This was definitely a loretastic Tale! Additional insights into life in Amaurot are definitely welcome, as are snippets of insight into the lives of our favorite omnicidal maniacs back when they were normal (if rather above-average) people.

It did bring up a few very puzzling things, though! The Underworld, for instance... Is this supposed to be the Lifestream? If so, is it the SAME Lifestream we know? It appears that there's a cycle of life and death involving the Underworld... are the Ancients themselves, being immortal beings, not a part of it? Or are they still subject to it on the rare occasions when they do die, or are born?

And the fact that Creations have no souls (unless a stray soul gets tangled up in the Creation process)... Zodiark and Hydaelyn are both Creations, as well - does that mean they have no souls? Or were they, perhaps given souls deliberately? Perhaps this is why the sacrifice of half the Ancients was necessary, so their souls could become Zodiark's soul? As for contemporary Creations (Primals, basically) - do they have souls? Or are they just cleverly designed to appear as though they have souls? If they do have souls, do those souls persist when they are not currently summoned, so the Primal gets the same soul each time?

It may be significant, that in contemporary times the idea of creating a Soul doesn't seem to be that big a deal (the Heavensward Relic being one example), whereas the Ancients considered it to be flat-out impossible. This may be due to the way that the current Lifestream is constantly dispersing and assembling souls - soulstuff may simply be more malleable now?

And the immortal bird... I definitely think this is meant to be the Phoenix that inspired the legends that lead to both Suzaku's evolution and Lousouix's en-Primaling. Well, probably. I mean, unless Hades failed to put it down, it doesn't appear as though the poor thing had much of a chance of getting itself widely known. Maybe Lahabrea made another soulless version, later. And speaking of Lahabrea, I can't help but wonder whether this was truly an "accident". Could the guy have incorporated a soul deliberately? Or, perhaps, even tried to create one, was semi-successful, and lied about it to cover his misdeeds? We know Lahabrea as a cackling supervillian, and while this MAY be the result of his transformation into an Ascian, perhaps the guy had a dark streak all along...

So much food for thought!