Sometime after what Balthier'd done he dreamt this:
Work Text:
THE INVERTED WORLD
A FINAL FANTASY XII fanwork
By MAGDA (magda_the_deserter)
"O sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere."
― John Milton, Paradise Lost
"He goes to the desert, fires his rifle in the sky
and says, "God, if I have to die, you will have to die!"
― Modest Mouse, "Cowboy Dan"
PART 1
Sometime after what Balthier'd done he dreamt this:
He rides astraddle a longfaced beast he has never seen the likes of before nor since. Beneath a red sky growing black behind him, he progresses slowly across a vast and endless desert. On the distant horizon just barely discrete from the sky itself is a thin spine of black trees and beyond them rrises a tower erupting from the ground like some parasite emerging and atop it sits a great, ageless, terrible wyrm. It's wings like paper. All about is the feeling of loneliness so unique to dreams yet from his left he hears:
"Some place for a ride, eh?"
His faceless companion on a similar mount falls in step beside him.
"I suppose I've ridden on worse a night."
"This isn't night, friend," says the stranger cordially.
Balthier looks at the wyrm. So large it was he thought he could see it breathe. "Can he see us?"
The stranger laughed as though to a child. "Friend, I think he can see the curve of the earth from his seat."
A movement on the horizon draws their eyes. Despite the distance Balthier could see that the wyrm had turned its head. Despite the distance he could see the thing was looking at him.
"It's looking at me."
"Aye."
"What should I do?"
"Keep riding true, I'd say," the man answers.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Right to that there wyrm yonder."
"Why?"
"Why?" The stranger chuckled. He motions around to where all about the desert was smooth and featureless as a bowl of clay inverted.
"You see anywhere else?"
From its perch at the top of the world, the wyrm trembled and snorted.
Somehow in the night all the packanimals got free. Balthier heard the great clawed feet shuffling in the sand and rattling the gravel about, and he woke from his dream and crawled from the rags where he lay and crept over the pale huddled forms of his sleeping companions white against the leather-black ground like the larvae. He heard no whisper of steel, smelled no gunpowder nor felt magic in the air nor had he felt such in a long time but still he continued with caution. Soon he saw the stakes and the strips of hide and harnesses pulled from where they'd been hammered into the ground and he dropped his guard and felt along in the moonless dark, calling for the birds.
"Tss, ts, ts. Here, now. Come on out, you great feathered fools."
The Westersand that night as most nights was cool. The desert entire windblown and studded in towering pillars of rock, mazelike channels and charnels wherefrom which no cry nor howl escapes. They took shelter in a small quarry sheltered from the wind and now he left this quarry in search of the chocobos. The night was starless and moonless and he could not see for the dark and the sand blowing across the land. The shuffle of his footsteps in the sand as well as his cries of come out, come out wherever you hide, you damn filthy pigeons was swept away in the howl of the desert. The only howl granted on such a night, and as such he did not hear the birds where they squawked quietly until he was right upon a sudden divergence in the blowing walls of sand where a great wall of rock emerged from the ground and the sand thundered against the outside of it, and within there stood the chocobos, all eight of them, some still saddled and one trailing its rope and harness, and one seeming to have lost all its things in the wind. They all stood with dust adorning them so thoroughly as to paint them the color of the desert.
Among them Vaan stood leveling green blossoms into a waiting beak.
"Good morning," he said without looking up. He too had been concealed by the storm.
"Morning. You're certainly up early."
"Couldn't sleep."
"Can you ever?"
"Not lately."
Balthier moved further into the shelter and patted the chocobo nearest him. It looked at him with great featureless eyes and gurgled happily.
"What scared them?"
"Hm?"
"Away from the campsite, I mean."
"Your guess is as good as mine. I just followed them out here." The chocobo Vaan was attending to snapped at the bundle of greens in his hand. "You'd think if they're so smart, they'd be easier to read."
"Penelo would know, I'm sure."
"Maybe."
"She's good with the chocobos. Got quite a knack, if I do say so myself."
"Mm." Vaan wiped the dust off his hands and onto his pale linen shirt. Balthier found an outcropping in the rock wall where he could sit. He looked like he wanted to say something for a while as he watched Vaan pat and feed the chocobos and then he did say:
"Fran would know."
Vaan did not look at him as he set the greens down. "I'm going to go wake the others up."
"It's a bit early for a reveille, isn't it?" Balthier said. But it was too late. Vaan had already disappeared into the sands.
In the morning the windstorms stopped but the temperature rose like a bolt and all across the camp the wanderers folded their bedding and cinched their effects to their chocobos. Someone's chocobo had been rearing and stamping its feet and shaking its head about and Penelo now peered in its beak and felt around the nostril for sand. Balthier with his things already cinched to his own animal and his rifle propped against his thigh sat and watched her.
"How does it let you do that?"
Penelo chuckled, a hollow imitation of laughter. "I guess between me and a bunch of sand, I'm the better option." Her hand came free coated in granules. The chocobo snuffled and shook its head and shied from her as though she'd not just done it a kindness. "I think we should leave soon."
"Aye, the sun's climbing more quickly than I anticipated."
"How's our water looking?"
"Dismal. Hence the hurry."
Penelo wiped her hand on the side of her trousers once red and now the color of rust from the battering of the sands. Her once smooth brow was knit and seemed to always be so. "Guess we'll make it to the midpost before nightfall after all." She smiled as though this were not meaningless.
Balthier holstered his rifle on the scaled leather saddle and motioned to where Vaan stood belting a stuff sack to his own bird at the front of the column and no one took lightly his call when he ordered the group to fall in behind him and soon they rode across the sand in a narrow wedge, Vaan and Penelo riding in the front and Balthier taking up the rear on his chocobo and four arranged in a diamond within and the final two in the center. Upon or leading on foot these six other birds rode three former cargo-ship operators put out of work and two mages similarly inconvenienced, and sharing the last a hume mother and her young son. These two the sky-pirates contracted with to convoy across the desert and the others attached themselves to their party over time, and these ten though they spent near every hour awake these past two months in the company of one another they knew little of the other's lives nor destinations save for those who'd ventured together before and even less did they care to know. Their journey was long under way and far from over. They were a year today without mist and although with destination in mind they rode east toward nothing.
Fran was strong enough to hoist Balthier with one arm behind his back if she gripped him by the back of his belt and this she did as she used her free hand to disengage the Strahl's safety mechanism. He tottered and sagged against her skin, his own flesh burning hot though the night's are was cool. The ship's entrance unfolded to the ground and she hauled him up into the ship proper. As the lights came on inside she divested herself of him letting his body fall into one of the passenger seats and herself collapsed into the one across the narrow aisle of the cockpit. Balthier groaned and rolled his head to face her and muttered something and she reached one long arm toward him and tipped her ear closer and shook him none too gently and bid him to repeat.
"Said I might be drunk"
She released him and lay back unnaturally across the seat with her legs dangling into the aisle over the armrest. She was not drunk nor did she ever much drink but she was exhausted and had not slept and felt very much the worse for wear. "You very well may."
They lay quietly where they'd fallen and for a long time neither had so much the desire to speak and this silence in itself when she fully apprehended it caught the viera by surprise. She'd known the man across from her for not much longer than a month and she felt finally here in his ship unguarded in his presence and she wondered aloud.
"If the gods will it."
Balthier awoke or was perhaps never asleep. "And which gods would those be?"
"Which other than the only?" she replied, to which Balthier had no answer. Then he said:
"Didn't take you for the religious type."
"Why is that?"
"Oh, I don't know. I suppose it's down to all the talk of the wood this, and the wood that. What more god does one need if they can talk to the trees?"
"Perhaps the trees, as you tell, satisfied me not."
"So you went looking for other gods?"
"You're terribly articulate for a drunken man."
"And you're avoiding my question."
"Additional gods."
"Pardon?"
"I went looking for additional gods. To put it as crudely as yourself."
"Mhm. Still smells blasphemous to me. Don't most gods demand sup…supple…"
"Supplication."
"Aye. But not yours, conceivably? No scraps of food must be given to the fire, no stomach left empty as entreaty? I've not seen you so much as bow your head in prayer."
"I simply do not pray."
"Ah, she doesn't pray."
"The gods don't will it."
"Ah, the gods don't will it!"
"What mean you by this?"
"Nothing at all."
"You must mean something or you'd not say it."
"Not necessarily."
"So you speak idly, then?"
"Fair enough. I meant only that it seems awfully convenient to believe in gods not requiring of worship. Awfully convenient."
"Ah. You find my manner profane."
"Oh, not I. To find your manner profane would imply that I live by the laws of your faith."
"I have no faith."
"Well, now you really have stumped me. Else I've been understanding this religion thing all wrong."
"I can believe without faith."
"Are they not one and the same."
"They are not."
"Explain the difference."
"Faith is for those things held in question, and even then faith is a flimsy truce with reality. Our lives are held always in question. Where we'll spend tomorrow night is held always in question, and yet it is not faith that we proceed under."
"I'm not sure I'm following."
"This, then: do you have faith in the sun? Do you need pray it will rise each morning? Do you espouse the virtues of the sun to anyone who might listen in the aim that they too may find hope in the promise of its overwhelming the sky? Or do you simply believe it will, because it's the truth? Animals worship nothing. No animal submits to supplication nor devotion nor any figurehead of sorts with the gods and this is proof enough of the absurdity of faith."
"I think this is more words than I've ever heard you say, Fran."
"And to so many words you listen not."
"I do listen. And I suppose you've got some sort of point. Who's to say those of us cursed with reason should have to use said reason to commune with the holy?"
"You do listen."
"I do listen."
They rode in their narrow wedge always to shield the hume and her son. For on these plains once inhabited by wolves and cacti and great saurions now there roamed beasts a shadow of their former selves sick from want for mist and those that had not died or gone extinct altogether were ravenous, and they snapped their jaws at all things that passed, and tore them apart and devoured man and monster alike. Worse than them were the butchers and thieves who fell upon those destitute without mist. The mages without vehicle for their craft and the pirates and pilots without skies. Families without safe travel. It is these kinds which made up their convoy and moreso than the beasts it is the wandering and barbarous they traveled in numbers to avoid.
They wove their party through the quandary of the pillars within that desert. Their shadows at the height of the day lay directly beneath them like trap holes into some cooled catacomb beneath the sand and as the day wore into evening their shadows stretched up the pillars and bled into the shelves and crags there until night came upon them completely and their shadows grew boundless and absolute. The desert offered up its relief with no precursor and one turn in the maze led them to the tented midpost. A section of canyon littered with tented shelters and one fire burning away in a huge pit in the center where people milled and all the shadows within that place thrown onto the red rocks.
One of the mages who rode in front of Balthier was a nu mou name Aurelianos who had once been a beastmaster and he sighed and reeled in his saddle.
"I thought we'd be stuck out in the dark for certain."
"No faith in our command, eh Ianos?"
"No trust in the desert not to deceive us, more like."
"A likely story. Fret not. Your secret's safe with me. I don't trust Vaan much, either."
"You jest too much."
"Aye, that I may!" To an observer it would seem Balthier's spirits were high but in fact he felt not much at all and this his disposition had remained and did remain as he rode into the midpost and dismounted near the hitching posts by the empty corrals just within the post. Their eight chocobos at this point covered in all manner of bedding roll and satchel and spontaneous adornment would have in any other repose made for an uncommon sight but here housed all manner of transient and in this world now transients had become as insects numerous but powerful only in their number. The heat had gone and in its place was the bitter cold of the canyons. Balthier patted the beak of his chocobo and looked about for Vaan and Penelo but their bird was hitched and they were gone, and in fact all the party was soon to follow suit so desperate was everyone to escape the cold. A bangaa named Elam who had once flown on cargo ships was ducking into a tall eggshell-colored tent balanced unevenly in the firelight and looking as though it had been erected with transience in mind and had become a permanent fixture upon the land, and Balthier took his rifle from the holster on the chocobo and placed on a sling on his back and followed Elam into the lighted tent.
Within was a bar. A collection of round tables all packed with all manner of people and the walls lined with dark wooden panelling which held up the canvas walls and darkened the room itself. Against the far back wall a collection of kegs and taps and vessels separated from the sitting space with a long narrow bar and barrels for stools. Here everyone had escaped to.
He spotted Vaan and Penelo seated together in a shadowy corner as they'd taken to doing in every bar across the continent. Vaan already had some drink in a dark bottle and Penelo had something in a glass. They were whispering quietly and Vaan had his hand on her thigh. All around them and filling the space between them and Balthier were drunken throngs so many of which they made the tent seem both closer and more expansive than it in fact was. Balthier ducked inside and moved along the walls heading in a roundabout way toward the bar.
The bartender was a man of almost fifty with long silver hair he kept wrapped behind him and a thin silver beard and copper skin. His name was Melphis and as he polished a glass in his hand he looked at Balthier with little surprise.
"Always in bars I seem to run into you. Even the ones I'm not working in."
"Pleasure to see you." The bar had no stools and Balthier was forced to lean. He ordered something clear and mean-tasting called kinbote and took it down with a grimace and ordered another. Melphis left to attend another patron and when he returned he asked Balthier how he was holding up without the sky.
"I'm no sailor, Melphis."
Melphis laughed softly. "By which you mean...?"
"Ask a sailor how he fares without the sea and he'll regale you with woeful tidings of the rolling tides and salty winds that he must now go without. What could a sky pirate say to such effect? That is, what could he find in the skies - the sky itself - which he could not find on land?"
This was Balthier merely making polite conversation but in any case Melphis seemed to think it down as he poured kinbote from a clay flask.
"The height, nay?"
Balthier snorted against the rim of his glass. "Heights. Men can climb to the tops of towers for heights."
"Aye, and they do so for thrills and some supplication of the soul, yes?"
"They do."
"Then the greater the height, the greater the thrill, nay?"
"The view from a skyship is mostly clouds."
"So I've observed."
"But again, even if proof of such great height in the form of the obscuration of the surface by clouds is what you seek, still from a mountaintop, or a particularly tall tower or pharos, or even from the precipice of a sky-city could this be seen. Have you been on the open sea, Melphis?" Balthier asked suddenly.
"I've not."
"Ah," Balthier said. He ran his finger around the rim of his near drained glass. "I have. Only once or twice, but it was enough to know the difference."
"What difference?"
"On the ocean, you see, there is a kind of wildness you cannot find in sky nor on land. A sickening fear mixed with exhiliration. Nowhere on land does the ground roil and the gut reel like at sea. Nowhere on land, not even in the most dire swamp, the most terrible corners of Jagd, does a wall like that of the ocean surface divide you from its horrors. The sight of it rolling upon itself beneath the storming sky frenzies the mind and yet dares trespass in even the sanest of humes. Not even the thickest mist dares that of men. Dared that of men."
Balthier by now was speaking near a whisper and addressing the surface of the bar so severe was the downward tilt of his head but nonetheless Melphis was not listening. He peered across the din.
"That not your charge thereabouts?" He pointed. Balthier swung his head in the indicated direction.
Penelo had gone somewhere but Vaan did not sit alone. In her seat was a man with dark hair cut short save for where it fell into his eyes and skin pale like those who live in colder climes. He was about the size of Vaan himself though taller and he leaned back in Penelo's chair until the level of his face was level with Vaan's. Vaan's own face was impassive though as Balthier watched at the behest of the barkeep the other man tipped back in the chair even further so that he was near Vaan's ear close enough to kiss him, and he tipped his head back exposing his fine white throat to the firelight and he crooned in his ear like a lover. Vaan's face clouded. He stood quickly and some men seated nearby including two from their own party followed suit so quickly it was as though they'd risen at the same time. The din of the bar did not stop.
"That's a fight threatening to start if I ever did see one."
"I'll be off, then." Balthier pushed gil across the counter where it clinked into the glass and began to weave through the crowd. So dense it was and so loud that almost instantly he felt as though he'd gotten lost. Absorbed into the throng where the only way out being the way he'd come and that way being closed off in suit. He was turned around and for a moment disoriented but quickly he found the direction of Vaan because for a moment the noise faltered from there and then rippled back out in the form of shocked cries. A sound of thudding and flesh colliding with flesh gave him terminus to his pursuit and he pushed through the crowd that way and the crowd opened to the sight of two broken tables and wine staining the dirty packed sand the color of offal and Vaan and the pale man named Early wrestling among the mess.
The shock had left the crowd and people now cheered.
"Vaan," Balthier called and was drowned out by the gallery.
"Kill the son of a bitch," someone cried.
Blood ran from Early's nose and mixed with the liquor on the ground such that the two could not be told apart. Balthier's patience was always thin and these days was thinner and under the influence of drink doubly so. He lifted the rifle from his hip. Despite his efforts the firing apparatus appeared mangled. The piece of fire magicite that once propelled the round when struck was now inert as any common crystal and he'd gutted the rifle and replaced the magicite mechanism with a bolt action clip-fed built-in magazine into which he now fed a round of onion shot. He shoved the bolt forward and lifted the rifle to the sky. He fingered the trigger and squeezed.
The shot rang all about and screams lifted from the crowd then silenced. Vaan looked up at him finally.
"Balthier," he said dumbly.
"Up you get," Balthier said, and he made forward to collect Vaan but already two of their companions, the cargo-ship operators, a woman younger even than Vaan and a surly bangaa who had been watching from the forefront of the gallery, stepped forward and grabbed his arms from behind from either side. "Good of you to finally step in," Balthier said.
The woman or girl was named Bijeau and she glared at Balthier from beneath her short blue-black hair. Her eyes were so blue as to appear transparent and they looked cold and dead and rendered her whole visage not so much striking as somewhat deranged. She said nothing as she slung Vaan's arm over her small shoulders. The other was named Segundo and he simply held Vaan's arm near the armpit for he was nearly twice the height of Bijeau and could not put Vaan's arm over his shoulder without lifting her off the floor. Together they left to find Penelo. The toes of Vaan's boots left two ruts in the sand where they dragged.
All around he saw faces watching him as he righted the tables. He hadn't noticed before but the hume woman - barely taller than her son who could not have been greater than ten and five years of age, and both of them with white-blonde hair and tanned skin as that of other desert-dwellers, though her eyes brown and his green - watched him quietly. As did her son, his green eyes showing no opinion of the scene he'd witnessed at all.
Balthier passed them on his way back to the bar. "Some place to bring a child, eh?" he said. He took his place at the bar where Melphis watched his approach with a shake of his head. He ordered another drink.
That night they payed the property overseers to stay in tents. The tents consisted of cagelike structures draped in canvas and all manner of fabric covering and had no doors but merely small entranceways of fabric one had to crouch to clear. Despite this Vaan still knocked when he came to Balthier's tent that night.
"Enter."
Vaan's mouth was swollen and pink and his cheek bore a scare from what could have only been one of Early's rings. In the pale oil lamplight he appeared younger than he was. Balthier could see that the cut still bled.
Balthier sat on the edge of his bed wiping down his rifle. "Gods, he got a good one in on you, didn't he?" When Vaan did not answer he continued. "Not much compared to how your opponent looks, though, eh?"
"I was going to see if you had any potions."
Balthier pulled his cleaning rag free of the bore and set both aside. "Come here."
These days since Balthier was alone Vaan spent much time with him and now he came close and knelt by Balthier's bedside unselfconsciously as Balthier procured a crystal flask from his rucksack. He took a clean rag and wet it with the potion. The one he'd chosen he knew was too strong and he told Vaan to take a deep breath. The secret pleasure of all hunters and pirates and all others he knew who made their living in blood was the cooling sting of a potion and he watched as Vaan's brow creased and smoothed. His mouth working as though he bit it from within.
"There's something else, too," Vaan said through winces.
"And that is?"
"There's someone out by the bonfire says he's looking for you."
Balthier paused and looked toward his tent-flap. He could not see the bonfire from here but neither could he see its glow. It was late for bonfires. Everyone in the settlement would be asleep or preparing for sleep.
"He was out there alone," Vaan added, seeing the searching in Balthier's eyes.
"He was a stranger?"
"That's right."
"And you told him in no uncertain terms that I'd rather be let alone?"
"Actually, I told him I'd get you."
Balthier nearly dropped the rag. "Excellent, Vaan. Nothing I like more than being bothered on my travels."
Balthier was finished with the wound. I grew a pale new skin where he'd applied the draught. Vaan touched it gently and stood as Balthier cleared away the mess. As soon as Balthier was finished and his hands were empty Vaan made for the doorway.
"You coming?"
"Of course not," Balthier said, brows creasing, as though he could not understand what was so hard for Vaan to understand about this.
"Alright," Vaan said, in a tone so coy it was immediately clear he hadn't told Balthier the whole story. He sauntered through the tentflap and into the dark of the night, calling oer his shoulder: "But he asked for you by your old name."
-
The viera was dragging her body against the ground. She was unclean with short and ragged hair and her shoulder bled where it had been scraping the wall.
"Sister," Fran said quietly, but the viera moaned in pain or fear, some great agitation. All around people avoided her, avoided looking. She was not the only one in Balfonheim or indeed anywhere but she was the first Balthier and Fran had seen.
The viera reared up, slowly, like a slug or some similar lowly being, and though Balthier leaned away Fran leaned closer until she was very near and could smell the weeks of illness on the woman. Her own yellow eyes met the dull eyes of the viera. Her gaze bore no emotion at all and she looked insane.
"There's nothing can be done," a passer-by called. But Fran did not heed him. She watched the viera for a little longer as the passers-by watched her, and felt pity for her, and she listened to the waves crashing on the nearby shore and like one of those waves come alive and watching the waves around it crash into the ocean's surface she began to fear for her existence.
The stranger never showed. Balthier went with Vaan to the bonfire and nothing waited for them there but the ashes of the bonfire itself and the smokey light left over of it. Balthier cursed Vaan and turned in for the night but he felt somehow the stranger's absence moreso than he thought he might. Thoughts of the stranger followed him into his dreams and the next morning even as they rehitched and rode out from the canyon he thought of the stranger still.
So he was distracted when they came upon the remains of a slaughter. They'd been riding for most of the morning and the day was hot and the sun was high, and before they saw it they smelled it. Blood and offal tinging the air, boiling up out of the sand and into the light breeze. Most of the party stayed behind to guard the woman and boy while Vaan and Penelo and Balthier took eastward. They followed a set of likely tracks and soon the smell grew stronger and the sand underfoot turned deep red and pliant for all the blood in it. Penelo found the first corpse - she called to the other two and pointed and they all made toward it and gathered and knelt in the sand.
It was a hume, a small man who looked Dalmascan with his light hair and tanned skin. It was readily apparent that he'd not been set upon by wolves and that the slashes that rendered his skin enough to show bone had been made by a sword. On a hunch Balthier checked his pockets and found them not only empty but cut through - thoroughly robbed. So there were brigands loose in the Sands. There were six other bodies found this way and a chocobo with its feathery throat cut. As often done with beasts the sight of its sad face and empty gaze filled the little party with a greater sadness than that of the fallen humes and they covered its face with a torn canvas satchel. Then they checked the rest of the corpses and left.
When they reached the rest of the conoy they told of their findings, which were met by a tired sort of fear. Bijeau scowled from atop her chocobo.
"Precisely what we need," she said in her hoarse boyish voice. She flicked her head upward like a shying horse as though she had once had very long hair that had needed to be flicked away from her eyes.
The hume woman looked lost in thought. She held her son against her from where they shared the saddle of the chocobo. The boy played with something in his hands. A piece of leather or the like. Balthier checked his hands for blood and then went to stand by their chocobo.
"You're holding up well?" he asked her.
"I'm fine."
"Will you need another stop before we reach the outpost in Giza?"
"Ask your compatriots. I'm fine." She was looking at him but now she looked down and away. She looked very young when she did this, even younger than she probably was. Her son continued to play and made no attempt to look at Balthier at all. He lingered a moment and went away.
They continued on their path. The sun continued to beat long and hard against their necks and they shaded their eyes and the eyes of their mounts as best they could. The wind for once in the Westersand did not blow and now they missed it and the movement of air, though once the wind picked up and with it the harsh scouring buffet of sand they'd long for stillness once more. They had water enough for all of them but still it felt like not enough and their dry throats and eyes were such a replica of illness that many of them began to feel ill as they made their procession southward toward Giza and beyond.
As nightfall closed in on the ending of that day they still were nowhere near a settlement. The sun descended on the horizon, their shadows long and livid and alive, painted up the jagged rocks and cliffs in a black so pure in places it looked blue.
Balthier rode up to the front of the line where Vaan was. "What say you, captain?" he asked.
If the honorific bothered Vaan, he did well to hide it. "Not much we can do besides stay on course. Holler if we see a cave or something."
So they did but with their weapons drawn. Vaan with his sword unsheathed and in hand and Penelo with her bow (Fran's bow, in fact) ready and Balthier with his rifle ever ready on his hip. Among them only the woman and boy were unarmed though even the woman kept a knife on her. As so many of their number were once mages or dock workers or the like, they made poor warriors. Only Balthier and Vaan and Penelo were of any use in a fight, with the addition of Bijeau, who was passing decent with a firearm, and a white mage among them named Gerhard who had once been from Bhujerba, and who lived most of his life in Nabradia until its destruction and hunted food for his family all his life in addition to his healing and whose narrow green eyes were now keen for it. They tightened their ranks and went in silence further southeast toward the narrow passage to Giza. The sun finally disappeared beneath the horizon and the solid shadow encroaching on the Westersand expanded fully into night. Under this darkness they did not dare to light fires nor torches and Vaan and Penelo led the way in the dark as they knew the Sands best. As they came upon the narrow path between the cliffsides of two towering walls of red pillared rock they once again smelled the aftermath of a slaughter and this time so strong was it that even the birds recoiled, shying and stepping back from their chartered path. All about could be heard the travelers shushing the fearful crowing of the chocobos. The smell came from within the canyon ahead.
Balthier, Vaan, Penelo, and Gerhard took the lead and immediately they came upon the slaughter. This one was greater than the one before. Upon every rock it seemed there was a body or blood or some splatter of viscera. The smell of it all overwhelming. Balthier turned in a slight sudden frenzy to look for the woman - she shielded her son's eyes with one hand and covered her mouth and nose with the other. So much blood was there that it reflected the moonlight back at them and for a moment he was half-blinded by the glare. Soon, when his eyes had time to adjust, he saw that many of the bodies lay headless. Some two dozen bodies there were in total all in a state of partial or entire disassembly and in addition where nearly the same number of chocobos in a similar state save for one that was grounded, its legs broken, and which lolled its head about in the blood and the grit cooing softly for who knows what salvation. In the distance wolves howled in a sound that once put fear in the hearts of man but now elicited no more than a sort of sad camraderie in the knowledge that fate had forsaken all.
"By the gods," he whispered, in spite of himself, of everything.
By some luck they came across no band of marauders and reached the nomad village in Giza untouched. In truth the nomad village no longer held the nomads - though perhaps all who passed through were nomads in their own right - and was a settlement much like the one they'd stayed in before. They dismounted and hitched and Balthier separated from the party and found someone to sell him supplies from a heavily adorned booth, situated at the front of a tent that served as a storeroom and home for the shopkeep. He asked this shopkeep as she leveled out herbs on a cloth if she'd heard tell of murderous bands about.
"Nay, but I've seen the aftermath as I'm sure you have," she said. She was old and had to stoop to read her scale. "Seen the blood on the boots that come tramping through. 'Spose we're lucky they've not thought to attack." She set to measuring out the herbs and said no more.
Balthier took the vials from her - one of them he recognized as an old ether-bottle, a kind of draught which served no use save for tasting bitter - and stowed them on his chocobo and for a moment he stood there with his forehead against the smooth leather of its saddle. These days at times the mist, the damned mist and the weight of its absence weight on him like a physical thing and he could do nothing more than stand still and wait for the feeling to pass. On the days it didn't, as things were tonight, he could chase the remainder away in the bottom of a glass.
Every outpost had a bar of some kind. Here, too, could one find repurposed ether-bottles. This bar was smaller than the last but better kept and sturdier, built properly of wood though still flimsy as would any impromptu bar be. Perhaps it was the closer space or the thrill of seeing the bodies pervading all, but Vaan had been quicker in his ways that night - he was already atop someone by the time Balthier got to the bar.
This crowd was a tireder, drunker sort, and they all watched in bitter silence as Vaan attacked the man on the ground. A feeling of knowing came over Balthier and he was unsurprised to see that it was Early, once again. He'd left the outpost just before they had supposedly for the capital and had instead taken southward, unwittingly tracing their path before them. And here he had sprung like a trap upon Vaan when Vaan entered the tavern and this had been the last straw.
Of the crowd which stood nearest to the brawl were Bijeau and Segundo, as always just onhand, and some others from their party - for once, the womand and her son were nowhere to be seen - and furthermore were some familiar, mean-looking folk who were undoubtedly from Early's crew. All stood watching and none deigned to interrupt their senseless brawling. Balthier too stood watching, knowing he should step in and feeling no inclination to do so. Vaan's face shone with sweat and an evil glint was in his eye, a glint of murderous intent. Balthier searched his memory for a time he'd seen just such a glint in the younger man's eye and could find none. Early heaved, threw his weight into every effort he made to get out from under Vaan, but it was never of any use. Vaan was winning and by no small margin was he doing so.
Soon Penelo's voice rose over the sound of colliding flesh and grunts of effort.
"Get up! Are you insane, Vaan? Get up! Get off of him!"
With no hesitation at all she entered the fray, stepped right into the bloodstains upon the ground. When her attempts to physically pull Vaan to his feet failed she inserted herself between the two of them. Early grabbed at her hair - to pull her down or himself up, it was not clear - and she pushed his face to the ground with a stiff palm to his forehead. Vaan quit his assault, falling backwards onto his hands.
"Out of my way, Penelo," he said, but breathlessly. He was already giving up, heaving quiet breaths as he watched his opponent crumpled on the ground.
"Gods, you've nearly killed him!" she hollered. Indeed it seemed Early was nearing death. His pale face held almost no image of the man who wore it, so swollen beyond recognition was he. Something had been done to his arm and it was so broken at the elbow that the hand of that arm faced the wrong way upon the floor. Tears and blood fell down his face. Penelo knelt beside him procuring potions from some pocket of her trousers and as she attended to him she looked at the crowd around her.
"None of you would help him?" Deliberately she did not look at Bijeau or Segundo, who she hated as she had hated few people before, so clear in their ways was the evil in their hearts. She looked instead at the pirates, or ex-pirates, who ran with Early, and who stood looking guilty as she'd ever seen them. "Do you fear Vaan so much?" But was it fear or apathy which stayed them?
She looked around and caught sight of Balthier then, but the disgust she'd saved for him was slightened when he began procuring his own potions, far stronger than the salves she worked with now. He stepped out from the circle of bystanders, holding the potions out, and she stood and wiped the blood from her hands and took a step from Early's body to accept them, and only now did Bijeau step forward from the fore of the gallery where she'd been disregarded and leveled her pistol at Early's gasping face where spit rose in arcs from his lips and from the forefront of that gallery of bystanders reacting too slowly or not at all she narrowed her eyes and fired.
The entire bar seemed to erupt at once. From the mouths of some of Early's compatriots and that of Penelo and Balthier and even Vaan rose a cry of dissent, and echoing this was a cry of horror that rose throughout the crowd. The shock that suspended the room for only a moment dissolved and someone tackled Bijeau to the ground. Blood spread from the punctured tumor that was Early's face, the ground staining with it. Segundo and the rest of Vaan's party and the rest of Early's dove into the fray that was growing larger every passing moment and soon in the bar entire violence was regular throughout. Almost all brawled with their fists but some had drawn guns and Penelo only narrowly dodged a stray round. She shrieked and ducked behind Balthier, who steered her toward Vaan. He grabbed Vaan by the back of the shirt and looked around for a quick way out. He could see none, only bodies. He felt for his rifle and found that he'd left it with his chocobo. He was ready to hide beneath a table until the worst of the brawl died down else start attacking anyone who crossed his path when he heard a voice calling to him quietly, yet somehow reaching him over the din:
"Here, Ffamran."
Very nearby a man had somehow escaped his attention. He stood against the nearby wall. From beneath a wide-brimmed hat his face could be barely seen and was almost entirely in shadow and he beckoned toward Balthier. Balthier did not move, and the man shrugged.
"Follow or don't," he said just barely audible over the din, and casually as though it were a thing he did every day he turned and kicked out the boards that made up part of the back wall and stepped out into the cool night.
What could Balthier do? He took Penelo by the hand and they both took hold of Vaan and the trio followed.
Out in the night proper Penelo could tend to Vaan's wounds. She swore and cleaned the blood from his knuckles none too gently and ignored him when he said he was alright. She looked at the stranger and thanked him before leading Vaan away. Balthier called after her but she did not respond though he knew she'd heard.
"The girl seems upset," the stranger said.
Now aware of the stranger again, Balthier turned toward him. Outside there were lamps lit, still too early in the night was it for them to be put out, and in the flickering firelight could he see the man's face just barely visible from beneath the rim of his wide hat. His nose was sharp, upturned, and his eyes large and dark as a bird's. He was tall, a few inches taller than Balthier, maybe six-four, and he smiled slightly - his teeth glistened in the light. He had broad shoulders and hands, and he slouched. A killer's smile, a killer's stance. He looked to be about thirty-five.
Balthier felt cold. "You're the stranger who asked for me the other night."
"Aye," the man said. His voice was low, very low, gravelly. "Sorry ye missed me."
Balthier thought before that a stranger that knew his old name must be Arcadian yet the man's accent was not at all that of an Arcadian. In fact he sounded like a Dalmascan though his speech was somehow rougher hewn, as though he spoke mostly to animals and other killers. His clothes were no hint either, adorned entirely in dark skins and leathers not in any one style of any particular land.
Many questions spun in Balthier's mind. The man before him merely watched him as though aware of this whirlwind and waiting to see which question Balthier would choose. In the end Balthier stayed silent and the stranger turned away from him.
"Will you walk with me?" The stranger turned and slowly, limping as though he had an old injury in his leg that never quite healed, he loped away.
Balthier watched his form fade into the dark of the night. Someone was making their rounds, putting out all the torchlights, and as each one went out the darkness all about him grew more absolute. Soon by his distance and the lack of firelight the stranger disappeared. Balthier set out to follow him.
[INSERT MEMORY SCENE]
-
Balthier found the stranger just outside the village. There was an obstruction of dry and fragile treelimbs, swept away from where they'd fallen during the rains and which eventually collected here. The stranger sat among them with his left foot resting on his right knee, scraping the mud from the bottom of his boot..
Here the moonlight could find them easily but still it was hard light to see by. Balthier came close as he dared to the stranger, a safe few feet away, and sat. He'd had a few moments time to gather his thoughts and he opened his mouth to speak but before he could the stranger paused in his work and began to tell this story:
"Listen close, Arcadian. There's a story I wish to tell you that you may have heard before. It starts with a pirate like yourself. This pirate had the debacle of being lonesome and poor of sight - a debacle since how could a man poor of sight ever know he was poor of sight if he had no one's sight to compare it with? Aye, he couldn't see leaves distinct among themselves on trees. He could only see the leaves upon the ground and assume that the blurred green mass overhead in forests was made up of them. As well as leaes he could not see the craters upon the moon - indeed it looked like a great blinding hole in the heavens to him, not so distinct from the sun save that he could look at it without hurting his eyes. And so he came to believe it was a hole in the heavens such that a man gien the right means could fly right through and into the realm of the gods. This man became a pirate then because it was the closest he believed he could get to the gods, and he grew older and a little wiser and soon came to know in his travels of his deficiencies and in time forgot why he'd become a pirate in the first place. One day he had a dream that the gods reached down from this hole in the heavens and killed him where he lay, and he woke in the night and looked up at the moon which he could now see was a physical thing within that ether beyond man's knowing. The sight of it there in the sky filled him with terror. Now the problem is how to end this story. Some say the sight of that heavenly body inspired in him a new fear of the gods so great he fell to worshipping the moon instead. Others say that he took the moon as proof that there were no gods and he slept easily that night and every night hence. I'm curious to know, Arcadian, which endign you've heard?"
Balthier felt very cold. He'd been breathing very quietly as one might breathe near an easily upset animal. "I've not heard such a story."
In the low light Balthier could see the stranger was smiling. "Not as a child, even?"
"Not as a child. Nor any time hence."
"That's a shame," the stranger said. "There's much a man can learn from stories."
Balthier's impatience overtook his fear. "What do you want with me?"
As though he hadn't heard, the stranger kept scrubbing at his boots.
"Can you spare at least your name? Or do I ask overmuch for that as well?"
The stranger set aside his brush and leaned back on the log upon which he sat. He looked right at Balthier for the first time since he'd found him there. "My name is Brothers, pirate. And what I want of ye is twofold. Firstly..." he stood then, dusting himself of dried mud and twigs. "Firstly, I've come to kill ye. I've come to kill ye and take with me yer head for the bounty upon it. And second, I've come to inform ye that I have something of yers. Somethin ye left behind." He smiled his full smile, such that Balthier could see every one of his gleaming catlike teeth. "Can ye guess what that might be?"
It could not be clearer to Balthier that this was a ploy, some kind of bait, and yet he could not help but wrack his memory for some idea as to what this stolen thing might be. He was on his feet now though he did not remember standing. He had no weapon and of course no magic and he felt now the maddening terror of defenselessness.
"Worry not, Ffamran," the stranger - Brothers - said. He reached toward his waist and Balthier stiffened when he saw the dagger stowed there but Brothers' hand passed it and went inside the pockets of his trousers instead. "I'll not hunt ye defenseless. But I'm on the hunt nonetheless. You know all about the hunt, my friend, nay?" He turned toward the trail and began making his way back to the village. "I apologize in advance," he called over his shoulder. "Ye'll not get much sleep tonight nor any night hence. Ye'll die tired!" He barked out a laugh and began to whistle, something tuneless and with no sense to be found in the melody. Balthier listened to him go. Not until the tune was gone on the wind did he feel safe to make his way up the path.
-
PART 2
[INSERT MEMORY SCENE HERE]
They stayed one night more in the village. The morning they set out they could smell the rains coming in the air and feel it in the cool breeze that lifted the sand from their belongings. Balthier had seen no sign of Brothers since their rendezvous that night and he had indeed not slept since.
Early's body had been cleared away and with little other option his people buried it in the dirt outside the village in a spot neither beasts nor the coming flood would reach. Vaan's face was scarred and bruised but he was little the worse for wear. Of their own number only Segundo was dead, by bullet-wound, and they buried him as well near Early's body in a bigger grave to accomodate his mass. Bijeau had run, leaving behind almost everything save for a small number of her belongings and, to his dismay, Balthier's rifle. Early's party was under command of a tall, severe, and quiet Bhujerban named Niobe who had been a pirate even before Balthier. She left the encampment the day before Vaan's convoy and told him if she ever saw him again she'd kill him, and with that she and her people had ridden away.
"You're lucky," Balthier reminded him, helping Vaan onto his chocobo. Gerhard stood on the other side of the bird to catch Vaan if his broken fingers lost grip.
"I know not what the gods see in you, boy," Gerhard said. "They must love you dearly for all the scrapes you avoid."
Balthier laughed under his breath. "It's not the gods that love him."
Gerhard grinned. "Aye, perhaps not. Seems that's the way of sky pirates, nay? 'Spose the only pirates not avoiding scrapes are the dead ones."
"Yes, that. But what I referred to were the gods. They don't love Vaan much at all. If they had the power I'm sure they'd be first to put Vaan in these scrapes."
"We've given 'em a scrape or two back," Vaan added, smiling wryly. He caught Balthier's eye and the latter could not help but grin himself. Their adventures together seemed a very long time ago. Vaan had on his face a look Balthier had seen much in that time - the look of knowing he'd avoided death.
Gerhard shook his head. "You live in mystery, pirates."
"Former pirates," Balthier said. Before Gerhard could say more he slipped away.
They rode out before the morning was out. The cold deepened and seeming almost from the land itself poured forth a thin mist which became a deep fog by the afternoon, until a man could not see more than a few feet. The formation drew in close. The dust-worn feathers of the chocobos now seemed garishly yellow in the light as did all colors upon them. Like signalflags in the wilderness of a tribe intent on being found out. On the minds of all was the massacre seen only a few nights hence. In the center of their numbers the woman held the child tightly.
As though the thought multiplied among them was enough to make it real they heard the first sounds of movement in the fog. Balthier looked to Vaan and Penelo and saw they heard it, too. Vaan's hand was already at his knife and Penelo clenched her hands uselessly as Balthier knew incantations swirled in her mind by habit and by that same force did she not reach for her bow. Balthier's own hand was at his rifle. He rode up to be near Vaan and Penelo.
"It's distant," Penelo said quietly. Now she drew her bow and held it ready as she peered through the fog. The sound's faintness was telling of its distance, more the sound of far-off movement than the sound of the movement itself. The path to Ozmone lay through a narrow canyon of tall mossy cliffs between which the fog grew denser yet and clung about like ghosts, and through here the sound was so distorted by the rock and perhaps the air itself that even the chocobos were disturbed by the low rolling thunder of some approaching threat. They started and some refused to go on and all around could be heard the travelers shushing their beasts. The hume woman was hissing to her chocobo as it warked nervously and at the provocation of seemingly nothing at all it suddenly yelped and bucked, the sound echoing thunderously in the canyon.
"Penelo," Balthier said.
"I've got it." She was dismounting already, pulling bundles of gyshal from her saddlebag. The other riders rode clear and Balthier and Vaan rode as close as they dared and took the woman's son from her. She dug her hands into the bird's feathers, curled her fingers within the quill there and held for dear life. Penelo called to the bird, grabbing for its reins as it threw its great head around and the woman shouted to hurry and in some odd exchange few besides those who tame beasts can know she tugged it and spoke to it until it quited. Not quite abated in its fear but quiet all the same as it accepted the greens from her palm. She patted it and took the woman's hand. The woman allowed her hand to be held for a moment before gently tugging free. She looked to her son, who rode now secure among the saddlebags on Balthier's mount. She looked at Balthier.
"Will you take him? While your chocobo is still calm?"
He looked down at the boy. Or the back of the boy's head, as the boy looked down as always at his hands. He looked at the golden hair like stiff dry summergrass, the sunburned scalp. "Yes. Until we reach an outpost." A twinge of something like his old intention flourished and he added, "But you'll owe me."
He'd meant to make her laugh but she snorted. "Owe a pirate? And I thought life without mist would be simple at last," and it was Balthier instead who laughed. But if he knew how the night would end perhaps he'd have laughed all the harder. For in the face of the workings of the gods or those as like gods who sit in their highborn thrones or lay otherwise dead fallen from their heavenly mounts to earth lowly at last he could do little more than laugh at them and those who believed in them.
The thundering in the canyon had met a slight lull, then clambered back up to its previous height and then some for the distance was closing ever smaller between the party and the interlopers. The formation gathered and Vaan resumed point and guided the formation out from the canyon. The fog seemed to surge forward so they thought the plain beyond the canyon would be clear but it was not so and the fog was as dense there as before. Somehow, perhaps in the confusion caused by the fog, they had misjudged the distance of the attack. Vaan had lifted his right arm in the air and had begun a hand signal, leading them from memory to a cleft in the rock where they could circumvent the low Ozmone peaks and among them perhaps escape unnoticed, and before he could finish his motion an arrow rifled through the air and tore through the fog and the flesh of Vaan's forearm before lodging shallowly in the plumage about Balthier's chocobo's throat. Blood spattered across the party and the chocobo buckled so fast that the boy in the saddle yelped and threw his arms around Balthier as he skittered nearly to the ground, his spindly legs swinging wildly through the air.
"Shit!" Balthier slid from the saddle and collided with the ground. The weight of the boy followed him, landing squarely on his back. Balthier scrambled to right himself, gripping the boy by the forearm and rolling from beneath the chocobo as it clattered to the ground. Its clawed feet flailed and one kicked him nearly off balance as he darted around behind it for his rifle on the saddle.
All around him turmoil reigned. He heard arrows flying, dismounting riders and felling chocobos as the onslaught grew nearer then deftly came the sound of swords swinging and erupting against armor with almightly clangs like the hardy bells of a seaship. Few was their number and the number of the enemy yet the tumult and enclosing fog made him feel the participant of some grusome deathmatch walled in by coliseum stands. Another arrow rifled past him, so near his ear that the sound of it overpowered all others for a split moment. He felt more than heard it burrow itself into the ground just behind him, and he whirled to meet the hand that fired it. He swung his rifle toward the man. He saw only features dimmed by a closely drawn hood and leather arm, and all this indistinctly through the thick fog. One shot into its hooded face was all it took to fell him.
EPILOGUE
that's it. sorry. I wrote this years ago. just hope they are doing ok.