First Experiment Record: Wilhelm Paul Hresvelg

Page 1 of 12

Preface

First Edit: 22nd of Horsebow Moon, 0046

Final Edit: Seventh of Harpstring Moon, 1180


Mother,

I saw you teaching those Adrestians outdoors, on the mock battlefield today… all the way from my perch in the monastery. I saw the way that scion of Hresvelg fawned over you, even slapping you so impetuously – how she called you her teacher, and how you said how happy you were that she did.

Did you encourage her to call you that? Was that meant to be some sick reminder to me about my own youth? Clearly your tastes have changed. She is so small, so petite – thin as a rail with that ugly white hair, as if on death's door. Is that what you consider human beauty to be now?

If so, what inspired you to make me in this awkward form? It is as if you modeled me off some village midwife who had come to prostrate herself before you in worship. You don't need to answer that of course… I knew who you created me after. Macuil told me. It was Wilhelm's long-dead mother. The human who you once deigned to use that term with – out of affection. I know now that all of us were created in the image of one of Wilhelm's family members. What anger and rage that caused me when I realized who my own model was.

I know you meant it is a gift, as his mother was a beauty. Still, In those first few years, I felt so relentlessly awkward with mankind gazing at me so lustily all the time – I found myself stealing away into the windswept cliffs of the Throat in my dragonic form. Each day was so nauseating… Once I had tried to wear more revealing robes like yours and could no longer tolerate the stares.

Towards the end, I had tried to tell you about those feelings, but you never had the time. You indulged everyone but me, right up until Nemesis came along – murdering and defiling you in your slumber.

Particularly, you indulged Wilhelm.

Is it because he was the first human you met in this sick, pathetic world?

How after you fell from the stars – he looked after you – hid those ears of yours under a shepherd's cap and took you into his parents home… putting you through the rigors of a peasant's life throughout his childhood? I remember you saying how happy you were during those days…

And then how he threw that short life away for you as an adolescent – even when a foolish mistake of yours had invited the bandits that descended upon his home… Bandits who murdered his own family?

And then… his hiding of you in Zanado, while he worked as a mercenary for five years as you slumbered and recovered from the blood loss – the blood which you gave up to save him… which kept his body frozen in time and as ageless and adolescent as yours.

And then… that world you started to build together in your rebellion against Agartha… that world which you thrust upon me to maintain?

Was all that why you gave him the love that you denied to me?

He doted on you, too of course. I watched it all the time, stewing in my jealousy. It was as if every day, he woke up with an idea about how to make you happy, and it always worked. Your smile – one that faded with each passing day after I was born, could only be brought out by some stupid gesture of that man. I was clearly such a frustration for you… It sickened me so – how your exhausted little frame seemed to reinvigorate whenever you saw him, but not for me… your own daughter.

I remember when you had him walk Cichol's soon-to-be-wife down the aisle of the palace in that special marriage ceremony you concocted. That fatherless human girl who had lost her parents in one of those javelins of light. I remember how you spoke to Cichol so warmly about the gift that you gave us at our births – one which you did not have – the ability to procreate with humanity.

How does it feel to know that every human does that special little ritual now?

I mandated it as the Church's standard long ago.

Because I too am eternal, and remember all.

I recall how after the ceremony, you and Wilhelm stole off together out into the Oghma Mountains before Cichol even took his own wife to bed, your champion riding on your back… right to this very peak where I constructed the monastery.

When you fully awaken, will you notice?

I followed you.

I followed you to this secluded little summit, where the garland flowers grow.

That place you landed… is where the Goddess Tower rests… to seal it away forever.

That place is where I watched you transform back into your human form and take him in your arms.

That place where you and Wilhelm consummated your own little wedding…

Where he reaffirmed his promise to stay by your side forever… and you reaffirmed the same.

And when, that very next day – I asked him to become my teacher and guide... To look after me while I began to build the new world you wished to create but lacked the energy to.

The look on his face… he had planned to accompany you to Zanado during that slumber which proved to be your last one. He had planned to watch over you, and not me.

What did you think?

You looked so tired.

All you said was: "My daughter, your heart has made its choice." – and when you asked Wilhelm, he obeyed because he could never say no to you. All you had to do was pout at him to get your way.

How could you get him to do that after thousands of years with you...? I sometimes think of that.

Oh, how I wish I could ask you right now – but you're too immersed in it all. I can see it.

Naturally, you've gotten very attached to the body you've taken up. How Jeralt must have entertained you in those days when you traveled. That was always his nature. Unknowingly taking you on all those journeys to the Throat that Wilhelm told you about, so many millennia ago. That was your wish, I remember. To walk on the same path as humanity, not just alongside.

Is that why you allowed it?

If so, thank you.

Because I loved every lesson he gave me.

He taught me about the people of Fodlan, of war, of peace, of all the things that make humanity wonderful and unique and worth preserving.

And he was attentive to my thoughts and feelings and concerns as well, just like yours. He was not just another nameless, faceless, prostrating human who only wished to worship us Nabateans.

He spent nights with Macuil, transcribing poetry and Agarthan tomes of science.

He spent nights with Indech, crafting impenetrable armor from adamantine.

He spent nights with Cichol, studying government and meting out the fairest justice to the oppressed people of this continent in the wake of each victory against the first Agarthan Coalition.

And most importantly, he spent nights with me, and was by my side whenever I needed him. Even when I cried so bitterly about never getting any attention from you.

As the triumphs gathered, I thought that our victories would be enough to finally get a fragment of the love you granted Wilhelm and my siblings.

When you sat there in the cavernous palace, exhausted and cold, Wilhelm warmed you with his cape and granted to me the honors that he had won himself on the battlefield. He did this in an attempt to improve your estimation of me.

When he said those things, Mother, my heart overflowed with love. I wanted him for myself.

But... I hated the relationship you had with my teacher. I always knew those most intimate feelings would only ever be there for you.

And that his care for me was truly on your behalf alone. It was your smile he was searching for, not mine.

I learned to tolerate this knowledge with each passing day, but could not ever move past the sadness.

...When you died, I thought he could be mine alone, Mother.

I remember how broken his heart was – how the thought of you being torn apart by that Nemesis had utterly crushed him. I came to his room in the palace that night and berated him. And then I held him in my arms and made him pledge to me – that we would destroy all of your enemies, Nemesis, those ten elites, the Almyrans, the Agarthans – all of them. And then bring you back to life once again.

He never returned that embrace that night or again, Mother.

But he agreed to that pledge.

And I hated him for that. The pledge was meaningless.

The embrace was all that my heart truly desired.

But... he always looked after me, in spite of everything. I would have died so many times without his watchful eye. And he fought, with all his heart and without consideration for his body for me, just like he did for you. And sometimes, against my own better judgment, I thought that he might finally grow to love me, too. For thirty years we wandered like that. Ageless beings, from village to village, gathering our forces and biding our time. Not once did he reach out his hand to me, like he always did with you. He chose to suffer in silence instead, as if I was never by his side.

People spoke of us as lovers once, because they saw the way I yearned for his affection, his kindness, his care. How just the smallest consideration of his would make my heart sing.

And then, after three decades in the darkness, we began to win. We won for you.

After each victory with him at my side, I yearned evermore passionately for the intimacy that he gave to you and withheld from me. As each Agarthan castle fell – from Thales's first to Julian's last, I stood there, waiting for him to return an iota of feeling towards me, your daughter. The product of the woman he cared for and loved so deeply. In the image of his own mother, no less.

There was a short time where I believed he might.

Once, he nearly died, Mother – to save my own life, this time. Just like he did for you.

He had lost so much blood in the fight against one of the Agarthans… Ishtar, was it? Anyway, I could plainly see that his life was drawing to its close. So… I waited until his crest, your crest, faded away. And then, I slit my wrist and gave him my own. Hoping against hope, I begged you to let me have him.

When he awoke in my bed after a week of delirium after that transfusion, I was there as he opened his eyes.

But when I looked into those purple irises of his, all I saw was you behind them.

Still, I tried everything to remove you from them.

I offered him an Emperor's Crown.

He took it and would still not love me.

I offered him a continent, conquered by our hands.

He took it and still would not love me.

I offered him myself as his Empress.

He declined, and produced a bastard a year later from a servant whose name he could not remember. That was Lycaon.

How the knowledge of that destroyed me, Mother. How my womb, which carried your blood wasn't good enough, but some peasant's apparently was.

Yet, when the day came for me to begin my experiments to revive you, he was the first to volunteer. And I knew it was because he loved you so much, that he'd gladly sacrifice himself on the smallest hope of saving you. Just like he did thousands of years before in that swamp that now holds the city of Enbarr, that beautiful city that is a monument to his love for you. His palace constructed upon that place where you two shared your earliest memories.

On all my maps, I simply place "Hresvelg". Because I cannot bare to look at that name. It is the name of the child he wanted to have with you, but never could. His father's name.

A child he could have had with me...

Just know that the torture I inflicted upon him on the day of the experiment was unimaginable. There were no sedatives or anesthetics then – those had disappeared with the Agarthans. I smiled bitterly as I tore his chest open and the blood began to flow anew.

I watched as you turned his hair white, as I wrapped you around his heart, and your crest melded with my own.

I watched his tears as I sealed the wound.

And when I told him what a success it was, and that soon you would be revived…

I watched the joy in his face melt away all the pain I caused.

And I began to hate you.

But then I began to love you again when I realized that I had in fact failed.

That you and I together were killing him.

When Macuil saw his hair in that sickbed, he must have known what I had done. He stormed into the throne room and berated me endlessly. How could I have been so thankless? How could I use the technique of our most bitter enemies – the people who had the hubris to plant two crests on humans and mark them for death as weapons of mass destruction?

That windbag continued on and on for hours.

Most were accusations of the most base kind, like:

Had I not cared for him just like they all did?

I cared for him the most, I thought.

That he was our teacher?

He was my teacher, I thought.

And our Mother's beloved?

I loved him more, I thought.

But to Macuil, I only replied with silence.

And so they left – Macuil, Indech, even Cichol and Cethleann – for a time. Day by day, week by week, month by month, I watched Wilhelm die in the worst and most absolute agony imaginable.

That son with that servant managed his role well in the interim, aided by a minor crest of mine.

You will be happy to know that Wilhelm faded in the most stately composure in spite of all that pain, happy that he could have you so close to him again. Each day I waited on him, and all he thought of was you. All he spoke of was you. On the last day of his lucidity, he joked about how warm his chest felt knowing that the two of you were reunited. How he could pass on happily.

Finally, a few days later, in the moments just before his death, he suddenly called out to you.

And I replied, doing my best impression of your voice.

And he reached out his hand, desperately – pleadingly to hold yours one last time. The pain as the twin crests overwhelmed his internal organs must have been unspeakable.

I declined to take it, Mother.

Just before he died, tears flowed from his eyes. But not mine.

When you awaken – one year from now – I'm going to tell you that.