CORRUPTED FILE [Lumina Chronicles Past Drafts]

Level Fourteen

[ELLE'S PoV]

If there was one thing I missed about Mags other than, well, literally every damn thing about Mags, it was the fact that she always kept our dorm somewhat clean and livable. If the usual state of my bed and computer nest was any indication, I didn't have that instinct. Clearly, Marc didn't either, because the two of us living in the same room made it look like a tornado had struck. Actually, scratch that, a tornado would at least pick things up.

Marc had grown tired of Pokemon after the third time he beat the Elite Four, and Mario Kart just wasn't holding his interest. As a result, he was painfully bored and incapable of going five minutes without reminding me.

"For the love of all that is good, can you shut up for ten minutes? Just ten. I'm not asking much." I was on the floor, trying (sooo unsuccessfully) to make a cape for Marc's cosplay, and I was seconds away from tossing the sewing machine out the window. Which would be bad, since it was borrowed from an acquaintance who lived down the hall. She'd probably murder me if I hurt her baby.

Marc flopped on my bed with a dramatic sigh. "If you want me to be silent, give me a new game to play before I die of boredom."

I glanced up at him over the sewing machine instruction manual. "Ah, but if you die, I get eternal silence."

"But after I die, I'll come back as a ghost to torment you from beyond the grave." He pouted. "Give me another game, you have so many! Give me something with adventure, like Pokemon, not that dull car game with the weird turtle shells."

"Alright, fine." I sighed and stood up off the floor, wincing as my joints cracked. How long had it been since I last attended a Krav Maga class? Too long, clearly. Maybe later I could convince Marc to run through some practice exercises with me.

For now though, my priority was shutting him up so I could actually get some work done. I plugged my PS3 into the tv and handed Marc the controller. "Here."

"This is a game?" Marc asked. He eyed the screen warily as he turned the controller over in his hands. "It is much larger than my DS."

"First of all, that's my DS. This is called a Playstation. You're gonna play Shadows of Light."

"Oh!" Marc perked up. "This is the fictional interpretation of my world, correct?"

"Yep. Click start." I glanced at him. "It's the button that says start."

Nowadays, Mags and I did most of our gaming on PC, but we kept the PS3 in our dorm for one specific game, the only game that really mattered.

The familiar SoL theme song came to life in horns and drums, but the happy feeling it usually brought was missing. Well gee, I wonder why?

The opening animation, depicting the heroes of the game in the midst of their most iconic battles, flashed brightly across the screen. I glanced over at Marc to gauge his reaction and was surprised to see him frowning. "What's up?"

"I recognize the moons, and the palace of Lumina, but who are these people supposed to be?" he asked.

"That's Prince Jareth, he becomes king at about the midpoint in the game." I pointed at the characters as they flashed by. "That's Arvan, the court sorcerer and Jareth's best friend. He tragically dies in the war, but apparently his son will be in the new game. That babe right there is Lady Amaranth, the love interest—"

"Amaranth?" Marc interrupted with a scoff. "That is not Queen Amaranth."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course it's not actually her, this is just the game version."

"I see. Is it common for 'game versions' to look nothing like their real life counterparts?"

"Um." I thought for a moment. "I wouldn't know how to answer that, seeing as I'm still not used to the idea of there being real life versions of game characters."

"Well, they made Amaranth blonde, and human" he said. "I do not think I'm impressed with this game."

Mags would be heartbroken to learn she didn't actually look like Amaranth, who had been her favorite SoL character for years. She'd gone as Amaranth for halloween every year since the game was released. Then Marc's second statement registered and I stared at him. "What do you mean, 'they made her human.' Queen Amaranth isn't human?"

"No, of course not. How could she be a princess of Ignus if she was human? That doesn't make any sense." Marc rolled his eyes as if this should have been common knowledge.

I pointed at the tv screen, where the opening video crawled to a close and the iconic roses burst into flames across the title screen. "This is my only look into your world, so if it's not in this game I don't know about it. What is she if she isn't a human?"

"I just said, Ignean." Marc and I stared at each other blankly, then he sighed and clarified. "A dragon."

The fangirl in me kicked into full on theory mode, wondering why that had never been touched on in the game. Jareth's love interest was a noble from the enemy side? But then logic took over and I shook my head. "That makes no sense. The 'real' Amaranth is married to Jareth, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so explain to me why the beautiful Jareth Lousvar of Lumina would choose to marry a giant, violent, lizard monster when he could get literally any girl in the kingdom?" I asked.

Marc gasped. "Elle! I'm shocked to hear you talk like that, I thought you were better than most humans?"

I sat back on the carpet and sighed, rubbing my temples. "What did I say wrong?"

"Dragons were a gentle species, and ancient, powerful variant of Shifters, so they didn't look like that all the time. Let me guess, your Shadows of Light leaves out that they most generally occupied a humanoid form?"

I sat in silence, processing this information as Marc began the game tutorial. Everything I knew about the Shadow Realm was as follows:

-The humans of Lumina lived in constant fear of the magical creatures that controlled the realm, the dragons being the worst and most aggressive.

-After his mother, Queen Lynn, was killed by a dragon, Prince Jareth (later King, after his father met the same fate) vowed to avenge her and protect his kingdom once and for all.

- He set out on a noble quest to rid the realm of dragons, aided by his friend and sorcerer Arvan, and love interest Amaranth. Along the way he encountered enemies of all different species, who wanted to take Lumina's wealth for themselves.

- Jareth fought valiantly, and though both his father and Arvan were killed along the way, he was successful in his quest of ridding the realm of dragons.

-Lumina lived on in prosperous peace under King Jareth's rule until a decade or so later, when the second game is to be set. With Jareth's son Casimir leading the charge against a new threat, the villainous Abandoned Order.

If the portrayal of dragons in the game was skewed then...

"Marc," I began carefully, "did I hear wrong, or did you describe the dragons in past tense?"

There was a sickeningly long stretch of silence before Marc answered. "That is one thing this game seems to have gotten correct. The nation of Ignus, men, woman, and children alike, were completely eradicated by Lumina. I know of only two that still live, one of them being Lumina's Queen Amaranth."

I sat up, feeling nauseous. "If that's true, then how could Amaranth stand by and watch her people be slaughtered?"

Marc spoke more quietly than I was used to, which made sense given the heavy subject matter. "I don't know. Kindle— he's a friend of my brother's and the only other dragon left, to my knowledge— He despises Amaranth. Says she was a traitor and," he did air quotes and dropped his voice an octave lower, "'deserves nothing less than the same brutal fate she inflicted on my people.'"

"Turn the game off," I whispered.

It's a strange feeling, learning that your fictional hero was the cause of a real life genocide. But if Mags was with them, engaged to that monster's son, then getting to her as soon as possible was more important than ever.