@soliscoluber sent ‘memories of sorrow’
He doesn’t enter towns often -- only when the place is far enough away from Insomnia that he won’t be recognized. It’s been only a scant few decades, after all, and some still might recognize the king that Izunia has done a damn good job of wiping out of the history books when he’s not dragging his name through the mud. Ardyn thinks that in a few more decades no one will ever know there was a king between Aelius and Izunia.
He keeps his head low when he enters the town, but no one is paying attention. They’re gathered in groups, whispering, and the sorrow and grief on their faces speak of a death -- and that everyone is in the square, holding papers and letters, tells him it’s not someone local.
He approaches a group, making excuses about having been travelling, trying to find out what happened (he’s got a sick feeling in his gut that’s not from the Scourge and it only worsens the more words he can pick from the low murmur of the crowd) -- one of them hands him a paper, an announcement from the capital, and he takes it and the world falls away beneath him.
YOUNG ORACLE, AQUILA NOX FLEURET, PASSES AT TWENTY-ONE
“No,” he whispers brokenly, and the townsfolk try to comfort him -- they’re all in mourning, losing another Oracle not two decades after losing her mother, and they assume he’s the same, filled with sorrow at the snuffing out of such a young life, such an important life.
He tears away from them to retreat back out of the settlement, breaking into a run as soon as he’s out of view, and collapses on the ground in the woods, sobbing brokenly with such force he starts coughing, black ichor splattering on the memorial picture in the announcement, staining the portrait of the girl with pale blonde hair and familiar honey-brown eyes.
His daughter, the daughter he never knew and the daughter he never met, the daughter whose mother he’d loved dearly and whose mother he’d killed -- his daughter is dead. She’s dead. He never held her, he never carried her, he never saw her smile or her laugh, never knew her at all and now she’s dead.
She’s dead. He doesn’t care that his granddaughter is taking her place, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all. His daughter is dead.
He jolts backwards, nearly falling off the bed, and there are tears in his eyes. He’d forgotten how painful that was, the resurfacing of the memory tearing at the heart he’d tried to abandon. No, no, he didn’t want to remember that, why would--
His thoughts screech to a halt, though, staring in unseeing shock as he remembers the young girl that’s in his presence now, the naga, the daemon, staring up at him with tears in her own eyes, and he chokes on his own voice for a moment. “You--” He manages. “Vipa, did you see--” How had she-- how--?
