Disclaimer/Note: I do not own Seiken Densetsu 3 or any of the characters in this story (unless otherwise stated). They are the property of Square, and the game designer/creator. I am not making any money off this story; it is being written for my own sick twisted amusement. All original concepts in this story are original (duh) and belong to me, or have had all rights handed over to me for the duration of this story. Do not steal. I would like to thank The Mad Poet, my beta and a fellow fan, for being a rampant geek and helping to flesh out much of the world history that you will find in this fic. This story may contain violence, psychological trauma, romance, flashbacks, language, crude humor, accents written into dialogue, a fair sprinkling of creative and artistic/realistic liberties, and possibly sex or sexual references. If you're not mature enough to handle all that, then just leave now. Also, I will not translate any other language in this story unless someone in the chapter other than the person speaking knows that language, and certain countries in Fa'Diel will have their own national language that corresponds to a language in our world. If this annoys you, read something else.
Moments:
Chapter Two
The sun was bright and glaring overhead, cold light reflecting off the pristine snow to blind the young girl who stumbled through the frigid wastelands of the north. She had imagined before that sunlight would bring warmth; that a person could not feel the rays upon their skin and still be cold. But that was a foolish notion, she now realized, as her body trembled uncontrollably and her face and shoulders burned. Was 'burned' the right term for this feeling? She did not know. Her mind was racing, brain clutching wildly at abstract and fleeting thoughts in hopes that it could keep her from noticing the cold. It did not quite work, but the girl went along with the foolish notion anyway. Thinking kept her from screaming.
She was burning.
But how could she be burning when it was so cold? It did not seem to make sense. Her skin ached in the air, and when she turned her head ever so slightly to glance at one bare shoulder, she saw that her once pale and flawless skin was now a mottled dark red and purple hue, beginning to bubble and blister from the weather's onslaught. She grimaced, and was thankful that she had long since lost all feeling there. It struck her then how bizarre and foreign this experience truly was. This was not caused by some wayward strain of tainted Mana, some half-controlled spell gone awry. No, this was a natural burn caused by too much sun on skin that had never gone outside a protective circle on its own. But still, regardless of the way her skin bubbled and discolored in the sunlight, she was entirely without warmth.
She had never before been cold in her life.
A small smile crept onto her painted lips, the dire temperature having caused them to split and the blood to freeze before it had the chance to drip down her ravaged face hours ago. She shivered, rubbing at her naked bicep with one gloved hand, her other arm clutching her middle as though holding shut a gaping gut wound. For the most part she remained uninjured, though, except for the vicious gangrene and chill that she was certain were slowly killing her. Behind her, she could hear the Sanguins crunching through the snow, waiting for her to fall in true scavenger fashion.
Disgusting little monsters. . .
Her whole life she had lived in the bustling capital of the Magic Kingdom Altena, safe from the biting wind and snow on the other side of its enchanted walls. She knew nothing of the outside world, of the continents not connected to their cold and desolate lands. The girl took a moment to marvel at those facts: she lived in the center of the coldest place in all of Fa'Diel, and she had never been cold before today. Ah, what wonders the grace of the Goddess had lent her people, what miracles the magic of her blood wielded!
Well, perhaps not her blood, per se, but the royal blood of the rulers of the kingdom, certainly.
You who cannot use magic are the shame of this royal family!
Her mother's words struck out from the back of her mind, the memory of them having cut deep. They echoed there, a nagging doubt that she could not move past. She was a smear on her people's history, nothing more than a useless child to the family that she had never truly known. What was a mother, she wondered, but a woman who gave life to another? Did mothers have purpose or obligations after that to their children? The Queen of Reason was a dispassionate woman, cold as the ice that covered their lands.
Another shiver racked her thinly clad body, and she forced herself to keep her legs moving. She could not feel them beneath her. The snow crunched under the soles of her boots where it had soaked the leather and rendered her feet dead to the rest of her being. She wondered if they were the same shade of blue that her fingers had been the last time she checked. What did they call that, when the limbs froze and died while the rest of the body refused to give up struggling? Frostbite. Another humorless smile, this one pulling at the sore corners of her mouth. What a trite name for something so cruel and terrible. This was far worse than any mere torture that her sheltered mind could conceive of.
How did people survive this level of cold? Angela squeezed her eyes shut as she took a painful step forward. Her limbs felt too heavy, now stiff and uncooperative. Although her mind moved quickly and her thoughts were sporadic, it seemed that the adrenaline would not pass into her veins and motivate her body. Each inhalation hurt, the cold like a knife in her throat as she tried to take shallower breaths. How was it possible for people to live in a world that was so white, so merciless, and so very, very cold? There were no directions, no landmarks visible beneath the snow. Was there a sanctuary up ahead? Did everyone beyond the capital live with this oppressive sense of helplessness that currently engulfed her?
A fitting demise. . .her mother's calm voice came back to her, the memory of a pale and expressionless face following it.
Angela opened her soft purple eyes, hunching her shoulders up and holding herself tighter. If she had less pride, she would have died by now. She would have given up and succumbed to the clean expanse of nothing that made up the Sub-Zero Ice Fields. Angela may have been a spoiled princess, a foolish, sheltered little girl who had never before known cold or pain, but she would not die for anyone. Her life, at least, was her own. No matter who took away her title, who threw away her rights and citizenship, no matter who told her that she was worthless without magic, she would cling to that selfish desire to live at any cost. She did not need the Queen of Reason, did not need that bastard Koren, nor the old sage José; she needed no family and no friends for this. Angela was certain that all she needed was one more hour of life to pull herself through this frigid Hell.
Because—she thought to herself grimly as she continued walking, always aware of the creatures following her—she was alone and no one was going to save her, anyway.
The nights in Rolante were truly beautiful. Lise leaned out over the ramparts, letting the fierce wind whip through her long blonde hair with a smile and laugh. On nights like these she could see forever from the top of the castle walls, looking down the cliff side to the ocean hundreds of miles below. There were many tiny lights at the base of the mountain, and her smile only grew to see them there. That was the fishing village, Palo, so far away that she sometimes wondered how her people had acquired it; or perhaps why they bothered to keep it. When she was younger, she told herself it was kept down there for the same reason she kept a lit candle near the door of her room: monsters shied away from light and would keep to their hallway shadows and dark ocean depths. Besides, Palo made the Rolantian nights even more beautiful.
Whenever she snuck away to the ramparts like this, she thought about the kingdom and what it was made from. There were villages other than Palo scattered across the mountains. The rough red rock had eroded over time, giving way to vast plateaus and winding catacombs chiseled out by the wind. Her people thrived up here on the mountain, where they could see out into forever, and she felt close enough to heaven that she thought she might be able to touch the face of the Goddess if only she dared to reach up to do so. She hoped it would never have to change, even in this aging world.
Lise spread her arms wide and embraced the wind's caress, reveling in the strength of her people's prayers. That was what brought the wind to protect them, was it not? The wind was the embodiment of their prayers, their dreams, their hope and faith in the power of the Goddess. No other country could boast of their closeness to the Holy Lands like Rolante could; no other people had Stairways to Heaven and steps chiseled from stone that led all the way to the Father of the Winged Ones, the Goddess's most loyal and beloved of creatures after mankind. It was pride that filled her at those thoughts, a dignified sense of favor in the eyes of the Goddess. She would need to atone for it later.
Rolante was devout, both pious and pure, and surely that was why they had been blessed with the mountain and the wind. That was why Rolante had never fallen; why the Rolantian women had been born so strong and so wise, and had built the kingdom up from the rocks. The only place in Fa'Diel that rivaled their faith was the Holy City Wendell, but Rolantian queens did not travel there for pilgrimage and guidance when they were lost. The Holy City acknowledged their privileged place, and would send the sons and brothers of the High Priest to their blessed capital to study during their youth. Rolante trained their own clergy members, and were the only country in the world with priestesses of the Goddess.
There was nothing that could touch them; nothing that could taint the perfection that Rolante lived daily, by the will of the Goddess. Lise closed her eyes, and prayed for this feeling of peace and belonging to last for all of eternity.
But the wind was sometimes fickle: it was unwavering and complete like the faith of a child, but like a child, it was playful and teasing as well. The wind would come and go as it pleased, but it was always present when Rolante needed it most. Now, it slowed to a faint breeze that tickled her cheek and kissed her fair skin good-night. Lise sighed, brows furrowing and a disappointed frown taking up residence on her countenance. Her arms dropped back to her sides as she straightened away from the rampart walls. She looked out across the water far below into the darkness miles out from the shore, where the world disappeared into the beautiful, quiet night. The wind had been strange lately, and everyone in Rolante could feel it. Was it a sign of waning devotion? She could not imagine anyone's love for the Goddess to dwindle over time, and the state of the wind worried her greatly. If this continued, she did not know how much longer she could afford to sneak away to be with the Goddess and the wind of Rolante.
"Sister? Is that you up there?" the voice that rose up from the stairs behind her was quiet, meek and male and very young. Lise's smile returned in full force, and she turned away from the surrounding world to meet her little brother's concerned gaze.
"Éliot!" she said his name like it was the most important word in all of the world—and for her, it was. Her heart belonged to a deity and faith, but she would have thrown all three of them away if she thought he needed her to. She was more mother than sister to him, and he was more son than brother. Lise would have torn the mountain down around their country if necessary for him. "What are you doing up so late? Au-maman will be worried if she finds you missing."
"Let her worry; I cannot sleep," he told her as he ascended the steps, his feet falling heavily even in the soft boots he wore. The woman they spoke of—Mother Aurélie—was an elderly maid who had cared for the children of the royal family since birth. Éliot was wearing a strange scowl that seemed out of place on his soft face in reference to the maid, and Lise wished for nothing more than to make it disappear. She opened her arms up to him, and he hurried into them with a beaming grin, his own thin arms wrapping around her waist as he pressed the side of his face against the thin leather armor covering her abdomen.
Éliot's birth had not been the same celebration as her own, and in a way, she felt guilty for that. She knew that it could not have been her fault that it had been a troubled pregnancy and a complicated delivery, but somehow she could not rid herself of that shameful feeling. She had known both parents; Lise was five years older than Éliot, and clearly remembered their kind, strong mother. It was hard to imagine that a woman who led armies and fought demons could be killed by something as sacred and joyous as childbirth. Their father was never quite the same after, either. King Joster tried to smile and fought to stay alive for both of them, but between his failing feeble body and the deep sorrow over the loss of his wife, he had never been a very good father to either.
But especially to Éliot. She held her brother tighter. Rolante did not have Crown Princes, or any real place in their hierarchy for sons. While she was a princess and the leader of Rolante's exalted Amazon Army, there was no role for Éliot to lose himself in. He was not a prince, or a general, or even an heir in the event that something happened to his sister. While daughters of the Rolantian royal family were carefully trained and educated, sons were forced to become scholars or join the clergy. Sons were married off quickly and were expected to have as many children as possible, in hopes that there would be daughters to take the throne. Just in case. It was a stupid rule, a barbaric custom far too similar to those practiced in the heathen country of Altena, but there was nothing that could be done.
The Goddess's laws could not—and, Lise reminded herself, should not—be altered, because the Goddess had no flaws and made no mistakes.
Éliot may not have ever known the love of his own mother, but his sister hoped that between herself and Mother Aurélie he did not feel abandoned or alone. She hoped that he knew how important he was to her, if nothing else. Lise petted his hair lightly with one hand for a moment before pushing him back just far enough to tilt his chin up and look him in his pale eyes.
"Éliot—" she began in a teasing manner, playfully scolding him for his childish stubbornness, but was interrupted with a curious question:
"Lisette, what are those? Are they birds?" Éliot was peering around her arm at the horizon, and he pointed to the dark outlines in the sky. Lise turned abruptly, releasing him so that she could lean out over the edge of the ramparts again. Birds that large, this high up? Preposterous. . .Lise had never encountered birds near the castle; not even the Mana-deformed Needlebirds came up this high. She squinted, unbelieving of the sight in front of her. The objects in the sky were far too round, too symmetrical, and moving too quickly to be natural. How had she missed them before, even in all this darkness? "I thought the air was too thin for birds, sister. . ."
That was when it struck her like a slap in the face, and she gasped despite herself. Ships. Those were wooden ships in the sky, floating towards the castle beneath giant balloons. She did not have time to disbelieve, to wonder how it was that something like that was possible.
"Get inside, Éliot," she commanded, her leader's mask cooling slipping into place. "And tell Father to pray for wind."
"But—"
"Éliza!" Lise shouted down to the warrior on the lower terrace, who looked up with a startled jerk of the head. "Rouse the guard and get that trebuchet turned around! I want our best throwers lining the upper walls! We're under attack!"
How am I still alive. . .?
The young prince lifted aching limbs from the moss covered ground, pressing the soft palms of his hands against his closed eyes. Behind his lids, he could feel a dull pulsing pain, could feel the scratchy texture of dried blood peeling off his skin from around his fingertips. The flakes caught on the thin light hairs that covered his face, pulling some of them out by the follicle. His whole body felt bruised and mistreated, as though someone had skinned him alive and ripped his bones apart to beat blood from his hide before shoving it all forcefully back inside. He groaned, and tried to roll over onto his stomach.
Instantly, the young prince regretted that attempt.
White hot lances of fresh pain shot up through his legs and back when he tried to move them, and he cried out weakly against it. His arms fell limply back to the forest floor. He struggled to open his eyes, and the blood on his face cracked around the movement like a thin seal of new skin over a pup's lids.
The world was too bright and too dark all at once when his vision returned to him, reality lacking shapes or true definition. Everything was hazy, each brilliant color flowing into the next and distorting the sights around him. He could not smell anything, could not hear the usual sounds of the forest. The young prince blinked rapidly in the hopes that that would help to speed his adjustment. When at last true sight returned to him, he craned his neck up—pushing past the stabbing pain in his head—to glance down the length of his body.
This gift of life must have been the result of the change back to his normal form, he decided, looking carefully at the twisted and mangled lump that remained of his left leg. The other was fairly normal, and did not seem broken from this angle. But his left leg was definitely beyond help. Was his hybrid form truly so powerful that it could bring him back from death? That body, that werewolf version of himself, had been devastated by the fall, he reasoned. The transformation normally shattered bones and reformed them into new shapes, ripped organs and skin to make them fit the new structure. It was only logical to assume that the transformation itself had some basic healing abilities.
Perhaps that was the true power of the Beast people; they had to be killed twice.
The young prince forced himself up into a sitting position, teeth clenched together and lips curled back in a snarling grimace. Oh, Luna be damned did it hurt! From there, he slowly dragged his body backwards, deeper into the forest. He wanted to get away from the massive walls surrounding the capital city as soon as possible. Finally, with his bruised back resting against the rough trunk of a tree, the young prince relaxed slightly, breathing heavily from the exertion. He looked up at the dark stone expanse in front of him, the top of the ramparts blocked by the overhang of branches.
". . .That animal is not my father," he murmured to himself, the title arousing a bitter hatred deep in the pits of his very being. He had never before known of feelings this passionate, this all-consuming. The young prince was sure that, if allowed, these dark feelings would overrun him, devour him, and leave behind only a haunted shell. Yes, he could let himself become a monster fed by anger, the kind of brooding beast that so many of his kind had become. He could grow to be like Lugar, driven only by his hatred for those who had taken so much away from him. The blame did not have to land solely on the Beast King; he could let this emotion seep out into the rest of his people, until his hatred for them grew into a desire to for their blood.
He could, but he would not let himself follow in his father's footsteps.
"Ooo. That doesn't look good," commented a bright and grating voice from off to one side. The young prince's head jerked up to locate its source. From the shadow of a nearby tree, he could just barely make out the figure and the strange three points of its drooping hat with his injured vision. The figure straightened from where it had been leaning back with one foot curled up beneath it, the sole of its comical shoe resting flat against the bark, coming slightly closer and offering the young prince a bow. "Perhaps I can be of some assistance, Your Majesty?"
A growl snuck past half-human lips as recognition dawned on him.
"I am not the King's pet; don't think that helping me will put you on better terms with him, foreigner."
"Oh no, no, no! It's not like that at all, you see," the foreigner—that strange and dark jester from atop the wall—exclaimed emphatically, no longer bowing but instead kneeling in the moss at his side. This close, the young prince could see that beneath the heavy black and dark blue makeup, its face was sunken and the skin stretched too tight over the bones as though it had been borrowed from a smaller head. The planes and angles of the face were sharp but androgynous, more corpse-like than human, and its teeth were too big behind its thin, flapping lips. "I'm here on my own behalf, and that of my Master's, not the King's. I think that I can be of use to you and your cause, and you can be very useful to me and mine."
It had a slippery, sleazy tone to go with that gravelly voice, what would have been a charming and playful lilt had it not been so coarse. Those painted lips were spread wide in a crooked smile that took up too much of its face, as though the expression had torn the corners of the mouth until reaching the bottom of its prominent cheekbones. The young prince regarded the jester thoughtfully, wondering what it would have smelled like had his nose been working. It seemed to take his silence for doubt, and quickly began to elaborate, the barest hint of worry tainting its voice.
"You want to kill someone, and I need someone else to die—"
"You're a court jester." A statement, not a question. It faltered at the bland tone of the young Beastman.
"Well. . .yes—"
"Who deals in death?" he cocked his head to the side, raising a brow faintly in confused disbelief.
"Death is just another illusion," it answered with a small, meaninglessly vague gesture of one skeletal hand. "But that's another matter. Point is, the King's little 'hunting party' is a farce and won't get anything worthwhile done. They'll see those curs coming, and they'll never make it past the caves, let alone into the temple's sanctuary. I can fix your leg up like new, and all you have to do in return is take a package to Wendell for me. When you get back, I can make sure that you have all the strength of the Beast people at your fingertips, and surely that's enough to kill anything outside of the Holy Lands and Underworld."
"You want me to be your little messenger-dog?"
"It's a very important package."
". . .What strength are you talking about?"
"Dolan's bloodlust, locked away in his pretty prison at the top of the Moonreading Tower, of course. I can get you there, past all the magic wards and Mana-poisoned brutes that roam those long halls, and all you have to do is arrive in Wendell ahead of Lugar."
"And my leg?" he asked uncertainly, glancing down to the mutilated appendage.
The jester of death only smiled wider.
"Deal?" it held out its hand, perhaps to shake, but that was a human custom the young prince was unfamiliar with. He stared at the discolored flesh covering the wasted fingers and realized that he was not entirely sure that the jester was wearing make-up at all. He wished he could smell, and did not feel quite so blind. It took his hand while he hesitated, and a sharp and electric pain raced up his arm, stabbing deep into his chest at the contact. He gasped but could not breathe; the air around him felt heavy, stale and unmoving.
His bones snapped and cracked back into place, the tiny shards pulling themselves free from the inside of his thigh to recreate his shattered femur. A howling scream escaped him then, just as his face was stretching out into that wolfish hybrid-muzzle from his natural transformations. The cartilage was popping as it reformed, bubbling up from where the Beast King had smashed the tissue into the bone behind it.
Whatever magic the jester had used left the young prince feeling sick and nauseous in the wake of the pain, with a dark and oily sensation swimming around in his intestines like it was alive. He coughed, shutting his eyes to the light and colors of the world, wishing he could tone down his sense of smell as it suddenly returned to him in full force. The stench of death, the sickly reek of plant decay, was clinging to the inside of his nostrils, crawling onto his tongue so that he could taste the rot surrounding him. His fingers dug into the ground at his sides only to find that the moss had shriveled and died; it was brittle and disintegrated at the rough touch. Behind him, the thick bark of the tree was falling off in broken chunks, the wide trunk soft as though from months of decomposition.
The death jester grabbed his chin with its other hand, and when the young prince opened his eyes again, he was horrified at just how wrong he had been. It was not makeup but grave dirt and chemical reactions that discolored the taut skin; the very earth herself had stained its body that blue-black color. Where once he had thought that it had eyes, he saw only an uninterrupted darkness stretching out into a place far more frightening than eternity. The source of the death-smell came from inside that grinning skull as it whispered:
"Deal."
