Chapter 18: Peace Offering

He appeared from pixels that binded together and shaped his in-game avatar. Surprisingly, Lu turned out to be exactly as he expected, which was inadvertently, at the same time, what he did not expect.

Looking closely at his reflection in the water, he did not look like his avatar from the game, but looked like himself. Lu shrugged off the unsettling fact and gazed ahead of him, and found that the terrain was the same as Monitum as well, though it did not surprise him for "what else could it have appeared like?", he thought.

The trees dotted the plains of medium-sized grass, and stones littered as much as the brown patches untouched by nature. The only item out of place was the girl hacking down the innocent trees using her scythe while roaring as loud as she could with each strike.

"Hi..." Lu silently crept up to her, not knowing what to say, or how.

After Autumn realized who the source of the voice was, she instantly dashed to where he was and pointed the tip of her weapon on his throat.

The boy did not move an inch.

"Go ahead. In here, you can kill me as many times as you'd like. I'll be respawning over there so if you want you can kill me over and over again in that same spot" Lu pointed at where he appeared.

Autumn thought for a moment before she dropped her scythe and it evaporated shortly after. She turned away from Lu and started walking the other direction.

"Hey...um, can I show you something?" Lu asked politely.

She stopped on her tracks and turned back to him with an uninterested expression.

"Here let me just..." Lu shot seven feathers into the ground which dissolved as if the dirt turned into magma. In place of the feathers, seven symbols created a perfectly circular glyph, glowing blue for a short time before turning into a part of the ground.

"Follow me" he said, jumping in and disappearing as soon as his feet landed inside the small circle.

Naturally curious, Autumn followed his lead. She felt blinded by a white abyss for a moment, and when her sight returned, she was in a completely different location.

What she witnessed widened her eyes and took her breath away. The skies were painted orange and the clouds lined up in beautiful natural patterns, mostly like fluffy popcorns. The sun sat on the heart of the horizon and gave the waters in front of it a beautiful hue.

Autumn was standing on nothing but a long, thin layer of rock branching out from a tall, rock mountain. The strong but gentle breeze caressed her, and even the trees around her made her feel comforted.

"Welcome to Eversunset cliff...or so I called it" Lu took back his grand presentation.

Autumn did not not utter a word, but almost in awe. She walked to the edge of the rock and sat, letting her legs hang from the edge of a thousand-meter drop.

Lu sat a little distant from her. "Even back in my world, almost nobody has seen this place. To get here you must go through trials that do not make sense, each one extremely difficult to clear, and is meant to feel like it the challenges never end. One day I thought I would try to last as long as I could and ended up here. There's no reward or anything, but the view is cool. You get only one place to stamp your teleport waypoint so it made sense that many set it up on their houses. I decided to stamp mine here. That meant I could no longer set up a house anywhere even though it would be highly impractical, but I'd say it was well worth the exchange. The time of day here never changes and it's good for when I need to take a breather and run away from everything for a little while, you know what I mean?"

Lu's question went unanswered, and for a while, only the wind could be heard as both of them enjoyed the atmosphere. Lu felt a little drowsy feeling carefree and away from every threat in existence. Lu snapped awake only because Autumn finally decided to speak.

"I..." she said, her voice no longer as threatening as her look earlier.

"...once met an aurum. She was a sweet girl about the age of nine. When we first met her, she was crying at the gates of Cybelle, asking for help. She looked like the world was against her. Though, the only thing she did wrong was to announce that she was an aurum. Everybody thought no different of the girl, except for me and my family.

We took care of her. Fed her. Raised her. She stayed with us for over a couple of years.

And then, people started disappearing one by one.

Of course people suspected her, but my family stuck with her thinking that there was no proof. And as if she wanted to get caught on purpose, that same night I saw her absorbing my brother's soul.

She was too skilled and got away even though the whole lower part of the kingdom was chasing after her. I remember her smile like it was yesterday. The smile that told us she did not feel any remorse at all. In fact, she might have even been enjoying it. She laughed as she ran for her life, boasting about how many lives she'd taken already and 'some idiots' were willing to believe in her.

Just like any aurum, her hair and eyes were black, and she had no regard for anyone's life. She just takes it and gets away with it. That's when I swore that I would kill any Aurum that comes my way."

Silence persisted once more as Lu did not know what he was supposed to say. All he could do was stare into the sunset that supposedly lightened his heart, yet he was perceiving otherwise. He felt a certain heaviness cloud over his chest.

"That is why there was no space for me to ever trust an aurum. Until recently" Autumn looked into his eyes with an inquisitive look. "The night we fought you could have killed me, and got away with it. Why didnt you?"

Lu voiced his thoughts. "Honestly I thought because you could use your fourth animus if I had fallen for your trap but also of course because I don't really intend on killing anyone from the start"

"Why don't you want to kill anyone unlike the rest of your kind?" She asked as soon as Lu finished his last word.

Lu looked up. "I've lived in a rather peaceful era. Killing was taboo back in the reality I used to know. Also, for what it's worth, I'm actually normal person if you change the color of my hair and my feather"

Autumn followed his example and looked up as well. "I've killed people, Lu. Not yet hundreds, but somewhere near that. I did what I had to. Knowing that, I guess it's a little hard to tell who's the monster between us now, huh".

"You know, if I ever needed to, I would slit throats too" Lu announced confidently.

"I guess the aurum too can be different from each other, huh" Autumn tilted her head as she continued to stare into the skies. She then closed her eyes and laid back on the grass. "Thank you"

"I didn't really do any---"

"No, really. Thanks. Even now, you could have eaten my soul outside before you entered, or maybe just stab me for the heck of it. After all, you were trying to reach out to me for a month. But you didn't. Truth be told, I thought you would be angry at me, but there's not even a hint of it when you confronted me today. Maybe some aurum aren't so bad after all" Autumn smiled.

"Maybe I'm not an aurum at all" Lu jested, which prompted them both to laugh.

They went silent to breathe the light air that comes after that sense of achievement whenever an issue is resolved.

"Alright, how do I get out?" Autumn stood back and opened her arms to gesture that she was ready.

"It's a good thing you asked. That was actually why I came here. You do this and press this and that" Lu demonstrated to how to disconnect from the device.

A white abyss consumed Lu and the next moment he was back to the real world lying on his back. Autumn followed him soon after following his example.

"Does that mean you will no longer spread rumors of an aurum in Elle?" Lu asked, smiling.

"Of course I will!" Autumn laughed so much Lu had doubts whether she was mocking him or not.

"You...will do that, right?" Lu asked after Autumn finished her short good laugh.

Autumn snapped her focus to Lu. "There really is a rumor?" she interrogated.

"Wait so that wasn't you?" Lu asked back.

A moment passed before they realized the weight of what they learned from the small and almost incomprehensible talk. Without another word they walked back to Elle in a hurry.