#but also gets plenty more questions as he tries to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of figuring out how to Not Get The Bad Ending

[carminite-wyrm]

Running Onwards, To The Hope of a New Day (Part 2 of the Time Looping Nyx AU!)

Part 1 can be found here

In which Nyx makes several attempts to keep everyone alive, adds several more things to his to-do list, finds a black market, and learns some new things.

Or, Phoenix Downs Save Lives, More At Ten.

Nyx sighed, flopping back down onto the floor of his room and resting his head on the side of the bed. He was on his sixth loop now, and so far, he’d only managed to learn that keeping Crowe, and everyone else, alive was ridiculously difficult. He’d tried knocking out Luche again in his fourth run, only for Tredd to be the one to kill her, and while Tredd’s aim was a little worse than Luche’s, getting shot in the leg still sucked. He’d attempted to convince her not to take the mission on the fourth and fifth loops, to no avail, as either way she’d think he was being overly worried, or somehow insulting her capabilities.

On that note, keeping everyone else he cared about alive was also proving to be a nearly impossible task. On the fourth run, he’d opted to switch out Luche and Pelna, when they went to recover the Princess, so that hopefully Luche would be the one getting attacked by the octopus daemon.

Pelna had ended up getting backstabbed by Sonitus, that run.

That run had also ended in disaster yet again, though he hadn’t made it past the Princess recovery operation. Because he’d swapped out Luche and Pelna, Nyx had the dubious pleasure of getting a knife through his hand, stunning him just long enough to miss his warp away from the octopus daemon.

At the very least, he’d managed to drag Luche down with him as they fell.

The fifth run had actually turned out a little better, because he’d found out that if he kept Pelna at his side, Nyx could actually warn him fast enough for the man not to die immediately to the octopus daemon. And having Pelna’s assistance turned out to be a very good thing.

The three of them had managed to escape the daemon, and Nyx had tried to convince Pelna and the Princess to escape. Unfortunately, Lunafreya was…incredibly persuasive, and off the three of them went, to try and recover the King, and the Ring.

They got there just in time to see the Princess’ brother put on the Ring once again, and Nyx had managed to get the King, and the others, out of that first room, with the damnable Ring. With Pelna’s assistance, they actually managed to run out to the car, Nyx and Pelna laying barriers in their wake to slow down Glauca. King Regis was still grievously injured though, the Princess doing her best to heal him whilst Pelna took the wheel, and Nyx prepared himself to fend off any attackers.

Unfortunately, they’d only managed to make it a short way before they were beset by Tredd and Luche’s group, and in the ensuing literal firefight, Pelna’d been hit by a bullet. The traitorous Glaives’ attempt to waylay them on their attempt to flee Insomnia was once again interrupted by Petra Fortis, that gate guard that Nyx continued to have very mixed feelings about, but not before Tredd (and of course it was Tredd bloody Furia, the other member of the Kingsglaive besides Crowe to have a great affinity for fire) had managed to hit their car with a fireball, sending them crashing off the bridge.

When Nyx managed to haul himself out of the wreckage, it was to find Pelna unconscious and bleeding out, and the King dying once again, bringing him back to the same damn situation as the first two times.

And so, Nyx had found himself waking up for the sixth time, having died once again from the price of wielding the power of the Lucii.

He still hadn’t figured out how to get Libertus to not leave and join that group of ill-fated rebels, and while he had figured out how to keep Pelna and King Regis alive for longer, events seemed to continue to conspire against them.

And he still didn’t know how to prevent Crowe’s death.

At the very least, he knew for certain that if Luche was the one sent to murder her, he would do it with that handgun of his. Nyx wasn’t sure if he could tamper with that though, considering Luche kept it either in his locker, or on his person, at all times, and Nyx knew he couldn’t get to that locker without raising suspicion.

Nyx tapped his chin thoughtfully. He couldn’t risk telling anyone in the Kingsglaive about his foreknowledge, because the likelihood of one of the traitors or Drautos finding out was too high. And the Crownsguard were…well, to put it bluntly, a bit too xenophobic to pay attention to a refugee who had no actual evidence, beyond his own memories/experiences. He could try getting an audience with the King again, but without an incentive like the Princess’ kidnapping, the likelihood of that working was equally low.

But maybe, he could find a way to increase Crowe’s odds of surviving the ambush. He couldn’t give her any extra equipment from the Kingsglaive armoury, because that would be noticed, but maybe there was some sort of black market in the city? Most cities as large, and with as great a wealth gap, as Insomnia probably had one? Nyx wasn’t certain, but it was worth a try.

And maybe, just maybe, he could put a spanner in the Princess’ kidnapping as well. Her kidnapping was the bait that drew the Kingsglaive out of the city, leaving the Citadel more vulnerable to the attack that would bring the Wall down.

If the Wall remained intact, then the Empire wouldn’t be able to bring in the majority of their forces, including those giant daemons that had wreaked so much destruction. He didn’t really know what happened, exactly, during the signing ceremony itself, though. And there was so much else he also didn’t know, about this whole disaster, especially about that faction Libertus had taken up with, after Crowe’s death.

Nyx sighed, closing his eyes as he realised what he’d have to do, this loop. He knew now that he had the benefit of time, and so long as he made sure he died, everything would reset to just before midday on the 12th. This loop, he just needed to find out everything he could about the faction Libertus would take up with, their location, their numbers, their resources. He needed to know if he would be able to sabotage their efforts to bomb the Citadel, or if it’d be one of the things he’d have to find a way to reveal to the Crownsguard without implicating himself or Libertus.

And for that to happen…he’d have to let Crowe’s death play out as before.

This loop, Nyx decided, steeling his resolve as he headed over to the training area once again, he was going to whatever he needed to do, to get his hands on the information he’d need to make things right. A rebel faction like the one Libertus joined surely had access to a black market of sorts, after all, one wouldn’t be able to put together explosives or those communicators without access to at least some sort of restricted, possibly military-grade, material.

And perhaps he’d also read up on the whole deal with the Lucii, so maybe he would be able to get them onboard with the whole ‘saving lives and stopping the Empire’ thing, without having to sacrifice himself in the process. Their whole thing about setting alight those they deemed unworthy was useful, Nyx had to admit, recalling how it had dealt with Ravus and Luche rather handily, but also it was a pain when the ghosts in the Ring deemed themselves above the plight of the common man, to the point that it had taken Regis’ intervention to even get them to consider hearing him out.

And, now that he thought about it, what was so utterly important about the Prince that King Regis would be willing to sacrifice himself, and his entire city, just so that the kid would be out of harm’s way? There was that prophecy that either King Regis or Lunafreya had mentioned, but Nyx still wasn’t sure what that entailed beyond the Prince being destined to save the world, or something. Regardless, it had to mean something, for both Lunafreya and King Regis to be so adamant that sacrificing the city and themselves was worth it for his safety.

His course of action decided, he silently apologised to both Crowe and Libertus, and everyone else he wouldn’t be able to help this loop.

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Nyx still threw up, upon seeing Crowe’s corpse in the morgue. He knew he could have at least tried, to save her, but- he needed to know what went on, on Libertus’ end of things.

It still hurt, though. No matter the apparent necessity of this loop, and its likely future benefits, his need to protect those he could still rebelled at his decision to accompany Libertus, and abandon everyone else.

At the very least, he could count on the fact that Libertus was pretty much ride-or-die, when it came to vouching for him in front of the (justifiably) suspicious rebels, when Nyx had found himself failing to come up with an actual believable reason for his presence. The ensuing conversations with the rebels, however, had been rather informative. Nyx knew firsthand how refugees were treated in Insomnia by a large portion of its inhabitants, particularly by those who were born and raised in the city. Even though the Kingsglaive had been essential to the war effort against the Empire, the fact it was staffed mostly by refugees – and the majority of them Galahdian – made most of the citizenry a little…frosty, at best, due to the perceived favouritism from the King. And of course, there was the whole matter about how the nobility – and the Crownsguard, by extension, given that a good portion of that organisation was made up of the sons and daughters of Insomnia’s upper classes – believed that the refugees were beneath their notice.

Nyx knew this, but maybe the time he’d spent out at war with Niflheim had dulled his awareness somewhat, to the situation back home. Had there ever been this much vitriol, this much hatred, at Insomnia and its people? Had the King’s name ever been spoken with this much derision? Had his people – his fellow Galahdians – and even the other refugees from the other regions ravaged by the Empire, been this poorly treated by the Insomnians?

He thought back to the initial meeting that he and Libertus had ended up at, how, as an introduction, they’d all gone around sharing why they were here, in the backroom of a dingy abandoned arcade, planning to bring down the Lucian government.

“My brother died in a daemon attack when the Lucian military pulled out of Cleigne.”

“We lost our homes when the government had them demolished to make way for a new overpass.”

“I lost my job, because some rich upper-class fucker thought that the restaurant’s dishes shouldn’t be cooked by ‘some uneducated backwater savage’.”

“My mother’s cousin was stabbed last week, and the Crownsguard refused to investigate it further because ‘it was probably just a mugging gone wrong’. As if every trash-filled back alleyway was home to criminals, rather than the poor and downtrodden.”

Honestly, at this point, Nyx actually felt kind of bad about the fact that he was going to use the information he got in a later run to stop them.

But he knew that the explosives they would set off would allow the Empire to take the Crystal, which in turn would damn the entire city to being razed by both daemons and the Empire’s soldiers. Nyx really did understand know, why the rebels would consider such drastic actions, understood that the peace treaty was seen as the final betrayal of all the promises that the King had made, understood that at that point, the only way forward, in the eyes of the rebels, was to take matters into their own hands.

But knowing the consequences of their actions…he had to stop them.

He found himself, a short while later after the rebels had all begun to disperse so that they could work on their various tasks, hovering awkwardly in a room that had been converted into a makeshift workshop. From what he’d been told, these rebels didn’t seem to be associated with the traitorous Kingsglaive members, but considering how Libertus was still discussing matters with this group’s leader, and how small this group was, Nyx bet that they didn’t trust him fully just yet.

“So, forgive me for asking, but this stuff doesn’t seem…it doesn’t look like you’d be able to get this from a hardware store.” Nyx commented, staring at the charges one of the rebels was preparing.

“Well, obviously,” The man shrugged. “You’d be surprised, what you can get from the old merchant in the back alleyway. Couple of leftover demolition explosives, from the last time a condemned building actually got demolished. Honestly, the only part of this that we’ve gotten from uh…outside sources…would be the communicators, and the money to buy the explosives.”

“…Do you think this…old merchant of yours…sells potions?” Nyx inquired, as casually as he could.

The rebel squinted at him, and Nyx quietly hoped he hadn’t pushed too quickly. Libertus was having an easier time ingratiating with the group, probably because his anger was all too genuine, whereas Nyx knew his silence was probably leaving everyone suspicious of him, even with Lib vouching for him.

“What do you need them for?”

“I just…I want to be prepared, in case someone- someone gets injured, or hurt.” Nyx admitted, putting in just the slightest tinge of the depression he felt whenever he thought about all the times one or more of his friends had died, of all the times he had failed, over the past few loops.

The rebel’s eyes widened, and Nyx realised that the other man probably had just made the (logical) leap of understanding that Nyx was thinking about Crowe, about his sister in all but blood who had recently died (yet again). Libertus had not been quiet about the fact that her death was the cause of their change in allegiances. The rebel visibly softened, before patting Nyx on the shoulder and giving him directions.

As it turned out, the black-market dealer not only dealt potions and explosives, but also all other sorts of legal and illegal merchandise. Quite frankly, Nyx wasn’t sure how this guy hadn’t been caught yet, considering that not only was most of his catalogue was kept in the same graffiti-covered garage, but also, he travelled around in the shadiest van Nyx had ever seen.

Nyx stared at the array of very illegal weaponry that was on display along one of the garage’s wall panels, before turning his attention to the rack of various curatives. There were a few potions, and he even managed to find a high elixir amongst them, even if the bottle was a little cracked and leaking the magic-infused liquid into its haphazard plastic wrapping.

But what caught his attention next, was a tiny box in the back of the curative rack, one that had the slightest sparks of a phoenix down emanating from it. He picked it up, and opened it, half-expecting it only to be some sort of clever fake. But no, there was a small downy feather resting inside the box, barely a quarter of the size of a regular phoenix down, but somehow, he could tell that the magic within it was as potent as normal.

“…How much does this one cost?” He asked.

The dealer laughed, shrugging. “Five thousand gil.”

Nyx winced. That was…almost a third of his current savings. He could purchase at least ten potions with that money, or even two extra knives for Crowe. And technically, he could buy even more for a cheaper price if he went outside the Wall, to maybe an outpost in Leide or Duscae, but there was no way he’d be able to just skip out of the city in a future loop, not when the Kingsglaive would be ordered to remain within, until the Princess was kidnapped.

Damn the fact that anything stronger than a regular potion was only available in Insomnia via the military, and even then, they were highly regulated. Potions wouldn’t save Crowe, if only because Nyx knew she took at least four of them with her on that mission.

“I’ll think about it.” Nyx finally said, putting down the box. He wouldn’t be needing that in this loop, that was for certain.

He now knew where this rebel group was located, knew their leader, knew how they were getting their supplies, beyond collaborating with the Empire. He had also come to the realisation that there were at least another two or three cells, with at least one of them likely in collaboration with the traitor Glaives, after Libertus let slip later that night that he had participated in ‘a meeting with the other leaders of this rebellion’. Nyx had tried to get further details from him, but Libertus had just shrugged and said that it wasn’t important.

He still didn’t know if the rebels would have been half as successful without Libertus’ information (and hadn’t it stung, to learn just how much information on the Citadel, and all their truly loyal brothers and sisters in the Glaive, Libertus had been willing to share), but Nyx figured that was a problem for a future loop. He’d figure out how to convince Libertus to stay. One day.

And now, he had just half a day before the signing ceremony, half a day with which to do research on the other thing he wanted to learn about, this loop. Namely, that Prophecy that both Lunafreya and King Regis had mentioned. Somehow, Nyx had the feeling that it was important, but he had no idea how or why it was. And considering that this loop, there was no chance he’d be able to even start digging up proof of Drautos’ treachery, or that of the other Glaives like Luche and Tredd, he might as well see whether he could get at least some background information on that.

The City Library turned out to be practically useless. Oh sure, there was a book on the Cosmogony, which didn’t actually talk about any sort of prophecy, but all it did talk about a King chosen by the Astrals to ‘see through a coming disaster’. And he assumed that disaster had something to do with that last passage in the book, which he gathered (after a good hour trying to parse through the flowery phrasing) talked about some sort of apocalyptic plague of darkness? There was nothing actually specific though, just passages that he assumed was well-known information amongst the more religious folks of Insomnia.

Nyx was starting to regret not paying much attention to the main religion in the city before this.

He spent the rest of the loop, before following Libertus to see where these rebels would be setting their charges, nursing a headache, as he tried to figure out how exactly this was all related to the Empire invading Insomnia. In the end, he opted to just, focus on the more immediate problems he had. He had his hands full anyways, trying to stop the deaths of his friends, and the destruction of Insomnia, pretty much all on his own.

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Nyx woke up, for the seventh time, and decided that no matter what happened in any of his future loops, he was never, ever dying again to a hail of bullets. Sure, he may or may not have intentionally stepped in front of that one guy, the rebel leader that had taken a shine to Libertus rather quickly, but…once was more than enough.

He swung himself out of bed, absently rubbing the centre of his chest, where he swore he could still feel the phantom impact of the bullets, along with the by-now-expected mild burning sensation that accompanied every awakening to a new loop. He had about ten minutes before Libertus would call him about meeting up at the training building, and he needed to figure out how exactly he was going to play things this time around.

It was…surprisingly easy to sneak through the alleyways to get to the black-market dealer, that night, and Nyx quickly handed over the required amount of gil for the phoenix down. Absently, he noted that there was a stack of demolition-grade explosives badly hidden in one corner. He quickly rushed back to his flat, trying to think of anything else he could give Crowe that wouldn’t arouse to much suspicion from any of the traitors or his technically-allies. An extra elixir? Nyx wasn’t certain how much help that would be, but well, more curatives certainly never hurt anyone.

Crowe still disappeared, on that mission.

He did notice Luche limping around though, one arm clearly injured, some new bandages peeking out from under his collar.

Good to know that Crowe had, at the very least, given Luche hell.

The trip to the morgue…was perplexing, to say the least. This time, there was an actual guard around the room, and when Libertus inevitably burst in, they only saw the faintest glimpse of a charred arm, before they were both tugged back outside by the combined efforts of Drautos and Pelna.

He tried to convince Libertus to stay, once again. This time, he emphasised the fact that they didn’t know for certain that Crowe was dead, that maybe she was still alive, why else would they try to stop them from seeing her? And Libertus knew Nyx had given Crowe a phoenix down, and an extra potion. Surely Crowe couldn’t be dead, she was far too strong to die.

Libertus still left, leaving Nyx clenching his Kingsglaive emblem in his hand.

Looked like the phoenix down wasn’t enough. Not on its own.

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Two days later, when the Glaive deployed to rescue Lunafreya, Nyx found himself revising his words. Slightly.

He’d tampered with the hairpin beforehand, having spent several of the prior loops figuring out exactly where the tracker was placed, and whether he could actually remove the component that allowed the Niflheim forces to track it, whilst still keeping the part that let him know where it was located. It had been…finicky work, to say the least, and it hadn’t worked out before, but Nyx was fairly confident that this time would be the one. He’d left the part he thought was the daemon-attracting one in Luche’s apartment, because Nyx was, at the end of the day, absolutely down to cause that man as much grief as he could before he could kill him with no consequences. And, just before they had prepared to leave, he’d packed some extra curatives, because he guessed that even if he failed to prevent the daemons from swarming them all later, he could at least help keep Pelna and the King alive for longer.

The rescue mission went just about as Nyx had expected, having continued with his plan to keep Pelna alive, because having extra allies never hurt anyone. What he hadn’t expected, however, was a blast of fire slamming into the octopus daemon, successfully knocking it off the ship that Nyx had managed to get Lunafreya and Pelna into.

He looked for the source of the fire, only for a knife to go sailing through the open door, and Crowe warping with it, a second later. She crumpled onto the deck of the ship, and Nyx vaguely heard Pelna make a strangled exclamation, before cursing as he briefly lost control of the ship.

“Crowe!” Nyx yelled, rushing to her side. “Holy shit, you’re alive!”

“No thanks to that bastard Luche.” Crowe grumbled, voice clearly laced with exhaustion.

There was a burn scar tracing from just under her chin, down to her shoulder, and Nyx belatedly noticed that one sleeve of her tattered jacket was hanging empty.

“…We thought you were dead, Crowe.” Nyx admitted, almost breathless with relief as he pressed an extra elixir into her hand. “Well, at least now we know why they wouldn’t let me and Libertus into the morgue.”

“I’m hard to kill, you know that,” Crowe muttered, looking decidedly better after the elixir. “Though…I probably wouldn’t have made it without that phoenix down you gave me. And even then, it was a bit touch-and-go. I was lucky that a couple of hunters found me, otherwise I would’ve died. If not from blood loss because of Luche’s damn bullet, then from the shock of losing my arm. At least, that’s what the hunters said.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright? We’re…heading back to Insomnia, because the Princess said we need to recover the King, or else we’re all fucked, basically,” Pelna called out. “I think I’ve got enough control of this thing to give you the opportunity to get off, but the moment we cross the city wall, we’re going to be right in the thick of it.”

“Pelna, I literally ran all this way after the hunters spotted the Imperial ships in the air. I would’ve called you all about Luche being a filthy traitor, except that my comms were all linked to Commander Drautos’, and considering I don’t know how else Luche would’ve known the exact details of my mission in order to ambush me that effectively, I…couldn’t risk it.” Crowe glared at him, straightening up and pulling her knife from out of the ship’s wall. “I’m helping, whether you all like it or not. Speaking of which, where the hell is Libertus?”

“He left the Kingsglaive, after you- I mean, after we thought you died.” Nyx admitted. “I tried to get him to stay but-“

“But it’s Libertus. Probably wanted to take things into his own hands, didn’t he,” Crowe rolled her eyes. “Idiot. But yeah, it does make sense.”

Nyx nodded, silently figuring out whether he had any other methods of communication he could give Crowe in future, now that he knew for certain that the phoenix down actually worked!

Several hours later, Nyx cursed viciously as their car once again went flying off an overpass, this time from an errant missile from an MT Armour that had somehow still managed to catch up to them, even with Fortis’ intervention. When he finally pulled himself from that wreckage, it was to see Pelna’s bloodied face staring up at the sky, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.

“Shit.” Crowe said, as they all hurried into the nearest building with the same damn horde of wasp daemons chasing them, Nyx preparing himself for the inevitable run with the hairpin. “I don’t suppose there was any way to stop Tredd from throwing that fireball that sent us right into that MT’s path?”

“Actually.” King Regis finally said, as they crouched behind a row of filing cabinets. “If you told me who the traitors were, I probably could have cut them off from my magic. I would’ve done so earlier…but I wasn’t certain whether I’d be able to cut just them off from the magic, rather than the entirety of the Kingsglaive.”

Nyx stared in shock at the King.

“Wait, you could’ve done that from the start?!”

“It is…finicky work, to sever only those specific bonds, without being immediately near to them,” King Regis admitted, oblivious to Nyx’s churning thoughts. “And I will admit, my hold on the magic of the Lucii is…weaker than it was, before the initial attack on the Citadel. But it is doable.”

Nyx was so distracted by that newest revelation, that he failed to notice the swinging arm of an MT Amour, and found himself waking up with a shout for the eighth time, the feeling of his ribs being crushed still fresh in his mind.