Lyra (ライラ) is a short story given to those who purchased volume 3 of Astraea Record in BookWalker.
Summary[]
Lyra had no name. Her earliest memories was of being in a room with several other crying babies. One day a strange man in white clothes came into the room and started making a commotion. Other people came into the room to stop him. As Lyra watched him, suddenly she was splashed by a hot red liquid that flew from the man's body. The man's body collapsed, and the other adults dragged him out of the room. The commotion made all the other babies cry, but ever since Lyra was covered in the man's blood, she was completely silent. Lyra was wise and her only thoughts was of how she didn't want to get turned into the hot liquid that covered her like the man in the white clothes.
As time passed, Lyra started to notice that the adults, that would sometimes come into the room, would always take the babies that was located closest to the door outside the room. Once the babies were taken out of the room Lyra noticed that they never returned. Lyra assumed that this action would lead to the end of their lives. When the time eventually came that she was the nearest child to the door, she would hide in a box in the far corner of the room and try to ignore as other babies were taken in her place day after day. Lyra was able survive this way for quite a long time because she was very small even for a Pallum, which made it difficult for the adults to notice her correct age in comparison to the other children. Eventually as she grew though Lyra realized that she was reaching the limit of how long she could get away with it. Thinking this Lyra fearfully sneaked out of the room hoping no adults would find her. However when Lyra finally reached what she thought was the exit that would lead into her freedom, she instead entered a prison, the prison city Bergen.
Located in the Eastern section of the continent, the mass prison was so large that it was referred to as a city. It contained prisoners who were guilty of crimes from all over the world including adventures from Orario who had their blessings erased and their statuses sealed by their gods, and have been locked inside the prison’s walls for their crimes.
Once she had escaped, Lyra discovered that she was the child of two pallum inmates in the prison. Whether if her birth was conceived as a result of love or of force, but what she did know was that the day that her mother gave birth to her, instead of showing her love or compassion, her mother covered her ears to block out the noise of her crying baby, complained to the other inmates that was in the room about the noise, and left Lyra in their care.
Lyra also found out that the room that she was taken into was referred to as the ‘merchandise room’, in short it was a place that’s purpose was for the selling of human organs. Whether the residents of the city were criminals or they were descendants of criminals it made no difference. All citizens of the city were treated the same. Bergen was also a place that conducted many practices that was considered as unacceptable from the outside world; including organ trafficking, human experiments, strange rituals and often the selling of products which were the outcome of such practices to mages and hexers outside of the city. Lyra threw up when she learned the truth of her origins.
During her days in the prison Lyra was often kicked and punched by the residents there. The only reason that she managed to survive both physically and mentally was most likely because of how small she was. After escaping the merchandise room Lyra started living in the sewers of the city. One particularly clever inmate started to take notice that she was living there, so the inmate started to give her food and other small things.
Lyra was too young to understand many of the things that were happening around her when she first escaped the room. When she was punched in the face and that red hot liquid she saw that day first came for her own body she thought it was the end, but her memories of the man protected her as from that day she always thought of how to avoid having the same thing happen to her.
Work in progress.