Chapter 16 Sanctus et Peccator

Transcript of Interview with Wilhelm Viktor von Hozollern, taken by Mage Doctor Gustav Jung of the Waldstätte Psychological Institute

December 2nd Unified Year 1920

This interview was taken at the behest of the Imperial ambassador to Letzenbourg as part of the investigation over concerns of the over-medicating, and misdiagnosis of the young prince. As requested, I have left my own notes and recommendations throughout.

Jung: Are you ready to begin? How are you feeling Wilhelm?

Subject: Horrible! Why do I have to be in this thing again? I hate it!

The subject is referring to the ECT device, modified with computation orb and mana detection device developed by myself and Dr. Frude (*see appendix 4). Unfortunately, the subject needs to be restrained for accurate readings, causing some discomfort.

Jung: Now now Wilhelm, you've been in something similar before. It's an important piece of medical equipment, using mana we can monitor your responses and…..

Subject: Tell me I'm sick and poison me some more!

Jung: I'm hoping that we can put a stop to all that. Now let's talk about the dreams you discussed with Dr. Binet.

At this point, the subject became silent and uncooperative, his previous experiences with members of our profession having colored his opinion of us. The medication given to the subject causes side effects such as bouts of sickness and confusion. Having discovered this, I'm told the medical staff has found it increasingly difficult to medicate him, and often need to use force. This has eroded his trust in our profession further.

Jung: I understand you're very intelligent Wilhelm, are these the books you're reading? There can't be many children your age that could read these. Let's see. Poor Dionis, Faust, Macbeth, Crime and Punishment, Animal farm? A little heavy going isn't it?

It should be noted that during our research into family history on the Duke's side, signs of both genius and lunacy are present, although not necessarily both at once. Interestingly their links to the deposed royal family of François can be traced back to the so-called Xarles the Mad, however, enough time has passed that this is unlikely to be relevant.

Subject: You don't think I understand them either, do you? You're just like Dr. Binet, I won't let you inject me with any more of that stuff!

Jung: Wilhelm please, I don't want to inject you with anything. I was just surprised. So you read them yourself? I had assumed you had them read to you, did you pick them out?

Subject: Christina lets me read whatever I want, not like my old nanny, I don't want to read stupid stories about caterpillars or elves.

Jung: Ah but you were reading them before Christina let you, weren't you? It seems to me that there are some similarities to your dreams in these books.

Subject: No! It's not like that!

Despite his agitation, the readings seem stable. This is an encouraging sign.

Jung: Then tell me about your dream, help me understand.

Subject: It's hard, the medicine makes my head feel fuzzy, everything seems jumbled. It's easier to remember the end. I'm sure it's not a dream, it feels more like a memory.

+++ Page missing +++

Jung: Wilhelm, I think the medicine is making you confuse what's real and what's not. The machine can't seem to find any signs of your illness so I'm going to suggest we take you off the medication. I also prescribe some less dreary books for you to read, try this one I think you'll like it, it's about a heroic swashbuckling prince.

Although I have some concerns over some of the subject matter of his highnesses' dreams, I believe they stem from a lack of emotional understanding about the death of his mother and subsequent illness suffered by the Grand Duke. I have suggested the suspension of his medication, I believe the side effects of the drug are being confused as the illness in this case. I will review again in a month, other than that he is to be kept away from potentially stressful situations. The machine is known to be only 70% accurate and although we are confident in our diagnosis, we would prefer to err on the side of caution. If there were an error, anxiety could cause his mental state to deteriorate quickly.

I do not personally believe this will be a problem, however.

It should also be noted the machine detected a highly erratic mana signature, I'm sure this will calm as he grows, and he will become a proficient mage. It should be monitored, however.

Dr. Gustav Jung

Found while clearing old files in the Waldstätte Psychological Institute.

Xxxxx

She used to believe, she used to be faithful, until she realised that life isn't fair.

The two biggest lies we are ever taught as children is that we are all equal, and if you work hard enough you can achieve anything.

How can we be equal when all the evidence itself shows us it's not true? Are we all the same height? Do we get the same test scores? Does every sports match end in a draw because no one team is stronger or more skilled than the other? The sad truth is our genetics, decide our potential. If you have a natural talent or intelligence towards something you will more likely to succeed in it. Your very birth dictates your potential success.

From birth, society begins dictating your worth, based on sex, race, disabilities, sexuality and a hundred other unspoken measures to decide where your place in the world should be. Everyone knows you're not supposed to, but they do it anyway, and then they don't talk about it. Instead, they use other more socially acceptable reasons for denying people their wants and needs, but these are just excuses. In many ways' society tries to use your genetics against you, it uses your very birth to limit your potential success.

Life doesn't see you as equal, because life isn't fair.

There is another element to our inequality too, one that relates to the where and to whom you are born. Can a child born to a poverty-stricken family in the third world be considered equal to the child of a billionaire industrialist? Will they get the same education? The same opportunities to succeed? A genius could be doomed to work minimum wage on a factory floor because their family was too poor to give them the best education. While a rich spoiled heir or heiress is given a company that they will run into the ground with their incompetence because they went to the right school and daddy is a Freemason. Life doesn't care, because Life isn't fair.

It seemed like there were two worlds, one for those born with wealth, status and power, and one for everyone else.

The second lie is supposed to disguise these flaws, or at least it attempts to be the balance for this philosophy. If you work hard enough you can achieve anything. On the surface this seems true, many people have prospered through hard work and gone on to achieve great things. But have you compared how much work really went into those achievements?

On closer inspection, rather than disguising the lie of equality, it exposes it further. Who you are, what you're born with and who you know, determine how hard you have to work. A wealthy and well-connected family could get even a below-average child into one of the top universities, from there they could meet more of the future leaders, judges, businessmen, and other elites. The only remaining limiting factor was themselves but with everything else offsetting their weaknesses they only needed a little work to achieve greatness. Or at least a comfortable life.

The poor family could not afford these things, they relied on the state-run schools, had to work just to feed themselves as they went. Unless there was a freak chance, they had little or no ways to make connections, they had to work to get them. Even if they overcome these things, then they are saddled with debt to pay for their education. Even the most intelligent will struggle to overcome these obstacles and even then, those who hold the keys of power are reluctant to let anyone new near what is theirs. So, they had to work harder every step of the way, and all their extra hard work is only considered equivalent to that of the wealthy family.

Is that Equal?

It's easy to say you got where you are on your own merit, but it's never as simple as that. Was the talent you were born with merit? Was your sex or race? True you worked hard to get where you were, but you could afford that good school, the better education, was that merit? How much did you really earn yourself? How much was given to you? How much were you born with?

In an Olympic race, the starting positions are staggered to compensate for the longer distances on the outer lanes. In life the rich and powerful start on the inside track, but they also start closer to the finish line and are given help or sometimes even carried to their goal. Most of the time they don't even need to follow the rules, they can afford a good lawyer, and they're friends with the judge.

Meanwhile, people on the outside track started further back, had to jump hurdles and were given lead weights to carry. Technically you could still win though if you worked hard enough, that's what they would tell you anyway. They might as well be racing on different tracks, it was like they were living in different worlds.

This is why we are almost always ruled by the wealthy elite, the deck is stacked against those that they don't want to get into positions of power and wealth. There have been revolutions in the past to overthrow this established ruling class, but they were soon replaced by another. Even communism, with its high ideals of equally sharing the wealth through common ownership, soon fell to corruption and a small group of elites once again began controlling everything and suppressing those who they didn't want to gain power.

This is why she no longer believed if there were a God, then He allowed this injustice, he even engineered it. If there were a God, he didn't deserve to be worshiped, he deserved to be reviled.

There was only one true leveller in the world, only one way to force those who had everything to part with some of it. One great power that made those with power turn against each other for their own survival. Information.

Knowledge is power, and with the right knowledge you could bring empires to its knees. Information could be bought and sold, it could be given to gain trust and if you relaxed your morals it could be faked. With the right information, you could gain access to their world and force them to uphold the rules they enforced on everyone else. Or you could take a slice of their cake and enjoy the fruits of your labors, after all, you worked very hard for it.

She had needed to work very hard, sexism was still alive and well despite certain parts of society's claims to the contrary. She was also not from a particularly well-off family so she had not managed to win God's lottery as far as finance and influence were concerned. So, despite these disadvantages, she began her life studying hard under the belief that hard work would win out and one day she could have a happy comfortable life.

As a child she was brought up to be faithful in god, as she grew, she saw the world and her faith wavered. She once asked the priest why some people seemed to want for nothing, while others had nothing but want. She was told that God helps those who help themselves. Her observation was that god helped no one, while those that helped themselves, helped themselves to other people's things and demanded you give them what little you had to fix God's roof. She was beaten for her insolence for daring to question God's wisdom, so instead, she questioned God's existence.

It was a dog eat dog world amongst the group without the support of daddy's bank balance. She often found herself being stepped on by those who also wanted to advance in life. She wasn't the smartest but she was one of the better students, but she soon found it still wasn't enough, even down here there was a social pecking order and she watched others begin to overshadow her. At first, she thought she just needed to try harder, but when a classmate stole her work and got a better grade than her, she knew it wasn't that simple.

It wasn't enough to work hard, you had to drag others down as you went. Humans are animals after all, and like animals competing for resources, she would fight for her own success. She had to crush or control her rivals if she were to get the life she deserved and she would do anything to accomplish it. It was justified, deep down she knew she was better than them, why else would they try to keep her down?

She would maintain some friends and allies however, after all 'No man is an Island' as John Donne said. They had to be trustworthy and hardworking like her though, and she would keep them loyal friends by helping them achieve their goals too, as long as it didn't interfere with hers. Anyone else who got in her way would become fair game, however, she would do what she needed to do. She vowed she would do whatever it took to get her comfortable life, even if she had to give up her mind body and soul to do it.

She went to university to study journalism and political science, she discovered the importance of information and began to understand how the powers that be ruled over them, she glimpsed into the other world.

They ruled with information, or rather misinformation. They didn't need to lie, just arrange the facts in a certain way to get the desired result. When they did lie, they just needed to sprinkle in a speck of truth and apologise for the mistake if it was ever found. Usually, it wouldn't be found at all, that speck of truth was enough to give it credibility.

Their actual authority was much more fragile than people realised, much of their power relied on appearances, it was more the pretense of power, it was a giant bluff. People did as they were asked because they were expected to if anyone questioned it, they had to resort to drastic measures to maintain control. It only worked if people followed the rules, they had law enforcers to make sure these rules were followed but even they relied on an authority that was paper-thin. It was a system that relied on societies built-in flaws and inequality to keep it working, but there were cracks and weaknesses, which meant it was exploitable.

She began working for a national newspaper and found it just as competitive. Worse still the editor must have been in the pocket of someone important as she found her work to dig at the establishment blunted and stymied. Instead, she was encouraged to do softer more light-hearted stories, it infuriated her. Still, she worked hard, slowly chipping away and slowly slipping bits into her articles under the editor's nose. Eventually, she'd wear them down, that was the plan at least but she was becoming impatient.

She had been investigating government corruption for years now, she'd been told to drop it by her boss, but she continued looking into it in secret. It was too good to leave alone. Her investigations had found they knew the location of some war criminals and they had been covering it up for years. Her editor wanted nothing to do with it, so she went it alone, hoping it would be the key to her comfortable life.

Blackmail is a dirty word, she preferred to think of it as being paid to keep certain information safe. Nobody could deny, however, that it was an opportunity to collect a lot of wealth and power very quickly. The targets of this blackmail had already done wrong and others were already hiding their involvement, all she was doing was using their own misdeeds against them. It was perfectly justified, in a way she would be punishing them and being compensated to do so. Soon she could live the life she deserved.

She had made contact with one of the criminals who might be willing to sell out his handlers if she cut him in on the deal and a chance to tell his story. He was understandably reluctant at first and insisted on using an alias. They had been exchanging correspondence for months and she made little progress persuading him. She had almost given in when finally, he asked for a meeting. This would be it, this would be the information that would secure her the easy life, this would be her ticket into their world.

xxxxx

I felt oddly numb as I watched my blood spread slowly along the floor. There was still a throbbing where I had been struck on the head and I could feel the bruising to my side where I had fallen but somehow the pain didn't quite reach me. I felt disconnected from my body as I saw feet cross my eye line and once more another heavy blow struck me hard across the temple. The feet limped away, dropping their weapon with a loud thud as they went, leaving me staring into the eyes of the statue that had battered me.

It was a reproduction of 'The Thinker' and as its name suggests it was staring at me thoughtfully. It felt as though I was being judged, I felt a strange urge to justify myself to the object but as I struggled to open my mouth no sound would emerge. Instead, I turned my mind to how I had gotten here, how it had come to this.

I could say I'd gotten careless and panicked, or that I hadn't planned well enough and missed something. Ultimately though, my biggest mistake was that I had gotten greedy.

They say life passes before your eyes before you die, this wasn't my experience, at least it's not how I remember it. Maybe it was the head wound or maybe the poison the doctors would sedate my new body with, but I struggle to remember any of it clearly. It had seemed like a dream, unreal and untouchable, I wish it was.

I tried to move but my body wouldn't obey, instead, it sent a prickle of pain along my body, cutting through even the debilitating numbness. I tried to call for help but again no noise escaped me, except for my own ragged breathing.

I could feel my pulse weakening as I grew colder and colder, I watched the blood spread further from me and knew with a sickening realisation that I was going to die.

I never got what I deserve I thought sadly

"And what do you deserve?" a voice emanated from the thoughtful statue. I must be hallucinating I thought but I was compelled to answer anyway.

My comfortable life! Everything I ever wanted! I've always worked so hard, I'm better than all of them! I deserve more!

"If you worked so hard, why don't you already have all that? Why are you here?" The voice replied. I remember feeling angry, was my own subconscious turning on me in my final moments?

Because of who I was born as! What chance did I ever have!

"You truly believe that, don't you?" The statue asked. "How strange you humans are."

The pain was gone I realised, although I was still paralyzed. I was confused, this wasn't right, this wasn't my subconscious, but how else could a statue be talking. Who or what could it be?

"Who indeed?" The statue asked as I stared at it with growing horror, it couldn't be could it? It must just be my mind playing tricks.

"I had heard that faithlessness had spread over here, I thought it prudent to check. It seems you have no intention of breaking the cycle." The voice began to explain with sad resignation, "Such a shame, you believed once."

Despite my fear, or perhaps because of it, I felt my anger rise. It was this thing's fault! All of it!

It was you! You're the one responsible! You set my life on its course and now what? You want me to thank you for it? You want me to worship you? Fuck you! You don't deserve my devotion! I screamed at the thinker with my mind, how dare it! I'd been forced to work my entire life without reward because of this thing if I'm going to die Its at least going to get a piece of my mind.

"You blame me for your birth? I see you really have fallen, it seems I have no choice but to punish you then." The thinker stated calmly.

If I'd had enough blood left in my body, I'm not sure whether it would have run cold with fear or boiled with rage. I was going to be punished for that thing's mistakes, it seemed the afterlife was just as unfair as life.

Suddenly I began to feel a strange and deeply uncomfortable sensation spread throughout my body. There was no pain, just an uncomfortable tingling all over. The edges of my thoughts seemed to disappear, I mentally grasped for them but gradually I felt my sense of self disappear only to be replaced with emptiness.

I panicked as more and more of my self seemed to evaporate. A terror unlike any other took hold of my remaining soul, it was an indescribable feeling of fear and sadness I felt as everything that was me was stripped away. My vision blurred and I swore I saw the thinker begin to grin cruelly.

It's not fair! Why me? I'm worth a thousand of them! My inner voice cried in desperation as the last parts of my inner self began to fade.

Abruptly the draining stopped and my sense so self began flowing back to me. My vision slowly began to refocus and once again the statue stared at me, studying me closely.

"You place great worth on yourself human," The thinker started. "You are filled with sin but perhaps you can still be useful."

By this point I had decided anything would be better than what I had just gone through. I still felt strange and disconnected by my brush with nonexistence, I never wanted to feel that again.

"You blame your birth, so I will give you a new one, with all the wealth and privilege you covet." He declared. "It will give you everything you need to succeed, I will do nothing to interfere with your new life"

I was stunned, what was going on? I had gone from being punished to being offered paradise, I felt elated but confused and suspicious. Why the sudden change?

"But there is a price if you don't want to be cast into the Abyss." The voice warned.

Not that! I'll do anything!

"Deliver unto me, one thousand faithful souls."

My sense of self began to dissipate once again but it was different this time. I was horrified by that thing's words, I'm no murderer, I don't want to kill people. This God was truly a monster, truly horrible a devil.

This experience did nothing to rekindle my faith, but I can now say I believe again. You can't fear if you don't believe.

Xxxxx

May 4th Unified Year 1925

203rd Temporary Command Centre 23:55

"Who are you really? What did you mean you'd be free?" Growled Tanya as she pinned the little colonel to the ground. He was still an emotional wreck and it felt somehow wrong to see him this way. It was like he'd lost all control over himself, she almost missed his smug self-serving attitude.

"I'm not alone! We can…" He began with a hopeful look on his face before Tanya cut him off.

"Wilhelm!" She hissed shoving him to the floor once again, bringing her face down level with his and fixing him with a glare. "Answer me, Wilhelm," she said threateningly.

"The medicine I was given made me forget some of it. I…I was murdered, that monster started to do something to me. I started disappearing." He began babbling fearfully, it seemed Being X inspired genuine fear in the boy.

"I was scared, I would have done anything to stop it. It told me I would be reborn if I kill for it, if I don't, I'll stop existing!" He cried, fear turning to anger in the boy's voice.

Something seemed strange, Being X was a bastard, but would he actually ask someone to kill for him? Still, could she put it past him? History is rife with people killing for their God, crusaders being promised a ticket to paradise in exchange for murder. Was this really any different? That thing had a sick sense of humor.

He went on to explain that the sword was counting how many he had killed while bemoaning that nobody else could see the number on it. Due to being medicated in his youth he had thought it was all a terrible nightmare but once his medicine was stopped, he realised he would be no more if he didn't fulfill his end of the bargain. He could see that a war was brewing so he began working to find a way of putting himself in a situation he could pay his debt.

"I didn't want to kill anyone, but people die in wars, I figured if I kill the enemy that's ok, it's justified! I'm just trying to survive!" He said

Morally she should be disgusted by this, but ultimately, he was killing for his own survival. Every soldier on the battlefield was doing the same, she couldn't really criticise him for that, the only real difference is he had a quota to fill. She had to admit his solution to finding victims was surprisingly rational for him. By being in a war he had legal and moral justifications for his actions in addition to that, it made economic sense. It was true that people were going to die in a war, that was a regrettable truth that no amount of feeling sad about it will change. Wilhelm was using their sacrifices for his own survival, it was almost a twisted version of recycling.

"What about Arene?" She asked narrowing her eyes, remembering why they were here. Was he lying? If he was, she couldn't see what he was trying to achieve aside from a trip to the mental ward. He seemed like he was being truthful, although her track record of spotting his lies was spotty at best. But he'd almost seemed relieved when telling her all this as if he was glad he could finally unload it all.

"I don't know, the number didn't go up," He began voice filled with sadness. "They were all going to die anyway, I thought there'd be enough to end it and I could leave and be happy." He continued looking up at her sorrowfully, "That monster never told me the rules, the number doesn't always change, he cheated me!"

Tanya considered this for a moment, this much sounded like the being X she knew, every time she'd been close to proving that bastard wrong, he'd interfered somehow. He had mocked her in the north and it was why she was stuck with the type 95, Being X seemed to delight in taunt its victims.

She wanted to press him further but suddenly the main doors to the chapel came crashing open revealing Lieutenants Grantz and Serebryakov.

"Major, colonel, I'm sorry to interrupt but ...oh," Began Visha as she pushed through. She seemed to blush as she paused and Tanya looked around confused.

Crap! she realised. She was still straddling the colonel, she'd even had her face down by his, of course, they'd feel uncomfortable, they probably thought that she'd been beating him to calm him down or something.

Quickly she got up and straightened her uniform, trying to regain her composure. It's entirely fine, I was just dealing with a hysterical officer. She thought to herself. She heard the little colonel also pick himself up as he looked at the messengers expectantly, Grantz and Visha didn't seem to know where to look.

"Report"! She ordered snapping the officers back into reality.

"We've had a message from western command Sir's," Grantz began looking uncomfortable and glancing at the colonel. "It's Letzenbourg, they've switched sides, the regent is letting the Republicans in and the Letzenbourg forces are fighting amongst themselves!"

Surprised Tanya turned to look at the colonel. Although he had regained some of his composure, he wore a frown of annoyance.

"Why now of all times, I knew you wouldn't just abdicate" He whispered to himself

"It seems we'll have to arrest you then colonel," Tanya said trying to keep a sly grin from her face. She expected a dirty look from the boy but was surprised to see a grin begin to spread across his face.

"Erm, not quite ma'am" Visha began. "The Empire now recognises Prince Wilhelm as the new leader of Letzenbourg, the general wants to talk to you both on the phone right now."

You've been planning this all along, haven't you? Tanya thought staring at the boy once more, he leaned over and whispered into her ear.

"Looks like today isn't a total loss after all"

Authors Note

Hi All and thank you all for reading.

1st I'm going to pre-empt some things, I know it doesn't seem like being X: that's on purpose. Being X wouldn't ask for 1000 faithful souls to be killed: He says deliver faithful souls, Wilhelm is the one that decided that means to kill, the mechanics of the sword will be explained later on.

I'm sorry if this chapter seems a bit disjointed there was a lot I wanted to put in and I couldn't figure out the best way to do it. On top of that, I've not been well all week and have struggled to write more than a couple of paragraphs before feeling ill so I'm a little worried it might not be my best.

I'm also sorry if the backstory seems a bit vague, there's a couple of reasons for that that I can't reveal for now but it kinda bothers me as well. I like putting in little details but it's hard to do that if you're being deliberately vague.

I would have liked to do the whole thing like the medical bit at the top, that was fun to write but unfortunately, I couldn't think of a way to get everything I wanted in there. There are a few little details in there that I liked putting in.

About Wilhelm's reading list, there are some possible clues in those. Poor Dionis, for instance, has themes about reincarnation and time travel. (So wiki tells me anyway, I'm not super familiar with 19th-century Romanian literature). Also, technically Animal farm came out in 1945, but it's an alternate universe so let's just pretend George Orwell had the idea a bit earlier lol.

As always thank you all for reading

Xanen