Series: Tales of Zestiria
Rating: T
Genre: Character study, Game-canon ending/post-epilogues
Characters: Symonne, Sorey, Rose, Mikleo, Lunarre, Phoenix
Warnings: Canon-typical violence, Minor character death… pretentious prose? IDK
Summary: Truth be told, she never was all that fond of morality plays. Or, five times Symonne struggled with meaning and one time she found contentment in simply being.

Augury of Sins

~.*.~

i.

"Why do you still keep smiling, even when I tear open your wounds?" she hissed, vehemence laced in every word.

(Many moons later, she would find herself asking the same question, to yet another who smiled just as he did even through the anguish and pain.

How could they… How dare they? It didn't make any sense, it couldn't—)

Her brows creased in anger, Symonne forced herself back up to her feet even as her limbs ached and trembled from the growing exhaustion of battle. Being delicate in stature had its drawbacks; she would tire easily from direct combat. As such, she had perfected the use of her seraphic artes, weaving illusions and doppelgangers born from human hearts, an augury of one's deepest fears and desires. She had not asked for this accursed blessing, had never wished for any of it.

But it was all she'd ever known, all she'd carried with her through centuries of misery and growing apathy.

It was (she was) enough for this, for her Lord—she reminded herself again as she struggled to stand upright, pointing her baton at the two humans before her. It was enough that she could serve her Master. She won't stop here… no, she couldn't stop, she must not fail—

"That's enough, Symonne."

The Shepherd's voice was gentle and kind, and Symonne felt frustration flaring from deep within. She lifted her head, staring up at his disgusting concern, at the pity in those evergreen eyes.

"Why do you keep fighting back? How can you smile like it doesn't hurt?!" she cried, hurling all of her anger and confusion outward, streaks of magic dancing in violent crackles around them. She wanted to smite them down; wanted to rip that infuriatingly radiant smile off his face, to gouge the kindness out of those eyes with sharp nails—

"When all that awaits us in the end is inevitable doom, a hollow death? Is it not natural to welcome that?!" Symonne snarled. She raised her baton once more, threading wisps of magic through the thick violet miasma around them, even though she was already worn from their earlier battle and from the crushing weight of Heldalf's domain bearing down upon her.

The illusions danced briefly around them—shadows of the bandit children laughing alongside the Cardinal, crimson blossoming against the pristine-white of her robes; of the old Explorer, his hefty leather book strapped to his back; of the blind wind seraph who gnashed his teeth, lips curled in derision at the Shepherd and his Squire.

Both humans faltered at the sight, sword and daggers wavering in their hold, their expressions clouded with grief. This would throw them off, surely, and turn them to despair, it must—

But the Shepherd only closed his eyes, steeling himself, before he slashed forward with his burning blade. The shadows screamed and flickered weakly, fading along with the remainder of her strength and Symonne was left curled against the cold, hard ground.

"Don't you wish they could have at least survived? I can make it a reality, so why do you keep fighting back, why?!" she spat, feeling a last spike of defiance as she struggled to her hands and knees.

"If Forton, Mayvin, Dezel, and even those children were brave enough to have endured the pain that comes with reality…" Sorey began, his sword still bright with the silver flame. "Then we as the Shepherd and Squire—we surely have to do just as much, maybe even more so."

"And that's why we'll keep pushing onward," Mikleo said. "We could never cast away the memory of these people by accepting your illusions, no matter how perfect they are."

Rose nodded, a rueful look in her eyes. "Doing so would be a disservice to all the pain and hardships they've had to suffer."

Symonne set her jaw, fingers clenched so tightly around her baton that her knuckles turned bone-white.

How could they not see, not understand the futility of it all? If she could not do this one thing for her Lord, if she failed him—no, she cannot allow it—then there would be no reason… She would have no meaning…

"The more you fight, the more you suffer… What use is there to struggle?! So why must you resist Lord Heldalf vision's? He will rid the world of perpetual agony and restraint!"

There was the sound of approaching steps then. She froze, shoulders taut, agitation a churning knot deep in her belly.

Sorey knelt before her, smiling gently—that abhorrent smile, bright and untouched like the sun, she hated it so—and reached out for her, only to pause and thought better of it, pulling his arm back to rest at his side instead.

"It may be true—the more we struggle, the more we'll suffer. But it doesn't always have to be like this. It's what I've come to realise and learn from my friends. From those I've brushed paths with throughout this journey."

His countenance grew softer, his voice low, almost as if the words spoken were for himself as much as it was for her. "We're more than the suffering and burdens we bear, Symonne. You are so much more than the pain you carry with you—and you don't have to keep thinking of yourself as evil, of deserving of all resentment."

"W-What?" she echoed, feeling her throat constrict and her eyes growing moist.

"Ah…" Sorey faltered then, struggling to articulate the words right. He offered her an apologetic smile, seemingly self-conscious at how he abruptly had her full attention now as she waited for his answer.

"W-Well, what I mean is… It's all right if you are as you are. You exist just like the rest of us, in the here and now—that's what really matters. Everything will work out somehow because I'll keep searching for a way, for all of us."

Symonne lowered her head, unable to hold his gaze any longer.

As the party left, making their way through the labyrinth and into Artorius' Throne, Symonne felt his words lingering, striking a chord deep within.

She wailed then, and despite her angry, bitter tears, felt a euphoric sense of relief, of affirmation taking root within her chest.

How truly selfish of you, Shepherd.

~.*.~

ii.

Many moons later, she found herself—yet again—asking the same question, to another who smiled just like he did even through the anguish and pain.

(How could they… how dare they? She had pondered over it then, seething, infuriated at the young man whose heart would not be corrupted. Who had refused to fall, even when his family's blood had stained his hands crimson.

This time though, the ire driving her question had dimmed into waning embers; all she was left with was genuine bewilderment.)

"Thank you," Alisha said, bowing graciously. Symonne did not miss the grief and sorrow lining the corners of her eyes, but what puzzled her most was the Princess' smile. It was a tiny smile, tugging at the corners of her lips, but one filled with immense gratitude nonetheless. "Because of you, I was finally able to see Lady Maltran off with a proper farewell."

There it was again, the look upon Alisha's face. The same look of pity and understanding that Symonne had so much contempt for. She had scorned the Princess' gaze then, turning instead to face the Squire—Ah, no, not a Squire anymore; our darling comedian has taken up the Shepherd's mantle now, hasn't she? —only to find she detested Rose's cheeky grin and unflinching sureness nearly as much. Symonne hated how the woman's blue eyes were still as sharp as the blades she twirled languidly in her palms.

"Selfish and as pitiful as ever, I see," she muttered, almost thoughtfully, before the air around her rippled and she disappeared into velvet shadows once more.

~.*.~

iii.

Humans were obnoxiously stubborn beings. Even when they had shed all trivialities, mortal customs, and ingrained social graces; when they allowed the darkness in their hearts to fester, allowed the ferocity of their desires to run amok and then consume them, transforming them into hellions.

Symonne twisted her lips ever-so-slightly at the thought. Even from her vantage point high up the Shrine walls, she could see the battle below was drawing to a close, the two opponents seemingly at a stalemate. It was clear as day who the true victor was though and she wasn't the least bit surprised.

With a hum, she calculated the distance to the square below and took a graceful leap off the ledge.

The sphere of illusions disintegrated just as her feet touched the cobblestoned streets: the ghostly silhouettes of a tawny-haired boy and red-haired girl shattered into fractals, the children's laughter dissipating into a sheet of crystalline dust that settled over the two opponents—the fox hellion and the darling comedian Shepherd.

"Traitorous wench!" Lunarre spat viciously at her approach, fangs bared. "This was all your doing? I should've known."

"Traitorous? Always the dullard spouting inane commentary, aren't you?" Symonne countered sweetly. "My master is long dead ; there is none left to betray. And I serve no one now, least of all the likes of you." She tilted her head, turning a coy smile towards the Shepherd Rose. "In your bid to carve each other up, you've all unknowingly waltzed into my domain—surely it isn't necessary for me to remind you how my blessing works?"

"I won't play your games, wench," Lunarre growled, amber eyes feral and burning with bloodlust. "If you get in my way, I'll kill you too, after I gorge on little Lambkin Rose and her friends." He threw back his head in a fit of maniacal laughter, tongue lolling over cruel and yellowed fangs.

Symonne only scowled at the sudden surge of malevolence, at the growing pressure settling against her shoulders as she continued to hold her ground, unyielding.

"And after that, maybe I'll even sniff out everyone's precious sleeping Shepherd." Lunarre hissed, voice dripping venom. "Wrench his limbs apart and split him open, flesh and bone, just so I can rip into that delicious still-beating heart, drain his blood dry and—A-AARGGH!"

There was a flash of movement, a whirlwind of red, green and white.

Lunarre tried to scream but could only choke on blood, crimson stains blooming from his chest where Rose's daggers had found their mark.

"May these weary bones find peaceful rest," Rose murmured through clenched teeth, driving the blades deeper as she listened to his dying gasps. "Good-bye, Lunarre. I'll always remember our better days together."

The fox hellion shuddered, his form dissipating into a miasma of black and violet tendrils.

The emblem over her glove was still ablaze with silver flames as Rose purified the last of the malevolence. With the malevolence cleared and the illusions wavering there was no reason to linger around—Symonne could hear the approaching steps of Rose's seraphim as they broke through the dying hellion's crumbling domain to reach her side.

"What display of audaciousness. Seems like you've come a long way and we've just only reached the interlude of this brand-new play. But alas, the curtain must be drawn for now." Symonne paused, sparing a glance at Rose—she was still crouched low to the ground, staring silently at the bloodstained path. "Oh, has our darling comedian Shepherd finally broken? Did the fox really get to you that much?"

Rose let out a tired laugh before she straightened up. She wiped the grime from her face, eyes bright with unshed tears.

"He's kind of right though, you know. I'd be a really cheap imitation of Sorey. Not that I want to be known as a maniac who goes nuts over mouldy architecture and dead people's possessions, mind you—we still have Mikleo for that. But sometimes…" Rose's voice grew soft as she touched the blue scarf around her neck. "This whole Shepherd business is just…"

Symonne hummed, almost amused now. "No need to flatter yourself, dear girl. You humans are the same wherever you go, whatever you do. Stubborn, supercilious, and always with the self-serving monologues."

"Aren't we all?" Rose gave Symonne a crooked smile, before turning to nod at Mikleo. "Like you're pretty stubborn yourself too, so not all that different from the rest of us. And Shepherd or not, I'm always gonna be getting stuff done the Rose way. Gotta live up to that true name I was bestowed so graciously with, after all."

Mikleo quirked an incredulous eyebrow at that, even though he couldn't quite hide the amusement creeping over his features. "Huh. I thought someone once lamented how Wilkis Wilk was a lazy sort of name."

"It is still a lazy sort of name. But guess I just grew into it!" Rose cracked another easy grin, hands upon her hips.

"Presuppositions again. Such is your lot." Symonne sighed. Dawn was fast approaching, the first slivers of sunlight visible over the edge of the cityscape—and her cue to take her leave.

"Hey, wait!" Rose called after her retreating form. "Why… why did you help us, Symonne?"

"That wasn't assistance," Symonne murmured quietly, her form elusive as she faded away with the mist.

It wasn't assistance, but…

Was it mercy, hope?

Salvation?

She had grown weary of pondering this act.

(Truth be told, she never was all that fond of morality plays.)

~.*.~

iv.

If she was honest with herself, she could not say she remembered in detail the events of that particular day, decades ago. Human lives burn so brightly throughout the march of time, and yet the fire of their souls was merely flickering candlelight, winking out, one by one, in endless cycles.

Even so, she remembered those smiles, the sound of their laughter.

She remembered the littlest things, the crinkle in the sides of their listless eyes, their face contorted in fear and pain.

Their voices pleading for release from the bitter harshness of reality—

—the world is too cruel, please just let us dream, let us sleep forever—

—no! this wasn't what I… forgive me…! —

—you brought this upon us, your gift, youyouyOUYOU…! —

The ringing silence that came thereafter.

She had expected the malevolence here to have festered long enough to overwhelm her, perhaps even driven her to draconian madness. But as she picked her way carefully through the debris and remnants of the small village—of a place she had almost called home once, a lifetime ago—all she sensed now was tranquillity, a calm relief.

There, before her and basking in a patch of sun, was a small plant. A fir wood sapling, its bright green vines curled around a stick, tiny leaves already sprouting from the ends.

Symonne knelt beside the sapling, brushing a finger gingerly over the leaves, running her hand through the loose soil. There was no longer any trace of malevolence, not in the air or beneath the earth. Only the buzzing of insects, of life once again slowly taking root.

There were no echoes of the past (no desolate screams of the dying villagers) whispering from haunted shadows into her ears.

"Our darling comedian Shepherd, so hard at work these days."

Symonne sat beside the sapling a little longer, exhaling slowly as she savoured the warmth of the sun upon her back.

~.*.~

v.

The water seraph was a frequent visitor of the cliffside grave.

Others came by as well, to present flowers and offerings of traditional curry buns, to pay their respects—the humans, during the Vernal Equinox every late autumn; the seraphim at every turn of a decade, sometimes a century. But it was the silhouette of a smallish creature perched over Mikleo's shoulder that, for one reason or another, she remembered most.

Symonne did not care for normin in general. They were a contemptible lot, simpletons easily beguiled by fleeting contentment. And she especially did not care for a pompous one with too zealous an attitude, and who seemed overly keen with pointless nattering.

"I see you've made the annual pilgrimage as well, little one." Phoenix nodded in approval, chest puffed out importantly.

"And I see you still possess the proclivity for presumptions." She scoffed in return by way of greeting.

With narrowed eyes, she studied the way Mikleo's hair now skimmed over his shoulders in loose, silver-white strands. A single lock braided with a bright yellow-orange feather was tucked neatly over his left ear. Then, with almost a resigned reluctance, she moved forward to sit as close to the cliff's edge as she could manage, peering down at the ruinous landscape below.

After a moment, she asked, her voice barely a whisper over the rising gust: "How are you not a dragon, loving and being around humans as much as you always have? Yearning so much for his return and yet… never truly certain if he…"

She fell silent, unable to finish the question.

Mikleo did not reply, did not look her way. He seemed to have curled in around himself, arms wrapped his torso as he sat beside the grave—whether he was trying to keep the questions out or perhaps just protecting his most treasured memories, Symonne could not say.

"I can't say for sure, honestly. But I guess I've learned not to dwell too long in the past," Mikleo began, a pensive look in his violet eyes. "I don't think I'll ever stop missing them, my human friends. And yet at the same time, I don't think I can ever not see what's before and around me still." He paused, raising his hand to the weathered headstone, tracing a finger over the engraved name Numin. "Maybe… maybe this is what it really means to be a seraph?"

"So that is your answer then?" Symonne asked, unconvinced. "Finally casting aside your shackles?"

"Shackles?" Mikleo shook his head. "The time I shared with Sorey, with Rose and Alisha—and all the humans I've ever met? They're the foundation to who I am now, who I'll continue to grow to be. And my answer is simple: I believe in Sorey, in our dream. I can't reach that dream if I'm always going to keep looking back over my shoulder in despair, can I?"

Symonne only sighed, dangling her legs over the cliff side. Still such a simple fool then, she thought.

"And what about you? You're no dragon either even after serving a Lord of Calamity for as long as you did, and then lurking among humans nearly as often as I have."

His question caught her unawares. She tilted her head towards him, brows furrowed, pondering for a moment.

"Spite, I suppose. And sheer obstinacy."

The brief silence that followed was awkward, but easily broken by Mikleo's soft laugh.

"So, not that different from humans and the rest of us then," he said, violet eyes bright with mirth as he looked ahead to the pillar of light glimmering from the ruins below.

"No," Symonne said, smiling wryly. "I suppose not."

~.*.~

vi.

"You really saved my skin back there! Thanks!"

The young seraph wasn't anyone she'd ever chanced upon over the years, Symonne was certain of this. His messy oak-brown hair was pulled back into a short pony-tail, the tips of each strand now a bright, radiant gold; his travel cloak casual and unadorned.

But it was in the curve of his smile, the tentative sincerity of his expressions and little mannerisms.

And those evergreen eyes—she had recognised that childlike wonderment, that boundless zest within them all too well.

"I'm Sorey, a wandering seraph," he introduced himself readily, once the dust had settled around them.

Symonne studied the broken stone monument in the tall grass before them, listening intently for any tell-tale creaks or shifts in the stonework to suggest yet another collapse in the structure.

"Symonne," she replied simply, once she had ascertained there was no imminent danger. "I was merely passing through. You… don't remember anything, do you?"

"Well, I did kind of bumped my head a little," Sorey said, brushing at his nape sheepishly. "So yeah, I'm a bit fuzzy about the details. The last thing I remember is the prickleboar rushing at us, and then… uh, falling off from that stone wedge there in the structure, all while trying to dodge it…"

The familiar angle of his head-tilt only lifted the corners of her lips into a knowing smile.

(He was not yet aware of it himself during his fall from the crumbling structure, but Symonne hadn't missed the brief glimpse into his thoughts, his memories: the way her illusions had reacted—fractured pieces of emotion weaving through the wind—to the indiscernible fears he had kept folded behind that bright smile, buried deep within the eaves of his heart.)

"I managed to scare it off with the illusions, so it's highly unlikely to return," she said instead, already moving ahead. "You'll still need to tread with more caution through these woods. Prickleboars aren't the only creatures that are territorial."

"Right," Sorey nodded, reaching down to collect the book he'd dropped earlier. He dusted the covers before slipping it back into the small leather pack he wore at his hip. "And thank you again, Symonne. I really owe you one. I'm going to look for Phoenix—ah, he's a friend… a normin I sort of picked up?—we got separated just before I found this monument and the prickleboar attacked. Maybe you'd like to go with me, if we're heading the same way?"

Symonne had almost, almost considered taking up his suggestion, if only for curiosity's sake.

"My path leads elsewhere for now," she said, declining the offer with a slight shake of her head. "We may however chance upon each other again another day. And while I'm not fond of platitudes, but… Some advice for what you seek, your heart's desire."

She held his curious gaze, unwavering, her thoughts drifting to the words that had stayed with her, that she'd held on to at every turn of the century.

It's all right if you are as you are. You exist just like the rest of us, in the here and now—that's what really matters.

"You're more than your lost memories, more than the burden of a selfish Shepherd's legacy."

There it was again, the tiniest hint of emotion, flickering over his features. Sorey blinked—and it was gone again—head angled in confusion. "I don't think I quite understand…"

Symonne only smiled, retreating once more to the comfort of shadows before he could question further.

"Good journeying, seraph Sorey," she said, her voice the soft rustling of leaves in the canopy above. "May you find luck dancing, wherever your heart leads you."

Sorey was still deep in pensive thought when Phoenix finally found him, watching the way the leaves bobbed over the spot where Symonne had last stood.

.

.

.

—End—

:::

Notes:

- I wanted to re-write some of the scenes with Symonne during the battle before the game ending. Somehow it turned out longer and ended up being a character study of sorts. Not sure how I feel about this but lol #i-tried

- The fourth scene is inspired by Symonne's character notes found in the Zestiria World Guidance Book. Before working under Heldalf, she was a seraph who actually loved humans and had tried to live among them, only for her blessing to bring disasturous results to a village.

- The last scene where she meets seraph Sorey takes place a little after Chapter 1 and before Chapter 2 of my post-epilogue fic, Chasing Dreams.

- Thank you for reading! Comments and critique are welcomed for my fics—I'd like to hear what you think, if you've enjoyed this so far.