Part One: The Rulers and the Ruled
Chapter 1: The Death of Heroes
The 50 Years' War devastated Ivalice and the surrounding nations. Constant warfare of this scale would have strained each country on its own, but a nation at war is not a nation in stasis. Every corner of Ivalice trembled from the effort, as barons and counts and dukes and kings were forced to make promises they could not keep in order to get troops and funds and supplies. Plague and disease killed commoners and kings alike. Ivalice should, by all rights, have lost this war. That fair peace terms were signed is often credited to the fearsome reputation of a single man: the Heavenly Knight, Balbanes Beoulve.
-Alazlam Durai, "Larger Consequences of the 50 Years' War"
Not so soon.
It couldn't happen so soon. It couldn't. The Choking Plague was deadly, but it was at the very least a known quantity. The healers knew how it progressed, they knew how to treat it, and the Beoulves could afford healers of royal caliber. So why, why, why...?
It couldn't happen to his father. It simply couldn't.
Ramza Beoulve rushed up the stairs, his blonde hair damp with sweat, his green eyes wide and frenzied, perfect mirror of his whirling thoughts. Delita was a step behind, taciturn as he had been since plague had taken his own parents. In spite of his silence, Ramza felt the faintest comfort from his presence. Delita would not offer him any words of support, but no one else could grasp how Ramza was feeling at this moment.
His feet made almost no noise upon the lush carpet, as he rushed past closed doors to his father's bedroom at the far wing of the manor. The door was open just a crack, and he could hear voices within.
"Father!" Ramza cried, shoving the door open.
His father was not alone. Dycedarg, Alma, and a Church Healer were with him. The Healer had a shepherd's crook out, pulsing with a faint light that crawled between subtle runes etched into the wood. His father, skin ashen with illness and silver hair limp with sweat, turned in his bed to face him. He started to smile, then trailed off in a fit of coughing.
"You forget yourself, Ramza!" barked Dycedarg, and Ramza fell back, his face flushing with shame. Dycedarg's dark eyes glared at Ramza out of the confines of his narrow face. His dark blonde hair, usually coiffed expertly, was rigid with grease. He placed a tin cup against Balbanes' lips. Balbanes sipped, then winced, trailing off into coughing once again. His father breathed in a rattling wheeze.
"Why isn't this working!" hissed Dycedarg, glaring at the Healer in his robes of red and white.
The Healer shook his head. "The Ydoran records tell us that the Coughing Plague was not easily healed even in their age," he said. "We have done all we can."
"That can't be true!" shouted Alma, huddled at the foot of the bed, clutching at her father's hand. Her hair, as bright gold as Ramza's, was as wild as her green eyes.
"It can," the Healer said. "It is."
"Then leave us," Dycedarg said.
The Healer inclined his head and left the room. Dycedarg turned his attention back to his father. "Can I get you something for the pain?" he asked.
"N..." started Balbanes, and trailed off in another fit of awful coughing.
"Alright," Dycedarg said. "Alright." He looked back towards Ramza and gestured for him to come closer. Ramza approached tentatively, feeling as clumsy and graceless as he always did besides Dycedarg's effortless ease and authority.
"I'm sorry," Ramza said, looking between Dycedarg and Balbanes.
"I know," Dycedarg said. "Me too."
Ramza reached out and took his father's hand. The three of them sat together, clutching at the father they loved, in a room silent save for the rattling breaths of his slow dying.
Ramza looked to the door, unsure what else to do, how else to act. Delita stood there, dark red hair straight and kept cut in a squire's bowl, his simple clothes still faintly dirty with cleaning grease. He did not look at anyone in the room. After a moment, Ramza saw Teta enter behind him, and put her hand on his shoulder. Her hair was the same dark red as her brother's, but where Delita's eyes were so dark as to be almost black hers were a most striking shade of blue. Delita reached up and rested his hand on hers.
Plague had taken so much from them: Delita's parents, Dycedarg and Zalbaag's mother, Ramza and Alma's. Now it would take Balbanes, too.
Thunderous steps sounded from the hallway. Delita and Teta turned and parted ways as Zalbaag swept into the room. In sharp contrast to everyone else, Zalbaag looked regal. His black armor gleamed in the lights from the walls, and his dark blonde hair and tight, jaw-hugging beard were trim. He flung off his blue cloak and it fluttered to the ground. There, the crest of House Beoulve: the White Lion, with the intercrossed swords before it.
"Move," Zalbaag shouted, shouldering Ramza aside and kneeling besides his father. Ramza stumbled, came to stop at his father's feet so the whole tableau was laid out before him.
"Wh..." Balbanes started, and trailed off in a rattling breath. He turned his head towards Zalbaag, and his eyes opened, and suddenly his father was not a weak dying man, suddenly he was Balbanes Beoulve, the Heavenly Knight. "What news," he said, in a whisper that carried sudden strength. "Of the war?"
"The Coprse Brigade arrived in time," Zalbaag said. "With their reinforcements, the Marquis punched a hole in the Ordallian lines. We have retaken Limberry."
"And Zeltennia?" whispered Balbanes.
"Cid led a joint force of Hokuten and Nanten," Zalbaag said. "The Ordallians could not break the walls."
"Ha!" gasped Balbanes. "They dreamed of beating the Thunder God!"
"We have just had word from Ambassador Lennario," Zalbaag continued. "The Ordallians have agreed to your terms."
A graceful smile lightened Balbanes' face. "Ah, thank you, God!" he breathed. "This war dies with m-" he broke off in a fit of terrible coughing, and suddenly the illusion of strength was gone, and he was just an old man dying in his room.
"Father," Zalbaag whispered, clinging to Balbanes' hand. Ramza had never seen that look of weakness in his brother's eyes.
Alma cried harder, and Balbanes gently tugged his hand out of her grip and cupped her chin. "No tears. Send me off...with a smile?"
Alma tried, her thin pale lips twitching, but it only seemed to make her cry harder.
"Ah, my dear Alma," Balbanes sighed "You are...the image...of your mother. You care...too much. The world...will not...be easy." He took a moment to catch his breath. "But you...are stronger even...than your brothers. You will-" He descended into a fit of rattling coughs, and he pulled his hand away from Alma to cover his mouth. Alma fell away, crying, and Ramza wrapped a protective arm around her, feeling the warmth of his sister, feeling his own weakness and insufficiency before her tears.
"T-time," Balbanes coughed. "T-time...at last." Balbanes gestured vaguely to the side of the bed. Puzzled, Zalbaag dropped down to the floor, and gasped. His trembling hands pulled out two sheathed swords: one a broad bastard sword, one a shorter one-handed blade. He looked between his siblings, his eyes wide. He placed the blades at his father's side.
Balbanes took a steadying breath and looked up at Dycedarg. "To you, my son," he said. "I give the sword Service. Remember that we Beoulves are born to serve the good of all Ivalice. To protect our King. To protect..." He stopped, drawing several rattling breaths. "To protect all the weak of Ivalice. To fight for their sake, never for our own."
"Yes, father," Dycedarg said. He reached down and took the smaller sword. He drew it from its sheathe, studied the shining silver blade, glowing faintly from the runes that ran across the pommel and all the way up to its sharp point.
"And to you, Zalbaag," Balbanes continued. "I give the sword Justice. Remember always that Justice cares naught for class, or birth, or power. The just must always hold the guilty accountable for their misdeeds, from the lowest commoner...to the highest..." He closed his eyes, his breath rasping on his throat and in his lips. Without justice...there can be...no Ivalice."
"Yes, father," Zalbaag said, taking the bastard sword from his side, his hands still trembling.
From the foot of the bed, Ramza watched his elder brothers carrying the legacy of their house, and felt a peculiar sense of relief. He envied them, yes—envied them as always, so proud, so confident, so comfortable with the mantle of their father's name. But now they bore an even heavier weight, and Ramza was glad he did not have to.
"Remember...also," Balbanes said, moving his hands so one rested atop Zalbaag's hand and the other took Dycedarg's wrist. "Remember that I l...love you both." He seemed to be choking on this last, but managed to force the words out. "But I love them, too." He turned his smiling face towards Ramza and Alma. "My blood...courses through...all of you. Love...each other. L...look out for..."
His eyes closed, and his breathing softened, though it still rattled faintly in his throat.
"Of course," Zalbaag said. He rose from his father's side, crossed towards Ramza and Alma, and embraced them both. "I am sorry," he whispered into Ramza's ear.
"Nothing to be sorry for," Ramza replied, wrapping his other arm around his brother.
"Where is...Delita?" Balbanes whispered.
"Here, my Lord," Delita said, stepping in from the hall. Teta hesitated behind him.
Balbanes chuckled, though it turned into a rasping struggle. His face reddened, his eyes hardened into a glare. "There!" he gasped. "Not...yet!"
"Father!" Dycedarg said, offering him the cup again, but Balbanes waved it away impatiently.
"Come!" Balbanes said, his voice ragged but firm. Delita hesitated, then approached with Teta tentative behind them.
"S-s-sergeant Roger," wheezed Balbanes. "You h-have been...training with him?"
Delita shook his head. "I just...I want to learn how to help you," he said, his voice shaky. He looked around the room. "To help the Beoulves."
"We would be...so lucky," Balbanes said, smiling. "He s-says you are...gifted."
Delita shook his head again. "I'm not," he said.
"I h-hope you are being m-modest," Balbanes replied. "I...have arranged..." He closed his eyes, struggled for breath. "You will join Ramza...in Gariland."
Ramza rose at once. Delita took a step back in surprise, and Dycedarg and Zalbaag gasped.
"You're serious?" Dycedarg said.
Balbanes managed to chuckle. "The headmaster...you should have seen his..." He struggled for breath, his eyes bulging slightly in his head. He grabbed for Delita's hand, and looked fiercely into his eyes. "You are...capable," he said. "Y-you can...s-serve Ivalice. You and T-teta both." He pried his hand from Delita and reached for Teta. "Y-you may j-j-j-" he broke off in another bleak fit of weak coughs. "Alma," he said. "If you w-will."
Teta managed a clumsy curtsy. "Of course, my lord."
"Good. Good."
Balbanes eyes closed again, Delita looked around the room, clearly lost. Dycedarg set his cup down and extended a hand to Delita. "I look forward to seeing what you can accomplish," Dycedarg said.
Delita looked at the hand and at once fell to one knee. "My lord-" he started.
"Oh, rise!" Dycedarg exclaimed, hauling Delita upright. "We may have to stand on ceremony out there, but not in here."
He offered his hand again. Delita took it gratefully.
Teta crossed over to them, hugging Zalbaag and then wrapping an arm around Alma.
"Ramza...?" Balbane's voice was a whisper.
"Father," Ramza said, rising from where his place with Alma and Zalbaag and moving to his father's side. Delita clasped his shoulder, and Ramza nodded at him. His head was still whirling and wild, barely able to make sense of all he was seeing. All his father's preparations to...
To die.
He took his father's hand, and stared into his face. Balbanes' eyes were still closed.
"I'm here, father," he said.
There was a long silence. Just rattling breaths. Dycedarg sighed, moved to the corner of the room, and refilled the cup from a glass bottle.
"Ramza...?" Balbanes said again, his eyes opening into slits.
Ramza tightened his grip on his father's hand.
"Our swords," Balbanes said. "Are Justice and Service. Ever have we seen...that Ivalice..." He trailed off, his eyes closing again. Ramza felt his jaw clench. How could his father be made to seem so weak? So frail?
"From the lowest beggar," whispered Balbanes. "To the highest king. We serve all. We serve the mercy. We serve...with honor. With...justice."
His grip tightened on Ramza's hand. "Your brothers...hold the swords. But remem...member. What they mean. You...show them. What it means...to be a Beoulve."
Ramza clutched his father's hand as tightly as he could. Slowly, the others returned. Dycedarg put the cup to his father's lips, and Balbanes drank of it gratefully. Alma strokes Balbanes' brow, and Zalbaag moved to the opposite side of the bed. They listened in silence to Balbanes' rattling breaths.
They listened in silence until Balbanes Beoulve, the finest knight beneath Heaven, breathed no more.