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The moon had ever been a silent sentinel, bathing Etheirys in its pale glow. Empires rose and fell, calamities tore the world asunder and civilisations rebuilt it once more, and still the moon remained. Few knew that its pale surface bore countless secrets: a hidden home of leporine creatures, a deity born of sacrifice, and two ancient souls. They were enemies by design: one was Zodiark’s heart made manifest, and the other was Hydaelyn’s most trusted ally. Each was pivotal to his mission, and each fulfilled his duty without question.
Elidibus sat in silence. While the moon may have been silent for many, he was cursed to hear a constant cacophony. The souls sacrificed to summon Zodiark pleaded incessantly for mercy and freedom, but it never came. They had believed their duty would be brief, their suffering short-lived. Now, all they wished for was death. Elidibus could hardly fault them for their desire; he, too, sometimes found himself wondering if his mission was worthwhile.
No. He could not abandon his duty. He made a promise. He swore he would save mankind from their ruinous fate. He could not disappoint… Whom? Elidibus opened his eyes and stared at the white stones beneath his feet. These moments of forgetfulness were becoming more frequent. He would begin a line of thought only to hit a wall, an invisible obstacle in his mind barring him from his past and the truth to which he so desperately clung.
“The voices…” He mumbled to himself in the language of the Eorzeans.
It was easier to blame the cacophony, the nonsensical screaming. He had to strain to understand it, to make out even a single word, and all he could recognise was one: mercy. His allies had long begun speaking the language of Eorzea. Many worlds had reached the same destination, speaking similar tongues, and it had become a matter of convenience when new Ascians were brought into the fold. Elidibus wondered if his comrades even remembered the ancient tongue, but he never dared to ask, lest he acknowledge his own ineptitude.
“Thank you for your kindness, little one.”
The emissary heard a voice in the distance, speaking in the ancient tongue. It did not scream, nor did it plead like the voices that plagued his presence here on the moon. It was kind, calm, and serene. Before he could think, Elidibus stood up and hurried down from the hill, seeking the source of this sound. Had Lahabrea remembered? Or perhaps Emet-Selch?
He followed the sound, his eyes darting from right to left, searching the moon’s horizon, until he finally stopped. It was only Hydaelyn’s lapdog, speaking to one of Hydaelyn’s fuzzy little toys. That the source of such nostalgia would be none other than his sworn enemy was… Elidibus shook his head, dismissing the thought. He had no time for such frivolity, nor did he have time to entertain sophistry. The Watcher’s presence had always irritated him. The man never confronted him nor even spoke to him; he simply stood on his balcony, observed, then retreated into his tower in silence. For millennia, he had maintained the same ritualistic habit. Why, then, could he still speak their tongue when Elidibus could not? The emissary turned away, waving a hand in the air as though the thoughts were a persistent pest he could dismiss. Still, the question remained. Why? Why had The Watcher succeeded where all others had failed? It was an enigma Elidibus could not abandon, and so he strode towards the Watcher and the emoting loporrit.
*
By the time Elidibus had reached the scene, he immediately regretted approaching them. What could he possibly say? Even worse, if he opened his mouth to speak, he would have to use the Eorzean language. It would be far more embarrassing than anything he had ever endured before. When speaking to the others, he could simply write it off as their failing; they had lost their grasp of the language, and so he was performing an act of compassionate understanding in accommodating their weakness. Here, faced with his linguistic superior, he had no such pretences behind which to hide.
Just as Elidibus mustered the courage to open his mouth, The Watcher spoke up. As if sensing the emissary’s discomfort at being outnumbered in faction representation, he knelt down and addressed the loporrit with a kindly tone one would imagine of an immensely patient teacher handling a particularly mischievous child.
“Thank you again, little one. Run along now, lest your friends wonder where you have gone.”
The loporrit bounced up and down and bent its long ears forward in a display of delight and affection before hurrying down the lunar plains.
Alone with The Watcher, Elidibus found himself feeling more comfortable talking. He had decided his excuse for using the Eorzean tongue would be a matter of habit and practice. “You were loud,” he stated.
“Was I?” The Watcher replied, infuriatingly fluent in the ancient language.
“Yes. Must I forever be reminded of your presence? You are my enemy, little more than Hydaelyn’s lapdog. The less I see of you, the better.” Elidibus began to pace in front of The Watcher. “What do you even do with yourself? You come out onto your balcony, you stare out at the moon as if anything on it has changed, and then you go back inside! What life is that? Is this how you serve your precious Hydaelyn? She sits dormant in Etheirys, and you sit dormant here!”
The Watcher observed in silence as Elidibus began to gesticulate.
“Why?! Why do you do it?! Why do you waste your days observing all of the nothingness that is around us?! I am trapped here, bound to Zodiark like an unborn child to the womb, but what of you?! What binds you to this wretched tower?! You are a lapdog, a fool enslaved by a false goddess who has left you here to rot! What fulfilment can you find here?! What purpose do you serve beyond being a pawn?!”
The Watcher remained silent as Elidibus’s chest heaved. Elidibus had not realised that he was shouting. The two men stared at each other for what felt like aeons, until at last The Watcher tilted his head to the side. Elidibus was struck with the unsettling realisation that The Watcher had seen something, but he could not discern what. Was it his grief? His misery? His weakness? Whatever it was, he schooled his expression into something imitating calm indifference, though it appeared to The Watcher more as a pained grimace.
“Would you like to see the tower’s interior?” The Watcher offered.
Elidibus’s crazed eyes only widened further, his jaw nearly falling slack. Was Hydaelyn’s lapdog truly so foolish as to invite his sworn enemy into his abode? Elidibus could hardly imagine what he would do for their cause in the tower, but he convinced himself that it was necessary for his mission. The alternative would have been to acknowledge the pity he had sensed in The Watcher’s tone, and that was a slight he could not bring himself to suffer.
“Very well,” Elidibus said at last, straightening his robes. “One must know their enemy, after all.”
And so, they both walked through the tall doors of Sinus Lacrimarum. Elidibus froze as he saw the gold detailing, the perfectly geometric lines… even the engravings on The Watcher’s countless contraptions bore a striking similarity to a memory he had long believed lost to time. Echoes whispered in his mind of days long past, when he knew the form and function of each tool and used it with the competence of a professional. A chair, similar to the one upon which The Watcher rested, had been his… somewhere. A council of sorts… No, a convocation. The towering spires reached for the heavens like the outstretched, eager arms of… someone. An old friend. A kind voice. Memories fluttered past his mind like the littlest Petaloudae, only to dance away as he sought to grasp them. A laugh echoed in his mind. “It’s alright! You’ll catch it next time!”
He shook his head violently, and for a moment, The Watcher observed him with concern. Elidibus then looked around, searching for something to cling to that would free him from the fragmented labyrinth in his mind. The crystals. This had been their primary method of storing information, once upon a time.
“It is… Like an echo of Anamnesis Anyder,” Elidibus murmured as his fingers brushed over the crystals lining the walls. How he remembered the name, he did not know, but it had come to his mind like an old friend.
“Anamnesis Anyder was my primary abode,” The Watcher replied in the old tongue. “Beautiful hallowed halls abound with knowledge and scholars. If there was aught to be learnt, we would find it.” The Watcher chuckled into his hand as if recalling a colourful, vivid memory. Elidibus envied him. Anamnesis Anyder was… A library, was it not? Some manner of repository for the knowledge of their homeland. He wanted to ask more, but he did not dare expose his own ignorance. Instead, he remained silent, pretending not to care about such tales even as he tilted his head towards The Watcher to better hear him.
“Amaurot was built on knowledge. Or rather, the pursuit of it,” The Watcher continued. “The countless concepts in Elpis could attest to that, of course, as well as those bound to Pandaemonium.”
Elidibus leaned forward in his seat at the mention of Pandaemonium. The name was familiar, and he could vaguely envision cells buried deep underground, housing all manner of monstrous creations. There was a gap in his memory of the place, as there was in his memory of everything, but it was better than remembering nothing at all. It was better than Lahabrea, who could scarcely recognise his own seat.
“Indeed,” Elidibus replied, feigning more knowledge than he possessed. “I recall the beasts.”
“The students at the Akadaemia were often keen to study the concepts in Elpis, were they not? One may wonder whether such a concept had planted the seed for the Final Days. Perhaps this knowledge, and what it entailed, was the cause behind Azem’s absence at the very end,” The Watcher mused. He had no more knowledge than anyone else, but after spending countless aeons observing the Moon and Etheirys, he had been afforded enough time to ponder the possibilities.
Elidibus, however, froze at the name. Azem. Before he could grasp for what the name meant, or to whom it had belonged, a crystal slid from his grasp and clattered sharply to the ground. The Watcher’s gaze followed the rolling crystal through his mask until it seemed to approach him like a loyal pet. He knelt down and picked it up, then once again tilted his head as he stood up.
“Worry not; the knowledge within remains unharmed.” He reassured Elidibus. “Perhaps you would prefer to take a seat?”
Elidibus took a step forward, then stopped. He looked to his right, then to his left, and found no other option. With a huff that would sound almost petulant were he not the unflappable emissary, he sat down on a bench.
“Tea? The loporrits bring it. Their cups are too small for me, but you might enjoy it,” The Watcher offered. He had hoped to put the emissary at ease. So young he still was, as though he had not aged a day since the Final Days.
“No,” Elidibus answered with a grimace. “I want nothing to do with Hydaelyn’s monstrosities… And I hardly trust you to not poison me with it.”
The Watcher brought a hand up to his chin and chuckled, his billowing sleeve swaying. Poison, he thought. How delightfully human a thought. Elidibus narrowed his eyes and scowled.
“You lap up anything Hydaelyn makes for you. Her little beasts and their food… Can you even eat it? Or do you pretend just to appease your precious goddess’s will?” Elidibus scoffed. “The loyal lapdog to the very end, are you not?”
The Watcher gave no response, watching Elidibus in a way that made the emissary’s skin crawl. Even through the mask, his gaze was too knowing, too perceptive of his weaknesses and fears. Elidibus found himself standing up and pacing the room.
As Elidibus walked around, The Watcher observed him in silence. He had seen Elidibus countless times, both in the unsundered world and here. He knew the young man would soon reach the conclusion of his winding thoughts and manifest his rage into a question, and his patience was rewarded when Elidibus whirled around and faced him with a disapproving glare.
“Why?” Elidibus demanded at last. “Why are you so loyal to Her? Why do you carry out Her bidding so readily? You are bound here to fulfil a mission the end of which may never come. You put your faith in a distant dream and simply wait. Why?”
The Watcher cocked his head to the side. “I would wonder the same of you,” he replied. “Why are you loyal to Zodiark? Why do you hold fast to your mission? Do you not also put your faith in a distant dream?” He could not deny that this was enjoyable; it had been far too long since he had partaken in a debate, and even if the emissary could not remember, the young man had once been an excellent interlocutor.
Elidibus clenched his jaw and looked at the tower’s door. He half expected Emet-Selch to come barging in, scolding him for engaging with Hydaelyn’s dog, but he knew time flowed differently here. He had waited for a thousand thousand years, and so would he wait again. Emet-Selch would surely come, as would many others, but their arrival had never been convenient. No one had ever rescued him, and he knew no one ever would.
“Perhaps my answer may help you find your own,” The Watcher offered, sensing Elidibus’s impending aporia. “You asked me why I remain true to my cause. My answer is simple: love. All things worth doing are done for love. The only force that would transcend all distance and time is love. Perhaps you and I may differ in our methods, but in the end, neither you nor I can deny our love for our home. For our people… For Amaurot.”
Elidibus flinched at the mention of Amaurot, the name spoken with a sound he had abandoned a long time ago. The new language’s phonemes for it were scarcely as beautiful as those of the old. He would have wept had he not sensed a presence on the moon. Emet-Selch, perhaps, or another. It was a welcome reprieve, was it not? Then why did he lament its arrival when he had so desperately wished for it mere moments ago? Regardless, he could no longer stall.
“I must go,” he said, standing up and walking towards the tall doors.
As Elidibus’s palm settled on the door, The Watcher spoke, “You were once called Themis, were you not?”
Elidibus went still. Had he truly forgotten his own name? No, it was inconceivable. And yet… Hearing it now, it sounded like both a novelty and a reminder. Themis. It felt right. It warmed his heart to hear it spoken with such kindness. The ancient tongue had a way of softening everything… Well, everything except screams of terror and pleas for mercy, he had found. Finally, he spoke, his body still frozen in place.
“Yes.”
He wanted to leave, to rid himself of this place and its accursedly observant inhabitant, but he had to ask one more question. He had asked it of both Emet-Selch and Lahabrea before; the former knew, but the latter did not. Neither had bothered to ask him in return.
“Do you recall your own name? Before you were The Watcher?”
The Watcher looked around the tower in silence, as if seeking the answer in the countless crystals lining the walls. Elidibus scoffed and shook his head. Of course he could not remember. They were no different, after all. He gripped the door’s handle and pushed it ajar.
“What use is a name if none remain to call me by it?” The Watcher murmured.
Elidibus’s head jerked around, seeing how The Watcher stared at a single crystal on the wall. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what memory it could house, what knowledge it could contain, but he did not dare to linger any longer lest he be found out—or worse, lest he begin to contemplate The Watcher’s question. He walked out, his feet carrying him through each crater and pebble.
*
Elidibus’s mind repeated one single sentence, an incessant reminder he did not dare abandon: “I am Themis, I am Themis, I am Themis…” until at last he reached the Drowning Brand. There, he saw Emet-Selch staring into the abyss where Zodiark dwelled dormant.
“You only come here when you fail,” Elidibus said. He felt a biting resentment rising in his throat like bile. Why? They were allies, were they not? The sight of Emet-Selch—Hades, he had said his true name was—infuriated Elidibus somehow more than The Watcher had.
“I did not fail,” Emet-Selch hissed in the Eorzean language. “They did. Weak, impulsive fools…”
Elidibus approached the sorcerer and stood next to him. To some, the depths of the cavern appeared as a swirling pool of darkness. The emissary knew he and his ally were forced to watch the souls of their friends lie dormant, imprisoned. Some wept; others regretted their choice; many yearned for mercy. Emet-Selch could see them, but he was privileged in his purgatory. It was Elidibus who bore the weight of their grief. As Zodiark’s heart, each cry, sob, and whispered prayer wracked his soul and his heart. It was an unbreakable tether; even when he had stepped out of Zodiark, the voices remained. He sometimes wondered if half his thoughts were even his own anymore.
“They do not understand,” Elidibus said at last. “They cannot comprehend it no matter how their feeble minds may try.”
“Of course they don’t,” Emet-Selch replied with a scornful scoff. “They don’t remember. They don’t know why we must fulfil this mission. They seek only power and wealth, like vermin.”
“Like humans,” Elidibus corrected. “Mankind is flawed; it always has been.”
“Fair,” Emet-Selch conceded. “But they had us to guide them.”
Elidibus fell silent. Could he really guide anyone in his current state? He recalled nothing and no one of his past; he had been bested in debate by a mere lapdog—a shameful failure he would not dare disclose to Emet-Selch. His gaze drifted back to Sinus Lacrimarum. The Watcher’s soul suddenly felt achingly familiar, like a whisper of a name just past the tip of his tongue.
“Noesis,” Elidibus found himself saying. The seemingly undying chamber in The Archive Eternal. There. That was where he had seen the soul.
“All our knowledge, all that we had learnt…” Emet-Selch said with a quirk of his lips. “If the Sundering had spared it, perhaps mankind could have been fractionally less incompetent.”
Elidibus was no longer listening. Why was he so desperate to remember The Watcher’s true name? He searched his memory, fragmented and misshapen as it was. He had visited the library and its archive countless times, consulted its tomes and crystals in equal measure… But the faces eluded him, as did the names. He could only hear echoes of laughter, the gentle voices, the warmth of it all. In his torturous pilgrimage through time, his soul had clung to the one thing that could keep him tied to his mission: the love of his friends.
The thought that The Watcher may have been right made him clench his fists, that now-familiar tightness seizing his throat. “All things worth doing are done for love,” he had said. Such idealistic drivel… But had Elidibus not clung to love? Had it not borne him this far? By the time he had looked back from the tower, Emet-Selch was gone. The man had a habit of talking himself away, no doubt plotting the downfall of another pawn in his game. Elidibus turned away from the Drowning Brand and began to roam the moon’s craters once more.
The silence was a welcome respite. Themis. That was his name. A distant echo rang through his mind, ricocheting off his labyrinthine thoughts. Memories of friends calling his name, beckoning him to join them, asking him questions, thanking him… They were all faceless and nameless. He had no names with which to call them. Guilt once again rose in his throat, choking him. Had he not owed it to his loved ones to remember them? Already, he had failed them, and now his name was forgotten, too. None remained to call him Themis. He was now Elidibus, the Emissary, Zodiark’s heart, he who would deliver mankind from its fate… He looked back at Sinus Lacrimarum—the last true remnant of Amaurot. A relic of happier days.
*
Inside the tower, The Watcher pondered his own name. He had long since abandoned it. To the loporrits and the moon’s few visitors, he was simply The Watcher. He had allowed his mission to become his definition. It had consumed his identity until little remained of himself. He did not grieve his name, nor did he wonder at his past. Somehow, he was certain that even in Amaurot, he had been a quiet, observant friend, more willing to listen to others’ tales than to recount his own.
He knew Anamnesis Anyder, of course. He could vividly recount every memory of Venat, and most of his memories of her were within its hallowed halls. She would sometimes come in search of knowledge, but she more often came to regale him with tales of her grand adventures as Azem. Everything she had ever told him, every blessed word her gentle voice had uttered, was imprinted on his flesh and engraved into his bones. He recalled the time she had befriended a particularly reclusive old coot by helping him chop wood for his fire—the man had been delightfully reluctant to accept any aid through magicks. He similarly recalled how she had stayed in the archives late one night, riding the ladder around the room in search of a very specific ledger about the nature of a very specific type of Phanopsyche. The staff had called her a nuisance, but The Watcher had stayed. His loyalty had been handsomely rewarded when he heard her joyful laughter at her ultimate success. The crystal had been tucked away, as many of the most valuable things often are, and she had prized it with a triumphant shout. Even then, he had been a watcher—her watcher.
When Venat had approached him, seeking the aid of her most trusted friend, The Watcher knew the cost of her impending sacrifice. At world’s end, when her mission was complete, he would not see her again. What worth, then, could his name have? He had only ever cared to hear it in her melodic voice, after all. In its absence, there was no use to it. He was The Watcher, Hydaelyn’s lapdog, he who would guide Hydaelyn’s champion to deliver mankind from its fate. His true name held no such connection to Venat, and so it was meaningless to him.
He stood and ascended the stairwell, winding around the tower. The crystals on the walls whispered to him, diligently reciting their contents. He vaguely recalled a colleague’s hypothesis that crystals could develop their own form of consciousness and provide or withhold information accordingly. He also knew that the colleague had offered her life to the summoning of Zodiark, thus leaving her research incomplete at the Akadaemia.
As The Watcher reached his balcony, he stood atop it and gazed across the horizon at Etheirys. There, beyond the mantle and deep within the core, was Venat. On the quieter nights, when Etheirys was particularly peaceful, he could almost see the glimmer of her soul. The light had grown weaker with each rejoining, but his searching gaze had always found her, like an eye trained to seek a particularly distant star. She shone brilliantly, even as Zodiark’s darkness sought to consume her.
He pondered how Venat had asked him, during the Final Days, why he had not succumbed to terror and despair like the others. The question had taken him by surprise. He could not bring himself to even hypothesise that he could be somehow superior to his colleagues; the best of Amaurot had succumbed, so he knew the Final Days distinguished neither station nor strength. Of course, even then, the answer had come easily. He had no hopes for himself, and thus he also had no fears for himself. Destroyed knowledge would be rediscovered. That which was destined to be known would always reveal itself again to the willing scholar… But his truth, the secret that had burrowed its way into his bones and settled into the marrow, had been simple: he cared only for Venat. He had feared only that she would come to harm, and her strength of will had given him a faith that transcended all academic certainty that she would be well. In the wake of the world’s descent into terror, he had not thought to consider the possibility that the most formidable threat to her wellbeing would be her greatest strength.
A bitter thought echoed in his mind, relentless from the very beginning—or had it been the end? This is my fault. He knew it to be true. She had come to him seeking advice in the form of a carefully veiled philosophical debate, and his words had planted the ruinous seed in her mind: To every thesis must be an antithesis; thus does each question find its answer. He knew this was the seed that had grown to become Hydaelyn—Zodiark’s ultimate antithesis. He also recognised fate’s irony in positioning him and Elidibus on the same moon. The thought that he could be Elidibus’s counterpart was intriguing. What answer, he wondered, could be found between the two of them? Given a true answer, would either of them change course? This he doubted. Should we reach complete consensus, surely that would spell our demise. It was an opinion he still maintained. As long as he and Elidibus shared the same moon, one of them would be its light while the other would be its darkness. Thus would mankind find its truth between them.
In the end, he had aligned himself with Venat’s will. ‘Her loyal lapdog’, he had been called, and it was a title he wore with pride. He allowed himself a smile. All things worth doing were done for love, and nothing was more worthwhile than honouring and upholding her hopes and dreams. As he tilted his head, he was certain he had seen a twinkle in the light of her soul, unmistakably pleased. He was not presumptuous enough to hope that it had been for him, and so it twinkled again. With a quiet chuckle, The Watcher nodded. “Very well,” he murmured before resuming his post. Whether he watched over Zodiark or Venat, he would never truly know.
*
The moon soon went silent again. The loporrits had retreated to the privacy of Bestways Burrow, and the Ascians had resumed their meddlesome missions. Elidibus remained, and The Watcher continued watching. The Watcher knew that Elidibus would soon forget their conversation, as he had forgotten his name. It was an inevitable tragedy that could only be temporarily forestalled, though its sorrow was allayed by the equivalent inevitability that all would be recalled in the end. Meanwhile, The Watcher would observe, patiently awaiting the final act.
Both would remain forever bound by the same moon, the same fate, and the same indefatigable love for their lost homeland.