Prompt from anonymous: "There was a point, when Emperor Solus was not quite a young man or an old one, when Garlemald's devotion to him was particularly fierce, that Emet-Selch faced a primal parody of himself on the battlefield. Enemies of Garlemald conducted a ritual in desperation using captured soldiers to create infighting. The result was a twisted, primal emperor. Whether an Ascian plan or a surprise, Emet-Selch finds himself in line for battle while masquerading as a mortal."
Garlemald is a different meat than Allag. Its raw materials are weaker in constitution, limited in resources and trade. Its intellect has been honed on desperation, and generations of grudges where that same intelligence has never brought its owners equality. It begins as a nation of disadvantages: a people pushed to the far north of Ilsabard, given only the territories that others do not want and left to die in ignominy.
Its noble houses are few, and that makes it easier for Emet-Selch to pick from when he plucks one of its heirs as his own.
As a meal, he chews Garlemald differently. Its substance is leaner; its people have no time for any invention which does not produce immediate results, such bringing crops out of poor soil or finding enough fuel to keep houses warm. Emet-Selch takes to its conquest, at first, as a purely analytical exercise. It presents no greater difficulties on paper than any other realm. Across all the reflections, Garlemald is far from unique. He has infiltrated other struggling countries before, has raised them and destroyed them, and by now he has an entire playbook to consult.
The Garleans adopt him gladly, welcoming him into their midst with the same ardor as the Allagans had, and in this, they make the same fatal mistakes.
He spends the years mortal: Solus sas Galvus, Solus tol Galvus. Then Solus van Galvus. His middle name is as mutable as his interest in it. He rises higher, brings himself acclaim. Legatus at twenty-four. The discovery of ceruleum processing at twenty-five. He allows others to decorate him, as if he is a piece of entablature for them to inscribe with their own friezes. When he takes the title of Emperor, it is intended as both an insult to them and to a long-dead Xande, though Emet-Selch is the only one who knows to laugh.
Garlemald is a different meat than Allag, but in the end, they will be devoured all the same.
He regrets, almost instantly, the method he has chosen as soon as the crown is placed upon his head. It was pure laziness that had initially led him to using Solus as a figurehead; none of the other Garleans he had found had been willing to heed his gentle nudges each time he had alluded to potential means of refining raw ceruleum. They had been convinced for generations that they could not succeed - not at war, not at peace, not at anything save the bitterness of watching other races use tools they could not grasp. All had turned aside, citing the substance's volatility. Too many lost lives. Too much risk.
In the end, Emet-Selch had given up and uncovered the use of refined ceruleum himself, steering its development down the shorter, stable paths. When he had presented his findings to an eager hoard of engineers - researchers whose work was now no longer theoretical - the light of hunger he had seen in their eyes had been only outshone by their desire to make the rest of the world regret.
Solus zos Galvus is a pathetic name, for a pathetic people. Emet-Selch cannot undress himself from it. He is the Emperor now, a living embodiment of the hope they had lost for so long that some of them had begun to believe they truly do not deserve to have it. Everyone marks where he comes and goes. There is no room for privacy. He must play his part, and there is no sparing it.
At Othard, he orchestrates his second masterstroke: his nation's sudden discovery of the true devastation that Primals can bring. Everything rolls all downhill from there. The Garleans have every reason now to conquer the world in order to save it, wearing the mantle of self-righteousness in heavy folds upon each soldier's shoulder. Emet-Selch barely needs to provide them with direct guidance anymore. The empire is building itself around him like a hive around its queen, and while he should be proud of such things - the automation of such processes is a sign of careful preplanning and calculations which have all fallen squarely into place - he finds himself rankled by the boredom of it all.
He does not need to think. To be innovative, to explore the options for creative ploys and true discoveries, rather than regurgitating science he already knows. He does not need to devise endlessly cunning plans, nor to design. The Garleans have been given enough power and knowledge to blaze entire chasms across Eorzea, and their inventiveness will blossom all the more quickly if their cruelties are given free reign to flourish.
It is as it has always been: when given the option, mortals inevitably prefer to destroy one another, and call it virtuous in the process.
Garlemald allows Emet-Selch no room to escape. They insist on parades for him, honor guards. They give him a wife; they lose his first child. They document all of his known favorite foods, his personal appetites, his entertainments and distastes - so many of which are false, but which he must now pretend to have passion for anyway, for as long as his mortal shell holds out.
His immortality ebbs out of him like the exhalation of a tide. The creations he makes now are all death-bound, contributions to a kingdom which has the seeds of its own self-destruction woven into the very motivations he has given them. Even if Emet-Selch did wish to engage in art, there is no one around to create for. Not as an Ascian would appreciate it. Particularly not the Garleans, whose capacity for aether manipulation has caused Emet-Selch, more than once, to privately compare them to rocks - and so he merely mimics back their own ambitions, ruthlessly bolstering support of their theaters whenever he can divert the funding for it, simply to keep himself sane.
With each new sun, Emet-Selch wakes in his borrowed flesh and feels it rest more heavily upon his spirit. He rolls over, presses his face against the heavy velvets and silks of his bedding, reminds himself of the exact way he must calibrate his voice and which opinions he must conceal. Once his mask feels properly in place - a shell of skin and solemnity - he rises and allows his attendants to dress him. He goes afterwards to make an unending assortment of declarations and speeches, spouting off the same tired lines again and again, while those around him nod and praise his wisdom.
Go forth. Conquer. Rule.
When they demand to hold yet another parade for him - not truly to celebrate him, Emet-Selch knows, but merely their own returning sense of pride - he realizes with despair that he will not be free of this guise for decades yet to come.
All he can do is close his eyes and feel himself be shut away a little more each day, suppressed beneath a role that he now must play in each waking moment without surcease.
It is a form of sleep, he thinks. A new form of oblivion for one denied it: to become as insensate as the halfmen around him, thinking only in terms of their unimaginative desires. Existing only within their limitations. Like smothering yourself with your own pillow, allowing your body weight to press you deeper into the feathers. A means of losing yourself willingly even as you black out by slow degrees, trying to ignore the small spasms of self-preservation as your body rejects your demands and tries to contort away from its own finality.
And when death comes for Solus's body one day, perhaps it will take Emet-Selch as well, dragging him into the Lifestream along with the man's soul - for he will have forgotten, by then, that he was once anything more.
The first time Emet-Selch hears of the beast upon the battlefield, it is eight years into their conquest of Othard.
"A ruse," he declares, without more than a passing glance at the report. The papers hit the table with a whisper when he tosses them down, spreading in a loose wave across the map. They have just advanced six cohorts into Dalmasca; the casualties so far are minimal. "Some form of cheap puppetry to undermine the confidence of our troops. It would not surprise me if its owners mean to execute the thing publicly as a scheme to imply my own death next."
He does not miss the uneasy looks that his officers give one another. As a tactic, such doppelgangers are uncommon, but not unmanageable. In his work as an architect of nations, Emet-Selch has seen countless false imitations set up to sow confusion within both battlefields and bedrooms; he has helped create them himself, either by recruiting actors or simply possessing the right bodies at the appropriate times. A fake Emperor upon the field is boring. Predictable.
This is little more than another quarrel for Solus zos Galvus to manage. In his heart, Emet-Selch can feel the ennui of it all weigh him down further: another barnacle clustering alongside the rest, dragging his bulk into the depths as his true shape is lost beneath the detritus it bears.
But the reports do not cease. The next ones stem from more trustworthy sources. A veteran Tribunus Laticlavius who has been praised for his steadfastness for many years, being an older soldier with a known loathing of rumors; Emet-Selch can read the latter's own self-disgust in every word of the document the man sends in, hating to join in with such foolishness, and yet duty-bound to notify his superiors. Troops whose commanders should have been unswayed by such illusions are turning, dozens of soldiers gone rogue. Recent sightings of the 3rd Cohort of IX Imperial Legion, which had all vanished in a single stroke some moons back, and which had been assumed either exterminated or deserted; such outcomes are one and the same thing.
There are several devices that can be employed for changing the minds of mortals in such quantities. But few of them overlap with all the evidence provided, and with each report comes the conclusion that this false Emperor - which has appeared from nowhere, wielding vast powers and luring any soldier he comes across to his banner - is an eikon.
An eikon. A Primal. Faced with an entire barrage of evidence, Emet-Selch leans back in his chair and studies the data being spelled out in the language of casualties upon the table.
If so, it is a puppet - much like he has become. He must address it now, before the loss of troops becomes terminal, and the Garleans grow too confused to be manageable. If he is careless, this forgery will steal his entire army away from him, and then Emet-Selch will become the substitute instead.
The idea is less dismaying than it could be. It is entirely too tempting to hand over Garlemald peaceably to this imitation, and finally escape out the back door. Perhaps they could even work out a schedule of alternating days.
But there is another impulse that stirs within Emet-Selch as he regards the map which tracks the creature's rampage across Othard. Another Ascian has had their hand in this. They must have. In order for Primals to be conveniently discovered in Othard, their concepts first had to be established - whether in stored matrices just waiting for the sufficient amount of aether and belief, or taught directly to their summoners - and Emet-Selch knows exactly when and where he had that knowledge planted. With all the debris that has built up on the Source over the years, it is not impossible for someone to have uncovered the right combination by accident - and yet, the timing of it is far too convenient.
This is no creation of some desperate auri tribe, praying to their legends. The summoners this time are Garlean, and Garlemald's only faith involves how thoroughly the rest of the world scorns them.
Emet-Selch considers, tapping his finger upon the inkblot that outlines the latest position of the beast.
What do you mean by this? he wonders towards his unknown kin. He has not thought about any of them in what feels like ages; his memories feel rusty, sluggish as he spurs them into operation. Lahabrea. Pashtarot. Elidibus. What would any of you stand to gain by pitting me against myself?
By the next moon, he has a clearer picture of the Primal, after the untempered troops have been warned to retreat from the creature's path, and only scouts and magitek devices are allowed to be sacrificed to its appetite. Garlemald does not know what to call the beast; Emet-Selch watches them scramble to interrogate the few turncoats they have captured, reluctant to report the results just in case they, too, will be considered treasonous. The enthralled soldiers refer to the Primal as the True Radiance, the Ceruleum Crown, and other such base titles. Few of them realize that they are not serving the real Solus - not that any of them are, regardless. Many believe that the Ceruleum Emperor is Emet-Selch himself upon the field, having chosen them secretly as his escort in recognition of their dedication to the cause. They are alight with the fervor and gratitude of being selected to serve in such a way, to be entrusted as part of some elite military maneuver by which they will ambush Doma itself.
The remainder of their wits are equally addled. They accuse their own comrades of serving a traitor; they screech and spit when Emet-Selch himself enters their sight, refusing to acknowledge his veracity and accusing him of being a cheap copy.
The irony does not escape him.
According to the garbled stories they manage to gather, the Primal itself is not openly monstrous, or else it would be that much easier to decry it as false. An annoyance, as Solus zos Galvus would call it. A disappointment, Emet-Selch thinks. Only two arms, two legs - such a wasted chance for creativity. This reflection. This simulacrum.
This Emperor.
The curiosity of why it exists continues to build in him, growing until it overtakes the practical disinterest he should have as Solus zos Galvus, and spurring his imagination awake. It is clear how Solus would react. The Emperor would order the thing destroyed, sweeping the matter underneath the same canopy as the rest of the star's uncivilized madness. Proof of how eikons are the greatest menace to all mankind, he would say. The presence of this Primal would become more fodder for propaganda, feeding the war effort and Garlemald's growing conviction that they must save Eorzea, if even its own mortal leaders can be distorted into such lies.
It is clear, how Solus zos Galvus would react. And - for the first time in over a mortal decade - Emet-Selch realizes that he does not want to.
There is a mystery here. He will only be able to find it if he investigates it thoroughly. Like small pockets of ceruleum being ignited in his mind, each idea begins to spark another, until his thoughts have become heated past any self-restraint. They bubble with an anticipation so foreign that he feels giddy with it, and has to rein in his own replies to his officers, lest he slip too far out of character. It would be best if he could have the thing captured. If he could study it at leisure, taking it apart and inscribing the documentation into crystal, then perhaps he might have the pleasure of uncovering the riddle stitched into its existence by its Ascian progenitor.
And yet - he cannot. Not as Solus. Solus would destroy the thing and move on. He would not have the skills to entertain himself in such a manner. Nor the desire.
These conflicting wants tug at Emet-Selch, making him impatient and fretting. He wastes several afternoons looking up remote branches of scientists, wondering if he can secretly fund one in time to contain the Primal for his own entertainment. His schedule is too full for him to vanish for even a bell, let alone a proper battle; he cannot nip out for a bit of sport on his own, and be back before anyone comes knocking.
But neither Garlemald nor the creature give him the time to devise a proper means of circumventing their watchfulness. The beast continues to worm its way south, gathering up troops in its wake like a magnet sweeping up iron filings, and finally Emet-Selch cannot ignore the confrontation forever.
When his senior officials hear that he plans to take the field himself, their reactions are - at least - predictable.
In the briefing room, the military officers shift uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking meeker without their heavy armor. The ministers wring their hands. "The risks, Your Radiance - "
"On the contrary." He does not bother looking away from the list of available troops scrolling down his datapad. They wish to send only the best with him; the best will be wasted here, but he cannot let Garlemald know it. "If we allow these barbarians to believe that anyone can be replaced by false eikons, then no governance is safe, nor any individual. If there is confusion over which of us is real, then I must be present to dispel it." Finally, he lowers the screen and regards the pale faces arrayed before him. "The risks are far greater if I do not battle this thing. Neither our people nor our enemies should be given cause to think that this foreign monstrosity is stronger than I am, or else they will use this tactic on every force Garlemald sends against them in days to come."
Again, the panicked glances; again, the same minister stammers. "But their ability to enthrall - "
Thankfully, Solus zos Galvus has a reputation of having sufficient skill to justify his confidence. Emet-Selch cannot afford to allow Garlemald to come up with its own ideas of how to handle this Primal, lest its army insist on him never even sharing the same field. He hands the tablet briskly to the aide beside him, and then addresses the doubter directly.
"Do you mean to imply that your Emperor's will is weaker than some conjured imitation?" he asks, his voice as deliberately balanced as a blade laid across a finger.
Surreptitiously, the officers surrounding the man take a casual half-step away.
There is no benefit if Emet-Selch appears too cocksure in this battle; there is always the risk of being suspected of conspiracy by those few voices who have become jealous of his rapid rise in power. But even so, there is something pleasing about the theatrics of it all, in making declarations while knowing exactly what the outcomes will be. He is in no true danger here. Compared to another few moons of pretending to care about Garlemald's medical developments, a Primal is by far the lesser threat.
Emet-Selch restrains the shrug he wishes to make, steering his face towards a properly stoic expression, as befits a leader facing an enemy of significant enough force. "I will prove stronger than this eikon. The real thing will always be better," he cannot keep from adding, and tries not to smirk when they bow and praise him with Solus Galvus's name.
The strategies to separate the beast go about as well as he expects. It is a bloody matter, splitting away the creature's vanguard through use of territory and diversionary forces, parting them from their master so they can be slaughtered on their own. The distance of its kill zone is strictly monitored; the orders to fall back sing out in a constant chorus, maintaining as much space from the Primal as possible. Otherwise, their own troops will become mere fodder - fodder which is capable of informing the enemy of their plan.
Each of the soldiers selected for Emet-Selch's honor guard expects to die. He can see it in their eyes, their nervous gulps whenever they think he is not looking. He cannot say anything to assure them. The best thing he could do on both their behalfs would be to execute them all himself the moment they enter the Primal's domain. He suspects they know that much, too.
In retrospect, Emet-Selch is fortunate that this construct is not sophisticated enough to begin giving orders to its enthralled, setting up fortresses and strongholds to occupy the territory it has taken. Instead, it moves its stolen army as a unit, sweeping like locusts across the field, and this is the first clue that Emet-Selch has towards understanding it: its summoners must think of him as an implacable, driving force, one whose true power lies in action, rather than architecture. A conqueror. One who dominates, utterly and completely.
He knows when he has breached the bubble of the creature's influence when his advance scouts suddenly stiffen, and then turn to plunge their swords into the bodies of their comrades.
From there, the mortal troops fall quickly. Emet-Selch orders his soldiers back; the Primal's forces rush forward to chase them, and then they are locked in a battle where everyone is dressed in the same uniforms, shouting the same commands and performing the same maneuvers. Both sides know how to dismantle the formations being flung against them. The slaughter is absolute.
Emet-Selch does not bother regretting the losses. All the Garleans with him today must die regardless, both enemy and ally. Either they are already enthralled, or they will become so once the Primal arrives. Even if they somehow keep their wits, they can never be allowed to speak of Emet-Selch's true power. Death is the greatest efficiency for them all.
He stabs the last surviving soldier - the souls of the rest have already begun to slip free, rising like a rainbowed mist into the sky - and then the blaze of the Primal is there.
For a moment, as he catches his breath, it feels as if Emet-Selch is staring down at a concept in one of Amaurot's workrooms: a younger researcher's practice effort, designed crudely around a few key ideas which have been laid out as part of their instructions. In their adoration, the Primal's summoners have made an Emperor whose every feature is honed past the capacity of mortal flesh. Its cheekbones alone are like a pair of stone cliffs. The massive jewel in its brow is as brilliant as a diamond. The cape wrapped around its shoulders is formed from a single liquid sheet that shimmers like blue lightning, radiating a ceruleum glow.
Its muscles are beyond unrealistic, bulging taut and sculpted like an athlete in marble - and the reason that Emet-Selch knows this is because the creature's armor appears to have been painted directly onto its body, outlining every single detail of physique in glistening detail, metal clinging like wet silk to skin.
It is extraordinarily well endowed.
His own soldiers are all dead by then, which is a mercy to them all.
The thing considers him gravely. Then - like any conqueror with an onze of sense - it attacks rather than allow Emet-Selch time to gather his wits.
The creature's summoners expected the Emperor to be skilled with a blade, and so it is surrounded by more weapons than it has hands to use. A crown of swords fans around the Primal's body, a halo of razors splayed as they rotate with it as the gravitational center. The hilt of each one is wrapped and decorated with the colors of the countries Emet-Selch has claimed, trophies that he has turned to his own use - and now, each of those lands becomes a tool for the Primal to wield as two swords detach from its arsenal and plunge towards Emet-Selch's face.
The first few sword swipes are easy enough for him to block. He deflects the first blade, steps past the reach of the second, and crosses the path of the first too rapidly for either weapon to strike without snarling the other. Even now, Emet-Selch's mind whirls like a tempest that sings with joy for its own ability to soar. All ideas of fighting evaporate from his thoughts. He is there to understand, to observe: to interpret each of the creature's motions and analyze them for aether usage, building a blueprint for its design piece by piece until the whole riddle illuminates itself with the same glory as the skies above Amaurot itself.
One of his own people engineered this. This creature is designed for him.
Another blade whips around in an attempt to eviscerate him; Emet-Selch lets it crash against his own parry. Already, his mind has jumped to the distant memory of Lahabrea's firebird from so long ago. If he could somehow wed Solus's soul to this phantom, then there would be two Emperors. Perhaps in exchange for his freedom, Solus might be willing to take over the responsibility of leading the nation. Having the Emperor be a Primal would be an irony even greater than an Ascian doing so - a true touch of poetry that would be all the more mirthful for when the deception would inevitably be found out.
Emet-Selch is in the midst of amusing himself with such a mental image when the thunder of the creature's swords warn him; in a sudden rush, they draw together before coiling back in a wheel, a dozen conquered nations blurring their colors together in a pinwheel of tassels and braids.
The Ceruleum Emperor does not bother getting its own hands filthy. Like a true ruler, it merely points, and its weapons take action for it.
Interpreting the symbolism delays Emet-Selch for a moment too long; he jerks away as half the blades detach from the array and slice in a vertical wall towards his body, intending to impale him from head to toe. The act manages to save his limbs, but the swords slice in neat parallel lines into his right leg and arm, shearing away half his pauldron with the ease of a hand sweeping away a lather of soap foam.
He ducks back, feeling pain shriek along his nerves, and then begins to try and close the gap between them in earnest.
In only a few passes, he can tell his mortal strength is outmatched. The Ceruleum Emperor is quicker; its weapons are empowered by its aether, and though Emet-Selch's own sword is enhanced by magitek design, it cannot keep up against a Primal's direct strength. Even equipped with such tools, he has a shorter reach. The charge on his blades will not last forever.
Another of the creature's swords cuts through his defenses, gouging his breastplate. A long braid in Nhalmasque's colors slaps against his face, stinging his cheeks. This beast will kill Emet-Selch with the symbols of the very nations he has claimed as prizes. He will be slaughtered by his own victories.
On the next pass, his sword snaps in half.
He is knocked to the ground by the force of it, magitek sputtering into inertia. His breath rasps in his lungs. His body is not as young as it once was when he seized the title of dictator. It is a little enough trick to strengthen his body with aether - and yet, two decades spent fighting as a mortal has left him out of practice. It has been a long time since he has had to stand alone on the field. It has been a long time since he has lived as an Ascian.
When he tries to catch his balance, feeling exhaustion and bloodloss gnaw at his strength, he hears himself gasping.
The Emperor's perfect face cracks into a triumphant smile. Even its teeth are flawless, Emet-Selch notes pettily; someone clearly paid too much attention to detail. It lifts an arm slowly, aiming its finger in imperious demand towards him as all of its swords slowly orient their points towards Emet-Selch's head.
"Kneel," it purrs, its voice a velvet rumble. "Serve me. Crawl upon your belly and place your mouth against my boot, and mayhap I will be lenient in your punishment."
"What a vast number of fantasies you must have fulfilled in your creation," Emet-Selch pants, catching his breath, and then he shoves himself backwards and off the ground entirely.
He allows the air to catch his weight for him, whisking him safely away from the blades which rush forward, twisting in their path to chase his flight. He sheds the broken remains of his sword, and rips the weight of his reinforced scabbard free, tossing both aside. His own cloak goes next, crumpling to the ground and empty of any significance.
Even then, he is slower than the weapons themselves as they spiral up into the sky - and then plunge down towards him, a rain of metal and revenge.
Emet-Selch slips between spaces.
It is an Ascian trick, and he employs it freely now, teleporting away with the ease of a leaf being caught by the breeze. The creature roars with anger, spouting off some string of commands that Emet-Selch barely pays attention to; he can tell that it is not capable of such magicks, limited by the imaginations of a people who never knew the true nature of their Emperor, let alone the full reach of his power. It cannot fight him like this. It does not even know what he is.
"Shh, shh," he chides, teasing a basic shield out of the dust of his memory: a simple shell of power that blocks the next wave of swords as the tide splits in half and attempts to strike both his flanks at once. Then, like a chained alchemical reaction, another design works its way into Emet-Selch's mind. Designed for protecting taller buildings against the vibrations from earthquakes, it had been one of his favorite tools for dispersing kinetic force. He has not touched the concept for hundreds of years, but it remains faithfully there for him anyway, its structure still held in memory.
He calls it into shape now, glittering hexagons springing around him like a protective honeycomb. It is a true Ascian creation: even intended for utility, there is an innate beauty in its opalescent form. Rainbows chase each other over the glossy panes, reacting to the merest hint of the elements around them. They deflect the next wave of blades, and a chorus of color explodes in a soundless burst of power, the red of fire mixing with violet lightning as the ward absorbs the force.
The swords skitter away harmlessly. In the opening presented, Emet-Selch launches his first volley back, plucking off a few hexagons like fruit and sending them spinning in long arcs that move with deceptive slowness before they suddenly bolt towards their prey.
The Ceruleum Emperor bats them away impatiently; Emet-Selch does not bother to be insulted. The entirety of his attention is focused instead on the smoothness of the Primal's motions, observing the way that energy flows from the center of its core out through its limbs and connects to each blade.
It is new, he thinks, with real excitement. This is a new thing, a tactic that he and the other Ascians have not tried upon each other before, and even though it borrows from principles that they have already established - Primals, after all, are hardly a fresh invention - it is enough to intoxicate his interest. It electrifies his blood. One by one, it feels as if parts of himself are waking up again, with the buzzing of a limb whose bloodflow has been restored, until all of his nerves are left singing.
The fight does not matter. Only the discovery. Only the delight of remembering pattern after pattern, weaving shapes from his own imagination to counteract each of the beast's moves: a game of pure creation, locked away from Emet-Selch's hands for so very long that he forgot, even briefly, that he was capable of it at all.
As he blocks another assault, snapping his palm up to spread the shield into a flat wall - the swords merely bending their momentum at a right angle, like hawks arrowing towards the sun - Emet-Selch finally pieces together the heart of this particular riddle.
The battlefield around them has been cleared. He stands in a private theater of one, where he is both audience and actor. He is an Ascian, isolated and aided by no one, confronted by mortal ambition - no, by mortal delusion, forced to stare at the image of himself that Garlemald perceives him to be. This thing, this Ceruleum Emperor is merely the facade he has allowed himself to become: a living mirror which embodies all the fanatical, distorted ideals that mortals have made of him in their minds.
This is what mortals think of him. How they conceive of him, on levels both conscious and instinctual. How they understand him, in this rippling caricature of power they would worship and fear at the same time, a god that demands the submission of their very souls.
This is how mortals love him.
The deftness of such a ploy takes Emet-Selch's breath away for a second time - in appreciation, rather than from exhaustion. Such artistry has Lahabrea's hand all over it, save that there are knots of aetheric conversion in the entity's design which resemble Igeyorhm's craftsmanship, pushing raw energy on demand through channels which are reinforced to handle it, rather than doling it out in measured intervals like the beat of a heart. The spindles of its limbs remind him of Altima's designs. The alternating elements of its attacks almost feel like something he once saw Emmerololth make once, invoking an electrical storm.
He wants to linger longer, to untangle the remains of every influence that might have gone towards the crafting of this particular beast. But the dance cannot last forever. The next time that Emet-Selch twists about, dodging another round of swords that circle him like angry hornets, he catches a glimpse of airships in the sky. Troops are already on their way to come to his aid - imagining, of course, that he could possibly ever have need of them.
He abandons all mischief along with defensive tactics, sowing the air with aether brambles that shudder with an elemental instability packed within each shell. They burrow into the Primal as it passes through the cloud of them, latching onto its armor, its weapons, the glossy locks of its hair. He waits until the hooks have worked their way into every part of the creature, and then Emet-Selch orders the remainder of their tethers to fasten onto the air itself, locking into place with an absolute finality.
The next step the Primal takes rips its own flesh off its bones.
It staggers, howling, as each motion pulls it further apart. Its fine cloak melts into tatters, dripping iridescent liquid that splashes against the soil. Emet-Selch does not give it a chance to regain its strength. With a simple conversion of energy, he tears it open with a thousand detonations, the elemental balance of each bramble allowed to topple with catastrophic results.
Sword blades shatter into a mist of razored shrapnel, spewing themselves onto the wind; Emet-Selch slips into intangibility the moment before they would have shredded him into raw meat, feeling the distant sting of their aether rip through the places where his organs would have been. The beast is tottering, tumbling down to the dirt. The stability of its creation matrix is already ruined. All its beautiful art is now lost, without a chance to properly copy it down for reference later.
It shudders, shedding even more of its armor like a crackling husk. Emet-Selch solidifies his form once more, and lands gently on the dirt beside it. As he does, the creature manages to radiate one last, useless pulse of energy: a tempering call, in hopes of converting its enemy's malice to devotion.
Emet-Selch feels it pass harmlessly over him with all the strength of a dying spring breeze. He crouches down, smirking into the hateful mirror of its perfect face.
"What makes you think, at this juncture of the game," he asks mirthlessly, "that you could convince me to love myself?"
He leans back on his heels to glance at the ruined earth around them, not bothering to mark the creature's reply. The heat from their battle is already beginning to cool; soon, imperial troops will be swarming over the field to support their Emperor. There will be scientists and engineers ushering him back to safety and analyzing every scrap of data available, gathering the bodies of the fallen. Physickers will examine every ilm of him for both physical and aetheric contamination; his officers and advisors will watch for any sign that his mind may have been swayed after all, compromised despite all his claims of strength. Any decisions he makes to honor - or not - the tempered soldiers will be evaluated. Every troop position he orders will be analyzed a second time, just in case his judgement has been overridden beyond his control. He will have to restrain every part of his true self even more tightly than before, until Garlemald can relax and be assured that they have not lost their figurehead of victory.
The moment he steps off this battlefield, the bars of his prison will slam down once more. He will have to be Solus zos Galvus again - that much is inescapable.
Yet as the Primal writhes, and Emet-Selch looks down dispassionately towards it, he finds the satisfaction of his triumph settling in like a coat of gold over his bones. The delight of having had a chance to play again feels like the purest water soaking into his soul, revitalizing parts of his spirit that have been so long parched that he had forgotten what it was like to move freely, to stretch his powers and recall their force. To be himself again, in ways he only can be as an Ascian - along with a warning of what he had nearly allowed himself to become.
He will pretend to be Solus zos Galvus. But he will not be Solus in his heart, and he will not die as Solus either. Whenever the unbearable ennui of it threatens to drag him down again, Emet-Selch will be able to remember this day, holding it like a butterfly of aether in his fingers: a creation of Ascian hands, Ascian dreams and cleverness.
But most of all, when the time comes, he will not drown within this mortal ruin. He will not become this thing that Garlemald lusts after, either mortal or Primal. He may yet choose someday to shelve away his name, and serve only as an empty, masked tool of Zodiark - but when that day arrives, he will do it as an Ascian.
He will do it as himself.
The Primal wails in fury. When Emet-Selch presses his boot upon its decaying forearm, he shatters its bones beneath his weight.
It would have been a better Solus zos Galvus than he could ever be. It has no hidden agendas that serve a secret god. It almost certainly loves its people, because that is what they believe their Emperor does. Perhaps it might have even led them to victory across the entire star. It is a dream for mortals by mortals, which has no bearing upon his true nature at all.
Emet-Selch smiles at it in benediction.
"It seems I have conquered you instead, Solus Galvus," he drawls, and - with a snap of his fingers - reduces the shell of the Emperor to dust.