Filling In The Blanks
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy IX or any of its characters.
Chapter 53: Puzzles. Who Doesn't Hate Them?
"He gets to go, but I can't go?! This is ridiculous!" Cinna threw up his hands, whipping his head from side to side. "Nobody's going to stick up for me?!"
"We all pretty much agreed… Marcus is just… better –" Blank nodded as he said this, "- than you…"
"You need to stay back and help Zenero, Baku, and the others work on the ship!" Dagger told him with a sly smile, "Nobody can do that job, but you…"
He stroked his chin, looking up in wonder. Was there a negative side to what she just said? Was she complimenting him, or just making fun of him. "Zidane you better watch yourself… I think Dagger has the hots for me…" He winked, and the girl face palmed.
"Not what I meant…"
"You can deny it all you want, Sugar, but you and me… We're gonna make beautiful bab-"
"Okay!" Dagger clapped her hands together, taking in a shaky breath. "That's enough of that…" She pushed Cinna away by clamping her hand on his face, and pushing his head back. "Cinna you aren't welcome anymore. Go away and work on the airship."
Blank, Marcus and Zidane snickered.
He narrowed his eyes, jaw dropping, "Ouch! Dagger's getting harsh!"
She smiled at him lightly, before picking up her staff from the wrack.
"Is everybody ready?" Lysandra asked, leaning on her sword that she'd plunged into the ground. "We don't want to be trekking about at night… That's definitely too dangerous…"
Dagger looked around at her group. She had to admit, it wasn't a very big one. There were Steiner and Beatrix, who hadn't said anything to anyone since they'd arrived, and wouldn't even look at each other. Then there was Zidane and Blank and Marcus, who were naturally trying to make the mood lighter. Freya and herself stood awkwardly next to the rowdy boys, and at the last moment, Amarant stepped up to take Vivi's spot, because the black mage really didn't want anything to do with a scary castle. Even though he hadn't said it, they all knew he was thinking it.
"Are we ready yet? This is a real drag…" Amarant commented, rolling his eyes.
No more people answered Amarant than they did Lysandra, so the group took off anyways, assuming from everyone's silence (save for Dagger's slight nod) that they weren't going to be any more ready in five minutes.
"Wait!" Everyone turned at the voice, to see a man most didn't recognize jogging towards them. Steiner's eyes narrowed. It was his brother. The man pranced up to Lysandra and stared at her, his dark eyes giving her a hard look. "I'm coming with…"
"Nathan…" she murmured, "You don't –"
"It's not a request…" He mumbled to her, glancing back at Beatrix and Steiner. Both of them crossed their arms and looked in different directions than his stare.
She sighed and nodded, "We're leaving now."
"It's fine… I'm ready…"
They started to move again, and even the boys settled down. The tension in the air was thicker than the fog; though Dagger was sure you could grasp the latter and cut through it if you really wanted to. Soon, the group started to break – Lysandra, Nathan, and the two others she brought with her were up ahead, all standing in a united line.
Freya and Amarant hung back, unsure of what to make of the unusual attitude of the group. The three Tantalus stopped horsing around a few minutes into the hike, and walked side by side, every once in a while shooting glances of communication at one another.
Dagger walked behind them by herself, ever-analyzing the situation. She'd always been one to try and see everything from everyone's point of view, so she was sure the tension was coming from the two former knights at the front end of the group… It seemed to deepen when the man with the jet black hair tagged along.
Though their walk was only about forty minutes long, it felt like days they were trampling through the muddy grass, slipping along, waiting for a shape to build in the distance.
She began to get sleepy, rubbing at her eyes. Dagger was tired of all the tension in the air, but as soon as she was about to say anything at all, Lysandra spoke up first.
"There it is!" She called backwards, noticing a long time ago how her company lagged behind her. "Ipsen's castle!"
The group ran forward, peering up at the building, now in pure view. It floated on a piece of earth, looking like it was ripped out of the dirt. The long staircase that ascended into the castle was the only thing suspending it to the ground.
The woman turned around, walking to Steiner. She handed him a gun-like device and looked at him very seriously in the eyes. "If you make it out… Do not hesitate to call for our aid… Shoot this gun into the air, and we'll mirror your shots… We will lead you back safely through the mist…"
"Thank you," he nodded to her, refusing to look at anyone else as he started forward.
They all followed, nodding their thank you's silently to the woman as they began the climb to the castle.
"Are you sure you want them going in with no help?" She asked her partner.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away from the sight in front of him. "They can't be trusted…" With that, he walked away from the woman, whose one aquamarine eye trained on him as he went.
"What's the matter with you?" She whispered faintly, before signaling to the rest of her own group to follow her back.
Beatrix sighed, glancing at Steiner, who was still marching steadily on ahead. Even her own legs were aching, wishing for a break. They'd been running up the stairs for a solid ten minutes, and while it didn't seem like a long time, the stairs were a lot steeper than they looked from the ground.
"Steiner," she called out, bent over, clutching her thighs for support. "I think we should take a break…"
"Already?" He called back, not stopping.
She glanced behind them. Only Freya was behind her still, her icy eyes piercing through the fog, staring towards the castle in wonder. Apparently, she was the only one who could hold a dead sprint at this angle.
"You're out of shape, Beatrix…" He turned to her, and for the first time since the whole family ordeal started this morning, he smiled. She felt relief flood her as he galloped down a few steps to sit next to her. But even as he did this, she could see his chest rapidly rising and falling as well.
She smiled at him, just delighted he was speaking again. "Steiner…"
"Let's not talk about it now, okay?" He asked, glancing down the stairs. He watched Dagger comically try to yank Zidane up the stairs, but the blonde was a heap of dead weight at the moment.
She sighed, "Okay…" The brunette turned back to look down the stairs once more. Seeing that they stopped in the distance, the others slowly tramped up the stairs. Turning back around, the woman's eyes fixated on the structure in front of her. What they had thought before was earth that the castle was floating on, turned out to be another castle – exactly like the first, but upside down.
"Thiis… is going to be more interesting than we all anticipated, isn't it?" Marcus asked, being the first of the boys to get there.
"I think we're in for a big surprise," Steiner agreed. As soon as Zidane, the last of the group, made it to them, they started walking again. His jaw dropped.
"Are you kidding?"
Nobody said a thing, their minds extending out to the castle in front of them. Steiner deliberately slowed, moving at an almost leisurely pace up the stairs. Even after a few moments, the blonde had to follow, no amount of thoughts flying through his mind could make him speak.
Have you come to challenge Ipsen's Castle? A voice asked Steiner in his mind, but he could tell from the expressions mirrored on everyone else's faces, they had heard the same words inside their head.
Instead of answering, his chewed his lip, pulling out his sturdy broadsword, and continuing forward. Though the first stretch of stairs seemed to take an eternity, this stretch didn't give them enough time to decide what they wanted to do, before finally, they burst through the castle's doors.
At first, everything seemed regular. There were windows so far up, that the light shining down on them was meek from the distance. The stone walls were ancient and crumpling, but ivy pillars with gold trim held the whole place up. In front of them, a hall extended horizontally to the right or left. In front of that was a small staircase of only two or three stairs that lead onto a landing, almost like a porch, that had a door on the right, and another stairway on the left.
But it wasn't this peculiar set up for a castle that had them gawking in wonderment. Above the landing, there was a balcony, and beyond the balcony were walls with hanging tapestry, drained of color from sun bleaching, and rugged with age. But the odd thing about these decorations, was the curve at which they hung.
On any normal wall, they would sag low, almost like a U shape… But these curtains were flipped upside down.
"Ohhh my…" Freya mumbled, causing all eyes traveling upward to see another balcony at least twenty feet above the strange tapestry, again, flipped upside down.
Dagger turned around, blinking her giant chocolate eyes at Zidane. She didn't look like she wanted to go any further, and bit her lip, wondering if it'd be appropriate to ask if she could stay at the door and wait for their return.
But before she could voice this opinion, Steiner walked forward to the wall, reading the words imprinted on the walls.
"Do not be restricted by your knowledge and experience. This place turns logic upside down. What's big is small, what's strong is weak, and heaven is earth…"
"The same words in your father's letter…" Beatrix mumbled.
From his pocket, he pulled out a thick stack of parchment that the woman recognized as the same thing he was reading on the Tantalus airship on the way here.
"My father outlines this very scene in front of us in this letter. He tells of how the first night, he extended into that hallway, and the tricks that awaited him were so nimble and horrendous, he left to write a letter home… He writes his good-byes in this letter, saying that he would probably not return from Ipsen's castle, and that if he didn't, he had arranged for someone to send word to us… If he did… He would write us."
He glanced at the others, staring at him in anticipation, "We didn't get a letter nor did we get word that he had died…" He stared up at the balcony, now looking more terrorizing than before. "I wish to seek out what happened to him."
"Well stand behind you, Rusty…" It was Zidane who spoke first, and the knight turned around, shocked. As though answering a silent question, the blonde shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Did you come after Blank and I when we went searching? It was dangerous, and we almost died, I'll admit… And yet, you came anyways… I'm finally getting a chance to thank you for that…"
To say that Steiner was touched would be an understatement. The former knight turned completely around, and walked with a high head over to Zidane. Slapping a hand on his shoulder, he let on a small smirk. "Perhaps I have been wrong about you all this time, Zidane…"
The Genome's eyebrows shot up in shock.
"Your talent and mind are both advanced far beyond what I expected when I first met you… And I am sorry for doubting your abilities before…"
Zidane was at a loss for words. His sapphire eyes shined as he clasped his hand on Steiner's arm and nodded, unable to think of anything else to say. The man turned back towards the front and sucked in a breath.
"Let us begin…"
It began with hours of walking soundlessly, hoping not to disrupt any of the monsters or other strange things that might have been lurking in the castle.
But after three hours of constant rummaging around with no sign of life, trace of Steiner's father, or really any danger at all beside the dizzying side effects of being right side up, then flipping upside down, defying gravity and the laws of architecture, the little group decided they were going to talk.
At first, it was only a couple of hushed whispers – mostly Blank and Zidane bickering, and Dagger and Marcus telling them to shut up. But soon Beatrix started to question Steiner, Dagger wondered this and that out loud to Freya, and Marcus eventually joined in on the two younger thieves' conversations.
After a lapse in conversation with Beatrix, Steiner found himself wondering into the past, not really knowing what to think about this whole mess.
"I met this real nice girl, Adelbert…" He smirked, and flopped down on their bed. "I can't even begin to tell you what she's like."
"You could start with her name…" Both of them looked up to see their eldest brother walk in the door, carrying a large sack with him.
"What'd you bring?!" Adelbert asked excitedly, scampering up and over to the table. "What'd you get? What'd you get?"
"Hush!" His oldest brother shook his head with a chuckle, "Open the bag and look yourself…"
The eighteen year old pulled open the sack to reveal a couple of chickens. His eyes almost fell out of his head, "Alexander, you brought back chicken?!" Quickly enough, Nathaniel was stumbling over himself to get to the table as well.
"I figured my two favorite brothers deserve a treat…" He grinned, and put his hand on his youngest brother's shoulder. "Happy Birthday, Adelbert…"
He smirked, straightening up with pride that his birthday was not forgotten. "Thanks!"
"I have a surprise for you…" He was about to say something, but Alexander stopped him, "But first, I want to hear about this girl that you met, Nathaniel…"
He blushed and turned away. "It's nothing really…"
"Come on, tell us…" He grinned stupidly at his two younger brothers, and beckoned them to sit around the table.
"Okay… Well… She's beautiful! She's got this long brown hair, and her eyes are just gorgeous! They light up every time I see her! She's determined and brave and –"
"Her name, Nathaniel!" Adelbert laughed.
"Okay, okay…" He chuckled, spilling his words quickly. "Maybe you know her, she's training to be a knight too… Her name is Beatrix!"
The room suddenly fell quiet, and both of his brothers stared at him. Nathaniel shrunk back as though he'd said something wrong. "Why are you two staring at me like a fool?"
"Well…" Alexander's eyes slide to Adelbert, who's lips were pressed into a hard line. "It's just that Adelbert –"
The youngest of the three slammed his foot on top of his older brother's. Out of reflex, his leg flew up, knee slamming into the wooden table. "Ouch!" He yelped.
"What's wrong?" Nathaniel asked, his brows knitting together, confusion bunching on his face.
"I was just going to say… that… Adelbert thinks she's kind of… umm…" Said brother gripped the table, hoping the oldest wouldn't spill his secret crush on the same girl his brother liked. "A wench!" It was the first word that came to his mind that wasn't nice.
"What? Why?"
"Erm…" Alexander was going to have to take the fall for that one… His other brother got up, and started rummaging through the sack he'd brought in, wondering if there was more than just chicken to eat tonight. "Well… She's kind of… prissy, and um… Dates a lot of… Adel! I forgot your surprise! Let's go see what it is!"
"Okay!" He leapt at the opportunity, and the two stumbled out of the room, leaving their other brother very confused, blinking at the table.
"Why don't you want him to know?"
"I don't want to be fighting with him for the next however many days or months because we both like the same girl!"
"Well you just –" Alexander traced his brother's line of sight, cutting off his sentence.
Adelbert stared with disbelief at the sidewalk in front of their house. Kuja's war had yet to come to the mist continent, but apparently, his older brother was making sure he was ready for anything that came at him.
There on the ground was a huge leather sheath, and when he hurriedly picked it up, and pulled on the handle, the nicest looking blade he'd ever seen in his life revealed itself. The broadsword was sturdy. Those kinds of metals were precious and expensive in Alexandria these days with all the knights being trained.
Yet here he was, forgetting about the excitement he had had when the Captain of the Pluto knights handed him his first whimsical short sword, and swimming in the delight of his eighteenth birthday gift.
"Do you like it?"
"I love it!" He whipped around, hugging his brother quickly, "I love it, thank you so much!"
He smiled and pulled back, "It was Dad's…"
His brother fell silent, the goofy grin falling off of his face. "D-dad's?"
Alexander nodded, pushing his blonde hair out of his eyes. He was the black sheep of the family, stunning stormy grey eyes, and shaggy blonde hair, compared to his father and two brothers' dark eyes and even darker hair.
"And you're giving this to me?" He gasped. "Why?! Why not for yourself?!"
He smirked, "I've been a knight for a little while now, and though I may not be the best or the smartest… I definitely know that I have more access to a sturdy sword than you… Besides, I think Dad would be proud of you. I'm just any old part of a regiment, but your talent and speed… It's going to have you at top ranking in the Pluto Knights soon… Because you know… Dad was a Pluto Knight…"
"He was?!" The raven haired teen's eyes almost fell out of his head. "I didn't know that!"
Alexander nodded, "He used to tell me stories all the time about it… They really are a respectable little regiment… I would be proud to be there…" He nodded and ruffled the boy's hair, "Let's get back inside… Just this once, I'll give you bragging rights to Nathan – but don't tell him its Dad's okay? I think he might get mad."
Adelbert nodded dutifully, "Yes sir!"
"Guys!" Dagger's shocked voice brought Steiner out of his thoughts, as he glanced at her. All the blood must have been flowing to his head from standing upside down too much.
Her hair hung down irritatingly in front of her face, and her cheeks were abnormally red. But her hand leaned on the crystal window, also upside down, in front of her. Instead of the top, the bottom peaked into a point, and the scene on the stained glass was the wrong way.
"I think this is the end of the castle…"
Steiner narrowed his eyes, walking closer to it. His eyes inspected it, and he shrugged. "It looks like it to me… But I can't see the other –" he touched it, and suddenly it rippled. Everyone leapt back with a shout… windows shouldn't do that.
"What the hell?!" Marcus touched it again, and the same thing happened.
"I have a bad feeling…" Freya said, glancing about.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, creatures of all kinds began crawling out of crevices and upside down windows and archways around the room.
"We're going to fight upside down?" Dagger's confidence was wavering with her ability to see straight. They'd been walking upside down for a good twenty minutes.
"Makes it interesting!" Zidane laughed, leaping forward and kicking one of the creatures square in the head.
It hissed and fell back, before springing again.
"What the hell is that thing?!" Blank demanded, before spinning on request of Dagger's scream, watching as a large eyeball monster leapt down at him.
Steiner continually sliced all enemies that came at him, watching his step so he could protect Dagger incase she needed to cast any spells. But the more he sliced them, the easier they bounced back.
The thing Zidane was currently trying to beat down flipped open the book in its hand, and started mumbling a bunch of words. The blonde was unsure how to stop him, but didn't really have enough time to react anyways. A bright light illuminated out of it, and gargoyles hanging on the walls for protection, suddenly came to life, flying at them.
One of those stone statues was behind Dagger, and bravely, she slammed her staff into it. She half expected the wooden rod to break in two, but instead the stone gargoyle screeched hideously, before cracking and crumbling into pieces.
"What's big is small… What's strong is weak…" She gasped, catching on before everyone else. "Your weapons! Don't use your weapons!"
"What?!" Blank spluttered, sliding under the creature still coming after him at full force. He ran into Zidane's back, Genome flipped over them, swiftly switching attackers.
"I don't think –"
"Do it!" She commanded, throwing her staff to the ground. The others weren't as sure, but as a tonberry slipped through the wall, ready to knife the girl, she ducked underneath his poisonous blade, and flipped backwards, kicking him in the process.
He screeched and melted back into the wall, not returning to attack again.
"What's strong is weak!" She repeated, "Your weapons are too powerful to kill these creatures!"
Still, Steiner and Beatrix didn't seem convinced, but threw their swords down anyways. Steiner's metal gloves smashed into the gargoyles coming his way, and a grin overtook his face. "You've got it right, Dagger!" He praised.
Marcus flipped over the cerberus that just leapt from the wall, both mouths barking viciously. He grabbed onto the collar around his neck, and rode with it for a little bit, steering him into the other creatures.
Both mouths began devouring other creatures, before bucking the Tantalus thief off of him.
"Ahh!" Marcus tried to warn Blank before he tumbled into him, but the two went spiraling towards the edge of the walk way.
Zidane whipped around, hearing their grunts and calls, and both of them went rolling off the edge, falling up. He raced towards them, staring at what appeared to be down, when in reality it was up.
"Little help?" Blank asked with a cheeky smile.
The blonde got down on his hands and knees to help, yanking up the short redhead who had Marcus clinging to his waist.
"Zidane!" Dagger yelled, sliding under a gargoyle's pounce. "Look out!"
He turned his head just in time to see a veteran – one of the eyeball bats that had attacked Blank – his one eyed glare evil, as his claws caught the blonde's shoulders and yanked him off of the walk way.
"Ahh!" He yelled, being flipped right side up, but now upside down from the rest of his group. He scrambled for an edge, but the creature wisely kept him away from any stone.
"Oh shit!" Marcus yelled, when a gargoyle latched onto his leg. He sunk his stone teeth into the thief's foot, sending him scrambling. Blank's hands lost more ground inch by inch.
"Marcus!" He howled.
The thief heard the damn gargoyle grinding away through his leg, and the thought made him sick to his stomach. Finally, in a brave act, he let go of Blank's wrist, and felt himself falling the opposite direction.
"Marcus!" Blank called again, wondering if he should jump after him.
Said guy was busy punching the gargoyle's head, still latched onto his leg. He felt the warm liquid drip down his leg, but all the blood in his head was making him dizzy. His knuckles throbbed. He was either going to smack into the ceiling (or floor?), dying with this thing, or he was going to latch onto a balcony and lose his leg.
Suddenly, a weapon came shooting through the air, slicing right into the gargoyle's stone skull, and slowly, the pieces started to crumble away. The thief snatched up the claws that had been thrown his way, and scampered for some sort of a ledge. "Nice!" He cheered when he saw it was Amarant's weapon in his hand.
Freya found herself trying to do any sort of low level magic on all the gargoyles flooding the area. Her eyes were wide, and she was tired, her mana draining quickly. It seemed to be working, but more and more continually took each of the monsters' place moments after it was killed.
"Go for the ones with the books first!" Steiner adviced her, punching one down. It crumpled and cried beneath him, before wisping away.
Beatrix focused her energies and shot her weakest lightning spells at the enemies with the books cradled in their arms. They cried out just as all the others, before dissolving into the air. It wasn't the best attack, due to the drain on her energy, and the fact that even the lowest power spell she had was still pretty damn good, but it hit multiple targets at once, and she was tired of jumping around without a sword.
"Zidane!" Dagger cried, watching in disbelief in between her own small battles. She had the best weapon for the job, and she used it to her advantage.
The poor blonde was being dragged around, airborne, by the veteran who hoped to find an acceptable height to drop him from.
She focused her energy, and shot a spell at Zidane, the magenta hue exploding from her hands. Her face light up with the strange light as she focused on Zidane. His body suddenly shrunk within itself, and though sort of painful, he was free from the damn bat's grasp.
He began to free fall in the air, screaming in a high-pitched voice. His arms waved and his legs kicked like he was trying to swim, before Dagger jumped, and caught him in her hand.
It was weird, having her hand curled protectively around his whole body, and he decided he didn't like the strange feeling that came with it. "Change me back!" He yelled at the top of his lungs.
She could barely hear his request, but quickly did what he asked. She'd had the spell on her before, and she hated it, but that was the only way she could think to get him out.
"We're almost done! Three more!" Beatrix yelled to them, as the Bermecian tried pulling Blank up from the ledge where he was still dangling miserably.
"Did I miss all the fun?" He asked, but sounded more relieved than anything else.
Amarant's fist connected with the last of the enemies just moments later, and needless to say, they were all exhausted. As the six of them rested, the raven cast a cure spell on Marcus, who watched his own leg patch itself up. His pants were all torn, and he grumbled, knowing it would be Cinna who gave him shit about it.
"We'll find you! You're by a balcony, right?" She called up to him.
He shook his head, "No, it's fine… I'll be down in a second!" He crawled into the doorway, disappearing for only a minute, before reappearing down the path a little ways.
"Let's find somewhere right side up for a little while, huh?" Zidane groaned, clutching his head.
"You look a little pale…" Blank poked at him, but the blonde swatted his hand away.
"I really, really hate that mini spell, Dagger," The blonde told her, but she shrugged with an innocent smile.
"I was saving your butt…"
"Ugh…"
"Come on… Let's go to Marcus and find a different path!" Amarant told them, hopping up. He was irritated with how slow moving this was going, but even more frustrated that the way was so confusing… because there was nothing any of them could do about it.
"What about that weird window?" Dagger asked, wiping the stone dust from her yellow pants.
"If it's going to produce more things for us to fight upside down, I'd rather just leave it alone…" She ignored Blank's wisdom and ventured to the wall.
"Don't touch it, Dagger!" Freya warned her, readying her weapon though the back of her mind tried to remind her it wouldn't be any good… She felt naked fighting with no spear to protect her.
She peered into it, and saw something very strange. While a regular window would reflect back at her, she saw nothing but a brightly lit path. Instead of listening to the Bermecian, she gingerly put her hand up to it. Touching it softly this time, and giving a little push, the group watched in stunned amazement as her hand went through.
"What the fu-" She pushed through the entire window, vanishing, before Blank finished his exclaimed curse.
A/N: Okay, I'm going to admit… Ipsen's castle is a LOT harder to write than I originally thought, so I'm sorry if it seems rushed or a little lame… Try and bear with me through this part… It's kind of obnoxious to write!
Those lame creatures I did not make up either, by the way. They are the actual monsters chilling in Ipsen's Castle in FF9 :)
I hope you enjoyed that chapter though!
-zesty-
