Knight Quests: Armor (MOX-994)

Troia stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror of her room within her mother’s noblexyn manor. Only the faint moonlight from the window subtly lit the mirror image of her masked face, together with the warmth of an ornate candelabra sitting atop the vanity’s tabletop. The dulled gold of her mask glinted in the light; but its expression remained unmoving.

For a brief moment, a memory, painful and unwanted, flashed before her very reflection. Troia suddenly remembered the day that her halo first appeared as a very young xyn; it was the day that she saw her father die from his mysterious Corruption, mercy killed when he could not be saved by the Lullay Knights sent to restrain him. Though she was already a quiet and reserved child, she had never been the same since that very day her corrupted father passed before her eyes. Troia was unable to cope with the memory and emotions that ensued with what she had witnessed, and at that moment, her halo materialized to take the form of a mask to shield her face: her armor that protected her heart and her mind from the cruelty of the world around her. 

Troia wanted to bristle her fur, to growl, or bite her tongue, and even her magicava felt as if it should surge with feeling; but her body would not respond- there was nothing but a numbness that suppressed what she wanted to feel.

There were endless invisible walls that protected her from; but it was her trinket halo, in the form of a mask, that felt as it protected her the most. Though she was shy (and especially reluctant) to be in the company of other xyns, she could not stay isolated, or the halo that she cherished as her armor would vanish if she turned Fallen. And yet she sometimes wondered if complete solitude was worth the price of losing her halo, a part of herself always used to hide from others…

—

Troia snarled as she sparred against another knight-in-training Moxyn within Moonreach at a training facility. They deftly exchanged blows against each other, one after the other, and seemed to be on equal footing. Her opponent, just like her, used their Dark magic to melt into shadow and blend into their surroundings. They had fought for about five minutes, until her opponent slammed her back into the ground, pinning a paw on her chest.

“Why won’t you use your breath magic?” They asked her. Their voice was cold, and they seemed to want to goad her.  “What’s with the mask?”

Troia didn’t respond.

What could she even say to a stranger that knew nothing of what she had been through?

With one brutal shove she knocked the moxyn off of her, and shook herself off, immediately turning invisible and sprinting out of the training room and through the hallway of the facility, sprinting towards the front door to leave. It didn’t matter if she would face repercussions later on- she couldn’t stand being asked that question. If tears could well up between her eyes, they couldn’t; that same cold numbness spread through her heart and, very soon, she felt nothing… as she always did.