Liridia

Chapter 30: Trinity

Liridia
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The darkness was disorienting to say the least.

I slowly walked backwards, my hands grasping for the wall's touch.

My eyes were playing sick tricks on me for what seemed an eternity before the room lit up with a purple glow, illuminating my mother sitting in the arm chair facing the now roaring violet fire. Her ankles are crossed delicately on a foot stool that wasn't there before, in shoes she could never afford, wearing a long lavender gown she could never make. Her hair was coiled neatly on her head, and a dagger is in her hand that she is absentmindedly flipping over and over in her hand.

She looked like a Queen.

"Liridia." She said expectantly, glancing at her hideously bitten down nails.

"Mother." I hiss coldly, my glare boring holes into the lavender of her frock.

"Oh hush, I've come to talk." She tuts, the light from the fire bouncing off her blade. She looks at me pointedly when I don't move, and I cross my arms. She twists her hand, and the chair spins to face me. The tight bunch of hair sitting on top of her head could possibly last through a storm, it looks so tight.

"Come back. I want us be together. I know I haven't been much of a mother-"

"You haven't been much of a mother?! Do you hear yourself?!" I exclaim, my pent up rage from her words exploding from me.

"Li-"

"No. You don't get to speak. I was the mother. I took care of you for most of my childhood. I had to start working to pay for the tax and the food and the liquor you wasted my money on when I was eight. You came home every night, drunk and angry at the world. Angry at me. I was your daughter, Ma. You just gave up." I cry, hoping that I'm not crying because then I won't be able to stop.

"You gave up." I whisper, anger and sadness battling for control of the situation.

"I know, darling. I did, and I regret it. With every bit of my heart, I regret not being the mother you deserved." She stands, her dress crinkling and changing into the plain clothes I remember from when I was a child. Her hair uncurls and lays on her shoulders, her eyebrows knitting in concern.

"But we can start again. I know we can. We can run away, somewhere where the rules don't apply and no one knows us." She pitches, grabbing my hands in eager anticipation of my decision. My hands start to burn, the fingertips tingling, then my palms becoming alight with flame I can't see.

"What are you doing?" I demand, her grip vice like on my hands and my tone becoming frantic.

Then the reality shoots up from my gut into my eyes, so I can clearly see it written in words that I understand. But my head is a bit cloudy on the edges, and I huff like an enraged bull as my eyesight goes gold. She's not mother. Never was.

"You demon. Let go of me before I send you hell to drown in the Styx!" I shout, wrenching my hands away and stumbling back with a sense of agility and elation. Like I'm floating. And I am.

"Tut-tut now Liridia. Don't act so high and mighty, you are nothing but a poor axeman's daughter." She chastised, purple flicking over her hands and caressing her face.

My plain tunic and trousers evolves into high grade battle armour, my gauntlets and my breastplate are etched with gold, the symbol of the box carved into the steel, a circle seemingly drowning in vines.

A helmet materialises from the nape of my neck to fit snugly on my head. I growl, and my mother snaps her fingers.

"They don't respect you, you know. They know you're nothing but some scum under their boots. They don't know you like I do."