Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
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year 5, quarter 3
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She seized her glass, swallowing hard before slamming it down again and turning to him. ’Meant to die?’ His eyebrows raised as she continued. My, but where was that scared and wincing girl who had faltered beneath this gaze? Now she faced him with the challenge and dignity of a queen. Ardyn eyes flitting to the side at her accusations. She wouldn’t have set herself against him had he not proven himself a menace. She meant to fight him despite the odds for the protection of the people. Ardyn said nothing once she’d finished. He only smiled to himself, waiting for something imperceivable but to himself.
And then he clapped.
”Bravo!" he cried. "What ferocity! I’d dare say you’ve put me in my place.” He laughed beneath his breath, shaking his head in a kind of quiet contemplation. ”How rude of me indeed, but I have no intentions of fighting. Perhaps another time if you’d so prefer. I’d hate to disappoint.”
He hummed to himself and eyed the last of his wine glass, downing it in a single motion before setting it aside. ”I’ll finish it myself, I think,” he said. ”You’ve had quite enough as it is.” With that, he eyed the last of the bottle and poured what he could into the empty glass. He tested its tension on the edge, shifting it first one way and then the other before he brought it carefully to his lips and sipped until it had reached a more manageable level. With that, he stood.
”I do think it's time we took our leave.” He extended a hand towards Yuna. ”You seem rather unbalanced as it were. Might I escort you? Oh! I’d hate to think what terrors might befall you in the dark!” He winked at her before taking another sip of his wine, sliding some gil onto the counter, and turning on his heel. Somehow, the night felt brighter than when he’d left it. He squinted into the streetlights.
”You aren’t staying far, I’d hope.” He looked idly towards the rooftops, waiting for her to catch up. ”With Aera, perhaps?”
As Yuna gripped the counter for balance, she waited almost nervously for Ardyn’s response. She would have been at a disadvantage in any of their encounters anyway, but without her staff and with an ambiguous amount of alcohol in her system, she had no real hope of surviving if he chose to call her bluff.
(Had that been her unconscious intention tonight?) The thought was too vague and nebulous to dwell on for long.
For a moment after she’d finished, Ardyn was silent, and his expressionless face was more worrying than any other look that she’d seen him have so far. And then he laughed. Yuna blinked slowly, heat rising to her cheeks as he broke out into a round of applause and heads turned towards the two of them where they were seated at the bar. “Ah…people are looking at us…” She felt flustered again, which frustrated her, but every time that she felt she had a handle on the situation, Ardyn did something to surprise and unsettle her. He was clearly making fun of her when he said that she had put him in his place, but she was too caught up by his comment that he had no intention of fighting her tonight to care. Then he really intended to spare everyone around them?
Yuna was a little insulted when he implied that she had drank too much. She had carefully monitored how much of the bottle she had been poured, thank you very much, though as he sipped the remainder of the wine, she did have to wonder with a bit of despair how he drank the dark liquid without any visible signs of disgust. Surely not even someone as sociopathic as he was could think that the blood-red wine tasted good.
“What?” Yuna stared at him when he offered to escort her back to the inn, not knowing where to look in her embarrassment when he had the gall to wink at her. “You’re the terror most likely to befall me in the dark,” she pointed out, trying to ignore his offered hand by taking a step forward. The room tilted unexpectedly when she moved, and she ended up having to grab the man’s entire arm to avoid faceplanting in front of him.
“This isn’t right. You had more than me,” she despaired, though she hated showing weakness in front of him. “I thought you had to finish the bottle to feel anything.” Why else would they sell wine in large bottles and liquor in small bottles? Clearly each bottle was a serving, and she hadn’t made it nearly through one of those.
Yuna let go of his arm as soon as she had righted herself, though she had to admit that his copious layers of clothing would have made it a fairly comfortable way to fall if the man under them didn’t unnerve her so much. Ardyn paid for their drinks, and under usual circumstances she would have thanked him, but this was the furthest thing from normal. Instead, she offered an uneasy “Should I dare to ask how you earn money?” before she stared after him as he moved towards the door. Was she really about to follow this man outside into the dark? It was maybe the stupidest decision that she had made so far tonight, which was saying something, but what else was she to do? Everything felt hazy and dream-like, and everyone else in the bar was a complete stranger, so with more than a small amount of misery, she crept after the red-haired man.
Ardyn had moved to just under a streetlight, so Yuna stopped in his shadow, feeling more than a little dwarfed by their size difference now that they were standing. If she’d learned anything in this encounter though, it was that he appeared willing to pretend this was normal as long as she did the same, so she clenched her fingers around her skirts and did her best to keep her chin raised.
“…Yes. I have a room in the city.” Even with as bleary as she felt, it didn’t seem like a good idea to be more specific than that. At his second question about Aera, her eyes drifted to the side, though the darkness made it difficult to see anything outside of their circle of lamplight. “…We were staying together, but she left Provo recently.”
(After drugging my tea and robbing me).“After drugging my tea and robbing me.”
Was that last part out loud? Yuna wasn’t entirely sure of anything except that she was desperately looking forward to getting away from him and laying in bed for a while.
...Wait, was that part out loud?
“I don’t think that I like wine much,” Yuna muttered, as she touched a hand to her forehead. “Why are you being nice to me now? Is this a trap?”
It seemed that Ardyn had been wrong about Yuna. She wasn’t just amusing. She was adorable.
He raised an eyebrow as she stood, stumbling before crashing into him and clutching at his coat for balance. She was so small that her weight felt as inconsequential as a child’s, and he grabbed her shoulder to help keep her steady. Finish the bottle? Oh dear. The girl hadn’t a single idea of life outside her religious sect, did she? He couldn’t wait to see her corrupted.
”Ah! But the bottle must have been sabotaged! I’m of half a mind to complain!” He laughed to himself. ”My humblest apologies.”
Ah yes, humility. One of his greatest virtues, he was sure.
”How lovely.” Ardyn’s eyes wandered to the sky. Lovely. Yes, that was the word for it. A room in the city. A stroll through the streets past moon-high. Despite Yuna’s initial hostilities, Ardyn found himself in a nearly unprecedented mood. A mood which brightened the more Yuna spoke.
’After drugging my tea and robbing me.’
Ardyn blinked at her, startled, before the image hit him. Aera. Pure, well-meaning, mischievous Aera slipping drugs into another Oracle’s tea and taking her for what she had before slipping off into the night. It was absurd. It was dishonorable.
It was delightful.
Ardyn burst out laughing. ”Did she? How spirited of her. Might I extend my apologies on her behalf? I am simply...mortified.” His lips turned on the last word, too utterly amused to speak it even in jest. My, but how he longed to have seen it! And here he’d been drowning his sorrows…
He would have to find her again. If only to witness her exploits.
Ardyn hummed happily. Yes, his mood was simply unprecedented.”A trap? I’d never.” He swayed to the side, sighing. ”But if you simply must know, I’ve lost the will to play for now. Have you never heard of the power of love?”
Another laugh, softer this time. ”Why, I’d say I’ve been fully reformed.”
Standing under a streetlight with Ardyn, it felt a little like being stranded on a dark island with the man. If her head wasn’t so comfortably fuzzy, she might have decided to take her chances by running off down the street. She’d probably be a lot safer around literally any other random person she could encounter on the way back to the hotel, but as it was, she felt so lost and bleary that she was hesitant to leave the only person around that she knew. Even if that person was a temperamental, immortal sociopath who seemed to take pleasure in her discomfort. She’d let her guard down too much and tried to prove too much to him, and now she was drunk and completely at his mercy, and they both knew it.
Thankfully, that fact seemed to have put him in a good mood.
Her cheeks flushed as she shared what Aera had done and he laughed louder and more genuinely than she’d heard so far. It was far different than his usual mocking laugh, but it still made her blanch a bit as she recalled how Ardyn had chuckled while she’d fought the man that he’d turned in the hospital. One friendly encounter wasn’t going to make up for what he’d done, but it felt like beating a dead chocobo to tell him that again.
“It wasn’t that funny,” she protested instead. “And I suppose it wasn’t strictly my money. She left that alone and went entirely for what I’m given for expenses…” Now that she said that out loud, it almost sounded as if Aera had taken issue with the Dragonblades for some reason, but she didn’t exactly want to stand there and outline the entire organization for Ardyn while she dwelled on that. Particularly not when Caius clearly despised him for everything that he’d done to Eos.
The thought of Caius’ disappointed face if he could see her being friendly with Ardyn nearly shocked her into sobriety for a moment, so she gave him a slightly more heated look as he spoke about how he was a reformed man since he’d found Aera again.
“That isn’t how love works. That isn’t how anything works,” she complained. “People change after making a sincere effort to do so. They don’t change because someone was nice to them.”
Otherwise she would have been able to persuade him to give up his nihilistic plans by agreeing to marry him, and that clearly hadn’t panned out.
(…What?)
Yuna’s head hurt. She rubbed the side of it and decided that curling up under at least three layers of blankets took priority over Ardyn knowing where she was staying tonight. Even if he came to kill her in the morning, he clearly had no intentions of doing so tonight. “The Hanging Cactuar,” she murmured as she turned to peer down the dark street in the direction from which she’d come. It felt like ages ago since she had seen him enter the bar. Her heart had nearly pounded out of her chest at the sight of him, and now here they were being weirdly casual on the sidewalk. It made her feel weirdly nostalgic, though she couldn’t have said for what.
“Have you had any memory problems of what happened before you came here?” Yuna asked without entirely meaning to. “I keep hoping the fog will lift, but it never does entirely…”
Ardyn hummed happily. He couldn’t quite remember when he’d been so pleased -- not amitably so at any rate. For perhaps the first time, he quite regretted his attempted murder. Yuna, it seemed, was far more interesting alive than dead.
’People don’t change because someone was nice to them.’
He would never tire of her jokes.
”Ah yes, I know the place.” Ardyn looked in both directions at the street crossing, rocking on his heels until a chocobo-drawn carriage had passed before swaggering to the other side. ”You've found yourself alone then?” He paused before laughing under his breath. ”Well, not alone. Here I am! Why, we’ll be fast friends.”
Against her objections, of course, but he found them quite insignificant. They would be friends -- he had decided. At least until she grew to bore him.
”My memory?” Ardyn glanced to her in mild surprise. He had heard tell of a rather nasty case of amnesia going around. ”Oh no. My mind is clear as the crystal. Until my death at least, but I’d say that’s well under the bridge.”
Was it? Death had been promised to him. He had felt the power of kings scour him both in body and soul, and yet he had resurrected as surely ever. He had cursed the gods for their betrayal. He had vowed to sully their new world as terribly as the last, but now…
In that one fleeting moment, he did not begrudge his life. He had a goal to accomplish.
”But my, that sounds like quite the ailment. To lose one’s past…” Ardyn felt darkness touch his lips. ”Would be to lose everything.”
He sauntered ahead, watching the tiered apartments and storefronts as they passed. On occasion, he would glance behind, ushering her forward with a wave and a word of encouragement. The night had been quite the venture, but as with all good things, he thought it must end. He had his own business to attend to, after all. Aera. He longed dearly to see her face once more.
He brought them to the aforementioned inn and forged their way inside without asking. He held the door for her, bowing in jest as he drawled, ”After you.” The lobby was nearly empty at this time of night. What time was it now? He couldn’t tell.
With that done, Ardyn turned and frowned, hand at his mouth as he looked to the stairs thoughtfully. ”You’re not on the second floor, I hope. I wonder if your balance would hold.” He glanced to Yuna, his smirk widening. ”Ah, but no matter. Allow me lend a hand.”
Yuna balked a bit when Ardyn referred to her as being alone. She certainly didn’t want him to think of her as being defenseless in the middle of Provo, but before she could protest, he referred to them as being ‘friends’ now, so she gave him a reproachful look instead.
“Perhaps if you were legitimately making an effort to change and not just toying with me…” She reflected, though she didn’t really expect her concerns to be listened to. He was clearly just poking fun at her anyway. Their tenuous relationship was far from friendly, even if it had taken an odd turn this evening. She felt as if she were navigating a grey area on an unbalanced tightrope.
Ardyn shared in a rather cheerful tone that he had no memory problems whatsoever. Yuna sighed a bit tiredly--of course he had somehow managed to wake up here unharmed--before his final words sank in and she briefly stopped walking to blink at him. “After your death?” She repeated. “You told me that you weren’t an unsent!”
Perhaps it was on Yuna for expecting anything but mockeries and half-truths to come from his lips, so after a moment, she reluctantly started following him again. She would have rather returned alone, but her surroundings had become a haze of streetlights and brick buildings, and his snide grin was the only thing that she could focus on enough to follow. As loathe as Yuna was to admit it, she didn’t seem to be in the right condition to find the inn alone.
Eventually, the man that she was following spoke again, and Yuna bit her lip slightly as he callously remarked that to lose the past would be to lose everything. “...I know that I didn’t fulfill my duty as a summoner,” she admitted, which would have surprised her if she weren’t so numb. She hadn’t even confided that in Caius yet, and yet here she was, rambling on to a mad-man. “I wouldn’t be alive if I had. I just wish I remembered why I didn’t…”
Yuna wasn’t sure how much she wanted to dwell on that topic, so she was relieved when they reached the low-hanging sign that marked The Hanging Cactuar. Ardyn gave her a mocking bow as he ushered her through the door, and Yuna eyed him closely as she did her best to go inside backwards. She was highly displeased everytime the man was at her back.
Yuna had hoped that Ardyn would leave now that she was safely indoors, but she supposed that had been a foolish thought as he joined her in the lobby. He wasn’t really following her so she’d be safe after all. One way or another, this was for his own entertainment, so she grimaced when he offered to help her to the second floor.
“No thank you. I can manage.” Yuna fumbled with her sleeves for a moment before extracting her room key and stepping over towards the stairwell. She had intended to begin climbing the stairs, but she somehow ended up sitting on the bottom step and leaning her head against the wall as her eyes drifted closed.
“Maybe I’ll just sleep here,” she murmured without opening her eyes. “It’s rather nice under the vent. Heating is a wonderful invention, whatever Yevon says.”
Yuna wasn’t interested in his help. Ardyn couldn’t fathom why. He merely clicked his tongue, looking with a vague interest up the stairs. ”Nonsense,” he said. ”We wouldn’t want you to take a fall, now would we?” His voice was low and half-mocking. Only half however. He had no intention of leading her to a grisly end after all.
Yuna stumbled up beside him and then dropped at his feet. Ardyn blinked at her. Rather than climbing the stairs, she had instead settled down on the first with her head limp against the wall and her eyes closed. ’Oh dear.' Ardyn frowned. 'It's worse than I'd thought.’
He shook his head. ”Now that will never do.” He leaned down grabbed her beneath the arms, lifting her easily as though she were made of nothing more than plastic. He tipped her back and hoisted her into a kind of bridal style carry before starting up the stairs. ”Now, now. Don’t fuss. Oh, you’re like a child.”
He didn’t put her down once he’d reached the second floor landing. Instead, he squinted at the key in her hand. It was tarnished and brass and had an inscription carved into one hand. ”Room 2B,” he muttered. ”Now where could that be?”
He wandered the halls with an idle interest, humming, ”No, oh no, not that one,” at every wrong choice. Finally he found the door with the proper label and brightened. ”Here we are!” He shifted Yuna’s weight to one side, grabbing the door handle from beneath her knees. It scraped one way and then the other. Locked.
”Ah.” He jiggled it again. ”Now how do I...?” He looked from the knob to the key still in Yuna’s grasp. ”If I could only…” He jolted Yuna closer to his chest and reached the arm beneath her back towards her hand. Nothing.
He sighed. ”Well, nothing else for it, I suppose.” With that, he gave the door handle one violent jerk. There was a snap of broken metal pieces and then the door crept open. ”There we are!” Ardyn brightened and drifted inside. ”Ah, safe at last!”
The rented room was nothing special. Two beds along one side (one blessedly unused -- oh his beautiful, mischievous Aera!), a simple wooden dresser, a shaded lamp on the end table with a notepad beside. Ardyn went to the bed, shifted Yuna’s weight, and set her into a sitting position at is edge.
”Now, you’ll want to drink plenty of water. Does this lodging have plumbing?” Ardyn peered around the corner to find a small alcove with a tiled sink. ”Oh it does! How convenient.” He laughed under his breath and patted her head, ruffling her hair as he did. ”How irresponsible of you, ending up in this state. And with such company! I must say, I’m quite disappointed.”
He laughed again before his eyes landed on the end table. His smirk widened. ”Now then, just one more thing.” He drifted towards it, picked up a pen, shook it, then wrote a note at the top. ”That should do it.”
He hummed. ”This has been fun, but I really should be going. Wasting moonlight, and all that.” Ardyn offered her a wave. ”We’ll have to do this again. I’d dare say our paths will be quite close.” He paused at the door, turning and smiling with a last ”Toodle-loo!” before he was gone, disappearing into the night like a shadow.
Behind him, the notepad gleamed in the notepad, shining with wet ink in a loose and looping cursive. ’Be more careful next time!’ it read.
Stamped beside it was the crude likeness of a smiley face.
