Knock, knock, knock.
The jailer slid open the cell door's peephole.
"Lady Freya, do you need something?" the soldier asked when she met the dragoon's gaze.
"I'm ready to leave, Lena." the burmecian replied.
"Alright, stand clear of the door, please."
Freya complied and the knight disabled the magic glyph that kept the room sealed.
"Stay calm, Cherry, everything will be fine..." Sir Wulfweard reassured her before resuming his meditation.
"I sure hope so..." his former student said, nodding to him, "I'll be back soon, sir. Please, hold on a little longer."
"Alright, you can leave now." the guard said, letting her out. She then activated the barrier, sealing the chamber again.
Freya sighed and resignedly went down the tower's stairs. Despite being confident in Mikoto's lie detection skills, she couldn't help feeling bad about her old teacher's imprisonment, however comfortable it was. She began absentmindedly walking down the second floor hallway, so caught up in her thoughts that she failed to notice that Zidane was there, waiting for her.
"It's not that we don't trust your judgement, you know?" the genome said, interrupting the burmecian's contemplation, "It's just that too many lives ride on every decision we make. We need to be certain about his innocence."
She stopped and sighed before turning around.
"I understand how delicate this situation is." the dragoon answered, brushing aside her platinum bangs, "However... I know I'm definitely not an authority on the subject, but what I told you earlier still stands: you need to start trusting more in your friends."
"You're right. I've been kind of... overbearing these days." the genome sheepishly admitted, abandoning his spot and approaching her, "Mind if I walk with you?"
"Of course not, dummy." she replied with a lopsided smile, waiting for him to catch up.
Freya realized as they went that it had been an eternity since the last time she had spent more than two days with her Mist War comrades. Her visits to Alexandria had grown sparser across the years and she had almost stopped coming altogether once Puck offered her a position in the Royal Guard. Just walking in silence with her oldest remaining friend was nice for a change, as if they had never got separated by their respective lifestyles and responsibilities. She briefly fantasized about escaping to a less complicated universe; one in which she got to wander aimlessly again, drinking, sight-seeing, picking up fights with the local wildlife and sleeping under the boundless skies of the countryside. Gods, did she miss traveling without a care in the world.
"I just did the hardest thing ever..." Zidane said, completely out of the blue.
"Huh? What happened?" Freya asked.
"Garnet and I had a talk with Lil' Tot... we told him about our plan."
"What plan?" the dragoon inquired, raising an eyebrow.
"We're not going to Puck's funeral together..." the king replied, "Dagger is leaving me here in case... something goes wrong."
Freya stopped dead on her tracks.
"Is she gonna be alright?" the burmecian squeaked with a shocked expression on her face, "Please tell me that she can still summon her eidolons!"
"Yeah... Dag still has the moves." Zidane affirmed, "If Ulrich decides to whip out his Dragon's Crest, he's gonna get a faceful of kaboom... or at least that's what I hope."
The dragon knight winced at the idea of a showdown between the summoner and the dragonslayer. She had serious doubts about Garnet's chances against a lightning fast killer like the usurper: if she fought him one-on-one without any kind of field advantage, she would be dead before she could complete her first incantation.
"... Besides, an entire company of our best soldiers, and Rusty, are gonna be with her at all times." the king added, mostly trying to convince himself about how safe his wife would be with them.
Freya sighed: it still wasn't an ideal match-up. For starters, pitting common soldiers against Ulrich was like sending rabbits to hunt a fox. Steiner's sword arts could certainly hold the dragonslayer at bay for a while, but if he didn't manage to kill him fast, the sheer versatility of the Dragon's Crest would allow the chancellor to take out Garnet in a blink while staying out of the Pluto knight's reach.
"Oh, I almost forgot... last night Dag managed to contact Cid. He's suspecting an ambush too, so he tried to force Eiko to stay at home. Guess what, it didn't work." Zidane stated.
Those were excellent news, the dragoon thought. The princess of Lindblum's endless stream of white magic was exactly what they needed to counter the mark's strengths and overwhelm Ulrich's defenses. The usurper would be in for a nasty surprise if his arrogance made him take on the three of them at once.
"What do you think, Freya?" the genome asked, seeking reassurance despite knowing the answer to his question, "Is Ulrich crazy enough to attempt something during the ceremony?"
The burmecian gulped.
"Look, I'm not going to lie to you, Zidane... I think that his most dangerous trait is his unpredictability." she answered, resting a comforting hand over his shoulder, "The best we can do now is to help our friends prepare for the meeting and gather every piece of information we can to give them an edge. We're blindly stumbling in the dark and that needs to change soon."
"I hate to admit it, but I'm scared out of my mind..." the king confessed, "I dunno what I'd do if something happened to them..."
"They are the best Gaia has to offer, monkey boy." the burmecian affirmed with a confident smile, "If I believe in them, and I'm the pessimist here, so should you."
Zidane sighed and gently patted the back of her hand. He suddenly frowned and sniffed a couple times, as if detecting a strange scent in the air.
"Huh? What's wrong?" the dragon knight inquired and started alarmedly sniffing around.
The genome seemed to follow an invisible trail to the burmecian's hand and immediately burst into laughter when he understood what he was smelling.
"Have you lost your mind?" Freya squeaked, recoiling in confusion.
"I know you're positively covered in hair, but that's just too much shampoo, woman!" Zidane chuckled, "You've just had the most expensive bath in Gaia's history!"
The burmecian's ears immediately glowed red and she looked aside, blushing furiously beneath her pale fur.
"I couldn't resist, okay? That thing was just too good..." she exclaimed, folding her arms, "At least I don't smell like a chimp's butt!"
"I agree! It's more like chamomile and honey, with a subtle hint of wet rat." he retorted, imitating the gestures of a perfume connoisseur.
"Why, you little..!" she shrieked, balling up her fists before snorting with laughter, "Pffft, gwahahaha!"
The king snorted too and they chortled uncontrollably for a while. It was just like the good old times.
"Ahhh... thank you, Freya. I needed this badly." the genome said with a goofy grin when they managed to calm down, "Wanna go grab a bite? I'm starving!"
Her tummy replied with a loud growl, prompting both friends to blankly stare at it.
"I guess that's a yes!" Zidane exclaimed triumphantly, much to the dragon knight's chagrin.
"Your Majesty!" Breireicht of the Pluto knights suddenly yelled from the other end of the corridor, "Lady Mikoto has arrived to the castle!"
"What?! So fast?!" Zidane blurted out in shock, "Where is she?"
"Queen Garnet is personally escorting her to her cabinet, sir." The soldier replied, "She's sent me to find you two, in fact."
Zidane and Freya glanced at each other.
"Looks like lunch will have to wait..." the genome said, scratching the back of his head.
"So, how are the genomes doing, Mikoto?" Garnet inquired with a fascinated expression, "Zidane told me that they had adapted to Gaia most admirably!"
"Biologically, yes. Culturally, not so much. Most of them have yet to develop true self-awareness, but the few exceptions give us hope for the future..." the blond scientist replied, making a brief pause to sip her tea. She then stared into her empty mug for a moment, looking almost disappointed, "Sorry for the interruption, but this is just too good to be true, how did you call it?"
"Oh, this is black tea with rose petals, orange peel and cinnamon, one of my favorite blends!" the queen exclaimed. She had always found Mikoto's endless capacity for amazement deeply endearing. She was literally as curious as a monkey.
"I need to replicate this, share it with my people, perhaps if I take a few samples..." she mumbled, staring at the porcelain teapot while scratching her chin. Garnet held back a chuckle: despite their vastly different intellectual capacities, brother and sister were just as easily distracted and even shared the same mannerisms.
"You don't need to do all that, sweetie, I'll gladly give you the recipe." the monarch said, winking at her.
"Oh... right... thank you." Mikoto replied, mildly embarrassed.
Knock, knock, knock!
"Come in!" Garnet exclaimed.
Zidane entered the room, followed by Freya. "Hi there, Miko!" he said, grinning from ear to ear.
"Brother! It's good to see you!" she excitedly greeted him. The queen stared at the girl, bemused by her unusual display of emotion; Zidane truly had the mysterious power of bringing out the best in others.
The king affectionately kissed the top of his younger sister's head and she seemed to revel in the rare physical contact. It was no wonder that she appreciated him so much, Garnet thought, for the blond thief was one of the only people in Gaia that had openly cared for her from the very beginning.
"Hello, Garnet, Mikoto." the dragon knight said, taking a bow.
"Hi, Freya. Please, sit down wherever you like. Do you want some tea?" the queen offered.
"Absolutely." the burmecian eagerly answered, picking a spot near the table.
"Any news, Dag?" Zidane asked his wife while lazily sinking into a couch "Hey, thank you for receiving Miko, by the way. I had no idea she could cross the ocean in, what, ten hours?"
"Thirteen, to be precise." the young scientist corrected him with a proud smile, "It's a new world record!"
"That's just crazy, girl." the king commented before noticing a nearby plate full of sweets, "Ooo, biscuits..."
"Zidane, do you have the soul core? I'd like to examine it right away." his sister said, picking up her leather bag from the ground and revealing a myriad of gadgets and tools.
"Here it is." Garnet answered, putting the brass heart on the table. Mikoto drew a magnifying glass from her toolbox and spent a good moment studying every nook and ridge of the alien device.
"Hmph... even if it's remarkably well made for a gaian machine, this is nothing but a crude, severely flawed imitation of a true soul core." she said, showing the artifact to her friends, "Look at the shape of the crystal, it's completely irregular and presents cracks and fractures that hint at a barbaric production method. Whoever did this seems not to understand that to produce a stable soul stone you can't simply slaughter people and harvest their remains like some kind of butcher."
"Could you please tell us what's the difference between a stable and an unstable soul stone, Mikoto?" Garnet inquired, trying to remain focused despite the horrific nature of the golden machine.
"Well... Vivi, for example, was powered by such a beautifully crafted soul stone that he was psychologically and emotionally indistinguishable from a normal human being. To put it in simpler words, he was the first black mage to possess an authentic soul of his own." the monkey-tailed girl explained.
"And what would happen if we were to... uh... install this faulty core on an empty vessel?" Zidane asked.
"A crystal this defective would probably cause it to go on a pain-fueled rampage until someone managed to put it out of its misery." Mikoto stated, "The way a soul is harvested is what shapes the resulting crystal. This... thing... was created in a particularly gruesome fashion, and it shows."
"Does this man's cruelty know no limits..?" Freya growled. She was so tense that she had unwittingly embedded her fingernails into her chair's arms.
"Who are you talking about?" the scientist asked, completely unaware of Ulrich's usurpation of the burmecian throne, "We don't even know if we're dealing with a man here..."
"Hold on a second..." Garnet said, opening her eyes so wide that Zidane thought they would pop out of their sockets, "We're not dealing with a man... Zid, we're not dealing with a man!" she yelled, scrambling for a nearby wooden chest.
"Uh... Dag, what are you talking about?" the king asked, craning his neck to try to see what his wife was looking for.
"Ah! Here they are!" the queen exclaimed, grabbing several rolls of parchment and scattering them all over the table, "The records of the Treno Rebellion!"
"Huh..?" the king mumbled, scratching his head in confusion until a terrifying realization dawned upon him, "Oh... OH! OH, SHIT, YOU'RE RIGHT!"
"The Treno Rebellion? But wasn't that like sixteen years ago?" Freya inquired, raising her eyebrows.
"During the early days of the conflict, we had a particularly bloody run-in with a deadly enemy unit." the queen explained, "They were outfitted with enchanted suits of armor that significantly enhanced their physical capacities."
"Yeah... motherfuckers razed half a dozen alexandrian villages to the ground before we finally managed to take 'em down." Zidane added, "Do you remember those strange breastplates we sent you, Miko?"
"Yeah... they were lined with a rather primitive mystical circuitry mesh." the scientist recalled.
"Well, they weren't primitive for us at the time." her brother retorted, "Those bastards took too many innocent lives to count thanks to their superior technology."
"The woman who designed those suits of armor is Treno's current head of goverment. It can't be a coincidence!" Garnet concluded, unrolling one of the scrolls and skimming over a list of merchant names.
"How was she called? Vilma? No... Victoria?" Zidane muttered, repeatedly snapping his fingers.
"Bishop." Garnet replied, "Margaret Bishop."