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“I cannot say that I envy you—yet at the same time I cannot say that I do not feel the slightest tinge of envy with my whole heart.”
When faced with punishment rather than censure, he had been relieved. He had been less relieved when the vote unanimously agreed that the punishment ought to be decided by the slighted party—with Elidibus folding his hands with a small, knowing smile when he asked if that was acceptable for doing the right thing in the wrong way. The vote went two to one in that regard, and majority votes took precedence over Hermes and his nearly panicked refusal.
So it was that Lahabrea himself had decided their punishment.
Hythlodaeus had been ordered away from the Bureau of the Architect to instead catalogue and sort every matrix in the Words of Lahabrea. Back-breakingly boring as punishment, the Chief had bemoaned and earned a hiss from Emet-Selch that he ought to be glad that he was not removed from office in the altogether.
Azem and the Meteion accompanying them on their travels were instead told to serve as combatants to oppose recent creations and to see whether or not the soul-bearing familiars were capable of interacting with Dynamis… for a whole turn of the seasons in Amaurot. Azem groaned about being stuck in the city for so long, and the Meteion on their shoulder had simply tilted her head with a worried glint in her eyes as she looked at Hermes.
Hermes meanwhile was all but shoved into the arms of Pandæmonium. Not to serve as Warder but to observe for as long as the others served their punishment.
Less excruciatingly awful than expected, Azem had said. Quite possibly worse than a premature return to the star, Hermes would have said after the first day and night dealing with Warders and the creations.
Pandæmonium was quiet, eerily so. The paths of Warders seldom crossed outside of their domiciles—the sole exception being the Keyward whose rounds took him all over the Circles of Asphodelos and even within holding cells. Thanks to that quiet solitude, Hermes was thrust into the arms of one shockingly young Warder who was in turn given the express orders to not only show daily routine to their new guest but also to instruct him in the art of aetherial chains and the theory of interment if necessary.
After what felt like countless sunrises of icy, eerie silence the Warder started speaking, his voice just as youthful as his face was—since he did not know his age, he expected him to be not much older than Elidibus.
It was then that the ice started to break ever so slightly.
It took them a while to get to the point where they made friendly conversation about more than simply their daily routine, yes, but Hermes had to confess that Warder Erichthonios offered a surprisingly solemn, difficult view on Pandæmonium and what its purpose was. They were judge and jury, yes, but the executioner was the passage of time itself and the dangers these creations posed to the rest of Etheirys. They needed to be studied, catalogued, have every bit of malcontent aether documented so that a being that suffered and brought suffering in such massive quantities would never be brought about again. They suffered and brought suffering in return, yet none of the Warders of Pandæmonium seemed to think these creations evil and deserving of death. Once all was said and done with the subject it was raised in long, arduous, draining debates before the Keyward finalised the report and saw it sent off to the Words of Lahabrea once the verdict on the creation’s fate was reached. And even the volatile ones that burnt through the candle of their life before verdicts were reached were still documented in painstaking detail with attention to what the Warders believed to be the root issue.
It was so very similar to Elpis, yet simultaneously sounded like a different world.
The unravelled chains and the empty holding cell this time around were the reason for the conversation he and Erichthonios were having. A concept that had been here for the longest time, an almost comfortingly familiar being to most of the Warders whose routine brought them this far into the Fourth Circle—and this very morning, three seasons into his four season punishment sentence, the holding cell had been empty and not even a mote of aether had remained.
“I do not envy your endless wandering, your lack of routine. I envy the fact that you simply go where the wind takes you and that you meet countless souls with so many differing opinions,” Erichthonios elaborated further after he carefully undid the links in the remnants of the aetherial chains. “Yet I do not believe I could stomach simply leaving this place even if I could quit it with nary a warning.”
For someone whose hands and thoughts could not weave as effortlessly as others when it came to creation magicks, Erichthonios wove chains so near unbreakable that on one occasion the Keyward of Abyssos had requested him for a day to renew certain reinforcing chains for seals further down below. Hermes had spent that day beside Keyward Hesperos wondering why exactly the stark difference between the quality of shackles had manifested the way it had. As the Keyward explained it was a matter of extreme routine, training so deeply ingrained in his very essence that even under a befuddling spell of any sort Erichthonios could likely still ensure his opponent was chained safely, securely, inescapably.
But just as much as the Warders were creatures of routine at this point, the Keyward said perhaps as a warning, there was always the fact that routine could evolve from less than savoury situations. Be it prowling halls and fields of study subjects with festering hatred for creations or creators, or the paradoxical comforting familiarity of aetherial shackles as taught by an unforgiving, cold, distant teacher that should have been more than simply a teacher.
As he learned later, aetherial shackles as they were used by each and every single Warder were a spell crafted and perfected by none other than Lahabrea himself. Cold, unyielding, unforgiving—just as the Speaker was when it came to his fields of expertise. Erichthonios as the sole Warder who had such intense familiarity with them clearly implied some sort of relation to Lahabrea on a deeper level than simply student and teacher. Family, then; not that he had ever heard of Lahabrea having any.
It would explain why Erichthonios would be incapable of leaving Pandæmonium even if he wished to quit this place.
“Is it shackles that bind you to this place?”
Erichthonios, who had since moved on to documenting the state of the gaol, the remaining aether, the state of the shackles and the interment spell, lowered the pen he carried for this express purpose and lowered his head.
“It would be rather cruel to leave a person bound to a place they loathe, would it not? Esteemed Lahabrea very much is capable of such cruelty, but even he knows where to draw lines. I am not shackled. Neither is any Warder in Pandæmonium.”
Azem had posited the question early on. Were there any shackles that bound him to Elpis that were now finally broken? Was there any reflection he could do already now that he was no longer upon those floating isles he loved and loathed simultaneously?
His reflection had been love and hatred in equal measure, he had begrudgingly admitted after they opened every single day on the road with those questions. He loved Elpis out of all things on Etheirys the most. He hated it more than anything else. Etheirys was bleak and lifeless and so full of beings that were unrightfully undone by no faults other than their nature that they had been created with. Souls were not theirs to give—souls were gifts from Etheirys itself. Why were they judge, jury, and executioner?
“To bind another living being in shackles far away from blue skies might seem cruel, yes—but if one were to be cruel to these creatures I doubt not for a second that if it is not the wrath of the Keywards that sees a Warder banished from here it is Lahabrea himself. And if one had to choose between being shown the door by a Keyward and Lahabrea, believe me when I say most would choose a Keyward’s wrath.” A surprisingly dark chuckle escaped the Warder as he resumed his writing. “You remember which creature was bound here, yes?”
Routine.
As much as he loved and hated Elpis, he loved and hated routine. Every day was the same in Pandæmonium. The same people, the same rounds, the same creations from the depths of hell itself. The same, same, same. A slog. Daily routine.
Comforting.
Unsettling.
Yet even so, he struggled to remember now that naught remained of the being. It had been an arcane entity, of that he was certain. He said as much.
Erichthonios simply added another line to his report and closed his eyes.
The rattle of chains as they formed before his eyes, whipping about to ensure this now empty space was ready to receive another interred creature at any point. A lick of fire that snaked across the light that formed into metal links, clinking and clanking as the light-woven steel was tempered by the swift caress of flame. Other Warders used different elements, different skills and natural predispositions making for other forms of shackles. Shackles that never stopped moving around the unmoving prisons of interment magicks. The chains that Warder Erichthonios forged were burning hot yet cold as ice reflecting off eternal ice. They moved and yet they did not, perhaps the closest thing to perfection in a sense that one could obtain down here. Abyssos and beyond held containment units that had their shackles forged by none other than Lahabrea, Keyward Hesperos had said with a barely noticeable yet clearly fond smile on his lips. With more training there was not a doubt that the Speaker would see his position as perfection incarnate when it came to shackles challenged by none other than this boy. And Keyward Hesperos said that he looked forward to that day.
“Selene, the spirit of a fictional star close enough to Etheirys to be considered her moon. A being of darkness, activity. Gorgeous, yet it was her singing voice that brought doom to those around her. And though an arcane entity she was, she shone bright like a star on the night sky, and brought demise to those around her just as swiftly as night falls in the cold season. A logic jump in the creation process. A heart just distracted enough by the loss of a beloved one to turn the wonderful song into one of untold tragedy.”
Erichthonios snapped the notebook shut.
The sound was deafening in these empty halls.
Hermes noticed the slight tremble that went through the Warder’s body.
“That she did not take her creator’s life borders on the miraculous. But our now forever unproven hypothesis regarding Selene is that she took something else. Whether she made off with her creator’s ability to create and his saviour’s ability to feel anything for the creator or not, the fact that she is gone is… troubling. Yet relieving all the same.”
A return to the star was always beautiful if creators were involved.
Yet the unspoken implication here was that Erichthonios may have been Selene’s creator. That he grieved for someone’s doubtlessly beautiful passing similarly to how Hermes came to see the duty to undo that which had been given life.
But neither of them said anything and simply wordlessly continued their routine.
“If I may ask—”
Keyward Hesperos was calm. Kind. A deep body of water, but the water was clear enough that one could see the surface beneath—he thought.
Suddenly the kind expression hardened. Went petrified even. Every hint of kindness washed away by the clearest, most pristine waters of Asphodelos.
“You may not.” Voice low, icy, unforgiving and unyielding like the chains that snaked through all of Pandæmonium from the uppermost Circles to the unspoken depths way down below. “Selene’s fate was, like so many things, preordained yet not unwelcome. The decline has been natural—I would not see an entity thusly removed stir again due to a well-meaning outsider’s meddling. Her existence will be compiled, filed away, so that the mark she leaves on Etheirys is a tale of caution that none repeat those mistakes rather than simply the deep, unhealing rifts her tumultuous creation tore into an already rocky relationship.”
And just like that, the Keyward turned, his robes flaring out around him like a warning.
A warning Hermes understood.
It was when routine was interrupted that Pandæmonium stirred.
Generally it meant a new creation was being interred.
Hermes knew that this time in a place without time it was him that had upset the routine. While the Warders said that they were not chained to this place he very much was. Whatever kindness they felt towards the inmates of Pandæmonium extended to him, but never did a creation leave this place alive. He was not a creation and he would be leaving alive—on this day in a place where time seemingly never passed and passed all too rapidly.
The Keyward looked as stunningly bright and wonderful as always.
Lahabrea looked positively radiant in comparison. Overwhelming like a sun about to go supernova, from the highly held head to the stern expression on his face.
Hermes and Erichthonios were the very pinnacle of gloom. For different reasons, yet glowering all the same. And Azem behind Lahabrea, dark mask as slightly askew as ever, holding a Meteion’s small hand in their own as they followed the Speaker. Neither of them looked worse for whatever their trials had been.
He simply threw a sideways glance at the Warder he had spent the most time with.
There was that same familiar lingering fury of life lost about him that Hermes felt with every wretched heartbeat. Yet the Warder, much too young to be consigned to a place without light or hope, wore it like a shield rather than a choking mantle.
Now that they were this close together, the similarities between Erichthonios and Lahabrea were striking. Eyes that burned as red as the fires of Ifrita had when Azem had finished moulding the excess aether into her shape. Set jaws that clearly gave them away as related. Yet where the lines of age showed clearly, freely, on what little of Lahabrea’s face he could see, Erichthonios’ youth was betrayed by the lack thereof.
Documents and reports were exchanged along with general words. One penned on the subtle changes of the older inmates. One Hermes knew was about that one heavy day that Selene had simply vanished in the altogether. And one on him and his progress, written by routine and observations during it.
Many times had he witnessed family or friends meet each other in Elpis. Even simply someone as well-known and well-liked as Chief Hythlodaeus usually inspired some sort of gentle, familiar, happy greeting. Creators for all their lack of understanding that the study subjects were alive and aware enough to know when their end came always treated another creator with the highest regard. There was a warmth there that seemingly was unaware of all the suffering they could bring.
But there was nothing here.
Not even the slightest bit of familiar warmth between what must have been father and son. Simply the cold emptiness of space between a planet and its moons, filled with naught but the silence of what belonged together yet spent their time apart. Erichthonios looked tense—and Lahabrea simply lacked any sort of tension. It was a paradoxical opposition—not much unlike how he felt whenever someone drew attention to how different he and Azem were when they were on the road.
“Pray continue as you have,” Lahabrea’s voice cut through the tense yet tensionless air like a creator undid the links of aether. “If aught changes once your reports have been properly evaluated, you will receive word immediately—as always.”
“As you wish, Master Lahabrea,” came the neutral, clipped reply from Erichthonios. It lacked the almost affectionate joy he felt for many of the creations in this place and all his colleagues. With that, the Warder stepped back behind the Keyward—who in turn looked to the side quickly, barely noticeably.
“Are you quite done staring holes into my mask, then?” This time, Lahabrea’s tone was just as dry as Erichthonios’ had been. But it was Hermes who was addressed with this tone. He startled. Straightened up. Very pointedly looked away, unknowingly mirroring Erichthonios behind him. “You know the purpose of my visit—your sentence is hereby served. Whether you learned aught is not my decision to make.”
With that, he gestured. It seemed as if this had been what Azem and the Meteion had been waiting for; as soon as Lahabrea turned around to return whence the three of them had come, the pair hurried over to him.
He turned his head in Azem’s crushing embrace, however. Looked over to Keyward and Warder as they turned.
The Keyward put a hand on the Warder’s head in the same moment that Lahabrea snarled that he was more than content to leave the three of them down here in chains.
They had an empty space.
Keyward, Warder, and Hermes all flinched.
Yet no one said a word.
The silence hung just as heavily as it had when Erichthonios had finished his preliminary report on the disappearance of the arcane entity Selene. And Hermes felt he understood what the Warder had said to him back then, now that he was staring at Lahabrea’s back while the Speaker simply marched, cold, unbothered, unflinching.
Unrelenting like the chains of Pandæmonium.