Disclaimer: Nintendo and Intelligent Systems, man. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.
You were his faithful servant.
You had sworn to follow him until death.
Your oath said nothing about madness.
And so you stayed, ever faithful.
Preparing the meals, desperately trying to keep the palace from falling apart – though really, what could you have done? That palace was meant to have hundreds of servants. But you were the only one who stayed.
"Madness, Janx. This is insanity. His wife is dead," the other servants had told you. "He's been driven out of his mind, who knows what he'll do next? No, it's best you leave now."
You hadn't listened to them. What would the lord do without you? No servants and no chefs, and with his complete neglect for his own well-being…surely he would starve. Wouldn't that be betraying your oath to serve him until death? And if you left…what would you become? A servant with no master has no purpose in life. Perhaps, with time, the sting of his wife's death would subside, and he would begin to see sense once more. At least, that's what you had hoped for.
Then, that man had come. You weren't even sure if he was a man. He'd agreed with your lord's delusion of a sickness, and asked to see her. Suspicious, you followed along, taking great pains to remain unseen.
And as you crept closer, something, ever so slightly, began to feel terribly, horribly, wrong. It began with a nagging feeling at the very brink of your senses, so subtle that you didn't even know where it was coming from.
Then it grew stronger and stronger, and you almost gagged when you realized.
It was the smell of something rotting.
The stench grew and grew as you approached the late lady's room.
You lurked outside, fearing discovery and fearing to see what was left of your lord's deceased wife.
You listened as that creature promised to heal her, promised to bring her back from the edge of death itself. But you knew she was no longer on the edge of death. She had not been for months.
There was one condition – it sounded almost too good to be true. But to be back with his beloved once more, your master Orson would have to betray his own liege lord.
He did not even hesitate. You felt that he would regret being away from his wife's side for so long more so than the actual betrayal itself.
As he headed into the hallway you were hiding in, you scrambled back, into the great hall, into safer territory. You pretended that you had heard nothing, that the strange man had not promised to defy the Lord and bring the dead back to life. He smiled at you.
"This man Lyon brings great news, Janx. He says he can heal her. And I believe him."
"That's wonderful, my lord!" You contorted your muscles to form a smile. You felt ghastly, like a grinning white skull in the face of calamity.
He took a deep, long, look into your eyes. "Listen, Janx. I would entrust you with my life, and so I do the same with hers. Watch over her while I am gone, ensure that no harm befalls her. Though I believe Lyon, I do not trust him wholly. Should anything, anything, seem wrong - if he hurts her in any way - you are to tell me the moment I return."
Inwardly, you winced. At this point, everything seemed wrong. Your lord was mad, driven to insanity by his twisted obsession with his dead lover. A necromancer was working his magic in the room down the hallway. And you, you were powerless, unable to stop this lunacy. But outwardly you nodded, the perfect picture of subservience.
"Understood, my lord."
He left.
You stayed in an empty crumbling palace with a decaying body and the necromancer trying to revive it.
A/N: Just looking at Orson's descent into madness from a different point of view. The next chapter will focus more on Lyon ^^ Reviews are appreciated!
