Pyralis
From The Elysium'verse Wiki
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Pyralis, along with his identical twin brother Celos, is the current youngest of all Maci and Tory's children in the Elysium'verse. He's very baby in present day canon and, other than his weasel-daemon shapeshifting abilities, little is known about his future at this time so far...
Pyralis' parents and siblings have taken to occasionally calling him Py for short.
Appearance
Pyralis is currently a toddler. His skin-tone is a coral type reddish pink, and he has blonde curly corkscrew hair (inherited from dad Tory, whose natural hair is curly when he's not straightening it). He and Celos are Maci's first blonde children! Pyralis has maroon eyes, pointed ears, fangs and a tail. His fingernails and toenails are naturally blackened in color, though they are not claws unless he's in his daemon form.
Pyralis is indeed a daemon from Tory's side, and, like all daemons, bears strong resemblance to a specific animal when shifted. In their daemon forms, Pyralis and Celos resemble weasels, with an elongated snake-like body, paws, and a pointed snout. His black nails sharpen to little razor claws.
Because Pyralis and Celos are completely identical, Celos is fitted with a little gold bracelet that Pyralis does not wear. This is the only way to differentiate them, as they act similar too.
Powers & abilities
On account of being a toddler at this moment in canon, Pyralis lacks the powers that any mature god grows into, only possessing standard unconditional immortality. Presently, Pyralis' one unique power, shared with that of his twin, is tied to his daemonic species. Many of the Underworld's daemons are able to shapeshift back and forth from a humanoid form, into a form that is more "animal" in shape. Since before he was born, Pyralis has been able to shift back and forth between his weaselly daemon form and back. However, this ability is tied to his brother, Celos - Celos possesses the ability to shift in the same way, however only one twin has mastered shifting to daemon form at a time. If Py is shifted, Celos must be in humanoid shape, and they can "trade" when Celos wishes to shift himself. Both twins can exist in their humanoid shapes at the same time.
Like most of Tory's children and all of Maci's, Pyralis is fireproof, and will probably develop some type of pyrokinetic ability later in life.
Personality
Much of Pyralis' personality is yet undiscovered, since again, in current canon Py is still very baby. However, even as a newborn, Py has been a happy and bubbly child, along with his brother. In toddlerhood, Pyralis has a lot of hyperactive energy - a daemon trait, maybe, but moreso a trait inherited likely from his hyperactive ultra-bubbly mom, Maci. Often, Py is thrilled to spend all of his time running around, trying to climb on or up things, play-wrestling and play-fighting with Celos, and delightedly shrieking at the top of his lungs.
For double the fun, Celos acts the exact same way. Despite desperately searching, Tory and Maci have yet to find any sort of "off button" for the twins.
Canon events
The twins are among the newest characters in the Elysium'verse and have not yet grown up enough to feature very prominently in any canon contents beyond, like, being born. The following section is a quick rundown of the events surrounding their existence.
Conception & birth
Unlike Maci and Tory's other children, the twins were actually an unplanned surprise. Though Maci is naturally infertile without divine intervention - the way her older two children, Neo and Raz had been conceived - messing around for one night with stupid potions and their friends had resulted both in Tory finding himself all of a sudden pregnant again, and also briefly left with no idea who the other parent could be.
Narrowing it down between Maci herself, or Eury or Epi (and no resentment to be had, as the co-parenting situation of Elysium had already extended several babies ago into crossbreeding), Tory and Maci decided to hope that the new baby was in fact Maci's. They hadn't planned for another kid between them, but since Neo and Raz were growing up and Tory's previous children had been sired by Loki and Epi, respectively, the thought of having a new Maci-Tory baby was suddenly amongst their hopes and dreams. After beseeching Hecate, Tory was able to confirm that the new baby was indeed Maci's.
Tory went almost his entire pregnancy without knowing he and Maci had conceived twins, but much of this was because at the time when Tory and Maci had first found out he was expecting, a separate crisis situation was erupting in Elysium. Chal, who'd recently also been irresponsibly messing around with potions, discovered she was accidentally pregnant, too.
Chal's situation was an actual emergency. Tory's oopsie pregnancy was a fun bonus baby, as Tory was a parent many times over. In fact Tory had even very recently adopted Chal herself as Tory's own daughter, for even though Chal was a whole young adult, after the several years of painstaking rehabilitation that Chal had undergone to break free from a lifetime as Thanatos' supervillain kid, she was in need of a parental support system and family of her very own, craving it despite how she cursed and spit otherwise. Though she'd come a huge way from how she'd started in her own arc, Chal at this point was firstly, still coming to terms with even accepting a parental relationship; and secondly, with the help of her beloved long-term boyfriend Bel, only now recently realizing after all this time that she was actually a girl. The revelation about her gender and newfound familial love and support found Chal (though still wound up and bitterly fragile like always) finally on a tentative track forwards over the past few months. Then she - with all of her simmering, festering, specifically parental-related trauma - discovered she was pregnant of all things, knocked up accidentally by Bel - and Chal's entire world SHATTERED.
More about Chal's specific history and especially about her baby is located upon her own page - linked again right here for ease of access. For now, the sake of relevance on baby Py's page, when given the options of how to handle this pregnancy, Chal decided last minute that instead of aborting it, she would give it away. Though being a parent was a literal nightmare to Chal and always had been, there was something about the baby being Bel's that wobbled her resolve. She didn't want a baby at this moment in time, but... she also realized, once the panic had subsided, that she didn't actually want to get rid of it completely. Throughout all of this chaos, Tory remained steadfast at Chal's side. He was now Chal's adoptive father and had been entrusted with her well-being, and making sure Chal was okay was one of Tory's top priorities. And now, for her sake, as Chal expressed her anxieties and hesitations, Tory volunteered to adopt Chal and Bel's baby himself, offering to raise it as his and Maci's. This way anyway, they could be as close or as far to the baby as they wanted since they all lived in the palace together, and they could trust that the baby had been given a good home. Tory would of course allow her and Bel to have whatever sort of relationship they felt comfortable having with the baby once it was born and had grown up. Overwhelmed, floored at the gesture of such kindness, and eager to be rid of the thing, Chal agreed.
Next, even if the end result was adoption, Chal was terrified to be physically pregnant, and they found an option through Hecate and childbirth goddess Ilythia's suggestion. A godling fetus, provided it was developed enough to achieve immortality, could grow incubated in anything even if taken from a womb - the Olympian Dionysus had famously been birthed from Zeus' own thigh, after all. They would just need someone to volunteer to host the baby.
Tory, confessing that he was already secretly pregnant so it'd be easy, and since he was going to adopt this very baby anyway, again volunteered.
Once Chal's unborn baby had grown enough to be immortal, Ilythia transferred the baby, a little girl, to Tory's womb for the remaining duration of her development. Through this entire process, not one person noticed that Tory's existing baby was actually a set of twins. Completely identical and tangled on top of each other, plus possessing strange daemonic weaselly features and constantly shapeshifting back and forth and back, Ilythia and Hecate each assumed one twin was the other's tail or limb or torso. Tory’s artificial twin pregnancy in progress during the transfer was in reality an artificial new triplet pregnancy.
Eventually, as the babies grew, Maci and Tory chose the name “Celos” for their son, and Chal and Bel shyly chose to name the baby they'd given up at Tory's offer, calling her “Enodia,” or “N” for short. When alarm bells were raised about N's possible appearance, the horrible traits of Ker being detected among one of Ilythia's check-ups, Tory arranged with Loki for Chal, Libby (Chal's sister, or well, close enough - long story), and Bel to see a hologram projection of Enodia like a livestreamed 3D sonogram. Pawing around magically within Tory’s womb, Loki was also able to show Maci and Tory the baby that was theirs, and in the action of doing so, he discovered the third child hiding inside behind his brother.
...However Loki, in typical Loki fashion, did not say one single word about it.
Tory was overdue by the time Ilythia finally realized and announced he was carrying three and not two, during another routine checkup to see when the babies could be induced. In addition to a revised due date, they received a new baby surprise! Panicking for a name since the twins - no, triplets, were set to come out any day, Tory and Maci landed on “Pyralis” as the second. Many years ago, before Neo had been born, they had discussed the name Pyralis for a baby boy. It hadn't felt right for the baby who would end up being Neo, but it felt right now.
Tory eventually was so overdue that Hecate and Ilythia did end up inducing labor. Even with the powers and assistance of those two midwifery goddesses, the birth of the triplets was long and arduous, stretching across three days. Pyralis was the first born on the first day, then baby N the next, followed by Celos on the third day, giving the twins non-consecutive birth dates.
The epilogue to Pyralis and his siblings is that following the birth of the not-triplets, Chal and Bel came round to meet baby N, and unexpectedly Chal completely fell in love. Spending more and more time visiting her, eventually Chal and Bel approached Tory about being more involved in N's life than they'd expected... and then confessed they wished to adopt her back. Tory of course wholeheartedly encouraged them to follow their hearts, assuring them that he'd support them in every way he could if they wanted to try being N's active parents after all. They did. N lost her technical triplet status as she returned to the arms of Chal and Bel, though the time she'd spent in the womb with Pyralis and his brother had created a bond between them.
Today N's honorary triplet status persists, as Py and Celos are overjoyed during each baby playdate to hang out with their former wombmate.
Trivia
- The name "Pyralis" is Greek for "made of fire."
- Pyralis is the third of Maci's children who she's tried to stick the name Pyralis onto, and obviously the first of whom that she won. First chosen as a tentative name for when Maci was pregnant with Neona, once Neo was Neo, the name was suggested again for their next son, Rasmus. At the time, Tory felt like it didn't quite fit. This time around, something about it plus the absolute lack of time because Pyralis' existence was an entire surprise, made it seem like the right choice.
Mythological roots
Nope! Pyralis, as is often the case with many of our kiddos, is not based on any such character from actual Greek mythology!
