mental link // S72

[servitor]

DIASPEIREIN To scatter, spread about.	MELIORISM The belief that the world gets better.
ORIFLAMME A symbol or standard that inspires confidence, devotion, or courage.	VANGUARD The troops moving at the head of an army.

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[servitor]

With sodas?

[Nyx looks incredibly dubious, but then again, his magic wasn't anything close to the royal's use of the magic.

But he's definitely sure using magic on soda was never on the list of things to use magic on.

Still, he takes the soda, not quite moving to open it yet.]

[somnifacient]

[listen stop judging our stupid canon okay]

Well, yeah. Or anything that you can drink, I guess. If it's in a container, it's easier to carry around.

[This makes sense to him, at least. Lucis Caelums and their magic.]

It's a life-saver on the go, basically.

[servitor]

[the self-awareness is strong in this one]

We had to do things the old-fashioned way out there: with our hands.

[somnifacient]

I wish I had the kind of magic to support the entire Glaive with healing sodas. [Healing potions, really. That sounded better.] But I'm pretty sure I'd pass out from exhaustion just from trying.

[Or maybe he would have, once. Imbued with the power of the Crystal, anything was possible.

That's gone too, now. Faded and far-away.]

But, uh. That's not why I asked you here. There's a lot that you don't know, about what happened between your last memory and mine. A difference in years.

[A fingernail taps against his soda can.]

I figured it's only fair for me to answer any questions you have about the... future.

[servitor]

[Nyx sighs, playing with the can in his hand. Sure, he wanted to know about the future.

What good is the future if he didn't know the past, the way things really happened?]

I think I need to tell you first what happened the day Insomnia fell. Or as much as I know of it at least. It's pretty obvious Insomnia didn't make it out by your time.You know I was there when the city fell, and I was helping the Princess get the Ring back to you.

[Nyx scrubs his face. He doesn't know where to start. It's a lot to unpack.]

I think you should ask me first. Start from the beginning, work our way up to where you are.

[somnifacient]

[It's a reasonable request, but Noctis can't help but cast his gaze to the side anyway. Start from the beginning, wind their way to the end in all its darkness. But for some reason, he had thought that talking about his own experiences would be easier than listening to what Nyx had to tell him. The loss of Insomnia, the loss of his father, and so much more.

But one way or another, they need to have this conversation. So he nods, looking at the Glaive directly again.]

All right. Tell me... how it all went down. [A sweeping generalization, so Noctis attempts to specify. Might as well stop dancing around the one subject that'll hurt the most.] Were you there when dad... [He frowns, but pushes through.] When dad was killed.

[servitor]

[There's a pause, thoughtful, somber. He's trying to arrange the events as best as possible, trying to gloss over insignificant details and trying to put together what mattered.]

Drautos had been working with the Empire. I don't know how long, but long enough that some big promises had been made to him. If you ever met a General Glauca, that was him. He was the one that killed your father. [His eyes flicker, does his damned best to not think about what happened and simply speak of them without the pictures to go with the words.] He tried to protect us. He did protect us. He made a wall between us and himself. He told Princess Lunafreya to take the Ring, and for me to go with her. Drautos stabbed him with his sword and killed him. King Regis knew it was the end for him. Your father knew that day wouldn't end well for him or the kingdom.

[He fishes out from his pocket the duplicate Ring, dead as can be, gleaming black and deceptively inviting on the table he sets it on. The Ring of kings, the Ring of power, the Ring that undid so much, and was meant to save them all, too.] Princess Lunafreya had meant to carry this to you, you know that. I put it on and it was the last of anything before I got here. The Empire had overrun the city by then, releasing daemons into the city to track us.

[somnifacient]

[Noctis may not be cognizant of it now, listening intently to Nyx, but later he'll be appreciative of how he's not flooded with the images and emotions of his father's death. Nyx's willpower is something of a bulwark against these memories, strengthened by how Noctis is also trying very hard to not let this news affect him outwardly.

(Internally, though, is another matter. Ten years ago, he was forced to come to terms with his father's death on the fly. No time to breathe, no time to mourn. Only to keep moving forward, pressing grief down further and further within himself to deal with it later.

Later's now, hilariously enough. But he refuses to unravel in front of Nyx, and so he only sits up straighter in his chair, hand still clenched around his soda can.)]

So the peace treaty really was just a sham. They never intended to see it through to the end in the first place. [He knew that, but hearing it from Nyx only reiterates this a hundred times over. Noctis eyes the ring that the Glaive sets on the table, a perfect, empty clone of the one around his finger. Both without their power.

He reaches out to pick up the ring, but his hand stops just inches above it. He lifts his gaze to Nyx.] Mind if I...? [Look at it. Copied ring or otherwise, it feels like it belongs more to Nyx than to himself.]

[servitor]

[Nyx nods in regards to the Ring. It's not like it's his, anyway.]

King Regis knew they would never sign. He did it anyway, to attract all the attention to the city instead of to you. [A beat.] The Princess was kidnapped the day of the treaty. I don't know if the Nifs expected us to find her, or if they expected anyone to figure out how many of the Glaive had been bought out by them. By the end, I think it was just me with the Lucian crown. Everyone else was dead or defected. The Princess put up a fight of her own, I'll give her that. She damn well near killed us both on the way back to the city just so the Nifs wouldn't get the Ring or be able to use her powers.

[Throwing herself out of a falling airship, just to prove herself free, just to avoid the Empire getting the power they so wanted? He probably aged ten years in those two seconds she was in free-fall. If he'd had more time, he probably would've scolded her even more than he already had.]

[somnifacient]

[Noctis picks up the second Ring, turning it over in his hand. The detail and design were exactly the same, but it wasn't as if he expected anything different. It held weight in what it represented -- its symbolism something he had viewed as a burden for such a long time.

In a way, maybe, he still does. He only carries it with a modicum more of grace, now.]

All of that trouble... just for me.

[Guilt, again. It shoots through him, dull and cold. But Noctis doesn't bask in it, he only moves his eyes to look at Nyx directly.]

You said... you used it? What did you see?

[And did it hurt? It must have.]

[servitor]

"To save the world." That's what Lunafreya had said.

[He'd very nearly gotten into an argument with the King and the Princess right then and there, in the elevator, just after he'd gotten into a physical fight with Drautos-as-Glauca. Nyx had sometimes wondered if all the sacrifice would ever end.

It's an anger that flares wildly, and an anger that he lets go of just as quickly. He didn't even care about himself. He just wanted the needless bloodshed to stop.]

I don't know. I had just gotten shot by one of my own, someone who'd sided with the Nifs. I was in a weird space, all black and purple. Time seemed to not even exist, but I was still on the floor. A woman showed up, I'd never seen her before in my life, but she somehow knew me. She wanted me to go with her, that I needed to go with her. It's how I ended up here. I don't know who she was but she wasn't anything I recognized. I don't think she was even human.

[He scrubs his face, trying as best to remember the Ring, sorting the events, sorting out how he felt weightless and yet heavy, a stranger in a strange place. A place he certainly didn't belong in, and a place that certainly wanted him out.]

[somnifacient]

["To save the world". Noctis knows what that really means; to give his own life for the sake of Eos. A sacrifice dictated by the gods, for his own existence to be crushed under the heel of destiny. He's too tired to feel angry about it these days. Too accepting to really feel anything other than guilty he hasn't completed the task, yet.

Even if the opportunity had been pulled out from under him, being brought here. Much like Nyx was, in the midst of his sacrifice. Because that's what it would've been, he's sure of it; none but a Lucis Caelum would be able to use the Ring, and that Nyx had even seen anything is surprising to him.]

That's pretty impressive, you know. That you lived to tell the tale, that you even saw anything.

[He sighs, setting the Ring back down and sliding it over back to Nyx. He leans back in his seat, then holds up his hand with his own Ring on it.]

It made its way back to me, in the end. So... thank you. For all that you did.

[All bittersweet sincerity from Noctis. The flash of gratitude is easy to read, easy to feel.]

[servitor]

[He picks the Ring back up, running a coarse thumb over the black edges.]

They called me hero for a reason.

[He says it with humor, despite the truth. He hadn't expected a whole lot when he put on the Ring except some final attempt at saving the Princess and the Ring itself.

The gratitude is humbling, in a way, because he never really does anything for thanks. He does it because it's right and necessary. Because he knows that if he doesn't do it, no one else will. It's duty, in the end, not any kind of prize that makes him do literally anything.]

I wrecked your car in the process, though. Maybe you don't want to thank me just yet.

[He's not belittling the gratitude, not at all. There just needs to be some levity to this dark affair of their lives.]

[somnifacient]

[Humor for humor. Well, sort of. Noctis's voice is tinged with both disbelief and that intonation of of course you did, I'm not surprised, lingering in the air.]

You did what?

[Not that it mattered, and not that it made him less of a hypocrite by looking so surprised. The Regalia had become nothing but a smoldering wreck, as well; he can hardly judge Nyx for what had basically happened to himself, as well.]

And what's the story behind that?

[servitor]

[Unfortunate the lightest part of this story is laden with dark history. So it goes.]

After we ran from the Citadel, we made it to the garage. [If he could even call it that. More of a warehouse of modern-day cars protected by the kings and queens of old. Talk about high security.] I'd already been driving that car when I picked up the Princess, might as well, right? It got us out and it got us far but uh. It didn't really make after the Nifs dropped their machines on us. We took a jump off a bridge, got us between two buildings and somehow managed to make it out alive. [A beat.] I might have driven it between the buildings before it finally fell to the floor.

[In reverse. After telling the Princess to get out of the car into an open window. But before throwing himself out into another window. These are all crucial details that he decides to leave out because it already sounds ridiculous enough when he's retelling it.]

Lunafreya is a hell of a driver, I can tell you that much.

[somnifacient]

[That's one way to darken the mood, though Noctis doesn't expect it to stay light for much longer. If he were to be honest, he had no real attachment to that car. Yeah, it was cool, and it was fast -- but it wasn't the Regalia. The sentimentality wasn't there, and he's only glad that it served as a literal vehicle for Nyx and Lunafreya's escape.

Speaking of Luna, though, he blinks at Nyx with surprise.]

What, really?

[servitor]

Yeah.

[He'd been surprised for about half a second himself, but it took the next half second to get into survival mode.]

Your fiancee? She's got a lot of tricks up her sleeve. She's a fighter if I'd ever seen one. Smart as hell, too.

[Maybe clever is the better word. She'd single-handedly conned Lazarus into putting on the Ring when she'd been cornered. That was the end of his former comrade.

And that might be a tinge of admiration and pride in there for the Princess. He could say, without a doubt, he wouldn't have gotten near as far if she wasn't helping and pulling the weight she didn't need to pull.]

Really doesn't like to pull her punches.

[somnifacient]

[Somehow, despite his initial surprise, Noctis won't discount a word of it. Luna always had a strength about her, an unshakeable core, that he always looked up to. A dignity that he hoped to wield himself, one day. There's fondness there, adorned with grief. He misses her -- but he misses everyone from his home. (Well. Almost everyone.)]

You know, somehow that doesn't surprise me in the least. It's not a side I ever got to see with her -- not a side I ever will get to see -- but. She was always so strong. Gentle, but determined.

[servitor]

Can't say I ever got see much of that gentle side myself. Too busy trying to run from Drautos and the Nifs to have a conversation.

[Though she did stay at his side after he'd been shot. She could've run for cover.

Nyx scoffs softly. He's taken hit after hit but he's gotten back up every time. He doesn't really try to let it weigh him down, but now, so far from Lucis and the war, he's realizing how much crap they'd been thrown at, and how survival was its own win.]

We're one for bad stories, aren't we?

[somnifacient]

[The both of them, having seen different sides of Luna. He smiles a little at the idea, as if they're further connected by that singular, luminous thread, passing from one life to the other.]

Bad stories... yeah, something like that.

[His story didn't get its proper end yet, did it? It was going to be a happy one for Eos. It should have been.]

Only fair that I share my side, if you still want to know. If you have a question, then shoot.

[servitor]

What is there to know? You said everything when dark, right? How'd that happen?

[Better to move on and past, to whatever lies ahead beyond his death.]

[somnifacient]

[Straight to it, then. Noctis wish he felt more prepared to explain, but he probably never will be.]

The Starscourge. After... Luna's death, there was nothing left to stop the nights from growing longer.

[A beat. He sets his hands in his lap, so Nyx can't see the way the threads them together in a tell of anxiety. Otherwise, he keeps his eyes trained on the man.]

You remember Chancellor Izunia?

[servitor]

Izunia? Yeah, I remember him. We'd been told to keep a small watch on him. He was in Insomnia the day it was bombed, no surprise there.

[He'd never really met the man, but he'd seen enough of him in the news and heard enough of him in the reports. Something never fit right, but what it was Nyx couldn't say. He'd joke and say it was the bad taste in fashion.]

[somnifacient]

[Noctis would laugh if he heard the joke regarding the bad fashion. Yes, he'd agree with that wholeheartedly.]

You should've kept more than a small watch on him.

[Wry, but ultimately a useless comment. No one could've seen his plan unravel from that far out; no one had possessed that foresight.]

His loyalties were never with Niflheim -- he was just using them, ultimately, to further his agenda. [His expression hardens.] He's the one who brought the darkness... ten years of it. The daemons. All for revenge on the world, and revenge on the Lucis Caelum line.

[servitor]

That guy brought ten years of darkness? [If Nyx sounds skeptical, it's because he thinks that's absolutely batshit fucking insane.

He exhales loudly, scrubs his face.] That guy sure sounds like he knows how to hold a grudge. [Revenge on the world really sounds melodramatic to whatever it could've been. Then again, he's not exactly privy to the royal stories and legends. Who knows what the Lucis Caelums did to royally piss off a man with tattered clothing.]