Rather than finding Cid in Giruvegan, they had instead found the Occuria. His hopes of retribution thwarted, Balthier had fallen into a rage so pure and dark that not even Fran would venture near. And no one had protested when he abandoned the party, slinking off into the distance to vent his anger in private.
And as the others crowded around Ashe, asking probing questions regarding whether or not it was her intention to use the Treaty-Blade given her by the Occuria to cut new shards from the Sun Cryst and wage war on Archadia, Penelo slipped silently away. She knew that she ought not follow him - the prickle of gooseflesh that chased over her as he had passed had warned her of his dangerous mood. And yet, somehow, she could not stay away. He drew her like a moth to a flame, and, she thought regretfully, much like the moth, her inability to restrain herself where he was concerned would likely lead to singeing her wings.
But even knowing the inevitability of it all...she went just the same. Because she had to, because he was hurt, because he needed someone, and there was no one else brave enough - foolish enough - to intrude upon his solitude when he was in such a state. She had set her course already, and she would follow it through, wherever it lead, regardless of the danger it posed.
He had bypassed the Strahl entirely, but the mists swirled where he had passed through, and she trailed along in his wake, her heart wrenching in her chest as the sounds of his loosed rage first drifted to her ears as mere echoes, and eventually grew louder as she neared until they rumbled along the crumbling walls of the ancient city in a roar of boundless suffering.
The mists gathered thick here and it conjured up illusions of the past, preying upon the unwary hearts of whosoever stumbled upon it. She could well imagine what Balthier might even now be finding himself faced with. He would know it for an illusion, surely, she thought, but in the depths of his misery would he even care?
She could see him, now, finally, through the veil of mist, and she drew to a halt for a tense moment, silently observing. He crouched on the ground, hilt of his sword clutched tightly in one hand, the other hand on the holstered gun at his hip, chest heaving, scouring the roiling mists before him. And then he erupted into motion, slashing out viciously, determinedly, at whatever illusion the mists had wrought to torture him. And again her heart squeezed to see that broken expression, a man so battered by life that he took refuge in fighting the only thing he currently could - the mere illusion of his father. It was an unwinnable battle, of course, but still she watched as he soldiered onward for long minutes, until at last he stumbled, the sword clattering upon the ground.
Balthier sank to his knees in defeat - always, always defeated - tilted his head back, and shouted his outrage to the indifferent skies.
And then Penelo was there, emerging from the mists, and he wondered for a moment whether she, too, was an illusion called forth to torment him. But then she was laying her hands upon his shoulders, and he knew she was not.
Ruthlessly he shoved her away. He could not face her now, not when pain seethed in his gut, when despair and fury clawed at his soul, stripped away all pretenses of civility and turned him primal and cruel. He could not stomach her gentle hands upon him, steadying him, for she leashed the rage he so desperately needed to set free from its shackles.
"Go." The word was a vindictive snarl, a warning. "Now."
"No." A short, immediate refusal. And she touched his cheek, cradling his face as he had once cradled hers, the softness of her fingers such a light, delicate caress. Soothing, restraining, tempering. He resisted the urge to turn his face to her hand, take the comfort she offered.
Again he threw her off. "Go!" It was bellow of unsatisfied bloodlust, intended to send her skittering away in fear.
She shook her head, expression grave, an aching look of resignation, determination. She reached for him again, falling to her knees to be on a level with him, threading her fingers through his hair, leaning forward to brush her lips to his forehead, a featherlight whisper against his skin. He had intended to shake her off again, but against his will, his fingers clung, held, snatched her up against him. And then he was pulling her down to him, dragging her into his lap. He clutched at her as though she alone could anchor him. He breathed raggedly, and with each violent indrawn breath he pulled her calming lavender scent into his lungs, with each exhalation a tiny bit more of his intemperate bitterness faded.
By degrees he felt the hysteria leave him, subsiding to a manageable level, one at which he would not be goaded into hacking at spectres like a man possessed. By degrees his jaw unclenched, his muscles unlocked, the madness that had held him fast in its unshakable grip abated. By degrees he became aware of her cool fingers stroking his face, her warm breath on his shoulder.
"He was never here. He never meant to be here." A derisive, self-castigating sound burst from his throat. "He has made a fool of me once again. He laid out his trap and I flew into it just as he intended, just like the lackwit he thinks me. I should have seen it at once, he has always manipulated me thus."
"You couldn't have known," she soothed.
"Yes, damn you, I should have known," he said forcefully. "I have always been the scapegrace to him, no better than I should to be. He delights in casting my failures up before me; he had planned this from the very start. The better to force me to dance to his tune."
Penelo silently cursed the man who had so wounded his son, who had sacrificed his family on the altar of Glory, who had reduced the man holding her to such all-encompassing anguish.
Disconsolate, Balthier dropped his head to her shoulder, closing his eyes. He could only absorb the warmth of her skin, breath in and out mechanically. He could not even manage to weep for the ruin of his plans for revenge. A terrible melancholy had seized him, sunk its icy claws into his flesh, rent his determination into tatters, tearing him down into pieces too small for thought, for hope, too small to feel anything but the cut of the bitter fragments of sorrow and shame that overwhelmed him.
And because his pain went too deep for tears, Penelo wept for him.
In the city of Giruvegan, the mists were too thick to get a clear view of the sky, and so Penelo did not know how much time had passed. The crumbling stone beneath her cheek was cool, the roughness of it catching the fine strands of her hair. And still she lay, silent and still beside Balthier, unwilling to move or speak and risk breaking the fragile peace that had settled over him.
His breathing was deep and even, purposeful, as if he had to force his lungs into a rhythm lest they forget the maneuver on their own. He rested on his back, one arm stretched over his stomach, the opposite hand pressed to his forehead as though he thought to shove the memories that assailed him from his mind.
The mist clung to him in a way it did not to her, sweeping across his face in lazy tendrils, whirling to catch at the remnants of blinding rage and pain that were even now seeping away from him. But those stray thoughts he marshaled, locking them away so that the mist could not play upon them to summon shades of his past.
And he was aware of Penelo beside him, her very presence a focusing force, a lighthouse on a stormy sea. He could set his sights on her, and her light would guide him to safety, to a calm in the storm where the riotous turmoil around him could not touch him, where he could rest his weary body upon the warm sands and recover in peace until he was once more prepared to charge back out into the fray.
Of their own accord, his fingers searched out her hair, slipped into the cool silk, gathered a handful as though he could tether himself to her, let her lead him out of the darkness. He had come, already, to depend upon these quiet moments in which she drove away the demons, waited patiently, unassumingly, for him to come back into himself. Her faith in his ability to do so was baffling, aggravating. Even as he resisted her presumption, he was loath to disappoint her.
"Why did you stay?" he asked, finally.
And she knew, as she always seemed to know, exactly to what he was referring. "Why did you ask me to?"
A part of him must know the answer, but his thoughts were so tangled still that he could not bring himself to search it out. So many things had been locked away, he knew not how to uncover them without letting slip the darker parts, the past that had blended so seamlessly with the present, a daunting jumble of confused emotions. Dangerous, to go in search of things he could not control.
But she did not press her question. Instead she lifted herself gracefully from the cool stone floor, and her hair slid from his fingers without catching, as fine and weightless as the mists surrounding them. She stood and offered her hand, helping him to his feet. He caught up his sword in his free hand, sheathing it in a smooth, decisive motion - with her hand in his, the illusions wrought from mist held no sway over him. She banished the darkness, and it departed in fear, retreating to the far reaches from her vibrant glow.
"We're going across the Ridorana Cataract," she said. "Fran thinks the Sun Cryst is there, in the Pharos Lighthouse." Her voice was soft, cool, the pleasant, gentle flow of water over rock. It neither ordered nor pleaded; it merely impressed upon him the necessity of their journey, carried him along in its tides, until at last he fought the current like a drowning man, aghast at how easily he had acquiesced to her words, how effortlessly she could cajole him to follow where she lead.
"You ought to have left me," he said, and his fingers went lax in hers. But she picked up the slack, tightening her grip, unwilling to let him founder when she had gotten it into her mind to save him from himself.
"How could I?" Her voice was low, her breath did not so much as stir the whorls of mist that enshrouded them. "How could I? You needed me."
"No." An instinctive refusal; he had never needed anyone, had never wanted to rely on anyone, had never known anyone in whom he could place his trust in without reservation. And again, "No." The denial of all things he could not yet face, could not countenance for the truth, rejected with every fiber of his being. Drowning, clawing desperately for the shore, swept under again by the cruel, merciless current.
"Yes." She whirled to face him, but there was no mockery in her face, no judgment, not even satisfaction, only a bemused acceptance of the fact. "It could have been Fran, or Ashe. Either of them would have been better suited. But it wasn't. You needed me." And she turned and continued to pull him back toward the Strahl, the threads of fate urging them ever closer to the inevitable conclusion, the final battle in the war that had raged already for too many years.
And the inconstant wind carried the echo of her words back to his ears, so faint he had to strain to hear them.
"And maybe I needed you, too."
Penelo was glad to see the last of Giruvegan, the city that teemed with the spectres of the lost souls who had once called it home. Now the hidden refuge of the old gods, it filled her with a sense of foreboding, of profound hopelessness. Should Ashe choose to take up the mantle of Dynast-King that the Occuria had laid down before her, she feared for the future of Ivalice, under the constant manipulation of the gods.
But Ashe was in no hurry to share her intentions, and in her faraway look Penelo sensed the seething hunger for retribution that burned in her. And while she could not find fault with it, with the desire to give like for like, the desire to see Archadia humbled as it had in turn humbled so many proud kingdoms before, she could not imagine that the path toward peace would come through ruin. If Ashe chose the power of the Sun Cryst and carved her own shards from it, she feared that history would repeat its wretched twists and once more plunge Ivalice into war.
Penelo slipped her hand into her pocket, closing her fingers around Balthier's ring. He had not asked for the return of it, and neither had she seen fit to offer it back to him, and so she held it now like a talisman to drive away the unease that gripped her. The possible futures stretched precariously before her, so fragile and delicate. At any moment, the futures that spelled peace might be wiped away forever in favor of violence and vengeance. And she could only go where the major players would decide to be lead.
A cup of steaming cider was thrust beneath her nose, and she jerked in surprise. She took Fran's offering, sinking deeper into her seat as Fran settled near her.
"I must thank you," Fran said. "For seeking him out."
"Why didn't you?" Penelo asked, curious. Why, then, if they had been partners these last six years, did even Fran leave him to his own devices, leave him to fight his demons alone?
"I am not so privileged as that," came the easy reply. "Few are those would would dare to intrude upon him. He would not welcome my interference."
He had not welcomed Penelo's interference, either, precisely. It would be more truthful to say that she was, perhaps, the only one who was not threatened by the lash of his anger. Maybe the only one who had been allowed to see the hurt at the heart of it...perhaps the one who understood him with the visceral recognition of a kindred spirit. The thought both warmed and confused her; why had he permitted her to venture where even Fran dared not trespass? Disconcerted, she cast her thoughts back to their current dilemma.
"What do you think we will find there...in the Pharos?" Penelo needed to hear someone else's counsel, needed some reassurance that they were on the right path, that the coldness, the shiver of impending disaster she felt was merely the lingering effects of Giruvegan.
"The Viera are untroubled by such things as wars between the Humes." Her face was bland, expressionless. "The Wood is everlasting, and we are unaffected by the powerful emotions that grip your kind and propel you into endless conflict. Whatever the outcome, it is none of our affair."
Penelo subsided into the refuge of silence, sipping her cider pensively. Hardly the answer she would have hoped for.
Fran studied her passively for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was for Penelo's ears only. "If the princess should seek the nethicite, the power of the Sun Cryst, I believe that the taking of it shall not be so simple a task. If the Occuria know of its location, so, too, will the rogue god Venat. So, too, will Cid." A brief hesitation, as though she wondered if she ventured where she should not. "Should the threads of destiny pull in this direction, he may have need of you."
And then she rose, with a curious expression, as though she were unaccustomed to saying such things, uncomfortable with such plain speaking, and left the deck for parts unknown, leaving Penelo to wonder at her strange choice of words.
None of them had slept through the long journey; rather they had intermittently paced, brooded, sat in solemn silence, none daring to voice aloud the doubts that hovered, ever-present. A tense hush had invaded the ship, and none were eager to break it, even as their destination loomed closer.
The sun crept inexorably over the horizon, changing the black waters far beneath them into a shifting cerulean blue. At length, even the waters failed, plunging into the depths of the Ridorana Cataract. Penelo had the uncomfortable sensation of vertigo; sky above and nothing but endless dark below, into which she felt as though they might fall at any moment.
Finally, as if summoned by the singular thought at the forefront of each mind, land broke through the endless black beneath them in jagged edges and perilous cliffs. The Pharos lighthouse was rather a misnomer, for the dark stone monstrosity with its skyward-reaching towers more closely resembled a fortress. Its spires pierced through the clouds, and the great length of it perched forbiddingly upon the tallest cliff, bordered on either side by the steep, plummeting waterfalls that poured into the Ridorana Cataract that stretched, unfathomed, below.
"I can feel it." Ashe was the first to speak, the low, awed thrum of her voice shattering the stillness. "The stone, the Sun Cryst. It beckons to me, like a song in my blood."
And perhaps it was, for the Occuria had imbued her with their dubious blessing - the chosen of the gods to forge a new path for all of Ivalice, to conquer and destroy as she willed.
"I beg your highness, consider -" But Basch's voice faded away at Ashe's sharp glance; the choice was not his to make, the course his to follow but not to chart.
The Strahl touched down lightly upon the earth, settling amidst the rocky, crumbling stone courtyard of the ancient citadel. Here, long before, according to legend, had the Dynast-King Raithwall, Ashe's distant ancestor, once journeyed to cut of the Sun Cryst his own shards. Here, since time immemorial, countless other long-forgotten Dynast-Kings had likely also traveled so to do the same, to take of the Sun Cryst and harness its power for the creation of their own kingdoms.
And Penelo shuddered, grateful that this moment did not rest upon her shoulders, hoping instead that Ashe would have the strength to refuse the inconceivable power offered by the gods to instead let Ivalice shape its own destiny.
As they disembarked, the only sound was the furious rush of water over cliffs. No wind stirred, no animals or insects moved or breathed in this place to lend life to the ageless stone around them. Despite the bright sunlight beating down, the fortress felt like a tomb in its eerie silence, the oppressive weight of the expectations of capricious gods winding tight the tension that gripped them.
Penelo shaded her eyes, peering up at the jutting spires, and suddenly there was a bright flash of light, piercing and sharp. No guiding light for ships was that, she realized - rather it was the guiding light for kings.
Ashe drew in a reverent breath. "The Sun Cryst." Her fingers curled as though it were already in her hands. She drifted forward a step as if drawn by an invisible hand, at the mercy of the stone's pull.
"Nethicite." The dark, scathing word was a hiss of disgust. "You know well where that path would lead, princess. You have seen it already." Balthier was closing up the Strahl's dock, the first Penelo had seen of him since they had parted ways after she had lead him back from the crumbling halls of Giruvegan.
He had once more gathered up the mask of apathy he so frequently donned, and only the dregs of his revulsion for the nethicite Ashe sought slipped through.
"It is mine," Ashe said fiercely. "Mine to do with as I please; the Occuria have left its care in my hands. To use or destroy, it - is - my - choice."
"Then better you should make the right one, and recall the faults of those who have come before you. Are you so pure of heart, then, that you would trust yourself with it, trust yourself with the shaping of all of Ivalice? Would you keep us all caught fast in the clutches of perpetually scheming gods? You are not the only one who would seek to harness its power; consider the devastation that has resulted from the wielding of such a weapon. Consider, too, that the longer we tarry, the nearer draw our enemies who would also seek the stone." His tone was cool, disinterested, but still waters ran deep with menacing undercurrents.
Urged on by the reminder that they were not the only ones who sought the stone on these distant shores, Ashe started forward towards the Pharos lighthouse, and the others trailed along in the wake of her determined strides.
Penelo lagged, instead keeping pace with Balthier, who seemed not to see her and instead kept his eyes focused ahead on the towering fortress. And she realized that his chance at revenge rested with Ashe, for unless she chose to destroy the stone, the very source of all nethicite's power, Cid would still have control of the Dusk Shard, the protection of the rogue god Venat. To strike him down they would have to render him powerless, and that would come only if Ashe used the Treaty-Blade not to carve new shards for herself but to crush the stone into oblivion.
"She'll do what needs to be done," she found herself telling him, and more - actually believing her words. "I think she wants peace more than she wants revenge. When she has the possibilities of both in her hands, I can only see her choosing peace."
"The Occuria would never have chosen her if she did not have the same darkness in her, the same lust for power as her predecessors," he responded in a lackluster tone. "She comes from a long line of conqueror-kings. That hunger for power is in her blood, bred into it over hundreds of years. Her forebearers could not resist its lure; how could you expect her to do so?"
"Because Ashe is better than that," she snapped, appalled and furious at his indifference. "If you let your own worries drag you down and consume you, then we are as good as lost already. We may as well quit here, because how will you ever summon the courage to confront Cid when you can't even muster a little faith in us? Everyone has darkness in them, but only the weak fall to it. I would never have thought you weak, Balthier."
He stopped abruptly, his face a study in shock, and she wondered if, for once, she had gone too far, stretched him past his breaking point. But after a moment's silence, in which he examined her flushed, angry face, astoundingly he laughed, a husky sound of genuine amusement. A wisp of a crooked smile curled his lips.
And his hands clasped one of hers, raising it to his lips, where he pressed a gentle kiss upon her palm. Then he curled her fingers around his kiss as if to keep it safe, relinquishing her hand once more.
"I yield," he said, and his fingers stroked her cheek. "And so I leave my faith in your hands."