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I imagine they would. I'm fond of the longer nights in summer myself. Made it feel less like I was living in constant darkness.

Come now, Jonathan. Don't you know that in darkness, the eyes open wider?

[ Ardyn chuckles. It's just as melodic as the rest of his voice. There's a leathery sound behind the laughter, too. ]

But enough of that. How goes your hunting?

That's the last thing I need.

I'm not hunting. I don't- I'm not doing that.

Oh, dear. Did I accidentally invoke one of the other... ah, what did you call them? Powers?

[ He didn't sound terribly fussed either way. ]]

Very well, let me be more blunt:

Are you hungry for a statement?

The Hunt is one of them. And I don't mean that. I just- doesn't matter.

[And that question sounds like a trap but at the same time...]

Yes. Always.

Well now, isn't that a co-incidence?

[ He knew it wasn't. Ardyn got the impression that Jonathan was always hungry for a statement. ]

I have a few hundred stories from people who dealt with a vast, incomprehensible evil. And since we're both the same thing... I suppose you could say they're my stories, now.

I could part with one or two, I think.

[Yes, Jon doesn't believe that at all. But it's an interesting offer all the same, and he can't quite help the hunger that spikes at the thought of it.]

There are side effects.

I'm sure I'll live.

[ Unfortunately. ]

But if it assuages your conscience, then you're welcome to tell me.

Oh you'll live. [That's part of the problem isn't it.]

You'll experience those horrors in your dreams every night, all of the terror and despair that comes with them. And I'll be watching. My patron will be watching.

[ To give Ardyn credit, he did listen. In fact, he made sure to.

It wasn't until after Jonathan finished that he laughed, and the harmonics his draconic changes gave to them made it spiral outwards, encompassing and pressing from all sides. ]

Oh, I could use a night's sleep. It will be so invigorating to feel something again.

[ There is nothing in any poor unfortunate from the mass he had absorbed could feel that would be as terrible as his own suffering, after all. ]

[The laugh makes him shiver, and it is not exactly unpleasant, although that in itself makes him somewhat uncomfortable.]

It isn't funny. It- you'll relive all of the terror of the experience too.

[ This man did not yet understand what suffering was. That was all there was to it. Ardyn smiled again, but he didn't laugh. His tone was still somewhat light, but there was a slightly more serious bent to it. ]

If you'd rather not have it, I can keep it. It's just a little nugget of unchanging suffering in a sea of misery. One more drop.

No. No I- I want the statement.

[He craves it deeply. He is hungry, and god, something willingly given... he can't turn that down.]

Very well.

[ Ardyn sat back, getting himself comfortable. He prepared himself to feel the impulse to share what he had already decided to, and called up the experience that had not been, but now was, his own. ]

Shall I just begin, or is there some ceremony to this?

Well, it's not required but...

[There's the click of a tape recorder nearby, the faint hiss of static.]

Statement of Ardyn Izunia, regarding...

[ As Jonathan said his name, Ardyn smiled. Midway through the word regarding, Ardyn spoke over him. ]

Ardyn Lucis Caelum.

[ The name would mean nothing to Jonathan, save the off chance he'd met Noctis and knew his last name. Even then it would just be a hint of familial relationship, and nothing more. None of the sad, grand, cosmic tragedy of that family would carry.

But it felt right to give his proper name, when he was about to share a story from one of the millions that made up the Scourge.

He let the interruption hang for a moment, and then continued. ]

Regarding the haunting of Fociaugh Hollow.

Edited (Got rid of the extra u lol) 2019-11-10 17:59 (UTC)

[The name doesn't mean anything to him of course, but he can feel the importance of it, the truth of it hanging heavy on the words.

There is the intense feeling that they are being watched, the prickle of eyes on the back of your neck, the gaze of something ancient and hungry and utterly inhuman having its attention turned upon you.]

Statement begins.

[ It was an oppressive feeling. Had Ardyn been alone in himself, he might even have felt horrified by it. The unease was manageable, however, and whatever looked at him found the empty hunger of the Starscourge looking back. This was not a power of either one’s world, but the Starscourge was a power between worlds. It had come from beyond Eos, and after it had consumed it, it would move elsewhere.

Sizing up the creatures that ruled there was likely only sensible for it, now that it had a mind to do so. Ardyn would have laughed, but he’d never found his presence as the Scourge particularly funny.

He let his mind cede into the background, drawing forth the part of him that wasn’t him, and the part of that which had once belonged to the one who had experienced this.

When he spoke, the voice that came from his lips was young and feminine, numbed with a shock of loss and hoarse, perhaps from crying. ]

They lost my baby.

I know that’s not what you’re interested in. You don’t care about human horrors. You just care about what’s in there, don’t you? But that’s not frightening to me. What’s frightening to me is that my little boy was playing at Fociaugh Hollow and when he didn’t come back out, they refused to look for him. They lost my baby.

I know, I know. They say there are daemons in the Hollow but it is a place blessed by Ramuh, and if daemons were to avoid anywhere it would be there, wouldn’t it? It should have been safe. Everyone in the town has gone to the Hollow. People come from all over Duscae to visit it. It’s part of our culture, you know? ‘Oh, come to the Malacchi Hills, we’ll show you the last known place that the Fulgurian ever set foot before going to Angelgard’. I’d even shown people where to go. What to see, and look out for.

It was supposed to be safe.

Have you ever been inside the Hollow? It’s winding and dark, but it is beautiful. Parts of the upper caverns open to the sky, and on a bright day you can see the sunlight pooling on the ground like radiant puddles. The walls are crisscrossed with jagged lines, like lightning, and sometimes there’s a sharp smell in the air. Ozone, one of the visitors told me before. I just knew it because it smelled like the air after a storm, but I started including that when more visitors came to see the caves. [ A short, huffing laugh. It doesn’t sound amused. ] There was another one like that. You see, it’s cave, even the parts close to the surface. Stalacmites jut up from the ground and in some places they are so close to the stalactites above that they look like bars of a prison. That’s fitting, isn’t it? We’d say that to tourists - ‘It looks like a prison’. Why not? Ramuh was the god of Angelgard. He judged prisoners. It makes sense. [ A laugh, almost like a hiccuping sob. ] It got us a tip sometimes.

I know I’m rambling. I know this isn’t what you care about. But I want you to know that Fociaugh Hollow was considered mostly safe. The upper caverns practically have a path worn through by people walking around the stalacmites. Yes, we’ve all heard of the dangers deep down inside but you can’t go through them easily. Even if you can clamber past the rubble, there are tight squeezes that are almost impossible to get through. The main cavern of the Hollow is safe.

[ The voice, which had begun to ramp up in insistence and passion, deflates as there’s a sigh. That dull tone comes back. ]

And that’s why I didn’t worry when my little boy would go up there to play.

It was a warm day. Tourist season had just ended, and I’d not gone up to the caves in a while. Still, a man came to the tourist center. He was an odd sort of person. I couldn’t place his accent. He… sounded like might have from Lucis, but there was a Niflheim edge to his voice too. He was wearing so many clothes I thought he must have been sweltering. He never took his hat off, either. Something about him made me very uneasy but… you work a customer facing job, and most of your town relies on the tourist draw, so even though it’s out of season, you plaster a smile on your face and you greet any weirdo that wanders in. He smiled at me. He had a very pleasant smile. Asked me how I was, how the place was, and if I had any maps of Fociaugh Hollow. Well we’re not short on those… don’t even really charge for them; they’re on our pamphlets. So I gave him one and he opened it, looked through it, and then he shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I don’t mean the upper caves.”

I told him we don’t advise going further than the first blockage. A few cavers have tried, you know? They got past the first squeeze, but they came out again soon after, white faced and scared. A few tourists accused us of hiring them to drum up interest, but we were just as baffled as everyone else. No one goes further in. There are daemons deep down under the ground.

This man laughed. He said he wasn’t worried about that, and that he’d been curious about what lay deep below the main caverns. Still, he promised me that if it wasn’t allowed, he wouldn’t go further than the upper caves. I was starting to feel bad about finding him creepy when he smiled at me again, and that’s when I noticed his eyes. They were yellow, like a hawk’s. Or a wolf’s, or… whatever they were, they weren’t a colour humans had.

That night, my little boy didn’t come home.

I wasn’t worried at first; Fociaugh Hollow is a small distance away and it takes a little while to bike back, and there are so many nooks and crannies in the caves to play in that children sometimes forget the time. So when his dinner was getting cold I just covered it with a plate and put it under the stove, and I went about washing up. Washing up. [ Another laugh, entirely without humour. ] Plates were more important than making sure my baby was all right.

It wasn’t until an hour before sunset that I really started to panic. You see, I know there are daemons underground. That’s just a fact of life. And I know that the caves do lead underground. But daemons abhor the sunlight. Everybody knows that, so I don’t even think about them until nightfall. By then, everyone’s safe in town, with the lights on all around, and they can’t come in there, too. Someone being out after dark is a concern and my baby couldn’t get back from Fociaugh Hollow to town in only an hour. So I called in the police. They told me to wait where I was in case he came back and oh… oh I hate myself for doing what they said. I hate myself for it. Because they came back in the dead of night and they did not have my little boy with them. It ‘wasn’t safe’ to continue the search. They thought he might have gone further in. I told them he would not have done anything of the sort but they didn’t believe me. “Boys will be boys,” one of them said, like he knew anything about my baby that I didn’t. Then I told them about the man. They looked at me like I was crazy, but they took down the description and told me to get some sleep.

[ A disgusted sound. ]

Sleep. I’ve never had a night where I slept less. Every noise I thought was someone coming back with news about my baby, or even him coming back, scared and cold but alive. I kept thinking about how I’d hug him, how I’d yell at him, how I’d send him straight to bed but I’d climb in with him too… but he never came back.

That night bled into next day and though I kept pressuring everyone, it felt like they did nothing. Preliminary searches of the top caves. A few people went through the squeeze points and looked around, but they came back out after not having found anything. I asked them about the man but they told me no one had seen anyone matching that description. I didn’t know what to think. It felt like no one was taking me seriously. My baby was missing and no one seemed to care.

So I waited. I waited until everyone said their reassurances and told me their pieces and went away, and then I took my light and I took my gun and I went up to Fociaugh Hollow on my own. I parked the car outside but I kept the lights on, just in case, and I went in.

The stalactites merged with the stalactites into bars like a prison cage. The sun was puddling on the ground like radiant pools. The walls were marked with branching patterns like lightning. There was a strong ozone scent in the air.

But my baby was not there.

The man was, though.

[The voice, which had been feminine, young, and smooth if dull from shock, began to change. It’s lower now, harsher, as though the speaker’s throat was damaged, and every word is a hiss. ]

He told me he could help me be with my baby again. He came closer. I think I shot him, but I must have missed because he kept coming closer. And when he took me in his arms all I remember is darkness.

[ The hissing isn’t a descriptor anymore; it’s a fact. Every ‘s’ is drawn out and sibilant. ]

I live here now, in Fociaugh Hollow. I remember his fingers in my hair as I laid my head in his lap… so small, now. So tender. I thought maybe he was my baby, but he wasn’t. He was me, and he was my baby, and something so much more than either of us.

I still want my baby.

I suppose there are daemons in Fociaugh Hollow now.

Edited 2019-11-18 14:41 (UTC)

[He feels that calm settle over him, that deep hunger that gnaws at him spiking in want. The fear creeps down over his neck, makes his heart pound and settles in his belly.

He doesn't blink while Ardyn talks, gaze fixed on him with rapt attention, the words washing over him. He can feel it, that woman's terror as the hours stretched on and her child didn't return home, as she entered the cave system, the darkness and and the lightning. The fear of the unknown strange waiting for her.

When the tale winds down, Jon lets out a slow, satisfied breath. His eyes are dark and there is the air of something sated around him, like a well fed tiger. His tongue flicks out over his lips.]

Thank you.

[ Ardyn let the voice of the woman who had become just one more daemon cede back into the collective mass of the Starscourge. He felt... something, perhaps, or maybe it was just his imagination. It was hard to feel frightened of a memory that didn't matter anymore.

He heard that sigh, and he gave a faint smirk. ]

Oh, you're welcome.

Us ancient evils have to look out for each other, don't we?

[Jon blinks a few times, still not quite back in his own head just yet, that monstrous thing looking out from his eyes.]

Ancient? I'm in my 30s.

[ Ardyn laughed again. ]

With no offense meant Jonathan, but I wasn't just speaking to you.

I'm the only one here. And if you're speaking of the Eye... I don't think it cares.

You'd be surprised how needy something so huge, something so beyond us mere mortals can be.

[ There's was utter disdain in Ardyn's tone, now. A vile, deep-seated loathing that came from the center of himself and was reflected back many times before it found its way out.

And then it was gone again, and Ardyn sounded like he'd just had a pleasant conversation. ]

Well, I'll leave you be while you digest your meal. Have a good day, Jonathan.

[ He hung up. ]

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long loooong pooooost

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