izunia lucis callout

[founderinglight]

you will pry twinzunia from my cold dead hands let's do this

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[misanthropicprinciple]

Uhhh, what? Dude, I don't think that was his reasoning at all. God damn, you guys are both morbid as hell.

[New drinking game, take a drink every time a Lucian is a fucking 2000's emo kid. Congratulations, you have died of alcohol poisoning.]

[founderinglight]

We're Lucian royalty. More to the point, we're the generation of Lucian royalty that established the black-and-gold death worship aesthetic of the kingdom.

[Okay so that was mostly Izunia, but. When your entire kingdom is created and founded on your swan song wish that one of your descendants someday manages to kill your twin brother? You get fucking morbid.]

Are you really surprised?

[misanthropicprinciple]

No, but Jesus. I've met Noct, too, and for a guy named "Night" he sure knows a lot more about lightening up than you.

[Another swig, because "black-and-gold death worship aesthetic" definitely merits that.]

He did it because he didn't want to be "Ardyn Izunia" anymore is what I meant. He couldn't go back, but he could look for a way forward. Or something.

[founderinglight]

Noctis is crafted entirely of light in a way that the rest of us could only hope to emulate. I'll have you know his grandfather was named Mors.

[It doesn't get more aesthetic than that.]

...Does it have a meaning, besides being yours?

[misanthropicprinciple]

You mean Tenmyouji?

[For some reason, that makes Junpei laugh. It's not even a mean laugh, though he was just rolling his eyes at Noctis being made of light. Lucians. Pretentious fucks, all of them.]

Hah, I'll say it does. You think your brother would settle for anything less than the most ridiculous video game surname available to him? Come on, it's like you don't even know him.

[founderinglight]

[Please enlighten him, Junpei, it's an utterly foreign tongue.]

Oh, I'm sure I can imagine. After all, our given names were certainly more than fitting for our fates.

[misanthropicprinciple]

I dunno that mine's fitting for my fate, exactly.

[He holds his hand out again and wags his fingers. Gimme, gimme. Someone's used to taking advantage of someone else's infinite bag of holding.]

It'll be easier to explain if I write it, too. Japanese has kind of a funky morpheme system, seeing it'll demonstrate something about how it works.

[founderinglight]

[Goodness, how demanding.

Fine he does in fact have a notebook or two. And a fancy ass fountain pen.

He'll elaborate while you fuss with it.]

At least back in our era, it was family tradition for children to be named for when they were born. We were birthed at sunset, thus - 'Ardyn,' for the burning color of the setting sun, and 'Izunia' for the first stars.

[There's a faint smile on his face, bitter as it is.]

Considering that he would eventually take the sun from the sky entirely and I would be the one to spawn the line of kings, like stars in the night, that held out until the Dawn... More fitting than our parents could ever know.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Really? 'Junpei' just means 'pure plain.' Super common boy's name where I come from.

[He's set down the brandy to write as he talks in surprisingly neat strokes, even with the fountain pen. As practiced as if he's done this before, he writes the kanji vertically and then adds the romanized pronunciation in parentheses:

天 ('ten')
明 ('myou')
寺 ('ji' or 'tera')

He flips the pen over and points with the end to each character in turn.]

That first one, ten, that's 'heaven' or 'sky.' The line at the top represents how it covers the earth below. Then the next one combines the characters for sun and moon together into one. So, the sun and the moon in the sky. Tenmyou.

[He points to the last one.]

In my name, this last one's pronounced ji and it means 'temple.' But that character's got another reading in other words. Tera. [Junpei smiles wryly at Izunia, pushing the pen and notebook back to him.] You know. Like 'terra' in your language. So sun, moon, earth, and sky, all lined up in one name.

He didn't even know what it meant when he asked if he could use it. It was at least, like, the third funniest thing I've experienced in the moments before a dramatic life-or-death escape.

[founderinglight]

'Ardyn' is actually still common enough - 'Izunia,' on the other hand, is from our grandmother's tongue, spoken in the region that would become Tenebrae, and that language virtually died out long before Noctis was born.

[He takes the notebook and taps the pen against the edge of it.]

Heavens and the earth - and so the whole of existence, really. No wonder you're disappointed with your first name.

[After a moment, he takes up the pen to write Ardyn's first name in an elegant, archaic version of Eos' script, followed by the three characters Junpei wrote.]

To burn the whole of existence, or to have passion for the whole of existence, depending on one's translation. Both are fitting.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Oh, no, don't get me wrong. My first name's fine. It's the last name that's always been a pain in my ass. 'Sky sun moon temple,' when most Japanese surnames are more like 'inside a rice paddy' or 'little forest'?

[He snorts and returns to his brandy.]

As you can imagine, I was super popular in school and wasn't considered a weirdo at all. So many friends. You don't even know.

[founderinglight]

[Okay, congrats, you made him chuckle a little.]

As a Lucis Caelum, I don't think I have any room to talk on that front. I somehow feel that our family was considered strange even before the Draconian touched our line and gave us magic. And afterwards, of course, we would forever be strange even to our own people.

[misanthropicprinciple]

You were just ahead of your time. All the black and skulls, you would've fit right in with the high schoolers of my parents' generation.

[You know, if you want to feel old.]

[founderinglight]

Well, considering exactly how you and my brother seem to have adopted each other...

[Man you haven't even seen anything, Junpei. Why couldn't the dream dump you in the modern Insomnia?]

Again, we were hardly ahead of our time. We were the establishing influence.

... Though for my peace of mind, if he kept the spats, do not tell me.

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Junpei says not a word, just drinks with a smirk.]

[founderinglight]

[SIGH.]

I adore Ardyn relentlessly but he is an absolute disaster in completely Starscourge-unrelated ways.

[Junpei you're his favorite now.]

[misanthropicprinciple]

Them's the facts. I mean, what kind of weirdo insists on adopting a guy who does, actually, you know, have decent parents? Time displacement notwithstanding.

[A disaster weirdo is what he's saying.]

[founderinglight]

One desperately seeking a family of his own again, in all likelihood.

[You tries to be flippant but got a real answer, Junpei, no wonder Ardyn thinks he has no sense of humor.]

Time displacement?

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Hey, that's fine, you know what Junpei does with real answers and serious questions? He ups the flippancy. There must be balance in the Force.]

Oh, we met while kidnapped interdimensionally through space and time to some galaxy roughly five forty-five hundred years in my future. I don't even know what it'd work out to for you guys from Eos.

[founderinglight]

...Possibly nothing at all, if it was in your universe. You might be dividing by zero to try to manage time across realities.

[misanthropicprinciple]

I don't think it's in my universe exactly. Just a handful fewer timelines removed from my history than yours, since Earth is still definitely a thing there and Eos is probably considered intellectual property of InterGal 7.

[founderinglight]

Oh no, surely not. Copyright law.

[He says it so tonelessly it's hard to tell if that's a joke or if he legitimately does hate copyright law.]

What's your Earth like, then?

[misanthropicprinciple]

Not that different from what Eos is like around Noct and that blond kid's time, from what I can tell. Except we don't have daemons, magic, or chocobos, and most of our wildlife isn't big enough to eat us. And gods just stay inside religion where they belong.

[founderinglight]

...That sounds almost boring.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Don't worry, we still fight monsters. They just happen to be the human kind.