“And?” Gildron said, his face grew feverish again like he was going to talk about stories.

“It wouldn’t be a good story if you were strong, no… it would be even worse. Nobody likes blowouts, but everybody loves a good underdog tale. If I die in such a situation, I will be considered it a life well-lived, but what about you? Are you happy pathetically dying like that, to the hands of your siblings?”

“I don’t want to kill anybody,” Ryla said. She didn’t have the conviction to give such orders, Ryla would rather let them backstab her than make that decision.

“Who said you have to? Your doners? No… You will be queen one day and when that happens you can decide your own fate, until then, your life is not only your own” Gildron said.

“You can’t possibly expect me to lead, I’m not like my siblings. I don’t have a charming smile, nor do I have Zacariah’s arrogance.”

“Then steal it” Gildron said simply.

“Eh?”

“You are weak, yes, You lack will even, I will be honest watching you infuriated me,” Gildron said.

The words dug deep and Ryla turned away in shame again.

“But I can see the potential, you have the ability to shake this queendom to its core, I can’t tell yet, but my sense of finding interesting stories is rather refined,” Gildron said.

“If you don’t have the ability, steal it. If you lack power, take it. If you lack resolve, then fake it. It may be a farce and built on lies, but at least that power is built on your own will.” He continued. His face was feverish once again, but once he finished the last statement, he collected himself.

Ryla sat there on the ground, for a long while. She felt bruised from being tossed on the ground but it didn’t hurt.

Ryla palmed the dagger on her side, it had been digging into her side ever since she hit the ground but she didn’t bother to adjust it.

She felt something within her harder. Ryla was weak, she didn’t have the natural talent of her siblings that much was true, she didn’t even have the resolve to use the dagger she wore at her side to stab them in the back.

Gildron was right, Ryla had no obligation to execute her own siblings, but unless she was queen she couldn’t put an end to the barbaric practice. Ryla would have to cut her own path for herself, she didn’t have time to feel pity for herself.

She made a decision at that point. One that marked itself in her soul, a new conviction that seemed to rock her being.

She stood up slowly. Ryla unsheathed the dagger that Gildron had gifted her from her side. For a moment it looked like she was about to attack Gildron, but instead, Ryla only took the dagger and cut a small half circle into her arm.

It was an old Eris tribal ritual before the cities were built. Tribe chiefs would often quarrel and make grudged with each other. To remind themselves of the wrongs that had been committed against them they would cut a half-circle into their arm, only once the grudge had been resolved would they complete the circle.

Ryla cut the circle, not as a grudge against her siblings, but rather against the queendom that forced them to fight.

Ryla felt her blood pool and then drip from the cut in her arm. It splattered on the floor, staining the white marble with red.

Despite the gruesome scene, she didn’t feel any pain, rather she felt lighter. As if a great burden had been lifted off her shoulders. Despite this, Ryla knew that she had put an even greater responsibility on herself.

[I will take this queendom for myself. For the sake of my siblings. I will become a proper queen’s candidate even if I must lie to myself to do so.] She thought.

A voice rang out in her head. One that seemed vaguely feminine, it was a voice that adventurers had often talked about but one that Ryla never expect to hear herself.

It was that voice that herald the arrival of skill, those bombastic abilities that made adventurers such fearsome fighters in the first place.

“Potential Skill gained [Mimic]!”