Although he knew that he was seeing a dream, Noth could also tell that this was more than just a mere figment of his mind’s creation. He saw flashes of himself, visions, one after another, all involving some bleak situation or outcome that the child had yet to face. He could never see enough to truly know what was happening or why, but just the scenes alone combined with the feelings flooding into him let him get the gist of it. Pain, misery, the feeling of being alone even when surrounded by others, betrayal, the notion that things really could have been so much better had he only known. A constant longing for the one person he’d ever been loved by, and yet would never come back. A general feeling of helplessness combined with a sense of spiralling out of control.

There was a picture stuck in the back of his head of his father’s expressionless and yet somehow disapproving seeming face. Of course there was a feeling of disgust at what the man had done, but there was also a feeling of regret, maybe a tinge of a wish that he didn’t have to become a monster to save himself from one. He also felt a completely different hidden wish start to ooze out from the corner of his heart. If he’s destined to become a monster anyways, it isn’t necessary to lose the monster that forged him at the same time; Then he’d truly be alone. A lonely little monster. He’d truly have forsaken every possibility of family or any hope of normalcy if he gave up on his father. But how could those feelings be there when the man had killed the one good thing in Noth’s life? The duality of these emotions were so confusing.

The child was staring at the wall for a while, churning over the thoughts his dream had brought to light, before suddenly realizing that he was actually now awake. Something about him felt somehow different, like something had changed, and like he wasn’t quite the ‘Noth’ that he knew himself to be. Maybe a piece of him felt like he’d been slightly tainted by his dreams. He slowly picked himself up, moving to the edge of the bed and sitting there for a small bit longer, letting his mind gather and remember the situation he was in more and more, and then his head swivelled to the door, instinctively knowing where his angel would be.

“I’ve made my decision.”

“My dreams showed me that I have a lot of different wants that are all fighting each other, and no matter how I thought of things, everything hinged on just one point; I don’t really know my father. I won’t know what I actually want to do or what emotion is going to win out unless I somehow get to know him better. You say there’s some important secret, some fact that if I knew it, would magically make things be different. Well, the only thing I know for sure is that that monster isn’t going to let something meek and lesser get to know him. There’s no way a mouse will be allowed to approach him, and no amount of sneaking is going to let me understand that man’s mind. The only way that Earl Kieran will let me close is if I show him I’m strong enough that he has to listen to me. I have to send in a monster to fight another monster… even if I’m only pretending.”

There were almost tears in her eyes as the angel clapped her hands, a touched look messily plastered on her face.

She quickly floated over and swept him up in her arms, hugging him lovingly and burying her face in his hair. Noth let himself relax a bit, loosely hugging her back as his face blushed a small bit from the praise. When she finally let go and beamed down at him, he averted his eyes a bit, hoping she wouldn’t notice his cheeks, or the tears that were threatening to fill his eyes. Her giggle and the way her eyes teasingly narrowed easily dashed any such hope.

~~~

An hour later the pair left out of the greenhouse’s door, food in Noth’s belly and slightly fancier clothes adorning his body. His bracelet had two tiny cracks in it from the wishes he’d made, but he’d long since gotten over freaking out when the cracks would appear, now that he’d thoroughly tested that they would always repair back to normal at a later time. That’s why he also didn’t bat an eye as he made his third wish of the day. He’d learned over the past week’s time that he could make his wishes at any volume, and he planned to put that fact to good use.

“I wish the guard would fall asleep.”

The barely audible wish was followed by a thudding sound, as the now loudly snoring guard fell to the ground. Noth lightly jumped over him as he headed out the door, making sure to stay quiet until he was further away, so as not to accidentally awaken the sleeping man. When he felt that it was safe, the boy straightened up his posture and tried to remember what it looked like to walk with dignity and authority. He needed to confidently stride into his old home like he still belonged there if he hoped to not be stopped along the way. Even though he took care not to go through the front entrance, he should still be able to get away with coming through a lesser used side door and acting like he’d come from the front. No one should think that he wasn’t allowed in if he was, in fact, already in. Best that he didn’t run into too many people, though, just to be on the safe side.

Luckily for Noth, his angel was being very cooperative today after the moving speech he’d delivered to her earlier, and she scouted ahead, checking who would be coming down the hallways. Half of the staff were new, since the people who were loyal to his mother were chased out of the building when she’d been killed, so that meant half of the staff didn’t know what he looked like yet. Those were the people that Noth could get away with encountering on his path to the monster’s lair. And as a matter of fact, he was now faced with having to shoo one such person away, just before he turned the final corner to his destination.

“I’m sorry young sir, should you be here? Do you not have an escort?”

A young, cute maid who couldn’t have been older than 15 leaned down to talk with him. From the feather duster in her hand it was clear she’d been put to work dusting the hallway, all the more reason that avoiding her hadn’t been made an option. She was still being moderately polite to him, and with her young age it was obvious that she didn’t know who he was, so Noth knew he had a chance to swindle her. The thing that he was really concerned about was his angel. He worriedly glanced at where she was floating nearby, trying to signal her to at least hide or do something so that the young girl wouldn’t notice her.

The angel’s mischievous smirk and the way she almost whispered the last sentence were perturbing for the boy, for sure, but at least his trump card hadn’t been blown yet, so that was a relief. He looked back up to the maid in front of him and tried to remember how he used to smile at the servants. Sadly it came out a bit more unwilling and crude than he’d meant it to, but perhaps that would reinforce a sort of ‘evil young master’ image to her? Maybe going a petulant route would work to shoo her away. He tried to summon up the attitude of the rude little lords he’d heard about from his mother’s tea parties.

“I don’t need an escort. I also don’t need a conversation partner either. Should I go to the head maid and tell her that one of her new maids is shirking her duties? Or are you all done, and that’s why you feel the need to pester me?”

The wounded look on the young girl’s face rebounded and hurt Noth too, but he did his best to not let it show, doubling down on his act and glaring at the girl as he crossed his arms. He felt so sorry, but he needed this to work.

“Well?”

The maid bowed, mumbled out her apologies, and moved back the way Noth had come from, so that she wouldn’t find herself in his way again. He could make out the quiver in her voice and the small sniffle she let out as she trudged away. He closed his eyes and mentally thanked her for her sacrifice, while also wondering how such a sensitive girl was able to work in the same building as the man he knew his father to be. Shaking his head to stop himself from thinking about the girl, Noth continued forwards, at last reaching the doors of his final destination. Luckily or unluckily for him, his father was a [Superior Warrior], and therefore didn’t have any guards directly guarding him, so the entrance to his office was completely unwatched.

It would be a lie to say he wasn’t nervous as he stared at the doors. His worst nightmare was sitting behind them, and here he was, about to open the only barrier now standing between him and the beast he called a father. The boy’s heart was beating like he was about to face a great battle, one from the story books his mother used to read to him. He wished he was as strong and brave as the knights in those books, but how could he be? He wasn’t a knight. He was a kid. A 9 year old kid. A 9 year old kid who was short for his age. A 9 year old kid who was about to stroll into a room alone and confront a murderer. Clearly his only option was panicking. When his angel saw this, she swooped in and hugged him from behind.

When the boy clenched his fists and seemed to stop shaking, the spirit swooshed over to his side and kissed his cheek.

Noth nodded fiercely and took a step forwards, reaching his hand out to firmly grasp the door, but then faltered a second later and let go. He glanced up sheepishly at the angel beside him and bit his lip a little.

“Um… It wouldn’t be bad to be a little bit cautious, right?”

At his angel’s snort and amused smirk, he looked away and blushed. A small moment later a wish had been made for an invisible barrier to cover his body, a rather worryingly large crack had formed on his now fragile looking bracelet, and he once again grabbed the door with a purpose.

When the door swung open and his son confidently strolled in, the Earl understandably looked perplexed. The two stared at each other with equally uncomfortable faces until Noth’s father finally broke the silence.

“Noth? …How did you leave Natalia’s Villa?”

His voice was obviously confused, but it also had a certain undertone of fear to it that Noth caught on to very quickly. It was a strange realization to him, to hear the very man he’d cowered at the thought of for years now expressing any amount of fear back towards him. Emboldened by this new discovery, the boy scoffed at his now tawdry seeming father.

“The first time you see your only son in such a long time, and those are the only words out of your mouth. Such a touching reunion, father. I’ve been doing just fine inside my cage by the way, thank you for asking.”

The sarcastically worded slaps that Noth sent towards his father seemed to be working, and the smallest hint of pain was showing in the man’s eyes. He almost looked as if he was seeing a ghost with the way he stared at his son. The boy almost couldn’t believe that he’d been so scared to confront this man before. How could a man who was so afraid of his son so easily murder his own wife? Perhaps that’s just how monsters were.

“You’re looking at me like I’m some horrific beast that escaped from somewhere and happened to wander into your office. Or maybe it’s how you’d look at someone you were sure you’d never have to look at again? Did you forget that this was my home, too? I believe that this is still the Kieran lineage manor, right? Well, father, in case you’ve forgotten in the time we’ve been apart, I’m still Noth Kieran, the only heir of the great Kieran legacy. I belong here.”

Now that he was saying it all out loud, the words he’d oh so often been fed about his station growing up somehow seemed so…silly, so nonsensical. The past two years had shown him that none of what he’d been promised in life would ever truly be guaranteed, which was especially proven evident by how easily it had all been snatched away from him. A legacy? Effortlessly breakable. A father? They could abandon you with ease. A home? Just another thing to be taken away. How ridiculous the idea of it all was now that he was looking back on it. At least he could say he’d gotten one good takeaway from it all. He’d learned his lesson to never take anything ever promised to him for granted.

The focus of all Noth’s misery did nothing to defend himself against the antagonistic words being spat at him, and even as his son started slowly striding towards him, all he did was flinch. Laughter spilled out of the boy’s mouth at the display of weakness, but the only thing he could feel was anger. He stopped at the other side of the desk the man was standing at, levelling him with the hardest glare he could as he looked up at his father.

“I’ve heard stories that you’re trying to fix that, though. Rumours that it wasn’t enough for my own father to kill my mother, his own wife, but now he even wants to kill his only son too, so that he can start up a whole new family. And now that son of yours is standing right here, right in front of you. What will you do?”

There was a moment of silence as the usually stoic face of Noth’s father steadily morphed into an expression of pure pain and misery. It was such a pure, childlike expression, that it made Noth honestly doubt what his eyes were showing him for a second. Who knew that such a strict man could ever possibly make this kind of face? Part of him was even tempted to turn and ask his angel if she was seeing this, too. His astonishment was abruptly cut short however, when he noticed his father’s hand shakily starting to unsheathe his sword.

“You’re…You’re right. Oh dear God-dess no, it’s finally come to this, hasn’t it?!”

A tear began to fall from one eye as the man slowly stalked around his desk, his sword sheath trailing on the floor, messing up the fancy carpeting. The Earl stood in front of his son, shaking and let more tears fall for a few seconds, before his eyes suddenly filled with bloodlust and rage. Without warning and with lightning fast precision, the sword came sailing right for Noth’s head. The boy fell backwards onto his butt hard, a shriek tearing from between his lips as his hands came up to shield his face. A loud clanging sound made him screw his eyes shut.

A second passed.

Another second passed.

The snivelling sounds of a man’s anguish made Noth lower his arms enough so that he could look upon the face of his attacker.