Charisma 100: My Academy Life As A Heartbreaking Commoner-Chapter 236: The Artist

The Consortium official, who had apparently survived the attack by hiding behind an overturned table, stumbled back to his feet, adjusted his grey robes, cleared his throat, and announced in a voice that was only shaking a little bit that the ceremony was now formally, legally, and bindingly concluded.

So, Aegis kissed her wife.

And, boy, did she make it count. She grabbed Talia by the waist with one hand, put the other one behind her head, and dipped her so low that Talia’s black hair almost touched the floor. Talia made a noise of surprise against her lips, and then grabbed the front of Aegis’s dress with both hands and kissed her back hard enough that Aegis’s brain went a little fuzzy around the edges.

Somewhere in the crowd, a noble gasped. Somewhere else, someone wolf-whistled. Aegis was pretty sure that was Sophie.

When she pulled Talia back up, the princess’s yellow eyes were wide, her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing hard. She looked like she wanted to either kill Aegis or drag her into a closet. Possibly both, and possibly in that order.

"Was that necessary?" Talia asked, her voice low.

"Absolutely."

The crowd started clapping, and, honestly, Aegis couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just the kind of nervous applause that happens when people aren’t sure what else to do after an assassination attempt and a shadow magic reveal and a dramatic kiss all happen within the same fifteen minutes.

Either way, she’d take it.

They made their way through the aftermath. Broken glass on the floor, overturned chairs, guards ushering people toward the exits. Evelyn appeared at Aegis’s side with a checklist already in her hand because that woman’s ability to produce paperwork in any situation was, frankly, superhuman. Scarlett and Kanna were near the doors, both of them armed and scanning every face that walked past them. The twins were nowhere to be seen, which meant they were doing their jobs.

Talia pulled Aegis aside near a hallway that led to the private rooms.

"I need to go deal with my mother before she does something dramatic."

"More dramatic than trying to arrest me at our wedding?"

Talia’s eye twitched. Just like her mom’s. Aegis decided not to mention that.

"If you’ve got anything to do, make it quick," Talia said, and then looked at her with hungry, half-lidded eyes. "You and I have a long night to look forward to."

"Yes ma’am."

Talia turned and left, and Aegis watched her go for a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary before she ducked into one of the private rooms and shut the door behind her.

The room was small, some kind of sitting area with a couch and a window. Aegis locked the door, sat down, and opened her Scandal Shop.

Her current balance read: 800 Scandal Points.

Aegis stared at that number. Then she blinked, rubbed her eyes with both hands, and stared at it again.

[Eight hundred. EIGHT HUNDRED!?]

To be fair, it made sense if she thought about it.

The whole betrothal interruption, the griffin thing, the duel with Darius, the wedding itself, the assassination attempt, shadow magic in front of five hundred nobles, kissing Talia like that in front of everyone. Her life had been a Scandal Point printing press. But still. Eight hundred. She’d been scraping together points in the double digits for months and now she was sitting on eight hundred like some kind of scandal millionaire.

She scrolled through the shop.

Lune (500 Points)

Major Timeline Deviation (300 Points)

She had enough for both remaining options.

[Oh, hell yes.]

She bought the Lune option first.

And then reality broke.

---

The room didn’t fade or dissolve or do anything dramatic like that. It just stopped being there. One second she was sitting on a couch in a private room at her own wedding, and the next second she was standing in a black void with no floor, no ceiling, no walls, and no anything except for Lune Solana, who was about ten feet away from her, painting.

Not painting on a canvas. Painting on reality itself. Her brush moved through empty air and left color behind, strokes of blue and green and gold that expanded outward and became sky and grass and sunlight. The world grew around them in real time, layer by layer, like watching someone build a landscape out of nothing.

Lune didn’t look up from her work. Her long black hair hung loose over her shoulders, her pink eyes were focused on whatever she was creating, and she had this expression on her face that Aegis had seen a hundred times in class, in the dorms, in the hallways.

Just Lune being Lune. Quiet and still and completely unbothered.

"Oh?" Lune said, her brush not stopping. "You finally purchased it."

Aegis opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Lune. What the fuck."

"That’s a broad question."

"What is this? What’s happening? Why are you painting the sky?"

"Because it needs painting." Lune tilted her head and added a streak of orange to the horizon. "I suppose you have questions."

"Yeah, Lune, I have questions. I have so many questions. You can start with, I don’t know, literally any explanation for what I’m looking at right now."

Lune set her brush down.

She turned to face Aegis fully, and for the first time in all the months Aegis had known her, Lune’s expression was, well, it wasn’t different. That was the weird part. She looked exactly the same. Same flat stare, same faint tilt of the head, same absolute lack of urgency.

But rather, instead of thinking "there’s my cute roommate", Aegis was thinking "what am I looking at?"

"I am, in terms you would understand, a deity," Lune said. "Or close to one. The distinction is mostly academic."

Aegis waited for the punchline.

It didn’t come.

"You’re... a god?"

"Close enough."

"You’re a god... and you’ve been my roommate for a year."

"I have."

"You’re god and you’ve been drawing me naked in your sketchbook."

"You have a memorable figure."

Aegis sat down. Or, she tried to, and a chair materialized beneath her because apparently that was just how things worked in here. She put her face in her hands for a moment, then looked back up.

"Okay. Keep going."

Lune picked her brush back up and resumed painting. A river was forming now, blue-silver and winding, cutting through the landscape she’d built.

"I observed you for some time when you were still Emily," Lune said, her tone the same as if she were describing what she’d had for breakfast. Aegis’s breath caught in her throat. "You were dying, and you spent your remaining time in a world that wasn’t real. A videogame. I found that interesting."

"You... saw that?"

"Yes. So I built this world. From the ground up. Using the game as a template, and then expanding on it. Making the people real, the history real, the magic real. All of it." Another brushstroke, and trees appeared along the riverbank. "And then I pulled your soul here after you died."

Aegis sat with that for a second. Then another second. Then a few more.

"Why?"

Lune stopped painting and looked at her directly. Those pink eyes that Aegis had spent a year thinking were just an unusual genetic trait were, apparently, the eyes of a being who could create entire worlds with a paintbrush.

"Aegis, or should I call you Emily?" Lune paused. "The truth is, I don’t understand people."

"What do you mean?"

"Ambition. Feelings. Desire. Fear. Love. I can observe them, but I can’t comprehend them. They don’t make sense to me. They never have." She set her brush down again, and it floated there, dripping gold. "So I figured I would make a trade with you. You get to live in the world you love. And I get to observe your growth up close. Learn from you. Watch you make choices and feel things and want things."

She tilted her head.

"I figured it was more than fair, no?"

Aegis leaned back in her chair. The chair that a god had made for her. In a void where that same god was painting a world into existence. While looking at her with the same blank expression she used when she asked Aegis what she wanted for dinner.

[So that’s why she was always drawing me.]

"Are you angry?" Lune asked.

Aegis thought about it.

She thought about Emily, dying in a hospital bed with tubes in her arms and a videogame on a screen. She thought about waking up in this world with a maxed Charisma stat, a body that worked, and a whole life ahead of her. She thought about Talia, and Scarlett, and Nazraya, and Liora, and everyone else she’d met and loved and fought for over the past year.

"Hell no," Aegis said. "I’m thankful. You gave me a second chance at life and you put me in the one place I’d actually want to be. I appreciate the opportunity."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah." Aegis grinned. "I mean, the whole ’secretly being god’ thing is gonna take some getting used to. But, yeah. Thank you."

Lune looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded once, and the faintest trace of what might have been satisfaction crossed her face.

"What will you do now?" Lune asked. "If this was that game you liked, it would be safe to say you’re entering the final act. You’re quite close to having everything you’ve wanted. Your perfect life, as it were. And now, only this one group stands opposed. What are you going to do about it?"

"I’ll win," Aegis said. No hesitation.

"And if I asked to continue observing you?"

"I’d say knock yourself out. Though, give me bigger boobs next time you draw me."

"... I’ll keep that in mind."

Aegis laughed, and then she stood up from the chair. She looked at Lune, at the world she’d painted around them, at the sky that now stretched endlessly overhead in colors that didn’t exist in nature, and she felt something settle in her chest. Not heavy, not dramatic. Just settled. Like a piece clicking into place.

"Oh, and, by the way," Aegis said. "It’s not Emily. Not anymore."

"Hm?"

"It’s Aegis."

Lune smiled. Just a little. Just enough to notice.

"Noted."

---

Reality snapped back.

Aegis was on the couch in the private room.

The window was still there, the door was still locked, and according to the clock on the wall, about three minutes had passed. Her head was spinning a little, but otherwise she felt fine. She felt good, actually. She felt like she’d just gotten an answer to a question she hadn’t known she’d been asking.

The door opened. Talia walked in, already pulling at the laces on the back of her dress with one hand and shutting the door behind her with the other.

"My mother is going to be a problem."

"When is she not?"

"Fair point." The dress came loose at the shoulders and Talia shrugged out of the top half as she crossed the room toward Aegis. "We can deal with that tomorrow."

Aegis looked at Talia, her wife, walking toward her, half out of her wedding dress, yellow eyes locked on her with the kind of focus that Talia usually reserved for combat and exams, and she smiled.

"Yeah," Aegis said. "Tomorrow."

Talia straddled her on the couch and kissed her, and Aegis kissed her back.

The rest of the world could wait.