In Innermost reaches of Bithynian city in Nicaea theocratic state.

Rodrigo Borgia looked at his seated audience.

"As you know I am the head of Shadow Templars that is in charge of intelligence and reconnaissance."

Bartolomeo retorted, 

"Yes, which is why only the head of the  Shadow Templars— namely, you — knows the truth. All we learned is what little leaked out.”

After inhaling and exhaling, Rodrigo Borgia explained, "There were two incidents. First, in the cave where the eye witnesses are Farnese and her bodyguard, Rowan. We interviewed them separately and their stories matched each other. Then, we managed to get five survivors from Iron Chain Templars who escaped after the cave incident. Their story matched with those two."

When Rodrigo Borgia stopped talking for a moment, Theresa pushed him,

"How about the tower incident?"

"We interviewed Farnese and Rowan separately. Their stories matched. After they departed, we somehow captured a Templar who survived the tower. He seemed to be unreliable as he is already a lunatic but his story on the tower incident matched those two."

The Pope nodded and gave a cue to Rodrigo Borgia.

“…I see. Then, release the full, unabridged version of what they saw in Saint Albion to us.”

After reading the rest of the report, the room filled with the silence of horror.

Feeling that this could not be allowed to go on, Giovanni raised a question:

“I see, I see. …You were afraid our hearts would stop if we saw this first, right?”

Rodrigo Borgia retorted,

“Not really. Your hearts are strong enough to sprout hair. I was simply afraid that if I opened with this, none of you would believe it.”

Giovanni nodded, unable to refute that.

“It’s true that we would have doubted this if we had seen this first. We would not have believed it at all. But after understanding the reality of the cave incident, we have no choice but to believe.”

Pope, in straight to the point manner, directed a question to Rodrigo Borgia,

"What manner of monster was that? Demon?"

Rodrigo only shook his head meekly but still replied,

"The sketch of the paper is the drawing of that monster that appeared in the tower. Its drawing was confirmed to accurate by Farnese and Rowan. Flying winged monster with the body of a hideous man that caused the people to become man eating."

Bartolomeo said, "Still… I don’t want to believe this. Templars ate another templars. Mozgus and his close aids became monsters, grew wings and weird body parts before rampaging to attack Farnese and remaining normal men."

"What the hell. What pit of hell did that come from?”

Silence filled up the chamber once again. After a while, the warrior Bartolomeo voiced up, "But I am interested about the group of  unknown mercenaries who defeated the monsters, Mozgus and others."

Rodrigo Borgia answered,

"Unfortunately, Rowan and Farnese didn't remember their looks but there were women in the group. The surviving Templar who lost his marble didn't exactly mention that group but there were definitely other survivors who fought against the monsters."

Rodrigo Borgia added, "But they specifically mentioned a man who fought bravely on one on one against the monster, Mozgus. A black haired and black eyed man with brownish skin. Definitely not from this continent."

Theophylactus bluntly proposed,

"After Olga Federation being destroyed by Negara, the church and Nicaea, probably, is the most powerful force in the continent. Why don't we just perform manhunt  throughout the continent for those survivors!"

Theresa angrily rejected the idea, "That’s dangerous, far too dangerous. If it goes poorly, we’ll make enemies of over a dozen of nations at the same time.”

"Yes. We need to avoid opening up multiple fronts at the same time.” Bartolomeo also disagreed.

The Pope also killed off the idea,

"You’re right. As it is, we’ve taken considerable losses. We might be able to defeat any kingdom or large aristocrat in one on one battle, multiple enemies are beyond us. Even Venetian and Vandimion will stop sending us gold. The templars will still be short on manpower. Sun Templars lost dozens of veteran including templars' one of top ten fighter, Benedict, while the Iron Chain led by Farnese and Moon Templars led by Godfrey are effectively dissolved. The Crown’s been stolen, the Paul, Cardinal Mozgus and his men are dead. Our only stronghold outside Nicaea, that was Saint Albion is decimated. It’ll take us around 30 years to recover our strength. We can’t go around roasting meat next to sleeping lions in this state.”

At this moment, the hostility in the room seemed to swell.

“Those filthy traitors.”

“Those bastard pirates.”

The church was currently at war with various factions of pirates. Originally, the church and the pirates had a cooperative relationship. But that relationship had been broken, and the church was recently fighting the pirates with their own power.

They had built bases at various islands in Thedas archipelago. According to the church's plan, the bases should have been destroyed in a few years, but that plan was slowly going off-script.

“How about a ceasefire with them for now?”

“Don’t be foolish. How much blood do you think has been spilled in the fighting up till now?"

Pained looks appeared on the faces of everyone present.

"How about Anaïs who preached about one God? She and the traitors were last detected in a border town in Orlais."

"I don't think they would remain in Orlais, as they knew many Orlais nobles are our allies. They could escape to Ferelden, Dioral, Korcari Wilds or former Olga territories."

"Damn that traitors spreading her cult."

The room became silent again. 

After a while, Pope's face turned serious. He said,

"To the topic again. Federico and Vandimion family..how are we going to explain about their daughter's disappearance?"

Everyone became speechless and looked at the floor meekly. Obviously this Farnese issue was more troublesome than monsters and death of Cardinal issue.

***

In Haine castle, Orlais.

The head of Haine family, Margrave Mantillon de Haine clutched at his head.

This was not a recent thing. He had been doing this for quite some time now.

In the past, this cunning man had purged all manner of nobles, heard about treachery which could shake the Haine faction, and learned of deteriorating relationships with neighboring aristocrats. Through it all, this man had neither panicked nor fallen into confusion. However, in the face of an insoluble problem, even this man could do nothing but bitterly cradle his head.

“Dammit! You son of a bitch! Die! Die and rot away!”

While magic could curse someone to death, Mantillon did not have that kind of power. Therefore, he was simply speaking offensive words. Furthermore, he didn't even know who his enemies exactly were.

"Ah, maybe I should curse the whole population in Dioral."

He was even thinking about such meaningless things.

Mantillon’s stomach ached and strands of his fallen hair adorned his pillow every morning. The culprit, responsible for all of this was unknown. However, as both of his invasion was targeted at Hyuutia region, his hate was directed towards Hyuutia and Seraph family, the two large families that rule that region.

There was no satisfactory solution to the problems posed by Dioral.

The first problem concerned the casualties among the soldiers during invasion of Dioral. He had assembled the largest force in recent era, of 7,000 of mostly conscripted peasants under various aristocrats in Orlais. The whole men were not only defeated but their corpses were nowhere to be found. This occured despite for over a month, he received a favourable report on their invasion progress. 

Since then, he received complaints, threats, and even attacks from the aristocrats who contributed their men. That's understandable as they lost precious knights and peasants. Losing peasants meant their productivity was severely affected.

The second reason was the joint invasion with the Templars. Unlike previous attempt, Haine and families under his faction, sent their best warriors in return for the church sending their elite knights. The next invasion might be a lot less inferior numerically but the quality of the fighters were top notch. However, even the elite battalion disappeared. Based on the ground investigated, there were indeed battle going on but no corpse or equipments remained. 

Knights were professional warriors, and training even a single one of them entailed considerable expense.

Nor was it just a matter of money. Training time was also essential. One could not simply grab somebody off the streets and say, “From tomorrow onwards, you are a knight.”

Haine and the church would need to spend a great deal to fill the shortfall in the number of knights. But where would he get the funds for those expenditures?

Then, Haine financed a group of elite knights from templars to act as bandits as a way to gradually undermine Hyuutia's defence. Mantillon had spend a lot of gold on that but even the wannabe bandits disappeared.

Haine, as one of the top aristocrats in Orlais frequently attended council with other top aristocrats and received correspondence from other nobles.

Of course, one could not expect such debates and  letters to always be positive, but the recent exchanges were harsh indeed.

During early days of invasion, Mantillon was aggressively lobbying for that war. Everybody knew this, and laid the blame for that miserable hellscape squarely at the feet of Haine family.

In other words, they were using him as a scapegoat.

When Mantillon learned this he was both furious and frustrated in the extreme. If he had known that such incident would happen, he would never have done such a thing.

Besides, the reason why Mantillon started the war was for expanding Orlais territory. 

Originally, it should have been the other way around. “Thank you for sacrificing yourself for testing out part of the Hyuutia’s power. Now we know better than to act recklessly around them.” Other aristocrats should have said while expressing their gratitude. After all, if things had gone poorly, Dioral and Hyuutia would attack Orlais without Orlais knowing the neighbour's true power.

However, other aristocrats did not see things that way. It was because they felt Haine was greedy, acting for their self interest. Thus, many suspicious gazes now fell upon Haine family including other families under their faction.

This was the first time Mantillon had been so disgusted by his own reputation.

"Damn that Hyuutia! It’s all their fault!”

He pressed against the pain that radiated from his stomach, no ― Mantillon paused to think.

This was not “the Hyuutia’s fault”. This was “the Montfort’s conspiracy.”

Margrave Cyril de Montfort was the head of Monfort family of which many lower aristocrats were under him.

It was very possible that the current state of Orlais might have been orchestrated by the Montfort to undermine him. When he calmed down and considered it, the possibility of that was very high.

Mantillon took out a key and opened a drawer. He withdrew a bottle from within.

It is a stomach medicine. After confirming it is indeed such drug, he gulped it down.

Mantillon placed the bottle on his desk, and frowned.

He took a mouthful of water from a bottle on the desk, to wash away the now-familiar astringent taste spreading through his mouth. After that, he pressed the area around his round belly again.

Was it just a placebo effect, or had his wound really been healed? While there was no way he could know for sure, at least his stomach pains had subsided for now.

“Haaah~”

"This is Monfort's doing. I must punish them." I didn't care whether his suspicion was true or not but he needed to unleash his vengeance and fury on someone, and the one who happened to gave him the most pressure was Cyril de Montfort and Montfort faction. At first, Mantillon became deluded in his fantasy but now he was going to vent his madness.