LUNA

            Luna Love flinched at the sound of a knock at her chamber door. Get in here and get it over with, you bastard, she thought to herself. Luna stole a glance at Gardevoir, wrapped in the steel chains that rendered her motionless, some magic in the metal kept her Psychic powers at bay. Yet Luna drew strength from looking into the Spirit Pokémon’s eyes. My brother will come for me. I know he will.

            The person who came into her luxurious prison was not who she expected. Instead of Ahab, the smelly, vile man who had murdered her daughter and beat her most every night, there was a young man about her son’s age with sandy hair. Ahab’s Squire, Thomas.

            “My lady,” he said as he bowed, unsurely. “Her Grace bid me give this to you.” Thomas awkwardly handed over a roll of parchment. It was a letter that had come from Meteor Falls, she knew. From her time in captivity and occasional dinners with Empress Glamour herself, she had learned that Miguel Starfall had overthrown the Brightflames of Lavaridge, and now ruled the Mt. Chimney Kingdom himself.

            The seal is broken, she observed. Someone had already read its contents. Luna had most often gotten her news second-hand, from Ahab during his drunken rages at night, or Empress Glamour herself. She took the latter’s news with a grain of salt, no doubt she was trying to intimidate Luna into complying with her wishes. She’s nothing but a witch. A lying witch, Luna thought bitterly.

            At her first dinner with the Empress of Sootopolis, Glamour had shown her a vision with the Blue Orb that was imbedded below the three golden prongs of her trident. She had a seen a great beast rising from the depths in a storm, and dead soldiers in the water, and her son drowning in a sinking ship with his Mudkip next to him. That was when she knew the visions were a fabrication. Chris wasn’t that young, and his Spirit Pokémon had evolved into Swampert.

            She opened the letter and read it.

Your Grace,

            It is with great pleasure that I write this letter to you. Yesterday, my scouts came across the body of Chris Marsh, the King of Slateport. He had been impaled through the chest by his own spear. When we lit his body on fire with our arrows, he looked like a Spoink roasting on a spit.

            I am rooting out dissenters to my rule in the Mt. Chimney Kingdom every day, and I’m glad to report that there have been no large scale uprisings. The Sands of the Mirage Desert have shown no animosity towards my reign, for fear that I will kill the Brightflame boys. The older one is rotting in a cage deep in the dungeons as we speak, and the younger one is wrapped around my finger.

            I have the Red Orb locked inside my own chambers, guarded day and night. It is safe from falling into our enemies’ hands. You may no longer concern yourself of the Three Heroes reborn. The last Marshes are dead. I have the Brightflames at my mercy. I await your word to lead an assault on the Forrests.

-Your loyal Governor,

            Miguel Starfall, Chief of Meteor Falls and Lord of the Mt. Chimney Kingdom.

            Luna collapsed into her chair and began to cry. It had come true. The vision the Empress had shown her wasn’t a literal dream, but it had all come to pass anyways. Chris was dead. Her son, her first baby, was gone. She had nothing to live for anymore. Both her children were dead.

            Luna’s head swam with a mixture of emotions. She walked over to her barred window and looked down at the jagged rocks in the lagoon below. She turned away from it, and looked at the letter again, and then at Thomas who was still standing there nervously.

            She screamed and wailed as the emotion poured out of her body. The mother of no one picked up a wooden chair and ran back towards the iron barred window.

            “My lady, what-”

            Her screams didn’t let her hear what else Thomas had to say. She began to beat the iron bars with the wooden chair. Over and over they clanged and clanged and vibrated, but they would not break loose of its bonds. She wanted nothing more than to leap into the lagoon and end her nightmare called life.  

            Break! Break, damn you! It was no use. The wooden chair broke instead, shattering into pieces. Luna paid no attention to the splinters in her hand. She collapsed to the ground.

            “It’s my turn now,” she sobbed to no one. “Take me. Take me instead and give my children back…” she turned to Thomas, who was shocked, standing with his mouth agape. “You!” she pointed at him and said in a wailing voice “Take the bars off and let me die, boy. Please!” Thomas was one of the Empress and Ahab’s pets, but Luna knew underneath his mixed confusion, terror, and general servitude of evil monsters was a gentle heart. He had always seemed reluctant to hold Luna down when Ahab would hit her. He would help her die in peace. She knew he would…

            But Thomas left; he backed out of the room and shut the door, the same confused and scared look on his face. Luna saw Gardevoir’s eyes in tears as well. The steel chains held the Spirit Pokémon back like the iron bars kept Luna from the death she so desperately wanted. She cried herself to sleep, hoping that death would come to her in her dreams.

            That was not what happened. It was dark outside the window when the door opened with the creak of a hinge. She knew the outline of the shape all too well.  The matted, oily hair that hung in curtains about his face. The way he staggered when he walked. The way he slammed the door behind him.

            “Get up, woman,” he barked. Luna didn’t move. Ahab laughed and lumbered towards her. He had a ceramic mug in his hand, most likely it had been filled with tonight’s drink of choice, but the smell from Ahab’s breath told her the mug was most likely empty now.

            There was a crash as he threw the mug at the wall and it burst into shards. “I said GET UP!” he yelled. He reached down and grabbed hold of her bodice. She felt herself get yanked to her feet against the wall there was a ripping sound of the cloth being torn, she didn’t care. Luna said nothing, she just looked right past Ahab.

            Her face stung suddenly. Ahab had hit her, she knew. The wretched man must have given up using Thomas to hit her. Gardevoir tried to escape her steel chains to help, but the Pokémon grew weaker by the day in its captivity.

            “Will you marry me, my dear?” was all Ahab said.  Luna said nothing in return, and got a punch in the face, and then the belly. He grabbed her by the neck and pulled her close, his rotting breath climbing through her nose and choking her. “I said, will you marry me, my dear?”

            She spat in his face.  Ahab responded by throwing her against the ground.  He didn’t even wipe her blood-mixed saliva from his face. The physical pain was nothing to her. It was nothing compared to the mental anguish and the pain in her heart from the loss of her last child.

            “GET UP!”

            She stood up again, holding the cloth up to still cover herself. Why does it matter, anymore?

            “WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

            Luna gave a tormented laugh, her lips were beginning to swell, and one of her eyes seemed to be closing from the beating.

They want me alive, she knew. They want my claim to Slateport. She was determined to deny Glamour that much.

            “I’ll never marry you,” Luna said as she laughed again. “My husband was Sam Marsh, King of Slateport.” Ahab’s face contorted in a drunken rage as he stalked up to her again. Luna continued: “He was an honorable man, and a skilled fighter. He defeated Carlos Brightflame in single combat.” Ahab slapped her face again, she tasted blood in her mouth as the swollen lip began to bleed. Luna didn’t stop. “I will not marry a man whose greatest accomplishment was slaughtering a little girl,” she said as his eyes got angrier. “I am the Queen of Slateport, and you’re nothing but the son of some whore!”

            Luna raised her hand to slap him back, hoping it would send Ahab into a blind rage that would lead to the death that she ultimately wanted.

            It was worse. He caught her hand. In his eyes, Ahab must have realized what Luna was trying to do. The last thing she saw that night was Ahab’s silhouette stalking out of the room laughing and drunkenly stumbling his way out of her prison.

            She collapsed into tears once again.