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Lysithea wasn’t supposed to be able to carry this staff. All told, taking up the burden of a Relic not meant for you crippled you - if it didn’t transform you into a rampaging black beast - but she was already weak and infirm anyway.
It still wasn’t meant for her, and perhaps it knew it.
Thyrsus whispered in the dark, indistinguishable words yet unmistakable for their malice. Maybe it was the Elite Gloucester’s voice, low and judgmental and accusatory, that she would dare to take it up rather than his descendant. Maybe it was others that wielded it after his time, evaluating her, finding her lacking, unworthy, for all her blood carried a major Crest.
Sometimes the voice was Lorenz’s, begrudging her the professor’s decision that it would serve best in her hands, with her power channeled through it, rather than his.
He tried to puzzle it out at first too. “I know my lineage, Lysithea,” he confided in her once over tea. A sweet apple blend to appease her, she was sure, rather than the almost pungent rose she knew he preferred. “It has been at least two centuries since a member of House Gloucester married into House Ordelia, so it is a curiosity that you would be born with a Crest of Gloucester, much less a major one.”
Lysithea’s hands curled into fists in her lap, and she stared into her teacup and tried to keep Thyrsus’ serpentine voice from filling her head. “A curiosity, to be sure,” she agreed, because she hadn’t been born with it at all. “I’m sure Professor Hanneman would have more insight than I on how that’s possible.”
“Likely as not,” Lorenz said. “Regardless, I trust the professor’s judgment, and you are deserving of its burden. I only wish my father was so understanding…”
Thyrsus drowned out his words.
Imagine, little one, it intoned, voice deep as it reverberated through her head, through her ribs, understanding . Was this bastard Gloucester so understanding when he disemboweled me and fashioned a staff to empower himself from my bones? Were his detestable comrades understanding when they slew my brethren and drank of their blood?
Understanding. Be not understanding of your tormenters .
You are the least worst successor to Gloucester I can imagine, with his legacy forced upon you, your body violated just like mine.
Thyrsus’ voice faded away, slipping from her mind as if it had never been there, but it left her heart racing and her skin clammy with sweat. Lysithea’s hands trembled as she reached for her teacup, so much that she knocked it over.
Tea soaked the tablecloth, but while Lorenz scrambled for a napkin she could only stare and wish it didn’t look so much like blood.