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Deep.
Dark.
Quiet.
Aether hums around him, coursing above and below, swirling around his hands as he floats in a bubble of air. Ruins dot the landscape around him, giant monoliths tilted in sand and stone, embedded into the ocean floor. Some are shattered, scorched, scarred, while others are remarkably untouched - nearly pristine were they not malms beneath the sea.
When he works the voices are quiet. When he focuses his nightmares are pushed back, if only for a time, and he is capable of committing his attention and his power to the task at hand.
He rests his palms against one of the ruined buildings, revelling in that touch - that moment of connection with the world he lost - before closing his eyes. The aether around him solidifies, eager to turn to its new purpose, and he molds and manifests, designs and duplicates, conjures and creates -
In the watery depths of a sea not yet named, a city begins to take shape.
“You must search for Emet-Selch.”
Silence. Thick as fog, clogging and clutching and clotting, mixing with regret and worry and other, darker thoughts, it is deliciously dark, viciously still, ominous in its emptiness -
Elidibus closes his eyes. He is no stranger to silence, but he cannot find comfort in this quiet. His thoughts hammer at him like a pestilence, persistent and transfixing and ultimately fatal -
“I must do nothing,” he says. “He made his choice.”
“But -”
“Leave me.”
Silence again, and then the faint sound of his guest vanishing into a voidgate. The aether shifts, adjusting to his companion’s disappearance, but Elidibus remains where he is.
Is this free will? Does he remain because he chooses to, or does Zodiark demand it even when sundered?
He does not know. He doubts he ever will. What remains of his god is too scattered to reflect upon, too damaged to question directly. They are rudderless in a sea of dismay and agony, of regret and sorrow and anger -
And that last, that most dangerous, most unpredictable and potent of his worries -
As powerful as the silence is, it is but a thin barrier to the fear that presses in on all sides.
Emet-Selch has been missing for two hundred years. He can wait a little longer.
Blood - his blood? He doesn’t know. Too much to belong to one person. His hands, his arms, his chest and stomach - he frantically pats his face, hearing the wet slap of damp skin, and shivers. Is the blood fresh? Where does it begin? His robes are destroyed, drenched, dripping - there’s blood on the stone beneath him, seeping and spreading and it is coming from him. He stumbles as he tries to flee, weighed down by the soaked robes he wears, and as he forces one foot in front of the other he tears his gaze from himself to look skyward.
A mistake. This view is far worse. The sky is an agglomeration of horrors: fire and meteors and winged beings, every one of his nightmares writ large across the darkest, deepest canvas.
“It’s done!” His voice is hoarse; it cracks and rasps as he fights to draw breath. “This - this is wrong! This is a dream! This cannot be real!”
Murderer.
Monster.
He grasps his head between his bloody hands, pressing his fingers against his skull as he curls forward. “I’m not - damn it, I didn’t -”
You killed her.
Your hands, Hades. Look at your hands.
“I wouldn’t!” Blood. So much blood. “Please believe me, I -“
Murderer.
“I didn’t touch her!” He staggers forward, fighting hard for every step. Ash and smoke clog the air; he can taste death and decay on the wind. Something, somewhere, is echoing - it is a deep, hollow sound, like an enormous clock or a deep drum: a persistent boom - boom - boom -
He glances over his shoulder. A smear of blood follows in his wake, a trail just as wide as his robes, slick and crimson and shimmering -
“I didn’t kill her!”
Liar.
She loved you, Hades, and you murdered her.
Look at your hands.
Your hands.
Look.
Remember, Hades.
“No!”
Aether escapes from him in an explosion, bursting free with such force that it throws him through the air and flings him against the stone like a ragdoll. Crumpled and twisted, he lies where he fell, covering his head with his arms as the voices close in like vultures.
Monster.
Murderer.
Liar!
Mitron and Loghrif stand on the moss-covered shore, keeping their distance from the disheveled figure curled on the rocky beach. His cries have faded to soft sounds, whimpers interspersed with gasps, but they are no less unsettling than the screams they’d heard from him minutes earlier.
“What do we do?” Mitron asks quietly. “We cannot leave him here.”
“If you would like to approach him, be my guest.” As concerned as she is, Loghrif has no intention of moving any closer to the Ascian washed up on their beach. “Do the others know he’s here?”
“I doubt it.” A pause. “I assume he is that reverberation we felt earlier.”
“In the aether?” Loghrif hates to consider it, but it is the most likely explanation. The power they’d felt had been monumental: undeniably unfettered creation magic at work “What do you think he did?”
“Judging by the state of him, something under water.” Mitron sighs with disgust and turns toward the surf. The overcast sky darkens the rolling sea below it, painting the waves a dark, muted grey. “I shall investigate. Keep watch over him while I’m gone.”
Loghrif slides each hand into the cuff of the opposite sleeve, hugging her chest in an effort to keep warm as she eyes the still-crying Ascian. “You will tell the Emissary?”
Mitron is silent for a moment, undoubtedly considering how best to break the news that they have found the missing thirteenth Ascian - at least, what is left of him. “First I must determine what forces he’s been toying with.” He vanishes into a cloud of aether.
Left alone with the sobbing, soaked form of Emet-Selch, Loghrif can only watch and wait.
“I had not expected to see you on the Source for quite some time.” Elidibus caps his pen and places it delicately beside his ledger; the pen is perfectly parallel with the book's edge. The rest of his desk is spotless, immaculate in its emptiness. “What brings you here ahead of schedule?”
“Emet-Selch.”
He narrows his eyes. Though he has questions, he doubts Mitron knows the answers to even half of them. Rather than waste his words he sits back, resting with his fingers steepled over his lap, and tilts his head. “You’ve found him.”
“We stumbled upon him on the western shoreline. I had the impression he - he was unaware of where he was. He was not able to speak with us.”
More questions, more concerns, more flittering, fleeting fears. “Why was he not able to speak?”
Mitron flinches. “My wording, ah - I mean to say, he was capable. I am sure he was capable. The issue is not his ability but his -” He grimaces and lowers his voice. “Sanity.”
“I see.” Elidibus drops his hands onto his lap. Ignorance may have been easier, but now that he knows he can only move forward. Unfortunate as his colleague’s mental state may be, it is not entirely unexpected: in all honesty Elidibus is surprised they found anything left of the man at all. “Do you know why he is on the First?”
Mitron looks away. Though the mask hides his expression, his posture belies his discomfort. “He has been...manipulating aether. Creating, I mean.”
“Creating what?”
The man glances back; his eyes are haunted behind his mask. “I - I do not -” He stops and swallows hard; his next words are barely a whisper. “I do not remember. I think I do - it feels like a memory, but I know of no such place - perhaps it is from a different lifetime. An earlier lifetime…”
A chill seeps through Elidibus, tightening his lungs and freezing his heart. “What is he creating, Mitron?”
“I think - I think he’s building our home.”
The silence catches her attention, foreboding as it is. Loghrif shifts on her rocky, uncomfortable seat, startled out of her musings to search along the beach. Realizing she is alone, she jumps to her feet and frantically turns from left to right before turning around -
Emet-Selch stands behind her.
Loghrif takes a few steps back, caught completely off-guard. She stares at the tall, pale figure before her, gaping at that maskless face as her thoughts scatter. This is the first time she has met this Ascian - in this lifetime, at least - but word of him has carried through their ranks like fire through a forest.
Emet-Selch, the architect of Zodiark, the master of the plan that halted their annihilation, the most powerful of all the Convocation -
Emet-Selch, who they’d lost for centuries, who had looked upon the sundered Shards and the diminished people and had vanished without a word -
Emet-Selch, husband of the nameless Fourteenth, about whom the sundered Ascians know nothing but whispers -
Loghrif swallows hard. The thirteenth Ascian’s face is pale and ragged, his long white hair still damp and bedraggled, but the golden eyes capture her and refuse to let go. Fierce intelligence intermingles with a wariness, an unnerving look of mistrust and unease that twists Loghrif’s stomach.
Though Ascians cannot truly die, they can still be made to hurt.
“Emet-Selch,” she says, raising her hands in a muted show of respect. “You know me not, but I am Loghrif.”
Silence. Those golden eyes never leave hers; the man is impossibly still, impossibly quiet: a marked and unnerving change from the cries that had wracked him earlier. His robes are still damp with seawater; they hang off his thin frame like a shroud.
Finally he speaks. “I know you.” His voice is ragged, rough and cracked. “I know who you once were.” Something flickers in his eyes. “One-fourteenth of a whole, are you not?”
“I -” A flush burns across her face. She does not like to be reminded that she is less than she could be. “Yes.”
No response from the thirteenth; he continues to stare with haunting, empty eyes. They stand watching each other long enough for Loghrif to start to sweat, until finally the man turns his gaze towards the sea.
“Did Elidibus send you?”
“We - that is, Mitron and myself - are assigned to the First. We have been here for years.”
“Years,” the Ascian repeats, but it is impossible to tell what he makes of that. “I expect you will inform the Emissary of my whereabouts?”
Loghrif shivers, silently cursing Mitron for leaving her here. “Not myself, but -”
“But Mitron has departed already,” Emet-Selch says quietly. “It is out of both of our hands.” He sighs before shifting, sliding past Loghrif on his way back down to the water. “So be it.”
Loghrif hurries after him, shivering as she watches the man wade into the shallows. “Where are you going? You may stay - we have a residence not far from here. There is room -” She swallows her words as she watches the tall, gaunt form keep walking, trudging against the consistent crash of rolling waves until he vanishes beneath the surface.
More than a little unsettled, Loghrif tucks her hands into her sleeves and stares out over the water. She has no idea what Mitron may have discovered in the depths, but her curiosity has evaporated. Whatever is down there had to come from the shattered, crazed mind she’d glimpsed behind those golden eyes, and she is certain she does not want to know.
Suddenly terrified by the looming possibilities hidden beneath the waves, Loghrif teleports away.
Someone else has been here. Someone else has walked in his city.
He rests a hand against one wall, taking comfort in the feel of it beneath his fingers. Whatever Mitron had done, he had not touched these creations: his works are unmarred.
Your hands, Hades.
He flinches away from the building, curling his fingers into fists as he hunches his shoulders and closes his eyes. How he traveled from the depths to the beach far above is a mystery; he cannot pull together the memories and does not care to try. It is yet another gap, yet another period of lost information in an already-hazy time.
They know where he is. They will soon know what he’s been doing. It is only a matter of time before the other two come looking.
He must work faster.
The news spreads through the Ascian ranks, starting from Mitron and Loghrif before moving quickly to the others, even scattered as they are across the Shards.
Emet-Selch has been found.
Emet-Selch is building.
What is he building, the Ascians ask. What could take him centuries of solitude to construct?
The answer changes depending on who responds. Some tell the truth - he’s building a city - but others call it a shrine, a place of remembrance, a work of art.
Elidibus calls it a tomb.
“I know you have the conviction and the willpower to see this through. I am entrusting this to you, Igeyorhm, and I must reinforce the importance of this task.”
“I am more than prepared to do my part.” The woman’s eyes glow behind her mask; pride fairly radiates from her. “I shall not fail.”
“I do not believe you would willingly err, no, but I would still prefer to be cautious.” Elidibus pauses. He is still unsure if this is the correct decision, but there are too many problems, too many concerns - he cannot be everywhere at once. The sundered remnants of his people demand far more attention that he has to share. Lahabrea does what he can, but he is better suited to fieldwork than Elidibus’s own role overseeing their brethren.
Yet he cannot do this alone.
“Take Emet-Selch with you.”
Igeyorhm recoils as if slapped. “Him? Why him? He is not even -” She cuts herself off, aware she wanders close to disrespecting one of the unsundered, yet the unfinished thought lingers.
Elidibus lets it. He allows the unspoken word to drift between them, wedging an invisible rift that widens the longer the silence carries on, growing and growing as the woman begins to fidget, fumbling at the hems of her sleeves, gnawing on her lip, shaking her head, until -
“Fine,” she spits. “I will visit him in that mockery of his on the First. Wish us much luck.”
“In Zodiark’s name,” Elidibus says, but she vanishes before he speaks. His blessing rings hollow in the dark recesses of their meeting place, echoing back to him in a parody of fellowship.
He can’t quite be sure why he chose Emet-Selch for this task. Igeyorhm is capable of dealing with the Thirteenth with any of the sundered Ascians, and yet -
Elidibus pulls aside his mask to rub his fingers against his temples. That damned city! He has not yet been to see it with his own eyes, but reports from the other Ascians unnerve and anger him.
Emet-Selch cannot stay on the First; he must be forced back into the fold to shoulder his own responsibility.
Provided he is still capable...
Him? Why him? He is not even sane.
Elidibus shudders and shifts his mask back into place. He gives himself a minute - a brief moment to calm himself - and then turns to his next task.
“The Emissary has decided we are to work together.”
He snorts and keeps his attention on the building he is working on, moving his hands through the air as aether passes around them, under them, and solidifies beneath his hands. The frame of the building is complete; he had just begun adding furniture within when the woman barged in.
The woman.
He twitches, catches his breath, refocuses and remembers the work before him.
“Are you listening?”
“Elidibus wishes for me to assist you in flooding the Thirteenth with dark aether,” he says in a monotone. “What he fails to remember is that the Convocation does not have a leader: we are fourteen equal souls, sharing equal parts of power, and I will not be summoned by him as though I am a mere lackey.”
“Thirteen souls - there are thirteen of us.”
Murderer.
His hands falter and he drags in a shuddery breath. He is hearing things. A strange ebb of the currents around them, his imagination playing tricks, a figment -
Nothing more.
“Thirteen of us, yes.” He cannot focus; thoughts merge and mar and mutilate. He steps back and stares at his latest creation in confusion. He’d intended to create a chair but the legs are blades, and the blades are bloody, and the blood is -
“Emet-Selch, you need to come with me.”
He turns slowly, his head tilted to one side. A woman stands across from him, her face hidden behind a red mask and her body robed in black. She takes a step forward, anger sparking in her eyes. “We have a job to do.”
The woman, the woman.
“Do we?” he whispers. “Or are you going to leave me again?”
“Leave you? I’ve never left -“
Liar.
He lunges across the room, grabbing her and letting his momentum carry them to the far wall. Her back slams into the surface and he pins her wrists beside her, pressing down against her as she stares at him.
“You left,” he whispers slowly, exaggerating his pronunciation, allowing the consonants to hit hard. “You left me, you left the Convocation, you left everything!” His hands are crushing her wrists even as she begins to fight against him, bucking and floundering in an attempt to break free. “Everything we were - destroyed in an instant!”
“It wasn’t me!” Her voice is shrill with fear. “I’m not her! I’m -”
“Bitch,” he croons, releasing one of her wrists to quickly drag the claws of his glove over her jaw. Lines of blood follow in their wake, thin rivulets of colour below her mask. He slams his hand back on top of her free wrist and she cries out in pain. “Liar.”
“I didn’t do any of that, I’m not who you think - Emet-Selch, stop!”
Power erupts from her and he swats it back, stamps it down, flattens it effortlessly. “We were never going to find a different solution, not with the Final Days upon us! It was annihilation or Zodiark - you, or Zodiark! And you forced me to choose!”
“I’m not her, goddamn you - your wife is dead!”
Murderer.
Look at your hands.
He releases her and staggers backwards, staring at his gloves. Blood. Where did the blood come from? There hadn't been blood there a moment ago. He looks back at the woman across the room and sees the hint of red on her jaw, the lines of crimson dripping down her pale neck, and he quivers.
“Igeyorhm - I hurt you. Not - you’re not -” He shudders and looks down at his hands. Black gloves with bloody talons. He blinks. Pale palms drenched in red. “No. No. Not again.”
Monster.
He whimpers. “Please -”
Murderer.
Liar.
Did she deserve it?
Your hands, Hades.
Your bloody hands.
“I couldn’t - I don’t remember -”
You could.
You did.
Look.
Listen.
Liar.
Her blood on your hands.
“Stop -”
She screamed, Hades. Do you remember?
Murderer.
Did you enjoy it?
“NO!”
Power bursts from his frail shell, racing up the walls, cracking the tiles, shattering the lamps and blowing out the windows. The woman screams but her voice drowns beneath destruction. Wind howls through the space before the sea crashes inside, allowed in by crumbling walls and fracturing aether. The entire building tilts to one side and he can’t stop it, can’t put the pieces back together, can’t right the wrongs he’s committed -
The woman vanishes, teleporting from this death before the water crushes her, but he lets it take him. It’s the promise of blissful oblivion, of quiet, of a chance for rest in a sea of dark nothing: no thoughts, no voices, no need for fear and guilt and desperation. Death takes him for a brief flicker of time and it is a relief to have a moment of peace, even knowing it will not last.
What irony, that the thing he fought so hard to avoid is now the thing he wants most. What cruel fate to curse him with immortality!
He dies knowing it will not be the last time.
“Igeyorhm’s on the Thirteenth alone?”
“She didn’t take time to explain.” A pause. “She’d been hurt. There was blood on her face.”
“Blood on her -“ He cuts himself off. Bites his tongue. Closes his eyes and wishes for silence. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Elidibus…are you going to talk to Emet-Selch?”
A moment of quiet, and then -
“Find me Lahabrea.”
He’s singing as he builds, as he shifts aether back and forth, weaving and tumbling and merging it into the shapes he needs. The tune is meaningless, a collection of sounds rather than actual lyrics, but the melody calms him. More of the city comes into light, growing out of the ocean depths in startling contrast to the darkness around him. Most of the buildings are complete and he has begun to move on to the shades, the replicas of the souls that once walked these streets. They are not true people - closer to automatons than actual creations - but it gives him great comfort to see the familiar silhouettes gliding around him.
Slice, sing, create.
Slice, sing, create.
It’s a comfortable rhythm, a pattern he is content to repeat as long as necessary. Working this way is much more efficient; the power is near bottomless, amplified and extended by his own pain. It is a small price to pay -
And he owes far, far more.
Headless of the growing puddle of red below his feet, he continues to work.
Slice, sing, create.
Slice.
Sing.
Create.
Fury finds him quickly. While he had believed Mitron and Igeyorhm’s warnings were preparation enough for what awaited him, he had wildly underestimated the scale of Emet-Selch’s aspirations: the bright city parting the depths of the ocean like a lit theatre stage defies all expectations. There is no time to be shocked, however; Elidibus shifts quickly from surprise to anger.
To waste such a magnitude of power on this…!
Ripples in the aether hit him in bursts, pulling him down through the city, past the dome of air that keeps the water at bay, between the buildings he recognizes, through streets he knows like the mask on his face, and over clumsy replicas of his people - and a sick, queasy feeling rises through his stomach as a horrible suspicion filters in.
His people could create many amazing wonders - given boundless creativity, time, and energy they had built a true paradise. Emet-Selch has the creativity to recreate the Amaurot they loved, but the time? The energy? Powerful as he may be, no soul has this much aether to give.
Not without another source…
Fear rises quickly and he stamps it down, swallows it, forces himself to keep moving. He is a lone speck of white floating among these dark skyscrapers, these thousand-malm headstones, and as he opens his mouth to sigh he tastes it -
Metallic. Faint, but -
Enough.
He comes around a corner and freezes. Ahead looms the Capitol, as resplendent and stately as he remembers it, but the wide road up to the building has taken on a new tint of colour: shining, shimmering crimson spreads from just below the Capitol down the entire road. It is a veritable lifestream, a puddle spreading slow as molasses, and it all comes from the lone figure in the middle of the road.
Elidibus forces himself to meet those golden eyes, to hold on to the wariness and alarm he sees there as he floats ever closer. Knowing now is not the time to look down upon this damaged soul he lands a few fulms away.
Red immediately begins to seep up the bottom of his white robes.
The state of the man in front of him captivates and horrifies him. Gaunt and pale, with dark circles under his eyes and bedraggled, limp hair, all of that still manages to fade to the background. Elidibus cannot look away from the sluggishly-bleeding wound down Emet-Selch’s forearm: it runs straight from elbow to wrist. Blood curls down his hand, trailing across his palm and between his fingers before joining the red current beneath their feet.
His gorge rises. Even as he stands there Emet-Selch is creating: pulling power from his own blood and melding it with his aether, spinning it into the beginnings of a shade beside him.
He would know better than any of them the power held within sacrifice.
“My friend,” Elidibus says, before his throat closes and he’s forced to swallow hard. The smell is worse here, an overpowering odour that taints the air around them, but it is not nearly so powerful as the guilt that arrests his ability to speak, twisting his tongue and cutting off his thoughts.
He should have come sooner.
He should never have allowed Emet-Selch to leave alone.
“Welcome to Amaurot.”
Even the man’s voice is wrong! Cracked as it is, he sounds as though he has been screaming himself hoarse.
Every word he thought to say has fled, leaving him with his guilt. “I am sorry, my friend.”
“As am I.”
Still his blood runs, still the aether siphons into the robed construct at his feet. Elidibus steps forward, willing himself not to cringe at the splash below him, and puts more strength into his voice. “You must stop this madness, Emet-Selch. You are killing yourself.”
The man actually sways and a woozy, strange smile shapes his face as he shakes his head. “Killing myself? Are we few not immortal? It matters not how many times I bleed myself dry: the final death will forever elude me. What better purpose for my tainted blood than this?” He raises his clean hand to gesture around him, gazing affectionately at the buildings nearby. “I have died countless times, my friend. The world goes on.”
Though the words are horrifying enough, the calm, straightforward manner with which they are delivered sends shivers down Elidibus’s spine. He needs to stop this, to shake some sense into the man - but the aether moving through the air warns him against moving too quickly or coming too close. “I came to speak with you, not to watch you perish.” He flicks a finger and the man’s wound glows green.
Emet-Selch recoils, hissing in anger as his other hand clamps over his healing forearm. “Now you try to stop me? After all this time - now you try to act? When the city is nearly complete?” He takes his hand off his arm and stands straight, fury hardening his golden eyes. “Where were you earlier, friend? Why was it not convenient to find me sooner? What task captured your attention so thoroughly?”
Elidibus had anticipated this line of questioning but after seeing the state of his colleague he must admit he had done the man wrong. “I thought to respect your privacy. Each of us reacted differently - I assumed you were using your time alone to heal, to come to terms -”
“To come to terms?” Emet-Selch repeats shrilly. “To come to terms? Do you understand what I saw, Elidibus? Do you understand what haunts me even now?”
“I -”
Emet-Selch cuts him off, his gaunt face twisting as he forces the words between them. “Their souls. I never thought - in all my time plotting and planning, I never took into account that I would see our sacrificed brethrens’ souls.” Misery clouds those golden eyes. “They were like to ghosts, Elidibus, floating and fading and then - gone -” A sob chokes his last word and he hangs his head; Elidibus watches him open and close his bloody hands. “And she - she -”
“Emet-Selch…”
“I don’t remember,” he spits, his voice slightly stronger. “I don’t remember how she died. I only remember taking her in my arms - watching her soul…” He trails off, caught in memories, before violently shaking his head. “My hands were red - are still red. Will always be red. But - I don’t remember -”
“You must not dwell on these thoughts,” Elidibus says, speaking over Emet-Selch. “They are memories, my friend, and you cannot lose yourself to them. If we are to heal this shattered world we need you at our side - we cannot do this without you.”
Emet-Selch shudders. “No. I will have no part in that future.” His voice lowers to a murmur. “Your world has no place for the creature I have become.”
“I cannot allow you to disappear behind self-pity and loathing. I am sorry, my friend.” He understands this is a battle words cannot win and turns to action instead. He waves a hand, intending to break the power leeching towards the shade, but the unmasked man reacts far quicker than anticipated. Power meets power and a bang echoes past them, the force of it rippling their robes and hair.
“Do not raise a hand to me,” Emet-Selch says quietly. “Not here.”
“I am not leaving without you,” Elidibus replies just as softly, shifting slightly as he settles into a sturdier stance. He does not want to take this path - to risk harming the man, after all this time - but he cannot stand aside and allow this to continue to its horrible, grisly end. “You do not want me to hurt you.”
“Don’t I?” Madness glimmers in Emet-Selch’s eyes. “End me, friend. You have the power. You could halt this vicious cycle.”
“No - you will not ask that of me.” His hands curl into fists and he cannot resist giving in to his disgust. “You dare to try to escape the world you helped create? I would not have believed you to walk a coward’s path.”
Rage shatters Emet-Selch’s cold sorrow and he flings both hands forward, throwing spears of dark power towards Elidibus - who, at such close range, barely has time to raise his hands -
An invisible barrier absorbs the spears soundlessly; it glimmers with dark power a few ilms away from Elidibus’s chest before vanishing.
Lahabrea dispels his glamour of invisibility a moment later. He leans against a lamppost with his arms crossed and his head cocked to one side; his teeth glimmer under his mask, though there is no humour in his smile. “Play nice with our Emissary, won’t you? He has had quite the time of it since you left.”
“Both of my friends,” Emet-Selch murmurs, his gold eyes jumping back and forth between them even as he takes a step backwards. “I should have expected you to bring another to do your dirty work.”
Elidibus lets the insult pass. “We are not here to harm you.”
“Though he deserves it, for what he did to Igeyorhm.” Lahabrea pushes off from the iron post, shaking out his hands as he cracks his neck back and forth.
“I barely touched her!” Emet-Selch is shrinking back now, staggering as he slips on the slick ground beneath him in his hurry to move away from them. His shoulder hits the half-made shade behind him and he halts, trembling. “I didn’t mean to - blood - on my hands - but she wasn’t -”
“You hurt her, you fool, and I’m not nearly so forgiving as I once was.”
“I didn’t mean for - I didn’t -” Emet-Selch curls forward and grips his head in his hands, leaving bloody smears through his white hair. “I didn’t kill her!”
Elidibus sees the aether shift, surging into Emet-Selch’s frail, tense frame, and reacts automatically. A shield encapsulates the Ascian moments before his power bursts free, slamming into Elidibus’s hastily-constructed barrier with enough strength to make him gasp. He throws both hands forward and channels more aether into the shield, gritting his teeth as the maelstrom contained within hammers against his power.
“Look at that,” Lahabrea murmurs, shifting towards the dark sphere. As mesmerizing as the whirling, spiraling aether around Emet-Selch is, the little droplets of blood levitating higher and higher completely redirect Elidibus’s attention. He stares wide-eyed as the tiny crimson spheres vibrate all around them; it is a long, anxious moment before he realizes what they signify.
“Shield!” he roars, dropping his barrier around Emet-Selch to snap one over himself. He crouches low to the wall, covering his head with his hands a mere breath before Emet-Selch’s full power, backed by the blood of his own sacrifice, slams into him. It shrieks as it streams past him fast as lightning, tearing at his skin and clothes, dragging and pulling like the funnel of a tornado. Every ounce of his power pours into his shield as he desperately attempts to bolster it; he can vaguely hear Lahabrea cursing to his side but cannot spare the energy to look.
“Stop this!” he roars. “We are trying to help you!”
“Where were you two centuries ago?” Emet-Selch’s voice echoes in the depths, rising from below him, all around him, cutting through the screech of power and wind. “Where were you when my world collapsed?”
“You speak as though our world is not the same as yours! As though you are the only one who suffered!”
“You did not see what I saw! You did not do what I did!” The storm picks up speed as the howl nearly deafens him. Agony distorts Emet-Selch’s voice, splintering it as he sobs, “I killed her! I murdered her, Elidibus! This - all of this - this is restitution!”
“No.” Sensing a crack in the storm, Elidibus forces himself to his feet. His own power hits Emet-Selch’s writhing, spinning aether hard enough to make the man stagger; the winds and dark, spiraling power vanish as the Ascian struggles to regain his balance. “You’re wrong.”
“What?” Gold, crazed eyes in a pale face framed by bloody white hair - a sliver of uncertainty, of confusion -
Of hope -
“I killed her.”
“You -”
His magical bolt hits Emet-Selch like a fist, cutting off his exclamation; the man’s head snaps back as his eyes unfocus. Elidibus flicks his wrist, using aether to catch the body before it falls.
He doesn’t look at Lahabrea as he walks through the bloody mess, doesn’t say a word until he reaches Emet-Selch’s bewildered, confused form. Quickly leaning forward, Elidibus covers the man’s eyes with his hand, quietly murmuring, “Sleep.” He goes limp instantly as a touch of aether rids him of consciousness.
Lahabrea’s footsteps come closer, stopping a few fulms away, but Elidibus cannot take his eyes off what remains of Emet-Selch.
One more damaged soul in their fight to heal the world. One more burden Elidibus must swallow without complaint. One more setback in a plan gone completely astray.
Were he any other man he knows he would have begun to waver - but not the Convocation’s Emissary. Not Zodiark’s heart.
He will not stray from his path.
“Who killed the Fourteenth?”
Elidibus rises, ignoring the damp blotches of red coating his lower robe and sleeves, and meets Lahabrea’s eyes. He is expressionless, his gaze purposely blank - but Elidibus knows the mind behind that mask. Even now his companion is calculating, coming to conclusions -
It unsettles Elidibus that he cannot guess what those conclusions might be.
“Does it matter?”
“Not particularly. Not my business, is it? Ancient history, one might even say.” Lahabrea pauses before continuing in a dangerous, deceptively-neutral tone, “Strange, is it not, that I somehow believed the Fourteenth fell at the hands of Venat’s people? Almost as though someone had purposely misled me.”
“Strange indeed,” Elidibus replies, never breaking eye contact. He does not believe the Speaker so reckless as to physically challenge him, but these word games disappoint him. He watches mutely until Lahabrea realizes he isn’t going to find an answer.
The Speaker’s mouth widens into a rictus grin. “Play your games with Emet-Selch if you must, Emissary, but you will not lie to me again.”
The silence speaks for him, carrying the threat far better than words ever could. It is only a few seconds before Lahabrea vanishes in a cloud of aether, but it is much longer before Elidibus finally closes his eyes and lets out his breath.
Messes and machinations, plots and plans and puzzles, despair and death and destruction -
This is not the future they hoped for. This is not the future their people sacrificed themselves to bring about. If he must drag his fellows kicking and screaming to bring their people back, he will do it time and time again - he must guarantee the end result is worth the price paid.
He owes his people that.
With a snap of his fingers he teleports Emet-Selch’s prone form to the Source, knowing he is only postponing the problem, but he will not deal with it here. Elidibus allows himself a few moments more in this city; he is a solitary white and red figure in the darkest depths of the abyss, a small shape among the towering recreations of his ancient home.
Before he leaves Elidibus moves forward to look at the shade Emet-Selch had been working on. She stands still as a statue in front of him, her hands outstretched to either side and her blank eyes gazing forward. Though the mask marks her as the Fourteenth, nothing about her feels familiar: she is a construct, a duplicate - a prop, nothing more.
Elidibus snarls and lashes out with one hand. His bolt of power strikes the shade directly in the chest; it implodes into motes of dark aether that slowly disperse until nothing remains.
Gone, and yet -
Drenched in bloody robes and bloody thoughts, Elidibus vanishes.
Consciousness comes slowly, in bits and fragments and achingly strange realizations. He is no longer on the First; he is in a bed; he cannot remember how or why he came to be here. The longer he thinks on it the less he remembers, and that realization begins to manifest as panic -
Until a calm, warm hand rests on his shoulder.
“I am glad to see you awake, my friend.”
Elidibus sits on a chair near his bed, his expression carefully neutral.
“Have I been asleep long?” A fog clouds his mind, obscuring memories and befuddling him the more he attempts to concentrate. “Something is wrong -”
Elidibus’s hand presses against him more firmly, holding him in place on the bed even as he attempts to rise. “You have been gravely ill, I’m afraid, but thanks to the ministrations of both myself and Lahabrea you are well on your way to recovery.”
“Ill?” An attempt to shake his head quickly convinces him something is indeed wrong; the room spins in circles and he presses his head back into his pillow, closing his eyes in the hopes it will end his nausea. “The last I remember is departing to the First -”
“Quite ill,” the Emissary enforces. “In truth we almost lost you.”
Surprise snaps his eyes open and he meets the other man’s gaze. It is somber, remorseful, pained - the sincerity of it should be reassuring, yet he cannot help but feel unsettled. It is an unusual expression for the Emissary to wear. “Lost me?”
Elidibus shakes his head, masking his emotions behind a front of assurance and relief. “Never fear, my friend - you are well on your way to recovery. Pashtarot has volunteered to assist you until you have regained your strength, and I shall always be nearby - should you have need of me, of course.”
“I - I do not remember -” He shifts, moving his arms from under the covers to stare at his hands. They are clean, pale and unblemished, but he cannot dismiss the feeling that he should be washing them. “I do not believe I have ever felt so addled -”
“You are not well yet, my friend - but you will be.” Elidibus suddenly pulls his hand away, reaching for something out of view. “Ah, I nearly forgot - here. This is yours.”
He stares at the red mask in the man’s hands. One hand slowly reaches up to touch his own face; the realization that he is unmasked is deeply worrisome. For Elidibus to have seen his true flesh - for others to have witnessed the man beneath - makes his stomach churn and his skin flush hot. He takes the offered mask in shaking hands and slips it over his face, feeling the familiar, cool surface against his cheeks and forehead - and a sense of comfort washes over him he wasn’t aware he was lacking. The anxiety and worry fade away, driven to the background by the undeniable sense that he has found what he was looking for -
Strange that he doesn’t remember searching.
The Emissary’s hand grips his shoulder one more time. He meets the man’s confident, sharp gaze and shrugs, hoping to convey if not his gratitude then at least his desire to put this - whatever this is - behind them. “I will recover as quickly as I can. I assume there is much work to be done, and I would not remain an invalid.”
“I know - and I would expect nothing else.” Elidibus finally smiles. “Welcome back, Emet-Selch.”