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[thefinalwitness]

hi hello i realllyy wanted to ask 18 but im not sure if it’s a boring one with how applicable it is with the WOL so I found another one too just in case \o/

15. What places hold significant meaning or memories for your OC? Do they have a positive or negative association with those places?

18. Has your OC ever had a prophecy made about them? Was it a big deal or did they ignore it? Was it straightforward or cryptic? Did it ever come to pass or did they circumvent it?

HIIIII THANK U THANK U THESE BOTH LOOK SO FUN

15. What places hold significant meaning or memories for your OC? Do they have a positive or negative association with those places?

l'aiha has a weird... how do i put this. you know when people have an attachment to something that causes more hurt to them than peace? l'aiha feels like that about the phantom amaurot. she visits it A LOT after defeating emet-selch, just to sit there and watch the simulacrums go about their daily lives. it haunts her, but she can't look away. she goes there until she and her friends are all returned to the source and everything gets a little too busy to sit around being melancholy in another reflection's fake city, and she feels strangely empty without it. almost like a lesser form of an addiction, a place she needs to go to 'feel normal', even though it just seems to cause her more pain.

she doesn't know why, but it feels like 'the key'. l'aiha suffered profound amnesia during the seventh calamity, and has no memory of her life or identity prior to it. amaurot, emet-selch going on and on and ON about this old world she used to know but forgot—it triggers this obsession in her. she wants to remember. she wants so fucking badly to remember anything at all. the memory loss hasn't bothered her since ARR, but emet-selch tears it open like an old scar, and she can't close it up again. she needs to remember. she will stare at this city with no answers for her until she remembers. only getting dragged back to the source severs her from that particular 'fix'—but at a price, cus see, what happens after 5.3 ties in WONDERFULLY with question #18. :)

18. Has your OC ever had a prophecy made about them? Was it a big deal or did they ignore it? Was it straightforward or cryptic? Did it ever come to pass or did they circumvent it?

so the answer here is "KIND OF". at the final battle with elidibus in 5.3, l'aiha feels something 'awaken' within her, prompting her to use the memory crystal she was given by hythlodaeus. what awakened was the semi-rejoined consciousness of her ancient life, artemis—azem.

and artemis is... NOT a pleasant presence for l'aiha. l'aiha finds her terrifying, finds it terrifying that every memory artemis experiences, l'aiha feels like it's her own. she finally, FINALLY is remembering what emet-selch wanted her to, and it's wrong and terrible and it scares her to fucking death. this isn't her. this IS her. this HAS to be who she was, even before the 'who she was' she was looking for; this has to be the ultimate, the 'first' who she was.

and all artemis wants, all artemis ever communicates, is that she wants l'aiha to give up. "lay down your life, and let me take up the mantle of burden in your stead." because to artemis, l'aiha is this sweet, precious, HOPELESS creature. artemis feels terribly for the sundered, because they are so full of life and love, but how, how could they EVER face what she, a full and whole ancient, couldn't? how could they ever, ever, ever withstand the final days when people bigger and fuller and More than them couldn't? she pities them. she pities l'aiha. she's like a kitten in the cold, unable to understand that no matter how she cries or searches, she will not survive this.

the "prophecy" is artemis's. "you are going to fail, just as i did. so give me your life, so that you do not have to face that failure. let me fail in your place again, so that you may embrace the peace and sanctuary of ignorance, so that it may never be broken. let me spare you."

and l'aiha is PARALYZED by it. through 5.4, through 5.5, and all the way to the moon in 6.0. she's haunted by this inevitable failure, this thing she cannot possibly do because how could she? how could she, when a soul fourteen times MORE than her couldn't? artemis has her in a chokehold and tells her it's mercy, it's kindness, it's pity. she tells her how sorry she is. she tells her she will take the pain, if only l'aiha lets her end it swiftly.

as for how the "prophecy" plays out... in the face of zodiark, in the face of everything that she believes has caused this pain artemis speaks of, l'aiha does something incredible: she does what artemis couldn't. she resists artemis's attempt to take over her body, she refuses to be spared—and she kills zodiark. she frees all the souls artemis mourns, the lives the convocation stole for an insane, doomed to fail bid to stop the sky from falling. artemis is speechless. she no longer haunts l'aiha's mind. she's there, l'aiha can feel her, but she is wordless.

she is realizing, over the course of vanaspati and then elpis, that l'aiha is not JUST a fragment of her. l'aiha is a person. every sundered soul is their own, unique person, irregardless of whose soul they were once a piece of. she realizes that l'aiha, somehow, fulfills the potential artemis couldn't. l'aiha is the light that shines through the darkness. she comes out the other side. she lives. she succeeds.

the "prophecy", the conviction with which artemis died, that the final days could not be circumvented, that the world was doomed—is shattered. l'aiha is not artemis. l'aiha is l'aiha, and she might just be able to do what artemis couldn't. the "prophecy" is one of failure, of doom, but l'aiha breaks it, and shows artemis it can be hope. it can be light. l'aiha breaks the song of oblivion that has seized artemis's heart for twelve thousand dead, silent years.

and artemis realizes that the reason she couldn't stop the final days was because SHE didn't have the hope. she didn't try until the end. she gave up. she despaired. and l'aiha won't. l'aiha will cry and mourn and scream and bleed but she will hope. she will try until there is nothing left of her to try with. she will not be spared. she will not give up. so no matter that l'aiha's soul is "smaller", no matter that l'aiha is not, physically or spiritually, what an ancient was—she is more. she is more because she dares to hope in the face of nothing but despair. she meets the potential artemis had and couldn't meet herself.

sorry i am. so so so so so insane about l'aiha and artemis in shb and enw hehehe. they're so important to me. l'aiha's journey to realizing "i am not anyone else, i am not anyone who came before, i am me, i am here now" is soooooo precious to me, and artemis finding peace in realizing that l'aiha is not lesser, is not a tiny, doomed fragment of her own failures, but is the potential that was met, is the successor, is the bird that came of the ashes, is so!!!! it's like a story about a mother and daughter to me. l'aiha is not artemis. l'aiha is l'aiha, and she will face her life in ways artemis never could, and she will succeed where artemis failed, and she will be things artemis couldn't be and WON'T be things artemis COULD be. it's. rolls around on the floor. i'm insane about it thANK U FOR THESE TWO EXTRAORDINARILY GOOD QUESTIONS ;_;

#arinaxiv #l'aiha #wol #azem #artemis #about #HOOOUGGHGHGHHHGHGHHGHG