Cassie frowned, unable to follow the train of the Queen's thoughts. Had she not said that the Smile of Heaven's death was the root of the war? But now, it was Broken Sword's death?
Cassie was still dazed due to having ingested Ki Song's blood. In her current state, even thinking was a difficult task.
Eventually, she forced out a pale smile.
"All your problems seemed to be solved, and you were free to shape the future as you saw fit. However, it does not look like any of you lived happily ever after."
After all, Ki Song had to have ended up as a corpse somehow. The two puppets laughed. The Queen nodded with a smile. "Indeed. Well, it was to be expected… after all, how could we trust each other after betraying one of our own? What would stop us from perpetrating betrayal again? There was nothing holding us together anymore. Smile of Heaven was gone, and her ghost was gone as well, since Broken Sword had died. Anvil was wary of me — not because I was a threat, but simply because I had the potential to become a threat. And both of us were afraid of the Dreamspawn, that monster. Most importantly, we weren't really people anymore… we were entities, each responsible for a Domain."
She paused. "Let's just say that large-scale systems are far less tolerant to risk. You can be reckless when you are only responsible for yourself… but what if you have a family to take care of? Would you allow yourself to be careless when the lives and well-being of your children are at stake? What if you are responsible for a million families? Ten million, a hundred million? Once one becomes a monarch, there's little difference between a threat and a potential threat. The mere promise of disaster is enough to take measures against the source."
The Queen looked at Cassie and Seishan with pity. "Both of you have already tasted the burden of responsibility. But you know nothing, yet… ah, but I digress. The thing is, despite it all, we could have still worked out our differences. We even tried to remain civil, for a while. However, our attempts were destined to fail. Can you guess why?"
Seishan frowned. Cassie remained silent for a bit, then said evenly:
"Because of the Spell."
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