Caera Vritra
"Cecilia, cheer up!" I exclaimed, offering a smile to the new friend I had made in the High Sovereign's dark fortress of Taegrin Caelum.
Cecilia was a strange girl near my age and the only person in this place I could speak to, whenever the High Sovereign didn't...
I refused to think about it. I refused to let my mind wander down that dark corridor of memory where the High Sovereign's experiments lived, where the screams echoed and the pain never truly faded.
Instead, I focused on my strange friend as we sat on her bed within the dark confines of one of Taegrin Caelum's tall spires.
"I am sorry, Caera. I didn't want to bring you down," Cecilia answered in that battered tone of hers, her voice carrying the weight of centuries she had never lived.
I took her trembling, bleeding hands in mine, feeling the warmth of her skin against my cold fingers.
Cecilia had the bad habit of clenching her hands too hard, causing her nails to pierce her skin.
Something about her strange magic—a secret the High Sovereign prohibited her from speaking to me—made her incredibly strong physically, even if it wasn't mana... or so I deduced.
As thus, she really risked harming herself.
Even her four horns, she scratched them continuously in anxiety, and the black bone composing them was badly scratched in many places, bearing many healed scars.
"Don't be sorry. You know what I have been doing in Aedelgard every time I was afraid of Master Seris?" I asked, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I thought about something good and I tried to smile."
It was the only thing that kept me sane since I officially became Scythe Seris' Retainer a year ago at the Victoriad. Think positive, feel hope.
That was what would prevent me from becoming a weapon, a puppet, an object like Scythe Seris; the only thought of becoming like my cruel master forced me to feel hope everywhere I could find it.
In Aedelgard, in the Briand Manor, I tried to make friends with the servants, showing them kindness. I tried to sneak out to Mainland Aedelgard and help the unads there as much as I could before Scythe Seris discovered and punished me.
Hope—that was the only weapon that worked against a foe like Almighty Vritra and his Clan, and my training as Retainer engraved in me the concept to use every single weapon, no matter how unorthodox or foolish, to my advantage through searing pain.
"Think of something good...?" Cecilia echoed, her voice barely above a whisper. "Like Grey and Nico?"
Grey and Nico were the other mysterious children living in Taegrin Caelum like me, even if I never saw them. I knew Scythe Seris had a peculiar relationship with Grey, seeing as that mysterious boy was once a Denoir, a Highblood family that were basically Scythe Seris' servants.
And I knew Nico had been raised in Taegrin Caelum since birth. But other than that, I didn't know a thing about the two people Cecilia called her dearest friends; information, in Taegrin Caelum, was the monopoly of Agrona Vritra, aided by the strange matrix of magic woven into the very walls of this fortress.
I cast a sidelong glance toward the shadowed corner of Cecilia's bedroom in Taegrin Caelum. I knew all too well that even here, deep within these private quarters, the High Sovereign's senses somehow managed to reach.
Speak of the devil, I thought—a peculiar Earth saying Cecilia had taught me. As if on cue, the heavy door swung open, and stepping through the threshold was Agrona Vritra's most prized tool: Scythe Cadell.
The Basilisk, for calling him a mere man would be a grave error, swept his hollow gaze over Cecilia and me. My first and only friend shrank back in terror, but I forced myself to stand tall. I already knew exactly what the Scythe of the Central Dominion wanted.
"Caera Vritra," Cadell stated. His voice was utterly devoid of anything even resembling an emotion.
In fact, he was far worse than even Scythe Seris, who at least retained a lingering trace of humanity within her—namely, a fervent zeal toward Almighty Vritra and an obsessive, desperate desire to make amends for her treason.
But even that twisted devotion was something more... alive... than Cadell. He was a husk. A hollow, terrifying husk capable of slaughtering thousands of people in mere minutes.
I hugged Cecilia, trying to reassure her, and headed toward the nightmare that awaited me.
—
"Caera!" The High Sovereign greeted me as I was escorted by Cadell to where the Lord of the Vritra Clan awaited, a deep tunnel below Taegrin Caelum's surfaces where all the laboratories and dungeons of the fortress were located. "I find you well."
The illumination was terribly faint within the sterile corridor, making the piercing red eyes of Agrona Vritra burn like bloody stars in a twilight sky.
Pooling across the stone floor was a dark, freezing fog that choked the very air; this insidious haze bled through every crevice in the bowels of Taegrin Caelum.
It was a physical manifestation of the High Sovereign's own magic: his Grim Mist.
The creeping tendrils of this decay-type mana brushed against my legs, and as they did, I felt something akin to a sixth sense, a mysterious, dormant perception Agrona called Legacy that had suddenly blossomed within me only a month past, instinctively reaching back out to meet the miasma.
"High Sovereign," I greeted, bowing my head deep and arching my back downward, my horns pointed to the ground: the sign of submission to the Basilisk race of Asuras as Scythe Seris drilled into me.
"I do have some interesting experiments I want to do today, Caera," the High Sovereign said as he started walking, and I followed him, Cadell close behind like a secondary, living yet silent shadow of the High Sovereign himself.
I was led toward a large split gate, many meters tall, which opened as soon as the High Sovereign stepped into view. I gulped. What was it going to be this time? What demonic piece of Ancient Wraith technology would the High Sovereign force me to... gain Insight over?
I stopped thinking about it. I had to think about positive things, like the kind servants back at the Briand Manor, yes.
To defeat Vritra, you couldn't let him take away your happiness and hope; every single branch of the Vritraism taught that happiness was the All-Knowledgeable's one true right, his monopoly and possession.
I entered the room sealed by the Ayin Gates and opened my eyes in fear of what I was about to see, but when I did so... nothing—only an empty room.
"Surprised?" The High Sovereign mocked, and I turned to face the Basilisk, his dark horns absorbing the already flimsy light of the room. "I do have a quite different task for you today, dear Caera."
Then, my gaze fell upon what the High Sovereign was clutching in his hand.
Was that... a frog? The sight was profoundly unnerving. The tiny, plump creature possessed a rich, azure skin that shimmered like the reflective waters of Lake Boolan in Etril, crowned by small green horns that gleamed like polished gems.
It squirmed and thrashed desperately within Agrona's suffocating grasp, absolutely terrified for its fragile life.
"I don't understand, High Sovereign," I dared to ask. A phantom pain flared across my body—the ghost of what Scythe Seris would have done to me had she heard me question Agrona Vritra so openly. "What is the meaning of this?"
"You will soon understand, Caera," the High Sovereign merely replied, relaxing his suffocating grip on the amphibious creature.
The frog leapt from his palm to the floor. The sheer terror that had possessed it only a second prior completely vanished. Its large, bulging eyes locked onto me, and its throat sac began to rhythmically inflate.
Two things happened simultaneously. The frog lashed its sticky tongue out as if to strike me. I subconsciously moved to defend myself, calling upon my Soulfire, but a sudden, terrifying force seized my magic.
It was the High Sovereign himself exerting absolute dominion over the Vritra Blood flowing through my veins, forcefully paralysing my every movement.
In that same fraction of a second, the heavy Ayin Gates slammed violently shut behind us, thick tendrils of Grim Mist clawing wildly against the stone walls of our newly sealed chamber.
When the amphibian's tongue made contact, I felt as though I had been plunged into a freezing ocean. It was as if my entire being—from my physical body to my very soul—was violently swept through a rushing, torrential current of space and time.
Just as abruptly, though, I was spat back into the real world.
I collapsed onto the cold floor of the chamber, gasping for air at the feet of the High Sovereign, who looked down upon me with an expression of dark amusement.
"The Legacy of Insight is truly portentous," Agrona mused softly, speaking more to himself than to me. "To let one such as you use the abilities of Fate's Arbiter. I truly wished to know what new authorities over the Edicts had Fate bestowed upon its new slave."
The smile crossing Agrona's lips was the most frightening thing I had ever seen, and my bold positive thoughts fractured with that smile.