Tales of Death´s Daughter

‘The dignity of intelligent beings shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of the state authority.

Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law. Freedom of the person shall be inviolable. These rights may be interfered with only pursuant to a law.

All persons shall be equal before the law. No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of sex, race, language, homeland and origin, faith or religious or political opinions.’

So far the constitution of this new country was looking good, especially the first few articles. In my opinion these articles were way too nice. The constitution basically forbid any kind of torture, gross violations of basic rights and murder. But I needed to make concessions to get one simple article written into it.

‘The empress as the head of state is above the law, including this constitution. The title of empress may never be given to someone except Lucy Worchester.’

It was kind of nice to have ones own name written into the constitution of a country, no matter how I looked at it. A bit of pride was quite alright in that regard, at least that was my opinion.

In total, the constitution had a hundred and sixty six carefully crafted articles, five hundred less than optimal, but we were already working long enough on it at this point.

“Is it done? No loopholes?” Hannah asked, a bottle of wine in her hands which was already the culprit for several red spots on the paper. But hey, that was only a document of historic relevance, carefully written by me. The only downside it had was that future readers would think we were all drunk when we wrote that. And no, that wasn’t the case, I promise … okay, for the most part that wasn’t the case. But it was hard to juggle between ideas for a constitution so a bit of alcohol just had to be present.

But – surprisingly – we were all satisfied with the result. I had my way to order everyone around without caring about the rules while Juliette could basically add whatever else she wanted and Hannah … well, she was happy with her bottle of wine.

“No loopholes whatsoever.” Satisfied, I patted the pieces of paper a little before handing them to Juliette. “Make sure these documents are copied and distributed throughout the country. Tell everyone the undead will leave them alone when they agree to lay down weapons and join this new country.

“When will you declare it?” Juliette asked tired while the door opened slowly and honestly a bit creepily for her.

“Tomorrow. I still need to do stuff.” I told her and stood up from the chair as two girls strode into the room, wearing blue dresses and diadems as if they were princesses.

“Mum! Look at what we found.” Clara told me vigorously.

“For fucks sake, I am not your mum.” I growled. Since that … incident, they had doubled down on their efforts to make me love them while I honestly distanced myself a little from them.

“I believe these belong to my sisters.” Juliette pointed out a little meekly. The twins … how should I put this … they never adapted to human society at all. If I wouldn’t throw them into a same room with death row inmates regularly, they would be hard to control.

“They can be lucky Lucy didn’t throw them out yet.” Clarice replied and stuck out her tongue.

“Please don’t bicker around and get going. We have an appointment.” I told them a bit exited of what we were going to do.

“Wohoo.” Hannah threw her arms into the air and stood up as well, following after the twins who knew where to go right away. While we were doing the hard stuff, they were obviously fooling around and went on the nerves of the few servants who did return. But at least some guards chose to take up their post again which was why the vault was untouched by any thieving hands. Just like last time I visited it, the place was filled with valuables both from the previous king and nobles as well. We did consider seizing these assets, but chose not to in the end. Everyone who thought about rebelling would have much more to loose this way.

But we weren’t there for any valuables of others. We were there for a single item. My old crown.

Sitting on a pedestal, it reflected the light of the magical lamps beautifully and the red gems inside clearly accentuated my eyes as I put it on my head.

“How do I look?” I asked Hannah, purposefully ignoring the twins who showed me their thumbs up.

“All high and mighty.” Hannah finally placed the bottle of wine onto the ground, nodded towards the guards and knocked on a small compartment protected by a magical barrier. There wasn’t anything in it but one golden key which was out of the ordinary, but not too odd either. Nobles did store a few weird things inside the vault after all. “Open that please.”

“We cannot open compartments without the key.” The guard admitted a little scared, even though he didn’t have to be.

“Oh wait … it was a password wasn’t it? Open up?” Hannah attempted close to the barrier which made it light up in a red light.

“How about: I am Tom, the most intelligent person on Solaris?” I proposed as unsuccessful as Hannah was. I was pretty sure he told the password to the key two hundred years ago, but I seem to have ignored him at the time.

“No, that wasn’t it either. Simsalabim? Please open the fuck up?” Clara stepped closer and screamed at the barrier to no avail.

“How about we be nicer? Please open?” Clarice tried, still failing miserably.

“I’m so done with this shit. Why did this ape use a complicated password? Tom you imbecile, I’m going to strangle you for that …” And suddenly, the barrier vanished to the surprise of everyone. Coughing a little, I smiled towards the guard gently. “I suppose he was indeed a little creative with his password … it was good that I remembered, wasn’t it?” Hannah grabbed into the compartment, retrieved the key and smiled at the guard who was kind of glad to have us gone afterwards.

“And where do we go now?” Clara asked on our way out, kind of excited to be given the key by Hannah while her sister threw a quiet tantrum.

“We´ll get you a few proper dresses. You can´t run around with one forever.” I told them with a smirk on my face. Thankfully, we could combine a lot of activities that day which was why we happily went through the whole palace until we arrived at the entrance where a whole lot of nobles were protesting without being allowed to enter. Thankfully, order in the palace had returned to that degree.

But apparently, the guards were more interested in protecting the building itself than me. Without any further warning, a lone tomato came flying, hitting my right shoulder easily.

The crowd fell silent nearly instantly, probably expecting me to explode in anger which didn’t happen at all. Instead, I merely looked towards my shoulder and then back towards the crowd.

“Are you angry that there won’t be any nobility going forward? Are you worried about your future? Because I can assure you there is no need. This country needs people who know how to govern, today and tomorrow. But the preferential treatment is over for good reason. You can throw tomatoes at me all you want, but that’s not going to change anything. So rather than cry for the lost privileges, why don’t you work to secure the future of your family?” I asked into the round loudly. For sure, nobody would be swayed like this, but the few reported in the group would surely print my words down.

“You murdered my father!” Well … shit? Was that in the realm of PR-disasters already?

“It was wartime and trust me, I am feeling strongly about every death caused by me.” And that wasn’t even a lie. If anything, it was as close to the truth as I could get, and yet the nobles were less than pleased with my answer.

“And yet you raised undead to topple the previous government. How many villages have you razed to the ground?”

“Far too many. But there is no such thing as a bloodless war. What I did was to give everyone a chance … and most of the killings weren’t because of me. The demon king – slain by the heroes I selected – had trampled on the life of so many that it is hard to count. And before you say it, yes I was working together with him, but only because there was no other way. I implore you – just like I intend to forgive your crimes – do have mercy with me.” And that was all I wanted to say. Following Hannah´s lead, I squeezed myself though the nobles, even though I was bombarded with questions and called names by several nobles.

They did not like the reforms I was going for, not in the slightest.  But hey, politics was always giving treats to one group and hitting another with a stick. As such, I didn’t mind their little tantrum, but rather wore the tomato on my shoulder with pride as we stepped through the eastern gate while the mob was hold back by several guards.

Freed from their baseless accusations and blame-game, we were finally greeted with a dark, empty street in front of us, leading further east. Theoretically, the way to our destination was relatively easy and yet the first hundreds steps were anything but that. My gaze wandered towards the forest to my left and I stopped in front of the gate towards the white´s mansion heavy hearted.

“Do you want to go in … as far as I know she is still there.” Hannah obviously meant Mary who apparently hadn’t left the mansion yet. I wanted to speak with her about Luna and everything else … I wanted to know her opinion, but I feared her reaction to all I had done, to everything I had to do to get to this point.

“I … not now. Maybe when everything is over.” Shaking my head, I turned right again and left the estate behind me. Going in there would be … to much for my fragile soul and as such, I chose to postpone it indefinitely until everything else in the capital had been dealt with.