Author's Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. All rights are reserved to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.
Rated 'T' for some language and some violence, but some later chapters will be rated 'M'.
Author's Note: The content of this story is not a word-by-word transcript of the actual game. Conversations, character developments, and events are altered to fit a more novelized narrative with merit and depth.
Thank you BFoS, hannahbbug3, and my sister for editing this.
MEMORY AND DESIRE
A Tale of War in One Year
PER ME SI VA NE LA CITTÀ DOLENTE,
PER ME SI VA NE L'ETTERNO DOLORE,
PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE.
GIUSTIZIA MOSSE IL MIO ALTO FATTORE;
FECEMI LA DIVINA PODESTATE,
LA SOMMA SAPÏENZA E 'L PRIMO AMORE.
DINANZI A ME NON FUOR COSE CREATE
SE NON ETTERNE, E IO ETTERNO DURO.
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE'.
Dante. Inferno. (III, 1-9)
What a wild beast is uncollected man!
The thing that we call Honour, bears us all
Headlong unto sin, and yet it self is nothing.
Beaumont and Fletcher. The Maid's Tragedy.
When I heard this,
I fled in exile from the land of Corinth, using
stars to measure out a path that would ensure
that I stayed far from there in future, somewhere I
should never see these evil oracles' reproaches
be fulfilled.
Sophocles. King Oidipous. (793-798)
Preamble: A Never Writer to an Ever Reader
Headline of Editor's Letter to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida
[A spotlight turns on from the projection room and shines through an empty auditorium; specks of dust swirl in its ray. A circle of white light, small yet whole, just big enough to fit a person, forms on black velvet curtains. After a short period, they part, the spotlight enlarging as they move, its pristine shape splitting, becoming more and more dispersed and unrecognizable. A stage hidden in darkness is pulled into existence, barely perceptible in the scattered light. On the right upper stage, a spiral staircase is shown going pass the ceiling, its metal railings tarnished, and at the center of the lower stage, a tall stool stands. The background is shrouded in an impenetrable darkness. Footsteps can be heard, growing louder and louder, and Anna descends from the stairs. Wearing an unusually bright white robe, she holds a glass of red wine in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. Her red hair loose runs down to her thighs, and noiselessly, walks towards the lower stage, with the cigarette raised high, and stands at the center, right next to the stool.]
Anna. (After a small period of standing with her face showing no emotion, she suddenly grins, selfishly) Black curtains made of soft velvet drape endlessly like two seas, flowing from opposite sides under a starless perpetual night and implode on collision.
From whence they came is where all cycles of Life is concocted from sand and wheeled and sowed into the seams. From whence the chasm the curtains formed is where gravity reached its limit and gives way to wholeness; a speck, a whole of an atom, invisible to my eye that crumples and breaks, splitting in pairs of two, down into the crack where histories of memories and desires are created: reality is realized.
Bye to bygone, generating past empires from Death's grasp, embedded deep in layers of sand on top of bedrock, antiquity wakes yet again to foreign lands and flows back unhesitatingly into the stream, where the wheel slowly cranks and creaks it to another generation, and another, and another; back to death, where death is nothing more than sleep, and an awakening is bound to happen yet again. At finis: no water in life's stream to flow properly but plenty of it in fantasy. All hope of progression and knowledge are lost; the waves are now diminished to a straight line and the last heart beats with a whimper.
An end is unreachable, an endless desert of mocking horizons. A ball within another ball with smooth curves has the point of infinity as its mouth and an imaginary egress at the bottom, where the end of stories rot back to dust; crystallization into golden sand, and we return to the beginning with a blink, trapped in the seams.
Time is selfish. Stark mad with unblinking eyes, his bald head forever bent, he overlooks the space that Life takes, naked and alone in the universe with white wings soiled, torn, and crippled, giving no source of warmth to him in the universe's crust of rolling plains of black velvet; no comments to say, for he does not know words and thinks with a blank mind. His white beard at his feet, he holds his hourglass, shattered to pieces, close to his gut as if freezing to death, afraid that dropping them he would never find them in the dark, and his scythe, dull from the years of harvesting histories from the seams, is tucked safely underneath his arm.
No work and no play makes Time have more time to gaze blankly at nothing while his work piles up.
Then the fall, where the curtains fall and the cosmos cracks and order topples over like dominos into a black hole. First Man, then Nature, and finally Time, Space, and God lumped together.
Alas, we return to peace. Over there, at the end of the tunnel, comes the white dot; a mournful sigh from an unknown source of an unknown place increasing as it expands and expands, breaking its body, and reaching the end, comes God, and Space, and Time all rejuvenated and awe struck and ready to work in a land where two seas of rolling black velvet, coming from opposite directions, collide and implode a chasm, and a spotlight, as bright as the Sun, sitting hearteningly on the horizon, flicking infinite pastel shades of blue, yellow, and red in the empty sky.
Space is the designer of the set, creating worlds with adroit hands on the land of velvet nearest to the spotlight; once finished, it throws its artwork down into the chasm. God sacrificed itself to amalgamate with Space's creations, throwing itself in the abyss to breed Life from its decomposing body, disintegrating and melting little by little into the vacuum, into the matter, and into the air of which it surrounds and thrives on the stage for the story and the actors to unfold. Awakening, God abandoned supreme divinity, and dying over and over again, splitting into multiple fragments of itself, its deity lives through Life's mosaic. Wholeness can never be reached again, and Life, born from a corpse of perfect caliber, divides again and again with polarity in its head and divinity in its veins. Nature and Man: the universe's greatest adversaries.
Meanwhile, while Space continues creating, while God continues decaying, while Life continues dividing, Time reaps the histories from the seams with a quick swish of his scythe on one hand and checks his punctuality from his hourglass on the other. A brilliant white, his wings beat over the landscape with force, throwing his harvest down into the abyss to dissolve and blend with Space's creations and Nature's features and Man's intelligence.
Everything is in order, but Time begins to feel the burdens of repetition. Repetition of reaping stories sharing the same features, the same outcomes, and the same consequences.
Nothing is preconceived. It does not exist. But the outcome of one's story is listed in the grains where a graph, made in great, meticulous detail, is shown with titles and percentages of a wide range of possibilities. And Time does know this graph, for Time is Man. Beyond Man. The first Man, yet having nothing to do with the creation of his own species, is Man's failed prototype. Carrying the burden of the truth, he strains his eyes from the never-ending parade of stories, filled with tragedies and disasters, few with happy endings but not enough to gain his confidence back.
Histories in a handful of golden sand. Ripping the velvet and digging deep within, Time pulls it out. On his palm, grains of stories slide through his fingers, hissing the struggles of Man's cries and Nature's whispers. Man's triumphs and Nature's floundering. Man's blasphemy and Nature's commitment. Man's...
Born after God and Space.
He looks at the sand, running past his fingers, and meticulously, calculates the result. He knows which outcome will most likely happen. He knows the end. He knows that he can't do anything about it.
All alone.
God died before Time could know him, and Space is invisible, focusing on its craft and having no time to talk.
All alone. Confined.
For all eternity. Away from the spotlight and deep into the arctic of darkness, far away from that chasm, where the paragon of infinite knowledge hides in its size, he realizes that the chasm is always close by.
Becoming careless, Time broke his hourglass, slicing his skin.
Tower of Babel, climbing to the heavens from the bowels of ignorance, imaginary in thy naked eye, but real in thy mind, your desire of wholeness is in vain. Round and round your circular structure goes, no point for conclusion, only forlorn hope of reaching the Holy Grail of supreme consciousness that's always been there, before Man, before the universe, before God. Failing to realize that ignorance is trailing behind.
Time tumbled head first into the velvet, injuring his wings.
The spotlight starts to fade away, gradually. As Man congeals, coming closer and closer to wholeness, its pastel primal colors fades, darker and darker, until it becomes nothing more than sheer blackness.
His scythe becomes so dull that harvesting becomes impossible.
Now we return to the beginning, where Time is at his bovine state. A gaping mouth where soundlessness flows flow and eyes of pearls gaze, he survives but kills his thoughts: himself. Now, he is Man. His smashed pieces of his hourglass, his only friend, held close to him; pieces of broken glass jabbing him, blood running down his sides. His wings tattered, scythe, dull and chipped, under his arm, Time is alone and miserable in a wasteland where no light can reach him. Space and God never existed to him. Man died, the last one in the mountains, where he saw a star dying and said his final words in Latin. But his brothers and sisters did not know, for they have lost all sense of being and became like all the others: whole.
And so, Time gazed with blind eyes and breathed soundlessly, and as the scene close, his final thought, before being a paralyzed fool, was that the only supreme being was he: God.
But this has all been a dirty lie.
Time is not Time. This Time's job is not the real Time's job. This Time is Time's impostor.
Never kept anything in order. Never read a single thing about Time. Never heard of the truth.
This man never did anything I just told you just now. This man never felt human compassion nor human emotions. This man never had familial ties and rejected Life and hid in his basement.
Who is he then?
A man who took the identity of Time.
The fall. And we're back at square one.
Now the actors: Man. (Laughs). Of the lesser kind. Not those whose stories of going to the store buying basic necessities, continuing their boring day with uneventful phenomenons, burning through boring nights with no original thoughts or ideas shaping into interesting dreams. No, I'm talking about the ones born with a touch a grace. The ones where all the ingredients are right, where all the stars and the planets align: character of infinite character.
Born with a preset of infinite possibilities, these are actors that roam around the set, clueless to the consequences of their actions, graphed above in a chart where the crowd can see. A mind and a body worth having, for when caught in Life's vortex, devouring civilization and throwing it back torn into pieces, they do not wither away in their own tears, but through reproof, bloom yet again in Spring's evoking rain. Star-crossed with actions, their inner potential awakens, for anyone can be a character, but the only ones that are remembered are from the circumstances of their surroundings.
(She now holds the hand with glass of red wine upwards, leveling it with the cigarette). In this hand is the blood of Man. (She brings it down and drinks the whole thing) In this hand is the Sin of Man. (She brings the unlit cigarette down and pretends to smoke it, pretending to puff clouds of smoke out of her mouth. She places the empty glass on the stool and levels her hand with the cigarette down to her waist.) With these, I'm now able to show you Man's dark mind. But be forewarned, don't expect a full revelation at first glance. Beneath the icy, dark sea is layer of underwater mountain ranges, repressed and piercing back up, unbeknownst to the eye.
(Lets out a long sigh and laughs) Now with that out of the way, I present you your feature presentation! Your night's entertainment! Your late night reading!
All of you, crowded here tonight, are about to hear, to see, to read a tale of a teen's quest for lustful revenge and self-discovery. Of a girl's self-negligence. Of a teen's coming-of-age. Of a father's sinful past. Of a woman's melancholia. Of a princess' naivety. Of a king's madness. Of a man's nonexistence...
[On the word 'nonexistence,' The One Behind The Curtains enters at the left upper stage, hiding in the shadows, invisible to the audience; small smoke clouds rise out of the shadows and twirl malevolently in the fainted light, seeping out of the dark corner.]
...Of...
The One. (In a loud and authoritative voice; a voice that is indiscernible from a man or a woman's voice) You don't want to describe the whole thing, Anna. You might overwhelm the audience.
Anna. (Doesn't turn around to look at the One and keeps her attention in front of her) I can't help it. Sometimes I get excited and ramble on endlessly about things that...
The One. ...have no meaning?
Anna. To you, yes. But these people here want a story with meaning. So, I'm giving them just that.
The One. (Laughs snobbishly and bestially at her remark. The One starts walking slowly out of the shadows and over to Anna. In the faint light, The One is wearing a baggy, black tuxedo suit and has its face blurred. Continues talking while walking over to Anne) You honestly think that these people give a shit about meaning? Filled with moralities, merits, and ideas? Bah! (spits out a cloud of smoke) Leave that for the English majors. Here, (with its free hand, makes a rapid gesture to the empty auditorium) they want the good stuff. The stuff that sells. The stuff that gives them feelings...
Anna. ...empty feelings...
The One. ...feelings in which they gain personal satisfaction. Gives them hope...
Anna. ...false hope...
The One. ...hope of reading something to their liking. Something simple, fun, exciting, sensual...
Anna. ...pornography...
The One. ...now, Anna. (standing right next to her) Don't be so negative. I'm only describing what the average joe wants.
Anna. What do they want?
The One. Oh, you know: one-shots, inserts, , inserts with , one-shots with both inserts and , homosexual romances, heterosexual romances, homosexual insert fantasy, contemporary comedies, melodramas, epics, melodramatic epics, epic melodrama, epic melodrama romance with insert and with homosexual and heterosexual overtones with comical situations...oh, but do I really need to go on? You know as much as I do.
Anna. And that's the problem.
The One. Problem? Problem that I know about as much as you do?
Anna. (rolls her eyes) Not that but generic stories bereaved of worth.
The One. That so?
Anna. Stories with thought-provoking meanings and themes; ambiguity exercising the mind, that makes the reader say, 'Wow! Such talent! Such intelligence! After putting up with the story's difficulty, and reading it over and over again, I was able to figure it out!" That's gone. I've searched and searched from world to world, past to past, future to future, looking for these tales with merit, but failed to find a substantial amount.
The One. I'm pretty sure that there's some on text.
Anna. Text? Of course! Why wouldn't there be any? You can literally fill mountains with stories on text rich with words and ideas. What I'm talking about is virtual text.
The One. (trying not to laugh) Really?
Anna. (affirmatively) Really.
The One. (snorts offensively, fuming clouds of smoke) Your naivety amuses me, Anna, but quite painful to wrap around. Do you expect that these (points to the audience)...people...actually care about stories with ideas and messages? Contrariwise, they are running away from them.
Anna. (sighs, and in a low voice) I don't want to believe it, but you are right.
The One. (confidently) Am I always?
Anna. But (she walks up to the tip of the lower stage) if there is one story out there, one story that challenges all other stories in this empty universe, let it exist.
During my journey through countless imaginary lands and worlds, I have found only a handful of tales that were perfect, others close with ingredients left out.
But let there be one that breaks convention, that challenges the reader, the viewer, the voyeur into breaking their minds, questioning the relation between virtual and text.
Generic genres, cast thee into oblivion, and let this one rise. Rise to bring others out of the dark shadows from the depths of the mind, and bring them a wave that carries the colorful banner of the New, demanding Old's death and demise. If not, let it be the Wandering Jew, criticized and amusing, forever drifting from land to land; its death is when power dies.
My mind can't bear it. Ignoring the facts gashes my soul. Such reputation can't be washed away. A deep cut on the flesh, where the scar forms and burdens the brutal name.
Grammar.
The proper usage should be an act of indulgence.
Your and you're.
Misery! What a heart-stabbing mistake.
Anne Frank as a hedgehog.
My brain cells deplete at a mile per second, and I ask myself, how can this level of stupidity exist?
Medieval heroes in Japanese-like high schools. Incestuous misrepresentation. Horrible lyrics. Plagiarism. Impious pornography. Pitiful fantasies. Unguided criticism. A doglike mind of both likeness and ideas.
Horror! Horror! This is where we ended up. Grab yourself a bottle, drink to this loss; I, too, will join you, though I can never drink while on duty.
The One. ...are you done?
Anna. ...
The One. You know what I think? I think that your whole ramble on wanting the greatest fanfiction made, or what you call, 'creative response,' is nothing but hot air. What do you gain by shaking your fist at everything that is and will be? Pretentious! You sound like a god damn hipster! You came down those stairs as if wearing a garish plaid shirt, fishing overalls, army boots, and 3-D glasses. Nothing but a homeless trickster. I've been standing in the shadows since I can remember and saw you come down those stairs and I heard your entire speech from beginning to end. Pretentious! Filled with precautions! There's no precaution in this. Everyone knows what they want on here or elsewhere. It's everything from the size of the ant to the size of the universe, a red dot on a white sweater: it cannot be missed. They come and go, pay in time, and you should give them what they want: escapism. The pleasure and satisfaction they receive is a drug of letting them forget (takes a long pause, sucking its cigarette, letting out another large cloud of smoke) beyond this place: the cruel ways of Man. They're in it for the kick, and if you present them with this nonsense, they will leave you and tell their friends that you and your story...
Anna. (correcting him)...not mine. His.
The One. Whatever. You and 'his' story, will be labeled as junk, a hipster trying to become a Joycean or Wellesian figure trying to make 'The Greatest Story Ever.'
Anna. (expressing heavenly patience) So you think that by writing senseless yaoi, that he and I will become acceptable?
The One. Thought, not write. There's a difference. This is not real (points to the stage).
Anna. (points beyond the room) And that is?
The One. Nothing means everything, Anna; you should know that. Hyperreality, virtual reality, and regular reality, dimensions upon dimensions, are all the same. They express nothing: all meaningless. Everything is mechanical and derivative, coming from one source. We are all the same.
Anna. (disturbed and somewhat annoyed, confusedly) Yes and no.
The One. Yes and yes and yes. All come from the same point; therefore, originality is dead, and most importantly, that I am right...yet again.
Anna. (abruptly) But the story...
The One. (amused) And?
Anna. Um...
The One. Go on.
Anna. (calmly) The story is his idea. Not yours.
The One. (more amused) Is that so? Elaborate.
Anna. He came up with the idea that the universe comes from one point, and because of it, we're all the same; you just repeated it. That's the rule. A fact. We're here, standing face to face, talking and exchanging words. We were meant to meet each other. We were meant to have this conversation. We were born from his mind but he, too, was born from another, and that person from another, and that person from another. Put a mirror in front of another mirror, and tell me, what do you get?
The One. (lets out another cloud of smoke, quickly) The same thing.
Anna. (stern but calm to the One but doesn't look at it; she appears to look around it) That was a rhetorical question. What do you get? The same story being told over and over again, but the differentiation is the shadow between the image. Original concept doesn't exist. Wholeness doesn't exist. But the way it is told can be original.
(Turns to the audience) Ladies and gentlemen, you believe everything that comes out of my mouth to be my own independent thoughts, but instead, I'm just repeating what has been said, oh, let's say, thousands of years ago. He, with a stroke of his pen, a flick of the wrist, is the one behind it all. (This phrase offends the One) My monologue: thought up. This stage: thought up. The two of us: thought up. Though I can say whatever comes into mind, it will fit the context of the frame in one shape or form. The author, the playwright, the director, has orchestrated everything that you're about to read and see. The author has foreseen all the events that are about to be unfold.
We and the actors take up matter to perform a universal and never-ending tale that still invigorates the mind to anyone who passes by and decides to stay. As for I, I'm to guide you. I am Charon, and this room is the vessel to sail across a sea of sorrow. But I have permission to stray and we'll delve to the deep, reaching the bottom, digging into the soggy ground, and pilfering Life's rich treasures.
I am not Charon, and this stage and I are going to metamorphose from water to land, from air to fire, and from flat to dynamic; changing constantly to the purposes of clowns, with the story trudging to its final act, I will appear and reappear in forms of objects blind to both you and the actors and myself from time to time.
Finally, I am Sibyl. Born from the author's head, I come full force, armored with white to protect myself from the horrors that soils the soul. In between the seconds, I wander from world to world, fantasy and reality, seeking knowledge and consuming it; there, the parables of origin lie, and I see the connections. Alas, by the help of my benefactor, I know the end...
(Pause, then turns to the One) Would you like to say something? After all, you have a purpose too.
The One. (annoyed by Anna's prelude and innocent remark) A pleasant thought. (turns to audience) Ladies and gentlemen, if I may say so, you're in for a sour treat...
Anna. ...a sweet one...
The One. ...a story like this doesn't come around often, and just a few minutes ago, I wasn't informed about the story until Anna walked down the stairs and started...
Anna. ...started what?
The One. ...I'm not one who likes repeating myself. Hell, I can't even remember how many times we...
Anna. ...mostly me...
The One. ...repeated the message and our eccentricities over and over again...
Anna. ...But back to the story...
The One. ...well, it's about...
Anna. ...about?
The One. (sarcastic) ...well, sorry if I'm not artsy, speaking in rhymes and metaphors, but it's about war...
Anna. ...and life...
The One. ..and hate..
Anna. ..and love..
The One. ...and sins...
Anna. ...and virtues...
The One. (exacerbated) ...and how about letting me speak for myself?
Anna. I was only helping.
The One. (back to the audience) Personally, I don't care for stories like these. Young, ambitious pseudo-writers being infatuated by ideas nobody else finds interesting except for themselves. No, I don't want you to think that we, you and I, are preconceived, as if we were programmed like computers, having all the sources of the world in our mind yet we can't decide on our own decisions. That's a lot of shit right there. Certain actions result in certain consequences. Don't think that you and I are nothing but puppets.
Let's get down to it. I don't know what's going to happen at the end. Hell, I don't know what the story is even about. I was minding my own business, when I took a wrong turn and ended up here. But if I did know, you'd think I'll be selfish enough to hold it back greedily, so that only I, and I alone, would know the secret to the story, or any other story out there? No. All this metaphorical crap and symbolism is nothing but to hide both Anna and the (mockingly) 'the one behind it all's' incompetence as storytellers.
Now, I'm not insulting Anna. She did the best that she could describing this pretentious junk, making it seem like a masterpiece. But the author doesn't have my sympathy. He's an idiot. Do you think that anyone wants to write serious stories here? Go write yourself a novel. Go somewhere else.
You think that he can act like a god and decide the fate of his subjects? Blasphemy! All of us here can decide our own futures. There's no graph in the sky that lists all our outcomes. We are not star-crossed to fate. Fate never even existed. It was coined just for the purpose of having control over us. This (points behind) is of the highest offense, and what I have standing beside me is a messenger of a false prophet.
Wholeness can be achieved. What I was trying to say earlier is that everything comes from unity but can fall back into place if we know our place.
Anna. (ignoring the One's tirade) Thank you so much. You have accomplished your role in this production.
The One. If there was any.
Anna. We have delayed the reader far too long, and I see that some have left the room. But no matter: I shall be brief.
[The One, seeing it has no purpose left, walks back to the shadows it first came from. Before being swallowed by it, The One turns to the projection room and makes a rapid gesture. The One enters into the shadows, never to return. With it gone, Anna walks to the upper stage where the background, shrouded in an impenetrable darkness, is slowly being lighted from an unknown source. A gigantic blue door, as if a front door to a castle, slowly emerges, as if being pulled out from the abyss. It stands to the point where it almost surpasses the ceiling, and written on the top are giant words that read: OUTREALM GATES. Anna stands by the door, which slowly opens, automatically, without making any sound.]
Anna. So now ends the overture and into the real action. We begin at the end. Not the end of the story, but end of a four period cycle that marks where civilization stands. We now sail into the mind of our first character, but you won't know it. You will wake up when I say so and there you will become someone else, encompassing yourself with foreign thoughts and unruly manners. At the end of the journey, we will return back to ourselves and reflect. Well, reflect without spooning you like a baby.
But enough art, forwards into the matter. Do not stray far, for you don't want to get stuck to the wet ground or drift into the current. I'll guide you through the meshes but try to remain safe.
Without further ado, we begin...
[She enters into the door, like a vacuum sucking away the sound, the auditorium fills with a dead silence, and all the lights flicker off.]