After that night, he walked in her Dreams, whispering in her ear:
"We're the same, you and I."
Every night he came; each time she fell out of that In-Between place where she curled up with her father's spirit and fell into true sleep. Ardyn knew, of course, that she had used the ring. And regardless of what she had or had not promised him, he would have his dues.
He was everywhere and everything else was darkness. It curled in tendrils, like the black mist that now covered Eos, and swirled around the pair of them. No matter where she turned, no matter where she moved, he was there.
"No…" She backed away, keeping her eyes on his, and still she ran into him.
"No? Come, little Dreamer… you know it's the truth. All we ever tried to do was help… and they fucked us for nothing." Ardyn was at her ear, his voice sending a chill down her spine.
Reina pulled away. "I would never do what you have done."
"No?" He grinned and black ichor dripped from his lips. "Perhaps you wouldn't… but only because Father-dear wouldn't like it."
He vanished into the darkness.
"What would you do…" He whispered in her ear, but when she turned he wasn't there. Always, she heard his voice as if he hung just above her shoulder. "...If he was really gone? If his spirit wasn't in the ring. If he wasn't watching every move you made…?"
Reina clenched her fists, resolutely not turning around to try and find him. "I would do the same thing I am doing now."
"Would you? You know it's Their fault. The Gods asked for his life."
"He died to protect Lucis—and the future." Reina stared into the darkness. Ardyn materialized out of it.
"He died because they needed his death to pay for mine." He turned a slow circle around her. She didn't follow him; it was a pointless game and she wasn't going to play.
"Then it is your fault that he is gone."
"And do you know why they need me dead?" He stopped beside her, leaning over her.
"Because of what you've done."
Ardyn tsked. "You are being obstinate on purpose, little Dreamer. Look deeper."
Deeper? Deeper than him killing millions for his own amusement?
But that wasn't quite true… He had never cared about the people he killed except the Caelums. The Gods didn't want him dead because of his revenge. They wanted him dead because of what he was. The tainted king. The Accursed.
"Because you have the scourge."
"Warmer!" Ardyn had circled back around to stand in front of her. Now he bent forward, putting his hands on his knees and levelling his gaze at her—as if she were a child. "I don't have the scourge. I am the scourge."
Reina's brow furrowed. What did he mean he was the Starscourge? He was a Caelum and a Lucian; she had seen him in a Dream, before he had been tainted. He couldn't have been the scourge.
"Ah, the Starscourge." He straightened abruptly, spreading his hands. "The darkness that plagues their perfect little world. When I healed the sick, I took it into myself. I took so much of it into myself… much more than any person had any business trying to contain. It ate me away from the inside. Any lesser man it would have consumed utterly—transformed into a daemon like so many others. But a Caelum has magic of his own. I took it and I twisted it as much as it twisted me. You think this is really my face? You think I'm still human? Silly girl. I am the Starscourge—I am the seed that taints the world. The Lucian royal line might drive back the darkness… but always it would live on within me."
Her head swam. She was disinclined to believe anything he told her, no matter the context, but it made sense. Every time a king had pushed back the dark it had returned. And here he stood before her as proof of his own words—he may have looked human, but he was more a daemon than even Aldercapt had been.
"Now tell me, little Dreamer, where did the Starscourge come from?"
"I don't know."
"It came from the Gods."
What?
Reina shook her head. "You're lying. Why would they make this plague and then try to stop it?"
"Because they realized it was a mistake. Because they meant to punish man's hubris… and it got out of hand. Because their own creation—much like humankind—had grown too powerful. And it was killing everything."
Still, she shook her head. "I don't believe you. No one knows where the Starscourge came from."
"No one left alive, perhaps." Ardyn grinned that unsettling black grin. "But you… you aren't limited by the bounds of time, are you? Why don't you look for yourself?"
Look? Look where? Two thousand years back and more, to the fall of Solheim? That was further than she had ever Dreamed… but she had seen Ardyn and Somnus…
"Run along, little Dreamer… I'll be here. Waiting."
Ardyn dissolved into the black mist. Then the mist, itself, began to evaporate. The darkness dimmed—becoming less stark and more real, less empty and more physical, until she was staring up at the ceiling above her bed in the long night.
"Don't take my word for it…" Ardyn's voice whispered in her ear.
Reina let out a breath, pressing her palms to her eyes. She woke, much as she usually did after an intentional Dream, completely lucid and with no doubt in her mind that what she had seen had actually happened. Tonight, however, it was different. Tonight Ardyn had come to her. How was it that he walked in her Dreams, when she hadn't even meant to find him? Did he have some power similar to hers?
It would explain how and why he knew so much about her.
She shook her head. Beside her, Ignis slept on—a glance at the bedside clock told her it was only three in the morning. And while such an hour certainly hadn't prevented her from rising from bed in the past, she elected not to. What she really needed was to talk to someone. Someone she trusted; someone who knew about magic and how it worked.
She glanced at the ring on her hand and shut her eyes, again.
It was easy, now; like sliding a peg into a hole. She could build a whole world with a thought, but she didn't need that much. All she wanted was one familiar room and one familiar face. He always came when she called. It didn't matter to a ghost that it was three in the morning. It didn't even seem to matter that they had spoken last only a few hours ago.
"Reina." Her father wore that comfortable smile—the way he had always looked when she had come home from school, except without the fatigue behind it.
He sat in one of the wingback armchairs in the lounge attached to his bedroom. The room itself materialized around him, down to the last detail: the bookshelf full of scarcely-read but well-kept books, including a hand-bound manuscript that had been there for as long as Reina could remember; the needlepoint, still in a hoop, of a black cat and a barrel of flowers, discolored with time; the pictures of Reina and Noctis; two tiny handprints alongside a much larger one pressed into clay and fired—somewhere there was a box full of keepsakes and silly arts and crafts they had made for him over the years, but only a few were out on display.
Reina stood before him, cleaner and more well-kempt than she had been in over a year. She hadn't really noticed how poorly her attempts to present herself had failed until she had something to compare it to. Then again, her appearance wasn't really the foremost subject on her mind, recently.
"What is it?" Her father sat forward in his chair, a furrow forming on his brow.
She didn't answer immediately. Her eyes flicked around the room—this place had always meant home to her: it was safety and it was comfort. Now, knowing it was just a construct of her own mind, she couldn't help but wonder how secure it actually was. If Ardyn could visit her Dreams, could he find this place? It was an unsettling possibility.
"What do you know about the Starscourge?" Reina ran her hands down the front of a dress that didn't exist anymore. It felt real.
"More than I did in life." He sat back in his chair, motioning her forward. "Come. I shall tell you what I can."
Reina didn't sit in the empty chair across from his; she dropped into his lap and tucked her feet up as she curled against him. He wrapped his arms around her and she felt like a child again, sitting with him. It didn't matter how old she grew or how much changed, he always managed to do that to her. Just now, she appreciated it. Children didn't have entire civilizations looking to them for guidance and hope.
"The scourge is, in the most generic sense, a plague. It infects people like a virus and, if left untreated, can have terrible results. Most diseases can do no more than cause death. This one causes transformation; like a parasite, it takes control of humans and animals, and morphs the creature into a daemon.
"The infected are the cause of this darkness, indirectly; in the advanced stages of the scourge, creatures—including the daemons they eventually become—exude miasma: a black mist that serves both as a carrier for the Starscourge itself, and taints the environment to better suit it. The more afflicted there are who walk the earth, the more miasma—and therefore the longer nights and dimmer days—and the more miasma there is, the more vulnerable survivors become to infection.
"In all the centuries that our family has reigned, no cure has ever been found, save for the Oracle's magic. By her light, the darkness was held back; blessings given to the land could deter daemons and her hands laid on the infected could cure them before the scourge grew too advanced."
Parts of what he told her she had already known; that the Starscourge was a plague upon Eos was common knowledge—at least in Lucis. But parts were new. What she really wanted to know, however, was excluded.
"Where did it come from?" She didn't look up; she just remained tucked underneath his chin, listening to the familiar timbre of his voice.
"That I do not know. As far as my knowledge stretches, it is not a question that any know the answer to, save, perhaps, the Gods themselves."
Reina shifted. It wasn't the answer she had been hoping for. She still couldn't believe what Ardyn had said, but she couldn't discount it, either.
"How do we stop it?" She asked, instead.
Her father shook his head. "That, I believe, is a question you already know the answer to."
Noctis' death. It was the secret she had kept from her brother for six years before he was drawn into the crystal; by now he must have known—whatever 'now' meant, for him.
"But other people have fought it—our own history tells tales of kings driving back the darkness." Reina sat up and looked at him.
"Indeed; at great cost to themselves and never were they successful in exterminating it."
"But they did push it back—each time it took ages to return."
"Reina." He smoothed his hand over her hair and left it there, fixing her with a serious gaze. She couldn't have looked away from that if she wanted to. "I know what it is you are thinking. Believe me when I say that every idea—every possibility—has already crossed my mind. For fifteen years I sought a way to save his life. Perhaps I could have sacrificed myself when I was younger—while I was still strong enough to push back the dark—but I would only have bought Noctis' life at the cost of the future. Without him, the Starscourge will return, time and again. Future generations will suffer and, with the end of the Oracle's line, it may well prove disastrous. The Gods have laid their plans with care; it is beyond us to seek to meddle."
Gods? What Gods? The same beings who would condemn an innocent man to twenty centuries of suffering? The same beings who have thrust the weight of the world on our shoulders for two thousand years?
Something of the rebellion in her heart must have showed on her face, because his expression grew stern and he said, "Have you grown so proud in my absence to believe you know better than the Gods?"
Reina dropped her gaze and tugged at the hem of her dress. "No, Father."
I should just walk my path, like I'm meant to.
All of this—even questioning—was precisely what Ardyn wanted. He was a snake, poisoning her mind and her Dreams at night. Everything he said was either a lie or a carefully framed half-truth, why did she give any weight to his words? That claim that the Gods had created the Starscourge was the fabrication of a madman. No one knew where the scourge had come from.
Her father sighed. He caught her chin and lifted her face to look at him.
"My last moments I spent wishing I had been a better father to you and regretting all the moments we would never share. Now you give me a second chance and I waste it by scolding you," he said.
"You are a wonderful father—!"
He silenced her with a finger over her lips. "I fear that you will never convince me of the nonexistence of my shortcomings. Know, then, that what I want—what I have always wanted—is a joyful life for you and your brother. Noctis… his fate is what it is… and I have done what I could to ensure he had the life he wanted before. If you were to do this thing, you would have no chance at even that—no chance to have a future with Ignis, no chance to raise children in a world with neither Starscourge nor daemons, no chance to see a Lucis without a Wall. So promise me that you will not try to drive back the darkness for the short term gain."
What she said was: "I promise, Father."
What she thought was: But I would be with you.