The streets of Greenleaf were crowded that day.

So, Cecilia Lizbell noticed as her purple dress swayed around her hips, her steps resolute and bound for her own alchemy workshop, taking her through the main street that cut the city right in half. The path was wide enough for carriages to pass, whether led by horses or raptors, although it had been some time now since she had last seen one of the latter. From what she knew, such beasts were found exotic this South of the continent, yet were quite common up North, around the sands of Gea’s desert.

Although she was aware such bustling was common of the markets located right at the heart of Greenleaf, what she was witnessing that day was beyond that, and as her travelling high-boots drew clouds of dust from the trodden path in her wake, she quickly came to realize why. There, at the center of a plaza, she caught sight of an improvised stage, a step or so above the crowd gathered around it, an audience that was seemingly enthralled by the play being represented.

“What company did you say they were?”

“The… fairies… something.”

The Laughing Fairies. Cecilia corrected in her mind, recalling the many times she had watched their performances during her travels. Good memories, all of them.

With a quick glance in her workshop’s direction, she made a list of the many things she still needed to take care of, wondering if her apprentices had made correct inventory of the reagents she had ordered, or if any new special requests had arrived… then nodded to herself, and with a gentle hand, she secured her wide-brimmed hat to her head and jumped, drawing a toll of the small bell hanging from the end of its conical crown, bent backwards by its weight.

An instant later, she landed on a balcony nearby, on the second floor of someone’s house, although she couldn’t be bothered to remember whose. Its placement, however, allowed her to see the entirety of the stage as if she was in a theatre, which brought a gentle and satisfied smile to her pretty lips.

“You! How did you get here?!” Shouted a male voice behind her, from inside the building, seemingly quite irritated by her trespass. “Out, this instant!”

Cecilia, however, just glanced at him sideways, her blue eyes glinting in the contrasting dark brought by the sunset behind her. The action itself also made the bell on her hat ring a light tune, which accompanied by a flicker of purple lightning, gave the man all he needed to know about who he was talking to.

“M-Ms. Lizbell?!” The man hurriedly bowed, then signalled to others in the room to do the same. His family, by what she could gather. “I-I’m so sorry for my previous conduct.”

She nodded. “I hope you don’t mind me occupying your balcony to watch the play on the plaza.”

The man took a quick peek to check what she was talking about, probably completely unaware of there even being such a thing.

Some people can be so uncultured. She sighed in her heart.

“O-of course. You can have my whole house if you want. My family and I were just leaving!” Said the man, who then pushed his wife and daughter out of the building despite their clear befuddled expressions, and clothes that were clearly not for going out.

Cecilia just nodded, then shrugged as one of the sun’s dying rays bounced off her wheat-colored ponytail, gently resting on her right shoulder. Her attention turned away from the family then, and focused fully on the play and its crowded audience.

It only took one line for her to recognize the drama being performed.

“Why?! What cruel hands do strangle our life together?!”

“The same ones that are to take my brother, and leave but dust out of our pride.”

It seemed she was late, for the play was already on its last interlude, right before the final act of the tragedy titled Hector of Troy. She had watched it before, once or twice, performed by different theatre companies with more or less success. Maybe it was just her personal preference, but she was liking The Laughing Fairies’ version much more, for the actors on stage at the moment were representing the feelings of desperation and crushed hopes of Andromache, Hector’s wife, much more faithfully through contrasting them with the latter’s apparent stoic and dutiful attitude.

“Is it that not even her gift can turn the tides?!” Andromache asked, her gestures exaggerated in an attempt to hold on to her husband.

“Her gift has no fault. It is I the one undeserving of it.” Hector declared, and Cecilia noted such a verse was not in the original work, but something they must have added on their own. The gift they mention had to refer to the legendary weapon that was given to Hector to resist and break the siege on his homeland, Troy.

There were many records detailing what kind of weapon it was, but barely any of them coincided. In some, it was a catapult capable of striking thousands of archers in the time one shoots an arrow; in others, it was an indestructible golden sword. In the most ridiculous version, it wasn’t actually a weapon, but Astraea’s sister, a demi-goddess just as mighty as the incarnation of Justice.

It seemed, Cecilia understood quickly, that The Laughing Fairies had chosen to mention it, but not disclose its nature. She couldn’t but wonder how they were going to represent, then, the final act.

“Don’t go, I beg you, if the war’s fate so direly advents.”

“I must.”

“Then what about our hope?” Andromache placed a hand, meaningfully, on her lower abdomen. “Shall it die before light shines again on the skies of our home?”

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

“I must, so that our hope lives on!”

“Where?! The gods have abandoned us!”

“The less gods at our doors, the better.”

“I refuse to believe the words I hear! Shall I stop praying, then?”

Back then, Cecilia had learnt, Diana was still considered the goddess of childbirth, and many still worshipped her for that reason. It wasn’t until a few centuries later than it was learnt she had never been in control of such a thing, but rather something much more powerful. In that verse, Andromache was referring to her.

As for why Hector felt such discontent towards the gods… was because Troy, back then, was being attacked by an army led by Nemesis, god of vengeance, father of Helen who Paris, Hector’s brother, took as wife under wicked means - albeit the records say no proof was ever found of such a thing. The whole affair, at the same time, was being watched by Astraea, goddess of Justice, who thought Nemesis to be in the right.

Cecilia couldn’t but shake her head, memories of how the story ended already wandering through her mind.

Her gaze, however, never left the play.

Hector grabbed his wife’s shoulders gently, then kissed her. It was now when the mask of indifference fell from his face. “Pray, I beg. Pray for us, for me, for the fate of the fields and the fruit they must bear in a future when no black army stomps on what must grow.” He stepped away then, Andromache’s hand hanging in the air, as if already missing his touch. “Pray, but far from here.”

“What?”

“A vessel waits for you on the other side of our homeland, one made just for you and a few others. Escape. Keep our flame bright as the day I saw your eyes for the first time.”

“Come with me!”

“If I go, if the one defender suddenly disappears…” Hector shook his head. “He’ll know, and I fear his wrath and domain would crush what little future we have left.”

“But… What about Troy?”

“What about it?”

By then, the might of Hector was well known among Nemesis’ army, and it is said even the god himself was wary of the warrior who seemed to have no equal.

Hector, also known as Troy’s First Wall.

Andromache watched him leave the scene after that question was left lingering in the air, the actress gesturing the confounded thoughts going through the character’s mind, as if she weren’t able to place the Hector she married with the one who had just disregarded the love for their homeland and his father, the king Priam.

“What about Troy?” She began her monologue. “What has war made of you, my love?”

Cecilia found her hand on her heaving chest, her memories echoing the woman’s next words,

“Your eyes were missing that spark,

Of hope,

Of yearning for the next morning dew,

For contemplating the gentle caress of the sun upon the fields,

Your eyes, where once I chanced upon a nascent green bud,

Were now but split bark, blackened by that which you have lost.

Is that what war has made of you, my love?

Leathered heart,

Lifeless seeds,

Unfertile fields,

Where no dream shall ever sprout?”

Andromache wondered, Cecilia thought, if her husband hadn’t lost the reason why that war was worth fighting, or maybe, if the brave Hector who had once asked for her hand had already died, replaced by nothing but a husk filled by fear of what else he may lose.

“What of Troy? I asked,

And your stride left your confidence behind,

As if you knew,

Did you?

Is fate already sealed so?

No, it cannot be, it must not be.

Pain and sorrow are surely blinding me,

Forcing me to see that which could further scar my heart,

For surely,

When I asked,

‘What of Troy’

Your gaze was cast

On a concept beyond what the most of us think of as Troy,

Surely.

Surely!

Surely you thought that Troy is not what hides behind its walls!

But what sails away to keep its flame alight!”

Andromache never got an answer to her questions, and instead chose to believe in the man of her memories rather than the person who left her alone, for that interlude was the last time she ever saw her husband. She fled Troy soon after, to never come back.

For after the final battle, there would be no city to come back to, nor bodies bury.

Records say what once was Troy, now is but a crater where no life can ever grow, a dead zone plagued by rampant demonic Essence, which was but lingering aftermath of Nemesis’ vengeful strike. The god had recovered his daughter, but not content with that he also made sure no one else would ever covet her by making an example out of the city and its habitants.

The final act depicted as much. It showed Hector’s final struggle, with no description of the weapon he was supposed to be carrying, against the hordes of demons that Nemesis commanded; how the god of vengeance deceived Astraea into leaving before delivering the final blow to both, the hero and the city under his protection, then fleeing the scene out of fear of retribution from the goddess of Justice. How was she deceived, or why she had taken Nemesis’ side at the beginning, was still a controverted topic of discussion between theologist and the Order of Astraea, but what they both agreed on was on the consequences that followed… and that had Hector not chose to remain, so that his wife could live, there wouldn’t be a House of Troy today.

Cecilia sighed, her gaze settling briefly on the actors who, hands linked, were bowing before the applauding audience. Then, she set it towards a specific place, a building which she couldn’t really see.

The building in question was an orphanage, where once a dishevelled hut stood outside its fence. She had yet to hear anything about the boy who had lived in it, and was quickly losing hope of ever doing so, for the way in which he disappeared was something even beyond her comprehension. Then, she cast her gaze the other way, towards her alchemy workshop, quickly going through what she needed to take care of.

She sighed. It would be another long night.