Time and life went on, as it was apt to do.

One month following her defeat, Cocolia had been keeping herself occupied with the helpless task of sifting through each piece of her memories, not that there were any better considering most were of her time as the Supreme Guardian, but it was a stark reminder of how she believed she was treated so wrongly. She had received visitors of animosity and loathing over the past months in her comfortable prison cell, and had responded to them with a thin-lipped smile, but over time even they had pricked at her.

Cocolia wondered during those couple of months if that was what made her so furious. It was so easy for the citizens of Belobog, as mere bystanders to what occurred with her fight against the Express, to accept that the event was devastating, but life went on as it always did. They could offer their outrage and incense, wear an enraged expression, and then go on with their lives, content in their knowledge that they believe they have done the right thing — imprisoning her for something she had to do. They weren’t at the centre of being the Supreme Guardian, no way. They didn’t have to deal with the Stellaron’s whisper, the raw destruction, the empty wishes and the heavy burden. The knowledge that her own daughter resisted the salvation of what the Stellaron could have offered, the current nineteenth person to bear the title of Supreme Guardian.

They didn’t have to deal with the notion that Qilipoth only ever glanced at the Trailblazer, void of actual life and full of artificial feelings with a replaced heart for a Stellaron, and the almost sickening notion that the only time she desperately sought ways to ignite the eternal, frozen statue of Jarilo-IV…was when THEY had ignored her completely. Now, Jarilo-IV has been slowly warming up, and the title of Supreme Guardian was now Bronya’s.

Seated in the chair inside her imprisonment, Cocolia held before her the copied photograph she had requested of her and a young Bronya, taken during her daughter’s adoption so many years ago. She felt the smooth paper under her fingertips and glanced at the adorable face of her daughter curiously feeling the red ribbon of her badge and the smile adorned on her own face. The previous Supreme Guardian didn’t know why, but she felt an anger rise within her from just staring at her own smile.

Maybe it was the situation she was in.

Maybe it was the feeling…almost of betrayal.

How dare they imprison her like this.

How could they revoke her title in such a final, irrevocable way?

How could Qilipoth gaze upon the Trailblazer, knowing how she depended on THEM…and why?

How could THEY do this?

How dare the Astral Express and that butterfly rip Bronya from her so cruelly?

Cocolia did not know why, but what she did know was that a figurative fragmentum had grown within her, sending a command to her arm, and the uneaten breakfast she had been given by the Silvermane Guard on duty was flung with an anguished shriek at the prison wall.

Shards of glass in addition to a mesh of food splattered as the plate impacted the painted brick wall, spraying it with sharp proof of her fury. Cocolia stared at the mess for several moments, her heart pulsing with bubbling wrath; it was the right emotion to feel, and she would take it over the cold numbness that had occupied her heart over the past couple of months. At least she could anticipate the feeling as sharply as the filling of her lungs with deep, heaving breaths, or the digging of her nails into the side of her arms.

The front door to the prison cell clunked open, sending out a dull creak as well as a familiar face being none other than you, the Silvermane Guard responsible for looking after her, moving inside the room.

The sound snapped her from her figurative fragmental reverie; blinking, she looked at you holding her lunch, as though waking up from a short dream. “Another generous offering from the city I once ruled. You bring it with such ceremony. Do you expect gratitude, soldier?” Cocolia asked in a slight, dry snap that even surprised her.