[voicetest] it's this guy

[unsunderworld]

[To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Shadowbringers spoilers abound beyond this point.]

Comments

[scourgingstars]

[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.

[unsunderworld]

[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.]

[scourgingstars]

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.]

[unsunderworld]

[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?

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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?

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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.

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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.

[scourgingstars]

How remarkable. Just what exactly are you, then?

[unsunderworld]

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

[scourgingstars]

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.

[unsunderworld]

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?]

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

And no desire to leave, I take it.

[scourgingstars]

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

[unsunderworld]

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

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

[scourgingstars]

I'm not the sort for companionship.

[unsunderworld]

I see. That's a pity.

[It sounds sarcastic, but he does mean it genuinely, in his way.]

[scourgingstars]

[A shrug.]

I see no reason for pity. Solitude is far less complicated than the alternative. It's simply easier this way.