Asher the Insane

69 - The Queen's Journey Part 01 - A Girl

Wo Aini, was a princess born to a father called Wo Chongbaini. He was the sixty-ninth successor of the Alaranian Empire, the sole heir of the throne after his nameless older brother had died during infancy.

Her mother was a very weak noble woman called Tamen Henhao, who had also been the sole heir of her own family line.

The Wo's and the Tamen's always had a close relationship with each other and to strengthen their connections to the throne, the Tamen's offered their daughter to the previous Emperor, Wo Weirou, as wife to his son.

This gift and also the fact that the Tamen's had the biggest private army in Alaran made it easy for the emperor to accept the proposition.

Following the birth of a beautiful baby daughter with a snow-white complexion and dark, opaque hair, her mother Henhao passed away, leaving her husband Chongbaini with a void in his heart that was soon filled with hate for the girl who had, in his mind, murdered the only woman he had ever loved.

Chongbaini who had already had known that he would have no love for this girl, his own daughter, sent her away to someone he had considered an old friend of the family, the Ex-Imperial Weapons-Master Baohu Ta.

The Emperor just uttering one sentence to him: "I cannot stand to look at her, keep her far away from me."

Baohu, who himself had experience almost the same tragedy as Chongbaini, with the difference of receiving a son, Baohu Wangguo, instead of a daughter, gladly accepted the mission that was given to him by his own Emperor and shared his love to the girl, which he raised as his if she were his own daughter.

The people of Alaran knew and were aware of the princess, though she was never seen in public and after the birth of the princess and the death of the Queen, the Emperor mostly refused to speak to the public.

Oftentimes it was assumed that the princess had either died or was born with deformities, bringing shame to the royal lineage of the Wo Family and was being held in secret in the Royal grounds somewhere under the Imperial Palace.

There also had been rumors floating around which spun into stories of the Queen having been mentally ill and committing suicide while being pregnant or having killed the child herself after the birth.

But these were just that, rumors.

Never to be said aloud in the presence of the Emperor.

For years, Baohu and Chonggaini exchanged letters to keep in touch about the unseen princess.

Baohu informed Emperor Chongbaini about his daughter's life and how she had led it, including what her first words were, where her first steps were taken, and other first encounters in the world she lived in. But, after a few years, when Aini had just turned four, contact unexpectedly ended.

After another year of living isolated and alone in the Imperial Palace, the king had cut contact with practically everyone else, fully becoming a recluse.

The Emperor's mental state rapidly worsened, and word of this immediately spread.

Refusing to eat, refusing to sleep, to wash, to clean, to attend matters of the empire, or to even utter a single word.

It was not just him which worsened. The state also sank with him.

Without its leader, evil quickly sprang from within the empire with no guidance on how to cleanse it.

With no direction, the empire's forced failed to protect the land and its people from the dark shadows which were held at bay; flourishing under the new wickedness they could impose onto others.

Violence bred like a festering wound, which took over the host. Syndicates made of previously secretive, powerful groups of people had tightened their grip on the empire.

Since no names or faces were clearly attached to them, they were simply referred to as the Underworld or the Underground.

They preyed on the people who couldn't afford to leave and those who didn't know any better.

The destitute residents of Alaran suffered from enslavement, which extended to everyone the syndicates could latch onto, as well as murder, robbery, assault, and excessive beatings that no one could possibly deserve.

The weak, without any protection, which were most commonly the mixed descendant of two races and beast folk, who did not claim any part of the world as their own and were strewn throughout it, had it the worst.