The Perfect Plan (1)

Aurora~~ Sunday afternoon 1:39 PM – Aurora's Room.

My daily life was nothing but boredom, idleness, or indifference. Killing occupied my empty mind. I didn’t attach myself; I didn’t…

What was the prince to me? A distraction to pass the time?

No. Training the prince was the most tedious task I had been given. Torture was by far a better distraction!

Exploring the limits of human psychology was a bit like organizing an expedition into uncharted territory: wherever I went, I was sure to make great discoveries about its mysterious mechanisms. As for the recruit, it was the opposite: wherever I went, I was sure to be blocked whenever things got interesting… Hello, frustration!

To maintain the authenticity of Big Brother in his future body, I had to make sure not to break his psychic order. Reboot the personality of someone was like rewriting the story of a book. To do so, I had to erase the pages one by one. The risk was that by rewriting the story, it would become illegible due to paper too damaged during the erasure.

Indeed, the human psyche was as fragile as paper! You could never predict whether the writings would disappear completely or if there would be smudges.

With Edwoyn, I only had one shot. You can imagine I didn’t want to take any risks when it came to rewriting his personality. For people to believe my new story, my writing had to be impeccable in coherence and naturalness.

Without that, I could forget about all the copies I would make of Big Brother. So, I limited myself to breaking Edwoyn's will by pushing him to psychological exhaustion.

If he had destroyed the foundations of his personality by killing of his own accord, he would have been plunged into such a state of shock that his consciousness would have dissociated from his perception.

Thus, he would have been unable to think and make rational decisions. He would have given in to all my demands due to a lack of will, without realizing it would compromise his integrity. This way, I would have had the freedom to teach him how to become Big Brother without having to erase the book by hand.

In other words, my original plan was to place his book under a bright sun and wait for the ink to evaporate on its own over time. It was the perfect plan, but everything had fallen apart because Edwoyn’s mind was filled with elitist nonsense, and it seemed he was as stubborn as his father.

Oh, I forgot about his magical malfunction. That damned bug…! It had to make its appearance just when I was about to make my subject crack!

Since that disaster, my experiment had been at a standstill, and I had lost my way. If I couldn't make him a replica of Big Brother as I intended, training the prince made no sense.

So what was he still doing in this house? Why hadn’t I gotten rid of him like any other target? What was stopping me from doing it?

The answer seemed to have become mixed up with the thousands of contradictions swirling in my mind. Edwoyn had everything it took to make an excellent Big Brother. His ore was patiently waiting in its shell.

No, you know nothing of his true nature. He is not normal. Edwoyn cannot be broken; it’s a waste of time. You have failed; find another more malleable. End of story.

If I saw Big Brother in him once, I could see him again! I just haven’t found out how yet! It’s by failing that you learn; you can’t give up at the first attempt…

And what will you do if Edwoyn turns out to be irreplaceable? Edwoyn is just a copy; stop deluding yourself. No copy will ever live up to the original, and even if you settle for a counterfeit, you don’t have what it takes to reshape him.

Now there was a problem to address.

Before talking about what I would do with my copy, I needed to at least be able to create one. Given the circumstances, I had neither the right material nor the right model.

My eyes fell on a piece of paper sticking out from the cut-out desk pad. I leaned down and grabbed the pencil wedged behind my ear to draw a little diagram of these two points.

First, my raw material was unusable. A kid with an aggressive split personality? There was no way that would reflect on the final version of Big Brother! Edwoyn had a particularly unstable soul, and I had learned the hard way that breaking such an unstable soul resulted in nothing good.

Second, the model I was supposed to base my reproduction on was just a blurry, confusing picture. Despite the few memories I had recovered from my childhood, I knew almost nothing about Big Brother—not even his name or the nature of our relationship.

Were we friends? Rivals? Partners in crime? What was our affiliation? What circumstances had brought us together?

Why had I given him that ridiculous nickname: “Big Brother”? Was he part of my family? Or was it just a childish desire to draw closer by considering him as such?

I leaned back on my stool. With some distance, I thought I would see more clearly, but it made no difference. I sighed in exasperation before returning to my tinkering under the orange glow of my industrial lamp.

Who is Big Brother, damn it?

No matter who this boy had been to me, it was only by asking him directly that I would get those answers. The problem was, I had seen him die.

Could I even trust what I had seen at Hiven Palace? Memory or hallucination? Was there a chance, however slim, that he had survived the massacre? I had survived after all, so why not him?

“If you had used me on De Ritella, you wouldn't be asking so many questions right now...” a voice, unwelcome in my mind, whispered.

“I decide when to use you, not the other way around, filthy parasite.”

“I’m your only solution, Aurora. When are you going to put your ego aside and recognize the facts?”

“There has to be another way. I’ll invent one if I have to.”

Without giving him a chance to respond, I abruptly set the disjointed sword down on the workbench. To check if the wiring system I had just installed worked properly, I discreetly pressed the button embedded in the handle.

Each fragment came together to form a straight, rigid blade. I pressed the button again, and the cable unfurled, transforming the sword into a sort of segmented whip with numerous edges.

With such a prototype, my opponents would all be caught off guard. All that was left was to figure out how to compact the weapon for carrying.

“You shall be called Multipales,” I declared in a surge of pride.

The Multipales sword had a very flexible shape that could easily replace a belt, although I would have preferred to reduce the size of the blade.

After a minute of indecision, I realized I didn't need to choose. Why choose when you could have both at the same time?

With a magic chisel in hand, I began to carve two small lines along the edges of the blades. These grooves would hold magical crystals, and by casting a compression spell on them, all the sharp fragments could merge into one.

The idea of being able to shorten the blade at will pleased me immensely. Eager to see it come to fruition, I pulled small crystals from my personal stash and immersed myself in the work for a good quarter of an hour.

Contrary to what others might think, being alone and isolated suited me just fine. Alone, I was free to push boundaries as I pleased. Isolated, I no longer had to confront outside gazes.

In a word: I was in my element. There, tinkering with new weapons, I could finally think calmly about what was next. To get out of a deadlock, it was good to return to the essentials. A

s I admired my final creation from every angle, I tried to trace back to the root of the problem: what did I really want out of all this?

The soul of Big Brother with me.

And what was stopping me?

The soul of Edwoyn.

At that thought, the solution jumped out at me. From the beginning, I had been completely off track! I had only been thinking about reshaping a defective soul, but just like machines, if a part was defective, it was much easier to replace it. Replacing one soul with another...

A resurrection.

If, indeed, Big Brother was no longer of this world, I could directly introduce his soul into the body of a vessel. That was where Edwoyn came in. Enlightened after days of blockage, I abandoned my Multipales sword on the workbench and rushed into my room. The door slammed shut, and the lock produced two distinct clicks.

“Just the two of us, resurrection magic.”

Knowing exactly where to look, I turned to the two bookshelves just behind the door. My finger traced the rows of grimoires until it bumped into a worn old notebook. The cover was made of green leather with no metallic decorations. I grabbed it with a swift motion and pulled on its cord like a ribbon on a gift.

I could have thought of this much earlier, so much earlier!

The pages were often stuck together, most torn and yellowed, but the writing remained legible. I turned them eagerly, detailing the sketches and the author’s notes with the utmost care.

When I sat on the floor against my bed, I lost track of time and my worries. It was just me and the fundamental rules of necromancy, or more commonly, death magic. These forbidden practices remained taboo wherever you went.

The few brave souls who dared to try often ended up in a terrible state. For my part, this singular magic evoked life, love… hope. It was the most desperate act one could dedicate to a loved one.

The journal in my hands belonged to a magician I had executed on a solo mission. Yes, that same magician who had introduced me to maleficence. His blood still coated the tips of my hair after all these years, but for what he was about to offer me, it was a small price to pay.

Since he was no longer of this world, there was no harm in borrowing his belongings, right?

“Preparation:

- 280g of invocation sand of the fourth degree of purity.

- A living or dead vessel less than 36 hours old. (Preferably young and healthy bodies.)

- A fragment of DNA that belonged to the target you want to bring back.

Incantation: Soul transfer spell “Rodes Amae Nethom Viquiosa.”

Step 1: Immobilize the vessel. (Keep it conscious.)

Step 2: Draw a magic circle on the vessel (according to the rune model below) with a magic ink pen.

Step 3: Kill the vessel if it is still alive. Be careful not to damage the vessel during its death. It is recommended to suffocate it.

Step 4: Heal the vessel and recite the soul transfer incantation while scattering all the incantation sand. You will need to maintain physical contact with the DNA portion of the person you want to bring back.”

The DNA of the person I wanted to bring back? I didn’t possess even a crumb.

A forbidden thought crossed my mind at that moment. I stopped breathing. Slowly, my wide eyes fell on the large wardrobe to my right.

Unless…

The day I lost my memory, everything that constituted my old life had been slaughtered. I had taken only one thing with me when leaving that hell: the nightgown I wore that evening.

I had never been able to bring myself to get rid of it, even though it was unusable. It meant nothing to me, but it must have held many memories for the little girl I had been.

The small nightgown was gathering dust in a box at the back of the wardrobe, a piece of furniture I stared at as if my life depended on it.

It had been a long time...

Without even opening it, I was aware of the wrinkles in its crumpled fabric. The lace, every grey and mauve ruffle, the bib collar... All stained in the slightest weave.

This box was a bit like my treasure chest. It held the remnants of the dark and mysterious period that was the first five years of my childhood. In twelve years, I had never sought to open it because I had never sought to remember.

I had a vague feeling of knowing yet, at the same time, knowing nothing about the nature of my lost memories. From what little I knew, I had no doubt that they were hideous—the kind of memory one would want to forget forever.

So, I had pushed away all curiosity on the subject and continued on my path without worrying about the past. Still, I had to admit that there were times when I thought back to that nightgown.

I mainly wondered to whom all that blood covering it belonged. Was it mine or that of the man who had tried to kill me?

Now, the answer seemed obvious to me: it was Big Brother's blood.