"Loyal to the empire? Have you not sworn your loyalty to me?"
Tristan now looked a little flustered. Despite both of them being archmages of the second rank, he seemed scared of the emperor's power.
"Of course I've sworn my loyalty to you, my emperor! I merely spoke of the empire since I was thinking of how your rule is so grand. It was a slip of the tongue."
"Do not try to weasel your way out of this with such pathetic excuses. You said the empire instead of myself knowing full well what it meant. You disappoint me!"
"I was wrong, my emperor. Please forgive me!"
"Forgiveness? Go look somewhere else! From today on you are relieved of your position as court mage. As punishment for openly attacking a prince, you will be confined to your workshop until you have created a hundred magic mechanisms for the kingdom. After that, you are free to go."
"Thank you for your leniency."
Tristan's last words were spoken through gritted teeth. And the apparent lack of the 'my emperor' he had always used before showed his true thoughts.
Still, the emperor had been lenient. Without the position of court mage to cover him, Tristan could have received the death penalty for attacking a prince. Not to mention the assassination attempt that the emperor had brought up himself.
Sullivan looked a little shocked. He hadn't predicted such repercussions to follow a single mindless action of his follower. If he knew he would have stepped in. However, things were worse than the crown prince initially thought. His father still looked incensed and turned his blinding gaze to prince Sullivan.
"As for you, my SON. I made you the crown prince in the hope that you would bring stability to the empire. I gave you many privileges and looked the other way when you overstepped your bounds. I had been expecting you to learn from those mistakes but all they appear to have done is emboldened you. You are the crown prince no more!"
Oh, that must have stung. Prince Sullivan sank to his knees with an unbelieving expression. He looked around wildly searching for a flaw in what he was seeing but he soon came to terms with it. This was no illusion his brother had cast, this was reality.
Two guards entered to take Tristan to his workshop. With a sullen expression, prince Sullivan followed after the guards as he too left the throne room. He didn't have the heart to stay amongst a group of nobles, many of whom were snickering at his misfortune.
With the prince gone the meeting resumed. But after the duke's comment about me slaying a dark fog vessel, I was met with some questions. Prince Amon, the third royal child was sitting in a crowd of armed nobles towards the back of the room. So far he had attended the meetings but never spoken. However, my fight with the dark fog vessel seemed to have aroused his interest.
"Lord Raven, we have clashed with the purple-eyed monsters a few times but found it hard to dispatch them. Did you find a weakness we could exploit?"
"Well, I don't know if this will be of much help but they appear to be humanoid."
"And why is that of any importance?"
"Since their form is humanoid they will likely have their vitals in the same place we have. For example, during my fight, I poked the monster through the eye and into the brain. After that, it died."
The third prince looked at me dumbfounded. He was the commander of the army so I assume he and his forces had attempted to blast the dark fog vessels into oblivion. With the dark fog's cushioning effects this did them little good.
They had never even chanced upon the idea of hitting the vitals by using a series of precise attacks. Typical muscle head tactic if I'd ever seen one.
Now, to be clear, dark fog vessels did have a weak point that allowed someone weaker to slay them easily. While a dark fog vessel was taking over another being turning it into a dark fog pawn there would be an opening.
The dark fog origin that usually lay dispersed throughout the body would congregate into the arm that was used to facilitate the takeover process.
During that process, the vessel's fighting prowess would be lowered and if the arm was cut off the vessel would explode. Fair warning though, if the victim was already turned into a pawn the dark fog origin would simply inhabit the pawn and create a new vessel. The time frame of its vulnerability was short.
However, none of the people present knew that and I certainly wasn't about to tell them. Knowing that kind of weakness after killing just one of the vessels and without it creating a pawn at that would reveal that I was connected to their appearance.
From experience, I reckoned that it would take a few weeks for them to discover the weakness themselves.
At any rate, prince Amon sat back down but it was clear to see that he could barely wait for this meeting to end. Seeing that no one knew what to say prince Gideon took the lead in a practiced manner.
"As lord Raven said, those monsters can be killed and they must have other weaknesses too. We have spent the past week trying to locate the monsters' nest or whatever it is. Thanks to the dedicated work of many brave knights we were able to track the creatures and discover that they hide in the sewers of the capital. There are three large areas where they could be congregating."
That was indeed the situation thus far. However, now came the problem. Who would go and where to?
If they went to one of the locations with all their forces and the creatures were alarmed prompting them to flee into all directions then all past efforts would be wasted. At the same time, the risk of splitting the forces was equally big. The capital's military forces would be spread thin and might suffer heavy casualties.
No noble was willing to hold out their head and propose a plan. Gideon had wanted to but I had advised against it. A prince shouldn't try to take too much responsibility.
Prince Amon saw that differently. With every passing second his impatience grew until he erupted.