daemonized | RECOLLE IC CONTACT.

[Woah, okay, a moment while Ardyn reads this more than once, because... what.]

"Weird emblems". What sort of emblems?

[And Ardyn recalls something--] I remember the drawing you showed me, back when all this Retrospec nonsense started. A monster with a hole in its chest, shaped like a heart. A "heartless", I assume. Taken literally -- how odd.

Do you remember why you were fighting? Or why some dream eaters were fighting /with/ you?

[There's a reason he decided to bring this over privately! But in response, Ardyn will receive a couple of drawings.]

the first one's the heartless

the second one, i'm assuming that one belonged to the dream eaters. all the ones i remember so far had that emblem on them, but it's still a guess

it's not entirely literally. [Were this in person, he'd be trailing his words together, trying to figure out how best to explain it.] i remember they were "born of the darkness in people's hearts," however that's possible

i don't remember why i was fighting, but i might have a guess why they were working with me

apparently the past me... he could control the heartless. i had a memory a while back, back when prompto and i fought, about him and this other kid. he wanted to know why i was siding with the heartless and i told him "the heartless obey me now"

["Now I have nothing to fear."]

if he could control the heartless maybe he could do something similar with the dream eaters

[Dante, always so eager to draw pictures for him. It clarifies things, at least, and now he has an idea of what the emblems are -- but if there's symbolism to be had in either of them, they escape him for now.]

"Siding". Was there a war going on, I wonder.

[That's... mostly rhetorical, because Ardyn doesn't know if Dante would be able to answer it, anyway.]

If they're born of the "darkness" in people's hearts, that makes them sound like very symbolic sort of creatures. What does darkness imply? Sin? Guilt? Something else?

[Are you mocking his pictures, Ardyn]

i don't know. there might have been, considering what i've remembered so far

but if that's the case, it means i must have turned traitor at some point. i remember fighting against the heartless, but then i could control them, too...

[The question is in what order? Either way, it's another fuck-up to add to his list--they were called the Heartless, for god's sakes. It shouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to know those guys were bad news...]

i don't know that, either

that witch i talked about before, she was talking about darkness in MY heart

and i could FEEL it in that memory i think. this kind of feeling in my heart, something that wasn't right. i don't think it was guilt but it could have been anything else

it's hard to describe

I know exactly what you mean.

[Because healing those people in his past life? Oops, there was an awful lot of something... dark and painful churning within him as a result, he believes.]

You don't seem like the traitorous type. Not for very good reason.

you give me too much credit

[It's barely an answer, and Dante knows it. Still, what else is there to say? Ardyn has all this belief in him, and it's been entirely misplaced. He'd thought that Dante hadn't realized he was hanging out with the wrong sort of company, too.]

anyways, that's not the point. we were talking about the monsters, have you remembered any more of them yet?

[Honestly, it's a bad attempt at redirecting the conversation and he knows it. He could bring up the fake him he's remembered, but that would just give Ardyn more to chew on and try to use to back up his whole "you're a good person blah blah blah" spiel.

All he can do is see if Ardyn will let him get away with it or not.]

You give yourself not enough.

[But they've had this conversation before, haven't they? Besides, Ardyn is much more attuned to the redirection that's obviously happening right now; he's a lawyer, Dante, he can see it for what it is. He does it all the time himself, as well.]

I have. And I'll tell you, but I'm more than aware of you attempting to sidestep the conversation at hand.

[Ow. There's that pang in his heart again, a sensation he's felt more times than he cares to think about in the past few months.]

i'm just saving us both time and wasted effort here

[He doesn't want to hear more about the type of person Ardyn thinks he is. He doesn't want to compare it to the type of person he actually is, nor does he want to make the prof think that he's desperate for any sort of support.

(Not right now, at least.)]

lay it on me, what monsters have you remembered lately

[He'll entertain him and change the subject... for now.]

Only one, actually. It's called a Behemoth, and it lives up to its name. A gigantic creature, much like a lion with two great horns on its head. I believe it fed on chocobos.

Well, it probably fed on anything smaller than itself, honestly. Ring any bells?

i remember behemoths, freya reminded me of them a couple months ago

i don't know if i'd call it like a lion though. the ones i remember had two curved horns that curved up out of their jaws and one pointed black one where a unicorn's horn would be

does that mean you had chocobos in your past? i haven't remembered anything about them yet

[Wait.]

So you remember behemoths, too? How strange, for it to be the third variation I've heard of. Freya's were different than "mine", as well.

Yes, I did. I owned one, too. It was black.

don't tell prompto that, he might die of jealousy

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