Chapter 1: Red Poison Lilies

When a noble house wanted to restore peace and order —or put the masses in their place— the wise ones pleased their subjects with wine and ale. The wiser ones sharpened their steel.

Talulah Spar only needed to send a bouquet of Red Poison Lilies.

There's a good reason sending such flowers is such a bad omen. There's no better way to strike fear into one's heart than to see their crimson petals bundled in a neat, threatening hand. Why? Well, it started with the history of the first flower and —more importantly— how it was grown.

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Before becoming "The Red Monarch", Lady Spar was the Head of Cavalry for the 41st Division in YoonKao empire's Eastern Front, and before that she was the princess of a noble house on the brink of bankruptcy.

In other words, her early life consisted of wiping the shit and piss of self-important high-born nobles. The only difference was that one involved sleeping in fancy silk sheets and the other involved trying to sleep under fire from whizzing pyro magic.

Maybe that's what made her into who she is today. Or, maybe, she was always sadistic since birth. Regardless, the fate of marriage, politics, strategy, and warfare would change in the YoonKao empire forever after one historic moment: the day she was forced into marriage with the greedy, glutinous, mass of writhing abhorrence known as Lord Cray.

So, who cares when a noble family sells their daughter to a disgusting Lord for wealth and influence? Well, she did. She cared a lot.

Talulah would have even strangled the life out of her parents; she almost did. Except, she was at the ripe age of 16: the perfect age to be sent to fight in the empire's war of expansion. Lord Cray may have wanted her, but the ruling government of YoonKao wanted her more. So they plucked her from her family's arms and, because she was still a noble regardless of being a lady, she was granted a horse into combat. How generous.

While Lord Cray had to wait 2 years before getting his grimy hands on a fresh new bride for his collection, Princess Talulah had the luxury of riding into a rain of fire bolts and obsidian arrows. Upon fighting savages for the empire's expansionist plan, she often wondered what it'd be like to just be some peasant girl. Maybe she wouldn't have a horse running full speed at artillery fire, and she'd just be at a light jog.

Well, by the time she turned of age and was sent back home, she returned decorated with medals of honor and bravery. However, she had no one to share her glory with.

While she was drafted hundreds of miles away, Lord Cray, in a drunken fury, ordered his army to sack her family home and slaughter her household knights. He was hoping to ruin her family into ashes, so that he could "save" her from a broken family without having to pay her family a hefty price. Drunken fool. Ashamed and paranoid, he intercepted any letters sent to her —as if that would do anything.

With her mother dead and her father a paralyzed husk of a man, she had nothing.

Then, a letter came to Lord Cray. It was a letter from Talulah days before their marriage. Except, it was not titled Princess Talulah but with Lord Talulah Spar. The crimson wax seal and official title meant she had officially assumed her last name and title of Lord Spar for herself after her mother's death and her father's, well, inability to refuse.

The letter read…

"…thusly, House Cray and its Lord will agree upon the price of 1200 gold crescents as compensation for the atrocities committed upon House Spar…furthermore…"

Arrogant and blinded by both lust and rage, Lord Cray didn't even need to read the whole letter before sending his knights to cow what little armies she had left. I'm sure the little man was both humiliated and turned on at the thought of a young pretty girl taking charge like that, and he'd have loved the thought of breaking such a girl.

His rage and impulsivity would send a vanguard of swords and spears to her front door, exactly as she expected.

The knights of House Cray arrived at her front gates to see not Princess Talulah, but her father with a fire glass in hand —a firebomb relic she picked up as a prize from fighting savage witches and heretics at the Eastern Front. When the magical glass erupted, it engulfed the castle halls in flames. Fiery bricks and stone launched at their armor and shields so fast that by the time the common folk arrived to see the commotion, singed holes had penetrated their armor one end and out the other. All that was left were piles of holed corpses, with Talulah's father's burnt ashes scattered in the air. Two birds with one stone.

House Cray was in a flurry, but not because they knew of the atrocity that occurred. No, no. They were a day away from the official marriage between the beauty and the brute, and everyone was busy gathering roses and cakes and fowl and ale and wine. They didn't expect to see the remaining knights of House Spar, led by Lord Talulah herself, storm the front gates. It was poetic of her to crash, no, maim her own wedding night.

Lord Cray had only his house guards defending the castle. The result was clear. Soon, the noble blood of House Cray painted the spears and blades of the Spar army until the front doors were adorned in red. Afraid of capture and imprisonment, Lord Cray fled down the steps into a secret passage while his monstrous bride tore through flesh and steel.

She didn't want him imprisoned. She wanted him dead.

So, the castle was put to the torch.

Castle Cray's history of wealth started when it used to own much of the farmland in the Eastern region. When they expanded, they inherited the beautiful marshlands and used its fertile soil to create "the floating gardens". Collecting fees in tourism and in land ownership, they quickly became powerful enough to become a noble house with the floating gardens being their prized possession.

When Lord Cray fled to his makeshift archipelago with his house maids, servants, and surviving guards, he screamed across the lake begging Lord Spar for mercy.

She smiled.

It was one of the few times I've ever seen her truly smile before.

She smiled, and ordered her men to pollute the lake with poison, corrupting the garden soil and what little water they had left.

I wonder what Lord Cray thought to himself as he saw the proud and noble house he grew up with give in to the depravity of thirst and hunger. What was going on in his mind when the flowers and fruits of his ancestral garden withered to wrinkled dust? Did he shake his meaty fist at the sky? Did he reach out to it in desperation? "Oh, if only I had just paid them in full!" "I would pay them anything, any amount!"

To the horror of the noble houses —and delight of the empire— everyone could hear the savage screams of House Cray as they tore each other limb by limb in hunger and thirst. With certain death awaiting them outside their archipelago and the food and water of the lakes poisoned, they devoured themselves into extinction until the soil became a silent bog.

Now, the ancestral garden of House Cray evolved into a labyrinth of toxic vines and shrouded, tangles trees. However, in the deepest parts of what used to be the Floating Gardens, where the bodies of House Cray used to be, now grows a mesmerizing patch of Crimson Red Poison Lilies. The flowers are a symbol of House Spar's history, and also a stark warning that those who cross Lord Talulah Spar should tread lightly.

Now, most people only really know a fraction of the story. They only really hear the murderous wedding or the siege tactics. How does someone like me know every detail to the last syllable?

Well, she told it to me as a warning. How could I forget one syllable? How could I forget one word, or one consonant every time her tongue reached the top of her palette and lowered itself to rest? How could I forget her final words to me before I never saw her again?

She was a fighter for freedom. She was a tyrant. She was a hero. She was a monster.

Most of all, I knew everything because I was there. I was her brother.