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The Phantom City of Amaurot
“I don’t know what to do. It’s not like I don’t understand him. I look around this place and I wish to know what it was like in real life. Everyone here, all the shades are so… nice. Helpful. I wish I could have known them. But to destroy everyone I hold dear…”
The confessions slip out easily - things she’d never dared to tell the other Scions, and yet now she’s telling them to an all too familiar stranger. She doesn’t think the Scions would understand, the depths to which her longing and her sympathy goes. She doesn’t understand it herself.
“I don’t know if anyone can change his course,” Hythlodaeus says. His words translate in her head without effort. “He has been at it too long, and it is too righteous. But if anyone can, I think it must be you.”
Kade frowns. “But why me? Why is it always me?”
The shade’s face doesn’t change, but she can still feel Hythlodaeus smiling. “I don’t know about always. But in a way, he’s obligated to listen to you the most. You made your vows together to be partners until the end of time.”
Kade leans forward a bit, the crystal - Azem’s crystal - warm under her clothes. “What do you mean?” She asks the question, but she thinks she knows the answer. The crystal pulses slightly, and it comes to her. She still wants to have somebody else say it.
“In our time, it wasn’t uncommon for the Convocation to arrange partnerships between people who they felt could enrich each other and Eitherys in turn. Of course, Emet-Selch didn’t have a say in his own match, but that doesn’t mean he protested it.”
The crystal pulses in time with her heartbeat. “You’re saying we were married,” she says, marveling at the words. “But we weren’t in love?”
“Love wasn’t required for such an union,” Hythlodaeus confirms. “Trust and cooperation were much more important. But that doesn’t mean love didn’t exist.”
“Azem loved him?” Kade asks, trying to make it sound casual. Like it’s not personal. Like it’s not the end of the world.
“I’m sure Azem loved him,” Hythlodaeus says. “The three of us were the closest friends. We loved her, and she loved us. But Emet-Selch loved her in a way she didn’t love either of us.”
Kade doesn’t answer. She has to sit with that knowledge, that Emet-Selch was in love with a woman who was broken into pieces to become her.
Hythlodaeus says she didn’t love him back, and the crystal under her clothes doesn’t argue. And still, with Kade’s heart hammering out of her chest…
That doesn’t sound right at all.
Somewhere else
It should be a triumph. Her friends and fellow Scions coming together to defeat a threat to their world, as they always do. Darkness falls, and they live to see another day.
The shining hole in his chest makes her sick. She pushes herself forward in panic, trying to reach him.
“Emet…”
“Remember,” he says, and he doesn’t seem angry at all. He just seems resigned. “Remember us. Remember… that we once lived.”
Her hand is almost to his shoulder, but he’s already turning into light.
“I did love you,” she blurts out, desperate to tell him before he goes. “Azem did love you. I do love you.”
For a moment, he looks shocked, staring at her like she’s speaking another language–
Then he smiles a sad, slight smile, and then he’s gone.
On the Moon
“So… Emet-Selch meant for you to have it.”
Recognition hits, and her eyes widen. “Hythlodaeus?”
“You recognize me?” His face is blank under the mask, and she struggles to remember what he looked like. What he really looked like. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Back in Amaurot,” she starts, then shakes her head. “I mean… Emet-Selch, he created a recreation of Amaurot. You were there. We talked. But it wasn’t really you, was it? It was just his memory of you. Is this now you?”
“Emet-Selch created a shade in my likeness?” The soul laughs, the sound strange and yet familiar. “How very like him. A slave to sentiment, even after an eternity.”
It’s really him. She has to believe.
“Hythlodaeus, if it’s really you, I just need to… I need to know,” she says. “The other you told me that Azem and Emet-Selch were married. He said that it was arranged by the Convocation, and that Emet-Selch loved her, but Azem didn’t love him the same way. Is that true?”
For a moment, he is silent and Kade thinks he seems shocked. Then he laughs again, and it sounds sharper. “Is that what he said? Oh, that I could smack him over the head for putting those words in my mouth.” He lowers his hand and leans down a bit, to get closer to her level. “Of course she loved him. They loved each other, and for the two cleverest people I knew, they were both immensely stupid about it. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
And then, with a blink, he is gone.
Kade’s knees give out and she collapses on the ground, letting the tears finally come.