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.
at adventu, we believe that colorful story and plots far outweigh the need for a battle system. rp should be about the writing, the fun, and the creativity. you will see that the only system on our site is the encouragement to create amazing adventures with other members. welcome to adventu... how will you arrive?
year 5, quarter 3
Welcome one and all to our beautiful new skin! This marks the visual era of Adventu 4.0, our 4th and by far best design we've had. 3.0 suited our needs for a very long time, but as things are evolving around the site (and all for the better thanks to all of you), it was time for a new, sleek change. The Resource Site celebrity Pharaoh Leep was the amazing mastermind behind this with minor collaborations from your resident moogle. It's one-of-a-kind and suited specifically for Adventu. Click the image for a super easy new skin guide for a visual tour!
Final Fantasy Adventu is a roleplaying forum inspired by the Final Fantasy series. Images on the site are edited by KUPO of FF:A with all source material belonging to their respective artists (i.e. Square Enix, Pixiv Fantasia, etc). The board lyrics are from the Final Fantasy song "Otherworld" composed by Nobuo Uematsu and arranged by The Black Mages II.
The current skin was made by Pharaoh Leap of Pixel Perfect. Outside of that, individual posts and characters belong to their creators, and we claim no ownership to what which is not ours. Thank you for stopping by.
Declan looked worried after Yuna asked how Spira was doing, which did absolutely nothing to assuage her fears. Still, she did her best to maintain her polite silence in order to give him time to gather his thoughts. When he finally did speak, she thought that her heart might have skipped a beat at the words.
“Yuna ... You might wanna take a seat. This is gonna be a lot to take in.”
Yuna curled one hand to her chest, staring at him nervously before she nodded her acceptance and perched on the very end of the chair that he had originally caught her sleeping in. “Please...tell me what has happened,” she said as she looked up into his pale red eyes while he took a seat across from her. “Is Besaid alright?”
That was the only reason that she could think of for why Declan would have been so reluctant to share news of Spira with her. If Sin’s attacks had grown worse and no summoner had yet managed to bring the Calm, then everyone must have been fast losing hope. It made Yuna wish now more than ever that she could find a way home.
However, what finally left Declan’s lips was the last thing that she had expected.
Yuna stared at the Al Bhed uncomprehendingly for a few moments before one hand rose to her lips in shock. “An eternal calm?” She finally murmured, hardly daring to believe her own words. Her first instinct was denial--that she had done no such thing--but she had long noticed the gaps in her own memory after coming here. Leaving Besaid for her pilgrimage was fuzzy. Operation Mi’ihen was fuzzy. Everything that came after that was a downright blank slate. Yet she had managed to summon Shiva on Zephon. That implied that she had at least made it to the Macalania Temple, didn’t it? If so, then why couldn’t she remember?
“You...aren’t saying that just to make me feel better?” Yuna finally asked quietly as she met Declan’s gaze again. He didn’t seem like the type of person to make something up to be cruel, so if he was lying to her, then she had a feeling that it was because Spira was actually in shambles. Perhaps he had reasoned that if they were both stuck here forever, then there was no point in burdening her with the truth. Yuna couldn’t fault him for that.
And yet...a part of her wanted to believe it could be true.
Rising from her chair, she paced anxiously towards the window, looking out at the Dragonblade members training in the back, before she let out a slow breath and whirled around to face him again.
“I’d...like to hear more about the new Spira. If you don’t mind.”
Bartz and Yuna drinking was the cinnamon roll combo I didn't know I needed
I will live with my sorrow
Bartz seemed a little nervous as Yuna gushed to him about being glad to find a familiar face here. Was the brunette boy not happy to see her? A slight frown touched at Yuna’s lips, but she supposed that she couldn’t blame him. Their meeting must have been traumatizing for him between the villagers trying to attack him and being briefly set on fire. Her presence probably brought up bad associations for him. Maybe she should consider his feelings and just take her leave.
Yuna nearly drew her hand away from his when Bartz suddenly laughed and said her name. He scolded her for not introducing herself, and Yuna felt her cheeks flush red in realization. “Oh! I’m sorry. I just assumed that you’d recognize me too,” she said with a sheepish smile. “That must have been awkward for you. My apologies.”
Yuna was prepared to do a dance or two with Bartz before they could properly catch up--she had promised after all--but she didn’t complain when Bartz tugged her off the dance floor and in the direction of the bar instead. While she enjoyed dancing, she suspected that neither of them would fare well in a world that they hadn’t been born in. She somehow doubted that Bartz knew the steps any better than she did.
“No, I’m still so sorry about that,” Yuna said with a laugh when Bartz asked if they had been setting anymore people’s clothes on fire. “Caius meant well. He was just trying to scare them off from hurting you, but it went a little poorly obviously.”
Bartz ordered two drinks for them at the bar, and while Yuna’s mind uneasily darted to her encounter with Ardyn, she refrained from protesting. Bartz was just trying to be friendly with her after all. This wouldn’t go at all as that night had.
While they waited for the bartender to pour out the amber liquid, Bartz commented on the splendor of the event, and Yuna nodded in agreement, deciding not to mention her suspicions of why they had been invited. She didn’t want to take away from his good time until she’d found something to confirm the unease that she felt. “I’m here with Caius and my friend Celes, but we’re spending some time separately right now,” she responded, tilting her head when Bartz mentioned a man he had come with. “Is Faris a friend of yours? I don’t believe we’ve met,” she commented as the bartender finally slid them two tiny glasses.
“Is...is this all?” Yuna asked curiously, picking up the small glass and glancing over at Bartz. The cup was almost cute, and she was relieved to see that the portions were so small. She had been expecting another huge glass of red wine like the ones that Ardyn had threateningly poured for her.
As she watched, Bartz threw back the drink and drained the tiny glass in one gulp, so Yuna did her best to copy him, grimacing at the slight burn that made its way down her throat with it. Really though, it didn’t taste all that bad. It was almost sweet in a way. What Ardyn had been drinking had tasted far harsher, but the difference in company might have had something to do with that too.
“Bartz!” Yuna protested with a laugh when he ordered two more shots of the strange liquid, but she gave him a small smile and took the glass anyway when it was presented to her. “Truthfully, this is only my second time drinking,” she confided. “I was...looked to by many people in Spira, so I never felt that I could.” She was silent for a moment before smiling faintly and clinking her glass with his. “To new beginnings,” she toasted quietly before draining the second glass. It tasted sweeter this time.
“Has anything changed with you?” Yuna asked curiously once they were finished. “You were traveling alone the last time we met, weren’t you?”
Looks like their timeline differences are starting to come out xD
I will live with my sorrow
The boy seemed to have recovered from his initial surprise, and Yuna tilted her head to the side slightly when he admitted that he knew a lot about her. He used her summoner title, so Yuna was inclined to believe him, though she certainly hadn’t been expecting to be recognized as a summoner.
“Really?” She asked with a flattered laugh as she rested one hand on her chest. “Thank you. But...I am still new on my journey. There’s no need to call me that here.” She certainly didn’t deserve the respectful title anymore. She would likely never complete her pilgrimage now that she was trapped on Zephon, as little as she liked to consider the possibility. She desperately wanted to ask the boy how Spira was faring and if anyone had managed to bring about the Calm after she had disappeared, but it felt rude to ask that before he’d even introduced himself.
He went on to say that he was distantly related to one of her guardians, and Yuna drew herself up in excitement even if his next question perplexed her.
“Speaking of which, what happened to your Guardians? Is Rikku with you?"
“Rikku?” She repeated with only a bit of puzzlement. She knew the name, though it wasn’t one that she had heard very often since her father had left on his pilgrimage. She was distantly aware of her younger cousin on her mother’s side of the family, and it had always saddened her that she’d never gotten to meet them much. This boy seemed to be under the impression that they were close though, and Yuna wasn’t sure how to correct him, so she focused on his first question instead.
“...No, I haven’t found any of my guardians. I woke up here alone,” she admitted, glancing to the side before she was able to meet his eyes again. “Truthfully, my memory has been hazy since then. I don’t really remember if we were separated before I came here or not.” She thought that she had still been with them, though she couldn’t have said for certain. Yuna could still clearly remember the failed Crusader operation at Mushroom Rock Road, but everything that came afterward was something of a blur. Had she even managed to acquire the blessing of the Fayth at Djose Temple? Her head ached if she thought about it too intently.
Yuna was grateful when the Al Bhed changed the subject by talking about his own experience ending up on Zephon, though she wasn’t sure what it all meant. “A rift…” She murmured, wondering privately if it could have been something similar to the stories that Sir Jecht and Tidus had told her about being transported from Zanarkand by Sin. “At any rate, I’m very glad you’re alive. Airships...must go up very high, right? That crash must have been terrifying.”
Airships were almost certainly something that was forbidden by Yevon, but the Al Bhed had never really cared about things like that, and Yuna doubted that she would have reproached him even if they had still been on Spira. She had become a summoner to save everyone--not just those who followed the teachings.
“Declan,” Yuna repeated, happy to finally have a name to go with the Al Bhed’s face as she once again brought her hands up into an oval-shape to give him a bow in the traditional Yevon style. “If you’re not busy, I would love to catch up,” she said with a faint smile as she gestured towards the chairs around the desk where she had fallen asleep. “How is Spira? I fear that I've been here for a while now...”
It seemed like a safe opening for the questions that she really wanted to ask.
Has anyone brought the Calm yet? What is Sin doing? How many are dead because I came here instead?
The boy that Yuna had suspected of being one of the bandits that had been plaguing the Dragonblades reacted with far more enthusiasm than she had expected. She resisted the urge to flinch backwards as he shouted his acceptance for her offer of a dance, and she had to press a hand to her mouth to hide her laughter when he did a brief fist-bump to show how ready he was. Any suspicions that she’d had towards the somehow familiar boy flew straight out of the window, so Yuna was back to trying to place where she’d met him before as he held out both hands to try to identify which side was left.
Finally, he correctly offered her his left hand with an easy-going grin on his face, and it was his smile more than anything that jolted her memory.
“Bartz!” She exclaimed, raising her hands to her mouth in surprise before she laughed and offered him a small bow of apology. “I’m sorry. It’s been so long that I didn’t recognize you at first. I hope you haven’t been breaking up anymore weddings.” She gave him a slightly teasing smile to show that she was joking before she finally reached out to accept his offered hand.
“If you aren’t busy right now, I’d love to catch up.” True, Yuna was supposed to be investigating the masquerade, but taking a few minutes to see what the friendly chocobo-whisperer that she had met in Provo had been up to couldn’t hurt. Caius and Celes were on the case too, after all. They could spare her for a little while.
“Caius is here too, but I promise your cape is safe tonight,” she said with a small smile at the thought of her mercenary friend. As the music started up again, Yuna glanced up at Bartz before hesitantly bringing her left hand forward to rest on his shoulder like she’d seen other women on the dance floor do tonight.
“I don’t really know the steps,” she admitted in a whisper, since most of the dance pairs around them seemed to be moving the same way. “Maybe you could lead us this time? I could show you a dance from Besaid afterward if you want me to lead one.”
The boy who had walked in had initially had a fairly sullen expression on his face, but as soon as he had spotted Yuna in the chair, he looked so shocked that Yuna was a little embarrassed all over again. Admittedly, it had been unprofessional of her to fall asleep, but she had expected irritation or impatience rather than the level of surprise that he was showing. Her cheeks felt hot, and she started to apologize again when a foreign language left his lips instead.
Though she wasn't fluent in the language that he uttered, its pronunciation and accent was all too familiar to her, and Yuna froze in place as the last word repeated in her mind.
“Rumo lnyb uv Spira...”
“That…was Al Bhed, wasn’t it?” She asked, one hand trailing up to her mouth in shock. “I’m sorry to pry, but might you be from Spira?” She desperately hoped that he was. Yuna had only had the chance to meet one other person from Spira so far, and while Kana-Ei had been a fellow summoner, he hadn’t appeared to like her much. Truthfully, she hadn’t blamed him or expected much different—she knew that many summoners didn’t like her for the perceived advantage of having a high summoner for a father—but it had still been disappointing. Caius and Celes were always sympathetic listeners, but nothing would have compared to someone who knew Spira personally.
The blond boy apologized for having spoken in Al Bhed, and the slight stutter in his words told Yuna that she wasn’t the only one starting off this conversation on an awkward note. She’d have to see what she could do to put him at ease.
“Please don’t apologize,” she said earnestly as she clasped her hands in front of her. “I’ve always wished it was more widely spoken in Spira…” The Al Bhed may have been a minority group, but their language was highly important to the history of their world, and it really was a shame that it wasn’t taught more. Yuna supposed that the church of Yevon didn’t want to support them in any way, but it was still a little sad. She would have liked to feel a connection to her mother’s side of the family by being able to speak it better than she currently did.
“I’m Yuna,” she introduced herself with a slight smile as she moved closer to him so they could talk easier. “I’m so happy to find someone else from Spira. Have you been here long?” She assumed that he must have been an Al Bhed since it was obviously his first language, though he didn’t have the characteristic green spiral eyes that distinguished them from other groups. His actual eyes were curiously red—perhaps he was like her and only half an Al Bhed or perhaps he’d simply been born that way. Either way, Yuna didn’t think it would be polite to ask.
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.”
After returning from Provo, Yuna went straight to the Dragonblades’ base in an effort to track down Caius. She was still reeling from her encounter with Ardyn and didn’t entirely know where to go from here. She hoped that Caius would have some suggestions on what she could do about him. At the very least, he would know how much danger she was likely to be in now. He was far more familiar with the enigmatic red-head than she was, after all.
Unfortunately, the cramped front room was empty when Yuna let herself inside. The clink of metal coming from outside told her that some people were training in the backyard, but it appeared to be a slow day around the base. She assumed that Caius or Celes must have been one of the people in the training yard, but she didn’t want to interrupt if they were giving a lesson to the other members. Her news on Ardyn’s movements wasn’t so earth-shattering that it couldn’t wait an hour or so.
Yuna let herself fall into the chair at the desk that Celes usually used to sort out the mercenary guild’s paperwork. A partially closed drawer with an exposed manila folder told her that the blonde woman must have left in a hurry, and Yuna idly trailed a finger around a stain on the desk that looked like it might have been from spilled tea. Swords and spears hung on the walls, and the decor somehow made her feel even more closed in than the small room already made her feel. Still, it was nice to have some quiet after all the excitement of Provo and her long journey back, so after a moment, her eyes drifted closed and her head slumped back against the chair.
The sound of the door opening woke her, but she was so disoriented that she didn’t rise at first. "Mm," she muttered while she raised her head in hazy confusion. After a moment, Yuna recovered enough to take in her surroundings and remember where she was, and the realization struck her like she had been slapped. “Oh!” Leaping to her feet, she circled her hands in front of her and bowed to the newcomer with the traditional Yevon greeting. It was embarrassing that a potential client had caught her sleeping, so her cheeks felt a bit hot as she looked up at the ash-blond man who had entered. “I’m so sorry. Can I help you?”
Was he a client or a member that Yuna just hadn’t met yet? She sincerely hoped it was the second.
The seconds passed, and Yuna bit her lip as she waited to hear what Caius would say, but his response surprised her. Her head snapped up and she stared at him when he named the woman that she had met at the Crystallus Divider.
“You know Aera?” She supposed that she had known that on some level since the blonde woman had explained that she had first heard about Ardyn from him, but Yuna hadn’t known that Caius had recommended that Aera come find her. “It’s not your fault,” she said, shaking her head when he apologized. “Truthfully, I wasn’t hard to convince.”
After what had happened at the hospital in Provo, Yuna was more than ready to send the red-haired man to the farplane, though this was certainly not the correct company for that. She wouldn’t be able to defeat him with only one companion who walked with a cane. She suspected this would be more of an information-gathering session, and hopefully Aera would be able to find some closure when she realized that her fiance was no longer the same person.
Caius knelt down on the grass in front of her, and Yuna looked up to meet his gaze. He had quite the serious expression on his face, so Yuna tried to match it, though Vordun made that difficult when he followed suit by sprawling at Caius’ back. The action made her lips twitch slightly before she went back to listening to his advice.
“Thank you. I understand.” Yuna dipped her head slightly in acceptance. “I wouldn’t attack him alone unless I was forced to. Even with Shiva, I barely escaped last time.” She hesitated, weighing Caius’ words that Ardyn was immortal for a moment. “He reacted to my sending,” she finally shared. “I can’t say for certain that it would kill him, since this world’s afterlife seems to be different from Spira’s, but it might be worth a try sometime.”
Of course, Ardyn would hardly just lie down and let her try it. Her sending was what had prompted him to personally attack her in the hospital after all. Before that, he had seemed fairly content to just send the monsters that he’d created after her, but the sending had seemed to actually bother him. So it would be a dangerous undertaking for something that they weren’t positive would even work, but she was glad she had at least shared it with Caius. It seemed like they needed all the ideas that they could get when it came to the red-haired man who had ruined his world.
As Caius finished up by asking her to take a look at Aera’s sword wound, Yuna gave him a startled look. “That’s why she walks with a cane? I assumed it was a chronic issue...” Yuna frowned slightly, wondering why Aera had never mentioned that something like that was bothering her. Wounds could be dangerous when they were untreated.
“Of course I can take a look at it. But who attacked her?” She hesitated, a terrible thought occurring to her. “Did Ardyn…?” She couldn’t believe that anyone could hurt someone they were supposed to love so badly, but after what she’d seen at the hospital, she couldn’t put anything past Ardyn.
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…”
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?”
