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“A polymorphic Concept is preposterous. Such a thing goes against the very rules that we abide by here in Amaurot; our Creations are communal, our appearance is communal. To change one’s self to be something non-communal is simply banned. Do you understand? This is the last time we will even bring you forward to discuss this. All other applications of this type will be rejected on sight and should you persist, your right to create will be revoked.”
The administrator bellowed at Iosis, still young at a little over two-hundred, but old enough to know better. The Amaurotine was one of the few gifted as a natural polymorph, and despite their best efforts had been rejected time and again to bring the joys of it to the rest of Amaurot. They had been reprimanded on more than one occasion for expressing their polymorphism in public.
“Your obsession with self-expression is dangerous, and unbecoming of the spouse of a Convocation member. You would do well to control these desires and channel them into something else.”
Iosis said nothing, their mask hiding the tears welling in their eyes as they turned and left, the sheer bristling of their soul causing others to veer away from them like a tide going out. Such that it was, one attuned to their aether could have probably sensed it from miles away. Iosis stormed down the street, pulling their hood back and throwing their mask to the ground, shattering the delicate porcelain it had been made from. Head down, nobody daring to get near them as they marched their way back to their - Hades’ - apartment. Unaware of the world, they were almost knocked over when a replacement porcelain mask clapped onto their face.
“Rejected again?” Hythlodaeus’ voice was calm, a hand on Iosis’ shoulder holding them in place.
“They don’t understand, Hyth. I want for people to be able to go out there, enjoy a new experience that’s them , soar like so many of the creatures we’ve made, run like the beasts far outside the city.”
Hythlodaeus carefully pulled Iosis’ hood back over their head, obscuring the small horns the Amaurotine was often found with. “You know why they can’t allow it. It’s better this way.” He walked slowly alongside them, his calm and easy soul smoothing out the spines of Iosis’ presence. “Channel those things into your creatures. Make them grander than you could be to compensate. Aren’t those Concepts usually well received?” Hythlodaeus asked slowly. Ira shrugged slowly. “They are. It’s not the same, though.” Hythlodaeus made a considering sound, rubbing his chin. “Then consider this something wholly and completely unique to you. Polymorphs aren’t common, and nothing would be more taboo than being utterly and wholly unique, don’t you think?”
Iosis was silent for a while, lifting their head as a slow smirk curled on their lips. “I suppose so. I think if I got reprimanded again Ha...Emet-Selch would throw a fit.” He had a title now. One that must be spoken in open spaces. His name was for privacy only.
Hythlodaeus laughed, slinging an arm around Iosis’ shoulders. “Let him have his fit. He loves you too much to really stop you, anyway.”
On cue, the aether shifted and Emet-Selch stepped out of a rift, dressed in Convocation robes and mask. “What is going on? Why could I feel your aether piercing through me from ten miles away, dear monster?” he asked frantically, his eyes settling on the slight peaks of horns pressing into Ira’s hood. Emet-Selch deflated with a slow breath. “You presented the polymorph Concept didn’t you.”
Iosis’ soul retreated, small as it could be as they rubbed their arm. Hythlodaeus’ and Emet-Selch’s aether wrapped around it, knowing their tendency to withdraw when they felt slighted. “No, no, no. You are fine, you can come back. I know this meant a lot to you, my dear. You know how things work in Amaurot though.”
“I know.”
The words hung heavily, Iosis’ hands shaking as Emet-Selch embraced them, a barely contained supernova. His fingers dug into their shoulders as he felt talons press through his robes. Muscles of powerful wings flexed under his grip, beneath the linen of their robes. “Don’t. Let it pass.”
Their body went slack, aether loosening as their form returned to normal. Emet-Selch breathed a slow sigh of relief, nodding to Hythlodaeus. “I’ll take them home. Thank you for keeping their wits about them whilst I made my way here.”
A rift opened, gently leading his spouse through with him.
“Do you think horns would suit me?”
The lalafell did not receive a response. “Emet-Selch?” They lifted their head from their book, the Ascian staring off blankly into space. “Emet!” they shouted again, making him blink a few times and move from his statue-like position, unbreathing. “So loud, hero. What’s on your terrible little goblin mind that requires my attention?”
“I asked if you thought horns would suit me.”
Emet-Selch blinked a few more times. Thousands of years, and that is what your mind still fixates upon? He thought to himself. Clearing his throat, he laughed dryly. “So you’d match your temperament? How does one even propose obtaining horns that aren’t those stage play ones?”
Ira bit their bottom lip for a moment. “Well, I was hoping you’d help.” Emet-Selch scoffed in response. “You think me able to just snap my fingers and craft your body anew? It takes plenty energy enough to change my own.”
They sighed and set their book down. “No, you’re right. It’s just sometimes, I look in the mirror and think…” they trailed off, flexing their fingers. His eyebrows quirked as he saw the shift of aether, running like veins through to the lalafell’s fingers, the way they used to when they first started being able to shapeshift their appearance. It fizzled out into nothing with Ira voicing an exhausted sound.
Emet-Selch let out a slow, long breath, pinching the bridge of his nose as he stood up from the bed he’d been dozing on. “On your feet, hero. Describe to me the horns you find yourself enamoured with.”
There was the smallest lift in Ira’s elfin ears as they hopped up from their chair. “Polymorphic aether manipulation is dangerous, you understand? I shall give you the means, but you must be the one to direct it.”
Fingers snapped and Ira’s vision swam with excess aether, pulling their focus inwards as they tried to visualise the change, squinting up at the Ascian standing watchfully over them. Their fingers flexed, faintly avian joints and claws. No, no, just horns, just horns. Short at first and then slowly lengthening to grow in an arc, flicking upwards at the end, mimicking the archaeodemons they’d seen in Ivalice.
“Describe it. Every detail.”
It was hard for Ira to speak, but they slowly explained the arched, tip-flicked and ridged horns of Archaeodemons, aether shifting and writhing as it pulled its shape together. Emet-Selch watched Ira’s aether carefully, seeing those lingering echoes of the soul he knew so well, for so many centuries. That their desires should remain the same after so long brought a soft, warm smile to Emet-Selch’s face.
“Another reprimand, dear? What happened this time?” Emet-Selch asked with an amused trill. The reaction he got was not what he expected as a glass shattered against the wall in the living room, thrown by a monstrous limb, an extra arm that was halfway between a wing and the arms of one of Iosis’ many Concepts.
“I can’t control it, Hades! I was laughing, my hands, my hands, went to my mouth to cover my teeth and whoops, another reprimand!”
Halfway between here and there in body, legs and feet like a leathery reptile, hands with talons and digits like a bird and two additional malformed wing-limbs, twisted into arms and hands looming across them. Their aether lashed wildly and it was all Emet-Selch could do to try and pull them back. Their teeth sharp and serrated, growling in unworldly undertones, he pulled the Amaurotine into his arms, holding them tight for dear life as he blanketed Iosis’ soul with his own. His spouse returned the embrace after a few agonising, worrying moments, claws of extra limbs resting softly upon his shoulders until they faded into glints of aether, the rest of their body returning to its base appearance.
Polymorphs often had volatile personalities, but in all their years together Emet-Selch had never seen his partner have so much trouble controlling it. He did not speak it, but the aether had begun to rot, spoken only of in meetings of the Convocation.
“Ah- ow, ow, okay! It’s enough! I can’t…” Ira gasped, trying to hold their image there, just the horns, nothing more. Emet-Selch snapped his fingers, removing the glut of aether from Ira’s body, leaving them with ridged, curved horns set onto their scalp. The lalafell’s knees buckled and they reached up to feel along the keratinous ridges of the horns, exactly as they wanted them.
He was amused, to say the least, that over a million years had passed, and yet tendencies remained the same. For a broken little thing, Emet-Selch may have described himself as impressed that they were able to retain their polymorphism, to a degree. He never got to speak it to them before, either too cowardly or held in too highly regarded a position, but he was full of second chances that he never had before.
“I must say, hero, it’s quite the fetching look. Just as much a monster on the outside as you are the inside,” he lilted as he leaned over to playfully sneer at Ira, just barely out of reach of the swipe of slightly, just barely monstrous fingers, grinning at him with sharp, shark-ish teeth. “A little more than you bargained for, perhaps?” He asked as Ira felt their teeth, blinking a few times. “It’s nice. I like it. Feels... me. ”
Emet-Selch’s face curled into a wry smile. They had no idea how exactly right they were.
“In addendum, I now also get to do this,” Emet-Selch piped up brightly, too giddy, Ira backpedaling but not fast enough as he reached down, grasping a horn firmly and stopping their movement. The lalafell wasn’t even able to twist out of the grip, pulling against his grip and making his nails zip across the ridges as he let go. Ira was covering their face, their ears darkened to a deep red as they continued to back away.
“My apologies, did I hurt you?”
Ira was silent. His brow furrowed in concern. “Are you-”
“Never. Do. That. Again.” Their voice was strained, their cheeks ablaze with heat, parting their fingers from their face to stare up at the Ascian with...something he couldn’t quite identify. He raised his hands in surrender, taking a full three fulms back from the lalafell as they came back to their senses, rubbing along the horn and its base. “Ugh, weird. It’s just...weird. Nerves I didn’t have before.” They were mostly musing to themself but Emet-Selch chuckled warmly regardless as he saw the flickers and fluctuations in their aether as the last dregs of polymorph aether settled around their body.
Ira ambled over to the mirror, stroking their new horns, looking at the slight change in the shape of their hands and feet, just a little bit more feral than before. To an untrained eye, it simply appeared that the horns were a costume, nothing more. They realised they were going to have to bat away many a curious hand.
“Do you think your little Scions will react well?” Emet-Selch broke the silence with a probing question that he thought would get a rise out of the lalafell, but found a slow shrug. “They’re used to it. It was Thancred was the one who coined the phrase ‘terrible little demon’ to refer to me.” The Ascian raised a brow mildly. Much the same, but the freedom Ira had in changing their appearance...Iosis would have-
Emet-Selch cleared his throat with a slow smirk. “What say you show them?
“I think they’d be more distracted with trying not to kill you.”
Emet-Selch laughed. “Even after we explained that if one of us should perish, the other surely will too?”
Ira remembered, still on the high of having taken down Pauldia in Il Mheg, returning to the Crystarium. Ryne and Thancred had returned from their excursion and were there when Ira and Emet-Selch emerged from the rift, the Ascian still clad in full Legatus armor.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to summon that many swords, and I don’t think I’ll be able to again.” Ira mused.
A sea of bright blue blades hovered, pointed at Thancred as the tip of his gunblade pressed against Emet-Selch’s throat.
“Ira is my family, and I swore I didn’t know what I’d do if I ever saw your face again. Well, now I guess I do.” His finger hovered over the trigger, a standoff between one blade, and one hundred blades hanging overhead, a precarious chandelier.
Ira looked tired. They tasted blood in their mouth, an unhealed injury they needed time to address properly. “Thancred, don’t.”
The Ascian had to explain, “You see, this fool of a mortal saw fit to pull me back from the Lifestream, but as they are not a complete being , had to do so at physical and aetheric expense. They are linked to me, and I to them.”
Blades shivered and strained to be let go, “If your hero dies, then I die. If I die, the warrior dies. Now, the first I’m sure you do not want, and the second I’m sure your warrior does not want.”
Ryne touched a hand to Thancred’s arm, confirming that Emet-Selch was telling the truth. He hated it. He hated what Ira had done. Ira was his family but for them to bring back an Ascian at such a volatile expense was…
He didn’t think he’d be able to forgive it. Not for a long time.
Thancred’s finger moved from the trigger, and lowered the blade. The sea of summoned rapiers burst into aether and faded away, Ira taking a strained gasp. Thancred saw, for just the briefest of moments, an expression on Emet-Selch’s face that he identified, but refused to believe, was genuine concern.
“If we’re done trying to kill each other, some medical attention wouldn’t go unappreciated.” Ira groaned, holding their side. “I’ll...call Urianger on linkpearl. You, Ascian , take Ira to Spagyrics.”
Since then, the relationship between Ira and Thancred was strained, the hyur finding it hard to not centre his conversations on Ira’s budding relationship with the Ascian, even as they tried to explain everything. Ryne would often look peculiarly at the two of them, seeing something Ira could not, and that Emet-Selch deigned not to.
Word had propagated throughout the Scions on the First that Emet-Selch was truly returned in physical body, and the link between him and the Warrior of Light. The reaction to the news was universally...negative. Ryne was the only voice that tried to plead Ira and Emet-Selch’s case, trying to explain what she saw. Y’shtola had shouted her down, claiming the concept of an Ascian being in love with anybody was preposterous.
Yet Ryne saw it, clear as day. While Emet-Selch and the lalafell spent most of their time exchanging sharp words, she saw how their aether leaned and laced itself together.
“Ira...Are you and Emet-Selch in love?” she asked hesitantly, sitting at the fire with Ira, who was explaining summoning magic to her. Snoozing in a larger chair by the window, Emet-Selch visibly stiffened, while Ira nearly spat out their tea, swallowing it so they could burst out laughing. “What on Norvrandt would make you ask such a thing?” Ira chuckled after catching their breath.
“Your aether, and his. I often see it...weaving together. When you’re relaxed and next to each other. I won’t tell anyone. I know the others are still…”
Ira’s ears visibly dipped down, looking to the side. “I don’t know. I wish I could tell you, but I’d need to know myself first.”
Still ‘sleeping’, Emet-Selch relaxed, letting out an undignified snore.
Ira’s hands flexed, inspecting how the changes had just barely touched their extremities, the faintest change in shape that made them appear almost Ixali. They looked back up to their horns, stroking them again, a grin spreading across their face. “Thank you, Emet.”
He knelt down in front of Ira to try and touch, but was swatted away. “No. Hells no.” So much distrust was there in physicality still.
“Can I not simply inspect some skilled handiwork?”
Ira huffed. “Not with your hands you can’t.”
“Well I need to look closer!” he pouted, grabbing Ira and pulling them into his arms, standing so that the lalafell was slung in one arm safely. His gaze raked over the horns and he looked down his nose at Ira, bicolour eyes scrutinising him in return. “Ugh. You’re incorrigible,” Ira grumbled, wresting themself out of his arms and landing on the floor.
“I’m going out anyway to get some food and sit on the lawns. Spagyrics still haven’t cleared me and being stuck here is starting to make me stir crazy. You’re welcome to join me if it will entertain you.”
Emet-Selch shrugged his shoulders. “Eating, how droll. No, I think I shall find my entertainment elsewhere. Perhaps I will watch the day drunks at the wandering stairs. Maybe I’ll even pay your other partner a visit.” There was jealousy laced into his words. “If you’re going to go and be a nuisance to ‘Raha, at least tell him to persuade Spagyrics to clear me.”
Ira was barely paying attention as they changed their clothes, knowing there was never a time when Emet-Selch wasn’t watching them, even if he claimed to be elsewhere. His eyes drifted, absentmindedly, looking at the pale white scar on their back, but a faint outline on their skin, stretch marks that left an echo of small wings on their skin.
“Hero,” Emet-Selch started, turning away again as the lalafell pulled on loose denim pants, lazily half-tucking their red shirt into its waistband. “Don’t do anything rash.”
“While I’m getting some soup and fish out on the lawns? Wouldn’t dream of it, Emet-Selch.”
As they opened the door, shooting a wink and a finger gesture at them he recognised as the sign for a gun , he let out a soft huff of concern. The door closed and Emet-Selch remained tapped onto the anchor, Ira not as sensitive, or well trained to notice his aether listening in, feeling that longing for the rush of wind howling around their ears.
Hades was soaring, and Iosis alongside him. The Concept rejected so many times, they had given to him as a gift. Of course, a very secretive gift given that rejected Concept matrices were supposed to be destroyed.
He laughed, tumbling and rolling as grand, black feathery wings held him aloft with ease, his spouse diving and soaring above the spires of Amaurot on imposing, leathery wings, tucking them tight to their body, plummeting, then unfurling to gain back all the height they’d lost. He understood. He finally understood why Iosis wanted this for Amaurot so badly. To be able to soar, tumble and see the world from so high up.
“Think fast, Hades!”
It startled him into doing the exact opposite as Iosis collided with him, tucking their wings in, to fall with him together in a tight grip before catching the wind on the broad sails of their wings, pulling him up as he mimicked their motion, letting go, the two of them gliding apart, before drifting together again, two-toned souls tumbling through the air.
Iosis descended, landing on one of the ladder-like spires, making a flock of multicoloured birds scatter as they perched with reptilian legs and feet, looking for all the world like one of the stone gargoyles they’d insisted he place on some of the buildings around the city. Hades was...less graceful, but found his footing, sitting next to his spouse with a low sigh. “I’m sorry for ever doubting this. For...doubting you.”
They shook their head, stretching and folding their wings neatly on their back, before they disappeared in gold-swirled aether. “Amaurot is Amaurot. But outside and above the city, I can be whatever I want.”
Hades draped a soft, feathered wing around them, leaning against them as they watched the sun give way to stars, gems strewn on a pelt of black ink, three thousand fulms above the ground.
“What I can’t quite figure out, Emet-Selch, is why you would even entertain the things Ira requests of you. Why would a Sorcerer of Eld deign to spend their time carrying a lalafell on his shoulder?”
It wasn’t quite the line of questioning Emet-Selch had envisioned when he appeared in the Exarch’s suite at The Ocular. Nay, he had full intent to do the questioning.
“I feel it rather prying to ask a man why he would spend time with the vaunted Warrior of Darkness , do you not?” Emet-Selch bristled in response. “Similarly I might wonder why the Crystal Exarch is trying to butter up said Warrior with sandwich picnics and storytime. ”
The Exarch allowed a smirk to curl on his lips. “Get under your skin, does it? Not that it’s yours anyway.”
“Sharp words from a man who spends his life being so soft and kind. I’ll have you know this body, for once, is quite my own.” His arms folded slowly over his chest, curling his fingers around upper arms. “Forgive me if I don’t extend that kindness to the man who shot and kidnapped me. You might have Ira in your influence but suffice to say the rest of us aren’t as impressed.”
Emet-Selch looked aside, almost as if genuinely hurt. “I already proved myself to the only one that matters.”
“The only one that matters? They might be the only one that matters to you, but we matter to them. You’d do best to accustom yourself to that if you want to keep your proof.”
Emet-Selch swallowed his rage. The point was salient. He was no longer here for the Rejoining, he was here for…
Ira. The name felt strange to even think of. He wandered out onto the tether in soul, and was met with the sound of rushing wind. Emet-Selch’s eyes widened and a rift opened. The Exarch was shouting at him, something about him having to try harder, something about helping the Scions go home.
The words fell on deaf ears as black-purple smoke bloomed in the room, Emet-Selch rushing through the rift in a hurry. The Exarch blinked a few times, furrowing his brow. Had he seen...fear?
Ira was falling. They were falling from the airship landing and, quite frankly, it wasn’t the rush they were hoping for. The ground of Lakeland was rushing up to meet them and there was just something to this thrill missing. They brought a thumb and finger to their mouth and whistled sharply to summon Midgardsormr’s echo, holding out an arm to grab the harness as the dragon swept by.
It was not a dragon that caught them, however, but the strong grip of slender arms, long fingers holding them tight to a body Ira heard shouting, and looked up at in confusion.
They’d seen him fly before, at the top of Mount Gulg, but not in this way. Not with huge, black feathery wings of a crow, his face torn into blind panic as they opened, catching the air and slowing the descent. Midgardsormr’s sweep caught just short as the dragon flew beneath them.
“Are you mad , hero? Fully out of your mind? If you die, I die. Do you want to die? ”
The beating of wings sounded familiar and Ira tried to bring their senses back from the rush they felt when Emet-Selch opened his wings and caught the updraft of air. Emet-Selch was calling for them, but by a name that was just static to them, a linkpearl damaged. They felt bliss as he carried them to a ledge, landing clumsily, the act of flying this way all but forgotten, only the taught Concept remaining. Midgardsormr’s echo landed beside them, rattling a predatory sound as Emet-Selch snapped his fingers, dismissing it back into the aether.
“Do you even hear me?!” he bellowed, Ira blinking a few times back to their senses, the willowy Ascian shrouding them with body and wings. They didn’t have sharp words to trade, their brow furrowed at the sight of the grand wings keeping them shaded. “I was...fine. Midgardsormr would have caught me. I just felt like..” They shook their head. They sounded addled. “Whatever they’ve been giving me at Spagyrics must have scrambled me fiercely.”
Emet-Selch held them tight to his chest, knelt on Light-bleached wildflowers. The lalafell didn’t know what to think of this. His own selfish fear of death? They closed their eyes, attuning to the anchor.
No.
It wasn’t.
The Echo gave them the faintest memory, so long ago it should have been all but out of their reach, more than hundreds, more than thousands of years ago. But they saw Emet-Selch soaring, and somebody alongside him, laughing and tumbling and swooping. They had horns, arched and ridged. Just like the ones Ira dreamed of, the ones Ira now had. They felt the rush that they had craved as they pushed off the airship landing.
“Let’s keep you to just horns for now, hero,” he sighed softly, standing back up, still holding Ira to his chest, and stretching out huge, grand wings Iosis had taught him how to make thousands of years ago. In a single beat that kicked up dust and loose petals, the ground was far away from the both of them.