Chapter Two

People used to spread some randy rumors about me and Branford. And while some of them were so ingenious that I was tempted to change the names, write them down, and publish them as erotica under a pseudonym, I found the idea kind of gross. She looked like a kid; compared to me, she was a kid; and besides, I didn't think she was very beautiful. In fact, I didn't think anybody was very beautiful. I hadn't seen anybody, male or female, that inspired that mind-altering state of hormonal and instinctive bullshit that you like to call "love."

Until I saw Natissa Drakken.

I followed Wrexsoul for weeks; over the tossing ocean, through a raging thunderstorm and waves that looked like snakes in a pit, all the way to the desert of Figaro. Once located near Narshe, the castle had relocated itself several times and now fit snugly between the mountains and Kohlingen. I didn't know why Wrexsoul wanted to go to Figaro, since the king was a lech and anyone who was either male or over forty was about as welcome as head lice, but I followed him into the castle anyway. I wondered if he didn't plan on telling King Edgar about me.

Excuse me, your highness, I'm a conglomerate demon who just escaped from the Phantom Forest, and I'd like to tell you that the ghost of your old enemy Kefka is on the loose. Not that you can do anything about it, since he's blown up the Phantom Train, effectively barring himself and everyone else from Hell.

Yup, that would accomplish something.

I figured it'd be easier to spy on Wrexsoul than outguess him, so I haunted the castle, trying not to lose sight of him in its many sweltering stone corridors. Every human I passed was covered in sweat and sand, their clothes sticking to their bodies and their hair plastered to their faces. Positively nauseating. Why would anyone want to live in a place where you could fry eggs on your boots if you kept them polished? I followed Wrexsoul around another corridor, glad I was too dead to be feeling the heat myself.

That was when I heard it. Yelling. It was coming from behind a wooden set of double-doors. Wrexsoul had stopped in front of the door, and was listening intently, so I followed his lead.

"... and since the Cataclysm rearranged this range of mountains here," A high-pitched but strangely imposing female voice was saying, "The pools of Kyrithian are in Jidoor's territory and, as such, are mine."

"Our borders have always been defined by those mountains." That was the deep, unmistakable voice of King Edgar. "My subjects have built towns; grown farms. There isn't any way to relocate them, or any place to relocate them to, so that you can drill on land in which you've displayed no interest until now. "

"I didn't check until now. I have maps here, for comparison. This one is before Kefka's Cataclysm; this one is after. Look at them; go on! It is quite obvious that these mountains have moved nearly a sixteenth of an inch on this map, putting your subjects' farms over my borders!"

There was a pause; then: "M'lady, I am not accusing you of anything, but I believe that any map made either here or Jidoor, in light of recent events, can't be trusted. If we could get our hands on a recent map drawn by an unbiased arbitrator-"

"Are you accusing me of fraud!"

"I have already told you that I am not, madam, I'm just saying-"

"I think we've done enough talking for one day, thank you very much!"

One of the perks of being a ghost is the ability to become invisible and/or intangible to the living. When we heard the doorknob turn, Wrexsoul and I did both. We were still able to see one another, but the woman who came bursting out of the room walked right through me.

I was stunned. Dressed in a tight bodice of white silk, with her puffed, breezy undershirt and matching skirt splashed with intricate ink patterns, the woman looked more like an unorthodox opera bride than a politician. The heavy makeup she was wearing gave the impression of a different profession, but her face was so youthful and her brilliant red hair so wavy and soft that even that couldn't ruin her elegance. She was, dare I say it, a bona fide hottie.

Figures I wouldn't meet one until I was dead.

Edgar, a blonde, long-haired pretty-boy, stormed through my invisible frame after her. He grabbed her arm. "Natissa, wait!"

"You take your hands off me; I'm not one of your sleazy entourage!"

"And I would never insinuate such a thing. But perhaps we're both being too hasty in this matter? Perhaps we haven't even identified the problem-"

"I've identified the problem, and it's you!"

"We can still settle this like gentlemen."

"Oh, did you want a duel? I could give you that, fool, and I'd win before you could draw."

"I mean, we've got time; weeks, months, whatever it takes! We can work out an agreement that will benefit everyone involved, especially our subjects. Think of them, won't you?"

"I am thinking of them!" She crossed her arms. "Ever since magic became an invalid source of energy, I have worked tirelessly trying to find a replacement so that Jidoor, Figaro, Narshe, and the whole damn world won't have to give up their way of life and go back to the ruddy dark ages! And now, that I've discovered Kyrithian, a gallon of which can produce just as much energy in a burning as low-level Magicite summon, you've put up every roadblock you could to stop me from getting at it!" She pointed a sharp, blue-painted nail in his face. "I'm not going to let you keep me from it, Edgar Roni Figaro, even if I have to bully you off of it."

Edgar grimaced. "Let's hope we don't have to go that far. After all, it's not me you'd be bullying away; it's the people who live there."

"If that's what it takes, for the good of everybody else." Her angry face dissolved into a slightly less hostile pout. "But I also hope we don't have to go that far."

And she stormed down the hall, silken, patterned dress trailing after her.

Edgar put a hand on his forehead and retreated to the room he'd just come from.

"Ah, ha." Wrexsoul watched her leave. "The seeds of contempt are already being sown here. If this is not a meaningless war, then I do not know what is. Now, the question is... how to kindle it."

"Kindle it? You think you can hurt me by starting a fight? Get real! I love fights! I'll even place a bet on that luscious vision of beauty that just stormed out of here with the sour-grape face."

"She will be dead when I am done."

"Even better. If she's a ghost, I'll be able to place more than a bet on her, mwa ha."

"They all will. And they will all be part of me." Wrexsoul spread his large, swathed arms. "Figaro and Jidoor are the biggest nations on this planet. If they clash with appropriate rage and abandon, they will wipe out all life... and I will be able to devour the remnant." Wrexsoul paused. "You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"With all of humanity part of one whole, there can be no one to war against. You will not be able to harm anyone the way you have harmed us."

"Wait, wait." I held up my hands. "I want to run this through with you, 'kay? You want to stop me from harming anyone, right?"

"Yes."

"And if I remember correctly, you said in the Forest that you wanted to do this so nobody would have to experience the same living hell that you do."

"I did say that."

"And you're going to start a meaningless war in which everyone will die and become a part of you, ensuring that there's nobody for me to hurt?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?"

Wrexsoul shrugged. "You will not be able to hurt them."

"Being a little petty, there, aren't you?" I flexed my wings. "I might be a bit worried if I thought you'd succeed, but I don't. You don't know Edgar. I do. He may be a hentai, but he's also a goody-two-shoes. He'd sign the disputed land over to Natissa before he'd let her start a war over it."

"Do you really think so." It wasn't a question. "Then, perhaps I will make a bet with you. I'll bet you that they choose to fight rather than negotiate. If you're right, and this ends peacefully, I will go back to the Phantom Train, wait until it is fixed, and go to the other side, leaving you in peace. If it erupts into conflict, as I am certain it will, you will do this."

"Do you really trust me to keep that bet?"

"No, but if it erupts into conflict, you won't have to. I'll absorb everybody and they'll be safe anyway."

"Safe in eternal agony!" I didn't care, but the guy's insolence was really pissing me off, and that overrode my apathy for the state of humanity. "Tell you what, you've got a deal. And you don't have to worry about me backing out. I'm that confident in Edgar's standards."

"I hope, for your sake, that he's as good as you say. Because I will try my hardest to make him yield to the temptations of battle."

"And I'll try double-hard to ensure his impure thoughts are restricted to the Chancellor's daughter. Got it?"

Wrexsoul forcefully shook my hand. His hands were colder than the blizzards in Narshe, only I was dead and couldn't feel normal changes in temperature. Freaky.

"So be it," Wrexsoul said, sinking into the floor. "I will see you then."

He vanished from sight.

I stomped the ground he'd fallen through just for good measure, then turned my eyes back to the room Edgar had retreated into. What could I do in order to stop them from fighting? I could always take the easy route: get myself a bunch of goofy-ass chains, jingle them around Figaro for a few nights, scare some of Edgar's "entourage," then appear to him amidst a cheesy eruption of fire and brimstone and mournfully tell him that I was forced to do penance for my eveel ways by warning him of the dangers of armed conflict. Or I could risk my undeath to stay true to my convictions and murder either Edgar or Natissa so they'd have no one to declare war on.

Which strategy to pick? I looked back over my shoulder at my sliced wing. I remembered too clearly the hand that had dealt that wound. Unroyally calloused from constant tinkering, the hand had belonged to King Edgar. He'd also put an ugly bruise on my stomach with his Air Anchor. After my recent demise, I was nowhere near secure enough to mess with one of the people who'd killed me. That would be dumb. But I wasn't humbled enough to kiss up to him, either, even as a manipulation. That left me with one option.

"Wonderful," I said to myself, "I finally meet a girl I like, and I have to kill her."

I laughed so hard that a passing page jumped and ran away from the disembodied noise.

***

Stopping and smelling the flowers has never been a past-time of mine. I'm too hyperactive. But sometimes, there are things that command your attention, and the view from Natissa's window was one of them. The glaring sun was baking the sand, sending up waves of mirage that distorted the yellow dunes in the horizon and gave everything the look of blown, hand-shaped glass. I didn't really think about it like that until Natissa came back, sat at a canvas, and started to paint it.

She was good. I thought she might even be better than Relm Arrowny, the pint-sized prodigy that painted Owzer's famous Starlet portrait. Better, but distinctly more warped. She did paint the landscape as I'd described it, only she cracked the glass and added extra red, distorting the landscape nightmarishly.

Of course, once I'd noticed, I wasn't particularly thrilled, either. My main concern was getting hold of Natissa's schedule.

I had it all worked out. I couldn't just stab her, throttle her, or throw her out the window. Jidoor would assume she'd been murdered by Figaro sympathizers, or worse, Edgar himself. Then Figaro and Jidoor would be even more paranoid of one another. I'd have to wait until Natissa left Figaro, kill her in a manner that looked like either an accident or a suicide, and make sure that more than one Jidoor-friendly eyewitness saw everything but my ghost. Ideally, I wanted to ace her in crowded public with hundreds of eyewitnesses, but realistically, that kind of opportunity wasn't likely to present itself.

I looked back at Natissa. She was still coloring her canvas with long, swirling strokes. Very clean and professional. She didn't even splatter the paint. However, she didn't look like she was having much fun.

I considered being a poltergeist and overturning her pallette just to spice things up, but I was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was thumping and heavy, and the wood shook under its weight.

"Edgar, if that's you-"

"No, Ms. Drakken, it is Bedivire."

"Oh. I apologize for my tone." Not that she sounded any less belligerent. "Come in."

A burly man with a face like a warty gourd and a moustache as bristly as Natissa's paintbrush stepped through the door. He was grinning widely, showing off rows of large white teeth, and I figured he was one of those people who are too dumb to be anything but unconditionally happy.

"Did you get the parts from the tool shop downstairs?"

"Sure did. They've got mighty fine craftsmanship here, they do. I'll bet we could get the entire machine-"

"You want to pay our enemy so that they'll know exactly what we're buying and why we're buying it? Don't be a fool. We can afford the extra cost getting the rest of the drill elsewhere." But she cringed, as if affording the extra cost were causing her physical pain.

"Where are we getting it?"

"We're stopping by Maranda on our way back. Their products are of moderate quality; mostly salvage from Vector; the chunk of the old city that fell off the tower. But it should serve us."

"If we can talk Edgar into releasing the land."

"Ugh... Bedivire, this is something I would rather not discuss right now."

"I'm sorry. But what I did get here is amazing! The engine's only ten tons worth of freight, but it's powerful; it's basically a smaller version of the one in this castle. And I picked up a few pipes and some coolant... you wouldn't believe how much more advanced Figaro is than the rest of the world."

"Which is exactly why we want to best them. With magic dead, Jidoor is no longer the wealthiest city; it's split between Figaro, which has steam power, and Narshe, which has geothermal electricity. Land and entertainment no longer serve us; technology is the new gold, my friend, and if we want to keep ourselves and our town from going the way of Zozo, we have to be able to compete. Kyrithian would let us do that, and I'm willing to bet that's exactly why Edgar wants to keep it from us. All his talk of philanthropy for his subjects."

"I don't know... he seemed pretty sincere to me..."

"You're starting to sound like his female staff."

I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing.

"So the new engine is ten tons, eh? That'll be a monster, with the shell casing we're picking up in Maranda. It's recycled Magitek, and it's thirty-eight. A fifty-ton drill, once it's assembled. Won't that be amazing? I'll bet nobody's built a portable machine of that magnitude before."

I couldn't take that. I whispered "Kefka built the Light of Judgement," and left them to squabble over who said it. I didn't stick around to see who won.

I now knew exactly what I was going to do. Thirty-eight tons of spare Magitek parts, eh? Thirty-eight tons, if they were mishandled, could cause accidents resulting in serious injury or death. And I was positive that by the time I finished mishandling Natissa's equipment, her "accident" was going to kill her.