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“You rarely call for me with such urgency,” Azem commented as he met with his friend in Ethoselektikos Boreas.
Trouble clouded newly appointed Fandaniel’s eyes. “I rarely wish to disrupt your important journeys,” he said with a sigh, “but this matter… has bothered me.” It was just like Hermes to get too deep into his thoughts, to work himself up in knots over them. His nervous fingers fidgeted with a tassel of his robe.
“You can tell me anything,” Azem coaxed. “You know this.”
“I should… it would be better to just show you,” Fandaniel muttered and turned to lead him inside the facility of Ktisis Hyperboreia. Their footsteps pounded too loudly in the quiet of the halls. Not a soul in sight, everyone who worked here absent. Dismissed… or dead? Either way, the observation concerned Azem.
Fandaniel only glanced back to ensure he still followed. Azem could see his hands still busy, the knuckles white, his back hunched. It made him much smaller than his height.
“I didn’t see Meteion on the way,” Azem made idle conversation as they walked to fill the oppressive silence that had fallen. “I trust she is well?”
No answer but a hitch of breath. It revealed enough. Azem knew not to pry.
They reached a set of heavy double doors before Fandaniel next spoke. “Be quiet when we enter,” he warned. Not a usual request from him, at all. Azem could not remember a time when the man had ever asked him to still his voice, naturally calm and dispassionate as he was in his speech. He had the kind of cadence that soothed most beasts he met. Whatever this was, it had his friend all out of sorts—his friend who had likewise seen and felt for all manner of creatures in his line of work.
Then, he swung the doors open. Hunched in a corner like a misplaced robe lay a pulsating shadow. Though the room’s light was dim, it still stood out as a pitch black spot of smoky plumes clearly visible all the way from the door. Azem could not make out an exact shape or even a silhouette.
Fandaniel gave him a nudge forward, his breath brushing his ear as he whispered: “Go closer.” He took a step without conscious thought, unable to look away from the unknown phenomenon.
As he approached, it reacted. His own wary white eyes stared back at him from the darkness. His heart pounded, and the mass seemed to pulse in the same rhythm. Wrong, unnatural. But that gaze… the uncanny sensation of seeing himself looking back…
He reached out slowly toward the shadows. Cold, colder than it should’ve been, and strangely dry. The mass shifted under his hand, as if made of thin cloth—no, feathers. Their shadows long and sharp, trying to cut his hand.
“Fandaniel.” Azem did not turn to look at the man. He couldn’t break the mirrored eye contact. Each word he said came clipped through a building dread. “Tell me this isn’t her.”
“No! No, it is not.” Fandaniel’s denial rang with pain like the accusation had been a blade. “I saw her dissipate… she’s gone… I don’t know what this mass of dynamis is.”
So it was dynamis, just like she had been. Azem tore his gaze away to look over his shoulder at Fandaniel, trying to discern lies from his grimace. He saw none. It could have been the lighting, but the man looked paler, sick. The way his hands shook added to the impression. What could have been outrage softened into a wave of concern for his friend, but as he opened his mouth to give a word of reassurance, some kind of comfort, Fandaniel was quick to stop him.
“No. Look back at it.”
“Why?” Azem asked, swallowing his sentiments and his fear.
“Please, trust me. Do it. Please. Achlys does not react well when people look away for too long. I have watched it. Please, look back at it, now.” This scared, desperate pleading… How bad was this, to reduce Fandaniel to such a state? Not many things did, and that sent a chill down Azem’s spine.
With great reluctance, he renewed eye contact with the shadowy mass; Achlys, as Fandaniel had called it. The eyes still watched, now more numerous and different. Wider. Hungrier. The soft edges of its shape rippled like disturbed water, leaning toward him the moment his attention returned. Azem’s hand instinctively reached for the hilt of his halberd, though unsure what good steel would do against such a being.
“It begs to be seen,” Fandaniel whispered, somewhere between horror and reverence.
Azem couldn’t shake the feeling that if he so much as blinked, the mass might lunge—or worse, vanish entirely only to reappear closer. “You called it Achlys,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Where did it come from? What does it want?”
“It… it appeared after the day I took my seat. And the day she…” Fandaniel paused, unable to utter his pain. “I don’t know what it wants, only that it watches.”
The shadows shifted again, myriad eyes blinking out of sync. With each blink, a new one popped into existence. Azem’s grip tightened on his weapon. “And you’re certain it is not some remnant of Meteion?”
“Certain?” Fandaniel’s voice cracked like brittle ice. “No. But I prayed to every star it was not so.” He took a shuddering breath, and Azem thought he might cry before he composed himself. “Yet the way it watches feels familiar. Like an echo of something I should remember.”
Feathers formed in the mass again, before dissolving back into the void. For a heartbeat, Azem swore he saw blue.
“You know I say this rarely, Fandaniel,” he said carefully, like soothing a cornered animal, “but we need to kill this one.”
Fandaniel flinched. “What? No! You can’t kill it, it’s a living being, a creation of dynamis—”
Azem cut him off with a firm, flat statement. “I’ve seen a great darkness in the future. It must be related.”
Fandaniel’s hand snapped to his shoulder to pull him away from the mass. “Moros,” he whispered his true name, “It lives. It suffers. I’ve felt its despair. To destroy it when we don’t understand…” His voice broke as he spun him to face him, emerald eyes glistening with unshed tears. “How can we judge what deserves to live and die when we don’t know its nature, whether it can be saved?” The darkness made a sound like rustling wings and sighing wind. Fandaniel flinched, but didn’t break his hold on Azem or his gaze. “What if it’s not a threat? What if it’s calling for help?”
This poor, soft-hearted fool. Azem’s jaw clenched. He must’ve seen too much of himself in the creature… and Azem had to admit, he saw himself too. It was difficult not to, after all, when fractals of his own eyes stared back. “Then what?” he asked, uncharacteristically agitated. “Do you intend to keep it here?”
“I cannot, not here,” Fandaniel conceded quietly, “but there must be somewhere, some forgotten corner of the world where it could exist. A place to be, if not to thrive.” The being rustled like dead leaves, seeking more attention. Fandaniel flinched, shoved Azem back toward it. “It would be hypocritical,” he continued, though his voice frayed at the edges, “to call myself a guardian of life, then turn away when that life is ugly.”
A pause that charged the air with unshed lightning. Azem’s mouth tasted metallic.
“... I thought we agreed about that.”
Azem wanted to argue, but he knew Fandaniel, knew Hermes. He had seen that stubborn gleam in his eyes, heard that determination in his tone. If he felt strongly enough, the man was a force of nature. His love was no gentle summer breeze, but a hurricane. The slow, deep breath Azem forced himself to take did not challenge it, but weathered it. “You want me to take it with me, do you not?”
Fandaniel averted his eyes as he nodded. He must’ve known this was too absurd for even his closest confidant to consider. But he said nonetheless, with hope in his throat, “Can you take it? Can you keep it with you? If it is even a part of her…”
His eyes again fixed on the shifting darkness, Azem waited for that sentence to finish, but it hung in the air in half. He could only infer the rest: ‘you are the only one I can trust with her.’ She’d been an unauthorized creation who never saw the Bureau’s scrutiny. Likely never would have met their approval. Achlys, remnant of her or not, would see even less. It repulsed Azem, how those eyes focused on him, how the plumes leaned with a sort of eagerness…
Oh, sod it. After a slow, shaky breath, Azem nodded, his resolve defeated. “I can certainly try.” He had tamed monsters far mightier, after all.
A fragile smile rose on Fandaniel’s face; relief, gratitude, sorrow all tangled together in one expression. “Thank you,” he murmured so softly the words might have been meant for the shadows instead. The darkness rippled towards Azem like a tide drawn by the moon, slow but inevitable. He could already tell this was a mistake, yet something stopped him from backing out.
“Be careful,” Fandaniel added, though the warning came too late for either of them. The decision was already made; the thing that was Achlys folded itself around Azem’s outstretched hand, feather-light and freezing.
The beginning of the end.