Deadly Shenanigans

Introduction to Emalia (Emalia)

Before all of the Virtues turned to Sins, I was an open book. My father was the late Honesty Virtue, which meant I had to live up the legacy of being 100% honest in my ruling. As you can imagine, people started to take advantage of that. But it was ingrained in me from so many years of telling the truth. I couldn't stop or else I would disappoint everyone. I would let them all down. I couldn't do that and let down my parents.

    I was tired and depressed and would often cry in secret, as stupid as that sounds. Sometimes I heard Scarlett cry hidden tears, too. I knew Scarlett had split with her boyfriend and she was starting to change herself after that. Iren never slept because she was always busy with paperwork. Raeka was struggling with morals, even though she basically saved the whole kingdom from poverty. Cundrie was skinny and was always weak and tired. Even Earl and Joseph were becoming depressed from caring more about others than themselves.

    My job was to write and speak to the kingdom about anything and everything. If there was something going on that was better not known by everyone in the village, I had to tell them anyway. I had no filter. It got to the point that suspicious townies asked me things and I had to tell them. The truth would come right out immediately and I wouldn't be able to stop it. Often I accidentally got the village riled up over false alarms or my own personal fears.

    Laying in bed one night, I thought about things. But for some reason I had real motivation to do something about my problem. As anticlimactic as this sounds, I kind of just decided to lie about little things. At least at first. So when the other Virtues (and Sins, by this time) asked me if I swept the treehouse floor I would always say yes even if I didn't. Or when I ate the last cookie and somebody confronted me about it I would always deny it. It grew into lying to the people to protect them. Eventually, I would lie about everything. It was like a sugar high and I couldn't come down. I never wanted to come down.

    After Cundrie burned the treehouse down, the boys decided to move into the castle. The girls wanted to live in the underground bomb shelter to get away from the commotion of actual people. As rulers, we were at liberty to do so. The boys visited sometimes, but not often. Their visits typically started with them saying there's still "good" in us, and ended with me or Raeka kicking them out.

    The bunker was more of a home than anything I had ever felt. Raeka, Iren, Cundrie and Scarlett were a better family than I had ever known. And maybe we were greedy, or lazy, or always hungry, or confident, or liars. But that was fine. At least we're all happy.