lazybox | [voicetest] it's this guy

The essence of arcanima is academia. The pursuit of knowledge, no matter how hurtful or disruptive. The acceptance of uncomfortable truths.

Analyze.

This city felt familiar to her, though she had never seen anything like it in her relatively short life. The language, which she certainly had never encountered before, was likewise known to her. The magics of creation utilized here - also unfamiliar, but so similar to what she used daily.

Hypothesize.

1: This place was familiar to her because she was experiencing it through Emet-Selch's memories, a much-diluted effect of the Echo caused by his truly ancient origins and the power he wields.

Probability: 10%

2: It was familiar because she had dreamed of it, after seeing the pictures on the wall of the Ronkan temple. The dream had been flavored by Emet-Selch's own storytelling, and so all of it is really his fault.

Probability: 30%

3: These were her own memories, from long ago - perhaps before she was even born as she currently is. The Echo wasn't working because it couldn't show her her own past.

Probability: 50%

4: Moogles. Somehow.

Probability: 10%

With no better than a half-chance at discerning the truth, she could only experiment with each theory in turn. The first didn't hold water - Emet-Selch would have recognized instantly if she were invading his memories in such a way. Would he tell her if he did? ...Probably. He had not lied to her before now, after all, even if he never told her all of the truth.

The second was more palatable, but still not likely. And it didn't explain the failure of the Echo. Dismissable on that ground alone.

And while she would love to blame it on the moogles... she really hadn't seen more than a handful of the damn things since being summoned to this world.

That left an uncomfortable truth as the only option she had enough data to examine... and the pieces fit too well.

"I've been here before..." She looks up at him, her eyes filled with a mix of emotions - pain, fear, sadness, and a lingering melancholy. "Fourteen thousand years..."

There's an actinic flash, the crackle of energy, and six points of light form around her. Three of them burn far, far too brightly - the others mere motes by comparison. An all-too-familiar diagram describes itself on the floor, linking the points in six equidistant rings at the points of a star - two triangles overlapped. Static crackles between the three bright points, and she screams as it leaps at her, striking her to the floor. What should have been blood but wasn't passes her lips as she retches, spattering the floor.

How easily a blessing can prove to be a curse in disguise.

He is silent at first, as she repeats the number, his eyes closing against the memories. "Fourteen thousand years," he agrees. "To repair that which was destroyed in the blink of an eye by comparison, and still the work is not done."

If he's honest, which he always is, sometimes he doubts that it ever will be. A doubt not in Zodiark, for he is incapable of such, but...

How is it impossible to not doubt, especially now, with she who championed over Lahabrea not once but twice before him? Who, even now, refuses to stand still long enough to just die?

They would be best served to postpone all of their plans until some mortal end came to Hydaelyn's champion, and to work frantically in the few years that follow, before her next incarnation becomes old enough to be a threat. But timing is a tricky thing, when dealing with multiple shards.

When he opens his eyes, he can see it, Hydaelyn's blessing spread just to the reach of his feet. Water, earth, and ice blinding, the elements of stagnation.

(He could help. But he cannot. That which binds him is as an old companion, a faith that is not faith but unbreakable nonetheless. He cannot doubt, cannot betray it.)

(But for the first time, he finds that he resents it.)

"And how very close you must be to what you were, to have held on this long..." he muses. "So very close."

Close... close to what? The answer dances just beyond her reach, just outside the circle of Her blessing. Why was it beyond her reach? Had she not the will, the power to move beyond that frail barrier?

Tears that are not tears stream down her cheeks as she looks up through the light haze at Emet-Selch. For an instant, she sees not the old emperor of Garlemald, but... someone else. Someone much more similar to the masked apparitions that fill the city around them.

Someone at once familiar and alien to her.

She reaches out a hand - the dark motes flicker ever so slightly brighter, but the Light will not be broken so easily. She screams again as it hammers on her, trying to strike her down, to mold her to its will...

Wait. Hammering. Molding. Shaping. The elements bending mere matter to another's will. The concepts of synthesis, the methods of arcanima.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed... but it can be changed. Equivalent exchange, the core principle of alchemy. Work with the grain, not against it - let the materials move as they need to. Shape what you need to fit the situation. Carpentry and smithing. Weave lesser parts to make a greater whole...

She stops fighting. A high, crystalline chime rings out as aether flows from the Light elements into her, and then out to the Dark, and Balance is achieved.

Light cannot exist without Dark. Nor can Dark exist without Light. Order and Chaos define one another.

He can but watch and wait, as her aether redistributes, balances itself. And there is something entirely different in his expression, if she has the faintest gap in her concentration to look.

Pride. Satisfaction. You were worthy after all.

(How many times, did he watch his old friend approach the edge of disaster, leaning over into the abyss, only to suddenly tilt back, violently, and have everything fall into place?)

"A bit rudimentary, but it will do," he says, and for all the condescending meaning of the words, there's none of it in the tone. He actually sounds genuinely, unrepentantly pleased, as though this possibility is as acceptable an outcome to him as another Rejoining.

(There are other shards, other plans, and the best of mortals who stands before him is mortal yet.)

Worthy? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She's not entirely certain what exactly she's done, at the moment. But the tears that fall now are genuine, and merely the salty water they should be.

"What fools we have been..." Slowly, she picks herself up, the black and white robes she's long worn as a personal choice a fitting symbol for what she's become. "Then and now, as ever. So many lives lost senselessly. So much destroyed by our own pride... none of us willing to admit we were all wrong." Finally, she looks up at Emet-Selch - no. Hades. She remembers the name, now, of her dearest friend from so long ago.

The friend she had betrayed, when she left the Convocation to lead those who balked at feeding their own to the godling they had fashioned for themselves.

"I would remind you," he says, tone almost gentle, "that some of us remain incapable from turning from the path we put ourselves on, all that time ago."

To be aware of his tempering does not undo it. It simply makes him intimately aware of which lines he can push, and which he can't.

"For better or for worse, you have more free will than I."

"Death and rebirth, it seems, does have its advantages." She sighs, then, and wishes she had a chair. Or a pillow. Something to flop on. "Not that you're any stranger to that phenomenon. Ever were you the more reckless one." Now that's an arguable point if ever there was one. She looks around at the titanic buildings, a sharp pang of nostalgia passing briefly through her before she returns her gaze to Hades. "Gods, I feel like a gnat among giants here." A wry smile at the words - gods indeed.

"When was the last time you slept, old friend?" A question brought by the dark circles around his eyes, so stark against his pale skin, spoken with clear concern.

"I've been a member of your race recently enough that I do recall the feeling," he says. "It's only been three or four centuries."

And yet those words... He frowns, unsure what to make of them, after his initial reaction to return the banter is passed. He has to know, he has to ask - "And how much do you remember, on this day, in this place?"

"Alas that I missed that, then. I'm sure you made quite the fetching popoto."

Ah, now that's the question, isn't it? "Fragments. Not enough to be entirely certain of anything - but enough to move forward with. I'm certain some of it is yet being blocked from me." And just as certain that she is not entirely free of Hydaelyn's influence, even now. Balancing her aether may have given her some room to breathe, but it certainly won't prevent what she now knows to be tempering from subverting her will. "I remember leaving the Convocation, and bringing forth Hydaelyn. The chaos that enveloped our world before, also. But... nothing after."

[voicetest] it's this guy

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