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 )

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[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.]

[somnifacient]

[Nyx might sound dubious, but Noctis reflects it back with a stringent certainty. The man may have been difficult to read, oily and untrustworthy at first, but now he knows better. They memories of fighting him in the midst of a crumbling Insomnia were still recent to Noctis. He could play them back in his head not unlike a movie, frame by frame by frame.]

His real name was Ardyn Lucis Caelum. [A neat little bomb to drop, said plainly.] He held a grudge for thousands of years.

[Yes. His family is... messed up.]

So yeah. You're right.

[servitor]

[There is an incredibly slow blink, a very physical manifestation of trying to process an immortal being destroying the city on the basis of a grudge.]

So the chancellor is your... uncle. Cousin. Doesn't matter. He's been around long enough to harness the darkness and destroy the city, then make the world go dark.

[He lets out a low whistle.]

No offense, but I'm not jealous of you.

[somnifacient]

I don't know exactly how he's related to me. Great uncle times a hundred, great grandfather times a hundred... It doesn't matter. It's not like we really had much of a family bonding time.

[Sarcasm practically drips from every word. Sarcasm, and something faintly reminiscent to pity.]

Either way, I'm not jealous of me either. But if it makes you feel any better, I managed to beat him in a fight.

[servitor]

He deserves it. Had I known I would've done it myself instead of going after Drautos.

[Though Drautos was the immediate threat to the city and the Princess.]

[somnifacient]

You might've had a little trouble with that.

[He wasn't exactly, well. Easy to kill.]

But hey, I would've cheered you on anyway.

[You know, if he was there.]

[servitor]

Trouble or not, it would've been worth it.

[Not like Drautos wasn't enough trouble with hulking armor and him without magic.]

I can't imagine things went great during that darkness.

[somnifacient]

No.

[He pauses, taking a drink from his soda, the can almost forgotten. He feels the fizz as it goes down, providing little distraction from the memory of Eos, and the state it was in when he left.]

Insomnia was... a mess. There are daemons crawling around, as far as the eye can see. Most of the civilization is holed up in or around Lestallum; the flood lights keep the daemons at bay, or so I was told. I didn't exactly get a chance to visit.

[servitor]

[He just... hopes his mother is still around by then. He's assuming now that she got out during the evacuations. It's something he'll never really know, will he? Nyx doesn't expect records to have survived the bombings, even less after Eos fell into chaos.]

I guess we can count on people to stay alive, huh?

[somnifacient]

To stay alive, and to fight. To stay... resilient, from what I saw.

[A hand comes up to rub at the back of his neck.]

I was gone for so long... I.... [A frown.] I wanted to set things right again. But, well. You know what happened after that.

[Those plans were cut short, for the sake of being brought onto the Station.]

[servitor]

So... does everything keep going then?

[Because he's not... exactly sure how it works here. They're different times, and his future, according to Noctis, is set in stone. Or is it? Now that they're here... does this mean it's going to change?]

[somnifacient]

I don't know.

[It's as honest of an answer as anything. He holds his hand up, Ring facing outward.]

Ardyn's body is dead, but his spirit-- I didn't get to finish the job there. I don't know if he'll just come back, or if it's a moot point because Eos is being overtaken by the Enemy, or what. [Uncertain settles uncomfortably within him, like a puzzle piece with not enough sides.] I just know that I need to get back. Even if they say it's impossible, I know that we have to try.

[servitor]

For all we know the Enemy is the Empire, or a part of it. [Only the gods know how big of a target he made of himself once he tore after the Princess and tried to get her out of the city. Yeah, that would probably explain why the Enemy is out for him, if they'd infiltrated the Nifs.] You know I'm not going down without a fight.