I'd Give Up The World For You

Juliet continued scrolling through the Rukelion Blaze tag. Someone had drawn him when he was younger with his family, making up names, genders, and ages for them. She had never put much thought into the royal family of Katalya since they were hardly mentioned.

In the book he did shout at the protagonist that he had watched his entire family die in front of him because of the Mireans but never mentioned how many siblings he had. This fan artist had drawn two older brothers and a little sister all with the same tomato red hair. The father and the sister also had heterochromia while everyone else's eyes were either blue or yellow.

Hmm. She might have to file this away for future reference.

To write a proper backstory for a villain who goes mad with grief, she would need some major setup for the way things were before losing everything. Being close with his family members would make his drive for revenge more realistic.

As Juliet carried on with her scrolling she saw other headcanons and questions from readers that got her thinking. People made up all sorts of theories about Rukelion's past since almost nothing about it was mentioned.

Some people thought he must have been trained by mercenaries. Others thought he joined the Mirean military to destroy it from the inside out. Still others thought he had found some other fire mage somewhere who trained him. All agreed that he couldn't have become powerful enough to take over the world on his own.

That also raised the question of who his allies were since it was highly unlikely that one person would be able to do everything by himself no matter how powerful he was. In the novel people had been so afraid of him and he was so overpowered that he hadn't needed guards or anything. He lived in his castle blocked off by an impenetrable wall of fire and let the world fall into chaos around him, which was why the heroes intervened.

One of the many problems with backstories was that nothing in them could contradict canon. If she invented allies she would also have to find a way for them to disappear before the events of the story.

Juliet truly marveled at how much thought some people put into one of her characters considering he wasn't meant to be more than he was at face value. She may have written fanfiction before but she wasn't the type to diverge from canon too much. At the very least she tried to stay in character even if the situations were different.

Some of these people were throwing canon out the window. As she continued on she ended up reading some fanfiction where he lived a peaceful life instead of taking revenge and fell in love.

Multiple people had written fics like that! She also found some that were Rukelion x reader, meaning he was interacting with a generic character that could fit anybody.

Honestly, she had never understood people who wrote character x reader fics. They clearly couldn't separate the lines between fiction and reality. As much as she loved books she knew they weren't real and didn't expect them to be.

Unfortunately, this was the sort of stuff Juliet had to wade through in both the 'Rukelion Blaze' and 'Down in Flames' tags. If she wanted any inspiration she had to deal with the weird things as well as the potentially useful ones. She did her best to scroll past things like that quickly.

She spent most of her free time working her way through all of the fan theories, fanfiction, and fanart she could find about her villain over the next several weeks. She couldn't do it constantly because she still had a second job in HR.

Writing had been a hobby before it happened to take off. She had put the lump sum for the book and movie plus all the royalties into her savings account and lived off of her HR salary. Though she had used a good chunk of the money on fun things like taking a cruise with some of her friends from college and upgrading her old clunker.

Juliet collected data for weeks on what people thought Rukelion Blaze was like. They had headcanons about everything from his favorite dessert to whether or not he was a sore loser playing games.

These people truly needed to get off the internet and go do something more productive with their time but she was grateful they hadn't. Every small detail helped her try and paint a clearer picture of what sort of person the monster was before he completely became one.

Once she had done enough of that she wrote a basic outline and submitted it to her editor, who thought a prequel was a fabulous idea. "Juliet, this is fantastic! Your fans are going to eat it up. Announcing Rukelion Blaze's backstory coming out while the movie is still in production is going to shoot sales through the roof.

"Hmm…would it be better to release it before or after the movie comes out? I'm going to have to talk to the people in marketing. In the meantime get cracking on that novel! I'll email the contract for it over soon and once it's signed you'll get your initial check just like last time, though it will be higher since we already know it's going to be a hit."

"Thanks, Rachelle," Juliet told her with a small smile on her face.

She hung up the phone feeling rather satisfied. Well. That was one problem down. Now all she had to do was write the dumb thing.

Writing when not inspired had always been difficult for her but at the very least she had an outline to follow now. Even if it took her a while to crack down and focus, she should be able to meet her deadlines. She hoped.

Juliet wrote her first draft feverishly over the next two months and managed to get it done. The problem was when she went back to edit it before sending it on to Rachelle. Almost everything she had written was changed and she hadn't touched it. She lived alone so no one else had access to her computer either…

She had written that Rukelion escaped from the carnage left behind in Katalya after a happy childhood and a gruesome slaughter so his revenge seemed more reasonable. That much hadn't changed.

But he was supposed to pass out from his injuries, have them become infected, and nearly die. He barely managed to make it to a nearby farm house, treat himself, and sleep it off. The only reason he was able to do so was because the family who had occupied said house had all recently died of an illness.

When he recovered he was supposed to join up with a mercenary group using the name Leo May (May being the name of the family whose house he had raided for money and supplies) and tour the continent with them, becoming both stronger and more comfortable with killing.

The changes in her document started with Rukelion being found by one of the members of the May family who somehow survived and offered him a place to stay and help disguising himself. Juliet squinted at the screen in disbelief. Was this some sort of joke?

She tried backspacing and fixing what was wrong but it was like her document was locked. No matter where she clicked or what she tried to do to retrieve her original document nothing worked.

"Come on!" she cried.

Two months of work couldn't be ruined just like that! She might not have poured her heart and soul into it the way she had with Down in Flames but the prequel still took a lot of time and effort and she didn't want to lose it.

Could she send it as it was or would that be considered plagiarism? She definitely hadn't written this…she wasn't crazy.

As a last ditch effort, Juliet tried restarting her computer to see if it was possible to fix this mess. That was when something even stranger happened.

An eerie blue light emanating from her computer screen grew so bright it engulfed the whole room, which began to spin. When she came to she was lying on the ground in the middle of a cobblestone street with a headache.

"Ugh, what happened? Did I pass out or something? Is this a dream?" she mumbled to herself.

Juliet blinked, hoping to reorient herself, but that didn't do much. People dressed in old-fashioned clothes from a few hundred years ago walked around whispering to themselves and looking at her like she was crazy.

This didn't seem right. Why would random people be judging her inside her own dream?

She brushed herself off then caught sight of herself reflected in a shop window.. She had the same wideset hazel eyes and medium brown hair as usual and she was in the pair of pajamas she had been wearing back at her apartment. If this was a dream, wouldn't it have made more sense for her clothes to match the general aesthetic at the very least?!