"There's been a change of plans, I need to move up the schedule. Are your men ready? Those not chasing ghosts."

Leonard Nerva hated Morden Aimsland. He hated that icy shell that refused to be cracked or broken no matter how much shit was thrown at him. He hated the envious looks he got from women in the street as they passed. He hated the easy confidence that he seemed to throw off and only he could see through. He hated the admiration and adoration he received whenever he walked down the corridors of the palace. He hated the trust others showed in him even as he himself had to threaten and cajole those same people into following their orders. He hated everything about the man.

Leonard Nerva hated Morden Aimsland.

How the hell did he find out?

As usual the arrogant son of a bitch seemed to have some way of reading his mind. "I learned it only a few hours ago, from one of your people. I assume you were going to tell me when you arrived, but instead you bring me this?"

This was a picture that Nerva had received from one of his people, out on the plains. A picture of a hooded figure standing in the middle of a crowded square, just one more well-wrapped citizen from any of the dozen villages skirting the edges of Dollet's territory. He'd given this one special attention though, and told his men exactly what to look for. The pose had given her away, even as her unremarkable figure concealed it all. Hands clasped together in front of her, legs together as if she were at attention. She must have known she was being photographed, because he had been given by the picture not by the person who had found the body, but by the person who had found his. "Tyynes is just one woman. We'll get her eventually."

Aimsland placed the photograph down on the table. He wasn't a man that slammed his fists or shouted (he used him for that, Nerva thought) but his anger was palpable. "So far 'eventually has taken two weeks and ten of our ministers, and she's getting closer to our city. If-"

Nerva hated that he had to stand and listen as he talked, hated having to take orders from this quiet prancing weakling. It was galling. He would have done it all differently. Burned Dollet to the ground and marched on Deling. Disposed of that frigid SeeD whore and torn out the ones still hidden somewhere in the city.

"-not even what I was talking about, as you well know?"

Nerva froze. Shit.

Aimsland nodded as he read the expression on his subordinate's face. "The entire cell dissolved and broken down in a single night." He tapped his fingers on the table and to Nerva's ears it sounded like some eerie countdown. "All of the Faithful locked up or dead. And when were you going to tell me about this, Leonard?" His voice was like a snake in the grass, or a hissing tiger. "You seem to be keeping things very close to your chest these days."

His breath was shallow in his throat as he stared into those blue eyes and he had to concentrate hard to avoid panting for air in the room, as Aimsland stared him down. That gentle force seemed to be exerting some mental pressure and he felt like he would be pushed back by it, into the abyss just behind his feet. If he stepped back he would fall in and be lost, all the plans he'd made crushed to ruin and scattered to the winds. He had needed more time. After Deling would have fallen – to his men, not Aimsland's fawning cult – he could have finished off the man and taken both cities for the prize. Let the brat rule in his name while he cleaned up Deling's last remnants of leadership and chased the SeeDs back to their ocean hideaway.

But then that bitch Tyynes had beaten him to it, slaughtering the old men in cold blood, and suddenly he'd woken one morning to an insistent knock at the door and found failure had reached out during the night and slammed a fist down onto his trump card. The tunnels under Deling were empty again now and not because his men had come out of the ground and taken the city in the night. Some fucking disaster had clawed its way down there and forced his men up out of the basements one by one, to be dealt with by the SeeDs waiting for them. He could put a name to that disaster.

"The SeeDs got lucky, that's all. We still hold the city. The situation isn't so bad that-" Fuck! Shut up! He stopped talking but the damage had already been done, and Aimsland's eyes stared at him like blue daggers.

"The city's gone Nerva. It's not going to be ours anymore, we no longer have the men to take it. Even that weak cipher Leonhart would make sure it was clean before he moved out. There's nothing there now."

"Leonhart's gone?"

The smile was back. Whenever he looked at it the room seemed to swim in front of his eyes. "The SeeDs are packing up. They're leaving Deling. Not that they need to stay, since our soldiers ware now dead or in prison. Did your men manage to inform you of this?"He stood and leaned forward, all menace as shadows fell across his face, and still those blue eyes glared into his own. "Do you remember the deal that we struck, the pact we made Leonard? I'm keeping my end of the bargain. I wish you'd keep yours." Aimsland sat back down at the desk, his interest in the other man seeming to fade instantly. "That will be all."

Not thank you for your time or until later now. Just a curt dismissal. Nerva turned and shoved the door closed, the echoing slam giving him no satisfaction. He could feel pinpricks biting into his hands and looked down to see they had made fists all of their own, biting through the leather of his gloves and drawing blood. He heard a whisper of cloth on marble and looked up just in time to see Kettil sweep past him and enter the door. The cultists guarding the entrance didn't even blink as the man pushed open the door and went inside, whereas he had been held back and forced to announce himself.

He walked away from the door, before he did something he knew he'd regret. He needed something to take his anger out on. Something he could ruin and bend and break until the fury in his bones leeched out into it and he felt like he could hold a conversation without screaming, without looking into the eyes of another person and wondering what they thought of him. He needed something he could hurt.

Or someone.

" Life isn't fair, is it."

"You're goddamn right." He was slurring his words and knew it, but fuck if he gave a damn anymore.

The man slid the drink over and Nerva accepted it gratefully. "You sound like you need it more than me. Want to talk about it?"

Nerva shrugged. It's not like things could get any worse for him. Stuck in this damned seaside shithole with no payment, a terrible job, a huge slur on his reputation and dragging around some half-dead waif. God, what a horrible job that had been. He'd pulled what strings he had left, called in the last favours he had, and knew he'd been damn lucky to even get this gig. If some royalist asshole overheard and decided to inform, so what. He'd just move on again. The man next to him didn't look like much, just one more asshole in a town full of them. Weird eyes though. "You wouldn't get it."

"I've been a soldier. You'd be surprised." The man's eyes narrowed for a moment, and was it his imagination or did the temperature drop just a few degrees? "Yes. Surprised."

He coughed to clear out his throat. "A job gone wrong. Not my fault you understand-" it had been "-but the damn Galbadians always need someone to blame." The other man nodded. Cheered by the stranger's sympathy, he went on. "We were supposed to be clearing some old labs out for the brass over there. It was real quiet stuff. Pay was supposed to set up my team for life." A 'team' he'd hired from the street the day before and were dead before they had even finished. No sense sharing out the cash too many ways.

"That ended up not being so quiet?"

"Got that right."

They had been crazy. Clawing at the bars to get out, and then finally just clawing when they realised what was to happen to them. The man had said it would be a simple clean-up, no witnesses no fuss, but he had vanished like a shot when the first handcuff had broken and the prisoner/specimen/whatever had fallen onto Nerva's colleague like a madman, ripping and tearing at clothes and flesh. He couldn't remember most of the next twenty minutes. There had been screaming and shooting and eyes like diamonds glittering in the dark. Finally he'd come around to his senses and found himself surrounded by dozens of bodies, and nobody left alive besides himself and Almas, still as voiceless and emotionless in the middle of that carnage as if she was looking out of a window. He'd left town the next day and he hadn't looked back. He'd left everything behind in Deling, including the advance they'd given him. He'd considered sending Almas back for it but doubted even she would get in and out without setting off any alarms in that heavily-guarded city. Fuck it. He'd sent her away to scout through Dollet for employment opportunities and see what the lay of the land was like, while he found the neared bar and took away the memories with a little liquid amnesia. She'd done this task with the same detachment she did everything he asked of her. Whatever had turned her into this order-taking emotionless doll he raised a glass to their memory, because god damn it was convenient having her around. He'd been there in the bar for a good couple of hours and three sheets to the wind when the other man had walked in and started talking with him.

"Sounds like you've been in some trouble."

"You have no idea."

He leaned forward. "I have a proposition for you."

Nerva resisted the urge to sneer. Guarding the royal brats was quiet and safe and paid well, but it galled him to have to clean up after the little bastards. Like they were better than he was. It reminded him too much of that bitch back at Balamb. "Oh?"

"I have a small but growing interest in a group of people much like yourself. People cut down before they could achieve true greatness. I've been looking for someone to help lead them."

"And what are you offering in return?"

The man smiled. "How about this city, for a start?"

He did laugh then. The stranger didn't look hurt, or even surprised. He just kept on smiling. "Right, okay. You're going to take Dollet away from those spoiled rich kids and give it to me."

"Yes."

He sobered up as he realised the stranger was serious. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"No."

Nerva blinked and felt the ghost of a smile cross his face. "You want to take over a city huh?"

"Absolutely."

He snorted. "Well it's an interesting offer mister…"

"Aimsland. Morden Aimsland. Let me tell you what I have planned."

So he'd listened. That had been his first mistake.

If he could have gone back in time and slammed his past self's head onto the desk and shouted don't be a fucking idiot at himself he would have. It had taken Aimsland a day but eventually Nerva had believed the confident blue-eyed man when he said he could take over the city. He'd fell for Aimsland's pitch and now he couldn't see a way out, except for… "You, get over here!"

Almas turned with the closest thing she had to surprise as she heard his voice. If he hadn't known better he would have said she flinched. She stood there like a deer in headlights as he walked over to her and he stared down at the girl with frustration. She was just so…empty. Like whatever hole he'd picked her up from had grabbed a part of her as they left, and now there was just some woman-shaped shell. Not as empty as she had been, though. When they had met she had been a blank slate, something he could imprint training and orders onto and she would learn and follow. That had changed since this whole mess had kicked off. An did she look just a little more…colourful…than she had? A little more black in that hair and a little more peach in that skin? Suddenly he felt dry but shrugged off the creeping feeling it brought with it. He could use a drink, nothing more.

"What were you doing down there?

She just stared dumbly at him and he glanced sideways. He knew damn well where she had been. Down in the dungeon with that SeeD bitch again and Aimsland stood outside the door doing god knows what. At first he'd thought it was a sex thing, but he'd shoved that away. As much as the thought of Trepe being forced onto the the gray little nobody made him laugh he doubted that Aimsland was the kind of tyrant who got off on voyeurism. He was pretty sure he wasn't saving the woman for himself either. The last time Nerva had been allowed – had bothered – to go down to the cell they'd shoved the GF-thing into her skull somehow and left her there. Not even discussion of a ransom. If Aimsland had any plans for her he was keeping quiet. Not like he'd bothered to tell me anything. Almas was still staring at him with those eyes. "I said what were you doing down there!"

His hand was out before he realised it, and her head flew to the side as the slap connected. For a moment the two stood there motionless, before Almas turned back to stare at him. They stood there in the corridor, the two semi-soldiers. One twisted and arrogant and the other something else entirely. Finally Nerva broke the silence. Sometimes he wondered whether the girl spoke at all. She did what he told him and when he'd tried to teach her- may as well get some use out of the brainwashed bitch – she'd absorbed it like a sponge. Working for the duchess had been dull and not a little humiliating, but they had been excellent at it. Eventually even the other guards had noticed, and they'd been given the bodyguard spot without a problem. Witht the pair just waiting for the order to bury a knife in the duchess's back Aimsland's plan had been certain, and Nerva had been sure of his reward at the end of it. Now though- "Just get out of here." Almas turned to walk away when the voice came from behind him, and he heard his own words repeated back to him.

"What are you doing?"

Nerva spun at the sound of that goddamn voice to see Aimsland standing there. "What?"

The cult leader looked at Nerva like he'd just smelled something bad. "It isn't polite to hit a lady."

He snorted. "She hasn't been a lady for a while. What I do with her is none of your god damn business."

At those words Aimsland's eyes lit up like twin searchlights, and Nerva flinched just a little bit, as he realised he might have made a mistake. He scanned the room but saw no other guards come into the stone chamber. Just him and the little prophet.

"But it is my business. Almas?"

Nerva turned to see that Almas hadn't walked out of the room like he had told her to, had stopped moving when Aimsland had walked in on them. The three stood in a triangle in the room. Nerva felt his breath going short when he saw she was staring not at him, but past him at the other man. "Didn't I tell you to get out of here?"

Aimsland just held out a hand. "Almas, come to me."

Ice shot through Nerva's veins and he had to physically prevent himself from shivering. Trying to sound as calm as he could he opened his mouth again as Almas turned away from him and began to walk to the other man. "Don't. You stay right where you are."

There was only a moment of hesitation, one single moment when Nerva thought he might have retained some advantage or grasp over whatever it was Aimsland was looking for in the city. Then Almas calmly and without a sound walked over to the cultist leader, and took his hand. Their eyes met for a second, then the blue orbs of Aimsland's eyes broke away from her gray ones and stared directly across the room at him, and Nerva realised what had just happened.

He wanted her loyalty.

He doesn't need me anymore.

"You son of a BITCH!"

His hand spun behind his back as fast as he could for the pistol he carried around with him everywhere, but somehow, somehow the other man was already on him. Aimsland closed the gap faster than Nerva had ever seen anyone move, and a fist slammed into his midriff so hard he heard something break underneath. He finally got a grip around the weapon and he whipped the gun out and around point-blank at the man's head, but suddenly his hand was dragged aside and Nerva saw the thin chain wrapped around it, and Almas' dull gray eyes staring into his as she locked him down.

"You were a stupid man." Aimsland's eyes burned like blue fire and the smile had been replaced with a snarl. Nerva looked for a moment in wonder at the side of the cool collected man he had never seen before, and then Aimsland's free hand came around, something thin clutched between middle and ring fingers. "You've outlived your usefulness. You're not worthy to see the revival of the Archangel. You are debased and arrogant and your soul is a rag of filth, and you are wretched in Her eyes."

The knifehand came around, and for Leonard Nerva all light vanished.

She stared down at the body and frowned as she wondered what she was supposed to think. She had seen other scenes like this with dead things sprawled at her feet. Sometimes there had been men or women crying over the body, or sometimes angry screaming people that had tried to reach her and had been cut down to lay with their friends/lovers/husbands/wives. Sometimes they had collapsed to the ground in shock and just sat there. Eventually she had wandered away, and they hadn't followed. Almas Jordin stared down at the broken corpse of Leonard Nerva and wondered how to feel.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked around to see Aimsland. She liked Aimsland. Or at least she thought she did. She could feel some sort of vibration inside her chest whenever she looked at the other man, and he seemed just a little less gray than the other bodies that came and went from her vision. Some faint splash of colour. She hadn't known what colour was until recently.

"It was right to do this. He would have hurt her eventually. We both know it."

That brought a flash of anger through her, and she looked down again at the body and felt her hands clench and unclench as they looked for something to do. Leonard's eyes stared back up at hers, unseeing. His expression matched her own. She hadn't liked or disliked him. He had taken her from that dark place and showed her how to move her hands and fists to hurt and kill others, so she supposed by the things she had read about she should be grateful. Somehow she couldn't bring it upon herself. When Aimsland and his splash of colour had asked her to come here tonight she had thought okay, and when he had asked her to come to him she had thought okay, and now here was another body at her feet, like all the others. He wasn't important.

She was important. She looked into Aimsland's eyes and he smiled back at her. "Of course you can."

She walked away as fast as she could. Back to the dungeons beneath, away from all he confusion and uncertainty of other people and trying to be more like them. She went back down to her knight.

The words had come unbidden from her mind the first time she'd seen her, and Almas knew that the other woman had heard them. Just looking at her the world had seemed a little less gray, a little less cold. From the first time she had seen her coming off the ship all those weeks ago she had had to try hard to stop from staring. She seemed to emit light and colour like a paper lantern, and whenever Almas looked away from her the land turned gray again. In the days that had passed she had ached to be near her, just to keep her in sight. Even when the sound and fury had happened in the city and she had been kept here while her friends left Almas still hadn't dared stay too close. She knew that Nerva was often watching, Morden had told her that he was. She had taken what looks she could when she had been able to hide it as something else, and had drank in every glance.

After the sound and hard noise that had turned the old woman and her small children into more corpses it had been a paradise, as she had went down to the white squared room and finally touched her, finally held her close. It had felt like pure warmth running through her, like she was finally connected to the source that so many other humans seemed to have but had been denied to her.

The door slid open soundlessly and locked behind her the same way as always, the guards at the entrance not so much as looking around. They knew her face, and they knew she was under his instructions. They were loyal, and they didn't ask questions.

She lay there on the hard floor, curled around herself like an embryo. At first Almas had just stood back and watched when she had found her like this, but finally she realised that the other woman wasn't going to wake up or move. Hesitantly, stopping every other step and hardly breathing she walked over to her and carefully, as quietly as she dared, laid down beside her so close their heads almost touched. Almas could look and see the eyes of the other woman, those blue eyes staring into infinity. She felt around until their hands met and intertwined them, feeling the warmth there. She could feel her heartbeat, and after a second of wondering will it will it will it happen she felt it. Like a pulsing energy that flowed through the other woman realising she was there and jumping the thin space between their bodies into her own. She-

AGGRESSION! INTRUDER!

She flinched and resisted the urge to reel away as the creature inside reared up and tried to drive Almas away. She focused on the hatred of the thing, pushing it back into the small part of the woman's mind it came from. The screams of rage and pain subsidized gently into nothing, replaced with only their breathing. She had been afraid at first but eventually she had realised the thing couldn't do anything to hurt her if she kept it inside that small home it seemed to have made. She pushed past the beast and down towards the blue warmth. She loved that light. Loved it like she had never loved or felt for anything else in the world. At first when the woman had been stronger or the drugs hadn't fully taken hold she had tried to fight her off, but Almas had always won out in the end. The struggles had grown fainter as time passed by, and now weeks later there was no longer a resistance, and she drank from the power and found stability there. A blue light that came into her and wrapped around something cool and white inside her and helped it grow.

Sighing contentedly, Almas Jordin sucked up the Blue magic from the soul of the other woman, her own meager power feeding on it like a starving child, growing as it did so. She drank deep from that well, as beside her the mind of the captive SeeD was teased apart piece by piece, devoured by the GF that was desperately trying to stay alive and the grayish-white force that was growing in the girl by her side.

Soon now.