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Chapter 97: Castle of Monsters

Alma blinked the golden sunlight out of her sleepy eyes and found herself curled around Izlude Tengille, holding him protectively.

She blinked again. She frowned. She hadn't fallen asleep like this. Had she shifted in the night? Without realizing it?

Should she feel embarrassed? Why? It wasn't the first night she'd spent in bed with a friend. Izlude had done nothing to make her uncomfortable.

He kidnapped you.

That was days ago.

She giggled to herself.The sound or the movement must have stirred Izlude: he grunted, his eyes grudgingly cracking open into weary slits. "Where..." he started, then gasped at Alma in alarm and sat up suddenly. Too suddenly, it seemed: he winced, groaned, hunched over with his hand clutched to his chest.

"Any better?" Alma asked.

Izlude shrugged, not looking at her. "Apologies. I shouldn't have...it was unspeakably rude of me to..."

"Saint Above, Izlude, it's not like we fucked."

Izlude blushed. Alma found herself rather gratified. The world was an even stranger, more dangerous place than she had imagined in her time confined to the safe zones of Orbonne, Igros, and Lesalia: she had faced Inquisitors and Templars, and now found herself trapped in the castle of a monster. But she could make a Templar blush (a Zodiac Brave blush), and that was almost as good as breaking an Inquisitor's spell.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, as Izlude continued to pointedly not meet her gaze.

Izlude shook his head. "I...don't know." He took a deep breath, and prodded his torso with one hand. "Still...hurt, a bit. But not as much."

Alma nodded, and held up her hands. "I can heal you a bit more, if you want."

Izlude nodded in turn, still not quite looking at her. "Please."

She reached out a hand for him, but hadn't quite touched him when there was a quiet knock at her door.

"I'm sorry." It was Malak's voice, curt but apologetic, and Izlude went stiff as a board, fearful eyes flickering towards the door. "But I have to take him back to his cell."

"Go away." Alma put every ounce of authority she'd ever learned as a Beoulve into her voice.

There was a moment's silence from the other side of the door. "You know I can't do that."

Alma's hands clenched into fists. Almost unbidden, light crackled in her grasp. She had broken an Inquisitor's spell with her strength, had healed Izlude's wounds. She was not helpless.

A hand closed around her clenched fist. She looked up to find Izlude smiling at her. "It's alright," he said. "My father's coming. This is almost over."

He squeezed her hand, then rose from his place on her bed, and opened the door. Malak stood on the other side with a coil of rope in his hands, his back straight, his gaze firm. But from where she was sitting, Alma could tell that he refused to meet Izlude's eyes. "I'll have to bind your hands again."

Izlude shrugged, and offered his hands. Malak knotted the rope around his wrists with quick, confident movements, checked the bindings with a few quick tugs and nodded. Alma glared at him the whole time.

"You're a monster," she said.

Malak met her glare without flinching. "I do what I have to," he replied. "The same as your brothers."

He gestured for Izlude to head down the hall. Izlude looked back at Alma, smiling nervously. He looked so painfully young, and so painfully familiar. She was sure she'd seen that awkward smile on Ramza's face, when he was trying to reassure the people around him, in spite of his screaming doubts. "Thank you, Alma."

Malak closed the door. Alma stared after them, her ring-wearing fist still clenched so tight that light dribbled out between her fingers like water. She could smash down that door.

And then?

She didn't know. But she was so tired of holding herself still. She wanted to move. She wanted to act.

She was still feeling that restlessness hours later, when the explosion almost deafened her. The floor beneath her feet shook with the force of that detonation, and the sound if filled her ears like a gunshot, so intense she couldn't tell whether it was her body or the castle that was shaking. She clutched at her ears, gasping in pain. Some dim lesson from the Preparatory Academy tickled weakly at her brain (stand under something? In a doorway? She couldn't remember, it had been decades since there had been an earthquake in Ivalice).

The shaking stopped. Alma lowered her hands from her ringing ears, rose from her fetal position beside her bed, and took a tentative step forwards. Then another. Everything was still muffled by the ringing in her ears, but she thought she heard shouting, screaming, explosions that were more distant and mundane, like the kind she'd occasionally heard from the distant battle lines when she'd been living in Lesalia. Those were the sounds of fighting far away.

Riovanes was under attack. And she was somehow sure she knew who was attacking.

All her restless discontent vanished in one great burst of joy, and she rushed for the door. It opened before she reached it, and spilled two bloody figures at her feet. Izlude Tengille was one of them, wearing the rune-laden gauntlets he'd used to strike her back at Orbonne. His hair was damp with blood, but his eyes were bright. The other was the shortest girl in the Hand, the one who could suspend her victims in that choking, distorted stillness. She was gasping in rabbit-quick breaths, her hands clenched around the massive hole in her stomach, spilling out blood and ropy guts around her desperate fingers.

"Saint Above!" Alma cried, rushing towards the girl and swallowing down the hot bile in her throat. She placed her own hands on the girl's (slick with her own blood and horribly warm, the salty stink of blood and something else, something like acid, something like shit, a fierce and terrible smell in her nose, no, swallow down your bile Alma, try and remember her name, is this Clara or Clarice, this poor girl needs your help), gathering as much light as she could, trying to ease the girl's pain, to close the wound-

Knowing with every moment she did so that it wouldn't work. It couldn't be enough. The greatest Healers in the world would be hard-pressed to deal with such a wound, and whatever her talents, Alma wasn't one of them.

"No," Clara whispered, shaking her head as blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. "No, don't, you have to go, his idea-"

She trailed off with a little whimper, shutting her eyes tight. Alma looked up at Izlude, who was standing over the two of them. If he had looked like Ramza before he had left the room earlier, he looked even more like him now. In spite of the blood running down his face, in spite of the slight slump to his left shoulder that told her he had either sprained or broken that arm, his face was set in an expression of fierce determination, his eyes not just bright but blazing.

"Your brother was right," he said. "There are demons in the Castle. They're after the Stones." He shifted slightly, and revealed that the injured left arm was clutching a lurid red object: the Virgo Stone from deep within Orbonne. "Take this to him. Don't let them get it."

There was a distant, terrible crash, and a horrible wailing shriek. Izlude grimaced, tossed her the Stone. Her blood-slick hands fumbled it, and it slipped to the ground with a weighty thnk: she scrambled to pick it up.

"Clara," he said. "I hate to ask-"

"No." Her voice was thin, shaking, and somehow terribly firm. Alma, with the bloody Stone clasped in her hand, looked up at her. The young girl was pale, and her lips were as bloody as the ruin of her stomach, but her eyes were blazing just as fiercely as Izlude's. "If I'm...going to die, I...want to die...with them."

Izlude nodded, stepped back towards her, and put a hand on Clara's shoulder. He did not look at Alma. "If I had listened to you and your brother..." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Alma. Please fix it on your end. I'll try to fix it on mine."

There was a flicker of magic on the edges of Alma's awareness, and a blur of terrific movement: the two of them were gone, with only a smear of blood where Clara had fallen to mark their passage. Alma stared at that bloody spot in disbelief, clutching an artifact of legend in her bloody hands.

If you stay here, they die for nothing.

Alma's mouth set in a thin line, and she sped from her room, cradling the Stone close. Her thoughts raced just as quickly as her feet. No supplies, but Ramza was somewhere in the castle, and so were the demons. The force of the explosion had been so enormous that she wasn't sure which way she needed to go to avoid them, but she could make some educated guesses. Alma herself had been welcomed by the Grand Duke in his salon, and the quality of her captivity spoke to her importance. The Templars were no less important, and would be received no less ostentatiously. If the Cardinal had been a Lucavi, it stood to reason that others like him would inhabit the members of the Church elite. She needed to escape the building, get to a place where she had clear lines of sight, where she could spot anyone, familiar or unfamiliar, and stay hidden until she saw someone she could trust. She would head down to the lower levels of the building, looking for somewhere that offered her concealment, and wait for her chance.

She rounded a corner, and almost ran headfirst into a man with a bloody sword in his hand. She screamed in terror, thrust back the hand clutching the Virgo Stone and raised her ring finger, summoning all the magic she could, ready to fight-

"Alma?" asked Messam Elmdor, Marquis of Limberry, as he blinked at her in disbelief..

Terror, confusion, and shock swirled together in a heady mixture that left her feeling almost mundanely off-kilter, like she'd run into an unexpected acquaintance at a party. The Marquis blinked down at her in turn, his red-brown eyes equally puzzled, and brushed a lock of silver-blonde hair from his forehead. "Alma Beoulve," he murmured. "I did not expect to see you here."

"I...could say the same?" Her voice sounded almost as surreal as she felt. "What are you doing here?"

She took a step back from him, her head reeling. Details began to trickle through her slow-moving mind: the Marquis was in full military gear, a demonic-looking outfit of black and red. His long Doman katana was drawn at his side, its blade dripping with blood. And something else, some fact about him tickling at the back of her mind...

His eyes flickered downwards, to the red stone cradled in her hands. He sighed. "Ah. That is most unfortunate."

Alma struck at once, flinging every ounce of magic she could gather right into the Marquis' face in a burst of sweeping light. As he skidded backwards, she sprinted back the way she'd come, her heart pounding. The Marquis was an ordained Inquisitor, a man of the Church, and so perhaps a member of this plot against the kingdom, this plot against her brother, this plot of demons and monsters and horrors-

Izlude's body fell to the ground in front of her with a meaty thumph.

Ovelia stopped. She stared down at her former captor, who had been alive and well this morning, alive and wounded mere minutes ago. He was dead now: the crown of his head had been crushed into a pulp of blood, bone, and brain.

"What have we here?" growled a voice that shook her to her marrow, as the thing that had crushed Izlude Tengille stepped round the corner.

It was beautiful. That might have been the worst thing about it: how beautiful it was. It stood so tall that it had to walk hunched over through the high-ceilinged halls of Riovanes. Its humanoid arms were long, strong, and supple, as powerful as a swordsman's and as dexterous as a musician's. It wore a long robe of deep violet that clung to its powerful frame, obscuring its feet as it swept against the floor. Every inch of visible skin was covered in fine, tawny hair that looked impossibly soft.

It had a lion's head. She could tell that much, even though it was hard to make out through the light: the pronounced snout, the powerful jaws, and the coal-black eyes, suave and feline as one of the captive panthers in the Lesalia Royal Zoo. But its features were obscured by its mane, as bright and golden and glorious as the sun, each strand a hair of living light as divine in elegance as a beam of sunshine cutting through the clouds on the distant horizon. The monster looked like royalty.

And Izlude's blood dripped from its refined right hand.

"Alma Beoulve, Hashmalum," the Marquis said from behind her.

"Hmmph!" the demon grunted. "Unfortunate. She would have been most useful leverage against her brothers."

He raised his bloody hand towards her. A bolt of fire burst through her veins and melted the frozen malaise holding Alma still: she thrust up her hand for another shout of bright magic-

The demon's blood hand flexed. The light was snuffed out, and Alma gasped as something inside her throbbed with pain.

"Pitiful child," whispered the demon. "You cannot stand against me."

He moved towards her, terribly swift: without thinking, Alma thrust out both hands, including the one still clutching the crimson Stone, and screamed, "Go away!"

There was a flash of light, brighter than her spell, brighter than the lion's mane, so bright it was like a sun had ignited in the halls of the castle. But no sun had ever been such a deep and bloody red. Alma's eyes squinted tight against that awful scarlet brightness, found that the crimson light came from the Stone in her hand, stabbing towards the lion-demon, sinking beneath its skin. It flinched backwards, shivered, shuddered, shrank in on itself like a garment being unraveled by pulling upon a loose thread.

She stared in disbelief, first at the unraveling demon, then at the Stone in her hand. She was not casting a spell. She did not feel the familiar warmth in her chest, or the heady exhaustion of transforming her magic into action. The Virgo stone blazed in her hand as though she'd caught a falling star.

The light went out. Alma stared still at the Stone in her hand.

"Impossible."

The voice did not shake her bones the way it had before, but it was familiar, nevertheless. If the voice of the demon had been an oak, then this voice was a sapling: the same substance, though not quite as towering or powerful. She jerked her head up from Virgo and found the speaker: a craggy-faced man with flint eyes and shaggy, salt-and-pepper hair. He was staring at her in disbelief.

"Hashmalum-" the Marquis whispered.

"Impossible," the man repeated, striding towards her. He wore golden armor beneath a purple garment that echoed the demon's robe. The Virgo symbol of the Glabados Church dangled from his neck.

"A Templar?" Alma, and then her eyes widened, and she stepped back from her and looked aghast at Izlude's corpse. "You're...his father?"

Vormav gave his son's body a dismissive look. "He sprang from my loins," Vormav grunted. "Unworthy though he was."

Alma's face twisted as fury ignited in her chest. "You monster!" She raised both hands again, desperate to strike him, to hurt him-

And found her wrists grasped tight in a strong grip, spinning her like a dancer, pulling Stone and ring alike from her fumbling fingers, then tripping her so she tumbled to the floor. The Marquis sighed and stepped back from her, holding both. "She's spirited, isn't she."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Vormav close enough to touch her. She shied away from him, glaring between the two men, caught between her terror and her rage.

"She can use Virgo?" the Marquis asked.

"You saw her," Vormav answered. "She commanded me." He was grinning—an awful, hungry grin. A hint of golden light gleamed in his eyes. "Oh, this changes everything."

"Stay away," she breathed, struggling to her feet-

A starburst of pain her stomach. She cried out, rolling away from Vormav's booted foot as he loomed over her. "Or what?" he asked. "You have no weapons against me."

"What shall you do?" the Marquis asked.

"Limberry Castle is entirely under your control?" Vormav replied.

"Of course."

"Then I will take her there through the Underside."

"The Underside? Really?" There was a worried note in the Marquis's voice that Alma could hear over her gasping pain. "Are you sure it's worth it?"

"Everything is worth it now." Vormav yanked Alma to her feet by her arm and her shoulder, socked her in precisely the same place he'd kicked her: a wave of hollow, breathless agony pulsed out from the spot, and Alma's vision went black around the edges. She swayed unsteadily in his grasp, kept upright only by his vise-like grip. "The Stone?"

The Marquis watched him warily (Alma saw through dark-rimmed his eyes, fighting for air), then placed the Virgo Stone gently in his hand. "What should we do?"

"The Duke escaped with Pisces," Vormav said brusquely. "Get it back. Find any other Stones he might have. Find the Gospel. Leave no survivors. I'll see you back at Limberry."

He pulled Alma close, almost as though he meant to embrace her. Alma's bleary eyes fell on Izlude's corpse. His eyes were gone, dissolved into the pulp of ruined flesh his father had made of his head. His mouth remained, open in a silent o of surprise.

Golden light, just like the light of the lion's mane, began to burn from Vormav, and wrapped itself around her. There was something strange about this light: bright and burning as it was, there was darkness in it, like ink or oil in a pool of clear water, coiling and undulating with serpentine malevolence. Alma struggled against the pain, against terror, against disbelief, struggled to find some magic she could use to free herself, something, anything-

Light and darkness stretched and widened, as though a doorway had been open. Vormav pulled her through that doorway, and into hell.