Commission for athenam.etheirys on bluesky! Azem, Hythlodaeus, and Emet-selch all living out a happier ending together 🥺💛 Thanks so much for commissioning me again! Always a pleasure!!
ffxiv - azem/emet-selch, azem/emet/hythlo
rating: e for consent issues and maybe gore?
words: 2664
Azem wanders a post-Zodiark summoning Etheirys.
--
The death of the star arrives with a quiet dawn. The wind does not blow and the birds silence their song. Clouds of ash color the sky of sickness and ill omen, leaving the day dark and suffocating. This is not the dust of a battle overcome; there is no triumph here.
You, the Traveler, know the danger is over, but this is anything but a victory. There have been defeats that have felt more triumphant than this. No, this… This is the wake of a nightmare without the relief of blinking it away. Objectively, it’s merely the aftermath of fiery rain no longer crashing into the earth. The beasts malformed creatures slow in spawning, no longer born by despair. It is a small mercy. Those that remain are slain with their guts and gore splattered at your feet, dirtying the hems of your robes.
Thus, mankind survives.
Through habit, your friends, family, loves, in Amaurot, come to your mind. The brief respite following days of battle take you back to where part of your heart remains. Their wellbeing, their happiness, are questions you no longer have luxury to. Your defection from the Convocation came with no subtlety and your departure from Amaurot surely left those you care for most with pain you never wished to impart. In the hours that follow the end, when no communications or summons come from the Capitol, you know for certain your duty on the Convocation is deemed finished.
Perhaps, one day you might come to regret it, but there is none of that now with the fruition of the Convocation’s plan.
You aren’t ignorant: the stilled skies and the sparse amount of monsters let you know that they went through with their plan. There wasn’t anyone anywhere that had an idea of what was causing the Sound, only that the aether became thin. You aren’t naive; you know they went through with their summoning. There is a marked difference in the air and not in what you can perceive through sight alone. The aether of Etheirys changes to something stagnant and artificial and the chaos threatening to wrest control of your magick disappears with it. It is more than seeing it. It is knowing - feeling half of the world sacrificed for salvation. It’s worse that, in their wake, it feels selfish to think it isn’t enough, not when the thrum of life - once abundant - hardly makes a sound.
You are several days away from Amaurot by foot, and in the days that follow, you wander through the lands you have visited in the past and some you haven’t. There is a grief so palpable in your chest that you mourn for places unrecognizable and those you weren’t able to commit to memory. Even as creation magick fills the material gap destruction has left behind, it does not replace what’s important. It is the empty streets, the shops that no longer open - it is in the same look in each face that screams their salvation has come at a cost far too dear than originally imagined. It is in the scarce amount of people, the plants, the animals, - life that should be there and isn’t.
Magick does not and cannot replace that.
There is a seaside town you settle in for the night. By the time you arrive, the majority of the wreckage has been cleaned up and reconstructed. You would have wondered if the Final Days spared this place if it weren’t for the same faces of grief laid plain to see on each person that passes you by on your way to the inn.
The silent innkeep leads you to a room overlooking the town and a gleaming view of the ocean, and leaves before you can express her gratitude.
With a sigh, your body falls, rather than sits, on the side of the bed; the ache of your feet throbbing to be acknowledged. You have four walls with a door to yourself, creaky floor planks, a desk with a lamp, a bed for two, and windows to enjoy the seaside view. In the solace of the room, you feel lonely for the first time in a long time. It is borne from the possibility of what could have been - what you could have heard: a bustling town readying for the evening, laughter, fighting, chatter, but it is absent. Not even the seagulls circle the edge of the sea, squawking as was their wont near the shore.
The easy remedy would be to involve yourself in this place, know the people and their problems, learn all you could, but who are these people without half their number? What are their problems that you don’t already know? You are in solidarity with them and if you cannot solve your own problems, what good are you to theirs? Like them, you are a victim to the two catastrophes: one brought on by unforeseen forces and the other wrought by man’s hand.
The hollow feeling deep in your gut becomes too much to bear alone and you recite a familiar incantation, starting it a dozen times and ending it just as many. The heartbeat in your chest thrums erratically because you can’t know if Emet-Selch or Hythlodaeus or any of your peers would answer your call following your departure. You all but abandoned them weeks before the Final Days came to pass in Amaurot itself. They must be so angry with you or worse, you muse grimly, that there would be no anger if they are among the sacrificed.
You shake your head, the abrupt tears flinging from your face - if it had come to pass, then you are among the plenty. Not knowing eats you inside so you recite your incantation one more time, your heart unchained and rattling out of control. You stop again with the fear from the rejection of their silence.
You underestimate how deep you were in your own head when a knock on your door rips you from your thoughts. Defiant hands wipe your face before opening the door as soon as you approach, not giving it a second thought. If you had, there would have been more preparation for the individual looming at your threshold.
Emet-Selch stands with an expression you cannot parse. Shadows and sleeplessness drag the skin under his eyes. Frown lines are marked deeper, brows perpetually furrowed.
It requires all of your meager remaining strength and stubbornness to restrain yourself from wrapping your arms around him from the sheer relief at the sight of him alone.
“You’ve been discreet in your movements,” Emet-Selch states.
You exhale, finding yourself at an unfamiliar loss for words. You grip the edge of the door subtly. You should be so lucky the Final Days were averted, the din of your thoughts and emotions feel so loud and scrambled that you could have erased this town from the face of Etheirys. Like sediment at the bottom of a river, the emotions of everything that happened before you left is scraped to the surface to mix with your grief and your loneliness and the weight of this despair. For weeks, control of your emotions has been prudent to your survival, but with the Sound silenced, you struggle to keep your emotions in check. You haven’t even had the mental composure to process the fact that he’s been searching for you, but it happens: “Why-” the words choke on their way out and you swallow because your throat is too dry. “What are you doing here?” No, that is the wrong question; you don’t care about that. “Why are you here?”
In lieu of an answer, he unfolds his arms and gestures towards your room. “Could I come in?”
You step aside anyway, giving him passage into your humble room. It would have been a beautiful sun-soaked room from the natural light; instead it is bleak and overcast from the aftermath looming within the atmosphere.
In the depths of your mind, you salvage a sliver of fortitude to speak clearly and silence your raucous mind. You speak before he can say anything else, “I have no business with the Convocation any more since vacating the seat-” But you trail off because you know he’s not here for business, confirmed by his sardonic chuckle. You know him so well that even if he tried to mask his own grief, eventually you’d lift it so he doesn’t carry it alone. The both of you are broken from the looks of it and he doesn’t look victorious either. You are in this dead silence together, staring but not looking, in each other’s company and leagues away from each other. Your resolve is still a work in progress but it crumbles without any warning, because it’s easier to ignore your own thoughts when helping others.
“Emet-Selch…” you say softly, taking a step forward, but it doesn’t stir him from his far-off view. You try again, “Hades…”
His eyes jump to you and it’s anger that you recognize first. “Why did you have to leave? Wasn’t leaving the Convocation enough?”
The quick switch catches you off guard momentarily, but you find yourself again. “The people outside of Amaurot deserved more guidance than what the Convocation was offering, there were those who were confused and hurt and dying. I wasn’t going to standby with idle hands.”
He looks away, the skin of his hands rubbing together as he balled them into fists. There is a deep pain he’s holding back, you can tell without another word.
“But you knew that already,” you add so as to not be misunderstood about your choices.
“You left me.”
You feel that statement drop heavily in your gut. He hardly ever uses something so petty as guilt to get a point across, it was beneath him. “You didn’t come with me,” you say, probably inflicted from the same wound.
“You didn’t ask.”
“Would you have even entertained it? Could you have been persuaded to abandon the Convocation’s course? No. You knew about everything, you even withheld information from me because you knew what I would do. You didn’t need to be asked and you know it.”
“How could I? I wasn’t about to abandon my duty.”
“Just because my seat was vacated doesn’t mean I abandoned my duty. And I did it alone. I walked through only sections of Etheirys in the aftermath and I did it alone. At least you have Hythlodaeus.”
“Had.”
The room falls silent for a breath as you wonder if you heard him right. The wrong kind of tingles envelop your body as your blood pressure plummets. Your rage from seconds ago disperses into the air as if it never existed. “What?” you ask but it’s a feeble thing, coming out breathless as the disbelief grapples your throat.
“I tried talking him out of it, but his mind was made up.”
You step closer. You want to look in his eyes to make sure you are hearing the whole truth. Your breath, it’s coming in and out of you rapidly. “What…what are you saying?”
“The screaming and the fire - the death and destruction, even in the middle of it all, he went so calmly.”
Your fingers grasp the front of his robes, tugging them, urging him to look at you. “Please, tell me-” Tears well in your eyes as you remember the last time you saw his beautiful face, touched his loving skin, heard his musical laugh, and the tears freefall when his hands clasp on each side of your arms, gripping tight. He looks at you with fury and sorrow and pride, unnerving you.
“He is part of our mighty Zodiark now! Along with half our number, he made the noble sacrifice so that we may live!” He recites this like it’s memorized, like he’s been saying it in his head for a while. “Azem-”
“I’m not Azem anymore,” you interject but the words rattle on an unstable foundation and he didn’t hear you besides. Would have been different if you had stayed?
“He called it his greatest contribution. Our dearest friend, our other. Do you feel that emptiness in your chest?” You do, but he doesn’t give you a chance to say so. Hades’s sorrow is palpable with every verse despite his zealotry. “He’s not even in the Lifestream, I cannot see his soul. He is lost to me… but you are not.”
You aren’t frightened, not in the least; you are concerned for him. Even now, you don’t feel as if you can mourn your lost partner, disallowing yourself to feel it for the moment as you had the days after your defection. “Hades…Hades, listen to me, you need to rest.”
“No. Don’t you understand? I needed you, I need you. Why else would I come all this way? If you feel this loss too, why haven’t you called for me?”
The breaking of his voice splinters your already broken heart; there is guilt but not regret for leaving Amaurot. You don't realize you’ve looked away until his hand jerks your head towards him from under your chin - he kisses you just as rough. Your head whirls from it as your lips are pressed between teeth and tongue. You’ve joked before, back when there were three of you, of how he was a slave to sentimentality but this is different. There is an ambiguous darkness to his words, to how his hands roam, to his unfamiliar kiss. He is grieving, no doubt, but he’s changed.
You push away from him, to breathe - to gather your thoughts. “Hades, wait-”
His hands pull at you around your waist and you are pressed flush against him. He angles his neck to look down at you but his eyes are closed, your noses ilms away from touching. “Do not deny me,” he pleads darkly. “It is your comfort I desire.”
There are a million reasons to give into him, but you still don't feel right about this. You try to wriggle loose, but he is adamant. “You are not yourself.”
“You are correct.” Hades leans back with another unsettling smile. “I am better, as is Dark Lord’s will, but you are still bound to me and currently your only remaining husband.”
It is his only excuse to capture your lips again.
His kiss is unfamiliar to you now; no longer impassioned or gentle, but frigid and dark. His urgency isn’t to feel your aether at his fingertips, to know your warmth, but merely consume you. You feel the edge of the inn bed at the back of your knees and he lowers you on your back, doing the work of relieving you of your underthings. Yes, he is hungry for you, you see it clearly in his eyes especially when he looms over you aligning himself into her. “This is the most docile you’ve ever been, one could get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t,” you tell him, followed by a harsh inhale as he penetrates you without preamble. Your eyes close as you try to relax, far too frayed to use any creation magicks to hasten the lubrication, but your body eventually relieves you. It is a confusing moment, because he holds you as he always has a million times before. He feels like he has a million times before. But you know in your heart of hearts it’s not your Hades. It’s not Hythlodaeus’s Hades. Your body, however, doesn’t know the difference.
He touches spots inside you that temporarily make you curl your toes and elicit small noises from your throat. He kisses your neck, marks you there, and nibbles on your ear in the ways he knows how. Naturally, you reach your orgasm and he has you on all fours so he can reach his.
You join together several times through the night, but it is in the morning, when he is least expecting the cast of True Sleep, that you leave him and never see him again.
