Creative Asset
Game: Hades
Asset Type: NPC
Asset Name: Lola, Lotus Eater
Asset Description: The Lotus Eaters were originally people who lived on an island, where they fed on lotuses that rendered them sleepy and apathetic. Lola can be randomly found in a non-combat chamber in Asphodel. She is snoozing on the ground, her arms crossed on a rock and her head laying on her arms. Her hair is long and splayed all around her. When Zagreus prompts her for the first time, she does not respond. However, if persistent (or on future runs), Lola awakens and reveals that the Lotus Eaters had a tree in Asphodel before the Phlegethon flood burned everything. Now, all that remains is the single fruit she has, and throughout interactions she ponders whether to eat the fruit and enjoy the peace it brings, temporary though it might be, or to ask Zagreus to plant it elsewhere to regrow the tree and bring its joy to others.
The portrait of Lola shows her hair is flaxen-blonde, unkempt and tumbling over her hands, where she holds a lotus fruit to her face with a sleepy, unfocused look.
When given Nectar for the first time, Lola gives Zagreus a Keepsake of the Lotus Sprout, which gives the player a chance to inflict a detrimental status effect on enemies. The codex text reads: From Lola; you share a Whimsical bond. With you, she has learned that to dream is only worthwhile if you wake.
“Layer Cake” Conversation
This takes place in a theoretical science-fiction, open-world RPG located on a near-futuristic Earth. The focus is of an organization that has been combining cybernetics (the study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems) – and cybertronics (the study and design of electronic control systems) to create cyborgs.
The delivering NPC is Basilisk, a human-presenting cyborg who has been subjected to modifications, giving her poisonous glands in her throat. Her eyes have been enucleated, but she is very aware of her surroundings.
Basilisk is proctoring the player’s ability test, which will prove both the player’s aptitude as a cyborg and Basilisk’s ability as a handler. This test determines whether the player is scrapped or allowed to take assignments, which also determines Basilisk’s level of freedom after the test. If the player fails, she will be harvested for parts and the “Basilisk” cyborg will be rebuilt, which will result in this Basilisk’s death. With their success, however, Basilisk gains the same accessibility to the outside world that the player does.
“Good, you’re on time. Take the course to the top – all abilities are allowed. In fact, I encourage it, if you want to survive.”
“What are you waiting for? Do you need me to hold your hand? Climb, Chimera. Prove that you can make yourself what you need to be.”
“I can’t cover for you if Selkie thinks you’re not worth her time – it’ll be bad for us both. You understand that she makes the decision about what happens next, right? You have to impress her. Get going.”
Dramatic Narrative
After weeks traveling by air, it’s nice to be on the ground. Nina’s been looking forward to getting off the airship, even for the few hours that it takes the crew to get supplies. As novel as the idea of air travel for people is, and even with her time spent helping Glacier cook, playing cards with Chrissy, and talking with Kel in the early dawn, there’s too much free time for her to really enjoy the trip. Even weaving magic and song, there never seems to be enough to do.
It has been good for getting to know each other better, at the very least. After months of traveling together, there’s still so much that Nina doesn’t know about the others. Chrissy’s idea of playing Blackjack with questions and strip-poker was—while mortifying—brilliant. At least at this point, it was as if there were fewer walls between them. After admitting that she still struggled with nightmares, and Kel making the same admission (over the same event, nonetheless), he’d suggested he’d be happy to keep her company. She felt bad about having him sleep or sit on the floor, and the idea of sharing a bed made her stutter, so they’d compromised; she’d cast a message before heading to his room, where he had a hammock and a bed.
Half the time, Nina doesn’t even sleep in her own room.
Her lungs scream for air, but she bites her tongue to keep the mouth closed, even as she’s dragged deeper, deeper into the ocean. She casts each spell she can think of, anything that will help her. “I can get you out, but it’s going to hurt.”
She stares straight up at Kel as she answers him, trust firm in her chest.
“Do what you have to.”
Lightning streaks, hot and jagged, in a line between her and Kel. It strikes straight through her, through the creature behind her, and it takes her heart precious seconds to remember how to beat. Her tongue is bleeding where she bit it. She’s alive. She still can’t breathe.
Instead, she sits on his bed while he hangs in the hammock. Sometimes they sit quietly and work on their own things, but sometimes—her favorite nights—she pesters him about magic theory and practice (half of it goes over her head, what with magic coming naturally to her, rather than through study, but she always wants to learn more.) Sometimes he prods about her emotional state, her music, her family. She always asks him about his sleep, and the answer used to be the same. For a while, it got better, and now he gives not-quite-answers—she takes that to mean the nightmares are bad again, and so he’s not sleeping at all but he never confirms that. (At least he keeps their promise about not lying to each other.)
Some days are worse than others—he’s a little bit distant again, and she tries not to take it to heart. Maybe he’s just thinking, lost in ideas of new magic—like he had been when he’d gotten hold of the Sunset Spellbook. After all, they’d recently downed another of the wizards, he’d gotten her spellbook. It… had been a close call, and Nina knows those weigh on him the most.
“We can’t rely on luck. What happens when we run out? When we come across something we can’t win against and our luck runs out? Because we have been lucky so far.”
She chews her lip as she thinks on that, because—as much as she can see where he’s coming from, there’s good luck and there’s bad. And they’ve had their share of bad luck. Maybe it’s been outweighed, overshadowed by the good, but all she can do is be optimistic and try to understand.
That optimism fades when he avoids her. It’s been worse the last few days, since the captain declared they’d be landing for supplies soon, that the team would have some time to themselves before they’d take off again. At some point, she stops pursuing him for conversation, deals with the nightmares on her own.
It throws her off when they land, the captain departs, and Kel approaches Chrissy.
But—
Nina is among the only standing now. Glacier is unconscious by her sword, too far away for Nina to reach her. Her words wouldn’t reach anyway, not beneath the barrier of quiet. Her eyes flick briefly from the body, so still and so, so pale—she had never been that pale before—to Chrissy’s, bent at an unnatural angle and bloody, only twenty, maybe thirty feet away from Glacier. Kel stands beside it, and Nina feels the reality slip somewhere between awareness and fear.
Leo, her faithful guardian of all these years, is still standing, just out of eyesight. Nina knows this, can feel the firm presence in the corner of her mind. She hates this—the idea of putting him as a shield between her and her best friend. But he can handle more than a normal person can—perks of no longer being human, her mind provides. She never wanted that. She swallows the bitter thoughts alongside the blood from the cut on her tongue, the only residual injury from when Kel had fired off a bolt of lightning, straight down at Nina. It had been uncanny, seeing the parallels now—the only difference in his intent. Her body had seized, wracked with unfathomable pain and loss of control when it caught her straight in the chest. This time, at least, the pain had lessened almost instantaneously. She could breathe.
Her mind, in a startling moment of clarity, refocuses and she slides her attention to Kel, watching him pull the sword out of—Gods, please let that have been from the ground. But—no, Chrissy’s body slumps back down with gravity, face turned away from Nina, towards Glacier. And Kel turns with all the elegance and silence of a large cat stalking its prey.
“Take away your magic and you’re just a girl with some scales on her shoulders, and a pseudo-daughter she won’t get to see again.”
Running isn’t an option. Nina knows how many spells Kel can cast, at least in a general estimate, and this? This has not been nearly all of them. So she would have to… she would…
He levels a finger at her, and Nina feels more than sees the lightning crackle, the intensity astounding. That clarity stays, snagging the panic and replaces it with a plan. She brings her hand up in a wide arc, the beginning of a counterspell at her fingertips.
Her smile is sudden and grim as he copies her motion.
His words from earlier are drowned out the rushing of blood in her ears as she breathes in, out, in—and then stops in a blaze of pain
The next breath comes in a flood of dizziness, the brief thought of I should be dead, and Nina feels Leo’s arms underneath her, pulling her away and to her feet. It’s only the feeling as she’s blinded by the glint of the sun off his armor. She stumbles as she tries to maintain an upright position, and her gaze lands on Kel, who looks… irked. The irritation shows beneath his brow, but for a moment, Nina swears she sees something else pass across his expression. But before she can pin it, it’s gone again, and he pulls up the longsword—briefly enveloped in light, they split into his two longswords—and Nina prepares herself for the fight of her life.
—
The sky is so blue. And Nina knows that this is the last time she’ll get to see it, if the way breathing becomes difficult is any indication. Leo is finally still behind her, and Nina feels the absence of his presence, a cold corner of her mind. There is no coming back for him. There is no coming back for any of them.
Kel kneels beside Nina, and she closes her eyes against the shadow he casts over her. Her eyes sting with unshed tears, and the trembling overtakes her entire body. It hurts, gasping for breath to cry with while her body begins to fail.
It’s enough that she’s nearly distracted when Kel presses one hand to her hairline, slowly smoothing back blonde and silver. Almost. But Nina’s eyes flicker open, and she wants—she wants to hate him. To show him, for that to be the last thing. Instead, she still feels the intense trembling, and it’s hurt more than anything. It’s hurt and confusion and… Gods, is it still trust?
She opens her mouth to speak, but the first try at a word tears at her throat and leaves her coughing, choking on blood and spit. Her body fails her again as she tries to move, only managing an aborted lurch. Kel’s hands are not particularly steady, but he moves her nonetheless, turning her on her side. Her body screams in response, but it’s better.
She can breathe. It isn’t easy.
Once her breath evens out some, Kel gently shifts her back onto her back. Her head balances in his lap, and he runs his hands through her hair gingerly. She should look at the sky, take in her last sights, because there’s no way… there’s no way she lives through this. Instead, she looks up at Kel, taking in the sharp lines of his face, the resolute curve of his frown, the certainty in his eyes.
Whyever he did it, Nina understands that he thought—he thinks he’s right. It doesn’t stop it from hurting, a bone-deep ache of betrayal and loss, but it still soothes her, at least some. For a moment, the carding of his fingers through her hair and behind her ear really does distract her from a degree of the pain, but she jolts every wound as she lifts her arm to try and reach for his hand.
Kel doesn’t quite flinch as she gasps out in pain, but she does watch as his expression warps to something mournful. “You should let go, Nina,” he says, barely audible above the sound of her heartbeat in her ears.
She shakes her head. “I’m not—not ready,” she manages through desperate breaths.
He brings his hand to the side of her face, cupping her cheek as he leans forward, pressing his forehead to hers. “I know.”
Her unsteady hands reach for his and resolution settles in her veins as she realizes what she can do.
Nina holds the glimmering cards tightly, fanned out in one hand. and she stares intently at them for a moment, willing for there to be good. She uses her free hand to pull one card. She knows what it is, its magic settling deep in her veins, alongside the dragon’s ice. She pulls another, a similar, stronger magic tiding over her and then—she thinks about a third, but instead extends the deck to Kel.
Her hands settle lightly on top of his, and she moves his hand to press it to her lips, kissing his knuckles. Her voice shakes. “I hope you understand… I can’t let it end like this.”
Kel’s brow furrows, but reality has already begun unraveling to Nina’s will. This magic was earned, and it takes everything from her for a moment—each moment rewinds, becoming brighter and brighter until the entire thing frays at the seam. It’ll reweave itself, she knows; she feels the pain and aches fade away—even realizes that, for a moment, there is no need to breathe. Everything is free.
But it lasts what should only be seconds, and she blinks into the sunlight. There is an awareness of Leo, tucked into the corner of her mind where she can reach him. She stands there, taking in the scene of Glacier and Chrissy talking, Kel’s stride toward them—
This is what it means to rewrite reality. One must change it.
She moves to her feet, and she lunges for his wrist, hand steady. He startles underneath her touch, and she takes the opportunity to gently pull him. “It’s not worth it,” she says, breathless. “Kel, please. I know how this ends. It’s not… we can figure this out.”
No matter how much she wants to look, to check that Glacier and Chrissy are still there, to take in the fact that they are alive, she keeps her eyes trained on Kel. There is something raw and aching in the depths of his blue eyes, and he is drowning in it. He takes her in for a moment, and Nina uses the moment of his confusion to take his other hand in hers, turning him around toward her. “Tell me what this is about. Please,” she murmurs.
He could pull away from her if he really wanted. He could disappear and reappear at Glacier’s side and pull his sword. She knows this, and so does he. But still, he lingers. There are several seconds of silence between them, and by now Nina knows what this kind of quiet means. He doesn’t know whether he should tell her, because he won’t lie.
“There are fates worse than death,” he says, and Nina’s breath hitches in her throat. “How are we supposed to continue when I know that’s what waits for us?”
Slowly, Nina drags her thumb across the back of his hand, then turns them over so she’s looking at his palms. For another several long seconds, she says nothing. “Why are you so certain we don’t win?” she asks, finally looking up at him. Her voice aches in her throat with the urge to cry. “I believe in us. We’ve gotten this far. We’re getting better. And things—” her breath stutters a moment, mind assaulted by the memory of what it felt like to be dying. She slips away from herself, from this moment, and only realizes when Kel takes his hand in hers. With a jolt, she comes back to herself, and she gives him a watery smile. “Things can change. We can change things if we live. And I promised to hear you. I can’t do that if you don’t talk to me.” She keeps her voice low, out of earshot of the other three of their party members, but the desperation leaks into her voice.
He looks down at their hands, expression carefully neutral, and for a moment, Nina’s afraid she has lost him for good. But he eventually brings his gaze up to hers, and it is only because he allows himself to show that she sees the extent of his pain. He’s been haunted for so long, and Nina wants those ghosts to leave.
“I want to believe you.”