Chapter 14: The Manor Besieged
"I mean, it's not like I mind getting away from the Academy," huffed Alma, glaring out her window. "But why do I have to be locked up in here?"
"It's not safe," Teta said. Personally, she was relieved. She liked the Beoulve Manor. She liked being Alma's lady-in-waiting. It wasn't difficult, since Alma was so restless that she pushed aside all Teta's attempts to help her.
"I know it's not safe!" Alma shouted. "It's not safe for anyone! So why..." She trailed off and folded her arms across her chest.
Teta said nothing. She knew better. Alma had been fixated on her exclusion from military training ever since Ramza had begun his. Perhaps it was an even older obsession. Perhaps she'd been obsessed since her father had died, and she and her brother had been ordained a full-fledged Beoulves. She flung herself into their magic classes at the Preparatory Academy, but those were designed to protect the women from kidnapping and assassination, not to make them useful. Or at least, so Teta gathered: generous as the Beoulves were, they would not buy Teta any Ydoran jewelry to amplify her magic. Who would ever want to assassinate her, anyways?
Maybe that was why she liked the Manor. No expectations. No responsibilities. No need to teeter on that line between civility and submissiveness so the other women of the Academy would not look at her as either threat or easy prey.
She looked out the window, smiling a little. The barbs and jibes of spoiled noblewomen were little concern to her. Her brother was somewhere out there with a sword in hand and enemies trying to kill him. He'd already shown himself so strong. What did words matter, while Delita dodged swords?
"They'll be alright," Teta said.
"They'd be more alright if we were there," Alma said.
Was that true? And even if it was, was it worth killing anyone? Teta didn't think so. Teta had yet to hear a single compelling argument for why this stupid war had to be fought in the first place, though she was careful never to say so. No one, at the Academy or in this manse, would take kindly to a commoner questioning their fight against the Corps. She'd spent a lot of her life keeping her thoughts to herself, even from Alma. Alma would never betray her, Alma would never judge her, but Alma might repeat the things Teta had said, confident that she could convince anyone to listen. But good intentions could hurt you just as easily as bad ones. It was safer this way.
People lost enough to the accidents of life—to cart crashes and to plagues. Why add human malice to the list? Why not leave well enough alone?
Staring out the window and thinking of her brother. Thinking of her parents. Thinking of the Academy, and nasty whispers, and bloody swords. Thinking of...
She squinted. There was someone moving in the distance. Not on the roads, but on the rolling hills that led up to the Beoulve Manor. That was unusual: most official delegations took the road.
"Alma?" Teta said. "Do you see that?"
"See what?" Alma asked, peering over her shoulder. "Who are they?"
"I don't know," Teta said, but she felt a creeping sense of something, like the tingling on your skin just before a storm. There was something off about those men, something she couldn't quite place, something in the scraps of dark green cloth they wore, or-
Dark green. No one wore dark green but the Corps.
"Alma!" Teta shouted. "Lock the door!"
"What?" Alma asked, but there was no time to explain, and she was not going to allow her best friend to die like her parents had died. Teta rushed from the room, pounded down the stairs, and pushed her way past the surprised guard standing outside of Dycedarg's door.
"Teta?" he said, looking up in surprise from a map of Gallione splayed across his desk. "What are you-"
"It's the Corps," she said. "They're coming by the southern wall."
"That's not possible," Dycedarg said, though he grabbed at Service.
"I saw them, Dyce," she said, momentarily careless of propriety or civility. "Dark green cloth."
"Corps members wearing their colors?" he said. "That's not-"
There were shouts of alarm from outside, and the ringing clash of sword against sword. A moment later, a bloodcurdling shriek sent frost coursing through Teta's veins.
"Damn!" Dycedarg roared, drawing the gleaming blade from its sheathe. He threw open the door and gestured to the knight outside.
"Alma?" Dycedarg asked.
"I told her to lock the door," Teta said.
"And what do you think are the chances she actually did?" Dycedarg asked.
"50/50," Teta said.
"Wow, she likes you," Dycedarg said. "I can't order her to do anything."
"You brought her back from the Academy."
"She wanted to leave the Academy."
She had never spoken with Dycedarg like this before. Ramza, of course: Zalbaag, occasionally: but Dycedarg? Never. Why now? Why, when blades clashed and someone screamed their death-scream? Why didn't this feel real, even as fear chilled her to the bone?
They raced up the stairs to Alma's room. Alma was standing in the doorway, looking both ways down the hall.
"50/50," mumbled Teta.
"Well, you tried," Dycedarg said. He grabbed his sister by the shoulder. "We need to get out of here."
"What's happening?" Alma demanded.
There was the clomping of feet upon the stairs at the other end of the hallway. Dycedarg hissed and gestured with his sword as though it were a conductor's baton. The runes on the sword darkened, and with another quick gesture Dycedarg flung a cloud of inky down the hall. It exploded into a jet-black fog by the opposite stairwell. She heard shouts of panic and alarm, and the repeated thumping and cursing of a man falling down the stairs.
"Other way," Dycedarg said, pulling Alma back the way they'd come. Teta kept close, throwing one glance over her shoulder to look for any sign of movement from the black cloud. The Hokuten guard led the way, sword drawn.
There was a flash of sunlight on steel, and a spray of blood against the wall. The knight tumbled down the stairs.
"Damn!" roared Dycedarg, jabbing with his sword's bright blade, and an arrow of crackling blue burst from the swordpoint and exploded into the wall, so chunks of masonry hammered into the man in ragged leather standing over the dead knight. Dycedarg plunged forwards again, burying his sword in the man's chest. The man gasped and sank to the wall.
Alma was already kneeling by the fallen knight's side. Dycedarg grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her to her feet. "Dyce!" she protested.
"There's no time!" Dycedarg roared, giving her a single withering look. He wasn't looking at the blonde, pale man charging towards him from down the hall, leading a small pack of soldiers, all with weapons drawn.
"Dyce!" Teta shouted in warning. Dycedarg turned, too late: the sword slashed, and Dycedarg collapsed backwards, clutching at a bloody wound across his chest. Teta felt that sickening disjointed feeling, the lurching unreality of a nightmare. This couldn't be happening.
"No!" Alma bellowed, lifting her hands, and a shimmering white light flowed out from her palms and formed a translucent opal-colored barrier between them and the man with the dark green cloak. The pale man cursed and started running back down the hall, leaving a single guard on the other side of the transparent light, glaring at them.
"Dyce!" Alma cried, falling to his side. Dycedarg had a gloved hand on his chest, shimmering with faint radiance: Alma put her hands over the wound, and added her light to his. The hot salty tang of blood filled the air, and bile trickled up Teta's throat.
"Run," whispered Dycedarg.
"No!" Alma said fiercely.
"Where?" Teta asked.
Whatever he might have said was drowned out by a shout of triumph from above them. Teta and Alma looked up to find soldiers with swords and spears standing at the top of the staircase, staring down at them. Teta's heart spasmed in her chest, and she jerked away from Dycedarg and Alma, her back against the liquid pressure of Alma's barrier.
"Noble bastards," whispered the man. "Noble bitches, too. What are ya good for?"
This couldn't be happening, could it? This couldn't be real. Dycedarg with blood on his chest, armed soldiers coming towards them with hate in their eyes.
Her imagination had shut down. Everything had shut down. She was frozen in shock, blank and afraid. All at once, everything was so terribly real.
And thunder sounded from above, as though a lightning bolt had struck just in front of her. White fire exploded outwards, the soldiers crumpled and screamed. She caught a glimpse of a figure in the thick of that heat—Zalbaag in his sable armor, a gleaming bastard sword in his hand, the broken bodies of the dead scattered all around him.
The pressure at Teta's back gave way. Teta fell, and was wrenched upright by powerful arms around her chest and throat, so she choked and gasped and could not breathe.
"Zal!" Alma shrieked, as the hard-eyed soldier from the other side of the barrier grabbed her and pulled her away. She struggled in his grasp, until he struck her across the face and pulled her slumped body over his shoulders.
"Let's go!" shouted the man holding Teta, heaving her over his shoulder as though she were a sack of grain. Why wasn't she fighting? Shouldn't she be fighting, like Alma? She'd been moving so quickly, why had she-
I didn't believe it I didn't believe it just doing what I was supposed to it's not real it's not real
The soldier carrying Alma gave a strangled cry and threw her to the ground, kicking her in the stomach. Her mouth was covered in blood, and so was the neck of the man who'd been carrying her.
"GET UP!" howled the man holding Teta, and the bleeding soldier grabbed Alma and moved forward again, one hand firmly around her neck. She choked and wheezed and would not stop fighting. But Teta did not want to be kicked, or punched, or hurt. Why were they doing this? Why would anyone do this?
Doors burst open, and a painfully clear sky glowed blue above her, as a delicate breeze tugged at her hair. How could it be so lovely, when there was such fear in horror in her? How, when-
"Alma!" roared Zalbaag, and the man holding her collapsed, his severed head rolling from his shoulders as blood dripped down the stump of his neck, and he was so close Teta could have reached out and touched his outstretched hand but then there was the scratching of taloned feet in the dust and a pack of mounted chocobos charged by. Teta lost sight of Alma and Zalbaag, and then with a lurching start she was thrown onto the back of a bird and the Manor was already shrinking away into the distance.
"Teta!" screamed Alma, face still slick with blood. She moved forwards, but Zalbaag grabbed her by the shoulder. He was right, of course he was right, neither of them could catch up to a chocobo at a full sprint, but Teta could jump off, it wouldn't even hurt, she'd done it before for fun, and she gathered her nerve and-
And felt a sharp needle-prick against her back.
"Move and you die," whispered a terrible voice, and Teta closed her eyes and felt the nightmare weight settle in over her.