9 Gemini
It has been a year since I last heard that voice, but as it echoed through the church hall, drowning out princess Ovelia’s soft-spoken timbre, I recognised it immediately. I froze.
Delita. Was he still alive? Like Ramza, who claimed to have seen him run off on chocoboback with an unconscious Ovelia, I needed to know. It has been a year since we last saw him, and when our innocence had left us that day in Ziekden, we had joined Ramza to wander Ivalice as mercenaries. Fallen from grace, disillusioned.
It was by chance that we had ended up here, hired by Agrias of the Lionsguard and Ovelia’s guard, to strengthen the defence. King Ondoria III had died, and there was no one to govern. No one, as far as I could gather, but Ovelia and prince Orinus. To think that either she or he could rule Ivalice was a joke. Ovelia had just turned fifteen and Orinus was barely out of his nappies. Literally. The boy was only three years old. But the entire realm wanted them. Dead or alive, to some factions that didn’t matter much. Which is why, Agrias had explained, the Lionsguard needed to hire some squires.
The knights who had attacked the monastery had been of the Order of the Southern Star. And that only complicated things further. After all that had happened, if it truly were him, if my ears did not betray me and Ramza’s eyes did not betray him, then he would be alive after all! How?
I needed to be sure. If only to reassure myself that my hearing would not require special attention. Was it Delita?
Dorter
Oh, and of course Ovelia would need to be retrieved. Agrias was confident he could not have gone far and though Gaff was initially reluctant to acquiesce, and Agrias surely wasn’t waiting for Gaff to join her in her quest to retrieve the princess, we all decided we’d join. All of us were interested to find if Delita was still alive. Oh and of course to save the princess. Of course, that’s what we agreed to, as well. Gaff clearly didn’t want to be left behind with elder Simon, because for the first time ever since I’ve had the displeasure to meet him and his tactless babble, he decided the job was interesting enough not to get paid for it.
Well, wasn’t this day full of surprises. Though, Gaff assured us that he wasn’t joining the mission. He just happened to need to go in the same direction. Sure, Gaff. Sure. Let’s run with that.
Before we ran off, we all checked our gear. I had a mind to change jobs for a while now, and I’ve always wanted to try becoming a mystic. Now was as good a time as ever, I decided, as all the others changed into whatever job they preferred, and we left.
We passed through Dorter, where Gaffgarion, who just so happened to be going in the same direction as the lot of us, made short work of a bunch of thieves who just happened to be there to slow us down. Nothing could stop us now, I sensed it. It must have been my newfound mystic powers that told me. We would find and free Ovelia soon. And Gaffgarion would skewer and cleave himself a way to wherever he just happened to be going.
I am Bathsua, this time truly the Oracle of Ivalice, and these are my memoirs.
Memoirs of a squire 