(Should be able to keep up a once-a-week pace, at least for the next few weeks)
Chapter 111: Hell on Earth
The world had ended.
The world had ended. His sister was dead. The first man Ramza had ever killed stood smiling beside her shambling corpse. Ramza took a staggering step back up the steps, clutching the hilt of his sword as though it were driftwood on a stormy sea. Darkness lapped at the corner of his vision like a rising tide, threatening to drown him.
"Celia and Lettie told you our purpose is salvation," the Marquis said, as though he were not a demon in a man's skin, as though he were not presiding over a dance hall of the living dead, rot dressed in petty finery. "We deal in death so easily...but we can deal in life, as well." He was smiling, so gently, so genially, so utterly at ease. In one fluid motion, he shouldered his long katana and tossed the gilded white bow in his hand towards Argus, who caught it with a smile as his discarded mask clattered to his feet.
"Our purpose is salvation," the Marquis repeated. "Ivalice united in glory, under the auspices of the only power truly worthy to be called divine. That power can bring equality and prosperity to our broken kingdom, as it can bring the dead back to life."
Ramza could barely look at the Marquis. He could barely look at Argus. The darkness was all around him, all inside him.
Around him were his companions, tried and true, who he had risked his life for, who had risked their lives for him. They had walked willingly into the Marquis' trap beside him, to help him save his sister. To save Alma. Alma, her face a rotted ruin, as she clung so delicately to Argus' arm. How soon after he'd taken her had he killed her? Maybe she'd died at Riovanes, and Ramza had been chasing after her corpse all this time.
Maybe the Marquis could bring her back.
"Give us the Gospel," Elmdor said, as though he could read Ramza's mind. "Give us the Stones. You shall have your sister back. You shall have the Ivalice you seek."
They all promised that, didn't they? They all dreamed of a better Ivalice, as they wrought such endless horrors. As they kidnapped Princesses, laid waste to castles, and made corpses dance to their tune. As they brought back dead murderers. As they killed his sister.
His head turned, very briefly, towards the Marquis. His head turned, just as quickly, back to his sister, and her mangled face. Along the way, through the darkness engulfing him, he made out the corpses standing all around them, haggard ruins of men and women made to fight for a demon's cause. They were outnumbered. They were surrounded. Alma was dead.
He stared at his sister for what felt like hours. The sword in his hand trembled.
"No," Ramza said, and was barely aware he'd spoken.
Silence in the ballroom. It seemed as though no one dared breathe.
"No?" the Marquis voice was soft as silk and sharp as knives.
The darkness danced around him, like the flames of Zeakden. Alma dead, just like Teta. No: worse than Teta. Poor Teta had only been killed. Alma's corpse was forced to be a living goad for Ramza, a dagger at his neck, to threaten him into compliance. To make him relent to the unknown plans of the Lucavi, as they soaked Ivalice in blood.
"No." Ramza's voice trembled: not just with fear, but with a maelstrom of emotion, so immense inside him it felt like a brewing storm, threatening to explode. He felt that storm crackling in his voice. He felt it thundering in his bones. "You will not have the Gospel." The Gospel you killed poor Simon for. "You will not have the Stones."
The Marquis' eyes flashed with rage. "Then you consign your sister to a fate worse than death."
"It seems to me she is consigned already," Ramza said, and as he said it he felt another fresh burst of lightning wind from the storm billowing inside him, alloying with the darkness all around him, so he saw everything with sharp and terrible clarity. They had killed his sister, yes, just like they had killed Izlude, just like they had killed so many people in so many corners of Ivalice, and that was without accounting for the war they'd started for their own selfish ends, and now they thought he would help them?
"You have no idea what horrors I can visit upon her," the Marquis growled, but there was desperation in his voice, and the storm inside Ramza built and built and built, the heavy clouds of darkness and anger threatening to burst.
"Can it be any worse than this?" Ramza asked, and the immense absurdity of the situation hit home: he couldn't help but laugh, and felt the storm inside him thundering along with his laughter. "My sister's corpse stands beside the first man I ever murdered." Argus' eyes flashed with anger: literally flashed, a burst of violet light starting in his eyes and pulsing down through his pallid skin. The sight of it made Ramza laugh harder. "Under the command of a demon wearing the face of the holiest man I ever knew." The next laugh hurt, cold shards in his lungs and in his heart. "A demon and his dead man, leading a host of corpses. How scared you must be."
"You think me frightened, Ramza Beoulve?" The Marquis laughed—a cold, sharp sound. But somehow, Ramza could still hear the fear in it.
"Aren't you?" Ramza asked, his voice shaking with fury: the storm was overwhelming now, the winds howling through his veins, and he felt the cold of Zeakden in his spine and the flames of its explosion in his mind.. "I killed Cuchulainn before I even knew what you Lucavi were. I killed Wiegraf, and when he turned into Belias, I killed him, too. We drove you from Riovanes, Messam." Close now, so close to bursting with an emotion he could not even name, much less contain, and he spat words in desperation. "You kill my sister, and offer to make her a new puppet in exchange for my surrender, and I do not blame you for your fear, because the people beside me have faced armies and demons and every one has fallen before us but if you hoped for mercy you should not. Have killed. My sister!"
He started to lunge towards the Marquis. He was too late: a green-shrouded figure had already burst past him, to crash her blue blade against the demon's silver katana.
"Melia?" The Marquis was almost comically surprised.
"Demon," she replied, and the air around her whoomphed with magic.
In the chaos of Melia's attack on their camp, Ramza hadn't been able to tell much about her fighting style: all he'd known was that she was dangerous. Now, in the bright radiance of the Limberry ballroom, he saw the way she moved: with the same martial ease that her brother had used to cut his way through the Orbonne Archives, and such speed and precision to her sword that it almost seemed to be teleporting from strike to strike.
But after that brief moment of surprise—that staggering step backwards—the Marquis had recovered. His own long sword danced with the same marvelous speed. And he was not alone.
Celia and Lettie were leaping towards them. The great host of shambling zombies was following suit. Not least of all-
Alma.
His sister, ripping towards him like a feral creature, pale hands curled like claws, and the darkness flexed around Ramza's thoughts, smothered his rage in an instant. He couldn't fight her. He'd already killed her once. He...he couldn't...
A terrible burst of terrible light, the familiar roar of a mage knight's Bursting Blade, and a fleck of smoking, stinking black against Ramza's face. He stared at the scorch mark on the red carpet where his sister had been. He stared at the single blackened hand, still clutched like a claw, quivering in front of the scorch mark. He lifted his eyes to Argus' smiling face, as the dead man fished another arrow from his quiver. "Missed!" he called cheerfully.
And the hate was back, and the storm inside him raged, and Ramza was moving again. His hand snapped up found the rune for lightning on his glove, loosed a crackling bolt straight towards Argus. Argus twisted, caught the bolt on the head of his nocked arrow, laughing wildly.
Ramza regretted so many of the people he'd killed. He didn't think he would regret this one.
He threw himself forwards as Argus loosed the lightning-laced arrow, stole back a sliver of his own discharged magic as he somersaulted beneath it, rose up in a terrific slash to break Argus' bow. Argus had leapt away in turn, dancing back across a scattering of tables as a row of dead men hurled themselves towards Ramza with menacing silence. Ramza slashed—one clean, terrible blow. The head of the dead man nearest him went flying. The mangled body kept coming.
Ramza cursed, fell back before the oncoming corpses, cut off a chasing hand, ducked low and cut through a tendon. Still the dead men pursued him, more and more of them all the time, hunting him through a cloud of perfume and rot. Slash, slash, slash, and two of them were crawling but they were still coming, Ramza snapped up a hand to shoot fire-
Saw Argus taking aim behind them.
He ducked low once more, threw himself forwards in the same motion, knocked the headless corpse into the path of the obliterating arrow, flew backwards with the force of the explosion, sunburn heat against his face. He blinked his eyes against hazy afterimages, his throat hoarse with smoke and exertion, the dead men were still coming, so terribly close-
A flash of red hair, and Radia stood in front of him. A slash of her red sword, and the dead men fell like puppets whose strings had been cut.
"They're not undead!" Radia cried. "They're puppets! Powered by his magic! We have to-!"
She broke off, ducked backwards as Celia's sword swung through the air where her throat had been mere moments before, and as Ramza charged to her defense he heard a shout behind him: "Ramza!"
He turned, raise his sword in a clumsy block that was knocked wide, just barely managed to twist aside the lunging jab from Lettie's own sword: he staggered back, flailing his sword desperately to parry the needle-like jabs of her wicked-quick blade. Behind her, the ballroom was utter chaos: on the far side of the room, Rafa's fists and legs obliterated corpses like cannonshot, dripping with blood and dribbling flesh; Meliadoul and Elmdor were a blur of frantic steel (too much steel, as though there were too many swords, and then Ramza saw Malak's flying blades cutting through the air alongside Melia's and understood); to one side Alicia and Lavian were climbing back up the stairs, scouring the oncoming corpses with fire and shimmering light-
"Don't let them go!" Elmdor's voice was taut with strain and firm with command, and a moment later another shining arrow flew from Argus' bow, straight towards the staircase.
Thoom! Lavian raised a shimmering ward, and the explosion burst through the air, a wave of light and force that made Ramza stagger where he stood, twisting aside from Lettie's following slash, and Lavian's shattered ward drifted to pieces like embers wafting up from a dying fire as another arrow raced overhead ike a shooting star.
Thoom! And Lavian was tumbling down the stairss, carried by the force of the explosion, and Alicia was screaming her rage and raising her scepter before bringing it down like a gavel, and a howl of terrible wind exploded like a gale before her, bowling Ramza over, Lettie over, flooring the corpses clawing for their blood, and Argus, now on the balcony on the opposite side of the room where the musicians had once played, hunched low and braced himself on his back leg, iron hands clasped tight as he arched his white bow, and when Alicia's hurricane reached him the air shuddered around him with hints of cyclone force.
He loosed another arrow.
Thoooooooom! This arrow did not just shine: it howled like a storm outside the walls. Everyone who had kept their balance lost it: everyone who had tried to regain it fell the opposite way, only to be blasted by the force of the third explosion.
Everyone but four.
"Argus!" cried Elmdor, stumbling back before Melia's relentless assault. "The caravan!"
Argus was already sprinting. The dance floor of the ballroom was set half a level down, below the surrounding balcony, and Argus alone had claimed a place above the fray. But Rafa, unbowed by wind and explosion alike, was sprinting towards him, far faster than he could move, ready to cut him off-
Before Celia and Lettie stepped into her path. Rafa laughed, raised her arm to block their swords...and fell back with a shriek of rage, as the edge of Lettie's blade buried itself in her iron skin.
"Rafa!" Malak roared, hurtling towards her. His swords hurtled with him like enormous arrows, but Celia and Lettie ducked beneath them, and the blades buried themselves in the wall behind them...though, it had to be said, at strange angles. Almost as though they had never meant to claim the women he'd hurled them at. Almost as though they were meant to be hand-and-foot holds...
Ramza, fallen face-first down onto the ballroom floor, heaved himself to his feet and sprinted towards Celia and Lettie, swung his sword so they ducked backwards and sprinted through the gap between them, and as Lettie turned to follow Rafa was already twisting, snatching Lettie by the ponytail with her uninjured arm and clubbing her against her twin, and that was all Ramza had time to see as he scrabbled for the swords, pulled himself up by the first and bracing his feet against the second, leaping for the balustrade.
A rotten hand grabbed at his boot (Ramza felt the terrible softness of his hand, of flesh turned pillowy with maggots and rot, and fought vomit struggling up his throat). Ramza kicked back, and the hand did not give way.
What did you do to Wiegraf?
Ramza focused, kicked back, and flexed his magic in the same strange, intense way he had when he had blocked Wiegraf's sword...and in the same way he had when he had driven that same sword into Belias' skull. He felt something burst apart behind him, felt something warm and wet fleck against his back, and then-
If you can do that, what else can you do?
He flexed his magic again, this time in his arms, and threw himself over the railing's edge so hard he hit the far wall, and fell to the ground in a stumbling crouch. Gasping, his head spinning, he could just make out Argus reaching the grand doors that led out of the ballroom to the front yard-
And beyond Argus and the doors, the hot white fire of a Mage Knight's bursting blade, as Agrias fought to defend their caravan, and all that it contained..
You will not have the Gospel. You will not have the Stones.
And if he failed here, Alma's death would be for nothing.
From Ramza's stumbling crouch he leapt into a stumbling run, from a stumbling run to a pounding sprint, reaching for his magic the way he'd done a handful of times now, reaching for his magic and trying to combine disparate ideas into one coherent whole, a way of channeling his magic in bursts of momentum, in strength-
One step exploded beneath him, carrying him like a deer's leap. He felt his ankle twinge in protest as he landed, then flexed magic beneath his foot to soften it, to ease his twinging ankle, to be stronger than he should be. The door was so much closer now, as nightmarish battle raged just to one side and just ahead, but he had rage, hate, and despair to drive him on, he would fight until he fell and when he fell he would keep fighting until he was ground into dust, they had taken his sister from him and they would take nothing else!
One final burst, and he barely felt the energy it cost him as he ripped through the main doors, and landed on the outside stairwell. Melia's chocobo lay dead, a livid slash of scarlet on its long, beige neck. Four broken bodies lay around Agrias Oaks. Two more—the honor guard of red-clad men, masked corpses playing at soldiery—still hunted after her, swinging their terrible halberds. And Argus stood at the landing's edge, taking aim with his terrible bow.
"Argus!" Ramza cried.
And Argus turned.
The smile was gone. No trace of it marred his pallid flesh. Purple light pulsed beneath his skin, flowing in the places his veins should have been. And on that should-have-been-dead-face, wearing that not-quite-right skin, there was an expression of terrible regret, and terrible sorrow.
"Ramza," Argus said. "I'm so sorry."
The bow dropped from his hands, and clattered to the ground at his feet. He fell to his knees beside it.
"That was not your sister," Argus said. "It was a corpse made to look like her, made to trick you, your sister is still alive, they can't kill her, they need her for...for..." His eyes went wide with horror, and he shuddered. "Oh God oh God don't send me back forgive me please forgive me I know I deserved it I know I know but please-"
Hate, rage, and despair were all gone now. The darkness had gone with them. Ramza stood in front of the man he'd killed, utterly bewildered. "Argus?" he managed.
Argus shuddered again, shook his head violently. "No, no, there is no time, I do not know if he can hear my thoughts but there is no time-" He lifted his eyes to Ramza, grabbed at his hand. Ramza felt a terrible moment of deja vu: remembering a wounded Argus on the Mandalia Plains, begging for his help among the dead so many years ago. "You have to stop them, Ramza."
"Stop...the Lucavi?" Ramza felt as though he were walking through a dream.
Argus nodded. "They're going to bring Hell to Earth, I don't know what it is, I don't know what they are, but they can do it, Ramza, I've been there, you have to stop them, have to, have to-"
An explosion of light and force behind him. Only one of the halberdiers remained, swinging its weapon clumsily back and forth, and Agrias stalked after it like the Lioness she was.
"Ramza!" Argus clutched at his hand with terrible strength. "Listen to me!"
The desperation in his voice would not be denied. There was matching desperation in his dead eyes.
"You killed me, Ramza," Argus whispered. "You killed me, I died, and I fell into hell, I don't have another word for it, it's like...like you're being torn apart, and the holes are filled up with pieces of other people, all of you are screaming and there's people you know and people you don't and you can't hold onto any of it, my mother, my father, my grandfather, his grandfather, only moments, only glimpses, but they're all there, every soul who's ever died in Ivalice is there, dead and screaming-"
He shuddered, muttered another frantic prayer, shook his head with emphatic violence. "All the dead of Ivalice, all our souls, and it serves some purpose, the Lucavi travel through us like boats upon a sea, and sometimes they can fish one of us out, like the Marquis fished me out, but they're going to do something else, Ramza, something worse, something that's going to bring that Hell to Earth, I don't know what it is but it cannot be allowed, it cannot, it CANNOT!"
His voice was punctuated by another killing blow from Agrias' sword, illuminating his haunted face like lightning. In the time Ramza had known him, he had only once seen such naked need on Argus' face...and only once such naked despair, as he had died in the snow at Ramza's hand.
"That's what the war's for," Argus whispered. "More souls of the storm. That's why they're so afraid of you, that's why they're trying to stop you, why they need Alma, they won't hurt her but you have to stop them, you have to, promise me Ramza, promise-
His body stiffened. His grip on Ramza's hand went terribly tight. His eyes went terribly wide. The peculiar purple glow tracing beneath his skin crackled with lightning violence, and ignited into flame.
Ramza yelled, and staggered backwards from as the violet fire spread up Argus' arm and danced along his dead fingers. He crumpled to ash in every direction at once, the flames whirling over his body, spilling out around the bow he'd dropped in front of him.
He spoke once more, though Ramza did not know how: he could not see his head through the flames.
"Teta...saw Teta...I'm...so...sorry..."
The fire died. A pile of ash lay beside the fallen bow. Ramza stared at the man he had killed. The man he had consigned to hell. The man who had died again, for Ramza's sake, to tell him his sister yet lived...and to warn him of some terrible danger.
"Now, that is disappointing."
Ramza whirled around. The Marquis was standing unperturbed just behind him, the katana braced over his shoulder.
"I had thought his loyalty to me, and his hatred for you, absolute." The Marquis sighed. "Much as I love people, we are so damnably fickle."
Two blonde shapes blurred out of the chaos of battle behind Elmdor (the slumping footsteps of the corpses, the blows and blasts of his companions). Celia and Lettie landed beside the Marquis, katanas in hand. None of them had any wounds Ramza could see. How had they escaped his friends?
How many of his friends hadn't escaped them?
Another flicker of darkness. Ramza tightened his grip on his sword.
"Well." Elmdor smiled, and shifted his position slightly, bracing his blade to strike. Beside him, Celia and Lettie did the same. "I suppose it falls to me."
Ramza's mind raced Elmdor appeared utterly unhurt—either by Melia's furious attack, or Malak's accompanying swords. If Ramza was going to have a chance to hurt him, he would have to go for Argus' bow. Wait for Elmdor to attack, feint away, and-
Bang.
A bloody blossom bloomed in Elmdor's forehead. He blinked, tried to look up at it, and then collapsed forwards. His sword clattered onto the landing before him.
Bang. Bang.
Two more percussive blasts. Celia and Lettie were already diving to either side, but the bullets found them anyways. They hit the ground, and didn't move. Ramza turned his head slowly in the direction of the gunshots.
"As I recall!" Mustadio called, from his place at the caravan's exit, with the Grand Duke's stolen revolver in his hand. "He was afraid of this gun at Riovanes, too!"
Without a word, Ramza sheathed his sword, flung the bow from his back, and picked up the one Argus had dropped. He was already nocking a fresh arrow to the white bow, already pulling back on the string, feeling magic pulse through his fingers like a spell, ready to fire and itching for release-
And the Marquis started to laugh.
He laughed, as though he hadn't been shot in the head. He laughed, and with each laugh, there was a pulse in the air around him: subtle at first, then faster, faster, faster; stronger, stronger, stronger. A faint tracework of purple, like the fire that had devoured Argus: then a faint nimbus of violet, like sunset shaped into a cloud: then a growing blaze, a bonfire of amethyst heat, flickering faster and faster with every passing moment, and there was no time, Ramza had to strike now-
And the violet blaze ignited, a geyser of light and shadow, whirling up into the bright light of day, dwarfing the noonday sun with its radiance, and Ramza flinched back from it, loosed his arrow and saw its explosive energy flicker like a firework lost in the fury of a storm. Shadows twisted in that violet conflagration, human shapes that distorted, swelled, changed-
The fire swirled one final time, then crashed inwards, like a lightning bolt being sucked down a greedy drain. The amethyst light cooled like lava exposed to air. For a moment, the shape it outlined was almost angelic: radiant with fading light, long arms outstretched in seraphic grace, long wings flaring out at the shoulders as it hovered in the air before Limberry Palace.
But then the light faded, and only horror was left behind.
It was a mockery of an angel: impossibly tall and long of limb, great clawed feet like a bird's talons, and the fingers of the outstretched hands were silver blades. Its body was a patchwork nightmare of ill-fitting human skin, a grotesque tapestry of flayed bodies stitched together with thread of liquid shadow. But the wings were worse: great distorted faced were scraped into them, glaring eyes and gnashing teeth. Its head was a fleshless skull of jet-black bone, violet stars burning in its pitiless sockets.
"If you will not serve Ultima in life," intoned the creature (and its voice was Elmdor's voice, it was Celia's voice, it was Lettie's voice, it was a thousand other voices, but it was only one voice, one voice composed of a thousand threads, a tapestry as rich and grotesque as its skin). "Then you will serve Zalera in death."
The angel gestured with one-blade-fingered hand. The flesh of its body shuddered liquidly, like rain-slick leaves in a storm. And with a scream of delight, one wing unfolded into feathers of spearing flesh, and raced after Ramza like sharks through water.