Penitentes

by trimurti

Inside the Deep Dungeon, there is a corridor that lures in those steeped in regret. Some of Ramza's finest warriors are trapped there, and the only person who can save them is...Mustadio?

2. 1: Angel

Penitentes

A Final Fantasy Tactics fanfic

By Tenshi no Ai

(C) Square Enix

Chapter 1: Angel

A man and a woman strolled together, hand-in-hand, on a lovely romp through the Deep Dungeon. If that wasn't romantic enough, a massive adult dragon was somewhere in the vicinity, grunting and growling with every breath just like a true chaperone. There were no enemies around to butt in, and Mustadio was beginning to think that this was really a very pleasant journey. He had taken his gloves off a while ago, and Reis' hand was small and soft in his.

"I'm a little worried," she murmured once they were far away from their group. Mustadio turned his head towards the direction that her voice was coming from.

"Oh yeah? What about?"

"Did you notice something...different with everyone?"

"Um...well, I think so," he answered slowly. He had noticed, but now that he was away from them he started to wonder if it really hadn't been his imagination. "It's probably because we're all stressed," he tried to assure her.

He could hear Reis sigh, and then a soft rustle as her hair brushed back and forth along her back in a rapid motion. "I would like to believe that, but everyone is so strange now. In their words, their mannerisms...they seem darker."

"Yeah, well, it's plenty dark in here," he joked, trying to ease the melancholy from the normally reserved woman. She did laugh, though it was forced.

"I would've thought that Ramza considered us all as his friends."

"You caught that too, huh?" Mustadio said before realizing that he had just admitted to having the same fears. The acknowledgment hung in the dead air between them, crystallizing the quiet desperation they had regarding their friends.

"What do you think could be wrong with them?"

"It could be just being cooped up in this place. I mean, don't get me wrong, I really like some of the guns we're finding down here, but this place is really creepy."

"I agree. The farther we go, the more something's been bothering me. It's a buzzing in my head, and it's becoming louder and louder."

Mustadio shrugged at this. He hadn't felt the same thing. "Maybe it's a headache?"

"No...it's a message I can't decode. But I wonder if everyone else hasn't already figured it out."

"What's that, a message telling them to become more angry and despondent?"

"Maybe..." The dragoner exhaled loudly, forcing the air through her teeth. "Maybe it's the corridor. They might not be regretful enough to be drawn there, but more than suitable enough to hear the message of this place."

"But it's just a place," Mustadio argued. He had faith that really strange things happened all the time, but to believe that the Deep Dungeon was talking to his friends was a wee bit too much of a stretch for him. "I think this place is trying to kill us, sure. But I thought that the corridor was being controlled by something else."

She didn't say anything for a while. The sounds of their boots thudded dully. Nothing ever seemed to echo in the Deep Dungeon other than the death cries of the fallen. "Beowulf is usually rational," she started, "and he prefers not to get into the thick of the battle. He doesn't need to, now that he's remembered all of his magic from his days as a Temple Knight.

"But he's been changing his style the deeper we go. Now he's charging around like Miss Meliadoul, except that Miss Meliadoul has always jumped into the fray of battle. That's her style. He doesn't need to do that, his magic works on everyone."

"I, um, I don't really know about that. I stay even farther away - guns, gotta love them. But..." The mechanic tried his hardest to say something that would comfort his friend, racking his brain like he was tossing aside junk to find that one tool in his father's workshop. "Has he said anything about it?"

"He thinks he's being brave," she said, her tone molded around her words like a cast of sadness, though there was a surprising amount of bitterness cracking through. "He's proud of himself now, just because he feels comfortable in the heat of battle. This is a man who regrets all the things he's done for the Church, and now he's happy he can walk up to someone and end their life?" As those words began to sink into both of their minds, she continued in a small voice, "This place is scaring me. I don't know him here."

Mustadio bit his lip. The grief in her last sentences was so palpable, so real and aching that it was like he had been shot with one of his special sniping skills. There was a numbness in his mind, edged with the same growing hysteria - what can I do? "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice serious and low. "We'll do something about it, I promise. We'll drag them out, you and me and Melly, Aggie and Cid. After what they've gone through, they'll be more than willing to help escape. That's a good idea, right?"

There was a soft exhale, and then, "Thank you."

He smiled. Crisis averted. He thought it was sweet how concerned she was for her lover, especially in this dank and miserable place. It was so nice to not have to hear more talk about continuing to fight on. Actually, he mused, other than Worker 8 and myself, she's the first person who hasn't been screaming for blood...and Worker 8 doesn't really count. "Hey Reis, why aren't you affected by this place?" he asked casually.

She didn't respond immediately. "Ah...the monsters here aren't affected either," she finally murmured.

"...Oh." Then the full gravity of her words weighed in. "Oh. That's pretty handy, having an immunity to this place."

"It isn't a complete immunity." The words were laced with pain, and the mechanic could've smacked himself for what he had just implied.

"Hey, I didn't mean to say it like I thought you were less human or something - "

"I understand. It's fine," she said, but she still sounded troubled. Mustadio bit back a sigh. He never had been good at talking to women - even taken women.

They continued their stroll, but any lingering pleasantness had been drained from it a while ago.

-0-

The corridor was a narrow hallway snuggled within one of the turns of the labyrinth, oddly alit with a faint ice-blue aura. When Mustadio wondered aloud why he hadn't noticed that strange light, Reis had to remind him that the exit out of this area was closer to where they had originally entered; they never had the chance to explore the rest of this section of the Deep Dungeon.

"Well, it's not like we really wanted to," Mustadio muttered in reply, staring into the eerie light. It seemed to be pulsing in time with his own heartbeat, and he had to shake his head to distance himself from those thoughts. "We came down here just because of the treasure. Anything to help save Ramza's sister, right?" He kicked at the nearest wall and heard some loose pebbles scatter onto the ground before he turned to face Reis. The two were close enough to the light that he could see her face, highlighted by the ethereal glow. Her face was drawn, her brows furrowed. "Something wrong?"

Glancing at him, her pensive expression only deepened. "Everything is wrong here," she whispered, barely moving her lips. "I do have a regret...I'm sorry, but I shouldn't accompany you inside." He couldn't help but watch her glance towards the entrance of the corridor, her lips pursed together in one thin line as delicate strands of apprehension lined the corners of her eyes and mouth.

"Are you okay?" Taking a few steps forward, he reached out to her, but she jerked away from his hand, covered once again by his thick work glove.

"I'm fine." The statement was said in an expulsion of air, and by the way she was looking at anything but him he could tell that everything was very much Not Fine. Running her hands through her hair, she gave him something of a reproachful glare. "Don't waste your time with me. Our friends need you right now."

Confused, Mustadio crossed his arms and frowned. Nothing was making sense anymore, not even the woman before him. "It's not a waste of time. I mean, you're my friend too. If I can, I'd like to help."

Her light eyes, the color indistinguishable in the light of the corridor, seemed to soften at his words. "You're such a nice boy," she said in a gentle tone, "but I'll be fine. I'll wait out here for you."

He grinned, relieved that her friendly demeanor had reasserted itself. "Come on, you can't call me a 'boy' when you barely look older than me." Turning away, he faced the mouth of the narrow alleyway and stared deep into the light. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He nodded to himself; he could do this. His arms uncrossed as the stress left his body. "Okay, I'm going."

"Godspeed, Mustadio," Reis whispered, and even though he didn't believe in a master deity he still appreciated her words. Nobody else in their party had thought to grace him with such wishes.

When he entered the corridor he noticed that the light was as warm as a mother's caress, though he had never experienced such a touch. His mother had died while giving birth to him. A sudden prodding of guilt chipped into his heart, just as if he was working away to free an ore from one of the drifts of his hometown. The feeling was acute, painfully so, and he had to stop to compose himself. He had never felt guilty about that fact of his life before; his own father had made it a point to assure him that he should never feel as if her death was his fault, even if it was...

"I don't have time for this," he said loudly. Here, the walls and ceiling were more compressed, and he was able to listen to his own words crash and rebound against the gray stone walls that surrounded him -

time

this

i

don'thave

and what he heard made him frown. "Way to twist my words around," he grumbled, looking around in a pretense of nonchalance. Involuntarily, he shuddered as he accidently glanced at one of the myriad light sources of the corridor: the crystalized essence of a long dead warrior hovering against the wall. The light of the quintessence was casting a sickly blue sheen on the bones that lay underneath it. Slowly, Mustadio looked from the innocently shimmering crystal to beyond, where more crystals glimmered in the distance. They looked like they had been arranged just so, innumerable essences nicely spaced out from the last and pressed up against the walls, the discarded bodies beneath each one reduced to stripped bones and rags that once constituted clothing.

How many people have died here? Mustadio thought, his throat going dry. How many people's essences are here, just lighting up this place? Shit...that's scary.

Clenching his hands by his sides, he grimly made his way forward, his resolve renewed by the light of the fallen's essences. They hovered and spun, souls frolicking free of their human shells. Bumps rose along Mustadio's arms even as he tried his damnedest to keep his eyes forward, fear and disgust roiling about in his stomach. All of the Deep Dungeon shared the unusually muggy, stale air, and in the corridor the effect was magnified to the point that sweat began to trickle down his neck. He had the fair skin of the typical Ivalician and his face reddened from the heat and the continued physical exertion, a drinking blush that just wouldn't fade away with sobriety. The rubber soles of his heavy work boots scraped against the mottled gray stone as he continued onwards. As far as he could tell, he was the only living creature surrounded by the imposing walls, but he still kept a hand near the gun resting in his hip holster.

It was a cold comfort.

He continued onward for what seemed like forever, hearing nothing more than his heartbeat pounding desperately in his ears and his steady, plodding steps. A low murmur in the distance caught the attention of his sensitive ears, and he began to walk faster, grateful for the sign of someone else existing in this forsaken corridor. The low murmur became clearly defined words, and the first clear bits of conversation that he picked up made him stop his determined charge.

"You betrayed me. How could you?"

"You don't understand! Izlude, please listen. Please."

Izlude? But he died in Riovanes...I saw his body and everything. No matter how much he clung to that one bit of knowledge, he couldn't mistake those voices. Meliadoul had an indelicate alto, low and slightly harsh, her Ivalician marked with the very precise, modulated accent of someone educated by the Church. And Izlude sounded much the same, both compared to his sister as well as Mustadio's memories of fighting him at Orbonne, a smidgen lower than a tenor as long as the barely disguised anger trembed through his words.

"Why should I? All you've done is lie to me! Telling me that Father is a demon...how could you say that? How can you even think that? How dare you slander him when you're his favorite!"

"What? Listen...listen to me! At one point in his life Dad loved the both of us equally, but now he's been taken over by Lucavi. He isn't 'Vormav' anymore, he's just a pawn of the devil!"

"Is that what your heretic friends have been telling you? The people you left the Church for? How can you say you're my sister when you've turned away from everything in our lives? How can I trust you when you've joined Ramza and his heretics to destroy Ivalice?"

"That's not...it's not true..."

Mustadio ran towards the voices, not understanding what he was running into but sure that he needed to be there. Meliadoul's last words were so full of anguish that he was hurting for her, just as Izlude's accusing tone disturbed him. It just wasn't right that the same young man who talked about saving Ivalice with such brutal honesty was the same one who now systematically slammed down anything his sister said.

And then the mechanic reached them, and understood.

The corridor was wider here, a welcome escape from the claustrophobic nightmare that comprised its earlier part. Meliadoul knelt directly between the two walls, her back to him and her head tilted up, as if she were trying to find a glimpse of heaven within the bowels of hell. Before her hovered the ghostly image of Izlude, armor and all, distinct despite the wispy grayish-blue lines that formed him. The essences that brought light unto this place bathed the dead Shrine Knight in their unholy glow, casting upon him an aureole the same cold blue of the geomancy technique of summoning demon fire from the common objects of a city.

Having lived in Goug, Mustadio had seen - and had been forced to fight - the many sorts of skeletons and ghosts that haunted Zigolis Swamp. The popular theory was that the monsters that died and had their essences left out for too long turned into such beings. Humans, of course, were too good to have their immortal souls tainted in such a way, and so their essences simply lingered above their mortal shells forever and ever - an uninspired purgatory. Such spiritual ideas were beyond Mustadio's comprehension, but as he gazed upon the image of an opponent he had fought a lifetime ago, he thought that this was what truly happened to the human spirit after death.

The blank, empty sockets that comprised Izlude's eyes focused on him, and the mechanic was sure that his insides were liquefying under that dead gaze. "Well, your friend has arrived," the specter spat in undisguised disgust, "so I suppose you'll be leaving now, just like always. You always were happy to leave me behind."

Meliadoul stood, turned, her eyes widening as she saw Mustadio. "Oh...wh-what're you doing here, Mustadio?" she asked, and if the engineer didn't know any better he would've thought that she sounded wary, almost as if she didn't want him here.

"Well, I'm here to save you," Mustadio said, trying so hard to grin and pretend that Izlude's ghost wasn't scaring him. "We're waiting for you."

"Yes, they're waiting for you," the specter mimicked bitterly.

The look on Meliadoul's face was one of brutal indecision before she turned around, her back once again to Mustadio. "I'm not going," she declared, "not when I've finally found my brother again. I'm not going to leave him alone ever again."

Slowly, Mustadio reached up and tugged at his ponytail, scratching at his nape while he struggled to figure out just what he should do. "Well, uh, Melly, I hate to break it to you but...he's not alive. That's just his spirit."

"You think I don't know that?" she raged, spinning around to face him again, her pretty face twisted and ravaged by her sudden emotional spike. "He was supposed to come back! He wasn't supposed to die so far away from me..." She turned away, her voice cracking under the strain of her fervent words. "He wasn't supposed to die."

"It was your fault," Izlude told his sister, "I could've been prepared, could've been good enough. But with you around, I knew I could never compare. Father would never respect me like he does you. There was no point in trying. That's why I died.

"It's because of you, sister."

"Bullshit!" Mustadio suddenly exploded. He had been overcome by his fear momentarily, but after hearing such hateful, manipulative words his anger quickly reigned over his self-preservation. "Like hell it's her fault! That's your own sister you're blaming! What about your role in your death? I thought you were supposed to be some pure hearted fighter, not a whiny boy who would hurt his own sister - "

"He has every right to hate me!" Meliadoul shouted, her eyes gleaming wet as she completely faced the mechanic. "I failed him in the end! I should've protected him, I should've raised his needs over my own, whatever it took so that he wouldn't have died on the first mission he led!"

The Izlude-specter shook his head in a display of despondency. "Do you see now? This is what you've allied yourself with." He grinned toothlessly. "Stay with me, sister. Promise me. You've ruined me, but I can forgive you if you promise to stay here."

Turning around, her voice was nothing short of adoring as the Divine Knight stared up at the ghost of her brother. "I promise, Izlude. I'll never leave you again."

"Melly..." Mustadio pleaded, taking a step forward. She didn't acknowledge him, and something deep inside of him slunk away at this final rejection.

"So now that you've promised, you must do something for me," the ghost announced brightly. "Kill him, sister. Kill that heretic who thought he could separate us."

As Mustadio stared at the ghost in shock, Meliadoul flinched. "I...is that necessary? Even if he's misguided, he's still my friend."

"I thought so," the shade retorted. "You're just lying to me like always. Your word never was any good, but I couldn't help but fall into that old habit of foolishly believing in you. A heretic means more to you than I ever did."

"No, no, that's not it at all!" She held her hands up in a placating gesture. "Please...if it's what you really want then...alright, I'll do it. Just...don't say that. I want you to trust me." Trembling, Mustadio watched as his friend turned to face him, her expression full of sadness. Without a word, she reached up with her right hand, drawing the heavy Save the Queen from its scabbard. A memory fluttered in his mind's eye, one where she told him what that sword represented to knights in general and her family specifically.

-I wield my sword only for the right cause. Once I draw it, it's a promise that can never be broken. That's what my holy knighthood is, a duty to keep my word-

"...Melly?" Mustadio whispered. Every instinct in his body was shrieking at him to RUN! This wasn't how it was supposed to turn out; all he thought he'd have to do was to enter the corridor and collect his friends. There was no clause that stated that his friends would try to inflict grievous injury upon his person or, God forbid, actually attempt to murder him. "You...you don't want to do this," he continued, watching like the captive audience he was as she clenched the hilt of her sword.

Smiling sadly, she said, "I'm sorry, Mustadio, I truly am. You're a great friend, but Izlude won't be happy unless you're dead."

"Hurry up," the ghost muttered irritably.

Meliadoul nodded once, lowering her head so that her hood shadowed her expressive eyes. Fumbling, Mustadio pulled out his gun and pointed it at her, his hands shaking as he aimed it at her head. It wasn't supposed to happen like this! he wailed internally, the muzzle of his gun refusing to steady even as he swallowed several gulps of stale air. Intellectually he knew that, in a battle between a sword and a gun, the gun would always win. This was exacerbated by the Blast Gun he clutched now, the strongest long-distance weapon in existence, capable of hurling down lightning just as well as Ramuh himself. There was no way he could lose.

But intellect never made an exception for emotion.

She charged at him, and all he could do in his panic was dodge as her sword whistled through the air, the blade gleaming in holy anger as it swung towards his chest. Ducking as the next arc of silver flew towards his head, he quickly moved out of melee range, not bothering to aim at her again. He couldn't, even if his life depended on it. "Melly, stop it!" he shouted, hoping that his words could reach any clinging vestiges of reason. "What's the point of this? I don't want to fight you, and if you'd really wanted to kill me you wouldn't be swinging your sword at me." He smiled in relief as she paused, her eyes voicing all the sorrow she couldn't say. "We're good friends, aren't we?"

"...Of course," she replied. "I shouldn't, I know...you're such a good friend, but I'm hearing him here, inside my head...I can't..." Lowering her head, her shoulders began to shake uncontrollably as she whispered in a pitiful tone, "I don't want to do this, but if I don't Izlude will never forgive me...you don't know how much that hurts...he's my only sibling and Dad killed him but to him I'm just as guilty and...ah...my head...s-stop...!"

Mustadio took a step forward, wanting nothing more than to comfort his tormented friend, but a flicker of movement made him pause. Izlude's ghost was quivering, becoming more immaterial as the shade drifted over Meliadoul's body. "You're making this so difficult, sister of mine," he said just as the shape of his body dissipated, becoming nothing more than thick clouds of smoke.

And, as Mustadio watched in horror, the plumes of smoke plunged into Meliadoul's body.

She screamed, throwing her head back, her face describing the pure agony she was going through more than words ever could. Her precious sword clattered to the ground as she clutched at her head, tearing her hood off and raking her golden fingers down her short hair. The shrieks and cries that were shredding through her throat reached a crescendo of pain as black energy as impenetrable as the darkness of the main dungeon surrounded her in a dome that raced out from her, its epicenter. Mustadio barely jumped away from it as he covered his ears in a vain effort to keep her tortured cries from damaging his mind, and he tumbled onto the ground as the black dome began to shrink back into the Divine Knight.

On the outside, she looked no different than usual as she loosely let her hands fall from her head. He watched her warily as she blinked and shook her head, letting the short, dark brown locks scatter and fall around her face. To the mechanic, if it weren't for her darker, differently styled hair and the dress under her surcoat, she might have looked like a replacement for the brother she had lost.

Then she smiled, a cruel smirk that curled one side of her lip in a devilish manner as her eyes glittered with malice, and he knew that his friend was no longer herself.

"My, what a delicious mind. Only one insecurity, but it's more than enough for me." A wince crossed Meliadoul's face before her hand reached under her breastplate and casually yanked out a sparkling piece of jewelry, tossing it aside. Mustadio looked at it, noticing that it was a necklace with the symbol of the Glabados Church, a circle with three points forming an inverted triangle to signify the complete union of God, Ajora and humanity. A chill ran down his spine as he realized the significance of 'Meliadoul' throwing away such a relic.

"Get out of her body," he snarled, standing up and aiming the gun at her head. With a skeptical look, the Divine Knight shook her head in disbelief.

"That's funny. You couldn't shoot her before, what makes you think you can now? Or is this a matter of 'burning down the village in order to save it'?"

Mustadio pursed his lips, acutely aware of a drop of sweat trickling down over his forehead, gathering speed as it rolled down the bridge of his nose. "Get. Out."

"You don't seem to understand," the Divine Knight said, smiling in condescension. "I can't."

"You'd better," he growled, finding stores of courage in himself that he never knew existed.

The Divine Knight knelt down and picked up the discarded sword, handling it almost like she had never touched a sword before. With one hand she swung it back and forth like a pendulum, giggling all the while. "How wonderfully strong! A true goat, stronger than a woman has the right to be...well, except for that cute dragoner." She giggled again, too girlishly to work with the vocal cords of the body. The sound was grating, but Mustadio pushed that aside when he realized what the spirit inside Meliadoul had just alluded to.

"What did you do to Reis?"

"Nothing yet." The answer was cloying, disgusting. "When I can finally harvest these delicious souls, it'll be easy to make that unnatural creature succumb. Even now, I'm working on the friends you left behind." She smiled darkly. "And you can't do a thing about it, Mustadio."

Mustadio fired.

With supernatural speed, the Divine Knight twisted away from the storm-filled bullet and dashed at the mechanic, wielding the sword of true duty and honor. He barely dodged the first strike flying towards his neck, and as the silver blade raced towards his face he blocked it with the side of his gun. The clash of enchanted metal against ancient technology was horrendous, and the metallic clap of thunder disoriented Mustadio, who had the misfortune of possessing sensitive hearing. Normally he would've had his earplugs in beforehand, but he hadn't realized how dangerous the excursion could become. He winced and pulled away, stumbling back as his sense of balance was severely compromised from the clash. The Divine Knight continued to press her advantage, with Mustadio awkwardly weaving away from the heavily telegraphed swings. Apparently, the shade did not automatically pick up the skills of its host, which was one thing Mustadio was grateful about.

Swerving and swaying like a drunk, he found himself tripping over his own feet in his desperation to stay alive. The Divine Knight grinned as she held the Save the Queen up, swinging it downward with the force of the guillotine. Scrambling backwards as best as he could, Mustadio nearly screamed in blind terror when the blade smashed against the dense rock of the corridor, right between his legs. Without thinking, he aimed the gun at one of the Divine Knight's legs and fired, striking her with an electric current that rendered her lower limbs numb. A scream ripped from her throat as her head rocked back from the force of the bullet, and Mustadio's eyes widened as he saw the smoke that entered her burst out around her head.

I get it...psychic shock will force it out!

Even as he began to preemptively celebrate his discovery, the Divine Knight snarled at him, "Goddammit, you fucking son of a bitch! You can't stop me! The longer I stay in a body, the more it belongs to me!"

Mustadio sniffed in disdain at hearing the vulgarities flow from Meliadoul's mouth. The woman never uttered even the most mild of curses, and he'd witnessed her whapping Malak for daring to use the Lord's name in vain. To hear her now just made him even more willing to do whatever it took to save her. "That's not much of an insult," he muttered, standing up and pointing his gun at her again, "I mean, I don't even have a mom."

"That's right," she agreed, a malicious light alit in her dark eyes. "She's dead because of you."

He paused for just a moment, a buzzing like that of Lionel yellowcoats droning in his mind, before he shook the noise away. In that moment, the Divine Knight raised her sword and screamed, "Demolish weapons with fury! Hellcry Sword!" Hearing those dreaded words, Mustadio did the only thing he could think of.

He threw his gun away.

The cold steel energy created by the Divine Knight's focused aura, her sword the catalyst, surged up from underneath the mechanic, the asymmetrical blade jutting straight through his body. It fairly tingled through his body, painfully ticklish, and he wanted to scream with laughter. When the energy disappeared, he found that his body felt itchy, but other than that he was fine. He exhaled heavily before glancing at the body of his friend. She was livid, the dark flush on her face heightened by the milky glow the light of the essences was giving to her exposed skin. He saw her raising her sword again and quickly backed out of her range, going straight for his gun. Aiming it at her chest, he fired again.

Like all the other magic guns, the Blast Gun was prone to being fickle about the strength of the magic that pulsed through its shots. At this point, he was just hoping for a level one spell, just something to sting her but not injure Meliadoul's body permanently. Instead, the lightning frayed from all directions, with the Divine Knight as its sole trajectory. She screamed as massive amounts of electricity pumped through her nervous system and danced along her gold armor, enhancing the magic to excruciating amounts. This time the smoke jettisoned out of her body and Mustadio, chilled by the intricate lines of misery and torment along her face, shouted, "I fought Izlude, Melly! He's not cruel to his enemies, so why the hell would he be to his only sibling!"

Meliadoul dropped to her knees, so overcome by the pain that she looked as if she were going to crumple right then and there. The menacing cloud of smoke reformed to the image of Izlude, aglow and as angelic-looking as ever, even with the absences of eyes. "Sister?"

Her eyes were transfixed to one spot as she hissed in discomfort. "H-hey, Izlude..." she whispered, her tone affectionate, "what's my name?"

Stunned by the question, Mustadio raised an eyebrow. The ghostly image of Izlude seemed to feel the same way. "Meliadoul?"

She chuckled weakly before she spun around, one hand outstretched. "I cast you out in the name of the Lord! Begone, unholy spirit!" Izlude's image dissipated instantly, leaving nothing more than a cloud of smoke. Wisps of it shrank away as Meliadoul stood, the golden relic shining between two fingers. Finally, the smoke darted down the path, fleeing from the golden knight.

Mustadio was pole-axed. "I, uh...didn't know that those things really had holy power..." he muttered. As an atheist, it shocked him to see that there might have been something to the gibberish the priests spouted, even though the saint himself was corrupt.

"It doesn't. It's just a symbol." Slowly, Meliadoul lowered her hand, but kept facing where the spirit had disappeared. "It's the faith a person has in that image that really matters."

He watched her, but she didn't move from her position. The meaning of her words wasn't lost on him. "That wasn't your brother, just a defiled image. He - Izlude's probably up in, um, heaven. Y'know, just relaxing and stuff." What do people do in heaven, anyway? Mustadio wondered.

"Yeah, I'm sure he is." Bowing her head, she sighed. "I wanted to believe that Izlude was with me again, no matter what he was saying. I mean, you never know how much of what that spirit said was actually true. He could've hated me, or something. That thing was speaking both out here and in my mind, and I was compelled to listen to it. I couldn't not listen.

"But then he wasn't talking to me at all. And just now, I was staring at that revenant...and all my doubts about if I had smothered him and if I had really been a good sister to him were staring right back at me. So," she laughed, forcing the air out of her throat in rhythmic hacks, "I let myself fall into that mindframe. I let that become reality, instead of who he really was."

"But you broke away."

"Thanks to you. Sorry I tried to kill you, by the way."

"Oh, no problem." Shrugging, Mustadio couldn't help but continue to be concerned as Meliadoul continued to kneel on the ground. "So, what is your name?"

Her head lowered even further. "Izlude would call me 'Melia'. He said that it sounded really pretty, so it fit me. The only time he would use my full name was when he was abnormally upset with me."

Struggling to find something cheerful and appropriate to say, Mustadio finally came up with a diamond in a field of mud. "I guess he never really called you by your full first name, right?"

"No, not really..." she breathed. As Mustadio racked his brain for something else to say, anything to fill the stale air, her shoulders began to quake. That was when he decided to do the most appropriate thing he could think of.

He said nothing at all.

-End to Chapter One-

On the record, I really enjoyed writing this chapter. I haven't felt like that in a while, so I'll probably finish this miniseries first before returning to UFC. There's just something really invigorating about the B-class premise of this story, and I hope you all feel the same. Of course, if you do or if you don't, please don't hesitate to tell me!

- By the way, the corridor is in the TIGER section of the DD.

Reviewers!

Trueborn Chaos, I'm happy you liked the Deep Dungeon's story. Backstories are fun! Myself, I always thought that Worker 8 was more round than tall, especially since his uncharged form is a ball. That's kinda useful, actually.
(At Zirekile Falls)
Ramza: We need to get down there to get to Araguay Woods, but Worker 8 can't enter water!
Mustadio: No problem! (takes out the Aquarius stone from Worker 8, who reverts into a ball) Hey, help me push him off this cliff!
Ramza: ...
The problem with Worker 8 following Mustadio is a very simple one: Worker 8 regards only Ramza as its master, which can only be Not Good for delicate things like talking down elite knights. Besides, it takes away from the 'Mustadio as the lone hero' motif. So, yeah.

TobyKikami, you really thought the prologue had some creepiness in it? Dude...now I feel proud of myself. Thanks! But yeah, the preview really works, doesn't it?
Something I wanted to comment on in your last review of UFC: I know the parody you're talking about! My favorite one's the 'Olan recites gothic poetry', or, 'how reading from a book hurts the enemies'. So, are you a poster or lurker at GameFAQs?

gleenthefrog, nice to meet you! Glad you like it, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Cake Dance (that's an awesome name! Is it anything like a rain dance, where instead you dance a mystic ritual for cake, or what?), I'm very happy that the prologue affected you enough to believe the rest of the story will be good.
I read that 'Agrias' meant 'explosions' in a translation topic on the FFT General board at GameFAQs. Unfortunately, that topic was murdered by some asshat, and a recent reraising of that topic seems to have died as well. I'm not sure of the veracity of that claim, but I do know that the name comes from a type of butterfly from South America.

Chapter 2: Martyr: "Goodbye Mustadio, Meliadoul. You were both useful allies and I truly appreciate that. However, if over your dead bodies I can become strong enough to save the princess, then it is a sacrifice I am willing to make."