#starofthemourning

....it probably isn't helping my case that my first response to this was but this is the happy ending au is it?

but honestly, it's true

only way i could think of to make this au less angsty - cos I have to ignore all the lots trauma here since there's fuck all I can do about that - is make sure that Egg gets all the hugs? slightly happier childhood where rhaenyra and her harem notice that Egg and Helaena are a little odd and have nightmares and help them through that while they're still young? idk Otto Hightower + Criston Cole dropping dead shortly after Egg or Helaena are born so that there's less tension?

There are many things Ace doesn’t expect to happen, he doesn’t expect his uncle to care for him, he doesn’t expect top survive until twenty five and he doesn’t ever expect for his father to show up.

On occupied Galahd. But Regis does, and he brings an army with him. Regis shows up, and slowly, bit by bit, Galahdian’s are reminded that they are Lucian, that their king cares for them

And they fight.

It isn’t really a hard choice to head back into the resistance, isn’t hard to pick up their weapons again and go fight. The only difference is that this time their parents are with them and the ranks of those willing to fight are greater than they’ve ever been.

So Ace fights, he fights with his friends and his family and if Ace suspects that his mother is the reason Regis is there he doesn’t mention it.

(Things come to a head, as all things do, and Ace meets Regis on the battlefield made of Galahd’s former capital. Ace meets Regis in the final push to take back what belongs to his people and doesn’t hesitate in shooting a lightning bolt over Regis’ shoulder to shoot down the sniper that was aiming at the King.

Regis looks as though he wants to reach out, to tell Ace something but Ace shakes his head.

What dark things did I inspire Elri? Is Ardyn in the uncomfortable position of playing restrain?                    

@starofthemourning

I mean. It’s no more dark than usual, I don’t think?

But I was thinking something along the lines of @hamelin-born‘s and @charlottedabookworm‘s recent Leviathan thing with Nyx. As in, she doesn’t really care so much about the people - she’s not going to destroy Altissia or anything like that. I’d say in any other circumstances, she’d just slip back into her waters and reacquaint herself with the Sea.

Thing is though, Luna is right there. Luna is right there and spouting Bahamut’s Prophecy at her. Leviathan is grateful to her because she freed her - even if she was only following the path that had been laid out before her - but that does not mean she will new chains to bind her.

“You have my thanks for freeing me, little Oracle,” Leviathan says, “But I refused the Draconian before and I will refuse him again. Always. He bound me in chains for millennia as he did to my Chosen. He took my Tide-son, my heart, and shackled him to a cruel fate and when I raged against him, he did the same to me.”

And Ardyn, Ardyn will be watching this, will be listening to his Tidemother refuse the Prophecy. Will hear her claim that she did not go into sleep quietly as Bahamut demanded and was punished for it. And, even years later and all the distance between them, he will know her well enough to she the rage simmering beneath her scales - tempered, just as his is, by time and necessity.

“The Sea does not bow to Slavers,” Leviathan tells the Oracle, “You would do well to remember.”

And then Niflheim descends and Leviathan laughs.

She laughs and unleashes her fury on them because they dare. Imprisoned she may have been, but her children are loyal and they brought her news of the world above. They told her of the Empire’s conquests, of their slaughter and subrogation. Of their arrogance and destruction. And even if they hadn’t, Thalassa remembers an army raised and broken down and bent into little more than tools, remembers experiments on children, remembers the death and pain that follows in the Empire’s wake. The Empire is a den of Slavers.

So she laughs, because they think to try such things on her, think to chain her at best and kill her at worst. But she is the Sea. And the Sea does not bow.

(”The Slavers have forgotten me,” Leviathan tells her storm-brother after, eyes dark and gleaming and endless, “Help me remind them.”

And Ramuh, Ramuh, who mourned his sea-sister’s fate but had been helpless to do anything, who sheltered her children among his own, who love love loves his sister, will help her. Because she asked. Because Leviathan always asks. She never demands, not the way Bahamut does. She asks and Ramuh answers because he loves her, because her rage is his own, because his children have suffered at the hands of Slavers and he has not forgiven it.

Niflheim soon finds it near impossible to cross the sea. Boats disappear beneath the waves, airships are tossed about by storm after storm until they fall to the waters below.

imagine being that kid that a legendary takes a liking to and it just gets jealous of other Pokemon taking its humans attention so just decides to be their only Pokemon

“Hi, this is my companion, Eevee!”

Cor has already picked a fight with his older self, who went with it because why not.

Cor defeats and sits on baby Cor. 

Baby Cor hisses and tries to bite him. Gladio laughs.

Okay, so you know that Runa, the historian, was executed for heresy because she pointed out the historical inaccuracies in the Cosmogony.

What you don’t know is that wasn’t originally in the plan.

She was originally just going to be very absorbed in her work, and be an Early Lucian expert who only knew the official story and was puzzled by the inconsistencies, and therefore kept trying to interrogate Ardyn and Prompto to get the full story.  I wanted her main arc to be about encountering her reincarnated academic rivals.

But I decided that wasn’t angsty enough, and didn’t really give her enough in common with the rest of the group, especially Ardyn and Prompto, that they’d be willing to confide the truth to her—which I needed to happen for the resolution of the prophecy part of the plot.

So I made her work be her death, gave her a damn good reason to be against Astral-worship, and had her academic rivals be the indirect cause of her death because their envy of her led them to report her work for heresy.