As Rosy expected, Bastion spoke up about two days later, explaining that they were close to the Resistance's camp. "Look, I don't have the credentials to make an alliance between you and the Resistance by myself, devil girl. There's a barn up ahead on this road. I'll go by myself and set up a meeting between you and the Resistance leaders, so just wait there."
"You honestly think I'll believe that?" Rosy told him. It was a perfectly logical way of thinking. Bastion still clearly hated Rosy. If anything, that hatred had deepened considerably during the trip. If they let him meet up without him, then it was likely that they'd just never see him again.
"I'm leaving Lily with you, as collateral." He sounded resigned, like he was giving her the entire world in exchange for some sort of loan, but it was true that he'd never leave his only daughter behind permanently. Adrian met Rosy's gaze, and she slowly nodded, annoyed.
"Alright. We'll wait at the barn with Lily." She gave Lily's head a pat, as the child was clinging to her leg as usual.
...
Seeing the girl's companion race off, the Gryphon raced from the tree that he was perched in in Gryphon form. The Gryphon had mixed feelings about his current orders. On one hand, openly defying that soulless so-called king in any way, shape, or form was definitely something that he agreed with, but that girl's crimes and temperament were a wild card, more dangerous than the king himself in many ways.
If the Resistance could genuinely trust her, then it may be possible for the greater Chimera races to come out of hiding and band together, giving them a real chance. Unfortunately, even if she managed a complete change of heart, unprecedented if not impossible as it seemed, she had no chance of integrating herself with the people that she had openly been hunting like animals.
If she did show themselves to her, which was likely because of her immense value, they would pretty much unanimously call for her death. Rosemary would naturally react to the threat of execution in kind, and this would inevitably end in most major enemies of Noctus all slaughtered like lambs, allowing the king to turn over enough resources to hunt his enemies to the end of the planet.
Honestly, on paper, it would turn out so perfectly for the king that it may very well have been planned. Even in hawk form, the idea of the king being able to set things up with that much foresight made the Gryphon shudder.
The Gryphon's intended destination was Gryvus, the home of all gryphons, hidden in the heart of the most treacherous mountain range in the world. The reason the gryphon race as a whole was able to stay at a neutral position against the greed of Noctus was entirely due to the fact that it was nearly impossible to get to Gryvus without the ability to fly, which the gryphons prided themselves on basically monopolizing among intelligent species.
Unfortunately, the gryphons did not hold any immunity in the king of Noctus's eyes. If a gryphon was caught by the country, they were magically conscripted to follow the king's orders.
It was actually due to this conscription magic that this particular gryphon had been anywhere near Rosemary Hecate, and why, only a few hours after fleeing from Rosemary's vicinity as a hawk, the gryphon's flight brought him to the city of Hella.
Honestly, the gryphon would rather have been dead than anywhere near the capitol city of Noctus, but the gryphon's conscription magic didn't allow him much leeway, so his body flew to the castle courtyard and transformed back into his human form as he landed.
Due to the Noctian colors, the gryphon was allowed an audience with the Fraeguard captain, where he explained the results of his surveillance on Rosemary.
...
"My lord, we have news about your daughter, Rosemary." The current commanding Fraeguard was a common vampire. The young-looking man with the crown atop his raven-black hair was lazing about on the thrown, but he cracked open an eye upon hearing the report.
Even lazily disinterested, the black soullessness of his bored gaze made the tough commander's spine literally shiver in absolute terror. Any man with an ounce of common sense would naturally be too terrified to stay conscious but this particular commander had already faced a presence similar.
This particular commanding Fraeguard was Darius Alberg, one of the four generals who had served under Rosy herself in battle when she had held his current position five years ago. Back then, Rosy had lost interest in life.
She had been able to perform feats that had both her allies and enemies worshipping her as some sort of queen of hell, simply because the faith and value that she had placed in people, especially herself, had twisted and rotted away at its core. He had once been in her presence when she had admitted that the best thing that could ever happen would be if her, her enemies, and her allies were all simply obliterated from existence without a single trace. The nameless, detachedly convicted expression on her face that still haunted his nightmares was comparable (albeit lesser), to the absolute gaze upon him now.
The king was impressed that the man before him was not shirking from his gaze, but another part of him felt that he should simply dispose of the man on a whim, so he raised an eyebrow, half-interested.
"A couple of our mages finally managed to open her loot drawer."
It took them long enough. He supposed that the deaths of the mages could serve as a small punishment for allowing the girl's escape, although...
"What happened to the last commander? The Chaos Imp?"
"He annoyed you, sire."
Right... The confident one. Imps were stupid.
"Bring me the drawer, and kill the mages that took so long to open it."
A few minutes later, ten large, terrified Wulf men carried the small drawer in together. The king allowed them to leave, because the fear that they showed was not only entertaining, but proof that the mages, who had managed to override the child's spells, had all been killed. Had they mentioned it to him, he likely would have killed them on the spot, but they didn't.
most of the stuff in the drawer was junk, but frankly, the king didn't really care about the girl's current or past state, so finding a paper inside that was filled with curses directed at him him all over was amusing enough to satisfy.
In fact, it amused him enough that, when a Gryphon entered with a report that Rosemary was about to make contact with the Resistance, he waited until after the useless message was delivered to eliminate it, so that the shapeshifter would believe that his elimination was following a screw-up that mattered.