#aarus

"So did I," Iania retorted.

"You bring dishonor to the Akreus," Menaris said. "You dishonor the Blood of Basha by daring to come here."

"But not the Blood of Tolis?" Iania countered.

Silence answered her. Menaris was ice, her body still and eyes cold. Once, the older god was kind and loving, a grandmother to Iania that Diony had never been and a mother that Basha had never been, but that was gone now.

"Tolis dishonored the Akreus," Aarus said for his wife. "It is unfortunate you fell into the cycle of repeating your blood's mistakes."

"Are you truly going to judge me for my father's sins?" Iania asked.

"No," Belenos said, leaning forward, "but we judge you on your own. We cannot say why Diony freed you, but that does not mean we will not judge you."

Iania gripped her chains, feeling anger swell within her. "They were my children!" Her words filled the hall, but her voice broke at the end.

"They were abominations." Menaris' fury rose to meet Iania's. "We warned you not to bear Eros' creation." Belenos looked away towards Diony's chair, jaw set. "You ignored us, and you bore him two."

Aaru's Awakening, a hand-drawn 2D platformer from Reykjavík, Iceland-based Lumenox Games, is headed to Linux, Mac and Windows PC this fall, with an alpha for download now. "The game is 100% hand-drawn and has a dreamy artistic feel, and uses a combination of charging and teleporting," marketing director Johann Gudjonsson told Polygon via email. Check out the trailer above from earlier this year to see the game's unique style in motion and learn the lore that underlies Aaru's Awakening. You'll also see how the developer designed the game for mouse and keyboard control, the finesse required for the charge and teleporting moves — and the importance of combining the two while battling the game's scaling difficulty. Interested players can download an alpha version of Aaru's Awakening for Mac and Windows PC at the game's official website.