PSL; [YOU KNOW I LOST MY MIND]

[daemonized]

how high is too low?

[Noctis’ light had swallowed him whole.

Engulfed him like he were nothing, his power finally realized and strengthened by the chains of destiny. The King of Light wielding that selfsame weapon, as much of a pawn of the gods as he was, fulfilling his very purpose for existing. And it hurts, for a few harrying moments — it hurts, the light burrows into him and makes the Starscourge scream and he’s expelled from existence like a disease destroyed, like a plague banished from the land. The darkness fallen, his mind and spirit and his very right to exist erased. And then the pain is gone. Noctis’ light, too, wanes and becomes nothing, like him.

Then there is only nothing. And freedom — finally, after so many ages — is a release he cannot even truly appreciate.

But it doesn’t matter. He’s gone now.

* * *

Until he isn’t.

Until his body feels like it’s shuddered back into existence, so much feeling in every nerve ending. Air and dust filling his lungs. The cold press of a stone floor, dull pain across every limb, in every bone. It’s impossible, and for a moment that void of nothing is filled with fear — like a vacuum letting air in for the first time — and Ardyn jolts into consciousness. Gold eyes are wide in the shadows, fingers curling into fists, then opening, then closing, then opening again.

For those few awful moments, he is unflattering. Confused and disoriented and lost in the sensation of being alive and being without a darkness that crawls beneath his skin. It’s like gaining too much and losing a limb all at once. He might have released a desperate noise from the back of his throat, he might have had nails bite into his face as he felt the contours of his features. It’s all a great storm in his head, only slowly released.

It’s only later when the anger sets in. The frustration of his rightful end stolen from him, because this was not how it was supposed to go — he was not supposed to exist, he was not supposed to be alive. Was he alive? He felt off, strange, weak and unbalanced like the healer he used to be. The Starscourge — where was it?

Where was he?

He can’t see much of anything. It’s dark, though he swears a flicker of torchlight dances just outside the exit to this stone room of rectangular shapes and oddly purposeful placements. It reminds him of Angelgard, an unpleasant association. It reminds him of a prison, or of a tomb.

A minute more and he’s shuffling to his feet, heading towards that light. What an irony.]

Comments

[verflair]

[ Sometimes X’rhun wonders if he dreamed it all, everything from awakening on a great structure of steel and plastic and materials for which he has no name in the depths of space, to his year on the surface of the planet below, to the odd few months shunted into a new world altogether. When he found himself back home with a full head of hair, his usual clothes, and easy access to his magic, it became difficult not to doubt his memories as perhaps one extended, bizarre hallucination.

But there are scars where there weren’t before, marks of battles taken place worlds away, and a new regret that sits heavy in his chest, settles there with the rest until it has formed but another part of the foundations of his life.

He moves forward because he has no choice, because that’s just how he is. He keeps his memories and his regrets both tucked away in his heart, but his pilgrimage continues. Perhaps it was his experiences elsewhere, the year spent living under the lie that Hydaelyn had met Her demise, that draws him back to Ala Mhigo. Draws him back to the place where he entombed his comrades’ blades ere he put his homeland behind him. X’rhun finds the tomb set upon by grave robbers, and it is only thanks to the intervention of some old friends – students old and new – that he sees the swords returned to their rightful place.

With that business done, X’rhun seeks to depart again, to stick to his oath and continue to be a wandering force for good wherever he may be needed. Mayhap he ought not have started said journey by cutting through the long abandoned royal crypts, tucked into the mountainside near where the Duelists’ swords lay entombed, but he could handle a few dark tunnels and wandering voidsent.

Torches line the walls, kept alight by magic or else by someone with an unfaltering sense of duty even decades after the fall of the monarchy. Apart from the voidsent, it isn’t uncommon to find the odd living soul in the catacombs, seeking to stumble upon something of value from a place long picked clean by the desperate and the destitute. So, when X’rhun’s sharp sense of hearing catches the tell-tale beat of footsteps stumbling over the broken stone and uneven ground of one of the many tombs to line the main passageway, he thinks it to be one of his grave-robbing friends, out for revenge or perhaps lost and cut off from the group he and his students had so handily bested.

The Duelist slows to a stop, hand on the hilt of his blade as he waits. ]

~timeskip noises~

[verflair]

[ True to his word, X’rhun takes Ardyn on a tour of the battle-scarred streets of Ala Mhigo. In the few moons since her liberation, the city is starting to come back to life, refugees returning home at long last, and on their heels are merchants and volunteers for the efforts to rebuild. She has a long way to go, but this is an Ala Mhigo that makes X’rhun proud. It’s in good hands.

And so, he doesn’t linger. He and his companion take to the road, leaving X’rhun’s homeland behind to travel for a spell. There is trouble everywhere they go, but nothing so earth-shattering as the things they’d experienced in their time in other worlds. Bandits here, a rogue monster or two there, and in one instance a mage who’d gotten in far over his head and let a voidsent run rampant across the countryside. Nothing X’rhun could not handle on his own, and he keeps his promise, not once looking to Ardyn for help, even when he returns to their little camp with a fresh dagger wound scored across the back of one shoulder. His own healing abilities are enough, and of all the things, he dares not ask that of his friend again.

Getting to see him, when he returns to the inn room they share for the night, or the small roadside camp they’ve set up, is enough. To say nothing of the nights – which is most nights – that they fall into bed together.

The weeks wear on, and a chill begins to settle into the air, reminding X’rhun with a bit of a shock that they’re coming up on Starlight. Perhaps the X’rhun of years ago would be content to spend the holiday on the road, but not so much anymore. He guides their travels to the wooded city-state of Gridania, with the promise of an extended stay. They are scarce there a day when the snow begins to fall, the locals working despite the cold to hang wreaths and ribbons and shining tinsel all over the town. Something in X’rhun’s chest warms at the sight.

Now winter has well and truly settled over the Twelveswood, and though the snow is nothing compared to that of Coerthas, it is enough to overtake X’rhun’s boots past his ankles as he trudges past the city’s amphitheater, empty and quiet in the cold with a layer of snow dusting the benches and the stage. Ardyn is not far behind him, ever curious and ever willing to stick his nose into things because it amuses him, despite X’rhun telling him to stay behind at the inn.

He’s just going to pick up a package from the local delivery moogle, though he hasn’t told Ardyn as much. At this rate, his friend is going to ruin the surprise. ]

Are you quite certain you wouldn’t rather wait back at the inn?

[ Leave him alone!! ]