These familiar words strike me like a dagger to the face. My father never declared which one of us three brothers was to be his successor, so after his untimely death, the noble houses of Sol formed factions around each Prince. After months of turmoil in this struggle for power, my eldest brother, Augustine, could not stand to watch the citizens of Sol suffer any longer. He called for a Selection Ceremony to be held, an ancient tradition in Sol where Princes battle to the death to determine who will claim the throne.

 I want to run.

 I want to run away, and I want to beg Aquilo to come with me. I want to convince him to abandon our positions and escape this place. But my body moves like a marionette, going through the preparations as I remember them. Aquilo helps me don a set of light armour and select a suitable sword. Before we make our way to the carriage, Aquilo attaches a dagger to my waist.

“In case of emergency,” he says earnestly.

We make our way outside and take our seats, and I begin to reflect on the past. Before I was brought into the palace, I lived with my mother in a decrepit apartment in the capital’s red light district. As the child of a prostitute, I was treated worse than the stray dogs, and even my mother couldn’t bear to look at me. The only person who treated me kindly back then was Aquilo, an orphan from the Northern border. We met in the late winter when we were just 10 years old.

 That day, my mother had kicked me out of the apartment to ‘entertain’ a client, and since I had nowhere to go, I simply sat on our doorstep in the bitter cold. The winter that year was harsh, and with only simple rags separating my bare skin from the elements, the cold seeped deep into my bones like wine on a white tablecloth, creating a dark stain that could never be removed. On bad days, I can still feel the ache. But before my body succumbed to the elements, Aquilo appeared. He grabbed me by the shoulders and wrapped his coat around me, the only thing he was able to bring from the North, and somehow managed to start a fire. For the next five years, we relied on each other to survive in that hellish place.

The carriage comes to a stop, and Aquilo and I dismount together. Just before I enter the area, Aquilo wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his embrace. His skin is as cold as ice and he is trembling like a dog during a thunderstorm, but his words of encouragement are as steady as a boat in tranquil water:

 “Good luck, Prince Helios,” I can see the tips of his ears turn red when he says my name.  “I’ll be awaiting your safe return.” 

My body feels as hot as the sun on a summer afternoon, and I want to say something to him, I want to stop myself from what I am about to do, but like a fool, my body just nods on its own and I make my way into the arena. The feverish crowd is a blur of faces, but I can see my brothers standing clearly before me. The spark of ambition in their eyes is something I remember well.

 The sound of the ceremonial horn cuts through the crowds’ cheering like a sword through flesh, signalling that the battle has now begun. Augustine springs into action at the sound, as fast as an apex predator on the hunt. After I entered the palace, he was the one who taught me how to wield a sword, much to the disapproval of my second brother, Gaul.

But as Augustine charges forward, Gaul and I share a quick glance, and come to a tacit understanding; if either of us wanted a chance of winning, we would need to work together to defeat him.

Gaul, who had always been hot-headed, charges at Augustine head-on. As they clash, I study Augustine’s familiar movements, like a dog waiting for food to fall out of its master's hands. Gaul is able to knock Augustine back half a step, and I take my chance and sneak around to Augustine’s backside. The lessons he taught me flash through my mind as I rush forward. 

“Strike fast, and with intention,” he had said after sending me to the ground for the hundredth time “if your opponent makes a mistake, don’t give them any time to recover.”

I thrust my sword forward, stabbing my eldest brother in the back, straight through his heart, just as he had taught me to do. His blood flows down my blade and onto my hands; it’s surprisingly hot, and for a moment, I feel like my hands have been licked by the fires of hell. Augustine falls to the ground and lands face-first into the dirt, his blood flows out of his wound like spilled wine, turning the ground below him into mud. I stare at him, and for a moment my mind cannot connect the memories I have with my brother with the corpse on the ground.

 I see Augustine sitting atop his white warhorse, returning to the capital victorious from a battle, back when I had just entered the palace. He was effortlessly graceful, the very image of nobility, something I could never be. He greeted me warmly, but a sickly seed of jealousy was planted in my heart, growing more vicious by the day. The fruits of that jealousy now lie on the ground before me, cold and dead. It is not as sweet as I had imagined it being, and I feel like my insides are rotting. My brother is now dead, and I was the one who killed him, but why? He had always been good to me, he had even taken me under his wing, so why did I-

“Helios!” Aquilo’s panicked cry brings me back to the battle at hand.

Gaul, who had just narrowly avoided being knocked to the ground by Augustine’s corpse, is rushing forwards, and I can see the killing intent in his eyes. It seems that with no one left to stand between us, he has quickly turned on me. He swings his sword at me wildly, and while I manage to block the blow just in time, I am quickly overpowered by his strength. He sends my sword flying out of my hands, and the force of the blow sends me to the ground like a pheasant shot from the sky. 

He sneers at me and says  “A bastard child like you never stood a chance against me! I’m going to do what father should have done the day you were born!”

A primal rage fills my body at these words, drowning out my earlier doubts. Gaul raises his sword to deliver the final blow, but I lunge at his legs. By some miracle I manage to tackle him to the ground, and I quickly unsheathe the dagger Aquilo had attached to my belt. Gaul’s emerald eyes widen in shock and he cries:

“Wait! I surren-” 

But his last words are cut off by the dagger I have plunged into his right eye. He howls in pain and tries to struggle, but I simply bring the dagger down again, and again, and again.

I don’t stop until his body begins to turn cold.

 His face is now completely unrecognizable. The crowd is cheering wildly as I stare at the mangled corpse of my brother. The iron-tinged smell of blood is heavy in the air, and I can feel the crimson droplets of his blood dripping down my body like a torrential rain. My earlier rage begins to fade and I am left with the brutal reality of my actions. A feeling of nausea overtakes me, and my vision begins to swim, but before I lose consciousness I see Aquilo rushing over to me. I fall into his arms as every horrible sensation mixes together as the world around me fades away like fog in the afternoon sun.