Chapter 20: Memories (2)

Wynaveyve wished she could’ve wiped the rest of the day from her memory. Instead, it had been engraved into her mind. Before she opened her eyes, she had heard yelling. Desperate, angry, and wholly unpleasant. But Wynaveyve wouldn’t have called it terrifying. No, that lay after she opened her eyes. Vision bleary, she stared into the eyes of nervous maids. She didn’t feel any pain as she sat up. She glanced down at her chest, at the bandages wrapped around her torso. Just like any noble house, a magus was under this lord’s employ, one who specialized in healing magic. A small scar on her chest was all that remained. But healing magic could only go so far, and she wasn’t alone in that makeshift hospital that day.

The visage of her sister next to her burned itself into her eyes. Even to this day, she still sees it when she closes her eyes. A terrible, giant, blood-stained gash, where Roselwyn’s right eye should be. It hadn’t healed right, and they hadn’t properly cleaned it for fear of reopening the wound. But how could it? It was near impossible to heal something as delicate as an eye. Wynaveyve couldn’t help but scream. Yet, no matter how hard she called, her sister wouldn’t wake up. They told her there was a chance she wouldn’t wake again. It was a stroke of fortune that she did. She didn’t remember if their negotiations that day were a success.

As they rode away, Wynaveyve glanced backwards. She saw the corpse of the monster, surrounded by knights, unmoving. Dead. Its head was sliced clean off, its lifeless eyes glinting in the sun, staring straight at her. Wynaveyve shrank down.

Their father was quiet on the ride home. Rather than steering the horses, he had joined them in the carriage. His eyes were downcast, and he never once stopped staring at Roselwyn’s face. Roselwyn tried to pretend that nothing had changed. So silent and composed, Wyn couldn’t even tell if it hurt. As if sensing the tense atmosphere, Roselwyn tried to feign a smile, but no one returned it. Her bandages couldn’t hide the grotesque scars underneath. She tore a piece off her dress, fashioned it into a makeshift eye patch.

“That’s better. That’s pretty, right?” She asked, her voice only betraying a hint of instability. She didn’t get an answer.

Her father had an announcement by the time they arrived at the castle. They had been hurried back, kept hidden from public view. Father ushered them into the throne hall. Everyone else was forced out. It was just the three of them.

“A noble must always maintain appearances. This is doubly true for royalty. They must be unblemished, in character and in body. To do otherwise is to show weakness.” He began. “Roselwyn Emjragard. From this day forth, you are removed from succession. From this day, Wynaveyve Emjragard shall be the crowned princess.”

Wynaveyve turned to her sister, sure she was going to dispute, to defend herself in some way. In any way. Instead, she simply knelt down, and bowed her head.

“As you wish, father.”

From then on, Roselwyn’s responsibilities shifted towards her. The papers and books that she had read, now Wynaveyve would read. The security increased, so that she could no longer sneak away from her lectures. An ultimately pointless gesture. She had never again tried.

Soon, Wynaveyve found herself enrolled in Emijilucan Institute. She had big shoes to fill. Her sister was, of course, the top of the class, a so-called genius that appeared only once in a century. Wynaveyve knew better. There would be two geniuses that century.

Her room had a window overlooking the soldiers barracks. Since that day, Roselwyn had taken up swordsmanship. From her window, Wynaveyve watched as Roselwyn made herself a prodigy of the blade as well. Father was no longer strict on her. No one would’ve blamed her if she were to slack, to take it easy.

Instead, she found a new calling. Wynaveyve asked her once, why she tried so hard.

“I was born a servant to this nation. I merely lost an eye, not my responsibilities.”

A once in a generation talent, they called her. But from her window, Wynaveyve would catch glimpses of Roselwyn’s training. From dawn until well past dusk, she watched her sister train, sweat and bleed. Such was her role, and now was hers. She vowed to do the same.

Wynaveyve was there when Roselwyn graduated from the Institute as well. She aced every exam, created a whole three new spells during her time as a student, including the “Soaring Wings”. The first recorded flight spell in history. She watched Roselwyn’s Plangensoul. A field of grass, looking upon a massive fortified bastion. A hero, she was decreed. She would be destined for greatness, a name that would go down in history.

All the while, Wynaveyve threw herself into her own studies. She walked Roselwyn’s path, doing as she would. The two would become nearly identical, in their studies and their skills, though Wynaveyve always found herself lagging slightly behind. She memorized a greater repertoire of spells, but she had created only one, and it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Her blade lagged always an inch behind Roselwyn. Soon, it was time for Wynaveyve to graduate, just as Roselwyn did. Just as Roselwyn did, she aced her exams.

Yet when it came to the Plangensoul, she couldn’t have been a bigger disappointment.

What the Plangensoul revealed of a person had no pattern, no rhyme nor reason. Each individual manifested an environment tailor made for their own person. From grand castles to simple rooms, from dense forests to wide oceans, each had a thing to call their own, a definition for their souls.

Hers… was empty. There was no towering castle, no field. No war room, no library, no wild untamed terrain. No signifier of any grand purpose.

She couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear, smell nor feel anything. It was just… white. A pure void of white. Nothing that had ever been seen before, no hint of an affinity of any kind. Roselwyn was there, just as she was there for hers, expression underneath the helmet she now donned. A Plangensoul is performed in front of the best maguses of the nation, after all, and there was no better magus than her. And she had, before them all, demonstrated what a failure she was. She had run away from that room. Ran away from the castle, from that throne. No magus in the history of magic had ever failed a Plangensoul. It simply wasn’t something that was able to happen. But somehow, she had managed to.

She crumbled. She had cost her sister her throne. And she couldn’t even live up to replacing her. She couldn’t be her. So she ran. She ran as far as she could, from a place as most unlike her home as there was. There, she’d change. Become someone new. And from there, her Plangensoul would surely change, too. She’d become someone. Anyone. And if not, the throne wouldn’t want a failure upon it anyway.