#AzemxElidibus

[ofdragonsdeep]

16: Deiform

Hermes, former holder of the seat of Azem, beholds what is left in Zodiark's wake.

(implied AzemxElidibus)

(This is essentially a prequel to a fill from last year, which did not survive precisely intact, but I didn't have the time to write out the edited version of those events as well)

(Azem uses he/they pronouns)

 For the first time in all their long years, Azem’s return to Amaurot was not a cause for joy. They had made their way across the cracked and broken land, offering what meagre aid they could to communities broken by the Final Days. It was all they could offer, when they had failed so completely to find a solution to the tragedy. Even the mantle of Azem was no longer theirs to wear, though they had leaned on the seat more than once to calm panicked people who were too far from Amaurot to know what it meant.

When they had heard the name Zodiark, the premise that accompanied it so repulsed them that they had made the ultimatum on the spot. They would have no part in it. If the others saw fit to proceed, then it would be without Azem. And yet they had still moved forward, and so he had put down the title as he had sworn to do. He had left Amaurot not long after, and had told himself that he would not return.

At the time, he had thought that the hardest part would be to keep his distance from Elidibus.They had talked before he left, even though he had told himself no exceptions. Elidibus had seemed so calm in the face of it. He had been a rock for the citizenry and the Convocation both as chaos swallowed them whole, and so Azem - Hermes now, the mask discarded - had not put too much thought into his strangely distant demeanour. Nothing had been normal then, so it made sense, didn’t it?

And now he was gone. Gone like so many others, consumed in the heart of their saviour. Hermes had not intended for it to be a final goodbye, for all he tried to convince himself otherwise, and in the end the choice had been taken from him just like everything else.

They found themselves returning to Amaurot now, despite it all, because they had heard through those they were helping with recovery efforts that the Convocation had put out another call for ‘volunteers’. Hermes had heard strange things of what Zodiark did to those around it - him? - and did not much think that anyone who volunteered for anything would be doing so in their right mind. It was wrong. It was all wrong. And though they had not been able to talk the others out of the summoning - they hoped, deep in their heart, that they might be able to talk them out of this.

Venat had tried to talk to them, too. They had ignored the summons, at first, angry at the idea that they might turn around and abandon their beliefs for some idea of a ‘better’ creation, even one which fought what Zodiark represented. They had been angrier still when they had learned that Venat’s plan was much the same as the Convocation’s - a sacrifice for the creature’s rotten heart, and the ultimate price for those who helped to summon it.

What they had learned of the Convocation’s plans worried them, though. They did not want to turn to Venat, or whatever she had become, but they were not ruling out that the enemy of their enemy might need to by necessity be a temporary ally. But by the stars they hoped they did not need it.

–

Amaurot was an eerie skeleton of its former self. The creature itself sat atop the spires of the Capitol, its masked face unseeing as it stared in endless vigil at the aetheric currents surrounding the planet. Once it had come into full view, Hermes had stopped and stared at it, hoping to find some semblance of Elidibus - of Themis -  in its wretched guise, but there was nothing. Indeed, the creature itself seemed vacant and lacking, nothing at all like the grand saviour the stories had made it out to be. People had spoken of wings caressing the sky, of sure and certain movements, and Hermes’s heart had ached to map Themis to the gestures, the care, the love with which Zodiark smothered their people. But now he saw it up close, it was little more than a shell. A hollow echo of what once had been.

How could anyone give themselves freely to such a thing?

 They felt the first pulse as they walked into the centre of Amaurot proper. A ripple in the aether, so subtle Hermes would have missed it if he had not been on high alert. He felt the ward woven around his soul resist its tug, and scowled at the attempt. He knew the Convocation well enough to believe that it had not been a purposeful feature of their God, but he knew them well enough to know that they would not have made that sort of mistake in normal circumstances.

It was anything but normal, though, wasn’t it? The burned-out husks of buildings told as much to all who passed, the people walking through the streets like ghosts. He had seen so few of them, and they had all of them ignored his passing. None of them thought to use their magic to fix the broken buildings, though a wariness of creation in the wake of the end was reasonable enough. He had tried to speak to one of them, but all they had said was that ‘Lord Zodiark’ would mend their woes. Lord Zodiark would deliver them. And the days of yore, in all their imperfect glory, would return.

Hermes walked the familiar path through the city streets, down to the Halls of Rhetoric. The roof of the building had collapsed at some point since his leaving, but magic propped it up, and people still trickled in and out of the doors. He thought of all the times he had spent there in the past - before he had become Azem, even. Hades (the most honourable Emet-Selch) begrudgingly watching him debate some unfortunate scientist, Hythlodaeus egging him on. Later, Themis hiding himself in the crowd and resisting the urge to heckle, Azem’s verbal sparring with Lahabrea drawing crowds so large even the Emissary could pass unnoticed through them.

To return to those days was a dream, it was true, but nothing more than that. Motes of sand held in their hands, impossible to hold for long. For each wish they coaxed from their god, it was fulfilled for fewer than the last. And when there was no-one left, what then? Would the snake devour itself, just like their childhood fables?

With a shake of his head, Hermes passed through the open doors. There were no crowds to part around him now, but at the end of an empty hall stood a familiar face all the same.

“Lahabrea,” he greeted, a cheerful note to his voice. The older man turned, and regarded Hermes with a coldness that stung to be witness to.

“So returns the prodigal child,” he remarked. “Have you seen the error of your ways, then?” 

“Not even a hello?” Hermes said. 

How many times had he faced Lahabrea in these halls? More than he had ever cared to count, at the time, and yet it had never been in true hostility. Quite the opposite, most times, though it was hard to know if Lahabrea would appreciate the label of 'friend'. But the cold stare, the curt tone, the stiffness of his stance... it was almost him. But not quite him.

What had changed?

"I should think we are beyond greetings," Lahabrea said, turning away from Hermes to regard the hole in the roof, from which one of Zodiark's great wings cast a shadow down into the room below. "You heard the news, I take it."

"Your... 'grand undertaking', I believe it was called," Hermes agreed, sounding far more cheerful than he felt. "You know it is folly, yes?"

"Far from it. Life has already been returned to the star," Lahabrea disagreed. "If you mean to stop us, you are too late. The faithful have given what they must, and they will be rewarded in due time."

"You can't reward the dead," Hermes said, all pretence dropping. Lahabrea inhaled, a weary sigh following the motion, as though he were dealing with a tiresome child instead of a peer.

"They will not sleep forever. We shall nurture what grows on cracked soil, and when the time is right, we shall reclaim what is ours."

"Reclaim..." Hermes started, before making a horrified noise as it all clicked into place. No wonder they offered themselves freely if they believed they would be returned. "No. Lahabrea, you can't. Surely you of all people can see-"

"It is right," Lahabrea said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Lord Zodiark will deliver us salvation. He will save us."

"But you are already saved!" Hermes protested, taking a step forward in frustration. Lahabrea threw out a hand, and he stopped unbidden, even before seeing the magic ripple into the air to divide the two of them. Did Lahabrea truly think so little of him now?

"Calamity was forestalled, that is true," Lahabrea agreed. "But you have walked the streets of Amaurot, have you not? We are not delivered. Not yet. And neither you, nor the parasite which enables you, will keep us from that end."

"Parasite?" Hermes said, confused. "I came alone."

"Do you think me blind as well as foolish? I can see Her taint on you, Azem."

The word which had once been an honour was spat out now with vitriol, but Hermes caught the emphasis on her. Unless there was more to this that had not reached his ears, there could be only one person behind it.

"I am no hypocrite, Lahabrea," he disagreed. "I swore I would have no part of gods, and I told the same to Venat. Whatever she has done, I am no part of it."

"Liar," Lahabrea spat. Hermes made a surprised noise, moving backwards almost on instinct as Lahabrea wheeled around. Darkness gathered around his hands, where once there would have been naught but fire.

"This isn't you. It isn't," Hermes said, still backing away, movements slow less he provoke even more ire from his apparent sparring partner. "Your eyes would never be this clouded. What has Zodiark done to you?"

"Your blatant disrespect only proves your lies," Lahabrea declared. "I had hoped you might see sense, but if you will not, then there are other ways you can serve. I will not let you touch Elidibus."

Elidibus?

For all that Lahabrea had changed in attitude, he was the same in combat. Hermes threw up a shield of shimmering aether to block the first volley of magic, before throwing himself behind an upturned bench and invoking teleportation magic. Lahabrea reached out a hand, and though Hermes felt the aether tighten around him, it did not take.

On the street, he broke into a dead run. He had heard the stories. He knew Elidibus was dead. Elidibus would not have kept his intention to be the Heart so secret if he had not known it would be the end of him. And yet... And yet...

Did he dare hope? Would anything of Themis have survived intact, if zealotry and ire was all that remained of Lahabrea? Hermes had hoped to talk sense into them, but their god had stolen it whole cloth ere he arrived, it seemed. In a moment, he abandoned his plans to seek out Emet-Selch, or even to petition Mitron and Loghrif, knowing as he did that Loghrif would be hurting under the weight of Elidibus's sacrifice, one that she had laid claim to at the start. He had hoped. He had not wanted to hold the weight of what they had decreed against them, knowing that the star had faced oblivion without it. But this?

Themis... Please...

In the early days he had considered the notion of standing against Zodiark. In the wake of Venat's request, he had doubled down on not doing so. To destroy Zodiark would shatter the feeble protection that it offered against apocalypse, even if it would free those within. And Themis, he was gone, his very soul consumed to become the Heart - that was what Lahabrea had laid out in their Convocation meeting, his jaw set against the horror of it. And it had been a horror, hadn't it? All of them had hated it. Not a one had thought it good, simply better than oblivion in a world where no other options seemed to exist. That was why Hermes had left, rather than fight it. He would not stand between them in their hardest choice, even if he could not make it  himself. But now they seemed to honour it, to want it. The Lahabrea he knew would never have sacrificed so much, not even to bring back those he loved. It was delusional to think that this was in the star's best interest. How could they heal if the wound festered?

Venat had spoken not of destroying Zodiark, but of binding him. She had conceived of a creation not unlike Zodiark himself - a 'Goddess' whose purpose in its entirety was to protect the star, but her goal would be to imprison that which threatened to consume itself under the burden of paradise. Not destroy. To bind the souls of every sacrifice in place for the time it took for others to find a solution... was that progress? Was that better?

Could he at least save Themis?

I owe it to him... to his sacrifice to try.

[ofdragonsdeep]

2: Aberrant

All things considered, it was not a conventional relationship.

(cw: character death, spoilers up to 5.3. This one is LONG.)

2: Aberrant

“Your friends would not approve of your presence here, Warrior of Light.”

The white-robed ascian stood perfectly still, his bearing a sea of calm in the roiling aether around Mor Dhona. What little of his face Ar’telan could see - if it truly was his face, an unsolvable enigma in the wake of what Lahabrea had done - was unmoving, stoic. He seemed to be in perfect opposition to his brethren, what few of them Ar’telan had met. Both red-masked and black, all had been fervent, near rabid in their devotion to chaos and destruction, frothing over with violence and energy. Elidibus was… not.

“You spoke of answers,” he said instead, the corner of the ascian’s mouth quirking up into the slightest of smiles at the sight of his hands moving to form words.

“You do not need to ply me with the crutches used by your mortal brethren. I hear you well enough,” he remarked, turning his head to look out over the vast expanse of Silvertear Lake. “I spoke of the truth, yes, but I did not promise it to you. What have you done to earn it? Other than prove yourself a fool in meeting with me like this.” Ar’telan bristled at the insult, then shook his head.

“If you were concerned enough by our presence to attempt to sway us to your cause, then you should have words to back it up.”

Elidibus was quiet for a while, before letting out a sigh. It was as impossible to read his mood as it was any man who wore a mask, but there was a sadness in his bearing, a feeling of melancholy that settled over him so deeply it seemed impossible to shake.

“You will have the truth when you have earned it,” he said, his voice quiet.

“And when do I earn it?” Ar’telan asked. Elidibus considered the question.

“You will know because I will tell you,” he replied, as though it was that simple. Ar’telan narrowed his eyes.

“If I wanted to be made a fool of, I could speak to Lahabrea,” he said, and - Elidibus winced? It was the first indication in the entire conversation that he had any emotional investment at all.

“I do not mean to dismiss you,” he said, a soft shake of his head to dispel the lingering remains of his slip. “But just as you have no reason to trust me, I have little reason to trust a man so steeped in his Mother’s blessing.” Ar’telan fought to keep his face straight at the comment, though he thought it might not matter in the face of the Ascian’s mastery of the Echo. Indeed, he simply shrugged, unconcerned and unmoved by the potential for uncertainty. “We shall see, Warrior of Light. Both of us.”

“My name is Ar’telan,” he disagreed. Elidibus’s mouth thinned, and Ar’telan imagined that he was frowning beneath the mask.

“Perhaps,” he said, and with a flicker and pulse of darkness, he was gone.

Elidibus was not a hard man to find, if ‘man’ was still applicable to a being made of aether and darkness and little substance. For all he expressed distrust, he was there to listen with an uncanny reliability when tensions drove Ar’telan from the Rising Stones and into the wilds of silvertear. Over and over again Ar’telan pressed him for the truth he professed to hold, mastery over the gift that seemed only to undermine Ar’telan’s own efforts. His disdain for Hydaelyn was clear, but he would never mention her unprompted, and Ar’telan held his tongue on his bitter opinion of Zodiark.

What room for mortals was there when gods warred? What meaning did even the eternal hold against the powers that sought to control them? The only topic that Elidibus held his tongue on was mortality, the only time he ever asked Ar’telan to stop was when he tried to speak of the virtues of mortals. Elidibus was old, older than any time that Eorzea remembered. He had seen empires rise and fall, perhaps even precipitated some of the downfall. But he would speak on anything else - time, the soul, inevitability - but he would not speak on mortality. And he never loosened his tongue on the Echo.

When comfort found Ar’telan in the arms of Ishgard, Elidibus withdrew without notice. When Azys Lla and all that surrounded it left Ar’telan missing as many allies as Elidibus had lost, he returned. There was sadness in his heart, even for the loss of Lahabrea - he had never had kind words for his peer, but mourned him nonetheless. But Ar’telan could not hear that the loss was somehow worse than all he had suffered, that Lahabrea’s death - or whatever his dissolution into Nidhogg’s Eyes could even be called - was somehow worth more than the pain that Ar’telan had felt, the wrenching wound of holding the man he loved in his arms and watching the life drain from his eyes like the blood from his chest.

He did not want to know the truth of the Echo, not any more. Not when he had lived the worst moment of his life a hundred times, powerless to stop time’s relentless march because Hydaelyn had decided that this was what must happen. He had no love for his ‘Mother’ any more, not after Minfilia, not after Haurchefant. But he would reject them all if that was what it took.

“The Echo is not Hydaelyn’s gift,” Elidibus said, the words taking Ar’telan by surprise.

“The Blessing-”

“Is not the Echo. You know this,” he cut in, and Ar’telan bit his tongue, uncertain. “Some with the Echo are blessed by Hydaelyn, ‘tis true. Just as some are blessed by Zodiark. All who carry that power carry the Echo. But not all with the Echo are blessed.” Ar’telan blinked in surprise, shuffling in place to stare at the grass he sat upon. He still made the hand movements to accompany his speech though he knew Elidibus didn’t need them, out of habit - out of fear, perhaps.

“Do they only choose those with the Echo?” he asked. Elidibus - chuckled.

“Perhaps,” he replied, an infuriating, but predictable, response. Ar’telan sighed, and thought.

The Echo was a latent thing. It lived in the backs of the soul, untouched by the fortunate. Of all those he knew with the Echo, he knew none who had been born with the gift. Even Krile, who had been blessed from a young age, had not been born with it. No, they had awoken.

The calamity, ripping his voice and his home from him.

The ice, stealing the breath from Ysayle’s lungs.

Tragedy, robbing Krile of her family when she was but a child.

The sight of death, Minfilia watching her father die in front of her.

Garlemald, ripping through Arenvald’s home and driving him to desperation.

Each of them had all but died, one way or another. The Echo was there, latent and waiting. But not all who experienced tragedy awoke to it. So what did it mean?

“There is something which sets us apart,” he said aloud, choosing his words carefully. “A mortal life awakens to the gift through tragedy. A death of the self. What awakens an immortal?”

Elidibus went quiet, as though he had not been expecting the answer. He stared forwards, though Ar’telan thought he was not focussed on what was truly in front of him. The faintest flickers of his aether-mark hovered around the mask.

“Tragedy,” he said eventually, his voice quiet. “Most Ascians were like you, once. Mortal.” He looked over then, the marks fading as soon as they had come. “And when they understand the Echo, they transcend mortality.” Ar’telan shook his head.

“Is that the Echo, or is that Zodiark?” he asked. Elidibus sighed.

“Both. Neither. It is impossible to separate one from the other. To separate Ascian and Zodiark,” he said. “Just as those with the Blessing-”

“I do not belong to Hydaelyn,” Ar’telan disagreed, anger colouring his voice. Elidibus laughed.

“No. Not you,” he agreed, and he seemed almost happy by the statement. “Never you. But most of those - the woman who led you. What was her name?” Ar’telan felt his throat close up at the reminder.

“Minfilia,” he said, and Elidibus inclined his head.

“She belonged to Hydaelyn, did she not?” he said. “Without a second though, in fact. So it is for us and our master. Ascian and Zodiark. The Blessed Children, and Hydaelyn.”

“Then why do you think that you can change my course?” Ar’telan asked, feeling a sickness in the back of his throat. Elidibus shook his head.

“I do not,” he replied. “For you ever have and ever will do what you feel is right. But if you knew the truth- if you knew, then maybe…”

“I will not stop trying to save people,” Ar’telan disagreed. Elidibus nodded.

“And that, Warrior of Light, is my most fervent hope.”

Truth was a fearful master. When Urianger’s ‘treachery’ was revealed, his companionship with Elidibus and the Warriors of Darkness to save Minfilia, Ar’telan waited with worry in his heart for the accusation that never came. Even Unukalhai, rescued in a strange twist of fate by the emissary of Zodiark despite his soul being steeped in Light, made no mention of Ar’telan’s - friendship? Acquaintance? With the Ascian. Elidibus simply shook his head at the lightly probing question, saying that he had seen no need to divulge such things, irrelevant as they were to the missions they had spearheaded. It was a strange contrast to Lahabrea, who had taken every opportunity he could find to drive a wedge between the allies of Light, taken every chance to grind the man who would be the Warrior of Light into the ground. Ar’telan felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, a step closer to his treacherous thoughts revealed with every tiny piece of information he teased from Elidibus, like water from stone.

But it was calm. It was calm for the moments taken between the war that raged across Garlean territory, and it was calm when Elidibus withdrew in the aftermath, though it would be many moons before Ar’telan learned quite why. In each small space, Elidibus kept his counsel, kept the truth of them from even his own allies, though by now he surely knew enough to destabilise them. Surely he knew. Surely.

When the news spread through the upper ranks of the Ala Mhigan hierarchy that Prince Zenos lived, the Scions and those who knew them suspected Ascians. Ar’telan, faced with an empty grave and a space void of contact, thought he could put a name to it. But just as Elidibus had not said aught to put Ar’telan’s position in jeopardy, he kept his silence here, as well.

Elidibus.

The sprint through the Ghimlyt Dark was frantic and hurried, passing by entire clusters of Alliance soldiers that he could have aided, should have aided. The call for help had been clear and frantic, Zenos - though they knew it was not truly him, but a spirit puppeting his corpse. He had to go. He had to know. Somehow it had to make sense.

“Ah, Bringer of Light. It has been too long.”

The sound of Zenos’s voice was like a punch to the gut, all that he had suffered for, all that Zenos had died for feeling small and pale in comparison to the grand game. Ar’telan narrowed his eyes and drew his sword, his shield already in his hand from his frantic run.

“No words to mark our reunion? So be it.”

Ar’telan held the words behind his teeth.

“Equilibrium must be restored… and only your death will redress the balance.”

“Elidibus,” he said, the only sound his ruined throat could make a choking, meaningless vowel. Zenos’s hands gripped the hilt of his katana too tightly, his deadpan voice shaking, just a little, upon the operative word. They stood, eye to eye, Elidibus for the first time taller than Ar’telan himself.

If it came to blows, Ar’telan had said, he would not strike first.

If it came to blows, Elidibus had said, he would not need to.

When he woke in Ishgard, the Light still blazing in angry defiance within his soul, he would swear to himself that there was hesitation, if only for a moment.

“Strange that I would find you here, Warrior of Darkness.”

Ar’telan tensed at the familiar voice, spinning to find its owner. Ardbert - his empty shell. Elidibus.

“Have you come to finish what you started?” he asked. Ardbert’s body sagged with the tiredness that he had seen so often in Elidibus’s aetherial form, the familiar shake of the head his response.

“No. Not here,” he replied. Ar’telan glanced around at the gleaming white streets of Hades’s remembered Amaurot, the half-formed shades that populated it, fading in and out of existence with every breath. It would fade eventually, just like Hades himself had, and Ar’telan had found it difficult to let go of the idea. The shape of the city, the hurried activity that was painted in, a loving facsimile of a beating heart. Ever since he had first arrived here, half-mad with the Light, he had felt like he belonged.

“I made a promise,” he said, and Elidibus looked away, Ardbert’s eyes all but misting with the memory.

“That you did,” he said, voice quiet, and the Echo pulsed like a throbbing vein in his head.

“Strange that I would find you here, Elidibus, and not buried to the nose in books in the library.”

“Ha! A fine jester you would make, if you ever tire of the title you hold now.”

“Artemis claims that you have not left this building since the news broke.”

“Mitron exaggerates. Is this what brought you home, Hermes? The end of us-”

“I miss you when you are gone. When your seat sits empty for you fulfilling its tasks. How I gaze at the window and long for your return. It is unbecoming of one who holds the role of Elidibus.”

“And who makes those rules? You spend too long listening to Lahabrea. For all I wander, I will come home, always. Even if Amaurot did not call me back, you would.”

“We have made a decision, A- Hermes. We will summon our salvation.”

“And what then? Damn yourselves to save the world? This is madness, Zeus! It is-”

“You have made your views clear enough, Hermes, but I cannot afford myself the luxury of hearing them another time. Please.”

“And what of the core? You know what it will take, Zeus! Who would you condemn to birth your ‘God’?”

“I will be the Heart.”

When the visions faded, Ar’telan shaking his head to clear the static from his mind, Elidibus still stood there, staring out towards the Capitol. The look in Arbdert’s borrowed eyes was impossible to decipher, even for him.

“You grow strong in the Gift,” he remarked, voice level. “Did you see aught of interest, Warrior of Darkness?” Ar’telan swallowed back the words. He had long since learned how to keep the most secret of his thoughts from Elidibus.

“When Emet-Selch forced me to fight, he told me a name,” he said, as a reply. “Hades. I promised that I would remember it.” Elidibus closed his eyes, lowered his head. “What name did you carry, beneath the role of Elidibus?”

“I…” he began, his hands clenching to fists around the frustration. “I was… I was…” As suddenly as it had come, the frustration lifted, and he shook his head again. “It is irrelevant. I am Elidibus. That is my role and my mission both. What more matters?” The wisps of darkness that coiled around every tendril of his aether, fire-bright even to the Light that Ar’telan carried inside him now, were almost visible. But Ar’telan knew that none but him could see them.

“I promised that I would remember. That is not just Hades, not just the history of Amaurot. It is all of you, a tragedy shattered through the ages,” he said. “Tell me your name.”

“And what was yours, Warrior of Darkness?” Elidibus threw back, a trace of anger in his eyes now. “You, a shattered remnant of our greatness. What use is your memory, then? You will die, as all the others have died, and it will pass to dust and wash away in the waters of your Mother’s lifestream. What is it worth to give to you what will be lost?”

“I will not be the only one, Elidibus,” he disagreed. “You and Hades both cling to the idea of a saviour. But that is not the strength of mortals. It-”

“Is in your gathered might, I know,” Elidibus finished, though Ar’telan thought he had never said it aloud before. “I know. But what is the point, if you will die? If I will lose and find a hundred more of your echoes, if we… If I…”

“You do not need to chase Hermes. You are more than an echo, more than Zodiark,” Ar’telan said, and at the sound of the name Elidibus stiffened like he had been struck.

“Hermes,” he repeated, breathed the name like a precious relic. “But you are wrong. We are no more than He allows us to be. No more than His will across the shattered pieces of our star. As your striving to keep them broken is no more than your Mother’s.”

“There is value in what we have made. In what you have made,” Ar’telan disagreed. “Even if we burn out and die like candles, our aether lingers. If you have chased Hermes across a hundred lives, would the pieces not find each other, step by step? To seek, to find, to love, a hundred times. Is that not worth it?” Elidibus stared in solemn silence, his face a mask, but the turmoil in his soul like an open book to Ar’telan’s familiar eyes.

“I do not know,” he said, a sentence forced from the very core of his being. “I do not know. But I am whole and there are none left like me. None. So your talk of worth is a fantasy, built in the fragile scaffold of your mortality.”

“Are you whole?” Ar’telan replied. “When you do not even know your own name? When the only thing you have is your duty?” Another silence, though this time Elidibus turned to face him. Ardbert had been old and tired when his spirit had followed Ar’telan across their war of a tiny, broken world, but this look held the weight of aeons upon it.

“I do not know,” he said again, and he seemed scared to say it.

His heart pounded in his chest as he all but leapt up the stairs of the Crystal Tower, a bitter memory to his first climb of its halls, to put down a crazed echo of Xande - a hollow, discarded shell of Hades’s own making, brought back through Allagan desperation. Desperation fuelled him now, and it was not the climb that made his chest tighten, but the knowing of what he would find at the top.

“I cannot sanction this, Elidibus. I will not. If I must forsake my seat to do it, then I will.”

“You cannot leave! Our people live in fear, Hermes, the terror of the end grips them. We can give them hope!”

“We can damn them! We can round them up like cattle to the slaughter and spill their aether at the altar! You have seen what summoning of this magnitude does, Elidibus!”

“The Tempering is a small price to pay for our salvation. For a God who will deliver us - who will save us! What harm is there in compulsion to do good? To save? Is it not what you already do?”

“...No, Elidibus. Not like this. I won’t. I can’t. I’m sorry. I have made my decision.”

“If not for Amaurot - if not for the Council - will you not stay for me? After all we have given, all that I have given…”

“You will offer me up as a thrall to the creature that will eat your heart? So that what remains of you can cling to me in some masqueraded horror of love? No, Zeus. If I cannot stop you, I will not damn us both.”

“If it is to be eternity-”

“It will not be eternity, Zeus. You know as well as I that even the most benign of notions eventually corrodes. I will endure. I will search for a means of our salvation. And if I cannot - when care turns to madness, Zeus, I will find you. I will stop you. I will save you. This is all I can offer you.”

“...A vigil you cannot promise to weather, a compassion I cannot promise to hold. This is what is to become of us? When the end beckons we are to shatter like glass before the blade even falls?”

“I love you, Zeus. I always have, I always will, even when my journeys take me far from you. I will come back. I swear it. I swear.”

“Hermes…”

Elidibus stood, pensive in his reflection, as Ar’telan cleared the threshold. Words that tumbled from his lips, a desperate attempt to reconcile his actions, and with all he knew now Ar’telan wondered if Elidibus even remembered the truth at all.

“You do not have to justify yourself to me, Elidibus,” he said, and the comment cut through the rambling like a knife. Ardbert’s fists clenched, the red-aethered mask appearing across his face.

“On my honour as Elidibus, I will see it done,” he disagreed. “I will save them! I will! For all I have toiled, all the time we have struggled, I will- I promised- I…”

“You are not the only one who has made promises,” Ar’telan replied. “To remember. To see. Perhaps as the years go by, the memories will crack, the tales will warp, just as those who pray to the Warrior of Light do not know they wish for Zodiark’s servants. You wished to protect. To save.” His hand gripped tight around the crystal he had found upon Amaurot’s floor, a gift from a knowing shade. “I will see it done. Protection. Salvation. For all of the land’s children. Even you.”

“I do not need your protection!” Elidibus spat, and the light opened in a torrent around him, a cascade of rifts across the floor of the throne room. “It will not end here! I will carry out my mission!”

“I will save you. I promise.”

“Who for?” Ar’telan asked, and Elidibus all but screamed. A fervent prayer, the light of a dozen half-summoned souls, a blinding stream of light.

“If you would usher in the end, then with my all I shall oppose you,” Elidibus said. Gone was Ardbert’s shell, in its place a gleaming porcelain recreation of what might have been a man. Shield of lightest blue, sword of glowing silver, a bitter mirror of Ar’telan himself. Of the idea of a hero. “As the avatar of those mortal heroes who fought unfalteringly, in all their imperfection!”

In the end, it is our valour to which you cling. Our bright, short-burning flame. Our mortality.

“As the warrior of light incarnate!”

Teeth clenched, heart aching, Ar’telan drew his sword.

And when the light, white-roiling and so strong in its intensity it seemed to strip the soul from bone, came for Elidibus, it was with the heaviness of loss in his heart that Ar’telan turned away, and leant his strength to the Exarch.

“I will come back. I swear it.”

In the quiet, a spirit sat, so small and fragile against the might of the shades in Amaurot. His red-wood mask stained with the promise of tears as Ar’telan took gentle steps towards him. In his hands, thirteen tiny crystals, their light flickering in the motes of dust that carried what was left of Elidibus, inexorably, towards the tower.

Ar’telan knelt besides Elidibus. Laid the crystals each, face up, at his feet. Listened in quiet, the way he had when first they had met, as Elidibus reached out to take them, and fitted back together the pieces that had fallen through the holes that Zodiark’s beating heart had torn in his soul. And as he remembered, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, he looked up at Ar’telan.

“At duty’s end, we will meet again. We will. We will,” he whispered, and reached a hand out towards him. A wave of nostalgia and sadness from a time not his own washed over Ar’telan, a longing and a desperation that every piece inside his soul knew in perfect unison.

“Hermes,” Elidibus whispered, and Ar’telan held his shimmering form in a gentle embrace. It felt as though he was falling to pieces beneath his fingers, slipping away from him the way that he had watched the light leave Haurchefant’s eyes, the way he had felt the light flicker and fade in so many. So many.

“We will remember, Zeus,” he said, knowing that only Elidibus would hear him, praying that enough of him was left to receive it. “I love you.” The sob that Elidibus managed in response was keening, wrenching, and Ar’telan could feel, for the first time, the beautiful, shining aurora of his soul, untainted by tendrils of darkness, unwound from Zodiark like a patient spool and offered to the tower’s crystal.

“I will not stop,” Ar’telan said. “Trying to save people. Mortal and immortal all.” He drew back, and he thought that he saw the ghost of a smile in Elidibus’s flickering form.

“And that, Warrior of Darkness, is my most fervent hope.”

[ofdragonsdeep]

23: Soul

A connection between Ancients ran deeper than fragile mortals could comprehend.

(AzemxElidibus, ShB spoilers I guess)

Mornings in Amaurot blossomed like a gentle gift. The faint noise of birdsong in distant trees, the shade-dappled paths, the thrum and bustle of activity, all of it held out a welcoming hand to invite the weary wanderer back home.

Hermes, holder of the Seat of Azem, had spent more of his long life within Amaurot than not, and found that he missed it on his long travels around the realm. No matter how far the wanderlust took him, nor how long the trials kept him gone, he would ever return to it. Home, in so many ways, not least of which because it held his heart.

This morning was a quiet one, as returnings went. He was given nods of acknowledgement from the civilians he passed, in recognition of the mask he wore and the rank he held, and he offered smiles and waves at them in return. His cheerful feet traced a familiar path, winding between the buildings and past the entryways where a hundred hundred souls bustled, past the view of the Convocation Hall’s spire, past the aether-crystal in its intricate metal lattice. To a little pocket of green, cocooned tenderly within the city’s gleaming walls. At the highest point, Hermes lay down upon the grass and closed his eyes.

It was not unlike his travels. It was simple, when the mind could weave aether at a thought and there was none of the Architect’s bureaucracy to stifle the creation, to shield oneself from the elements with only the most necessary of comforts. He had spent many nights beneath the stars, feeling the ground beneath him through his robes, staring up to what lay beyond them and wondering at that most unknown of vigils.

He had lain there for long enough to lose track of time when the disturbance came. The sound of robes rustling, feet upon the grass, and a familiar voice.

“Never do you tell me when you see fit to return, Azem. Any would think you do not wish me to find you.”

A smile crept onto Hermes’s face, and he opened his eyes to look at his visitor.

“As if you need long to see my aether among the others, Elidibus.”

His white robes gathered up about his legs as he sat beside his erstwhile colleague, ever unmarred by stains from the grass beneath them. A soft smile sat upon his face - never one for grand gestures, was Elidibus, giving his all to others and saving so little for himself. Of all the people that Hermes knew, he was the one he missed most keenly when duty and curiosity took him out into the world beyond. But in the same stroke, he was the one he returned for - not his duty, not his people. Just Elidibus.

“I take it that your travels were fruitful,” Elidibus said, watching as Hermes sat and shook the grass from his shoulders. His magics could have cleaned it, true, but he saw no need for it in the moment. “I hope that you do not have any sour news for the Convocation.”

“Do I ever?” Hermes replied, face cracking into a smile. “You can say it, you know. That you missed me. None will hear you admit such a shameful thing.” Elidibus sighed, shaking his head in despair at Hermes’s attitude.

“I am not ashamed. I am… It is difficult,” he said. With a roll of his shoulders, he straightened himself, composing his thoughts along with his form. “But you know me well, alas. I… I did miss you.” Hermes took his hand, elegantly gloved, and pressed a kiss against his fingers.

“Perhaps my advantage is unfair,” he allowed. There were those on the Convocation who disapproved of their relationship - not because they stood as colleagues, but because of how this Azem seemed ever to flout their rules and conventions. Such was a part of the role of Azem, he had argued - to great success in the Hall of Rhetoric, in fact, much to the dismay of his would-be rivals. Elidibus held himself with the quiet regard of someone entrusted with a role as great as his, kept himself held back, spent his every waking moment dedicated to his duty - and likely his sleeping ones, as well. His discomfort stemmed from uncertainty, Hermes thought, a need to present an image of the perfect emissary to the people. What would they think if he were to love a reactionary so deeply as he held it in the darkest parts of his heart?

“I wonder at times if it is unbecoming of me to miss you so,” Elidibus said, a perfect demonstration of his warring head and heart. “I have asked Emet-Selch to cast his eyes into the lifestream when you are gone, in case the worst were to happen and you could not come home-”

“And he called you a fool?” Hermes guessed, and Elidibus sighed.

“Yes. ‘Lovesick and pining’ were his exact descriptors.” His skin flushed red at the admittance, and he averted his gaze to stare at the grass below him, swaying softly in the gentle breeze. “Still, I am glad that you return unmolested, at least for now.”

“Would I abandon you?” Hermes returned, running the palm of his hand up Elidibus’s cheek, slipping his fingers beneath the wood of the mask. “Perhaps you would know if I did.” He could feel his companion’s aether, so bright and shining, so close…

“Perhaps I would,” Elidibus agreed, his voice quiet. One hand reached up to lie atop Hermes’s own, and Hermes smiled at him and pushed back the hood. There was comfort in conformity, and reassurance in the safety that came with not deviating from the norm. How they would tut and shudder at the Bureau of the Administrator at the idea that one with so important a role would ever eschew the trappings of their station, a splash of colour across the mask the only difference between them.

With his free hand, Hermes gently eased the mask from Elidibus’s face. He blinked with surprised eyes, his own hand reaching to touch his unadorned face.

“I missed you,” Hermes said, and leaned forward to touch Elidibus’s forehead with his own. It was a tiny, quiet glimpse into the vast aether at the core of him, suffused with love and loneliness. So intense was the feeling that Elidibus moved backwards all but subconsciously, the breath catching in his throat.

“Hermes, please,” he said, a soft admonishment in his tone. “Such conduct is unbecoming of one who holds the role of Azem.”

“Yet it is Hermes you chide,” he replied, an amused smile on his face. “I shall note that for the record, though I shall keep it from my report for the rest of the Convocation.” Elidibus, his face red with furious embarrassment, picked his mask up from where it lay on his lap and set it back around his face. If nothing else, it did match his complexion, and most fittingly if Hermes was any judge.

“I shall have to hear your full report later, then,” he said, which made Hermes raise an eyebrow. Elidibus, heedless by intent or not, retrieved Hermes’s own mask from where it lay in the grass and held it out to him, a not so subtle suggestion in his gesture. “Come. It would not do to keep the others waiting.”

“I suppose you are right,” Hermes allowed, a soft sigh on his lips as he made himself ‘presentable’. Just as Zeus so rarely put aside his role as Elidibus, so too did Hermes need to be Azem to his core, at least for the moment. But what did a few moments matter, when they had eternity?

Such things were, he supposed, not Azem’s to think upon.

[ofdragonsdeep]

17: Destruct

They thought that Zodiark had saved them, but their end had come in the Final Days all the same.

(Character death cw, m!AzemxElidibus)

It was hard to imagine, standing on the lush grass of the billowing countryside, that it was a scene of devastation.

Hermes, former holder of the seat of Azem on the Convocation of Fourteen, placed a hand against the bark of a newly-born tree and closed his eyes. Sinking down into a sitting position, he let his mind fill in the blanks of the horizon beyond - Amaurot, looming large and full of life, a perfect home, a confluence of perfection. But when he opened them, though the skeleton was there - rebuilt by magicks beyond mortal ken, raised from dust and ashes - he could still see the glowing purple light of the god-crystal who sought to ruin them.

Hermes had been called coward, traitor, failure, for refusing to support the summoning of Zodiark. Hope-breaker, defector, disappointment, by those who had in their sorrow planned to summon another. War loomed, this he knew, now fought between kin rather than a desperate struggle against the unknowable. The truest and deepest tragedy, that in saving their world, they had damned themselves.

Zodiark and his Tempered were wrong, of course. There was naught to gain in destroying what lived to bring back ghosts, no matter how keenly the people had ached for them to return. Nor did he much like the idea of striking down yet more of what remained of their people on the altar of war to protect the fragile mortality they had created to fill the gaps. But what was he to do? No solution had presented itself, no matter how far he had travelled or how desperately he had searched. No miracle was forthcoming. For all their supposed greatness, he and his people had lost.

When he had refused the invitation of Venat’s people to aid in their summoning, they had asked him why he had returned at all, if he would not help in ridding them of Zodiark. This he would not answer, at least not to them. A sword against the bulwark of the newly minted god he would not be, for he was not a warrior - that was not the duty of Azem. For all he had eschewed his seat, he held the values dear to his heart even in the dust. He was a shepherd, a guide to the lost. And though he could offer himself no succor, despite how he floundered, there were those he would not abandon. Not yet.

---

His feet took him through familiar streets, down familiar routes, left unsettling in their emptiness. The sun shone bright and clear above the park, though no citizens walked its paths. He had come here countless times, watching the sun set on the horizon, the shining stars to welcome them in its stead. He had lain in the grass, hand in hand, and dreamed of eternity.

“Hermes?”

The voice, so achingly familiar, was cut with tired and rasping traces. He could feel the darkness radiate in every inch of the soul, cocooned around him, through him, becoming him. Zodiark.

“Elidibus,” he said, turning to face him. It looked like him, white robes and all, but his eyes were pools of deepest purple, pits of darkness like that which had sheltered their people from the fire of the Final Days. “Do you answer to that now? I confess I am unsure.” The sadness in his face was palpable.

“Please. I have not forgotten,” he replied, his every syllable echoing with the words of Zodiark behind it. “We are one, He and I, but I remain. Where there is strife, I remain. I will save us…” He reached out a hand, uncertain, and Hermes watched as he held it in space. It ached to not take it, to touch fingers against his, but Hermes knew they would be cold as the grave, steeped in pitch and crystal. “Do you not see it now? We are free of the devastation of the Sound. It worked. It did.”

“I never thought it wouldn’t,” Hermes replied, then sighed. “You and I both know ‘twas the cost I baulked at. Does He let you remember that?” Elidibus flinched, and a wave of pity washed through Hermes, but he could not let his course falter now.

“He wants what is best for us. I want what is best for us,” Elidibus said. “Please. You need not give yourself to Him, but I will not… I cannot weather this vigil alone. Our people falter and break. We need you. I need you. Please.” Hermes offered a small, sad smile.

“I am not the glue you think I am, and I cannot mend the wounds in our people’s hearts,” he replied. “And you will not sway me by claiming grand designs. Not when I cannot tell where He ends and you begin.” Elidibus looked down at his hands, still the same as they always were, the aether wracked with darkness beneath them. He had known the cost. Known the result. But still he had done it, because he could not let anyone else bear the burden of something so great. It was just like him.

“Please,” he repeated, bringing his hands up to Hermes’s face, holding it between them.

“If nothing else were left to me, I… I would try to save you,” Hermes said. The kiss was brief for the shock of it, Zodiark recoiling from the Light that Hydaelyn had woven around him, an agreement reached - a Champion untempered, for both gods knew, at their heart, that their designs would crumble and corrupt in time.

“No,” Elidibus said, taking a step back. “You- you refused us. Why would you-”

“I did not summon Her,” Hermes said, but the panic on Elidibus’s face did not abate. “Nor did I condone the loss. But I did not lie to you. I am weak, I am powerless. I cannot fix our people. We are already lost.”

“No,” Elidibus repeated, shaking his head. “No, She will not take you from me. She will not. She will not!”

He did not move as the darkness lunged from Elidibus’s small form, sinking its teeth into him, snarling and snapping around the Light. It was no true protection, nothing like that which Tempering might have given. A shield easily shattered, brittle as the life they had led before their ruin had come. He broke upon the rock of it, and though Elidibus reached out in desperation, Zodiark answered.

It was like a knife to the heart. Blood fell to the grass below as Hermes collapsed to his knees, life and aether leaking from the wound. Elidibus was beside him, holding him, whispering desperately, weaving magicks that were no longer his to command in a desperate attempt to save him.

“It’s… ok,” Hermes said, every word an effort. One hand reached up to touch his face, the red of his blood lost against the Convocation mask. “I cannot… save… our people. But I… will save… you.”

Elidibus howled, the agonised noise more painful than any mortal wound. The crystal, so solid and sure at the top of the Capitol, seemed to fracture just a little at the sound. He had known he would not live to see it. But life was more than the cycle of a single soul.

One day, what was left of him would know.