Chapter Text
They put him in the Angelgard. As if he has done something so terrible, so devious, that the gods must be his jailers. As if all of this was his fault. As if he was the one who killed AeraHisBelovedHisWife the oracle. As if he was the one who betrayed his family and burned his people alive.
Ardyn felt anger, burning fury for everything. For Somnus, for all those who stood and watched as his brother murdered his love the oracle. For the unforgiving gods who did nothing as he killed her. For that damned crystal that ruined everything.
I am unworthy .
He will never forgive them. All of them. He will make everyone pay, he will make Somnus pay. If he wants to play king, that’s fine. Ardyn will show him the same mercy his brother had shown to all those afflicted with the Starscourge. He will raze his kingdom to the ground. Ardyn flexed his muscles, the chains embedded in his flesh stopping almost all of his movements. But first, he needs to find a way out of this damned cage.
His first few months in this prison had somehow been the worst. Even though his world is now nothing but a blur of intense pain and darkness, it was not as bad as the beginning had been; in the beginning, he still had hope.
He'd thought that maybe he could die, maybe he could join her in the afterlife, but those thoughts proved futile when all his attempts were rejected. Or he thought, maybe, just maybe, someone would come and let him out. He had saved many people throughout his travels, maybe someone will realize the injustice of what had happened and free him from this dark prison. It was a very small chance, but he clung on to that small hope.
As more time went by, filled with nothing but black and agony and silence and black , he was forced to face the truth: no one was going to be coming for him. His own thoughts tore into him, fueled by the black, black, black surrounding him (devouring him) , but there was no reprieve from them; he cannot escape this place, not without help (No one was coming). He could not even die.
Why can’t he die?
Why was he here?
What did he do to make Somnus hate him so?
What does he have to do to make this stop?
Ardyn knew what this place was doing to him, what the consuming darkness was accomplishing. He tries so hard to prevent it. He was stubborn, using everything that he had learned in his thirty or so years of life to keep his mind together, but it still tore at his sanity. At first, he recited poetry and Aera’s his favourite stories, trying his best to fill in the silence.
Then, when he started stuttering over the lines, he switched to thinking about anything he could do to keep the silence and the blackblackblack at bay. However, his efforts were fruitless; even his running commentaries eventually faded off without warning, and he wouldn't realize it until the silence almost consumed him.
Centuries goes by and he begins to lose touch with reality. For what was reality when he was surrounded by nothing? No light, no sound, no wind (Is there even any air in here?). Robbed of all senses, no longer feeling the chains pulled taut to his flesh, hanging him in the air. Here, there was no such thing as reality, just an endless dark void.
As time trickled by, it took with it his mind, his memories, her ( please not her. anything but her. he can’t lose her again ). He felt himself slipping, drowning, falling deeper and deeper into the embodiment of his confinement.
Ironically, the first thing to fade was Ardyn's anger. Not completely absent, not by a long shot. There are times when his fury overcame him so abruptly and utterly that he’d spend daysmonthsyears screaming and shouting and thrashing, tearing his throat and voice into pieces, losing his only defense against the silence.
But between these violent fits, he could no longer fuel his want for revenge. There was no energy, no drive, nothing left. Attempting to hold on to his hatred served no purpose except to allow the darkness and insanity to tear at him that much harder; his hate slipped between the gaps and into the darkness. As did his memory and everything else.
Not that it really mattered when everything else was consumed (destroyed) . His sorrow, his joy, his pride; Ardyn knew he had become nothing more than a mass of continual agony and blankness. When moments such as these struck him, when his mind was his to use once more, he felt numb to what has become of him. Detached, to how he had forgotten the colour of her eyes, forgetting his mother's name and his brother's face.
All of it was gone, fading into the black. He still tried to fight it, to preserve what little he had left of himself; Ardyn had always been determined and unflinching in his ambitions, and while he had been robbed of many things, no one could rob him of who he was.
“I am Ardyn Lucis Caelum: eldest of the House Caelum, healer of Lucis. Chosen King-”
“The gods have spoken, I, Somnus Lucis Caelum, am king”
Try again. Don’t forget.
“I am Ardyn-”
“He’s a monster!”
He doesn’t want to forget. He can’t forget.
“I am...”
“Even if others forget your name, I will always remember.”
But she isn’t here anymore.
She left him behind.
He has nothing left.
“I’m sorry, Aera.”, he whispered, allowing the darkness to devour his words and everything with it.
After two-thousand years in the Angelgard, Ardyn wasn’t much of anything.
And when his world of darkness and silence was shattered into a cacophony of light and sound, he did not notice. His eyes remained staring into nothing, glassy and unseeing.