Ethereal Paradigm: Arcadia of Darkness - 107 Primal Scion 3

-Gabriel Byrne

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“As you can see, young master, it is safe! Do you want some?” She offered, closing our face’s distance, with rather this ominous demeanor. Something that looks like it literally came out from the whimsical ‘Promised Neverland’s’ Sister Krone. A facade, that a legit and loyal servant knows that either he or she is not supposed to showcase in front of her young master.

I peculiarly know that much… I mean, I was there in the job-hiring and in its prestigious orientations. And why did I not forget such unessential memory, you ask? I don’t know… (but I was pampered by many young maid onii-chans that day, which might spell a part of the answer. I mean, who would want to let go of such memory?… *Sigh*, what am I thinking… That’s just a mundane jest right there.)

“No, thank you.” I simply responded… maintaining my calm stature, which she did not even find to be weird coming from me, who is known to have had always acted frivolously all the time… And from that alone, I know that there’s something not right about her.

“Well then… Your brother is waiting for this treat.” She added, still with the ever-growing malevolence around her charisma.

I get it… She’s treating me like a kid, and worse, one that should be taken lightly.

“If you’ll excuse me, young master.” Bowing her head, she turned away for good, towards that man, and with her, is a tea of slow-killing miasma.

I do commend her guts on drinking a dose though, just to display that my doubt was at all cost, false and devoid of apparent evidence…as if she’s indeed being honest. But I know for sure, that she is everything except that.

Now then… I got myself a new mystique spice eh. Do pardon, Xerxes, but I think I’m not going to sleep… just yet.

(…)

I then followed the maidservant, whilst making sure of the stealth… towards that room on the other side of the veranda.

Like a kid, about to undercover a love affair of a friend with his domestic helper, (although realistically, I don’t know how that really works), I hid from one pillar to another, as the maidservant also began turning off the fluorescent lights, the grand chandeliers of gold, and several lampstands along the way. Killing two typical maidservant-tasks with the same stone… Although… putting a drug on your master’s favorite is assuredly atypical.

And then she arrived… finding herself facing an aristocratic bedroom door, which belongs to the heir himself. A room that is the least acquainted with all of us in this household. Why? The answer is a reason that will automatically be flagged as ludicrous…

No one dares to enter… not because he forbids us, but because we forbade ourselves. It’s his private space after all. And because of that, we really don’t know what lies beneath that door. If my juvenile personality back then could have been deceiving me, there might be a secret morgue inside or something… or even anything that can prove his mental damage, and here this maidservant is, outmaneuvering the household’s norms like it’s nothing.

Yet honestly, not that I can recall seeing her face on the job hiring, or on one of the orientations that I can ‘weirdly’ remember… She’s clearly an outcast, there’s no way my memory would fail me. And it’s on these types of a point where I would want to blurt out that my hypothesis, has been proven.

Taking one final deep breath, she then knocked calmly on the door…

“Master, your tea has been made ready… Can I enter?” She said…

Hmmm… The statement looks plain, but certainly not as to how it was instructed in the orientations. First; Say ‘excuse me’ or ‘pardon’ if you’re intruding someone in their room at night. Second; What the hell is with that ‘Can I enter?’ query?… It’s out of the picture.

Seriously, that soon-to-be personality-unstable scion is not that stupid to give permission, right?

“Enter…” The heir thought so otherwise.

Nevermind…

“Thank you, master…” The maidservant, obtaining the permission she needs, did not even scrape the dust off of her sandals on the rag she’s standing in, opened the door, and brazenly entered… What’s best, is that she left it slightly open, enough for me to catch a glimpse of what’s gonna happen inside.

Feeling assured that both of their attention is now away from that door, I then sneaked in to take my very first peek of the unknown… and I, who just got transported to a peculiar realm, am talking about this, in the most sardonic way plausible.

I then positioned myself as comfortable as I can, and from there, I saw… a normal room ( no matter how I look at it) of someone who’s about to take over the aristocracy for his generation…

A bedroom that’s almost like the busiest office in the world. Not with a clandestine morgue but with cabinets of organized files and folders, not with a pile of bodies, but endless piles of papers… and on a wide and varnished wooden table, just beside his messy bed, is the heir himself… stamping papers one after the other, sealing them with the family crest in ink of maroon, like there’s no tomorrow… Hmm. From this perspective, I should not be surprised if his mental state is gonna snap anytime soon.

Well, putting the surprise of a mundane look aside, the maidservant then approached the ever-busy heir, placing the teacup (of which she also drank off) on the barely cleared side within the reach of the scion himself, and started pouring the hot ‘favorite’ tea… whilst her malevolence also started to be greater than that of before, probably in her assumed thought of instant success.

“Well then master, you can’t drink it cold… ”

Implying that she wants the heir to drink it hot, she suggested.

“Ah, right… Thank you.”

He then took a grip of the offered teacup and started sipping drops from it, nonchalantly…

“I’ll be leaving then, master… I can’t disorganize you from your works” Seeing the heir take a single gulp of the tea, with a rather trained false-grin, she bowed down, hastily wishing to leave the room as soon as she can and with her… the false belief of premeditated victory.

“Wait…” The heir intervened.

“What is it, master?”

“Leave the entire pitcher in her… It’s delicious.”

“Well, I’ll be glad to, master. It would be my pleasure…”

She then placed the pitcher just beside the cup, and once again started to leave, feeling assured more than ever… and in a falsified belief, yet again…

How can I come up with such a conclusion? Easy… If she did not succeed in tricking me into drinking a cup, then there’s no way that her chance of success against this revered scion to be equal with that of zero… It’s likely to be in the negative spectrum.

“Wait…” The heir called out again, stopping the now-annoyed and nervous maidservant from ever leaving the room…

“Would there be anything else?”

“Who are you?”

Yep… there goes…

“Eh? What do you mean, master?”

“Quit it… I don’t have time for such unintegral errands, but seriously… What’s in the tea?” Relinquishing his paper-stamping for a bit, he looked at the maidservant, and even though she’s facing away from me, I can tell, that the servant herself knows that she is in a pinch.

“If you mean about the special recipe, it’s likely to be honey, master.”

“Honey, huh… What else?… Digoxin? Mixed with a little cyanide? It might be not the perfect time to say this, but that’s one bad combination. Did you take your chemistry class seriously? If you have had, however, mixed the first with an odorless compound other than cyanide which has an approximately 60 over 40 percent chance of not gushing forth a certain and specific smell when placed on liquids… your probability of success could have been a little bit higher… than zero that is.”

Damn… He even knows the exact names.

“Eh?”The maidservant stood stunned.

The heir then got up from his seat, looking very calm and composed, like he’s not even facing the slightest of threats.

“Now tell me, undercover-assassin… What is it that you want? That you want to kill me that badly. Where did this command even come from?”

An assassin? In this era? Could have named her, ‘Hit-woman’… Ew, Actually that would do. The maidservant slash, assassin, however, is speechless…

“Alas, I got an idea. It’s from that reckless pianist, right?”