(Evelyn POV)
I awoke with a jolt. The sound of thunder screamed into my ears. I tried to raise my hand to wipe the hair out of my face but it was stopped halfway by the shackles that bound it.
"Oh, that's right..." I said aloud to myself.
I gazed around the room to my prison cell, noting the several other white-haired eleven and human women chained up alongside me. I bit my lip in anguish and fury noticing the last elven man had disappeared during the night. My fists tightened hard as my frustration mounted.
"Princess, you are awake!" One of the women cried out. I gazed over at her. A beautiful elvish woman with pink hair and green eyes. She was one of the former maids who worked under me back before my imprisonment. Her name was Roa and she was one of the few friends I made in the castle after I returned from the village I grew up in with Alaster.
"How long was I out for? It looks like they took Adrian." I spoke.
"It was only a few hours. Thankfully it seems we still have some sympathizers among the guards because they healed you before putting you back in here." Roa mentioned.
I smiled bitterly at her response. Even if the guards didn't mean any ill will, it didn't mean we should rely upon them for our salvation. Each one had been implanted with an Orb of Domination and only had a sliver of their original personalities that remained. It was all 'HIS' fault. If it hadn't been for him then I could have gone about my life as the princess peacefully, eventually taking the throne in a few hundred years.
"Has there been any word from Nolla?" Another one of the women asked me in a voice that almost cried out for salvation from this hell we were forced into.
I shook my head at her and hung it in shame. "I only sent out Nolla a few days ago. If she managed to escape the city, the first thing she'll do is to go and find Ala- a friend of mine who is powerful enough to help get us out of this mess. However, he doesn't stay in one place and I feel like she won't be able to find him for several weeks at best." I said, my voice getting quieter and quieter as I saw the hope of the woman slowly fade with the more words that left my lips.
"I- I see..." She began before breaking down into silent weeping. My own eyes filled with tears as I hung my head in shame. It was all my fault.
I should have noticed my father's change after getting sick last year but I wrote it off as changes to his personality following his near-death experience. When he began to take those trips to places without telling anyone I was only convinced he was cheating on mother and seeing his lover but now I know what he was doing and what he was planning. The final straw was when he asked me to use my magic to create the Orb of Domination in the first place.
'My father was a kind man. He was a pervert that fondled so many of the statues of my mother in the castle that the parts covering her breasts, bum, and thighs were worn down, sure, but he always put the people first and would never harm a hair on my head, but now...' I couldn't even finish the thought, it was so brutal.
The kind king Oberon was no more, now he was going around calling himself the Great Magician Jahil. He used the Orb of Domination I created for him at his request to take control of me in my sleep. Then, while I was under his control, he ordered me to create thousands of the same orb that he could use to dominate the people of the castle and the military.
He killed my mother and summoned a demon to inhabit her corpse, then dominated that demon and used it to run the administration while he began to experiment on the people of the city. He blocked off access to it so no one could enter or leave and then had the military slaughter anyone who resisted.
He gathered up the entire populace of white-haired men and women and began to experiment on us. I was still dominated at the time so I couldn't do anything but scream and rage inside my mind while my body obediently followed his orders. Unfortunately, it seems like he found something during his private outings and investigations that I couldn't quite believe. He found some kind of monster that was so strong that even the strongest Majin in the kingdom would be suffocated by just its terrifying aura. Its evil presence has tainted the land around Soma and now monster attacks from spontaneously generating monsters are on the rise.
This massacre of our own people didn't sway whatever my father has become now at all. He simply praised the creature's strength and continued his experiments on it and us. He'd even started to gather the bodies of several thousand people together in order to complete the magic left by that madman Alaster was talking about. Something called {Deathman Birthday} or something to that effect.
Eventually, I was able to break out of the domination and even broke out Nolla and some of the other magicians under his control. We attempted to overthrow him before he could harm anyone else or complete this ritual magic he was planning for but we were utterly defeated. I had trained hard ever since I saw how powerful Alaster had become and I thought I was stronger than any elf other than Slyvia and her husband Sarion, but it seems my father was still too strong for us and we were easily defeated.
I don't know how my father became s strong in such a short amount of time. Aunt Slyvia said that he wasn't very strong and that he was chosen to rule Soma due to his strong morals to help the people and his talent in politics and administration. Also because Slyvia didn't want to do it herself.
We managed to let Nolla escape during our showdown, but I and the rest of the magicians were either killed or captured. He'd use us as more disposable 'material' for his experiments since he couldn't control us anymore as we were valuable majin who could handle much more physical and spiritual abuse than anyone else.
I bit my lip so hard it started to bleed. The only reason I am alive right now while the others were already used up is that he said he'd have something 'special' planned for me.
"Princess," Roa called to me to draw my attention.
I looked up and noticed the demon that had incarnated into the body of my mother. It looked nothing like the gentle and beautiful woman who I used to know and now looked like a handsome man with red eyes and hair. His gaze was lowered to look directly at me. His leering only lasted a moment before two guards rushed into view and began to unlock the door to our cell.
"Jahil-sama is requesting that you be brought before him now." He said with a cold voice before the guards unlocked the chains binding me to the wall and violently lifted me to my feet.
"Unhand me! I can still walk by myself!" I snapped at them and they agreed, letting go of my arms and allowing me to limp out of the cell.
"P-please! One moment, sir demon!" Roa called out in an almost frantic panic. "What is going to happen to princess-sama!?!"
"Roa don-" I tried to stop her but one of the guards was instructed by a gesture by the demon and struck Roa across the face with his armored hand.
Roa collapsed and cried out in pain for a moment before righting herself with great difficulty. She didn't even bother to acknowledge the man who struck her and continued to look at the man with a strong gaze in her eye, showing she wouldn't back down unless she received her answer.
It seems this lack of fear in him amused the demon as he smirked, probably the first time he had ever done so, and looked down at her with an evil gaze. "Woman, I refuse to tell you, but if and when you see your princess again, you'll definitely wish she'd just been killed." He spat back before walking away. I felt a strong nudge from behind and was pushed forward a few steps before defeatedly deciding to follow them.
After my defeat, my father had painstakingly sealed all of my magicules to the absolute bare minimum needed for my survival. I was unable to cast any magic and the pollution in the air that was caused by that immensely powerful monster made it impossible to call for spirit summons.
'Damn it! I wish I'd have learned how to use my fighting spirit like Alaster did so I could at least have a chance at escaping!' I thought back to my childhood.
Back then there was no war, no politics. Everything was warm and my days were filled with a lazy bliss that I wished with all of my soul I could return to. I had been thinking a lot about my past these last few days and weeks since my father's turn. I thought about everything I could have done differently to prevent it. I thought about how, in these past few years, the only annoying thing I had to deal with was the occasional suiter from foreign kingdoms or listening to the complaints of my mother when she'd complain about my father embarrassing her at one of her events by being too lovey-dovey with her.
Even in my heavily depressed state, I still felt a small smirk cross my face thinking about that time of my life. My smirk immediately disappeared upon remembering what that demon said to Roa, however, the strength in her eyes moved me and I decided that I wouldn't wallow in despair any longer and that I would face whatever torment my father was about to put me through so that I could be worthy of her resilience. Maybe it was because I was too busy thinking this that I didn't notice an announcement made by the Voice of the World inside my own head.
'I promise you, father! If it is the last thing I do, I will see you pay for your crimes and I will reclaim the happiness that was stolen from me!' I promised myself. 'And then maybe I can finally be by his side...'
.~.~.~.
A/N: Yes, Eveyln is Kazaream/Kagali. It killed me inside to never be able to mention it to anyone in the comments early on in the story. There are clues as to how her original personality would have been though, as she is implied to want to live in peace and even though she did some messed up stuff as a demon lord, she only went to confront Leon to warn him about calling himself a Demon Lord but was triggered by his handsome face which she used to have but was taken away from her.
I even tried to hint at her being Kagali if you re-read the story. She is good with all kinds of magic and even better than Alaster in the beginning, hinting at her unnatural talent that will eventually allow her to claim the title of Demon Lord. She was even shown to be a bit of a schemer like Kagali is when she told Velzard the plan to have the MC be used as both her husband and a tool for political purposes.
Kagali admits that Kazaream isn't her original name and that she doesn't even remember it. She was killed by Jahil after he took over his body and reincarnated into the body of an Undead Elf that was hideous and didn't look like her at all and given the name by Jahil, so it works perfectly as a plot twist as no one knows/remembers what she looked like and her personality was obviously changed a lot due to the trauma of her torture under Jahil, her time as a hideous man and being forced to watch helplessly her country being tortured under Jahil then destroyed by Milim.
She was never meant to be MFL but was supposed to be a tragic part of the MC's past but the more I wrote her, the bigger her role as a recurring side character became, to the point a lot of you want her to be the second wife of the MC.
When I looked at it from that perspective, the whole thing was screaming at me to write a story about it. It was for THIS plot point alone was why the MC was born before Veldanava's death so that he could interact with the original Kagali. I also named her Evelyn to not spoil the twist. Due to this, I realized that Rudra probably wouldn't have been born yet and that Twilight was probably still alive. This led to Alaster becoming the first hero as I wasn't going to let him just be super weak the whole time and you all know that I changed up Twilight's character a bit to better fit the canon in the last few chapters which is why it seemingly came completely out of left field that he was evil.
Twilight's evil character was originally supposed to have been Jahil. I even set him up in the first few chapters when I didn't show him directly yet he was responsible for the attack on the MCs village that killed his parents. Twilight gave Alaster the Origin Blood Spear but took it back for their fight, which was supposed to be because Jahil used the weapon in the canon to fight Benimaru during the raid at El Dorado in the Light Novel.
The reason Jahil's takeover of the Elf king and torment of Evelyn began earlier than canon is two-fold. The first is that in canon it was implied his reign of terror lasted for years. This means, in my timeline, that he could have started before Veldanava and Lucia became married and gave birth to Milim if the time between the marriage and conception was small enough.
A/N2: I also know that this isn't a big change to the timeline either. Kagali has to be at least a fair bit older than Milim since she was able to experience both the glory days of Soma under her father when he was normal and the terror of her Jahil's reign. She was old enough to remember how to reverse engineer the technology she used from her old home during her time as a Demon Lord. This meant she had to be old enough to have comprehended it in the first place, putting her older than Milim meaning she grew up when Veldanava was alive.
Additionally, since Milim was so young when Gaia was killed, I extrapolated that Jahil's reign was only about 10-15 years long. This isn't too absurd given the elves have long lifespans but it's also not enough time that Guy would have destroyed their country acting in his role as mediator, as he probably would have monitored it to see if it got better. Stupid leaders that ruin their countries pop up throughout history more often than you'd think, especially in monarchies, so if Guy kept killing them off every time someone incompetent or evil took control, humanity would go extinct. Since genocide isn't his goal (his goal is to preserve humanity by stopping them from fighting each other and focusing on him) he would allow for something like this to continue for a few years at least to see if the people of Soma eventually got a new leader through revolution to save him the trouble.
Lore Bit: Nolla is the personality template for Tear, being happy-go-lucky but losing the sexual aspect after knowing that Kazaream would be hurt by the comments because she knew he was self-conscious about the topic of sex due to his appearance.
Oberon's personality template was going to be used for Clayman, as it is said in canon he was originally a very kind man before Kondo dominated him. Evelyn would model him after her father's early years when he was a kind king, though, without a 'mother' figure like Oberon had, we would never have seen the gropy side of his character.
Footman would have been Evelyn's first try with the magic and wouldn't be based on any personality template which is why he would be so much less intelligent than the others and have a hard time talking as Evelyn wasn't as skilled during his creation.
Laplace was Slyvia's husband Sarion being reincarnated after Evelyn found him, so he was different.