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Chapter 105: This Wartorn Land

The air was cool and pleasant against Ramza's face, a delightful contrast to the warm body curled protectively around his, strong arms wrapped aroud his chest, long fingers draped over his bicepts Ramza did not quite want to wake up: not with how lovely this felt. So he kept his eyes closed, and wrapped his arms around Radia's, and pushed his body back against hers, to get every inch of her against his skin that he could manage.

"You're awake?" Radia whispered. Her breath tickled his ear.

"Don't want to be," he answered, squeezing his eyelids tight as though he could squeeze out reality itself.

Radia laughed (another wave of warm air tickling his ear), and tightened her hold on him for a moment. "Come on."

Ramza sighed, but allowed her to lift him up, and reluctantly followed her from the tent. The war caravan was off to one side, the central point among the thicket of tents they'd set up with their companions in the midst of an old landslide. The nearest spring was half a mile away, but the ground war firm, and the old, dilapidated road they'd found through the mountains both carried their weight well enough and kept them far from Hokuten and Nanten patrols.

"You're awake," Agrias grunted, chewing on some dried meat from her position perched on the back of the caravan.

"Reluctantly," Ramza said.

"I hear that." Mustadio's voice was a rasp from his tent.

"Would you rather we be discovered?"

"Who's going to discover us out here?" Mustadio poked his head out from his tent, his straw-blonde hair a chaotic cloud around his sleep-wrinkled face.

"No one," Agrias grunted. "If we're careful."

Ramza strolled over to the caravan, where Agrias had laid out the morning rations (a strip of dried meat, two pieces of dried fruit). He grimaced, but didn't bother arguing: they had taken ample supplies from Riovanes when they had left, but Agrias was adamant they had to ration themselves in case of danger. The argument had been fought one too many times the last ten days, and Ramza had no desire to repeat it.

"Where's everyone else?" he asked, over a mouthful of dried fruit.

"Scouting," Agrias answered.

Ramza frowned. "Malak, too?" He had taken the last watch, and anyways he and Rafa's injuries weren't fully healed, whatever they told the rest of them.

"He insisted," Agrias grunted. Her voice held mixed annoyance and admiration.

Ramza sighed again, taking another bite and closing his eyes. Now that he had left the comfort of his tent, the troubles of the world were coming back to him, as chilling and persistent as cold rain soaking through his clothes. Beowulf, fighting to save Reis somewhere in the Neveleska Archipelago. The ever-worsening war, and the bloodshed soaking Ivalice. And Alma, somewhere ahead of him, held in the clutches of demons.

"Found something!"

Ramza looked up. Malak was scrabbling down a nearby slope. Behind him, Alicia and Lavain were picking their way down much more carefully.

"Old trail running alongside the river!" Malak panted, hunched over with his hands on his knees. "Wide enough for the caravan, too."

"Soldiers?" Agrias asked.

Malak shook his head. "None nearby. Nanten scouts to the north." He paused, then added, "And...corpses, too. Not sure whose."

Ramza grimaced. "Then we should get moving."

Had to get moving. Had to keep moving, hard as it was. Alma was waiting. So was Beowulf.

Please be alright.

With the caravan loaded, they shouldered their packs and followed Malak down the winding path they'd taken up to this bouldered plateau the previous evening. Far ahead of them, an occasional flash of white showed them which way to head: Rafa, scouting at the front of the party as always. Nearly a month since Riovanes, and they'd established something like a routine now. Alicia, Lavian, Malak, and Rafa usually handled the scouting (Alicia and Lavian cloaking themselves in magic when they were crossing near a city or village, Malak scouting ahead in wide-open areas that needed his particular touch, Rafa serving as their one-woman vanguard). Ramza wanted to take them off watch duty (they were working hard enough as it was), but they refused, every time. Putting them on last watch had been the best compromise he could manage: at least that gave them more time to sleep, especially if they turned in early enough.

The routine had served them well over the past month. Leaving Riovanes to retrieve the Germonique Gospel from its hiding place beneath the roots of Rafa's old tree had been fraught enough: every moment, they expected to find some army returning to avenge the fall of the castle, some Templar squadron looking to reinforce the ones who'd slaughtered Barinten and his Khamja, or some Lucavi hungry for blood and destruction.

But in some ways, that first, desperate journey had paled before this one. Because it seemed to Ramza that Ivalice was bleeding, everywhere they went.

The demon wearing Elmdor's face had told Ramza that his sister would be kept at Limberry Castle. But Limberry was on the other end of Ivalice, sharing the Ordallian border with Zeltennia. Hard enough to cross the length of Ivalice during a civil war: harder still to cross it when he was branded as a heretic. Ramza had to assume Elmdor (or whatever the demon's name was), was counting on him failing, getting caught, and falling into the hands of the Templars.

So after parting ways with Beowulf (leaving him Boco, who seemed happy enough to have a familiar rider), they had chosen only the most remote, winding, and difficult roads across Ivalice, each fraught in their own ways. They had doubled back along their own trail, diverged to cut south across Fovoham's fertile plains, winding through ruts in the Lenalian mountains until they could pick their way out along old backroads far from any place the Hokuten and the Nanten might have outposts, garrisons, or bases.

Even then, things were strange. Ramza and Radia crossed the Lenalian Plateau, and wondered if they had seen it before. If this stretch of ground had seen wounded Death Corps soldiers perish in their sleep. If Teta had been hurried along this stretch of road, before she'd met her death at Zeakden.

But if the ghosts of their pasts were bad enough, the ghosts of the present were worse. Whether it was the aftermath of fierce battles they found even on their remote trails (long trampled roads where armies had marched, burnt expanses of bloodsoaked ground where battles had been fought), or the collateral damage they witnessed from afar (the husks of charred towns and villages crushed for the fleeting gains of one army or another), or the shallow graves they found every day (Hokuten, Nanten,. Khamja, patchwork local units conscripted into one army or another, or simply unmarked graves full of broken corpses that might have belonged to any army), or the dead men, women, and children they found everyday, left where they had fallen in some desperate battle, some desperate run, some desperate fight.

Like the little cluster of dead families they found, bloody and broken, the flies thick above their bodies. The group stopped for a moment, and looked at the bodies. No one spoke.

Limberry was even worse than the rest of Ivalice. It was not merely the ruin of battle they encountered here: it was the actual fighting. Soldiers in the employ of Counts, Viscounts, and Barons, all vying for supremacy, trying to claim the Marquis' empty seat. These days it was too common for them to hear the distant clang of blades ringing over the mountains, or see a burst of fire or lightning on some distant mountainside, or hear an echoing shriek as one soldier or another met their end.

And scenes like this—of people who'd had no part in the war, and the games the powerful played—were all too common.

They moved on. They had neither the time nor the strength to bury all the dead they found.

"Hold!" came the shout, perhaps an hour later. The caravan halted (too full of their gear now to allow more than three of them to rest at any time: they traded off as needed, though Ramza suspected they were all trying to prove their toughness by forebearing it as long as possible), and Rafa popped up from behind a boulder (literally popped up, like a child's toy springing unexpectedly from a box, and for as many times as he'd seen it now Ramza always felt that slight disbelief on seeing her, that anyone could move with such inhuman speed and power).

"Soldiers, southeast of here," Rafa said, hurrying towards them.

"Southeast?" Alicia muttered. "That means they'd be running along the edge of the Wastes..."

"They're in bad shape," Rafa replied. "I'm guessing they lost a fight."

"Keep moving?" Ramza asked.

Rafa shook her head. "There's enough of them to cause us trouble."

Ramza grimaced. So much time lost already. Who knew what was happening to Alma, caught in the clutches of literal fucking demons-

But they wouldn't get there any faster if they were wounded, or killed.

"Head north a bit, then lay low?" Ramza suggested.

"Wonder where they're running to..." Lavian mused. She was sitting in the back of the caravan, carefully modifying her rune-laden quarterstaff with materials taken from Riovanes.

"Does it matter?" Alicia asked.

Rafa guided them from their riverside path to a low, muddy rise a bit farther north. They steered the floating caravan into a little dip behind the rise. "Good call," Malak muttered.

"I manage from time to time," Rafa answer, smiling.

Ramza hesitated, then turned back towards the rise, falling onto his belly and worming his way to his lip. Absently, he scooped up cool, clammy mudy, and ran it through his blonde hair, to better camouflage himself. There he remained, the itching mud drying in his hair, waiting for some sight of-

There! A single mounted rider on a ragged bird, half-limping its way on the opposite side of this thin, muddy offshoot of the nearby river. She turned her head slowly from one side to the other, then waved without looking back. A few moments later, and a staggering, straggling line of soldiers crested the rise on the opposite side, and followed the rider as she picked a careful path for them westward.

From his position on the rise, Ramza counted some 23 soldiers. Most were wounded, though able to move: bloody bandages adorned arms, legs, chests, and heads. All had the hollow-eyed look Ramza had last seen among the refugees stumbling to the supposed safety of Lesalia.

More pointless war, more pointless strife, more bloodshed. A civil war within a civil war. So many hurt, and so many lost, and so many dead.

The line made its limping way out of sight. Ramza gestured for the others, and they set out again. Some part of Ramza wondered if anyone was watching them. Some part of Ramza wondered whether they looked as bad as those poor soldiers.

The left the rocky mountain foothills towards midday, as the muddy trickle connected with the broader expanse of the Finnath River. Rafa roamed farther afield than before, making sure they wouldn't encounter any other groups of soldiers. They stopped again a little ways from the river while they waited for her to return.

Mustadio had taken Lavian's place in the back of the caravan. His eyes were underlined by dark circles, and his straw-blonde hair was still a wild cloud around his face. He flipped back and forth through the Germonique Gospel, his fingers as delicate as a surgeon working on a tricky patient.

"Have you slept at all?" Ramza asked.

"Course," Mustadio grunted. "Sometimes it's too dark to read."

Ramza frowned at him. "You need rest, Mus."

"M'fine."

"Mus..."

This time, all Mustadio did was grunt wordlessly. He set the old book down and flipped open one of Simon's notebooks, reading parts of the translation. "Not quite right..."

Ramza sighed and gave up. Mustadio had been enraptured by the Gospel since first laying hands on it nearly a month ago. Ramza had thought he understood the initial fascination—to see such a different side of the Saint so much of their kingdom worshiped, to see him made human—but there seemed something more to Mustadio's frenzied research.

Then again, Goug's machinists often had to step carefully to avoid accusations of blasphemy and heresy. Maybe Mustadio just relished the chance to be a heretic in earnest.

"Clear!" Malak called, and they started moving again.

Three days like that, stuttering their way off the beaten path the best that they could manage. Underneath every moment was that anxious fear, relentless as a heartbeat: what if something happened to Alma?

The same little anxious loop, as the days passed by. They had left one set of mountains behind (the high, inhospitable peaks that divided Lesalia, Limberry, Zeltennia, and Gallione from one another): now another began to rise before them. Unlike the jagged climbs of the Bethla Range, these were lower, dustier, save for the imposing bulk of Mountain Germinas itself, presiding over the low outlying mountains like a minister over his congregation.

"Fewer troops around here," grunted Agrias, as they made camp at nightfall beneath an overhanging cliff.

"Fewer roads for troops to travel on," Ramza answered. He and Radia had been counting on that: Limberry's major roads all avoided the Germinas mountains. The best-known road into Zeltennia wound north-east around the coast to connect with the port city of Sal Ghidos. There were two other main thoroughfares which cut across the Finnath River—one which connected to the eastern pass into Bethla Garrison, and the other of which made its curving way into the Church-controlled city of Bervenia. It was those two paths that had made the last three days such tricky traveling: the last thing Ramza and his allies wanted to do was to attract the attention of the Templars or the Nanten.

But the demons work within the Church.

Not all the Church. Why else would they kill Simon? And Izlude?

"It's something else, isn't it?" Mustadio asked.

Ramza jerked himself out of his dark thoughts. Dusk was settling in over the world, painting everything in orange, gold, and crimson. It made the dry, dusty mountains look luminous, but that was nothing compared to the sight behind them. To the north lay the green expanse of the Finnath lowlands, the broad expanse of the river shining like a serpent of legend beneath the radiance of the setting sun. To the south, the endless silver dunes of the Bethla Wastes sparkled like frozen sea carved from starlight.

"There's legends in those Wastes," Mustadio continued. "The best weapons of the Empire are buried somewhere out there." He looked back at Ramza. "This was the heart of Ydoran control over Ivalice."

"Not Lesalia?" Ramza asked.

Mustadio shook his head. "Lesalia was Ivalice's greatest city. The Ydorans just improved upon it when they conquered it." He looked back at the Wastes. "They say Ajora scoured it during the Fall. Burned away the conquering armies, and poisoned the land so it would never grow green again. The whole place was supposed to be like Bethla Garrison before that. A fortress the size of a country."

Ramza frowned out at that enormous, lifeless desert. If there were ruins among the sands, he couldn't see them.

"Germonique doesn't mention the Fall," Ramza said.

Mustadio nodded. "That's strange, isn't it?" He looked at Ramza again. "Even if it wasn't Ajora's Judgment that caused it...something happened back then, Ramza. Something that sank the heartland Ydoran Empire, and turned a whole country to dust."

Ramza studied Mustadio closely. "Maybe...something involving the Lucavi?"

"Maybe," Mustadio said. He tapped the Gospel sitting in his lap. "Feels like...feels like we're missing something."

"Is that what you've been working on?" Ramza asked.

Mustadio shrugged. "Not sure yet." He smiled wearily. "I'll let you know if I figure it out."

Ramza nodded, patted his friend on the shoulder, and went to set up his own tent. He would take the second watch tonight: Agrias would take the first. But as he lay down in the tent, with the twilight sky bleeding faintly in through the canvas, he found he couldn't sleep. His mind was still too restless with questions. About Ajora, and the Gospel, and the Lucavi, and the Church-

And about Alma.

The flap of the tent rustled open. "You alright?" Radia asked.

Ramza shrugged tiredly. "Just...worried."

"I know."

Ramza hesitated, then asked, "Are you?"

Radia shrugged in turn. "I don't know," she said. "I just..." She trailed off. "I was...so worried about you, Ramza. When you left for Yardrow. I was so worried I wouldn't ever get to..."

The slightest tremor in her voice. Ramza reached out for her hand, and pulled her down to him. "I know," he whispered into her ear. "I'm...I'm so glad you came for me."

Her wiry arms wrapped tight around him. He held her close to him, and felt his worries ease, and slipped away into a dream.

Clang!

Bleary eyes snapped open from a half-forgotten nightmare, and Ramza jerked upright at the sound of metal clashing against metal.

Foom!

A flash of bright light, visible even through the fabric of the tent, and Ramza was already up and moving, Radia right beside him, grabbing for their weapon belts at the tent's entrance as they hurtled out into the dark.

Skreesh!

Ramza's skin crawled, and his arms ached, and he remembered the last time he'd heard that sound, when locked in desperate battle against Wiegraf. It was the shriek of shattering metal, breaking under a Swordbreaker's assault. He jerked his head from side to side, saw Agrias fallen at the feet of a sword-wielding shadow with a hood pulled tight to obscure their features.

"There you are, murderer!" roared a deep woman's voice, and the sword-wielding shadow hurtled out of the dark with hate blazing in her flint-grey eyes.