Thirteen is a number of great fortune.

In aetherology, it is a number of stability:

six elements polarized Astral, six Umbral, with an unaspected party in the middle.
With Azem so often absent, Amaurot holds only thirteen of the Convocation as well
-- which means six votes per side at most, with the last to break any ties. It is a
prime number. It is the seventh curve in a spiral sequence.
It is balanced in its own lack of divisibility.
Whenever the Convocation must renew one of its members, the count of them goes down
to thirteen as well -- but no lower. They always replenish their ranks. Always.
Thirteen is their baseline, their recovery mark. It is the representation of all of
them together: diminished, but regrouping.
Igeyorhm is not a student of the abstract mathematics which Loghrif is so fond of,
nor of the geometries which mark all of Emmerololth's designs. Her love of the
number is a simpler joy, like relishing the air after a rainstorm: the tickle of
cool breezes stirring the curtains, petrichor filtering up to the windows of her
home. It is the center around which Igeyorhm's world revolves around, a private
talisman which promises her that the world is balanced safely upon its rim.
After the Sundering, the rule of Thirteen no longer holds. The Convocation is
scattered, shattered to a fraction of its strength; there are only three
Unsundered, while the rest of them have been multiplied by a factor of fourteen.
Increased and decreased, a surfeit of reduction. Nothing adds up.
But thirteen is still lucky, for that is the shard which is furthest from the
Source and Hydaelyn's tepid aether. It is suffused already in Darkness, furthest
from the Light. Everything about its existence is proof of their ability to recover
-- to keep hope burning strong, despite everything that has been done to them.
Igeyorhm volunteers eagerly for its shard.
Even though she lacks the inquisitiveness of Mitron or the patience of Altima,
Igeyorhm's particular strength has always lain within her capacity for faith. It is
one of the most vital components of being able to shape creation from nothingness.
In order to manifest a tangible result from your own willpower and imagination, you
must first overcome the doubts which hiss, why would anyone wish to see what you
make, what could you possibly create that is useful, what value do you bring to the
world -- and force that confidence into a shape for others to finally perceive.
The teachers in Amaurot are very clear about the uses of natural biology, and what
can be accomplished by specifically-tailored phantoms. Merely hoping for a tool
that can perform a function is not enough. It is destructive beyond measure to
create without understanding consequences, like bluntly applying predators to stamp
out infestations -- only to have those same beastkin overhunt an ecosystem to
extinction. You cannot find the solution without first understanding the problem's
nature, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of your particular solution. To craft
a beast without knowing its motions is to create a shell at best, hollow and unable
to act.
But if you believe your effort is doomed from the start -- if it has a hidden flaw,
some secret weakness -- then it will be. Your own hands will determine it. Your own
mind will undercut you.
Faith is a vital component of every Ascian's existence. Faith in the aether of the
star, in your people's love around you. In the world's willingness to grant you the
aid you seek, to cherish you as much as you cherish it back.
Faith in yourself.
When the Thirteenth is destroyed, Igeyorhm feels herself being eradicated along
with it. Its aether drains into the bellies of starving voidkin. The currents of
the Underworld run dry. Like water running backwards into the ocean, Igeyorhm
cannot stem it with her hands; the tide seeps through her fingers, soaking through
the sand and vanishing forever. She cannot save its life. She can only watch as it
dwindles into nothingness, like a great eye closing forever, and play witness to
how it ends.
She mourns on every level imaginable. Her own soul is gone. Her people's souls,
dried to dust. Another piece of Zodiark -- a stepping stone back to their salvation
-- is now suspended lifelessly in the rift for all eternity, useless to the Source
and forever rejected by it.
And -- while she cannot somehow think to mourn herself any higher than the millions
upon millions of lost souls -- Igeyorhm's grief continues to wind inwards, no
matter how she strives to push it aside. Luck has failed them. The world has
abandoned its love for the Ascians. And with it all goes the child that Igeyorhm
had been, who had trusted in the fundamental harmony of a benevolent universe with
every fiber of her identity.
It is the death of faith that she watches gutter out in the last embers on the
Thirteenth, like the shocking emptiness left behind after someone takes a last step
off a cliff. It is the death of someone who believed.
Every time Igeyorhm allows herself to sleep, she dreams of everything she did
wrong.
When she forces herself to wake, her breath is sour in her mouth. It is impossible
to pinpoint exactly where she had initially gone astray -- whether it was during
the last confrontation with Thirteenth's defenders, or the very first -- and so
everything she has ever done in her long life is suspect. Every hope, every goal,
every drop of confidence marks her as a failure in advance.
There is nothing of value in her. There never was to begin with.
Like an allergic overreaction, Igeyorhm's body cannot stomach even the slightest
hint of the number after its shard has burned away. Her aversion becomes
compulsive; she splits lines of chairs into totals of seven and six, kicks aside
stones and tears the heads off flowers as she passes by. She counts and adjusts
rows of cups whenever she drifts through people's abodes, scornful of whatever
rumors of mysterious hauntings she may be leaving behind. At one point -- visiting
the kitchens of a nobleman whose dishware is filigreed with gold, a smirking excess
as he eats from tables which trumpet his own wealth -- she finds herself grasping a
plate in both hands and shattering it upon the floor.
She counts the broken chunks of pottery like a scryer would read the bones, and
finds herself exhaling slowly when the tally is twenty-four.
A thousand bad habits sculpt themselves out of her own fears. One thousand,
thirteen thousand; it makes no difference in her folly. If reversing her own
superstition might act as a ward to protect her, she would accept eradicating the
number from all of reality to keep herself safe.
There had been no reason for her to expect such betrayal. The loss of the
Thirteenth had been, at worst, a flaw of overconfidence. The blame is shared by all
the Convocation, as Emet-Selch has wearily reminded her. None of them had known
precisely how a Rejoining would work. It had been an experiment. They had all
believed wrongly.
But Igeyorhm knows: the fault does not belong to them as a whole. She had seen the
danger signs. She had been the one to decide that more darkness was needed, not
less. In her confidence, in her faith, she had ignored all caution and had pressed
on anyway, convincing herself that she did not need to stop and wait, that she did
not have to fear. The world favored them. The Thirteenth shard was proof.
The blame is hers, obliquely. She blames herself overtly. The Convocation moves on.
And, as the centuries roll past -- the frustration of it all wrapping around them
more tightly with each borrowed body they steal, like a poison unleashed upon them
by their living hosts as revenge -- she watches them grow steadily more willing to
forget only a portion of the equation of fault, and cling to the half that condemns
her.
Less and less often, she hears, the fault belongs to us all. Now, everyone is too
tired to defend her, even in their own hearts. Whenever the topic arises of how
many more shards remain to restore Zodiark, each Convocation member simply glances
in Igeyorhm's direction, as if she had chosen to sabotage their efforts
deliberately, starting them off at a disadvantage rather than admit to ignorance.
Her courage -- which she had once been so proud of -- becomes a shuddering,
boneless thing.
The change in it infects her work. Igeyorhm never held an open fervor for phantom
creation, but even the simpler designs become corrupted in her hands. She crafts
butterflies whose wings shatter like ice the moment the breeze touches them. She
draws fish out of snow that writhe before swelling and exploding into red slush.
Angry with her own incompetence, she casts about for a memory of one of Mitron's
creations -- an amphibious wavekin -- and weaves its concept doggedly into shape.
Its bones form correctly. The flesh is simple enough. Yet, just as Igeyorhm dusts a
layer of scales across the creature's body, her mind treacherously slides to
envisioning Emet-Selch's reaction to all the rest of her attempts. In her thoughts,
she can imagine his whisper, whip-quick: of course she failed, what else did you
expect from her, from someone so impetuous.
Cradled in Igeyorhm's palms, the creature's flesh ripples. Its spine unzips along
its length, ribs reversing into fangs as a newborn mouth opens wide and whispers
the same condemnations in Emet-Selch's voice.
She screams, horrified, and flings the monstrosity to the ground, where it strikes
with a wet, splattering noise. Undeterred, it rolls with its mouth facing towards
her, still chanting: of course of course she failed of course.
She disintegrates its aether with a burst of thought. After its essence scatters
into the smallest rainbowed motes, she clasps her arms around her body as she
shudders, fighting to smother both fear and truth with the same gesture.
When Emet-Selch approaches her a few moons later, part of Igeyorhm is terrified
that he has somehow found out about her malformed making: that it had opened up a
path directly across the rift, and had channeled his mind directly to berate her.
Yet the man merely looks weary, exhausted by life, as if he is in the midst of
making an argument to reality as to why it should unmake him on the spot. He comes
to a halt before her with his lips already frowning, a mirror to the lines of his
mask.
"You are to be paired with Lahabrea," he announces flatly. "Congratulations."
"With Lahabrea?" she barks, all her disbelief on display. Even with their forces
stunted, their Seeker remains one of their strongest. He is Unsundered, he is
masterful. He is a creator and creative, a visionary who will almost certainly
devise the solution they need with the same inspirational drive that has caused him
to leap over any number of otherwise impossible conundrums in the past. There is no
means by which Igeyorhm can contribute. Not in her current condition. "What am I to
do, make things for him?"
But Emet-Selch only scowls all the deeper. "Yes," he insists, the order brittle.
"Make them."
She thinks, at first, that it is some horrible jest. Some new cruelty, as they are
all discovering the applications of hatred: that Igeyorhm is so pathetic and
useless that she is to be assigned the person who needs her the least. That, when
Lahabrea comes to collect her, he will demand for her to demonstrate the skills she
no longer possesses, and then cast her aside with the proof of her unsuitability.
But -- like Emet-Selch -- their Seeker merely looks hollowed out from within,
accepting the burden of her presence with a sullen nod, and a wave of his hand to
indicate that she should follow. He does not call firebirds to attend his every
whim, or spend his days in giddy speculation, devastating reams of parchment with
sketches of living statues with faceted jewels for eyes, or amphibians with
dragonfly wings. Nor does he demand for Igeyorhm to show him any of her own
designs. Sun after sun goes past while Lahabrea conjures only the basics of
elements to his hands, no less destructive for all their raw fury -- and she
realizes, slowly, that he is as empty as she is. As if there is something so deeply
torn out of him that the remains of his soul have been broken without it, a
keystone excised from his heart, and the rubble left behind has come to the
decision to slowly crumble rather than try to stand on its own. One more brick
sliding free each year, powerless to even find a clean end for itself without the
intervention of an earthquake to swallow it whole.
So she does. She creates for him. In her rough, cringing way, rife with failures:
she makes the designs that he cannot. And when she, too, fails at this so often
that she resorts to simple elements as well -- ice storms, sheets of sleet,
stalactites snapped free of the heavens to plummet down upon their foes -- Lahabrea
never comments.
He merely nods, incinerates the leftovers still standing, and then they move onto
the next task together.
She has just finished shredding apart a fine tapestry on the Source -- a woven map
of thirteen desert nations, very pretty and very nerve-wracking -- when Lahabrea
kicks up his feet upon the table, staring bleakly at the ceiling.
"When we revive Lord Zodiark," he begins -- when, not if, as some of the Sundered
have started to refer to it, "what shall we do about Venat's restoration?"
Taken aback, Igeyorhm blinks. It is a highly practical question, so much so that
she wonders why no one else in the Convocation has voiced it before. "Venat is the
cause of all our suffering, Lahabrea. Why would you want to? Is it even possible
that they might be recoverable from Hydaelyn?"
Lahabrea shakes his head, dubious in every way save that his eyebrows are arched in
curiosity, meaning that he truly wishes to find out. "If Elidibus could return to
us, there is no reason that Venat could not be separated the same way. And if our
wish is to restore every Ascian soul and raise our people back up to power," he
continues, pushing against the desk with his boots so that his chair tips up, "then
how should we begin to pick and choose? Do we stop with everyone who aided in
Hydaelyn's summoning? What of those who aided them? And of those who did naught,
save agree with them in their hearts?" He rocks the chair back and forth, and then
sighs, his energy dimming. "Regardless, we will have to make peace with Azem, at
least. In some shape or form."
This is even less palatable to consider. Venat's actions were clear, but Azem's
less so. Their errant fourteenth member might not have contributed to the
enervation of their star -- but abandoning the Convocation beforehand in the
crisis's first wave had been nearly as bad. Still, Igeyorhm can understand the
reasoning. There had been hard words exchanged in the midst of a disaster, and no
time to make peace. Had Azem's dissent come at any other moment, they would have
resolved matters properly: with extended debate and discussion, both sides working
hard towards a mutual understanding until they shared an agreement once again.
"Must we?"
"The seat cannot stand empty forever -- though it has done well thus far," Lahabrea
adds with a bitter, dry laugh. "Else we may be the Convocation of Thirteen from now
on, and dwell in the legacy of our failure even after the restoration of our star."
Igeyorhm grimaces out of habit now, though the thought itself is equally
disquieting. You would bring a fresh Doom by naming us so, she wants to say --
except her protest is worth nothing, being only a parasitical worm that gnaws
through her thoughts and seeks to burrow into others. "'Twould take even more of a
miracle to sway them. That, or we feed them to Lord Zodiark against their wills, I
suppose. What other choice is there? The person I was in the past would not be able
to do such a thing. But the person I am," she acknowledges, each word as heavy as a
spadeful of dirt upon her own coffin, "is capable of so much less, even though I
could perform such an act without a second thought now."
She does not look at Lahabrea when she admits the last, not wanting to witness the
lack of surprise which she can guess must be on his face. She has already
demonstrated her ineptitude too many times over by now. She is no longer suitable
to be a member of the Convocation. She is no longer suitable to be an Ascian at
all.
But after a moment of silence, the scrape of his chair against the floor drags her
attention back anyway. Lahabrea has dropped his feet back to the ground; he is
looking up towards her, and enough of his bitterness has eased that a flicker of a
different emotion has made it through, as fragile as a seedling against a winter
frost.
For the first time since her assignment to him, Igeyorhm sees the corner of his
mouth make a small, wry smile. "Then that makes two of us."
The acceptance of it is strange. It settles painlessly in Igeyorhm's chest, warming
some of the ache that has dwelt there for longer than she can count. She takes a
breath, and finds that she is breathing easier: a simple in and out of her lungs,
with no greater expectations than that for success.
She sets aside the shredded remains of the tapestry without allowing herself to
count what is left. "Agreed."
Two is not a fortunate number. It is too easily split apart and reduced. Its
numbers quarrel with itself. It is not much luck, particularly not against the odds
they are given -- but, Igeyorhm decides, it may be a place to start.