Like clockwork

7 Virgo

When we arrived in Goug, it was peaceful. Citizens were chit-chatting with one another, and Mustadio pointed out what we all saw. It was quiet. There was no trace at all of a battle. Where had Lionel’s men gone, they should have been here by now?

Mustadio decided he would investigate. He offered to meet us in the lowtown and absconded. I didn’t understand either, didn’t the cardinal say he would send his men here to apprehend Ludovich Baert, why was there no sign of them?

As the answer still eluded us all, we decided to have a gander around this famed clockwork city. We bought some crossbows and one of these interesting looking pistols that Mustadio had himself, and we went off again. There was nothing new to be learned in the tavern and errands could wait until we got news of what was going on here. Or as the case may be, what wasn’t going on.

We geared up and got ready to meet Mustadio in the lowtown of Goug, as I changed gear and decided that from now on I’d be a summoner.

Goug Lowtown

We finally realised why none of Lionel’s men had been around, why the city was ever as peaceful as it had been before – on the surface, of course, as the citizens had not eluded Baert’s grip of terror.

Like his father, Mustadio had been taken by Ludovich Baert. As we looked around for him, Ramza feared the worst. Then they all appeared; Baert, Mustadio who was thrown onto the ground, and his father who was himself thrown into a rundown little house.

Of course, he wanted the auracite that Mustadio had hidden, and Mustadio had stubbornly refused just to hand it over. So it came to Ramza to hand over the auracite or Mustadio would suffer, and knowing Baert’s activities, we knew he was serious. It hadn’t been the first time he would have heartlessly killed someone to get his way, and it wouldn’t be the last. The reason why both Mustadio and his father had still been alive, it turned out, was because Baert had absolutely no idea where Mustadio had hidden the stone.

But now Ramza was here, and Baert had quickly realised that he could exploit Ramza’s kindness. Ramza would not risk anyone’s life for a stone, no matter how powerful it was. Defeated, Mustadio instructed Ramza where he could find the stone and Ramza retrieved it, only for us all to discover the reason why no knight of Lionel had come to strike Baert down.

Ludovic Baert and cardinal Delacroix were conspiring together. We had walked into a ruse, with our eyes wide open, just because we naively believed a man of faith would do good.

With the auracite in his possession, Baert released Mustadio and casually left. He was too happy with his new toy to be concerned that keeping us all alive may have been a bad decision. Greg rushed up to Mustadio to ensure that he was okay, but he insisted we would strike down all the Trading Company’s footmen to free his father. He didn’t seem all that concerned about the auracite either, even though just the mention of it had turned him pale as a ghost before.

After dispatching the footmen and freeing Mustadio’s father, it became clear why. Mustadio had been so bent on making sure that the auracite would not end up in the wrong hands, knowing full well what it could do after having seen it whir ancient airships to life, that he had switched the auracite for a fake. Baert would never know the difference, he knew, but he would find out eventually. All he did was buy us all some time.

That was not all, Ramza reminded Mustadio as the latter gloated over the success of his own little ruse. If Baert was working with the cardinal, and he had a fake auracite in his possession, then Agrias and the princess were in danger! His gambit had failed, and the only thing left for the cardinal to barter with were the princess and Agrias. He wouldn’t care about risking to make an enemy of the Crown; he would only want these zodiac stones to invoke the legend that he talked of, to bring salvation to the people and the people would gladly accept it because they too are tired of all these wars and power struggles.

But the cardinal has cooperated with a known criminal, and he wouldn’t be above using living beings as barter goods. Those were not characteristics of a pious man. He would not want to call upon the Zodiac Braves to release the people. He would only want to rule.

Either way, the true zodiac stone could not be handed over to the cardinal, so we would have to save the princess instead. Surely the cardinal would have had the roads to Lionel blocked, Mustadio realised, so we would have to go by ship.

Well, I guess that means we’re off to save the princess… Again.

I am Bathsua, summoner of moogles and little else at this point, and these are my memoirs.