Seraph | セラフ

Star World is so beautiful from orbit. It doesn't matter how many times I see this view, I'll never stop being a bit overwhelmed by the sheer glory of it.

All of those star-like lights down below, actually clusters of cities, of life, of souls who have their own unique perspectives and experiences. All of the greens and browns and tans and whites of various biomes and climates. All of the blue of the oceans, the fluffier whites of swirling, streaming clouds and weather patterns.

For so many people, what I can see from here is the extent of the Galaxy they'll ever experience. They're safe below, surrounded by the best protective technology the Galaxy has to offer, shields and a state-of-the-art air force dedicated to making sure no Nightmarish attack ever makes it to the planet below again.

The Galaxy is being torn apart by war, more and more all the time. But more and more, Star World sits safe, apart, untouched.

The soldiers of the Star Warrior Army know the grief, the horror, the agony of war... so the innocent Star Warriors below won't ever have to.

Sometimes I'm honored to be able to help provide that kind of peaceful home front, even to a planet full of Star Warriors who never took care of me.

Sometimes I'm so jealous of them that I almost hate them.

But then I remember Deputy Maize and Mrs. Cornflower and Daisy, who are down there somewhere in one of the dark, night-bathed patches that doesn't have any star-like lights to answer the sky, since it's not a big city like Startropolis or the other province capitals.

And even if I feel disconnected from most of my species... I'll always want to keep them safe.

I hate having to experience the horrors of war. But it's worth it, knowing they won't ever have to.

Sighing, I hug a mug of warm tea closer to myself and curl up snugger into the faded red, velveteen window seat I'm sitting on. The Academy is a school by nature, so the halls and levels are scattered with study spaces and alcoves, quiet areas tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the Army's headquarters. This room, one of those spaces, is covered in a thin layer of dust; there's a good chance it hasn't been seen by Star Warrior eyes for centuries. I found it by accident while wandering the halls the other day, but since discovering it, I've been spending most of my time in here.

The floor is carpeted, though it's old and rather threadbare. A large, rectangular wooden table surrounded by rolling chairs takes up a good chunk of the center of the room. There are aged armchairs scattered around the room, along with vintage lamps bearing the art deco style that seems to have been popular during the first war. Most of the walls are lined with bookshelves, but some of them have aged, yellowed star maps pinned to the walls. There's a couple of reading desks, a telescope positioned in the room's other window to the outside.

But my favorite thing about this room, that I sit in with only one of the lamps switched on—it's a miracle the lightbulb still works, and it's so old that I doubt I could find the same sort of bulb to replace it with—is that the ceiling is covered with painted on, glowing dots of all sorts of colors.

And I found in one corner, in glowing, light blue paint, is scrawled in one person's small, unassuming handwriting, 'Artwork by Heal & Petal.'

At some point in some distant past—or not so distant; technically the painters could both still be alive—two people took the time to take this once-standard-issue study room and turn it into a special place.

In a space station that is largely antiseptic, fluorescent, and unfeeling, it's nice to have found a sort of escape that is so hauntingly, so achingly real and alive.

The satellite is slowly moving towards the line of sunrise on the planet down below; the lights of the cities along it slowly fade out as the sun's light takes over, turning blackness into thriving color once again. The satellite makes it around the world about once every hour or so—I can sit here all day and watch the sunrise and the sunset over and over again, if I like.

At least, as long as we're stationed here on R&R. But any day now, Knight and I could receive our new assignments.

My gloves tighten further around my mug involuntarily. I swallow back anxiety.

I don't know if I'm ready to go back out there. Not when I now know that... stuff... exists. Not when I know that when I'm not looking, it could slime out of nowhere and down my or Knight's throat—maybe when we were sleeping; anytime we weren't on guard enough—and take us over and make us into an agonized, oozing, monstrous husk.

I hiss as a splash of hot tea lands on my foot, and that's when I realize I'm trembling so badly the mug is sloshing.

I take a deep breath and try to force myself to calm down. I've only ever seen that goo stuff once, and L.G. Dragato made it sound like it's only been targeting specific people. Knight and I are nobodies; I highly doubt it'll come after us.

But what if it does, my brain whispers unhelpfully. What if it goes after Knight and you have to kill him to save him?

"No!" I shout out loud, as if that will banish the thought. The sound of my own voice makes me jump, making more hot tea splash over me. The resulting pain makes me drop the mug. It lands on the carpeted floor. It doesn't break, thankfully; just spills hot tea everywhere.

I peer down over the side of the windowseat at it, the pain from the hot tea quickly fading as it cools against my skin. It wasn't hot enough to actually burn me, just enough to hurt.

I know I should pick up the mug, but I can't get myself to do so.

I've felt so powerless ever since we got back here. Trying to do anything has been such a battle. I can barely get out of bed in the mornings. I have a new letter from Deputy Maize and his family I need to answer; they still think I'm on the planet we were stationed on before. They haven't heard that it's now considered 'dead' and that there are no more Star Warriors stationed there, at least not that I can tell. But I can't gather my thoughts enough to write. At least, not enough to write anything that doesn't sound like the anguished stream of consciousness of a madwoman.

I don't know why this latest encounter has left me so broken. I didn't know Head Medic Cureall; I'd never even spoken to her before. I've seen plenty of people die at this point, in plenty of uncomfortable and disturbing ways. It sucks, I hate it, but I've gotten through it so far. I've been able to compartmentalize it, to push it aside, to refuse to let it get to me.

And yet, this new horror, this new knowledge that someone can be taken and forcibly twisted into not-themselves, left a prisoner in their own body and forced to feel the agony all the way through it, has left me shaken to the core.

Sometimes I can almost believe the 'power' controlling this universe is good. And then I remember it happily lets stuff like that exist when it easily could just, not do that.

Helpless sinners in the hands of an angry god.

Sighing heavily, I finally let my eyes drift from the mug on the floor below. My gloves drop limply to rest on my feet, and I turn my head, leaning it against the cool glass of the window, several inches and layers thick.

The line of sunrise is reaching the mountain range I grew up in. If my parents are still alive, still down there—and I don't know why they wouldn't be—they're likely already up, already helping tend to the community farm animals and gardens and crops. Once my mother is done helping milk the cows and gather the eggs, she'll return to my parents' cabin to fix breakfast for herself and my father. Lunches are eaten as a whole by the community, in between the hours of sermons given by the leaders, the diatribes against the unsaved nonbelievers. Breakfasts and dinners are eaten at home, mainly in silence.

My father is likely in the fields this time of year, helping pull weeds or irrigate crops. This early in the morning, though, he's likely helping teach the boys of the community how to fix tools, make bullets for hunting, or something like that. I was obviously never allowed to attend those lessons. Hell, I was hardly allowed to attend the girls' lessons on cooking and gardening and sewing and animal husbandry. I was usually shut away in some closet or something, after all.

I wonder if my parents were allowed to have another child. Probably, since as far as the cult is concerned, I never existed. I've been Banished. Forgotten. Just like the women who couldn't provide as many children as their drawn lots called for them to have. Just like the children who were born malformed or otherwise disabled. Just like anyone of age who was found to be 'possessed by demons.'

Once you've been Forgotten, it's like you never were at all.

I can almost hear the bustle of the early morning activity in the community, smell the breakfast fires and the barns and the chicken coops and the freshly-cut hay, see the sunrise slowly pouring over the mountaintops and surrounding forest down onto the Believers' Valley.

I don't miss it at all.

I jump as one of the double wooden doors into the study space suddenly creaks open, tearing me out of the unpleasant daydream. Knight's masked face peeks into the room. "May I join you?"

It takes me a moment to find words as I turn my gaze back to the planet below. "Be my guest," I finally say numbly. I mean to gesture to the rest of the windowseat with one of my gloves, but the order to move doesn't seem to make it from my brain to my paws, so I sort of just nod in that general direction.

"Thanks," he murmurs. He comes and sits down at the other end of the bench seat, facing out into the room while I keep looking out the window. After a long moment, out of the corner of my eye I see him turn to look at me. After a moment of silence, he takes his mask off, tucking it into his cape. "I haven't seen you much the past couple of weeks."

I numbly shrug but don't answer.

He sighs. "I get it, I think. I've constantly felt like I'm going to be sick ever since we got back here. I can't ever get myself to stop thinking about..." His voice trails off into nothing.

I swallow back a lurch of my own stomach. "I wish I could forget it."

He nods slowly. "Me too."

We sit in silence for a long second, but it's him who finally breaks it. "I... actually came to find you for a reason. Besides checking on you. I, uh. I got you something."

I look over at him in surprise. "Huh? What do you mean?"

He smiles slightly, and it actually reaches his eyes, which is always a good sign. I still don't understand what's going on, though. "I mean, I got you a gift of sorts. I mean, it's something practical, but—"

"You didn't have to get me anything," I interrupt in confusion. "It's not my birthday, or even Christmas."

"Seraph, I don't even know when your birthday is," he points out in bemusement. "I just... got you something because I thought it'd be helpful, and..." his voice trails off again and he sighs. "And I just sort of... wanted to thank you. For always having my back."

"Knight, that's literally my job as your backup," I point out. "And even if it wasn't, I'd still do it, and you still wouldn't have to get me anything."

He holds up his gloves defensively, amusement still creeping into his eyes. "Will you at least look at what it is before you keep protesting so much?"

I roll my eyes slightly, sitting up straight. "Okay, fine."

His smile grows slightly bigger as he slides off the bench seat and heads towards the large wooden table in the center of the room, tugging his cape off as he goes. I frown in confusion, trying to figure out what's going on, only for him to sort of carefully dump a rather large but relatively flat cardboard box out from his cape onto the table's surface. It makes a bit of a thump as it lands, telling me it's got a decent amount of weight to it.

I blink first at the box, and then at him. "Okay, you definitely didn't need to get me something that big."

He's almost grinning now as he tucks his cape back into place under his shoulder guards. "Again, open it before you judge, Seraph."

I snort weakly and roll my eyes again. "Fine, fine." I hop up off the windowseat, careful not to step on the mug I dropped earlier. I head over to the table and look down at the white, unmarked cardboard box. It's almost but not quite square shaped, and almost as tall as me.

I glance over at Knight again. He's still grinning.

I roll my eyes again, fondly this time, and lift the lid of the box.

Inside I'm met with a sheet of paper and a thin layer of tissue paper. Knight grabs the sheet of paper before I can read anything other than the words 'Custom Weaponry' and spot a Halcandran export stamp.

"Seriously?" I say teasingly. "What, you don't want me to see the price tag?"

"It's a shipping list that would tell you everything in there before you see it," he disagrees. "Just open it."

Again, I snort, and pull apart the layers of tissue paper.

Underneath, I'm met with first a pure-white mask, with an eyepiece shaped rather like two small, rounded angel wings shoved together. On either side is a simple, standard right and left pauldron, white with gold trim. Above it is a matching white mace, much smoother and more-refined looking than the standard-issue wood-and-metal mace I got from Requisitions after I broke my matching mace back on B-612 saving Knight's letters to Blossom. It too has a ring of gold trim where the barbed metal meets the handle. I pick it up wordlessly, testing its weight in my glove. It's still got plenty of heft to it, but it's definitely more streamlined than my mace, less clunky.

"Knight," I start numbly, feeling as though I'm not fully processing what's going on, "I can't accept this."

"There's another layer to it," he says excitedly. "There's more underneath."

"Knight," I try again.

But he interrupts, teasingly matching my tone. "Seraph." I give him a fond sort of glare in return. "Just finish opening it," he insists.

"You're like a kid on Christmas," I say. "And you're not even the one getting a present."

"Sh. Less talking, more opening."

I roll my eyes yet again, setting the mace back down and carefully lifting the hard plastic layer the objects are packed into. I set it aside, only to be flooded with shock as I see what's underneath.

Folded neatly into one corner, a cape strikingly similar to his, pure white with gold trim, just like the other objects. In two other corners, a matching set of metallic boots.

But taking up the bulk of the box, and suddenly making its large size make sense, is a large, shiny shield, with the same sort of rounded-angel-wing shape as either half of the mask's eyepiece. Like everything else, it's pure white with a ring of golden trim around the edge, and a raised, golden spike in the center to make it good for bashing things with.

It's roughly the same size as the shield I saved our lives with the other day, albeit obviously better constructed.

"It's a new material the Halcandrans are calling 'Metastic,'" Knight tells me gleefully. "It's light and durable like plastic, but strong and unyielding like metal. Best part, it doesn't conduct electricity and it's not flammable, and its melting point is way hotter than most fire burns—"

"Knight," I interrupt, still in shock. "Knight, there's absolutely no way I can accept this. This has got to cost what, at least a year of our pay—"

"A little more than, actually, but it's not like it's going anywhere anyway. It's just sitting somewhere collecting dust in a bank, otherwise," he assures me, as if this revelation is going to help anything. "The cape isn't Dimensional, unfortunately, so it can't turn into wings—there's a shortage of Dimensional thread right now. But it does have a limited holding capacity thanks to some Halcandran magic, and theoretically we could upgrade it eventually—"

"Knight." I say firmly, although it's somewhat adorable seeing him have a rare nerding-out moment about armory and weaponry. I begin to put the parcel back together. "You need to return this and get your money back."

His excited mood suddenly pops like a bubble. "You don't like it?"

"What? No," I start in shock, looking up at him. "I love it. These things are beautiful. They're... they're honestly incredible. Of course I love it."

He blinks at me in confusion, and it hits me that it's the look of someone who's never had to worry about money before.

Back when we met, Knight insisted he wasn't a rich kid. And by average Star Warrior standards, he probably wasn't. 'Rich' by societal standards means having more than you could ever spend, a mansion and a summer home, servants and waitstaff and chauffeurs, the life of government officials and movie stars and the brass. And I'm sure Knight didn't come from that; he doesn't have the naivete and innocence—and frankly, stupidity—that that sort of rich kid would have.

But when you come from nothing like I do, 'rich' means having enough to get by comfortably and some left over, for things like Christmas presents and vacations and, and...

...and boxes of beautiful custom armor and weapons given 'just because.'

As much as I want to keep the items in the box, I know I'm not worth the price they cost. I go back to putting the box back together.

"Seraph, I can't send it back for a refund. They're customs," he points out as he watches me, still seeming slightly hurt and deeply confused. "What's wrong?"

I feel my vision blurring as tears fight their way forward and I shake my head. "Knight, a base year of Army wages for a fresh enlistee is enough to comfortably feed and house a family of four on the enlistee's home planet, adjusted annually for inflation. And as Corporals, we make more than that."

"And?" he questions, still not understanding. He evidently notices my tears, because his concern grows deeper. "Seraph, are you okay?"

Some part of me is getting mad, but I know it's not his fault. "Knight, you can't just spend that much money on me. What if you need it someday?"

He's still not getting it. "Seraph, I still have plenty left over; I've been here several years now. And like I said, it's just sitting somewhere collecting dust and interest, otherwise. I don't have anyone 'back home' I need to be taking care of. I can afford to get you this, and I want to."

I shake my head, closing my gloves into fists and resting them on the top layer of the box. "I know I have my own stack of money collecting dust at this point too; I've been here a few years now myself." A solution hits me, and I turn to him. "At least let me pay you back for it."

"Seraph, no. It's a gift," he disagrees. I turn away, feeling angry and grateful and hurt and touched all at the same time, in a weird and infuriating mishmash of emotion. "Seraph, what's wrong?"

The old words almost escape my mouth. Identity topic. This time, though, I just stay silent, crossing my gloves and trying not to cry.

"It's just so much money," I finally say quietly. "It's just... too much money."

Knight sighs in frustration, but I can tell he's still trying to understand. I realize we're both getting lost in translation.

We both go quiet for a long moment.

"It's an 'identity topic' thing, isn't it," he finally says flatly. His fake Chivalric accent is breaking more than it usually does when he's feeling something particularly strongly.

"Knight—" I say gently, turning to face him.

"Meta," he corrects. His voice cracks as he says it, and I frown in confusion for a long moment until realization suddenly dawns on me. "It's Meta."

He's telling me his name. His real name, not his enlisted name.

"Oh," I say quietly, stunned. "Kni—Meta, I –"

"My name's Meta," he repeats, his voice suddenly changed, carrying an accent I've never heard him use before, seemingly his true accent. "I'm from Knowledge Clan, but I grew up in Chivalry Province in a rural community called River Village. My parents were named Honesty and Truecure; my father was a doctor; I had a blood brother named Forest—"

"Woah, woah, slow down; I can't keep up," I interrupt. "Kn—Meta. Meta, where is this coming from so suddenly?"

"I was going to tell you soon anyway," he murmurs, and that's when I notice he's crying. Knight—uh, Meta—never cries. At least, it's very rare, as far as I can tell. "I... I want somebody to know me, Seraph." He looks up from his feet again, and it's strange. Normally when he gets quiet and emotional like this, he seems old, so old.

And yet, I've never seen him look as young as he does in this moment. He actually looks our age, like a confused and scared twenty-something still trying to find his place in the world.

He swallows slowly. "I need somebody to know me. I can't keep just being the mask all the time."

I sigh heavily and reach out a glove, resting it on one of his shoulder guards. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Meta. But it's nice to meet you." He looks up, seeming ready to protest, but I continue. "And you're welcome to tell me everything you want to. I'll listen. Just... slower, okay? So I have time to process." He smiles slightly, but I'm still not finished. "But you didn't need to buy me fancy armor to earn the right to tell me everything. I'm your friend, your backup, and I'd like to think your sister of sorts—your sister in arms, if nothing else. You don't have to buy my listening ear."

He looks slightly offended, but he's still not mad, thankfully. "Of course not. I got you the armor because I wanted to. What part of that doesn't make sense?"

"Fine," I acquiesce lamely. "We'll come back to the gifts. For now..." My voice trails off as I think, and I finally sigh and go back to the windowseat and gesture for him to take a seat. "Tell me everything," I say gently. "Everything you want to, I mean. I literally have all day."

He nods slowly, gaze going distant, and he comes to sit down opposite me once again, leaving the gifts on the table.

"My name's Meta," he repeats. "I'm from Knowledge Clan and Chivalry Province, from a small town called River Village. My father was a doctor named Truecure; my mother kept the house. Her name was Honesty.

"I didn't have any siblings by birth, but I have one blood brother by oath. His name was Forest. He was from Chivalry Clan; a local kid. When we were little, he was one of my biggest bullies, but he eventually became one of my best friends.

"We both grew up in River Village. It's a beautiful place, full of pine forests and a rushing river. And outside of the town, about a half mile into the woods, there's a library."

I settle into the windowseat, resting my face in a glove, watching him as his eyes go ever more distant and his face goes ever softer, younger.

It's like I'm watching him become a totally different person. And yet, I get the sense I'm watching him become himself.

He turns to look at me once more, and his eyes are filled with both an old hurt and a strange sort of bittersweet happiness.

"I grew up at that library. That library was home."