week 2

[airlockedmods]

Week 2

[It's been about a week since the Champions woke up in their new consumerist hellscape of a temporary home and, despite a few odd goings on and the bomb incident with Church and Nari, things haven't been as bad as they could be. No one is even dead yet! But let's see how long that lasts.

Enjoy your week, Champions.]

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(( Also, don't forget to submit your AC and item rolls! You can also bother your Overseer here. ))

Comments

[burninglight]

I did say it was a long story.

Our world was beset by an infection not unlike what you seem to speak of. My work as a healer was all that stood between humanity and oblivion, and I was set to be the first ruler of a kingdom founded from the ashes of a fallen civilization.

My brother and I were the first of the line of Lucis as it came to be known--a bloodline of kings. Yet my brother...hm. I suppose he was jealous, though I no longer remember the details of it. Either way, he took my place and sought to eliminate me. Yet my healing had an unfortunate side effect, and by then I had ceased to be mortal--he had no ability to kill me. So I was exiled, and the historical mentions of 'Ardyn Lucis Caelum' are no more than a lie perpetuated by a false king under a stolen name.

[serrata]

He... he took your name?

[ Something about that makes her stomach curdle a bit. It seems perverse, almost. Her mind, rather unhelpfully, presents her with the image of a scavenger bird picking carrion and flying away with it. No, not even carrion -- no corpse, after all. And taking his name, only to send him away so Ardyn could live on knowing what had been stolen from him... it's vile. ]

But... wait a second. How did he even get away with that, unless...?

[ How could he have just taken Ardyn's place without anyone noticing unless... ]

[burninglight]

Easily. With me relegated to some miserable forsaken island, there was still one person with my face in Lucis.

[serrata]

... You were twins.

[ This is starting to sound like a monstrously cruel cosmic joke. ]

So he... he pretended to be you and then... how did he excuse exiling you like that? Surely someone had to have known something was wrong?

[burninglight]

I told you--I had ceased to be mortal. I was more plague than human by then; I'm sure he told them their savior was ridding Lucis of just another daemon.

[serrata]

So no one even knew.

[ There's something vile and perverse about that Yuuri can't articulate. It's one thing to not be allowed to die, and then to have someone try anyway and then throw him aside. But to have his own brother do it and then for that man to live a lie for the rest of his life, to be buried or cremated or whatever Ardyn's kingdom did with their dead under the name of Ardyn Lucis Caelum.

There would be a family, children, a wife who would think the man they loved was Ardyn Lucis Caelum and they'd never have any reason to call him a liar. ]

That's disgusting.

[ Her voice is low and fierce. ]

After all you'd done for them and he just threw you away like trash. How did he even live with himself?

[burninglight]

...I don't know.

[There was something very distant and tired to the calm look on Ardyn's face now.]

We must have been close, once. But I only remember a jealous king stealing all I sought to build.

[serrata]

[ The sigh she gives is long and slow and tired. She feels worn to the bone just hearing him talk about it, so she can't imagine how it must feel for Ardyn. How it must feel to have two thousand years rattling around in there.

She doesn't even think before reaching across the table and carefully setting her hands on top of his. Maybe if she herself weren't so strung out and exhausted, she'd be unsettled by how much it seemed like second nature to do so. ]

That's the worst part, isn't it? Knowing that there was something else there but no matter how hard you look... it's just gone. And there's just a... a hole where it should be.

[burninglight]

[Ardyn's hands went very still under Yuuri's, as if he wasn't sure what to do with the gesture.]

...it's the same for you, isn't it? Maybe you recall her face, or what she sounded like--can you remember anything else? What she liked, what she didn't...if ever you bickered like I presume siblings should, or if you were inseparable?

[serrata]

... Bits and pieces. I remember her face and her voice and... I remember how small she was.

[ It's her turn to go a little far away. Her eyes have settled on the middle distance and she's not looking at where her gaze as fallen but she's seeing that sickly hot summer morning, the last time she saw her baby sister alive. ]

She was a lot younger than me... nearly ten years, I think. But even for a little girl that age, she was small. Her summer uniform for school had a little yellow sunhat with it but even the smallest size we could find for her used to blow off in a strong breeze.

And she'd go chasing off after it. The amount of time she made me sick to my stomach because I'd turned away for a second and she'd wandered off to do something or other...

[ She doesn't smile, exactly, but something in her eyes warms a bit. ]

I guess you could say she was a bit of a troublemaker. But I didn't mind.