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“So, I think I’ve figured out how you did it, making students who look at you like you’re a step below a god, I mean. It took a bit of thought, but really, Start young enough… Hahaha, well, that makes it easy, right? You look for those kids, the ones who are smart and talented and think they’re too clever. Young, but just old enough that they’re looking for things other than what they’re parents taught them, right? Maybe they’ve just done something big, moving to a large city with a large school, for one, or been through hell, had a tragedy happen, something to really make them look and open up to new things. Strive to find order, all that. You start with those kids.”
“You go to them with Praise - Always praise first, to excite them and make them feel good, but it’s mixed with the challenge, for those kids that need to prove they deserve praise. It starts with a compliment on their grades, on a sparring match you heard about, about how teachers always comment on their observation and insight… You’re looking for a new student, see, and you’re considering them, but, BUT what you heard about them alone? It’s not enough. You ask them for more. The One who can fight needs to beat a text of theory, the Observant one has to win a fight, the one with perfect grades has to discover someone’s secret.”
“You tell each student that the tests will be hard - they have to be stellar to pass, and the tests need to be just hard enough to convince them of two things: The tests were absolutely meant to be hard, and that they were just that good. You praise them more and make them your students. You can’t pull them out of soltryce entirely, though, only for a few days a week. You praise them every chance you get, insist that what you’re teaching them is far more advanced than it is. After all, it’s no good, giving people power before you’re certain you have them leashed thoroughly to you.”
“You do make lessons too long, meals too short, give them uncomfortable beds. Your private lessons are more about philosophy - Why the Empire is great, and that a single great man can do more for the greater good than all the people who supply his food.”
"That's a good start, feeding them only what to believe, but you have to test them, don't you? Train them for the roles they'll play at the end of this. You command them to watch their fellow students and report when they act disloyal to the empire. You give them people to report to. They're snitches, now, telling on fellow students, watching them get punished, and the other students? They start to figure it out, to exclude the three of them, and how convenient, now, that they will never be exposed to a differing view. How nice, to sit down on the first day they study with you each week and go over all they're reports, every one, so that each of them you teach knows that if either of the other two report on you, your secrets will be bared and shamed."
"Of course, they're eachother's only friends, and they are children, then want affection... They go to you, with the deepest secrets. The jealousy for the favorite, the Fear the favorite has for speaking up, the loneliness they all feel. These are their secrets for now, but you promise to keep them and tell them what penance they must do to get them back on track."
"You've taught them to look for traitors, how to shape their own thoughts. You have their behaviors and habits under iron control between your home and the school, and you have them addicted to your praise. Now you need them cowed, Ashamed. The secrets they feed you are a good start, but not enough - So you arrange a deeper secret for them to find, a real traitor, in easy reach of students. They need to root them out, gather the evidence.... When they present their other teacher, you're delighted, the next week, on your private estate, you invite them to watch the consequences, and you start to teach them that disobedience? Disobedience means you aren't a person any more. Not to the empire. You are Nothing if you are not loyal."
"They aren't ready yet, but you arrange for any foreseeable executions to happen on your estate while they're there, always in sight of the room they're in. You're still waiting for the ideal bit of shame, to prod them with, but for now, they should get used to seeing the trash taken out."
"Finally, the isolation has done it, they admit their dependence on their peers, and it's good news, isn't it, that they all thought that one day, if the others weren't loyal to the empire, they might have a hard time remembering that they're trash and should kill them? It means they're ready. There's three traitors to be executed next week, one for each. but they're still weak in their training and you want that. They hesitate."
"It's a good thing you had that shame to lash them into action with, though, wasn't it? They stood and shook with the idea of killing a person, but you had the words, the exact turn of phrase to remind them. that the nation is greater than any person, that eventually they would need to turn on a threat to it. might as well practice now, with strangers, before you fiend out a friend, a lover, a sibling... any or all of them are traitorous. Learn to see the disgusting filth before you as a slug to salt, an ant to burn. smite them for your nation. You had to urge them to it like that, to remind them of the shame that they couldn't kill each other to even get them to attempt it on a stranger. They were children, after all."
" It gets them to act, but they're young and early in their training. They can't quite do more than hurt the poor fuckers being killed and you have the professional finish them while you 'comfort' the children, assure them that it was necessary, that you're so proud."
"Even that isn't the end of this, however. You're proud that they've taken their first steps to their destiny that day, and yes, you tell them it's destiny that their brilliance means they will be the protectors of the empire as adults. As adults, they need to understand that they are young and vulnerable yet. If they are to be protectors, then they must keep this training even more secret. Than any other piece of it. No one must learn that they are studying to kill like this, you tell them."
"Now you watch them, watch their teachers and mail. You have to make sure they don't tell, or that if they attempt it, they get the consequences. You hope these shining children that came from nothing are smart and keep this secret best of all. You like their potential, you want credit for what they will achieve. They are yours to shape, after all."
"Normal lessons resume, along with etiquette, dancing, and the executions in sight. You have them waltz on floors sticky from the blood of traitors, and you indulge in them sneaking to the bierhall to dance... As long as they hold your secrets."
"If they do, good, you get them used to death and used to trying to kill... But I wonder, how long before they go to you with their concerns, their doubts. Because they have them now and they think you love them, so the cold withdrawal of your affection is punishment enough to get them scrambling to prove they can get rid of that doubt. Is that when you offer them their next step in power, or is it when they say they aren't strong enough to kill? And well, of course they aren't strong enough, you haven't actually taught them anything that wouldn't have been in the Soltryce lessons they are missing, besides loyalty to you and the nation and the assembly."
"In fact, you give them things to fail at, again and again until they're exhausted and telling you that they want to be like you, begging you to give them more power. That's the thing with you, isn't it? They had to ask. You do something painful, experimental. With their arms, yes? Judging by the way the ones I know keep them covered or scratch at them. It really is an experiment for you, but confidence and conviction for them. You make sure that the next people they execute are physically weak enough to die easily to a single spell. Your students manage the deed all on their own for the first time and they celebrate. They're stronger! It worked! You send them more near-dead traitors to take out like trash, until they're certain they're stronger - then you give them someone healthy and sturdy, so much so that they have to work together to kill this one. They're distraught, the crystals stopped working, they beg you for more."
"It's a cycle for them, how you trick them into thinking they're growing faster than they are with the aid of your experiments. People they can kill, who they can't -"
"Ah, but there was a problem, wasn't there? They weren't allowed to take notes, on these special lessons, the ones that involved killing or the things you didn't want others to see. Normally it's fine, but you had a student once, with an unusually sharp memory. Did he notice the patterns, I wonder? The state of the people he killed?"
“Is that why he’s your favorite? That awareness that simmered in him, yet his willingness to take everything in? Did you think he could replicate it perfectly, continue as you did? Loose less students to the Grief and despair? Because that’s a thing, Isn’t it? As the students replace who they could have been with the versions of what you saw in them, Little toy soldiers, good only for looking for the lies, for the killing… Heartless, mindless, so caught in the lies that they must choose to believe them. But more than that - they’re isolated. Are all your students that isolated? It’s rare to find a solitary creature in a city, and that Solitude eats at people, rots them.”
“Hm? You say you don’t lie? No, it’s all about the framing, isn’t it. You take exaggeration as fully true, you claim your perspective for what it is, you’re a little bit delusional, and that helps. Again, Isolation rots and you are certainly Isolated. Ah, wait, I just realized: You telling the truth is more than that, It’s foundational to you grinding these children down, isn’t it? They are powerful, or at least will be. Look at their magic! The beginnings of them controlling reality. But that power and telling them that they have it - that reality is theirs to shape? It means that any manipulation, any way of framing, any coincidence, or - or gods, lack of information, cannot exist for them. That the reality they experience is something they understood and chose when that couldn’t possibly be true. In telling them that, every day, you told them they chose pain and loneliness, isolation, only you called them honor, and challenges, and the ability to rise above - ”
“You make me sick because they believe you, they don’t understand what was left out when you approached them. And you make me even more sick because you’ve bought it too - you believe that you’ve brought about every good thing in your life and all of theirs, don’t you? And you think every negative experience was only granted, only chosen to happen because of your student’s actio- From your face I take it there is one thing painful you did that you fully admit you did. Fucker. You’re proud of it.”
“You wanted him to be you but better, but that would require him to only have you and those you approve of to observe. And unless any given student is an orphan, they had families. I wonder if that’s too much, too great of a risk. Do any of them still have people they can rely on? Older relatives who care? I wonder how they were taken out of the picture.”
“I wonder if I’m jumping ahead, or sideways, perhaps. I’ve spent the most time around the Favorite. The Favorite is important. The one who Saw, but did it anyway, a clear head and clear vision, a teller of truths - Ah, I see, I get why you liked him best. That’s how you see yourself. The way I’m laying this out even - this is how you imagined and planned it, in your mind. Calm, intentional. Taking advantage of things that came up. Instilling Obedience and that dependency. Do you still keep the adults on your estate? Deny them a life - ah, unless they reached adulthood before you found them.”
“Regardless, it seems obvious enough, how you do this, How you take them and warp their surroundings until there’s only one way to exist for them. You’re shit at it, you break them. You could be better, but even with all your power and Authority, you reek of rot so much that most aren’t quite what you want. You've done nothing but turn individuals into shattered puppets.”