| “ | My my, how boring. I want you to keep on killing and keep on hating | „ |
Symonne was a dark seraph and the servant of Georg Heldalf, aka The Lord of Calamity. who served as a minor antagonist in the video game Tales of Zestiria and a recurring antagonist in its anime adaptation Tales of Zestiria: The X.
History (Anime version)
A seraph and servant of the Lord of Calamity, Symonne was first seen during the attack of the Black Cloud of Malevolence on the town of Gluriel. Watched by Lunarre, who found her actions amusing, Symonne controlled the clou of death as it consumed two of Princess Alisha Diphda’s entourage, and then tried to kill the princess as she rode to escape the inferno, using a magic want to create lava-geysers from the earth.
For the sake of enjoyment, Lunarre interrupted Symonne’s attack on the princess, and began further enhancing the carnage using blue flames. Symonne, insulted, attacked Lunarre with fire dragons and mini-earthquakes, and the chaos of their supernatural battle threw Alisha and her friend Clem off of their horse, causing Clem to fall down a gorge to her death. Lunarre then moved to attack Symonne again with blue flame, but after seeing that the storm had calmed down, Symonne simply teleported herself away from the battle-site. In the aftermath of the Malevolence attack, the entire town of Gluriel was destroyed, leaving no survivors.
Months later, Symonne watched the Battle of Glaviend Basin, taking amusement from the deaths of the soldiers and pleasure from the spread of malevolence, until Shepherd Sorey entered the battle and dispersed the malevolence, causing the battle to become “boring” to her. She then joined with her master, the Lord of Calamity, whose sheer evil presence had dramatically re-ignited the region’s Malevolence, filling the sky once more with dementor-like hellions. Nonetheless, Shepherd Sorey barged his way through the Lord of Calamity’s thick cloud of Malevolence, and proudly declared “Lord of Calamity, I am the Shepherd, and I will purify you!” Symonne was insulted by the way Sorey spoke, and said “How dare you speak to my master like that?” However, The Lord of Calamity found Sorey’s words amusing and invited him to attack, just to “see what he could do.” The two battled using their powers for a brief time with The Lord of Calamity quickly gaining the upper hand, throwing Sorey to the ground and fusing his hellions into a beam of pure hatred, before firing it at Sorey.
Sorey defeated the beam using his blades, but the Lord of Calamity mocked him anyway, since his source of power, the malevolence of mankind, was inexhaustible for as long as humans exist. As Sorey and the Lord of Calamity battled, Symonne mosked Sorey’s ineptitude, saying that he would never defeat her master if he was unable to even kill his servants, before giving a sadistic chuckle. Symonne and her master then left the battlefield without killing Sorey, since her master believed that killing Sorey would only be beneficial once the world viewed him as their savious, as this way, they would sow immense devastation in the hearts of all the people of the world, spreading malevolence everywhere.
Months later, Symonne reappeared in the city of Ladylake after Sorey, Alisha, and Rose purified a dragon. As they celebrated, she told them that it would take a lot more than that to save the world, and that no-one could stop her master now, because he was about to envelope the whole world with Malevolence. Symonne apparently spent the next few days fighting with Dezel outside the palace in Ladylake, where she expressed disappointment in Dezel’s monotonous use of wind powers, and Dezel expressed disappointment that she was holding back on him. During their fight, Symonne summoned several copies of herself, which Dezel destroyed using chains. When Sorey interrupted their fight to break it up, Symonne implanted a vision in his mind (and the minds of his comrades) of a harsh, almost lifeless land to the North populated seemingly solely by pine trees and covered in snow. In the centre of that land, The Lord of Calamity sat in a giant crater, surrounded by an army of thousands of hooded, dementor-like Hellions, from whom he was absorbing the malevolence and growing infinitely in power. The vision then showed a cloud of deep red Malevolence blasting across the entire world like a nuclear shockwave, destroying everything in its path. The vision knocked Sorey and his companions unconscious, and when they awoke, Symonne mocked their struggles (since her spell had made it hard for them to breathe), and told them that the real thing would be much worse. Mikleo asked Symonne why she was showing them this, since she had been trying to destroy the world along with the Lord of Calamity for so long. Symonne only responded with “I…”, then, unable to find the words teleported away.
Symonne secretly watched Sorey’s group as they journeyed to find the Lord of Calamity, as was distressed by Rose and Alisha’s failure to Armtize (fuse with seraphs to amplify their fighting ability), muttering to herself that at the rate they were going, they wouldn’t even get to her master to stop him. While Sorey’s group tavelled North to fight the Lord of Calamity, Symonne mysteriously trvelled with them, sat on top of one of their carriages, prompting Dezel to eventually jump to the back carriage to ask her if she was there because she had betrayed the Lord of Calamity. She replied “Not really. Even if you all go to the master, nothing will change.” When Dezel asked why she, who worked for their greatest enemy was following them, she asked him why he kept possessing Rose, and enquired as to whether or not he wanted to control her body, feeling just as suspicious of him as he was of her. That night when Sorey’s group were camped in an abandoned far-north town, Symonne left the group to go to a ledge to call to her master, pleading with him to at least speak to her, or tell her why she was ignoring him. Dezel arrived at the ledge to see what she was doing, prompting Symonne to tell him that she was following them because her master had underestimated Sorey’s potential in the last war and was afraid that he (Sorey) would be able to kill him. She then told Dezel that she hoped he found his “conclusion”, confusing Dezel for an instance before she teleported away.Immediately after her disappearance, the group was attacked by a swarm of dementor-like hellions.
While Sorey, as well as an armatized Rose and Alisha, fought a large flock of several hundred dragons as they approached the Lord of Calamity, Symonne reappeared on the battlefield and attacked Zaveid and Lailah’s coach using fire magic, knocking it over and injuring everyone inside. When Rose accused Symmonne of betraying them, Symonne quickly quickly pointed out that she was never one of them to begin with. Launching an attack of light energy against Symonne, Rose collapsed and separated from Dezel, being physically unable to cope with the power surge.
Ignoring her collapsed foes, Symonne looked to the sky and to the army of hellions, and pleaded with her master once again to at least her her and answer her, begging him not to have allowed the Malevolence to consume his mind, if he couldn’t hear her at all. Eventually, Heldalf finally responded to her, irritated by her shouting, and aske if she had brought the Shepherd as he had asked. Symonne realised that fo all of her love for Heldalf, he was just using her, but still she desired his agonising vision for the world so much that she willingly sacrificed herself to him in order to enhance his power, leaping into the pit in front of Heldalf only to be consumed by his Hellions and have her power absorbed into her master.
After her sacrifice, Symonne was transformed into a dragon, and flew across to Sorey’s group, dropping her staff in their path before flying back to Heldalf. Sorey was enraged that The Lord of Calamity would be so willing to so completely dishonor his loyal servant, and had his company pursue him whilst Rose and Alisha recovered. Knowing that Symonne would continue to protect Heldalf and fight Sorey, Dezel swore to kill her to prevent Sorey, Rose and Alisha from having to waste precious time and energy purifying her, given how exhausting this had been to them on ragons thus far and how likely the act was to kill Rose. Zaveid gave Dezel his dragon-killing pistol after learning how sincerely Dezel wanted a peaceful world and seeing how much he loved Rose. That night, the moon turned red with Malevolence consuming the sku, and Alisha held a funeral servicefor Lunarre, who had been killed in the battle aainst the Lord of Calamity. After this, the group headed out of Velvet Crowe’s old town and marched forwards to fight the Lord of Calamity. As the group followed the trail of Malevolence, they were surrounded by dragons, led by Symonne.
Dezel promised to “see off” Symonne, before telling Sorey that if he used up his energy of the dragons then he’d be unable to fight the Lord of Calamity. When Sorey protested, Dezel told him that he HAD to reach and purify the Lord of Calamity in order to save the world, but Sorey rebuffed him, saying that it was his duty to purify everything that had been corrupted by the Malevolence, including the dragons. When Dezel protested that this was impossible, all of Sorey’s seraphs (Lailah, Mikleo, and Edna) agreed to Armatise with him at any point, and Rose and Alisha both volunteered to armatise as well. Dezel called this ridiculous but gave in and threw Zavied his pistol back once he saw that even Rose disagreed with him. Dezel then said that he would scatter the dragons (including Symonne) with his wind powers, before placing his hand on Sorey’s shoulder and telling him to look after Rose and give her the peaceful world she always dreamed of. Dezel then armatised with Rose, and launched into the sky, dodging multiple beams of energy breathed at them by Symonne. Rose/Dezel then thre their own purification blasts at her and knocked her into two more dragons, throwing them into the ground. When Rose/Dezel entered the centre of the dragon mass, surrounded, Dezel told Rose that he was going to separate from her and transform his entire being into the wind, blasting the dragons away. Dezel then thanked Rose for everything, and blasted all of the dragons away from Sorey and his group, in so doing both sacrificing himself for the woman he loved and unintentionally purifying some of the dragons, including Symonne, who was released from her dragon body.