Chapter 756 — Daniel's Investigation
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
In the East District of Aldernan, in one of the deepest lanes of the city, the lights were dim.
This was the darkest, most closed-off quarter of the entire imperial capital, a place the upper classes seemed to have forgotten. Vast Aldernan was like a hill piled up layer upon layer: the upper levels were magnificent buildings, while the bottom was hidden deep in darkness like a festering wound. Advanced magitech, booming new commerce, an ever more polished bourgeois class—none of it had anything to do with the deepest lanes of Aldernan's East District.
It lay only half a city away from the Obsidian Palace, yet it seemed farther from civilized society than those mountain towns beyond the horizon.
And in these lanes, far from every official eye in Aldernan, a man with a tangled beard, sunken eye sockets, and a worn-out coat was hurrying past the doors of one low, dilapidated house after another.
Quick, undisguised footsteps rang out, and prying eyes peered from doors and windows. At this hour, with night already fallen, anyone bold enough to walk alone in the deepest reaches of the East District was bound to draw the curious—yet the gazes drawn streetward by those footsteps soon turned to confusion.
For they saw nothing. To their eyes, the street was utterly empty.
But the footsteps had most certainly been there.
The eyes hiding behind doors and windows gradually took on tension and fear. The superstitious residents recalled the terrifying tales of wandering ghosts and dark wizards after nightfall, and one by one they hastily withdrew their gazes, shutting their already closed doors and windows all the tighter.
And so the man walked openly down the whole length of the lane and came to the door of No. 14 Blackiron Lane.
He halted before the pitch-black door, pressed his hand to the panel, sensed the goings-on within for a moment, and only after confirming there was nothing amiss inside did he turn the key and soundlessly push the door open.
He saw warm lamplight kindled in the room, and a black-robed figure with an indistinct face seated in an armchair as though long since arrived. A blazing fire burned in the corner, and the polished floor and the tables and chairs were spotless.
The man slipped swiftly inside, shut the door, and bowed before the indistinct figure. "My respects to you, Bishop Daniel."
"No need for such courtesy, Grando," said Daniel, black-robed and faceless, with a wave of his hand. His voice sounded directly at the ear of the man called Grando. "This place is safe. We may speak freely."
"Yes, Your Eminence." Grando bowed his head deeply.
"The matter I had you investigate—how goes it?" Daniel asked quietly.
"Yes, I have completed the preliminary investigation," the Longnight cultist named Grando answered at once with reverence. "As of last week, the several lower-ranking cultists you bade me approach and question have all sent back word. None of them reported ever having issued any distress signal, nor having lost any memory—at least, they themselves do not remember such things."
Daniel nodded. "Is that all?"
"No, there is more," Grando said hastily. "I had my doubts about those reports, so where circumstances allowed I secretly approached and hypnotized those around them, and obtained different intelligence... According to those people's recollections, over the past while the cultists in question had for the most part shown spells of mental fog, prolonged deep sleep, even brief shifts of personality."
"Shifts of personality?" Daniel seized on the key phrase at once. "Is there any possibility of mind replacement or mental parasitism?"
"I have already confirmed there is no such possibility," Grando said, shaking his head. "I approached those cultists several more times afterward and observed their minds in various states, waking and hypnotized alike. Their minds remain their own; consciousness intact; and their subconscious shows no sign of being pieced together or cut apart."