[Chapter Size: 1900 Words.]
Third Person POV
Northern kingdoms.
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The banquet had turned into chaos after the assassination, ending immediately as the queen had ordered everyone to be escorted out. After all, it was a ticking time bomb, and she had to find the culprit, but there was nothing that could prove the identity of the assassin. Madara left with the princess and then went home after being released, as there was nothing he could do there. He rested and wasn't surprised when a messenger guard knocked on his gate early in the morning.
"The Queen requires your presence at the castle," he said, showing the order, and Madara nodded.
"No need to wait, I will go there on my own," he said and went to eat something before getting ready, leaping out of the mansion and arriving at the castle moments later.
He arrived in the throne room without anyone seeing him and landed in front of the royal guards, causing them a small startle.
"This brat... As always, appearing out of nowhere..." one of them murmured.
"The queen wants to speak with me, should I wait?" Madara asked, ignoring the comment, while the man nodded.
"We have orders to let you in as soon as you arrived," he said and opened the door, with Madara entering.
There were Calanthe, Eist, Mousesack, Varys, and four more royal guards in the room discussing as Madara entered, all giving a brief glance as he walked in.
"You finally arrived," Mousesack greeted him as he approached.
Calanthe stopped arguing with the royal guards and said, "I need you all to leave us alone, I want to speak with the boy alone." She requested while Varys led his companions out, leaving only four people in the room.
As soon as the door closed, her gaze fell on Madara. "I need to know what you saw yesterday, anything strange you noticed, maybe there is a clue, after all, you are always detailed," she asked, hoping he could help solve the mystery behind the assassination.
"First, I need to know exactly what is happening with Angren and Cintra. I overheard some of your conversations last year, but I still have no idea what's going on..." Madara requested.
"..." Calanthe looked at Madara for a while, seemingly debating internally whether to share this information with a child.
"Tell him, the boy has proven trustworthy and he is smart enough to deduce what is happening..." Eist said beside her, with Mousesack nodding in agreement.
"Very well..." she began. "This situation started over a year ago, shortly after those events. We received a letter from the king of Angren proposing a marriage between my granddaughter Cirilla and his eldest son..."
"Of course, if Cirilla were engaged and married to a prince from another kingdom, it would be a strong ally for Cintra. However, the intentions of King Edrin of Angren are actually much more than building an alliance; his real goal is clearly to break the borders between the two kingdoms and destroy Cintra's sovereignty so that he can conquer our country. Even if Cirilla marries in the future and forms an alliance, it is natural for Cintra to remain independent with one of her children." She sighed before continuing.
"With all this, we refused, of course, but the idea of conquering a politically fragile kingdom at the moment is quite tempting, and they have been sending proposals every month. We have always been firm, and they wouldn't be well-received attacking us and declaring war, that is until yesterday..." she said.
"Now with a noble blood messenger dead in my halls, Angren can declare war," Calanthe finally concluded.
"I understand..." Madara murmured, analyzing the situation. "This prince had a certain fiancée, when did she die?" Madara asked.
"Yes, she died over a year ago, one month before they sent the letter," Mousesack replied.
"What is her family?" he asked, wanting to keep this information.
"She was known as Lady Geriel of the Lupol family of Angren," Mousesack responded, while Madara took note of this.
He finally stopped the questions and began to share his thoughts on the matter. "It seems that with your refusals, they concluded that war would be more viable and prepared for it. I believe the Chai family is one of their contacts here, and since the discontent with the crown condemning their heir, they found this intention of Angren as a solution for revenge. I saw looks that the men accompanying the noble messenger and the family gave to each other. The noble who spoke on behalf of Angren was just bait, King Edrin prepared his own death," Madara said, sharing his understanding.
"He reached the same conclusion as Mousesack," Eist said.
"What do you think I should do?" Calanthe asked, curious about Madara's opinion.
"There is no way to avoid war now, except by conceding to that king's demands, but I doubt you will do that," he said, and Calanthe responded by spitting on the ground.
"The only alternative is to defend the sovereignty of Cintra," he concluded.
"Do you think you can help with something?" Mousesack asked, looking at Madara, hoping he could express his thoughts better.
"I believe Lady Geriel was murdered so that they could have an excuse to make their heir free to marry. I can see that, but I will have to travel to Angren," Madara said.
"Before anything else, I want to catch the traitors who used my feast. Can you identify them and find the culprits with proof?" she asked, and Madara scratched his chin.
"I can try to find them, but you know I am not a Witcher," Madara said. He was a good information gatherer and skilled in infiltrations, but Witchers were better than him when it came to criminal investigations.
"Alright, I want you to do your best. After all, we don't have a Witcher and I don't want one in this castle," Calanthe said, as she detested Geralt.
"I will do my best," Madara said.
"You may go, you are free to investigate whatever you can," she said as Madara nodded.
He left the room and didn't go to the crime scene immediately. He exited through one of the windows without anyone seeing him and started running vertically up the castle towers, jumping from one to the main tower and continuing up until he reached the princess's window.
"Madara!" Cirilla immediately exclaimed from her bed, sitting up when she sensed Madara approaching the window before he landed in the middle of the room.
"Hello," he responded dryly, as always.
"You are here... What happened?" she asked, puzzled.
"Your grandmother asked me to investigate yesterday's assassination..." he said, and she widened her eyes.
"Really?!" she exclaimed, looking quite surprised.
"I need your help, I want you to use those visions," Madara requested.
Mousesack could never teach magic to Cirilla, who never managed to learn the basics due to her vast amount of power, but Madara could try to make her learn the basics or even more advanced things as he was familiar with her abilities.
One of these abilities, Madara asked her to trust in fate, which would always guide her to the best path despite adversities. She eventually found a special ability, which allowed her to see images of things she had never seen before, such as finding something lost that Madara hid for her to try and find with her vision, and it was bearing fruit. Mousesack or Calanthe didn't know about this; it was an exercise between the two of them. The same could be said that Cirilla was the only one who knew about Madara's illusion powers in his Sharingan.
"Okay, I'll try! What do I need to know?" she exclaimed, sitting up on her bed and starting to close her eyes.
"I want you to visualize the previous night, try to see how the poison ended up in the man's wine glass. Also, try to see something about the Chai family who were present and if they were behind the assassination as well," Madara gave all the information she could think of.
Cirilla concentrated as soon as she heard all that information, thinking about everything Madara said. Suddenly, she began to see images. Her vision shifted to a scene where she saw a warehouse with an owl drawn on one of the windows as a symbol. It was late afternoon, as Cirilla noticed from the orange light through the window, when a portal appeared in the middle of the warehouse and a group of nobles stood in front of it, waiting for people to emerge from that portal, being the representatives of Angren themselves.
The scene changed as the Chai family approached the castle for the banquet, with the members of Angren coming in some carriages behind, hiding until they reached the castle without anyone seeing them.
Then, the scenes moved to the banquet, where some men were whispering about something. The queen was speaking at this moment, declaring that Cintra would remain sovereign to the members of Angren. These men in Cirilla's vision handed a kind of flask to each other through their noble cloaks without anyone noticing.
The scene shifted to one of these men stopping a servant and handing the same flask to the servant's hand. The servant was afraid of it, but eventually accepted, taking the flask and heading to the kitchen.
Cirilla saw the same servant take a specific cup and use the flask on it, seeming to coat its surface, which turned gelatinous as soon as it left the vial. He rubbed it with a cloth until no trace of the substance was visible on the cup, as if it had disappeared.
The scene shifted to the middle of the banquet, where the servant began distributing cups around the hall. One of these cups had the poison previously applied to it, spread across the metal without anyone noticing. He handed the cup to the representative of Angren, while another servant started distributing wine. Since the poison was already in the cup, it was not the wine that was poisoned. As the man drank calmly, the poison began to seep out of the metal of the cup and dissolved into the liquid until it finally took effect. The scene changed to the man dying.
Cirilla opened her eyes at this moment, a little surprised by everything she had seen. She looked at Madara, waiting for him to take over from there.
"Alright, look into my eyes," Madara requested after seeing that she had succeeded.
Cirilla felt her emerald eyes being met by scarlet eyes as Madara activated his Sharingan and began entering Cirilla's mind effortlessly, as she did not resist and trusted him. He managed to review all the images she had materialized before finally exiting her mind and deactivating his Sharingan.
"Thank you, Ciri. I will look into this now," he said, already with all the images recorded in his mind. Now he had to act.
"Okay, just come back soon to tell me how it went!" she exclaimed excitedly.
He nodded with a smile. "Yes, after all, I might have to leave the country for a while."
This surprised her, but before she could ask anything else, he had already jumped out the window.