(Thank you for your patience. The next chapter will be release 5/15/24)

Chapter 156: The Gospel According to Germonique

For a time, there was only darkness.

He had been in this darkness before. Perhaps he had never left it. Perhaps the explosion at Zeakden had left him dying in the snow, and all these things he'd seen—demons, Lucavi, the love and the triumph, the horror and the pain—were simply the fantasies and figments of a dying mind. The pain was the same. The smoke choking him was the same. The darkness drowning him was the same.

He drifted awake (if he was awake) only once. He found himself lying in the back of the rocking caravan, when some chance jostle set jagged fire coursing up and down his arms. He woke up gasping, his tongue too-big for his ashen mouth.

"Sleep," Radia said softly, pressing the cup of water to his lips. And Ramza slept.

His dreams were short and sharp as lightning—flashes of nightmares, flashes of nothing. Occasionally there was pain, interrupting his thoughts, his dreams, his darkness. Occasionally, there were voices. The voices helped the pain. The voices were his friends. If they were his friends, and not more dreams.

The darkness pulled back for a little while, revealing a vaulted stone ceiling with great runes carved into its tiled surface. It took him a moment to recognize the the great training chamber beneath the Daravon Estate. He thought someone sat nearby—he could vaguely make out a shape from the corner of his eye. When he tried to turn his head, slow lightning crackled down his neck, burned in his shoulders and flared in his fingers. He gave up, and looked back to the ceiling. How long he stared at the ceiling before the darkness closed in again, he was not sure.

When next he blinked awake, the darkness felt farther away. This no longer felt like a dream of a dying mind. He was not sure that made it any better, when he had such nightmare images to keep him company. His father's body, thick with Mosfungus. Zalbaag, turning to ash in front of him. The whirling, whorling horror of Dycedarg, revealed for the monster he'd always been.

"Are you back with us?" Cid asked softly.

Ramza turned his head, wincing against pangs of pain (quieter, more like the ache of a pulled a muscle now). Cid sat in a little kitchen chair someone had dragged down. They had surrounded his mattress with a motley collection of objects—a small table, a pile of books. A thin soup steamed on a metal tray nearby. It was not unlike the arrangement they'd made for Radia, as she'd recovered after Orbonne.

"Would I know, if I wasn't?" Ramza asked.

Cid shrugged. "Leave such questions to the philosophers and eat."

It took effort—more effort than Ramza would have believed. He trembled, and his grip felt felt weak, and he was so painfully slow. When he'd managed to secure the tray against his chest, he simply lay there a moment, trying not to pant.

But he recovered his strength, and managed to slowly slurp his soup. He was weak, and his hands still trembled...but he was not in so bad a shape as he'd been when he'd returned from Zeakden.

"How long since Igros?" Ramza asked, setting the empty bowl down.

"A week," Cid said. He studied Ramza for a moment. "Why did you go in alone?"

A lump in Ramza's throat. He didn't bother trying to swallow against it. "He killed our father."

"Your friends would have helped."

"I couldn't...stop." Ramza closed his eyes. "We couldn't stop."

Cid sighed. "Zalbaag?"

"Died. Saving me."

Silence in the room.

"There were some twenty soldiers in your brother's guard at the Manor," Cid said. "Most of them died, but not all. One of them was sent for reinforcements, as the Manor burned. Saw a demon battling Zalbaag. And someone else saw you coming from your father's grave. Found the Mosfungus." He was quiet for a moment. "I'm so sorry, Ramza."

Again, the nightmare images flashed through Ramza's mind like lightning. He nodded slowly. "So they're saying...that I consort with demons. I killed my father...and my brothers. I am...a new...Germonique."

He could not cry. There were no tears in him—only weakness, and pain. He only closed his eyes, and wished the darkness would take him again.

"Ramza." Cid's voice was quiet, contemplative. "When Goltanna was convinced I had betrayed him...I sat in my cell, waiting to die. And your...friend." Slight hesitation on that world, slight distaste. "Delita. Came to me. Reminded me of something I should have known all along. Dishonor lies not in what the world thinks of us, or the stories that are told of us. Dishonor lies in our words and deeds alone. In our intentions, and our actions." He drew a shaking breath. "You were foolish. But you have not dishonored yourself, whatever the world may think of you."

Ramza did not answer. What would be the point? He had failed Zalbaag, as he had failed so many others through the years. Miluda. Teta. Wiegraf. Simon.

"Delita said something else," Cid continued, into Ramza's darkness. "About what it means to be a soldier. What it means to do nasty, violent things, in service to a higher cause. That the greatest among us do those nasty, violent things to build a better world. He named your father as one of them." He paused. "He named you as one of them, too."

Ramza almost laughed. Nasty violence was his entire legacy, and for no higher cause than vengeance. Gaffgarion had been right all along. Who knew what fresh bloodshed awaited down his bloodsoaked? What fresh horrors Lucavi like Andrammelech would unleash? What fresh horrors he would unleash?

"He convinced me you and Olan could stop the slaughter at Bethla Garrison, and thwart the Church's plans," Cid said. "He was right. And he told me of other plots...other threats. Of Lucavi, and still-greater-evil. Evil he thought you alone could stop."

Cuchulainn had sold Ovelia to the Nanten, and sparked a fresh war. Belias had strangled Wiegraf's nobility, and slaughtered a castle. Zalera had turned Limberry Palace into a nightmare masquerade of dancing dead. Andrammelech had killed Zalbaag. Ramza had slain them for their crimes, but what did that matter to their victims? And whatever the name of the demon that held his sister, his plans continued. His sister was still a captive. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

"You mentioned Germonique," Cid said. "It's funny. While you were away...Mustadio cracked his code."

And what did that matter? Cracking the code would not save them, as Simon's work translating the Gospel had not saved him.

"You're tired," Cid said. "Body and soul. I have not been where you are, Ramza. Not even when my liege lord betrayed me. Because it was your brother who betrayed you. Who killed Zalbaag, and your father. They both deserved better. So many people deserve...so much better than this world will give them." He sighed. "I would let you rest longer, if I could. But what lies before us is...so much worse than I imagined."

"We need you, Ramza Beoulve. The world needs you."

There was the slight scraping of wooden chair legs against stone, and quiet footsteps as Cid left the room. Ramza did not open his eyes to look after him. He kept them screwed shut, hoping the darkness would take him once again. But minute after minute, the darkness refused to claim him. And all his pain, all his self-pity, and all his sorrow could not protect him from the words Cid had spoken.

Mustadio had cracked Germonique's code. And whatever he had learned, it had shaken Cid. Ramza had heard it in his voice.

Slowly, Ramza opened his eyes. Slowly, he turned his head towards the small pile of books on the nearby table. Already, his neck ached less than it had when he had first awoken. Already, he could feel grudging strength returning to him.

He reached for the books.

I am sorry.

I am sorry.

I am sorry.

I write it as often as I say it. As I sit in my little hut, I mutter it to myself. When I risk trips into the broken remains of the Empire, I fight the urge to say it to anyone I see. So many people, fleeing one way or another. Always, the same haunted look in their eyes. They have seen the end of days. They have felt Ajora's Judgment.

They are right to call it that. It was Ajora's Judgment. Let them believe in Him. Let Him be the martyr, sacrificed to Ydoran ambitions,whose death brought divine reckoning to a sinful, blasphemous Empire. Better that glossy lie than the truth. That is why I write this account, to undercut the glossy lie. And I weave, from my lies and half-truths, a compelling disguise for the truth that must be kept hidden.

The truth must be buried, hidden...but not lost. There may come a time when the truth is needed. Because Project Ultima endures. And while Project Ultima endures, our world will never be safe.

What I wrote in this account is not untrue. I joined with Ajora, when he roamed the far reaches of the Empire. His legend grew, as we traveled. As we faced myriad foes, and righted myriad wrongs. His crimes grew with his legends. Families, towns, and whole regions burned where he walked. He aimed to defeat the most powerful empire mankind has ever known: he accepted any price to beat them. I do not say this to excuse him, but to explain him. His road was paved with good intentions. It still led us to Hell.

But to be fair, his crimes were still less than those of the Empire he destroyed. What he did, and what I did to stop him, were the acts of monsters from the bowels of hell. But the Empire would have brought Hell to Earth. They were the ones who conceived of, and built, Project Ultima. They were the ones who dreamed of becoming gods.

Ajora put an end to that dream. But in its place, he would have raised his own. He would have been a God in earnest: a righteous deity, holding all the world in his thrall. His intentions were good. But there is no such thing as a benevolent tyrant.

I joined a man I admired on his quest to end an evil empire. I saw the lengths he would go, and the depths he would sink to, to achieve his goal. But as I looked out at the ruin we wrought together, I found that I needed to amend my tale. I needed to hide away the Lucavi, and the Stones, and Ultima.

All magic comes from the soul. The greatest magics require tools to be realized: runes written in blood or inscribed with the rights materials, tools that wield these runes in specific ways. Auracite is the most powerful of these tools: so powerful that, in the right hands, it can perform genuine miracles...and genuine monstrosities. I am still not sure which the Lucavi are.

In theory, one does not need auracite to build a Lucavi. In theory, one could make one out of your own body: weld souls to your own, to steal their magic for yourself. But in practice, the only Lucavi we know of are bound to the Stones. The Zodiac signs carved indelibly upon the auracite serve as a locus for the magic that holds the souls in some demiplane between our world and whatever waits beyond the veil of death.

The Lucavi did not start as demons. Each was born from a soul's willing act of necessary sacrifice. I do not know all their stories, but each one bears some resemblance to the next. Somewhere, someone wished to retain the knowledge, the talent, and the power of some unique soul. Perhaps it was a mad mage desperate for immortality, or a tyrant determined to maintain his rule. Perhaps it was a scholar who wished to preserve his knowledge, or a hero who wished to leave some legacy of protection for future generations. Perhaps it was merely a desperate soul, dying and clinging to the possibility of life.

That first soul formed the anchor. Every soul thereafter was a fresh link the chain, making it stronger. The creatures born from this magic are a gestalt of every soul bound to them, but their natures are determined by the first soul that formed them. Those who long for tyranny will bind themselves to tyrants: those who longed for life will bind themselves to the desperate.

I should know. I have fought against such monsters. And I have fought alongside them.

You have read my journal, if you are reading this hidden message. I have told you of the man I loved: the man, beloved among the people, who began to oppose the Empire where he was born. The man who traveled, to colonies and battlefronts, to long-repressed nations suffering under the imperial yoke. I have told you how he sought to destroy the Empire, and carried his brutal, necessary war into the Ydoran heartland to bring them down. But I left out the Lucavi. His masterstroke.

He spoke to cults, and old religions, and old resistances. He fomented old tensions, and lent his aid to rebels. He found mutinous lords and virtuous men, and offered them what help he could. Everywhere he went, the lives of the people were better. And everywhere he went, war followed in his wake. He spread the forces of the Empire thinner and thinner: he set the Empire to boiling. And along the way, he found the Lucavi (those who served the Empire, and those who defied it) and asked them to join his cause.

Zalera, who binds themselves to those who fight for desperate causes. Cuchulainn, who always seeks to punish the wicked. Belias, who is always on the side of righteous rage. Shemhazai, who hungers always to serve death to tyrants, and deliver justice for the downtrodden. Mateus, who finds a home in the ambitious. And Hashmalum, most of all. Hashmalum, our greatest foe. Hashmalum, our dearest friend. Hashmalum, Lucavi of the Empire, who fought us with all his strength, and revealed to us the danger of Project Ultima.

I did not love all that we had done, these years at war. There were good people, left to die, so we could live to fight another day. Passionate people fought to free homelands they had no hope of freeing. I had my doubts about our cause, and the righteousness of our deeds.

General Leo put paid to those doubts, on the day he joined us.

Ajora had some fame before I met him, as he gathered like-minded souls to his cause. I spoke of General Leo elsewhere in these pages: of the man who was charged with hunting us down. I did not tell you that he was one of the Empire's Lucavi. He was the bearer of Hashmalum, Bringer of Order. I never knew Leo, before he was Hashmalum. But as I understand it, they were well-suited for each other. Hashmalum wants peace, above all else. And he will kill whoever he has to, to maintain that peace.

But he could not kill us. Not in Mullonde, where we fought him in the Slums: not in Bethla, where we buried him beneath his fortress: not in Fovoham, where we finally bested him with the Exile's help.

I knew him, before we fought him. I served on his staff, not long before I met Ajora, when he put down a rebellion in Gallione. Our paths crossed only a few times. He paid me a compliment, at how smoothly our supply lines operated, in spite of the guerrilla strikes at our lines . I admired him then. I admired him as I fought him. I admired him when he waded towards us in a wave of obliterating light, smashing apart our magic. I admired him as we brought him down, and bound him in magic, and asked him to join us.

And I admired him, when he bowed his head, and agreed. He needed to know we had the strength to beat him. He needed to know we had the strength to stop Ultima.

Auracite is powerful, Lucavi or no. One soul sacrifices itself to be the first anchor, and forms pacts with future bearers, binding their souls to the Stone, to be inherited by the next host down the line. Of the 12 known Stones, 11 have Lucavi bound to them. Only the 12th, Virgo, had no Lucavi bound to it. But the Empire was ready to make one.

We had suspected that Emperor Xande had such ambition. We thought he might mean to make himself a Lucavi, and pass himself down the line. One eternal Emperor.

We were right. But we were also wrong. We were so terribly wrong.

The Empire built a web across Ivalice. Virgo serves as the anchor for this web, as the other Stones do for their respective Lucavi. But unlike the others, Virgo does not merely join with the willing. Every soul that dies in Ivalice is bound to Virgo. Every soul that dies in Ivalice is denied the right to move on to whatever awaits us beyond our mortal coil. Every soul that dies of old age, that dies of illness, that dies fighting against the Empire, that dies fighting for the Emperor. When Emperor Xande finally made himself a Lucavi, he would have the strength of every one of these souls at his fingertips. The creature that would be born from him would not be a Lucavi: it would be a God.

This was Project Ultima, so-called because it would make an end of history. There would be no new eras, no new empires. There would only be a God-Emperor with the power to reshape the world as they willed, enthroned upon the souls of the damned dead.

Hashmalum told us this, and begged us to stop it. The Empire, made eternal, would be a place of endless horror. No army could hope to oppose the monster that Xande would become. Hashmalum had fought us, because he saw no hope but to try and rein in the excesses of the Empire, and buy time. The magic required a certain number of souls to be realized: he hoped to delay it, as long as he could. But in us, he saw the hope of stopping it entirely.

I wish I could describe the expression on Ajora's face, when he heard this. When he heard that ever battle, every rebellion, had merely strengthened the god that Xande intended to become. When he realized that his plan had come to naught.

And I wish I could describe to you the look on his face, when he emerged the next morning, and told us we would put a stop to Project Ultima.

There are places where they call him Saint now. There are places they imagine him, beatific and endlessly compassionate, until my betrayal made him hate. But that hate was always there. Ajora had been one of the bright stars of the Ydoran Empire, destined for some high place. And he had found that destiny appalling. He had found the Empire appalling. His hate sustained him. He would not stop fighting, no matter the cost. Because whatever was required to destroy the Empire, allowing it continue would be far, far worse. That had just proved it, hadn't they? Harvesting the souls of the dead for their own nightmarish ends.

Ajora and I had fought publicly—the stories I told in these pages are not all lies. So Ajora decided I must be the one to betray him. I would go in secret to the Magistrates, and help lure him into a trap. He would be taken, and tortured, and martyred. I would be vilified. The Empire would reward me, for removing one of their greatest enemies. And together, we would put an end to Project Ultima.

I wonder now, if he always intended to betray us, too. If he always intended to seize Ultima for himself. I wonder if it was all lies, from the beginning. I wonder if he abandoned the Empire, not because they appalled him, but because he could never rise all the way to the Emperor's seat.

He did not tell me then. And he did not tell me, when he became Ultima.

I betrayed him, as he asked me to. Our company was scattered to the far reaches of the Empire. General Leo secreted me into Mullonde, and Belias, Zalera, and Cuchulainn rebelled in the heart of the city. While the man we loved was being tortured to death, we did our best to enact his plan. Because when the city was spread so thin, there was no one to stop Hashmalum and I from reaching Virgo. No one was there to stop us, as we poured Ajora's blood upon it, and performed the magic he had designed, exactly as he had asked us to.

I have seen great magic, in my time. I have seen Ajora call up a storm so fierce and terrible that the lightning falls like rain. I have seen Belias flood fortresses with fire. I have seen Ydoran airships pouring forth such devastation that all that remains of the cities they attack is ruined stone and dirt smote into glass. And still, I have never seen anything like Ultima.

They call it his Judgment. They are right to do so. Airships were swatted from the sky like flies, with a mere glance of his burning eyes. A legion marched against him, and was reduced to dust. A dragon breathed fire like a river, and he laughed, and his laughter evaporated the dragon's fire before it shredded the dragon into strips of dangling meat.

Even then, I knew what we had wrought. But I still wanted to believe in him. Maybe there would be more left, if I had tried to stop him then.

But I didn't. I believed in him. The Bloody Angel, with its wings of scarlet, carving a path of retribution across the Ydoran Empire. They had hoped to use this evil power to rule forever. Instead, it would destroy them. It was justice.

It wasn't justice.

It took too long to see it. When he destroyed the Citadel, that was justice. When he struck down legions, fleets, and dragons, that was justice. When he began burning Mullonde...

When he began burning Mullonde, I saw what we had wrought. The hate inside him, made manifest.

I did not have to guess. He told us. Over the ashes of the city, and the smoking corpses that remained, he spoke in a voice like the roar of the sea. He would eradicate every trace of the Empire. And he would preside over a golden age such as mankind had ever known.

The Lucavi cheered him. They saw in him their myriad causes made manifest: ambitions fulfilled, punishment for the wicked, justice to the deserving...a righteous order. Perhaps because the Lucavi are no longer human. Perhaps because they are too human. I cannot blame them. I wanted to believe. I tried to believe. But I could not believe this horror was any better than the Emperor we had set out to dethrone.

So I set out to stop him. And I was not alone. There were many of us, who followed Ajora, and believed in him, and hurt to see what he had become.

Did I know then, the cost we would pay, to bind him away? Did I know then, the ruin we would bring to the Empire? They call this ruin we live in Ajora's Judgment. They are right to do so. But none but we few know: there were two Judgments. The Judgment Ajora paid upon his enemies. The Judgment we put upon him, in sealing him away.

The heart of Project Ultima was in Mullonde—the heart of the web, where the spider sat. But the web is larger than the spider, and required careful anchors all across Lucavi to trap the souls that served the god it made. I had studied the magic that had let Ajora become Ultima. There was no reason I could not turn that magic upon him—turn his own strength upon him.

The souls of the Lucavi are bound into their own demiplane, outside the normal rhythm of life and death. Incarnated, each carries the strength of a small army. In Ultima, there lived the strength of nations. And I turned that nation upon itself. I wrought magic to make a make a god fall.

Have you ever seen a tower fall? Have you seen the devastation that is unleashed—not just upon the tower, but upon all that sits nearby? That devastation is multiplied by the size of the object you destroy.

Ajora had burned Mullonde. I sank it into the sea. It, and all the Ydoran heartland, gone as thought it had never been. Everything that magic touched, it destroyed. Fortresses were reduced to rubble: fertile farmlands to ash. Gallione now sits athwart the sea, where once it abutted only land: Bethla Garrison now overlooks a great desert. The Araguay Wood once stretched half of Ivalice: now a pitfiul copse remains, clinging to the shadows of mountains, after the fires that scoured it for days.

What Ajora had done was terrible. What I did was worse. In binding Ultima—in binding Ajora—I brought death to everything Project Ultima had ever touched. And the Empire was nothing if not thorough: the god they'd built was bound to every corner of their Empire.

Perhaps I was wrong to stop him. Perhaps the world would be better with a true god to rule over us. Perhaps he would have brought us to a golden age: he would bring justice to the wicked, and serve even the weakest among us. Perhaps the horrors I saw him rain down upon the Empire were just one last nightmare, before the sweet dream could being. In the darkest hours of the night, I wonder.

And then I remember other nights. Nights with him. How we planned and plotted against the Empire. How we saw men and women from all stations twisted into its service. Into its image. Project Ultima was the Empire made manifest—a ruthless intellect that vivisects our world in search of more levers, more power. How even the best and brightest of us bent to serve it.

Project Ultima was a tool, as sure as any sword. And there is no sword that can be drawn without the thought of killing. Killing is in its nature. That does meant there is no cause in which to draw a sword—how many swords did we draw, in our battles against the Empire? But every sword we drew, we drew in the hope that there might come a day when we might draw them no longer.

There was one purpose for Project Ultima—eternal dominance over all mankind. Perhaps that power could serve a higher purpose: perhaps it could be used to put an end to those who had forged it. But when Ultima spoke of ruling, as the Ydorans should have ruled, I knew. That sword served no higher purpose. It was a tool for killing.

What Ajora did was terrible. What I did was worse. But what Ultima would have done...would have made of us...that would be worse still.

Some days, I wish to speak this truth for all the world to hear. And some days, I am close to doing so. Not every corner of Ivalice, curses my name. Not everyone agrees that Ajora was the Saint who would have saved us, save for my treachery. I might well convince men and women of the truth: of what Ajora became, and would have become.

And yet, I hesitate. Because Ajora, who believed as I believed, heard of Ultima. Because Ajora became the nightmare he had once sought out to stop.

That is the danger with truth, you see. Tell one man a well is poison, and he will seal it off. Tell another, and he will lead the unsuspecting to it, and rob their corpses after they drink. Truths and lies matter, yes...but what matters more is what we do with them.

So I encode my information, in a story that mixes lies with truth. I tell any who care to read that Ajora built a cult on purpose, to lead a revolution against an Empire. I tell them of his callousness, his cruelty, his manipulations...and his brilliance. I endeavor to make sure that this budding religion built in the ashes of his death will not become too powerful.

None of these things are lies. But they are not the whole truth, either. Because I want no one to know one other truth. The ruin I brought to Ivalice, I brought by binding Ultima with his own power. But I did not kill him—did not, and could not. He may one day be freed. The Stones, after all, cannot be destroyed: Virgo is still the key to immense power, and the Lucavi who so gleefully sided with Ajora may one day be reborn, knowing full-well what Ultima is, and knowing he may be resurrected.

So in my lies I weave my thread of truth. I fear humanity's capacity for evil, but that is not the whole truth, either. The wrong truth in the wrong hands can bring ruin, true; but the right truth, in the right hands, can bring salvation.

I say I am sorry, over and over again. I say it to you know, dear reader, whoever you may be. I am sorry this burden now falls to you. It is a burden, no matter when you read it, no matter what the future holds. If the cult of Saint Ajora grows into a proper religion, you may be hunted as a heretic. But even if this faith in the Saint does not take root, you will still know a secret no one should know. You will still have to bear this knowledge, wherever you go.

I hope that is the worst of it. I hope that this knowledge comes to you only as a dreadful secret you must keep, and not an urgent message you must act on. But part of the reason that I bury this truth is in the hope it may help someone, on the far-flung day that ruin comes again to Ivalice. That it may save our world from devastation. That you may do what I could not, and end Project Ultima once and for all.

But still, I am sorry. Had we been stronger, smarter, braver, truer, this burden would never have fallen to you. Please, do better than we did. Please, do right by this world. Please. Please. Please.

I am sorry. But sorry as I am, still I beg of you: be true.