Quote Originally Posted by Nalien View Post
I wonder if there is any relevance to Phoenix essentially showing up in that story? A little bonus explanation as to how Louisoix ended up merging with it, perhaps? Hope it's not foreshadowing anything... Only Deus ex Phoenix I want to see is Alphinaud finally popping out a Phoenix-Egi.

Nice to see that Hades is the OG Primal Slayer, too.
Is this Phoenix an actual Primal as we understand it, though? It mostly seems unusual in the context of the story because it is an arcane construct with a soul, unlike everything else the Amaurotines (and possibly other Ancients) created. As far as I can tell, the presence (or absence) of a soul is not really relevant to Primal-dom, except possibly in the sense of "to be sapient, you need a soul".

As far as I can tell, Hades's responsibility here is to use his special connection to the Lifestream/Underworld to send this aether back forcibly. That, or maybe it's his power as a "sorcerer of eld", ie being a better mage than everyone else.

Also prior to this I assumed that Louisiox becoming the Phoenix Primal was because he heard the legends about Suzaku via some Sharlayan academic route, and used that as inspiration for a life-giving being, but with this story I'm beginning to wonder if there's a much earlier common mythical source for both Suzaku and Louisoix's Phoenix. Especially since there's the tantalizing hypothesis that the architecture and design of Akademia Anyder seems to be surprisingly close to what we know of Sharlayan architecture.

(Then again, it could just be a commonality in out-of-universe inspirations, ie pop culture Ancient Greece.)