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improvkingCW: references to apocalyptic ambitions/scenarios, minor dysphoria, possession, plurality-adjacent soul-fusion, cults, murder/violence, a mercy-kill request.
The Ring-Spirit was in Ryslig for four years. Quite a lot happened.
RS arrived in Ryslig fully aware that his life’s Purpose was to destroy his world - not end it, but to ensure everyone who ever existed there did so in perpetual torment. He hadn’t had very long to consider this at his pull point, which he was perfectly happy with. Why would he want to think about things?? FULL SPEED AHEAD! …And then he got stuck in Ryslig and was forced to sit there and eventually consider the ramifications.
On arriving in Ryslig, RS was first of all removed from his amulet-body and given a human body of his own - much to his consternation. He didn’t WANT to be in a body of his own; and the fact that it was just a copy of the guy he usually possessed? He never did come to terms with this one being his body. In his mind, it’s just a xerox of Ryou that didn’t come with a Ryou in it: it’s still Ryou’s body, just a subpar iteration.
Lacking power of his own, he determined it was in his best interests to ally with one of the local deities; between his first monstrous change coming in clutch to allow him to escape from monster-poachers and the fact that he just plain didn’t like the Fourth’s vibes, he signed on with the Fog. (He tried to assure her his grudge was against his own world, not hers.) He eventually grew quite attached.
One event that was particularly influential was everyone getting copies of their loved ones for a bit - he got reminded of why he was so set on destroying the world: the suffering of his family, the ghostly village of Kul Elna. For a brief while he got to live in a world where they weren’t constantly suffering. And then things devolved, because of course they did - they were suffering again, but this time they could talk and tell him that it was all his fault and how disappointed they were and that he’d be helping if he would just end them... but he couldn’t bring himself to, instead hiding away and just enduring the whispers and the clawing until they finally dissipated in spite of his (lack of) efforts. Thereafter he found he was much more reluctant to lose Ryou - he tried to justify to himself that he was just possessive, that he didn’t really care about Ryou - but losing Kul Elna again, while he was aware of his own complicitness in their suffering, made believing he didn’t genuinely care that much harder.
Then he was transported to an alternate Ryslig, where he was a native human. This opened his eyes to just how much the mind of a singular mortal, one with friends and family, operated differently from someone who was two people at once - one of them a divine entity at that, and the other, while mortal, someone who’d always been alone in the world. As he started to remember the horror of his dual perspectives of the Kul Elna massacre, he fled to his (in-alternate-universe) friend Noa Kaiba for help; his other-Ryslig persona had no way to understand what he was remembering, but had a bone-deep instinct told him that his cousin Ryou (not his cousin, the guy he’d possessed and ruined the life of) and buddy Atem (not buddy, his enemy, the guy trying to stop him from destroying everything) would not appreciate who or what he was starting to remember being. After everyone returned to regular Ryslig (and RS and Ryou managed to have a truly dreadful argument), RS went to Noa again for advice, because Noa would both have the most context and the least baggage (as they were from different timelines [aka canon continuities]). Fortunately for him, Noa was in a good position to offer advice now, having in his canon been turned into an inhuman supercomputer and later having to remember how to be a person again.
(Additionally, RS and Atem had a surprisingly amicable confrontation concerning Kul Elna, and managed to come to an understanding.)
While RS worked on this whole “being a person” thing, he also recognized a local monsterkin cultist from that alternate Ryslig - the cultist Snik had, in the other world, been an actual monster who’d adopted a young human-RS, only to be killed by monsterhunters. RS immediately latched onto this “family member” he’d lost but miraculously become able to replace. Soon after Ryou unintentionally stole RS’s emotions and they managed to have an argument that wasn’t just talking past each other for once. They managed to come to a sort of understanding; and not long after that, Ryou pulled the “we’re family” card and RS finally had to admit to himself that he couldn’t fulfill his life’s Purpose if it’d mean failing the one family member who wasn’t already beyond help - he had to give up on destroying the world. Not long after this though, he also learned a method to heal damaged souls did exist: and he started to have actual hope for restoring Kul Elna instead of merely dragging everyone else down to that level.
(RS also adopted several other of the monsterkin cultists when he created a splinter group: he’d seen their leader in action on the network and felt she wasn’t actually serving the Fog - and when he believed she’d abandoned her cultists entirely, he was quick to offer to pick up the slack. Only four accepted, but that was how RS acquired a cult.)
At this point his mortal half, the Thief King Bakura, arrived in Ryslig and immediately TKB and RS had a spectacular blow up. TKB was still very hype for the downfall of the pharaoh (Atem), and since Atem and Ryou had started dating, RS felt obligated to oppose this - technically the pharaoh was now an in-law. TKB accused RS of having given up on Kul Elna, and in response RS pushed some of TKB’s Kul Elna trauma buttons a little harder than he had to; and while he eventually tried to convince TKB there was hope of repairing Kul Elna, he never did properly apologize for triggering him before TKB disappeared again - something RS regretted thereafter. RS had never placed himself on his list of “people to protect”, but technically TKB wasn’t quite himself at this point - he was more like family? And you don’t treat family like that.
Importantly, RS did manage to summon a healed version of Kul Elna - they still weren’t whole, and they never would be again, but they weren’t in pain and that’s what mattered most to him.
By now RS felt ashamed of the ~darkness~ in him - his being ~the darkness within humanity~ didn’t feel like enough of an excuse after the way he’d treated his loved ones. He always stressed to his friend Altair (who struggled with similar personality flaws) that it was important to recognize and accept this darkness in oneself, but he technically never said anything about having to like it. And then an event triggered RS half-turning into a shade. The psych changes coupled with the return to being ~one with the shadows~ sidetracked RS’s road to redemption by reminding him how good it felt to just give in to those darker instincts. He came close to killing two of his friends in this state. Afterwards when he was apologizing to one of them about it, Jonathan Joestar, to RS’s surprise Jonathan insisted that ~darkness~ alone wasn’t a Bad Thing. RS considered Jonathan one of the (very) few “Good” people in existence, so if Jonathan was fine with it... maybe being like that was fine actually. So long as he was more selective than he had been in which way he pointed it, just “being evil” wasn’t itself a problem. Since, despite the shame, RS had never really stopped doing evil things - such as hunting humans purely for sport - this change in mindset did wonders for his self-esteem.
When the Apocalypse came for Ryslig a second time (don’t worry about that first time), RS and his cultists were among those who fought back. While the people of Ryslig won, their land was a mess - and moreover, RS could tell the god he’d backed wasn’t exactly going to be in charge. Still not liking the Fourth’s vibes, he insisted his cultists board one of the departing spaceships. RS was prepared to go or stay himself entirely depending on what Ryou decided; but Ryou wanted to go in the end, so they (plus Atem and Noa) all left together.
The Ring-Spirit was in Ryslig for four years. Quite a lot happened.
RS arrived in Ryslig fully aware that his life’s Purpose was to destroy his world - not end it, but to ensure everyone who ever existed there did so in perpetual torment. He hadn’t had very long to consider this at his pull point, which he was perfectly happy with. Why would he want to think about things?? FULL SPEED AHEAD! …And then he got stuck in Ryslig and was forced to sit there and eventually consider the ramifications.
On arriving in Ryslig, RS was first of all removed from his amulet-body and given a human body of his own - much to his consternation. He didn’t WANT to be in a body of his own; and the fact that it was just a copy of the guy he usually possessed? He never did come to terms with this one being his body. In his mind, it’s just a xerox of Ryou that didn’t come with a Ryou in it: it’s still Ryou’s body, just a subpar iteration.
Lacking power of his own, he determined it was in his best interests to ally with one of the local deities; between his first monstrous change coming in clutch to allow him to escape from monster-poachers and the fact that he just plain didn’t like the Fourth’s vibes, he signed on with the Fog. (He tried to assure her his grudge was against his own world, not hers.) He eventually grew quite attached.
One event that was particularly influential was everyone getting copies of their loved ones for a bit - he got reminded of why he was so set on destroying the world: the suffering of his family, the ghostly village of Kul Elna. For a brief while he got to live in a world where they weren’t constantly suffering. And then things devolved, because of course they did - they were suffering again, but this time they could talk and tell him that it was all his fault and how disappointed they were and that he’d be helping if he would just end them... but he couldn’t bring himself to, instead hiding away and just enduring the whispers and the clawing until they finally dissipated in spite of his (lack of) efforts. Thereafter he found he was much more reluctant to lose Ryou - he tried to justify to himself that he was just possessive, that he didn’t really care about Ryou - but losing Kul Elna again, while he was aware of his own complicitness in their suffering, made believing he didn’t genuinely care that much harder.
Then he was transported to an alternate Ryslig, where he was a native human. This opened his eyes to just how much the mind of a singular mortal, one with friends and family, operated differently from someone who was two people at once - one of them a divine entity at that, and the other, while mortal, someone who’d always been alone in the world. As he started to remember the horror of his dual perspectives of the Kul Elna massacre, he fled to his (in-alternate-universe) friend Noa Kaiba for help; his other-Ryslig persona had no way to understand what he was remembering, but had a bone-deep instinct told him that his cousin Ryou (not his cousin, the guy he’d possessed and ruined the life of) and buddy Atem (not buddy, his enemy, the guy trying to stop him from destroying everything) would not appreciate who or what he was starting to remember being. After everyone returned to regular Ryslig (and RS and Ryou managed to have a truly dreadful argument), RS went to Noa again for advice, because Noa would both have the most context and the least baggage (as they were from different timelines [aka canon continuities]). Fortunately for him, Noa was in a good position to offer advice now, having in his canon been turned into an inhuman supercomputer and later having to remember how to be a person again.
(Additionally, RS and Atem had a surprisingly amicable confrontation concerning Kul Elna, and managed to come to an understanding.)
While RS worked on this whole “being a person” thing, he also recognized a local monsterkin cultist from that alternate Ryslig - the cultist Snik had, in the other world, been an actual monster who’d adopted a young human-RS, only to be killed by monsterhunters. RS immediately latched onto this “family member” he’d lost but miraculously become able to replace. Soon after Ryou unintentionally stole RS’s emotions and they managed to have an argument that wasn’t just talking past each other for once. They managed to come to a sort of understanding; and not long after that, Ryou pulled the “we’re family” card and RS finally had to admit to himself that he couldn’t fulfill his life’s Purpose if it’d mean failing the one family member who wasn’t already beyond help - he had to give up on destroying the world. Not long after this though, he also learned a method to heal damaged souls did exist: and he started to have actual hope for restoring Kul Elna instead of merely dragging everyone else down to that level.
(RS also adopted several other of the monsterkin cultists when he created a splinter group: he’d seen their leader in action on the network and felt she wasn’t actually serving the Fog - and when he believed she’d abandoned her cultists entirely, he was quick to offer to pick up the slack. Only four accepted, but that was how RS acquired a cult.)
At this point his mortal half, the Thief King Bakura, arrived in Ryslig and immediately TKB and RS had a spectacular blow up. TKB was still very hype for the downfall of the pharaoh (Atem), and since Atem and Ryou had started dating, RS felt obligated to oppose this - technically the pharaoh was now an in-law. TKB accused RS of having given up on Kul Elna, and in response RS pushed some of TKB’s Kul Elna trauma buttons a little harder than he had to; and while he eventually tried to convince TKB there was hope of repairing Kul Elna, he never did properly apologize for triggering him before TKB disappeared again - something RS regretted thereafter. RS had never placed himself on his list of “people to protect”, but technically TKB wasn’t quite himself at this point - he was more like family? And you don’t treat family like that.
Importantly, RS did manage to summon a healed version of Kul Elna - they still weren’t whole, and they never would be again, but they weren’t in pain and that’s what mattered most to him.
By now RS felt ashamed of the ~darkness~ in him - his being ~the darkness within humanity~ didn’t feel like enough of an excuse after the way he’d treated his loved ones. He always stressed to his friend Altair (who struggled with similar personality flaws) that it was important to recognize and accept this darkness in oneself, but he technically never said anything about having to like it. And then an event triggered RS half-turning into a shade. The psych changes coupled with the return to being ~one with the shadows~ sidetracked RS’s road to redemption by reminding him how good it felt to just give in to those darker instincts. He came close to killing two of his friends in this state. Afterwards when he was apologizing to one of them about it, Jonathan Joestar, to RS’s surprise Jonathan insisted that ~darkness~ alone wasn’t a Bad Thing. RS considered Jonathan one of the (very) few “Good” people in existence, so if Jonathan was fine with it... maybe being like that was fine actually. So long as he was more selective than he had been in which way he pointed it, just “being evil” wasn’t itself a problem. Since, despite the shame, RS had never really stopped doing evil things - such as hunting humans purely for sport - this change in mindset did wonders for his self-esteem.
When the Apocalypse came for Ryslig a second time (don’t worry about that first time), RS and his cultists were among those who fought back. While the people of Ryslig won, their land was a mess - and moreover, RS could tell the god he’d backed wasn’t exactly going to be in charge. Still not liking the Fourth’s vibes, he insisted his cultists board one of the departing spaceships. RS was prepared to go or stay himself entirely depending on what Ryou decided; but Ryou wanted to go in the end, so they (plus Atem and Noa) all left together.
