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"Have you all gone utterly mad?" Eris spat.
Silence, tense as a drawn bow, as thirteen sets of eyes watched his every move.
Fury burned within his chest at the mere mention of the foolhardy plan the Convocation had concocted in their actions as so-called saviors of the people. Eris felt his lips curl into a snarl. They were cowards, all of them. Too consumed by their own importance to see the massacre they were to willingly create. And despite their preaching, Eris knew there was no going back from it.
A loud sigh of annoyance broke the tension as the holder of the First Seat straightened to speak.
“How disappointing,” Lahabrea tutted, “but typical. Are you truly letting your feelings for Azim get in the way of your duty to the people of Etheirys? Have you no pride in your work? What you have achieved? What you could achieve?”
“Do not speak to me of duty and pride!” Eris snapped back, taking a step forward. “Those are the very things you are all blinded by. You would ask the people of Etheirys to sacrifice half their population, half of everyone’s friends, children, partners, for a plan we do not even know will work! All on the whim that we could simply wish them back once we’ve achieved a more permanent solution. Do you not hear how asinine that sounds?”
“Azem-” Loghrif began to cut in.
“I am not finished!” Eris raised his hands in the air, motioning with intense fervor as he spoke. “You are all cowards! You would rather sit in your offices all day investigating the world from a controlled environment. You would not face the world’s unpredictability but rather summon a false god with the power to control it in the hopes that it may solve all your problems — even when that false god would cost us half the lives of the people of this Star!”
“And yet you would sit and serve among us,” Emet-Selch chided from his seat.
Eris turned to look at Emet-Selch, his face contorting into a disgusted snarl. The added cynicism from the Third Seat only stoked the flames of his fury further — their long-standing hatred for each other reaching a breaking point at this moment. How dare this man speak down to him and act as if he were complicit in the crimes here when he was the one condemning his lover to a fate worse than death.
“How astute, Emet-Selch. You are so very intelligent. So riddle me with this. How is it that when the Convocation of the Fourteen chose a candidate for Azem who, by all accounts, was the exact opposite of the two holders that came before him, did that candidate somehow become exactly like them?” Eris moved closer to Emet-Selch, grabbing onto the side of the chair and putting his face mere inches from the Third Seat's to force the man to move his head back. “How is it that the academic office shut-in who, by every prior indication should have stayed within the confines of the Akadaemia Anyder for the rest of his days until he returned to the Star, end up as one of the foremost Travellers this world has ever seen? How?”
A hard frown formed across Emet-Selch's features as he raised his hand in a dismissive wave. “Get on with it, then,” he muttered.
Eris straightened back up, releasing the now cracked side of Emet-Selch's chair, and ran his gaze around the room’s occupants once again as he returned to the center of their seats. “Since none of you seem wise enough to know the answer to my questions, then I will answer it for you.” Eris grabbed hold of the fabric of his robes over his heart with his right hand. “You give him the chance to look beyond the confines of the only city he has ever known. You open up the world to him and show him the lives of those beyond the capital city that rules them all. You give him a taste of freedom.”
As he spoke the last word, Eris released the glamour from his robes, the black coloring that matched those of his peers shimmering away into a bright lavender purple — a touch of flare inspired by the flowers he loved so much in his garden. Murmurings of disgust erupted from the other members of the Convocation. “Before I began to train for the seat of Azem, I was living as a mere fraction of who I could be. I conformed to the rules set in Amaurot, and while I was content, I was not happy. Then, I met Tiresias and I…” Eris paused for a moment, a smile spreading across his face, “he helped me show me who I could become by stepping outside those walls. He showed me it was okay to be… me.
“We all wear our nearly identical robes and masks. We claim it’s to minimize the strife and conflict between people in our quest to better the Star. But is that actually true? Or are you simply hiding behind them because you do not wish to confront something you cannot force to conform to your beliefs? Are you afraid of someone who will challenge your ideas and fight your course because they realize how wrong you are?
“Well, I refuse to conform to your rules anymore,” Eris said. “I will not serve an entity who no longer speaks for its people. I will not serve a body who only thinks for their own benefit, who would rather sacrifice a former member of itself rather than one of its current members because they know all of the members present at this moment would be too cowardly to make the sacrifice themselves. I will not serve a governance who would stop at a temporary solution and hide behind the theory of wishes and whims, rather than find something concrete that would better serve the Star at large.
Eris took a deep breath and looked over his peers once more. “You may summon Zodiark, if you decide that is the best course of action, but if you do so, you will do so without me.”
“Your personal feelings confuse you, Azem. We only act for the Star’s great good,” Nabriales chimed in. “This affair between yourself and Azim has made you act and think irrationally. Surely you do not think so lowly of us.”
Eris set his jaw at Nabriales’s words. The supposed martial champion and refiner of technique whose competency in magicks was so low his only recourse was to mimic his own mastery of time magicks to ensure he could win fights he otherwise had no business winning. No lower a being on the Convocation was there than a man who sprung for any opportunity to prove his postulated prowess and needlessly sought to cut the lives short of those for whom he did not care for. He would blast the moon out of the sky were it ever to prove beneficial to him and him alone.
“I will not be asked to willingly sacrifice my beloved for a plan whose path has not yet been paved, Nabriales. Do not chide me for being upset at the mere notion of the man I hold most dear serving as the heart of a false deity for an eternity because none of you are willing to look beyond these walls for the source of this problem and a proper solution! He would lose himself in the time it took for us to find one, assuming you even decide to pursue a proper solution at all, since you may deem it too much of an inconvenience.
“But perhaps I am being irrational. Perhaps it is emotional of me to wish that my lover not be sacrificed for the creation of Zodiark.” Eris walked along the circle of Convocation members before stopping. “Perhaps I should ask for a second opinion! What do you think of such a line of thinking, Mitron? Do you find it unreasonable? Irrational?”
The unspoken accusation sliced through the air like an icy dagger. The seeds sown during their long-standing rivalry now sprung forth as thorny plants that struck Mitron where it hurt most. After all, she, least of anyone, could condemn Eris’s feelings after she talked Loghrif out of sacrificing herself to Zodiark as well.
“No,” Mitron hissed out after a moment.
Eris raised his head higher as a haughty expression crossed his face. “That’s what I thought.”
"Enough, Azem," Lahabrea's stern voice called out from across the room, freezing Eris in his tracks. "Your point has been made. Now sit down such that we might be able to discuss the matter civilly. Or is such behavior beyond you at this point?"
Eris scoffed loudly and opened his mouth to retort, only for Nabriales to finally find his voice again — only after someone else had spoken up first.
"He speaks so highly of protecting Azim from his fate, yet do you all not find it curious that in doing so, he has condemned another to the same eventuality? Perhaps we should ask the Emissary his thoughts on the matter of how willingly his father would sacrifice him to become the beast he would spare his lover?"
"Nabriales-!" Loghrif shouted.
"Am I wrong to call out his hypocrisy?" Nabriales shouted back.
A tense cold silence settled in the Convocation room as the thirteen sets of eyes returned to Eris again. How cruel and judging they were — all but one. Eris met those eyes; the blue eyes filled with nothing but love and kindness that focused on his every move. He watched as they narrowed, now filled with a fiery determination he had never seen before.
A nod. It was permission.
That was all Eris needed. It was his last meeting after all.
Moving at a brisk step, Eris quickly closed the distance between him and Nabriales. Before the supposed master of martial prowess could react, Eris was upon him, grabbing the man by his robes and lifting him with ease — pure rage and adrenaline granting him unseen strength as he slammed Nabriales into the back of his chair.
"My son is a grown man. He can advocate for himself, unlike Azim who was explicitly barred from this meeting and given no voice to his fate. At least you all had the decency to ask Emet-Selch's lover whether or not he wanted to suspend his soul into an eternally tormentuous stasis for the rest of time! Mine was afforded no such luxury and yet you expect me to roll over like a corpse to let such a fate come to pass!"
"Eris-!" Emet-Selch's sharp tone echoed throughout the room as the Third Seat rose to his feet.
Eris turned his head to meet Emet-Selch's furious gaze with his own. In an instant both had committed grave taboos on the floor, but it was all for a point that Eris would drive home. They needed to understand the consequences of the actions they were taking, the pain they were inflicting — and if he had to teach them that lesson himself he would.
"Am I wrong, Hades?" Eris hissed back, emphasizing Emet-Selch's name to call out the Third Seat's own misstep as he tightened his grip on the still suspended Nabriales. For all his supposed martial prowess, Nabriales could do nothing to pry Eris's fingers from his black robes, fury filling him with the strength of a pteraketos as he refused to release the man until his point was made.
"Azem, you're… hurting me-" Nabriales croaked out.
"Good! Remember this feeling, Nabriales," Eris said with a laugh. "This is but a fraction of what your decision here today has wrought upon me and the people who I counsel." He slightly lowered Nabriales before slamming him against the back of the chair again. "You, who call me a hypocrite, are so quick to forget that were it my choice, we would not be following this path at all! Both my lover and my son would be spared of this most horrific of fates! You are so quick to forget the people we are sworn to govern and protect! So quick to sacrifice them to a fate most abhorrent! And for what? To stall for time?"
"That is enough, Azem." Chains encased Eris's arms and wrenched him away from Nabriales, pulling him to the center of the Convocation Hall once more. "This is unbecoming, even for you, and you should know as well as anyone that assaulting a member of the Convocation has-"
Lahabrea didn't get to finish his sentence. Time halted in the blink of an eye, freezing everyone in the room before beginning to reverse and halting once Eris had Nabriales in his arms again. How quickly they forget his mastery. Time cannot be bound by anyone.
"That is enough, Azem." The chains came again but this time Eris was ready. Spinning around on his heels, the chains quickly entrapped Nabriales instead, yanking him to the center of the room with great force. Lahabrea's mouth twitched in anger as the realization of what just happened hit him. "Your behavior is unbecoming, even for you. Have you no shame for the example you set for your son?"
"Have you no shame for your own?" Eris countered. "Oh, wait, no, I suppose that would require you to have actually played a role in raising him." Eris quickly stepped out of the way of another set of chains, his eyes glimmering a brilliant golden yellow as he prepared to reverse time should Lahabrea catch him on the back foot again.
"Lest you forget, Lahabrea, as I said before, my son is a man grown. He is more than able to make decisions on his own without my stealing his autonomy from him." Eris turned his head to look at Themis again, his expression softening a bit. "I may not agree with the path he has chosen but that is his decision to make, not mine. At some point you must learn to let go, otherwise you chain them to the ground and never let them be free to become themselves.
Eris let out a hollow sad laugh. "I have been placed in an impossible situation where you all have forced me to choose between the son I raised with all the love in my heart and the man who taught me how to be myself, and yet you would call me the hypocrite for doing my job and standing as the advocate for the ones who cannot be here to speak for themselves? For decrying the sacrifice as a whole that has forced me to make such a choice in the first place? Have your hearts truly grown so callous and cold? You would rather hide behind an easy solution than challenge the status quo to find a better one. So be it then. If you will not do so, then I will find one myself."
Eris halted his pace in front of the empty chair that marked the Fourteenth Seat — his throne upon which he and many others had sat for time immemorial. Raising his hand high into the air above him, Eris snapped his fingers, letting out a warm rush of aether as a summon began to take shape. Flames began to coalesce as they rose higher and higher into the ceiling of the room before bursting forth into the form of the mighty phoenix with a loud shriek that violently scraped the ears of those in the hall.
“Even if it takes me hundreds, no, thousands of your lifetimes, I will not stop until I have found a proper way to halt this apocalypse — to save my son and my lover from the fates you would so malignantly condemn them to. Unlike you, I have time on my side,” he said. Eris lowered his hand and pointed at the golden pedestal that he had so proudly sat on until now. "Helios, incendo."
The phoenix let out another loud shriek as it dove down from the ceiling. The temperature of the air rose sharply as the Convocation dove for cover — only Eris and Themis stood fast as the bird let loose a fiery bolt of breath at the chair, sending shrapnel and flames everywhere. Eris barely flinched as a piece struck his face, leaving a long cut down the length of his left cheek.
"You've gone mad!" Emmerololth shouted.
Eris scoffed, not even making the effort to wipe away the blood that dribbled down his face as he raised his arm to allow Helios to perch on it. “Enjoy the comfort of your high seats — I no longer seem to have one. If you wish to find me, look down on the streets. You will find me among the fire and brimstone. There I will fight along the people of Etheirys, where Azem belongs.”
Eris took one last long look at his now former peers, lingering on Themis the longest, before turning to exit the Convocation Hall. He hoped his message had reached them, but even with that fiery display, he doubted it would.
It hadn't ever before.