The Resurgence of Legends

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the words on the page :)

Okay for anyone who might read this, this story is a continuation of my uncompleted story Lente's Burden, which was part of a series of stories focused around Balthier and Fran's adventures beyond the canon storyline of the game. This story has its own plot but will explain the storyline to Lente's Burden as well. It takes place several years after the events of Lente's Burden and picks up with the characters in quite different circumstances...

Prologue: Well, We have to Start Somewhere

You undoubtedly want to know about Lente, the self-professed Vieran Goddess in a centuries old snit who very nearly destroyed all Ivalice. Well tough luck. This is my memoir and I'm not of a mind to grant that bloody woman any more page time than she deserves.

Disappointed? Put off by my tone, perhaps? Mayhap you are asking why you should continue reading if I am to be so disobliging, hm? Well, why are you? No, that was not a rhetorical question. I mean it. What are you reading for? What is it you hope to find here?

I've often wondered why people read memoirs. Do my fellow humes live such empty lives that they must live vicariously through the likely highly factually inaccurate memories of another, I used to wonder from time to time – although admittedly not that often. I had better things to do with my time than think about other people. Alas things change and I've since had ample opportunity to discover the answer. Yes, the lives of ordinary humes are that bloody boring. I'd scarce imagined how boring living a life of tedious sameness could be. No wonder so many of you wander off to be devoured by passing fiends, adopt Marlboro's as ill-advised pets, and otherwise indulge in rampant stupidity to pass the time. I understand it now. Boredom is the mind killer. I have new found respect to all you markhunters who drift around on foot from one hunt to another in search of vorpal bunnies and the like.

What I would not give for a rampaging Dream Hare right now, or an insane quasi-deity with unfortunate possessive qualities; perhaps a megalomaniacal would-be Emperor? A small pirate war wouldn't go amiss either, or just a single bloody assassin. I miss the days when everyone and his bangaa uncle wanted to kill me.

Have you heard the adage what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Well I'm here to tell you that's bollocks. What doesn't kill you eventually loses interest and goes off to kill something else. It's galling. But enough self-pity, time now to get on with the important matters. The self-aggrandising full and complete recitation of my fascinating and enthralling –and most certainly never boring – life story…

'Master Balthier sir?'

Jolting in alarm like a bolt of thunder had just hit him topside the head Balthier's hand jerked across the page scoring a thick line of ink through the paragraph he'd just written.

'Bloody hell.'

There was a small urchin standing in the doorway to the modest but comfortable abode Balthier had been grudgingly calling home for longer than he wished to admit. The child was hume and male with thin brown limbs barely covered by cotton pants and an open vest. He was also adorned with seashell jewellery and his hair was a rich thick brown. He blinked at Balthier expectantly. Balthier blinked back at him blearily. He'd been sitting with his back to the door facing the smooth terracotta brown wall and now the daylight oozing around the boy's frame and spilling across his swept floor gave him an instant headache.

'It's time Master.' The boy said.

'Time for what?' Balthier asked genuinely nonplussed. In his opinion time had no meaning here. Everything on this island stayed the same, following the same endless idyllic rhythm day in and day out.

'Didn't you hear the bell, Master?' The boy asked him almost reproachfully. 'It's time for class.'

Balthier did not groan because to do so would be undignified and a sign of weakness, but if he had it would have been a groan from a place of deep existential pain and misery, reminiscent of the sort of soul-wrenching moans the newly condemned in stinking dungeons were so widely renowned for. (Though his circumstances may be drastically altered Balthier's penchant for melodrama remained undiminished.)

Pushing the chair back he stood up, and if the room span a little and his vision was a little swimmy he was adept enough at pretending to be sober that boy-urchin did not notice. 'Off you go then,' he muttered flapping his hands at the boy, 'lead on.'

The school house was directly across the sandy patch of ground laughingly referred to as the 'exercise court' by the school administrator, a verbose Seeq with delusions of academic grandeur. Inside the classroom twenty urchins all much alike sat neatly two by two at driftwood desks. There was something insultingly demanding about their expectant and eager little faces.

'Alright,' Balthier said stalling for time as he strode in front of the class to the blackboard covering the wall, 'does someone want to tell me what in buggery you're supposed to be learning today?'

There was a flutter of tittering laughter and an appreciative fidgeting of limbs as the children settled in for "Master Balthier's" unique approach to the advancement of young minds.

'Poetry, sir,' said a girl in the front row who had a head of thick braids that sprang off her crown like a profusion of beaded rope.

Balthier eyed the girl suspiciously. 'Why would I teach you poetry?' He asked. A little shiver of worry passed down his spine. How drunk would he need to be to start reciting poetry to ten year olds?

'You weren't sir,' the girl responded promptly, 'Mistress Dalma was, but then she…'

'Ah yes,' Balthier seized on recollection with not a little relief, 'she had that unfortunate incident with a pack of couerls.' He nodded and then asked, 'I don't suppose any of the buggers coughed up her foot, hm?'

'No sir.'

'Hmm,' bracing his hands on the desk in front of the blackboard he surveyed his class. There was definitely an edge of something furtive about the little blighters. 'Well then,' he said testing out his theory, 'does someone happen to have a copy of the anthology Mistress Dalma was reading from? What was it, the works of that Rozzarian fop, Riccio, or maybe Edna Marbuckle? I was always rather partial to her Ode to a Hanged Man Dangling from a Tree.'

A shiver of dismay rippled from the serried rows of desks. Round childish faces cast each other slightly bewildered and rather alarmed looks. Balthier kept his smile on the inside and pasted a look of mild inquiry onto his face while he waited.

'Uh sir?' A boy in the middle row stuck up his hand. 'You ain't really going to make us read poetry are you?'

'I should,' Balthier told him and waited for the gasps to subside before addressing the rest of the class, 'consider this a lesson. Never commit to a con unless you are willing to see it through. You never know when someone will call your bluff.' He affixed a stern look on his face and cast his eyes over the rows of dark faces.

'That said,' he clapped his hands together, 'I'd sooner gnaw off my fingers than read about some distant Margrace bastard's meditations on a cracked chamber pot. So who feels like finding out what happens when one applies Marlboro stomach acid to fire magicite?'

The class erupted in squeals of glee and shortly thereafter the desk erupted in flame but that merely afford Balthier the occasion to demonstrate various techniques for putting out magical fires without the aid of blizzaga. All in all a good time was had by all and it was entirely possible that one child at least gleamed something useful from the experience.

Dismissing the class at the correct time Balthier left the school grounds and wandered toward the tree line. Dianitz Island was mostly jungle with the village huddled by the shore on the south side of the island. The rest of the island was uninhabited, at least by humes, bangaa or seeq; a pristine natural wilderness full of ancient ruins and vicious carnivores with a penchant for biting the legs off unwary school teachers. It was into these dark verdant depths that Balthier plunged. The canopy closed over his head, sealing him inside a sweaty, dripping tangle of foliage and twisted roots.

Balthier was unafraid and not merely because he was still riding the edge of his day drinking. The woods offered him no challenge as he walked, in fact paths opened under his feet and branches swept aside to let him pass. He was known here. The beat of the Heart of the Wood just barely audible in his ears. He stopped in his usual spot in a moss quilted clearing dominated by a single venerable old tree warted with impressively pungent toadstools. Sighing he dropped down on the deadfall log beside the tree, resting his shoulder against the gnarled trunk. Head in hands he swept his fingers through his hair and scraped his palms down his cheeks, wincing when he realised he'd forgotten to shave again. The chain around his neck spilled loose of his open collar and the broken half of Lente's tear seemed to shimmer, releasing just a little inner light. Reflexively he closed his fist around the tear bringing the jewel up to his lips.

'I miss you Fran.'

Heat gathered behind his eyes and his hand shook as he brushed his fingers across his face, swiping away the moisture before it could gather on his lashes. Unhappiness clawed its way up his throat and a rage he could not speak burned his lungs. It had been years. He'd tried to ignore it. He'd come here to the most boring place in Ivalice to outrun the truth; to hide from the passage of time by burying himself in stolid tedium. In moments like this, in the silence of his own mind even Balthier's impressive ability to lie to himself failed him. He was alone. Ivalice had left him behind; he was no longer the Leading Man. Faram take him, he was thirty four. He'd spotted a grey hair in the mirror the other day (just one lone grey in an otherwise ample head of wheat brown hair but that was how it started. The next thing you knew you were asking your tailor to let out your vests and complaining about gout.)

Of course, it wasn't just Ivalice who had left him.

Lurching up off the log Balthier paced across the springy ground. The tear lay against his collarbone and he rubbed absently at his chest where, under his pristine white shirt, the perfect imprint of Fran's hand blazed like a brand against his skin. The tear, her mark, these were all he had left. Well, no that wasn't true, there was something else that he and Fran had between them, a treasure of such magnitude he'd been forced to give her up as well.

Here it was, the blasted tears. Furious and ashamed Balthier scrubbed his face, roundly condemning himself a fool.

Resisting punching the tree because he wasn't quite that much of a fool Balthier leaned his head against the knobby bark, too involved in his own distress to notice or much care that the toadstools were leaving spores all over his shirt.

'How much longer Fran? How much longer do I have to wait?'

The tear pulsed against his breastbone and if it was an answer, it certainly was no comfort.