Penitentes
A Final Fantasy Tactics fanfic
By Tenshi no Ai
(C) Square Enix
Prologue: Prophet
There is an island a hundred sectas off the Lionel coast, the only one in the northwestern part of the East Bugroth Ocean. This island has only one point of interest: a dilapidated stone building. For centuries this building was a lighthouse, used to safely guide trade ships to Warjilis Trade City. However, early in the Fifty Year War the lighthouse was raided by Ordalian soldiers, who sought to weaken Ivalice's ability to import and export goods. The magic fire that the lighthouse officials strove to keep aflame died during the massacre, as well as all the magicians, dockhands, and other workers who had lived and worked there.
There were many attempts to fix the lighthouse during the middle of the war. Lionel's growth depended on Warjilis' international worth as a trade city. Without the lighthouse's guiding light to ensure the safety of vessels loaded with valuable goods, countries already reluctant to continue trade with the war-torn country made excuses to end their trade agreements. All kinds of workers were shipped over to the island, but many of them died within the yellowed walls of the lighthouse. The workers who survived had fantastic tales about the floors beneath the ground level, a place so dark that it was impossible to know if the next step one took would find solid earth, a trap that would be certain to lead to death, or nothing at all except for the thick, musty air that permeated throughout the place. Monsters lurked within the nothingness, the only evidence of their existence being the sounds of their heavy, humid breaths, the low scrape of leather-roughened skin against rock as their footsteps padded along the ground, and their sharp howls of glee once they found a victim to feast upon.
The survivors called it a deep dungeon, a place of absolute death.
Disheartened by these stories, Lionel officials decided to stop their attempts at fixing the lighthouse. In the end Warjilis still made enough capital that the cost of warriors, along with the requisite manpower necessary to run the place, would only improve trade nominally at best. However, the adventurers of Ivalice, who were unable to explore the rest of the country due to the invasions, flocked to the island in droves. The Deep Dungeon became the litmus test of adventuring; reputations were made or shattered based on one's actions within the dank blackness. Hunters too traveled to the former lighthouse, bent on poaching some of the rare monsters that had become impossible to find in the wild when the Ordalian soldiers had marched into Zeltennia and Limberry. Many adventurers and hunters died within the Deep Dungeon, but those who lived could often be found in one of Warjilis' many bars, gloating about their near-death experiences and the treasures they had found. They bragged, but all of them clutched their mugs with white-knuckled grips, unable to live outside of a drunken haze.
After the war the adventurers and hunters went back into Ivalice proper, finding that the battles had imprinted an indelible mark upon the land and formed new ruins out of once familiar grounds. Those who wanted to seek the thrill of death inside the Deep Dungeon slowed to a trickle, though there were still many who rented fishing boats from Warjilis' harbor and sailed to the island, hoping to be the one to find the ultimate treasure or the last floor within its bowels. Even the great mage Elidibs, Gariland Magic Academy's gift to the war effort, went to the island, though he reportedly never came out again. The temerity of these people caused them to travel to the Deep Dungeon even during the Lion War.
Not one of its many visitors understood the Deep Dungeon for what it was. They did not understand what was happening to them as they went deeper into the darkness. Perhaps they didn't want to understand the slowly encroaching madness that inevitably descended upon their parties, the emergence of the primal, reptilian brain as the dominating factor in their thought processes. No human could ever prepare for complete nothingness. None of them could tune out the whispers of the darkness around them, inside them. Many of them never even tried.
Ramza Beoulve knew nothing about the Deep Dungeon's infamy when he led his group to the island. He had heard about treasure and a magician, but nothing about the subtle plucking of fear one felt as they ventured into the musty environs. Although Ramza had faced many trials throughout the last three years, he was, at heart, still a teenager. He thought he had faced it all.
He hadn't.
-0-
They walked in a single file line, hand in hand, and if it had been anywhere other than the Deep Dungeon they would've looked like silly adults mocking the play of children. As it was, this was necessary if they wanted to meander through the desolate blackness with a degree of safety. None of them possessed a sight capable of piercing through the darkness, and there was no other method available at the present moment. When they had first arrived, there had been the idea of using either Rafa or Malak Galthana's magical abilities to light up areas in the distance (as no one favored the ability to see something close with the possibility of getting electrocuted or burnt), but the only thing that had seemed to work was to leave the crystalized quintessence shimmering over the bodies of those they had killed. That disturbed many in the group, and so everyone held hands and walked forward.
They had been walking and fighting within this pit for hours without rest, and Mustadio Bunanza felt it the most. Unlike the others of their diverse group, he was a wholly average human being who, prior to finding the holy stone in Goug, was not a supporter of vigorous exercise. He was not an elite knight, or an ex-assassin, or someone imbued with dragon's blood, nor was he an indefatigable robotic relic or a former cadet for knighthood. He was just a guy who dug things up and put things together, and he was tired. It had fallen to him to be the voice of reason several times throughout this excursion already, but the deeper they ventured into the abyss the more snappish the retorts to his complaints had been. Ramza had been forced to intervene once already. The only thing surprising about that skirmish was that the mechanic had set off Agrias Oaks, she of the unflinching demeanor.
Mustadio had already forgotten the incident when he decided to ask her about something. Since he was second in line and the Holy Knight was somewhere in the back, he went about this duty by yelling to her, "Hey Aggie, d'ya have the rations?"
Ramza turned his head slightly, more out of habit than a sincere acknowledgment. "Don't tease her, Mustadio," he said lowly, though there was a trace of amusement in his words. Mustadio, in an attempt to lighten up the group's often dour disposition, tended to refer to others using diminutive names. It had grown into a habit with some people, notably the ones who detested it and made it known.
"Look, her name's bad luck to someone like me," Mustadio mumbled. In the Lionel dialect, 'agrias' meant 'explosions'. That was also what had occurred the first few times he had used this nickname, and with the mood she had been in earlier it was what he was expecting now. Instead, there was no response. "Aggie?" he called again.
Nothing.
"Weird," he remarked loudly. Agrias was a cold woman at times, but she always responded, albeit in a tone that could outdo an ice spell in frostiness. "Hey, are you that angry at me?" He waited for a reply, perhaps an affirmation, but still he heard nothing. "I feel like I'm screaming into the darkness," he muttered.
"Well, you are," Ramza replied. He had a gift for grasping the obvious, which was why the subtleties his opponents had used over the years had never failed to trick him.
"Thanks," Mustadio retorted. He glanced behind him and tried to peer into the darkness. "Hey Melly, what's going on back there!" he called, a tinge of desperation clinging to his voice. But there was no response from Meliadoul Tingel, and she had been ambivalent about her Mustadio-given name.
"This doesn't seem right," Ramza stated after a moment of silence. He called for everyone to stop, which they did as efficiently as possible. He thought for a few seconds, then decided to do something he hadn't seen done since the academy. "I'm going to call out your names, and I'd like for you to respond back," he called, and a few people halfheartedly voiced their agreements. "Mustadio."
"I'm holding your hand. Wouldn't that mean that you'd already know I'm here?"
Ramza ignored the question and continued to go down the line. "Worker 8."
/Awaiting your command, Master Ramza./
He called each name and received a response, from Rafa and Malak to Reis and Beowulf, but his pitch went slightly higher when he reached the next person in line. If anyone could disappear at a moment's notice, it would be this next individual. "Cloud?"
"Yes?" Unsurprisingly, the man from another world sounded disoriented.
"Just checking. Agrias?" Like the other times she didn't respond, but Ramza was still surprised. "Meliadoul?" Nothing. "Sir Orlandu?"
Nothing.
Ramza decided to try a different approach. "Cloud, are you holding Agrias' hand?"
"Um...no."
This was not the answer Ramza wanted to hear. "And why not?" he asked, his tone peculiarly flat, the only way to tell if he was annoyed both above and below ground.
There was the sound of shuffling feet, rubber soles scraping along the rocky ground. "I didn't notice."
At this, there were a number of disconcerted grumbles. Things like, "How could you not notice someone's hand letting go of yours?" and "I told you we shouldn't have taken him!" warred with "But people don't just disappear into thin air," and "Well, the air's kinda thick, actually..."
"Alright," Ramza said, more calm than the circumstances allowed. "Reis," he called, "what did you hear?"
His question was phrased differently than if he had posed it to any other member in his troop. Though Reis Dular looked human, her senses were anything but. She was in the very center of the line for this reason, to maximize her potential of catching anything dangerous before and behind them equally. Coupled with a memory that could recall the events of a random day two weeks ago with the weather, sights, sounds, smells and her own feelings at the time intact, such a request would hardly be trouble for her.
"I...don't know," she whispered. With their sight lost, their hearing was magnified to the point that they all picked up her words. "Strange, I can't remember...hm?"
"What is it?" Beowulf Kadmus' voice was full of worry. He had never, not before she was a dragon or afterward, heard her say that she couldn't remember something.
"A dragon," she stated, the timbre of her voice shifting from a level humans were comfortable with to one that resonated with the draconic nature. Normally such a change went unnoticed by the other members of the party, but the deeper they went into the Deep Dungeon, the more it seemed that their own beings were sinking into a quagmire of primal urges. Even Rafa was enjoying the fights.
Ramza shuffled his weight from one foot to another. "Do you think it would know where everyone else is?"
A rumble, like the ominous roll of thunder before lightning struck, escaped from the dragon and reverberated through the moist darkness. "It says it does...but there is a problem," the dragoner reported.
"Which is?"
Reis sighed. "How do I put this...it's impossible for a normal human to get to."
"We'll decide that," Ramza said, his tone unusually curt. "They're our allies. We won't leave them behind."
'Allies'. The word bothered Mustadio, who frowned at this. He had never thought that Ramza saw them only as convenient comrades of war. After all, it was Ramza, eternally kindhearted Ramza.
"Yes, of course." The woman sounded pensive, as if she disagreed but was unwilling to voice her complaint. "There was a place we have recently passed through, the one with the twists and turns like a labyrinth. There is a corridor there...apparently, lots of humans go through there and are corrupted by something. That's why we've been fighting so many humans."
"Corrupted?" Rafa interrupted, her voice softer than usual. "By what?"
There was another rumble, this one more like the barest hint of an earthquake. "Ah...something like 'fear'. Fear of committing a personal sin? Is that what you mean?" An impatient growl broke through Reis' stumbling words. "Something only humans have...a sadness that clings to the soul...a fear that eats away like venom. Oh, you mean regret, right?"
"I don't get it," Mustadio muttered. "So, people that go through this corridor are corrupted by their own regrets, or someone else's?"
"Their own. Their regrets are heightened to such a point that they lose themselves in their pain and failures. Then, they wander, nothing more than shells. Only a human without regrets can pass through that place without being...turned." A soft sigh punctuated the woman's explanation, a finality of despair.
"'A human without regret'..." Malak's tone was curled with disbelief. "That's not possible." Low murmurs of agreement followed this statement.
Mustadio chuckled. "Oh, ye of little faith. You can't just write our friends off just like that! We don't just have humans, we have Worker 8!"
It was quiet for a full minute before the elder Galthana stated rather bluntly, "You're an idiot. What's that thing going to do to break them out of their spell, dance for them?"
The deluge of sarcasm, a tsunami in the sea of sardonic responses, only made the mechanic blink at its force. He was used to those kind of responses from Malak. "...No. I just meant, you know, that he could just drag them out of there or something."
"I don't think that'd work," Ramza said slowly. "If what that dragon says is true, then they're already going to be really volatile. Worker 8's strong, but against three elite knights..." he trailed off, the rest of his sentence implicit with his opinion on the relic's fate.
"Then, what can we do?" Beowulf asked, his tone subdued. "Malak is right. We all have our regrets, even if they weren't enough to initially draw us into that godforsaken corridor."
The atmosphere grew oppressive at the hunter's words. Ivalice had become so twisted throughout its decades of war, poverty and political corruption that living without ever having to make a choice over the greater and lesser evils was nothing more than a passing dream. Innocence was left to the children while their parents were forced to do all the wrong things to raise them the right way. Everyone in this group had faced their horrors, had went for the lesser evil. Everyone had survived long enough to regret.
And now, faced with their inability to save their friends, their regrets only grew.
"I'll go."
The sullen despair that had fallen over the group shattered at this crystal chime of audacity. What made this note so pronounced was not because of who said it, for cheerful Mustadio could be expected to say strange things, but in the depth of confidence in his statement.
Ramza was the first to respond, dragging himself almost painfully out of his initial shock. "Mustadio...I don't think..."
"I can do it," the ponytailed mechanic said brightly, a perverted tone to use within the malefic depths of the cavern. "I'll be back with them before you have to set up camp. Trust me."
"Trust you?" Malak shouted, his voice full of indignation. "You're not any different from us! You've made mistakes just like the rest of us!"
"Woah, easy there. Yeah, I'm not perfect, but I honestly don't regret anything in my life."
"Oh, really? What makes you so damned privileged while the rest of us have to suffer for our decisions?"
Helplessly, Mustadio shrugged. He could understand why Malak was so infuriated; the childhood and early adulthood of the Galthana siblings had been nothing short of a tragedy of errors. "Probably because I'm not like you guys," he replied quietly, "with all of your special powers and knighthood statuses and stuff like that. The rest of Ivalice sees Goug as that place where the lowborn play in the dirt, but we've only been touched by the Fifty Year War for maybe a month. Father's still around, and if it weren't for that whole zodiac stone thing I would've never ended up with you all. So...I'm sorry, I guess."
"But Mustadio," Rafa pleaded, "if what you say is true, then what will you be able to do against three elite knights?"
He shook his head at this. This apparently unannounced order to refer to the missing trio only by their titles of rank or their comradeship was really starting to get to him. It was like everyone was going cold. "It's not like they're just 'three elite knights.' They've got names, personalities, all that good stuff. They're Aggie, Melly, and Cid. They're our friends."
"So, you're going to get through to them using the power of friendship." Malak deadpanned.
"What's wrong with you?" Mustadio asked, disturbed by the Hell Knight's thinly covered hostility. He knew that Malak had very little patience for him normally, but right now he felt like he was on the other end of his sniping skills.
"Fine," Ramza breathed, as if he were trying to distance himself from his decision as quickly as possible. "Reis will lead you, following the dragon's directions. Get them out and meet us back here, and then we can keep going."
For the barest second, Mustadio wanted to ask if that was really a good idea. This place was actively trying to kill them; Ramza was many things, but he wasn't necessarily reckless. Plus, he didn't believe their lost friends would be up to continuing the exploration. But now was not the time to get into that.
"Thanks, Ramza," he said. "It'll probably be a little tough, but I'll get them out. Even if it's the last thing I do," he laughed after this, his little joke.
It was supposed to be a joke.
-End of prologue-
Mustadio needs to be the hero more often. The title comes from the sects of Catholicism that appeared in medieval Europe and nineteenth century America, noted for the fact that their members practiced receiving penance through self-flagellation and non-fatal crucifixions (no nails, just rope).
Burgross, Bugross, Bugroth: According to one long-dead topic about translating Ivalician letters, the ocean around Lionel and to the south of Gallionne is spelled 'Bugroth' on the world map. In that same topic, it was stated that the name 'Agrias' meant 'explosions, though the language was never stated.
Chapter 1: Angel: "I'm sorry, Mustadio, I truly am. You're a great friend, but Izlude won't be happy unless you're dead."