(A/N: We'll be delving back into slightly darker territory from here on out. Nothing crazy, I promise—but for those of you who are sensitive to such things, recall that Bahamut has been making Noctis practice dying for the past ten years.)
xxx
Noctis plods through a rotting forest. Its trees crowd tightly together, trapping darkness beneath their windbent branches and eroding his memories of the sky. A damp, mossy smell creeps into his sinuses and stays there, like weeping sap and decaying logs untouched by sunlight.
Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto are all together, for once. He is heartened by the sight. As if to mock the comfort this brings him, though, a Red Giant rears up from the forest floor, its metallic skin contorting the light of its own blade into a scattered chaos of orange reflections. His friends are unfazed by the sight; Prompto is already gunning for the daemon's weak points with collected, deadly efficiency. Ignis and Gladio, meanwhile, are dancing a controlled routine about its feet, guarding each other's flanks with an ease brought about by years of repetition as they take turns darting in for a strike. The battle is going well.
Then a second Giant bursts through the trees, swinging its blade in sweeping, deadly arcs that send branches hurtling through the air like javelins and the canopy exploding into pine-scented shrapnel. All three men are suddenly down, their fallen forms littered with splinters and debris. The daemons advance.
Noctis laughs—a dark, humorless sound. They will never take his friends. Not while he wields such power. The power to trade any death for his own.
Strolling into the newly formed clearing, Noctis plants himself directly between the two Giants. He holds his arms out—stretches them wide and smiles. "Take me," he says. "Here I am, Bahamut. Your always-willing sacrifice."
And Bahamut does—ending him in the swipe of a blade that shears him apart.
Friends died for today: check.
Irritatingly, he now finds himself standing on a blue-painted rooftop above a ruined courtyard, the flowers that once cascaded down the walls in cheerful reds, pinks, and purples long ago disintegrated into ash. The once-grand bell tower rises black and broken in the foreground, jutting above the city like a rotten tooth.
Noctis frowns. Typically he's given at least some reprieve between one Reflection-born farce and the next. More accurately, it usually takes him much longer to decipher how Bahamut wants him to die in any given episode.
Well, so be it. At least this one is a rerun.
Behind him, a handful of survivors huddle beneath the stacks of decaying shipping crates that have now become their homes. A cluster of Salpinx caper about down below, chittering and giggling, but they don't concern him.
Because in front of him, a daemon rises out of the sea. It's bigger than the Emerald Weapon. It's malformed and misshapen, hundreds of teeth—like the curved needles used to stitch up skin—protruding from its mouth, extending far past what would seem biologically viable. Its jaw gapes horrifyingly wide; the lower part dislocates to extend halfway down its torso. It slavers miasma. The families behind him scream.
Noctis takes a deep breath and flexes his hand. There's no need to allow it even to leave the sea this time; Holy can obliterate them both just as well from afar.
Bracing himself, Noctis opens himself wide to the destroying power of his ancestors.
Strangers died for today: check.
Except…nothing happens. His eyes snap open. He looks down…and there is no Ring. His fingers are bare. He stares in horror.
What's this? a sibilant voice purrs.
Noctis' head jerks up. The daemon of the deep still lumbers forward…but between them, a dragon rises from the waves.
Leviathan rears up, ignoring the monstrosity, and stares at him. She cocks her head.
What exactly have you done, little king?
He wakes.
xxx
Noctis blinked against the sunlight stabbing him in the head, utterly confused. Confused, because the sun had vanished years ago. Waves on the beach—now that was a familiar sound; but they didn't tend to wash so gently against the shores of Angelgard. Certainly not to the racket of gulls calling and scolding as they dove for fish, seeing as both had gone extinct years ago. Or a radio commercial promising everything from financial success to a better love life if he slept in the Leville.
Noctis turned his head to see two human-sized, blanket-encased lumps snoring away nearby, despite the fact that the sun that shouldn't exist indicated it to be late morning. Instead of the shelter of the hut, they appeared to be curled up on a haven stone—as was Noctis himself.
But of course that wasn't right. Angelgard had no need for havens; it was shielded from daemons by the unmediated power of the gods. They wouldn't want their prized sacrifice to be knocked off before his time, after all.
He took a deep breath of the salty ocean air, and immediately broke into a spate of weak coughing. His lungs felt fragile and raw.
And belatedly, memory started to return. Blurry recollections of trudging down a dawnlit beach on the verge of collapse; coughing violently and tossing with fever; dragging himself to wakefulness for a few spoonfuls of soup; someone draping an extra blanket over him—all swam back into focus as the fog in his head began to dissipate. The details of his dreams were already fading, evaporating in the sunlight.
Not that it mattered, as they hadn't had much more to offer than the standard Reflection trauma, anyway. This particular death of his, hailing from an Altissia that was about five years along in the Night—the one where he'd smeared himself out of existence with Holy—had been plaguing him even in his waking moments, and as recently as the interview with Claustra. Doubtless, it would again. It was all just more of the same, he told himself with a black sort of humor—eternal replays of Bahamut's greatest hits.
Leviathan, though. She had been new…
Noctis dragged his mind pointedly away from worries he had no means to resolve and planted himself firmly back in the present, listening for a few minutes to a ubiquitous, familiar sort of rattling sound—someone turning the pages of a newspaper, perhaps.
The radio concluded its commercial break and moved on to a news broadcast. It seemed Accordo was battling for full independence from the Empire. Niflheim held Altissia's port and the Waterway, but the Accordan Navy had fought fiercely and succeeded in reclaiming the northern quadrant of the city. First Secretary Claustra had made a formal declaration of war and was reportedly in secret talks with—
Noctis jolted upright, blinking as the world momentarily swam. "Claustra made it out," he breathed.
"So it seems," Ignis' voice replied, mildly amused.
Noctis turned his head and squinted at his friend, taking in the sight of him primly reading The Galdin Beacon, his legs crossed, somehow managing to convey urbane cultivation despite the slightly faded trousers and palm tree-patterned shirt he appeared to be wearing. Looking down at his own body, Noctis realized that, beneath his blanket, he was still encased in the remains of his salt-stiffened formalwear, the shirt unbuttoned and wrinkled until it resembled someone's rejected origami project and the pants torn beyond redemption. A vague memory resurfaced of Ignis delicately attempting to convince him to change; Noctis, shivering and coughing, had glared at him out of one cracked eye, pulled his blanket tighter, and curled into a ball next to the fire that—to his knowledge—he might not have unfurled from since.
His bleary gaze returned to Ignis. "Where'd you get the chair?"
"The…chair," Ignis stated, lowering the paper. He reached down and switched off the radio at his feet. "In and out of consciousness with a severe respiratory infection and high-grade fever for five days and the first thing you ask me about is my chair. Well, Noct, if you must know, I nicked it from the resort. There is a second, if you'd care to come take a seat."
Noctis sat dumbly for a moment, his comprehension lagging significantly behind realtime. Then he pushed himself clumsily to his feet, tripping over his blanket, not even bothering to fully straighten before he collapsed into Ignis' proffered seat.
"Couldn't've at least stolen the lounge kind?" he asked. He closed his eyes for a moment against a sudden giddy sense of vertigo.
The silence that followed was prickly enough that Noctis found himself subconsciously sidling up to the armiger for a potion, just in case. Then he remembered the armiger didn't exist.
Speaking of potions, though…Noctis' hand went carefully to the back of his head, where the bullet graze had sliced open his scalp. It was tender, but had scabbed over neatly. His leg, though still sore, hadn't immediately dumped him off the edge of the haven when he'd walked on it a moment ago, so that was already an improvement. His ribs still hurt, but that was most likely due to the fact that he'd been attempting to eject his lungs from his body for going on a week, if reports were to be believed.
Ignis, watching him take stock of his injuries, said, "We could only scrape up enough for half a potion each, I'm afraid, so we'll find it necessary to rely on nature to take its course for much of the rest. We sold most of the stolen Imperial weapons—for a pittance, but it was enough to finance a few of the basics."
Noctis cast him a sideways look. "Do I even want to know how you found a black market for Imperial weaponry in a swanky resort town?"
Ignis shrugged. "One finds ways." He leaned blithely back in his chair and snapped his paper straight. Noctis noticed, belatedly, that he seemed to have also "financed" himself some new glasses.
"Y'know, if you or Dad had ever bothered letting me in on any of those 'specialized' training sessions of yours, Specs, I would have thought I was studying to inherit the mafia, not the crown."
"Which is precisely why we didn't," Ignis replied, not looking up. "I trained for several of the less...savory...eventualities your position might present for the very reason that you wouldn't have to."
"Right," Noctis sighed. He glanced over at the sleeping human lumps, whom his subconscious had, at some point, identified as Prompto and Gladio. They lay on the bare stone of Galdin's beachfront haven, wrapped in fraying blankets, their heads pillowed in their wadded-up Glaive jackets—much as he supposed he had been for most of the week. The encampment looked strange without the perennial backdrop of their chairs and tent.
"Are Prompto and Gladio all right?" he asked. "I don't think I've ever actually seen Gladio, sleep, and the light of day coexist all at the same time. I always assumed they canceled each other out or something."
Ignis snorted, glancing over the top of his paper to give their friends a quick once-over. "Gladio developed a rather severe infection in his hand, on top of a ghastly cold. Between the lack of sleep, two nights in the ocean, and Shiva frosting over the Estate—and of course, you inhaling much of the bay, Noct—it's a miracle you two didn't contract some fatal strain of pneumonia and expire on the spot."
Noctis looked guiltily back at Gladio, whose face, in sleep, was startlingly open and relaxed. So many scars because of him... "And Prompto?"
"Prompto is merely sleeping off the night's adventures. He and I took on a few hunts—simple ones," Ignis quickly reassured at Noctis' alarmed expression. "Just a smattering of Goblins that had been causing trouble on the beach. Earned us enough gil for a few more potions, anyhow, once we cash in the bounty. Rubbish as these storebought brands are, I suppose they're better than—" Suddenly his voice faltered, his eyes narrowing at the page.
"What?" Noctis demanded.
"Er…nothing. They're better than nothing," Ignis finished, folding up his paper rather vigorously and shoving it beneath his chair. "And once you and Gladio have recovered, we'll find ourselves quickly earning enough for replacement phones, camping gear, and fuel for Weskham's boat. We shall be back on our feet in no time."
Noctis laughed, leaning his head back and allowing himself to bask in an ocean breeze that was—for once—pleasant and warm. "Living on a beach, killing things for gas and food—I've got to be the most stone-broke king in existence."
By the look on his friend's face, he knew Ignis wasn't overly fond of his flippant assessment. But they all understood, now, the price of his resurrection—his friends better than him, it seemed. The sooner he acclimatized to his diminished status, the better.
"And you, Specs?" he asked, regarding his friend knowingly through half-lidded eyes. The gouge on the side of Ignis' head—the one he'd acquired somewhere between Claustra's lobby and his adventures in retrieving Noctis from the bottom of the bay—had been stitched and carefully dressed. He had no doubt his friend had forgone his own allotment of potion to ensure more for the rest of them. "How are you holding up?"
"Me?" Ignis laughed softly and stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle. His boots settled on the ring of stone that enclosed the ashes of last night's fire. "I left Altissia with all the things most important to me in this life—my friends and my sight. What more could I ask for?"
Noctis simply returned his gaze, a poignant kind of warmth settling into his chest.
"And now," Ignis continued brusquely. "I think it high time you had more to eat than the mushroom soup you've been subsisting off all week. Care to share some breakfast?"
Said breakfast, as it turned out, was little more than day-old bread from the discount grocery and hotdogs—the cheap, highly-processed kind that would have had pre-roadtrip Ignis in his grave before he ever purposely served them to anyone, least of all the King of Lucis. But many of their principles had, by necessity, fallen to the wayside, even back then. Now, after a decade of privation and their funds so deficient as to be imaginary, convention was little more than a distant memory to all of them (except Ignis, still, who'd never stopped carrying a monogrammed handkerchief even when the last of the world's population was down to bean rations and sponge baths). And Noctis was quickly discovering he was hungry enough that rubbery, debatably designated "meat" on bread sounded positively gourmet.
By the time the sun sat high and hot overhead, Gladio and Prompto were both out of bed. Gladio still sounded congested, and his left hand was tightly wrapped. They'd replaced most of their clothes with a small wardrobe of dodgy origins, but Noctis found it a relief to be out of his sweat-marinated formals. So as to avoid immediately spoiling the hunter-style pants and t-shirt Prompto had acquired for him (bright green with the Splatz Tomato Jelly logo emblazoned across the chest), Noctis made an attempt at a bath in the breakers.
The water was cold, but not heart-stoppingly so. And while it didn't exactly clear away the grime, his aches and pains, both physical and emotional, were soothed by the rhythmic swish-and-hiss of the surf.
Wading out into the deeper waters, he walk-hopped until the tips of his toes were his only point of contact with the sand. The breakers, white and foaming beneath the summer sun, lifted and landed him in little bouts of weightlessness. Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift out into the ocean, unfettered, for once, by the burdens of a thousand deaths.
What exactly have you done, little king?
Noctis jerked back to consciousness, disoriented despite the fact that he'd probably only been dozing for a second or two. A wave slapped him in the face, and he went under. Water rushed uncomfortably up his nose as his feet were swept out from beneath him.
Flailing awkwardly, he turned and paddled until he was safely back in the shallows. Then he stood and hobbled through the surf, his body growing heavy as gravity reclaimed him.
He remembered, again, a dragon rising from the sea.
Dreams, Noct. That's all they are. More dreams. Distortions of reality reinvented by your messed-up head.
…Except they were becoming so much more vivid. More invasive—merging with his memories from Reflection until he was increasingly unable to detach them from even the waking world. His flashback at the Estate had dropped on him out of nowhere, and had just about unhinged him on the spot.
It left him unsettled. He snatched his blanket up from the sand and wound it around his dripping body, ignoring the fresh layer of grit it left stuck to his skin. His bare feet trailed soft indentations up the shoreline as he made his way back to the haven.
"Hidey-ho, Noct, how's the water?" Prompto chirped. He was sitting cross-legged on Gladio's back as the latter grunted and groaned through one of his typically excessive pushup sets, his injured hand closed protectively in a fist. "Care to join me?" He patted a spot between Gladio's shoulder blades as if inviting Noctis to an evening of movies on the couch.
"Hell…no…" Gladio growled. He forced his arms straight one final time before rolling to the side, dumping Prompto unceremoniously into the sand. Straightening into a lotus position, his posture immaculate, he began on a series of tricep stretches.
"How's the leg?" He cast a glance at Noctis' blanket-encased limbs, his breath still coming in light puffs.
"Fine—it barely hurts anymore. Curatives really seem to have done the trick," Noctis replied, shooting a pointedly suspicious look at Ignis' very-probably-untouched-by-potions head wound. He collapsed tiredly into the unoccupied chair, hunching as a light cough gripped him. His lethargy was returning with a vengeance, seeping deep into his limbs, leaving them weak and sluggish.
Ignis scooted his own seat closer. "May I?" he asked, his gaze touching meaningfully on Noctis' leg.
Noctis grunted his assent, closing his eyes and letting his head loll to the side. Ignis bent to grasp his foot, propping it across his knees. Noctis cracked one eye as his friend nudged the blanket back, examining the fading bruises that mottled almost the entirety of his outer thigh.
He tried not to wince at the touch; despite what he'd told Gladio, the injury was still exceptionally tender from his fall off the turret. (Also still completely worth it.) The damage to his ankle, ribs, and elbow, on the other hand—the latter compliments of his unexpected rooftop fight with his Shield—seemed nearly healed.
Ignis cast a critical eye at the site—and then Noctis himself—before diagnosing, "Your leg looks significantly better, but your lungs still need some work. Another two or three days should do the trick. Two with potions, assuming Coctura's able to cash in the bounty today." He raised his voice. "That goes for you too, Gladio, though it'll be longer if you can't rein in your barbarian instincts long enough to ever heal properly."
"A hundred burpees a day keeps the infection away," Gladio glibly replied. Standing, he brushed large swaths of sand from his sweaty skin as he climbed the ramp back to the haven stone. His injured hand curled in on itself conspicuously.
"Said no medical professional ever," Ignis muttered.
"Natural healing sucks," Prompto complained, levering himself to his feet and shaking sand from a pantleg. "It takes soooo long."
"Yes," Ignis agreed, rather emphatically. "Which means we will all need to take more care from here on out. We became far too dependent on Noct's upgraded potions, and the armiger which allowed us to carry a near endless supply."
He regarded them each severely. "Gone are the days where we can throw ourselves headlong into a row with a Ronin under the expectation of our curatives stitching up any gut wounds we collect along the way. Storebought potions speed and encourage the natural healing process, as we know, but their potency is greatly limited." He lowered Noctis' foot until it rested flat on the stone, tugging the blanket back down to cover his toes.
"Plus they taste like the nether cheeks of a dualhorn," Prompto said. "No, Gladio, I don't have firsthand experience, before you ask."
"Wasn't gonna."
"You totally were."
"Yeah, I was."
"With permission from you both," Ignis interjected, "might we soon begin a serious discussion of our plans?"
"Fine by me," Prompto said, coming over to park himself between their chairs. "So what's the dealio once these two finally heal? Take down something big, cash in for a tidy sum? I'm sick of the small fry."
"Small fry is what it's gonna be till we're all trained up," Gladio said.
"G-man, you seem to have forgotten about the part where that's, like, all we've been doing for more than a decade," Prompto reminded him. "Tack on a couple more for everyone here not named Prompto; but I still lost my newb battle virginity like, a lifetime ago. Way before First Altissia, and now we've had two."
"Nobody's doubting anybody's abilities," Ignis reassured him, "but—"
"But Noct's lost his magic," Gladio broke in bluntly. "Dynamic's gonna be way off."
Ignis glanced guiltily his way, but Noctis knew Gladio was only speaking a necessary truth. They hadn't actually fought as a complete unit since Insomnia, and even then there had been a few false starts as the other three—having grown used to fighting solo, or alongside various other warriors of the Night—re-acclimatized to their team. Noctis, freshly imbued with the crystal's power, had undeniably carried their battles, despite the fact that each of his friends would be considered an elite warrior all on his own.
Now, he could hardly even carry himself. Everything felt so much heavier. His loss of warping and phasing aside—without the blood power to grant him strength, even ordinary movements were enough to make him half wonder if his boots had been filled with ball bearings. The magic may have stolen years from his life, but at least it had let him fly.
And yet, sometimes he swore he could still feel it. Even now. Like déjà vu, or a memory floating just out of reach.
"Gladio's right," Noctis said. "Without the crystal, I'm not even close to the level I used to be. I likely won't ever be again. The strongest daemons, like those we encountered in the sealed dungeons, may be beyond our abilities now."
He caught Prompto's eyes. "At least when we kill them this time, they'll be gone for good. Ardyn's no longer around to spread Scourge everywhere. So even one less Imp will mean lives saved. Lives saved, and what was once a life, laid to rest."
At that, Prompto went very quiet. "Yeah," he muttered.
Beside him, Ignis brushed a reassuring hand against the blonde's arm. It was meant to be a subtle gesture, but Noctis stared at them, his eyes narrowing. He had seen those expressions on their faces before. His heart began to pound. Against his will, he remembered…
[Reflection Prompto and Ignis stand in a cave full of Nagarani. Only these aren't the ordinary monstrosities—through some quirk of fate, or science, or pure chance, they have all retained some degree of memory. A few of them mutter to long-lost children. Some of them had been children. Others speak of now-unachievable dreams, staring starry-eyed into the darkness.]
[Until they notice the two men in their midst. That is all it takes for their humanity to flee, turning identities into snarling monsters. Prompto weeps as he guns them down. But Noctis is too busy burning slowly in a self-inflicted Flare to notice.]
It had been a terrible death. It had been a terrible scene. Among his worst.
Bahamut had practically purred over it.
Memories. Just memories, Noct. From another place, another time. Nothing more than possibilities—nightmarish ones, that Bahamut used against you. Not even…real…
His thoughts juddered to an unexpected halt. Prompto's eyes were still far away, still lost, and Ignis was still hovering close—right up against him, lending the gunman his arm as if it were a lifeline. As if the two of them were trapped in memories themselves. And Noctis couldn't pull his eyes away, a sudden revelation—one both hideous and wonderful—flaring in his mind.
He had never been sure how much of Reflection was based in reality. Hadn't known what parts of it intersected with the physical world, and which were simply elements of Bahamut's sadistic inventions. Most of the time he had hoped for the latter; the deaths he'd been forced to witness, so very many of them—were terrible, gruesome, heartrending, unhinging—more than his mind could take. He'd had to compartmentalize to survive; convince himself, in a monumental effort of self-deception, that they were fictional horrors conjured by the god in order to ensure his compliance.
But occasionally he'd hoped for the former—that his actions did render some effect outside of Bahamut's realm. Because if so, it would mean he'd maintained even that smallest of connections with his friends. It would mean that he had been right there with them, even if they didn't know it. It would mean his many deaths had meant something.
…but no. It was far too much to hope for. The Draconian wasn't that kind.
He suddenly realized that Gladio was looking back and forth between the three of them, his brows drawn together. Noctis forced himself to breathe, casting one last, hooded glance at his friends before unsubtly changing the subject.
"Sounds like we're all on the same page, then—we'll start small," he said. "When're we gonna go see about cashing in on that bounty?"
Ignis stirred. "Prompto and I will go. Gladio has been keeping to camp, what with his rather conspicuous physique."
"Yeah, and you look kinda like a washed-up dead fish, Noct—no offense," Prompto said, having taken a noticeable moment to drag himself back into the present. His eyes landed briefly on the long, vertical scar in the center of Noctis' chest, then flickered away. "You should probably take a nap or something, bro."
Noctis wasn't about to argue. Even the short time awake had left him weak and exhausted, his lungs laboring to expand. A lie-down in the warm sand sounded nothing short of divine.
"Well, then, I suppose we're off," Ignis said. "If luck allows, we'll be returning with a selection of curatives fit to get us all on our feet and back at it within two days."
"You kids have fun," Gladio said. "I'm gonna go finish my workout." With that, he took off down the beach in what was bound to become some inhuman quantity of lunges.
"Make that three," Ignis muttered.
xxx
Half an hour later found Noctis still slumped in his chair, gazing dully across the sunbaked town, its bleached and weathered boardwalks unfolding less than a mile's hike up the beach from where he sat. Despite Prompto's suggestion, Noctis' mind was insisting on revisiting that unexpected moment with his friends on maddening, eternal repeat. His eyes rested on the sunlit waves, unseeing.
Could it really be possible?
…Could it be possible that Prompto and Ignis of the real world—the friends he knew and loved, not the crystal-reflected images he'd assumed they were for all those years—had somehow been there in that daemon-infested cave with him? That they had lived through that same nightmare Noctis had died in? Could his self-inflicted Flare from Reflection—one death among so many—have somehow influenced the outcome of that scene in reality, allowing his friends to survive where they would have otherwise died?
He snorted in disgust, shoving the memories away. Wishful thinking at its finest, he told himself contemptuously. He was only desperate to have shared something—anything—of those ten years with his friends. Quite frankly, it was a little pathetic.
Forcing himself to his feet, ignoring his body's gnawing need for rest, he cast about for some way to make himself useful. His father had always worked so hard, right up until the end, refusing to acknowledge his own gradual consumption—compliments of the crystal and the Ring—until his body gave him no more choice. Despite the pain and enduring fatigue, Regis would never have allowed his retainers—and especially his friends—to shoulder the load while he sat around and watched, injuries be damned.
So Noctis drove himself forward, stumbling as the blanket tangled around his legs. Ignis and Prompto had already disappeared within the bowels of the resort, melting into the stream of tourists that meandered along the walks. Far up the beach in the other direction, Gladio was little more than a hazy silhouette. So the least he could do after a week of playing the camp paperweight was to finish up the chores. Collecting driftwood for the fire was always a good start.
Unwinding the blanket from his body, Noctis used it to brush haphazardly at the gritty sand that now seemed adhered to his skin. It was a futile effort; eventually he gave up, tossing it aside to pull on the drab-colored hunter gear (and Prompto's decidedly un-drab-colored shirt), sand and all. He was just readying himself to trudge wearily out into the scrub when something caught his eye.
It was Ignis' paper, pinned between the stones of the fire ring, awaiting its fate as the evening's kindling.
Glancing over at the place he'd last seen his friends, Noctis pulled it free. Leafing through, it took him a few minutes to find the section Ignis had probably been reading—but when he did, there was no question.
Dated that same morning, it was an article bearing a relatively harmless headline: What's In Store For Displaced Insomnians? It became quickly apparent, though, that it was little more than a scathing op-ed masquerading as expository journalism. Heavy on anti-monarchist interviews, it spoke of refugees' dissatisfaction with how Prince Noctis (it tacitly refused to print his updated title) was handling the effort to reclaim Insomnia from the Empire. Rumors were raging that he had never inherited the Lucis Caelum magic to begin with—a detail, it alleged, that King Regis and the Council had kept deliberately hidden away. It obviously took great pleasure in the exclusive "sources" it had obtained—assistant chamberlains and the like, plus Glaives who had occasionally shared the Prince's training grounds—to confirm this secret ineptitude. And after all, it reasoned, why should he disappear from public view, fueling rumors of his death, only to reportedly be seen in Altissia begging for foreign help? Kings and queens of yore would have taken the fight to Niflheim's doorstep with ice and fire, rather than skulking about hiding in the shadows.
One thing was clear, the article concluded: If Insomnians were hoping for a savior, they wouldn't be looking toward the Prince.
Noctis carefully re-folded the paper, wedging it back between the stones.
He was so tired.
Sinking to the ground in the haven's shade, he retrieved his blanket, pulled it over his head, and fell into an exhausted sleep, memories of his deaths raging through his dreams.
xxx
A/N: Let's review Noct's mounting problems, shall we?
-He's lugging around boatloads of baggage from ten years of human sacrifice training and being singularly responsible for the entire fate of humanity
-He doesn't even know which parts of it were real
-His PTSD is getting sort of insistent
-His magic is gone
-There may or may not be a sadistic god gunning for him from the future, but he can't tell his friends about it because said god promised to end them if he does
-The Empire wants him deader than dead
-His mere existence is sending people into seizures or worse
-He technically still has a kingdom to run
-And he has no way to be a king.
More to come...