Ill Fortune

My eyes had opened to a bizarre world beyond fathom. Even in my wildest imaginings I could have never once pictured a location so abstract and otherworldly. Beneath a canopy of glass which held the moon and the stars prisoner in its body. Where moonlight was all that could be known as there was never a sun to shine.

While I wandered that world I was no longer in control of my own body. Or rather, I hadn’t my own body to control. From the moment I’d awoken I was there with another. Trapped in their skull with them yet altogether invisible and unknown to them.

It was scarce that I’d ever see the face of the man in whose body I had become captive, but when he would peer into a reflection as he seldom did, I would catch those sparing glimpses of them. And when he would come before any kind of mirror, I would see him; the man whose hair was as black as coal with eyes colored a somber green.

I knew his name only as it was spoken by those he kept as company and through the sweet and beloved voice of his most esteemed companion as she gleefully called out to him.

Fortino.

Piece by piece, discovering him through those who met with and who stood by his side, I’d come to know that this man was a knight. One of the few knights that this world had ever known. A member of a regiment created for the sake of liberating all of this city of Stelaris from the nightmarish world of the Zodiac Prison.

Through tales told by he and the few other knights that had hailed from my own home kingdom of Celestia, the citizens began to dream of the world where the golden light of the mysterious sun rained down. The land where an infinitely high blue ceiling expanded beyond the reach of their imaginations.

Towards that land, the knighthood had promised, he would do all hecould to raise every person to that world overflowing with freedom.

✩ ✩ ✩

All of my experiences in Stelaris and the Prison had come streaming to me through inconsistent moments of awareness. Fading from one event to the next without a discernible pattern nor reason, I’d began to understand but a shadow of the reality. That small insight had made it all a magnificent mystery that I’d began to deeply desire to unravel.

I had been witness to troubling conflict, battles against heinous monsters; the Loveless. I’d seen the times when the edge of death had swept close only to miss by a hair. There were times when sights had changed to the relaxing, even melancholy moments spent in the city of Stelaris.

Always by Fortino’s side was his beloved. A maiden whose long locks were like drifting rays of lunar light and whose eyes alight with love shone with captured stars in their deeper blue.

Amorette.

From their first meeting atop a high hill reaching out to the imprisoned moon and through their most delicate moments spent, I’d watched the two grow together through with those small flashes of insight I’d been given.

Together, promising the world to each other, giving their worlds to each other. A wedding ring slipped on her finger and a bittersweet feeling mastering the ceremony of their union.

Resignation but yet an unbreakable love glowing in their hearts to carry them onward.

In the next flash I had watched Amorette from the flat of the mattress. Looking over to her where she lay with her head on the pillow, her hair fanning out over the covers. A smile made her radiant features glow with such disarming, true warmth as she looked towards her lover with only eyes for him.

Holding out her hand, the wedding ring poised on her finger, she held his own firmly, letting him feel her warmth as they rested to sleep.

“I love you, Fortino.”

With the blink of an eye, she had vanished.

Where she’d laid was only the dust of the cruel and unforgiving earth. A spattering of blood where she once smiled towards him. Fortino had felt her warmth on his hand for but a spare second before reality had returned to him and he had fallen out of his memories.

It was then I’d understood what was happening.

All that I’d seen was but a flash of his life as his blood continued to drain from his body, leaving the complete absence of Amorette’s loving embrace.

I could feel the tears falling down his face, blurring the empty, harrowing sight he’d watched. Hoping that his most despaired tears could bring back even so much as that image of her for even a single second longer so he could even perish with the most minuscule fragment of peace in his heart.

Trying to squeeze his hand shut, he’d hoped to feel hers in his own one final time. But he could only weakly grasp the empty air left beside him.

When his fingers grew numb, I’d began to feel light, airy. Our eyes were no longer one when I’d felt myself leaving his body behind. In a panic, I’d quickly turned to look to the earth as I was lifted from it. There he was beneath me, the black and dark blue of his uniform tattered and worn, his armor shattered. His blood mixed with the dust, still continuing to pool out from the opened wound in his chest.

“Fortino!” I cried out to him and to my incredulity, he’d labored to turn and face me.

Our eyes linked together and I could feel my own tears running as his did. I reached out to him with all of my strength, all that I could muster to grasp for him. But against the greatest attempts I could give, the distance between us only grew.

Taking a skipping, strained breath, he’d extended his hand out to mine. Yet his reaching out was altogether different. Not outstretched to grab hold of mine hand, but as if to say his goodbyes to me.

With one final stream of tears splashing across his cheek, his eyes became hollow. All of the feeble energy that he’d had left to use was cut like a wire splayed in two. His hand met the earth where he’d dreamed Amorette had laid in his dying visions.

And then he was no more.

“No! Hold on…! Just a little longer!” I screamed out to him. “You can’t die! Stelaris is counting on you! You were supposed to return home with her!”

I’d raised so high towards the glass skies that I’d wondered if my voice could even carry over the expanse between us. As I could feel the glass coming close, I’d shouted out my pledge to him.

“I don’t care! I won’t let you go! I’ll find you! I’ll find this prison and I’ll kick down its doors and tear it apart! I’ll come back for you! I swear on my life! No matter what it takes, I’ll return!”

“Let go, Khiron.” A thought lit up in my mind but it had felt as if it wasn’t my own thought, but the gentle voice of another.

In my last moments conscious in the Prison, I’d felt an embrace that held me right and lifted me higher beyond the moon and the stars that were trapped in their glass prison.