Cuddling Rank D! My CandyHearts treat for ThatSpaceBird... Those two really gotta work on that big spoon-little spoon routine. Still, sometimes it's nice when the unbearable weight on your chest is literal and also floofy.
Pomegranate red lenses were closed as she held her head in her hands. Where normally her body was light, for some reason every part of her felt heavy, those long black horns especially so.
A man sat across from her, filling a wine glass from which the succubus immediately drank, the hand not holding the glass still resting on her face for a moment before she set the glass down to rub it.
The man across from her wore a scholar's attire - robes and a hat, with glasses sitting precariously on his nose. He was an elezen, hair striped with grey that distinguished him as older, holding a quill above a notebook as he waited for her to speak.
"I am here to put to paper your side of what happened in the First. There was a period of time when the Warrior of Light fell unconscious, and you were the only witness to the events."
Her tail flicked behind her, the woman resting her chin on folded hands, propped up by elbows, on the edge of the table. She seemed to find the task of telling this particular story difficult, her gaze mournful as she finally flicked her eyes up to meet his.
"You want to know what happened? Fine. But you won't like what I have to say."
It was another few moments before she finally drew a shuddering breath, exhaling it with eyes trained on the wine in front of her.
"I killed a good man, and they called me a hero." the way she spoke was emotionless, as if the very thought disgusted her to her very core, "I took something so beautifully, perfectly whole. And I destroyed it."
The man seemed confused for a moment, hesitating to write the words.
"I was told you killed an villainous ascian, one that threatened both our world and the First." he tapped the end of the quill into the ink bottle before him in a near irritated manner, "But that isn't what you're telling me at all."
"The people that told you the information were wrong. All of them. None of them knew, not like I did."
Once more her face rested in her hands, the succubus drawing a shuddered breath.
"He was... more than just any ascian or any man. Hades was a paragon of his people, a beacon in the darkness. A man that endured thousands of years of sadness, that bore the weight of the world. A man that believed even to the end that there could be a flicker of hope." her eyes raised from their place to look at the man, "If we are to write of him, I will not have him remembered as a villain. I will have him remembered the way I--"
A sudden pain seared through her skull, her tattered soul grasping for something - anything - at the very fringes of her memory that would explain the feeling. She clenched her fists as she once more buried her face.
"I want him remembered as I remember him. As a man. Not a monster."
The scholar's brow quirked, and he hesitantly lowered his quill to the page, nodding to her.
"If it is your desire." With a deep breath, she began.
"He was, first and foremost, one of the most powerful entities to ever grace our worlds. Had I not witnessed such with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. Those born of Amaurot, his kin, all of them were like that. Able to create and destroy effortlessly. Magicks that we couldn't fathom until we witnessed it. And even among his own people, his power was great. They called him Emet-Selch. The Architect. And the name suited him."
"He created the entire city of his people, filled it with shades of the dead. Those he shepherded, he broke bread with. Those he loved. All of them people he lost when Hydaelyn took everything from us."
"From us?" the scholar arched a brow as he asked, and the succubus grimaced.
"Has the Warrior not discussed this?" a shake of his head was the response, and she sighed, "Very well, I will make it brief. The original Source, full and complete, began to unravel at the seams. Those of Amaurot created Zodiark to prevent the utter destruction of their world, half their number sacrificing themselves in the process. Yet another half of their remaining number were sacrificed to birth Hydaelyn, who was meant to keep Zodiark's great power in check."
With wide eyes, the scholar spoke up. "You make it sound as if Hydaelyn and Zodiark are--"
"Primals. Yes."
Scribbling down the information, the man nodded. "Please continue."
"Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought. In the end, Zodiark fell, and Hydaelyn sundered him. Splitting him into fourteen shards, and with him were the remaining Amaurotines also split. Very few were spared this fate, one of them being Emet-Selch." she tapped her claws against the table, "The despair at watching your entire world crumble around you, severed, even as you fought to save it... it's unfathomable."
Swallowing back a sudden rise of emotion within her chest, she drew a labored breath.
"While his methods weren't ideal, his goal was noble. Even after thousands of years of guilt, all he wanted was to bring things back to the way they were. I cannot say that if this star faced a similar threat that we would not do the same. The Warrior of Light, as exhausted as she is, has been fighting to prevent this world from being destroyed for years. But in the end... I have to wonder. Are we fighting on the right side?"
She was silent for a moment before continuing.
"Emet-Selch was merely a title, of course. His name was Hades." she began once more, her voice wavering, "And he was much, much more than the darkness everyone thought he was."
She struggled for a moment, tears pricking the corner of her eyes as she did her best to hold them back. The scholar noticed this, setting down his quill.
"This seems to be a difficult topic for you." he stated softly, "But to preserve his memory, I need you to keep going."
With a nod, she wiped at her eyes and took another breath. Struggling to do so.
"He was elegant, purposeful, deliberate. Forthcoming. He enjoyed the theatre, playing piano. And flowers. He loved flowers. He was partial to roses in a certain spectrum of colors." a small, warm smile curled onto her lips as the words started to come more freely, "A bit of a shut in introvert. Very awkward at first, at least... that's how I remember it."
"You knew him before, then. If what you said is true, these memories you hold are from a time long before us." the scholar continued to write as she nodded.
"Yes I... have faint memories of Amaurot. Before I went to the first at the Warrior's side, I had constant dreams of the fall of the city. But as my soul has started to come back together, more has returned..." she trailed off for a moment as she reached for the wine glass, taking a sip before huffing a laugh, "He knew my favorite wine, and he always made sure to keep some around for me. There was always a bouquet of red and violet roses in a vase on his coffee table."
"You knew him well, then." the man murmured.
"Ah... yes." she smiled sadly, swirling the wine, "Intimately in fact. He kept his hair long then, white-silver that cascaded down like a fountain of silk. It was always falling in his face."
She paused for a long moment, gazing off to the side in thought.
"I love him even still. Nothing will change that. I may not remember every detail of what we had, but that is more than just a feeling. It's a fact."
"So... what happened when the Warrior fell unconscious then?"
"The light in her body was too much for her to handle, given she didn't have a way to counterbalance it. But the light was already focused and concentrated, and in order to defend her... I did what I needed to." she murmured, looking away as that calm demeanor began to fall once more, "I-I didn't have a choice. The light would have returned to the First, all the fighting would have been for nothing, and all those lives would have been lost. So I... I used the axe she had formed. And I struck him."
"The battle was long and hard fought, he rose against us twice more after his first defeat out of sheer will. Out of despair, pain, longing."
"In the end, it was inevitable. He made his choice. And I had to make mine." There was a long silence, regret burning in those deep crimson lenses as tears began to well visibly within them.
"I caught him as he fell. Held him one last time. And he asked me to remember. 'How could I forget?' I had said. All I can do now is make sure that Amaurot's memory - and his - remain unsullied. He was more than just a villain in this story."
"That much is clear." the scholar seemed to be satisfied with his notes, "Tell me something though. A man that meant so much to so many, that was so many things. What was he to you?"
Her gaze fell to her wine as she considered how to answer, finally settling on something.
In a canon where Perci follows the WoL to the First, she ends up facing down a lesser light warden that is a shard of her. The light merging with her void tainted soul puts her in a coma for several weeks as the the two corruptions duke it out, but when she wakes she remembers bits and pieces about Emet and Amaurot. Who he is to her, why he seems to treat her differently
Jumping forward, during the final fight of Shadowbringers, the WoL falters during the fight - my canon WoL, Kohina, has a much more difficult time containing the light because her body already died once from void corruption - and it falls to Perci to wield the light and make the final strike against Hades.
So this time, she gets to watch him die, after regaining enough of her memories to know what they used to be.
More recently, during the fourth era a viera named Cilla and the other veena warriors of the valley fight against voidsent pouring from a rift outside the forest. They're overwhelmed, she's struck down, and as she dies she bargains with a succubus.
The succubus is to take her body and soul, in exchange for closing the rift and slaughtering the voidsent that came from it. Of course, voidsent are selfish, so Asmodeus the succubus obliges. As it turns out, Asmodeus was a shard of Cilla's soul. Thus, instead of occupying the body, she merges with it.
Asmodeus survives calamity after calamity, going by different names, traveling to avoid void hunters. Learning eventually just to get by on consuming only what she needs. Up until the sixth calamity, after which she's haunted by dreams of a city she feels she recognizes burning and crumbling. And a name that never felt better to her: Persephone.
Persephone of Amaurot was the creator of flowers and plants. When she's nervous she wrings her hands and creates flower petals, when she's flustered/embarrassed/happy she kicks up petals when she walks or flowers bloom around her when she's standing/sitting/laying. When she's inspired, she just makes new flowers on the spot. The first time she met Emet she straight up just made violets. She also created the fae, pixies being the first of them
Where things begin to get dicey for her is during the final days.
Hades isn't afraid of commitment by any means later on, but situations keep arising where each time they talk about maybe having a bonding ceremony of some kind the plans fall through.
Over time Perci gets upset about it, and during the final days they end up having a fight about it. She walks out on him, tells him to not bother coming home if she just doesn't mean enough to him to "just give her two bells"
He doesn't see her again until Hydaelyn sunders her, in front of him. And the day he recreates in Amaurot is the day of the fight, so he relives it over and over.
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