Nyx’s POV
I have lived as the Great Shadow Spirit for thousands of years by now and it only took me a few centuries before I stopped interacting with other people and isolated myself. I invented a ball of Nature magic so that I didn’t have to hunt and instead I tried to sleep all day every day. My plan obviously failed because I couldn’t fall asleep when I wasn’t tired. It didn’t take long for me to invent another magic spell that forced me to fall asleep.
As time passed the same pattern repeated where I would continue to think of new ways that I could be lazier which would inspire me to invent weird and rarely useful spells. I thought to myself how strangely passing time like this wasn’t that bad of a way to live. However, whenever I started to think that way it would make me reminisce about my first love, the previous Great Shadow Spirit and my past regrets.
Back then the Great Shadow Spirit would find teenagers interested in magic before offering the choice of becoming a Shadow Spirit. However most would refuse after hearing of what they had to vow. At the time I never understood why they would let a chance to become a mage slip through their fingers.
When I had met her I greatly expressed my childlike interest in magic and she told me the contents of the vow. “You must vow to turn your back on men and only view other women as romantic interests.” Thinking she was making some kind of dumb joke, I made the vow and woke up as a Shadow Spirit the next day.
Later in life after I had studied under her for multiple years I had posed the question on if the vow was actually anything significant and all she told me was, “Well supposedly the first Great Shadow Spirit and Great Holy Spirit were both female knights that served the Spirit Monarch and were in love with each other. Ever since then people could only become a Shadow or Holy Spirit if they were gay. Even if you made the vow, as long as you weren’t gay you wouldn’t become a Spirit. It’s only a story but after many years of research I was never able to find an actual reason to explain why only Shadow and Holy Spirits had to go through this process."
I had walked away from the conversation feeling like I was finally accepted into a group and had an inside joke explained to me. At the time I wondered why I wanted to know the answer to that question but I now realize that was because I started to realize my feelings for her. In the end I never told her my feelings before she died.
On the day she died she suggested a mock battle where we would only use Shadow Magic to see how talented I had gotten with my magic. I had not realized that accepting it would mean that I would meet the requirements for dueling the Great Shadow Spirit over who should be the next Great Shadow Spirit, and thus I fell into her trap.
At the suggested time to meet up I had gone to her room and once there I found a horrifying sight. The woman I loved was hanging from the ceiling. I rushed over to her but she was already dead and I had no way to bring her back. I started to cry as it sunk in that I would never get to say how I felt about her.
Looking at the table next to her I found a suicide note. It detailed how she has grown tired of living forever and how she could never stop despairing over her dead wife. She wrote down that she believed I had the potential to become the strongest Great Shadow Spirit and so she tricked me into accepting a duel so that I would become the next Great Shadow Spirit.
To check if it was true I tried using elements aside from Shadow magic and I was able to use them. All Great Spirits could use every element aside from the one that conflicted with the element of the Great Spirit they are. Shadow and Holy conflict. Fire and Water conflict. Air and Earth conflict.
Ever since that day I thought about how if I confessed my feelings or showed her that she could still find happiness in the world she might still be alive today. While I was thinking that I was having these dark thoughts too often nowadays, I noticed an unusual thing had appeared at the nearby lake with my Air magic that I always have on. What I found was an adorably small young child cowering in front of a bear.
Curious on how a child had managed to make it this deep into the forest I teleported in front of her and killed the bear. I turned around and was about to question her, but before I could she passed out right in front of me. Scared that she died I picked her up and checked for a pulse. She was thankfully still alive but when I picked her up I noticed that she had lost an arm and I instantly thought that she must have had a tough life to be out here with a missing limb. That was when I decided to make a second vow in my life. I vowed that I would protect her until the end of time and make sure that she could always be happy.
When she had woken up she said her name was Kat and it didn’t take long for her to bombard me with questions about magic. In a slightly joking manner I said that if she made a vow she could become a Shadow Spirit and become able to use magic. I certainly didn’t expect her to actually become a Shadow Spirit especially after she had made the vow in such an incomplete manner without even knowing what it detailed.
The next few weeks I started teaching her magic and the sight of her trying her best to cast spells always brought a huge grin to my face. So when she became disappointed that she could only cast Shadow magic I immediately used the shadows in the world to locate the other Great Spirits and then I teleported away to ‘convince’ the other Great Spirits to bless her with their power. Though it went a bit differently when I got to the Great Holy Spirit.
When I teleported to the Great Holy Spirit I noticed that she was in a cathedral crying over a casket. Feeling a bit awkward I reminded myself why I was here and I walked up to her. She heard me walking up to her and quickly wiped the tears from her eyes. When she turned around I forgot what I was about to say as I lost myself in her good looks. Not even the puffy eyes caused by her crying could ruin the beauty I saw in her face.
While I was getting lost in her beauty she became increasingly more annoyed by my presence. Snapping out of my haze I introduced myself as the Great Shadow Spirit and requested for her to bless Kat. Hearing my reason for bothering her she yelled at me to go away and in the next second I was standing back in front of my house with Kat. I assumed that she sent me away with some Holy magic variation of teleportation. I began to continue Kat’s magic lesson but I couldn’t keep my mind away from the Great Holy Spirit.
I attempted many times to meet the Great Holy Spirit again but it took many attempts before I could actually manage to speak to her before I got kicked out. When I was finally able to get out an apology she forgave me surprisingly quickly. She introduced herself as Mary and told me how the day I met her she was grieving for her husband.
Upon hearing that I was confused. I thought that similar to Shadow Spirits the vow to become a Holy Spirit only worked if you were gay. I briefly pondered if it was a forced relationship, but if it was then why was she crying so heavily when we first met. I asked her about it hoping that I wasn’t imposing on her privacy too much but she was fine with telling me that she was bisexual and could love both genders.
She also told me that she had only become the Great Holy Spirit a few days before I met her. While we may have had a horrible first meeting we bonded over some shared interests in experimenting with magic and quickly became friends and eventually lovers. Eventually she introduced me to her blood-related daughter who was two years younger than Kat. Throughout the introductions Mary had never stopped doting on her daughter and it didn’t take long for me to dote on her as well.
In return I had explained that I was also taking care of a girl that I considered to be my adopted daughter. Mary had shown great interest in meeting her and feeling a bit competitive. I had invited her over to show just how great a mom I was. After Mary and Kat had been introduced it didn’t take long for Mary to dote on Kat and for Kat to start considering Mary as another adoptive mother.
