[He doesn't drink the coffee because of mild paranoia but he appreciates the gesture. As he listens, his expression changes, slowly going from closed off to horrified, then on to sympathetic.]
[It sounds...awful. Worse than Belos' regime. At least they had the good fortune of him backloading most of the absolute genocidal horror until the end. And the Corrupted...he's not sure what that is but it sounds like some kind of plague or contagious magical evil. Or a swarm of evil creatures?]
[It still puts him in a strange position of trying to figure out how he feels when it comes to associating with the man in front of him. Hunter, like every Golden Guard before him, had rebelled against Belos, even though it had killed all but one of them.]
[But then...they're dead now, aren't they. They didn't save the day, their efforts towards doing the right thing didn't reward them, fate was not on their side.]
[And it sounds like it's not on the side of these homunculi either. If they rebel, if they try to do the right thing, they don't survive. They get killed, and remade, just like the Golden Guards. He can think that what they did was awful, if they were killing refugees, and know that he - as he is now, with his life experiences - would choose differently if pressed into that situation. And that is something to worry about, here in a world like this that seems to be gradually controlling more and more people like him, being pushed into doing something awful.]
[But he also knows that he'd die for it in circumstances like that, just like he almost died for it back home. If Luz hadn't taken his place when Kikimora was trying to capture him... ]
[Can he really hate the ones trying to survive? When the same horror of the dead Golden Guards is the only thing that awaits their rebellion? Maybe it's not his place to judge at all. Maybe the best he can do is just judge the current actions of the man in front of him now, as they happen in the present. Especially now that he's free to choose.]
[The fact he refused to let someone like him walk away, apparently concerned at his age, does say something about him. So does his obvious outrage and anger.]
[His voice is soft when he finally speaks, and his heart can be heard aching through it. Because so much is similar. At first, he thought this man was like him, then that he was wrong, but apparently he was right by accident.]
I'm sorry. That you went through that.
We are alike. Maybe it's not exactly the same. I was lucky, that the bad things I did weren't as permanent. That I was kept in the dark about the Emperor's plans.
And that I found out in time to do the right thing. I changed sides and joined the rebellion before he committed genocide and killed every witch and demon in the Boiling Isles.
[He leans forward with his elbows on his thights, expression pensive, twiddling his fingers anxiously.]
I'm a Grimwalker. Homunculus was a technical term I found in some of the books I read when I was trying to figure out what I was. Grimwalkers always have eyes like mine, so that combined with what you said...
[That's why he'd gotten confused.]
I wasn't made from dead bodies and I don't know the exact recipe for the ritual, but I do know was made with the bone of someone dead, in their image.
To serve the Emperor, Belos. I was a copy of someone he murdered, someone he used to be close to, and he made me to be his right hand, the Golden Guard.
He raised me. He pretended he was my uncle.
[His voice restricts.]
And I wasn't the first. All the past Golden Guards, the past Grimwalkers, he made and killed them one by one, because every time he made one they betrayed him, and rebelled. He almost killed me, too, when I found out what he'd done and what he planned to do to the Boiling Isles.
He wanted them to be loyal and when they weren't? He just made a new one.
My friends saved me. They decided to be my friends even after all the bad things I'd done, even when I was still serving him. They saw good in me, and were there for me when I ran away from him, when I needed someone.
cw: some more of that corpse desecration, and genocide, wow these canons
[It sounds...awful. Worse than Belos' regime. At least they had the good fortune of him backloading most of the absolute genocidal horror until the end. And the Corrupted...he's not sure what that is but it sounds like some kind of plague or contagious magical evil. Or a swarm of evil creatures?]
[It still puts him in a strange position of trying to figure out how he feels when it comes to associating with the man in front of him. Hunter, like every Golden Guard before him, had rebelled against Belos, even though it had killed all but one of them.]
[But then...they're dead now, aren't they. They didn't save the day, their efforts towards doing the right thing didn't reward them, fate was not on their side.]
[And it sounds like it's not on the side of these homunculi either. If they rebel, if they try to do the right thing, they don't survive. They get killed, and remade, just like the Golden Guards. He can think that what they did was awful, if they were killing refugees, and know that he - as he is now, with his life experiences - would choose differently if pressed into that situation. And that is something to worry about, here in a world like this that seems to be gradually controlling more and more people like him, being pushed into doing something awful.]
[But he also knows that he'd die for it in circumstances like that, just like he almost died for it back home. If Luz hadn't taken his place when Kikimora was trying to capture him... ]
[Can he really hate the ones trying to survive? When the same horror of the dead Golden Guards is the only thing that awaits their rebellion? Maybe it's not his place to judge at all. Maybe the best he can do is just judge the current actions of the man in front of him now, as they happen in the present. Especially now that he's free to choose.]
[The fact he refused to let someone like him walk away, apparently concerned at his age, does say something about him. So does his obvious outrage and anger.]
[His voice is soft when he finally speaks, and his heart can be heard aching through it. Because so much is similar. At first, he thought this man was like him, then that he was wrong, but apparently he was right by accident.]
I'm sorry. That you went through that.
We are alike. Maybe it's not exactly the same. I was lucky, that the bad things I did weren't as permanent. That I was kept in the dark about the Emperor's plans.
And that I found out in time to do the right thing. I changed sides and joined the rebellion before he committed genocide and killed every witch and demon in the Boiling Isles.
[He leans forward with his elbows on his thights, expression pensive, twiddling his fingers anxiously.]
I'm a Grimwalker. Homunculus was a technical term I found in some of the books I read when I was trying to figure out what I was. Grimwalkers always have eyes like mine, so that combined with what you said...
[That's why he'd gotten confused.]
I wasn't made from dead bodies and I don't know the exact recipe for the ritual, but I do know was made with the bone of someone dead, in their image.
To serve the Emperor, Belos. I was a copy of someone he murdered, someone he used to be close to, and he made me to be his right hand, the Golden Guard.
He raised me. He pretended he was my uncle.
[His voice restricts.]
And I wasn't the first. All the past Golden Guards, the past Grimwalkers, he made and killed them one by one, because every time he made one they betrayed him, and rebelled. He almost killed me, too, when I found out what he'd done and what he planned to do to the Boiling Isles.
He wanted them to be loyal and when they weren't? He just made a new one.
My friends saved me. They decided to be my friends even after all the bad things I'd done, even when I was still serving him. They saw good in me, and were there for me when I ran away from him, when I needed someone.