Chapter 21

554 33 9
                                    

We decide to head for Gralea, the Captial of Niflheim. We plan to take back was ours and investigate a certain mystery. I sit with Noct and Ignis as they talk about Altissia. I mostly ignore it and look out the window.

"Is someone else there?" I turn behind me to see Gladio headed our way and roll my eyes. Noct answers before I can.

"Where'd he go anyway?" Ignis explains that Gladio had left to find a certain man on the train. It turns out Ignis over heard him talking about longer nights.

"Hey, captain. Mission complete," Gladio tells Ignis.

Noct continues to press further about what Ignis had heard. Apparently, the nights have grown longer while the days grow shorter. It was happening back in Lucis too, but it has just now gotten noticeably worse. Ignis wanted to figure out what was going on, because if this continued then the demons would be out much longer, and the world could be in danger. Ignis asks if I'd like to go with him and Gladio to interrogate the man, and I begrudgingly agree.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had been at the back of the train for a while now. We decided to wait out in the engine room and talk to the man, but he couldn't provide any information we didn't already know. We had just about given up when a loud explosion shook the train, causing it to stop.

"What the hell was that?" Gladio asks.

"Maybe an accident? Let's head to the front of the train." I say as I leave the engine room.

As we enter the next train car we see people running in a panic. The man ends up running ahead of us as we contemplate what to do. I snap out of my confusion and continue on through the train. We enter into one of the lounge cars when another explosion sets off. I fall to the ground as shattered glass from the windows rain down on me. I cover my face to keep the sharp pieces away from my eyes and mouth.

I look up to see an MT climbing inside, "No freaking way," I mumble. I quickly warpstrike the soldier in the head before he could do anything.

"Come on, we gotta hurry!" Gladio tries to usher Ignis to the next car. We enter to find a large whole blown out of the wall. I run up and look out to find Noct and Prompto fighting the MTs to protect the train.

"You two get to the front of the train and keep the passengers safe. Us three will take care of these scrape heaps." Before they can respond I throw my blade at an MT coming behind Noct. Once I warp I dig the blade deeper into the robot to make sure its deactivated.

"Y/N!" Suddenly, I'm knocked to the ground and there is an explosion in front of me.

The weight on top of me is lifted and I see that Prompto is the one that tackled me. He gives me a hand and explains, "The MTs can self-destruct!" I look down at my feet and see that the robot I had killed was charred black. I look around to see more coming.

"They're not gonna stop this train! Let's go!" We continue fighting off the imperials as they come. They seem to be ignoring us though. They only care about the train. We have no idea where they're coming from, but they just keep on coming.

Soon the train starts up again, "Y/N! Noct!" We both look to see Prompto calling out to us from the hole in the wall. We both warp onto the roof of the train. We make our way to the car with Prompto inside and meet him on one of the open cars without any walls. He looks up at the sky and points at the army of imperial engines, "Guys! Do something!" I notice something strange about his voice. He didn't sound cowardly like he usually did. He sounded frustrated and demanding.

I decided to brush it off in the moment. I make eye contact with Noct and we know instantly what to do. I guess this shared power helps us read each other like a book. We both nod and point warp to different engines. We wait on top of them until we see them begin to open one by one. I warp to the opening of another engine and find loads of explosive MTs inside. I stab one of them straight through the chest and quickly warp to another engine. The MT explodes, and the engine begins falling down away from the train. We continue this until every engine is down. After the last one I warp back to the train. I manage to land on an open cart near the front of the train and quickly head inside through a small escape door on the roof. I find Ignis and Gladio in a car full of scared citizens.

"Is everyone alright?" I ask.

Gladio lets out and exhausted sigh, "Yea, where are the other two?"

"I guess you can say we separated during the fight. They should be somewhere on the train though," We choose to wait in an empty car, not wanting to be surrounded by other people. We wait and wait, but the boys don't show.

Eventually, Ignis' phone rings. He takes it out of his pocket and hands it to me to hit answer. When I do I hand it back, "It's Noct," I tell him.

He nods, "What's wrong?" He asks.

"..." Nocts voice is frantic and hysterical.

"Stay calm," his tone is slightly harsh. He usually talked like this to talk some sense into us, "I'm just as concerned for Prompto as you are." Gladio and I are taken aback by this. What happened to Prompto? Ignis goes on to explain that stopping the train will put the passengers in danger. Stopping the train? Did he fall off? What was going on?

Ignis makes a plan with Noct to drop the passengers off in Tenebrae and then figure something out later. He hands me the phone to hang up and I ask what's going on, "It seems the chancellor is up to the same tricks. He has fooled Noct into pushing Prompto off the train." It's a lot to take in. What the hell was wrong with this sick chancellor? I begin to panic like Noct. We enter a tunnel and then the train shakes once again, and we quickly look out the windows.

"More imperials?" Gladio asks. My eyes widen as I see daemons crawling along the side of the train. We are all speechless. They seem to be heading for the roof for some reason. We start hearing footsteps on the roof of the train and realize that Noct must be up there.

Crap.

It isn't long until we reach the end of the tunnel and we see something strange. Walls of water just like in Altissia during the rite. I put two and two together and realize what's happening. We are close to Tenebrae now, known as the floating continent.

"What is that idiot thinking! He's gonna wash this train off the rails!" We watch in horror as Leviathan lunges out of the waves. She screeches and sends small jets of water at us. I put my arms around Ignis and pull him to the floor. We all brace for impact, waiting to be knocked off and fall to our deaths. However, this doesn't happen. The train trembled, but nothing more. We hesitantly look up again to see Leviathan leaving.

Huh, guess we lucked out.

An Angel Blooms (Gladio X Reader)Where stories live. Discover now