houses have actually sent people, besides Sarnel and Versys?"

The soldier nodded and began laying it out. Five days ago, this village had been struck by two Dark Beasts at once, a Dusk Feather and a Dark Goblin working in tandem. Stranger still, he said, there wasn’t a single trace of the villagers left behind, not one body, not one survivor.

He reported the same grim pattern repeating itself across a string of other villages nearby, each one gutted, each one emptied of its people without explanation.

It matched, almost exactly, the scouting reports Jeanne had already received days earlier. People vanishing without so much as a footprint left behind.

A thought settled coldly into her chest. If Patricia’s disappearance followed the same pattern as these missing villagers, then finding one thread might lead her straight to the other.

But chasing that thread meant she’d need Elder Tervis, the man who’d been watching over Patricia before this all began, since he was the one most likely to hold some real clue to her whereabouts.

Unfortunately, Tervis was out scouting with Ulrich too.

The soldier’s report moved on to the forces currently gathered at the camp. By his account, only three of the Seven Pillar houses hadn’t sent help of any kind yet.

House Augusta’s strongest soldiers sat too far west, pinned along that border, with a long march still ahead of them before they could reach Korven.

House Austur’s main strength was worse off still, stationed in the farthest reaches of the south, slowed further by brutal terrain on top of the sheer distance. And House Winter, per the latest word, hadn’t even decided whether they intended to send anyone at all.

Not every house had sent a representative yet, but one banner among the rest caught Jeanne’s eye immediately, impossible to miss.

A Dire Bear, rendered in sharp, aggressive lines, one eye bound behind a strip of cloth.

Jeanne recognized the crest instantly, enough to draw her a few steps closer, waving Lucian, who’d only just swung down off his horse, along to look at it with her.

"That has to be the most eccentric banner design I’ve ever seen. I wonder whose family or unit runs with something this strange."

She half turned, looking for whoever had just said that with such a plainly ill-advised opinion, already suspecting it wasn’t a thought that should have left anyone’s mouth out loud.

She didn’t have to look far. The voice had come from just behind Lucian, Eleonor’s own, with Arnold and Luis somehow already standing right behind him too, having trailed along without anyone noticing.

Lucian startled slightly at finding them suddenly there, and caught the tail end of the comment himself, the kind of remark clearly meant to be kept private, not announced to half the camp. Though, studying the banner himself now, he had to admit there was something genuinely odd about it, a Dire Bear, supposedly the picture of raw, unmatched power, wearing an eyepatch of all things, gripping what looked like a spear wreathed in lightning.

"Ohoho. So the lot of you think this is a strange banner, do you? Interesting. Interesting indeed. Seems your own family’s forgotten all about Knight Fulgur, Lady Jeanne."

The voice this time came from directly behind Eleonor, who felt an immediate, crawling chill, as though some enormous presence had simply materialized at her back, a hand closing over her shoulder, far larger and far heavier than any grip she’d felt before.

She drew a sharp breath, twisting to look behind her, a full-body shiver running through her.

"Hack, hack!"

A thick cloud of smoke rolled directly into her face, pulled straight from the mouth of whoever stood behind her, sending her into a fit of coughing before she could make out a single detail of who, exactly, had just done that.

Jeanne pressed a palm flat against her own forehead the instant she recognized who was looming behind Arnold, already moving past him in quick, deliberate steps.

"Forgive our guests’ rudeness, Supreme Commander Flemming."

She bowed her head as she said it, because standing before her now was one of the Bravenheart Empire’s own Supreme Commanders, one of the sharpest spearheads the crown possessed.

Flemming’s body alone commanded the space around him, built on a scale that made him look like a bear standing fully upright, towering over every soldier nearby.

His gaze swept across Jeanne and the small cluster gathered around her, lingering longest on Eleonor, something sharp and searching in it, until the shape of her unusual eyes dragged some old memory up to the surface of his mind.

He looked, briefly, almost wounded by the earlier remark, since the banner in question happened to be his own design, one he privately considered rather magnificent.

In Flemming’s own view, it captured exactly the kind of strength and unbroken resilience that defined his entire career. In every campaign he’d ever led, he’d never once failed to see a mission through.

But what truly held everyone’s attention wasn’t the banner at all. It was the round, patterned cloth bound tightly over one of Flemming’s own eyes.

"I’ll let it slide this once, little Barbosa. Just this once, mind you, for mocking my magnificent banner."

Jeanne had never once mentioned Eleonor’s family name to Flemming, nor properly introduced her or her companions at all, well aware that her status as a foreign guest could easily sour into something ugly with the wrong first impression.

Luis, usually the picture of calm, went rigid at once, his hand closing tight around the hilt of the sword at his hip, urging Eleonor to fall back. He clearly feared what one of the empire’s greatest living powers might be capable of doing to her if this went badly.

But Eleonor waved him off, telling him to stay composed, offering Flemming an easy, curious smile instead.

"Oh? So you already know of my family, Sir Flemming. Have you purchased something from us before?"

Flemming let out a short, bitter laugh, one hand drifting up toward the cloth covering his ruined eye.

"Why would any of us buy goods out of that strange little corner of Rippledale? Our own empire’s craftsmanship outshines anything made over there ten thousand times over."

Eleonor’s brow furrowed, genuinely puzzled now. If not through trade, how did this man know her family at all?

"Then how exactly do you know us, Sir Flemming?"

She couldn’t hold the question back any longer.

"Isn’t it obvious?"

Flemming gestured to the wound hidden beneath the cloth.

"How could I ever forget the man responsible for this. Arnaud Barbosa."