Interlude: Melancholy in the Arteaga Empire

Interlude:
Melancholy in the Arteaga Empire

 

QUITE FRANKLY, the Arteaga imperial household was in dire straits.

The grand chamberlain’s shouting echoed throughout the princes’ joint office first thing in the morning, a common occurrence there. “Your Highnesses! What happened at the dinner party last night?! Did something about those noblewomen displease—excuse me, Your Highnesses?! Are you listening?!”

He complained in vain. The two princes, one green-haired and the other blue, kept their eyes shut. He did not enjoy shouting, but a grand chamberlain sometimes must.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re listening. The ladies conspired against us last night. Said something like ‘Oh! Those two princes are so terribly boorish. They aren’t worth our attention,’ and ignored us for two whole hours! Can you believe it?” The green-haired prince, the heir apparent, rolled his eyes theatrically.

“Your Highness!” the grand chamberlain said, aghast. “Please take this seriously! I believe I’ve told you many times that every lady sacrificed a great deal to attend that dinner party! I also believe I told you that, as the highest-ranking nobles in attendance, nobody would speak to you two unless spoken to first! Such are the rules of noble society!”

“Ohhh, yeah…you did say something like that.” The green-haired prince crossed his arms and nodded deeply. The blue-haired prince to his side did the same.

The veins on the grand chamberlain’s forehead bulged. “I simply cannot believe that you two could forgot such an important rule! How could you squander two hours with ten of the Empire’s finest noblewomen?! All their attendants were in shock! Never has there been such a silent dinner party!”

“Yeah, totally. Quieter than a funeral, even. But what’s wrong with that? So all the ladies were well mannered, eh? Isn’t that good?”

“Prince Emerald!” he exclaimed, nearly shouting his lungs out.

The green-haired prince raised a hand. “The name’s not Emerald. It’s Green Emerald, got it?”

He grit his teeth. Their name change was one of the Empire’s many problems.

It was well known throughout the Empire that these two, their older brother, and their sister—all children of the previous empress—had been cursed and lost the right to the throne. It was also well known that the three brothers then journeyed to a distant land to slay a powerful monster and rid themselves of their curses. But there wasn’t a soul in the kingdom who didn’t know the story of how they met the Goddess of Creation in that distant land and had their curses undone, returning to the empire with blood no longer streaming down their faces.

The three had always been ideal princes, in terms of bloodline and capability. Even in the past, many citizens assumed the oldest would be the next to succeed the throne once his curse was undone. But after ten—after even twenty—years of their curses continuing, the citizens gave up on them. Even the most influential nobles at the core of the government gave up when their close sources told them that the curses could never be undone.

Vying for the throne, the concubine of the previous emperor had a curse-maker work their dark magic upon the princes and princess…and then had that curse-maker killed. Under normal circumstances, a curse could only be undone by the one who cast it, although a much stronger curse-maker might do so. Worse yet, the death of a curse-maker only made curses stronger and harder to remove. The people assumed, then, that the siblings’ curses were permanent. And so the empire as a whole had given up on the otherwise perfect princes…until their curses broke.

Prince Ruby, Prince Emerald, and Prince Sapphire—the three handsome, strong, brave princes named after gems removed their curses (well, two of them did to be precise) and returned home with newfound strength. The people of Arteaga had welcomed them with open arms. People love a good Cinderella story, and there was no Cinderella story as grand as theirs.

The three princes, the true legitimate heirs to the throne, had trumped their fate and returned to oust the previous emperor’s concubine and her children from the imperial household. The citizens knew this to be just.

But it didn’t end there. The princes’ little sister—their Sleeping Beauty, if you will—awoke for the first time. She was a fragile yet pure-hearted girl, still ignorant of the world.

The citizens, their heartstrings all plucked by this fairy tale, gladly accepted Ruby as their new emperor, along with Emerald and Sapphire as first- and second-in-line princes. A new era had begun.

Which was, you know, fine. The grand chamberlain himself had wished for the change. The problem, however, was that even after quite some time had passed and things settled down, not a single one of the three showed any interest whatsoever in marrying—nay, in even engaging with the opposite sex!

This was greatly alarming in regard to the continuity of the imperial bloodline, as he often reminded the three. Whenever he did so, the three would (of course!) always apathetically reply, “The Goddess of Creation has given us a duty to fulfill. We have no time to waste on marriage.”

The three instead spent their time worrying over how they had given the Goddess aliases rather than their true names, eventually changing their real names to correct their mistake. Ruby, the emperor, changed his name to Red Ruby, while the two princes changed their names from Emerald and Sapphire to Green Emerald and Blue Sapphire respectively. Why they chose to prioritize their aliases over their true names evaded him!

To be perfectly candid, he had no idea if the three had truly met the Goddess. He believed they did, though, for how else could their curses have been undone? He believed they’d met the Goddess, taking the form of a young girl. And he, as did many others, believed they’d never meet her again.

Meeting the Goddess had been a miracle, but miracles are miracles because they occur just once. There was no other recorded instance of a person ever meeting the Goddess. Her manifesting and protecting the imperial line could only be a one-time blessing. He wished that the three would understand this and turn their eyes toward the future, but…

“The Goddess called herself Fia! Isn’t that a splendid name? So grand, yet so gentle and benevolent.” Green Emerald looked spellbound as he sang the praises of a most common name.

Blue Sapphire had a similar twinkle in his eyes. “Her name is wonderful, yes, but let’s not forget her sheer beauty. She had such wonderful crimson hair, like the Great Saint of legend, and though she was still a bit thin due to her young age, she had stamina great enough to walk the same distance we did!”

“Yes, she was amazing. A bit absentminded, but smart, gentle, kind…”

The two princes continued ad nauseam. Why had they been so silent at last night’s dinner party? This was the problem! The two were so fascinated by the Goddess that other women weren’t even on the table.

They were both young—Green Emerald being twenty-five and Blue Sapphire twenty-one—handsome, sociable princes, so of course they were incredibly popular among the noblewomen. But they didn’t care.

Occasionally, between their long days of imperial duties and physical training, the grand chamberlain would overhear them talking about a woman—but when he listened in, he always discovered that it was yet another conversation about the Goddess.

It was a problem. It was a huge problem. But the biggest problem of all was—

“Green! Blue! There you are!” Dropping in unannounced was Red Ruby, the emperor himself.

The grand chamberlain hurriedly dropped to a knee as he strode in.

“Look! It took a while, but carefully washing the cloth Fia gave me to wipe my blood was worth it! It’s almost white again!” he said, proudly holding up a cheap rag.

Green Emerald looked envious. Clutching his head, he said, “Red, that’s amazing! I’ve been trying to clean my own cloth too—alone, of course, because I thought it’d be wrong to get another’s help for a gift from Fia. But it just isn’t going well.”

Blue Sapphire slumped his shoulders sadly. “At least you got a cloth. I wish I’d been cursed to bleed like you two…”

Confounded to the core, he watched the trio express their adoration for the Goddess.

This was the biggest problem—their twenty-nine-year-old emperor was also obsessed with the Goddess, enough that he wasted his few spare moments chatting away with his brothers about her. The grand chamberlain couldn’t even complain to him about his younger brothers’ indifference toward women, as he was no better!

It very much reminded the grand chamberlain of the way baby chicks imprint on the first thing they see, assuming it to be their mother, and latch on to it. With all due respect to the princes, the three didn’t have much in the way of interaction with the fairer sex during their youth. As a result, they became thoroughly smitten with the first woman they’d properly met, then grew obsessed with their memories of her. Worst of all was that the first woman they met just so happened to be the Goddess Herself. Of course all other women paled in comparison.

At this rate, the imperial lineage will come to an end. I must do something.

“Y-Your Majesty,” he stammered. “Wh-why not perform an investigation in Náv for traces of the Goddess?”

This was the Goddess they were talking about. No matter how hard anybody searched, no such traces would appear—which was perfect. Once the search turned up empty-handed, they’d be forced to face the reality that their meeting with the Goddess was a once-in-a-lifetime event and move on.

Hopefully.

“Th-that’s outrageous!” Red Ruby blustered hysterically. “H-how can you even suggest we do something so shameful as search for Fia?!” Despite his age, he was blushing like a tomato. Even children nowadays handled romance more gracefully than him.

The grand chamberlain kept his silence, exercising patience and waiting for one of the brothers to do his work for him.

Sure enough, Green Emerald also chimed in, equally hysterical. “Th-that’s a bold thing to suggest! Looking for where she went, what foods she likes, what clothes she wears… N-no, we can’t!”

I never said anything about those last two—but no. Patience. Say nothing…

Red Ruby laughed. “I don’t need an investigation to know her favorite food! Meat, meat, and more meat! I remember her happily wolfing down all the monster meat on our journey. Wh-which means the two of us have the same favorite food!” he bragged.

“H-hey, I know that too! I’m the one who got to feed her meat and watch her up close, after all!” Even Blue Sapphire, the most well mannered of the brothers, was now a mess.

Ahhh… I wish the noblewomen could see this. The noblewomen saw these three as expressionless and cold-hearted, and had even taken to calling them “Ice Emperor” and “The Ice Princes” behind their backs—and who could blame them? They had tried everything, from batting their eyes to aggressively pressing their bodies against the brothers, but they were only ever met with cold glares. They thought the princes hated women. Of course, this was wrong. The reality of it was that the three were terribly inexperienced hopeless romantics who were unfortunately smitten with a goddess. It was up to the grand chamberlain to fix them…but how?

He was still thinking when Blue Sapphire, beet-red, spoke up. “I’ll go to Náv! Yes, something this important can’t be entrusted to anyone else! Let me handle it!”

“What? You sly dog, you! If you’re going, so am I!” Green Emerald exclaimed at once.

“Guh, what?! Didn’t we swear to rule the Empire together?! If my two brothers are going,” Red Ruby declared, falling into the voice of a statesmen, “then I shall have to go too!”

Naturally, the grand chamberlain stepped in. “That’s enough, all of you! Surely, you don’t think you can travel freely as you did in the past?! Think of your position!”

Faced with logic, the three grimaced.

“Right,” Red Ruby muttered. “In that case, we’ll leave the investigation to Cesare. Any problems with that?”

Yes. Yes, there are many problems, he wanted to say. Cesare was the commander of Arteaga’s Knight Brigade—he was somebody of great importance and certainly not one to send on a secret errand for the emperor. This was far too rash of a decision. But he supposed that these three believed that anything related to the Goddess took utmost priority and demanded no less than their best. Judging by their expressions, they weren’t willing to compromise further.

The grand chamberlain put a hand to his forehead. His head was throbbing… “Ah. Understood. We’ll…send Commander Cesare.”

And thus, it was decided. The empire’s esteemed commander was to go to Náv to secretly carry out what was practically an errand for the emperor.

 

It was early morning on the day of Cesare’s departure. Despite it being a secret mission, Red Ruby personally went to see Cesare off, causing a crowd of people to form. To make matters worse, Blue Sapphire was spotted among the knights in Cesare’s unit, causing further pandemonium, the likes of which the grand chamberlain had never seen before.

For the time being, it seemed the melancholy in the Arteaga Empire would continue.