Chapter 100: A Little Monster

He said the name as he closed the remaining distance between them, and standing beside him now, Eleonor looked almost comically small, barely clearing the height of his waist.

Understanding settled over her all at once. One of the men her own father had once crossed blades with was standing directly in front of her, looking down at her now with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

Flemming’s gaze stayed fixed on Eleonor, sharp and unreadable, and his hand rose toward her head.

Jeanne lunged to intercept it, certain, for one gut-wrenching second, that Flemming meant to hurt her, to settle an old debt for the eye her own father had taken from him.

Neither she nor Luis, who’d only just started moving himself, came close to fast enough. Flemming’s hand had already settled over Eleonor’s head before either of them closed the distance.

But there was no violence in it at all. He simply ruffled her hair, almost fondly, a short laugh rumbling out of him as he drew another pull from the cigar still smoldering in his other hand.

“Hahaha, relax, you two. You really think I’m foolish enough to go roughing up someone important out of Rippledale?”

He blew a thick stream of smoke off to one side as he said it, the cloud curling heavy through the damp air.

“Besides. What kind of fool of a knight attacks a little monster like this one out in the open?”

Buried somewhere inside that gruff compliment sat genuine respect, the dawning sense that whatever Eleonor actually carried inside her went far beyond what her size and manner let on.

Flemming turned and led the way toward his own command tent, waving everyone in to talk things through properly.

Jeanne and Lucian fell in step first.

Luis and Arnold lingered a few paces back, already at the tent’s entrance, checking on Eleonor, who’d gone unusually quiet since her face-to-face with Flemming.

“Miss Eleonor. Are you alright?”

Luis studied her expression, caught somewhere between a frozen, polite smile and something else entirely, until she finally tilted her head toward him.

“Ahh, that was far too close. I genuinely thought he was about to pound me into the ground.”

Hearing the question seemed to snap her fully back into herself, the silence she’d fallen into finally breaking. Whatever calm she’d managed to project in front of Flemming had been nothing but a carefully held mask. Underneath it, she’d been thoroughly terrified.

She admitted as much to Luis and Arnold both, and the admission brought something else up with it, a memory of her father’s own voice telling her, once, about a knight from the Bravenheart Empire, a man built impossibly large, whom he’d fought for three straight days without rest.

Her father had told her he’d come away from that fight with something close to trauma, having managed only to wound the man’s eye before it was over.

Only now did she understand exactly who her father had been describing.

Arnold’s own face shifted as the pieces clicked into place for him too.

“So you’re saying, Miss, that’s the same man who forced both the Rippledale army and the Corvinus forces to retreat, back then?”

Eleonor nodded. It was him. The very commander credited with turning back a combined invasion that had nearly swallowed the entire northern region years ago, standing shoulder to shoulder with Victor of House Winter.

Luis pulled her aside for a quiet word of his own, asking whether they ought to simply move on from here, strike out on some other road toward Virelle instead.

“Don’t think like that, Luis. If they wanted something bad to happen to us, it already would have by now. Besides, we’ve still got time. We’ll head for Virelle after we’ve seen what becomes of this city.”

Her answer caught him off guard, and he tried once more, for her own safety, reminding her they were standing in enemy territory, strictly speaking.

“Ehh, aren’t you even a little curious how Korven turns out? Don’t you want to help the people struggling here, Luis?”

She closed the distance between them, taking both his hands in hers, practically pleading now for him to consider helping Korven’s people.

“Help? A moment ago you said it was enough to simply observe.”

Something in his tone made clear he’d caught the shift, and he wasn’t wrong to notice it. Her real intention here was plainly to get involved in a foreign crisis, the exact kind of thing that could land Luis in serious trouble with her own father, should he ever learn of it.

“Ah. You’ve gone quiet.”

Luis opened his mouth to correct her, to say that no, going quiet meant nothing of the sort.

“That means you agree.”

He didn’t even get the chance to close his mouth again. Eleonor had already decided the matter was settled, spinning on her heel and marching straight into the tent, leaving him standing there with his objection still half-formed and entirely unspoken.

He lifted a hand to stop her anyway, until Arnold’s own hand closed gently around his arm.

“She’s got a point, Luis. Maybe it’s worth seeing how things actually stand here first. If the soldiers’ rumors about this being tied to the Crimson clan hold any truth, our own country’s going to get pulled into this sooner or later regardless.”

Arnold’s quiet reasoning settled some of the doubt still churning in Luis, though not all of it.

A moment later, another group approached the tent, figures dressed like Phantom soldiers but wrapped in heavier cloaks bearing House Sarnel’s own crest, filing in one after another.

Inside, the tent’s interior was lit by a ring of hanging lanterns, their light pooling warm and uneven across a wide map table scattered with markers and pinned reports, the canvas walls still dripping faintly from the last of the storm outside.

The air carried the heavy mix of wet wool, cigar smoke, and oiled leather that seemed to follow Flemming everywhere he went.

Eleonor caught the tail end of a conversation already underway between Jeanne and Flemming, something about a Gargoyle swarm that should have reached Korven by now.

“A Gargoyle swarm?”

Flemming’s question carried genuine confusion, since his own forces, stationed along Korven’s border for several days running, hadn’t turned up a single trace of the creatures Jeanne was describing.

“There’s nothing. Are you certain of that, Supreme Commander? Because I’m sure, absolutely sure, those Dark Beasts were heading straight here.”

“That’s exactly it, Jeanne. We haven’t spotted a single flying Dark Beast anywhere near this region, not in days.”

Flemming said it plainly, as though the sky above Korven had been entirely clear of them this whole time.

It didn’t sit right against what Jeanne already knew, having seen, on the map days earlier, a Dark Beast the empire had captured, and having personally fought off a swarm of Gargoyles herself not long before arriving here.

“So where had they gone?”

Flemming clearly understood the weight of her questions, but held off answering directly, waiting instead for someone he judged far better suited to explain it, especially since even he didn’t have a fully clear picture of the situation yet himself.

He nodded toward the tent entrance behind her, as if the answer was about to walk itself in.

Footsteps approached from that same direction a moment later.

Jeanne turned.

A man in his fifties stood there, a black hat and coat marked with House Sarnel’s own crest, a fresh wound visible along one arm. He offered his greeting to Jeanne without wasting a moment.

Beside him stood another figure, armored in black Phantom gear beneath a heavy, House Sarnel-marked jacket, bowing in greeting alongside him.

“Lady Jeanne.”

“Elder Tervis. Captain Ulrich.” Jeanne’s eyes moved between them both. “Are you finished with your scouting?”

Before either man could answer, Elder Tervis dropped to his knees on the tent floor, head bowed low, as though begging her forgiveness outright for failing to properly protect her younger sister.

“Forgive me, my lady. This is my own failing. If I’d pushed harder to stay beside Miss Patricia, something like this would never have happened.”

He laid out the full account of how she’d gone missing, insisting it hadn’t come from his own carelessness at all, but from one of Orvis Academy’s own rules: during a student’s examination, no family member, not even an escorting Elder, was permitted to remain at their side.

“What kind of examination could Patricia possibly have faced, Elder Tervis?”