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Originally Posted by
RyuDragnier
I'm thinking...
Zenos seemed to recognize the person in white, and was somewhat shocked to see them. Meaning it's possibly somebody he knew, but it's doubtful it's one of our copies because he would have drawn his weapon immediately. My money is on either the good doctor we fought in Ala Mhigo or Asahi, since either would make for an interesting twist as somebody he knew and would likely be willing to work with.
The "hue" remark I took to be Zenos recognizing the type of soul (say... an Ascian soul...), but not the individual. Whoever it is seems to have some idea of Zodiark and would like to help Zenos hunt Zodiark. That rules out a lot IMO, though arguably if Elidibus is pulling the strings he'd likely give such a puppet the right words to buy favour with Zenos. For someone to know "full well [Zodiark]" I can only really say Ascian, though. Arguably only one of the big three, but that only leaves Elidibus, who we can rule out I think... Emet we saw turn to dust... So that leaves...
Lahabrea. My theory always was that Lahabrea didn't want to revive Zodiark, he wanted to become Zodiark. The whole Shiva/Thordan Primal experiment was to that end, perhaps even the whole Terminus event leading up to the summoning of Zodiark. Zenos has already displayed the ability to take over a summoned Primal (Shinryu), now he sets his sights on Zodiark... Time for Lahabrea to come out from whatever rock he is hiding under, assuming we buy my "He survived being sucked into Thordans personal sword-battery" line of fanciful theorycrafting. His aether wasn't consumed, it was stored, and that gave him the opportunity to eventually break free and hide away to work on his own goals. Now he helps Zenos track his prey, then snatches it up from right under his nose...

Originally Posted by
RyuDragnier
As for the other...
I'm betting money that it's Elidibus. As unlikely as it would be for him to find Ardbert's body, he needs to keep us stuck on the First for a while. This would require him manipulating things to keep our attention focused there, and finding out he was there would definitely be a big one to keep us from going back to the Source too soon. Not to mention this would be their best chance to flesh him out and explain why he's so obsessed with equilibrium, considering everything he has done up to this point has been for that singular motive...even fighting us back in 4.5 when a Calamity of Light was about to occur (something the other Ascians wanted) when killing us would have thrown the balance into the favor of Darkness and probably prevented it.
Would he be doing this directly, though? He wants to keep us busy on the First presumably so he has more of a free reign to manipulate events on the Source. If he is personally keeping us busy, that's a problem. I guess if we take the guy on the Source to be his puppet, that frees him up on the First... Still, that seems unbelievably risky... We're all meant to be under the impression that he is the last of the unsundered, the only Ascian left who can help raise up his brethren... If we toss some Auracite (which conveniently came up this patch) his way then it's game over for their entire ambition. He should be far more cautious... That's the whole reason he "Nope!"'d out of an encounter with Zenos, after all... We don't have G'raha trying to summon us to give him an edge next time we encounter him and I don't think Ardbert is a stronger body than Zenos...
Either way though, I do find it a bit disappointing to be reusing Ardbert in this manner... He had a nice send off, to bring his corpse back or to just have another Shards "us" also look the same as Ardbert... Eh, I guess I prefer the former in that case... There's more drama if it is Ardberts corpse... I would hope it isn't Elidibus though, that just seems too reckless, plenty of other Ascians he could send to do the grunt work... Sets a fairly haunting prospect, too... Hope he doesn't send any other fallen heroes our way...