There was no difference, this deep in the jungle, between night and day. The unrelenting darkness had smothered any light that might have attempted to breach the canopy; it might have been noon, but it might just as well have been midnight.
Penelo knew only that she had jerked awake at a strange rustling sound, but the fire had long since burned itself out and she could see nothing beyond perfect black. For a heart-stopping moment she experienced a frisson of utter panic at finding herself helpless, sightless, and unarmed – and then she heard an unintelligible murmur, followed by a soft rumble of a snore.
She choked on a gurgle of laughter, rooting around in the darkness for the bag she was sure she'd left nearby. Her fingers found the discarded torch first, stuck right through the strap of her bag, and she set it across her lap as she jammed her hands into the bag searching for the small, square box of matches. It took her a few attempts to strike the match against the box with enough force to light it, and she singed her fingertips in lighting the torch – but at last there was light.
Light enough to see the vague outline of Balthier's sleeping form. He made a rough sound of displeasure in his throat, tossing himself in the other direction, ostensibly to protest the intrusion of the light into his cozy world of darkness.
She busied herself with collecting a bit of tinder and twigs that littered the ground, gathering them into a small pile atop the remains of last night's fire, and setting them ablaze with the torch. The additional light revealed nothing particularly disturbing; there were no new tracks to suggest that any creatures had invaded their camp while they slept. Of course, there was still the corpse of the massive snake ringing the clearing – it might have posed too great a risk for any creature that might have happened by to risk a closer look.
It appeared as though Balthier had risen at some point during the night; he was no longer merely blanketed by his bedroll, but within it. Penelo had not cared to take the risk of moving him while he had been so ill, and so she had only rolled it out on top of him to shield him from the chill in the air. She supposed she should have given a thought to his wellbeing – and her own – before she had upended one of their water canteens over his head. She only hoped it hadn't soaked his bedroll as well as his shirt.
They had three canteens remaining between them; enough to last another day if they did not manage to come across a source of clean, drinkable water – but she didn't imagine she would trust it, even if they did find something.
She had no idea how far they had left to travel or where their path would take them. Still, it was best not to linger longer than necessary. With limited water and potions in short supply, they needed to make all haste.
She crossed the few feet to where Balthier's bedroll lay and dropped down to her knees, reaching out to grab his shoulder and shake him awake – and paused, arm extended. His bandaged arm was thrown over his eyes, his opposite arm draped across his chest. Which was bare. Bare? Well, she had doused him with water; she supposed that it shouldn't be all that surprising.
She didn't know why she was hesitating; it wasn't as if she'd never seen a man's chest before. Good gods, Vaan had gone years with only a vest. She wasn't even particularly convinced he had a shirt to his name. It was just that she had never seen Balthier in such a state before, had never even considered it. She'd had an image of him in her mind, and he had always been both fully dressed and immaculately groomed. Somehow it was disquieting to see him now neither; even in the soft glow of the firelight she could see the shadow of a day's stubble shading his jaw. His hair was in disarray, strands clinging to his forehead in clumps, held by mingled sweat and dust. He had never looked less himself – and he had never acted less himself.
That was the trouble; she had thought that she had known him, and yet…he wasn't quite the Balthierthat she remembered. The Balthier she remembered would never have kissed her.
No! Nothing good would come of dwelling on that; he'd been out of his mind with fever and poison. It addled the mind, everyone knew that. He couldn't be held responsible for actions taken while suffering illness. It was unlikely he'd even recall it, wasn't it? No harm done in the long run, and best forgotten altogether.
She blew out a harsh breath, steeled her nerves, and grabbed his shoulder to shake him.
He made a sound that could only be considered a groan of dismay, swatting ineffectually at her hand. "Blast it, Fran – five more bloody minutes."
Perplexed, Penelo jerked her hand away. The moment she released him, he shifted in the bedroll, twisting onto his stomach, where he buried his face in his folded arms and immediately resumed that low, rhythmic snore.
She shook him again.
His voice was muffled as he groaned, "Haven't you any mercy in your soul?" One hand emerged from beneath his head to reach around, searching for something to drag over his head to block out the world. His fingers found only moss and dirt; his head popped up as he muttered, "What the devil –"
Penelo stared at him as if she were quite sure he'd lost his mind. After a moment's hesitation, during which she nibbled her lower lip in a valiant effort to refrain from commenting on his behavior, at last she said, "We should get moving."
Still in the fuzzy, sleep-clouded twilight stage of wakefulness, he flopped onto his back and asked, "I don't suppose there's coffee?"
He had packed a small amount of it, in what Penelo had taken for an overly optimistic attitude. "We can't waste the water," she said. "You'll have to make do as is." And she experienced a twinge of guilt, for she hadn't given a single thought to wasting water when she'd dumped half a canteen over his head last evening.
Balthier hauled himself up to sit, scrubbing at his eyes as if even the soft firelight stung. The top layer of the bedroll fell to his waist, and Penelo skittered backwards in what Balthier felt was a rather unnecessary display of outraged modesty.
"You'll want to turn around," he said, extending his arms over his head in a sinuous stretch. The sore muscles in his back pulled and relaxed; he let out a satisfied sigh. "I don't make a habit of sleeping clothed, and my trousers are –" He gestured to a low-hanging vine half-hidden in the shadows that wreathed their campsite, " – over there."
With no small amount of amusement, he watched varying emotions flicker across her face; incredulity, shock, displeasure. He was delighted to note that he absolutely could make out a blush even in the low light. Perhaps it was just that she blushed so very well, her fair skin burned with it.
Her mouth dropped open, her jaw working as she struggled to find an appropriate response. She drew in a breath and hissed, "Really? We're in the godsdamned jungle!"
He shrugged. "Who's to see, then?"
"Me," she cried.
"Well, you certainly will if you intend to remain there gawking like a schoolgirl."
The acerbic comment had a galvanizing effect; her mouth shut with a snap and she scrambled to her feet and away from him, one hand shading her eyes just on the off-chance that he decided to rise before she had fully averted her gaze.
Thank the gods her bag and bedroll were in the opposite direction of where he'd hung his trousers; she shuffled over to her belongings and dropped again to her knees, busying herself with gathering them all up and packing them away.
Not so very far behind her, she was intensely aware of the sound of Balthier rising and striding – naked – across the clearing to retrieve his discarded clothing. The sound of fabric rustling as it was collected burned her ears, unnaturally loud in the stillness of the jungle. What was taking him so long? Had he even bothered to begin dressing, or was he taking his sweet time to taunt her? She risked a tiny peek over her shoulder.
He'd donned his pants, at least, though he was still shaking the wrinkles out of his shirt. And he was looking straight at her as if he had known that she would be tempted.
"Ha," Balthier crowed, and the single syllable was so full of smug satisfaction that Penelo's palms itched to smack his smirk right off of his face.
She fastened her bedroll to her bag and growled, "I was only wondering what was taking you so long." But somehow the words rang false even to her own ears. She just…hadn't expected him to be built so differently than Raen. Raen had been soft – not fat, but totally lacking in any sort of defined musculature, owing to his indolent lifestyle. He had never had to work for his living, never had to lift a hand in manual labor, and it showed. Balthier, in turn, was lean. His skin stretched taut over cords of muscle, with nary an ounce of fat to spare. He had the sleek look of a predator, fit and active.
Raen would have despised Balthier, she realized. Balthier had honestly earned the reputation and image that Raen had so wanted to cultivate, but had never been willing to put any work into. He had always been searching for the path of least resistance, spending his time steeped in resentment for those who had surpassed him.
The crunch of a footstep behind her made her jump; she whirled, her fist clenched around her sword.
"If you're quite through woolgathering," Balthier said, "we may as well be off." A hint of a satisfied smile lingered near the corners of his mouth, as if he assumed she had been thinking about him.
And to react at all would confirm it, blast him.
She slung her bag over her shoulder and neatly side-stepped him. "You're right," she said. "Let's go."
He ought to have invested in a timepiece after all. There was no way to measure what time it was, or how long they'd been walking. They were down to only two canteens, and his stomach protested the simple breakfast of dried, salted meat. He'd become acclimated to a richer fare. When they made it back to civilization, he would insist upon a decent meal immediately.
If they made it back to civilization, anyway.
Though she hadn't given any indication that she might succumb once more to panic, he had noticed the tendency of her shoulders to pull up tight and tense until she recognized that she was doing it and shook herself out of the habit.
She had not offered her hand to guide him, presumably because she was still displeased with him.
But she had looked. Just a tiny, furtive peek – but she had looked. Indifferent she was not, no matter how she might try to convince herself of it. At the very least she was curious, and curiosity he could work with. She might be persuaded to indulge that curiosity eventually.
She paused abruptly as she hacked through the vines barring their path, listening intently. "Do you hear that?" she asked in a whisper.
He stilled, concentrated – his brow furrowed. Behind him he heard the quiet, latent sounds of the jungle. The soft rustle of leaves, the distant snap of a twig as some creature trod upon it. Before him – nothing. Not a single damned sound; only an eerie, chilling silence.
He lifted the torch, and revealed only utter darkness.
"I think we found it," she said. "The tomb, I mean." And she swallowed audibly, as if the thought of proceeding any further terrified her.
"I think you must be correct," he murmured. And he rather wished that he had never suggested such an ill-conceived venture to begin with. The jungle had been risky enough, but this was an entirely new level of unsettling. But there was no way back, and so it was through they would have to go.
They eased between the trees, and Penelo was startled to hear her boots click against stone rather than earth. Balthier swept the torch in a low arc, revealing a stonework path laid out before them, leading into the distance.
"Have you got an extra torch?" Penelo asked, sheathing her sword. "I don't think I'll have many vines to cut through here." Her words sounded flat and dull, dampened by the murky darkness.
Obligingly, Balthier rooted through his bag and came up with a spare. A few seconds later, their circle of light grew a bit brighter with the advent of the additional torch. Grey, twisted trees lined the walkway, their gnarled limbs intertwining as if they had been trained to grow over the path. There were no visible vines, nothing to obstruct the path.
And still Penelo was reluctant to step forward. "What do you suppose we'll find?" she murmured.
A way out was at the forefront of his mind, but if she had not yet realized that they had no apparent exit strategy, he did not wish to plant that disquieting thought in her mind.
"Something valuable, I should hope," he said. "Let's not linger, shall we?" He took the first steps, and she followed close on his heels, twisting round as they walked lest they be taken by surprise by some nefarious creature lurking in the ever-present shadows.
In the distance, as the light from their torches lent their glow, a huge hulking building loomed. Built of grey stone and swathed in large patches of thick moss, it looked more ruin than tomb. And yet as they pressed closer, a shiver of awareness prickled at his skin and raised the hair at the nape of his neck.
Strong magicks were at work in this place; the sort that were only found in places of dire danger. And worse still, upon approach he realized that the base of the tomb was shrouded in a thick layer of mist. Better, then, that Fran was otherwise occupied for this particular venture. The last time they had encountered a place of so much mist had been disastrous indeed.
Three steps rose sharply upward at the end of the path, leading straight to the massive stone doors at the entrance to the tomb. At their approach, the mist encircling the tomb pulled back as if stirred by a breeze, almost as though it were inviting them to inspect the doors.
They were sealed tightly, with barely a hint of a crack to suggest where they met, and no visible lock. But carved into them was an inscription, chiseled into the massive doors in clear, deliberate lettering.
Penelo swept her torch along the doors, reading the inscription aloud, "Wanderer: Here you may venture, and no further. Let rest the sleeping queen." She turned towards Balthier, brows drawn together in puzzlement. "Queen? I'm fairly sure Old Rohan said king."
"Ah," he said. "I'm afraid it would hardly be the first time history has been rewritten in favor of men." He made a disapproving sound. "Queens in their own right are a fairly recent occurrence; in her day and age, it would not have been at all the thing. And that, I am afraid," he said, "might very well be why we find her buried here, and stricken from the annals of history no less."
"How sad," Penelo murmured. "To be willfully forgotten. To be worth less for having the audacity to be born the wrong gender." She placed her palm against the stone door and jerked immediately back with a sharp cry. In the torchlight, her palm had been seared an angry red, but Balthier had not the time to do more than briefly examine it, for there came an angry rumbling, and the rough, ear-burning sound of stone scraping across stone.
The faint line marking the seal between the doors flooded with golden light so intense that Balthier shaded his eyes against it, and slowly the seam split, and the doors began to move, retracting within the tomb. Ancient dust that had not been disturbed for hundreds of years clouded the air as the massive doors ground against the stone floor.
Penelo coughed, covering her mouth with her injured hand against the thick, swirling dust. The mist that had wreathed the base of the building began to move again, seeping in through the open doors. The bright light flared to a brilliant burst and then winked out abruptly, like its source had been summarily extinguished, and the tomb was once again dark and silent. The magicks that warded this place had been strong enough to collect this much mist, and it had held over centuries, and yet – it had been all too simple to gain entry.
Which lead to the disquieting conclusion that perhaps the wards had not been intended to keep visitors out, but rather to keep something else in.
"Tread lightly," Balthier murmured. "I don't care for the feel of this place." The mist swirled in strange patterns upon the floor as if impeded in its circuitous flow by phantom objects. There was little inside the tomb that would attest to its occupant being of royal blood, and certainly not the trove of ancient treasures Balthier had hoped to find. The walls were bare, marked only with metal rings set into the stone, holding long-extinguished torches. Balthier touched the flame of his own to the one nearest the door, pleased to find that after a moment's hesitation it caught the flame and held. The tight seal of the doors had kept the tomb dry for centuries, preserving the torches that had been set into the walls.
He proceeded slowly through the room, lighting torches as he went, until at last the whole of the room was blanketed in a warm haze of light. Penelo wandered to the far wall, where a small gold plaque hung in a shallow recessed hollow. Placed below it were several white candles, giving the overall appearance of something approximating a shrine to the deceased.
Penelo picked up a candle to light the wick against her torch, then used it to light the other candles. The plaque shimmered in the candlelight, its inscription legible at last.
"Oh," Penelo said in a disconsolate voice. "She was only twenty. So young."
A whisper of sound came from behind him; a shadow in his peripheral vision moved where it ought not to have. Balthier turned, but there was only the mist there, climbing the walls, stretching out thin skirls like fingers reaching for a prize.
Unsettling. Deeply, profoundly unsettling. "Anything useful?" he asked. An escape route would be of particular interest just about now.
"Well, informative at least – her name was Anora Celestinia of Rozarria; she was last of her line. It – it looks like the Margraces must have overthrown her." Penelo looked over her shoulder toward him. "I suppose I just thought they'd always been in power."
Penelo's education as a commoner had been sorely lacking, but Balthier's had not. "They were a minor line, connected to the throne by blood but they didn't rightfully sit it until – well, I'd suppose right around the time our queen here met her end. It all gets a bit murky; their ascension was largely glossed over. And no wonder, if they had had a hand in creating their own good fortune." He searched the shadows still, trying to shake the unpleasant feeling that something was searching him right back.
Penelo continued on, "Whoever put this here beseeches the mercy of their beloved queen, that she might find the peace in death that escaped her in life, and that she spare Rozarria her vengeance. Why does that sound so…ominous?"
"Remember Nabudis," he murmured. "Think of the lost souls whose senseless deaths prevented them from moving on, tying them forever to the Necrohol."
Penelo turned, mouth agape. "You don't…you think she might still be here?"
"I'm certainly not ruling it out," he returned. "If her contemporaries were fearful enough of it to ask her to spare them her vengeance, I'd wager good gil on the likelihood that she had reason enough to desire it. That sort of emotion is ruinous – frankly, I'd be more surprised if she hasn't lingered."
Given their past experiences – the Necrohol had been terrifying, to say the least – he would have expected some manner of revulsion, perhaps even horror from Penelo.
Instead, she let out a gusty sigh and said, "I hope she's moved on. I can't imagine how lonely it would be to be trapped here for so many centuries."
There was a soft sound near his ear, like a satisfied chortle. But when he turned, there was nothing to be seen; only the wick of the mist curling around the torches, turning them to balls of light glowing behind a fine, opaque sheen of white.
"Oh! There's something here; a crack in the wall. Do you suppose that's where they put her?" Penelo asked.
Balthier crossed the room to examine the section of wall that Penelo had discovered; a small section at the bottom had crumbled away, destroyed by a wedge of stone that had driven up from the floor, most likely forced there by a tree root that had tunneled beneath the tomb over the centuries. Upon closer examination, there was a seam, so slight as to be nearly undetectable – a hidden door. He braced his palms against the stone and pressed, but there was no give, not even the smallest concession to his effort.
"Strange," he said. "They hid her, even within her own tomb." The room they currently occupied was nothing but an antechamber, an entryway. It held nothing of value, and little of import. Perhaps it had been meant as a deterrent to trespassers and thieves, that they might think the tomb already looted. He searched the walls for a latch, a lock, any such mechanism to operate the door, but came up short.
Beside him, Penelo made a soft sound of dawning realization. She held up her hand, palm-up, and examined it in the light. The magick that had seared her palm earlier had left behind its mark: an angry, raw wound, like a layer of flesh had been seared clean off. "I think…" she murmured, contemplatively, "I think it must…want a sacrifice. And I've already volunteered."
Before he could protest, she placed the flat of her hand against the seam of the door. Heat flared; there was a brilliant flash of light, and Penelo bit her lip against a cry of pain. But she held her palm flat until at last there was a grinding sound, and the door began to separate from the wall. When she retracted her hand, blood poured freely from the fresh wound. This one had taken a slice from her palm, scoring her delicate flesh deeply.
Balthier muttered a thick stream of expletives, hauling his bag from his shoulder and rooting through it in search of potions and bandages. He found a strip of cloth and snared it with his teeth, tearing it to an appropriate length, then grabbed for her hand, winding it around tightly to staunch the flow of blood.
"You little fool," he snapped. "Do you never think before you act?"
She swayed a little, her eyes glazed with pain. "Our best way out is through; you said it yourself." Her voice was tight and sharp, each word forced out through teeth clenched tightly against the pain.
"I didn't intend that you should maim yourself," he responded.
"It'll heal." She swallowed hard, flinching when he tightened the bandage. "I hope." And then, as the door tucked itself back against the interior wall and ceased its infernal scratching racket, she peered over his shoulder and said, "Balthier, I think we found her."
The light from the antechamber spilled into the newly-opened room, and in the center of the floor there rested a massive stone coffin carved with the image of a young woman, her arms folded over her chest, eyes closed in her eternal slumber. A slender crack ran the length of the lid, from the artless sweep of carved curls framing her head straight past the dainty, sandaled toes.
"She's kept this long; she can wait a few more minutes," Balthier growled, plucking the cork from the neck of the potion. She accepted it with her free hand, swallowing back the liquid in the small vial, and sighing in relief.
"I'll be fine," she said. "Really. I want to see her now." She snatched a torch off the wall with her comparatively-uninjured hand and ducked around him, slipping through the open door into the heart of the tomb.
He made a rough sound of aggravation in the back of his throat and followed her through, repeating the process of lighting the torches that hung upon the walls until the room was ablaze. And again he was disappointed, for the treasure that they had sought was not to be found in priceless gems or artifacts – instead, the room was full of books. By all rights they ought to have crumbled to dust in the intervening years since they had last been seen, and yet they seemed as fresh and vibrant as they must have been when first they had been bound. Perhaps the seal that had been placed on the tomb had also served to preserve its contents.
Balthier was willing to bet that these ancient tomes contained a wealth of information that had been long since lost to time. Valuable to Rozarria's history, certainly – but with little monetary value, to be sure.
Penelo had eyes for nothing but the coffin; she stood beside it, peering down at the intricate carving. "She was pretty," she murmured. "She reminds me of Ashe – a queen so young, with everything set against her. I can't imagine what it must have been like."
The pages of an open book near Balthier's right side fluttered as if stirred by a breeze. The mist crept within the room, pulled up tight against the walls and hovered there. And again, he felt as if unseen eyes were trained upon them.
"She shouldn't have been forgotten," Penelo said. "No one deserves to be forgotten." She brushed her fingertips across the queen's folded hands as if she sought to comfort the forgotten queen through her carved image.
A shadow crossed Balthier's vision in a high arc, sweeping the mist through the air as it passed, streaking great clouds of it in its wake. He could not see through the dense mist; Penelo had disappeared entirely, encased within a shroud of the stuff.
But he heard her sharp cry, quickly silenced, followed by the thump of a body hitting the floor. He charged forward, plunging into the mist where he had last seen her, sweeping the curling tendrils of it away in a vain effort to clear the air.
His hands searched the floor in a desperate attempt to locate her, and a moment later he caught her elbow in his palm, curled his hand around it, and hauled her upright. She groaned as if the effort of sitting alone was painful, resting her head back against the coffin.
Slowly the mist settled once again, restoring visibility. Penelo stirred, and in the silence of the tomb her breaths were harsh, almost…unnatural. As if she had forgotten how to breathe.
And when her eyes opened at last, he realized why.
It might look like Penelo, sitting there, her chest heaving with each rapid breath. It was certainly her face, and her body – but it absolutely wasn't Penelo.