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Elidibus wears falsehoods easily, like another might lay gauze upon their skin: silks which leave no mark behind, no impressions from the weight of their lacings. Their colors come and go. The flesh beneath remains tepid. By now, Emet-Selch has watched Elidibus dress himself in every form a facade can possibly take. He has seen their Emissary don a plethora of faces, and each one means less and less.
The vividness of the man's soul similarly dwindles with all the dignity of a candle drowning in its own wax. After the Final Days, its hue was drenched in Zodiark's darkness. In the millennia since, it has bleached itself to a drab grey, as filthy and threadbare as a dishrag which has been used too many times to scrub vomit off a tavern floor.
There is very little left to distinguish it anymore. Even his presence before Emet-Selch is a lie: a false claim that the man exists at all.
"Haven't you considered taking a proper vacation, now and then?" There's no sign of any mortals or Sundered nearby; their meeting is being held on a blasted scrap of the Tenth, which Emet-Selch privately approves of. "You've just finished quashing that pack of Hydaelyn's pets on the Ninth, and now you're already off to chase down a new batch? And before that, you straightened out Pashtarot's disastrous experiment on the Eighth. At this rate, you'll make Lahabrea look indolent."
The criticism slides away ineffectively. Their Emissary flicks a disinterested glance at the horizon, which offers only another endless, barren line of dirt. "There is too much to attend to."
Emet-Selch rolls his eyes. It does not take any particular skill to see the way that Elidibus's physical aether fluctuates, tremulous spasms like the contortions of a vilekin curling up into a ball. "You've remade your current vessel to suit again, I see. As much as I disapprove of Lahabrea's frivolity, why not take a fresh body? This one is nearly spent. It will barely hold the alterations."
"I was already in this one." Elidibus's discomfort with words is telling; the man speaks as if he has forgotten entirely how to do so, a lapse where his mind has been filled up with something else instead, something that bids him, go forth and serve our god. "There was no need to... waste resources that were already available."
"This one is already a waste." Reaching out boldly, Emet-Selch taps the proud arches of Elidibus's face, prodding at each feature with the impersonality of a sculptor assessing a lump of marble. "Just look at this nose! It makes a mockery of the very concept of aesthetics. Couldn't you shape anything more appealing?"
Elidibus does not cower. His gaze tracks Emet-Selch's motions with mechanical precision, a pendulum that does not care where gravity pulls it next. "It will be of value on the Third. Your report said that these bipeds are the dominant species of the era. I will blend in better through successful mimicry."
The logic is sound enough, even as Emet-Selch is repulsed by the impassiveness of it. Elidibus is correct: to subvert the locals, one must fit in, and Elidibus is an expert at ingratiating himself. When he can remember to act. If he can remember. It is no concern of Emet-Selch's, either way.
Flesh is so cheap these days.
Emet-Selch's hand jerks away before he can order it to linger; unlike their Emissary, it is hardly half as obedient to its master. "Good enough," he declares out loud, in order to disguise the flinch.
"It is not." Elidibus's response is instantaneous. His denial is framed in monotone. "I have not been to the Third in some time, while you were there but a sennight past, by the Source's counting. This current creation is merely approximate. I require your skills, Emet-Selch. Fix what you see as flawed."
If only I could. It is a good thing that the shard around them is a wasteland; it, like everything else worth mentioning, is already obliterated. For a moment, Emet-Selch craves wildly to embrace the same madness that has been nibbling away at Elidibus's sanity, regardless of the cause -- but doing so would be the final ruin of them all. He has too much of a need for the loathing that drives him, the fire that he crumbles his soul into small pieces to fuel, feeding it by hand in order to keep it alive. He does not have the luxury of killing off all of himself yet.
Mouth sour, he looks away. "And what if I err?"
"There is naught about me," Elidibus says in serene, horrific reassurance, "that is not disposable."
It would be simple to refuse. Emet-Selch can think of a dozen excuses that would let him turn his back on Elidibus's request, fabricating a curt enough rejection that it would take centuries for the man to forget enough about the exchange to try asking again. Lahabrea has railed at him endlessly about the state of their Emissary's decaying mind, his words bitter and raging with despair -- and each time, it takes all of Emet-Selch's remaining self-discipline not to say, you are just as bad, Speaker. You are just as far gone.
But just as he is preparing himself to abandon the shard entirely and flee like a coward, he catches the flicker of something in Elidibus's unmasked, altered face: a tightening around the mouth, an attentiveness in the eyes. It is real, and the presence of it is enough to arouse Emet-Selch's appetite into what can only be described as a perverse hunger, a need to draw out that scrap of emotion and expose it to the world, stretching it across a board with its edges nailed to the wood while it squirms and squeals at being seen.
The impulse is foul; it is part of Emet-Selch's own inventory of excesses, bloated and swollen with all he has ingested to widen the range of his palate. But it keeps him rooted there beside Elidibus, and perhaps that is its only saving grace: it alone keeps him connected to the moment.
He lifts his chin, coolly offering his disdain as bait. "Are you sure you want my hand upon you?"
"If the nose is incorrect, then change it, Emet-Selch." Again, a faint distress stirs again in Elidibus's expression, eyes narrowing as insecurity contorts itself into the easier guise of impatience. "I do not intend to embark upon this task while poorly suited for it."
"I could take the whole thing off, if you'd prefer. Give you a snout, or a trunk instead." The curl of Emet-Selch's tongue follows the same arc as a scorpion's tail, poison primed and ready. Some part of him -- weak and whispering -- insists that he is better than this. He was not a cruel man, once.
For an instant so livid it burns molten-hot, Emet-Selch does not know what he hates more: Elidibus, or the lingering residue of his own self that he has yet to excise fully.
In that moment, it is pure rancor that puppets his hand back towards Elidibus's face. The pad of his thumb strokes roughly across the man's mouth, hard enough to pull down the man's lower lip, exposing the teeth within.
"Mayhap I should take the measure of your vessel first," he drawls. "This body of yours does seem marvelously responsive. 'Twould be a waste to numb it unnecessarily."
Wariness tightens Elidibus's eyes, though he leans only far enough back to be able to speak without impediment. "Just what are you suggesting, Hades?"
It is rare for Elidibus to use his name. Even rarer for the Emissary to remember that name at all. The promise of it spurs Emet-Selch on, crooking its finger like a swindler as it lures him down the hallway.
"A test of your sensory capacities." He manages to say the words as if they mean nothing, as if he has the same professional benevolence as a physicker. "A simple stimulation of the nerves to ensure they are all operational. I will touch you in several places -- intimate and otherwise -- and register your aetherial flow. Tell me when you have reached the very edge of your endurance each time," he informs the man, "and I will stop."
"Stop?"
"Yes," Emet-Selch replies; he is pleased at how utterly reasonable he makes it all sound. "How else can we properly calibrate you?"
He does not expect Elidibus to back down -- not from a challenge so basic that even a Sundered could endure it -- and his reward is a sharp nod of permission. Yet in that brief, wretched moment of clarity, something more breaks free in Elidibus's eyes, someone else: a young man who had once bent all his studies towards the practice of impartiality so that he could better mediate for them all, better love them all. A person named Themis, who had looked up to them all with such admiration, fiercely enough that it illuminated him from within, bright enough to blind.
That same individual now regards Emet-Selch with uncertainty, as if they fear failing a test which will be presented to them in a way they will not recognize until it is too late. The mixture of apprehension and uncertainty wars in Elidibus's expression -- so faint, so fleeting, that even as Emet-Selch watches, he can see it beginning to slip away beyond the boundaries of conscious thought again, as if it never existed at all.
Emet-Selch's lips twitch. He can taste that same flavor of dread like a layer of ash across his tongue. It blunts the edge of his malice, replacing it with a helplessness he cannot quantify, kin-cousin to fear.
"Don't flinch," he orders, his voice dull with lukewarm hostility, and reaches out.
Only a touch is required to shred Elidibus's robes. Emet-Selch does not bother with the charade of undressing the man; his fingers claw the cloth away into raw aether, exposing the clumsy anatomy hidden beneath. The adaptation cannot have been an easy one. Elidibus had clearly read the reports from the Third, but had only bothered acknowledging the surface basics: superficial alterations to the skin and skeletal structure, muscles stretched like rubber bands wrapped around pegs on a board even as their fibers are strained to the tearing point. None of it amounts to art. This performance had stemmed from the pragmatism of someone wearing their body as a temporary disguise, not expecting those around them to seek anything deeper.
Dryads, the creatures called themselves on the Third. A bipedal species of mammal, though not for much longer. Truthfully enough, it was the seedkin which had bonded to them which were the true progenitors of their race. After the environment had shifted enough on the Third to bring drought after drought, the plants had fallen back upon their encoded instincts, directing their aether-infused pollen towards the nearest mobile species which shared their habitats, there to settle and incubate. The changes would have been small at first. A gnarling of the digits, and thickening of the features. Nostrils flattening down, teeth becoming rudimentary nubs.
With each successful generation, those tendrils would twine further through mammalian flesh, converting it further and further through a patient, irreversible transformation. Eventually, all traces of the original species would be smoothed away, leaving only sturdy seedkin that imitated the same form -- like roots grown into a stone coffin, filling every ilm of it up until the container could be cracked away like a potter's mold, leaving a perfect shape behind. They would migrate to new environments once the process was complete, roaming until they could find fertile soil again where they could lay down their roots and begin the cycle anew.
Halmarut had done masterful work.
Elidibus had not. Their Emissary had seen fit to skip ahead, taking the existing body he was in and forcing the physical changes wholesale rather than working through any incremental steps. While the surface of his vessel matched the look of the current dryads with their grooved skin and slender limbs, the flesh itself was stressed, forced to perform a facade that it could not sustain. The Third's dryads were still more animal than plant; the fragile merging of their aether had left them with tissues that were just beginning to learn how to convert sunlight into nourishment, but otherwise they retained all the same biological functions that could be expected from any other creature of their type.
Even at a glance, Emet-Selch can see how Elidibus has not bothered with such mercies. Rather than allow the fusion of plant and flesh to knit together gradually, the Emissary had simply taken his current body and converted half of its aether by force, welding a layer of thicker tissues on top like a shell. The vital organs are compressed, atrophying without proper bloodflow to nourish and cleanse them. Only a constant stream of aether keeps them functioning at all.
Thousands of years have eradicated any instinct Emet-Selch had once possessed for revulsion. His fingertips brush and then press firmly against the cooler skin of Elidibus's vessel, exploring the consistency in search of the deceptive softness of rot. The initial report is better than he anticipated. Elidibus's arms are smooth, body hair lost to the same transformation that left the veins running green instead of blue, but there are no pockets which cave under pressure like the mush of decomposing fruit.
Slowly, watching Elidibus as he does, Emet-Selch brings one of the man's hands up to his mouth, pressing its knuckles to his nose as he breathes in the scent of Elidibus's body.
He parts his lips. He samples the taste of it.
Then -- gaze unwavering -- he slides Elidibus's forefinger into his mouth.
Unlike a common predator, he allows his teeth to stay lax against the bone. There is plenty of opportunity for Elidibus to retreat, should the man prefer -- but the finger remains docile upon Emet-Selch's tongue, like a pet ordered to sit, to stay as commanded. The loop of it is like some exhibitionist's play. Emet-Selch is watching Elidibus watch him as he consumes the Emissary, piece by living piece.
Slowly, he closes his jaws. Elidibus's knuckle nudges the roof of his mouth. The Emissary's expression is absent of all reaction, as if he has already forced himself to accept that this will be how Emet-Selch's judgement is to be rendered: with a snap and a bite, the offending parts removed through the simplest means of devouring them.
At no point does Elidibus flinch.
It is Emet-Selch who retreats first, smirking even as he pulls away. Elidibus's finger slips limply out of his mouth, dragging a cooling trail of spit down his chin; Emet-Selch resists the urge to wipe it off. "Very good," he sneers -- as if he can pretend that the whole exercise has been merely a joke rather than a cruel disappointment -- and then turns the man's hand over to frown at the slender wedge of its bones.
Elidibus's fingers curl upwards when Emet-Selch runs a thumb hard over the palm: a mindless reflex, far from any conscious invitation. The simple machine of anatomy is what obeys the pressure. When Emet-Selch investigates further, he finds a knot where the knuckles have been misaligned -- causing the nearest tendons to pop over the joints whenever the fingers are flexed -- and corrects it absently, his hand bracing Elidibus's wrist as he works.
The work is painless; he does not initially consider the value of making it hurt. By the time he does, it is already too late.
From there, he traces the bones up to the shoulder. From there: the ribs. Aether pools around each point of contact, syrup oozing through muscle fibers and saturating them with the new energy of creation. Elidibus does not resist. The color of Emet-Selch's aether trickles through him like well-water into the blind parts of the earth, and everywhere it touches, nerves flicker radiantly back to life.
The nipples of Elidibus's borrowed body are large, a lovely size nearly big as the pad of a grown hyur's thumb. Emet-Selch places his mouth upon the left one, teasing its contours with his tongue. When he withdraws, the flesh hardens quickly in the coolness of the air, and Emet-Selch smirks at it, rubbing a fingertip in small circles to heighten the response before flicking it once, insolently.
"Emet-Selch."
"Too much?" he drawls.
Elidibus shifts his weight from foot to foot. "No. Continue."
Spurred on by the challenge, he takes his time to savor the treat. The dark nub lures him in for another mouthful, like a ripened berry to be devoured. The way it fits neatly into the bed of his tongue is delightful -- almost as delicious as the sound of Elidibus's stifled, erratic moans. More and more of those precious noises flit free the longer that Emet-Selch indulges himself, allowing his teeth to scrape against the pebbled surface, delighting in the feel of Elidibus's heart beating faster beneath his palm.
Finally, the man makes a jerk of his head. "Hades," he grits out -- a hissed warning that does not know if it protests or begs, and Emet-Selch sighs dramatically as he grants a reprieve for a second time. It is hard to keep his expression properly scornful. There is something wrong with his mouth. Heat squeezes his chest when he looks at Elidibus, as if some force is crawling through him, eroding him like a sandstorm intent on flaying him from the inside out. That, or the agony he removes is being transferred to him instead: an inescapable equation that no arcanist can solve, nor entropy.
It hurts. He hurts. The pain has no right to be there. He is not the one who is broken.
Shoving the thought aside, Emet-Selch sweeps his thumbs down Elidibus's stomach, drawing satisfaction from the way the skin is now tinged a healthy jade, mossy shadows gathering in the crevices. The hard lumps of the man's spine resemble marbles baked into concrete. Emet-Selch tests the lowest one before pressing firmly against it, signaling the clenched muscles to release, and feels the pop of a vertebrae sliding into place -- the reverberation like an explosion underwater, muffled by the insulation of flesh.
He is prepared for that, this victory over mere physical anatomy. But he is not prepared for the heavy gasp of relief that escapes Elidibus as the man's shoulders tremble, posture slumping forward as if the strings which hold it have momentarily gone slack. The Emissary's eyes flutter shut; he breathes deeply through his open mouth, leaking formless noises. It is an uncalculated response, inelegant with honesty: the dialogue of a body which is struggling to come to terms with the shock of no longer having to compensate for an internal imbalance, muscles loosening from being cramped up into a solid block in order to try and hold the spine steady.
Emet-Selch waits for Elibidus to recover, listening to the man's raw, helpless panting, and then moves on.
The gentleness of it all comes back more easily than he expects. It should not. There should be nothing of tenderness left free to roam inside him. The practice of it is an imitation, as cheap as Elidibus's own disguises. Parasitical. Weak. Emet-Selch has hollowed out his own mask like a carapace to adorn him -- and yet, it is as if the work is smoothing away some snarl within himself, his hands seeking to fix something instead of breaking it down into its basest components, grinding lives into slurry with which to congeal their star back together. He and Themis might have performed this same exact experiment in a corner workshop in Amaurot together, cooperating willingly to shape something in an act of joint creation and joy.
It has been eons since those kinder days. Like so much other useless detritus, those experiences have been locked away to rot.
Until now, when the compass of Emet-Selch's being is turning slowly through the congealed tar that weighs down the colors of his own soul and dims its radiance with grime. Memory seeps back into him, a visitor moving through his veins. The rusty gears of his heart churn. Elidibus is the lodestone that his attention seeks, turning unerringly towards the man with the implacability of natural law. The vessel the man wears is no longer a ruse to be mocked. Even with its imperfections, it is merely a container meant to hold something infinitely precious -- to be precious itself, to be looked upon and loved by all who witness it.
"Come now, we're not even halfway through yet," Emet-Selch chides as he adjusts another joint, and hears Elidibus groan. Even this teasing is monstrously gentle. "Don't tell me your construct is so weak that it cannot bear a little more."
He doesn't wait for a denial; the answer is already apparent in the way that Elidibus's hips cant forward, turning instinctively towards him. It's tantalizing enough to make Emet-Selch want to pretend he hasn't noticed, that the thought hasn't occurred to him -- and won't, until Elidibus is made to ask outright.
Then he drops his gaze down, smiling in private satisfaction as he sees the way that Elidibus's cock has swelled, rising thick and heavy and urgently in need of being attended to.
But when Emet-Selch reaches down to seize this new treat, it becomes markedly clear how this organ, too, has been malformed. Elidibus must have paid barely any attention to it when he reshaped the tissues. The nerves refuse to stir as Emet-Selch strokes a fingernail slowly down the cock's soft length, too dull to acknowledge any stimuli. It must feel like almost nothing to Elidibus to be touched like this, and as Emet-Selch toys more boldly with the man's endowments, his suspicions are confirmed. He can see the proof in how Elidibus tries to press blindly into the contact, a pointless foray against the numbness that has infused the flesh, as if there are layers upon layers of scar tissue which obstruct the way.
There very likely are.
With a practiced tsk, Emet-Selch draws a playful sneer across his face, even as he begins a few coaxing pulls with his hand. "What a wonderfully stunted piece of work you've crafted here. This doesn't seem like it would be much fun."
"And what use is it if I feel pleasure?" Yet again, Elidibus lies: he strains to follow the slow massaging of Emet-Selch's palm, even as his tone rings starkly indifferent. "If I am tasked to seduce another, then all that matters is that I am able to perform adequately enough to fool them. What higher purpose would satisfying myself serve?"
The defense is so matter-of-fact that it stops Emet-Selch flat, all amusement going cold in his veins. The smirk he forces next feels ghastly, lips pulled back like a corpse.
"Well," he offers blandly, "right now it can serve to entertain me, and we can call it fair payment."
He is more patient here -- he must be, with all the cruelty that Elidibus has done to himself. The nerve and muscle connections must be carefully unpinned in order to be remade properly, glands allowed to receive proper signals and trigger as demanded. He warms the man's cock with a trickle of aether as he works, painstakingly reconstructing it from the base up until Elidibus takes a sharp, surprised breath. Color has gathered in the man's cheeks, darkening the whorled bark-lines which grace the bones. If he were in a hyur's body, they would be flushed red with arousal.
Emet-Selch provides further encouragement by thumbing the head of Elidibus's cock, pleased with its plumper shape. "Shall we continue the test?" he murmurs, allowing his other hand to wander down lower, until it cups and caresses the soft skin of the scrotum. "I wouldn't be surprised if there's more that requires correction."
Elidibus inhales loudly as Emet-Selch cradles him, but his voice is determinedly neutral. "If you feel it to be of value," he states, refusing to back down, "then by all means, proceed in your task."
There is an implicit threat in the way that Emet-Selch slowly closes his fingers around the man's testicles, giving them a light squeeze -- but that is all. "Oh, I intend to," he purrs. "We've barely just begun."
In truth, he would benefit from having a few more arms in order to properly position the other Ascian in the most advantageous angles, but his transformed shape would dwarf Elidibus's vessel, like that of a deity looking down upon its worshipper -- and he has no desire to see Elidibus's face become wracked with emotion when it could be so easily mistaken for the blind adoration of a god who is not there. Instead, Emet-Selch snaps his fingers, drawing in the nearby aether and reforming it into a low, backless bench, wide enough to sprawl upon without any risk of falling off. As an afterthought, he leaves one end sloped to make it easier to prop himself up, and then promptly puts it to use, leaning back against the cushions and pulling Elidibus down to straddle his waist.
He takes his time to explore the configuration of Elidibus's genitals at a leisurely pace even as the man gets himself settled, organizing knees and hips to keep himself balanced while Emet-Selch walks his fingertips along the length of Elidibus's perineum. Moisture gathers in a slick sheen as he winds aether around his hand, converting the energy to liquid. A few drops crawl down his wrist, tickling his skin.
He ignores them, and reaches up.
With the very first thrust of his fingers, he can tell how the muscles of Elidibus's anus are wretchedly tight. The sphincter twists at an awkward angle; the Emissary must have squeezed the vessel's hipbones together, bending them like a piece of wood soaked in water to soften it for the clamps. Several pockets fester where the bloodflow has been trapped, veins sluggish and struggling. Emet-Selch smoothes each one out absently like wet clay, his knuckles moving with the steadiness of a metronome -- back and forth and back again, sliding deeper and deeper as he works his fingers inside, opening the way not just so that he can move more easily, but for the body itself to be able to finally have the room to breathe.
From his palms, aether blooms outwards, rising up through Elidibus's body as it seeks out all the remaining places which weep for repair. One of Elidibus's lungs has been wadded up like a discarded handkerchief, unable to fully inflate; Emet-Selch corrects the cavity around it and sparks the stifled seedkin roots to grow, twining into the circulatory system. They widen the narrow arteries, expand the lymph vessels. Every organ is washed clean of the rancid fluids it has accumulated, flushing out the small toxins that have built up until they had no choice but to become self-made poisons.
Above him, Elidibus makes a sudden, strangled noise as the last cyst is erased: another cry of pure relief, a sublime ecstasy that comes from the simple suspension of pain, the bliss of simply not hurting anymore. His lips fall open, jaw lax; he gasps softly, a rasp of air that metamorphosizes into a pant. Then he lets his shoulders drop back, hips forward as he braces his hands behind him, working himself tentatively further down upon Emet-Selch's knuckles -- as if his body craves as much as it can take, simply to prove to itself that the motion itself is not paired to suffering, that the act of living is no longer a prison to be caged in, a coffin of bones and bile.
Emet-Selch lets him take that pleasure without condemning it. His own focus is better spent on thinning the rest of the tissues which have been shoved together in scar-thick wads, patiently angling his hand to guide the aether as it molds new angles in Elidibus's body -- until, at last, the prize of the Elidibus's prostate tucks comfortably against his fingers, sitting flush against them without any effort needed to reach it anymore. Every shift of Elidibus's body rubs it back and forth against the steady pressure of Emet-Selch's fingers. He allows his hand to rest like that, savoring the moment as he rolls his fingertips absently in small circles to encourage healthy bloodflow, fully aware of the side effects of such stimulation.
All of the vessel's nerves are operating as they should. Elidibus has shifted his weight even closer now that his body grants him the mobility, sinking down upon his knees. His palms are splayed on Emet-Selch's thighs, his back bowed; his entire body hums with the flow of Emet-Selch's aether as the energies continue to vibrate more deeply inside him than mortal fingers could ever reach, an intimacy of the soul. His mouth is slack. Sweat paints him in a glossy sheen. There is nothing artful or calculated about his chosen body now. All that remains is the fragile, defenseless animal that Elidibus had sought to crush into a bloodless shell, concealed inside a maze of flesh congealed into bark and commanded to lie about it.
He is, Emet-Selch thinks, more lovely like this than any creature imaginable.
But the man's eyes open all too soon. He freezes, holding himself very still, even though the effort must be straining every ilm of self-control he can fling towards it.
"This body is at its limit." The announcement is clinical, passionless. Elidibus stares blankly at the sky, not looking at Emet-Selch: speaking blindly, seeing blindly, surrendering himself to pure trust of whatever Emet-Selch is doing to his body, and what may yet happen next. "Any more interaction will push it over the edge."
Like a hunting dog, Emet-Selch's instincts snap to full alert.
Here it is. This is the tipping point, the fulcrum by which bridges snap underneath their own weight. Here is the moment where Emet-Selch knows he can do the most harm. All he needs to do is to shove Elidibus off onto the dirt, laughing while wiping off his hands in deliberately showy gestures, abandoning the man in this precise moment of vulnerability -- all so that Elidibus will know better next time than to ask for help.
This is what Emet-Selch knows he should do in order to hurt Elidibus so deeply that the man may never recover from it, even if he should regain all else.
"Very well," he says instead. Almost, he cannot recognize himself: this tender creature from a world that no longer exists anymore, voice low and patient. He has become the ghost of a man who died along with his star. These are that person's whispers. "On three. One. Two..."
By the last number, Elidibus is already coming, arching around and into the firm strokes of Emet-Selch's fingers as they usher him towards release. Emet-Selch stays with him through it, his hand jerking the man's cock with hard strokes as it spurts a sap-like stream of liquid, clear and sticky. Elidibus is wordless, lost to the mindlessness of sensation -- his face still turned up towards the distant sun as he pants with lungs that can flex to their full capacity, a heart which pumps in harmony with the arteries and veins that embrace it. His hands clench fiercely on Emet-Selch's legs as they continue to brace him upright; his body is hot around Emet-Selch's fingers, moving easily without resistance.
Then it is over, and the magicks with it. Elidibus drops his head down, slumping forward weakly. In the silence, Emet-Selch carefully frees his hands and places them on the territory of Elidibus's hips to steady the man, cleaning the mess away from them both with an absent snap of his fingers.
He expects Elidibus to be subdued afterwards -- from the sheer exertion, if nothing else -- but the man rouses faster than Emet-Selch expects. His stamina has not fully recovered; his shoulders are bowed, fingers loosely curled as he catches his breath. Yet when he opens his eyes, the color of them seems more vivid than before, more real, even when trapped inside the limitations of a mortal mask.
"This... is a significant improvement, Hades," he admits. "Does everything feel as it should now?"
He does not sound like he once did, before the Final Days -- he never will, Emet-Selch thinks. But at least he sounds alive once more, enough to make Emet-Selch want to believe that the man is reawakening to something familiar, something which dwindles further each day as it is smothered beneath the deceptions that Elidibus wears -- that they all wear, in the never-ending arsenal of people they pretend to be, and Emet-Selch keeps his mouth shut even as his lips writhe around the expression they want to make.
It shouldn't feel good to be here like this, because nothing can ever feel right or good again, not when their world has been broken and the cost of repairing it is the untold slaughter of their twisted, half-sane kin. When Themis has forever been lost as a living sacrifice, and the entity that was returned to them possesses only some of the mercies of a god, and none of its strength. When the misery of it all is something that Emet-Selch has endured poorly, compressing it all down under the rationale that temporary measures should not matter, that the end justifies any means, and to pay attention to them only makes them hurt more.
There is no rightness in what they have become. There is no cure.
But here in this moment -- dressed in foreign bodies that have abandoned their original identities and purposes -- his own aether tells him that it is Themis in his arms, the energy flowing back into him from where it has mingled with the other man's soul, reminding him of what it was like to be whole. And if he lets himself lean far enough towards it, he can pretend they are in the lush fields of Etheirys once more, in a world full of endless dreams and wonder -- and when Elidibus bends down with his lips parted invitingly, Emet-Selch is already rising up to meet him, equally hungry for it.
"Yes," he whispers, yielding to the pull that redefines him, even if only for the briefest of moments. "It does."