Crown Prince of Headal Jacques' Point Of View

There are six 'elements' of magic in this world. Air, Earth, Water and Fire form the basic and most common magic in this world.

There are multiple restrictions in using magic, and most importantly is it that it cannot affect a body directly. By directly I mean things that affect the body such as healing, flying, body enhancements and so on. According to the scholars, the magic ends up interacting with the mana in your body and causes a sort of internal explosion.

Now, you may start to point out the oddity that light magic users affect the body of other people, in the way that they shouldn't be able to. You'd be right. It has been suspected that light and dark faeries aren't even the same creature as the others. However, the day Augustus came down the mountain I believe I figured out why thanks to an impressed outburst from Morke, my faerie.

Most of the floodwave had apparently been a water spirit. What is interesting about that, is apparently that these spirits are usually asleep and have no desire to interact with people. Though, more importantly, there are four elements of spirits. Air, earth, fire and water. Additionally, these spirits and faeries are on bad terms. According to Morke, the elemental faeries kind of grab the spirits, twist them and bend them to make their spells happen. Light and Dark spirits, however, do not exist.

My standing theory is that the spirits themselves are preventing any use but external as a sort of grudge.

Theories aside, Morke is a fairy of darkness. These two kinds of magic are quite different from the others. The biggest downside is that they lack the offense of the elemental faeries.

Light magic is specialized in the human body. Healing, minor enhancements they call blessings and a raw mana shield. It is magic for the living, and to make more people survive.

Morke's magic, dark magic, is magic for the dead.

The first and most important ability is to be able to see, hear and talk with the dead. If the dead here have too many grudges or regrets, or have a last wish that they will not let go, then they cannot ascend to judgement. Most accept their death calmly and settle with that there is nothing more that can be done and that they no longer need to worry, but with willpower, stubbornness or emotion, it is possible to force yourself to stay behind.

In other words, I can talk with executed spies, diplomats, soldiers, generals, geniuses and so on. Furthermore, this is known in Headal. Didn't have time to teach the royal family in life, or got killed? Don't worry, we can hear you.

As the royal family blessed with dark magic, we thrive on knowledge and a big part of our education is to reflect on the actions and results of other people's experiences.

There are, however, some restrictions. We cannot manipulate the dead directly. They have their own will and can come and go as they please. If they're a bother you can only block out all spirits, or hope another ghost stops them.

We do have one very important spell though. It is the only close to offensive spell we have, and in the end it's effectiveness comes down to how well you have interacted with the ghosts around you. Ghost Field is a spell that thins out the barrier between the dead and the living, and lets the dead take shape in our world. Well... half take shape. They are immune to physical attacks, and you must use magic to kill them. If the object or thing touching them is not imbued with mana in some way, then it goes straight through them. In turn, however, they can apparently do direct damage on the soul. Once the stability of a soul is interrupted enough by damage, it fragments, killing even living people.

Now, knowing how much information we get from conversing with those on the other side, Ristaze is always extremely cautious with manipulating information and have more propaganda than you are probably imagining.

Part of their manipulation lies in the way their castle lulls it's citizens into a false belief of peace. It's defenseless. Another part is simply the absurd amount of wealth in their pretty and flowery capital. They go through much effort to appear as though they are rich, perfect, loved and peaceful. In a conflict they always attempt to appear as the victims.

To make sure none believe the words of their enemies, they say that dark magic is evil and that their enemies lie to break their perfect country apart... all in all we are painted as the bad guys... but I beg to differ.

—-*—-

The Great War did start over resources, and back then it was a justified war from all sides. The king of Ristaze had been a military genius, and so was the four generals to which he each entrusted with a border. Stanbell, Tepet, Salender and Celeste. Each very different people and specialized in each their element. Stanbell the Playful. Tepet the Stalwart. Salender the Loyal and Celeste the Wise. Finally there was Listere the Kind.

The king himself was Schwarthertz the Patient. A man blessed by faeries of darkness.

Now, how did they turn into Schwarthertz the corrupt and Salender the cruel?

You see, once the Great War ended, Schwarthertz had five sons. The oldest son was granted the joy of marrying Listere's oldest daughter, and it was a happy marriage. The oldest son hoped that maybe this would bring the blessing of light into the royal family as well. The other sons each married the oldest daughter of the four generals and became dukes. However, the faeries of darkness blessed none of the children born to any of the five sons. Some assumed that the children were affected by the strong blood of the generals' families, but believed that the blessing of darkness would return to them... then this went on for three generations, and no successor to the royal family was blessed by the faeries of darkness.

They came to believe that the faeries of darkness had abandoned them, though they never understood why.

Years later, after a brutal border skirmish where ghost field had been used by my ancestor, Ristaze retorted to using propaganda to keep up the morale in the kingdom. It was likely the simplest way to bring the country together in a hard time. At first it was mild, just saying that we used it in a bad or cruel way, but over the next decades it gradually became worse. Their princes almost solely began to marry daughters of House Listere in an attempt to gain the blessing of light, but of course it failed. They began to cover up the legends of their patient and clever king, and the first they turned to was House Salender the Loyal.

House Salender had been extremely busy trying to control the beginning flow of poison and drugs being bred, sold and used, as most of it was smuggled through their lands. Removing it was an impossible task, and the internal borders in Ristaze became... fluent... baronies changed hands sometimes up to three times each year, taxes were double or triple some places because people weren't sure who owned what, countless nobles died from poison and bloodlines were ended in just a few years. House Stanbell proceeded to isolate themselves in their forests at the foot of the mountains, and were easily outmatching House Tepet in military size, furthermore, they were getting angry with the royal family's decision to hide away the stories and information of the first king. Ristaze was like a powder keg of death just waiting to explode.

The royal family went to House Salender and gave them an order... to help them get control of the country. The first advice House Salender gave with hesitation was to split the large territory of House Stanbell into three to split the army and their command structure into three.

Yet, it had no effect, and the young king demanded a method that worked. The young lord of House Salender didn't know what to do and was over his head in poison matters... and then he gave in.

Thus far is the story the dead kings, messengers and spies tell me. Though, not just those...

Apparently this became a slippery slope for House Salender and the royal family that started seizing control of all they couldn't remove, and used it to force a strict peace in the kingdom.

However, the problems began once they started applying this to diplomacy as well. At that point we did have small yearly skirmishes with Ristaze, but it was nothing major, and cities were never taken or ruined.

One year our general was clearly poisoned, and the yearly skirmish was canceled because of it. When it happened once more next year, we declared a proper war on them. Yearly skirmishes may seem useless in the eyes of peasants, but it promotes the rise to nobility for soldiers and offers knights the option of being landed. Not just that, but war boosts economy. There may have been a few vague grudges and desire for the fertile Tepet land, but it was never an all out war... until then...

Then, merely a month after the declaration of war our king fell down from his throne... poisoned...

His oldest son took the throne and demanded Ristaze never use such underhanded methods in a private letter to their king... shortly after he died as well.

If I were to sum up how many rulers we have lost since then, it would be at least twenty. Averagely one every five years.

We lose at least one diplomat once a year on top of that.

Of course... we were not the only ones bitter over the manipulated information. Any royal family that had magic of darkness as their blessing were furious... but more importantly, the faeries themselves were furious. I know enough to confirm that each king in Ristaze marries about thrice, though secretly, and despite that only an average of two of his children grow to adulthood.

Zocria turned against Ristaze just like us, but Crinia and Semor gave up and just tried to avoid them as much as possible. In the end even Zocria gave up for a while.

...in the end Ristaze took the easy way out and ended up corrupted by it. A corruption that should be cut down.

—-*—-

House Celeste was always called the wise in the old stories. I do suppose keeping your head low when someone wants to hurt everything that gets even a bit too close to having too much power, is a good plan. I just wish that they had intervened or that they had been asked rather than house Salender.

Still, I was anxious when I first heard of Augustus. It was too much against the behavior expected of that house, and a lot of nobles made a lot of noise about it for almost a year.

I wasn't anxious because he was a strong opponent, but because they described him as a genuine hero. Kind to the people, inspiring and... how he had gone blind with rage over injustice. An honest person would not last long in Ristaze... and as feared he disappeared.

A while later I found out about Jesmaine. You see, other than just talking with the dead, I can see the shape of a person's soul. They're usually just idealized or ugly versions of the body they're in, but Jesmaine was different. He soul appeared as a foreigner and her clothes were different from anything I had seen here.

I ensured that she was not possessed with the help of the ghosts, and that the soul really matched the body. The only thing left I could think of was a body switch or a failed reincarnation. She was horrible at pretending to be a child and would often end up being more of a mother to the children she attempted to play with, so I knew immediately that the adults would adore her... and not in a good way.

She would become a political piece, and she was naive enough to become a victim. Since she would make a politically acceptable wife I took her in, to keep her from getting trapped in intrigue. Not to mention preventing the more than average risk of her being killed by Ristaze's assassins, since she was considered a genius at the time. Furthermore, her family is one of the main fund raisers for the war against Ristaze.

Ristaze doesn't hesitate to kidnap sons and daughters of influential people. Even now, they have about four kidnapped prisoners. That is Ristaze in a nutshell, and I know our demand this time will be met with threats of their death. It is a price we are willing to pay to put an end to this... for if we let them do as they please, only more people will die by their unjust hand.

After I had found Jesmaine it didn't take me long to notice that both Semor and Crinia had started acting weird. The quiet Semor went into civil war over the throne, and Crinia increased their influence quickly. Their country blossomed even despite the fall of their king.

Then finally at a party four years ago I found out the truth of what was going on and what was foretold to happen in the future... though unwillingly...