Dark Dragon: The Summoned Hero Is A Villain

Chapter 347 347: Fear And Suspicion In Every Direction

Ines had been pacing for over twenty minutes.

She knew because the candle on her desk had burned down a measurable amount since she'd started, and she was tracking it the way she tracked everything now. As evidence and data. As something she could use to anchor herself when the scope of what was happening threatened to become too large to hold in one mind.

The reports kept arriving whether she wanted them to or not. She'd stopped having them read aloud and started reading them herself, because hearing them read aloud made them feel like someone else's problem, and none of this was someone else's problem.

The rain had appeared in Thornwall. In Crestmere. In Aldewick and the port towns along the southern coast.

It was the same phenomenon each time. The sun shining overhead, the rain drizzling peacefully, and then half the street on their knees.

The rain touched both commoners and nobles, with no apparent preference for rank or proximity to power.

Merchants and guards and minor lords and the people who cleaned their houses. All of them standing up afterwards with dark veins fading beneath their skin and no understanding of what had been done to them.

The knock came as she was turning at the far end of the study.

"Come in."

Edric looked tired in a way he rarely allowed himself to look in front of anyone. He closed the door and didn't bother with formalities, which told her everything about the state of things before he said a word.

"The frontlines are holding," he said. "The rain hasn't reached that far. I've managed to keep the reports contained and the soldiers there don't know yet. Morale is stable."

"That's something," Ines said, picking up the report she'd set aside earlier and holding it without reading it. "What about the cloaked man Stormborn had found above the capital? What do we have on him?"

"Nothing," Edric said. "He vanished before we could get anyone else into position. And since there are no trails or eye witnesses up in the sky, there's no avenue for us to pursue."

"Is it possible the Stormborn killed him?"

Edric leaned back slightly. "He doesn't think so. He's confident he landed significant damage, but he reported that the man never panicked. Not once during the entire fight."

He paused.

"That concerned him more than anything else. A man who takes that level of damage and shows no fear either has a very good reason to feel safe, or has experienced far worse and considers this unremarkable."

Ines set the report down. "He's connected to Lady in Dark."

"That was my conclusion as well," Edric said. "The timing is too precise to be coincidental. The academy falls, the wards come down, she walks in through the front door, and within days a man none of us have ever seen before is floating above the capital seeding the clouds with the hybrid potions."

He shook his head slightly. "This wasn't improvised. Someone planned both operations, and they have to be interconnected."

"Which means he's either her superior or her equal," Ines said.

"Either possibility is concerning."

She was quiet for a moment. "What are you doing about it?"

"The Purge is ready to begin the search, so we'll include him in it." Edric said. "If he has any presence in this city, any contact, any thread we can trace, they'll find it." He met her eyes. "We're starting from within the palace itself."

Ines held his gaze and nodded.

"Then start," she said. "What about the damage here?"

Edric exhaled slowly. "Significant. The rain moved through the capital without any particular strategic logic that I can identify, which I suspect was intentional. The time was carefully selected, which meant it found every layer of our administration."

He paused. "Palace guards. Clerks. Domestic servants. Agents of the Investigation Authority, several of the field teams were caught in transit between assignments. Reliable eyes in nearly every department have been compromised."

Ines stopped pacing. "The Purge?"

"Intact. They were in closed session when it happened. None of them were exposed."

"Then we still have a knife," she said. "What's the main problem?"

"The problem is what we're cutting through." Edric moved to the chair across from her desk and sat, which he rarely did without being invited. She didn't comment on it.

"The Purge works by reading memories. But memories are colored by the state of the person carrying them. And right now, every person in this city is frightened, suspicious, and uncertain about the people around them."

"When our agents go into those minds looking for evidence of Reunifier involvement, they'll be wading through fear and suspicion in every direction. Every nervous glance across a room becomes a lead. Every overheard conversation becomes a thread worth pulling."

"Rabbit holes," Ines said.

"Thousands of them. The investigation time increases significantly. Possibly by months."

Ines pressed her fingers against the edge of the desk, thinking. "What uncompromised assets do we have?"

Edric was quiet for a moment. "Noah."

She looked at him.

"The compulsion is seated. He's functional. And he has capabilities that don't depend on a chain of trust the way our intelligence networks do." Edric met her gaze steadily. "If manpower becomes the limiting factor, he fills gaps that no one else can."

Ines considered it, then nodded once. "Use him if you need to. That's what he's there for."

"There's also the matter of the public," Edric said. "Fear is spreading faster than the rain did. People who weren't infected are treating those who were as enemies. We're going to see violence between neighbors if we don't move quickly."

Ines had already been turning this over. "Ramsay," she said.

Edric raised an eyebrow slightly.

"He's the First Premier of Camelot, and he's been a hybrid since before any of this started," she said. "Put him in front of the people. Let them see that the kingdom's First Premier carries whatever they're carrying and is still standing at his post." She paused. "If he can be trusted, then perhaps they can be too."

Edric nodded slowly. "It may hold long enough to matter."

"It has to," Ines said.

She looked back at the reports on her desk, the stack of them, each one a city she hadn't been able to protect.

"It's all we have for now," she said quietly. "So it will have to be enough."