Chapter Text
I should like to begin by apologizing to whosoever reads this for aught I’ve done by the time you see these words. In my defense, I generally make terrible decisions and ought not to be trusted with… anything, really. I do not know why folk keep giving me important things to look after. I scarcely trust myself to water plants.
G’raha has asked that I should attempt, as he put it, “to record the truth of these remarkable events, that they might serve as inspiration for generations yet to come.” And at my extremely perplexed look, he added, “Please don’t write the words, ‘Chocobo shite,’ over and over until you fill the page as you so often do in your personal journal.” How… does he even know what’s in my personal journal? That’s what I should like to hear. But he was giving me the big, sad, pleading eyes, and the fact that his are the same color as Dalamud falling rendered me even less capable of formulating a refusal than usual.
So. Here we are.
The end of the world had come and gone.
It does that surprisingly often, but this time it seemed very serious about the matter. As if it really, truly meant it this time, and it definitely wasn’t going to just start up again with some nonsense at the first moment my back was turned. For what seemed ages, but was probably not more than a few moons, the remorseless pull upon my heart that had led me everywhere for so long seemed to have ceased. As if the current of events flowing all around me had dried up at long last. I very briefly entertained the foolish thought that perhaps now that I’d at last found the thing I had sought for so many uncounted lifetimes, mayhap the Echo was all gone. As if the ancient scars of memory seared forever into the fabric of my soul by the sundering would just disappear into a puff of logic because I no longer had a purpose.
The Scions of the Seventh Dawn disbanded. Or at least, made a great show of pretending to have disbanded. They had ever been somewhat terrible at being a secret society, from the first moment I had stepped foot inside the Waking Sands to find that they had a receptionist. Exactly like secret societies never do. Now, we were secretly a society of former secret society members, which was not at all confusing, I assure you. But it did serve to persuade fewer solicitors to show up at the Rising Stones hoping to sell things to Tataru, so I suppose the plan did have its merits.
In the aftermath of this pretend event, and possibly as punishment for almost getting myself killed by Zenos… again, quite a few souls attempted to persuade me to do naught for a good while. But very badly. Tataru’s version of “sitting on a beach, relaxing” involved an army of disgruntled mammets and industrializing a small island, for instance. I may have accidentally re-ignited the completely extinct Omicrons into either returning to conquering the universe or opening a chain of coffee shops? I’m not sure which way they were leaning on that point. Do they count as ghosts now? Are they undead coffee machines? I don’t want to think about this any longer. Yes, I did persuade the tiny moon bunnies to build a radio station, and yes, they just keep playing that one song over and over. I’m sorry. Dreamingway is inordinately proud of that piece. Please just tell him you like it, perhaps he will be inspired to write something else and stop playing that one quite so much.
I cannot claim that I particularly like being idle. Or am any good at it, anyroad.
Which is to say that when I suddenly felt the pull again while I was not at all desperately fleeing from Rowena and the Twins’ mother to the safety of the Baldesion Annex, I stopped immediately and looked about to see what it was that had called to me.
The problem was that I was still in bloody Sharlayan. Which, in addition to having a cuisine that technically counts as a war crime, and some of the most impractical architecture I have ever beheld, is full of Sharlayans. The street was littered with scholarly folk going to or from Noumenon, Old Sharlayan’s slightly less voidsent filled version of the Great Gubal Library, and thus they were largely all distracted by reading whilst walking, a peculiarly Sharlayan habit which makes their city incredibly annoying to traverse.
I did not at first see anyone or anything that might have been the source of the pull, until a gaggle of scholars passed by and I then realized a lalafellin lass was waving at me. She declared that she’d been lying in wait for me there for some time.
She worked at the aitiascope. That’s the device they use for plumbing the depths of the aetherial sea. Like the Antitower in Dravania, but with fewer upside-down chandeliers and singing frogs in it. The device they had once used to speak to Hydaelyn.
And they had found something they wished me to see.
I returned to Labyrinthos torn between curiosity and dread. There’s naught in the aetherial sea, apart from souls and memories, and I found it unlikely that there were any of either within its depths that could benefit from my company. But I knew that whoever ran the aitiascope must have the Echo—there’s no other way to hear Hydaelyn’s voice.
Was no other way, rather. No one’s hearing it anymore.
And I know perfectly well that sharing the experience of having an unfortunate, uncontrollable, eerie power does not make us friends, but still… I cannot help that, even now, my heart beats a little faster at the thought of finding someone else like me. I never do learn.
Professor Claudien was much like the other Sharlayan researchers I had met upon the island. And… actually a fair bit like some of the archons, if I’m honest. Excitable, prone to getting lost in thought, he easily forgot other folk were around. Though, perhaps that last was a consequence of his gift; I have also found that tuning out the people nearby sometimes helps to keep their memories from seeping into my head. Though he appeared fairly young, I gathered that he must be at least mine own age, if not some few years older, for he spoke of having also been a researcher at the Antitower, which has not been used in the fifteen years since the exodus.
I wonder if Master Matoya remembers him?
He had found a crystal. Or rather, it had found him, having propelled itself from the depths, and on opening the box in which it was contained, the dread which I’d felt back outside the Annex took over.
It was identical to the memory crystals of the Ascians. But unmarked.
Upon picking it up, I heard a voice. Like the constellation crystals of the Ascians, it was the barest fragment of a thought. A call for help. And a warning.
It was at this point that I began to wonder if my eerie supernatural gift was playing tricks on me. If one of the ancients had sent out a call for help for any reason prior to the sundering, whatever trouble had threatened them was long since past.
Or should be, anyroad, for the pull on my heart was unbearable, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that some terrible danger was yet coming, and this was my chance to go and find it before it found anyone else.
I don’t know if Claudien felt the same sort of danger from the crystal. But he was the one who urged me to try to seek it out in the ancient past.
First of all, who in the seven hells told everyone I had done that? Was it Tataru again or G’raha this time? Why anybody would believe I had done such a thing is a mystery to me. I wouldn’t believe that tale.
Secondly, I wasn’t at all certain that I could go back. Elidibus had spent all that remained of himself to send me there the first time. Even if the portal in the Crystal Tower was still attuned to that era in Elpis… would it have the power to send me thence? And thirdly, should the stars align and it somehow worked, where in the seven hells was “Pandaemonium”? It might be continents away.
Elidibus. Who had sent me to Elpis because he suddenly, and without warning, recalled having seen me there. And of whom I had seen naught whatsoever during my time following Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus around like a lost puppy, and playing games with the entity that would eventually destroy the star, having tea with the other entity who would also destroy the star, but differently, and accidentally helping that one ancient perfect the design of behemoths.
Shite, of course this would work. I still wasn’t done.
I returned to the tower in the First without attracting undue attention, which made me feel slightly better. If Ryne were not also sensing some terrible impending doom coming, perhaps it might never arrive in the First at all.
The Ocular was empty. I do not think I shall ever get used to seeing it without G’raha there, somehow. There always seems to be a space where he ought to be standing, like the hole left where a tree’s been uprooted. I removed the ancient memory crystal from my pocket and held it out as I approached the portal.
The mirror glowed in response.
So that was unnerving. It should only respond to G’raha. Or to someone bearing the vessel with his crystallized blood fused into it, at the least. Why did it answer the crystal? Who had made this damned thing?
As I pushed my hand through the portal’s liquid surface, I was suddenly struck by the thought that Elidibus, Emissary of the Convocation of Fourteen, Heart of Zodiark, just like G’raha, had missed his mark when he sent me back the first time. That was oddly comforting somehow.
I arrived in the unsundered past for the second time by falling from a height.
To be honest, this was slightly more in line with what I had expected when Elidibus sent me there the first time. I had no idea how great a height it had been, as I am capable of surviving some improbable drops, but my eyes took a moment to work again, and my head hurt as if I’d fallen directly onto it, which I possibly had. I was blinking in confusion and wondering if I were even in Elpis, or had landed somewhere else, when I heard the muffled sound that brought my attention to the fact that I had apparently fallen directly onto someone.
Chocobo shite.
I was then seized by the following realizations in ascending order of how horrible they were:
First, that I had definitely landed my steel-plated Ala Mhigan arse on a hapless bystander with considerable force like I was the star’s most incredibly stupid canon ball.
Second, that from the white robes and agonized sounds of pain, I immediately recognized him as Elidibus.
And third, he had come to his senses and was staring back at me, and from his expression of shocked recognition I knew he had just mistaken me for Azem.
That misapprehension soon cleared on its own, and… Azem told him I was coming? What in the seven hells?
So, I was going to have to ponder that revelation later, assuming I did not die of embarrassment right there in the middle of what was, I could now see, definitely Elpis.
Elidibus was far less angry at being struck a blow to the head by a highlander inexplicably flung through time and space, possibly by himself, than I would have expected. If anything, he seemed… pleased?
I suddenly remembered the first time I had met him, at the Waking Sands, when he had claimed that, had I only mastered the Echo, we would surely be on the same side of things. I’d never understood that notion. Not even after Hades revealed who the Ascians truly were to me. Remembering the ancient world, and how it had come to an end, and how I had failed to save any of it, and that nearly all my friends and loved ones were responsible for its destruction, did not make me any more in favor of mass murder than I had ever been. But now, standing before Elidibus, the living, whole Elidibus, and not the ghost of the boy sacrificed to save his people, not the confused primal desperately trying to recall who he once was and what he was doing, I wondered if he’d actually meant that we could have been friends once.
I wonder if he even knew that’s what he meant when he said it to me.
Because his dear friend had told him I was coming—although apparently without warning him to duck first—and also because I am apparently Azem’s godsdamned spitting image, which… I don’t know how to feel about that fact, honestly—Elidibus, or rather Themis, as he introduced himself, was inclined to trust me. He, too, was in Elpis to investigate Pandaemonium. Although he at least enjoyed the advantage of knowing what that was.
It belonged to Lahabrea.
A place housing dangerous creations which had suddenly gone silent following a strange shift in the aether surrounding it.
And I had seen the Words of Lahabrea in Hades’ Amaurot. I knew that even the creations they did not consider dangerous were awful. That… seemed to be aught that Lahabrea governed, actually. Needlessly terrible things.
So Themis and I ventured forth together to gain access to Lahabrea’s prison for even more terrible things than he usually made. He was intensely curious about me the entire time, and made no secret of it, which not only reminded me painfully of being here with Venat trying to solve me like a puzzle, it brought back that feeling of having my heart torn to shreds that Hades and Hythlodaeus had likewise gifted me. I couldn’t save him. He was an immortal ancient, and he might’ve well been a century my senior, but in appearance he was no older than Alphinaud and Alisaie. He was so young, and so determined in everything he did, and in a thousand thousand lifetimes I’d be the one to destroy him, and he’d sent me here, to himself, with the very last of his strength, chucked like a rock with a letter wrapped around it carrying a message he’d never get to read.
I couldn’t save him. I hadn’t saved him. The best I would ever do for Themis was to stop him from doing more harm. He would give his life for the star, and I couldn’t even gift him an assurance at end of it that his sacrifice had ever been worthwhile.
I was grateful for the fellow from the Words of Lahabrea taking me for a familiar and being slightly creepy about it, as the annoyance was a welcome relief. The man spoke of Lahabrea the way all the black masked Ascians I’d once met had, in weirdly fawning tones of reverence. It was, “Master Lahabrea,” to him, and he certainly seemed to have complete, wholly undeserved, confidence in his master’s ability to handle whatever trouble might’ve befallen his facility.
I do not know what I expected Pandaemonium to be. Claudien had translated the name to mean, “all demons,” which had not exactly been promising to begin with, and Themis and Lahabrea’s lackey had both spoken of it as a prison. But it didn’t look like any prison I’d ever seen. We emerged from the teleporter into a wide open stone plaza that appeared to be suspended in the aether. There were chains and cages about, mostly… just floating? They held naught. Their primary function appeared to be decorative. In the distance stood a needlessly creepy castle of some sort, the way to which was guarded by a great many statues of that three-headed reptile creation I’d fought in Ktisis Hyperboreia. The one both Hythlodaeus and Venat had incessantly made fun of. I guess it had been a design of Lahabrea’s. That made a lot of sense, actually.
Themis had just finished telling me that the magicks which kept the monsters in this prison were being tampered with, and he was now the only thing keeping it from bursting open with his constant concentration, when someone came sprinting out of the creepy castle as if his feet were on fire. Upon seeing us the fellow stopped, and a confused expression crossed his face, followed by a look of pain. He muttered something about, “having to save them.” And then he transformed.
I had seen Hermes do this, taking on a form that was and wasn’t his own. And… belatedly, I realized that I had likewise seen Hades do this. When before our battle he suddenly seemed to take on the shape of his own grief. Of his soul being crushed by guilt and anguish. Hades had said at the time, “Let us show our true faces to one another.” So I assumed that the form this fellow took on was not necessarily of his own choosing.
He was covered, head to foot, in chains.
Themis had called him a warder, but I did not think, somehow, his chains were for binding other things, so much as they were the ones that bound him. He did not appear to hear us, or understand aught, and Themis suggested that I might have to knock sense into the fellow.
Which I did. Or at least, I knocked him senseless, which was the next best thing.
He transformed back into a slightly more bruised and battered scarlet-haired ancient. My battle with him at least served to greatly entertain Elidibus, so some things never change, I suppose. He awoke swiftly enough, which was a relief. I hadn’t wanted to hurt the poor man. Even as he’d attacked me, he hadn’t seemed to know what he was doing. There’s truly no telling the ages of ancients, but he seemed no older than Arenvald to mine eyes.
Erichthonios, he said his name was. Some magick or other had clearly muddled his mind and perceptions, but he was absolutely certain that the creations within the prison were loose, and his fellow warders were being overwhelmed. The protections which sealed Pandaemonium, he believed, were being dismantled from the inside.
Both he and Themis suspected that if word of the disaster were to reach the Convocation, they would seal the place up with all souls inside it to prevent Lahabrea’s monsters from escaping. So. Calling for help was probably not an option unless we were content to let everyone within die.
Of course I volunteered to fight an enormous, creepy prison full of Lahabrea’s bad ideas to save already-doomed ancients. How could I not? I have never been able to stop throwing myself in the path of danger for any and every soul. I have, admittedly, never actually tried to stop doing that. But the point remains. Here and now, these people were alive. And I would do whatever I could to see that they stayed that way.
Themis, while insisting that he could not allow himself to be swayed by emotion, also clearly wanted to save the warders, though he claimed that he merely wished to continue the investigation we had only just begun.
As an added layer of challenge, Erichthonios wanted to additionally save all the monsters. They were, after all, his charges, and he was responsible for their safety and wellbeing. So. Fight all the monsters. Carefully. To put them all back in their pens. To save the warders.
I really did feel as though I were in the Words of Lahabrea once more, beholding the wisdom of the ancients in making an assortment of bombs, some evil armor, and a pony with wings to stave off the apocalypse.
We succeeded in sealing away some sort of baffling chocobo shite water monster made primarily of toothy maws with its head floating over its body, and a large three-headed bird that was a bit like the primal Phoenix, if instead of a primal of hope and rebirth, Phoenix were an awkward, ugly bird with too many wings and too many heads and an eyeball in the center of its breast. Why does Lahabrea seem to like making things with three heads? What good does that do the creatures? They don’t even seem to have better peripheral vision.
Anyroad, that’s when we were attacked by the keyward of Asphodelos, this level of the prison.
Hesperos was, by far, the strangest ancient I had encountered up until that point, and I had accidentally helped one design a behemoth out of a cow. They were all strange. He wore spectacles, for one thing. Which is not strange in and of itself. Lots of folk wear spectacles. None of them are ancient immortal god-like beings. He had apparently somehow fused himself with… some sort of aether-sucking creation of Lahabrea’s, and he believed this made him an immortal demigod. As if. He had not already been able to live for potentially thousands of years before this, and thought in some way having pointy teeth would help.
Themis thought his actions, “did not bespeak a sound mind,” and… yes. It was wholly likely that whatever magick had affected Erichthonios’ mind was doing the same to Hesperos, only worse.
Honestly, why did Lahabrea even make an aether-sucking monster? In what way was that, “for the good of the star”?
Although we attempted to confine him until we might figure out what in all seven hells was wrong with the man, he opted to fall upon his own sword as melodramatically as possible instead.
So. The only person who might be able to tell us aught of what had happened there was dead by his own hand. And with the upper level secured, Themis could sense further tampering with the wards down below. However, Erichthonios was… distraught is not a strong enough word for the particular hell he was traversing. He had just watched a friend and mentor turn himself into a monster because he believed it would win him Lahabrea’s love. Lahabrea, who was apparently Erichthonios’ estranged father.
That he did not appear to have any great fondness for his father gave me great hopes for his good sense.
Which was perhaps unfair of me. I had no idea what Lahabrea was like in this age. Emet-Selch was, at this time, merely grumpy and unapproachable after all. Like Estinien, but less likely to fling himself bodily into the air to escape conversations. Lahabrea might be a perfectly ordinary, reasonable soul for aught I knew. As baffling as the ancients might be sometimes, he could not possibly have attained a seat on the Convocation—the council which apparently just ran all of creation—without having any redeeming qualities. Probably. I have little notion of what the necessary qualifications of a Lahabrea might be. Cackling maniacally was unlikely to be one of them.
Erichthonios berated himself for lacking his father’s brilliant mind and mastery of magicks, two qualities which I had never personally observed Lahabrea to possess. The man had, upon our first meeting, thrown a bug at me and run away, as if we were children on a playground squabbling over a swing. It wasn’t even a particularly frightening bug? It had been a diremite that was slightly larger than average.
But I’d never hated Lahabrea. I’m not sure I’ve ever truly hated anyone except for Ilberd and myself. I had wanted to punch his face in mostly for Thancred’s sake. But honestly, of all the Ascians I fought he was the one I had always considered the least capable. Nabriales proved himself more dangerous when he broke into the Rising Stones. He had, at least, actually known the thing he wanted was there and gone to where it was. While Lahabrea had teleported Garlean soldiers inside the Waking Sands specifically to target me, a person he had to know was not present at the time because he was already there. I’m the large, awkward, metal-plated one with the approximate charm of a morbol. I’m hard to miss.
He was weird. And destructive. And I had simply wanted him to stop.
Anyroad, Themis thought that I ought to “report back.” I think… he might’ve actually believed I was Azem’s familiar, although I’d never told him that particular lie, and I think he expected me to tell all this to Azem. And not, for instance, a bunch of Sharlayan scholars twelve thousand years from now who absolutely would not be able to help.
I felt terrible leaving him there in the dark. Holding up the weight of the world by himself. And waiting for a salvation that might never come.