Those Who Are About to Die Salute You

Suddenly, the soupy darkness was illuminated by a ring of heavy-duty spotlights. They were indeed on a carefully-tended athletic field, and the bleachers were filled with thousands of magitek troopers standing at the ready.

"Big on sports, eh? That looks to be Ulldor's full brigade," said Ardyn. They all paused to let the enormity of the situation sink in. "Well then, follow me."

He strode confidently and unhurriedly out into the field. Ravus and Aranea's military instincts objected, but before they could say anything, Lunafreya had followed him out.

After a short distance, a laugh rang out over the loudspeakers surrounding the stadium. Ardyn ignored it completely, moving towards some point known only to himself.

"HA HA HA HAAAAAA!" the voice boomed, starting to sound slightly desperate.

Ardyn finally stopped, turned around, and gazed upwards at the little booth where the sound originated. The angry mob broke through the door and poured out onto the field, making Aranea instantly grateful they had put some distance between them. Instinctively, she moved her sister behind her and braced for battle.

"Well! Well! Well! Here you all are, just as I planned! You fell right into my trap!" There was no mistaking the gloating voice: it was Caligo Ulldor. "There's nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Come quietly - or even better, don't!" He laughed again, the sound resonating all around the stadium.

Ardyn swept off his hat and bowed. As he rose, he said, "Morituri te salutant. Those who are about to die, salute you."

"Whatever is that supposed to mean?" said Ulldor, sounding amused.

Lunafreya stepped forward, her eyes steely. She couldn't see Ulldor, up in the commentator booth, but she directed her gaze at him regardless. "It means you deserve everything that's coming to you," she shouted.

Ravus took his eyes off the troopers to look at her. She looked furious, but he couldn't tell whether she really had any idea what Izunia was planning.

"Troops! Attack!" Ulldor commanded.

The magitek troops did not move.

There was a short pause, as Ulldor struggled to understand where he'd gone wrong.

"Seize them!" Ulldor shrieked, enraged. "Fifty thousand Gil for each of their heads!"

The magitek troops still didn't move, but the mob swarmed towards them.

Ardyn shouted something in a language none of the others recognized.

Although it sounded like gibberish to the others, the magitek troops responded to Ardyn's command, leaping down from the bleachers and forming a wall in front of the daemonic mob.

"Why didn't you tell us you could do that?!" Ravus demanded, outraged.

"And spoil the surprise?" said Ardyn, grinning widely. "Anyway, we're safe. They'll only respond to me now."

The loudspeaker had gone conspicuously silent. Ardyn shouted another command at the troopers, and some of them split off to march up the bleachers towards Ulldor in his booth.

"How did you do that?" Ravus revised his question slightly.

"Simple. He guided the magitek research from the beginning," said Edea, regarding Ardyn warily. "And made sure there was a backdoor so it couldn't be used against him."

Ardyn looked at Edea closely. "I think I know you. Have we met?"

Edea opened her mouth to answer, but she didn't have time.

A high-pitched noise like a siren rose in the stadium. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. It got louder and louder, and as it gained intensity, the stadium walls started to vibrate. At the same time, the magitek troops stopped moving, as if their batteries had died.

The mob of villagers stopped fighting and clapped their hands over their ears in agony, as did Ravus. Lunafreya knelt next to him and held his face in her hands. She tried to ask what was wrong, but the sound was deafening and he couldn't speak regardless.

Daemons started emerging from the townspeople. A number of them were destroyed on contact with the powerful stadium lights, but the larger ones began pushing through the now-immobile wall of troopers. Ardyn was staring intently at the sky again. Aranea again braced herself for fighting; then she saw her sister point upwards. The darkness above their heads was cracking like old plaster, allowing tiny spiderwebs of light to shine through.

Ardyn drew Caligo Ulldor's sword and held it ready. He didn't have to wait long before the daemons were upon them. They were even more irate than usual, angry at having been forced out of their hosts into the uncomfortably bright lights. The sound didn't seem to bother them, which was more than Ardyn could say for himself. He was almost glad he had the daemons as a distraction, because the screeching noise was becoming unbearable.

The daemons were naturally tougher than humans, but Ardyn knew they had a particular weakness: they relied on their strength too much. They didn't train. They didn't practice. They felt themselves above mere mortals, and they were usually right.

But not always.

In a moment, he knew, the force field containing his power would disappear. When that happened, he would be able to destroy them all. In the meantime, all he had to do was hold them off.

He glanced behind him and saw that Aranea was herding the others towards an exit door. He was not surprised to find himself standing alone against an army; he had expected as much, and if they had stayed with him he would have told them to leave. Lunafreya must be protected at all costs.

But, if truth be told, he was a little disappointed.

#

Aranea saw the daemons emerge from the townsfolk, and the magitek soldiers crap out at the worst possible time. Ardyn didn't seem worried, but he was the only one. She clapped Lunafreya and Edea on the arm and pointed, not even trying to talk over the noise coming from all around them.

Lunafreya and Aranea got on either side of Ravus and lifted his arms over their shoulders, dragging him away. Edea waved, showing them the way to the exit.

"Goddamn...football…." Aranea huffed, as she shuffled across the enormous field towards the outside wall. Edea was already struggling with the locked exit door. Aranea gave it a rocket-powered kick and it flew inward.

She and Lunafreya managed to get Ravus through the door without difficulty. Most of the daemons were focused on Ardyn, who was somehow holding them all off single-handedly. Aranea had not asked him to do so, and she certainly wouldn't have blamed him if he had come with them to escape. Then again, he didn't look like he needed help.

"He is nuts," she murmured to herself. "Who knew?"

"I did," said Edea. "Did you know there are human beings in those people-shaped suits of armor?"

"Actually I did," Aranea couldn't help correcting her, "but what does that have to do with anything?"

"I protested the Chancellor's office over the magitek program. That's how he knows me," her sister explained. "He stood up on his balcony drinking wine. Seemed to enjoy how worked up we were getting. Now he seems...different."

"You have no idea," said Aranea, thinking of the daemons that swarmed out of him. She eyed her little sister and thought of what she had seen in the younger girl's mind. How much of that was human and how much influenced by the daemons?

Ravus gave a low moan. "Can't...move…." he managed, looking down at his magitek gauntlet.

Lunafreya brushed his hair back from his face, shushing him gently.

As Aranea debated whether she should help Ardyn fight off the daemons or help Ravus get farther away, the noise stopped and something strange happened: the magitek troopers, as well as Ravus's arm, started moving again.

#

"Where are we?"

"What happened?"

"Why is it so bright?"

"It's not bright...it's dark."

"Are those...daemons?"

Ardyn heard voices around him, a multitude of them, and because he was distracted by the daemons trying to kill him, he at first thought they belonged to the townspeople. Then he realized these people were speaking the tongue of ancient Solheim, a language that had died out thousands of years ago.

There was no time to think about what this could mean. He shouted another command at them.

At once, the magitek troopers began attacking the daemons.

Ardyn stopped to catch his breath. The troopers were holding off the daemons well enough, although they weren't fighting as well as they had before. They did not move in the methodical, robotic way that they usually did, but in the same way that human soldiers moved. They hesitated and flinched when struck, things mindless drones never did.

The daemons seemed to be everywhere - why were there so many of them? Ardyn was sure there weren't that many townspeople - and he had none of his supernatural powers to draw upon.

I've over-relied on the daemon's power, he thought, just as they do.

They were all around him, slashing at him with their talons. Too many to hold off on his own. From far away, he heard Lunafreya scream. He turned his head towards her and in that moment a daemon found its opportunity.

#

Ravus tried to fight it. At first he thought he could force the daemons back into their little metal box, where they powered the gauntlet that gave him super-strength and electrical magic. But their power grew as the horrible noise increased, and soon he realized they could not be tucked away. They would steal his body and Ravus Nox Fleuret would be gone.

He gazed into his sister's eyes. She was concerned, but not panicked yet. She didn't know what was coming. "Cut it off," he tried to say, but couldn't form the words. "I can't move," he tried.

Starting in his left arm and radiating out from there, he could feel something foreign writhing through his body.

Ravus Nox Fleuret blacked out and something else took over.

#

The oily black miasma took over Ravus faster than Lunafreya could have imagined. It washed over him, and at the same time seemed to flow from inside him. His eyes bled with it and a horn sprouted from his left ear and quickly overcame most of his head.

He lurched to his feet. Lunafreya screamed.

At the same time, the horrible noise stopped and the dome over the town cracked wide and disappeared. It was late afternoon and golden sunlight flooded the stadium, instantly dispatching all the daemons that it touched. The light did not affect Ravus, however. Aranea put herself between Lunafreya and the monster, holding her spear at the ready.

The monster used its still-human hand to hold up a sword. If Aranea had known more about history, she might have known that this was the Sword of the Father, one of the Royal Arms of Lucis, and that Ravus had taken it from King Regis's body during the invasion of Insomnia. However, she was more interested in preventing it from slicing anyone in half.

After contemplating the sword for a moment, the monster turned and jumped clear over the wall.

Blinking, Aranea ran after it and leaped up high to see where it had gone. It was loping off towards the western horizon, not even looking back.

Returning to the ground, Aranea explained what she had seen to Lunafreya. The princess shook her head numbly and they headed over to see how Ardyn was doing. He was sitting on the ground holding his head in his hands. As they came closer, they could see that he was bleeding profusely.

Aranea and Lunafreya moved closer to kneel next to Ardyn. When they were within arm's reach, two swords popped out of nowhere and hovered menacingly at their throats.

"It's Luna and Aranea," said Lunafreya gently.

Aranea stayed still and eyed the spectral weapons. They vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

Ardyn reluctantly moved his hands to reveal a nasty claw-slash across his forehead. Instinctively, Aranea reached out and traced the line of the wound with her fingers, thinking about the first aid kit in her ship. To her astonishment, her fingers started glowing, just as they had when she had touched Julian earlier. Ardyn's wounds sealed themselves up neatly under her ministration.

Ardyn pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket in his jacket and wiped the blood off his forehead, then ran his fingers over the place where he'd been struck.

"Well done indeed," he said. "Are you sure you aren't some kind of princess?"

Aranea laughed loudly, snorting at the end. "Yeah, pretty sure. Thanks for that, though. I needed the laugh."

She wiped away tears of mirth and got to her feet, helping him up too.

Edea was trying to talk to a headless magitek trooper.

Seconds after thinking it, Aranea rolled her eyes at her own flight of fancy. Of course it had a head - it was just missing its helmet, and she had never seen one without a helmet. From her observations, removing the helmet exposed light to the daemon inside, and generally they "poofed" just like other daemons, leaving an empty shell. She knew that they had human bodies at some point, but she wasn't clear where that body went when you killed one.

In any case, these troopers looked to be 100% human, if weirdly identical to one another. Edea was trying to talk to them, but she wasn't getting very far.

"What's your name?" Edea tried asking one.

The young man shrugged. "Name?" he repeated, as if he had never heard the word before.

"What's wrong with them?" Edea exclaimed in frustration.

"Nothing is wrong with them," said Ardyn. "Do you name a cow before you make a steak out of it?"

"Even if they don't have names, they're still people," insisted Edea.

Ardyn mopped more blood off his forehead. "They have human genetic material, yes, but calling them 'people' is a bit of a stretch."

"Takes one to know one," said Edea acidly.

Ardyn's eyes narrowed at that, and Aranea felt the need to step between them.

"Edea," said Aranea in a well-practiced big-sister voice. "This isn't the time. He saved your life just now."

"Thrice!" Ardyn added, a bit petulantly.

"At least," Aranea agreed. "Anyway, how did this happen?"

"I suspect it was related to the sound we all heard," Ardyn said. "Perhaps a novel interaction between the two fields - the Wallbreaker Wave and the one creating the dome. I thought that when the water from the sprinklers reached the Wallbreaker cabinet that it would cease, but this...well, it exceeded my expectations."

"The cabinet?" asked Aranea blankly.

"Somewhere in that building," said Ardyn, pointing at the school, "Is a box full of electronics that powered the dome over this town. A box that isn't waterproof. Q.E.D.," he added, waving his hand at the sky.

"Ardyn," said Lunafreya. The others turned to her. She had been so quiet they'd almost forgotten she was standing there. "Can you command these soldiers to do anything?"

"Of course. Would you keep them as a personal guard? Use them for further study? Send them after Ulldor?"

Lunafreya shook her head. "We need to go soon. Please tell them to protect this town and help the people in any way they can."

Ardyn looked as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. He whistled and the former magitek troopers lined up obediently and listened to him speak his strange language. When he was finished, they saluted then jogged off in several directions. Most of them went towards the townspeople, who were huddled at one end of the field.

"I had no idea they were capable of a complex task like that," said Aranea in wonder.

"They may not be," said Ardyn pointedly.

"Perhaps…" said Lunafreya, setting a hand on Edea's arm, "They could use a leader."

Edea stared at her in astonishment. "Me?"

"I think they could use someone to speak for them. Someone who sees them as more than tools. An advocate, perhaps. Could you do that?" Lunafreya asked.

"I...I think so," said Edea, warming to the idea.

Aranea's ship zoomed in from above. "Howzit, Lady A," came Bigg's amplified voice from the ship. She waved at him to land, which he was easily able to do on the enormous field. The back hatch opened invitingly.

"What say we get out of here and have a couple of stiff drinks," Aranea suggested.

"Do you deem this situation stable?" Lunafreya asked Aranea.

"About as stable as it ever is," said Aranea. "I don't think there's much more we can do here."

Lunafreya nodded blankly. Aranea knew the look on her face well. She had seen it in battle, when she lost squaddies. Inside, Lunafreya had already converted fear for her brother into grief at his loss. She was in the process of folding these feelings up and placing them in a coffin, to be accessed later, if at all.

"Very well. Then let us go to Gralea." Lunafreya's face hardened with determination and resolve. Setting aside her humanity for the sake of the mission.

Impulsively, Aranea threw her arms around Luna and hugged her tight. "We'll find him. Okay?" she said firmly.

Aranea glanced over Lunafreya's shoulder at the commentary booth where Ulldor was probably still hiding, the snake. Now, when he was separated from his troops, would be the perfect time to eliminate him.

She saw Ulldor run out of the booth and jump into a waiting airship, flying away as fast as the jets could take him. Aranea frowned, but she had made her choice. Ulldor would get what was coming to him; she would see to that personally if she had to. Luna was more important right now.