Enchanted [Final Fantasy XV]

❥ chapter V

You wasted no time in getting in the shower once you were alone. After you had locked the bathroom door (just to be on the safe side), you peeled off your remaining clothes, which were nastily clammy because they had been soaked in sweat earlier and hadn't fully dried yet. Then, you finally hopped into the open shower and turned on the water.

While washing the layers of gritty dust and stale sweat off your body, you attempted to make sense of everything that had transpired so far. You knew one thing beyond the shadow of a doubt: you were in a (now very real) video game—and not just any video game, but the one you had been playing for the fifth time up until yesterday. Meaning that you should know the game's plot down pat by now. But ... you didn't. You were unable to recall a single thing that was going to happen. Perhaps, that was for the best.

Furthermore, you couldn't remember any of the other persons that were going to play a part in the game's plot either, be it supporting characters or antagonists. The only people you truly knew in this big, wide world were Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto. Luckily, you had kept most of your knowledge of the world of Eos itself as well. Everything else, though, was gone, as if wiped from your memory.

The biggest and most important question, at any rate, was: How had you got yourself into this mind-boggling situation in the first place? As a matter of fact, you already had a strong hunch as to what the answer to that question was: The true love's spell. Given the circumstances, this was the only (sort of) conceivable explanation you could think of.

You had used the Chocobros' names while casting the magic spell, and now here you were, in the world of Eos alongside Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto. What had you chanted—"come to me, my love so true"? Your "true love" had indeed come to you, just not in the way you might have expected them to. Instead of coming to you into your world, they had come to you after you had somehow found yourself in their world.

The spell must have worked in some way or another. However, because you had so naively disregarded the instructions and written down the full names of four, albeit fictional persons rather than a detailed list of character traits, the spell had majorly misfired. You had been sucked into a video game and teleported straight to those whose names you had used in the spell ... At least, that was what you merely believed had occurred. Who knew what had actually happened. Not you, that was for sure.

Whatever the case might be, it was definitely going to be a whole lot easier for you to get used to living in a world you were already familiar with than it would have been for Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto to adapt to living in an entirely unknown world where they would have been stripped of their magic abilities to boot.

After all—and you weren't going to delude yourself—there didn't seem to be a way for you to return to your world at present. You had nothing on you bar the clothes on your back and maybe your smartphone, which you always had on your person, so it was quite possible that it had been teleported into this world along with you. If so, perhaps one of the Chocobros was holding on to it for you.

But, if truth be told, you weren't sure whether you even wanted to return to your world ... not anytime soon, at least. This was like a dream come true—no, this was, in the truest sense of the word, a dream come true. And you were going to make the most of it while you could. Not that you had much of a choice, really. You were pretty much stuck here and could do next to nothing about it right now; you could only hope to find a means to get back eventually.

Your best option was to ask Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto for help since they were literally the only people you knew here in Eos—and they appeared to know you, too. They had been searching for you specifically and even called you by your name. You wondered why that was. Well, there was only one way to find out.

Feeling clean, re-energized, and, above all, better again, you stepped out of the shower. You dried yourself off with a large towel and then rubbed and brushed your hair as dry as you could, seeing as there was no hairdryer you could have used instead. Afterwards, you put on your new outfit. Before you went outside, you checked your appearance in the mirror one last time.

Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto were seated around the table right next to the caravan's front door, beneath a white-and-orange striped awning. Noctis and Gladiolus were on their phones, playing King's Knights against each other by the looks of it; Ignis was reading his glossy magazine from earlier; and Prompto was just sitting there, restlessly bouncing his leg. They all dropped everything and looked up the second you exited the caravan.

With four pairs of keen eyes suddenly trained on you, you came to a faltering halt at the bottom of the small flight of steps leading up to the caravan's door. "Um, hi," you said and sheepishly raised your hand in greeting.

Gladiolus broke into a broad grin while giving you a once-over. "Nice tattoos you got there."

Following this, you looked down at yourself—at the Sphere Grid winding down your entire right arm; at the colourful portraits of a chocobo, a cactuar, a black mage, and a moogle on your left shoulder; at the intricate Zanarkand emblem on the inside of your lower left arm. You had two more tattoos, though they weren't visible at the moment.

"Wow," Prompto breathed, his voice barely above an awed whisper. "So cool!"

You beamed. "Thanks a lot. They're from my favourite video game series," you responded purely out of habit, only to suppress a grimace immediately afterwards when you realized your slip of the tongue. You tried not to let it show and kept smiling.

"Oh yeah? What's it called?" Gladiolus asked.

"Final Fantasy."

He appeared to turn that name over in his mind, then cast inquiring looks at his three companions, who either shook their heads or shrugged their shoulders. "Never heard of it."

'Figures,' you wryly thought. "Yeah, it's not that widely known. So, uh, what did you guys wanna talk to me about?"

"We have plenty of questions we would like to ask you, and it seems you do too," Ignis replied. "But please, sit down first." Courteous as he was, he pulled out a chair for you and—after you had sat down between him and Prompto with a "Thank you"—slid another glass of water over to you.

"Thanks." You took a sip of the refreshingly cool water. "Okay, shoot. I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge, though I can only speculate about what's going on right now."

"Who are you?" Noctis asked without a single second of delay, as if he had just been waiting to ask you that question.

"I'm [First name]—"

"[Last name]," he cut you short as he waved his hand impatiently, "yeah, we know that already." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the round table, his steel-blue eyes boring into yours. "But who are you?"

You frowned. "Uh, sorry, I don't think I understand your question."

"We had some kinda ... vision of you last night," Gladiolus explained, "and now we all feel like you're an old friend of ours even though we obviously haven't met before."

"Furthermore, we instinctively knew you were somewhere close by when the Regalia—our car, that is—broke down earlier," Ignis added.

"Well, that answers my questions as to how you all know my name and how you found me. Same here, though. I feel like I've known you guys for a long time, too." Which wasn't because of a vision you had had, but because you were an avid fan of the video game they were part of in your world. But they didn't need to know that.

Ignis nodded, as though confirming something he had already suspected to himself. "Just like I thought. You haven't once asked who we are."