User blog:Thriefty/Dumping a ToL drabble here before I forget to post it somewhere

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He had stopped counting the cycles a long time ago. He only really cared that they continued to repeat, giving him another chance at freeing the light he had cherished so.

… Maybe not. Maybe he cared more than that. On some level, he did care for the trio who carried the power his patron coveted. It was normal that he cared; if they died before reaching him, he would be robbed of his chance to obtain their souls and offer it to his god.

He could not remember any time they had failed to reach him, he realised.

Throughout the countless cycles, some things always stayed constant. The overall sequence of events never changed. First, the birth of the sprite. Then the birth of the girl. And when the seeds of ruin were spread, and the sprite and the girl finally meet, would the saviour, the boy, manifest. Then, the three would go on their journey together, purifying the seeds of ruin, chasing the brother, all the way till they finally reached the mastermind behind everything. This had never changed, no matter the number of cycles. They always lost their lives at his hands. (And he always failed to take their souls.)

Some things would change though. He didn’t know when exactly the sprite started introducing himself as an emissary of the heavens, rather than hiding behind the cover story he usually gave. Or when the pantheon of goddesses had changed, with a new goddess sending the sprite down. There were many little changes, like the multitude of interim events that the trio went through. The people they travelled with often changed between cycles – he had stopped keeping track.

It made sense. Even if things repeated, history could change just because someone decided to walk down a different road one day. Eras would shift, circumstances would vary, causing each cycle to differ from the last in some small way.

Yet, some small events would always recur despite it all. The boy and girl would find time to sneak off to procure cherries for the sprite. In a ruinator attack, the girl would sprain her leg and the boy would carry her to safety. Boy and girl would walk down the aisle in matching white dress and suit. He didn’t know why, what was so important about these little events, but they occurred time and time again.

Why did he pay attention anyway? They were strangers; people that had never met him before this. He did not even refer to them by names. They were merely the boy, the girl and the sprite. The trio who carried the power he required. (They weren’t the same. They weren’t worth caring for.)

All that mattered were that they appeared today. To confront him in another final battle, and yet another chance to accomplish his long cherished dream. They would come to deliver his souls to him once more. He would not fail this time.

He could see them now. The boy, with brown tousled hair fringing his clear green eyes. The girl, the bright pink ponytail swinging in the wind. And then the sprite, its white fur a stark contrast against the blighted land. (So similar. But never the same.)

He waited for the usual shock, and then the declaration of his now hated name.

Green eyes, ones so much like his partner from long past, regarded him. It was there he saw the minuteness of change. The steely determination, the rare emotion from his once-partner, the one that he had seen in all previous timelines… It was gone. What replace it was a soft, warm concern, one that had not been directed at him for eons.

His name came, not in an angered yell, but in the softest of whispers. It was a name he had not heard for cycles.

The name was not Lilium.

The boy, his once-fellow emissary, no, his partner, called him the name he had chosen for himself. A name that had merely been a pseudonym, yet felt like so much more.

“Zephyr.”

And for the first time in cycles, he can’t not care anymore.