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King Regis tells Ignis himself, after the Crystal’s magic settles uneasy in his bones, after they escort Noctis back to his little-used childhood bedroom in the Citadel to sleep off the effort of connecting Ignis to the power of kings. Ignis struggles to stay in one spot with this new, electrifying power buzzing inside him.
“Noctis is the Chosen King,” Regis says. He wraps his hands carefully around the mug of tea that Ignis offers him and then inclines his head in familiar invitation for Ignis to take a seat.
Ignis takes the space across from him at the coffee table and laces his fingers together to keep them still. The title is vaguely familiar. “Your Majesty?”
“The Chosen King,” he repeats. “As foretold in the Cosmogony and long awaited by the line of Lucis.”
Ignis drops his gaze to his hands briefly, uncertain how to respond. The Cosmogony—he’s read it, of course, as part of his education in classical literature, but he is not a devout follower of the Hexatheon. He hadn’t thought the king was, either, for all that he and Noctis must participate in state-sanctioned festivals and the accompanying rituals. Ignis remembers very little about the prophecies regarding the Chosen King. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard King Regis reference the gods as a devout man would.
(He’s seen leaked footage of the Glacian’s fall to the Empire, of course, but even that—even proof that at least one of the Astrals did, indeed, exist, was not enough to move him to worship. Not when she was felled by human hands and creations.)
“The Crystal revealed it to me,” Regis continues, and Ignis looks up again. “Whether you believe in the Astrals or not, believe this: Noctis is the Chosen King, and he needs you and Gladiolus at his side.”
Ignis straightens a little more. “Gladio knows?”
“We told him once he officially became Noctis’s Shield. I trust you will follow his example of discretion.”
Gladio never breathed a word to him; this secret must be a closely guarded one. “Of course, Your Majesty.” A thought strikes him then, and after a second of indecision, Ignis presses on. “Does Noctis know?”
“Yes. Lady Lunafreya informed him when he went for healing in Tenebrae.”
Years, then. He is surprised that Noctis could keep a secret like that as a child, but after the Marilith and the raid on Fenestala Manor—
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, I haven’t kept up my study of the Cosmogony. What does this mean for Noctis?”
The ghost of something unnerving passes across Regis’s expression. Ignis has never seen its like before. “He will banish the darkness.”
Ignis drives Noctis home afterwards. At a stoplight, he glances back in the rearview mirror to catch Noctis slumped against the window, dozing off again, hair and ceremonial suit still rumpled from his earlier face-first drop into bed.
This is the Chosen King.
Sixteen and worn out from school and magic only he and his father can do, drifting off in the back seat like any other person his age might. Still gangly and a little awkward from his growth spurt that started in autumn and tailed off in winter. His tie is loose; the first buttons at his neck are undone. He does not look royal in this moment, like a person hand-picked by the gods. He looks like a teenager who had a long, tiring day.
Ignis never had reason before to care about destiny and the gods; the practicalities of the day-to-day life of a country at war and his training as the crown prince’s advisor had been enough for him.
Noct, as he is, is enough. He has the makings of a good king, of that Ignis is certain. But this—
Regis is not a king who is prone to irrationality, flights of fancy, or putting his trust in misguided places. If he says that Noctis is the prophesied king, then Ignis believes it. The knowledge is a precious thing, to be well guarded and carefully expanded.
Ignis gets Noctis into his apartment and calls Gladio on his hands-free device. Gladio answers almost immediately, as if he has been waiting all evening for his phone to ring. “Hey, Iggy.”
“Gladio,” he says as he pulls out of Noct’s parking garage. “What do you know of the prophecies?”
The Chosen King, the True King, the King of Kings—all vague, interchangeable titles so far as Ignis can tell. Gladio provided him with a neatly organized list, practically a bibliography, of books from the Citadel libraries that he had read during his own desire to understand more about Noct’s destiny. Unfortunately, as Gladio said before handing it over, the actual prophecies as contained in the Cosmogony were vague enough to maddening.
The real places to get lost were in the two millennia of commentary regarding the Cosmogony. Ignis reads everything he can get his hands on, and by the end of it knows far more than he cared to about the various religious councils that decided what, precisely, was kept and what got tossed out, the scandals and the bargaining and the surprising amount of politicking and murders that occurred in the centuries it took to finalize the canon.
He dives into the heretical next, and after that the work of more modern scholars, people who have devoted their academic or religious lives to the study of the Cosmogony and its creation. The most helpful is a paper by an Insomnia University professor forty years ago that outlines the similarities and differences between all known versions of the Cosmogony, whether or not they survived to the present day, and the age of the earliest known copy of each version.
It’s easier, then, to dismiss certain details as later mistranslations, outright errors, or straight inventions and hone in on things that are likely true, if such a thing can be said about two-thousand-year-old prophecy.
The king will banish the darkness. That phrase, or some derivative of it, exists in all versions. The general consensus is that it is a metaphor, but the debate of what the “darkness” is is as varied as the commentators. A fairly popular bit of speculation is the daemons themselves, though Ignis can’t imagine how that would work, even with the Crystal’s substantial magic. A few insist the darkness is the Starscourge, but they’re generally ridiculed as only the Oracle’s line has the power to cure it. Ignis considers the decades-long war between Niflheim and the rest of the world and thinks the end of that would be a worthy miracle.
Another commonality is that of a journey in the Oracle’s footsteps to gain the blessings of kings and gods. Gathering the Royal Arms is a Lucis Caelum tradition already, but the Oracle and the gods—that is not something that King Regis did so far as Ignis knows. How can the blessings of Shiva and Ifrit even be obtained, when both gods are dead, in living memory and in myth? And more practically, the Empire has a tight leash on the Lady Lunafreya. The journey itself has some popular stories, all variations of danger and adventure, some featuring creatures Ignis knows to be extinct. It is here that the most embellishment has been done, and Ignis doubts many of the details are particularly useful.
The final commonality are the Swordsworn, the Chosen King’s companions. Typically depicted and canonically accepted as three men, though a handful of times in heretical accounts there are four. None of them are named, and there are few distinguishing characteristics. They're almost exclusively referred to as a unit. One interesting bit of correlation is that whenever one of the Swordsworn is depicted as blind, it is only in a version that has three companions. There is little consensus about the blind companion; some versions insist disability, others injury, and still others lean heavily on metaphor for ignorance or pride.
If Noct’s place as the Chosen King is true prophecy, then it is obvious that Gladio is one of his Swordsworn. Gladio himself had said so when he handed over the list, with a shrug and a dry after two thousand years of our families being bound together by oaths, you really think that I’m not one of them? and Ignis had conceded the point.
He is a little more reluctant to entertain the idea that one of the Swordsworn might be him, yet every time he wants to scoff at the idea of prophecy, of his place in it, he circles back to the truth:
He swore an oath to protect Noctis, and he would rather die than break it. No matter the difficulties they had when Noctis first moved out of the Citadel, no matter the arguments they still get into, no matter how quickly Noctis can drive him to exasperation, if Noctis is to walk a dangerous path across the breadth of Eos, Ignis will be beside him.
For all his research, there is very little for Ignis to act upon. The Cosmogony simply isn’t detailed enough to be useful as a guide or a warning, even if Ignis were to place his trust in it entirely. He files the scant information away into the back of his mind and puts his focus on the present, not a future that may or may not come to pass. The routines of day-to-day life are enough to consume him entirely.
“Ignis?”
Ignis glances up from the kitchen table and the 100 yen coin he placed halfway across it. Pulling something directly from the Armiger and into his hand or doing the reverse was fairly easy to master, but he is having more difficulty dismissing something he isn’t touching so he can re-summon it. It is a skill that needs to become second nature if he is going to branch out into using throwing knives regularly during combat.
He was so focused he let his awareness of the room fade. Noct abandoned his comic book and got up off the couch without Ignis noticing, and now Noctis stands across from him, his lips pulled into a slight frown. Ignis tamps down his embarrassment at being caught off guard and redirects his attention. “Yes, Noctis?”
But Noctis doesn’t say anything right away. His shoulders are hunched, almost defensive, and he has his hands shoved in his pockets as if that isn’t an obvious tell that he’s steeling himself for something unpleasant. Ignis makes a mental note to remind him of that before the next Council meeting he attends. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Of course. What’s on your mind?”
“Do you know…” Noctis trails off, and Ignis waits patiently, because the things Noctis cares most about are the most difficult for him to say. “Is there some kind of—procedure, for inviting someone over? To my apartment.”
Ignis debates for a heartbeat about teasing Noctis for his use of someone, as if Prompto Argentum weren’t the only person that could be on his mind. But Ignis keeps his amusement to himself because he knows just how carefully Noctis has guarded his friendship with the boy. That protectiveness, that carefulness, was one of the few bright points during their rough months. Even when Noctis shut Ignis and Gladio out, Prompto was an escape for him.
“There is,” Ignis says instead. “Would you like me to start it?”
Noct’s expression opens under a flood of relief. Ignis reminds himself not to take the reaction personally, and the sting of it fades a little. “Yeah. I want—for Prompto.”
“I had assumed so. Unless there’s another friend you’ve acquired?”
Noctis shakes his head. “No, just him. I—” He pulls his hands out of his pocket and makes a vague gesture toward the television. “There’s a video game that Prompto wants to play. And I can get it, but I didn’t—I didn’t want to invite him and then have to turn around and tell him no.”
It’s more information than Ignis expected. The last few months have been better, since Gladio’s intervention, but it’s usually a trial to pry information out of Noctis beyond the barest details.
“It’s my idea,” Noctis adds quickly. “Prompto didn’t ask me to.”
Ignis reins in the urge to tease him. “I’ll take care of it. You understand that you won’t be able to be alone with him?”
“Yeah, I figured. That’s fine, if it’s you or Gladio. Just not some random Crownsguard.” Noctis shrugs and drops into the empty kitchen chair. “What’re you doing?”
“Practicing with the Armiger.”
Noctis picks up the coin and balances it on its edge before giving it a little spin. He keeps his eyes on the coin. “You want some help?”
This time, Ignis allows himself a small smile, recognizing the offer as Noct’s way to show gratitude. “I would, thank you.”
They make a game of it, to end their nights on. After homework is done and the kitchen is clean and political reports are read, Noctis rolls the coin across the kitchen table at varying speeds, daring Ignis to call it back to hand before it can roll off the edge and fetching it from the floor when necessary with only a bit of ribbing.
Once Ignis gets a grasp on that, Noctis takes to hiding the coin in a closed fist or a pocket or elsewhere in the apartment. Retrieving the coin is more difficult without it in his line of sight or knowing exactly where it is. It stretches Ignis’s ability to reach out with the magic, to sense what has been connected through him to the power of kings, but the exercise fine-tunes his control.
By the time Prompto is finally allowed inside the apartment, Noctis has taken to chucking the coin at Ignis at unpredictable intervals to test if he can banish it before it hits him. It’s a small enough missile it hardly stings when it connects, and Noctis never aims for his face. It’s annoying to be ambushed when he’s focused on cooking or reviewing Noct’s schedule, but he will put up with a great deal when failure means he gets to hear amusement in Noct’s voice and his quiet, almost-laugh.
Prompto Argentum is a polite, if slightly anxious, young man, though Ignis isn’t certain if that’s because the boy is trying so hard to make a good impression or if it’s simply his nature. Ignis does his best to be as unobtrusive as possible regardless, as the last thing he wants is to foul up the friendship that Noctis is putting so much effort into cultivating.
And he does seem like a good choice of companion for Noctis. While Prompto is flustered whenever he remembers that Ignis is chaperoning from the sidelines, he is far more relaxed when he focuses on Noctis. They sprawl into one another’s space easily and debate all sorts of video game and comic book geekery that Ignis doesn’t quite follow. They complain about their teachers and homework, and it is all a very comfortable sort of teenage mundane.
Prompto, Ignis thinks, fits very well into the slice of normalcy that Noctis craves. Noctis even puts more effort into cleaning his apartment when Prompto is scheduled to be there that week, and that is the least of the benefits of having him over.
The greatest benefit is how easily Prompto can tip Noctis over into true laughter. The first time Ignis hears it, it’s preceded by a yelp and a you jerk that has him looking up from the sink in time to catch a GAME OVER screen and Prompto dropping the controller so he can snatch up an accent pillow and smack it into Noct’s shoulder.
And Noctis laughs, loud and unfettered. He brings his arms up to protect his face, but he’s too busy cackling to stop Prompto from whacking him with the pillow a second or third time. “Stop laughing!”
Don’t, Ignis thinks.
“You should have seen your face,” Noctis says, and this time he does catch the pillow when Prompto tries to hit him again. Noctis wins the brief tussle for possession, but Prompto lets himself get coaxed back into giving the level another try after Noctis swears up and down not to interfere again.
Several levels and hours later, after Noctis sees Prompto off at the door, Noctis comes to stand before Ignis at the kitchen table again. He looks less defensive this time, but that isn’t any better as it has been replaced with a brittle sort of worry. Ignis isn’t prepared for the question Noctis blurts out: “Are you mad?”
“No,” Ignis says, and he just barely keeps himself from frowning because he knows Noctis won’t believe him if he does. “Have I done something to make you think so?”
Noctis glances away for a moment, then mutters. “You looked at Prompto weird. After he hit me with the pillow.”
Ignis isn’t prepared for that answer, either, or the apparent lapse in his comportment, and tries to give himself a moment to collect his thoughts. “Well. It was my first instance seeing treason committed in real-time.”
The moment Ignis finishes his sentence, he knows it was a mistake, because the pure alarm in Noct’s expression when he looks back is wretched. “Ignis—”
“Forgive me, Noct,” he says immediately. “That joke was in poor taste. I assure you, I’m not upset. Will you have a seat?”
Noctis stares at him for a long moment before his expression settles into sullen lines. Ignis hates that he’s done that with one mistimed comment. But Noctis does sit down, even if his posture screams resentment.
Ignis takes a measured breath and hopes that he can salvage this. “I wasn’t mad that you and Prompto were roughhousing. I was just—surprised to hear you laugh like that.”
Noctis sinks further into his chair and refuses to meet Ignis’s eyes. “Why’s that a big deal?”
There are a dozen different ways that Ignis could answer that. He settles for one he hopes won’t make Noctis retreat entirely. “I don’t think I truly realized until then just how much you enjoyed Prompto’s company.” You rarely laugh like that around me or Gladio, he thinks but does not say, because it is no more Noctis’s fault he doesn’t than it is Ignis and Gladio’s fault they don’t have the kind of personalities that can inspire such laughter.
“Yeah, well.” Noctis glances up briefly, then away again. “I do, all right?”
“I can see that,” Ignis says mildly. “I’m glad you’ve found a friend like him.”
“You are?”
The muted hope beneath the question makes Ignis’s throat tighten. “Noct.” He waits until Noctis is looking at him again to continue. “I know we have had our difficulties, especially in the last year. But I must ask you—no matter what problems arise between us in the future, no matter the complications that occur because of our stations, do not forget that I prize your happiness and your wellbeing above all else.”
Color rises in Noct’s cheeks.
“And it is not because I have sworn an oath as your retainer, and it is not because you are the Chosen King.” Noctis hunches in on himself at the mention of the title. It is the first time Ignis has said it in his presence. Ignis presses on, “It is because you are Noctis, and even in our worst moments I have never wished to be parted from you. You have always been and always will be someone I care for, deeply.”
“Ignis—”
But Noctis ducks his head instead of finishing. He radiates embarrassment, and Ignis decides to pull back rather than reinforce the point. There’s only so much that Noctis can take of an emotional conversation before he shuts down entirely. He wants Noctis to remember his words, not be mortified by them, so he pivots to something less taxing.
“So long as your grades remain high, you keep up on your political reading, and you attend your training sessions with Gladio, I have no issue with you having Prompto over,” Ignis says. And this time he teases Noctis to signal that the difficult part of the conversation is over. “Even if he attacks you with home décor.”
Ignis allows him a brief moment to relish the victory when Noctis looks up again. A hesitant smile tugs at the corner of Noct’s mouth. “I thought you were supposed to protect me from him.”
“I’ll get you the paperwork so you can file a formal complaint.”
The last of the tension bleeds out of Noct’s posture. He leans back in his chair, so deliberately casual that Ignis braces himself. “Too much work. This is easier.”
Noct makes to toss the coin at him, but Ignis banishes to the Armiger before it even leaves Noct’s fingers. He allows himself a very small smirk as he places the coin on the table and stands. “If you would grab your dishes from the coffee table, Highness, I’ll finish cleaning up.”
That evening lingers for several days afterwards, and Ignis finds himself scrolling through his notes on the Chosen King prophecies during a rare quiet moment. There’s nothing new in them, nothing that sticks out this time around and says yes, this is him. But Ignis considers the potential dangers that Noctis will have to face if he is to banish darkness from the world. The journey Noctis will have to take someday will be far from easy or pleasant.
He doesn’t know if Prompto will be the third Swordsworn or if the last person destined to be at Noct’s side is elsewhere. But Noctis could do much worse than a friend who knows how to lift his spirits.
An email notification pops up on the screen about needing to reschedule a meeting, so he closes out of his notes on the prophecy and resumes his work.