Encore!

Lumine drew a deep breath and let out a long-suffering sigh.

„I’m getting too old for this,” she said bitterly. Usually, she wouldn’t be caught dead admitting her age to anyone, not even herself. She used disguise magic for a reason, after all. But here, standing in Wingfell, following a compass’ dubious directions, she couldn’t help but admit that the days of her youth were long gone. Back in her knight days she would probably have done this entire quest in a single afternoon.

Lumine sighed again. She knew she was being unfair to herself. A younger xyn might just have faced different problems entirely. She WAS an experienced ex-knight, after all, and she probably went through the clues a lot faster than a young upstart. It was just her body with its aches and pains that gave her a hard time and made her realize that she was – in fact – not a xynlet anymore. She snorted. Hadn’t been for a long, long time.

She quietly regarded the long set of overgrown stairs. The ascend would be difficult, the stairs were slim, broken and slippery due to the moss growing everywhere. Lumine thought of her old bones, but shook herself resolutely, her long fur fluffing up as a result. Enough of the self-pity! She had gotten too far now to be beaten by some stairs!

Slowly, carefully – she did have all time in the world after all – she started her climb. Wingfell’s landscape was beautiful, its tall bamboo forests, hidden stone statues, birds tweeting in the trees and small animals rustling in the undergrowth, that could only be heard but not seen. In any other situation, she wouldn’t have minded going on a holiday here.

Finally, she reached her destination. The moons shone brightly and illuminated the scene before her. It was a clearing, messily overgrown by weeds. The leaves of past seasons covered the ground, the smell of decaying vegetation in the air. Fireflies were giving off an eerie glow. And in the middle stood an ancient rock, covered with moss and dirt. Its placement was too calculated to be natural and Lumine couldn’t help but be reminded of a shrine. It probably was. The compass, which she had kept afloat beside her by magic gave an excited ping and, of its own accord, floated closer to the shrine. It started circling its top and Lumine knew then that she had reached the end of her quest.

Carefully approaching the shrine, her steps halted close before it and she registered the invisible force-field around it. Magic. A barrier.

She glanced at the compass, which was still circling above the rock, unaffected, out of her reach. Its glow grew stronger, quietly trying to tell her what to do. And Lumine realized that she, in fact, knew precisely what to do.

Closing her eyes and protecting her heart, she let a song arise from her chest, her voice forming vocals that were full of regret and loneliness, but also told of her resilience, bravery and being true to herself. All the feelings she had buried through the decades of her life were woven into the song. It had been a tough quest for her, bringing back all the memories of a well-lived life, all the joy and sadness and some things she would have preferred to forget. She thought of her knight training, how she wielded her fire magic in a concentrated laser beam, bringing down Corruption Beast after Corruption Beast. She thought of her fellow knights, one of them Empire, her one true love. She thought of their disagreement in the matter of family planning, how he had always dreamed of xynlets of his own and how she had refused, considering them both enough. In the end, she had let him go so that he could fulfill his dream of family. She never regretted choosing her life’s path, but she regretted that it had brought them apart. And she thought about how Empire, despite it all, had always remained a part of her life, and how fate had brought them back together in the end. The heavy pain around her heart lifted.

Lumine had been close to abandoning the quest altogether. Too much had it hurt to think about the things she lost along the way. But facing her past head-on had helped her realize that she made all her decisions for a reason and to the best of her knowledge at that time. She thought of Empire today, how they rekindled their love, older now but also wiser, knowing that she hadn’t deprived him of anything in his life and it filled her heart with joy. She sang stronger, conviction rising along with the refrain. Right here, right now, she was just Lumine, no knight, no lover, just a xyn that had come a long way, with all the reasons to be proud of herself and her accomplishments.

There were no regrets anymore.