LUNASTRA TRILOGY: Advent of Lunastra Arc (Arc 1)

Episode 11: Demons of Past Woes

Episode 11: Demons of Past Woes

That same night,

Near the Gyukon Clan Residence

On the outskirts of Gardenia

Shinki carefully makes his way through the darkness, looking left and right at intervals to make sure no one is following him. The neighborhood surrounding and built near the Gyukon Property was silent as a graveyard; the moonlight casted shadows all around the property and elsewhere, the alien crimson red of the moon hauntingly bathes the landscape in red. Parked cars in driveways lay there as if they too are sleeping from a long day of driving back and forth from destinations that Shinki did not care to know. He turned his head and looked at them absently, uninterested in the contraptions and their possible use. He waved his left hand dismissively at their direction and grunted in a mix of disgust and indifference. They were mere metallic husks with wheels on them, nothing like the majestic vehicles or modes of transportation Lunastra had under its arsenal.

As he kept pacing on the path bathed in the glow of the moon, Shinki's face contorted as he debated once more. Ever since he conducted the summoning/implantation ritual for the Night-Beasts, he has been having even more doubts about this mission. The thought of killing people to him, along with the mission, and what he needs to do was...

None of this feels as right as it did when I started, Shinki thought to himself. Lord Kagerinai said the Eien Empire will return to everything's rightful state...but could we not just have done it without this?

No! We must do this! You said it yourself once: "Those bastards deserve nothing less for abandoning us to the clutches of that terrible triad that ruined us! Our home...! Our land...! Our families, our friends...! They're-they're all...gone....BECAUSE of them! I will not rest until my service to the Eien Empire is served...even if it means bathing in the blood of the traitors, of who I kill!"

"Lunastra's philosophy was to never---"

"That was BEFORE everything was ruined. We now have a new philosophy: to restore Lunastra by building it up by the bones and blood of our enemies. This needs to be done! Who is going to avenge your sister, your father, your mother, your friends, your commander? Will you let them toil and be tortured in the fires of non-resolution, of eternal pain and pining for justice!?"

A surge of rage flowed through his veins briefly as Shinki bared his teeth like an angered lion that had its pride slaughtered; a single bloody tear poured out of his right eye. Shinki paused, emotions and grief for those he has lost. His throat choked as muffles intermixed with cackling laughter underneath his breath. After three minutes, he swallowed and wiped his eyes.

"It never does get easy, doesn't it," Shinki mumbled to no one in particular as he continued on his way to his destination.

I will do this, Shinki thought, for you sister, father & mother, Commander Kusagari...my Lunastrian siblings. You will have your revenge—even if it means staking my life onto my GRAVE and be torched in the fires of those who I aim to slaughter! ... But still...

A few hours later...

Shinki stops and looks up towards the general direction of the night sky. He smirked toothily and gave a slithering grunt. High above him, encompassing the entirety of the diamond-shaped wall that guards the residency is a barrier that he broke only days before, faintly pulsating in the moonlit night. It pulses in faint, slow waves, emanating magical emerald, blue and red in rainbow-like spectrums of magic as it tries to repair itself. He glances up towards the spherical shaped magical construction...and notices something. The cracked hole, repairing itself at a snail's pace, timing itself with each release of magic, little bits of shards like that of broken mirrors coming in two at a time.