“Noct! Are you okay?”

  Noctis groaned and blinked a few times as the world around him came back into focus. Prompto was kneeling above him. “No,” he said, sitting up. “Where’s Ardyn?”

  “Wait, he’s here?” Prompto asked, looking around as though expecting him to suddenly pop up. “If he is, that would explain all this weird stuff happening.” Noct was glad that Prompto had said it, meant that it wasn’t just him it was happening to. “I bet he’s behind the train stopping. Ignis and Gladio went up to inspect the engine room. I say the two of us go check out the rear.”

  Noctis nodded, climbing to his feet. “Yeah,” he said. Seemed like as good a plan as any. Something had to have caused that explosion. Maybe they could help.

  The two of them jogged through the train, but they got to the next carriage before another explosion rocked them. Glass cracked. People screamed and ducked. Noct stumbled a little, hands raising above his head before he realised that the explosion hadn’t been near them this time.

  “Did they bomb us?!” Prompto exclaimed. “Noct, we have to protect the people!”

  “Right,” Noct said. He glanced around. The passengers in this carriage were terrified, but no one seemed hurt. They continued on.

  Yanking open the door to the next carriage, another sleeper carriage, they only just managed to dodge out of the way as people ran through, running towards the front of the train, screaming. Glancing past them, he saw the shine of sunlight on armour: Magitek.

  Seemed Prompto saw it at the same time. “Head to the next car!” he shouted over the screaming to the passengers.

  Taking his lead, Noct added, “Leave these guys to us.” Summoning his sword, he warped ahead, moving behind the axeman so that Prompto had a clear shot. He took it down quickly, but there was only one there and where there was one, there was bound to be more.

  “So much for a safe ride,” Prompto said. “More of ‘em might be on board. Let’s check the rear.”

  Noct frowned. He started to move the other way, but Prompto blocked his path. “We need to get the train moving again,” he said, wanting to head to the engine room instead, to get it going and outrun the Empire. They could mop up after.

  Prompto kept getting in his way, though, preventing him from changing directions. “I’m sure Ignis and Gladio will come up with something. We have to trust them and make sure this part of the train is safe.”

  Noct grimaced. Prompto was right; Ignis had just proved that he could look out for himself and his hearing had been becoming ever sharper to compensate for his blindness. And besides, he had Gladio with him and Noct trusted no one more than the shield to protect both him and his friends. Things may still be shaky between the two of them, but he had never doubted the man’s skill in combat. “Hope so,” he said as he turned back again, heading down the passage back towards the rear of the train. “Let’s go.”

  “How bad do you think it is?” Prompto asked as they progressed forward, checking on passengers as they went. “Hope nobody got hurt.”

  Noct glanced back over his shoulder at Prompto hearing that; wasn’t that what they were just checking for? Prompto was acting… odd. He didn’t get a chance to really process that thought before another explosion sounded. He cried out a little as glass flew inwards, some slicing his arms as he threw them up over his face but most just bouncing off his clothes, thank the astrals. At least no one was in this carriage, but if they didn’t find what was causing the explosions soon, there wouldn’t be a train to get moving.

  Noctis was looking out the windows as they ran past (or as best he could through the broken glass), but it wasn’t until they reached the next carriage that he could see past the storage containers. There was an MT ambling towards the train. It was walking slowly and, instead of trying to head towards a door, it was just walking straight to the side of the train car.

  “What is-” was as far as Noct got before another explosion ripped through the carriage, close enough that it threw him to the side and he had to catch himself on one of the seats. When the dust cleared, the MT was nowhere to be found. “It blew up!” he said stupidly, looking around.

  “Crap, the MTs can self-destruct,” Prompto said.

  “We can’t let them inside.” Noct pulled himself upright and jumped out the hole the explosion had caused, launching himself at the nearest MT.

  -l-l-l-

  Prompto groaned and curled into a ball. His head hurt where it had smacked the train’s floor. He didn’t want to open his eyes, he wanted to pretend that none of this was happening, that the train hadn’t just exploded, that Noct hadn’t just been trying to kill him.

  That Noct didn’t hate him.

  Opening his eyes, he frowned. It was dark. It hadn’t been dark before; it was the middle of the day and there was no way he was out that long. Pushing himself up and sitting back on his feet, he looked around. It wasn’t completely dark, he realised. There was a crack of light as though through a doorway and, as his eyes adjusted, he could see where he was: in a luggage cupboard. A small luggage cupboard, where half the room had been taken up with shelving and people’s suitcases.

  Grabbing onto the shelf, Prompto pulled himself upright and tried the door. Locked. He yanked on it and rattled it a few more times for good measure. Still locked. Okay. It was okay. He could do this. What could he hear? There were people screaming. Running. The occasional explosion that vibrated the train. None of that was good news.

  His phone started to vibrate, a merry little chocobo tune playing, and Prompto jumped. Reaching into his pocket, he smiled a little, seeing the name: Gladio. A picture of the man with his thumb up, grinning widely, was on screen. A swipe and he answered it. “Gladio?”

  “Prom! What’s going on? Where are you and Noct?”

  The connection was breaking up—reception wasn’t good out here—but he could make it out. Prompto’s left hand started to tremble thinking about it, and he clenched it in a fist. “Noct is… I don’t know,” he said. Flashes of Noct chasing him through the train ran through his mind. A sword slicing down at him. An arm across his throat, choking him. “Noctis tried… I don’t know,” he tried again, his uneasiness causing him to cut off with that same default phrase a second time.

  “Prompto, calm down. Tell me what happened,” Gladio said and, even though he was telling Prompto to calm down, his voice was sharp.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Prompto took a breath, trying to stop the trembling, stop the memories, stop everything. Gladio clearly didn’t share Noct’s opinion of him. He wouldn’t be calling him, talking to him like this if he did. He could tell Gladio. “Noct attacked me,” he finally said.

  “What?!” Prompto couldn’t help it: he flinched at the tone. “What do you mean, he attacked you?”

  “He… attacked me. He summoned his sword and tried to… to kill me with it. He said… he said that he didn’t know why I was following and that everything was my fault.” Prompto swallowed. “When the first explosion happened, we were both thrown and knocked out. I don’t know where he is now.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Noct,” Ignis’s voice came through distantly, listening in to the call.

  “I’m not lying!” Prompto cried.

  “I didn’t say that, Prompto,” Ignis’s voice said, his tone calm and soothing.

  “Where are you?” Gladio asked.

  “A luggage locker. I… I woke up locked in here.”

  “Gladio, we need to get him out. Now!” Ignis snapped.

  Prompto closed his eyes and smiled a little sadly; Ignis obviously remembered what he had said about how much he hated enclosed spaces and why. “It’s okay, Iggy,” he said with more calm than he felt. “If…” He swallowed again. “If there really is something wrong with Noct and… and he doesn’t hate me, then you need to get to him. He needs help and maybe he’ll listen to you. You’ve both known him longer, after all.”

  “Alright,” Gladio said. “What will you do?”

  Prompto summoned his gun and looked down at it. “Take a leaf from your book and barrel my way through my problems,” he said. “I’ll shoot my way out.”

  Gladio chuckled. “Atta boy,” he said. “We’ll find Noct, don’t worry about it. You focus on helping the passengers and stay away from him for now. Alright?”

  “Okay,” Prompto said, his voice still a little shaky.

  “And Prom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He won’t have meant it.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Prompto lied. The truth was, he didn’t know; Gladio hadn’t seen the way Noct had looked at him with complete and utter contempt. Still, Gladio was only trying to make him feel better. “Thanks Gladio,” he said, before they hung up.

  Slipping his phone back into his pocket, Prompto glanced down at his gun. He didn’t know if Noct had felt him summon it, didn’t even know if he would care, but he had to get out of here somehow. Stepping back as far from the door as he could (which wasn’t much, really) he took aim at the latch and fired.

  -l-l-l-

  Noctis warped away from the exploding tank to hang by his sword embedded in a telegraph pole. He couldn’t hold on long there, but it was enough to get him away from a fiery death.

  “Come on!” Prompto shouted from where he had climbed aboard a storage carriage. “We’re leaving!”

  Noctis allowed his embedded sword to disappear into the ether and, as he fell, summoned it again and threw it, performing a mid-air warp to land on the train, only wobbling a little as he re-materialised there. If Ignis had seen that stunt, he would have been scolded for being so reckless! Prompto would have gotten a photo if he weren’t otherwise occupied.

  “Look! They’re hot on our tail,” Prompto said from somewhere below him. The rumble of airships was only just audible over the grinding and scraping of the damaged train pulling itself along the tracks. They were shooting at the train and soon it wouldn’t matter that Ignis and Gladio (or the actual train driver, Noct had no way of knowing) had gotten the train going again; it couldn’t outrun dropships. “They’re gonna blow us to bits!”

  “Not if we blow ‘em up first!” Noct replied, an idea forming. He started running along the roof of the carriage towards the back of the train and the dropships.

  “How’s that now?”

  Noct skidded to a stop suddenly. Since when did Prompto need that level of direction? He was usually just as innovative as Noct was, especially now he wasn’t so shy and nervous around them. “Shoot ‘em!” Noct said, his voice conveying the obviousness of the plan.

  “Oh, now there’s an idea!”

  Noct shook his head but pushed worry about what Prompto was doing out of his mind; Prompto could shoot any troopers that got close, but his gun didn’t have the range to take them out from where he was. It was up to Noctis. He threw his sword, warping to the nearest dropship.

  -l-l-l-

  Prompto reached under a train chair and grabbed the wrist of the little girl cowering under there. She was only about four or five, and she was the only one left in this carriage. “Come on!” he said as he pulled. She didn’t want to come and Prompto didn’t know what to do; he had absolutely no experience in dealing with crying children. Even Talcott was afraid of him, though he suspected that had more to do with seeing his grandfather murdered by someone wearing the same armour as Prompto had.

  Gritting his teeth, hoping he wouldn’t hurt the girl, he tightened his grip on her wrist and pulled, dragging her out. She was screaming and crying, but he didn’t think it was in pain. Not that he would know the difference, but surely he wasn’t strong enough to actually hurt her. And, truthfully, even if he did, that would be better than dying here because the kid was too scared to move.

  Getting her out and picking her up, Prompto ran towards the front of the train, but another explosion caused him to stumble and fall. He turned his body so it shielded the kid from any glass and was up again as soon as it passed. There were a multitude of tiny cuts all over him now from the constant explosions, but he barely noticed. He was surprised that the train was still moving, truth be told.

  Hearing a noise behind him, he glanced back to see three MTs leap in through the window. Clutching the child to his chest, he ran through the carriage and threw open the door to the next one. There were people here, and he shoved the child on to the nearest person.

  “Run to the front of the train!” he shouted. “There are MTs behind me. I’ll take care of them!” That got them moving and Prompto turned his back to them and returned to where the MTs were ambling towards him. He couldn’t help but notice that these MTs seemed to be rushed; either they weren’t created very well or they hadn’t had long to train. Prompto’s shots took them down easily.

  An explosion outside the carriage drew Prompto’s attention once the last of the MTs had fallen. A dropship was following them, but as he watched, a fire caught and it went down, crashing into the landscape and quickly falling behind. There was definitely more than just the one, though; the troopers had to be coming from somewhere.

  Prompto ran towards the carriage’s doorway. There was a luggage car after this one; he could get onto the train’s roof from there and maybe be able to pick off a few. His gun was no sniper rifle, they had never managed to find another that met Prompto’s high standards, but he could get a few shots into any that tried to come close and board the train, maybe even hit something vital.

  Outside, the hot wind alternated with icy pockets from the distant snow. Trees and rocks raced past faster than they were supposed to, the train far exceeding the speed limit. Prompto climbed up onto the roof and looked around. He caught sight of a blue outline as another dropship went down and bit his lip; Noct was up there.

  “Why, if it isn’t our little pet MT.”

  Prompto’s heart leapt up into his throat and he spun around, raising his gun, ignoring the painful throb his head gave at the action. Ardyn was just standing there, smiling at him!

  “What do you want?” Prompto demanded, glad that his voice sounded steady.

  “C1094, lower your gun.” Instead, Prompto rose his other hand to help hold the gun steady, still pointed at Ardyn. Ardyn’s smile only widened. “I see our young king there really has broken you. It’s okay, we can fix you.” The truth was Prompto wasn’t as ‘broken’ as he let Ardyn believe—he had been trying to pull the trigger since he saw Ardyn without success—but he wasn’t about to let the chancellor know that.

  “What. Do. You. Want,” Prompto said slowly.

  Ardyn moved slowly along the train, hands up as though he were surrendering. Prompto followed him with his gun until they were both standing facing each other with their backs to the landscape whizzing by.

  “Nothing,” Ardyn said. “Yet.”

  “Prompto!”

  Ardyn’s grin became practically wolf like briefly at the sound of Noct’s voice, before he affected a terrified expression.

  Noct’s sword slashed down, knocking the gun from Prompto’s hand as he hastily stepped back, then Noct turned and slashed at Prompto. Forced to dodge again, Prompto windmilled his arms, trying to keep balance, but in the end, it was too late. He fell backwards with a scream, the last thing he saw was Ardyn and Noct together, looking down on him.

  -l-l-l-

  Noctis’s heart dropped into his stomach as Ardyn seemed to flicker and change into Prompto as he fell, Prompto’s distinctive scream echoing in his ears.

  “How long were you in the dark?” Ardyn drawled from behind him.

  Spinning, Noct caught sight of Ardyn holding Prompto’s gun when it slammed into his head before he could react, sending him down to the train’s roof and into darkness.