The floor-to-ceiling window had been replaced by a decorative wall hung with a shield and a pair of crossed longswords.
"Hey. What exactly is this supposed to be? An execution?"
Rolwen tightened his grip on the longsword lying across his knees. His honed instincts told him plainly enough that he was sitting in the middle of a pile of monsters. His gaze came to rest at last on the far side of the table, on Timmy, who had been wrapped in so many bandages he looked like the mummy of an Egyptian pharaoh.
"Mmf... mmff mmf (I... don't know.)"
Frostbite, blunt-force trauma, blade wounds, and fractures in several places. From behind the bandages sealing his mouth shut, Timmy produced nothing but unintelligible squeaks.
"Easy now, there's nothing to worry about. We've only asked you here to talk over what happened last night."
Schwenk offered a kindly smile. Rolwen wasn't buying a word of it.
If Timmy hadn't been in desperate need of treatment, he'd never have taken the risk of asking that white-haired Demon Race member to take them in.
They were Demon Hunters, after all!
Years of hard-won professional instinct told him that the ones seated at the head of the long table were Great Demons, every one of them stained with countless human lives. By rights, the sworn enemies of Demon Hunters.
Think it though he might, Rolwen knew his own limits. Making a move now would be suicide, and it would drag Timmy, who had only just clawed his way back from death, down with him.
"Lord Nanoda, let's get the meeting started!"
Yuna slapped the table. Because of what had happened to Übel, she was carrying an anger that was rare for her.
"Ugh, another boring meeting?"
Aura was the first to lodge a protest, despite having long since parked herself at the long table in the lord's manor office.
"Aura really is getting better and better at making a fuss."
Nanoda didn't stop her from grumbling. After such a long stretch of peace, so many incidents had come all at once, and she could feel it: Gaderia's stability was being chipped away, piece by piece.
"Why are there more and more Humans lately?"
Linie tilted her head, studying the two new faces. One looked like a lion's-head meatball, the other like tempura.
"..."
Qual paid no mind to the racket around him. He simply went on polishing the Black Staff in his hands with a white cloth, his mouthful of shark teeth split into an enormous grin.
"..."
Puppet Böse sat motionless in his chair, his vacant eyes making him look as though he'd fallen asleep.
"Public order's gone downhill, hasn't it. Looks like I'd better get back to my post soon."
Schlacht, one hand done up in bandages, muttered to himself in a thick, muffled voice.
"You're in no condition for that."
Draht, both palms wrapped in bandages of his own, gave Schlacht a shove. His hands stung for the trouble, and Schlacht ended up clutching his shoulder with a wince.
"The Evil Dragon revives... and the Dragonslayer sets out... once again."
Jane was thoroughly absorbed in a book of fairy tales, a glimmer of light in those cold eyes of hers.
"Lord Jane is surprisingly childlike, isn't she. Last time it was a novel about fighting in the city, as I recall."
"I like them all."
Having said that much, Jane paid no further attention to Lugner beside her. She held the book up, leaned back against her chair, and swung her little feet.
For some reason, Rolwen was struck by a subtlety he couldn't quite name. These Demon Race members, most of whom seemed to be on holiday, were nothing at all like the creatures he'd hunted in the past.
How to put it... they all had so much personality.
The Demons in his memory were supposed to be far colder, far more heartless than this.
"Ahem. This time we're dealing with a far more serious matter. Yuna, you open."
At Nanoda's words, every being in the room fell silent.
"Last night I encountered the Great Demon Solitär. At the time she was hunting Grand Bishop Schwenk, the Executor Lois, and a gentleman whose identity remains unclear for the moment. She also drove Übel to burn through all her Mana and collapse. So here and now I'd like to put a question to his other companion. Just who are you people? Why would a Great Demon come after you? And what is she after?"
Yuna looked to Rolwen, the one still capable of speaking normally. Instinct told her this man was no ordinary sort.
"We're in the dark ourselves. I only saw a note left at the inn and went out with my companion, and when we got there we ran into that Demon and her associate. She said our deaths would be the first step in destroying Gaderia."
Rolwen delivered the half-true account he'd prepared in advance.
"Still playing dumb, even now? Slipping past the street patrols and the city defenses and leaving town in the dead of night, you're hardly ordinary merchants."
Nanoda cut straight through the lie in his story.
Quite a few of the Demons present turned openly hostile eyes on him.
As though he'd been braced for exposure from the start, Rolwen drew a deep breath.
"Everything but our identities was true. Our position is a sensitive one... All right, I'll come clean. The truth is, we're Demon Hunters from the demon-hunting organization."
"Mmf mmf mmf (Have you lost your mind)!" Timmy thrashed against his bandages.
"Thought as much." Beside him, Lois showed no surprise.
"Rest assured, the organization aside, we bear no ill will toward anyone in this room, nor toward the free city of Gaderia. Quite the opposite. You saved Timmy, which means we're the ones in your debt."
Rolwen kept his expression as level as he could manage while he explained.
"Let's set the demon-hunting organization aside for now. It wasn't only Solitär. I also ran into one of the old Seven Sages of Destruction, Grausam the Miracle. In all likelihood, he stands against Gaderia as well."
Nanoda laid out her own experience from the previous night.
"That comes as something of a surprise to this old one."
Qual stroked his beard, deep in thought.
"The Miracle? That obnoxious creature."
Aura, one of the Seven Sages of Destruction herself, evidently didn't get along with Brother Miracle.
"My suspicion is that there's a greater power behind them, and that whoever is orchestrating all of this has set their sights on Gaderia."
To get Solitär, whose strength stood level with the very top of the Seven Sages of Destruction, and Brother Miracle, whose magic was the most impossible to pin down of anyone's, to work together, there had to be something more formidable still standing behind them.
"That demon-hunting organization, the one that had Lugner assassinated. Wouldn't it be better to get rid of them?"
At some point Jane had closed her book, and she was watching the two Demon Hunters with a distinctly unfriendly look.
Lugner had always been good to her, indulging her every whim, all because she'd shared a few scraps of magical theory with him.
"It's a misunderstanding, all of it. The captain of Squad One in the demon-hunting organization used to be a spy for the Northern Empire. That was purely a personal matter of his, so please don't lay it at the organization's door. Ah, and naturally, we would never stand against Gaderia."
Starting today, Rolwen silently added, having just dropped the blame squarely on the Empire's shoulders.
"A clever one, this. Knows how to bite his tongue and say the pleasant thing. This old one still recommends killing him."
Qual's abrupt, savage suggestion nearly had Rolwen breaking into a sweat.
"Everyone, we all share a common enemy now, and the enemy of my enemy is an ally. I see no need for us to be at each other's throats like this. Perhaps we could help one another instead."
Schwenk hurried to smooth things over. The last thing he wanted was blood spilled halfway through the meeting.
"Allow me to make a proposal. Since we've all suffered at the hands of enemies from the same side, the same camp, why not lay out every piece of intelligence we have and analyze it together? Let us stand together! Let us unite!"
____
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