After having an extended rest and re-checking all of their supplies again, they carried on and pushed further into the extensive cavern system that they were barely halfway through. It seemed to almost wrap over and over on itself as they headed around and downwards on a seemingly-nonsensical path and despite how linear it was, they had absolutely no idea where they were in relation to anything above ground. It was very disorienting with spatial awareness as well as the passage of time.
A couple of them briefly wondered if that was its purpose, as well as being the only real place that could hold a Divine being of that size and weight in relative safety.
There were more Daemons waiting for them too, every so often; more clusters of Hecteyes, Goblins, Skeletons and Ghouls, but thankfully nobody from the Lich family. They'd had their fill of those for that lifetime and the next, thank you very much.
They all fell one after another, Helena still helping as much as she could by herding and pushing the Daemons either away from an advantageous position, or forwards onto a very painful one.
More than one creature was thrown through the air to land on a blade that slipped between their ribs...if they had any, that is. In the case of the Hecteyes, it made contact with one of their namesake and she chose to not think about that too closely.
They still noticed that she was slightly more hesitant, however, and as they gradually got closer to their goal, the others started to wonder about her.
Was she really okay?
They weren't sure if there was time to ask.
The possible issue temporarily got put to one side as they took one last break in the cavern just before Titan's Throne.
Prompto suggested coffee for this particular stop- and insisted that it was to make sure everyone was alert and not related to there being a shortage of chocolate powder in any way- and they all huddled at the underground campsite to discuss the plan.
Or, the complete and total lack of anything resembling one.
"I believe we've made good time." Ignis reported as he braced a glance at his watch. "It's only quarter-past eight."
"Huh. New personal best." Noctis smiled.
"We shall still need to camp here before heading back out, though, despite our swiftness."
"Reckon that chest's still waitin' for us?"
"Could be." Prompto nodded. "We gonna take a look?"
Helena looked up from her thoughts. "...chest?"
"Yeah. Found it in a little side cave last time. Didn't get round to opening it- once we clapped eyes on Titan, just plain forgot."
"Oh, right." She looked back at the fire. "Might have nice stuff."
"We reckoned so too. Who's comin' with me?"
"I'll go." Noctis offered. "If one of us crawls through that space first, we can drag it back into here."
"I like that idea. It's cramped in there." He looked at Helena and explained. "In that cave, there's this little tunnel? Not all of us could fit in, but when I decided to go take a look-"
"He means, got pushed through kicking and screaming."
"...we found this chest. Couldn't see clearly, there was nothin' we could light up in there and then we got distracted from it by the giant next door." He then looked at Noctis. "Which means that you're goin' this time."
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you fucking well are."
"I shall settle this." Ignis rummaged in his pack and pulled out a pencil that had lost its point, then turned away from both men and snapped it in half. He fumbled for a few seconds, then held out one half in each hand. "Shortest goes through." He said.
Gladiolus smiled. "Drawin' straws, huh?"
"It'll save a lot of arguing, which I'd much prefer."
Prompto shrugged. "Okay." He tapped Ignis' left hand. "I reckon I'll take that one."
Ignis opened that hand first, the right, then opened his left after a pause. The left-hand straw was shorter by about an inch.
Prompto punched the air in front of him. "Yeah, baby!"
Noctis rolled his eyes. "Come on, then," he sighed, "before I lose interest in it again." The two men then left to go and bring the chest back to the campfire.
After they'd gone, Ignis looked at Helena for a moment; she was staring into the fire, sipping at her coffee occasionally while Gladiolus also looked at her once in a while, also wondering.
He looked at it too, then, and decided that this was as good a time as any. "Gil for your thoughts?" He ventured.
Helena looked at Ignis briefly. "...not much to say."
"Or, maybe...not enough?"
She smiled. "It's true what they say about your eyes."
"They don't miss much. I apologise, but I am just concerned that you may be putting too much weight onto things."
"The weight itself isn't the problem. I just feel it more now."
"I wish we could ask Bahamut." Gladiolus said then. "Not cos' I don't believe in you, you know I do. I'd ask...so that you believed in it. Doesn't seem like you're so sure anymore."
She nodded. "There might be time later."
"That doesn't help right now." He put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm not sure if we can say any more."
"You don't have to." Helena replied. "It's not you that needs reassuring. It's me. I can't get that, so...I guess I'm trying to work it out for myself more than anything."
"The thing is," Ignis said, "that this is Hades you're talking about here. Have you stopped to consider...that this might be exactly what he wants? For you to doubt yourself? He was very quick to judge based on what his follower had told him. You're almost doing the same thing- relying on information that isn't accurate."
"He's right." Gladiolus agreed. "You've only got his say-so on it, and as you told us, his opinion's bound to be different. That's also down to how he is as a person, too...or Daemon or whatever. He's a lot simpler. For him, it's join or die. He never thought that one of his own would dare to lie to him about it, so how can you believe that what he said has so much truth?"
"I fear that the problem here, is that we've only got his side to go on. I personally reckon that we do need Bahamut. That's not up to us, of course. Hades is your opposite so he's bound to side against you on a lot of things. Bahamut would no doubt provide a more balanced version that wouldn't cause this confusion."
Helena smiled. "I know what you're trying to say. Really, I do. Part of me thinks that stuff too, but...maybe I'm just saying that to justify myself, rather than it being true. Same thing he does, his take on it merely gives it a darker edge."
"I suppose it's also reasonable to assume that part of you may think that because we're on your side, we're bound to be in your corner regardless. I don't mean that to undermine anyone. But we say these things because we ourselves believe they are true. None of us doubt you. Not even now."
Gladiolus nodded. "Listen to what we're tryin' to say, babe. I know it's hard, but...you cannot tear yourself to bits over this. Like Iggy said, that's probly what he wants. He can't go for you directly, cos' he knows you're right and he's got no grounds to, so instead? He's tryin' to get to you, pickin' at your weak spots, puttin' that confusion into you so that he doesn't even have to lift a half-rotten finger. You're beating yourself, babe. Think about it- in the light, everything's clear. You know exactly what you're lookin' at, for good or for worse, and nothin's obscured. With darkness?
Nothin's easily visible. It's confusing. You can lose your way. It's half the battle before it's even begun. Don't let him win."
"I couldn't have put it better myself." Ignis agreed.
She thought about it, then gradually, a smile began to slowly spread across her face. "...yeah." She said. "That makes sense. What would you suggest, then? What's best?"
"I reckon that you need to push back. Don't let him sway you over to his side of thinking. Although we can't get hold of Bahamut to swing you to the other side, you can just choose to hold things in stasis. You knew you were right, and we know you're right. Use it like a wall, and wait out the siege while carryin' on as you were before all that happened."
She nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks."
A few moments later, Prompto and Noctis returned, dragging a heavy-sounding metal chest along the floor between them.
"Look what we got here." Noctis smiled. "Payday."
"Eventually." Prompto added.
"If speed was an issue, you should have done it."
They dragged it over to the fire, and Prompto was telling the others about it while Noctis worked to pick the lock.
"So we get over to that little tunnel I mentioned before...and this guy says that he could see a Skeleton guardin' it."
"...were you okay?" Helena asked. "You didn't call for help."
He chuckled. "Didn't need it. See these?" He then picked up the half-skeletal remains from the chest's lid and threw them away with an echoing clatter. "There's your guard right there."
"How was I to know?" Noctis defended. "Not as if there's much room to see when in that tunnel. Or good lighting."
"Well duh, we're in a fuckin' cave. It's not somethin' you'd write a formal letter of complaint to Good Cavekeeping Magazine for. So anyways, this guy shits the bed and yours truly has to go in there and drag it out myself."
"I told you that you should have gone."
"At least you still got it." Gladiolus said. "Let's see if it was worth all the trouble."
"Hope so." Noctis fiddled for a few more moments with his ear to the side of the chest, then finally heard the noise he was waiting for. "Anyone got a slim knife?"
Ignis drew out a switchblade and passed it to him.
"Perfect, thanks." Noctis slid the point into the barrel of the lock, keeping his lockpick in the same place, then slowly turned both of them at the same time. He was rewarded with a click, and he handed the knife back to Ignis after pocketing the pick.
Mentally crossing his fingers, he lifted the chest lid up with a creak and puff of dust, then looked inside.
"Okay, looks like a mixed goodie bag." He reported.
First item to come out was a small cloth pouch, and that was filled with gems; two diamonds, an emerald, a ruby and three sapphires, all uncut but in very good condition. A ring also fell out, silver with a diamond as its stone, and he pocketed that one for himself instantly. There was also a gold bar, a mythril ingot, a pair of wicked-looking daggers with saw edges and emeralds encrusting the hilt, and oddly, a compass.
"...the fuck is this doin' in here?" He said, pulling it out. "Would have been a lot more useful when outside the chest."
"People do the oddest things." Prompto agreed. "Hey, what's that there?" He pointed to what looked like a flat scrap of cloth that was at the very bottom of the chest.
"Just a dirty old rag, looks like. And...that's it. Nothin' else. Still a pretty good haul, though. I reckon it was worth it."
"It'll all sell for quite a bit, yes." Ignis smiled. "Well done."
"...lemme see that cloth." Prompto's hand dived into the box to draw it out, and he took it closer to the campfire.
"Careful," Noctis joked, "might be laced with petrol."
"...I don't believe it."
"What?" Noctis went over to see what his friend was gawping at. He snatched the cloth from him, then turned it over. "Huh. It's faint, but it's there alright. Fuck."
"Has a way of poppin' back up, don't he?"
"What is it?" Gladiolus asked, curious now.
Noctis held it up for them to see. "It's the last piece of Sylvester's map- the one we were never able to find and gave up on?"
He stared at it, then laughed. "Figures." Was all he said.
Ignis smiled. "So that's his compass, and some of his treasures. Makes me wonder what he hid at the map's end, if this lot is what he puts into a mere chest."
"Me too. I dunno bout you guys, but I think that's lit my fire again. I wanna find what marks the spot."
"I am also very interested."
Noctis grinned. "Sounds like a mission to me."
"Still got this one to do first." Prompto reminded.
"After we've sorted this out and when there's nothin' urgent, we'll go look for it then. One last shot. Can't hurt." He then sighed. "Guess I'd better get this test over with."
"Feel ready?"
"No...but what the hell. I wanna get it over with, really."
"Then let's go meet that mountain."
Entering the next cavern along almost felt like entering a whole other world to them. After walking in a short way, they stopped and looked down at the spiral of the path that they were on. It curled all around the outer edge of the enormous space, and sat right in the middle of it on a stone worn down into a seat, was the Divine himself. They were roughly at eye-level with his chin from their current position- and that was only because he happened to be sitting down at the time.
Even though he effortlessly looked like a statue due to how still he was, his eyes moved and studied them silently, giving them all the sense that he was, in actual fact, alive.
Helena bowed slightly in respect. "You look well, Brother." She said. "We hope to not disturb you for too long."
Titan didn't speak inasmuch as he never really opened his mouth; instead, from an unknown source deep within his chiselled body, a low rumble like distant thunder was heard by them all.
What he actually said to them, was unknown.
"Can you understand him?" Prompto asked her.
"Yes...and no. It's hard to explain. He's fine, he's just waiting to see what happens, that's all."
Ignis nodded. "We'd better get started, then. Long way down."
It was. The spiral path, rather thin and precarious in a few places, ate away at time as they walked along it to access the floor of the cavern a hundred feet below. As they travelled along it, it also afforded a complete view of the entire Divine as they looped over and over on themselves. However he had been carved and by whoever, there was no finer craftsmanship in all of Eos.
Nor ever would be, most likely.
They eventually reached the basin and came out onto a huge bed of mixed shale and sand, the official 'seat' of the world as all the scholars so called it in their lectures. However deep the seat was, the only thing below it was molten rock as it was the lowest area below average sea level by considerable margin.
They all stood at the foot of the path, looking back up at him as far as their necks would allow, and saw his eternal eyes watching them from high above.
"...y'know," Prompto said, "one thing bothers me."
"What's that?" Helena asked.
"Where's his dick?"
Beside him, Noctis put his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.
Ignis typically rolled his eyes and Gladiolus had a slight grin on his face, while Helena had a smile frozen into place on hers.
"Uh..." She began.
"You'd know, right? I mean...he's so perfect in every other way, why hasn't he got a donger? It just bothers me."
"W-well...I guess he doesn't really need one. He's eternal, there's only one of him, so..." She decided to leave it there.
"Hm, I guess. So he doesn't think about gettin' laid?"
Helena was now trying very hard not to laugh. "I have no idea."
"Put it this way, pal." Gladiolus told him with a grin. "If it was on there, you sure wouldn't look at his face ever again. Or any other part of him, for that matter."
"That's true." Prompto also grinned at that point. His face then took on a more sly look. "And ain't you glad, huh? Means you won't have to resign your position."
Gladiolus thought about that for a second, then... "...shut up."
His grin still stayed in place, however.
"Let's...just carry on, shall we?" Ignis said at that point. "We're here for a reason, after all. Let's not take up all his time."
Prompto nodded. "Go on, Noct, ask him."
The young man shook his head. "It's stupid, it's not gonna work, man. I'm not doin' it."
"We've got a bet...unless you're a chicken?"
"Oh no..." Gladiolus sighed under his breath.
Noctis turned towards Prompto. "What did you just call me?"
"Oh sorry, didn't you hear?" Prompto took a step forwards and puffed up his chest a little. "I called you, a bawk-bawk chicken."
"I'm gonna kill him." Gladiolus fumed. "Fucking hate that stupid-ass chicken noise."
"Put your fingers in your ears." Helena whispered.
After a few more chicken noises, Noctis held his hands in the air. "Alright!" He said angrily. "Stop, already! I'll do it, okay?"
Prompto grinned. "That's more like it. Floor's yours."
The Prince sighed wearily, then turned back around towards Titan and looked up as high as he could decently manage without pain.
"Uhh...excuse me? Titan?" He inquired politely. "I think there's something under your foot, could you move it a bit please?"
The Divine peered down at him with the same stony expression, and after a few seconds, a very deep rumble was heard.
Helena shook her head. "Nope." She said. "Although you might get bonus points for being a comedian. He found it funny."
"I'm not fucking laughin'." Noctis grumbled. "He probly thinks that I'm the biggest idiot on the fuckin' planet now."
"Damn." Prompto said. "I was sure that it'd work."
"Would have been nice if it did...but that's too easy, right? I doubt that any part of this whole thing will ever be that easy. But on the plus side, you'll be givin' me my ten Gil back later."
Prompto grumbled about that, but it couldn't be heard clearly.
"Ramuh said that once you were here, it would become clear." Ignis reminded him. "How's that going?"
"Nothin' so far."
"Perhaps we should get closer to his feet?"
They decided to try it, and paced across the sand to stand much closer to the two appendages in question. The big toes were almost as wide as they were, and nearly half as tall.
Noctis looked at them both in turn. "Okay, so...here we are. At his feet. And...they just look like feet, bro, there's nothin' here."
"There has to be something we're missing."
"...reckon Carbuncle was lying to us?"
"No. Divines do not lie. They might...be rather selective with what truth they say, but it's never false."
"Uh...lemme walk around them a little. That might help."
Taking care to not lose his footing in the sand, Noctis travelled all around each of the two massive slabs in front of him, examining them from all sides and angles. Maybe there was a catch? Some sort of hidden button or old-school secret panel shit going on?
No. He was deluding himself, they were just feet. Very large feet, made of solid stone that was somehow alive...but still just feet.
He sat down on the sand in front of one of them. "Well guys, I don't mind tellin' you that I'm about ready to give up here."
At that point, Helena decided to walk away from them all and instead, she drifted around the cavern, looking at the walls and kicking the odd piece of shale around.
The others stood a metre away from Noctis, looking to see if there were any other clues, while the Prince himself was just staring at the foot he was closest to, and his eyes also wandered over the sand that was underneath and around it. Idly, he wondered how far down the sand went. It had to be very far just to support all that weight, maybe even hundreds of...hang on.
He looked closer at the sand nearest to the outside of Titan's left foot; his weight definitely had some sort of impact, as a two-inch indent had been made in the sand that would turn into a footprint if that foot moved. That sand, was lower than the rest.
...what if he could somehow make it even lower?
"...that's it. That's it!" He scrambled to his feet, sending some of the sand flying out behind him.
"What's it?" Prompto stared at him. "And be careful, dude! Nearly put sand in my eyes."
"He was right. I don't have to move him at all." He turned to the others. "Have we got a shovel or anything?"
"Uhh...we have...a spoon? I need that, though. Can't make hot drinks without a spoon, heh."
"I'll be here all fuckin' year if I use a spoon. Okay- how about somethin' a lot bigger than a spoon, that can move sand?"
Ignis stared at him. "Of course...that's brilliant!"
"Right in front of our faces." Gladiolus beamed. "There any way we can make a shovel? Let's look for somethin'."
They all started to search the cavern.
After a couple of minutes, all they really had was shale.
Noctis decided to try it, getting back down onto the floor near the left foot to start scraping out sand, but the fragile material snapped and crumbled after only a few uses.
"Fuck, there goes another." He cursed after the third piece has gone the same way as all the others. "This isn't working, it's not strong enough for me to get anywhere with it. There's gotta be somethin' else, guys. What about in the other caves?"
"There was nothing except rocks." Ignis said sadly. "The campsite didn't have anything either, it was most..." He paused.
"I'll be right back." He then started running back up the path.
Prompto watched him go. "...what's eatin' him?"
"I'll just keep goin' with my hands while he's gone, try to save a bit of time." Noctis backed away from the foot a short distance, then began burrowing almost like a dog, digging his hands into the sand and shoving it away.
Helena then saw what was happening and came back over. "How's...oh, that's original." She smiled. "What's he doing?"
"He's gonna try to displace the foot by movin' some of the sand that's underneath it." Gladiolus told her. "I'd be careful not to get in the way, it's flyin' all over the place."
She nodded. "It sure is. That's a great idea."
Ignis returned holding the half-skeleton that had been found on top of the chest they'd discovered. "Try this." He said.
Noctis stopped digging, turned around...and stared.
"...you want me to use that?" He said. "A fucking pelvis and a set of fucking legs?"
"Bone is rathermore solid than shale, is it not? I'm not keen on the idea...it's defilement really, but-"
"Gimme those fucking bones." Noctis snatched them out of the blonde's hands and started pulling them into separate pieces.
He then took up the pelvis and used it almost like a scoop. "Oh, this is much better." He grinned. "Thanks, Iggy, you're a star."
"Want some help?" Gladiolus offered.
"I sure won't say no."
"Tell me what you're lookin' to do."
The other two men also joined in, using other pieces of bone, and between them they started to clear out a rounded shape in the sand that was a couple of inches away from the foot itself, then they extended the width of that shape to two or three feet so that it left the limb on a sandy island of-sorts.
"Okay." Noctis nodded after he'd looked at it from all angles. "So this sand is now lower than this sand, right?"
"Sure is." Prompto nodded. "So now what?"
"Now, I've gotta lower his foot to that level. I'm kinda...I need to scrape out the sand under his foot until it drops down?" He borrowed one of the shin bones, knelt down right beside the foot and started scraping underneath it delicately.
"...is this shit even gonna work?"
"You got any other ideas?"
He kept at it, then decided to try and speed up as he really didn't want to see in his next birthday in that cavern.
He scraped and scraped...then the bone slipped and a thunk was heard as it slapped Titan on the foot.
"Shit!" Noctis instantly warped away from it by several feet.
Helena shook her head. "Relax, its fine."
"Are you sure?" Noctis was very nervous.
"Course. See?"
They all looked upwards, and saw that Titan hadn't moved and didn't look angry. He just looked the same as he did before.
Noctis got up and walked back to the foot slowly. "But... I hit him with it. I fucking hit the guy."
Helena smiled. "He probably didn't even feel that. And even if he did, he can easily tell the difference between an honest mistake and a blow done with intent."
"...oh. Uh...r-right, yeah, I...knew that."
Prompto grinned. "Did you fuck. You ran like a coward."
"Shut the fuck up." He carried on digging, trying to not feel like a twat for the second time that day.
He was, however, rewarded at last; after several minutes of careful scraping, he saw a very slight movement in the front half of Titan's foot. Encouraged and excited by his success, he carried on scraping around it until, with an enormous whoosh of fine sand that covered him from head to toe, the toes dropped by an inch and his bone was trapped beneath that gigantic foot. A split second later, the weight snapped the bone into splinters.
Surely, he had to have noticed that.
As Noctis scrabbled away, shaking himself and sneezing a couple of times, the impossibly-heavy limb moved to one side to push the largest bone fragments away, then he slowly set his foot back down to produce yet another huge cloud of sand in the air.
He then looked down at Noctis, who was still trying to get sand out of his hair, and bent to place his palm flat on the floor.
He rumbled with a pitch that was slightly higher than all the others had been, and he then merely waited.
"...what's that for?" Noctis asked.
Helena was already walking towards the palm. She carefully stepped onto it, then looked at Noctis. "Coming?" She asked.
He swallowed nervously, but he still went over and climbed onto the huge expanse to stand next to her.
"He wants to look at you." She told him.
That palm then rose into the air as Titan lifted it back up, holding it in perfect balance until it was level with his upper chest. He gazed at both Helena and Noctis in turn, his eyes then settling on him last of all. A few bursts of much-shorter rumbles were then heard, after which Helena nodded.
"You've passed." She told the confused Noctis.
"How do you know what he's sayin'?"
"It seems like he's putting the words directly into my mind. I don't know how, I...I just know. He also apologised for having to attack you all last time. That's nice, isn't it?"
"Uh...yeah, that's cool. Y'know, er, no hard feelings and all. Probly that sphere of...whatever Ramuh mentioned."
"...yeah. Anyway, he now has part of your prize."
The Divine then looked directly at Noctis, and within those stony eyes, the Prince could almost see some sort of fire burning.
At the same time, he felt as though he'd just been hit by a cool breeze and took a small step backwards at it.
"Careful." Helena's hand shot out to prevent him falling.
"Sorry. That's...what was that?" He asked as he then saw the unusual inner fire flicker and then die out.
"That's his blessing. Well, how he conveys it, anyway. He showed you a part of his soul, so that you'd understand. Stay quite still, he's going to put us back down again now."
Sure enough, they gently sank back to the floor and the Divine waited for them both to hop off before pulling his hand back to its previous position. He looked at them all one last time, then his eyes closed and he appeared to be asleep.
They went back to the others, who were smiling broadly.
"Twat-face does it again." Prompto grinned. "Are we gettin' out of here now? I'm starving after all that."
Noctis noticed that he was holding his camera.
"Get a good shot?" He asked.
"You betcha."
Gladiolus chuckled. "C'mon, let's make tracks. Still need to set up the camp properly, or it'll be a long night."
After they'd all eaten, they had just enough hot chocolate left for one more round and sat drinking it while looking at the photograph. Titan's massive chest and head was in the centre of the shot, and on his palm were Helena and Noctis, looking almost doll-like due to being dwarfed by the Divine. However, the flames didn't show up on the picture.
"Where's the fire?" Noctis asked.
"That was for you alone." Helena told him. "I didn't see it either, but I knew it was there."
"I felt a breeze, too. Was really weird. It was like...he could see right through me. Like he knew everything, y'know."
"They're all like that. They can all see the future, and the past. Titan's the second oldest of the Divines- he was created at the same time Eos was, carved from it. Ramuh came afterwards, when the first men began to walk on the surface. When the climate settled down, the other Elementals were created next, Shiva being one of them and Ifrit being another. There are several others, of course, but fire and ice were the two most important things needed for the planet. When man began to look towards the stars and dream, one of those stars fell to earth and became Carbuncle, the youngest of them all."
"What about Leviathan? He's water, right?"
She nodded. "Yeah. The planet was far too cold at first, or, it was far too hot. They used to fight often, until Ramuh stepped in to broker a truce between them. From that truce, water was allowed to become part of the planet and Leviathan sprang out of the first ocean. Water can be hot or cold, so both Ifrit and Shiva felt that they were represented fairly."
"And...where does Bahamut come in?"
"He's the oldest along with Hades, who's the same age. They made their agreement, and to cement it, they each gave a part of themselves to create everything in the heavens. Everything came into existence when they worked in perfect balance, and as long as they remain in balance, that's how it'll stay."
"...that's beautiful." He smiled.
"I've always thought so too. And in a way, we are their children. Made from them, and shaped by their impression on this planet."
"Hmm." Ignis said. "Some humans wouldn't exactly be classed as being well-behaved children."
"Not all of them, no. But, they're old enough to find their own way and make their own mistakes, some more than others. There's still balance there too, in a way. For every truly evil person who would bring ruin, somewhere a hero will rise who can teach them that vital lesson. And so it goes on. For others, that lesson is merely about being able to tell the difference."
That triggered a few seconds of reflective silence.
Prompto then shattered it.
"Okay, well...maybe this is the right time to tell Hel about the sleeping arrangements? Anyone?"
She looked at him. "What sleeping arrangements?"
Noctis decided to do it. "It's nothin' really bad." He assured her first. "Y'see...last time we were down here, we camped at this place and it's fucking cold."
"It really is." Prompto agreed.
"So like, we all said that if we ever came down here again, or ended up in the same kinda scenario? We needed a new plan. Cos' we got no sleep at all that night."
"No sleep."
"Then the next day we were really grouchy and stuff..."
"We had a lot of arguments."
"...Prom, will you stop being my echo please?"
"I should- oh. Yeah, heh, sorry."
Noctis shook his head, then carried on. "All it is, is that instead of being separate as usual, we'll just sleep together. Y'know, like, just huddle up to keep warm? We'll keep our clothes on and stuff, but I'd understand if you were a little edgy about it."
She looked at the both of them. "That seems fine to me."
"...oh. Okay."
"What, you thought I'd have a problem with it?"
"Uh...yeah. Kinda."
She smiled. "It's fine. Can't be helped, right? I can totally see what you're sayin' and it makes perfect sense. Long as you're not a sleepwalker or anything like that, I'm cool with it."
"I knew I should have bet on it." Prompto muttered.
So, they then all went to bed. After some discussion about what order to best lie in, it was decided that Helena should lie in the middle of the group, and Gladiolus was next to her as would be normal. Noctis ended up on the other side of Helena, followed by Prompto, and then Ignis was last to join on the other side of Gladiolus. With that sorted, they waited for sleep to claim them.
"I'm gettin' warm already." Noctis smiled.
"Me too." Prompto agreed. "Toasty."
"Wish we'd thought of this last time."
"So then tomorrow, we get the hell outta here and head back to the Disc to meet that old man and his feather duster?"
Ignis sighed. "One of these days, these quaint descriptions of yours are going to get you in an awful lot of trouble."
"Nah bro, they know I'm only jokin'."
"That doesn't mean you dig deeper."
"Prom would, he's crazy." Noctis chuckled.
"I am not." He defended. "I'm totally sane."
"I dunno," Gladiolus teased, "you don't get many sane, regular people askin' questions about Titan's dick, do you? You're lucky he's got a great sense of humour, if ya ask me."
"Heh, er...shut up, you're just tryin' to scare me."
"I...wasn't, no. Can if you want me to, though."
"Okay," Noctis grinned, "enough now, let's get to sleep. Even though we're all nice and warm, it's late, it's been a long day and we don't wanna get cranky."
"Okay."
"Alright."
Roughly a minute later... "...hey, guys?"
"What?" Noctis snapped at Prompto.
"...I was gonna say goodnight."
"Oh. Night."
After a wave of more goodnights, they finally went to sleep.