Starsinabox

I went very on the speculative side of genetics, (aka I completely ignored them) so she’s basically just a Baphos demon. Kore did not let ANY of Amelia’s genetics through on neither of the daughters.

Instead of ice as he element, I went with fire. She looks like the stereotypical demon, kind of. Black hair, black, twisting horns, red skin, black eyes. I named her Ashley because, yknow. Fire. But her powers are much more uncontrollable than Kore, but I’ll get to that eventually!

She was bullied HORRIBLY from a very young age. Because of the fact she looked like a stereotypical demon, and all the kids said she was bad luck and evil and yada yada. She was very insecure about it, and hid it from Kore and Amelia because she was afraid. The only person who actually knew about the bullying was her big sister. (which, I don’t think I ever mentioned, but her name is Namib, which is a desert in Africa. Thank you to my lovely moot @suzyisgone for the name recommendation, even if it was literally months ago.) Namib was just a few years older than Ashley though, so she was also incredibly young. Ashely begged and begged and begged her not to tell their parents, and so Namib didn’t.)

Anyway, this caused a lot of problems and trouble for Ashely as she grew. She eventually stepped up to the bullying in the only way she felt was appropriate; violence. Not a good thing when her magic is incredibly uncontrollable. From that, she learned the only way to survive, was to be aggressive.

Anyway, about her magic. It’s naturally a bit stronger than Korea, not for any reason other than it just is. But it’s more uncontrollable because Kore doesn’t really know how to teach her to use it. Unlike Namib, whose element matches his own, Ashley had fire. Kore tried his best to be supportive and patient and such with Ashley, but she never got the hang of it. It leaves her very unpredictable.

Yeah, anyway. Life goes on. Yada yada. Teenage phase, Ashely is 16 and very moody, her powers are unpredictable, and the bullying is still bad, and she’s violent. An accident happens, her powers go out in control, she injures Namib badly in her outburst. They’d always had a special bond so this scars her irreversibly, and also confirms that what her bully’s say are true. She’s a monster. If she had stuck around, she would’ve found that the burns were so light they barely even scarred. But she didn’t. She ran and got the midnight train out of there.

Things get kinda messy and rushed here because I haven’t rlly thought on it too much, but she eventually ends up in the Abyss. Years go by where she’s just nearly scraping by. Battle after battle after battle. At some point she has to cauterize her own neck wound so she wouldn’t bleed out. Yeah she had to cauterize a lot of things, actually. Lots of scars and burns and such. The entire time she just wants to go home, but she can’t get herself too.

Eventually, she gets involved in some kind of cult/religious group, which I’m gonna have to go into a deep dive of the Abyss in this au.

Basically, the Abyss is back to how it used to be before Abriths rein, where it’s just the strongest demons for themselves. Idk how it got this way, but it did. But many of the big demon lords still have little cult followings, and even so even though Abrith is gone, because he literally RULED the Abyss for a time, he has quite the few cults around him. Some things even got mixed up, and some believe instead of just being a demon lord, he was a GOD. Anyway, hope you see where this is going.

Kore had kept his past a closely guarded secret from his kids, especially the whole religious deal, but SOME of it had to be spilled. Anyway, when Ashley heard about this following, at first she’s simply interested because it reminds her of her father (who, let’s be clear, she misses DEARLY), but eventually she really gets into it. As all cults do, it manipulated her into thinking she had a proper purpose. Plus, the fact everyone in said cult were demons just like her was very comforting.

It gets even more fucked up than her being in some Abrith cult when the False Prophet thing shows up. I don’t have a name for this guy, so we’ll just call him Lizard for now. He’s not a lizard folk, but like half dragon born and half human. I haven’t rlly decided. I wanted him to be a freak of nature, but I’m not good enough at dnd to make up my own race. Anyway, he’s fairly tan, short black hair, slanted green eyes, and always wears like a cartoonishly evil smile, because he literally IS CARTOONISHLY EVEIL. He has many patches of scales and a very long, reptilian tail. Like fr that thing can be a whip.

Lizard takes a particular liking in Ashley—who is now around 25– (mentally/human age. I head cannon Baphos demons age differently, not to mention the half elf and little bit of hyena in Ashley’s blood), for no reason other than she is very young and vulnerable. This is around the time their relationship starts.

It’s incredibly abusive, mentally and sexually. I won’t be getting into the nitty gritty stuff this time, but the rundown is that Lizard very much used Ashley’s insecurities against her, making her think she was a monster just like her bullies did, but it was okay because they were all monsters here. He basically manipulated her into thinking she’d only be accepted in this creepy cult.

Bunch of stuff happens, but eventually Ashley gets suspicious of this entire Abrith thing. Again, in the years since Abriths fall many things have gotten mixed up, and it’s thought he’s a god, the one that gave the demons magic. Ashely eventually uncovers the truth in an ancient ruin where she finds a mural of the demons receiving blood magic, and it is in fact not Abrith that gave it to them and oh shit is that HER UNCLE??

She doesn’t bring it up in front of the entire cult though, instead she waits until she gets alone with Lizard—idk if I mentioned this but he like runs the cult. Entire ‘False Prophet’ thing. Things go to shit quickly. Lizard is essentially burned alive.

Also, though I might add here Ashley has her own version of Kore’s ‘hardcore’ mode, because I’m pretty sure that’s an inherent Baphos trait rather than a Kore thing. One of the biggest triggers for her is the smell of burning flesh, because of when she initially hurt Namib all those years ago. So when things got physical with Lizard, she just.. blacked out, woke up and he was dead.

That’s kinda all i got right now. I know I eventually want her to go home, but I can say for sure she’ll never fully heal. She has dinners with Kore and Amelia, who very much missed their baby girl. She finally faces Namib for the first time after the accident, and life goes on. She never feels like she can see Rooster again, and tries to avoid that whole thing. The mural really freaked her out, but she’s too afraid to ask anyone about anything.

She never fully finds closure, but she’s back with her mom and dad again. That’s all she really wanted.