Free Web NovelChapter 30: Investigation
The headmaster’s office was the kind of room that made its own argument for authority without needing to say anything out loud.
Wide and high-ceilinged, the space carried the particular weight of a place that had hosted significant decisions for a very long time. A large banner hung to one side of the room, the crests of both the kingdom and the academy displayed side by side on deep fabric, their colors rich and deliberate. The table was dark polished wood, massive and old, seated at the center of a large red carpet that absorbed sound and made the room feel both grander and more private than its actual dimensions warranted.
Behind the table, a bookshelf stretched from floor to ceiling, ancient tomes and texts packed into it with the density of decades of accumulation, and to one side a rack held several magnificent robes alongside a collection of magical artifacts arranged with the kind of careful spacing that suggested they were not decorative.
The headmaster sat behind the table, elbows resting on its surface, both hands beneath his chin. His expression was not the calm, measured face he wore when addressing students or settling academic disputes. It was something heavier than that, the face of a man sitting with something he could not fix by being patient.
His foot tapped against the floor in a slow, involuntary rhythm.
Selene stood to one side of the room, near the window, her arms crossed loosely, her own expression carrying a worry she was making no particular effort to hide. Neither of them had spoken for several minutes. The healing magic had closed the worst of his wounds, but there were things healing magic did not touch, and the weight of those things sat in the room alongside them.
The door opened.
She came in first, and the room changed the moment she crossed the threshold, not dramatically, not loudly, but in the way a room changed when something with real authority entered it, a subtle redistribution of where the gravity was.
Blood red hair, sharp and clean against a completely black uniform with golden accents that spoke of military rank without needing to announce it. Her eyes matched her hair, the same deep red, and they moved across the room with the unhurried thoroughness of someone cataloguing rather than observing. A cape fell from her shoulders, its edges catching the light as she moved. The crest of the Vermilion Kingdom was pressed into the gold at her chest.
Behind her, two men in identical black uniforms without capes took positions just inside the door, standing with the particular stillness of people whose job it was to be present without participating.
The headmaster rose to his feet.
He gave her a small bow, the kind that acknowledged rank while preserving as much dignity as the situation allowed.
"Greetings, Lady Ezra," he said.
She didn’t respond immediately. Her eyes completed their sweep of the room, settled briefly on Selene, then came to the table. She crossed to the chair across from the headmaster and sat down in it with the unhurried ease of someone who had never once in their life needed to wait for permission to sit anywhere. The two men behind her remained standing.
"From the letter you sent," she said, her voice even and carrying no particular warmth, "you appear to have lost a divine armament. A divine mage armament." She let that sit for exactly one second. "There are seven existing armaments of that classification in the entire kingdom. You have lost one of them to a monster in a forest." Her eyes settled on him with the directness of someone who had decided pleasantries were a waste of everyone’s time. "Tell me the full account of what happened. Leave nothing out."
The headmaster’s jaw tightened. He held her gaze for a moment, the particular frustration of a man who was significantly her elder and significantly her subordinate in this specific moment moving visibly through him before he pressed it down.
He sat back down and told it.
He gave her everything, while still hiding some key parts, the arrival at the forest, the encounter with the dragon, the losses, the fight. The letter had given her an outline. The spoken account filled it in, and he watched her face as he spoke, looking for the reaction and finding almost nothing, just that same steady attention and the occasional small movement of her eyes that indicated something had registered as significant.
When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.
Then she leaned back in her chair.
"You want us to accept," she said, "that an infant dragon, a creature that by standard classification should not possess the combat capability to threaten an advanced academy instructor, a head master in the sixth star mage realm, defeated you and took a divine armament." She said it without particular accusation, but the words themselves carried enough weight without it. "I find that difficult to accept at face value."
The headmaster said nothing.
"The record shows," she continued, "that in your younger years, you and your party engaged a red dragon in the southern territories. A fully matured dragon. You survived that engagement and were commended for it." She tilted her head slightly. "If you were capable of that then, why does an infant present a problem now?"
The headmaster’s expression shifted.
Something moved through his face that was not guilt exactly but was in the territory of it, the look of a man touching the edge of a story that had been kept carefully managed for a very long time. His hand on the table pressed flat against the wood.
She noticed it. He could tell she noticed it. Her eyes didn’t change but something in the quality of her attention sharpened.
She chose, for reasons of her own, not to pursue it.
The headmaster drew a slow breath.
"The dragon did not fight as an infant fights," he said. "It did not rely on instinct or aggression or the standard approach of a young creature. It planned. It used the environment deliberately, created openings through deception, anticipated counters before they were made. It fought with the strategic patience of a mature and experienced dragon." He paused. "I was not prepared for that. I was caught off guard, and it used that."
Ezra looked at him for a moment.
Then she stood.
"An investigation will be launched into the dragon and its presence in the forest," she said, smoothing her cape with one hand, already moving toward the door. "Its capabilities, its origin, and the circumstances of the armament’s loss will all be reviewed." She stopped at the door and looked back, the two men falling into step beside her. "Until that investigation is concluded, you will also be placed under review. You will not leave the academy or take independent action regarding this matter."
She left.
The door closed behind her with a sound that was entirely ordinary and somehow final regardless.
The headmaster stared at the space she had occupied for one long second.
Then his fist came down on the table.
The crack of it rang through the room, hard and sharp, sending a small stack of papers sliding to one side.
Selene looked at him from across the room and said nothing.
There was nothing useful to say.
