[ffxv] kings and guardians, pt 3
Dec. 5th, 2018 03:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gigantomachyThere are things that Cor learns in the weeks that follow.
The first is this: Nyx does not grieve alone. On the day of the funeral, three days after Cor’s arrival to the capital city of Asteria, more than a thousand people crowd the cobblestone square in front of Ramuh’s temple for the service. Cor stands like a beacon at Nyx’s back, a lone spot of white in a sea of mourning black – watchful as the priests offer their prayers to the kingdom’s patron god and the symbolic fires are lit, as Nyx steps away from Cor and out of the circle of his glaives to address his people.
Crius Ulric had been an honorable man and a thoughtful king; Queen Theia and Princess Selena, the pillars the kept him upright in his times of need. All of them dedicated to Galahd and its people. Nyx, Cor learns, is not the most eloquent speaker, but even when he speaks the platitudes that seem to accompany all such memorials, he speaks from the heart. He wears his grief openly in front of his people. Lets his voice break when he speaks of his sister, and wears his tears without shame when he asks for their forgiveness and blessing. Honors the servants who’d died in the blaze with the same respect accorded the royal family.
Cor thinks he understands the love he sees on so many of those faces, reflected back at their young king as he asks for their forbearance in the weeks to come. Something about Nyx seems to demand it – even if he had been a stranger to Nyx, he thinks he might have felt the pull. Perhaps it’s a royal quality; perhaps it’s intrinsic to Nyx himself. Either way, he finds nothing strange about the sense of pride that he feels, as Nyx returns to the safe embrace of his retinue and turns a wary, bemused look in his direction.
(He learns the details of the incident in bits and pieces, listening to the guards outside the apartment door while he waits for Nyx to bathe before breakfast. Commander Arra of the Crownsguard had been one in a long line of servants to the crown – in fact, his own son had been on duty on the other side of the island the night of the attack, even now avoiding a return to the capital in chains only on Nyx’s express order. Among the rest of the conspirators, two hailed from a fishing village along the northern coast, and the last four remain unidentified, their origins still a matter of fierce speculation.
He learns that the attack had been dual-pronged; Axel Arra had personally murdered the king while they walked the palace gardens in a weekly routine they’d shared for years, one shot to the head before Arra turned his weapon on himself. At the same time, an explosion had rocked the royal wing of the palace, collapsing the east wall outright and culminating in a firestorm that blazed through the night, trapping both queen and princess and a half-dozen servants inside. The noise had drawn the prince and the glaives he’d been training with, and they’d fought off his own attackers to the sound of panicked screams.
It was Libertus who’d dragged a wounded, frantic Nyx from the crushed doors, who’d used the last of their curatives on the ruin of his hands and arms where he’d tried to to break through, long after those screams had gone silent.)
Cor learns that there are still plenty of Galahdians that remember his kind – that for every young eye turned on him in suspicion, there is an elder that quietly blesses his presence in passing, that asks for his regard in return.
He learns much about Galahd – the living kingdom, so much more than its divine origins or sluggish histories or seaswept borders – from his place next to the throne. The maps he’d seen spread out on the Enclave’s library wall had illustrated an archipelago with little to recommend it, at least not unless one preferred scrub and solitude. The texts had indicated a haven slow to change, little more than a distracted observer perched at the edge of a restless world.
In person, he finds Galahd to be a vibrant, beautiful land. Asteria’s people are as hardy as the land they call home, but within that hardiness lies a deep sense of compassion and community. He listens to Nyx as the young king stitches together frayed confidences and eases fears in the wake of upheaval with the same hopeful honesty he’d demonstrated at the temple. He holds back a smile when a small whirlwind of grandmothers bring Nyx a basket overflowing with pastries, when Nyx descends from his throne to be enfolded in its fierce, bosomy eye and fussed over like a child.
None of this is what he expected, either. He recalls images he’s seen of other capitals: Insomnia, Lestallum, Accordo and the others, halls that could fit the whole of Asteria’s population within, all crowded with nobility and staff alike. Palaces and citadels the size of the Enclave itself, cities spreading as far as an image could capture. By comparison, the Heart and its rotating forum of island elders hardly seems worthy of a similar title, but it fits Galahd. It fits Nyx – and thus it fits Cor.
Finally, Cor learns for fact the thing that he has suspected all along, in the sharp crack of gunfire cutting through the peaceful quiet of a late summer afternoon, and the grunt of pain that follows. Eyes up, senses sharp; Cor breathing a soft curse at their vulnerability here with their backs to the rocky coast and the white walls of Talos little more than a taunting beacon at the feet of the far distant foothills. Just ahead, the soot gray chocobo beneath the glaive Sonitus staggers through a slow step, then lurches sideways toward the ditch with a weak squawk of distress.
“Jump!” he hears Nyx cry, but the man’s trajectory is already a foregone conclusion.
Cor swings down from his frightened mount, pleased to see the others following suit as he takes his spot in a tight ring around the young king. The remaining chocobos flee down the road; shield magics flare to life at the hands of the other glaives, overlapping walls of iridescence that spatter flaring light as another salvo of bullets tests the integrity of their barrier. “We’ve got to get him,” Nyx hisses. “He’s–”
“–not going to risk your safety any more than we are,” Cor cuts in, ignoring the anxious concern he can feel radiating from his king. The big man is alive at least, keeping his head down as low as possible as he tries to ease out from beneath his mount’s body. Nyx’s attention stays divided, darting between a fresh wave of fire and his fallen friend. He flinches, relaxing a moment later when Cor’s hands curl over his shoulders.
“He’s more protected over there than we are,” Cor murmurs, eyes on the flat span of boulder-strewn ground between their position and the patchy stands of scrub trees on the other side of it. Five hundred yards, more or less, to cover. The source of the shots is somewhere out there, but he sees no sign of movement yet. “For now, at least. The three of you shelter with him – alternate your shields, if you can. You trust that village?”
“What are we doing, boys,” Crowe sing-songs, restless and unhappy.
“Old Korrin was a friend of my father.” Nyx is squinting into the distance, too. “All right. We pair up, split off; you and Lib, Pelna and Crowe. If I warp through the middle I can–”
“–are you kidding me right now,” Libertus chokes.
Cor makes a decision, and hopes dearly that it isn’t about to bite him in the ass. “You – we don’t know what’s out there. Get your man freed and the lot of you into the ditch. Be careful. I’ll find you.”
It’s Pelna whose control slips first, his slice of the barrier dissolving at their backs Not the most reassuring of circumstances, but Cor takes the opportunity provided and steps back and away from them – unguarded, yes, but free to move.. Somehow, it feels colder outside the glaives’ shield – a foolish thought, but it’s easier to digest than sentimentality on the battlefield.
That, he suspects, will be Nyx’s realm, too.
“What are you doing?” Nyx asks – only now afraid enough that Cor can feel it.
The look Cor turns on him as he calls his blade to hand is less a smile than a baring of teeth. “Going hunting, my king.”
Sweet Selena is alive and happy in the garden AU, and that’s where and how I intend to keep her. I hate hate hate how every personally impactful lady got fridged hard in this universe and here I am just doing the same thing 8( But. BUT. I do think that loss, and the way he deals with it, is a pretty intrinsic part of what makes Nyx Nyx, and while this is obviously a maaaaaassively different situation to stick him in, I fully intend to keep him him. (Give him a little room to be young and still filling out as a grown-ass human being, he’s only 22 and fresh out of some Real Life Doozies)
Cor is also still very much Cor, underneath the veneer of cosmic empathy and whatnot. He’s also learning how to function in the real world after being shaped into a custom-designed monk sidekick with a whole lot of observational experience and basically no practical. (Listen, no one ever accused the gods of Eos of being masters of long-term planning on any front without some major snafus and oversight along the way)
Because let’s get it out of the way now: Eos is divided into six kingdoms, each dedicated to a patron god/dess, and the ~godless lands~. Each with a ruler who, barring something unhappy, has an accompanying guardian. Lucians (well, not Lucians, Lucis isn’t a thing here) don’t have a lock on magic, though it’s pretty well confined to monarchs and guardians – well, and the monarch’s glaives. That’s right, Camilia is a magic lady, and she has glaives, and Altissia is still in very good hands.
I don’t claim to be remotely good at lorebuilding either, and this is turning out to be probably the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to do on that front, but roll with me if you’re into it and I’ll try to do us all right. Nyx needs to go read a goddamn book, but he is being stubborn and also busy doing his job, so Cor is stuck twiddling his thumbs a bit (and bonding with his new destiny bestie) as things shake out a little in the wake of major upheaval. GO READ THE FUCKING BOOK, NYX.
