Caeca Luma was a woman ever caught between stunning success and dismal failure. She was never a lukewarm lover, never a distant friend or mild enemy. Whether she blazed with the fury of a thousand suns or had the chill of midwinter sunk into her very bones, she was never in-between. Her appearance had always suited that. Like all who bore the name Luma, she had fair skin and dark hair. In her case, she was alabaster pale with inky locks, and pale grey eyes that never threatened her monochrome countenance. It was that beautiful face that had won her the heart of a king, and that beautiful face he had taken from her.
He had been the serpent-king, the usurper who had been discontent with merely being Head of the Mages' Guild and sought to be head of state as well. He was ruthless and powerful, and second in both of those things to his thirteen-year-old lover, Caeca Luma. He had brought her off the streets and into the role of his student and consort, a princess overnight and, in two years, a queen in her own right. His hunger for power was great; hers was greater. She quite nearly overthrew him at just age fifteen, and for her insolence he swore to make the world see as clearly as he did just how two-faced she was.
He was a mage and she was a mage, but in his coils she was powerless, and she was maimed. With blade and flame and mana he stole her beauty from an inch at a time.
Perhaps she deserved it. Perhaps not. But when she did escape his clutches, she was half the beauty she had been- quite literally. While the right half of her face retained its pixielike beauty, the left was in ruins. Blinded and deafened, he had bound too much of her magic to let her heal his revenge. Where once there had been delicate lips only scar tissue remained. Pale flesh was now pink and wrinkled and malformed, covering only the bones of her fragile face.
It is commonly known that magic and madness walk the same halls, and her mind was a labyrinth now twisted by hate as well as hunger, only now with the face to warn the world. Most take the warning at face value. She is a legend to some reasons, a ghost story to scare children into bed with. In other areas she is mere superstition. In other areas she roams still, longing for the day when her revenge may be complete. Most view her with pity, many with fear, and some with admiration. She failed, but she came close, and it is an unlikely and fascinating enough tale to have come within a fingersbreadth of going from the streets to ruling a nation.
It burns her up inside to have come so close only to fail.
