Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Monolith Year 33
Lune
Lune was exhausted.
The fight with Renoir had completely drained her, leaving her feeling as though she had drawn from her very life essence just to keep going. Perhaps it was because of where they were or who they were fighting, but the chroma felt heavier. When she moved her hands to pull the elements from the air, it felt like moving through tar. Even performing a simple heal with light stains caused her to sweat.
However, she couldn’t really complain. While the chroma had been more difficult to manipulate, it was also more powerful. She could feel it in the air around them, saturating the space until it was almost suffocating. The pictos on their weapons burned brighter, their attacks hitting harder than ever before. And it had all been worth it.
At least, until Verso entered the portal.
Dread sank within her with his whispered apology. The look in his eyes said that they weren’t finished.
But they were.
Maelle had gone after Verso– the only one who could without withering. When Lune attempted to follow after, she let out a small hiss when her hand immediately began to gommage. So they waited. She, Sciel, and Monoco could only watch as Maelle and Verso spoke their muted words. The dread fell deeper into Lune’s gut when she saw Maelle draw her rapier.
Lune had never been good with people. Reading them, interacting with them, understanding them – it was one of those skills that she hadn’t deemed important to study. It hadn’t been a priority when she was growing up, and her parents certainly hadn’t cared if she decided to read more about chroma rather than go out and socialize. She knew a few pleasant acquaintances and had even fewer friends because of this.
Lune was not good with people, but she knew anger. She knew fear and desperation.
She knew resignation.
But she could never accept it.
Which was why, when she saw Maelle and Verso draw blades against one another, she began to panic.
“What…?” Lune stepped as close as she could to the portal’s entrance without stepping through. Her first instinct was to find information, to find some explanation that would help her understand what insanity she was seeing. They had just fought together – they had won. “What are they doing?!”
“Verso… He's changed his mind,” Sciel said quietly, sadly.
Lune stared at her incredulously, “But why? He helped us force Renoir out.”
Monoco was silent, watching the two siblings duel.
Lune was too busy staring imploringly at Sciel to see the final blow. It wasn’t until Sciel let out a small gasp that she whipped her head back towards the fight. It was just in time to see Verso catch Maelle in his arms as she struggled for breath, blood splattered everywhere. Two large gashes crossed each other over her chest. It was a fatal blow that Lune had seen finish many of their foes.
And now it was the end of Maelle.
Verso’s final words to Lune rang through her ears. “I’m sorry.”
He was forcing Maelle – Alicia – out.
He was betraying them again.
“No, no, no, NO!” Lune stepped too close again, her fist raised as if to pound on the portal. Her hand burst into petals before she drew back, reforming slowly once she did.
Lune felt her breath catch in her throat as she saw Maelle disappear into a cloud of yellow petals. Verso watched them with visible anguish and eventually stood, his shoulders hunched and his eyes downcast.
At some point, Esquie had joined their group outside the portal. Neither Esquie nor Monoco said anything before stepping through and embracing Verso. Then they were gone, as well. Lune saw Sciel start to move, and she hated how broken her voice sounded as she called out for the other woman.
“Sciel!” Lune reached out to her.
The look Sciel gave her was not a smile, or even one of sadness. She let her hand brush Lune’s briefly, fleetingly, and then stepped beyond.
Lune suddenly felt numb to it all. Why? What did I do wrong? Could I have done something?
Then she looked up and met Verso’s eyes.
Flashes of those moments by their quiet fire came to mind. When everyone else had gone to sleep and Lune was fixing their journals or counting stars, he would find her. She remembered that night when they wrote their song together, when the moon was high in the sky, and they sat bare beneath it. She plucked a quiet tune as he gazed at her, a warmth there that made her feel like he was a man that she could finally understand.
She couldn’t keep the fury out of her glare even if she wanted to.
Lune felt her body tremble, and she let herself down, sitting cross-legged on the ground. She would not meet him. She would not fall apart in front of him. Her eyes held his by sheer force of will, daring him to confront her. He watched her for just a few more moments, his hand still outstretched from where he had tried to hold Sciel’s, but his fingers curled around nothing.
And then he turned away.
Coward. Betrayer. Liar.
Liar.
LIAR.
She wanted to scream the word out, but knowing it wouldn’t reach him, the shout died in her mouth and turned into a choked cry. Pressure built in her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes, but she refused to let him see a single tear. Lune held her head high until his end. All she could do was watch Verso and the faceless boy walk away, dispersing into a mix of red and white petals.
The next several minutes passed like a timeless mess.
Lune’s attempt to control her heavy breaths of rage quickly morphed into gasps for air. Now, without anyone else to see, she let herself crumble. Her fists beat the ground as she sobbed, her devastation finally hitting her. Everything she had ever done had culminated in nothing. Every drop of blood shed, every moment sacrificed, had led her to death.
She had failed. It was over.
Quiet tears blurred her vision, slipping down Lune’s cheeks through blood, dust, and paint. And then, it started softly. She started to feel the weightlessness of being erased. In a daze, she brought her hand up to stare at the petals peeling from her skin. Her head tilted, watching the sluggish rise of each layer curiously.
This was not like before. Renoir’s gommage was quick and painless – perhaps the older man’s version of mercy. This unpainting was slow, and while it didn’t hurt, it left a hollowness that grew with each second. It was as though her very essence, her soul, was being wiped away. It was becoming more difficult to think, her thoughts slipping away like the petals.
Lune almost thought it was easier this way. It made all of the complicated feelings more manageable. The anger and distress were strong at the forefront of her mind, but there were also small bursts of guilt… of relief. Relief that she could finally give up, that she could finally let herself be tired and weary. Her emotions all mixed, becoming echoes, each ripple getting quieter until there was nothing in her head.
Her eyes closed as she waited for the void.
“Fascinating.”
Lune was startled back to awareness, and everything rushed back into her with such force she gasped. There was a figure beside her; a fading woman stared down at her. Her head tilted to the side, arms folded. And while her form faded, it was different from the slow destruction that Lune was experiencing.
“You’ve so much chroma that you can withstand even this. At least for a while.”
Lune couldn’t help but glare at the figure. Even in the foggy haze that her mind had become, she remembered this one — as she remembered all of the strange shapes of chroma that spoke to them on their journey. This one had been at the Forgotten Battlefield, and that tall tower with the copies of enemies they fought before. Maelle had mentioned that it must have been her sister, Clea. And from what Lune had seen and heard from her, Clea didn’t care much for the “false” world that had been repainted by her mother.
“Have you come to finish the job?” Lune spat, looking away. Any lingering tears had immediately dried at the idea of being so vulnerable around the eldest Dessendre.
The woman hummed. “I just wanted to ensure that the painted version of my brother had followed through with his plan. I see he’s already gone.”
Lune watched Clea turn her head towards the portal, where Maelle and Verso had clashed before their eyes. Although there was no expression on her face, Clea almost seemed… contemplative.
“Don’t you feel anything? Any remorse for the lives you’ve taken?” Lune’s voice held fire, but it was sputtering. Now that her will to continue had been cracked, it felt like feeding a dying flame, doused in water. “You Dessendres will get to go on living, but only after you’ve destroyed an entire world.”
Clea’s head whirled around to face Lune, the chroma around her vibrating. “Do not lecture me. You’re nothing more than my mother’s twisted playthings. This world should have died with Verso, but Aline tainted it with humanity. He shouldn’t have had to paint for so long just for all this tragedy to exist…”
With her final statement, Lune noticed Clea’s voice grow somewhat softer. By “he”, it was assumed that she was speaking of the fading boy. The sliver of Verso’s — the real Verso’s soul.
Lune tried to argue, “But his painting also brought life into this world—.”
“Life that was never supposed to exist,” Clea countered, not with any venom this time, but as a matter of fact.
“But despite it all, we do exist.” Lune stood, ignoring the way she stumbled from the weakness of her slowly disintegrating knees. “You just don’t care.”
Clea did not respond immediately, taking a few moments, and then she scoffed.
“I hate how well Aline crafted you all,” Clea admitted, but despite her words, they held no ire. There was a lightness in her tone, shedding the anger from before. “Your expedition was certainly the most interesting of the lot. I had never seen painted creations wield raw chroma the way you did. The one-armed man was bright. It was a shame that he died so early on—.”
“Stop it,” Lune ground out. “Stop speaking of us as some form of sick entertainment for you. Our lives were real! We were real.”
“Real or not, it changes nothing. I did all of this to save my family. Just as you fought to save yours. We are the same.”
“We are not the same! Your father gommaged thousands of people every year! You crafted monstrosities to kill expeditioners—!”
“And you, in turn, killed hundreds of my creations to serve your goal.” Clea’s words sank into her like sharpened knives. “Is the life I created somehow less than yours? I saw the compassion you showed the unfinished nevrons, you certainly believed that they deserved to live at the time. Shall we discuss the philosophy behind that, as well?”
Lune opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t. Behind all the fury, despair, and grief, there was a logic that frustrated her. Were the situations reversed, she could see herself understanding the other woman’s perspective. There was truly no right answer.
But Lune was stubborn, “There had to have been another way…”
For a while, the only sounds that could be heard were the continuous tremor that rolled through the Canvas. Then, Clea faced Lune for the first time, and although there was no expression to be seen on her fading form, Lune could imagine it as they came to an understanding.
“We couldn’t take any chances,” Clea said in a tone that sounded too close to pity. “Creating you all was the cruelest thing my mother could have done.”
The words rang out hollowly in the space between them. There was room for an apology, but Lune did not expect one.
After standing in silence for a moment, Lune asked, “Why are you here? You exist in your real world; Maelle made it clear that you don’t like wasting time here.”
After bringing Lune and Sciel back from Renoir’s gommage, Maelle had been very forthcoming with any information surrounding the family’s situation. Compared to Verso’s constant dancing around their questions, it was a breath of fresh air.
Maelle had briefly explained her family’s whole stance on the matter and the reason why some of them were hell-bent on destroying the Canvas. Renoir and Clea believed that forcing Aline, the Paintress, from the Canvas and destroying it was the best way to help the woman grieve properly. Meanwhile, the Dessendres who wished to save the Canvas were Aline, Maelle — Alicia, and Verso. At least, until the end.
Before he betrayed them all.
Don’t think about him, Lune scolded herself, trying to ignore the unhelpful simmering in the pit of her chest.
“Verso…”
“I’m sorry.”
Lune inhaled sharply, her hands clamped into fists.
This family… This family had taken so much.
For several long moments, Clea said nothing. The lull stretched to an almost uncomfortable length, but then she said, “I want to repaint you.”
Lune’s mouth fell open.
“What?”
Wordlessly, the other woman waved her hand. A ripple of chroma distorted the air around them, and Lune felt her body cease its erasure. Blue petals caressed the broken parts of her flesh before falling away. She looked down at her hands, gripping and stretching her fingers in wonder. Even the encroaching void in her mind had receded, causing Lune to blink with her usual sharp clarity.
“I don’t understand. What purpose would you have to repaint someone who will perish as soon as this Canvas collapses?” Lune asked, her voice clipped in her frustration.
“So many questions. You were always a very driven creation. It was something that I actually admired about you. If you hadn’t pulled that engineer out of his pit of despair with his little chroma collector, your expedition would have failed then and there,” Clea observed, her tone as nonchalant as if discussing the weather. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before there was a group bright enough to–.”
“Enough,” Lune scowled, a pang striking through her chest. Gustave’s life was yet another thing that had been taken. The jab came out before she could stop herself. “I didn’t realize avoiding the subject ran in the family. I thought perhaps it would be exclusive to your brother—.”
This time, Clea interrupted, her voice distorting even further, “He was not my brother. He was just a shell wearing his face.”
An indignant frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. Verso had mentioned offhandedly in the Flying Manor that the real Clea had been the one to tell him the truth of the Canvas. If this was the attitude Clea had when she first told him of his true origins, it was no wonder he felt conflicted by his mere existence. The real Dessendres only saw him as a shadow, his very being discounted. He had been Verso Dessendre until he wasn’t.
But Lune shoved down the urge to defend Verso. His loyalty had been the cause of Lumiere’s demise. At the end of it all, he had still sacrificed everything to save the family that failed him.
And what have you done your whole life?
Lune grit her teeth and closed her eyes in a grimace. It was not the time to dissect her familial relationships, especially not as Clea materialized something in her hand.
All of Lune’s previous thoughts were pushed to the side as the other woman seemed to pull something out of thin air. It shone brightly, as a star plucked from the sky. However, the structure of it was odd and warped, unlike anything Lune had ever seen. Even with all that she had witnessed throughout the expedition, this strange object held an otherworldly essence to it. The more Clea moved it, the more intensely it would glow, holding a shade of red so vibrant that it almost hurt her eyes to look at it.
“A… picto?” Lune stared at the mass of symbols on the shard. It would have taken her hours, perhaps days, to decipher it.
“Is that what you all call it? If it’s similar to the markings on your skin, then yes. This is old chroma, an essence created back before the fracture. Before humanity was even painted onto this Canvas. It works similarly, but it is stronger and more… volatile," Clea explained.
The closer Lune inspected it, the less it made sense. There were only a few lines she recognized, and even those differed from what she considered to be their modern translation. They reminded Lune of the picto that Monoco had dubbed the “Second Chance”. It had been one of their strongest pictos, bringing them back from the brink of death quite a few times.
“I would like to paint this onto you. With this, you’ll be able to harness enough chroma to sustain your life outside of the Canvas,” Clea explained. “Theoretically speaking.”
Lune’s brows shot up. “Outside of the—? How?”
She and Maelle had spoken of the world outside of the Canvas once before. The girl described it fondly, but there was also a sadness beneath it. It was a world without her brother in it, after all. A deep ache settled in Lune’s chest. The memory of Maelle promising to paint a version of her world for Lune once everything was over resurfaced.
But now she was gone.
The world trembled, and splotches of the sky began to warp, as if someone had placed drops of paint thinner on the horizon.
“I’ll need you to decide quickly. The longer we linger, the less chroma I’ll have to work with.”
“Decide?” Lune shook her head with a scoff, “You’ve barely told me anything.”
“I’ve told you what you need to know,” Clea said.
A sense of deja vu hit Lune, and she shot back, “I’ll decide that for myself. Your father tried to kill us, and your painted brother actually succeeded. I would rather not be betrayed by your family a third time. I’m not agreeing to anything without more information.”
Clea argued, “There’s no time for this—.”
“You’ll find the time,” Lune said, crossing her arms. “I quite literally have nothing to lose.”
It was clear that Clea was becoming impatient with the way her fingers twitched. But Lune knew that she held more sway in this conversation. For some reason, Clea needed her, specifically. Lune intended to make the most of this advantage.
Lune asked, keeping her guard up, “Can’t you send the nevrons to do your dirty work?”
“Nevrons aren’t intelligent enough for what I need. Painted humans are different.” Clea pointed to Lune’s arm, to the pictos on her skin. “Nevrons have certain chromatic abilities, but they are limited by their single-minded nature. Not only are painted creations made of chroma, but you can also manipulate large amounts of it. Some of you more than others.”
Lune still wasn’t satisfied. Whenever Clea would answer a question, five more popped into her head. Part of what Clea was saying made sense, but… “You’re a Paintress. Couldn’t you just paint a copy of yourself and send her on her way?”
“If it were that simple, I wouldn’t be asking,” Clea said flatly. “Believe me, I’ve considered other options, but this was the most optimal. It must be one of Aline’s painted humans, and as you can see, I’m quite limited on my selection of those.”
Lune felt her eyes narrow in scrutiny.
It didn’t make sense; there had to be something else that the other woman wasn’t saying. Clea had been all for destroying the Canvas, and it was clear that she didn’t give a damn about the lives within it. She was similar to Renoir in that sense, but at least he had the decency to refer to them as living beings rather than soulless dolls. Inviting Lune to not only survive, but to exist in their “real world” sounded not only impossible, but… suspicious.
However, Lune would be lying if she said it didn’t intrigue her at least a little. Going on the expedition, seeing the Continent, it had been everything she imagined and more. She would always be upset over the Dessendres decisions leading to the death of Lumiere’s entire population, but she was also heartbroken as a researcher. There was so much beauty and wonder in the Continents that she would never be able to fully explore.
The idea that there was a whole other world beyond the Canvas tugged at her heart and mind.
“Why?” Lune asked again, part of her relenting. “Why do all this now?”
Clea held the picto close to her chest, the swirling chroma that made up her body illuminated. In those fading shadows, Lune thought she could almost see a face. It was almost… melancholic. The eldest Dessendre sibling stared down at the burning light in her hands with a conflicted expression of grief and what Lune could only describe as hope.
Clea turned to Lune, and suddenly the chroma around her form began to solidify. The dull mass of chroma began to bloom with pigments of color. First formed was a skirt, then a simple blouse. Long, auburn hair flowed down her back in gentle waves. Then, familiar grey-blue eyes formed, held within a pretty face.
Her lips pressed together in a thin line before she said, “I miss my brother. And if there’s a chance to bring him back… I’ll do whatever it takes.”
She held out the picto in her hands.
“I want you to go back. Save my family from the fire that ruined us.”