Hello again. I have another question regarding Nox-verse. I was scrolling through the tag (again) and I came across the adopted/adapted hc about death/near death scars noticeably glowing when near the crystal. And I was wondering, how does everyone react the first time Nox and Ardyn are close enough to the crystal for scars(and conspicuous non-scars) to be affected? Does anyone know what that means beforehand, or do the people who know about Ardyns scar figure it out based on context clues?
Ohhhhhhhhhh tricky question. Imma probably ramble buckle up:
-Setting aside the fact that Ardyn and Nox were NOT enthused with the idea of getting within four hundred feet of the Crystal, let alone close enough for the glow, the first sign of it is from Ardyn, because he has the most scars and his brand is more than happy to go off like a lightshow near the Crystal. They see the brand glowing the closer Ardyn reluctantly inches toward the Crystal and Regis’s stomach drops a little. He doesn’t make Ardyn go closer, and Ardyn is relieved to stop just on the edge of the effect, where it … lights more than just the brand. The Brand is the only one that has a noticeable blue tint even in normal lighting, but this close older things, things the scourge mostly sealed up and ate away the glow of, start to shine too. This was the man who was tortured by LCs after all, a lot of his wounds were inflicted by LC hands if not magic-imbued weapons.
-It makes Regis feel ill, to see so many places where Ardyn glows through his layers and it makes Titus’s mouth thin in suppressed fury. They’ve seen his non-glowing scars, they “know” what Mors did to him (or so they think) but to see it outlined in magic like this is … it makes it worse somehow.
-Then they notice that Nox hasn’t stopped. He’s getting closer and closer dragged on as if in a daze toward the Crystal, and with each step his magic unspools like heavy fog.
-Every step closer and the place on his back and chest, right over his heart and lungs and vitals, but especially where his skin is conspicuously NOT scarred, begins to glow like a beacon. Far brighter than Ardyn’s, because his was not just one strike to the heart, it was the Royal Arms, each charged with the magic of an entire lifetime.
-Ardyn is the one who bolts forward to catch Nox before he can actually get in touching distance of the Crystal, primally afraid of what might happen if Nox does, but by that point he’s so close Regis can see- can see-
-Blades. Ghostly outlines of blades. Like an armiger but WRONG because these do not spin about his son in Protection-Strength-Memory, these shimmer from his skin and out of his back and chest like some kind of macabre, horrific painting. Every breathe Nox takes makes the chest not-a-wound glow and dim and dim and glow like a faltering heartbeat, every shiver of his son’s lungs make the ghostly impressions of blades and shuriken and axes and maces shift, like they are still stuck in his skin, magic slowly dripping down from where they seem to enter his skin, like blood made of blue crystals, shimmering in rivers down his back and front in streams that are blue instead of scarlet but no less terrible to behold.
-Regis is horrified. Everyone is horrified. The silence as Ardyn gently pulls Nox back to a safe distance is thick with it. With the shock and regret and outrage (who would do this? WHO WOULD DO THIS TO REGIS’S SON?)
-The ornate sword (that looks both familiar and unfamiliar, its outline too hazy for Regis to quite make it out) stabbed straight through the center of Nox’s heart and out the other side takes the longest to fade and all Regis can think of is how Phoenix Downs work and how, if applied soon enough, they will heal the wound in its entirety, leave skin unmarred and good as new.
-Unmarred and good as new.
-Even if the skin was originally covered in older scars.
-Just like Nox and his conspicuous patch of untouched skin where smaller scars stopped short and the shape was a little too perfectly blade shaped to be natural.
-Regis feels like he’s going to be sick, and Clarus and Cor are not any better off. Axis all but vibrates at Nox’s side, spitting furious and holding it back only because Nox has that Look in his eyes, like he’s about to fall into a Quiet Week rather than just a Quiet Day and Axis doesn’t want to tip him over the edge.
-Nox sags quietly against his Uncle as the last ghostly blade slowly fades away, looks so very tired as Cor, ever the one to ask the questions no one else dares to, quietly demands to know what that was about. What that meant (because only the scars inflicted by an LC’s hand glowed on Ardyn, so what does it MEAN that Nox is even WORSE???)
-”There’s a price,” Nox whispers into Ardyn’s shoulder, carefully not looking at anyone in the room, “to magic. The deeper you go, the higher the cost. They … they wanted me to go deeper. Always deeper. As deep as I could go. But when you go too far … the price is more than anyone alive can pay.”
-Anyone alive. The implication is so clear Regis wants to break something. Wants to go out and wage war, level mountains, because too many things are clicking into place about his son, about how he always seems to understand his Uncle even though Mors died the same year Nox was born and couldn’t have laid a hand on Regis’s son.
-He knows how cruel the Ring of the Lucii can be. How the memories within can reach out and touch-burn-destroy the living if they so desire, has read the stories of prices too steep and crowns too heavy. And that is with the Ring acting as a limiter, a focal point for them that also serves to keep them in check so that only someone wearing the ring will be within their reach. How much worse for someone who is forced to dive so deep into magic without that buffer, without the ring that was forged after the Founder King rather than before, that they stumble across the place where those memories lurk? Without the Ring to prove their bloodline and keep the worst of the magical memories tempers in check?
-”Who are they?” Axis growls through teeth locked tight together fury. Because Nox would not have dived so deep alone. Even if he had not already admitted as such, there was no way a child could know or want to go that deep into magic. Someone had to have forced him. Driven him and pushed him and tormented him until he reached for every scrap of power his connection to the Crystal could offer and ended up grabbing too much and attracting the wrong attentions.
-Ardyn’s gaze flashes gold before he buries his face in Nox’s hair and Nox still won’t look at anyone as he whispers the answer Regis wanted to hear the least.
-”My family. All of them but Uncle.”
-And oh Regis has to lean against Clarus, has to grip his Shield’s arm with white knuckles to keep from either collapsing or screaming under the weight of his fury. Ardyn glances up for the briefest of moments, eyes an eerie, hateful gold and Regis can see Horrible Truth in the other man’s eyes.
-Nox was had been an orphan before Regis found him for a reason.
-Somehow Regis can’t bring himself to feel regret at the thought of it. Not with this evidence, not with the sudden meaning behind Nox’s not-scar.
-”Don’t make me go near the Crystal again. Please, Dad?” It’s the first time Nox has called him “dad” instead of “father” and in any other circumstance, Regis would celebrate. But right now all he can do is tentatively approach and gingerly wrap his arms around his son and his half-brother both, trying to convey without words that they would never go through anything like that again. Not while he still breathed.
-”Of course, Nox. Neither of you have to go near it if you don’t want to.” And he means it. Blast tradition into the ether Regis is never wants to see ghostly blades in Nox’s body or crystalline magic blood drip-drip-dripping down his shirt ever again.
