I know my close friend is fated to die a terrible death. Yet, if I change this fate, I will cause much more destruction on everyone around us. My friend knows this, accepts it with a smile, and yet.... everything inside of me screams to change the world to save them. -- Anon Guest
My lord Neptolomos Jannaeus, inheritor of the Fiscal Empire of Olikent, is doomed. I've known he was doomed since we were ten. As for me? I am -was- his whipping boy. My lord was appointed by the will of the gods to lead the profits of the next generation. He could not be punished for his misdeeds. Therefore, I must be.
Or he would have been. The seer brought in for our tenth birthday pronounced him a grim future.
"Beware the Thrice-Sworn. Continue in the way of your blood and your blood shall be spilled." Ze was executed for hir innaccuracy. Except... the seers were always accurate. My lord beat me himself for bringing such an ill fate to his feet. My fault for being born on the same day as him.
Everything ill is my fault. I do what I can to subvert ill fortune, but it is I who pay the price. All for the love of my lord.
I wish I could pay my life for his. But I know better.
I crept down to the seer before she was doomed. Still aching from my last punishment. I asked, "Is there a way I can save him?"
"Should you save him, should you defeat the Thrice-Sworn, the world will never have enough gold, and the reign of Human shall fail and fall. Should he live, and continue as he's taught, it shall be the end of everything you know."
All the truly accurate seers tell how things could change.
If my lord continued in the way he was taught.
If he carried on in the traditions of his family line.
Then he must be wary of the Thrice-Sworn, and therefore die to preserve the reign of Humans. For Humanity to continue its rise towards a gilded age, then my lord must sacrifice his blood to the Thrice-Sworn.
That soothsaying was twenty-five years ago, and I have learned what the Thrice-Sworn is.
Humanity rose against the Elves by aligning with demons, and that taint was with us still in the form of Hellkin. The foretold Thrice-Sworn is the devil-born spawn of those upstart escaped slaves from centuries past. They were proud of them on that accursed frozen mountain. They called them Demon Lords.
I tried to warn my lord, and he was right to beat me for my hubris. He wanted a gilded age for Humanity, and if his blood must be the sacrifice for it, then that is the price he was willing to pay.
"There are things greater than us in the histories. I shall enter those grand books as a noble sacrifice for the greater good."
His fate was written. I tried to argue that there were phrases he could change. All he had to do was divert from the traditions of his family, lean away from the lessons he had been taught, and he could live and oversee a bright new era.
My lord was right to break my arm for saying such. Fate can not, should not, and will not be changed.
As a last effort, when the Demon Lord had been goaded into action, I slept on the floor by my lord's bedside. Ready to put myself between my lord and whatever may come to oppose him.
The Thrice-Sworn was worse than a mere Demon-Lord. He was trained in his shadows. He came in the night as silent as mist, and woke me by picking me up. Of course they could see in pitch black darkness. Those Hellkin were always creatures of the night.
My lord snored on, and the Hellkin lit a candle. "Who are you who sleeps on the floor when his bed's as big as a house?" The Hellkin whispered. He was all in black, and only carried a dagger.
I suppose he didn't need anything else. "I could call for the guards."
"I could have slit your throat," he countered. "Let's be merciful to each other, eh? Who are you?"
It's well known that the truth is poison to those creatures. So I told the truth in hopes of ending him that way. "My name is Skum, and I am his appointed whipping boy."
"You both are thirty-and-five. You are now his advisor, ja? His most loyal and true friend?"
"I am... everything that goes wrong. My pain pays for his betterment. It is the way of things."
"It is not the way of things for other leaders." In short and quiet words, the Hellkin also told the truth.
What is well-known can also be lies. I learned, that night, that such things are so. At ten, my lord should not have wanted to see me hurt. At fifteen, he should have chosen paths by which I would not have been caned. By twenty, we should have been close allies. And in the years beyond, my advice heeded with utmost sincerity.
I had seen it, when we visited other rulers. I had simply ignored it as an anomaly.
He asked my birthday, and I told him. He and I also shared fates. He embraced me. Apologised for that fate. Something my lord had never done. He released me from my shackles, too, and told me his reign did not have slaves.
Then he gave me his dagger. He gave me a choice.
Strike where the knife would do the most justice.
My lord's neck was soft. The blood flowed quickly from him. He didn't even wake, since the Thrice-Sworn kept his blades so sharp that there was no time to feel pain.
A merciful end to the suffering my lord gave me.
I live in a palace, now.
I have been taught to read.
I choose when I bathe, how I keep my hair, what clothes I wear... what and when I eat. There are no more broken bones. There is no more suffering.
It is so odd being in the advisor's cabinet to the Thrice-Sworn King.
He never beats me.
[Photo by Adenilton Paulo on Unsplash]
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