[He’s gone and raised Aranea’s hackles, which was likely the point, given Ardyn’s proclivities to utilize his words like barbs, or needles sliding beneath skin. That would quickly put the idea of a truce under the knife, having made his point via the flaring tempers of others. Yet she’s quick to show restraint, and he can’t help but experience the smallest tinge of disappointment as a result.

More fireworks burst overhead, and he has to raise his voice to be heard. It adds an emphatic quality to an already ostentatious timbre.]

I wonder.

[He’s being asked what he wants, as if he could be satisfied by anything the boy would have to offer him. All that could possibly sate him exists on Eos — upended constantly by his arrival to one foreign world, and then another — and while he could maim and maul and gut Noctis where he stands, and likely feel quite good about it, this would be no adherence to a Prophecy that he’s been shackled to for millennia.

Thus the question feels so shallow, like its own kind of patronization, even if that isn’t the young King’s intention. And when Noctis adopts a more assured stance, how desperately Ardyn wants to tear it down, crush it underfoot, to illustrate that he’s not as strong or sturdy as he thinks he is.

Maybe he will.]

What if all I require is your strictest word that no matter what’s transpired on our star, you will still honor this truce? Those are not unreasonable terms, are they?