Chapter Text
"They say the King of Light banished the Starscourge from our kingdom and from most other places, but it was never gone, just dormant."
"So... behind the Wall there's..."
"Yes. That is why you must never get too close to it, Noctis. We're safe here, after all."
The Verus family, back then barely more than one suspected of attempted regicide, was banished to the outermost reaches of the Kingdom of Lucis. The second Verus Seer was born in a small settlement in the very outermost reaches of Cleigne called Frontier, and ever since their family and its Seers had been born there, lived there, died there. Just because of their powers did other people know of this family, but most people in the kingdom of Lucis considered their power a curse for the founder had been banished by the Immortal King most likely for a dire reason.
They watched the Wall, ever so slightly shimmering even in the night—it was never truly dark in the Kingdom of Light after all.
Thus, the 113th Seer of the Verus line nearly immediately realised something was wrong when it actually got dark for once, especially that close to the Wall. Nightfall had always made Regis Verus slightly uneasy, something about this time of the day always made him nervous ever since his wife had died. She had loved the night the most and taken away his fear of it, but since her death the fear had come back with a vengeance, and thus he sat on his son's bed and watched the Wall. It was too dark, just too dark.
After an hour there was an eerie silence choking everything, and he felt the headache that ensued whenever a vision was incoming pounding in the back of his head.
Within a second he saw flashes of fire, of the people he knew screaming and falling to the ground, and the entire village crumbling as creatures he had never seen seemingly tore down the fabric of reality. He also saw his son, barely older than six, sprawled on the ground unmoving, and Regis forced the vision back out in cold sweat.
It had been so long since he called on the true power of a Verus Seer—so long he nearly forgot how to do it. But for the first time in six years he called upon the stars and Astrals to guide him, to wrest fate from Shiva's hands and give him permission to change it. Once he felt the icy cold that meant his plea had been heard and he had been granted permission, he grabbed Noctis from his bed.
His son opened his eye slowly and let out a tiny noise of protest, but Regis shooed his child.
"It's alright, Noct, it's alright."
"What're... you doing...?"
Regis inhaled slowly. There it was again, that headache, that incoming feeling of doom. "We're going on a trip."
Noctis yawned, "Trip? Thought we're banned from that."
Just a split moment later they heard an explosion, and suddenly Noctis was wide awake and clung to his father.
"Dad!?" It was all the kid managed before he whimpered, for he took off and hurried downstairs.
Regis growled a little as they passed a mirror in their house. Those brightly shining eyes in a strange reddish-pink tint that was the telltale sign of a Seer having had a vision stared back at him from both his and Noctis' faces, and he made a dive for the car keys with his free hand. Normally a Verus did not start having visions until they were at least 15, but for some gods-forsaken reason Noctis had to have been one of the few exceptions of the rules, much like the 71st, the 47th, the 13th and the 2nd had been. Nothing was worse than waking up in the middle of the night and see his son staring at him with these gleaming eyes.
It was getting brighter outside… but not because the dim light of Lucis was returning. No, the first houses had caught on fire, as Regis had seen in his dreams. He dashed out the front door, keys in one hand and his trembling son in the other as the screaming around them started. It was just like his vision, and once more his blood turned to ice. This was the moment he had asked to be changed, and indeed as he set Noctis down to unlock the car as fast as he could, some kind of creature crept around the corner. Regis quickly interrupted what he was doing and sent a small fireball its way – if there was one upside to being a Seer it was the fact that he was one of the few people in this kingdom that was able to use magic.
He opened the car’s door and tried to pry Noctis from his leg.
“Noct, let go. Get in the car. Come on!”
The boy let out a tiny whimper and clawed at his father’s legs.
“D-D...ad… be...”
In the same moment as Noctis let out a screech Regis felt something raking across his back. Claws, most likely. Thus he bent down, picked up his son, and just shoved him onto the seat. At least he could block this thing from entering the car for as long as necessary, but surprisingly the creature soon had enough of trying to claw his back open to get at the child huddled on the seat inside the car.
Regis then put Noctis on the back seat, sat down in his trusty car as blood ran down his back and seeped into the driver’s seat.
“Your Majesty, we’ve lost contact with Freya at Frontier.”
If there was one positive side to being the Immortal King, most people didn’t recognise him outside of the Citadel unless they had worked there before. Most people would assume this man was just employed there as he walked.
“Freya at Frontier?”
That particular place was something he preferred not thinking about – after all he had banished Izunia Verus there, all these years ago. The man known as Immortal King Ardyn Lucis Caelum had done so mostly out of spite at that point, for Izunia had admitted and somewhat repented for his sins back then. Not that that stopped Ardyn from banishing him.
“Yes, your Majesty.”
He’d stopped on the stairs next to the current head of the Amicitia family, a family wholly devoted to protecting the crown. They all looked so stern and serious throughout all generations, Ardyn thought it quite hilarious (not that he said that out loud, these men and women could most likely crush him).
Clarus shrugged. “It is very unlike Freya to not report back. I was considering going to Frontier and checking on her as well as the current head of the Verus family. Something was odd about that man last time I–“
Some guard behind them shouted, and the sound of a car sliding while braking at full force sounded through the Citadel. Ardyn and Clarus turned around. A black car. That normally never meant something good, but Ardyn was plenty relaxed – barely anyone knew what he looked like. If that was some half-hearted attempt to end the Immortal it would fail as usual, for one of the only things the people in Lucis knew was that their King was followed by a creature known as Carbuncle. Said creature was currently most likely rolled up on a carpet and snoring like a badly behaved house cat.
When the door opened and a bleeding man stumbled out clutching a wailing child, the people who had also frozen suddenly sprung back into motion.
Ardyn on the other hand stared into familiar eyes, with that infuriating glow in them, and he tensed up a little before he followed Clarus slowly. A Seer. Hadn’t he banned the Verus from this city?
But the closer he got the more he started to realise that this man knew that he had broken a millennium-old banishment to get here with his slightly injured and wailing son, and his brightly glowing eyes were clouding over as he set the kid down slowly.
“Frontier… overrun.”
The boy was clinging to his father’s leg at this point and shaking him slightly, although Ardyn tried to phase that child’s bawling out – two Seers, in the middle of Citadel, in the middle of Insomnia. He’d heard of Regis Verus when he had been born, when he had assumed the position of head of the family. He’d heard of his son Noctis too, and that he was an exception of the unspoken rules that no Seer should be able to see death before a certain age, but… Ardyn’s perception of time had gotten lopsided long ago. For some reason he had imagined that child to be in his early teens already, not to be a child that seemed barely old enough to cling to his father’s leg and beg him to stay awake.
Only then did he remember Izunia’s silent voice all those years ago - “I will watch your Wall, then”.
Indeed, after taking a shallow breath Regis Verus looked at the Immortal King.
“Wall… busted. Daemons… Daemons took Frontier. S-Seal it… up. Outside. No s-survivors… other than Noct…is and me.”
It had always been strange that the family name of the Seers was Verus rather than the actual founder’s last name. Verus Izunia had been a traitor, but he had always been as truthful as his name suggested. Maybe that was why the Seers were called the Verus instead of the Izunia, although for the first ten generations it had nearly made Ardyn laugh.
Now, the 113th of that line pat his son on the head, looked at the king and the King’s Shield with blank eyes, and toppled over forward.
People moved once more, apparently waiting for their liege to say something. Ardyn simply gave the sign to call for doctors, but he noticed Clarus furrowed brows as even the called healers and medics screwed up their faces at the deep gashes across the collapsed man’s back
“Amicitia. Spill it.”
“The… the son, your Highness.”
Of course a father would be soft when it came to wailing children. Several people indeed looked from the boy to their king and back with furrowed brows and pitiful expressions, and Ardyn knew they all had children. The kid on the other hand just tried following these people who had collected his father, his glowing eyes bright and wild.
A child that age couldn’t have been taught to control its visions correctly, no matter how devoted the elder Seer and therefore their only teacher was. Six was too early for someone to see death at the whim of the gods, and even Ardyn screwed up his face in pity for a split second.
Then he gestured.
“Amicitia, pick up that child. Take him with you into the Citadel, we’ll work something out inside.”
Noctis Verus, 114th Seer of the Verus line, was wailing for them to please let him go to his father. He didn’t know why his blood was so icy cold, but that vision of his father falling and never getting up again would haunt him forever.
Those deep blue eyes that seemingly were unable to portray anything but their owner’s true feelings, like a mirror – or the lake he fished Izunia from. Many people committed suicide because of the Starscourge, but even that dive had been awkward from where the man simply known as Healer sat. It turned out the buffoon had tried to recover something his sister dropped when she collapsed the other day, a vain hope that retrieving the trinket would save the dying girl’s life.
Ardyn healed her, of course. It was his duty as the only one able to expunge the Starscourge from a mortal body. Menda Verus awoke with a jolt next to her dripping brother, and the young man just started crying as he held the girl, profusely thanking the Healer.
They then swore their lives to him – Menda was a talented girl, especially in the martial arts. Verus on the other hand was more of a buffoon, but Ardyn soon came to enjoy his presence. It was… grounding, in a way, especially to someone who conversed with the Astrals and who fought the literal plague that ate away at Eos’ existence.
These wide blue eyes often followed Ardyn into his sleep when he still slept, especially after Menda died heroically trying to defend an entire village from a Daemon gone wild.
The unspoken accusations that mirrored in Izunia’s eyes as they buried his sister together.
Now, after more years than he bothered counting, those blue eyes were staring up at him again. It was not Izunia, though, unmoving as Ardyn, recently crowned King of Lucis, spoke his sentence. This set of blue eyes belonged to a trembling child, and the blue was still rimmed with a red glow, an aftershock of the vision (or possibly several visions) this child had before being seated in a far-off room in an unknown castle in a city it never even dared dreaming of. Sitting opposite a man who banned its family, to boot.
Amicitia had been sent to stand watch and was to inform the king immediately if anything changed with the kid’s father. Ardyn was more than displeased with this situation, but he knew better than to scowl at a terrified child.
Noctis, on the other hand, was looking for a way to escape. He was well-behaved for his age, his father had always made sure he knew what manners were and how to act all proper around people he didn’t know. But this man intimidated him, and he wanted to just see his father and for the man to tell him it was alright, that the Wall was still there to protect them from these creatures.
So there they sat, King and Seer, one awkwardly staring at the floor and the other often shooting dismissive glances at the portraits scattered across the walls of the room.
Eventually the child got clearly upset, but seemed unable to address the older man in any way, shape, or form – Regis had been thorough with teaching Noctis manners, certainly, but not even the 113th had expected to ever enter Insomnia, let alone sit opposite the King. So he muttered and mumbled something for a few minutes before Ardyn was ready to snap at the kid.
In exactly that same moment, as he inhaled to tell the boy to speak loudly or not at all, large tears started rolling from these even larger blue eyes. Truly, it looked like someone had kicked a helpless puppy, the bloodstains on his clothes and the soot on his face aside.
It was as Ardyn stared at this crying boy that he noticed that something in this room moved. Naturally it had to be the Carbuncle. It always was the Carbuncle that moved or appeared in the worst possible moments, and he had to hold himself back from rolling his eyes. Even back then it had been that creature that might have had a paw in--
‘Blaming me again instead of yourself for Izunia and Menda? That stopped being funny approximately 2,734 years ago.’
Ardyn stifled a sigh – at the same time Noctis turned around. Had the kid heard the creature?
Impossible. No one but the summoner heard the summon. As much as he sometimes disliked that particular characteristic of a summon; but every other person heard only squeaks or unintelligible garbage (which was what the Language of the Gods sounded like even if Ardyn knew the meaning of the words).
‘Ho, there he sits, the mighty King, unable to speak to a child.’
The boy giggled a little.
“You--”
‘You’ve ruled for what, over 6,000 years? Even if we just assume that every Verus before this boy here has lived for only 50 before having a child and dying. So it’s give rather than take. Over 6,000 years and you can’t talk to a kid, let alone admit Menda and Izunia were your fault.’
The King sneered at the summon as it jumped on the table and stretched.
“If you had been--”
‘Goodness gracious. You do know that in the last 1,000 years you lost every argument.’
“You are persistent enough for--”
‘It would be kind of awkward if a summon weren’t persistent, Ardyn Lucis Caelum.’
“Stop interrupt--”
‘Bweh.’
A sound in the room made both of them stop their pointless bantering – the boy, still looking tired and terrified, was laughing at this point. Not loudly, like children his age should, but he was certainly laughing. For a split second Ardyn saw the Carbuncle side-eye him before it jumped off the table and into the child’s lap.
Of course. Naturally a fuzzy creature of some sort would calm a nervous child. It always worked, even back then, up to the point Izunia had suggested catching some pointless fluffy thing and giving it to children who were terrified of their infected parents, terrified enough to get in the way somehow.
Noctis just stared at the creature now circling around his lap until it lay down. It was kind of like a cat, like the lady in the next house over had, though slightly bigger and with more fox-like features. Still, it started purring there, and he fought the urge to pet it. He had heard it argue with the King, which meant that it was, first off, different than a cat. Second of all, the familiarity between King and creature implied that they were close, and it would be more than bad manners to pet a thinking creature that belonged to someone else or was just friends with the literal Immortal King.
It also seemed like they thought he couldn’t hear the creature. Noctis heard its voice, clear as a bell, somewhere in the back of his head, and he heard every backhanded but affectionate insult it hurled at the King.
At some point eh urge to pet it became near overwhelming. King and creature had gone back to bantering after he had laughed a little, so it was hard to catch the man’s attention. He tried doing it like his father did, with staring at the man for a while and clearing his throat. It didn’t work, really.
So he tried addressing the man, which also somewhat failed. His voice was just too silent.
“E-Excuse me!”
He hadn’t meant to yell. Especially not at the King. Gods, his father would be so ashamed.
On the other hand, now he had the attention of the man, and he stumbled over his words for a moment.
“I-I w-was… wondering… N-Not to… L-Like… Uhm.”
It wasn’t hard to read a child’s desires, at least something as simple as wanting to pet some fuzzy, soft creature that was bemusedly purring in the kid’s lap. Ardyn pinched the bridge of his nose as the infernal summon started laughing softly before shaking his head and looking at the boy.
“Go ahead.”
“T-Th-Thank you!”
At the very least it was distracting enough for Ardyn to slink off. He had never thought about how the Carbuncle was nothing more than an oversized cat, especially now that it was play-fighting with some silly string. He made a mental note to think Kar the Carbuncle later for at least keeping the child distracted. He had seen that flash of red spark up in the kid’s eyes after he had suddenly whimpered a little.
So the Immortal King marched off to find Amicitia. Or at least the man that Amicitia had been told to watch.
Noctis had seen that maid who had entered the room getting hit by a car. His father had always told him to not talk about these visions, but the way the King looked at him with furrowed brows as he had sent the maid out had made him worry. Surely the King knew of that power, he had to. After all it had been him who had sent his family to live in Frontier. Kar, on the other hand, tried to distract the kid some more. That had been Ardyn’s unspoken command when he left.
When the King found where his orders had taken both Amicitia and the wounded elder Seer, Amicitia immediately stiffened. Before Ardyn even asked for a report, he got one.
“Clearly a Daemon’s work, none of the doctors knew what kind of creature had caused these injuries. Looked similar to these people from beyond the Wall, and Frontier was close to it, after all. He’s barely conscious at this point, and the doctors are at a loss.”
Daemons, then. That explained why not a single person could contact Freya. She was a watcher, not a fighter, and would have most likely perished in Frontier. Still, Ardyn tilted his head a little.
“Check Frontier.”
“As you wish, your Majesty.”
Clarus turned around, but Ardyn stopped him to add, “No pointless heroism, your children need you alive”.
Once Amicitia was gone Ardyn demanded entry to the infirmary, and stared down a very barely conscious Regis Verus. Indeed, this poor man looked positively beaten within an inch of his life, and again Ardyn found himself staring at one of this family and wondering how they survived all these immensely dangerous and often stupid things.
Much like his son, his eyes were also rimmed red still, but also glazed over as if the man were about to pass out again. Ardyn therefore knew he didn’t have much time.
“Just one thing, Verus.”
There was a tiny, barely noticeable nod. At least he was still responsive enough for this.
“Frontier overrun and no survivors, as you said. I am indeed inclined to believe that. But why would you, as survivor, make this trip while quite literally bleeding out on the front seat, only to break a ban that has gone on for near six millennia?”
There was a deep silence in the room. Even the Seer, his eyes once more flashing up bright red, seemed at a loss for words. Or maybe he was just planning his next move – Ardyn never quite understood what Izunia and Menda meant when they fell silent.
The last word the 113th Verus Seer spoke before falling into a coma he might as well never wake up from was “Noctis”.
He stood in the room for a while. This was exactly how he had accidentally picked up Izunia and Menda when the Starscourge ran rampant without a cure and without a King of Light as the only person capable of healing the symptoms and preventing people from turning into Daemons.
The Healer returned to the room he had left child and Carbuncle in. The kid had fallen asleep in the meanwhile, rolled up on the rug, next to the summon from ancient times, a hand in the soft fur.
‘You look displeased.’
“You have no godsdamn idea.”