(Thank you for your patience and your kindness. Chapters to come as I am able.

CW: Torture)

Chapter 165: Confession

God, no.

Please, God, no.

Oh, Saint, no.

Marcel Funeral, Confessor of the Glabados Church, is fighting for every bubbling breath, fighting through every wave of agony, but worse than the agony is the loss of agony, the loss of sensation: he is dimming, darkening, dying, feeling the light of his consciousness dwindling down to embers.

He has fallen, as the Ydoran Empire Fell. He should laugh at the parallel (though his agony is too great to laugh). One of the secular lessons of Ajora and the Empire is that it is so easy to fall, even from the height of your power. Build a citadel upon a mountaintop, rule from on high, and you blind yourself to how easy it is for a rebel to cast you down upon the slopes, to break you upon the rocks. But for all his long consideration, Marcel Funeral was not ready for this Fall.

He was face to face with Alma Beoulve—heir to a famous name, possessor of power enough to trouble Inquisitors, and answer to questions about the Stones and the plots that surrounded them. He was not ready for her, Nor was he ready for the sword that lanced into his ankle, and laid him low in ice-cold fire.

He fell, screaming. Before his eyes, Vormav Tengille was wrapped in nightmare darkness and searing brightness. Before his eyes, Alma Beoulve flung herself into that simmering thicket, and her shout was crimson light. The young woman wrapped her hands in shadow, with scarlet lightning crackling from her fingers.

A monstrous shadow, limned in golden light, wrestled with a girl who burned red. But the shadow kept darkening, and its golden light kept brightening, and the girl's red lightning grew shorter, dimmer, thinner, until at last shadow and light alike resolved themselves into a leonine figure robed in purple, and the girl was only a girl, with no magic left.

"Enough of your insolence," growled the lion demon, with its mane of golden sunlight, and gestured. Golden fire rolled like a wave before him. Alma Beoulve raised a shout of light that shattered before the fire, washed the light away, washed her away. When the fire faded, she was sprawled face-down on the carpet.

The thing that had been Vormav turned terribly familiar eyes to the Confessor, who had long since stopped screaming.

"I am sorry, Your Holiness," the Lucavi said, stepping towards him with slow, terrible purpose. "I really hoped you might count yourself among our number. You would have been well-suited to Chaos, or Famfrit, or Exodus." He knelt in front of Marcel, as though he were praying. His voice, guttural and powerful, was still so awfully like Vormav's.

"But you would accept no other Stone but Virgo," the demon born of Vormav said . "And in that refusal, I understood. You would accept no other Stone, because you knew what Virgo meant."

The fear Marcel Funeral felt at that moment eclipsed even his pain. The secret that had been shared from one Confessor to another, down through the centuries—the secret of the Virgo Stone, as key to the door through which the Saint would one day return—was the most closely guarded in the Glabados Church. The fear that another knew that secret—that Germonique, confidant of Ajora long before he betrayed him, had known how to bring him back, and so how to keep him from the Earth—had led to their especial fervor in destroying any of his works. And Marcel's own hope—that the knowledge of priests and sinners alike might help him to realize the Saint's return in his lifetime—had let him allow Simon his comfortable retirement at Orbonne, sitting squarely atop the door through which the Saint had entered heaven, poring over heresies that might offer one final, holy clue.

Those secrets, those stories, those hopes, and those fears: all of them, and more, had led Marcel Funeral to this place. To his monstrous crimes in helping to fan the flames of a terrible war. To his struggle to track every Stone, and leave each in the hands of an ally, for the day when all 12 were united again, and the door to the Saint could be opened once more.

It was he who had put the Leo Stone in Vormav's hand. He who had opened the door to this demon, and to this agony, and to this betrayal.

He was in too much pain to hide his thoughts, to hide his emotions: he felt his face betray his fear, saw the recognition in the Lucavi's terrible eyes.

One great hand reached out, and gently stroked the side of the Confessor's face. The hair was curious against his face—soft as a housecat and yet strangely, intangibly warm, like sunlight on stone. "You can simply tell me, Your Holiness," Vormav said. "Tell me, and I will resurrect our Saint."

Lost in pain, lost in fear, Marcel wanted to believe the demon. He wanted to believe his long-cherished dream might still come to pass. The dream of the Kingdom of Heaven, reborn in Ivalice, with the Saint at their head.

How long had he nursed that dream? In some ways, it had been with him as long as he could remember—as the bastard son of the Bishop of Lesalia, secreted away in Mullonde to preserve his father from scandal. Innocent in the way of children, Marcel had not understood the sin that tainted his birth. Innocent in the way of children, he had only seen the wonder of the Cathedral City, and not the loss it represented.

Understanding came later, as understanding always did. Understanding came, and guilt with it, as he realized his own father had broken his vows, and that his very birth was proof of that breach. Understanding came, and Marcel saw that the wonder of Mullonde was a fading thing, a guttering flame threatening to go out. Understanding came, and synthesized his two childhood foundations into new understanding, of the fate of the Church, and the fate of Ivalice, if someone could not stop the long slide into decay.

It was the Church's job to preserve Ivalice's soul, but it had abdicated its responsibility to save itself, as more and more power was concentrated in the hands of the nobles and the King. The Bishops all stood only for themselves: even the Cardinal in Lionel was only a nominal ally to the Church now. Without the Church to guide them, Ivalice would go the way of the old Ydorans—destroyed by hubris, by cruelty, and by an unending lust for power that took the place of any morality.

Marcel Funeral saw the danger, and he was not alone. There were others like him—younger than the staid and tired heads of the crumbling Church, men of vision and vigor who saw what would be needed. Men like Simon Penn-Lachish, his only intellectual rival in Mullonde Seminary. Men like Father Alphonse Delacroix, who openly sought the special dispensation of marriage, who forsook the easy path of Church power for the more difficult deeds of leading Lionel's levies into war. And so Marcel Funeral had started his long labor—to restore the Church to its proper place in Ivalice, and then restore Ivalice, in turn. To spare it the fate of the Ydorans.

It was only later that Marcel had learned he could do more than spare Ivalice the fate of the old Empire. It was only later that he learned of the secret passed down from one Confessor to the next since the founding of the Church. It was only later, through his own careful research, that Marcel had learned he could realize his dream in a single lifetime.

He should have known there was more he did not know. He should have known, even before the Lucavi emerged before him, what horrors lay within Ivalice. The records he had pored through were clear: Ajora had fought the Lucavi. This thing could not be trusted.

Something of his resolve must have shown on Marcel's face. The creature with the glorious mane nodded stoically. "Would that I had time to convince you."

The soft hand stroked the side of his face one more time. Then, with terrible speed, it snaked out, and hooked a claw in the pulsing wound on Marcel's leg. He thought of the Saint again, who had born such agonies for so long, to give his tormentors time to repent. He held back his scream, as the claw traced a rapid, ragged path along the edges of the wound, pulling at it, widening it. But pain built, and built, and built, and finally he could not stop himself from screaming.

He screamed, as the wound was pulled, torn, widened. He screamed, as a claw tore fresh gouges into his calves and soles. He screamed, as two claws hooked around a toe, and began to scissor closed.

"Tell me what you know," the Lucavi said. And when Marcel, panting against the fire burning in his legs, fumbled for an answer, the Lucavi shook his head regretfully, and squeezed those claws together, severing Marcel's toe in a thunderburst of cold flame.

What do you know of the Saint, the demon asked, as though Marcel had not been trying to answer that question his whole life? The Saint as a symbol of mankind, capable of being pure vessels for God's will and grace, capable of being destroyed by ambition and cruelty. The Saint as a man himself, laboring to build the Church even in the face of the Ydorans and their demons? The Saint as Angel of Judgment, vessel for the wrath of God?

But, as a part of him was severed with such delicate cruelty, it was the Saint who had died at Ydoran hands that occupied Marcel's thoughts—the Saint who had been tortured to death for the crime of opposing Ydoran cruelty, betrayed by his most beloved disciple.

Marcel had often thought of that moment, in his decades upon the earth. What was it like, to fall into the hands of the enemies you had spent so long fighting? What was it like, to know you suffered because of the betrayal of one you loved?

But the Saint's torturers had only been his foes. Marcel's torturer was his friend.

Vormav Tengille, rugged and indomitable, as plodding as a tortoise and as irresistible as a behemoth. Vormav Tengille, who was ruthless and cold and terribly pious, who reminded his Templars that the Saint was not only a holy man but also a warrior who had battled with mortal men and Lucavi alike. Vormav Tengille, whose deep seriousness masked wry insight and fearsome compassion. When a Stone had fallen into Church hands once again, Marcel had had no doubts about who he would entrust it too. Vormav Tengille had the name and the power to make a worthy Brave...but more importantly, Vormav Tengille had helped Marcel Funeral rebuild the Templars into their present power. There was, perhaps, no man that Marcel trusted more. Not since Simon...

Oh, Simon. Alma Beoulve had told the truth. You died at the hands of the Lucavi I did not see in my midst.

The claw dug into the wound where his toe had been, throwing up a fresh spike of lightning-laced flame all down Marcel's leg. But it was worse than that first bolt: fresh embers flickered up his muscles, bit into his bones, as the demon dug its claw into the wound, with all the gentle cruelty it had shown to the tear in his tendon.

The pain, at last, was too much: he choked out, "Orbonne!" and hated himself as soon as he'd spoken.

The claw stopped its tearing: the pain dulled to a merciful throbbing. The hand closed around his foot, and there was a flash of golden flame and searing pain: another scream was torn from him, climbed higher as the fire surged along his leg. He felt his skin shriveling with the heat of it, waves of hot agony pulsing up from the fire.

Then the fire passed, and as it retreated, the pain became bearable. He panted, whimpered, as the strong arms of the Lucavi hefted him the air, and carried him gently to the bed as though he were a weary child. The demon with the sunlight mane set him down gently on the plush mattress, and stroked his face again.

"Orbonne," the Lucavi repeated. "What about Orbonne?"

Marcel swallowed, blinking tears from his eyes as steady waves of pain flowed up from his maimed leg. That had been a mistake, he should not talk about Orbonne, he should not talk about the door the Saint would one day step through-!

The Lucavi sighed. The hand that had stroked his face moved to his chest, and pressed down there with the weight of a stone. His free hand freed another claw, and traced a path down Marcel's left arm. Marcel fought not to flinch away.

"You will talk, Your Holiness," the Lucavi said. "It is only a matter of time."

No. He would not. He could not. He had spent his life in plotting and planning, bending every onze of his intellect and will to building the connections, within the Glabados Church and without, that would let him restore the Church to its proper place in Ivalice. In the nightmare of the 50 Years' War, he had seen his fear realized: that Ivalice was on the path of the Ydorans, a path that led to self-destruction. So he had enacted his two-fold plan: to revive the legend of the Braves, and to pave the way for the Saint's return.

The gentle hand traced its way down to his hand. The claws closed like scissors around the first knuckle of his pinkie. Marcel felt himself breathing too quickly, fought not to scream-

Lost the fight, as the claws snapped closed, and fresh pain surged from the stump where the top of his finger had been.

"What about Orbonne?" the Lucavi asked.

But even through the pain, Marcel would not let himself speak. He would endure. He had to endure. He had lived in his life in pursuit of the lessons of Saint Ajora. Now he had to measure up to his example—to let himself be martyred.

He held his tongue, as the claw dug into the stump where his finger had been. He screamed, but did not speak, as claws closed on more knuckles, more fingers, tore ragged gashes into his arms, his chest, his face. He screamed, but did not beg, and did not break.

But then his screaming was cut off, as the demon's hand snapped up from his chest, and closed around his throat. And as he writhed and gasped and choked, the demon's bloody hand cut its way up his chest, and came to fresh a fraction of an ilm from Marcel's left eye. Marcel's own blood dripped from the tip of the claw, spattered against his fluttering eyelid.

"What about Orbonne?" the demon asked, as his claw lowered, oh-so-slowly, towards Marcel's eye.

Marcel writhed and bucked and gagged and could not free himself, he closed his eyelid and felt the claw begin to pierce it and he could not lose his sight, could not lose his eyes, he wanted to see the new world that they were building, he wanted to see Ivalice made wondrous, he did not want to be blinded, please, oh God, oh Saint, please-

"Stones!" he sputtered, through bloodflecked lips.

The claw ceased its descent, but he still felt it there, its point pressing against the thin skin of his eyelid without quite breaking it. The grip on his throat slackened, just enough to let him speak.

"What about the Stones?" the Lucavi asked.

And when Marcel hesitated, the claw jabbed down with sudden force.

A lance of cold agony that spread into scouring pain.

A flash of bloody white, and then nothing.

He started to scream against pain and loss: the demon's hand tightened on his throat, choking off the scream. As the claw pulled away, Marcel's vision was lost in bifurcated darkness: the agonized blackness of his ruined left eye, and the encroaching darkness that held the other as lack of blood and air took their toll.

As his screaming faded with the light, the terrible hand loosened its grip. He tried to blink (fluttering pain in his sightless left eye), and embers of pain helped him focus again. The demon's bloody claw now hovered just above his right eye.

"What about the Stones?" the Lucavi asked, in the same casual tone, and the claw began to fall once more with slow, terrible inevitability.

"Need...all the Stones!" Marcel whimpered.

The claw froze in its awful descent. "Explain,"

Marcel nodded frantically (the nodding was fresh pain, pulsing in his left eye and the stumps of his fingers, flickering in the punctures and slashes left by the Lucavi's claws). "Orbonne," he started. "A...seal. A door. Virgo is...key. But not...not only..."

Pain throbbed from his eye. Pain throbbed throughout his being. It crackled like bloody lightning in the darkness: it danced like fire on his skin.

He should not speak. But he could not bear to lose his remaining eye. More than the pain, it was the loss he feared—the loss of the vision with which he hoped to see Ivalice's new golden age.

"NO!"

Something moved in the dim darkness—a blonde shape, screaming in a familiar voice. The crimson lightning was not the blood of his wounded eye socket, but real magic, crackling as it had crackled before, when Alma Beoulve had last launched herself at the Lucavi.

Above him, the lion roiled: its outlines dissolved in crackling crimson, golden light flaring in a swirling darkness, eddying together like a cloud threatening to disperse. Her hand closed around his wrist, and he felt warmth in that grip, trickling through his veins, itching in his skin. The darkness rimming his vision fell back a little, as Alma poured magic into him.

"My brother's coming," Alma said quickly. "Your Holiness, you have to tell him this, you have to-"

Behind her, the crimson lightning stopped its dancing, and the inky dark-and-light snapped back into the body of the lion demon. His hand snaked out, and Marcel whimpered in such terror as he had never felt, terror that hand would visit some fresh horror upon him, take more fingers, take his genitals, take his eyes. The terror was darkness, and the darkness drowned him.

He heard sounds—Alma's defiance trailed off in choking, the clamor of shouting voices and clashing blades. They reached him as the noises of people in the hallway had reached him in the seminary dorms. He was a young man, sick with illness, safe in bed as he struggled with a nightmare magnified by a frightful fever.

There would be better days ahead. There would be days of study, and days of prayer, and days of power. He would reform the Church, and the Inquisition, and the Templars. He would move into the vacuums left by the atrocious stupidity of the 50 Years' War, and lay the foundation for Ivalice to be what he knew it could be.

And when he had risen to the seat of the Confessor, he had found there was even more hope than he knew. He had found the secret, passed down from one Confessor to the next, of Orbonne, and the Virgo Stone.

"It's...it's the Confessor."

The voice reached him through the darkness of his feverish dreams, where past and present and future seemed to mingle until he could not tell one from the other. Confessor of the Glabados Church. Chosen to be the vessel of God's will, as the Saint had been before him. Chosen because he understood what it meant to be a servant of God: to walk and watch the nebulous lines between the material and the spiritual, between faith and science. To understand the Stones are both blessings from God to his appointed and magical foci of incredible power. To understand that your Braves are symbol and lie and profound truth, all at once.

This is what it means, to pursue a Godly purpose in a godless world. To see both the world as it is and the world as it could be, and to use every tool at your disposal, both the sacred and the profane, to bridge the gap between them. It was that vision which had driven Marcel and his allies through the ranks of the Church, until they stood at its head. It was that vision that had allowed him to rebuild the Church, and place it at the heart of power in Ivalice. It was that vision that had led him to gather the Stones, and spread rumors of Zodiac Braves, and prepare Ivalice for redemption.

And where had such vision led you, Marcel? Your right hand-man is a demon, whose claws have torn you to shreds. Vormav, how could you be such a monster? Was your son like you? Your daughter?

"Oh, Your Holiness."

And in the fog of black pain he was lost in, Marcel finally recognized the voice. That was Meliadoul Tengille, with her voice as wracked as he felt, so much more human than her inhuman father's.

His eye fluttered open. He grabbed numbly for her: a hand too short of fingers failed to catch hold, as faint drumbeats of pain throbbed where his fingers had been been. "Stop them!" he gasped. "You must...stop them!

The darkness was still closing around his vision, but the warmth of Alma's spell had given him a little extra strength, a little extra clarity. Through his single eye, he could see Melia, white-faced, with her grey eyes and thin lips set in eerie echo of her father. Her hands managed to find a section of his arm free of wounds. "Stop them from what, Your Holiness?"

Dimly, Marcel felt another shape moving somewhere in the darkness. Gentle hands found his chest, and warmth flowed outwards from their touch, soothing the worst of his pain. The shadows retreated a little further.

"Lucavi," muttered Marcel. "Your father-"

"I know, Your Holiness."

The terrible knowing in her voice. The terrible knowing in her gaze. He saw pain there—he had not come this far without being able to read a face, however subtle its expressions. But, as always, he was impressed with her poise. The pain passed over it like cloud shadow on a cliff wall and then was gone.

"You...know?"

"We've been trying to stop them."

That was a new voice, but strangely familiar. The warmth and pressure on his chest faded, and a new figure stepped into view: tall and oddly-garbed, sad green eyes and long blonde hair that hung down just past his neck. Even through the fog clouding his thoughts, he recognized the man in front of him.

"Beoulve..." he whispered. "Ramza...Beoulve."

Melia did not look back at the heretic. "He showed me what they were fighting, Your Holiness. And when I heard my father was..."

The pain in her voice and face was more palpable now: she closed her stone eyes against it.

"She's been helping us fight them," Ramza said. "She's been helping us stop them."

Marcel blinked up at the boy. Here he was: the most dangerous enemy on a field of dangerous enemies, the one he'd been most afraid of. Here was a boy who had struck out on his own course and frustrated the ambitions of powerful men and the armies that supported them. Ludvich Baerd, Alphonse Delacroix, Gerith Barinten, Frederick Bremondt, Druksmald Goltanna, Bestrald Larg, Dycedarg Beoulve...and, yes, Marcel Funeral.

Months ago, Marcel had told his Conclave how he admired the boy, turning their own lies against him for his own ends. Except they weren't his own ends, and they weren't lies. There were demons in the world, and the boy he'd called a heretic had been trying to stop them. And Marcel Funeral, Confessor of the Glabados Church, heir to the will of the Saint, had stood in his way.

And just now, he had handed the key to the Kingdom of Heaven to a demon.

He felt fresh tears in his eye. The tears stung against his wounds.

"Stop them," he repeated. "Stop them...from reaching...Orbonne."

"Orbonne?" Ramza repeated.

Marcel nodded, and the nod brought a fresh wave of pain, a fresh wave of darkness. The light was fading from the world again. "Orbonne...is a locked...door," he managed, struggling to get the words out. "The...Ydorans..."

"We know," Melia said softly.

Marcel felt dim surprise in his dimming mind. How could they have learned what had taken him years to assemble? The Emperor of the Ydorans had dreamed of trespassing on God's domain, to try and claim power over life and death for himself. Project Ultima had been the name of that mad plan, and though Marcel had few details he understood that the Saint, God's Anointed, had punished the Emperor and his Empire for their evil, standing at the gates of Heaven and heaping Judgment upon the sinful.

"Virgo...pointed the way," Marcel whispered. "A key...in the lock...at Orbonne. But the door to heaven...remains closed. It needed...all the Stones...to open again. I hoped...to open it...to see the Saint...with my own..."

Harder to talk, with every passing moment. Harder to breathe. Harder to see. The bastard boy who had become High Priest was dying. The dream he'd nursed was dying. He would never see the Saint return. He would never see Ivalice become what he knew it could be.

"It's alright, Your Holiness." Melia's voice was so much softer and kinder than her father's had ever been. He felt her hand upon his wrist, and his forehead.

"It's...not...I..."

So much he had done that he should not have done. So much left undone that he should have done. What a rotten legacy, for the man who had dreamed of bringing the Saint back to Ivalice.

"We'll stop them." That was the heretic's voice, Ramza's voice, so like his sister's. There was terrible strength in that voice, and terrible clarity. Marcel trusted that voice. Marcel wanted to believe in that voice.

"Ramza..." he murmured. "Ramza, I'm...sorry. I thought...you were...lying. I thought..."

He realized something, as the darkness feel like a blanket across his vision, and his thoughts drifted like embers into that blanketing dark. He realized it, and said it, and understood how he had failed.

"I thought...you were...like me."