Took me a little longer than I meant it to, but here you go! Chapter 3! No Em this chapter. Couldn't really figure out if she would fit in, and it turned out that she didn't. ~ First: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/854964808/ Previous: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/872460862/ Next: Working on it ~ Age rating: 11+ (basically just as long as you're a mature reader) ~ When I had gotten home by the end of the day, Mother was waiting for me already. She did not like to be kept waiting, and certainly not while wondering where her daughter had been for so many hours. We’d had fun, Em and I did, but we weren’t really supposed to have fun. Fun is for heroes, who can “sit tight and feed on their own glory”, according to what Mother had told me when I was still a little girl. We had a job to do, a role to fulfill, unlike the lazy heroes who had no reason to try and do anything right until it was their moment in the spotlight. Mother thought that that’s why they had invented the Tournament in the first place. So they could show off in front of a crowd. That’s why they always win, she had told me. They all love the heroes, don’t they? But Em wasn’t like that, at least not to me. With the Tournament only a few weeks away, I should have been training like Mother wanted me to. She was the first and one of the only three villains to ever win the Tournament in history, and she fully expects me to live up to her accomplishments — not that I ever could. The thought of hurting someone else for show makes me absolutely sick. I was fifteen, fully expected to participate in the Tournament and win, follow in my mother’s footsteps on the path to become one of the great villains. I was supposed to be the one who they wrote fairy tales upon fairy tales about, the one they later built monuments of, documenting my accomplishments. I was raised for greatness. Greatness and expectations that I have no doubt I will fail to live up to. But was that really so bad when all that I wanted was to be a hero? A raven sat at the window, which most people outside of Solanine would find to be an ominous sign, but they’re really completely harmless to me. Mother even loves them, if it’s the only thing she truly loves about me, how the ink-feathered birds will fly to me like a dog to its master. Sometimes the endless cawing becomes too much, and I wish that I could run from them and escape their grip on me. They were only one more reminder of the person that I would forever be and how I would eternally be known as a villain, even if I was respected for being the daughter of the great Astraia Caldwell. The thing is that when you’re a villain, you get used to trying to capture the spotlight and failing, because you simply know deep down that even with all of your efforts, you can never outmatch the heroes. Except for Mother. She was always the huge exception to things, wasn’t she? She has a kind of silent power that almost every other villain in Solanine desires, able to assert dominance with only a few words – or lack of them thereof. So for me, even if I am sure to, failing is not an option.
