Chapter 15: To Plot Against The Devil
—
"The Auracite is not to be trifled with, Ludovich. It will not grant your wishes. It will not craft your dreams. It will only lull you into a false sense of security, and sink its fangs into your mind. Even now, as I stand before you, I can feel it calling me."
-Besrudio Bunansa to Ludovich Baert, upon request for the movement of the Auracite to safer holdings.
—
The Orbonne Monastery was a dreamlike place in the dimly lit dawn, one that Ovelia cherished deerly. Thin strands of the sun's rays faintly trickled through the stained glass that lined the high walls, the glass still flecked with dew from the midsummer Orbonne Monastery was quiet in the dimly lit dawn; thin strands of the sun's rays faintly trickling through stained glass portraits She was surrounded by portraits of long-dead Saints, most of whomst Ovelia had struggled to recall in her lessons. The pews were empty of church-goers, the blue carpet that had been worn down by the feet of hundreds of worshippers over the years trailing down the line between the pews, its golden flecked strands dangling over the legs of the seats. The walls were adorned with candles at the height of an ordinary man—and although many sat higher in the church than Ovelia could ever dream of growing, she had never seen any of them lit.
The Monastery was a silent place, for sinners to pray for forgiveness and lost souls to look towards the dawn. Ovelia's eyes were clenched tightly shut as she blew a stray strand of golden hair out of them, her hands clasped together so painfully she could almost feel her nails digging into the skin as she knelt before the altar in the center of the chapel. Ovelia clenched her eyes shut tightly after blowing a stray strand of golden hair out of them, clasping her hands together as she knelt before the altar in the center of the chapel.
"God," she whispered, her voice breaking the silence of the monastery, "please, help us sinful children of Ivalice…"
"Ah!" A rough voice boomed through the halls, startling her from her reverie. She stood, turning quickly and staring at the man as he entered. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a fine white mustache and a dark burgundy horned helmet that he held underneath his right arm. He saw Ovelia, giving her a mocking bow with a sardonic smile on his face.
"A thousand pardons for interrupting your morning prayers, Princess," he said, in such a tone that Ovelia felt the hairs on her arms stand on end, "but we are due to depart shortly, are we not?"
Princess Ovelia Atkascha, first of her name, the eldest daughter of the late king of Ivalice rose, staring at her newly assigned honor guard.
"Indeed," she replied, turning back towards the old wooden altar as she clasped her hands together once more, "but for such a long trip, it is only right that I pray for the safety of our compatriots, Ser Gaffgarion."
Gaffgarion laughed, a hollow sound that rang through the silent church as if the devil himself were laughing with him.
"Our compatriots, Princess," he said with a drawl as he sat in one of the church pews, kicking his feet up onto the one in front of him, "are your humorless knights, my idiot of a squire, and a surly she-goat with more bravery than sense."
"Please refrain from antagonizing Lady Agrias, Ser Gaffgarion," Ovelia said, sending her guard an annoyed look as she spoke in a frosty tone. Ovelia was not fond of Gaffgarion, filled as he was with arrogance far above his stature, and a small voice in the back of her head always whispered that he did not respect, but mocked the institutions she represented. He was one of her freshly sent guards, courtesy of Lord Dycedarg. While she didn't trust the man—it was hard for a girl who grew up in the court to trust anyone working with nobility—rejecting a veteran of the Fifty Years' War was quite possibly the height of foolishness. "She is one of my most trusted confidants."
"Oh?" Gaffgarrion said, a lazy half-smile on his face as he leaned backwards in the pew, placing his hands behind his head. "Knighted in combat, was she?"
"Yes, ser."
"Knighted for combat, and sent to guard a brat," Gaffgarion said, shaking his head as he sighed. "It's quite curious why she's still here at all."
Ovelia flinched, and almost reprimanded herself as Gaffgarion's lazy smile grew a little. She knew he was trying to get a rise out of her, trying to provoke her into saying something she'd regret, because he found it amusing. Her life was not someone else's idle plaything, a mere amusement to be observed.
"Still," he continued, as Ovelia stared at a picture of one of the saints—a woman with blonde hair and bright blue eyes, hoisting a flag high above her head as she held a sword in the other, "these times are not as certain as we once thought, princess."
"Whatever do you mean, ser?"
"Don't you know?"
"Know what?"
Gaffgarion smiled, kicking his feet off the pew in front of him as he slammed his greaves on the ground, the sound echoing through the silent church as he stood up, making his way over to Ovelia with his hands still locked behind his head as she watched.
"Riovanes will not be your final destination, princess."
Ovelia's heart soared and died at the same time. To return to Riovanes— a city inhabited by many who despised her and wanted her dead, was always something she had desperately wanted to avoid. But she was a princess, and her father, the king, was dead. If she did not return to Riovanes…
Her duty was at Riovanes. Even if her heart wished to flee to a far-off place from one of the pages of the many books she had read in the monastery, a place where mothers were kind and fathers weren't dying, where friends and allies were plentiful instead of so few she could count them on one hand with fingers to spare, she understood.
To not be at Riovanes castle was a slight. An affront to the crown itself, which was hers by right of birth.
"No, ser?" Ovelia said, pretending to be confused; Gaffgarion always liked to feel as if he knew more than others, and letting him feel superior would loosen his lips. "But the king is dead, is he not?"
"Aye," Gaffgarion said, placing a hand over his heart and closing his eyes, "The late king Ondoria, may he rest in peace, has died. And his daughter, the princess, shall go to Dorter, while his son, the prince, shall go to the Black Lion's home. It is strange, is it not, princess?"
It was strange. Ovelia knew it was out of the ordinary. As she stared at the saints and angels in the monastery's painted glass, their faces flecked with hundreds of colors and wings a shining white, she felt a sensation begin to creep into her mind, causing the hairs on her arms to stand on end as she tightly clasped her hands. For the presumptive heir to the throne to be tossed aside…
Ovelia was used to being abandoned. In a way, it comforted her.
"Dorter?"
"The city of rats itself, yes! Although, I hear it's become a rising star of the Southern Sky as of late. Have you not heard the whispers that people murmur when they're too deep into their cups? The rumors that swirl around the south like a plague?" Gaffgarion smiled at her, reaching out his arms wide as he gave her a mock bow. "Rejoice, princess. For I, a humble scholar of the lower class, can reveal them to you."
Ovelia's nose wrinkled and she turned her head away from Gaffgarion back towards the altar. Were that the deacon here, he would not act as such. Gaffgarion, loathsome as he was, respected the institution the Church represented, if not the place itself.
"Not interested?" he said behind her, and Ovelia closed her eyes, desperately trying to ignore the needling of Gaffgarion, and the fear that it had implanted in her mind.
"No," she said curtly, "I am not."
"Shame," Gaffgarion said with a sigh, "there's a name on everyone's lips in the South. Not the king's, of course, most peasants couldn't give a damn about your beloved father, may he rest as well as he lived."
Ovelia's father had lived a life of fear. He was a scared man—as he had told her once before she left, begging her to be brave—with a weak mind, who was skillful at little in life other than doing what he was told by his wife. She had pitied the man in life, but to see what he left behind with his death…
"It's Beoulve," Gaffgarion said with delight in his voice, "a noble we can trust. A noble who believes in the people. A noble who loves the peasants, so much so that he hired the Corpse Brigade."
Ovelia scoffed.
"Such a person," she said, turning to deliver Gaffgarion a fierce glare, "couldn't possibly exist."
"And yet, he does. Ramza Beoulve. His closest confidants are all commoners. I hear he treats all as equals, regardless of status or standing. Whether your lineage is covered in muck and blood as mine, or as golden and untouched as yours," Gaffgarion said, grinning dangerously as her eyes rose to meet his. Ovelia maintained their newfound staring contest, Gaffgarion's eyes dancing as hers tried to pierce through him. "What do you think his thoughts—this ode to chivalry in our miserable era—will be when the two of you meet?"
Ovelia's heart skipped a beat, and she broke their gaze, turning away from the man as she flushed, private fantasies she had long kept buried deep down coming back to her—of someone who was desperately, desperately noble and would do anything in their power to save her from the hell that her life had become.
"Wh-what are you trying to say!? Do you mean to imply that I would sully myself by—"
"I want you to think, princess," Gaffgarion hissed, his hand suddenly lashing out to grab her shoulder and roughly pull her closer to him, staring into her eyes as his own narrowed into slits. "I want you to use that pretty little head of yours and think."
"About what?!" Ovelia shrieked, her voice echoing through the church as she smacked his arm off her with her free hand, taking several step backs to stare at the man in disgust. "About some person who is hosting me!? I'll treat him as fairly as I treat anyone else, you brute!"
"Not about the damnable Beoulves, about what it means," Gaffgarion said with a hiss as he crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing while the sun slowly set behind the stained glass of the church. It painted the church a shining amber hue, and his armor seemed such a dark red Ovelia would have called it black in the light. "I want you to turn your mind to the politics you've been scurrying around like a rat to avoid; fitting for a new Dorter resident. I want you to think about honest and true knights, and the scared little princesses who cower behind them in fear, and about what they might do should anything happen to their precious charge."
Gaffgarion let out a long sigh and walked towards her. Ovelia put up her hands to try and stop him, but he ignored her entirely, instead standing by her side and looking at the altar behind her, making the girl suddenly turn around in confusion.
"What was it you said…" Gaffgarion drawled, clasping his hands together mockingly, as he suddenly spoke in a high pitched tone. "'God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice?'"
He dropped his hands to the ground and spat on the candle. Ovelia watched the flame go out and die.
"Aye," he muttered as he turned away, walking towards the door, "we'll need all the help we can get."
—
Mustadio sighed as he leaned his head back against the wall, holding his pistol loosely in his hand. Ramza paced back and forth inside the sewer, his hands clasped behind his back with a furrowed brow, his skin lit a faint green by the reflection of the sewer lights. Delita's face was pale, and Wiegraf stared despondently into the waters at our feet.
In short, we were a bit lackluster for a band of supposed heroes meant to break the city free of its chains.
"It all comes back, in the end," Ramza muttered, scratching the side of his jaw, "to auracite. Godstone? What rot. Devilstone, more like than not."
I gave him a suspicious glare, but Ramza seemed lost in thought. Did he do that on purpose? Speaking in verse would be an easy way to check if someone was possessed by the auracite. After all, when I was possessed by my own, I spoke in a form of verse as well.
"Aye," Mustadio said as he cracked his neck, "Devilstone is an apt term for such a cursed thing. It warped the city so fast I didn't even notice. I was arrogant, I suppose. Thought that if I just hid it from sight, if I made it so people couldn't see it, then they'd be set free."
He laughed, a rough, hollow sound that came out of a scratched throat and ended in a cough.
"Ha…a poor joke. That damned stone has driven its fangs far too deep into the city's center to ever let it go so easily."
"You keep saying things like that," I said with a frown. "Does the auracite truly have such a vast reach?"
"It'd be easier to say what it can't reach, Miss…?"
"Degurechaff."
"Degurechaff. The auracite sinks its tendrils into your mind, and then slowly takes more and more of it until there's scant left but a shell. You became enraptured by it. Infected. Doing the will of the stone is naught more than that which must be done."
Being X had already infected this city with his damned mental illness, but it seemed…
I looked at Ramza, and he looked at me, his eyes flicking towards the thing around my neck where we'd hidden the auracite Being X had left me. He arched an eyebrow, and I shook my head.
While deliriously ill in their minds, those infected by this stone didn't seem to be near as mentally cracked as what the auracite had done to my mind upon use. And, it had only affected me. It hadn't touched Ramza, or Vinya, or any other.
Somehow, whatever was in this city could fester. A creeping thing that slowly overtook your mind without you noticing. I drew a blade.
"Degurechaff…" Ramza muttered a warning, reaching for his sword.
"Ser Bunansa," I said, pointing my blade towards him, "how are we to know this… Devilstone has not taken your mind as well?"
He looked at me with wide eyes, and then laughed.
"You can't, can you?" Mustadio said, a sad smile on his face. "That's what makes it so insidious. I could be myself this moment, and not far from Cosimo the next. That's what's happened to Goug—an entire city being devoured by the stone."
It was a damned bear trap for my sanity as it was, let alone everyone else here. We had no way of knowing, let alone understanding, how the auracite would enter our thoughts, how it operated, and what could destroy it. My free hand reached up, almost against my own will, to grasp at the necklace I wore, where a piece of that same damnable stone hung around it. I could raze the city to the ground without blinking an eye.
But I needed Goug. More than that, I needed machinists. I needed their ingenuity, and I needed Goug's machinery. I sheathed my weapon with a sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. I needed to think.
It was quiet for a moment, the only sound was the endless plinking of water on stone. Green flickered across the mottled gray, and I turned to look at Ramza, my eyes narrowed and arms crossed.
"We'll need to form a plan of attack," I said to Ramza as I walked towards him, looking him in the eye, "and, worse still, we'll need to split up. The crew will be too busy to aid us, and as such, our strike force will have to simply be us five."
"Five against an entire city…?" Mustadio looked at us with wide eyes. "Is such a thing even possible?"
To be honest, I'd have given us better odds if Heiral wasn't here.
"It is not about whether or not it is possible," Ramza said, nodding towards me, "but whether or not we can do it. Can it be done, Degurechaff?"
"Aye, but it'll need to be two-pronged. Heiral and Ser Folles should go with Bunansa. Get the auracite. Find a way to destroy it, or if not destroy it, then to break the connection."
"I see you hold me in high regards, Miss Degurechaff."
My hand twitched, and I idly dreamed of punching Wiegraf in his smug face so hard that he fell into the river of grime by our feet.
"I certainly hold your mana in high regard, Ser," I said as I fixed my gaze on him for a moment, his eyes staring into mine, "and such a connection with the arcane may be the only way to shatter the stone."
"Could you not do it yourself? You had, after all, bested me."
I shook my head, looking at Ramza.
"Beoulve and I will have to continue the negotiations," I said and the blood drained from Ramza's face. "It wouldn't do for Eagrose Castle's representatives to be absent."
"We know this city is captured by something vile, Degurechaff," Ramza said to me in a low voice, "is it truly wise to continue negotiations, as if nothing has occurred?"
"Could you imagine if we were to not appear, Beoulve? Surely that would be far more suspicious, would it not? We have to pull eyes away from these three, and what better way than for us to act as if naught is amiss?"
He gnashed his teeth, but had no reply. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but we both still had to at least appear to be in Goug for the pretense of our presence here. Being X, you bastard… Are you this against the beauty of capital? Of course I want a monopoly, damn it! Do you know how much easier it would be to have a peaceful life with modernization backing me?! It's called being civilized, civilized! Do you want me to live in a world where people ride around on birds instead of in trains!? Don't be ridiculous!
"I do not wish to take part in this mummer's farce," he muttered, scratching at his chin with a frown, "and does it not bear an ill wind if we are to fail? Citizens will be caught in our wake."
"They're already caught in the wake, Beoulve," I said with a scoff, "they just haven't the good sense to know it yet."
He sighed, looking at me sadly before turning to Mustadio, who still sat on the floor, his back to the grimy wall.
"Ser," Ramza said quietly. I was unable to see his face as he spoke to Mustadio, but some emotion carried in his voice, a frail thing tinged with iron. "Is it truly impossible to separate the innocent and the guilty?"
When I was a young man, I once read a book about a young French woman. Her name was Jeanne d'Arc. An innocent, idealistic girl thrown into a cruel world of war, where she succeeded against all of war's necessary cruelty and violence, with nothing more than her heart and beliefs.
Instinctively, I hated her. Who was this girl, this foolish idealist, to believe that her values were worth more than all those around her? It reeked of an arrogance born of childish feelings. Such things I had long since tossed aside; there was no justice in this world but that which you claimed for yourself. To 'become' an idealist, one must throw aside all rational thinking, all the logic and reason that mankind has developed since Plato and Socrates.
Totally ridiculous! What a completely absurd notion! The only thing that had real value was yourself! If you were the sort of person who believed other people could save you, try thinking for yourself! In a corporation, if even one person was out of sync with the rest, it would create a massive jam in the system that might never be resolved!
Ramza Beoulve was closer than I liked to Jeanne d'Arc, rather than someone a little bit more likely to live. I wasn't asking for Alexander here! Seriously, a Cromwell would be more than enough!
"We can only hope the shattering of the auracite," Mustadio said slowly, "breaks its hold on the innocent as well."
"Relying on belief alone will only result in all our precious hopes going up like smoke and ash," I said, tapping my foot impatiently. "It does not do to dwell on the ideal instead of the reality."
"Reality is a harsh mistress, Degurechaff," Wiegraf said, and I stared at him, as he leaned against the wall with a sardonic smile on his face. "To chain yourself so deeply to it…you must have had a harsh life."
"Ser Folles," I said, smiling at him, "if you continue to speak to me in such a manner, I will happily remove your head from your body."
He laughed softly as he bounced his back off the wall, cracking his neck with that damnable smile on his face as he turned to Delita and Mustadio.
"You two," he said, waving a hand over his shoulder as he walked away, "with me. We go to the devilstone."
Delita hesitated for a moment, glancing at Ramza, before he clenched his fist and followed after Wiegraf, Mustadio a small bit behind the two. Ramza and I watched them go, and he let out a beleaguered sigh.
"Is it this place that's cursed, Degurechaff, or us?" His voice was soft and quiet as he stared at the murky waters below us. The steel in his armor was tinged with green, as was his skin, making him look almost sickly. "It seems that every which way we turn, we run into naught but dangerous things and ill fates."
"And?" I asked, crossing my arms. "What are you going to do about it? Blame yourself? Blame fate, perhaps? Or even God?"
He shook his head, taking a deep breath before he looked me in the eyes. We were a clashing pair, as per usual—I was short where he was tall, I was strong where he was weak. My eyes were silver, his were hazel. But it seemed, that in this at least, we were of the same mind.
"No. The only thing to blame is that damned stone, Degurechaff. Without it, this city would be peaceful, its inhabitants kind. With it…"
He clenched his fist, turning from me as he began to move towards the sewer's exit, the sickly green lighting his back as I hurried to follow him. We stared up at the manhole that would lead us back up to the light of the sky, and Ramza's face soured.
"With it, I cannot think of an ending," Ramza said breathlessly, shaking his head as he climbed the ladder, moving the manhole out of the way, and allowing a few stray rays of light to enter the sewers, "that will save this city from undeserved suffering."
The light hit my eyes and made me flinch, covering them. I had adjusted to the darkness of the sewer, and as I squinted, Ramza began to climb up the ladder, gauntlets making a soft ting as they clashed against the metal. I looked at my own hands, a small bit of disgust growing in my stomach. Unfortunately, I merely had a pair of leather gloves on. I'd have to wash them until my fingers bled to get rid of the stench. Ramza exited to the surface, and I heard his voice calling down from above.
"Well, Degurechaff?" he asked. "Are you coming?"
I rolled my eyes, and climbed up the ladder. If one thing was for certain, it was that Beoulve of all people didn't have a chance of handling this alone.
We stood in front of a massive clocktower, made of old brick and wood. The entire thing thrummed with mana, and I could see the faint shine of blue and green underneath the bricks, thin strands of mana that climbed higher and higher up the clocktower, until I had to tilt my head backwards to see the top.
A massive face, with three hands. One gold, one silver, and one bronze - the bronze moving faster to count seconds, while the gold stayed near perpetually still; slowly moving forward to mark the hours of the day.
The manhole was near the side of the tower, and Ramza replaced the covering before we moved towards the front. The stones quietly clacked beneath our feet as we stood in front of a massive set of doors made of a wood colored a deep, dark cherry. It was Baert Company, as was easy to see from the placard. Made of a bright and cheery mahogany, silver outlined with gold proudly advertised the name of the place: Baert. Ramza grabbed one of the copper handles on the door, and we stepped inside with little fanfare.
The Baert Company was made of gears. There was no other way to put it; every damned thing in the building was gear-related, including the floors—shiny metal blocks, but gears rotated underneath, letting them move this way and that like platforms. We stood on the first one, and it rose upwards to another floor, before multiple climbed around us, and it rose like another elevator.
"Quite a fancy contraption," Ramza muttered, scratching his jaw. "A different sort of sorcery, is it?"
"Sorcery, Beoulve?" I scoffed, rolling my eyes. "Despite their best efforts, few are able - let alone capable enough to comprehend what the ruins have to offer. Did you not read any of the files that Lord Dycedarg left for us?"
He smiled at me. His eyes twinkled like a pair of earrings, as if he had some hidden insight into my character, but didn't want to share it. I glared back at him, tapping my foot impatiently as I crossed my arms.
"I had a feeling you would be more than happy to read about the history of Goug for me, Degurechaff."
I wasn't happy about it! I just assumed you weren't going to do it! When Dycedarg left and I showed you a book about Goug, you looked around and then muttered something vague about there being 'too much else that needs to be done' before fleeing without even opening the damn thing!
"Sorcery is not something that plays well with machinery," I said. "Perhaps, were they to go further down…"
I frowned. The fact that scientific discovery in this world was entirely halted by this one damned ruin was the first reason I wanted to come to Goug. Goug was simply civilized. Proper modernity, entrapped in a single city. Were I to export it to Ivalice, it would make life for me infinitely easier. And yet, they hadn't. Not because they couldn't, or didn't have the desire, but because of the damned ruins, or rather the lack thereof.
Without whatever metals and ores were in the ruins, everything screeched to a halt. That was the inherent flaw of Goug; the 'machine city' was really a 'mining city'. Sure, an incredibly efficient one, but nevertheless a mining city whose lifeblood pumped in ore and ingots. Even with an exclusive contract, without some sort of teleportation mechanism—impossible, at that sort of distance—I'd be waiting months for even the most basic of supplies to arrive. So the orders we brought with us needed to be placed immediately. Before anyone else even had a chance to think about ordering. To claim a semi-monopoly on technological advancements in Ivalice was a fine plan, and I almost admired Dycedarg's belief in the fundamental powers of capitalism.
I wanted that contract, and Ramza and I had plenty of leeway to negotiate. I wasn't one to disappoint.
The constant sounds of the gears around us lulled to a low hum, as the platform finally came to a halt near the top of the tower. Before us was a corridor, lined with a red velvet carpet, stitched with designs of gold and tassels of the same color. As we walked across it, I examined the designs; it seemed to follow the zodiac, of all things. Constellations were stitched across the carpet, each one a beast or being of Earthly astrology I could recognize.
We crossed Cancer, then Leo, then Aries, Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus, Aquarius - each and every one of the damned things was represented.
We stood before a set of doors that looked nigh-identical to the ones at the entrance, standing on top of Capricorn's horns.
"Well," Ramza said, almost jovial as he placed his hands on the door handles, "further up and farther in, as they say."
He flung the doors open and we stepped through as I took a deep breath and placed a polite smile on my face. It was time for what we came here for.
A corporate restructuring.
—
Tune in next month probably.