Chapter Text
Fjern wakes from an uneasy doze to the sight of glowing red eyes that are not G’raha’s, and sighs.
Splayed partially across her, G’raha slumbers, unaware of their guest, the slow twitch of his tail against her ankle tickling enough that she has to turn her leg to scratch it. He still doesn’t move, breathing softly and even against the curve of her shoulder.
“You’ve had how many evenings where I was alone to do this?” Fjern asks quietly, stroking her hand through G’raha’s hair, the faintest press of nails against his scalp starting a low, rumbling purr deep in his chest and the sleepy knead of his hand against her thigh. “I am glad to see you, though.”
Slouched against the wall, Fray glowers. “We both know you will not be able to properly rest until you decide when you will finish this.”
Of course. Fjern hasn’t discussed her thoughts with anyone, but she didn’t need to have a discussion when Fray would know. Stroking over the velvet of one of G’raha’s ears and savoring the greedy feeling that came from being allowed such a thing, Fjern focuses on that instead of Fray’s stare. “Mayhap I tire of killing, things and people I care for.”
It would not be the first time, and they both know it is a shade of the truth. Fray pushes himself off the wall and gives G’raha a long, lingering look while he slumbers, unaware. “You tire of useless killing, slaughter without a purpose. You do not tire of freeing those hitched to a yoke that fits ill.”
“True enough,” Fjern murmurs, watching G’raha’s ear twitch under the featherlight press of a finger. “...There were times I thought it might have been easier to… simply lock you away. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Like at the bottom of the ocean.
The dark knight’s stone comes to her free hand at the faintest flex of her power, hot to the touch even now as it rests in her palm. The heat is not so dissimilar from Azem’s stone when it’s active; it is never so hot she worries it will burn.
“You were always stronger than Hades,” Fray murmurs and strides across the room, coming to kneel at her side. “You wondered in Elpis what shape his shadow would take but you already know.”
Fjern exhales, long and slow, eyes closed. When she opens them, a different set of red eyes look at her, the first having dissipated into nothingness. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.” Languorously, G’raha stretches against her and slides one of his legs atop her thighs, taking the implicit invitation of her not moving at all to get closer. “Were you intending on leaving tonight?”
“Nay,” Fjern murmurs, carding her hand through his hair again just for the purr to start up again, smiling sleepily at him. “In a few nights, though, if Y’shtola will allow it. I’ll return in the morning.”
G’raha doesn’t push, dig for answers, or do nothing more than nod and curve an arm around her, dropping a lazy kiss against her shoulder. “I will accept the solemn duty of keeping the bed warm for you when you return, hero.”
G'raha utters it with such seriousness that the sleepy comment works as he likely intended, wringing a drowsy little snicker out of her as she tugs the blankets up tight around the both of them and shamelessly curls into his warmth, just as welcoming as Azem or Fray’s crystals.
It’s late in the evening when Fjern finally rises, extricating herself slowly from the tangle of limbs that is G’raha Tia, somehow half of her size and yet taking up a good half of the bed and the blankets.
Well acquainted with sharing rooms and all that comes with it, none of them are strangers to someone having to get up in the middle of the night, sometimes simply needing the space and sometimes for a walk or the washroom the most he does is flatten himself out into the warm spot she leaves behind, arm hanging over the edge of the bed. Fjern smooths his hair back, watching him chase her hand's warmth with a sleepy rumble low in his chest.
Used to traveling light, she swings her travel backpack on the way out the door, pulling double the number of gysahl greens out once they’re far enough away from the Annex and closer to the aesthete. A tug, a little pop of magic, and Bourdon is pulled from the stable in her yard to before her with a startled little trill before snuffling at her hands for the treats he knows exist.
“I know this part isn’t either of our favorites, but Hades’ attention to detail is frustratingly exact down to how enormous the roads are.” Fjern says apologetically while he delicately picks the greens out of her hand and tips his head back, not unlike an owl swallowing a particularly delicious mouse. Another pleased trill and a headbutt for her trouble, already nosing at her pockets as if he has never been fed in his life, despite the rotating roster of retainers she knows exist to feed the mounts she has. “I would be happy to let you stay here if you wanted.”
Bourdon’s head lifts, and not for the first time, she thinks he does understand what she’s saying– perhaps not the entirety of it the way Seto had, but enough. Smoothing her fingers over the hard, cool angle of his beak first, Fjern tilts her hand and scratches the soft skin at the corner of his jaw gently, affectionately. “Apple first, then.”
She activates the teleport only once he’s delicately taken the bribe in his beak. Once again comes the awareness of what- who is no longer there, but upon her boots hitting the ground in Amaurot, she knows the taste of anise on her tongue is Emet-Selch's magics helping ease the travel what little he can. The two of them shake themselves out after the teleport, Bourdon much more furiously so, like he's shaking water out from the downy undercoat. Once his feathers smooth down, he bumps himself against her firmly, crunching down the proffered treat with a particular sort of sulk that happens every time they teleport into a different shard.
“You are very brave.”
Fjern is, regrettably, also a soft touch. When he trills pathetically, crouching, making himself look smaller and sadder, she fishes out yet another apple with full knowledge that she is laughably easy to manipulate as long as one is an enormous bird. Bourdon finishes the second offering, shakes himself off one last time, and gently body-checks her until she takes the hint they need to get moving as if she were the one holding the procession up.
Her hand smooths over the saddle, boot hooking into the stirrup to heft herself on top of him. Once settled, she leans in and over, wraps him in a hug from behind, heedless of the ghosts that watch, mildly bemused.
She speaks to each of the ghosts anyway, the ones who can communicate, the ones she has talked to a dozen times. They always follow their prescribed lines. The ghosts aren't real, they are just reflections of people they used to be, but nothing definable about them – memorable enough to hold in this instant of time but not so memorable they remembered their names. Perhaps she would know them if she had remembered more– but then again, maybe not.
Even now, she’s unclear if Hades had desired drifting through a picture– a snapshot of a time when everything was better, or if he had regarded all of it as another play, the ghosts merely set pieces.
Most of them, anyway.
Her feet take her in a circuit she has walked dozens (hundreds, thousands) of times in the past, starting at the aetheryte, winding through the streets aimlessly in a route that feels too familiar, unsurprised when it ends with the Bureau of the Architect stretched tall toward the false ceiling, bright and beautiful and fake.
Amaurot is a wound she accrued during battle yet unhealed over, and she’s not sure if coming here is to spread salt in it or cauterize it as the conversation with G’raha had.
“Ah,” Hythlodaeus says with pleased surprise as he materializes a yalm before her. “Hello again.”
“Hythlodaeus.” Under her feet, the ground feels solid. Under her hand, the stone feels real. None of it feels like an illusion, least of all Hythlodaeus’ quiet welcome every time she comes here. Fjern nods, hooking her fingers into Bordon’s lead. “Do you have time to speak?”
It is a very foolish question.
Were Hades here, he would point it out, but Hythlodaeus laughs brightly in all this darkness, hand lifted to his mouth, and Fjern is so unbearably fond for a brief moment that she understands the necessity of going to the quietest, darkest place in the First to grieve his loss.
“I believe I can make time in my busy schedule for you, my new old friend.”
There is a certain level of care she believed she had to take with her questions. Earlier, Hythlodaeus had referred to all of them as fragile bubbles that would burst under too much scrutiny, and to tell the truth, she had hoped he would be correct.
If she could but convince herself that no part of this enchantment was genuine– all of this would be so much easier if she looked at Hythlodaeus and did not see him, if she did not have a point of reference to compare, if she had not seen all she had in Elpis. Maybe this would be easier if he did not feel more real each time she visited.
“Is there somewhere you like to go?”
Not somewhere the three of them liked to go– she has no idea if that would be a good or bad memory for either of them, but perhaps there was somewhere in this facsimile Emet-Selch created Hythlodaeus enjoyed going to. It is unobtrusive enough a question, she hopes.
Hythlodaeus gives it due consideration and then nods, robes whispering over the stones as he leads her away from the Bureau to a few streets over. The ghosts look curiously at them, but none of them say anything new; none deviate from their prescribed lines.
Hythlodaeus waves a hand toward a gilded elevator and points to the last button on the elevator; each is an iridescent stone with a similarly gilded number, the 14th floor being the last available. Whether this is accuracy or artistic rendition borne from pettiness, she’s not certain but, upon noticing the crack in the button, thinks perhaps it’s the latter.
What is most important is the elevator works, dinging cheerfully when Hythlodaeus presses the 14th floor. Shortly after, the elevator opens again to another hallway, and Hythlodaeus gestures to a door at the end.
“We must take the stairs from here.” Hythlodaeus leads her toward a staircase, and the rooftop entrance is at the end of the winding set of stairs. Here, too, Hades has created everything in detail: the plants, the landscaping, the walls that are massive aquariums, illusionary fish floating by. By the door they came in light flickers, a recreation that only comes with the irritation of seeing a problem for so long it would feel off not to have it recreated. “The view is not…quite the same as it was then, though he did his best.”
Next to all the lush landscaping is a bench, and Hythlodaeus settles himself down, smoothing his robes out while she hauls herself onto the seat with a grunt and carefully settles back against the backrest.
It is a lovely view, even incomplete.
Knowing that Amaurot is an illusion does nothing to make it seem any less real, looking out over the city from here. Below, the ghosts look like people going about their day; lights flicker off and on in office buildings, imitating time passing. Shadows linger in meeting rooms backlit in the skyscrapers, and the meetings conclude, the lights fading, shades exiting the building. It feels a little like Elpis, sat in the grass, watching Hades work while Hermes and Meteion looked on.
When she looks down, there is a heartbeat where she thinks she sees a lunch set out on the seat with them, Hythlodaeus’ hand lifting to greet Hades’ arrival. As quickly as the memory is there, it is gone, Fjern swallowing around the knot in her throat.
Hythlodaeus allows the silence to linger between them until she decides to speak, but after a short while, he tugs his hood down and off, his mask following shortly after with a familiar, impish smile. Unlike in the dream, Hythlodaeus has a face– it is his face, but she looks at him and cannot help but mark the subtle differences. His eyes are a little dimmer, a little less unreal than Hythlodaeus’. Memory was an imperfect thing; did Hythlodaeus watch himself change bit by bit over time, as Hades’ memory of him changed?
“Hades will have to forgive me the impropriety,” he murmurs, settling the mask in his lap, distracting her from the new horror she was forced to confront. “For the sake of a friend, new or old.”
“There is no one left alive who would care for the impropriety,” Fjern confesses quietly. All of them were dead at her hands, leaving her the closest thing to one. The last of us. She clears her throat, forcing her voice steady with limited success. Everyone else has gotten to do this, say lines with the expectation the other party would know what is being referenced– it’s only fair she does. “And I, for one, would like you to favor me with your handsome face.”
Fjern has spent bells looking at Hythlodaeus – the real one, the living, breathing person and looking at this one, even knowing what, who he is, aches no less. He is undoubtedly more intangible; if she stares at him too long, she can see the impression of buildings behind him, his aether spread just a little too thin as her own had been upon arrival in Elpis.
“We averted the Final Days,” Fjern begins finally, bracing her arms behind herself and leaning back to look up at him. “I would not have been able to if you had not given me Azem’s crystal.”
Hythlodaeus laughs, reclining back against their seat; when the light hits him just so, it shines through him. He isn’t real, but he is. He and this place are a series of memories given form, but she looks at Hythlodaeus, and he looks real enough. If she reached out to touch him, he would fade with enough pressure like all the rest, but the lie presented to her eyes was enough without the touch.
Would have been enough, were she Emet-Selch, perhaps, because something was better than nothing, but even then– G’raha had told her Emet-Selch had not even known. Hythlodaeus was himself enough to understand what it would do to him and had stayed alone for ages instead, like Ardbert, like the Watcher, like Emet-Selch, to an extent.
It is so bitterly unfair.
“You would have found a way,” Hythlodaeus says with a certainty he should not be able to achieve, warmth radiating from him. “Azem was nothing if not determined. Even until the last moment, even if that determination was at odds with the others.”
Determined, but ultimately unsuccessful, until thousands of years later and at an unimaginable cost. A very uncharitable part of Fjern wants to call this cleaning up the mess of the Ascians, trying to set right a frankly breathtaking amount of wrongs, and to some extent, it is, but all of this would be so much easier to stomach if it weren’t so much destruction in the process of cleaning that mess up.
Shifting to look away from the city and focus on Hythlodaeus, Fjern curls her knees under herself despite the way the armor pinches, not meant for such fine movements even with the glamour applied. “Do you wish to stay here? The enchantment would last…centuries is our best guess, if untouched.”
“Nay.” She doesn’t imagine the speed with which he responds, the rueful little twitch of his lips when he sees her mark it. He seems like the real Hythlodaeus, even now. Especially now. The long, knowing look he gives her, the way the corners of his lips twitch, dimples forming, the recreation painstaking in effort and detail. She tries to think about all of the people she has met, all of the people she cares very, very deeply for, and how Fray could have just as easily been one of them. Ysayle, or Haurchefant, or any other of the number she has failed and lost over the years.
There’s a different sort of horror to consider were it to be any of the others, were she to weave an enchantment full of her grief to recreate those lost. Does she remember how many bracelets Urianger wears on his wrists? The exact shade of blue that is Alphinaud’s jacket? Given enough grief and raw power, could she recreate them with enough veracity to convince herself of the lie?
Would she have been able to settle, were that the case? Or would she have constantly weighed them against the perfection of what was, the way Hythlodaeus had known Emet-Selch would?
“Do you mean to ask if I am ready to leave?”
Even here– even like this, he wouldn’t call it death. There’s a tiny, awful part of her that unknots slowly, a part that had wondered if the reason the enchantment did not unwind when Hades had passed was that, in his refusal to let the last of them fade into obscurity, he had somehow imbued that thought into the very enchantment itself.
Nothing about death had struck her as particularly beautiful, ever. More often than not, it was painful and messy, leaving the world less for the loss.
“Aye. I think I understand how Hades recreated Amaurot and I believe I could– un-create it enough to release you without releasing the rest of the enchantment. You needn’t stay here alone.” Fjern thumbs over the bench they’re sitting on, wondering if there was truly a bench here or if it had been washed away in the resulting destruction and only existed in Hades’ memories.
When he had– when he died, when she had killed him, the enchantment had broken, however briefly, before slowly seeping back into place. It would fade in time, but Hythlodaeus remaining trapped here even longer feels like a cruelty she cannot abide knowing what she knows now.
There is no telling whether or not Hades’ abilities with the dark knight soul stone worked the same way, though she could not imagine why they would work any differently.
Would an illusion grasp what’s being unsaid? Would they be able to read between the lines? If it did, what did that make the enchantment? It was one thing to form an enchantment, but most enchantments they had encountered were base instincts– kill, destroy, take some simple task, and achieve it. They were not sentient in this manner.
“I saw your robes earlier,” Hythlodaeus says in lieu of an actual answer, calling back to one of her prior visits to Amaurot, directly after Elpis, as far away from the prying eyes of the rest of the Scions as she could get no matter how well-intentioned all of them were. Without meaning, her feet had taken her on a route not so dissimilar from Emet-Selch’s, clad in Elpis’ robes, desperate to go to the one place no one else would follow her. “I admit, I do find myself curious.”
One characteristic he shares with Hades and the other Ascians is the subtle, infuriating ability to have two conversations simultaneously. After enough time around them, she’s gotten a feel for when she’s being corralled into something, but not enough of a sense to understand how to avoid being led there.
“You and Hades thought it would help me be less…obtrusive,” Fjern pulls at a different glamour, feeling Ascian robes settle in over her armor. When she brushes her fingers over the material, it doesn’t feel like it was made from the creatures she culled– it simply feels like an exceptionally finely crafted cloth the way the bench underneath them feels like just a bench.
“If I made you robes, I would have had you gather the ingredients. If you were in Elpis, and unable to use a concept for robes, I would have given you aetheric rope, differing petaloudas for their aetheric composition.” The pleasant smile stays fixed there, and Fjern nods slowly, an animal unaware it is walking into a trap until the door slides shut. “I also would have explained to you the process.”
Fjern draws in a shuddering breath, eyes closing, bracing for the words she knows are coming as if they are a sword between the ribs.
“Everything here is long since gone. Even me. Faithful of a recreation as I may be, to dispose of the enchantment would simply release the aether back into the world.” Hythlodaeus turns until he fully faces her, folding a leg underneath himself, chin propped in hand, the very picture of someone simply lounging, not casually discussing what is effectively a third or fourth death, depending on how one counts. “And in that faithfulness, I think my answer would be the same as it would have been in life. I do applaud Emet-Selch’s restraint, if one can even call it that.”
The fear from earlier rises again, a flicker of thought– a Hythlodaeus who would not have volunteered here and now– who would not have wanted to die, who would have wanted to wait out the end of the world with Emet-Selch. The horror of it shows on her face because Hythlodaeus reaches out, the chill of cold fingers resting against her face.
“This is one final burden he has left you to carry, and I am sorry for it,” Hythlodaeus murmurs. “Perhaps initially, he may have meant it as a cruelty for her– punishment for the perceived crime of leaving him alone. He spent so long mourning you, he might find some sort of…satisfaction, however spiteful, that now you would mourn us. Now, I think… he needed you to be strong for the both of us one more time. He was always rather terrible at asking for help from either of us, despite having two model examples who bothered him for assistance as often as we liked.”
Perhaps he couldn’t bear to be responsible for what he would consider Hythlodaeus’ death for a second time. Inside its pocket against her heart, Azem’s crystal pulses with warmth. If she focuses, she can see the threads of the enchantment filtering around her, flickering at the corners of her vision that she blinks away.
“I for one would consider the aid rendered quite useful these last few weeks, hm?” Hythlodaeus prompts, drawing her attention away from the glow. “Enough to ask a favor from the savior of our star, mayhap?”
The ache in her chest grows vicious, and she nods without thinking. “Of course. Anything.”
“Marvelous. I would ask you this, then. After everything you have seen, everyone you have met, the experiences you have had, those glorious and those painful– think of this as Hades’ final gift to you.” A small, red crystal manifests in his palm, glowing dimly with a dark aether as familiar as Fray’s. Of course. Of course, he would know why she is here.
Incredulous– indignant, Fjern stares up at him and is rewarded with his laughter.
A gift. No, rather more a curse– or, like Hythlodaeus had said earlier, a cruelty, a punishment. Azem had left Hades alone– what more fitting punishment was there than making the erasure of Hythlodaeus' second existence, however partial, a conscious decision she had to take part in instead of running from?
“A gift,” Fjern repeats dubiously, watching Hythlodaeus stand and grandly sweep one hand across the horizon, the soft glow of the city around them. The stone sits in his other hand, accusatory as she avoids looking at it, at him.
“Sundered as you are, you do not remember Amaurot. We shared thousands of memories together here, and much and more elsewhere. In truth, we knew Hemera tolerated Amaurot because it was where we were, but she was always happiest out among the people. Somewhere new, somewhere exciting.” Hythlodaeus stretches a body with no muscles and no bones and rolls shoulders that do not exist. The motion looks real. He looks real. “Hades left a gift for someone with a traveler’s heart– a place you would never otherwise be able to visit, for you to explore at your leisure. What better way to look at this recreation?”
Fjern’s expression crumples, and Hythlodaeus reaches across the distance, sweeping his fingers through her bangs like he means to smooth her hair back but doesn’t have the tangibility. A rueful smile curls his lips, shoulders lifting and falling in a little shrug. What did I expect? An awful part of her had wondered how Hythlodaeus could serve as Fray– her Fray was rigid and unyielding, and neither of those words had fit Hythlodaeus quite the same.
Now, she thinks she understands how Hythlodaeus’ gentle certainty would have broken both Hemera and Emet-Selch so much quicker than the adamantine grip of her Fray.
“So then, the question is not if I am ready, my dear. I have been ready for thousands of years.” Hythlodaeus stretches upward toward a sky that is not visible. “Well, traveler? Have you explored all you wished to here? Have you sought out all of the answers you can in this place? Are you satisfied?”
No, never, but isn’t that part of the problem? She could spend countless days here, memorizing the precise way the streetlamps shone, the exacting recreation of the architecture. If necessary, the enchantment can be recreated for further studies; consolidating the sheer amount of knowledge and information Emet-Selch had collected would take years. But there was no reason for the whole of the enchantment to exist in perpetuity, no reason for Hythlodaeus to be trapped here. She could go to the rooms Azem shared with them, but that still feels less like catharsis and more like an invasion. Maybe someday she will find herself able to, but it seems unimaginable now.
Is she satisfied? No, but that is no reason to keep him here; Emet-Selch may not have learned that lesson, but she has. She will have to be satisfied with what she has. After an eternity, Fjern feels her head nod like a puppet on a string rather than it being an intentional gesture, tugging out her dark knight crystal along with Azem’s.
“Then I am ready, whenever you are.” Hythlodaeus places Emet-Selch’s crystal in her hand with the other two, folding her fingers around them gently. It might as well weigh as much as her axe.
Cradling them in the center of her palm, she could feel the flicker of magic around her like in battle. There are anchor points of magic scattered throughout the city, and she knows that if she focused just so on the aether around her, she could dip into the memories of its creation and utilize the Echo to dip into memories that are not entirely hers.
This, too, is too much of an invasion for the time being.
“A small suggestion, if you do not mind,” Hythlodaeus says when she still hasn’t started dismantling the enchantment holding him, staring tearfully at their hands instead. “The aether would normally dissipate. This much of it– he truly spared no expense on the enchantment for once in his life– you might be able to repurpose a touch. What you might lack in experience with creation magicks, raw power and the crystal as a focus should compensate.”
Fjern curls her fingers around the stone, thumb sliding back and forth over the engraved face. "Of course," someone with her voice says.
“At your leisure.” Hythlodaeus tilts his face up into a sun that isn’t there, eyes closed as if he can feel the warmth anyway. “Tell me about how you found Elpis, would you?”
Fjern closes her eyes. She may not be Azem, but she has never felt the similarity more keenly than in this moment, unable to watch as Hythlodaeus is unmade yet again. From within, Fray uncurls himself, stretching outward in a spill of shadow against the ground, rising upward. She reaches for the first enchantment anchor point, dismantling it thread by thread from its tethers while discussing the facility. She tells him about the Elpis flowers, about flying with Hades, about each of the incredibly kind people she met through her travels, and when the last of the enchantments tied to the anchor of the crystal dissipate, there’s a quiet clatter next to her. Hythlodaeus’ intangible hand no longer rests atop hers, replaced by the weight of two masks. Hythlodaeus would have given the mask to Hades before the end, and Hades would have kept it all these years. Sentimental to the last.
She opens her eyes to the carcass of Amaurot once more, awful, blackened metal and stone stretching up to the false ceiling offered by magic before the enchantment resettles itself over the skeleton with a tremble that vibrates in her teeth at the raw power of it. The second mask in hand can only be Azem’s, familiar and unfamiliar in equal parts, surrounded by teardrop pieces of auracite similar to those she had picked up from the ground in the wake of her battle with Emet-Selch.
“How do you feel?” Fjern asks, trying not to sound too worried. She approaches where Fray stands at the edge of the rooftop slowly. When she touches her fingertips against his back, his body is warm to the touch instead of the unnatural chill he typically radiates. “I do not feel any different, but I thought you might.”
Fray lifts one shoulder and lets it fall in a little shrug. “Uninjured; ‘twas not as complex of a rejoining as that of the Exarch and G’raha Tia, if it worried you. At most, you might consider it a pooling of residual enchanted aether given form.”
He turns to look at her properly, and Fjern isn’t sure if she imagines the way the glowing red of his eyes feels dulled, closer to a magenta than violent red. Nodding mutely, Fjern feels him slip back into her shadow again. Next to her on the bench lies Hythlodaeus’ mask.
Slowly, she pockets the reformed crystal and dismisses the robe glamour, settling into the familiar comfort her armor offers. Last, she reaches both hands out and delicately picks both masks up, refusing to consider how Hythlodaeus’ mask and the pieces of auracite from her battle with Hades were the last authentic pieces of a world that no longer exists.
It’s a long jump down to where Bourdon has been patiently waiting, looking mildly perplexed at the bit of careful landscaping he had been picking from, which had gone to barren soil and then back to illusionary plants. Fjern hands him another apple for the trouble and returns them to Sharlayan.
As promised, G’raha is still between the sheets, and the bed has been kept warm for her; it had only been a few bells. Once she’s changed into pajamas from her traveling clothes, G’raha tugs the covers back in an invitation, and Fjern fits herself up against his side, pressing a lingering kiss to the warmth of the curve of his throat, and allows herself to fall asleep.