--Luci--

  “So… Why'd you come with me? Your lover's going through a lot back there. Shouldn't you be staying with her?”

  The two of us walked in silence until we were out of earshot from the house and Setsuna began to question me.

  “She doesn't need me right now. What she needs is some time with her sister. This is the first time they've actually been able to talk as siblings in a while after all.”

  “Mhm…” She narrowed her eyes at me, suspicious of my answer. “You sure that's it? You don't wanna learn more about your lover's sister?”

  “There'll be plenty of time for that ter. Besides…” She was right though, I did have other reasons to follow her. “I wanted to learn more about you.”

  “Huh?” We stopped walking at this point, and she turned to face me with her hands on her hips. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  Ah. I think I can see now why Mira ended up falling for her in her past life. She was trying to look mean and imposing to get an answer from me, but it ended up having the opposite effect. If it wasn't for countless hours in etiquette lessons growing up, and the fact that I'm with Mira now, I'd probably end up falling for this girl myself. I probably should answer her question before she really does get upset.

  “I meant what I said. We haven't known each other very long, but I'd like to think we can be pretty good friends. That being said, I'd like to get to know you better.”

  “Okay…? We'll have plenty of time to do that when we go to your brother's wedding, so… why now?”

  “I wanted to talk to you alone.” As in where Mira won't hear.

  “Hah… You really just want to know more about what Ren was like, don't you.”

  “Well…” I guess it only makes sense that she'd find out what I was pnning. Hmm… Now, how do I recover from this? I wish I had paid more attention in those lessons. “That does sound nice, but that can wait. I really wasn't lying.”

  “Well… What is there to know about me?” Oh? That didn't take as much convincing as I expected. “I was raised by my grandfather, who was the st Fire Chief, since my parents died when I was a baby. I was taught from a very young age how to use my Sacred Fire magic, since everything the prophecy said pointed towards me being the one to grant the hero his sword and travel with him. I-”

  “Slow down a minute. What do you mean by ‘prophecy’? I don't believe that there's any kind of magic that can tell the future.”

  “Right. We've known about the prophecy for as long as we've had access to the Gates and… Mira's sword. A little under five-hundred years ago. My grandfather thought that they were given to us by the Goddess to protect, as that was also the same time the Tribes each gained their genetic magic. Anything else?”

  “So all of the Tribes have a kind of genetic magic? This is the first time I'm hearing about this.” All the books I've read in the Guild that had supposedly registered all kinds of genetic magic had nothing about this.

  “Yes. The Fire Tribe had Sacred Fire magic, the Frost Tribe had Frost magic, the Lightning Tribe had Lightning magic, and the Earth tribe had Terra magic. It was specifically the bloodlines of each of the chiefs that had these magics. You already know about mine, which is just a golden fire with the healing and anti-undead properties of Light magic. Frost and Terra are respectively just Ice and Earth magic that can be controlled without using a spell. Lightning magic should be pretty obvious from the name. It's just the ability to make lightning and electricity.”

  “So how come I've never heard about these before? I at least know about your magic, but even then that was only after I met you.”

  “We try to keep it a secret. The less people know about us, the better. When MAF attacked us, that was not the first time. We've been mostly okay for the st five-hundred or so years, around the time we gained our magics, but before then we were constantly suffering from the prejudice of others. It was the same for many other beastkin, but for some reason we were always preyed on the most. I guess we were just the favorite group to take sves from.”

  “Oh… I guess that makes sense. Although, it may just be me, but from the way you worded that it really seemed like you were talking from experience.”

  “Are you calling me old?” Setsuna was smiling now. It seemed like she was finally warming up to me and enjoying our conversation. “Nah. Grandpa used to tell me a lot of stories. Unlike me though, he was talking from experience. There's something about our Sacred Fire magic that lets us live a very long time. It's simir for the other Tribes, but I guess their Chiefs tend to retire and go explore the world or something after a while.. They've all had five or six generations of chiefs by now. For the Fire Tribe though? Grandpa was the only Chief. I would've been the second, but as you've seen, I decided to unite the Tribes into one, and now I'm the first Chief of that.”

  She put on the widest grin I've ever seen from her, clearly proud of her achievement.

  At some point without me consciously noticing, we began walking again, and it was at this point when we arrived back at the Gate.

  “Well, Luci. We did tell them we were going to head back, but I'm actually kinda enjoying this. Wanna just stay here and wait for them?”

  “Sure, why not.” I nodded in agreement. “Besides, we did get a little sidetracked from the earlier conversation. I believe before that you were saying something about that prophecy predicting that you would travel with Mira?”

  “Ah yeah. I forgot exactly what all the prophecy said, but it said something about me delivering the hero his sword. Of course, that hero ended up being Ren. The prophecy didn't say anything about him dying though. And it doesn't feel like MAF was really as evil as the prophecy made it out to be…”

  “Hmm…” Now that's a concerning thought. Perhaps if this prophecy was predicting that the ‘hero’ would defeat some kind of evil entity, maybe this MAF group wasn't what the prophecy was talking about? I'll have to know what this prophecy says before I jump to any conclusions. Might as well ask. “So what exactly does this prophecy say?”

  “Haha,” Setsuna began scratching her head with one finger while nervously ughing. “About that… I forgot.”

  Well, that's a shocking discovery.

  “Isn't that like, really important for your people? Something the Chief should remember?”

  I wasn't trying to scold her or anything by saying that, but it's a little concerning that a leader doesn't remember something that should be so important for her people.

  “Eh.” She shrugged as if she couldn't care less “I never really bothered with it too much. I tried a couple times to memorize it, but it was too long for me and never stuck around for long. If you really want to know though, all of the Elders should know it. You could also ask Shimo's mom or Ina. There's also the tablet it was originally written on, which is currently at Ren's shrine.”

  “Alright. I'll have to go see this shrine, I've noticed it from a distance, but I haven't really gone to check it out yet.” Wait. If the shrine is for Ren, would that be where he's buried? Or I guess where his ashes would be if he was cremated. “Now that's a weird thought…”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing. I just thought it'd be pretty weird if Mira went to that shrine. I mean, it's basically memorializing her own death.”

  “True…” I seemed to have touched on a topic I shouldn't have, as her smile completely disappeared, and her eyes looked to the ground with as much life in them as a corpse.

  “Okay… Moving on, could you tell me a little more about what she- er, he was like when you were traveling together?”

  Luckily, that seemed to be the right thing to ask to cheer her back up, and for a second I even thought her eyes had tiny, golden fmes in them.

  “Gdly!”

  Alpy376