Chapter Text
At first there was only darkness, silent and oppressive, until a muffled voice pierced the heavy fog that permeated Renna’s mind.
"The experiment was a success, but I fear our time is short."
Metal clanked and screeched, footsteps clicked across steel floors, and a tinny, high pitched whine all rang in her ears at once. Her stomach churned and she pressed her lips tightly together, willing herself to calm.
Orient yourself, she thought, and her head pounded in protest. Center your body - Gods, why does it feel so weird? - you were unconscious, obviously. Get it together. What do you remember?
The roar of a primal. Screaming. Terror. Chaos.
Fandaniel.
"Now, it is time for you to awaken."
Renna groaned as consciousness returned and though her stomach roiled again, she forced open her eyes. Her vision was momentarily blinded by dim candlelight. As her eyes adjusted, a long table set with plates of food slowly came into focus. The smells of a foreign dinner mixed with the cold scents of steel and acrid ceruleum made bile burn in the back of her throat. She sat straighter, and as her eyes traveled the length of the table, they widened in shock.
Zenos yae Galvus sat at the other end.
She hadn't seen him since his demise in Ala Mhigo. Unbidden, the memory of his death flashed vibrantly in her mind: the blood, thick and pungent as it poured from his neck, and his body collapsing in a broken heap before her. She had fallen to her knees on the stone floor as silent, cold tears flowed freely from her eyes. Rather than the overwhelming sense of justice she had sought all her life, Renna had felt nothing but a strange emptiness as she watched the blood pool around him, staining his long golden locks and fine Garlean dress. Her hands hung limply at her sides while she stared wide-eyed at his corpse, wondering, perhaps even hoping, that it would stir back to life to challenge her once more. Though she didn’t know why, Renna knew she had lost something she would never get back.
Giving herself a small shake, she brought her attention back to him. How long had it been since that day? Months? Years? It felt like an age had passed since she had laid eyes on him; the real him, not some Ascian puppeting his body. His hair and clothes no longer streaked with his own dark blood, Zenos looked strong and vibrant. His light golden hair shimmered in the candlelight and his long, dark lashes stood out in contrast to his clear, fair skin, and his eyes... icy blue and piercing, just as she remembered them. Though he did not look at her, a deep part of her found herself wishing he would. Surely he hadn’t orchestrated this macabre reunion just to ignore her.
"Here, have a taste before it gets cold," the familiar voice interrupted and a black gloved hand gestured to a steaming bowl of soup. Renna startled, retched a little, and looked quickly away instead - towards Fandaniel, who was leaning towards her with his hand outstretched and a saccharine smile on his face.
"Where am I?" she asked, but stilled almost immediately at the sound escaping her lips.
That... wasn't her voice. It was deeper, more gravelly, the sound of a man who had smoked one too many times in his life. She instinctively brought her hand to her throat and saw that it was gloved. Despite this, she could tell it also did not belong to her, with fingers much thicker and more stumpy than her own.
"Be sure to remove your helmet first," Fandaniel replied, ignoring her question. His pristine smile and dark eyes seemed to grow wider, more sinister, like a caricature of a fiend from a children's fairy tale. "Take a moment, too, to familiarize yourself with that borrowed flesh."
Renna's heart plummeted and she looked down to inspect the rest of herself. She was wearing a Garlean soldier's uniform: thick black leather lined with fur she could barely feel through and a suffocating steel helmet that trapped the smells of the room - and, she realized with horror, the smells of this stranger's body. She felt... condensed, almost, as though she'd been squashed down to fit into something - or someone - much smaller.
Pulling the helmet off her head, she pushed down her rising anxiety with a deep breath, pressing the stranger's lips into a fine line to stop herself from vomiting. She reluctantly scanned her surroundings. Twisting columns of grotesque metal walls encased them from all sides, the magitek steel as cold and indifferent as the two men that trapped her. Dim lights marked a passageway to her right where a giant door loomed ominously over them - she felt a shiver run down her spine as her eyes fixated upon it. The passage to her left, however, was shrouded in darkness. Renna squirmed uncomfortably in her seat as the oppressive strangeness of the room and her own skin enveloped her. She struggled to breathe.
"I, for one, find those first moments within a new body to be most refreshing," Fandaniel said with casual excitement. Renna snapped her gaze to his.
"We had a magitek engineer by the name of Aulus to thank for this method of soul extraction and implantation. I believe the two of you met briefly in Ala Mhigo?"
"GIVE ME BACK MY BODY!" she burst out, her rage and fear overpowering all other sensations. She tried to ignore the stranger's voice as their fists - no, her fists now - clenched in pain.
"And permit you to go on a righteous rampage?" he taunted, putting a hand to his face as he pantomimed serious consideration. "No, I think not. I have gone to great lengths to reunite you with my lord and he would be most displeased if I released his friend too soon."
Before Renna could respond, a horrific, rumbling screech filled the room and she clapped her hands to her head. White hot pain burst behind her eyes and the ringing screamed in her ears.
"Oh my! Daddy is pleased his grumpy little boy has finally found his playmate!"
No...
She didn't need Fandaniel's impending explanation when she could clearly remember the severed limb in the last tower she and her friends had defeated. Nor when she could remember the sound of Jullus' voice and who he called out to with tempered loyalty. Not when she felt the all too familiar presence of a primal.
But to use Varis' body as a conduit for the Garleans' prayers and turn it into a primal... This is what they had siphoned the world's aether for? What could Renna possibly say to them? The lengths they had gone to in order to force this monstrosity into existence were far outside of anything she could have possibly imagined. Her only thought was that she had to stay alive long enough to warn her friends. None of them were truly prepared for this.
"Tell me, does the pursuit of prey you have bested before excite you?" interrupted Zenos.
Renna jolted in her seat and turned to him - so engrossed was she in her terror that for a moment she'd completely forgotten he was in the room. He, however, seemed unperturbed by her reaction, as if this was simply a dinner between friends.
"Of course not," he continued. "Absent the challenge, the thrill, your prize is a hollow victory. Butchery."
"You don't know anything about me, you arrogant piece of shit," Renna spat, the venom in her words scraping the back of her throat with this much deeper, masculine voice. "And I don't give a flying fuck what your reasons are for murdering innocent people - you deserve nothing short of a permanent death. I’m going to put you back in the ground where you belong."
Zenos stared impassively at her. It was like speaking to a wall - no emotion crossed his face, his features made no movements.
"Fair enough," he responded after a moment. "But do not let your disdain deprive you - deprive us - of an opportunity to craft an even more majestic moment of euphoria."
"Are you even listening to me, you deaf bastard? This was your grand plan? You couldn’t beat me in my own body so you put me into someone else’s? You’re pathetic!"
A crooked smile grew on Zenos's face and his eyes fixated on hers.
"As you will soon learn, I have only just begun."
He rose from his seat and walked down the passage to his right - candelabras flickered to life as he passed. Each click of his boots’ heels against the metal floor echoed in the room while Renna and Fandaniel watched his imposing, retreating form. Her heart raced anxiously in her chest. What new horror did Zenos have in store for her?
"While my lifeless body was in the possession of the Ascian, I, too, claimed another's as my own," Zenos droned as he walked. "It was an enlightening experience, to fight in an unfamiliar form. Flaws and failings in my technique were plain to see." He stopped, his pale, golden hair glowing faintly in the candlelight, while his body blocked something from her view. He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Whence rises one's true strength? The flesh? The soul? Perhaps you should like to discover the answer for yourself."
Then he turned, with his arms outstretched, and Renna saw what he had been hiding.
Her body.
Hunched over on a dark, twisted throne.
My body.
She surged forward, pain shooting fire through her limbs, nerves alight by pure, unbridled fear, the ringing in her ears almost unbearable. Zenos smiled and the Resonant gleamed in his eyes. She reached towards him, willing the strange body forward with all her might.
But she was too late. In the next moment, he collapsed to the floor and Renna stopped still in her tracks, looking down at his motionless body before her.
For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, nothing happened. Zenos’ body lay at the foot of the throne on which her true, Vieran body sat, and Renna wondered how this was possibly a part of his grand scheme. She felt her stranger's limbs grow heavy with dread, however, as the body atop the throne stirred to life of its own accord. Transfixed, she watched her auburn haired head raise and gaped in horror as she met the gaze of her own emerald eyes.
Her body was hers no longer. It belonged to Zenos now.
He looked up with her face and smiled with her lips.
"Or... together," he finished with her voice.
And then he was gone.