ICM Chapter 141

“This isn’t my fault. You made it this way. Ibis!”

But suddenly, she was startled and stopped her hands.

“No, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I, I didn’t mean to do that. Please, Ibis…, spare me. I was wrong.”

Ilerna wept like a child, sobbing uncontrollably. She pushed away the torn bushes, crouched in a pile of fallen leaves, trembling and crying.

Then suddenly she sprang up from where she sat.

“I’ll kill you! Ibis! You ruined my life! Aaaah!”

Ilerna, raging with fury, collapsed to the ground after taking only a few steps.

There were those watching her from afar. They were hidden on horseback in the forest as twilight descended.

But Ilerna didn’t notice the gazes watching her. She couldn’t.

“Bring me my son! You insolent creatures!”

Ilerna’s screaming was desperate. As if someone was cruelly persecuting her. But no one was persecuting Ilerna. Even the trackers who had found her earlier couldn’t bring themselves to touch her and were only surrounding the area.

None of those watching from close by approached her. Her appearance was so grotesque that they couldn’t dare come near.

“You vulgar wretches. Didn’t I tell you I don’t want this! Why is it so dark! Draw the curtains, draw the curtains!”

She had wandered so roughly that her dress was half-torn from thorns and branches, and her hair, scratched and torn here and there, had become disheveled. Her face, smeared with makeup and tears, looked grotesque.

Even so, the Empress Dowager struck the empty ground with her bare hands.

“I’ll strip the skin from you. You wicked thing. You tried to bewitch my husband, didn’t you? Even if I tear you apart and kill you, it won’t be enough!”

Tearing at the dry leaves scattered in the forest, Ilerna babbled incomprehensible words.

“Ha….”

The trackers were speechless. They were shocked by the half-mad woman’s behavior, and it was even more shocking because she was the Empress Dowager.

Iben watched Ilerna’s mad gestures quietly. There was no anger or lingering emotion left in her.

“She even harbored delusions I didn’t know about.”

Ilerna’s husband, the late Emperor, had once been Ibis’s fiancé. So if the beautiful Ibis returned, wouldn’t the late Emperor’s heart change too? Wouldn’t he cast her aside and choose her sister instead?

It was an absurd delusion born from inferiority complex and jealousy.

Iben knew that she and her mother had been manipulated by an alchemist’s drugs for a long time. Even if she wanted to reclaim the Grand Duchy or seek revenge, she couldn’t even walk the streets freely.

She couldn’t remain within the Empire. So she sought out the alchemist that Weive had commissioned and spent quite a long time abroad acquiring knowledge. She had to endure long years of patience to return to the Empire.

And when she returned to the Empire, she gathered the retainers of the destroyed Grand Duke’s family and their children. The children who remembered the tragedy of the Grand Duchy cursed the Imperial family with chattering teeth and became Iben’s hands and feet.

Igraine and Talion, even the Imperial family – everyone was entangled in the problem. She couldn’t recklessly touch any of it, so it had to be slow.

For the Empress Dowager, she used drugs over a long period to cause nervous breakdown. So she could never recover. Gradually eroding the boundary between reality and nightmares, mercilessly tearing at her most painful memories.

What she saw before her eyes now was the result of that long, painstaking effort.

“Yes, it was bound to end up like this eventually.”

She knew that even if she got revenge, she wouldn’t be happy. She had sometimes vaguely thought she might be a little sad.

But she felt none of the emotions she had expected. As if all of this was simply a destination reached according to natural order. It was a somewhat futile ending.

“My lady….”

One of the guards who had been by Iben’s side finally spoke.

“What shall we do? Just give the order and we’ll quietly finish this here.”

These were the people who had guarded Iben’s side, going in and out of the Grand Duchy territory. People for whom neither the Empire nor the Imperial family mattered anymore. With one word from Iben, they could behead even the Emperor’s mother and cut off her head to bury it without a trace.

Instead of answering, Iben gazed silently at the convulsing Ilerna.

A bleak wind blew and the forest swayed. A terribly peaceful forest and one woman who had fallen into her own hell alone.

Finally, her tightly closed lips opened and a rough voice flowed out.

“…Let’s go.”

“What?”

Those guarding Iben’s side all turned to look at her.

“Will you let her go like this? There are soldiers stationed around, so she’ll be discovered soon.”

“Why should I….”

It was a somewhat bewildered voice.

“Show mercy to that wretch?”

At Iben’s response, everyone fell silent.

Empress Dowager Ilerna had walked into the hell she had created herself. There was no reason to relieve her suffering with the mercy of death.

She should live a little longer in that hell, paying the price for the blood she had shed. She should live long, trampling on the honor she had spent her lifetime building and becoming a disgrace to the Imperial family.

Now the Tridelia Imperial family and nobles would never forget the mad Empress Dowager, and the current Emperor would also engrave deep in his bones that he was of that bloodline. Thus Contilia’s bloodline would slowly walk the path to ruin.

Iben slowly set her horse in motion. Leaving behind the sound of a woman possessed by evil crying out in the middle of the darkening forest. Now it was time to move forward toward the path ahead, not the path behind.

****

When the winter wind that had blown all night subsided and the blue light of dawn gradually spread to the outskirts of the city. The carriage that had been running without rest stopped briefly at the outskirts of the capital. Aegonite, who had been following alongside until then, approached the carriage and knocked on the window.

“Lady Maiheller.”

It was a name that would soon disappear, but he called her that since there was no appropriate title.

The carriage window opened and Shafri waited quietly for what would follow.

“When you reach the port, someone will be waiting. You can receive passage, identification, and everything you need there.”

“Thank you.”

Aegonite’s escort would end here, but he meant he would see Shafri’s final departure.

“The journey is long. Do you really not need an escort?”

“Let’s be honest. Do you think I don’t know that what’s visible isn’t everything? How long have I known Dru?”

She knew that not only the knights visible before her eyes, but also Talion’s people were lurking around in unseen places. Though it was called protection, it was actually surveillance.

It might be a gaze that would follow her like a tag for life. It was also Drushia’s warning that he would never tolerate any mischief.

Aegonite didn’t deny it.

“So I’d like to avoid even the visible pressure.”

A journey to flee from the Empire. She didn’t want to ruminate on that fact every moment.

Aegonite, who had been looking at Shafri for a moment, spoke.

“The Duke’s message: thank you for telling us about the hiding place, and for your efforts until the end.”

A place known only to his closest confidants. It was Shafri who had informed them of the place where Marquis Maiheller and the Empress Dowager had met.

“I just did what I had to do.”

There were debts to repay. Though she muttered coldly, a small sigh escaped. It was a sigh of relief. Even if it was a twisted relationship, she was glad she could say a final goodbye. At least it wouldn’t be remembered only as a bad connection.

“Well then, farewell.”

Aegonite finished his brief farewell and moved away from the carriage.

Shafri closed the window and drew the curtains over the window where light was streaming in. The carriage began to move with a clatter.

Shafri, who had been gazing at the front seat, reached out her hand. She pushed the long legs that had protruded outside the blanket back in with both hands and covered them carefully with the fallen blanket, sealing every gap.

“Is it uncomfortable because the carriage is small? I’m sorry.”

It was an ordinary carriage that wouldn’t attract attention, so the space was difficult for a person to lie down completely. The other person was sleeping like the dead, crouched under a blanket on the cramped seat, with only half their face showing.

“Just endure for two days. Once we get off the carriage, it’ll be a bit more comfortable.”

White fingertips caressed the sleeping person’s face. It was an aristocratic face with white skin and distinct features. She wanted to see those mysterious odd-colored eyes, but she had to be patient now.

“We’re going to take a boat. They say if we take a boat and follow the river, we’ll reach the sea. If we cross that sea, we’ll see a world we’ve never seen before.”

Though he slept like the dead, she could feel warm heat from Erwin’s cheek. She was relieved by this and didn’t want to take her hand away.

“Do you know what I did to save you?”

Shafri had done her best to bring down Maiheller. To save Erwin, defying Drushia’s opposition.

[Do you know what annihilation means? The family’s successor cannot survive.]

[I’m leaving the Empire. So don’t touch Erwin. That’s my condition.]

Drushia had both threatened and tried to placate Shafri. To give up Erwin. But if it hadn’t been for Erwin, she wouldn’t have helped Drushia so desperately.

But would Erwin be able to accept the woman who had annihilated his family and driven his father to death?

“Even if brother hates it, there’s nothing that can be done now.”

Maiheller had disappeared and Shafri had survived. She would remain by Erwin’s side to the end and would continue to do so. Would that be an unhappy thing for Erwin?

Shafri put her hand into her bosom and took out a black pouch. Inside were three medicine bottles marked with numbers.

“It was Noah who made those drugs. You know that, don’t you?”

Noah, who had been Maiheller’s personal physician and alchemist. The accomplice to all secrets who would now be captured and taken away by the Imperial Guard.

When Shafri made her last visit to the Maiheller estate, she stole the alchemist’s drugs from the physician’s laboratory. And she asked Ashika to get her the antidote.

“It’s too easy to deceive you. It’s not fun, but that’s why I like you, brother.”

Erwin had rushed over at Shafri’s call and drank the tea she offered without a moment’s suspicion. A hopelessly careless man. A man who had nothing in common with his viper-like father.

“They say the first medicine awakens consciousness, the second releases paralysis. The third medicine is….”

The complete antidote. The final medicine that would give complete freedom. Shafri fidgeted with the last medicine bottle, lost in thought.

“Brother will probably hate me, won’t he? No matter how much he feared him, that person was his father. Yes… it’s fine to be angry. It’s fine to hate me.”

But what if he tries to leave?

The last medicine bottle rolled around in her palm. When the carriage’s vibration shook her hand with a clatter, she quickly gripped the medicine bottle.

“Brother, I’m sorry.”

The quiet whisper like a soliloquy settled near the unconscious Erwin’s ear.

Shafri opened the window of the moving carriage. The sound of the carriage clattering and the cold wind howling made her spine chill.

The small medicine bottle left her hand, cut through the air, and was instantly thrown onto the road. The sound of the bottle breaking was drowned out by the sound of the carriage wheels.

Shafri closed and latched the window without regret.