What I imagine Gwyneth will look like all grown up...
⚜️⚜️⚜️
20 years later...
Almost two decades have passed. Even though the Lady Jane has became a danger to the Moniyan society, the Knightess chose to let her live, having known of her shortcoming. Her daughter will be the end of her and it will hurt even after death. It was fate far worse than prison.
For years, Lady Jane lived in the Baroque castle and returned to her lavish lifestyle after the war. Without her children, she had managed to get through loneliness and grief for the death of her husband. According to the constabulary, he had been poisoned by one of Jane's handmaidens for they have been having an affair. All of it is purely made up, though, but they closed the case and signified it was murder, having the young innocent handmaiden sentenced to a slow ravaging demise.
Lancelot never came back to the palace, not even her favorite and beloved Guinevere. Not yet, it seems. Jane was aware she was to return to have her revenge and so she waited for her daughter to come by, surviving day by day with one strange purpose.
Lest if her daughter was not to be her killer, it would be her disease. She has a cancer on the bone, her physician said. It was an illness not incurable by magic or technology.
Lady Jane had grown out to be the old woman she feared to be. Her soft cheeks had became wrinkles which hung like unbaked dough. Her teeth were falling off and her blood vessels were horribly visible through her paper-thin skin. She had become the one thing she loathed the most; senescence. It is why she has never looked in the mirror for years. Rather she would stare at her old portraits for hours, imagining and making up scenarios for when everything was better. When she was better.
"Milady, it is time to drink your medicine- hurgh!" before her appointed nurse could finish here sentence, an invisible force pulls around her neck.
Jane waves off her hand and her diamond wedding ring accidentally falls off from her thinning finger. She stared at the ring on the marble-tiled flooring. Then a bead of tear fell off her eye.
"M-Milady!" The nurse choked. "Please release me!"
The Lady did so, but she made nurse suffer more of her abuse as she stretched out her hand, having the nurse hurled out of the room. Luckily a servant caught her before she could have a crack on her skull.
Lady Jane sighed, exhausted. She hauled her wheelchair towards her bed. She climbed and crawled to her sheets, turning on the centennial phonograph from across the room using her magic. The music player began playing a violin solo. It sounded lousy and depressing and it was the only thing Jane had been listening to.
"Wait, girl, you should not enter so sudden for the Lady is not feeling well!" She heard a panicked voice say from the hallway. Footsteps tapped and neared, it was irritating the old woman's eardrums.
"I don't care. I want to see her now." A familiar voice replied.
Jane's ears twitched in interest as she faced the wide open door. There entered a familiar figure. Jane winced, trying to focus her weakening eyesight. "Guinevere, dearie..." She could only whisper raspily.
For the first time in years, the Lady was smiling. She was feeling euphoric as well and it was as though her depression was cured.
Guinevere stepped closer but when she's now a meter away from the bed, Jane realized her face was different, save for the green eyes and the big volume of curly brown hair. Reminiscent so once the girl creased her brows and scowled, wearing the face of specific demon hunter.
The Lady threw her head back and looked at the girl again with rather an impressed smile. "So you've managed to get out of the dungeon after all."
"Grandmother." The girl seethed as though the name was poison. "It's nice to meet you too." She said of sarcasm.
"My, Gwyneth, you look so much like your mother." Jane kept a warm smile despite having a sickly appearance to make herself less of a threat. "How is your mother? Is she here?"
"No. She's at the Academy and she's a professor there." Gwyneth answered.
" And your father?"
"Still a demon hunter, along with Alucard and my younger twin brothers."
"You have siblings?"
Gwyneth nodded.
"How fascinating. Now are you here to kill me or you have actually came to pay me a pitiful visit?"
"You're not what I expected," Gwyneth said as she looked around the room and came up with the big portrait of a younger Lady Jane on the wall. "You used to be so beautiful and youthful. What happened?"
"Karma did her job." Jane sighed, void of any emotions as she stared at the girl. Her longing blinkless stare was terrifying.
Gwyneth veers off the stare and unsheathed a dagger out of nowhere. "Look, I'm not here to kill you but you're really making it hard for me not to, grams."
"Grams? Apologize to me at once!" The woman barked, getting too ahead of herself.
"I'm just here to give this to you." Gwyneth said, throwing what seems to be a journal covered with fine leather onto her. The journal lands beside her trembling hand clenched on the sheets. "It's my mother's diary and it contained her whole childhood. Should you skip it all and get to the last chapter though, you won't be able to restart your reading."
"And why do you want me to read this?"
"Because my mom's childhood made her into the person she is now and because of you being a very horrible parent favoring superficiality over motherly altruism."
The Lady remained silent, but her smile has now become of a tightened scowl.
"Oh, just end me already! Come on, take my life! Kill me with your bare hands and bring justice to the trauma I have given your mother!"
Gwyneth remained calm. Her mind was clear and her heartbeats were normal. She doesn't want to kill the person in front of her, despite it was the right thing. It was wrong for her, taking a successful life so easily, stabbing her grandmother on the throat and earning her a quick ticket out, which is why she will have to use magic on this one.
Just then Gwyneth's eyes became a dark shade of red and it was as though the bright afternoon outside had turned midnight. The whole room blacks out and voices began to buzz in Lady Jane's ears.
Jane screamed in pure terror. "No! I-Is this... Dark magic? But how?! Both of your parents are of Lightborn!"
"I've had an apprenticeship with a certain someone from the Abyss." Gwyneth spoke but Jane couldn't tell where she was for her voice was echoey, almost as though she had been trapped into a lucid nightmare she couldn't wake up from. "Do you know someone named Alice? She is the one."
"Oh Alice, that winged hag!" Jane began to cough up blood. "A-Are you planning to take over the Empire then? Are you evil?"
"Evil?" Gwyneth laughed deeply. "I'm more of a neutral, as what Momma said."
"Surely Guinevere wouldn't have approved your apprenticeship on becoming a user of dark magic! Ergo it is illegal to practice necromancy in the Empire after all!"
"Not anymore. I am afraid you are getting ahead of times, grandma." She chuckled.
The voices laughed and Jane began to hallucinate all of the members of the Moniyan upper class, laughing at her. Shame then clouded her fear.
"Wow. You are such an unkillable pest, aren't you?" The girl sighed, getting annoyed with herself. "The world must really hate you. You could've died anytime but no! The world wants you to suffer more until you realize what you have done was all wrong."
"Then come on and kill me!"
"Meh. I want you to beg."
"Please kill me! End my misery!" The Lady whimpered. When she began sobbing, Gwyneth knew it was enough.
It was as if it had been all a dream. Jane only blinked but everything was back to normal, back in place. Gwyneth stood in the same spot, smiling of smug.
Coughing up blood, Jane scooted out of her safe haven and shuffled to the ground, kissing the girl's boots. She then grabbed the dagger Gwyneth was holding and pointed it at her own throat. "Please?"
She looked so pathetic, begging for her own granddaughter to end her. "Do it!"
Tbfh with you guys this story will never end. The rest is up to your imaginations now. I hope you know that. :D
THANK YOU FOR THE 19K+ READS YOU GUYS I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH OH MY GOD LMAOOOO