from_the_treasury

You

Reimond was 66.

Per Anisa, Rose and Calhoun’s statistics, putting aside infant mortality, average life expectancy was 56.

You had been granted access to the royal vault, on the condition you wouldn’t share what you saw. Which was a stupid proposition from multiple perspectives. If you were to eventually be king, you’d soon get full access regardless. And, why would anyone ever trust you to not share? Your confusion and irritation was omnipresent and palpable, thinly masked with solemn pursed lips.

The grade of the treasury’s magic was failing. This sword was blessed by a wizard. This sword was blessed by a witch (you thought witches didn’t bless things?) and slathered with holy water. This wand allowed you to cast a ‘Clank’, but sucks out heat from your body in place of thaums. This chest rotates you on the W axis.

They let you take the chest. They also insisted you take a copy of an old letter, in the hopes you had the time to translate. It was shocking your ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ thought of you as the person who could translate ancient languages, rather than Agarma, but you appreciated the recognition nontheless.

Rose, Agarma and Hendrik probably already had all the cool stuff.

You gave Samantha a full list of magical items stored in Blisbane. She got angry — as she is wont to do, as you love her for. You are a vampire for her passion.

She requested several of the items be brought to Penbarrow, and got denied by Red Talon. She had screamed at you, “why can’t you just force dad to give them over? We could do so much good! If we could reverse-engineer how the Aqueous Acumulus worked, we wouldn’t need to worry about droughts! If we could work the Dreamward Signet, maybe we’d find an easy source of thaums! You’re the crown prince! Do something! Take responsibility for something, for once in your life!”

You had responded, “it doesn’t matter.” She had screamed and screamed. Young and passionate.

She was overreacting, The particular items Samantha had requested had either already been requisitioned by Rose or Agarma, or had sat in the vault for so long it was senseless to believe someone else hadn’t already evaluated them as worthless. Time was the greatest filter, and the world had experienced so much time already.

“Think about it!” she’d continued, she’d shouted, she’d somehow begun wearing you down. “You’re working in the field, overheating, and instead of needing to fill your water back up, ‘CLANK’! You’re all cool again! You should’ve taken it!”

“If it worked like that, someone else would’ve already taken it,” you said, and she ignored, and you questioned why you were bothering to engage. “It probably only works a certain amount of times, or instantly freezes you.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know any of that! Maybe no one’s thought of using it like this! Or maybe it just needs to be tested! You’re so closeminded! Boring! Uncreative! Lifeless!” And she had marched upstairs into her room until the maid called her down for tea.

The maid was annoyed at you, too, but the maid was always annoyed at everything, a low simmer to Samantha’s hot spikes.

She left for Felkner with the maid the next day. She may have been convinced when meeting Anisa a few days earlier.

Her fleeing was a foolish, if optimistic, endeavor. She’d run quick enough that she couldn’t reason herself out of it, nor could you. Going there would restrict her freedoms, and her time, and energy to the whims of others. She’d need to meet new people to do her experiments, if she had the time to do them at all, and if those people even existed in Felkner.

It was saddening. More saddening than the default malaise of the world’s lack of possibility. Perhaps you weren’t as similar as you’d thought.

She poached their Felkner workers, assisted by the maid’s testimony.

You eventually had the clank wand sent to her. She thanked you, and encouraged you to visit Felkner.

Samantha should’ve been chosen as inheritor. Failing that, Rose. Calhoun. Agarma. Lionel. Hendrik. It wasn’t as if Reimond was binding himself to crown his eldest son.

Reimond was playing a game. You wouldn’t consent to being bound by it.

Maybe Samantha was playing it, too. You could pull her with him. You, rather. But, were your places swapped, you wouldn’t want to be pulled. Better to give her the choice.

So you sent a letter, waited for her frenzied arrival, and jumped off the cliff.