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He clearly remembered the first instance he marched. It was a defiant stumble next to his parents, through rain and mud and overall with nothing but the feeling of despair clinging to all three of them. The Scourge, unforgiving, and its latest victim was his elder brother. Their march was long and exhausting, carrying a child on the verge of turning as the younger child asks time and time again why they were going the way they were. That it was cold. That he was tired.
That was the first time he heard a whisper going through the back of his head, barely audible and when he looked around he realised that his parents had not heard that voice. The soft mumble that he could be given the chance to keep other children from losing their elder brothers. That he only needed to reach out to the voice, to swear fealty and being willing to do anything they demanded. They needed him to help them. That was all they asked of him – a life for a country, a life for a planet.
The first time he marched he was six. His older brother had been nine.
The voice kept promising him the power to help if he just accepted, and thus he agreed. A silent oath to a voice he had never heard before but he felt like he could trust. A woman’s laughter, chilly but somehow lively, a pact made between a child and a goddess.
He lived.
His brother didn’t.
The second time he marched he marched right out of the house in a huff. He was sixteen now, older than his brother had ever been and old enough to understand what he had done as foolish child. He’d healed, more than most people would think he had. A year after they marched to the doctor the next village seven miles away his father had collapsed just like his brother had. His mother had been in a downright panic, but all he had done was placing a hand on his father’s forehead and started mumbling.
The blinding light and the fact that his father got up mere moments after he passed out was something he had missed but it was something that his parents agreed on never mentioning.
Until now.
And so the day before they had an argument. Two exhausted but scared parents, and the boy who realised he had been given the power to stop all of this. The night he had spent having nightmares with images of gods that he had only heard of in scriptures and prophecies, and thus before even the sun rose he had packed up what little he owned and left the house. He was not going to return here for a few years, until long after his parents had died knowing that their son was indeed in one piece and on his way to safe not only this country but also all of Eos. But for now it was him marching with what little he owned, ready to meet with those creatures from his dreams, ready to do as he had promised ten years before.
A march that led him to what would one day become the shining capital city of the country he had been born in, a march that was mostly led by sleeplessness and lending a healing hand where it was needed as a means to hone these skills he had not known he had until just the day before he left.
“Healer,” they started calling him as his path led ever onwards, “Saviour,” they started whispering when he had left the towns and villages and healed those that needed it. The main settlements soon knew of his existence, and within a year he felt like he had seen more of the world than he would have ever seen back at home.
As he marched his parents wept, uncertain whether he was alive or not until he was in his mid-twenties.
The third march was not one of solitude.
For the first time since he had left his childhood home in a huff he was not alone on his way, and while annoyed at first he soon grew to enjoy the company. The bickering between the siblings, the jabs and laughter, the faux-offended whining at campfires. He did not remember his brother’s name, but for a moment he liked to imagine that this could have been the two of them, following a chosen saviour of some kind around as bodyguards – perhaps as friends.
The fourth march was one of solitude.
Yet another sibling buried somewhere; though not dead because of a Scourge infection but rather the victim of Scourge infected. The long hours of silence, the way the older brother’s gaze kept flicking after the traders they had met earlier that day. And though it hurt after all this time together, he let him go.
“Go back home. You don’t have to force yourself to follow me.”
The Seer left, shoulders slumped, and they parted ways. For good, Ardyn thought.
So he marched on alone. He hated admitting that he missed the sound of someone complaining about the strict distance they had to cover a day. He missed the bickering, the jabs. The laughter. All of a sudden it was silent around the saviour again, and no matter how gods-given his powers were, there was nothing and nobody who would treat him like a normal human being. He was the Healer, after all. He was what the prophecies had promised, a means to end the Scourge that harassed this planet. He had nearly forgotten that at the end of this path lay naught but death for him, for a child had traded in his life back then for a measure of a god’s power, for the power to keep other siblings from having to bury theirs.
It hadn’t worked out in the end.
The Seer lived.
The sister died.
And the Healer marched on.
The fifth was less of a march and more of a blurry journey to another country. The country they had been born in was almost unchangingly perfect in many ways, but this other continent where the country Tenebrae lay was already very different from any stretch of land on their home continent. After all this progressively getting worse he felt more alive than he had in years, and the Seer beside him was the best company he could have ever asked for. Tenebrae was a country so unlike Lucis, and anything was a marvel that he almost felt like the teenager leaving his home with nothing but his belongings and marching off into the world again. The lush nights. The pleasant days. The flora and fauna that was so different from anything back at home.
And then the Messenger’s warning. That there was something about the Seer he should watch out for. An ominous warning he dismissed immediately, for the Seer was the only person he would trust blind. For a Seer saw death, a Healer could prevent it. The warnings the Messenger gave him were cryptic at best and too vague to make any sense of at worst, and so he discarded her warnings.
The march home was then him, the Seer, and the Carbuncle, a summon of yore.
Halfway back to Lucis the Seer fell silent for once as he watched the Carbuncle. There seemed to be something on his mind but in the past they had spoken about most things – he didn’t say anything, so it was perfectly okay to believe that whatever made him frown was of no importance.
A march back home, back to the city the country was trying to build where the gods had given him the Crystal. He was to help out with the purge they were running there, to help get rid of the Daemons and other hostile creatures. And when the Daemon lunged at him and he dodged, when the Seer called out and said that this thing that had nearly murdered the two of them had been here because of him…
The march back home ended in what would one day be called Insomnia. It ended with the bitter feeling of magic all around them as the Wall stretched across the horizon. He would not die as the gods wanted him to. The Seer left, his sentence spoken and even then he cracked a smile as he left with the promise that he’d be looking out for the Wall.
The Healer became the King. The Seer became an outcast.
The Carbuncle was grinning beside him, grinning, tail swishing across the rubble as it followed him around.
He lost count of the times he marched with the Messenger and the Carbuncle. The Seer was long dead and his family lived somewhere along the border of the Wall, so all that remained of those times were the three beings that would not die that easily.
The Messenger was less than pleased to be there as usual; he was ever unhappy to have been assigned this spot. Over the years that unhappiness deteriorated, became begrudging acceptance, then perhaps something like scathing companionship. They got along sometimes – most of the time they tried to outwit each other. And more often than not the King lost to the Messenger. Not that Ardyn minded; the times he won left the Messenger staring at him silently and unable to reply anything. There were no sweeter victories than that.
The Carbuncle remained as scathingly sarcastic as it had been since the day it had appeared before him on his way back to Lucis. It never once let anything quietly pass, and never helped when it came down to it. But it was a companion of a sort, and Ardyn was not going to kick it out. It was a reminder of how the times were better, how even those closest to him could betray him. A country founded on the fact that a magical Wall had been erected around it, keeping Daemons out and the people in.
They weren’t exactly withdrawn. He made a point in keeping good connections to the other countries, even if Niflheim became ever more complicated over the years.
“They have a point,” the Messenger whispered in the dead of night, “your choices led to Lucis being spared invasion, yet the Scourge still runs rampant.”
The King shut the Messenger up and sent him out for a hundred years. By the time the man returned, they had to admit they kind of missed getting on each other’s nerves. By the time the man returned, the Healer could admit he bitterly missed the Seer. But the dead won’t rise from their graves. His brother, the Seer and the Seer’s sister would never suddenly be standing in the throne room in one piece, as if they had never succumbed to the Scourge, died gruesomely in combat, did not die somewhere in the outskirts of Lucis in a small house that he shared with his daughter.
“Immortal King,” the population whispered, and the Healer and the Saviour became unknown after two thousand years. Perhaps they were with him once; but all they knew now were the Immortal King, sitting upon his throne, with the Crystal keeping up his Wall and keeping him alive as far as they knew. They did not know that a Daemon sits upon the throne, donning the appearance of their beloved Immortal King.
Ardyn lost his humanity long ago.
Cor had lost his even before that.
Kar remained seated beside them, grinning ever onwards as the light of the Crystal never once wavered or waned.
The oncoming storm was distant across the hundreds and thousands of years that would pass like this. Ardyn nearly forgot he was not human at points. Cor had to admit that despite being a divine Messenger sent to ensure the King does his duty when the time comes, he was enjoying himself. And Kar, ever valiant, ever patient. Her time would come. Her time had to come. Even if they called her by the wrong name.
The Immortal King had lost his humanity a long time ago, after all. He was scarcely seen and rarely left the Citadel. He had returned from one short travel that morning, somewhere into the city for something he had not even found.
And that very morning would remind him that he was indeed a human being. A father, a son, blood. The same red eyes he had seen hundreds of times years upon years in the past. They were the Seer’s descendants, technically not allowed within the borders of Insomnia. Technically not allowed anywhere but this part of Duscae. Yet there they were, and the father collapsed.
So once more reminded of his humanity, the Immortal King realised that there were not many things he could do. Seers had powers that no other mortal possessed. Someone would need to supervise this child as he learned how to handle his powers, but the only other living Seer was in a coma. The only other person who could teach him how to use magic were the Oracles of Tenebrae. And so the Immortal King recalled the times he was the Saviour, the Healer. A man who used his magic.
He started teaching the child. Sooner rather than later he found himself attached to this boy’s success, and the Messenger scowled. The Carbuncle snickered. Before long he realised that this kid was all but his son. This would be causing trouble down the line, the Messenger warned – the King did not heed him as usual.
Of course it brought naught but trouble down the line. He did not mind. He sincerely did not mind because this child so delightfully reminded him of the Seer. Perhaps this was a way of apologising after all this time, for where he had once burned with anger all he desired now was just to say that while he was still angry he also wished it hadn’t ended like that.
The Messenger sighed and complied as usual, as it was his duty. And time went on and the child became a teenager, a delightfully stubborn young man together with his sharply intelligent best friend. Somehow even the Messenger found himself attached to that young Seer.
But the fact that the Wall was flickering and waning after so long remained. The King grew tired. The young Seer received his mission. The Messenger remembered the reason he was there.
The Carbuncle set her plan in motion.
His last march had been a painful one. It was with alarming clarity that he remembered as he all but dragged himself through that hallway that once upon a time he had followed his own parents that way. He did not remember their faces. Did not remember their names. It had vanished in hundreds upon thousands of years of life, things he more or less recalled. He had not considered his brother’s death for so long, had not remembered that this had been the day he had all but traded in his life for his powers.
There were but a few things he wanted to keep, no matter what. The Seer, smiling as they sat together in a tree. The Messenger, giving him one last defeated laugh as they admitted that they were kind of in this together. The younger Seer throughout the years, from the child nearly crying in front of him to the young man who he nearly called his son on so many occasions.
The Immortal King. The Saviour. The Healer. The younger brother.
In the end he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum. That was the way he would die. Not a saviour. Not a king. Not nearly as immortal as the people believed him to be.
His last march was surprisingly confident for someone who had feared death long ago. This was for the country, he said. This was for the Messenger, he said, for the Seer.
In the end, it was for the Seer he had raised – a world where he did not have to fight visions of future death. No Daemons waiting just beyond the Wall to once more fall in on him. No supposedly dead ancient aunts, no supposedly dead founders of his family. No Messengers haunting the halls of the Citadel.
No ancient Healers on the throne.
A Lucis that Noctis could see with his own eyes during his limited time.
Hundreds and thousands of years. Lifetime over lifetime, and Ardyn Lucis Caelum faced the gods with a smile. Shiva’s voice was as gentle as it had been back when she had first promised him his powers, was as gentle as she wished him farewell.
Perhaps this wasn’t a bad last march.
He just wished he could have walked upright for it just as the boy beside his parents had, all this time ago.