For Thee: Domnis Lux History

      Janus embers, is how I would have described her the moment we met; I was so foolish back then. I proclaimed to the world that I would make my way through the Hercynian Temple, but the curse of the forest was too strong for me. It toyed with me in its maleficence.

      Moments from becoming just another naive soul lost to the world, she appeared from nothingness. No poof or shimmer. She wasn’t, and then she was. The curse of the forest fled from the goddess before me. As but a child, that is what she looked like to me, and that is what she truly was.

      She addressed me as “Loyalty” and told me she had a mission for me. She told me that she, but necessarily not herself, would return again someday; that I had to be ready.

      Ready for what?

      She merely gave a sad smile, and, with a wave of her hand, opened the temple before me.

      As she touched my hand to pull me up, all my wounds healed. My rotten and missing teeth from a lifetime of sweets and alleyway fights popped back into perfection.

      Her hand was softer than the finest fabrics, I’m sure. I could not believe this woman with her fiery-red hair, her green eyes that seemingly saw everything, would take a moment of her time for me. Never had my small heart of ten years been so bewitched by another.

      The walk through this temple was far shorter than I had expected. But so much longer did time pass, as I spent it with her. Upon the temple wall was a blank section of brick. She waved her hand and a tapestry ground itself within the wall. She told me it was a story.

      It was the story of how it all began, at least the first world.

      A rock from the heavens fell to the planet and released the monsters of so many myths. A lone girl wished upon herself and her friends for a way to defeat the creatures. She fought with all her might, yet failed. Using the power of her world, she bound a part of her soul to her blade, and flung it into the void itself. She was determined that somewhere, at some time, she would bring an end to those that hide in the dark.

      To make sure of this, she spread word of what remained of her soul through the void too. Fragments of who she was, and what it is she would do, spread through all there was, is, and ever would be.

      The fiery-haired lady carried a small smile as she drug her fingers across the depiction of the girl from the story.

      “Did you know her?”

      “I am hers, and she mine. But Fate is cruel.”

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      She waved a hand, filling out the rest of the story.

      “She and I gain snippets of each other on the occasion, but our directions are in opposition. Were I able to stay, I could be with her. Were she able to let whole worlds fall, she would not fight. But I cannot, and she cannot. That is the way the stars have laid it out.”

      She finished her picture and her words that rung much-too-complex for such a small mind as my own. She gave me another small smile and slid her silken hands through my hair again.

      “Loyalty, you are to do great things this time around. Much more than ever before. You will join Queen and Moderator, and set me down the necessary path. With any luck, your assistance will allow the stage to play out more effectively than ever before.”

      Confused, I looked up at her with a million questions burning inside my little mind. But simple-minded me asked the most obvious of all of them.

      “What is your name, my goddess?”

      She gave a small laugh at that seemingly unexpected question and led me out of the temple. She took one last look in my eyes and knelt down to my level.

      “Things are going to be hard for you, Loyalty, as they have been for many others. It’s so selfish of me, I know, but you all made your choices. You refused to leave me alone. You have no one else to blame besides yourselves. And so-”

      She placed her hand on my head. I felt a warmth like none other flow through me. The entirety of space and time… and my… our history flooded into my mind. Tears poured down my face like a dam that had always been destined to break. I met her gaze and she looked at me, a single tear dripping to the ground.

      I place my hand on her cheek and tell her that I’m sorry. I tell her over and over and over again about how sorry I am, so sorry to have failed her, to make her suffer alone.

      “But I am never alone, even when I do not realize it. I have you, and Moderator, and Queen, and Silence, and Temper, and Mother, and Knight, and Scribe. You, all of you, are irreplaceable to me as much as I am to you. That is why we are all here, ne?”

      I nod, trying to wipe away the waterfalls that had replaced my eyes.

      “But what am I to do? I have never been allowed to remember before.”

      “Be the beacon of light for this world – that is how I will arrive. Be the guardian, to keep out the Beta as long as you can.”

      “And after that happens?”

      “Then once again, your role will be complete. Then you can start it all over again. How lucky you are.”

      “I am. I am so lucky to do this for you, to be able to offer even a pittance of happiness in this accursed existence you bear.”

      She looks up to the sky, “That is why you are Loyalty, I suppose. But I must away, they are already coming. Thousands of them have found me. You are going to have a rough few hundred years. For that much, I apologize.”

      “Ah, but I am human this time, I will not-”

      She cuts me off with a gorgeous smile. A real one, but not quite so real as to reach her eyes. Only Raven could give her that kind of smile…

      “Goodbye…”

      She gives me the smallest of waves, and disappears from existence. From that moment on, I was going to be very busy. Busy, indeed…