Konrad found Maple lying on a huge pile of empty plates.
Drooling, unmoving—but with a wide, satisfied grin spread across her face.
"Is she all right?" He tried to shake her shoulders, but nothing happened.
Lily didn't seem concerned, flicking the dragon's ear.
"She's snoring like a baby," she mused, and indeed, he could hear the breathing. "Must've had a huge appetite if she could finish before the poison kicked in. She ate everything."
"Everything?" Konrad furrowed his brows.
That shouldn't have been possible. The feast they planned was for almost a thousand people.
Stella's eyes widened, too, taking in the scene.
"The mercenaries passed out halfway into their first meal," she noted with a side glance at Lily.
Whatever else she wanted to add, Nimrod's arrival made her swallow her words.
His twin barged in with an elder in tow, pointing at the ginger, but addressing Konrad instead.
"They say your mistress poisoned everyone's food," he claimed, hysterical.
He was well aware of it now, too, but his 'mistress' snorted before he could think of an answer.
"You're welcome," she said with a smug grin that Konrad knew would cause him trouble. "I saved your little camp while you were away, cowering behind your soldiers."
Yep, Nimrod was about to explode.
He didn't even tell her anything about how the raid went—but that didn't matter for a seer.
"You're trying to soil my name," he still accused Konrad, rather than her, for whatever reason.
Worse yet, he spotted Stella, pointing a finger at her next.
"She—she was there in Halaima, too." His twin's voice was getting louder. "The Church's men."
"Last time I checked, she was a girl," Lily noted, pretending to yawn, but thriving in the chaos as usual. The girl in question was blushing, trying to hide behind the demoness.
If only she weren't two heads taller than the ginger.
And while Konrad didn't like his torturer, it was easy to take her side out of spite for his brother.
"She's no longer with Otto," he said without much conviction, shielding her regardless. "And she had led his entire mercenary army into Lily's trap."
"What army?" Nimrod spat, but turning to face the elder, he ran out of steam fast.
"How could you miss six hundred armed men in your camp, who don't belong?" the ginger teased him, as if Konrad didn't learn about them only after entering the healer's tent.
The elder nodded, though, and Nimrod's face turned crimson.
"A-a traitor," he yelled, and wouldn't stop pointing fingers. "Someone told them we moved out, and—it must have been you." He accused Konrad again, and he couldn't even blame him for it.
Betrayal was his first thought as well, and given that he was the one planning the raid—
"The Inquisitor became desperate," Stella spoke, clearing her throat. "Even before your raid, Ser Prodigy caused him a huge loss of income, and he wanted to burn all the tribe's villages."
The way she called him a prodigy now sounded very different than before his torture.
Still, Konrad couldn't help but shiver at the memory.
"Which means it might be our perfect opportunity to attack," he tried to steel his voice.
Nimrod narrowed his eyes, looking suspicious.
"Even if this thing with the mercenaries is true—how do I know you're not trying to set me a trap as well?" he asked. Very measured for someone willing to attack fortified positions earlier.
Konrad sighed.
"Don't need your help. I'll retake Halaima by myself if I have to." He wasn't even trying to sound tough. He was calculating. "My tactics paid off—I'll only have to finish what I've started."
His twin scoffed, but couldn't say anything to counter him. The facts spoke for themselves. Before Konrad arrived, the tribes were starving, and on the back foot after a failed assault.
A completely unnecessary one.
He achieved victories for them. Diplomatic, as well as military ones.
Now they have plenty of food, too—though that was before this glutton of a dragon arrived.
But with so many merchants siding with them against the greedy church, they were on the right path. The silence stretched thin, Nimrod fuming rather than presenting a comeback.
Stella muttered something instead, and he almost missed it at first.
"The Inquisitor's red guard is still intact," she noted, voice almost a whisper. "He wouldn't have left himself vulnerable. He hired sellswords to do the dirty work, while he sat it out in safety."
That sounded familiar, exactly like his brother during their raid.
Konrad didn't want to escalate the tension any further, though.
"How many men?" he asked instead, already making plans.
If what Gabrielle told him was true, he didn't have to worry about bishops or any spellcasters.
But then Lily captured almost a dozen sorcerers with the mercenaries.
Who did he believe?
He always thought magic was rare, with only three mages in the kingdom, and all—
"A sorcerer and a mage aren't the same thing," Lily noted, nudging his side. "Mages are the peak of magic users, and the only ones worth learning from, but even Zoltan counts as a sorcerer."
A rare case when he didn't mind that she read his mind.
His 'master' wouldn't have been happy about her tone, though. And Nimrod seemed confused, as if wondering how this even came up. So he couldn't read him, either.
That was a huge relief.
"They're rare in mercenary bands. It's odd, the Inquisitor could hire this many," Lily continued, pondering. "But almost every decent adventuring party has at least one wizard or a monk."
Would adventurers support a corrupt tyrant like Otto?
How many more spellcasters would he have to face then?
Stella answered his earlier question, right on cue.
"The guard has about two hundred men left, no magicians. But there is a girl—"
She left the sentence unfinished, wringing her hands. Lily raised an eyebrow.
She must have seen something inside the blonde's head—then shook her head.
"Yeah, it would be too risky to go alone with her involved," she concluded, then held up her hands as if surrendering. "And don't get your hopes up, she's a child, not your next haremette."
"W-what?" That random claim caught Konrad off guard. "Who?"
"I, uh, don't know," Stella admitted, looking everywhere but in his eyes. "She only seemed like a young girl, but the spirits went crazy whenever she was nearby."
Nimrod scoffed, puffing his chest out.
"What does the Inquisitor's lapdog even know about the spirits?" he spat. That sounded like a fair question, but Lily silenced him with a glance. Then he paled.
Telepathy? Or something else?
"You could say that," the ginger smirked. "He finally shut up long enough so that the spirits could reveal the truth to him. Why have their blessing if he never listens?"
Nimrod's lips trembled, his glare electric, but he didn't snap back at her.
"Revealed what?!" Konrad, meanwhile, was losing his patience—and his sanity.
"B-but—I was the chosen one," his twin muttered, more to himself. It was hard to miss how pale he had gotten. Even more questions arose, and no clear answers were in sight.
"Spirit stuff," Lily said, as if that explained anything. "This is why I can't get involved."
Of course, otherwise, one thing would go his way for once.
"What am I facing now?" Konrad asked with a resigned sigh.