The footage was spotty in parts, even after the unimportant parts in which nothing substantial happened were cut down. The last hour was completely corrupted, bringing an abrupt end to it. Everyone except Andromeda had fled the field at the sight of daemons. She had faced them instead.
Cor filled them in on the ending that he had witness when the video failed to show what had happened. After Monica and Dustin had failed to make contact with her, and things escalated in Galahd, Regis had sent Cor to see what was in store. From his account, Andromeda had survived the event and escaped the Empire yet again, although she had to be pulled away from the burning field by comrades after the daemons were defeated and the strange creatures she had summoned had all disappeared.
There was a moment of silence after Cor finished his report, as the three other men in the room considered it. They met in Regis's personal office; the throne room was not a good place for espionage reports, and this wasn't something for the Council to know about.
Officially, the case on Andromeda had been closed for a few years. At first, after the Glaives had failed to retriever her in Duscae, Regis presumed to leave the girl to live out there in peace. As it was, there had been some intense discussion to be had with the Council about other matters, which greatly took up his time.
When word came of her capture by Niflheim, there was nothing he could do. He couldn't risk the men on such a small thing like that, and certainly couldn't give enough reason for such a trespass behind enemy lines. It was assumed she had been taken all the way to Niflheim, far out of reach.
She wasn't dead as some had believed. What Regis recognized when he first saw the news footage months ago was the same ghostly woman who had once been thrown out of the Crystal while he had been consulting it. She had been disoriented, and slightly hostile. She had briefly appeared in the Crystal's chamber once before years before. She wouldn't answer any of his questions—she only told him to "ask his god" before disappearing.
Bahamut hadn't given him an answer for that, and when pushed, he only condemned the girl as something that should not be, and therefore was a threat against a cleansed world. He declared her an enemy. Regis hesitated to believe the war god. Only Andromeda herself could truly answer his question, and he was determined to hear it.
There were many things that nagged at his mind, as a king; this case should not have been one of them, but it was. This was something for people far below him to handle, and for the most part, had been the case. Yet the night this had all first started, he had sensed the explosion of dark energy—magic that wasn't his own, in his city. The Crystal had reacted as well, only making him more aware of the situation. He had feared it was another Imperial attack within the city, much like the Founder's Day Incident nearly twenty years beforehand that had been expunged from all records, completely covered up. But then, after that initial burst and warnings Regis received, nothing more had happened. The Crystal, the conduit for Bahamut, would not respond to his questions.
He had learned all of the details from the initial reports and watched, hoping the girl could be brought back to Insomnia. The city never saw many Tenebraens, much less refugees, and even then, as undocumented immigrants. Regis had been there when Niflheim had attacked; he understood their need to flee. He was ashamed to have done nothing to help Tenebrae—he had failed to keep Lunafreya safe, and Sylva had been killed. He had found himself wanting to help these two refugees who had come all the way across the world for safety in Insomnia.
Both witnesses of the first incident had attested to the use of magic, which was what bothered Regis the most about this. Andromeda couldn't be a bastard of either royal line—her age wasn't right for it. Bastards usually didn't end up with magic, or what they did was much weaker than they had seen her do. Her aunt had confirmed both parents had been Tenebraens. One of the most pressing questions remained: how did Andromeda come to possess magic?
It was another question the Crystal refused to answer, much less acknowledge. Two witnesses were not much to go on, but Regis knew they had been truthful, and whatever that teenage girl had done had terrified them.
In the past spring, the whole world found out that Andromeda was not dead, but alive, and in Galahd. The video clip had cycled through the morning and afternoon news, and her image had been on the news website for that long, by the time several people had recognized her. Just before it was time for the evening news, Regis had ordered for the story to be removed from all media. Now it was like it had never been aired. Crownsguard had spoken with the reporter to get all of the information he had. The news no longer reported much on Galahd, although it was not a complete media blackout.
There had been reports of odd disturbances in Galahd a couple of years before. At first, everyone had assumed it had been the Imperials, but as more information came in, they all learned that it had been Andromeda. Thus Monica and Dustin were sent to find out more about the situation now that those disturbances were occurring again. Andromeda had resisted contact, and none of the rebels had been very cooperative.
Other spies had been sent since then to look for her, and find out what she was doing. A steady flow of information had trickled in in the past few months; the spies had found an informant to go along with what pictures they had taken. Andromeda was not a captive of the rebels as was initially presumed; she was quite content among them, as could be seen in one photograph where she and another woman shared a large bottle of alcohol while sitting on a roof. The other woman had since been identified as a refugee that had returned to Galahd. The two had been friends in high school, in Insomnia. That the two women managed to meet up after a few years apart was interesting, and noted.
Another unforeseen outcome was that Andromeda spoke almost entirely in Galahdian with others around her—if any sound bytes were captured, a translator was needed to change it to the common language. She was often kept close to the rebel leader; the informant mentioned she had been placed there by someone he hadn't known, and he also hinted that she might have had a little more say in their strategies than a foreigner should have. If so, she was clever, but led by her rage.
"The situation is getting out of hand," Clarus said, the first to break the silence.
"I agree," Regis nodded. "We won't get the information we're looking for through an informant and spies anymore."
He certainly wouldn't get the answers to his questions this way. Except for her exact whereabouts, there was nothing new the spies could bring up that would be relevant.
"It would be unwise to bring her into the city, Your Majesty," Drautos cautioned. It was the logical next step in this endeavor.
"She has gone from setting apartment fires to destroying military bases, apparently without much effort on her part," Clarus agreed with him. "If we bring her into Insomnia, she could wreck havoc. We don't know how to stop her from doing that. It doesn't appear that she can stop herself."
"She has no reason to attack Lucis," Regis countered, noting how the other three were against this.
"She's resisted contact twice," Cor said, deadpan.
"Resisted, not attacked," The king pointed out. "Her targets have been Imperials, and whoever align themselves with them. You've even noticed her strategy changed when confronted with human soldiers. She did not throw herself into fighting them as she has done the MTs."
Granted, her idea seemed to have been to let the MTs kill the human soldiers. Cor had witnessed her at one point pushing the human soldiers towards the androids. Thankfully, Insomnia did not have any sort of mechanical soldiers her magic could manipulate. Everything was still very human in the city.
The dust might have settled in Galahd for the time being, but the Imperials were closing in on Andromeda. It was a small region; there were only so many places she could hide. She was being cornered.
"She might be quiet now, but I don't think she has left after what happened," Regis said. "It's possible that after using that much power in one instance, she's currently weakened. Now is the time to extract her."
The three other men couldn't argue against that. They could all agree that Andromeda needed to be removed from Galahd before the situation became any worse. The Empire was ready to storm the villages again. Regis was adamant to be face-to-face with this woman, before Niflheim could take her again. This went well beyond whatever was happening in Galahd, yet that was something he could not explain to them.
"It will be as you wish, Your Majesty," Clarus assured.
"Have the spies find where she's hidden, then have them return here," The king ordered. "I want Glaives to bring her to the city."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Drautos bowed.
There was something more at work here, that Bahamut wanted to destroy without a justifiable answer. It could mean all the difference in the prophecy.