#umbral light

[banishingtheshadows]

Red Star

((More ship stuff to wind up @demaciangrandwarlock with.))

“What’s your favourite star?”

She asks him that question as they are sitting on the couch, her head pillowed with warm familiarity on his shoulder. Caiaphas blinks, turning his head to peer at her. Even then it takes him a few seconds to process that she is asking him a question, as lazy and comfortable as their position has been making him feel.

“Go on,” she adds, poking him when he doesn’t reply.

He considers a number of replies, discards them all. “Oh, you should know,” he replies with, “I’m sure I’ve told you already.”

“We’ve never talked about it, so I can hardly see how I might know it.”

Caiaphas beckons her close. She obliges, though judging from the scowl on her face he can guess that she’s almost bursting with impatience at his shenanigans. And so he bends forward to whisper in her ear one word: “You.”

She yanks her head away to stare at him. “Y-you can’t j-just-”

Hm. He hadn’t expected her to react with embarrassment, but there she is in front of him. He can’t help but continue to tease her. “No star I’ve seen burns brighter than that lovely shade of red. It is one of my favourite colours after all.”

And just as she’s opening her mouth - no doubt to yell at him - he winks.

He feels her hands on his arms - and then he’s lying on the carpet, peering up at her. She stares back, her eyes widening. “I-I’m s-”

He can’t help it, given the situation - he starts truly, genuinely laughing, his shoulders shaking from the force of it. He senses rather than hears her cut off her apology - and then she’s attacking him with a cushion.

He is too busy laughing to stop her.

[banishingtheshadows]

All For Charity

Let’s be real here all I post about when I’m IC is just me shipping with Caiaphas @demaciangrandwarlock

--

For charity, it was said. Lux couldn’t hate that. She couldn’t say no to a good cause - especially when one of her superiors took her off duty. “There are other ways to provide light for Demacia,” was all she was patiently told when she protested.

Her superior wasn’t wrong, but Lux didn’t like parties. She hadn’t liked them for a long time. Still...

“Auctioning people off like they’re...things. We’re...this is...”

“Frown for any longer, and the sour look will stay on your face.” The words were accompanied by a gentle elbow in her side, before that same arm was offered to her. “My lady.” His next words were mild, his brow cocked mischievously in an otherwise-deadpan face.

Try as she might, she couldn’t fight the smile that rose up. “Scoundrel.” She slipped her arm into Caiaphas’s, and stepped onto the floor.

“How did you even manage to afford my bid?” she asked as the band began a song.

“I have my ways,” he replied, not bothering to hide the smug glint in his eye. “Besides,” he added, “it helped that nobles were only allowed to bid for commoners, and vice versa.”

Mixing of social classes for greater unity, that was another aim of this auction and ball.

Maybe Lux could support the fostering of community bonds, but balls...

“I didn’t pay all this money to have you thinking about someone else, now.”

Jolted back to the present, Lux blinked - then glared at Caiaphas. “Knave.”

He bowed, and it was only then that she realised the song had ended. “At your service, milady.” He looked her over for a moment, then offered his hand yet again. “You want some air?”

“Please.”

***

The night was cool, as was the stone of the balcony. Lux leaned on the railing, her head turned up to the stars, each a pinprick of silver in the sea of twilight.

A swish of robes announced an interruption to her isolation, and the woman turned her head slightly as her escort for the night joined her, bearing one cup in each hand. “One apple juice, as ordered, milady.”

“Stop it with the name thing,” she replied as she accepted the glass, but her heart wasn’t in it. Knowing the emotion behind her words by now, Caiaphas only answered with a chuckle. “I didn’t know you could dance,” Lux added as she lifted her glass to her lips.

“...Not much,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his head, “but since this was a ball, I thought it prudent to learn...something. Did I pass muster?” Giving her a ghost of his normal cheeky grin, he bowed deeply, as a commoner to a noble. Lux only rolled her eyes at his shenanigans.

His smile faded as quickly as it appeared, and the man joined her on the balcony to lean on the railing. “Usually I get an insult out of you for that. You don’t like Court functions, I take it?”

“It’s not you, it’s...” Lux paused, turning her head from the stars to look at him. “Someone, a long time ago...They almost won me. Courting, flowers, all the right words...I thought...” She paused to shake her head before turning to look back out at the view, this time of the gardens below them. She could sense Caiaphas watch her as she stared unseeingly into the night. “...They wanted the name and not the person. This...auction, this treating of people as commodities rather than...well, people...it brings up...”

Another head shake, another deep breath. “The Court is a nest of vipers, and I was a mouse. I guess you could say I do not have good memories of this place.”

The long silence was pierced only by the rustling of fabric as Caiaphas sidled close enough to place a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

She bore the contact for a moment before turning to meet his gaze and nodding. “I have to go back inside. I...I am a Crownguard.”

The man only nodded and offered her his arm yet again. “You have to be in the public eye.”

“As much as I can.”

It was just as he began to escort her back in that she paused to look at him once more. “Caiaphas...one good thing did come out of that time.”

“Hm?”

“...I got to meet you.”

[banishingtheshadows]

Missing Light

((The following is me deciding to try and get back into the writing groove with a “What if Lux got herself into trouble and Caiaphas went to rescue her” scenario. Oh, also because ship stuff. I regret nothing.

Anyway, it will probably end up being 2 or 3 drabbles, under the tag Captured Light.

Credit goes to @demaciangrandwarlock for letting me borrow Caiaphas and for his help!))

--

Caiaphas stops in the middle of the street, his eyes shooting up to the small building that Lux called home. His gaze takes in the shadows of the curtains in the window, the solemn white stone of the walls, the simple tiling of the roof.

They are things he’d seen on his occasional visits, and they’d never changed. In fact, the only thing that had changed was the lack of activity.

Never had she left the door unanswered so long.

Something is wrong.

A mission, she’d said. He knew she couldn’t give more, clandestine as her assignment was - but he knew it had something to do with Noxus, their rival nation having been active in skirmishes in various neighbouring villages as of late.

Maybe he is overthinking things, but he can’t help it - every time she’d left, he’d worried until she got back. It was something that they’d managed between the pair of them.

Until now, that is.

He’s sure that she should’ve been back by now.

He turns and walks away, sliding between two people to access a small alleyway. It is only when he is out of sight that he calls on his magic, teleporting from the area. Several minutes of discrete travelling, careful packing, and some walking later, he stands at the entrance (or exit, as some would see it) to Demacia with nothing but a traveller’s pack and a hooded cloak, the better to hide his face so nobody would recognise him leaving.

Caiaphas tilts his head to inspect the archway for a moment, admiring the beautiful stone. Lux had called this place home, he knew, but she had not been here to study it for weeks. The knowledge only served to add to the weight in his gut, the certainty that she was in danger. The moment gone, the warlock turns again to the path before him, contemplating his next move.

Caiaphas didn’t know where she’d be, but he knew that Noxus had recently begun testing the eastern region between their empire and Demacia. He would start there. Decision made, the warlock strides forward with all the certainty in his body, his footsteps leaving dust in his wake.

Somewhere, out there, Lux was lost or worse.

Somewhere, out there, he’d find her.