Princess Peach

Unfinished business

We hadn’t even well left Mullonde, the grenouilles or the hardships that had been thrown at us on the island not even fully digested, or we were thrown back into the deep end. Not literally, of course; we had managed to secure a skiff to get us to Goug, much to Balthier’s dismay as he christened it Atomos for some reason too obscure for me to grasp, and he refused to regale me with the background story. Odd man, this sky pirate without a sky.

Once back on solid ground, welcomed by Besrudio in the local tavern, and a jug of ale to quench our thirst and drown our misery after what happened in Mullonde, that Besrudio had ordered in his celebratory elation for seeing his son return to him in relative good health, we hadn’t even time to breathe. Reis had gone to draw the latest rumours from the loose-lipped tavernmaster, and returned rather white in the face. Then Beowulf decided he should get the story from the plump ale dispenser.

He returned in a huff. We had to go to Lionel, he said. There was some unfinished business he had to attend to. Before Ramza could object – wasn’t he supposed to be the group’s leader? – Balthier pitched in to remind Beowulf that they had other, more important business to attend to. The foamy ale right in front of him, for example, but even so, what could be important enough for Beowulf to go back to Lionel?

Beowulf had only to explain that Reis’s rather agressive suitor, Celebrant Bremondt, had taken on the city’s Lordship and Ramza jumped up, demanding why we hadn’t left yet to bring the man to justice? After all, we had to go through Lionel to get to Orbonne Monastery. And surely there was treasure to be plundered, he suggested to Balthier?

Balthier sighed and slid his jug across the table, towards Ramza’s jug of milk. Fine, he said. It had better be worth it.

What is the going rate on kidnapping princesses, these days?

No sooner were we in Lionel, or Reis had already disappeared. We could scarce keep up with a berserked Beowulf who stormed Lionel Castle only to be confronted with a former comrade in arms, a man by the name Aliste. Balthier was still getting himself ready to plunder the lot of them and had barely gotten himself ready when we had to jump in to Beowulf’s defence.

Rather disappointed in the meager loot he had lifted from the ninjas, archers and the time mage, Balthier finally jumped in to throw one barrage after another on the nigh invincible knight templar until he no longer rose. Swords didn’t seem to bother Aliste, but whencever the barrage came – it wasn’t from the lance Balthier equipped – it did seem to keep the ailing man down.

Not that Beowulf cared much. A dying Aliste urged him to go into the Castle to save Reis, as if he needed any encouragement. When we chased him down, attempting to keep him out of harm’s way, all of us got a nagging bad feeling. This Celebrant Bremondt, whoever he was, had set himself up in the castle’s oratory, a place most of us – save for Beowulf and Balthier – remembered all too well.

This did not bode well. But Balthier had no worries on his mind. He had gleaned some interesting loot equipped on the mystics and the samurai in Bremondt’s entourage and he would be mad to let it slip.

After a long fight dodging the ninjas, trying to take them out only to have that scared old man bring them back into to conscious world, and Balthier urging us to leave the man alone because the man’s reviving skills helped him plunder his entourage better, we had all had it. We only had to cut off the head of this snake, have at Bremondt, and we’d be done. This plundering business had to stop. We were almost dead here, loot couldn’t be that important, could it?

Of course, that couldn’t be the end of it. We were, after all, in the oratory where Cúchulainn had chased us down. Bremondt wouldn’t admit defeat so easily, of course he wouldn’t. He called upon powers of darkness and before us now stood a dragon. A dragon that had nothing to plunder, Balthier snarled.

But at least it was vulnerable to a Dragoon’s Javelin.