#he still takes the aid from ardbert at amaurot with the statement that

[minarcana]

[ofdragonsdeep]

9: Friable

What soul would not fray under the burden of Light?

(Existential dread, unsettling descriptions of Light-sickness, discussion of death)

9: Friable

It was like aetherial static in the back of his mind, the hiss and twinkle of the Light. The stillness wrested him towards it, a beckoning call of emptiness, perfection in stasis. What had once sounded ill against the ears felt welcome.

Ar’telan sat in his room at the Pendants, his eyes upon the window. The shutters had been thrown wide as so many had at the subsidance of the Light, and night twinkled in the distance. Stars so like his own, but pale and reflected in the mirror of the sky.

“World’s got you pensive of late, hasn’t it?”

Ardbert’s ghost walked over to the window, staring out at the land beyond. If Ar’telan had struggled, then Ardbert had suffered tenfold. Watching as his world curdled like milk under the Light, knowing that it had been his choices that made it so, his goodness which damned it. Ar’telan had thought them alike when they had met upon the Source, united in distrust for Hydaelyn even as they were pitted against each other, like chess pieces in the game of foes. Of late he was disliking being found right.

“It feels wrong,” Ar’telan said, knowing that Ardbert would hear him with the Echo despite being faced away. “Not… Not Norvrandt. But-”

“Aye, it eats you. I can see it,” Ardbert agreed, casting a glance back at him. “Why do you hide it? You know those friends of yours would do anything to protect you.” Ar’telan looked from Ardbert to the stars outside the window.

“As did yours.”

The silence that met the statement was tangible, and only a frustrated sigh from Ardbert broke it. Neither of them could talk now, even though Ardbert had been the voice of his companions when they had cast themselves as the Warriors of Darkness.

He had wondered how it felt, back then, but perhaps he had known for longer than he thought.

The solid wall of aether which bordered the desert of Ahm Araeng was a sight to behold. It had been even before the Lightwarden had fallen, but illuminated in the glow of night it was a truly marvelous creation.

In the ruined palace at Nabaath Araeng, Ar’telan walked across the sandy tile. It was here that Ardbert’s friends had died - here where Minfilia had perished, first to stop the Flood, and then to save Ryne from the fate of her predecessors.

They say that we are heroes, giving our all to protect the weak and innocent. But we are bodies like all the others, thrown upon the walls of war to rot.

His gaze drew up to the apex of the Light, feeling the roiling aether within it despite its stillness. Beyond it was emptiness, silence, and the slow and rotting death of the Light. Scrubbed of the imperfections of life. He took a step towards it. Then another. The ringing in his head scratched against the glass like claws, clamouring for freedom.-

The misty axe in his path stopped him dead from the sheer surprise of it, and a look to his side found Ardbert, shaking his head at him.

“Leaving the show early? Doesn’t seem fair,” he remarked, which got a weak laugh from Ar’telan.

“Strange to think that one Ascian’s death could cause this,” he said. Ardbert made a noise of hollow amusement.

“Always the way with them, isn’t it? Not like it matters to them, the bastards,” he agreed. Ar’telan thought of Igeyohrm, her talents too great, losing a world to the darkness. He thought of her shrieks of agony as she had died under the aether, trapped still and torn asunder. Perhaps he knew how that felt. Perhaps.

Emet-Selch had said that it was simple to replace an Ascian, even one of their vaunted red-masked brethren. Another soul that seemed alike to the dead, elevated to their position. But they had not replaced Igeyohrm. They had not replaced Lahabrea. Was it a direct lie, or one of omission? Only a fool would truly trust an Ascian, and yet…

And yet.

Sand toppled from the brickwork suspended in the frozen light, disturbed by the wind so newly returned to Ahm Araeng. Ar’telan flinched as it threatened to sting at his eyes, but Ardbert simply watched as it passed straight through him, like so much else had. Perhaps that was the most tragic fate for the heroes forged by Hydaelyn, after all. To be surrounded by suffering, an island in an ocean of sorrow, and be unable to render aid.

The bustle of activity around the grand lift to the top of Kholusia’s cliffs was a stark contrast to the stifling light that lit their work. Ar’telan sat upon crates, distanced from the busywork he could no longer aid, drinking in the atmosphere of enthusiastic camaraderie.

The arrival of Emet-Selch seemed inescapable, in the situation, and Ar’telan sat and listened to him talk, as he often did. His words made the same kind of almost-sense that they always had, the same way that Elidibus did, that if you tilted your head and saw things just skewed enough, it would seem a foregone conclusion. Ar’telan supposed that to the Ascians, it must have seemed as though their enemies were the ones who were so close to truth, but who saw things just a fraction too sideways.

“If we mire ourselves in the past, we forsake the future,” he said, which earned him a scoff from Emet-Selch.

“I think I would rather forsake a half-alive future if it meant reclaiming what was lost,” he disagreed. “I had hoped that you might understand, having lived as you have. A pity.” Ar’telan looked away, his gaze unfocussed, the memories coming unbidden to the surface. Of course it would feel as though it had been stolen from them - all who had lost felt the same. But they had waited and yearned for so long, Ar’telan wondered if they truly remembered what they longed for any more.

“It is the nature of life to turn,” he said. “To live and to love and to lose. To feel certain, and then crack like glass.” The light in his soul strained against the bounds of it at his words, and he winced at the pain and the horrible echo on the inside of his ears. “I too had family. Friends. Loves. Ones that you would say did not matter, content in your comforting hypocrisy.” Emet-Selch watched him, something unsettling in his keen amber eyes. “We rob each other of dreams with every breath. Zodiark. Hydaelyn. Amaurot.” The sigh, so deep and wistful, felt oddly familiar. “You are just like Elidibus. You say that it would make sense if we knew, and then you do not tell us. If you are so confident in your veracity, then speak it aloud.”

“Strange that you would say that,” Emet-Selch said, stretching his arms above his head with a satisfying crack of joints. “Ah, well. I am content to wait, hero. Unlike you mortals, I have the luxury of time.”

“Lahabrea thought the same,” Ar’telan replied, and Emet-Selch went still, as though the words had actually given him pause.

“Perhaps he did. Perhaps he did not,” he said. “He was ever a fire, was Lahabrea, stoked every higher with the fervour of righteousness. The friction was inevitable, I suppose.” He gave Ar’telan a searching look. “Do you believe you are strong enough, hero? To prove me right?” Ar’telan shrugged.

“There is no singular hero of the kind for which you wait,” he said. “No one Warrior of Light to lead the people from the darkness of their own hearts. We are small and insignificant in comparison to the souls of eld, perhaps, but we are strong in our multitude. Many hands hold this beacon, not simply my own.” He returned the look with a level one of his own. “The others say that your mind was made up before we began, that you are simply waiting to make your move, and I do not disagree with them, exactly. But I wonder how strong your own conviction is. You more than any Ascian know us mortals well, don’t you? We crumble and fray at the edges, our lives snuffed out too soon for one used to eternity. But the thought lingers. In those we love, in those who mourn us, we live on. In the push for change, in the belief in the righteous, in memory. For those we have lost, for those we can yet save. We are many, but we are the hero that you seek to find.”

Emet-Selch let out a long breath, tendrils of the familiar Ascian darkness gathering around his fingertips as he moved them through the Light-saturated air.

“If you miss those you left behind in Amaurot, then let us remember them for you,” Ar’telan said.

“You do not need to, hero,” Emet-Selch said, a sorrowful note to his voice. “But they will know this iteration of you, all the same.”

It felt like glass, scratching against every surface of his skin. Leaking through the cracks of what was left of him, beautiful and stifling in its surety, its stillness. White and unblemished he would become, the golden threads knitting together what was left in the gaps. Pure and stagnant and- and-

“May I?”

The voice cut across the noise, and his vision cleared, even if it was only for a moment. In the cool halls of Amaurot stood another of the multitudinous ancients, identical in every way. This one was regarding him with a tilted head, some way between curious and amused. Ar’telan, blinking in the aftermath of the light, offered the weakest of nods.

His name, he explained, was Hythlodaeus. It was familiar and not, plucking at the edges of a memory that wasn’t his, floating in the mire of his light-addled soul. He explained with patient ease the truth - the city, its people, Zodiark. The role which Emet-Selch had taken upon himself. The familiarity of Ar’telan’s own, a soft laugh on the shade’s indiscernible lips at the thought of it. And when it was done, he vanished, part played - Ar’telan and Ardbert both stood in blinking confusion at his departure.

“The same soul…” Ardbert muttered to himself as Ar’telan reached up to take the papers offered to him by the shade of the clerk.

“Emet-Selch would have seen it if it were true,” he said. “If he is strong enough to pluck a soul from the lifestream.” Ardbert made an unhappy noise.

“Aye, perhaps, if his mind wasn’t rotted with Zodiark,” he offered. “Hard to think about, isn’t it? To lose so many.”

“But they won,” Ar’telan said. “They saved their star. Oblivion beckoned and they held fast against the tide, strong in their multitude.”

“But it wasn’t enough, was it?” Ardbert said, a bitter note in his voice. “So they’ll do it to us a dozen times over. Fatten us up and slaughter us like sheep for their god.” His fingers clenched into a fist, though even in this aether-rich city he would not have been able to strike the wall in any way that mattered. “Do they even listen to themselves? Who are they saving? Who?!”

“We’re not so different,” Ar’telan said, his voice quiet. “To them, I mean. We would live in the wake of their deaths, or so they see it. No matter that the lives were freely given. No matter that the dead lived on in the life they created. Every moment we breathe is another that we drive the dagger deep into the heart of what once was.”

“It’s madness,” Ardbert said. “Madness! To accuse us of killing the dead!”

“Zodiark is a primal,” Ar’telan said. “They were Tempered. They still are, they must be. To them… To Zodiark…” Ardbert kicked the floor in frustration.

“Aye, and so is Hydaelyn, to hear them talk,” he spat. “So are we the same, then? Tempered thralls compelled to do her bidding? To expunge the darkness no matter the cost to those who yet live?” Ar’telan looked down at his hands, sparkling with brilliant Light, and thought of Minfilia.

“Some, perhaps. But not us,” he said. “When we first met we were the same. Wearied by our battles, carrying the weight of how pointless it seemed. We met on opposing sides, but you knew-”

“That you didn’t trust her. Maybe, but still…” Ardbert tried, but the fight was gone from his voice now.

“Did you not hear it when I spoke to Emet-Selch? He says that he believes, and he has the conviction of a broken man. He does believe, with every fibre of his being - devotion demands no less. But he skirts around the edges like a caged animal, longing for a way out.”

“And is this it? To bring the hopes of both our worlds crumbling down around us?” Ardbert asked, a hopeless look in his eyes. “To put his hope in a myth, as if it will make manifest like this cursed city?”

“We shall give him a myth,” Ar’telan said, though the Light inside him pulsed to disagree. “Show that their sacrifice was not meaningless. Live, with every screaming nerve, with every agony, with every joy. What else is there to do?” Ardbert considered it, looking down at his ghostly hands as if in a trance. How it must have hurt, to see the Light that he set free corrupt every tendril of the hero they had trusted in. To see another victory snatched away at the final moment, replaced with the crushing understanding of defeat. How many horrors could one soul see?

Many more, if Emet-Selch’s vigil was any proof.

“Aye. Perhaps you’re right,” Ardbert allowed. “Though I couldn’t have thought of it when first we met, a thin and lonely shadow. I won’t leave you to fight this war alone.” Ar’telan offered a smile, though he was loathe to truly part his lips, lest the light shine through the spaces.

“Thank you,” he said.

If nothing else, they would part as friends.