Chapter Text
It was a common pastime in Demacia to ponder what form a young daemon would choose. Kids liked to speculate with their friends, listing every exotic animal they knew while their daemons shifted for them. Parents theorized over each other’s children, and elders reminisced on the guesses they’d had for their daemons in their youths.
For children of notable lineage, daemon-guessing was a public spectacle.
Years before anyone knew of Lux's magic, countless Demacians noticed her bright personality. When the Crownguards ventured into the soaring mountain streets of High Silvermere, Lux often overheard cityfolk wondering how her daemon would reflect her "shining" disposition. Occasionally, a visitor to the Crownguard estate spotted Tirich gamboling beside Lux as a snow-white rabbit or a lightning-bug. Then, they would fawningly remark on how well the grace of such creatures befitted a lady as bright as Luxanna Crownguard.
“They couldn’t possibly know,” Tirich would reassure Lux later, nuzzled against her neck as a tawny mouse. She huddled in the gloomy recesses of her closet, knees to her chest, hands pressed flat against her legs to suppress the light flaring from her palms. She breathed deeply; in, out, in, out…
She started when a heavy fist knocked at her bedroom door. Leaping to the ground, Tirich shifted into a cat, his fur bristling, but he calmed at the familiar tenor of Garen's voice. “Aunt Tianna’s stopped in for a visit. She said she’d show us some swordplay in the courtyard! Want to see?”
Lux took one last deep breath, her face scrunching with concentration, and her light finally dimmed. “Yeah! I’ll be out in a minute!”
Garen and Aunt Tianna looked beyond Lux’s bright smile when they made guesses over her daemon. Lux was as much a warrior as they were; that much was clear in her razor-sharp focus when she watched them skirmish, her keen eyes hypnotized by their dancing blades. Lux drunk in Tianna's stories of perilous battles she’d fought with the Dauntless Vanguard. When Garen began his military training, Lux plied him daily to share what he learned.
Garen and Tianna agreed, without a doubt, that Lux would have a daemon befitting a warrior.
“Just like that!” Garen encouraged, his wooden training-sword striking Lux’s as she practiced the parry he’d shown her. At a short distance, Tirich tussled playfully with Hestia, imitating the silver wolf’s form and movements.
“Maybe the wolf form will stick,” Garen suggested as they continued their strikes and parries, his focus divided between his sister and their daemons. “I bet mother would let you train with me more if Tirich settled on the same form as Hestia!”
Augatha was partial to the thought of a songbird for her daughter.
As a matter of fact, she’d convinced half of High Silvermere that Tirich would settle on a bird. The assumption was plausible. Tirich had favored small, colorful birds throughout Lux’s childhood, delighting in zipping over Lux’s head, chirring crisp, bell-like notes as golden sunlight glinted off his glistening feathers.
Lux liked the thought of Tirich being a bird. She reveled in the joy Tirich felt when he launched himself over Demacia’s veridian fields, wings tilting to catch a warm updraft, spiraling higher, higher…
Garen watched with a furrowed brow as Tirich rose above the swaying, emerald treetops as a goldfinch. His face, usually so open and kind with Lux, was stoic. “Keep Tirich close when you’re in public,” he murmured. “People will think oddly of you if they notice how your daemon wanders.”
Lux nodded mutely, whistling for Tirich. He dove, wings flaring as he braced to land on her shoulder.
As much as Lux enjoyed Tirich‘s songbird forms, she hated the persona her mother associated with them. Augatha expected Lux to tend their estate like a bird tends its nest, and she wanted Lux to strengthen the Crownguards’ ties with other families by flocking from gala to gala.
“It’ll be a relief when he finally settles,” Augatha sighed, observing Tirich take the form of a bear. Tirich pawed at Hestia’s nose, trying to rouse the dozing wolf into a playfight. Augatha’s own daemon, a robin called Flit, preened his ruddy, orange chest feathers. “I hope it’ll happen soon so that this tomboy phase can come to an end.”
Tirich abandoned his attempts at play. It was clear that Hestia wasn’t going to reciprocate, not in the stifling confines of Augatha’s sitting room. Tirich took to the air as a bluejay, a recent favorite of his, and alighted on Lux’s shoulder.
Frustrated by her mother’s words, Lux replied vehemently, “My desire to serve our homeland is not a phase!” Tirich flapped his wings in agreement.
Flit churred disapprovingly as Augatha insisted, “There are better ways to serve your nation and family! Help me maintain our household! Represent the Crownguards at formal events! Strengthen our ties with other families! That is the way we keep our nation strong!” Her voice grew softer as she took in her daughter’s defiant glare. “You’ll understand once you know yourself better. Once know your WORLD better. Trust me; by the time Tirich settles, this will all make sense.”
Lux shot a glare at Garen, who huddled mutely in his seat. Though his eyes were half-closed, his rigid grip on the chair’s upholstery betrayed how closely he'd followed the exchange.
Surely, he didn’t agree with Augatha! Garen had always been apt to speak his mind! Why did he hold his silence now?
Lux couldn't comprehend how her mother couldn’t see what was right in front of her. Lux was strong. Lux was a fighter, and she would never be content as a homebody. She wanted to be like the warriors in the legends Aunt Tianna told!
It didn’t matter if Tirich settled into a songbird, or a wolf, or even a slug. Tirich would embody the soul of a legend, regardless of her family’s protests.
“You said nothing!” F rustrated, Lux fixed her brother with a searing gaze, flinging one arm toward the house they’d just departed. " You just sat there while mother told me how SHELTERED my life ought to be! What’s gotten into you? What happened to the brother who used to stick up for me?”
“Mother has a point.” Garen’s tone was unconvincing, and his face had twisted as if his own words tasted bitter on his tongue. “Maintaining the Crownguard household is an important task. You’d be supporting our family in a great way! you’ve always wanted to do something important...”
“NOT THIS!”
Garen’s hand flashed forward to grasp Lux’s outstretched arm. “You would be SAFE, Lux!”
Lux tried to yank her arm from her brother’s grasp...
That’s when she saw the light radiating from her palm.
Her panicked gaze shot to her brother’s face, but Garen only looked resigned. “I know about your magic,” he sighed. “So do Mother and Aunt Tianna. We want to keep you safe, but if you put yourself in danger, you're going to slip. People will notice!” He stepped closer, his expression pained. “What will I do if the Mageseekers declare you an enemy of Demacia? What will I do if they ask me to capture you, or escort you to prison, or enforce your exile?”
Lux’s gaze turned to steel. Well-intended as Garen might be, Lux refused to be cowed by her brother’s words. “This life is mine to live, and these risks are mine to take. Not mother’s, not yours! MINE!”
Tearing her arm from Garen's grip, she sprinted through the Crownguard lawns, past the gate, and toward the mountains beyond…
Lux hated the speculation, both over Tirich’s form and her own fate. She loved the people of Demacia and she loved her family, but who were they to tell her what Tirich should be? What she should be?
As she ran from the estate, Lux’s mind reeled. Why couldn’t her family understand?
Tirich’s wings sliced through the wind above her. His form shuddered, and the cerulean jay’s feathers flushed cardinal-red.
Lux’s hands burned. She turned sharply, fleeing into the steep woodlands. By the time she was enshrouded in the shadowed safety of thick oaks and tall pines, her palms were radiant. She almost laughed – with all this light inside of her, it was ironic that her family couldn’t see who she was.
Rather than force the magic back, Lux allowed it to spread freely down her wrists, then her arms, then her shoulders…
As her ever-growing light cut through the murk of the woods, it illuminated the harried flight of her daemon, whose feathers were broad and brown one moment, then sleek and silver the next. Tirich struggled to maintain a steady flight as his form shifted rapidly. He was dove-white, parrot-jade, thrush-speckled, lark-yellow.
The pair burst into an elevated glade, emerging from the gloom into golden, late-afternoon sunlight. Magic bled across Lux’s skin in fiery streams, brighter than the sun lingering over the tip of a neighboring mountain. She’d never let this much magic free before! It burned her! It awakened her!
Why was she taught to call this gift a curse? Why did this light make her Demacia’s enemy? Why couldn’t the world rejoice in this part of her?
One thing was clear: No one would invite her to live as the person she knew herself to be, with the talents she yearned to let loose. She could never force anyone to accept her, but she could accept herself, her WHOLE self, fully and completely.
Her light exploded forth, and Tirich was silhouetted in the radiant glow, his feathers inky-black against it.
As Lux’s magic, accepted at last, began to fade, that darkness continued to stain Tirich’s body.
Kneeling upon the heather-strewn earth, Lux felt something settle within herself.
The funny thing was, her mother’s speculation turned out to be spot-on.
“Of the birds classified as perching birds or ‘songbirds,’ the Common Raven is the largest…”
~ Audubon.org ~
Despite being right all along, her mother had seemed unnerved when Lux trudged back from the hills against a backdrop of gloomy dusk with a somber, jet-black raven on her shoulder.