The Daughter of Evil - Volume 4 - Chapter 3.26

chapter 3, section 2-a heartbeat in the rain; scene 6
Praefacio of Blue, page 182-193

<<Reflections of Marlon Empress Dowager Prim Marlon>>

.

You know that I am from the high-ranking Lucifenian Rogzé family, don’t you? Having such an ancient and honorable pedigree had been my pride since I was young. Everyone around me praised me extravagantly, and there was nothing I desired that I couldn’t have. I spent my girlhood convinced that I was a chosen person.

Though thinking on it now, all that was merely a misunderstanding on my part. Lucifenia at the time was nothing more than one small country in the Bolganio continent–even the nobles of such a country didn’t amount to much. I hadn’t understood that, knowing nothing of the world.

I had a best friend since I was a child. Her name was Anne Swee. She was also the daughter of a noble family at the time, but because the Swee family was of much lower breeding compared to the Rogzés, Anne was more like a maid to my family. We were of the same age, and so the two of us got along well, and quickly became friends. And that relationship continued until we became adults.

Anne had better school grades than me, and was more skilled in music and singing. But I didn’t pay that any mind. Because I was a woman of higher status than she was. No matter how she excelled, she would never stand above me–or at least, that’s what I’d thought.

Around the time we grew to be of marriageable age, a certain man became the talk of Lucifenia. The valiant prince, Arth Lucifen d’Autriche. Overcoming the opposition of his father, the king, he had begun to expand our territory by declaring war on our surrounding countries, one by one. All the men praised and admired him. And all the women longed to become his wife.

But I was the one who was going to become Arth’s wife. That’s what I decided. I had thought I would marry him because he and I had both had social connections as children, his face was fairly handsome despite being a childish man, he was the owner of blond hair so beautiful that all the women who saw it were charmed, and because I was certain he liked me too.

But there, the unthinkable happened. Anne seduced Arth through some unfair tactics, and settled herself into place as his wife. Impossible. Arth couldn’t possibly lose his heart to a girl so inferior to myself. I still wonder what means she used. At any rate, from then on my and Anne’s social positions completely reversed. Around then Arth had already succeeded his father on the throne, so Anne had regrettably obtained the position of queen.

Even so, I blessed the two of them. Anne was my best friend. Her happiness was my happiness. And that fact wouldn’t change even after that—that’s how I expected it to be, anyway.

But after a little while passed, Anne and Arth started to keep their distance from me. I didn’t know the cause. And I hadn’t been given an explanation as to why. So, one day I pressed Anne for an answer. “Why have you been ignoring me?”

She said, “Someone has poisoned King Arth”. And, “This isn’t a happy matter, but the culprit is certainly someone close to us”. And she glared at me with eyes as cold as ice.

She had to be joking. What an awful accusation. Like I was the kind of person who would try to kill someone for having given me the cold shoulder! Though I suppose the Rogzés are extremely well versed in pharmaceuticals, so if someone were to have obtained the new type of drug called “Gift”, which they said had poisoned Arth, it would have been someone from my family line. Come to think of it I guess I might have put something in his wineglass the last time I saw him. But I’m sure I hadn’t left any evidence behind, and I’d already forgotten about something so long ago in the first place. That wasn’t the point. The important thing was that Anne was suspecting me. Even though we were best friends!

Anne had said, “It’s not that I suspect you”. She spoke lies! I knew that on that day, she had arbitrarily decided I was the culprit. And then she said, “We can’t let anyone even slightly suspicious near His Majesty—”

.

Suspicious!?

Call me suspicious!?

.

Calling me, her best friend, someone of such noble birth, a suspicious woman of all things! Oh, what a vulgar woman she was! She must have realized that Arth had some lingering affection towards me, and so was trying to keep the two of us apart. She must have thought it was fine to defy her position in life, despite being of such lower noble birth.

So, right then I decided I would teach Anne a lesson. That no matter what unfair means she used, she would never be able to win against me.

I left Lucifenia, crossed the sea, and arrived here in Marlon. That was in order to marry the previous king of Marlon, your father. At that time he was terribly wasting away at his wife’s passing, so I offered him some comfort. I’m sure that my devoted affection got through to his heart. I answered his proposal, and became his second wife. Shortly thereafter, Kyle, you were born.

There were a few children that he’d had with his previous wife. And several children that he’d had with his mistresses. But there’s hardly any of them left nowadays. I wonder why in the world that is?

Huh, you think I killed them? Oh no Kyle, are you looking at your own mother with such accusing eyes? You’re being such an awful boy…Well, I suppose it makes no difference now.

Your father didn’t have any talents aside from womanizing. He was a king utterly hopeless at protecting the territory he had inherited from his ancestors. I couldn’t hope for anything with him. So I put my hopes on you, Kyle. I believed that surely you, since you were of my blood, would make Marlon a greater kingdom than it has been. Naturally, it is a mother’s duty to erase anything that would get in the way of that.

Since my younger brother Presi worked in the Kingdom of Lucifenia, I would get updates on all of the current events happening there without fail. At that point my old acquaintaince, the “Witch of Beelzenia” Elluka Clockworker, had defected to Lucifenia and the country was expected to grow more and more. To the point where it would surpass Marlon…You see?

I couldn’t wait for you to grow up. With things the way they were I’d lose to Anne—With that in mind, I began to search for a sorceress who held enough power to rival that of Elluka. At the same time, I proceeded to engage in my own particular research using the magical knowledge I had been taught by Elluka as a foundation. The power of the unknown was an incredible thing. Pretty soon I was captivated by it.

But there were limits to just sticking to the knowledge I could gain from old books, after all. I still needed someone who was able to properly use magic.

At that time, I discovered Abyss I.R. here in the Bloodpool region. She told me that she was a descendant of the sorcerer who had worked for the original owner of this castle, Lord Hedgehog, and that she had inherited his powers.

Of course, I didn’t believe her immediately. And it was there that Abyss declared she would demonstrate her power, and presented to me a single blade. That was the “Venom Sword”. I believe you also saw it at the Freezis estate in Elphegort. Doesn’t Elluka’s apprentice have it now?

Abyss told me that the sword was a “charm that makes love blossom”. So, taking along the sword, I returned home to Lucifenia for the first time in years.

Anne and Arth’s relationship had become just a little bit strained. It seemed that was because even though a lot of time had passed since their marriage, Anne had never been blessed with children. I knew this was because she was nothing but a cowardly wretch. God is always fair.

I drew close to Arth. Thanks to the “charm that makes love blossom”, he became up-front with his feelings. Before long we came to love one another. Of course, it was kept a secret from Anne.

After a stay of several months, I returned home to Marlon. Immediately after, I learned that I was pregnant.

Without a doubt, this was mine and Arth’s child.

I was ecstatic. “I did it, I’ve beaten Anne!”. I had obtained earlier than Anne what she had not been able to.

As the baby in my stomach was the proof of mine and Arth’s love, I naturally told no one else, not even him. Because there was no way I could disguise my belly getting bigger, I chose to insist it was my child with the king of Marlon.

One day during that period, Abyss visited my castle. She offered me her aid towards my ambitions–to make Marlon prosper. Abyss’ power had already been proven by what happened with Arth. Her proposal fit nicely into what I desired. With her, my country–I–would be able to obtain powerful magical might….That’s what I thought.

In return for lending me power, Abyss presented to me several conditions. First was cooperating in helping her collect the “Vessels of Deadly Sin”, items that held the same kind of strange magic as the “Venom Sword”. And the other one was to offer her a single baby that she could use as a test subject for her magical research.

The first condition was a simple one. The country of Marlon had within it a man named Duke Sfarz, who owned an extensive information network. I figured it would be a cinch to quickly find such items if I used him.

With regard to the baby of the second condition, I happened to have someone perfect in mind. King Marlon had gotten another mistress set up elsewhere, apparently not having learned his lesson. I had heard that she’d just given birth to a boy named Arkatoir, so I saw an opportunity to give that child to Abyss…That was the plan, anyway.

I was in the last month of my pregnancy by then, so I ended up deciding to fulfill my obligations after things had settled down following my birthing.          

After that—you were around 5 years old—I delivered a girl. But there, I faced the unthinkable again.

The issue was, the fuzz growing from my newly born baby’s head was just like her father, Arth’s—blonde. I had black hair, and the Marlon king had the same blue hair as you. I shouldn’t have been giving birth to any yellow haired children. It wasn’t a problem then, but someday when she grew up it would become obvious that she was an illegitimate child–I was a bit put out by that, but I quickly hit upon a brilliant idea.

–I changed my plans so that the baby I would offer to Abyss was her.

I already had you, Kyle, and as I’d made certain my victory merely by growing pregnant, I had no great interest in the child that I’d given birth to in the first place. Although I had considered perhaps using her to further ruin Anne and Arth’s relationship someday.

I had no need to keep her by my side if it meant risking my own position. Making it out to be a stillbirth, I handed the newborn baby to Abyss. Abyss named that child Ney. Three years after that, children had been born between Anne and Arth. A lovely pair of twins, a boy and a girl. I heard that because of that, their cooled affections had returned to what they once were.

My bad luck continued. Once, when Anne was visiting the country of Marlon, she made a suggestion to me. That we have you be engaged to be married to Riliane, one of her twins, in the future.

It seems as though Arth was originally the one to think up your betrothal. Anne seemed a bit troubled on whether she approved or not, but on the other hand she had apparently regretted her suspicions of me, and so was inclined to let the discussion progress under the idea that we could go back to being friends through this engagement between our two children.

What a joke! Just the thought of marrying off my beloved Kyle to a child of Anne’s was repulsive! But the king of Marlon and his chief vassal were simply taken with the idea, so I couldn’t protest outwardly.

I hated Arth for scheming something like that. I had secrets with him that I couldn’t make public.

–Soon I would kill Arth and his children. That’s what I decided.

When I first started to consider it, I suddenly enjoyed the thought so much that I couldn’t stop myself. I wondered, what sort of expression would Anne wear when she had lost everyone she loved? My heart swelled at such fantasies.

Meanwhile, my gathering of the vessels of deadly sin was coming along very well, and I had already finished collecting the glass, spoon, and mirror. Abyss already had the sword, and so including the doll that meant she had five of them.

Abyss applied some further processing on the mirror, and what had once been one was split up into four. I don’t know the precise reason why, but she told me that it was more convenient that way. She informed me that with the doll as well, it had only become a doll after she’d improved on its original form.

I dispatched Abyss to murder Arth and the twins. It would be no small feat to off three people of the royal family. But she replied that she could do it. I decided to leave the methodology up to her.

First, Abyss used the power of the “Glass of Conchita” to make the Gula disease spread. In order to keep it from having much of an impact on Marlon, she started by having it spring up in the Beelzenian Empire, the furthest spot from here. At the time Arth was in the middle of a campaign to capture Beelzenia, so he was infected with the disease immediately. It was less effective than I would have thought, but eventually Arth passed on.

Next, when the twins turned six she plotted their assassination using the “four mirrors” and the ambitions of my younger brother Presi. Apparently she’d been able to kill one of the twins, Alexiel, but had failed on Riliane. And in that incident, Presi died too. That had been unfortunate, but he had always been such a useless boy, so perhaps it was inevitable.

My miscalculation had been that I was unable to read Abyss’ true motives. She’d had no inclination to help me from the beginning–she was merely using me for her own aspirations. What kind of aspirations? I’m not sure, but she looked to have some animosity towards Elluka. To make Elluka suffer–that was her aspiration. I didn’t know why. Why don’t you ask her yourself? Ah, that’s right, she’s already dead isn’t she? Ho ho ho…

From there Abyss began to go off course. She killed Anne with the Gula disease. I cried all night long. My best friend was dead! Now that she was dead and laid into the ground, I would never be able to cause her misery!

…There was nothing to be done about her passing, though. Having been left behind, what I needed to do then was to destroy the kingdom that was her legacy, and to drive her memento of a daughter Riliane to die in despair.

Even there, Abyss took her own liberties with the situation. I was fine with her getting Riliane possessed by a demon. But I could not possibly forgive her having you–my Kyle–possessed by the demon of “Lust"…ordinarily, anyway.

But when you were possessed by the demon, you ended up obediently following my wishes far more than you ever had up until then. You broke your engagement with Riliane yourself. I was so incredibly overjoyed at that….I’m sure you’ll understand the feeling if you too become a parent someday.

Riliane died during the revolution, and Abyss recollected the demon that was possessing you, as it served its purpose. However, I wanted you to remain the submissive, adorable child that you were. But I didn’t want to use the demon of "Lust” for that…I’d have a problem on my hands if you went around having women here and there like your father, wouldn’t I? So instead I had you possessed by the demon of “Pride”, as I had no other use for it after it had left Riliane.

From there…It’s as you already know. Filled with self-confidence, you flourished and steadily began to spread our territory for me!

But because of that mage and that swordswoman, the demon of Pride left you. You went back to your original self—the Kyle that rebelled against his own mother.

.

Therefore…Therefore, my Kyle,

 .

Your mother will once more,

Have a demon possess you.