The Abyss Never Lets Go

Chapter 3 (Six Years Later)

 Lumine was grumpy again. Well, she was usually grumpy nowadays. Enjou had taken to basically running the other direction whenever she was around and the rest of her Lectors and Heralds were the same way. In her defense she had good reasons to be grumpy. She'd been plagued with nightmares of when Jasmine had killed all of her Abyss Children and from when Kheanriah had fallen. Her brother was also giving her a headache because he was causing all sorts of minor kinks in her plans. Skirk had also vanished and Lumine wondered if she'd left the Abyss permanently. She wasn't anywhere to be found and Lumine couldn't find a trace or rumor of her body, so she was sure that she had just left. And to top it all off, Ajax seemed to have cast her aside for the Cyro Archon. He should have sent her a message within the last year. He was 21 after all and should have been able to use the Foul Legacy for the last three years. That was long enough for it to take effect. Yet he hadn't sent any word and was still happily serving the Tsaritsa as the 11th Harbinger. So Lumine thought that she was within her rights to be grumpy. At this point it seemed that everyone she'd ever cared about was either dead, cursed, actively fighting her, or had abandoned her.

Lumine suddenly needed to be out of the Abyss. She needed to get away from here before she became numb to the grief and became a true monster. Stopping by her room she grabbed her cloak and swung it around her shoulders before summoning her favorite ruin guard. It came quickly to her side and knelt for her to sit in its palm. She took her place and it stood up and began walking towards the throne room and the nearest waypoint. Going through the waypoint was always disorienting and she was relieved to be out of it again. She and her ruin guard were in an old ruin in Liyue, near Lumine's favorite place in all of Teyvat. Several berry bushes grew here and Lumine jumped off of the ruin guard and began to comb through several of the bushes looking for berries. So what if she, the Abyss Princess, wanted to eat berries. She surely deserved to stress eat with everything that was going on.

She commanded her ruin guard to stay put and began slowly moving her way through the berry patch, eating as she went. The berries tasted good, and Lumine decided that after this she'd go look for something to fight. Maybe a good fight was all she needed to perk her spirits up. Lost in this train of thought she wandered out of sight from her ruin guard. She was fine with this. Almost nobody came out this far into the ruins anyways.

"Mr Cyclops!" A sudden voice shouted.

Lumine froze and mentally ordered her ruin guard to freeze. She ran towards it as she did so, that had sounded like a child's voice. She rounded the wall separating her from her ruin guard and froze, because Ajax was standing in front of her ruin guard. But it couldn't be Ajax, he would be 21 by now. An adult, and this was just a child, but he had the same bright coppery hair and deep blue eyes. His eyes even had the same innocent look Ajax's had had when she'd first seen him in the Abyss. Lumine shook her head to dislodge those painful memories and walked towards the child.

"Would you like to see it move?" She asked.

The boy spun around and gaped at her. He looked so much like Ajax had it made her heart ache.

"Really! This Mr. Cyclops moves!" He said excitedly.

"Sure. This is my special one." She said.

She mentally commanded her ruin guard to stand up and not attack. It obeyed her and rose to it's feet.

"Wow! He's so big!" The child said, "why is he your special one?"

"He goes with me everywhere." She said.

This child confused her slightly. Most people were scared stiff by the sight or a ruin guard, yet this kid just looked excited to see it.

"Watch." She said.