It was twilight, though not a soul would be able to tell from atop the ravaged, sand-swept plateau that had once overlooked Ylisstol. The skies had been dark for years, shrouded in sulfur and death. Not even the flashes of violent lightning from the endless storm pierced the veil these days, though the low rumbles of thunder betrayed its existence. The rocky outcropping, once embraced by the green vibrance of life, was now darker then the air surrounding it, if such a thing was possible. The exalt lay on her side, Naga's fang nearly invisible beneath the layers of ash - all that remained of perhaps the greatest Risen host the world could remember.
Now, the vibrance was relegated to the steady stream of red across the black sands, and the pale crimson gaze of a god, leaving no tracks as she glided towards her purpose.
"Lucina." hissed the demon in her mother's skin. "I would have words."
Grima paused for a moment. Those thoughts were not her thoughts. She knew of demons - mortal evils, harboring mortal ambitions, felled by mortal hands.
The fell dragon laughed. Perhaps if her audience was blind, they might surmise the source as human. Perhaps the child was blind, in a way, glancing towards the Brand of the Exalt. She was surprised that the child's emotions flowed through her mind so freely - even the blood of Naga could not defend her from her birthright forever, in a world forsaken by light. It was a shame, to have such a strong spirit tainted by that vile infection. She might have made a fine vessel, had fate deemed it so.
"Little Light," she cooed, approaching the girl's fallen form. "I am so much more."
"STAY BACK!" the child roared, shifting her body away even as she was overcome by hacking, blood-stained coughs. "You are not her! You have no right!"
Her response elicited another all too disturbingly human chuckle from the fell dragon. "It is good to see your spark endures, Child of Naga. I would be so disappointed to see you accept defeat with your final breaths."
The girl made no further struggles to escape, meeting Grima's gaze with a cold intensity. Cold, and dead.
Her hand, grasping feebly behind her back, met Falchion's hilt.
"There there, Little Light", her words dripping with amusement. "It would not do to stain your precious blade further. Your dear cousin will be needing that, won't he? Or perhaps I'll raise you as a Risen, have you run him through, watch the light fade from his eyes. He inherited your weaker half, after all. You would be doing my world a great service. It would hurt, of course. Terribly so, wielding such a wretched artifact in that state, but then again you never have been a stranger to-"
"He's dead." There was no struggle in her words, no unshakable resolve. Just stony acceptance, as she lay there in the sands.
The fell dragon blinked. Could he? Was he? The mortals were always planning, always plotting. They scurried about in the dregs like rats despite the unshakable truth that she had won. She focused, tapping into the lifeblood of her earth. The magical weave flew through life and death alike, now inexorably bound to the fell magics that cleansed the lands.
And yet she felt nothing.
The fell dragon turned her focus to her true, inconceivably massive form, lurking in the clouds above them. She gazed out across her barren realm, searching with almost fervent desperation for something - anything.
Anyone.
Lucina was the last of her kind.
Grima laughed - a great, booming thing, her true maw's cackles sundering the skies as they rolled between her fangs. She had won. She had struggled and slew and lived and died and now she had won. The world was her own, and she was the world.
It felt hollow.
Grima knew it was not supposed to feel like this. It was supposed to feel wonderful, her spirit drenched in the death throes of those who so bitterly opposed her. The dragons were dead. The mortals were dead. And she had survived.
At this, the fell dragon blinked once more. Survived? Of course she had survived. She was not bound by life and death, she had fallen into the depths of the abyss and clawed her way out piece by piece. The dark had claimed her and so she claimed the dark. Now, her long journey was at an end, and she could finally-
What was she going to do?
The word returned to Grima, a thread of light in a world that had no place for it. That was right, she remembered now, from a day drenched in the blood of the earth and rich with the feast of the Dragon's Table.
Naga had called it degeneration.
The fell dragon allowed the world to roll through her mind. Degeneration. Degeneration. She was beyond such a thing, was she not? The vessel was bred to prevent it, maintain both her will and her might - that of an entire tribe lost to fire and time.
Perhaps, Grima came to realize, it would have had she not murdered her husband.
It was now, at the dawn of her victory, that Grima realized she had never climbed free of the abyss. She had merely sunk and sunk until she could no longer surmise where the surface lay.
How long had she considered herself female, she pondered, the thought springing to the forefront of her mind unabated. It was such an insignificant, mortal thing, unbecoming of a god. Her avatar's spirit was broken, beaten, and now she was Grima.
And Grima was tired.
The fell dragon's crimson eyes stirred at the sound of steel against steel as Falchion abandoned its sheath resting in the remains of countless Risen. Lucina knew she could not slay the monster. Sable remained lost, and the Fire Emblem incomplete. Lady Tiki had cried out to Naga in her final moments, and there had been no answer. She was well and truly alone.
But one day, perhaps, in millennia unknown, the seeds of life could sprout again. Falchion would wound the beast, it would not be able to ignore her.
She could hold the fell dragon here, she could fight forever if she had to. A feeble, impossible hope, but if Lucina did not hope, she was unsure she could be Lucina. She could harbor no doubts now, not after every sacrifice that had paved her path. The fallen deserved no less.
Grima opened its horrible, bloodshot eyes. The monster did not smile with smug satisfaction. The monster did not laugh, mocking Lucina for the friends she failed. It merely took a step back, a single step, and Lucina pitched forward, plunging Falchion into the earth to steady her absolute failure of an attack.
"Naga is dead, Lucina. You cannot defeat me."
Lucina spat blood and bile, staggering to her feet and raising her blade once more. "Do not presume, monster!"
"HOPE-"
She lunged forward, blade outstretched in a final gambit to pierce flesh.
"-WILL-"
The demon stood, unflinching, gaze never faltering from Lucina's eyes.
"-NEVER-"
Flesh. The blow was glancing, cutting through tattered cloth before slipping past the demon's arm. Lucina spun, boots digging into black ash.
"-DIE!"
Grima caught the blade. It dug through the vessel's leather glove, piercing deep and sliding between bones. The demon did not falter, as it held out its left hand.
Lucina's breath hitched, her eyes torn away from her target. It was a ploy, of course. Dangling the vestiges of hope before her eyes, only to snatch it away. This was what Grima did. The monster led people towards their own undoing, and Lucina had given the fiend just the opening it needed as her eyes bore into Sable, the final gemstone.
She braced herself. She had tried, gods, she had tried. It was no excuse for failure, but she could find solace in the fact that she would not die a coward.
"The Awakening does not only channel Naga's power, you know. The Fire Emblem can harness the might of any Divine Dragon of sufficient strength... or one who harbors their blood. As loathe as I am to admit it... I did grow in a vat."
The demon of her nightmares laughed, and it felt pure and real and Lucina had not heard such a thing since she was a little girl, wrapped in a stolen Plegian cloak far too large for her.
"Mother?"
The avatar's face fell all at once, blanketed by... pain. Regret. Loss. Lucina knew it all too well.
"No. Grima. The fell dragon. The creature that murdered your father. It will be easier that way."
And so it was, at the end of time itself, that Lucina chose to be selfish for once in her life.
"MOTHER!"
Her embrace was met immediately, warm tears trickling into the crook of a familiar shoulder, and somewhere beneath the stench of fell magic and wrongness, it was dusty tomes and liver-and-eel pie and it was her. It was her.
They stood there for an eternity, and Lucina was no longer the last Exalt. She was a little girl again, and her mother was here and everything would be alright now.
She was the one to break the embrace, reluctant yet firm as rivers continued to flow down the child's face.
"You have a job to do, Lu."
Lucina took a breath, long and shuddering. She plastered a wholly unconvincing smile across her features, hand outstretched as the smooth black sphere fell into her palm.
The rite had been one of the first things she had been instructed in after father died. It had seemed so simple as a child - arrange the shield, hold the blade, say the words. But as Sable dropped into its socket and she stood to meet her mother's gaze, she felt as though nothing anyone had ever done had been harder.
Lucina took a breath - in, out.
"Hear me..." she began, shuddered, heaved a nonexistent lunch into the sands. Her mother lay a hand on her shoulder, a small comfort, but to Lucina, it felt like the world.
"Grima."
Lucina took a breath, and steeled her heart.
"Hear me, Grima! I bear proof of our sacred covenant! In the name of the exalted blood, I ask for the fell dragon's power! Baptize me in fire, that I may become your true daughter!"
By Naga, it burned. Was it supposed to feel like her very blood was boiling through her skin? Were those her friends, screaming their rage at her betrayal? Has she been tricked, Grima's final torturous gambit as the world lay in its death throes?
Lucina realized the screams were her own, and all at once they fell silent.
"Awakener, your heart has been tested and deemed worthy. Cleansed in my fire, your desire has proven to burn the stronger. I shall now imbue your blade with my power."
She knew the violet flames creeping from the blade up the length of her arm were unnatural. What would Tiki say if she was here, watching Lucina defile the last vestige of her own mother? Even if it worked, could she do it? Raise a blade against her last light in this dead world? If she did not, she damned the world.
If she did, she damned herself.
Lucina took a breath, and held Falchion high. Her mother met her gaze, a thousand emotions spanning the two in a mere moment.
"My life is yours, Little Light. It always will be."
The girl realized she had never stopped crying. "I love you." the girl breathed. The words burned her tongue more than the hilt her hands, but neither more then the blood that now coated them both. Her mother slipped to the ground, and Lucina scrambled to pull the blade free, steel sizzling as she dropped it at her side but she was too late and there was too much red and she collapsed to embrace her mother one last time.
"...Mother. Mother! Oh gods, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
The dying vessel raised a hand to Lucina's face, reaching to wipe her tears and pull her closer.
"Morgan escaped." Lucina choked on her racking sobs at the revelation, but they continued unhindered. "It was all I could do."
"I'd like to meet you both there, someday. In a better life."
Robin smiled.
And the sun set on a silent realm.