Ascension's Companion | Sir Pentious x Gender Neutral reader
A soul of pure, refined light undergoing purgation on a cosmic mountain befriends the newly ascended soul of Sir Pentious. Based on this ask.
I confess, whilst writing this, tears did flow freely. I would not term it 'angsty', yet if saying goodbye is difficult for you, arm yourself with something to dry your eyes
Rating: General audiences
Relationships: Sir Pentious x reader
Perched upon the shelf of Purgatory’s Mount, an impossible thing existed. It was not rendered of stone, nor woven from flesh, but from an act of pure, concentrated stellar ignition, a soul-made-light, kissed by the cold indifference of the cosmos. You.
Within the heart of your celestial vessel, a consciousness burned. Its essence was a terrifying fusion: the raw, indifferent fire of the sun and the scattered, ancient, often contradictory wisdom gleaned from a billion distant stars. This was not the uncontrolled immolation of damnation, it was the meticulous, gradual, and excruciating work of refinement. Every facet of its being functioned as a kiln, slowly baking away the black slag of past transgression. With each eternal second, a heavy residue lifted, a tenacious stain evaporated, and the last, stubborn droplet of earthly judgment was being rinsed from its core.
A hollow, echoing query resonated through your star-stuffed frame, a whisper of pure silence: Who are you?
You did not, could not, have an answer. Not yet. A name, a face, a human history, these were simply ashes scattered to the infinite wind of the beyond. Yet, in the deepest, purest recess where the divine fire met the cleansed core, a profound certainty resided, warm and unwavering. The answer, the ultimate truth of your identity, was not something to be remembered, but something to be earned. It would be revealed the moment your purgation was complete.
Forty years. On this timeless, in-between plane, the span was simultaneously a breathless instant and a crushing eternity. It was a passage of time measured not by the turning of mortal seasons, but by the relentless, slow-burn erosion of the self.
The Mountain itself, vast and impossibly vertical, did not merely exist under a sky, it shimmered in it. The light that fell upon its high shelves was not the weak, filtered radiance of moonlight or sun, but the full, unfettered glory of a thousand neighboring galaxies, illuminating the granite dust with an ethereal, milky glow. This was not the triumphant, blinding finality of Heaven, nor the messy, gravity-bound chaos of the material Earth. This was something else entirely. A cosmic liminal space. It functioned as a solitary retreat, a crucible of necessary silence, where the soul could finally turn inward and attend to the meticulous, heart-wrenching business of its own redemption.
Not far from your own soul, curled into a relatively tidy coil upon a shelf of smooth, shimmering basalt, a new soul manifested one day. This one was still recognizably serpentine. It was the raw, immediate proof of the process. A chaotic, anxious bundle of former sin, now utterly, utterly confused by its own lack of gravity.
You watched, wordlessly, observing the rapid, jerky movements of the serpent’s nascent eyes. Despite his impending soul promotion, this arrival was still trying to figure out which direction was up. This was the nature of the Mountain. A place where even a being of pure light could wait for its identity, and a redeemed Victorian villain could finally, quietly, shed the skin of his last earthly anxiety.
For forty years, your perception had been focused inward, focused on the agonizing geometry of purification. Now, there was a distraction.
"Hello. You are disoriented." Your voice, calm and utterly devoid of inflection, cut through the pervasive, silent roar of the cosmos. It was a statement of fact, simply observed.
The Serpent recoiled, a movement both frantic and unnecessary, for he was fundamentally weightless here. His consciousness, a writhing, spectral ribbon of grey and shadow, felt the insult of the simple truth. His head, a ghost of the predatory shape it once held, whipped around in your blinding, star-stuffed glow, trying to locate the source.
"What? Who said that? Show yourself!" He demanded. He injected a practiced note of menace into his tone, but the sound was thin, frayed at the edges. It conveyed not the ancient, terrible hunger he remembered, but a genuine, cold fear.
"I am only the light nearby." You explained, tone flat and vast, like the space between galaxies. It was an explanation meant to ease, yet it only intensified the soul's lost feeling.
The Serpent searched the impossible radiance until his non-eyes finally located the source. A few yards away rested your core of blinding, silent intensity, pure, churning energy, condensed into a quiet, vibrating form. It was too bright to look at, too fundamental to comprehend. He squinted, a physical reflex inherited from a long-dead, fleshy body, though his eyes were now only suggestions, luminous, scared motes within his spectral head.
"The light?" He muttered, his voice a bewildered whisper, struggling to process the impossible brilliance. "Oh. Right. Yes, well, everything is rather light up here, isn't it? Disconcerting. Are you... a fixture?" He hesitated over the word, trying desperately to apply a familiar, mundane label to this terrifying object of pure energy.
"I am not fixed," you replied. "I am being made. Refined."
"Refined." He repeated the word, his spectral shape, that ribbon of shadow, shrinking slightly in the face of the concept. It was a hushed tone, more of a question than an echo. "Refined for... what purpose? Where is this place?"
"It is measured not by Earthly time," you stated, "but by the dissolution of what you were. Your purgation is already underway."
The Serpent almost withered. His essence struggled to grasp the situation, his mind still shackled by the laws of his mortal existence.
"Tell me, Light, what were you when you were... dissolute? Were you a great sinner?"
"My name is not Light. My former self is gone. My sins were small, consistent, and corrosive." You paused, a silent, internal calibration. That was the central truth of this mountain, this plane of purification. Time did not exist here as an arrow, but as a scale. Your body had died forty Earth years ago, yet when it finally reached the celestial summit of heaven, it would be whole, and the aeons spent here would simply fold into memory, feeling like a single, lost dream.
"Right. Thank you. That was... clarifying." The Serpent shifted in the weightless void. "Perhaps I should find a good spot to wait out my time here. Do you mind if I wait? Here? Nearby? The sheer enormity of this Mount is giving me a touch of vertigo."
You summoned what you could a smile in your form.
Decades, measured by the silent, relentless processing of the light, slipped by after that moment. The Serpent remained nearby, a steady, spectral presence. You learned his story in fragments, of the texture of his ancient sins, the scope of his misdeeds, the agonizing specifics of his redemption, and the chilling account of his time spent in the lower realm. He spoke, you listened.
In return, you offered your own echoes, past fears stripped of their sting, philosophical notions distilled to their essence, and the quiet, profound realization of how differently time behaved in this void.
He often lamented the loss of his friends and found family, the connections that anchored him to the physical world, and you absorbed these sorrows.
A profound proximity developed between your two entities. It was a relationship forged in the intense, purifying forge of Purgatory. It was safe to say that if any form of pure, non-physical affinity could exist on this plane of unmaking and refinement, it had blossomed between the Serpent and you. You had found in one another a witness and a quiet, constant companion.
The shift was sudden and unmistakable when it finally happened. It began not with a sound, but with an accelerated thinning of the Serpent's spectral form. The ribbon of shadow began to stretch, pulled upward by an unseen, profound gravity. The raw light surrounding him intensified, no longer a constant presence, but a current drawing him away.
"Oh," the Serpent breathed, his voice a tremor of surprise and relief. "Oh, it's...it's time, then."
You, a silent core of refined energy, dimmed slightly in response, focusing your entire, vast attention on him.
"The time scale has tipped. Your essence is reconciled."
A sudden wave of disorientation, not of fear, but of profound severance, washed over Sir Pentious. He looked at the incandescent sphere that had been his only steady point in the void for countless ages.
"Goodbye, my light." He whispered, his ghostly eyes shining with an unnamable depth. "Thank you. For the silence, for the listening." You could not physically move, nor could you speak words of farewell. But in that final moment of proximity, you expended a concentrated pulse of energy, a focused, gentle burst of the purest, refined frequency. This pulse did not burn or blind. It simply integrated into his soul. It flowed directly into the Serpent's rapidly ascending form, an absolute transfer of acknowledgment, history, and profound respect and admiration for the journey completed.
Sir Pentious felt the charge, clean, complete, and utterly whole, flow through him. It was a final lesson, a final purification, a final benediction delivered not through words or touch, but through the essence of pure being. As the Serpent became a swift, luminous streak, dissolving into the glorious, beckoning current above, you spoke one last, simple truth that echoed only within his receding consciousness:
And then, the Serpent was gone, leaving you once again alone, vibrating quietly in the void, awaiting the next measure of time.
Sir Pentious hadn't realized it until his knees met solid ground. The impact was shocking. He was no longer a spectral ribbon or a wavering shadow, he was a single, coherent, weighty entity once more. His new body, whole, pristine, and perfectly formed, reacted instantly to the sudden presence of gravity and mass. He scrambled upright, looking around frantically, the habitual disorientation of the void clinging to him like a phantom mist.
"What? Huh? Where am I?!" He exclaimed, his voice ringing with a richness he hadn't possessed in millennia. His frantic gaze seized upon the architecture. The blinding, impossible silver of the towers, the air shimmering with golden warmth, and the silent, serene figures, winged, impossibly tall, and crowned with light, who stood patiently before him. He recognized the unmistakable, overwhelming atmosphere.
"Oh." His volume dropped to a quiet, reverent breath. He raised a hand in a small, tentative gesture toward the nearest Seraphim. A humble, almost nervous smile crossed his face.
The memory of you, the silent, intense core of energy that had witnessed his long refinement, felt instantly distant, already fading to the soft, gentle texture of a beautiful, barely-recalled dream. Yet, the deep, fundamental wholeness it had imparted remained, a quiet reassurance settled deep in the core of his new being. He was loved.
It was not until the cusp of the third week, an instant or an eternity, depending on the soul’s focus, that his path was was broken when exploring heaven. He blinked, once, then twice. A new soul had ascended to heaven, but this one brought with it a distinct, palpable change in the cosmic atmosphere.
The rarefied air of this soul did not merely hum with a similar vibration, it resonated, matching a forgotten frequency deep within his memory. It was the precise vibration he had only ever felt in the deepest, most vulnerable moments, the last instant before sleep overtook him, when all his anxieties was suspended. This resonance was not his own self-love, nor the reward for his purgation. It was You.
The truth struck him not as a memory, but as a fundamental physical constant of the universe. He was not alone. He was loved, the love he felt was not distant, not an abstract of heavenly deity's grace, but yours. The clear, steady, resonant presence now vibrating in front of him physically.
