It's been exactly five years since I finished my novelization of Final Fantasy XII (February 25, 2008 to May 1, 2011). It was a gift for a friend, so I didn't give it much thought once it was done, but another friend took an interest in it recently, and I discovered that I was embarrassed by the quality when showing it to her. I've decided to try a rewrite, though I can't really promise I'll finish it. Updates should be more frequent than usual, since I revise much faster than I write, but I do plan on adding a few new chapters, so that might slow things down from time to time. I'll let you guys know if I ever go on hiatus.

Just as a reminder, this was originally a collaborative process with the friend I wrote it for, so it isn't a direct novelization of the game. Here are some of the more noteworthy changes I've made:

*Larsa is ten years old, since it makes him more vulnerable and less threatening.

*Ashe is twenty-five years old, since she acts like she's thirty and there's only room for one prodigy in this story.

*Basch has a random back story to liven his character up.

*Ashe and Rasler aren't in love in this version. (I think it gives her more depth, but that's just my opinion.)

*Balthier is his real name; Famran's the fake one.

*The only races in Ivalice are humans, Viera, and Occuria. (No Bangaa, Seeq, Urutan-Yensa, etc.)

*The Bahamut scenes have undergone a serious facelift. Purists will be very unhappy with them.

*I've taken a lot of creative liberties where Larsa's character is concerned.

*The Strahl can fly anywhere, over any type of terrain.

*I changed around which stone is found where (purely for the sake of symbolism).

*It's a bit more political than the game.

*Vossler Azelas has been changed to Azelas Vossler because I used to go to school with a guy named Azelas. No joke.

*Al-Cid has been changed to Al-Mid because two Cids seems repetitive to me, and because a Rozarrian prince is not likely to be given an Archadian name.

*Other "gamey" attributes have been altered to make the story shorter and smoother.

Moving on to the rewrite, here are a few other changes I'm thinking about making:

*I'm going to give each country its own language.

*The Garif and Jahara won't make the final cut. (For that matter, I also wanted to get rid of Rozarria, but I don't think that would work; Rozarria's political influence is too pervasive.) The Garif come across as nothing more than an afterthought, and don't show up anywhere else in the story.

*Vayne could stand to be toughened up a bit. In my quest to make him sympathetic, he mostly just turned out whiny. I'll do what I can.

*The whole narrative approach (mainly the detail in which every character's thoughts are described) still feels a bit juvenile to me. Although, I'm biased against that style in general, so I could just be beating myself up here.

*I can't quite tell which portions of Venat's ramblings are true. Same goes for Gerun. I suppose it doesn't matter much in the long run, but I'll try to clean that up as well.

*I've decided to merge Vaan into Penelo. I hate to admit it, but there's nothing Vaan can do that Penelo can't. This is going to require changes to Penelo's character—mainly replacing her cautious nature with Vaan's thirst for adventure—as well as significant twisting of the plot, particularly in earlier chapters. Maintaining Penelo's naiveté and insecurities is still crucial, though, as her relationship with Larsa will have to remain the same. From there, it's just a matter of assigning some of Vaan's lines and actions to Penelo, and then eliminating what's left.

*The first draft was extensively over-written (181,922 words), especially where Ashe's character was concerned. The main purpose of this rewrite is to give it a good, hard hacking.

That said, on with the new and improved prologue…

Prologue

Another body hit the floor, but Reks spun away from it, deflected a lunge, fought against every blow that clashed off his blade until at last they ceased. His fellow soldiers raided the bodies—weapons, armor, medical supplies—but Reks only heaved, wheezed. So many had died tonight—so much time and effort and deception over a piece of land Archadia may not even deign to keep. It wasn't that he felt no malice for the Archadians—their rivalry with Rozarria was petty back at the first and folly here at the last—but the fighting was wearisome at a spiritual level; soldiers barely older than he, killed for a cause not half as just as his.

A haze of light seeped out from beneath a corpse—just at the edge of his sight—and he shouted before he could even register his own voice:

"Get away!"

He leaped, tackled his nearest comrade. The burst ripped around them, singing his boots and throwing him clear of the battleground.

He woke against the stone wall of a walkway some fifteen feet from the platform where the guards intercepted him. Groans sounded in the near distance, but he could see only the exposed blade before him, engraved with the name Azelas Vossler. The captain knelt before him, a heavy hand on his shoulder, and Reks swallowed hard—he was every bit as young as he looked, and this would only prove to his superiors what a tyro he really was.

"Are you alright?" Azelas asked.

"Huh?" was all he could manage in reply.

"You took quite a hit."

"Captain…what happened?"

"Magicite, by the looks of it. You're lucky to be alive."

"The others?"

Azelas rose, extending a hand. "Some burns, but no losses. You saved their lives."

Reks accepted the lift and wobbled to his feet. Nothing remained of the Archadian soldier who detonated the stone, and pieces of his fallen comrades had been blown into a ring around the platform, but the Dalmascan force remained intact, albeit bloodied and disoriented. Archadia didn't usually entrust magicite to low-level soldiers—this was an alarming turn of events.

"They'd do the same for me," Reks said, throwing his chest out and straightening as best he could.

"We're at a dangerous disadvantage," Azelas replied, and then, calling out to the others as they gathered nearby: "Keep watch for magicite. They'll give their lives to keep us from the king."

They answered in the affirmative, but it would be a moment before all wounds were bandaged and the troop could continue on. Dalmasca's alliance with the island country of Bhujerba provided it with vast quantities of magicite, but most of the stones—certainly the most potent ones—powered fleets of the sea and sky; little remained for ground troops.

"As though they didn't already have the numbers," Azelas muttered.

"Artillery is an empty threat in this battle," Reks replied. "Sure, they'll die to keep us from the king, but we'll die to free him."

Azelas smiled, but Reks could see little joy in it. "How old are you?" he asked.

Reks nodded. "Seventeen, sir."

"My gods, are we that desperate?"

And a deep voice cut in, blunted by a Landisian accent: "Archadia takes them at fourteen."

Azelas turned to face his fellow Dalmascan knight—tall, hulking, Landisian by birth, but an infamous force against the Empire from the war's very beginning: Basch Ronsenburg.

"For training," Azelas told him, "not battle." And then, to Reks: "Don't you have parents who'd fill your place better?"

Reks shook his head. "Both my parents are dead, sir. I have a little sister to take care of."

Basch huffed. "Has all the world gone dark?"

"The battle isn't lost yet, Ronsenburg," Azelas answered. "We need to keep moving."

With the company back on their feet, they continued across the platform and into the dank tunnels beyond. Torches lit the walls at a despairing cadence, and the stones were slick with mold. The fall of the fortress at Nalbina last month tolled the destruction of the greater part of Dalmasca's forces—so many killed here in these very tunnels—and the air still carried the smell of battle even with the bodies gone and the blood washed away.

Reks's troop was motley in composition—primarily Dalmascan and Nabradian, as their countries shared a common heritage and mutually intelligible languages, and had united recently in a marriage alliance. Captain Vossler served Lady Ashelia, Princess of Dalmasca, and Captain Ronsenburg served her husband, Lord Rasler, Prince of Nabradia—or he did until three months ago, when the prince fell in battle against the Empire. Now both captains served the princess, and she had dispatched them tonight to aid her father, the king.

A few among their number, however, were from Landis, and ought to have known that the Empire would not stop, would never stop. Perhaps Nabradia had no choice but to pin themselves down, but the fortress would again be a tomb in short order, no matter its defenses. Basch seemed the only one among them who acknowledged this. In fairness, though, Basch was unwell—Reks knew it as well as any.

The war first erupted in his homeland, thanks to false information set forth by Archadian agents. Convinced the republic had aligned with Archadia, Rozarria invaded—and Archadia cited the unprovoked violence as justification for its own invasion. Basch fought for the resistance until it fell, and fled then to Nabradia, where he found his way into the prince's security—only to watch the royal city of Nabudis fall to Archadia in a hail of fire, and with it Nabradia's royal family, both the current king and the future one.

They had all suffered, of course—all lost pride and faith and family in this war—but Basch was a ruin of a man, and if half of what was whispered of Nabudis was true, Reks didn't begrudge him his cynicism. Reks had heard the stories—many stories—but the one that summed it all up told of how the survivors had run toward the invading army, far preferring the Archadians to what lay in the ruins of their former capital. Half a million lost in a single battle, and most of them civilians. Reks couldn't imagine it—no one could imagine it, even though it was all anyone could speak of.

Reks's homeland of Dalmasca, which stood at the exact geographical center of the conflict, had been set adrift, at the mercy of history's restless tides, and it wasn't long before Archadia took Nalbina. And here they stood in counterattack; here they ran, blades bared, in search of their captive king—the only one remaining to the world. They surprised a pair of guards at the end of the tunnel and slew them with little effort—nineteen remained in their company, though they had set out with thirty.

"They should be here," Azelas said, seizing a torch from the doorway and stepping into the room. It was long—a grand chamber—but devoid of furniture save for a few splinters littered along the walls.

"Something's wrong," Basch agreed.

Reks spread out with the other soldiers, checking quickly out a window before posting himself beside it.

"They can't have finished already," said Azelas.

"Who's to say they even intended to see the treaty signed?" Basch replied. "The bodies in this fortress weren't even cold when Archadia came forward with their terms of peace." He spat the last word out with a sneer. "All they really needed was the royal seal."

Azelas had ventured to the end of the room and checked the passageway beyond for guards. "Two paths," he reported.

"Split up?' Basch asked.

Azelas nodded. "And meet back here." He gestured to the soldiers on the left side of the room. "You all with me." And then to the others—Reks included. "You with Captain Ronsenburg."

A flurry of affirmatives answered them, and the soldiers launched into action—out the door and in opposite directions, Azelas and Basch at their heads. The hallway was dim, only the light of the moon at its end, and Reks nearly slipped on the slime beneath his feet, but kept his grip on his sword. Nalbina was under Archadian occupation—they were quite at home here by now—but they could not push beyond the border in peace until King Raminas surrendered.

The clang of steel echoed behind them—boots skidding, voices calling out—Azelas's group had met resistance.

"Turn back!" Basch commanded, yet as they did so, an arrow pierced the back of the soldier beside Reks.

Another clash—blade-on-blade—and Reks turned once more to fend off an Archadian sword as it came down on him. They were funneling out of the chamber his group was meant to inspect—they were funneling out of both chambers, and more of them from the long room the troop had only just deserted. The company was divided—ambushed.

Reks forced his blade through the belly of his opponent just as another of his comrades fell. He struck at the attacker before he could pull his sword from the young soldier's side, and struggled onward, Imperials dropping in his path.

Basch had vanished. Someone called out for him—another recruit Reks recognized from Rabanastre—only to be cut down. The roar of magicite erupted at the far end of the passage—Azelas's group—and the racket there fell silent. Reks felled another Imperial, and turned then on the one beside him as he claimed the last of Reks's companions.

And then there was darkness—the dripping of water in the distance, an echo alone on the stone.

Reks looks behind him. "Captain?" And then to the near chamber where Basch had led them. "Captain?"

Silence again. And then muffled voices—a grunt, and the slicing of steel. Reks bolted after it, into the near room, around a corner with in it.

A table laid upturned there, blue and gray in the moonlight, and a splintered chair littered the floor beside it. And there sat King Raminas—old, withered—slumped in his own chair with a pair of dead knights flanking him. He was bleeding.

Reks ran to him. "Your Highness?"

He was dead.

And a pain struck Reks then—a sleek intrusion, sharp and practiced, which slid out from between his ribs as deftly as it had punctured them. He gasped, gripped the wound, and one leg gave out, dropping him to a knee. Wheezing, he clanked his sword against the stone floor—leaned on it.

"A peace treaty…"

The voice was familiar, but distant—low, practiced, Landisian.

"He meant to sell the very blood of Dalmasca."

He walked around Reks, in front of him, the sword of a Dalmascan knight glinting in the moonlight before Reks's dimming eyes, slick with his own blood, engraved with the name Basch Ronsenburg.