Track 3: Deep Red

The day Arete disappeared without a trace would be the final nail in the coffin to set the original story onwards, and that was one of the key events I was determined to stop by any means necessary. It would certainly send canon off the rails, but at the point I decided I would stop that, I was manic.

And it all was because I had murdered one of my siblings right on Camilla's birthday.

His name, I found out later after the act was done, was Victor Artemis du Nohr, and was about a year older. He had always been one of the quieter children even among the silent ones like Leo (and back then poor Leo was a mangle of nerves, quieter than the night breeze). I never got to know him personally; we hadn't ever given a word to each other but for the basest of courtesies when the dining hall accommodations demanded so. Victor never spoke a word during lessons unless the tutors specifically called him, but either way was well on his way to be the first among us to try Thunder magic, which was a pretty big deal. Our main tutor, Iago Macbeth (Yes, THAT Iago), who by that time still had his whole face and a hopeful glint in his eyes, often ridiculed all of us by calling us trash in comparison to Victor. Yet at the same time, he backslapped the kid by calling him a weakling for his quiet personality. Leo still hadn't shown aptitude for magic, being that he had just begun out and had a whole year of material to catch up on, and surprisingly, he didn't pick it up immediately.

As for myself, I soon found out, quite before anyone told me, that I'd be average at best.

I was and still am unremarkable in every martial and magical sense, and honestly, I was fine with it to a degree. I want to think it was due to my older mind and younger body having trouble "synchronizing" or something among those lines. I was often reprimanded by both my fencing and magic teachers that I tended to cut out important basics during my training in an effort to go directly to the result. It was more a problem of discipline and mindset coming from learning at a slower pace, because while my mind could by all means learn, I seemed to have trouble relaying the information to my body, so I tried (and mostly failed) to compensate by taking shortcuts where I could, something that never went unnoticed by my tutors; they were the best in Nohr, after all.

My one strong forte was that my older mind allowed higher focus, but to be less pretentious about it, I just had a different form of patience. Whereas the other kids relied on pure instinct and instruction, I had a bunch of habits ingrained quite deep into me, which got me a lot of punishments in the process of unlearning myself out of them.

I had to adapt, and so I did to the best of my abilities. At a slow and arduous pace that was way too evident.

Which was first noticed by one Graciela Sorel. Mrs. Sorel was an elderly woman renowned for bringing in the rowdiest of noble boys and girls and grooming them into presentable members for high society. In blunt terms, Mrs. Sorel hovered about us like a vulture at all times - while at our desks, eating at our table, and even during and after our combat sessions - and beat "unsightly" manners out of us via good ol' sessions a' whippin'. She also instructed us in a variety of things, from dancing, to table manners, etiquette, to even bathroom manners (One thing I think I won't ever be able to get over).

Now, as a disclaimer I was never one of the most refined persons in my old life. I want to think I just had common sense, if a bit of a crude tongue that often got me in trouble (not a sharp one, just a rather a blunt mouth prone to profanity), but I often survived social meetings by virtue of blending into the background. Now then, as a Nohrian Prince, that wouldn't fly, and it was made difficult by a number of reasons. First being that among my mostly blond brothers and sisters, and Nohrians in general, I tended to stick out due to my dark hair and piercing copper red eyes. It was a bit surprising that even with Camilla's lovely lilac mane when we were all lined together, I stood out like a sore thumb because of my hair and eyes, both part of my inheritance from my mother's family. My facial structure is similar to Xander's, which I've heard is in return similar to Garon's back when he was in his youth and didn't sport such a voluminous beard, but due to the way I've been styling my hair (combed backwards and gelled), it's a bit hard to see much resemblance between us unless looking closely. I would never pass as a Hoshidan, mind you, but it was certain that I had a bit of mixed ancestry in me (which I heard was what attracted Garon to my mother in the first place).

The second one was that, due to my memories of my old life being ingrained in such strange ways (damn you, past me!) I had to work twice as hard with my habits. If my memories don't lie to me, I never had to worry about anything other than being downright savage when eating. I used my forks and knives accordingly and ate with my mouth closed, but that just wasn't good enough for Mrs. Sorel. Corporal punishment was a common practice in Nohr, and I got me quite a number of scars on the back of both my hands and my back to attest to it. Those were the most brutal of them all. We would be whipped each time on both hands for taking the wrong fork, twice on each hand if so much of the middle of our fingers reached the handles, and thrice for both hands and twice on the back if we didn't keep the correct posture when eating. The worst part? She wouldn't do it right away, oh dear no. All of us accrued a tally of whippings and would receive them daily during the end of our morning classes, tallies we all had to keep a close eye on, even Xander. Mrs. Sorel would ask us each how many whippings we had accumulated, and if we were off by just a single digit, we would be forced to do additional chores, never more whippings, for some inane reason, but additional homework and essays that were by all means mundane and soulcrushing busywork. I guessed it was because there was so much physical damage she could do to us before it interfered with our fencing lessons. And the cherry on top was that Mrs. Sorel seemed particularly delighted in screwing the kids she didn't like. I was one of the children in her shitlist.

My ancestry was never explicitly used against me, but something about just my appearance seemed to piss her off, and she was outright the one who took the most leverage out of it. It's not like my family tree was a secret, heck, my mother belonged to a minor noble house, so any of the teachers, or the concubines and even their children would surely find it up if they looked.

One day, I was given the delightful title of "The Below Average Prince" both as a mocking of my performance in my classes as well as my ancestry. It was quite backhanded of her, if I do say so myself.

All hell broke loose when my mother heard of this not too long after. Let it be known that Sol Grimwood (Grimwood I found out later was my mother's maiden name as well as that of her household, and as a concubine didn't have the right to take the du Nohr name for herself like Queen Arete would) is proud of her lineage and her family's achievements. It's the reason I have the second name Perdido too, which I also learned was the name of my grandfather who was a high ranking officer in the Royal Army before he retired due to tuberculosis and a lost leg about a decade and a half ago. My mother took to Mrs. Sorel and thoroughly berated her, and was bitterly retorted back. I don't remember the whole shouting match, but the important part is that it devolved into a series of insults where Mrs. Sorel mocked my mother that for all of her lineage and history, she was just a no name courtesan that would never have a hand in the crown, and that my "dirty blood" was better off in the sewers.

Mrs. Sorel was found dead by multiple stab wounds not even a day later. My mother was arrested for murdering an esteemed educator when they found a suspicious knife in her chambers. I remember the last thing she told me was that I should always be proud of my ancestry and shouldn't let anything stop my ambitions, that I should aim for more, for the top and beyond.

A few days later, I overheard the maids gossiping that my mother hung herself in her cell.

For the children of Garon, there was nothing worse than losing their mother for their sense if security. As much as I hate to admit it, my mother was an enormous safety umbrella for me. She had always been a choleric one, guided more by her ambitions and emotions than actual reason or planning, but she was nonetheless cunning, so cunning and driven enough to not be stopped and hang herself. Perhaps even more than any of that though, was a love for her family as a name. My mother rarely talked about her time before Garon, but there was always this bizarre warmth when she reminisced about her father and mother, as well as her siblings. I still remember many stories of my grandfather Perdido in particular, who my mother was always happy to talk about.

Looking back, those were the only times I could bear to look at her in the eye.

I never truly hated her. She had been also a complicated woman, something I understood from the beginning due to my particular situation, being reincarnated and all. She birthed me, and though she did use me as a tool to try and claim the throne like many of her fellow concubines, she protected me to the end, even if she lost it all.

And all of that had been a motherfucking ploy by none other than Victor's mother. I didn't know then if my mother had truly murdered Mrs. Sorel or not, nor did I ever found out, nor want to know, or if she did hang herself or someone set her up, but back then I didn't care. With a rage that I didn't know I would be able to muster for anyone in this crapsack family, I wanted revenge.

And if there's something I'm quite bad at, even after being reincarnated, it's handling anger. It was at that moment that I realized how ironic it was that anger was the one thing that resonated the most with both my previous and current lives.

Of course, being just an 8 year old, freshly made an orphan, I couldn't just up and go on a rampage to claim revenge. I had to play it safe if I wanted to live to tell the tale.

And that's where I fucked up.

In hindsight, I should have realized it would end badly, but again, anger made me short-sighted, and as much as I want to refute otherwise, at some point I stopped caring if I took someone innocent down with me, which made me concoct one of the stupidest plans ever that worked.

I took the death of my mother the best as I could and started planning (Read: I did so badly). Now that she was out of the equation I had to act fast, because I was a free target and I wouldn't be surprised if Victor's mother wanted to finish the job thoroughly. So I took what I had been learning and doing under my mother, namely learning about my environment, and decided on a course of action to kill the bitch.

My chance came about a month later, right on Camilla's birthday. At that time Garon made it a point to make small celebrations to their children if he could, which was quite morbid for us children. In hindsight, I'm sure he had all the best of intentions (even if he had this downright haunting expression during the celebrations, and those feelings decayed each year until we didn't celebrate our birthdays anymore) and truly wanted his children to have a good time on their birthdays. My 8th birthday was skipped at my insistence of not having a party, both as an excuse to not expose myself because of my recently deceased mother, because I was still ironing out the details of my stupid plan, and because I was truly grieving her as well.

One night a few days before the celebration, I slipped into the kitchen and took a single long knife and hid it in my bedroom within a chest locked by a key; a key which was passed down to me when my mother died, key that had no spares, as the chest belonged to her exclusively and was actually protected by magic, the nature of which evades me to this day (I only know that forcing it open or destroying will have some… explosive results). In it were her personal effects, including her diary, some weapons I suppose she wanted to pass down to me when I came of age, and some Tomes I knew she had been working hard to obtain. As a concubine she didn't have much in the way of money; her basic necessities were covered, but she didn't have much else. There also were some papers with the Grimwood seal, which were in reality her (modest) will and various directions for contacts she trusted. My mother had truly been working hard for me.

I locked the knife away until the day of Camilla's celebration.

The plan was simple: Stab the bitch in the jugular, burn her out with my Fire Tome if she survived, discard my clothes and burn them and then dispose of the knife. How would I carry such an insane plan out? Well, it was really stupid.

I needed to bait her or leave her defenseless for the attack. Due to my small body, the second option was the safer one. Even with my body trained and hardened, I was still too small to pose a physical challenge to the woman, and to make matters worse, she actually was a Dark Mage, a shitty one at that, but one that could easily kill me in a frontal assault if only due to my mediocre talent and her experience tilting the scales.

The way I went about it was even dumber. I had procured my mother's sleeping medicine and powdered it to a fine dust, which I would spike into her drink during the party, and once she was out for the night, I would kill her in her sleep.

The day of the party, I was nervous as hell. I was jittery and skirting around like a stressed cat. That day the evening classes and activities had been cancelled due to the festivities. Garon had come back from whatever business at the frontier (I didn't care about it) and was organizing a small but sizeable banquet, so our schedules had been freed in the afternoon and onwards, while the servants were hurrying all over the place, tired and overworked. I got to my own devices by preparing two sets of clothes, a thick robe (and thank fuck it was November and cold as hell, so going around with thick clothing wasn't that unusual, not that Windmire was ever warm, mind you), my recently strengthened Fire Tome, the sleep medicine I had powdered, and the knife that would be the murder weapon.

The party started at sunset. I took my first set of clothes and my robe. I hid the medicine in the pocket of my shirt, and the dagger within the robe. As for the Tome, it wasn't uncommon to see a few of us walking around with one or two below our shoulders (or with a maid walking behind us with them), mostly those who had been studying Magic for a while tended to study whenever and wherever they could so long they didn't intrude, so I didn't look that out of place, but either way, I was waiting to be reprimanded to have an excuse to retire and leave the Tome in my room. The timing to spike the drink was crucial, so I skulked around the castle kitchens after the party had already started.

The funny thing about nobility is how picky they get to be with their food and drinks. Victor's mother, being actually a bit high on the hierarchy, adored indulging in this vanity. She was of the few concubines to have cooks prepare exclusive meals to her, and I knew which ones were the ones to do so. I had spent the time planning this revenge observing her, after all.

I waited until the first courses and drinks were ready to go out, and caused a small disaster within the kitchen to distract the cooks away from the wine for just one second. My prank later got many people fired, but who cares, right? I casted a fireball towards a group of oil bottles near one of the stoves, which burned into a small but sizeable flame that distracted them, and during the chaos, I slipped the medicine into her wine. After that I scurried out of the kitchen, calmed my nerves to the best of my mediocre abilities, and joined the festivities. I tried to appear calm, and entered the dining hall with my Tome open and trying to dig a hole through the pages with my eyes, and faked walking distractedly into an empty seat, quite a few ways away from Victor and his mother.

When Garon roared what the hell was I doing in the middle of celebration, Arete calmed him down quite spectacularly, coming to my defense. I was a bit touched, honestly, and I guess looking like shit after many sleepless nights helped me in looking miserable. Nonetheless I excused myself after Garon and the concubines drilled me down with disapproving glares.

I returned to my room and quickly changed clothes into the attire I would be using to commit the deed, quietly left when I thought nobody was looking, and took watch of the room belonging to Victor's mother. Not even half an hour later, I heard steps coming, and to my chagrin, it was Victor's mother… followed by her son. I cursed all manner of profanities under my breath, as I knew I had fucked up. Of course I should have expected an outcome like this, but what I didn't know back then is that it had been my fault… because I had overdosed her. The sleeping medicine had adverse effects when ingested in too large quantities, such as giving a mind-splitting headache before the sleeping effect kicks in with a vengeance, and the first half of that effect was what she was going through at that instant. The headache had made her excuse herself quite rudely from the guests, and Victor, bless his soul, had followed his mother in worry, Garon's outrage be damned.

I didn't quite catch what Victor and his mother were arguing about, I only remember Victor pleading and crying for his mother's wellbeing, and her dismissing him at every turn. The two of them entered the room in a hurry. I hesitated for a moment, but doubled down the corridor and near the door. I waited a few seconds outside, and Victor emerged soon enough, worry coloring his face from ear to nose.

We met face to face. He was quite surprised to see me, I'm sure. He quickly said that his mother was feeling sick and he needed to get a doctor or something. I calmed him down saying that she was probably just tired, so why not go and get her something to drink from the kitchens?

Victor listened to me. He actually listened to me and went back. Due to his rush, he didn't notice that I tossed my robe between the frame and the door to prevent it from closing. At that moment I didn't quite realize how half-baked my plan was as I hadn't actually planned how to enter her room but, alas, the stars aligned due to Victor's unexpected appearance and made the work easier.

With Victor gone, I waited a few minutes close by the door until I could hear steady breathing and, with my heart pumping in my ears, I trespassed.

There she was. The bitch that had killed my mother, sleeping peacefully thanks to the effects of the medicine. Time seemed to stretch infinitely in those few minutes I just stood there, wordlessly watching one I had resolved to kill… and doubting myself.

And it was all due to Victor. The poor boy was just a child worried for his mother, harpy as she is. I realized at that moment that I didn't know any of my siblings. I didn't know a thing about Victor other than he was proficient in magic and apologetic to a fault, and here I was, about to murder his mother, and make him just like me: an orphan in this castle trapped within the machinations of the concubines, of a malicious court, wanting to receive the love of a father who does not look at us, and just breaking apart as people a little bit more each day.

"Is this what revenge is?" I remember whispering to myself.

And for better or worse, I got my answer.

I spent too much dallying, and Victor came back with a glass of water in hand. And he saw me, his younger brother, watching over his mother like a gargoyle, a glimmering knife in my hand.

He didn't need to ask me what I was planning to do. Before I knew we were wrestling each other on the ground, with me shoving my forearm into his mouth to prevent him from screaming, and myself wailing silently at his teeth trying to bite me off. I was used to that much pain due to the hellish punishments, but I also snapped at that moment. Victor tried to disarm me, but I was actually physically stronger than he was, and I held.

"MURDERER!"

At some point, in my desperation, I stabbed him with in the gut. Things got really violent then. He looked surprised when dark red blood started flowing from the hole made by the silver blade.

"MURDERER!"

In what I guess was his final pump of adrenaline, Victor managed to shove me off, I rolled away and crashed into the night table near the bed, where the candle was pushed down into the ground. Victor then straddled me, decidedly choking me with his lanky hands.

Soon enough the velvety room became an inferno.

"MURDERER!"

I struggled more between screams and tears. Everything had gone off the rails.

"MURDERER!"

Victor's grip eventually loosened as I reached again for the knife embedded in his gut and tore it in further. Blood splattered on my hands, my arms, my shirt, my face. I'm sure soon enough I was covered from head to toe, but I was able to overpower him eventually.

"MURDERER!"

The last thing I remember before passing out is a room lit ablaze and cradling my dead brother in my arms.