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The man wearing the shell of an Elezen leisurely approached the body of the centurion he had just slain. Even in this unfamiliar form, a single strike had been all he needed to silence one of the Empire’s finest. Yet another testament to the petty, feeble heights that his father’s empire had risen to. Around Zenos Yae Galvus, the burning embers of The Ghimlyt Dark crackled among twisted magitek wreckage and ash-strewn craters. The scent of blood and battle in the air should have excited Zenos, but sadly they were an illusion. He had arrived too late to test his blade against any truly worthy opponents. All that were left were the embers. The embers and the tracks of his two quarries.
One of them, the far more tempting prize, lay out of his reach for now, but the other…the other remained close by. All Zenos needed was an appropriate shell to reach it. It would be most disappointing if his prey became aware of his approach and chose to flee, as those of its kind seemed wont to do when faced with a meaningful challenge.
“Quite remarkable, this power to transcend the boundaries of the soul,” mused Zenos as his Elezen body loomed over the corpse. He felt the fire burn through him as he called upon the might of the Resonant, feeling his very eyes blaze alongside his soul. He felt his very soul expand, testing then overwhelming then breaking free from the corporeal shackles of the Elezen corpse.
In the brief instant that he existed only as an incorporeal mass between bodies, held together by nothing but aether and sheer force of will, he could feel a glimmer of what his soul yearned to be. His true body, the one that had been forged and molded by years upon years of battle. He felt his soul grow and relax, like a man suddenly released from a far too tight jacket. It tried to form into his shape, into that familiar, towering frame, but with no physical body to contain it this shapeshifting accomplished little but jeopardizing the cohesion of his entire being. It quickly flooded into a new far too tight jacket, the corpse of the centurion, and to Zenos it felt as if both his soul and body were squeezing him tight, constricting him as hard as they could. The discomfort began to fade into the background, slowly but surely, but never leaving entirely. After days in the Elezen corpse, Zenos knew that the discomfort would never truly leave, at least not until he reclaimed his body.
“The power to claim another candle of life,” a strange throat echoed his words, slowly adjusting to a pitch and cadence that was almost but not quite his actual voice. “To burn longer and brighter than the average man, again and again and again. Wasted on those who could never understand.”
Zenos lifted his katana out from under the hand of the already-cold corpse he had just abandoned and began to perform a series of practice strikes in the air. First the basics, simple attacks taught to him near the beginning of his tutelage in the art of the Unyielding Blade. Then, after a minute, more complex exercises. Feints, defensive stances, and complex combinations of strikes against an invisible opponent, the image of whom was crystal clear in the prince’s mind. To a casual observer, his movements would have appeared impossibly fast and precise, but even through unfamiliar eyes a master swordsman knew better. Muscles ached as they attempted to move too far, too slow, too quickly, or too shortly. Flaws in his technique that he had never once noticed were now laid bare. With every blow he improved, over and over again, until he reached a point of stagnation. His practice complete, Zenos sheathed his sword and sighed. Soon, soon he would have it back.