#nyx stays in galahd AU

[a-world-in-grey]

Life Debts and why Nyx's is a Big Deal

@secret-engima because I've been thinking on this and have Feelings.

Y'all can find SE's original post on Debt Braids here, but a short recap:

Debt is taken very seriously in Galahd. If you owe a debt, it's expected that you pay it off as soon as you can - via goods, services, etc. Very large debts between families can be settled through marriage, but as it requires both potential newly weds to be completely willing (Galahdians don't do divorce, you're married until one of you die), that sort of arrangement is rare.

A Life Debt is declared when a Galahdian believes they owe a debt they cannot repay, usually because the debt is so large, so personal, that a value of the debt cannot be given. In such a scenario, the Galahdian will declare a Life Debt and weave a Debt braid into their hair. A Life Debt is declared on that Galahdian's life. Only they can pay it, and once they die, the debt is fulfilled.

Now, this is where we get to just how serious declaring a Life Debt is. A Galahdian who declares a Debt is declaring that they owe this one person so much, that said person essentially now holds their loyalty over even the Galahdian's own clan and Chief. That loyalty stays until the Galahdian dies. If the person holding the debt dies, the debt passes on to their heir. When the heir dies, the debt does not pass on to anyone else, but even then, the Galahdian is not free from the Debt. Instead, they are free to choose how they will fulfill the debt until they die.

Because Life Debts are such a serious thing, no one can demand a Life Debt as payment. It is only ever voluntary.

So now we get to Nyx's Debt to Regis.

(I won't go into why Nyx declared a Debt - canonically we know Regis once saved Nyx's life, but exact details are for everyone's personal headcanons.)

On the surface, it's not that big of a deal. Oh, it's significant. It's a major commitment Nyx can never take back, but it's not really a problem.

Three things make Nyx's declared Debt significant, even by Galahdian standards. 1) The holder of his Debt is the Mainlander King. 2) Nyx is a Clan Chief. 3) Nyx is the absolute Last of his clan. Any single one of these wouldn't be remarkable, but together they turn what would be a significant but standard Debt into a nightmare.

Regis being an Outsider would normally not be an issue. Oh, there are Galahdians that sneer in private over Nyx declaring a Debt to an Outsider, because they believe Galahdians don't owe Outsiders jack shit. (Is it xenophobic? Yes, but Galahdians have a strong insider-outsider mindset and there will always be extremists in any culture.) But they keep their opinions to themselves because commenting on someone's declared Debt is just asking for a broken nose. Even Regis being a king wouldn't be anything other than an unusual detail (because just what happened that caused Nyx to owe a king a Debt?). The biggest thing about Regis being an Outsider is that to fulfill the debt, Nyx pretty much has to leave Galahd for Insomnia until the king and his heir die or one of them gives Nyx explicit permission/orders to return to Galahd. Which sucks, but that's what Debts mean. Regis - and later Noctis - will hold Nyx's first loyalty until Nyx dies.

Nyx being a Clan Chief is where things start getting sticky. A Chief's first duty must be to their clan. Chiefs, as a rule, do not declare Life Debts. They can't, not when they're first loyalty has to be to the clan, instead of a single person outside the Clan. In the very rare cases a Chief feels they must declare a Debt, they step down from their position as Chief. At least, they should. There's no clan law stating someone with a Life Debt cannot be Clan Chief, but a Chief in such a position will either neglect their clan or their Debt. Neither is something Galahdians regard favorably. There's never been a case where a Chief has refused to step down after declaring a Debt, so none of the Clans have ever had to decide what to do, but it's likely it would not end well.

Nyx being the very Last of his clan means that there aren't any other Ulrics he has a duty of care to as Chief. He is the only one affected by his declaration of Debt, so him remaining Chief Ulric isn't actually a problem. Where him being the Last becomes the final nail in the coffin is if anyone ever joins Clan Ulric. Because unless the Clans somehow find an Ulric that escaped the Burning, Nyx can't step down as Chief.

Nyx's first commitment must be to Regis. Then to Noctis. Not to his people. Not to his friends or any personal relationships. Not to rebuilding Clan Ulric. Any spouse/children/clansmen would always come second unless Regis/Noctis allowed it.

(Do I think Regis and Noctis would allow it, if Nyx asked? Yes. In a heartbeat. But Nyx would have to ask. Might even have to explain, and as a whole, Galahdians tend to be... reluctant, to explain their culture to Outsiders.)

I don't think Nyx really thought about the long term consequences of his Debt, when he made it. He might have, and could have decided that the situation was such that he was honor-bound to declare a Debt regardless. But Nyx has a reputation for not really thinking before he leaps into action, and depending on when Nyx declared his Debt? If it was after the Burning, after Nyx lost literally everyone, he probably wouldn't have been thinking clearly even if he had taken the time to think the decision over. And that's assuming he would have realized the implications in the first place - if Nyx wasn't raised to be Chief, it's very probable he wouldn't have.

Every other Clan Chief would have caught the implications. They would have known, from the moment they saw Nyx's braid, that the Last Ulric would never return to Galahd (not when the likelihood of Nyx outliving a boy 12 years his junior was slim to none). That the Last Ulric would likely remain the Last, condemning the Ulric Clan to die with him.

#ffxv #worldbuilding #galahd culture #galahd #Nyx Ulric #braids #working on my various Sola aus and realizing what it means for Nyx to declare that Debt #in most aus is doesn't end up being a problem because either Regis dies and Nyx transfers the Debt to Sola as his chosen queen #or Nyx never bonds as Sola's Sword before either of them die and is never confronted with that particular crisis #but in Sunshine-verse *Selena is still alive* and *still a child* for about four years after the Burning #...oh I work with that I can *definitely* work with that #then there's the Memories-verse when Nyx finally meets Sola again after Sola's supposed death (and actually *knows* it's Sola) #and he's smacked in the face with the realization that he can't stay with Sola because Sola doesn't want to return to Insomnia #and Sola has very good reasons for not wanting to go back but Nyx *has* to go back *because he declared a Debt* #and that Debt will go to Noctis on Regis' death because Sola is still 'dead' and Sola (now going by Rhea) doesn't want to be Sola anymore #so Nyx can't tell Regis or Noctis about Rhea because they'd want Sola to come back but Rhea *can't* be Sola #can't be the daughter and sister she was before she fell down Taelpar Crag #before Taelpar Crag it could have worked - Sola's first loyalty will always be to Noctis so she would have understood and accepted #Nyx being unable to give her his first loyalty even as her Sword (which is how it works in the fusion with SE's Blood of my Blood-verse) #(and in the fusion with SE's Nox-verse though Sola does ensure that Nox is aware of Nyx's situation when the two are courting) #it's unlikely I'll ever have Regis or pre-Crystal Noctis learn that Nyx declared a Debt or what it really means

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Welcome Home, Please Stay

Okay, so, I'm looking through my notes on the Not Everyone Knows How To Draw A Salt Line fae au story (yes, that'll be the next story I'll post a chapter for) and I got an idea. Which is a truly dangerous thing to have sometimes.

What if, the evening when Broek tells the story of the Devastation, Nyx and Whisp didn't do their escalating sleep spell? And instead of the resulting fihrie-fae drama, all of Little Galahd just... vanishes during the night?

Like, our little Whisp did not just kidnap a Bog on its own to prove something (spoiler for Salt Line, I guess?) but all this was a communal effort with the other flickerings. So what happened was the every single Will-o'-the-whisp on Galahd came and just took the people back. As you do. Not a trace of them left.

All of Insomnia wakes up the next morning to a few ten thousand people missing. Their things are still there. It looks like they just vanished into thin air literally.

Can you imagine the resulting panic and fear? What happened? Where did they go? Why did no one notice anything? Is it only the Galahdians? Did they do something? Was it the fae? Why? The Niffs?

Investigations are launched. Some Insomnians went also missing. As did children in the system and some adopted kids. (Investigation proves all those kids were of Galahdian descent. (The other Insomnians weren't targeted, but ended up being in the woring place at the wrong time.))

And

Maybe a week later every single thing that was ever made by a Galahkar or ever belonged to one, vanishes as well. There are suddenly entire empty lots where houses used to be. Art and valuables held by the Insomnian nobility go missing. Ancient relics from Lucis's conquest days just go poof.

The panic escalates.

What is happening?

Then Niflheim grows strangely quiet.

#ffxv #fae au #not everyone knows how to draw a salt line #welcome home please stay #here I go again #XD #please help #just the insomnian pov of what's happening #the fihrie took the galahkari back home #as one does #the galahkari had to convince the fihrie to go get their stuff as well #some adopted kids and those in the system are in for a shock #the fihrie know who's of galahdian descent #they can literally smell it #the poor insomnians that just got taken with #geist writes

[glaivenoct]

if the story followed the same as in the game, what would happen to nocts dragon when he gets pulled into the crystal?

[prev Dragon AU ask]

ngl I think Noct's dragon would legit go into a depression. Well, maybe first a rage, then a depression. As in, I want the dragon to tear the crystal from where it stands and absolutely demolish Zegnautus Keep. Aulea's dragon gets Nyx and the bros to safety, and Noct's just burns everything down.

I really want Noct's dragon to take the crystal because, when I think about how it happened in the game... the crystal ends up with Ardyn in Insomnia and Noct wakes up in Angelgard. So when everything in Zegnautus happened... did the bros just leave the crystal there? Is there something I'm not remembering? lmao idk, it's been sooo long. But, I've always wanted to entertain the idea of the crystal staying with everyone rather than Ardyn. And this feels like a good excuse to do that.

Like, once all the destruction is over, Noct's dragon comes back, sets the crystal down and just curls around it. Like a shield. Like it's still protecting Noct and no one's really sure about what to do. They're processing what just happened as it is, asking each other "He's not dead right?"

He's not dead but he's not here. If he's in the crystal itself, is there some way they can pull him back out? That seems like the best question to try and start answering, but they need more eyes and brains on it (Cor, Sania). Except, again, Noct's dragon won't budge no matter how much they try to coax it. Maybe they even get snarled at a few times if they get too close. Nyx gets frustrated and yells and Prompto has to remind him that the dragon is as angry and confused as they are right now.

So all Nyx can think to do is ask Aulea's dragon for help, but then before she can try - Noct's dragon flies off with the crystal.

Now here's another idea I've always wanted to entertain when it comes to the World of Ruin. WoR in Galahd. If we go back to the ask where I mentioned wanting dragon origins to have some connection back to Galahd, and the headcanon you mentioned connecting the crystal with Galahd, I feel like that would be a neat reason/excuse for Noct's dragon to fly back to it's origins. To safeguard Noctis there. But also - what if, rewinding back to Altissia, Luna is back in Galahd. She was injured by Ardyn, yes. The Leviathian trial very much did almost kill her and a lot of people think she's dead - but Crowe and Aulea's dragon took her down to Galahd for some very old school but potent Galahdan healing magic. And she's been gradually healing since.

So, back to origins and to Luna.

Of course, when Nyx hops on Aulea's dragon to follow Noct's he has no idea where this is going at first. He doesn't understand why Galahd, either. But it seems like this is where Noct's dragon intends to stay, and Nyx is willing to work with that for the time being. Well, for however long it takes for them to figure out a way to get Noctis back. The dragon will be more cooperative this time around too. Still furled around the crystal and guarding, but cooperative, because at the end of the day they all want the same thing.

They want Noct back and maybe possibly probably I can mess with canon more and say it takes less than ten years to do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#fic asks #nyxnoct asks

[niaswish]

Planning the Future

This is based on an au I introduced in 2020 for the NyxNoct week (Chapter 7 of the Heroic Start by Shiary on AO3).

Rating: Teen +

Warnings: Slightly graphic violence near the end. Implied character deaths.

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, implied character deaths, Nyx Ulric/ Noctis Lucis Caleum, eventual fluff, no major character deaths, Dark-ish Nyx, Royalty AU.

Chapter summary: A much needed conversation between 2 princes offers them clarity and a path towards their future.

Nyx brought Prince Noctis to a nearby creek, far enough that they would be able to talk without being overheard but close enough that Nyx would hear if anyone needed him. When he finally turned to look at the man who had once been his prisoner, Nyx found himself unsure as to where to begin.

Thankfully, Noctis spoke first. "I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I was supposed to stay at the Temple last night." Noctis bowed apologetically towards Nyx. "I know you saw me with Unc... Marshall Leonis and I'm sure you were furious, rightfully so, at my presence with those responsible for the injuries your mother suffered."

Nyx scowled and crossed his arms. "If you're sorry then why did you do it?"

"To get them to leave." When Nyx raised a brow, Noctis continued explaining. "When I was brought here, it was against my will. But instead of being treated as a prisoner like I expected, I was allowed to move around and given a job that I actually liked." Noctis chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I've never liked being royalty. Too much attention and pressure to be this perfect person."

Nyx scoffed, "What a stupid expectation."

"Ya, I was surprised by how relaxed you all are about royalty stuff."

Nyx shrugged, "The only reason the Ulrics still have royal titles is due to Lucis being annoying assholes about who can negotiate with them. At this point, being the Ruler of Galahd just means we get a vote in decisions and pretend we make them in front of other nations."

That got Noctis to laugh and something warm and fuzzy replaced the anxiety that Nyx had been feeling. Oh he was smitten alright, and apparently Ramuh approuved? He'd have to check with his mom later. 

For now Nyx still had something they needed to discuss. "Thank you for the apology and keeping Niflheim back until your friend could warn us. However, the Council has elected to wage war on Lucis because Marshall Leonis and your retinue broke the Oath King Regis made about respecting the payment due."

Noctis winced, "I figured that might happen." He turned to look at Nyx, "You don't agree do you? Otherwise why tell me?"

Nyx inclined his head, a slight appreciative smile on his lips. "Before the attack? I did but now... It seems like the wrong target for our Hunters. The only one who would benefit from such a war would be Niflheim. Not exactly what either of us want."

Noctis nodded in agreement for a moment before he frowned, head tilting to one side thoughtfully. "Wait. How did Lucis break that Oath thing in the first place? We've been losing against Niflheim for centuries and Galahd didn't do much when the Wall was reduced so... What happened?"

Nyx was surprised by the change in topic. "You never asked my mom that while you were at the Temple?"

Noctia glanced away, "I was too angry to ask when I was brought there initially then kinda...forgot?"

Nyx couldn't help it. He burst out laughing. "Ramuh's staff! How on Eos have you been able to remember all those orders but forget to ask the reason why you were brought here?"

"Oh shut up!" Noctis hissed in embarrassed anger. "Just tell me already. It's not like Lucis could have sent enough soldiers to make a difference. We also don't have a lot in terms of supplies to share with how isolated Insomnia has become."

Nyx wiped the tears from his eyes even as he answered. "Information. We didn't need soldiers, weapons, or supplies -Galahd provides us with all that- but our abilities are limited to Galahd and the Storm. The Oath has always been about sharing information and trade, that's all."

"Information???"

Nyx nodded and leaned back against a warm rock, tilting his head towards the sun. "Lucis knew that Niflheim was gathering an army near Galahd, had caught wind of a plan to attack us. And yet your father and council made the decision to not share that with us. Then after the attack, they had the galls to deny ever knowing any of it."

Noctis frowned. "How did Galahd find proof of this?"

"Ramuh." Nyx shrugged. "An Oath with his blessing means he is aware of anything and everything related to it. If the information had been delayed or ignored by only a few then the Oath wouldn't have broken. Its destruction was proof enough."

Noctis stayed silent for a while, Nyx echoing it as he allowed the prince to process that knowledge. He took that time to take a good look at the man he'd come to love. Even with a thoughtful frown, Noctis was beautiful. Long lashes framed gorgeous eyes that seemed to shine with emotions, a veritable gate to how his princeling truly felt.

His body was that of a lithe but trained fighter, born from years of training. With an amused smile, Nyx noted that Noctis' muscles had changed in the months since Nyx had first seen it. Still healthy and fit, there was a new roundness to his figure, a lessening of the muscle definition that made Nyx wonder what kinds of meals his princeling had been getting in Insomnia.

Noctis' voice broke through his admiration. "My eyes are up here, Boss." Thankfully, Noctis' tone was amused and playful.

"And they're as gorgeous as the rest of you." Nyx spoke before his brain had caught up. With a hiss, Nyx hurried to apologize. "Sorry that was inappropriate. What did you want to say?" Lifting his eyes, Nyx noticed the blush on his princeling's cheeks. -and he wasn't going to think about how being called boss made his inside twitch.-

"Umm..." Noctis stumbled over his words for a moment before he managed to speak properly. "I have a plan to help you convince your Elders to not go to war with Lucis."

"Oh? Well, I'm all ears. What do you have in mind?" Nyx straightened and leaned closer.

×+×++×

Nyx greeted his mom with a hug and a question. "Did Ramuh know I'd fall in love with the princeling?" His mother laughed at him and he frowned. "I'm being serious, mom."

"I know, Nyx." She took a step back, a hand cupping his cheek as she answered. "No, Ramuh did not know you would fall in love. However, he had been keeping watch over Prince Noctis due to a stupid prophecy that Bahamut insists should come to pass. No, I will not explain that yet. It is neither the time nor of any importance now."

"When King Regis failed to warn Galahd of the impending attack by Niflheim, Ramuh saw it as a chance to give Prince Noctis a happier life. One free of the burden of royalty that he wilted under in Insomnia. The Oath initially specified that the Ruler would become the sacrifice but Ramuh decided otherwise. In his own words, Noctis has the making of a Galahdian and should be allowed to make his own path in life."

Nyx relaxed at that, relieved that Ramuh hadn't predicted his love for his princeling. He placed his own hand over his mom's with a soft smile. "Then can you help us with the Elders? We have a plan."

"I'm listening."

"A war between Lucis and Galahd would benefit Niflheim and open us up to further attacks. Prince Noctis proposes that instead, Lucis hires Galahd's Hunters to help them repel Niflheim from Lucis, with the price being twice what is ours to claim as well as all of (location). And... He's agreed to let me court him."

His mom raised a brow, "A Galahdian or Lucian courtship?"

"Galahdian Hunter's courtship, of course."

"And the offering?"

"Aldercapt's head."

His mother's eyes flashed bright white as thunder mixed with her delighted laughter. "Galahd's path is a war indeed! Just not the one the Elders envisioned. Very well, I'll deal with the Elders and your father. You, on the other hand, will have to deal with the Lucians."

"Mom!" But it was too late as his mom kissed his forehead and left, leaving him alone with a monumental task.

Ifrit's ass, how was he supposed to explain to a bunch of overprotective Lucians the concept of courtship Hunts?

A/N: Thank you for the great week! Feel free to ask me about this au whenever :)

#NyxWeek2023 #nyx ulric #Noctis Lucis Caelum #Day 7: free

[garbria]

"📓"

I have this idea for a CorNyx bodyguard au. Nyx is prince of Galahd and goes to Insomnia for a cultural exchange/diplomatic mission. He's going to stay there for a few months to teach about Galahdan culture and learn about Insomnian culture.

Regis assigns Cor as his bodyguard to keep him safe, but Nyx doesn't think he needs one. He gets Cor into a little trouble in the beginning by sneaking off to see the sights and have fun. Cor is annoyed at first, thinking Nyx is just messing around with him, but eventually he sees how much Nyx really cares about his people. They bond over their sense of duty and similar philosophies. Nyx gets Cor to loosen up some and have some fun.

They grow close, and both develop feelings for each other, but neither one says anything because they don't believe it's possible to have a relationship. Cor doesn't think he could be a partner for a prince, and Nyx doesn't want to Cor to feel pressure to leave a job he loves.

Eventually, Regis gets tired of Cor moping around and tells him to go find Nyx and confess to him. So he goes to Galahd, and there's the dramatic romcom ending where Cor shows up at some event Nyx is speaking at and surprises him.

Thanks so much for the ask! Sorry for the long wait!

#starryredflames #asks #ask game #sometimes i enjoy a good romcom #mutual pining is my jam

[patsdrabbles]

Shelter from the Storm

Title: Shelter from the Storm Fandom: FFXV Pairing: Cor Leonis/Nyx Ulric Rating: Teen and Up Word Count: 5934 Summary: After Niflheim attacked Galahd, only one Galahdian stays behind in the worsening storm, unshakably sure that his people will return eventually. He makes a deal with a god… and waits. People come into his life as the years go by, but only one of them becomes a constant. A Nyx stays in Galahd AU. A/N: Inspired by the title of Bob Dylan’s song “Shelter from the Storm” and line “But nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts”. (For reference, Nyx is around 18 and Cor is around 23 the time they first meet.) Please enjoy ❤

AO3 & a sketch I made for this fic

“Nyx, there’s no time to stay any longer, there’s nothing left to stay behind for!”

Those were the last words from Libertus that Nyx remembers hearing before he stopped in his tracks and let his friend continue without him. Libertus had yelled, but his father had just dragged him along.

When he closes his eyes these days, years later, Nyx can still hear Crowe’s angry and desperate voice.

“Nyx!”

*

The storm had picked up as more dropships landed and houses were ground to the ground.

*

He had stayed behind, just a child in the middle of the devastation the Nifs had left behind. The ground was burning and when the fires were eventually extinguished by the rain and storm that never once stopped here in Galahd, the daemons had started to appear from the dust and ashes.

He had started to yell in desperation and anger himself then.

He shouted at Ramuh so long until the Astral had at last deemed to appear.

He hadn’t really been willing to listen to Nyx and had disappeared again mere moments later, but if Nyx was known for something, it was his persistence. He didn’t like giving up easily. Even less so if the matter was something he cared about deeply.

And Galahd was, at the moment, everything he had left.

*

Eventually, Ramuh began to listen to the kid in torn clothes covered in ash and blood that kept yelling at him. A kid who had lost everything and had decided to stay despite it all. Even though he could have followed his friends and people to safety.

They made a deal.

*

At least one person will have to decide to come back and stay here, genuinely wanting to, and make it through the next day.

Nyx thought that this shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. Someone of their people at least had to decide to come back and try to salvage what was left, even if nothing really was left. But it had never been possessions that had made up Galahd after all. It had always been the storm and its people.

*

If not, the only other chance for you and my land is if a single person is willing to return twenty times. If they do, that too will be enough for me to lift the worst of the storm and see to Galahd’s liberation myself.

It was a good deal, a fair deal, Nyx reasoned. He was certain of his people’s loyalty to their home and even if that hadn’t been enough to convince him to agree, it wasn’t like he had much else to lose anymore.

*

There is a hut, facing the rage of the storm even though it shouldn’t be able to, even though it should not have been there in the first place after the Nifs’s thorough devastation.

*

There is a hut in Galahd and none of the people who have seen it and were taken in by a kind yet weary-eyed young stranger are later able to pinpoint where it was located on a map. They wouldn’t even be able to if the storm weren’t as strong as it is these days.

*

There is a hut in Galahd and it appears to all those who need shelter, because they were willing to come in the first place.

*

Nyx isn’t allowed to tell anyone why he wants them to stay. Quite frankly, during the first couple of visits, his firm belief in his land and people has him absolutely sure one of them is bound to stay eventually.

He actively tries to convince them to stay, a few years in, but after a night of nightmares that every single one of them seems to experience, they all leave again.

All seven of them never returned.

The hut has become something of a myth by the time the third of them returned to Lucis soon after.

*

There is a tall man outside the hut. He is breathing heavily and is dripping wet, barely able to lift one foot in front of the other anymore. The storm is raging outside, but Nyx has noticed that he always hears when something or someone passes his home. Always has, over the past ten or so years since he built his hut from scratch with what he had been able to salvage over the course of weeks.

The man can’t be Galahdian, Nyx reasons. The storm seems to threaten to pull him under.

The others who had come had done so in the hope of finding something, anything, that’d make them willing to stay but hadn’t found it.

This one? Nyx doesn’t know what brings him here, but he has a duty, so he gets up from the rumpled blanket on the floor and goes to open the door to the stranger.

“Come in,” he says, trying for an inviting voice even though he has to shout to be heard over the storm. “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

The man practically falls through the door and collapses.

*

When the man is conscious again, Nyx urges him to strip off his soaking wet clothes and take one of Nyx’s self-made blankets to cover and warm himself.

By the time Nyx presses the second mug of hot tea into the stranger’s hand, the other man finally really meets his eyes.

“Huh.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, so Nyx decides he won’t ask, even though he’s itching to know what brought him here. He watches the man quietly stare into his mug of tea for quite some time. Nyx catches him staring at him a few times as well.

At some point during the night, the man speaks up at last. Nyx and him had both moved on to a glass of something strong and bitter that Nyx had been given by the last visitor before she had left.

The man doesn’t say much, but it’s enough for Nyx to understand.

He learns that the man lost his sister.

She was important to him but apparently important to many others as well and thus he was supposed to hold a speech about her or something.

So he ran away, before someone – it sounds like the man’s friends – would have been able to stop him.

Nyx puts a hand on his shoulder and the man starts to crumble beneath his touch.

When he stops crying, neither of them says a word, but Nyx pours them another drink.

He hasn’t cried about Selena and his mother in a long time now, but now he suddenly can see their faces more clearly again when he blinks and he feels the old wound inside him reopen.

*

The man leaves in the morning, another drink and not many words later.

*

The man returns around the same time the following year.

Nyx doesn’t have a calendar and his feeling of time is shit and Galahd always looks the same, rainy and dressed in an impenetrable storm, but he has a feeling that a year has passed since the man last visited. No one else has come here ever since. Still, he didn’t give up hope.

*

“I am hallucinating, am I not?” Cor – he has learned the man’s name is Cor – mumbles into his drink. He brought it himself, a whole bottle for him and Nyx to share.

Nyx pulls out one of his knives and teasingly presses the blunt edge to Cor’s tight.

“Nope, don’t think you are.”

He stashes the knife away again, always close to his body because that’s just what the place he lives in demands if he wants to live another day, and smirks.

“I’m very real.” He sees Cor’s raised eyebrow. “And very alive.”

He isn’t willing to cut into his finger to prove that he bleeds blood the same as he suspects Cor does unless it’s really necessary, but –

Cor’s shoulders drop.

“It’s alright, I believe you.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” Cor shakes his head. “You’re too much –“ Cor gestures vaguely before settling on a shrug. “– for my mind to have made you up.”

“Too much of a what?” Nyx smirks and leans in. He can feel the hot air of Cor’s exhausted huff on his face. Huh.

Cor chooses to ignore his question and they spend most of the night drinking in silence.

Nyx doesn’t wake up in time to see him leave, but when he does, there are two additional blankets wrapped securely around him.

*

“I never asked why you are staying here, when really any other place would be a… nicer place to stay at.”

Nyx shrugs and doesn’t explain. He can’t tell half of it and the other half he could, he isn’t sure Cor would understand.

“Alright.”

*

It’s the fourth year since he first met Cor.

“You know, I’ve been thinking you should perhaps start attending this commemoration event for your sister after all. Maybe it’d help.”

Cor leaves in the middle of the night already this time and Nyx isn’t sure he’ll see him again.

*

He arrives later in the year than usual the next time.

“I stayed, this time.”

“Did it help any?”

A sharp nod even though his eyes won’t meet Nyx’s. Then a bottle is handed to him.

Cor falls asleep leaning against his shoulder soon after. It doesn’t seem like he has nightmares, despite it all.

*

The next time, Cor arrives looking grim. He was doing better the last times he visited, but this time, his eyes look especially weary and his mouth is a thin line.

He breaks down moments after Nyx wraps the blanket that has pretty much become Cor’s by now around his shoulders.

He swears and shouts and tells Nyx about a prophecy he despises before he allows Nyx to pull him into a tight embrace on the floor.

Nyx holds on tight and doesn’t let go. He notices he wakes up in the morning that neither did Cor.

*

The seventh year, Cor doesn’t open the bottle he brought that has become kind of traditional early on.

He sits down at the table Nyx has been ornamenting with traditional Galahdian designs over the past two years and looks at him in silence for a long time. Nyx can’t stand the intensity of it and looks away before too long.

Cor sighs.

“You didn’t ask for it, but I guess I’ll tell you the whole story tonight.”

And so, Nyx learns about Aulea Lucis Caelum, née Leonis, a queen and mother to a young prince with terrible destiny. He learns about all of that and slowly, by that, about the place Cor has in his own small world. He has never heard Cor talk so much before, so he doesn’t interrupt to ask questions.

He learns implicitly that night that Cor trusts him more than anyone else or, at least, tells him more and shows him more of himself than even his closest friends.

He tells himself that it’s nothing. That he’s just like the diary Selena used to keep for things she wanted to put somewhere safe and didn’t want anyone else to know. She explained it to him once and he thinks that maybe he is Cor’s safe place for confessions.

*

He prepares himself mentally before Cor arrives the next time.

Cor can apparently tell that he wants to talk and so he lets him.

He talks about Selena and his mum and the day the Nifs destroyed everything they had.

He is a wreck of ugly sobs in the end and can feel hot tears running down his face and the wound is open again, as open and painful as it was back then.

He holds onto Cor as he tries to find himself again in the storm of his feelings.

Maybe the wound will heal properly this time.

Cor hugs him before he leaves the next morning.

“I think I am starting to understand,” he says quietly and Nyx wonders if maybe, to a surprising degree, he actually already does.

*

The ninth year, he realizes that there is a chance, so he prepares himself to ask, no matter whether it’ll turn out to be a hopeless case.

Cor and him are having yet another mug of tea and the night is drawing to a close when he finally dares to speak up, though.

“So, please excuse me for asking so bluntly, but you’re pretty high up in the Lucian hierarchy, right?”

Cor only arches an eyebrow at him, in a way that Nyx has learned means that he is willing to listen.

“I need a favor. Could you please see if you can find two people for me and tell them I’m still here?” Tell them to come back, he doesn’t say, but he can see in Cor’s expression that he understands.

When Cor stands up to leave a while later, Nyx hesitates a moment at the door before he pulls Cor into a tight hug.

He feels hands wrap tightly around him in return and it’s… nice. He hasn’t felt this kind of safe in a long time.

*

When Cor comes back the next year, it’s with an expression that has Nyx slightly on edge when he opens the door to him. He looks like someone who has to deliver the news that someone’s dog died and Nyx waits impatiently for Cor to shrug out of his clammy clothes and shrug over the clothes and blanket Nyx prepared for him as usual.

Only when they both have tea with a shot of whatever Cor brought this time, he tells Nyx.

“They told me that I must have seen a ghost.”

Nyx lets himself slump forward, resting his head on the table, hidden behind his arms.

“These darn, stubborn idiots.” His voice is muffled against the table but the anguish in it is audible. When he sits back again, he lets out a sad, bitter laugh. “I’d have reacted the same if either of them had pulled a stupid stunt like that and had stayed behind in all the destruction. Of course they think I’m dead.”

He sighs, then shakes his head.

“I just hope I’ll see them again someday.”

It’s quiet, but he doesn’t mind Cor hearing. It’s not like he hasn’t already figured that Nyx misses his friends.

He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them immediately when he feels a hand on his shoulder, lighter than he would have anticipated.

“Nyx.”

It’s the first time he’s heard Cor use his name. He cracks open an eyelid to look at him, a light, pained smile on his lips.

“Yeah?”

“I haven’t told you all yet.” Cor takes a breath and looks away when Nyx’s gaze bores too intensively into his own. “I found them fairly easily because they chose an, ah… profession similar to mine. They’re serving as part of the King’s Kingsglaive now, fighting against the Nifs. They’ve both made names for themselves as some of the best they’ve got.”

Nyx sighs fondly and nods, his eyelid sliding close again.

“Of course they did.”

“I could… tell you about Insomnia’s Little Galahd, if… you want.” If it’s not too painful, is what Nyx hears.

He nods.

He can hear Cor taking some steps away again and the other chair being lifted up and put down next to his.

“You need a couch,” Cor grouses in a joking tone before settling down next to him.

Nyx doesn’t notice when he falls asleep, but when he wakes up again, Cor and him are both on the floor, leaning against the wall, covered by blankets, and Cor has an arm around him.

There’s something in the pit of his stomach that wants Nyx to pay more attention to it, but he doesn’t dare to.

His thoughts begin to drift.

He is already grateful for Cor’s annual visits and it’s not even due to the deal he has with Ramuh. He is simply glad to have someone who is so easy to talk to come by every once in a while. He missed that.

He knows very well that Cor is someone who could easily (or, well, not so easily, but more likely than regular people) wind up dead any day and he. He likes Cor for whom he is.

He closes his eyes in annoyance.

Yes, it would be nice if Cor’s returning to Galahd would change anything, but even so.

He just wants him to come back every year and not stop.

Even when Ramuh’s and his deal will eventually be fulfilled. Even thereafter.

And that realization makes Nyx kind of want to slap himself.

He thinks he might have a name for this thing he is starting to feel.

“Fuck.”

(Of course, that’s the moment Cor decides to wake up with a confused, sleepy “Huh?”. Nyx looks at the sleep-clouded blue eyes and knows with a startling certainty that he is starting to fall for Cor. He hides his silent scream behind his blanket.)

*

The eleventh time Cor visits, he reeks of death that even the everlasting rain couldn’t wash off him.

He tells Nyx about the family of coeurls he met when he passed through Leide. A mother and her two young.

Nyx feels compelled to yell at him, but Cor holds up his hand, knowing more about Galahd these years, and doesn’t stop his explanation.

The blood no longer visible on Cor’s clothes belongs to two behemoths that had attacked the coeurls, seeing how the mother animal was injured and slow.

Cor tells him he’d have brought some of the behemoths’ remains to last Nyx for a while but that the rain was too heavy and he had to give up most of it except for a little. He hands what is left wrapped in a piece of cloth to Nyx.

“Sorry I couldn’t bring you more. It’s gotta be shit to hunt in the rain out here. …I feel kinda stupid I never thought about that before.”

Nyx nods, feeling the increasingly familiar warmth inside him resurface, and yet, he can’t help but also feel like laughing a little.

Of course the heavy rain was enough to stop any Lucian – even Cor, whom he knew to be a pretty resilient guy.

The storm has never stopped Nyx before, though. He needs to hunt to survive, yes. But he is also Galahdian. The storm is his home.

*

He makes them food and realizes he hasn’t had much to eat around to offer to Cor before. They had mostly drunk tea or something alcoholic, or both. He guesses he’ll have to change that in the future.

He drops the wooden cooking spoon he is holding when Cor leans over his shoulder to see how the cooking is coming along. Cor has the decency to snicker and Nyx really, really would like to have his blanket to scream into right now.

*

He hugs Cor goodbye automatically this time and shivers when Cor’s lips brush against his ear as he tells him goodbye until the next year. He feels the ghost of that and the touch of Cor’s hand on his shoulder after that for weeks.

*

The twelfth time Cor visits, Nyx is almost sure he’ll manage to tell Cor… at least something. He hasn’t been sleeping well recently, the storms are slightly stronger than usual these weeks, and often when he lies awake late at night, he starts seeing Cor in front of his inner eye and that really doesn’t help with falling asleep again either.

*

But Cor is surprisingly distant this time around, at least for the first few hours. Eventually, Nyx sighs and puts his hands on Cor’s shoulders, attempting a makeshift massage.

“What’s got you in such a mood?”

He doesn’t expect an answer so soon, but then again, Cor is an awfully honest person and has, with only a few exceptions, when he needed more time to mull a question over, almost always answered him directly.

“Regis found a way to perhaps stop the prophecy from coming to happen as it’s intended to.”

Nyx’s hands still.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Nyx realizes with a start that Cor is leaning back into his touch, as if silently asking him to continue his massage. So Nyx does.

“Is it safe?”

Cor laughs.

“Nothing about this whole family is safe – but then, when has it ever been?”

He makes a sound that has Nyx shiver right down to his boots and places his hand on Nyx’s right hand.

“Right here. Could you please do that again?”

And Nyx might be a masochist, because he caves and keeps working the knots in Cor’s shoulders loose and tries not to cramp his hands down when Cor keeps making all sorts of quiet noises.

*

By the time of Cor’s thirteenth visit, Nyx is angry. He hasn’t been sleeping well in months, the storm having remained worse than it was before last year, and he keeps waking up with Cor being the first thing on his mind. So yes, he is angry.

*

Cor looks at him in confusion but follows behind without asking when Nyx all but drags him inside.

He doesn’t even get the chance to change his clothes before Nyx begins, sounding oddly frustrated.

“Fuck you! Just – why – argh.”

What.

Nyx turns away from him and pulls on his hair in frustration, grumbling below his breath, before turning back sharply and accusingly pointing a finger at Cor’s chest.

“You’re the reason I’m always sleep-deprived these weeks! And I’m done not saying anything, because I only see you once every year and it fucking sucks.”

Oh.

Cor can’t stop the laugh from falling from his lips.

“I almost thought you weren’t interested after all, after last time.”

Nyx keeps pointing, his finger waving lightly in the air as he gapes at him.

“You…? Oh, fuck you, Cor, you put me through this intentionally?”

“It’s called flirting, if I’m correct. Not that I seem to be very good at it, but that was the intention.”

Nyx swears up and down more curses than Cor thinks even he has ever heard, but he delightfully shuts up when Cor steps closer and kisses him.

Only when their kisses are becoming handsier, Nyx pulls away all of a sudden.

“Oh, fuck, you’re still wearing your wet clothes. You’ll get sick if you keep them on much longer.”

Cor considers this, agrees and looks at Nyx with his eyes a shade darker than before and a tiny smirk on his lips.

“Mind helping me get out of ‘em?”

He hasn’t seen Nyx blush before, furious red creeping up his cheeks, and he vows to himself that this won’t be the last time.

Nyx just splutters in betrayal but starts freeing him from his wet clothes just the same.

*

The fourteenth and fifteenth year are similar in the respect that they find themselves making out like teenagers all through the night until Cor has to leave again and Nyx has hickeys to prove to the darkness outside that he isn’t alone anymore. He leaves Cor with some of his own, especially when Cor present him with the Galahdian talisman for good luck and safety that he got for him in Little Galahd.

*

Cor has told him that he hasn’t had much of a relationship before either, unless you count a handful of stolen kisses in free minutes he barely ever had in the years before he met Nyx, and Nyx feels relieved none of them is at a disadvantage here.

Even when Cor huffs out a labored “’not playing fair, huh?” when Nyx grinds down against him on top of their pile of blankets, hands all over Cor’s body and not in the least feeling apologetic.

He starts to apologize when Cor starts kissing down his throat, though, and Cor eventually laughs, a full-body laugh, against his skin. Nyx shivers but can’t suppress the laugh at the back at his throat for long.

“Alright, you name the place and time if you wanna take this elsewhere,” Cor says, more quietly, and Nyx names his date.

*

The next time Cor arrives, he arrives earlier in the day. It’s always dark in Galahd these days, of course, but Nyx only had lunch a few hours ago, and he appreciates it when Cor can stay a few hours longer than usual.

Cor takes his time undressing and drying himself off, this time. Then, he stands there wrapped in only his usual blanket and gives Nyx a look that has a shiver run down his spine.

“Today still stands or would you prefer –”

“Yes!” Nyx blurts out. “I mean – ah, fuck.”

Cor is still laughing when Nyx is coming closer, unsuccessfully trying to get off his boots and repeating “Yes, of course I still want this, fuck, why doesn’t this come off?” over and over again.

Once they’re face to face, Cor drops to his knees as gracefully as he can and looks up at Nyx.

“Let me help you?”

Nyx’s helpless, furious blush and nod is all the agreement he needs to start pulling on the damn shoe.

When this endeavor ends with both of them tumbling to the floor in a tangled mess of limbs, blanket and boots, Cor just snorts when Nyx buries his laughing face in his chest.

They’ll be fine.

*

The seventeenth year, Cor comes to the hut looking as close to triumphant as Nyx has ever seen him.

“Regis and the Queen of Tenebrae did… well, they did some magic shit, I guess, and the Astrals themselves apologized to them. The – the scourge isn’t gone, obviously, but they said they’d remove the threat to the prince’s life and –”

“Take a deep breath,” Nyx instructs, when Cor begins stumbling over his words.

Their gazes lock and Cor takes the advised deep breath and another.

“Noctis is safe. He won’t die for their fucked up games, after all. I –”

Cor takes another deep breath, then smiles at him wider than Nyx has ever seen him smile before.

“There’s a chance things will end up fine after all. I just wish I could tell Aulea. She always told me things would be alright in the end.”

He shakes his head and Nyx sees tears of relief and happiness starting to form in Cor’s eyes.

“Tea?” He asks and Cor nods and follows him inside.

*

It’s been eighteen years. Nobody else is visiting these years, has since Cor first started coming, and Nyx is casually leaning on the window ledge waiting for Cor to arrive. He grins when he sees the familiar silhouette approach in the rain, puts the kettle on the stove and opens the door with a smile.

“Hey there.” He leans in and pulls Cor into an embrace and down into a kiss, both of which Cor returns immediately.

“Good day?” Cor asks with a smirk dancing over his lips.

“It’s always a good day when you’re stopping by.”

“Can you attest that to me somehow?”

Nyx snorts and it’s one of Cor’s snorts, he realizes with a start. How about that?

“I think I love you.”

It was meant to be a silent thought, but Nyx finds it feels right once his mind stops racing.

Cor is looking at him and he seems so much closer all of a sudden, his eyes widened.

“I –”

“You don’t have to say it back if this is too fast for you,” Nyx rushes to say, but Cor only shakes his head.

“No, I actually – I actually think I love you as well.”

Nyx’s heart stutters and he can’t look away from Cor as he takes in his words.

Now, how about that?

“Tea?” Cor asks when he has apparently been silent for too long, just gazing at Cor with so many damn feelings.

He nods before the words and the whine of the kettle in the kitchen register. Ten seconds later, when Cor has turned off the stove and is turning to pick up some mugs, Nyx catches his wrist and stops him.

“Got the order wrong, sorry. You first, and then some tea and cuddles?”

Cor snorts and then smiles at him.

“Sure, hon.”

Nyx splutters and blushes before he hides in Cor’s chest and it’s Cor’s favorite look.

*

The nineteenth year, Cor is later than usual. Nyx knows him and his fighting skills well enough to trust him to be okay, so he tries not to worry.

He opens the door quickly when he sees him approach.

“You are late this –”

He interrupts himself, noticing the tight set of Cor’s shoulders, and steps aside after a moment of shock to let the man inside.

There are dried blood stains on Cor’s clothes and it seems like the blood isn’t only his own.

“What happened?”

Cor is quiet for a long moment and Nyx steps closer to put his arms around him. Eventually, he feels Cor’s shaky exhale against his face and the warmth of Cor’s forehead against his own.

“Insomnia fell.”

*

He has already taken care of seeing his nephew – the prince, the only heir to the Lucian throne – off safely on his journey to collect his arms. There isn’t much more he can do to help Noctis and it’s driving him crazy, Nyx can tell.

Cor is angry at himself, angry at Regis.

“I could have been there.”

“You would be dead now if you had been.”

“Regis once said that I attract danger wherever I go. And yet that idiot-“

“Is that true?” Nyx interrupts him.

“What? The danger?” Cor falls silent, mulls it over for a second. “I suppose so, even though I’d never tell Reggie- Fuck.”

Nyx can see the tears in the corners of Cor’s eyes. As he caresses Cor’s back as calmly as he can manage, a plan starts to form in his mind.

“If I told you to attract as many dropships and MT force here, to Galahd, as you can, would you do it?”

Cor looks at him like he lost his mind for a moment, and maybe he has, but if Nyx knows something, then it’s that Ramuh hates the Nifs for what they’ve done just as much as every Galahdian and Lucian does. When he doesn’t say anything further, Cor seems to consider his question.

“I would certainly try, if I knew no harm would come to you.”

Nyx laughs and it comes from deep in his belly.

“Oh, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. It’s the Nifs that won’t be.”

He doesn’t look away when Cor gives him an – understandably, he supposes – worried gaze. But Nyx is Galahdian and it’s not him who will encounter the Nifs. He’ll stay in the back, safe in the storm and out of harm’s way, and watch them fall. He is Galahdian – he doesn’t have to fear the storm.

*

“Promise me you won’t turn around and won’t come back until it’s over. Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t understand why you’d want that,” Cor admits. “I’d rather be by your side through this. But you have my word.”

“Thank you.”

Nyx pushes himself up and pulls Cor into a deep kiss that once again ends up with them both in a tangled mess on the ground between his and Cor’s blankets. He feels the strong urge to crawl into Cor’s skin, not ever let him go, but he needs to for the plan to work.

He just hopes that Cor will return, after it is over, and maybe, maybe stay even when the storm abates.

*

Cor leaves the next morning, wearing a talisman Nyx hastily made for him, nervous despite his faith in his plan and wanting Cor to be safe, the first and only thing he ever wanted in so many years, really.

Cor leaves and doesn’t turn around, and the storm picks up after him.

*

It takes several weeks until the first signs of MTs and other Nif military arrive, but the storm is ready.

He can hear some of them over their radios, volume turned up loud enough for them to be able to communicate over the noise of the storm.

“The prince is said to be hiding here somewhere. All trails led to this… place.”

It’s said with disgust and the storm seems to retaliate by becoming even worse.

*

Two weeks later, it’s only the storm that is howling still. A huge part – at least it looks like it has to be a huge part to Nyx – of the Nif army is destroyed, deformed wrecks on the ashes of the ground they wreaked havoc on over two decades ago. A bitter feeling of irony and satisfaction forms in Nyx’s mouth at the sight and he turns around to return to his hut.

*

Cor returns a month later, as if he was trying to make sure it was really over before he did, and as he walks, the rain around him seems to let up.

He doesn’t get around to asking Nyx about the rain or the victory, though. Because the moment the hut appears in front of him, Nyx comes running through the door and the rain and pulls him into a kiss that is both a promise and a confession.

Nyx drags him inside and out of his clothes and instead of a blanket wraps himself around him. He pulls him on top of their blankets and whispers against every part of his skin as his hands won’t stop running over Cor’s wet skin.

Cor can make out “I love you’s” and “Please don’t leave again” and realizes Nyx wouldn’t hear him were he to reply to him right now.

So he settles on pulling Nyx closer and kissing him – his hair, his face, his lips – until Nyx is willing to let Cor peel him out of his wet clothes as well.

“I love you too. And I’ll stay, if you’ll have me.”

It’s quiet, but it’s enough to make Nyx’s eyes look up sharply and there’s so much relief in them.

“…even though I attract danger.” Cor smirks, the corner of his lip lightly pulled up, and Nyx lets out a teary laugh.

“I really don’t care, as you should know by now.”

So maybe there are still dangers out there that Cor might attract, that might hurt him on some days. Hell, even Nyx has to admit he is guilty of attracting more danger than any other person he has ever known, Cor aside.

But he thinks they’ll be just fine as a lighter rain covers Galahd’s ground outside and Cor wraps his arms around him in a way that makes him feel safe and at home.

*

Cor is standing right by his side when the first group of his people arrives and asks if there is anything they can help with to make the place habitable again, and he smiles when Nyx nods enthusiastically and shows them how to get started.

The storms aren’t as harsh as they used to be for almost three decades anymore these days. They’re much more like they always used to be in Galahd, the same after the war as they used to be before it.

Before long, two figures approach over a hilltop and stop in their tracks for only a moment before breaking into a run. Cor gives him a gentle push against his back and then Nyx is running as well.

#cornyx #nyx ulric #cor leonis #cor leonis x nyx ulric #ffxv fanfiction #ff #fanfiction #final fantasy xv #ffxv #ffxv ff #my posts #pat writes #my fanfics #AUs #nyx stays in galahd AU #Shelter from the Storm #7.8.2020 #2020 #my art #ffxv fanart #this could've been lore-heavier but i decided to stick to Nyx's side of the story so most events are only alluded to #also playing fast and loose with ages and the time of some events but hey it's an AU for a reason ^^ #and yup that's my art blog in the reblog i think i referred to it before at some point in the past but yeah #*slaps laptop* this bad boy fits so many fanfic and art ideas #(ngl i've been writing and drawing so much stuff the past few weeks it's what's kept me sane through the last weeks of writing my thesis) #anyway please enjoy! ^^/ #(apparently this time it's the tags and not the links that made the post disappear from the tags again. but i really dunno how to fix this #* and it's exhausting... my art post has tons of tags as well??) #if you read and liked this please give it a reblog? bc otherwise idek how to get my fics to anyone anymore #(it's been a year. *stares at @staff*)

[charlottedabookworm]

FFXV prompt: (Non-Bahumut) dragons.

By the time the first startled exclamations reach him, it’s already too late.

To be honest, Nyx probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway - he was running on caffeine and spite at this point and was due a crash soon enough. Definitely in no right state to avoid the fuck out of this situation.

Which is just his luck really, which is also probably why he isn’t really surprised that this is happening in the middle of Insomnia.

Still, he thinks as Libertus nudges him from his slight daze, he would have preferred a little warning.

Because how the fuck was he supposed to explain the massive bloody dragon?

The slight hope that he’d get lucky and the dragon wasn’t there for him faded the moment that Nyx realised that he recognised said dragon.

“…Nyx.” Libertus started slowly, “isn’t that…?”

Nyx closed his eyes - wishing that he was still a kid and believed that if he couldn’t see something then it wasn’t happening - and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Fuck.” Behind them both, Crowe burst into laughter.

He groaned in agreement - choosing to ignore Crowe’s cackles - and started to push forward, to where the dragon was starting to land. Luche, when Nyx walked past him, clapped him on the shoulder with a sarcastic, “have fun Ulric,” that had Nyx growling at him.

Seeing people starting to pull weapons, Nyx sped up a little - he really did not need this to turn into a full out battle, the situation was bad enough as it is.

“What the ever-loving fuck are you doing here Aether?” He ignored the Crownsguard that had hands on their weapons, Cor standing on the sidelines with his sword in his hand, and the King watching curiously from a short distance away with Lord Amicitia.

“Chill, little cousin.” He said as he shifted fluidly - leaving a human man standing were the dragon had been, one with the same blue-grey eyes that Nyx himself had but who was a few inches taller - ignoring the flinches of those around them.

Nyx snarled as one of the Crownsguard took a step towards Aether, weapon raised. “What, you never seen a Lightning Chaser before?” He snapped out, protective instincts high even as all of the Galahdians around bristled, before visibly calming himself and turning back to his cousin. “Seriously though, why on Eos are you here? Because, I swear to Ramuh, if you say that it’s because you were bored…”

Aether smirked, looking almost a mirror image of Nyx when he did so - despite his blonde hair - shaking his head. “Nah. I just came to warn you that mum is totally pissed off at you because you haven’t visited home in ages.”

Nyx groaned. “For Ramuh’s sake, Ae. I visited home last year, it hasn’t been that long.”

“Yeah, but you missed Ere’s birthday and they’ve been throwing a tantrum about it ever since. Combined with the fact that we really don’t see you enough…” He shrugged.

“Yeah, alright.” Nyx sighed, shoving a hand through his hair. Why did he have to deal with this shit? “But really, you couldn’t have called? Or even come to visit normally? There’s no need for all of this.”

Because Nyx was going to have to spend ages explaining why a dragon had come to see him just to berate him for not visiting his family. He was going to have to deal with the chaos that Aether’s visit had caused and calm down the Crownsguard and the Glaive before one of the Galahdians took offence to the weapons drawn and attacked the Lucians. He was too tired for this shit.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

He twitched, his cousin’s words echoing in his head.

(Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the fun in that?)

Nyx lunged - diving towards Aether with murderous intent - hitting only open air as his cousin launched himself back into the sky, shifting fluidly back to dragon form.

“Get back down here so I can fucking kill you, you storm-eating chocobo-fucking bastard-”

He was met with the sound of laughter, distorted by a dragon’s throat. “You should spread your wings more often, Dark Spark, you need to relax more.”

Nyx growled and continued to curse at him until he was out of sight.

Ramuh damn him.

#ask #prompt #Hamelin-born #ffxv #nyx ulric #dragon au #in which the ulrics are dragons #and all of Galahd knows this #I was nice to Nyx and gave him living extended family #see #it's not even angsty #my fic #snippet #libertus ostium #aether ulric (oc) #nyx is also a dragon #but he mostly stays in human form #this was fun

[noirbriar]

FFXV AU: Find Your Way

Libertus: *supposedly projected to be the sensible one in the party and normal of the bunch*

Also Libertus : *goes AWOL, does his own thing, also takes a car and slams into Drautos without remorse, and later takes over as a figurehead of the Kingsglaive*

A quick writing challenge for myself.Character study of sorts? This one is hard and I eventually gave up. But Libs deserves something too I feel, after considering the end of Kingsglaive and Comrades.

Also, some Iris and Crowe things too.

——-

Stay honest. Be humble. Do good and keep out of trouble.

There are the words his mam had kept drilling into him as a kid. Words to live by that simply, and logically made sense.However the Galahdian has no idea how trouble just keeps finding him. Libertus tried. He really did.

Libertus tried when Nyx went canyon diving in effort to out do Luche. He somewhat attempted when little Selena attempted to have a pet piranha in Jahha Ulric’s ornamental fish pond in their garden. He did all he could when Crowe had placed fireworks in Furia’s locker out of spite over something silly. 

“-You wilful child, don’t you dare-!”

SLAM!

Now the burly Galahdian can only gape blankly, watching the disaster unfold before his eyes. All while their unexpected stowaway had went and snatched the comms, slamming the device with Lord Clarus Amicitia’s voice yelling himself hoarse out of Sasha’s hands without a thought. The poor boy gaping at the Lucian bewilderedly. Whereas his squad could only stare at the suddenly quiet machine as young Lady Iris Amicitia storms off to the edge of the haven in quiet anger like a monsoon storm brewing in the horizon.

His squad turns to him eerily in sync. All eyes wandering towards their Deputy expectantly to deal with this unexpected turn of events. 

Libertus can only sigh and begins to trudge his way over to where Iris was.

The Lucian forces are low on manpower and tight on time due to having one Marshal and Prince’s Shield down as Nyx tries to cover for Gladiolus. This left the warfront to the both the King and Lord Shield as well as Major Elshett, Major Ackers and the Glaives. They had barely managed to reclaim Leide and Duscae. Now they are pushing all efforts to clear the daemon nests around Cleigne while replenishing ammunition to other teams further out clearing Imperial bases. All to strengthen their foothold in the Lestallum region that they just secured. However this unexpected development has put a wrench in their current schedule.

As the only child but part of a large Clan, his mam and his ba were both rather old when they finally had him. Libertus then grew up cared for, and caring for a large family with plenty of cousins. Selena Ulric too, was as good as his own baby sister considering how close he was with the Clan Ulric and Nyx.

After moving to Insomnia,Nyx was distant as were his kinsmen. Maybe it was his nature or just his inability to leave anyone alone,or the need to have a friend, Libertus is not entirely sure, but he felt an affinity and need to look after Crowe when they first met in the Kingsglaive. She had been this scrawny young kid whose eyes were filled with fire and rage. An absolute a handful, not that she is not anymore, but the man is optimistic enough to think she is past her rebellious phase now as a grown woman and excellent mage. Now a fellow Deputy in the Kingsglaive. 

They had all did pretty well looking after each other’s stupid asses while raising a girl with so much fire and character, that much was certain. Yet, he knows without a doubt that if it weren’t for Crowe, and being allowed to care for her as a brother figure, it managed to keep him busy from spiralling into a darkness that he shudders to think about. She was an anchor when he had been adrift since coming to Insomnia after watching most of his family perish in the Rebellion as Galahd burned. Nyx and his fellow kinsmen had their own demons to deal with, and at one point they all had sorta slipped towards the deep end. 

Now it feels like deja-vu as he sees a different pair of bright, fierce eyes filled with the same fire staring back at him.

That is, until the firecracker threw a punch at him.

The young Lady had nearly threw him off if he had not reacted quickly enough to dodge. He also chooses to tune out the sudden cheer from his men. The bastards are just watching a free show as he avoids a hit in his solar plexus from the tiny girl.What do House Amicitia feed their kids anyway?

“Woah now! Holy Ramuh, Iris? What? What brought this on? A little family squabble?”Libertus laughs awkwardly before he sputters and notices something is clearly wrong with the bright and chirpy girl. They are not close, due to their different stations. Even though they have met on several occasions in Insomnia, him on guard duty with Iris sharing small talk with the friendly glaive while in the Citadel. Even having fought together a couple of times in Lestallum when daemons suddenly started to overrun the area when they were wrestling Lestallum back from the Imperials. The Iris he knows is always optimistic and supportive, helping wherever she could. A good kid all around. This unusual behaviour have caught him entirely off guard.

“Libertus, fight me!”

The Glaive chokes on his own spit as Iris sudden demand snaps him out of his own head and turns to his possible murderer and person to single handedly end his entire somewhat moderately lukewarm Kingsglaive career, “w-what?”

“Fight. Me!”

“Yeeeeah no. Not gonna do that, squirt.” Libertus has enough. He’s not the strongest fighter but he is still a veteran nonetheless, and he easily subdues the angry Amicitia with a firm grab, locking her arms in a quick disarming manoeuvre without hesitation. Unlike mainlanders, Galahdians do not coddle their fighters and young, especially towards women raised to be warriors, the Muu’laris.  

 Iris struggles, unrelenting and unwavering until she finally runs out of steam. Exhausted in her rage.

“I’mma let you go.And then we’ll talk. Only talk.Yeah?” Libertus tells her calmly and patiently, almost like dealing with an unruly child.

“…Fine.” The Galahdian releases her and Iris Amicitia turns and looks at Libertus grimly, shoulders squared and fists balled tightly by her side. 

“Its.I just-I-”

Iris then crumbles as she curls down and begins to wail, her chest heaving in broken heaving breaths.Her form shaking.

Oh, oh no. If anything, there is one thing Libertus cannot deal with, its kids, and tears.

(He also has no idea why he is suddenly involved in so much family drama. From Royal sibling quarrels to Royal family disputes. This was all NOT in the Glaive Recruitment briefing.)

Libertus fumbles a little, taken by surprise for the second time that night. Confused as he turns to his own crew watching them incredulously. Minos even has the audacity to even mouth at him a ‘lol you done fucked up’ while Sasha has gotten whiplash, stunned by the entire display. With both Miles and Elea watching on, intrigued. He resists the urge to give them a rude hand gesture and chooses to ignore the unhelpful bunch in favour of the situation at hand. The burly man squats down and quietly pats the broken girl carefully on her back in attempt to calm her distress.

“Hey, hey? We gotcha. Its okay. Let it all out.” Libertus pats her back gently.Iris just cries harder into her knees. Until the tears simply would not flow anymore and reduced into small hacking sobs. There was silence with only the sound of insects and the daemons groaning in a distance, on top of little sniffles filling the night as the camp fire crackles and the Glaives watch sympathetically nearby.

“So, wanna talk about it? I have a good ear.” Libertus tries to break the silence awkwardly. The big Galahdian trying to gauge the problem and making the space comfortable for the teen to talk on her terms.

“…They won’t listen. As if we aren’t in the middle of War and they just want me safe! They forgot that no one IS safe! Jared nearly died if you guys had not arrived just in time and Talcott, he-” Iris begins to rant irritably in a jumble, heaving between sobs, “Daddy even nearly died now he’s on the frontlines. And-and Gladdy! He-Gladdy just takes off to take an stupid Trial and-“ the young Amicitia purse her lips and tries to gather herself.

Ah. Libertus is starting to see the problem.

In the chaos, they all seem to have forgotten that its the people dearest to them by their side breaking apart without a word. What more a civilian girl who lost her home and now have to watch helplessly while everyone around her are heading out to possibly die. In his personal opinion, the Lord Shield and Gladiolus have neglected to ponder if their actions would affect their family. Though by no means intentionally or deliberate with ill will. Now, Iris’ confession reminds Libertus of loved ones lost during the long years up to the Rebellion of Galahd and his time in the Glaive under Drautos, watching brothers and sisters in arms perish on the battlefield. The grim feeling of regrets he had long buried coils around his heart wretchedly.

Sometimes, its those who are left alive by the sidelines who suffer the most pain.

Gladious’ choice to take on an impossible Trial and the Lord Shield’s brush with death seemed to have become Iris’ tipping point. Its a behaviour he’s all too familiar within the Kingsglaive. With people reaching their threshold, they collapse as the cup spills over, the heart unable to contain anymore fear and helplessness. Even the brightest and most put together looking ones. Maybe them most of all.

“I’m sorry. This is so stupid.” Iris mumbles, wiping her eyes and muffling the last sniffles that escapes her.The girl starting to process her irrational behaviour it seems.

“Naw kid. Glad that you trust me enough to talk. Though running away from your safe house and hanging up on the Lord Shield is not great, I gotta admit there.” Libertus plops down, tired of squatting and pats the grassy patch, gesturing the teen to settle down. He pulls out a handkerchief of intricate Galahdian patterns and offers it to her.

Iris takes it with a soft thanks as she folds her arms and curls deeper into herself.

“What exactly happened? If you don’t mind me askin’?” 

“I had asked but daddy won’t even consider letting me join the frontlines to help. Even when I have been trained in combat since I was a kid. Not as much as Gladdy, but eventually I would enter the Crownsguard myself anyway. He is barely coping and I can see he’s struggling so clearly. Gladio has his hands full as Shield for Noctis and having to guard Lady Lunafreya. Yet all I am expected to do is stand on the sidelines like I’m nothing!” Iris begins, “I’m just tired of being treated like glass when my entire family is out there when clearly I can help! I am an Amicitia, am I not?”

Libertus hears her loud and clear. It resonates somewhere in Libertus that this is beyond some teenage rebellion. Its a need steaming from something deeper from within. 

How many times he himself had said a similar thing to his cousins going out to fight the Empire when they encroached on their shores? Or every time Nyx attempts to be a Hero out on the field to save everyone in their company? Or Crowe trying to do things her way stubbornly on the field, pushing herself into stasis every time. The baby glaives all being stubborn and destructive, doing things beyond them as they cope with their own hurts? 

How he himself threw his own being out there with no regards until he was so tired of all the futile fighting done up until the damn Treaty and the Fall? Libertus is a practical person to a fault, but for once since this chaos had begun, he finds himself daring to hope. For Eos, for his people, for himself. 

“To be fair, they are right. You are barely of enlistment age, Iris. Plus, you are Lord Amicitia’s youngest and only daughter. They all love you, Iris. Do not doubt that. Your life is priceless and should anything happen to you, your father and your brother will break apart.” Libertus slowly gives his perspective. Whether the girl listens or not is another thing.

Iris remains quiet, her eyes downcast and deathly still.

“I will admit I kinda didn’t think this through properly…You guys might be in trouble. I’m so sorry. ” Iris at least finally realises the consequences of her brashness and look sheepish. Which earns her a bark of laughter from the burly man.

“Ha! We’re already are. Although one disciplinary report and you still can’t beat the Nyx’s and his file is like what? 6 Lucian dictionaries tall?” Libertus jokingly laughs to himself in his own amusement before letting the conversation turn back with seriousness. “Damn right you didn’t. I won’t sugarcoat it for you, its damn stupid and reckless. But at least you realise it. Thats a step. So I still havta ask, did you just ran out with us just to prove a point?”

 Libertus is watching Iris carefully, though he suspect he knows the answer.

“No.Just.Well… I just don’t want to just sit around do nothing when I know I can do something.” Iris turns to him, stubborn defiance in her voice. ”…Are you guys going to send me back to Jared now?”

The Galahdian sighs heavily, feeling the tension on the back of his head tighten. Not that he is keeping count how many times he is doing that. He knows he will regret this and it has the potential to blow up in his face. Yet he also is familiar enough to know if he does not do what his gut feels right, Iris will just get herself into a deeper mess later. Not that she is not right now.

“If you wanna be a hellion, I honestly rather you do it with us and have people watching your back.” Libertus caves and considers the options and his life choices. He prays silently and hopes this would not bite him in the ass. Its obvious the young Amicitia girl will not stop if told no anyway.

Iris perks up cautiously. Libertus pauses, as he turns serious with what comes next.

“But I’m going to be serious, Iris, you MUST follow our commands. We’ll guide you and do the mission together. We can go clear out some daemons as per our mission. You get to prove your point and also a chance to prove yourself. Later you can take this as an experience or make your argument with Lord Amicitia or the King and whoever. I don’t know. But you will stick with us and please, your safety first. If not for me, for the rest of the Glaives’ sake.” 

“So, you’ll let me help? I can fight with you guys?” Iris starts carefully, sitting up with her back straightened, almost unbelieving.

“If I know the Captain well enough, he won’t agree to allow you with us on the field. But we sure as hell don’t have the luxury and time to send you back now either. However if shit gets real, I will be dragging you back with Jared and Talcott first thing without a word. I’m not risking shit. Not you, not any of my squad. You get me?” Libertus lays it down and Iris jumps up, her eyes, glittering and bright before making a textbook salute.

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Etro, please preserve him and his soul.

Libertus sighs for the nth time that evening and in an instant feels older by a decade.Questionable life choices aside, this is a whole other set of responsibility that is not part of his job. But looking at her cheerful smile all wide and hopeful, Libertus cannot find it in him to be annoyed to be honest. He really is too soft to be a soldier.

He also wonders wryly which will hit him faster? Discharge papers, or the Lord Shield’s blade?

——-

“WHAT THE FUCK LIBS?!”

Sure enough. Nyx personally is not okay with Iris out in the field and was very vocal about it. Libertus somewhat knows why too, considering Selena was barely 14 when she died in the Rebellion as a Muu’laris. However, the Kingsglaive Captain literally cannot do anything at the moment stuck with the Prince’s retinue. So for once the tables are turned with Nyx telling Libertus off in rapid Galah that has Minos, the only Galahdian apart from Libertus in the group, wincing with every word.

The burly Galahdian simply gestures for Sasha, the poor baby glaive, to let the comms run on its own. While the squad digs into a Malboro feast as a treat after a long night of tearing apart several daemon nests. 

Libertus had been firmly adamant in his stand and opinion as much as Nyx is. Its the truth that they need all the capable fighters on deck after losing Insomnia. Iris has already proven herself she is no pushover and combat wise, she is a damn good fighter. Petite but not fragile. Hell no. 

It is true that the girl is not supposed to be here for many reasons. Lucians do not operate on the same way as Galahdians in the way they view their warriors. That, on top of her current status as Lady of House Amicita. Captain Ulric declares this out of his hands and had gone straight to the King to intervene. He’s not risking the someone else’s only daughter, especially when the Marshal is not here either to call the shots on the Crownsguard’s end of things. This is also not a responsibility he is willing to throw onto his men with good conscience either.

It was a quiet morning when the King himself calls Iris personally. He remains silent as Iris speaks to him through the comms, polite and concise, firm but respectful, as per her station of high Lucian nobility. An impeccable image of a Lady of House Amicitia. After listening to the girl herself and considering Iris’ own choices, Regis relents. He puts out the command for Libertus and his Glaives to watch over Iris in official capacity of training her. One royal decree later, their squad instantaneously gets a disciplinary warning each by Captain Ulric, Iris receives hers from the Head of the Crownsguard Lord Amicitia himself. Their Deputy alone gets three. Which makes Libertus huff at while his crew laugh as the situation finally settles.

Iris gives Libertus a hug, screaming with chains of happy ‘thank you‘ on repeat as they continue on their journey. The Galahdian is glad, even considering the trouble it earned him. It was worth it as he watch the young Crownsguard slowly blossom into a formidable warrior all on her own.

——-

The first time Iris kills a human imperial soldier, Libertus stays by her side throughout the rest of the day. Much like how he did for Crowe and the baby glaives on their first stint. On another occasion in an ambush on one of their scouting trips, the crew all stay up and making sure her concussion does not turn into something worse. 

Between destinations, they all share old childhood stories comparing to each region they hail from. Favourite food, the weird snacks in different birthplaces. Families and memories of parents and cousins, and a mom Iris barely remembers. Small things that they find common ground and familiarity with. The glaives teaches her combat and run drills with her along the way as well as other essential military knowledge. There’s some sort of humour and pride among them that they are training a Crownsguard the Kingsglaives’ ways, let alone the Lord Shield’s daughter. Though let it be known that Amicitias definitely live up to their reputation. Iris’ skills are right on par with any soldier starting out.

When they finally meet at one of the hunters outposts, Crowe was surprised to find Iris fitting in comfortably with Libertus and the Glaives. The Deputy mage already fond of the young Amicitia after hearing about the fiasco along the grapevine, even more so after seeing her attitude and tenacity on the battlefield. 

They get on well. Too well. Crowe and Iris. The latter whom he had come to build a close friendship and becoming sort of another little sister he has come to care for. He certainly did not expect these two women he had come to cherish as much as his own family would end up hitting off so quickly as he watches carefully both Crowe and Iris lay waste to an Imperial Base alongside their fellow glaives. All of them running high on adrenaline.

Fate works in strange ways. If someone were to tell young Libertus years ago he would one day leave his broken Clan and ruined homeland, becoming one of the leaders of the Lucian military, he would laugh and tell you to take a walk. Gaining a clan sister and battle sister on the mainland in all but blood, one braiding his braids while the other cooking his family’s recipes surrounded by his kinsmen and comrades? The burly Galahdian would probably toss them into the Eastern Ocean immediately without a word.

Fate certainly is strange.

——-

[Kingsglaives Command Message Channel 3-1]

[Nyx 9:20am] where you at switch on the comms channel dumbass 

[Libs 9:21am] reporting back to C.C Base. y?

[Nyx 9:21am] Gladiolus is back and get ur ass ready since guessing we have a 3 way Amicitia family fight to break up later by the looks of things

[Nyx 9:21am] Quite ballsy lately eh big guy

[Libs 9:22am] STFU. Also btw, since i am getting dishonourably discharged then means i am no longer a deputy?

[Nyx 9:23am] [ √ message seen ]

———

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.

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Bonus:

Years later, at the Mainland Port before leaving for Galahd, Libertus will bid farewell to Lucis. After officially welcoming Crowe into his Clan as a sister. Though the woman had chosen to remain in Lucis as the new Captain of the Kingsglaive. While promises are made by a tearful Iris hugging him tight, crying like she did that night by the haven, though her tears now are for different reasons entirely. The Amicitia makes sure to keep in touch and promises that she would come visit the Galahdian once Galahd is ready, her treasured friend and mentor. 

As the ferry departs, the Galahdian lets his mind wander while watching the mainland become a speck in the horizon. Once without a purpose, often going along with the whims of the people around him. He realises he had eventually found his strength to stand his own ground, paving his way forward, becoming an entirely a different man he once envisioned unexpectedly. A good sort of different.

In the near future, when he would once again return to Insomnia, the Galahdian would instead be the one to ugly sob at Iris’ wedding. Well, thats another story of its own.

——-

art here

Song for this ficlet: FFXV OST Up For The Challenge

#ffxv #kingsglaive #everyone lives au #final fantasy xv #libertus ostium #iris amicitia #crowe altius #nyx is screaming somewhere in here #clarus amicitia too #i just realised it would be interesting to see the 3 interact #the lion the coeurl and the cub

[secret-engima]

This may have been someone else, but did you ever write about a dragon settling in Galahd named Tempesta? She basically stayed in an area near the Ulrics, and Nyx dragged Libertus to visit her. Then, when the Nifs attacked she wrecked them.

That was me! I- for the life of me do not remember what that AU is called. Lemme try to find it-.

Found it! It's called Rivers course my blood (my breath is thunder) verse.

#SE asks #swiftyue asks #Secret Engima Rambles #Rivers course my blood (my breath is thunder) verse

[sparklecryptid]

I was reading through the Royal Bastard AU tag, and I found the post where Ace mentions to Noctis that his mom would have liked him. Now I'm picturing Noctis time-traveling for some reason and he ends up on Galahd-and he does get to meet both her and Ace's Aunt Carly-but he's like 14 because of Weird Astral/Time-Travel Nonsense. At least Ardyn isn't there to laugh at him! (He thinks hopefully, knowing from Ace's tales of 'Uncle A' that he /will/ show up, somehow sensing the chaos from Niflheim)

*cackles loudly*

okay okay so Noctis is-

Is on an island, on an island he is VERY unfamiliar with. He’s on an island and he’s FOURTEEN AGAIN WHAT WHY when he runs into a very familiar group of people.

Oh no, Noctis thinks as he stares at his big brothers, Oh no.

Ace meanwhile is frozen at the sight of /what has to be Noctis fucking Lucis Caelum/ staring back at them.

‘Ace?’ Libertus asks, ‘You know this kid?’

Ace wheezes out a reply that might be ‘he’s my brother’ or ‘fuck’ Noctis honestly can’t tell which it is.

‘You don’t have a brother,’ Nyx says dryly, ‘Besides I’m sure any brother of yours wouldn’t be such an idiot to wander the jungle without a weapon.’

‘He’s an idiot,’ Ace says, ‘He gets it from our dad.’

‘Hey,’ Noctis protests, ‘Our dad is-’

‘An idiot,’ Ace finishes, ‘Completely.’

Noctis bristles, but then he remembers that Ace has never thought that Regis would ever accept him and some of that rage dissipates. 

‘Whatever,’ he says, ‘He’d like you, you know.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ Ace disagrees quickly, ‘How did you get here.’

‘Family bullshit.’

‘Sounds legit,’ Ace says, ‘I- guess you can stay with my family until we- get this sorted?’

#royal bastard au #and then he brings noctis home and katrina sighs and carly nearly falls over laughing #before phoning up Cor and asking if he's missing a prince #meanwhile katrina is just 'fuck at least this isn't another bastard' #'at least regis can somewhat keep it in his pants' #noctis is very awkward #but ace's family makes him feel welcome #and meanwhile ardyn's SOMETHING INTERESTING IS HAPPENING alarm went off #and hes on his way #skyshinigamialchemist

[amarabliss]

Galahdian Dreams (Nyx Ulric/Reader)

It’s Valentine’s Day and I have a whole new story in my head about Nyx…but I refuse to write it right now cause I want to finish Oaths and Hearts… so I will indulge a little for the sake of V-Day…

Synopsis: Your father was the king of Insomnia. He was good and just. You never thought you’d meet anyone like him after he was taken from the world. You Uncle Regis, has taken the throne and followed through on your father’s plans. It was good to see the city in capable hands. Enter Nyx Ulric, refugee, Glaive, fighter…how is it he can see all your secrets? He knows how to set you off and he’s promised to not let you go…(AU for sure, Regis wasn’t supposed to take the throne, and our lovely Nyx has more of a past then we thought…)

WARNING: Be aware, this may be triggering for those who deal with thoughts of suicide. If you need help please reach out. I love you, and no I will not let you go.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1-800-273-8255

“You will escort my niece from this point on. Do you understand, Nyx Ulric?” King Regis held his gaze at the young man before. 

Nyx’s eyes shifted just for a moment toward the former princess of Insomnia. She looked so sad and something in him stirred. He knew exactly how she felt in that moment. 

Her home was no longer her’s. Forced to change in order to survive. Orphaned…

“Of course, your Majesty. I will do as you command.” Nyx planted his hand over his heart and bowed.

“Good…it is important for a bodyguard to understand his charge. Y/N,” Regis turned to you placing a hand on your arm, “this is for the best, I hope you will cooperate so he may do his job properly.”

“Yes uncle…of course.” You spoke quietly before glancing at this Glaive, “I appreciate everything you’re doing…under the circumstances…”

“I wish I could have done more…Your father was a great king and you mother a loving queen…I know they would have done the same had they ever been in the position I am in now.” Regis sighed his features softening, “I do this because I love you…and I do not want the same fate to befall you. It is only by the Six you were not in that caravan…”

“I won’t trouble you, I promise.” You stared into his eyes as you forced a smile, but your eyes were cold and distant, “I will do what is necessary…your Majesty…”

Nyx eyes widen slightly as you turned stepping away from Regis. He’d never seen anyone just leave the King’s presence before without being dismissed. Granted he and his people had only been filtering into the city within the last year, thanks to Regis’ extended hand of help, so his knowledge of Insomnian royal protocol was next to none.

“Uh…” Nyx glanced at you as you passed him. He cleared his throat bowing to Regis, “Your Majesty…”

“Go with your charge Glaive…keep her safe.”  Regis’ eyes met Nyx’s directly as if to serve as a warning.

Nyx nodded once before turning briskly. He ran to catch up with you. He didn’t miss how you looked at him slightly irked by him placing an arm out to stop you, “Ma’am, I will go first.”

“As you see fit.” You took in a breath clenching your fists for a second.

He waved you out when he cleared the hallway and began following you down the many corridors, “Ma’am?”

“Yes?” You didn’t stop or look at him even for a second as he spoke to you.

“It would be a great benefit to know our destination.” He told you quickly, “So I can be better prepared…”

“You have nothing to worry about…” You looked at him finally pushing open a glass door, “We’re here.”

He hadn’t been to this part of the citadel before and he felt his mouth drop slightly as warm humid heat hit his face. A wide open greenhouse lay out before him. Colors of every kind sparkled from the flowers and leaves. It was winter in Insomnia, and this was…

“Are you going to stand there all day and gawk?” He looked over at you as you took off your cape hanging it up near some tools, “Or are you going to come in?”

“Forgive me ma’am…it…” He stopped as he shut the door to keep the heat inside.

“It what?” You asked as you tied an apron around you waist.

“Uh…” He tilted his head a little before he answered, “It reminds me of home, ma’am…”

You looked at him eyes flashing a little, “Like…Galahd?”

“Yes ma’am.”  He nodded stepping in slowly.

“Hm…my father would bring back specimens from all his trips…” You spoke softly as you pulled on a glove, “Perhaps there is some piece of Galahd here…you’re welcome to look.”

“Thank you…ma’am.” Your eyes met his for the first time. He swallowed a little unsure of how to proceed.

Finally, you walked up to him holding out your ungloved hand, “I have a name…it’s certainly not ma’am…Y/N  Lucis Caelum.”

He took your hand in his noting the softness of your skin, “Nyx Ulric.”

“Hm…” You shook his hand before letting it go, “Do you know plants?”

“Know? Uh, not particularly. No.” He shook his head as you walked back grabbing a watering can and a small handled carrier holding tools.

“Shame…I fear you’re going to be very bored.” You smiled, genuinely, and Nyx felt blessed to see it because it was lovely. Even if it did only last for a second.

“I learn fast…if it matters.” He sprinted to catch up with you as you walked through the garden, “I have a friend and we did know a thing or two about hops…”

“Hops? As in beer making?” You looked at him quzzically.

“Yes, ma’am…best brew of the capital…” He smiled and it slowly faded, “Well it was…”

You stopped and stared at him for a moment. You looked as if you had a thousand conversations you wanted to speak but not a single word made it past your lips. He could see such a strong wall behind your eyes. He understood it…

“Libertus had the green thumb.” He finally said to break the awkward tension, “I was more the face…”

“Ah…I see…” You nodded slowly turning from him silence falling again as you watered some plants. He shifted on the balls of his feet looking around the area. It was beautiful here and so unlike the rest of Insomnia. Here things felt alive.

“You can ask your questions if you like.” Your voice drew him back to the task at hand. You glanced over your shoulder, “But don’t expect it to be one sided.”

“…what happened?” He asked you seriously. A small breeze made the leaves sound like a wave as he watched you stand up stiffly.

You looked at him nose reddening from suppressed tears, “They were coming home from talks with…I think Lestallum…I don’t really remember…and a Nif hit squad bombed the caravan…”

“Why weren’t you with them?” He watched as it became a struggle to speak, “Y/N…why weren’t you with them? The Royal Family is supposed to travel together at all times…”

You took in a sharp breath, “…it was my birthday…and I stayed behind here with a friend and couple guards…I just….”

“You don’t have to say anymore…” Nyx took a step forward, “I understand.”

“Do you?” You looked up to his face an anger coming to your eyes.

“Yes…” He spoke straight faced, “You’re not the only one who’s lost people because of the Empire…you’re not the only one who’s lost a home because of it either…”

He watched as you took a step back looking at the ground, “This place…it’s all I have of my father anymore…He wasn’t a man who liked things.”

You went on taking off your glove before reaching out touch the leaves of a plant, “He liked to leave things behind…he wanted things to grow…”

“I’ve heard he was a kind king, that it was actually his idea to open the borders to us, Galahdians…” Nyx told you quietly, “I probably owe him my life, so it’s only fitting I protect yours.”

“For what it’s worth…” You whispered shutting your eyes, “which isn’t much anymore…”

“Whoa…” You looked at him as concern fell over his features, “Let’s make one thing clear, all life is sacred and created equally…Y/N, you’re not…”

“I’m tired…” You turned from him throwing the gloves in the box you carried as you walked away.

He stood there watching you for a moment before he followed you. Warning signs began signalling in his mind as he followed you all the way to your room. He stepped in clearing the room as his thoughts raced.

“All clear.” He stopped in front of you as you held the door.

“Thank you, you can go.” You waved for him to leave.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that ma’am.” Your eyes widened. Good you could still be surprised.

“Everything is clear…I don’t need your assistance any longer.” You told him quickly.

“No ma’am, there is a clear danger present.” Nyx stepped up to you leaning into your face becoming very serious, “I promised to protect you, that means even from yourself.”

You looked away from him shaking your head, “I have no intention…”

“Say it to my face.” His eyes narrowed in for the kill, “If you really mean it…say it to my face.”

The same emotional tells from before. Cold distant eyes full of a hurricane of self loathing. He knew that storm well, weathered it from time to time still himself, “I…”

“So…what…the plan was get a guard…a good one…” He reached up for the door pushing it closed, “Try to get them relaxed…disinterested in your hobbies…come back here…”

He moved across the room scanning everything until your eyes flickered toward the bookshelf. He walked over reaching for a decorated box as you spoke, “You have no right!”

He glared at you holding up the box from your reach. He turned reaching inside pulling out a pill bottle…one of many… He turned back clenching his jaw, “Well here…”

He shoved the box into your hands roughly making a few of the bottles fall out as he spoke, “You can do it, but I’m going to be right here to save you.”

Tears welled up into your eyes as your face reddened, “You don’t even know me!”

“I don’t need to know you to know that you’re hurting!” He shouted back at you, “I don’t need to know you to want to keep you safe!”

You let out a scream throwing the box at him. He shielding his head with is arm only lowering it when you looked him in the eye, “Get out!”

“No.” He flexed his hands as he shook his head, “I’m not going to leave you like this.”

“I don’t want you here!” You came up to pounding your fist into his chest, “Leave!”

“I won’t.” Six, he knew this pain. He knew this process and he wished someone had been there with him, “I won’t ever leave you like this.”

You screamed as tears pooled down your face. A years worth of holding it all in coming out all at once. You pushed him, punched him, and he just stood there until you couldn’t stand anymore. 

His arms wrapped around you as he helped you to the floor. You cried into his chest, wails of loss, of resentment and shame. He sighed rubbing your back slowly trying to help you find a steady breathing pattern again.

“Your ladyship!” Guards burst into the room no doubt alarmed by the commotion from a moment ago.

Nyx looked at them shielding you from the world as he pledged he would, “We’re fine here…”

#galahdian dreams #nyx ulric #nyx ulric reader #nyx ulric/reader #kingsglaive #glaive #ffxv imagine #ffxv #nyx ulric imagine #final fantasy xv #final fantasy xv imagine

[a-world-in-grey]

@secret-engima

Thinking about Sola’s Holy Fire in the Sunshine au, and-

-The first time the white flames make a public appearance is when Sola, Ravus, and Loqi demolish the Niflheim outpost and kill Caligo. There aren’t any survivors to report what exactly happened, but Sola’s destruction is in no way subtle. 

-Niflheim wonders if Regis snuck out of Insomnia to burn the place down. They hope it is, because they at least they can keep an eye on the king, but if the Kingsglaive have come up with a new fire spell that can do that... well, they might have problems.

-Lucis on the other hand is equally baffled, if not as worried. Oh, there’s some worry, given there’s an unknown person or group running around capable of such destruction. Because the fires burned for three days straight, and they burned white until they sputtered out into ashes.

-The Galahdians are a Dread. Because white fire? 

-Galahd has Tales of white fire. There are Reasons why the color white means Purity, specifically the purity of destroying everything, of leaving nothing but ash. 

-There is a Reason Galahdian art always depicts Ifrit in white.

-The next time Sola blatantly uses the Holy Fire is to heal Titus. Titus knows the process will involve fire, Sola briefed him on how the process worked beforehand so she didn’t have to worry about Titus trying to kill her in a panic. 

-But the glaives do not know, and so those watching the procedure - taking place in an outdoor courtyard of the Glaive outpost because fire - have no warning when Sola places a hand on Titus’ chest and fire roars.

-White fire, in a firestorm ten feet wide and twenty high, so bright and hot that those watching have to turn and shield their faces. Even as panic sends adrenaline through their veins and their hearts to their throats, because that’s their Captain in the middle of that!

-Several glaives have to hold their more reckless fellows back. Crowe and Libertus nearly tackle Nyx to keep him from leaping into the blaze. They wait, ten seconds, twenty, thirty, a full minute. Thinking of the fire that destroyed the Niflheim base and left nothing behind.

-Thinking of all the Tales of Ifrit and his Blessed.

-The fire dies, and... Captain is there. On his knees, clothing turned to ash, and still upright only due to Sola holding him up even as she tugs the blanket she’d dropped near her feet over Titus’ shivering form. The medics - Ioke Bellum and Delilah Ornata - surge forward. Ioke takes Titus’s weight and guides him back inside while Delilah lingers to speak with Sola.

-Not all the glaives watching swarm Sola once Delilah leaves. Only because the woman nominally in charge of their regiment - Pelagia Furia and even Tredd doesn’t piss off that particular relative - levels a glare at them and barks that the show’s over.

-Tredd and Nyx are able to near Sola, and Nyx immediately demands answers. Namely, what the Pyre was that?! Sola tiredly tells them that it was a Pyre. Tredd helps Loqi nudge Sola to the infirmary as well, because Tredd’s well aware of what magical exhaustion looks like, and clearly whatever Sola did took a chunk out of her. Selena and Ravus stay behind to answer Nyx and Luche’s questions.

-The next time the Holy Fire comes out is against Titan, which means all of the Kingsglaive know what Sola and Co were doing the moment the reports come in the day after. Tredd and Nyx want to strangle Sola and Selena respectively. Luche and Libertus have no sympathy for their Idiots.

-Later, Tredd asks why Titus lost his clothes while Sola didn’t. And Sola explains that the Holy Fire destroys everything that the person doesn’t consider part of them. It’s where the legends of Solheim burning people alive come from. People who were sick would step into the Pyres, and since diseases are always considered as ‘not me’, the Holy Fire would destroy the disease while leaving the person unscathed. Clothes? Not so much.

-Tredd says that explains Titus. Not Sola. Sola rolls her eyes and says that she makes almost all of her clothes. When you create something, you put part of yourself into that creation. Therefore, everything she makes is part of herself. Tredd eyes Sola and says that is the dumbest technicality he’s ever heard. Sola rolls her eyes and says that it’s not a technicality. Words alone aren’t enough - magic is will and belief. Sola had to truly believe it before she stopped burning her clothes. It’s why she took her boots off - she buys those. And she already had to replace her leather jacket. And she liked that jacket, dammit.

#Sunshine Never Stops au #ffxv #Sola Lucis Caelum #Alata Mederi #Titus Drautos #Tredd Furia #Nyx Ulric #Selena Ulric #Ravus Nox Fleuret #Loqi Tummelt #Kingsglaive #Tredd and Selena will always associate white with destruction #it will never be a happy color #but eventually it won't be so bad #because sometimes the only solution is destruction #so that what comes after has a chance to thrive #Galahd has a color for every Astral #Ifrit is white #haven't figured out the others quite yet #that'll be another post

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Heya! I absolutely adore your CorNyx aus and fics, especially HoT. The culture of the Galahkari is fascinating and Lucian's learning about it is my favourite part of your stories. I was wondering what your inspiration is for the world building? Also are there any tips you have for creating authentic feeling cultures?

paefhsldjvb

Thank you Anon! <3

I have tons of fun writing exactly that. XD

You know, those are two very difficult questions for me because I'm never sure how to answer them. But I shall do my best:

Doing worldbuilding for a fanfiction can be harder and simpler than starting from scratch at the same time. On one hand someone already did the groundwork and you can overwrite them how you want. On the other you need to make sure what you do doesn't clash (too much) with the already existing information.

If we look at Galahd, there is hadly any information at all. So we are in the unique position in the fandom to practically start from scratch where Galahd is concerned.

I started the worldbuilding process for Galahd very early. Like during the first half year the game was out early. There was barely anything known about Galahd at the time.

It's a group of islands (location unknown)

It has a river

It looks like it might be a jungle or something like that

Nyx and Libertus are from there

Galahdians (or at least the men) wear tattoos and braids

They aren't well liked in Insomnia

And that was basically it. Not much to go on, right? But with this information - sparce at it might be - you can start asking questions. 'How?' and 'why?' and 'what?' I treat it like a logic puzzle.

Galahd is a group of islands. So it stands to reason they eat a lot of fish and sea fruits. Which means they need fishermen. Those fishermen need boats, so you need people who make them. And those boats are made out of wood, so you need a lot of trees and people who cut them. This checks out because Galahd looks jungl-y in that one pic we have of it.

A lot of information/ideas I drew from fanon. Like that Galahdians are good hunters, or that the braids are important. And then I took these bits of information and started asking questions again.

There is a lot of tweaking involved and it's a very fluid process. I'm sorry if this isn't of much help.

Inspiration wise, I do my best to not draw from one real life culture specifically. One reason being that the only culture I really know is my own, and I don't want to do the others injustice. But I am taking bits and pieces here and there, if they fit with the information I already have.

Like Galahds tradition of oral history. The method how they tell the stories is inspired by the Ancient Greek storytelling tradition. Specifically Homer. Now, I'm no poet, so what I write aren't poems, but I like to think that there's a rythm to the Galahkari stories. I certainly drew the use of epithets from Homer. (I should add that stories like the Odyssey and the Iliad come from a longstanding oral tradition and Homer was simply the one who wrote them down.)

I don't want for this to get too long, so I won't get too deep into the language(s), but here I picked a handful of real life languages and played scrabble with them. Sounds stupid, I know. That is how I got my first few words. Then I started to think about rules for pronounciation and started to inch away from the languages I used in the beginning and it started to become its own thing. (Honestly, this topic could very easily be its own post.)

Moving on:

There isn't a definite answer to how to construct a culture. And certainly only one right answer. Me personally, I start with the location and the topography when worldbuilding. Because this information heavily influences how the culture works. A desert culture is vastly different than on living in a European like climate. This informs how people dress, what they eat, their relationship to things like water and food. Climate and terrain also narrow down what animals there are and which ones humans might use as a food source or as pack animals.

Another big point is how the different cultures play off of each other. How do their rules clash? How might they be similar? How will they influence each other?

Let's take Galahd again.

Solheim is the starting point. It was an Empire spanning (most of) Eos. (Really, how big it was isn't quite clear to me when it comes to canon, but I headcanon that it spanned most of the Lucian continent and a second landmass that got destroyed in the Astral War.) So, it doesn't really matter if it was destroyed during the Astral War or if its destruction was the catalyt for the War. What is important is the fact that the Astrals were the ones who did it. A thing like that will create ripples.

Which is where the whole religion aspect comes in. It stands to reason that most of Eos worshipped the Astrals in one way or another because they are very real god-like beings. So when they destroy the ruling power of a large part of the planet there will be consequences.

Some people might think it's devine retribution, so they will get even more stringent in their faith. Others will lose faith in the beings who destroyed their livelihoods. This creates friction - conflict. One partly will immediately think the other wrong and maybe even blame them for what happened in the first place. (Religious conflicts are ambudand in our history, so there is lots of inspiration to draw from. Though, again, I specifically chose not one specific example.)

The Galahkari were formed from the people who lost their faith in the Astrals, and as a result of that, were persecuted for it. They could not stay in one place for long, so they became nomads. And a some years later the islands of Galahd were discovered and most of the people emmigrated there to be safe.

And this informs the very basis of the Galahdian culture and how they move forward as a people.

You see where this is going? One action snowballing into another. And always there is the question: What are the consequences of this?

I hope this was helpful. Seeing as it went all over the place without much of a structure. If something isn't clear, feel free to ask anytime.

#ask #anonymous #ffxv #galahd #worldbuilding #headcanons #galahdian culture #eos #history of eos #history of galahd #religion #geist answers #or tries to at least

[angelrider13]

Alright, so this is not what’s going to happen in the actual fic (probably - who knows really, I haven’t even gotten to the part where Ardyn comes in yet), but then @hamelin-born said mer!Regis and mer!Clarus and my brain when down that rabbit hole and ran with it. So. Have 3400 words of snippets and a bunch of half-thought out scenes that I pieced together to make a sort of fic for an AU of an AU that is all hamelin-born’s fault. How very dare you.

(P.S. This isn’t edited at all, but I wrote so many words and I am tired now and I wish to share them.)

May also interest: @sparklecryptid, @theperidotshade, @charlottedabookworm, @starofthemourning

“Tidemother, by the oath I yet keep, I hereby petition you to make good on the favor you once promised me!”

The sound of waves breaking echos in his ears and Nyx sucks in a breath at the rumbling laughter inside his head.

“Storm-caller,” Leviathan greets, and Nyx can almost feel the smile in her voice, “What need have you of me?”

And Nyx remembers her words, from what seems like lifetimes ago, warnings about a threat to his King. And all he can think of is Regis’s life being snuffed out, the Wall crumbling, Insomnia a ruin, and Lady Lunafreya, who is brave and determined even in the face of death, who stands beside him now with questions in her eyes.

“The King,” he says, “He’s in danger. Niflheim set a trap and we walked right into it.”

He feels her pause in the back of his mind. “Oh? And what of the people?”

Nyx is reaching along his bond with the Fulgarian before she’s even finished, a wordless plea. The sky clouds over almost immediately and lighting flashes as thunder rumbles overhead.

“You promised aid against a threat to my King,” he replies, “Leave the people in the hands of your brother.”

Leviathan’s laugh sounds like the rushing tide. “They are very good hands. Very well, storm-child, to your King I will go.”

He feels her retreat from his mind and forces himself to shake of the sudden feeling of emptiness it leaves in his chest. He opens his eyes, sees Lady Lunafreya staring at him.

“We need to move,” he tells her.

She nods and he sees her push back her questions, expression firming. “How long until we can reach the Citadel?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe five if we push.”

“Push,” she demands.

“Five minutes it is.”

Glauca is a terror, monster on the battlefield that they had trouble matching, one that already had royal blood staining his hands. Regis knows that he is next on the list. Years ago, Regis knows that he could have taken him. But now, after years of holding the Wall up, of gifting magic to an army, of his body slowly bowing under the weight of the Crystal, Regis knows he won’t win. Even with Clarus by his side, he knows the best he can do is buy time.

Perhaps if Cor were here - but no. Reigs knows Cor is a formidable warrior and a dear friend and he had him posted to the outskirts of the city for a reason. One of them should make it out of this alive and Noctis (oh, his boy, his son, his light, how he wishes they’d had more time) will need guidance, someone to lean on during his coming trials. Regis just hopes Cor forgives him for forcing him to outlive another King.

His magic is harder to call on than he remembers, his armiger harder still. Glauca is strong as he’s ever been while Regis has only weakened, run down by his own power. He sees Clarus attack from behind, sees Glauca go for his Shield’s throat. He feels dread claw at his chest; for all he knew this was coming, what would happen the moment he let Niflheim within the Wall, he still feels that same cloying, helpless fear because there is nothing he can do to stop this and all he can think is I’m so sorry, Clarus, please -

And then everything stops.

Regis blinks, unsure what he is seeing. There is a woman. A woman with dark hair and tan skin and bright, glowing gold eyes standing between Glauca and Clarus when he is quite certain she wasn’t there before. One of her hands, small and thin and oh so delicate, is on the armored giant’s wrist, halting him.

“That is quite enough of that, kingslayer,” she says, voice echoing through the room, far larger than her small frame. Glauca tries to pull his hand back but the woman’s hold doesn’t so much as twitch. She smiles, showing far too many, inhumanly pointed, teeth. “Shield, to your King.”

Clarus starts at the attention, but is quick to pick up his sword and return to his side.

“Do you know her?” his friend asks in a hushed voice, eyes never straying from her and the general even as he takes his place by Regis’s side once more.

“No,” he answers, just as silent, even as something tugs at the back of his mind, something familiar about the way her voice is more, something he’s heard before but can’t quite remember where.

Glauca raises his blade, ready to strike the woman down, but she catches that too. The blade slices into her palm as she catches it, but she holds fast, smile never wavering, and in a motion too quick for Regis to follow, she flings the sword to one side of the room and the fearsome general to the other. He lands with a loud crash and there is a moment of stunned silence.

“Who are you?” Glauca demands as he pulls himself to his feet.

“I am the Unbound. I am Change, Tragedy, and Hope. I am Mother to the Drowned, the Broken, the Forgotten. I am She who controls the Tide,” she says, “You move against the storm-caller’s King.”

It is not a question. And the way she plants herself between them and the general makes her stance on the matter quite clear.

“Come, little changeling,” she calls, arms spread wide.

General Glauca charges.

Nyx rushes into the signing room, Lady Lunafreya hot on his heels, only to pause at the scene that greets him. The room is a complete shambles, bodies strewn about, MTs crumpled on the ground, windows shattered, pillars knocked over. It looks like a hurricane hit the room.

General Glauca is locked in combat with a woman he’s never seen before, but she meets him blow for blow, always keeping herself between the metal monster and the King.

“Your Majesty,” Lady Lunafreya calls as she rushes over to them, and Nyx shadows her across the room, kukri in hand.

“Lunafreya,” Regis breathes, relief in his eyes, “Sir Ulric. It is good to see you safe.”

“Relatively speaking,” Nyx quips. Lord Amicitia scoffs and Nyx shoots him a grin. “We need to move, Your Majesty.”

The King nods and leads them to an elevator hidden from view as Nyx and Lord Amicitia keep watch on the battle.

“I don’t suppose you know her?” the Shield asks.

“Nope,” he answers even as he sends a question down his bond with Ramuh. He feels the Old Man’s amusement in answer and that’s really all the explanation he needs. Galahd had been home to the Seaborne and their Mother was well known - the shapeshifting isn’t a surprise. “But I think it’s safe to say she’s with us on this one.”

Thalassa walks through the Citadel, blood coating her arms, dripping from her fingers. Niflheim made their weapon well, but Glauca, for all his strength, had grown too comfortable with his might. She’d ripped away his armor, revealing the mortal man beneath. She made sure to look him in the eyes as her hands closed around his heart.

Perhaps your next life will be kinder, change-child.

The years have not been kind to the Crystal. Humanity has always praised it for its bright light and this generation is no different. But if they could have seen the Crystal when it had first been stolen, when it was new to humanity - Thalassa wonders if they would still claim such a thing. To her eyes, the Crystal is dim, a shadow of what it once was, it’s light waning after so long away from its proper home. Bahamut’s chains have hurt the Crystal just as much as humanity, she can see them, feel the way the Draconian’s presence lingers in the room. He visits here often, resides in Eos’s very Heart as if he owns it. She stomach turns at the thought of such an invasion and Bahamut should count himself luck that he has picked this moment to be elsewhere.

She presses bloodied hands to the Crystal’s surface and it pulses weakly at her touch.

“Soon, Dawn Mother,” she promises, “Soon this will end.”

“Well isn’t this a surprise.”

Thalassa feels a smile bloom across her face as she turns. “Ardyn.”

He tips his hat to her and gives her a shallow bow as he comes up to stand beside her. “Thalassa. To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you so far inland?”

She clicks her tongue. “If I told you that would spoil the fun, my heart.”

Her Chosen smirks at her. “Not even a hint for your favorite son, mother dearest?”

Thalassa laughs. “I’ve missed you, dear one,” she coos, leaning into his space. In this form, she is smaller than him, has to push up on her toes to press her cheek to his.

He leans into her, turns his face into her hair and she takes a moment to just breathe him in. It has been far longer than she would have liked since she last saw him, but she understands his distance. She is the sea, ever-changing, ever-shifting.  He has been frozen in time by the Draconian’s curse, still and stagnant as the world passes him by. She remembers his face when Maren passed and he still lived, when Eran aged and he did not. She will never force him to stay, to do anything, when it hurts him so.

“Not as bright as it once was,” Ardyn says when she pulls back, his expression carefully blank as he looks at the Crystal, old shadows in his eyes.

“No,” she agrees, “Eos suffers from the sword-master’s folly. Her Heart grows weaker, she is fading slowly. The time of the Prophecy is upon us.”

“And the King of Kings shall lead all into the Dawn light,” her Chosen drawls, his bitterness well hidden to all but her.

“He is a child. Your brother was a fool who signed away his family’s freedom without realizing what he was doing.”

Ardyn merely hums.

“Do you pity him?”

“Do I pity a boy that was born to die for the arrogance of self-made gods?”

He lets the question hang and Thalassa does not push. Her Chosen is angry about many things - has the right to be angry - and not all of them are the same things that make rage burn in her blood. But he is also tired down to his bones and she aches to see the exhaustion in eyes every time they see each other.

“Are you here to claim Eos’s Heart for the Emperor?”

Ardyn sighs. “Iedolas wishes to see his prize,” he says with a roll of his eyes, “And good Chancellor that I am, I am here to see it done.”

She frowns. “I dislike his presumed ownership of you. You are mine. You are of the sea and no one can chain you.”

“Fear not, my dear, he’s only a means to an end. The Draconian and the Glacian were quite insistent on an adversary for their Crystal Kings, after all, and Niflheim’s Emperors of late have been highly susceptible to their own greed.” Her Chosen sneers as he speaks, gold eyes flashing.

“Dragons and sprites are meddlesome creatures,” she says, “It would be shame if something were to happen to the Emperor’s prize.”

Ardyn flashes her an amused smile. “Getting lost at sea, perhaps?”

When Thalassa grins at him, it’s all teeth.

It takes two days for the skies to clear.

Insomnia is behind them, a smoking ruin, the Wall long fallen, the people scattered. Clarus places a hand on his shoulder when he looks back again. Regis forces himself to face forward and steels himself - he can’t look back. There’s nothing he can do. Insomina has fallen. He’d known it would fall from the moment the treaty was offered and yet the knowledge is nothing compared to the reality.

Lunafreya has yet to let go of his hand. Her eyes are too understanding for one so young, but she was there when Fenestala Manor burned. She too, knows the burden of having failed the people.

“We need a plan,” Clarus says.

Sir Ulric rolls his shoulders, exhaustion clearly weighing him down. “I’m open to suggestions,” he says wearily.

“We should make for the Disc of Cauthess,” Lunafreya says, “Noctis will need the Covenants and the Archaean’s resting place is the closest.”

Sir Ulric looks at her with an expression Regis can’t quite decipher - something between disbelief and resignation if he has to guess. “You may want to rethink that, Princess,” he says, nodding to the side.

Regis turns and sucks in a surprised breath at the sight of the woman that had saved him and Clarus crouched upon the rocks. There is blood on her hands and splattered across her face and she seems indifferent to that fact. Her glowing eyes focus in on Sir Ulric.

“Storm-child,” she greets.

Regis blinks, mind flashing back to her words to Glauca, and turns to Sir Ulric.

The Glaive nods. “Tidemother,” he returns.

Lunafreya sucks in a startled breath next to him and he feels Clarus go tense in surprise. His own shock making his mind go blank for a moment. There are stories passed down by his family line, warnings really. It is well known by those with Lucis Caelum blood that Leviathan has no love for their line. And yet she came to his aid, apparently at nothing more than the request of Sir Ulric.

Regis freezes when bright gold eyes turn to him.

“Crystal King,” she says.

He bows his head. “Leviathan.”

She stands, unfolding her body with an eerie grace, and climbs down the stone face with ease. Lunafreya steps forward as she approaches them, hands folded neatly before her, back straight and head held high even as she bows before the Astral.

“Tidemother,” she says, “Goddess of the Seas, I thank you for your aid. I am Lunafre-”

“I know who you are, little Oracle,” Leviathan cuts in, eying the young woman with cool disinterest, “And I know what you seek. My answer is no.”

And the Leviathan turns away, a complete dismissal even as Lunafreya goes rigid.

“The time of the Draconian’s Prophecy is upon us, Crystal King. You know what this means.”

Regis does. He’s known for a long time what it’s meant. He closes his eyes, allows himself a brief moment to grieve, to remember, to regret, before he forces it all back behind crystal walls. Her removes the Ring from his finger, takes Lunafreya’s hand and gentle places it in her palm. She blinks as he closes her fingers around it.

“What?” she asks softly, before understanding lights in her eyes, quickly followed by alarm, “Your Majesty, no!”

He smiles at her, soft and sad, aching for the burden she carries. She’s young, far too young, to hold such a weight. And yet she’s carried it with grace and poise of one far beyond her years. “We all have our roles to play, my dear. This one is mine. My only wish is for you and Noctis to be happy,” he says, even though he knows that whatever happiness they achieve will fleeting at best.

“Sir Ulric,” he says, turning to the glaive, “I would ask that you escort Lady Lunafreya on her journey.”

Sir Ulric rests a fist over his heart and bows his head. “As long as she will have me, Your Majesty, she will have my blade.”

Lunafreya makes as if to grab him as he steps past her, but Sir Ulric is quick to catch her hand and pull her back. She goes slack in his grip and Regis wishes he could do something to erase the horrified resignation in her eyes.

“I am ready,” he says, meeting the Tidemother’s eyes.

She cocks her head to the side, observing him. “So quick you are, to surrender to your fate,” she says, gaze flickering over to something behind him.

Before he can turn, he feels a hand land on his shoulder and knows without looking who it belongs to.

“Clarus,” he begins.

“I am your Shield, your brother. Where you go, I go,” he says firmly, squeezing his shoulder in understanding of all that is left unsaid. The kids will be fine; they have each other. I will not leave you.

Leviathan laughs, the sound rough and wild even though the smile on her face is oddly gentle. “Very well, Shield,” she says.

She pauses for a moment gaze flickering over to the younger two of their group. “Peace, storm-child. We will all meet again soon.”

He only has a moment to catch the flicker of understanding in Sir Ulric’s eyes before the sound of rushing water fills his ears.

Then nothing.

Clarus doesn’t expect to wake up again.

To be honest, he expected to die the moment he and Regis realized what the treaty with Niflheim meant.

And yet here he is, alive and awake and in one piece, with his King standing next to him as they both eye the Astral before them. Her appearance has changed, not to the serpent of lore, but a creature of some kind. She still wears the shape of a woman, but her legs have been replaced by a long, serpentine tail. Her fingers have become claws, her skin is now a blue-gray color and spots scales, her hair sea green.

“What is this?” Regis asks warily, gesturing to there surroundings.

She quirks an amused smile at them from her place in the surf. “A beach, little King.”

Clarus sees his friend physically stop himself from rolling his eyes and steps in before he can say something unadvised to an actual goddess. “Why have you brought us here? We thought...”

“I know what you thought,” she says idly, tail swaying lazily through the shallow waves, “But I never claim I was going to do anything. You assumed.”

Regis’s eyes narrow. “You said the time of the Prophecy was upon us.”

“Bahamut’s Prophecy,” she corrects, “I have nothing to do with that farce.”

Regis blinks, taken aback and Clarus feels similarly bewildered. The Prophecy of the Chosen King has been around for thousands of years, held in faith by generations, and here one of the Astrals sits, calling it a farce.

A Prophecy that decreed the death of his Prince since the time of his birth. Clarus still remembers the haunted look in Regis’s eyes when his son was all of five years old and declared a sacrifice for the good of Eos. Regis learned how to smile again, how to laugh, but that haunted look never really left. He just got better at hiding it.

And now a being that is said to be a proponent of the very thing that means his son’s death is claiming it false.

“Explain,” Regis demands, eyes hard, hands coiled into fists at his side.

Leviathan raises a brow at his tone, but she seems more amused than anything. “So ready to die were you but a moment ago,” she says, “But now there is a tempest in your eyes. Have you changed your mind, little King?”

“The Draconian has long claimed my son as his Chosen King,” his King explains and Clarus can here the storm roiling beneath his words, “And yet you, one of the Six, denounce the very Prophecy you gave us. Which is the truth?”

Her amused smile has fallen, something almost like anger simmering in her eyes and Clarus places a hand on Regis’s elbow, ready to pull him back.

“The sword-master created the Prophecy. He bound the Six to it, but do not make the mistake of thinking that means we all believe it,” she says solemnly, “This Prophecy has taken much from me, Crystal King. I would see the Draconian’s work burn to ash before I would demand the life of your child.”

Clarus sucks in a breath at the declaration and Regis goes completely still.

“The Prophecy is false,” Regis says blankly.

Leviathan tips her head in thought. “In a way. After the Astral War, the world was in ruins. Bahamut was desperate for a solution and in that desperation, he chained the world to an unnecessarily cruel fate. The Prophecy is true. But it does not need to be.”

Clarus narrows his eyes. “What does that mean?” he asks, “Does the Chosen King need to die to save the world or not?”

“The trap with prophecies,” she says thoughtfully as she moves out of the waves and up on the shore closer to them, “is that they require faith. They come to pass because people have faith that they will. How much faith do you place in the Prophecy?”

“That Prophecy has been a source of hope for thousands of years,” Clarus says slowly, eyeing Regis’s frown.

“That Prophecy told me my son was born to die when he was five years old,” he says flatly, “If there is another way to rid the world of the Starscourge, then I will gladly take it if it meant saving my son.”

“What would you give to change his fate?” Leviathan asks.

“Anything,” Regis answers immediately.

Clarus feels alarm shoot through him. “Regis-”

“That,” the Tidemother cuts in as she curls closer to them, “is a very dangerous answer to give, little one. Anything, you say? What if I demand the lives of your people?”

He sucks in a breath as the bottom of his stomach drops out at the shattered look on Regis’s face. He can see the hesitation, the guilt, because Regis knows the right choice. He knows it. But he is also aware of his own flaws and he loves his son more than anything. He knows the right choice, but he still considers.

“Regis,” Clarus says again, firmly, guilt and grief weighing down on his chest like a cold stone.

“Ah, there it is,” Leviathan murmurs, her voice almost kind, “Love is a fickle thing, selfish as it is selfless, cruel as it is kind. You would burn the world for it, perhaps, or grow a forest in a barren land. Be careful, child, for love that strong is as likely to destroy you as it is to heal you.”

Regis’s shoulders sag, ever so slightly, at her words. “I know.”

She hums, gold eyes glinting in the sun. “You are lucky that I am not as cruel as the sword-master. He was promised anything once and he took everything. The life of your son, the pain and suffering of your line, was a price your Founder was willing to pay for a throne and a crown.” She leans in, tail tightly coiled in the sand. “What would you give, child?”

Regis pauses this time, clearly turning her words over in his head. His King’s eyes flicker to him, the war in them clear. Clarus knows what his friend would give for his child - it is the same he would give for his own children and Clarus can’t begrudge him that. He tilts his head in agreement, in permission, and the tension in Regis’s shoulders eases, a brief, apologetic smile flashing across his face.

“I would give myself, Tidemother,” Regis says softly, firmly, as he turns back to the Astral, “I would give my life, my death, the very breath in my lungs and all the blood in my veins, to give my son a chance to live, to be happy.”

Leviathan pauses, something like surprise passing over her face, before she throws her head back and laughs. “Very well, little King.”

Before either of them can so much as blink, she lunges forward, wrapping Regis up in her arms, and presses her lips to his. Clarus loses himself for a moment in a shocked stupor before he registers the panic in Regis’s eyes, the way his hands are clawing at Leviathan’s skin. Alarm floods him and he tries to move forward, to do something, anything, to stop whatever is happening, only to find he can’t move. He looks down and finds the Tidemother’s tail wrapped firmly around him, keeping him in place.

“Regis!” he cries, trying and failing to pull himself free, heart in his throat as he watches his King’s struggles slowly dies out.

When Leviathan pulls away, Regis is still. His eyes are shu, his body slack, his chest absent of breath. A strangled sound tears itself out of Clarus’s throat as he strains forward, grief threatening to choke him. That’s his KIng, his brother, limp and lifeless in the arms of a goddess. His King, who he failed. His, King, who is dead, while he still breathes. He is the Shield - he was supposed to go first.

Leviathan seems unbothered by the whole affair, nosing along Regis’s jaw, his cheek.

“Breathe,” she whispers against his temple.

And to Clarus’s infinite shock, Regis does. He arches in her hold, eyes snapping open - bright, burning, gold bleeding into his irises as a gurgling sound escapes his lips. He turns in the Astral’s arms, chest heaving, and vomits water onto the sand.

Not a kiss, Clarus thinks with a numb, distant kind of horror, She was drowning him.

He watches as his King changes before his eyes, bone breaking and reforming, scales and claws and teeth growing in where there were none before.

When it is finished, Regis lays gasping in the Tidemother’s arms, looking very much like the creature whose shape she wears. She unwinds her tail and he wastes no time time stumbling forward, sinking to his knees next to them on the sand. Regis blinks up at him, dazed and confused, as Clarus takes his now clawed hand.

“What did you do?” he demands, uncaring if the sea goddess takes offense at his tone.

“He is mine now,” she replies, “As he offered to be.”

“Why?” he asks.

Leviathan shifts so that she can look into Regis’s eyes. “You are the Father of the Chosen King. You are aware of what this means?”

Clarus looks at Regis, sees that haunted gleam that he so hates come to the forefront.

“Yes,” Regis croaks, voice wrecked and shattered and heartbroken.

“The Lucii are souls without mortal shells,” Leviathan explains, “As long as you live, the Ring cannot claim you. As long as may waters shelter you, the Draconian’s Prophecy can’t touch you. As long as you are mine, there will be no need to strike the killing blow against your child.”

Clarus feels like he’s been thrown across the room by Glauca all over again so quickly is the breath knocked from his lungs. He hadn’t known that. Regis had never told him.

Regis goes limp, as if a great weight has been lifted from him and Clarus can’t even imagine what kind of burden carrying around that knowledge around for years was. He tries to think of it, of baring his blade against Gladiolus, against Iris, with the intent to kill.

“Oh, Regis,” he whispers, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Regis barks out a broken laugh and Clarus catches a glimpse of pointed teeth. “What kind of father thinks about having to kill his own son?” he asks, tears building in his eyes.

“The kind with his back against the wall and a god holding his hand to the damned blade!” Clarus snaps, his temper completely breaking under the weight of this last horrific detail.

“Listen to your Shield, little King,” Leviathan says kindly, gently, “He speaks true.”

Regis presses his lips together in a thin line, his only response to her words to tighten his hold on Clarus’s wrist, gold eyes flickering up to look at him before sliding away as if ashamed.

Clarus sighs, bringing his free hand up to squeeze the back of Regis’s neck. His skin is scaled there to, cool to the touch. “None of this is your fault,” he says firmly, “You’re role in it doesn’t change that. You were dealt a bad hand and you have made the most of it. I’m your Shield, Regis. Let me help you shoulder the burden.”

Regis blinks at him, naked surprise plain on his face.

“Oh,” he says softly, breathlessly, watching Clarus with wide eyes.

Clarus is baffled by the surprise. Sincere his words may have been, this is far from the first time he’s said them.

Leviathan laughs. “Your first lesson of the Sea, little love,” she coos, a smile on her lips, “It is possessive and protective in equal measure. It hoards its treasures close, hides them away in its waters. It feels strongly, deeply, and you can no more stop it than you can the Tide.”

“That would explain things,” Regis says, eyes still wide.

“Like?” Clarus asks, brow raised.

“Everything is so much...more now,” Regis explains brow furrowed, “It’s...a bit overwhelming, to be honest.”

“You will adjust,” Leviathan says, running a soothing hand through Regis’s hair, “Let your Shield do his job in the meantime.”

Regis hums thoughtfully, eyes suddenly going sharp and Clarus knows him well enough to brace himself. “He’ll have a hard time of it if I am in the water and he is not.”

Leviathan stills, eyeing his King shrewdly. “Aren’t you a clever little one,” she says, an amused smile pulling at her lips, “Have you a request to make of me, my child?”

Regis doesn’t say anything, but the question is clear in his eyes and Clarus almost rolls his own.

“He does not, my Lady,” he says, “But I do.”

“Oh?”

“You have taken my King into the shelter of your waters. I wish to follow him.”

Leviathan stares at him for a long moment.

“You are a proper Shield,” she says softly, wistfully, eyes distant, “to follow your King so. Very well.”

She leans forward and Clarus tilts his head to meet her kiss.

#sweat tears or the sea au #elri writes #my writing #most of this is just me thinking out loud worldbuilding and all that jazz working out kinks and such #this is all i have been working on the past few days #might build on this more later #regis lucis caelum #clarus amicitia #nyx ulric #lunafreya nox fleuret #leviathan #regis and thalassa have a chat later about somnus's stupidity #thalassa adopts regis and clarus #ardyn is out there somewhere sighing so loudly #SO LOUDLY #ardyn: thalassa you cannot adopt everyone you like #thalassa: WATCH ME #ardyn izunia #thalassa #soooooo many ideas for this verse #au of an au #seaborne verse

[jazzraft]

Inverse

Ships Nyx/Noctis

Words 2303

Rated Teen And Up Audiences

Summary Nyx Ulric, leader of Galahd, has just lost his kingdom to the conquest of Niflheim. Stranded in Lucis and unable to rescue his homeland from invaders, he seeks comfort in the safest place away from home he knows. A Lucian guard, with a shoulder to cry on and promises to reclaim his lover's throne.

Notes Written for @nyxnoct-secretsanta! It was my job to make a list and check it twice for @chalabrun, who wanted an AU either of the Omenverse, or a fateswap. I opted to go for a fateswap! I hope you enjoy and have a wonderful holiday season!

Also over on AO3, if you would like to swing on by and leave a comment!

“Nyx… Nyx. C’mon, don’t shut down on me now. Especially not now.”

Libs’s voice was a hundred leagues away, across the sea and choked out in the smoke clouds chuckling over Galahd.

The view of the islands from Insomnia’s eastern port – the sloping, slivered crest of home – always used to be his comfort on outreach missions to their sister city. He used to stay up late and stare out his window, secure across from the constant reflection of his kingdom, just one, stolen boat ride away. He used to press his fingertips to his lips in the darkness, and send kisses across the waves, promising his prompt return.

Now, there was no one left to catch his kisses. No quiet content of coastal domesticity to hear his promises. No home for him to keep them to. There was no returning to Galahd this time, not with the airships swarming like hornets through the smoke.

It all looked so small from this far away. Like he could just press his thumb to the horizon and smudge out the black stain; wipe the skies clean like it was all just an accident, like a child had spilled ink over the cliffs, and all Nyx needed to do was clear it away with the stroke of one finger for it all to be beautiful again.

“Nyx…”

“You sound like a broken record, Libs.”

“Oh, good! So he’s not deaf after all. I was beginning to think the shock had ripped up your eardrums.”

Nyx sliced a glare through him. He didn’t need to say a word for Libertus to drop his gaze in a grimace. He paced in and out of the hotel room, crisscrossing the open threshold to the balcony like a surgeon’s thread, stitching footsteps over the open wound bleeding between them.

“Not trying to joke around,” he said, raw with the grief none of them had any words to console. “I just can’t have you running off in your own head right now, Nyx.”

It wasn’t as if his head was a sweeter escape than that black sky, than that sea running red with the blood of his people as the sun set on Niflheim’s victory. His thoughts were blacker, redder, and so much more violent than the newsprint crumpled in a ball in the trash.

He hadn’t been there. The Nifs had waited for Galahd to be vulnerable, for her to never suspect; for a routine farewell to her guardian, just like a thousand trips before. They had waited for the mundanity of royal politics to lull Galahd into a false sense of security, for the pattern of the Ulrics’ annual antics to throw them off their rhythm of everyday life. An excursion to Lucis to revise trade agreements; brief, ordinary greetings with their neighbors that had become so second nature, Nyx never thought twice about what he was leaving behind when he set sail.

He kept telling himself that he should have known. He should have looked closer at the Empire’s stillness over the past year, unmoving from the last lines of their conquest, silent to all pleas for communication. He searched back through his memories and tried so hard to find the points where he’d been blind, tried to find a moment in time where he could blame himself for failing to see what they were planning.

But there was none. As much as he wanted to blame himself, hurt himself the same way Galahd was hurting now without him there to hold her together, there was no predicting the Empire’s assault. There were no warning signs, no clues as to their desire for the islands – why would they want them? They were on the edges of the map, they served little to no purpose for the Empire. But their usefulness didn’t matter to the Emperor. He just wanted the whole world, and he would not stop until every last scrap of land was pierced with a Niflheim flag.

A knock on the door had Libertus snapping up his blade, even after the coded pattern of knocks proved it was Crowe. “I brought friends,” she said through the door, and that only made Libertus clutch his weapon tighter.

Nyx dragged his gaze from the smoldering silhouette of his kingdom. He flexed cramped and clammy hands from gripping the handrail so tightly, and folded them behind his back in the resigned rest expected of a guest dignitary. He nodded for Libertus to let her in, and clasped the twin hilts of his hidden kukris behind his back.

It was hard to trust in “friends.” Crowe could be held at gunpoint on the other side of that door. Or perhaps Crowe had brought him some Niflheim couriers he could sate his revenge on. She was generous like that.

Crowe’s shrewd, brown eyes slicked over Libertus’s drawn weapon like a whetstone, sharpening the steel rather than shying away from it. She was just as hesitant to trust the Lucian companions she brought in with her as the two of them were. She was flanked by three, hooded figures, garbed in the shadowy blacks of Insomnia’s elite assassins.

“Lord Ulric,” the man in the middle greeted, crossing an arm over his chest and dropping to his knee. The other two guards followed in a mirror sync. “Condolences can’t even begin to express our shock and regret at what’s happened to Galahd.”

Nyx’s hands flexed around his kukris. No, condolences never would. Neither would thoughts or prayers or whatever political niceties passed for sympathy these days. But it wasn’t Cor Leonis he wanted to cleave in half for having no words to describe his grief. Nyx released his knives and nodded for the guards to stand.

“I don’t want condolences,” he said, meeting Cor’s hard, blue gaze over the half-mask designed to disguise the identities of the Lady of Lucis’s hand-picked guardians. He’d been escorted by these people more than enough times in his life to tell one from the other. “I want revenge, wrath on the Emperor. Unless you’ve brought me his still-beating heart for me to drive a knife through, I don’t want to hear it.”

Cor nodded in grave understanding. “Then you’re in the right place. My lady and you will have much to discuss once we escort you to the Citadel. She is eager to have you safe under her roof.”

Safety was a bitter offer to accept when his people were squashed beneath the Emperor’s boot, scorched and scattered and scared without him there to protect them. He should be across the sea, not sequestering himself in the cushy Citadel, so high above the war that not even the smoke could reach them.

“The sooner you meet with Lady Fleuret, the sooner we can make moves to take back Galahd.”

Nyx flickered a glance towards the guard who had spoken, forcing his eyes not to linger. The man’s cobalt stare pretended to be as hard as Cor’s, playing the part of the indifferent glaive, but Nyx could catch the softness around the edges; the cerulean sympathy which soothed Nyx’s rage like no one else could. He’d known he was there the moment he walked in with the others.

No mask could ever disguise Noctis from him.

“This shouldn’t have happened. If we’d known, I promise you, we would have been there.”

Breath shuddered from Nyx on one last, tearless sob, nodding against Noct’s shoulder. If he believed in nothing else – no one else – he believed in Noct, in the fierceness of his sincerity as he held Nyx. With trembling fists bunched in the collar of his shirt, in the braids of his hair, Noctis was ready to fight for him, on guard against invaders even now, in their safest, most private retreat from the scalding eyes of politics.

The Citadel was full of secret corridors and hidden alcoves, the whole palace a riddle for his thirteen-year-old self to solve when his mother thought he was old enough to attend the voyage. He always remembered the Citadel as an adventure, as something to look forward to in the summers, having marked and mapped each new door he’d discovered in the previous year in preparation for uncovering new ones.

But for the past few years, he’d looked forward to visiting Insomnia for a different secret. He no longer shared his private escapes from dull conferences with only silence. He no longer dreaded the claustrophobic narrows of the skyline as he came across the sea. Instead of smokestacks and steel on the horizon, he sailed towards the sweet serenity of blue eyes and black hair. His little knight in ebony armor, always there at the docks to greet him, always awaiting him in the shadowed chambers beneath the palace to welcome him back to Insomnia.

Nyx couldn’t wait to leave the conference room, the familiar cacophony of trade and economy now turned war council. He couldn’t wait to escape the smiles turned scowls, couldn’t wait to bury himself beneath the Citadel like the ashes of his kingdom across the sea. Catching Noct’s glance from the corners of the room where the guards were designated to watch had been a comfort, at least one thing left unsullied by Niflheim’s scourge.

Noctis found him in their place, in the forgotten shrine to a nameless god beneath the Citadel gardens, where the fountains leaked below to trickle tears down the statues, in lieu of the tears Nyx couldn’t seem to conjure himself. By the time Noctis appeared to offer him release, to give him the shield of his own body to break apart against where no one else could see, Nyx’s anger had dried all those tears up. All he had left were these plaintive, empty breaths smothered in Noct’s coat, the sigil of the Lucian guard branded into his cheek.

“You’re still here,” Noctis whispered, so soft that the cavernous chamber didn’t even catch the echo. “Even though I know you don’t want to be. But Libertus is here, and Crowe, and us, we’re all still here. That’s something at least, right?”

Nyx breathed out, grounding himself with the weight of Noctis in his lap, crushed around him in a protective embrace. He touched as much of his body against his as he could, each point of contact a word he couldn’t find to express the gravity of all Nyx had lost. He appreciated that. He appreciated feeling what he still had, holding it in his own hands, the tactile comfort of weight and warmth in his grasp. It made things more real than the nightmare in the distance. It almost made him feel like there was more good than bad.

“Yeah. That’s a lot,” Nyx said, drawing back just enough to face Noctis.

His throat tasted like a papercut, his hands cold in the small of Noct’s back. He knew he must have looked like a mess in Noct’s eyes, the untouchable Ulric chieftain brought down to splinter with the rest of the wreckage Niflheim left in its wake.

But Noct’s lip didn’t curl in revulsion. He didn’t turn his gaze away. He didn’t look at him in pity, didn’t reject him for his weakness like all the rest of the world was waiting to do. Didn’t glare at him through the camera lenses, waiting for him to crack under the pressure, for his unchallenged strength to falter now that the Empire had crippled him.

Noctis, the humble Lucian guard, the silent shadow of the Citadel which had crept into his heart like a summer night, just held his face in his hands and kissed wherever he could. Small, searing kisses meant to burn his promises for absolution against his skin.

“We’ll make this right,” he vowed. “Somehow. The Empire can’t win forever. We’ll teach them what it feels like to be afraid. We’ll take back everything, leave them with nothing but the ashes of the people they’ve taken from us.”

Nyx smiled, hollow. “You sound like an Ulric. Quite the impassioned politician.”

Noctis snorted, shaking his head and wrapping his arms back around Nyx to prop his chin on his head. “I’d never make it in politics. Don’t let you carry a sword around the office, for one.”

“A sword in the right place would solve all our problems,” Nyx sighed, imagining the Emperor skewered through with the blade of the Lucian guard. Yes, it would be easier. But it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be any different than what the Empire did to them, taking and taking more bloodshed until they were drowning in it. “What would you do, if you were in my place?”

Noctis inhaled above him, body stiffening with thought. He was careful with how he answered.

“I would do what my father always told me: Walk tall. Through whatever comes, I would stand and face it. No matter how hard it was. But I wouldn’t do it alone.”

He sat back again, cupping Nyx’s chin in his hand. His eyes were blue jets of flame in the darkness, glowering with conviction. Between these four walls where the world went still, where the war couldn’t reach, and the past slumbered around them, untouched by time, it was so easy to believe him.

“You’ll stand by me, little knight? Even if it isn’t your fight?”

“They made it my fight when they hurt you. No one messes with my big bad chief and gets away with it.”

Nyx chuckled at that, the first time he’d laughed since the headlines came in. Noctis smirked, victorious, like one laugh was half the battle in the whole war. Maybe it was. If they could hold onto hope when the Empire took everything else, then they’d already won.

Maybe he really would see dawn rise on Galahd again. With Noctis by his side.

#nyxnoct #noctnyx #noctis lucis caelum #nyx ulric #ffxv #final fantasy xv #kingsglaive #myfic #nyxnoct secretsanta #chalabrun

[crownsguardbar-kingsglaiveclub]

Written for May’s @polyshippingday​ prompt, “Vibrant”. It was going to be a short vignette, and then backstory happened.

Pelna/Crowe + Crowe/Luna focus, appearances by Nyx, Noctis, Loqi, Aranea and assorted others.

(For those of you coming from the #polyshippingday tag, hello! This is a Final Fantasy XV AU, and you can find out more about it on this blog’s main page :) )

The first time Crowe comes home with Luna's lipstick on her cheek, Pelna can't help but point it out.

"Oh shit, really?" Crowe closes the refridgerator where she'd been grabbing a beer, and peers into the shiny metal door. It's just reflective enough to show the smear of dark red across her cheekbone, and Crowe blanches. "Oh Six, Pel, I'm sorry." She runs for the bathroom to wash her face, and Pelna stares after her in amusement.

"I don't mind, you know," he tells her once she's back and they're both settled on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table and hers propped up on top of his. "That's kind of the point."

"I'm still not going to be that asshole that rubs your nose in it," Crowe counters, her cheeks pink for reasons that have nothing to do with lingering lipstick.

Pelna laughs, wrapping an arm around her to tug her closer, but lets the subject drop. The arrangement's still pretty new, him and Luna sharing Crowe like this, but Pelna's always been fairly laid back. Galahdians in general tend to be fairly laid back, about things like love and marriage and sharing space. Lucians, Insomnians in particular, seem ridiculously hung up on pinning everything down and giving it neat labels. Which honestly makes no sense, when you're trying to categorize something as complex as the human mind and heart.

Pelna is secure in the knowledge that Crowe loves him, and he loves her with his whole heart. They've been wrapped up in each other for years, since they were young together still back in Galahd, and it's grown into a comfortable, warm love. The feeling of Crowe's fingers laced together with his is the feeling of home.

Letting her go, sending her and Selena ahead to Insomnia to live with Libertus while he and Nyx stayed behind, rearguard of their old lives, had been one of the hardest things Pelna had ever done. But if anything, the year spent apart had strengthened their bond, and when he saw her again Crowe had grown up and blossomed, brighter and more vibrant than ever, full of the energy of the city. She'd always seemed a little too big for their sleepy islands.

And Pelna was amazed, when she lept into his arms, wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him, that after a year in Insomnia she'd still held a torch for him at all. He had missed her, so much, and was content to settle back into life among his family, which seemed to have expanded a bit.

Libertus had gotten a job at a bar that had welcomed him in, and welcomed Selena and Crowe just as warmly, and now seemed ready to pull Pelna and Nyx in too. Regis Caelum Amicitia made Pelna and Nyx the same offer he had the rest of them; employment and a place to stay while they found their footing in Insomnia. They both accepted, as the others had, and though after a few months Selena had moved on to dedicate her time to school, the rest of them stayed. The Crownsguard Bar had become their new home, the Caelum Amicitias welcomed them in and made them family.

When the Kingsglaive Club opened upstairs, Pelna, Crowe and Nyx were the founding staff. (Libertus couldn't have been pried out of the downstairs kitchen with a crowbar, nor did anyone want him to be.) Pelna is fairly certain he's straight, or at least he's never felt real attraction to much of anyone besides Crowe, but he is very comfortable with himself, and very comfortable with Nyx, brother and friend all together. He has no problems serving drinks in high-heeled boots and leather shorts, nor does he have any problems kissing Nyx full on the mouth to entertain customers and bring in the tips. Watching Crowe kissing Nyx for the same reasons elects no jealousy. That's just how things are, and at the end of the night it's Crowe and Pelna that go home together and peel each other out of their leather and fall asleep on the sofa.

When first Luna, then Noctis turn legal and start working upstairs, the dynamics change. Pelna isn't shy, but he isn't as comfortable around them. It takes a few months for all of them to learn each others' boundaries; Luna doesn't mind being touched by the men if it's part of the shows but she only lets Crowe and Cindy and Aranea kiss her, Noctis is lazy and easy and a damn good kisser but hates dancing and generally refuses to. Slowly they feel each other out, their strange sort of family drawing tight together again, until the night Noctis pinches Pelna's thigh on his way past and smirks when Pelna jumps, and Pelna knows they're going to be okay.

The Caelum Amicitias and half their staff might be Lucians, but they seem to have taken up the Galahdian attitude toward labels. (Or, as he gets to know Regis and Clarus and Cor, Pelna suspects they never cared for labels in the first place.) Life is good.

Pelna's always been the quiet one, the observant one, content to sit back with a cup of coffee and spectate on life. He sees the looks that Luna gives Crowe for a long time before Crowe notices them. Maybe Pelna saw them before Luna even noticed them. He waits, and watches, and starts to grow concerned that nothing is happening, until he remembers that Luna is Lucian (well, Tenebraen by birth, but raised Lucian), and Lucians have that stupid thing about monogamy.

So Pelna invites Luna out for dinner, and they have a very long, very enlightening conversation. Luna stares at him like he's opened a door to a magical wonderland, and he just laughs and holds up his hands as if he can fend off her awe. "It's still Crowe's decision. I'm just saying if you want to ask her out, I'm not a reason not to. I know she loves me, but I know she's got more love to give." He pauses, head tilting, watching Luna blush. "I also know she loves a lot more tit than what I've got."

And now it's several months beyond that, and they're starting to settle into a routine. Crowe bounces back and forth between the apartment she shares with Pelna and staying over at Luna's, and she's the happiest Pelna has ever seen her.

The only downside is work. Luna doesn't seem to know how to act around Pelna anymore, as though he's going to spontaneously turn into a jealous monster and forbid her from seeing Crowe if he so much as catches them holding hands. At the strip club where all three of them work. As though he could ever forbid Crowe from doing anything she wanted. For awhile he waits it out, trying to decide what, if anything, he should do about it. But it's the night Crowe comes home with lipstick on her cheek that gives him the idea.

The next time he and Luna and Crowe are all working the same shift at the Kingsglaive, Pelna packs several extra tubes of lipstick into his bag. Makeup is something he and Crowe don't share, though it's less for hygiene worries and more because with their wildly different skin tones they prefer very different colours. They change clothes at the club, and then all pile into the dressing room to do hair and makeup, their own or each others'. Pelna, Crowe, Luna and Noctis are working the floor tonight, serving drinks and teasing each other for tips, and Aranea's manning the bar. Loqi from the security team crams in with them at the last minute because he can never do his own eyeliner straight ("Big surprise," is Noctis' sarcastic comment) and wants his aunt - Aranea - to help him.

With all of them tripping over each other and laughing and trying to avoid getting caught in Noct's usual cloud of glitter hairspray, it's easy for Pelna to catch sight of Luna applying a coat of bright pink lipstick, precisely the same shade as the streaks in her hair. He smiles to himself and returns to his bag, rummaging around until he finds the one he's looking for. He leans over to steal a corner of mirror to apply the dark plum- coloured lipstick, and Crowe hums in appreciation.

"I like that colour on you," She smiles, and Pelna smiles back, and then leans over and very deliberately presses his lips to the sharp curve of her collarbone. He draws back to admire his handiwork and is pleased to find her blushing.

"I like it on you too." He smacks his lips deliberately at her, and grins. "Though I think the pink Luna's wearing will bring out your eyes more."

Crowe's eyes brighten in understanding. She leans in to press her forehead briefly against Pelna's - a gesture that'll always be more Galahdian than Lucian, trust and understanding and love - and then turns to duck under Loqi's flailing arms to grab Luna around the waist. Pelna leans against the wall and watches as Luna laughs and leans back into her, the two of them sharing a quick moment of quiet cuddling before they have to go out on the floor in six inch heels to serve drinks.

When Luna notices the perfectly pressed purple kiss on Crowe's collarbone, her look turns questioning. Crowe just grins and gestures to Pelna, who waves. For a moment Luna stares at him, looking hesitant, and he smiles and blows a kiss to her.

A determined look crosses Luna's pretty face, and then she's leaning up, pressing a kiss and a challenge bright pink on Crowe's throat.

Pelna grins, and when Luna pulls away from Crowe he maintains eye contact with her as he reapplies his lipstick.

(By the end of the night, Crowe's sides hurt from laughing at them, and almost every inch of her visible skin is covered in pink and purple kiss marks. Luna leaves the club with one perfect plum mark on the back of her hand, and Pelna with a bright pink mark on his cheek that clashes horribly with his skin.)

(And after that, they're okay.)

#polyshipping day #ffxv #crowe/pelna #crowe/luna #crowe altius #pelna khara #lunafreya nox fleuret #crownsguard/kingsglaive bar au