#he'd hunt this child down just to scare the living daylights out of him lol

[misteria247]

Mabel talking to Ford about her romantic endeavors: And then there's Mermando, he was my first kiss! And then ugh there was Gideon. He was.....weird.

Ford immediately curious: Weird?

Mabel launching into Pines summer lore: Yeah, he took me to fancy restaurants and tried to take me out of the friend zone. And when that didn't work Dipper tried to help me out with it, which resulted in Gideon trying to kill him. After that, he basically harassed me, Dipper and Gruncle Stan. Oh! And then he stole the deed to the Mystery Shack, making us all homeless and then he built a giant robot and tried to kidnap me! But Dipper saved the day and I saved our butts with my grappling hook! Then Gruncle Stan revealed the sham he was pulling over everyone in town-Gruncle Ford you okay?

Ford gripping his arm chair barely keeping himself from hunting down a tiny child: I'm absolutely fine my dear. Please tell me more about this Gideon.

[secret-engima]

Somewhere, out in the multiverse, someone tried to make Ardyn chancellor... Which the Ardyn in question would find entertaining, in theory- except he'd be chancellor. Ardyn has had more than enough of politics, thank you, and that's part of what had originally sent his life to hell. And he may or may not have already lived through this mess once, twice would be boring. So, sorry, dear. But if you want him as chancellor, you'll have to catch him first.

I love this idea. I love it SO MUCH IMMA RAMBLE/MINI-FIC ON IT-.

-Just- Ardyn probably taking one look at this Mad Scientist (not that he knows that pop culture term) and deciding that whatever the man has planned is Not Good and Ardyn may be a walking mess and may not Understand Technology At All but he’s not going to just sit around being used a second time in his life and so he...

-Bolts. Uses his newfound daemon powers to escape into the wildness and then realizes he doesn’t really ... know where to go? At all?

-Decides to travel everywhere and see how the world has changed because what else is he going to do? He isn’t Ifrit-crazy in this AU and so has no real desire to go hunt down the LCs for revenge (no desire to see them at all actually but eh).

-While Bersithia and the rest of Niflheim proceed to lose their minds (YOU LOST THE ADAGIUM??? FROM THE MOST SECURE FACILITY IN NIFLHEIM??????) Ardyn ambles all over the place and finds really interesting people and learns how to use his daemon powers to Not Get Hurt and also how to ignore the screaming in his head at having Daemon Powers. Visits all sorts of cool places, wanders into Altissia looking for a boat to Lucis, briefly meets Weskham who is just getting Maagho of the ground and teaches the nice young man some ancient recipes for the lols before shambling off to Lucis.

-Immediately, instantly, catastrophically starts rumors left and right. Niflheim has great censorship (this is the evil dictatorship that convinced its people they were “vanishing” and not “turning into daemons” after all) so rumors of a “human-shaped daemon” never get off the ground there but in Lucis? In Lucis the rumors SOAR.

-Ardyn’s whole anonymity thing would be way more effective if he didn’t have insomnia (the medical kind not the city) and no REAL need to eat or sleep and so often spends both days AND nights ambling around looking at the sights, drinking in the fresh air, listening to the mad cackle of daemons as they chase some poor hapless Hunter-.

-Wait.

-Poor Hapless Hunter in question has NO IDEA what to make of Ardyn ‘Healer King’ Lucis Caelum (not that he knows Ardyn’s name) sweeping in and driving off the daemons with powers unnatural. He is not reaaallllly the king of daemons because the Scourge doesn’t have a set hierarchy like that but the strongest daemon in the area CAN boss the others around and Ardyn is the strongest daemon literally everywhere he goes. So when he saunters in, face weeping Starscourge, skin pale as ash, and growls at them to kindly leave, all the lesser daemons scramble off in a panic.

-Poor Hapless Hunter stares in Terror™ at this man-shaped daemon eyeballing him for injuries like a meal. Is ... very confused when the man-shaped daemon sighs like the Hunter is a Problem Child and herds/leads/scares him off to the nearest Haven, lecturing him blandly the whole way about not getting caught out at night “you’re fragile and easily killed and smell like a royal meal to any daemon in the area, honestly you should know better than this, did your parents teach you nothing?”

-Poor Hapless Hunter is not believed in his wild tale until it happens again. And again. And again but to a lost civilian family whose car had broken down at dusk and were about to be killed by Iron Giants. And honestly by the time the Chocobros 1.0 hear about it, the Hunters have accepted the existence of a fae-like, semi-benevolent King of Daemons (he bitterly tells one Hunter that he is called Adagium, but that his name is his own, and after the initial panic attack of talking to the Literal Boogie Man, all the Hunters agree to never call him Adagium. It might anger him.) and are leaving him gifts of food and clothes and tacky hats (he seems to enjoy tacky hats, there’s a betting pool on which one he will wear next time he appears) in hopes of winning his favor and protection. Some of the bolder ones will even hold conversations with him when he appears, and the most rural of Lucians are telling their children that if they ever get lost out at night, they are to hide and whisper a certain phrase that is said to summon the king of daemons (King of Night please hear my plea, I need your aid with all due speed). Ardyn keeps stumbling across those kids/people who say that phrase by accident and it only reinforces the mythos springing up about him.

-Cor searches in vain for someone who can actually confirm the existence of this Daemon King they all claim exists (and Cor tries not to think too hard on the fact that Angelgard was broken into two years or so ago, that there were signs that something had been dragged out of the sealed prison Adagium was said to lie in). Eventually decides that if this “King of Daemons” only appears to lost travelers in the dead of night, he’s just going to have to go get himself lost in the dead of night. Because Cor Leonis.

-Runs into Ardyn while fighting off the host of daemons that are coming for Cor. Is ... unnerved when a soft word from the figure in the shadows sends them scurrying. Ardyn’s face comes into view in the light of Cor’s flashlight and Cor flinches at the scourge weeping down his face. Ardyn just blinks at him, used to that reaction to him when he’s not hiding the Scourge in his veins (he hides it in the day so people don’t realize their “King of Night” is actually able to move around in the daylight, if under way too many layers of tacky clothing), “You are not a Hunter or a civilian,” Ardyn points out mildly.

-”What are you?” Cor snaps with white-knuckles on his sword hilt.

-”More polite than you.” Ardyn answers without batting an eyelash, “I save you from a horde of daemons and you don’t even say thank you? Rude. You must be from the lovely capital.” Because the rural folk have all seemed to have taken a wary liking to him in this form, and its hilarious to him in a heartbreaking way that people are more willing to shyly leave gifts on the edge of their property and children stick their heads out their bedroom windows and talk to him when he looks like a daemon in man’s skin than when he’s just a human drifter trying to figure out what in the world a phone is.

-Cor blinks, not expecting that at all, then keeps pushing the issue, “If you are the so called Daemon King, then why don’t you just call them off permanently?”

-”I’m a king,” Ardyn retorts blandly, “not an god. The daemons are wild, insatiable creatures. They only listen when I am near. So I suggest you make your way to a Haven before I leave and they return.” Ardyn turns and ambles away into the shadows, expecting to have to stalk this man to a Haven without the man’s knowing to make sure he survived the night.

-Does not expect to sense light at his back, look over his shoulder and find Cor following him.

-”This,” drawls Ardyn, “is not the way to a Haven.”

-”I’m not looking for a Haven,” Cor grunts, hand still on his sword hilt but ... willing to talk to this strange human-daemon for now (daemons can’t be captured for testing, so his best option is to ... talk ... with a daemon. how is this his life now.), “I’m looking for you.”

-”Well you found me, now go away. Go back to the stones of safety your Oracles pray over. Go back to your precious Walled off city of kings.” the last sentence is biting and bitter and Ardyn knows it, can feel it in the way the Scourge deepens his voice and makes it sound like the hissing of a thousand monsters right at the end.

-The man does not go away to a Haven or Insomnia. He keeps following Ardyn with a dogged persistence that would be amusing if it wasn’t so frustrating and baffling.

-Ardyn ends up being forced to take shelter in a cave come morning because he’s not revealing that he can hide his Scourge and walk among men to this armed, persistent stranger thank you.

-Cor follows him for like three days and nights straight, harassing him with rude questions and thinly veiled accusations before Ardyn’s temper snaps and he pins Cor to the wall, the Scourge welling up tellingly from his hands like black smoke, ready to Infect at a moment’s notice, “If you want to know my secrets so badly, maybe I should just make you like me.” He snarls and the Scourge snarls with him, cackles in his head at the thought of finally feeding in the way he’s refused to let it since realizing he could infect people with the Scourge.

-There’s a flash of terror in Cor’s eyes, pinned and helpless for the first time since he found Gilgamesh, and as suddenly as Ardyn’s temper rose, it wanes.

-Ardyn drops Cor, shaken but unharmed, turns away with a sigh, “Please. Just leave me be.”

-Cor scrambles up, heart in his throat, and because he is Cor and Stubborn but also so very, very smart, he blurts the realization that’s just hit home, “You were human once.”

-Ardyn stills, but doesn’t turn back toward Cor, “Yes.”

-The single word hurts Cor more than Ardyn’s hands around his throat just seconds ago, “Who were you? You can’t really be the Adagium that was broken out of Angelgard. It was sealed by the Founder King himself.”

-Ardyn sighs like the world is too heavy, and the last thing Cor hears before Ardyn knocks him out is as low, “I was called Ardyn, and I will not be going back in that prison.”

-Cor wakes up on a Haven with a headache and a name and a wild report.

-He tells Regis everything, and he and Regis spend feverish months researching, looking, puzzling and finding inconsistencies in the historical record that have gone unnoticed and unquestioned for 2k years. Regis contacts the Oracles and asks for access to their library and it is there, with a nervous Queen Sylva hoping she has not made a great mistake letting an LC into the Oracle’s libraries, that Regis finally finds- not an answer. But a piece of it.

-Ardyn has almost forgotten about Cor Leonis, the annoying young swordsman who trailed him around for several days and nights, has put the incident behind him and resumed wandering around as King of Night by the moonlight and a simple drifter admiring the sights beneath his many layers of clothing by day.

-Then he stumbles across a group fighting off daemons in the middle of the night and shoos the daemons away before he can register-.

-He stiffens and backs away, reaching for the shadows desperately because he will not be caged and stabbed and betrayed again. He will not be able to control the Scourge screaming in his veins if he is attacked by this again and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone so just go away-.

-”Wait!” Cor Leonis half sprints into the shadows, fearless despite having already been on the near-receiving end of Ardyn’s wrath once, “Wait!”

-Ardyn keeps retreating, heart hammering and afraid.

-“Ardyn Lucis Caelum!”

-Ardyn stills. Doesn’t dare breathe.

-Cor stops and looks over his shoulder at the man who yelled Ardyn’s name. The man with Somnus’s blue eyes and black hair but not his features, who limps hurriedly to Cor’s side, unafraid of the dark and desperately searching the shadows for Ardyn’s shape while their third companion fidgets nervously two steps behind. The man with Somnus’s blue eyes (Somnus’s magic, Ardyn’s magic and it hurts to be so close to it again) swallows hard and calls, “Your name- is Ardyn Lucis Caelum, isn’t it? You were- you are-.” He seems at a loss for words and Ardyn braces for the rest. For Monster and Accursed and Traitor and Adagium.

-”You’re my uncle, are you not? Just- a great many times removed?”

-Ardyn shifts, turns back toward them without meaning to, startles himself by asking hoarsely, “You would call a daemon and the Adagium kin?”

-The man swallows again, but there is something earnest and open in his eyes, something that makes Ardyn think this is not a trap, “Rescuing lost travelers at night is hardly the work of a daemon,” he whispers into the dark, “and I don’t think you- I think there is more to history than I have ever known before. Please,” he begs, begs, a King of Lucis and child of Somnus’s blood drops to his knees in front of Ardyn and begs, “I would ... I would know you. If you let me. I would know the truth.”

-“...The truth?”

-“There is something wrong with the historical records of the Founder’s time, gaps where there shouldn’t be, things that don’t make sense. The Oracles have records of an older brother, of you, but none will say what happened. No one will explain why you... are the way you are.”

-The man takes a deep breath and pleads, “Something is wrong and my son- my son is going to be the one to pay for it unless I find another way. Please-, I know you owe me nothing, and probably do not even want to see another Lucis Caelum after all that has happened, but ... please. Will you tell me your story?”

-And Ardyn ... Ardyn turns back very slowly, steps into the light with hesitant steps and looks down at the young king (young father? Young father of the new Chosen King?). The Scourge in his veins says to kill him, torment him and corrupt him as Ardyn was tormented. The bitter, purely human part of him says to walk away, because he owes this man nothing. Somnus has dug this grave and all his descendants deserve to lie in it.

-The part of him that is Big Brother and Healer and now the Wanderer of the Night that Aids ... slowly crouches down in front of this young king-father, watches pale skin turn paler at the sight of his Scourge yet not flinch away or draw his blade, and Ardyn ... well.

-Ardyn always was too kind for his own good, “What is your name? And the name of your son?”

-”I am Regis, and ... my son is Noctis.”

-Ardyn sighs and sits down on the cold ground, lets his magic, red as blood and rubies, flicker off his fingers in greeting to a relative, “Sit down then, Regis, father of Noctis, for this story was long when I was a child and it has only grown longer now.”

-And Ardyn tells them. Of Draconian blessings and plagues, of healing and dying and being trapped in his own skin as his blood ran black and he kept healing still. Of thrones and betrayals and agony in the endless black until strange soldiers broke him free and he discovered his healing had turned to plague-giving. Of Prophecy and Lies and Truths and the true cost of Crowns.

-Ardyn speaks and Regis listens, and as the sun rises Ardyn does nothing more than tug his hat lower on his head and shift to sit in the dark shade (he does not hide the Scourge, not yet, he does not trust them to know he can look purely human, even if they gape at his staying alive in the daylight), and when Ardyn is done singlehandedly unraveling the foundation of all history Regis has ever known, Ardyn fidgets with his sleeves, acknowledges he will regret this, and offers to ... help. If Regis can uncover a way to end the Scourge without tormenting Ardyn further, Ardyn will in turn help uncover a way to save his son, who is destined to bear the full brunt of Somnus’s sins and the plague of the world.

-Ardyn the Wanderer and Regis the Father-King speak together in the middle of the wilderness with only the Shield and the Sword to overhear, and together all of destiny unravels around them.