L'anthologie Dystopique des Héros

The Betrayed

In a magical world far away, there were three continents that were separated by an ocean. They each had five key differences: climate, customs, politics, and geographic features. For example, the continent on the eastern side of the world was Ishgar. It had a temperate climate, but it wasn't uniform in the several kingdoms that made it up. The Kingdom of Fiore in the western side of Ishgar had a tropical climate; meaning hot summers and mild winters. If you were in Hargeon, Fiore's famous port city, in June you would literally feel the heat. But the ocean view made up for it, resulting in a boom in terms of tourism for the country. Meanwhile, the island country of Ca-elum was a tropical paradise. One year immigrants from elsewhere in Ishgar came in December as ordinary folk, nobles, merchants, businesspeople, and politicians geared up for Christmas with their families. 'Twas on a snowy morning on Christmas Eve on a small island in Ca-elum's archipelago, that a happily married couple was eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child. The husband was the CEO of a multibillion dollar business enterprise with offices all over Ishgar. His name was Elijah Johnston. 

The elders of his village say he was the illegitimate child of Mikihail Romanov I, King of the island but no one believed it. Before he took the throne upon the death of Elijah's grandfather, Peter X, he was a rowdy teenager looking for adventure that he could not find in the archiplelago's largest island. On it, was a grand palace built in honor of the coronation of the first Tsar of Iceberg centuries ago, with Ionian Greek-style pillars, painted as white as snow. The Winter Palace stood at the end of a roadway from the heart of the village into the outskirts of town, with a circular driveway surrounding a Baroque-style fountain made of gold in the middle. The rear entrance overlooked a valley where a large river flowed on through, unabated. But the sides offered an impressive view of the mountains surrounding his palace. But it was unsatisfactory to the young prince, so he ran to town one night with only a handful of bodyguards. He ran into a young noblewoman who was exiting a shopping plaza, and from there they hit it off. Their relationship remained a secret, so they met each other in the city square whenever they had free time. Soon, his father had discovered Mikihail's love affair with a lady beneath his station, so Peter X had her family's estate confiscated then sent her father to court for a show trial. Mikihail's romance ended sourly with him walking home, crying bitterly as his beau dumped him after his father had hers executed by firing squad. She then fled to Fiore to avoid capture and execution.

After he recovered from his heartbreak, the prince was angry at what his father did. So a serious argument erupted between them, in which he angrily questioned his father's love for his late mother, who died having him. They did not speak for decades, until one day. His father was now an old man and desperately needed an heir. The elderly king's number one choice was a distant cousin by the name of Prince Paul, 8th Viscount of Ca-elum. But because it was a country where the king was elected by unanimous support from the nobility, they instead elected Mikihail. His father was angry and tried to have them arrested then executed, but they poisoned him to death. After the late King's funeral, Mikihail was crowned King of Ca-elum's outer islands. He eventually got married after months of celibacy, out of anger to his late father and had a son they named Elijah. But in the eyes of the nobles, he was illegitimate because his mother did not have an aristocratic title to her name. So the baby was not accepted as Mikihail I's heir, should he die prematurely. Instead it was his cousin, a nobleman named Ludwig. The kid was sent to an orphanage run by an abbot, but his childhood would not be the happiest. Suffering from years of mental and emotional abuse by his caretakers, he eventually came to hate everything about being king or a noble. When Elijah ran away and got married as a young adult, he was content living an ordinary life despite his past. Before he ran away, he had killed all of his "caretakers" and then chased his roommates away from the abbey, before burning it down to the ground. No one knew about his attack, though rumors spread which he quickly and mercilessly shot down. The people responsible for these rumors were either cowed into submission or killed. Soon, Elijah opened his own business in the export of Iceberg's tin from the mountains, in exchange for imports of perfumes and spices from Fiore, the archipelago's number one trading partner. In the years that followed, it grew into a business conglomerate that he dubbed Sumner and Associates, Limited. He was voted as its CEO by his several hundred employees, granting him huge profit gains.