The Archives

I dragged my feet behind Faelar as he pressed onwards swiftly. Although from what I had read, patricide had been the norm for nobility and kings in this world, Fredreich’s confession still completely threw me off guard.

“Commander Faelar,” I called out, as he maintained his quick pace, “what do you think of King Aldric?”

My words seemed to cause a stir in his movements, though he kept his distance. He chose not to respond and simply pressed onwards. His footsteps became wider and quicker than they had been before, creating a gap between us that I had to almost jog to cover.

“Commander Faelar,” I called again.

“If you wish to know about dead men, the archives is a good place to start, on the fourth story towards the Eastern wing,” he replied curtly, avoiding my eyes entirely and increasing his speed.

Eventually, we both entered a dining room where Jaeger stood looking out of a window while Amber had her head low, seated at a large table.

“The maids should bring you food and then escort the three of you to your individual rooms,” Faelar announced.

“Won’t you join us?” I questioned Faelar as he started walking away from the doorway.

“I may not look it,” his voice echoed across the stone hallway, “but I am a busy man, Mr. Aizawa.”

I entered the dining room and seated myself beside Amber, who appeared to be lost in thought, fiddling with her hands in her lap.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded ever-so-slightly, her gaze still fixed low.

Jaeger’s footsteps thumped from behind me as he came up beside me. “So, sire, what’d the King say?”

“We’ve done ‘no wrong’ apparently,” I sighed.

Amber’s eyes lit up as she finally turned to face me. Jaeger let out a sigh of relief as he tried desperately to make himself comfortable in a chair that was clearly too small for his massive frame, seating himself next to me.

Soon enough, maids carrying large platters of various roasted meat, vegetables, fruits, and wine came through the door and started serving us our food. Jaeger tore away at the food without hesitation, but I couldn’t do much besides take a few bites and play with the food on my plate while occasionally sipping on the wine next to me, even though the taste was a bit too sweet for my liking. Amber couldn’t do much but stare at the lavish food in front of her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

Amber’s eyes flickered for a second as she looked up to me and then at Jaeger, who seemed too preoccupied with trying to fit a turkey leg down his mouth to notice the conversation.

“That woman in the mural, beside the King,” she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “It was just like my mother.”

“She did kind of look like you, save for the hair.”

“It was too accurate, even the mole on her neck was exactly where I remembered it,” she said, raising her hand to her own neck and pointing with two fingers.

“It is odd because the mural was brighter than the rest, which means it was only painted recently,” I said, nodding slightly.

“The same goes for Fredreich’s mural, so it probably means the two of them were painted together,” she responded, her eyes fixed on the table in front of her. The implication hung heavy in the air.

“I’ll go to the archives tonight, if they let me in, to see what I can find out,” I said, taking one last gulp of the wine.

After the three of us had been sufficiently satiated, the maids came back, taking away what was left while a few remained to guide us to a floor below. The staircase twisted and turned almost unnaturally until we reached a hall that seemed to be packed with people wearing various types of clothing.

“I’ve been waiting to see him for months and still, no response!” said one of the older men clad in robes I had never seen before to another man who seemed to be wearing the colors of Feldheim. The two of them eyed us down as we walked alongside the maid.

Eventually, the maid stopped after a bit, gesturing to the right, saying that that was where I and Amber would be staying, while taking Jaeger a bit further up and showing him a room towards the left.

I swung open the doors to reveal a room that mimicked the size of Remus’ dining hall; chandeliers adorned the room as various sculptures of men and women stood beside the silk-laden bed at the center. The tiled floor was polished to the extent that I could see my own reflection as both Amber and I made our way in.

Amber went ahead and sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes fixed to the floor. I sat beside her, taking her hand in mine.

“I’ll figure it out, don’t worry,” I assured her.

I pushed myself off and straightened my tie before leaving the room, giving one last glance at Amber who sat where I had left her. Walking through vast corridors, asking unhelpful guards for directions, and occasionally stumbling into rooms I wasn’t allowed into, I came to the realization that I probably couldn’t find my way there even if I had all day.

Standing hopelessly in one of the hallways of the fourth floor that had staircases at both ends that both somehow led upstairs, I let out a sigh of dejection before a familiar voice called my name out.

“Mr. Aizawa,”

I turned around to see Faelar standing with a bunch of his men, his eyebrow raised and his lips curled downwards into a disappointed frown.

“When I had heard of a lost visitor, I should have known it was you.”

“I’m just trying to go into the archives,” I responded.

Before Faelar could respond, one of the shorter guards who had his face covered spoke up, “The archives are off-limits for common folk!”

Faelar instructed him to pipe down before swiftly turning to me. “Follow me, Mr. Aizawa.”

We left the guards in the hallway as Faelar turned into a passage that I had missed despite circling the area nearly six different times. We finally reached a room whose doors towered even buildings. Letters I didn’t recognize were embossed into the wood, with statues depicting kings reading or carrying books at each side of the doorway.

As we made our way inside, the smell of paper and ink greeted me first. The vast bookshelves towered inside the room as several officials, all too old to even pay attention to what was happening, walked around; some carrying books, others sitting at tables reading, while others wrote away in specific corners.

“As per King Fredreich’s instructions, nothing is off-limits,” he said, gesturing towards the vast bookshelves before me.

“So he knew this is where I’d go first, huh?”

“He knows a man of knowledge when he sees one,” he smirked before turning around to leave me to read as much as my heart desired.