"Huh?" Azalea frowned.
From his position above the broken road, he could see only a single young man standing in front of the carriage, holding a dagger.
Just one? He narrowed his eyes. Did I misread the situation? Where are the others?
He looked the man over and almost felt sorry for him.
He was pathetically weak.
"What? Why were you screaming?" Anna's voice came from beside him as she landed softly nearby.
"What are they doing?" she began.
"Kill him."
"What?"
"You heard me."
BOOM.
The man's head came apart in a burst of red.
"I didn't say do it like that," Azalea said, his voice flat. "Now go clean up the mess and calm the horses."
Anna's face went pale. "Please, no."
"Then just clean it up."
She ran. Her hands were shaking as she cast the spell to erase the blood, and once she was done, she disappeared from his line of sight.
Azalea stepped into the damaged carriage.
Inside, a girl sat trembling, her entire body shaking in her seat.
He wasn't fooled for a second.
Anyone else might have looked at her and seen a helpless noble girl in distress, but not him. He wasn't operating on emotion right now, only on goals.
Vivian.
One of the most dangerous villainesses in the game, and what made her dangerous wasn't just her ability to manipulate people. It was the reason she could do it, the other side of her divine blessing, and that was exactly why he had sent Anna away and come in himself.
Because he was immune.
Vivian's ability wasn't charm or seduction in the conventional sense. It was emotional influence, a divine gift that could quietly warp the feelings of anyone exposed to her. It wouldn't work on someone who didn't have anything for it to latch onto.
"What are you?" she stammered, pressing back against her seat.
For the first time in her life, Vivian felt something she didn't recognize. Uncertainty. Looking into Azalea's eyes felt like looking at a blank page, no emotion, no reaction, nothing she could read or use.
"Human," he replied, sitting down across from her.
"No, that can't be right," she whispered.
"Drop the act," he said. "I want to talk to the real you. You can't fool me, so don't bother trying."
She stared at him for a moment, then her expression shifted, the trembling stopped, and her eyes went cold and measured.
"What do you want? Who are you?" she asked.
"Good," he said. "I know what you're planning. You're trying to start a war."
Her eyes widened, and it was the first genuinely unguarded reaction she'd shown.
"I don't know you," she said.
"You don't need to," Azalea continued. "You made that king fall for you, pushed him to obsession, then handed yourself over right at the Ezram border. Albion blames Ezram, tensions build, and then you reappear, revealed to have been in Morntelia the whole time. Suddenly Ezram and Morntelia, who used to be allies, are at each other's throats, and Albion gets to either watch it fall apart or step in and play the mediator."
He leaned back slightly.
"You're destroying the alliance between Ezram and Morntelia. If they believe Morntelia staged the whole thing to turn Albion against Ezram, the whole relationship between them collapses."
"It would," Vivian said quietly, her voice tight.
He'd hit exactly what he was aiming for, and she knew it.
"Is Albion really that insecure?" he muttered, more to himself than to her.
"What do you want?" she said, sharper now. "If you kill me, you gain nothing. My death would only..."
"Who said anything about killing you?" he replied.
She blinked. "What?"
"I don't care what happens to the kingdoms," he said, completely straightforward. "I just need something from you."
She swallowed.
This was bad. Her ability wasn't working on him at all, she couldn't read him, couldn't find the emotional thread she needed to pull, and without that she had nothing.
"What is it?" she asked carefully. "If it's my body..."
"No." His expression shifted for just a moment, something that looked like genuine irritation crossing his face, and that brief flicker of actual feeling caught her completely off guard because it was the first real thing she'd seen from him, and then it was gone just as fast.
"Why does everyone assume that's what I'm after?" he said. "All I want is the location of the Legacy, the one outside Albion."
Her breath caught.
Two things hit her at once. The first was the insult, because nobody had ever spoken to her like that. The second was that he knew about the Legacy, which was impossible. That information had barely been uncovered by the scouts who abducted her, and they hadn't even reported it to the king yet because she had killed them before they could. The site was untouched, and she had been the only one who knew about it.
So how did he know?
"Who are you?" she said, and it came out quieter than she intended.
Azalea leaned forward slightly, his eyes steady on hers.
"Someone you should listen to, before this gets worse for you."