WHAT Julia received a cursed bear and a credit card. Nyx comes over to help her store it safely. It's the start of a beautiful broship. •
WHERE Julia's apartment •
WHEN Uh... back in April, lol. BE PROUD OF US. WE DID IT!!!! •
STATUS Complete •
WARNINGS Nah
For the most part Nyx felt somewhat out of his element when it came to magical discussions in Vallo. His own magic seemed to be so different than what the rest could do - and really he himself had only begun to even scratch the surface of his magic. The Kingsglaive hadn't exactly been given any information of their borrowed magic outside of what it could do to protect Lucis and Regis it had turned out, hadn't exactly given Noctis much information either. Neither him or his brother really knew more than a small percentage of the power they held.
But he could help Julia. Temporarily at least until someone better suited could offer a long term solution.
He knocked on her door, a bottle of red (from the stash of Altissian wines he had at the bar, the good stuff) in hand. Nyx offered her a warm smile when she answered. "Seems kind of shitty that other people get fun things like cars and money, and you get a cursed credit card and stuffed animal."
Julia smiled in reply. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, spotting the bottle of wine. “A cursed credit card and stuffed animal I can’t even use,” Julia said. She opened the door wider for him. Sabrina made a box to put the items in so they could be safely stowed.
Out of all the people she’d met on Vallo, Nyx was the easiest to trust. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Why she assumed he had no real agenda but to get by: the same could probably have been said for a number of people on Vallo. Maybe it was that he’d given her a job? Or that he wasn’t hard to look at? None of those were the reason she found him easy to trust, only contributors.
Maybe it was because it felt like he trusted her back, despite not knowing her for long. She hadn’t precisely done anything to earn it, but was grateful for it nonetheless.
“I’ll get some glasses,” she said.
Julia’s apartment was not the tidiest. She’d always been a disorganized mess in her own home, while precisely prepared and methodical everywhere else. Still, even if the place wasn’t spotless, it looked hardly lived in. Perhaps because it did not feel like home, just a place she was visiting.
She found a bottle opener and two glasses and brought them out.
Nyx would never judge an untidy apartment. He wasn't exactly the craziest of neat freaks himself outside the bar. His own loft tended to suffer from cups of coffee left randomly, books left haphazardly and clothes not always where they belonged. But his loft did have more of that lived in sense that was missing from Julia's apartment. Though Nyx assumed that was more to do with the time he'd been here than anything else. Closer to a year than not.
He took off his jacket and laid it on the arm of the couch as he took a seat and waited for Julia, eyeing the items on her coffee table. They didn't look like anything special, but then he supposed that was where the true danger lay. Nothing to scream don't pick me up.
He took the opener when she returned and set about opening the wine. "So, have you ever used them? I know you said you can't now, but have you before?" he asked as he poured them each a glass of wine.
“No,” Julia said. “When Freddy made them, I was like this. I offered but apparently that risked the magic that created them.” Julia pursed her lips. With a cant of her head she added, “So my friends used them instead. One using the black card to make a withdrawal of magic, and one to hold onto the bear so it would work.”
It had worked, but it came at the expense of Quentin having a pretty terrible day. Julia tried to let go of any remaining guilt with an exhale. “It’s not exactly optimal, but there could come a time when someone here might need them.” There was a small shrug of her shoulders, not quite apologetic. “I’m new here and am not sure who I can trust with them yet, but I think I can trust you.”
Trust was a heavy concept really. One that Nyx was honestly surprised he didn't struggle with more. After most of the Glaive harbouring traitors, watching Drautos run the King (your father he reminded himself again, something that still felt so foriegn) through with a sword. His whole life really since he had left the ruins of his home having gone up once again in flames. Literally. People he thought friends, family, his brothers and sisters in arms betraying everything he thought they stood for.
Maybe he was just some sort of masochist. Every home he'd ever had he'd lost but yet here he was again - making a new one. Making friends, connections, trusting people when he knew how easily that could be used against him.
But still…
He smiled a little at Julia. "I think I can trust you too," he offered in reply. After all it was a two way street right? And the words weren't hollow. He liked Julia. He felt comfortable with her.
Maybe it'd come back to bite him in the ass. Maybe all of his life would come back to bite him in the ass. But he didn't want to be the person who second guessed and questioned everyone's intentions. Then Drautos really won.
Nyx held his hands over the items. At this size it was second nature, he'd done the barriers often enough in battle to protect himself, or others, from an attack. How his father took it to the level he had, surrounding all of Insomnia itself, was still a mystery to Nyx though. A shimmery blue glow enveloped his hands and extended over the items and then faded, only really visible that there was something surrounding them in a certain light.
"Not gonna lie though, kind of amuses me that the one end of this is a stuffed bear," he said, that amusement evident in his tone.
“Freddie dealt in luck magic. The bear came with some kind of prize basket he won randomly… while he was at our apartment that supposedly no one knew about.” Julia’s brows went up. For someone used to magic, Freddie was a strange one even to her. “I think that was right before a pigeon brought him a sandwich.”
The look she made acknowledged how odd that was to say, but also serious.
She watched him cast his barrier magic with interest. It was close to longing, but the idea of seeing magic from other worlds, unique and legitimately new magic, always interested her. It was a neat trick. One that… she wasn’t going to be able to try and learn any time soon.
"Well that's - a story," Nyx replied. But then it had become quickly apparent that most of the people in Vallo tended to have fairly different lives. Maybe that was the common thread, the thing that made whatever was behind all of this want them but that was more thinking on the situation than Nyx wanted to do.
"Can't say we have luck magic back home," he said. "There were certain items said to improve luck but personally I never bought into it, and nothing like this," he added and nodded towards the items on the table at the end.
Julia took a long sip from her wine glass, considering Nyx carefully. “What kinds of magic does your world have? Battle magic? The shield spell you used, that kind of casting is pretty difficult where I come from. Not a lot of magic users have any kind of magic like that, defensive or offensive.”
"It's… complicated?" he said and then laughed softly at the term. But it was. And truthfully Nyx had only the smallest fraction of an idea of what he was truly capable of. They'd seen Ardyn do things he and Noctis hadn't even imagined were possible, and it was the same magic, although twisted from a thousand years of isolation, that flowed through them.
"Magic in my world was for a very long time something only the royal family of Lucis used, there were a few people here and there who were naturally attuned to it," like Crowe who had taken to her magic in a way few had, outside himself but Nyx knew that was a whole other thing. "But they weren't able to do much with it. After Nifhlheim started invading, started encroaching on Lucis' lands and the attack on his son, King Regis formed the Kingsglaive." Nyx paused, his fist flexed and lips pressed tight for a moment.
"It wasn't hard to find recruits when the Nifs had gone through and burned whole towns, villages, homes for so many of us to the ground." His own included. "Our magic was borrowed, lent to us from the King to protect Lucis. We were only ever trained in what would serve that aim. Battle magic as you called it. Fire, ice, lighting, short range teleportation, quick barriers," he shrugged a little. All of that still hadn't been enough for some of them. Up against the daemons the Empire was creating, the monsters beyond imagination.
"What we were told, trained in, was only a small fraction of the power of the Kings," which he supposed was what had made it so enviable to the Empire, worth waging war over. Worth destroying the world over. "Nearly ten years after I died, one of the gods brought me back, legitimized my bastard claim to the royal line that I hadn't even known I had and in doing so allowed me access to the magic of the Kings, not borrowed, but my own. I know with absolute certainty that what I can do is but the tip of the iceberg, but how deep it goes I can't fathom." In truth he still had vivid memories of the power that flowed through him when he'd put on the ring, the kind of power that could easily corrupt a man. Digging into it was something he was sure had potential to end badly.
Like the library, Julia thought. The magic she had intended as a goddess to go to everyone, was now controlled and loaned out by who the library deemed worthy. She hated them for that. Instead of asking the rest of her curious questions, she said, “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
She pressed her lips together, not sure what would be out of line and what wouldn’t.
“I could try to help you. If you wanted. First discovering I had magic. Then discovering I had a spark that I could grow into something more? I kinda have some practice. Maybe you could try to cast spells not related to fighting? ...If you want. It’s unlikely you could hurt me if you make a mistake anyway.”
I'm sorry… It was words he hadn't heard all that often. At least as an adult. Everyone he knew had gone through the same. Wallowing in their collective misery had never been high on their to do list. Noctis had apologized. Profusely. For their father not legitimizing him, for so much more. Apologies Nyx had never really known what to do with because he was far more of a realist than his brother. He knew the reasons why. Hearing it from Julia though - it was kind of nice. He shrugged a little, gave a resigned smile. "Life sucks and then you die?" he offered. A sort of half joke, half thanks for giving a shit.
He glanced down at his hands, fingers laced together between his knees. He knew he needed to figure this magic shit out. There was that worry those sleepless nights that not learning what he was capable of, how to control it, would leave him as insane as Ardyn. He had vivid memories of the sheer power that had flown through him when he'd shoved that damn ring on his finger. Power that could very easily overtake a man.
"Yeah - maybe?" he replied. He'd have to think on it. "How indestructible are you anyway?"
“Unless you have god level powers or a specially designed weapon to hurt or kill a god?” Julia shrugged. “Pretty indestructible. Also kind of immortal now, I guess.”
She hadn’t thought much about her immortality. Iris had been sure to rub in the fact that all her mortal friends would age and die before her eyes but there had to be some advantages to never growing old.
“Open offer. We don’t have to do anything now. Just, think about it?”
Nyx laughed a little at that, shrugged. "I don't know? Doubtful though since magic in my world comes from the gods so I can't see them giving us shit we could destroy them with." Unfortunately.
"Immortal, hey?" he added. "That's a hell of a concept to come to terms with." Nyx honestly wasn't even sure where someone would begin with that. The idea that you'd long outlive everyone you cared about. But then - well - you didn't have to be immortal for that one he supposed.
"If you ever want to - talk about it or whatever," he paused, gave Julia a warm smile. "Open offer," he repeated her words. Truth was neither of them were probably ready to talk about or work on their respective issues right then - but it was nice to know the offer was there.
He leaned forward and refilled their glasses. "But for tonight I say we focus on this bottle of wine…"