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[beshackled]

"This is Erichthonios. Apologies if I have missed your transmission. Should you feel inclined, pray leave a message, and I shall be sure to return word to you."

Comments

[emet_sulk]

Yes, fourteen. As I recall, you chose to stay behind in Pandaemonium to keep the creatures from escaping. You would not have been spared Her blade.

[ Lahabrea may have mentioned it. During that portion of time when the old man was still lucid. But speaking of Lahabrea-- ]

I'm sorry, you said your father did what?

[beshackled]

[Lifting his head, Erichthonios looks confused for a moment, then considers:]

Ah, that's right. It must have been long ago for you...

[He straightens, gathering his composure so that he might explain properly.]

When my father confronted Athena, his wife, for experimenting upon me, she offered him answers he craved -- why she did what she did, why she would not stop, and in turn he wished to know if she ever loved him. To attain these answers, he consented to bond their souls... and in so doing, he unwittingly exposed himself to her corruption. When she declared this to him, he tore his essence in two, seeking to isolate that corruption from himself... although he has since reabsorbed it to restore himself to his full power.

His corrupted half was... different. Outwardly passionate, manipulative, and cruel.

[emet_sulk]

...So that was why...

[ He had noticed something amiss but, at the time, he hadn't enquired too deeply. Lahabrea had just lost his wife after all. It would have been insensitive. So the old man had torn his soul apart without any hesitation? Well, it explained his behaviour after the Sundering as well. Emet-Selch had assumed it to be a product of his vessel hopping. It seems it WAS that and more. ]

Anyway - yes. Something akin to that I suppose. But...cleaner. Not tearing away specific parts of the soul but an even split.

[beshackled]

...I see.

But the overall effect... would be much the same, wouldn't it. Enervation of vigor, of physical and magical capacity. The soul itself...

It... must have been a terrible thing to witness. How are... all of you? You, my father, and Themis...

[Unlike most of their people, he actually has some idea of what trauma is like and how much it can distort a person's every day perceptions and existence. He expects the answer to be bad. He expects it to be very bad.]

[emet_sulk]

[ He is silent. That silence speaks for itself, but Erichthonios has to know. ]

They're dead, [ he says bluntly. ] As am I. Your father was the first to be vanquished, absorbed into the eye of a wyrm of the First Brood. Then myself. And finally...Elidibus.

[ He doesn't have the heart to admit that he set up Elidibus' downfall. ]