"Finished?"
Gabriel looked at Alice, whose tears were finally starting to dry up. She’d stuffed the entire pan of food into her mouth, forcing it down even after she looked ready to burst. As a result, her cheeks were bulging slightly and she had made a mess of both her face and the table.
"It’s fine to cry when you’re happy, but if you cry too often then people will think that they can just take advantage of you so I recommend doing it in moderation in the future."
He picked up a rag from the side as he spoke, wiping the sticky crumbs that clung to her cheeks. The soft touch made Alice’s eyes well with tears again, but she swallowed heavily so that they didn’t pour out this time, her lips pursing as she put on a strong front.
"That’s good. I can understand your desire to cry, but you’ll have to get used to the feeling, living a good life means experiencing a lot more happiness so you can’t well go crying every time."
He lowered the rag after he finished with her face, starting on her hands, which were somehow even dirtier than her face. She was starting to calm down now, the reddish tint in her eyes receding as she pulled back her tears.
"Tell me, Alice, what is it that you want? Beyond the cake for your birthday, beyond a friend who’ll stay with you, what is it that you want?"
He asked the important question. People… They needed desires, ambition, things they wanted. They’d end up hollow without them. He had been one such person, and thus he took the plunge in his past life. And thus he latched onto this pitiful villainess when he saw her and how she was treated. He didn’t want her to end up hollow, nor did he want to become hollow again.
"What I… Want? Can there even be more?"
Alice was, to say it simply, stumped by the question. Just earlier this day she thought of a birthday cake as an extravagant wish that she would likely never see fulfilled. But in just one day, she got both a friend and a birthday cake, how could there possibly be anything more she could want?
"Of course, as long as people live there can and will always be more. If you’re not sure, then just think about the future. Not tomorrow, not next week, but years ahead. Think about the possible futures. What if your Elder Brother takes over the household? What if your Eldest Brother takes over as the duke? Think about the futures that are likely to come to pass and then search your own feelings. How would you feel? What would you think? What would you do?"
To Gabriel, in one way, desires were an easy thing to dig out. Think about the future, think about what is likely to happen, and then think about how you’ll feel. Will you be happy with it? No? Then your desire would be to become someone who could change that future. It was easy, which made it all the sadder when someone ended up hollow.
Naturally, the reason Gabriel mentioned her two brothers in the possible futures was to see how she would react. And luckily, if he could even be despicable enough to think that word in this situation, the response was favourable.
"Elder and Eldest Brother…"
Alice winced slightly, a bit of colour slowly fading from her face. She’d shown signs of it at the orphanage, but it seemed as if she was in fact at least a bit afraid of her brothers. She was just a child, but she knew that her brothers had been the ones to snatch away her new maids, and she probably knew that they were the reason she was being treated like this.
As for why she hadn’t said or done anything, it had probably gone on for so long that she now considered it natural. Her mother had cheated so it was only fair that she was hated. She carried filthy blood so of course she should be hated. She didn’t look like the rest of the family so she shouldn’t expect to be loved. That was how she had been raised so of course she would think like that, of course she would accept it as natural.
"I… I…"
She struggled with the words, uneasily looking around the empty kitchen, her eyes eventually settling on Gabriel. He simply smiled gently, not urging her towards any one answer and simply waiting for her to decide.
"I… Don’t think I want my brothers to take over the duchy… If they become the duke then I can’t stop them from taking you away, and then I’ll be all alone again…"
Right now it was somewhat okay. The brothers had more authority than her, but they couldn’t just outright order her servants to leave her. They could offer better positions or deal with them in underhanded ways, but that was it. But if one of them became the duke? A word would be all it took for them to separate her from her new friend, she’d be powerless to stop them.
"So what do you want to do with it then?"
She’d found something she didn’t like, a future she didn’t want to come to pass. That was step one, now she just had to figure out how she would stop it from happening. Once she did that, then she would have her desire. And how did you stop someone else from becoming the duke? The answer was perfectly plain and simple.
"I… I think I want to become the duke. Then I can eat cake whenever I want, I can get fresh fruits whenever I want. Then… Then no one can take my friend away from me."
Duke, duchess, ruler of Vritara. Never once had Alice thought about that position. That dark room, those closed curtains, that was all she knew, all she expected. She was alone, so it would be enough for someone like her. But now there was someone who would open the blinds for her, someone who would turn on the lights, someone who said he wanted to be by her side. She… She didn’t want to lose that.
"Alright, then that’s your desire. Alice De Vritara, you want to become the next duchess. You want it, so we must work towards it."
The desire was born. In the show, despite being the final villain, Alice De Vritara never once actually tried to take over the duchy. From when she was first introduced until the second-to-last season, she remained the illegitimate child of the Vritara family, not even after gaining strength and renown did she look at the seat of the duke.
But now, now that story had been thrown for a complete loop. How would it affect the numbers that hovered in the sky? Would they rise, would they plummet? In the show, the viewership numbers on episodes where the villainess was tormented were always rather high, people loved watching a bad person get their just deserts.
He was going to take that from them. The pitiful villainess, the torment, the suffering, the tears that the evil lady shed. He’d rob them of it all, he’d not allow it to become that sort of story again.
Alice hesitated somewhat in the face of Gabriel’s words, her mouth opening and closing a few times. She didn’t want to say it. She had just gotten a friend, someone who’d even bake a delicious birthday cake for her. She didn’t want to say it and ruin things, because surely, once he knew the truth, he too would leave her.
But he had been kind, and when she thought about reciprocating that kindness with lies, she felt sick. So even if she had to bite her lips as she spoke, she needed to tell him the truth.
"But… But there’s something you don’t know… I… I can’t become the duke. I have dirty blood in me so I can’t inherit the title. And… And… And I can’t use magic like the rest of the family so I can’t protect the duchy… I can never become the duke."
She forced out the truth. The Vritara Duchy, the Dragon Duke that protected the empire. She only had half of his blood so she wasn’t qualified to inherit the duchy when compared to her siblings. And then there was the magic… A dragon that couldn’t use magic? How shameful was that, how humiliating? They would never let something like that sit on their throne.
She was ready to get despised, a scornful look. But when she raised her head to face reality, all she saw was an unconcerned, and even gentle look.
"Okay, and?"
He didn’t even look surprised. Was it because he didn’t understand it? He seemed very mature, but he was just an orphan, could it be that he didn’t know what it meant? But when she was going to explain it further, he stretched out a hand and placed the tip of his finger against her nose, pushing it slightly.
"No one’s blood is dirty, my Lady, I want you to know that. From the lowest commoner to the highest emperor, it’s all just blood, it all flows red. And who said that an illegitimate child can’t inherit the duchy? If you become stronger than your siblings, better than all of them put together, who’s going to stop you from taking the title of Dragon Duchess?"
It was just that ‘easy.’ Become stronger than Leonardo. Become stronger than Francis, become better than your sister and your father. Who would care about your blood at that point?
"But… my magic…"
It was a nice thought, becoming better than all of them. But they all had something she didn’t, they had qualifications she didn’t have. Without them, everything they spoke of here would just be a fleeting dream. But Gabriel maintained that gentle look, that soft poke on her nose as he tilted her head slightly upwards.
"My Lady, I don’t care what anyone else in the world has told you, nor should you. You are unparallelled. Not talented, not gifted. Unparallelled. Within you, you carry the capability to become the greatest person this world will ever know. So hold your head high, you have that right."
Gabriel knew things no one else did, he had seen a future no one here would ever know of. So he knew what was sitting in front of him. It wasn’t through wit that Alice had drowned the empire in blood and lit it aflame, it was through sheer strength.
Naturally, she hadn’t seen that future so she had a hard time believing it. She wanted to, but she just couldn’t. Once reality came setting in, wouldn’t it just hurt that much more if she believed it? Gabriel saw it in her eyes, the darkness swimming within the crimson pupils.
Really, what a shitty family, couldn’t even make it so that she was able to believe in herself. Oh well, he was already planning to take the storyline and mess it up so it wasn’t as if this wasn’t within his plans.
"Let me guess, when they took you to test your mana affinity, you first got a mish-mash of colours that eventually settled into an oily black? And afterwards, no matter which of the ancient words they tried, you couldn’t use any of them"
The mana affinity test. It was something all nobles took, and something every commoner could take after they became ten. If you came up blank, you had no mana or affinity, if you got a colour then you had an affinity for that element. There would occasionally be people with strange mixes of colours, and people like Alice, but they were never able to use magic no matter which of the ancient words they tried to use.
Alice looked a bit shocked that Gabriel had been able to point it out that accurately. She had indeed come up as oily black in the end, her family making her test every single one of the 11 types of magic. But as he said, none of them worked, not even the lowest ranked spell would come out. She was a defect. Gabriel simply kept smiling.
"I’m right, aren’t I? What if I told you that its simply because they used the wrong words? Eras, Arais, Waraya, Tarak, Azui, Katush, Uvaish. Even Karas, Gula, Diverta, and Akasha, you tried them all, didn’t you? But they’re still wrong, they’re not for you. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that, right? So let’s try it."
He hopped down from his seat after reciting the 11 magic types. They had been around since before the founding of this empire even, they had been in use for thousands of years. But there was something he knew that no one else knew yet, there were more of them. Other than the last four types, which were solitary and didn’t interact with any other types, the first 7 were reactive. Several of them could merge.
He picked up some paper and a bit of coal, bringing it over to the table as he sat down again. Using the coal, he started to scribble on the first sheet of paper, drawing a formation on one side and words beneath.
"Let’s start with an easy one, Eras and Arais. Together they become Iras. And if you combine Iras with Karc then you have the lowest level spell. This is the formation, try it for yourself."
Alice looked at the paper with some scepticism, she had never seen a formation like this, nor had she ever heard about mixing elements. But there was something about the way Gabriel spoke, the unbound confidence, she just couldn’t treat it as a joke. She studied the formation he drew up and memorised it, linking it with the words.
"Iras Karc."
The second the words left her mouth, she felt a bit of energy within her body move. The mana she could sense but never had a use for, it was moving within her. It seeped out of her body and entered the air, a dark blue crackle of lightning sparking in the air in front of her. It crackled for a few seconds before vanishing, leaving a dumbfounded Alice.
"Iras is lightning, and Karc is crackle, together they form a bit of crackling lightning. Not too useful, but pretty to look at."
"Iras Karc."
Alice muttered the words again as Gabriel spoke, a crackle of lightning lighting up her face. She looked dumbfounded.
"Iras Karc."
Again, a flash of light.
"Iras Karc."
Violet hair, like strands of wolfsbane woven together.
"Iras Karc."
Crimson eyes that seemed like a mixture between blood and roses, in the light of the lightning they seemed like a pair of blood moons that hung in the night sky.
"Iras Karc."
She kept going, even when she started to feel tired from using too much mana. This was a very small spell, but she was just a child, and she had never put too much focus on increasing her mana because she had no use for it so it was inevitable that she would get tired. But right now, those waves of weariness made her ecstatic.
"You’re crying again. But this is just the start, Alice. Arais and Tarak for Duvak, Eras and Tarak for Makar, Azui and Katush for Natar. There’s even more than just those, and you can use all of them. I told you, you are unparallelled."
His hand moved as he spoke, as he reassured her. He drew a diagram on the other side of the paper, writing down the elements and fusions that he knew, leaving out only the four non-reactive magic types of Darkness, Light, Divine, and Demonic.