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

[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.

[somnifacient]

There's-

[No way, he wants to say. No way that the Enemy has been the Empire for all those years, and yet. He blinks at Nyx, trying not to let this theory practically blow his mind.]

Wait, you think that might actually be a thing?

[servitor]

If they found us? They had to have been following us long enough to know we're a real threat. Everything we've fought has come from the Empire, and now the Chancellor. What's to say it's not the same thing?

[somnifacient]

Nyx, that's too much for me to even wrap my head around right now. That would mean that they've been working within the Empire for years, that the Chancellor himself might've-

[He looks doubtful.]

I don't know if he was an agent of anything other than himself. That's all I'm saying.

[But as for the rest of the Empire? Who knows? And did it matter now? Niflheim was in tatters, just like there rest of the world.]

[servitor]

I'm not doubting that. [Nyx sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose.]

Drautos was the general for longer than I was in the Glaive. He defected without thinking it twice. He got people onto his side. He'd been thinking about it for years and held onto that anger for who knows how long.

[Yeah, it's too much to think about. But right now they've been tackling the Enemy as it comes.

And he thinks it's time to take the fight to them, to start dismantling them, instead of reacting.]

The Chancellor can be his own agent for all I care. We're not given answers about the Enemy but the Enemy knows about us. I'm saying there's got to be something better than just waiting for them to spring at us.

[He sighs deeply.]

That's for another time, I guess.

[somnifacient]

[He lets him speak, and only nods when he's done.]

You're right. Nothing to do be done about it, not right now. More will be revealed as we join mission after mission.

[As if they had any choice.

But the subject of Drautos comes up again, and therefore another chance at a question as he tries to parse all of this.]

...Why did he do it? [All that anger, holding onto it for years... sounds familiar, a parallel to be drawn in his own enemy, just of a different degree.]