When you keep telling yourself the same thing over and over again, do you start to believe it?

“I’m a good kid. I’m a good kid. I’m-“

The other kids watch me march up the steps made of planks that precariously jut out the side of the island above the clouds. I am on my way to the alchemy laboratory. My favourite place. They turn away after I let the door slam behind me and continue to kick their ball of leather scraps and rubber around the courtyard. They are used to it, for I make my way up the cliff face every day, my brownish robes flapping with each volume of air that slams upwards.

As I enter, a gust of wind sends my notes across the room after they had been left out on more than just one table.

If that tonic could kill a person, it could definitely kill a messenger bird, right? There had to be a better way to get it to Master Rin anonymously. If I gave it to a raven, the scent of the brew would kill the bird from inside the package before it could even be delivered.

“I’m smart enough to figure this out, so I can’t be a bad kid.”

I wanted him to listen to me. Master Rin was almost as bad as the school children that laughed at me in their robes without a thought in their own heads.

The same heads that I would make roll.

The Northern Garmic armies were already marching. It was like I could feel the sounds of their machines of war pumping billow after billow of smoke in the rhythms of the breezes that scraped our mountaintop.

If Master Rin wouldn’t do something about it, someone would have to take his place, or watch as he let our people suffer.

A tyranny.

No, tyranny is evil.

I would do it for the good of our people.

Or was it all in vain?

They will write history about me and say that it’s because that’s what I wanted. Fame. Immortalization.

No, I’m a good kid.

I don’t need the power.

I just need someone other than Rin to have it.

And if no one else will take it from him. To take action.

Well…

I was smart enough to figure out that if you start with Yorek’s tea and add crushed broodstone with a dash of hardroot shavings, you get a nasty white powder-type substance that will shut down your organs minutes after smelling it or getting it on your fingers.

Could some punk do that?