>>5209121>>5209113>>5209107>>5209072>>5209178Your heart seems to slow to a crawl, its three chambers beating one a minute, an hour. You place your hands on your knees, feeling as if you will throw up into that basin before your smashes brains and blood come to fill it for your pitiful, disgusting mammalian emotional weakness. How could you have been such a fool—such a complete and utter IMBECILE, falling for a demon’s tricks?!
You won’t cry. You’re NOT going to cry.
‘It wasn’t … A trick, ya’ know?’
You look up suddenly, and see not The Chaplain standing there but Irinnile. Her form has shifted, albeit only slightly. She has not hooves, but feet; her red skin is subtly scaled. Her horns are smaller, daintier, her figure and face familiar without being that of anyone you know. That face smiles ruefully at your close scrutiny.
‘It’s, like, a combo of the features of everyone you’ve been attracted to,’ she admits.
‘To better manipulate me?’ you spit.
Irinnile laughs nervously, and shrugs. You feel the pit in your stomach grow.
‘Lispy, it’s not like that,’ she says, kneeling down to cup your face, meeting your eyes with her own brilliant, golden ones, with their eerie shining pupils. ‘I don’t do it on purpose When a succubus gets summoned, we automatically, like… Adapt to the desires of the summoner, or whoever we form a pact with. We become what you want us to be, what you need us to be.’
‘To get the most life-force and leeway from us,’ you say, bluntly.
Irinnile winces, but doesn’t recoil from you. ‘Yeah, yeah. You’re right. But, like… Ain’t that just dating inna’ nutsack? Or, nut-shell, I mean?’
You blink in confusion, so she continues:
‘You hid stuff about yourself from Edwin, lied… Even tried not to let on everything you felt about me. I know that even now, a part of you wants to just say “fuck it” and let the Snakefather out there just get rid of me and be done with me.’
‘Can you blame me?’ you demand.
Irinnile just smiles, and shakes her head.
‘We don’t lie to the ones we love, change ourselves to suit ‘em, because we hate ‘em or think they’re dumb and wanna’ use ‘em up,’ she says, stroking your check; you realize, shamefully, that in your mindscape the tears have begun to fall freely.
‘Then why?’ you whisper.
‘We do it to keep ‘em close to us,’ Irinnile says.
>Reassure Irinnile—she is invaluable, and you cannot begrudge a demon her nature [+affection]>A belated tie-breaker at a thematically-relevant momentYou stare at her for a moment, then pull her close, pressing your lisp to hers and taking her into your embrace.
‘I won’t begrudge you your nature,’ you tell her, ‘if you’ll forgive me my own.’
Irinnile grins widely, giggling.
‘I love you too,’ she says.
>Irinnile Affection: 100% 