The Sorceress stood over her study, staring down at a massive book of apocalyptical text from an mysterious origin. Her eyes shifted over the words death and prophecy.
It was not the end of humanity, it wasn't the end of the world. However it was the end of the world as they knew it, allowing it to be reborn in the blood and ashes of others.
How many people would die? Who was the Hero in this story? Who was destined to win?
Jack had become an Angel, the strongest she had ever believed there would be. Yet there was another being, the Heavenly Daemon Emperor. Where were they going to come from? What did they represent? What did her brother, Lord Sephir, represent?
Running her hand through her hair, she turned to look at the door of her room and pursed her lips. With a flick of her wrist, the door slammed shut and latched itself, locking upon her whim.
"Oh Jack..." She muttered quietly to herself as she sat down on her bed across the room from where she had once stood. She looked at her hands, then up towards the mirror.
He had looked down on her for abandoning not only him with her death, but her daughter in life. She believed in a way, he was right to judge her. Yet she couldn't let the world know, her world know, that she had conceived with an elf.
It was bad enough her elven lover and run away, it was even worse that she had ended up in the hands of slavers. Seeing that little elf on the bed with her former brother, she couldn't help but let out a quiet sigh. Perhaps she was in better hands. She'd be fed and cared for, at least that is what she hoped the most for.
Though she hadn't showed it at the time, she did care for her daughter. It was her only blood that didn't betray her expectations. Her eyes rested on the mirror across from her bed at the study.
She stared at her face, the perfect appearance of a villainess.
She wasn't evil, she didn't think so. Though she did experiment on the living and the dead. She damned her morals in order to get stronger. She damned anyone who got in her way.
She showed a darkness all humans harbored, ones that they hid in their vile imaginations.
It was dangerous to read one's thoughts, knowing very well that the person beside you could be thinking of murdering everyone in the room. Yet what controlled them, what stopped them, was either their moral center or the consequences that came with those actions.
She closed her eyes.
Evanon was fearful of her father as he had no moral center nor did he have consequences to learn from. The man was a sexual sociopath, anything he could get his hands on was a target.
Yet at the same time this was the reason she had gotten stronger, so she did not have to feel afraid anymore. The thoughts of what would've happened if she didn't sacrifice so much of herself in order to get where she was now, were horrendous.
She turned to look at the window of her room, looking over the capital city, covered by a thick cloud of darkness from up on high. A storm was brewing.
'Just how is this going to turn out?' She thought.
...
The Crown Prince stood in the courtyard of the Royal Palace, staring up at the darkened skies.
He was well aware of his father's typical plans, if they could be called such a thing. Plans, they needed to have some sort of bar they had to reach before they could even be called such a thing.
The man doubted his younger brother who had been essentially sent to his death paid attention at all to the scholars who were paid to school him in diplomacy. It was likely he took after their father. Which was a rather huge disappointment for probably everyone, including himself.
"I should get my other siblings together..." He muttered under his breath, "Starting with the bastard children." He knew that the King would rather use bastards to fight a war, than his legitimate heirs.
This Prince made his way off of the palace grounds and onto the streets. A small continent of four royal guards following him off the premises with the intention of protection.
Glancing over his shoulder, he could only smirk to himself slightly, before looking ahead.
There were over forty bastards he knew of in this city alone. He couldn't tell just how many were scattered across the Kingdom however, though he doubted any of them were trained to fight.
His father's way of fighting was just throwing bodies at his enemies. And while it worked due to the sheer overpopulation and poverty of the kingdom, it wasn't going to work with Sephir.
He didn't know Jack's abilities, but knowing his sister Evanon could teleport, he could only imagine how quickly he could end the war by bringing an entire army before the capital.
Would Jack do this? It'd be anticlimactic, cheating almost. These questions were currently unanswered. He looked up to the sky once more, partially believing winged angels would come raining down from those dark clouds, yet there was nothing but the ice cold spitting of rain.
Walking along the slab streets of the capital, avoiding carriages and shrinking through crowds. The Prince appeared in front of a large building, a group home for Royal Bastards, was the name printed on the placard with hung above the door.
He knocked on the raggedy wooden door, he could hear the hinges move uneasily as he did so. This place wasn't regularly cared for, that was for sure.
When the door opened, a small teenage girl with freckles on her upper cheeks and short orange hair, blazing green eyes, and a white nightgown looked up at him. "Oi... It's the Crown Prince!" She shouted with a rowdy tongue before taking a step back and walking away from the open door.
"Soph!" The Crown Prince barreled after her, "Come back here!"
"No! Your legit status offends me, half-brother!"
Clicking his tongue, the Crown Prince placed a hand on the female's head as the two entered the kitchen and dining room where all the bastards were currently inhabiting for a meal.
"First Prince Alden, what brings you here?" A young man in a bard's outfit stood, speaking in a singsong voice.
"A war is brewing... You know what that means."
All of the people at the table tensed just hearing the second word that had left his mouth. Even the women who were there tensed up. Conscriptions for soldiers typically took men. In order to make up for the loss, they'd take single economically poor female citizens and elves and use them as comfort slaves.
It didn't matter if they were bastards of the King, if anything, they were the first to go and it didn't necessarily matter what age they were either. Everyone was now uncomfortable.
"Are you here to take us in?" They all looked to the Crown Prince, most of them with skeptical gazes. Some of them trusted him, the majority didn't.
"I am going to prepare carriages for you tomorrow. You're going to Noctia, with one mission..."
Blinking at one another, they all turned their eyes back to him.
"...Survive." The Crown Prince would clench his fists lightly. "By no means, are you to let anyone in Noctia know your royal heritage unless under duress."
They stared at him. Why were they being sent to the ancient Fortress City? News hasn't spread amongst the general populace, but information was very hard to come by for Noctia for the past several days if not a week.
"How will we get passed the front gates?" Soph looked up to the tall man as he had given this news, that they'd be able to escape and disgusting fate.
"I'll be joining you," Alden simpered quietly as the Royal Guards were waiting outside the building. "With a little coin to the Merchant Guild Master he may be able to forge us some identification papers. If not, we're just refugees fleeing from the King's wrath."
They all nodded to him, though he didn't know if Jack would let them in either way.
Based on his sister's words, Alden wanted to believe that Jack, or this Lord Sephir, was a better person than his father or any other human monarch that had reigned.
He didn't want to be here while the Capital Burned, if anything, he could change the spheres of influence. He wouldn't have to be a Prince, or have a crown. In a way, he'd be free of this torture that is watching his people suffer.
He turned his back to his fellow brethren and sisters, and began walking back out towards the door. "Until then, I bit you all a good day. Rest easy for you will be leaving early tomorrow."
Soph, the girl he addressed from before, grabbed his sleeve with her fingers, stopping him in his tracks. "Can older sister come with us?" She was speaking of the Sorceress.
"No, not as she is now, but you will see her again Soph. Be sure of it."