Galaar
"Cecil," asked Rosa for the dozenth time at least, "do you recognize this city at all? Anything?"
He shook his head. That was the most disconcerting thing about this. He had traveled the entire world, and yet this one city, and its enormous stone castle, (which should be impossible to hide from the air; certainly none of the local trees-most of which he did not recognize at all-were up to the task,) were entirely unfamiliar to him. The air had a strange smell to it, not unpleasant but something that he could not describe, as it did not smell like anything he knew, and the people spoke with a strange birdlike accent that was utterly alien to his ears and his experience. It was inconceivable that he had never noticed this place, and equally so that it had all been built within the last three years; some of the houses had clearly been standing for decades or longer. The vines and moss on the walls of the castle, and the noticeable effects of wind and rain, spoke of much longer periods. Hundreds of years, these stones seemed to taunt him. For centuries we have stood, and you knew it not. And nobody they had spoken to knew of Baron, Fabul, or the other great cities of the world. He was almost forced to conclude that they were not on his world at all, but for one thing.
They had heard of Mysidia. Every person they had asked knew of the ancient City of Mages, one of them had even visited it. But his description of it was all wrong; buildings set in the wrong places, a much higher population, and no Crystal of Water. It was, and yet was not, the Mysidia he knew. "Could we be in another time?" asked Rosa.
The utter strangeness of the question forced Cecil out of his reverie. "What do you mean?"
"Haven't you heard of time-travel theories?" he shook his head, and she continued. "You know that mages have limited control over time. In battle, for example, I often use this power to increase our fighting speed. And time flows differently in the realm of the Summoned Monsters than in ours, we know that all too well. Time isn't nearly as rigid as we perceive it."
"Go on..."
"Well, some mages ask if it might not be possible, not only to bend time but to jump through it entirely. I have magic to jump through space from one place to another; they ask could we not move through time the same way."
The very notion made Cecil's head spin. Jumping through time? "No, I've never heard of it. My discipline emphasizes the warrior's arts much more strongly than the magical side."
She giggled. "Your 'discipline'? Your personal preference, you mean. As the world's sole Paladin, you're inventing the discipline as you go along. You'd been a Dark Knight your whole career, and when holy magic was suddenly tossed in your lap as a part of your rebirth, you had no clue what to do with it, so you chose to ignore it as much as you could." It was an old argument, without any anger left in it. She was ashamed at his monumental waste of talent, his almost-total neglect of the healing powers of the Light. He claimed that he was weak in the powers, and that his magic had advanced as far as it could, that he had reached his limit. But she believed that it was simply the product of his own neglect for the magic of the Light, using it instead as a weapon. Using the Holy Light as a weapon, to destroy! If she did not love him, if he were not her husband, and a hero and a king besides, she would have long since hauled him before the Tribunal in Mysidia for his sacrilege. If he would simply apply himself, he could be nearly as strong a mage as she. But the war had taken a terrible toll of them all, and had forced even her to learn to use the Light offensively, in imitation of something she had seen FuSoYa do. And without it, as much as she hated it, they would not have been able to defeat Zeromus. She hated it, but it was true.
Cecil merely chuckled. "Indeed. And my discipline emphasizes the warrior's arts much more strongly than the magical side. But since you know so much about this research, has any real progress been made, or is it all theory?"
"Theory. Well, I thought so. But someone must know how to do it, because we're clearly in the future."
"We are?"
"Well, we can't be in our past, or I'd have heard of this kingdom."
"Nobody here has heard of our modern kingdoms either. Perhaps we're in the far past."
"That or the far future. But it's the only explanation," Rosa replied.
"No it isn't." She could tell that Cecil did not like this idea at all. "We could be on a different world entirely. The Mysidian whale-ship flies between planets, and the second moon was inhabited. Could we be on another entirely? Perhaps colonized by ancients of times long ago, in another whale-ship, and when they arrived they named their first city after their old home."
It was a thought. It would explain many things. But it left one big question unanswered. "But why? Wherever, whenever we are, who brought us here, why, and how did they sneak into our rooms and do all that they did without ever waking us up?" Neither of them were particularly heavy sleepers, another aftereffect of the war.
"I don't know. But I know we'll never find out by talking to each other. Where was that man's house supposed to be?" The guards at the palace would admit nobody who did not have a writ of recommendation signed by the "mayor of the city," most likely an elder or governor of some sort. But the twisting streets of the city were disorienting, and they could not find the house they had been directed to. For the fifth time they stopped a passerby for directions, a middle-aged woman in rather poor dress.
She looked them up and down, gawking at their weapons and armor, and stammered, "right down this street, milord, milady. Three blocks, then turn left. Two blocks, turn right, and 'tis straight in front of ye." They thanked her and she walked off a little too fast, clearly afraid of them. They found the house this time, and called at the door.
After a moment they heard steps from within, and a smaller door set in the top of the door opened. "See here," came an annoyed voice even before the head it belonged to was visible, "why'd you bother disturbing us when we all know the mayor's not-" the man stuck his head through the window-like observation door, looked down at them and stopped speaking in mid-sentence.
"Yes," asked Cecil in the friendliest tone of voice he could muster.
"Beggin' yer pardon, milord, milady, I don't believe I know ye. I was expectin' the rabble of the city, always callin' at the door lookin' for some of his time."
"Could we speak with the mayor?" asked Rosa. "It is a matter of urgency."
"Aye, certainly it is, but he's not here. Left three days ago for Kaaris."
"Kaaris?" asked Cecil. "Where is that? We're... from another land, and are not yet familiar with this one."
"It's nearly due south o' here, milord, followin' the road southward. Right on the sea it is, the largest port in the kingdom."
"How far," asked Rosa.
"Oh, perhaps half a day's journey afoot. Seven hours, no more, on chocobos, less on your mounts of course." He obviously wished to flatter them, thinking of them as some unknown but powerful nobility, and he was not wrong, except that they had no mounts.
"Our chocobos are not with us," Rosa explained. "Do you know where we can hire some? We must see the mayor on a matter of some urgency."
"Of course, milady. Down this road twelve blocks, turn left…"
Eight hours later they rode into Kaaris. The mayor's servant had not known where they should look when they arrived, but his master had said something about the recent problem with monsters (five days ago they had begun to infest the land after an absence of three years!) and so they sought out the local armory. As they found the place and walked in, Cecil glanced about, admiring the wares on display. The weapons and armor were well-crafted, nothing to compare with his own or Rosa's, of course, but of good quality. But the merchant who owned the shop was nowhere to be seen.
He took it as a good sign. Perhaps he was in another room, conversing with the mayor of Galaar. He closed the door, loudly, to alert anyone who might be listening to the presence of a customer. Within a few moments a man walked through the door at the far end of the room. "Can I help you?" He looked to be in his early thirties, tall, and well-muscled, any by the look in his eye, a retired warrior who knew his way around the arms and armor he was selling.
"Yes, we're looking for a man named Tralarre, the mayor of Galaar. Has he been here?"
"He has, good sir, buying up all sorts of weapons for the soldiers, but he left not half an hour ago."
"Where was he going?" asked Rosa.
"Home, with the first shipment."
"The first shipment?" asked Cecil. If that meant what it sounded like, then was Galaar raising up an army? That was the last thing he wanted, to become involved in another war of conquest.
"Oh yes; his order was larger than I can fill for almost a month yet, but he bought what I had and left with it."
"What does he need so many weapons for?"
The merchant looked at him as if he were mad. "For the guards and the soldiers, of course! With the monsters back all of a sudden, nobody feels safe without a good blade anymore."
"I look around and I see a large, prosperous shop," contended Cecil. "Such a large order that you couldn't fill it for a month is enough to begin to equip an army!"
"Exactly! Especially after all that business the last time the monsters came, won't we need a good, powerful one if it happens again?" He shook his head as if this was something everybody knew and understood. Perhaps, thought Cecil, it is.
"Very well. I suppose we must seek him in Galaar, then."
The merchant laughed. "You look wealthy enough, but I'll wager you don't have any airships."
Rosa blinked at the non-sequitur. "An airship?"
"Well you weren't planning on walking there after dark or riding, were you? That's a nice sword your... escort?"
"Husband."
"Your husband has, milady White Mage," he seemed a bit surprised by this bit of news, "but it won't protect the two of you at once from the monsters at night. Only reason Tralarre went this late's because he's got an escort of fifty soldiers, and I still don't give them better than two-thirds odds of surviving the journey."
Rosa smiled indulgently. "We can handle ourselves against monsters."
"Be that as it may, I doubt the Light Warriors themselves would feel safe on that road after dark. Especially if there was only two of them."
"Thank you," Cecil broke in. "We will take that under consideration." They walked out, and Rosa asked him if they should find an inn to spend the night.
"No, I think we'll be all right. We have a fast chocobo and the few monsters I saw on our way here didn't look very frightening."
"See? The monsters weren't any worse after sundown," said Cecil as they rode into sight of the walls of Galaar. The torches set on the walls were burning bright, and their Chocobo, just moments before at the point of collapsing from weariness, took heart at the light. "Just more common." They rode up to the city, only to find the gates closed.
"Whoever our most kind and generous benefactor is who brought us here with our armaments," began Rosa in a voice that dripped sarcasm, "I--"
"Would really like to kill him?" finished Cecil.
"I wish he'd had the common decency to include a tent in the package. We're going to be here for another few hours at least, and I'd like to not have to spend it out in the cold and with monsters all around."
"Can you teleport us inside?"
She sighed. "No, I can't use Exit to enter a place we're outside of."
"Just wondering."
"You know what I'm wondering?"
Cecil braced himself for a verbal onslaught. His wife had been in a terrible mood ever since they woke up this morning. "What?"
"I overheard the people at the Chocobo stables in Kaaris talking about two young ladies. Strangers, they said, babbling about 'the return of magic.'"
Cecil blinked. "Return of magic?"
"I didn't catch much, but apparently these two thought that there was no more magic in the world, and were stunned to find it working now."
"So? A couple of nuts. Too much magic messed up their minds; it's a risk you take, right?" One of the more interesting events that transpired after the defeat of Zeromus was an international incident between Fabul and Mysidia that almost erupted into war. A prince of the royal line who had been born with skill in Black magic and sent to Mysidia to train overextended himself and damaged his mind. He was driven violently insane, and when the White wizards captured him and cut off his magical powers (their standard course of action in such cases,) the prince became so desperate that he killed himself. The King of Fabul, not fully understanding the details, blamed Mysidia, and had the clerics of Toroia not stepped in quickly to act as mediators, the situation could have easily degenerated into combat.
"I'm not sure they were crazies. It just seems too coincidental. What if, in some other time, far in our future, magic somehow ceases to exist? What if two girls from their time have been brought here, just like us, and now find that magic has 'returned?'"
Cecil shrugged. "Could be. I doubt we'll run into them, though. They're back in Kaaris."
"No, they'd been in the stables looking for a Chocobo. They might have come here."
"But if there was no magic in their time, how could they be brought here?"
For once, Rosa had no quick answer. "I... well..." she bowed her head, as if in defeat. "I"m not sure."
Despite the cover of darkness, Cecil tried not to smile at that.
Several hours later the sun began to break over the horizon. Cecil heard the sound of a guard walking along the city's walls. "Ho, the city!" he called. "Open the gates!"
A helmeted head peered over the battlements at them. "You've been out there all night?" he asked suspiciously.
"No, just recently got here on our Chocobo. We need to speak with the Mayor urgently."
A grinding of gears was heard from within, and the great wooden gates began to creak open. "The Mayor's meeting with the King," the guard called down to them. "I'd suggest you rest at the inn, if you've been out by night."
Cecil and Rosa looked at each other, trying not to laugh at the prospect of returning to that innkeeper. "Thank you, good sir!" Cecil called.
As they passed the gate in the thick city wall, Rosa remarked, "you realize that now we have to go to that inn again?"
"Why?"
"It would look very suspicious if we didn't, especially now that the guard specifically pointed it out to us."
Cecil groaned. "You're right. Well, let's get it over with then."
The innkeeper recognized them as they walked in. "You two look like you've been testin' out those weapons of yers all night. Lookin' to apply as guards?"
"No thank you; we just need a bed," said Cecil.
"Very well. That'll be 150 GP."
After they paid, they walked into the back room and lay down on one of the beds. It had been a long night, and they were both asleep within moments.
There were two other occupied beds in the room. Neither Cecil nor Rosa were awake when the inhabitant of one of them, a tall lady with hair so blond it was almost white, awoke. She quickly put on her boots and strapped the strange bladeless sword hilt she had placed under the bed to her waist, then went over and shook the other customer by the shoulder. Her companion, a girl just into her teenage years, gave a start, but the older woman motioned for silence. In a whisper she said, "There are other clients here. We don't want to disturb them." The girl nodded, retrieved her own shoes and a magical rod from beneath the bed, and the two of them left the inn together.