Solus zos Galvus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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isleofavalon2021-09-12 02:41 pm
emet_sulk) wrote in isleofavalon2021-09-12 02:41 pm
September open log
🧙 WHO: Emet-Selch and YOU
⚔️️ WHAT: Local Ascian attempts to catch fairy coins and also dons his old robes for anonymity
🕒 WHEN: Throughout September
🗺️ WHERE: Lestari, Camelot (see prompts)
⚠️ WARNINGS: Necromancy but otherwise none
1. Bright-eyed and Bushy-tailed
(As ever, if you have an idea you want to run by me, please feel free to PM this account or drop a comment on the CR meme.)
⚔️️ WHAT: Local Ascian attempts to catch fairy coins and also dons his old robes for anonymity
🕒 WHEN: Throughout September
🗺️ WHERE: Lestari, Camelot (see prompts)
⚠️ WARNINGS: Necromancy but otherwise none
1. Bright-eyed and Bushy-tailed
"A fairy coin?"2. Gathering the Undead
The old man nods. "They wake around now when the weather grows cooler. Would you catch one for me? You should be able to find them in Lestari, if memory serves." His eyes crinkle at the edges as he smiles. "I'll be fine without you for a day or two. I really would like to see one before I die."
Emet-Selch can hardly refuse the request. Surely he can be excused from visiting the old man for a day in order to fulfil a request like this? It's with this trepidation that he sets out on the journey there together with the Elphame Traders. When he arrives, he has to pause and stare at the incredible city, before belatedly realising he's blocking the way of those arriving behind him. He hastily moves further in, but he continues to stare at his surroundings and pay little mind to where he's wandering.
It seems that he'll have to partake of these...fizzy lifting drinks in order to catch a fairy coin. Well, the traders are paying him and others to try them so he supposes he may as well make it easier on himself.
How hard could it be to float anyway? He used to do it all the time.
...As it turns out, once he starts drifting upwards, that there's no easy way to propel himself through the air when he lacks his usual magicks. Emet-Selch flails about a few heads above, spinning in slow, lazy circles as he tries to snatch on to something as an anchor.
"Curse this dratted...!" he growls out. He makes a swipe for a strut and just misses, the movement causing him to rotate well out of reach. The Ascian utters a string of expletives in a foreign tongue - not his native language for once but Ancient Allag.
Being a necromancer, Emet-Selch inexplicably finds himself involved in the ritual to obtain ashes of the dead for the cauldron. Isolating one of the walking dead is the easy part; it's bringing them back that's difficult.3. Secret Ascian Man (🗡️ if engaging at night)
Those on the road to the Land of Rot will see an amusing sight: a robed man in a mask arguing with a skeleton.
"Do you want me to take you apart? No? Then I suggest you keep walking!" the man says irritably. He steps back smartly as the skeleton makes a swipe at him then jabs his finger in its blank face.
"I command you. Now, keep walking. I would rather not carry your foetid bones in a sack."
And to think that he could freely command the souls and spirits of the dead in his home world... Why must they be so disobedient here?
The robed man is back. In fact Emet-Selch has taken to wearing his old outfit on his excursions into the city. Though the garb garners a few stares, it's far more preferable to the open whispering and looks of judgement. Neither his crime nor his face will not soon be forgotten.
Perhaps you spot him in the middle of the day buying groceries. Or perhaps you run across him at night, sitting on a bench staring forlornly at the stars. It's during the latter that another masked man swaggers up and brandishes a sword at Emet-Selch.
"Hearken, fiend! Your time is at an end!"
There is a moment where he seems to not have heard. Then his head slowly lolls to the side and he stares at the vagabond. Sighs.
"I'm not in the mood," he tells them, returning his gaze to the night sky. The vagrant seems miffed and moves forward to thrust the tip of their sword near his face. Before they can speak again, Emet-Selch stiffens and growls.
"I said, I'm not in the mood."
(As ever, if you have an idea you want to run by me, please feel free to PM this account or drop a comment on the CR meme.)
no subject
She never forgot, but she imagines now, now that he's done them out of a selfish anger, it makes it even more clear how far he's fallen from his own thoughts of paradise.
The very things he saw to hate in the rest of the sundered. She shakes her head, as she carefully moves to sit on the ground in front of the bench he's on, grimacing from the pain in her body, and with her back to him, she looks in front of herself.
"I would, but I think you hate yourself enough. Even if not for the lives you claimed, but for everything around it." She states bluntly. She's quiet for a bit, before looking at him over her shoulder.
"I can't forgive you or love you for the lives you've taken, but I can't hate you as a person, having known you as I have. Even if it would be wiser to step away, be angry enough to have you lose a friend. Believe me, I was tempted, and I do hate what you did." A sharp look in his direction, before she turns around and moves her arms over the side of the bench.
"But if we didn't have forgiveness, we wouldn't know most of the people we have in our lives." She reaches up and pokes his nose with her finger from where she's seated. "So stop acting like you're supposed to be some exemplary paragon of perfection. You've always been flawed. But you're not evil, Hades.
If you were, I wouldn't have come back."
She lets those words sink in, before sitting sideways now- parallel to where he's resting his head so he can turn and look at her if he wants.
"... and I missed you. More than I imagine you've missed me." She adds, ear flicking with a wry smile at him.
no subject
"It would be easier if I was 'evil'."
He thinks about it sometimes, how it would be easier to give in to his worst impulses. Evil people, he's sure, don't agonise over their existence.
no subject
"By the way... Do you remember, back when we fought a specter of myself? One who you called The Warrior of Light?"
It was far, far back, in that cursed City.
"One of yours... Solus', rather, just arrived recently here in Avalon. Gaius Baelsar. Apparently, he'd known me. As a Warrior of Light. Can you believe it?"
For something as surprising as that, she just feels a little numb when telling Emet-Selch this.
"... have you been able to speak to him at all?"
no subject
A small measure of resentment burns in his breast over it.
"Given that several Warriors of Light can exist at once, 'tis hardly surprising to learn you were one yourself in another world."
no subject
Not that she agreed with any of the Ascians' actions, besides the understanding as to why. But it's not even her argument to have.
The only reason she even knows is through Emet-Selch, and the Warriors of Light she's encountered, after all. At his words, her ears droop and she huffs lightly.
"... It's just strange, is all. Knowing some version of me went through the tales I was told by the other Warriors." That they could have been a part of the friend you miss so much. She doesn't voice that bit, but she sighs.
"Suppose there's no point in worrying about what isn't true for me, anyroad. We've met without any of that..." She looks aside, then. "I just don't want to be held to any sort of expectation I can't fulfill."
She's not a Warrior of Light here, after all. She doesn't want to be seen as someone who could remotely accomplish what they have- she has her own path and is happy to walk it. Not that she doubts she could do things beyond her limits- but-
"... but what I do know, is that I care for you. I can't answer why beyond what we've already done. And I wish you'd rely on me a little more if you feel that clouded."
Just putting that out there.
no subject
He pushes himself upright, an ugly, irrational anger writhing in his gut. He's glad for the mask on his face now, hiding half of his expression. "I am tired of being told I am in the wrong," he hisses through his teeth. "It has nothing to do with whether or not you are the Warrior of Light. None of your are the least bit capable of understanding what I want or need. You barely scratch the surface of it. I don't want your trite platitudes or your gestures of concern. I--"
What does he want from them though?
He falls into a frustrated silence, hand balling into a fist in his lap.
no subject
She stays where she is, because sudden movements are bad for her body right now, and she moves her arm over her knee.
"... it's like you're afraid of allowing yourself any forgiveness. Aren't all these years of anger and sadness enough punishment?" Her voice grows softer. "I've never seen anyone with so much love in their heart treat themselves this cruelly. If you wanted to hurt anyone, that's all you needed. Just keep being in pain and anger while others around you who care for you struggle to know how to help, knowing they can't."
It's pointed, and she turns to look over at him.
"What do you want, Hades? Do you want us to abandon someone we care for? You clearly haven't been able to, then why do you expect it from us?"
no subject
In the end, this is what it's about, isn't it? It's why he has thrown himself so readily into Zodiark's service (compulsion aside), why he has run himself ragged over so many centuries into millennia to bring back his people, his world: he wants to go home.
"All of you have your place but I have none." His fingers dig into the underside of the bench, knuckles turning white. "I want friends and loved ones who won't die within the turn of a century. I want a place that won't be endlessly uprooted by one of your selfish wars. I want stability - but I won't get that in Hydaelyn's fractured mockery of our star."
no subject
She wishes he'd find home in who he loves. In the present. Is that even possible for someone who has carried so much pain for a millennia?
So she simply listens, and for once, she has nothing to say, no advice or words, because they've been through this over and over. After some time, she reaches out and touches one of his hands to the sides the bench, fully expecting him to pull away, but maybe, just maybe, he'll keep it there.
Because all she can say in that moment is through that simple touch. She knows. She's sorry he can't go home. She's sorry he hasn't found any home in the present.
"... Stay here for a while with me?"
It's not an answer, but she doubts she can give him one, anyway.
no subject
He says nothing to her in response because there is nothing left to say. But silent tears roll down his cheeks and fall into his lap.
good place to wrap up