DUNGEON - BELLMARE ENCLAVE (BELLMARE MOUNTAINS, PT 2)

[phantasmods]

The shadows are starting to grow very long as you crest his particular ridge - it's not night yet, but it will be soon. In the shadows of the afternoon, with a tall mountain already blocking the sun, lies a snow-covered valley that is different from the ones you've come across thus far in your investigation.

This valley is home to a town, and unlike all the settlements you've seen so far - Incendia, the Telovia mining town, and the manor - it's very much active. There are actual people in the streets, visible from above, going through their days on snow-free streets, bundled up against the cold.

Those of you who asked were told of the handful of people who didn't go into the slumber of stasis as the Fissure conditions of the world grew worse and worse, instead isolating themselves and trying to continue living their lives as they could. Now, it seems, you've found exactly such a group.

Welcome to the Bellmare Enclave, and enjoy your stay.

[[OOC: Welcome to part 2 of the dungeon! For the most part, interaction with the town's NPCs can be handwaved as described on the main information post. Worth noting are the following major things: The Bellmare Enclave isn't expecting visitors, though the people are generally friendly to the new arrivals. They don't know about the time dilation effect of their Fissure - to them, it's only been about eighteen years since the Slumber Plan was put in place and they withdrew from the world. And finally, by a similar token, they have no idea how far the Fissures outside of their own have grown - while it's not uncommon for them to find odd objects from time to time, they'll assume that the characters are just arrivals from other places within their own world, rather than outsiders, until told otherwise.]]

Comments

[founderinglight]

[Do not bonk the injured relative, Izunia. Do not.

God, Regis, he wants to flick your forehead.]

There is no reason to not change both should we have the opportunity.

[kingkingcxiii]

[Look you all picked him to be the Father. Did you really expect anything else? He's got 'sacrifice for his son' down to an art form.]

I will not risk the opportunity to change things for him. Not for anything.

[Good luck budging him on this right now, Izunia. It's not going to happen. Everything is just too fresh.]

[founderinglight]

[As Izunia has watching over the entire family. You think you can out-stubborn a two-thousand-year-old, Regis?]

Don't throw yourself out with the bathwater before you've even begun. Noctis would not permit that.

[The Founder King speaks in stewardship for the Chosen King until he arrives. That holds as true now as it did before the Dawn.]

[kingkingcxiii]

[Regis makes a soft sound. It's probably suppose to be a dismissive huff, but there is something pained in it as well.]

Noctis has more important things to worry about than a father who was too much of a coward to tell him the full truth of his destiny.

[founderinglight]

More important to the world, or more important to Noctis?

[You're not going to win this one easy, Regis.]

Because you are very dear to him, and he would do all in his power to protect you just as you would him. It isn't not telling him of his destiny that hurt Noctis - it's that you let him leave Insomnia thinking that he would be able to come home to you again.

[kingkingcxiii]

And what else would you have had me do?

[Regis finally turns back toward Izunia, words a harsh, pained hiss.]

If he had any idea of what was going to happen, he would not have left and they would have killed him as they killed everyone else. Or worse, they would have taken him captive just as they took...

[His voice cracks and he turns away again.]

I was already responsible for allowing the Oracle to suffer under their hands. I could not allow the Chosen King to do so as well.

[founderinglight]

I know, Regis. I was a parent myself, if you'll recall.

But this isn't about what I would have done or not done. It's about your son, who was too young to remember his mother when she passed - who first experienced grief in losing both his father and his home in one swoop.

[There's the sound of Izunia shifting his weight to cross his arms.]

It's not about the Chosen King, or the Prophecy, Regis. It's never been that simple - not between my brother and I, and not between you and Noctis. You know as well as I.

[There's more he can say in answer - that Ardyn Izunia, for all his loathing of the Chosen King, served as much as his guide as did the Oracle or Gentiana. That the Chancellor of Niflheim would have ensured Noctis' survival one way or another, in order to ensure his own demise. Izunia believes that much, at least, down to his bones - that if nothing else, Noctis' death in the fall of Insomnia would not have satisfied his brother's need for revenge.

But that is a thread of discussion they can return to later, if need be.]

[kingkingcxiii]

[Regis knows everything that Izunia says is true. He knows it too well. That's why these words are so painful as they pound against the walls he's had in place for over 10 years. The night he found out that Noctis was the Chosen King, he had locked himself in his rooms and spent it screaming and crying out his anguish and anger. The next morning he'd gone about his duties as usual, but he was withdrawn and distant. Anyone who knew him well, Clarus and Cor in particular, were quick to recognize his actions for what they were since he had acted the same way after Aulea passed.

He was mourning.

The world doesn't stop for a father's grief--it hadn't stopped for a husband's either--so Regis allowed himself a scant three days to mourn what was to come, and then he sat Cor and Clarus down to tell them what he had learned. By then he had locked everything back behind freshly built walls, because despite how heartbreaking the news was, he still had a kingdom to run, a child to raise, and a war to fight.

Three days. There was no time for more. The king in him repeated that to the man--the father--in him over and over again, but such grief couldn't be dealt with in so short a time. It could only be walled away.

And all walls eventually break, no matter how well built. Especially when the person who built them knows well they need to break.

Izunia gets no angry response to his words. Instead, there is only the scrap of Regis shifting his cane in front of him instead of off to the side. He grasps the top of it with both hands and then leans into it, no longer trusting his legs to keep him standing. The shaking begins at the same time the hitched, almost painful sounding breaths do, but Regis has no hope of holding back the tears with such old pain suddenly freed to wash over him. It takes only a few seconds and he's sobbing silently, tears streaming down his face.]

[founderinglight]

[And there is no child of the line that will cry alone while Izunia is there. And so Regis will find that Izunia steps up beside him and puts an arm around his shoulders.

Lean on him, and hide not from your grief. It weighs as it should.]

It's alright. You've carried it long enough - you can let go, now.

[As it should - but there is no shame in putting it down or a time.]

It is the cruelest of fates.

[For the both of them. The child who would never grow up - what little adulthood he had taken by grief and the power of the Crystal - and the father who have to put a blade to him in the end, for the sake of the world.

Izunia bore the guilt of that, the knowledge of what was to come, centuries before either had a face or name. He bears it now, even as he tries to let go of some of that weight, tries to accept that things were hardly in his control enough for him to truly bear the blame.

In that regard, his unquiet mind rarely listens to logic. Humming a dead hymn to himself, he pulls the arm around Regis' shoulders closer.]

[kingkingcxiii]

[Regis almost pushes Izunia away. It's not a slight, merely an instinctive reaction. He's only allowed two people to see him like this and neither is here, neither is still among the living and that is just more grief to pile onto his shoulders--one loss much newer than the other, both still his fault.

What good is the power that let him protect a whole city when it didn't keep his wife's life from slipping from his fingers? What good is the ability to call weapons and magic to his grasp in an instant when it didn't allow him to keep his oldest friend from being cut down in front of him?

What good is any of it when in the end his son will never have the chance to live in the world everything was sacrificed to save?

There were days when the walls were all that kept him able to speak of the future with any kind of positivity, to keep confidence in it when he knew just what its cost would be. Without them, he is well on his way to finding out if it is truly possible to cry oneself out of tears.

Distantly, he knows that Izunia is speaking to him, humming a tune that Regis doesn't know if he should recognize or not. Both are things that feel as if they are happening a world away, things his mind doesn't really have the energy to deal with right now, so he doesn't, placing it all away to be dealt with later when he doesn't feel as if every fear, pain, and guilt-ridden feeling he's ever had has been exposed for the whole world to see.

Eventually the sobs and tears stop, though the stillness of the exhaustion that follows really doesn't help the feeling of vulnerability that settles over him. The flood of emotion has slowed, but it is still far too near the surface for his liking, far too easy for others to see and to touch without the walls between it and them.

Regis knows he should say something, but he is not quite ready yet and so he remains silent just a little longer, turning his head into Izunia's shoulder and taking several slow, long breaths as he begins piecing himself back together.]

[founderinglight]

[Except that this is a person who has seen it, whether or not it was something Regis consciously chose to allow. Such is the burden of kings, once they assume the throne - 'you no longer have privacy' isn't just a matter of the media watching your every move.

But there's not judgement and there never has been, because there are some things in life that shouldn't come with conditions.

And so he remains, with an arm around his descendant's shoulders, and when Regis begins to calm and breathe instead of shaking his shoulders with sobs, he just keeps humming until they've both steadied out a bit. His own voice is a bit raw with something, a vulnerability to his family in pain.]

The good thing about retirement is that it's a time to take care of all those things you put away for duty. That includes your heart, Regis.

[kingkingcxiii]

[There is a long moment of silence where it's unclear if Regis is ignoring what Izunia has said or if he's just not ready to speak yet, then he makes a soft, dismissive sound, one almost completely muffled by the Founder King's shoulder. Fortunately, Regis does turn his face out from Izunia's shoulder before speaking. Between the fact he is all but whispering and the hoarseness from his tears, it would have been quite difficult to make out his words otherwise.]

We both know the real issue is that I never fully put my heart away no matter how much it hurt not to.