"...I don't think it's a matter of blame. But forgiving myself..."
It's another matter entirely, and it sounds like one that Talcott, unfortunately, knows well enough. He lets the silence hang, in sparkling crystals and the sound of the rain, for just a moment.
"The true nature of Ardyn's power, that he kept hidden from even me and Gilgamesh, was that... He didn't heal the Scourge, in the way that the line of the Oracle later would. He simply took the infection into himself, more than any human should have been able to contain. I think that what happened would have happened eventually, when it grew too much for his body, a point that I think was very near. But I cannot be sure, and I cannot ask - Ardyn remembers little to nothing before the events that immediately followed his transformation.
"Distraught, I sought the Crystal for guidance. There, the Draconian told me that Ardyn had become a daemon - something worse than a daemon, even, the avatar of all that was dark and twisted by the Scourge. I didn't want to believe it. But two nights later... I was asleep, in that same room, and I woke to hands around my throat. Ardyn, black-weeping and berserk. If Gilgamesh hadn't come... I believed, then.
"I had the daemon Ardyn captured, contained, but I - the Draconian laid the role of king at my feet, and I picked it up, because the people still needed someone. And I let 'Izunia' be the brother who had died, replaced by a daemon, and 'Ardyn' be the beloved king wracked by grief. I told myself that it was for the sake of everyone else - 'Izunia' had few people who would miss him in comparison, after all. I was sparing the world grief."
A shaky inhale, exhale, Izunia running a hand through his hair and closing his eyes, even if he can't see through them right now anyway. The circle of crystals continues to spin; the orb of light hanging over their little campsite wobbles.
"...The truth I can admit to now is that... I just couldn't handle a world without him. So I sealed away my heart and committed the whole of my being to the substitution, to the mad attempt at recreating the brother I had lost with my own self. And the daemon that I blamed for taking him away from me - the daemon that was, still, always, my brother - even if prophecy said I couldn't kill it, I could hurt it, for taking him away from me."
He almost can't say it, not outright. The turn of the phrase he uses is not for politics, but for his own chances at holding himself together long enough to tell the rest of the tale - "And so there are thirty-seven fratricides to my name, and only the first an accident, even if they were all mistakes."
Thirty six - six times six, a ritual number from a ritual time in which faith in the gods was something he still had some belief in. A mad, frantic prayer of death for something, someone who couldn't die.
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It's another matter entirely, and it sounds like one that Talcott, unfortunately, knows well enough. He lets the silence hang, in sparkling crystals and the sound of the rain, for just a moment.
"The true nature of Ardyn's power, that he kept hidden from even me and Gilgamesh, was that... He didn't heal the Scourge, in the way that the line of the Oracle later would. He simply took the infection into himself, more than any human should have been able to contain. I think that what happened would have happened eventually, when it grew too much for his body, a point that I think was very near. But I cannot be sure, and I cannot ask - Ardyn remembers little to nothing before the events that immediately followed his transformation.
"Distraught, I sought the Crystal for guidance. There, the Draconian told me that Ardyn had become a daemon - something worse than a daemon, even, the avatar of all that was dark and twisted by the Scourge. I didn't want to believe it. But two nights later... I was asleep, in that same room, and I woke to hands around my throat. Ardyn, black-weeping and berserk. If Gilgamesh hadn't come... I believed, then.
"I had the daemon Ardyn captured, contained, but I - the Draconian laid the role of king at my feet, and I picked it up, because the people still needed someone. And I let 'Izunia' be the brother who had died, replaced by a daemon, and 'Ardyn' be the beloved king wracked by grief. I told myself that it was for the sake of everyone else - 'Izunia' had few people who would miss him in comparison, after all. I was sparing the world grief."
A shaky inhale, exhale, Izunia running a hand through his hair and closing his eyes, even if he can't see through them right now anyway. The circle of crystals continues to spin; the orb of light hanging over their little campsite wobbles.
"...The truth I can admit to now is that... I just couldn't handle a world without him. So I sealed away my heart and committed the whole of my being to the substitution, to the mad attempt at recreating the brother I had lost with my own self. And the daemon that I blamed for taking him away from me - the daemon that was, still, always, my brother - even if prophecy said I couldn't kill it, I could hurt it, for taking him away from me."
He almost can't say it, not outright. The turn of the phrase he uses is not for politics, but for his own chances at holding himself together long enough to tell the rest of the tale - "And so there are thirty-seven fratricides to my name, and only the first an accident, even if they were all mistakes."
Thirty six - six times six, a ritual number from a ritual time in which faith in the gods was something he still had some belief in. A mad, frantic prayer of death for something, someone who couldn't die.