Once I recovered from all of this, I began to think again but not about what any normal person would, but rather what I started with. For if I was to be reasonably objective and neutral then I couldn't leave something out either.... myself.

I had long and thick black hair which I kept to a specific length for obvious reasons. My eyes were red but closer to pink than pure scarlet, although I was born with the blue color. It didn't happen overnight, but I assumed that this mutation happened as a result of my gift, as I slowly mastered this. It was a low price to pay for such an ability.

My skin was snow white in color, while my face was smooth and probably even quite handsome, as for my musculature.... maybe it's better not to talk about it. There was no excuse, but I had spent practically all my life in one place and one place only, there was no time for that. Great library. A place about the size of a city and also one of the largest on the planet, right next to the palace and the ancestors temple. Library supposedly contained all the knowledge ever acquired, even that forbidden anywhere else. It was such a wonderful spot for me that at one point the guards had to take me out by force... on someone's orders. Fortunately, it wasn't very popular among my siblings, so it turned out to be my hideout as well, which I tended to go whenever there was an opportunity. I read and read, as for now I didn't even know how much, whether I could count in thousands of books or maybe already in tens of thousands.... but it wasn't enough anyway. I barely scratched the surface of this wonderful structure. If I wasn't a prince I would certainly become a librarian there.... unfortunately this opportunity won't be given to me in this lifetime. I wonder how my teacher the great librarian will be doing without me and our conversations, will he feel too lonely?

What is left to tell about me.... height, of course height.... height... I was the shortest of us all. If this was to be the last moment I could be honest with myself for I could no longer be more naked, and the truth was to be told.... I was short. No matter how I screamed, gnashed my teeth or tried again to find something in books, genetics couldn't be fooled.... I was born the smallest and shortest. And a one certain person did not hesitate for a moment to remind me of this.

“How the fuck I hate him.”

Damn, how refreshing and maybe cleansing it was at the same time. I felt much better, I continued to feel the phantom pain but but I felt lighter. As strange as it may sound, maybe this is what I needed.

Person who stood next to me was Eighth, a real freak, maybe not like me but still a freak. He stood out by his fat, yes fat, it was thanks to him that I learned that our physique even allows it. However, he was not completely obese, it was easy to notice muscles in him and even a fair amount of them, just he was sort of round, for a better description.... he was rounder than others.

Yet his oddity did not end there, he was short however what it was to have a different physique.... ehem. The Eighth was also bald, or more precisely, very smoothly clean-cut, which made his baldness stand out among the crowd of our hair. It's a good thing he wasn't standing next to Sixth as the contrast couldn't have been more noticeable.

However, even despite all this I wouldn't call him weirdo, what struck me personally about him was his smile. It seemed so real, not fake like in others or covered up by other emotions, just pure smile. The usual, most normal smile, smile for that he was in the place he was. And it was disturbing, surprising and refreshing at the same time. A freak in the true sense of the word.

His gift was as ironic as its owner, as Eighth seemed to be simply lucky.

The man approached him, as usual he looked him over from top to bottom then moved on, indifference and aloofness again. Although I could already expect this to the end, we the inferior ones had no right to receive even a shadow of emotion from a great ruler.

Next in line was Nine, short, petite and cold as frost. Maybe by his upbringing, maybe by his circumstances o maybe by his race.

His hair was unique, long and gray, even passing into white. However, his skin was pale, covered with a bluish tint that was almost blue, as if dead. Yet his eyes were deep and azure, almost sky blue. Beautiful as jewels, something I never expected to say about another man. If I had to speak in another language I would say that he was blue, blue, blue, blue and blue.

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His mother, from whom he would take his dominant traits, could have been of any race, from ice elementals, through ice giants, to yuki-onna. She could even be a ghost or undead whose dominant element was a ice.

Whether our sperm donor would be interested in a undead was not even a question. But how did you impregnate such a undead, who knew... maybe that's where the saying comes from: all you need to do is want it?

Even at first glance it was clear what he was capable of, he ruled the ice. Cold on the outside and cold on the inside, there was also a wave of energy rising from him, but this time a cold one, although noticeably weaker than Fifth's. Maybe that's why he had a smaller number, or maybe it wasn't taken into account at all?

Fire and ice, complete opposites, our father must have had a lot of fun choosing... and more.

Well, and then it was time to inspect the last one, the Tenth. He was disconcerting, average in everything, average height, average looks, average musculature and even average hair length. But he had a feature that could not be overlooked, his eyes... were completely black, and that, I don't know why, slightly frightened me. Black blanks like a deep pit, with tiny barely noticeable pupils.

On top of that, his behavior, the fact that he was terribly quiet only compounded it. He seemed to stand there and not breathe, quite like a puppet without strings. His gift also seemed complicated, after all, nothing could be ordinary about us.... Tenth seemed to extinguish the rest. Nothing could be heard from his surroundings, nothing or no one. And when I tried to focus on him, it was as if part of my brain stopped working.

I had never heard of such a thing, nor did I know anyone who had. But someone must have, after all, the Tenth must have come from somewhere.

As the liar passed the last of us in the row and thus disappeared from my direct sight, I could finally take a deep breath. He was going to have to deal with the next rows of my brothers which there was no way of knowing how long it would take him, they weren't in the top ten so I didn't need to focus my attention on them, they were insignificant and I might never meet again most of them again.

So I was left with an indefinite amount of free time in an empty room full of people, so I went back to what I started with. Observation of the room to which I had access for the first time.

Our royal guards, hidden observers, were invisible because they decided to hide in various hidden corners of this cursed room. And I could sense the invisible, but sometimes ignorance could be bliss. Because yes, there were guards hidden in this room, but there were dozens, hundreds, if not several thousand of them.So someone was so afraid for his life that he had to have thousands of guards. Some of them stood in the open, camouflaged behind some spell, others were hidden behind marble pillars hidden under a mantle of shadows, while others were hidden in the floor or hanging from the ceiling. The correlation, however, was that the stronger one, the harder it was for me to spot him, probably due to experience in stealth... or maybe it was the other way around, weaker, more noticeable.

However, one of these dark shadows was different, completely different. He practically made his presence known in plain sight, as if he wanted to be found or looked at.

If I saw some of them as a spot on a white sheet or, in extreme cases, a hidden flickering shadow next to a burning flame, I saw this special individual hidden in the farthest part of the throne room, or more precisely in the shadow of the marble columns, ideally behind the throne, only as a sun.... void, an everything devouring black hole.

The black hole which I think was mocking me, kept disappearing and reappearing in random places, flitting from right to left and left to right, but still within the area behind the throne. I was so fascinated by this that, so I decided to focus my attention centrally on it. I didn't know if I should follow it, look for it again, or maybe this person wanted to give me a message?

Nevertheless, after a while the black hole ceased its movement, the air around me thickened and breathing began to come hard to me, something happened that shouldn't have happened. If at the earlier sight of the man in front of me my hair was standing on end, then through the shadow hidden behind the throne I felt as if all the light in the surroundings could go out. As if reality was bending to it will.

However, the sensation of pressure just as quickly as it appeared disappeared, my head was again as fully functional as ever, my back was dry and my legs were limber, once again.... It was as if it was all an illusion. Yet the illusion was not.... the shadow of the throne continued to exist, I continued to feel it.

I however understood the message . “Don't look that way.” I started repeating to myself over and over again to restrain my whims, because next might not have ended with a light reminder.

So I closed my eyes and waited, fighting my inner demons, until the sound of footsteps reached my ears followed by that familiar deep and husky male voice.

“Know what you have, know where you stand and also know what awaits you. Go and do not return until you are victorious."

And so we did, exactly as we were taught.... in order, one by one quite like polite dogs. From the worst to the best, so that the First could bask in the glory of the emperor, for the longest time.

However, before the first one could exit through the hall door, it was our great ruler who added something else from himself at the end. Just to further rush us our escape, maybe he didn't even want to pretend anymore.

"BEGONE"

“Yes, it was nice to meet you, too, Father.”