The Achievement Junkie

'Go ahead, Lunara,' Jack verbally prodded as well. 'No matter what you tell him, Raztol can't stop you. Might as well be honest, right?'

Opening her mouths, Lunara paused and failed to get a word out. She looked down at her half-emptied plate but showed no desire to eat and no attention to the food on the table. Lunara was taking a few silent moments to reflect on the ancient memories that she had long forgotten and was struggling to ignore throughout the trip.

'I… It…' mumbled Lunara, taking even longer to get her mouth going. But once Lunara managed to speak properly, there was no stopping her emotions and memories any further.

'I want to keep living with my husband and family.'

'Family?! You've found more hydras beyond the trench?' questioned Raztol. 'In my few years of travel, I never heard of anything involving other hydras… no matter where I looked…' A grim expression flashed over the aged hydra's face by was quickly replaced with a soft smile.

Lunara and Lina hadn't noticed, but Jack was unusually aware around the hydra head and was all the more intrigued by the old hydra's moments of peculiar emotions or reactions.

'No… My husband is a human,' admitted Lunara. 'That's the reason I don't wish to stay away from the rest of the world…'

Recognizing the shifty nature in Lunara's gaze, Raztol asked, 'Alright… Then tell me, what drove you to run away?'

'That…'

'Come on,' Jack added his voice to the mix again, wanting to learn more about the past that his mother had hidden from them. 'Please, Lunara?'

Sighing and already feeling her old, bottled-up emotions emerging, Lunara couldn't stop her tongue. 'That… I ran away after my mother passed… What else would an orphaned hydra do?'

'Well, I'm sure we could've found you a home,' mentioned Raztol.

'N-no… I don't believe that would've been possible… Not for me…'

Dropping his smile and showing tender eyes, Raztol asked, 'Lunara… What sort of discrimination did you face? If that's too harsh a thing to ask, then forgive me. But understanding your story may better help me understand my people… our people.'

Lunara nodded slowly and stopped fighting herself. 'I was… I was only lv. 34 at the time… nothing but a young woman unknowing of the world around me. I never got out much though, as my mother made sure to bring me everything that I could ever need. It was rare that she took me into the young city that was back then…'

'Where did you live?'

'In Kelp Glade…' sighed Lunara. 'That's where I was raised, where I was taught to fight, where my mother cared for me…'

'In Kelp Glade…' Raztol was astonished by the fact, something that Jack couldn't fully understand.

Lunara noticed Jack's confused glance and explained, 'We passed over Kelp Glade on the way here, but it was very different at that time… There were no Giant Anemones nearby and no neighboring places filled with residents… That's where those unable to care for themselves would struggle to live…'

'It was practically exile,' mentioned Raztol, startling both Lunara and Jack. 'In fact… There were some hydras exiled there, which only made things worse…'

'I… I didn't know that…' Lunara took a deep breath and continued, 'I never left the area that my mother had claimed. It was rare that anyone tried to confront her, so it was more peaceful for us than it was for most…' With a quivering lip, Lunara added, 'Mother always told me to be grateful… That a kind heart would win against harsh words…'

'That… saying…' Raztol was shaken also, reliving his own memories for a brief moment. 'That saying was quite popular at the time… I eventually used it to gain momentum among the elders, becoming a consul with the support of the people.'

Continuing, Lunara was focused on her vivid memories, 'One day my mother left to hunt since we had run out of food and I hadn't eaten in days… I remember her nuzzling against my heads and comforting me, reminding me not to leave and that she'll bring home all the food we need…'

'And she never came back?' asked Raztol, enveloped in the story by both Lunara's and his own emotions of the past.

She shook her head. 'She came back… Mother came back with a tattered and torn portion of a Giant Squid. It was already missing half the head and most of its tentacles… And she was injured, badly injured…'

'Well…' Raztol swallowed some saliva and tried to console Lunara. 'Giant Squids have always been regarded as a delicacy, even to the Ancient Crustacean and other creatures of the deep.'

But Lunara shook her head again, her eyes devoid of light and dulled. 'Those wounds… weren't from another creature of the deep…'

'Then…' Realizing what Lunara was implying, Raztol didn't dare say another word.

'... Mother was riddled with bite marks… just like the tattered squid carcass… Other hydras had attacked her for the squid and she defended what she could with her life… I don't know how many there were, but to overpower Mother, there had to be a lot… As proud Six-headed Glacial Hydra, Mother wasn't afraid of anything…'

'W-what happened then? Where did you go for help?'

Lunara didn't look back to Raztol, still staring blankly at her plate. 'I… I tried to find help… I asked the people I knew in Kelp Glade… But they only glanced at her and took the squid… She tried to stop me from leaving again, saying she would be alright… But I knew better…

'I swam to the city as fast as I can… but no one cared to listen to a young girl that had already grown a third head by lv. 30… No one offered help, only cruel slanders at me and the mother that birthed me… I even tried an elder… but that ended in me getting swatted away… I… Had no one… to help me…'