Day 45:
A weight had lifted from her chest. The cold lump of Starscourge still sat coiled inside her, but it was no longer hidden away, a dark secret waiting to be unleashed upon friends and family, destroying their perception of her.
She could see, still, the shadows of her Dream in the faces that turned away from her. But more often than not she blinked and they were banished. She could feel it—that endless isolation and the cold need to reach out—but it was a feeling that belonged to another life. She could see that now. That wasn't real. That wasn't now. It was just a ghost and if she shut her eyes tight enough and held on to the hands reached out to her, it would whisper away. Eventually.
By the time all curiosity was sated and all minds were in agreement, Reina wanted little more than to fall into bed and sleep for a week. Like being hungry without an appetite, being weary with no desire to lay her head down had become ingrained in her existence. To experience anything else was as unexpected as it was unnerving. Nevertheless, she begged solitude of her friends and family and retreated to her own rooms.
They were not as deserted as she had intended.
"Ever so popular, little Dreamer."
Reina turned. Ardyn leaned against the inside of her bedroom door, somehow managing to lounge while remaining upright.
"As are you," she said. "I note there was a scramble to beg forgiveness as soon as I walked away."
A smile twisted across his face.
"How does it feel?" She asked.
"False."
"You don't believe they're being earnest?"
He levelled a dark gaze at her in response.
"No," she corrected herself. "You've spent so long shrouded in lies and manipulation—on every side—that you struggle to accept the truth when it's presented to you."
His silence was enough of an answer.
"Can you bring yourself to trust me?" She asked.
"Can I trust you, little Dreamer?" He pushed away from the door and sauntered across the room, dropping onto the bed beside her. "You have yet to follow through on your promises."
"So I have." Her gaze dropped to the ring on her finger. She stripped it off and held it up between them. When he made no motion she took his hand, placed the ring in his palm—he jerked as if shocked, but did not pull away—and covered it with hers.
"Together," she said.
He met her gaze, intense but silent, still refusing to trust.
She shut her eyes, lowering her attention inward and downward, to the core of her power where it twisted with Ardyn's. Between them, the ring sat pulsing—so small and yet blazing with the strength of a hundred souls. At the heart it was one tiny stone, a seed of strength created by the Astrals, but the Lucii wrapped around it in so many layers it had become unrecognizable as an artefact at all. It seemed alive.
They sifted through the souls. Deeper and deeper into the knot of Lucii they delved, to the very heart of the ring, where Ardyn's soul was bound—a corrupted and unsnappable line, protected by the very thing that tainted it. And beside that tie, was the soul they searched for.
:Somnus.: Reina grabbed hold of him and dragged his soul into the In Between, thrusting him into the body he had once inhabited—hardly more than a boy and fully unfit to be king.
Ardyn followed. He made for himself a body, a corporeal form for the shapeless In-Between, and painted a picture of the space surrounding them until all three of them stood in the deserted halls of the Citadel's predecessor.
"Dreamer." Somnus inclined his head toward her. His eyes flicked in Ardyn's direction, betraying his unease. "Brother. To what do I owe this visit?"
Ardyn advanced without a word to him. He was the taller of them—or else he had made himself that way—and could look down on Somnus when they stood toe-to-toe.
He turned abruptly back toward Reina. "Will you do it? Will you truly do as you promised?"
His voice was different in this place. His face as well. More as he had been than as he was.
"I will," she said.
"Even if he repents?"
"Would his apologies satisfy you?" She asked.
"No." He said it with just rancor, and she heard in him the same emotion that had driven her to burn the skin off of Drautos' face.
"Then they will not satisfy me," she said.
Ardyn turned his back on Somnus and came, instead, to stand before her. If he looked down on Somnus, he towered over her. He always had. "Even if he begs for mercy?"
"I have none to give."
He studied her, as if to catch her in a lie. When he found none, he smiled. "No. You don't, do you, little Dreamer?"
"What is this about?" Somnus demanded.
Ardyn rounded on him. "Your death, dear brother. Or your infinite life, as the case may be. The little Dreamer has promised me justice: the very man who chained me away to rot for two thousand years, left to drift in endless purgatory."
Somnus' eyes darted between them. "You destroyed my body."
"I did." Ardyn grinned.
"And now you've come to destroy my soul."
"Oh no, dear brother. Much worse than that. We've come to set you free."
Again Somnus' eyes flicked between Reina and Ardyn. They landed on Ardyn and he took a step forward. "Ardyn, without my body I will never be able to reach the Beyond."
Ardyn's smile only stretched.
"Ardyn—brother. Please. Be reasonable."
"You want me to..?" Rather than rage, Somnus' pleading conjured laughter. It broke through Ardyn's words, echoing in the lofty hall, and wrapping around him. "You want me to be reasonable? Reasonable?"
"What was done to you—what I did to you—was unconscionable. There is nothing I can say in defense of it. Looking back, I hardly know what drove me thus. Some erroneous belief that, were you to remain king, Lucis would crumble into darkness. It was as if a great light blinded my vision and righteousness took hold. In all that has happened since the Dreamer took the ring—merely weeks of your time—I have come to wonder if they were not my thoughts at all."
"The Draconian," Reina murmured.
Ardyn spun to face her. "You promised me, little Dreamer. Don't change your mind now."
She glanced between Somnus and Ardyn. If what Somnus said was true, they weren't so different. Both twisted and manipulated for Bahamut's purposes and used until their once-selves were no longer recognizable. If Bahamut had indeed forced Somnus' hand, he was hardly to blame for what had happened to Ardyn.
That might have mattered if Reina could have found one single scrap of empathy in her soul. But all of that had been crushed out in a long night that had never happened.
"Shall I do it now?" She asked.
The intensity and accusation on Ardyn's face faded as her words sunk in. In their place, came a smile, twisted and dark.
"Do it, little Dreamer."
She reached out with her magic, brushing the line that bound Somnus to the ring. It hummed in response.
Somnus' eyes widened. He took a step toward her, reaching out as if for compassion. "Don't. Please. I am sorry. A thousand times I am sorry, but no apology can ever be sufficient for my sins."
Reina met his gaze blankly, sharpening her magic like a blade.
He turned to Ardyn instead. "Brother, please. I beg of you. Stay this madness and let us come to some understanding."
"I have all the understanding I shall ever need," Ardyn said, smiling distantly. "Goodbye, Somnus."
Reina drew her blade across the strand, slicing in one swift motion. It split neatly and a look of shock burst across Somnus' face. He clutched at his chest, as if she had struck a physical blow to him, and staggered.
Ardyn stepped forward, bent with his hands on his knees, and blew. A great wind swept through the hall, catching on Somnus clothes, hair, and skin, until bits of his body seemed to be swept away in shreds. It picked up speed, wearing away what was left of him in the In Between, and Somnus faded to a whisper in the world:
"Ardyn…" His voice hung in the air, a ghostly hiss. "I'm sorry…"
And then he was no more. At least, not in this realm. He was but a ghost on Eos—untouchable, untraceable, for all eternity. In purgatory.
The strength of the ring lessened by one.
Ardyn turned; for a moment his face was blank. Then a smile split his features.
"You did it."
"I promised I would," she said.
He crossed the distance to her, gathered her up in his arms, and spun her around like she was no more than a child in his arms. Indeed, she hardly was. His laughter echoed once more on the walls of the Caelum tower.
"Oh, little Dreamer! You are as cruel and as heartless as I!"
She smiled in spite of herself. It wasn't a compliment, at least not one any should be pleased to receive, but when last had she seen him smile so? Not in perverse pleasure or twisted amusement, but in true joy. With the release of Somnus' soul, so too had Ardyn released a sliver of that spite that held him through the years. Justice had been done.
"Just one more promise to keep," she said.
He set her back down on her feet. The In-Between dissolved around them and once more they sat in her bedchamber in the Citadel.
"Two, I think," he said. "Though the second you've failed to make properly and I've been forced to form my own assumptions." Now he leaned closer to her, one hand braced on the bed on either side of her. "What happens when the Draconian is dead, little Dreamer?"
She met his ceaseless gaze levelly. "What would you like to happen?"
"Sweet oblivion." There was a hunger in his gaze as he studied her. It was not, perhaps, in connection with her so much as what she could do for him. "But my death requires yours… or Noctis'."
"We're bound to die someday," she said. "I swear I won't leave without you."
His gaze narrowed. "You mean to simply take me with you when you leave this cursed life behind?"
"Why not?" She asked. "Unless I have missed a piece of magic, what is required is for either Noctis or I to reach the gates of the Beyond and drag you along, willing or unwilling. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Noctis' Ascension—a death on the throne by the sword of his forefathers—is merely poetic. At the time, perhaps it was necessary. There was an urgency involved when you were antagonistic."
"I am antagonistic." He leaned so close that she could feel his breath on her lips.
"Not to me," she said. "Will you trust me, for all that I have kept my promises to you?"
"Have you? You betrayed me once."
"No," she said. "I didn't. Just as I never turned my back on my friends or died on the throne. I may have been her, but she is not me."
"And she never did commit to my vision," Ardyn murmured.
"No, she did not."
"Well, then, little Dreamer. Will you swear now to take me with you? Put an end to this endless life?"
"I swear," she said. "Just wait one more lifetime with me."
"In the hundreds I have suffered through, I will savor the last the most." He leaned forward, closing the last of the distance between them, and kissed her.