The Descent of Empress Magistratus Mia with her Arbitrary Judgements… or not
“Judgment?” Mia asked, “What do you mean? What will you do with them?”
Barbara looked at her with happiness. “What I will do with them? Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“This woman has guts. They weren’t lying when they said that immorality makes people without shame,” Abel said.
Barbara shrugged. “Judge me however you want. When all of this is over, Prince Abel, you can do whatever you want to me. But I’m not the one being judged right now.”
She went up to Citrina from behind and put her hands on her shoulders. “The members of the cursed house of Yellowmoon are the ones who need to condemned.”
Mia repeated, “The cursed house of Yellowmoon…” as she thought about the many Lord Yellowmoons who had lived there.
“I’m sure you know that people with the Yellowmoon bloodline have worked in the shadows of Tearmoon’s past for centuries, killing many important people and wiping out whole families of nobles.”
“That’s not…,” Lorenz tried to fight back, but the cold metal on his neck was pressed even harder, making him stop. But his feelings that he didn’t say didn’t stay hidden. Ludwig picked up where he left off, as if he could read his thoughts.
“That’s not a very accurate picture. They were just getting rid of dangers to the kingdom. If a country wants to grow, there will be power struggles that need to be fixed. In this way, what the House of Yellowmoon has done, while not exactly praiseworthy, is not bad enough to deserve a harsh trial,” he said as he fixed his glasses.
Huh. That makes me think. I guess Ludwig did say something about the Yellowmoons doing bad things in his letter…
While Mia thought about what was in a letter that she had obviously not read very carefully, Barbara smiled in a serious way.
“I see. So you say that what they did was okay because they were trying to make their kingdom prosper. A fair point, maybe. But does it work for these two? In case you didn’t know, both father and daughter are Serpents, and they’ve killed a number of people on the Chaos Serpents’ orders.”
She put her hand on her face to act like she was thinking.
“Let’s see… To name just a few… The head of a noble family in the middle of nowhere had a lot of farmland in his property. He died from a special drug, his family was split up, and the land was taken over by the House of Yellowmoon. Then, a good person figured out what we Serpents were up to. Everyone in that family died. Oh, and about that…”
Barbara looked at Citrina and clapped her hands once.
“Milady, it didn’t go as well as before, but this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to erase one of your friends, is it?”
The pale eyes of Citrina popped open.
“N-No, Barbara. Stop.”
A man next to her pushed her back down when she tried to stand up. She didn’t give up and fought to get away from him.
“Don’t! Don’t…tell Bel…,” she begged, her voice full of sadness. This made Barbara happy, and she smiled in a cruel way.
“You make friends with them with that cute little smile of yours, then you charm their families, and then you poison them all. You poisoned your friend’s drink, didn’t you?”
“Ah…” The legs of Citrina gave out. She fell to the ground and put her hands over her ears as she didn’t want to hear any more.
Barbara chuckled. “Did you know that the Yellowmoons are poison experts, my dear guests? For example, Milord knows so much about banes and venoms that it makes what I know look like child’s play,” she said, turning back to Mia’s group.
“So, royal keepers of all that is fair and right, when you look at the face of sin…” She made a fancy motion in the direction of the Yellowmoons. “What will you do?”
She spoke more eloquently as she looked at Mia and said, “Surely, as the Wisdom of the Empire, Your Highness won’t let evil go unchecked? So, go ahead. Yes, please. Bring down the gavel of justice on these bad people.”
“Well, uh, I—”
“Or does Your Highness plan to forgive these two bad people? Let both the father and the girl go free, even though they have done wrong.” Barbara’s grin grew wider. “I guess that would be a good choice, too. What is royalty if not the power to get what you want? To stand tall and crush the protests of the lower crowd, which are based on good ideas but are inconvenient? But you might want to think twice before doing that, especially when your royal friend is around.”
“Isn’t that right, Prince Sion?” She turned her attention to him. “Kings must keep the law. Isn’t that what the royal family of Sunkland says? Those with power have a responsibility to use it in a moral and right way. Can you overlook amnesty granted just because you like the princess?”
When he heard that, Sion’s lips clenched.
“And what would Rafina, the saint, think of this?” Barbara kept talking, even though Sion looked upset. “Would she be happy if a girl who had killed her own friend was found not guilty? And was involved in killing the friend’s parents and ruining their family as a whole?”
Every word and every phrase was filled with poison. That was what made Barbara’s poision.
She would have Mia judge and blame Citrina and Lorenz for what they had done. Or, if that doesn’t work, make the choice on purpose not to find them guilty.
In the first case, she would be doing the right thing. But if she killed Citrina, it would definitely hurt her relationship with Bel, who had grown close to the young Yellowmoon. Likely, the other people on the student council would also have mixed views about what happened. A result like that would hurt her heart and make it harder for her to be close to her friends.
What if she picked the second one? And did forgive the Yellowmoons? Sion, who is known for standing up for justice, and Rafina, who preaches about the right way to live, would not like such a choice.
So, not making a decision would cause trouble between them and Mia as well. The split that would happen might not be too big. At most, just a small crack. But it would make a small hole, which the Serpents would then use to get in.
Even if Barbara was caught here, other Chaos Serpents would come to poke and prod at it until they broke the bond between Mia and her friends.
They did it. No, they had did this before. This method was what led to the mass poisoning at the Holy Eve Festival, which tormented Rafina to no end and turned her into the Empress Prelate, a force of chaos. She then led the Serpents’ fight against order without meaning to.
This was how they did things. If they couldn’t kill someone with an assassination, they would just go for the person’s heart instead, because a soul with scars could easily become a hero of chaos.
The poison from the Serpents was dangerous. It got into the brain without anyone noticing and poisoned the mind, making it just as deadly as a disease on the body. Faced with this insidious technique of an experienced Serpent, Mia…
Okay, is it just me, or has this old woman been really mean to Rina the whole time?
…Was a little bit mad. She didn’t like how Barbara kept picking on Citrina. Mia just couldn’t look away from someone who was in trouble. No matter what Barbara said, she could only see Citrina as a poor little girl hugging her knees and not as a murderer who had done terrible things. That made her think…
Rina could not have done those things on her own. Look at her, I mean. Poor thing, it was clear that she was forced.
Even with everything, it was still true that she and Citrina had been through some of the most important things in life together. Like seeing a new life come into the world when a foal is born. And going mushroom picking. Even though these two things might not have been equal, they were related.
I’m pretty sure Rina is not a bad person herself. I bet Barbara made her do those things by giving her a hard time. If that’s the case, I might be able to save Rina without much trouble. If Miss Rafina asks, I can probably get away with it by saying that I saw a girl being bullied in front of me, so I stepped in to help her and that’s all that happened.
At best, it was a weak case, but Mia couldn’t care less because she had nothing to lose right now. Even if Barbara made a few bad decisions, she was still clearly bad guy. Duke Yellowmoon was also a good person to blame if the situation called for it. Since she had nothing to do with this conversation about crimes passed down from generation to generation, she was almost impossible to blame.
She took a deep breath and let it out with confidence. She was getting more and more excited. She had nothing to lose, so she could say whatever she wanted and rate people however she wanted. Behold! Empress Magistratus Mia and Her Arbitrary Arbitrations is descending.
Okay, woman, you’ve talked enough. Time for me to tell you what I think!
As the spirit of Empress Magistratus Mia entered her body, its hammer of justice was raised and ready to hit anyone who had the bad luck to make her angry.
“Hold on, Your Majesty. I humbly ask you to give me just a minute of your time.” Lorenz Etoile Yellowmoon finally spoke up. And that’s when things started to change.
