Valthor: Family ties (2/?)

When I was twelve years old, my father had me sealed inside a coffin and buried in a shallow grave, to prove that I was truly of his bloodline. 

It was boring. 

I am my father's child. I don't need to breathe. And while I don't share the supernatural strength of some of his children, shoving my way out of a coffin and digging back up to the open air wasn't so very difficult. It was just a matter of finding the right position, so I could provide the proper leverage.

I wondered what my mother would have thought. I wondered if she would have been proud of me. I didn't bother to go looking for him, to tell him I'd survived; I just went back to my room. It was just another day, just another test.

But after that, my father started paying attention to me. He watched. He spoke to me directly -- not often, but when it pleased him. He moved me out of the nurseries and gave me my own room. And when I stabbed my half-sister in the back and shoved her out into the corridor to face the consequences of her actions, he didn't so much as blink. 

But several weeks later, he announced that he was banishing us all: all his children, born or turned or raised. We would go out into the world, and we would make what we could of ourselves, and whomever he judged most successful would inherit the Crown of Shadow -- and, presumably, the Shadow Kingdom and all that that entailed.

I didn't want the crown. 

But if any of my siblings claimed it, there would be a price on my head. So I went out, taking with me the skills that had kept me alive, and I joined a company of mercenaries. If I wasn't the most successful, then I'd have to be the first to disappear. It would have to be one or the other.