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It began with rumours. Rumours of heroes turned monsters, rumours of entire cities laid to waste when an age and a half ago by his reckoning they had been freed from primal influence thanks to all these heroes. Salvation was not beyond even the Tempered, it seemed, for with the Primal imprisoned they were incapable of summoning it again. The people were not driven by a mad desire to summon but rather lived their lives as the heroes said that perhaps one day their deities would be freed to walk amongst their worshippers—for their duty as heroes was to find a way for all of them to coexist.
Rumours of reapers that hounded aether and consumed the worshippers now made their rounds as settlement after settlement went down quietly.
Death had already lost all meaning to him by the time it visited his home in the form of a demon wrought of flame and endless rows upon rows of teeth and claws and eyes, staring them down for a moment and devouring them next. Just as the tales from the haunted survivors told, except their tales had other demons in them. Icy embraces, the never-ending howl of storms, the raging seas, blinding lightning, monsters more earth than human. Yet even amongst the flame and teeth he saw a face, still a face, even as hundreds upon thousands of flaming rocks were thrown at them.
His mother shoved him forwards, off the cliff that would send him into the river below. Eyes wide he stared up, stared as those burning chunks of earth sailed past him from above.
Stared as his mother’s shriek of agony as the thing devoured her whole was drowned out by a droning voice that heroes all claimed they heard when they awoke to their duties echoed in his head.
Hear.
Feel.
Think.
Unukalhai, not even ten turns of the seasons old, crashed into the icy river below.
When a group of travellers pulled him from the river, he could not even muster a single tear for his mother and his home. They were gone, he mumbled, hands on his ears as the voice continued relentlessly. They were gone and he felt nothing—the adults had been expecting catastrophe to strike for a long long time; long enough that they no longer cared whether the children heard or not.
Felt nothing as the travellers also fell victim to another thing that still spoke with a semi-human voice. He stared down into that abyss of a humanoid with twisted scales and several limbs that all cracked and ground as it moved. Slithering, cracking, grinding, and the voice was as hoarse as the laugh.
“Run, little hero—grow strong and kill us if you dare.”
He ran.
Ran as far as he could with all those mangled corpses littering the ground before he, too, finally did not have the strength to continue. Others turned and he put them down as well as he could—not a single tear still on his face even as his own supposed comrade turned on him and he all but incinerated them before they could harm him any more. He plucked their staff they had dropped off the ground gingerly and continued marching until his legs gave out.
He heard the exhaustion and expectation of a sudden, swift and painful death in every voice on the road.
He felt… nothing. Perhaps he ought to have been concerned about that, but even as faint whisperings of others with the Echo who were supposedly untouched by aetherial hunger rose amongst the few survivors he felt nothing.
Perhaps that was why he reached for the hand the Ascian offered him quietly once he finished burning that wound of his clean. He thought… he thought. Thinking about it, the Ascian had a point when he made his offer.
“Salvation is not beyond you,” his deep and even voice said, “but for the dark to be banished, the surviving specks of light must needs be stoked into a blinding glare. Should you embrace that path, gladly will I help you walk it. Should you wish to embrace oblivion instead, I can grant it to you. Such is my duty as Emissary.”
Once more, Unukalhai did not shed a single tear of regret as he watched his world crash into the dark deluge.
Of all Paragons, the one that made him speak once again after the Flood devoured all was Lahabrea.
There was an exhaustion in this place that seemingly weighed each and every soul down. The ones not donning the robes of Paragons numbered few, no more than ten—and all of them wore whatever they had left their beloved home with. Simple travelling robes for most. Weapons much like his picked up as a memento of someone.
Twixt worlds, they soon realised, Hydaelyn’s voice did not reach. Suddenly they were on their own after having the Mothercrystal as their constant companion as their homes were devoured.
It was not even much of a grand gesture. It was but a Paragon, an Unsundered as Unukalhai would learn later, picking up the pieces and sternly judging them.
“You there, the one named after the serpent star.”
He had not long ago called for one of the sky’s seven sisters and after what might have been an interrogation judging from her angry glare as she stalked off beside two Paragons she had been assigned he had been quiet for a while. It seemed that it was his time to be scrutinised.
And nigh immediately he saw the Paragon’s scowl deepen.
“You… a child. Truly?”
Unukalhai shrugged.
They were all young—but none as young as him. People who all had their lives ahead of them, but he had not exactly even had a childhood to begin with. The Paragon Lahabrea’s shoulders tightened at that, some expression likely hiding behind his mask as his lips settled into a thin line.
For a moment, nothing. Then the Paragon, surprisingly enough, lowered himself down so they were eye to masked eye. Beyond that mask his eyes seemed to glow an eerie silvery-gold. Unukalhai blankly stared.
“And here I thought the high and mighty thought not to stoop to levels they deemed reprehensible when all else was impossible,” he hissed and then shook his head. “I ask you, much as I asked your fellow Bringers of Light, if you would raise your weapon to a cause concerning naught less than the salvation of your star and all others.”
He nodded, apparently a wrong choice. It was either an annoyed scowl—or a concerned frown. The mask made it hard to tell.
“To think your beloved Mother would send children out to war—”
“Lahabrea,” came a flat voice from behind, and the Paragon straightened back up. For a moment he thought he saw a flash of blonde hair which the Ascian immediately brushed back under his cowl again.
“Emissary.”
“I ask you refrain from giving this one a duty on a shard. I would have him watch the Source—and if necessary have him don the robes of an Emissary.”
“Understood.”
He waited for a long time after the white-robed one vanished again—and then tension released from the Paragon as if he were a wind-up doll collapsing after its energy was spent. “You have your duty, then. And for what it is worth, on behalf of Igeyorhm, I offer an apology.”
Unukalhai stared at the Ascian for a long, long moment. The words were on his lips, scathing and naught but a truth he had slowly but steadily realised as all other Bringers of Light wept for their home and he once again felt next to nothing. “Empty words, meant to appease those you have wronged,” Unukalhai said, his voice raw and sore after it had gone unused for so long.
The frown turned into a grin as the Paragon laughed.
“My, oh my. Sharp, are we, serpent star? Perhaps an Emissary’s robes will suit you well after all.”
He watched. Quietly. Unerringly.
None save the passing Paragons acknowledged him on occasion—the black-masked ones more receptive to his presence than the three who prowled Eorzea with an appetite for destruction. Only the very orchestrator of his home’s fall with a red mask ever truly reacted to him, her raised hand a feeble greeting laden with a guilt he barely even acknowledged. One day he would get his revenge on her in particular. He but had to bide his time—and perhaps the balance could forgive him a little personal vengeance if it but restored the Void to a Shard or helped rejoin it. After all, he knew that by the end of it all, heroes were beyond the salvation they so laboured for. Time and time again they rose with weapons in one hand and naught but simple desires clutched like pearls in the other, and every time, without fail, those heroes never were the same or never died as peacefully as those they saved did. Not even those heroes that were free from the burden of the Echo were granted peace.
The skies had grown quieter in recent days.
Following the demise of Nabriales, something else had changed after enough time passed. There was no roar of war making entire clusters of dragons rise into the skies. It had quieted down, that mournful cry for vengeance, and the skies felt emptier for it.
Unukalhai inhaled.
Exhaled.
Rose to his feet when he felt a strange change in the surrounding aether that usually announced the arrival of a Paragon.
He turned to face the visitor—he expected a black mask.
Blinked in surprise when gold glimmered in the warm afternoon sun, as white robes near but blinded him. He bowed quickly—a motion that was interrupted by a movement of a hand.
“The Warring Triad stirs,” was all Elidibus said, forgoing a greeting of any sort. “Their shackles loosened by Lahabrea and Igeyorhm’s foolish final stands—there is something I would ask of you, both to ensure the survival of the Source and to ensure the balance does not tip further to wildly fluctuating out of our control, Unukalhai.”
He blinked. “Fluctuating?”
A long inhale. Exhale. Elidibus ever seemed to lack clear emotions, but for some reason it felt as if there was a deep, bottomless grief that he could not fathom behind his next words. “Lahabrea is no more. The Warriors of Light from the First have set out to balance the Source, hopefully to slay the Bringer of Light. While their demise at their hands is likely, I ask of you to spur them into taking care of the Triad ere they pass—I ask you to don an Emissary’s robes and to approach the Archon Augurelt.”
Perhaps Elidibus felt some sort of sorrow for the Speaker’s passing.
Unukalhai but turned his gaze back to the Source’s immaculately clear skies once the Emissary departed and could not help but wonder if he was not orchestrating another’s demise as carelessly as he had torched his own friend once they turned on him.
It was as simple as a few words. Genesis Expression—and a whisper to tear into the wards once he promised to do so.
Regula van Hydrus would not leave the Aetherochemical Research Facility alive. The trap was set—all that was missing now were the actors.
“Warrior of Light,” he greeted them in the Solar. Abandoned by its previous holder, the Antecedent likely whisked away by the Mothercrystal due to her gift. Now all that remained was the supposed servan of a ‘friend’ as he had introduced himself, shadowed by the Scion working with the Emissary and the Warriors of Darkness.
The first death that left him rattled for more than a passing moment was indeed Regula van Hydrus—but later. Much later.
His trap had failed him, the Warrior of Light surprisingly forgiving even as the Archon Augurelt revealed whose hands had undone the ward. Those Scions felt like companions in the same way that the Paragons never had save for the Emissary and his calm explanation of what their duties were. The almost playful friendliness from that Scion Krile in particular had left him strangely looking forward to working with her and the others some more, as if he was a person rather than but a tool the gods could use. The Void ever burned behind every spell he cast, a home he barely remembered at this point and that he still had not shed a single tear for ever looming behind him. A reminder that his duty was just. That all those people were not pointlessly sacrificed to the plots and ploys of uncaring gods who preserved or saved the worlds in their own ways.
Unukalhai had entered the codes to see the thralls’ life supports turned off with cold clarity. He already had that much blood on his hands—what mattered some more staining his hands? The Archon Y’shtola called him out for it, fury in her blank eyes as she accused him of making presumptions about the Warrior of Light and the Scions and their dedication to the cause they all joined hands for.
But that spilled blood, that blood that stained his white robes—it rattled him. Made him black out for a moment as he stared at his unstained hands and swore he stood amidst a deluge of blood and darkness.
It was Krile who snapped him out of it, who led him away when the Warrior of Light all but jumped into the beast’s maw. Just as his mother had stopped to yank her struggling child forwards and to push him off the cliff to safety from fire and snapping jaws fully knowing that she would not make it, the Warrior of Light forged ahead knowing that even if they died for it, someone else would have easy pickings. Even should Zurvan slay them as he had slain van Hydrus, they knew that Krile and Unukalhai would be there to pick off the weakened Eikon.
Had his trap worked, he would have perished then and there, at the end of a sword that he had hardly even considered a threat to him. But van Hydrus had protected him, had said that his gift was too precious to be wasted.
Same as the travellers who pulled him out of the river had said when he quietly, meekly asked if he would turn into a monster as well and if it were not better if they killed him then and there. Same as the Emissary who stood beside him at times as he quietly watched the Source, nothing but the sound of rushing water below them as they stood at that cliff that so much reminded him of the one his mother pushed him off of.
“In the end, you will make a choice that best befits the fate of stars,” Elidibus had said quietly during one such silent observation, half turned back to return whence he came. “All heroes who choose salvation do in the end. Even if all else they should lose.”
Perhaps it was time he told the Scions the truth. All of it. Of who he was. Of what he had failed.
Of why he did what he did.
Part of him wished he could have challenged van Hydrus to a fight eventually, once he had grown strong.
The second death that rattled him was much simpler. A Scion—they had made him a Scion.
As silent death devoured the Source just as loud hunger for aether had devoured the Thirteenth, he stood amongst the stubborn remainder. Amongst the people who had not descended into brutal anarchy.
Wordlessly sunk to his knees when the Warrior of Light was confirmed dead beside the Scions Alphinaud and Alisaie.
He remained at Revenant’s Toll even as it was abandoned for a long, long time. He watched as he always had, one eye on the emptiness that had once been a bustling city of adventurers, one eye on the silent Crystal Tower that towered over the now empty Mor Dhona.
Unukalhai did not realise how much he missed them until the very moment Elidibus once more quietly sat down next to him as he kept his silent vigil.
“… Perhaps it is time I closed my chapter as the Emissary’s emissary,” Unukalhai said softly after a while and leaned against the Ascian.
He was cold.
He was always cold.
Cold and empty and oddly comforting in this world choked half to death by light.
“If such is your wish,” was all Elidibus said.
“s that… selfish?”
A long pause. “That I know not. On occasion, people need breaks. Emet-Selch earned his—who am I to deny you one after you so duly did your duty?”
Unukalhai nodded. He knew eventually people would rise to the occasion as they always did. He but willfully closed his eyes to the people who, much like any hero, took up their weapons to make the impossible possible despite never living to see it. He almost wished he could show himself to these people of the Ironworks to wish them well and offer help without prying Paragon eyes watching his every step.
Cold.
That was what the Scions usually called him. It was not an insult, but it was not a compliment either. The Solar already felt cold to all of them due to the Antecedent’s absence in the first place, and while he was a member of their order his concern were Eikons first and foremost. Lately no such dangers had truly arisen since the unexpected rise and demise of Tsukuyomi—and then the Scions had fallen one by one.
He lent Krile a hand whenever she requested one, but such times were far and few between. She rather spent the time the Warrior of Light was away sprawled on the floor of the Solar, watching Unukalhai move about to keep the place clean. It may have been the cold, empty remainder of a woman who gave all for the world, but the least he could do while occupying this space was keep it clean.
Sometimes he sat on the ground with Krile, exchanging a few words and inquiring after her well-being while also making certain she ate properly whenever Mistress Tataru took over the watch for her.
Once, just once, there was an unusual if not unwelcome visitor. Quiet as ever, without a word to announce him. Only the swirling aether announced him, and Unukalhai felt a pang of horror when he saw the Ascian properly in that moment. Quiet, cold, empty. Blank. Comfortingly blank. That was the Emissary he had gotten to know, a quiet pillar that oft went against what the other Paragons preached with a faint smile and the claim that his duty would see salvation brought to the star even if he worked against them.
Elidibus now had a clawed hand raised to his head, mouth half-opened and seemingly stuck in either a growl of pain or a snarl of anger. For a long, long moment the normally comforting silence was uncomfortable as he watched the Emissary—and then the man in white shook his head. He tried, he tried to return to the usual blankness, but there was a furious air about him that Unukalhai had never noticed.
“Emissary?”
He startled—not something that Elidibus normally did at the sound of anyone’s voice. There was a deep, bottomless anger in his normally so calm and collected voice as he spoke. “I will not ask your forgiveness, not this time. But the Bringer of Light must die. And I will see it done with my own two hands—lest the salvation of this star is left to… is left to….”
Blank eyes. Shaking hands.
Without a further word, Elidibus departed as erratically as he had arrived, his answer unfound and Unukalhai not entirely certain the Emissary had sought him out in particular in the first place.
He knew, in his heart of hearts he knew that he would never see the Emissary again.
The quiet finality of the door to the Solar falling shut after the Warrior of Light confessed to slaying him and sending him off with the crystals that bore the memories of the Convocation in his hands only made it worse.
His thoughts were rapidly going over everything he had ever noticed before he departed to find the Archon Augurelt.
He had heard, of course. Heard how allegedly the Emissary refused to even look at his own stone while so gingerly handing them out to his dark-cloaked brethren. Heard it in that one particular one-sided screaming match that Lahabrea attempted to have with the ever cold and blank Emissary. It was what broke the Speaker beyond repair as he sunk to his knees, fists balling up white fabric.
“Please, anything,” Lahabrea had choked out. “Please. Tell me why you refused to rest even as all of you was lost. I cannot bear this any longer, Elidibus—or whatever you are that stole his name.”
The door was closed. He waited a few more moments to listen for the door to Dawn’s Respite to open and click shut.
He tore the mask off his face, tossed it into a corner, and slammed his hands into his face. Perhaps Regula van Hydrus’ death had but opened the gates enough for this agonising pain to seep through in the end. Leaning against the desk as always, Unukalhai sunk to his knees with a sob he choked back.
Heroes were never granted the same salvation they sought to bring. From how it sounded, Elidibus had died alone and in despair, clutching what little remained of his memories to himself and crying. Unukalhai knew that the same fate awaited him, awaited the Warrior of Light at journey’s end. The Emissary had always at the very least extended hands to heroes at the end of that journey, to ease their suffering somewhat.
The Warrior of Light had tried to offer that same hand to the Emissary, but there was nothing to be done. It was kill or be killed in this case, if the Emissary’s apparent furious confusion had not already told him as much.
Unukalhai wailed on his own in the Solar, muffled by his own hands. For a home he lost. For a home he lost. For a man who gave up his life for him.
For the one Paragon who always so very quietly and comfortingly stood beside him whenever he was not preaching salvation through balance.
Elidibus would not quietly appear beside him again. No matter how out of control the fate of stars spun from here on out—it was now his duty as the Emissary’s emissary to ensure that the stars did not flicker out and died without at least an attempt to see them saved.
But for just a moment he wanted to be Unukalhai—and Unukalhai very desperately cried out the bottomless relief and crushing desperation that he felt right now as survivor of the Flood of Darkness. The Paragons who ushered in that end were no more. The Paragon who all but made him his apprentice however also was no more.
He was conflicted, to say the least. Apologised wildly when a tired Krile all but kicked in the door to the Solar and asked him if he was okay.
Just as he had often watched Calamities beside Elidibus, he now sobbed into Krile’s shoulder because the realisation that the hero he aspired to be had died like all of them did settled in. Alone. Cold. Hopeless. Salvation out of his reach, no matter how hard he laboured for it until his last breath escaped him. The same fate would await the Warrior of Light—and he knew they would accept that in stride even as they bled out somewhere.
He, however, for the first time, had to admit that the thought of dying on his own somewhere scared him. Death scared him.
Unukalhai would apologise to the mask he so carelessly tossed aside later. Right now, he wept. Maybe it would help.
It likely wouldn’t.
But he could try. Wasn’t that what all of them did in the end? Try, until there was nothing left to try, no road left to walk?
Ah, right.
Elidibus wasn’t here to answer that question any longer.