Chapter 15: The Brand Her Soul Carries

Let us take a little detour. A quick digression, in which we circle back to the previous timeline to tell a forgotten tale. It is a small story, faded from memory and lost to time, about unrequited love and a soul consumed by grief.

“No...”

There was the sensation of her legs giving way.

Ruby Etoile Redmoon sank to the ground as the morbid tidings washed over her, squeezing all strength from her limbs. Her long search for the whereabouts of her first and only love had finally borne fruit. But it was a bitter harvest. Fate, in all its wicked humor, had dealt her a cruel hand. Vanos had been present at the Sealence Forest when the conflict with the remote tribe of the Lulu erupted.

And he’d died there.

Wounded by many arrows, their shafts protruding gruesomely from his back, he’d still managed to carry the bodies of two fallen comrades out of the forest with him as his troops retreated, but he’d fallen at the gate of their camp and did not get back up. A vision of his face materialized in Ruby’s mind, then grew shadowed and indistinct. She imagined his gentle features bruised and bloodied. The man she’d loved since childhood...

...Is gone. He’s...really gone. Dead. Not coming back. Not ever again.

Slowly, this truth began to sink in. And it sunk like a rock, like an arrowhead, lodging itself firmly in her core with the weight of a black hole.

“But... How did it come to this? Why did any of this have to happen?”

The forest was Lulu territory. They knew it inside and out. Why had the troops stepped into such an uneven battlefield? And more importantly... What had caused the conflict to erupt in the first place? Why were they fighting their own people?

“We were told that it started with a demand from Viscount Berman. But now I hear the Viscount was acting on orders from higher up.”

“Higher up? ...How much higher?”

The man, who claimed to be a survivor of his hundred-man squad, said with a flippant shrug, “The princess. Her Highness Mia Luna Tearmoon. She wanted the wood from that forest.”

“...Her Highness?”

“Yes. I believe she wanted some sort of fancy ornamental chest or box...and she wanted it made out of those trees,” the man explained. “The Lulus tried to stop us...so our squad was sent in to get rid of them. That’s the story I heard, anyway.”

His words slithered into her ears with ease, almost as if they had been crafted especially for her.

“That’s...it? All of this...for a trinket?”

A moment’s emptiness.

Then, fury.

Tendrils of rage erupted from her heart and wrapped themselves around her mind and body, making her their slave.

Seasons shifted and years passed. The great famine fell upon the empire. Starvation abounded, death and anger gripped the people of Tearmoon. Upon this fertile soil, the seeds of revolution budded. That was when she came.

The imperial princess, Mia Luna Tearmoon, arrived with one of her subordinates to ask the House of Redmoon to deploy their private army. The petition was of course a request for military aid, but it was more important as a message to the people. In order to weaken the revolutionary army’s resolve, they had to make a public show of solidarity, signaling to friend and foe alike that the Emperor and his nobility were a monolith, firmly committed to the empire and to each other.

There’s still time... We can still stop this from spinning completely out of control...

They could. She was sure of it. But in spite of that, she went to her father...

“I don’t think this is the time for action.”

...And did everything she could to sway him against intervention, playing every card of military theory and using every trick in the book of rhetoric to prevent him from joining the fray.

She succeeded, and in doing so, indirectly assisted the revolutionary army by allowing them to grow. Eventually, the imperial capital fell, and the flames of revolution burned triumphantly over its ashen ruins.

Fire, however, was not known for its restraint. It spread, consuming not only the emperor’s family but all the powerful nobles throughout the empire. Soon the whole of Tearmoon was aflame. The Redmoons’ elite private army, though well-trained and strong, could not fend off the scorching tide alone. Absent coordination with the main imperial army, both factions were left isolated and ripe for the enemy’s picking.

Resolved to fight to the bitter end, the Redmoons put up a fierce resistance. Their efforts were valiant, but the revolutionary army’s momentum ultimately proved unstoppable. As their numbers thinned, her father took personal command and rode out to war. He was soon followed by her younger brothers who, donning plate and helm, left for the battlefield as well.

None returned.

As the surging vanguard of the enemy army flooded her view, Ruby stood on the balcony, looking out over the sea of fire and ash that had been the heart of the Redmoon domain. Her lips trembled.

“Is this...what I wanted?” she murmured. “What...did I want?”

Lunatear had already fallen. The imperial army was no longer capable of mounting any form of organized resistance, leaving every noble to fend for themselves. So they did, blocking roads and tightening borders, using what soldiers they had solely for their own isolated defense. No attempt was made to coordinate a united front. After all, the most eminent military faction, the Redmoons, seemed entirely focused on their own survival, having spared not a man for the rest of the empire. In that case, they were surely justified in looking after themselves in the same fashion.

And it could all be traced back to Ruby whispering into her father’s ear, advising him to decline Mia’s request for aid.

Those fateful words had done the trick. Everything had gone exactly according to plan. Princess Mia, who’d all but ordered Vanos’s death, had been captured by the revolutionary army, then executed. It was over. Vengeance was had. Balance restored.

She’d won. Victory was hers. And yet...

“This...isn’t what I thought...”

The only thing filling her heart now were echoes. She felt hollow. Dreadfully, unbearably hollow. She’d counseled her father to withhold his troops. That was all. Nothing more. Seething with anger but powerless to strike back—she could hardly retaliate directly against the imperial family, much less lead troops in an attempt to take bloody revenge upon the princess—the only option available to her had been to stay in her domain and wait. So wait she had.

She chose not to fight. The one her heart had sworn to fight for was already gone. There was nothing left to gain. No one left to protect. No reason to fight anymore.

There was a thunderous crash.

It was the sound of the manor’s front door being breached. Soon they would come for her.

Ruby drew her sword. It gleamed in the crimson firelight. She held it up, the skin of her neck mirrored in its well-polished blade.

“Since the day I was born, I’ve been taught to fight. Trained in the sword, in command, in riding. Melted, forged, and whetted. And in the end, I’m to die in the sheath. Without even a chance to be drawn, to fight, to put my life on the line for something that matters to me...”

She smiled. It was a small smile, wry and worn.

“When life is but a cruel joke, what’s left to do but laugh?”

And she drew her sword again. Not out, but across.

The barren sky, infinitely vast and void, was reflected in her eyes as she collapsed into the blood pooling under her. The world darkened, but her despair was darker. In this all-consuming, meaningless blackness Ruby’s life reached its end.

...Leaving behind a soul consumed by grief. A soul into which was burned the eternal regret of not being able to fight for the one she loved.