Will of a Prince

Slimo stared at him with his deep yellow eyes. His white hair was disheveled, his expression strangely calm, but his posture was anything but ordinary. He was leaning so far forward in his bed that it looked like he was trying to jump out. Jacob suppressed his fear and gave Slimo a stern glare back. The two stared at each other for a while before the silence was finally broken.

"Hmm. How long was I staring off like that? Oh, Jacob’s awake."

Jacob’s jaw dropped.

’He was lost in his own head that whole time?!’

"Yeah. I’m awake."

"I see."

Another silence followed. Slimo slowly stood up from his bed, allowing the sheets to fall off his body. He walked over to Jacob with nothing but long brown pants and bandages to wrap his body. His physique was beyond insane. His body was chiseled and toned like a statue and massive enough to make any person quiver in fear. Seeing his body for the first time made Jacob appreciate how much harder he has to work for strength compared to everyone else in their group.

Maria slowly got up from her chair and sat on the bed next to Jacob while Slimo took her seat. He closed his hands and stared at the ground thinking to himself before starting a conversation.

"I’m glad to see you are safe. You’ve made it back in alive. That’s a good thing."

"Yeah. I guess it is."

Slimo’s hands shook slightly. He sighed deeply and rubbed his face.

"Listen, about what happened before between us-"

"Please don’t worry about that. I think it’s more important to discuss what I did when I came ba-"

"No no, I insist. It was wrong of me to hold such information fro-"

"Please no more. I think it’s time that I owe all of you an apology for-"

"Hey, stop interrupting me while I’m trying to apologize!"

"You stop interrupting me!"

"You started it!"

"Because I need to apologize! I almost killed you all!"

"Oh please, little old you killing all of us? Lidia would never let that happen."

"Half of us are in this ward as we speak!!"

"Maybe if you would open you ears for one second and let me say sorry."

"Not until I say sorry first!"

Slimo slammed his fist against the bed frame.

"I’m much sorrier than you! I drove you and Maria away! I betrayed your trust!"

Jacob got in Slimo’s face and screamed back.

"Oh please, your apology can hardly compare to mine! I almost killed my beautiful girlfriend!"

"I was the reason you became that beast in the first place!"

"It was my choice to leave! Accept my apology!"

"Not until you accept mine first!"

Maria sat in utter disbelief. She seriously had zero idea how to feel about this conversation. Was it an argument? Were they complimenting each other? Jacob called her beautiful which made her feel nice. Her emotions were on a roller coaster. Maria cleared her throat and tried to interject.

"Why are you two arguing like a married couple? Just accept each other’s apology and be done with it!"

Slimo and Jacob blushed embarrassingly and slouched back where they were sitting.

"Listen, I want you to know that I didn’t hide your true power from you because I didn’t think you couldn’t handle it. The truth is..."

His teeth clenched slightly.

"I was terrified of it."

Jacob’s eyes widened.

"And I don’t mean terrified that you would accidently say a wrong command. I was terrified of how powerful you would become. As one of your guardians, it should be my responsibility to look after you. However, I got tied up in my own head, I was still thinking the way I used to think, I saw you as nothing but a threat to me. That is the real reason I didn’t tell you. Lidia had nothing to do with the decision. I was the one who pushed to hide the truth."

Jacob nodded his head.

"... and I’m really sorry. I hope you can forgive me."

Jacob crossed his arms and raised his chin.

"It’s okay. I think I was losing my head already when the truth came out so it was bad timing. It was quite a stressful thing to go from trying to save your life to finding out you were hiding something from me this whole time. Combine that with this mark of mine affecting the way I think, it’s only natural I would flip out a little bit too much. But still..."

Jacob looked at his mark and closed his hand tightly.

"What the hell did I become when I transformed?"

Slimo shook his head.

"It’s simple."

He put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder and looked deep into his eyes.

"You became a monster."

He didn’t know why but hearing Slimo’s words sent a chill down his spine. Jacob still hadn’t fully grasped what had happened yet, so hearing it come from Slimo himself made it feel all the more real.

"I’m sorry... for becoming a monster and breaking all your ribs. And I’m sorry for almost killing Zoey. And for taking a bite out of that Orvo guy."

"Don’t worry about Orvo. He’ll be okay."

"If it makes you feel any better, part of me thinks I didn’t enjoy eating him."

Slimo smiled lightly.

"That does make me feel better to know you don’t like eating people."

Orvo sighed heavily across the room.

"So, I didn’t taste that good after all. What a bummer!"

"I feel a lot better. Let me go apologize to everyone else, please."

Jacob lightly touched the bandages covering his right eye and tried to pull them off. However, Maria jumped up and grabbed his hand before the bandages could unravel completely.

"DON’T!!"

Jacob stopped and stared at her hand slightly confused.

"What’s wrong?"

"I-I don’t think it’s healed yet."

"What do you mean?"

Maria slowly reached over to their bedside table and grabbed a mirror before handing it to Jacob.

"Just unravel them slowly, please."

Jacob hesitantly unwrapped his eye while staring in the mirror. He gasped and almost let it drop from his hand. Where his right eye would normally be, was a festering dark wound pulsating lightly as the light hit it. It was so swollen that his eye was almost permanently shut for the time being. Before he could ask a question, Maria was immediately ready with the answer.

"After the battle, when you transformed back into yourself, everything seemed to be fine with your body. You didn’t even have a lot of scratches, really. However, once we got you situated in the medical ward, your body started to have a crazy reaction that started with your eye. All over your body you had these weird green pustules that looked like they were trying to escape from your skin. Each of them was filled with some sort of liquified corruption goo. Lidia spent endless hours trying to rid your body of them. However, she said your eye would have to heal on its own and she did all she could. I think she is simply too exhausted from the battle that occurred."

Jacob’s heart felt heavy towards the end of the short story. It was no doubt that the reaction he experienced was the corruption trying to leave his body in any way it could thanks to Lidia’s attack. However, that also gave away one chilling fact and raised an even greater question: These marks that both Maria and Jacob carry are somehow infecting them with corruption slowly. However, if that is the case, why hasn’t Maria shown any remarkable signs of succumbing to her corruption yet like Jacob has? Jacob thought on it for a short while before assuming that Maria hadn’t been using her curse marks power nearly as much as Jacob had, or at least not in such an intense way.

"Maria, I don’t think we can leave Lidia anymore."

"Well, that’s a good thing because I wasn’t planning on it anytime soon."

"No, I mean you especially cannot afford to be away from her."

"Hm? What do you mean?"

"I mean that these marks on our bodies are slowly infecting us with corruption. Lidia is the only thing that will prevent another incident like the other day from happening again. Think about it, Maria. If that’s how powerful I was in a transformation and I didn’t even use my Zalo in that state since I couldn’t speak, imagine what will happen to you, where your Zalo is directly tied to your brute strength. Do you think anyone in our group, anyone in this world could stop you?"

Maria paled slightly coming to the realization herself.

"I see. That’s a good point."

She looked at Slimo nervously.

"It looks like you two won’t get much privacy anymore!"

Slimo winced and held his torso.

"If it means I won’t end up like this again, I think I’ll be okay with it."

Orvo dragged himself over to Jacob and Maria using crutches.

"I’ve heard a lot about these marks of yours by now. Do you mind if I see them?"

Jacob covered his mark instinctively to try and protect Orvo from hurting himself.

"I would show you, but I don’t want you to bleed out of your eyes... if that makes sense."

Orvo sighed.

"Please! It’s the least you could do after eating half my organs."

Jacob made a disgusted face.

"There’s no way I ate half your organs, and you can move like that... but if you insist."

Jacob slowly unveiled his insidious mark, allowing its dark presence to flow into the room once more. To Jacob’s surprise, Orvo didn’t so much as twitch seeing it. His eyes stared into the one-eyed skull with curiosity until he was satisfied.

"Creepy stuff. No wonder you wanted to eat me so bad. All I can feel when staring at that thing is an insatiable avarice."

Normally Jacob would be a lot more surprised to see someone unaffected by his mark, but ever since the incident with the General of Monlo Empire, he realized that the stronger one becomes, the less affected by the marks presence they seem to be. Therefore, it was unusually expected for Orvo to be unfazed by the mark.

"Sorry about that again."

"No need to worry! By the way, you look really familiar. I didn’t run into you randomly on the road sometime, did I?"

Jacob scratched his chin.

"I don’t believe so. Everyone in my group comes from this small place called Iron Kingdom. It resides very far south in what I believe is Monlo territory? We were very closed off from the world so seeing outsiders was never normal for us."

Orvo’s eyes betrayed a hint of emotion. It was so subtle that Jacob would have missed it had he not been staring directly at him. However, he couldn’t seem to decipher what kind of emotion it was.

"I see. I must admit, I’m extraordinarily curious. I’ve never heard of a secret kingdom before. It sounds... interesting."

"Well, it’s not so secret anymore. Monlo’s have taken over and put my bastard uncle in charge."

Orvo nodded his head.

"How unfortunate. I promise we will win it back some day, once this war is all over. Please rest up well, and thank you for your apology."

Orvo looked at Maria and bowed his head.

"And I’m sorry again for losing my temper, Miss Maria. It won’t ever happen again."

Maria shooed Orvo away.

"I already forgot about it, so don’t stress yourself out too much."

Orvo smiled warmly and clacked away on his crutches. Jacob watched him leave with a small smile on his face.

"He’s strong. I can see why he is Avala’s right hand."

Maria nodded and began wrapping Jacob’s eye with clean bandages.

"Indeed. Now please rest. We can hopefully get you up and moving by tomorrow."