Part Eighty-Five — What the Knights Carried Home

Pieced together later, same as everything else about how the wider kingdom actually came to hear of us before we ever heard back from them properly.

　Seraphiel led her three shaken companions back through the barrier's edge in near total silence, none of them quite ready yet to put words to what they'd actually witnessed.

　It was Aldric, predictably, who broke first — blunt as ever, though his usual bluntness carried none of its typical confidence.

　"That was Ignivar," he said, flat, once they'd put enough distance between themselves and the barrier to feel safe speaking at all. "The Ignivar. From the old bloodline records. I thought those stories were exaggerated."

　"They were not," Valerius said, quiet, the fewest words he'd offered in days somehow carrying the most weight of the four. "If anything, they undersold him."

None of them fully processed how close I actually came to dying today, Cassian thought privately, still feeling the ghost-sensation of a blade that had stopped a hair's width from his colleague's throat.

A single word, wrongly chosen, and it would have been over before any of us understood what was happening.

　They made camp that first night back in relative silence, the usual easy rapport between the four considerably subdued by everything the day had actually shown them.

　"We need to report this accurately," Seraphiel said, finally, breaking the quiet. "Not exaggerated for effect, not softened out of embarrassment. Exactly what happened."

　"Including the part where I nearly died over an ill-chosen sentence?" the youngest knight — Tomas, still pale from the encounter — asked, quiet.

　"Especially that part," Seraphiel said. "High Priestess Selwyn deserves accurate information, same as she's always insisted on. Softening this to spare our own pride would be exactly the kind of dishonesty that got our predecessors killed."

She's right.

Whatever pride any of us have left after today, it's not worth risking someone else's life on incomplete information.

　They reached the nearest Church outpost three days later, exhausted, and Seraphiel dictated her account to the outpost's own recording clergy with the same careful precision she'd brought to everything since first spotting the barrier's shimmer months earlier.

　"A near-execution," she said, watching the scribe's hand pause slightly at the phrase, "halted only by the intervention of a second figure within the territory — one our own records confirm as Ignivar, formerly of significant dragon lineage, now apparently allied with or teaching the anomaly directly."

　"You're certain of the identification?" the outpost's senior cleric asked, clearly hoping for some margin of doubt that might soften the report's implications.

　"Certain," Aldric said, before Seraphiel could answer. "I've seen the old portraits. That was him."

Ignivar.

Actually alive.

Actually involved.

That changes the shape of this entire threat considerably, and not in a direction anyone back home is going to find reassuring.

　The report traveled from the outpost toward Laodicea's central archive within days, carried by riders who understood, from the careful wax seals attached to it, that whatever it contained demanded speed rather than the usual bureaucratic patience.

　Selwyn received it personally, reading through the account twice before setting it down, something genuinely troubled crossing her composed features for the first time in weeks.

Ignivar.

That name alone changes the calculus considerably.

A rogue dragon of that reputation, actively training and protecting this anomaly — this is no longer simply a territorial dispute with an unknown power.

This is a coalition, however small, of genuinely significant threats.

　She called Cassian in that same evening, the account spread between them.

　"You said the scholar Vance chose to remain," Selwyn said, reviewing that particular detail with fresh concern. "Did the report specify why?"

　"Only that she cited academic interest," Cassian said. "Nothing more specific than that."

Vance.

Ignivar.

Whatever else is quietly assembling itself in that territory.

I need a fuller accounting of exactly who and what we're actually dealing with, before this goes any further.

　"I want a complete review of every historical record we hold on Ignivar specifically," Selwyn instructed. "His reputation, his known associates, anything that might explain why a dragon of his stature would involve himself with an anomaly this significant."

　"And the wider report?" Cassian asked. "Do we present it to the king's court as written?"

　Selwyn considered that a long moment, weighing the political cost of full transparency against the very real danger of withholding information that would eventually surface regardless.

　"As written," she said, finally. "Every uncomfortable detail included. I would rather the court's fear be grounded in accurate facts than in whatever exaggerated version eventually reaches them through less careful channels."

Doesn't mean the accurate version won't be frightening enough on its own, though.

A near-execution.

A legendary rogue dragon.

A scholar of considerable reputation choosing to stay, of her own free will, rather than return with knights she'd have every reason to trust more.

Whatever calm I've managed to maintain through this entire investigation — I suspect that calm is about to be tested considerably harder than it already has been.

　She filed the report properly, alongside the growing collection of documents that had, over the preceding months, assembled themselves into something considerably larger and more troubling than a simple territorial anomaly.

Two units lost.

A functioning, breachable barrier.

A rogue dragon.

A scholar of my own Church's occasional consultation, choosing to defect, effectively, without a single moment of hesitation.

Whatever this actually is, I no longer have the luxury of treating it as a minor curiosity.

And I suspect, given how quickly rumor already travels faster than truth, neither will the rest of this kingdom, once word of today properly spreads.