No fucking "You Died" ssages. Just death. That was my first thought as I was reborn in so palace.
Princess, it is.
Oh, boy, here we go again.
What surprises my birth had in store for this ti? I was shocked. Rule 37 [1] was in full effect.
[1]Rule 37: No matter how fucked up it is, there is always worse than what you just saw.
My soul was joined with the body a bit too early as I gained consciousness inside the womb. Have you ever experienced how it felt to be birthed and rembered it? Obviously everyone did, doh, but I was skeptical on the latter. It was… uncomfortable and constrained, to say the least. 1/10 would not be birthed again. Alas, it was my Fate.
As the proverbial light at the end of the “birth tunnel” shone upon and I left the insides of the “birthing person”, I inhaled and cried, just to make sure people knew I was alive. I didn’t need to open my eyes to “see” where I was as {Titan Skin} worked in a reduced fashion. It was a regal marble bedroom, with lavish dark red (why red?) carpet and tapestries matching with furniture worthy of a [King]. I had no doubt I was once again born to so Royal family sowhere. Goodness, how was I mistaken.
The woman stared at the man holding as he deftly cut and cauterized the umbilical cord, officially making an individual separate from my birth mother. I guessed he was so dical professional as he seed clearly skilled at delivering babies.
“Is it?” She croaked, obviously lacking the strength to do so.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. This one too is a girl,” the man bemoaned.
This one “TOO?" I ntally gasped. Did I have a twin sister this ti? Oh, boy, I wished to see her.
“NO!” The woman scread and cried. “No! It cannot be!”
He held on one hand and the woman's hand on the other. It was obvious they cared deeply for one another, like family not lovers. The man was subordinate to the woman and adored her.
He treaded softly with his next words, almost a faint whisper as he tempted the woman, “I smuggled the stillborn babies. We can kill the girl and replace them with the boy corpse,” the man suggested. "You'll survive."
Big pause here. The verb “To Smuggle” next to the expression “Stillborn Babies” should be a deadaway hint as to how fucked up and unethical this situation was. Trust , it would go south of that really quickly. I didn't even mind dying so quickly instead of suffering what was to co.
I asked.
I could sense the fairy and the wisp inside my soul. Despite being killed in a rather peculiar and mysterious way, it was death like any other.
I stared at the man and could tell he was so sort of mage. Aside from my birth mother and this new mid-husband, nobody else was in there with . No maids, no guards, it was ridiculously suspicious.
The mage's suggestion was violently rejected, “No, don’t kill my babies! Is the other girl with the milkmaid? Did she give birth at the sa ti as I did?” The Royal woman asked.
The mid-husband mage nodded, “It is, Your Majesty. The girl will be recorded as the twin of the other girl the milkmaid birthed and raised as her daughter. What will we do about this one? The [Emperor] will demand to see the baby.”
“Save my daughter. Let die, old friend!” The woman begged between sobs. “Please don’t let that monster kill my daughter!”
The man shook his head. I saw a tear forming on the corner of his eye, “I cannot do that, Your Majesty. I made a vow to your late Father before Galbarar's altar. You must live.”
Despite his obvious lack of dical ethics, the mage cared deepy for the woman. He was almost transfixed as he rembered his vow and his voice told it was the most important thing in his life after this woman's safety.
The woman cried and fainted from her unattended bledding crotch. She'd just birthed twins, why wasn't this asshole helping her instead of fussing over gender? As if he could hear my thoughts, the man cast a [Wizard] spell and removed the caul from her womb and staunched the bleeding. It wasn't a normal healing spell. I couldn’t recognize the strange specialty but I didn’t have System access.
Or System assistance like that asshole from Dallas mocked as if it was a crutch. Maybe he was right about it being a crutch. How the hell did he kill under open sunlight? {Solar Indomitability} should make unkillable so long I was in the sun.
He stared at for a while with pity, then woke up the [Queen]. Was she a [Queen]? It seed so.
“Your Majesty, I have a proposal,” the mage said after a long pregnant pause. Just the pause, as the woman was officially no longer. “I’ll give my life for the child. Forgive for abandoning you.”
I could see the sorrow in the woman’s silent eyes. She had just heard her best friend and probably the only person she could trust hint at committing suicide. Too weak to speak, she puckered her lips and shook her head. She mouthed, “NO”.
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“I have to do it, Your Majesty. The [Emperor] is already on his way.”
His words had a sense of haste and conveyed a deep desire to avoid the tragedy. I didn't doubt that if this [Emperor] was so callous as to kill the woman and , he wouldn't spare the mage.
She croaked as the desperate woman whispered, “Please don’t leave . You’re my last nto from ho.”
“I’ll make sure your child survives. If the [Emperor] sees her sex, he’ll murder all of us. I’ll die so you both can live.”
The [Empress] (I guessed with the information available) didn’t reply. She turned her head to face away from the mage and cried her brains out. Her pained and miserable sobs stabbed at my heart.
The mage placed , naked on the bed near the corner of the mattress. He then waved his storage ring and placed a dead baby boy next to . Closing his eyes, he started to cast a complex spell.
I tried to decipher the circle but it was beyond . It had sothing to do with my body and it was targeting but it was rather complex. Maybe if I had ti to study the imprint or the System crutch, as the Dallas asshole said, I could learn the spell but I knew it was tied to a specialty I didn’t yet have. aning it was one I didn’t bother or wanted to have.
Going through the ntal list, I recognized it. The damn mage was a [Fleshcrafter]. And he was using his disgusting trade on . Ard with new information, I could at least know what the spell would do. And I dreaded.
The spell finished. Without him ever touching the magic did its work on its own.
The dead baby’s genitals were excised from the corpse and floated as the spell attached them to . I could feel the pain as the nerves from the graft connected to mine and the spell drew my blood to revive the dead flesh and convert its DNA to my own.
He started to cast a second spell, this one ant to remove my female genitals. Before he could finish casting, we heard soone banging on the door. He was out of ti and this spell had to be precise as it was ant to keep alive, hale, and with no scarring.
The mage clicked his tongue and emptied his expensive storage ring as he dropped several dead corpses, babies, n, won, of all species on the room. Next, he quick-cast a spell that disintegrated everything, including the now-genderless corpse forrly laying next to that he dropped on the pile.
People were shouting from outside and the door was about to break. I could sense a defensive ward failing.
Then he took a wicked dagger from his storage ring and approached . I was a baby, powerless to even move as my muscles weren’t as developed. He tid his attack with the door breaking. Cackling, he cut the graft, drawing blood. The cut was precise and only nicked the skin. I knew he didn't intend to hurt but it was all part of the scenario he was painting for the newcors.
“DEATH TO THE MURDEROUS EMPEROR!” He shouted theatrically and jumped to murder my mother.
“Stop him!” A commanding voice resounded, making shiver. “Check the baby!” The overbearing man who just entered the room ordered.
Magical rays and {Force Javelins] struck the [Fleshcrafter] dead. He never reached the [Empress] and it wasn’t his goal anyway. His mission was accomplished, his vow kept. His sacrifice would not be honored nor his lack of dical ethics. Alas, he never learned none.
As his body was violently shoved on the far wall, soone, a [Healer] took in her arms. She glanced at my lower body before wrapping in a soft piece of cloth.
“It’s a boy, Your Imperial Majesty!” The woman exulted. “He’s wounded, this wicked mage attempted to castrate your child!” The secular healing spellcaster healed the wound in my scrotum but didn’t ntioned what she saw behind the grafted external organs.
“Burn his ho country to the ground, every village, every city. Salt the land so nothing ever grows there!" He roared, enraged. The [Healer] holding paled and shivered in fright. "Surround it with my armies, let none survive!” The [Emperor] ordered and the world shuddered. Almost literally.
This guy had power beyond what a normal person could achieve. [Emperor] was a [Unique] Class from level zero. It was arguably the most powerful Class in existence. What made the man so strong was that when one beca the [Emperor], he had his Class level reset to zero, I learned later.
Another [Healer] checked my mother, “The [Concubine-Queen] is alive and hale. She seems to be sleeping.”
The [Emperor] smiled and all was well in the Empire. “Good. Now let see my son!”
The [Healer] took before the Emperor and I could tell the guy was the toughest mortal alive. The man unwrapped the cloth and held naked. He gave my body a cursory examination before he put the linens back around .
“I saw with my eyes,” the [Emperor] declared solemnly, “That a boy was born from my wife’s womb, fruit of my loins. I recognize him and grant the title of [Imperial Prince]. I grant him the na, Percival. He shall be ranked thirty-eight among my sons and in the line of succession. I grant him the {Imperial Royalty} Perk. For being wounded and surviving an assassination, I know he’s a survivor and a fighter. I grant him the [Imperial Lancer] Class. That is all. See to the young [Prince]’s health.”
After he handed back to the younger [Healer], The [Emperor] spared his wife not a glance before he left the room. The guards and retinue went with him, leaving only my mother, the two won and . A mage repaired the door before he left and I could hear the lock clicking.
The younger woman washed on a silver basin. After she cleaned and applied so aromatic enchanted oil to my skin, she wrapped in the softest clean cloth and put on a crib that still had a faint sll of the varnish. I pretended to take a nap while I eavesdropped on their conversation.
“Did you see it? The wound in the [Prince]’s crotch?” She asked the other woman who was looking after my mother.
The reaction from the older woman was imdiate. "What do you an?"
"It is an odd wound behind his balls. It is vertical and there's no scarring..."
I heard a slap.
“Don’t ntion it if you want your head to stay attached to the neck,” the other hissed in a whisper. “The [Emperor] had spoken. He examined the child and deed him worthy of those Perks and Classes. The [Empire] has less than ten [Imperial Lancers]. It is one of the rarest Classes in the world and a sign of the Emperor’s favor. Say sothing negative about the child and we are all dead.”
“But my magic can't heal the wound in his crotch! I think it is not a wound but a va...”
Oh. She was talking about my…
Slash! Swish! Slick!
The other [Healer] cut the woman’s neck for speaking too much. Such was life in the Empire’s most powerful family.
“Guards!” She called.
Not a breath was taken before armored sabatons clattered on the marble floor. “What is going on?” A boosting deep male voice rang.
“This woman attempted to hurt the thirty-eighth [Prince]! Take her away!”
"She's dead, sir," one of the soldiers said.
"Take her away! The [Concubine-Queen]?"
"She's safe. I killed the traitor before she could harm either," the [Healer] said pretending to be a fanatic like the others.
It was a nuthouse. People were on edge all the ti and nobody wanted to have anything to do with the trouble. From the way they acted, dead bodies were found every day in the Empire's palaces. The soldiers dragged the body away. So that’s why the carpet was red. To disguise all the blood.
The [Healer] approached and smiled. If it weren’t for the blood splattered on her face, hair, and clothes, one would never tell she’d murdered her coworker without a second thought. She pretended to change my diapers and checked everything as she powdered talc on my crotch so I didn’t get any rash on my butt. As if I would even if I was dipped in filth.
But she confird my most peculiar gender situation. Her face steeled for but a mont before she smiled at and recited what would be the gospel of my life.
“Sleep well, my [Prince]. I’ll stay here by your side for as long as you live. The [Emperor] had just condemned my holand and everyone inside to death, including my family,” she bitterly reminisced. "All that’s left of once-proud Raswaria is [Princess] Rhiannon, your mother. Your survival is our vengeance and your secret is safe with . I pledge my life to serve you so you may one day avenge us all.”
Nuts! The vitriol as she declared her loyalty was sothing that made my blood freeze! The woman was as unhinged as everyone else in this cursed place, I say!
She kissed my forehead and gently cradled as she sang a nursery rhy.
“You’ll need to prove yourself over and over. You’ll need to be a man among n. Ruthless as the [Empire] demands of its Royalty, fiercer than any of your brothers. Hide your true nature well, my [Prince]. Sleep softly for death is at every corner of these marble palaces.”
I understood the latter part clearly. It was a dog murder dog world. As decadent as it was wealthy.
She may be unhinged. But her loyalties were in the right place and she would never harm my mother or .
I was worried about my twin sister. What would happen to her?
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