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year 5, quarter 3
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[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Caius had maybe the best suggestion for a replacement holiday ever, and Noctis had to snort as he pictured what a Cup Noodles Appreciation Day would even entail. “Have you met Gladio, or did those just blow up while I was gone?” Probably the latter since he’d mentioned the lack of electricity. Honestly though, a noodles festival sounded like it could be a good time. “Consider it done. I’m thinking tasting stations and a costume contest.” Basically the opposite of how dignified Founder’s Day had been, but maybe that was appropriate given the circumstances.
They finally seemed to be winding down all the serious topics—or at least the Ardyn topic in particular—and Caius agreed that maybe it was time to start fishing again. Vordun seemed to recognize the word ‘fish’ and in an attempt to be helpful, he spat out the remains of a half-eaten fish at the blond mercenary’s feet. Maybe he had been saving it for later.
Noctis had to laugh as Caius ended up in an argument with his dragon, and Noctis raised his hands in surrender when he was brought into the mix. “I don’t think I’ll ever say no to a dragon,” he joked as he leaned forward to retrieve the carcass. It was definitely slimier than the average fish, and the prince tried not to think about how much of that was dragon drool. He’d definitely need to scrub his hands after this.
“Tell you what, Vordun. I bet we can use this to catch a way bigger fish than our lures would get. What do you say?” Or it would entice sharks to come toward the beach, since only carnivores would be attracted to the smell of a recently dead fish. But that was a worse case scenario. It could also just attract a big fish.
Noctis slipped the current lure he was using off the end of the hook and put it away in his tackle box. Then he started the very messy task of working a fish head onto the edge of the hook instead. It shouldn’t have been any grosser than working with a live worm, but somehow it really really was. Anything to make Vordun feel included though.
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Tifa seemed to have an interesting life if the secret hideout in the basement of her bar was anything to go off of. “Hang on, back up there,” Noctis said with a slight laugh as he adjusted the grip on his fishing pole. “I’m guessing you guys were doing something illegal then?” He wasn’t one to judge since everything he’d been up to after Insomnia had fallen was technically “illegal” as far as the empire was concerned. He didn’t know what kind of regime or laws she had lived under anyway. Some governments just straight up sucked. Coming from a prince.
“You know, I think I’d straighten up real fast too if someone came over with a gun on their arm.” That was a real power move. Maybe he could talk Prompto into it if he ever lost an arm somehow since his best friend liked guns so much. Not that he wanted Prompto to get that injured of course, and it would probably look weird on someone as friendly as the blond man anyway. Worth a thought though.
Tifa wanted to know more about his glaive, and Noctis nodded a bit sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s genetic, so it runs in the family. I can share it with people though, and then they can use my magic too. Just takes a ceremony to set it up.” Or maybe it didn’t technically need all those bells and whistles to work, but it had been beaten into his head growing up that he shouldn’t share Lucian magic too freely. Probably just old customs more than anything though.
Speaking of outdated traditions, Noctis grinned a little when Tifa said she’d have to find him when she wanted to stock up on something. “It’s technically supposed to just be weapons and the essentials, but I’ve always bent the rules a little anyway with all my fishing gear. So I’d be happy to come help the next time you need 30 cans of soup or something.” He didn’t even want to think about how many cup noodles Gladio had stored in there already. The founder king was probably rolling in his grave.
Tifa at least already had the first rule of fishing down, which was patience. It could be a few minutes, an hour, or never before they got a bite tonight. Only time would tell. She seemed willing to wait though, and Noctis rubbed the back of his neck to hide that he was flustered when she called him nice and winked at him. “You don’t seem so bad yourself.” Still, he was kind of surprised to hear that Tifa was new here too, and he looked over at her in interest. “Really? So you just woke up here one day too?” It seemed like everyone he met lately had one of those stories. Hopefully Tifa hadn’t been in the middle of anything too important.
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Vordun caught the first fish of the day completely by himself, and while Noctis didn’t speak dragon, he was going to guess that the snort the creature gave them on the way over to eat his catch was pretty judgmental. “He’s putting us to shame,” Noct said with a slight grin, patting his fishing pole sympathetically as if the wooden rod was going to be jealous of the dragon’s catch. Well. Maybe Noctis himself was a little jealous, but there would be time for fishing later. The current conversation was a bit too serious for him to enjoy his favorite pastime much.
Caius didn’t seem too surprised that Noctis didn’t know much about Ardyn’s actual backstory. He told him the tale with the air of a man who had repeated the story pretty often but still didn’t know how to feel about it. Noctis didn’t blame him one bit. He didn’t know how to feel about it either—especially hearing that his ancestor had been such a terrible dude. “I…don’t know what’s weirder,” he finally ventured. “The idea that Ardyn used to be a savior or that my family buried what actually happened. If we ever get back to Eos, then remind me to replace Founder’s Day with a different holiday. Feels weird to celebrate Somnus now.”
Caius muttered under his breath that knowing all of that didn’t change anything that Ardyn himself had done, and Noctis nodded in complete agreement. “Yeah. It makes me understand him more, but he’s definitely not the guy from that story anymore. So it doesn’t change what I have to do.” The Ardyn that Noctis knew was a complete sadist who delighted in causing pain for the sake of his revenge, even though Somnus himself had been dead for 2,000 years. He was delusional about where the blame fell in the present day, and he needed to be stopped.
“I guess that makes him something like my great-uncle times 113 generations,” Noctis added as an after-thought with a slight grimace. It wasn’t a pleasant realization considering their interactions so far. “You said he would absorb the starscourge back when he was a healer. Is that what made him immortal? He looks younger than my dad does if he’s really that old.”
Or younger than his dad used to look, but Noctis left that unsaid.
The prince was a little surprised at Caius’ request that he stay alive, but he took it in stride and gave the blond kingsglaive a slight smile. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. Especially not here when I haven’t done anything for Insomnia yet. First things first though, got to find Prompto and rescue the others.” With that said, Noctis paused before he curled his fingers around his fishing pole. “Maybe I could fish again. Just felt kind of rude when everything was getting so heavy.”
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Caius genuinely didn’t seem to know what Noctis had done during the ten years that he’d supposedly been trapped in the crystal, so the prince let it go for now. Still, he couldn’t help but hope that this was what he was meant to be doing after all. Especially if people had shown up on Zephon and vanished back to their own worlds before. That made it sound like some kind of sick playground the gods had thrown together to test out various mortals on. It wasn’t a bad world by any means, but Noctis still couldn’t imagine spending an entire decade here while the people back home suffered in the dark. If that was what it took to fulfill the prophecy though…
Vordun broke the tension by sticking his head in the water to catch a fish himself, and Noct couldn’t help but laugh a little as they were both splashed with water droplets. “Well, we did promise him a fish…”
Caius apparently knew even more about Ardyn than he did, which left Noctis blinking at him until he remembered that the guy was supposed to be from the future. There was bound to be more that was known about Ardyn later on, so that checked out. “You’re saying it was the founder king who ostracized him?” Noctis rubbed the back of his neck as he counted up exactly how old that made Ardyn. “He didn’t tell me much, but he dropped the barest outline of his story while I was getting pulled in the crystal. I didn’t even know we were related before that.” Distant relations he hoped, since Noctis was still royally pissed off at everything Ardyn had done. Maybe his story was actually pretty tragic from what Caius had said, but Noctis didn’t know the full details yet. Somehow he thought he’d still be pretty mad even when he did.
Caius finally confirmed what was obvious about the king that he’d potentially died to save, and Noctis let out a slow breath as he let that sink in. “Shit,” he echoed Caius with a faint flicker of a smile. “I…don’t know what I can say to measure up to that. But even if it wasn’t for me exactly…thank you.” The fact that Caius still wanted to help them in Sonora even though he’d already died for him was mind-boggling and touching at the same time, and Noctis tried to express that with another faint smile since he’d never been that great with words. “And I’ll try to have your back this time, too. I don’t want there to be any repeats.”
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] The cat batted at the fish delicately with one paw before it suddenly snatched the entire thing out of his hand and went bounding away to eat in peace. Noctis was not-so-secretly delighted, and he could feel that he probably had the dumbest grin even as he yelled after it. “Just don’t choke on the whole thing!”
Returning to the table, he draped himself over the chair across from Alex, a little surprised that his suggestion had gone over well. “Honestly, yeah. I think a camping trip would do us all some good after this.” He was looking forward to it already. A prison break followed by a trek through the wilderness sounded just like the old days before Altissia had changed something between the four of them.
They seemed to be wrapping up the Prompto discussion for now, but Noctis felt like he should add one more bit to his pep talk. “Honestly man, I wouldn’t take it too personally. It sounds to me like Prompto’s just got a lot to work through right now.” Not that he blamed his best friend after everything that had happened, but it didn’t sound like Alex was the only one at fault for their soured relationship.
Or at least, Alex was probably only somewhere between 60-80% to blame.
Noctis was inclined to put the number closer to 80% when the blond mercenary casually dropped that Noctis didn’t seem too majestic. Still, he just shook his head since the comment wasn’t worth getting too worked up over. Not when he was only one beer in at any rate. “Yeah, says you and the entire Lucian council.” Or at least, the council had certainly thought that before Insomnia had fallen. Truthfully, he didn’t even know if any of them were still alive. It was a weird thought—he hadn’t been super close to them, but they’d been a constant in his life, and he knew his dad had valued their insight.
Noctis would have latched onto about any topic at that point as long as it didn’t involve how fit he was to be king. Unfortunately the one that Alex took up was Ardyn, which happened to be his second least favorite topic. Still, Alex’s information was good. Really good actually, and Noctis found himself leaning forward in interest as he tried to piece together exactly how Ardyn’s immortality worked. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I always thought he just regenerated like crazy, but I guess he has to be making a new body if that’s the one that takes something special.” If Ardyn could be killed by any other means, then he couldn’t imagine why the astrals wouldn’t jump on that themselves instead of leaving it to some ancient prophecy.
Alex had a pretty good explanation of how calling on a Blade of Light would work too, so he nodded pretty emphatically when he offered to teach him. “Yeah, that would...be amazing actually. I was supposed to learn something that could deal with him in the crystal, but instead I ended up here. So unless you’re the one who’s supposed to teach me anyway…” The thought was almost enough to make him laugh because trust the gods to be that roundabout that they’d smash two people from different worlds together to get something done.
His grin faded a bit though when Alex mentioned that you could draw too much aether and accidentally kill yourself along with the immortal. Yeah, the guys definitely wouldn’t like it much if he fulfilled the prophecy but ended up dying or something. He’d definitely need to learn from Alex. Speaking of…
“How’d you learn to do it?” Noctis asked curiously. “Or is a big immortal killing move the kind of thing you remember from one life to another?” He wasn’t entirely clear on what all Alex remembered from his other lives honestly. Maybe that was something they had talked about back on his world though.
Alex asked if there was anything else he should know about Ardyn, and Noctis paused for a moment before realizing that there was a pretty big piece of info he hadn’t gotten to digest yet with his friends. Maybe it would be good practice to tell Alex first. “I think we’re related. Distantly. God, I hope distantly. Uh. But he has my last name. As it turns out.”
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Caius basically confirmed that he’d be one of Noctis’ kingsglaive twelve years from now, which was a lot to take in. For one, the guy looked a few years older than him, so it was weird to think of him wanting to serve Noctis. But no, that wasn’t quite right, was it? If his story was true, then Caius must have just been a kid when Insomnia had fallen. As if this whole thing wasn’t crazy enough.
Noctis was quiet for a while as Caius told his story, though he felt like he could feel his eyes widening slowly over time. By the time that the blond mercenary had wrapped up, the prince wasn’t even sure where he wanted to start with his line of questioning. It was probably best to just go in order, but it was hard to formulate everything into words. Finally, he latched onto the one detail that he could confirm.
“You’re telling me I spent ten years-...But the crystal’s where I came from!” He sat forward a little, taking the time to reel in his fishing pole and set it aside. For once, there were things more important than fishing to focus on. For once. “I mean that I got sucked into the crystal and found myself here. I’ve been wondering this whole time if it was by chance or if the astrals wanted me to be here. Some kind of ‘Trial of Bahamut,’ you know. But nothing’s really come of it yet.” There was an unspoken question there of whether or not Caius thought that this could be the training he had gone through. He couldn’t explain why the other three would be here though if that was the case. Still, it was hard to sit around and wonder what was happening at home without him. It would be easier if he thought all this had some kind of purpose.
Honestly, Noctis had never been one for public speaking, so he might not have believed Caius about himself giving a rousing speech if the man hadn’t added that it was also awkward and soft-spoken. That part at least made him laugh under his breath. “I guess ten years didn’t change me that much then.”
Caius had apparently attacked Ifrit without any Lucian powers whatsoever, and Noctis stared at him as he tried to process what the Infernian’s presence in Insomnia again implied. “...So Ardyn was Adagium.” It wasn’t a surprise really. He knew the stories of the man’s attack on the capital before he’d been born, but he had never really confirmed who he was either, except for that brief story before Noctis had been dragged into the crystal. Ardyn Lucis Caelum.
Biting his tongue, Noctis tried to focus on other things. Namely Caius’ side of the story. “I see why that would impress me though,” he added with a small chuckle, referring to how Caius had gone for Ifrit even before he’d become a kingsglaive. “My dad always said that plenty of experienced fighters fell to the Infernian, so it sounds like you did great all things considered.”
Mentioning his dad made him realize that Caius had never actually served King Regis like he had assumed, so Noctis fell a little quiet again as the blond man finished his story again with how he’d taken a dagger for his king.
“...Then…the king you died for-…?” The answer was obvious, but it came with so many feelings behind it that Noctis wanted to hear it confirmed out loud.
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Alex had apparently already apologized about his Ardyn comment, which surprised Noct since Prompto wasn’t usually one to hold a grudge. Maybe everything that had happened had affected his best friend more than he’d realized. The four of them hadn’t exactly had time to sit around and debrief after Gralea. Noctis had been sucked through the crystal and ended up here, while the three of them had-...
Well. He didn’t really know yet what had happened to them after that.
“You didn’t mess that up too, did you?” He asked with a slight twitch of his lips. He was kidding, or at least half kidding. Hopefully Alex could make it through an apology without accidentally offending Prompto again, but you never knew with the guild leader. Noctis had promised him to never mention the whole ‘driving off a cliff’ episode again, but he was afraid to ask why the entire street was demolished around the Rising Stones headquarters. Maybe he needed to finish the beer before he heard that story.
Alex turned the topic back to Ardyn, and Noctis squinted at him when he stumbled over whatever he had been going to say. It sounded more like he had been about to call the chancellor a bitch, and that made him snort into his drink. He couldn’t argue that even if the immortal was way more dangerous than Alex was giving him credit for.
He corrected course real fast at least by saying that he’d either teach Noctis how to kill an immortal or just take care of Ardyn himself. The second offer took the prince off guard, but he only had to think about it for a moment before shaking his head. “I’d definitely take your help if he showed up here, but it feels like I should finish it. A one on one fight seems to be what he wants anyway.” He owed it to Luna and his father and everyone else not to pawn off the responsibility even if a part of him wanted to.
“But yeah, I definitely want to learn how to deal with them if you’d teach me. I haven’t strictly fought him yet or anything, but I watched the Glacian shatter him into a million pieces and he was just fine like two minutes later. Not sure I have anything in my arsenal yet that could deal with that.” Sucking him into the void with the Ring of the Lucii was definitely tempting, but Noct would probably still be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life if he didn’t know for sure that he’d ended it.
Alex’s advice about Ardyn’s shapeshifting was pretty good though, and he nodded a bit glumly in response. “You uh…deal with this stuff a lot, huh? Yeah, Prompto didn’t act much like Ardyn at all when their appearances were switched. I was just too pissed off to see it at the time. Asking questions he wouldn’t know is a good idea though if they seem off.”
The blond mercenary got a little more self-conscious after that, and Noctis leaned back in his chair a little when he asked if he should tell Prompto his whole deal. “...I don’t know,” Noctis admitted. “Telling someone you’re a reincarnating warrior of light is a lot, and I’d completely get it if you just wanted to be a random adventurer for a while. I’ve wanted that too sometimes.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his gloved hand before continuing. “I don’t think he’d judge you for it though. Prompto’s always been there for me, even when he looks completely out of his depth. And…you know. Not exactly my place to tell you what, but I don’t think he’s told you everything about himself yet either.”
He wasn’t sure if Prompto ever wanted to tell anyone else about being an MT, but that was up to him. Just like it was up to Alex if he wanted to share that he was a warrior of light. Noctis would stay quiet either way until they wanted to.
Noticing Alex looking over his shoulder, Noctis glanced back and froze at the sight of an adorable little calico cat sneaking around. “Hey there, little guy…” Climbing out of his chair and kneeling on the floor, he pulled a fish that he’d caught recently out of seemingly nowhere—technically it was from nowhere since he stored his items in his glaive. “Come here, buddy. Do you like sturgeons? I can catch you something else if you’re a sea bass kind of girl.”
While trying to entice the cat over, it also occurred to him that maybe Alex and Prompto had only ever hung out in a crisis. “Hey. Have you guys ever just…gone out for the hell of it? Prompto’s pretty big on camping too, you know. Hidden photo spots, chocobos…” Maybe his idea of a camping trip would have sounded more convincing if he wasn’t currently on the floor waving a fish at a cat.
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] It had been a rough landing, and Noctis grimaced as he stared down at the rips in his jeans. He was less concerned about the bloody scrapes—his skin would heal. His clothes definitely wouldn’t. Great. Now he’d have to scrape up the gil for some new ones.
If only Ignis had been around for that stellar pun.
There was a crowd surrounding his body from a careful distance as if he were carrying the scourge or something. Noctis felt like he was trapped in a semi-circle of scared faces and whispers, and he wondered why no one was approaching if they were all that concerned about him.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t really gotten up yet. Maybe they thought he was dead. “Hey, sorry about that-” Noctis might have sat up a little too suddenly from the way that some of them gasped, but one reaction stood out. Someone yelled his name, and the prince snapped his head up to scan the crowd. All he could see were strangers, but suddenly a shock of blond hair pushed its way towards the front, and Noct froze because he knew that gelled hair and that freckled face and-
And he definitely knew that clumsiness. In his haste, Prompto slipped on the ice and ended up skidding right past him and landing in a snow bank. It happened so fast that for a moment all the prince could do was blink at the very wet boy next to him. Then everything caught up, and he scrambled to his feet to make sure it was really who he thought it was.
“...Prompto?” He stared down at his friend and the way the snow clung to his eyelashes, and somehow the relief just made him throw back his head and laugh for a moment. Turning around, Noctis fell backwards into the icy pile right next to Prompto. He watched the snow fly up into the air around them before he turned his head to grin at the blond boy now that they were side by side. “...Hey.”
There was snow soaking through his hair and all down the back of his jacket, but Noct still wouldn’t have changed that moment for the world.
And then he heard the guards demanding for people to let them through and everything came crashing to a halt. Sitting bolt upright, he gave a sheepish look down at his best friend. “Actually, we might want to hold that thought. I just broke into the city, so…”
Hopefully Prompto knew somewhere for them to go. If not, they could always try to lose the guards around the rooftops. That was sort of his thing.
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Caius loved Prompto’s nickname for Cindy, and his laugh was infectious enough that Noctis snorted a bit too. He had almost forgotten just how objectively ridiculous ‘grease-monkey goddess’ was as a nickname. He had been too used to his best friend to really question it. To him, it was one of those things that would fall out of Prompto’s mouth and you just had to roll with it. “Honestly, he’d probably deserve it if Cindy did hear it,” Noctis said while shaking his head. He wasn’t going to be the one to tell her though. He wanted his friend to have the best chance possible, but Prompto was likely to hang himself with his own rope anyway. He usually did when it came to girls.
Noctis had been trying to let Caius off the hook for the mission by pointing out that he didn’t owe him anything even if he’d served his father. He wasn’t expecting the blond mercenary to suddenly look really somber and express that he hadn’t wanted to tell the prince something until afterward. “...Sure, go ahead. Whatever it is, I can take it,” Noct said with a frown. He even committed the cardinal sin of leaving his fishing pole mildly unattended as he turned to face the man to hear what he had to say. He kept at least one hand on the fishing rod though. Better safe than sorry when it came to losing a great catch.
Noctis nodded along for the first part of what Caius had to say—he’d met enough people on Zephon so far to know that people came here from all kinds of worlds, but he hadn’t heard yet that people could be from different time periods. “Seriously?” He managed, trying to figure out what that could mean. Were there younger versions of people he knew wandering around? Were these even the versions of Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto that he’d last seen? Could there be people who were dead in his time that were here? Apparently yes, because Caius dropped that he’d met people from the founder king’s era of all things.
Before his mind could spiral too far out of control, Caius reached his main point for wanting to come on this mission, and Noctis froze in place as he stared at the man. His fishing pole nearly slipped from his grasp, but he managed to fumble and catch it at the last moment as his thoughts raced to catch up. “You’re saying you were…one of my kingsglaive? Or that you will be 12 years from now?” The word kingsglaive sounded odd on his lips when he wasn’t referring to one of his dad’s. Sure, he’d always known that he’d have an army someday too, but that had always been theoretical. Especially lately, when he hadn’t even been sure that he’d ever get to sit the Lucian throne.
Caius being from the future should have been absurd. He might have even argued it if he hadn’t already met Alex. The guy had managed to convince him that Noctis had somehow traveled to his world and gone camping with him before coming to Zephon. Compared to that, someone from the future on Eos was only mildly weird.
The fact that he even had a future that distant made Noctis go a little quiet as he looked up at Caius to ask his first question. “...Does that mean we stopped the daemons?”
[attr=class,lyric1]i am noctis, prince of lucis and
[attr=class,lyric2]king of fishing
[attr=class,bulk] Noctis had been confused when he’d first settled in around the table in the Rising Stones headquarters with Alex. Honestly, at first he just couldn’t picture why Prompto wouldn’t like the blond mercenary. Sure, Alex could be a little rough around the edges, but he was way better than Gladio in that department. Plus he was hilarious and sarcastic and a hell of a good person to have around in a crisis. He was also a bit of a disaster, but so were the four of them as a unit. It felt like he would have fit right in with their group honestly, so going into this Noctis had no idea why Prompto of all people wouldn’t like him.
By the end of Alex’s explanation, Noctis was choking on his beer.
“You told him Ardyn wasn’t shit?!” He wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the absurdity of that or be offended himself, but Alex seemed to feel bad enough as it was. It was probably better not to dive into his own deep insecurities around Ardyn and just keep focusing the discussion on Prompto. “Alright. Give me a second to unpack that one.”
He let Alex carry on, mostly trying not to facepalm at every mishap involving his best friend, though he genuinely wasn’t sure why Prompto would be mad at Alex for knowing him. “That one I’m not sure about,” he admitted, twirling the edge of his bottle of beer against the table in thought. “Unless he just doesn’t believe you? I thought it was kind of far-fetched at first, but the gods obviously threw me at this world. Why not two?” The fact that he apparently had amnesia about going to Alex’s world was way more troubling, but he’d met a few other people who didn’t remember everything either. It just made him worry about what else he was forgetting.
Now that was nightmare fuel.
Alex seemed to abruptly remember in the middle of a sentence that he also had questions about the crownsguard, and Noctis blinked a bit before shrugging. “Sure. Prompto’s my newest one. He actually joined up just so he could come with me to my wedding.” That had honestly touched Noctis more than he had ever admitted to his best friend. Joining the crownsguard wasn’t exactly an easy process or a light decision. It was basically Prompto dedicating his life to the Lucian royal family, and Noctis had never known what to say to him that could measure up to that. He was just so glad that the guy had finally worked up the courage to talk to him in high school, even if he’d pretended that they’d never met before. Typical self-conscious Prompto. He’d never had a great concept of his own worth.
Alex finished up by alluding to a conversation that he and Noctis had apparently had under the night sky while camping back on his world. It actually sounded like a pretty deep talk. It reminded him of nights with the other three, so he frowned slightly before taking another drink. “That sounds like stuff I’d say. Sorry I don’t remember it.” Setting down the bottle, he leaned back in his chair and looked over at the warrior of light across from him.
“Okay. First things first, you’re gonna have to tell me about your own experiences with immortals sometime because I could use help there. But that aside you should probably apologize to him about Ardyn if you want to make up. It’s not really that he regenerates that makes him so dangerous. It’s that he’s a complete sadist who can look like anyone at anytime. And he…kind of went after Prompto specifically.”To get to Noctis. The prince ran a hand through his hair, not really liking that he finally had to think about the chancellor. It had been so easy on Zephon to just go with the flow and push away his last moments on Eos.
I will keep your friends company until you return.
Shaking his head, Noctis tried to remind himself that they were talking about Prompto. “He switched both their appearances so that I’d throw Prompto off a train. I don’t even have the full story of what happened to him after that, but by the time we found him again, he was strung up on a torture device in a jail cell looking like he’d been through hell.” He didn’t really like remembering that honestly, but it was probably important for Alex to hear. “He still is the life of the party, but he might be different now too.”
