It hurt to breathe and it hurt to think. As long as Faris went through the motions of living, she was left to her pain. Thankfully. She would likely rip into the next person to ask how she was.
That one last thing Lenna wanted to address with one of the ministers turned out to be supplies that were promptly dumped into a bag charmed with dimensional magic. The bag weighed little, but it held everything they could dump into it. Retrieving something from it involved concentrating on the item, however, and Faris left that to everyone else. It was probably worth a fortune she no longer had a use for.
They rode the dragon to Walse, where Lenna talked to the guard from Karnak and learned that he managed to find his way inside the meteorite that fell at Karnak, fell unconscious, and woke up to venture out near Walse Tower. So, naturally, they went to the site of the impact.
Being familiar with heavy objects fired at high velocities, Faris expected more damage than there was. Given the size of the meteorite, there should be burned vegetation for miles around, the skies should be full of dust, and the meteorite should have dug a lot deeper into the ground. Had she her wits about her, she might have questioned it. She didn't care about anything beyond the raw pain smoldering inside her just then.
Upon landing, they found that the meteorite was hollow and had a door cut into it. Like the completely daft fools they were, they went in with a torch and wandered the passage the stone grew around. Not that it was like any stone Faris could recall ever seeing—a fist-sized rock she picked up outside that was broken off of the meteorite was lighter than a nail-sized bit of pumice, and it was strangely warm. This meteorite was made, somehow. By whom, and with what magic, Faris didn't have it in her to wonder.
After a short walk, they entered a chamber at the center. Within that center was a pit lined with white tile and a glow of swirling dimensional magic that raised her hackles with its strength.
Butz wasn't looking where he was going; he stepped wrong on a protruding rock and tumbled into the magic. His eyes widened as his body floated in the column of light his fall triggered, he tried to say something, and… And he disappeared in a twinkling of light.
Faris needed a drink. But no, rather than take the omen as it was, they gathered around the pit and stared.
"Butz!" Lenna called out. Faris suspected he wasn't able to hear any of them just then.
"Was he warped?" Galuf wondered aloud.
Ever willing to take charge when necessary, Lenna faced them with a resolve that covered up for anything else she might have felt. "Let's follow after him!" Then, without so much as consulting with the others, she stepped into the swirling magic and warped away to…wherever Butz was warped off to, probably.
Well. Wasn't like Faris had anything better to do. She urged the dragon to find himself somewhere to hide from poachers for the next whenever, stepped in after Lenna, and was spirited away.
It felt like falling into a cold so deep that it made her bones ache. There was no air, so she couldn't breathe or hear. She could see nothing but a blackness so profound that it defied description, and she felt none of her own weight. Then, between moments she couldn't measure, it was over. Faris' senses returned in a burst of life as she oriented herself just quickly enough not to fall over.
Galuf materialized a minute later. Once they patted themselves down to make sure they had everything, they wandered the innards of another manmade meteorite and exited into another country.
Karnak. Faris had been there twice: Once as a child with Merrick hauling her along to watch him haggle with sutlers and black market resellers; she had complained of boredom at the time, but only realized later that he was teaching her the trade and making sure that his contacts would recognize her as one of their own. The second time was as a teenager, after a streak of bad luck resulted in some upstart being voted in as captain instead of her. That bad luck resulted in her doing something stupid to impress a pretty girl and get her mind off the loss, being jailed and having her pendant taken from her, and the Queen herself coming down to meet her and offer a proposition: play the queen's suitor to annoy her advisors for a bit and she could have her freedom.
Faris might have taken her freedom a bit earlier than planned; she had been sixteen, hot-headed, and wanted more than she was given. She didn't particularly look forward to facing Queen Karnak's disappointment again. Not that what she wanted was on anyone's mind just then.
So they hiked long into the day, stopping only to attend to human needs. Butz blathered on about his last venture out in Karnak territory, the time he and his father fished in the Karsa River just when the tsunami a few years back sent the water flowing backwards. And then…something else. Aside from some vague realization that Faris would normally appreciate his attempts to keep their moods light, she hardly cared enough to pay attention. All that was needed of her was her participation in fending off monsters driven mad by whatever was attacking the Crystals, and the berserker's shard had been pressed into her palm for that. Had she the ability to look beyond the pain, she might have been thankful for the gesture.
⁂
Given the distance from where the meteorite had fallen in Karnak to the site of the Fire Crystal, the trek was bound to take several days even with Butz's ability to speed them along. Lenna had long since forgotten her fears that she was unworthy of the Water Crystal's favor, or her concerns about how it manifested—an ancient magic beyond the ken of common mages flowed through her at times and she didn't quite know what it really did or how to control it consciously. With everything else going on, she didn't have the time to learn.
The Light Warriors largely let Faris think they were giving her space to grieve, but they all kept an eye on her. Lenna convinced her to swap the knight's crystal shard for the berserker's, knowing that Faris wasn't able to focus on fighting monsters well and could do with something that didn't require her to think. Butz and Galuf lingered nearby just in case she wanted someone to talk to. No one brought up the observation that the campfire provided too little light or warmth, no matter how much fuel they put on it. Lenna was thankful that they could at least use one of the miniaturized cabins to trap in their body heat at night.
They had a day yet before they would be in view of the Karnak capital, and Lenna went with Butz to collect greens for their supper. Galuf stayed behind to watch Faris, who spent much of her time staring blankly into the campfire and keeping to herself.
Lenna had remained silent as Butz showed her what to look for in edible plants, and went off by herself when she decided she learned enough to work from. By the time Butz found her again, she had a nice armful of wild spinach, fiddleheads, musk mallow, and other things that looked young and tender enough to be edible.
"Can we talk?"
Lenna bit her tongue over the urge to decline, opting to nod instead. The one she truly wanted to talk to wasn't likely to be as receptive. She followed Butz to a fallen log, where she sat after he did.
"You want to know what's going on with us." It was, perhaps, sharper than she had intended.
To his credit, Butz no longer looked surprised when she forgot her manners. A corner of his lips twitched with the urge to smile as he tried to focus on sorting through her pickings instead. "Something like that."
Her hands clasped together in her lap in an attempt to keep from wringing them. It took more than a moment to arrange her thoughts. How much did she want him to know? How much could he have guessed already? How would he respond if he knew? And how would he respond if she told him that she still loved Faris in ways she shouldn't?
It wasn't as if she hadn't tried to talk herself out of her improper emotions. Every time she found herself yearning for what she once had with Faris, she chided herself with reminders that her desires were immoral. This was her sister. Faris didn't really look like either of their parents, but only because her sister seemed to favor their maternal grandfather more than she did their parents, with enough obscure Highwind traits that Lenna didn't immediately recognize her. When that wasn't enough, she tried to focus on Faris' faults: odds and ends invariably found their way into Faris' pockets, she sheds and Lenna still finds tangled strands of long hairs in surprising places, she's sometimes so defensive and touchy that she's best left to herself to cool off, she was a pirate and quite unapologetic about it… Still, nothing Lenna did to change how she felt worked.
"You've been all over the world, haven't you?" she began, hoping he could figure things out for himself without her stating her sins outright. "How are people who break taboos handled by their societies?"
Butz's glance was speculative and a question seemed to be on his tongue, but he answered her, instead. "Depends on the taboo. In Walse, cannibalism gets the killer hanged, no questions asked. Crescent Islanders will convene a council meeting to review the facts and stories, and compare them with the evidence at the scene of the crime. Then they discuss why it might have happened before coming to a decision, which usually ranges from the guilty party atoning to the victim's family if no fault was found and there was survival involved, to beheading if they decide there were alternatives to…you know, that. It's illegal to act on same-gender attraction in Istory, but it's not actively punished and usually one of the parties involved is encouraged to take the social role of the opposite gender. A lot of people who can't afford transition treatments in Karnak head to Istory because of that. None of the kingdoms ban marriage between cousins, but independent states might draw a line at how closely related they are. So on. Is there something specific you have in mind, or…?"
Lenna's hands twisted in her lap; she had to force herself to stop. "Were you any of the port towns around the Western Inland Sea between the years 800 and 805?"
"I was five years old in 800," Butz offered wryly. "Don't remember a thing from back then."
The grimace over how much she didn't want to talk about this showed itself before she could stop it. Yet this wasn't the first time she had to face intensely personal and unpleasant topics, and she knew she had to talk to someone. "What do you think of people who break taboos?"
"Not sure I get the connection, but… It depends, I guess. If no one's getting hurt or killed, it has nothing to do with me."
It was terribly unhelpful. Lenna took a moment to breathe and get her thoughts in order, and by then she didn't care how apparent her hand-wringing was. "The connection is…a member of my family was lost at sea when I was a child. There were searches for years, but—"
"Hah." The laugh was short, humorless, but there was no derision in his voice. Rather, he just looked glad to have figured it out without going through the pain of meandering through a conversation. Relieved that she didn't have to explain further, Lenna paused in her hand-wringing. "Galuf thought you two might be cousins."
If only. She could still marry a cousin. But Lenna was more than ready to be done with this discussion and attempted to smile. "Something like that. Faris is taking it a lot harder than me."
"Well, of course she is. People like us make fun of nobles for that kind of thing." Butz's tone eased into a kindness he wasn't used to showing, and the attempt at a reassuring smile was weak. At least he was trying. "Look, Faris is a pirate. They're not known for upstanding moral fiber. But right now, I think she's just trying to cope with losing Syldra and isn't ready for anything else."
"It doesn't bother you, then?"
Butz gave that quick one-shouldered shrug. "There are worse things in the world. None of the usual things that makes incest as bad as it can be apply to you. You didn't grow up together. A pirate isn't going to care about things like rules. If you two do end up falling out, it's not like she has any personal relationship with the rest of the family. I'm not going to worry about it. Just, y'know, be careful in public if you decide you want to stay together. Not everyone minds their own business, or considers nuances before jumping to conclusions."
The tension that drew every fiber in her body into uncomfortable stiffness eased. It would not leave her entirely, not until Faris was ready to talk, but it helped to know that someone else knew and didn't see her as a monster.
"Hey," Butz began after a moment of awkward silence, "uh, I try to respect boundaries and stuff, so you can tell me off and I won't mind. You look like you need a hug. I know I'm not Faris, but I'm here."
Hesitation kept her rooted to the log—once she grew into adulthood and noticed the way in which her suitors and some of her own subjects looked at her, she never quite felt comfortable with men. Yet this was Butz, who hadn't done a thing to make her feel uncomfortable for as long as they'd known each other. If he had ever thought of her as attractive, he certainly didn't act on it. Being a tactile person, Lenna missed a human touch terribly, and she couldn't go to her sister for it.
Lenna didn't bother to try to cover up her feelings as she drew close enough for him to wrap his arms around her. He had a lingering scent of chocobo musk mixed in with his own, and he was solid and warm. He was a friend, and she desperately needed a friend.
If she cried, he neither commented on it or mentioned it to anyone else.
⁂
If Walse was sedate and orderly in a way that made Butz uncomfortable, Karnak was a celebration of the chaos of life. People in foreign garb mingled in front of market stalls and argued over the price of spices and incense, and some snatches of conversation he caught were in languages he couldn't hope to decipher and only recognized by cadence—Istorian, Crescent Islander, Nazalean, and more. Travelers new to Karnak gawked at the fire-walkers and flame-swallowers performing for gil, unaware that the flames were an illusion and had little real heat.
While he had always liked Karnak, something felt off. It was in the mutterings over a strange monster coming from the meteorite to attack the Fire Crystal and the castle being locked up to all as a result, and not even the heft of Lenna's title allowed them entrance. It was in the increase in the number of guards watching the marketplace and eyeing every foreigner suspiciously. It was in the rumors of the Queen building a wall to keep the scholars from the Ancient Library away from the kingdom for raising concerns over the use of the crystal amplification device. Karnak was a lot of things, not all of them pretty, but xenophobic wasn't one of them. Until now.
At least Butz wasn't the only one to notice the change. Lenna looked worried, and not in the way she did over her relationship with her cousin—at least, Butz assumed Faris was her cousin; he was sure he would remember if there had ever been more than one princess of Tycoon. It was enough to startle Faris out of the despair that kept her unmoored from reality; her eyes scanned the crowd and kept returning to the guards. Even Galuf figured out that something unusual was going on.
"Get our supplies and bail," Faris hissed when the throng pressed them closer together. "Don't fancy the way the guards're eying us."
Probably for the best. At least Karnak was the one place someone could get cheap mithril; the Fire Crystal's power made the difficult raw ore easier and cheaper to forge into usable armor and weapons. Butz used to know the process, as his father once dropped him off at a bluesmith's workshop for babysitting, but the details escaped him now. All he remembered for sure was that the Fire Crystal's power allowed the forge to burn hotter and still kept the flames well-controlled.
Relieved that Faris' spirit seemed to be returning from her darkness, Lenna led the way to the nearest weapons shop with a lightness in her step. The shop smelled of Jacolean dragonsblood incense; it was just strong enough to overpower the scent of bodies sitting in stifling heat. Miniaturized weapons filled a glass display case to limit the possibility of theft. While Lenna reviewed the offerings, Galuf chatted up the shopkeeper and Faris' fingers twitched with the urge to slip something into her pockets. Finally, gil exchanged hands and the shopkeeper removed the Minimum spell from a mithril dagger, and—
A young man in the long, traditional roles of the ancient families of Karnak swaggered in and stopped at the sight of them. The robes were timeworn and faded, if well cared-for—his family probably wasn't as well off as he'd like. On his heels was a cadre of mithril-armored guards. "You! Don't move!" Then he turned to the guards, robes swaying from his overly dramatic gestures, and said; "It's them!"
Perplexed, the Light Warriors glanced at each other as if one of them might know what he was on about. No such luck. Out of the corner of Butz's eye, Faris' hand flew from a pocket to her mouth, and returned to the pocket just as quickly. It didn't take him long to suspect she'd tucked a lockpicker's pins into her cheek, just in case.
"You're the monster's friends! I saw you coming out of the meteorite!"
Butz could only stare, flabbergasted, as the guards rounded each of them, clapped them in irons, and marched them out. How did the man manage to see them and avoid notice? Remote viewing spells took up so much energy that surely one of them should have felt it. Had they just been distracted in their efforts to take care of Faris? Had this stranger set up a monitoring system they never noticed? Had they been followed?
Regardless, the result was that they were taken down several back alleys to avoid being seen by the throng.
"At least this way, we can get into the castle," Lenna muttered. Galuf's stare was disbelieving, though Butz hardly knew why given that this wasn't the first time Lenna saw advantage in a bad situation.
Up ahead, a guard joined them and matched pace with Faris. His accent revealed him as an immigrant from Tule. "Get yourself arrested again, eh?"
"Shove it, Clausus."
"Thought I'd warn you," the guard said, unperturbed by the sharpness of Faris' tone. "Queen's not herself lately. Don't think she'll find you half so charming anymore."
Lenna, sensing an opening and diving on it like a jaculus, trotted up to the guard and wedged herself into the discussion. "Will she at least see us? I'm Lenna, Princess of Tycoon, and she's my cousin—"
The guard didn't even stop to consider her words. "Queen's not seeing anyone. Do what I can, but the bosses're all busy. Gotta go through the chain of command, y'know."
"Oh…" Lenna's disappointment was almost tangible.
The guard paused to look at Lenna, and the first real glimpse Butz had of his face made him wonder if he was another of those people who migrated to Karnak to physically transition into their proper genders and simply never left. Not that there was a lot to reveal himself as such, and not that Butz cared, but he'd been trying to pay more attention to people. People were just a lot harder to read than chocobos and he needed the practice.
"Everyone's busy, Highness, but I'll get to it dreckly."
With that said, he trotted ahead, whispered something to the leading captain, and left. Butz didn't have too much hope that anything would come of it. Not when nothing else interrupted the march to the castle dungeons.
⁂
Galuf would say this for the dungeons of Karnak: at least they were warm. Almost too warm. He'd ended up shedding the jacket Faris had made for him back in Carwen and left it to the princess to be used as a cushion. Butz stayed by her side at a respectful distance. After picking the locks on their manacles, Faris leaned with her back to a far corner and her arms crossed and just stayed there. Pain radiated from her like heat from a flame.
He should be annoyed, because wallowing did no one any good. It made everyone around her dispirited. Yet somewhere in the back of his head, he knew that losing a dragon was a blow so terrible that few survived it. How he knew was as much a mystery as anything else shrouded in the fog of his amnesia. Still, some part of him wanted to bark at her to shape up, soldier. The enemy wasn't going to give them any quarter out of sympathy. He was damned sure human emotions weren't things possessed by a…a… blast it, whatever he was grasping for just slipped back into the fog.
Well, maybe Faris was right about him being a military man, after all.
At some point, he got the sense she was watching him. Somehow. It was dark in the cell, and their light came from the fires that just sat on the floor outside, left no cinders, and needed no fuel to keep them going. Given that none of them had anything better to do, Galuf leaned against a wall a few feet away from her. It gave her the space she needed, but made him accessible.
Her hands gripped her upper arms tight, reminding him uncomfortably of the fact that she was still smarting from being exposed in the Ships' Graveyard and never quite got past it enough to be comfortable with him since.
Well, since he was there and he doubted he could get things any more wrong, he opted to eschew Lenna's advice. "About, ah, yanking, back on the ship… Sorry."
What did his wife ever see in him? Certainly not articulation.
Faris' response was little more than a grunt. No wonder she passed as male so well, she certainly acted like a moody teenage boy half the time. Right down to the body language and disaffected grunting. And that was a crying shame, given her looks. She could be a gorgeous young debutante if she so desired, with suitors falling over themselves to catch her eye.
He left it at that. Faris might be a skinny, if very pretty, youth who would be a pain in the rear for any drill sergeant to deal with, but she kept knives hidden on her person and wouldn't be above sticking him with one.
Finally, after a long period of silence, she deigned to speak to him. "How do you handle it? Not knowing."
"March with one foot after the other." Galuf barely noticed the way he stroked his moustache as he spoke. "Not a blasted thing I can do about my memories but keep going."
"Bloody lot of help you turned out to be." Faris looked away, her gaze falling on Lenna. The softness she had when she was still courting the princess was still there, but it was mixed now with pain and regret. Then she shifted her gaze away, towards a far wall, and her eyes lost focus as she stared at nothing and seemed to try to shove her feelings back under a rug.
Part of him wanted to insist that they had no time for self-inflicted angst, but they had all the time in the world while they were locked up. Galuf tried to get thoughts in some semblance of order to reassure her, but…
Something hard pecked and scraped at the mortar at the other side of the wall he leaned against. Sounded like someone trying to dig holes in several places. As he was both curious and grateful for a reprieve from Faris' misery, he followed the sound to where it was loudest and listened until it stopped.
What instinct urged him to step away, he had no idea. But step away he did, until something hissed and popped. His arm shot up to shield his face, his body turned his unprotected midriff away from what it knew was coming. Sudden fragments of fire-baked brick and dust exploded outwards from the wall and into their cell, striking at a Protect spell Lenna put up around Galuf the second she noticed his motions.
A few moments later, the dust cleared just enough for them to see a man-sized hole blown out of the wall.
"I give up," someone groaned. A man, maybe a few years older than Galuf, with a moustache much like his own. But that was where the comparison ended—the man's arms were strong, but he had an unhealthy pallor, a weak chin, and luxurious, flowing clothes that Galuf thought of as impractical. A man could trip on that much silk. The stranger stepped through, glanced around, and gave a great, woeful sigh. "Used the last of the blasting powder just to end up in another cell…?" Then he sobbed pitifully and turned back towards his cell.
It took a moment for the Light Warriors to process what he said. In fairness, they had all been stuck in their own heads since they were locked up. But the sorry old man was so unbelievable and unexpected that they couldn't help but laugh.
The man froze and turned back to them, looking utterly mortified in the dim light. "You! You just laughed!"
They shook their heads, though denial was just as absurd at this point. Lenna even squeaked and muttered an apology; surely her cheeks were pink with the embarrassment of being caught.
With a huff, the man waved it off. "It's fine. I'm Cid."
"Wha—! Cid?" Lenna started, clearly unable to rein in her horror quickly enough to keep it from leaching into her voice. "The one who made the Crystal power amplification devices?"
Cid's gaze dropped and that self-pity returned. How it managed to make him look so pathetic, Galuf had no idea.
Contrite, Lenna folded her hands in front of her and gave a slight bow. That soft, formal tone returned to her voice. "I'm sorry."
"No, that's fine. It's all my fault, after all…" The man gave another great, woeful sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Though the dimness of the light didn't let him make out a lot of details, he was sure Cid used reading glasses. Somehow. Perhaps because the gesture was a bit too well-practiced for him to be conscious of it. "According to a book I found in the Ancient Library, the Crystals of yore were so powerful that they were incomparable to the present. I studied the Crystals in Tycoon, Walse, and Karnak, and developed a device to amplify that power. But that was a mistake. If a Crystal's power is amplified, it will shatter. Everyone, it's my fault…"
Galuf wasn't given a chance to process that, as Butz barged right on ahead. "But why are you in such a place?"
"I couldn't be in time for the Tycoon or Walse Crystals, but I thought that at least I could prevent the Karnak Crystal from shattering. However, I got caught when I tried to stop the machine…"
"We have the same goals," Butz said brightly, leaving something of a question in the tone of his last word.
Perhaps because Butz's optimism was infectious, the defeat on Cid's face gave way to cautious hope. "You're also protecting the Crystals?"
"These called upon us to." With that, Butz pulled out one of his shards so quickly that he probably had it ready the moment the old scholar admitted to being caught.
The thief's shard gleamed with its own light, illuminating features lost in the gloom. Cid startled, stepped back, and had to take a moment to calm himself before he peered more closely at it. Butz allowed it for a few moments, but slipped it back in its pouch soon afterwards.
"What the—?! A Crystal shard! You people…who are you?!"
None of them had the time to respond. Something big and metal banged hard on a brick wall in the distance, followed by feet pounding on floor tiles and a near-breathless voice shouting. "Emergency! Doctor Cid!" He paused, briefly, to rattle keys in the effort to open the jail door, and shortly arrived at the cell door. The glance in their direction was inquiring, turned to disapproval at the pile of manacles and then to surprise at the sight of the rubble, but he dismissed it all to open the door and focus on Cid.
"What's wrong?" Cid asked as he picked his way through the rubble to stop at the cell door and in front of a man who looked like an administrator of some sort.
The man's words lost whatever formality he might have used in his rush. "It's just as you said, after all! The Crystal cracked!"
"What?!" Cid exclaimed.
Galuf had to resist the impulse to smack his palm into his forehead in frustration. This entire quest had been one disaster after another. He wanted to shove past them and find the Crystal and do something, anything, to keep the crack from expanding. If he just knew where it was.
"I stopped the machine immediately," the younger man said in a tone that might have been apologetic, "but the Crystal's power just keeps growing…"
Cid's voice was thoughtful. "The fire-powered ship…"
"Eh?"
"Maybe the fire-powered ship is drawing on the Crystal's power," Cid explained. Galuf faintly wondered what kind of idiocy possessed them to build things that depended on the power of the Spirits' incarnations.
"Doctor Cid, please lend us your aid!"
Cid grabbed Galuf by the upper arm and hauled him bodily with him as he stepped out of the cell, which Galuf went along with out of confusion. The others followed. "These people will help us!"
"What?! But they came out of the meteorite. They're the werewolf's compatriots!"
Astounding leap of logic. Galuf's thoughts were uncharitable.
"If they can't help, then I can't." Cid's tone was almost petulant as he stepped away. Great Spirits, what did Galuf get himself involved with?
The official's eyes darted from Cid, to the Light Warriors, and he sighed. "Understood."
Cid turned, as if finally realizing that he'd volunteered them without their say-so, and asked; "Will you help us?"
Of course they would. They had the same goals. The Light Warriors nodded as one, and Cid's shoulders slumped with relief. "I'll go on ahead to the fireship. It's a dangerous place. I'll wait until you've quite sufficiently prepared."
With that, Cid strode quickly away.
The official watched them suspiciously. "Your things are with the guard at the front. Don't tarry. You'll be watched." Then, without waiting for a rebuttal, he ran after Cid.
"Well, at least we're out," Butz offered with forced cheerfulness. He started on his way to the guards posted at the jail entrance, only to be stopped by Faris.
"Hand me another shard," Faris said, voice unnecessarily brusque. "Rather be here if that ship's any real threat."
Butz handed her the shard he'd shown Cid. It flashed an image of a thief over her as it changed hands, and the picture was gone as soon as Faris slipped it in a pocket. Galuf went on to collect their travel bag and weapons from reluctant guards.
They trekked through the castle to gather what information they could. Matters of particular concern: the queen was missing, a bed-ridden soldier muttered something about a black shadow, and the Crystal was spitting out flames. Galuf tried to focus on the Crystal, but something about the soldier's muttering nagged at the back of his mind. It meant something, but…
But right now all they needed to focus on was the Crystal. He could let the muttering bother him later.
Their passage out of the castle was blocked briefly by a commotion at the gates. There was shouting about a werewolf, an explosion, and Galuf could see none of it behind the solid bronze gates. Nevertheless, the guards let them pass with a warning that the werewolf was bound to return. Privately, Galuf could not accept the notion that the werewolf was all that bad and wondered if he should commend the werewolf's persistence.
The Light Warriors arrived at the harbor where the fire-powered ship sat in its moorings in the mid-afternoon. It was a great monstrosity, boasting a massive hull, paddle wheels, chimneys that reached into the sky to spew steam, a thick pipe feeding into the side, and an alarming number of cannons. This was meant to be a warship.
"This isn't like her," Lenna said, her voice almost whisper-soft. She drew close to her pirate for support.
Faris didn't bother to step away. If she straightened just a bit to project strength to reassure her partner, she didn't notice. "See how low she sits in the water? There's a lot of metal under that wood veneer. Ship like this is built to hunt other ships, not monsters. Who the hell is she thinking of attacking?"
"Doesn't matter. We've got a job to do." Butz plowed on ahead to walk up the gangplank. Galuf took a moment to appreciate the change in the boy—when all of this started, Butz was very much the type to avoid getting involved and left leadership to someone else. With one natural leader second-guessing herself and the other too mired in her own grief to take charge, Butz was finally stepping up.
Cid trotted down from the aft deck to greet them. In full daylight, he looked slightly healthier and the pinks of his clothes were even more garish. "I've been waiting! As I thought, this ship's engine is drawing in the Fire Crystal's power."
"The engine is…?" Butz asked, encouraging him to continue.
Not that Cid was the type to need encouragement. "Right. If you don't stop the engine quickly, the Fire Crystal will shatter. Will you go?"
Various noises of assent followed, which was Cid's cue to lead them to a wooden door below the aft deck. Were it not for Faris' comment on the ship sitting as low as it did, he might have been fooled by the appearance of an otherwise normal-looking ship. "You can enter from here, but be careful! Monsters have gotten inside. I'm relying on you."
The Light Warriors paused briefly in the normal-looking stateroom to review their tactics and swap any equipment that needed swapping. Lenna kept the red mage's shard, as she had for the trip from Walse to Karnak, and didn't bother to hide the delight she had in the sword she used. Given the way she handled it, Galuf suspected she was a lot more practiced with a sword than she let on. Faris opted to keep the thief's shard for the time being and offered no reasoning for it. Butz switched his blue mage's shard for the mage knight's. Galuf, well, stuck to the summoner's shard he'd borrowed from Lenna the night they stayed in Tycoon. When they were ready, they went to the deck below.
It was, as Faris said, full of metal. An entire labyrinth of metal. Of course it was infested with monsters, they were drawn to sources of magic gone awry. With the Fire Crystal cracking, they were bound to try to feed on its power and would attack anyone getting in their way.
The trek through the depths of the great metal monstrosity was grueling. Monsters attacked at every opportunity and slowed their progress, and they were strong enough to force the party to pause for healing. They got lost more than once. The place reeked of hot metal, oil, monster ichor, and their own sweat. Galuf came to hate the blasted ship and whatever genius made it difficult to find the engine room. He suspected that the only reason they ended up finding it at all was because a giant metal ship was still a ship, and Faris knew ships well enough to have a good sense about its construction.
The engine room hummed with machinery pumping energy from the pipe connected from outside and into a massive, sprawling metal thing that was probably the engine. Standing in front of it to watch its progress was a small, slight woman with her hair done up so tightly and impeccably that stray hairs only escaped where she wanted them to escape. Her dress was the type that belonged in a royal court, not an engine room.
"Queen Karnak!" Lenna exclaimed as she stepped up the platform, stopping only when the woman turned to glare hatefully at them.
Having grown attuned to his instincts, Butz darted to Lenna's side with shield in hand. "What the—?!"
A dark, malignant aura enveloped the queen of Karnak, sending a shock down Galuf's spine. He knew it, somehow. It was the same aura that took the king of Tycoon from his daughter's grasp. It was the same aura that…that… Blast it all, it was gone again.
"You who would hinder my revival," the queen sneered, her voice no longer her own. Something else spoke through her, betraying itself in its archaic speech. "You shall vanish from this realm!"
Flames erupted from the engine, surging past the queen and taking a human shape in front of them. The monster exhaled fire at them, struck at their shields and magic barriers. They did all they could to keep from taking a direct hit, but Lenna had to focus on healing them all the same. Worse, the monster changed shapes, and one of those shapes was invulnerable to Butz's ice-enchanted sword. Faris twirled a moon ring in her fingers and launched it at the monster, forcing it to change shapes into something more vulnerable. In disgust, Galuf snapped the rod in his hands. Ice magic shot from it, cloaking the room in a layer of frost and smothering the flame monster into nonexistence.
How on earth had he known to do that?
Without the monster regulating it, the engine imploded on itself. A shockwave pulsed from the crumpling machinery. The queen was caught in the blast and collapsed with much of her clothes on fire. She screamed, rolling in the frost until the flames extinguished.
Butz shouted for her and ran to her side. A mid-grade healing spell left Lenna's lips the moment the queen stopped rolling on the ground, and the princess was soon at her side. Faris, for her part, looked struck in a way that made him wonder whether they knew each other. Before he could fully question it, Faris moved to drop to her knees by the queen's head and pull her up to help her breathe.
The queen's voice was halting and low with smoke damage and pain. But at least now the voice was her own. "I was being controlled by someone… an evil spirit… one seeking darkness…"
She almost passed out then and there. Butz shook her, called her name, and she glared at him before she continued. "It's not just because of the machines that the Crystals are shattering. The evil spirit is trying to use them to revive itself. Please. Please protect the Fire Crystal. You should be able to get to the Crystal site from that pipe."
With the last of her energy gone, the queen fainted in Faris' lap. "Right. She's coming with us."
"Faris, the guards were close behind us," Galuf offered, trying to be gentle. He suspected he was failing at it. "They'll take care of her. That pipe isn't big enough for us to take her with us and still keep pace. We'd have to crawl backwards to drag her, and that's not going to help her burns."
The set of Faris' jaw was bullish, but she nodded and eased the queen back on the floor. He wondered if they'd been lovers, once. Wouldn't surprise him.
From Lenna's carefully shuttered expression, she came to the same conclusion. Rather than dwell on it, she turned to approach the pipe opened up by the implosion and got on her elbows and knees to climb into it.
Faris pushed past him, muttering that she'd rather not have them get an eyeful of Lenna's rear end. Not that they could see anything in the darkness within the pipe.
How long they crawled, Galuf had no idea. His joints screamed at him every time knee or elbow met with hard metal, the pain growing in intensity the further along they went. Butz bumped into him each time his strength failed, but he was good about it and said nothing.
Then…something happened, Galuf wasn't sure what. It was as if someone had cast a Levitate spell on him, but he wasn't actually floating. He just weighed less. He paused, alarmed, and nearly bumped his head trying to turn to look at Butz. As if he could see anything in the chthonic darkness.
"What'd you do?"
"I dunno," Butz said quietly, his tone almost sheepish. "I just wanted the going to be easier for you and thought if you weighed less, it might help. It's just more of the same thing I do when we hike and I want us to go faster."
Spirit magic. Bless the boy for his consideration. "Thanks. Just take it off when we can stand again, eh?"
Butz's answer started with a short laugh. "Sure. Whenever that is."
In time, they finally reached the chamber in which the Fire Crystal laid in wait for them. The air in the Crystal chamber struck them with a wave of heat so strong that it knocked their breaths away. The force of it gave Galuf both a headache and an awful taste at the back of his throat. He wasn't even sure whether the dizziness came before or after the headache. Lenna said something in relief, but he couldn't make out a thing over the ringing in his ears until it faded.
Galuf's head barely had time to settle before a section of the far wall exploded. He heard a voice that made him feel like he should know it, but whatever he knew was as much a mystery as any other memory. "Oh, it's safe."
What trotted around the Crystal dais and machinery attached to it might have been human enough, if one didn't look at the hands or face. Avoiding looking was an impossibility—the hands were furry and sported claws instead of nails, and the head was more animal than human. Or, more specifically, lupine.
Then the wolfman stopped at the sight of them and nearly jumped out of his own pelt. "Galuf?!"
"Werewolf!" Butz shouted, brandishing his sword to defend against an attack.
Startled, the wolfman lowered his head and flattened his ears in a gesture Galuf somehow recognized as placation. His hands spread to show that he was unarmed. "Stop! I'm not the enemy!"
Butz's sword lowered. "What the—"
Pain shot up from somewhere behind Galuf's left eye. Right eye? Whatever. He groaned and rubbed at his temple, despite it being absolutely useless.
"Galuf! What's wrong?" The wolfman lifted his head a little to sniff at him.
"You know me?" That pain pulsed again, and he pressed his palm against his forehead in some vague hope that it might help. "Ugh. Can't remember a blasted thing. Who the hell am I?"
Lenna drew close to skim her warm, strangely calloused fingers over his temple and through his hair. He had the strangest sensation of blissfully cool, clean water sweeping through his head and taking the pain with it. All of his pain. She smiled back when he blinked in confusion at her. He opened his mouth to ask where she learned that, because it was nothing like a Cure spell, and—
The door to the Crystal chamber opened, allowing one of the royal guard entrance. The guard rushed to a lever that was barely visible on the far wall, pulled it, and the wolfman's ears straightened in alarm.
"What are you doing?!" the wolfman barked, fangs clearly visible in his agitation. "The Crystal will shatter if you do that!"
Behind the Crystal and its dais, that same dark aura seemed to emanate from the guard. Heedless of their presence, the guard muttered to himself. "This is the third. One more to go and the seal will break…" Then the guard laughed in a way that sent chills down Galuf's spine. He knew it and still could not recall why.
Then the soldier disappeared. Somehow. Magic, probably.
They ran. Ran as fast as they could. Butz, with his Crystal-enhanced speed, made it to the lever first. He tugged it. When it didn't budge, his brow furrowed and he yanked with every ounce of strength he had. "No good. Lever's broken! Won't go back!"
Faris growled something incredibly unladylike under her breath. He figured she was allowed.
A scraping along the slate tiles and relentless thudding of machine parts drew their attention back towards the Crystal. Great metal pipes moved, lengthening under whatever mechanisms the lever set into motion until they slipped easily into the couplings at either side of the Crystal dais. The wolfman ran in front of the remaining empty coupling.
"Galuf! Run while I hold out. Last one… Protect the Earth Crystal!"
The ground shook as the fissure in the Crystal deepened. Flames spewed out and erupted from the floor.
"Now go!" The wolfman's claws scrabbled against the tiles as he attempted to keep the last pipe from its target. His voice was sharp with urgency, hoarse with effort. "This room will fill with flames if the Crystal shatters! Hurry! Escape the castle! And protect the Earth Crystal!"
"Werewolf," Butz called out, and Lenna nearly overlapped him with; "Let's help him!"
They scrambled one way and had to back away quickly; flames erupted in their path. They turned, ran the other way, and the floor crumbled under their feet. The only thing that saved Galuf from breaking bones on the floor was Butz's Crystal magic slowing his fall.
It took a moment for them to collect themselves. A glance up at the holes through which they fell revealed a room too dark for his comfort, and the falling air too hot.
Around them, the fires set in the floor went out. "The flames are going out," Faris said, her eyes distant. Galuf doubted she meant just the ones they could see.
"Has the Fire Crystal's power been lost…?" Butz asked, though he sounded like he knew it had.
The air of defeat was almost tangible, but they raced up the stairs anyway. They led to the Crystal chamber, which was hot, blackened, and the only light came from shards blocked off from them by the pipes.
Lenna's breath rattled with sorrow. "The Crystal…shattered…"
"The werewolf…?" Galuf asked, inanely.
"Probably swallowed up in the flames." Butz sounded gutted. Galuf tried not to feel anything at all. They didn't have time for it.
Lenna, willing as ever to take charge, straightened and spoke. "We must hurry! The Fire Crystal's power was supporting this castle."
"The castle explodes when the Crystal shatters?!" The boy's tone was utterly bewildered.
"Yes, there's not much time left!"
At Galuf's apparent confusion, because he'd assumed the castle should implode instead, Faris leaned close and muttered. "Fucking idiot fire cultists built on top of a magma chamber. Crystal was all that was keeping it contained. Moment that chamber gets a whiff of air…"
Figures.
They ran.
They ran as far as they could in a castle quickly growing too hot to be bearable. They ran until they collided with monsters drawn to the blast of Crystal power. They ran down abandoned hallways, stopping only rarely to pick something up. And only because Faris had to be a blasted pirate and couldn't leave well enough alone. They ran outside, gulping in the cooler air gratefully.
And, naturally, they were blocked by some idiot and his attack dogs just outside the castle gates. They knocked out the attack dogs quickly, but the sergeant blocked their attacks with a skill that surpassed the average soldier.
Butz paused to wipe the sweat from his brow. "Th-this one's…"
"Not just a sergeant," Lenna said. That her sword hand never wavered impressed Galuf more with each passing moment.
Faris hollered in that captain's voice of hers that managed to grab everyone's attention. "Show your true form!"
With a cackle, the sergeant made a sweeping, mocking bow. He exuded egotism. "I am the great bounty hunter, Lord Ironclaw! Transform!"
The man leapt, his form shifting mid-air to reveal something far more monstrous. Whatever it was, it had two feet and an absurd number of what should be arms. Tentacles, more like. Six of them, all covered in metal plates and tipped with red. Ironclaw might have been human, once, but he'd evidently run afoul some spoiled magic and changed into a monster. Or maybe he'd fallen in deliberately. Whatever the case, he didn't seem to regret his change.
His arms lashed out and hit hard. Lenna blocked him well, but Ironclaw was well-practiced in striking multiple targets. While she kept one metal-sheathed tentacle at bay, another coiled around Butz's throat to strangle him. Faris flung her moon ring at the monster while Galuf did his best to cast a summoning spell and pry the tentacle off of Butz at the same time.
In the chaos of flailing limbs and tentacles, no one noticed when Lenna managed to disappear. The tentacles suddenly dropped, lifeless, and their eyes fell on a mithril dagger sticking out of Ironclaw's neck and Lenna stepping on his back to yank it out. She glanced back, face grave with exhaustion and urgency. "We've wasted enough time. We need to go."
Though Butz's Crystal-enhanced wind at their backs sped them along, their long day of relentless battles was getting to them and everyone stumbled along the way. A stitch in Galuf's side reminded him uncomfortably of his age, and he'd rather not have his heart burst on him. Somehow…
The earth whispered soundlessly, encouraging him to change their trajectory. He grabbed Butz's arm, veered left, and they dropped off a short cliff that turned out to be solid and just concave enough to shelter them. Faris followed, landed on her feet like a cat, and waved Lenna over and held her arms out to catch her. The girls joined Galuf and Butz against the cliff wall just as a loud explosion and a flash of light sent rubble flying.
Rubble fell around them. Galuf sank to the ground, grateful just for the reprieve, and got his rest while he could. The kids slumped to either side of him and gulped in lungfuls of air until their hearts stopped racing. His full weight returned as Butz slipped out of consciousness beside him. A quick glance to the other side assured him that at least the lovebirds were setting their disagreement aside for now; Lenna curled into Faris' side and was shielded from the discomfort of the cliff wall by the arm Faris slung around her shoulders. Just seemed more natural that way.
It wasn't until well after the rubble stopped falling and Butz was awake again that the Light Warriors got up, dusted themselves off, and walked back up the hill to see the damage.
The castle was gone, and all that was left of it was rubble and a gout of lava still welling up from the magma chamber under the castle. The chamber seemed to have exploded to the west and against the remains of a distant wall, and the flow of lava followed. Lying in wait for them at the crown of the hill were three Crystal shards.
The shards were collected into Faris' many pockets. Dispirited and tired, they strolled to the town. At least it was spared.
⁂
There was another Crystal gone, another sacrifice, and all they had to go on with the final Crystal was hearsay. Had there been any choice at all, Faris would leave the party, plant herself in an opium den frequented by transvestites, transgender people, and others who didn't care, and stayed until she lost her mind. Felt like the better option.
Fuck this destiny shit.
Also, fuck that niggling sense of guilt over Polymja. Polymja had been an adult when they were together, and by the laws of Karnak and Tycoon, Faris had been considered an adult at the time, too. She didn't owe Polymja a thing beyond, maybe, an apology for running off without warning. In her heart, Faris knew she made the right decision by leaving. Regardless of how generous Polymja had been to her when she certainly hadn't done a thing to earn it.
Still. When she was young, stupid, and governed more by fits of passion than experience, Polymja told her that she was meant to be a king. Faris hadn't thought much about it at the time, but the words sat uncomfortably at the back of her mind, brought out by Lenna's little mistake of calling her her sister. And if Lenna was right, then had Polymja known who she really was when she saw her pendant?
Nothing but daft fancies. But…
Faris resisted the urge to pace in frustration and spoke up as the group deliberated over their options in the inn. Frankly, she hadn't been paying attention and didn't care one whit where they planned to go. She'd go along anyway, because what else was left to her? Besides her past mistakes. Ugh. "Back later. Errands."
Thankfully, no one followed her as she left their room at the inn and followed the string of guards to Polymja's room. Of the two posted to keep out intruders, one was familiar enough that she was sure she'd get through.
"Clausus." Clausus had been a pickpocket in Tule, once. He was like Merrick in that the gender he was assigned at birth wasn't true to him, and he'd had the same treatments to fix the error. There the comparison ended; Clausus was, in general, not as damaged a person and less prone to insisting on things going his way. And less prone to murder and piracy.
"Faris." He gave a slight nod of acknowledgement. "We rescued the Queen from the fireship, but she's wounded."
"She's been having nightmares this entire time," the junior officer added in a tone that suggested that he hoped she had a solution. Which was absurd. The pool of Faris' wisdom began and ended at sea.
The sea, at least, rewarded well-considered action. She steeled herself for a fight and opened the door.
Upon entering the Queen's room, Faris scrubbed her face and sank into the chair next to the bed. With Polymja muttering something about darkness in her sleep, Faris was fairly sure she wasn't present enough to hear her.
The places where Polymja's flesh had burned and cracked were pink with healing skin, but her hair was chopped and shaved where it had gone to ash. A shame; Polymja loved her hair. Lenna took care of the worst of the injuries, but she was of the opinion that sleep was necessary to continue healing and laid down a Sleep spell.
"This wasn't the way I expected to see you again." Frankly, she hadn't expected to see Polymja again at all. It just reminded her of how stupid she'd been as a teenager. Had she more wits than temper at the time, she might have stayed.
Or maybe not. Polymja was just as temperamental and stubborn. All they ever had was passion, and that burned through quickly enough.
No answer. Faris sighed as she slumped in the chair and stretched out her legs. The rush of running through the castle and fighting off a bounty hunter had drained out of her and left her depleted, and still they had to find the Earth Crystal. If it was even worth finding anymore.
"Lenna says you're cousins." Which, if Lenna was right about them being sisters, meant that Faris had been committing incest before Lenna stepped onto her ship and wrecked her life. Why it bothered her, she had no idea. Being a well-traveled pirate with a crew composed of people from all nations and familiar with different attitudes towards unusual behaviors, taboos never unsettled her like this. Her quartermaster was disowned by his parents for buggery, the chief gunner liked to wear dresses when the mood struck, the sailmaker killed his own father in self-defense and came from a nation where such a crime was viewed with horror. Among others. The more she thought on it, the more ridiculous her aversion seemed.
"Third cousin, I think." Polymja's voice was soft and hoarse from breathing in smoke. Faris glanced at her and met an uncovered brown eye watching her with an expression she didn't want to read. "Back when Lonka started expanding, Karnak was still small. The queen at that time, Yscra, felt that the only way to resist Lonka's encroachment and defend the country was through solidarity with other countries. She married off her children of appropriate age to powerful families in order to secure alliances. It became tradition. Any nation or family of note that wished to forge an alliance with Karnak was expected to take a spouse from among the royal family. When Lenna's great-grandfather approached my grandfather to support his consolidation of the Tycoon clans into a real nation, he agreed to take a Karneis wife."
Thereby controlling every nation and powerful family it could, Faris suspected. "Convenient. Hard to argue with family, eh?"
"Oh, there was always resistance. Lenna's grandfather refused to capitulate to our interests and insisted that continued intermarriage would result in feebleness in the royal families. Her father wasn't much better on that front, but he was common-born and didn't want to follow his predecessor's footsteps." A faint smile curled at Polymja's lips. "I allowed for Alexander's self-interest because Lenna's mother was a dear friend."
"'Continued intermarriage'…?" Fucking perfect, if it meant what she thought it did.
Polymja's answering laugh was humorless. "The Karneis family married off our children to other families. Often enough, other families offered their own children. After a few centuries, intermarriage was inevitable. Gelon Tycoon ended up being right—my father and half-brother died from that feebleness he railed against. As did Lenna's mother. At least her daughters didn't seem to inherit the royal disease."
Faris would rather be anywhere else right then, because when she didn't eat enough and didn't sleep enough, sometimes she bruised too easily and bled without clotting. She managed well enough with spells she was taught in that time before she could remember with any clarity, but why would anyone teach a child Cure spells? Unless…unless the child was expected to get hurt regularly. Oh, for fuck's sake.
She was on her feet and moving towards the door before she came back to herself. Her chest was feeling tight again, and she couldn't be here, but… But… She did come to check up on Polymja. "Great to see you're awake. Take care."
With that, Faris fled. Light Warrior of Courage. What a joke.
Background notes:
- The introduction scene with Cid is hilarious in Japanese because Cid sounds just so pathetic and whiny. He sobs. I don't recall how the official English localizations handled it all that well.
- Ironclaw uses おれさま to refer to himself, which is like... gangster haughty, I guess? Definitely pompous.
- The book Basic Knowledge says that the fire-powered ship was a prototype meant for mass production. And was a warship. So the question of who the Queen of Karnak was thinking of attacking was the first thing to pop into my head when I read it.
- Basic Knowledge also says that Karnak is the major trade hub in that part of the world and was a cultural melting pot.
- Details on Faris' past with Polymja comes out of another fic, Orbital Dynamics, and was a feature of the original version of this fic from 20+ years ago.
- The rise of the Karneis family and how they retained power over much of the world is heavily inspired by the Habsburg family. As a nod to another infamous royal house, I included the "royal disease", hemophilia, which was passed through the family. Faris actually has a very slight case of manifesting hemophilia due to her grandfather refusing to secure ties with Karnak, and it's only noticeable if she takes heavy duty injuries (deep stabs, broken bones) and doesn't have the caloric reserves available to heal on her own. Lenna won the genetics lottery and is not a carrier. I'm afraid I'm a huge history nerd.