Krista! Just got your letter not too long ago. Glad to hear you guys are safe and taking care of yourself. I don’t know how I should feel about you guys adding more Shining Twilight members to your group, but you need to be careful.
I’ve been doing more and more research on some of them and have learned very little. They’re extremely secretive. Cleo, for example, comes from a nobility in Soaring Sun. In her early years, her home was hit by terrible earthquakes, and she disappeared for a considerable time. The most recent information I have about her is her time as a nun at the Clergy of Lunera.
Dmitri has many accolades, a former child prodigy of his own right. He was destined for great things until the disaster in Falling Starlight. He was the sole survivor of an explosion that took the lives of five students, including another prodigal student, Akira Yarrow, and his Grandfather, Martin Dmitri senior.
I was also able to learn that one of their members, Raven, has had some past with Blade, an assassin group prolific in Journey. His last name, Failure, is representative of that. It means he failed a mission in his youth and was probably banished. You need to be careful, especially around him.
The Dante boy is a bit of an enigma, I could not find anything out about his past, he just suddenly appeared one day. He started Shining Twilight when he was only 15 in Falling Starlight, and they made a name for themselves due to their connections to the Dragon royal family. That’s everything I could dig up about them,
Love You!
Inside, Krista’s thoughts went haywire, “An assassin, seriously?! Actually, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. He always seemed a bit weird or off. In all reality I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll need to tell Amelia and Damien whenever I get the chance.”
So, she wrote back, Hey Grand Auntie o n our travels, we’ve met one more Shining Twilight member, a Jikan Iminashi. He’s a bit of a dunce. And I think he’s a few years older than me, but he acts just like a child, and Raven commonly beats him. It’s like a comedy act. He’s a bit strange, whenever he thinks he’s not being looked at, he steals glances at Amelia. I caught him muttering something about her looking like his sister, but I don’t know.
Either way Amelia has been getting really close with this Dmitri guy, I actually think they’re really hitting it off, and he seems to be someone that can keep up with her… unique personality. That’s all I have for now, but I’ll keep you updated.
“I never had a chance to yesterday, but I should really tell Damen about that weird thing Dante said about anomalous wattiez,” Krista contemplated, “Dante probably knows more than he lets on, what am I saying, of course he knows more, he’s the leader of Shining Twilight, for Vitnova’s sake.”
“Hey Krisha, hope I’m not bothering you,” Dante said as he walked over to her tent, “but I wanted to ask how was life was like as a part of the Laborer’s Guild? What kind of adventurers did you go on?”
Krista didn’t know why, but Dante has been sticking fairly close to her whenever he wasn’t hounded by Cleo and Raven. Honestly, she had barely been able to get a real moment alone time.
“Adventures, hmm let’s see,” Krista didn’t really like the idea of being put on the spot here, and she found it hard to think though the sounds of Raven’s training, “First, you can tell me a little about Raven there. He randomly starts training whenever he feels like, even while doing other things or talking to others. Moreover, why is it so loud?”
“Yeah, don’t worry too much about it, they’re just training,” he said blowing off Krista’s question, “I’m more interested in your life. Doesn’t have to be anything particularly special, I’m just going to cut to the chase here. I’d like to know more about you, I’ve always considered myself a people person, and you’re a person I want to people.”
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“That didn’t make sense, but I get what you’re saying. Alright, how about this, when I was younger my parents discovered that I didn’t have any affinity. In their need to protect me, they pretty much tried to cut me off from the world. I spent months if not years stuck inside my home, with my only contact being my Grand Auntie and eventually Amelia.”
“That sounds… lonely.”
“If it wasn’t for Grand Auntie pushing me to do what I wanted, I’d probably still be there… stuck inside that house. My parents are so stupid! Why couldn’t they see that I can protect myself! That I am capable! That I will-”
A soft touch on her shoulder snapped Krista out of her stupor. She could feel hot streaks rolling down her face, Krista had been unconsciously crying. She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes and sat down. Krista had only intended to tell Dante enough to get him off her back, but obviously, she had given far more than she had planned.
“Please, go away,” she finally said.
Dante didn’t listen, instead, laid on his back beside her, “You know, I never knew my parents until very recently, at least my mother. I grew in an orphanage in one of the villages near Falling Starlight. Thing was, nobody really knew where I came from, just a baby on the doorstep, mind you I wasn’t necessarily the only one, but I had other special circumstances.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I hadn’t told you before now, how could you? It’s fine, regardless, for the first four years of my life, everything was fine. I’ve always been the happy, charismatic type, so even back then, I didn’t even think it was sad or strange to not have parents. Then, I turned four, and things changed.”
“When you turned four? The affinity test! Why, did something happen?”
“I was found to be untethered.”
“You’re untethered?! Is that why you were so accepting of me and Raven?”
“Maybe, I’ve definitely experienced some harsh things do to being found as untethered. The Den Parents began to pity me, to think less of me. Many, if not all, of my close friends were the same way. The teachers and orphanage staff would tell the other kids that I was different, that I was ‘special’, that they had to be careful when they played around me. It’s not often talked about how cruel children can be. The constant harassment and bullying, the loss of many of my good friends, it was unbearable. One of my only solaces was Ms. Megumi.”
“So in a way, you were in solitude too.”
He nodded, “Ms. Megumi was younger than the other staff, so she could easily see the troubles I faced, and she took care of me… man I really was an idiot back then.”
Dante randomly started spouting an eerie laughter, while sporting the most sullen face Krista had ever seen him make.
“Did something happen to Ms. Megumi?”
“I didn’t learn this until I met my parents, but she was working under the same cause as they did. She was tasked with watching over me and making sure I didn’t get to close to anybody. Can’t have the chosen son getting too attached to the others!” He had his has curled into a fist so tightly that there was blood.
“Hey, your hands!” she cried as she pried Dante’s hand open, “Stop hurting yourself.”
“Sorry, seems like I got carried away too,” he said with nervous laughter, “You shared your life story, so I thought it was only fair I shared mine.”
Seeing the commotion, Cleo quickly ran over and took his hands in hers, wiping the blood off with a cloth, “Listen I think you both have shared quite enough. Why don’t you both go ahead and return to your tents? I think that’s best for everyone.”
Krista felt like there was more they both had to say. This was the first person she met to have gone through such a similar life, so she wanted to speak more, but Raven appeared from behind her sweating after having finished his image training.
She thought by now she’d be used to that but no dice, “Comet’s is fairly close to Soaring Sun’s border, I’d say in about a day and a half we should reach it,” Raven commented, “After that, we should reach Phive and Shix in Nova in another two days. Sleep now because we leave early. What the? Who did this to Dante… Darius!”
“If you don’t mind Krista, I’d like to try talking for a bit more,” Dante whispered,” This time we can talk about happy experience, instead of our troubled past.”
A quick glance past him showed Damien in the middle of an argument between Cleo and Raven, probably regarding Dante’s bloody hand.
Dante’s smile was so goofy that Krista couldn’t help but laugh, “Yeah, I’d like that.”