In the Eyes of a Storm
A Fire Emblem: Awakening fanfiction
"They take after you, you know."
There's a cold draft from somewhere. Rain, perhaps.
He can barely smell it over the smoke.
"It's quite funny how much you're all alike."
The floor is crumbling away beneath his feet; he's forced to tread lightly as he walks on the higher floors.
"Does it run in the blood? A family tradition?"
The sky is his ceiling, the only light from the weak glow of a moon in the clouds and the dying lights of the lanterns that lay in shards by his feet.
"To defy the impossible while it comes for you?'
He can barely even recognize the throne room.
From here, he can see the cracks in the floor from where the barrier had been.
Even now, the air around him felt...isolated.
Isolated.
"That had been your downfall, didn't it?"
Even in this dim light, he can see the scorch marks, the blood, the weapons scattered about.
"Isolation. Such a simple thing. It's laughable, isn't it?"
His cloak lifts a bit as the wind blows through again and somehow he can smell the warmth of the desert night.
Somehow.
Even through the smell of rot.
His flesh is grayed; maggots crawling through. Jaws peeking through the flesh of his cheeks and it's putrid and soft under his fingers.
His eyes had been the first to surrender to decay. Such a pity.
"No, that's not the truth. It's not."
He can feel the bile raise in the back of his throat. A sharp pain in his head.
He grins.
So he's finally awake. Finally reacting.
"The truth was, you could have seen it coming. You could have prevented your own death."
He's awake and he realizes what he's seeing.
His heart stutters, falters, stops.
Only kickstarts back up when the body starts to strain.
Does he really want to join him up there in the heavens above?
"The truth is far more simple and far more ironic than that."
He almost doesn't recognise him.
Almost.
"You would have survived, if not for him. Your best friend."
Does he realise what he's talking about?
Can he even recognise words anymore?
"You'd put your stock in the bonds that you'd foolishly believed in. Such things didn't exist out of fairytales; did no one tell you that, little prince?"
When he kneels on the ground, he feels the fine powder of battle-worn tiles.
He feels his heart sink when he sees that familiar royal blue, feels garbled words rise to his mind, attempting to make sense of each other.
"You were marked dead the day you found him."
His flesh is still soft. It's putrid, discoloured and gives way easily, under his fingertips.
"It's almost laughable. Because that day was that day that he'd started to live."
He can hear a word, he realises. Strung together in a mantra of some kind.
He grins.
"He did tell you, didn't he? What they did to him back in that holding place. What his mother had to do to escape. The things he had to do to stay away, stay free just for a little while longer."
The clothes are in surprisingly good condition, despite the state of the place. Almost a pity he had to do this, then.
He rips the cloth above what used to be his chest.
"And you still trusted him then. What a fool."
His hands were cold, already whittled down to the bone in some places.
"It's only natural for a fool to have such a foolhardy gaze."
He remembers them all too well, those eyes.
"The boy in this body used to love those eyes. You didn't know that and neither did he."
Personally, the sight of them made him want to retch.
"But then, he loved you unconditionally. That kind of sickly-sweet, blind love that could never possibly be returned. Truly wasted on such a fool."
He scoffs.
"And it's contagious, those eyes. They look more and more like you every day."
The skin under his own eye itches even as he talks. How much power did he use?
This body was starting to crack under the strain.
Of course, had it been anyone else, they would be long-dead.
"The sheep that you led, your sister. Your children. Especially the older girl." He clenches his teeth, "She has been nothing but a thorn in my side ever since she took that sword."
His fury flares up again at the memory and his cloak flares out at the sudden rush of magic that pours from his being. The consciousness at the back of his mind puts up a feeble resistance, but is pushed back down almost immediately.
"No more! That girl has interfered with my design for too long!"
Now, he couldn't just kill her. No, that would be too easy for the wench.
His scowl melts away almost immediately, his lips curled at the thought in his mind.
"Perhaps it's a personality trait. A side-effect of growing up without a father."
The skin of his human body starts to crawl at the magic that he summons, old as time.
"That can be easily fixed."
His fingers sink into the corpse's skin, infusing it with forbidden energies, even as he hears the screams of anguish in his mind, increased to an almost normal volume.
His hand actually starts to tremble.
"Isn't this what you wanted, Robin?"
The corpse's jaw clenches, unclenches, the crackle of unholy lightning traveling through its decaying form.
A shiver goes through his body when he hears that same, terrible roar that this body had heard from the moment of its birth, from the moment of its freedom.
"Here he is. Didn't you have something to tell him before?"
Even the glow behind the corpses eye sockets were blue. Odd.
It persevered even in death.
Nausea rises within him suddenly, sudden enough to make him panic for a bit.
And a memory flashes before his eyes.
Of the prince's dying smile, the words that he'd last heard from him
" This isn't your fault'? Of course it is. Look." He tilts the corpse's head up, "Look at what you've done to him."
He feels the surge of shock when he leans in and brushes his lips against the tips of the corpse's hair.
Exactly like the boy himself had dreamed of doing in those long-gone days.
It smells of blood and char.
"At this point you can never tell him, can you?"
His chest heaves, phantom sobs racking through his body.
And something warm trickles down his cheek.
"...Ha. Hahahahahahaha!"
He throws his head back, his laughter echoes through the empty air.
His tears feel warm on his cheeks.
"Excellent. Excellent! If just the mere sight of you could force this wraith-like spirit to react, this mortal who's long lost the ability to use his body, then imagine what it would do to them!"
The Risen corpse groans again and it seems to shake the foundation of his very bones.
"Excellent. It would be an expensive gambit to make you useful but it would be worth it." He says in glee, a deranged, childish glee.
"If it would take a dead storm to wipe the fire of the living, then so be it."
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ahahaha
i havent written anything messed up for this fandom yet so
i
...well. also i haven t seen this type of fic concerning grima even though ive seen art for it. so i wanted to rectify it.
this was also an exercise for writing grima. grima was a butthole to write, i discovered. he's an ass to write and an ass in the stories i write amazing
in any case im glad you stuck around! thanks for reading!
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