Inhumane

prologue.

The world hid lots of secrets from the past. To the world Xerxes Vasilios was a brutal bastard who usurped the Crown and shook the realm to its core. He was said to be loveless and childless. A lone King. Lived a triumphant life above the trail of terror and blood he left behind. He will die alone with no wife or children. Peaceful, yet glorious.

The realm hid lots of secrets from the past. The realm also hid secrets from Xerxes, not a lot. Just one. One secret that remained a secret until the day Elysium welcomed the usurper back home.

The truth is, he was indeed a brute who lived and thrived on top of blood and glorious battles. The secret is, he was never destined to be that.

High Priestess and High Sorceress all around the realm forbade the King to lay with another just months after the death of the Queen. They forbade him because a King were meant to wed only one Queen. They forbade him in fear of the child will be a monster the realm could not handle. Little do they know, it was not because of that.

It was because of a dying fetus inside a wailing woman banging on Seraphina's door in the dead of the night with blood running down her legs. The King was away. The banging woke the confused and sleepy Seraphina along with her son.

"My queen!" She panted "Please..."

Just like the wailing woman. Seraphina too, was heavily pregnant, wobbling in her room to open the door thinking something had happened to the King, and the woman came to tell her that. But, no.

"My child!" She wailed louder when Seraphina opened the door, her eyes horrified to see the woman before her front door. "Save it, please... Please! I'll do anything." The woman then kneeled. Trembling on the ground.

"Where are the midwives? I could not assist birth." Seraphina put a hand under her swollen belly and bend over to patted the woman's shoulder "Tell your husband to pray to Eileithyia."

"No, my Queen! The midwives told me to go to you, please... the Goddess could not help me. My child, it-it's dying." Her whole body trembling with tremor as she gripped Seraphina's hand.

"It needs life... They said you could give—" The woman stopped and cried out in pain when more blood trails down her legs. One hand clutching the soaked dress. But, the Queen understood what she meant. She was raised by witches and grew up to be one of the skilled witches in her village.

What the woman asked; Seraphina could give, theoretically. But, is she willing? Her son in exchange for an unknown woman's child?

"I will do anything, my Queen..." She begged breathlessly "I will give everything I own, my Queen..."

Seraphina helped the woman to stand, although she too, have troubles walking on her own. They walked inside before she told the woman to lay down with her legs spread open as if to give birth, and her stomach exposed.

"I could not give all that you wished from me." Seraphina whispered as she touched the woman's swelling stomach.

"I could give just enough for her to live, but not much." just enough to keep her from early death, but Seraphina can't bring herself to say it.

"Her?"

The Queen nodded, "A beautiful girl." It soothed the woman.

Seraphina went to grabbed all the things she needed to perform the procedure, then sat down next to the woman. "I bare another Vasilios inside me, a boy" She began.

"He will be the last, and he will become a great Prince." if the realm ever let him to be one.

"Like his father? King Wagner?" Aslaug smiled.

"Much better I hope." The future is uncertain, and blurry. But if it's close enough and the Gods are willing, Seraphina was able to foresee it. All her sons will do better than her husband, that is a future she was sure of.

Seraphina painted the woman's belly with wolf's blood before wiping the blood that trailed down the woman's leg and use it to draw runes.

"Will this work?" The woman asked in between hard, labored breathing, her voice still full with hope despite the skull-cracking pain all over her body.

"Women are made by the Gods from the left rib of men. Do you know why?" Before the woman could answer, Seraphina continued.

"Because it was the strongest thing yet most vulnerable. So strong, it protected life from harm, yet so vulnerable it often breaks just to keep life... alive." She was almost finished with her runes, and looked down at the woman's face. Her mind is all made. What the Gods asked of Seraphina through this woman cannot be denied.

"Women were made from and are men's ribcage because we kept them alive, and we protected their life. Without us, life would be crushed to death and they'd be nothing." Seraphina put her blood coated hands on her stomach and chanted spells, her other hand pressed against the woman stomach.

Seraphina knew the cost of serving the fate that befell her from the Gods. What the future hold will still be mysterious to her, but she knew.

She could feel her pain, she could feel the dying baby's barely beating heart. The poison the baby was swimming in. The poison that was choking but her and her mother. Her heart beating poison through her veins. Rapidly.

Then it stopped. Before it beats harmoniously and in sync with her mother. The youngest Vasilios then began to kicked Seraphina's womb repeatedly against her hand, before he then stopped altogether.

Seraphina retracted her hand from the woman's stomach and began to carressed her own stomach as if to apologize. She could saw the woman visibly melted in relief against the surface. Her stomach now feels like the most peaceful place on the realm. Serene.

"I could not give my son's rib for your daughter's life. But, I could give some of his strength for your daughter's life."

The woman blinked. "In exchange for?" She was smarter than she led on. Of course there's something to trade for something as big as life. There must be.

"Both of them will live. That I am sure of." The true answer is too hurtfull for the two women to bare.

When the sun started to show, the baby girl's heart was beating proudly with life, and the youngest Vasilios had stopped kicking his mother's womb until the day he came out to the world. He's alive, because life will always find its way.

And, so will death.

The two will cross in a path that fate has built tirelessly.

Xerxes Vasilios was never destined to be a King. His destiny was to walk the realm and fight glorious battles like a true Lycan. It was his mother who had to choose, and she chose Xerxes to be the most ruthless man the realm had ever seen. She chose Xerxes to be King, because the babe was destined to be Queen.

Xerxes Vasilios wouldn't be the King that the realm know and fear, not without his Queen.

———

hello you lovely lot.
are you ready for Inhumane?