'Calm down yourself!' Cryst admonished herself. 'Emperor Stelart isn't like those kings before the empire who tortured their people. He can be reasoned.'
Lady Izne Hont Keyriftrian without turning spoke with indifference. "You are in the presence of His Majesty."
Cryst bowed once again, speaking as her head rose. "Cryst bows to The Emperor. I apologise for the problems that may arise due to choices of the operatives in Tarna and assigned to Tarna including me given the war and its casualities." Her eyes meeting the gaze falling on her, "But none of us can simply ignore the extent to which the nations of Tarna are going to hide cata and lesios from its very people."
Cutting in the very similar insouciant voice resounded, "I asked a question." The gaze narrowed of the one who spoke.
"I-," a realization hit her. 'Wait, no one can teleport into the great hall. That's simply impossible. Not even the Emperor could do that as far as I know.' Her eyes narrowed as Cryst's heart began beating faster and louder as if she was committing treason.
"You are not the Emperor." The face that was of the emperor Stelart Keyriftrian raised a brow, lips on his face parted but Cryst continued zoning in on her knowledge of current situations. "The Emperor had already left for Irka even by the time I decided to come here." 'I did hear the news of his arrival.'
"You dare accuse?!" Lady Izne called her claim blasphemous.
Her eyes caught the council in its entirety. 'No one else shows any reaction.' So, Cryst faced Lady Izne speaking her truth she had glimpsed, "You dare to create a facsimile of the Emperor? You dare to make someone believe they could be teleported into the great hall?" Her fulminar cata leaked out of her immersing her surroundings in a cata immersion awaiting her lesios.
"Hmm, this would be interesting." Inri Plora quoted, yet she had a smile that seemed too fake to make Lady Izne believe her.
The fulminar cata as it seeped into the floor below crackled within it bringing cracks atop the surface.
Cryst without looking down stated the simplest truth about the great hall of the Highest family's castle. "The great hall's floor would never crack if I were to plunge it with all my force." Her heart's rhythm slowly but surely reached towards her normal heart rate after being high for couple of seconds. "Why would you do it?" Her teeth gritting against each other.
Lady Izne's breath left her as it asked her permission to leave her to take away her moral exhaustion. "You do know that I too am from the Highest family? And that the Highest family has the right to make mirages of the reigning emperor or empress if deemed necessary?"
Coughs of mild amusement echoed across silently.
"Yes? Lady Inri?"
Duchess Inri holding back a smile said with as utmost sincerity as she could muster, "She is an Operative. And also that is only used when the entire empire faces a threat. Not when some operatives are following…" Inri rolled around the thoughts and ideas she could use to convey but seeing she had stayed quiet for a while simply left the silence to answer it in her place.
Another amused smile spread through her lips.
Lady Izne's head staying upright and proud reminded a cold truth. "The Highest family has many rights to make those decisions that do not require the conditions set for it to be checked." Her words seeping into the air, the ground and the space around them. "That includes whether to create mirage or not of the Emperor for situations that can affect the empire…"
Her brows furrowed continuing, "And the true goal that made this empire."
Cryst knew that as per Ennet, her proposal will advance the empire to the dream. But, she did not know the goal.
"It's not worth asking. You don't have clearance yet." Duchess Inri put a stop in Cryst's about to be asked question.
If Cryst ever looked back at this moment in history from the future, she may wish to choose a different path. But she'll never be able to see the consequences right after. The current Cryst did not have those worries yet.
So, nodding, she asked a different question. "Since Emperor Stelart isn't here, may I leave now?" A moment passed, maybe more. Cryst did know that Lady Izne and Duchess Inri were the ones keeping each other in check.
"May I leave to help my friend Ennet?"
"Your friend is-" Lady Izne felt it through her the words she spoke were losing themselves in thin air.
"Inri." A single word softened the world of the great hall.
"Yes?"
"She can go. But stop with trying to find how true is Ovier's freezing through me."
Bowing, Duchess Inri answered. "As you wish, Her highness."
Cryst's confusion surfaced onto her as she glanced from one to the other, but the next moment all of the great hall around her began shimmering out and the corridor in front of the room she stepped into began to reveal itself. 'Did I really teleport?'
"It wasn't a teleportation." Lady Izne chose to clarify. "I used something of the great hall. That's all you need to know."
"But-!"
"Yes, you did not say it, and yet both of us knew some of the thoughts you had." Duchess Inri chimed in. "It comes with the access strength given to someone to the great hall."
Cryst glanced back and forth again, considering many things. 'How much do they know? How much are we in the blind even when the Emperor says we are not?'
She did not know.
Thus, she asked one last thing. "Will the message I came to give the Emperor be delivered to him?"
Lady Izne exhaled a small breath and nodded, "Yes, it will be delivered but it does not matter when it reaches him. Only one thing does, and that's the amount to which the situation is salvageable." The calm on her face had the soothing she conveyed through her words, one she affirmed further with her simple bobbing of her head to the right to the teleportation room awaiting Cryst.
And Cryst was gone within the same minute. Traveling through the same white indistinguishable hall that once Ennet used to gather everyone for rescuing a possible hopeful future for Tarna and its civilians.
Atop the ancient caestre spanning kilometres not just in length but in altitude reaching deep into the sky above, Anaphol and Neva emerged from lights enveloping them converging down back into a different pattern in a different hut within the Sanctuary aspiring Proficiency and Wisdom. They are closer now to the second period's classroom.