Ephidel-centric

It's a deathfic, so no likey, no ready. I wrote this to kill off the plot bunnies that told me to kill him in my big fanfic, and it's my first time trying to write in 1st person, so please don't kill me if it's bad. Also, it has my own ideas about Morphs in it, nothing here is set in stone. Kishuna, unusually, features a lot.

This is set the day after Nergal forst tries to open Dragon's Gate, and Ephidel has been saved by Limstella in this fic.

Guess I need one of those disclaimer thingys... I do not own Fire Emblem and all its lovely bishies, although I sure wish I did. Then Bartre would be more easy to train up to get Karla, and Ephidel would live!

My Arcadia

Last night, I dreamt.

A dream is a scary thing. I had been told by people, but to experience one is another matter entirely. Pictures in your head, like reality, but not reality, and you are pulled along and into this trap of your own making…

It was a harmless dream, in fact one could term it pleasant, but I woke up scared just from the experience.

I dreamt of Arcadia. I know it was Arcadia, it had to be Arcadia! My Master, Lord Nergal, has spoken of it several times, and the place I saw fitted. Sands, white sands, stretching out over the horizon, green palm leaves waving lazily in the breeze, the sky the clearest blue… and the feel of the wind around me, feeling as though I could fly…

Wonderful. Terrifying, but wonderful. And I know, now I've seen it, that I need to get there. Arcadia. My Arcadia.

I still don't know why I dreamt. I'm not supposed to dream. Morphs aren't meant to be able to dream. We aren't made with that capacity; it isn't necessary, or at least, that is what Master says. And Master is always right.

Perhaps it was Limstella. She saved my life today… From the fire. I would have burned, but she kept me alive by sending me quintessence. A routine thing, but perhaps the circumstances made it more… Potent. Master was unhappy with me dreaming. And when Master is unhappy…

I am out on Valor. Standing on a cliff face, looking out at the sea. The spray hits me, my cloak is already soaked, but I don't care. The wind, the way it hits me, it's almost the same as my dream. But not quite…

I yell out in shock; someone pulls me back before I fall. Turning, I see Limstella there, her face as blank as usual. She has come to fetch me for Lord Nergal, she says. I am late. It is not good to be late for Master, hard to find. Lately, the consequences have started to become terrible.

I thank her and teleport the short distance inside. I must hurry. Master will punish me if I am late. I run the short distance to the Gate, because that is where Master will be. The guards I pass on the way say nothing. They never talk to us. We never talk back. That is the rule on Valor.

Master turns as I walk in, a look of annoyance on his face. I hope it is not for me. I bow and walk up, and Master mutters something angrily. That tells me that I will be hurt again. Master likes my pain.

I am correct, of course. Master grabs me and forces me to the floor, growling at me about failures and the way his plan isn't going as it should. I simply nod. Agreeing is always best, I find. I know that I will not be able to ask about my dream.

Later on he lets me go, and I walk to my quarters. The walk is not far, a small mercy I am thankful for, and I sit on the bed. I am a lucky Morph. I have a name. I think. I am no number like the drones. But, being lucky… does it warrant this pain? This hurt? These dreams? I do not understand. For the first time since my creation, I am experiencing something I cannot understand.

Morphs are supposed to be perfect. We are created that way, at least. We have better sight and hearing than humans, greater strength, greater magic. The cost of this is that we do not feel. Emotions for power. Master considered this a good trade. I only know of two of us that feel: Kishuna and Sonia. Kishuna I have met, and he seemed kind and sad, although it did not affect me at the time. Sonia is merely annoying. Unlike Kishuna, she believes herself to be human. Master Nergal let her believe this. It benefits him, so he does it. That is the way of things. Sonia looks down her nose at us, calls us puppets. One day she will die. Then we shall look down our noses at her. Sonia is enough to incite slight feelings in even Limstella…

Speaking of her, she walks in. she hands me a Heal staff, tells me I am to go to the Sacean Black Fang guarding the beach. There has been an accident with a boat, and I am to fix it. Limstella has other duties. She will be draining the dead and dying, without the Fang seeing. She is good at this.

I teleport outside, for ease. I must also practise my locations. I once ended up in some ruins, with a library. Since I was not required, I explored, and I found something… a picture. I felt a reaction, but then I did not feel, so it did not interest me. I would like to return there again, if I could. Connect with my self.

The Fang have mixed feelings about my arrival, so I heal their wounded quickly. I have to burn away a portion of the boat to free some of them, and they shy away from me. I need no tome to cast magic of so low a calibre. This makes them fearful of me. Power for emotions. I wonder now if it is worth the trade.

I feel Kishuna arriving, which is unusual. I am thankful that I have healed all of the Fang, and am leaving. Kishuna stops me when he sees me and walks up. He is less perfect than the rest of us, so as not to sacrifice all of the power when he was given emotions. He is shunned by all he approaches, and I see the pain in his eyes. I know the pain, now. We are hated for what we are, which, when we are perfect, does not bother us. I, a failing Morph, feel it, though. It cuts deep. None will look at us, talk to us, associate with us. We are puppets, creations. Only our Master has a use for us.

Kishuna says sorry. That is all, one word, sorry. He grabs my hand, looks at the star-shaped mark there. I do not know what put it there; it was there from my creation, which is fuzzy, because Master made it so. He drops my hand, repeats sorry. He looks into my eyes, and still that pain is there, that sadness. He sees it in mine. He mumbles something about not being able to change things, says sorry again, teleports away. I stand there for a while, confused, before beginning the walk back to the castle.

Master finds me as I return. He laughs when he sees the look of pain in my eyes, the involuntary hiss as I bow for him. He grabs me by the chin and pulls me close, too close, for a small while, and then lets me go. I realise that I am trembling slightly, but I make my report all the same. Most of the Fang healed, Limstella took care of the rest. Simple. Nothing wrong. I hope that Master can find no flaw to hurt me for… The pain scares me. Another forbidden thing; fear. But still, it is not something I can help. I long to be perfect for Master again, but Master tells me it will never happen. This prospect scares me. Fear again.

Master laughs harshly at me again and pushed me over. I fall to the cold, stone floor, hit it hard, crying out in shock more than pain. Master laughs once more and kneels by me, and I resign myself to the pain. I try to plead, stammer out that I did nothing wrong, but he bends low and whispers in my ear 'you don't have to…'

Limstella finds me lying on my bed. I am not crying, I do not cry, but there is pain clear on my face. Physical pain, which Morphs do feel, so she thinks that nothing is amiss. Asks if I fell, would I like healing? I tell her no. Master forbade me to heal myself, and I am playing it safe. That is always best.

She wants to know if I know the location of a book from the library. It is one I have read, so I tell her its location last I knew of it. She thanks me, but her voice is so bland she may as well have said anything. I watch her leave; her gait is not as forced as mine.

That is good; it means Master has left her alone.

It is tomorrow, and I woke up scared. Dreaming again, is this a regular phenomenon? I hope it is not. I do not like having no control over myself, and in dreams you do unusual things. In the last one, I was trapped under sand, and my eyes were heavy, my body was heavy, I could not move. It was as if I was walking in mud. This, I did not like. Normally, if I were trapped under sand, it would have been easy to escape, but not in my dream. I was on the verge of suffocation when I woke.

That is another scary prospect. If I die dreaming, does my waking self die? Master would not be pleased at that. At least he cannot pull my quintessence back and punish me for dying. I am the product of that. Made of another. Master Nergal says I am the only sacrifice. I do not understand what that means. He never explains it; whenever it is mention he goes into mutterings about Arcadia then, invariably, he gets a headache. He is losing his self to the dark, losing his memories, which is why he does not know. Either that or he has lived so long he forgets.

Morphs do not forget. That is a flaw, and we are perfect. No flaws. I have never forgotten anything I have experienced; I simply store the memories away. Recall is simple, I open mental doors. Acts like that, which would be difficult for a human, are second nature to a Morph. We are the same, but so very different.

Master is human, but lives on quintessence. Others perish for him to survive. That must be the correct thing, because Master cannot be wrong. He taught us so.

I come across Limstella's favourite, Denning. Nergal does not know he is named; he still calls him by number. Denning's number is 265. If Master found that Limstella had a favourite, he would be displeased. Limstella tells me that she only named him to make him easier to teach. She is trying to make him think for himself, to replicate Master's techniques on a drone. I doubt she will succeed, although she tells me she has made a little progress. He will answer to both name and number, at least.

Denning, it appears, has been ordered to find Limstella. I tell him library, a one-word answer, simple for a simple thing, and continue onwards. Drones, no matter how much they interest Limstella, do not interest me in the least. They are mindless. I cannot connect with them.

Blocking, buzzing sensation; it is Kishuna again. Not here, but nearby. I feel the slight feelings I have being amplified, and wonder at this other aspect of his seal. I did not know of this… Simply because I had no emotions for it to affect before…

He appears around the corner, he was looking for me again. That is twice in as many days, so something must be up. Kishuna avoids contact with any, even Master, if it is at all possible.

He greets me with sorry again. I tell him he has caused me no trouble, he shakes his head and mumbles something about Lord Nergal. I frown in confusion – a rare thing for a Morph to do – and he grabs my hand again. He has an obsession with my mark. Every time I am near him, he always at least glances at it. I know not what he means, but something inside me tells me that he does.

He traces the points of the star out with his finger, which makes me uncomfortable, but I try not to show it. I do not feel uncomfortable, I am a Morph. No need for any other than Master to know that I am failing. Kishuna murmurs 'ever the optimist', and I think I pale slightly. Kishuna looks up at me, concern in his golden eyes. He tells me to go to the ruins in the south-east. I ask him whose the orders are, but he shakes his head, tells me I will benefit. As far as I knew, there are no ruins in the south-east, and I tell him so. He shakes his head slowly, tells me to go to the lair of the Shrike. I understand that, at least – he means Teodor. So, I have to find Teodor, for what reason? I ask him this, he says not Teodor. Apparently there is a library… Then I remember the picture, the place I went when I was meant to be somewhere else. My eyes light up, if only for a second, and Kishuna sighs and mumbles sorry for what must be at least the fifth time. He tells me that there is more to what we are made of than we think, that he knows. I ask him what, and he tells me that I needn't worry about the pictures. He lets go of my hand, finally, tells em he will not bother me further. I tell him that his doings do not concern me one way or the other – if he wishes to 'bother me' then he may. Kishuna shakes his head and walks away, and as soon as he is far enough away for me to teleport, I home in on Teodor's signal. Teodor the Shrike, Nergal's slave, because he hungers for knowledge. Nergal lets him have slivers, a bit at a time. He will lose himself in the end, the way Master has. That is the price for being a Druid.

Power for emotions. Power for self.

It isn't worth the trade.

Teodor is not there when I arrive. That confuses me, Teodor is always there. He makes a point of trying to keep 'polluting Morph scum' away from his little hideaway. He can become very vehement about it, to the point of barely accepting us even when we are there on Master's orders. I plan on telling him I was ordered here, if he demands it of me…

So, Eliwood and friends visited Teodor, it would seem. I find him lying dead, next to the throne, a look of annoyance on his face. He was Teodor to the very end, it would appear, something which I have to say I did not expect. I never thought he would die before he lost himself. Either way, he is dead, killed, by the looks of it, with a sword through the heart. The manner of stroke indicates Lyn, not that it bothers me much. I leave his body lying where it is and move on, looking for the library.

I hope that Kishuna is correct… A little searching after consultation of my memory to find where I last saw the picture allows me to locate it. It has been moved recently, another indicator of Eliwood's group. Always disturbing things, they are.

It is a picture of a man and a dragon. The dragon appears female, and they are together in a way, something which I had thought impossible… Master often rants about it, at least. I feel as though the dragon is… Important to me, somehow. I touch her face, a shiver of recognition rushes through me. I drop the picture hurriedly and step backwards, afraid of the new sensation. A reaction… Of the quintessence inside me. Master had warned me about that, a reaction to who I used to be. Be made of, at least. But that is not possible, she is a dragon…

The man in the picture is Master, I suddenly see. Only standing away made it obvious. That scares me slightly. Perhaps it is possible for me to have been this dragon, but… Master would never have… They look so…

I take another few steps backwards. Kishuna was right in a way, I have learnt more of myself, but at what cost? Master, he… I shudder and teleport back to the Gate.

I am unfortunate enough to have picked a location where Kishuna is, and as a result get the most painful landing I have ever had. My magic strains to keep me together as it is blocked, and I cry out in agony as I hit the floor, losing control. Kishuna notices this, runs up to me, which only compounds the problem. I scream at him to get back, which he does, but only just in time. I am nearly torn apart on the spot. I am very thankful for Kishuna's high running speed.

Once he is certain I am not in danger of dying, Kishuna approaches me again, saying sorry in a very sincere way. Once I have stopped moaning in pain, I tell him it was nothing, he need not concern himself with me. He shakes his head and tells me I am 'irreplaceable'. I look up at him and tell him about the photograph, about the reaction. He nods in an understanding way and turns away from me, murmuring about dragons and Arcadia. He looks up suddenly to the side, and backs away, telling me he must go, and then he runs. I frown, perplexed, but then I hear Master. That makes sense, Kishuna annoys Master. I gather that I am not in for much fun, either…

I stumble into Limstella later, and she catches me as I fall over. I realise that I am bleeding all over her, and struggle to my feet. She regards the blood on her white clothes with disinterest, asks me what I did. I tell her nothing. It would not do her good to know I am failing Master. I deserve the punishment, I am bad. Ever so, ever so bad. However, when I begin to cough up blood, Limstella demands an explanation, telling me that she must report to Master that I am hurt. I tell her no, no. it is unnecessary. She makes a disinterested noise and walks on, saying that she will inform Lord Nergal. I shiver and stumble onwards, almost blind with pain.

I run into Kishuna again as I reach the exit. He says sorry again, looks at my hand, but my palm is so bloodied he cannot see a thing. He says I am purer than he, and I am confused. He says I am white, and still I do not understand. He holds my hand up in front of my face, and, to my surprise, white light is playing around it, apparently around all of me. I am in too much pain to notice the calming glow. I try to push Kishuna out of the way, to keep walking. I will never reach where I am going if I do not keep on. I am too weak…

Kishuna tells me it is a waste, and I meet his gaze. He tells me I am free to choose, says he understands. I tell him no, he could never understand. Not these dreams, not this pain. He shakes his head sadly, whether agreeing or disagreeing, however, I cannot tell. He says I am Ninis. Ice dragon of Arcadia, her quintessence made me. My voice hoarse, I thank him. Now I know. He tells me I will be free, I have all the right to go. He says he wishes he could join me, and he will divert the punishment away from Limstella if I am caught, and walks off. I call another thank you, and struggle onwards. I will get there before I collapse, I will!

The pain is becoming almost too great to stand, but I have got here. The cliff. I stand upon the very edge, looking out to sea, the spray hitting me, the wind blowing. I feel myself blacking out, force myself to consciousness. I will have control over one thing in my life. I will not stay and be hurt; I will not be Master's plaything forever. I stretch my arms out; imagine I am in the sky, flying, free. I let the wind catch me as I fall forwards; let it carry my soul out into the sky.

Free.