#hehehehehehe this was fun to answer tyyyyy!

[sunderedazem]

Hello! I'm back haha, hoping you guys haven't gotten tired of me yet. Just reread alone amongst the wreck again (sorry I keep talking about that series, I adore your unsundered au too but I have too great a soft spot for the old men) and that one line where emet selch says he wasn't quite sure if he was loved at the end hit me like a brick to the face. You guys have many lovely bricks but oooooh this one. I know his fallout with Helios was covered in the first fic, but I was kind of wondering what Helios would think of Emet Selch now, after all these centuries exhausted and alone? Would Emet Selch have said/agreed to any of those things untempered? This old man definitely needs hugs and I'm so glad he lets G'raha give them (for now).

Speaking of G'raha, can I confirm that he's not a shard of Hythlodaeus? I know some other authors have done that and despite liking that trope I've always found it slightly tragic. It feels like in your story G'raha's Ancient form never met the polycule? I'm curious if Emet Selch had met him before, would they have become involved? Or would it be a 'right person, wrong time' kind of situation?

Thank you so much to you and your co-author for writing these fics and continuing to write them in the future, they always make me happy-squeal and kick my feet when I read them XD. I hope you guys are having fun with dawntrail despite the wonky writing I've heard it's had, and thank you for taking time out of your days to answer my asks! Take care of yourselves :D

we are NEVER tired of you! I am giving you the biggest wettest cat eyes of held-back tears - thank YOU for sending us such sweet asks! Literally highlight of the week, lol!

So, with regard to that first paragraph of questions - we actually have an AU or two where Helios passes out on leaving the Convocation like that and gets taken home to sleep it off, and the *first* thing he realizes when he wakes up is that none of the Convocation are themselves - they're all tempered, though he doesn't have that word for it yet. The only reason he doesn't realize it on that first meeting is- because he is exhausted and sick, and he's barely on his feet. This is also why he's horribly irritable and snaps at Emet-Selch so cruelly.

So, in short - if he'd even waited just a little longer, let alone after the centuries and millennia that Emet-selch has endured - he would be clinging to this man, and trying to find a cure, and essentially just. a very tearful koala, because he would feel responsible for what Emet-selch became, since he wasn't there to stop it, or see the descent of the Convocation.

And on that note- we think that Emet-selch would have agreed, mostly, to the plans proposed by Elidibus as Zodiark, and when we (lol unsurprisingly) unfridge him, we do have him still agree with most of what he's done. But the biggest part of it, the planning to resurrect their fallen brethren through mass sacrifice - this is what he wouldn't agree to, untempered, and without that the rest of the plan kind of falls apart. We think he'd see this as a perversion of the Lifestream it's his job to monitor and watch over the souls of the dead/those using aetherytes, and- as Younger!Emet-selch says in Elpis, it would be an insult to their memory to do something like recreate Amaurot. Which, of course, appropriately fucks him UP when he realizes that he *was* tempered and therefore so was the rest of the Convocation and etc. G'raha really DOES need to give him hugs, lmao.

(There will also be a line, probably, from Corrain or G'raha or both, about how he built the empire that gave them the technology to cure tempering. In a way, he made his own cure)

And then, G'raha- he is not a shard of Hythlodaeus. We actually do have a shard of Hythlodaeus OC for use in some AUs- an all-lavender Viera named Liokki. But anyway, in my own headcanons, G'raha doesn't actually have an ancient counterpart- he was one of those souls formed by the Lifestream after the Sundering, and as such he's a little *less* well defined, and more able to be layered back into his own younger body and soul as he is at the end of Shadowbringers patches. I have this HC mostly because I think it's very crunchy for Emet-selch to fall in love with someone who literally has never existed Unsundered, hehe

thank you for the questions! I'll tag lee in in case xey want to add anything? @azems-familiar pspspspspspsps