Co-Author's Note: Falchion1984 here. I would like to take this opportunity to thank a recent friend on DeviantArt, Bluefelt, for providing both encouragement and advice when a lengthy ringer at work and in my writing had me fearing this that chapter was subpar. If you're reading this Bluefelt, Elly3981 and I thank you for your help and we hope you enjoy this little piece.
Interlude 2: Broken Glass and Distorted Reflections
Ivalice had long been a harsh land, one where hope too often proved a fickle mistress and where diplomacy was most frequently decided upon the tip of a blade. From time beyond memory, those of high or even royal birth waged conflicts, subtle and open, as they jockeyed for position in the kingdom's convoluted society. At times, dukes vying for greater wealth or influence would solicit the help of covert agents to infiltrate one another's affairs, sometimes by working from the shadows and other times by insinuating themselves into the very lives of those they were hired to ruin, seeking some dire secret to drag into the daylight.
Other times, a king would decide that one or more of the nobles beneath him was a threat. At times, this was because those who'd earned the king's ire raised too many objections to this decree or because too many knights and other vassals had begun to show signs that their loyalties were shifting and, on rare occasion, actual proof was unearthed that one of the many thorns in the king's side was poised to become lethal. Regardless, the wrath of kings was to be feared, and not just by the object of their ire.
During the last half century of war, there had been no shortage of opportunities to eliminate a potential rival for the throne. At times, an overconfident monarch might publically declare such a noble to be a traitor and their lands and wealth forfeit, which had the predictable consequence of Ivalice's sizable list of enemies growing a bit longer as the noble in question, guilty or not, would never suffer destitution, death, and posthumous ignominy without a fight.
A king of a more devious persuasion, however, would pour over the ever shifting ebb and flow of the decades long war, seeking out the most suicidal engagement he could find. And, upon discovering it, he would command the noble in question to take command of a confrontation whose end was all but preordained. Thus, the noble in question would either tacitly commit treason by refusing or meet his end waging a battle which had been hopeless from the outset. Then, the slain noble would serve his king from beyond the grave as a martyr by which to rally new support so that his Ordalian slayers might not go unpunished.
Yet, though kings, queens, knights, bishops, and rooks warred upon the gray chessboard of Ivalice, it was the pawns who took the brunt of each and every assault.
When a king mobilized his army to crush a would-be usurper, any and all who served the maligned noble were branded as guilty of treason by association. Whether soldiers and guardsmen who rallied to their lord's defense, regardless of their complicity or even understanding of the alleged treason, or farmers who tilled the earth under the lord's protection, each and all were invisibly branded by the king's wrath, and that brand demanded bloodshed.
And, even those who were not killed outright fared little better than those who'd lost their lives, as many either died in dungeons from hunger or disease while others were publically hung before jeering mobs. Others still, be they women, children, or elders, either found themselves destitute when their homes were looted and burned, or they were taken as plunder, to wait upon those who'd upended their lives.
For those nobles thus branded, and whose deaths on the battlefield had been arranged amidst the long shadows that gathered in the throne of Lesalia, the pawns fared little better as they shared the disparaged lord's fate. After decades of war, and countless battles where far more men and women-at-arms returned on their shields than with them, a deep haze had shrouded the land, one of equal parts frenetic desperation in the face of an implacable enemy and the grim resignation that not one day would go by that didn't end in blood and tears being shed.
Whether during Ivalice's advance into Ordalia, or when the tides of war had turned and Limberry had changed hands, eagerness for final victory or desperation to stave off total defeat alike had allowed that haze to thicken, by measures small and great, until it overshadowed nearly all else. Whether it was the ever shrinking yields of the harvests and how the prices for staple foods crept ever upwards, or how conscripts populating the barracks grew steadily younger and their training briefer, or how both the letters of condolence written to the families of the fallen and the debts owed to third parties financing the war piled ever higher, each and all was largely lost amidst the haze created by the sight of marching hosts and flashing swords, and the grim knowledge that staving them off would mean the loss of countless lives that could have been.
Some, however, had managed to spy sordid opportunities amidst the gloom.
Amongst such constant and chaotic attrition, one command being wiped out was only to be expected. And, if the lord leading that command just happened to be a perceived rival to the king, so much the better.
In those engagements which took place on Ordalian soil, such oblique assassinations could easily happen unassisted. After all, few Ivalicians had had the luxury of conducting cartography on Ordalia since the war started, and those maps which predated the hostilities were often found to be woefully out of date. And, even those armies and commanders who proved the stronger when faced with a blind march through and behind enemy lines still had the enemy themselves to contend with. Though Ordalia had been bled of warriors just as surely as Ivalice, even the greenest recruit fought fiercely when their foes drew so near to hearth and home.
Even when Ordalia could not do the king's dirty work for him, there were no shortage of alternatives. As there was never any lack of forays against Ordalia, ill-fated or otherwise, and since Ivalice's ever deteriorating economy meant that resources to support these advances were distinctly finite, it was a simple matter to decide that supplies should be redirected to a command which had a greater chance of success while another was doomed and further support would be futile. No less potent a tool was the erratic and unreliable intelligence that reached Ivalice from behind enemy lines. Ordalia was a strange land, inhabited by strange people who spoke in strange tongues. And, if a troublesome lord leading a sally against Ordalia met with a tragic end, such was easily blamed on a "mistranslation".
For those who served under a lord thus condemned to die on the battlefield, realization of the truth did not always occur. Some fought and bled to the very end, never realizing that their death warrants had been signed by the very crown they had sworn to defend. Others died of starvation, wondering what had waylaid their overdue supplies and fearful what such might portend back home. And some, who at least suspected the truth, either grimly accepted that the crown was far beyond the reach of their sword arm and chose to simply take as many Ordalians with them as they could, while others chose to desert, keeping their lives but also knowing that both their honor and any chance of returning home were forfeit.
Thus, with a calculating malice towards the perceived enemy and a cold indifference to the "expendables" who would be dragged to the grave along with the object of the king's ire, a troublesome lord was eliminated and the wrathful monarch was secure on his throne for a heartbeat or so longer.
Yet, before the dust had even settled from such violence, portents of bloodshed yet to come would arise once more, as a king never lacks for foes.
As it turned out, neither did the warring dukes who'd fought over the vacant throne of Ivalice.
With the kingdom already broken and spent from decades of war with Ordalia, the feud which arose following the sickly King Omdolia's death found a far more fertile field upon which to sow and reap a harvest of carnage and misery. The disdain for the crown and the nobility seemed to wax with each passing day, sparking such rebellions as the infamous Corpse Brigade and Order of the Ebon Eye in many corners of the warring dukes' domains.
And, with Ivalice's economy continuing its slide into ruin, the flames of discontent found ready fuel as work and food grew ever scarcer. Both dukes, each utterly ensnared by their mutual delusions of their own right to act as regent of the throne, would greet these crises, and the anger that came with them, with harsh words at best and the tip of a blade at worst.
More often than not, however, the flames of war delivered pains far more searing than the slash of a simple sword.
Unceasing rains in western Ivalice and relentless drought in eastern Ivalice had ravaged crops from one corner of the realm to another, forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes in a desperate gamble to escape the long arm of starvation and, just possibly, rebuild their lives. Most had to resort to crossing the battle lines in order to accomplish this, where getting caught could mean being turned back or hung, while others were smuggled out by villains who treated the desperate droves as little more than cargo and had no thought save how much coin could be bled from the castaways.
Regardless, the destitute and the dead piled up alongside the chessboard that was Ivalice while the dukes, indifferent to the cost, warred on, each seeking to claim the crown and to write their place in the annals of history using their rivals' blood as the ink.
And not just that of the opposing duke either.
Both the warring dukes were besieged not only by their rivals for the throne, but also from within their own domains as well. The Corpse Brigade, as it turned out, was but the first of many armed rebellions which had sparked amidst the dry tinder of Ivalice's misfortunes, and it was a blaze neither duke could spare the manpower to beat out. What's more, it was not uncommon for embattled kings and warring dukes alike to have enemies much closer at hand...
...even in their inner circles.
Not all those who were powerful enough to present a credible threat found a monarch's dagger in their back, however. Indeed, quite a few were too dangerous for monarch or duke to turn into an enemy, even when it was clear that the favor of too many knights and vassals were shifting away from their liege lord. Most famous amongst these were Lord Balbanes Beoulve and Count Cidolfas Orlandu, better known as "Thunder God Cid", the White and Black Lions whose claws repeatedly rent to pieces seemingly invincible Ordalian armies.
Other such names included the would-be successor to the Beoulve legacy, Zalbag Beoulve, the pious but fearsome Cardinal Alphons Draclau, and Marquis Mesdoram Elmdor, better known as "the Silver Prince" to his friends and "the Silver Demon" to his foes. Each and all were valiant commanders who led from the front, who fought shoulder to shoulder with their troops, and who, much like the legendary King Denamda IV, bled as their men bled while lesser commanders kept their distance from the battle and were the first to run when fortune turned against them.
These commanders who were men of greatness, Balbanes and Orlandu in particular, were the sorts of commanders that could rally the troops to surge back from the brink of defeat, could make an enemy on the brink of victory quail and fall back, and, more to the point, that many would prefer to bow to than their liege lord.
However, that same adoration and loyalty made it impossible to eliminate these imposing threats to the king's continued reign. Whereas a local lord could be invisibly branded by the king's wrath and crushed overnight through force of arms, attempting to do likewise to one like Balbanes or Orlandu would turn Ivalice against herself while Ordalia was free to stab her in deep in the back. And, if such a commander was to be lost in battle, even without a wrathful king "arranging" it, the loss of morale amongst the troops might very well cost Ivalice the war. And, thus, the necessities of war and the likelihood that such an act might cause a king to lose his kingdom kept such commanders safe from the monarch's dagger finding purchase in their backs.
A wildly different, but no less dangerous, specimen was Duke Garreth Barrington. An obese toad of many perversities, he was neither counted as a great commander nor was he blessed with a phalanx of loyal friends.
What he did have, however, was a keen and devious mind.
Knowledgeable in many aspects of the machinists' craft, and quick to learn the secrets of new technological terrors, he was the evil genius behind the capture and reverse engineering of Romanda's infamous guns after their invasion across the Larner Channel.
Though a difficult and costly process, made all the more so by the disbelief and panic that had swept through Ivalice after the great King Denamda was finally felled by disease on the Romandan front, it had been Barrington who had struck upon the notion of creating a much, much larger version of the Romandan guns, which he dubbed "cannons". With this new innovation, and his construction of Fort Zeakden to act as both an elevated position that allowed for firing at tremendous range and a depot for ammunition and gunpowder, Barrington had thoroughly turned the tables on the Romandans who, just barely able to fight in a land where their longtime ally of winter was too often absent, were promptly routed.
And, as if that wasn't enough, Barrington also made a point of seeking out and grooming promising youths to act as his personal assassins. Some were trained to be ambidextrous, and could deflect a sword with a blade in one hand and then impale their foe with a blade in their other hand. Others had a nigh-flawless aim and could hurl tiny bladed stars, daggers, and even larger weapons at their foes with jaw dropping accuracy and lethal effect. There were even rumors of a pair of dark-skinned siblings in his employ who could twist the very weave of nature and bombard their foes with bursts of thunder and tongues of flame, using powers hitherto unknown even in Ivalice's rich history of spellcraft. And thus, the unloved but feared Duke Barrington was kept quite safe from the monarch's wrath by his thundering cannons that could rain steel upon a castle and his assassins who made no more noise than the shadow of death before they severed even well guarded heads from their shoulders.
But, the monarch had doubtless considered taking the chance nonetheless.
There had also been those who'd condemned such casual brutality against the people by those who wore the crown, or even the trappings of highborn underlings who craved to rule, alleging that a ruler who is more dangerous to his subjects than their eternal foes of Ordalia lacked the virtue and wisdom to occupy the throne. Some of these detractors were also too powerful, and too badly needed to stem any unwanted shifts in the tides of war, to be disposed of, either directly or "accidentally". And so, their unflattering assertions were tolerated so long as their swords were pointed at Ordalia rather than at the ever embattled monarch. The most famous such advocates for those of low birth were the famed Lions of Ivalice, Lord Balbanes and Count Orlandu...
Yet, it seemed both had been surpassed by the newly crowned peasant king, Delita Hyral the First.
Though Ivalicians from both the White and Black Lion factions knew of the lowborn young man, and all respected his abilities and were awed by his story, not many expected their lot in life to improve under his rule. Some, especially those who'd fought and bled in the service of Duke Larg's ill-fated bid for the throne, feared the new king would have only retribution for his fallen foes. Others, though well aware that a peasant occupying the throne was certainly a novel event, regarded stories of the pending changes to Ivalice with a skeptical eye. In the end, however, both camps were flabbergasted when the peasant born king delivered the very opposite of their bleak expectations.
Rather than retribution, he offered clemency to those former enemies that pledged to support his efforts in mending Ivalice's many wounds. And, whether it was brokering negotiations for distressed nobles to sell land they could no longer maintain to displaced Ivalicians eager to build new homes for themselves, or lifting tariffs in order to ensure a freer flow of goods to Ivalice's still distressed peoples, each and all were amazed at how the unheard-of had become commonplace under Delita's rule.
Many peasants, once certain that their humble birth was their fate, were stunned that one of their own could not only accomplish such a meteoric rise above the limits of his impoverished origins, but also seemed capable of chiseling out handholds by which the lowly might climb above and beyond their humble stations. Many nobles - some who had been bankrupted by the war and sought any means of escape from destitution, others who knew the best way to survive in this new Ivalice was to hitch their wagons to a rising star, and those who'd privately shared Balbanes and Orlandu's beliefs that a king had no less a duty to safeguard the lowly than he did the highborn - were eager to embrace the new king's proffered hand of friendship. In the end, the high and lowly alike flocked to Delita's banner, eager to see what future would be heralded by this pawn who had become a king.
Many, if not all, had once supposed that their lot in life had been decided the moment fate decreed whether they were born in a lord's castle or a farmer's homestead. The intricate, and ever entangled, web of Ivalice's convoluted society often seemed to most a cage of glass, which a person might wear as they did their clothing...but which could never be removed. Thus, it was the lot in life for one born into privilege to lust for more than they were born with and to fear that every shadow might hide a threat, just as surely as it was the lot in life for those of humble birth to labor over the glowing forge, spinning loom, or tilled fields, and where the best prospect was the relief of earning enough to keep a roof over their heads.
Though few would admit it, there had been those of high birth who'd found themselves wondering what their lives would be like if they'd been born as one who had no cause to distrust every stranger, nor to begin every meal wondering if it was this morsel or that which might have the poison. There were also no shortage of the lowly who'd pondered what a life of luxury might be like, where food was as abundant as it was decadent and where servants catered to ones every whim.
Some of these envious souls were aware that, whether it was anonymity or luxury they craved, it came at a price; but all such fantasies were dismissed as simply that, fantasies.
The glass cage had no doors, no hinges, no locks, no means of egress.
But, with living proof to the contrary now steering the helm of Ivalice, many began to wonder if they too might trace a very different path in the world than the cold logic of centuries would have dictated.
Soon enough, however, this was no mere musing but an unfolding reality.
Many nobles on either side of the war had been bankrupted financing the conflict and, though some had managed to pull themselves free of the jaws of destitution, others failed to manage that same egress. For some, they were too blinded by their pride to even consider haggling with peasants, even with the alternatives so bleak. For others, they simply had nothing to offer, their lands too damaged to be worth selling and those treasures they might part with having already been sold or stolen or otherwise lost. For both such parties, the road forward had proven long, twisted, and filled with ruts.
Those nobles who'd decided the only escape from poverty lay in allying with Delita had been bewildered enough to be bending their knee to a king who was born a peasant, but sitting across the negotiating table from more peasants had been no less stupefying. Not many such liaisons had succeeded easily, and quite a few didn't succeed at all. In some cases, the pride of centuries simply weighed too heavily to be dislodged, even by the far more ancient instinct to survive. In other cases, suspicion, mutual and otherwise, of being cheated, substantiated and otherwise, caused such endeavors to stall until one side or the other pushed back from the table and elected to try their luck elsewhere.
And for more than a few, who either could not or would not look at one of low birth and see anything more than chattel straying outside their proper station, such a leap of faith as negotiating with them as equal partners could no more succeed than an attempt to snatch a star from the heavens.
Thus, whether pride, prejudice, suspicion, or contempt, each and all proved less a weight to shoulder than a weight which pulled beneath the waves those who clung to it.
For those nobles who did remain at the table, however, their motives were no less desparate than the reasoning of those who'd never bothered to sit down in the first place.
For some, it was strictly a matter of practicality, with the threat posed by a horde of debt collectors and creditors eclipsing this hunting ground that had been untouched since before King Omdolia's death or that villa which had spent years doing little more than gather dust. For others, it was a throwback to the olden days of highborn Ivalicians jockeying for position, though the game board was now radically different. Where once there had been a plethora of dukes, counts, barons, and lords amongst which one might spin a web of convenient alliances and weave filaments with which to ensnare and strangle their foes, there was but one power broker in Ivalice and one man by whose leave the nobles kept whatever they had left, and that was King Delita Hyral the First.
And so, whether by strategically demanding less in return than might be expected or by digging deep into their purses to offer more, each and all was done in the hopes that the newly crowned king would notice and look upon such an act with favor. Others still, realizing that the lives they'd once had were beyond recovery, chose to simply move forward. For some, this meant lamenting their ill turn of fortune in a life of dissipation until their unlamented end, but for those who were younger and more ambitious, the notion of having to build a new life with only their own inner resources held a certain thrill. Some discovered talents hitherto unknown to them, others found unlikely friends by reaching across the ancient divides that separated class from class, even finding true allies amongst those whose former wartime allegiances had not mirrored their own, and still others realized a new and very different pride in creating a great legacy rather than simply inheriting it.
For many of low birth, the transition had been equally jarring. Many who'd been forced to abandon their homes in the face of poverty and starvation had long pined for the chance to return to their old homes and their old lives, even though they knew both to be impossible. Though some had held out the hope that Lesalia, the jewel of the realm, would offer them succor and the chance to rebuild their lives, this dream largely gave way to a nightmare of mutual contempt that promptly ignited into violence between the castaways who'd lost their livelihoods and the native Lesalians whose city was crumbling under the influx of desperate souls. The uneasy calm brought about by King Delita had been had been shocking enough, but what came next caused jaws to drop in every camp.
The idea of negotiating with nobles, who could no longer afford to maintain their land, and to sell it to displaced peasants, no less, had seemed too bizarre to believe. More than a few half expected one of noble blood to be able to conjure gold out of thin air whenever some itch of profligacy struck them. Others, of a more rational persuasion, were very much of the opinion that an impoverished noble would rather hang their family crest in a cave and sleep on a hibernating bear than turn to the lowly for help, let alone as part of an equal partnership.
Men being turned into demons by magical rocks seemed less impossible.
But, then again, so had a man born the son of a farmer ascending to the throne. And, more to the point, many of those peasants to whom Delita made his appeal had no homes to return to, no work, little money, and families to think of. And so, with equal parts trepidation and mystification, the unlikely partners took to the negotiating table to discuss how to reverse Ivalice's decades of misfortune.
The unlikely partnership, however, was far from harmonious.
Just as more than a few of the nobles left the table out of either pride, prejudice, suspicion, or contempt, a number of their humbly born counterparts did likewise. Some, who remembered how they were sitting across from the same people who once could've evict them with the snap of a finger and who would happily bleed them dry in rents for the most paltry offense, were delighted at such desperation on the part of those they'd long feared and hated. Others, knowing the nobles had been long practiced at the art of spinning and twisting words to suit their ends, suspected treachery. And still more, those who had a more intimate awareness of the depth of the nobles' former lives of excess and how far removed such was from that of one who was born and died in toil and squalor, could no more conceive a reason to help them than they could a reason to expect an equitable agreement to be reached, let alone honored.
And so, they left, returning to their families and their fellows, only to see a reason to go back to the table in each and every desperate face, each sunken cheek, and every moist eye.
Some were chastened by the sight, others were reminded that indulging their suspicions and grudges did nothing to put roofs over these peoples' heads nor food on their tables, and still more wondered what they had to lose in any case. Thus, the negotiations were reconvened.
King Delita chaired these strange conferences, speaking only to encourage, to mediate, and, when needed, to suggest an alternative when the proponents had locked horns a bit too tightly. Yet, for the most part, he was content to watch. And, he beheld quite a sight indeed.
Spurred by their mutual desperation, and by all that might go to wrack and ruin if they failed, concessions were made, obstacles were reasoned around, promises without precedent but with the weight of a nation's future riding upon them, were forged and signed, and then stamped with the authority of a most unlikely king.
Yet, the sojourn into the unknown did not end there.
Many of the peasants who'd once robbed and vandalized businesses in Lesalia were offered incentives to work off the damages. And some, spurred as much by a vengeful conscience as their king's eloquence, did so with such dedication that they were hired on as true employees afterward. Others banded together with friends and neighbors, new and old, and hired out wherever they could put their shared talents to use for an honest day's wages. And others still were able to rebuild their former livelihoods and, with the lands purchased from the distressed nobles to use as a base of operations and with taxes and tariffs sharply reduced, they were able to make a far better living than before.
Thus, in a land where one's birth had once been one's fate, nobles born into wealth now faced the challenge of building a new legacy with their own wits and skills, peasants once considered as bred to be expendable were now actively sought after for their talents, and both had managed to find a way to snatch Ivalice back from the brink of ruin through the unheard-of act of negotiating a solution as equal partners.
The land of Ivalice was changing. And, into what, no one truly knew.
All the people could say for certain, as nobles and peasants rallied to the new king's banner and a man of low birth conjured one portent after another of a hopeful future, was that those who spared a moment to glance into the mirror never saw the same person staring back at them twice.
Granted, the eyes, nose, chin, and mouth did not betray the transformation, and the hair about the head and face showed nothing that could not be attributed to time and the strain of the day. Yet, there was no hiding that no one in Ivalice had come through the War of the Lions unchanged. Some had changed for the better, as had those nobles and peasants who chose to make their unlikely union work. Others had changed for the worse, such as those who'd turned to thuggery after arriving as a castaway in Lesalia and who'd remained deaf to any murmur of conscience afterwards. Some had endured, such as those nobles who'd chosen to create a new legacy to replace their lost inheritance and those peasants who'd built prosperous lives with their own two hands. Others had been broken, such as those who lived lives of dissipation in sordid corners of Ivalice, whiling away what time and coin they hand left on drink and opiates until their lamentations ended in a final gasp.
Yet, in a land where nobles and peasants, who had each lost so much now aspired to claim a better future, the mirror always showed that none were the same person they'd been since the sacking of Lesalia heralded the War of the Lions. And, on the heels of such a realization came the simple truth that there was no going back. By that same token, the cage of glass that once held an Ivalician in the world into which they'd been born, and allowed neither the ingress of those without nor the egress of those within, no longer seemed so impermeable.
The cage of glass had already begun to shudder when a man born a farmer's son rose to the throne, and now it was beginning to crack.
Many began to wonder if the cage of glass might soon shatter.