35

E pluribus unum

I

Silia left Orior behind the following morning, on a motorbike, with her swords well hooked to her holster, a backpack that contained all of her equipment – ten mixed magic flasks of fire, blizzard and thunder, a cote to sharpen her blades, a change of warmer clothes, a first aid kit and some medications – and Darius behind her.

Darius had insisted on going by car, but Silia had pointed out that they would dress up and behave like Meldacio hunters, and rarely did the hunters travel by car. Darius had replied that the cover wouldn't have done any good in the Imperial territory and that they would be less suspicious in a car because of the sub-zero temperature of the innermost regions of Niflheim. Silia had reminded him that the bike was faster. Cor Leonis had put an end to their diatribe by suggesting they'd take a motorbike up to Cape Noah and once they had reached Cape Esther, provided they found a way to cross the sea, get a car. That had been the first of a long series of discussions that had lasted until late at night.

Silia drove the bike and drove silently since neither one of them uttered a single word for the first few hours of travel as they sped through Leide's semi-deserted motorways. She felt Darius' pressure on her back, his arms gently girding her waist. She was glad to have him with her and she was even more glad that they had achieved such a complicity that they could afford not having to fill the silence so she could concentrate on her own thoughts; they kept bouncing between Cape Noah, where they would have to convince the authorities of the outpost to let them talk to the Imperial civilians in quarantine – and even further over the strait, to Niflheim, where they would have to move with extreme caution and intercept the Prince before he arrived in Gralea – and Orior, where she had quit the training of her guys. The Marshal, without assuming that sooner or later she would return, had reassured her that he would involve the other Crownsguards to take care of the volunteers. They were perfectly capable, he had said, and it was time they took some responsibility too. Iris, pretending to ignore that they were joining a suicide mission, had declared herself happy that they were going to give her brother and the others support, while Talcott had been disappointed by her sudden departure, just when she was starting to teach something to him too. No one, however, had been as unhappy as her guys, who had no idea where she and Darius were heading. Someone had gone so far as to say that, after all, Kingsglaives weren't reliable.

Leaving Orior, her new home, gave her a vague feeling of discomfort, but as soon as they had entered the woods of Duscae she began to feel a tingling of excitement in her limbs. Something in her Glaive blood, at the prospect of unknown challenges, began to quiver. She was expecting at any moment to be able to feel the magic of the Crystal. Almost without realizing it, she began to hum.

"Battle-scarred down to the bone, falling, failing to believe… living in so much despair with no hope of release…"

"Hartwood…"

"Was I born to be betrayed? Was I born to simply die? Can I bear to seek the truth when it feels like a lie?"

"Hartwood!" Darius squeezed her hips.

"What's up?"

"Will you stop with this depressing song?"

Silia grinned, looking at him from the rear-view mirror. "A little nervous, are we?"

"Why should I be? We are only going to Gralea to infiltrate Emperor Aldercapt's fortress."

"And doesn't this excite you?"

"I'm excited by other kinds of things. Hartwood, tell me you're just happy with the idea of meeting your boyfriend again and that I'm not about to go into Imperial territory with a fanatic that can't wait to die sword-in-hand."

"I'm thrilled about getting back on the front line, but I don't want to die," she clarified. "But the odds are decidedly not in our favor. You knew that last night when the Marshal officially asked you if you accepted the mission."

He frowned. "Hartwood, are you calling me a coward?"

"Would you call a man who refuses to be tied up, bandaged and thrown into a pit full of Behemoths a coward? No. You would say he's a sane man. We are on the brink of that pit."

"I would call him a coward if the Prince of Insomnia was on the bottom of that pit."

"That's why I'm glad you came with me."

Darius didn't answer. They remained silent again for a while.

"When Cor told me days ago that the Prince would go to Imperial territory, I thought that if the Marshal had nothing to object, then everything was under control," he said again.

"Mh."

"But since we left Orior I'm not so convinced. I believe that we are all on the verge of a pit full of Behemoths since Princess Lunafreya died. I believe that Chancellor Ardyn Izunia is the scariest Behemoth who has ever walked on Eos and that he's somehow connected to the advance of the Starscourge. I believe that if we don't recover the Crystal we are all fucked and that Cor is fully aware of that."

"Did I already tell you that I'm glad you came with me?"

"Hartwood, stop. Since the attack on Altissia you've had a stick so far up your ass that the point comes out of your mouth, so we never talked about it. How do you see it?"

Silia was frank. "The way you see it. I told Gladio they were embarking on a suicide mission, but I think it's the only one that can really work. An army, which we don't have, wouldn't help the Prince to take Gralea, but the Astrals who are siding with him will."

"An army wouldn't help him, yet we're reaching them."

"Two people can what an army can't do: move discretely. Pave ways. Cover backs. Cor would have come too, I'm sure, but if the Prince dies..."

"...Lucis will be left without a guide," Darius completed for her.

"Exactly," Silia approved. "But before we get to Gralea, I want to be clear about this story of refugees from Niflheim."

"What do you think?"

"That Gralea might not be as impenetrable as it was until last month. For the first time in many years civilians have fled; perhaps at the Zegnautus Keep they have some hassle that will keep them busy as we enter."

Darius smiled. "You know, Hartwood? The first time I saw you, you were in the queue waiting for one of the Citadel lifts."

"Really? And did I see you?"

"I don't believe so. I was with Devan. You were wearing the Glaives' uniform and a really pissed off look on your face. A scrawny kitty with unsheathed claws, we told each other."

"Fuck you."

"When Cor told me you would come to our camp, after Gladio's and Cid Sophiar's calls, I lost my temper. I asked Cor how he could allow a damn Glaive to even get close, after what they had done. He replied that even if he didn't trust Gladio Amicitia's word too much, because of his personal involvement of which everyone, Hartwood, suspected something already back in Insomnia, he trusted that of Cid Sophiar. If Cor would have been convinced too after talking to you, he wanted me to keep an eye on you for a while."

Silia shrugged. Darius' words sounded like an apology, but why should she resent? "So? It seems more than reasonable to me. You did your duty well, Darius. You were glued to my ass the first few days. And it wasn't even a man's ass."

"Well, I think that not killing that scrawny kitty turned out to be one of the most appropriate decisions of Cor the Immortal."

Silia turned slightly towards him, pleased. "It took a lot out of the Marshal, letting you to come with me. He counts on you and trusts a lot of your judgment. But it was the right thing to do. He couldn't help me better comrade for this mission. If you had been sensitive to magic, Darius, you would have been a great Kingsglaive."

Darius' smile became a grin. Silia believed it was for the compliment until he spoke.

"I was."

That was quite a surprise. "What?"

"I was sensitive to magic as a child. But it's a faculty that, if not encouraged and nourished, fades until it disappears, as you must know. And the scions of noble families of Insomnia don't become Kingsglaives."

"Unless they run away from home to enlist, right?"

Darius leaned over to look at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. "Did you know Julius Clipeus?"

Silia nodded. "I talked about him with Gladio once. He died just because of a Behemoth."

"Would you like to talk about him with me too?"

"I didn't know him very well. Perhaps even his teammates didn't know him very well. He came from an environment that was too different from everyone else's. But he didn't give a damn about making friends. He was there to become a Glaive and to leave Insomnia. I liked his stubbornness. It allowed him to get to the end of the training. He fought two years in war before he died. I felt sorry for him."

"I was sorry, too. We were friends."

"Just friends?"

"Just friends. He was five years younger than me and enlisted at fifteen."

Silia winked. "Thought age wasn't such a problem for you."

"They told you about Alexander, then?"

"Was his name Alexander? Nobody told me about him, anyway. I heard some jokes. And jokes don't amuse me if they aren't addressed face-to-face to those directly involved so that they can respond with other jokes."

Darius sighed. "So, what do you want to know?"

"Nothing, if you don't want to tell me."

"I don't want to tell you anything."

"Then don't do it."

"Fuck," he let slip. "Really I don't want to, but I haven't talked about Alexander since it happened. Actually I wouldn't talk about Alexander even when I was seeing Alexander. It was one of those relationships you can't live out in the open. But by continuing to not talk about him, he's going away. The first days were a torment, but his death was a drop of shit in the rain of shit that had fallen on Insomnia and I told myself that a Crownsguard had no right to cry over a dead lover on the same day he had lost his king." He raised his arm and brushed his eyes. "Now, except for some nights when I wake up and I can't orient myself for a few seconds, and it seems to me that I could simply go back to sleep to wake up in my bed or in the hotel room where we met in secret, I've the feeling that years have passed. Alexander doesn't even come to my mind for whole days, as if he was a stranger with whom I shared something a long time ago and not the recently dead man I was in love with; fuck, Insomnia has fallen just few months ago. I feel like shit about this."

Silia let him vent in silence. "Hans Castor," she then uttered, when she was sure he wouldn't say anything else.

Darius raised his head. "What?"

"Hans Castor. He was my…" She looked for a suitable word, and she didn't find it. "How would you call a man you're in love with, whom you gave your virginity to and who fucked you as often as he could, but whom you can't see a later with because you know that one of the two of you could be in pieces in a box that very night?"

"I don't know if there's an adequate word."

"Neither do I. However, one evening, Hans Castor ended up as pieces in a box. In a box, and not in wild beasts' bellies, because I defied my Captain's orders to recover his corpse, in the hope that it wasn't a corpse. I thought I was prepared for the idea, but I cried and threw up and I thought I would go crazy. I was beaten and blasted with insults by Sarah, my teammate, and almost thrown out of the Kingsglaives by Titus Drautos, who prevented me from participating in the funeral of our fallen comrades that day by putting me on guard on the turrets."

Darius didn't tell her he was sorry, as she hadn't told him. "Why are you telling me?" he asked instead.

"Because the day after we started fighting again and I couldn't think about Hans Castor, because if you think about your Hans Castor instead of focusing on casting a magic wall, the magic wall doesn't materialize and you also end up in pieces in a box. A month later I had the impression that Hans Castor had died years before, like all our other Glaive comrades who had died in the war, and Simon Cregan would come at night onto my cot to fuck me as Hans had fucked me. Well, not exactly, Simon had a taste for asses."

"Hartwood..."

"What I mean is that I too felt like shit for a long time. Was it possible, I'd ask myself, that putting thoughts of Hans aside was so easy? I loved him, fuck, I was fond of all my comrades, but Hans was Hans; that wasn't just camaraderie, it was..." She tightened her grip on the handlebars. "I still dream of him, from time to time; he and my other dead friends. On the day of the fall of Insomnia, besides the King, I lost Sarah, Sam, Caesar, Legato, Glaives loyal to the kingdom, the last people in the world I cared about, except for Gladio Amicitia. And I killed Marius Gaunt, a traitor Glaive, with whom I had grown up in Ambrosia. They too seem to me memories of another life, but it happened just a few months ago. If tomorrow Gladio died, in a month or two it would be exactly the same, and that's how it must be. If you have time to despair for the dead, it means that you're not taking care of the living enough."

They rode in silence again for a long stretch of road.

"Hartwood, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"The more I know you, the more I wonder: why Gladio Amicitia? You're a messed-up war veteran. He looks like a huge grown man, but he's a greenhorn who until a few months ago had seen just the Crown City."

Nobody had ever asked her that question. Even she had never asked herself that question. She had found herself in up to her neck, as in many other circumstances of her life, and she had simply taken note of it. She smiled. "Once in Insomnia, while I was really drunk, Gladio pissed me off and I threw a beer in his face. Instead of punching me or tell me to fuck off, he went away without a word and waited for me to get out of the bar just to pick me up and drive me home without damaging my pride in front of all the patrons. At that moment I thought that, in another life, I could have married such a man of six and half feet and two hundred pounds of pure muscle, endowed with a chivalry that isn't even sexist."

II

"Damn it," Prompto tried to joke, without much conviction. "Dunno how you can like this stuff, Gladio."

Gladio didn't answer. He wasn't hungry, and had barely managed to finish his portion of Cup Noodle. They wouldn't have had anything else to eat anyway, because they had left all the superfluous equipment in Altissia and Ignis had thought that, in his condition, the precious ingredients and the spices he had laboriously put together along the way were indeed superfluous, and nobody was up to hunting the beasts that infested the quarry to cook them. They just wanted to find the royal tomb and get away from there.

"A royal tomb…" Noctis said, in a low voice, as if he was forcing himself to speak. After the furious quarrel on the train they had barely spoken or looked at each other. On the other hand, they had risked three times to fight over in the quarry because Noctis persisted in his incorrigible habit of distancing himself from them and going away alone, with the difference being that now, with Ignis struggling, they could no longer keep up with him. "Why a royal tomb in a place like this?"

"Niflehim and Lucis have not always been at war," Ignis replied. If they were tired, he was exhausted, and the little support he could give them in combat – Gladio was ashamed of thinking it – was more of a hindrance than a help. "According to Dustin, this mausoleum was erected as a symbol of peace between the two countries after three years of violent hostility between Gunar Aldercapt and Nero Lucis Caelum. The war was caused by the murder of Nero Lucis Caelum's wife in Gralea, a murder that the king of Lucis attributed to one of Gunar Adercapt's sons because of some sexual intercourse and that he avenged by killing the man in turn. Legend has it that Gunar's and Nero's heirs, with no hope of seeing the end of the conflict between the two kingdoms, secretly agreed to dethrone their respective fathers. Gunar Aldercapt ended his days in the dungeons of his own castle. Nero Lucis Caelum, who was marching against Gralea with his army, was treacherously assassinated by his son Clitus. The two heirs hastened to wear their fathers' crowns and to establish a new peace between Niflheim and Lucis. At Fodina Caestino, not a quarry at the time, where Nero, who had triggered the war, had fallen, a mausoleum was built, and Clitus had his father buried there."

"What they say a filial love."

"Not all Lucis Caelums were examples of justice and righteousness."

"Why should someone like King Nero Lucis Caelum lend his strength to Noct?" was the unexpectedly appropriate question from Prompto.

"He assumes Noctis is going to stick his katana in some Niflheim Emperor's ass," Gladio said. He rubbed his hands on his knees to clean them from the soil and stood up. "Provided that he thinks he can do it."

Noctis jumped up as well, furious. "Gladio, if you think I'll allow you to keep on insulting me like this, you're dead wrong."

Gladio bowed his head. "And then, Your Majesty, order my tongue to be cut off."

"Enough!" Prompto intervened between the two. "I can't recognize you anymore. You look like two teenage brawlers!"

Gladio ignored him, starting to disassemble the improvised camp – they had left the bulk of their equipment in the Regalia, parked on the Magna Fortia, expecting that they wouldn't spend the night in the quarry. He thought he had vented with the row on the train, but truth was that a part of him hoped that, once in Fodina Caestino, chased by the first enemies they would meet after the clashes in Altissia, Noctis would have ended up wearing the Ring to test its power. It hadn't happened so far.

"If you have rested enough, let's go on. We've to recover that damn key, reactivate the generator and move that machinery that blocks the road."

To reach the shed where the key was stored, they had to go back to the other side of the quarry, on the northeast side. Even if there wouldn't be beasts lurking – and luckily it was day, so at least they didn't have to deal with daemons – the ground was damn slippery and walking had to be agony for Ignis, even with his stick and Prompto's arm stretched to give him support whenever he saw him hesitate. Once the key was recovered, they had to look for the emergency generators to restore power to the machinery that made it impossible for them to continue and which they couldn't destroy, bypass or climb over in any way. The easiest path led them close to the protruding roots of the enormous tree that grew in the middle of the quarry, which reminded him of the Citadel because of the way it stood out above all. Gladio stopped to look at it from below as Noctis and Prompto gave power to the first generator, located on a platform under the roots. The tree was in bloom, as he had heard from someone on Magna Fortia, and it was beautiful, a stunning vision in the midst of those marshes and the desolation of abandoned machinery on which vegetation had already begun to grow. He thought of telling Ignis, next to him, to break the nervous silence, but then he remembered that his friend couldn't see it.

The second generator was a little further. Once activated, they heard the noise of engines running.

"We have the power supply!" Prompto exclaimed, cheering.

"It doesn't mean that it will work for a long time," Gladio deluded him. "Let's hurry and move that device."

"At your command, Sir," Noctis bugged him. Gladio forced himself to ignore him.

They came back, reaching the control panel of the machine. It gave off smoke, and for a moment Gladio believed that it would explode or not move, but Noctis managed to lift it. As they advanced more and more to the bottom of the quarry, Gladio distanced himself from Ignis and Prompto coming up beside to Noctis, who had once again separated from the group. He counted up to ten before talking to him.

"Hold up, Noct."

Noctis stopped and glared at him with a defiant look. Gladio counted to ten again. "What?"

"This time it's not a provocation, but a serious question. You sure you're ready for this? You got what it takes?"

"What do you mean?"

"We'll meet another of your ancestors in the tomb. You'll have to convince the Warrior to lend you his strength. I repeat, this is not intended as a provocation, but with the other kings, you were determined to challenge the Empire and take your destiny into your own hands. Do you still think you can see it through? To the end?"

For a moment, Noctis' gaze dropped from his, perhaps looking for help in Ignis or Prompto behind his back. Gladio was well aware that he was pulling the rope to the breaking point: the question was whether, when it was broken, Noctis would be the Chosen King or a kid – his friend, almost a brother – in pieces. Gladio had officially sworn to protect the former and unofficially, to his father and the king, to stay close to the latter, but not at the cost of returning to Lucis with his tail between his legs, without the Crystal, waiting for the end.

The rope didn't break. Not yet. "I can, and I will," Noctis replied, his gaze now again firmly planted in his. "Whether I like it or not, I've got a duty to fulfill... As a King. I will claim the Warrior's weapon and proceed to Gralea. We will not stop at Tenebrae."

He hadn't said he would wear the Ring but at least, it seemed, he had not lost sight of their goal. Gladio sighed, deciding – for the moment – to be content with his decision to not divert to Tenebrae as the prince would have liked. "Don't forget it," he retorted, pointing his finger at him, but without animosity anymore. "You'd better take it seriously."

He turned to go back to Ignis and Prompto.

~~~XV~~~

They went past the obstacle. He and Noctis didn't quarrel any more, probably because the swampy rotten stench that they could barely smell higher above, now was unsustainable and they had no breath to waste. It had to come from the quagmire at the end of the quarry to whose edges they were approaching.

"Oh, by the Six, don't tell me we have to walk inside," Prompto complained, as soon as it was clear that there was no chance to find a way around it.

"I really think so. Ig, be careful. Do you need another arm?"

"Prompto's is enough for me," he declined. "Where are we? I can hear the sound of water again. And smell an abominable stench."

"A marsh. We're advancing towards the roots of that enormous tree in the middle of the quarry." Gladio kept forgetting that Ignis couldn't see and that, for him, it was all a long walk in the dark. "I think I see a passage down there."

"The entrance to the Mausoleum?"

"Possible."

They crossed the marsh. The filthy water was up to their calves. The swarms of insects that had tormented them more than the beasts since they had entered the quarry were now like fog banks. Gladio couldn't wait to get back to the station, burn his clothes, and have a shower so hot as to take his skin off.

"Hey, guys?" Noctis called their attention. He was already under the roots of the tree.

"What?"

"I can see the entrance door to the tomb, but it's covered by... cocoons? Eggs?"

They reached him. Indeed, the door seemed obstructed by eggs as big as basketballs. Ignis leaned over to touch one.

"Ugh, the stink here is even worse." Prompto covered his nose. "Let's hurry up and destroy them and move on."

"If we had another fire bomb we could get rid of it quickly," Noctis said. As soon as he pierced his sword into one of the eggs, behind them, in a tumult of stinking water, a sort of Venus flytrap with tentacles, at least thirty feet tall, emerged. Gladio had rarely seen a more monstrous beast: it had no eyes – not visible eyes, at least – and its whole body seemed to be made of tentacles. Other smaller appendices, where "small" meant as big as his arm, snaked around its mouth, between a row of equally large teeth. It released the most nauseating reek he had ever smelled.

"Let's get out of here!" he shouted. "Or we'll get trapped under the roots!"

They scattered. Gladio was quick to grab Ignis' shoulder and drag him away. The Venus flytrap opened its enormous mouth, seemed to take a deep breath, then emitted a greenish vomiting cloud. Gladio covered his mouth and nose with his arm, but he felt woozy. Prompto, the closest of them, fainted. Gladio saw him sag into the water, unconscious.

"Prompto!" Noctis warped to his rescue. His blow drove the beast only three feet back, but it was enough for him to grab Prompto before the beast's tentacles could seize him and drag him into its mouth. Other tentacles rose, but Noctis was quick to dodge them.

"Gladio, what's that?"

"Ig, now you have to step aside. It's a thirty-feet-tall Venus flytrap, Prompto has fainted and you can't..." Gladio started to say, when Noctis practically threw Prompto at him.

"Gladio, if you hadn't noticed, we've a big problem."

"If you hadn't noticed, we've at least two!" he roared, pointing to Ignis.

"Will you stop?" Groping, Ignis leaned down on Prompto, rummaging in his equipment bag and touching the bottles. "It's a Malboro. We'll need antidotes, adrenaline, salts. Its fetid breath causes poisoning, confusion, sleep, and other annoying effects."

"Great. Ignis, stay here," Gladio ordered. Facing such a beast, able of launching multiple attacks at a distance, would be suicide for Ignis. "Take care of Prompto."

"I'm already taking care of him! But I'm not going to..."

They were reached by a storm of lashes. For such a big beast, it was fucking agile. Gladio and Noctis jumped in. If they had remained calm, it wouldn't have been a worrying opponent; he had defeated Gilgamesh, after all, and a shitty stinking plant couldn't trouble him.

Gilgamesh, however, didn't have a fetid breath that could make him lose consciousness. They attacked him on two sides, careful not to cross and not to crash their swords against each other. He had to keep a distance from the enemy, an arm covering his mouth to breathe the least amount effusion as possible, careful to watch that the Malboro didn't return to emit its toxic cloud. The tentacles, with a range of ten or twelve feet, didn't allow them to approach the monster's body anyway.

Three shots in quick succession exploded less than two feet away from him. A small Malboro – a little shorter than him – gave a shrill cry. Only then did Gladio realize that, in the heat of fighting, neither he nor Noctis had noticed that a dozen other beasts almost identical to the enormous plant had emerged from the marsh and were encircling them.

Still stumbling on his legs, panting, Prompto was already reloading. "There are others! Be careful!"

"Prompto, stay with Ignis!" he shouted, but Malboro Senior was behind him, and Gladio felt the unpleasant sensation of slimy, rotten tentacles that enveloped him around his waist, arms, legs and neck and lifted him up into the air. He panicked. He left his broadsword and clung desperately to the tentacle that clenched his throat, pulling, scratching it, trying to loosen the grip on his throat. He wouldn't have died stifled or devoured: at that rate, the Malboro would have simply broken his neck.

But then Noctis pounced on the tentacles. Although boosted by the warping, his blow failed to shred the tentacle around his neck. The grip weakened, fortunately, just enough to allow him to catch some air. He summoned the broadsword again, but couldn't move his arms to wield it.

"That's enough. Gladio, watch out. I'll handle that!"

To Gladio's great horror, Ignis stood before the Malboro. He took from his pocket what looked like a fire flask – one of Silia's, because Noctis hadn't prepared one since they were in Lucis. Gladio couldn't even remember having given it to him. He opened his mouth to shout to him what the fuck he was about to do, since he couldn't move, but Ignis threw the bomb into Malboro's open mouth.

The explosion threw him far away, into a disgusting stink of putrescence and burnt grass. Ironically, the tentacles enveloped around his body protected him from the explosion, which fortunately was not as violent as he had feared. He stood up, in pain, incredulous and upset. Nobody spoke.

He reached Ignis and shoved him. "You're fuckin' crazy. Were you trying to get yourself killed? Were you trying to kill me?"

Ignis simply smiled. "It was a low intensity fire. You weren't the only one to receive a farewell present from Silia. But I am stunned, it was a perfectly stabilized flask. I'll have to call her to express my compliments. And we should order her an arsenal."

He couldn't answer him. He rubbed off a little grime from his face – he felt like throwing up – and turned around so as not to give him another shove.

"C'mon, before something else comes out of the water," Noctis urged them. The small Malboros were on the run and none of them – it seemed – wanted to chase the monsters to engage another battle.

A second fire flask – the very last one he had, low powered as well – blew up the eggs, revealing the entrance to the royal tomb. Noctis used the key received from the Marshal to open it. Gladio feared to find himself in front of another maze of tunnels, but fortunately the Warrior's sarcophagus was there in front of them. Without hesitation, Noctis stretched out his hand to claim what was his.

For a moment, Gladio believed that nothing would happen, that the Old Kings would have perceived Noctis' hesitation and wouldn't bestow him the Katana. Instead the weapon lit up, shattering its stone prison, and penetrated into Noctis like all the others.

The Chosen King turned, challenging him with his eyes. Gladio merely nodded in approval. "Let's go," he simply said, refusing to acknowledge aloud that, after all, if the Old Kings still considered Noctis to be trustworthy, his resolution evidently didn't falter as much as he feared.

"Let's go," Noctis retorted, nodding in turn, without asking for satisfaction.

"Wait!" Ignis stopped them.

"Is everything okay, Ig?" Prompto asked.

Ignis took a deep breath. "It bloody well isn't. I won't go back to that train if we don't face the matter, now, all together and once and for all. We can't go on like this. First on Magna Fortia, Gladio, you said that if Noctis doesn't wear the Ring, we won't come out alive from Gralea. Well, I can tell you that if we don't cooperate again, we won't even get there." He waited for a reply, but there wasn't any. Gladio felt exhausted and couldn't oppose. "It seems to me that there are two knots to be dissolved. One is about me. My eyesight won't come back, and this can't be helped. Yet I have decided that I will go through with you all to the very end."

Gladio had hoped until then that the difficult clashes inside the quarry would persuade Ignis. "No, I object. Be reasonable, Ignis!"

"Gladio, what the hell is wrong with you?" Prompto yelled, opening his arms. "We'll take care of him!"

"I'm not saying we wouldn't do it, but..."

"Then the choice should be up to him, don't you think? You're trying to impose your point of view again by showing attitude!"

"It's not only his life at stake!"

"I know that perfectly!" Ignis cried. His voice rumbled through the quarry.

Gladio felt emptied. He joined Noctis and laid a hand on his shoulder. "That's fine. The Crystal and the Royal Weapons are his legacy. The time has come for His Majesty to say something about it. D'you agree that Ignis goes on with us in these conditions?"

He thought Ignis would have opposed, but instead he nodded. "Gladio is right. Noct, you are the king. One cannot lead by standing still. A king pushes onward always, accepting the consequences and never looking back. So, the decision is yours."

"But I..."

"Before you answer, Noctis, let me face the second knot with Gladio." He turned to him. "The Warrior has just given Noctis his power, and also the Old Kings whose weapons we retrieved. And so did Titan, Ramuh, Leviathan – three Astrals. Who are you to doubt? Noctis is up to it. He only needs time. When the time comes, he will be ready and will do what he must. You won't have to do it in his place."

"He will be ready," Prompto also said. He smiled. "And when that time comes, we'll all be together. I already told you in Altissia, Gladio: it's not all on your back."

Gladio looked at them for a long time, and they looked at him. He was the oldest of the party, he liked to consider himself mature and sensible, and he cared about the well-being of his friends, yet at that moment they made him feel insensitive, unreasonable, a child who insist on stamping his feet and shouting to be right. Stay focused and don't exacerbate an already tense situation, Silia had advised him the day before, and instead he had demoralized them more than they already were and provoked them to the point of putting one against each other.

"Shit." He crossed his arms. "It seems that I became exactly like my father, after all. Fine. But let's all stay on guard."

"Let's go," Noctis nodded. "All of us."