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Chapter 108: Dinner With Monsters
Alma Beoulve was in hell.
She had no other word for the teeming, screaming agony into which she was plunged, like a dive into ice-cold water where every droplet had a razor's edge, and where every razor's edge left a feeling in your skin like metal scraped against the grain, and carried a sound like a child's screaming in your ear.
And worse than that were the memories. For every razor touch, every child's scream, came with a vivid splash of remembrance, an image of a world that was always a little wrong, a little unfamiliar. The pain was bad enough, but the loss, the confusion, and the grief that surged through her with each abrading touch and every burst of foreign memory made her mind flail and shudder and crack.
A year or so before her father had died, when he had begun making arrangements for Ramza to attend the Gariland Military Academy, Alma Beoulve had tried and failed to convince him to send her, too. She had screamed and sobbed and begged, to no avail, and when she stormed from her father's office she had headed straight to the chocobo stables, determined to run away.
But she had never ridden a bird before, and the mount she choose was poorly trained and improperly saddled, and had taken off at a wild gallop when Alma had just barely taken her place upon its back. She clung on to the coarse, musky feathers for dear, terrified life as it ripped across the hilltops surrounding the Beoulve Manor, plunging through aqueducts in wintry splashes that brought tears to her eyes. She had been so scared of where the chocobo would go. She had also been too scared to let go, until her father, Ramza, and Delita had caught up to her, and calmed the wild bird down.
That memory returned to her, as she ripped down through this flashing, nightmarish surge. She hated that heavy weight, pulling her down through the current...but she was terrified to let go, for fear she would be lost in this swirling hell forever. Glimpses reached her through the nightmare, of a shape more golden than any chocobo could be, burning like a sun, and she hated that massive, burning presence, she feared it and despised it, but she hated the scraping current that surrounded her more, and clung on for dear, terrified life as great weight pulled her deeper and deeper into the boiling depths, like a boulder pulling her down into the sea.
She had no idea how long she sank through that swirling hell. She only knew the moment she was free of it. Nonsense images scattered across her mind like broken pieces of a stained glass window, and she shuddered as though with a fever. Scattered physical impressions, overwhelming in their solidity, blessed in their stability, besieged her. Voices, distant and terrible as castle-shaking thunder, reached her through the cacophony.
"-you may break her before we even have a chance-"
"She is the only chance that matters."
"And so you risk the others Stones?"
"We have a suitable host, the rest is dross-"
"It is not dross when we number so few!"
Her mind trembled, shrank back, and went black.
She could not say how long she was lost. She came awake only gradually, as though she were emerging from a long, fevered illness. She was in a small, windowless bedroom. The furnishings, though sparse, were luxurious: a well-wrought armchair and table beside her plush mattress, and fresh runes glowing along the borders of the ceiling.
Alma lay in that bed for a long time before she hesitantly lifted her head. Her mind was muddled, but her body felt none the worse for wear: no soreness, no fatigue. She sat up slowly in case she was wrong, but no wave of dizziness drowned her.
There was a thunk from the room's single door: Alma's head swiveled towards the source. A slot in the bottom of the door had popped open, and a bowl had been slid inside: a thin soup sloshed inside. "Hey!" Alma shouted, hurrying towards the door as the slot thunked closed again. The door was locked, and rattled in its frame as she shook it, and Alma glared at it. Imprisoned again.
There was something else, though. A smell in the air she didn't fully understand, lingering by the door and over her soup. It was a strong perfume, sweet and heady, almost overwhelming, but there was something layered with it, something she couldn't quite place. It reminded her of her mother's house (moments of sunshine, moments of fear, and moments of terrible loss) in the days when the Choking Plague had taken her. It reminded her of the room where her father had died.
She spent perhaps three days in that room. Impossible to tell for sure, without a window to mark the time, but there were eight more meals, and she assumed they were giving her three meals a day. Riovanes had been bad enough, but being trapped in this single room was somehow worse. Nothing to read, no one to talk to, nothing to occupy her time but her own restless thoughts. She paced her room like a panther, and tried to some of exercises she'd seen Agrias and the Lionesses do at Orbonne, and every magical exercise she could think of, whether the ones Simon and the Academy had taught her or the ones she'd invented on her own. She didn't have her ring, but perhaps there was some spell she could use, some way to use the light runes on the walls, some way to escape...!
Every so often, another meal was pushed through the slot, accompanied by another whiff of that strange smell. And eating was the worst, because while she did it, there was nothing to occupy her mind but her fears, and her memories, and her uncertainties. The explosion that had rocked the castle. Izlude and radiant, leonine demon, with Izlude's blood dripping from his savage hand. And the hell she'd entered, Izlude's grey-eyed father pulling her into the blood-red nightmare.
She shuddered at the mere thought of it. Sometimes she would shake, and couldn't stop herself, suddenly filled with certain terror that she was still in that hell, drifting through a dribbled scarlet memory, about to be plunged back into the pain.
What was that place? What were these demons? What did they want with her?
She drifted into uneasy sleep not long after finishing her meal, and was awoken by a crisp rat-tat-tat on her door. She jerked herself upright as it swung open. A lithe blonde woman, wearing loose trousers and a red bandeau across her breasts, stepped inside, carrying a bundle of clothes. She set them unceremoniously at the foot of the bed.
"You will join us for dinner in one hour," the woman said, with a thin, utterly dispassionate voice, and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Alma stared after her, hardly believing it was real. But there were the clothes at the foot of the bed—a simple dress of soft white fabric, a silk shift, and a Virgo necklace. Alma hesitated for a few minutes, staring at the clothes, wondering if she should refuse...
But after however long she'd been locked in this room, she was starving for company. And anyways, the blue dress which she'd been wearing when she was taken from Riovanes still had the dead girl's blood on it, and three day's worth of sweat besides.
The door creaked open again some time later (Alma found herself waiting with growing impatience, pacing the circumference of her small room once again), and the woman before entered the room, now wearing a blue bandeau. But no, not the same woman: she stepped through behind her twin, still wearing the red bandeau. "If you will come this way," the woman in red said, and stepped back through the door. The woman in blue took a position just behind her: Alma's jaw clenched. Guards, of course. To make sure she didn't run.
She felt a scream building in her throat, rage filling her like hot steam threatening to burst. Years spent barely keeping ahead of the absurd enclosures her brothers banished her to, time and time again; captured by a wild-eyed boy who hadn't known any better, only for his failure to consign her to the clutches of that cretinous Duke and the deluded children he'd warped to serve him; now held prisoner by literal demons for unknown reasons. She was so, so tired of having her fate dictated to her.
She took a deep breath through her nose, trying to calm her rage, and nearly stumbled. It was duller now than it had been when her meals were served to her, but that strange smell was in the air, the same way animal musk lingered in the Royal Menagerie. Whatever that smell was, it had soaked into the halls of this place: the narrow stone corridor she started in, the cramped switchback of the stairwell the two women led her up, and the grand, plushly carpeted hallway she emerged into.
"-you risk another Stone?" came the wry voice of the dead Marquis, echoing down the hall.
"I tire of this subject." That was the voice of the man who became the glowing lion, the man who had killed his own son: Vormav Tengille.
"Since you act with such wild impunity-"
"You distrust my leadership?"
"The Stones and the Gospel are about to walk into our grasp, and you intend to run."
"There is work to do elsewhere."
"Which is exactly why we should be careful now. Marshal our full forces to deal with our enemies."
"He has been lucky. His luck will not hold."
"So let me pull him from the Underside to make sure of it."
Vormav snorted. "And waste souls and power on a mere boy?"
"And guarantee the boy does not disrupt our plans any further!"
"You doubt yourself so much?"
"I do," the Marquis said.
"I did not think you so fearful, Zalera."
"And if Cuchulainn and Belias had felt a bit more fear, perhaps they'd still be with us."
A moment's silence. "If we restore Ultima the world-" Vormav began.
"If, Hashmalum."
She was led around the corner, to a long table of dark polished wood, set before huge picture windows glowing with the last rays of the setting sun. The Marquis sat at one end of the heavily-laden table, with a glass of wine in one long-fingered hand and the dusk gleaming in his hair: Vormav sat on the other, glowering first at the Marquis, than at Alma. He raised one bushy eyebrow at her, then looked back at the Marquis. "You could have warned me she was coming."
"I suppose I could have, yes," the Marquis said. He smiled politely at Alma as the twins guided her to her seat, halfway between him and Vormav. "Thank you for joining us, Lady Beoulve."
"I don't think I had much of a choice," she replied, taking her seat.
"Not if you wished to learn more, no," the Marquis agreed.
"She will learn nothing else," Vormav grunted.
"Come now, Hashmalum!" Elmdor exclaimed. "How many times have we had this discussion? Willing hands are better than unwilling!"
Vormav grimaced. "And I would rather not waste time preaching to those who will not be converted."
"Not much of a Templar, is he?" the Marquis asked, with a wink at Alma. "Did Celia and Lettie treat you well?"
Alma glanced between the two women, who were moving fine china filled with some spicy soup around the table. "These two?" She shrugged, before the smell of the soup tingled in her nose and left her mouth watering. She immediately picked up the warm bowl with both hands and slurped greedily.
"Not much for table manners, I see," Elmdor observed.
"Am I supposed to concern myself with noble etiquette while in the company of demons?" Alma asked. She could not read either of these monsters in the flesh of men. All she knew for certain was that they needed her alive, or they would have killed her at Riovanes. And while she never wanted to end up back in that hell they'd plunged her into, she was tired of pretending to be anything other than herself.
"Hm." There was a note of amusement in Vormav's deep voice.
Alma placed her half-empty bowl back on the table, wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her white dress, and glared between them. "We're in Limberry Palace."
Vormav's eyebrows arched again. "Are we?"
"I heard you tell him where you were taking me," Alma said. "What I don't understand is how we got here. Teleportation magic is impossible."
Vormav looked pointedly around them. "Apparently not."
"The Ydorans tried," Alma said. "The Ydorans failed."
"Just because they Ydorans failed does not make it impossible," Vormav grunted. "They were not all powerful. We should know. We were there."
Cold spread across the back of her neck, sank into her bones. She stared at him, her momentary defiance forgotten. She'd seen him, in his full demonic splendor. And if he was truly one of the Lucavi of legend, then he had been alive at least since the time of the Ydorans. He had seen the empire that had reshaped the world in its image, and built towering wonders whose ruins were still more splendid than the mightiest achievements of Ivalice. The sheer gulf of time and experience that separated her from them spread before her mind's eye.
"You're a Lucavi," she whispered.
Vormav shrugged carelessly. Down the table, Elmdor nodded. "A Lucavi," he repeated. "But do you understand what that means, Alma Beoulve?"
"You're a demon," Alma replied.
Elmdor shook his head and smiled. His red-brown eyes were kind. "We met before, Lady Beoulve," he said. "Do you remember?"
She remembered. He had only been quartered at the Beoulve Manor for a short time, just long enough to heal the worst of the wounds he'd taken during his captivity. But he was one of the great men of Ivalice, an Inquisitor of the Church, and a legend of the 50 Years' War, just like her father. She had been eager to meet him, and remembered well the frail, battered man who, in spite of all his weakness, seemed to radiate a deep, considerate kindness.
She did not speak, and Elmdor (or the Lucavi wearing his face) seemed unconcerned with her answer. He said, after a moment, "Am I the same as I was then?"
"No," Alma said at once.
Elmdor nodded with satisfaction. "No. I am not."
Alma waited. Elmdor said no more. She stared at him in confusion. "So...you admit it. You're not him?"
"On the contrary, Alma Beoulve," Elmdor answered. "If I were a thing wearing Elmdor's face, would I not take great pains to pretend to be him? Would I not wish to discomfit you, to use his memories and his appearance and his position as tools to spread my malefic influence to the far corners of your society? To tear down your Kingdom and your God, so as to spread a rain of hell on Earth?"
"In fairness to the girl," Vormav remarked. "That's not so far from our actual aims. At least, as she might see it."
"Semantics," Elmdor said, with a dismissive wave. "She is a smart lass. She has been from the first moment we met." He looked back at her. "And besides, how long have we had someone we could talk to earnestly?"
"You are young yet," Vormav said dismissively.
Elmdor shrugged, and looked back at Alma. "Shall I tell you of the man I was before?" he asked. "A fearsome warrior, a pious man who plumbed the deepest mysteries of the Church, so as to better serve God and his appointed Saint?" He shook his head. "A man whose bloodsoaked, miserable rise to the throne of Limberry left him forever in doubt and fear of what might become of the kingdom he cared for, should he make a mistake? A man always anxious for the right thing, and never certain of it? A man who, to the last moments of his lonely life, was unsure that the path he walked was a righteous one? Who died in the name of a cause in which he didn't fully believe?"
There was naked pain in Elmdor's voice, and naked pain upon his face. Alma knew he wasn't human. She was enthralled all the same.
"I was dying, Alma Beoulve," Elmdor said. "Dying of a poisoned arrow on a meaningless battlefield. I fought for the cause of a God I did not understand, in the name of empty words. Righteousness. Justice."
The last one rankled. Alma glared at him, and Elmdor laughed. "I know your words, Beoulve. I used them with intention. I trusted your family once, hoping they were the paragons I sought. I believe you know how my trust was rewarded?"
Alma shook her head uncertainly. "Ramza saved you."
"From a trap Dycedarg Beoulve led me into," Elmdor said. "To make things easier for his master. To set the stage for war that now devours Ivalice." He paused. "And I sank to his level. I saw the scheming minds and wicked hearts of the men who would burn Ivalice to claim the throne, and took part in their plots. I resorted to evil means for what I hoped were noble ends. And when Vormav here came calling, I accepted his offer. A place among his Braves." Elmdor chuckled. "It was an honest offer. Though one I did not fully understand at the time."
He fiddled with something at his waist, then placed the purple Gemini Stone on the table before them. It glowed with rapturous light, swirling in liquid luxuriance. Alma was captivated by its sublime radiance...hough a part of her noted that the Marquis' light did not burn so brightly as Virgo had, when she had held it in Riovanes.
"Do you remember the first time you cried?" Elmdor asked, and then laughed and shook his head. "No need to answer. Neither of us do. We are too young when the moment comes to hold the memory." He tapped his temple. "But something in us recalls, deeper than memory. Something foundational, fundamental to who we are as human beings. Every child born to any parent with even the faintest spark of love in their hearts knows that if they cry out in earnest, someone will come to protect them."
"But we're not much older when we learn the other truth." The Marquis' voice had changed now, somewhere between a priest's sermon's cadence and a drunk's ramblings. "Sometimes it is an innocent thing—we have wandered too far, and for all our crying our parents' cannot hear us. Sometimes our parents have died, lost to tragedy, and we cry out for comfort they can never give us." He paused for a moment. "Sometimes it is worse. Sometimes our cries call monsters, who feed on such things. Sometimes those monsters are the same parents who were supposed to protect us."
There was terrible knowing in his voice. Alma remembered Barinten's predatory eyes, and the radiant mane of the leonine demon that lurked beneath Vormav's flesh. Her eyes flickered down the table to Izlude's monstrous father, who looked almost bored.
"And there is a third kind of crying, Alma Beoulve," Elmdor continues. "A kind you know now, sitting in this room, helpless to resist the potential depredations of we two demons." He smiled sadly. "It is the adult's kind of crying. Where you cry, not in the hope of being helped, but in the face of your own hopelessness. Knowing that no one can come to save you from your sorrow."
His eyes were full of terrible understanding. Alma wanted to look away, and found she could not.
"As I lay dying in a stinking tent on a pointless battlefield," Elmdor continued. "As I lay there burning with a poison that was melting my organs to pulp; as I l lay alone, crying out to God for succor..." His hand clutched at the Stone, which blazed with renewed brightness. "I was answered."
"The Lucavi are not demons, Alma Beoulve," he said, and now his voice was that of a zealot. "They are souls, countless souls, bound to a single powerful anchor, to be reborn, time and time again, into the body of a willing conscript." He held Gemini up for her inspection. "They offered me their wisdom, their comfort, their power. They offered me salvation, and clarity, and purpose. And when I accepted their offer, I found that what they had promised me was a pale shadow of what they delivered."
Elmdor stood up, standing over her, towering over her, and the purple light was sinking into him, so it suddenly seemed to Alma that she was not staring at the Marquis Elmdor but at a pool of deep water in his exact shape, and unimaginable things swam in the depths of that pool, figures and shapes that made eyes, mind, and body alike flinch, things that threatened to breach the water's surface and assail her with their forms.
"I am not the same frail, uncertain man you met at the Beoulve Manor," Elmdor said, as the shapes whirled across his deep form. "I am not the Silver Demon, or the Church Inquisitor, or any of the masks I wore to pretend at faith I could not feel. I am Messam Elmdor, latest host to the Angel of the Dead, and all that was false within me has been made true by my will and the will of the souls joined to me." He smiled, and the smile was more terrible than anything else: a slash of mingled light and dark, like a sun in the midst of eclipse. "And we would offer you a place in our ranks."
"Are we done with the melodrama?" Vormav asked.
The light dulled a little, and a recognizably-more-human Marquis gave Vormav a withering look. "Must you undercut me?"
Alma stared between them, and felt something inside her waver. She had seen, in both these men, demonic power that transcended any magic she had ever witnessed. And she had seen, in both these men, the jokes and foibles and wry disagreements of ordinary humans bickering between one another. Whatever else these Lucavi were, there was something in them that was still human.
So she thought about what the Marquis about said. About power beyond the dreams of even the Ydorans. And, not just power, but purpose. Purpose enough to live without all the doubts and uncertainties that haunted you. Like wondering why it was you were the most powerless and worthless of the Beoulves, doomed to never do anything that mattered, and to fail anyone you tried to save.
So what would Alma Beoulve, Lucavi, be like? What power would she wield, and what could she do with it? Be the strongest Beoulve? Be Queen of all Ivalice? Be a power like her father had been...no, greater than her father had been, as terrifying and fearsome and powerful as any legendary hero from the old stories?
A Lucavi like Vormav? Would her brothers' blood drip off her hands? Dycedarg's? Zalbaag's? Ramza's?
She picked up the soup in front of her, and took another long, mouth-watering slurp. When she put the bowl down, it was empty. "My brother's going to kill you like he killed Cuchulainn," she said.
The Marquis laughed. He was even more human than he had been a moment before: only a trace of the violet glow remained, gleaming off of him like sunlight reflected against a wall. "That's what he told me, as well. He's on his way here, to do just that. And to get you back."
He set Gemini down, and beckoned with his other hand. A door at the far end of the hall creaked open, and a figure in rough servant's clothes pushed a silver car laden with meats towards them. The closer the shape came, the stronger the smell that lingered all across the castle grew: that odd perfume with the sickly undertone. And something else, too: something rotten.
No mystery there. Not when the dead servant stepped into the fading light coming through the windows, which cut straight through the rancid slash down his face
Alma screamed and jerked out of her chair, which landed with a thump on the ground. The servant had once been a man: she could tell that much, even with the curdling flesh shrinking back from jagged splinter of bone, the nose split open almost now the middle so its tip tangled to one side, a polite smile fighting against the rigor mortis of pallid, sunken flesh. He began to move plates of steaming meat and vegetables to the table, with all the ease and comfort of a living man.
"But your brother may find it difficult to kill what is already dead," the Marquis said, and laughed. "Now come, Alma. Dinner's not over yet."
Small hands of terrible strength seized her arms. Alma's head jerked towards the two women who had led her here, struggled in vain not to be pulled back to her chair, and to the rotting, stinking servant. "You're monsters!" she screamed.
"Quite right," Elmdor said. "But no more than your own brothers."
"Besides," Vormav said, soft and certain. "It takes a monster to end the monstrous."