“I don’t remember much about that day, the day mom died. It all happened so… suddenly, so loud and violent and—confusing. Maybe it was the shock, or maybe I just didn’t want to remember, but in my head it’s all foggy and dark. Except for one thing.

“That monster. I can never forget its appearance: its hideous maw, its giant crooked talons, and a body surrounded entirely in white. To this day I still don’t know what exactly that thing was, but what’s for certain is that Xeros is responsible: He summoned it. He must have, for how else would he manage to kill Luxmi? She was the strongest, kindest, and most compassionate person I knew, so when Libevich told me she had gone off to fight I didn’t doubt at all that she’d return, just like always, with a smile.

“And so, little kid me did something really stupid. She ran away from the shelters, towards the big bad monster so she could see the moment her mom landed the killing blow, only that wasn’t what she saw. When she finally arrived, there was nothing there.

“Nothing, except my mom and Xeros. He stood there, silent, with his hand covered in blood.

“What expression did he have…? It must’ve been joy, right? He finally got what he wanted: my mother’s life, the Will of Desire, the worship of a hero after claiming all the glory for himself. He should have been happy, so why—why did he seem so sad?”

- Praetor Luxanne

———

Luxanne

Surprisingly, being knocked out isn’t all that bad. It’s a little like going to sleep, except I’m still conscious for some reason: just me, alone, drifting in a big empty space. I guess Lorelai must’ve bashed my brain in a little too hard… well, I wasn’t going down any other way.

It’s bittersweet, and frustrating. I did everything I could, tried so hard to protect this damn nation, yet here I am dreading the moment I finally wake up. It almost makes me not want to. If I stay here, dreaming, then I won’t have to see it: the rubble, the destruction. How can I face it, the sight of the city after it’s been destroyed by those Polus bastards? No, I shouldn’t call them that. Who am I to call names after all Xeros… my people have done to them? Honestly I would have done the same.

Doesn’t make it hurt any less, though. Even if it’s all twisted, Caelum is my home. I understand why Seraphina wants to burn it all down, and sometimes I think about doing the very same, but when those feelings begin to bubble up and all I can see is red, I remember my mom: how she never gave up on making this place better, safer, even when the whole world seemed to be against her. She never abandoned Caelum, so I won’t as well.

I wonder what she’d say to me now. Would she scold me for failing to protect our home, or would she pat my back and reassure me that I did my best? Either way, I’d be happy just to hear the sound of her voice.

“Hm? Why’re you standing there, dear? Is everything alright?”

Yeah, that’s the sound. Gruff, hoarse, yet with a light ring that never failed to brighten the air. It’s exactly as I remember—wait. That can’t be…

I turn around, and there, with her arms crossed and long ashy hair wrestled into a tight bun, is the sight of my mom. She’s dressed in oily trousers, face caked in grease, and there’s all sorts of gunk clogging her nails, but she never did mind looking a bit dirty. It’s the opposite: she took pride in it, because it showed that she was a working woman like anyone else in Caelum.

Before I even realize, I’m back in our old forge—back in the tiny body of a girl just shy of twelve years. It’s odd. I know this has to be a dream, but everything feels, and smells, so real: hot and sweltering as if I’m being roasted alive. I look around, and there are streams of magma flowing along ducts to the side, and huge iron rods hold up the foundation, and I see worktables and anvils and all kinds of tools scattered about. A furnace is in the middle, surrounded by brick walls, and in front of it is the one I’ve missed for so, so long.

And yet, I feel a bit awkward. Looking at her now, it’s easy to see how different we are. Her complexions darker from her years in front of a flame, while mine is paler: white like a new fall of snow. I wasn’t allowed to start forging until I was older, but when I finally grew up learning the family trade was the last thing on my mind. No, I only cared about Xeros, about becoming strong enough to bring him down for all the misery he’s caused, and so I traded the hammer for a blade. I shut myself in a cold, mechanical suit, all for the sake of revenge.

It makes me wonder if there’s anything we share in common, anymore. Do I even deserve to see her?

Eventually, I reply like the child I am: with a mutter. “I just wanted to see you.”

Mom breaks out into a large grin and stops her metalworking. She walks over to me, strolling with her great weighty boots, before gently grabbing my waist and hoisting me up onto her broad shoulders. It’s a bit embarrassing, and my cheeks soon flush red. But I don’t try to resist. For the first time in over a decade, I relax.

“My dear, darling little girl,” mom hums as we dance around the forge. “Were you lonely? A little adventure’s all well and good, but you’re a teensy bit too young to be here. Isn’t the heat uncomfortable?”

“No!” I blurt out. It’s a childish response, one betrayed by the sweat dripping down my forehead. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Mom ruffles my hair with her callous hands. It feels a bit bumpy.

“Look how brave you’ve become,” she says. “But it’s also important to know your limits, Luxanne. I’ll teach you all about the forge when you’re older, but for now you should be acting like a child, and children should be having fun.”

“I don’t want to be a child,” I grumble. And for good reason: children are helpless. When faced with trouble, all they can do is scream, and cry, and beg for anyone to come help them. When there’s no answer, you’re powerless. I know that feeling all too well, of how powerless and scared I was while watching the nation I thought I knew change so dramatically. Everything was frightening, and there wasn’t a single person I could rely on during those days.

When you’re a child, all you can think about is how weak you are.

“... Let’s sit down for a bit.” Mom sets me down away from the furnace, and she drops onto the ground with a flop. “You’re a strong girl, Luxanne. But there’s no need to be in such a rush. When you try to race past everyone else, you’re too hurried to look behind you: to experience the things in life, the mundane and the casual, that serve to build up… well, you. Having fun and taking things slow is necessary. There’s plenty of time in the future for work and craft, but I don’t want you to look back on this time and regret never having the childhood to just play and enjoy yourself.”

Mom’s words are harsh, but I know she means well. I can’t look away or whine about how I don’t need any of that. When she speaks, her tone becomes so sad, and I can’t help but think about what she must have experienced in her own childhood. She never told me about it, but I remember seeing it sometimes: a glossed eye that seemed to look out far beyond the city, the present, into her memories that I will never know.

“Regrets are so, so painful, Luxanne,” she says, voice dropping down to a whisper. “They don’t leave you, no matter how much time passes. When you’re at your lowest, they come back and haunt you about what could have been, how you could have changed, or all the people you let pass by. And for me… I remember how alone I was. I don’t want to leave you with regrets, Luxanne, so I hope you’ll remember these days fondly. Go out there, meet new people, and maybe even find someone special: someone you can rely on, trust, and be with you through thick and thin.”

“I don’t have anyone like that—” I begin to say, but that’s not true is it? During these last twenty years, I closed off my heart and avoided people who might betray me or get in the way of my revenge. I was stubborn, cold, and hurt. I didn’t want to become close with anyone ever again.

But I did. With just one person, I gave her my heart, and—it was stolen from me. Hidden all these years, only to reappear again: to remind me of the happiness I once felt.

“I think you already have someone in mind,” mom says with a light chuckle. “They’re waiting for you at this very moment.”

She’s right. Even if I’m a bit hesitant, nothing’s going to change if I don’t face her now.

So, I take a deep breath, and I nod my head. “I can’t stay here. I need to go.”

“Then it’s time for you to wake up.” She drops down onto her knees and gives me one, final hug. It’s probably the last time I’ll ever feel it, but I’m not sad. I can’t chase after her shadow forever. It’s time to set out as me and only me. “My precious little girl… I’ll always be with you, so don’t hesitate. Go out there and forge a future of your own.”

I gently close my eyes, and I wake up.

———

Luxanne

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The first thing Luxanne feels upon waking up is sheer, gnawing pain. Aches and blisters torture her body, from her arms, chest, face and every surface of skin—bruises turned purple and causing every muscle to scream out in agony. It hurts to twitch even a finger, but the wounds don’t concern her as much as where she currently is. An unfamiliar grey ceiling hangs above her. The walls are dark and dull, and the smell of iron fills her senses with a metallic stench.

“You’re up?” a voice asks by her side. Now that she’s actually here, Luxanne finds it a bit hard to look at her: at Seraphina, the woman responsible for this entire mess in the first place. But when Luxanne finally turns to face her, she sees just how exhausted the rebel leader is. Her face is gaunt, thin and sickly, and dark circles sag at the bottom of her earthy brown eyes.

It looks like she’s been here for hours, huddled up in this small corner mixing salves and applying treatment. It’s unfair, how worried she is.

“Yeah,” Luxanne mumbles. Seraphina’s lips spread out into a grin, her face illuminated by the flickering lights of a candle on a nearby stand. The room is small, barely large enough to fit the both of them, but Luxanne doesn’t mind the distance. On the other hand, it’s nice.

Seraphina takes a cloth soaked in hot water and begins to carefully wipe at Luxanne’s sores. The two stay quiet for a moment, only letting the waning flame to fill the space as they mingle in the other’s presence.

“... That Lorelai sure is a brutal one, huh?” Seraphina says. “I asked her to take it easy on you, yet here you are lookin’ like some kind of bruised fruit.”

“She tried, but I’ve always been a stubborn one,” Luxanne chuckles. “I couldn’t give up there. I had to keep standing back up no matter how many times she beat me to the ground. But…”

She sighs, and stares at the wall. “I failed. I wouldn’t be surprised if Caelum’s long fallen by now.”

But to her surprise, Seraphina pauses, hesitant, before collapsing into her seat. “Yeah, well, that was the plan. Shame it didn’t work; Xeros’s an even bigger monster than I first thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to see? Not right now, I mean. Doubt you can even a lift a hand in that state—”

Despite her words, Luxanne stands up and grits through the pain. “Show me, Phina.”

Seraphina groans and rubs her forehead, but she seems more amused rather than annoyed. “Stubborn, indeed. What am I going to do with you… fine, let’s get out of here. The sooner the better.”

The two stagger out of the room, Seraphina supporting Luxanne with her shoulder, and step out into a sprawling passage of musty halls. The floor’s just a stretch of dirt, and the interior’s blanketed in with rust and broken metal. This place is old, maybe even from before Xeros’s time.

“Are we underground right now?” Luxanne asks.

“One of the old workshops below the Slums,” she replies. “We found it while searching for scrap, and it’s been our base ever since. Not the nicest of places I admit but you get used to it. Can’t really complain when all the good stuff’s locked up in the upper layers.”

“I see.”

And just like that, the two fall silent again. Alone. Just the two of them, together, stewing in an uncomfortable tension.

“... Damnit, Luxanne, just ask me already!” Seraphina blurts out. “I know you want to say something. You always become so broody when you’re hesitant.”

“Wha—I do not!” Luxanne says, recoiling back and indignant. “I just… okay, fine.”

She takes a shaky breath and then glares at her straight in the eye. “Why, Phina? Why are you here? Why did you leave? What have you been doing all this time?”

“Wow, that’s a lot of questions.” She laughs, but her expression is anxious. Her mouth opens and closes as if rehearsing what to say, and when she finally does speak it’s in a very deliberate, and cautious, tone. “I left because I found something I shouldn’t have, something Xeros would have me executed for without a second thought. So I ran away to the Slums before he could have the chance. It was stupid of me, to go wandering where I didn’t belong.”

Seraphina lowers her head and scrunches her face. “It was supposed to be just like any other day. I was fixing up the defenses near the core, routine maintenance and all that, when I stumbled on my feet and fell right into a hidden shaft near the entrance. It was tiny, just barely big enough to fit a person, and normally I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But… I was the one who drew up the schematics of the place, and nowhere in the design was something like this. I got curious: Where could it possibly lead to? In hindsight I should have realized I was heading towards something far, far more important than I thought, but I was just so damn nosy. I had to see what was on the other side, and—”

She stops in place, and her legs begin to tremble with a fear Luxanne has never seen in her before.

“When I finally arrived, I found Xeros’s little secret. It… didn’t make sense. It made me rethink everything I’ve ever been told, made me realize all the lies I’ve been fed, but what I felt most was this hot, seething anger. I knew then I had to do something, so I ran away and gathered my forces in secret. I couldn’t involve you in that, Lux. You would have never gone with me; telling you would have only risked exposing you to more danger.”

“Phina, just what did you find?”

Her face scrunches in nausea, and she stutters over her words: conflicted whether or not to reveal the truth. But eventually she does, and what comes next is nothing she could have ever imagined.

“Your mom, Lux,” Seraphina finally spits out. “I found her corpse.”

… What?

Luxanne doesn’t know what to say. How to reply. She can only go back to that single word, looping it in her head again, and again, and again. Her throat clogs so tight that it becomes hard to breathe.

“What did you say?” she says.

“I’m… sorry,” Seraphina mutters. “Luxmi was—her corpse was hooked up to some kind of machine, siphoning this strange substance or energy or hells know what. I didn’t stick around to find out. The only thing in my mind at the time was this feeling of dread, like I just witnessed something no human should have ever seen.”

Luxanne lets go of Seraphina, and crumbles to the floor. “He said he burned her body. He held a funeral for everyone to see.”

She slams her fist on the ground. “And you never told me!? After everything I spilled, revealed to you, about my past, you chose to run away and kept this hidden from me all this time? How could you?”

“Because I knew you would act like this!” Seraphina yells back. “I knew you would launch some kind of suicide atttack against Xeros if you ever found out, and the only reason I’m telling you now is because you’re too injured to chase after him.”

She drops down to the ground and hugs her from behind. Luxanne wants to move, to stand up and run towards the spire to demand answers right now, but eventually she calms down. And she hugs her back, desperately holding on as if Phina will disappear the moment she lets go.

“I know you’re upset,” Seraphina says. “But we have to control ourselves—wait for when the time is ripe. You know this, Lux. I know you do.”

She does. It’s no different from what Luxanne’s been doing all this time: smothering her anger. Waiting for the exact moment she can strike. She’s managed it for twenty years.

And yet, her vision begins to blur, and she cries. It’s an ugly, unseemly cry, and try as she might there’s no holding back the tears. They pour down her cheeks, flowing without abandon as all the hate, the sorrow, the fury and longing she’s fostered over all these years pours out as well. She sobs about all the time she’s wasted on vengeance, of all the memories that could have been, and eventually… it’s all gone. The despair that plagued her, festering inside like a curse—it’s all gone, washed away with her regrets.

She cries, so that a new desire can settle in. To make space for her own happiness. And all the while Seraphina comforts her without a word. Her being there is all Luxanne needs.

“... Sorry about that,” Luxanne mumbles. Her face is hot, flushed, and she wants nothing more than to crawl in some corner after showing such an embarrassing sight to Seraphina. And yet, she doesn’t seem to mind. All that blubbering, and her gaze is still filled with such tender affection.

“It’ll be okay, Lux,” she says, stroking her back. “Everything will be okay.”

After a moment, the two stand back up, and the air changes around them. It’s no longer distant. It feels like their relationship back then: without any barriers. Without anything else hidden from the other.

“Well,” Luxanne says. “Let’s go see that thing you were talking about.”

“Of course,” Seraphina laughs. “Though, I don’t think it’s all too pleasing to look at.”

They continue their trek down the halls before finally arriving at a small, dilapidated ladder. It’s too high for Luxanne to reach, and she definitely doesn’t have the strength to pull herself up, so Seraphina sets her down and arches her back towards her.

“Hop on.”

“No.” She may have wept like a babe earlier, but Luxanne still has her pride.

“Beloved, stop complaining.”

“Agh, fine.”

She swallows her dignity and lets Seraphina carry her out like a child. When they open the lid, a cool chilly wind welcomes them into the evening outside.

There, surrounding the city, is a wall of Stars know what. There’s bits and pieces of animals and flesh blended together, alongside suspended liquid, and flame, and starlight, and just about everything she can think of. It’s hideous, and even just looking at it is enough to make Luxanne’s head hurt.

“What is that…” she mutters, recoiling back.

“Xeros’s intervention, no doubt.” Seraphina shivers and brings them to a spot where the wall can’t be seen. “How? No clue, but that isn’t something you can just make. Not with Creation or technology. Well, whatever it is, Polus isn’t entering anytime soon, that’s for sure. Our rebellion’s a failure.”

“Oh my, how tragic,” Luxanne says dully.

“Hey now, don’t go sounding too disappointed,” she teases. “I won’t give up here. When my forces have recovered, we’ll find another way to bring this city down.”

“And I’ll have to stop you again. Though, something tells me it won’t be as hard as last time.”

They two share a giggle, and they lay themselves flat out atop the ground: staring at the starry sky above.

“I don’t want to let you go, Lux,” she says. “But I have a feeling you’re gonna go back to Xeros’s side.”

“I have to, Phina. I have to find out the truth.”

She sighs and lays her head on Luxanne’s lap. “Okay. I still think we should just wreck everything and be done with it, but unfortunately the woman I love just so happens to be the most inflexible person in the world. So, I’ll respect your wishes, but I’m going to work towards mine and whoever succeeds in the end will just have to accept it. Got it?”

Luxanne chuckles. “Got it.”

They smile and wrap themselves around the other’s arms once more. Luxanne loathes that they’ll have to part again, but this time it’s different. This time, they know just who is waiting.

“Before you go,” Ceraphina says, slowly leaning in and delicately whispering into her ear. Her demeanor’s changed. Now, she looks like a predator eyeing its prey. “I’m going to get my fill of you for all the time we’ve spent apart. I’ll make sure you never forget about our promise. Ever.”

“U-Um,” Luxanne stutters.

“Say yes, darling.”

“Yes.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

And with that, they share a kiss under the moon’s gentle glow.