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Whatever Solheim has sealed at the heart of Costlemark Tower, Prompto has decided that he’d rather die curious. He knows that Noctis is intent on collecting all of the Royal Arms, but after cracking a third elixir over his crumpled form, he figures they ought to cut their losses and move on.
“You good?” Prompto asks. Noctis looks up at him with bleary eyes, his complexion slowly suffusing with color as the elixir courses through his various bumps and bruises. He inhales a concerning gulp of air when it reaches his lungs, mending whatever damage the hoard of goblins had dealt. “Gladio took out the last of them.”
Noctis doesn’t offer more than a grunt of acknowledgement before he’s careening himself forward, turning his attention back towards the puzzle that’s left them stumped for the past two grueling hours. Prompto wants to protest, but the prince is already hobbling away, disregarding his depleted reserves of magic and surely sore muscles.
Prompto watches from the sidelines as they attempt to solve the intricate blockade with a new combination, likely inviting another swarm of daemons from the depths to mock their efforts. Ignis has that signature furrow between his brows as he notes down the stumbled pattern of Noctis’s footsteps.
“Guys,” Prompto calls, so out of breath that he feels a twinge of embarrassment. When no one answers, too focused on their task to bother, the embarrassment doubles. “That was our last elixir.”
“So don’t get hit,” Gladio answers from across the chamber, clearly irate. “It’d be a waste of time to turn around now.”
Prompto bites back the rest of his defense. He doesn’t have the energy to argue, let alone with his equally exhausted teammates; the remarks always turn a little mean spirited when they’re all injured and spent.
Still, he’d really like to complain. They’ve been at this dungeon for hours, navigating endless collapsed stairwells and cramped hallways, filled to the brim with daemons that seem to be cut from a different cloth than the ones they’re used to above ground.
His feet are aching in his boots, and he’s been knocked around enough today to humble him for a lifetime. To top it all off, the deeper they go, the sicker he feels— something about the air pressure, maybe, or the stench of whatever substance those sludgy daemons are secreting on every floor.
Noctis steps on the last cube in his current puzzle sequence, and the ground shifts beneath their feet. The room rapidly rearranges itself in a nauseating series of grating rock as the floors and walls drift apart, only to coalesce in a new layout.
Prompto closes his eyes to combat the motion sickness. No matter how many times they’ve done this, the feeling doesn’t abate. All he can do to ground himself is lay his palms flat on the cold concrete, praying to any Astral that’ll listen that this is the combination that frees them from this harrowing room.
The Astrals have never bothered with answering Prompto’s prayers before, so he shouldn't be surprised when they don’t rush to his aid now. As the spinning slows to a stop, Prompto cracks his eyes open to an entirely different space than the one he’d been inhabiting before.
Namely, a dark, confined space. Four unforgiving blank walls, only as wide as the stretched length of his wingspan, and only illuminated by the meager amber glow of his flashlight. Prompto feels his weary pulse quicken, shooting down his limbs in sharp zaps.
“Guys?” His voice doesn’t echo like it did in the larger chamber. Prompto can sense the thick walls eating up the sound, so he tries again, raising his voice as loud as he can muster in his current state. “Noct!”
Nothing calls back. His own shouts are deafening as they bounce back to him in the cramped space.
Great. This is fine. They’ll just notice I’m gone, and try that stupid puzzle again. After they kill whatever round of daemons this botched attempt sends. And figure out what pattern they want to try next. Can’t be more than a few minutes.
Prompto tries to soothe himself with a supposed time frame, backing himself against the closest corner. The concrete is so cold he can feel its chill through the denim of his vest. Silence is an oppressive thing, and Prompto’s mollifications last about thirty seconds before he’s shaking where he sits.
It’s not that he merely dislikes small spaces. Prompto knows he makes a big stink about it, griping and seemingly overexaggerating his discomfort anytime they’re trekking through narrow dungeon hallways. But there’s something comforting about the irritated voices of his friends, who usually bother with a response to his complaints, even if it’s just a barked command to quit whining.
No one is here to respond now, and that might be even worse than the incommodious room. Nothing makes it through the slabs of concrete— no calls wondering where he’s gone, or investigative footsteps, or sounds of struggle as they slice through a slew of daemons. Nothing but the labored sound of his own breathing, and the erratic beat of his heart in his ears.
Prompto might be hyperventilating. It’s hard to tell in a general state of panic, but when he tries to hone in on the pace of his breathing, it only worsens.
He should know by now to stay calm in a den of daemons. Nothing puts a target on your back like the stench of fear— he knows this, intimately so, and still he struggles to gain control of his senses.
Up until the floor warbles and cracks open mere inches from his feet.
Prompto is achingly familiar with the methods of this particular daemon. He’s been struggling against the berth of its gleaming sword all evening, sticking staunchly to the outskirts of the fight to stay out of its expansive range.
The yojimbo crawls with contorted limbs from its obsidian crevasse, towering up from its crouch as the portal of miasma closes beneath its straw sandals. Prompto watches in a haze of terror as it reaches around for the blade against its spine, clearly locked in on the hunched body in the corner.
There are no outskirts to retreat to in this room. Prompto instinctively reaches into the Armiger for his pistol, finding a small amount of comfort in the metal weight against his palm, before thinking logically about the consequences of firing shots in such small quarters. He winces at the thought of dented copper projectiles, ricocheting unpredictably, leaving no real winners like he’d started the fight by headbutting his opponent.
Still, he has few other options, and the daemon is inching closer, creeping dramatically like it's relishing in instilling fear before it reaches its prey. The yojimbo is silent, save for the chimeric sound of miasma brewing beneath its warrior simulacrum, usually quiet enough to go unnoticed in the open air.
It’s like a mockery of a living being. Pulses of miasma like a sad imitation of a beating heart, wearing the form of a man, hunched over like it’d never bothered to correct its poor posture.
Prompto is no different. No more than a flimsy imitation himself.
He’s nearly ready to close his eyes and submit to his fate when he recalls the only close range weapon he’s got stored in his pocket of the Armiger, and a faint memory of a prior conversation with Noctis about preparing for dire situations just like the one he’s in now.
The blade that wisps into his hand is not nearly as flashy as the swords that his companions wield. In fact, he thinks it’d look quite pathetic lined up beside them.
Prompto won’t call it pathetic now, though. Now, as it somehow parries the first swipe of the yojimbo’s katana, it’s a saving grace.
The blow knocks the wind out of Prompto, but he manages to direct it against the concrete. Metal clinks gratingly against stone, and in an ironic turn of events, Prompto notes that he’s not the only one at a disadvantage in this room with his choice of weapon.
The daemon isn’t deterred. He reels back and sends another blow, with even more power and finesse than the first. Prompto manages to keep the blade from nicking him, but the effort of deflecting it flings him back against the wall with a sickening thump.
His vision goes dark around the corners for a frightening second, but Prompto doesn’t let himself go slack. He forces himself to stand fully upright, still backed into his corner but on more even ground with the daemon than he was in his previous crumpled state.
They parry back and forth for what feels like an eternity, and with each blow from the yojimbo, the disparity between them widens. The daemon doesn’t grow tired after each swing. It doesn’t pause to catch its breath, or wince when Prompto manages to get a clean hit in. If anything, it only gets angrier, kind of like Gladio when he’s too focused on a fight to pay any mind to his gaping wounds.
On the other hand, Prompto is growing exponentially weaker as the fight drags on. He feels his blood trickling in various spots on his arms, and his fingers are smarting from the force of his grip on the blade’s hilt. His spine feels bruised from all the times he’s been slammed into the concrete walls, pushed back by a force much stronger than he could ever dream of rivaling.
At this point, Prompto is almost convinced that the daemon is playing with its food. There have been enough opportunities by now that it feels intentional, and if he were more like Ignis, he may have been able to work out a strategy around the fact.
Alas, he’s not Ignis. Nor is he Noctis, who could’ve warped laps around the faux samurai, ending things in half the time that Prompto has spent fumbling and bleeding.
In a last ditch effort, feeling his exhaustion send out warning signals in trembling legs and spotty vision, Prompto swaps out his measly blade for his handgun. The yojimbo backs up against the opposite wall only a few feet ahead, bracing his blade in a position that previously would’ve sent Prompto as far from its reach as he could manage.
Now, there’s nowhere to run, so with his own back pressed into the concrete, he fires three shots in sync with the yojimbo’s forward strike. There isn’t time to duck as the katana falls cleanly into the center of his abdomen, punching the air out of his lungs in one fell swoop.
Prompto’s knees try to buckle, but with the blade firmly in place, he’s forced to stay upright, looking head on at the masked visage of the daemon hidden beneath its straw hat.
He isn’t sure if his shots hit their mark until the pressure in his gut loosens, and he stares in a barely conscious daze as the figure in front of him crumples and melts into a gruesome pool of miasma.
Prompto sinks to the floor with it, watching as the sword fizzles out of his gut into that same black tar, melding in a puddle with his blood still pouring. As he hits the ground, the flashlight clipped to his vest comes undone, clattering on the concrete and bathing the room in total darkness.
“Shit,” he mumbles, and the gargled sound draws his attention to the metallic taste in his mouth that he’d hardly noticed before.
Prompto fumbles quickly in the darkness, searching with wandering hands for his fallen source of light. When he finds the small device, he fiddles with it, battering it against his palm in the hopes that it’ll reignite.
It’s no use. The glass is shattered— both the lens and the bulb— and he lets it clatter to the floor again as the sharp edges nick his fingers.
“Noct?” Prompto tries, barely managing his normal speaking volume. “Guys?”
When no one answers, he acts on instinct, exchanging his pistol for a potion from the Armiger. He knows from the tight burning in his abdomen that he really needs an elixir, but with none to be found, he settles on cracking the weaker vial over his chest with trembling fingers.
It only eases the pressure by a small margin. He feels the cut below his sternum attempting to knit itself together, but the burning remains— maybe even worsens.
Prompto’s breathing quickens, and his eyes rove around the room uselessly, trying their damndest to adjust to the darkness. Without that small bit of illumination, the walls feel as if they’re creeping in even closer to his hunched up form. The air is thick with the lingering smell of daemon matter, and Prompto gags on his heaving inhales, chock full of the petrolic stench.
He tries to remind himself that it can’t be much longer. Noctis and the others must have noticed by now that he’s missing, and they’re surely trying another solution to the puzzle that’ll rearrange his tiny prison. It can’t be much longer.
Still, the irrational side of him fights back with a warning growl. Who knows what’s happened to them out there? Who knows how many daemons were on their end of things? Who knows if they’re even on this floor at all anymore?
Maybe the puzzle left only Prompto stranded up here. For all he knows, the ground could’ve opened beneath their feet, leaving them no choice but to trek deeper into the burrowed tower. He could be stuck here for hours, ages, before they make it back to this floor.
The walls feel much more oppressive than they did just moments before, and Prompto’s rapid breathing only worsens the spread of heat through his torso. Without his sight to aid him, he can’t gauge the size of the room any longer, so he pulls his tingling fingers from his still bleeding wound to assess the space with stretched arms.
He can hardly spread all the way out before the concrete pushes back, ice cold and unforgiving. Prompto heaves a groan, pulling his hands back like he’d been burned, and hunching them back around himself in a fetal posture.
He might be mumbling something to himself, but he can hardly tell. With the lack of oxygen from his labored breaths, his face feels crumpled and numb, buzzing with each attempt to move his lips and form a sound.
The feeling of the room closing in on him plucks a string of distant memories, oscillating and fighting for dominance in his clouded mind. He recalls very little from his early childhood, apart from the tangible glimpses he catches in dreams and moments of panic.
Prompto remembers moments just like this one— bathed in darkness and his own muck, scraping at the walls confining him on each side, sometimes too close to inhale a full breath. He remembers the suffocating feeling of rubber tubing, constricting each movement and pinching the tender creases of his joints each time they’re pulled.
The smell of miasma is even more familiar in these glimpses. It’s real enough to taste in the back of his throat— so much so that he can feel his stomach bloat with it, tingling in his nostrils and against his tongue.
Or maybe it’s surrounding him entirely. Maybe it’s the air he’s breathing— the reason he can hardly inhale the way he needs to.
Prompto has never known what these glimpses are alluding to. He doesn’t know where he came from before his life with the Argentums, or why his throat would constrict in any game of hide and seek when he’d shut himself in the linen closet.
He still doesn’t know how something like daemon matter can be so achingly familiar, but it stands that it is. He lays in it now, feeling the tacky substance coat his bare arms, and in his distorted visions he swears that it’s pouring straight from his own wounds.
Prompto squeezes his eyes shut tight, and his breathing finally slows to the thought of nitrile gloves, and the phantom prick of butterfly needles.
Noctis hasn’t cursed like this since his last session of forced physio therapy, he thinks.
The daemons that spawned after his most recent puzzle sequence seem to have increased tenfold. Or, Noctis notes with growing dread, it just feels like it because they’re missing a member of their retinue.
Prompto was sitting too far away when the room began to rearrange itself, and before they knew it, they’d lost sight of him. Noctis knows he dislikes the feeling of the room spinning, even more so than the rest of them, and he curses himself for not keeping a closer eye on him as they were jostled around.
By the time they’ve slayed the last of the flans and goblins, all three of them are sagging with exhaustion, but there’s no time for rest. Noctis immediately starts his trek around the large chamber, searching for signs of their missing gunman.
“Prompto!” Noctis calls, his voice hoarse from his parched throat. When there’s no answer, he calls again, louder and scratchier than before.
“We need to try the puzzle again,” Ignis says, sidling up behind him with a hand on his shoulder. Noctis shrugs it off in irritation, feeling a twinge of guilt that he’ll probably forget to apologize for later. “He might be trapped inside one of the smaller chambers.”
“Shit.” Noctis drags a hand through his hair, tugging in frustration and coating his scalp with sweat from his palms. “He’s probably freaking the hell out.”
Ignis nods, his sympathy only shining in the gleam of his eyes. He herds them back towards the array of cubes inlaid and glowing in the floor, pointedly not touching the prince’s back. Noctis stands and stares down at the closest cube, trying to recall his previous attempts and coming up short.
“I don’t know where to start,” Noctis groans, turning away. “I can’t even tell what we tried last time!”
“Allow me, then?” Ignis asks, calm as the saints. It’s a little infuriating, but Noctis doesn’t have room for any more frustration, so he nods and steps back towards Gladio.
Even the shield looks wound up— worried in a way that only the three of them could easily spot. His eyes keep roving around the vast room, like he’ll somehow find something they’d missed in the last half hour of fighting.
“What if it makes it worse?” Noctis asks, following Ignis’ contemplative movements. The advisor glances around the room, calculating something incomprehensible to Noctis with his eyes alone. “What if he’s—”
“Whatever he is, that’s not gonna help,” Gladio bites, interrupting the almost gruesome thought. “Just let Iggy focus.”
Noctis swallows and silences himself, thoroughly contrite. He waits for Ignis to start actually moving, starting with a cube against the wall to the left and making his way around the room from there.
The anxiety percolates as Ignis heads towards the final cube, seeping out in Noctis’s clenched fingers, tight enough to leave crescent indents in the palms of his hands. He stops only when the room begins to move, shifting closer to Gladio’s side and widening his stance to keep his balance.
“Iggy, get back over here!” Gladio calls, even though Ignis is already carefully trekking towards the two of them. His arms are spread wide to steady himself, but he still wobbles as the floor rearranges beneath him.
Noctis searches the room as it all shifts, his eyes locking in on a crumpled form that’s slowly revealed as a set of walls crack open like a stone chrysalis unfurling.
“Guys!” Noctis calls, his heart pounding rapidly as he trips over the still-moving floors. “He’s over here!”
Gladio and Ignis follow closely behind, stumbling in turn with each step. It takes them longer than it normally would to cross the distance, and by the time the floor settles, Noctis is nearly crawling on all fours to get the gunman.
“Prompto,” he gasps, his breath catching at the now clear sight of him, curled like a shrimp with his arms wrapped in a death grip around his knees. There’s a large pool of blood, saturating the stone beneath him and still trickling from the numerous scrapes on his arms. Prompto is hardly moving, but his eyes are cracked open and staring blankly ahead, glassed over and dull.
Noctis rushes to sit by his side, careful not to jostle him as he places a shaking hand on his shoulder. Prompto doesn’t even acknowledge the three of them as they huddle around him, frantic and glancing between each other with equal looks of concern and helplessness.
“A potion,” Ignis eventually mumbles, summoning one from the Armiger to place in Noctis’ palm. He wastes no time in cracking it over Prompto’s still form, but when there’s no change as it seeps in, their concern triples.
“Prompto, can you hear us?” Noctis asks, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “Hey, can you look at me?”
Something works, then. Prompto glances up, just barely, complying without really seeming to comprehend the request. His eyes, with pupils dilated enough to eat the violet color, stay fixed on the prince.
“Hey, buddy. You’re alright. You’re gonna be alright.”
Prompto blinks, still unresponsive, but his tension seems to loosen just a touch.
“Keep talking, Noct,” Ignis says, in a tone that brooks no argument. When Noctis glances back up at the two of them, they’re both as visibly ruffled as he’s ever seen them.
“About what?”
“Anything. Just talk to him.”
So Noctis does. He turns his attention back towards Prompto completely, keeping a now steady hand on the tense curl of his shoulder, and begins to talk. He can’t think of anything important to share, so he rambles on about fishing trips he’d like to take and King’s Knight and black baby chocobos, surely doubled in size since the last time they’d seen them.
Prompto keeps staring as he chatters on, his pallid face revealing none of the sinister thoughts that are surely brewing beneath. Even so, he loosens with each anecdote, relaxing under the gentle touch and stream of words until he’s nearly lax.
When his hands fall away from his knees, revealing the stark red stain spread all across his abdomen, Noctis stutters and halts his speech.
“Shit, that’s a lot of blood,” Gladio says behind him. “Does he need another potion?”
In a large feat, Gladio’s question somehow probes Prompto into shaking his head. He doesn’t speak, but the motion releases the strong hold of tension in the room, and Noctis sighs out his relief.
“It’s not bleeding anymore?” Noctis asks, and Prompto shakes his head again. Noctis can’t help the hand that strays to his forehead, brushing aside a smattering of wiry blonde strands as some kind of rewarding gesture. “Good, uh— that’s good. What do you say about getting out of here, huh? This can’t be comfortable.”
Prompto exhales shakily, nodding his agreement. His eyes are still vacant, duller than Noctis has ever seen them, and he’d be willing to do anything at this point for them to return to their usual vibrant state.
Gladio steps in then, crouching beside the two of them and wincing as the pool of blood seeps into the fabric of his pants. Prompto’s gaze finally leaves Noctis, turning towards the shield like he’s unsure if he’s truly there at all.
“Need a lift?”
Prompto doesn’t nod or shake his head this time. He doesn’t seem to comprehend the question, with his brow furrowing just slightly, betraying his stupor.
“I think that’s enough of an answer,” Ignis says behind them, and Gladio nods.
He makes quick work of situating Prompto on his back, with his arms twined around his neck and his legs loose as jelly, tucked neatly in the shield’s elbows. His head droops listlessly against Gladio’s shoulder, with his still impassive face turned outwards, taking in the room around him.
They work their way back up through the tower, with Gladio and Prompto sandwiched between Ignis and Noctis, taking the steps at a much slower pace than they would have otherwise. Prompto hangs spiritless and quiet against Gladio’s spine, and the lack of his usual chatter leaves a chasm between the four of them that no one dares to breach.
Thankfully, they’d slain every daemon they passed on the way down, and somehow their movements don’t trigger more hoards of them the way back up. Noctis wonders if they’re only enraged to see people searching for the heart of the tower— the Royal Arm he’d been after himself. The intricacies of Solheim civilization are far beyond his attempts to comprehend.
By the time they make it to the final staircase, Prompto’s eyes have fluttered shut in what Noctis hopes is a peaceful sleep. He thinks it’s better than the empty look they had before, but still, part of him wants to sneak his finger against the gunman’s inner wrist and wait for a pulse, just to be sure.
There was a lot of blood on the concrete. More than any of them usually spill, given Ignis’s propensity to overstock their healing supplies; and, of course, given they’re hardly ever separated by more than a stone’s throw in battle.
The guilt gnaws from the inside out as they finally make it into the open air. Noctis remembers his conversation with Prompto before they’d been separated— remembers Prompto’s implied requests that they leave and try again when they’re better prepared for such a long trek. He can’t remember why he hadn’t even bothered to answer.
Gladio pauses as they exit the outer ruins of the tower, taking in the starry sky above them. Noctis is sure that he’s thinking logistically— about the nearest town or campsite, and whether or not it’d be worth it to drive into the daemon infested night in search of a gas station stocked with potions.
“I’ve got a half-empty energy drink in the car,” Noctis offers, answering his silent question. “I can make an elixir.”
Gladio nods, the action lightly jostling Prompto’s sleeping form, and they head towards the Regalia with cautious eyes on the wilderness around them. By the time they’ve grabbed the energy drink and walked the short hike to the nearest campsite, the gunman is exhaling snore-like breaths against Gladio’s neck, guileless of the hours he’d suffered prior.
Ignis and Noctis make quick work of the tent, and Gladio hovers nearby, waiting until there’s cushioned ground to set their sleeping companion down. When he does, Prompto stirs awake slowly, looking up with glassy eyes that have more of a shine in them than they did before.
“You with us, then?” Ignis asks. He’s using that gentle, coddling tone— the one Noctis knows is reserved for his own severe injuries, or the days when his old spinal wound aches and smarts. “How are you feeling?”
Prompto’s eyes widen slightly at the sight of the three of them, hovering a hair’s breadth away in the cramped tent, all focus honed intently on him.
“Um—” Prompto starts, his voice trodden. He winces at whatever taste is lingering on his tongue. “Fine, I think? What happened? Did you find the Royal Arm?”
Three sighs ring out in the tent at the sound of his voice, and Prompto grows increasingly alarmed at the strange behavior. His memory of the hours prior are too foggy— too muffled after he’d found himself in that cramped room, faced with an even more nightmarish interpretation of the thing he fears the most. When he tries to grasp at how they’ve ended up here, he falls short.
Before he can voice more of his questions, the gunman is startled out of his rumination by a sudden embrace from Noctis, as gentle as it is unprompted.
“Sorry,” Noctis whispers, muffled into Prompto’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Prompto’s hands hover nervously at his side, unsure if they’re allowed to grasp back at the usually touch-averse prince, but Noctis pulls away before he can decide.
“Drink this,” Gladio says, interrupting their moment like it was nothing out of the ordinary. He hands over the half-empty can, now infused with all the reserves of magic that Noctis could muster, and Prompto accepts it without a fight.
Usually, he’d argue to preserve their healing supplies when they’re running this low, but glancing up at his three companions, he knows his arguments won’t make it very far. Besides, his abdomen is still searing with that sharp, internal burn, and though the wound has stopped bleeding, Prompto is sure that it wouldn’t take much for it to tear right back open.
He downs the stale liquid as quickly as he can, and the relief is immediate. Prompto leans back as he feels it course throughout his body, tackling his various wounds— from the broken fingernails he’d given himself by scratching at the concrete, to the bruises along his shoulder blades, to the glaring maw knitting itself together beneath his sternum.
His friends watch wordlessly as the color returns to Prompto’s skin. He’d offer apologies for being so burdensome, but honestly, he can’t find the energy to do more than blink his waterlogged eyes to stay awake.
“Better?” Ignis asks. He inches a little closer, rustling the tent beneath them, to slide aside the tatters of Prompto’s shirt and investigate the scar forming there. “Looks like we were a touch too late.”
Prompto shivers as Ignis trails a gentle finger over the angry raised flesh, brushing aside the dried crimson flakes with his gloved hand. He looks contrite, his lips almost forming a pout as he stares at the damage left behind.
“We’re sorry,” Ignis continues, echoing Noctis. “We should’ve listened to you before.”
Prompto shakes his head, feeling too tranquil and sleepy as he breathes the fresh air to bother arguing back. There’s not much left to complain about, now that he’s got what he was missing— three familiar voices surrounding him on all sides, even gentler than he’d wished for in that cold, lonely corner.