Luna’s offender took her into another room carved separately from the main cavern. This room was more pleasantly furnished, albeit crudely. The bed she sat on had a mattress stuffed with leaves from the forest outside. The wooden table and singular chair were shaped so haphazardly that it was a wonder how they stood upright at all. The various cabinets, drawers, and chests that lined the room were simple and boxy, carved of the same wood. As for the stone stovetop… well, it functioned somehow, boiling an iron pot of tea.

However, the torchlight chandelier was a nice addition. While forged from the mountain stone, it cast a warm and welcoming glow throughout the room. Other than that, Luna found herself drawn to the various scratch patterns embedded on the walls before the elderly man approached her with a tray of two clay cups, each he had filled with tea from the stove.

“My deepest apologies,” he beseeched her, his voice as soft and airy as a passing breeze. “Had I known you were a fellow angel, I would have more readily welcomed you to my isles.”

Luna scowled indignantly, but had no qualms taking a cup from the tray. “Didn’t you see me extend my wings over the forest? Or even during your wretched storm?”

The man set the tray down on the table and lifted the other cup to his lips, blowing on the steam the billowed out from it. “While I have command over these isles, and the area that surrounds them, I can only sense presence of others. I hear them along the wind and respond in kind. My eyes are limited in much the same way as any man’s.”

“But why? If you are an angel yourself, why haven’t you returned to the place beyond the moon? Why do you stay here?” Luna blinked thoughtfully, then added, “In fact, what brought you here in the first place?”

The man chuckled, the mess of his long, gray hair curtaining his face as his brown eyes searched the young angel with amusement. “So many questions. So much energy, despite your incomplete soul…”

[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1033425125283999875/1068008587739271218/6.01.png]

He then turned a glance elsewhere, and Luna followed his gaze to the markings along the wall. Only then did she realize what they were: four crude drawings of people, as if created by a child—or perhaps, simply by an old man without much sense of art. Three of the figures were small. The fourth was tall and blatantly female, judging from the long hair outline that flowed from her head.

He heaved a deep, thoughtful sigh. “When I was younger…”

=-=-=

…When I was younger, the world was a much different place. It would be unrecognizable now, if you peered through the lens of history. The grand city of Rystharos still stood, proud and strong—a central hub for adventure, commerce, and opportunity. The northern kingdom still, in fact, had a king; its crusade against the world’s evils raged like righteous fire. The southern nations still marched under one banner. The dragonkin of today were known as something else, and their bitter rivalry with the tiger tribes of the eastern plains had only just ignited its first spark.

And of course, there was magic.

In full abundance, the world gifted magic to any sentient being as easily as it gifted the air we breathed for life. It came in all forms, even beyond command over the world’s natural elements. Transformation between two or three forms, if one were born of two races. Pacts with powerful spirits, or contracts with heroic souls of the past. Experimental styles that enhanced your physical strength, agility, or swordplay. There were even powerful magicks that allowed travel between worlds that existed parallel to our own.

But then, magic began to fade.

Newer generations of elves strained to hear the trees. Descendants of renowned heroes bore no means to enhance their martial skills beyond honing their physical bodies. The dragons and tigers could no longer freely call on a human form to blend in with the smaller, civilized folk of the cities.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Until the era came when only those with angelic souls—whether born or bestowed from beyond the moon—maintained a complete grasp over magic. How cruel that the remaining magic that man could scrounge together was poured into a means by which to destroy us.

My beloved… strong and steadfast against a lifetime of strife…

My precious children… bold and capable in the face of adventure…

…Shattered from within. And then torn apart from without.

They came for me too. They even managed to scatter the shards of my soul to all the corners of the world. But my rage for their deeds against my family proved far stronger than they anticipated.

For a time, I searched for my lost shards—just as you now search for yours.

I found no allies on my journey. Each foe I encountered strained my reserves to their limit, and I only narrowly escaped death several of those times. It was then I realized: why was I still fighting death? Without my beloved, without my children, what was left for me in life?

[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1033425125283999875/1068008588204851241/6.02.png]

So I came here, intending to finally put myself to rest.

But as I prepared to expel every ounce of energy I had, ready to suffocate myself in a wasteful deluge of magic, my incomplete soul denied my passing.

I created the swirling storm out of spite for mankind. I poured more and more of my magic into its existence, hoping it would extinguish my lifeforce. But no matter how much of myself I spent on the wall, something in my soul refused to give enough to rob me of life.

I enchanted the forest of this isle. Onto each tree and shrub, I imposed my will to crush any intruder like a household insect—including myself. But the flora stayed silent in my presence, and no root would spring to life to constrict me.

I cried to the moon, angry and bewildered, “Why do you deny me my rest?! What is left that you would still ask of me?!”

As if in reply, something fell through the eye of the storm I had created. A little piece of treasure the moon had delivered to me. I knew immediately it was to be in my keeping until she saw fit to retrieve it.

And so, I became part of these isles...

=-=-=

He smirked, but Luna had never seen such hollow haughtiness. “I, once known as the Seer of the Storm, whose wrath made the skies howl and earth tremor against his foes… now an old man who hides at the farthest corner of the sea of sky, jealously guarding a little treasure.”

Luna watched as the old man rose to his feet and walked across the room. He stopped in front of a chest and placed his arms akimbo as he looked down at it.

Then he gave it a rude kick so that it would pop open—which it did. He lowered himself to one knee and reached inside. Curious, Luna craned her neck to see what he was retrieving, but his back obscured whatever it was as he clutched it against his chest and looked at the drawings he had made.

With his free hand, he touched the face of the tall woman etched on the wall. “I think the day is finally here.”

The loneliness of this man resonated with Luna. Only a handful of days apart from her party, braving these uncharted seas alone, was enough to create a small emptiness in her heart. She longed for the comfort of clasping her hands between Sage’s. She even ached slightly for the familiar grumbling from Sarech that sparked frustration and petty jokes.

But this man had lived in solitude for generations. For so long, he had only wanted to be reunited with his family and was denied. Instead, he was given a burden to bear for a span of time even he could not know. Luna had always thought solitude was a given for an angel. She even chose to undergo this quest alone, but… but now…

“You would truly go back—out into that world that hunts you?” He glanced over his shoulder.

“Yes…” Luna choked, suddenly feeling hot tears form in her moon-colored eyes. “I… want to go back to them… my friends…”

The old seer gazed at her, one dark brown eye peering through the curtain of his long, white bangs. His mind seemed to stall on a blank slate, or perhaps there were just too many thoughts for him to cycle through. It was a long moment of silence and Luna’s sniffling before he let out a sigh. He shook his head with a defeated smile as he turned fully around and approached, taking a seat on the bed beside her. There, he opened his hand to show her what he had retrieved from the chest.

Luna wiped her sleeves across her eyes to clear them of their tears, and looked down at his hand. Her eyes widened at the sight.

It was a crystal, as small as a finger and as pale blue as the moon on a clear night at sea. It was a lost shard of her soul.

The shard recognized its other parts. Upon being revealed and recognized, it began to rise from the seer’s hand and float towards Luna. The young angel stared in anticipation and disbelief—disbelief that she was about to be reunited with part of herself. When that notion sunk in, she held up both hands, shepherding it towards her chest.

As it made contact between her breasts, a bright blue light erupted from the shard. Luna closed her eyes, feeling the new piece of her lost soul settle into place. The comfort of welcoming another part of her felt like the embrace of an old friend. And when the light faded, a renewed vigor burned in the angel’s heart. It was time to continue her quest… and return to her dearest companions.