(Thanks for reading. Next chapter 10/16/24)
Chapter 162: The Prisoner
Time is like a river so powerful that none can swim upstream. To be a Time Mage is to be the swiftest swimmer in that current—to slip beneath the water's surface and reappear at will, to surge ahead so far that you leave all others behind or freeze yourself in place like a mighty stone.
To be a Time Mage is to be the swiftest swimmer in that current. And to be a Time Mage is to understand that time is not the absolute that others take it for. It can be played with, toyed with, used bent, negotiated. Even among non-Time Mages, something of this truth is known: what can be an idle moment for one man can be a lifetime for another. Time Mages simply know this truth more expansively. Their moments were not the same as other moments. They passed weeks in hours, years in weeks. Among the Stillblades was an ancient joke: "How long has it been?" And the more experienced you became, the funnier you found it.
LF3 was a Time Mage. But even he could concede: he had been in this prison a long, long time.
"Stillblade LF3."
How long since LF3 had stiffened to attention, eyes fixed forwards, awaiting his punishment?. "Yes, Overseer," he had answered, trying to show not a trace of emotion.
Overseer Zeromus sat at some remove from him, a single sheet of paper in his hand. To his right stood General Leo, looking pale and sickly. To his left stood FN2, her hands behind her back, staring straight ahead. The runes on the walls flowed fluidly into one another, suppressing any Time Magic.
"Do you know why you are here today, LF3?"
"I do, Overseer."
Zeromus gestured with one hand. "Please. Enlighten us."
LF3 nodded. "Failure to complete my mission, compounded by gross insubordination."
Zeromus cocked his head and adjusted the glasses on his narrow face. "I think you have it backwards, no? Your gross insubordination led to your failure, did it not?"
LF3 nodded again. "As you say, Overseer."
The Overseer sighed, and leaned back in his chair, setting the paper down on the table in front of him. "Perhaps you would care to enlighten as to why one of our most promising subjects displayed such...dare I say, treasonous behavior?"
LF3's throat felt very dry. "I-" he started, but what was there to say? There was no explanation he could offer the Overseer that would not make this worse. That would not damn him, and his fellow Stillblades alike.
So long, since the fateful meeting that had sealed him in this cell. Yet longer still, since he stood in the same room, with all the same players, and it had been more excitement than dread that dried his throat and left his heart fluttering.
At that time, Overseer Zeromus had not worn his human guise. At that time, fresh from the Ring of Woe, he was a great black shape, scuttling in on six armored legs. His left arm was human, elegant and translucent, deep and dark as a night sky, radiant with quiet stars. His right was a great crustacean claw so black it hurt to look at, which he moved with deft and dangerous dexterity. The human torso and head stood somewhere between these two opposites, like great shadowy stormclouds occasionally streaked with lightning that illuminated other features.
Behind him had come General Leo, with his silvering tawny hair and grizzled face, and green eyes so stony they looked more like cuts of jade. And behind him had come FN2, with her lank red hair tied back in a severe ponytail.
"Thank you your patience, LF3," Zeromus had said, his voice thrumming through the air, distorted by the peculiar time and space of his Lucavi body.
"Of course, Overseer," LF3 answered.
"Hashmalum, if you would be so kind." The shadowy figure gestured with their human hand. "This form has many gifts, but is hardly suitable for handling paper."
"Then return to human form," grunted Leo, as he flipped through the pages on the little table at the far end of the room.
"My magic is at work in the Ring," Zeromus replied.
"I think the lesson has been taught."
"That is not up to me."
Leo shrugged. "You would know, I suppose."
Zeromus' great body went very still, as though the surface of a pond had stopped rippling and turned glassy all at once. LF3 kept his gaze fixed ahead. He had heard the whispered rumors that the Ring of Woe had first been built to contain Zeromus, in the days before he had served as Overseer. In the days when he had dreamed of opposing the Empire.
Leo leaned down towards the table, apparently unaware of the effect of his words. "This is..." He looked up at LF3. "You suspended yourself for a week?"
"So I am told, Magistrate," LF3 said. Time had different meaning for a Time Mage: LF3 only knew the task he had been given. Locked in a cell in the Ring of Woe, with fractured impressions of twisted time and space and distant screams in the walls beyond his own, left with a little food and a little water and a sealed watch he was to keep on his person at all times, to bend time as best as he was able. And LF3 had endured, because it was a Stillblade's place to endure.
Leo shook his head. "Magistrate is a title of convenience. Leo is fine."
"It is not fine," Zeromus interrupted. "The Stillblades must have utmost respect for the Empire, in word and in deed."
Leo sighed. "General, then." He looked down at the paper. "A week, though..."
"He has set the record for the facility," Zeromus said. "Previously held by FN2."
Leo glanced between the two Stillblades. "Limitations?"
LF3 glanced at Zeromus who nodded. "It is my understanding that my art is closer to that of one of the Heavens' Fists, General," LF3 explained. "I can bend time around myself, as an object with large mass can bend gravity. My understanding is this allows me a proficiency and endurance with speeding my own subjective passage of time in ways that are unprecedented in the history of the Stillblade program."
"That's not what I asked," Leo said.
LF3 stiffened. "I apologize, General-"
"No need for apologies. Just answer the question."
LF3 nodded. "Yes. Because my ability is bound more closely with my person, I can extend it to other objects...and potentially other people, though this capacity has been obviously subject to to certain experimental limitations." He paused. "I cannot...project, as certain other Time Mages can. I cannot, for instance, produce a barrier that slows the passage of objects, or hold someone else in a field of slowed time. And..."
He paused again, and looked at Zeromus. "This is a field evaluation, LF3," Zeromus said. "General Solidor needs a full understanding of your capacities to grant his approval."
Another thrill in his heart. LF3 fought the urge to look at FN2. It was just as he'd hoped. A field assignment...!
And in that thrill, an unusual hint of boldness. Boldness was uncommon for a Stillblade, and for good reason: they existed at the Empire's pleasure, and the slightest hint of disobedience and insubordination was strenuously punished and excised. But if he was to demonstrate his capability for a field assignment, boldness might be required.
"Overseer, describing my limitations may be a poor substitute for demonstrating them."
Zeromus cocked his shadowy head in consideration. Finally, he waved his great claw, and the shimmering runes on the walls dimmed. "Proceed."
"General, may I use my magic on your person?" LF3 asked.
Leo arched his eyebrows, then nodded. LF3 focused on the General, and reached for his magic. It was like flexing muscles for a difficult piece of physical labor—it always remind LF3 of the first time he'd been made to practice free climbing, calling on familiar muscles in an unfamiliar configuration for a difficult task. But, just like with free climbing, you could get better with practice. And even by a Time Mage's standards, LF3 had been practicing for a long time.
He flexed, and the world slowed to a crawl. The contrast between the fractured gleaming of the near-frozen runes, and the gentle movements of Zeromus and FN2, highlighted the utter stillness of General Leo. Slowly, LF3 approached the General. Slowly, he reached out a hand.
Suddenly movement: Leo whipped around, golden light deepened by strange darkness blazing in the lines of his form, a wild corona of golden flame dancing around his head. LF3 pulled his hand away, relaxed his magic: the flow of time quickened around them.
Leo's green eyes were wild, the fire slowly wisping away to nothing around him, light and darkness fading into fleshy solidity. FN2 and Zeromus finished their slow turns to face them.
"Attempting to act against a person or object pulls them into my personal timestream," LF3 explained, with a slight tremor in his voice he could not suppress. "In terms of combat utility, it still offers me an enormous advantage. However, a capable opponent would still have time to react. As..." He swallowed. "As you have demonstrated, General."
"We hope we may be able to abridge or eliminate this limitation with either additional training or successive generations," Zeromus put in. "But I believe you'll agree...for our purposes, this limitation poses no significant risk."
Leo nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. I believe you're right." He smiled slightly. "Thank you for the demonstration, LF3. Now, let's review your field assignment."
Rare indeed was the Stillblade who received a field assignment. Rare indeed was the Time Mage allowed to venture out from the subterranean warrens of the mountains east of Lesalia, to step into the sunlight, and see the wider world. And after far too long a time, LF3 was one of them. Yes, the world he walked in was still and silent, moving as he did in a bubble of his own warped time. But even still and silent, what a world it was.
He stopped several hours into his journey, and looked back the way he'd come. A pack of caravans crawled like snails over a broad road beneath the mountain foothills he'd left behind. The grass was bent low beneath a wind he could not feel, moving with the slow, easy grace of a calm sea. In the distance, a fat cargo airship was a suggestion against the clear blue sky, its rotors revolving so slowly they might have been mistaken for flags flapping in the same unfelt wind.
LF3 allowed himself to laugh. There was no one to watch him, no one to monitor him, no one to make sure his every effort was spent in compliance with the strict codes that governed the Stillblades. He had earned this freedom. He had earned this trust. He would complete this mission, and prove that the Stillblades deserved more trust, more freedom. Deserved to walk free in the sun, as willing servants of the Empire.
"Your target is Engineer Second-Grade Reeve Tuesti," General Leo had explained, handing the sheaf of papers to LF3. "Engineer Tuesti was granted a six-month sabbatical following a tour of duty performing field inspections on the Romandan Frontier. Per his filed request, he and his family would visit the coast of Gallione, concluding with a tour of our outpost at Igros and a return trip to Mullonde by way of luxury airship, as recognition for his service. His family never disembarked from the airship. In our investigation afterwards, our intelligence agents found they never reached Igros."
LF3 looked up. "He has defected to the Exile?"
Leo nodded grimly. "Engineer Tuesti is young, but talented. His recent tour of the Frontier was meant to prepare him as assistant supervisor to a new airship yard in Goug. We need faster ships if we are to permanently put down the Dragonriders." He sighed. "As such, his defection to the Exile constitutes a serious risk. We've long suspected the Exile's intention to set up a fully-functioning airship yard. With Engineer Tuesti supervising, such ships would be the equal of any Ydoran vessels. We need him eliminated with no risk of provoking further conflict with the Exile."
Hence, LF3. Hence another Stillblade, dispatched on another mission. Another effort to atone for the past that had almost left them exterminated.
He walked until he was tired, then found a shallow cave where he could relax his magic and sleep. The interchange of day and night had no more say upon the world he walked then the passage of clouds in the sky. He awoke, and flexed his magic, and went walking through the slowed world once again. His joy dimmed, but did not go out. It was still better to be walking through this world, consulting his map to skirt cities and towns and outposts, as he headed into the sprawling forests of the Exile's little kingdom.
It was hard, but LF3 was used to hardship. He had been trained for such missions from birth, as were all his fellow Stillblades—like LB2; who could effect the actual velocity of objects, so bullets touched by her magic hit like artillery, or like RG4, who could bind a whole room in choking stillness so thick he had once suffocated a dozen chocobos; or like CF3-
Ah, but he did not want to think of CF3, or his cell in the Ring of Woe.
It was hard, but life was hard. And the promise of the Empire was that all could gain, if they could endure the hardship, and win through. Such was LF3's mission now—a reward for his loyalty, and a punishment for Engineer Tuesti, in betraying that dream.
The going got harder, the longer he walked: the defenses of the Exile's domain were not so formidable as the defenses of the Ydoran heartland, but the Exile had his own intelligence service, and he had managed to foil most attempts to penetrate it too deeply. That was one of the reasons they were counting on a Stillblade: to compensate for their inadequate intelligence.
And that was why LF3 had to complete his mission. To prove they were worthy of trust.
So LF3 took his route farther and farther from the little enclaves formed around the estates of the Exile's courtiers. So he went wading through mud and muck, tracing the line of distant mountains, in search of the place in the northern foothills of the mountains that stretched between Igros and Fovoham. So he found Enginner Tuesti and his sparse guard among the rude collection of shacks that might one day be the Exile's own private airship yard.
There were twenty one souls working at the worksite: some ten laborers, commanding a single Worker, mainly at work preparing the actual "dry dock" for the ships; six members of the Exile's personal guard, led by a seventh, a Heaven's Fist known only as Rude: and finally, there were the Tuestis themselves. Walking silently through the ramshackle yard, LF3 noted each. The laborers would not be a problem. Neither would the guards or Worker: the Worker was inactive at night, and the only guard who might pose a problem was the Heaven's Fist.
So he turned his attention to the Tuestis.
They had the nicest house in the yard—a simple one-bedroom with indoor plumbing, as opposed to the latrines the rest of the crew had to use. At night Engineer Tuesti often stayed up late under runelight in a little section of the house he'd converted into an office, revising his plans for the yard itself and the airships he would build, while his wife Shalua and their children Cait and Seth slept in the bedroom.
When the pattern showed no sign of breaking on the third day—one guard posted inside the main door, one on patrol just outside, rotating out through the night, and all else in camp asleep—LF3 made his move.
He could not kill the guard inside—his mission was to punish the defectors without provoking the Exile. He assumed that was why it was the Exile's personal guard that had been dispatched on this mission: to make challenging them openly too risky. But LF3 was a Stillblade, and it did not take much to subdue a guard. That was why he waited until the third day, when he was sure that Rude would be asleep. And when the battered guard was left, alive but unconscious behind him, LF3 slipped into Engineer Tuesti's office, sword already drawn.
No sooner had he trained his attention on Engineer Tuesti then the Engineer whirled to face him. The two men stared at each other.
"How did you-" The Engineer began, then stopped and cocked his head. He managed a trembling smile. "Of course. A Stillblade."
LF3 did not speak.
"What defenses could there be against you? Perhaps some in the Exile's Estate...but he would not fritter such precious material away on a lowly turncoat." He managed a trembling laugh. His voice was surprisingly melodic, even as it shook. "I suppose...I should be honored. That I would warrant such an extreme response."
Still LF3 said nothing. His sword was raised, ready to strike.
Tuesti offered a trembling nod (trembling all over, shaking violently, pretending at calm). "I understand. You have your mission. Kill me. But please...spare my family."
LF3 could not bring himself to speak.
"The family as well?" LF3 had asked, when he had received his assignment.
The General had sighed and nodded grimly. "The family as well."
LF3 had asked no more questions. There were no questions to be asked. He was a Stillblade: his whole bloodline had been brought into the Empire's thrall, as punishment for their ancestral crime in trying to kill the Emperor. That had been the Emperor's mercy: to allow them a chance to atone. The Tuestis would be allowed no such chance.
Staring at the pale, bearded man in front of him, LF3 took a trembling breath, and swallowed against the dryness of his throat. "That's not up to me."
"It is," Tuesti said. "It is. You can pretend it's not, but all your pretending won't change reality. If I have to live with that-" He laughed, a high and ragged sound, like a bird's cry. "If I have to die with that...so do you."
LF3 stared at the man he'd been sent to kill—the first person he'd met in his life who was an enemy of the Empire. "Meaning what?"
Tuesti shook his head. "I think you know already, Stillblade. I have to imagine...the Stillblades know better than most. You, and all those like you...you live only on the Empire's sufferance, no?"
LF3's throat felt so tight he could barely breathe. He tightened his grip on his sword, to stop his own trembling.
"You're not here to stop me giving secrets to the Exile, you know," Tuesti said. "Any secrets I have to give, the Exile will have within ten years. No, Stillblade: you're here to make an example of me. To make sure everyone knows the price you pay for refusing the Empire's will. The price you pay for having a part of your soul that's not up for sale." His voice cracked with the suggestion of a sob: he closed his eyes and balled his hands into fists. "You know why I defected?"
LF3 said nothing. LF3 did nothing. He should strike Engineer Tuesti down. He didn't move.
"They sent me to study the Dragonriders," Tuesti muttered. "To watch how they fight our airships. Learn how to counter them. But that's a short-term problem. The Empire always thinks in the long-term. They want to build airships that can resist any challenger. Airships that can rain death upon the defiant." Tuesti buried his face in his head. "How much of the world already sits in their thrall? And they are not content."
"If I...I had stayed, they would have me designing airships that could shred dragons in the sky and turn whole cities glass. No one could stop them. So many would die...because of me." The sound he made then was neither a laugh, nor a sob. "That's how they win. They inflict horror on everyone. And they threaten you with horror, if you will not aid them. But I...I can't. I can't do it anymore.
He lowered his hands, and stared up at LF3. LF3 had seen eyes like those before—in CF3, before he had tried to kill Zeromus. Desperation, pain...and relief.
"Please," Tuesti said. "Make an example of me. Take as long as you need, make it as nasty as you need, but my family...they didn't...Stillblade, please...!"
Time does not mean the same thing to a Time Mage as it does to another man. But for a long time, LF3 said nothing. For a long time, LF3 did nothing
He was not sure, then or later, why he lowered his sword; if it was only a moment's hesitation, or if it was genuine treachery. He only knew what he saw in Engineer Tuesti's eyes. First, the disbelief. Then, the relief...and the hope.
And then: the horror.
His eyes snapped over LF3's shoulder. Puzzled, LF3 cocked his head, and froze in turn. There was someone moving in his slowed time. That shouldn't be possible. Not unless it was another Stillblade.
He understood before he saw her face. He understood before FN2 stepped into the runelight. He understood before he saw the blood dripping from her naked sword.
"NO!" Engineer Tuesti's scream was terribly musical, terribly ragged. It was like the sound of a dying animal. By the time LF3 turned to look, Engineer Tuesti had already exploded past him, white-faced and wild-eyed, screaming still. Slowly, LF3 turned to watch him throw himself at FN2. Slowly, he watched as FN2 simply stepped back, and raised her sword, so it seemed that Engineer Tuesti impaled himself upon it.
The scream died at once. Engineer Tuesti stared down at the sword buried in him. "No..." he whispered, and closed his eyes, and spoke no more.
Without effort, FN2 slipped her blade from the engineer's chest, and let his lifeless body crumple to the floor. Her sword was even bloodier now than it had been moments before, when she stepped out of the bedroom that held the rest of the Tuesti family. Her blue eyes met his.
He had followed, without a word. Followed her into the night. Followed her, from the dream of freedom in Ivalice, to the certain punishment of the Ring of Woe.
"I have no explanation, Overseer," LF3 said at last. "I was not ready for the trust placed in me, by you or by the Empire." He bowed his head. "I do not ask for your forgiveness or your understanding. I have earned neither."
Overseer Zeromus sighed again and shook his head. "We had such hopes for you, LF3. Such hopes. Few indeed are the candidates who have proven worthy of even a chance in the field...and that number will be fewer still, with your failure to weigh them down."
He paused contemplatively. "Still, FN2 argued on your behalf. If your intention had been outright treachery, you might have fought her, or fled to the Exile yourself. In light of your willingness to face the consequences of your misdeeds, we are willing to grant you a chance to atone."
LF3 dropped to his knees, and bowed his head to the stone. "You are too kind even in my failure, Overseer."
He spoke the words as confidently as he could manage, pretending they did not scrape raw against his throat.
"It is not my kindness," the Overseer said. "It is the Empire's." There was too much preening pleasure in Zeromus' voice: LF3 fought the urge to flinch. "And they have chosen a path to atonement well-suited to a subject of your abilities. We will repeat the experiment that earned you the first trust extended to you. Though, given the...gravity of your crimes..." He chuckled. "We will have to make it a rather more...strenuous test."
A cell in the Ring, like CF3 before him. Above him, a great stone weight, suspended only by Zeromus' will. The runes along the walls of the cell would be returned to magnify Time Magic, rather than suppress it, just as the great stone weight was released. If LF3 slackened his attention, even for a moment, the weight would come crushing down upon him. So long as his magic endured, he would live.
"Prove your willingness to atone," Zeromus explained, as they stood outside his cell. "Endure for one month, and you shall prove that our time, our attention, and our mercy were not misspent."
LF3 bowed his head again. "I will not fail you again, Overseer." He turned without raising his head. "Nor you, General."
The General did not answer. He had not said much, since LF3 and FN2 returned from the field, with word of FN2's success and LF3's failure. There was a weariness in what little he did say that matched the weariness in his eyes.
LF3 entered the cell without looking back at FN2. There were loaves of bread and a trough of water on the far side: he would not die of thirst or hunger before his execution was finished.. He sat cross-legged on the floor, trying not to mind too much the thrashing swirls of nightmare magic he distantly felt through the walls of the other cells. He focused on his own cell, and its own walls. Waiting for the magic to shift. Waiting for his execution to begin.
Zeromus gestured, and the four cell wall descended from its place in the ceiling. He glimpsed all three of them then—Zeromus with his cruel eyes, and the General with his weary ones, and FN2, staring straight ahead. She did not look at him. He did not look at her.
But he thought of her. Of their last honest conversation, one day's travel from the Ring.
"Loffrey."
LF3 looked back at her, his throat thick. Lofrrey was her name for him, given to him in frantic whispers in stolen moments of slowed time, spoken only when they were sure their captors would not hear it. Names were identity, and for a Stillblade, identity was a privilege to be earned.
But it occurred to LF3 that, for the first time in his life, he was free to speak to her. Who could hear them now, in this pocket of slowed time, outside the Ring.
"Why?" Her voice cracked.
LF3 shook his head. "I..." He shook his head again. "They do not...we do not...none of us deserve this."
"Deserve has nothing to do with it," she whispered. "This is the way the world is."
"Why?" LF3 asked in turn.
FN2 looked at him helplessly, and shook her head in turn. "I cannot save you."
"I did not ask you to."
"If we're lucky, they'll spare us for your crimes." She squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry, Loffrey."
Loffrey looked into his mother's eyes, and discovered something. "I'm not."
He did not want his family to die. He did not want the Stillblades to die. But he wanted, even less, to live like this. To be the subject of endless horror, in the service of endless horror.
When Engineer Tuesti had spoken, he had spoken the truth. This could not be borne.
Later, the runes would turn. Later, the great weight would descend. No one believed that LF3 could slow time long enough to survive the month. He was not in here to atone. He was in here to be an example to his fellow Stillblades.
So he would be an example. He would endure, for their sake. He would endure, and hope for a better future. And he would endure, because it was the only defiance he had left to him. To prove he could be better even than this hollow pretense of a punishment they put him through. Put them all through.
He had been in this prison a long, long time. He had been in this cell, with killing weight coming down upon him, for a long, long time. But though he had been born in the Ring of Woe, the latest in a long line of prisoners and experiments to bend time itself to the evil purposes of the Ydoran Empire, Loffrey knew: he was free.
