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Inside the Eldan Sanctum’s prayer room, the group of rebel stragglers seeking to change the world is, in a twist of fate, seeing their own world changed.
The object of their quest is laid lifeless upon the altar, and their captain is swaying in dazed agony, magla almost visibly emanating from his body. His fairy companion, normally so close to him, is floating eerily still far behind him.
She frankly doesn’t understand any more than the others what is going on, but Juani Cygnus alone feels as though this is a scene she’s seen before.
In her, in that moment, there’s an innate nidia-borne familiarity that painfully surges through as she watches her captain fall to his knees, doubled over in pain, murmuring otherwise incomprehensible words :
“i have nothing..?”
“all i am…” “…all fake ?”
“my body... a lie”
It hardly makes sense, he’s elda, not nidia… but regardless, it is happening right now, and she recognizes the pain as one she has experienced herself : a deep-seated panic at her difference, when she was alone with no one to comfort her, and a persisting self-loathing over the love and success the “lie” had found.
She has been helped through the fears derived from that pain by none other than their captain, and so now that she sees that same hurt grace his fragile features, threatening to engulf him, she knows she has to give back some of the hope, the trust that he shared with her.
She takes a few steps towards him, feeling the confused gazes of her companions behind her.
No one had dared to touch him in this state, but Junah is a daring person.
Her heart hangs heavy as she softly places a hand on his back. He doesn’t react, clawing at his hair with a face so scrunched up he’s tearing up, but his body is warm and it feels tingly under her hand like shimmering lights if they could be touched.
She swiftly moves around Will to kneel down in front of him and holds his shoulders firm and grounding, gently rousing his awareness back just enough for him to be able to hear her speak in his daze :
“Even if it’s a lie, it is still you . Our beloved, reckless, selfless captain.”
Her words are simple, but from a place so personal, her voice warbles ever so slightly, mirroring a hint of the undying belief she had declared to her sister back at the cold mountain.
It’s sincere and it’s the truth.
She knows he’s heard her when a single tear, the smallest she’s ever seen, falls from the corner of his eye, landing on her knee.
She smiles at him, relieved, and his face softens a bit, his jaw still shaking with displaced words.
Strohl and Eupha are the first to come up to them, but soon, most of the party stands at Will’s side, surrounding him and calling him back to them.
Gallica and Hulkenberg are the only ones to hang back, seemingly distraught.
Pleased to at least have conveyed her message, Junah releases the blue-haired boy.
She watches carefully as his face relaxes fully, when suddenly his arms drop from the death grip he had on his hair, and to her absolute surprise, his entire body follows.
She barely has the time to catch him, and she would have succeeded… but the moment he makes contact with her body, his small form crumbles into endless motes of warm golden light, starting from where his collar and chin would have hit her shoulder.
She is fairly certain that there’s shouting around her, but her focus is entirely on the horrifying sight of the disappearing boy.
Her eyes are like saucers as the shimmers that were once her captain scatter like motes of dust, as if he was never there at all, before altogether moving past her to where the lifeless body of the Prince lay still.
Or, to where the Prince’s body was supposed to be laying.
Following the shimmers, her wide eyes reflect only the same warm light where his body would’ve been, illuminating the room in sunset tones.
All the golden motes coalesce, slowly forming the bright light into the shape of a person, a very familiar one.
At first she thinks it the Prince’s body, from the shape of the hands held to his chest. But at once, she realizes it’s not quite it :
Shorter, poofy tangle of hair, sturdy traveler's coat, ankle warmers and worn shoes…
It’s their captain.
But after the shapes, the color comes to the form, and it changes everything :
Strands of gleaming silver, with the subtlest hint of forget-me-nots in the tint. Every part of the boy seems to glow brighter than before.
The Prince’s colors.
The light fades out, leaving behind a figure with closed eyes, who is both the Prince and her captain.
She doesn’t understand.
It’s so familiar she wants to scream.