Calm Flames
Blades that come in pairs are...well, they're rare.
All Blades are rare, just as all humans are rare. But then there are dual wielders, those of certain elements, those with odd Core Crystal placements, those with progressively more inhumanoid features (horns, haunches, flames and flickers, sentient accessories of all manner shape, detached limbs or places on their body where there's nothing binding the frame together at all), those who don't open their eyes and those who never blink.
Each attribute has no need of being treated as dependent or independent. No one's doing the science on summoning these Blades, with percentage chance of scoring one versus another. We can just assume, from plain sight, that progressively, additively, and perhaps also multiplicatively, some Blades are less likely to have just happened that way than others. And some look quite curiously just exactly like their Drivers of yore.
People say Aegaeon looks like a common Blade. People say Brighid looks like a common harlot. If you look and listen hard enough, they do, anyway. That'll be those who more openly scorn the imperialism that clenches the iron fist of Mor Ardain's own artefice, and thus judge the Jewel as not worthy of her associated pomp ceremony. Certainly, she earns it more and more, over the years, decades, centuries.
For her part, however, Brighid thinks Aegaeon looks quite handsome indeed, and that a finer companion for her couldn't have been found. She's quite content to last the generations with him at her side, a constant in her journals, the Driver noble and agreeable enough but the partner Blade nobler still, magnificent as no other.
Aegaeon's regard is not for Brighid's appearance, but for her affect; her bearing. He is a veritable king when it comes to devotion, platonic or otherwise, and she strides the halls of the palace, or any other place, as a queen in every sense. They are lucky (lucky? indeed, it is so) to have been afforded awakening in an environment that permits their free roam, and their own quarters, when their services are not needed; where should Aegaeon go, when he has naught else to do? He might ask Brighid, of course.
Brighid is the only one who has ever seen Aegaeon cry. Some cycles back, Brighid had left herself a note to let Aegaeon be, if not the only, perhaps the first to see her open, simmering violet eyes - not to scandalize him, not to play cheap tricks, but simply because she can. Because she was and is called to. For what else are true partners for?
(Aegaeon keeps record by letters written to his absent Jewel, while Brighid's entire personal history is maintained in various styles in her journals, and she does not write extensively about him. This caused quite a backfire when once the floodgates had opened to a new Brighid and an old Aegaeon, but because they were Aegaeon and Brighid, at heart, all was soon calm again.)
Shared with each other, their idiosyncrasies are unsurprising, yet sacred. Shared between the two, food is neatly sorted: none else would indulge Aegaeon's sweet tooth, because, in usual circumstance, none else know. He steals from her the fruity salsas and the crusty bread. She steals from him the succulent fowl and fish that he has caught and prepared, but plated for two in perfect equanimity (Aegaeon loves, treasures, stipulates things that come in perfect pairs).
They'd never give such a relationship up. They never have to; they are lucky (yes, lucky). Sometimes Aegaeon is more a gentleman; sometimes he is moreover stiff. Sometimes sillier, sometimes sweeter, sometimes brusque and all of business. Sometimes Brighid sways sterner with him, and sometimes she drapes benevolence over his staunch forearm. She is always willful, and he is always principled. If they are undecorous, it is only together.
The Sword: Leave it to me, Aegaeon. On the offensive. Now you have me to deal with.
The Shield: You always overextend, Brighid. On the defensive. Rest now. I cannot watch you get hurt.
And when by the wanderers' campfire they stand, it is, however unfortunately, not to and for each other that they can account. They are employed at the emperor's back, or to the back of his friend, the prince, whose own Blades sit near and far from him. They should sit, certainly, and take rest as people, but Aegaeon is wary, and will not cease to stand, so Brighid stands with him, defense at their hands.
What would they have, had they not each other?
Royal blue, both of them bear. Cascades of hair and disciplined water flail at their backs, rippling ether coursing through their sides; spirits soaring in the tides of battle, throughout history and throughout Alrest.
If complicit in a country that wages, and takes it stock not by agriculture and art, they have not the force, whether internal or external, to take such a turn; to be the ones who killed the emperor and yielded themselves to the next most opportunistic palm. They stand in their tight mutual circle and persist across time, together. Blades that come in pairs and stay that way are rare.
Careful faces. Surging chest. Gleaming Cores. Upright head.
Indeed. They are Ardainian Blades.