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Everything had been perfect. Magnus had been so happy. He had lived in absolute bliss—Lucretia couldn’t have dreamed of a better happily ever after for her dear friend.
But that was gone now.
She watched from afar as Magnus collapsed near the ruins of Raven’s Roost. Debris from the support column and the colony that had been atop it were piled in a broken mess where the Craftmen’s Corridor had once stood, pieces of cabins and chunks of stone were scattered below at the base of the cliff.
He was wailing.
Her heart panged with sympathy as she watched him keen with an unparalleled grief. Suffering that she had never seen from him in their hundred years together. Torment she had never seen in her entire life.
It was unbearable.
She had to fix it.
“Lucretia.”
A deep, chilling voice beckoned from behind her. She recognized it instantly, and was immediately filled with both joy and dread.
She turned around to see the dark phantasmal form of her friend and rival, Barry Bluejeans.
Any shred of hope that had sparked within her upon hearing his voice died out, as she felt the unmistakable sensation of someone prying into her thoughts. She tried to push him out of her mind, but his lich form was too powerful. But as quickly as he had come in, he relinquished. Barry held his skeletal arm outstretched threateningly and aimed point-blank at her. Crackles of red energy flashed around it, ready to fire.
“Barry,” Lucretia began. “I—”
“I won’t let you do this, Lucretia. This is where I draw the line. You’ve taken our family’s bonds. You’ve taken our Captain’s very soul. You have taken their memories and their pasts. I will not let you take his future, too.”
His words stuck in her like a knife.
“The relics would have destroyed this world,” Lucretia explained. “And they destroyed our chance of happiness. I’m giving us that chance back.”
“You can’t. I don’t want to fight you, Lucretia, but I will. Magnus found love. I won’t let you take that away from him. I won’t let you make him forget about his wife like you tried to make me forget about mine.”
As he spoke his last few words he struggled, his spectral form flickered as the red electricity of his lich power charged around him.
Lucretia desperately, angrily motioned back towards Magnus.
“Is this happiness, Barry?! Is this peace?!”
“No. But it is part of life. Grief is necessary. You have not erased their pain, Lucretia. You have only buried it. And by doing so, you have condemned them to suffering.”
“How can you say that?! Magnus was happy. Merle has a child. He’s on the beach where he always wanted to be. Taako is on tour, he’s far happier than I ever dreamed he could be without his sister. And Davenport…I know how it seems, but he’s okay—this is only temporary—I wouldn’t let him go on like that if he wasn’t at least at peace, I promise—I know it looks bad but as soon as I have the Relics and I’ve put everything right—”
“You are wrong, Lucretia.” Barry’s form quivered briefly. “You can’t possibly begin to understand how that constant sensation of presque-vu torments them. It is torture. It is why I cannot bear to be in my body.”
Lucretia swallowed her guilt. She held her tongue and let him speak.
“Merle grew listless with monotony and ruined his marriage,” Barry began. “He has abandoned his home, his child. And Taako—he knows something is missing. I see it. He is tormented. He pours two glasses of wine at a time and doesn’t understand why. He leaves space for her when he rests at night. He leaves space for her, and he doesn’t even know who she is. He doesn’t even know she ever existed.”
He floated closer, and Lucretia took a step back.
“I watched someone ask him about his childhood, and he said “we”. And he could not grasp why he had said that. Because he believes he’s been alone his whole life. Lucretia. To have a bond as strong as theirs, only to have that bond ripped away—torn from his memories and from very existence itself—it leaves an empty space. And that space has made him bitter and cold.”
He grew closer still, his spectral form popping and fizzling slightly, so Lucretia reached for her staff.
“And as for Magnus—he was plagued with nightmares he could not see or explain. He had Julia to comfort him, but now…”
“Barry, you’re losing yourself,” she warned. “Your voice, your manner of speech, you—you don’t sound like yourself. Work with me. Please. We can find the relics and end this. We can look for Lup together.”
“You know I can’t do that, Lucretia,” He replied sternly. “You need to stop this. Your shield will break all the bonds of this world. It will suffocate.”
“Surely that’s better than being completely consumed by the Hunger,” Lucretia insisted.
“We have had this argument often enough for me to know I cannot convince you to stop,” Barry said. “I came here for one reason only: to protect Magnus from you.”
Barry raised his arm again, red static energy building up around it.
“Do not take his love from him. He will be nothing but a shell. He will be consumed with grief from empty spaces he cannot make sense of. He is already suffering enough, I won’t let you augment that suffering with desiderium.”
Lucretia balled her hands into fists, clenching her teeth as she spat, “You really want me to just leave him like this?”
“It is not your decision to make, Lucretia. None of this has ever been your decision to make.”
“I did what I had to do, Barry. To keep this world safe. We promised Lup—”
“Don’t talk about Lup. Wherever she is, she never would have wanted this,” Barry shouted, his lich form sputtering again, much more so than the last time. Barry nearly lost control—Lucretia quickly threw up a Shield of Faith in front of herself as a bolt of red energy shot off of him and hit a nearby tree, scorching it.
Barry took a moment to collect himself, then quietly continued. “Promise me you won’t erase Raven’s Roost. Promise me you won’t erase Julia Burnsides.”
Lucretia dissolved her shield with a heavy exhale.
“Promise me.”
Her throat felt tight, and her voice trembled as she spoke: “If that’s what you want, Barry—fine. I am not giving up my quest to restore the Light of Creation, but I promise you. I won’t erase anything more from our family’s lives. No matter how bad things get for them.”
Hearing this, Barry vanished into thin air—but Lucretia continued to hear his voice as she turned and scanned the area for any sign of him.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Lucretia, but know this,” Barry’s voice echoed around her. “If you break that promise. I will kill you.”
She gripped her Bulwark Staff tighter, her heart heavy.
Before his voice faded out completely, he left her with one last quiet plea. This time, his speech sounded a little more like his own—it still was a harsh whisper of a lich, but it rang with the distinctive compassion and deep baritone voice of Barry Bluejeans.
“Please don’t make me do that. In spite of everything, I want to believe…I have to believe…we can all be together again someday.”
She could no longer feel his presence, the intense arcane power of his lich form gone.
She took a deep breath and looked back over her shoulder off into the distance, to see Magnus still doubled over on the ground near the ruins of Raven’s Roost, weeping loudly.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” she whispered.
Barry was right. She could not just erase any and every hardship that came to her family. A line had to be drawn somewhere. A life without pain was no life at all. They had worked so hard, and suffered for so long—they deserved normalcy. She simply could not prevent her loved ones from feeling pain forever.
No matter how much she wanted to.