Vi tossed and turned in bed. Enrique watched next to her, worry creasing his forehead.
“What happened?”
She drew the covers over herself. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, come on.” Enrique sighed. “You’ll probably feel better if you do. Aren’t you my spirit partner or whatever?”
Vi turned away from him. She buried herself in the sheets. “Don’t talk to me.”
The boy blinked. He reached out a hand and tugged on her blanket.
She made a small whimpering noise. Vi’s head popped up from the blankets as she faced him. Her eyes were big and sad. Her mouth quivered. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to do this anymore. N-no one can count on me. I’m tired. I’m so tired.”
Enrique felt shocked. This wasn’t the calm and reserved Vi he usually saw, or even the happy version. “Is—is this about the gang? It’s not your fault. A whole guild of adventurers couldn’t stop them. You did your best. I bet you still saved a lot of lives. The same for that forest place. It was horrible, but you rescued people. Isn’t that what’s important for a Hero?”
He was guessing here, but he was trying to make her feel less bad.
“I’m not a hero.” Vi’s body shook with emotion. She curled up into a ball, wrapping her tails around herself. A tear streaked down her face. “That’s what people called me, but I’m not.”
“What are you talking about?” He watched Vi tremble, unsure what to do.
“I was never supposed to be one. A hero doesn’t choose who to save. A hero tries to love everyone in the world.”
Vi sniffled. She was crying now. “Everybody who loved me the most is dead. My mom and dad were killed before I could graduate school. I saw it. All my friends are dead. Aurelius is dead. My past partners are dead. The Kingdom is all I have left.
Her big eyes were wet and she hiccuped. “Everyone’s hopes and dreams—peace and unity—I failed them all. If it was Claire or anyone like her, things wouldn’t be like this. Now I fail others when they need me the most. I let them die. I stand there and let them get slaughtered. I’m not a good person. Okay?”
Enrique reached out and patted her on the shoulder. “Vi…”
He didn’t know what to do. He just watched her cry.
----------------------------------------
??? years in the future. Capital of the Unified Empire. Sub-scenario 55/560. 20%.
A bunny woman in a pink sleeveless top and black stockings dragged the man into the room. She roughly yanked the chain on his neck, causing him to choke and splutter as he was brought to the ground in front of a black throne.
“On your knees!” The woman shouted, kicking him in the back. The man whimpered and knelt before the throne, shaking. A figure sat on it, with a crown of four jewels on her head.
“Thinking about stealing?” The crowned figure spoke softly.
The man shook. He kept his eyes on the floor. “Please, I didn’t plan to do it. Have mercy—”
The bunny woman in pink stomped on him with her heel. The man cried out. She did it again, and again. “How dare you speak to the Queen without permission! You worthless, stupid creature!”
The figure was a woman with many long black tails and the black ears of a fox. Her eyes were a glowing blue. She lounged back in her seat. “I don’t want anyone to get any ideas. No crimes are allowed against my subjects. What do you want to do with him?”
“Punishment.” The bunny woman kicked the man hard on his side, her eyes gleaming with vicious satisfaction as he uttered a wail of pain.
The queen said nothing, but a deep pool of water suddenly formed near the man. A tail lazily swatted his behind and he yelped in pain. Another tail smacked him, and then another, harder. He whimpered as the tails beat him relentlessly in a bored and casual fashion.
“Aw…it hurts, doesn’t it? Ahahaha.”
The queen pulled him with a tail and dunked his head in the pool of water. He flailed helplessly. As time passed he violently thrashed under the surface. Before he could drown, she lifted him up and he gasped for breath. Then seconds later she pulled him down again. She did it twice. Three times. Four. She said nothing, merely smiling as he struggled.
She threw him unceremoniously back onto the floor of the room. The man spluttered and gasped for breath. She stretched a tail out to a dark part of the room and it returned with a black whip. She offered it to her subject. “I think that’s enough. Would you like to try?”
The bunny woman chuckled. She straddled the man and yanked the length of it with her hands, smiling as he cringed and whimpered.
“No, please—”
The crack of the lash echoed through the room. The man screamed. Another crack, louder this time. The whip came up, and then down again. There were more cries. The bunny woman laughed. Black leather sang through the air.
The figure on the throne watched silently.
Several minutes later, the bunny woman seized the man’s head and pulled it so she could scream in his ear. “Behave! Respect the Empress!” She laughed as the man sobbed.
The Queen spoke. “Aw, sweetie, calm down. You’re such a good friend. Why don’t you punish your other servants? Don’t let them think such bad things.”
The bunny woman shuddered with pleasure. “lt—it would be my honor, my Queen.”
The bunny woman dragged the man away, pulling him with one hand like he weighed nothing. She strutted out of the room.
After some silence, another subject entered. She had black cat ears and a black tail, and wore a black jacket. She approached the Queen and bowed to it, then looked up directly at her with green eyes.
“My Queen.” The cat girl stopped, as if hesitating on what to say.
The queen smiled. “Speak freely, Ali. Do you need anything? More food? Pillows, blankets? A hot shower? I want you to be nice and comfy.”
“No, those are fine.” She seemed to be making an immense effort, trying to force herself to say something. “My Queen, there are—there are no murders anymore.”
“No,” the queen confirmed in a mild tone.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“No hurting Anima. No taking advantage of us. No poverty. No fights among ourselves. No stealing.”
The queen was listening silently. In the distance, there was the sound of flames burning flesh, a chorus of screams, and a female voice laughing.
“We have servants. Servants that do whatever we say, without pay. We can do whatever we want—anytime we want.”
The cat girl went silent, as if unable to continue.
“Yes. It’s good, isn’t it?” The queen spoke quietly.
“How do I say—I think this is—there’s something that I…I…”
The cat girl struggled. There was a thought she was trying to have, rising up to the surface, which was quickly being dashed like a vapor of mist in the wind. “I don’t feel good. When I see servants,” the cat girl finally said, a little dumbly.
“Do you want one?” The queen spoke gently to the cat girl, as if being patient with a small child. “Of course you can do whatever you want to them. I only want my subjects to be happy.”
The cat girl shook her head. She seemed confused with herself. “I don’t want one. But if I had one, I don’t want them to be loud.”
It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to say. She wanted to say why the loudness bothered her. But was it bad? She couldn’t find the words to express why.
“Oh, I understand,” the queen said sympathetically. She reached out one of her tails and patted the cat girl on the head. “You already live in a quiet zone, remember? The servants don’t bother you there. They are nice and obedient, and your neighbors are quite happy to use them.”
The cat girl shuddered violently at the touch. “Yes.”
The queen reached somewhere in the room and took out a bottle with white liquid. “Here. This will calm you down.”
The cat girl stared at the bottle. A very small, faint voice in her head told her not to take it. There was something not right here, and she knew the moment the liquid touched her lips, she wouldn't think about it anymore. Everything would be over.
“Please don’t worry,” the queen said in a soothing tone. “All that matters is your happiness. I will always provide for and take care of you, okay?”
The cat girl looked into the Queen’s eyes. They were glowing blue, cold and without feeling. More like a force of nature than someone she could relate to. Still, there was a strange comfort that came with that. The cat girl knew she was safe with the queen, that she could get almost anything she wanted. What was she trying to stop herself from, in the end?
The queen tipped the bottle to her mouth. The cat girl finally took it and drank. It was sweet and pleasant, not like she expected.
She visibly relaxed, gratitude and pure pleasure flooding into her from everywhere in the room at once. “Thank you.”
Screams of agony sounded in the distance. A female voice shouted in a mocking tone. With each passing second, the cat girl found the noises less and less of a disturbance. She knew when she went home, she wouldn’t hear any of them. She could ask the servants to prepare an afternoon snack. They would do anything she asked with complete silence. Maybe the queen would give her a hot shower before then. The cat girl smiled blissfully at the thought.
That was how the last resistance to the World Empire was broken.
The queen smiled to herself and took out an old phone. There was a picture there, of a profile from before the System ceased to exist.
Vivian Azurelane
Role: Queen. Villain.
Partner: (none assigned)
Rank: 1
----------------------------------------
Vi woke up with a start, breathing heavily. What was that? She glanced to the side. Enrique was fast asleep. The fox woman turned and gazed at herself in the mirror.
It’s just those nightmares again. Go to sleep.
I’m not a monster. Not yet.
That was what she told herself. She wasn’t sure if she believed it.
She fell back into an uneasy slumber.
The forest of spirits.
Vi was standing against a crooked gray tree. The trunk was a pillar behind her, stretching up into twisting and bent branches which extended every which way. The tree had no leaves, but swayed in the wind, its many large twigs twitching like dancing arms. Many similar trees stood around her, like tombstones in a vast graveyard.
A figure approached. A fox woman like her, but with long black hair and eyes perpetually glowing blue. The being’s appearance reminded Vi of her mother, Arienne, but the stranger’s features were more angular, and some would say crueler. Her many long black tails spilled out behind her, so many even Vi’s twelve seemed small in number. She stood proud and erect, with a secretive smile.
“I know you,” Vi murmured, as tried to place where she had seen the stranger. Not in life. In dreams. Then she remembered. “Great-grandma Zeta?”
Vi was suddenly flung hard against the tree, the branches wrapping around her in a tight grip. “Ah!” she cried. “Auntie Zeta,” she tried again, and the branches released her.
Even as a spirit, apparently, her ancestor didn’t like being reminded of her age.
Zeta spoke. Her voice carried in the wind, thrumming with raw power. “What a disappointment. Why do you resist, child?”
“I…I don’t know what you mean,” Vi stammered. It was very strange to see someone old enough to call her a child.
Zeta scoffed. “Stupid. Arienne should have carried on the legacy. Even Valos would have been more acceptable.” She approached Vi and prodded her with a tail. “Your Eye. You are holding back. You want to know why you can’t save anyone? It’s because you’re afraid to use our power to its full potential. You’re afraid of the consequences.”
Vi’s ears twitched. She licked her lips. “My mom and dad spoke about you. They warned me. They said you searched for true immortality, where you could never die no matter what anyone did. You were the first wielder of the All-Seeing Eye but its power permanently consumed you. You did horrible things. That’s why everyone calls you Zeta the Insane.”
Zeta’s tails flicked in the air as she regarded Vi coolly. “Insanity is merely a mind others can’t bear to comprehend. Your intentions are good. Mine were too, back in the day. Why don’t you seize the dream, and make the world yours? Forget about what others think. End the torment you bring on yourself.”
Vi was silent. She tried to look away from Zeta’s eyes. They were piercing, amused, gazing into her depths the way only an Azurelane could. “You’re dead, Auntie Zeta. You’ve been dead even since my parent’s time. Don’t try to trick me so you can fulfill your own fantasies.”
Zeta reached a tail out and stroked her cheek. The older being’s voice softened and took on a soothing tone. “I am the first Azurelane. You are the last. As long as you live, we are connected.”
Vi shook at the touch. It reminded her of her mother when she tucked Vi in at night as a small child. A tear trickled down her cheek. “I can’t. I won’t do it.”
“Do you know why you always receive a new partner, century after century? Do you know why that curse of yours still remains?”
Vi didn’t want to admit it, but Zeta’s eyes, even in death, were terrible and strong. She looked into them. She nodded her head.
Zeta the First smiled, a cold smile. “It’s because you’re supposed to fall. You were meant to be the world’s worst Villain. That’s your Destiny. It’s what the System wants from you. You can consider it a fail-safe. You’re like a weapon of last resort if the world is overwhelmed, if all the Heroes through the ages can never truly provide peace, and the Kingdom needs a tyrant to preserve itself. Assuming you don’t get killed, of course.”
“You’re—you’re lying.” Vi shook her head, trembling. “Maybe it’s true the System will stop trying to pair me if I go insane, or if I take the crown for myself. But it doesn’t mean I have to be a—a villian. It doesn’t mean it has to go that way.”
“Ahahahaha!” Zeta’s laugh echoed through the woods. It was like Vi’s laugh, but wild, crazed. “Silly child. Trust me, it’s a slippery slope. Once the so-called ‘madness’ begins, it starts to take over. It feels good. It’s fun. You can’t stop. Like a set of cliffs overlooking the ocean. You stand at the edge, stick your foot out—just to experiment, you know? Then you lose your balance, and you fall.
“You catch yourself as you go down, maybe grab a rock or handhold, but then there’s another cliff right below. Such a good place to land. And there’s such a nice view down there, in the ocean. It's beautiful. It’s smooth and flat and you can play on the sea and the sand. It’s too hard to go back up anyways. Maybe you try, in the beginning. But it’s too difficult. So down and down and down you go.”
“Stop.” Vi shook her head, pleading, trying not to imagine the picture Zeta was painting in her head. “Please stop. I’m not a bad Anima. I’m—I’m a good fox.”
Zeta shrugged. She smiled mysteriously. “Think whatever you want. You’ve been doing this for—how long, now? Thousands of years. Every mistake, every defeat, and every piece of suffering you experience only draws you closer to the darkness. I would get it over with if I was you. The Anima Kingdom will be happy. You’ll be happy. Isn’t that what matters?”
There was a bright flash of white light, and Vi awoke.