The Ignis Ducal Estate
This tale unfolds a little further along — just past the moment an anomaly began drawing monsters from other regions into the north.
A small force under Princess Aine had reached the outskirts of the duchy ruled by Duke Ignis.
Eve Ignis, one of the princess's most trusted retainers and a key figure among the unit, gazed out over the land of her birth with an expression tangled by too many feelings at once.
I never thought I'd come back...
It had been the day she came to believe she had wounded her younger sister, Riel. With her heart broken, Eve had fled her home. After that she threw herself into her studies and her work, joined the Magic Division, and in less than ten years had risen all the way to Princess Aine's right hand.
It was a rise that could well be called a great and honorable achievement. And yet, in a corner of her heart, the guilt of having abandoned her family and her homeland — of having run away — pressed down on her with crushing weight.
That same woman had recently been reunited with her younger sister, and had learned that she was not hated. The heart that had been broken began to burn once more. Helping Riel, she had come to realize the situation was far more serious than she had thought — and so she had returned, determined to set right everything that had been shattered in her childhood.
She had come home. To the Ignis Duchy.
"This area hasn't changed much."
Brimton, the city that could be called the heart of the Ignis Duchy. That was the first impression Eve had, setting foot once more in the city where she and Riel had been born and raised, after more than ten years away.
Leading a handful of knights and mages as the advance party, Eve entered Brimton and took in the sight of the duchy's people hurrying along the streets. Truly, they were still the same — busy, hardworking folk who hadn't changed much at all.
When they were children, she had snuck out with Riel more than once to run around and play. ...Though in truth, their secret escapes had been discovered, and the guards had been tailing them the whole time.
"Could it be... Lady Eve?"
A voice reached her then. Slightly startled and already on her guard, Eve looked the speaker full in the face.
"...And you are?"
"Well now, it is you! It's been far too long!"
The man in the hat swept it off and bowed his head to her with formal courtesy.
"You may not remember me — I'm Olson. I run a trading company here in Brimton!"
"A trading company... Olson...?"
"I called on the ducal house a number of times, doing business with them!"
"Ah — that merchant!"
She remembered. He was, without a doubt, the merchant the ducal house had used whenever they needed goods. Quite some time had passed, but that distinctive goat beard and those blue eyes were still etched in her memory.
"You remember! Well, I must say... you've grown into a truly beautiful woman!"
"Haha... Flattery won't get you much from me, I'm afraid."
"Heh heh, that's no flattery — I mean every word! Has it been about ten years...?"
"Yes. The holidays are winding down, so I thought I'd come home for a visit."
Eve offered a conveniently vague excuse for her homecoming. Inwardly, she was thinking this was perfect timing. Wasn't this the ideal chance to get information on the ducal house?
"It's been so long since I last came home... Has anything unusual happened lately?"
There was no need to be coy about it. The House of Ignis was her home, and she was a member of the family. Asking directly was far less strange than dancing around the subject.
"Hmm... If we're talking about strange things in Brimton lately..."
And so Olson's account began. It was, without question, something too strange to simply let pass.
"The soldiers have vanished entirely...?"
"That's right. I'd already been thinking there were fewer of them around, and lately they've all but disappeared."
A great many of the ducal house's private soldiers resided in Brimton. Troops were stationed throughout the duchy, but Brimton, as the city that housed the ducal estate, held a far greater number of them. And yet those soldiers were nowhere to be seen? That was certainly strange.
Eve shot a glance at the knight waiting behind her. Catching her signal, he nodded and left. She lingered a while in small talk with Olson, asking if there was anything else. She gleaned various other bits of information, but the most important was what she had just heard about the soldiers — that, and the fact that trade with the ducal house had ceased for the past several months.
She wondered if they had simply started dealing with another merchant, but according to Olson, as far as he knew they hadn't opened trade with anyone at all. Something was growing stranger by the moment.
After parting with Olson, Eve waited, and the knight who had left returned.
"Well? What did you find?"
"Yes, ma'am! Just as the merchant said — there's not a single soldier to be found anywhere in the city!"
"...The soldiers used to be quartered in the barracks near the estate. We'll have to go see for ourselves."
Eve decided to lead her subordinates to the ducal estate.
The Ignis ducal estate sat on the outskirts of Brimton. Eve had come home to the house she had once lived in, after so long — but the look on her face was closer to horror.
It was true; it had been a very long time since she had last seen the estate. But even so — could it possibly have changed this much?
The Duke had left, taking his wife and son with him. Eve had left, and then Riel — and the estate had been left with no master at all. Even so, the servants of a house whose lord was away were supposed to maintain it, keeping it ready for the day he returned. And yet the estate Eve now stood before, looking at it from the gate, was in a state beyond words.
"...What in the world happened here?"
The garden that had once been beautiful was filthy from utter neglect, the windows caked with dust. The great stone walls still stood as high as ever, but they had crumbled here and there. The damage itself looked like natural collapse — yet no one had lifted a finger to repair it. The estate's condition was so dire it seemed abandoned for a month at the very least, and Eve was left speechless.
And on top of that...
...Why aren't there any soldiers here to guard the estate?
The sentries who were supposed to stand at the front gate and protect the house were gone. With even those guards missing, Eve remembered that there hadn't been a single soldier in the city either, and turned her eyes toward the barracks nearby. There, too, not a single soldier stood waiting.
An estate and barracks from which not a trace of human presence could be felt. A chill ran through Eve, and she gave her orders at once.
"Split the unit in two. Search the estate and the barracks thoroughly."
"Yes, ma'am!!"
They met no resistance, no obstruction of any kind, all the way into the estate. The interior of her childhood home, which she was seeing again after so long, was a complete wreck — not a speck of it had been cleaned. Eve ordered the knights who had followed her to search the interior, and headed toward the rooms where she had once lived.
"...Well. Would you look at that."
She climbed to the second floor, where her room was — and was struck speechless by the dust piled so thick it looked as though no one had walked there at all. There were dozens of servants living in this estate. And yet the place had been left to rot until not a hint of human presence remained — and it wasn't as though they had all resigned.
Had they simply slacked off because the master was gone? That didn't make sense either. They may have treated their lord like garbage, but they had always been faithful about the work itself.
Just then, a knight came running to Eve.
"What is it?"
"We've found people!"
"...Where on earth were they hiding?"
"Well... it isn't so much that they were hiding..."
The troubled look on the knight's face told Eve that something was very wrong.
"Show me."
The knight led her to the servants' quarters. The moment she saw the inside of those rooms, Eve lost her words.
The servants were all still in the estate. No — they were simply there, in the most literal sense of the word.
Neither of them spoke. The servants sat dazed and silent, slumped wherever they happened to be. On chairs, on sofas, on the floor, on beds — perched or sprawled in every possible place, they stared into empty air with eyes that would not focus.
"...What in the world is this?"
The scene before her sent Eve's thoughts into a tangle. She looked around, and found a face she knew. One of the maids who had worked in this estate since Eve was a child — and one of the traitors. Rena.
"Rena, get up! Rena!"
"......"
"Snap out of it! Rena!"
"Nn... nngh..."
Even a slap across the face and her name called out only drew a vacant groan from Rena. Eve felt as though her mind might burst.
"What is this..."
"Lady Eve — the knights who went to the barracks say it's the same there as it is here."
"Then... even the two hundred-odd soldiers are all in this state?"
"...Yes, ma'am."
What... what in the world had happened here? Eve wracked her brain desperately, but she could not even begin to guess what could reduce hundreds of people to this all at once.
And then a report came in that might just break the deadlock.
"Lady Eve! We've found someone in the estate who can still talk!"
"You have?! Bring them here at once!"
In a situation where not a single person could get a word out, all of them near-comatose — there was someone still intact. Did they know something? Holding onto that thought, Eve sat in the drawing room and waited.
Then a knight came in, bringing a young maid with him.
"I... um, um... who... who are all of you...?"
A young maid, trembling as the knight brought her in. She was perhaps a little younger than Riel, Eve guessed — and at the sight of the girl, her expression softened a little.
"It's all right. We have no intention of hurting you."
"W-who are you...?"
The girl still watched her with eyes full of wariness, even at Eve's voice.
"My name is Eve. Eve Ignis."
"...What? Then... the eldest young lady...?"
"That's right. I don't believe I've seen your face before..."
The young maid snapped to her senses with a start and sprang to her feet. The wariness seemed to have fallen away — but tension filled her in its place.
"I-I'm... Luka Altran, ma'am!!"
"Altran... Then you're from Count Altran's house...?"
"Y-yes! The third daughter! I started working at this estate at the beginning of this year!"
Luka answered in a loud voice. If it was the beginning of this year, she was a new maid who had been here only a few months. Eve looked at her with a smile.
"All right, Luka. I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Y-yes, ma'am! I-if it's something I can answer...!"
"What exactly happened in this estate?"
At Eve's question, a shadow crossed Luka's face for a moment. And she began to tell the story of what she had been through.