Chapter 174: The Tragedy of the Gifted
At the tender age of five, Bellona started hearing voices in her head and ever since then she…
Wait a minute…
This ain’t the way to tell it.
Give me a second…
WHIRRRR!
BZZT! BZZT!
CLICK, KLANG, CLUNG!
*The sound of a gallon of gelatin desserts impacting a copper plate.*
*Lobster and goats noises.*
*Sounds that are censored in at least three countries…*
Ding!
There we go, on with the show!
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Stop me if you heard this before.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, was a rather unusual kingdom.
Now the people were fine, the landscapes were pristine, the harvests plentiful and the noblemen were… “noble”, but what made this kingdom stand out was it’s unusual succession system.
Most kingdoms at the time were very traditional, with the crown being passed father to eldest son or mother to eldest daughter. Now while this kingdom still maintained such a tradition of passing the crown from parent to child, it wasn’t always passed on to the eldest child or the same gender as the current ruler.
For reasons unclear, the crown would sometimes be passed from father to second son, mother to third daughter or even father to daughter with no rhyme or discernable reason…to the masses and noblemen at least.
For years they have tried to figure out the exact condition, whether it was based on looks, abilities, intelligence, if they were born with a third arm or not. But no matter what they tracked, they couldn’t figure it out. However, the people didn’t seem to mind, because whoever was chosen was always a wise and caring ruler of the people.
This wasn’t by accident, rather this was the result of every ruler having fulfilled a single hidden condition: Innate Mind Reading.
Starting from the first Sherpard King, every successor of the crown needed this one trait in order to rule the people with fairness…at least, that was his thinking.
No noble could keep their schemes hidden before them, no merchant would be able to swindle and lie to them, no spy would be able to betray them. A ruler that can hear all, know all and can rule above them all.
Normally, this succession would be a rather smooth transition from one ruler to the next with very little complaint from any other offspring born before or after the chosen heir had been decided.
Whether it was by fate or luck, regardless of how many children the monarch had, only one child would have the [Innate Mind Reading] ability.
For several generations this was the norm, a king or queen would rule, they would have multiple children with only one having [Innate Mind Reading] and the cycle would repeat…until recently.
The current Shepard King, Enrico Ecaredies the Third, was blessed with four sons and three daughters, however, none of them had the gift of [Innate Mind Reading].
It wasn’t too shocking when the first two children were born without the gift, that was the normal pattern based on past inheritors, but things got worrying at around child number five.
While this wasn’t necessarily a problem for the time being, the current king was still strong and healthy, this would be a massive issue in regards to succession once that was no longer the case.
Old age, war, disease, a jilted mistress, any of these could kill him at a notice moment, and none of the current princes or princesses would be able to take up the crown because of the rules of the Shepard King. However, this all changed when the First Prince had his first son, who was born with the gift.
It was weird that the gift had skipped an entire generation, but the royal family was relieved that there was now a qualified heir for the throne.
Immediately, the royal family began to sink in as much resources as necessary to train the First Young Master, Dialgo Ecaredies, into a proper heir…but then the First Princess had a daughter who inherited the gift and the Second Prince had a son who also had the gift.
In the time of a single decade, the Ecaredies royal family now had the exact opposite problem of having no qualified heirs: they now had too many qualifying heirs.
Most of the resources and training materials dedicated to raising the future heir to the throne were acquired and designed to facilitate the raising of a single heir, not three!
This was just the start of the problems.
With three qualifying heirs for the throne, for the first time in centuries, factions began to form.
From among the ranks of the nobles, the sects and the commoners alike, all of them began to throw their weight behind one candidate or another. While this hadn’t lead to an all out civil war for succession yet, the tension between the factions we’re growing by the day.
The lines has been drawn in the sand, it was only a matter of time until this all came to a head.
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Bellona was quiet as she tried to find the right words to say in this moment. The fact Zhen Liu was just staring at her with a pair of eyes that could look into someone’s soul, didn’t help much either. With a heavy sigh, she just said what was on her mind.
“I have no desire to fight for the throne,” she plainly said.
“Okay…,” Zhen Liu trailed off, signaling her to continue.
Bellona proceeded to tell Zhen Liu…not everything, but what was necessary to know for her situation and her circumstances.
“As of this moment, several of my cousins are drawing knives and plans on one another in order to claim the right to rule the kingdom from our grandfather once he abdicates. They’re being stirred by both family and stranger alike,” Bellona explained, “Because they all share the same ability as me.”
As she kept talking, tears began to flow. Not in a sobbing manner, but in a simple, broken manner.
“I’m not sure how much voices in your head told you, but around the time I was tested to see if I had the ability to read minds, it came up negative. It was until several years later and the further I cultivated, that I had developed the gift…and decided to keep it a secret.”
She took a deep breath to steady her breath and wipe away the tears from her eyes, pulling a handkerchief from her dress as if out of thin air.
“I’m afraid that if I tell anyone about my ability, I will be forced to participate in this insidious competition,” Bellona hissed in angrily sad voice.
“I grew up watching my aunts, uncles and cousins go at each other’s throats in the dark, aware or unaware of their motives I would never want to know. Once I had developed my ability, I hated it. I’m not sure how my cousins tune it out, but I could hear every scheme, every plot in the dark and how nobles who would be all smiles and handshakes on the surface, secretly desires to cannibalize each other’s territories for the sake of power and wealth. I don’t want to be involved in any of that.”
Bellona took a deep breath before turning to face Zhen Liu and meeting his gaze.
“That’s why I didn’t tell my father, or anyone until you. I didn’t want to be locked deeper into the cage called… royalty.”
