thm. andante agitato “the raid” - nicholas britell. start at 2:00 setting. ffxiv, lightwarden au summary. lost to the abundance of light that overwhelmed him body and soul, rune becomes a lightwarden with all the power of the previous lightwardens combined and threatens to tip the scales into another calamity once more. the scions, desperate and out of options, turn to the one man that they knew to be the warrior of light’s equal.
“Oh dear…” a low voice said behind him in an almost teasing tone. “My silly, silly friend. Gave yourself away to the light, have you?”
Startling but not stopping his dance, Rune let out a gentle, surprised laugh and spun around, taking the other man by the shoulders and pulling him into his arms. Lightless blue eyes met his, and joy fluttered in his heart. In the fragments of his broken mind, he dimly wondered if what he was looking at was real.
‘Didn’t you die already?’ the thought came and went as the light in him swept away all else. At the moment, he only knew freedom and boundless tranquility, and he was determined to share that with the man before him.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he hummed to Zenos, his feet moving to a melody only the Viera can hear. “The light, I mean.” The former crown prince gave him a smile as he obliged him to the final dance - a waltz at the end of the world, with his only friend giving him a smile he had previously never had the privilege to see.
“Positively monstrous,” Zenos replied, feeling Rune’s joy to be infectious. In the end, he knew that it would always come down between the two of them at the battlefield, with everyone else falling away to the darkness that the spotlight would not grace with; one ready to kill the other in a heartbeat. This time was no different despite the circumstances which brought them both to this very moment. Rune’s friends may call him a dread monster in needing of slaying - a being to bring about the Eighth Umbral Calamity - but to Zenos, this was still the same Rune he had always known.
The two continued their waltz within the void of light as the floor beneath their feet slowly solidified into white marble speckled with gold. Columns appeared and began encircling the platform’s edge, draped in silks of light-infused aether. Before him, Rune’s raven hair began to lose its color into a lifeless white, with his skin turning into a similar color as the marble they danced on.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” the Warrior of Light said, seemingly unaware of his encroaching transformation. “This is the best I’ve ever felt since… gods, I don’t even know when.”
“Not even when you thought I had died with my blood on your hands?” Zenos teased, and Rune laughed; the sound was so intoxicating he almost felt dizzy and nearly wavered in his steps.
“Hmm… not even that, I suppose.” He raised his arm to let Rune spin gracefully, the white color that had began at the root of his hair beginning to reach the tips, as he furrowed his brows in mock hurt.
“You wound me so,” Zenos pretended to pout. Rune met his gaze, his smile dropping. Zenos found that the gold irises he knew so well was gone, the life seeped out from them. It was like looking into a mirror and the yawning white firmament stared back.
Rune said nothing as the waltz slowed and eventually stopped. The two stood there at the center of the white platform as Rune asked, never breaking his line of sight as clarity returned to his eyes, “Why are you here? As happy as I am to see you, I never expected you to be here dancing with me.”
“And why is that?”
“You died, didn’t you not? With your own hand.”
“And yet, here I stand, still suffused with the Echo, jumping to and fro across bodies to possess and worlds to pass, and-” Zenos leaned in, closing the gap between him and the shorter man, “feeling the best I’ve ever felt since the gods know when.” He twined his hands with Rune’s, and he continued, “You should know the joy I felt when you and yours came to me, begging me to kill you. ‘He’s turned into a monster,’ they said. ‘We know no one else that can even hope to stop him.’ And what do I find when I come here, expecting a lovely abomination to fight and kill?”
The gap between them closed fully as Zenos pulled the Viera into a warm embrace, burying his face into the crook of his neck.
“You. You, and you, and you. They called you a monster, and I still found you, the one and the same. You may look different, and they may have said your mind was dead and gone, and yet who am I talking to? You. My friend, my dearest friend. My dearest enemy.
“I say you wound me with your words, but their words wound me more when I found you here, dancing away to your heart’s content. There is no monster, no abomination here. Only you.
“They want you dead. I want you alive. This world and the next mean nothing if the color you had brought me is lost to the light. We were meant to dance together, with our blades drawing blood. This is the only testament I know that will bring us true joy. So please,” Zenos ended, tightening his embrace, “come back. You are not loved here. There is no joy here. Only the white void.”
He felt a hand cradle the back of his head as Rune returned the hug, his confession all heard. Several heartbeats passed between them in silence, with only the hum of light aether around them filling in the quiet. “I’m afraid,” Rune began, his voice rumbling low beside Zenos’s ear, “there is no coming back from this.” He let go of the back of Zenos’s head as he looked at his own hand, seeing nothing but white marble and the light surrounding him.
“There is no choosing here. One of us will die. And, if what you say about yourself and your Echo is true,” Rune pulled back to gently cup Zenos’s face, giving him a tranquil smile, “it won’t be you.
“I agree with my friends. You have to kill me. Will you not do me this last favor, my dear? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” Rune let go of him, and backed away, his smile never faltering. “But it’s such a shame. I never would have expected you of all people to grovel at me and beg me to stay. It’s an achievement of sorts, don’t you think?” He let out another gentle laugh, and his steps were the only sound to echo in the white halls as he continued back, back, back.
Only for him to suddenly, viciously, violently lunge forward with a blinding strike in the next split second, a lance of pure light materializing in his right hand.