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The keywards have been sealed away, and Hephaistos is no more. Athena is no more, her presence pulled from Hegemone’s heart and absorbed into Lahabrea’s breast. The danger has passed entirely, and where a thousand eyes and thick tendrils of viscera once stood, now there simply stands Speaker Lahabrea, in the guise of his usual self. His glyph appears and fades with imperceptible speed, and he is reborn as man. He stands as tall as ever, face as weathered as before. He is, by all accounts, returned to the Lahabrea Themis has come to know over the years.
He would be Lahabrea as ever, could Themis not sense the change in his aether.
The rejoining of two disparate halves of the soul shine bright through every ilm of Lahabrea’s form. Where Lahabrea’s very soul once flickered with a persistent, ambient crimson, it is now brilliant and blinding, so bright that Themis can scarcely look upon him without flinching. He is far from the only one to notice; beside him, Erichthonios has covered his face, dark robes a shield against the brightness. Neither of the two of them are particularly sensitive to the markings of the soul, either – were the honourable Emet-Selch here, an expert in such matters, he would be able to intuit far more from the way Lahabrea’s aether pulses with new-found life. Instead, the two of them flinch, and Themis slowly adapts his form to the brightness. He imagines his self-concept as able to bear the sudden change in Lahabrea’s aether, and in a matter of moments, the brightness is not so demanding, his soul a darker, more muted shade of red. The power he must wield is nigh unthinkable. Already, Lahabrea has the finest command of creation amongst the Convocation, yet now –
“You are changed,” says Erichthonios, after a silence that feels an age. “How does it feel?”
“I feel as myself,” Lahabrea says, and Themis holds his breath as he notices a different shade to Lahabrea’s voice, a timbre so deep he has not heard in it before. “Myself, yet – less easily fatigued. I can scarce remember how it must feel to create with such a soul.”
“But you can remember,” Themis says, less a question than a statement of fact. “And you shall have to remember fast, if we are to challenge Lady Athena.”
“Do not doubt I will,” says Lahabrea, voice sharp. “Faith in me shall not be displaced, I assure you.”
“I would expect nothing less from you,” Themis says. “But the threat we face is grave, and I fear time is not our ally. We should put your magicks to the test.”
Lahabrea’s aether pulses, and Themis feels his clench in turn.
“A rejoined soul is capable of feats most unpredictable and strange,” Lahabrea says, can scarcely keep the smile from his mouth. “You would invite such unbridled power here? In Pandaemonium, no less?”
“I would put your new-found ability to the proof,” Themis says, voice even, soul positively thrumming. “If the stories of eld are to be believed, it should be akin to watching a master work.”
“So soon?” Erichthonios interjects, eyes wide. “Father has scarcely recovered from – his ordeal –”
“Erichthonios,” says Lahabrea, in a tone that brokers no argument. “A moment.”
Erichthonios’ aether flickers with a sharpness that does not go unnoticed by Themis. How desperate he is for his father’s approval, and how quick he is to smooth over such feelings. Instead, he nods, and turns to leave the cells, positively shrinking into his robes as he does so. Themis would say something kinder, perhaps, were it not in his best interest for the boy to leave. He gives Erichthonios a wry smile, waits for the gate of the gaol to bolt behind him.
At last, the two of them can drop all pretence.
Lahabrea is quick to close the distance between them, reaches for Themis with furious hands until their bodies are an ilm apart. He sneers, places a hand under Themis’ chin to face him, and Themis is, as ever, unflinching; stares at Lahabrea with eyes of piercing blue, brimming with want.
“Enjoyed goading me, did you, boy?” says Lahabrea, digging his knuckle further into the fragile expanse of Themis’ neck. “To watch a master work – why, you tease –”
“I spoke sincerely,” Themis says, pointedly. “I fervently wish to see your magicks at full strength. Just what will you be capable of, I wonder?”
“Of death, and rebirth," Lahabrea says, smiles down at Themis. "Of godhood, if I so chose."
"How very much like your wife," Themis says, innocently, and oh, he deserves the furious clench of a hand around his throat for that one. He smiles at the sudden show of force. Lahabrea feels quicker to anger already, and Themis senses a sudden ferocity in his very soul.
"Enough of your cheek," Lahabrea snaps, releases Themis in body but holds possessive tendrils of aether around Themis' neck and shoulders, keeping him in place. "Speak plain, and perhaps I shall indulge you."
"'Tis for the very reason you sent your son away," Themis says, eyes bright. "To be alone with me."
Themis reaches for Lahabrea, reaches up to clasp the man's hands in his. He is a fulm or two taller than Themis, yet Themis is never undeterred; drapes his arms around Lahabrea's neck as if no aetheric shackles were holding him firm.
"To make use of me as you so wish."
Themis feels Lahabrea's soul pulse violently.
"To think you offer yourself so wantonly," says Lahabrea, voice low, and Themis flutters his eyelashes as if he has never heard such protests before. "What a depraved youth you must be. Is there no one to discipline you, boy?"
It is a fiction they have worn to the bone, the premise of all their trysts over the years – yet Themis still feels Lahabrea's soul thrum with a desire to tear him apart. Themis feels the shackles tighten around his neck, pulsing with warmth, and he smiles, projects a childlike innocence that he knows suits his features convincingly.
"Nay, there is none," Themis says, following suit, as if this is a game they have never played, a game he does not know makes Lahabrea desperate to touch him. "I am in need of a firm hand."
Themis holds tight to Lahabrea, pulls himself up, face close against Lahabrea's mouth.
"Will you help me, Speaker?" Themis asks, waits for Lahabrea to come undone. "Will you correct me, as you see fit?"
"Aye," Lahabrea says, breathlessly. "Aye, boy, I shall."
The force in Lahabrea's embrace is immediately different to the Lahabrea Themis has come to know. Aetherial shackles tighten around Themis’ neck, shoulders, wrists; hold him aloft with a sudden pull that leaves him reeling. Lahabrea has always made light work of Themis in this form – so much larger than him, so much stronger – but for Lahabrea to be so quick to subdue him is unexpected, thrillingly so. Themis’ childlike body is pulled around, mammet-like, into a position for Lahabrea’s liking; arms bound in mid-air, legs splayed apart. A curl of Lahabrea’s fingers, and the white robes covering Themis’ modesty evaporate into aether.
“How quick you are to stir,” Themis taunts, smiling coyly. “How I hope you shall be as quick to take me as you are to disrobe me.”
“That I shall, and more,” says Lahabrea. “Do not doubt how firm a hold my creation magicks will have. How I could rob you of your senses, one by one. First of sight, then of voice –”
“How bold,” Themis says, smiling at the challenge. “And yet I hope you are prepared for my will to resist yours, Speaker.”
“Oh, Elidibus,” Lahabrea says, with a tone that sounds almost like affection. “I would expect nothing else.”
Lahabrea is, as ever, true to his word. Themis feels a thick-black tendril of aether encroach upon his vision, ever slower, and pushing it away with magicks of his own feels like fighting against the tides. The makeshift aetheric blindfold wraps itself around Themis’ head, and he surrenders into the sensation, reliant only on the sound below sound, the frenetic pulses of aether he can feel churning below Lahabrea’s hands. He has never been so vulnerable before Lahabrea, has never been bested as he has here. He channels his aether into a singular point, pushes all that he is into the point of a blade. Still, it is fruitless. Lahabrea clasps a fist around the bright-white blade bursting from Themis’ chest, and shatters it with one hand.
Themis slumps back into his bonds, body limp and reeling. It is not a wholly unpleasant feeling, the loss of control. He cannot see the machinations Lahabrea has planned for him, but he can feel – oh, he can feel as the most intense warmth rubs against the space between his thighs in fluid motion. A tease it shall be, then, Themis realises, a tease of denied sensation until Themis is half-drunk, begging him to rip him apart, to tear a hole to fill. It would not be the first time Lahabrea has forged a hole for Themis in order for Lahabrea to use his tongue upon him, but this feels far larger than anything approximating human. He can imagine one of the long-curled tendrils of the hemitheos’ body, thrown between his thighs; imagine, but cannot see, not even through aether.
The growing warmth continues for what could be moments, or could be aeons; it is impossible to tell without sight, without sense. Themis battles until he can no longer, until Lahabrea is no longer goading him into resistance with his very being, and instead instructs Themis to succumb, to fall ever deeper into the tar-black pit of submission. Time and space are measured only by the growing intensity of need blooming inside Themis’ body; a need for release unlike any he has ever experienced in any lifetime. Perhaps Lahabrea can sense the depths of his desperation, without word or sound, for he places a hand on Themis’ chest, as if to pluck a heart from him, as if his corporeal form possessed one. He holds it against Themis’ body, absorbing his very aether, his very soul, and Themis draws back in horror, twitches violently against his shackles.
“You cannot be –” Themis starts, voice muffled from lack of permission to speak. “You cannot be suggesting –”
“If I were,” Lahabrea says, firmly, “would you deny me?”
For the first time, Themis hesitates.
Their bodies are meaningless things. He fears nothing of the physical, for there is little Lahabrea can do to him that he cannot undo himself. A thought, a wish, a prayer, and his aether is reformed, pulled into the shape of the young man with blue eyes he calls Elidibus. Bodies are there to be moulded as cities are there to be lived in.
The soul is a different being entirely. To place hands on another's soul – to merge it with another's aetheric signature – is to molest something sacred with a host of dirty fingerprints. Lahabrea merged with Athena, and his aether is irrevocably stained from it. The appeal of unbridled ecstasy is second only to the fear of Lahabrea snatching something that Themis can never take back. And so, he hesitates, with sudden anxiety so bright that Lahabrea must sense it. He unclasps Themis from the tendrils holding him in place, slowly brings him down to the dungeon floor. Themis shakes, overstimulated by the sudden contact of soul against soul, and forges a protective case around himself, a ward with no real strength, more intended to soothe his troubled mind than bar all entry.
His soul is unsullied, unsundered; he will not sacrifice it for a pleasure so fleeting.
"I cannot," Themis says, softly. "You know it is unwise, as well as I."
A shade of disappointment passes over Lahabrea’s face.
“I forget,” Lahabrea says, voice distant. “How young you are.”
“I have no objection to being your youth in our games,” Themis says, coldly. “Yet if it is license to patronise me, I shall have none of it.”
“Never, Elidibus,” Lahabrea says, with a sincerity that makes Themis pause. “Never to patronise, for your role is of the highest import. You are simply the creation of a new age. Unburdened by a past longer than the mind can remember.”
Themis cradles a hand to Lahabrea’s face, strokes it downwards as if removing a mask. Lahabrea touches it, with unexpected tenderness; his hand all but twice the size of Themis’, covering it whole.
“A created being, born of hopes for this star,” Lahabrea continues. “You are yet so young. You do not yet know what it is to become one with another. The possibilities it brings. The intimacy it brokers. How singular a sensation it is, in this world of pleasures.”
Lahabrea sighs, with an inexpressible exhaustion.
“How it feels to understand another, in body and soul,” he says, closes his eyes. “To experience true partnership. You may be yet to experience a great deal of things, Elidibus, but already you must know solitude.”
Themis stares at Lahabrea, his heart aching. Lahabrea picks at wounds that have scarce begun to form, and yet Themis feels acutely as if he has been gutted clean through the chest. An impossible sensation of what is and what will be flare inside Themis, and he feels his resolve crumble. Is this not why he seeks pleasure with Lahabrea, why the two of them have joined so for as long as he can remember? To repair a broken soul?
“I do,” says Themis, voice frail. “Somehow, I – I know it well.”
Themis closes his eyes, and he can hear rainfall. Even in the depths of Abyssos, he can hear it.
“Lahabrea,” he says, and nods. “Show me.”
For a moment, Lahabrea says nothing, and Themis fears he has been too hasty, too quick to acquiesce to what should be a sin of all sins. Instead, Themis is most surprised to feel Lahabrea embrace him, fully, placing a delicate kiss on his forehead. The two of them have joined their bodies in ways unimaginable, and yet, such intimacy is quite unlike Lahabrea. Themis stares at him, curious at the sudden change.
“It shall hurt some,” Lahabrea says. “But it will reward sensation that words can scarce do justice.”
“I would not imagine it to be a comfortable endeavour,” Themis says, lightly. “But I would have you show me anyway. Show me what it is to bond with you.”
Lahabrea extends a hand, closes his eyes as his aether blooms within him.
“I am become thee,” Lahabrea says, his voice infused with a depth unlike anything Themis has heard. “Memory, and mind.”
Aether drips from Themis’ chest into Lahabrea’s hand, slow at first, but growing into an intense beam of bright light. He feels himself growing light-headed, almost as if consciousness may elude him; not so different a sensation to being bound in Lahabrea’s shackles. He feels memories of ages past flicker in his mind, memories that cannot be his – memories of a chamber of twelve, of thirteen – memories of a former Lahabrea, imperious and demanding – memories, even, of a child, born from the aether of others at the cradle of Zodiark. He understands, now, the difference between them of which Lahabrea speaks – for Lahabrea has lived entire lives before the birth of Elidibus. He is but a child in comparison, and his heart aches to realise it.
Lahabrea must be experiencing a similar transference of memory. Themis feels Lahabrea’s hands shaking around the frayed edges of Themis’ soul, seeing as much of Themis’ lifetime as Themis sees of his. There is a warmth between them, and Themis feels the pulsing, barbed fire of Lahabrea’s regret and agony dissipate into aether. Memories of his wife flare, and rage, before disappearing completely, replaced instead with an image of Themis’ true self, his winged, embattled form. His armour gleams, his shield unyielding. It is a form Themis has scarcely seen himself, fond as he is of the blue-eyed boy, fond as he is of his mask and robe; but it is a form he thinks is truly breathtaking. It is divinity, manifest; his spear a conduit for His divine power.
For a thrilling moment, Themis wonders if this is the Elidibus Lahabrea sees, the Elidibus he has always seen.
“How different it is,” Lahabrea says, voice distant, breathless. “To bond with another so aligned with myself. With another so dedicated to the fate of the star.”
“I feel it too,” Themis says, overcome. “Such purpose, such divine purpose. How much I have to learn, how much you have to give me – oh –”
“Elidibus,” he says, “My boy. Give me all of yourself, and I shall gladly take it. I shall gladly give you everything in return.”
Themis closes his eyes, and allows Lahabrea to drink from his soul.
He feels the force of Lahabrea’s fully-restored soul hit him with seismic force, sees Lahabrea’s glyph burning in his mind in the space behind his eyes. The grief, the excitement, the sheer, uncontrollable need – Themis bears it all with no hesitation. Aether convalesces between their bodies until Themis cannot be sure either of them has a form at all – and yet, he can still feel phantom hands, phantom limbs, a desperate, straining cock pushing at the hole inside him.
“Everything,” Themis moans, and places all the energy he has into widening the space in his chest, in his very soul, widens it for Lahabrea to reach inside and fuck it raw. “Hold nothing back, I beg you –”
“How ambitious,” Lahabrea says, taunting. “If you think you can withstand it.”
Lahabrea pushes further inside, and Themis gasps, feels Lahabrea fuck the most vulnerable part of him, the part he has never bared to another in his entirety of existence. The ecstasy is heightened beyond belief, ascending into a sharp wave of relief that he recognises as climax; yet it is far from over, for Themis still feels Lahabrea inside him, still feels Lahabrea desperately clutching to the threads of Themis’ aether, his desire so palpable it feels almost as Themis’ own.
As Themis’ aether grows pliant in Lahabrea’s hands, it is clear that Lahabrea has done this before. His desire seems endless in comparison to Themis’ untouched soul; while Lahabrea has hardly hesitated in fucking Themis at unrelenting pace, he has already drawn three wrung-out climaxes from Themis’ aching body. Themis’ grasp on Lahabrea’s aether softens, as once again, he succumbs into Lahabrea’s grasp. His soul feels raw, an unimaginable pleasure now subsumed by an unimaginable pain. Each thrust of Lahabrea’s cock is sore, nigh on unbearable, but he does not protest; simply allows his hollowed soul to be used, to be transported to the edges of existence, of possibility.
“Elidibus,” Lahabrea breathes, stuttering as he finally tumbles over the edge. “My Emissary, my boy –”
Themis feels a pulse of crimson aether fill him, and he shatters. Their souls join in a flood of light, so joyous, so affirming, that Themis finds himself crying, in hiccuping, uncontrollable sobs. His glyph flickers in front of his vision – his own, this time – and Lahabrea smiles, whispers his name, over and over, Elidibus, as reverent as prayer, and Elidibus smiles too, for he swears for an instant that he can see Him, their Lord, the faceless presence who has walked with him since the moment he was born. Themis sobs, in soreness and ecstasy and exhaustion alike, and allows himself to be carried in His arms, to whatever rest may await him.