Atriarch.
Do you remember when I took the life of our firstborn?
I do.
I recall the look of horror upon your face when I threw our baby’s tiny head at your feet.
I could feel your heartbreak.
It gave me so much pleasure to see you suffer.
I thought I might replicate that same feeling when I took Octavian from you.
Steal him from you by inflicting a fate worse than death.
I transformed him into the thing you hated the most before me.
I watched from the shadows as your heart broke once again.
For another son was taken from you.
You turned your back on him.
In his moment of need, you betrayed your favourite son.
Poor Octavian.
He did nothing and yet you judged him.
You returned to Caelum and left him all alone.
He wept.
Such cold tears did he weep.
I thought I would enjoy the same gratification I once experienced when I stabbed our child through his tiny, beating heart.
I did feel heartbreak that night though it was not yours, Atriarch.
It was mine.
There was no bliss gained.
I pitied your son.
Your son.
He never wronged you – yet you betrayed him.
He begged for your help – yet you ignored him.
He was helpless.
He had no one else to turn to.
His pleas were ignored.
Just as mine were.
I never wronged you – yet you betrayed me.
I begged for your help – yet you ignored me.
I was helpless.
I had no one else to turn to.
Is this what you do to your loved ones, Atriarch?
If they disappoint you, you discard them?
Are we that expendable to you?
Perhaps I am, for was I not just a brood mare to you?
But your own son?
You were there when he was born.
You were there to see him walk his first steps.
You were there to see him speak his first words.
I saw the fear in your eyes when he almost died during our final battle.
You did everything you could to save him then.
But not now?
You abandon him so easily, without hesitation?
Through no fault of his own.
How could you punish him like this?
You offered him no hope.
No salvation.
Your actions today shall have grave consequences for Sarcadia.
Just as you made a monster out of me.
So, too, have you made a monster out of your son.
— “The Elysia Monologues: Another Son Stolen”, Bruce Boward, 216 AO
W.F. Thorne 