Lumina Nightglow's Arc

Chapter 9 of 34

Lumina walked to the frozen edge alone. Her guard creature stayed behind with the healed groves, its stardust veins bright again. Ahead lay the ancient cold, a wall of white silence that no fire could touch. She raised her hand and called the light in her chest. It bloomed, pink and gold. But it reached nothing. The cold had no love in it. Her light needed a bond to travel through, and here she stood by herself. "It won't cross," she said. "There's no one here to share it with." Celsius Heartwood stepped from the trees behind her, flowers trembling in her green hair. She had guided Lumina to merge with the heart long ago. "Then you are looking too close," she said. "Your light passes through love. Love does not need to stand beside you." Luminara Tidewhisper drifted forward in her ribbon of river water, blue hair full of starlight. "You reached the whole forest through the roots," she said. "You never touched every grove with your hands. You touched them with your heart." Lumina understood. She knelt and pressed her palm flat to the frozen ground. She did not aim her light at the wall. She sent it down, out, everywhere. She thought of every creature she had healed. She thought of the sleeping groves and the cold ones she had woken. She let her love pour into all of them at once. Heart Solia sparkle rose beside her, radiant, leaf and flower in her flowing hair. She was the fairy the heart had made from Lumina's joining. She laid her hand over Lumina's on the icy soil. "Together," she said, as she had before. Their two lights joined and ran through the earth like a single flame. The forest answered. Far off, veins of light lit under the snow. Creatures came running. First one, then ten, then more than Lumina could count. Each was different. Their bodies shimmered with stars, their blood glowing like living light. They poured out of the trees, a whole host of them. They surrounded her. They licked her hands and cheeks with joy, pressing close, finding a new spirit of the forest to love. Now the bonds were everywhere. Lumina's light no longer stood alone. It traveled through every creature at once, a web of love strung across the frozen land. She raised her hand again. This time the pink and gold light shot forward, carried by all of them, and struck the wall of cold. Frost cracked. White dust flaked away. The edge of the ancient dark drew back. Lumina rose, the host bright around her. She had solved it. Her light could cross now, because the forest itself carried it. But the ancient darkness went deeper than she had thought. Beyond the broken edge, the cold stretched on, older and colder still. She had opened the door. The last dark waited past it.