After Alisa eventually began to walk away in a rather slow pace, I just watched her leaving back with a smile, a smile that should relieve her somehow. Just from the way she moved, I knew she was reluctant to leave me alone in such state, but couldn't stay as this was an important discussion with my family. The sight of her small body, which slowly went further and further away from me by each step, suddenly triggered something in me. The feeling that slowly emerged itself took my whole attention away and consequently let the voices surrounding me fade, thus I didn't hear the question that was given me before.
Since I didn't show any reaction to my speaking father, he became worried and came closer to me from behind. As I finally looked back to him, my family became slightly startled upon seeing me as a result. I slowly began to walk towards the sofa where the LaBelle previously sat and took my seat with a straight posture wordlessly while I waited for the others to follow suit. As if they knew my intention behind my act, they also sat down opposite of me later on. I saw my family, especially my father, looking at me with strained expression resting on theirs faces.
Nobody tried to break the ice between us, even my father who wanted to ask me previously, didn't dare to open his mouth again. As if my older brother couldn't take it anymore, he was the first to ask me worriedly, " Are you okay ? Don't you want to rest beforehand ?" Every stressful events which even continued in my own home overstrained me so much till my face became emotionless and my eyes lost his shining colours. Tear strains remained on my face and red puffed eyes were visible instead. I knew that my older brother only asked me this out of good will and care, but my overwhelming feelings brought my mind into chaos and so I interpreted his words in a different way, '…he wanted to escape from my questions ?', I raised an eyebrow and looked at my brother with cold eyes. My brother never felt such coldness and indifference coming from me, as we always had a good relationship, even in disputes and teasings between siblings, so naturally he became slightly shocked by this reaction.
Even I would be surprised if I didn't know the reason why I changed in the first place, but I knew them. 'You should thank Cedric for he taught these emotions to me and partly my will who wanted to change after my return'. I was so much destroyed in the inside and now even more, thus no way I would lose the chance to get the truth and finally perhaps my salvation.
Then I looked down to the ground already tired to look at my beloved father who had abandoned me in the past. I suddenly saw small water dropping on my lap.
I thought that it wasn't possible to let them fall anymore as I used these up so much since yesterday, nonetheless here I was, uncontrollably crying again. At first I became frustrated and my hand formed into fists as result, but before I knew it I just accepted everything naturally and let it go.
I asked myself, why it was so hard to hold this sadness in. Even though I made this question, inside I already knew the answer, but didn't want to admit it. Why ?
I once had the time and space in a world where I could freely recover from my tragic past. As Eun Ae Cheong I spent my life with joy and anticipation for following days, so this should be enough to heal these wounds which was left on my soul was my thought. However like with any living creature some injuries couldn't be cured completely that led them to scars. After I came back, every old cuts reopened again, especially when I saw the leaving back of my best friend since this reminded me of my loneliness. It awakened my cry for help and fear of being abandoned from the past.
Unconsciously,
it gave me the feeling that my soul didn't let go of its past yet.
Was the reason for returning here my second chance to free myself from my tragic this time ?
Questions over questions soon piled over my already confused state of mind. So how could I not be frustrated? I, who wandered around the world naively and blindfolded of everything, couldn't take it anymore in the end, so I now screamed my sorrow out of my lungs with my head still hanging down. My family became startled with my sudden outburst and shock revealed on theirs faces. As if they eventually released themselves from their trance, my older brother shortly held me in his arms from the front and my mother joined us and cried with me. On the other hand my father just had to watch his own daughter in this terrible state. But though my vision became blurry because of my tears, I could still see a guilty expression on his face.
I thought, 'Opportunities like this were narrow for me, thus I should take as a chance to release my wrath.' I couldn't do it in the archduke's mansion before, for I had to be careful around the servants.
As I eventually finished my outburst, I looked at my awaiting family who comforted me by gently caressing my back and hugging me. Just my sobbing and hoarse voice which I used throughout my desperate cry was left behind. I looked back to the door, afraid that the LaBelle's family must have heard it.
" I'm sorry…", said my father with a quiet voice. I suddenly turned my head to the front and saw my father having some tears formed on the edge of his wrinkled eyes. ' Why are you sorry ?', I asked myself as I watched him slowly crying.
As if he understood my confusion, he explained," There was a reason why we couldn't help you in your misery. We were also very upset with this situation and hoped for the current archduke at least to support you mentally…. but it wasn't the case here. If I had known this, I would have never sent you off to him…". As I listened to him attentively, I could hear his immense regret through his trembling voice.
'They couldn't help me… What did this mean ?', I asked myself. My face like an open book, which my father easily read every line on it ,soon proceed to speak clearing my further confusion, "… Back to the beginning. Do you remember the war 500 years ago ?" Suddenly his vulnerable self faded away , as soon as he said, and his strong headed one came back with determination burning in his eyes, as if this emotional face never showed up before.
I was still upset, but my will to know the truth was stronger, so to reply to the same intensity, I sat myself straight, wiped my tears away and hurried my brother and mother to return to theirs seats.
As an Ainsworth I shouldn't show weakness that easily.
" Yeah, naturally. This was the biggest war ever in history. ", I replied to his unusual question with eyes looking straight into my father's eyes.
When I was a child, my history tutor would always take the chance to mention the war in every lectures, to the point it made me exhausted and slowly got bored with this subject. So how could I forget this legendary war, you know? Just remembering these times made me roll my eyes. Compare it to school in my old world and you knew, what I meant. Sometimes the lessons were so dryly conveyed to the students, that I would question if the teachers didn't get tired of them as well. Never mind, since it was already over, I didn't care about it anymore and also this stuff which I learnt didn't come into handy at all.
But the way my father just asked me, couldn't help but made me suspicious now, if there was any connection to my current situation.
As far as I knew, it was the very beginning of my family's glory and famous oath, so naturally I was taught that much for I should remember my obligation to the nation as well as to the mightiest royals. Even in the novel was the war precisely written, however I didn't find any hints in any relation with my execution or so whatsoever. Nevertheless I shouldn't have set aside these information only as the description for the development of the story.
By replaying my remaining knowledge of the war, perhaps I could find some clues now, so I began to narrate it in my mind :
The history lesson started.
This world consisted of ten kingdoms :
Alynth Kingdom ( our homeland )
Neon Kingdom
Kali Kingdom
Xenon Kingdom
Helium Kingdom
Radon Kingdom
Argon Kingdom
Selen Kingdom
Tellur Kingdom
Yttrium Kingdom
Each kingdom had only one god they worshipped and thus they had to serve alone. To keep their loyalty the heaven being created a blood contract similar to an oath, so they could restrict the mortals from committing unfaithfulness by bonding them to this one god, as one's betrayal would lead them to their own death. Nonetheless this agreement allowed them to use special magic, which only one realm could possible possess as this was the characteristic of this certain god. This showed theirs affiliation as well as pride for the heaven being. For example the people of the Yttrium kingdom were the only ones who had the wind power, while the others didn't have this ability. This was the special trait of their god Aeolus.
Our kingdom belonged to the sun god, Apollo, and the royal families had the strongest connection to this god, so that's why they had the most magical power and strength than anyone else in this country. Furthermore they were one of the bridges between the Olympus and the earth. In general all royals had strong affinity to their specific god, as they were in some way blood- related to them, therefore the were the connection between the one they worshipped and the people.
Over the generations the mortals soon developed magical formals and tools which made it possible to activate different types of magic, so in conclusion everyone could create magic phenomena, other than their own. The necessary magic energy for activating and inventing the instruments was already provided by the blood contract, since this was needed to generate the special magic too. However the special magic, which they gained as an evidence for their affiliation, wasn't allowed to be imitated and in addition to this nobody had success to recreate these abilities of other kingdoms to this day .
Still it didn't change the fact that the mortals from all different classes of society, even slaves, possessed such potency.
Even though every kingdom had a variety of powers and cultures, they did certainly share one thing in common. It was the second god whom they also had to serve for a lifetime, regardless if they held a stronger bonding to the kingdom's god or not. Through each realm should serve only one specific god as it was mentioned before, but this one here was entirely different.
He had the highest standing in the world of gods and therefore reigned over them in the Olympus as well as other domains. His name was Zeus, god of thunder.
Zeus was the one who gave the final decisions as well as orders, therefore all gods had to obey him as their only "king".
So if a god requested of building an own country, they first had to get the permission of the supreme god. After that they were allowed to create their own people's appearances and other traits for their newborn kingdom. Though they were their own creations, it didn't mean they would stay loyal to their creator, thus the blood contract should restrict them before they could cause any damage to their kingdom. The royals were their supervisor and obtained a part of their own blood during the process. Further requirements as such as their wisdom or strength were also needed for procedure of forging a whole realm. These were the basic knowledge to understand the origin of the people, but as they were simple mortals, the rules of these heaven being's world still stayed a mystery for them. Nevertheless everyone knew that this certain god who was capable to certainly obtain a land must be extraordinarily, if one looked at the current division of the countries. Momentarily only ten kingdoms existed in this world. The novel didn't mention much of it as it mainly concentrated on the love story between Cedric and Luciana.
As soon as their establishment was finished, they had to build a temple for worshipping and conveying the god's will. In this construction it already existed the first message of the gods. It was the scroll written by Zeus himself. This paper described the way of life and thus gave these creations certain duties and rules, so they could remember who made them. In addition to this, it should remind them whom they also served besides their " kingdom's god" too. Should they not follow these rules, they would immediately punish us.
Zeus' words:
No war
No kill
Respect each other
Help each other
Love each other as a whole family
Only bring justice to the ones who deserved it
You served, follow and obey only one god, except for the supreme god Zeus
Though the content was pretty simple and short, it still held great strength. But because of his scarce words it gave the mortals many opportunities to go around them without being punished, for example you wasn't allowed to kill someone, however violence was still possible.
Nonetheless theirs bad deeds, which wasn't acknowledge as crime before, remained and still followed this person until the end of his lifetime, so one day this one would eventually repay it in the same intensity anyway. Therefore many people feared for harsh punishment some day. Although it was like this, the endless greed and hate of some mortals didn't stop there.
Not every kingdom reached the same level of development and technology, so only few had higher standing while others had to remain low. The reason could be either small countries didn't invented and produced much to increase one's property which consequently lower the kingdom's worth, or newborn kingdom were just beginning to bloom.
Thus these kind of people naturally envied those who gained higher level than them, this included their kings too. As they watched with jealousy, over time these desperate mortals soon concluded on their own that it must be because of the lack of necessary resources. That's why they soon blamed their own worshipped god for not providing the materials like other kingdoms and eventually small sparks of resistance arose in them, while they still continued to remain in this state. One day their jealousy and greed finally reached the limit and broke the already overflowing bottle. Not long they also questioned even Zeus' words, getting suspicious if punishment indeed existed there. Because nobody experienced these penalty in person as no one dared to break the rules and in addition to this the recording of older generations didn't show any difference too, many assumed the falseness in these so-called truth of gods.
But it all came wrong and this assumption would soon became deathly for them.
By looking back to the past it already existed discrimination, fighting between races, slavery and much more in every country which also caused the beginning of the raw materials to already fall out a bit, so naturally once that happened, the reaction of each kingdom was of great importance here. Some would try to stabilise the regime by preventing and reducing the problems, whereas on the other hand other realms would just look for similar resources in different countries unfortunately. This concluded that these small countries wasn't the only ones to suffer from sudden loss of some resources, but they were so blindfolded not seeing the truth that they didn't think that this could be the cause for their problems. The piled- up anger towards their own god and slow rise of opposition to the words of Zeus precisely led them to the war 500 years ago.
It was a war for obtaining certain resources, which other realms could't have before.
The first to start was the Neon kingdom as they suffered from bad harvests because of the climate. He fought against the Helium Kingdom for they had perfect conditions for agriculture as well as the blessing of their god Dionysos. According to the rule such act consequently resulted into the punishment of the implied realm by losing some of their resources. Their own destruction was already carved in stone, however the war continued for 50 years without such penalty, so other kingdoms with similar problems soon assumed the same opinion like the Neon kingdom and afterwards joined in their fight.
But nobody knew that the materials already reduced for 20 years after the the start of the war, as the people secretly hid the truth.
"What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over."
So Alliances and treat agreements easily followed, especially for young kingdoms who would asked for protection.
Over the time they became so ignorant of their actions to the point that they eventually didn't consider their own people's suffering from the continuously loss of their valuable resources and own sacrifices, forgetting the real intention behind their fight: helping their own's people. The wish for victory blinded their vision and later on constantly hurt the laws of Zeus. Before they knew it, their kingdoms finally lost their whole glory and prosperity from the past.
Poverty, hunger and pest filled these countries, however this didn't stop their kings to even go for a neutral country, Kingdom Alnyth. This kingdom was neutral during the whole conflict, so they still preserved its beauty to that day. This naturally led them becoming the very target for two small kingdoms, Neon and Tellur, who joined force together to win against us.
At that time they tried to provocative our previous king through constantly attacking his people. Our wise king knew that if he joined in this war, his own realm would go down to the downfall like other kingdoms, so instead fighting he just strengthened the defence in his country. That was the beginning where my great-great-grandfather and his father gave their oath to the king and served him as his loyal generals protecting the borders and preventing intruders .
However on this particular day new creatures suddenly appeared in the battle field making every kingdoms to get shocked by this development. One after another they slaughtered the people which resulted into fear and anxiety to spread around the world. To stop it, all 10 kingdoms' kings came to a meeting discussing the cause and solution for this case, so they temporarily went to a stillstand.
During the discussion the Alyth's queen who walked around the mansion's garden was suddenly attacked by the the other kingdom's spies. This brought the previous king's rage and made it even harder to join forces for suppressing the new creatures, named "Shadows". An attempted assassination became the catalyst for the king joining the war and in addition set aside this issue for the time being.
During the big world war 500 years ago, which lasted 70 years by now, my great-great grandfather as well my great-grandfather battled alongside with our previous king Evergarden against the two kingdoms, the one responsible for the attack. My family took the biggest part into the war, which led them to gain wide recognition in our kingdom. In the end we came out victoriously, conquering two kingdoms. All three countries soon emerged to one empire in the end that reigned by this certain king who became the emperor afterwards.
Even through it looked like it was only because of the attempted assassination on the queen, the real intention behind was to finally unified the "problem-kingdoms" before it could escalated into more. Their messed- up regimes caused major damage to everyone around, so the higher level kingdoms decided to stop it ultimately. However nobody wanted to take responsibility for an almost destroyed country and the culprit and in addition to this they had to help them to recover. Still only kingdoms with much higher development and richness could possibly hold on despite the additional problems:
Kali, Radon, Argon, Xenon and Alynth
Alynth was the only one who voluntarily took in these kingdoms, so he joined the war to dominate them, since these countries were already on the brim of destruction.
At first it existed some resistance in these realms after the execution of their own kings who were their pride and bond to their god, but as soon as the people of our Alynth kingdom helped the people living there, knowing that they suffered because of the selfishness of their royals, they soon changed their minds. It took more than 150 years for such acceptance. While the "problem-kingdoms" slightly rose again, our kingdom lost many money and resources for them, so they finally fell behind other rich countries. These people soon realised it and so devoted themselves to pay off the debt. The reason why they saved these rather troubling countries was to save the innocent people from disappearance and to follow the rules of Zeus's words.
Although their kings were executed, the royal family of each countries itself existed, as they had the strongest bond to their specific god who was the very reason for their existence even after the war. Should they lose the nearest children of god, their kingdom vanished immediately with his creation too. Humans, demons, elf and other living creatures first formed and built by god's hands would disappear like air.
So the Alynth regime selected some of their officers to get them married into their royal family. In the history these new kings later on reigned over them wisely. It took time for the three different cultures to get used to each other. The ones who got conquered and the other who conquered them.
One day the prosperity finally returned to his original state of these "problem-kingdoms". It took 200 years for coming back to his old glory with much support of the Alynth kingdom. Though unified as one empire each of them, including us, still kept their own cultures in tact as well as their name, only the small regimes came together and discussed in meetings as a whole with the current king as medium and decision maker. Should someone wanted to know what the name of the whole empire was, it was " Tempera".
A long peace resided in our empire, but the peace didn't last long.
Suddenly new creatures' popularity increased immensely, unbeknown for the people who could finally rest. As they finally thought they suppressed the "Shadows" after the war, these unknown creatures shortly attacked the people as well as other beasts and such in as fast pace.
After many investigations they soon concluded that these new found creatures didn't have something like minds and attacked anyone on their way, regardless if they didn't have weapons or just went for a walk. They acted and moved as puppets with strings coming from the origin which the generation of the past didn't find out yet.
This gave all kingdoms the reason to make a peace treaty and formed alliances to fight against these new entities until they eventually reduced them to the point the country could now fight on their own.
One day Zeus' next words reached to us, explaining what these creatures were .
These were our punishments for destroying the environment and breaking his laws multiple times. The origin and the god who created them were still unknown, but one statement of him was clear as water :
To reduce our penalty, we should now continue to live in harmony and get rid of any problems, for example inhuman measurements or discrimination. This way it would lower the popularity of the 'Shadows'.
According to the novel, after the death of my family the popularity of the 'Shadows' arose so much again that whole armies stood in each corner, preparing to fight. Our empire somehow withheld the attacks with the help of the archduke Cedric who could lessen the damage while other kingdoms had it harder and needed time to recover. This followed his crowning as the next emperor. Together with Luciana as his wife, he reigned as the wise emperor.
However more than 3/4 of our kingdom was destroyed . It was difficult to cultivate the ground.
But miraculously a different god appeared to help them and the kingdom somehow flourished afterwards. The reason was Lady Luciana had the blessing of this god "Hera".
You gained blessing from gods, if they showed interest in you, even if you didn't worship him/her before .
Make this sense somehow ….?
This is just a sh*t romance novel ! To emphasise the main characters, many people suffered. Are they really kidding me ???
Anyway the people there respected our whole family, as they were descendants of the greatest warriors of the empire who protected the home alongside the emperor. Even now my father, uncle and brother were well known for their amazing skills.
Now they fought against the "Shadows".
End of history lesson
After I answered his question, he followed, " As far as you know, our family served as the right hand of the royal family, so didn't you ask yourself why we didn't rise in our status or at least joint their family ?".
Upon hearing this, I was indeed curious about this long before my marriage.
Normally, dukes were descendents of the royals, so you first had to marry one of them, but I remembered nobody achieved this, …' so why ?' , I contemplated. Knowing that, I could only answer with another question, " Is it because we were already too powerful for them perhaps ?"
To this my father shook his head and looked straight into my eyes with a serious expression. Soon he replied:
" No, it wasn't like that. More like they needed us very much to the point they are desperate for us to join their family."
" Because we were the sword and shield ? " , I answered truthfully. But what came next took me by surprise:
"Because we served a completely different god, not our kingdom's god.
Apollo need this god's help. "