“This sucks ass.” Grumbled a certain royal child as he lay in his bunk. Raziel was still not exactly used to the new status quo, but what could he really do about it? His parents, Kain and Alexis, had used some wacky mumbo jumbo voodoo shit to lock most of his powers away. Now he was just as powerful as anyone else here in the Academy, but if there was one silver lining it was that his sister, Elizabeth, was in the same boat.

The days were far longer than they had any right to be, and the nights kept feeling shorter and shorter. Every so often, and at entirely random times, everyone would be forced to get up and out of bed for an inspection. While he was getting into this new rhythm, it was still a massive pain in the ass.

“Eh, it isn’t that bad, you know?” said the person on the next bunk over. “Once you’ve been here for a few months, you kind of get used to things. I’ve been here for around a year and a half, and I personally feel that this gives me a bit more purpose and discipline than I used to have.”

“Yeah, I know.” Growled Raziel. “You’ve given me that exact line about seven times so far, and I’ve only been here a few weeks. Hate to say it, but you’re a bit of a broken record, and I, for one, don’t want to end up like that.”

“Well, things could always be worse. You could be in juvie, right? As someone who was in that before being sent here, I can tell that you would do even worse there than here. At least here you don’t have to worry about being beaten to a pulp because you looked at someone funny.”

“Try telling that to the instructors.” Raziel said as he turned over in his bed.

“Hey, they don’t actually hit us that hard, and even then it is just a bit of motivation. Worst that you can get from them is a bit of mild soreness, but at least they don’t give you bruises and lacerations.”

That was a decent point, but Raziel still didn’t much care for this place.

“Well, fuck.” He grumbled. “Maybe I should tell my parents to look into the abuses in the prison system.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Raziel said before sighing. “If there is one thing my dad hates it is people abusing their power that either aren’t him or aren’t those close to him. Well, usually, anyway. He did have a massive hard-on for prison reform, and I’m fairly certain he’d be livid if he found out that the guards at whatever juvie place you went to were allowed to do that or allowed others to.”

“Heh...” the other boy began to nervously laugh. “Well, I can only imagine what he’d do to those people. I mean, he is who he is, right?”

“You never know,” Raziel replied. “He may kill them. He may just give them light punishment. He may have them blacklisted from the industry. He may exile them. To be brutally honest, I kind of get the feeling that he’s mostly just winging it.”

“How so?”

“Well, if you learn about who he was and what he did more than one thousand and five hundred years ago, you’d see very clearly that he used to just not give a flying fuck about ethics or morality. He very nearly turned the whole world into a land of the dead and undead, with himself a the top as the God of a dead world. But as for now? He’s an entirely different beast altogether.”

The sound of the bed creaking and sheets shifting was all the reply that Raziel got.

“That isn’t to say that he’s entirely pure of heart or a saint now. He is still unrepentantly evil. But now it is more of a mix of… well… I guess he bounces between Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Evil, while occasionally dipping into Chaotic Evil from time to time. Normally he doesn’t really care that much what other people think of feel, so long as they do what they are supposed to and don’t get too far out of line.

He doesn’t care if you rise the ranks and climb the ladder, but if you so much as try and use a loophole he can and will make your life a living, maybe even undead, hell. On the other hand, he is willing to go out of his way to royally fuck over anyone who crossed either himself or one of those he rules over or with. He still has his darker side, but as of recent times it feels a bit like he’s trying to rebel against that inner demon whenever he can.”

A boy in another nearby bunk laughed and replied, “It sounds like you’re a bit of an apologist for your old man!”

Raziel didn’t deny this, though. “Yeah, I guess I am. But he is better than he used to be. Previously, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone’s opinion and rush headlong into any war that he could. Now, however, he’s thrown away a perfectly good casus belli and sentenced me and my sister to this place because we nearly dragged him into a new war. I won’t deny that he can be a massive hypocrite, and even he likely wouldn’t deny it as well. I will say that he is making a somewhat decent effort to get ‘better’. What he views being ‘better’ is, however, is a secret to everybody.”

Raziel was about to continue, but the yell of a full-grown man echoed out through the barracks.

“Lights Out!”

At this declaration, everyone in the barracks immediately responded with a single voice.

“Sir, yes sir!”

Immediately thereafter, everyone tucked themselves in as the ingrained habit kicked in once again. Only Raziel caught himself midway, half stunned and half scared at how easily he’d fallen into the same conditioning that everyone else here had already taken to.

He was about to grumble a bit more, but he decided against that. Everyone else was as silent as the grave and the last few times that he had voiced any dissatisfaction he had been forced out of bed by the instructors. He had kept the other people here awake during those times, and that didn’t exactly put him in their good graces. Perhaps it was best to simply accept that this would be how things would be for now and just go with the flow.

He did wonder just one thing, though. How was his sister faring? She always was the rowdier of the two of them, so he could only imagine what kind of shit she had been forced to endure. Well, he’d see her sooner or later, and they’d undoubtedly share their troubles with each other.