at the bottom of the universe, looking up

Alone, she stands on an outcrop above a sprawling valley. Her Ghost pops up over her shoulder and scans the area with his optic squinted, then looks back to the toppled Pyramid behind them.

“Are you pleased with your life choices, now?” he says gruffly.

Luzaku laughs—softly, not to alert anything that might have pursued her on her escape through the Pyramid, but brightly. “Why have you followed, Light, if the path this one has chosen to walk upsets you so?”

Euloch scowls. He hates when she calls him Light.

“We should look for others.” He is evading the question, but Luzaku lets it slide.

Tentatively, she brings her hands up to her horns and feels them. Her neck aches again, unused to the weight. The chitin is smooth to the touch, almost silky, like thrallskin after first moult. She feels… not bare, entirely, but tender, in a way that makes her think of butterfly wings or blossoms in early morning dew. It brings back her first memories, of Euloch raising her from a pile of bones in a forgotten corner of the High Coven, of fumbling fingers and traitorous feet as she was only just learning the abilities and limits of her own body.

As they walk, Luzaku drinks in the landscape: the bright sky and lush greenery, the hills on the horizon, the vibrant flowers. This place, too, is a thing both ancient and new. Freshly created, yet ancient, eternal. The Sky’s creations are never untethered from the environment they sprout in; she recognises some of these flowers, remembers hearing this birdsong out in the marshes of the Coven. The heart of the Traveler, yes—but also her own, and maybe others’ too? The Deep’s, perhaps? Has it too had a hand in creating this magnificence? Has this place, too, arisen from its memories?

In a valley between two granite cliffs, they come across a massive statue of a Ghost. It lies toppled among the greenery, overtaken by weeds, and there is something haunting in how it stares them down with its stone optic larger than Luzaku is tall. Euloch stops, and she stops as well, and for a moment they contemplate the view in silence.

“When you first raised this one into the Sky, you said I should always strive to be the victor in any given battle.” Luzaku passes her own Ghost a sidelong glance, one-and-a-half eye. “Say now, who is the victor here?”

“You mean the weeds or the statue?” Euloch gives a long-suffering sigh, but indulges her. “The weeds. See how they have taken advantage of the cracks in the marble, how it is overgrown and conquered entirely.”

“But if not for the statue, the weeds would not have prospered so.”

“Perhaps, but it is still the weeds that remain while the statue lies toppled, a ruin of what it once was.”

“This one does not think it is a ruin,” Luzaku says softly. She presses her palm against the stone, then draws it back to stare at her claws. They are bone-white, still fresh and unchipped after her Morphing. “Is this one a ruin of what I once was? That one died, and this one lives.”

“Because you’re the victor,” Euloch says, somewhat begrudgingly.

“Over what? Myself?”

“As life is over death.”

“As the Sky is over the Deep.”

The Ghost bristles, and Luzaku cannot help the chuckle. He is so easy to wind up, so single-minded in his beliefs. She has wondered, often, why the Traveler made the decision it did to pair them so. In moments like these, she suspects she is beginning to understand.

“Are you pleased with your choice, now?” She echoes his earlier question back to him, eyes glinting in a smile. “You did not have to follow.”

“One does not win battles by running from them,” he snaps. Ah yes, what a mortifying thing. Talking about feelings.

“What would your victory be, in that case? Convincing this one of the validity of your sword-faith?”

“Might as well.”

“And your loss?”

Euloch glares at her, and does not answer. Luzaku grins. The Light, in its infinite grace, beams down on them from all around: dew on leaves, sun in the sky, the scent of vanilla in the air. Far ahead, where the largest Pyramid has burrowed, yellow-black sickness seeps into the ground.