museboxofmuses | DRAGON AU

DRAGON AU

Prometheus hibernated a lot.

There wasn't much else to do, as a hermit-dragon. He couldn't venture out into the world in case some intrepid 'adventurer' wanted to slay him for bragging rights or his hide, he couldn't mingle with other dragons because he was one of Nidhogg's brood (a fact which was why he couldn't socialise with any Ishgardians because spears inevitably got involved in those conversations, he knew, he still had the scar on his hindquarters from his last naive attempt), and he knew absolutely no one else, knew nothing about the world or its new continents or civilisations, so hibernating it was.

But even then, sleeping got dull.

Prometheus sighed deeply, drawing his wings tighter about himself. Perhaps it was because he spent so much time sleeping, but his draconic body evolved to have furred wings - which was nice, it was very warm, even if they did shed some strange, fluffy black motes from time to time (he soon learned that these motes were highly toxic to mortals, probably from his subconscious desire to be left alone slipping into this body's maturing evolution). The downy undercoat of his wings was shed often and thickly enough that he even had a little nest, in a cave warmed by geothermic means, in the high mountains of Coethas. It was cosy, safe, and isolated.

It was also boring and devoid of anything. Prometheus came here... fuck, centuries? Or millennia? He couldn't remember. A long while, just after the war between Ishgard and the dragons kicked off in earnest. He flew here as a dragonnet, and slept and slept and slept, with miserable waking moments in between where he went to stretch his wings, eat a bear or something, and crawled back in his warm, soft cave to sleep some more.

He was avoiding reality, he knew. He didn't understand why he woke up in the form of a dragon - an alien species, not native to their star, how the hell did the reincarnation cycle mess up that badly!? - what happened to Amaurot, why the geography was completely different and... where Hades and Hythlodaeus were. He remembered, in the early days of his life, he would cry out through the Lifestream to hear nothing back, and was slowly accepting that, maybe, it was just him. Alone.

No Hades. No Hythlodaeus. Just him and his cave.

He exhaled heavily, flexing his claws as his body sluggishly roused from its latest bout of hibernation. His stomach was an empty pit of starvation, so he had to eat something calorie dense before dozing back off again. The only thing was, it took ages for his body to fully 'wake up'. Spending centuries practically in a coma made his limbs lock up, and it took a while for the aether flowing through his body to regain strength and feeling in them again. Not that he was in any rush...

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“I’m being careful,” Hades said with a bit of a pout. “And he wouldn’t bite my fingers! He’s a clever boy.”

“I wonder if he can...” And then Hades flipped his glyph on.

Prometheus realised where this was going the second he saw the glyph flicker to life. While for an ordinary Amaurotine child, a soul glyph was normal and seen almost every day, for a newborn dragon fresh out of their shell-!

"Uh, Hades, wait-!" Prometheus started, but it was too late.

Aza seemed to freeze, blinking at the sudden glare of crimson glaring down at him... looking bewildered and feeling totally confused. From his perspective, his father had vanished only to be replaced by a glowing, angry looking crimson skull, and he reacted as any confused child would.

He started crying.

Not with tears, since it seemed dragons lacked that capability, but he let out a distressed, unhappy yowl, squirming to escape Hades's arms and immediately reaching for the parent who hadn't replaced their face with a glowing red skull.

Hades dropped the glyph immediately, his breast filling with panic. “I’m sorry! Look, look, it’s all gone!” He tried to rebundle the squirming baby. He could let him just go to Prometheus, but the baser part of him just wanted to calm the rejection.

“I should have known better...” Hades said, eyes wet. Little Azeyma didn’t cease his squirming, so he set him down against Prometheus’s feet in the hay.

Hades looked beside himself with worry. He crouched down, his mind racing with ways to fix it. He debated whether turning into a dragon would make things worse.

Oh dear.

Prometheus wasn't quite sure what to do at Hades's panic and hurt at the rejection, quickly lying down when Aza scampered towards him. The dragonet quickly tumbled into the gap between Prometheus's forearms, curling up against his broad chest as he made quiet, uncertain noises. All his fur was fluffed up, making him look like a furball on legs. It should be cute, but...

Prometheus let out a low, soothing purr, deepening it until it was a rumbling bass that Aza would feel as a physical vibration, pressed as he was against his chest. It seemed to work, the dragonet calming down enough to peek up at Hades with wary uncertainty.

"I think that was a bit too fast for him," Prometheus said, feeling awkward. Hades really should've known better, but he felt like saying that probably wouldn't help Hades's dejection, "Also... your sigil's kinda scary looking..."

"It does have a skull on it," Hythlodaeus muttered sotto voce.

"But I'm sure he'll get over it!" Prometheus continued loudly, nudging at Aza gently to urge him back towards Hades, "Look, Aza, the scary mask's gone. It was just a mask. Hades- uh, wait, are you Father or you going with 'Dad'...?"

“It’s just how it is,” Hades muttered back. Hades cleared his throat. “What about Hythlodaeus? I can be Father...” He had been Father in the past, and it was comfortable enough to hear, especially in their mother tongue. And a dragons’ vocal chords were well suited to speak Amaurotine.

Hades stared at the child, getting on his knees and outstretching an arm. He turned his palm up, conjuring a small bowl of bone broth. He felt like he was appealing to a small animal...But being a father had made him feel that way before. They were all held prisoner by the mushy whims in their developing brains.

“Azeyma...” he said sweetly, trying to coax him over.

"Oh, I thought I was going to be 'Uncle'?" Hythlodaeus said with clear surprise, "I mean, I wasn't overly involved in the, ah, baby making process..."

Prometheus would've rolled his eyes if he had any, "You can be Uncle or Dad, it's up to you."

"And you?"

"Well, obviously, I'm Cool Dad."

"That's... weird, Prometheus."

While Hythlodaeus and Prometheus argued what constituted as an appropriate parental title, Aza was slowly coaxed over by the smell of bone broth. He stepped lightly, ready to dart back into the safety of his dragon parent's arms if the red skull came back... but it didn't. He reached the bowl, and two-legged parent's face stayed the same, so Aza chanced lapping the broth up.

Then when nothing happened, he got a little more comfortable, clambering half-onto Hades's arm to shove his snout right into the bowl, almost tipping it over.

“There are Amaurotine words for what you are,” Hades started, already feeling his sanity drizzle out one ear. “And Hythlodaeus, you cant be uncle, that... will imply something strange in mortal terms.”

Hades grasped the bowl just a little tighter, letting him drink in the broth. “My son,” he whispered, setting his other enormous hand gently over him to pet his fur. “I’m sorry I scared you. You will understand what it was in time.”

He looked up, locking eyes with Hythlodaeus for a moment. “When the little one has gone to sleep I have something to tell you,” Hades said quietly.

"Oh, yeah, 'Uncle' means you'd be a brother to one of us," Prometheus mused, vaguely recalling the layout of a mortal family.

Hythlodaeus wrinkled his nose, "...oh."

Prometheus chuckled, watching Aza make a mess all over himself practically bathing in the broth, rather than drinking. In no time at all, it was all gone, and Aza was full and happy, purring at Hades petting his fur. Looked like all was forgiven regarding the scare with Hades's sigil.

"Hm? Well, that sounds ominous," Prometheus said lightly, even if he felt a knot of unease tighten in his belly. It looked like Hades was going to bring up the elephant in the room all of them had been aggressively ignoring for the past few months. Prometheus wasn't sure if he felt dread or relief.

“It is, a bit,” he admitted. “My soul has become heavy with sins through the ages... But hear my vow that I will never allow harm to come to our son. You and Hythlodaeus, I cannot lose you again.”

He picked Aza back up, wiping the broth off his face, watching the fur stick together in points. He held the dragonet close to his chest closing his eyes and dropping his chin as he begun to softly sing a foreign lullaby.

Prometheus and Hythlodaeus exchanged a meaningful look as Hades lulled Aza to sleep with a song. Hythlodaeus's expression said 'you can't ignore it any longer', while Prometheus's was 'quick, feign an illness to put this off longer!'

Hythlodaeus's stare down won, and Prometheus looked away with a grunt.

At this point, Aza had fallen asleep, snuffling quietly as he unconsciously cuddled against Hades's chest. It was, quite frankly, absolutely adorable. Prometheus wished he could Create a camera for the moment.

"So..." Prometheus said after a moment of silence, where all of them just watched Aza snore, "Let's hear it then."

“Let’s start... not at the beginning. That’s far too much. But recently...oh, sixty years ago I became the patron, the founder of a people so disenfranchised and beaten down by their Eorzean neighbors. There is a race of people, the Garleans, who are entirely unable to wield aether. But they are tenacious and mighty... And I admit I became enamored with their struggling. My attention was captured by someone who looked just precisely like me, eerily so. His name was Solus from the noble Galvus, and like most men his age, he entered the military. Unfortunately for him, he subsequently died of exposure in the night as he worked in his lab. I found him after, and I saw what he was working on.”

Hades paused, taking a breath before resuming. “He had died entirely too young. The cold had preserved his body... and so... I assumed it. I reheated the flesh and reinvigorated the aether and stepped out to explore these people.”

Hades softly petted his child, lowering his voice and rocking him when he began to stir.

“I finished Solus’ project, and with it, I gave the Garleans the chance to survive their horrible predicament. And with our survival came flourishing. I married the woman who had been arranged for my host since he began to walk. And we had a son,” his voice quivered for the first time in his emotional monologue.

“And though he was tall and strong... He passed away just shy of 22 summers from an illness that I was not even aware of.”

Edited 2019-12-20 20:53 (UTC)

There was a moment of silence when Hades finished, and Hythlodaeus - who had already been aware of Hades's first child - chanced a glance at Prometheus.

He was, annoyingly, unreadable. His expression was difficult to parse, due to the fact that Hythlodaeus still wasn't very good at deciphering dragon expressions, and that Prometheus's soul had gone few soft and opaque. He was clearly mulling it over, but Hythlodaeus had no idea if he was going to react well or poorly to it.

"...well, that explains your egg anxiety," Prometheus finally said, his tone still damnably neutral, "And I was dead at the time, so I can't begrudge you marrying someone and having a child with them either."

There was a but, though, it was clear in Prometheus's tone. However, he didn't utter it, because... he was wary of prodding that. Questions like; 'Hades, you're not a naturally generous soul, so why would you live out a mortal's life to that extent unless you were getting something out of it?' and 'Twenty two years old is old enough for a mortal noble family to procreate before passing on, so are there any other grandchildren or great-grandchildren I should know about too, and if so, why haven't I seen hide or hair of them?' and 'I smell bullshit, there's more to this then you're telling me'.

But Prometheus didn't ask those questions.

Instead; "If you're worried about Aza suffering from the same fate... don't. Dragons are pretty robust creatures. Never heard of any getting sick, to be honest..."

“That I’m not afraid of, anymore,” he clarified, running a hand through his hair. He frowned. “His soul is as dense as mine. No physical malady will be able to kill him in any meaningful way.” Hades was suspicious of the fact that Prometheus wasn’t needling him about those other points. He’d left out a lot, but he’d also admitted to possessing a corpse and leading a military.

“I married for the appearances of it,” he said, then bit his lip. That was only slightly true.

“He’s not this flimsy sort of mortal who will die if the aether fluxes wrong,” he said, gently petting between Aza’s horns. He took a breath.

“I’m surprised that your combined curious minds have no questions about the story I’ve told you.”

Hythlodaues fidgeted, "Ah, well..."

Prometheus exhaled heavily, his tail giving an agitated thump against the floor. He had no idea how to approach that without betraying his... suspicions, and theories from what he gleaned from both the locals of these lands, the state of the aether and the Lifestream, and what little Hades and Hythlodaeus had let slip. It all came together as a horrifying picture, one that if Prometheus acknowledged he'd... well, he wasn't sure how he'd react, but it wouldn't be pretty.

"Oh, I have many questions," he finally said, his tail thumping the floor again, harder this time, "Many, many, many questions..."

"But now doesn't seem the right time for them, right?" Hythlodaeus added warily, when Prometheus didn't say anymore after that, "Well, not until you decide to stop obfuscating things, Hades..."

Hades drew in a deep breath and sighed as tears pricked at his eyes. “Sooner than later would be best, wouldn’t it? We can cut to the chase. If you’re to kill me, we shouldn’t let little Aza get too attached.”

Well, that was far more horrifying than he meant to go. But it was true.

“We should pull the wool from your eyes before it becomes too complicated to deal with me. Rather, I’ve been having a change of heart. Oh, this is going to be so messy...Lahabrea is going to be all in a tizzy.”

That shocked Prometheus out of his quiet, dark mood.

"Kill- Hades, you absolute dumbass," Prometheus snarled, rising to his feet and flaring his wings, "I'm not going to kill you, no matter how badly you fucked up. What'd that do? Just make an even bigger fucking mess."

“...Mm,” Hades winced. The next thing was too hard to say. His own sins were one thing, but letting Prometheus be crushed under the weight of his own guilt? He breathed slowly to calm himself down. His own sins, his own...

“The world was shattered. A long, long time ago reality was shattered. And everyone’s souls became pale and small, and their bodies weak and small, and their minds vicious and small! And even when you try to love them, they can not overcome that and they eventually die! They leave you alone! And before you can move on they all die again! You were probably wondering what we were doing. Elidibus, Lahabrea... myself.”

Aza stirred slightly, but made no genuine appearance of waking.

“We have been trying to make the world whole again. End all he misery and suffering. It’s just not working. It doesn’t matter what you give them or try to teach them. They’re hopeless.”

"Shattered..." Prometheus didn't seem too shocked, if anything he seemed grimly resigned. He had already suspected that, considering the state the Lifestream had been in, and his own, quiet investigation into the thumping soul of the planet that only he could truly hear.

"Hades," he paused, gathering his thoughts, "You know, I did a lot of research into the Lifestream and the structure of our star before I... died. When a Planet is shattered to this extent, where souls are even impacted, you do realise that there's no foolproof way of rejoining the broken parts, right?" Prometheus huffed out a morbidly amused noise, "Not unless you trigger the Lifestream's survival instincts to contract by causing a massive influx souls into it, but you'd have to get to like, genocide... levels..."

There was a very long pause, where Prometheus finally realised. Making world whole again -> end all misery and suffering -> Hades's disdain for the mortal races -> helped a country become a mighty military force -> a planet's shards can only be rejoined when the stretched thin Lifestream felt threatened, and contracted them closer when it sensed mass death occurring -> the fact there was evidence in the Lifestream of these contractions, ones Prometheus assumed to be natural disasters -> oh Hades you haven't.

"...ah," he finally said, stunned at his own revelation.

“I never wanted to, you know,” he whispered. “Of all of us that there have been and will be, I was the only one who ever tried to just... live. To try to make the best of it, to move on. I’d thought... when my son was born... I’d had hope that they had been rejoined enough. That humanity might be whole enough.”

“Even the first times. But they snuff out one another’s lives with less consideration, less purpose, than we ever did,” Hades furrowed his brows. “Don’t misunderstand me. We had tried nigh everything else for thousands of years before then. I don’t like to inflict suffering on them, even if they do nothing but design it for themselves. They’d already built the fire, we only handed them the match.”

"So, that makes it justifiable, then?" Prometheus asked, feeling the first embers of anger start to flare, "So long as you get your precious Amaurot back, you'll just burn your way through as many mortal races as necessary?"

"Prom..." Hythlodaeus said, but he didn't say anything after that. It was clear from his expression he didn't approve of this either.

"Did you and others ever think that maybe, just maybe, our entire race was meant to die?" Prometheus continued bluntly, his voice tight, "We studied this under Mentor Metis, remember? When things in nature become unbalanced, nature corrects. We were an unbalancing force- oh, don't look like that, we were, no matter what bullshit we fed ourselves about being 'Caretakers of the Star'. However it happened, our race became functionally extinct, the star shattered and from what I saw it's stable. Everything's in balance! If you truly cared about being a caretaker, you'd leave everything alone, not try to revive a flawed paradise!"

Prometheus's voice finished on a yell, and Aza startled awake in Hades's arms, letting out a low whine as he felt the volatile emotions in the air.

“You’ve woken him,” Hades chastised as he tried to soothe the babe in his arms. “We understand balance. We have worked tirelessly to maintain that balance.”

But he thinned his lips at the next part. It was the worst case scenario, after all. “The lifestream demands death for its health, and the mortals supply it well. Why are you so eager to give up? Certainly there must We a way through it. Isn’t it worth trying? To end the suffering?”

“And we’ve arrived at how we started. You would have me accept death, but you will have to kill me to make that happen.”

Prometheus made a frustrated noise, saying nothing for a long moment. Aza was fussing in Hades's arms, and he didn't want to make it worse by yelling at Hades until sense started sinking in through that thick skull of his. Ugh, Hades always did become stupidly stubborn once he got an idea in his head...

"Everything dies, eventually," Prometheus finally said, calmer, "Even this star. It's a natural course of life, and the longer you struggle against it, the more misery you're just making for everyone else."

He lowered himself onto his belly again, feeling thoroughly exhausted, "Remember what Metis said? 'Always be ready for change'. For good or ill, we have to accept it. You've... done the exact opposite of that. 'To end the suffering', what suffering? The people on the Steppe are content and happy! Their culture is different, more violent, yeah, but that's how they are, and I wouldn't want them to change at all! It's not like death is such a painful thing, anyways. You reincarnate eventually and start again. Like nature intended."

Hades took a silent moment to just look at Aza. It did serve to help calm him, at least. Whole and pure Aza...

“Funny thing to say,” Hades started. “I’m not sure they’re all happy. They are awfully prideful about the hardship they place upon themselves, however. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? I have grown tired, Prometheus. I can’t resunder what’s joined. What would you have me do? Kill Elidibus and Lahabrea? It is certainly within my power.” He gave a grim, sad smile.

"What is it with you and thinking killing things is the answer?" Prometheus groaned, "Stars, Hades, you've become fucked up."

"Perhaps," Hythlodaeus interjected, "We can convince them there is an alternative way. After all, we have a brand new soul right here..."

“Can you blame me?” he said with a frustrated growl. “I would have also liked to just nap for the last two-thousand years. But I haven’t. Just constantly being told to devise extinctions. It’s exhausting. Lahabrea is an over-passionate impatient idiot, and Elidibus... I have to admit that even I don’t know all that he plans, but he’s keen to foist the difficult work onto me.”

Hades cared for all Amaurotines, of course. But why did the only ones he’d had left were the worst people from his office.

Hades sighed. “But perhaps. They will visit again sooner than later, I’m sure. They have been obsessed with you and I know Lahabrea will be unable to contain his academic curiosity for long.”

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