Chapter Two
The Desert
King Edgar has quite a nice drill.
The ladies all think it's a thrill,
Because they have found
It drills holes all day round
For the low price of twenty-five gil.
- Popular limerick
The first month had been the worst.
Edgar had spent two weeks begging for food on the streets of Nikeah until he'd managed to find enough strength to work. Afterwards, he'd started fixing ships' engines when he could find work at the waterfront and repairing stoves and clocks around town when he couldn't. There wasn't much money to be earned, but he'd slept on the streets and skipped meals, and he'd managed to save up a modest sum.
The Nikeah-South Figaro ferry had lost most of its ships in the Cataclysm, and many others had disappeared off the coast of Figaro soon after. But its owners weren't planning to give up. As he waited for the ferry to reopen, Edgar watched the people of Nikeah and kept his ears open for news of the outside world.
Nikeah was a city of merchants. There was nothing you couldn't find at the port bazaar of Nikeah, so went the cliché, if you had the money and knew where to look. It was a city of thieves, lurking in the alleys, and of sailors, smelling of sweat and salt. It was a city of pubs, markets and docks, where you could watch people of all kinds go about their business. That's what the city was: a nexus, a meeting place for people the world over.
That hadn't changed. What had changed were the people. They still came from outside, seeking harbor or wealth, but they walked along with their heads bowed and their eyes downcast, did their business as quickly and quietly as possible, spoke in hushed whispers of the world outside. The Light of Judgement hung in the air like a sword swinging from a frayed rope.
In the town square, a man in green robes had preached the word of Kefka. Around him, people had gathered; some booing, some listening, some whispering among themselves. None had tried to drive him off. Too scared, most likely, of Kefka's retribution.
"Would you fight the water that wears the mountains down to dust?" the man would proclaim, arms spread wide. "Or would you accept it? Can't you see there is no other choice? Can't you see?"
Afterwards, Edgar followed him into an alley behind the pub. He caught the preacher by the arm and the man turned towards him, his eyes hollow and haunted.
"Listen," Edgar whispered to him, his voice conspiratorial. "I know the others don't understand, but I could feel the truth in your words. Please, I wish to know more."
But the man muttered gibberish about a tower and a box, and eventually Edgar walked away.
That evening, he'd taken the ferry to South Figaro.
Of the money Edgar had earned in Nikeah, only a few hundred gil were left. He had a dagger he'd bought because he needed a weapon and couldn't afford anything else, the clothes on his back, and the magicite.
He needed supplies.
In a small shop, on a rickety table illuminated by a splash of light from the broken window, Edgar pored over the available maps. No two matched. Most were little more than scribbles; others had been roughly edited from older charts. None seemed to agree on what lay beyond the sea. They only had one thing in common: a large blank area west of South Figaro.
"You're going through the desert?" the clerk asked him, frowning. She was a short, dry woman with a sharp voice and a surly look on her face. "Are you insane? It's almost August. You'll be cooked alive."
"As much as it warms my heart to hear you urge me to stay—"
"Don't bother. I only go out with people with sense."
In the end, he excused himself from the shop without buying anything. The clerk simply rolled her eyes and waved him off.
With the last few gil from his pouch, Edgar bought himself supplies and as much dried meat as he could afford. He remembered listening intently as the Locke listed everything that could be useful on an adventure, fascinated by the bits and pieces of a life he'd never thought he'd ever live.
He donned his old brown cloak and slung his pack over his shoulder. With a last glance at the dirty blue rooftops of the city, he turned his back and bid goodbye to South Figaro.
At first he passed through the fields. Those that hadn't been burned down by the Light of Judgement were sickly and wilting and the farms that dotted the landscape were little more than rubble. Eventually, even those last signs of civilization grew more and more sparse until nothing was left but the wilderness. Patches of forests still grew, grey trees with grey leaves; no birds chirped among their branches, and Edgar did not venture into them. By the time he'd reached the Figaro mountains, even the dry grass had begun to give way to bare rock.
He spent the night inside Figaro Cave. Once, it had been a well traveled passageway between the capital and its kingdom; now the way had caved in and there was no capital left to travel to. The air inside was dank and clammy, and the walls still bore the signs of battle from when the retreating army of Figaro had collapsed the entrance and the Imperial army had drilled their way through. Throughout the night he could hear steps and growls echoing through the corridors; once, he thought he felt something watching him from the darkness. But he slept with his dagger in his hand and the fire by his side, and nothing bothered him.
When the sun's first rays shone through the cave entrance, Edgar packed his supplies, refilled his waterskin from the spring, and headed west into Figaro proper. The scenery that awaited him beyond the mountain range was a picture of desolation. Barren rock extended in front of him, for miles on end—to the left, the ocean glistened like a sickly purple bruise upon the world; to the right lay a vast sea of sand, filling the horizon.
The great Figaro Desert. The largest desert in the world.
Even in better times, the learned traveler had been wary of Figaro desert, where the sun was baking and it was easy to lose one's way among the dunes. But Edgar was well familiar with the dangers of the desert, and he kept out of its reach, walking along the southern shores.
He made good time on the first day. With his pack on his shoulder, his cloak fluttering, he walked.
"Oh, my hero, my beloved," he sang quietly to himself, and his voice was the only sign of life to be heard for miles.
The hours passed unrelenting, stretching out into days. Miles went by, and the barren waste remained the same. Dusty grey rock, scorched by the sun, spread where grass had once grown.
And, finally, the unnatural cold that had settled on the earth after the great disaster gave way to the summer
Edgar, who'd lived in the desert all his life, was not caught unprepared. He carefully rationed his food and wrapped cloth around his head. Through it all, he pressed forward.
On the third day he got lucky and found a desert hare. A quick spell and it was dead before it could run. He skinned and gutted it and tried not to gag at the sight of its innards. The meat was hard and bitter; he had to force himself to swallow every bite, and he sent silent though devoted prayers to Ifrit for sparing him from having to eat raw, bloody flesh. Had Sabin and Locke been there, they'd have laughed mercilessly at him for his queasiness, of course, but neither his brother nor his closest friend were there to mock him, so he had to do the job himself.
Water, at least, was not a concern. Shiva had once taught him to condense the water in the air into crystals of clear ice. The sun did the rest.
If the days were hot, then the nights were still freezing, with a chill that crept down to his bones. But the temperatures, at least, he could deal with. It was the stillness that unsettled him.
Figaro had never been truly quiet. The constant rumble of the engine, the whirring of the wind turbines, the warking of the chocobos had filled the air. Even in the quiet hours of the night, the castle had been alive in a way few other places could be. Edgar had found it comforting. Locke had thought he was crazy, of course, but Locke usually did. Out here, in the desert, there was nothing but desolate wasteland for miles and miles. No wind blew. It was lifeless and utterly still, without even the sound of shifting sand to fill the air.
It was the first time he'd ever spent more than a day away from anyone, he realized one night. Before, he'd always been surrounded by nobles, guards, machinists, councilors. He'd never been truly alone. It had felt like it, at times, but this was different. He felt slightly off balance, like a gear that had slipped out of alignment by a hair's breadth.
The magicite in his pocket hummed softly with power. Terra had talked to the crystals, he remembered. Celes had spoken as if they'd been alive, and even Sabin had mentioned the whispers of the dead espers. Edgar held his magicite and tried to listen, but Siren was silent to him. When when the exhaustion wasn't quite enough for sleep to find him, he'd lie on the ground, turn his coin around in his fingers, and imagine Terra's laughter, Sabin's chanted mantras, the grind of whetstone against metal as Celes sharpened her sword, Locke's snoring beside him.
"I don't snore," Locke had told him once, in that petulant tone he'd always use whenever someone found fault with him. "I'm just pretending to sleep in order to lull you into a sense of false security."
"Believe me, security is not the feeling your snoring evokes in me," Edgar had said, and then Locke had tried to punch him and they'd scuffled until they were laughing too hard to continue.
He'd imagine the chatter, the jokes, the laughter, the arguments. Cyan and Celes raising their voices with each other, Interceptor's barking, Locke and Sabin singing off-key folk songs. And of course Gau had been the noisiest, jumping and howling and babbling with that endless manic energy of his.
"Quite the rowdy little spirit you've found," Edgar had said to Sabin, once, after an eventful evening spent failing to convince Gau not to gnaw on his cape.
"Isn't he great? I was thinking I could adopt him. What do you say?"
"I'm glad to have a new addition to the family. Think we can make him king?"
"He'd probably end up trying to eat the crown."
"Excellent! I shall notify the Chancellor at once."
When the memories became too much, he'd lie on his back and watch the stars. The world may be in ruins, but the stars at least never changed.
If there was a bright side to the growing heat, it was that it kept the monsters away. Few beasts were around to decide they wanted a kingly meal, and those that did were easily dispatched. This was why he was so surprised, early in the morning of the seventh day, to see a figure emerge from the horizon.
Edgar had spent the most of the night walking, lighting his way with Ifrit's fire. The sun had already begun to shine on his head, and he was beginning to feel a little like a recipe from that cookbook Terra had bought in Narshe in one of her attempts to feel like a normal person. "Cook over low fire," she would read out loud, carefully enunciating every word, never quite sure what to do with this newfound wisdom.
The figure turned out to be a middle-aged woman with dark curly hair and a hunting spear in her hand. She seemed startled, but she didn't run as he approached. Edgar greeted her with a sweeping bow. "Well met, madam." His voice was hoarse from disuse, but never let it be said that the King of Figaro could be anything less than courteous. "My name is Gerad. Is there by any chance a town or encampment nearby?" he asked.
The woman opened her mouth, then closed it. She nodded. "Camp is ten minutes from here. Come. You shouldn't be out here like this." She turned around; then, with a moment's hesitation, she looked over her shoulder. "I'm Nell."
Together, the walked towards the dunes.
