a/n: Began writing this pre-release, but in terms of headcanons I didn't need to make any major changes to this.
Based on a true story i.e. my fifth playthrough of the best Fire Emblem, which I was doing iron man, save once when Kamui was critted by an enemy Deen. I'd run out of Lion Head Statues on Celica's side...
The dragons reach Mae first, and Boey's world begins to crumble.
They'd been caught in an ambush, with gargoyles scattering them across the bog. Their lifeblood seeped away every second, and the gargoyles were dizzying, untouchable.
"Ragnarok!"
And they were smote, deserving of the raging fires from the holy hand of the priestess. A simple word uttered only after the ingenuity of Celica's allies, whom had herded the beasts together by using two mages as bait–they were able to withstand the fiery deluge. Sonya splits away, Mae remains and smiles at Boey.
Then they were bait for the dragons.
Monstrous jaws barely held together by strangled, bloodless tendons, huge wings covering the orange sky send the dragons forward twenty steps for each of Boey's one. Mae is there. Mae is over there, standing in the bog, mud and unholy mire up to her knees. Only Kamui is there. The rest are elsewhere.
The rest are elsewhere. Boey is not there. Boey is here, he can't reach there fast enough. The bog, the bog, legs drag through the mud, life drains away. The world spins, the dragons soar, Boey cannot soar, only scream as the world begins to crumble. Boey crumbles, and the world spins.
The strongest woman in the world is nothing.
The dragon's bodies are tenuous but powerful, too powerful for the unflesh. Angels shriek through the air, through the dragons, out the other side. A dragon falls, Boey rises again but the second converges upon the strongest woman in the world–Mae smiles at Boey–and rips her to pieces. A blood spell, blood spills.
Boey shrieks. Boey's sights fix on the dragons like an arrow. Arrow.
"Sagittae!" Kamui ducks beneath the spell. "Sagittae!" Boey is on one knee, and the bog clasps a hand around his remaining vitality.
Genny is not there, but saves him from his own destruction.
*.*.*.*.*
"I'm sorry."
"No, I'm sorry."
"She meant a lot to you."
"She meant a lot to you."
"I'm sorry I wasn't good enough."
"It's okay, it's okay. I'll avenge her."
*.*.*.*.*
Celica never cries over it. Any expression fades from her face as she speaks, except for a slight crease of the brows. Just as it always is when addressing these matters, but this might be the first time he notices her mask crack a little.
She smiles. "You know I can't do that."
Of course he knows that! The Princess lets no one else shoulder her burdens. But, isn't what they were all here for? Isn't that what Mae did, right to her death?
Boey smiles at the injustice of it all.
*.*.*.*.*
The bog reeks of death and memories. The High Priest cloaks himself in it, sending his eyes upon the split group. Another fatal slip in their formation, allowing for overconfidence in the name of grief and bloodlust.
Boey is overrun.
*.*.*.*.*
Alm hears a whisper in his ear beyond the chorus of the waterfall.
There are souls here, restless. They sing into the caverns, awaiting the echo that will never come. They dance and weave but leave no marks upon the cavern floor, no ripples in the puddles of water lain about. They yearn for the material world, but Alm cannot tell how many they are. They draw on each other too strongly and so are almost one. Their desire is one, the same.
He kneels before the head of the lion and sees their faces.
He does not know them, but he knows they belong to the flesh, even for just a little while longer.
*.*.*.*.*
Mae is the first to cry over the life in their veins, and Boey is the last to stop. On the floor of the cavern they cling to each other like lost children, water seeping into their clothes but they don't care because they shouldn't be here and why is Boey here and I can't believe Mae is here and their fingers begin to ache as they hold each other and soak each other's cloaks in tears.
Eventually, Mae croaks, through the burning in her throat, "Remember when you said you'd die before anyone saw you cry?"
"When did I say that?"
"Never, and I can't believe it."
"Oh, I hate you."
*.*.*.*.*
"You died too, didn't you?"
They can tell when they reunite with their Princess below their barren continent. She is battered when they see her, but only a resurrection can explain the newness of her bruises, and there is not enough magic in the world for the clerics to care for old ones.
Their resurrected Princess speaks of resurrecting their country. She is noble, they would die for her and have, but their hearts hide doubt. They'd glimpsed wretched humanity and knew the fear and denial that turned men into monsters. Even after she had shared their fate for a little while, she was not blunted by death but honed, into the beautiful warrior priestess who faced her gods with a countenance to rival theirs.
Perhaps that was where death had taken them.
*.*.*.*.*
The smell of the sea, crashing onto the shore. They see death in the ocean's vortex. They see life in its spray as it pools among the black rocks.
"Do you ever think about it?"
"Of course."
Death appears in her pallid face, in his ashen skin. And just as they begin to crumble they're young again, as energetic as the waves that crash into the shore. It's a dance that their souls match in step, a dance that sometimes leaves them breathless, brings them love and hope and anguish. What they'd had before death, and how it goes on.
Their life goes on, when the strongest woman in the world is nothing, when man is overrun by his enemies, desperation.
I feel like I don't go far enough with some ideas here (which is how I liked i mean wrote my essays in high school) but H. Also maybe a bit too theoretically philosophical (read: i'm making this up as i go along) to pack a punch? idk.
(Still pissed that they thought they had to kill Celica but H also.)
I hope you like this as much as I liked it at points! c: