Brave Ascent

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

This was written for the "Yield" challenge at the fe_contest LJ comm. It is the first of my submissions to the comm that I am 100% pleased with.

***

The touch of the wind on his face made black spots dance across his vision. Michalis closed his eyes, but the spots remained, stark against the red lining of his eyelids.

"Hurry, Xanthos. Take us out of here."

His dragon knew him so well that the tone of his voice alone led her to put more force into each wingbeat. Lucky him; he couldn't control her now with the reins, as he had so little feeling left in his hands that he had to continually glance down to know they were even intact. Xanthos carried him higher, to the top of an updraft, then went gliding down to the base of the next vortex. The speed of their descent sent white spots as well as black shimmering through his head like a cloud of flies, and it forced the weight of a heavy spellbook against his chest. The impact made him nauseated; he couldn't tell a bundle of parchment and leather from a burning brand of wood. He would have liked to throw the book down to the earth, or even to fall with it, to dash himself on the ground and so end this misery.

"This is for Maria," he told himself, and concentrated on the image of his sister with her small hands clasped and her eyes filled with a silent prayer. The black-and-white clouds in his eyes couldn't touch his memories.

*

He'd known it was another of Gharnef's traps when he found the tome in an unlocked chest at the Dragon's Altar. He was already in a fighting stance when Gharnef materialized in front of him, a different and far more noxious tome in his filthy hands. Michalis had only smiled then, as he had a surprise of his own for the dark priest. Instead of reaching for a weapon, Michalis hurled himself at Gharnef, wrapped his fingers around the man's throat and squeezed until the wretch's yellow eyes bulged. He'd almost managed to choke the last fetid breath out of Gharnef, but Michalis hadn't expected that the touch of the priest's skin would be toxic. The pain of fire, of ice needles and thunderbolts, caught him unaware as it lanced up through his fingers and caused his grip to slacken. Gharnef wriggled out of his grasp and then squirmed over the floor like a salamander, just far enough that Michalis was unable to keep him from unleashing the Imhullu spell.

When it struck, Michalis no longer knew hot from cold, or light from darkness. The dim violet glow of the temple turned to a shattered mosaic of white light and black nothing, and it seemed his body would dissolve away entirely, like a block of salt in water. When he regained his senses, he found himself alone. Gharnef had warped himself away and left Michalis-- and the tome he was dying for-- on the temple floor.

*

He asked Xanthos to come down at a village on the border between Dolhr and Macedon, in the valley where Xanthos and all of her kind were born. His body still obeyed his will enough that he could dismount and stumble a few paces away. Xanthos stretched out her neck toward him as though she planned to follow him.

"You can go," he said to his dragon. "I'll be staying here."

Xanthos snorted and pulled her head back, though she continued to watch him for a time as he struggled for breath. The black spots seemed to be spreading somehow; he could see them flickering around his field of vision, he could feel them with each gulp of air. His arms felt as though something crawled across them and burrowed into the skin. But he felt the weight of the stolen tome against his heart, and Michalis forced one foot to follow the other in the direction of the village gates. He didn't know if Xanthos would linger outside the village, pining for her rider as dragons did in pretty stories, or if she would go join with others of her kind. He didn't know, and since the whims of the dragon were fully outside his control, he didn't have it in him to care. It was all he could do to control his own faltering limbs.

The village was, as he expected, abandoned. This area of Macedon had fallen into barbarism during his father's reign, and he'd never managed to reclaim it. Nor had his sister....

"Not your perfect world, Minerva. Not mine to save, either."

In the center of the dead village was a small shrine, fallen to ruin, built around a healing spring. Michalis stumbled into the water until it reached his knees; the hot-cold-crawling sensation over his skin eased, and the spots cleared away from his eyes. But his strength was spent, and Michalis eased himself down to half-sit, half-lie, upon the submerged steps of the pool. He couldn't go in any deeper without getting the precious spellbook wet-- or without the risk of drowning should he black out entirely. So he lingered there, not quite dead yet not fully alive, while the spirits of the spring chattered over him.

"Malicious ghosts." If they had bodies, he would have swatted them like so many wasps. "You're no help to us at all."

Michalis heard neither grace nor sense in the caprices of these deities, nor had he ever. To place any faith in their benevolence was as foolish as the belief that, when raindrops fell on his face, the gods grieved his sins, or that when the sun shone upon him once more the gods did bless his sacrifice. They, too, were the stuff of children's tales, the stories he and Minerva had learned in the cradle and then passed on to Maria. Stories where the gods would aid the good and punish the wicked, where the hero's plans always came to fruition and the princess was rewarded for her virtue.

His own resentment, as much as the spring water, kept Michalis alive as he waited. He did not know how long that wait lasted beneath the sun and the rain as the spirits poured their nonsense into his ears. They sent him into a trance, perhaps, one from which Michalis emerged only when the chattering spirits began to sing out in real excitement.

"Yes, I know, you twittering echoes. He's coming."

Michalis met his destiny standing; one hand gripped a crumbling statue for support, the other pressed the stolen tome safely against his chest.

"Prince Michalis, what are you doing here?"

They had exchanged letters before, but this was the first time he ever had heard Marth's voice as anything more than a shout on the wind. The Altean sounded exactly as Michalis had imagined him when reading the letters-- too damned young to understand how the world actually functioned and too naive to know that he didn't understand.

"What has happened to you?" And the little Prince of Light reached out for him, to steady him, to help him. Michalis, unable to step back, resisted by keeping his body as rigid as he could.

"I've been waiting for you." He hoped the smile he displayed made a suitable mask as he held out the tome with one ruined hand. "Take this."

So this was his fate-- to hand a spellbook he couldn't use off to a boy who couldn't use it either. Marth would give the thing to one of those pure-hearted children who followed him like a parade of hatchlings, then send that child in to do the work of the angels and bring Gharnef to justice. And it would probably work, too.

"The Starlight tome." So said the prince as he accepted his present.

"That's right. I managed to take it back from his possession."

"Gharnef." The boy's eyes narrowed, and his gaze was surprisingly sharp. "Where is he now?"

"At the Dragon's Altar." The black spots flickered in his eyes again. "Hah. I was careless."

That word didn't quite sum up his adventure, but Michalis didn't have the time for a proper explanation. Besides, he wasn't obliged to provide one. The voices of the water spirits flooded his ears and Michalis sank to his knees. He didn't stay upright long; whatever stay of fate the spring had granted him must have expired once he handed over Starlight. All his senses began to fail as the blue sky crumbled into fragments of darkness.

He felt a splash of searing heat on his face, like melted wax or hot oil. Then his vision seemed to clear somewhat, and the molten wax turned to a trickle of cool water. He turned his head enough to see that Marth had set aside the blasted spellbook and was scooping some water from the spring, as though a little sprinkle of it now would do Michalis any good when he'd been immersed in the stuff for days. Michalis watched Marth's hands as the boy poured the spring water over him. Small hands, thin arms. This boy could never have done it, never throttled Gharnef to the brink of death and gotten away with Starlight. That was his part to play, then-- a helper, a tool, someone on the level of whichever of Marth's followers actually used the tome to blast Gharnef's rotting body to pieces.

His own body now felt as numb as his hands had been since the priest's poison had entered them.

"Your dragon led me here," said the boy once he'd given up on the healing water.

"Ah. Then there is at least one left loyal to me beneath this indifferent sky." Or it simply meant that Marth was the kind of person for whom, and about whom, pretty stories were written. The sun did shine on his endeavors, the flowers bloomed in his footsteps, and Xanthos would probably eat out of his hand. "Your Highness, I am already finished. Set my body once more upon my Xanthos, and let her take me where she pleases, be it to the bowels of the earth or the burning face of the sun."

He expected some kind of denial from the boy. "Oh no, you can't die yet, we'll save you," or something in that vein. It didn't come, and when Michalis looked past the flickering blackness, he saw in the boy's eyes not tears or sorrow but a clear, cold resolve. He was truly glad to see that; it was, after all, what he had staked everything on when he'd gone off to steal Starlight. Had his instincts failed him the way everything else had, Michalis really would have found it all intolerable.

"Your Highness... I leave the fate of my sisters to you."

He would have said more, but the words turned to a rattle in his throat. He had enough strength to shut his own eyes, so that his last impression of the light was of its warm red glow, the color of Maria's hair, and not of the distant blue heavens beyond. So Michalis had his small victory-- however inconsequential-- as his own fate claimed him.

The End

Alas, poor Michalis. At least he died the hero he always intended to be... but I doubt that gave him any comfort. Props to myaru for encouraging me to finish this!