The day after the exams had ended, I headed to Eweleanor’s chambers at the first crack of dawn. Entering without knocking again, of course.
“I’m worried,” I stated, as I entered her bedroom and sat down on her bed, all whilst ignoring the fact that I’d woken her and she was still in bed, dressed in her frilly pyjamas.
“About what?” she said, after needing a moment to centre herself.
“About Seren,” I stated more than said, again, whilst Fluminix trotted into the room after me. She climbed onto the bed next to the sheepkin woman, curling up with her head on the freshly-awoken headmistress.
“Hmm,” was all the woman could offer me in a soft hum, as she started to stroke the infant dragon’s head scales.
I shot her a glare, with little effect. “She’s been avoiding me for the past two weeks, ever since our date down in Mazliach. I’m worried that taking her there was a mistake.”
“Hmm,” she hummed again, not deigning to look at me.
“You disagree, don’t you?” I demanded more than asked, as my patience was running out.
“I do,” she said after a pause I felt took way too long. “And I don’t.”
“What do you mean?” I asked with a sigh, as I started to get the feeling I wasn’t going to like whatever she was about to say.
“It wasn’t so much where you took her as it was with who she was during the date,” she answered cryptically.
“Again, what do you mean?” I asked with exasperation and apprehension. “She was with me. All I did differently was dress up more than normal.”
She nodded with a hum, as she gave Fluminix a few scratches behind one of her horns, before looking up at me, into my eyes. “I did warn you to tell her before it was too late.”
I frowned in confusion and I closed my eyes, as I processed her words. She had warned me to reveal my past to Seren before it was too late. Seren had been avoiding me since our date two weeks ago, for which I dressed in my finest clothes…
My eyes shot open, wide-eyed in realisation. “Oh…”
“Yeah,” Eweleanor said with a little sigh, one of those she reserved for when she scolded students after they had realised their mistakes. It was rather annoying to be on the receiving end of one of them.
“Since when?” I asked carefully.
“Since the day after,” the traitorous sheepkin admitted without remorse. “She came to me, asking for the truth, as she had heard rumour about you and seeing you dressed up felt like confirmation for her.”
“Fuck…” was all I could say.
*******
And yet, I didn’t immediately seek Seren out to try and rectify my mistake. It wasn’t until the graduation ceremony for the outgoing sixth-year students was concluded a week later that I sought her out. At this time, I was the one trying to avoid her.
It took me a while to gather my courage.
As the parents and outgoing students filed out the front of the main building, I made my way out the back, into the grand courtyard and out through the northern gate. I’d hoped to find her near the Tender Department’s buildings, and I was in luck. Sitting out in the grassy field between the gate and the forest, the very same field we had met in, Seren sat looking at the forest with her shoulders slumped and her legs hugged against her chest.
My non-existent heart ached at the sight as I approached her, before placing a hand on her shoulder. “Seren, can we talk?”
She flinched away with a start as she turned around to look at me, before immediately frowning and distancing herself from me. “What do you want?”
“To explain myself,” I said, as I raised my hands and took a step back.
“Just so you can tell me more lies?” she countered, as she got up. “No, thanks.”
I took two quick steps forward and grabbed her arm, more forcefully than intended out of my desperation. “Please.”
Both of us turned towards the gate as the sounds of the Tender Department faculty returning from the main building drew close, before she sighed. “Fine. In private.”
I nodded and let her go, before I followed after her as she led us to a more hidden place between the buildings and the wall.
“So, what do you want to say in your defence?” she demanded, as she turned around to face me and crossed her arms.
“I should have told you sooner,” I admitted honestly. “I just…”
“You just what?” she prodded with a glare.
“I, admittedly, enjoyed the fact that you didn’t know,” I continued my confession.
She snorted derisively, which was rather unusual for her. “So, you just enjoyed me playing the fool, is that it? Make fun of naïve, little Seren, huh?”
“No!” I said firmly. “I never thought of you as naïve.” And definitely not as little, considering she was quite a bit taller than me.
“Then why?!” she demanded, suddenly raising her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me you were The Morgana, The Lich?! Why did you make me kiss you?! You led me into sleeping with you, for Luminus sake!”
“I never let you into doing anything you didn’t want to,” I protested.
“How could I know I didn’t want to, if I didn’t know?!” she asked, probably rhetorically.
“Well, sorry. I’ve just never had to tell anyone before, alright?” I threw back, as I was getting just a tad annoyed.
“How about, ‘hey, I’m Morgana, and I once destroyed all that was good in the world. I hope you’ll enjoy getting toyed with?!” she shot back just as hard. “Then, at least, I would have known all of this ‘I’m a nice lich’ stuff was just a façade.”
I took a deep breath to calm myself.
“It’s not a façade. This is who I’ve always been. Who I’ve always strived to be. This is how I’ve always intended to live as a lich. Teaching, keeping people safe, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do after my reign,” I tried to explain.
“Well, good to know you got to live your happily ever after. Never mind the deaths you’ve sown,” Seren retorted.
“Do you really think I haven’t paid for my sins?!” I asked with exasperation, due to how this conversation was getting derailed. But not feeling inclined to try and get back to talking about us.
“You wiped out a civilization. And got away with it. So, no, clearly not,” she shot back.
“I’ve spent five centuries paying for something I didn’t do,” I said with as much calm as I could.
“Don’t play the victim. You aren’t the victim in all this. Nobody made you kill millions,” she accused.
“Don’t tell me how many died because of my mistake. I know full well how many died because of it,” I retorted. And it certainly wasn’t millions.
Merely hundreds of thousands.
“If you know, why do you dare hold your head high and rule at the heart of the very civilisation you destroyed?! Was trying to kill Flavio Lumino not enough for you, that you had to reanimate him to kill his descendants?! On the day he saved us from the greatest evil that has ever walked Ceres, no less?!” she demanded angrily.
There was nothing I could say to that, as all of it was, technically, true. So, I stayed silent.
“What? No snappy comeback or ’perfectly reasonable’ answer?” she mocked provokingly.
Again, I remained silent, as those just weren’t claims I could refute. If I did, then I’d definitely be the villainess all of them made me out to be.
“You’re a monster,” she practically spat in my face.
“Enough!” I yelled suddenly, as I slammed my fist against the wall next to me. From the centre of my fist, a perfect, foot-wide sphere of stone and mortar just… disappeared, as I barely managed to control the violent outburst of necromantic magic that came with my vocal outburst.
Seren fell silent, went white as a ghost and took a step back. And I had no mind to feel sympathy for it, to feel bad for scaring her.
“You’ve no idea what it was like. You didn’t see a city burn before your very eyes. To hear your family’s death screams, whilst you’re lying on the ground, bleeding out in the courtyard. You’ve no idea the hell I’ve been through. So, don’t try to judge me. You aren’t qualified,” I growled, pressing on.
“As if you haven’t inflicted the same on others,” she retorted weakly, in an effort to regain her sense of moral superiority.
“You think your precious ‘Great Hero' was any better? Who do you think burned down a city with dragon fire, whilst the people still lived inside? Who do you think butchered my family, whilst leaving me to bleed out like some back-alley criminal? His hands are far from clean, darling,” I said mockingly with a sardonic smile.
“He simply did what was necessary. You didn’t leave him with any other choice,” she stated, even though it came out shakily.
I stewed in my emotions for a moment, trying my hardest to rein myself in, as I just wanted to lash out against everyone and everything around me. Luckily, I succeeded.
“We’re done here,” I stated definitively, before turning around and walking away from her.
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