#anyonoe like the venat reference i threw in there say you do please say you do pl

[flowerwept]

@antipyre said:  ✍️ + would you beat my head in if i told you to try emet-selch

Time has worn down much of Hades over the years / he’s not stupid, he knows that, but duty has chased Emet-Selch to the ends of the earth and he’d be damned if he stopped here. He sits on some stairs in a faux Amaurot of his own recollection, hands clasped neatly in front of him, and he would look more like the emperor he is supposed to be were it not for the way his shoulders sag / some kind of wounded Atlas.

“Are you lost?”  A shade says to him, not recognizing his soul--obviously, because a shade is a shade. Emet-Selch stares back at it, trying to recall who this had been, had he known them personally, and there is preservation in action and all that.  “Do you need help finding your parents?”

“ ‘Am I lost,’ “ Emet-Selch mutters to himself disdainfully, and he can’t help rolling his eyes--he knows this place better than anyone, but it was still just a fraction of the original Amaurot, and it pains him to think of the streets and halls that went unremembered or, worse, the people who gathered on those streets. Don’t worry -- I swear I will bring you back. This is my duty. My purpose. My love.  “No, you waste your time with such fears.”  He gets up and the weight of a thousand years settles into his shoulders. The shade looks at him, its shape wavering. Clearly this was the end of the conversation.  “After we reclaim the star and you have been brought back I will apologize to you more properly.”  The real you, though Emet-Selch dare not say it. He smiles at the wayward simulacra of his own invention and then saunters down the stairs and into Norvrandt’s depths.

“I suppose I shall have to pay the hero a visit sooner rather than later,”  he goes on muttering to himself as he walks, eyes tracing every nook and cranny of Amaurot, every cracked stone, every window frame. All of it. I REMEMBER.  “I can’t let them get too comfortable...or think that I’d gone and forgotten about them.”  He would rather die than forget.  “There’s too much unsaid. Can’t risk them dying before all that.”  But would anyone believe him if he told him how beautiful the sun looked when it cut across the Amaurot skyline? Well--if they didn’t, Emet-Selch would just kill them. He’s grown used to that.