Chapter One
The City
And so it came to pass that the enemies of Kefka went to desecrate the continent in the heavens. Armed with the power of His slaves, in their folly they challenged Him. And Kefka spoke his words of hatred, and as He willed it His enemies were vanquished.
- The Book of Kefka, chapter 3, verses 36-37
To call the Hungry Lobo a disreputable establishment would not have been entirely fair. True, it was dirty and seedy, but so was everything these days, and though most of its patrons openly carried weapons none seemed to be in the mood to use them. All its tables were intact, save for the odd knife mark, and the glasses were mostly clean. Certainly no self-respecting royalty would ever be caught dead in it, but as far as Edgar was concerned that was only a point in its favor.
"Here you go!" cried the bartender, slamming a mug in front of him. "Pint of my finest ale, fit for a king!"
Edgar took a sip and tried not to grimace.
"Oh, don't complain. I'd like to see you make decent beer with the wheat and barley we have now. Nothing grows right anymore."
"Fair enough," Edgar said, raising his glass at her, and the woman laughed and turned to deal with some other customer.
The smell of smoke and stale beer filled the air, and all around him ragged-looking men and women sat quietly drinking themselves into a stupor. No one payed him the least bit of attention. Even if they had, they'd have been hard pressed to recognize their liege. His normally lustrous golden hair hadn't seen a comb in days, and his clothes were more suited for a beggar than a monarch. He'd found himself a cape, in a desperate attempt to regain some style, but it was an old, ragged thing.
Beside him sat the man he'd come looking for. He slouched there, staring moodily at the bottom of his mug and sparing little attention to the world around him. Just like many others, these days.
These were the people he'd meant to protect.
"Don't you look like a ray of sunshine," the bartender said, startling Edgar out of his thoughts. "Can't you see you're bringing down the cheery mood?"
Edgar grinned up at her. "Looking for more sob stories to collect? I imagine you've heard your fair share."
"That I have. You sound like you're from the desert. You hear about the castle, right?"
Edgar took a long swig of his beer. Somehow, it went down more easily than before.
"Yes," he said quietly. "I've heard."
"Ugly business, that. The governor's holed up in his house and can barely keep control of the city, and with the King gone—"
"What a loss," the man beside him snapped. "An Empire-loving bastard who exiled his own brother. Good riddance to him, I say."
"Really?" Edgar replied. "I've heard he's actually an idiot who spends all his time chasing skirts rather than doing any sort of work."
He'd always preferred that rumor. It had taken quite a bit of effort to spread.
"That's enough disrespect from the both of you." The bartender slammed another mug on the counter. "Edgar may have been eccentric, but he was a fine king."
"Three cheers for King Edgar!" someone cried behind them, and a half-hearted whoop spread through the bar. Everyone drained their mugs. Someone in the back decided to render tribute to their liege by reciting dirty limericks starring his person.
"Some eulogy." The bartender chuckled, shaking her head. "Wonder what he'd say if he was here."
"Well." The man beside him looked glumly into his mug. "Wouldn't do us much good if he was, would he? What can he do, raise the dead? Create food from thin air? Beat up Kefka?"
"Now there's an idea," the bartender said. "If there's anyone who could use a good beating..."
The man snorted. "Nah. The people of Nikeah have the right of it. If we just stay quiet and do nothing wrong then he'll leave us alone. It's best not to talk about rebellion and risk the Light of Judgement again."
He'd met Kefka, Edgar wanted to say, and he was quite certain he'd consider boringness just as big a crime.
"Is living like that really worth it?" he asked instead, as the bartender clicked her tongue and scurried away.
"Is living at all really worth it?" The man shook his head. "I was from the countryside, you know." The look in his eyes was one that Edgar had come to know well. He'd seen it on every face in Nikeah. He'd seen it on Sabin's, ten years ago.
Maybe something was showing in Edgar's expression; maybe it was simply that the man had too much to drink and too much to mourn. Something in him seemed to break. "Look," he said. He leaned forward and opened his pouch. Edgar only caught the slightest glint of green, but he already knew what it was. It had taken quite a bit of effort to track it down from one hand to another.
"I bought this from a merchant from Nikeah," the man continued in a conspiratorial whisper. "Only fifty gil. I don't know what it is, but I know that those cultists are looking for them. If I give it to them, they'll let me join." His eyes were wild and hollow. "They say they can help those who've lost everything. I can put in a good word for you, if you want."
Edgar closed his eyes for a second. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder.
"Don't. Listen, that's not going to help you. How about this: I'll buy that crystal from you. Use the money to do something else. Get on the ferry to Nikeah and start again. They're looking for workers there."
"Start again?" The man gave a hysterical laugh. "And why should I? We're all doomed to die out soon. What's the point of fighting fate? "
"You believe in fate?" Edgar asked.
"What else is there to believe in?"
Edgar leaned forward with an easy smile and fished out his coin from his pocket. "Then why don't you ask it for guidance?"
Edgar stepped out of the Hungry Lobo and into the streets, his newly regained magicite weighing comfortably in his pouch once more, Siren's faint presence by his side like a soft, gentle humming. The weak morning sun shone on the tall, wooden houses of South Figaro, its cobblestone streets, the tainted water that flowed through its canals. In the strange new light of a dying world, the city he'd once known felt eerily alien.
He'd landed in Nikeah, originally, though not with very good aim. A sailor had fished him out of the ocean and dumped him in an alley after relieving him of his money and valuables—and his magicite. He'd woken to a city filled with hollow-eyed, despairing faces.
South Figaro was different. Where the people of Nikeah had broken under the fear of Kefka, the people of South Figaro still held on. What had broken was the city around them.
The Imperial occupation had taken much out of South Figaro, leaving buildings dilapidated and the guard force decimated. Much of the city's wealth, the supplies, the merchant's wares had been confiscated by the soldiers. The troops' withdrawal had been but a token concession on Gestahl's part—the damage had been done.
Then, three days after the Cataclysm, the Light of Judgement had struck. It had missed the city and burned the fields instead, destroying houses and farms and carving a new inlet of sea west of the city. The countryside had been scorched and ravaged, the people driven from their land.
Northeast of the docks, past the first flood gate, lay the workers' district. There, in the grimy streets among the breweries, tanneries, and slaughterhouses, the survivors from the farmlands had taken refuge. They slept in the warehouses and in the streets, huddled together between closed-off businesses and tenement houses; some had even turned old boats and barges into makeshift homes on the canals. Many had spilled out into the rest of the city, from the Guardsman's Walk on the northern city wall through the Merchant's Quarter and all the way to the narrow, seedy alleys of the docks.
A young girl ate a shriveled apple on a street corner, cutting out the rotten bits with a small pocket knife. She held out a piece to Edgar with a grubby hand.
"Mommy said we should share what we have," she informed him with solemn intensity. She looked no older than seven, all dirt and bony knees. "'Cause we're all stuck here now and if we don't act nice to people then we'll turn into Zozo."
"Your mommy is a very wise woman," Edgar said, kneeling down before her. "But you should keep that. You need food to grow into a wise lady like your mommy. I'm a grown-up; I don't need to eat any more."
"Oh. All right." The girl frowned as she processed this information. Then her eyes lit up. "Oh! I'm supposed to ask if you've heard anything about Mobliz! My uncle moved there last year. Mommy said he was tired of people and wanted to raise chocobos."
Edgar shook his head. "I'm sorry."
"Oh," she said, chewing thoughtfully on her apple. "All right."
She wasn't the only one looking for information. People whispered among themselves, desperate for news of their families, their friends, their hometowns, trying to piece together the shape of the world. Every little bit of information on the outside world was precious. Travel had been difficult ever since the Cataclysm, now that the maps had been rearranged and dangerous monsters roamed the land and sea. Railway lines had been swallowed by the earth, and ships had been known to mysteriously disappear. Many of the semaphore towers that once dotted the landscapes of Figaro had fallen. Pigeons were unreliable—those still alive and healthy enough to survive the journey had trouble finding their way in the new, changed world.
The news were vague and sparse. Outside of Nikeah the Serpent's Trench had emerged from the waters; the ocean bed made an eerie, otherworldly landscape, with its dead coral and briny marshes. Some enterprising spirits had set out to follow it, but if they'd made it to the other end Edgar never heard. North of Figaro, the Sabre Mountain Range had been swallowed by the sea, along with Mount Kolts, the Lethe, and hundreds of small mountain villages. Of the world's largest continent, little was left but remote islands. Reports from the Southern Continent were scarce, but they spoke of twisted, unrecognizable landscapes.
Vector was gone, and on what was left in its place no account agreed. Jidoor had survived relatively unscathed, as had Zozo. There were tales of monsters from Maranda. Mangled reports of destruction from Tzen. No news from Albrook. No news from Doma. No news from Kohlingen. No news from Narshe.
No news from Figaro.
In the pale sunlight of their new world, Edgar walked through the streets of the town, exchanging news and helping wherever he could.
"Have you any news of the castle?" he asked those who would listen.
And: "Have you seen my friends? There's a young man with a bandanna and sticky fingers, a young woman with green hair..."
And: "I'm looking for my brother. He looks just like me, only with more muscles and an aversion to shaving properly."
But no one had seen his brother or his friends or his castle. An old woman pointed him to a bulletin board next to the Dancing Moogle Inn where people could write the names of those missing. Some had been crossed out. Most hadn't. Edgar wrote down the names of his companions, then walked away.
An Ifrit-class Magitek armor had been abandoned next to the waterwheel outside the smithy. It stood slightly crooked, like an old, dead husk. The joints had rusted, the metal plates were scratched and dented, and the controls had been meticulously destroyed. It loomed like a rampant beast, casting a twisted shadow on the ground, and few people chose to walk past it. As the sky began to darken and the sun set the horizon aflame, Edgar went to rest under its shade.
He'd been so excited, long ago, when Locke had finally managed to treasure hunt the schematics from an Imperial courier's pocket. There was much he hadn't understood at the time. He'd found more pieces of the puzzle since then. Had the process to imbue the magic tortured from the Espers into the cold metal been the same as the one that one thousand years ago had created the ancient relics, or had the Empire created brand new atrocities to inflict upon the world?
Had any of the Magi's deeds come close to matching what Kefka had achieved?
When he closed his eyes he saw the end of the world, his companion's faces as they disappeared in the whirlwind. Gau and Relm had been children. Celes and Terra had only begun to live their lives free of the Empire, and Sabin—
But there was no point in dwelling on such things. He didn't know his friends were dead. Edgar had survived, after all, and wasn't Sabin always boasting about being tougher than him?
His friends were beyond his reach, for now. But there were others who needed his help.
There were two things he needed to do.
The first was simple. Locke had told him of the secret passage he'd discovered during the Imperial occupation and of what he'd found on the other end. It was easy enough to uncover once he knew where to look. The mansion was guarded now, but Edgar could silence his footsteps with a spell, and a quick incantation put the sentries to sleep.
That evening Lawrence Da Ponte, governor of South Figaro and richest man in town, walked into his study to find a dirty, disheveled man sitting in his chair, muddy boots on his exquisitely carved mahogany desk.
"Don't bother calling the guards. I'd hate for you to waste your breath," Edgar told him cheerfully, twirling his knife in his hand to give the impression that he could, at any moment, bury it in his neck with the slightest flick of his wrist. He couldn't, but he felt that there were certain expectations to be met and had resolved to play the part as best as he could.
"Please, do sit down." He gestured at the ornate chair before him. The man obeyed, stiffly. "My name is Gerad, and I'm here to discuss certain financial affairs with you."
"I'm sure," said Da Ponte, clearly doing his best not to sound intimidated and failing utterly. No recognition showed in his eyes. Men like him rarely saw beyond the finery and the regalia.
Edgar motioned towards the window. "I'm here to bring to your attention the plight of the men and women who have taken refuge in our fair city following recent events. It strikes me that you are not perhaps handling this situation as best as you can."
Da Ponte fixed him with a pointed stare. "Who the hell are you?"
"Call me a concerned citizen. But let's not change the subject. We were discussing your response to recent tragedies and the inadequacy thereof."
"And what do you expect me to do? The occupation left our town in shambles. We're doing all we can with what we have."
"And yet those less lucky than you still starve in the streets. The ferry to Nikeah has reopened. The merchants there are looking to reestablish trade routes, and they have food and manpower to offer. You've done little to take advantage of this."
"With what money should I do so, pray tell? Our coffers are, sadly, quite bare. Or haven't you noticed that little unpleasantness a while ago? The Empire left us little."
Edgar hadn't known the man well, but he'd been appointed by Edgar's father and he'd served the crown for many years. He'd struck Edgar as self-serving, but not cruel or disloyal. What had driven him to betray his homeland to the Empire?
Money, probably. It usually was.
"Surely a man as generous as yourself couldn't possibly wait to dip into his private funds to provide aid to his community. And I'm certain you have plenty to give. I hear you had quite the windfall recently."
A muscle in the governor's jaw clenched. "I don't know what you're talking about. The Empire—"
"—is quite generous when it wants to be." Edgar let his smile widen. "As I'm sure you are too. I think charity would be a wonderful balm for any remorse you may be feeling over your recent correspondence, would it not?"
Whatever attempt at bravado Da Ponte still clung to vanished from his face. He was as white as his cravat, his eyes wide and sweat beading on his forehead.
"And, should you happen not to feel any, I'm certain that could be fixed," Edgar continued. He removed his feet from the desk and leaned forward, spreading his arms and smiling like a shark. "In fact, I believe there are thousands of honest citizens outside who would be quite happy to help."
The second thing was simple in theory but difficult in practice.
There was a part of Edgar's brain that could keep him entranced for hours dissecting interesting contraptions. He was fascinated by the puzzle of how the gears turned together with clockwork precision, how even the smallest of parts was necessary, how changing even one could drastically alter the whole. The world was the same: a crisscross of people and schemes and events, infinitely complex, and he just needed to figure out how they all fit together to be able to fix it.
He knew two things: that his castle was not in the desert of Figaro, and that there had been no news from Kohlingen ever since the Cataclysm.
This, in itself, meant nothing. With communications the way they were, it was impossible to tell whether this was because a disaster had befallen it or simply because the pigeons and the travelers hadn't found their way yet.
He didn't have the complete picture yet, but one piece was plainly visible: if his castle was still above ground, then it would be in Kohlingen; if not, then at least the people there might know more of its fate. As always, the first step was to collect more data.
He had to get to Kohlingen.