Spoilers for 27E/29H: Cog of Destiny, and what came after.

This work was originally written as a gift for ergoipsofacto on Livejournal, who was looking for fic with characters who don't interact much in canon. I'd like to dedicate it to my good friend V.S., who will understand when they get to the second variation, hahaha. :]

01. actus virtutis

Far from their homes in gilded castles and farming villages, the mish-mash army under the joint Ostia-Pherae-Caelin banner sleeps in shared canvas tents, on wool sleeping-mats. To each of them, lord to orphan, square footage as small as possible, to save room in the caravan for extra weaponry and vulenaries; one might be happy for each moment sleeping on the hard ground when that extra arrowhead saves their life in the heat of battle.

They are camped at the foot of the Shrine of Seals. After a long and hard-won battle against the Black Fang, exhaustion has claimed most of them – even Eliwood is asleep, and Hector wonders if he is dreaming of Ninian, who only hours earlier gave herself up to Nergal. Hector himself cannot sleep. He is not even close to tired.

He steps out into the night and it tastes electric, like a fever dream. His arms and legs are twitching. The air is ice-cold on his tongue. All of his senses are heightened, and he feels as though there is a snarling beast within him, ready to pounce. Ever since Athos cracked the Heaven Seal before him and the strange white light overtook him, he has been filled with the strange urge to strangle someone, and its intensity is terrifying.

So he tells himself he's being a responsible commander and inspecting the camp, walking through the nest of tents with his hands clasped behind his back like he knows what he's doing. The waxing gibbous moon is all the light he needs to see the way, for there are no lit torches at this hour, not when they will begin to move west at the crack of dawn.

Only – yes, there is one lit tent. Hector moves closer to the source of light, spilling from underneath the tent flap. He knows that he shouldn't, that responsible commanders should consider the insomnia of one soldier below them, but curiosity gets the better of him and he knocks on the canvas, managing to disturb it with a slight shifting sound.

"Hello?" There is a rustling within, and it is Canas, looking slightly bewildered, who pushes the flap open. "Oh – Lord Hector. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Can the pleasantries," Hector says, softly. He peers inside; Dart is fast asleep, pushed up against one of the tent walls, and Canas has an oil-burning lamp in the centre of a collection of tomes.

Canas adjusts his monocle. "I usually take advantage of the quiet of night to catch up on reading. When I'm not on watch, of course." Hector steps in, and Canas does not stop him. "Is something on your mind, Lord Hector?"

"No." He picks up the nearest book and opens the front cover. "Yes." The inside reads The Compiled Records of Izuka the Betrayer. "Why did you join us, Canas?"

"I did not lie when I told you I seek knowledge." Canas takes the book back, gently. "My curiosity has taken me to strange places, and it will most certainly be my undoing one day, whether on the end of a blade, or – as my brothers did."

Hector does not prod, but motions with his chin towards the exit of the tent. Canas follows. The two unlikely allies meander side-by-side through the camp, though Hector – oddly enough – does not feel awkward. If anything, the cool night air is calming, and the friendly sight of stars gives him the oddest feeling, as though their battles are very, very far away. It is then that he realizes that he has been clenching his jaw for quite a few hours, and he relaxes it cautiously. His teeth ache. He's hungry, though he had eaten two hours before.

"You have something on your mind, Lord Hector?"

"Bramimond. Athos took us – down a spiral of some sorts, into the Shrine of Seals, to see Bramimond." He pauses, and feels the weight of his words in his mouth. "He – Athos – said that he – Bramimond – is…a shell. Like –"

"–And you came to me as a fellow practitioner of elder magic, concerned about my well-being?"

"…Well." Hector does not say that the thought had never crossed his mind.

Canas tutts, softly. "If it assuages your fears, Lord Hector, I began my study of elder magic knowing full well the consequences of its practice." Even in the dim moonlight, Hector can tell that he is amused, though the shadows give his smile an edge of grimness. "We who practice elder magic invite dark spirits to dwell within us, and the power to submit is great. But the study has been in my family for many generations…"

Now the silence is awkward. They have come to a stop at the foot of the Shrine of Seals, still stained with Lloyd's blood. Hector is suddenly and savagely reminded of how that man seemed to be begging for death.

"…But it was not the thought of my well-being that drew you from your tent, was it, Lord Hector?"

"No." The memory of Lloyd makes him angry. He bends down, picks up a rock, and throws it with all his might at the shrine wall. It shatters upon impact, leaving an indelible dent. "Athos – changed me. When he used the Heaven Seal, it broke something, and he said it would take a little time to get used to the change. I'm just restless, and you happened to be awake. That's all."

"You fear change, then."

He shakes his head. "It's just a little hard to control. There's a part of me that's been wanting to strangle you all night, because I know that I can." He picks up another rock, but Canas touches his arm, and he drops it. He sighs, lowers his shoulders. There is a tremor in his hands. "Tomorrow we ride for the Western Isles. Do you know of an axe called Armads?"

"Ah – yes, the Thunder Axe. The Berserker's blade. It is written that one who wields its power is fated to die not peacefully, but in battle."

"…Oh."

"And you intend to claim it for our cause, then?"

"I'll do anything to end this. For Eliwood. And for Uther." The trembling is harder, now. He sits down on the steps of the Shrine.

"You and I both, then, sit on a very narrow crest between greatness and madness." Canas touches Hector on the shoulder. "Mind that your goal is strength and not power, and I shall mind that mine is knowledge and not power."

"I guess so." Hector manages a wry smile. "You know, you're not so bad for someone who reads books on the battlefield."

(They decamp with spectacular speed the following morning, and begin making haste to the west, where the Armads is lying in wait. Hector is not ready, and knows that he still may not be when they arrive at the place where his resolve will be tested. But he is prepared.)

02. quartus parietis

Hector had almost everything he needed: his textbooks, his lecture notes, a stack of lined paper, pencils, a graphing calculator, his iPod, an enormous can of Monster, a comfy sweater (dark gold, the proper colour of a King's University engineering student), and jeans a few sizes too large. He also had a few things he didn't need: a hangover, and a few hazy memories from the night before, and a Calc final worth half his mark in exactly twenty hours. And he was missing the most important thing: a good place to study.

Eliwood had kicked him out of their shared dorm room as a source of too much distraction (so what if he liked to listen to music really loudwhile studying? It helped him concentrate) and it seemed like every seat in the campus library was taken. He had decided against braving the blizzard outside to find a new building to study in (friggin' winter exams), which was how he had ended up on the spiral stairs that descended down into the library basement, looking for a desk in a secluded corner.

"H-hello?" Funny, he hadn't remembered it being so creepy down in the library basement. The enormous room, the limestone walls dimly lit with fluorescent bulbs, the rows upon rows of metal bookshelves stacked with single-colour reprint bound journals dating back to, like, the middle ages – yeah, creepy in the extreme. But beggars couldn't be choosers, and if there was a table and a chair somewhere, Hector had a really long date with his calculus notes.

In the back-left corner of the room there was a row of three wooden cubicles. Unlike the upstairs cubicles, which each had their own fluorescent tube lighting and computer chairs (the type with wheels, perfect for impromptu study breaks), these had old-school desk lamps and really uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs. One was taken.

Wait – one was taken.

There was definitely someone slumped over, sleeping at the rightmost of the three cubicles, surrounded by an enormous stack of musty-looking books. His lamp was on; that was how Hector had seen the cubicles in the first place. Hector took a step closer. It was a dude with hair to his shoulders, wearing a checkered red waistcoat (seriously?) over a dark shirt.

Okay, sure. Hector quietly set down his things at the leftmost cubicle, trying not to think of urinals, and snapped on the lamp. He opened his first textbook. The hard cover slipped from his fingers and hit the table with a soft thud.

"Hnngh," the man said.

"Fuck," Hector responded, without meaning to.

The man's eyes fluttered open. "Oh." He sat up, yawned and stretched, and relaxed back down into his chair. "Didn't see you there. What time is it?"

Hector pulled out some pencils and set out a sheaf of paper, trying not to make eye contact. "Uh, six?"

"Morning or evening?"

"…Evening."

"Oh, that's good. And here I thought I'd slept the whole night." He pushed his chair out and extended a hand; Hector immediately noticed that he was wearing latex gloves. "– Canas. Third-year Ph.D candidate and student of History, specialization in 18th and 19th century occult of the British Isles. And you are –"

"Hector." He cautiously returned the handshake. "First-year. Engineering."

"Engineer, you say? And what brings you down –" Canas waved his free hand about, "– here?"

Hector sat down, feeling uncomfortable. "Calc exam at two, tomorrow afternoon. All-nighter."

"Aah, calculus, you say. Did you know that Sir Isaac Newton – the English mathematician-slash-scientist-slash-genius – came up with most of his best theories during the Plague Years? He was born right at the start of the Reformation. – Right after the English lopped their king's head off."

"…Oh."

"– Yes!" Canas pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. "You may know him as one of the fathers of infinitesimal calculus and the binomial expansion of one-plus-x-to-the-n – beyond Principia, of course, but some of his intellectual forays were quite incredible. He once stuck a heated needle into his eye socket and moved it around to get a feeling for the structures there, did you know that?"

"…No."

"I've had the pleasure of reading some of his works. He had a change of heart later in life, and wrote a lot of religious texts and texts on the occult. Things more in my field than yours."

"Uh…"

"—Strange, isn't it? So many geniuses sit on a very narrow crest between greatness and madness. It is said that Archimedes had to be dragged to the bath-house, and would incessantly draw circles in the oil on his skin while forcibly being bathed. Georg Cantor, who came up with the most beautiful theory of the infinite and the transfinite realm, is said to have been –"

" –Right." Hector popped open his energy drink and took a swig, then opened his book to Chapter 1. "You sure know your stuff. I bet your work is really interesting. But I have studying to do, so –"

"Oh, it is!" Canas held up one of the leather-bound tomes. "– I've recently unearthed the collections of an ancient wartime battle-mage. He writes with a remarkably modern tone, though his madness is quite deep. I believe he thought himself able to transcend time through invoking the power of multiple gods."

Welcome to the wonderful world of Engineering Calculus! "You see, here he discusses the summoning of dragons…" In this section we will a) derive limits using Weierstrass' (ε, δ)-method, b) expound the derivative by way of first principles, "…And here he seems to insinuate that among his kin were some sort of druid of dark magic…" and c) foray into integrals and the antiderivative by way of Riemann Sums. "Ah, yes, and here he seems to invocate the gods –" Let ƒ be a function defined on an open interval containing c (except possibly at c) and let L be a real number. Then the formula iff for each real ε 0 there exists a real δ 0, "—Yes, the gods Ay, Bee, Starte, and Selecte, as benevolent deities that would allow ones to travel through time and undo grave tactical errors…" such that for all x with 0 |x − c| δ, we have |ƒ(x) − L| ε…

Around four in the morning, Hector, low on caffeine and entering that stage of a solid all-nighter where one starts feeling like shaving one's eyebrows off, suggested that the two of them take a break and try to find a bite to eat. Canas, already loopy from two full days down in the library basement, showed him to a little café run in the attic of the Student Centre called the Dread Isle, where they ate a meal that Hector thought looked like something out of a Neil Gaiman book. Canas felt the need to let him in on how H.P. Lovecraft had thought of it first. Hector had a little knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos and Canas knew all the dirty secrets of the president of the Engineering Students' Society, and it all went downhill from there.

(Hector ended up passing with a 52%, only because there was a bonus question asking what system Georg Cantor had developed. He found Canas two nights later at the bar, drunk and reciting soliloquies from King Lear in a corner, and wasn't surprised.)