It was easy to figure out how this family worked, as even if the days were mostly slow in this family, this does not mean it was inactive, the house was one of fierce competition among the possible heirs; although it was an Edeltraud tradition to have the children of the family train themselves in whatever they wanted, there was an underlying power struggle amongst the children, or ducal princes and princesses. It was somewhat of a battle royale, based mostly around intrigue and subterfuge, assassination attempts were common, as for Lilith though, she was always looked upon as a worthless child, one that was worthless to attack.
While other noble families would base their inheritance in a more meritocratic system, in the Edeltraud Grand Duchy things worked somewhat differently; the competition was a violent one, and siblings would usually treat each others like enemies, while both the duke and duchess usually maintained an indifferent neutrality towards everyone.
Given the competition, it was no surprise that most of the children would go for magic, swordsmanship, or anything related to combat really in their studies; it was drilled into their minds that they should always be focusing on becoming ambitious, callous and intelligent people, the only way to ensure their survival was to either become subservient to the current heir, or to become the heirs themselves, no matter the means.
It all started when my mother called me to the office one evening, I started to become suspicious about it, but in order to properly play the part I had to work hard to fit in.
As I entered she quickly waved at a chair, so I took my seat in front of her desk, which was brimming with paperwork. She would usually take care of the entire household while my father would usually go around razing villages or going from one war to the next.
"Did you call me mother?"
"Yes, I just wanted to give you a quick heads up, I think your siblings will start to try and assassinate you soon enough."
"Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for the warning, but why are you telling me this?"
"Well, it just felt that I should repay you for such an interesting test you did; so there you go… You can go now, I have more important things to do."
The assassination attempts starting to appear soon enough; they honestly caught me by surprise. Lilith was always ignored by the family; she was seen as someone who wasn't a threat; so I think they expected me to be simply a mild annoyance that could be dealt with later, like in the end of the novel, when they didn't help her avoid the execution.
Perhaps I have started to change the story a bit; although it feels early to be honest, it is not surprising, I have gotten a little renown amongst the family, by obtaining a cold indifference from my mother, rather than her usual disdain, apparently this was enough to threaten the standing of some of my siblings.
It started easily enough, with poison on my food and tea, assassins trying to kill me at night and mysterious carriage malfunctions. Fortunately I would receive support from either Viktor, or Nadia, who would step in and protect me from my siblings; I could of course do that on my own, but I don't really enjoy dirtying my hands.
Life continued at a steady pace, and other than attending both horsemanship and smithing classes to just entertain myself, it was crawling at a tedious and boring pace. I had a lot of free time, but it was useless free time, as the only thing I could really do was wait around until the first chapter of the story began.
A routine that quickly started to grow was the one in which I would start experimenting a bit with how magic worked in this world and then going to my room and relaxing for a bit, but one day this routine was seemingly broken, as I entered my room Nadia was nowhere to be found.
I started to look for her, it would be inconvenient if she turned out dead, so I quickly went to the balcony as I could feel a presence there, but it felt somewhat different than Nadia's as it was not emotionless as she usually was, but rather, it simply felt cold.
As I walked out to the balcony, but before I could even react I turned around and I saw a silhouette of someone; and I fortunately, or rather in this case unfortunately knew immediately who it was, as I had suspected, it was my mother herself; perhaps she still believed that I was useless and wanted to remove a weed before it started to grow, as she pushed me to my death from the balcony; regardless, before I could properly react, I knew I had to quickly envelop my body in a shield so that this body wouldn't die, but I wasn't fast enough. I had still not grown used to my weakened body, so it took me far longer to react.
When I fell the two stories I felt immense pain, it was an amount I had never experienced before; I tried to stand up, but as I did, I noticed that I couldn't really move my right leg, it wasn't broken, it was something worse…
In a way one could say that this body was basically only maintained alive by my powers, without a soul a body is nothing more than a dead husk, but with my powers I could use the body as a puppet or a marionette, as if I was moving strings from within, but now it felt as if it was shattered.
It seems that I have lost the connection to my leg, I could recover it by transforming the body, but it would lead to me being easily discovered as an eldritch horror; and that would be inconvenient to say the least.
