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Chapter 24: A World Gone Mad

"A sword again a bow, and you've the gall to think you can win!" called Argus, loosing another arrow. Delita rolled aside, and the arrow buried itself in the snow behind him. "Blood will tell! Common idiocy from a common man."

"I don't want your words!" Delita cried, plunging towards him, zigzagging with each step so it was damn near impossible to get a bead on him. "I want your blood!"

"As if I'd bare my throat to you, dog!" Argus shouted. He loosed another arrow, and ducked behind the corner of the fort.

No, Argus Thadolfas was not going to die today. Not when the glory and power that were his by right were finally within reach. The long, black road from oblivion was behind him: the last scion of House Thadolfas was the trusted right hand of the Marquis in a major military operation, and victory would see his grandfather's sins forgotten. Everything would be restored to its rightful place. The world would make sense again. No more Death Corps. No more Delitas.

It was rabies. That was obvious to any man of sense, wasn't it? How the infection had spread, slow and sure? The common man spat upon his God-ordained place and tried to break the divine order that protected kingdom, king, and commoner alike. They tore the world apart and then had the unmitigated gall to act offended when divine will turned against them. They barked and growled and snapped when their masters pulled tight upon their leashes, trying to rein them in.

Like Delita, now. Barking and praying, hounding him through the ruin of Zeakden. Argus loosed another arrow, and Delita snapped up a hunk of scrapwood so the arrow sank into his makeshift shield. He hurled this plank at Argus: it fell far short, but masked Delita in an explosion of snow, and Argus darted away again, stepping nimbly through the frost.

Of course, Delita was only a symptom of this problem. The dog didn't know better. It couldn't. A dog was always the reflection of the master. So what did such a dog as Delita say about Ramza Beoulve?

Ramza. A well-meaning idiot ill-deserving of his good fortune. A bastard Beoulve whose father had been kind enough to make him a full-fledged member of his proud house. And how magnificently he failed to live up to his responsibilities. Taking to the battlefield and refusing to kill the rebels who had tried to kill the Marquis. Promising them safety and security when they had tried to tear all Ivalice apart and remake it in their blasphemous image. And letting his dog act the part of a man. Letting him imagine himself the equal of the company he kept. He rubbed elbows with the Beoulves, he boasted as his comrades a Daravon and a Thadolfas, and did he act grateful? No. He acted entitled. He spoke down to Argus, Beowulf, and even Ramza. Allow a dog a seat at your table, and you have no one but yourself to blame when he eats your food.

Argus slipped onto a crumbling parapet, crouched slow against the snowy stone as Delita plunged around the corner. Argus loosed another arrow, but gave himself away in a shower of snow from his hiding place at the last moment. He cursed to himself as Delita whirled towards him: the arrow intended for his throat instead plunged into his shoulder, and Delita screamed with more rage than pain and sprinted towards him again, kicking up geysers of snow with every step. Argus leapt down, hugging the wall of the fort as he circled away from Delita.

The Thadolfas family had learned these lessons the hard way, hadn't they? When that common squire had cut his grandfather's throat, and been made a knight for it. What choice had they given that dog? Dishonor or death. What did you expect of a cornered dog, except to fight? Fool that his grandfather was, he'd forgotten that rule. Never give the dog a hope of fighting. Never give it reason to turn. He imagined his grandfather was someone like Ramza, ignorant of the dangers that surrounded him, of how easy it was to slip and fall.

Argus knew. Argus knew all too well. Knowing who he was, knowing the storied blood that coursed through his veins, and having to beg for so much as a role as the Marquis' squire. That was no place for a man of House Thadolfas, shouldering his way through commoners who looked at him as though he were beneath them.

Delita was the worst of all. The condescending tone he took, as though he understood Argus' struggles. The way he equated them. Argus still remembered Dorter: Delita had the unmitigated gall to forgive Argus for his anger, as though that were his place. And his reasoning? That Delita would have done the same, were it Ramza. That somehow he and Argus were equals. Equals. A nameless commoner and the son of House Thadolfas, equals, and what could Argus say when he needed what little grace Ramza could provide just to keep looking for the Marquis. So he'd had to bite his tongue and make nice, and the man could fight and he was smart enough but he had made the same mistake as his father, and as Ramza. Treat a dog like an equal, and it forgets its place

The world had stopped making sense, but it could still be fixed. Look around. The dogs were being put down. Argus was the Special Limberry Liason, trusted with the will of the Marquis. So close now, and he would do whatever he had to to keep climbing, just as he had by pretending Delita didn't sicken him.

Just as he had when he'd loosed his arrow into Teta's throat.

He regretted that. Why deny it? She was uncomfortably familiar with her betters, but that was not her fault when Ramza and Alma encouraged such appalling behavior, and she behaved with the grace and deference befitting her station. He had actually enjoyed her company, that raucous night in Igros those months (lifetimes!) ago. He wished she hadn't had to die.

But the mission of the Hokuten—this divine mission to civilize and bring order to the disparate, lawless rabble who refused to be grateful for all that was done for them—brooked no argument. Beside, it was the fruit of the master's idiocy again. If they had not allowed their dogs to forget their places, Teta would never have been here. There would have been no hostage.

He crouched low, and loosed another arrow as Delita rounded the corner. Delita hurled himself to one side, just too late: the arrow sank into his thigh, and Delita hit the snow in a spray of blood and cursing. He lunged to his feet, limped towards Argus, and Argus loosed three arrows in quick succession.

Delita cut the first from the air: the second found his sword arm. The third found his chest.

The sword dropped from Delita's numb fingers, as his steaming blood hissed down into the snow. Argus reached back for another arrow, and found his quiver empty. That just about figured, didn't it? Delita didn't even have the decency to die properly.

Argus drew the short sword from his side, and made his crunching way towards Delita. Delita, who acted like they were equals, who refused to understand his place in the world, who had tried to kill him just like that damn squire had killed his grandfather, one of those criminal madmen who would upturn the natural order for their bizarre, blasphemous purposes and see families like House Thadolfas laid low. He wondered what his grandfather's killer had looked like. Like Delita, he imagined. All that rage and self-righteous gall.

"Bastard," hissed Delita, trying and failing to rise from his kneeling position, as blood trickled down from his wounds. "You...fucking...monster...I'll...kill...!"

Argus laughed. "You'll kill me?" he repeated. "You can't stop me. You couldn't save her. You're sitting at the feet of the Beoulves, and you think that makes you one of them. You do what they allow. And that's why you're going to die here, just like your sister."

Argus raised his sword.

Thhkt.

What a curious sound. Like a sword slipping through flesh and fur. Why did Argus feel so much colder? Why...

He was face-up in the snow, and did not remember falling. Something ached, deep inside him. It was hard to breathe, and Ramza was standing above him with a bloody sword in his hand. Whose blood? Whose...

"N...no!" gasped Argus. "How...how!"

Argus tried to rise, and his back exploded in spasming pain. He fell back into the snow, gasping, staring at Ramza. No no no no no that wasn't right Ramza was a fool and a coward but he couldn't be such a monster he couldn't choose a commoner dying in the cold over a fellow noble that didn't make sense that didn't make sense.

"You...!" hissed Argus, and Ramza was stepping over him, moving towards Delita, stepping over him like he was nothing, and Argus Thadolfas was not nothing, Argus Thadolfas had tumbled into a broken world and clawed his way back to his rightful place, seizing every opportunity until he was one of the Marquis' most trusted men, and the name of Thadolfas was going to be restored to glory so how could Argus die here?

He grabbed at Ramza's leg. Ramza jerked in his grasp (and fresh fire flowed from the wound in Argus' back as he clung to Ramza), nearly fell, then righted himself and turned to stare at him with wide, terrified eyes.

So scared, so uncertain, so lucky and so ignorant of it. Men like Ramza would ruin everything: would treat the dogs like men, until their teeth found their throats. Thadolfas. Beoulve. Maybe all Ivalice, brought to ruin by such fools. There were tears in Argus' eyes now.

"You...child...!" Argus sobbed. "You...stupid..."

It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe. The world was wrong. The world was...

Darkness, for a moment. And then the maelstrom.