After some little shuffling of positions, Regis was soon dropping into the In Between alongside his daughter. She guided him through the dark, where blackness seemed to swirl like impenetrable fog in the unknown, and at last brought him to a place that might well have been the physical world.
They stepped out onto a grassy ledge beside a roaring waterfall, tucked away somewhere on a cliff face below a castle. Neither the location nor the architecture were familiar to Regis. But he stood in an un-physical body, dressed as he always was, in the shape Reina had chosen for him. He wondered at once what his face looked like, if Reina had been the one to imagine it. In her eyes, was he older or younger than in his? Did his face still sport the new scar from use of the ring?
He had no way to know.
Reina stood beside him, hand clasped with his, appearing several inches taller than she actually was. She had also chosen for herself a form that was older than her physical body. For a moment he wondered at what age truly meant to one who slipped so seamlessly through time, who could pass days within minutes, and who lived with one foot in a world he could hardly imagine. But they were not alone and he had no time to dwell on such things.
Ardyn sat just at the edge of the waterfall, leaning up against the rocks with one leg stretched out before him, the other bent up to serve as an armrest. Had Regis not known that Ardyn was their target, he would not have recognized him at all. Certainly, the person before them was not the chancellor of Niflheim, nor Ardyn Izunia as Regis had ever known him.
He was then, perhaps, Ardyn Lucis Caelum: a younger man, not so much in appearance as in demeanor, with long burgundy hair and a white shirt, which had grown damp from prolonged proximity to the waterfall. He wore a poet's look of anguish on his features.
Beside him was seated a young woman of roughly the same years. Fair of hair, bright-eyed, with a loving smile on her face as she looked up at him. But she was frozen, as if a statue. This was an image—a person—he had formed from his imagination, but no consciousness inhabited the body. She was as a doll.
"So. Brought the old man along, have you?" Ardyn stared up at them with a piercing yellow gaze that gave lie to his youthful features.
"We must speak, Ardyn," Regis said.
"Must we?"
"We made a deal. I have stood for my half of the bargain—allies have been assembled and we are prepared to strike out at Bahamut. It remains only for you to rise up to stand beside us."
"Bargains and deals—to hear him speak, one would think it was I, not he, who had transgressed and taken the hand of a sworn enemy."
The urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him was strong and growing. Sulking, as Reina had said. He had not believed it could be true at first.
"Somnus may be your enemy, but he is my ancestor and thus my source of power. An alliance—or lack thereof— with him was never a part of our bargain."
The peace of the grassy ledge was shattered by Ardyn's sudden shout. "He destroyed my life!"
Regis had not noticed the surrounding sense of birdsong until it was gone. All hint of breath in the air vanished and the temperate world became cold. Even the roar of the waterfall seemed to fade away, deadened. Muted.
The lifeless woman who sat beside Ardyn turned her gaze up toward Regis, but not with animosity. A pleading was on her face as crimson blossomed across the abdomen of her white dress and a line of blood dripped from her rosy lips. Regis stood, transfixed in horror, as she lifted a bloodied hand from her stomach and reached out with shaking fingers. He watched the last dying breaths of a woman he had never known, a memory summoned unwillingly from Ardyn's minds at the mere mention of Somnus. When she collapsed, she vanished, as if banished from Ardyn's mind.
What was Regis to say to that? That Somnus regretted the part he had played in making Ardyn into the monster he had become? That he wished to repent and make up for his sins? The vision of the woman's death left many questions unanswered, but enough holes were filled to take a leap: could Regis have forgiven a man who ran a sword through Crea's chest?
No. Not in any number of lifetimes.
And no amount of contrition would overcome the hatred that had bubbled in Ardyn's soul for two thousand years. That time spent on Angelgard had driven him mad with hatred and spite until there was nothing left but that flaming passion. Nothing Regis said would change it. After that vision, he wasn't certain he wished to change it. It was Ardyn's very existence and without it, what would he have been? A thought. An idea. A whisper on the wind.
While Regis struggled to find some words that would bridge the gap, Reina's hand slipped from his and she stepped forward.
"No," she said.
"No?" Ardyn seemed too stunned even to contradict her for a moment. But only a moment before his fury came back to him. "No?! You watched him betray me, Little Dreamer!"
"And I watched the crystal reject you," Reina said. "But you have no ire for the crystal, because you recognize it for what it was: a tool in the hands of another. Has it not occurred to you that your brother was the same?"
"Somnus is autonomous and cognizant. The crystal is a rock."
"There is no difference in the Draconian's eyes. To take hold of a stone and shape it is much the same as seizing a person and forging them into precisely what he needs them to be. The Draconian took your brother's mind and made him believe that you were twisted beyond salvation by the darkness. A stone cannot fight its own nature. Somnus was a tool, just like every Caelum after him has been. He even suspects it, but lacks the deeper understanding of Bahamut's twisted nature to make the final leap of deduction."
Regis stared at her. He had long since stopped watching Ardyn for reactions and fallen to gaping at his own daughter. When had she become the confident young negotiator who held insights he could only begin to grasp at? Surely this was not the same child he had fretted over mere hours before as he sent her off to speak with Ardyn.
He need never have worried. This world was her world, and here she was precisely what she had made herself: a competent princess whose knowledge and power granted her a firm grasp on any who wandered too close.
When Regis at last managed to pull his eyes from her, it was to see Ardyn regarding her with suspicion.
"I don't believe you."
"Then let him show you." Reina turned to look at Regis. "Call him, Father. Bring Somnus before his brother."
"Do not bring him here!" Ardyn was on his feet, his youthful features contorted in unnatural rage. Yet Reina continued to regard Regis.
If ever there was a time to place his trust in his daughter, this was it.
He reached out through the power of the ring and found the thread that bound Somnus to him. It required little more than that, for with that connection formed, Somnus came willingly—even eagerly—to face his brother.
Somnus stepped from the In Between into the bubble of peace that Ardyn had carved for himself. With the form he took and Ardyn as he was, it was impossible to miss the similarities between them. Brothers indeed, with no more doubt than one would have on seeing Reina and Noctis together.
Ardyn straightened, all hint of the sulking prince gone as he regarded the core of his spite. "Well, if nothing else, it gives me the opportunity to free your head from your neck."
He drew his blade, but before he could do more than that, Reina stepped between him and Somnus.
"No," she said. "You'll listen. Because somewhere deep inside you is a tiny piece that wonders what would happen if you were wrong. You have nothing to lose. If Somnus is a liar and a betrayer then nothing has changed. But perchance you discover something more. Something you never hoped to have because all happy memories of brotherhood and camaraderie have been buried beneath hatred."
Somnus reached around her and extended his hand to Ardyn. "Please, brother. Know my mind. And if yours remains unmoved, then sever my head from my neck as you please."
Ardyn, eyes narrowed, gazed between Reina, Somnus, and Somnus' outstretched hand. The silence stretched. And it was full silence now. The waterfall made not a sound, nor the river, nor the woods across it. Regis dared not move for fear of breaking whatever spell Reina had woven.
Time meant nothing here. They might have remained frozen in place for minutes or hours or years. All were interchangeable.
Ardyn released his blade and took Somnus' hand.
In a burst of magic, blue met crimson and melded into violet, an aura which surrounded both of them. Reina took several rapid steps backward and stopped when she had backed into Regis. Before them, brother stared at brother, one with a grimace of pain and anger and hatred, one with the anguish of regret. The violet light brightened, swelled, and burst, sending a near physical shockwave through the un-physical place.
Ardyn staggered backward two steps and slouched, doubled over with his hands braced on his knees, breathing as if he had run across the kingdom. Somnus took a single step forward and stopped abruptly, retracting an outstretched hand.
"Tool…" It was the first word from Ardyn, spoken as a wheeze as his breath came in starts. At last he straightened and fixed his gaze on Somnus. "Tool! You could have fought him! You should have fought him! For me!"
He lurched forward and slammed Somnus against the cliff face, holding him with one forearm locked beneath his neck. Somnus offered no resistance.
"If I had had even the slightest inkling that my thoughts were being manipulated, I would have, brother. But you have seen my mind. You know there was no hint, just simple and instantaneous belief, which I only questioned when it was far too late."
Ardyn slammed him hard against the stone, giving an animalistic growl. Then he released him, stepping back abruptly and turning his blazing eyes on Regis.
"You wish for the Draconian's death?" He asked.
"I do," Regis said, and meant it this time.
"Then make me one final bargain: After the Draconian is gone, you will end my life in whatever way is necessary."
Half a dozen thoughts raced through Regis' mind. If the prophecy and Bahamut were to be believed, the only way to end Ardyn's life was with Noctis'. He would not sacrifice his son's life. Not for the world. Not for anything. Could he make this agreement with the unspoken caveat that Ardyn's life would end in eighty or ninety years, when Noctis had lived a full life and was prepared to lay down his crown? In all technicality, it would not be a breach of the bargain Ardyn had spoken. Such a thing would occur after the Draconian was gone.
But no. Regis trusted neither the prophecy nor Bahamut. In which case he could not trust that the only way to end Ardyn's life was with Noctis' death. But he had no time to search for an alternative way before committing to—or rejecting—this bargain. Reina had bought him this precious opportunity. Could he truly throw it away? Could he truly accept it on the off chance that he could discover an alternative in time?
Though all this rushed through his mind in less than a second, that instant opened a door he had not meant to reveal, and through it stepped Reina. Once more.
"When the Draconian is gone, your life will end by the very nature of the Starscourge," she said. "It remains only so long as its creators still exist. On Bahamut's death, the other five must be held to their word to leave Eos peacefully and the Starscourge will end. And your life will end." She turned to Regis. "You need only swear that you will hold the Astrals to their word or else sever them, Father."
This was a vow he could make, and without hesitation. All the more for Reina's unspoken assurance that it was a safe bargain without unexpected strings attached.
"That I swear." Regis held out his hand to Ardyn. After a brief moment, in which Ardyn considered Reina with curiosity, he took it.
"Then we have a bargain," Ardyn said. "Now then. Shall we kill the Draconian?"