LUSTER EFFECT
a Cinderella Side Story
Luster Effect is a fairytale story set in a fantastically magical world with magic and princes and dragons and fairies. It is my oldest story, my baby, and I am leaving it to the past now.
However, inside this story remains my Cinderella couple, Lea & Erion, which are probably the sweetest most innocent couple I own. They are very dear to me, being two characters that I simply am not. And their love for each other is the purest. Add in the glass slipper twist and they complete my childhood dreams.
Outfits: Currently I'm digging the first set! Feel free to AU/make your own!
LONG STORY IS LONG
OTHER NOTES
- To sum it up, Luster Effect basically takes the word luster - a soft sheen or light that comes from a reflective surface and uses that to define the whole world. Meaning everything we see is just a lie because it's a reflection from something else.
- The world really does take place in a fantasy world that is strictly based on fairy tales. The original main characters are part of a joint Sleeping Beauty and the Little Mermaid fairytale. A long time ago, an "angel" descended from the skies above and graced one of the countries with her magic and victory. They sent her down there to stop the war because all the deaths and pollution was getting to them @ above. She was pretty much a goddess of victory and won the war for the king who then wanted her for his wife. And he began to pursue her and ask her to stay with him forever. But she kept declining saying she must go back home and live eternity alone. It wasn't that she didn't love him but she would literally have lived for eternity.
- However he could not believe her and with his top magicians, they created a giant golden bracelet bond thing and wrapped it around her making her unable to fly and unable to leave. At that, they married and she got preggers and babies. And then her family realizes that she hasn't come home yet so they came down and realized she was cocreating with some filthy human! And they were like no bitches! And being in the human land had made her sick so she died and so they cursed the king's family with a toxic blood that only would get more and more vicious with the more magic used in the user so eventually there would be no magic users left and no way to capture one of the angels, actually they are fairies, again.
- Fast forward to thousand years later, the toxic blood of the king has pretty much died off, being a pretty good royal secret. But the children of the new king, secretly of course, have all had magic. Their first son they had when they were young, discovered he had magic and set out to find a cure but was eventually consumed by his own blood. They had had one more son while the first was living, but after seeing the second had magical blood too they began banging like crazy and popped out another son and then a set of twins.
- Okay so this is where the story splits off towards the side story. The second prince, Roi, is the main character of my original story. He realizes that his blood will eventually kill him so he also decides to go on a quest to find the cure. And he parades around as some magician, changing his entire looks, so no one will know its him. He also leaves behind a magical entity that masquerades as him for at least 10 years. Roi is basically trying to find the fairies again and the cure, apparently a way to get to them is to find the tomb of his greatest ancestor, the original fairy. What would not be revealed until the end is the fact that Roi is a skilled magic user and that on his younger brother's birth [being 10 years different], he stands over the crib and consumes all of his younger brother's magic. It's to keep him safe from the blood but he's a bit extreme you know, Erion would have to suffer being an incompetent child you know..
- Which is the second child and our main character here, Erion. He is the third prince and nothing about him is special! He's got no magic, he's not very physically skilled, he's slightly social awkward and the best he can do is just be locked up inside the castle and never let outside. Through his cousin he meets a few nobles and ends up meeting Lea and her brother Peter.
- Lea and Peter are looked down upon because they are half-elves [fairies really] and their green hair and golden eyes really set them apart. Did I mention that the more royal blood you have, the more blue your eyes are. Also as a side effect of toxic blood, their black hair starts to turn white. [On another side note, Peter and Erion's cousin Maria end up playing out Snow White]
- And it's love at first sight..... For Lea. LMAO. Erion falls for her best friend [Eliza] instead LMAO. Who doesn't like him back! But they are all good friends and everything is happy. And they grow up and the best friend's dad dies. Lea's dad remarries her friend's mom and they become step sisters. Which is all good first but then friend is really depressed at having just lost her dad and demands to Lea to let her take Erion. And she agrees and the two get together and Lea cries her pearly tears by the well.
- And then its like OH SNAP ROI ENTITY DISAPPEARS /finally/ and it's like the crown prince is missing oh noes. So out of some stupid decision they decide that Roi is old enough and should see the world and send him out to find his missing brother. While disguising it as Prince Erion just vacationing the world. Then things go downhill from here as the step sister breaks off their friendship and Dios goes off to find their mother's origin and why she died so easiry and disappears from existance. And then a few more years pass and it is noted that Erion and the step sister broke it off and Lea begins hiding herself as a servant all Cinderella-style, b/c of the racist attacks. Somewhere in the middle of this time, Lea meets the actual Roi who magics a pair of glass slippers for her.
- Roi does eventually get found, or rather he reveals himself, and they all head home to have a ball, three balls. And you know how the story goes, Lea makes it to the ball with the help of her fairy... brother. Who is here to take her to their new home, where they will never be looked down upon because the head of fairies mysteriously got sick and died making Peter, now Dios, the next in line by his mother. So off she goes in her dazzling dress to the masquerade ball and there is Erion pretending to not be Erion, since the years outside the castle have made him bitter, but just some random vagabond esque guy who just won't let Lea dance with the prince. And there they really fall for each other. The first two nights go like this until the third night, Roi asks for her hand to have one dance.
- Roi all this time has been being spectacularly evil, figuring out how to break the curse and even then something more. He lives with the ideals that the end justifies the means. He knows that the masquerading Erion is his younger brother and to save at least one soul he tricks her. Erion rushes out in his prince clothes, knowing his brother is really psycho from accidentally overhearing a plan, and is rushed by girls. By some bizarre and unfortunate happenings, Roi manages to convince Lea that Erion will never love her. And Erion confirms this by telling her that he's been pretending to be the vagabond guy all along and just toying with her heart, for the sake of saving her because he thinks his brother is up to something. And she runs out and into her brother's arm where they both magically disappear to the skies above.
- What happens is the tomb of the ancestor fairy has been held inside the castle all along. And Roi brings it out. What's even more strange is that she isn't dead, fairies don't die. No she's been sleeping for the past thousand years. And if he can wake her up, she'll take back all the magic with her, even the toxic blood magic, and fly away to live off eternity again. And the way to reawaken her is to harvest souls, which he has been doing, but the finale is to take all the souls of the remaining people in the ballroom. Which he promptly does and everyone falls to the floor. He uses a lot of magic with this feat and is barely standing at the end, only his blood and soul not taken.
- And everything is silent with only Roi standing or well falling to his knees about now. The fairy awakens and is upset, upset because of who she really is has been a lie for she has been reincarnating every 100 years as a young girl who keeps dying at the same time, and then even more upset at all the dead people around them. So she releases the souls and falls back to the floor but with her magic she has removed the curse from everyone minus Roi, because he hadn't given it back to her. But he releases his hold on Erion's magic, as it flies back to the awakening prince who holds out his arms and the magic shoots through his palms, burning them to a crispy black for life.
- And Roi lies on the ballroom floor which is how the story starts off with. He dies on the golden reflective surfaces as his blood strangles him from above. Spoilers, he isn't the sleeping beauty prince.
- Erion becomes crown prince and decides its finally time to complete the Cinderella story. So he hears of a waterfall at the edge of the world that flows up into nothingness and takes a band of army with him to get his princess back, ofc having her pretty fairy slipper with him too. Except, only he gets to go up the waterfall. And what meets him is an angry Dios, who has never really liked the flimsy prince ever. Dios is the new head of the fairies and looking more haughty than ever. And tells Erion he's got only one chance to make Lea happy. Then sends him off to one of the pools to get cleaned.
- Which Lea accidentally visits as he is pulling off a shirt and she goes kyaa and drops her stuff and runs off. He stands there in silence before pulling back his shirt and getting out of the pool to chase her down and off they go cat and mouse. And she yells at Dios for tricking her and they kinda go down the place to where she thinks she can get away. But she trips.
- And Erion catches her and they fall together into a puddle. And he holds her close and they realize that their love is both true kyaa and he gives her back her slipper and she says she'll go back with him and they probably kiss or something. Then they meet Dios who says they may never meet again because time passes differently for the fairies, it goes slower or faster than normal without any reason. So it's [one of] their last meetings as she tearfully hugs her brother and then the two jump off the ledge back into the waterfall where the soldiers swear they just saw Erion disappear.
- And then they get married and live happily ever after.
OTHER NOTES
- Maybe one day in the future I'll tell Roi's side of the story. I really personally dislike Roi because he's a jackass and not as fun to plot about. But the story is much more complex and action filled than this sob story. It's also be /even/ longer cause I like to explain /everything/ when I get to it isn't that a funny dooze compare to other stories- /turns head.
- I really enjoy AU'ing Erion and Lea into different universes. When AU'd, Lea loses her elf ears because that's just weird. And I like to put them in cute bowler hat and button up clothing which era I don't quite know. I'll cut or doll up her hair more too on my whim.
- Erion, Lea, Maria, and Dios all originated from a middle school type story that Erion was always a prince but Lea was handicapped to a wheelchair and Dios was named Peter. I made this tiny comic adventure where Maria led a lot of outrageous events [like jumping out of a window and demanding a princess hold catch] and Erion had the puppiest crush on Lea.
- With this universe, I have touched the fairytales of: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, and Rapunzel. Some other smaller tales are also referenced to during the story but I don't know them off the top of my head.