story

Aquila is the last legitimate firstborn of Asphodelean royalty. As a crown prince, born in a time of relative peace and decadence, supported by a loving but irresponsible family with questionable choices in friends, it took some traumatic hardships for Aquila to mature from a careless delinquent into the conniving politician he is today.

While others may balk at the responsibilities of princehood, Aquila always adored the privileges of his position and proudly looked forward to succeeding his family. But being fundamentally selfish and unsympathetic towards those outside his immediate circle, he lacked the makings of a fair, just, or even competent ruler.

Unhelpful in his development were his friends, Morgan and Mason Whitewood, the twin sons of Aquila’s godfather. Being heirs to their own princehood in the world of criminal enterprise, they also looked forward to inheriting their father’s mantle, and fancied themselves above the rabble.

Together the trio were punks. They caused trouble, often illegal trouble, then exploited their positions and parents’ support to avoid punishment if caught. Aquila became reckless, careless, and arrogant, and so when an old enemy of his father’s targeted him for assassination, it caught him completely off-guard.

His assailant was a former knight named Toreas of Lacren, wielder of the blade Kingslayer. Kingslayer is an enchanted sword that frustrates magical powers. Though classically used to face witches and ghouls, it would also affect the magical properties inherent in Aquila’s soul, as he and all of his bloodline belonged to a magical strain of yazata. The holy blood of Asphodel, which could purify even a soul of rot, was nothing more than another deviant magic for Kingslayer to pervert.

Aquila suffered barely a scratch, but the poison cut to his core. Kingslayer’s enchantment reversed the purifying properties inherent to his soul, flipping his constitution from one that rejected contamination to one that rejected cleanliness, requiring pollution, disease, and necrosis to live. His body began rotting from inside, but also acclimatized to being rotten as exposure to clean substances started to sicken him.

Aquila was bedridden for over a year as his condition steadily worsened. His parents, agonising for a cure, eventually hired the witch and physician Trivia Venn to examine him. She couldn’t help Aquila, but could ensure his parents’ next child would be male. With Aquila’s prognosis seeming final — death by asphyxiation, as anything but the most toxic fumes became untenable for him to breathe — his parents decided to sire a new heir, the birth of which would mean the death of Aquila’s mother.

The decision was premature, as Aquila’s godfather returned from his months abroad with a cure from Kitiven’s Pontifex. Once administered, Aquila recovered so quickly that the whole thing could’ve been a joke.

Aquila realised the seriousness of his position and immediately became more careful, more responsible, and frankly said more boring. He distanced himself from his friends, who continued to get into trouble he couldn’t afford, and engaged in the dryer, strictly political side of princeship with proper respect for what it meant. After all, if he was going to protect the standards of living of himself and his loved ones, then mastering the most powerful weapon given to him, politics, was not only prudent, but vital.

His mother soon died with Phoenix’s birth, the first of many tragedies to come. In the following decade, Aquila lost three fiancees in succession, lost his sister, briefly lost Phoenix to a kidnapping permitted by his father and conducted by Mason, lost Mason to exile (that Aquila secretly imposed, shh), lost his father to Phoenix’s retaliatory assassination, lost his country to foreign insurgents, and finally lost his life to Phoenix in a moment of panic. When Phoenix resurrected him again many months later, the first thing he witnessed was Phoenix’s execution, with his country in the thick of the worst civil war in history.

With incredible efficiency, Aquila reclaimed the country and ended the war. While cleaning up the aftermath, he realised the stability would only be temporary. The body Phoenix had resurrected him into was infertile and immortal, and without marriage or succession as incentives to keep ambitious aristocrats loyal, it would only take a few decades before someone would try to sideline Aquila into a figurehead. If Aquila was to guide the country as Phoenix wanted, and find means to end the suffering Phoenix now endured as an Archon, then such a thing was unacceptable.

While chaos still provided opportunity, Aquila assassinated many powerful families and elevated the Whitewoods into extremely high positions. As expected, social climbers latched onto the politically inexperienced Whitewoods, which gave Aquila the setup to, once his godfather passed, assassinate them and all their associates in one swoop at the funeral. Then he could mourn the tragedy, establish a power vaccuum, instate a new line of succession to fill it, and monopolize that line with a pawn of his choice. That pawn would be Mason Whitewood.

After all, this wasn’t just about politics. It was also about revenge.

Aquila planned to enslave Mason’s soul with soulsmithing, then torture him as a puppet, moving his soul down the line of succession generation by generation. This sadistic punishment of Phoenix’s old kidnapper was the only thing Aquila, who could not conceive how to break the Archon curse, felt he could do for Phoenix that justified him staying in power. Fortunately, by a turn Aquila could not predict, a better alternative presented itself.

Mason’s son and daughter, Raum and Reyl, had escaped the assassination at the funeral. As they hunted their family’s killer, Aquila discovered their immunity to an aspect of Phoenix’s curse, which enabled them to exist in Phoenix’s vicinity without dying. Gobsmacked, Aquila offered that they become Asphodelean royalty, hoping to install them as caretakers for Phoenix that their company might ease his suffering. Reyl declined the offer, but Raum accepted, and even swore of his own accord to undo the curse on Phoenix.

Though confident in Raum, Aquila struggled to dismiss his old plan for something so uncertain. In the end, Aquila conceded that his love for Phoenix mattered more to him than his lust for revenge, and allowed himself to trust Raum. As they organised Raum’s transfer to Phoenix’s palace, however, Raum himself was killed and inflicted with the Archon curse, though his version of it manifested somewhat more mildly. All the same, that two of his intimates now suffer these curses infuriates Aquila, who cannot wait to strangle the god that’s been inflicting them and vindicate their misery.

Aquila presently focuses on running the country and supporting Raum, who in turn supports Phoenix while heading investigations into breaking the curse.

And though the peace Aquila has fostered does not reflect it—

—These four hundred years of nothing have truly, been a long time.