Chapter Text
'Aaaagghh!'
The scream pierced the still, silent night inside the palace. It was closely followed by the thud of running footsteps then the slamming of a bathroom door. Noctis leaned against it, panting heavily, as the terror of what he had just encountered set in. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, his heart raced in his chest, and he wondered if he should summon an armiger attack or whether an Archaen would be required.
As if on cue his door burst open.
'Noct! What's wrong?' Prompto asked, gun in his hand and eyes darting about the room as if searching for an intruder.
'You're not gonna believe this,' Noctis said, peeling himself away from the door. 'I don't know how it got in the palace without a guard or something seeing it. But look.'
Cautiously Prompto crept closer to his friend, gun still raised, and peered through the crack that Noctis opened up in the door.
For a moment Prompto squinted in the bright light of the white room, then he saw it.
'Oh Etro!' Prompto leaped back as Noctis slammed the door on the beast. 'You've been sleeping in your room with that thing in your bathroom?'
'Don't remind me,' Noctis moaned, stepping closer to his friend for protection. 'What do we do?'
'Well if I shoot it it'll make one hell of a mess,' Prompto mused. 'I don't think you should open the door again, though. What if it makes a rush and manages to escape? You don't want that thing loose inside the palace.'
'Hell no,' Noctis agreed. 'But I can't leave it in there forever.'
'Noct, I think you might have to,' Prompto said gravely. 'Just wait for it to die, then you can dispose of its corpse. I think it's the only way.'
'It's a bit dramatic, there must be some way of killing it.'
'Do you want to go in there and battle it in such a confined space? And they can walk on the freaking ceiling, what if it leaps down and attacks you aerial style? You won't stand a chance. It's not worth the risk, Noct.'
Noctis chewed his lower lip thoughtfully as his bedroom door opened again.
'The hell are you two doing making so much noise this late at night?' Gladiolus asked. He stormed over wearing just a pair of pyjama bottoms and a dark look on his face. 'Some of us need our beauty sleep.'
'I know you do,' Prompto said deadpan, 'and we're sorry, but this is an emergency.'
'Seriously what took you so long? You're my bodyguard, I could have been being murdered,' Noctis pointed out.
'Do you know how many times you scream at night? If I came every time then I'd spend half my night wandering up and down the hall.'
'Not my fault I get nightmares,' Noctis said with a frown.
'Okay then, so what's the big emergency? Prom run out of Nutella?'
Noctis paused for dramatic effect. 'There's a creature in my bathroom.'
Gladiolus looked at him, then to the door, then back to the prince. 'I thought we'd got over boogeyman fears. There is nothing under your bed. There is nothing in your closet. Except that one time Prompto was hiding in there to scare you.'
'That was hilarious,' Prompto recalled. 'He nearly wet himself.'
'Yes thank you for contributing to my traumatic childhood,' Noctis snapped. 'I'm not talking about that, there is an actual honest to god living thing in there that wants to eat me. And I really need the bathroom.'
'It is probably bigger than Noctis, I've seen it,' Prompto confirmed.
'Most moths are bigger than Noctis,' Gladiolus grumbled. 'Come on, let's see this behemoth then.'
'No no no, don't open it!' both Noctis and Prompto urged.
'It will eat your soul!' Prompto insisted.
'I don't want to have to get another bodyguard, I've got you trained and everything,' Noctis said.
Gladiolus fixed them both with a look that clearly said they were crazy, then reached for the handle. Despite the collective gasps behind him he turned it. He was a soldier. A warrior. A royal bodyguard. But none of that prepared him for the hideous creature inside. 'Holy hell!' he yelped, and quickly pulled the door shut before it could rush him.
'Told you,' Prompto said. 'It'll probably be the downfall of Lucis, to be honest.'
'But my family has reigned for generations,' Noctis said sadly.
Prompto gently patted him on the shoulder. 'No Caelum has ever had to deal with something quite like this before.'
Gladiolus nodded. 'Yeah, I'm with Prom. Usually whatever he says is batshit crazy, but I think honestly your best bet is to just burn down the castle and rebuild it several miles away. It's the only way to be sure.'
'The only way,' Prompto agreed, nodding sagely.
Gladiolus clapped his hands together. 'Well, I'll get the lighter fluid and matches.'
'No need, I'll use firaga,' Noctis said with a resigned sigh. 'I did like this castle though.'
'What the bloody hell are you doing, Highness?' Ignis asked, appearing at the bedroom doorway just as the flame spread from Noctis's fingertips.
'Burning down the palace,' Noctis said. 'You might want to get out while you still can.'
'We're already damned souls. What we've seen cannot be unseen,' Prompto said. 'We'll go down with the castle.'
Ignis blinked once. Twice. Pinched himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. 'Highness, please put the fire away. I'm sure there is a more reasonable solution.'
'Fine, go for it,' Noctis said, retracting the flames. 'But we've already thought through every possibility.'
'I'm sure,' Ignis said in the tone of a man that wasn't reassured at all. He pushed past Prompto who was making the sign of Etro over his chest for protection, and stepped up to the bathroom door. When he looked over his shoulder he found all three men hiding behind the large four poster bed.
'We're here for moral support!' Prompto insisted. 'Just from a distance. And behind a magical barrier. Noct, quick, put up a magical barrier.'
Despite himself Ignis actually felt a trifle nervous as he turned the door handle. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck and his heart was fluttering in his chest. As he pushed open the door his emerald eyes quickly scanned the room, assessing the threat and preparing a course of action. It took him a long time to find the source of the problem, and when he did he felt a headache forming behind his temples. He pushed the door open fully, ignoring the cries for him to run for his life from behind him.
The beast noticed him and began to scurry away, running for the gap under the bath.
Ignis pursued his prey and in two short steps had caught up with it. He bent down and scooped up the spider in one hand, then strode through the bedroom, ignoring the way the other three literally jumped out of his way, and opened the bedroom window. He tossed the spider out and shut the window. Then turned to the three lunatics he called friends.
'Was that so hard?'
'I can't believe you touched it,' Noctis said.
'I can't believe it didn't eat you,' Prompto said.
'That was what I was going to do next, if the fire didn't work,' Gladiolus insisted.
'I'm going back to bed. If anyone wakes me up again I'll be throwing them out of the window.'
And with that Ignis turned on his heel and left.
For a moment nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Then Prompto whispered; 'Nobody wake him up, it won't be funny. I don't want to be chucked out there with the spider.'
'Me either,' Noctis said. And suddenly decided he didn't need the toilet after all, as the flushing might wake Ignis.