#it was great kate
Spoilers for Episode 2 of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
It’s been so long since Zerxus has been touched. Some days, he aches with the loss.
The fiend in front of him has hands that are warm, and skin that is soft beneath Zerxus’s own as he cures his wounds, as he stares into that heartbreakingly familiar face. Evandrin was indeed the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, and it has been so long since he’s laid eyes on those cheekbones, that hair. He knows he’s on borrowed time, here in this place between worlds, but he also never wants to leave.
He is a man who has no space for the gods in his life. There is no loyalty to any pantheon, no true distinction between betrayers and the ones betrayed. If the gods had cared, truly cared, Evandrin should not have perished. Elias would still have a father and Zerxus would still have a husband. The universe is a cruel place, and Zerxus feels intensely aware that that cruelty extends to those with cosmic power as he stands before the figure on the bed, holding his bandaged wrist and feeling alive for the first time in years.
As he emerges back into Exandria, he’s aware of a difference in himself, a heaviness to his limbs, a twinge in his heart that had not existed before that single moment. His muscles ache from spasming and he feels the beginning of a headache in his temple. Something in Zerxus changed, in that space between worlds, in that time immaterial. He has emerged something more than himself, the magic at his fingertips stronger than ever, the feeling of being buoyed by something greater than himself intoxicating, like a drink of the sweetest ambrosia.
Asmodeus’s story makes sense to Zerxus, that’s the simplest part. Of course the betrayer gods are not truly evil, just as the prime deities are not truly good. They are simply creations of the world, the same as anyone else, the same as Zerxus himself. Zerxus knows he has potential for good in himself, and equal potential for incredible evil. It is the way of things; why would the deities truly be any different, betrayers or not?
Any choice in war is going to seem like a betrayal, from a certain point of view.
