Bartz sat in the wastes of the plain, contemplating a leaf of grass. He had been searching for freedom for so long, that watching this piece of plant, rooted in the dirt, suddenly made him envious.
The vast plain of Jenal looked out from where he sat, his arms stretched out leisurely, his fingers digging into the rocky ground. Mountains as tall as the sky circled him, their hillsides dotted with burnt stumps and the howling of the tribes of goblins. Bartz saw the shadows of the goblins flitting between valleys, impossibly fast, carrying their heavy blades that bounced the light of the moon back into the sky during their night raids.
They were moving into the northern valley tonight, Bartz sensed. He dared not travel that direction, knowing that wherever the goblins went, the insanity of magic followed. He had made a habit of avoiding anything magical during the past few years, and he intended to keep it that way.
Bartz’s mount, the chocobo La’mere, grazed quietly nearby. He could hear the sound of his chocobo’s snorts as he happily fed. He was tired after the long ride from Talmon Village. While Talmon was the closest habitable town, Bartz had no desire to return there. The villagers were quite unhappy with him, having nearly hung him in the village square before he narrowly escaped.
He wasn’t sure where he was going next. The next town, a one day ride, was the quaint hamlet of Troia. Bartz knew from the tavern at Talmon that Troia was only slightly larger, but boasted women who were once bred as servants of the Ai, and then during the rebellion they escaped and disappeared into the wilderness. Or at least that was the hearsay of Talmon. He half chuckled when he heard that: the servants of Ai were often known for their beauty, but also for being contemptuous and vile.
Nevertheless, at least for the beauties, that might be a foreseeable stop.
La’mere had stopped grazing, and looked up at Bartz with his big black eyes. The hair on his back had a slight lift to it: Bartz sensed the clouds rolling overhead and felt like a storm coming.
He slapped his thigh, and the chocobo trotted to him, nuzzling his face. He smiled.
“You’re a good boy, you know that?”
La’mere, in response, brought his head up high, ready to move. Bartz stood up, grabbed his gear, and swung onto the saddle. With a kick, they were off.
They found a place to rest in the woods that border that border the plain. They were unnamed for good reason: the villagers and farmers who lived nearby were afraid of the woods, as the goblins often came here for their bloody feasts.
Bartz set the fire and tied La’mere to a tree. It took him several tries to get the fire started, but eventually a small flame was lit. He took out some oil and spread it over the wood, causing a huge blossom of flame, and then sat down next to it, pulling out some rabbit meat and roasting it over the fire using a silver splinter from his pack.
It was quiet, except for the blowing ashes and the wind in the trees. The stars were incredibly bright tonight; the moon was behind a cloud, half-shrouded in a dim sheath of gray, the other half like a broken face.
La’mere whined, and tried to break out of the rope. Bartz dropped the meat, and tried to quiet him down.
“What’s wrong, boy?” he whispered to her, stroking her hair.
As if in response, he snapped his neck again, this time with more violence, and the rope came apart like a piece of thread. He was a strong chocobo, and his impact caused him to prance forward, clambering over Bartz and disappearing into the darkness of the forest.
Bartz lay on the ground, feeling his arm. It felt like it was broken, but he had known enough pain to quell it before it caused him too much of a distraction. La’mere was not easily startled: he was a chocobo of war, one bred by a local king who had his share of battles with the darkness. Bartz was suddenly afraid, and the pain came back to him with full force. He fell on his back and watched up at the sky, and suddenly felt the pit of his stomach reach into his throat.
There was a screaming in the air. It was as if the stars in the sky shifted aside to make room for something. The screaming grew louder, and suddenly the fire pit exploded into a bulbous flame, spitting out sparks to an impossible distance. Bartz brushed the smoldering flames off him; he felt the ground heave, dip, and roll about like the wave of an ocean.
As the sound came to its zenith, a dark shape roared across the night sky. It was covered in flames, as if it were the hand of God coming to destroy the world. It was the size of a small town, with pitted sides like it had been forged in a smithy. It screamed through the air, and as it passed by silence followed, like the afterburn of its flight carried some mysterious spell.
There was an ultimate quiet, and then the voices came. The goblins, in their bacchalic and mesmerizing singing, called out into the night veil like wolves in heat. Bartz tried to move, but found the pain too great.
“La’mere!” he cried out. He was desperate; if the goblins found him here, they would cut him apart and use his skin as ornamentation. Or their madness would spill into him, and he would become a haunt of the moon, spreading chaos and blood across the Earth until someone ended his suffering by sticking a piece of metal in his gullet.
“La’mere!”
Out of the corner of the wood, his chocobo came, bounding towards him, with fire in his eyes. Bartz struggled with getting up, and then threw himself on the back of the chocobo, using his good leg to slip through the leather of his pack.
“Go,” he said. The howling was closer.
“Go!” he shouted. La’mere danced a few steps, and then trailed out of the moon. He could hear the sound of the goblins rushing into the campground and their delight at the fire licking the night sky.
Once out of the wood, they slowed. Bartz had regained some use of his legs, and though it hurt, he moved La’mere into the steppes so he could have a better look.
The strange rock that had flown through the sky left a trail of destruction in its wake. The ground was scarred, trees burnt, and several woods were smoldering and hot orange still. The goblins were everywhere, attracted like moths to the chaos. Following the path was not hard at all; the huge town-sized rock had come to rest in a grove of trees to the far northwest, effectively cutting off the route to Troia.
From behind him he heard the sounds of an amassing horde. Further south, he heard the sounds of war cries and saw flames.
Talmon.
For a moment he felt like he should go back there and save the villagers. The goblins were certainly there now, and the villagers must be scared as ever. He imagined Kylene’s face, her blond hair spattered with blood, the heavy breathing of a goblin hovering over her, teeth rotted with bones, eyes pitch with scarlet. Her quick breaths, as if she anticipated his cruelty and welcomed it, while at the same time struggling in his grasp and screaming for help, from any lover she had ever had during the course of her short life.
But Bartz’s pride held him back; why did they deserve to be saved, when they had nearly killed him; this was the answer to their cruelty. Bartz felt guilty with these thoughts: they had all the right in the world to hold him accountable for his crimes, but no matter. That direction was simply too dangerous now. He only had one route: north. He was curious about the rock, and this gave him an adequate excuse. He limped north, riding slowly. It was as if La’mere also knew the dangers, and he moved forward cautiously.
The rock was bigger than a village; more like the size of a small mountain. It was covered in fallen leaves, and was still smoking by the time Bartz approached the grove where it had fallen. The summit of the rock could be seen over the treeline. It had huge crevasses and dark pits, like a mountainside blasted with magical fire.
Bartz had heard of such things before, but never seen one himself. In one of the Northern provinces, this kind of rock had fallen into a lake and caused a number of villages to be drowned. It happened at the end of the fall season, and the flood had not receded by the period of snow and ice. Those villages were lost to time, as the flooded waters froze over doorways, chimneys, stables, and beds. Villagers had to bring ice picks to the village and break their way into their kitchens and stoves, just to retrieve their cooking supplies so they could last the winter. When the summer season came, the wood had rotted and the villages unlivable.
But this was different: when villagers dived into the lake to examine the rock, they discovered it to be a kind of grayish rock that broke apart when touched; this rock looked like it was hard like obsidian, as if the flames that surrounded it turned the rock into steel. It nearly shone in the moonlight; Bartz saw the reflections of the stars on its surface, even from beyond the treeline.
A rustling in the wood; cracking of branches, and a muffled cry.
Gritting through the pain, Bartz threw himself to the ground, rolling once and dragging La’mere into the border of the trees. The goblins language was a compilation of tongues men spoke, smashed into one at once beautiful yet horrible speech. It was filled with song, yet contained the brashest of words spoken by man across all the language of the earth. Bartz had encountered them enough to know this was the language he heard. However, he also heard struggling and pain.
He withdrew his blade, gripped the hilt and waited. The shadows of the goblins passed by him, and he saw they carried a young girl dressed in bright silks. He gritted his teeth. A simple village girl they were taking to continue their dark experiments.
He saw the goblins closer now; their eyes contained the same madness as he remembered, shining with the kind of pure magic that they practiced on themselves that had made them outlawed in every province in the country. They wore scraps of clothing they found, stitched together by hands that had been turned into claws or talons or worse; their muscles bulged as they walked, but they walked with a clumsy gait, as if they had not learned how to walk yet, still babes.
The girl had beautiful blond hair; just like Kylene, Bartz recalled. But this girl’s nose was more elegant, and her eyes were fierce, shining with a luster of blue that caught Bartz off-guard; her clothes, in addition, decried her being any kind of villager, with spiral floral designs crafted onto the long sleeves, and beads of small stones threaded onto the rims of the dress. This was no ordinary girl.
Bartz jumped forward with his sword, and plunged it into one of the goblins. She screamed out, gripping Bartz’s sword with both hands, pushing it further inside her until Bartz panicked and dropped to the ground. The goblin had caught him off-guard, but as she slunk to the ground, he leapt forward and slid the sword out of her shaken body, ready for the next assault.
“Please, be careful!” the young girl cried out.
The dark man holding her snarled and swung back an ornamented blade. It was obvious to Bartz they must have ambushed the girl, killed her guards, and then stolen the weapons. That sword was the kind of blade given to the king’s guard. The goblin, however, had no idea how to properly wield the blade, and lunged forward without any kind of grace.
Bartz parried the swing and slapped the goblin’s sword arm away, causing him to momentarily lose his balance. Taking advantage of the opening, Bartz winced through his pain and used his boot to kick the goblin back, and then swing his sword downward toward the neckline. The goblin dropped the sword in a gasp of fear.
Before his sword connected, he was grabbed from behind. Sticky hands coated with dry blood gripped him, and rather than going for the neck, he switched positions, shifted to the left, and shoved the blade under his right arm. The figure holding him in the back wilted away, and dropped to the ground with a thud.
The girl had managed to get out of her captor’s hands, picked up the sword, and plunged into the stunned goblin who now lay twitching on the ground. The girl was heaving with deep breaths, staring at her hands.
Bartz gathered his wits, walked forward, and took the sword from the girl, gathering her in his arms.
“It’s ok, you are safe,” he said to her. She trembled in his arms.
“I’ve never killed a man,” she said after a moment.
“They are not men.”
“What are they?” She stopped shaking, and moved out of Bartz’s arms, as if startled by even his embrace.
“They are men who lost their minds to magic,” he said.
“Magic…” she was very quiet, and then collapsed. Bartz moved forward and caught her before she fell to the ground.
“You need to rest,” he said.
“No, it’s ok,’ the girl said. “I can go on. Just give me a moment.”
“Where are you going?” Bartz released the girl, and she sat down on the ground. “It’s not safe here, we need to move to safer ground.”
She looked up at him, and then said, “I am going to the Wind Shrine.”
Bartz knew little of the Shrines, but what he did know was shrouded in mystery. They were guarded by the King’s Cult, a group of religious men trained by the courts in Ai, who then took positions in various temples around the country. He did know that the Wind Shrine was not located here, but quite far away, in a country far to the north, across the waters of the Median Sea.
“That is still quite far, lady,” Bartz said. “By walking, at least a two weeks; by chocobo, I suppose you could travel there in three days.”
“So you can see my urgency,” she snapped.
Bartz was taken a bit aback. She seemed to have little care for his saving of her life. She was probably nobility, some little snot who grew up around extravagantly dressed servants, roasted pig, and handsome soldiers. She apparently knew how to use a sword, but Bartz knew she had never seen the blood of a man before tonight.
“Your lady is free to go where she pleases,” Bartz said, bowing away.
The girl sighed. “I am sorry, you did save my life. Please accept my thanks.” She curtseyed to Bartz, which was quite humorous given the tears and rips in her dress.
“No matter,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal. “Perhaps you would like to join me, as I am headed north.”
“Yes, that would be lovely,” the girl said. She looked at Bartz suddenly, fatigue covering her face. “Forgive my temper. My name is Lenna. May I ride with you?”
Bartz smiled for the first time tonight. “For such a beautiful lady as yourself, I would take you wherever you please. But first, we must take a look at the reason we are both here; if you would please follow me, we will see if there is a way out of these blasted woods.”
It was impressive, Bartz noted, like a mountain just decided to fall from heaven, and burn up half the villages in the plains in its anger. The ground was covered in burn, the tree trunks surrounded with scorched streaks, and many of the rocks nearby had simply been crushed into dust. The earth was still hot.
“Stay here,” Bartz told Lenna. She did not respond, but it was clear from her expression she was surprised as well.
Bartz made his way through the rubble, and touched the rock. It stung him, hot to the touch. The rock was still throwing smoke into the air, as if it was made of ash and brimstone. Almost like the rock came from hell itself.
Bartz clambered up on the rock. It was soft under his feet, like molten steel before fully cooled into a blade. He made his way higher up the surface of the rock, and stopped cold. He heard a sound. A groan.
It was clearly a groan. He rushed over to the sound and found a man on the ground, his clothes burnt and blackened. He had soft red hair, with a full beard that had seemingly been untouched by the flames.
Bartz shook him, and the man opened his eyes.
“Where…” he struggled, breathing in for what seemed to be the first time.
“How is it that you are alive, man!” Bartz said. “Come here, it’s not safe here.”
Bartz lifted the man onto his shoulders and brought him out into the clearing. Lenna gave a short gasp, and jumped off the chocobo, helping Bartz lower the old man to the ground.
“Careful,” Lenna said, smoothing his clothes with her slim and gentle hands.
“Where… am I?” the old man asked.
“You are in the Junel Plain, near the border of Luca,” Lenna replied.
“You were also on the top of this smoking rock,” Bartz said dismissively. “Can you explain that?”
The old man was puzzled at Bartz’s remark. “My name… is Galuf.” He scratched his head. “But I don’t remember much else. Where is Luca?”
Lenna looked with care at the old man, and she helped him sit up. “You just need some time to rest; you’ll remember soon.”
Bartz paced around the site. The rock totally blocked the passage through to the other side of the mountain. There was a short cave that led through part of the mountain, but the falling rock must have destroyed the passage.
“This way is closed off. The only way through is through the pass, but the pass has been destroyed, and this time of the year it’s much too dangerous to try the scale the mountain, especially with our condition.”
“What do you suggest?” Lenna asked.
“There is another way around, but we must go through goblin lands and to the north. I believe I saw a port there when in passing, where we can catch a ship.”
Lenna sighed. “We must hurry. Are we in any danger?”
“Just do what I say, and we won’t have any trouble with them. You too, old man. We’ll get you to a safe haven, but then you two have to go your own ways.”
