nozombiesallowed | official fandango open post

[ The unsundered were all gone, a hole left in the stability of every little ascian plan, and that all had meant the perfect time for Fandaniel to begin his own plans. Find an easy way into Garlemald, stir up chaos on behalf of its listless prince, plot out where all the Telephoroi's towers were going to pop up... One would think it left no time for dwelling on the past and yet?

And yet, here he was, retracting his steps through his own labs high up on the floating isles of Azys Lla.

With the ever-useful hero of the land and his allies doing him the solid of bringing its defenses down, it was nothing at all for him to slip in and reactivate several of his more secret experimental spaces and, in particular, one with a set of cloning vats. Ah, the memories, all the failures they had to flush out of the system, and then all the successes, leading to such giant leaps in Allag's society. Why die when you could clone yourself? Why be careful when you had a back-up?

But he wasn't here to make one for himself. No, he was stuck with Asahi's horrible little body because of its standing in Garlemald. In this one, he would remain until the end, even as he queued up an old copy of, well, him. It had been so nostalgic to see himself as he once was. A duskwight elezen, he would have been called in current times, and while he might find some ill humor in what he was about to do with his own visage, it would resonate with his original's memories all the better.

It was, after all, how he had reincarnated from the aetherial sea, even if he did not know it yet.

But now that same clone was out of the vat and clothed, sat in a comfortable chair in the center of Amon's laboratory. The current Fandaniel had put an effort into splitting off a portion of his current soul and any memories he could cobble together from Hermes, having planted them within the clone. It should work, he presumed. Why wouldn't it? He was, after all, Amon, and therefore a genius.

And so, as he stood before the clone, he reached out to give him a pat on the cheek. ]

Wakey wakey, my new old me. I wish to have a little chat.

[ Time to see if everything settled in properly. If not, well, he might have time to take this one apart and begin again if he was quick about it. ]

[ Though Zodiark had put an end to the Final Days, the last days of the ancient known as Hermes were fraught with the chaos of rebuilding Etheirys. Down a member in noble Elidibus, the Convocation had been all hands on deck for longer than Hermes could remember. Work was constant, but the distraction was a welcome one. So much had Hermes been swept up in his own duties that the sundering had claimed him easily.

The Ascians had seen fit restore Fandaniel many a time over the years, filling one unfortunate shard of his soul after another with his memories in hopes they would fill the seat with aplomb. What remained of Hermes himself was tired from so much work and muddied by the shards that had required his essence to take up the reins.

Physical touch was jarring after so much time spent incorporeal, and he startled at the very real feeling of it. More surprising was having a body that responded to his desire to move. Hermes blinked several times, opening his eyes to a room whose very design was an assault upon the senses. What was happening? ]

Where am I?

[ Such shock and bewilderment! It was hilarity itself to see those reactions drawn clearly across his own face — well, the Amon clone's own face, in any case — when both had been a rarity for the man himself. ]

Do you not recall?

[ He asked Hermes with great amusement in his voice. He drew back a step to cast a look about them. Deep reds and golds, brass and other metals, pipes and blinking lights, and eerie glass tubes holding shapes obscured by thick liquid. It was the very picture of a mad scientist's lab, though every inch Allagan with none of the somber grace the ancients had built into their own structures. ]

Ah, of course, you would not. I took great pains to keep you free of my own memories. It is heartening to see it worked so well if you truly haven't a clue.

[ Recollection was far more difficult than Hermes could have anticipated. The mind often muddied upon waking, but this was no mere nap in his study. How he got here is more of a mystery than a wayward researcher moving him to safe quarters.

He groaned. His body was seemingly perfect, unburdened by the age that hampered his mind. He felt no pain, save perhaps a twinge of a headache. ]

I do not.

[ For a moment he thought to apologize for the rudeness, but the more he saw of the facility he was in, the less he felt that formality welcome. As he adjusted to the garish lighting, he realized the specimens in the glass tubes were not concepts but body parts. There's a familiarity to the space he can't quite explain - likely as those memories have been removed - but something about it filled him with dread. ]

What have you done to me?

[ So many questions came to mind, and all them filled him with dread. Perhaps if he were to get to the purpose of this meeting, he could end it all the sooner. ]

You may not but I suspect it feels... familiar, does it not? [ He didn't need to still have Hermes as a part of him to guess that might be the case. He raises an arm and gestures widely to the laboratory they were in, dramatic as always in his motions. ] It is styled after your dear Elpis, after all.

[ Though that it had been was a dreadful realization after the fact. He had seen snippets of Elpis in dreams only, vague and unclear, and he had thought it inspiration from himself alone. How bitter he had felt, discovering it had been quite the opposite. Had any of his genius ideas been his own? Had his fate been shaped by being this wretched man's reincarnation?

If only it made any sense to throw aside how he wished to torment the man and simply strangle him here and now. It would mean nothing, though, only a too quick return to being a single being all over again. ]

But I digress. [ And he turned back to Hermes, smile wide and terribly fake. ] You ask what I have done to you but how do you feel? Do you not like your new body? I fear you have been without for quite some time. Well, all on your lonesome, that is.

[ Hermes can't deny it, even if his memories of such places are full of holes. He remembers feelings more strongly than anything else - the frustration of experiments gone wrong, the late nights working on a new theory, and the joy of reaching a new development that would please his majesty most greatly, among other things. Though incomplete, the desire to please is familiar, as is a drive to dismantle his enemies and defeat them with their own strengths. The latter unsettles him greatly. ]

It's familiar enough. [ He frowns, offering a hint to what awareness he does have. While he does not have every piece to the puzzle, such an incomplete reconstruction must be intentional. ] A laboratory will always be such, but this place lacks the life of Elpis. [ It's more matter of fact than anything else. The aesthetics aren't to his tastes and if the study of nature is the intent, there seems little access to nature itself.

Feelings are the best Hermes has to act on, and they are screaming that he's in danger. A part of him, stuck in the ways of eld, suggests he should be polite to preserve the peace for now, but the smile runs a chill down his - his new body's - spine. His hair is far too long for comfort and his hands are a deep shade of gray. Aether feels harder to grasp in this form, likely due to the sundering. That he does remember, but perhaps that weakness is best left unspoken. ]

It feels... different. [ He definitely isn't used to it, a discomfort which is hidden plainly enough on his face to someone who knows to look for it. Hermes doesn't want to talk about all that he feels, but confirming this body is in fact alive seems counterproductive - or worse. ]

[ Lacks the life... ha. Of course, he would think that. ]

Hmm, I suppose so, though this place has been left on standby for several thousand years at this point. [ Which wasn't at all what Hermes meant. Oh, he knew, but the long time of being shut down certainly did not help. ] The defenses I had built to safeguard it proved beyond me once my original body became too old to continue sustaining me.

[ Growing old and miserable in his own body. Ironic, really, to have to jump to one body after another while his access to all of the cloning tech he himself had developed remained beyond his reach. In any case, he turned away from reviewing their setting and took a seat himself, in a chair he'd been sure to place opposite Hermes well before he woke the man. ]

As it should! 'tis my former body, albeit a clone of it. I am but a poor and lowly sundered soul, so the original did not stand the test of time. It is suitable for you, however, as a vessel. I doubt you would have synced so well otherwise.

[ It only seems to further his point - the lack of life is a condemnation of such research. This place should be overgrown, taken over by the subjects that had grown and thrived beyond it.

But cultivation of life hadn't been the singular goal of this research. Unlike Elpis and its lofty goals, it wasn't even a primary goal. That much remains clear. Not that it seems to bother his opposite overmuch. ] If defense was your intent, it seems to have worked well enough. I cannot imagine my labs are in such pristine condition after so long a time.

[ The sense of malaise starting to loom over their conversation feels familiar, even if the memories aren't all there. Self-loathing was something he had ever excelled at, so a bit of self(?) deprecation feels natural here. There's something of a compliment in there too, since Hermes can respect good design in spite of ill intentions. He was a functioning member of ancient society, after all. ]

A clone of your former body, which you've already admitted has failed you once before. [ Hermes reiterates coolly, not liking the implications of any of it. ] What I fail to understand is - why go to so much effort for someone who is already dead?

I would think it does not exist at all anymore, truth be told.

[ In bits and pieces, perhaps, spread far and wide across the various shards, but Fandaniel never dared believe any of it survived on the Source itself. As for Azys Lla and the lab appearing to be in pristine order, he wished the same could be said for the rest of the floating islands. ]

Although I could not dare claim the same for the rest of my dear Azys Lla. It would appear some of our old test subjects have run quite amok in some areas. Others have reactivated with the fall of the shields.

[ Though he won't indicate the way out of this lab, to where all those potential dangers may yet lay. Rather, his head tilted to one side, curious as he observed Hermes in his temporary clone body. ]

Though you need not fear. The clone is in the prime of its life. It shall not fail you anytime soon. [ Did Hermes not recall that people aged now, grew old, and died? Was that, too, a knowledge that lived solely in his own memory? ] As for why I would go to so much effort, I do admit part of it was sheer curiosity, to see if I could do it. How much of our situation do you understand? Do you not understand who I am to you?

And yet, life perseveres. [ In a sense. Not all of it had, certainly not those lost in the Final Days or sacrificed to Zodiark, but they were here and alive in some manner of speaking - which meant something had gone right. But had it been enough? The creatures here were proof that life could endure, but what manner of being could find joy and thrive in a place like this? Had his lab and study been so much more worth future life of the star?

Hermes rubs his body's forehead, still getting used to the feeling of having a body of his own again. The outward physical capabilities of this body are similar enough, but the way it responds to the ambient aether is much reduced from what he remembers of his own. Perhaps an explanation would help. ] It is like I've been submerged in water for quite some time but, now tangible, I cannot grasp the individual drops that surrounded me. My faculties return, but as part of a wealth of information I must parse. [ Some things he recognizes on his own, but a few millennia of corporeality have muddled that signficantly.

He doesn't feel comfortable looking at Fandaniel, but feels it would be rude and ungrateful not to. ] The places in my memory where I think memories of you should be are darkened and... unpleasant, like an embarrassment best forgotten. [ Which doesn't feel great, but Hermes was often little fond of himself either. In that, a note of commonality breaks through the noise of his mind. ]

We share a soul. [ His lips quirk upward in an awkward attempt to be sociable, however futile it may be. ] And a passion for research.

Perseveres? In this world? [ Fandaniel dared to let out a titter of a laugh at that. Life! Preservering! In a sense, perhaps, but from another perspective, he saw it differently. ] I believe you mean that it struggles. It lives and dies and lives and dies and lives again with no control over what or when or how.

[ There is no option to simply cease, as he very much wishes to. It rankles, it riles, it maddens the mind, which considering how the desire for death has created a creature as unsensible as Fandaniel himself, well. Regardless of his dark thoughts, the smile remains, still never quite reaching his eyes, still hideously disconnected from what a smile should be. ]

But yes, we share a soul.

[ He leaned comfortably back in the chair he'd chosen for himself, something simple and metal, made for general use in a lab. It was Hermes that he had granted a comfortable chair to, surprising though that might be, and how he had been forced to search across all the floating islands for a big, overstuffed, overly fancy one that was still intact, at that. ]

And a passion for research... Although I do forever wonder if your soul did not lead me down that path, one I may have gone astray from otherwise.

[ Which broaches the topic he really desired to discuss, although he would inch around it oh so delicately. He wasn't sure he wanted the answer, no matter how the question burned in his mind. Was he ever his own person? Had Amon been nothing more than a pale reflection this entire time? ]

[ Watching life carry on from the "underworld", the aetherial sea, was not a skill Fandaniel would have had before passing into death at long last but once he had hit this afterlife, once he had remembered everything, became everything he had once been, it was a simple as, well, breathing. For the living, that is. Clearly, he was not truly breathing now! There was no need here, even if the form he clung to for the time being mimicked it idly. Old habit, he supposes, but...

Old habits were not on his mind right now, not when he can sense himself being watched in this vast field of gentle blue light and pale crystal while he, in turn, also watched. He, however, was enjoying the show as everyone slowly realized the Final Days were once more upon them. Watching the panic, the chaos, the sheer panic. Meanwhile, the person observing him... ]

'tis awfully rude of you to stare, Emet-Selch.

[ As if he could ever truly ceased watching. Hades had bit the Warrior of Light to remember them and to simply fade within the aetherial sea. To get the rest like had been aching for; the rest that had eluded him for eons at this point. Yet upon the return of those memories, how could he rest? How could Emet-Selch do anything less than to watch the Scions as they carry on -

Which is why he is absolutely glaring holes into the back of a particular person's head. To think that he would need to cheer for the current iteration of mankind to triumph over one of his own. ]

'Tis awfully rude to seek the death of all things as well.

Aye, perhaps so, and yet all I was doing was finishing what he began.

[ What Hermes began. Amon still would not consider himself and the previous Fandaniel to be the same man, and yet... How much of this had truly been his own decision if the outcome was the same? ]

Or is it we? [ He turns to look back from across a shoulder at the white-haired man boring holes through his soul with those yellow eyes. ] I seem to recall quite a bit of death-causing on your own part as well.

Oh no. You're not about to bait me with that comment.

[ As Emet-Selch is quite the stubborn, grouchy man. He knows what this soul - for it is a far cry from Hermes and most certainly seems to retain much of Amon's values. In a way, that is. It does make Hades question if this is a more... Intense version of what Hermes might have wanted all those years ago.

But he cannot believe that Hermes would truly wish for all life to end. ]

Returning our home to the way it should be is not the same as making it a lifeless rock.

Ah, of course! [ Fandaniel whirls about fully now, hands coming together in a single clap. ] How could I be so thoughtless! Your murders were by far more moral than any of mine!

[ Whether an undiluted version of what Hermes may have desired or some twisted shade of the poor, sad man from so long ago, this Fandaniel is not like to share much more on it with Emet-Selch. He's wondered for so long... but who wants to hear that, after everything he's done?

Still, he smiles, and that smile never quite reaches his eyes even now, even here in the underworld with all of Hermes' memories filtering back to him. ]

However can I make it up to you? The sheer audacity to compare me to you, the great and powerful Emet-Selch, his hands dripping with a sea of blood.

official fandango open post

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