@skysamba I was gonna reply to our original discussion but the post was getting long so like. QUICK BAD SUMMARY: WHAT HAPPENED TO EDGEGRANDPA???
tl;dr: he dead. he’s so dead.
BUT. I think, last I checked into this blog, he was still living out with his tiny Charge, bless his heart, and generally having an OK time aside of, yknow, being mad shaded and not being fully there at all.
Then at some point they met this fucker, who was absolutely perfectly nice because she’s good and has no bad intentions whatsoever- no. Well, it’s partly true. She was very nice, perhaps a little too much. Definitely too much for Ephah’s liking. Though eventually he managed to get her to leave them alone and he got as far away from her as he could, taking Elymas away with him.
Except Una didn’t see it like that, and had decided that the kid would be better with her. So she followed them from afar, waited until Ephah’s guard was down, and attacked with blessed weapons. Which are particularly nasty to a Shaded individual. She took Elymas and got the fuck away, leaving the grandpa for dead.
Except he wasn’t! And when he woke up, he was pretty pissed to find his Charge gone. Grief-stricken, angry Guardians are bad. Grief-stricken, angry Guardians who are so badly infected with Shade it’s a miracle they’re even alive are worse. Kinda lost himself there. So of course people reported him as a threat, and one of the people who got there to get rid of the shadebeast happened to be Shenir.
She recognized him, and because this grandma is Morally Conflicted about things sometimes, she decided to go against protocol (and common sense) and, instead of killing him there and then, she had him restrained and brought back to her temple under the pretense that purifying him fully would demand more resources than available on the spot. But instead, she hid him away in unused parts of the older buildings, pretending she had gotten rid of him.
She attempted non-lethal purifying rituals to try and save her old friend from the Shade’s influence, but nothing worked. Some days he would be lost to his madness, incoherent, a beast that only roared for his Charge and nothing else. Some days, fully silent. Sometimes, though, he would find some lucidity again- and the two would talk as much as they could. Even those days, he didn’t make much sense; his sense of self had almost fully eroded, over years of infection taking over him, being kept at bay only by a weakening divine blessing.
This went on for weeks, perhaps even several months, of Shenir spending increasing amounts of time with him in his cell, in hopes their talks would help him remember more of his old self. She would sometimes just talk on her own, even when he was unresponsive, finding some comfort in having someone with whom to reflect upon times that were long since passed.
Then the Lightweaver spoke to her children. And of course, they both heard Her. With both their Charges being Imperials, both cherished children of the Mother, Her words held a considerable weight- and, somehow, the voice of their goddess had cleared the fog from Ephah’s mind.
The two Guardians had a long, long talk, at the end of which Ephah implored her to find Elymas and take care of him, if he proved unable to beat his affliction. He also attempted to give her his Sunchaser’s jewelry, which he felt he had stopped being worthy of wearing a long, long time ago. Shenir didn’t accept, but even though she wished she could stay with him more, she had duties to attend to, and had to leave.
When she came to visit him the next day, she found Acantha, her lieutenant and right hand, standing in his cell instead along with a handful of other paladins, a smile on her lips over the light-burned remains of the old dragon. She’d grown curious of Shenir’s repeated absences, and what else could she do once she found Ephah but eradicate a creature so Shaded? It was only right. He was a danger. Makes one wonder what business Shenir had keeping him there...
Anyhow, grandma shenir was potentially in hot waters despite her status and influence, not to mention pretty miffed over her friend’s death, and preferred to leave her position entirely before Acantha made a move with her newfound knowledge. She took the Sunchaser’s, undamaged by the holy energy, and got the HECK away to find that one kid that used to be Ephah’s Charge.
Meanwhile, that grandpa’s still in “got blasted by high concentration holy Light energy” death hell.