I have to admit…

  This was blowing my mind a little.

  “I…” I started and then stopped, staring blankly up into the kindly face of who I thought had been ‘Elder Jinshin’. The man looked both similar and wildly different from how I had known him to be. He still had a long, wispy white beard stretching down the length of his chest and equally long hair of a similar shade. His eyes were still closed, too, and yet I didn’t doubt he could see me just fine.

  But that was where the similarities ended.

  The man who was apparently Emperor Seimei of the Kawatsuyo dynasty was very much dressed according to his station. There was an elaborate box cap upon his head with the seal of the Imperial family emblazoned in gold on the front of it, while a thin golden circlet lay upon his brow. A white silk robe with delicate golden embroidery depicting crashing waves lay over layers of deep blue silk, while even under that could be seen traces of what looked to be solid golden cloth. A thick, golden belt circled his waist, upon which stylized rivers spiderwebbed across the surface, visibly flowing in some kind of obviously magical manner.

  I…hadn’t even known it was possible to do that. Magical clothes, huh.

  I couldn’t help but shake my head, feeling a mingled sense of both defeat and admiration. “It’s really you, isn’t it, ‘Elder Jinshin’?” I laughed to myself lightly, my shoulders slumping. “You guys were playing me all along.”

  The Emperor hummed lightly to himself, his eyes still closed. “Come now, Nathaniel. ‘Playing’,” He said, shaking his head. “Is an ugly word. I would prefer…guiding your attention elsewhere.”

  I sighed as Masayuki tittered to himself by my side, my eyes briefly passing over Sogen standing patiently off to the side. “Was any part of our lessons real, ‘Elder’?” I asked tiredly.

  ‘Jinshin’s’ smile faded then, but to my surprise, he nodded. “Oh, to a degree. Jinshin is in truth my birth name, if you’re still willing to believe me. Seimei is merely the regnal name that I took upon ascending to the throne. I rarely have cause to use the name my honored Mother and Father bestowed upon me at birth. It was quite amusing for me to use it in this manner when any true-born Kawamaran would have known who I was from the beginning.”

  I snorted softly but didn’t say anything. But I sure thought it.

  What he was saying, then, was that he had played a trick on the ignorant foreigner, who had never bothered to question if the knowledgeable old priest hadn’t been more than he had appeared to be.

  Hook must be rolling in his grave. I really should know better by now.

  “It is well known that communion with the Great Spirit Anima is the purview of the Imperial Family,” Emperor…Jinshin, I guess, continued. “We are meant to act as not only the secular leader of Kawamara but the religious head as well. All members of the ruling dynasty have a duty to be inducted into one of the Spiritual cults, and thus all of my family are considered priests and priestesses. I always favored Lady Anima, and so I became the head of the Temple upon the start of my reign.”

  “So, Sogen is actually your…” I said slowly, letting my gaze drift over towards the man younger than I was.

  “My youngest Grandson,” The Emperor confirmed. “And the young man who is often assigned to act as my…assistant in religious matters. I am not often in residence at the temple within the Hidden Valley-”

  Which neatly explained why our lessons were so infrequent.

  Damnit, it really did all fit.

  “But I was the day I sensed a young foreign man of some interest wandering through the Temple district, apparently inquiring as to the price of Magical instruction,” The older man smiled slightly. “More interesting to me, however, was that I felt the slightest touch of She Who Breathes upon them. I was…curious. At my instruction, my guard lowered the aversion wards surrounding the Hidden Valley, and not long after, you came swaggering in, Nathaniel.”

  Swaggering? Really? Was…that the impression I gave off?

  I eyed him for a moment before briefly cutting my eyes over to Masayuki. The painted man looked like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth he was so innocent. I sighed. “And all along you were taking careful note of my wants and desires, investigating my background, and taking my measure. And then, at the first available moment, presented me with the idea to try and assassinate Tatsugan through your spymaster.”

  There, I said it. It was out in the open, now. We all knew what Masayuki really was. Why pretend at this point?

  The Emperor didn’t deny that part, at the very least. “You were being watched, yes,” Jinshin admitted without shame. “We were curious as to why such a figure that is both…relatively unknown, and yet newly high profile at the same time would choose to venture onto our shores. Thus, a report was drafted on you from observations that spoke of your motivations, and it eventually made it to my desk once Masayuki noticed several interesting factoids. We were of course sympathetic as to your desire to recover from your trials after the end of the Construct War, but we were more curious as to your questioning of the locals-”

  “-about mysterious steel doors that might or might not exist in the countryside,” I finished for him, for a moment forgetting my courtesies. After all, this was an Emperor I was backtalking. Thankfully, he let it pass without incident, but I did get a mildly scolding raised eyebrow from Masayuki.

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  Whatever. He wasn’t my liege lord, and I was a little miffed by the deception.

  “Just so,” The Emperor inclined his head. “From there, my personal observations in combination with your public inquiries led to a…little idea, coming from my ‘spymaster’, as you so gently refer to him.”

  “If you must be angry with someone, Sir Hart, be angry with me!” Masayuki intoned in an almost dramatic fashion, laying one hand over his heart. “Twas I who concocted this scheme! Do not direct your wrath towards my lord, for it was not he who sought to direct your attention in this manner!”

  I eyed the both of them for a moment, feeling simply…tired of it all. Frankly, at this point, I’m not sure I could actually trust either of them in any capacity.

  Not that I had particularly trusted Masayuki in the first place, though. I’d long had suspicions about the man.

  But the Elder…I had to admit that hurt a bit. Just after the Construct War, I’d been feeling a bit raw and frayed around the edges. The peaceful atmosphere of the Hidden Valley, the comforting environs of Anima’s temple, and most importantly, the calm, even advice of Elder Jinshin had done quite a bit to ease my tensions at the time.

  Only it turned out to all be part of a deception from the highest authority in this land.

  I restrained from sighing, but only just. Shurenga had been right, earlier. This was turning out to be a valuable lesson for me. Just…in a different way than I’d been expecting.

  I think I was developing a problem with authority.

  “It…doesn’t really matter, I suppose,” I eventually said in a tired manner. “What’s done is done, and none of this has to do with why any of us are here.”

  Both the Emperor and Masayuki sobered up at my words, turning serious in an instant. “Yes, of course,” Seimei inclined his head. “We gather to discuss the events which transpired upon the isle of Goryuen, and the supposed final death of Tatsugan. I have heard the accounts of everyone else who was present during these clashes, and now I must hear yours, Nathaniel Hart. When I have done so, I will pronounce my ruling. You may begin.” He finished, waving the fingers of his right hand my way in a prompting manner.

  I wasn’t a fucking dog…is what I wanted to say, but I refrained.

  Barely.

  Instead, I launched into the explanation about the events my companions and I had settled on together. All of them were meant to have stuck to the timeline we’d given General Hisakane back on the slopes of Mt. Umetsuji, while I…

  Had always intended to give a slightly different sequence of events, directly to the Emperor in a private meeting much like this. My companions had been meant to deliver the version of the story meant for the public of Kawamar, and I was supposed to give a...mostly truly one. Only, that had been meant to be after I’d testified together with the others before the court. Instead, I’d been denied that, and we’d skipped straight to the private audience.

  In my account, I didn’t mention the existence of the Netherim at all. The most that I mentioned about the interior of Gorenzan was that it had been filled with ancient ruins from the time of the gods, cursed by one of the Chaos pantheon. I even mentioned that the name given for her had been ‘Lucretia.’ There had been fights galore with a guardian creature that Observe had told us was named ‘Akhoroth, Maw of the Wyrm’, and little else about the ancient beast. In those running battles, Azarus had been chosen by Tarus to become his newest Envoy, and with his newfound strength we’d overcome the Maw. Inside of those ruins, I told them I found an ancient source of power that the true form of Tatsugan was feeding upon, left all those millennia ago by that same goddess. I’d drawn him from his source of strength and slain his true, pathetic form, only for the power source to destabilize. We’d fled from it just in time for it to explode catastrophically, leading to the destruction of Gorenzan. From there, we had withdrawn to the seat of Shurenga’s power and waited for the arrival of the Kawamaran forces we’d known were coming.

  The rest, they supposedly ‘knew. ’

  When I was done with my explanation, I saw Masayuki glance at the Emperor. He raised one impeccably maintained brow at his liege, and in response, Seimei…

  Finally opened his eyes, for the first time in all the time since I’d known him. I…don’t know what I’d been expecting. Maybe blank white orbs denoting complete blindness, or I dunno. Magical cataracts or something?

  It certainly wasn’t for the Emperor of the Kawamaran Isles to have eyes of solid glowing gold. And I truly mean solid. There were no irises, or pupils, or sclera evident in the orbs that Emperor Seimei regarded me impassively with. Simply a solid expanse of gold that gleamed almost metallically in the low lamplight of the throne room.

  I refrained from shivering under the gaze, but only just. There was an almost sense that Seimei was seeing deeper somehow when he was looking at me with those uncanny eyes, whatever the hell they were. I don’t know if they were a Skill expression of some kind, or if they were prosthetics or an Artifact or something. But they were seeing beyond the physical in some way, I could just tell.

  Probably not a good thing, I eventually decided.

  After a moment of inspection, the Emperor looked away from me in order to shake his head minutely at his servant. As Masayuki stepped back with a bow, Seimei closed his eyes and looked back at me. “I sense you’re not being entirely truthful, Nathaniel,” He said in a quiet, even tone. After the strange inspection from the man, I’d been expecting something like that, but I still mentally winced, even if I kept any physical tells from showing. But I was surprised by his next words. “However, I do not think it matters, overmuch. The fact is that you do believe that Tatsugan is truly slain in a permanent manner. All of your companions' stories, from young Lord Higanashi to the newest chosen of the Sun, believe this to be true as well. Thus…I am disinclined to pry. I have suspicions as to what it may involve, and these things are inconsequential. With that said…” For the first time, Emperor Seimei of the Kawamaran Isles stood from his throne, and laced his fingers together, hiding them in his voluminous sleeves as he stared down at me with closed eyes and an imperious bearing. “Hear my judgment, and the words that shall be delivered to the Kawamaran people. With the help of Herztalian partisans, a young, disgraced Kawamaran Lord sought to clear his family’s name of dishonor by slaying the Dread Wyrm Tatsugan. In the process, he both discovered the secret daughter of Tarus, Lord of the Sun, and a method in which to rid us all of the Calamity for good. With the final death of Tatsugan, the mountain of Gorenzan was destroyed in a fit of serpentine spite. Rewards shall be given to all those who participated in such a grand undertaking, chief among them an Imperial charter to found a new Kawamaran Sect from the remnants of the old Herztalian Order of Solstice Flame. All shall know this as the Emperor’s decree, and none may defy it.”

  I couldn’t help but sigh once more, this time in relief. Even though Seimei had seen through me to a degree-

  (Possibly literally).

  We’d still accomplished our goals. The Kawamaran government was going to go along with the narrative meant to conceal both Aveline, and the Netherim as a whole.

  We’d won.

  As the Emperor sat back down on his throne, he regarded me with a small smile on his aged features. “Now…”

  “What is it that you desire as a reward, Nathaniel?”