(Thanks for reading. Next chapter 11/13/24. And if you're an American, and old enough to vote, please vote against Trump in the coming election)
Chapter 164: Mullonde Is Burning
You cannot truly comprehend the staggering devastation of the Fall unless you consider Mullonde. Not only the city that was lost—the country-wide metropolis that was the heart of the Empire, occupying the land that once stretched between Lionel and Gallione—but the city that was named in its honor. The Cathedral City, Mullonde, mighty relic of the fallen Ydorans, holy heart of Ivalice. Consider that, before the Fall, Mullonde was a meager mountaintop observatory. Consider that, when the Empire Fell and the flood waters came pouring in, only this mountaintop refuge survived. Consider that this ruined relic was magnificent enough to be one of the most powerful cities in medieval Ivalice. And consider how, if such power could remain in such a meager relic, how much more must have been lost.
-Alazlam Durai, "A Nation of Ruins."
The late morning light dripped from cathedral spires like liquid gold. It flirted across shadowed crenelations, rippled across stained glass, pooled atop buttressed rooftops. Following its bright fluidity, your eyes lost themselves in gorgeous complexity—in the elegant images silhouetted in stained glass windows, in statues and carvings, and in the curves and arrows of Zodiac signs that adorned buildings at all levels in all directions, Virgo brightest among them.
Looking at that enormous city—looking at buildings that blended into one another, so that the impression you got was not of innumerable buildings but of one colossal cathedral, larger even than mighty Bethla Garrison—Ramza felt something he had not felt since his childhood, when he had first seen the ocean. A feeling of looking at something so awe-inspiring you could not help but sense the divine.
"You've never seen it?" Melia asked.
Ramza shook his head. The Inquisitor's red skiff made its bobbing path across the sparkling waves towards the wide harbor. Towers surrounded that harbor, overseen by what seemed like a lighthouse with a great crystalline top. "I never saw much beyond Gallione and Lesalia before..." Ramza shook his head. "And the Church has little need of mercenaries."
"That's too bad. It's...there's no place like it in Ivalice." Ramza heard the wistfulness in her voice.
"You'll have to take me on a proper tour of it," Ramza said. "When all this is over."
"It would be my pleasure."
They closed in on the harbor. Ramza adjusted himself as best he could. Melia had bound his wrists and ankles hours ago, tying the two bindings together in front of him so he was effectively hobbled. He winced, as he adjusted himself: even with Lavian's ministrations and his own careful use of the Draining Blade, the faded bruises on his face hurt.
Playing the captive. Springing yet another trap, in the hope of rescuing someone else from inside of it. His sister, yes...and perhaps the entire Glabados Church, as well. From the plots of demons, and the horror of Project Ultima.
He took a steadying breath, as a Templar and her captured heretic sailed into Mullonde Harbor.
In his childhood, Ramza had known only three great cities. Igros and Gariland were two of a kind, differed from each other only by size and purpose: neat, orderly places, laid out in grids and lined by trees, simple dwellings and idle entertainments presided over by great places of power (the various Academies in Gariland, the Beoulve Manor and the Cathedral and Castle in Igros). Lesalia had been something else: a sprawling riot of a city, protected by powerful walls, dotted with old relics of the Ydorans, all under the shadow of the mountainous majesty of the Lion's Den.
Since that time, Ramza had seen far more of Ivalice. From then muddy mire of Dorter to the clenched fist of Zaland Fort City, from the lovely ruins of Goug to the pleasant, crowded chaos of Warjilis, from Yardrow with its Manors and Slums to the towering might of Bethla Garrison. And in all that time, he had never seen a thing like Mullonde.
The closer they drew to the city, the more marvelous its details became. Subtle crenelations formed artistic impression in rooftops and walls that only grew in depth and detail the nearer you drew: statues, gargoyles, and grotesques that were hidden by distance drew suddenly into focus, so you saw this knight in full motion, spear outthrust, threatening a whorling figure of a Lucavi, all captured as though in mid-motion. The Zodiac patterns were even more elaborate than he'd realized—chains of paint, colored stone, and glass that spiraled and refracted everywhere he looked.
The Harbor itself was guarded by a great lighthouse, the runes upon its crystalline cap quiescent in the light of day. Rimming the docks of the Harbor were Workers, but unlike the moving Workers Ramza had seen in the Neveleska Archipelago and the Bethla Wastes, these Workers were immobile and far more elaborate. One, far to port, knelt as though in prayer, hands placed together: one, almost dead ahead, had wings of colored glass spread out behind outflung arms: one had had pieces of metal cunningly affixed to it to make it look like a great armored knight.
Everywhere he looked, Ramza saw some wonder he had seen no other place in Ivalice. Melia hadn't been exaggerating.
The skiff slowed as they approached one thin pier, past the Worker who knelt in prayer. Ramza glanced back at Melia, her had on the rudder, her brow furrowed with concentration. Like him, her face was mottled with faded bruises. Hopefully it would be enough to sell their story.
He slid to one side, as though he were unconscious. As the skiff slid to an easy stop, Ramza watched through slitted eyes as four men bustled aboard. First, a dockworker, who kicked out the gangplank as he started to tie the skiff off. Then an older gentleman, white-haired with, a ledger and quill in hand. Finally, there came a young, chestnut-haired priest in yellow robes, with a red-cloaked Templar holding a gleaming spear just a step behind him.
Ramza closed his eyes.
"Inquis-" began a young voice, so thick with relief it was close to tears, before breaking off abruptly. When the voice spoke next, it was thick with suspicion. "You are not the Inquisitor."
"You've sharp eyes, Father Braska," Melia said. He heard footsteps moving towards him. "Templar, I need you to get a message to His Holiness."
"Hold a moment, Templar Tengille," Father Braska said. "Why are you aboard the Inquisitor's skiff?"
"He didn't tell you?" Melia asked.
Ramza tensed. Depending on what Father Braska said now, he might need to fight his way across the city.
"Inquisitor Zalmour is missing." A moment's hesitation. "And presumed dead."
Ramza fought not to flinch. He heard Melia's footsteps stop abruptly. "What?"
"He was sent to assist Cardinal Bremondt in his expedition to the Archipelago. He has not been seen since." There was grief in Braska's voice. "There's some evidence that the Cardinal was killed...we presume the Inquisitor was killed as well."
Melia was quiet for a moment. "I see."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Ramza's thoughts whirled. They had known that the Inquisitor's mission had been unsuccessful—Ramza was still a wanted heretic, and the war had not ended. But what had happened to stop Zalmour from reaching Mullonde?
"Forgive me, Templar Tengille." Braska's voice was stiff, with just a hint of suspicion. "Why do you have the Inquisitor's skiff?"
"He gave it to me, when we met in the Archipelago." Melia's voice shook slightly. "He said my mission more important." Her footsteps started moving towards Ramza again. "I dare say he was right."
He felt her hands close upon his bonds, and haul him upright. He groaned, twitching his head feebly from side to side.
"Templar Tengille...who..." Father Braska's voice was hushed. He already knew who Ramza was.
"You don't recognize the Heretic Beoulve?" Melia asked.
Stunned silence across the skiff, broken only by the gentle lapping of waves.
"Now," Melia said. "Templar, if you would be so kind as to inform His Holiness we need an audience." She slapped Ramza across the face. He groaned again (sincerely this time: it was a hard slap, and stung against his bruises) and his eyelids fluttered open.
"Hold on a moment-" Father Braska's voice was higher now, and shaking in earnest.
"I have spent months tracking this man." Melia's voice held every onze of her control, every onze of her fury. Ramza felt a pang in his heart: he heard echoes of Zalbaag in her voice. "You know the chaos he has caused, since I left to find him. I have reason to suspect he intends still worse. His Holiness needs to hear of this."
"I...yes. Templar Auron, if you would-"
Blurrily, Ramza saw the Templar move off at a rapid pace. Melia shook him slightly. "Awake, heretic. I'm not carrying you in."
Ramza blinked his eyes open, glaring at her. "And I guess you expect me to roll the whole way?" He held up his hobbled hands.
Melia scowled at him, then flicked out a dagger (his dagger: they needed to keep her sword hidden, in case anyone knew what kind of blade she was supposed to be carrying) and quickly sawed through the knot at his feet. "Come on."
She sheathed the dagger and dragged him down the gangplank. The man with the ledger and the priest followed. Ahead of them, dockworkers were standing back with mouths agape, and soldiers were hurrying to the end of the dock. Ramza tensed, and felt the heavy weight of the brown clothes over him. It was a thin fiction they had spun, and it could fall apart at the slightest investigation. If anyone searched him properly, and found the armor he was wearing beneath the heavy brown clothes...
"We can take him from here, Templar Tengille." It was a brawny man near the front of the soldiers who spoke, with a great sword sheathed upon his back.
Melia laughed grimly. "I'm sure you can, Templar Jecht. You're not going to."
The brawny man glanced between them, then nodded. "At least accept an honorguard.
"Gladly." She started dragging Ramza again, as Jecht and four other Templars fell in on all sides. Jecht, Braska, and Melia walked in front, Melia dragging Ramza behind by the length of rope still bound to his hands. One of the great buildings loomed ahead.
"How did you-" It was Braska again.
"I'd prefer to save most of the tale for when I see His Holiness," Melia said. "It wasn't easy. And his allies are still out there." She glared at Ramza. "Plotting Saint-knows-what."
"Were you working with the Knight-Commander?" Jecht asked.
Melia stopped moving. "What? Why?"
"He just came back three days ago. With the Virgo Stone, and..." Jecht's eyes flickered towards Ramza. "His sister."
Melia stared at Jecht. Ramza stared at Jecht.
And then: an explosion.
All of them snapped towards the sound, watching a great plume of fire and smoke rise above a distant rooftop. The explosion was bad enough: the fthoom of ignition, and the great rumbling of destruction that followed. But layered beneath the fire was laughter, loud and uproarious as a tavern drunk. Follow the source of that laughter, to a shadow moving amidst the towering flames: a moment later, and the shadow in gestured. With that gesture, the column of fire ignited once more, a geyser of searing flames climbing into the cloudless sky.
From the sides of that, fireballs rained down upon the city. One, two, three, each at least as large as a chocobo, each exploding in great bursts as they crashed against different parts of the Cathedral City.
But the fires did not stop there. From one fire, then another, then another, an ashen skeleton wreathed in flames emerged, and began clawing its way across rooftops and down high walls, leaving smoldering ashes in their wake. Ramza recognized those figures: he had seen them laying waste to the Khamja at Riovanes.
And those were not the only figures moving through the flames. The shadowed figure in the first fire emerged, a distant silhouette with a staff in hand. He raised that staff, and the power that pulsed off his silhouette was as strong as a storm wind blowing before the storm starts in earnest: Ramza, Melia, and their honorguard of Templars were buffetted by the force of it, staggering backwards before the spell radiating against them, around them-
Staggering, as fresh fire rained from the sky.
The spell had called that flame: raised it up, then rained it down. Each gout struck with the same force as the first: each threw up a mighty column of roaring flame. Distant shouts and distant screams reached them, from their place by the harbor.
Distantly, Ramza saw a Worker's laser carve its crimson path across a building's facade. Distantly, Ramza saw stone and wood burst into molten fire, adding fresh chaos to the city. Distantly, Ramza saw apocalyptic power even grater than that which he'd seen from the Lucavi so many times before.
Ramza's eyes flickered to Melia. Hers flickered to him.
"Evil is afoot!" Melia screamed, jerking Ramza behind her. "The Lucavi move!"
Father Braska's head snapped around. "The Lucavi?"
"You heard what happened at the Beoulve Manor, and more besides!" Melia shouted. "The demons of the Empire are at work in Ivalice! I have to see the Confessor! He has to hear what the heretic has to say!"
Braska and Jecht stared at her. Ramza tried to look wide-eyed and vulnerable.
"I-" Templar Jecht began, and then cut off, choking.
Ramza looked towards him, and almost did not notice the world go still around him. He felt rather than saw the figure behind him, scything towards him with a blade: he threw himself low, rolled backwards as a hooded figure kept cutting towards him. The sword in his hand was glowing.
But then, the hooded figure hadn't noticed the other figure, moving towards him with her own sword in hand. The clashed together, blade against blade.
"Templar Wodring," Melia growled.
"Templar Tengille." The hooded man sighed—it was the same man who had held his sword to Radia's throat atop the roof of Riovanes. "So it's true. You've joined him."
"Better the company of heretics than the company of Lucavi."
"How can you be sure?" Loffrey asked.
"Because I've seen what the Lucavi are, and what they do." Neither of them moved, facing each other over their crossed blades. Ramza remained crouched where he'd fallen: Melia had secured the robe that bound his hands around her waist. Around them, flames moved as slowly as flags in the wind. Templar Jecht and two others were dead. Their frozen comrades stared at their bloody bodies with mouths agape.
"Loffrey," Melia's voice was quiet. "I've heard you were with my father at Riovanes."
Loffrey cocked his head. "And?"
"Are you the one who killed Izlude?"
For a moment, Loffrey did not speak. For a moment, neither did Melia. In a moment, Loffrey would try to move—to slip away, bending time itself to speed his steps, and strike against them as he willed.
Ramza did not give him that moment.
He lunged, and Melia lunged with him, keeping Loffrey pinned, keeping him in contact, so he could not use his magic to escape or strike against them unseen. As he started to pull away, Ramza leapt forwards, reaching out with his bound hands, reaching out with his magic. At the same moment that Loffrey started to bend time, Ramza pulled on his magic, drinking it in through the marvelous armor he wore beneath the heavy brown clothes
Loffrey gave a strangled cry, and the world lurched into motion again as he disappeared. No, not disappeared: he was several yalms away, staggering as though his legs were asleep.
"Hurry!" Melia shouted, and took off after him. As they ran, she sliced cleanly through the knots tying his hands together: he looped the remaining rope around his waist and knotted it like a belt, so they might stay bound should Loffrey try to ambush them again. Beside him, Melia had raised her free hand to the cuff on her ear.
Vormav Tengille and his terrible company assaulted Mullonde as they had assaulted Riovanes. And somewhere in this burning city, they had his sister.
"Where-" Ramza began.
"There's a section of the guest wing designed for important prisoners," Melia said, ducking into an open hall of desks stacked high with papers, beautifully illuminated by tall windows with arched tops. Around them were people craning to look out the windows, hiding under their desks, hurrying towards one door or another. "My guess is-"
Crash!
One of the windows exploded, tinkling glass raining down around the misshapen figure that had burst through it. It landed with a heavy clank, red light burning on metal fingers. Ramza lunged forwards as the laser fired, smashed out with one fist and a burst of magic: the laser refracted like sunlight through crystal, shimmering through a ward of magic that dissipated it.
Ramza kept charging towards the Worker, passing through shimmering light that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He was perhaps a yalm from his target when he realized it was not a Worker at all.
The Workers Ramza had seen the last few months were brutally functional, like suits of armor brought to life. The creature in front of Ramza had none of that simple, pointed design. The limbs were an ungainly mismatch, pieces fused together with obvious welding lines, so its whip-fast movements were erratic as a frightened cat. Likewise the torso, which was not the plan tri-sectioned sphere Ramza had seen in so many other Workers but instead a great misshapen wedge, all harsh angles along seams that glowed red with the heat of its inner fire.
Atop the crumpled mass of its odd torso sat half a human face, with its remaining patches of brown hair thin and sparse. The left half of the face was still recognizable: a high cheekbone, full lips, and a single dark eye. But above the full-lipped mouth, the right half of his face was a mess of patchwork metal and fragmented crystal interrupted by occasional stitches of flesh. Red lights flashed among those crystal shards, like panthers' eyes gleaming in the dark of night.
The left half of this patchwork creature's head belonged unmistakably to the Machinist Barich Fendsor.
"Beoulve!" howled the metal man. Its voice echoed strangely, as though it were shouting into an empty suit of armor. Powerful arms smashed towards Ramza: Ramza twisted aside, saw the telltale red gleam of another laser as half the creature's chest sagged open at spat a lance of red light as thick as his thight straight towards him, and kept twisting. Papers and wood burst into flame behind him: he heard someone scream.
He forgot about the rope tying him to Melia until it jerked back backwards, throwing him low as the heat of the laser pulsed above his head. Melia was sprawled out to one side, already scrambling to her feet: he followed after her.
There would be time to dwell on the horror of Barich's appearance, anger, and anguish later. Now, there was a battle to be fought.
There, just behind Barich: Loffrey had reappeared, white-faced and staggering, trying to reach Barich. As the laser died away, Ramza burst past Barich, trying to get between him and the flickering figure of the Time Mage. Barich snapped around, reaching with metal arms: from the corner of his eye, Ramza saw Melia leap like a panther with her sword in hand, and cut a shallow gash into one of Barich's metal arms.
"NO!" Again, that strange echoing hollowness to Barich's voice: he fell back from Melia's attack as Loffrey flickered after him. But this close, and this weakened, Loffrey could not win through, especially with Ramza drinking every piece of magic he could, every chance he got. Loffrey was slower now, white-faced, stumbling physically as well as in time, his frantic eyes flickering between Barich and the room around them.
"Barich!" cried Loffrey, and flickered away, appearing in lightning bursts across the room, to stagger to a stop by the far door. "Get the others!"
Barich stampeded towards the shattered window he'd fallen through, firing a fresh laser at them as he ran. He clambered lizard-like up the wall, and back through the open window.
"After him!" Melia cried, and was off and running again, with Ramza keeping pace besides her.
Out of the room thick with desks and papers, and into another space, illuminated first by morning sunlight tinted prismatic by the stained glass windows it sparkled through and second by the dancing flames burning in the fringes of the room. The flames burned in the footsteps of a skeletal figure of black ash and curving horns, wreathed in fire. There were charred and mangled corpes littering its burning path.
Loffrey was visible just past the creature. He shouted, then flickered away again. In answer to his shout, the creature turned its black skull towards them, bent low, then swept towards them. The heat of its fire built, and built, and built: a wall of flame rose above it, around it, a tsunami of fire threatening to drown them even as it burned them to ash.
Ramza remembered the monster: he had seen it carving a similar path of flame through Riovanes so many months ago. But he had learned about this creature afterwards. Melia had explained it was an Eidolon: a living spell of flame, sent off with instructions at its creator's will. And Lavian, Alicia, and Reis, aware of what awaited them, had talked about what they knew about such creatures, and how they could be fought.
It was a terrifying apparition, riding a terrible wave of heat. The air was thick with the smell of its burning: with the deep musk of burning wood, and the acrid nastiness of burning carpet, and the terrible bacon-in-the-pan sizzle of burning human flesh. But it was a creature of magic, and Ramza knew how to fight such creatures now. Especially with his armor.
He rose to meet it, baring his teeth against the heat of its approach. But that fire was all magic, and Ramza could drink that magic: flames guttered as power poured into him, a simmering heat like alcohol flushing in his cheeks and setting his pulse to pounding. He struck in rhythm to his hammering heart, draining magic in one beat and lashing out with shattering blows the next.
Pull-pulse-punch-pulse-pull-pulse-punch-pulse
In draining away the Eidolon's magic, he healed his wounds, restored his tired arms and legs. With every blow, he turned its magic against it, in rippling bursts that exploded into the holes in its fabric he'd drained away to fuel his attack. Within moments, the flames had guttered: within moments, it was a thin wretch of black ash, surrounded by flames that twitched with the frantic desperation of a candle on the verge of going out.
Then Melia slashed down upon it, through it: it dissolved in a puff of black ash, and its flames went out.
Charging on again, as explosions like cannonfire rang in the distance, underscored by screams and shouts. Strange, this feeling: he was conscious of a certain mental exhaustion, but there was no physical counterpart. Ramza had been stealing from his enemies along the way, turning their own strength against them, so that for all the magic he'd used and the fighting he'd done, legs and arms and soul all still felt strong.
From the hallway with its high windows, to a spacious reception hall in which an Ydoran Picture Window showed images of airships plying over a bustling city, and Ramza barely spared it a glance. There, a door still moving from where someone had passed through it, and he and Melia pounded down the stairs, ripped through the doorway to a different hallway. The ceilings were lower here, the sound of their footsteps muted by carpet underfoot.
Ahead of them, they could just make out the twitching figure of Loffrey, flinging open a heavy door. Ramza and Melia put on a burst of speed, and caught the door before it closed.
Through the door was a modest, comfortable apartment. Through the door was the ruin of man in a priest's robe, lying upon a plush, blood-soaked mattress. Through the door was Loffrey, stumbling and white-faced, panic in his blue eyes. Through the door was a creature nearly three yalms tall, with a lion face barely visible beneath the radiance of a mane like a sunlight. Through the door was Alma Beoulve, held aloft by the Lucavi's tawny hand around her throat, at the foot of the bed and its blood-soaked body.
The lion demon's stone grey eyes flickered towards Ramza, then towards Melia. He shifted, to hold Alma before him like a shield. She was pale and seemed utterly unconscious, though Ramza thought he saw the slightest movement in her chest as she breathed. "Move," he growled, in a voice that rumbled like distant thunder. "And your sister dies."
"You can't kill her," Ramza said. He felt as taut with potential violence as a drawn bowstring, eyes fixed on the demon that held his sister, on the sister that had been taken from him so long ago, on the sister he could save. "You need her. To bring back Ajora."
The creature grimaced. "The Gospel, eh? Germonique troubles us still."
"It's you."
If there was thunder in the lion's voice, there was lightning in Melia's. It crackled in her throat, threatening to break.
The lion demon slowly turned its head towards her.
"And who do you think I am?" the Lucavi asked.
Ramza could think of only one man who could inspire such dread in Melia. He had glimpsed the man through the magic artifact Zalbaag had brought back to Daravon's Estate: he had hear a similar voice hint at Dycedarg's monstrous crimes. The demon in front of them could only be Vormav Tengille. Knight-Commander of the Templars. Melia and Izlude's father.
Melia's grip on her sword seemed feeble Her grey eyes were cloudy, as though she couldn't quite see the demon in front of her.
"There's...so much I want to ask you," Melia whispered. The lightning still crackled in her voice. "About...when you became...this. About...why you became...this. About Izlude." There was the slightest hitch in her voice. "About me."
Half-silhouetted by its radiant mane, the lion demon cocked its head to one side.
"But I know better," she admitted. "I don't know what your name is, demon. But I know who you are." The lightning was building her voice. "I know what you are." Her grip tightened, and she raised her sword en guarde before her. "And I know what you've done."
The bowstring violence wasn't just in Ramza anymore—it was within all of them, shimmering on the edge of Melia's blade, flickering around Loffrey, burning in the demon's free hand. It built, and built, and built, towards an explosive point.
But when the explosion came, it didn't come from inside the room. It came from just outside. Behind them, they felt terrible force, terrible heat, terrible magic. They twisted, turning to guard themselves, and in the same moment Loffrey and the lion were moving towards the explosion, and they were taking Alma again, he was losing his sister, he couldn't let it happen, he refused.
Twisting, and moving. A burst of magic from his feet, rocketing across the room. Loffrey flickered into his path, sword raised: Melia lunged at him, sword in hand, and the two were flickering in a furious interchange of slashing blows. The lion was halfway out the door, Alma now slung across one shoulder like a sack: Ramza kicked into empty air to redirect his course, feeling the vibration of force through his feet, echoing through his legs.
But beyond the demon that had been Vormav Tengille was the explosion: a great shattering of fire and swirling magic. Facing it now, the force of the flames, the explosion, and the magic at the heart of both was even greater: through the crumpling ruin of the devastated wall, Ramza could distant signs of destruction, smoke rising from smoldering fires among the high buildings of the Cathedral City. The path down to the shattered wall looked as though a cannonball the size of a behemoth had been fired straight through at Ramza, tearing heedlessly through buildings as it came.
The source of that destruction—the source of this terrible magic—had taken a knee in the thick of the explosion; a gnarled figure in a loose, patchy robe, hair and beard a wild cloud about his face. Held on the ground before him was a tall wooden staff. Slowly, he rose, as shattered glass hailed down around him, and splinters and embers crashed to all sides. Slowly, colorless eyes found Ramza, and a savage grin unfurled across his face.
He brought his staff up and then down, as though it were a headman's axe. In lifting the staff, Ramza sensed magic gathering at its tip—magic as intense as immense as the annihilating beams he'd felt from the Lucavi he'd faced, and from Cardinal Bremondt in his dragon form. As the staff descended, that magic was unleashed—a beam of radiant force, like all the colors of a vivid sunset swirled together and set aflame. It speared past the lion demon and Alma, missing both my ilms as it lanced its scouring way towards Ramza.
But Ramza had faced such beams before, when he had been far weaker, and far less determined.
He skidded to a stop, raised his hands, found the rune on his wrist for lightning but did not attempt to cast a spell. When the beam hit, he drank it in—as Radia had taught him, and as he had taught himself. In the past, catching and turning such spells had left him feeling sunburnt on the inside, stretched thin and raw, like he might tear at any moment. He still felt some of that, catching ahold of this terrible magic, but his armor had been built for this. Built for him.
The power poured into him, but he was already reshaping it, drinking it to heal himself, drinking it to heal the light blistering he felt upon his cheeks, the strain he felt in wrists and fingers from standing against the scouring strength of the spell. But the power of that beam was so immense that there was still more to drink, to send crackling through his armor, to pool inside himself, ready for release. When the multicolored devastation had faded, Ramza willed, and poured all that magic into his hands, into his own spell.
The lightning bolt that crackled out of his hand was so bright it nearly blinded him, more immense even than the combined spell with which he, Alicia, and Lavian had felled a Worker in Neveleska so many months ago. His nose was filled with the burnt air of its crackling passage It crashed into the spellcaster and flung him back into the path of destruction he'd carved across Mullonde.
Behind him, obscured by the thunder of his lightning bolt and the cacophony of the collapsing wall, he heard the clanging of swords climb to a fever-pitch. "Ramza!" Melia cried, and from the corner of his eye, Ramza could just make out Loffrey flickering towards him. He turned to meet the Time Mage, but the man was gone as soon as Ramza turned. Distantly, Ramza saw that the rope tying him and Melia together had been severed.
He snapped around, looking for Loffrey. Instead, he found only the Lucavi, staring at him as the wall finished collapsing around him. Beyond him were the blues skies of late summer, the crumbling edifices of Mullonde, and the rising smoke of their attack. Upon his shoulder was Alma, her unconscious face obscured by her greasy hair.
With a titanic thoom, a shadow leapt out of the burning city, and landed besides the lion demon. His grin was wider now, so wide it threatened to split his face in two. Those colorless eyes were burning as Wiegraf's eyes had burned, fresh smoke rising from their pits to match the rising spoke from the burning city.
"He's everything you said he'd be," whispered the wild figure, and Ramza dimly felt its power building again. He recognized the voice—the laughing shadow who had rained such terrible fire upon the city.
"Yes," rumbled the Lucavi. "He is."
Behind him, more felt than heard or seen, Melia stepped into position. Ramza clenched his fists at his sides, ready to strike.
A flicker of movement: he snapped up his fists as Loffrey appeared again. At his sides were the metal monstrosity with Barich's face and the nasal-voiced wizard Ramza had last seen on the roof of Castle Riovanes.
"We need to go," the wizard said, his brown eyes wide, his face pale.
"Not until we're finished here," the man with the terrible magic breathed. Beside him, the Lucavi nodded.
"Cletienne is correct, Hashmalum," grated Barich, though his one organic eye was glaring at Ramza. "The Invincible is here."
The lion demon glanced at them. "What?"
"Sailing into harbor as we speak," Loffrey said.
"And who knows what allies he's brought with him," Cletienne added.
"If they're half the fighters he is..." Impossibly, the wild-haired man's grin seemed to widen. Ramza felt his power building still further. "To think there were such worthy foes...!"
The lion demon glanced briefly at the wild-haired man, then turned his gaze back to Ramza and Melia. He raised one hand, gleaming with golden fire. Ramza tensed, ready to resist whatever attack was raised against him, ready to fight Hashmalum and Barich and the wild-haired man, ready to fight any demon, any monster, any enemy that would dare to stop him saving Alma now.
Too focused on the golden fire, and the attack it signaled. Too focused on the hand and its flames, and not the Lucavi that held it. Too focused on the battle, so he did not see how the Lucavi's body seemed to deepen and darken, as thought it had become a pool of clear water leading down into fathomless depths. Too late to see that the Lucavi was not fighting, but running.
"STOP!" he screamed, as he realized it was teleporting away as Belias and the Marquis had teleported away, and as he screamed he forced magic out through his legs, burst towards them with hands outthrust. But he was too late, much too late: even as he moved, the darkness of the Lucavi's form exploded with light of gold and red, and Ramza felt that light touch him, envelop him, sink into him, felt a slimy sense of foreign pressure, fleeting glimpses of swarming memories that were not his, like vertigo in his skin, like nausea in his mind.
The moment passed. Light and darkness faded. Where the Lucavi and his allies had stood, there was no sign. Only the broken rubble remained, and the burning city beyond.
He landed where they'd been, and stared out over the desturction they'd left behind. He felt tears burning in his eyes. He blinked them away. There was no time for tears. They had to hurry.
"The harbor," Ramza said, turning away to find Melia.
She still stood in the doorway, looking just as lost as he felt. There was a tear in the mail over her left arm, with a line of blood dribbling down the metal Her right still held her sword. Her grey eyes were bright with tears, though none had fallen.
"Barich's with them," Ramza said. Every word felt like a rasp against his throat, as he fought to swallow his despair. "Barich knows about Beowulf, and Master Daravon. They know where to look for the Stones."
Her grey eyes, so like the demon's, met his. Both of them blinked against their tears, and swallowed against their sobs. Finally, Melia nodded. "Just...just one moment, alright?"
Ramza nodded back at her. Melia turned, and stumbled back into the room where Alma and the demon had been back towards the broken body on the bloodsoaked bed. Numbly, Ramza followed along behind her.
"Is that-" he started.
Melia nodded. "It's...it's the Confessor." She reached out her wounded arm. "Oh, Your Holiness-"
And she gasped, as the ruin of the man snatched out with a hand missing fingers to seize her wrist.
"Stop them!" The Confessor's voice was a bubbling, broken thing. "You must...stop them!"
