Back inside, with the door shut behind him, Ran wondered why the girl had been so dramatic, offering up her life over a spilled tray. Whatever the reason, he was glad he had laid down the rule. It would save him a great deal of annoyance later.
A month after the incident at the evening ritual, a rumour began to move quietly through the imperial palace: the first prince had lost his powers. Among the other princes and princesses, that rumour said one thing only. The throne might be up for grabs.
According to the novel, this was the point at which Rasia begged the emperor to move the royal hunting competition forward, purely to quell the talk about him. In the book that competition was still six months away. But things were running ahead of schedule now, so Ran had convinced him to push it forward himself.
Fast or not, they were at least following the original plot, and Ran was relieved about that. What he could not stop wondering was whether the acceleration was affecting the protagonist too, or only the people inside the imperial city.
Today was the day of the royal hunting competition. Ran had one thing to do here: find a certain man and give him something. After that he intended to sit back and relax until it was the right time to make his next move.
"That black horse suits you," Sailos said, riding up alongside him. "Gloomy animal for a gloomy little brother."
Ran ignored him, though privately it worried him that Sailos was far more hot-headed and impulsive here than he had been in the original novel. He had important plans for today and no intention of being drawn into a shouting match at the gate.
Infuriated, Sailos barked at him again. Ran did not so much as turn his head. He was busy admiring his horse, which he much preferred to the golden ones the other royals rode.
The original owner of this body might have been useless, Ran thought, but the body itself seemed to have some kind of affinity with animals.
Soon afterwards they arrived at the entrance to the imperial forest, where the Tower of the Beginning stood. This was where the first prince performed the opening ritual every year, and once the ritual ended the hunting competition began immediately.
The competition, however, was more than a political show.
The emperor told Rasia to prepare for the opening ritual. Just as he was about to leave, the second prince, Dito, expressed his gladness that his elder brother was in such good health, and asked whether he had prepared what to wish for.
Rasia had no idea what he was talking about.
Dito reminded him that the winner of the competition was entitled to ask one wish of the emperor, and that as far as he was concerned it was already certain the first prince would be today's winner.
Rasia walked away scoffing, saying smugly that of course he would be today's winner.
After all, the opening ritual was really a showcase for the next emperor to display his manis, and a way for the royal family to remind the assembled nobles exactly who was in charge.
As Rasia climbed toward the stage, the onlookers fawned over him, while others whispered behind their hands about the prince who had lost his powers. Standing in front of the tower, Rasia found himself regretting that he had listened to his black-haired brother at all. If his power backfired here, it would do so in front of every noble house in the empire. He swore silently that if the boy had tricked him, he would end him in the most painful way he could devise.
Ran, watching from a distance in the crowd, could tell that Rasia was nervous. He was not worried. As long as the man followed his instructions, nothing would go wrong.
Rasia poured out every ounce of manis he could muster, and none of the unbearable pain that had plagued him at the evening ritual came. Nothing came but power. It rose off the stage as a massive vortex that nearly swallowed the front of the audience, and somebody was shouting for everyone to move back, move back.
He is the first prince, Rasia reminded himself. Destined to become the next emperor.
He pushed himself further. He unleashed a great surge of water manis straight up into the sky, and it came down over the crowd as gentle rain.
Everyone watched in awe, reminded all over again of the immense power the royals possessed. When it was over, the crowd cheered for him, loud and long, and all Rasia could think about was how the seventh prince had helped him achieve this.
Ran had given him a black stone and told him to pour his manis into it. Rasia had thought the solution absurd. Ran had explained that the black stone absorbed polluted manis, and Rasia had refused to believe a word of it, and had been infuriated when Ran simply shrugged and told him to wait around and die then, since he had no intention of babysitting anyone or saving a man against his will.
Back in the present, at the edge of the crowd, Ran was glad he had gotten his hands on the stone at all. According to the book it was not supposed to surface until the latter half of the story.
Just then Sain came stumbling up, panting, with a bag of stones on his back that Ran had instructed him to bring over.
Ran sternly scolded him for being unable to handle such a simple task, and demanded to know whether the bag had arrived intact.
Sain seethed as he set it down, wondering, not for the first time, how the seventh prince had tamed that black horse. He had purchased the animal on purpose because it was wild and had already injured a good number of people.
A trumpet sounded, and the emperor announced the beginning of the royal hunting competition.
Everyone surged forward into the forest, some hoping to win so that they might make a wish, others participating purely for show, certain that one of the royals would take it anyway.
Ran was the only person on that field who did not consider the hunting competition important. He kept a low profile to avoid drawing any unnecessary attention while he searched for the man he had come here for: the former Imperial Knight Commander, Agoni Feitus.
Elsewhere in the trees, Agoni was asking his aide, Talin, what he had thought of the opening ritual.
"It was like witnessing the power of a god," Talin said.
"It felt to me like a display arranged to break the spirits of the nobles," Agoni said.
Talin quickly scanned their surroundings to be sure they were alone before admonishing his master for speaking so openly against the royal family. Agoni reassured him that there was nobody nearby to overhear them, and reminded him, with some confidence, that his wits had kept him alive this long.
Deeper in, Ran continued his search. The imperial forest was divided into three main zones: the small animal zone nearest the entrance, then the medium animal zone, and furthest of all the large animal zone.
He recalled that according to the original story, Agoni presented a golden fox to the emperor during this very competition. Unfortunately, Ran had no idea where the creature could be found, because that part of the story appeared only in a brief flashback.
Because of this, he had spent the past few days quartering the vast imperial forest in his crow form. Golden foxes were extremely rare, and he had wanted to narrow down their likely territory before the day of the hunt rather than blundering blindly through the trees with everyone else.
Then he had remembered a single line: the book mentioned that Agoni had washed his hands immediately after the hunt. From that, Ran deduced that the golden fox must have been found near the lakeside, in the southwest.
Armed with that, he charged deeper into the forest to get ahead of Agoni. As if it understood his intentions perfectly, the black horse picked up speed beneath him, and Ran was extremely satisfied with the pair of them.