Galaxy of Hyperion: Mystic Heir

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Playing Highly

Alba was working to create artificial life, and their plan was to find another person out there who would be able to make their creations even more powerful. It had taken quite some fine tuning in the first place for Lana to be created, that much she was aware of. There was quite a bit of experimentation that went into Lana's initial forming, and it took Lyloc a long time to finally pin it down. In the end, Lyloc had kept her methods a secret, and not even Lana was fully sure of how it had taken place in the end. Lyloc was seemingly trying to prevent too many people from getting the same idea that she had as far as creating new life was concerned, and yet, here they were anyways. 

Lana didn't know how anyone else had pulled it off either. Jubilee, Colt, and Arian all seemed to know little of the circumstances behind their own creations aside from the fact that it ended with them being living, breathing human beings much the same as any other. Lana figured that this was for the best. Part of her wondered if this was even meant to happen in the first place. Perhaps her mere existence was some twisted sin in the eyes of Hyperion, Soluna, and Skylox. Lyloc had always served in the name of her goddess, and those had been the days where Hyperion walked plain earth much the same as any mortal did. Was this even meant to be? Perhaps Lana was overreacting and thinking too deeply into the circumstances of her creation. That was what she desperately wanted to believe, she had to confess.  

On the other hand, Lana found herself once again wondering about what it was that set them apart. Deep down, was there even a difference between what she was doing and what Alba was capable of? Lana had created robots over the course of her time working as the leader of the City of Steel, and they could be considered artificial life if one wanted to get technical. Lana hated the way that her mind seemed to push her in the direction of implying that she was more similar to Alba than she let on, but once the thought arrived, she simply couldn't escape it. Alba was using their beasts of false creation to terrorize the people of Skylia, and if they succeeded in finding the person that they were looking for, Lakinya or otherwise, then Alba was going to try and take over the planet as a whole. Lana would never even dream of going that far, but the concept of creating life in the first place still drew a parallel between them that was beyond unsettling to her. 

Lana willed herself to stop thinking about it all with as much force as she could muster, but she kept crawling back to the same old song and dance. What was it in basic facts that set her apart from Cryai? How were any of the other Skylian Mages, save for Jay and Ronan, any different from Cryai or the other beasts of Ice that had invaded the castle? Lana knew realistically that their morals, ethics, and shared sense of justice pulled them in a different direction, but she could only feed herself such a thought process so many times before she started to feel as if she was simply lying to herself. Hearing herself turn the words over internally only seemed to lessen their impact in a moment when she needed them to strike strong and true to her core. 

In the end, Lana was pulled out of her thoughts by a knock at the door, and she looked up to see that there was a person standing in the entryway of the room. Jay was the person in question, and her gaze was just as detached and distant as Lana would have expected given the circumstances. Jay hadn't been all that happy about the news from Zelda, Tavi, and Lila either, though Lana supposed that none of them were truly satisfied with it. Why would they be happy to hear about something so openly dismal?

"There you are," Jay commented as she shut the door behind her. "I was worried when you were late to our training session earlier. It isn't like you to be behind schedule to anything, so I figured that something had to be wrong. I didn't want to ask in front of the rest of the group in case you wanted to keep it private though."

Lana smiled to herself at Jay's kindness and observational skills. "Thank you for coming to see me, Jay. I appreciate it," she said softly. "I guess that I've just had a lot to think about as of late." She didn't bother to elaborate further at first, figuring that she would have to talk about it sooner or later. Jay was going to pick up on what was happening; Lana could simply tell. If Jay was perceptive enough to see that Lana was upset when she was less than three minutes late to their training session earlier that day, then she was going to figure out something was happening here as well.