#it doesn't even really evoke phoenix in the end but we tried

[ofdragonsdeep]

6: Halcyon

A fabled bird.

In the midst of trying to stop Athena, Ar'telan has a question for Lahabrea's shade.

In the shallowest reaches of the aetherial sea, Ar'telan beheld a ghost.

They were not ghosts in the way that the souls that drifted by were ghosts. Oh, they were dead, but this was far, far worse than a meeting with the departed.

Athena had created them on a whim. Ar'telan did not pretend to understand why she did what she did, only knew that it was abhorrent to him in every incarnation. She wanted him to find her, he thought, and this was a way to help.

It was likely she hadn't even considered that it would hurt.

The researchers had kept their distance from Lahabrea, but despite Erichthonios's uncanny resemblence to Claudien, they were happy enough to speak with him about the nature of the issue they faced. Erichthonios had not been a scholar in life - a phrase that hurt, knowing he could step through time and see him living, if only for a fleeting moment - but he still knew a great deal about this.

Lahabrea stared at him.

He should have left long before this, of course. He had never had a conversation with Lahabrea that did not end in disaster, and this was not like to be the first time. This simulacrum, pasted over with a hasty coat of paint, would not have the answers Ar'telan had wanted from Lahabrea and never managed to seize. He couldn't look at him without remembering the pain that he had caused.

"I see now why you could not elaborate in Pandæmonium," he said eventually, his voice quiet, but it carried in the silence. Ar'telan took a breath that failed to calm his nerves.

"A shame that you will never truly know that."

Lahabrea nodded, his face pensieve. It was strange to see him without the immediate burdens of his role weighing on his shoulders, though given the nature of their foe, the stress was never far from him.

"You and I are both aware that I am barely a person in my current state. This form will last until the aether Athena stole to forge it fades, and she did not plan for that to take long. Yet you stare at me as if I can help you." Ar'telan fought the urge to flinch.

"You can't. I know that."

"Then leave." He folded his arms. "It is only a matter of time before Athena conjures some new horror to bar your way. You will not want for distractions."

Ar'telan hesitated. He was almost certainly right - a situation he did not like to attribute to Lahabrea, but not unusual in the grand scheme of things. But he was all that was left of Lahabrea, save for the broken shell of Hephaistos. And Hephaistos would not know anything that would help Ar'telan, so he would not burden him with the question.

"I want… an answer to a question," Ar'telan said eventually, swallowing back his nerves.

"Do you think I can give that to you?"

There was no malice in it, just a simple statement of fact. It was very like the Lahabrea he had met in Pandæmonium, and unlike the Lahabrea of his time. Of this time.

"…No. But I wanted to ask. If you do, then…" Then what? He didn't even know. The spectre of Lahabrea's fate haunted him still, how even his desperate attempts to save the ones who wanted him dead had been unable to reach the first of them he had wanted to save.

For a while, he had thought it the desperate desires of a fool. But he had saved Elidibus, after a fashion. A small fragment of him, but what else was left, after all that time broken?

Could he even weather it?

"I suppose I owe you a question," Lahabrea allowed. "Ask. But do not expect an answer."

Ar'telan supposed it was the best he would get.

"I have… something," he said. "I wanted to know if- if it meant anything." He ignored the puzzled quirk of an eyebrow Lahabrea responded with, reaching into his pocket and pulling from it the one thing he had never told anyone else about. To hold out the crystal to Lahabrea, even this recreation, felt somehow wrong to him. But he did it all the same.

Lahabrea's expression went from puzzled to a frown of concern. He reached out as if to touch it, but paused before his fingers met the crystal.

"…This is… The same substance as the Heart of Sabik," he said. It was a credit to his stoicism that he could say it without even a hint of fear in his voice, after everything the Heart had done to him. "Black auracite."

"Yes."

"Where did you get this?"

"You gave it to me."

The pause was palpable. There was no outward change to Lahabrea's expression, but there was the subtlest shift in his stance. Ar'telan knew it well for what it was, after all this time. Hesitation.

"It was a gift, I think. But I'm still not sure," he continued. "I… wanted it to be a gift. But…"

"I cannot think of any reason that I might want to give you a fragment of something so uniquely dangerous," Lahabrea said, his tone frank. "This is not the same stone as the Heart. But something lurks within it still." Ar'telan started in surprise at that, closing his hand around the stone as if Lahabrea might think to take it from him. "Do not mistake me," he said. "It is the barest wisp of essence. One of your aetheric composition would be entirely unable to detect it, much less interact with it." He frowned. "But if it was me who gave you this, and it is not the Heart, then it is not the tiniest fragment of Athena who sleeps within it. We are not enemies, but even if we were, I would not inflict her upon you so." He shook his head. "The corruption concerns me, but it is not cleansable. Why did I give this to you?" Ar'telan looked down at his closed fingers.

"…I don't know," he replied. "I thought perhaps if I showed it to you, even if you could not give me the answer, I would… figure it out from what you said. But I just have more questions now."

"I do not know if it is true in the present, but Auracite was incredibly difficult to procure in my own time," Lahabrea said. "If I truly gave you this token, I did not do so lightly. The fact that it is corrupted is… concerning, but irrelevant. Do you truly know nothing of why?"

"It's… complicated," Ar'telan replied. "I didn't think much of it at the time. Well, I… I did, but not… not in a way that mattered." Lahabrea's concerned frown did not shift. "A different question, then. If you had the Heart of Sabik when you died, would you suffer the same fate as Athena?"

"Perhaps," Lahabrea replied. "It would depend upon the manner in which I met my demise. Assuming there was naught else to trap my soul, and there was… room, within the stone, I imagine I would be similarly imprisoned." He folded his arms. "The soul over which my likeness has been written is not my own. It is not even a fragment of my own, just as Erichthonios is not his own."

If there were nothing else to trap it…

"And if it were trapped, could I get it out?" Ar'telan asked. Lahabrea sighed.

"Perhaps," he repeated. "Extracting a soul from a prison not designed for such a thing is rarely a clean experience. And depending upon the manner of my death, I suspect it would be kinder to release my spirit to the aetherial sea, rather than attempt extraction." Ar'telan grimaced at how easily he could speak of his own death. "There is much you have not told me, this is plain," he added. "But you know me. For it to be me that you know, in this present, then I have been alive far longer than man is meant to live before his return to the star. If you truly seek to recover this… present incarnation of me from a supposed prison, I cannot guarantee that he will much resemble me." He paused. "Though I suspect you know this already, given your actions in Pandæmonium."

"…Yes," Ar'telan replied.

"I would tell you not to attempt anything rash, but you are a shard of Azem. No matter how diminished your soul, I suspect their capacity for utter stupidity that still somehow does nothave consequences has carried over," Lahabrea remarked. Ar'telan sighed.

"If only there were no consequences," he said, "but thank you. I will… I will get help before I do something stupid."

It was a promise he might even keep.

---

It was only when the dust had settled that Ar'telan had the time to think about the question he had asked.

He sat in his room at the Rising Stones, crystal in his hand. For so long he had held on to it, long after the hope of Lahabrea speaking to him about all that had happened had died. He had been so scared, back then. Even now, having sorted through the feelings, having learned so much about the Ascians - about the Ancients - he still didn't understand it, not really.

He had seen the memory, just like everyone else in Pandæmonium. Lahabrea had searched so desperately for love that he had damned himself, and found nothing. He had cut out his passion in Hephaistos, but he could never cut out his heart. It had been a long time - millenia of waiting, of fighting, of endless hosts and exposure to the stone that held the woman who had hurt him the most. It was no wonder that Lahabrea did not remember him, being a mere footnote in the story of Pandæmonium as he had been, but…

Elidibus had held on to something. Something of Azem, yes, but something of him, too. And Elidibus had been broken beyond belief by his death and subsequent rebirth. Surely Lahabrea would have rememebered something. If not him, surely he would have held on to the fact that nothing hurt more than looking for love and finding none where it should have been promised.

Lahabrea had acknowledged his part as the villain, though. He had admitted he would do it, if the need arose, even if that had been an untempered memory. Ar'telan thought about the stories Erichthonios had told him, in explaining the Phoinix, of Lahabrea's search for the bird of eternal life. Of Suzaku, an auspice and phoenix both, that proved his success.

What drove him? What had driven him then? Did Ar'telan even have the right to think of finding that ragged soul and begging answers of it one last time?

He did not like to think what it would do to him if he did not like the answer. But he owed it to him to look, if only to grant him the peace of a death not tainted by what had happened in the Singularity Reactor.

He would find it, somehow. If nothing else, even what was left of Lahabrea would find the parallels amusing.