Trial in Session 5
Conan and the others had only agreed to this because they knew Fontaine had never once carried out an execution — the harshest sentence anyone had ever received was confinement in the Fortress of Meropide. So how could a death sentence have suddenly been handed down?! And the one sentenced was the Hydro Archon herself. Nothing about this was within their expectations.
Hearing the verdict, Mouri Ran spoke up in alarm. "Wait — can the charges be withdrawn now? If we retract the accusation, does that mean the ruling of the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale won't have to be carried out?"
Under Ran's anxious, hopeful gaze, Neuvillette shook his head with regret. "I am sorry. A verdict rendered by the Oratrice cannot be withdrawn..."
Conan, however, had caught something off in the reading of the result. "But the judge just said the Hydro Archon was sentenced to death, right? Yet it's been proven that Focalors isn't the Hydro Archon. So the one this Oratrice was judging shouldn't be Focalors at all... should it?"
Haibara picked up the thread. "Exactly. And if the defendant were Focalors, then the verdict addressing her as the 'Hydro Archon' would mean she never actually impersonated a god or deceived the people at all — which would make her innocent. It contradicts itself."
Listening to the two of them, Moroboshi murmured from the side, "It's practically a paradox."
"Yeah," Genta chimed in. "That whole Oratrice-whatever-it's-called thing — is it really reliable? What if it's actually the one that got it wrong?"
"Right," Emori added. "Didn't that magician say earlier he heard a voice coming from the core of the machine? Maybe that was a sign it was malfunctioning."
Neuvillette was just preparing to explain that the Oratrice, as a creation of the divine, was all but incapable of error — that such a verdict surely pointed to something else entirely — when the magician who had earlier been a suspect in the missing girls' case seemed to receive some message, and stepped forward.
"Everyone — I believe I may know what the 'Hydro Archon's' crime actually is," the magician declared in a ringing voice.
Neuvillette turned to him, questioning the reason with a puzzled look.
The magician had several stone slabs carried up onto the stage, then began. "You all know that ruins were recently discovered near Petrichor, containing a number of stone tablets. But what you don't know is that the tablets found there were incomplete — one was missing. Ever since I heard that the tablets' contents concerned the prophecy, I've been pouring manpower and resources into searching for that lost slab..."
He sighed, then continued, facing the audience. "I know you're all curious why I care so much about Fontaine's prophecy. But what I want to tell you is this — the prophecy of Fontaine is no joke. It will come to pass!!!"
"I may come from the House of the Hearth of another nation, but I am still a Fontainian. I could not simply stand by while the danger foretold draws near. That is why I risked infiltrating the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale — that divine creation — in the first place."
In the audience seats —
"No way. He has to be joking, right? The prophecy is just a legend, isn't it?"
"Yeah — it's been passed down all this time and nothing's ever really happened."
"W-well, not necessarily... people can be dissolved by water, after all. Hasn't part of the prophecy already come true..."
Most of the audience was reluctant to believe the magician, but a few had already begun to take the prophecy seriously, and now wore visibly uneasy expressions.
On the other side of the courtroom, Conan and the others were closely studying the stone slabs the magician's people had carried onto the stage, discussing the information carved into them.
Pay no mind to the murmurs of doubt below, the magician pressed on. "At last, our efforts were rewarded and we recovered the missing slab. And from the pictures upon it, we learned one thing — the truth of the sin the prophecy says binds every one of us Fontainians..."
Then, in detail, the magician laid out exactly what the sin of the Fontainian people — and of the Hydro Archon — truly was.
It turned out that all Fontainians had been created by the previous Hydro Archon, Egeria, who, out of compassion for the pure-water spirits yearning to become human, had transformed them by stealing power from the Primordial Sea. This was precisely why Fontainians, upon touching Primordial Seawater again, reverted into pure-water spirits.
But that act was never permitted. And so the people of Fontaine had, all along, carried the original sin of "stealing power from the Primordial Sea"...
Conan stroked his chin.
By that logic, the previous Hydro Archon Egeria must have known the origin of the prophecy — and Focalors, her publicly acknowledged successor, surely knew it too. So why had she never said anything?
Just as Conan and the others sat with heads bowed in thought, and the rest of the audience reeled between shock and dread at the truth and the crisis now announced, a member of the security force suddenly burst into the courtroom from outside.
As a rule, when a trial was underway in the Opera Epiclese, no one disturbed the proceedings without a matter of exceptional importance.
Now someone had flouted protocol and rushed straight into a live trial — which could only mean an unforeseen emergency. Xia Yu and the others instantly thought of the prophecy that had hung over the entire game like a refrain.
And the words of the man who had come rushing in confirmed it.
"Your Honor, we have a problem! A message has come from 'the Duke' of the Fortress of Meropide — the special containment device deep beneath the fortress is beginning to fail. He is handling it for now, but he asks that you come as quickly as possible to reinforce the seal!"
"What?!" At the news, Neuvillette rose sharply to his feet, a rare breach of composure, the verdict from moments before driven clean from his mind. "I will go at once!"
Focalors, too, had heard the guard's words. The impassive mask she had worn throughout the magician's presentation of the slabs fell away at last; tears slipped from the corners of her eyes as she spoke in grief and self-reproach. "This is all my fault... I am the one to blame. I failed to keep the promise I... made. I failed to... protect you all..."
Mitsuhiko, sharp-eared, caught the location the guard had mentioned. "Weren't we told that prison — the Fortress of Meropide — is underwater? Something's gone wrong down there now... Could this be the rising sea level the prophecy talked about...?"
Conan realized at once how likely that was, and spun around, calling out, "Ran-neechan! Xia Yu-neechan—!"
Before he could voice his thought, Xia Yu — who had already guessed where this was going — shouted toward Neuvillette, "Your Honor, let us come with you to the Fortress of Meropide! Perhaps there's something we can do to help!"
Neuvillette glanced at the children who made up more than half of Xia Yu's group, and was just preparing to refuse when a violent earthquake rocked the opera house, cutting his words short.