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The building was crumbling. The wall which Wip had blasted through a moment ago toppled and crashed into spray of dust and ash. If someone was alive in that wreckage, there was no way for Luci to tell.
It took a few seconds for Luci to realise what she’d just lost. Her breath grew heavy. Her throat tightened. She let out a strangled scream.
“Mr. Wiiip!”
She scrambled towards the crumbling wall, body feeling like lead even after Wip had reduced her enma fatigue. As she reached the hole, the heat and smoke rushing out of it and into the open air became unbearable. Wobbling from heat and exhaustion, she collapsed flat against the ash-ridden floor. She tried to peak over through but the smog obscured her vision.
“No, no no no,” Luci stammered. “You’re not dead. You can’t be dead. You—”
She broke into a coughing fit. The building was turning to cinder. She forced her breathing into a steady rhythm, if only to not choke to death on the smoke before the fires took her.
“No, you’re not dead, Mr. Wip,” she said to reassure herself. “I thought, for sure, that everything was going to be okay, because you were going to catch me.”
The fire wasn’t the only danger she faced. Snatching up her staff, Luci crawled into the open lobby and towards the hole that had been punched into the opposite side of the building, where the blast that had taken Wip originated from. Luci squinted against the smoke to make out close to a hundred figures dressed in black. They kept their distance from the taking flames, far down the narrow street. Standing in front of them was a man with a scar running down his face. Flak.
The scarred man raised his gun. A white light engulfed it, illuminating the street. Gasping, Luci threw herself to the ground with everything she had. A second yellow blast screeched through the building, smaller than the one that had struck Wip.
Once the screaming in her ears died down, Luci pushed herself up on arms that felt like gelatine. The fall had winded her—she still weighed about a hundred kilograms—but her pain felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.
The building was creaking under its own weight. The walls Flak hadn’t yet knocked out were struggling to carry the rest of the structure, which had already been pushed to its limit after years of unregulated additions. He was trying to bring the building down on top of her, Luci realised. On top of his own men, too.
Luci’s knuckles whitened around her staff. “He’s evil,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “He’s just as bad as—no, he’s worse than the monsters. They don’t try to kill their own for dirty money.”
She pushed herself up with effort and sat on her shins. “But the worst part is, he hurt you, Mr. Wip. He hurt you and he tried to take away the only good thing that’s ever happened to me. But I know you’re not dead because you made a promise, okay. You promised!” She sucked air through her teeth. “So, I’m going to fall, just like you said I should. I’m going to fall farther than I’ve ever fallen before. And when I do, you’re going to catch me, because that’s what you promised!”
She reached out with her soul. There was no trepidation, no fear, no doubt left in her mind. She didn’t seek power because that was her duty, she sought it because she wanted it. Because she needed it. For the first time in her life, there was no conflict within her. She connected with Lunacogita, and they became one.
To be earth and moon, to be two things at once—she realised it was all ridiculous! Luci wasn’t some amalgamation of her mother’s will and her father’s neglect. She wasn’t a tool for wielding Lunacogita. She wasn’t some prodigy walking a path laid out for her by others. Wip had shown her that.
She was Luci. She was the moon and the moon alone, waxing and waning, risen above all, turning the tides as she saw fit.
And the tides had no choice but to obey, because she was the moon.
Enma poured from her, millions upon millions of fine threads of conform attaching themselves to anything larger than a mote of dust. She didn’t bother with the rest of the five forms—she was never any good with them anyway. And once the world was in her hold, once she was the centre of everything, she turned.
The building creaked. Flames halted their march upwards and instead made a chaotic charge for the floor. The smoke crossed from the ceiling and gathered at Luci’s feet. Then, with a grunt of effort, everything lifted off the ground. The flames, the smoke and ash, the bodies knocked unconscious in Wip’s fury, the whole building—it all rose into the sky.
Her body was quickly gaining weight, but she expended no effort standing. Luci stepped gently along the torn-up floor towards the street, walking underneath an ocean of concrete, pipes, and steel.
She stepped out onto the street. Each footstep landed just a little higher than the last, until she was walking up and through the sky. She came to a halt in the middle of the narrow street, several stories above the ground. She was weightless. No, she was the moon, and there was no gravity at the centre of the moon.
Her threads kept shooting out, attaching to the surrounding buildings. Caged windows, pipes stapled to the sides of the buildings, and floating walkways whose only railings were the structures next to them, all groaned and screeched as they detached and rose into the sky. And then, with a series of roars, the buildings themselves detached from their foundations and joined their brethren.
The cacophony never reached Luci’s ears; all she could hear was her own blood thumping through her body, and her enma humming all around her. Her heart was racing. She could barely keep a straight face. For the first time in her miserable life, she was letting go, and the thrill of being herself was overwhelming.
Piloting her body with strings of conform, like a marionette, Luci turned towards the members of Flak’s gang. By the light of the full moon that cast its rays from behind her, Luci could make out the terror in their eyes.
Luci’s lips parted into a grin. She raised her staff and swept it down and around in a circle. The motion was sluggish and difficult, the staff dragging from the glut of enma flowing through it. Then she began the first of Lunacogita’s incantations.
From high the mountain comes the silent horde,
From Lady Starfonyne, her fates they’ll steal.
So thus, she gave mankind her binding cord,
To lash the monsters’ hearts upon her wheel!
Enma roared through her and around her. The debris Luci had raised, currently floating without purpose, began to tremble.
Then it all began to move. Concrete split from steel. Tables and desks flew from their homes. They turned around Luci, gaining speed, orbiting faster and faster. Luci’s hair and dress whipped about her in the wake of the orbiting debris. They formed a shell around Luci, who was grinning ear to ear.
The thugs down the street tried to turn tail and run. However, their leader, Flak, wasn’t shaken just yet.
“What are you idiots doing?” he screamed. “Shoot her! The meld drops if she’s dead.”
Finding their wits, they all fired without rhythm. Beams of light and blurs of darkness struck at the shell around Luci. The rotating debris formed layers so dense and it moved so rapidly that nothing could penetrate it. Some of their attacks couldn’t even make it that far and instead were intercepted by Luci’s enma. They, too, joined the rotating mass.
Then Luci started laughing. It was all so simple! All of her struggles, all of her worries, all of her fear and shame, they all meant nothing to the moon.
A crater formed beneath her as cobblestones were ripped from the earth. Everything in a wide sphere around her was gradually being sucked into Luci’s orbit. Slowly, she turned. No, she didn’t turn. Rather, the world turned around her. The earth was above her head, the sky below, and those who’d hurt her were just before her.
With her body arced backwards like the crescent moon, with her hair flowing freely about her, its silver glow cutting through the darkness, she pointed Lunacogita at her enemies.
Before the earth and oceans, formed by chance,
Before the moon’s glow pierced the empty night,
All raged within a formless, dark expanse,
And all shall be once more by Wirsay’s might!
At once, the debris that rapidly orbited Luci was released. They howled through the sky and crashed into the street where she pointed. A patch of the Shanties vanished in a cloud of debris and carnage, pelted by meteor after meteor after meteor.
Luci laughed at the destruction. It was so easy, so absurd. So right.
This was her. This was what she could do when she was finally freed, and it felt so good to release all the tension that had been bearing her down for years.
Then her body stiffened. With a gasp, the rivers of enma that had been pouring from her soul cut off like a faucet. The world slipped out of her grasp. Enma fatigue had finally caught up with her. She lost her connection with Lunacogita, and now it was just a lump of glowing metal in her hands. It was heavy. She dropped it, and she fell with it.
Her mind was hazy. Fatigue was taking her. She could barely stay conscious as she plummeted towards the earth. She was heavy. Way too heavy. She’d used more enma than ever in her life and she couldn’t offset it any longer with whatever power she’d tapped into earlier. Vaguely, she realised that the fall would kill her.
Despite knowing this, Luci smiled on her way down. For the first time in her life, she’d let go. She’d been free. Too bad freedom was such a fleeting thing. The world would always catch up to you one day. Still, it was good while it lasted.
When she landed, the ground trembled.
