Chapter Text
Azem had left months ago for her next adventure, Venat in tow. Elidibus envied her. Though he had plenty free time as Emissary, it was his duty to act swiftly in any matter which needed his attention. He would go weeks without any work outside of Convocation meetings. And then suddenly some crisis would spill upon his desk and need days of tending. He only had so many ways to cope with the stress of constant waiting.
He was trying a new way. He left the mask of Elidibus at home when he came here. So too did he leave the sketches Venat had given him, drawings from memory of that future interloper. Yisu had told her that he had spoken with Elidibus, that Elidibus had seen him once in Elpis. Perhaps that husk of Themis had truly lost his mind by then... He was grasping only at these secondhand memories, impressions of testimony—the sketches, the anticipation of Zodiark-to-come. Yisu would not ever return to this place. Or perhaps he would. Elidibus would not know unless he wandered and waited.
He told the Overseers that he was an advisor representing the Amaurotine Guard. He donned their cord with its distinctive knots, strung round his civilian mask. There was nothing the matter, he explained, no need for worry. He was a liaison for Pandaemonium. He was consulting with the Keywards on techniques of security and restraint. His name, he told them, was Themis.
Many of the Overseers at were older than him. They may have second-guessed themselves, if he did not use that name. Here the Emissary stood before them begging casual discretion, on his way to see Lahabrea in that facility where horrors dwelt: Pandaemonium, whose portal made shivers go down the spines of Elpis’ respectable observers. Whatever his business, it must be a matter of import. They did not pry.
He never went to Pandaemonium, amusing as it would have been to surprise Lahabrea at his work there, the man was most frequently occupied at Akademia, or the Capitol. Themis would walk the length of the islands, out into the bush. He would watch the skies, thinking of dead stars and transcendent agonies. He would ramble through the gardens and plains. He was good at leaving the beasts undisturbed—with his stature and manner, they did not judge him a threat. He was free to watch them as he pleased, finding a hillock or a tree to climb up for vantage.
It was meditative, watching them. Herds of grazers, with all their social drama. Solitary predators who lazed and groomed, things that looped gracefully through the air. They seemed for all the world to play. There were times he could see the old world again, in all the feathers and claws and fur. A world where creatures were ruled by base impulse, infinite subroutines spilling out into random action, a series of events set in motion by that subject of Venat’s grand discovery, that spontaneous creation of Etheiric life millennia ago. A time when every beast was much like man.
Though violence be extinguished betwixt all men,
He shapes red fangs to turn the wheel, in knowledge he is but prey.
Though now Enlightened we attend to our Eden,
Man mourns his kin beheld to kneel, all lost to light of day.
For all our baser natures paved, the beasts can not be taught.
And so we labor ever on, to build what was forgot.
It was an old rallying song, from that first Convocation’s assembly. Amaurot had no anthem. No other nations stood apart from her, and man’s duty was to society, not to symbol. But it was an anthem, or sorts, which circulated through the gardens of Elpis, or was hummed under the breath at Akademia. Played by brass-bands at parades, drunkenly chorus at graduations…
Their simulacra of of animal life were imperfect. But the ecosystems into which their released their creations were as savage as any of the old world wilderness that Empire had scorched bare. Things still hunted and starved. The creations of Elpis mated and died and decayed. Their bodies fed the earth, their beastkin. They were feasts for predators and scavengers, and smaller savager things. They still turned to soil and leaf and motion.
He loved to watch the bugs most of all. Sometimes researchers would come across him, knelt upon the ground, watching little many-legged things scuttle through rotting wood, out from under stones. These were the cogs upon which their earth turned, their ancient blueprints so exacting and complex that the best minds at Anyder could not decipher their design entire. They were the essential building blocks of life, the majority biomass. The only survivors from the Animalian Archive.
Even the first Elidibus had not seen true beasts upon the earth, save these tiny scuttling things. When their Convocation razed the Archive, all those possibilities in blueprint and crystal were erased. These creatures had not walked the star in a god’s age, so blighted and ailing it was. The Convocation saw the way the Empire continued to drain the land, the barren swathes of salt-blighted desert bleached to bone. They saw this avarice turn next toward the Underworld, the sacred realm of mankind’s birth and death.
And so, they held the last vestiges of Paradise hostage. When that did not work, they eliminated those hostages, save but the essentials. They impressed upon the world its own mortality. They hastened death, so as to rebuild.
There were few records of the revolution. The Convocation, after all, was an inevitability. It was the telos of mankind’s social technology, of his capacity for love, his desire for mastery. Under their watchful eye, the land was once more aether-drenched. Men became equals. They became stewards. They created a star which bloomed with beauty unimaginable. And to secure their new-built Eden, they erased as much of the past as they could. They ensured each citizen was properly educated. They wasted not. And they loved.
He thought about these things as he wandered marsh and forest, let a creek run through his fingers, saw a comet shooting overhead. He waited for the man who had brought him his future: the Warrior of Light. Elidibus would be Emissary to the age which succeeded them. He would act a failed servant, of Utopia loyal and ever-bound.
He felt a hand upon his shoulder.
“Enjoying the scenery?” Lahabrea asked.
Elidibus craned his neck. “Oh, hello.”
“I got word you had been haunting Elpis. Some business with the Wardens?”
“Eventually,” Elidibus said, softly. “Perhaps. I am finding this locale a balm for my frayed nerves, and I have no reason for which to wander freely without purpose.”
“You do not,” Lahabrea agreed. “But talk is spreading. Word of your extended consultation begins to make my staff uneasy.”
Elidibus laughed. “Quite. Even their uncanny tolerance has limits.”
Lahabrea threw him a sidelong smirk. “It is fortuitous to happen upon you today. There is a school group from Anyder. Words and Wards in training, here to see some failures of creation. I was on my way to meet them. Might you accompany me?”
“I suspect they may be intimidated by my observation. Even If they do not know my face, I am dressed as an investigator—”
“I will get you a new cord,” Lahabrea said. “…Elidibus.”
Themis watched Lahabrea’s face patiently. The old man was chewing his lip, staring out to the horizon.
“They are my future Words. Here to tour Pandaemonium.”
“I have gathered.”
“Verin is among them. And I cannot…”
“She trains for the Words of Lahabrea?”
“As of three years ago, the Headmaster informed me. Rumor has been following her. Apparently it has stoked her budding interest in spirit and soul. I do not know how long we might continue to hide her.” Lahabrea nodded at the earth.
“All the more reason for the Emissary not to mysteriously observe her field trip.”
“I need your support.”
Elidibus frowned. “We will weather this, Lahabrea. Igeyorhm has drafted trickier statements. While it may cause Verin some trouble in her finals, it would be better to disclose her nature before she becomes a ward of your office. One might make untoward conclusions.”
“It is hard enough seeing Erichthonios there,” Lahabrea whispered. “And when he carries on so… I do not need another reminder. She deserves a path of her choosing, but I tire of these failed gods haunting my office. I am afraid when I look at her, ‘tis all that I will see. I would deny her on naught but selfish impulse.”
Elidibus sighed. “You require an impartial ambassador.”
“No. I require you, Themis. I need your hand,” Lahabrea answered. “Please.”
“And you will have it,” he answered.
He reached out and thread his fingers through Lahabrea’s. They were alone in the grass, not another soul in sight. He stepped up onto his toes to kiss Lahabrea upon the cheek.
Elidibus would be that guiding hand. For Lahabrea. For the final throes of civilization, for Verin and Zodiark and the broken fellowship of their Convocation.
In the Capitol today, Nabriales dressed Fandaniel for his funeral. Tomorrow they would see him off. They would honor him and say his rites. They would draw his aether into vessels, and those vessels would travel wherever it was they were needed—to the edges of civilization, to balm the last traces of war and pestilence, to satellite cities and colonies grown strained and dim with their growing pains, to storerooms of Anyder for the final restoration of their world.
Hermes would do his best not to cry. He would remind himself that death was peace, and Fandaniel’s service had concluded. He would make himself glad that Fandaniel’s body would nourish whatever aether-thin places needed it most. He would not rot in Amaurot, in that glut of brick and humanity, eutrophia incarnate. His duty remained to the ecology of their star, oikos, home—even in death. Etheirys, star of poets and hope, of seedlings burst from ash and blooming.
And when the ceremony had concluded, Hermes would return to Elpis, to the bench where they had that first, furtive midnight kiss. There he would lay a bundle of flowers. Krinoi, named for those who judged and divided.