High above Cape Lumous, veiled by the ominous, churning dark clouds, Lyria Vicinage crackled. She was no longer flesh and bone, but a pure, unblemished fusion of consciousness and raw electrical energy. She was power unbound. With a mere whim, she could unleash bolts of lightning to strike anyone below, yet such petty acts were beneath her. Lyria had transcended not only the physical, but the tumultuous storm of human emotion. Only her mind, crystalline and detached, and her shimmering spirit remained.
Revenge held no sway, love no capacity. Though her old enemies and the sisters she once cherished lived out their trivial dramas beneath her, Lyria felt no urge to meddle. She had succeeded. She had achieved her ultimate goal. Five years ago, driven by a fervent idealism, she had yearned to save everyone. Then, a chilling epiphany came to her: most people didn't want saving. So, she had focused on the one soul she truly could rescue: herself. And she had.
Lyria was content. She was, in essence, a goddess, untouchable, unseen. No one even knew where she truly resided. The accepted narrative, whispered throughout the city, spoke of an altercation with Elodie Petalcrest, a political struggle Lyria had supposedly lost, resulting in her banishment from Cape Lumous. Lyria had merely sought to upgrade the city’s rusting, wheezing steam-powered machines with sleek, efficient electrical conduits. Her younger sister, Nikola, was a prodigious inventor, but Jada, their mischievous sibling, had wreaked havoc with uncontrolled electrical surges, eroding public trust. Elodie, ever the opportunist, had seized the moment, fanning public fear to strengthen her own political hand, pushing for a ban on the new energy source. With the Great Calamity’s scars still fresh, it had been a simple matter for the Petalcrests to sway public opinion.
Nikola, in secret, had years ago created a weapon capable of transferring electricity directly into a person. Electra, the second eldest Vicinage sister, her name itself a prophecy, had insisted upon claiming it as her own. The results were astounding: electricity pulsed visibly beneath her skin. Lyria had made Electra promise secrecy, especially from Jada, fearing the chaos her wild sister would unleash with such power. Then, Nikola had made a chilling new invention, boasting the ability to transform a person into pure energy. Lyria had felt the pull of that ultimate power, convinced that with it, she could finally defeat the Petalcrests and usher in the Age of Electricity.
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The procedure had been agonizing, a searing agony that threatened to tear her apart. She hadn’t expected to survive, but she had. And in surviving, she had become something utterly terrifying. In a flash, she had teleported to the wasteland, her hands unleashing devastating bolts of energy that annihilated hordes of mutated zombies. But then, in the stark, silent aftermath, it had all dawned on her.
Why was she doing this? So what if she cleansed the land of its monsters? So what if she upgraded the city to electrical perfection? Would it truly matter if she ruled? What was the point of any of it? The electricity had not only granted her incredible power; it had illuminated her, opened her mind to a wisdom she wasn’t ready for. For all the pure light she could emit, within her now lay a profound darkness, a nihilistic void that nothing could fill.
And so, Lyria had vanished. The clouds became her sanctuary. She hadn't even bothered to say goodbye to her sisters, felt no pang of missing them, no grief at their tears. So when the day came that Ether was revealed, she saw it all. She understood its properties with a depth no Tanzanight chemist could ever hope to attain. She grasped the political landscape, the inevitable consequences, the future as if it had already transpired. She foresaw the disaster, the suffering, the war that was about to unfold like a monstrous, predetermined tapestry.
She could warn her sisters. She could even stop everything. And she would have. If only she could answer the question that echoed, eternally, in the vast, silent chambers of her electrified mind: Why should she do anything at all?
