lazybox | [voicetest] it's this guy

[Their kind hasn't interfered overly much with this world; in some ancient time, primals who still yet exist devastated the land of most of its aether, leaving the sundered people unable to work magic almost entirely. It's long been considered uninteresting, and the attentions of the Convocation devoted instead to more aether-rich shards for the Ardor.

But now, a most curious event. A Calamity by any other name would smell as sweet, and the lasting darkness upon this shard now - nearly ten years and yet to pass - certainly qualifies as such. The only pity is that it is aligned with the dark, else they could have forgone the entire nonsense with the First and the Flood entirely.

Alas, hindsight. For now, with so many of their number out of commission, waiting for rebirth, it falls to Emet-Selch himself to investigate.

And that investigation has lead him here, to a dead city that nigh trembles with aether, not of dark but of light, woven into the stones of the pavement. Or the concrete of the pavement, rather.

Of course, he's no fool, perfectly well aware that he's an intruder in someone else's domain. Thus, with the grace of many lifetimes spent as royalty, does he approach the largest building, in a city far more Amaurotine than any he has yet seen built by mortals.

And there, before the gates, he bows and waits. Sooner or later, the king will come out.]

[...Something felt off. It wasn't the motions of the useless Kingsglaive remnants or of the half-ruined automata in the empire's abandoned base camps, but something else. Some force Ardyn couldn't identify--not daemon, perhaps not human, an existence he couldn't put a name to and yet felt on the sort of level he felt his covenant with Ifrit. Well. He certainly had nothing better to do than look into it, moving from throne room to gates in no more than a few seconds and a burst of shadow.]

[And truthfully, he wasn't entirely sure what to make of who he found himself faced with. Attire from an era Ardyn couldn't place whatsoever, and some air about him that felt...wrong. Much as that was casting stones in a glass Citadel, something was quite unusual here.]

And what, might I ask, brings one so far into daemon-infested lands apparently unarmed?

Why, nothing more and less than simple curiosity.

[...Interesting. Like attempting to shove as many iron filings as possible into a sheath and calling it a sword; not quite one of the Sundered but far from whole, and every bit as dark as one of their kind. Except that the light remains beneath the stones finds its echo in this man as well.

A magical right to rule, perhaps? And the corruption of the ruler leading to the corruption of the land? An analytical part of his mind is furiously making notes.]

Emet-Selch, at your pleasure.

[Hm. Ardyn raised an eyebrow at the display, nothing on his face betraying how fundamentally wrong it was. Magic, even such a minor display, used by someone not of the Kingsglaive or Noctis' retinue? Impossible.]

[Red-toned magic? Ardyn had given such rights to no one, and yet a small smile played across his face as he looked the stranger over. He held his arms out to his sides as if to gesture at the dead city around them, and the magenta phantom blades burst forth to revolve around their wielder at a mere thought. Perhaps not a threat, but a display of his own all the same.]

Ardyn Lucis Caelum is my name, and I must confess few have such a dangerous sort of curiosity to them.

[The glyph does not persist; it seems more an identifier than anything else. Emet-Selch keeps his own eyes - gold-toned, but of a lighter shade than Ardyn's - on the blades more than their owner.

Yes, that would explain... Factor in the corruption... The man's well of aether is probably the nearest approach to his own aside from Hydaelyn's champion and his uplifted fellows. Far too much for a normal mortal, but then, if he assumes the aether reserves of all the souls pressed into this man's body have compounded...]

Few have as little need to fear death as I do.

[It's simple as that.]

Fearing death is the sole domain of those who have something to lose from it.

[The swords vanished once it was clear this wasn't about to come to any sort of fight, Ardyn's hands dropping to his hips. This was certainly an interesting way to pass an abundance of time, strange as it was.]

[Interesting, and more revealing than the man perhaps intends. Emet-Selch has no fear of death, but plenty to lose from it, all the more so with the all-too-recent fall of Lahabrea after eons.

No, he still has so very much to lose.]

Spoken like someone with something to gain. And what is it that keeps you in this city of the dead?

I happen to live here. Are you truly so far outside reality that you know nothing of Insomnia?

Yes, actually, this is the first I've heard of the place. You'll forgive me for not having taken the time to visit this world in any great detail in the last millennia or three, I've had quite enough to deal with elsewhere.

My, you really are a complete foreigner to this world, aren't you? I wonder however that might have happened--a wandering immortal of sorts?

Not exactly. I'm afraid that your world simply hasn't been high on our priority list.

[Yes, 'our,' just putting that out there.]

There's been fairly little of interest happening here until quite recently. An interesting case study, but nothing more.

Oh, do tell. Even if I've slipped into a particularly strange new form of manic hallucination, I am enthralled and fascinated.

No hallucination, that much I might promise.

[You know, if he were so inclined. Emet-Selch glances around, as if taking in the world they reside in, and shrugs as though exasperated. It is on the sky that his eyes finally come to rest.]

You might say that I am an architect of sights such as that. Why, just yesterday I stood beneath its very opposite - a world which has not known night in some near-century or so. All for the sake of aligning it in such disarray that it might be Rejoined with the world from whence it was split, ages before ages ago.

Sounds dreadful. [Ardyn rolled his eyes, trying and failing to process what half of that even meant.] I've rather grown to detest light in my old age, I'm afraid.

Oh, it does me no favors either.

[And there, the faintest hint of a smirk.]

And you've no room to talk about old age in front of me, I assure you.

Is that so? And here I'd almost be tempted to say the same.

If you were my age, I would know you.

[Stated as simple fact. There is no option but to know each other, after so very long.]

I was old when this world was born.

How remarkable. Just what exactly are you, then?

I stopped counting a few millennia after the Sundering; somewhere between eighteen and twenty thousand is the best estimate I can produce.

My, and here I am a mere two thousand and change. I'd call it humbling if I had the capacity to feel as much.

Don't worry, young man, you still have plenty to learn.

[When was the last time he talked to anyone who even cracked two centuries? Anything like an equal, but those he has been with for so long that they quite literally have nothing to discuss anymore?]

And so little time. I'm not terribly long for this ruined world, truthfully.

And no desire to leave, I take it.

And be condemned to live sometime as long as you? Heavens, no.

It does tend to be less terrible with company, you realize.

[Seriously, you have a very lonely city here.]

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