The Elders' Judgment

After sending Theodore and Annaliese away, the elders reconvened in a meeting room on the tenth floor of the tower. In regards to Theodore, they had more to discuss.

"It turned out quite well." The woman with the golden mask was the first to speak. "As hesitant as I would to admit it, I'd say that Darius's proposal for us to make use of a more forceful method has proven to be wise in the end."

"It was a gamble," said Darius, his mellow tone a contrast to his fierceness from earlier. "Knowing next to nothing about him, there was no telling as to how far we could push. If he feigned ignorance till the end, there wasn't much we could have done other than torture, but he wouldn't be much use to us afterwards, which might prove be a great loss. Yet, if we take back our words, it would also make us look weak. Having a reputation of cowardice would certainly not do well for us in future negotiations if words were to spread."

"We have made good use of our reputed cruelty in many of our exchanges, after all. It'd make things difficult if we were to lose it," the scrawny old man added.

"Not that the boy gave us much of a choice either way. He's a crafty one, that child."

The woman wearing the golden mask thought back to their review of Theodore's first examination. The answers he had written down were in line with what Annaliese had been teaching him, including the holes and mistakes within the knowledge taught. Theodore left no openings in that regard.

Additionally, not only had he answered perfectly in line with what he was taught, but he had also attempted to answer things that were outside of the knowledge passed on to him. Though the additional questions that had never been covered by Annaliese were supposed to be an attempt to draw out what other knowledge he might have, Theodore went ahead and answered the questions by the way of hypotheses and deductions formed from the lessons given by Annaliese, using even the misinformation purposefully fed to him as a basis for his answers.

The answers based on the misinformation would be wrong, of course, but the masked woman thought that it was brilliant that he came up with it. What's more brilliant, however, was how he could feign ignorance to such a degree. The way he answered those questions was something that could only be done by someone who knew little to nothing about magic before being taught it just days prior, yet has a talent for putting the information he had been taught together in creative little ways, like a prodigious ten-year-old perhaps, which was exactly what Theodore was trying to present himself as.

"Looking at his test results, if we assume that he truly was ignorant, then he would be a genius showing off what his mind is capable of," said the masked woman. "However, if he's not, then we may have a terrifyingly proficient trickster on our hand, one capable of not only tricking others but perhaps also deceiving himself into thinking that he's someone else. Doesn't that sound familiar, Archmage?"

"Oh? What are you all looking at me for?" said the Archmage as her big hat tilted to the side along her head, her voice carrying a hint of playfulness missing from the interrogation prior.

"A little over ten years ago, before you became Archmage, you've traveled with an incarnation of the Demon Lord, did you not?" said the bald, scrawny man as he rubbed his chin that was as smooth as a newborn's cheeks. "The traitorous sixth hero erased from records, you were rather close to him, weren't you? Intimate even, from what I've heard."

"I'll never tell," the Archmage said with a soft giggle only to become solemn the next moment in an eerie shift in mood and tone. "But you are right, he was quite a trickster. None of us five that were with him noticed anything wrong till the moment of betrayal. He acted completely as if he was one of us, as if he had convinced himself that he was nothing but the person he claimed to be."

"So are we saying that there's a good possibility that the boy is the Demon Lord?" the large man, Darius, raised the question. "Does the Demon Lord know about what's atop the tower?"

"The Demon Lord has a deep connection to the Alva and knew a great deal about them. He would be able to guess what the tower is and what lies atop from a glance," answered the Archmage.

"Considering that the number of those who knew about the Alvan ship could be counted on both hands, I too think that there is a high likely hood that the boy is the Demon Lord," said the scrawny old man. "If he's not, why does he have such a reluctance to reveal his true identity?"

"Perhaps he is exactly as he claimed," Darius proposed. "Perhaps he truly does not have that much memory to go on and is, in fact, a simple prodigy."

"Your willingness to grant the benefit of a doubt is admirable, Elder Darius," the scrawny old man spoke sarcastically. "However, I also have to mention that if it weren't for your abnormally strong body, you'd have been stabbed to death by now, mostly in your back. It's no small miracle that you survived long enough as a mage to become an elder with that naivety of yours."

"And what of his 'memories'?" the masked woman cut in. "Those sounded more akin to prophecies to me. His mention of the ship aside, the burning city and the empire's flag was concerning as well."

"If he was indeed the Demon Lord and *if* let's say that the Demon Lord had managed to break off a fragment of themselves in their final moment, entrusting all of their memories up to the very last breath to it and passed it down to the next vessel, then it's possible that the boy fully understood the relationship between the Mage Tower and the empire, allowing him to come up with this likely scenario for the near future," proposed the Archmage. "It's possible that he's trying to both tempt us with the mention of the Alvan ship as well as terrify us with the destruction of Lancea at the same time, hoping that it would affect our judgment."

"Which reminds me," the scrawny old man interjected, "the boy was living in Eastcliff, wasn't he? Isn't that place quite close to where the final battle with the Demon Lord took place?"

"So everything lines up then," mused the masked woman. "It looks like we have a high likelihood of having a Demon Lord Larva on our hands."

***

End of Chapter 28

***