Archive of Our Own

Others shall cast the aether to breathe
With life anew, I well know, and shall spin
Living tales from the yarn of song, and shall plead
Better causes, and with sight shall better suspire
Of the underworld and proclaim souls in their rebirth;
But it shall be your charge, O Iakobos, to serve
The people on your star. This shall be your art:
To bring forth peace on Etheirys, to show mercy
To the innocent, and to beat the wicked down.

Smoke. A great deal of smoke. Malformed creatures with grotesque, pus-ridden bodies. Blood running through rivers that boiled as the sun bent low. Innocents dissolving into nothing for the chance to save their loved ones. Two great beings fighting in the sky for survival. The order to fly away, to the edge of sky and space. My lower half splitting open and being torn away. Being sundered, shattered, unmade and put back together a billion times. Seeing the universe above and below and around me change and fracture in an instant. Losing connection with my creators. Seeing three others right before the crash. Falling down to the ground and hitting it hard. Splintering apart and feeling every part of me spray out of my broken frame, every ticking gear, every hydraulic pump, every ounce of artificial blood. Losing connection with my body.

I cannot die here.

I don’t want to die here.

I don’t want to die.

It was the end of me. All went black as pitch.

>Today is the first sun of the first moon, Year 1, Day 1 on Etheirys.

>Today is the first sun of the first moon, Year 1, Day 1 on Etheirys.

>Today is the first sun of the first moon, Year 1, Day 1 on Etheirys.

>Remember your directive.

A message from some foreign source within me, the reviver of my memories, the holder of my consciousness. The announcement rang in my ears as it repeated the day three times, for memory’s sake.

I awoke with a fulfilled wish: life. My legs were half-buried in the dirt. I pulled myself out and limped to the nearest source of water. The crumbling earth I crossed was barren, the sky wine-dark and clouded, the air dry and decayed. As I came upon a muddled stream, my gaze was met with two blue eyes, glowing against the dark of the surrounds. It was here that I got a better look at myself, and drank of the tainted flow.

I looked the same as I always had, with short brown hair and stubble, and the blade and armor I had fought to the end in. I was in pristine condition, though this body was not my own. It held my appearance, but it was not what I had died in. The memories I held were true; I had ceased to exist. How strange it felt to perish for the first time, to rouse in that wasteland. I had questions upon waking—was I the same consciousness as the Iakobos of the unsundered world? Did this new form come from the sundering, or was it mere coincidence that I looked as I knew I had? Why did I know my previous appearance? Why did I have the memories of a dead familiar? Was I the only living thing on Etheirys?

I walked the earth to find what few answers I could. During my odyssey, I came across creatures of thin aether, some grasping at me, trying to pull themselves up. Others appeared more like those hideous, jarring things I remembered from my previous life. I recalled Hermes, my creator’s partner, how he loathed the thought of sending denizens of the star to the underworld. Would he hold fast to that conviction if he saw what roamed the earth now?

There was no need to consider philosophy. The beasts bayed and whimpered ceaselessly, their voices broken as if in agony. I knew that Hermes would hate to see living creatures suffer, and so I raised up my blade to end their misery. One by one, the chorus of pain was silenced, until nothing sang anymore. I moved on.

Hours passed until I found three signs of sapient life, figures at the distant western horizon, their aether unmistakable. I ran to them.

Themis. Hephaistos. Hades.

There was a fourth figure at their feet that I recognized, and my artificial blood pulsed with such fervor that I thought it would kill me before I reached him.

My creator… Ikaros…!

I skidded to a stop next to the three men, clad in robes hugged in gnarled iron, marked with the runes of Zodiark. They were masked under their hoods, as was custom. They stood over a creature that groaned in agony. Hades stared at it while Themis and Hephaistos turned to me.

“By the stars…!” I paused to catch my breath, to stop myself from an unseemly sobbing fit. “I never thought I would see anyone from Amaurot again, much less three men I know—”

“Iakobos,” Hephaistos gasped, “we saw you fall dead on the ground not so long ago.”

“I know not what happened, only that I was revived.” I scanned the horizon as I spoke. “I spotted four when I saw you three. Is… Ikaros not with you? His signature is unmistakable.”

Hades broke his silence and snapped, “Look, you fool! This misbegotten fiend is what’s left of him!”

I turned my gaze to the earth. The creature, shadowed and deformed, grasped at Hades’ robes and peered up at him with pain, sorrow, and faint recognition in its eyes. I recognized those emerald eyes at first glance.

“…That cannot be him,” I whispered after some time, my clockwork whirring in what could only be described as a deep, primal fear. “What is this thing!?” It turned towards me, grabbing my leg, and its aether answered my question: that was my creator. I was the object of his interest now, as he crawled towards me and looked up at me, no familiarity in his eyes but the dull gaze of a creature, no instinct but to turn towards the nearest thing that moved. Ikaros was an unthinking, unknowing beast.

“Emet-Selch,” Themis leaned towards Hades, then gestured to me, “what must we do with him?”

“He has no soul, for he is synthetic.” Hades considered me for a moment. “But he remembers our world.”

“Exactly. He remembers. And he is bound to follow Azem’s cause even after his demise.” So preoccupied was I with my revelation that I did not think to respond. Themis continued, “We will have someone who opposes Zodiark. He cannot live.”

“Elidibus, what you suggest is preposterous! Utterly preposterous! He is—”

“He is correct, Emet-Selch,” Hephaistos growled. “He is Ikaros’ creation, unworthy to exist.”

“Lahabrea, he is Amaurotine, just as we are! If we are to restore our world, is he not part of that mission!?”

Ikaros whined. I looked up to Themis and Hades. “Themis, you plan to kill me for what my creator has done?”

“I do, Iakobos.”

“Even after all we have been through? After all those years he spent on the Convocation with you!?”

Themis had a carefully crafted expression. He betrayed nothing of how he felt to me, nor his peers. “At the most crucial moment, he betrayed us and abdicated his position. He is no comrade of mine.”

“Elidibus speaks true,” responded Hephaistos. “His allegiance is absolute. He will never side with us.”

“Please, stars above…” I wiggled Ikaros off of my leg, my sword hand gripping my blade. “Do not make me fight for my life against you three. Do not let this come to blows. My directive is to serve the people of this star, and so long as you do not go against this directive, we need not fight. We need not even speak again. Please, I beg of you, come to reason!”

Then came a flash of brilliant, tenebrous magic; from which of the three, I do not know even now. It was the final thing I saw, and all faded away to darkness as I fell. My mind hummed before being silenced, before I hit the ground. To die again so soon… Will I awaken as I did this time? Will I remember this life? Will I awaken at all?

The last thing I heard was Ikaros, my creator, groaning with an unearthly, concerned timbre—a cry of grief.

My second death became a cycle of new lives, each different from the last, yet beginning the same: with a new body, the same face, the same hardware, the same weapons and plate. Every time, I would awaken with the same message: the day repeated three times in the same stagnant melody, a chime of welcome back to the star, and a tone of stern recollection of my purpose.

Remember your directive, it always said to me. It never said quite how. To be born and raised as the ensouled are was never something I could do, or choose to do. Instead, I had been given an oath to live by and obey at any cost, as I had been ordered to do. What, then, was this directive? To serve the people of the star, to bring forth peace, to protect the innocent, to beat the wicked down—what do those things mean?

Automata and machina of cold, hard metal, of laws immutable, cannot parse such vague orders. Not without their own interpretation of them. And when they have figured out what it means to them, they are nigh set in their ways, as if that was the meaning all along. When you have the same frame of a man, awakened again and again, and you give him the same orders he always had, would he not interpret it according to his own immiscible quirks? Would he not believe the innocent to be different upon every incarnation, to give a different face to the wicked, to serve Etheirys in his own unique way?

There are things I have done that mortals would deem nonsensical. Ways of serving the star that seem misguided, perhaps even evil. Yet despite Ikaros’ original intentions, those interpretations were all correct in their own way. They were law to each version of me.

The powers of the unsundered world—the Ascians, as they were now known—tried to make peace with me during one of my lives. Why they did this, I cannot say; in another age, when all was whole, we knew each other. Perhaps they were nostalgic for those times. Or perhaps they sought something far darker from me, sought to wrest the ambition in my mechanical heart for their own ends.

It was Day 2,556,750 on Etheirys, the beginning of my seven thousandth year on its sundered surface, and the beginning of a new life. I found myself in the heart of the Allagan Empire, searching for someone I knew was nearby. The sundered soul of Hermes, my creator’s partner, had taken shape here. I found him in his office, on the great flagship of Azys Lla.

“There is much about you I do not know,” he spoke, a tall masked man, draped in hues of oranges, whites, and pinks. “And you mean to tell me that we have met before?”

“Yes, in a fashion,” I explained. “Though our bodies have changed, your soul knows me well.”

“This you have told me, and more…” The man sat and hung his head in contemplation. “Yet what I do not understand is why you came for me. Why here, in my study? And why now?”

“Because I believe our goals are aligned. I have heard much of you, Amon, resurrector of the Allagan Emperor Xande. I know that you told the world you brought him back to restart your dear Empire’s heart. And I know that your heart has changed. You have grown apathetic.”

Amon looked at me, incredulous. Indignant. “Even if our souls have met once before, what business do you have accusing me of being disloyal to my Emperor!?”

“Because you think that you are misunderstood, that there is no one else on the star that thinks as you do. You hide how you truly feel. But I am here now, Amon. I know how things are, and how they should be. There is no true reason for living, you know that.”

Amon gasped and looked me up and down. He attempted to see through my frame, into my artificial heart. He straightened up, put a finger to his masked lips, and huffed, deep in thought.

“You are a strange one,” he whispered, “perhaps foolish. I know that you are not human. You told me as much. How can you know so much about mortal hearts?”

“So what if I am not human? All mortal lives come to an end. I understand this fact, for I have seen it happen countless times, across lifetimes, across eons. You would only hasten this end. My metal can be rewelded, my clockwork realigned, my veins filled anew. But mortal hearts cannot regrow what has shriveled and died from them. They are inherently tainted, from the moment of first sin. Or did you learn nothing when you revived your beloved Emperor Xande?”

“…A machine after my own heart.” Amon put a hand on my shoulder, and used his free hand to unmask himself. His raven hair fell as rain from his head, framing his pointed ears and chiseled face. His eyes were sunken, piercing, a hue of jade green. He was Hermes’ spitting image. “I would know the machine’s name.”

“Meteor,” I replied, a cold, dark grin spreading across my face. “You have always called me Meteor.”

Day 2,558,243 on Etheirys. In mortal terms, the first sun of the second moon, Year 7,005 on Etheirys. Emet-Selch—the man I once knew as Hades—came to me when all the rest of the world was asleep.

I sat perched upon the bow of Azys Lla, near where Amon resided, looking down at the land before me. I had no need to sleep, and no desire to pretend to do so; though I appeared human to the wider world, there were no eyes on me at night. Or so I thought, for I soon felt eyes lock onto me—Emet-Selch’s eyes. I turned and saw him in his Ascian robes, his hood down.

“That’s the man I killed yesterday,” I whispered, gazing at his stolen visage; he had golden, sunken eyes, silver locks flowing down, matted and still ridden with dirt. “And you didn’t have the decency to freshen him up first?”

“I saw you sitting here, all alone, something that is rare for you to be in any life. I figured I should take a chance now, and I needed someone you would recognize.”

“I’d recognize you in any form. I can’t remember a life I’ve lived where you haven’t shown up. And you’re ruining my alone time. Between Amon’s little project and the loose ends I’ve had to tie up,” my eyes flicked up and down the walking corpse, “I’ve had my fair share of people today for a lifetime.”

“You mean his bid to call the Void by filling the Syrcus Tower with the power of an eikon? Who are you in this life, Iakobos?”

“It’s Meteor this time. ‘Iakobos’ hardly sounds Allagan. And your ‘paradise’ doesn’t interest me. I have no tie to the Ascians, nor Hydaelyn, nor the people of this land, nor Ikaros and whoever he may be reborn as this time, nor—”

“Nor Hermes and his incarnation as your beloved Amon?”

“No. Not even him. And he is not my ‘beloved,’ merely a means to the end I see. I mean to harness his genius to bring about death, and nothing more.”

“Really?” Emet-Selch gasped in his theatrical manner, then strutted to where I was and sat down next to me. “I know that you always end up different, much like the rest of your misbegotten, sundered ilk, but I never expected Azem’s favorite creation could end up so… so misguided! Oh, the irony! You, my friend, would make a fine Ascian.”

“Emet-Selch, fool that you are, why would I join you? Why you, or Elidibus, or Lahabrea, wherever those two are now? All that I hold myself to is my directive, and nothing more. It tells me that the best peace, the only peace, that I can give this world is the silence of oblivion. To deliver this oblivion is a mercy; see how the people wallow in anguish, how Allag subjugates them under the yoke, as oxen to the field. See how they long for someone to deliver them from this fate. Mortalkind, wicked, imperfect, sundered mortalkind, wallows in a hell of its own making, without purpose or meaning. To live is to suffer, and I would end that suffering by my own hand! It matters not if it flies in the face of Hydaelyn’s will, or your Ardor, or the feeble cries of the fools that call themselves ‘heroes’ in this broken world. Death is the only solution!”

My answer echoed throughout the flagship, across the empty air to the ground below, rattling and then resting deep within me. Memories of past lives flashed through my mind; saving a village from a great thunderstorm and sacrificing myself so that its inhabitants may live; making peace between belligerent kingdoms to save future generations from the cycle of war; serving the heroes of the star against Rejoinings that never came to pass. Somewhere in my cold, unfeeling heart, there was a spark. Could I have done all that? I asked myself. How can I follow the same law, life after life, yet come to such a different conclusion as the one I now have?

Is this the answer I was hoping for?

“My, aren’t you full of conviction?” Emet-Selch sighed, standing back up. “A pity. I would have loved to work with an old friend.”

“…We are not friends,” I breathed.

“Sure, sure. Incompatible beings, and all that. I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I would be working with a hunk of metal if I were to join forces with you. But if—no, when—you ever want to rethink your position… Azem’s seat is always open.”

“…Azem’s seat?”

I looked to where he stood, and he was gone with a snap of his fingers.

Day 2,558,281 on Etheirys: the tenth sun of the third moon. Part of my work with Amon required me to travel the Empire in search of its brightest minds, and to ensure his new eikonic energy project remained secret. I came to the newly-conquered province of Meracydia, and there I met a soul I had not seen since my first rebirth.

He was not my initial target. I had been sent to dispatch a scientist that defected from the project; killing is the easy part, the true difficulty is getting away with it. I sat on the doorstep to her home, in the dead of night, cleaning my blade of its blood. Behind me, her manor slowly became swallowed by flame. Through the gathering smoke and the roaring inferno, a man snuck up on me, treading the earth with a near-silent gait.

“Good stranger,” he called out, his voice light and lively. I jumped when he spoke, for I did not sense his presence beforehand. “I have seen my fair share of emissaries from the Empire, and I know when one is well-intentioned.”

I snapped, “Get out. You know nothing about me.”

I saw him in the field as he walked through the smoldering air. He was a Seeker boy, with a distinct trio of jet hair, emerald eyes, and dark skin. Like Amon, he was his soul’s spitting image.

“I know that you carry a sword—how strong you grip it, and with such malice in your eyes! You are the one who cut my mistress down, are you not?”

I looked back at the house, and realized my folly; there was no more scene—it would look like a death by house fire—but there was now a witness. Fool that I was, I believed that no one else was around, that everyone else was asleep, that she couldn’t possibly have—

“Slaves,” I muttered. “She has slaves?”

“Oh, you don’t shy away from the term? Most of the people from the Empire call us ‘laborers.’ Am I glad that her murderer is progressive!” He laughed and looked up to the house for a moment. A load-bearing wall caved in, and the roof went down. He winced and turned his gaze back. “That is what you’re here for, yes? Otherwise you would have cut me down already.”

I sighed, “Is that why you came up to me? So you could watch her burn?”

“So I could thank the man who freed me!”

“You’re free. Go run along.” I stood, feeling the tongues of flame licking closer. All the while, he looked at me with his piercing gaze, and familiar green met wayfaring blue. I turned my gaze down to my sword. “You’re a fool, you know that? You’ve seen too much. I should cut you down where you stand.”

“You ought to, yes. Here I stand all the while, my flesh neither pierced nor burnt.” He put a hand on my shoulder. He was warm, a different warmth from the fire. “And besides, I can’t help but feel like I know you. And I can tell that you feel the same. Something tells me we’ll be fast friends.”

“No,” I spat. It came quickly, on instinct. “I have no use for you.”

The sudden touch made me jolt, and the severity of the wound snuck up and hit me soon after. There was a click in my side. Some vital gear had lost the will to turn. He yelped in surprise as my artificial blood poured from where the cog had stopped. He tried to pry my cuirass off to get a better view of what was happening. I tried my best to raise my blade up in defense, but the defiant gear thought otherwise and abandoned its role in keeping my system running. I shuddered, then collapsed, stiff as a board. He caught me and set me down safely. I felt something akin to fear. Dying was something I was used to, but I had never been rendered as a corpse while still living. He must have sensed that fear. His hands threw my armor off, then plunged into some deep gash, finding and feeling a thin brass pipe. I realized what had happened; one of my most integral routes of blood had been severed, and the surrounding mechanisms that relied on it were failing.

I saw the boy run away, and my fear deepened. Had he taken the opportunity to run from the scene? Did he leave me to die, or worse, to be captured? My racing thoughts were interrupted by the sound of frantic footfalls. He came back into view with what I recognized as a welding torch and a helmet. His stained hands went back into the laceration, found the pipe again, and willed it to fuse back together. Slowly, my function began to return to me. I moved my fingers, then my hands, then my limbs. I finally sheathed my blade.

“She fought back, didn’t she?” He raised his helmet and huffed, working off some of his adrenaline. “Got you real good.”

Still dizzy from the loss of blood, I took a moment to reorient myself, then to stand back up. “You know how to weld…?”

“My job was to repair her machina. But you’re not like them…” He lifted up my now-opened cuirass for me to see. “You’ve soaked your armor blue and black. Someone of flesh would run red, and standard Allagan machina wouldn’t have any liquid at all. They’re digital, and you’re analog—you’re one of a kind! Not many people know how you really work, do they?”

The boy turned the cuirass around to examine what painted it, and my thoughts raced again. What could he possibly be thinking right now? I knew the curiosity in his expression well. He wanted to study me. More than that, he wanted to know me. I knew as much when he flipped the armor back around to inspect its trim, then raised it up to see how the metal captured the stars. I raised my arm to swipe it from him, but I felt that same cog protest again.

“Your work is half done,” I winced, bringing my arm back down. “I no longer bleed, but my body still rebels against me. And your weld was quick. It will not hold forever.”

He looked at my side again. “I can do no more. Not with my gear. I need something more specialized.”

I paused for a moment, and thought of my options. One came to mind, and I groaned. “I have tools of my own, but I have one condition: you will ask no questions, will not go anywhere I do not tell you, and will not speak to anyone else. There are things that I will kill you for should you learn them. You know that I can kill.”

“Of course, of course,” he smiled. “If I can continue to help you, then I shall. What did you have in mind, then?”

I took him back home to Azys Lla to let him repair me.

I learned his name on the way back: Halan, a native to Meracydia, who remembered precious little of life before Allagan rule besides the fact that he tinkered with machines. Truth be told, I had no idea why I had acquiesced to his demands. Yes, he had Ikaros’ soul—a soul I had not seen for some seven thousand summers—but there was something else, something innate about him that pulled me closer. Perhaps it was his charm, the way he blissfully bordered on stupid. Perhaps it was the fact that I needed to keep him close, since he was the only witness to my crime. Or perhaps it was because he was right. So many lifetimes, and I had never met anyone who could understand my inner workings. The mortals of the distant past, of a time before constructs were reinvented, never knew a living machine could exist. As they could not conceive of me then, so too was I ancient now. Obsolete. The wonders of Allag, of the present, were electric, with wafers of circuitry and microscopic wiring. I operated on steam, hydraulics, pumps and levers, tiny clockwork that made up tissue, brass that made up bone. Not even Amon could truly understand the labyrinth inside me, although he made a great effort to try. He could weld me, put me back together, but I wanted someone to understand me as a thing fundamentally different from machina, not something merely like them in concept.

I opened the door to my abode, and he took in every inch of it. Dawn had not broken, yet the room was bathed in an aureate glow all the same. Tiny golden cogs were strewn across the walls like little hanging lights, shimmering from some unseen source of illumination. The floor was littered with minuscule things of brass, pipes and coils and pieces of plate. Halan did not seem to mind my lack of recent company, and weaved through each and every one.

“So this is where you live?” He gasped in awe, twirling one of the strings of cogs around. “Is this not akin to having viscera as a decoration?”

“More like how your kind cremate each other.” I groaned and creaked, sitting on the chair I called my “bed” for purchase. “On my desk are two vials. One is blue, the other black. Open me and insert them into my heart.”

Halan searched for the vials as I sloughed my armor off. Now that I could take a proper look at it, the wound was worse than I thought. It cut deep into my flank, enough that it would scar. That I still had any function at all was a miracle, much less near-full capacity. I thanked whatever powers mortalkind worshipped—Emperor Xande, perhaps—that I would be alright. Halan gave me a brief scan, quickly found my ticking heart, and inserted the vials into their correct positions.

“I see… It’s quite intuitive. The black liquid is oil, is it not? That is what supplies you with energy. It stays in your circulatory system and pools in your heart,” he mused as he poked the delicate part, “unlike the blue liquid, which is some substance I do not know; the pipe it feeds through travels throughout your whole body. It must regulate your nervous system!” His finger traveled up to my head, pointing at me. “What is it? Lightning aether given liquid form?”

“…You learn fast.” The curiosity in his eyes looked oh so hauntingly familiar. “It is not oil, but steam and smoke condensed into an ichor. The other substance is magical, and it allows metal to move and breathe like mortal flesh.”

“I see! And where do you find these liquids? Do you synthesize them from within your body?”

“I was meant to, but I was never finished. I have to rely on these whenever I bleed.”

The vials emptied, and they dislodged from my heart, dropping to the ground with a little clink. Halan picked them up, studied them for a split second, and put them back on the desk.

“Why not modify yourself so that you are able?” He closed the door on my chest and gave it a pat for good measure. “Install a new part, perhaps.”

“It’s not that simple. No one makes parts like mine, not anymore. My creator is long gone, and with him went the art of conception. I have precious few parts to make new pieces of myself. Finding spares is bad enough.”

Halan looked at the hanging cogs. “Why not those?”

“Remember that they are as urns filled with ashes to your kind.”

“Right, right.” There was a pregnant pause. “…Were there once more of you? Are these remnants of those other automatons?”

“Remnants of me.”

“So these are parts that wore out, that you had to replace?”

“No. Far from that. You would not understand.”

“I’m sure I would,” he blurted out. He shook his head, sitting on the other chair in my room. “You called yourself Meteor on the way here, did you not? Meteor, I know that we hardly know each other, and I know more about your inner workings than, well, your inner workings, and I know that I owe you my life and more for freeing me—Gods, listen to me ramble. What I’m trying to say is that I want to research you. I wish to know more about the man who gave me a second chance at life, who took me to Azys Lla to put his life in my hands! I wish to know who you are, who you are, Meteor.”

That strange feeling in my unbeating heart again. I felt his pleading gaze drill into my artificial soul, remembered how my creator had that same light in his eyes. I had to honor it, but how? What was I supposed to tell him? The same thing I had told Amon?

“…Listen to me, Halan, and listen to me well. I am but one machine, and one life of many lifetimes. Though I do not age like your kind, my body may fail me, and my life may end. Throughout history, countless lives of mine have ended, and with my death, a rebirth follows soon after, and thus the cycle goes on and on. Each time, my memories are stored in a new form, identical to all the rest, yet in some other part of the world. This time, I was reborn in the Allagan capital. Last time was in your Meracydia. The time before that was in the steppes far out east. With each reincarnation, I find my previous self, and I take what has not rusted from him and keep it as a reminder. A reminder of—”

I stopped myself. When I said the same to Amon, I had told him the bitter truth. A reminder of the cycle that you and I both go through. In that great, unknown antiquity, you and your partner made me who I am, gave me a directive, set my purpose for the star, and believed me to be the greatest contribution to Etheirys that the two minds together had ever accomplished. And yet here I stand now.

Dawn showed faintly in the east, and one set of cogs glistened, the light catching in my eyes. A voice rang through my body, in my head.

>Today is the eleventh sun of the third moon, Year 7,005, Day 2,558,282 on Etheirys.

>Today is the eleventh sun of the third moon, Year 7,005, Day 2,558,282 on Etheirys.

>Today is the eleventh sun of the third moon, Year 7,005, Day 2,558,282 on Etheirys.

>Remember your directive.

My directive. Why was I telling a man I hardly knew any of this? Why, when I held no value for his life? It was nonsensical, completely illogical, for him to even be alive, and for me to have allowed him back home, much less to repair me. To honor my directive would be to have thrown him into the inferno that I had started. To honor my directive would be to never have thought about how he had Ikaros’ soul, to remember how much his unsundered self meant to me, to believe that I could feel that light again—

“Meteor?” Halan looked at me expectantly, a tinge of confusion in his voice. “What does… any of that mean? Are you referring to a backup system?”

“A backup system, yes. I have a server of my own, in a fashion.”

The reply came without computation, and my mind whirred again. I was acting rogue. He knows too much, I told myself, and asks too many questions. No one but Amon should learn so much about me, much less someone from Meracydia that I have barely met! He is of no use to me, none at all, and would be better off dead!

And then, in some other, unknown recess of my mind, I heard myself speak up in opposition. He is innocent, and has gone through hardship unknown to you. Have mercy on him, and let him into your life. Take him under your wing. Allow him to be with you, and keep him safe. Keep him safe. Keep him safe.

“Meteor, you’re staring off into space.”

“Am I? Forgive me, I just…”

“Is it too much for you to speak about it?”

“No, I just…” Keep him safe. “I realize now that you are in danger here. You are the only witness to my crime, after all. If you are to remain here, it must be in secret. And I know that you’re about to ask me to stay.”

“That I was, yes. If it shall be so, then I will do it.”

“You will?”

“If you’re sure about it, and open to it, then yes. And it seems like you are both!”

Against the better judgement of the directive I claimed to follow, I smiled at Halan. “Then allow me to welcome you home.”

Day 2,558,416 on Etheirys: the twenty-third sun of the seventh moon. Amon began to realize my treachery.

I had been keeping Halan out of danger as I promised myself. He made his bed in some rarely visited part of Azys Lla, and I kept his company often. Time and time again, I asked myself why I bothered. What was so special about him that made me risk my life? Why had I not killed him yet? Most importantly, why was I at war with myself? Not once in any other life had I ever even considered changing my mind on my directive. It was law, and I had to follow it. Why, then, had I seemed to develop a mind of my own?

I know now that I was exhibiting humanity, something I had never done before. Yes, I once cast my lot with heroes, saved lives, and served the star as an altruist, but I had never done it of my own volition. It was only right, as it was how I had interpreted my directive. It was what I ought to do, something in my nature. But now my nature went against my actions, and I found myself being “good” despite it violating my directive, and it both infuriated me and piqued my curiosity. Was this what it was like to be mortal?

As for what ignited that spark, I believe it to be love. I came to think of Halan as a friend of mine, then part of my family. Family! The concept was alien to me in all my sundered lives until this point. To have a family, by blood or bond, was to be loved. It was a strange, strange thing to experience for the first time. Paradoxical love and paradoxical humanity, both blooming in a field of blood and ash.

But then Amon began to see me falter. Tying up loose ends began to make my proverbial stomach turn. I would clean my blade excessively to rid myself of the guilt, and I would always return with remorse on my face, scarcely hidden from Amon’s gaze. Death was no longer a solution, not even as a last resort. And so he approached me in the dead of night, on the bow of Azys Lla, just as Emet-Selch did all those months ago.

I was looking down at the ground below as I always had, yet in recent days I found that I now saw in a new way, in a manner reminiscent of how Hermes must have seen the world. There were little creatures roaming the earth below which I had not even noticed before, going about their business. Newly formed chimeras bounded about, empuses learned how to seismically communicate with each other, and Meracydian dragonets practiced flight. The truths of their existences were sad; the chimeras were victims of harsh aetherochemical experiments, the empuses were built for war, the dragonets would never know their homeland, and enforcement droids surrounded them all to ensure nothing strayed too far. Despite these facts, however, seeing them made me happy. The mere act of existing, of living and breathing, brought me joy. Mortalkind calls such a joy “appreciating the little things,” and it was only now, once my philosophy had moved away from Amon’s, that I realized what precisely that entailed. So many creatures in the world, so diverse that I could not identify them all, even after countless lifetimes! The little things are wonderful.

“The project is almost finished, Meteor,” Amon whispered next to me, breaking my trance. We both looked down at the landscape below. “The Syrcus Tower should be able to hold the requisite aether according to our calculations. All we need is to channel that aether through our new satellite.”

The satellite. I looked up and saw our work, newly added to the stars. Dalamud gleamed a faint red and yet hung low in the air. For a moment, I looked back down at the chimeras, the empuses, the dragonets. What we were planning to do could kill them all in a heartbeat. The Void would twist them into aether-hungry beasts, fit to be cowed like cattle to wreak havoc on all living things.

“Amon.” I swallowed my anguish, then stood up and turned to face him. “I see my work has sped up your own.”

“That it has. I must say, I could not have done this without you. Resurrecting Emperor Xande was a monumental task, as I am sure you know. This project of ours was just as monumental, with the added task of necessitating secrecy.”

“Opening a Voidgate is…” I sighed. “The Emperor’s ambitions align with ours, it is true, but even I have my doubts as to how effective this will be. I am no scientist as you or any other member of this project may be, but to summon a Voidsent, and such a powerful one at that? It is—”

“Dangerous? Deadly?” He spread his lips wide in a sickening, dull smile. “This is what we always wanted, is it not? Emperor Xande is channeling the means to our end. It matters not whether he succeeds in reducing the world to nothingness. Even should the Void fail the first time, we have the power to channel an untold amount of aether into the Syrcus Tower. The Emperor may try again, and again, until his ambitions—our ambitions—are realized! This is what we have worked for! Months upon months of work, and we may finally bring this broken world to its peaceful end, free of the suffering it has wrought upon itself!”

“No, Amon! It is wrong! This is wrong!”

Amon, the man I had worked with for so long until now, who I had told the truth of his sundered soul, who I had killed for and connived with countless times, looked at me with shock in his eyes. That shock became something else, perhaps pity, perhaps rage, perhaps sorrow.

“What do you mean it is wrong?”

“I mean that… All that I have done for this project is loathsome. I have burned down houses, crucified poor, innocent souls who wanted nothing to do with the Void, made orphans of children who did not know what their parents were doing… It is loathsome. It is wrong.”

“Meteor, you…” Amon lowered his voice, as if he were on the verge of tears. “What of all we have done together? The times you told me of your nature, your directive… Those effigies to your past lives you hang in your room. Do you remember how we bonded over that, Meteor?”

“I do, Amon.” I turned to break my gaze. “I do.”

“What of those memories? Do they mean nothing to you?”

“That is why this hurts all the more. I used to think it was foolish of me to keep those cogs. If I believed life to be worthless, then why did I keep those old pieces of me, knowing that we were all so different? I loathed the idea of being who I used to be, dying by the sword in some vain attempt to save those who were doomed already to suffer and die. But I see now why I acted the way I did, time and time again, standing for the people of this star. There is a light in them that can never be snuffed out, no matter what they go through. They can kill each other, leave one another to rot on the battlefield, burn themselves at the stake for simply being who they are, but they still have that light. So long as they live, there is still light. Who am I to try to extinguish it, soulless as I am, immortal and unnatural? They burn brighter than I ever could.”

“…You disappoint me.” Amon took a step towards me, and my hand found the grip of my sword in instinct. I feared for what he might do to me; would he dispatch me like I had done to so many others? “You told me that you were an unthinking, unfeeling machine. That you had your law, and you followed it as a dog follows its master’s orders. Has the dog learned to rebel?”

“Is that how you see me? Not as an equal, but as your dog!?”

“I used to see you as an equal, but now you are nothing more than a beast! You kill and kill for me, and come to lament the blood on your hands, defective as you are. That blood will not wash away, nor will the souls you freed come back to this realm. What is it that makes you think you can stop now? Now, after all these years, when we are on the eve of our work being fulfilled!?”

I looked back in his eyes, that familiar jade, and I was taken back to a time before times. I saw Hermes, keeper of Elpis, overseer of all walks of life. I saw how afraid he was to confront death, be it his own or those which he encountered in his work. I remembered the kindness in his eyes. I looked at them now and saw no such warmth.

“You are unworthy of his soul, Amon. I know not who you are.”

“What has happened to you, Meteor?”

“I gained a mind of my own is what happened to me!” I sighed, then sat back down, facing away from him. “Leave me here to think about this. We will speak in the morning.”

“After what you just said to me-”

“Leave, Amon, before I make you.”

I heard him groan in indignation, or perhaps simply plain rage. Then I heard his footfalls, fading away, until I could hear them no longer. I finally felt safe enough to take my hand off of my sword. I stared down at the land for a while, thinking again of Hermes. Fool that I was, I did not realize that they were nothing alike. Though they shared the same soul, and looked similar, they could not be more different. The same could be said for me and my past lives; what good is it to have the body of a hero turned to the mind of a villain? The better man I was had nothing to do with the wastrel wretch I had become. As Amon said, the blood on my hands could never be washed away. I would forever be a murderer.

I have realized the weight of my sins. How do I atone for them? How do I honor the light of mortalkind?

“You do not belong here.”

I jumped up to my feet and saw the scientist I had killed so long ago, the one whom I had burned myself. Emet-Selch wore her body. It looked like new.

“I heard everything you said to him.” he began as he approached me, “and I am now convinced that your place is not among mortalkind. Join the Convocation, Meteor.”

“Emet-Selch…!” I shook my head, my sword hand resting on its pommel. “You offered this once before.”

“Yes, and look at yourself. Ikaros—Azem—would see how you have fallen and know that you are wanting. Time and time again, you have fought and died in vain to protect that spark you see in mortalkind. Think for a moment why that may be. I have followed you for many lives, and I know that they are short—never longer than five summers. Do you not tire of living and dying by the sword?”

“So long as the star wills it, I shall continue to do so.”

“But the star is sundered, on the verge of collapse, and in need of succor. This world has no need for heroes like you, who only slow the spread of chaos, who live among the sundered and prolong their suffering. It needs someone to expunge the stain at the root! How many vaunted ‘Warriors of Light’ have you sided with, only to fail to prevent a Rejoining?”

“You mean to say that the will of the Ascians, of Zodiark, is inevitable. You want me to become your weapon, is that it?”

“I want only for a fellow denizen of Etheirys, the true Etheirys, to join we unsundered three in our reformation of the star. Perishing freshly reborn, over and over again, retaining those memories and clinging onto them, must be exhausting.” He came closer to me, arms outstretched, offering an embrace. “So I ask you again: do you not tire of living and dying by the sword? Do you not tire of prolonging the inevitable? Do you not tire of being alone?”

Alone. Was I truly alone? In some sick, maddening way, his words rang true; no one else on the star was like me. I was an automaton from a bygone age, carrying out orders given eons ago, by a man I had not met in this life and could barely remember. Ikaros. I knew precious little of Ikaros, my creator, the man who sculpted me with his own hands and raised me like his son. What connection did I have to him besides that? Why did I continue to follow his orders, twisting them in every life, corrupting them until I had shed blood for my directive? Why did I swear my allegiance to him for all eternity, even after he vacated Azem’s seat, cursing me to walk alone forever?

Why did he leave me alone?

“Emet-Selch. Hades. Why this life, of all the ones you could have tried? Why would you ask this of me now?”

“Because I know your answers now. I see it in your eyes. You are tired.”

“Don’t say that to me, Hades. You know nothing of me.”

“You said it yourself the first time we met in this life. You have no allegiance to Ikaros, nor Hydaelyn; naught but your directive. And now you have come to question even that. You have nothing left.”

“You know nothing of me…!” I shuddered, and my sword hand began to tremble. “You speak of the ills of mortalkind, but know nothing of their strengths. They love, and that is something you can never take from them!”

“What, are you about to go off on some trite platitude? Tell me how you still have your conviction and—Oh. Oh…” He grinned, spreading a sickly, wide smile that distorted his ill-gotten face. “You have someone.”

I froze. “Hades—”

“Ah, not now. I have much to think about in regards to you and yours. I best be on my way! I shall look forward to meeting whoever you speak of, hero!”

I unsheathed my blade, plunging it towards his chest, hoping to stop him before he could disappear. I was too late; the tip of my sword met cloth and nothing more. I had narrowly missed him.

Halan… Oh, Halan…!

Day 2,558,423 on Etheirys: the first sun of the eighth moon. I saw Halan for the last time.

I feared for his life, but I feared Amon more. I had left Azys Lla in the dead of night to avoid his wrath. Though it pained me, I had to leave everything behind but my blade and armor, for I could not carry all my cogs and remain stealthy. Days passed before I could see Halan again, but I knew he was safe, hidden, for no one had seen him all these months. Even with Hades searching for this era’s Ikaros, I was confident that I had kept him safe.

I came back to Azys Lla as dawn broke. Security was on high alert throughout the flagship, as the day to activate Amon’s grand machine came close. I nonetheless snuck past them, into the bowels of the ship, deep in a no-longer forgotten atrium, and stopped at the door to a closet I knew quite well. I knocked and waited for what felt like an eternity before he answered.

“Meteor…!” His ears perked up, and his eyes twinkled with tears. “You’re alive!”

“Of course I am, Halan.” I sniffled and brought him into an embrace. “I would never leave you here.”

“You got me thinking you had…!” He pulled me into the dark room, closing the door behind me. “I have much to tell you, and more to show. Oh, Meteor… I heard everything. How you faced Amon and left Allag for a time, and how he began to hunt you. He raided your room. Did you hear of that? He left nothing unturned.”

“I did not. And he took everything?”

“No. Not everything.” Halan went to turn the lights on, and I heard the sound of light clanking against brass. The room was lit up, and I was at once awash in a golden glow. Halan’s room was tiny, barely able to hold the two of us, yet he had managed to fit the cogs strewn about my walls on his own.

“Halan,” I breathed, “you… Why? Why risk your neck for me? When did you do this?”

“I knew how much they meant to you. Do you remember when we first met in this room, and you apologized for telling me? You said that it was a burden to know so much about you.” He bumped his head on a gear that hung low and giggled. “Well, I figured, and still figure, that it’s a wonderful thing to know. So what if it’s a bit strange that you keep little pieces of your guts? Seven thousand years of lives are in this room right now, and I think that’s beautiful. As for when, I must admit that I heard someone walking by my door, speaking to someone about how you had defected. I snuck out soon after.”

“Halan, you idiot…!” I laughed, and brought him into another embrace. “You know that you’ll be skinned alive if anyone ever sees you.”

“Yes, yes… The danger of being a freed slave, and all that. As always, I treasure the shelter you give me.” He laughed with me, and then sighed. “I assume you didn’t risk your neck just to say hello.”

“I did not.” I put my hands on his shoulders. A feeling of calm washed over me when I felt his warmth. “Listen well. our project—Amon’s project is set in motion. In four days’ time at the moment before first light, he will execute his plan, and channel energy through Dalamud into the Syrcus Tower. He will do all this to summon a Voidsent.”

“You have mentioned this in bits and pieces, I believe. Everything but the date.”

“That I have. And I do not believe that you are safe here anymore. As much as it pains me to admit it, I cannot protect you now that Amon is looking for me. The best thing you can do is run while—”

“While you try to stop him?”

“I… Yes. Yes, I will confront him. Sharp is my blade, and sharper are my wits. If I do not kill him, then I will at least slow him down.”

Halan didn’t skip a beat. “No.”

“What?”

“No, Meteor. I cannot allow you to sacrifice yourself like this.”

“Halan, I must! He means to bring about annihilation! If there was ever a time to sacrifice myself for the good of the star, as I have in ages past, now is that time!”

“You think with the blade in your hand, and not the brain in your head. You know me to be a smart man, yes? Do you think I have sat idly by all these months, merely repairing you when you needed it?”

I groaned. “You make a habit of sneaking out, don’t you?”

“Of course I do! I am a wandering soul, and this closet gets dreadfully boring at times. The lack of sun is particularly egregious. There have been times where I even went into Amon’s office to, shall we say, adjust some calculations. Nothing too out of the ordinary, of course! I merely lowered the expected output of Dalamud’s eikon enough that the Syrcus Tower would appear to handle it unmodified. In reality, the tower should merely explode, and that will be the end of it. I have never harnessed power so great, of course, so I cannot be sure that this will be the outcome… I’m quite confident, though.”

“…Halan, I’d tell you off if we had more time.”

“Oh, it would take hours, wouldn’t it?”

“Days. Maybe longer.” I looked at the hanging cogs, and one in particular caught my eye. It was mangled, with teeth missing and the shape bent out of any recognizable piece of clockwork. It was the first cog I had ever collected, back when the world was new and freshly made imperfect. It was when I had met the first incarnation of Ikaros, a shambling, malformed creature like all the rest of the newly sundered, clinging to me in some sort of familiarity unknown to itself. I remembered speaking to the unsundered three: Hades, Themis, and Hephaistos. That was the last time I considered myself to be as they were, as a thing of Etheirys when it was whole.

“I wish to tell you something, Halan.”

“Is it about whatever you’re looking at?”

“In a way.” I plucked the cog from the wall and put it in his hands. I took a deep breath, let it out, and began to tell him what I could not months prior. “You know that I have been reborn time and time again. You know also that I recall my past lives, some in great detail, others in more vague terms. Yet the cycle of rebirth is not unique to me. You, Amon, and all the rest of mortalkind go through this cycle as well. Though you do not remember them as I do, and you look different in every instance, your soul has lived time and time again, your lifetimes uncountable, your experiences lost to history. Your original self knew me well.”

“Oh? How well?”

“You… were my creator. You built me with your own hands and breathed life into me. You raised me, taught me the ways of the star, how to serve its people, how to preserve peace. You were as family to me, just as you are now. You, and… Amon’s soul.”

Halan was quiet for a long, long while. The twinkle in his eyes faded, and for a moment I believed that it had been lost forever. Then he spoke.

“All my life, I have been haunted by a dream. Each time, I would see a multitude, their names and faces always unknown to me. I would perform acts I could not remember when I woke up, spoke to people I never recognized, fought battles beyond my understanding. I always awoke with tears streaming down my face, as if I had lost something dear to me. All of which is to say that I… I can hardly believe you when you say that our souls are bound. But I know that we have a bond forged in steel, as if we were always meant to meet. If we did meet in some bygone age, some haunting, ghostly, bygone age, then far be it for me to deny fate bringing us back together. I can tell you cared a lot for your creator.”

“I… I did. Yes, I did.” I choked back a sob and smiled at him. “For thousands of years, I have looked for his soul once more. And now that I have found you, I want nothing more than to remain by your side, as I used to with him. My unbeating heart wants the star to return to how it used to be… but my mind knows better. We can never go back to the way things were, not in Allag, not while it still stands, not in a world like this. But in some distant time, I know that we will meet again, and then… And then…”

“Will we ever see each other again, Meteor?”

“If fate wills it. If not in this life, then the next. If not the next, then the one thereafter.”

“You will look for me, will you not?”

“In every life. Every single one.”

It was Halan’s turn to shed tears, to sob and throw himself in my arms. We stood like that for a long, long while, a time that even my clockwork could not measure, would not measure. I wanted it to last forever. But time was running out.

“I can throw most of my things in a single bag,” he started, dashing across the room and collecting what he needed to survive. “Go take your cogs and get them somewhere safe.”

“Not before I escort you out.”

“Meteor, do you think I snuck out so many times without being caught out of sheer luck? I can handle my own. And besides, it’s more dangerous if two people are running away together. Looks more suspicious, you know?”

“Promise me that you will remain as careful as you were then.”

“Of course. I will not squander your wishes, nor our history together. Though those memories are not mine, I feel their weight on your shoulders all the same.” He got everything together in a pack, slinging it across his shoulder. I saw his cog, peeking out of the top, shimmering in the light. “Be good to yourself when you save the world, alright? Fight, but not with abandon.”

“Of course. Be safe, Halan. Be well.”

He smiled at me, then turned and opened the door. He took a step out, looked around, and made a run towards the end of the hallway, the way I had come in. I looked at the cogs he had strewn. They gleamed anew, brighter than they ever had; I realized that he had polished them for the precious little time they had been set up.

Take care. The thought echoed endlessly in my head. Take care for me, and I will be safe for you.

Day 2,558,426 on Etheirys: the fourth sun of the eighth moon. The night was fading, and the crepuscular Void was ready to be called. I sharpened my blade and prepared to meet Amon just as his project came to fruition, when his guard would be lowered in the euphoria of culmination. To Azys Lla I moved in secret, past soldiers who once guarded my abode, past scientists I once worked with, past constructs and creations large and small to meet my quarry.

There was precious little time to find Amon before daybreak. Forcing my way deep into the flagship, I came to the engine of the beast, at the stern, in an atrium with huge windows. The Syrcus Tower and Dalamud were visible against the lightening sky. I found him at work on a terminal, activating the satellite’s power transmitters. He turned to face the clanking of armor behind him.

“Meteor, I’m so sorry!” He took his helm off for me, revealing a face I knew all too well. “I started without you.”

“Do not pretend that I still want this.” I drew my sword from its scabbard and slowly walked through the chamber. “Stop this. Draw yourself away from there.”

“And pause the great moving gears of progress? This is far larger than both of us, Meteor. Over half a decade of work and so many great minds have culminated in this very moment! See how the blood you shed has carved open a path to the Void!”

Amon looked up as Dalamud began to glow, the beast within the great red ball becoming visible. The beating wings of Bahamut, the Meracydian eikon, shored up the dragon’s strength, creating a rhythm of power that only grew by the second. The twilight sky became as day where the satellite was.

“Of course,” Amon started, “I had to dispatch the rest of the project’s team before this all began. Ever since you betrayed me, I realized that the rest of them were also loose ends. It was a pain without you, my weapon, but I managed. After all… my magicks could kill in an instant.” He gazed back down at me. “That is why you are here, is it not? To bear your steel against me? See how resolute you are, how you grip your blade! You believe you and yours to be invincible, unstoppable.”

“I have the wherewithal to kill you. This I know.”

“And did you say the same to him?”

My heart plummeted. “To who?”

Amon approached me, and as he walked the length of the room, he produced the head of a Seeker boy by the hair. “Four days dead,” he spat, throwing Halan to me. “I saw him sprinting under the moonlight. ‘Who is this laborer who runs from Azys Lla?’ This I asked myself as I readied my magicks. I struck him down as he tried to climb down to the land below, though it did not prove immediately fatal. It was only when I beheaded him and saw him up close that I recognized him for who he truly was.”

Halan stared back at me with an unseeing gaze, and I scooped him up with a trembling arm. His eyes were sunken and clouded, frozen in perpetual terror, emerald turned a dull gray. I remembered how they once twinkled and shone, how he once looked at me with curiosity turned to warmth turned to love. Love. Love. I loved him as family, as mortalkind does. Never had I loved before, never had I known a family before, never had I met someone like Halan before. And here he was now in my embrace, decapitated, long cold, rotting.

“You look pale,” Amon sneered. “I am told that you cared for him, and swore to protect him. Loveless thing that you are, could it be that you failed to honor your word?”

My sorrow turned to vengeance, and I charged toward him, blade in hand, leaving Halan’s head behind. Amon stepped back and prepared for his assault, summoning a blade of pitch in his own hand. Millennia of battles, of skirmishes and duels, flashed in the raging storm of my mind. A new, more primal rage came through the rain and thunder, the natural answer to Amon’s murder: more than I wanted to kill him, I wanted to make him bleed. I cried out, anguish and fury both in the sound, and threw myself at him, hacking away, trying to break through his defenses with sheer strength. But he was perceptive, dodging out of the swings that proved too slow, parrying the ones that were too weak. Devoid of all focus but that which was reserved for violence, the two of us exchanged no words, heard nothing but the clanging of steel against magic and the tones of the terminal processing its orders.

Amon defended knowing that I was tireless. He positioned himself far enough apart from me that he could back off when a swing would strike true, replanting closer and closer to the terminal. I believed that I was winning. But then he changed his strategy; what he lacked in strength, he would make up for in speed. I swung a heavy blow at him, one he saw and ducked away from. He responded with a quick stab into the opening between my pauldron and cuirass. His thrust struck true, hitting the mail underneath and turning it cold. The tip of his blade was rimed with ice magic, and he willed it to spread, coating my shoulder and stiffening it. I moved my sword to my other hand, going on the defensive while I forced the ice away with a quick flick of my arm, shattering the wall of frost with hydraulic might.

He tried blow after blow while I recovered, looking for another opening, jade scanning metal. His strikes were exaggerated, theatrical. I planted my feet once he made a particularly flashy thrust, overextending himself and leaving his flank open. My blade found its mark with a decisive swing, slicing his side open and tearing his cape in two. The smell of blood filled the air, and Amon howled in pain. I followed with another thrust to deepen the wound, narrowly missing and ripping the rest of his cape off. But Amon was clever, and he saw me lunge. He swiped his sword below me, trying to knock me down. When I stood my ground, he rammed his weight into my chest in an attempt to press the advance. I fell down to one knee, and he jumped back, pointing his blade at me. The air began to crackle with thunder. Lightning was coming.

The spell came from the hilt of his sword and mixed with the ice-aspected tip, and frost and bolts both ran through my frame. Brass bones became supercharged, the artificial blood coursing through them freezing over. I raised up my arm to protect my vitals from the worst of the blast, though pain still streaked throughout my body. The assault was relentless, the magic screaming through the air, until his aetheric reserves ran dry and he could hold it no longer. My arm was now useless, encased in ice and crackling with electric charge, the sense of feeling in the limb deadened. Amon tried to close the gap between us again, charging forward to score a hit on my weakened body. I blocked once more with my arm, this time with the intent to counter.

Right as his cut connected with my shoulder, I brought my dead arm to bear against him, grappling him by his collar and bringing him down. My other arm connected with his leg and pulled it away from his body. There was a sickening snap as bone shattered. Amon shrieked and plunged his blade into my ice-coated arm in a bid to disengage, and I felt it cut away at the shoulder. Blackened steam sprayed forth from both sides, blue coating my armor and his coat, the now-dismembered arm still holding onto him.

I was on borrowed time now, for I could not will the bleeding to stop. I grew more desperate, all sense of pain fading as my proverbial pulse quickened. Amon was wracked with agony, his face contorted in anguish, tears welling in his eyes. I exploited the difference in biology between us and threw my sword into his good leg, forcing him to put weight on his fractured bone. He fell supine, holding his weapon out as defense. I straddled him and grabbed it by the blade, trying to force it out of his hands. Blue and black, made into slush from Amon’s magic, spilled forth from my palm, pooling onto his chest. He forced the blade deeper, and more blood spilled out, then gushed, and I began to lose feeling in my fingers. My clockwork was fried and frozen, and I heard it creak and shrug to a halt. We were both paralyzed, held in place.

“Get off of me,” Amon hissed, his voice weak. His muscles shook with exhaustion. “Get off of me, Meteor.”

“I want nothing more than to cut your throat with your own sword.”

“Wretch!” Some of his aether returned to him, and he sent it into his weapon, sending voltage through me once more. I groaned and forced the metal within me to keep turning, pressing the attack, bringing it closer to his neck.

“Rot… Rot in whatever hell you believe in.”

“Wherever your Halan went,” Amon wheezed.

“His name is not yours to speak!” Some vital gear had its teeth snap from the sheer stress, and the flow of blood accelerated. I put all my strength into my arm. “Murderer that you are!”

“You speak of murder when you stink of blood, of viscera, of homefire smoke! Your metal is rusted with that blood. It has run down into your veins, traveling to your heart, nesting within you like a tumor. It is in your nature to kill. So kill me!”

I cried out once more and broke the blade from his sword, turned it around, and sent it towards his throat. I had done this thousands of times. One clean cut into the jugular, a severance of his arteries and windpipe, something that the best of healing magicks could not fix. One clean cut. That was all I needed to do to end his life. One clean cut—

A flash of tenebrous magic. A beam of deepest pitch. I looked down and saw it impale me from behind. After an instant, I heard the screaming of metal, the groaning of my armor, the wailing of brass leaking steam, all swallowed up, as a black hole engulfs everything that it touches. I felt no pain; the receptors had been eviscerated.

“That is enough,” a voice behind me mumbled. I recognized the soft tone, the gentle rhythm. “Lay down your arms, Meteor. You will fight no longer.”

The beam decayed, and I looked behind me. “Hades…?”

“Enough toiling. You are too late.” He wore his red mask this time, clad in Ascian’s robes, his hood up. “I told Fandaniel everything.”

Fandaniel. That was a Convocation title. Hermes had that seat. I looked down at Amon, and tears fell from my eyes.

“You gave him his memories? Made him an Ascian?”

“I did. He knew to find Ikaros’ soul from what he had learned. I told him how much your Halan meant to you.” He paused. “I knew he was who you were trying to protect. He had one of your parts.”

I shuddered, and felt myself start to fail. I went limp and leaned back. Hades caught me and dragged me to the windows.

“Run along now, Fandaniel,” he chimed as he moved me. “You have done well. Elidibus and Lahabrea await you in the rift betwixt worlds.”

I heard the telltale sound of a teleportation spell. I had not the strength to see him go; in his direction I spotted Halan’s head, abandoned on the ground, facing the windows, as if he had borne witness to the struggle between me and Amon. He was about to see what came next. Hades positioned me so that I rested on his shoulder, with him sitting by the spectacle.

Halan’s great act had paid off, for the Syrcus Tower could not contain Dalamud’s might. Instead of the Void answering its call, I watched as the eikon Bahamut’s pure aetheric strength sprang forth from the satellite, suffused itself into the tower… and then shot down into the ground. The earth began to quiver from the magnitude of it all. The world began to fall apart. The floating flagship was spared from the worst of it, but the ground beneath split open and shattered, roiled and writhed. Far away, I saw the Syrcus Tower, the Empire’s capital, and all around it sink and become swallowed by soil and rock. I knew what was happening; I had lived through every other one in ages past.

It was a Calamity. Amon and I had started a Calamity.

“Hades… Did you plan for this to happen?”

“From your project’s conception, I knew what it could, and would, do. I had meant to rejoin both the Thirteenth and the Third at once, but your precious friend’s meddling left the former intact. Nevertheless, I have done my duty.”

“Why wish for me to join you, then…?”

“I thought the redeemed hero would like to see the depths of his villainy.”

“Not this. The Convocation. Why make me an Ascian, too?”

He was quiet for a while. I heard the ground far beneath us tremble.

“Hades, are you alone? You asked me such.”

“I haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about,” he retorted.

“Spare an old friend the truth. If I do not learn it here, I shall one day.”

Hades sighed. “I built Allag with my own hands long ago. Creating empires is my bread and butter. I don’t imagine you’ve ever done so… have you?”

“No… I have not.”

“Well, it starts with ambition. Someone charismatic enough to unite the people and turn their warlike behavior outwards towards a common enemy. Mortalkind is fickle and thirsts for blood, more so than the water they need to live. And when blood is shed, they grow numb to how it feels on their skin. You recall our paradise, how we never so much as bickered, much less came to blows. This new world is alien to ours. No mortal being could ever fully comprehend the unsundered star you and I recall so clearly. Would you not feel alone as well?”

“Ikaros… Halan had his soul.”

“And what of it?”

“I had not seen it… since the world was first sundered. Do you remember, Hades…? The first day of the new world. Mortalkind was yet malformed… primitive. And yet he had found you, and I had found him. And then…” I chuckled, then winced. More function had been lost. “And then that was it. I was reborn soon after one of you killed me. And when I died, I was reborn again. And the cycle began. At one point, after centuries, I asked myself… what the point of it all was. Why I had been tasked with the burden of memory. There have been times when I thought myself closer to you than to my fellow sundered for this reason. But now I see that partings make the reunion all the better. Ikaros will never return, but the soul remembers… The incarnation is more like the predecessor than you think.”

“You are naïve. No sundered soul can ever live up to who they used to be.”

“Then why would you comfort me so…?”

“You are different, for you remember. You are an Ascian in all but ideology.”

I shuddered again. “You lie to me and yourself. I comfort you in turn, do I not…? I remind you of the world that once was. What you want the world to be again. Maybe we aren’t so different after all… But we can never work together. Never. And yet… maybe we should try this again. Staring at the sky, watching the stars disappear… I-I’m growing cold, and you still have warmth in you… I have died in lonelier ways.”

Hades was quiet again, until he broke the silence. “Let go now. Surrender yourself to the flow. Let the tide sweep in, bear you down, and release your consciousness from this body. Let yourself be born again, for when we Ascians bear arms against you once more, and betray you, and leave you to bleed out in the next Calamity. And the next one. And the next one.”

“Farewell… Hades… Until we meet again.”

“…Farewell, Iakobos.”

The last thing I saw was the sun rising above the shattered star, the quake still raging on. Then my sight shut down, and I heard the endless rumbling of the earth below. Then I could no longer hear, and I felt Hades shift to accommodate my weakening body, pulling me closer with his arm. Then I lost my sense of touch, and my hydraulics shrugged to a stop, emptied of the fluid that once helped them pump. Devoid of all perception, waiting for the last piece of me to shut down, I sensed one last announcement ringing somewhere—I knew in my failing heart what it was…

>Today is the fifth sun of the eighth moon, Year 7,005, Day 2,558,426 on Etheirys.

>Today is the fifth sun of the eighth moon, Year 7,005, Day 2,558,426 on Etheirys.

>Today is the fifth sun of the eighth moon, Year 7,005, Day 2,558,426 on Etheirys…

“Iakobos. Print your directive.”

The familiar whirred in response to Hermes’ command. “Others shall cast the aether to breathe—” He sputtered and stammered, and then went silent again. The other man in the room groaned.

“Hermes, please…” Ikaros sat beside the familiar, his head in his hands. “May we move on to your project?”

“But we’re so close…! He’s got the idea, doesn’t he?” Hermes gently stroked the concept’s hair, though he could not yet feel the touch, incomplete as he was. “All we need to do is guide him along the right path.”

“Hermes, he can’t even repeat a string of words. The most fundamental part of him, and he can’t repeat it! And that’s to say nothing about how it’s such a rough version, too. ‘Beat the wicked down!?’ Think of the laws of robotics! I say we scrap him and take a break from his concept!”

“The laws of robotics? What are those?” Hermes shook his head. “Poulaki, give him time. Remember what your philosophy was with him?”

“…To mold him as if he were living? As if he were my own flesh and blood?”

“Exactly. It would give me pause to end any life, much less one we are treating as our own.”

The sound of clockwork, of ticking gears and whirring pivots, came from the familiar. He was thinking.

“Serve the people… on your star…” The sound was scratchy, grainy, muffled from black steam clogging his voice box. “Your star… Your star.”

“Hermes, I just… I worry, for we are treading unknown ground. Familiars are common, of course, but not one that looks so lifelike. I fear that his very existence is flawed. What will the rest of the star think when they see someone who seems so real, but is merely artificial? An imitation of our own selves?”

“A metal frame does not an artificial thing make. What matters is how he acts.” Hermes opened the familiar up, checking him for whatever bug silenced him. “Think of my idea for Meteion. She will be a creature of thin aether, yet she will look similar to you and I. But I do not plan to make her unfeeling; on the contrary, her aetheric makeup shall ensure that she knows emotions well. Your creation will live and breathe as we do, so long as you will him to be so.”

“You make it sound so easy…” Ikaros stood up and began to help Hermes with his work. “I have much left to do with him. Not least finding a name.”

“You had one already, did you not? He answers to Iakobos.”

“Yes. Like my mentor in my youth.”

“I still think you should call him Meteor.”

“Would it not be too similar?”

“Not at all. Meteion, the shooting star, and Meteor, the falling star. One bound for the heavens, and one bound for the earth. Is it not fitting?”

The familiar jolted as Hermes found the source of his problem; a pipe that serviced his throat was blocked, black steam turned back to liquid too early. He cleaned the part out and closed him back up.

“…Do you really think he’ll turn out alright, Hermes?”

“Of course, Ikaros.” Hermes patted the familiar on the head. “And if he needs aid, we will be there to help him, will we not? Like fathers to a son.”

“Aye… like fathers to a son.”

The familiar turned his head to meet Ikaros with unseeing, unfinished eyes, something he had never done before. It made the man jump back in a mix of fear and surprise.

“He seems to be listening,” Hermes chuckled. “Why don’t you try to get him to talk? I would not have his first words be choked with steam. Let him speak as we do, and I’m sure your doubts will be quelled.”

“Either that or I give him a speech about learning to walk and run like you did,” Ikaros scoffed. He leaned back in. “Alright… Iakobos. Print your directive.”

He whirred again, thinking for a long time, before he finally recited his first order, just as Ikaros had sculpted it for him.

“Others shall cast the aether to breathe
With life anew, I well know, and shall spin
Living tales from the yarn of song, and shall plead
Better causes, and with sight shall better suspire
Of the underworld and proclaim souls in their rebirth;
But it shall be your charge, O Iakobos, to serve
The people on your star. This shall be your art:
To bring forth peace on Etheirys, to show mercy
To the innocent, and to beat the wicked down.”