(We're in the home stretch on Part 4, so we'll be updating once a week until it's over! Hope everyone's doing alright out there. Please check out quickascanbe dot com and follow me on Facebook and Twitter if you're looking for more to read)
Chapter 100: Dead Man Walking
They call him a Saint. They call him a Brave. They weave together the Pharist teachings with the pagan myths of Ivalice and build something new: the Stones are not merely objects of great power, but instead the blessings of God himself, proof of Ajora's divine providence.
Fools, the lot of them. Yes, we wielded the Stones. But Auracite is only a tool, like any other. There is nothing divine about them.
-The Gospel According to Germonique, ISV (Inquisitor Simon Version)
The woman flung the heavy, bloody man over one shoulder. He skidded across the rooftop and out of sight. She straightened up, holding Malak's katana in her hand, and took a step towards Rafa, still clutching her bloody brother like he was driftwood in a storm.
"Now-" the woman in the red top began, and stopped as her eyes found Ramza Beoulve. Ramza stared silently back at her.
He had raced out of the ruined terraced battleground where he had slain Belias, holding Wiegraf's stolen sword in his hand. He had pounded through the halls of Riovanes with Beowulf a step ahead of him and Radia a step behind, jumping over corpses and shoving open doors, searching for anyone, anything, that might tell him where his sister was.
Then, the thunder of a distant gunshot. He had scrambled up a staircase after that sound, not even looking to see if Radia and Beowulf were with him, and shouldered his way through a half-open door to find a curious rooftop tableau: a slender, beautiful blonde woman, holding a heavyset man in luxurious clothes by the throat as though he weighed nothing. Then she threw the man over her shoulder, and turned.
The woman in the red top stared at Ramza. The woman in the blue top, slightly farther away, stared at Ramza. Ramza stared back at them.
They all moved at once: both women lunged towards Rafa, and Ramza lunged towards them. They were so fast Ramza thought they might have had the same strange magic as the other two girls in the Hand: they moved with more confidence and swiftness than even Gaffgarion at his deadliest.
Ramza was too tired, too slow, to catch up with them. In a frenzy of movement, both women had their blades at Rafa's throat. Ramza skidded to a stop several feet from them.
"Move and she dies, Beoulve," said the woman in the red top.
"Stay right there," said the woman in blue. Their voices were as identical as their faces.
There was an explosion in the distance. Ramza, the two women, and Rafa stayed still as statues, not even turning their heads to look.
"Ramza?" Radia's was thin from the doorway behind him. "What's going on?"
"Easy." Ramza held up a hand. "They're too close to her. They'll kill her."
"Isn't...isn't she one of Barinten's men?"
Ramza shook his head. "She's a friend." His eyes found the blood dripping from her thigh. "She's hurt." Shock. How could she have been hurt? His eyes found the gun, some ways behind the two women. Wheels began to turn in his head, weighing the two deceptively-powerful women, the distance between him and them, the distance between him and the gun.
"She'll be hurt worse if you don't give us the Stones," said the woman in the red top.
There were frantic whispers from behind Ramza. He did not turn his head.
"I didn't bring them with me," Ramza answered.
"And the Gospel?" asked the woman in the blue top.
"You should answer them, Ramza Beoulve!" called a voice Ramza hadn't heard in three years. "Neither Celia nor Lettie are especially patient."
Ramza's eyes stayed fixed on the two women. He refused to look at the silver-blonde man in elegant red-and-black armor striding onto the castle rooftop from the entrance across from him, a long katana slung over one shoulder. He had only a vague impression of the Marquis' features, though he could just make out an amiable smile on the dead man's face.
"And which of the Lucavi are you?" Ramza asked.
"Would you recognize the name if I told you?" the Marquis asked. "As I recall, you are not the most pious of souls. Or has something changed these last three years?" He chuckled. "I admit, it would be a bit funny if you'd found God only after your heresy."
"Says the demon in the body of an ordained Inquisitor."
The Marquis shrugged. "I spoke to you once, of the murky world in which we move, seeking the light of the Saint." He chuckled again. "I did not know how right I was."
There was another explosion, closer than the first. Though Ramza and the women on the roof stayed completely still, the Marquis shot a careless glance after it. "Someone's giving Cletienne quite a bit of trouble..." he murmured, then shrugged. "Well. The Khamja were hardly second-rate. A pity about all this."
"So you're the ones who attacked?" Ramza asked.
"We are, though it's worth noting that wasn't our intention." The Marquis sauntered to the same edge of the roof where the man had tumbled over the side. "We came to negotiate in good faith. But we were told that, if negotiations went awry, we would be signaled." He glanced towards the ruined wing of the castle, no longer cloaked in a nimbus of crackling gold. "Ah well."
"But why?" Ramza asked.
"Oh, don't play dumb, Ramza," the Marquis breathed, whirling around. "The Cardinal told you our purpose. So did Delita. So did Wiegraf. We are trying to reshape Ivalice for the better."
"You seem to be doing an excellent job of it."
The Marquis laughed. "You've sharpened your tongue these last three years!" He gestured around them. "Scenes like this are playing out all across Ivalice as we speak. Let us imagine that I am truly a demon, in the company of demons, working for a demon's sinister ends. It is not the armies of the Lucavi who lay waste to the kingdom they are sworn to protect. It is the armies of men."
Memories of the last six months flashed behind Ramza's eyes: the hospital at Gariland, the refugee trains in southern Lesalia, the deserters in the Fovoham foothills.
"I may not condone the methods needed to correct this broken kingdom," the Marquis growled. "But I will not shy from them when the alternative is the madness and ruin of the last centuries. I refuse."
"Let me treat them," Ramza said, looking at Rafa and Malak
"Not until you give us your Stones," Celia (or was it Lettie?) said.
"I didn't bring any Stones."
"You did," Lettie (or was it Celia?) said. "Stones and a Gospel. We will have both."
"And I'm sure you'll just let us walk away if I do," Ramza said.
"Do you have another option?" The Marquis raised his voice. "Do it."
There was a rush of air and a strangled cry: this time Ramza did pivot on his heel, trying to keep the two women in his peripheral vision as Radia and her attacker tumbled out of the staircase. She was face-down against the roof, with her hooded assailant straddling her back. The tip of his bloody sword hovered just above the back of her neck.
"I hope you weren't counting on her to save you," the Marquis said.
Ramza's throat felt tight. Rafa had barely moved throughout this whole conversation, simply cradling Malak's unmoving body as his glazed eyes stared up into the sky. Ramza and Radia were outnumbered, and one of their attackers was another Lucavi in human flesh. The Marquis, like Wiegraf, had already been a warrior of some reputation. How much more fearsome would he be, with a demon's power fueling him?
"I-" Ramza began.
The explosion that rang out this time was much louder than the first two, much closer, and much more familiar. If the gunshot Ramza had heard down below had sounded faintly like thunder, this sound was the very essence of a storm. From the faint crackle of distant lightning, the brightness of the flash, and even that bone-deep rumble that presages the sound, this was like a lightning bolt cleaving a tree in two nearby. The thunder was just as loud, and the lightning just as bright.
He whirled towards the source of the noise behind him, and found a bizarre sight. It was as though someone had caught a stormcloud in midmotion, and shaped it like a child does a snowman. A massive figure of woven clouds hurtled onto the rooftop in a gust of rattling wind. The clouds were cunningly-shaped to provide a subtle impression of an elegant robe and a great bushy beard, and electricity crackled around the face so that the eyes flared out in stabs of lightning.
"It's them!" shouted a nasally academic's voice, comically out-of-place from such a majestic figure, but a moment later Ramza realized it wasn't the storm god talking, but the robed man upon his back, clutching at a long wooden staff gleaming with inlaid runes. "It's-" His eyes flashed wide when he saw Ramza.
A moment later, and a great burst of fire exploded from beneath him. The storm figure pulsed, flowed like sinuous mist with the mage clinging to his back. The roar of the fire was loud enough to muffle his words. There was a rattling clang as a metallic something was flung up to the roof, only to slither backwards and catch with a clink against the gutter. At almost the same moment, two loud cracks rang out like gunshots, as the two doors to the rooftop were flung open with sudden violence, shoved aside by two charging figures, and Radia pulsed with magic and the hooded attacker on her back bellowed with rage, leaping free almost too late as Agrias Oak's blue blade cleaved through the space where his head had been.
Ramza lunged forwards, straight towards Celia and Lettie, as Beowulf charged across from the other side of the roof. They slashed their blades together, and the three (distracted by the stormcloud, distracted by the fire, distracted by the noise all around them, distracted enough not to cut Rafa down) raised their blades in their defense.
They were fast with their katanas, fast and so strong; they slid aside from Ramza's frantic strikes, deflected him with idle flickers of their quick swords, and Ramza was exhausted, near the end of his rope, and so he flailed at them with frantic desperation, his arms aching with every strike, hoping just to hold them at bay. Behind them, the storm figure loomed up again, crackling with lightning, but there was brown-haired Lavian, swinging the staff she'd made at Daravon's, a flash of pearly light answering the flash of lightning.
And rather than grab for it (though that had been the seed of his mad half-formed plan when he ahd first seen it), Ramza kicked the discarded pistol laying forgotten on the rooftop, straight toward the grappling hook that had hitched against the gutter, as a straw-blonde head poked its way over the side of the roof. Quick as a snake, Mustadio's hand snatched up the gun, and pointed it at the Marquis. "Freeze!" he cried.
And everyone froze.
Such a strange tableau in that moment. Beowulf held the Marquis' katana against his broader, shorter blade, and Lettie's against his thin one. Celia was frozen with her sword pointed towards Ramza's belly. The swordsman who had ambushed Radia stood equidistant between her and Agrias, his sword pointed at the ground. Lavian faced the brown-haired mage riding his strange stormcloud, her staff glowing just as his glowed.
"Everything okay up there?" It was Alicia's voice, shouting from the same side of the roof the stormcloud figure had appeared from.
"Bit tense right now!" Lavian called back.
"You've a gift for understatement," the Marquis snorted. His eyes flickered around the rooftop just as Ramza's had. "But nothing's changed from before. Everyone of you will die if you do not stand down."
Ramza studied the Marquis for a moment, then shrugged, playing at a carelessness he did not feel. "Maybe." He ignored the assassin with her sword pointed at him, and faced the dead man whose life he had once saved with another dead man's golden sword in his weary hand. "But I'm not so sure that the odds are your in favor. I mean, the Lionesses and the Vampire Knight are on my side, and so's the Machinist with the gun pointed at you. And if I talk too long, Beowulf will remind me he can probably handle the lot of you himself."
"Well, I might break a bit of a sweat." Beowulf grinned like a feral thing.
Ramza smiled and took a step towards the Marquis. "But maybe you're right, Marquis. Maybe you will kill all of us." He paused thoughtfully for a moment. "But I don't see you killing us without losing at least a few of your own. Whether that be the mage, the knight, or your friends here-" He nodded at Celia and Lettie. "Or yourself, Marquis." He paused, frowned. "I'm sorry, you told me to call you Messam, didn't you?"
The Marquis arched his thin eyebrows "That was an awful long time ago, Ramza Beoulve."
"Before you died, you mean?" Ramza shook his head. "Or before a demon stole your soul?"
"No one stole my soul."
"Yes, I've heard all that from Wiegraf," Ramza grunted. "It's you, just more of you. Made majestic by the Lucavi who lives inside you now." Ramza laughed. "So why does everyone think you're dead, Messam?" He took another step towards the Marquis. Still, no one moved. "If you want to pretend you're dead, I must assume it's because you're operating in secret. And if you're operating in secret, you must be afraid of what happens if someone tells the world the Marquis Elmdor is still alive."
Silence upon the rooftop.
"So let me lay it out for you, Messam," Ramza continued. "Let me make this very clear." He adjusted his grip on Wiegraf's sword. "The soldiers you see before you? They have defeated the best hunters the Hokuten and the Royal Army could deploy against them. They have destroyed the strongest enforcers of the Baerd company. They have slain the elite knights of the Lionel Gryphons. They have even beaten the Hand of Barinten. When they were not being the Hand of Barinten. And, on top of all those other feats?" He took another step towards the Marquis. "I killed Cuchulainn. I killed Belias. Whatever your true name is now, Messam-" Another step. "Do you think I can't kill you?"
No one moved. Messam and Ramza locked eyes for a long, long time.
"What became of the scared Beoulve boy looking for righteousness in a wicked world?" the Marquis asked, with a note of admiration in his voice.
"What became of the Marquis Elmdor, to make him sell his soul?"
The Marquis' face twisted. "You know nothing, Ramza Beoulve."
"That's not true," Ramza said. "I know how to kill Lucavi."
The Marquis pursed his lips for a moment. "I suppose you do, at that." He looked thoughtfully up and down and the rooftop, at the drawn weapons and crackling magic. "Tell me something, and be honest. Did you bring any Stones with you?" No one spoke, but the Marquis sighed as though they'd answered his question. "And if you didn't bring the Stones, I bet you didn't bring the Gospel, either." He shrugged, and sheathed his sword. At precisely the same moment, the two women lowered their own weapons, and stepped back towards him. Beowulf looked flabbergasted. "I see no reason to die fighting you when there are no prizes worth claiming."
"Marquis!" the mage began, from his place beneath the sheltering figure of lightning eyes and clouded beard. "This man-"
"-is exceptionally dangerous," the Marquis finished. "And I have no particular wish to fritter away our forces on a pointless conflict." He shot a curt look between the mage and the swordsman. "Do you?"
"Quite right," muttered the swordsman with thin red hair poking out from beneath his hood, sheathing his own blade and turning his back on Agrias and Radia (Agrias looked vaguely offended). A moment later, and the grimacing mage sighed, and closed his eyes. The storm figure dissolved as though a strong gust had blown away the mist, and the mage dropped down to stand behind the Marquis.
"Well, Ramza Beoulve," the Marquis said, clapping his hands together. "You are impressive. I thought you carried Balbanes' legacy well last time we spoke. Look at you now."
He smiled, and Ramza almost flinched backwards. That smile held the same underlying darkness that had pulsed beneath Wiegraf and the Cardinal's skin, before they had transformed. "Proud Beoulves, one and all," the Marquis continued, stretching his clasped hands out towards Ramza. "Always fighting to do the right thing. Some more successfully than others." When he opened his hands, there was a gleaming ring in his right palm: Ramza felt the back of his neck prickle with cold disbelief.
The Marquis tossed the ring underhand. Ramza caught it without thinking. He didn't have to look at it to know whose ring it was.
"We'll be waiting at Limberry," the Marquis said. "Come with the Stones to trade, or see your sister's corpse swing from the gallows."
"You-" Ramza began, snapping a hand towards his wrist to throw some spell towards them-
Too late, as the Marquis burst with hellish light, a violet blaze marred by writhing shadows, an ooze like slime against the skin, like syrup in the veins, like sandpaper against the soul, and Ramza cried out like a child in the face of a nightmare, throwing an arm across his eyes. When the swarm retreated with the light, he lowered his arm, and found that the Marquis and his allies were gone.
A moment's silence. In the distance, they heard the low rumble of collapsing stone, and the crackle of still-burning fires. The great green forest hung heavy behind them, as afternoon gave way to evening, and the orange sun painted the castle rooftop in bloody light. Ramza looked to his friends—the friends he'd left behind to protect them, the friends who had risked life and limb to fight alongside him again. His sister's ring, light as it was, felt oddly heavy in his hand.
"Malak."
Rafa's voice was shattered glass, sharp and fragile and broken. She had not moved through all the frenzy of the last few minutes. She held her brother close to her chest as her own blood drenched her grey leggings, his head buried against her chest, her face buried in his hair.
The others on the rooftop were moving. Ramza watched them from a distance, as though he were in a dream, his hand curled tight around his sister's stolen ring.
"The sun is setting on Riovanes," Rafa whispered. "The Duke is gone. We're free."
Malak's eyes were glassy and unblinking. Rafa shook her head slowly. "Please, brother. Please. Wake up."
There was a flash of blue light. There was a rumble of sound beneath the senses, deeper than thunder, deeper than noise. Rafa blinked down, and her hands caught around a round blue Stone with a bright Pisces mark upon its front, glowing brighter and brighter with every moment.
Ramza had only just started to move when the blue Stone ignited like a newborn sun.