…

…

"Audacity, more audacity, always audacity."

Danton.

…

…

"Henrietta! I'm so happy to see you again!"

Tears filled her eyes and an overjoyed smile lit up her face as Louise rushed towards her beloved friend, the Queen of Tristain, with outstretched arms.

She was to receive no indication of what was to happen next. Louise had never been able to embrace the Queen, for Henrietta took to slapping her across the face.

It was all needed to snap her out of the gripping hallucination she unconsciously had been trapped into. Louise remembered feeling her body crumpling into the ground, after being swatted away harshly by the Queen, and shocked still she found herself really on her knees.

The forest around her was dark and wistful. It was nightfall. Blue moonlight shone through the trees and cast upon everything in an eerie glow. She drew a sharp, hacking breath. She felt cold. Like she had just taken a swim in the Lagdorian lake. The wet gravel began to soak her riding skirt and her hands as she remained planted for a minute, processing what had just happened and confirming that it all had been a vision. It had all been a lucid dream.

The lake. The Water Spirit. Both were before her. Napoleon was across from her, standing. His back was turned from her.

It had been the Water Spirit that had pulled her into that indescribable trance, that hallucination, like a mermaid luring a little girl into the sea. It was the Spirit that had shown her all those ominous, foreboding things.

Her cruel mother, the Grand Duchess. Her sisters Eleonore and Cattleya. It had also shown her the Prince of Albion, James Wales Tudor.

In that dream, the Prince had been unmistakably affectionate towards her. "Stay with me, Louise Francoise," She remembered the Prince begging, holding both of her hands in his. Do not go - She was going off to war. She was going to leave them all. There was a path, and it demanded to be traipsed on her own. A pang of dread, the fear of heights, shot through her.

And then the Water Spirit and the dream had shown her other things.

Jean-Jacques Francis de Wardes, one-half of his face terribly burned. Her own father, the Grand Duke Sandorion, communicating to her only with sorrowful silent eyes. The murderer Siesta, holding a knife, as thin and cruel as it was on the day she attacked the Valliere family.

Louise did not tell Napoleon everything. She couldn't. Those terrifying visions, they caught in her throat and they were utterly choking. Louise had to know what it all meant first. They were demons from the recess of her own heart. The Spirit merely held her hand and led her back to them. She had to find out by herself why the Water Spirit had shown her those things in the dream. The dream took her through a series of rooms, scenes akin to the acts of a theatre play with almost no rhythm whatsoever. But each time Louise was whisked away into another scene, it became more and more ominous until she found herself unable to breathe, assaulted with the kind of horror from being trapped inside your dream. In each scene, she was forced to come face to face with a person who she found frightful or already dead. So when Louise met Henrietta once again, her beloved friend, she was relieved. She threw herself towards the Queen, as if she was her saving grace.

The Queen always slapped her away. Henrietta never spoke to her nor uttered a single word. Only her gaze, which spoke it all. Henrietta gave her an envious glare with her beautiful eyes, now hateful as those that had laid sight upon a devil and cried enemy.

But if not for that painful slap, she would have never woken up at all. It was pain which had brought her back to reality, in time to save Napoleon and herself before the Water Spirit could have put them both to death.

The series of hallucinations replayed again and again in her head.

What did it all mean?

Louise lied still on her sheepskin. Across, to a tall aspen tree their string of horses were tied, braying quietly in the dark. The campfire across from her crackled faintly, the reddish embers glowing. Wisps of hot smoke invisibly snaked through the cold air. Oftentimes a gust or a breeze would blow the fumes towards her, so that it stung her eyes and her nostrils. It did not bother as much; She had tasted battlefields. She was becoming nearly used to it.

Does Henrietta hate me? Does she watch me from up there, sitting between the two moons, and does she see how I am destroying her country?

That must be it. Louise felt her heart waver in her little chest, as she continued to look at the devoid night sky. The two moons, green and red, shone brightly. Henrietta knows, and she shall take it as a betrayal.

I was her friend. Now, her 'friend' is here, perpetuator in a civil war. Her 'friend' wishes to crown herself; she wishes to take the throne of Tristain for herself. That's not nearly enough, is it? Now, her 'friend' wishes to take her Prince for herself.

That was how it looked. That was how Henrietta was probably taking it all. If she were her, she would've thought the same. So Louise thought sullenly. Guilt was a rotting fruit nestled in her chest. It occupied the void between her cloak and bosom. It gnawed the inside of her. The Queen was dead, and everything she left behind her friend shall take over, not sparing a heart. She just felt so lonely, and she couldn't help it. That's what the dream meant with the Prince, didn't it?

She stared at the night sky, then down at her right hand again. It was barely past midnight. Their confrontation at the lake had only happened five hours ago.

Louise sighed. She couldn't wait for sunrise. There was no way she would be able to sleep, not after everything that had just happened.

She opened her right hand slowly, then clenched it again. She repeated these motions, as she sullenly traced the spidery lines of lacerations on the skin of her hand. It eased her nerves a little. Once they returned to Tristania, her relatively light injuries could easily be healed.

Casting her explosions with her stiletto-wand had caused this. The wounds still stung. It felt and looked like someone had literally taken a razor and sliced flowery patterns across her skin, especially following along the veins of her hand. It had bled generously. Even if it were only a superficial wound Louise was still shocked. What if she cast an even stronger explosion? Could the Void cause her an injury worse than this? Either she would destroy a wand or a limb: Could she accidentally blow her hand into smithereens one day?

But despite this, she was glad. Louise glanced to her right side.

Napoleon sat, leaning on the same fallen trunk. He seemed to have nodded off to a shallow sleep beside her.

She had saved the French emperor. Once again, she had done something monumental with her Void magic.

Maybe I've been a failure for most of my life, I'm a Zero, but tonight I'm a Zero who has saved a life. My magic served when it counted. With my explosion, with my power, I've successfully defended my partner from the clutches of the Water Spirit.

Louise felt proud of that. Every time she looked down to her right hand, her painful wounds, and thought of it, she knew that she would do it again without a second thought. Even if it meant blowing her hand out. She'd save Napoleon.

She realized something, though. It didn't change one perilous fact: everything thus far had almost been lost because she wasn't strong enough. So many things could have gone wrong during the confrontation with the Water Spirit. Louise inwardly realized much of their survival had depended on the strokes of luck. She and Napoleon had been lucky. The emperor remarked on this. Coming here, they did not anticipate such intense hostility from the spirit; There was no telling how much worse the Water Spirit could have reacted against them, this was only the beginning.

I need to become stronger. I need to be able to defend myself, and those I must protect. I need to, if I am to make the attempt to end all wars, and bring peace to my whole world.

The night wind blew. Louise squeezed her eyes shut.

"You wish to unify Halkeginia? The nations of Tristain, Albion, Gallia and Germania, and hundreds more states which are constantly at odds with each other? Unifying them would be like a midsummer night's dream!"

Her servant Matilda had uttered those words in disbelief when Louise had mentioned her intentions in passing. She did not forget. Louise was merely testing the waters of their conversation, but looking back, Louise had to admit: it was truly a steep claim, a feverish dream to be thinking of uniting an entire continent - no, it was conquering an entire world.

Rule all of Halkeginia atop one throne? Halkeginia comprised the universe for most people. Most quiet folks never saw beyond the confines of their communes. Not even Louise knew the extent of Halkeginia. Could it be done? Rule the world?

It was all making her awfully apprehensive.

You're talking of world domination! That's madness! This is mad!

A tiny voice in her right ear protested indignantly. Louise shivered and breathed.

Think of something different.

Louise tried to throw herself back into the stories the Emperor told her. Her anxious desperation, pleasantly, turned into gentle curiosity once more.

Napoleon told her that he had visited faraway lands when he was younger. Egypt, again. Suez and Sinai, again; Syria again. Those were his tales. Napoleon had crossed a sea with a mighty army to take a legendary country.

Jean-Jacques Francis de Wardes often talked enthusiastically of the Holy Lands, and his obvious desire to make a valiant pilgrimage there, to wrest it free from the clutches of the evil Elves, a dream shared by so many kindred knights of Halkeginian kingdoms. A dauntless ambition: Retake the city the Romalians once called Aelia Capitolina, the capital of the Holy Lands.

Nobody called it Aelia Capitolina anymore. Not since it had been lost over a thousand years ago. The Elves call it by a different name now; they had made the city theirs.

As far as any Halkeginian was concerned, that city was dead. But it continued to live in the hearts of many Halkeginian knights until today.

The similarities between the two, between Napoleon and her ex-fiance, enamored Louise. But Wardes' fate, no; it frightened her: it occurred to Louise how much Napoleon reminded her of the treacherous Griffin knights captain, in some distinct way. There's some kind of irresistible charm with these kinds of men, that Louise even dreaded Napoleon were he to take a villainous turn like Wardes. Maybe Napoleon was just that, when he was younger…

What was Napoleon like when he was younger?

Louise tried to imagine. She envisioned Napoleon, like Wardes, was once a gallant spirit. Maybe Napoleon was like a prince in some way? He always said that he was first a soldier, that he rose through his unrelenting pursuit of recognition and advancement through merit. Glory and greatness. But something so vain and self-centered couldn't have driven Napoleon so far, for so long, right?

What kind of person would cross the sea with an army, to reach a place like Egypt? Why would a young general march across vast deserts and a faraway isthmus? What was he looking for? What was he trying to prove? It couldn't be just fame! Could it be a woman? Louise recalled how the emperor spoke so fondly of a female named Josephine. How mad in love could someone be to start a war to impress a lady? It couldn't be that. What kind of person was Napoleon? Up until now, that question had never really been deepened meaningfully. But she wanted to find out.

A romantic? Louise thought deeply. The kind of storybook hero drawn from an epic tale she could, admittedly, fall in love with no matter how naive or wishful.

Hard to believe the Emperor was once that same storybook hero. What had happened to turn Napoleon so gray, weathered as the cliffs facing an icy sea?

Now, the Emperor often had that almost indefinite but subtle aura of melancholy that surrounded him in moments of silence. His dark eyes seemed to have only three true constants: were either imperious, vaguely amused, or worse, tired. She could never read him when his eyes seemed tired of being. It made Louise a bit sad. As it stood, she knew that Napoleon had no sentiments nor interests towards forging new relationships with people from her world. The fact that the Emperor kept a sophisticated system of connections and acquaintances that served him was not the point; Napoleon seemed to care little for anyone else. He had said he had no interest in making any more friends, giving one reason and the next to excuse himself.

Why?

The Emperor had yet to continue his story, and the interim simply served to further arouse Louise's thoughts.

Wardes talked about the Holy Lands. It was the goal of almost every knight: to claim that mysterious, idyllic oasis that had belonged to the Halkeginians so long ago.

He talked of reclaiming it, always. He said that it could bring peace, that they could help a lot of people. Louise knew from listening that Wardes' mother had once been to the Holy Lands a long time ago.

As far as Louise knew, this passion-turned-obsession that Wardes seemed to have inherited could have been one of the things that had thrown her ex-fiance down such a grim path. Something had driven Wardes to traipse the path he did now. To betray his country, his Queen, everything he had been raised up upon. Whether it was power, wealth, or something else it was a devastating passion all the same. But Wardes' passion impressed Louise for a long time.

What was Napoleon's passion?

The Emperor talked of so many things. He talked of wanting to heal people. Of bringing back knowledge and medicine to his homeland to aid the sick and ease the afflicted, of bringing prosperity to his country, to instructing his people, to elevating the public standard, there were so many things… and for the first time, bring about something called a revolution in 'science'. Like so many rulers and leaders before him, the Emperor wanted to light up his entire world.

Now, Louise's rose-coloured eyes were shining, almost luminous from the flicker of their campfire as she gazed out into space. Her hand had moved to feel her chest.

"Unity, Indivisibility of the Republic," she whispered silently to herself, as her hand felt for the golden franc she always kept in her breast pocket.

As was her wont, she took out the large coin and set her eyes longingly upon it. She had memorized the words permanently, though it still remained as mythical as the first time she'd laid her eyes upon it.

The words always inspired something within her, like a small spark to light up an entire world.

Louise reached out and tugged at her partner's cuff.

"Hey. Don't pretend. I know you're awake too," Louise mumbled through her lips.

The emperor stirred.

"You should really sleep, you bat."

Louise scoffed. "Huh?! Are you serious? We both just went through a really scary fight for our life back there! You almost died! How do you rest like a baby at night, Napoleon?!"

Napoleon hummed a smile. He began looking at her face for a moment.

The young mage could predict another vaunting from the emperor along the lines of Destiny and "the bullet which shall kill me has not yet been cast!" and so she paid him no heed.

"But I want to know something. What's a republic?" Louise asked bluntly.

"A republic, you ask? Well; an esteemed correspondence of mine once said it is a most hardest kind of thing to keep."

"What do you mean by that?"

Napoleon shuffled a bit and sat upright. He yawned, deciding it harmless to entertain her out-of-the-blue question and continued.

"The greatest civilization that has ever graced my world was a Republic before it became an empire. An idealist must hold in favor the former - Republics can very well be the finest kind of society mankind can nurture for himself. Empires are only as good as their emperors…" Napoleon trailed off silently, crossing an arm behind his head.

"Could we give Tristain something like a republic one day?" Louise said, almost pleadingly.

Napoleon glanced at her. What kind of fervor is possessing this girl? Only a fanatic Jacobin ever entertains politics well into the night! Napoleon inwardly chuckled.

At her age, in his collegiate days, he was once part of the same group of passionate, crazy thinkers and dreamers. The young mage seemed to have perceived that by now when their glances crossed, and a smirk gave away mutual ideals.

"You are getting too carried away, Louise. These are not dreams but very real decisions we speak of…" Napoleon sighed.

"I'm serious."

"A Republic you say…"

Napoleon seemed to be thinking of something. He stared forward for a long time, his grey lonely eyes glittering from the campfire.

Louise waited.

"What do you think?"

"I dislike the idea. Do you want to be stabbed to death by your own governors in the Assembly? I wouldn't particularly enjoy losing you, Valliere."

Louise gawked in surprise. "W-What?! If this is some kind of joke, it's not funny!"

Napoleon gave a short smile.

"As I was saying. It will be costly, Louise. Republics tear themselves apart. Come to think of it, I can't recall the last time one ended well in my time. But if this is your ambition then, however… so be it. You are growing into a fine ruler, I have no doubt that you can carry out this ambition of yours. Let us hope that we can at least give one to your country. We have to do what needs to be finished first."

Louise was quiet, mulling to herself for a while.

"I need to get stronger."

The soft tone of her voice broke the shallow silence between them. The campfire continued to crackle. Napoleon glanced over at her. "That's true," he said.

Louise waited for a minute before she spoke again. "You said you would teach me how to make war," she said. "Teach me more."

"Yes, I did say that."

"We're going back to Tristania, then? Tomorrow we'll go see if there's the Gallian army on our border, but with the Water Spirit completely shunning us, there's nothing else left for us to do here. Whether we'll even find the lost Ring of Andvari at all is an issue we can only hope to solve another day. So we'll go back, and we're likely going to war in two weeks' time."

Napoleon hummed. "Are you excited, Louise?"

"That's a very twisted way of putting it!"

"But you sound so enthusiastic," Napoleon mused.

"I am enthusiastic about ending this war," Louise insisted. "The sooner we can defeat the Loyalists, Marshal Gramont and the Duchess, the better, right?"

"Yes."

Napoleon took a breath. He brushed himself off in a manner that indicated he was to begin on something.

"Let it be said that today, you've done something quite praiseworthy, Louise. You saved my life. I don't think I need to express how obviously grateful I am for that. I am."

Louise blushed, despite the gruff tone of his voice. Napoleon continued.

"You have asked me once if it is you who I care about, Louise, or if I am only interested in your powers. You've always had my answer. I need you to understand that these Void powers of yours are just as much a part of you, as my wits or these Gandalfr runes on my hands are of me. So, if you had been an ordinary girl, would I have cherished you as much? It's not the same question. Though, honestly, I quite like you, Louise. But tonight we only survive by the strength of your powers and it had been barely enough to tide us from the Water Spirit's attempt on my life. So yes, as you said: you need to become stronger."

"You know, I should've been the one protecting you, not the other way around," Napoleon remarked, chuckling dryly. "This won't be the last time we'll be in a sudden position where we'll have to fight for our lives. We have been fortunate. On the other hand, I've always been concerned for the development and the progression of your magical powers, and also yourself. Tonight has shown that we still have much in the way of making a truly great mage out of you. You haven't fully mastered the power of your explosions, honed it quite, nor have you been able to control your affinity with the Void in an efficient manner yet. You have saved the both of us, though. It's a matter of survival now. You'll have to keep becoming better, Louise, for the next time our luck may not suffice."

Louise listened attentively, in silence. Her head was tilted towards the light of the campfire. When Napoleon was done, she slowly looked up to him.

Napoleon smiled.

"You did well. This would make even your mother proud."

"I don't care anymore if I make the Duchess proud or not. I've long resigned myself to indifference towards the opinions of my own family."

Louise's demeanor shifted at a turn of a page. Napoleon was not surprised by her bitter reaction. He didn't take his eyes off her.

"You know that's not true."

"I care more about what you think of me, Napoleon."

A tiny, teasing smile tugged at the emperor's lips. And he also did not fail to notice the anxious bluster in the young mage's voice.

"I am very flattered, Miss Valliere."

"I'm serious!"

Louise mumbled glaring at him. This only made Napoleon grin even more, much to her frustration.

While the best they could have to themselves were a few hours of shallow, sleepless rest under a cold night, the young mage and the emperor both shared a mutual feeling of relief after everything they had braved tonight.

…

After watering the horses and packing camp, they set off early the next morning heading an eastward direction.

Lake Lagdorian by now had swelled to a fantastically large scale. It hadn't burst to flood the surrounding marshes and lowlands yet or to touch the foot of the big mountains, but it had certainly grown a bit overnight. The lake had an elongated shape, once was approximately four miles long and two miles at its widest point. Now it seemed almost like a small sea.

Napoleon and Louise had ridden another six miles before they came to the end tip of the massive oblong body of water. It was difficult to spy across the other side of the lake now, as a hard fog had yet to lift that morning. There was also another issue cropping up. The Lagdorian Lake was situated in between the borders of Gallia and Tristain. Hundreds of years ago, changing territorial lines meant that Gallia and Tristain disputed claims over and around the lake. Gallia at one point encompassed the entire lake. But now, things have changed.

Louise noticed that the waters of the lake had not exactly advanced equally in all directions. An alarming volume of the lake seemed to lean into the side of Gallia's borders. She couldn't tell the extent of the water's rise, but Louise figured one thing: if the damage they had passed that morning on the side of Tristain's borders - washed up huts, drowned livestock, a plethora of personal effects and traces of people's presence littered throughout the grassy knolls where settlements once stood - if those were bad, it was bound to be just as, if not worse, on the Gallian side.

The swollen Lagdorian Lake made Louise think of the Caspian Sea from the Emperor's stories.

How would the Gallians react to this? There was no way Gallia was going to tolerate this catastrophe. This was a crisis the two kingdoms faced at their borders, and it was not going to help any tensions already up in the air. The Water Spirit, with its powerful influence causing the Lagdorian to grow larger and larger, was inadvertently changing the territorial lines at the borders, ruining communities and displacing both Gallians and Tristanians. All due to the theft of a ring. Right now, it might not seem obvious, but the great flooding of the lake would start to disastrously affect cities and communes around. All that water would begin to steep into the land, like a dollop of ink spilled onto a sheet. It would overrun into marshes, worsen swamps and force people to leave their homes. It would wreck dams, kill crops and pastures, and if the heavens be any less merciful, a famine would befall the land.

Louise perused the circumstances again. Whoever had stolen the Ring of Andvari from the lake might or might not have been aware of its consequences. But if it was as Napoleon had said, that the Ring of Andvari had turned up in Albion and likely used by Sheffield, the familiar of the King of Gallia himself, then it meant that Gallia was responsible. Sheffield had used the ring to aid the Reconquista - By proxy, Gallia had aided the Reconquista against Tristain, before they abruptly turned on them in a spectacular double-crossing.

The conclusions were bold, they were adding up in one way or another, but there were questions left unanswered.

How would they track down the Ring of Andvari to return it? It seemed impossible; no trails to follow except the suspicion that it had been in the possession of a Gallian king's familiar, in Albion.

Suppose they could not return the ring? The unpredictable rising of the lake would no longer be the problem of Tristain, but of Gallia as well; it already is. That would be an incentive for Gallia to assist in locating the ring. But if Sheffield had been the one to take the ring, would she return it at all? After all, wasn't appeasing the Water Spirit in the interests of Gallia as well?

The young mage busied her mind with theories that morning as they rode the trail. At around seven-thirty, they finally spotted Gallian soldiers.

She couldn't stave the dry feeling in her mouth as she peered through her spyglass the shadowy silhouettes in the distance. About eleven miles away, well beyond the other side of the Lagdorian Lake, there were files of men marching up a road. It was impossible to tell how much more, but the presence of mounted men, a long caravan and the faint colors of banners, battalion standards, confirmed that these sightings were military in nature. Louise put down her spyglass.

"It's true," Louise said. "I still can't figure it out! What's Gallia doing with an army so close to here? Aren't they aware this is a form of transgression, mobilizing such a large military force at our borders?"

Napoleon did not bother taking another look across the lake.

"There's no mistake," Napoleon said calmly. "Those are Gallian columns. They may look tiny, but you'll soon learn that appearances can be deceiving especially in the contexts of battlefields. That's just one of the many baggage trains being escorted. Let us assume that Gallia is moving thirty, forty thousand soldiers in the region. What we're seeing is just a sliver of it. There's thirty-six thousand other soldiers taking multiple roads to wherever they're going now, and we will not see them from here."

Napoleon remarked, "We don't have a map of this region at hand right now."

Louise pondered, touching her lip. "We're in the Duchy of Walloon still, but this is the Briseis region already. Gallia used to claim these lands, until that changed. I don't know for sure, however, where Gallia's going with that army."

"Any cities, perhaps? No doubt those columns are going to stop at a city where they can station themselves."

Louise was puzzled. "Well," she said. "I'm not familiar. I think if they're marching in multiple columns coming from all over, maybe they're not just headed to one place. There's going to be several towns and places they could stop at, and lots of things they could be up to…"

Without another word being said, both of them could sense another crisis on the horizon.

Gallia was up to something. It followed that their king was the one leading all this. What were they really up to? Louise could only guess by herself. Maybe Gallia is planning to aid the Germanians, who were on the other side of Tristain threatening to invade. Maybe the king of Gallia had also smelled blood in the water, and wanted a part of Tristain once the dies were cast. That was why they were amassing soldiers and armies on the front.

Now with more than a sense of urgency, they decided to return to Tristania. They had addressed two primary objectives they had come here for in the first place, and while the crisis of Lake Lagdorian and the Water Spirit was still an active and extremely serious problem, for now they were done here. Quite importantly, they had surveyed and confirmed the Gallian presence in the southern borders of Tristain.

Napoleon would've been interested in making contact with the Gallian forces in the region and conducting further scouting observation, but that could wait for now. It was highly risky for the two highest-ranking persons of Tristain to be all on their own.

He and Louise were soon back on the trail for the next hour heading north. They had to pass through the Duchy of Walloon again, and take the rugged roads that skirted the main towns and especially the sites of previous battles. It was going to be another long, two to three days of riding before they returned to the capital, but they did not hurry. Louise herself did not complain anymore of the arduous treks on horseback. She had too much on her mind to be bothered.

They were passing through a thick pine forest when the most curious sight happened.

Louise was riding, looking lazily at the treetops as they traced a narrow road through the woods when they came upon another person on the lane. She paid no heed, and so did not notice anything strange instantly. Napoleon slowed down and so did the string of six other horses behind them.

The emperor cleared his throat. "There's a young lady," Napoleon pointed out.

Louise stared. She furrowed her eyebrows and stopped.

There was a stark-naked girl up on the road. She had lovely blue hair that fell down to her waist, but did little to cover her skin. Why? Louise was flabbergasted.

"Hey, you!"

Louise's voice drew a reaction from the naked girl, who seemed to effectively snap out of her bored trance and gaze around in surprise. She looked at them both, wide-eyed.

Louise continued to stare at the girl. "What are you doing?" she demanded. "Why are you naked, in the middle of the woods? Are you lost? Where are you going?"

There was a long moment of silence, that Louise wondered if she even understood the questions until the girl finally spoke.

"O-Oh! I'm sorry!" The girl answered in a polite, cheerful voice. "I didn't mean any trouble, miss! It's just that I've been flying for like, days now and I'm a little tired out!"

"Flying?"

Napoleon spoke. His head was tilted slightly.

The naked girl nodded. She smiled, as if she was enthusiastic to converse with the two strangers she had just met.

"Yes, that's right!" she chirped. "I've been flying for a long time, yet, it's taking me a little longer than I anticipated to reach the city. Oh, my master must be getting impatient now…"

An expression of guilt drew over the face of the girl. Her tone was remorseful.

Napoleon was puzzled. Flying? What did this girl mean by that? She was clearly on foot, trudging up a path through the woods. If it was the next town she was headed to, then she wasn't even halfway there. They were roughly ten miles away from the next town. The girl mentioned a master; was she a servant?

The emperor took a short moment to judge what was so peculiar about this girl. She was barefoot, yet did not seem quite like a vagrant. At last, he spoke again. "You look famished," Napoleon said. "Wouldn't you like something to eat?"

"Yes! Yes! Of course!" Almost immediately, the girl stopped and blushed with shame. "I-I mean… that would be very kind of you, mister. I am quite hungry. I would appreciate it."

Napoleon and Louise glanced at each other. Then he dismounted, before proceeding to produce a small sack from a saddlebag. It contained the leftovers of their light breakfast: two sliced hunks of stale bread, stuffed with dried tomatoes and dipped in olive oil. The girl was eager to receive it nonetheless and upon taking out the rudimentary sandwiches and briefly sniffing it, began to wolf it up ravenously.

Louise was frowning. She gave a disconcerted look, then took off her brown woolen cloak.

"Tell her to cover herself," Louise muttered.

Napoleon took Louise's cloak and held it out to the girl. The girl had finished eating, and hesitated for a moment but took the cloak and wrapped herself up in it, so that only her feet on the ground and her blue head of hair were visible.

"Now then. Would you care to elaborate why exactly you are here in the woods, alone?" Napoleon began. "You seem to be going in the direction of the next town."

"That's right."

"It's ten miles away. You're all by yourself. Why? Where did you come from?"

"Like I said, I've been flying. I'm not good with directions. I left from another city; the people there call their city Compiegne."

"Flying? From Compiegne?" Napoleon stared.

He turned back to Louise, as if to affirm that she was listening.

"Parbleu!" Napoleon huffed. "You came from across the Gallian border! What do you mean you have been flying? Do you have wings? Or do you travel on a magic carpet? You are making up stories, girl. Tell us the truth; where are you trying to go?"

"Oh, mister! I am telling you the truth!" the girl insisted. "I have been flying. No, I don't have a 'magic carpet'. Yes, I do have wings. My master has ordered me to find people who can help us. And the only people who are nice enough to be willing to help us are Tristanians. Gallians are not so nice people…"

The look on the girl's face turned wary for a second. "Are you Gallians?"

"What? No!" This time, Louise sighed. "We're Tristanians," she explained. "If you've been trying to leave Gallia, well then, you've succeeded. You're in Tristanian land now. This is Tristain."

"Really?!"

"You may call me Louise Francoise. Would you tell me your name?" Louise asked impatiently.

"Of course. Which one would you like to know? The name my Master had given me, or my native name?"

"Just your name."

The girl beamed. "Well then. I am Illococoo! But, my Master also calls me by the name Sylphid!"

"Huh?" Louise furrowed her brows even more. Her eyes grew more bewildered every second. "Sylphid? But- but Sylphid is a dragon! Wait a moment, just who exactly is your master?!"

"She is Master Tabitha, of course!"

The girl, Illococoo, smiled. "But I often call her 'sister' instead. Because she's like a sister to me, and she takes care of me!" Illococoo added.

Louise gaped in disbelief. She whipped her head towards Napoleon. "Are you listening to this?"

"If you're actually a dragon," the emperor began, "prove it."

"That's not important at the moment, Napoleon!"

Napoleon gave a glance. "Do you believe what she is saying?"

Louise sighed exasperatedly. "And you do not? Why would she lie? We're riding back to Tristania and all of a sudden, there's a naked girl in the middle of the forest, who claims to be a dragon! Do you think that's a coincidence? What about the fact that this girl knows who my classmate from the Academy, Tabitha is? Tabitha does have a huge Rhyme dragon familiar. But what I'm concerned about is what's going on with Tabitha."

Louise's conclusions were surprisingly logical. Yet, Napoleon seemed inclined to elaborate the situation.

"A 'Rhyme dragon', you are saying?" Napoleon mused.

Illococoo had been watching the two with good curiosity. Now, she pouted at Louise. "Mister doesn't believe me, does he?" Illococoo mumbled.

"Napoleon. His name is emperor Napoleon, and he doesn't believe in a lot of things," the young mage muttered.

"No, I'm just very curious. Voir pour croire."

Louise scowled at the emperor. Napoleon shrugged and crossed his arms expectantly at Illococoo.

"Look, it's fine!" Illococoo offered. "I'm going to shift into a dragon now, yes? I was pretty hungry, am still, so I had to turn myself into a human in order to conserve my energy, but if it will please you, then I shall happily demonstrate!"

Louise could not help but grumble. But inwardly, she was also anxious. She had seen dragons before, so had Napoleon. There was no reason to be surprised. But while Napoleon doubted the girl, Illococoo, out of nature, Louise found herself wide-eyed and not knowing what to expect. She had never even seen Tabitha's familiar up close before. Rhyme dragons were extremely rare, powerful animals. Louise had done a bit of reading on her own, and if what she had read in the books were true, then this might be the first time she would witness a human turn into a dragon - or rather, a dragon return to its natural form from its human disguise.

Illococoo began to take a deep breath. Then slowly, she began to lower herself to the ground, kneeling, and pressed both of her hands on the dirt. Napoleon and Louise were silent. A long minute passed, painstakingly tense.

Suddenly a sharp, whistling sound filled both of their ears. Napoleon and Louise both flinched.

In that split-second they snapped their eyelids, a white wispy puff of strange-smelling smoke blew and rose in front of them. It smelled sweet, but also chalky, like a kind of powder. A dark silhouette materialized at a monstrous instance. While all the show of smoke made it seem like a firecracker had burst in front of them, Napoleon watched everything without fail. And while he was too stunned to retain every bit of detail, there was no mistaking it: the girl had turned herself into a dragon. Her lithe limbs swelled into those of a reptilian beast's; her skin protruded in places and warped into a strong shade of blue, and grew frightful scales. Her features transformed into that of a dragon. If the smoke were any clearer, the visible transformation could even be called scary. For a man as unaccustomed still to this world as Napoleon, it was too fantastic to describe in any definitive way. The brown cloak that had clothed the girl now lay on the ground.

Louise was not as stunned as the emperor. It was easier for her to comprehend a human girl turning into a dragon. Still, it was highly surprising. After a few moments, Louise shook her head and looked over the giant blue Rhyme dragon sitting in front of them, and turned towards Napoleon.

"There you go. It's Sylphid the Rhyme dragon all right."

"Dio mio!" Napoleon exclaimed. "She has turned herself into a dragon! I have never seen anything unlike it."

"It's not that amazing," Louise sighed. "Some very powerful dragons and fabled beasts can disguise themselves as other animals or humans. Some mages can also pretend themselves to be animals, like turn themselves into birds or dogs or whatever. A long time ago, in the days of old, evil spirits would turn themselves into fearsome dragons, and then it would take a saintly knight to slay them. That was the story, anyway. Rhyme dragons are nicer. They say they're the smartest of all dragons. And Sylphid, like most of them, can turn into a human whenever they want to."

The Rhyme dragon gave a croon and drew its head closer down to Napoleon. This made the emperor lean away.

"I see. Well, Louise, this may seem as normal to you, but in my world all of these are merely myths and fantasy. This is impossible to me. You cannot even begin to understand how inexplicable this is to me."

Napoleon could not help but stare at the Rhyme dragon, which remained sitting where she as a human girl had been prostrating on the ground before she had shifted physical form. He observed it with great interest. A few minutes later, Illococoo had returned to her human shape again.

"So, what happened to Tabitha?" Louise finally began.

In a flash, that stricken expression returned to Illococoo's face. Her voice turned brittle and she quavered, that Louise forgot this was still a dragon she was talking to.

"Master Tabitha had been attacked and captured by Gallian mages! It wasn't that I f-failed to protect her—but she was wont to command me to make myself scarce especially when she is to enter a human city or make contact with other humans. She had gone to Compiegne that day traveling with another peasant. Hours later I had led myself to the edge of the woods to bathe in a pond, and when she had summoned for me in distress I hurried as fast as I could to her rescue. When I arrived to aid her, there was a fierce fight happening in the middle of the city! I tried to fight the evil mages, but they had weakened me, and for some reason I still do not understand, Master Tabitha had ordered me to escape…"

Illococoo wiped away a tear, still mournful from what had happened. She said, "Master had ordered me to go find help. I flew as fast and as far as I could, but I've failed miserably to find my bearings, and I've lost a day from hunger and exhaustion which had rendered me to this human form."

"Ah, I'm a disgrace!" the dragon-girl moaned distraughtly. "I ran to save my own hide! I shouldn't have abandoned sister Tabitha! They've caught her now!"

Napoleon put up his hand and shook his head firmly.

"No. You followed her direct orders. You did the right thing," he stated. "That's brought you to us, has it not? And now, thanks to your alert, your master has a chance of being rescued. If you had disobeyed her and stayed to defend her until you were killed, it could have resulted in her death as well, and the demise of you both. That would have been a true disgrace."

"I-I…" Illococoo stuttered, staring wide-eyed at the man. She lowered her head. "I never thought of it that way…"

Louise walked up to Illococoo and made her face her. "You're coming with us," she said. "And you're going to help us rescue Tabitha," Louise had a stern look. She whipped around and took Napoleon's arm so that she and him were both turned away and could counsel privately.

Louise was visibly agitated. She made no attempt to lower her voice, and burst out: "We have to rescue her!"

"Restrain yourself, Louise. Now is not the time for spontaneous gallantry. Have you forgotten how critical our position is?"

Napoleon glared at her. She stared back at him.

"You are the Grand Marquise!" he exclaimed. "You are to be the next Queen of Tristain. If you are lost, everything will be for nothing. You cannot be putting yourself in situations of peril no more. First, the Water Spirit, now—we can't afford to be audacious like this. We'll send someone else to rescue your colleague Tabitha."

"Send someone else?!" Louise cried. Right now, she realized for a moment how concerned she was being for a classmate she barely knew, and it surprised her. But while Louise felt ambiguous about the whole thing, she knew certainly the right thing to do was to help someone in need.

And so she went on. "Who? Soldiers?" she retorted. "Oh, but you think I haven't thought of that right now? This is different! No, we must do it ourselves. There isn't the time, Napoleon. And what if they fail too? I have to do this!"

"No you don't. This is not work befitting a monarch!" Napoleon cut in a sudden harsh tone. He took a breath and gazed at Louise. "Don't forget what you are, Valliere. A Queen does not throw herself against the ladders to scale a Gallian fortress. That is not the work of a Queen. That is the work of a chasseur, or a grenadier, or a knight. Not you. You're a Void mage. That doesn't make you capable, that makes you a liability. Tristain cannot afford to lose you. I will not lose you."

"I'm a soldier, Napoleon."

Louise gazed straight at the emperor with an adamant look.

She said, "you and Matilda have taught me better than anyone else on how to fight and survive a war. This is what I've gone all this way for. We're partners, aren't we? You have to back me up this time! W-We have to save Tabitha, and we have to do this."

Louise looked at Napoleon again. "Don't you trust me?" she asked, upset.

Napoleon frowned.

"It's not a matter of trust, Louise. It's the risk."

"Everything has a risk! You've taught me that as well! I've lived all my life being called a Zero, and this is a chance for me to make something out of myself. And Tabitha and Illococoo need our help, and that's exactly why we must do this, right?"

Louise began to tilt away sullenly. She muttered, "Or you're worried that I'm not strong enough. Or, that we might fail because of me, and that I'll be in grave danger."

Napoleon stopped.

She was nervous of how Napoleon might further forbid her from her plight, because even if her decision was final, there was no way she could do it - not without him. That had to be admitted; and it was unbearably frustrating, Louise was sick of it, to still be underestimated until now. Hadn't she proved herself capable?

But there was a slow semblance of a smile that tugged at the corner of Napoleon's lips. After a few moments, he finally gave a soft laugh.

Without any warning, he seized Louise by her ear and pinched her.

"Bah! You think I am worried, Louise?"

"Napoleooon!"

The young mage swatted his hand away. The emperor grinned at her.

"I am quite vexed that you should come to such an assumption. No, I am more irritated at the fact that despite your audacity to embark onto this mission, you seem to have forgotten to even try any indication of a plan whatsoever. Are you a moron, Louise? Shall we simply ride off and make it up as we go along? It's laughable, you'll surely fail if you go forth out of blind spontaneity right now.

"Always plan, Louise. Never, ever forget to first prepare yourself to bridge the distance between you and your objective. Never forget that."

Louise puffed her cheeks and turned red.

"O-Of course I'm planning it out!" she snapped.

Louise sighed, and now began to sit. "I know that if we're to rescue Tabitha from wherever she's being held captive in, we're going to need a plan."

Once she had said this, she fidgeted. Louise turned to the emperor and pursed her lips.

"Napoleon, I need you… to help me draw up a plan."

The emperor grinned.

"Beginning then," he finally said, nodding. "If what Sylphid says is true, then Tabitha is currently imprisoned in the fortress of Compiegne by her Gallian kidnappers. That's an entire day's ride going back south from here. I reckon the poor girl has been cooped up in there for a few days now, so our clock is ticking. God knows what Tabitha has had to endure in her time there. But we can't do it by ourselves. It won't be enough. There must be no margin for failure now. We'll have to make it to the next town as soon as possible and relay a message to our allies. I will personally organize a team."

Louise noticed something for the first time which was different in Napoleon's voice. His eyes too once again held that rare, bright glint of enthusiasm that she had only seen once, so long ago when they first discovered that weird Dragon's Raiment artifact in a village at Tarbes, and those weird books Napoleon was so obsessed with.

And Louise was inwardly glad to see this. They had less than two weeks left before the war with the Marshal and the Iron Duchess resumed. A great lake spirit was running amok. Gallia was growing threatening against Tristain, and now this. Yet still, the emperor seemed animated by an opportunity for some truly intrepid action.

.

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