[thanks for reading, everybody! And remember, you can find more of my stuff at quickascanbe dot com]

Chapter 23: Nightmare

...the historian always faces the same dilemma: what is history? It is undeniably a record of events, but which events, and how to record them? Even if we accept that all change is the providence of great, invisible forces, these forces act on men, and men react to them. It is a story: a tale of actors on a stage, performing for an audience, supported by many invisible hands, by long chains of events we can never fully grasp that led them to that moment, that action. Perhaps the historian's task is simply to make their best guess as to how that stage was set: to record the event, while recognizing the human and inhuman forces that led the actor thus.

-Alazlam Durai, "Letter to an Adjunct Professor at the College of Dorter"

This had to be a dream.

The feeling was familiar. We've all had dreams like that, right? The monster is closing in from behind, and you can't run fast enough to get away: you've slipped and fallen from your place atop the island in the sky, and now you plummet towards the ground with no hope of salvation from an airship of the long-ago. Death is closing in on you, horror and tragedy beyond what you've imagined, and in that moment of lurching, terrible fear you spasm into gasping, frightened consciousness, with your nightmares draining away into the night.

This had to be a nightmare, too. Watching the arrow fly, as Zalbaag's order echoed across the snow. Watching it strike Teta, so she slumped in her captor's arms. Watching the captor gasp and stagger backwards, and Teta falling from the wooden bridge and tumbling down, down, down...

Delita caught her. How had Delita caught her? He'd been standing right by Ramza's side just moments ago, but there he was, his sister in his arms, his teary eyes raised to Ramza's.

"Ramza!" he cried, and Ramza was jerked from his vertigo unreality, staggering towards Delita, and with every step and every bitter, moaning gust he felt the reality sink in a little more, because no nightmare had ever felt this clear or real. From the corner of his eye, he saw Argus loose another arrow: saw Teta's former captor stumble backwards with an arrow in his chest.

"Bastards!" shrieked the man who'd taken Teta. "You miserable-"

Another arrow in his chest. The man squealed, and crawled backwards, into the shadow of the door.

"Help!" Delita cried, as Ramza pressed his hands into the bloody wound, stared into Teta's pale face and glassy eyes, listened to her labored breathing-

Listened as she breathed no more.

The wind kept moaning. The snow kept falling. There were voices Ramza could almost hear, almost understand ("Reggie, get the rest of the troops in here. Lars, hold that door."). Teta's blood was on Ramza's hands. Teta, who he'd known for so long, his first shy kiss in the old estate outside of Lesalia under the heady influence of old wine. Teta, of the sound advice and the quiet strength and...and...

And she was dead.

"Teta," Delita whispered. "Teta, please..."

Delita pulled her closer. Ramza stared at her corpse as her blood dripped onto Delita's armor.

Delita set her gently down into the snow. He brushed an errant curl of hair from where it was plastered with blood against her forehead. He rose to his feet, and began to walk—towards that little rise that separated them from Zalbaag and Argus.

"Delita," Ramza mumbled, rising to his feet but unable to tear his eyes away Teta's dead face.

"Stand down, cadet!" barked Zalbaag.

The words jerked Ramza away from Teta, sent him stumbling after Delita, crunching his way through the snow. Zalbaag had descended a set of jagged steps near them, his bastard sword in hand. Delita kept moving, his own sword drawn. The sword Zalbaag had commissioned for him. It's twin was in Ramza's hand. When had Ramza drawn it?

"That's an order, cadet," Zalbaag growled, his face pale, and he raised Justice defensively. Justice, ha. What Justice would have needed Teta's death?

"Delita-" Ramza starting, not sure what he intended to say, and Delita whirled on him with his blade drawn, his face contorted in rage and grief with his eyes two livid flames in his tear-strewn face as the snow kept sighing down around them and Teta's corpse steamed beneath the bridge where she had fallen and the sword in Delita's hands was pointed towards Ramza.

"A mad dog," Argus grunted, and Delita whirled away and there was Argus on the lip of that higher ground, an arrow nocked to his bow, the arrow trained on Delita.

"There's no need for that," Zalbaag said, his voice shaking.

"How could you?" Ramza asked, staring between Argus and Zalbaag.

"She should never have been here," Argus snapped.

"So you killed her?" demanded Ramza.

"We're not negotiating with the men who cut down our brother," Zalbaag said, his eyes wide and bright and strange. "With the men who tried to take our sister. Or-"

"She was my sister," Delita whispered.

Delita was facing Zalbaag, His swordpoint had drooped to the ground. He seemed like he might collapse at any moment.

"She was my sister," Delita repeated. "And you...why?"

"Because we do not sell out the honor of the Hokuten for a common girl," Argus said.

"MY SISTER!" howled Delita, turning towards Argus with the blade lifted, and Argus pulled back his bowstring with his arrow trained on Delita and-

"Stand down, both of you!" Zalbaag said. "It was my order."

"Why!" shouted Ramza

"This is war!" Zalbaag shouted back. "People die!"

"You ordered-" Ramza started.

"You killed her!" Delita shrieked.

"I'd do it again," Argus said. "With or without the order."

They were interrupted by a thunderous explosion and distant shouts of alarm. Ramza's head jerked towards the sound of the blast, and saw smoke rising in the distance. The shouts were getting closer.

"Delita!" cried Zalbaag, and Ramza's head jerked away in time to see Delita hurtling towards Argus, and Argus loosed his arrow and Delita cut it from the air without missing a step, so the broken haft slid through the snow in front of Ramza, and in one bounding motion Delita had clambered up the stone wall that separated their dry moat from the higher ground where Argus stood and Argus was running and Delita was chasing him.

Zalbaag moved to follow. Ramza stepped in front of him.

"Out of my way," Zalbaag ordered.

"You killed her," Ramza said.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," Zalbaag said. He tried to move past Ramza, and Ramza stepped in front of him again.

"He cannot kill the Limberry Liason," Zalbaag said.

"Argus deserves to die," Ramza replied.

"Move!" bellowed Zalbaag.

"Or what?" Ramza asked.

Zalbaag half-raised his sword. Ramza started to raise his own.

"Commander!" came a distant shout. "Commander, the Corps-GAAAAAIE!"

"Keep them out of Zeakden!" roared the resounding baritone of Wiegraf Folles.

Ramza and Zalbaag snapped away from each other and raced up the steps, almost in sync. When they reached the higher ground above the dry moat that surrounded the fort, they found Wiegraf waiting for them, a knight's corpse steaming at his feet. The sounds of battle were very close now.

"You should be dead," Zalbaag said.

"I had a war to win," Wiegraf said. "I can't afford to die."

"Your rebellion ends here," Zalbaag said.

"Does it?" Wiegraf asked.

"Ramza, with me," Zalbaag said.

But Ramza was not looking at his brother. He was looking at the footprints in the snow. The footprints Argus and Delita had left behind them.

"Ramza!" Zalbaag shouted.

"Choose now, Beoulve," Wiegraf said.

Ramza didn't have to choose. He was already moving, away from Zalbaag and Wiegraf, through the falling snow, chasing his friends as they tried to kill each other.

"Ramza!" howled Zalbaag, moving to follow, and there was the resounding clash of clanging steel.

"Your fight is with me!" shouted Wiegraf, and bright light and cacophonous booming blasts rent the air and Ramza was running for all he was worth, trying to reach Delita before he lost another friend.