Kismet’s Tale

     Stefanie studied the movements around the eye. Edward sat on one of the stools, observing the movements.

“How’s he?”

“He took out Arminus Rax, so there should be no worries other than the one tracking them. Owl’s eye is too far to recognize the smallest object. We can send one of the drones in the satellite, but that would cost us one of the drones.”

“That's so?.”

“I know that look.”

Edward raised a brow. “What do you mean?”

“You want to be off again.”

“I do. It’s over.”

Stefanie stayed muted. She operated the satellite while still eyeing the monitors.

“Stef, you’ve done what your father had asked.”

“Enough. I told you. Four times. That I choose this path out of necessity.”

“By being enslaved?”

“How dare you.”

“It’s the truth!” Edward said as if it was a matter of fact. “You can have more than this! You are endangering yourself!”

“Endangering myself? Edward, you’ve been with me for years alongside Gaul. You even wanted to waste my brother because you thought he was your rival. Edward, I told you, again, and again that this was a choice that I was given. Do you know who was the most against this choice? My father, Uncle Logain saved me from becoming worse than a slave. My father educated me to be strong and have some spine! Don’t dictate to me, on what I should do or should not.”

“I am not dictating you on that.”

“Then stop asking me to change my mind, Edward.”

Stefanie snorted loudly. Her expression was frosty. Edward scratched his head, “Look, I’m sorry for asking you this again.”

“You will ask again.”

“I will. But I told you already. There must be more to this.”

“Are my degrees and doctorates nothing to you, Edward? Must I remind you that even without you or the treasures of my family, I could still make it on my own? And what more than this? I am fine with what I have.”

Edward behaved still as if he couldn’t understand. How could he? He knew nothing of what goes behind their family. Stefanie might trust Edward, but she would always skirt around anything that relates to her father and his origins.

“That’s why I want to understand. I want to understand why you are so eager to work for the Boss.”

Stefanie held the joystick operating satellite imagery and focused her eye on the monitor before turning to Edward with a narrowed glare.

“Would that make you stop asking?”

Edward folded his arms, hesitating for a moment, before raising a hand. “I promise.”

“Fine, what do you want to ask?”

“Tell me. Why?”

“Why what? I can’t read your mind, Edward.”

“Why follow him?”

Stefanie turned around, facing Edward with her eyes pointed on the ground. “My father, my real father, had abandoned me when I was still young. I told you this a long time ago. I was a bastard of a royalty, a child that shouldn’t exist. I was given to my late mother’s relative, they promised money, in exchange, they would take me in. They did. But they treated me like I was their housemaid. Five years, they spent telling me I am a bastard, an abandoned child. Imagine it, a child that should be learning how wonderful the world is, at a young age, being trained as a poor maid.”

Her expression didn’t change. The steel on her face was unfathomable to Edward. She remembers being a maid, but her face showed that she held no thoughts to it. Like it didn’t matter to her any longer.

“I was so young back then. But I still remember it. I didn’t understand a lot, and right now I still can’t fathom why anyone in their right mind would treat a child like that. Of course, they hated me for my blood, they thought of me as an embarrassment to their ‘noble’ family. Do you know what they did when Uncle Logain found me? They sold me for one hundred thousand. That’s what their worth was to me. Of course, I didn’t know better. It was only when I grew old enough to know that I was treated like a commodity,” she said without missing a beat. “Uncle Logain, he handed me to Father, and I was given an education, higher than what they would give me. He raised me. He fed me and taught me how to be good. How to be better than my peers, excel, and examine what I learn and put them to good use. Perhaps, in a way, I had thought I was being made as a tool once in a while, but my father, despite how rebellious I would try. He never shouted. He never reacted. I know he was heavily wounded because of an evil he had to fight. I know that it was because of his promise with the Boss that he was in agony. There are days where my father would choke on his vomit after drinking too much. I had to lift him up, and make him puke. He was strong as ten men, but as years passed, he grew weak. But that’s what you’d expect from someone missing a lung and having wounds that do not heal.”

Stefanie looked down. There was a gloom on her face that made her colder. It was so blank that Edward wanted to reach out a hand, but hesitated.

“My father wasn’t so weak when I first met him. His later years, however, made him so pathetic. I wanted to save my father. The father who’d carry me like I was his little girl. I know that I wasn’t his daughter. My father, like Uncle Logain, only loved one person in their lifetime. I guess that’s how Lazonian vows worked, and though I might not have lived in those parts, I was still somewhat affected by their customs and culture. My brother Gaul, we took care of our father when he needed it. In his late years, he was just a frail old man waiting for the man in the coffin to wake up.”

Edward nodded. “Coffin, was he really in a coffin?”

“Yes, the Boss was in the coffin. Seven years ago, my father took us to where he hid the coffin of their ‘young master’. I was told who the young master was, and in a way knew that like us, my father was saved by the Boss. He was brought up into a perfect tool. The perfect right-hand so that he could save those near him. The industries of Lazon, everything that you see of the Lazonian State is because of the Boss and though my father had worked to make the state prosperous.”

“Wait...then why aren’t you getting help from Lazon? Correct me if I’m wrong, but General Logain Stromm was your Uncle, right?”

“And on paper, he is my father. In a way, Uncle Logain was my second father, and most of the time he would visit to make sure that me and Gaul were not helpless pups. There were complications that made my father leave Lazon, and there was a need for secrecy.”

“To hide the coffin.”

“Yes. But also to get away from the state. Still, when we learned of the coffin, we learned what it means to him. How the person inside of it meant everything to him. How he had to suffer years of loneliness, and waiting. I hated the Boss for that. We hated the Boss for what my father had gone through.”

“You...hated the boss?”

“Why not? Think about it, your good father, suffering because of a single command made by a man who had been sleeping for fifty years. Like a dog waiting for his owner to come home.”

Edward listened. He leaned in, not daring to say a word for now.

“So when Alden woke up. We tried to intimidate him. Well, we did try to intimidate him, but even without memories, he wasn’t a pushover, and he easily lifted my brother, Gaul like he was a pillow, and slammed him down. My brother is strong and durable, but he easily did him in. Not to mention that the moment we tried, my father, who had never been angry, dissatisfied, and let us do what we pleased, was angry...insulted.”

“Why?”

“What do you think?”

Stefanie said as if it was the most embarrassing that she had done.

“He spent fifty years guarding him, and we wanted to insult and hurt him. Of course he’d be angry.”

“After that?”

“We stopped trying. Someone was after my father back then, and because the Boss was in transit that he was lost to us.”

“What happened to the ones who attacked your father?”

Stefanie didn’t answer for a moment. Edward studied her face and it was then that he saw the rage on her face.

“We killed them. I tried to recover the Boss in my father’s honor, but we saw that he wasn’t awakened. So we let him be, and in a way we told ourselves that if he doesn’t awaken and seek us to say the words, then we would not act.”

Stefanie looked at the panel that controlled the systems of the satellite. “But if he did, then we would help him. And now that he has awakened, we have to, for the sake of ourselves as well, to help him.”

“Do...you still hate the Boss?”

Stefanie joined her hands. “I had once thought of it again. When he came in and knocked on the doors. He commanded presence and I know why my father followed him. Perhaps, maybe I think that because he had the disposition that my father had. Then again, the Boss’s better at hiding it, but he had the same anguish look that he and father hides. I don’t know what drives the Boss to do what he does, but it makes me want to help him.”

“Is that really it?”

“It is. I don’t cooperate with the Boss because I was born to do so. I do it because I want to. I don’t particularly like the Boss, and I’m not my father either. Me and Gaul have my own reasons for wanting to help the Boss.”

Edward hesitated before asking, “I suppose you don’t want to tell me what that is?”

“No, I don’t. Edward, you are a good man. You come from a higher calling, and if we hadn't met in the university a few years back, I doubt we would have become friends.”

“Friends...huh,” Edward looked down, avoiding her eyes.

“I’m not dense, Edward. I know. Besides, with Arminus Rax dead, there is little that needs to be done any longer.”

“What about your heritage then?”

She looked at the monitor, “My family has no power over Holmia, besides, the title of ‘Princess’ isn’t to my liking. Why would I care when I have my own education? I have money, and properties that my father left for my brother and I? The throne, the bloodline, everything that they have doesn’t interest me. Besides, I don’t even want to think of being part of the noble circle. Why should I care about a heritage that threw me away?”

“That’s good to hear,” Edward said.

“Why?” Stefanie looked up.

“The Prince of Holmia, he’s interested in getting political power. He’s probably going to start something considering that Knia’s become a wreck.”

“Is that so?” Stefanie went back to the monitor. “If I was still a Princess, I might have cared. Besides, doesn’t that Prince already have Princess Irene Medici gunning for him?”

“She does. Hmm, I didn’t think you knew her.”

“How could I not? Irene Medici is a brilliant woman, arrogant, and confident, but she deserves her arrogance. She’s pragmatic and in a way she has the answers. My father said that she reminded her of Lady Mildred, she might appear a villainess, but in our times where a single missile could destroy nations, can you blame her for her coldness?”

Edward nodded. Somehow, despite what there situation was, he wondered how awful it would be if they were part of that affair.