Words spoken aloud. A human voice other than his own. Noctis had to pause to be certain he’d not imagined it. He looked in the direction of the sound and could just make out someone running toward him.
“I’m not wrong, am I? You are the king, right?”
The speaker appeared to be a young woman about twenty years of age, more or less. A shotgun was strapped to her back, and Noctis presumed her to be carrying a variety of other armaments: as she drew near, he heard the clinking of a great deal of metal.
“Huh,” the woman added. “You’re a lot more handsome than I would have expected.”
She stared at him without any hint of reserve. Noctis began to wonder if she might not be so unknown to him after all.
“And you might be . . . ?” he ventured.
“My name’s Sol.”
His hunch proved correct. So this was the companion of whom Lunafreya had written. The walking armory who was good at cards and bad at cooking.
“I was wondering how much longer you were going to keep me waiting,” she said.
“You’ve been waiting here for a while?” Noctis asked.
He could see that it would take more than a few daemons to faze the young woman, yet it was still hard to fathom anyone waiting long in a place so desolate and devoid of all other souls. Clearly, Galdin was no longer any manner of haven.
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I was here twenty-four/seven. But I’ve been coming by two or three times a day to check on the place.”
She grinned. “Guess I ended up pretty lucky with the timing.”
But the smile lingered only for a moment. Sol’s next words were solemn.
“There’s something you need to know,” she began. “Luna’s alive.”
Had he heard it from Sol’s lips before reading the notebook, it would have been too much to take in. Noctis would have been at a loss for words and quite likely unwilling to believe, his logical mind dismissing the possibility outright. It was fortunate, therefore, that Umbra had reached him first, bearing that small but incontrovertible bit of proof.
“I know.”
“You do?” Sol’s surprise was apparent.
And well should she be surprised. Noctis and Lunafreya had never told anyone else of their quiet correspondence. There had been no explicit promise between the pair to keep the notebook and its contents secret, but as the messages continued, it naturally began to feel like something private, a matter shared only between the two young lovers and Umbra. If anyone else had been aware of it, perhaps Gentiana was the only one, but even of that Noctis wasn’t certain.
“Talk about a letdown,” Sol mumbled. “I thought you’d be blown away by the news.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Nothing gets past the king, huh?” she said. Then, “Anyway, we got bigger fish to fry. Come on. Car’s this way.”
Noctis recalled the location of the parking lot. He did not need Sol to lead the way but followed nonetheless. They passed through the quay’s main building and crossed the narrow boardwalk, through drab surroundings of endless gray. The vibrant hues Noctis remembered of Galdin were nowhere to be found.
As they crossed from boardwalk to shore, Sol said, “You sure are trusting.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Noctis responded, perplexed by the comment.
Sol made a face, equally perplexed. “I mean, you don’t even know me. You’ve never seen me before in your life.”
“That doesn’t mean I have any reason to doubt you. You’re a friend of Luna’s, aren’t you?” To Noctis, that alone seemed reason enough to trust her. “Then, I believe you’re here to help me.”
At some point along the way, he realized Umbra was no longer with them. The dog seemed to have run off or vanished, as if his task was specifically to ensure Noctis’s safe rendezvous with Sol, and now that his task was fulfilled, he was free to return to wherever it was he’d come from. It occurred to Noctis that the timing was too perfect to be a coincidence, and that was exactly why Umbra had come along on the vessel.
Sol began to speak but was interrupted by her smartphone. The ringtone was a familiar trill. For an instant, it had Noctis remembering an earlier time.
“Oh come on!” Sol was saying on the phone. “Your timing is almost creepy. How do you always seem to know right when stuff happens?”
Sol flicked her eyes at Noctis. Once more, Noctis felt a premonition about who was reaching out.
“That’s right. I’m with him now,” Sol said. “You wanna have a word with him?”
There could be no doubt now. Ignis, Gladio, or Prompto. So which of the three was holding the phone? Noctis felt certain it had to be one of them, but he couldn’t make out the voice at the other end of the line.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. We’ll be there soon,” Sol said, then breathed a small sigh as she slipped the phone back into her pocket.
“Who was that?” Noctis asked.
“Gladio. Says he’s got some visitors, so he can’t stay on the phone long. But they’re near Hammerhead. We can meet up with them there.” Sol added, “By ‘visitors,’ he meant they’ve got some daemons to take care of.”
Noctis gave a small laugh. What a Gladio way to put it. He envisioned his sworn Shield in battle, the man’s greatsword arcing effortlessly through the air. Then an unpleasant thought struck.
“Are all three of them okay?” Noctis asked.
Prompto would be at a considerable disadvantage in this new era of darkness, with his strong preference for guns. And if Ignis had not regained his sight, survival in a world overrun with daemons would be no easy feat.
What if one of them has . . . ?
Sol’s interruption was merciful. “Of course they are. Could anything kill those three?” she laughed. “Prompto spends most of his time around Hammerhead, trying to impress Cindy. He helps out whenever she needs a little muscle on the road. Ignis hunts, too. Says if anything, he’s more used to the darkness than we are.”
It seemed clear that Sol was quite close with all three.
“They’re gonna be real glad to see you. Not just your retainers, either. Everyone’s been anxious for the king to return.”
So they’d been waiting after all. For ten long years. Everyone in the world had carried on, believing that this day and this hour would come.
“We oughta hurry, too,” Sol said. “Come on, jump in.”
Noctis slid into the passenger seat at her urging. No sooner was his door closed than Sol had the vehicle in motion.
As Sol drove, she related the story of her encounter with Lunafreya and their first few days together.
“There I am, cruising down the highway on my bike, and out of nowhere this woman in white rolls right out onto the road.”
“She rolled out onto the road?”
“I know, right? Figure she probably slipped off an embankment up above. She was in a real hurry.” When Sol had slammed on the brakes, Lunafreya had jumped right into the sidecar without a word.
“She was being chased,” Sol recounted, almost casually. “Apparently, the thing had been after her for a while. But that bike’s an antique, y’know? Doesn’t get the kind of speed you need to outrun a determined daemon. ’Specially not if you’re lugging around extra weight. So I make a point of mentioning it to Luna―as a joke, right?―and guess what she does next.”
“No idea.”
“She goes, ‘Right. What should I dump?’ and flings the bag with all my food in it out onto the road.”
Noctis snorted, at which Sol griped, “It was not funny. Food isn’t easy to come by out in the wastelands. I was so mad I was fightin’ back tears. The next day, we had to go back and pick it all up.”
Sol began to talk about what a pain it had been, how they’d crawled around in the darkness on their hands and knees, picking up cans one by one. As she recounted the details, she mimicked their actions, stooping low and reaching her arms out to swipe up imaginary cans, not seeming to care that in reality, she was behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. According to Sol, Lunafreya had been much better at finding the cans.
“That was pretty much how it always went, right from the start. Luna was full of surprises. Same name as the dead Oracle. Then she tells me she is the dead Oracle. And then she turns out to be crazy strong, even though she’s got that dainty little princess figure.”
“What do you mean by ‘crazy strong’?”
Lunafreya had mentioned in the journal entries that she was battling daemons alongside Sol. Noctis assumed she would’ve handled herself well enough given her training, but he wouldn’t have expected this “walking armory” to describe the Oracle as an outlier in terms of physical strength.
“The way she fights, y’know?” Sol responded. “Packs a real punch. Terrible at cards, though. Oh, but there was this other game we played, and she was unbelievable at that one. Five Finger Fillet. You ever heard of it?”
Noctis had. “The game where you stab a knife between your fingers?”
It involved spreading one hand palm down against a table, then using the other hand to stab a blade down into the spaces between fingers, moving back and forth as quickly as possible. He’d played it with the guys on a road a few times. Ignis hadn’t approved.
“It was so frustrating,” Sol continued. “She claimed it was her first time, but she was going faster than me! Apparently, her brother was real good at it. She said she was just copying what she’d seen him do.”
Noctis was surprised to hear that Ravus had played the game. It seemed the man had another side Noctis had never seen, far removed from the stiff, unapproachable high commander they’d encountered at Aracheole. Maybe Ravus was more easygoing in the presence of those he was close to. Or maybe he’d been another person entirely, before his mother died.
Sol kept on talking. “But the thing that really floored me was when Luna said she was gonna face off against Ardyn. Claimed it was her ‘calling’ ever since she came back to life.”
Noctis turned involuntarily to look at Sol. “Did she really say that?”
The words gave Noctis a start; for a moment, he thought he must have misheard. Was that truly the new calling that Lunafreya had written about? How could she be the one destined to stop Ardyn? That was the True King’s duty, bestowed upon him by the Draconian, inside the Crystal.
At Noctis’s evident disbelief, Sol scrunched up her nose. “Please. Couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.”
“Sorry. It just caught me off guard.”
“Guess I can’t blame you. I felt the same way. Told Luna that was a joke if I’ve ever heard one.”