"Mountains are so overrated," Prompto moaned, huffing and blowing loudly enough to rival the kujata that roamed the Cauthess plains. "My achilles tendons…were so never meant to bend this way."
At the moment, Noctis had to agree, though he was too focused on sucking in enough oxygen, himself, to comment.
Granted, the terrain through which they were laboring didn't quite qualify as real mountains—more like an endless series of ever-growing foothills. The slope they were scaling even now happened to be of a grade that was distinctly unfriendly to bipeds—but with no trails to follow, they were often left with very little choice but to go straight up one side and straight down another. There was less chance of finding oneself trapped in a box canyon that way and being forced to backtrack for hours. Not that they had ever had to do that.
Noctis grabbed the withered branch of a lightning-scorched tree and used it to haul himself a few more feet up the slope, his legs on the verge of mutiny. They were well and truly away from the coast, now, encountering ever wilder stretches of forest with every mile. The landscape had grown piney and slightly arid, stippled in tall, rugged trees with long needles and rust-red bark. Rather than the spongy undergrowth they'd encountered farther south, here it was rocky, layered in prickly, scrublike brush. Between the plant life and the cliffs, it made for a fairly unpleasant experience if one were to lose one's footing. Or, more specifically, be ejected from one's chocobo.
…Which, in truth, was the primary reason he and Prompto had gone for the hiking option. Ostensibly it was because they had all felt guilty making their poor birds haul their weight up endless mountainsides, but in reality the two of them had agreed, in whispers, that theirs was most likely trying to kill them.
Noctis broke from his concentration long enough to cast a glance up to the top of the slope, a few hundred feet of misery away, where the trio of chocobos waited impatiently for their blundering humans. His assessing gaze met that of their rooster's. It stared at him, one side of its beak curling up in derision.
"Prompto…is our chocobo…sneering at us?" Noctis panted.
"Wouldn't be surprised," Prompto wheezed. "Hey Gladio, the 'bo you rented keeps malfunctioning. Can we get a refund?" He stopped to cough weakly, losing his balance in the process. Noctis grabbed the front of his shirt and wrenched him back upright, and Prompto continued as if he hadn't just nearly somersaulted down a mountain to his death. "How many days did you take 'em out for, anyway?"
"No idea," Gladio replied from just below them, barely winded. "I pretty much threw some cash at the guy and ran."
Prompto sighed. "Leave it to Gladio to rent us not only the single uncute, evil chocobo in existence, but also for a possibly infinite duration of time."
Noctis eyed the other two birds, recalling the dismembered voretooth, but kept his comments to himself.
At last they topped the ridge. The sun crested its own peak at the same instant; it spilled light across highlands that stretched for miles on ahead, all the way to the horizon. Noctis felt tension bleed from the group as an almost palpable thing. Though they all could live and work quite comfortably in darkness now—particularly Ignis—it was often as if each of them was secretly afraid that maybe this time, the sun wouldn't rise. Maybe this would be the day the other shoe finally dropped.
Noctis almost laughed, though the thought was sad. So many scars…
Prompto let out an explosive sigh of relief and collapsed gracelessly into the dirt, uncaring of the pinecones that jabbed him in the ribs. "Finally," he panted. "I thought it would never end. So much up and down and up and down…and up…seriously, Iggy, couldn't we have just followed a valley or something?"
"Well, Prompto," Ignis replied, smoothing a bit of sweat-misted hair meticulously back into place. "Every valley appears to in fact be an unscaleable ravine. Which, when all is said and done, would still leave us… let's see here… Oh yes. At the bottom of one."
Prompto opened one eye, groaned, and flopped over onto his back. "Next time I'll just fight off the Niffs while you quick run into the store and grab us a map, kay?"
Noctis let his attention drift as he sank down onto a spread of sun-dried pine needles. He rubbed his calves absently, staring out over the cliffs and ridgelines they finally seemed to be leaving behind, toppled trees scattered across their rocky slopes like an upset box of matches.
The others were back to casting him sideways glances when they didn't think he could see. Ignis, in fact, was fixing him with a carefully casual once-over even now. Noctis could hardly blame them; he knew it had been upsetting, to say the least, to see him out of his head that night with the Red Giants, ready to embrace death like a friend. Any attempts they had made to gently broach the matter with him had been bluntly deflected.
He knew they weren't going to put up with that forever. Eventually, something would have to give. But in the meantime, he fully intended on steering as far clear of the subject as humanly possible—at least until he figured out a better plan.
"Make sure you stretch those," Gladio said, nudging one of Noctis' calves with the toe of his boot as he ambled past. Drifting to a stop, he gazed around the highland glade with satisfaction. "What say we make camp here? Get an early start this evening?"
"I'm game," Noctis replied. He winced as he extended his legs, leaning forward to slowly ease out the kinks.
"Good." Gladio whistled a tuneless little ditty, inspecting the procession of pleasantly flat copses and clearings that had opened up before them. An insistent morning breeze tugged at his half pony. He was obviously in a good mood, and Noctis, too, had to admit the air was noticeably fresher this far from the cities and highways. These mountains were a woodsman's paradise, and he could see Gladio happily living out the rest of his days in such a place. Sometimes Noctis thought his friend must have missed his true life's calling as a hunter.
Gladio's whistling paused, then resumed as a long, low sound of appreciation. "Well, would ya look at that."
Noctis climbed stiffly back to his feet and padded over to stand next to him. Ignis and Prompto joined them.
Alongside the meadow, half hidden in a tight little copse of trees, was a large, raised stone, intricate patterns carved into its face. It was almost completely obscured by dirt and dead leaves, its runes burned out long ago.
"A lost haven," Ignis breathed. "What a fascinating piece of history! I had read it was Lady Lunafreya's grandmother who last renewed the haven stones. As this particular refuge seems to have been missed, it must have been forgotten long, long ago."
"Too bad it's out of gas," Prompto remarked as they wandered across the meadow for a closer look. "Not gonna lie, I'm running low on steam myself these days. It'd be awesome if we could take a down night to recoup."
Noctis couldn't help but agree. Without the protection of the havens—most of which were spread along highways or trails—they had no alternative but to carry out their travels at night, fighting as they went. They typically managed to wedge in a few bonus hours of daemon-free mileage before dusk or after dawn, leaving themselves only a short window of time each day to find shelter, make camp (still with nothing but their blankets and a handful of cooking supplies at their disposal), forage, and sleep. And with at least one of them awake at any given time to guard against the wild animals that roamed the daytime hours, it hadn't made for a very restful week in the wilderness. They were all starting to feel the strain, both in body and mind.
"I'd happily trade a working haven for a bath, though," Prompto added. "A nice, deep, steaming one, with bubbles. You know, I don't think I've had a proper bath since First Altissia. That was friggin' ten years ago, guys!" He grabbed Ignis' shoulders as if to shake an appreciation of the sheer absurdity of that fact into the man, then quickly changed his mind.
"Ah…the true motive behind Umbra's 'islands to all others' pronouncement, revealed at last," Ignis caustically remarked.
Noctis snickered. "Walked right into that one, Prom."
'Haaa…you all are hilarious," Prompto said, chucking a pinecone indiscriminately in their direction. It sailed wide and bounced off their chocobo, who reared up from its grazing to stare at them icily. "I've had showers, thanks all the same, Ignis. Just not a bath in, like, a proper bathtub, with plumbing and all the other modern things. And coconut-scented shampoo. Dude, we're so mangy right now we won't even need to bother with disguises once we get back to civilization. We could dance the foxtrot naked in front of an Imperial convoy while singing the official anthem of Insomnia and nobody would guess who we are. Might even earn ourselves a little gil on the side …"
"Thank you, Prompto, for that thoroughly egregious visual," Ignis said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Enjoy the weather and all the dirt that comes along with it while you still can," Gladio advised. "Just a few more weeks of summer before the cold sets in. You think you're miserable now, just wait till we're digging snow caves and cracking open frozen streams for our drinking water. Definitely won't be wanting to take any baths then."
Prompto made a truly piteous sound, his future obviously painting an increasingly bleak picture.
"You guys ever see autumn outside of Insomnia?" Noctis abruptly asked. He traced one of the darkened runes with a finger, staring absently into the thicket.
Gladio looked at him curiously. "Yeah, a couple of times, out on training missions with the Glaives. Even without trees, some of the outer isles got real pretty. The scrub and grasses on the hills would explode with color." His eyes went distant as he reminisced. "Come sunset, it would look like the whole thing was on fire."
Ignis added, "I have, as well, but only when I was very young. In later years it was much more difficult to get away, as you well know."
He thought for a moment, then continued, hesitantly, "But I do recall a certain day in Lestallum where I once found myself rather transfixed. The streets were positively swamped in vibrant reds and yellows, the wind tossing the leaves all about like snow." He smiled, wistful. "It was quite lovely."
"Not me," Prompto confessed, subdued. "Stayed in the city my whole life. Well, except for that whole part where I was stolen from a Niff lab as a baby, but, y'know. That one tree in my yard did get kinda pretty sometimes. What about you, Noct?"
"Just once, in Tenebrae," Noctis replied, a soft smile brushing across his features. "Luna would wheel my chair to the edge of the stream, and for hours we would sit and watch as little yellow leaves drifted down through light that was all murky and green from the forest. They would clump together in the water, like pools of gold."
He suddenly wondered how much Gladio and Prompto actually knew about his time in Tenebrae. Gladio would probably be up to speed with just about all of it; he would have been briefed on the essentials when he'd begun his Shield training, and Ignis had doubtlessly filled him in on the rest. Noctis' childhood injury and the barriers it had imposed on his magic, plus the violence-filled deaths he'd witnessed at an early age, would both, of necessity, have served as major considerations in his training and security regimens. But unless the other two had talked, Prompto had probably only heard rumors. Noctis, himself, almost never spoke of it.
Turning toward them now, he said, "Tenebrae was a beautiful place, before the Empire really cracked down. Luna and her mother were so gentle and kind. I didn't feel like an invalid around them, despite being stuck in that chair for all those months. Even Ravus wasn't such an ass back then."
He leaned back against a tree, his eyes tracing the patterns that twisted across the stone, and continued. "I learned so much about simple things there. Simple, but beautiful. I learned about an existence outside of duty. That's where it finally occurred to me that friendship was a real thing—that not everybody in my life was there just because they were expected to be, or to get paid. That some of them would become people I would...would willingly die for some day."
His gaze flickered briefly to their faces, gauging their reactions. Gladio looked mellow and contemplative, his body language relaxed. Ignis was regarding him with a soft expression, and Prompto's eyes were slightly shiny. Noctis knew he was treading on dangerous ground, and had most likely said too much. But somehow it felt right—despite his resolve, despite the risk. It felt right to let them know.
Ignis took a breath. Noctis knew exactly what he was thinking: that it seemed an auspicious moment to kindly broach the subject of his flashback.
"Anyway," he said, "think I'm gonna go out for a run, get some of the kinks out. I'll be back in a bit."
Prompto's jaw actually dropped. "Wha…? A run? You? Here? Now?"
"Yep." Noctis took a long pull from his canteen; then, wiping his mouth, he leaned down to tighten his laces. Combat boots really weren't the nicest footwear for dedicated running, but they would keep him from breaking an ankle on the rough terrain as he did his damnedest to continue to unhelpfully avoid their questions. As it was, Ignis was looking both irritable at his quick deflection and vaguely nauseated at the prospect of anybody within breathing range deliberately sweating without any expectation of baths or a wardrobe change afterward.
"Guess I'll go with, then," Prompto sighed. "My 10k is trash these days. Plus none of us should be disappearing off into strange mountains alone."
"If you absolutely insist on smelling like the humid netherbits of a cateopeblas for our eventual reintroduction to civilization, would you at least return with any edible roots or berries you encounter along the way?" Ignis asked, his expression pinched.
"Sure thing, boss," Prompto said, shooting him a breezy double thumbs-up. "Ready, Noct?"
Twenty minutes later, Noctis was feeling significant remorse over his somewhat underhanded escape, though probably not for the right reasons. He was certainly no stranger to a strenuous workout; gods only knew what Gladio had put him through on a daily basis back in Insomnia, and the battles and skirmishes that had since become a way of life made falling out of shape virtually impossible.
Still, swinging-and-dodging cardio didn't necessarily translate to running cardio. Not that he was feeling particularly adept in either these days. Despite Gladio's supplementing of their nightly hunts with spot training, Noctis still felt like an encumbrance to their group. Without his magic, he was much like an aging, washed-up war veteran: the experience was there, but he no longer had the means to use it. In truth, "second-rate" felt like a more accurate descriptor of his fighting skills as he struggled to overhaul both his ingrained habits and his methodology.
Gladio had been unusually patient since that first training session on the beach. He remained unruffled even in the face of Noctis' occasional frustrated outburst, always levelly urging him to try again. But his Shield was easily one of the most skilled and deadly fighters alive, his strength and the handful of additional proficiencies he'd picked up during the Long Night making him truly formidable. Prompto, meanwhile, had become a veritable gunslinger, his experience combining with his technical skills to leave the world with this upbeat but dangerous man, full of casual, lethal confidence.
Ignis, for his part, was nothing short of a phenomenon. In blindness, his fighting style had steered toward the conservative; he had trained himself, out of necessity, to unleash the most damage with the least movement possible. Now that he had regained his sight, he exhibited the rare talent of knowing how to utilize each of his senses to its fullest potential. Nothing was wasted, resulting in an unfussy, unexpected end for their enemies.
And then there was Noctis, with a stolen MT blade that couldn't hurt a Red Giant, a penchant to barge headlong into battles he couldn't win, and his mountain of issues.
"Gil for your thoughts?" Prompto said, panting lightly. He was of that sadistic class of individuals who thought conversation was an acceptable accompaniment to running. "Long as they're not dirty, that is. Actually," he amended, looking thoughtful as he leaped gracefully over a log, "dirty's okay, or whatever else you've got rattling around up there. Maybe just remember that fine but critical line between I and TMI, yeah? 'Cuz Gladio sure doesn't, 'specially when he's, like, cleaning out infected things or pinching off a loaf or something and thinks I need to know more about it."
"I guarantee you don't want to know my thoughts right now," Noctis wheezed. "They're mostly centered around…the terrible decision—" He took a few deep, strained breaths, then finished all at once, "—to subject my body to this self-afflicted torture you runner types like to call exercise."
"Hey man, it was your idea," Prompto unhelpfully reminded him. "Not my fault you keep looking for excuses to bail when Ignis is only trying to help you deal with all that leftover trauma from dying."
Noctis tripped neatly over his own foot. Catching his balance on a tree, he eased into a walk. Prompto slowed to match his pace.
"We've all been through terrible things, Prompto," he reminded his friend quietly.
"Yeah," Prompto said. He turned to watch Noctis intently, his breathing having already returned to normal. "Yeah, Noct, we have. But you know what the rest of us do? We talk, help, and sometimes even carry each other through it. Me and Ignis and Gladio might've spent a lot of the Night apart, but whenever things got to be too much for any one of us, you'd better damn well believe we were calling up the others. And that the others were there in a heartbeat."
Noctis grimaced, the guilt resuming its slow burn through his chest. "Fine," he said, turning his gaze out over the blue, rippled valleys below. "I was thinking about what a deadbeat teammate I am without my magic, and other similarly angst-ridden sentiments. Happy?"
It wasn't really what Prompto was asking for, and they both knew it. But this was a compromise—and one that his friend was evidently ready to accept, for the moment.
"Happy you think that? Nope," Prompto said. His gaze was full of earnestness. "Happy you told me? Yeah. And for the record, none of us considers you a deadbeat teammate. To be honest, I barely notice the difference; it's not like we had any magic-slinging Lucis Caelums rolling up to our battles during the Night, 'less you count the occasional Glaive.
"And really, Noct, you're good," he pressed. "You've got the skills. You think everyone can bounce around in a battle like you do, much less with a deadly weapon? You and Ignis both spend half your fights upside down and still manage to corner the market in kills. And as for the new stuff, like working the field without warps and phases and things, Gladio thinks you'll be up to speed in no time."
"Gladio doesn't know," Noctis replied, a touch cynically. "Not really. He's never had to start again from scratch. Never lost everything that made him useful."
Prompto came to a stop, and turned to face him with an intensity that brought Noctis up short.
"You sure about that, Noct?" he said. There was an unfamiliar, penetrating quality to his voice. "Are you really sure?"
Noctis opened his mouth to testily reply, then stopped, overcome with sudden chagrin.
"Dude, how useful do you think a Shield without a king feels?" his friend continued mercilessly, voicing what Noctis was only just now comprehending. "What about a Shield whose king is destined to go off and die? When keeping him alive was his sole life's purpose?"
"Yeah," Noctis said, exhaling heavily. "I'm an idiot. Sorry."
They walked on in silence for a bit, broken only by the clamor of the morning birds bustling around in the trees. Despite the sun's encouragement, the breeze seemed to have cooled rather suddenly, chilling the sweat on his skin. Noctis folded his arms, hunching in on himself.
"When did you get so perceptive, anyway?" he eventually asked, shooting his friend a small, wry smile.
Prompto cast him a sideways glance, looking almost embarrassed. "Nah, dude, it's always been there." He chuckled, once, a self-deprecating sound. "Back then it was just easier to laugh things off sometimes. You know?"
Noctis did. Prompto had always contained more depth, more emotional complexity than anybody ever gave him credit for. But as he'd said, deflection was usually easier.
After a time, Noctis hedged, "It's just that…sometimes it's almost like I can feel the old power, right there at the edges. I keep reaching for it without thinking, usually in the middle of a battle. And that's when someone gets hurt—because I keep chasing ghosts."
Prompto opened his mouth to reply, a pensive crease appearing between his eyes. But Noctis continued, "I think…part of the trouble is getting used to this body again." He gestured down at his frame—young and lithe and strong, even if—at twenty—it was still a tad on the weedy side. "You know how the crystal aged the Lucis Caelums before our time. Once I was finally able to meet up with you guys at Hammerhead, right before the…uh, the end…" —he couldn't help but stumble over the word, even now— "I was already starting to break down. It made me rely on the magic more than ever.
"Now that I'm back to being physically young," he continued, "—gods, we're barely more than kids again, Prom—being without the magic I once depended on is like…missing a leg. I just can't seem to get used to it." Even as he talked, his mind stretched out toward the void, brushing against that great gasping emptiness, feeling for something that was long fled.
Prompto sighed, turning sideways to edge through a cluster of prickly bushes. By unspoken agreement, they had both begun scoping out edibles as they walked, a habit Ignis had ingrained in them years before.
"I can't even pretend to get how that feels," his friend eventually said, "but I can tell it's wearing on you." He held aside an exceptionally nasty briar as Noctis followed him through—then took the opportunity to catch and hold his eyes, his own bright blue ones searching. "But Noct. You know the magic isn't who you are, right? I mean, I don't think it's what makes you you. It never was."
Noctis stopped, just for a heartbeat. Remembering a time long, long ago…before the words duty and throne and destiny had meant anything to him. When all he cared about was what would be for dessert that night, and the new anak plushie an eight-year-old Ignis had given him, and his dad chasing him on hands and knees across the luxurious carpets of their suite, growling like a coeurl as his own childlike shrieks of delight rang through the corridors…
He smiled crookedly, breaking Prompto's gaze as he ducked beneath the vine. Elbowing his friend in the ribs as he passed, he said, "Oh yeah? Then what, pray tell, makes me me, Prom?"
Prompto shoved him lightly in return. "Stubbornness and chocobo brains and a bit of adorableness around the edges, duh," he replied. "And fish. And a total sketchball personal timeline. Like seriously, Noct, WTF is that all about?"
He began gesticulating somewhat manically, warming to a subject he'd obviously been mulling over for some time. "How do you even handle that? It's like, one day you're a regular twenty-year-old broski having a conversation with assclown Ardyn in his evil Imperial lair, and then next thing you know you're waking up as a thirty-year-old in the Apocalypse. And then just as you're probably starting to get used to that, you go right back to being twenty again. But with everything different." He shivered, rather suddenly. "Gah, that little blast of wind just now was freezing! Maybe we should get back to our run soon? …But anyway, talk about whiplash with that whole ten years of sleep business. The rest of us at least had the full decade to get used to things."
"…Yeah," Noctis agreed uncomfortably, suddenly not meeting his friend's eyes. "Uh…I guess I just haven't had much time to think about it yet. Too busy being alive again and all that."
Grasping for a subject change, his gaze fell on a cluster of spotted fungi, tucked away between the roots of a large, spreading fir. "Hey, is that alstroom? Ignis'll go into a rapture if we bring any of that back, especially this far south."
Prompto eyed him, but let the matter drop. "Mmm, brink-of-dawn mushroom soup," he replied instead. "You really know how to do it for me, man." His voice bore the same degree of enthusiasm their aforementioned bastion of elegance and good hygiene might exhibit when faced with a public swimming pool.
"Better than Croaker in Brown Sauce, right?" Noctis said. He stretched out the hem of his sweat-soaked shirt and dropped the mushrooms in, one by one. At some point he'd have to dig up a better receptacle; Ignis would probably make him throw the things off a cliff if he ever laid eyes on their current mode of transportation.
Prompto turned slightly green. "Yeahhh…I love and respect Iggy and he's like, the most awesomesauce culinary artist my unworthy self has ever had the good fortune to share a cookfire with, but even a kitchen god like him can't make slimy frog rubber palatable.
"You know what I'm craving, Noct?" he continued, a sudden wistful gleam in his eye. "A nice, greasy double cheeseburger from The Crow's Nest. It's been four years since I've been there. Four. Long. Years. That's like the entirety of high school." He sighed, long and loud. "We're so poor these days."
"Just four years?" Noctis asked, glancing over at him in surprise. "The Crow's Nest survived the other six of the Long Night?"
"Yeah, it was one of the last holdouts of civilization." Prompto leapt into the air to swipe at a high-growing branch, for no other reason than the achievement of touching it. Noctis wondered where he dredged up the energy.
"I'm really not sure how they did it," Prompto was continuing. "They were making some serious substitutions there toward the end—packing burgers with beans and grains and eventually sawdust. But then even the trees got Scourged, and the greenhouses couldn't support non-essentials anymore. So The Nest got the axe. All of Lestallum went on starvation rations the very next year."
Noctis thought back to his own years of canned beans and greens, there in the bleak desolation of Angelgard. Those bland, tin-flavored meals had been a luxury compared to what the rest of the world had endured for much of the Night. And even toward the end, when he'd spent so much time in Reflection that he hadn't been eating anything at all, but living off the crystal's power alone—at least he hadn't much felt the hunger. (He'd been far too busy playing out his part as Bahamut's docile little human sacrifice.) Noctis hurt for his friends.
"Yep, good old Kenny Crow's," Prompto sighed, nostalgic. His stomach growled noisily as he tossed a few mushrooms into Noctis' shirt.
Noctis shivered, the chilled breeze raising goosebumps on his exposed stomach and arms. Why in Shiva's name was it so cold? "Sure you don't want to snack on some of these?" he asked. "They'll at least tide you over till we get back."
"The day I willingly eat the fungus we found under some tree as a 'snack' is the day the world ends," Prompto declared. "Which is why I did actually eat them during the Night. But let it be engraved and runeified—or whatever—on the record—that that's the only situation where I will eat them ever, and that includes all of Umbra's alternate timelines."
"Yeah, your stomach is saying differently," Noctis said, popping one of the smaller alstrooms into his mouth.
"My stomach wasn't saying anything, dude," Prompto insisted. "Especially after watching you eat that from your sweaty shirt just now."
"I heard it growl."
"In loathing and disgust, maybe—"
A long, guttural rumble reverberated through the woods, the vibration causing some of the frailer branches to prematurely shed their summer foliage.
"Noooct…please tell me that was you," Prompto begged in a small voice. "It's okay if you're having gut issues or something, I promise I won't mock you or even tell Gladio—"
The sound boomed through the trees once again. This time it was unmistakably a growl, and not of the bodily function variety. Noctis realized, belatedly, that the birds had stopped singing some time ago.
A dread behemoth poked its head through the canopy. From above.
It looked down on them, through the foliage, its clawed, muscular legs stretching as tall as many of the trees themselves. Sparkling with Blizzard, it slavered hungrily, the viscous substance glopping onto their heads and shoulders like a sudden downpour of Flans.
"Holy crap…I, uh…I thought dread behemoths were supposed to be extinct?" Prompto suggested hopefully. The optimism in his voice withered away into nothingness as he stared up into the monster's beady yellow eyes in horrified awe.
"They're just incredibly rare," Noctis informed him through stiff lips.
The monster practically grinned at them, revealing a full collection of painful ways to die.
"Pretty sure I just crapped my pants," Prompto announced.
Noctis found his blade in his hand even as mushrooms bounced off his feet, though he didn't remember freeing it from his belt. Blinking through the warm, sticky saliva that now clung to his face, he tilted his head back to stare up...and up some more...at the very large, very muscular, very toothy beast. Twisted, black horns protruded from either side of its head, framing a pair of fangs the size of greatswords. The Blizzard crackled around it like a mist, coating the foliage in frost. And also, it had wings.
"Shit," Noctis breathed.
Then there was no more time to think about it. Noctis threw himself at Prompto, slamming into his chest and carrying them both to the ground as the monstrosity spat spears of ice at them. The frozen, knifelike shards blew a line of destruction across the ground; a split second later, crystalline blades exploded from the earth where they'd only just been standing.
"Stay down!" Prompto yelled from beneath him, as Noctis moved to push himself back up. He grabbed the back of Noctis' head and pulled his face roughly down against his chest; with his free arm, he reached around to level a volley of gunfire into what was presumably the Behemoth's cavernous maw, judging by the freezing breath Noctis felt puffing against his back.
He winced as the weapon discharged right next to his ear, leaving the smell of gunpowder sharp and acrid in his sinuses. Squinting, he chanced a glance upward. Even lying on his back in the dirt, Prompto was a study of deadly calm. His arm still wrapped protectively around Noctis' head, he was already in the process of reloading, one-handed, to deliver a second round. The resulting barrage made Noctis' ears ring.
"This isn't working," Prompto announced from between gritted teeth. At the same moment, the behemoth whipped its muscular tail around, taking out several large trees. The sound of snapping, tortured wood crackled across the mountaintop.
"Crap crap crappity crap…" the gunman was muttering to himself, as the ancient evergreens, groaning in surrender, began falling inward.
But Noctis had already rolled off his friend and back onto his feet. Grabbing Prompto's hand, he yanked him upright. "Time to run," he snapped.
Prompto didn't argue. This was a contest they would've had difficulty winning even at the peak of their strength, with all four of them, at the height of Noctis' power. Now they were two, with Noctis judging a battle well fought by whether or not he'd managed to start the campfire.
So they ran. Noctis had no idea where they were going, and he suspected Prompto didn't either. The only sure thing was that they were making significantly better time than they had on the way out. And that the behemoth was very much in pursuit, judging by the thundering mini-earthquakes that pounded rhythmically along behind them.
Noctis forced his legs faster, his lungs burning. Prompto trailed him closely, firing the occasional potshot over his shoulder, though Noctis knew he could outpace him in a heartbeat if he wanted to. He noted from the portion of his awareness that was in the least amount of pain—and therefore still somewhat capable of rational observation—that the tree branches ahead of them were frosting over.
Which meant the beast was almost literally on their heels. They were nearly out of options; the only real choice left was to stop and make a stand and hope to the gods the thing decided they weren't worth the effort—
Then even that possibility died a screaming death as the ground suddenly dropped out from beneath them.
It wasn't a cliff they found themselves falling down, per se, so much as a very abrupt hill, packed with rocks and thorny scrub. Noctis felt true terror then as he pinwheeled out of control, punching straight through every bush he met along the way as if it were made out of tissue paper. Instinctively, he attempted to warp, but of course it didn't work; even if he could, he'd lost his sword farther up the slope. He finally settled on scrabbling wildly and ineffectually for some sort of anchor, hoping to snag a handhold on one of the stony clefts. But the vegetation merely ripped away beneath his fingers, thorns and gravel tearing the skin of his hands.
Noctis was fully convinced this was going to be how his life ended (again...and maybe even permanently this time): cartwheeling down some obscure mountainside to his death and then eaten by a behemoth. He'd like to see Bahamut bring him back from that one.
Then, with a squelching noise not unlike an imploding gigantoad, he careened straight into a bog.
It was really more of a sinkhole (he noted to himself as he flailed about for purchase, up to his chest in mud), formed by the late summer remains of a small seasonal pond. He didn't get much more time to think about it though because suddenly Prompto arrived, mostly upside-down, his steel-toed boot catching Noctis in the face. Pain exploded in his head as blood began streaming from his nose.
But he hardly had a chance to feel it, because right on Prompto's heels was the behemoth.
It skidded to a halt at the edge of the marsh, its massive claws digging furrows into the ground. They slowly filled with water as the beast backpedaled, retreating a short distance to recline on its haunches. It panted and blew, staring at them hungrily, snowflakes drifting around its face. The muck encasing Noctis' body turned slushy as it began to freeze around his arms and torso, ice crawling and creaking around him like a spring thaw in reverse.
"Prompto, get up!" Noctis yelled. He grabbed hold of the first body parts that made themselves available (Prompto's ankle and knee) and used them to begin dragging his friend through the sludge.
Prompto struggled against him, flailing for air. Noctis dropped his leg and latched onto the collar of his shirt instead, yanking his head free. The blond sputtered and coughed, but there was no time for him to regain his balance. Tightening his hold, Noctis continued to haul his friend bodily along in the direction of the far shore, his breath coming in harsh gasps, turning only to shoot an apprehensive glance back at the behemoth.
Seeing that its prey was, for all intents and purposes, safely trapped, it tossed its head and snorted in satisfaction. Its toothy, serrated maw stretched wide, curling conspicuously upward at the corners. Oh, it was definitely smiling now. Frost crept from its claws and out over the ice, forming a soft, sparkling layer that would have been mesmerizing in any circumstance besides the woeful situation they found themselves in now.
Whirling back around, Noctis shoved his way forward, forcing his legs to power through the sucking, squelching mire. He bulldozed the stumbling Prompto along in front of him, his breath hissing loudly between his teeth. His sinuses were clogged with mud and blood; half of it trickled down his throat while the remainder dripped steadily down his chin. Noctis choked on a particularly disgusting mouthful at the same time his foot lodged itself in a hole. He and Prompto both went down.
The behemoth snuffed in what he could have sworn was laughter. Ever so casually, it raised a paw and swiped at a stony embankment, sending tons of rock hurtling through the air as if they were nothing but a kicked stack of kindling. A boulder the size of the Cup Noodles truck splashed into the bog not ten feet away, drenching them in a wave of decaying organic sludge. Prompto yelped as a shard of stone glanced across his shoulderblade, leaving an oozing red line behind it.
And that was the moment that the last bit of Noctis' composure rattled loose.
"All right, you wanna go?" he yelled, spinning to face the beast head on. "Come on, then! Let's go!"
In reply, the behemoth spat a flood of status effects at them. Poison, Confusion, and Frozen, among other, nastier ailments, shot toward them like a popped soldier wasp hive.
Eyes widening, Noctis dove to the side, dragging Prompto with him. Magic whisked over their heads, leaving a characteristically earthy, ozonelike smell in its wake. A Silence fizzled into his upraised arm, hissing briefly before it evaporated away into nothing.
Noctis struggled back upright, mud sucking at his shoulders. "Hey! Is that all you got?" he shouted, his voice hoarse and, admittedly, slightly manic. "I'm not even magical anymore, asshole!" Beneath his breath, he muttered, urgently, "Prompto! Shoot it!"
"I can't!" Prompto hissed, wiping his hands frantically along the barrel of his gun. "It's all jammed up! Not sure what your plan is, dude, but maybe if you stopped pissing the nice death monster off any more than it already is we can live long enough to get it working!"
"I'm not pissing it off, I'm distracting it," Noctis growled. He flinched away as a flurry of Curses flew overhead.
"Distracting it from all the potential meals in the woods besides us, maybe…oh, shit…"
The behemoth had evidently tired of its game already. Rising to its full, mind-boggling height, it stretched its fang-filled maw wide. Ice spears formed among its teeth, crackling with deadly magic, crystallizing into blades the size of Meteor shards.
So maybe this really was the end, after all.
Calmly, Noctis shoved Prompto back down into the mud, then planted himself in front of him as he turned to face the beast. Maybe his body could shield his friend from the blast that was to come. Maybe it would even be enough for Prompto to survive.
Then he heard a noise from behind, something akin to what the most spiteful, diabolical chocobo in the world might sound like.
Whipping around, Noctis found himself face to face with that very thing.
Their yellow-white rooster, its eyes glittering bloodthirstily, croaked out the least cute wark ever to be heard from the beak of a creature who was born with an actual smile on its face as it stared down the behemoth. The musclebound monster ceased its own snarling, suddenly looking dubious.
Then, with a long, low growl, the chocobo launched itself straight at its face.
The behemoth yelped as the feathery fluffball raked its talons across its snout. Screeching, the bird flapped a few times, bits of plumage floating in a downy golden cloud around it, before diving in for the monster's eyes.
Howling in dismay, the behemoth spun around, its tail taking out a few more trees in the process. Then it thundered off into the woods, the bird in close pursuit.
Noctis stood panting, blood still trickling from his nose, up to his elbows in half-frozen mud, staring dumbly at the suddenly and inexplicably empty forest. Prompto grabbed hold of his arm and used it to tow himself, hand over hand, to his feet.
They looked at each other. Neither of them spoke. A half-splintered tree groaned and swayed, eventually crashing to the ground to join the gaping, behemoth-shaped hole in the woods. A cloud of leaves exploded into the air, only to gently return to the forest floor on the eddies of the morning breeze. Melting mud dripped from their elbows and hair, making plopping noises as it rejoined the bog.
Finally, they dragged themselves out of the marsh, slowing only to crack the occasional ice sheet that stood in their way. Wordlessly, they hiked up the hill to where the bird and beast had vanished, mud squelching in their boots. Standing at the top, they could see the two speeding away on an already-distant ridgeline, the chocobo's croaks of animosity drifting back to them on the breeze.
"Guess his rental period finally ended," Noctis said into the silence.
"The worst part about it is that I don't know if our 'bo was protecting us, or if he was just hungry," Prompto added, his voice faint. He was virtually unrecognizable beneath a black, head-to-toe layer of mud. Around them, the birdsong tentatively returned, melting ice trickling from the branches like the aftermath of a summer storm.
"It's probably better that we don't," Noctis said. "Ugh, I think this behemoth slobber is starting to dry. It's like being encased in rubber cement." He swiped ineffectually at the gluey substance that was slowly adhering to his upper half.
"Yeah, I've got bog water in places that have never seen the light of day. I think it's, like, miles back to camp at this point, too."
Noctis groaned. Then something caught his eye. "Hey, look at that," he said, pointing to a spot on the horizon.
"Stone arches!" Prompto exclaimed. "Aww yeah, our stone arches! I mean ones we know! Taelpar is at the bottom of one of those, isn't it? Oh, man, civilization here we come!" He pumped his fist into the air in a mud-encrusted victory dance.
"You realize you just identified Taelpar with civilization," Noctis pointed out, picking a black, suspiciously wriggling lump of slime from his arm with a feeling of vague horror. Deciding it was best just not to think about it for now, he tossed it away and commenced with what was bound to be the longest hike back to camp of all time.
"Kinda sad, right?" Prompto agreed. He was grinning from ear to ear as he bounced alongside him down the hill, not looking sad at all. "I don't care if they make their burgers out of voreteeth there; the first thing I'm gonna do when we ride in is park myself in one of The Crow's Nest's corner booths and order four double cheeseburgers. For myself, by the way. You guys can get your own."
"I think you mean when we hike in," Noctis corrected, fruitlessly attempting to mop up some of the blood on his face with the collar of his ruined shirt. "Now that our chocobo has flown the coop. So to speak."
Prompto's cry of despairing realization echoed from the mountaintops.
xxx
"Where are those two jackasses?" Gladio growled, pacing a rut into the scrubby grass.
"Patience, Gladio," Ignis replied, taking a long sip of spruce tip tea. He'd brewed it after a short expedition to see what he could forage from within their little thicket of trees—with most excellent results, if he did say so himself. Leaning comfortably against the old haven stone, he leafed through a magazine Gladio had managed to save in their flight from Galdin Quay. "I don't believe it's time to worry just yet. We have been riding for several consecutive days now; perhaps they found they had additional energy to burn."
"More like additional chores to avoid," Gladio grumbled, but Ignis recognized the sincere worry in his voice. He was probably imagining them being eaten by a tyraneant or dread behemoth or something equally unlikely. Ignis, himself, was feeling remarkably calm about the whole thing; after years of fighting alongside these men, he liked to think himself firm in the knowledge of their competence. (Or perhaps it was just the calming effects of the tea.)
Gladio busied himself with practicing his sword forms, one of his preferred stress distractors. Sweating and grunting, he was halfway through his high guards when two very familiar voices drifted toward them from the trees.
"…no way dude, it makes way more sense for you and Gladio to share. You're smaller."
"I'm smaller? Prompto, you're basically made of, like, twigs and wadded up string."
"Fine, we're the same size. Still should be you doubling up with Gladio, though, seeing as he's your Shield and all. What better way to stay safe and sound than to spend all day hunkered down behind a three-hundred-pound wall of muscle, or whatever it is he weighs?"
"He'll just make fun of my noodle arms the whole time, even though they're not. Well, maybe they are in this body but it's hardly my fault I'm twenty again—"
Ignis carefully set his tea on the stone as two figures emerged into the meadow, one resembling a mud- and blood-covered Noctis and the other appearing to be some swamp monster with a generally human shape Noct had evidently adopted and dragged back to camp with him. Gladio did a double-take at his charge's less-than-pristine condition; lodging his blade in the dirt, he stalked toward the two, employing several of the nastier swears in his arsenal beneath his breath.
Noctis, seeing his approach, stopped and held up a hand, suddenly imperious. Gladio halted in surprise, and Ignis raised an eyebrow.
Even caked in mud, his face smeared with dried blood from what appeared to be a grievously swollen nose, his body littered with cuts and road rash, his clothes shredded and damp, shivering and partially encased in—congealed Flan…? —Noct, in that moment, reminded Ignis overwhelmingly of Regis: the man's softspoken but undeniable command, his composure and elegance.
No—not Regis. He reminded him of Noctis, 114th King of Lucis. Ignis felt a sudden warming glow of pride.
"Three things," Noct said curtly, folding down the fingers of his upraised hand as he began ticking items off his list. "Taelpar is only a day's ride away. We're down a chocobo. There's probably a raging dread behemoth trampling around on the next mountain. And no—I don't want to talk about this right now. Not until I've scoured every bit of swamp and all the wildlife that came with it from my person."
"That's four things, dude," the ghoul said in Prompto's voice.
Noct didn't even look his way, but the sudden icy silence was enough to make the swamp monster visibly wither.
"We'll be back in an hour," Noct continued decisively, shouldering his way past Gladio. "And by the way, this is for you." He peeled a mud-encased, unsettlingly spongy object from his pocket and plopped it into Ignis' hand before marching stiffly away.
The Prompto-monster cast a glance in their direction as he started off after Noct. "We'll be back after we find a stream and I've rubbed off all my skin with a pinecone," he helpfully stage-whispered over his shoulder. "And our run was great, by the way, thanks for asking! Really got a lot of mileage in today." With a cheery wave, he jogged off to catch up with their battered king.
Gladio stared after their retreating forms, his mouth hanging open. Turning to Ignis, he gave him a look that was equal parts helplessness and incredulity, only to find Ignis having once again taken up his tea, a fond smile on his face.
Gladio threw his arms up in surrender. "That's it. You've all lost your damn minds. Every bloody one of you. So if you need me, I'll be over here in my happy place, where peace and sanity reign." With that, he stalked off in a direction as opposite from Noct's and Prompto's as he could manage without walking over a cliff, exasperation radiating from him in near tangible form.
"All right, but mind the wildlife," Ignis advised, picking clods of hardened gunk from the mysterious object Noct had handed him. "We're running low enough on clothing as is."
The last thing Noctis and Gladio heard, as they disappeared into their respective corners of the mountaintop, was a precise, aristocratic voice jubilantly exclaiming, "Oh, I say, an alstroom! However did you find one this far south?"
xxx
A/N: So, kind of quiet around here on the old FFnet, eh? No judgment here, I used to be a lurker too—mostly because I didn't think I had anything of value to add. But guess what! The positive things you say do make a big difference, even if you don't always know it. So if you like what you read, consider dropping a writer a word of encouragement. They will looooove you for it.
And if you're still feeling too shy, no worries! I'm glad (/hope) you're enjoying.
All that being said – huge shoutout to Heiro20 and my (one?) guest reviewer! You two are positively lovely, and leave me flying high for days.