Chapter Text
You were quite fed up with it all, really.
You had eight children once, though not at the same time. Most of them never met each other. But you were their mother all the same. You loved them all like a mother would and they loved you back in kind.
And they were all dead. One after the other.
And it broke your heart every single time. In your darkest moments you wished the repeated loss would harden you. Would callous your heart, make the grief easier to bear. Instead the pain redoubled every time. Like picking at a scab, it only made things worse.
And it only hurt worse knowing the part that you played in their deaths. Knowing you could only briefly shelter them, knowing you could only barely prepare them for the journey to the castle they each chose to make.
Knowing you were sending them to die at the hands of your husband for the sake of monster-kind.
You hoped they wouldn't. You told yourself each time that maybe, maybe, this child would make it out alright.
You never believed it though. After all, that's why you never asked for their names.
The names of your first two were already enough to haunt your dreams. The image of your son crumbling to dust over the corpse of his adopted sibling was burnt into your mind night after night. Each morning you'd jolt awake with tears in your eyes and the names of the two on your lips. You were both saddened and relieved you couldn't call for the names of the others.
You had eight children once, and the eighth had fallen yesterday. Isolated as you were in the Ruins, the rumors still flitted past your ears from the few monsters that lived there. It sickened you to hear the joy, the hope in their voices. One more soul, you'd hear them say. Only one more soul and we’ll be free. As if the sacrifice for their hopes and dreams wasn't the lives of innocent children.
Seven souls , you think, as you trudge miserably from the door that led to the rest of the Underground. Seven souls to break the barrier. You walk past your house, entering the area you used to train the humans. Seven souls to free monster-kind.
But why must they be children! Your barely controlled rage bubbles over as your fire magic lashes out, incinerating the puzzles in the room. Are we so desperate to see the surface that we are content with the murder of CHILDREN!? Flaming paws chased away the ruin's residents, errant fireballs smashed into the walls leaving deep gash-like scorch marks. Are we so eager to return to a place that once cast us out that we'd forget our morals!? A swipe of your paw left a training dummy burnt to cinders. That we'd force these young ones to fight for their lives!? Your foot smashes down and the cracked ground shatters, bits and pieces falling to the floor below. That we'd harm the ones who deserve PROTECTION more than anything else!? Flames annihilated switches, toppled down doors, consumed fallen leaves, and melted down spikes. And finally, your rage entirely spent, you paced listlessly towards the bed of flowers at the end of the ruins.
You reach the softly lit patch of ground where the first human child had fallen, nearly a century ago. Where the body of your adopted child lay buried. You collapsed in tears in front of their grave.
"In the end," you mutter between choking sobs. "I couldn't protect a single one of you, could I?"
You had eight children once, and you'd lost them all.
In a bed of golden flowers, with the last of your resolve, you quietly made a promise.
You would die before you lost another.