Archive of Our Own

He met her on a rainy day about a week after the old Emet-Selch gave up her seat and it was taken by the almost infamous half of a pair from her Bureau. Considering that the rain had gone from harsh to torrential in the few minutes it took him to gather his belongings from his desk and to get there, he stood beside the door scowling. The one day he did not carry an umbrella of any sort, the one day he was too exhausted to create one on the go—not to mention the absurd collection of black umbrellas in his apartment, all lovingly stacked but long forgotten.

She waltzed out of a hallway with a content little smile on her face; a smile that froze once she realised how harsh the rain was.

“Oh. Oh my,” she muttered and looked around. She froze somewhat once she finally saw him, then raised her hand a little in greeting. “How… how long has it been raining?”

“Quite a while now,” he replied with an exhausted sigh, not entirely willing to admit how jealous he was of her pulling an umbrella out of thin air. For as much as he loved Anyder there were times where even he desperately wanted to be home.

She seemed to evaluate the situation a little, judging from how she chewed on her lips for a bit. Then, finally, recognition. “Oh! You are the Speaker’s right hand, are you not? What was your name again….”

He merely waved a hand through the air with a non-committal hum and adjusted his mask a little. “Doesn’t matter. You should get going; it does not seem like this will let up any time soon and the sun will set just as soon. Rain and the dark make for a perilous path home.”

She eyed him for a moment—and then raised a hand to her face. She also let out a hum as she evaluated the situation more.

She tilted her head to the side a little as she looked at him. “Say, uhm… you seem to be lacking an umbrella. Considering your position you are likely rather exhausted, and I was wondering… where do you live, exactly? I could walk you home.” She grinned at him as she popped the umbrella open with a flourish and a twirl, and with a lout popping sound it grew large enough to cover the two of them. He looked at the flower pattern adorning it; it spoke volumes about its creator. She was talented but not used to doing anything other than getting the designs approved. A new arrival to Amaurot, then.

He stared out the window for a moment, then sighed in resignation.

“I most definitely do not wish to cause you any trouble.”

“Oh, it would not be any trouble at all! Rain and the dark make for a perilous path home indeed, but it is best spent with company, wouldn’t you agree?”

She was positively beaming at him, green eyes twinkling in the dim light of Anyder this time of day. For all his time assisting the Speaker he had certainly come across many students and those merely coming to listen in on the lectures, but very few dared interact with those that held lectures in a friendly way. It was usually limited to discussions related to the lectures, something that he quite enjoyed. Still, not many people talked to him in such a forward way. Not even the new arrivals—making her something of an oddity. But… who was he to rebuke her for this friendly familiarity?

“Point taken. You are a student here, are you not?”

“Indeed I am!”

He let out an amused snort. “Well, good for you—I, too, live in the student suites, believe it or not.”

For a moment she seemed to process that. A moment later she reached for him and linked their arms together. He barely even had time to grab his own bag before she opened the doors and very happily all but bounced down the stairs. The rain had not let up at all, it near deafened him as she eventually let go of his arm. Still, there was something fun about talking to someone who so unabashedly enjoyed her time in Amaurot. Even through the heavy rain hitting the umbrella he heard the sheer joy in her voice as she led the way—quite confident for someone who admitted she hadn’t been here for more than a month, admitted at Anyder for her outstanding work in some remote town. It sounded quite a lot like the new Emet-Selch’s story, he remarked at some point, and she broke into laughter.

“I ran into the man the other day. He was being dragged along by I presume the chief of his bureau and another, unrelated person. If his story is one of success, then I most certainly hope I can outdo that sorry look!”

He snorted, Lahabrea’s words echoing in his ears. The new Emet-Selch seemed an odd choice to many, but his skills with the Underworld answering his every call was uncontested. Every member of the Convocation had the Sight at the very least, but most of the time those that bore the name Emet-Selch were more intimate with either seeing or calling upon it than others. Still, skilled or not, the man was not exactly the most agreeable colleague, were Lahabrea’s moaning about perhaps seeking an early retirement if this was going to be how every new member of the Convocation was going to be like from here on out.

“Well, with that attitude you may as well make it to gain the honour of a title,” he said softly as they waited for an elevator to the upper floors where their apartments were.

She almost deflated right where she stood, clearly flustered all of a sudden. “I-I. I mean. I, uh. Maybe?” She kicked her feet a little, leaning from one side to the other before she let out an “Oh!” at the same time as the elevator doors slid open.

“Incidentally, would you mind telling me your name after all? I am not exactly familiar with all students who double as lecturers….”

“Me not telling you my name is truly bothering you, is it not?”

“If you don’t wish to share it, I will not press you any further, but I… do wish to address you properly, somehow. I have not yet had the chance to speak with my fellows….”

He nodded. “Bureau of Immigration nonsense, I presume. If you need help with anything, I am quite certain I will find time to lend you a hand, the Speaker be damned. And you may call me Loki.”

She beamed at him when the elevator doors slid open once more and she held out the umbrella. The rain was still going strong even as they arrived at the building that housed most of the students and lecturers alike, and he shook the cold out of his bones as he entered the building. Seeing as he had the luck of having a place not that far up he said that he was going to take the stairs from here on out.

He stopped halfway up the stairs to turn back once again.

“By the way… I seem to have failed to ask you for your name in the end. Mind sharing it with me?”

She giggled in front of the next elevator and patted down the umbrella to its previous size meant for one person. The flower pattern persisted, almost radiant against the black of her robes.

“Well, Lecturer Loki of Akademia Anyder… you may call me Sabik.”

A hundred years meant nothing to them, but he had to admit that he was quite enjoying this century. Sabik eventually mellowed down a little, her excitement eventually replaced with the same focus that every student at Anyder developed. What made her different was the mischievous glint in her green eyes as she personally decided that she was going to cause trouble through an ‘accident’ the very day that Lahabrea had visitors from the Bureau of the Architect. Emet-Selch left with a deep scowl, Chief Hythlodaeus left out of breath and close to toppling over from trying not to burst into laughter. The rest of the students were more interested in how she had come up with a concept that hilarious on the fly—and Loki himself had to choke back laughter just as Chief Hythlodaeus had when Lahabrea forced him to catch the strange creature that Sabik had conjured up. As he tried to hook his fingers into the handiwork of the creation to undo it, he realised a moment too late that perhaps this was going to leave him vulnerable to the creation’s antics. He did indeed leave just as covered in slime as Emet-Selch had, except he was the one laughing and Sabik the one with the very displeased expression. She wildly apologised over and over, tried to wipe the slime off his face whenever she stopped wringing her hands, and all he could do was laugh harder. He nearly lost his mask when he stopped to double over to let out howling laughter that had finally bubbled up from his attempts to keep himself together in public.

He was nearly sobbing by the time Sabik pulled him back to his feet to shove him the last bit of distance to the building, his muttering something incoherent that was really him trying to savour the absolutely delightful view that had been Emet-Selch looking his usual snide self for one moment and then suddenly being covered in this nonsensical goo that still dripped off his robes. The city cleaning services would have a fit—then again, the Bureau of the Architect handled that for the most part. Chief Hythlodaeus was likely laughing himself into the next dimension by now if Emet-Selch hadn’t throttled him to death yet. He handed her his keys with a shaky hand, wheezing softly as she shoved him into his apartment. Hells, he let her do as she pleased, running out and about to clean the trail of slime he had left behind and then when she entered the apartment again she very much seemed to evaluate what to do next for a moment.

But a second later she had thrown the cowl of her robes back and tossed her mask aside. Since he was still wheezing weakly where he had dropped on his couch she brusquely marched forward, sat him back up straight and tossed his cowl back as well. He didn’t even have time to blink at her before she had placed his mask on the table and slapped both her hands against his face.

That finally, finally, made the accursed laugh die in his throat. His entire body ached by now and he let out a groan when she let go of his face again.

“It is very unlike you to go utterly hysterical,” she said as she reached for a damp piece of cloth to wipe the half-dry slime off his face.

He shrugged weakly. “A weakness of mine, perhaps.” Goodness, his voice was hoarse by now, and her eyebrows furrowed a little as he said that. “I have to admit, it was a clever combination of two entirely unrelated concepts. Especially considering that you likely came up with it on the fly, seeing as this was an unannounced visit of the Architect.”

She rolled her eyes. “Impressive or no, I should have considered that someone would have to clean the mess up. I did not think of any way to stop the damned thing, and then you had to work to unravel it as it...” She gestured vaguely and put the cloth aside. “… covered you in slime.”

He snorted and leaned backwards a little. “Slime or not, that was some impressive work. Rest assured, Lahabrea will not have the skin off your back for that, even if he did consider it a childish act. You might see yourself elevated to lecturer student sooner rather than later; he said that your handiwork rivalled that of Chief Hythlodaeus. If the Architect can get over your little prank in due time, perhaps the man will seek you for his own Bureau. But before that, the Akademia would quite enjoy having you teach others how to rout concepts like this on the fly.”

He just couldn’t admit out loud that he truly treasured her presence more than anything else in Amaurot right now. Not many people managed to make him laugh, and he was not going to risk souring that friendship with these less than platonic affections.

The Convocation of Fourteen never had an empty seat. Resignations were to be submitted years in advance, and the very moment the members felt that they could no longer serve the people and Amaurot at full capacity they were asked to find a replacement as soon as humanely possible.

He hadn’t even considered that the honour of a red mask would fall to him.

But Lahabrea was always a member of the Akademia, was always someone who lectured with vim and vigour. It only made sense that he was offered the honour next, yet at the same time he felt as if someone had crushed a concept of a sleeping potion over his head. Sabik was the first to congratulate him, her green eyes gleaming even behind her stark white mask.

She vanished for a while as he prepared for eventually accepting his new title alongside another. Two seats of the Convocation, two new faces that would help steer Amaurot in the right direction; Lahabrea and Mnemosyne both retiring. Perhaps the two of them had planned it, considering that they had always been friends. But as he caught a glimpse of Mnemosyne, there was a deep dark shadow on his face that he had never seen on the man’s face before. Something had made him resign because he felt like he could no longer take care of Amaurot with his whole heart.

The next Mnemosyne was, fortunately or unfortunately, a close friend of Emet-Selch. But much like his Bureau Chief, that person was absolutely nothing like the Architect. They greeted him with a warm welcome, a warm smile—something befitting the member of the Convocation who would spend most of their time everywhere around or outside Amaurot.

“It has been a while since we last spoke, has it not, Loki?”

“It has indeed, Persephone.”

They were of the same age. Same city district, even. But they had never been friends, they had never quite meshed well. But he was a civil person and they simply did not interact with those they deemed uninteresting—thus had they eventually latched onto Hades and Hythlodaeus, and only because of that did he know that those two were the same age as him as well.

“To think that we would both be given the honour of taking up a title and seat at the Convocation, at the same time no less! It is quite amusing how these things work out in the end, is it not?”

He hummed an agreement; few people tried to make him talk more. Sabik was about the only one that managed it, which was hilarious as she often remarked because he worked under and was now going to be the Speaker, of all things. He did love talking about concepts and applications, talked at length with the members of the Convocation that often made their way to his office when the parting Lahabrea was nowhere to be found. But something as idle as mere conversation he had little use for.

Persephone tried it a few more times; they enjoyed idle conversation about little nothings like the weather and the current condition of whatever little pet project garden they were trying to raise now. He bit back his scathing remarks that the only plant they were able to raise was something carnivorous, created by children trying to spite their playmates because their strength did not lay with nurturing anything. They best meshed with the people on the streets, laughing with them and making certain that everything worked the way it did. They would at least make a fantastic duo with the Architect they would work with closely—an already existing friendship made that quite a lot easier.

His position would not change much, he realised as he left the Capitol building later that day after talking thoroughly to the current members of the Convocation that he would be working with after this. He would still hold his seat at Anyder, would continue teaching and creating first and foremost. He was, after all, a mouthpiece for those that sought knowledge in the same sense that Persephone would be one for the people who simply lived in the city.

He paused for a moment when he saw Sabik sitting at a table outside a café. She waved to him, but he did not recognise the person she was with immediately.

He wasn’t the most gifted person around when it came to seeing the colours of the Underworld. Some of his fellows at Anyder claimed that there was a lot more colour to it than he saw, that he missed most of the passing and flitting bits of aether and soul that apparently were all around them. He did, however, see souls in their proper colour. That was enough for him just in the same way that it would never be enough for those that instinctively saw more.

The man Sabik was sitting with had a brilliantly crimson soul—Hythlodaeus. It was astonishing how the former first choice for the title Emet-Selch was so wholly unremarkable even amongst a city of people where gaudy colours and unmasked faces were frowned upon. But the very moment one took a second to look at him even the least skilled with seeing the Underworld were greeted with a bright blaze of colour so intense that even Sabik’s icy blue seemed to drown out next to it.

He waved back and continued walking, not entirely certain what to make of this pair. Then again—perhaps she was being recruited by the Bureau of the Architect after all.

For all the trouble he expected from the moment he was given the title Lahabrea and a red mask, none of it came true. Every single person he came across immediately called him Lahabrea. There were no sudden changes in his schedule outside of the required meetings and conversations with the senior members of the Convocation. Hells, not even Mnemosyne proved to be an issue, seeing as they stuck to Emet-Selch and the crowds that their position demanded they worked with.

The only person who seemed vaguely displeased was Sabik. She played it off as a swing of the mood as this year settled into autumn and continued to talk about the latest lectures and creations she oversaw alongside Mitron and Halmarult. But there was an edge to her voice whenever they spoke and whenever she thought he wasn’t looking properly she started frowning. Despite all her usual cheer and dedication to what she did, something was bothering her and he wasn’t quite able to figure out what.

It wasn’t until he dragged himself out of his office blinking blearily at the windows only to see that it was pouring. Emet-Selch strode past him without a care in the world, swung the doors wide open and marched out into the rain without any sort of umbrella or other thing that could shield him from the torrential downpour. Lahabrea blinked a few times before he realised that the cheeky bastard was using his own powers to keep the rain at bay. A horrendous waste of energy were this power actually needed, but he leaned against the walls with a sigh. It had been three bloody centuries, and he had not gotten better at remembering to mind the weather forecast and taking at least a matrix with an umbrella inside with him. This time there would be no Sabik coming around a corner asking when it had started raining—Emet-Selch had been the last person in here beside him. With a deep, deep breath, he pulled his hood down as far as he could and burst into the rain outside. He stumbled down the stairs, cursing the very day of his birth or the invention of the umbrella concept. If only they had invented something a little less cumbersome or easily forgettable. If only they were all blessed with the same control of the arcane as Emet-Selch had been born with. But as he ran through the streets, every step splashing and sloshing through the heavy rain that only autumn could bring, he couldn’t really bemoan his powers leaning more towards brutish strength compared to the almost whimsical elegance that Emet-Selch worked with.

Eventually, after running for quite a while and not yet having managed half the way to his apartment, he stopped dead in his tracks. Water was running down his face, crisp and cold as only Amaurotian autumn rain could be, his entire robe was dripping and he was soaked to the bone.

Standing in the middle of the street was a person he would recognise anywhere by now, mask or no. Yet it was the umbrella that gave her away—black as so many things here in Amaurot, but with a vibrant flower pattern. Not many people put patterns onto their umbrellas, and this was such a striking pattern that he would have recognised even if he had chosen not to walk with her all those years ago.

“Sabik.”

“Lahabrea.”

There it was again, that edge to her voice that had been there ever since he had accepted that title. It had taken him until now to understand what she meant—it was late. It was dark. He had been running through the rain all by himself, long after the rest of Amaurot had long since departed for dry homes and people they cared about. Though she tried to still show the same cheer around him as she had before, there was a rift between them and it bore his title. He was Lahabrea, after all. One of the Convocation of Fourteen.

Suddenly her talking a lot of Hythlodaeus of the Bureau of the Architect made sense—that man was wholly unremarkable but yet somehow managed to live in one of the most interesting and perhaps even most terrifying situations in all of Amaurot. The two people he was closest to were both members of the Convocation; and suddenly all her attempts at changing the topic from something related to work which she knew he was interested in made sense. All the pointless small-talk she tried to initiate that had missed his interest. All the times she suddenly was busy when she previously had not been. She remained his friend, of course, but she was not happy. And he had been blind. So bloody blind.

He let out a long breath, deflated as he stood there in the rain. All she did was move the umbrella from one shoulder to another.

“Aye. Aye, that is my title, and by the heavens did I act the proper Lahabrea. And forgot there was more than Lahabrea left. All this time I wrecked my brain in my free time to figure out what had changed and found naught—for there was nothing that changed. But it is the title. It is the title, is it not? The duties that come with it.”

She pressed her lips together and said nothing. It was all the answer he needed.

“By the heavens that now pour down upon my foolish head, I solemnly swear that this was not my intention. It was foolish of me to believe that nothing would change and then I failed to see that you did not believe it would work out with us being friends despite the title.”

Her hands were tight around the umbrella by now, white-knuckled as the rain continued pouring. “Chief Hythlodaeus was right to call you an idiot on the same level as Emet-Selch. Perhaps that is the requirement for becoming a member of the Convocation. But… but he called me an idiot on the same level as well.” Her grip on the umbrella lightened a little, and she absent-mindedly twirled it a little. “At first I thought it was the title as well. I said that, I asked him time and time again how he managed with his best friends being so busy and so important to Amaurot. After the seventh time of entertaining me by reassuring me that even with the title the people stayed the same, he started frowning and asked if I was truly worried about you just being busy.”

Emet-Selch never quite confirmed or denied that he and Hythlodaeus were a thing. Even Mnemosyne, arguably their best friend, shrugged and said that they had no idea when asked about it. He was mentally beating himself up with a stick by this point; truly, he deserved being the one standing here completely soaked to the bone and shivering slightly.

“I wasn’t, I realised,” Sabik said softly and avoided looking at him. “It was naught more than petty, childishly jealous—“

She didn’t get to finish the sentence. He started running towards her while she avoided looking at him, and finally interrupted her by all but tackling her. They both fell to the ground with a yelp, him already soaked to the bone and her umbrella all but flying away on the autumn wind.

“Aye, ‘twould seem Chief Hythlodaeus had a point,” he laughed. “We both are idiots and weren’t sure if the other felt the same way, were we not.”

Sabik snorted a little as she watched her umbrella tumble into the canal next to the road.

For all their longevity, he rather rapidly rose from one of the two newest members of the Convocation to one of the most senior ones. Elidibus, Emet-Selch, Lahabrea and Mnemosyne stayed—the other ten went. The most recent arrival had been Nabriales, but the most senior member announced their departure and that they had already decided on a replacement.

Even under his mask she must have seen how wide his eyes went when the next Igeyorhm was introduced to them—and it was none other than Sabik herself.

Predictably enough, Emet-Selch, ever the grudge-bearer, objected weakly to it, citing an incident from two lousy millennia ago. Lahabrea immediately stomped that complaint into the ground, citing that it had been an early show of brilliance when it came to adjusting a matrix on the fly, and that he had definitely not been the only person leaving the Akademia covered in slime that day. For a while they glared each other down until Emet-Selch backed down, hissing that he had a point and that her incredibly fast adjusting would be a boon to Amaurot.

It did prove to be one as time went by, and while she remained the latest and youngest member of the Convocation she very soon rivalled her fellow newer members. If things had stayed that way, Lahabrea did not doubt for a second that every problem Amaurot still had had would have dissipated under their combined efforts.

But Mnemosyne started investigating the sudden silence from another city across the ocean; Mnemosyne returned with horrible stories from people fleeing the other continent. Whatever was going on, it was a creeping feeling of fear that took root in Amaurot as more people than ever sought entry to the city and were permitted. Some where like Igeyorhm and Emet-Selch, gifted children and adults alike that merely sought to further their knowledge. Others were people who had fled the impending doom that soon razed their hometowns and swallowed up the villages they hailed from. Mnemosyne returned one last time, their face utterly devoid of emotion as they spoke of the last remaining villages falling. Emet-Selch looked unimpressed—his and Chief Hythlodaeus’ birthplace had been one of the first on this continent to go. Igeyorhm on the other hand had her hands clasped over her mouth, shaking slightly as the horror of losing her hometown settled in.

The next meeting they agreed that there had to be something they could do, that they had to at least try anything. But finding a solution to a vague issue proved to be an issue of untold proportions. Mnemosyne threw their hands up at some point, yelled that they knew about as much about this as everyone else. They had talked to those that fled ahead of time but there were no survivors they could talk to. Every person who stayed was dead, and the lands were utterly devoid of life. Not even the Underworld’s lights shone there any longer, and those foolish enough to tread dead earth to invoke these powers would find themselves in the precarious situation of everything leaning towards stagnation as they tried to bring the powers of life and death into it. It was hilariously dangerous and multiple people who had dared venture into dead lands never returned.

At least that seemed to discourage Emet-Selch from venturing into what Amaurot soon called the Deadlands.

In the midst of all of them trying to find something, anything that could save them from the looming doom, one evening Igeyorhm knocked on his door. He let her into his office—technically they were at work. Much like Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus they had reached an agreement that they would remain as professional as possible in public and in the Capitol building, but as soon as they were at home they went from being Lahabrea and Igeyorhm to being Loki and Sabik for a few hours.

Thus she kept a professional distance between them when he asked what it was that she needed.

She reached for a Creation matrix and handed it over. Her handiwork, as ever, was impressive. Whatever this was supposed to be, it was astonishing how finely crafted and how deliberately strung some of the threads were. Lahabrea turned it over in his hands several times before finally asking her what it was.

“An energy source. A core. Before Mnemosyne returned with their news we were tackling the issue of instability in power distribution to smaller settlements like the villages I and Emet-Selch grew up in. It was in my desk the entire time.”

He turned it over in his hands once more. Now that she had mentioned it he could see that it was indeed an energy core. Only then did he notice that there were changes to it that had been made rather recently. Rather than a mere energy core, Igeyorhm had tried to make an absorption core out of it; and while the matrix looked absolutely unassuming he knew he was holding something rather dangerous in his hands in that very moment. Igeyorhm noticed the shift in his stance and crossed her arms.

“I admit, it is a rather shoddily made adjustment. Hells, I most certainly do not know if it will absorb that sort of primordial power after all, since that is such a vague descriptor. But I had to do something.”

“Shoddily made? Igeyorhm—this thing is amazing. The little errors and misadjustments you might have made likely come from being desperate to find an answer, but that is nothing you cannot fix—“

“If there is anything that can be fixed, you fix it. Lahabrea, I don’t think it will work. This isn’t… this isn’t Emet-Selch visiting your predecessor and me causing trouble for the sake of causing trouble. Anything that backfires will backfire on Amaurot, and that is the last thing I want. The town of my birth is lost, but I can still help save my home.”

“Why give it to me, then?”

“It would only distract me if it stayed in my desk. I want to put my whole heart into saving Amaurot and not lament the loss of towns that I barely knew.”

He exhaled slowly at that. Put the matrix down and crossed his arms. Eventually he settled for a grim nod. “If… No. When we succeed with that, I will hand it back to you. There will be other towns, and the prototype shows promise, even through the changes you have applied. Excellent work as always—I am more than honoured to work beside someone as skilled as you, Igeyorhm.”

She let out a weak laugh at that. “Idiot.”

“Idiot prime. But I promise you; we will persevere. And once everything in Amaurot is settled, I swear that we will tackle this issue dear to your heart.”

He had believed it. With every fibre of his being, even as every suggestion wound up a paradox, even as every discussion near turned into a yelling match between all fourteen of them. They were cracking under the pressure of trying to save that which might not be saved, until after a long pause to think, Elidibus brought up something that made all their blood run cold. Creation on that scale had never been attempted, the very concept was absurd. But as the others discussed it, Lahabrea frowned deeply and thought back to the countless books he as the Speaker oversaw. He had gone through myriads of them—not all, of course. Anyder held more knowledge than any one person could hope to achieve, and there were plenty of hideously uninteresting topics. He would have made a horrible Emet-Selch or Mnemosyne, he lacked the calm care that Halmarult required. But in the end, he was Lahabrea.

And thus Lahabrea said that this was the first damned thing they had ever come up with that had merit. Because it had worked in the past on a much smaller scale. The concepts were there, they but needed to work out how to make it work for them rather than against them.

Mnemosyne was the one to slam their hands on the table and call the entire notion ridiculous. They were not going to sacrifice people, they all but screamed. Mitron almost timidly asked if they even had a choice by this point. They still had time, Mnemosyne tried to argue—and Igeyorhm said that time was running out.

Even as his studies into that solution went absolutely haywire, even as he could not stop one of his fellows from calling to the thunderous nature of another thing—even as Igeyorhm shook him by the shoulders to snap him out of his daze. This incident that would have been considered horrible publicity and might have caused him to step down as Lahabrea were times calmer and the people less worried about other things, it proved something very important to him. It could work.

He muttered it as he pried himself out of Igeyorhm’s grip, he said it louder and more confidently to the rest of the Convocation. He ignored Mnemosyne screaming counterarguments that had merit—but this was the absolute last resort. Everything else would not save Amaurot and merely make their demise all the more devastating. They were not going to sit by idly, Igeyorhm hissed eventually. Even if they had to walk over corpses, as Mnemosyne hissed back furiously. The Convocation, normally uniform with their decisions and civil whenever there was a disagreement, was a hair’s breadth away from attacking each other with their fists.

Elidibus called for a vote.

Thirteen to one, although Emet-Selch seemed hesitant to agree.

Mnemosyne resigned on the spot, said that finding a replacement was pointless seeing as the Convocation was going to bloody sell them all to dangerous half-truths. For the first time since the foundation of Amaurot was lain there were thirteen rather than fourteen. For the first time one seat remained empty as they all agreed this was their absolutely last chance at saving not only Amaurot but the Deadlands as well. They stood shoulder by shoulder with the people who agreed that this was the only solution. Those that would offer up themselves to save a city and a planet that they loved more than anything else. Perhaps Mnemosyne had had a point when they resigned. They weren’t the Convocation as they forged the way forward through a catastrophe. They were bloody executioners that would beg the Underworld to answer their call and meld it to their will. It was absurd. It would work. But it was absurd.

His hysteric laugh died in his throat when the fires died out instantly. Out of all those that had marched to this place to force the planet to have its own will, none remained. Only the Thirteen still stood, all of them singed and bloodied, bruised and worn out.

But they had succeeded.

They had succeeded, he all but wanted to scream at Persephone, titleless and standing in a crowd of people who started loudly disagreeing with Zodiark and His methods. They were standing in this gift that Zodiark had bestowed upon them, this revived world that all their fellows had given everything for. They were supposed to be of one opinion on this. That this was their duty, that eventually He would return their brethren. But they did not.

He could only watch as they broke what they had tried to save. Zodiark fell above them, His last power spent to save the three of the Convocation that had not stood in the centre of that last blow. He could only think about Igeyorhm, trying to reach for her and seeing her shatter in front of him.

There had to be a rational explanation for this, and Lahabrea was going to be the one to find it. As he near immediately disengaged from Emet-Selch and Elidibus urgently discussing what was going on, he instead decided to throw his energy against something a little more productive. The time for carefully planning and plotting years in advance was gone—the carefully crafted plan sounded like an extremely bad idea, considering that all three of them had lost their bodies and the entire bloody world shattered under Hydaelyn’s uncontrolled light. No. Perfectly controlled light.

Zodiark’s energy had been spent when He protected the three of them, and Lahabrea was not going to squander that gift. There had to be a way to carefully reunite what had been torn apart—judging from the sharp yelp of pain from Emet-Selch as he looked around at Elidibus’ behest the Underworld had been drenched in as much light as everything else. But as there was light, there was always going to be darkness. If necessary, he would be delighted to be the darkness.

Around them, the ruins of Amaurot looked as if it had been at least a century of not a soul living here. Plants had cracked through the asphalt, trees jutted out of gutted ruins. The upper floors had collapsed, the district next to the canal a few miles in had sunken into the ground and given way to a bloody swamp of all things. Creatures he had seen concepts of carried on with their inconsequential lives, hurried through cracks in buildings and the streets. The sun rose, and were these not the ruins of his beloved home, perhaps there would have been something about this view. Dew gleamed on the plants he recognised and those that he did not, flowers slowly opened up again to turn towards the rising sun. He stopped dead when the sun had nearly risen in it entirety, stopped dead when his feet brought him back to a familiar place. Collapsed and overgrown as it was, it hardly seemed like the place he clearly remembered. Half of it had sunken beneath a lake, a lake that all but glowed in the morning sun, ripples giving away creatures that now lived within that pond. It likely were the same specimens as before, those marine creatures that so many students found more fun than anything else.

Several trees had sprung up and grown through the now-missing roof, and with a heavy heart he realised that the rest of the building had collapsed without much fanfare. Akademia Anyder barely even stood, taken over by the subjects that it had once housed. The roof where they learned that the right amount of sacrifice would bring about Zodiark the proper way to halt their imminent destruction, the halls he chased a wayward creation that could spit slime at a moment’s notice through, the previous Lahabrea’s office and his own office. All gone, taken over by ruthless wilderness.

The front doors barely even stood any longer.

The Capitol did not fare better, but he still wandered over there once he got over seen Akademia Anyder in shambles. Where flora and fauna had taken the institute they had been created in, the Capitol stood relatively well compared to Anyder. Hells, his office had been on the lower floors and judging from collapse and decay it still stood. Even here, however, ivy and moss had covered whatever they could; the relatively simple and barren room with wooden floors having turned into a creaking, on the verge of collapse mess with moss covering the floor. If he had a body he did not doubt for a second that his steps would have been cushioned by the sheer amount of moss, with some sort of other plant he did not recognise creeping up the walls and hanging from the ceiling. There were cracks everywhere, and water dripped through one near the hole in the wall that had once been a window.

It was fascinating in a horrifying way as he willed all energy in the world to let him drawer on his moss-covered desk. Somehow it did, and though he lacked a body of his own the Underworld was still receptive enough to let him interact with the world around him. Or, perhaps, it was because no matter how much shattered and diluted, the world was still made of the same energies.

Had he still a body of his own, his heart would have likely skipped a beat when he opened the drawer. Inside, untouched through some insane coincidence, was Igeyorhm’s matrix. The one she had made before Terminus had come for them all, the one she had tried to make into an absorption core. He hadn’t adjusted a damned thing about it, and even as he carefully picked it up her handiwork was as familiar as it had always been.

The thing weighed the world now. A dreary reminder of Amaurot, whose ruins he stood in—a dreary reminder of Igeyorhm, gone and scattered like the rest of the world.

He returned to Emet-Selch and Elidibus—there had to be people somewhere. While Amaurot was clearly abandoned perhaps they could learn more about what exactly had shattered and how they would bring Zodiark back to restore order if only they found other people.

Emet-Selch had cited horror as reason and had withdrawn after three mortal generations.

Lahabrea and Elidibus remained as humanity’s unseen witnesses, a deep scowl on Elidibus’ face as the mortal years went by. What had been barely of consequence to them in the past now was almost more than a normal lifespan; considering they did not slaughter one another. No wonder someone who worked closely with the people, even through a proxy like Mnemosyne, would cite horror and withdraw. In the past he would have called Emet-Selch a coward for it, but even his scholar’s curiosity soon swung over to utter disgust.

It wasn’t until he decided to try out seeing souls in the wake of Emet-Selch’s absence that the disgust truly welled up, however. Countless times Emet-Selch had gone on a tirade how everything had been bleached and washed out, chopped up and mutilated, even. But as he looked around with even his limited Sight, he could see it. He did not have much time to complain about it however—his eyes caught a familiar flicker of colour, something that even this diluted had a distinctly dark flicker to it.

Elidibus was nowhere to be seen, and thus Lahabrea took it upon himself to sling his arms around a nearby mortal, forced the soul inside to move aside for him to have a body. For all intents and purposes he was only borrowing this body, not that he needed to explain himself to anyone. He wanted to see if this soul with a dark spot remembered anything.

A mortal with an inconsequential name, with an inconsequential life—this man was blissfully unaware of who he had once been. There had been cases of people losing their memories under Altima’s care at points. She had ever been someone devoted to figuring out a remedy for every affliction. She had theorised and proven that enough stimuli might return lost memories, but there had to be something there that could spark this. There was also always the chance that the person was too unstable to not lose their minds with it, but Lahabrea was not a doctor. He was a scholar, and any theory needed testing to be proven.

The soul belonged to someone under the Emissary. Technically this was to be Elidibus’ job, but he had likely gone to coax Emet-Selch out of his shell. They would need to work together.

At first he tried with vague statements that related to the Emissary. That mortal was not receptive to any of that in any capacity; they were confused more often than not. After that he moved on to more precise things—in turn he learned that the ruins of Amaurot were now called Whence the Twelve Walked and that no one had lived there in centuries. It was where the deities these mortals worshipped had come from allegedly; the ruins of their realm that they once shared with the ancestors of humanity until one day hubris brought them all low and the Twelve separated themselves from the mortal realm once more. But still, no matter how much he tried there was no rekindling the memories within that mortal.

Thus he abandoned all subtlety for the last attempt. Trying to rouse the Underworld to do his bidding was harder than expected—then again, he was not nowhere as talented as Emet-Selch—but as he laid the horrors of the world and its current state bare, finally the spark of recognition flickered in the mortal’s eyes.

They threw up. Writhed in agony as their memories returned, and once an eerie calm settled in Lahabrea leaned forwards to look into these mortal eyes that went from blank to darkly motivated.

He of course attempted it with the next soul he came across—crimson flickering telling him that he had come across one of the many members of a Bureau that had chosen to stay in Amaurot as it burned to ensure that the people who could would escape. In the final years of Amaurot, even under Zodiark, Hythlodaeus had lost his physical sight, blinded by the sheer eruption and shift in the Underworld. He retained the Sight, of course, but there was nothing they could do to help him see the physical realm. He muttered things about souls and dark fires kindled in some, and clung to Emet-Selch whenever he was out in the streets. A sorry sight, but he refused help from both Lord Zodiark’s side and from the side of those that would bring Hydaelyn into being later.

This time however the mortal with that soul screamed, covered their ears and writhed, begging Lahabrea to stop. The Emissary servant he had risen the other day had immediately gone where he suspected Elidibus and Emet-Selch to be, to forward a message that perhaps there was a way to stoke these shattered souls back into remembrance. There were tears streaming down that mortal’s face as they begged and begged, voice growing hoarser and hoarser.

If this damned useless mortal would just remember, perhaps that would make Emet-Selch stop wallowing in self-pity. Despite everything, despite the fact that he should have been wholly devoted to Lord Zodiark, there had always been that part of Emet-Selch that clearly longed to merely stay with Hythlodaeus. Getting him back would make Emet-Selch work again and then they could… they could do something about these shattered existences. These infuriating, infuriating and useless mortals that moaned that they did not understand as their torn souls writhed in agony alongside the flesh. Not even the blinded, traumatised Hythlodaeus had been as useless as this shard—because even blinded and traumatised Hythlodaeus had been overwhelmingly intelligent and kind to every soul around him, even if the verbal lashings hurt. This mortal had nothing. Nothing. Not even the same cocky grin that the Chief of the Bureau of the Architect wore whenever Igeyorhm and Lahabrea walked past him.

“Remember, damn you!”

He was approached by Elidibus cloaked in a mortal hide much as he was a few hours later.

He stood in the half-dried pool of blood shaking with rage. The mortal had broken under the sheer volume of memories. Vomited blood and screeched in agony, clawed at the walls in this room and finally fallen down with a choked sob. Twitched and moaned, but the feeble mortal heart had given out at some point.

“I have to adjust my earlier hypothesis,” he eventually hissed through clenched teeth and crossed his arms. “Only shattered souls of those who served our Lord may live through this process.”

“Mhm,” Elidibus stood there with his shoulders surprisingly slack. The man had ever abhorred the sight of blood.

“I need more test subjects to see whether this hypothesis has merit, however. If you excuse me, Emissary.”

“Hold, Lahabrea.”

The nauseating stench of death hit him fully when he turned back around to face Elidibus. He scrunched up this mortal he was controlling’s face. It wouldn’t be long before some sort of mortal authority would be arriving here, this cheap copy of Hythlodaeus had been vaguely well-respected and important in this community. As far as that went with these inconsequential mortals.

“There will be no need to test it on other mortals. Find our lost brethren, those whose souls burn dark as ours. What we need are supporters of His cause, not the people who chose neither His side nor Her rebellion.”

He rolled his eyes, muttered an agreement—and left the mortal he was possessing. The body collapsed nigh immediately upon his departure but he frankly did not care. He slipped into another. Skipped across the continent in myriad bodies, roused souls wheresoever he found them. People from the Bureau of the Architect who wept when they saw the state of the world. Mages and Creators alike, students from the Akademia, few and far between the endless slog of souls irrelevant to him.

He stopped dead in his tracks when he came across a familiar soul once more.

Nabriales, for all his prim and proper and disgustingly snobbish behaviour, had the dubious luck of being born a mortal brat with nothing to its name. It was almost laughable with how pathetic this attempt at keeping him from his true self was, but it was efficient in a way. By keeping him from ever developing the pride he had had as Nabriales of the Convocation, there was absolutely no way that he would ever start doubting the Mothercrystal as the mortals called Hydaelyn. Pathetic, utterly pathetic.

Perhaps it was not the most elegant way—but no mortal would ever miss a brat living in the streets. Unfortunately a brat was also not the most receptive to any sort of lessons that could have awoken Nabriales’ memories within that shard of his soul. Thus Lahabrea eventually yielded, asked for help. Surprisingly enough, it was Emet-Selch who answered the call. It was Emet-Selch who coaxed the child into trusting him by playing the mortal caretaker and wise sage who had skills to teach that could make the boy’s life easier. It was Emet-Selch who eventually rekindled the spark of memories, after what used to be a blink of an eye but was a horribly long time in the short life of a mortal child.

Where Lahabrea had swept a child with a soul dark as night off the streets, Emet-Selch revealed a young man who managed to conjure up his mask with shaky hands for a few seconds before the magic fizzled out. Architect—at least he remained true to his name. It was also Emet-Selch who finally, finally, said that if they were able to awaken Nabriales like this they would likely need his Sight to help them find the others. There was a new determination in those amber eyes of his, and Lahabrea, Nabriales and Elidibus all were more than eager to jump into the fray.

But, alas, as it soon turned out, Nabriales could not awaken others, could not undo the subtle threads that kept them locked to their mortal bodies. He could help them find and support the others, of course, he was more than capable of awakening the lesser servants of Zodiark—but the rekindling of the Convocation was left to the three who had survived the Sundering.

Mitron and Loghrif were less than pleased about their rude awakening, but Lahabrea cared little about their complaints that they felt left out of the loop when the Convocation gathered in its full numbers in the ruins of Amaurot.

The mortal body Emet-Selch had picked this time around was eerily similar-looking to his erstwhile and long gone body back in Amaurot. He also stood with the same bad posture as ever.

The rest of the Convocation looked little like the people they had once been, however. Their sizes were all wrong, the ages were all messed up. Altima’s soul blinked within an old crone, Deudalaphon was a mortal child of not even a decade. The only thing right were their eyes—and he was staring into familiar blue. Emet-Selch had found her, a young woman taking care of her dying parents in the middle of one of the largest settlements, and while she was dedicated to her family her heart had ever yearned for something other than that. Igeyorhm remained Igeyorhm, no matter the incarnation it seemed.

She smiled at him when they parted, and laughed when he said that he had found her matrix still in the ruins.

“I would hope you have no intention of returning it to me.”

“No. I said I would keep it until Amaurot was saved and there were other cities in need of an energy source.”

“Good. Let’s use it for Amaurot when we get her back.”

Her theory had been more than solid. Trapping primals, having the vaunted heroes that trapped them carry them around until their essence consumed them, and then leaving these monsters to destroy the star they were on. In theory. She sobbed into his chest as he absent-mindedly kept his arms around her as the thirteen of them watched the star’s final death throes. Elidibus had snatched up several of Hydaelyn’s too little, too late defence for the star that was swallowed up by utter darkness now. Scattered as they had been, none of them even knew one another, and they were terrified pieces of a chess game gone horribly wrong under Igeyorhm’s all too eager control of the playing board. The Emissary had explained what had gone on, killed those that swore vengeance and taken those that swore themselves to the cause. Out of ten of Hydaelyn’s playthings, two remained; one a lithe tall woman with a blank expression, one a quaking child with terrified huge eyes.

Igeyorhm, ever a quick study—but prone to mistakes in her hastiness. It was what had made them a good team in the end—Lahabrea took too long but was less prone to making hasty mistakes; Igeyorhm worked fast and efficiently. Unless, of course, both were running rampant with emotion. But that was the Convocation; for every overly emotional member there was one who remained cold and rational.

It was this very concept that Elidibus then brought up to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Emet-Selch, perpetual loner that he was, voiced distaste for it and found himself supported by Deudalaphon and Nabriales.

Eventually Lahabrea all but shielded Igeyorhm from the others. If they were going to single her out for her mistakes, he was willing to defend her tooth and nail; Emet-Selch had famously abandoned his post on the Twelfth to sulk somewhere, Nabriales had abandoned his post to chew Emet-Selch’s ears off for that. Lahabrea himself had been hesitant to mess with the Second, Altima had found herself overwhelmed and driven back by the Fifth’s Warriors of Light.

Surprisingly enough not even the Thirteenth’s two survivors, the Warriors of Light that had not been killed, the mortals that had not turned into grotesque aether-starved monstrosities, were the ones to say that if someone was going to blame the overeager Igeyorhm, they might as well blame them for not being strong enough to quell the flood of darkness. The woman, a seasoned warrior by all means, stood amidst the people who had but just ruined her home and took a share of the blame for the state of things. If mortals weren’t so idiotic, that would have been an impressive move.

At the very least it seemed to calm the almost hysteric Igeyorhm down. As much as he hated mortals and their fragmented existences he quietly thanked the woman for that.

They got along like volatile oil and a wildfire. Perhaps that was precisely what was necessary to make the winds churn on the Source, and Lahabrea and Emet-Selch all but made a game out of terrorising the mortal shades of the people they once knew while verbally attacking each other at every turn. Hythlodaeus was a raw wound for the Architect—Igeyorhm was one for him. And by Zodiark Himself, they made a point in ramming rusty nails into these raw, open wounds every time they had the chance to.

The seeming discord between the antagonists made some of the protagonists suspect that something was afoot, that perhaps the enemy of their enemy would be their friend. Emet-Selch entertained this nonsense while Lahabrea salted the very earth he walked upon. After all, chaos only bloomed where discord and strife were abundant, and sooner rather than later they would need to have the heart of chaos ripe for the picking. One of them played the maker, the other one played the ruin. Hydaelyn’s champions, all their souls entwined with radiant light and the true colours of their souls feebly attempting to break through that light at points, tried to side with the maker, failing to see that maker and ruin went hand in hand.

Whence the Twelve Walked Lahabrea all but screamed his rage over losing his home to the heavens, and after all the careful prodding and poking, finally—finally the tempests themselves answered his shrieking call. Altima and Emmerololth had brought one shard to the brink by overwhelming it with the storms that now swept through what remained of Amaurot. Whence the Twelve Walked was swallowed up by a tempest that reminded him of the windswept days of the rain season. Trees, smaller than they were supposed to be and firmly standing in the ruins, Lahabrea uprooted with a laugh to toss them at Hydaelyn’s chosen warriors pursuing him. Emet-Selch was nowhere to be seen, but Lahabrea knew that he was going to take out the ones that lagged behind and those that were injured. He dipped into the Capitol to snatch the matrix, then brought the building down with a surprisingly heavy heart. But ruins could always be rebuilt—once Lord Zodiark was back in the picture, surely He would help them undo whatever damage they did to the world as they reunited it to its proper state.

He had to.

Lahabrea brought down the ruins of Akademia Anyder to bury one Warrior of Light. Their companions, one with a soul thoroughly light in everything and one with a soul that glimmered iridescent and familiar, screamed as he laughed. Laughed as a shard fell and the winds broke free of the ruins to swallow all in their wake.

Retribution came for them all, the previous Lahabrea would have said. But even as he had been driven into a corner by the mortals, all he had to do was disengage from the body. Not even a blade of light as they were using right now could kill his soul in the end—after all, this paltry, sundered light was nothing compared to the almost primordial dark that broiled in his soul. He was one of the last true worshippers of Zodiark, and this darkness of His that he carried would see his soul unharmed, slippery as an eel and unchanging as the tides themselves.

But the Warrior of Light leading this bunch of mortals changed their target in the last moment.

Lahabrea, already having let go of the body, could only watch with horror as the weapon of light crashed against Mitron, struggling to follow suit. It was diluted light against diluted dark in this scenario—but Hydaelyn still had Her grasp on this world, whereas Lord Zodiark remained silent and unresponsive, shattered as He was. Mitron’s dark guttered and flickered, snuffed out underneath the Hydaelyn-empowered blade of light that struck him. The shattered remnants behaved as any one soul made of aether did.

It vanished, swept away by the Lifestream. Stripped clean of memories, reshaped into a new mortal, reborn only to die again and to repeat the process for all eternity.

Though the others tried, he was unconsolable. Not even Igeyorhm telling him to calm down quelled the fury in his heart as he stormed off to find the pathetic mortal that bore Mitron’s dark soul now.

It was Loghrif in the end who found their elusive companion, Elidibus who awoke him.

But now that the Source had seen a Paragon felled, Hydaelyn invested a lot of energy into stopping their advance. Emet-Selch, Elidibus and Lahabrea were fickle and escaped, diluted light indeed doing nothing to their souls that roared with Amaurotian darkness. The others, the ones that had not escaped the Sundering however, were not so lucky. Even on the shards now they found themselves opposed at every step, every breath they took on these vile jokes of a world once whole. The nightmare of seeing them all splinter before his eyes was back, a nightmare not accompanied by the voices of their compeers that gave their lives at their behest. They were souls that knew the truth, that laboured day and night to return the world to what it once was—but at the end of the day, Lahabrea was not a destroyer. He was supposed to talk.

Thus, with Igeyorhm by his side, on this shard, he attempted it. Emet-Selch had played the content watchman for a long time, had returned time and time again with new fury burning under his skin and in his eyes as he claimed these mortals were absolutely incapable of being rational. How incapable, he soon learned as he spoke. He laid the truth bare before this shard’s Warriors of Light, a group of three. Once more the Hydaelyn leader faction’s soul shone as pure light, accompanied by a soul unknown to him and Persephone’s iridescent shimmering beyond the veil of light. He spoke with a feverish fervour he had thought lost in the Final Days. Spoke with the same desperation as he and his researchers had gone through book after book in the scripture deemed too dangerous for general Creation magicks section, spoke like a man possessed. Lord Zodiark would never have approved of this talk, seeing as a part of himself wanted to scream and attack the Warriors of Light listening to him. But they were listening—the same way that the Convocation had not, the same way that the Hydaelyn faction had not.

He spoke until the mortal body he had taken for himself’s throat was raw and he was parched, Igeyorhm standing beside him to offer him an arm to lean on.

It felt like lecturing an unresponsive class.

An unresponsive room full of students that brandished weapons, created monsters that brought about Termination. The light soul’s weapon struck him once and it burned, burned as if he stood in the aftermath of the End of the World once again. Burned as if he numbly watched Emet-Selch pull Hythlodaeus from a pile of corpses, burned as if the man’s once controlled and precise voice was barely more than a whisper that uttered complete nonsense in the wake of destruction. Burned—but it did not burn as much as the next strike.

Igeyorhm pushed him aside, bade him return to the Source.

She took the blow meant for him, and her awoken but sundered soul could not take the light. Just as back then when Hydaelyn had struck true, she all but fragmented in front of his eyes; instead of screaming his title she smiled this time around and said that this was going to work even without Hydaelyn’s little pawns.

He went on a blind rampage on the source. Turned benevolent kings that Emet-Selch had tried to raise into tyrants over time into madmen massacring their own people. Made the faithful leader of a church dedicated to the Twelve with the largest following in the country at the time into a fanatic who sacrificed his fellow believers to the gods that were once deemed benevolent and were now ruled vengeful.

He could feel Emet-Selch’s disgusted and disappointed gaze on him as he set out bloodied and battered and beaten, laughing to himself. After a century he calmed down enough to seek Igeyorhm’s inevitable reincarnation and found naught. It was Altima reporting from the Seventh that she had found Igeyorhm, it was Elidibus who forbade him from going and went himself to ascend her back to her proper strength. But finally he was calm again.

“You, my friend,” Emet-Selch sighed the next time they met, “have made a fine mess of my work. One would have thought the Speaker to speak ere he destroys—“

“Do not call me Speaker,” he hissed. “And even if I spoke, who remains to listen? Who remains who can grasp the full nature of my lectures, the weight of my words? You and Elidibus. None else. For none truly remember what it was like before. You bemoan it every odd century—do not tell me you suddenly have faith in mortals.”

Emet-Selch scrunched up his face—another mortal melded in his image, though slowly but steadily some details were starting to look odd to him. Not that he cared.

“Besides, what is a little razing for the sake of razing?”

“Your lack of grace astounds me every odd century as well, Lahabrea.”

“This has to be a sick joke!”

Warriors of Light had made short work of Igeyorhm and Deudalaphon on this other shard. Given that Emet-Selch was once again busy building a ridiculous cardboard empire with the rain season closing in and that Elidibus had seemingly made it his job to unravel the mysteries of this nonsensical world that Hydaelyn had built, he took it up to himself to look for them once more. Hopping from shard to shard, he eventually found them.

And lost them again. This time, Nabriales and Mitron joined the list of casualties. Emet-Selch did not respond when called, Elidibus did not respond either, and he was left to deal with four missing members of the Convocation. To think they had once been fourteen, highly organised even without constant meetings. But try as he might, the orderly meetings never quite returned. The next time Lahabrea finished finding Nabriales, the man had the utter gall to go into a hysterical shutdown. Muttering nonsense about his head taken off with a blade of light, about feeling the phantom pains of being taken out over and over and over, like a hammer bearing down upon his splintered soul. The others repeated it, all of them more and more swaying towards refusing taking to the field directly and instead wondering if Emet-Selch’s cowardly subterfuge was not the better approach to the Ardor after all.

The only one who remained as cold as the rain season was Igeyorhm, gently touching his arm before she departed for her next assignment and giving him an encouraging if sad smile.

“Once we have Amaurot back,” was her mantra, and with that she went. And never came back. And went.

He held the matrix like an idol built to the Twelve on the Source as he dove into another body, discarded it for the next best choice, and wondered why in the hells themselves Emet-Selch thought he had the time to meld the mortals he took as vessels after himself. The more time passed the less he remembered, the more he wanted to give way to utter desperation. He deliberately started messing with the Source and Emet-Selch’s plans; but the Architect did not even have the good spirit to break out of his apathy any longer whenever Lahabrea messed something up. And Igeyorhm and the others went. Never came back.

Went.

Never came back.

He had felt utter horror at the first casualty—now he felt nothing. He would simply have to find her again. Apologise for not being there for her again. Start that whole cycle anew. Perhaps this time they would succeed, perhaps the next time even the civilians would be ready to be reminded of what they had lost in favour of this diluted, pointless existence.

He had gone to find her again. Had decided to stop for a moment and wait, remembering that human children were unfortunately prone to accidents when it came to ascending them. Instead he tried to play at Emet-Selch, tried to quell the rage that was bubbling in his dark soul to try to enjoy a mortal lifetime. The world was unsatisfying and bland, but the kid that held Igeyorhm’s soul as she babbled about things as she grew older and arguably wiser for a mortal tried to see the best in it. If this was what all mortals saw, well, he had no words. Lahabrea, for his esteemed title as Speaker, found nothing to describe the utter, vast void he felt when this mortal child unaware of who she was tried to show him how wonderful this world was and found himself staring at nothing worthy of note.

“A joke!”

But as they all had observed countless times, mortals were not capable of enjoying what they deemed pretty. This shard, admittedly left alone for quite a while, soon developed its own issues rather than something the Convocation brewed up for it. And despite all that, despite the fact that he had tried to simply see rather than conduct, he found himself face to face with another Warrior of Light. He had been naught more than another pointless mortal in this pointless village, a bloody babysitter to the child that Igeyorhm’s soul rested with and then her teacher in a sense. As far as teaching someone to shepherd went in pointlessly peaceful and bland mountains went.

A Warrior of Light who called for the blood of the Paragon for causing something or other, since there was no way he was truly here to be a peaceful watcher. No matter how many times he claimed that he had no idea what the hell was going on and what that warrior was accusing him of all sounded like hogwash to him, they insisted that he give up the charade.

He dropped it eventually, revealed his mask and repeated that he had no idea. He did not even get as much as a word.

Once more Igeyorhm threw herself between him and the blade, except this time it was a blade of steel rather than one of light. Frozen solid the Warrior of Light struck his vessel and left, a job well-done and the Paragon seemingly dead. He discarded the twitching body of his, instead sank down next to the teenager whose soul was twisting under his touch.

“Igeyorhm,” he had whispered, but he had received no answer. Of course not—mortals did not seen Paragons without the Blessing of Light, the Echo or an Ascension. And she was, by all means, a mortal right now. Another soul in Hydaelyn’s endless grind of souls that was the Lifestream.

That child died under his non-corporeal hands, muttering his mortal name.

He sat there for a while, soul without body. Hells, he could feel his own sense of self fade for a moment as this cheap comedy disguising itself as a tragedy decided it was time for rain. Rain had always made him go. For Amaurot. To stand in Akademia Anyder without an umbrella again, to sprint through the torrential downpour, to laugh when it caught him and the people he was discussing things with unaware.

“How many bloody times are you going to kill her, Hydaelyn!? Or any of them! If this is some oh-so-divine retribution for the Thirteenth, know that none of this would have happened had you not shattered the world to begin with!”

Lahabrea got no answer. He never expected one.

He departed this shard, and forced Elidibus to find the replacements next. He was going to teach another beast tribe Creation magic that would inevitably go haywire.

The upteenth Igeyorhm was skittish compared to the previous ones who tried to walk with their heads held high even after learning what they had done to the Thirteenth. None of them had had the same controlled grace of herself back in Amaurot. Long gone were the days of Igeyorhm leading a serious discussion—when asked about it, she all but backed away, citing some very confusing memories as reason for her inability to be as she used to be. Something about deeply rooted regret, and he desperately wished he could have uprooted that as he had uprooted the trees around Akademia Anyder during the first Ardor.

They lost more of their fellows to Warriors of Light. Altima went from calm and collected to mostly tired—not on the same level as Emet-Selch claimed he was tired. Emet-Selch looked dead, hollow, rotten on the inside as the time went by. Where there had once been a spark of joy when it came to orchestrating things there now was no such joy left. Altima on the other hand looked physically exhausted, her once swift motions as she danced through her stash of medicines and matrices she kept for rarer cases whenever he saw her in her office long gone. Nabriales’ pride went from stern but open to criticism to plain egocentrism. Loghrif and Mitron’s relationship that many cited as calm as Amaurot at night covered in freshly fallen snow went virile and toxic, like the Deadlands festering as the Doom approached Amaurot.

Elidibus went from the quiet but positive man who smoothed over tides wherever they appeared to a void of utter silence, speaking only when spoken to and then always with an underlying rage that made no sense on these neutral features of his.

Lahabrea knew that he would not be able to hold the attention of a room of students again. Never again. He screamed when spoken to outside of the mortal roles he played for short whiles before hopping to the next, and every time he felt less and less like the Speaker and more and more like his title now meant Warmonger. Where Emet-Selch, subtle and elusive, became a synonym for something threatening and dark behind the scenes, Lahabrea soon was a name mortals who knew about the Paragons cried in fear as he torched the lands behind him—in a sense his title already carried the meaning Warmonger. Where in Amaurot people expected a scholar when they heard the title Lahabrea, mortals on the Source expected a maniac whose very footsteps left devastation in their wake. Even the lesser ascended under his care became more brutal in what they did, threw themselves into the ways of Warriors of Light. But for every time he and his cornered and killed a Warrior of Light, another would soon rise to the occasion to sweep the place clean. His fellows from Anyder, standing beside and behind him, ascended and knowing one moment—and a moment later, pierced by light and scattered, returned back to whence souls went. Not the definitive end of the Underworld but the endless cycle of reincarnation of the Lifestream.

Whatever alumni once came to hear the Speaker, he was now the drill sergeant of cannon fodder. He almost found enjoyment in it at times, whenever he was left to deal with those Paragons that were supposed to work under Elidibus.

Not even as he stared down the little remaining Warrior of Light salvaged from the Thirteenth did he stop grinning to himself in twisted enjoyment.

“I have no intention of causing this nonsense stack of cards to collapse in on itself too early. Emet-Selch returned the other day and said that there were Hydaelyn’s blessed afoot in Allag. So close to the tipping point I cannot very well allow them to persist in their folly.”

“Your methods are callous and set a bad example. There have to be subtler ways to tip towards chaos than all this wanton bloodshed.”

He sneered, leaned over this kid. Were it not for the fact that Elidibus would never have him hear the end of it if he actually did kill him, he would have done so on the spot. Alas, a Warrior of Light who did not try to oppose them every step of the way was a blessing, a balancing element that they needed.

“Try telling that to your beloved Mother, Unukalhai. The moment She stops, I will. For the time being, I do owe Her creation quite a lot of retribution for all those we have lost. As should you—your valiant as ever comrade has set off on her own, and once more you are left behind. Make certain the light does not swallow you up and isolates you from reality even further, mhm?”

He left, the rage in his heart for once a terrifying calm instead of the all-consuming and blinding blaze. He departed for Allag, Emet-Selch’s grandest creation yet. An empire that seemed perfect and was capable of conquering most of everything, yet on the inside it was rotten to the core, corrupt and about to devour itself. Perhaps it served as a mirror of Emet-Selch’s mental state; volatile and calm, on the verge of breaking. But Lahabrea had little interest in all the little things that mortals did and did not do. He donned the guise of a researcher, a person privy to seek out Allag’s greatest weaponry. They had killed a dragon, had shackled several Primals. It was the bloated corpse of some beached whale ready to blow up, but as he buried his hands in the coat’s pockets while he stood in front of the dormant Ultima Weapon, he could not help but wonder.

Allag was about to fall, but these machines and what-not were created to outlast the apocalypse. Allag itself would not but its creations would; the alien satellite would one day burst and release Bahamut at their behest. But there had to be more that he could do.

Igeyorhm’s mellow voice from the Final Days echoed somewhere in his ears. An energy source, reworked to absorb primordial powers instead. A matrix crafted delicately with the hopes to help the people, the rework of it intricate and fuelled by the fervent desire to save this world before it was deemed unfitting and given to him. It was supposed to be a reminder that one day Amaurot would be back, that one day they could undo the rework on it and use it for its intended purpose.

The current Igeyorhm did not remember that promise they had made in his office. Her memories were muddled and messed up, with things blending together from before the Final Days. They remembered everything after the Fall sharply and clearly. They did not remember their birth names, did not remember the streets of Amaurot as they were before the Final Days. They remembered termination—Igeyorhm barely remembered any of the many people she befriended and cared about, barely remembered her time as lecturer before she was given a seat in the Convocation. They remembered being thirteen—they did not remember being fourteen.

“Oh… what are you doing here this early?”

He opened his eyes again, looked at the mortal who now stood beside him. Looked up at the Ultima Weapon.

Emet-Selch would eviscerate him if he meddled with Allag. But the Source was ripe for the picking—all that was needed was to tip the balance. Certainly no one else would mind if he messed with the playing board a little.

“Truth be told,” he drawled out and reached into the coat’s pockets. “I have been working on something for a while. The absorption core on the Ultima Weapon worked perfectly, but I have been wondering whether it could be enhanced or not.” A spark of ancient magic was enough to make the matrix into what it was supposed to look like. Barely more than a core, fitting into his mortal vessel’s hands. “I will leave it with you, chief engineer.”

The man was studied for a mortal at the very least. His eyes went wide as he looked at Igeyorhm’s handiwork, brought to life by Lahabrea’s magic. “How on—this is incredible! How did you—“

“I doubt I could replicate it properly if asked.”

“Well, I most certainly want to hear as much about it as possible—but what would you call this thing?”

Lahabrea looked back up at the Ultima Weapon once more. Mortals. They orchestrated their own downfalls better than the Paragons they hated so much ever could. They but needed a little nudge. And if this ancient promise that had once filled him with determination could be used to further this downfall, all the better. Because she had forgotten it.

He was going to forget it eventually as well. Inevitably.

As would the mortals.

Who even cared about what to call this thing. Allag was taking its last breaths.

He stared at the light falling into the facility, watched it reflect off the shining metal of the Ultima Weapon. One day it would be back to haunt mankind, this proudest, strongest creation of theirs. Emet-Selch had so very subtly led them to orchestrate the fall of this empire, and sooner or later Lahabrea would bring them all to kneel before him with this machine.

And the instrument to that success was this last remainder of someone he lost along the way.

“The Heart of Sabik.”

He tired of this charade.

Where he had once rolled his eyes and let Emet-Selch do as he pleased, he all but dragged the man along to Elidibus when he finally, finally, deigned to grace them with a miraculous reappearance. All this hard work was going to waste with the Source as balanced as it was right now, and while time passed on it faster than on the shard teetering on the edge they needed to do something. Something a little more… involved than Lahabrea’s usual fiddling. Surprisingly enough, Emet-Selch complied—he did not look or sound pleased about it, but something about him seemed unusually high-strung for someone as low energy as him.

He had half a mind to ask what the hell was wrong this time, but he thought better of that. They had not had a conversation not related to their duty in the name of Lord Zodiark in so many yeas that Lahabrea had stopped counting and Emet-Selch and Elidibus both lost count. Whatever had this fool churning on the inside, all the better. Any sort of emotional response from Emet-Selch was better than the endless sinkhole of self-pity the Architect usually fell into after a few years of doing what his role demanded. He set his sight on Garlemald, claiming with a tired voice that perhaps if something like Allag would be needed it would be best to hook his claws into the one country that felt closest to it in its beginnings.

Lahabrea did not care. The sooner the balance tipped, the better.

“You are in an unusually foul mood, Speaker.”

“We have been over this countless times. Do not address me by this title, or would you like me to start calling you Martyr?”

“Would it make any difference? You clearly despise those you deem lesser—and it is equally clear that no matter how many times you ascend our fragments, you do not deem us the same.”

No matter how many times they handed over the masks, no matter how many times they told the truth, even their supposed fellows were not the same as they had been. This Igeyorhm at least had found a sharp tongue and the bravery to talk back rather than the previous three incarnations that had, in order, been shy and easily scared, had developed a guilt complex, and had cried more than she had helped. In a sense they were all pieces of Igeyorhm; shy and surprisingly easily scared before she found her footing in Amaurot, the guilt of living when her hometown had been razed by the End. The ceaseless sobbing had been odd, but he had deliberately avoided that incarnation.

“How very perceptive of you.”

“And how wonderfully vain of you.” This Igeyorhm had been from the Source. As the shards rejoined the souls did as well, and those members of the Convocation that were born on the Source this time around proved to be less unstable than the ones from the shards. “You claim superiority, but in the end we are on the same side. And while we do not remember things that you do, there is a clear erosion of memory present.”

That almost sounded like his fellow attendant of courses in Anyder. Almost. She was scowling at him, her face hidden behind her mask. Some shards never quite got used to the idea of wearing masks all the time, but this one seemingly enjoyed it.

She crossed her arms. “Slow and steady wins the race, Lahabrea. Perhaps your explosive impulses best work with a slow stage-setter like Emet-Selch—have you considered working with him rather than antagonising him every time he makes an appearance?”

“I have no pity for a sad old man.”

“You, much like him, are a sad old man.”

“Not everyone can quite be as well-adjusted as Esteemed Elidibus!”

“Well-adjusted?”

The sheer indignation in her voice was enough to make him pause. She rarely spoke like that even back in Amaurot, seeing as even the most heated debates usually brought a smile to her face as she argued. This, however, had what was visible of her face turn an ugly, splotchy red in sheer rage.

His pause seemed to set her off further. Igeyorhm animatedly gestured as she started to speak, voice on the verge of turning shrill. “None of us are well-adjusted! I do admit, yes! It is all in fragments much like my soul—but that is not the Elidibus I once knew! That is an apathetic wretch knowing that he cannot lose because either he gets back what he lost, or he finally dies! Where is the bite in Emet-Selch’s voice, the irony that seemed to lace his words whenever he was in a good mood? All he has is depreciating sarcasm for both himself and the world around him! I want to tear Nabriales’ tongue out of his next chosen vessel’s mouth so he cannot speak, Altima has lost her joy in healing, Mitron and Loghrif don’t even talk to each other for the most part! And you—you.” Igeyorhm furiously shook her head. “I would not even know where to begin with you. All the cruelty. All the complete disregard for any sort of resource. The complete and utter disregard for life. Are we but expendable ammunition for your crusade against Hydaelyn? We are supposed to be companions, the Convocation and its most steadfast supporters. Your role should dictate you speak—“

“And what, pray tell, happened the last time I attempted to speak, mhm?”

Her anger vanished in an instant. Much to his own surprise, so did his as he recalled those events. He sighed deeply, tiredly. He was utterly, despicably tired. If he still had his own body he was certain that he would have lain down in the grass somewhere as Emet-Selch was liable to do even when pressing matters were looming around the corners. But not even Emet-Selch rested for the sake of rest any longer; the Architect seemed desperate to get rid of a weariness that never left his bones and mind these days no matter how much time he spent idle.

“Zodiark be my witness, this is perhaps the most miserable conversation we have ever had. And yes—I am counting these other instances of existence as part of me. Because as much as I am not the Igeyorhm you once knew, you are not the Lahabrea I once knew.”

He watched her leave, unsure whether to laugh or to cry.

He settled for laughing in the end.

Any other time, he would have rejoiced. Part of him still did, a part of him that belonged wholly into the dark. But Emet-Selch refused to even show up as they discussed which shard to pick next—they settled for the First, adjacent to the Void that Igeyorhm’s misstep all this time ago had caused. Hells, he saw that she was about ready to volunteer herself for that duty, but it were Mitron and Loghrif who said that they would be taking care of matters on the First. After all they knew that shard best next to Emet-Selch who still was busy playing his key role in the Garlean Empire. A good old-fashioned war of succession to cause unrest might not have been the most eloquent choice, but given that the empire was growing a little uneasy following Nael van Darnus’ demise as the false satellite fell to reveal an Elder Primal.

Surprisingly enough, when asked who wanted to bear the brunt of what would lead the Source to the tipping point, both he and Igeyorhm raised their hands at the same time. Before either of them complained, the remaining members of the Convocation agreed that they would make an excellent team alongside Emet-Selch’s last push before he would be granted leave for an indefinite amount of time. Hells, even the normally too proud to see himself as anything lesser Nabriales said that perhaps he might jump in on that.

After all, there was a Warrior of Light again. A Warrior of Light who had failed to stop the fall of Dalamud, yes, but a Warrior of Light regardless. They had not been identified yet, but any one soul with tendrils of light woven into it was a danger to their plans. Hydaelyn, weak as She was, surely would put quite a lot of trust into a creature like that. And their duty as so-called Paragons was to stop these individuals not too early, not too late.

For that they either needed good communication—or a completely volatile relationship with one another because trying to sabotage one another’s plots usually put Hydaelyn’s chosen on edge and caused enough mayhem that pinning an individual down by themselves became nigh impossible.

But even as they were to depart for the Source to decide their next course of action, perhaps to convene with Emet-Selch at his earliest convenience so they knew what precisely was going on on the Source, Lahabrea and Igeyorhm stood there with an almost awkward silence between them.

It was clear that she was not going to speak any time soon, and while he was not known for giving any ground to mortals she did have a point. Technically they were on the same side, even if her fractured existence made him mad beyond reason by this point. Hells, be barely recalled anything that was not sheer unrelenting rage by this point.

He exhaled slowly. “The city state that calls itself Ishgard may be a good point to start.”

Igeyorhm seemed surprised that he was speaking at all. “Ah?”

“An isolationist country that Deudalaphon’s interference locked in nigh-endless war with the draconic entity calling itself Nidhogg’s Brood that arrived on the Source following Hydaelyn granting their progenitor Midgardsormr passage. Considering that it refuses all contact with the outside world perhaps you could easily sway its leadership. If not, the faction that sided with the Brood. Those heretics as they are called are liable to call upon a Primal if driven far enough in their belief.”

Igeyorhm nodded. “Duly… duly noted. Much appreciated. What are you planning on doing?”

“Same as I ever did.” If he left it at that, it would have worked. But instead he closed his eyes behind his mask. “This time with less casualties.” Igeyorhm startled a little when he added that, and Lahabrea sighed. “On our side, mind. You do have a point. Should the Warrior of Light encroach upon your position, whatever you wind up doing, call for help. We can ill afford to lose someone so shortly after a long overdue success. And if not me, understandable as that would be, call for Nabriales or Emet-Selch while he remains on the Source. Or bloody Esteemed Elidibus.”

“… Same to you, Lahabrea. If you need me, come find me.”

They parted with that, a certain spring in her step as she chose Abalathia’s Spine as her next destination. Somewhere in the clouds above the Sea of Clouds Azys Lla remained, and Lahabrea narrowed his eyes a little. Of course. Allag. Garlemald was obsessed with Allag—and he had made certain that one weapon in particular would cause a lot more trouble down the line.

His claims for less casualties soon proved to be hollow. After five years of needling into Gaius van Baelsar and all but delivering the Ultima Weapon to him on a silver platter, something changed. First the person he had dispatched to one of the city states never returned. Not long thereafter the Amalj’aa deity called Ifrit was summoned—and subsequently felled nigh immediately. In the past Primal summonings had all been very rudely interrupted by curious mortals, determined mortals, mortals that merely wanted to get underfoot. A summoning demanded life; where the Convocation had resorted to using volunteers, the beast tribes of Hydaelyn chose to instead bleed the land dry. None of them however escaped Tempering.

Unfortunately for him, the mortals that wanted to get underfoot seemed to have a surprising number of Echo-bearers under them. In the past those with the Echo had been few and far in-between, all scattered and rarely capable of teaming up. It was exactly that fact that had driven the Thirteenth to destruction as the last set of supposed saviours failed to meet in time.

Lahabrea, called a fickle Paragon of Destruction by mortals, found himself trailed by a fool.

He had grown bored of the current vessel, and the man trailing him was on his own. It was about as easy as stealing candy from a baby would have been, but a simple hop and a jump and the Scion of the Seventh Dawn found his own body nowhere under his control. The man fought back, more than most other vessels Lahabrea had had in the past seven centuries or so. It only made wresting control from the Scion all the more fun—though his mortal ‘allies’ were less than pleased about the sudden change in voice. But van Baelsar cared not—especially since it meant that they knew where the Primal slayer had their headquarters now. Once the Scions were rooted out, the theory of absorbing more than one Primal could be tested easily.

They but needed to wait for the right moment to strike. He spent a while observing the Scions.

They were a disappointment in the end. While there were many with the Echo, most of them lacked Hydaelyn’s full protection. There was light woven into one boy’s soul, yes, but the idiot looked barely capable of standing on his own, barely strong enough to stand apart from the people he spent his time with. The only ones that were vaguely interesting were the main Scions themselves.

Until he met their leader.

A blaze of light so bright that he could see it without trying to. Emet-Selch, when asked about that, usually said that Persephone’s friend and one of the driving factors behind Hydaelyn’s summoning had had a soul like that. And here that friend was, radiant and glowing and content—and he nearly attacked the Waking Sands by himself. Countless times had they come across Warriors of Light with souls like that. Countless times had they won, lost—but not once was that soul directly involved on the Source.

He all but fled, the Scion raging against his grip when he finally told van Baelsar it was the perfect moment to strike. The Ixal of Natalan were just on the precipice of summoning their deity Garuda. And while the Kobolds’ Titan was on the verge of being vanquished it was as simple as driving the strongest of those three into a corner and presenting her with an opportunity to get her fellows back. Only Garuda of the Ixal would be so foolish as to seek another Primal to prove her superiority.

The Scions of the Seventh Dawn were neutered, and sooner or later that radiant leader of theirs was going to crack under torture. Every mortal did, and even if she refused to yield he could always enter the stage himself. But the time was not quite right yet.

Nabriales he knew was dealing with the tempered Sylphs as of now. Lahabrea himself departed for Coerthas, the Scion he controlled’s raging against him mellowing down almost in defeat when he called for Igeyorhm.

Her vessel this time around seemed to have been chosen for her similarity to what she had looked like in Amaurot. Icy blue eyes, but she voiced distaste for the, as she put it, violently non-vibrant blue hair.

“At least mine looks better than yours. Where did you pick that corpse out from, a ditch in the desert?”

“Not a corpse,” he snarled, all but stomping down on the Scion’s suddenly once again raging soul. “Fortunately, unfortunately.” He despised shoving his soul into corpses in any case. A case she knew, which meant that she had to be poking fun at him. He merely rolled his eyes. “How goes your foray into the snow?”

“Slow and staggered, but I did find a rather interesting mortal. Light woven through her soul, of course, but she does not seem to be a Warrior of Light. Yet, or at all—but she certainly bears the Echo and the Mother’s protection. She does, however, seem to be almost hilariously focused on something about the Dragonsong War. A heretic, as you said. But unlike the rest. Her fellows tired of the war seem to be rallying behind her. A nudge here and there and we might have a perfect candidate for a Primal on our hands. And how goes… your endeavour, whatever that may be?”

He waved a hand through the air. “It goes; and if it goes well you might see it from your mountaintop perches.”

Lahabrea returned to where he supposedly belonged, and watched the chaos unfold with slight amusement. He noticed the Primal Slayer’s arrival in the region, the light that had been woven into their soul familiar, infuriating. A glimmer of familiar colour in between the light only made the fury fester—but he was not going to interfere with this. He put… too much trust into mortals. Normally they were so good at killing the few that rebelled, were so good at causing mayhem and destruction. But the Primal Slayer, soon to be Warrior of Light at their current rate, broke in. Broke the others out. They went uncontested, and Lahabrea in all his simmering anger decided against blowing them to smithereens. Too many times had acting first caught the others unawares, too many times had someone paid the price for overconfidence with their lives. The Scion he controlled tried rebelling again and again until Lahabrea all but choked his soul within an inch of its life. So weak was it, in fact, that removing him might kill the Scion in the end.

If Persephone stayed the same throughout their reincarnations they would not sacrifice a life dear to them in order to defeat their enemy. Van Baelsar and his chief mechanic watched in horror as Castrum Meridianum’s main defences fell, as their darling fellow Garlean was slain at Persephone’s hands. Lahabrea cared little, paced inside the deepest bellows of the inner sanctum. He did not care about this at all. Either way, the Allagan creation was going to release the energy it had absorbed. Thousandfold enhanced, as the energy core that Igeyorhm had created all these myriad years ago was intended to. Whether van Baelsar intended it or not—and that perhaps made this all the better. Not even the Mother would be able to keep Her precious little mortal from vaporising to one or two of these. And after that the Ultima Weapon was free to run as rampant as necessary. Bahamut would pale in comparison to that.

Igeyorhm had never designed the core for that. But it would do its new duty well as every of her creations did—and he for one would enjoy that cacophony.

Things never quite went the way he wanted them to. Experiments gone haywire he dimly recalled, standing beside the Convocation as the very skies themselves bled fire down upon Amaurot. The Thirteenth.

He disengaged with a howl to whisk himself to safety—the light was overbearing. Any moment longer and he might have cracked, would have finally been turned into enough pieces for Hydaelyn to hook Her claws into him and pull him down into Her infernal Lifestream. But he managed to disappear in the last possible moment, the darkened shadow that he held close to his existence nearly gone under the enormous amount of light; gone enough for him to start screaming. He fled like a wounded dog—howling instead of whimpering, yes, but he fled like one regardless. He hurried behind enemy lines where no infernal Eorzean champion or Echo-bearer could get to him. Dragged himself through portal after portal until finally the dizziness vanished to give way to nauseating rage.

Another portal, this time with a more precise goal in mind other than ‘away’. Elidibus did not even have a chance to say whatever he clearly witnessed from his vantage point up here before Lahabrea grabbed him by the cloak and pulled the Emissary close.

“We have a problem, O Esteemed Elidibus,” he hissed.

“I saw. If you would be so kind as to alert Emet-Selch, I shall gather the others in the meanwhile.”

What likely went unspoken was the sloppy performance. He was mad beyond all reason, completely seeing red. He had had the upper hand and managed to completely waste it. Of all possible bloody Warriors of Light it had to be Persephone this time, the one who always proved the most problematic of Hydaelyn’s little tin soldiers.

Emet-Selch’s current vessel barely even reacted to the portal opening up. He did raise an eyebrow once he saw who had just burst into the room unannounced and without proper form. Hells, the bastard had likely been staring at him with that annoyingly sharp sight of his, had likely already seen what precisely was going on here. Not to mention in this nearly embarrassing moment of blind rage and embarrassment he failed to realise his mask had fallen off.

And indeed, Emet-Selch eventually broke the silence with a quiet but somewhat amused “Hydaelyn”.

“Delightfully on time as always.” It was a furious snarl as he fumbled with the mask. Emet-Selch, so far removed from everything. Emet-Selch, whose useless empire had brought fourth equally useless mortals that failed to do the only thing that mortals were good for. How on earth did a mortal fail at warfare? Zodiark be his witness, if he could have killed van Baelsar himself he would have. “You are required. O Esteemed Elidibus has called for a Convocation Meeting, the first in however many bloody mortal instants have passed.”

Emet-Selch let out a dry laugh, something that sounded ragged and wretched out of his vessel’s throat. That was a mortal in its death throes that would not last much longer—why on earth was Emet-Selch laughing?

“No, I think not. You go to your little meeting out of yet another Warrior of Light throwing wrenches in your plans. I will not involve myself any time soon, as I was promised I would be allowed to.”

Igeyorhm saying that none of them were the people she had known once, herself included, rung in his ears. Faced with yet another failure on a grand scale, with a bloody Warrior of Light on the loose, Lahabrea tried to stay calm. Breathed in and out despite the fact that he was a being without a body, without a shadow. His body had long since perished. The latest vessel had been wrenched out of his hands. He was going to snatch another one up soon enough.

But as he closed his eyes and opened them again after a moment, all he felt in the midst of that whirl of utter seething rage was… cold hatred. Devastatingly cold contempt.

“Very well,” and his voice was the closest to that of the normally calm Speaker of the past. “You certainly will not mind if I tear the mortal to shreds, then?”

Emet-Selch slowly waved a hand through the air. A clear sign of dismissal and no intention of even acknowledging that.

Oh, he was going to make certain not even a shred of Persephone remained this time around. And the only person that likely would have ever cared about it… well.

Long live the Emperor.

Or perhaps may this incarnation of Emet-Selch die a pathetic agonising death. That worked so much better as victory cry.

Igeyorhm and Nabriales had certainly not been lazy. Where she had worked hard to worm her way into the hearts of the Ishgardian leadership and the heretic leader’s hearts alike, Nabriales had strung the chords of unrest enough that several beast tribes were on the verge of summoning again or on the verge of summoning for the first time. It was laughable, really, but managing to push the Moogles of the Black Shroud this far was commendable in its own, strangely twisted way.

But Nabriales refused cooperation, citing something else catching his attention and it being beneficial to him to work on his own for a while. Thus Lahabrea, licking his wounds still as Altima put it, found himself working together with Igeyorhm once more in earnest. He took care of the Archbishop’s demands while she needled the heretic along to the right path for the Ardor. Before long this balance would collapse, not that there was much balance to begin with. In theory the Archbishop and the heretic would have gotten along quite well, were it not for one fundamental difference in their opinions. One wanted the truth to come out. One wanted to bury it. But both did want to end this war without further bloodshed, demanding that they were not responsible for their ancestors’ crimes.

A bloody difference of opinion.

Something like this would have been solved within a decade in Amaurot. Lahabrea himself had taken part in several discussion sessions to ease the tides in the past.

But unlike Emet-Selch and Elidibus he was not going to lament the things that had been lost. They would get them again, and the more time was spent mulling over days bygone, the more ground Hydaelyn recovered. Despite the initial apprehension from both sides, the two of them found themselves falling back into old habits rather quickly; it was what had made Lahabrea and Igeyorhm efficient in the past. It was what would make them efficient despite how many times she was forced back into the role of a clueless mortal unaware of her own existence. Even if she was not the same as she had been, the basics were all there.

Hells, they had nearly gotten far enough to properly apologise to one another when something shifted in the dark with such an intense tremor that even they felt it. Not a moment later there was a familiar feeling creeping through them, a tug on the connection they all had under what Emet-Selch had eventually started calling their shared Tempering. He had never quite been wrong with that, but Lahabrea abhorred calling it that. Zodiark may have tempered them, yes, but it had been a necessary evil—and the dark was so much more comforting than the light. Whoever was tugging, however, seemed insistent on them gathering where they always gathered when the occasion arose.

Curiosity got the better of them both and they returned to the vantage point.

Elidibus stood there with Halmarult, Deudalaphon and Altima—in time, the rest trickled in. Suspiciously absent were Nabriales and Emet-Selch.

The Architect had an excuse for his absence.

It was Elidibus who eventually pinched the bridge of his nose with a long, almost uncharacteristic sigh.

No. This was a sigh reminiscent of Elidibus right before the Final Days of Amaurot. That of an exhausted Emissary sick of dealing with yet another petty and childish argument between two members of the Convocation. An Emissary standing on the precipice of annihilation with what the then-gone Mnemosyne called a half-baked madman’s plan.

“Let me do away with any sort of preamble, and let us forget about wrapping this in pretty paper. Most certainly you felt that one of our two missing members fell. Now, normally that is not something that requires all of you present; should one of you come across a shard of Nabriales as per usual, please do alert either I or Lahabrea and we shall see him returned to our ranks. The reason I called you here is… much less pleasant, alas.” He shook his head. “Exercise caution. The Warrior of Light who managed to sabotage Lahabrea’s designs with the Ultima Weapon has vanquished Nabriales in a way I have not seen before. Mitron, Loghrif. Given your duties bind you to the First, I will make this plain. Do not bother seeking a shard of Nabriales on the star under your care. The part of his soul that belongs there has been crushed. Destroyed. Irreparably and irrevocably gone, blasted into pieces by infernal light. That is all. Continue.”

Murmuring broke out the very moment that Elidibus was gone—and for the first time in an age and a half Lahabrea feels as if he stands in the Halls of the Capitol again, Persephone gone and the clock ticking down for them. Suddenly they were not lesser for their shattered state, instead the same people he had always known. Deep frowns on every face, they quietly discussed what that implied. Perhaps Hydaelyn had grown desperate enough that She would grant Her chosen toys something like that. The implications of a piece of soul shattering were something that other bureaus had dealt with—the people lost parts of themselves to a partially fractured soul, but there were ways to fill that void and heal it over a millennium or two. Millennia that these fractured Convocation members did not have and millennia that had turned Emet-Selch lethargic and Elidibus apathetic.

There were no recorded cases of a dark-aligned soul losing a piece to overwhelming light. Whatever Nabriales they found next, that ascended shard would have to deal with the knowledge of never being complete again.

The anger about their fractured existences guttered out in his chest for the first time in millennia. No matter how fractured they were, they would at least be whole again once this ordeal was over and Zodiark back in control. Nabriales would never be again, forever fractured even once the world was back in place. What a miserable way to die. What a miserable way to live. He stood there with the others, all their heads stuck together and worry in the voices. It almost felt as if he were back in the Capitol again with whole people rather than shades of their former selves. One day he would be.

As long as… as long as… he shook his head and said that Elidibus was right. Caution would see them to their goal.

Right after Mitron and Loghrif departed, Lahabrea and Igeyorhm followed suit. The heretic had ended in failure—but the Archbishop seemed receptive. As long as no one gave Persephone another weapon to destroy them permanently, they would be fine. It would all be fine.

“You really think this is even remotely appropriate, do you.”

It was not a question. He wasn’t even sure what to think of this latest mess.

First to depart, first to not return, apparently—but the First hung in the balance, but a small tipping point away from being ripe for the picking. The light over there was blinding, radiant, infuriating. Mitron and Loghrif were gone. And Elidibus had plucked the Warriors of Light from that place with honeyed words and promises of this all being a mistake, that there was a way to save the people they had doomed to a horrid death. Lahabrea had merely gone to check in on Elidibus and inquire about Emet-Selch’s whereabouts and he learned rather quickly that Loghrif and Mitron were not going to return. The faces that greeted him instead were the haggard faces of mortals that were out of their element.

And one of them stared at him with Persephone’s infuriating clear blue eyes. Hells, the fool looked a lot like the Warrior of Light on the Source.

Elidibus shrugged, barely more than a slight motion that most others would have missed.

“Fine. Whatever. As long as they don’t interfere with my and Igeyorhm’s work.”

He needed to get away from these. Elidibus’ little pet brat from the Thirteenth had departed for elsewhere on the Source, and now Elidibus brought in more mortals. The Echo at least let them copy the bodyless state of the Convocation, an ascension in a sense.

“The Source’s Twelve be willing they will prove a valuable asset to you and Igeyorhm,” Elidibus said with the faintest hint of a smile on his face. A smile never meant anything good.

Lahabrea rolled his eyes, shook his head, and departed once again.

He couldn’t think straight. This mortal’s body felt like an agonising slab of maltreated flesh, and he could not manage the strength to get back to his feet. Not even the subtlest magics that had always answered him even before he went on to study for an eternity to gain full control over creation answered him now. The price of calling upon old, dark arts that had always been hidden away in the deepest reaches of the library that only the Speaker had full control over never quite changed—back then it had been the lives of others, given up with the hope and desperation of a people driven into a corner.

As he and Igeyorhm, an unsundered and a sundered existence, threw their lot in together, he finally understood something that Chief Hythlodaeus had mentioned just once.

In a fight of desperation and dedication, desperation would most certainly lose.

The price they paid for their desperate attempt to stop this reincarnation of Persephone was an exhaustion so overwhelming that he truly felt like the old man she had declared him not too long ago. All those mortals he had commandeered for a short while seemed like a waste now; he could still have had the Scion if he had focused his energy on something more productive than blind anger. If he hadn’t spent his energy on steering that Archbishop along the right path. If only that damned shard of Persephone were not so blinding, if only the two of them had not failed to talk about their differences, if only that damnable spell had worked properly. If only, if only, if only.

Now they were both on the ground, mortal flesh gasping for breath and even his own existence finally hit with the same tiredness that seemed to seep through every wisp of soul that made up Emet-Selch. He was tired, he was worn out—a threadbare carpet, stomped upon repeatedly.

Persephone’s little fragment had a call to make. Just as Igeyorhm told him that they could still flee and do it all over again, they reached for a chunk of stone that looked and felt despicable even from a distance. The mortal had a call to make—to eliminate a being that they did not know and just defeated for the first time, or get rid of someone they had defeated before. If he had had anything but a void of horror where the anger had kept him going for myriad mortal lifetimes once burned, he would have likely commended them for their choice. Wise—Igeyorhm, Martyr, mother of the Void for all intents and purposes. A being that the Warrior of Light did not know—as opposed to Lahabrea, the Speaker, someone they could parse to a certain degree because they had clashed before and Persephone’s shard had emerged victorious.

But he couldn’t. His wretched body was unresponsive as he all but knelt there at the mercy of Hydaelyn’s Chosen—a Chosen who had used their weapon against his weaker but more spirited companion. Finally, finally the anger had subsided. It was the quiet dark that he had grown to know and love in the final years of Amaurot as they rebuilt their city for those that still lived. The same dark that had ever guided him, had stoked that utter seething rage as he tore through mortal instants with reckless abandon. It finally, finally struck him what he had done. He had thrown ally and enemy alike into the fire that made him see red, and now there was nothing and no one left.

Igeyorhm had had her soul irreparably mangled now, the shard shattered into pieces and dispersed into fine aether that residually remained but would eventually flicker out. And it was because he hadn’t been able to guide her technically weaker hand correctly.

By the blessed quiet dark, he wanted the shrill seething rage back. This was miserable—the most miserable he had ever been. But before he could even gather up the energy to mock Persephone’s shard for their inability to strike him down as well, a piece on the board that he had almost forgotten about reappeared.

The damned mortal Archbishop, so self-righteous in his chosen path that he would have bloody killed his own son to see his goals through. Ruthless as mortals were, convinced that he was the only right one in this messy net of opinions and options—rather like Amaurot in its final death throes as Hydaelyn and Zodiark clashed and the people below those contested skies stood on two opposing sides.

There was one thing he had not accounted for. Now that the fog of fury that had clouded his mind was gone he realised that he had forgotten one hypothetical in this equation. Something that the shattered world that that Amaurot had lacked. Something that had arrived after his beloved home had been torn into ribbons.

Dragons.

Souls were, for all intents and purposes, made of what mortals called aether. The ascended ones were denser than their shattered mortal compatriots, but feeble and weak overall. Those souls were always recalled back to the Lifestream where Hydaelyn stripped them clean of their memories and recycled these souls—something that the Underworld never quite did. Every soul back then had been unique rather than a paltry piece.

But aether was what made up this world. Every mage learned how to control it, every animal consisted of it, every plant breathed it. Lahabrea and this mortal body that ached so badly were both technically made of it.

A dragon’s eyes stored aether. They absorbed it. On a much higher degree than whatever hunk of rock that had been manufactured to high hell and back the Warrior of Light had just used to disperse Igeyorhm.

The anger had finally died.

As per usual, Lahabrea was not sure whether to laugh or to cry when the Speaker realised what exactly was going on.

In the past, he had laughed. He had always settled for laughter. Laughter that sounded more and more deranged as the time went on, he realised all too late now.

He would have settled for crying if he had had the chance before he was devoured and found a rage just as seething as his own had been in that deep, dark sea of aether attributed to a dragon.

Not that he cared any longer.