Work Text:
Every breath was agony.
Every heartbeat was torture.
It wasn’t just her body that couldn’t contain the light, her soul, her spirit, even her mind was fraying at the edges, breaking at the seams, and letting that malignant light seep through.
Pri wanted it all to stop, even just for a moment.
Emet-Selch was pontificating over the ringing in her ears, clearer even than her own thoughts. He called her a failure, a disappointment, and the most dangerous Eater the First would ever see.
Then he knelt before her, the only face still visible to her swimming vision, a strange comfort as her very being was being unmade, and continued on his speech, she would kill her friends, she would kill her family, she would swallow the whole of the world and bathe it in light.
Stranger yet, he invited Pri to his lair, to mutate in seclusion, to fall to insanity alone, it was almost a kindness…
If it weren’t so insulting.
If it weren’t so repulsive.
All the injustices, all the slander, Pri had borne it all on her shoulders, smiling when she wanted to cry, soothing when she wanted to run, but never before had she been offered an olive branch by her dearest enemy, all the while he looked down on her, while he saw her as nothing but a losing bet.
An unfamiliar rage bubbled in her chest, foreign, and disturbing clear against the warring tide of light.
Pri’s pride has always been both her strength and downfall, she hated to lose, but she held herself high enough to recognize when she was above getting angry or outraged, people thought she was gentle for this reason, considered her steady and self confident.
It seems this cruelty, this misstep, was finally too much.
She couldn’t win against the light in her body, she couldn’t win against Emet-Selch’s barbed words.
It infuriated her.
and then the harsh light bursting through her body went out, as quick as a snuffed flame, the light was swallowed down with all the other emotions Pri felt wheeling through her. Her fear, her worry, her pain, and even her love, gone, gone and devoured by the rage burning in her chest.
The scions all gasped in succession, and all Emet-Selch had done was raise one arched eyebrow, regarding her with confusion and mild interest.
“W-Who are you to say I cannot contain the light…?”
Pri struggled to her feet, body heavy and voice scratchy from all her screaming when the light first ravaged her body.
“For all I have done...for all I have fought...WHO ARE YOU TO LOOK DOWN ON ME, ASCIAN!”
Pri surged forward, not allowing Emet-Selch a chance to flee before she found the small release that came with expressing her rage.
Small as she was, Pri only needed one hand to grasp that fur collar and yank Emet-Selch to her level, and she only needed one hand to punch him in the face. The curled metal ring fashioned from Omega’s own armour found its mark, splitting Emet-Selch’s lip and blossoming rose red on his skin.
For his part, he looked stunned, shocked, in a way that seemed familiar in another time and another place but now just served as more fuel to the fire.
“You tell me Lahabrea was powerful? Well I defeated him! You tell me Zodiark is a primal? The people of the Source know me as a God Killer! Fuck your disappointment!”
Cartilage crunched under her knuckles, and splattered blood turned her punches slick, but Pri continued, each hit more forceful.
“DON’T YOU DARE TREAT ME LIKE A TOY THAT HAS BEEN FOUND WANTING.”
A cough rattled through her body at the last word, and she let Emet-Selch to go slack in her grip. Unmistakable spittle covered her lips, brilliant and shining light. Reaching up, Pri smeared it away with the back of her palm, the light and Emet-Selch’s blood blending together on the canvas of her cheek.
The shell-shocked Ascian said nothing, and vanishing into nothing but shadow and mist.
With no weight in her hands, Pri staggered forward, coughing forcefully, before vomiting in earnest. Like the wind, the rage had gone, and with it the war of emotions and aether inside of her returned.
Pri’s body burst again with light as she collapsed to her knees, vomiting harder as that baleful shimmering liquid splattered down her dark armour, splattered down the golden floor, and became the only thing in her darkening vision. Pain roared through her body, stronger than before, stronger than anything she ever felt, and with one final hoarse moan, the world went blissfully black before her.