Finding My Way Back To You

by ShanoaWarrior

Brought back from the dead through the power of the holy stone, former Knight Templar, Izlude Tingel, is now able to keep his promise to his love, Alma Beoulve, whom he had died to protect and searches for her in post-Lion War Ivalice. Sequel to 'When Love Awaits'. Other pairings include Ramza/Agrias, Beowulf/Reis, Delita/Ovelia, Mustadio/Meliadoul, Rad/Alicia, Malak/Lavian.

11. The Phantoms of Gollund

A/N: Hello again to all our readers To make up for the slow update, we've posted not one but two chapters straight. This one covers Izlude's time in Gollund to earn his fortune to vie for our lovely heroine, Alma, aka 'Catherine Seymour' ;) Once again, I'd like to thank my co-writer and editor, Falchion1984 for his help in making this story possible.

Chapter 11: The Phantoms of Gollund

Amongst the people of southern Lesalia, including the once prestigious Tingel family, there was a most peculiar superstition, believed by many in other parts to be quite absurd...

...not that anyone would say so whilst within earshot of a collection of noble families best known for producing veteran knights with long swords and short tempers.

It was believed by some to be a bastardized cousin to the theory of the Butterfly Effect, which stated that, if a hurricane or other powerful storm broke out in one part of the country, then a butterfly had flapped its wings in an area some leagues distant several weeks earlier. This superstition, also believed to illustrate that small acts can have unlikely consequences elsewhere depending on the initial conditions, stated that a bout of sneezing with no obvious cause meant that, somewhere, the person in question was being gossiped about...

...which, considering Izlude Tingel was supposed to be dead, was not a reassuring thought.

"ACHOOO! Grrr... That's seven...and counting," he grumbled under his breath as he brought up an already frayed handkerchief to wipe at his reddening nose.

Izlude had no idea whether this superstition was true or not but, if it was, he desperately hoped that he was not the subject of discussion for anyone who might cause him trouble. Though he was reasonably sure that his masquerading as Damien Mitchell had been handled well enough, considering that he knew practically nothing of spycraft, the possibility that someone might see through his fumbling subterfuge yet weighed heavily on his mind. Still, with no way for him to verify that dread prospect either way, and suspecting that he would not have made it out of Dorter if his subterfuge wasn't at least passable, the knight blade thought it best not to dwell too much on the thought and to focus on his immediate goals.

Well, he mused, his irritation slipping away, This consortium could've picked a worse place to do business.

The knight blade supposed he was being somewhat stingy with his praise. Undoubtedly, there was no better place in all of Ivalice for mining than in Gollund. Situated in the midst of a vast mountain range, rich with precious stones, metals, and even ancient relics from bygone eras, Gollund was widely regarded as the true treasury of Ivalice, a place to which the origins of every finely wrought sword and well cut gem could be traced.

And, if Gollund was Ivalice's treasury, than its citizens were the treasurers, the people who toiled beneath the earth and before glowing forges, tirelessly working to obtain, assess, and transform even the unlikeliest of nature's offerings into wonders of craftsmanship.

The people of Gollund were hardy folk, masters of their craft, and unafraid of hard labor...and, in a land like this, they had to be.

Apart from the sheer toil of mining, delving into the earth was also a hazardous affair. As the years rolled by, and well established shafts expanded deeper and deeper beneath the peaks, so too did the risk of miners being caught in cave-ins. No less deadly would be the oil lamps and torches used to grant illumination by which the miners did their work. If any were to fall, then the wooden ties supporting the tracks used to guide the carts of ore to the surface could catch fire, filling the shafts with clouds of choking smoke. Yet, conversely, allowing those torches and lambs to go out would leave the miners stranded in labyrinths of utter darkness where, like as not, they would become hopelessly lost and starve to death before they could be rescued.

And yet, for all that, Izlude could sense why people chose to live in such a hard and unforgiving land. Apart from the riches beneath the peaks, seemingly waiting to be discovered by men with the skill and persistence to earn fortunes by claiming them, there were other treasures which Gollund offered.

"Lovely view, isn't it, Nelly?" Izlude asked his mount, who gave an affirmative sounding "Wark!" in reply.

The knight blade had paused a moment, just a mile or so outside the city proper, and let his newly re-colored eyes take in the spectacle before him. For miles in all directions, majestic peaks, capped with glistening snow, rose to touch the sky. The sun, a rare sight given how wintry weather seemed to prevail year round amidst these peaks, rose high in an intensely blue sky, setting the ever-present snow to gleaming. Many of the peaks were bare rock, but others abounded with pine trees. Some of these were nearly as tall as Izlude himself while others would literally tower over him, and each lent a dry spicy scent to the brisk, icy air that could make one believe that they stood at the top of the world.

Amazed and awe struck, the knight blade forgot the torturous commotion in his sinuses...

"ACHOOO!"

...briefly.

"Well, that makes eight," he pointed out sourly. "Either eight people are speaking of me favorably, or four people really hate me right about now."

Despite his seeming flippancy, the knight blade found himself wondering just who might be so fascinated by him. For that matter, was their gossip about Izlude or his new persona? He could not say, for he had no idea just who, besides Alma, might be there to greet Izlude, rather than Damien, at his journey's end, nor did he have any way of knowing what questions the mysterious former wyvern knight might've left in his wake. After deciding there was nothing to be done for it, and letting out yet another sneeze, he made his way to the city of Gollund. As he drew near, the air become redolent with the pungent aromas of sweat and forge smoke, both of which served to underscore that, while this was a land where fortunes were made, the journey was not for the faint of heart. Gollund did not have nearly as much as Dorter to offer in terms of pleasure and entertainment, and the closest thing to luxury many of these people had was an evening spent in a soft chair by a roaring fire or, for those who'd brought their families along on their search for wealth, throwing snowballs with their children.

This simple but hardworking lifestyle was reflected in the town itself. The houses were constructed with practicality in mind and, in an often wintry climate, this could be summed up in the word 'warmth'. Thick pine planks, cut from the trees which grew in abundance on the mountains, allowed homes to be built seemingly for a pittance and, being a natural insulator, could hold the home's warmth in and keep the outdoors' cold out with equanimity. Sharply angled roofs, designed so that snow would slide right off instead of pile on until the roof caved in under the weight, were another feature that characterized both the dangers which guarded Gollund's wealth and the character of the people who sought those riches.

Hard lines and sharp angles.

Many of these houses were cluttered close to one another so that, if they were so inclined, neighbors in adjacent houses could reach through their windows and shake hands. Other features, which showed the rare, softer side of the town, included a snowman which had been built next to the town gate, one wooden arm at an upward angle as though greeting newcomers to this wintry land of hidden riches.

And, visitors were numerous, indeed, for it didn't take him long to spot a line of burly men, doubtless here seeking the same lucrative billet as the knight blade. After checking into another inn and leaving Nelly to the care of the inn's stable hands, Izlude joined his fellows awaiting entrance to the main office of the Ivalician Mining and Metalworking Consortium. Even after spending another three days on the road, the knight blade found himself feeling strangely refreshed. Perhaps it was the wondrous view offered as he journeyed up the peaks, or perhaps it was be invigorating effect of the icy, rarefied air of this town, or maybe it was the gratification of seeing that, though this was a cauldron of steel and sweat, the people who tended it remained unbroken by the horrors of the War of the Lions. Whatever the reason, rather than rest his feet at the inn, he promptly deflected any questions about his black hair, grey eyes, and pale skin by reiterating 'Damien's' Romandan heritage. At times, however, as Izlude sensed seemingly every eye in the city following him, he found himself wondering why the holy stone couldn't give him a more practical disguise. A newcomer he might be to spycraft, but he was fairly certain that the whole point of a disguise was to allow one to blend in with the rest of the population more easily. That his 'disguise' turned heads wherever he went seemed to fly in the face of that simple logic, but he supposed he should be grateful to have gotten as much assistance from the stone as he had so far. As much as Izlude prided himself on his resourcefulness, he knew he would have never gotten as far as he had without the power of the holy stone.

Giving the stone a discreet pat, and hoping its assistance and his luck would hold for a bit longer, he took his place at the end of the long line of applicants who had managed to reach the mining town before him. From what the Izlude could see, many of them appeared to be from other towns and villages surrounding Gollund. Others looked to have come from Dorter as well, for some of the eager, craggy faces he saw amongst the applicants were ones he recognized from the tavern of the inn where he stayed backed in the City of Merchants. Others still were faces he did not recall seeing before.

Clearly, Georg's glowing praise of the consortium seemed well founded, for Izlude could see several dozen men before him and, when he turned, saw that at least a dozen more had lined up behind him. Still, the line moved with remarkable speed and, soon enough, the knight blade found the consortium's main office, and his goal, drawing ever nearer.

The money he'd need to court 'Duchess Catherine' was near to hand, and the anticipation was setting his very nerves afire.

He was jolted from his reverie, however, when the heavy wooden door before him banged open. However, instead of being greeted by one of the consortium's leaders, Izlude beheld a young blond man, possibly a miner. The man's face seemed drained of color and his eyes were round with terror. After a moment spent staring into nothingness and heaving frantic breaths into his lungs, he ran past Izlude, nearly trampling the knight blade, and went tearing down the street as fast his legs would allow. Judging from the sack of coins in his hand, the miner appeared to have gone to the office to collect his pay, though Izlude found himself strongly suspecting that the miner would not be coming back. The knight blade, recalling the seemingly ludicrous salaries the consortium was offering, found himself quite puzzled as to what could cause a miner - who, by necessity, were stout hearted folk - to bolt away from such a lucrative billet. And, judging by the chatter that reached his ears, several of the other applicants were wondering the same thing.

"Sir, wait!" a young brunette woman cried as she ran outside the office just in time to see the fleeing miner turn the corner of a nearby building, vanishing amidst the huddled structures of the mining town. After she realized the miner wasn't going to come back and listen, she sagged against one of the building's supports and mopped her brow. Though most of the men around him shrugged off the episode, Izlude could not help but notice that the woman's face, rather than flushed from the icy air, had gone deathly pale, and that the hand which wiped her brow was trembling. What's more, her breathing was harsh and ragged, as though she'd spent the better part of the day in a state of near panic. Sensing something amiss, Izlude stepped out of line and slowly approached the young woman.

"Excuse me, my lady, but what was that all about?" he asked.

The woman, apparently having failed to notice his approach, gave a yelp. After a moment, however, she seemed to calm herself, offered a visibly painted smile and let out a poor imitation of a shaky laugh. "Oh, nothing you need to concern yourself with, good sir. That miner just had a small accident and, as a result, he's expressed some...disinclination to continue working on this project. I tried to reassure him that everything will be alright, and that he would receive much better compensation if he stayed with us, but he insisted on collecting his final pay and leaving."

For a stretching second, Izlude puzzled over the woman's words, and he found them ringing hollow in his ears. Perhaps it was way the woman's smile seemed so forced and her laugh so shaky, as though she were desperately trying to hide a rising tide of panic behind a weak facade of calm. Maybe it was the recollection of the look of sheer terror on the miner's face, and the knight blade's ominous musings over just what could so frighten a man that he'd be willing to walk away from such a lucrative opportunity. Or, it might've been the belated realization that, judging from the chatter which had reached his ears, all the men currently gathered at the office were new applicants, as Izlude himself was. From what he knew about the consortium, and its remarkably generous wages, he was surprised that he had not seen any returning workers, nor did he see any who looked like experienced miners or smiths amongst his fellow applicants. In fact, those experienced miners and smiths he could spy milling in the streets seemed to be giving the guild's office a wide berth.

Izlude was startled by this revelation, and he had no idea what the truth behind these oddities might be, but it was obvious that something was wrong with the Ivalice Mining and Metalworking Consortium.

"Er... is something wrong, sir?" the young woman asked, her voice sounding even shakier than before.

"Oh, sorry about that," Izlude spluttered, thinking it best to try and deflect her puzzlement. "I am curious, however… are you the head of the Ivalice Mining and Metalworking Consortium? And, what is your name, my lady?"

Upon hearing Izlude's questions, the young woman spent a moment blinking in astonishment before she threw back her head and let out a, genuine, laugh. "Oh, goodness, no! I am but a humble bookkeeper. My name is Emily Rossum. What's yours, good sir?"

Truth be told, Izlude had guessed her answer even before she'd given it. Though Emily had the look of an intelligent and fastidious person, her earlier display suggested that she was high strung and fretful, which made her quite unlikely to be helming a mercantile enterprise hitherto unknown to Ivalice. But, the question had the desired effect of causing her to forget his strange, silent scrutiny from earlier.

"Damien Mitchell," he replied, this time without missing a beat. "Pleased to meet you, my lady. One of your representatives, Gilliam Ro, was in Dorter a few days ago. He told me about this new project your company is working on, and that you are in need of strong workers. Might I ask you to tell me more about it?"

"I would love to, kind sir, but it is not my place to do so. Why don't you and the others come to the office and speak with the head of our company? He will be happy to tell you all the details."

"Yes, of course," Izlude answered politely as he offered Emily his arm. "Shall we?"

"With pleasure, sir."

SSSSSS

"And that, my friends, is the consortium's next goal," the company's head, Anthony Aldrich, thundered from the podium.

Nothing if not a talented showman... Izlude silently mused as he watched his new employer.

Aldrich was a burly man in his fifties who, despite his years, seemed possessed of the vim and vigor one would expect of a much younger man. His deep voice carried well over the crowd, and his animated tone and irrepressible energy quickly got the would-be miners wringing their hands in anticipation of the work ahead. All told, the room full of applicants numbered around eighty men, including Izlude himself, and all seemed entranced by the fiery pioneer who, they all hoped, would guide them to wealth and prosperity.

Yet, despite the nigh-contagious excitement Aldrich had spread through the crowd, Izlude's suspicion that something was wrong yet persisted.

"The task ahead of us will not be easy," Aldrich continued, though his words sounded less like a warning than they did a challenge. "The wars have bled dry the surface deposits of ore, so we will be going deep beneath the city of Gollund. Deeper, in fact, then we have ever gone before. The days will be long, and they will be hard. But, there are vast deposits of new, valuable ores down there which are urgently needed for the reconstruction of Ivalice's cities. There will be iron and steel that the finest smiths in Dorter would envy, there will be gemstones bigger than our fists and more brilliant than the sun, and there will be gold and silver by the cartload! We'll be going down there to retrieve it so that fields can be re-sown and homes rebuilt, so our children can be schooled and our elders can spend their waning years in comfort. In accomplishing this, we will play a pivotal role in making this a great country once again."

The applicants, caught up in Aldrich's enthusiasm, cheered deafeningly and, despite his lingering doubts, Izlude found himself joining in.

"We will be going further down than anybody else has even tried before. And, the further down we go, the colder, harder, and riskier it will be. But, when you start to wonder if it's worth it, remember this: our country is still going through a rough time and that ore will go a long way towards seeing her through to better days. Once that's done, our countrymen will have someone to thank. Make sure that 'someone' is you! That's no small burden, but anyone who is willing to shoulder it will come away with gold beyond counting and a place in history amongst those who made Ivalice a land where dreams come true."

This proclamation was met with another veritable eruption of applause, after which the applicants began to chatter excitingly amongst themselves. Izlude, impressed though he was by Aldrich's showmanship, still could not suppress the nagging feeling that something was amiss. Granted, he already knew the myriad risks in mining, though these would not deter him from his beloved Alma, and, for all his bombast, the head of the consortium had not downplayed these hazards. Nor was it the eerie feeling that, between those men present who were used to and unafraid of hard and potentially dangerous work and those who did not quite know what they were getting themselves into, the latter group seemed far more numerous.

A querying touch to the stone returned an odd pulsing, almost as though the stone was also contemplating these peculiarities. With Pisces offering no clues, Izlude gave a mental shrug. He knew that the risks of mining were considerable, but he was willing to risk anything to win Alma's hand. With no other likely prospects by which to obtain the funds he needed in time, and with his family's wealth now beyond his reach, he had no choice but to build a new fortune, and a new life, from whatever skills and inner resources he could muster.

And, if something sinister was afoot, all he could do was keep his eyes open.

"Excuse me, Mister Aldrich", Izlude asked as he raised his hand. "How long will this assignment be?"

"One week," Anthony answered. "And, after that, we will ship out the ore we find to other cities and anyone who wishes to stay for future projects is welcome to do so. Our headquarters includes an extensive dormitory for our workers. It's nothing fancy, but there are four sturdy walls, free food, and a warm bed waiting for you after a hard day's work."

Free food, housing, and excellent pay sounded, much like the rest of the consortium's offer of employment, almost too good to be true. Even though Izlude did not plan to stay in Gollund very long due to his plans to seek out his lost love, he found himself wondering if any clues as to the source of his strange unease might be found within the consortium's lodgings. The holy stone's quiet humming in his pocket had told him that he'd made the right choice coming here, for no other job would earn the knight blade the money he needed in so short a time. But, the stone also seemed to be hinting that the source of his inexplicable discomfiture was both real and important. Regardless, he planned to be flush with coin and in Lesalia before the Duchess of Lionel made her first public appearance. God only knew how many men would be there vying for her hand as well, and Izlude would be damned if, after returning from death itself, he let anyone else beat him to Alma.

Determined to go through with the stone's plan, Izlude asked "When do we start?"

Delighted with the knight blade's enthusiasm, the consortium's head smiled.

"Tomorrow morning. We start at dawn, so make sure you are up and ready to work by then. I will provide everything all of you need in order to make this project a success. All I need is your persistence and hard work. Dismissed!"

"Yes, sir!" the excited applicants cried in unison.

SSSSSS

Later that night, as the sun vanished beneath the horizon and his hunger could no longer be held in abeyance, Izlude went to the inn's tavern. After checking up on Nelly, he was quite eager to have some dinner, as well see if some conversation with his future co-workers might lend some insight into the suspicion that yet curdled in his gut. Despite the hour, the tavern was abuzz with people chattering over platters of food and mugs of ale. Most of those who dwelt in this city of miners tended to dine later in the evening, as they were often called to prepare the mines for the workday before breakfast. And, given the generous pay Aldrich offered, Izlude didn't doubt for a minute that the consortium's head would expect every last man to be up before dawn and ready to work by sunrise. That in itself would pose no problem for Izlude, as he had done so nearly every day during his early and mid-teens while he was training to become a member of the Knights Templar. Like the head of the consortium, the High Confessor, as well as Vormav himself, also had high expectations of potential Templars, and these expectations were enforced with nary a care for age, gender, lineage, class, station, or creed. Izlude remembered how hard he and Meliadoul had worked to keep up with their father's rigorous training regimen and how, back when his soul had been his own, how proud he'd been when his children had ultimately shattered even his high expectations. Recalling this, Izlude felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth and reaffirmed his belief that, if he could pass the trials to be accepted into the Knights Templar, then he should be more than capable of handling difficult and dangerous mining work. And, while Izlude may have been born into a wealthy, noble family, he was still unafraid of getting his hands dirty should the need arise.

As the knight blade had expected, the tavern was crowded and lively as dozens of the newly hired workers were gorging themselves on the free food and drink. As the bartender had announced several times, the repast was on the house that evening, courtesy of the head of the Ivalice Mining and Metalworking Consortium, Anthony Aldrich. Though this raised still more unanswered questions, Izlude could not help a sense of nostalgia as he remembered how he and Justin had once gone to a similar establishment. It had been just after they'd reached their eighteenth year, and they'd been quite eager to celebrate both their newfound adulthood and their having won admittance into the order. The knight blade felt his eyes mist as he recalled the Knights Templar; how he'd venerated them, his father and older sister in particular, and how they had served laws, ideals, and principles superior even to kings. Unlike other orders of knights, acceptance into the Knights Templar was not determined by wealth, status, or the political influence of one's family, but by skill, valor, and absolute loyalty to the Church of Glabados and the High Confessor. None were above the law of the heavens, nor were any beneath its notice; not peasants, not merchants, not nobles, not even the king.

What's more, just as no unrighteous soul was permitted to escape the Templars, no righteous soul who wished to serve the order's cause was refused a chance to prove themselves. Roughly two-thirds of the order had been composed of people of common birth, including the late Weigraf Folles and Justin Timbel, Izlude's best friend, who was born into a humble family of carpenters who served the Tingel family. Though Justin's memory was still a treasure to Izlude, recalling Weigraf had served as a grim reminder of how the once noble order had so ignominiously met its end, subverted by evils far darker than even the most corrupt human's most depraved dreams.

Were those Templars who had died, ignorant of this corruption, been able to find peace in the afterlife? Had those who'd been singled out as vessels for the Lucavi been freed upon the destruction of their mortal forms? On both counts, Izlude hoped so.

Thinking about his fallen comrades made Izlude wonder just how many high-ranking Templars, aside from himself, had survived the War of the Lions, and whether the order was even still intact. He still had no real way of knowing if Meliadoul was still alive, as he'd yet to have any visions of what befell her after her apparent participation in Alma's rescue from the Lucavi, and his silent queries to the stone yielded only what felt like urgings to be patient. Though Izlude was next in line to command the Templars, his 'death' would make Meliadoul the best candidate, if she were still alive. However, after what demonkind had done to the order, it seemed likely that the history of the Knights Templar had drawn to a close. The knight blade could only assume that any surviving lower-ranking Templars had probably left the order to start new lives and find a place for themselves in the new Kingdom of Ivalice, just as he himself was doing right now.

Would the newly formed Order of the Chimera fill the void, acting as a force to uphold those laws to which even monarchs must bow? Perhaps, though the knight blade found himself second guessing what such a powerful force might be used for with the cunning and ruthless Delita at the helm of Ivalice.

Izlude was startled out of his thoughts when he heard someone very nearly collapse onto the bar stool right next to him and call in a slurred, bitter voice for a beer.

Even before the stone had begun to tremble in his pocket, Izlude turned to see a young man absently toss the bartender a coin after taking his drink. At the offer of food, however, his already forbidding expression soured further and he grunted a refusal.

"Why did you pay for your drink and refuse the food, my friend?" the knight blade asked, his curiosity piqued. "It was free, courtesy of Mister Aldrich."

"Not if you ain't working for him no more, it isn't," The young man snorted as he took a long draft from his mug. Upon closer inspection, Izlude recognized him as the same man who'd fled, seemingly in terror, from the consortium's office earlier that day.

"Wait a minute, I remember you! Weren't you that guy who ran from the company's main office this morning?" he blurted out in surprise.

The young man, who looked somewhat shaken at having been identified, nearly dropped his mug and quickly clapped a hand over Izlude's mouth to quiet him.

"SHH!" he hissed. "Not so loud, will ya?"

"But, why?" Izlude asked, dropping his voice to a whisper as he gently pried the other man's hand from his mouth.

The young man sighed. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you don't know."

"Know what?"

"Let me guess, one of the consortium's representatives showed up in your town and offered you this mining job. Generous pay, free room and board, be part of history and all that, right?"

As the young miner spoke, Izlude could sense the bitterness he'd noticed earlier deepen until it became a palpable aura of virulent enmity that had him wondering if that acrimonious tongue might set off a brawl.

"Yes, that's correct," Izlude replied, forcefully gesturing for the man to keep his voice down.

"I thought so," the man replied, his hostility seeming to cool into melancholy. "Did this representative also tell you of the strange incidents that have been going on in the mines beneath Gollund of late?"

The Pisces stone vibrated against Izlude's leg, but he hardly needed the confirmation of what he'd suspected, nor the encouragement to delve deeper into this discovery. If there was something foul afoot in the consortium, he may have finally stumbled across some clue. And, if it might be something that could threaten his plans to reunite with Alma, then any information he could discover might prove priceless.

"What incidents?" he asked, unable to keep a hint of urgency from his tone. "And for that matter, who are you?

"My name is Nicholas Rof," the man responded, a snort of derision punctuating his words. "Like you, I heard about this great offer and, like an idiot, I signed up the first chance I got. After I lost my home during the floods in Gallione, I spent the whole war panhandling, scavenging through the garbage for food, and hating myself for how low I'd sunk. And, in all that time, I wanted to make something more of myself, to find some way to a better life."

"An understandable sentiment, and it sounds like you tried to achieve it."

"Yeah, for all the good it did me. All I ended up doing was trading one nightmare for another."

"What do you mean?"

Rof took a quick look around to make sure no one else was listening in on his conversation with the disguised knight blade before answering.

"In the last few weeks, previous mining crews of the consortium, including myself, have been hearing strange voices coming from deep within the coal shafts. Not only that, we have also felt these icy drafts that chilled our very blood, and while we were much too far below ground for it to be coming from the surface, no less. What's more, miners had been talking about their hair getting pulled and, when they turned around, no one was there. Oh, sure, these all sounded foolish enough, but then things got worse when Gareth, one of the miners I worked with, sees this pickaxe suddenly come hurtling straight at him. He dodges, but he doesn't see anybody in the direction it came from. Then, he turns around and that same pickaxe is flying at him again! I didn't see that, mind you, but I did see a small rock lift itself out of the gravel and fly into my face as I was skirting the edge of a pit. Nearly toppled in and fell to my death! After hearing more and more stories like what I just told you, I decided that enough was enough and went to the office to demand my final pay. I want to be well away from this job - this whole city, in fact - before whatever's down there decides to follow me."

Izlude could barely contain his shock as he heard this, but tried his best to remain calm. Being a veteran knight, he had fought undead before and he knew they could be quite dangerous. If the mines were haunted, it would explain why there were no returning workers amongst tonight's revelers, as well as the frantic behavior of both Rof and Emily which he'd spied earlier.

It also cast Aldrich's generous offer and his fiery speeches in a new and troubling light.

"Are… are you saying the mine is haunted?" he asked, though he'd already guessed as much.

"You're damn straight I am!" Rof spat.

"And, you say there have been others who've been attacked by these phantoms?

"Yeah. The others I worked with have already wised up and quit; I was just too stupid and greedy to know they'd made the right move. But now, even I have had enough. Were you wise, you would have nothing more to do with this company or their crazy projects!"

"Surely somebody has brought this to Aldrich's attention?"

That question brought a laugh to Rof's lips, but there wasn't a drop of mirth in it. Instead, it was a bitter chortling that caused the raucous activity around them to falter for a moment before it hesitantly swung back into motion.

"Aldrich would never back down back down from a project this important," Rof pointed out, sneering. "Not after he's pretty much put his whole future on the line."

That last sentence caused the memory of the consortium's high strung bookkeeper to vault to the forefront of Izlude's mind. And, with the stone giving an urgent gyration in his pocket, he suspected that, whatever Rof was hinting at, it was pivotal information.

"Aldrich learned about this particular shaft some time ago, back during the wars," Rof went on. "But, it wasn't until now that he's been able to act upon it. I'm sure he gave you the speech about cartloads of gold and gems as big as your fist? Well, it's true. I managed to find out that much before I decided I liked breathing more than I liked getting rich. Anyway, he wanted to make sure the consortium got to it before anybody else could. And, he pulled it off; but, he had to, literally, bet everything he had."

"That's quite a gamble."

"And, it would pay five gil for every one that he spent if he could get this project back on track. Right now, with so many workers being scared off and the mining all but completely stalled, the whole thing's about to blow up in his face. Don't believe me? Just ask Emily."

"The consortium's bookkeeper?"

"She's my cousin. When she tried to talk me out of leaving, she told me that the project would fail if things didn't turn around soon. Aldrich is overextended on several loans, his gil reserves will run dry by the end of the month, and there are rumors that he's about to lose the contract. If that happens, and this profit bomb turns out to be a dud, then Aldrich will go belly up, and the whole consortium will get dragged down with him. Dozens, maybe hundreds of jobs, pensions for workers who stay on for years, death benefits for the families of workers who are lost in the line of duty, returns for his investors, the inheritance for his grandkids, and his workers' grandkids. This project stays in the doldrums for another month or so, and all that will be gone."

Following this pronouncement, Rof turned away and began trying to vanish into this bottom of his mug. Izlude, by contrast, sat stone sober, rocked by what he had heard...

...and also by yet another reminder of the last ignominious years of the Knights Templar.

In order to enflame the people of Ivalice against the corrupt monarchy and their silk-clad toadies, the High Confessor and the Templars had played quite a hand in, subtly, exacerbating the poverty and turmoil which had so characterized Ivalice both immediately before and during the War of the Lions. How many people, Izlude found himself wondering, had found themselves in the same position Rof so poignantly described as a result?

Izlude had no idea. In truth, he'd tried not to think about it at the time, to rationalize that it served a higher purpose which would, at its completion, see recompense given to those who'd had the misfortune of suffering harm in order for the greater good to be served.

Now, however, Rof's pronouncement, and the grim image it painted, loomed large in his mind.

For a long, long moment, the knight blade found himself wondering what to do. Though he knew that this information suggested that staying on with the consortium likely would not be wise, and that the burgeoning crisis here was not his concern, his conscience railed against the notion of once more turning a blind eye when he had the chance to prevent such suffering.

"Oh, don't tell me you're thinking of sticking around!" Rof grumbled, rising from his seat. "I cannot stop you if you choose to do that, my friend. But, for your sake, I hope you will heed my words. If not, then God help you. That is all I have left to say; good-bye!"

Before Izlude could question him further, Nicholas stalked out of the tavern as if he could not leave the place fast enough. Left alone amongst the carousers, Izlude pondered what to make of this revelation. That this seeming golden goose's eggs were guarded by specters could pose a dire threat to Izlude's plans, not to mention his health. He still feared that delving into a haunted mine shaft would mean putting his hopes of reuniting with Alma at risk. And yet, no less compelling was the insistent voice of his conscience which warned that, having unwittingly been a party to demonkind's infiltration of Ivalice, his guilt was already a weighty enough burden.

Having fought undead before, could he prevail against the specters that haunted the mine?

If not, his second and final journey into the afterlife would come about with his desperately sought reunion with Alma being yet another in an already lengthy list of might-have-beens.

Yet, if he turned away now, even if he could find the money he needed elsewhere, how could he bear having turned away from people in need when his actions might've prevented much suffering?

For a moment, he almost quailed under the weight of this dilemma until, at the last, he rallied himself and placed his hand over the concealed holy stone.

What do you think? he silently asked, suspecting that there was no point in hiding the weight of his dilemma from the stone. Should I take this job or not? I would like to help these people, but can I afford the risk?

A soft humming, suffused with the coolly familiar sensation of his sword's hilt held firmly in his hands, was the Pieces stone's reply…

SSSSSS

Suspecting that the stone's reply meant that it believed he ought to try and save the consortium, Izlude swallowed a hurried meal and then pondered how best to go about the coming exorcism. On the latter count, however, he came away having made little progress. With Rof's departure, and assuming the embittered miner was telling the truth, he no longer had any witnesses to the haunting which he might question. Blindly asking around was not an option either, as he might end up either looking the fool to his fellow miners or driving them into a panic, neither of which was likely to help anyone. And, going to either Aldrich or Emily with his suspicions might see his employment come to an abrupt end. What's more, the closest thing he had to a clue was Rof's report of being assailed near a pit whose lip was covered in gravel, and there were likely to be several of those in any given shaft. However, even learning of the strange incidents in the mines beneath Gollund was not enough to stave off the utter exhaustion which had settled over the knight blade after his ten days of hard travel from Kohlingan to Dorter and then to Gollund, especially since he'd allowed himself only a single night to eat at a proper table and sleep in a comfortable bed. That he'd emerged from that journey only to find a week of hard labor and lurking threats at the end had, rather than cause him a restless night, left him eager to seek his bedding. Izlude wasn't sure if he should consider himself lucky that he'd sensed something was amiss with the consortium, or that he'd ran into someone who was willing to warn him of the haunting of the mine while leaving the other miners completely in the dark.

And, for that matter, whether if it was truly luck or by the influence of the holy stone.

The knight blade did not have much time to ponder such thoughts; he fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Despite Aldrich's offer of free housing in the consortium's dormitory, Izlude thought that his myriad secrets would be safer if he stayed at a nearby inn. Given the peculiar touches the holy stone had given his new face, not to mention his carrying such oddments as 'Catherine Seymour's' portrait and the holy stone itself, Izlude did not relish the idea of would-be dorm mates asking probing questions.

Even though Izlude took to bed early and had eight full hours of sleep, he still felt as though dawn had come far too soon when he awoke shortly before sunrise. Feeling nearly as much the walking dead as his future quarry, he absently breakfasted on fresh bread and piping hot soup before heading back to the consortium's main office. As soon as he arrived, the knight blade noticed an even larger crowd then he remembered from the day before, which lent further credence to Rof's story. Back in Dorter, Gilliam told him that the company could only take so many applicants, yet every single person who arrived at the office yesterday seeking the new mining job was present. Not only did Aldrich literally hire everyone he could find, regardless of previous mining experience or the lack thereof - which suggested he was, indeed, desperate to save the investment upon which he'd staked his very future - but it seemed he'd also hired an additional twenty people who showed up almost literally at the last minute. Upon closer inspection, however, the still drowsy Izlude was shocked to wakefulness when he realized that the newly arrived miners were Georg and his daughter, Gerde, as well as the rest of their rag-tag group of friends who called themselves the Boulder Devils.

"Georg! Gerde! I didn't see you yesterday, so I thought you weren't going to come!" Izlude exclaimed as he approached his newfound friends.

The father and daughter pair broke into a smile when they saw the fascinating raven-haired young man whom they drank under the table back in Dorter.

"Sir Damien!" Gerde cried as she pulled the disguised knight blade into a hug that squeezed the air from his lungs. "So, you did decide to come after all! You seemed to have doubts the last time I saw you, so I wasn't sure if you would be interested in taking this job. But, I'm glad you did!"

"Aye…so good to see you again, my young friend," Georg agreed as he placed a hand over his mouth to suppress a yawn. "It looks like we'll be working together in the upcoming week, which should make for a more interesting experience."

"Yes, but when did you arrive in Gollund?" Izlude asked curiously. "You said you were definitely interested in this job, so I assumed you would be here before me."

"We arrived around midnight yesterday. As for why we were late, well, we had to stay in Dorter for one more day. Father might've managed to drink you under the table, but he met his match later that same night," Gerde answered as she shot her father a look of annoyance, hinting that this wasn't the first time the Boulder Devils had been delayed because of their leader's fondness for strong drink.

Ignoring his daughter's henpecking, Georg turned to Izlude. "We arrived after Aldrich had already led his workers in their customary chest thumping. Probably for the best, since my head was pounding enough already. Still, Mister Aldrich didn't much object when I knocked on his front door and told him we wanted in. I might've been knocking a bit too loud for his tastes...and his neighbors', for that matter. But, my crew and I have done good work for him before, so he didn't mind. In fact, he was very happy that we were willing to offer our services to him again."

Seeing this as an opportunity to glean more information about the strange events Nicholas spoke of in the mines beneath the town, Izlude asked "How did the company's previous projects go? When was the last time you worked for Mister Aldrich?"

"About three months ago, when the company first started. The first project was fairly easy, just two weeks spent mining ore near the surface of the western side of Gollund."

Izlude was sorely tempted to ask if they had noticed anything unusual, but ultimately decided to hold his tongue. Not many specters would venture so close to the sunlight in order to strike at the living, and he did not want to arouse the suspicions of his new friends unnecessarily. Besides, from what Nicholas told him, the strange incidents in the mines started only a few weeks ago, long after the Boulder Devils had completed their first assignment with the Ivalice Mining and Metalworking Consortium. Between that, and having no reason to believe there was more than one mine presently haunted, it was highly unlikely that Georg, Gerde, and the rest of their crew would know anything useful. And, though Izlude found himself struggling with whether or not to tell them what he learned from the young man he met at the bar the night before, he ultimately decided to keep silent on the matter. If they had weathered the poverty and chaos of the War of the Lions, then it stood to reason that Georg, Gerde, and their friends were not easily frightened, and that was assuming they didn't dismiss Nicholas's claims as drunken ramblings. If what the former consortium miner claimed was true, they would all find out soon enough.

Hopefully, by then, Izlude would have some idea of what to do about it.

"I see," Izlude said simply. "In any case, I'm glad you are all here. I don't know anyone in Gollund, and it would be nice to have some familiar faces around for once."

Georg smiled and clapped a hand to Izlude's shoulder "The feeling is mutual, son."

SSSSSS

Though Izlude kept his eyes and ears open for even the faintest hint of anything untoward, his first day amongst the consortium's ranks passed without incident. Not long after meeting with the Boulder Devils, Izlude and his fellow miners were bustled to a storehouse near the mineshaft entrance where each miner was searched for any prohibited items and then given a dark blue work uniform with the consortium's insignia sewn over the right front shirt, along with a helmet, a broad tool belt, and a pair of black steel-toed boots. In addition to the uniforms, the company also provided such tools as pickaxes, shovels, small lanterns, flasks of oil, water skins, and packets of jerky. Gerde, who had worked for the consortium before, commented on how much thicker the new uniforms seemed in comparison to those which had been in use some months prior, and Izlude harkened back to Aldrich's warning that this expedition would take the miners deeper than any previous venture. Apparently, this was true, which meant that the mines would grow colder as they delved deeper and deeper beneath the town. Still, between the hard work and his own hunt for the mine's ghosts, Izlude suspected he would have no trouble keeping warm.

The knight blade had hoped that his hunt would end quickly, but the first three days and nights went by without incident. Izlude and the rest of the new mining crew got up every morning, roughly an hour before sunrise, and would quickly change and eat breakfast before heading for the mines. Afterward, they would enter the dark labyrinth beneath the peaks where they would toil until sunset. Wondering what might happen if the ghosts remained unfound after he'd collected his pay, Izlude decided to make what use he could of his meager knowledge of spycraft. After their shifts were over, the miners would gather in the nearby taverns for dinner, where they would share gossip and stories of their homes and families. The knight blade took advantage of this to better hone 'Damien Mitchell's' back-story, pointedly adding a few anecdotes of fighting undead in the haunted forest of the Yuguo near his 'former hometown' of Yardow alongside other wyvern knights.

With luck, anyone who stumbled across evidence that the mine was haunted would come to him and, in so doing, allow him to confront and exorcise the spirits which threatened the livelihoods of the living.

Though the accommodations of the dormitory were certainly appealing to most of his fellow miners, the knight blade kept his own room at the local inn. His own funds were quite scarce by then, but he feared that bedding down anywhere less private might lead to some pointed questions about his rather strange luggage.

As Izlude had expected, mining was indeed hard work. Apart from the sheer amount of hard physical labor, Georg and his crew, the only veteran miners who seemed willing to come within a mile of the consortium, had used what little downtime the miners had to drill them in how to handle an emergency. These included tracing chalk sigils on the walls - so that, should the mine need to be evacuated, everyone would know which direction to go in order to reach the surface - as well as techniques for swinging the pickaxe so that the impact broke the rock rather than the miner's arms, and working to develop the miners' ability to see in low light so that they did not use too much lantern oil and run out too quickly. During this time, Izlude learned what he could about Aldrich himself. Apart from being a mercantile pioneer and a family man, he was also apparently a man of considerable courage. He had served as a caravan master during the Fifty Years War, ferrying supplies to the front and, when legions of Ordallians stood between him and Ivalice's besieged armies, he'd taken it upon himself to guide his laden wagons through a dangerous mountain pass, literally squeezing between the Ordallian lines, to reach the trapped Ivalicians. This had allowed the Ivalicians to withstand the siege, saving countless lives and making Aldrich a hero.

Like many a lowborn hero of the Fifty Years War, however, his bravery had gone unnoticed by either the royal family or the dukes who'd helmed the white and black lions...

...by contrast, however, King Delita had personally decorated Aldrich within one week of taking the throne.

Perhaps such an act was simply Delita consolidating his power, by so publically rectifying a slight committed against those of humble origins by the people whose downfall he'd orchestrated. Or, maybe Delita had come to believe what his own rise to power had said to the masses, and that the days when ones birth was ones fate had drawn to a close and now, whether highborn or low, anyone possessed of the wits and will to pursue a better lot in life could succeed.

'The Ivalician Dream', one of the miners Izlude overheard mentioned King Delita calling it.

Whether Delita was engaged in political posturing or whether he'd truly wanted others to follow his lead and dare to reach beyond what lay within their birth and station, he'd certainly put a great deal of effort into spreading his message. According to rumors which had leaked into the camp, he was planning a monument dedicated to other unsung heroes of the Fifty Years War, including, to everyone's astonishment, the Dead Men...the peasant fighting force who later became the infamous Corpse Brigade.

That Delita was willing to posthumously honor the service of the same people who were, at least partially, responsible for his sister's death had astonished many and impressed the rest. Izlude had little time to contemplate the meaning and motives behind the rising star of Delita, but he had studied Aldrich's story at length and found his respect for the man growing by leaps and bounds.

The head of the consortium might be a bit too brave and ambitious for his own good but, in peace and war alike, he had dedicated himself to helping better the lives of those who depended on him, often at great risk to himself.

He did not deserve to be made a pauper by a gaggle of recalcitrant phantasms.

As the evening wore on, the knight blade was eager to retire to his room and soak his aching muscles in a long, hot bath. Once the pains of a day's toil had been soothed, he typically spent what little time remained to him gazing at the portrait of his love, Alma, the woman for whom he was toiling in the mines of Gollund like a common-born laborer instead of the nobleman he was.

Much to his surprise, however, not only was he pursuing this strange avenue to reach his love, but he was succeeding at it. He'd taken to both his lessons from Georg and his duties with dedication and, toilsome though it was, he liked to think that his penance for the harm he'd unwittingly done under Hashmalum's orders was a burden he could, in good time, repay in full.

The other half of 'The Ivalician Dream', it appeared, was second chances.

Here he was, a high-ranking Templar and nobleman who had lost everything because he realized too late that his order had been corrupted by evil, having had life breathed back into his lungs and been given a chance to rebuild his fortune as well as a new life, and to vie for the hand of the woman he loved, who masqueraded as the beautiful Duchess of Lionel but a few leagues distant. Even after a long day's work, Izlude could not help but smile whenever he saw Alma's lovely face staring back at him. So life-like was the portrait that, foolish though it sounded, the knight blade felt tempted to kiss it before he retired, but he refrained from doing so to avoid ruining the paint. After he was satisfied, Izlude would carefully store the portrait away and sleep like a stone until the next morning, all the while dreaming of being with his love again…

SSSSSS

The first three days and nights, despite the aches and pains of the hard work and the ever present danger of laboring beneath many tons of solid rock, came and went quickly. Izlude worked hard alongside his fellow miners, several of which he now called friends, and had even discovered a dozen methods by which to escape matching drinks with Georg...

...methods which did not work, that is.

Still, though he pursued his lines of inquiry as best he could without raising awkward questions, he had yet to hear of so much as one incident in the Gollund mines which might be attributable to Rof's ghosts. Izlude began to wonder if Nicholas's claims about the place being haunted were, indeed, just drunken ramblings, or simply some trick of the senses, wrought by a joining of the dancing torchlight in the dark and a fevered imagination. Even without the stone's cool, admonishing pulse, that theory seemed unlikely. If the supposed haunting was not real, then why, aside from the Boulder Devils, did the previous mining crews all quit without any returning for new projects?

On the fourth day, the knight blade finally had his answer. As the workday began, he and his fellow miners went down a shaft which, according to the gossip he'd heard, had gone largely untouched. Even better, one of the miners pulled him aside and whispered that he'd felt a chill wind blowing all around him as he had passed a deep pit during the previous shift.

Such should have been impossible, given that they were well over a mile beneath the surface, but Izlude suspected the truth at once.

If that pit was the same one Rof had mentioned, perhaps it lead to the epicenter of the spectral activity in the mine.

Promising to look into it, he quickly ascertained the best path to the pit and began planning how best to combat the ghostly menace within...

...none of those plans, however, had included Georg, Gerde, and several others already being present when he arrived or, more to the point, they're still being there when the first sign that he was on the right track revealed itself.

RRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRRRRR!

"What was that?!" Gerde exclaimed, whirling and brandishing her pickaxe like a weapon.

The strange sound - which, as Rof reported, could indeed chill the blood of lesser men - had come from within the pit. The knight blade had hoped that the sound would convince the others to leave so that he could investigate undisturbed, but the neither Georg nor Gerde looked like they were going anywhere. Still, small consolation though it was, the knight blade peered around and noticed the other miners were also startled and had begun to whisper amongst themselves as well, confirming his guess that it wasn't his or Gerde's imagination and he had come to the right place.

"I'm not sure…," he said, pondering how best to get the miners out of area without causing a panic. "I think I'd best take a closer look. Maybe the rest of you ought to-"

Before he could finish his sentence, another gust of wind that was not wind howled out from the darkness, becoming a high pitched keening that had everyone clapping their hands to their ears. Then, just as suddenly as the shrieking began, it ended...only to be replaced by voices.

Stay away!

Don't come any closer!

Begone from here!

"Did you hear that!?" Gerde hissed as her eyes grew wide, though her expression revealed more surprise then actual fear.

Izlude nodded, idly hoping that Gerde still knew how to fight after leaving the Nanten, as he answered in a low voice "Yes…and, from the looks of everyone else here, I'm sure they did too."

Gerde gave the knight blade a sidelong glance, and Izlude found himself thinking she already suspected that he knew more than he was letting on. The young woman was about to question Izlude further when a sudden outburst drew their eyes. One of the miners was slumped on the floor in a daze, a corona of coal dust staining his forehead. Already suspecting what this might entail, Izlude whirled to see small rocks, lumps of coal, and tools suddenly being lifted into the air, as if by some invisible force, and hurtling themselves towards everyone in their section of the mine.

Before Gerde could say a word, she heard Izlude yell "LOOK OUT!" as he quickly grabbed and pulled her to the ground. An instant later, a shovel hurtled past them, whistling through the air barely a hand span above their heads, and smashed into splinters against the far wall of the mine. Had the knight blade not gotten her out of the way, Gerde's skull might have been caved in. Before the pair could regain their feet, however, they heard the other miners screaming as they desperately sought cover from the hail of detritus or get out of the mine as fast as they possibly could.

Over the frightened screams of the other miners, Izlude and Gerde both heard a deep male voice frantically calling their names.

"Gerde! Damien!" Izlude recognized it as the voice of his partner's father, Georg, who was desperately trying to fight his way through the mass of fleeing miners. The normally bombastic man's eyes were round with terror and, when Izlude glanced behind him, he saw that it was more than fear for his daughter that had him so alarmed.

All about the pit, stones and tools were being wrenched into the air by unseen spectral hands for a renewed assault.

"Over here, father!" Gerde shouted. "Please, get down and take cover!" But, her pleas seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, for the grizzled miner was not to be dissuaded from charging to the defense of his only daughter.

Whatever ghostly force had guided the hail of detritus had, apparently, singled out Georg as the most immediate threat to whatever it sought to protect, for one improvised missile after another whistled through the air to pelt the grizzled miner. One missed his head by a hairsbreadth while another rebounded off of his shoulder, yet Georg brushed off the pain just as surely as he swatted aside the flying detritus. Though Gerde was screaming at her father to take cover, Izlude shifted his own body to shield her from any stray projectiles and held her in a grip of iron, lest the unseen specters behind the bombardment pulverize her.

Though holding the frantic former Nanten was occupying most of his attention, the knight blade feared that the sheer weight of the assault would crush the life from Georg. But, the grizzled miner was a man of iron, tempered by the hardships of war and turmoil and bolstered by the far greater strength known only to a parent defending their child. Though he was bruised and bleeding by the time he reached them, the hailstorm of tools and rocks had ceased, the specters' ammunition having been pounded to dust or smashed to splinters in their fevered but futile bombardment.

"Thank you so...much for protecting...my daughter...!" the older man, now propping himself up against the wall, cried in a hoarse voice as he took one more shuddering step and pitched forward, landing in a heap before Izlude and Gerde.

Gerde tore free of Izlude's grip and scrambled over to her father's side. Between her and the knight blade, they hurriedly examined the grizzled miner. Izlude could feel a cold sweat bespangling his brow as he heard Georg's breathing become thin rasping, but a quick glance under the man's shirt eased a sigh of relief from his lips.

A determined salvo of rocks had badly bruised a number of Georg's ribs, which explained the shallow breathing, but none were broken and none of the cuts he'd collected were deep enough to cause him any serious harm.

"Are you...alright, Sir Damien?" Georg rasped. "I feared...my girl would...be smashed to...powder trying to... reach me. I owe you...a debt of...gratitude..."

Gerde had looked about to argue the point, either that Izlude had done her a service or that she'd needed it, but her expression softened as the import of her father's words sank in.

"We owe him, father" she corrected as she eased her father into a sitting position.

Izlude, surprised at how profoundly relieved he felt knowing that Georg was not seriously hurt, had been about to brush aside the praise when the trio heard the sounds of heavy footsteps charging in their direction. And, sure enough, it was the rest of the Boulder Devils who came rushing in to aid their leader.

"What are you-?!" Georg gasped out before his words degenerated into a fit of coughing. "I thought I...told you all to...go above ground!"

"You think after all we've been through that we'd abandon our own?" one of his crew, a heavy set man with a forked beard, asked, almost incredulously. "Not a chance! Besides, once all that commotion started, there was no going anywhere. The other miners were all bolting past our section, screaming at the top of their lungs! They looked to have had the daylights scared out of them, and not one of them would stay put long enough to tell us what was going on. So, we hunkered down until they passed and came to see for ourselves."

Georg, apparently used to his orders being treated with less-than-absolute deference, blew out an aggravated sigh that promptly turned into more coughing.

"He only has some bruised ribs, but you'd best get him to a healer," Izlude advised, moving to help Georg to his feet.

The knight blade had been hoping the Boulder Devils would clear the chamber, thus allowing him to investigate what he suspected was the epicenter of the mine's spectral activity. But, Georg shrugged off his grasp and Izlude suddenly realized that every pair of eyes had fixed upon him.

"Come to think of it, what did happened?" asked another crewmember, a lithe woman with a line of stitching where one eye should've been. "It's gone quiet again all of a sudden."

Izlude, not sure how to answer but suspecting that his meager talents in deflecting questions would avail him not, remained quiet. Though he knew the Boulder Devils were not people who scared easily, he was reluctant to risk frightening his friends by revealing what he had learned from Nicholas in the tavern three nights ago. He had hoped that Georg's persistent coughing would force the Boulder Devils to let the matter lie while they carried their leader to the surface but, unfortunately, Gerde was more perceptive then he thought.

"Damien…," she intoned, her voice becoming harsh, "What just happened here? You know something, do you?"

The knight blade was silent as his eyes strayed in the direction of the pit.

"It seems that whatever that was started when the area around that pit got too crowded," Izlude answered as his hand wandered to the pocket which held the holy stone. "Someone, or something, is down there, and does not want to be disturbed."

"What do you...mean, Damien...?" Georg asked curiously. Once more, the knight blade felt every pair of eyes alight upon him, as if expecting him to answer. And, the sight of Georg's battered condition, not to mention the thought of how easily it could've been much worse, left him sorely tempted to confess all. At the last, however, Izlude mustered his reserve and held his tongue. Instead, he pulled his lantern free of his belt, ignited it, and approached the pit. The gravel crunched under his feet as he leaned over the precipice and saw only blackness below. Shrugging, he turned and stumbled as something caught his foot. Izlude flailed for balance, all too aware of the bottomless chasm so near to hand, and managed to pitch himself towards safety...

...only to discover a length of almost buried metal beneath him.

Digging with his hands, he cleared away enough of the gravel to discover a rusted, long forgotten section of rail buried beneath. Further work revealed that the rusted rail swept towards the chasm, where it ended in a pair of jagged points just over the edge.

"It's not over, it's across," he mused aloud. "Whatever's going on here, it has something to do with whatever's on the other side of this pit!" he affirmed, pointing towards the shadowy mass beyond.

And, as he did so, the voices spoke up again.

Leave! Leave now!

Izlude ignored the warning, instead mulling over how to get across the wide chasm. Though the tracks had clearly once spanned it, these had long since fallen away. And, the gloom which enshrouded where the far side should be was so deep that he could not even tell where the tracks had once led, let alone whether or not he could make the jump across. He seethed with frustration, but this was forgotten when he heard a sudden flurry of activity behind him. He turned and, to his astonishment, saw that the Boulder Devils had unlocked and thrown open several of the storerooms in the chamber and were pulling free lengths of rail and sets of joints, hauling them towards the chasm.

"Er...," Izlude blurted, dumbly. "What are you doing?"

"Same thing as you, I'd imagine," Gerde replied smugly. "Investigating."

Izlude's perplexity must've shown as the other Boulder Devils began fitting the rail pieces together and hammering on the joints to hold them in place, for the former Nanten sighed melodramatically.

"You need a way across, and I owe you a debt," she said simply. "Once we have a long enough rail put together, you can use it as a bridge."

"And, nothing sours...the ale like...an unpaid debt," Georg choked out from he was being tended by a female white mage whose long wavy hair had long since gone grey. "Go to it...you lot. And, Damien, I...never forget a...good turn. After all, that..."

"Deserves a drink, yeah, I know," Izlude replied, unable to keep a smile from lighting his features.

Topsy turvy his world might have become since adopting the persona of Damien Mitchell, but it had been worth it to meet such people as Georg, Gerde, Aldrich, Sir Alian, and the Fredericks.

Perhaps, if he accomplished what he set out to do, he might repay a measure of their kindness.

Once the lengths of rail were assembled, several Boulder Devils lifted it and, after carefully pitching it up and down, they managed to discern the far side of the cavern. Setting their burden down, and after seeing that it remained stable, they built two more identical lengths and lay them alongside the first, allowing an easy crossing. Izlude gave his thanks and was partway across when a sudden outburst from Georg drew him up short.

"Wait, where are...you going?" the grizzled miner demanded hoarsely.

Craning his neck, Izlude saw that Gerde had joined him on the makeshift bridge.

"To investigate, same as him," she answered simply, pointing at the knight blade.

Georg cursed under his breath and looked about ready to rise and try to follow the knight blade and his daughter. But, before he could even get near the improvised bridge, he felt a hand tug at his arm.

"No, Georg," the white mage warned, setting a hand on his shoulder. "Your ribs are so bruised you can barely breathe. We must get you to the surface so I can treat your injuries."

"She's right, father," Gerde affirmed. "I know better than most how strong you are, but you'd never make it across this span in your condition." Turning to the other crew members, she said "Everyone, tend to and guard my father while I'm gone! I owe my life to Sir Damien, and will pay up right now!"

Georg looked about to protest but, at the last, he nodded in resignation. The white mage turned to Gerde and said "Go on, dear. Help Sir Damien, and leave everything here to us."

Gerde blew out a sigh of relief when she saw her normally stubborn father heed to her plea and, when Georg nodded his approval, Izlude could swear he saw a hint of smugness on the woman's face. "Very well. Good luck to both of you! Whatever you find down there, be careful!"

His daughter smiled as she joined the tips of the thumb and index finger of her right hand together in the shape of a 'o' and cried "Okay!" before turning and following Izlude across the bridge.

SSSSSS

Izlude had to admit, creating a serviceable bridge from spare rail pieces was a remarkable feat...

...though, if his encounter with what lay across the chasm went poorly, he did not relish the idea of trying to make a hasty retreat across the questionable footing of the narrow structure.

Shaking off the grim musing, and feeling reassured by the weight of the Pisces stone at his hip, Izlude strode further down the mine shaft. This section of the mine showed worrisome disrepair, its timbers sagging and its rails all but buried beneath a carpet of rock dust. Izlude had been mentally reviewing Georg's lessons on what to do in the event of an cave-in, but this was promptly forgotten when he once more felt the chill wind which, earlier, had heralded the deluge of stones. The whispering voices returned as well, echoing louder and louder in his ears, once more demanding that he turn back and stay away. But, the knight blade was not to be dissuaded, for this was what the holy stone wanted him to do.

Whatever will or consciousness or heart it possessed had gleaned that whatever was behind this haunting threatened the livelihoods of a great entrepreneur and his workers, that Izlude was still burdened by the harm he had unwittingly done after his order had been subverted by demonkind, and that the knight blade urgently needed money in order to vie for the hand of his beloved before another man claimed her.

Through means he could not understand, the stone had deemed that guiding Izlude here could set all three of these troubles to rights and, inscrutable though the stone's workings and motives might be, it had never led him astray before.

After walking for a few more moments, Izlude's faith was rewarded as the shaft expanded into an enormous cavern. Looking ahead and then up, he finally saw the source of all the commotion in the mines that had frightened off so many miners from the consortium's past projects over the last few weeks.

Before the knight blade was a huge trove of gold and silver coins, as well as such baubles and finery as jewelry, silk tapestries, ornate vases, ivory carvings, animal pelts, jewel studded weapons, and every other piece of decadence Izlude could possibly imagine.

Dangling from iron spikes thrust into the opposite wall, and looking decidedly out of place amongst the clutter of profligacy, was a tattered banner depicting a great white shark, leaping from foaming waters, its jaws gaping wide to devour a blood red moon.

"The Moonsharks!" Gerde blurted, her eyes nearly popping out of her head.

Izlude could not blame her for her amazement, either at the hoard or its apparent owners, for he had heard of the infamous band as well. A group of fallen warriors, discharged from Ivalice's armies for gross misconduct and other villainous deeds, they had promptly found a more suitable niche as some of the most feared and hated bandits in Ivalician history. Skillful, ruthless, and much more likely to leave behind corpses rather than witnesses, they were rumored to have amassed a kingly fortune during their sordid careers.

Actually, I think we might as well drop the 'rumored' part, the knight blade reflected, stunned at the wealth which had been amassed in the cave.

As he drew near one pile of loot for a closer look, and nearly ended up tripping over a bleached skull, however, he remembered how the Moonsharks' vile legend had ended.

During the War of the Lions, a terrible plague had swept through the Gollund underground, killing countless miners and, apparently, the nefarious Moonsharks had also fallen victim to the plague, which proved every bit as implacable a killer as they were.

There were other rumors - which, Izlude suspected, were also quite plausible - that the Moonsharks had been consumed by greed and suspicion of one another that, by the time they realized their loot would mean little in the face of the plague, they had all died...

...but, though they were dead, they were not gone.

Floating above the veritable mountains of treasure, numbering twenty in all, were the translucent shades of the bandits who had amassed this trove and, so perverted by the greed which had outlived their mortal bodies, yet guarded their ill-gotten gains, even in death, where their earthly possessions were no longer of any use to them. The knight blade wasn't sure if he should feel pity or revulsion for the wretched souls, but he did know that these foul spirits had done much evil in life, continued to threaten the living, and stood between him and his fervent desires to be reunited with Alma and to have the burden of his weighty conscience lightened.

It may no longer be the former Templar's place to pass judgment on the guilty, but, whatever sentence these sinister phantasms had earned, they had evaded it far too long.

"I would say that I have no quarrel with you," Izlude said solemnly, "but, I'd be lying. I know well of your crimes in life. And, even now, your perverted vigil over this hoard threatens the livelihoods of honest men who seek to better the lives of their fellows. I will give you one chance to seek some other dark corner to skulk in. Refuse at your peril."

"Does that speech ever actually work?!" Gerde asked, more than a bit surprised but less-than-reassured by Izlude's words and commanding tone with which he spoke them.

Evidently, the phantoms were also unmoved by Izlude's demands, for they sneered at the knight blade who stood before them, defiant and yet unarmed. Fool… they hissed. You should have turned back when you had the chance. Now, you will never again see the light of day! With a final howl that stirred the hairs on the back of both mortal's necks, the phantasms floated downward and moved to attack.

The knight blade grinned fearlessly...until his reflexively grasping for his sword left him probing only the air. The corners of his mouth drew downwards and he felt his heart drop into his stomach. In the onrush of excitement - the spectral defense of the pit, Georg's near brush with disaster, and the allure of being so close to where the holy stone had been guiding him - he'd forgotten that his immediate goal had simply been to find the ghosts' lair.

Assaulting it was supposed to have happened later, when was better equipped to fight the resident specters.

He saw the revenants' sneering faces twist into hideous mockeries of amused smiles and heard a deafening face palm from Gerde, and he could blame neither party for how they reacted to his buffoonery. Still, Izlude had fought shades like these before and, while far from harmless, he also knew that they were nowhere near as dangerous as the Lucavi he had stood against in his ill-fated last stand some months prior. And, more to the point, he hadn't been lying when he'd told his fellow miners that these foul spirits could be defeated.

If only he had a weapon!

Aldrich, no doubt sensing that his imperiled investment could not withstand the prospect of miners stealing from him, had made a point of meticulously searching each worker for illicit weapons. Izlude's efforts to smuggle one in so that he'd face these ghosts with steel in hand had yet to move beyond the planning phase, stymied by both the rigorous work regimen and Aldrich's equally rigorous scrutiny of any untoward goings-on in his imperiled mine.

Thus, here Izlude stood, unarmed before the restless shades of a murderous band quite eager to add him to their bloody legacy.

"You sure know how to show a lady a good time," Gerde remarked sarcastically, though her tone and the way she brandished her pickaxe like a weapon suggested that she was unafraid of the phantoms and very nearly excited at discovering the huge treasure trove.

But, though the former Nanten could probably swing that pickaxe hard enough to split a man's skull, it was unlikely to avail her against these wraith like apparitions whose ghostly blades could reach through armor as easily as she might reach through fog. In not forcing her to stay behind, Izlude might've just signed Gerde's death warrant along with his own.

Still, the holy stone had urged him here, and it had not betrayed him.

The Pisces stone began to hum in his pocket and he heard once more the sound of his father guiding him through the slashes, parries, and thrusts best suited to the short sword he had newly gained the strength to wield. He recalled the early combination he'd been taught; a low thrust to force the opponent back a step and gain the initiative, an overhand chop to draw the defense, and then turning it into a slash from left to right at the last moment to take off the opponent's sword hand.

Right, right, right! his father's voice echoed.

Knowing that was not the sequence, but that the holy stone had presented this altered recollection for a reason, Izlude let one eye dart to the right and beheld his salvation.

Nearly lost amidst the clutter of spoils was a broad bladed knight's sword whose rounded pommel was embedded with jewels. A blade of that make was aptly known amongst knights as a Defender.

Grateful for anything with which he could fight off the fleshless monsters arrayed against him, he charged forward, tucked into a roll in midstride, and tugged the blade free as he hurtled past. With practiced ease, he leapt to his feet and spun to face his foes all in one motion, his hands already having his newfound blade drawn back over the shoulder and leveled at the enemy.

Now, with a blade in hand and an enemy to face, he almost felt like himself again.

But, even a finely crafted blade as this was just as likely to whistle through the ghostly apparitions as to cause them any real harm. But, the holy stone once more hummed in his pocket and, closing his eyes and concentrating for a brief moment, he made a silent, fervent wish to the stone to lend him its assistance once again.

More than his own life was at stake. Gerde might die with him if he did not prevail, Aldrich's business might fail and he and his family and workers would be left penniless, and the wound his beloved Alma's heart had suffered at his first death would go forever unhealed.

Vanquishing these wraiths might not by a large enough act of contrition to erase his unwitting misdeeds, but whatever good it would achieve was worth bringing about.

The steel in his hands grew warm.

When the knight blade opened his eyes, he gaped when he saw that his newfound blade was limed with pale flames. Echoes of stories he'd heard in distant days came back to him, of how, in anticipation of deadly missions of the utmost importance, the swords of distinguished Templars and holy knights were consecrated with divine magics, meant to counter undead, dark knights, and even demons. Though he'd heard these tales, he had never once seen one unfold, let alone been at the center stage of such a story.

Yet, as astonishment gave way to comprehension, he realized that the tables of this battle had turned decisively in his favor. Thus resolved, Izlude charged forward to put the phantoms of Gollund to rest and end the Moonsharks' foul legacy for good.

Gerde was gaping too, but not at his now fabulous blade. As the baptism of fire had taken place, and the knight blade's eyes had opened, she saw that his irises were no longer grey, but shone with an eerie glow every color of the rainbow.

Okay, who or what the hell is this guy?! she silently thundered, but she had no time to ponder the question.

"Stay back, Gerde!" Izlude ordered as the malevolent lost souls descended upon him.

The knight blade, despite the long months since his last battle, fell back into the deadly dance of singing steel with such ease that he was left amazed. Though the ghosts would have been resistant to even a finely wrought blade, the holy flames wreathing his sword swept through one phantom after another, and each shrilled its agony just as it dissolved and vanished into nothingness. The knight blade parried their blows, their spectral weapons evaporating at a touch from the holy flames, and then thrust deep to send these specters who'd done much evil in life to face final judgment...

...but, these specters were no more ruthless in death than they were in life.

Some had hung back, assessing their foe as their former comrades were vanquished and, sensing a potential weakness, came at Izlude from all sides. Those in front sidestepped or leapt away from his blows, distracting him so that phantasmal blades could slip in unnoticed to pierce him in the side and back. Soon, the knight blade felt the chill of the grave which imbued their weapons sapping his strength and causing his vision to swim. The ghouls moved in for the kill...

...but froze in place when the sound of breaking crockery rang out.

"I think I broke your thing here!" Gerde's voice rang out.

As one, the ghouls turned and, when they saw the former Nanten throwing luxuriant pelts to the floor and stomping them, they shrieked and, the knight blade forgotten, charged at the offending woman. They swarmed over her in a body, packed so close in their killing frenzy that the ghouls seemed to have melded together, one's elbow residing in his neighbor's ribcage while another's head sprung from his fellow's shoulder...

...which was precisely where Gerde wanted them.

Digging into her pockets, she removed a handful of red-orange feathers and blew them into the revenants' faces. The feathers, phoenix down, weren't nearly as flashy as Izlude's flaming sword, but proved no less deadly to the phantasms.

They let out another shriek, this one of agony and fear, and then all but a handful of them were gone. Izlude could not help but smile when he saw nearly all the phantoms in the cave being decimated by Gerde's cunningly using their own greed to destroy them, and he brought his consecrated blade up to finish off the few, panicked revenants which remained.

Within minutes, the battle was over. Once the phantoms were finally put to rest, the stone's impromptu consecration of the sword faded. Izlude's eyes returned to their grey color and the holy flames which had wreathed the blade of his sword dimmed and vanished. Abruptly aware of how tired he was, and wondering how much of his fighting prowess hadn't stemmed from his years of experience, he collapsed to one knee, his hands clutching his chest as his lungs heaved for air.

"Sir Damien!" his young partner cried as she rushed to his side to help him up. "Are you all right?"

For a stretching second, the simple question left Izlude struggling to answer. In a matter of moments, he had, literally, lived one of the most coveted fantasies of those who took up the sword in the name of the heavens. His sword had been blessed with holy fire, which no evil being could touch without being incinerated. And, nary a breath later, he had used that power to bring justice to a band of murderous spirits who, even in death, threatened to do much evil to honest folk.

When he had made his first sojourn into the realm of the deceased, he's suspected that his own soul was no less twisted by the crimes he had committed and rationalized while serving the high confessor's designs and, albeit unwittingly, those of the demon who wore his father's skin. Yet, he had held the very flames meant to slay evil and had not only survived them, but had used them to, at long last, do something he could, without reservation, say had been right.

Did this mean that his guilt had been absolved? Or, that he had never been guilty in the first place? He could not say, but all he truly knew was that, for the first time in the long time, his heavy conscience was much lighter. What's more, with the foul spirits of the Moonsharks gone, Aldrich's business and his workers' livelihoods were saved, making his reunion with Alma so close that he could almost taste her lips upon his.

And, it was good.

His expression broadened into a smile that would've made a less stoic woman blush as he patted Gerde on the hand. "Yes, I'm fine. And, not that I'm ungrateful for your help, but why did you not run back to the others? You must've known whatever I thought to find down here would be dangerous and you could have been hurt."

The young woman grinned. "What else can I say? I ain't afraid of no ghost. And besides, look at all this loot!"

Izlude could not help but stare at his fearless young friend for a moment before bursting into laughter. Even after he'd laughed himself hoarse, he was still grinning when he heard a clatter of footfalls and saw Aldrich and a newly healed Georg burst into the room. Realizing what must've happened, and that Izlude and Gerde's actions had likely saved him and his family and workers from financial ruin, Aldrich nearly broke Izlude, Gerde, and Georg's arms shaking their hands. That done, he promptly promised a one eighth share of the Moonsharks' former loot, as well as owner's shares in the consortium, to each of the trio.

The knight blade, realizing that such an amount of the loot and the income from the shares might very well be enough to buy several acres of Lesalian countryside, and an estate to put on it, was flabbergasted at the offer...

...flabbergasted, but still grateful.

He would not only have enough money for transportation to Lesalia and finery to wear when he sought Alma's hand, but enough that he could give her, and the family he hoped they'd have, a proper home wherever they sought to spend their new lives together.

'The Ivalician Dream', as it had been so eloquently dubbed, had gifted him with both a fortune he had fairly earned and a second chance, both as a man in love and as a man of God.

"Three days a working man, and you're already rich and famous!" Georg cheered, pulling the knight blade into a rib cracking hug. "That's the sort of day you remember for the rest of your lives and dazzle your grandkids with!"

Despite the intoxicatingly beautiful image this conjured in his mind, or himself and Alma happily together for many years and watching their children grown and having children of their own, Izlude knew Georg well enough to know where this conversation was going.

Oh, no... he realized in dawning comprehension and helpless terror.

"And, that deserves a drink!"

Oh, yes... he mused in resignation as he was bustled back to the surface.

A/N: Ok, we're going to cut it off here. If anyone finds the scene with the ghosts familiar, it's because it was inspired by the anime 'Kara no Kyoukai', particularly Shiki Ryougi's roof-top fight scenes with the phantoms of several tormented young girls who committed suicide by jumping off the building.

watch?v=_CZqNwakCUE&list=FL7XYfD9Po3WrSGE5DMWR7kA&index=19