An Unknown Past

"Prove it," demanded Kaido. "How do I know you are telling the truth?"

He did not want what they said to be true. His entire life had been built around avenging the death of his mother. It was where his sense of justice came from. It was how he justified his existence. 

If she lived, who could he explain to her that he killed his own father? If she knew he did, she would probably curse him just as his father had; an ill-fated second-born twin. 

"What better proof is there than your own appearance?" said Gayil. 

"Everyone in the realm knows my brother, and I resemble our mother," said Kaido, flippantly. "Confirming that proves nothing."

"Not talking about your resemblance to your mother, idiot," said Gayil, touching the red mark on his temple. 

"What... what do you mean?" said Kaido, touching his own marks. 

"If only the smart twin inherited the power of the Skarred," sighed Gayil. "Instead, we get the stupid, brutish lesser."

Kaido's stance became more aggressive. The monster inside him, the rage that had become its own, urged him to attack the arrogant blonde Skarred sorcerer. It took everything within himself to resist the urge. He wanted answers, not blood. He was not yet a beast. 

"Gayil, stop provoking him," scolded Seialla, rising to her feet. "We were not instructed to tell him about that yet. She said she would tell him herself."

"She probably never expected him to be this stubborn," said Gayil. "There is no way we are going to convince him to come with us the way he is now. We need to make him face reality first; maybe then he'll agree."

"I said stop talking about me like I'm not here!" yelled Kaido. He met Gayil's eyes. "Tell me what you meant."

 "I guess I'll have to because you can't recognise the obvious," said Gayil. "But keep it down, alright? It's a few hours past midnight. Some people are still asleep."   

Kaido took a deep breath, though it did nothing to quiet the fire in him. He deactivated the sword and put the handle on the bed. He took the stool closest to him and sat down. He did it to show willingness to listen, but really, he was exhausted by the teneb root. Light-edged swords were lighter than steel swords, but even holding that up had made him dizzy. 

"Talk," Kaido demanded. 

The Skarred pair looked at each other, then at Kaido, then at each other. Seialla sighed, then sat in her chair. 

"Your father is not your father," Seialla said. "You are not related to the Imperatus at all. Your real father is... Yarrick. That's why you have orange markings, because you are his son. You and your older twin brother both." 

"Lies!" Kaido roared. "If you mean to tell me—

"Oh come on!" whined Gayil. "You are a Scout, right? So, you know a lot about the Skarred, right? You know that the majority of us have either red, blue, yellow, black or white? Have you ever wondered why there are very few cases of Skarred having gold, purple, brown or orange markings like yours?"

It was true that the Skarred generally were marked with the Keirian primary colours. He had given the reason why that was as much thought as he gave the rising of the sun or the falling of the rain. It was just a fact. 

"Oranges can only be born when a Skarred person from the Yellow Clan reproduces with a member of the Red Clan," explained Seialla. "Same applies for all the other rare colours. They usually come about when clans mix their heritage, which does not happen very often."

"Especially between Reds and Yellows," laughed Gayil. "We Reds are naturally cautious people. Too cautious to risk being with a Yellow and birthing a bundle of anger that can burn down a forest because they had a bad day."

Gayil looked at Kaido insistently as if to say, "a bundle of anger like you."

"Also," Gayil added, "Yellows tend to have bad teeth."

"Gayil!" said Seialla, exasperated. 

"What? I'm just trying to illustrate how unlikely it is for another Orange to be around at the time of his birth. Only Yarrick could have been his father."

Kaido was not as practised in logic and schooling as his brother Brenn was. But even he could follow how this explanation was sound. The words of Imperatus Zerre before Kaido killed him echoed in his head. 

Bastard! Bastard! Bastard...

It should have been the first thing Kaido had considered when he woke up with orange markings on his skin. None of the remaining nobles could have Skarred blood since Bethor's Purge. The only explanation for Kaido being Skarred was that the Skarred blood was introduced recently. 

Kaido's entire reality was in ashes. He was never really a prince. His mother was never really killed by Yarrick. The man Kaido had done everything to impress was not actually his father. It was the man he had always meant to kill. 

"So, on the night of Yarrick's escape," said Kaido, "my mother must have escaped with him. They faked her death?"

"Maybe you aren't as stupid as you look," said Gayil. "The burnt body they found was actually a dead soldier of our revolution. They put your mother's jewellery on its burnt corpse to sell the idea that it was her. She escaped with Yarrick and has been leading the Reige Revolution in the Muva Province ever since."  

The bastard prince felt every emotion at once. Betrayal. Defeat. Regret. Anger. Anger he felt in waves. Waves that washed over all his other feelings. The story of Kaido's life had been a lie, and the liar was his own mother. 

He had always told himself that his lust for revenge was his form of justice. That killing the orange villain, Yarrick, was for the good of the kingdom. That anyone who killed a member of the Challas Royal Family deserved to be put to the sword. 

What a farce. There had been an Orange Skarred sorcerer who killed a member of the Challas Royal Family, and it was not the man Kaido had spent his life fantasising about killing. It was that orange villain that Kaido saw in the mirror every day. 

He wanted to see his mother, if only to give the woman a piece of his mind. To make her explain herself, and why she had made him a pawn in her game. 

"I'll go with you," Kaido growled. "Let's go see Carcella."