Alternate Title: He really blew her away.

Mild trigger warning for abusive themes from here on out.

"How familiar are you with nursery rhymes?" The question appeared seemingly out of nowhere and proceeded to linger in my ears.

"Familiar enough. Think we all have a mythology phase." That some of us never grow out of. I might've had a few cosmology books sitting around at home.

"I take it then that you know of the Archaean?"

"From the deep, the Archaean calls… Yet on deaf ears, the gods' tongue falls, The King made to kneel in pain, he crawls. The great hero of Eos, he who caught the meteor, he who still holds it to this day." I was quiet for a moment as I inspected the ends of my hair for split ends. I could probably have used a haircut. Turning to Ardyn my arm slung over the back of my seat. "You know, always wondered why he didn't just put the thing down. Wouldn't have the same impact since he caught it."

"After all these eons it still has a searing burn." Ardyn answered, catching my eye out the corner of his. "We can only guess what would happen to the lands surrounding should he put it down."

"Fair point."

I turned to see if I could find the Disc of Cauthess somewhere on the distance. Sure enough it jutted out from the ground like shrapnel in a wound. Before all this started I couldn't bring myself to believe there'd been a man beneath, holding the thing up. I always wanted to believe, though. Things were different now. I suddenly felt as if there were two worlds: the world of the people and the world just behind it.

"You want to ask a question." Said Ardyn.

"My heart years for it." I parroted.

"Then by all means." He gesture, wrist flicking out. I half expected a card to fall out from his sleeve. "Ask away."

"Is. . ." My eyes were still fixed to the meteor. I had trouble bringing myself to ask. It felt silly and made me feel years younger. "Is he really there? You know, holding that thing up? There really an Astral just a ways away from Lestallum?"

"Oh undoubtedly." Answered Ardyn, as if it was indeed a silly question. "I met him once upon a time, you know."

"Bullshit."

"Is that really where you draw the line?"

"Gotta be a line somewhere." I snorted. When I turned I nearly jumped out of my skin. Right at eye level was the barrell of a gun. Was he actually going to shoot me? For what? Doubting him? More importantly where did he get a gun? Before I could open my mouth to speak or scream or stammer my way back into his good graces he let the thing drop. Barrel swung to and fro as he dangled a six shooter almost daintily from his index finger.

"Ardyn. . ." I began, softly but with a whole lot of feeling. "What the fuck."

"Oh don't look at me like you've never stared down the barrell of a gun before."

Briefly my mind flittered off to the bar. Guns would get drawn from time to time. The secret to civilian life is realizing—for the most part—that no one wants to shoot. Most disputes end in a fist fight. Sometimes a stray bullet will fire and sometimes that bullet will find purchase in a person. For the most part, though, guns in the city were aids to pissing contests. Well, at least in titty bars.

"Spin the cylinder a couple of times." He said. "Then press it to your temple."

"Not gonna fucking play nif roulette thank you very much!" My voice raised a little louder than I meant it to.

"Please consider earlier, Ceti."

I wasn't sure what part of earlier he meant, the part where he'd frozen time or the part where he threatened me. Both, I figured. Both were well worth considering. I wondered if this was the end of it. I'd rubbed elbows with a megalomaniac. The problem with playing cat and mouse is that somebody has to die at the end. I didn't think it would be literal.

Looking around for a moment I tried to see if there were any other cars on the road. Sunset dyed the world a glaring red and even on the distance I couldn't see a damned thing. No one behind us, either. It was a little late to risk my life leaping out the car, I'd get swallowed up by a daemon before I could try my luck at hitchhiking to Lestallum.

Ardyn tapped his finger impatiently against the steering wheel. Pale in the face and with a slight tremor to my hand I span the cylinder. It gave a loud whizz as I watched chambers blur together and then stop, suddenly, clicking into place. This was stupid, I thought as I pressed the barrel to my temple. This was actually stupid. I'd done the dumb thing and went off with some eccentric stranger in his gaudy old vintage car and now I was going to wind up in a ditch somewhere. My eyes squeezed shut. My breath caught in my chest. This was it.

I pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked. Empty.

All the breath left my chest in a groan somewhere between relieved and tired. With a slump of my shoulders I fell back into the seat.

"Good." Chirped Ardyn, turning a corner into an off road. "Now do it again."

"You can't be serious." I balked, jutting up from my seat.

Ardyn placed a hand over his chest. "My dear, I'm as serious as a heart attack."

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. Again, my options felt limited. If I refused then what would happen? He'd explained to me that I was in no position to argue but I had no reference as to what it was I'd deal with should I argue. I was faced with two great fears: death and the unknown.

Looking at Ardyn I was met with a vast uncaring. The wind whipped through his shaggy aubergine hair and he had the same vague smile he always carried with him. Again he'd begun to hum something drawling and tuneless. He was pretending not to notice my staring the way people ignore dogs beneath the dinner table.

With resignation I span the chamber again. Only once more, I thought, survive once more and you'll be done with it. The whizzing felt loud in my ears and the snap almost made me flinch. In a white knuckled grasp I pressed the barrel to my head and squeezed my eyes shut in tandem with the trigger.

I heard the boom but I didn't feel the bullet. That made sense, I thought, a bullet straight to the brain and I'd be dead in seconds. Death proved to be more painless than I thought. I had always hoped for something more than darkness but hey, it wasn't the worst.

That didn't explain why I could still feel the wind through my hair or hear the growl of the engine through my tinnitus, though. In fact, I couldn't so much as feel the gun in my head. Tentatively I popped open an eye, the other followed. I was greeted to the sight of the road ahead and headlights still made faint by the sunset.

When I turned to my left I was treated to a view of the side of the road. Turning to my right provided an image far more grim.

Next to me, Ardyn slumped limply against the passenger's seat. The gun had tumbled out of his hand and between his legs. I looked at the short twitch of his fingers and felt dread sink in my stomach like a heavy stone. Did the bullet miss his temple? Was he still alive? I didn't want to trail my eyes up to check. My mind was already flooded with terrible images. Ardyn Izunia, sitting in the passenger's seat of his car, the top of his head blown clean off.

Down the slope of his neck was a trickle of black. That wasn't right. Couldn't have been right. I squinted. Maybe blood at the head was darker. Hesitantly I peered up and was met with his face. An almost fully intact face. Blackness oozed from a dime sized entry wound on one temple. On the other side of his head was the exit wound, skull blasted open and. . .

And darkness seeping out. It burst forth from his head like the tip of a cigarette ashed and then proceeded to curl about the air like smoke. I could feel my breath catch in my lungs. My eyes flit to his where I was met with black sclera and—He moved. Eyes locked to mine, dripping mouth curling into a smile.

I don't want to admit it but I shrieked louder than I thought I could. Wouldn't you? Before I could take full stock of what was going on the car veered off the road. Shit. I was in the driver's seat. My shrieks turned into short, monosyllabic exclamations. The beginnings of words—probably curses if they got that far—as I was jostled in the front seat. The steering wheel spun in my hands as dust kicked up about the car in a sprawling, sandy plume.

My foot slammed on the brake. I was jerked violently forward, seat belt cutting painfully against my clavicle. I could hear Ardyn's rolling laugh from beside me as we skidded further from the road. I hissed, hands gripping the steering wheel tighter than I've ever held on to anything in my life. I was shaking, down to my very bones I was shaking. My lungs felt as if they were on fire as I tried to catch my breath, tried to ground myself. Behind my eyes all I could feel was static.

"Oh, I haven't done that in ages." Ardyn spoke in a fond sigh. I was hyper aware of his voice as it slipped into my ears.

It took a laborious amount of force to turn my head and look at him. I didn't feel frozen, rather I felt as if I wasn't meant to move, as if I'd been still my whole life. He was still dripping some sort of fucking. . . Ichorous bullshit from his eyes and mouth. The wounds on his temples were rapidly falling shut, the darkness that'd seeped from them dissipating into the air.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I opened my mouth to try one or the other but my body wouldn't cooperate.

"Oh my, Ceti, what's wrong? You look as if you've seen a ghost." Ardyn seemed pleased with himself in the face of my fright.

My voice creaked quietly from the basement of my throat. "What was that?"

"A lesson, Ceti." Answered Ardyn. His voice dropped into a whisper as he leaned into his seat. I didn't want to look at him. Looking at him would make the reality of his condition come to life. "Friendship, as you know, is based on trust. I've no reason to lie to you, Ceti."

He snapped his fingers near my face and I flinched, brought back into the world around me. "Ceti, Ceti dear, look at me." Night had begun to fall rapidly around us. I could almost pretend he was just a man, that the darkness that poured out from him were no more than shadows. "It's imperative you realize the curtain of the world has been lifted. Now you get to see what makes the play work. There is life as you were taught, and there is life as it is."

Ardyn smiled as he spoke. It could've been kind on any other face. "You're about to become the most well informed woman in all of Eos. All you need do is cast off your doubt."

Blood seeped slowly from my collar bone and onto the towel pressed to my chest. A blanket from the trunk was draped over me and I huddled into the reclined passenger's seat like some dejected mutt. I didn't have it in me to pretend to be asleep, rather my eyes were wide open and staring at nothing in particular, turned away from Ardyn.

He had flicked on the radio and was singing along to some tune that was popular about five years back. I couldn't decide if his voice was comforting or not, only that he knew how to carry a tune. We sped past what I think was a daemon that looked at the car with coal burning eyes but it made no move to give chase. I felt, paradoxically, considerably safe and in a weighty amount of danger at the same time.

I don't know when I fell asleep. Passed out would be the better term. My rest was heavy and dreamless. When I awoke I was laying overtop the covers in a hotel bed, blanket from the car still wrapped around me.

There were bloody cotton balls on the nightstand and a towel with a pinkish stain hanging over the radiator. The nap had done nothing for me. Suddenly a tremor shook the room, causing the lights in the room to flicker. I sat up too fast and could feel the room spin, hear blood rush around my ears.

"Fuck." It was the best way to articulate my feelings in that moment.

"You're in shock." Said Ardyn from somewhere behind me. I rolled over onto my other hand to find him flipping through a cosmology book. "You'd do best not to push yourself."

Silence hung between us a moment. For some reason I was caught up on the fact that his socks were argyle print. Absently I felt around for my boots only to find my socks, too. No shoes on the furniture seemed like a trite principle all things considered.

"So there's a giant man—an Astral—holding the meteor." I muttered.

"You got it." Answered Ardyn, blithely.

"And you're. . .some sort of immortal."

"Bingo!" He even added in a finger gun.

I let out a long, slow breath. My hand raked through my hair. "Shit."