Chapter 88- The Secret She Keeps
Grub took another bite of his food and stared at Luthiel across the table.
The conversation about her three aspects had settled into a comfortable quiet. His notebook sat beside his plate, filled with new diagrams and notes. El remained in control, her bangs covering her eyes, her posture still and straight. She had barely touched her food.
But Grub wasn't done with his questions.
"Okay, so I get all that," he said, setting down his utensil. "But there's something else. Why does everyone hate you?"
The air at the table changed. El didn't flinch. She didn't even shift. But something behind the bangs went still.
"I've noticed it for a while now," Grub continued, his voice even. "All the weird stares. The silent whispers of everyone around you.. The way the people who don't stare at you avoid looking at you all together. How that baker acted when we visited or Nora. Even the Guardians." He leaned forward slightly. "You seem like an outsider here, even though this is supposed to be your home."
El sat very still. The sounds of the diner filled the gap between them—plates clinking, low murmurs from other tables, the shuffle of the server moving between seats.
Slowly, she spoke.
"Master Morrigan found me when I was young. She was out traveling and she came across me. I was… very small at the time." Her voice remained flat, but it slowed. "She brought me back to her village and raised me as though I were her daughter. I love Master for that and I owe her my life. Anything she asks of me is my order to follow."
She paused for just a moment. "But the others did not welcome me the way she did."
"Why not?"
Luthiel looked down at the table. Her mitten-like hands pressed flat against the surface.
"You see… a-actually." She stopped. Her voice, usually so measured and controlled, caught on something. "Never mind. I cannot say."
Grub's expression hardened. "What do you mean you can't say?"
"I cannot share the specifics. Master told me never to tell anyone."
Grub scowled. "I thought you said you'd answer everything."
El shook her head calmly. "Not that. I am sorry, Scribe. That is the one thing I will not share. Not because I do not want to, but because I was told not to. And I do not disobey Master Morrigan."
Grub stared at her for a long moment. Frustration burned behind his eyes. He could see it in the way her hands sat flat on the table, perfectly still, that this wasn't a dodge. She genuinely couldn't tell him. It was an order, and Luthiel followed orders from Morrigan the way water followed gravity.
He decided to just drop it.
"Fine."
The word came out sharper than he intended. He softened it with a sigh and leaned back in his chair. The silence stretched into several moments. Grub poked at his food without much enthusiasm. Then he looked up.
"Can you at least tell me how long it's been? Since you got here."
El considered the question. It apparently wasn't covered under the restriction.
"A long time," she said quietly. "I have been here for most of my life. It's almost all I have ever known."
Grub raised an eyebrow. "You've been here that long and they still treat you like a stranger?"
"Yes."
"And that doesn't make you angry?"
El was quiet. For a moment Grub thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she spoke, and her voice was softer than he had ever heard it.
"Lu cries about it sometimes. When she thinks the other two are not paying attention." A pause. "Thi wants to break things when it happens. She holds it in, but the anger is always there. It is part of why she is the way she is."
"And you?"
"I accept it."
Grub frowned. "You just accept it?"
"What else is there to do? I cannot force them to like me. I cannot change what I am. And I will not leave, because Master is here. So I accept it and I continue."
Grub studied her. The flatness in her voice wasn't apathy, he realized. It was practice. She had said these words to herself so many times that all the edges had worn smooth.
He recognized it. He had done the same thing with his own memories—or lack of them. When you couldn't change something, you just stopped letting it cut you. Or you tried to, at least.
"For what it's worth," Grub said, looking away, "I think they're stupid."
El tilted her head.
"The villagers," he clarified. "For treating you like that. You clearly care about this place more than most of them do. You defend them in meetings they don't even know about. You follow Morrigan's orders without question. You've been here for a long time and as far as I can tell you are Morrigan's daughter. Blood or not." He shrugged. "If they can't see that, they're blind."
The table went very quiet. El didn't respond for several seconds. When she did, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"That is… an unusually kind thing for you to say, Scribe."
Grub scowled. "Don't get used to it."
"I won't."
But something behind the bangs shifted. He couldn't see her eyes, but he could feel it—something warm passing through the air between them, quiet and brief, like sunlight through a crack. Grub redirected quickly before the moment could settle too deeply.
"Have you ever been outside the village? Traveled anywhere else?"
"Once or twice, with Master. Never far. And never for long." She folded her hands. "Master prefers that I stay close. The world outside is not kind to people like me."
"People like you?"
El paused. Grub could tell she was measuring her words again, walking along the edge of what she was and wasn't allowed to say.
"People who are… different. In ways that others find difficult to understand."
Grub thought about that. He thought about his own situation—a boy with no memories, no identity, carrying a power that he just called Death that he barely understood, wearing a bracelet that could kill him at any moment. Different didn't even begin to cover it.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I get that."
They ate the rest of their meal in a gentler silence than before. Grub asked a few more questions between bites. What her daily routine looked like. How often she trained with Morrigan. Whether she had ever met anyone else with three aspects like hers.
The routine was simple. She woke early, helped around Morrigan's house, ran errands, sometimes attended class, and spent most of her free time either with Orobas or tending to the small animals and flowers around the village. It was a quiet life. A lonely one, though she didn't use that word.
She trained with Morrigan irregularly. Morrigan would offer, Luthiel—usually Lu—would agree, and then Thi would take over once the training started. It always ended with Luthiel running away because Morrigan's methods were, in El's words, "not gentle."
As for others with three aspects—no. She had never met anyone like herself. As far as she knew, there was no one else.
"That must be isolating," Grub said, not looking up from his notebook.
"It is what it is."
Grub recognized that phrase. He had used it himself, more times than he could count. It was what people said when the truth was too hard too accept or to heavy to comment on.
When they stepped outside into the late afternoon light, the sky had turned a warm orange. The streets were quieter than they had been that morning. Most of the market stalls had closed and the village was settling into its evening rhythm. Lanterns were beginning to flicker on along the roads.
Grub slid his notebook back into his coat. He had pages of new information. Three personalities. Three Anima types. Names for each one. A healing ability he hadn't fully understood until today. A history that stretched back further than he expected. And a secret locked behind Morrigan's orders that none of Luthiel's selves could share.
It wasn't everything he had hoped to learn. But it was more than he had known this morning. And strangely, despite the frustration of hitting that wall, he felt closer to understanding her than he ever had.
Luthiel walked beside him in silence, her bangs still covering her eyes. Their footsteps fell in a slow, easy rhythm against the dirt road. After a while, she spoke.
"Did you get what you wanted, Scribe?"
Grub shrugged. "Some of it."
"I see." She walked a few more steps. "I am sorry I could not tell you everything."
"It's fine."
"It is not fine. I can tell it bothers you."
Grub glanced at her. "You're pretty perceptive for someone who can't see through her own hair."
"I can see through my bangs."
"What?"
"I can see through them. They are not opaque."
Grub stared at her. "Then why do you wear them like that?"
"Because it makes people uncomfortable when they cannot read my expression. It is strategically useful."
Grub opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he let out a single, short laugh. A rare real laugh, one barely anyone in this village had heard from him.
El's head turned toward him slightly. She said nothing, but the air around her changed. They reached the point where their paths split. Morrigan's house to the left, the inn to the right. Luthiel stopped.
"Training is tomorrow," she said quietly. "With Master Morrigan."
Grub nodded. Something stirred in his chest. Excitement and nervousness. The two were starting to feel like the same thing these days.
"Yeah," he said. "It is."
"Are you ready?"
Grub thought about it. He had no Death left. His body was covered in burns and bruises. He was being hunted by a military faction, wearing a kill device on his wrist, and running out of time. He had no weapon yet, no combat training in Anima, and his only real ally in this village was a plush doll with three personalities who couldn't tell him half of what he needed to know. He wasn't ready for this training or what was to come next.
"No," he said honestly. "But I'll show up anyway."
Luthiel nodded. Something about the answer seemed to satisfy her.
"Goodnight, Scribe."
Grub looked at her. The bangs. The blue streaks. The still, quiet posture.
"Goodnight, El." Grub thought for a moment. "Actually, goodnight, Luthiel."
Something shifted behind the bangs. Small and barely there. The corner of her mouth twitched upward for just a moment.
Then she turned and walked away. Watching her go, Grub stood there at the crossroads for a while longer, hands in his pockets, the evening air cooling around him.
His mind was full. Names and diagrams and a secret he didn't know yet. A training session he wasn't ready for. A deadline that was now about three days away once he slept. And somewhere beneath all of it, sitting quietly in a place he didn't usually look, was the growing realization that the people he was supposed to betray were becoming the people he least wanted to lose. And if he was being honest with himself, one person in particular kept finding her way into those thoughts.
He turned toward the inn and started walking. Three days left.