Chapter Text
She is gone.
It happened all too quickly, one action after another blurring together until all that was left in its wake is a series of emotions that bleed like a gaping wound. Until all the group can do is stare up into the grand expanse of the universe from atop the highest layer of Ktisis Hyperboreia.
The dark ocean of stars had once seemed like an unending source of hope and wonder—and now it feels like a threat. It leaves a cold, heavy weight over everything, as if the pinpricks of lights are multitudes of dead eyes staring down at them. Waiting. Watching. Endless.
Hermes isn’t quite sure what he feels more heartbroken over: the dark, nihilistic revelations that had been promised from the edge of the universe, or the realization that Meteion—and Hermes himself in turn—had always been complicit to what would be known as the Final Days within the chronicles of time despite his best efforts to the very opposite.
Emotions of all layers and sorts twist painfully within the man’s chest. But he neither has the chance nor focus to begin untangling them as a voice rises from the silent rancor.
“That… is not quite how I expected things to turn out.”
Hythlodaeus steps up from the others—Venat, Emet-Selch and the time-traveling warrior yet looking up at the sky as if there is hope yet to catch Meteion—and lays a hand upon Hermes’ shoulder.
“Are you alright?”
Hermes merely stares at him. He can’t begin to form the thought let alone the answer in words; what would it even mean to be ‘alright’ after everything they’d seen and heard? So he shakes his head in simple but honest silence.
Before Hythlodaeus can say anything further, Emet-Selch’s stern voice cuts through the air and calls everyone’s attention towards him.
“So it would seem that we were unable to change the hand of fate,” he says tensely, “and as loath as I am to admit it, not even the help of a time-traveler was enough to stop this insanity from happening.”
Everyone is silent. He speaks the obvious, yes, but the empty air feels so thick with trepidation that it needs the sound to make it thin and breathable again. Else one might fear to suffocate upon it. But to the seatholder’s frustrated resignation, Venat’s eyes have been filled with something hard to place.
“I don’t believe that is the case,” she says. Emet-Selch and the others cast a look of confusion towards her, but she doesn’t yield an ilm beneath the attention’s weight and continues. “As our visitor described it from their time, we were completely unaware of the origin of the Final Days. The fact that we know of Meteion and her sisters’ is enough to argue that this timeline has been irreversibly fractured.”
Emet-Selch’s eyes narrow. “And what might this mean for us?”
“And for our friend?” Hythlodaeus’ eyes glance towards the warrior of light, his mind already rolling with concern but comforted if only by the fact that they had not begun to fade away like dust. “Given that they are still here, can we assume their world has not been affected?”
Venat nods her head.
“By their actions, we’ve been given a chance to save Etheirys—a chance not afforded to the versions of us from the world of our time-traveling companion.” She turns her gaze towards the warrior, who in turn mirrors a look of worry. Venat smiles and then continues, “Fear not, your world will remain as it was when you had left it, for good and ill alike. The decisions made by the versions of us from your past have not changed,”
She looks across the platform. To Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, and finally to Hermes.
“-but it means that it is our duty to help you overcome the threat, so that we may overcome it in our own time.”
Emet-Selch takes a step forward, his brows knitted tightly above his heavy eyes.
“What exactly are you suggesting we do to ‘help’?” he snaps. “Because if you think we can afford to pull the same foolish gambit that they’ve done in coming here, then I will have no part in it! None of you will have any part in it!”
Perhaps it is just a trick of the light, or perhaps it is simply due to the amount of aether he’d expended making his way this far into the facility, but the man… looks tired. Exhausted, really. Though he is without the eons-long weight of loneliness dragging his shoulders down, the warrior can see the same man they had spoken with in the world of the First, holding the same passion and love for his people. But only this time, there’s something else behind the man’s eyes that seems to separate him from the man who once masqueraded as the emperor of Garlemald: hope.
Honest and fearful hope that he would not have to make the same mistakes again.
Hythlodaeus breaks the tension in the air with a soft, but wary question. “If we entertain the thought for but a moment, then what exactly do you propose we do, Venat? Return with them to their present and aid in the forestalling of the Final Days?”
Venat nods her head solemnly. It’s clear that the idea weighs heavily on her thoughts, but her sense of determination burns like a fire through whatever doubts and fears that may have lingered upon them.
“Though that’s putting it rather lightly, yes, assuming we even have the capability to do so.” She looks at the warrior. “You said that the seatholder of Elidibus of your time—or what remained of his being—was able to send you here using a conduit?”
The warrior of light nods, then quickly explains the details of what had happened as best as possible. Even without knowing the finer points of how ancient allagan technology worked in tandem with the will of an ancient Etheirys’ soul, Venat’s expression morphs into focused thought than confusion. She taps at her chin and closes her eyes.
“A tower forged to collect and store the energy of the sun…? Well, I dare say that you’d be hard-pressed to find a better source of power. But the real question is if we have something at our disposal that can act in similar fashion.”
“I… am not a Chronologist by any means,” Hermes says, having found his voice once more from the tremor of his thoughts and woes, “but if you mean to find an abundant source of energy, then you should find none greater than the very facility we’re standing within.”
“Ktisis Hyperboreia,” Hythlodaeus echoes the name that sparks within everyone’s mind with the reminder that seems as obvious as the sun itself. “It has to amass a great amount of aether in order to function—in fact, I’m told that it's one of the best examples of how time and space manipulation can be utilized in the academic field.”
Hermes nods. “More of the latter, as you and your party had experienced while… making your way here. When aetheric energy is made extremely dense, it can be used to manipulate space in ways we believe only occur naturally on the very edges of the universe—time, of course, is a connected facet to that. One that we’ve not used to the same extent outside a few preliminary studies here in the facility.”
After a moment, Hythlodaeus lifts a brow towards the Chief of Elpis. “What? No attempts to see what wonders the future might hold?”
“If only it were that simple.” Hermes closes his eyes for a moment, arms crossing over his chest. “It is not unlike our need for aetherytes to traverse the aetherial currents of our star. We cannot transport ourselves without an anchor to bind our souls back to the material world. Traveling across time is similar, in theory. One cannot move forwards nor backwards without first having something to anchor our souls to.
And though the past could be easy in theory—had we the mind at any point to set up such a beacon and wait to traverse back to it—the future is complex and unwieldy. It would be no different than throwing yourself into the aetherial currents and merely hoping your soul falls out where you want it to. Assuming it ever would, without a proper destination.”
The group goes quiet.
Hermes’ words hang over all of them, heavy and stiff with a problem that on the surface seems utterly unsolvable. Even if they had all the energy on Etheirys and thensome, it would do nothing to change the fact that they had no way of connecting to the future in the same way that Elidibus had connected back to them—through memories so strong and beloved that they alone had kept a hollow soul with a semblance of purpose and life.
And in all this, Emet-Selch’s voice rings out once more, “You are not seriously entertaining this notion, are you?”
He steps into the center of their group, gesturing indignantly with his hands to the entirety of the platform around them.
“Assuming we could even find a way to make such a foolish plan work, what would we even gain from doing so? Saving their world will do absolutely nothing to save our own—and what will happen if we don’t return? What havoc will that bring to our own world when we are the only ones who know about this?”
“Hades…” Hythlodaeus murmurs.
“Don’t use my name like that! I cannot be the only person here who is trying to think this through rationally.”
Venat reaches out a hand and lays it upon Emet-Selch’s shoulder. In her eyes and words is not judgment, but understanding. She has worked alongside the man for long and has known him longer yet, so her words sit deep within the air of the moment as she speaks.
“You are not. But you must also admit that we have an obligation to help.”
“An obligation?!”
“From our own actions in another timeline, untold amounts of suffering has been unleashed upon a people who only wish to live their own lives. Not even that, but our own people will suffer for it too. If we are able to learn how to defeat Meteion and her song of oblivion by aiding the warrior in their time, then we will be able to return and do so here as well.”
To that, Emet-Selch is silent. He is silent for a rather long time, in fact, so long that Venat and the rest of the group thought he was seething with broiling anger. Hythlodaeus even reaches out a hand to offer some level of comfort of his own, but the seatholder’s voice rings out all too evenly and firm across the entire platform.
“…there may yet be an anchor,” he says, “to the future we seek to save. And we already have it with us.”
He points at the warrior of light.
Everyone’s eyes move to follow the man’s finger before, one by one, realization dawns upon their features—especially so for Hythlodaeus, who has eyes as unique in ability as Emet-Selch himself. To see the color of a soul, unique and branded in ways beyond the understanding of most people even in their modern academia.
“You are practically enmeshed in the aetherial energy of your time,” he continues. “And I do believe you’re also invariably tied to the point of which you came from—that very tower of which you described. If we were to truly go through with this concept, then our best anchor will be them.”
“It stands a very good chance of working,” Hermes admits, tone awed and expression similarly put—before a hurried fear falls over his eyes. “But we need to act quickly; there’s no telling how long that connection will last before it’s washed away by the ambient energy of the here and now.”
Hythlodaeus chuckles, “And here I thought I’d have enough time to pack all my best robes.”
The shift in the air from feelings of missed opportunity to vengeful hope is subtle, but unrelenting. It wells forth like a rising tide, higher and higher until it washes away all the lingering traces of doubt clinging to their thoughts. The plan put forth may not be the best nor the most sane, but it is the only one that they have available to them—and it simply must work.
Emet-Selch sighs. Though he seems exhausted, it is with a look of pure will and determination that his eyes meet Hermes’ own.
“Now that we’ve wholeheartedly decided to launch our souls into the theory of an entirely untested field of research,” he says, tone slow and undaunted, “What do you need from us to make it work?”
Hands, it would quickly seem to be. Lots of hands and much more coordination. Ktisis Hyperboreia may be a facility that regularly utilizes spatial reconfiguration technology, but not to the extent that Hermes needs. He has each of the group running about the endless rooms, gathering keys and pieces of machines they only scarcely understand and rerouting power sources that were never meant to be shifted.
The weight of physical exhaustion is already so heavy from the chase through and battle atop the facility—but it is ignored, each person seeing the mountain upon their shoulders as a measly addition to the already-monstrous thought of losing the chance to save their homes and loved ones alike.
This must work.
It can’t be more than a bell from when the group leaves the platform to when they return to it. Hermes stands at the center, hands cradling a brilliant crystal that, for a split-second, reminds the warrior of light all too much of the tower they’d been teleported from. The man turns his face towards the others as they appear, as if making sure they were each present and accounted for from their individual tasks across Ktisis Hyperboreia.
“I believe that was the last of things,” Venat says, glancing at Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, who appear last upon the platform. “The power has been routed from each of the major wings within the facility.”
“And the operations of everything else have been directed to cease,” Hythlodaeus adds. “The silence on our return here was perhaps the most uncomfortable I’ve heard. Or rather, not heard at all.”
“Good,” Hermes murmurs, turning his gaze back to the crystal in his hands.
It’s barely larger than several of the man’s fists stacked on top of one another, and shaped not unlike the white auracite that the warrior had grown familiar with not all that long ago in their adventures. It glitters a brilliant blue and hovers just above Hermes’ palms, and each and every person can feel the immense sense of aetherial power that practically radiates from the object.
Luckily, the group is not left to engrossed confusion for very long, as the man quickly nods his head towards the crystal and answers the unspoken question, “ ‘Tis the heart of Ktisis Hyperboreia itself.”
And all at once, the air shifts. It feels as if the space around them begins to unravel into bits and pieces, leaving the sky as dark as an abyss and the world below them as little more than a child’s glowing trinket. All that shines through the darkness is the crystal at the center of the platform, rising higher and higher yet from Hermes’ hands.
He turns his eyes towards the warrior of light. In the twilight of the platform, they glow a green as vibrant and lively as the rolling fields of Elpis itself—there is fear somewhere in that gaze, but it is overpowered instead by hope.
“Would you stand here next to me?” he asks. The words are soft, barely murmured, but somehow the warrior can hear him clearly—as if there is not a single thing to muffle the sound and all too much to emphasize it.
Though it takes a few moments for the warrior to pull themselves from the look of awe upon their face, they nonetheless walk forward, stopping just beside Hermes. The heavy feeling grows stronger with every step closer to the crystal as it sits just above their heads and glimmering with aether. After a moment to take in a breath, Hermes speaks a gentle command,
“Activate manual command structure. Program: Ktisis Hyperboreia.”
“ Initializing . . .” the noise—or voice, rather—originates not from the crystal, but from the void above itself. Each syllable echoes in a way that makes the air and even the floor below their feet shake. “ Warning . Request requires security authentication of user.”
“Chief observer of Elpis, Hermes.”
“. . . authenticated . Structure activated. Awaiting instructions.”
The man takes in a slow breath, his shoulders rising like the boughs of a tree amidst a powerful wind. The weight in the air only grows heavier, the void deeper above their heads.
“Activate subroutine Chronos.”
The system takes a breath of time before responding.
“. . . warning . Program : Chronos has not been authorized for use outside of primary testing states-”
“Disregard warning,” Hermes’ voice rings firm, cutting off the system and repeating the command once more. “Activate subroutine Chronos. Target: future. Anchor point: aetherial origin of subject. Subject-” his eyes turn, briefly falling upon the person standing beside him. “...Subject: warrior of light, undesignated visitor.”
“. . .command accepted. Target locking. . . Locked . Anchor point accepted . Subject accepted .”
As the reply echoes, it is with another immense shifting of the air, but one that can’t be felt physically. Venat, Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch peer around the platform as if searching for something, but the warrior of light is left engrossed in the pulsing light of the crystal set above them—for some reason, they cannot take their eyes away from the system’s core, as if their focus itself has been entwined. Even their heartbeat seems to mimic the rhythm of light echoing from the crystal’s body.
Pulse… pulse… pulse…
“Initializing time-space reconfiguration. Warning: please vacate the affected area.”
“A bit too late for that now,” Hythlodaeus chuckles, his words loud within the emptiness but quiet beneath the massive heaviness of the pulses that start to come faster.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
The warrior of light can’t tear their eyes away from the sight even if they wanted to. Their heartbeat starts to race, still attuned to the crystal. They can feel a touch in their chest, tugging, twisting, pulling at every fiber of their aether in a way that sends a shiver down their spine—but they still can’t tear their eyes away.
Pulsepulsepulsepulsepulse-
And then. All at once. The world itself goes white. Slow-motion and fast-forward all at the same moment, light seeping into every inch of the void, the platform, and even into their minds.
They simply existed in one breath and did not in the next, wiped completely from the universe itself-
-and washed into a sea of brilliant and blinding aether.
-
Emerging on the other side feels like the reverse.
From blinding light comes a sudden sense of existence. The white recedes instantly from their minds, seeping out into the world and fleeing into the landscape—the sky, the earth, the entire setting around them as their feet touch solid ground once more and pluck them from nonexistence.
Venat is the first to feel that something is amiss, even as it takes several minutes for her eyes to adjust from the blinding brightness of just a moment ago. Somehow it is both a finite and infinite amount of time.
When her senses and stomach settles, she doesn’t think much of her thoughts scattering about, desperately compensating for how altered everything is all at once; how the wind feels to her skin, how the air tastes on her tongue, how it all seems so… lost. Like images from a dream, vague and sporadic in familiarity and yet undeniably alien all the same.
When she feels unsettled upon first glance of the world around them, Venat merely assumes it’s in the same breath as everything else. They had planned on things being… different.
“Is everyone alright?” she asks, peering around the landscape. It looks rugged, but not far from some of the places she had visited in her time as Azem’s seatholder. If it weren’t for the fact that she had been aware of their tumultuous shift in time or that the aether of even the ambient air felt thin, she could have been fooled for a breath.
Hythlodaeus is the first to offer a reply. “Other than feeling a bit ill and dizzy, I dare say we’re all in one piece.”
“Speak for yourself ,” Emet-Selch growls. He’s sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, bent over in an obvious bit of pain. “I can’t even think without it hurting.” He peeks up for a moment, eyes glancing across the landscape before a fresh scowl twists his lips. “Please tell me this stupid idea didn’t simply teleport us elsewhere on Etheirys.”
Nobody replies to him. But then again, nobody needs to. The difference is stark to everyone who merely looks at the world around them.
Perhaps different is the wrong word, since technically every drop of aether around them was born from the very essence of their home. Even more, this world is Etheirys all the same… or at least a facet of it, albeit a very strong one despite the aetherial landscape being stretched farther than what most scholars would think possible. When one is used to seeing the horizon as a storm cloud, after all, it’s rather unnerving to find it as little more than a mist, so thin and fragile that it seems a stiff breeze could shred it apart.
“So,” Hermes murmurs, picking himself up from the ground. “The warrior of light was correct in their tellings. This world… is not the same as our own. Not entirely.”
To that, Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch agreed verily. Their eyes were sharp enough to note every detail as far as the horizon reached out in all directions—affirming Venat’s assumptions and the words of the future’s traveler as being correct: Etheirys had been sundered, fractured so completely that it seemed as shallow as a puddle where it had once been a vast ocean. But it did mean one thing at least: finding the present-day form of that traveler wouldn’t be a hard task.
Since Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch had both gazed deep upon that unique soul that visited them, such a color would be incredibly hard to miss, especially when they didn’t have to look past such vast pools of bright, competing aether. Considering that they had used the warrior as an anchor point in itself, they shouldn’t be too far from where the rest of the group had landed. Wherever they are.
The landscape around them is rough, grassy in sparse places—but what captures the attention first is the sharp crystals of pure aether that shoot out from places in the ground. Further on, the crystals coalesce until it looks as if they become the landscape itself, with a tower somewhere beyond that, shooting high into the atmosphere and glittering a brilliant blue in the hazy sunlight.
Where… are they?
“I’m not sure what state I expected to find this world in-“ Hermes murmurs, but Emet-Selch is quick to correct him.
“Our world,” he says. “Fractured or not, we cannot act as if this is anything but. And ‘tis our duty to ensure our time-travelling companion has fulfilled their promise.”
The fourth of their party, Hythlodaeus, merely hums in contribution. Then he turns his gaze about.“They’ve certainly done something,” he muses softly, “if there is yet a world for us to stand upon. We can at least surmise they didn’t die along the process of returning home.”
“We might as well try to find them,” Emet-Selch narrows his eyes after a moment. His tone is tense. “The sooner we get the assurance for the star’s continued prosperity, the sooner we can return to our own age of problems and discussions.”
The group agrees on that notion, at least. It had taken a gargantuan amount of aether to send them forward in time; it would be an insult to waste the opportunity with useless banter and debate. With a combination of Hythlodaeus’ and Emet-Selch’s eyes alongside Venat and Hermes’ familiarity to the traveler, it doesn’t take all that long to locate them—following a path opposite to the direction of the crystalline tower on the horizon, there seems to be a small outcropping of people. A settlement, if small, that glows dimly with the multitudes of people shuffling about within its walls.
And so it is with great trepidation that the four travelers of Etheirys come upon their wayward visitor, they themselves just stepping out of the entrance to the yet unknown settlement.
But where Venat and the others expect some manner of a surprised but friendly greeting from the self-titled ‘warrior of light’ of this timeline, the four of them only find confusion and hesitation instead in their eyes.
The face of the time traveler look upon each of them—Hermes, Hythlodaeus, Emet-Selch, even Venat—and there is naught a flicker of recognition to be found. In fact, the warrior of light looks a fair bit perturbed by their presence, and it only grows worse the more that Emet-Selch insisted on their prior meeting having been (to Venat and the others, at least) just a few minutes prior.
“I…don’t know you,” the warrior of light says, weighing their words with a tense look of wariness. “I don’t know anyone who looks like you—and I don’t recognize anyone by the name of ‘Emet-Selch’.”
This is the same person. Their soul is the exact same as the one they’d spoken to before having been tossed into the blinding light.
What could have changed?
How could they have forgotten…?
Suddenly, Venat sees the moment all too clearly for what has happened. How the warrior of light looks a bit younger than she had last seen them—less scars, less exhaustion, less weight upon their shoulders. Though she and the other three had jumped far into the future, it appeared as if they were gazing into a warrior that came before the one they themselves had met.
“Emet,” Venat says, her tone tight and careful, but soft enough that the words may be easily missed by all but her direct companions. “We’ve arrived too early.”
“Too early?!”
As the man finds his words of frustration towards such a notion, Hermes’ expression dawns with what Venat had deeply realized. He stiffens up in turn, casting his gaze to Hythlodaeus who seems to mirror his grim understanding of the situation; that in all their seeming flawless calculations, they had ended up in a time far before when the warrior of light had found will and a way to visit them. They are standing before a version of the warrior of light who has not yet faced the countless trials required to know the truth of the disaster they are one day to face.
So damn close. And all for absolutely nothing.
Venat’s expression remains careful and calculated, giving not a single onze of her true thoughts away. She takes a step towards the warrior of light and brings a hand up to her chest.
“Pray forgive us, dear stranger. You simply bear such a strong resemblance to a dear friend of ours, and we have grown so weary from such lengthy travels that I believe we must have forgotten ourselves for a moment.”
Emet-Selch opens his mouth—eager to refute the words, no doubt, but Hermes is quick to step up and fill the air with his voice while Hythlodaeus tries to reign the other in with their lie.
“We aren’t from around here, you see,” the soft-spoken Etheirys scientist has to force himself to speak loud enough that the to-be warrior of light could hear him. “Do you happen to know of a place we might be able to take rest?”
If the warrior had any lingering caution to the four strangers, the question seems to lay them far enough away that their expression softens and their voice finds an answer.
“Farther up the road, the settlement is called Revenant's Toll,” they say, pointing behind them. “In the main plaza you’ll find the entrance to an inn. Very friendly, they should have rooms to spare for all four of you.” They pause. There’s an emotion in their gaze that nobody but Venat can read—it’s an old emotion, ancient beyond years and bittersweet beyond reason. “Where… are you all from by chance? I don’t know you, but… ah, don’t worry about it. I suppose we see a lot of people when we travel.”
“Quite true,” Venat speaks warmly even though every word feels like ice pressing deeper into her chest. “We’re… from a city called Amaurot.”
A flicker of something moves across the warrior's eyes. “Never heard of a place like that before,” they finally say. “It sounds lovely though.”
“It’s rather far away,” Hythlodaeus smiles even as he has a tight grip on Emet-Selch, fingertips a warning as they dig into the man’s shoulder. “I dare say that few might even… remember it exists at times.”
The warrior stares at each of them for the span of a few breaths. Though the moment is truly brief, it feels as if it lasts a dozen lifetimes over, cold and desperate as each Etheirys time-traveler is forced to contend with a multitude of realizations one after another; they’re in the wrong time, their star is truly sundered, their world is… no longer theirs at all.
And still, the warrior's eyes hold such a stunning sense of hope that it’s hard to look away.
“Well…” the warrior coughs, stepping past the four strangers with a carefully quick gait. “I hope you all find safe travels, wherever they take you. May you walk in the light of the crystal.”
Venat watches them carefully—she can feel her own aether reaching out in near-invisible wisps from their soul.
“And the same to you,” she finally murmurs. “May we meet again.”
Soon after, the warrior of light has moved far enough to be out of sight, leaving Venat and the others to think among themselves as to what their next move might be. Not for a moment had they considered something like this happening—not when the warrior of light’s trail had been so strong leading to the ‘present’ of their time. Had something pushed their calculations to be amiss? Worse, had something changed the river of time, so much that there was no longer a proper ‘present’ to the warrior that they had met?
Whatever the answer, the four quickly move farther up the road towards Revenant's Toll, left with more questions than answers but an unyielding desire to see them through to the proper end.