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[More than Truth is now playing.]
I shouldn’t have come here, Fiona realized as soon as Phoebus touched down.
She slid off the lionine familiar’s back, letting her boots sink into the dense field of Elpis flowers, and took a tentative step. She could almost see the now-departed Ancients in her mind’s eye, summoning the flowers with a flourish. Hades and Hythlodaeus. The dull pain of loss rose to the surface.
She had long grown accustomed to grief. She had lost more than her fair share of loved ones, and memories of each loss still stung deeply. This was a duller pain, deeper and scarce remembered. It was the homesickness and longing that had clung to her like a phantom for six years, ever since she first saw Hades’s illusory city of Amaurot.
The city—what hadn’t yet faded, anyway—was a good place to get away from the world and think (or, as Estinien might describe it, wallow), but she had intentionally avoided it this time.
Fiona wanted to feel her own feelings for a time, not...hers.
Azem’s.
With a sigh and a wave, Fiona dismissed her familiar and sunk to the ground amidst the flowers. The blossoms were as vibrant as the day they were first created, flourishing in the concentrated dynamis of Ultima Thule. Even those she crushed by sitting would likely spring back as soon as she left. Nevertheless, she delicately pulled a few flowers out from under her legs and coaxed some healing magic into their broken stems.
“What am I doing here?” she muttered as she picked up a flower that had snapped off entirely.
“I could ask the same.” Ardbert dropped to the ground by her side, his armor clinking lightly. He had no need to worry for the flowers—they passed through his incorporeal form with no harm done. “It must be dire to bring you to the edge of the universe.”
Fiona’s lips quirked with a strained smile. “I wanted to think for a moment. Far from it all, you know?”
“Aye.” Ardbert returned the smile, but it fell as he looked across the flower field. Fiona thought the tired lines under his eyes must match her own. “But then this is the place you think to go. The last place we saw them.”
“...Yeah.”
Ardbert’s lips drew into a tight line. His eyes drifted from the flowers to the mass of aether collected in Meteion’s nest to the stars twinkling in the distance. “...It’s getting worse, isn’t it? ‘Remembering’ things.”
Fiona nodded imperceptibly. Ardbert, of all people, would know her worries well. The Arcadion matches and Calyx’s gauntlets had pushed her healing magic to its limits, and the further she pushed, the more ancient memory answered. In the worst battles, Fiona felt herself slipping away, like someone else was taking her place.
The flowers rustled softly in the umbral wind. Fiona focused on the sensation of their petals brushing her hands, trying to unwind the knot in her chest.
“You’re afraid she’ll replace you,” Ardbert said.
Fiona’s breath caught against the knot.
Ardbert hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees “Maybe she will,” he said plainly. “Or maybe it won’t be anything so dramatic.”
Fiona shot him a flat look. “That’s less than comforting.”
“Just hear me out.” Ardbert’s mouth twitched faintly. “I can’t claim to know what’ll happen, but I can think through a problem, believe it or not.”
With a withering glare, Fiona silently bade him continue.
“For one, you and I are shards of the same soul, aye? And look at us. Different lives, different worlds...but not so different in the end.” Ardbert gestured vaguely between them. “Same thirst to see the world and everyone in it. Same inability to walk away from an impossible challenge. Same habit of sticking our noses in other people’s problems.”
Fiona huffed a quiet laugh despite herself.
“My point is,” Ardbert continued, “from everything we’ve learned about her—about Azem—odds are she wasn’t so different either. Maybe what you’re feeling isn’t someone else taking your place. Maybe it’s just more of you. The parts that got lost along the way.”
Fiona twisted the flower between her fingers, frowning.
“And if I’m wrong about that,” Ardbert added after a moment, voice lowered, “there’s the other possibility.”
She glanced up, brown eyes meeting his blue.
Arbert shrugged. “The way I see it, Azem’s soul is like a stone that shattered when Hydaelyn sundered the world. The shards have been tumbling down a river ever since, for thousands of years, until all the edges have smoothed over. The pieces don’t fit together the same way after that, if you can even find all of them. Gods know you’ve been looking for the Ninth’s shard.”
“I’m curious! I don’t want them to join us.” Fiona made to shove him and scowled when her hand passed through his shoulder. “Ugh, it’s already like a pack of opo-opos spectating my every move.”
Ardbert chuckled and swayed as if the shove had an effect. “It is getting crowded in your head,” he conceded. “But that’s the other possibility—that you don’t fade, but neither does Azem. For all we know, she turns out like me. Like Fray and Myste. Another part and partner of the Warrior of Light.”
Fiona’s mouth fell open as she stared at him, wide-eyed. The distant constellations sparkled through his ghostly form, framing his soft, steady smile.
Was...that enough? By all rights, Azem was the original—theirs was her soul. The little part of Fiona that was Myste sympathized with Azem, lost to the apocalypse she had no power to stop. The part of her that was Fray raged at the injustice. The Ancients’ time had ended. Had they not killed Emet-Selch—killed Hades—for that very reason?
And the part of her that was Ardbert was...Ardbert. Her steady and perseverant soul-brother. All a part of her, and all their own.
Fiona turned the Elpis flower in her hand, its petals shimmering like a prism.
Ardbert watched her for a moment, then huffed. “You know, for someone who’s meant to be fretting about losing herself, you’re less worried than you let on.”
Fiona tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
Ardbert nodded toward the flower. “What color is that?”
Fiona blinked and looked down. The flower was the same as it had always been—a myriad of brilliant, prismatic colors. The nearest blossoms had shifted faintly toward green—companionship—but across the field the dominant hue remained bright, the darker shades only deepening the contrast. Hope, iridescent.
Realization crept slowly across her face.
“Besides,” Ardbert added with a roguish grin, “you love meeting new people.”
Fiona scoffed and threw the flower at him and he ducked out of its way with a laugh. “Piss off and stop being right about everything.”
“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” Ardbert quipped.
Fiona rolled her eyes and leaned back to watch the shifting lights within the ocean-blue nest. She turned the thought over in her mind—of meeting Azem, that indefatigable traveler Hades and Hythlodaeus loved with all their hearts, Venat’s adored protege, and Themis’s esteemed sister.
...She had to admit, she was a little curious.
With a wry smile, Fiona mimed raising a mug, tapping it against her temple and holding it up in a toast.
“Well then, welcome to the circus, Theia.”
