Chapter Text
Rough hands grip his jaw, and his mouth is forced open as callous fingers lock tightly over teeth. There is sharp iron and deep bitterness on his tongue, shocking his system back into awareness. On instinct his hands shoot up from where they lay limply at his side, dirtied nails digging uselessly into a grip that wouldn’t budge despite his best efforts. He hears what could be a laugh above and too close, hot breath spilling over his eyes.
“Where are your Gods now, I wonder.”
He looks up at the face of his downfall, his failure, and it looks back with open rapture framed by black Scourge and wild, dirtied burgundy. The words are heavy and dripping with poison, dousing the sorrow and panic that beats against his mind trying to convince him it wasn’t over yet. Blazing gold narrows to slits, Scourge spilling over and cascading down in rivulets of black. Suddenly the sting of something acrid melts together with the blood in his mouth. It’s light as it slides down his throat with ease, turning suffocating when it blocks his airways. He gags and coughs and tries to spit, but it’s all in vain. The hands holding him down are far too strong for his failing body, and soon his raised arms lose their vigour and his legs give out, falling against the other. A warmth wells up in his eyes, but he knows the horror is far too great to cry now. It’s the Scourge, rolling down his cheeks like cold, icy tears. The sole thing he was to banish from the earth was now making him its new host, invading and swallowing up the light within. He’s failed. The realisation hits him like a tidal wave, and he sobs brokenly through the spreading blackness. The burning excitement in Ardyn’s eyes shifts to something rueful for a moment, but he smiles a stained, vicious smile through it all the while.
“You poor thing.”
The words are barely heard over the rush in his ears, over the sickening fullness in his blood and bones. He feels that he’s choking, but with every attempted breath he only swallows more Scourge. He’s losing consciousness fast, but not fast enough to be spared from the shame and the guilt that wracks his being. The guilt overwhelms him much like the ichor in his veins as he thinks of his friends, fighting in earnest for him and for a dawn that would never break. He thinks of Luna and his father, whose sacrifices have all been for naught. He thinks of the Gods themselves, of his ancestors, how they must be watching him break in the very place he would arise as True King. Something snaps, vaguely distant like the rumble of thunder but vividly close like the whipcrack of a lightning strike. The air shifts, and it feels like the ground falls away from beneath, even as the twisted scenery of a ruined throne room remains. Ardyn feels it too, a flicker of surprise in his eyes and a twitch in his grip before he composes himself. Laughter fills the changed air. It sounds like the growling of thousands of daemons, beastly, horrid and loud. All Noctis can feel is a terrible sense of loss, and the Scourge is eager to fill the void that has opened up in him, rushing in like water. The blockage in his throat clears, but he can’t bring his lungs to breathe. He wants to sleep, to die from the shame that brings real, human tears to join the dripping Scourge. Finally, he feels his eyes roll back, and he closes them willingly. Ardyn has won. The Starscourge has won. He has failed, and there is some forgiving finality in accepting it. A darkness kinder than the Scourge takes him.
He doesn’t know when he wakes up again. The time before that is spent in a haze, a shroud of blackness in his vision that might be sleep or the Scourge. Sometimes he hears whispers, sometimes he hears screams. When he thinks he hears Prompto, Gladio, Ignis or even Luna, their voices rising and falling, he can do little else but listen. He awaits their approach and mourns their loss, but he’s never strong enough to ask them to stay. Sometimes he feels as though his limbs are being tugged on, held gently or with brutish force. He never whimpers or cries in pain or pleasure, and the touches are gone faster than he can think to react. Soon pain and misery become a distant memory, and through a narcotic darkness he prays he never has to remember.
When he wakes up again he remembers there is no one left to hear his prayers. He rouses slowly, feeling softness under him and a gentle caress against his cheek. His eyelids are stubbornly stuck together, but his dry lips part just enough to take in air. The taste of Scourge is still on his tongue, but the sour vileness is a known one, and it doesn’t startle him as much the second time around. Awareness comes back to him with every lungful, and soon enough he has the strength to pry open his eyes. Once open, the world is nothing but a blur, but there is light. His heart starts beating faster at the notion. The light becomes clearer, less dancing spots in his vision and more of a single, unmoving presence behind a shadow. The colours and shapes become more defined, shifting until he’s sure there’s a person sitting at his side. The thumb that gently rubs slow circles under his eye keeps him grounded as the world around him unfurls. White walls are awash with golden sunlight streaming in from a window he can’t see. He hears a pitched, warbled humming that sounds like birdsong and magic. The person’s features become more prominent as his eyes clear and he hears himself gasp in surprise. It’s Prompto, smiling softly. The amethyst in his eyes shimmer, and Noctis didn’t think he could miss the freckles on the other’s face before now. He calls out to him, but only feels himself mouth the other’s name with a slight wheeze.
“Shh,” Prompto hushes him, and Noctis obeys without protest.
Prompto lets his hand fall away, but this time Noctis doesn’t mourn the loss of touch. This time he knows it’s Prompto after all, not just a nameless, shapeless sensation to come and go. Prompto’s here, meaning he’s alive, and that he’s here to stay. There’s light, meaning the Night isn’t. It doesn’t make sense, and in the back of his mind Noctis feels confusion gnawing, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. A hand comes to rest atop his own lying prone and motionless at his side. He can feel its warmth, its weight, and he doesn’t think there’s anything as comforting as this left in the world. Noctis tries and succeeds in shifting his fingers slightly, giving the other his notice and appreciation of the touch. Prompto chuckles tiredly in response, and it sounds like everything good he’s had to abandon before the Crystal and the prophecy. It sounds like tranquil evenings at havens and long, rainy car rides, like drowsy mornings in his apartment and walking home together after school.
“Prompto,” he manages. It’s rasped and strained, but it’s there. There’s a smile pulling at his cheeks as he says it.
Prompto leans down, mesmerising, loving amethyst slightly hooded. Noctis meets his gaze with affection, chest swelling with relief when he feels the fragile press of lips against his own. His eyes flutter shut as the kiss deepens, and it’s over all too soon. He feels the other pull away, hears the creak of the bed frame and the shifting of fabric. He opens his eyes, more easily this time, and his plummeting heart skips a deafening beat. For a moment he considers closing his eyes and counting to five, ten, twenty, however long it would take for this horrible nightmare to pass. But try as he might, he can’t tear his horrified gaze away from the face that had shifted so suddenly into something just as familiar yet a thousand times more hated. He’s stunned into silence, but words dance on his tongue like bubbling poison. The Scourge in him surfaces like an extension of his rising anger. He can feel it swimming beneath his skin, feels it spilling over his widened eyes and from his parted lips. Prompto was never here. Ardyn’s mocking and human visage twists, laying his true likeness bare. Noctis hisses at him before he can stop himself, ignoring the Scourge underneath his tone as he tries moving his unwilling limbs to lash out. It doesn’t work, and Ardyn revels in his frustration as he grins with malice. The distant ringing of magic dissipates as the mirage of sunlight flickers and dies, and as though a curtain falls to hide the stage, darkness returns to the room. It melts together with the Scourge crawling up the walls, and Noctis isn’t sure if it’s his or Ardyn’s. The thought makes him sick, and the Scourge in him takes notice. It grows rabid, rebelling against its chassis. The first spike of pain lances through his chest, and it’s cold like the Glacian’s wrath and hot like Ifrit’s fire. It pulls and it pushes and he feels how it’s trying to change him from within, protesting against his restraining physiology. For a moment his frantic thoughts flit back to Ravus, mauled and changed by the plague that had festered in him up to the moment he was struck down. Horror dawns as he realises that might be how he meets his end.
“Ar…dyn.” When he speaks, it’s the Scourge that does so for him. It rattles his being, jerks at his unresponsive limbs.
“Release me,” he says, and he isn’t sure which part of him it comes from. He feels himself trying to cast out the blackness, while the Scourge thrashes against its wavering host. The hand at his side lifts up his own, and Noctis watches in anger and disgust how Ardyn presses a light kiss to his trembling fingers. The blackness on his lips smears against them, marking them.
When Ardyn pulls away the fire in his gaze sparks with twisted glee.
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, my dear Noct.” His mouth is stained with sickness, but his tone stays human.
“All there is left to do now is to wait and see how the King of Light falls from grace. Will you succumb to the Scourge, or will you watch yourself turn?”
Noctis takes one shuddering breath, and finds that he doesn’t actually need to breathe anymore.
“Why are you…?” His voice sounds inhuman, slightly slurred and growling like a beast trying to speak.
Ardyn’s face changes. The red of his hair becomes stained with black, swirling dust. The very air becomes thick with Scourge, and soon Noctis is looking up at two smouldering pits of molten gold brightly shining as though they were the only lights left in a dark, hopeless world. The rest of Ardyn had become as deeply black as the nightly sea. The hand being held grows colder and colder, sending shivers raking down his spine.
“We must endure,” says a voice that is ageless and all-powerful. It bounds against the walls of the room, the walls of his head, and even the screaming Scourge in Noctis seems small in comparison.
“Once, we were promised greatness by the Six through noble purpose, not unlike the one called Ardyn Lucis Caelum. We carried out their divine will, at great cost of our own. Yet at the time of our reward, our promise went unkept. Our trust was betrayed. Humanity, conspiring with those treacherous Gods, sought to expunge us from this earth. Your purpose, Oh King, was to bring an end to us, thereby wrongfully absolving the sins of the divine.”
The voice is booming, too loud as it drowns out everything else. It’s too much.
“Stop,” he tries in vain.
“Yet your incompetence,” it bellows on, “has ensured our path to greatness is born anew, to be heralded by our hand alone. We shall outlive the Gods themselves, and bring about a new age of everlasting Night.”
“Stop,” he begs.
“Die here, Noctis, or bear witness to the aftermath of your grave failing. Witness the reign of the Scourge.”
Blazing gold buries into his skull, its heat felt behind his own eyes even when he closes them in agony. He soon loses awareness, plagued by the thundering echo of the voice in his head. Somewhere in the dimming distance, his hand falls back to his side, and he falls with it into a deep, fitful sleep.