(Since I couldn’t resist writing something in response to this and cracking my writing skills for LuNyx, I’m rusty, but prepping for LuNyx week somehow.)
Nyx, a proud member of the elite Kingsglaive and a man who devoted his body and soul to the sovereign of an isolated kingdom, viewed his world in darkness.
Despite fighting for a cause he believed in, to reclaim the captured territories under the Empire and keep his comrades alive to see that dream to fruition, his world was darkness.
His heart once filled with light was now dim and dull, all but snuffed out.
An ode to the times of everlasting peace: to the rope swing dangling over the old watering hole, to the bar that he and Libertus finally paid off, to Selena’s acceptance letter to one of the best art institutions in Lucis, the small antique shop his mother owned and was damn proud of…
But life went on. Nyx simply rolled with the punches. He stumbled, tripped, faltered, two steps forward and three steps sideways during the worst of the episodes—there was only so much light his heart could shed in his surroundings—while maintaining the hero persona he had used to mask the hurt. It wasn’t by choice, it was better to be known as the hero than the broken person he truly was or the guilt that suffocated him to this day.
Insomnia gave him a reminder of how he was an undesirable guest on its turf. The Kingsglaive gave him a family.
Crowe, Pelna, Drautos, Libertus… All of the Kingsglaive were gone, dead or turned traitor, his family destroyed itself. And for what? A string of promises quickly accepted without any pretense of treachery involved. So much ‘For Hearth and Home’.
Insomnia was lost. It was beyond salvation.
Why should he have a future when the ones he lost deserved it a lot more? They had more at stake. He had nothing left to lose.
The Glaive was left to his own devices, alone to embrace the darkness. His heart was flickering now like a candle on a dying wick, limbs like wax folding in itself to oblivion. He was content and numb.
Hair spun and heart of gold, donned in silver upon black, a moon goddess found him. Her light, emanating from her right breast, an uncommon placement of where a heart would be, pierced through the shroud of darkness and illuminated where Nyx needed to go, but only if he permitted it.
Oracle Lunafreya reached out to Nyx, catching his hands in her own, and bathing him in her light. “I finally found you.”
Wicked shadows followed in her wake and distress lined her brow, but the Oracle found solace in spite of everything. Like the Glaive, she had endured many trials and inner demons, but unlike him, she pushed onward and preserved. There was a pervading darkness deep within, overflowing with grief and suffering, but Nyx immediately sensed more good than evil from her.
“You’re looking for me?” The Glaive asked, perplexed on why this woman sought him out.
She nodded, lifting her hand to point to the abyss before them, a foreboding fog of the unknown. “The world awaits us and I…” Lunafreya’s smile was idyllic as Galahd in the spring. “wish to give you a future in it.” She turned away, taking a few steps with her hands behind her back. “I will not take no for an answer.”
Nyx was taken back by the young maiden’s assertiveness. She was petite that not even in heels she could hope to reach his height, frailty surrounds her, but the air of authority and certainty wielded could withstand the greatest storm.
But fancy words and a steel determination were not enough to sway him. He fell for it once before. “Does it look like I got a crystal ball on me, Princess?” Nyx asked with a scoff, a little surprised that his tone was harsher than he intended, but meant every word. “Don’t expect me to give promises I can’t keep.”
Instead of taking offense to Nyx’s blunt honesty, Lunafreya bowed, her blonde tendrils manifested to a halo past her shoulders. “Then I offer you my solemn vow. On my honor as Oracle, I will not rest until the darkness is banished from our world and the Light is restored. Stop me if you wish, part ways with me if you must, I cannot promise that our journey would end happily.” She rose, meeting Nyx’s eyes with her own and there was an inexplicable drive to them that not even he could deny. “But please reconsider what I offer you before turning it away: an opportunity to rebuild.” She held a fist over her glowing breast. “To heal.”
But in order to do any of those things, the Glaive would have to confront the past. There was too much pain, the wounds still raw, and if he did, it meant that it would change him into something else—someone he wouldn’t be able to recognize.
A huge destiny loomed over Lunafreya and Nyx couldn’t let her go at it alone. After some deliberation, the Glaive concluded that he wouldn’t bear to live with himself if it swallowed her whole. If there was really a future outside the darkness, then maybe it’s worth looking into. Had to be if she’s in it.
Besides, maybe he could buy her time when disaster came screaming in.
“All right,” Nyx extended a hand and Lunafreya gratefully took it. “Let’s see where the future takes us.”
