Chapter Four: Ancients and Kings
Prompto liked to think of himself as a pretty chill guy. You couldn't not be these days, what with their slow progress towards any real results. Sometimes—or more like some weeks—it seemed as though they were going backwards instead of forward. The list of what they needed to do never got any shorter; if anything, they were adding to it whenever the council met. On each journey beyond the walls, Prompto still passed the same dilapidated structures and torn sections of pavement that they hadn't been able to fix since they'd returned to the Crown City; a few neighborhoods were more like junkyards than the residential areas they used to be. Sure, they were coming along, but that didn't mean they would be finished in a year or even another ten. That being said, it didn't pay to get impatient—impatience bred frustration, and Prompto had seen firsthand that nobody got a lot done once they reached that point. So, he considered it a good thing that he'd gotten the jump on everyone else in that department. Not having any expectations was a huge help: if you didn't let yourself believe that you'd get something, then it was easier to avoid disappointment when you didn't. That principle had worked on just about everything since he was a kid, from his family to his friends to school. All that he'd earned over the years, all the growing that he'd done, had been a collection of pleasant surprises. He'd worked damn hard to get this far, yeah, but it floored him nevertheless that he had come all this way in one piece. Despite some near misses, he hadn't had a nervous breakdown yet!
Yet being the operative word, as Ignis put it. Everybody had their limit, and he was positive he was about to sprint past his as he dumped another stack of books on the table with a groan of frustration.
"Do we seriously have to go through all of these?" he totally didn't whine. Not that he wouldn't have reason to: they'd been in the Citadel's library so long he was starting to wonder what the outside world looked like.
Which wasn't Ignis's concern, admittedly. He might not have been able to see, but the quirked eyebrow he aimed in Prompto's direction was too judgmental to interpret as anything other than sheer disdain.
Damn, how does he do that?
It just wasn't fair.
"Unless you have a better method of locating the information we're searching for," he retorted scathingly.
Swallowing the instinctive urge to simply do what he was told (because this was Ignis, and you didn't mouth off to Ignis), Prompto halfheartedly suggested, "Can't we ask Cor? I'll bet he knows this stuff better than we do."
He was apparently the only one who thought so, because Ignis immediately countered, "The marshal is knowledgeable on a great many subjects, but in Lucian history, his expertise is lacking."
"…Dude, he literally told us all about the ancient wars Lucis fought against the empire."
Ignis hummed in reluctant agreement, but it was Gladio who answered as he stomped up to the table with his own pile of research. "If we haven't found anything yet, odds are it's gonna be way more ancient than that."
"Especially with the Astrals involved," added Ignis with a frown. "There's no telling how far back we'll need to look to decipher the Glacian's clue."
"Are we even sure it's a clue? Focus could mean lots of things, right?"
Well, that probably wasn't the best way to phrase his question. Ignis and Gladio stared at him as though he'd recommended they burn down the Citadel and make an imperial war museum in its place—which was saying something when Ignis couldn't really stare at him to begin with. Somehow, even though they were all running on too little sleep and too much emotion, neither one of them lost their cool with him.
See? Chill. Pays off.
But it didn't exempt him from Ignis's deadpan, "I find it hard to believe that she would have appeared to us merely to indicate that Noct had done his job."
Gladio snorted, folding his arms and glaring at nothing in particular. "As if we didn't already know that."
"Yeah," sighed Prompto. "Right."
That much was obvious without divine intervention. Monuments to Noct's sacrifice were all over the place, from the building they lived in to the giant burning ball of light that rose every morning. They couldn't forget what had happened if they tried—and he'd really tried. No, whatever it was Gentiana had contacted them for, it couldn't be to rub their loss in their faces.
Then again, the Astrals had done more annoying stuff in the past. Leviathan? He didn't doubt for a second that she'd love that kind of thing. In fact, they should probably have counted themselves lucky that she wasn't the one who had visited them in their dreams. Prompto wasn't big on superstition, but he was convinced it was bad luck to let huge, bitter sea snake ladies into your head. For one thing, they'd make a mess of everything like she had in Altissia. For another… Actually, did he need another? That was awful enough.
And honestly, he couldn't see the Hydraean tossing them a bone. Gentiana, yeah. Sort of. It was tough to tell what she was attempting to say sometimes, yet they could be sure that she wasn't tugging their chains.
Or he hoped not.
Now wasn't the time to second guess what was going on, however. He had enough on his mind, whether it was this Focus business or the eerie realization that he had apparently been sharing dreams with Ignis and Gladio for the last year. None of them had noticed it before, of course: it was hard to figure that kind of stuff out when you didn't talk about it. Their mourning, both together or individually, was strictly off limits in daily conversation. Remembering Noct was fine, but getting all sappy over it was bound to send Gladio running and Ignis into a fevered frenzy of cleaning or working or whatever else he did. As such, they hadn't registered that things weren't quite right around here, at least not where their heads were concerned.
Up until a couple of days ago, the only weirdness Prompto had been worried about was the fact that his brain kept taunting him with the same nightmare whenever he closed his eyes. Like, seriously, the same. It was identical, night after night—the throne room, the Crystal, the Noct. He'd walked that path so many times that it was ingrained in his memory when he woke, which wasn't supposed to be a thing. Those first few weeks, he'd merely crossed his fingers and waited to forget about it. That was the whole point of dreams, wasn't it? They made you uneasy, but you couldn't remember why. Maybe your imaginary self was fighting daemons or left the stove on or just got a bad case of indigestion from those crappy cans of beans they'd occasionally had to live off. Whatever it was, you'd shudder a little in the morning and then go about your business, the details long gone as soon as your feet touched the floor.
Not this dream, though. This one refused to leave him alone, and he remembered it right down to the last minute observation every time he jerked upright in a cold sweat. That was yet another reason he'd started dragging his ass to the observation deck so early: with the sensation of eyes on him, it was one of the few ways he could think of to ease the gnawing emptiness he felt when he realized there would be no one standing beside him when he turned around. And hey, it was the closest he would get to his best friend, so it wasn't a total waste.
It didn't get rid of the prickling at the back of his neck or how he could have sworn Noct was right behind him either, but it was a start.
The morning after the Glacian had changed the game, he hadn't gotten a chance to complete his usual ritual. In fact, he hadn't gone to the observation deck in the three days since, which was something of a record for him. Instead, he'd been spending every waking moment in the library. With Ignis.
They needed to make a law against that.
How was he supposed to decline, though, when Ignis's argument had been that he needed Prompto's eyes? Talk about callous. Besides, it wasn't at all out of the ordinary for Prompto to be his seeing-eye person anyway, and he'd been doing it without complaint for eleven years—whenever Ignis would let him, that was. During the Long Night, he had been pretty adamant that he should learn to do some stuff on his own; that was how he had gotten so good at fighting and cooking again. But the job he'd undertaken in the aftermath wasn't like that: it required him to read almost constantly and examine pictures that he would never be able to look at without help. He needed someone at his side who could describe it all in detail, not to mention in ways that would make sense to him. They'd been partners and friends for long enough that Prompto didn't have much confidence in anyone other than himself or Gladio when it came to providing Ignis with what he hoped to glean from a document or a photo, even if Talcott admittedly came close. (That was no wonder—the kid went so far overboard that Noct would have had to fish him out if he were still here.) In any case, Ignis couldn't solely rely on his reading app and the Citadel's computer servers, which contained a lot of the records they'd managed to digitize before the fall. Those had been their priority when they returned power to the palace—the kind that wasn't bestowed upon them by Ardyn's innate creepiness, anyway—but they weren't perfect. They weren't complete.
This ancient stuff? Whoever was responsible for uploading old documents must have found most of the dustier texts a little too old to bother with, because they hadn't seen anything on Ignis's phone that went further back than ancient Solheim. As far as they could tell, however, even that was still too new.
So, they'd been holed up in the library for the last few days, Prompto sorting through countless books until his eyes went numb while Ignis focused on accessing every single file their computers had to offer. Well, maybe not that many, but it definitely felt that way when the toneless voice of his reading app recited the words for hours on end. Sometimes, Prompto wished he'd get Talcott or Cor to do it just so they'd have a different flavor around here. They were the ones who frequented the Citadel more than anyone but Ignis himself, given that Cor pretty much ran the place and Talcott simply ran whatever errands they needed him to, so they were always available. Even Gladio's gruff tones would have been an improvement on the cool, collected, mechanical voice of the artificial intelligence.
That was actually the plus side of their exile in this literary hell: not once had Gladio tried to sneak out of the city since Gentiana had dropped that bombshell on them. Prompto was positive he'd seen him more in three days than the last three months combined, which was… Well, it was kind of strange. Part of him was walking on eggshells to avoid the possibility of sending him running for the hills again; the rest just wanted everything to go back to normal…or as close as they would get.
Even though he knew Ignis didn't exactly agree with the idea, that was why Prompto had wheedled Gladio into King's Knight in honor of Noct's being-dead-for-a-year-iversary. Unlike the rest of the kingdom, he'd experienced what had happened when the hammer fell and sent them all scrambling. No one else had been there to witness how Gladio had deflated when he'd discovered Noct wasn't where he was supposed to be; no one else had been there to explain to Ignis what they were seeing in the throne room when he couldn't. There were so many painful memories contained in that one night alone that they'd never really talked about, not even to each other. Getting together in the same room to celebrate like other people around Lucis was therefore out of the question, but he'd figured that they could use a distraction regardless, a happier memory to keep their minds off it and focus on the best times instead of the worst. That was what Noct would have wanted, and Prompto thought they could stand to pretend they were as average as the rest of the kingdom for a few hours anyway. After all, between the three of them, they were wound tight. If they didn't take a step back soon, one of them was going to combust—Prompto's money was on Ignis. The guy was the quintessential professional, but he had a line too.
Fortunately, they hadn't reached it yet. The morning after Gentiana's impromptu visit, Prompto had jumped out of bed and raced to get dressed before Ignis had a chance to hang up the phone. Everything that followed had been a series of abnormalities, from Gladio's presence in Ignis's apartment to the reason for their congregating when the sun hadn't completely woken up. It wasn't like the three of them worked together much these days outside of council meetings and whatever Prompto could help Ignis with around the Citadel, so that had definitely been a blast from the past.
Then Ignis had taken it a step further: he'd started giving orders for a change. Like they were out on the road. At camp. Listening to him tell them that they weren't paying for a hotel no matter how hard it was raining.
Some mental images, you just couldn't delete. The abject horror of sleeping in a muddy tent was one of them.
And it hadn't gotten any better since, however focused Prompto was on keeping his mouth shut. (Mostly.) They'd been over the Glacian's clues so often that he was pretty sure he'd need to scrape the inside of his skull with a spoon if Ignis asked him to recount his side of the dream one more time. Prompto had thought they'd collected anything worth analyzing by now, yet Ignis was adamant that even the most seemingly insignificant detail was worth exploring. If there was something in Prompto's dream that Gladio hadn't seen, they needed to figure out what it meant; if Ignis had caught a hint that neither Prompto nor Gladio had (which wasn't totally unheard of), then they had to compare notes. Anything at all, whether it was an extra speck of the Crystal or a different expression on Noct's face, could be of value.
That was Ignis. In Prompto's opinion, they didn't really need to look any further than Gentiana's input. She was the big bad goddess here.
As he slumped into his usual seat and cringed at the sound of Ignis's reading app continuing its sermon, however, he had to wonder if she recognized how obnoxious her so-called clue was. Seriously, that was the best she could do? A whole year to come up with something, and this was all they got.
None of the Astrals had made an appearance since the night Noct had died; he was guessing they simply went back to sleep indefinitely now that things were returning to normal and the world was saved. Without the Starscourge, humanity was doing fine on its own, so they didn't have much use for divine advice. If Gentiana had some for them, then there were so many ways she could have gone about offering it—popping up randomly like she used to or leaving them a note or writing it in the stars. Whatever. This, though? This was torture. This was agonizing, brutal torture. Prompto wasn't sure what they'd done to deserve it either.
Actually, strike that. He could think of something, although he'd been under the impression that they weren't meant to fix their ultimate failure. Thousands of years of prophecies and a demented former king had sort of squashed that dream.
At least he wasn't the only one whose head was swimming with confusion and indignation. Gladio had been verbally bashing the Astrals for three days; while Ignis frequently hushed him, Prompto couldn't help but notice that he never argued. Then again, Ignis was the most logical of them all. If anybody understood what total crap this whole thing was, he did.
It was good that they were on the same page in that regard, because Prompto hadn't gotten the cover of his next volume open before Gladio grumbled, "Can't believe they're still playing these stupid games instead of just tellin' us what they want us to know."
"You can say that again," muttered Prompto, flipping to the table of contents and glancing over each item. None of them made any sense, but hey, they'd gone past the point of rationality.
Except Ignis, who paused his app to pointedly inquire, "You're certain there was nothing in the throne room?"
That was another discussion they'd had no less than fifty-two times, and it always ended the same way: with a big, heaping pile of nothing. There was nothing to find, nothing to see, nothing to hear—just…nothing. The only people who had been in the throne room in the last year were the Crownsguard members who swept up the remnants of the Crystal and the construction teams that had seen to repairing the wall. If there had been anything to discover, they would have by now. So, Prompto wasn't at all surprised when Gladio shook his head, more exasperated than pissed off for a change.
"Nothin' but dust," he replied with a sigh. "Definitely didn't see anything about whatever this bond is."
"Something tells me that's a less pressing matter than the Focus she mentioned."
"You think the Six have a different definition than we do?" guessed Prompto.
Ignis didn't answer immediately, seeming to turn the question over in his head first. When he did respond, it was with a careful deliberation that said he didn't want to put his foot in his mouth.
Typical Iggy.
"Perhaps not a different definition," Ignis qualified, "but the Glacian must have been referring to a certain context that we aren't familiar with. I'm sure of it."
"Pretty sure none of these books are gonna give us context," observed Gladio, to which Ignis shrugged a shoulder and picked up his phone again.
"Even so, it's worth a try. Noct may depend on it."
That brought their conversation to a close more effectively than the smooth, annoying voice of the app. It was as sobering a thought as it was comforting, the idea that they might be able to bring Noct back if they played Gentiana's game right. Well, that was their assumption, anyway. Why else would she bother telling them those things about eternal sleep and lying in wait? The Astrals couldn't be so bored that they had nothing better to do than dig in the knife, could they? Not likely.
But that didn't get them any closer to putting the pieces of this puzzle together or finding some answers. For three days, they had (briefly) gone to sleep with questions at the ready only to wake up having had no dreams and no encounters with Gentiana. A few weeks ago, Prompto would have loved the opportunity to get a good night's rest; he was always interrupted by that dream, which was more than mildly frustrating when his eyes started itching in the middle of a meeting. Now that he actually wanted to have it, however, his brain gave him a break. They were left without the familiar feeling that Noct was hovering over their shoulders and absolutely no direction whatsoever.
Which meant the next few hours were a blur of meaningless words and pounding headaches. In a way, Prompto thought he might be even more blind than Ignis. That would definitely explain how the clock on his phone went from early morning to early evening without him noticing. Even worse was that he hadn't absorbed anything he'd read—or was supposed to be reading—in that time. All he could say was that there were plenty of references to focuses. There were so many that he could hardly count them all:
There was focusing on affairs of state.
There was focusing on healing the Starscourge. (That one was a reference to the Chosen King, yet there hadn't been anything else of use in the fifty-seven pages Prompto had skimmed just in case he missed something.)
There was even focusing on a healthy diet, which was apparently a must for kings since they had an obligation to live as long as possible for their people. Somehow, he got the impression that whoever wrote that book would have had an aneurysm if they'd caught sight of what Noct usually ate if left to his own devices.
They would have had another if they glimpsed what passed for a meal that night as the sun set outside the windows and their stomachs started growling loudly in the silence. Admittedly, Prompto was as much a fan of Cup Noodles as the next guy, but Gladio took it to a discomfiting level. That was all they'd eaten for the last few days, and Prompto couldn't tell whether it was for sheer convenience or if Gladio was simply tumbling into the pit of his own despair. After all, there were few better comfort foods than freeze-dried vegetables and instant noodles that didn't even have an expiration date on them. If they did, they probably would have gone bad a long time ago, as would the thread that held the ends of Gladio's patience together.
They hadn't gotten so lucky with the Ebony.
Ignis wasn't Gladio, though, so he handled the deprivation fairly well. They'd rationed what they could, and now that things were slowly moving in the right direction, they were hoping to restock the stores with food they actually wanted to eat rather than what they were merely able to scrounge up.
Unless you were Gladio, who contentedly slurped his own noodles as he flipped page after page of worthless tomes that weren't giving them anything they could use. Prompto would have liked to make their dinner run instead, but Gladio had beat him to the punch. Honestly, he should have known it was so that no one could come back with something other than their usual fare, not that Prompto was complaining about it. Ignis must have recognized that it was a decent trade-off as well, because he didn't say a word in spite of his conspicuously puckered features as he picked at his portion. Gladio was here, he was focused, and he showed no signs of leaving anytime soon regardless of how much he groused about Gentiana's message—they could live through a few calorie-packed salt bombs to keep him around.
As old as Cup Noodles were getting, however, they were nothing compared to the rage inducing sound of Gladio telling him, "If you're done with those, you can always start some new ones."
Blinking, Prompto glanced past his empty container to see that all his books were stacked haphazardly at the corner of the table in his makeshift discard pile. It was a testament to how long they'd been at this that he hadn't even realized he'd finished. His hands seemed like they were on autopilot, flipping through each text until he wasn't conscious of the progress he was making. Well, he was going to call it progress. In reality, he guessed that he was lagging behind the others in terms of valid data. Ignis hadn't said much about what he was getting from his tour through the Citadel's server, but Prompto would have been super surprised if he hadn't come up with at least a dozen possibilities from that alone, unconfirmed or otherwise. On the other end of the table, Gladio appeared to have gone through half the library on his own; Prompto could barely see him behind the towering book fort that threatened to topple around him if he added one more volume.
Then there was Prompto, who had accomplished the equivalent of shoving pencils up his nose and imitating a comatose gurangatch.
Total score, dude.
There was no point in asking if he had to, just like there was no point in informing Gladio that he could handle the next serving of mind-numbing information dump. They'd pulled their weight; it was about time he pulled his.
"Sure," replied Prompto with mock enthusiasm as he rose from his seat and stretched. "Any suggestions?"
"Old would work."
"Wow, why didn't I think of that?"
Rolling his eyes, Gladio threw his latest read aside and reached for one that probably should have fallen apart during the founder king's reign. "Can't all be as smart as me."
"All that sodium's really going to your head. Maybe you should lay off the noodles, big guy."
"I didn't get this far to give up Cup Noodles."
In years past, Prompto would have taken that as his cue to sarcastically ask what he had come all this way for. It would have been a joke then, a snide poke at his Shieldly dignity and what a pain in the rear he always said Noct could be. These days, though… It wouldn't mean the same thing. Their road hadn't been an easy one, and even if Noct had lived, they weren't exactly swimming in luck here. Maybe they could fool themselves into believing everything was fine when they were cloistered in the library with nothing but books and Ignis's sparkling personality to keep them company, but that was simply a clever disguise for what else was going on in the world. Beyond that, they also weren't the same people anymore—they hadn't been for longer than Prompto liked thinking about. Yeah, Gladio wouldn't have blinked if Prompto had asked him that a while back; the worst he would have done was smack him upside his head. Now? After everything that had happened? The last thing he wanted was to remind the former Shield about the former part.
Instead, Prompto laughed awkwardly and trailed towards the bookcases with a snarky, "Better be careful, or you'll end up being a giant cup of noodles soon."
It might have been his imagination, but Prompto was almost certain he heard Gladio mutter, "Wouldn't that be nice," under his breath.
Neither of them addressed his underlying skepticism or how it practically screamed that he understood what Prompto had been about to say and appreciated that he'd decided not to. They were friends—they didn't need to go there.
And that was for the best given that Ignis chose that moment to call after him, "See if you can find any other religious texts."
Now it was Prompto's turn to roll his eyes, stopping long enough to shoot him an incredulous glance. "You mean, besides the million we've already looked through?"
"That would be ideal, yes," retorted Ignis dryly, although his humor fell a little flat. Whether he was aware of how ridiculous this whole thing was or not didn't matter—it still had to be done.
For Noct.
So, Prompto didn't complain. He didn't whine, not even ironically. Rather, he nodded his head in exhausted acceptance of the fact that this was what their lives had come to and retreated into the stacks to see what he could scavenge from the obscenely thorough collection.
It wasn't that he didn't want to do this, annoying as their methods were. Their shared vision from Gentiana was sort of what kept him going right now. (Cup Noodles and flat soda only went so far.) The prospect of getting Noct back, of having him around for even one more day, was so tantalizing that Prompto couldn't help getting his hopes up. It was everything they'd wanted for the future: the four of them walking into it together, not slouching into it with the constant awareness that they were missing a vital part of their souls. That was what the Glacian had given them. Despite all their jokes, their frustration, their doubts—in spite of everything, she'd reignited the tiny flame of faith that they'd stoked during Noct's ten-year nap.
But at times like these, when he was wandering aimlessly amidst ancient tomes that seemed to carry everything but what they were looking for, it was hard to maintain that momentum. The road laid before them seemed to stretch longer and longer, and the information they were trying to find was at its invisible end. Only it wasn't a road like the ones that had led them through the outer territories when they hadn't left the safety of the Wall before. No, this was a totally different path, one that had no signs along it to indicate that they were heading in the right direction. They were just as likely to end up in Galdin as they were to find their way to Ravatogh; they'd have no idea if they'd reached their destination until they arrived. Even then they couldn't be sure, not unless there was an Astral waiting to tell them they'd won the ultimate prize.
Or maybe it didn't have to be an Astral. Those guys were busy with…whatever it was they did these days. They had plenty of Messengers doing their bidding already, right? It would be so simple for them to send one down…
To…the Citadel?
Prompto didn't realize he'd stopped moving at first, his feet cemented to the floor and his eyes squinting to make sense of what the hell he was seeing. Or…not seeing? Maybe? He knew what it looked like: the fluffy white fur and lolling tongue made it pretty obvious. But it was impossible! They'd been camped out in the library for three days, and they had never been visited by anybody except the occasional retainer who needed Ignis's signature on something. Besides, it had been eleven years since Prompto had seen Pryna. By all accounts, she was supposed to be dead. Just like Umbra had died with Noct, Pryna had gone to puppy heaven with Lady Lunafreya. Prompto had long since resigned himself to the belief that it had been a dream, her leading him when he'd gotten lost in Niflheim and stuck in the depths of his own self-pity. There hadn't been any other explanation when he'd found out that she'd gone the same way as her mistress. And as depressing as that was, it really hadn't surprised any of them: the Messengers were tasked with carrying the word of the gods to humanity, and both delivery canines had almost exclusively served the Chosen King and the Oracle, as far as Prompto could tell. Without them, there wasn't really a reason for Umbra or Pryna to stick around.
Yet there she was, standing at the end of the aisle as though she'd been waiting for Prompto all day. Her impatient expression said it all, though she hadn't been much different as a puppy—a smaller Messenger? Did divine entities actually age, or had she merely appeared that way because he had been just a kid himself? Yeah, that was more likely. He had a feeling that if Pryna had been a puppy at any point, it was probably so long ago that not even the Astrals could remember. They had more important things to worry about.
And so did Prompto. Whether this phantom dog was real or his imagination was running wild, she didn't give him half a second to figure out. Pryna turned tail as soon as she had his attention and vanished around the corner, obviously inviting him to get a move on.
Shared dreams. Creepy presences floating around him day and night. Gods in his head. Messengers playing peek-a-boo with him. Oh, yeah—he was totally sane.
Opting to worry about his gradually slipping mental health later, Prompto darted forward without hesitation. He partially expected to see that his eyes were simply playing tricks on him, but when he rounded the end of the bookcase, he spotted the tip of Pryna's tail a few stacks down.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere!
Where exactly that was, he couldn't be sure. All he knew was that he needed to keep pace, so he did. He sprinted along behind Pryna with renewed zeal, his heart pounding in anticipation that he probably shouldn't have allowed himself until he had confirmation of his newfound suspicions in hand. With every turn, with every step deeper into the bowels of the library he hadn't yet explored, he felt as though they were coming up on something. There was a sign in the road, showing him which fork to take and a rising sun straight ahead. This was it—it had to be it—
And then, as soon as she'd appeared, Pryna was gone.
Prompto screeched to a halt, the bookshelves converging ahead of him so that the only way to go was backwards. For a moment, he thought that maybe it was okay, that perhaps the Messenger had been able to pass through solid stone and had forgotten that he wasn't so lucky. She'd retrace her steps and return to take him wherever it was she wanted by another route. It would be fine. Crazier stuff had happened, after all!
When Pryna didn't reemerge, however, all the hope that had suddenly burst forth in his chest seemed to shrink. Minutes ticked by with no change, and Prompto's shoulders sank a little lower as he admitted defeat. The worst part was that he knew he had no right to the resulting frustration. It was his own fault for getting excited over nothing, but it still left him feeling worse than he had before: he'd been so close, she'd been right there…
Through the haze of his disappointment, Prompto almost missed the fact that he wasn't entirely alone. Although there were no Messengers or Astrals waiting for him in this remote corner of the library, there was something else.
Something that looked right up their alley.
Frowning, he took a few tentative steps forward before gingerly reaching down to pluck the volume off the floor where it had been unceremoniously dropped by someone who clearly had no respect for how old the thing was. At least, that was how it would look to anybody who hadn't been itching for some divine intervention for three whole days without relief. When Prompto peered into the growing shadows, he couldn't find one empty space on the shelves where the book in his hands might have come from; there were no tracks in the dust left behind from someone pulling it out. Of course, it was possible that it had been lying there all this time, abandoned by a royal historian and forced to weather the empire's occupation. He could see it in his head: some poor old dude, hearing the explosions and running for the door, not even realizing that his research was doomed to gather dust for the next eleven years.
Only it hadn't. Turning the tome over, Prompto didn't spot a speck of dirt or dust anywhere on it. All that jumped out at him was the symbol on the front—a sphere made of green pentagons—and the bone-chilling cold that seeped into his fingers the longer he held it.
Isn't that interesting?
Even more fascinating was the expression on Ignis's face when Prompto described the cover to him. Neither he nor Gladio had doubted Pryna's convenient assistance, which was comforting since he still wasn't so sure himself. Luckily for him, he didn't have time to dwell on it.
"You're absolutely certain it's green?" he demanded almost before Prompto could finish relaying his heroic tale of courage and dog following.
Exchanging a perplexed glance with Gladio, Prompto replied, "Uh… Pretty sure, unless the thing's discolored or something. Doesn't look damaged, though."
"Nope," Gladio chimed in as he peered over his shoulder. "That's definitely green. What's up, Iggy?"
Ignis merely shook his head, frowning in their direction even though it was obvious his mind was a million miles away. As far as he was concerned, Prompto was certain he'd never seen the symbol in his life; he would have thought it was simply a random shape if not for Ignis's reaction. The latter hadn't been this intrigued about the data they were sifting through since Gladio had stumbled across an abridged history of divine appearances in Eos. Not exactly the most useful book, especially when it prioritized myths and legends more than actual encounters, but it had held their attention for a few minutes. Then it was right back to the pile, forgotten alongside the seemingly endless stack that Prompto so wasn't going to be putting away. (That was what they really kept Talcott around for, right? The not-so-little dude could benefit from a good workout.)
But first things first: they needed to get to the bottom of their latest mystery.
Ignis apparently agreed, because he leaned back in his chair and murmured, "I recall seeing the image before, but I can't remember where."
"Do you remember what it meant?" asked Prompto hopefully. His optimism was dashed a moment later when Ignis sighed in obvious frustration.
"No. It's been years since I last saw it. I'm not certain of the context, either."
Huffing amusedly, Gladio observed, "And here I thought your memory was a steel trap."
Prompto didn't doubt for a second that Ignis's gaze would have been sharper than his daggers as he glared them in Gladio's direction. "There is the occasional need to make room in that trap by getting rid of things that appear to be of little import."
"Too bad you threw out the wrong one this time."
"We can't all be as perfect as you, Gladio, much as we try."
"Uh huh. How's that workin' out for you?"
"It's positively dismal."
After three days of heavy silences and exasperated groans, Prompto had to admit that it was nice hearing those two going at it. Well, in a sense: when they actually went at it, nobody wanted to be around for fear of becoming collateral damage. Gladio was volatile on the best of days depending on the circumstances, and Ignis? He played a good game, giving everyone the impression that he was cooler than Ghorovas, but his friends knew him way better than that. They knew that if you were going to piss anyone off, it was better to rile Gladio up than Ignis. Where the former would beat you to a pulp if he caught you (or could since Prompto hadn't seen him do it yet), the latter could strip the skin off your bones with nothing but a few choice phrases and a raised eyebrow. If Ignis wanted to, he could make you rethink everything you'd ever done in your entire life and convince you that dirt was of more value. If Ignis wanted to, he could make you believe that not a word passed your lips that was ever right—one hundred percent, completely correct.
If Ignis wanted to, he could have overthrown the Lucis Caelum line and become the king all by himself. That was how intimidating he could be.
Ignis wasn't like that, though, nor did ruling seem to interest him. He was really sort of perfect for the position he'd been groomed to inherit: strong enough to combat Gladio at his surliest and gentle enough to coax Noct to eat a vegetable every year or five. It was more than Prompto had managed, not that he'd tried very hard.
In any case, just like that hadn't been his job, listening to the two of them squabble while Ignis racked his brains for that memory wasn't up to Prompto either. Rather, he took it upon himself to flip the cover of the book open and frown down at the lack of a table of contents. Wasn't that a thing around here? He hadn't seen one volume that didn't warn him what he was getting into; professional books were meant to come with a disclaimer, after all. That had been how he stayed on track, considering the fact that he wasn't about to waste his time on a treatise regarding the state of carrot farming in Caem. (Yes, there had been a book on that. No, he hadn't bothered with it. He'd save it for a rainy day.) It looked like Pryna—and, by extension, Gentiana—wouldn't be so forthcoming with information.
Go figure.
Cringing inwardly, Prompto tried not to let that deter him. Whether he could infer what the book was about in advance or not, there was no denying that Pryna wouldn't have led him to it if it weren't important. Sure, for all he knew, it might simply be a recipe book for excellent dog treats Ignis could perfect in his limited free time. Still, it was worth a shot.
The problem? He had no idea what the hell he was even looking at here. Half the words were gibberish to him, although the author obviously understood what they were talking about since they offered no explanations. Clearly, this wasn't something they'd written to teach people. No table of contents, no glossary when he momentarily flipped to the back—seriously, how much harder could they make this? In the first few pages, nothing familiar or sensible jumped out at him.
Nothing but the one word they had been hunting down for three days, at least. Too bad he couldn't make heads or tails of the rest.
"Uh, guys? I don't think this is gonna work."
That stopped both of them in their tracks. Ignis recovered first, scooting forward in his chair as though he planned to wrest the book from him and read it for himself. "What's wrong?"
"It's…almost like a fairy tale?" replied Prompto with a shrug. "Like, nothing in here makes sense. It's all about…magic and monsters…and stuff…"
"Hate to break it to you, but that sounds an awful lot like real life, doesn't it?" snorted Gladio derisively. Okay, he had a point there.
"These ones aren't daemons, though," Prompto argued, sticking the book under his nose so that he could get a look at the…things illustrated at the side of the page he'd randomly flipped to.
"Huh," he murmured quietly. A crease appeared between his eyebrows, and all of a sudden, his cocky remarks fell by the wayside. "Yeah, that's…definitely different."
That was putting it mildly, in Prompto's opinion. They had seen tons of monsters over the years, some naturally occurring while others had spent two millennia as Ardyn's grotesque pets. None of them came close to whatever the creature in the book was—a Cie'th, according to the caption. It looked almost human, or it would have if not for the way its feet were clawed and its arms seemed to have been dislocated from its shoulders and every single inch of it appeared to be made of stone. That was what he was getting from the overall image, anyway: a big rock monster with a weird red symbol on its chest.
This thing couldn't be real. Nuh uh. Not possible.
He hoped.
The description he and Gladio managed to provide Ignis, however, had his forehead wrinkling like it always did when he was about to blow their minds. In this case, Prompto got the feeling it would be more out of disappointment than anything else. After all, what must it be like to go from being a regular person to…that? He used to wonder the same about people who had turned into daemons: did they remember who they were? Did they retain any sense of right or wrong? Did they feel pain or understand the consequences of their actions even if they couldn't control either? Over time, he'd forced himself to believe that they couldn't. The alternative was simply too depressing.
Ignis wasn't going to let him off easy in this instance, of course. Rather than leaving the implications of the Cie'th to their imaginations, he eagerly prompted, "Read it aloud, starting from the beginning."
…Seriously?!
"The whole thing?" he clarified warily, already knowing the answer and hating it.
"I can't very well do it myself," Ignis reminded him flatly.
As much as Prompto wanted to complain or offer to just read him whatever looked interesting, he couldn't argue when he noticed the defeated set of Ignis's shoulders. Ordinarily, he didn't seem to mind asking for help: he was more comfortable with mentioning that he could use an extra set of eyes now than he had been in the months after Altissia. Doing his job had meant he'd needed to get over his embarrassment, stow the emotions, and keep on keeping on. Prompto had worried about him from time to time, but Ignis had proven everyone wrong and passed the toughest trials with flying colors.
That didn't make him the machine he sometimes pretended to be, though, and Prompto could tell that he would have loved to be able to do this on his own without imposing on either himself or Gladio to feed him the information. There was a line in the proverbial sand, and now that Noct's fate once again lay on the other side of it, Prompto could read Ignis's frustration with his disability in his posture. He hadn't had to deal with that sort of thing; Gladio hadn't either. They were the lucky ones here, and as such, it was their duty to prop up the guy who had taken a beating so they wouldn't have to.
Besides, it could have been worse: it could have been a super long volume about political affairs. If Prompto never saw another one of those, it would be too soon.
With that thought in mind, he quietly muttered his assent and dropped into his seat, propping the book open in his lap and starting at the beginning as he'd been instructed.
He got barely half a page in before Ignis interrupted, "Of course. How could I have forgotten?"
Of course was right, although not for the reasons he probably meant, and Prompto had to work pretty hard not to roll his eyes again. It totally figured that what he hadn't been able to decipher as more than a fairy tale, Ignis worked out after merely hearing a few words.
What a surprise.
"Forgotten what?" prodded Gladio when he didn't continue. If he thought they were going to get a glimpse inside Ignis's head that easily, however, he was sorely mistaken.
"It's nothing," he waved them off, his tone casual while his expression was anything but. Even so, Gladio didn't press him for an answer, and he gestured for Prompto to keep going a moment later. Maybe he thought they'd catch up with whatever he was onto if they did some searching for themselves? Yeah, that had to be it.
Unfortunately, Ignis was severely overestimating just how on the ball they were compared with his own rampant genius. The further Prompto read, the more confused he grew. It wasn't that the text was that difficult to understand: the writing itself was fairly basic, and now that he was actually looking for them, he spotted descriptions for everything that he hadn't heard of before. Still, it was a mystery he couldn't quite piece together as he flipped through page after page.
This didn't sound anything like what they had been looking for—not even remotely. The Six weren't mentioned once, nor did he find any references to the kings of Lucis or the Oracles. Instead, the story (because it seriously seemed like a fairy tale!) centered around some kind of ancient society where mystical beings called fal'Cie made people their slaves by bestowing upon them the key word they'd been hoping to see: a Focus. That Focus changed depending on the fal'Cie. Sometimes they wanted their servant l'Cie to deliver a message; on other occasions, they pushed their l'Cie to save the world from anything that tried to destroy it. More often than not, the l'Cie didn't even know what their task was. The book said they received a vision, and not a detailed one, that gave them a hint. Otherwise, they were on their own.
The punishment for not completing their Focus by the deadline their fal'Cie dictated? They'd turn into those monsters—the Cie'th. It was kind of like final exams at school, only instead of destroying all your chances of becoming anybody worth remembering, you transformed into a mindless beast.
No pressure at all.
Although he couldn't shake the skepticism that had him convinced this must be a myth, Prompto still shivered a bit in his chair at the idea. Getting penalized by what were essentially gods for not being obedient enough? Talk about unfeeling.
Prompto didn't realize he'd stopped reading and said that part aloud until Ignis sympathetically countered, "Unfortunately, that was a common fate for those who crossed paths with the fal'Cie at the time."
Eyebrows raised in obvious disbelief, Gladio demanded, "You tellin' me this shit's real?"
Ignis nodded. "It's been years since I heard the tales, and not many believe that it is the true account of our history, but Pryna wouldn't have left it for us if it weren't."
That was a good point, even though Prompto desperately wanted to deny it. Somehow, it just seemed so sad to think that this was what the past held for people. Becoming slaves? Being forced to do things that you might not agree with so that you wouldn't have to pay the price? Well, it sounded an awful lot like Niflheim. After all, that was what Aranea and Ravus initially had to do. When the empire took over Tenebrae, there wasn't much choice besides joining them to preserve whatever he could of his kingdom in Ravus's case. As far as Aranea was concerned, that was her job. Being a mercenary meant you didn't have the right to be picky about who you worked for—she'd told him that herself once. And that wasn't even mentioning what would have happened if Prompto…if he…
You know what? Let's not go there.
He already felt on edge as it was with all this talk of slaves and gods. It struck a chord a bit too close to home for his tastes, and he was only too happy to set it aside to not analyze some other time.
Ignis was right about one thing, though: the text in his hands had to hold the answers they were looking for. Prompto was no closer to picking up on what those were than he had been when they began, but he'd call it progress anyway.
Conversely, Ignis's mind appeared to be running circles around theirs. As if he could sense the way Gladio shook his head in mingled cynicism and disdain, he vaguely motioned in Prompto's direction and explained, "According to the legends, the fal'Cie were of a different world than ours—an ancient world that has long since been demolished."
"Like, Solheim ancient?" clarified Prompto in awe. There were still records of the kingdom that had once dominated the planet before their own emerged from the rubble it had left behind, but it never failed to impress him when he thought of just how long ago that was.
So, his mind sputtered to a halt when Ignis corrected him, "Their society practically renders Solheim a modern empire."
…Whoa.
"That's…really old."
"Indeed."
"So, what's the Glacian trying to tell us, then?" interjected Gladio impatiently. "If these fal'Cie are from that long ago, then what do they have to do with Noct?"
Yup, that was Gladio: getting to the point instead of dancing around the issue. It didn't matter if he had to drag them there or simply barrel in with a battering ram—he was putting them back on track regardless. In this instance, there was no argument from either of them. They would have a chance to talk about timelines later.
"I have a feeling it's less the fal'Cie and more the message behind the history," offered Ignis pensively. That apparently wasn't a satisfactory answer.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning there's more to this story than meets the eye."
"Uh…like what?" Prompto inquired. Ignis might be ten steps ahead of them, but they were treading through quicksand by comparison.
Clearly realizing the same thing, Ignis sighed wearily. At least he didn't sound as put upon as he would have a few years ago when he elaborated, "The world they mentioned is not Eos. It's what came before—our origin story, if you will. At any rate, the old world was ravaged by constant war between the gods and the people, orchestrated through the will of the fal'Cie."
"So, they were kinda like Umbra and Pryna," deduced Prompto, hurriedly adding, "except without the curse stuff."
"In a sense. They functioned as intermediaries between humans and the gods in quite the same way our Messengers have. The difference is that the fal'Cie had a will of their own, separate from that of their deities, and they acted on it well in advance of any truly divine interference in the affairs of that world."
Chuckling darkly, Gladio mused, "Sounds like they got a little too full of themselves."
"So it would seem," confirmed Ignis. "If the tale is to be believed, then it sounds as if a group of l'Cie defied their Focus in order to see their fal'Cie leaders and the gods themselves overthrown."
Prompto frowned. "But wait, wouldn't that be a bad thing? You don't just overthrow gods, right? They're the ones that keep the world going."
"Yeah, Solheim learned that one the hard way," mumbled Gladio, to which Prompto had to nod in response. Their world had had its fair share of run-ins with the divine, yet they hadn't gone that far. Beyond the idiots in Solheim that had actively tried to piss off the Six, nobody else had the guts.
Well, nobody but Ardyn. Prompto didn't count him, though. He was a…special case.
As was this world Ignis was describing, apparently. Shaking his head, he replied, "This was a different situation. The war between humans and gods was said to have grown so volatile that a new world had to be created altogether."
"Our world," Gladio guessed. Ignis nodded in agreement.
"Yes. The gods began the process, and the people of the old world completed it. By the time they were through, there were no more divine beings like the ones that had been complicit in their oppression for so long."
"And there were no fal'Cie to cause the same problems in the new world."
"Precisely. They shaped Eos in the image of what they had hoped their own existence could have been like. No l'Cie, no Focuses, no frequent warring with their deities. What they desired was peace, and in the new world, they thought they'd have it."
That one made Gladio laugh, though it sounded a lot more bitter than he probably meant it to. "Yeah, well, they really screwed up with that one."
Even Ignis couldn't refrain from smirking a bit. "Things certainly didn't turn out as they planned."
Prompto figured that went without saying. Sometimes, in moments when the road that lay before them felt longer and more daunting than ever, he wondered if peace was even a possibility. Could anyone really say that there was no conflict in the world when people disagreed about everything? There were plenty of arguments about how the new Lucis they were building should be run, from the connection between Insomnia and the outposts to the infrastructure that the latter needed in order to remain independent. During their council meetings, there were tons of instances where Cor had to tamp down the rising tension in the room purely because no one had an idea that suited everybody's purposes. Even Ignis and Gladio, who had been friends for longer than Prompto had known them, couldn't agree on what Gladio should be doing with his time now that he was an officially unattached Shield in more ways than one. They didn't need fal'Cie or selfish gods to set them on the path towards destruction—they managed just fine on their own.
The ancients couldn't have wanted this for them. They couldn't have desired a kingdom like Solheim to make the same mistakes and end up in ruin; they couldn't have wished for future generations to be doomed to the same fate as the l'Cie that came before. That was what had happened, though. Maybe they'd been too short-sighted, or maybe humans merely had a knack for screwing up a good thing. Either way, the perfect world they'd hoped to build didn't have to include fal'Cie in order for them to suffer like their predecessors.
Or…did it?
"Y'know," ventured Prompto slowly, his brows furrowed as the pieces of the puzzle finally clicked in his brain, "I think maybe that's why Pryna wanted us to find this book."
Ignis's head tilted his way, and Gladio's eyes were narrowed when he asked, "You think what's why?"
"It's all right here! Look—Gentiana told us that Noct completed his Focus, right?"
It wasn't much, yet realization dawned on Gladio's face almost immediately. "Which means the Six probably took a leaf outta the fal'Cie handbook."
"That would certainly explain the fascination they had with using the kings of Lucis and Oracles of Tenebrae as their servants," Ignis chimed in. The expression on his face was too smug for Prompto to believe that he hadn't already come to that conclusion about ten minutes ago, but he appreciated not having to be reminded.
"So, they were basically l'Cie," he continued anyway. It paid to make sure they were all on the same page.
"Indeed. Their Focus was predetermined before they were born: to protect the Crystal and eliminate the Starscourge. Their lives and deaths were contingent on whether they were successful to that end."
"And instead of a brand to show who they were working for, the kings got the Ring of the Lucii," Gladio said, nodding in growing comprehension.
"While the Oracle was gifted the Draconian's trident. Like the fal'Cie, the privilege of serving the Six came at a heavy cost. I can only assume that this"—he nodded towards the book as though he could actually see it—"is the Glacian's method of telling us that the Astrals chose to take a more archaic approach with regards to purging the Scourge from our Star."
For some reason, that had Gladio grinning like he was winning a game of King's Knight instead of translating pre-pre-prehistoric text into something resembling a point.
"I thought you said you didn't remember any of this stuff," he teased. Surprisingly, Ignis's features relaxed from where they had been set in tense frustration for hours.
"I suppose some memories are simply buried rather than lost entirely."
"That's good. Don't do any spring cleaning in that steel trap of yours. We're gonna need it."
"I shall endeavor not to."
Well, it was nice to hear that they could be so positive about this. For his part, Prompto was sort of seething. No, that was wrong—he was really seething.
That old society, the one that had fallen and done everything they could to make a better world for the rest of them, had fought to ensure that history didn't repeat itself. They had stopped the fal'Cie and the gods that had given them their power, just as they had rebuilt the planet to be a lot kinder to humans than what they'd lived through. More than anything else, it sounded like they had worked tirelessly to make sure that no one ever had to be a slave to their deities ever again.
Prompto wasn't stupid. He was aware that it would be optimistic to the point of idiocy to believe that purely wanting something actually made it real. Niflheim had used their own people as slaves, if that was what you could call experimenting on civilians and turning them into daemons. Even King Regis, who had only wanted to save the world (and his son, but that hadn't panned out), had employed people who didn't know what they were signing up for. Maybe the word slavery didn't really apply there, yet it was a similar principle.
This was different. After all that fighting, after all that suffering, they were right back where the ancients had started. Noct hadn't been given a choice, nor had any of the kings that had come before him. Lady Lunafreya hadn't either, and Prompto assumed the same could be said of the rest of the House Fleuret.
The Six had mandated it. The Six had become the very thing that people had tried to get rid of. And yeah, what they'd done had saved the world. Sacrificing two families meant that the rest of them would have the opportunity to build some of their own. In his philosophy class, they would have said that the ends justified the means: the needs of the many were more important than the needs of the few and all that.
He was just having a tough time remembering that when it was his friend who had been the means.
But he was letting his emotions get the better of him. That wasn't going to help the situation, and it definitely wasn't going to bridge the gap between this history lesson and how it applied to Noct. Anger and dismay wouldn't get him the answer to the last question he could think to ask.
"Okay, so… If people who didn't do what they were supposed to turned into monsters, then what happened to the l'Cie that did their jobs?"
In the blink of an eye, it was like the temperature had dropped a few degrees. Ignis's back stiffened, and Gladio's smile melted right off his face at the sight of it. Neither of them said a word, but it couldn't be a good sign that Ignis—resident genius and guy who had all the answers—didn't give them one right away.
When he did… Well, it wasn't as reassuring as Prompto had been hoping for.
"That…is the part I don't understand," Ignis admitted, sounding ashamed of himself for his lapse of insight.
Gladio didn't give him time to wallow, however. Instead, he pressed him, "How come?"
A pause, then he deliberately explained, "It was said that the gift for obedient l'Cie was eternal life."
…I'm not following.
"Uh, that's good, isn't it?" snorted Prompto, unable to comprehend why Ignis looked so upset. "That means Noct's alive!"
Scoffing, Gladio muttered, "As if it's ever that easy."
Of course not. They were dealing with the Astrals here: if it were easy, then they wouldn't be doing this whole deity thing right.
The quirk at the corner of Ignis's lips, while fleeting, carried the same bitter amusement that Prompto had come to associate with the sort of news nobody wanted to hear. Not Insomnia fell to imperial attacks bad, but pretty close.
"In this case, I'd say you're correct," he sighed. Slipping his visor off his face, he pinched the bridge of his nose as he dropped the real bomb: "While faithful l'Cie were indeed granted eternity, they were nevertheless doomed to spend it encased in crystal, alive yet asleep."
Just like Gentiana said.
Okay, yeah. That was a problem.
A/N: Just a quick note - if you have played Final Fantasy XIII, then you will definitely recognize some of the mythos I am using for this story! Originally, XV was meant to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis saga, which means it would have been in the same universe as XIII even though it isn't the same world. At the end of that series (spoiler alert), the world is destroyed and a new one is made, this time in the image of the real world. I sort of wondered what it would mean if it weren't OUR world so much as Eos that had been created, and this is the result! If you're not a fan of XIII, then no worries - there won't be any characters from those games!
