So I've been planning this story for literally over a year, but it keeps getting bumped back in the rotation. I've decided to just start posting it rather than wait to finish the whole thing, because now I'm committed to writing it in a timely manner. For this reason, it will have more irregular updates that the stories that I complete before posting. I consider this story the closest thing I'll ever write to a "sequel" to Tales of Vesperia, directly based on the consequences of the game. I hope you enjoy it.


Chapter One: Distant Thunder

"Keep quiet," the man whispered to his companion.

"Tell that to the horse," she snapped back.

The wagon thumped over the bumpy street, making the barrels it carried rattle. A man and a woman sat at the front, dressed in working clothes and plain brown cloaks. The cloaks worked well for the job, because they went unnoticed as simple protection from the chilly spring night, while also concealing their faces.

"This is the turn," he said, pointing at a crossroad. "I think."

"You're not sure?"

"It's been a while since I was in Zaphias, dear." He spoke with a balance of disdain and annoyance that can only be found between a pair that is either fierce rivals or old lovers. At the end of the road was the broad door to a warehouse, where a single knight stood on duty. "See? I told you it was this way."

"What were you just saying about keeping quiet?" she whispered back. "Honestly."

They pulled up outside the warehouse. The knight looked around for a moment, and then pushed his helmet back. "Finally. I thought you weren't coming."

"Quiet," she snapped and hopped off the cart. "Is anyone else on duty?"

"No, ma'am."

The man climbed down as well and hefted a barrel off the back of the cart. It thumped heavily to the ground. "And no one suspects?"

"Nope. Far as anyone knows I still loyally salute the commandant." The knight stepped forward to help the man carry the barrel into the warehouse.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with that, per se," the man said. "It's not Flynn Scifo personally we have a problem with."

"He's certainly not helping," the woman said, dragging in a barrel of her own.

"The grain is over here," the knight said and directed them to a collection of identical barrels.

"You're certain these are the ones being sent to Mantaic?" the man asked.

The knight nodded. "Certain, sir."

"Good," the woman said. "Let's get a move on, then."

They didn't talk much while moving barrels around. There were ten barrels brimming with grain to be hauled out of the warehouse and onto their cart, and ten identical ones to be taken in. When they were done, the woman stepped back and brushed dark powder off her palms before placing them on her hips. "This seems satisfactory." If she hadn't known the barrels had been switched out, there would be no way to tell. Unless, of course, you opened them and discovered that the substance making them weigh the same was decidedly non-edible.

It was the perfect crime, the woman thought as they drove away. The sort where nobody realized a crime had taken place at all. Not until, of course, it was far too late.


I shouldn't be here, Flynn thought as he made his way through the lower quarter. He had so many duties to get back to in his office.

He had been good at math as a child, but it turned out he didn't properly understand exponents until his amount of responsibilities increased exponentially with each rank. He'd thought he was swamped as a captain, but as the commandant he had to squeeze free time from his schedule like getting water from a moist cloth. He had to wonder where Alexei had found the time to plot world domination. Even though he had a dozen potential disasters demanding his attention at the castle, he was here, in the lower quarter, acting as a tax collector. Maybe Estelle was right about him needing to delegate more, but this was a touchy situation. He could resolve the dispute personally better than anyone else. It was easy to vilify a faceless knight, but they'd listen to good ol' Flynn Scifo.

He misjudged the depth of a puddle of melting snow and ended up with cold water soaking into his boot. The houses were so close together on this street that the pale spring sky was just a slit straight above. Flynn reached his destination and knocked on the old wooden door.

It took a few minutes for Mr. Winder to answer. When he did, he kept one hand on the knob and glanced Flynn up and down like he was prepared for a fight. "What do you want?"

"Good afternoon, Mr. Winder. I came because I heard you got in a fight with a knight this morning."

"Yeah. What, you here to arrest me?"

Flynn heard a door open behind him and saw movement in surrounding windows. The street was watching. "I certainly don't want to. The trouble is, you haven't paid your taxes this month. The knight this morning was only trying to collect what you owe, and you hit him with a step stool."

"I paid my taxes," Mr. Winder growled.

"Actually, you paid the old tax rate. Perhaps you weren't properly informed, but due to the increase in government programs, we've had to increase the tax rate for all citizens."

"Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Bullshit, I decided. I've paid my taxes every month all my life, and I'll continue to pay what I've always paid."

"I understand that it can be annoying to have to pay more. But, it will be beneficial for you in the long run. The increase in tax money we're getting is going toward protecting the farms outside the city, managing water cleanliness, training doctors in non-blastia medicine, and many other programs that directly help you." Blastia disappearing had left holes in almost every branch of society, and Ioder had no choice but to try to plug the gap with money.

More doors were open and he glanced to the side to see neighbours standing on their doorsteps. Mr. Winder ignored the audience and said, "Listen. I don't care about what those bigwigs in the castle want to do. All I know is my little girl died last week and you wanted to take the money we needed to bury her."

"I'm very sorry for your loss. If you have extenuating circumstances, we would be happy to arrange-"

"You're not getting my money!" The door wobbled as Mr. Winder's anger shook his hand. "Oh, sure, the government is happy to accommodate us when it comes to taking our money, but where were you when the pestilence hit? You left us to rot down here!"

Flynn wanted to step back, but he had to remain professional. "Mr. Winder, the epidemic affected all quarters of the city. There were numerous deaths in the royal quarter as well." But it wasn't equivalent and he knew it. They'd relied on aque blastia to ensure clean water for so long that now that they were forced to get water from the river or dig wells, it had taken a while to figure out basic sanitation practices. Water contamination hadn't been an issue for so many generations that it took weeks to even realize the water was the source of the epidemic ripping through the populace. The lower quarter had gotten it the worst, of course. The higher in the city you went, the more you could afford to spend on making sure your water was clean. That wasn't even taking into account how disease had always hit the poorer quarter more acutely. "Besides, we need more tax income to prevent tragedies like this in the future. I'm trying to improve living conditions for the lower quarter, but I can't help if I don't have funding."

There was movement behind him and Flynn became aware that the audience was moving in. Residents of the street had left their homes and were beginning to gather around Mr. Winder's house. For a moment Flynn thought, I shouldn't have come down here alone. He brushed that away immediately - this was his home. Even when he had spats with other people in the lower quarter, he was still one of them. They didn't always get along, but lower quarter folk took care of their own and they'd always stand together against an outsider.

"If you're so keen on helping us," said one of the neighbours, "how come you've been having your knights kick us around?"

"You mean breaking up mobs threatening to breech the peace?" What else was he supposed to do about bands of people on the streets in crowded markets shouting about justice? Of course he supported justice, but blocking the streets and shouting about the evils of the Council were not going to achieve it. Flynn looked around at the angry glares and said, "I'm on your side! I know it's taking a while to reform the system, but these things take time. I can't just snap my fingers and change how the Empire is run - I'd need to be a tyrant to do that."

"Seems to me," said someone else, "that things are going backwards."

"That's right!" a woman called out. "What are you doing about the food shortage? My children are starving!"

Flynn wanted to say, 'There's a food shortage because we don't have blastia barriers to protect farms, but if you give us the tax money you owe we can afford to pay knights to protect those farms you stupid woman.' He didn't, because he hadn't gotten to be commandant by speaking his mind every time he got irritated. No, that would make him Yuri. Instead, he said, "We're doing everything we can to increase food production. You must know that it's been difficult since the blastia-"

"Then how come the rich people still have food?! You look as well fed as ever!"

"Because food is expensive and they can afford more of it. It's the same problem it's always been, just exaggerated." Flynn tried not to feel self-conscious about his body surrounded by the skinny residents of the lower quarter. He did tend to overeat in the castle when he wasn't thinking about it, because he'd grown up learning that you eat everything that's in front of you because you never knew for sure when there would be more. It was hard to break that habit even in an environment when more food could be summoned with the ring of a bell. "I know it's a problem. We're working on it."

"That's what you've been saying all winter," Mr. Winder said. "Always 'we're working on it'. That's what you said about the pestilence, too! Now our Lillian is dead 'cause you didn't work fast enough!"

There wasn't anything Flynn could do about disease, he wanted to complain. His job was to organize the Knights, and he couldn't actually fight an illness. To this angered crowd, that would just be taken as an excuse. "I'm so sorry for your loss. I will do everything in my power to prevent tragedies like this happening in the future."

"That's what it's always been," someone said. "You government types always promise to fix things in the future but that future never comes and we keep dying. We thought you were different, but you've gone and become another royal quarter sell out."

"I am not!" Flynn looked around at the small crowd on the street. "I know things have been hard since the blastia left. We lost the blastia and had a new commandant and new emperor at the same time. Things have been tricky! I'm trying my best but it's taking longer than I expected and-"

Mr. Winder's fist hit Flynn's face hard enough to make him stumble backward. "I'm tired of your excuses!"

Flynn fell into someone else who grabbed his arms. He used the voice that could coral armies in a thunder storm to yell, "Everybody settle down!"

Using the commandant voice had been a mistake. These weren't soldiers trained to defer to orders, they were people furious in the face of authority and upping the authority just upped their ire. He remembered his thoughts about the lower quarter always banding together against an outsider, and as the crowd gripped him tight and shouted layers of overlapping fury, he realized the outsider was now him.

"Traitor!"

"Went to the castle and now he's one of them!"

"More concerned with keeping his job than keeping us fed!"

"Just another knight."

"Don't know why we thought he'd be different."

They started moving, dragging Flynn with them. It was getting hard to see out of the eye rapidly swelling and even if he managed to pull away from one member of the mob, there was always someone else to grab hold. They shoved him forward, dragged him when he tried to plant his feet, and hollered for justice and vengeance loud enough to drown out his own furious shouts. He was glad he hadn't worn armour down here today. He'd avoided it because he wanted to diminish the impression of being just another knight, but the lower quarter had a long tradition of throwing tax collectors in the river.

"What's going on here?!" A voice cut through the crowd and the mob slower down near the end of the street.

"Move aside, old man," Mr. Winder growled.

"What are you lot doing making this hubbub?"

"It's justice!" a voice shouted, but then squeakily added, "uh, sir."

"Oh yeah?" Flynn recognized the voice now and smiled. "And who's the poor sap you're enacting your justice on now? Get out of my way you idiots."

They meekly parted and the ones holding Flynn pulled their hands away like he was suddenly on fire. Someone shoved him forward to get the red as far away from their hands as possible. Surprised, Flynn stumbled forward and tripped on a paving stone. He started to drop to his knees, but Hanks caught him. "What's the meaning of all this? Why gang up on Flynn of all people?"

"He's a traitor," someone muttered, but not loud enough for Hanks to pinpoint who it had been.

"Oh, I see how it is. Well, listen up, you lot - and spread the word so everyone else knows, too. If I catch any of you giving grief to Flynn Scifo - or any other knight who calls the lower quarter home - you'll be answering to me."

"Yeah, all right," Mr. Winder snarled. "But he won't come down here again if he knows what's good for him. We don't take kindly to sell-outs around here."

"Fair enough." Hanks tugged Flynn's arm and said, "Come on, then."

Flynn followed him away, not looking at the scowling crowd. Hanks led him through the narrow streets of the lower quarter until they came out at the main square. There used to be a fountain in the middle, but that had been torn down and dug up so they could dig a well. The ground around it was still dirt.

"You all right?" Hanks asked, stopping by a pillar.

Flynn leaned against it and nodded. One hand tentatively poked his swollen face and winced. That was going to be blue tomorrow. "Thanks."

"I don't think I have to tell you not to come down here anymore."

Flynn hung his head. "I shouldn't let myself be chased out."

"Your presence is just going to rile them up."

"I knew people were getting frustrated with me, but I had no idea it was this bad. I can't believe the amount of vitriol Mr. Winder had."

"Ah, well, his kid died recently. You know how it is. He's looking for someone to blame, and people can be a bit unreasonable about their kids."

After Flynn just stared glumly at his boots, Hanks added, "Look at it this way. You think they ever would have dared to do that to Alexei?"

"No." Was this supposed to cheer him up? It just made him feel worse about the fact that he couldn't even command respect from his own people, let alone the Council.

"That's a good thing. It means that even though they're mad at you, in their heart they still see you as Flynn, the local lad they're allowed to rough up."

"I… suppose."

"And they're madder with you because they think of you as a local. Nobles are just born bad and what can you do about them? But you are our Flynn Scifo, and you're one of the good guys." Hanks pat his shoulder. "I know you'll pull things together in time. Just stay out of here until then, and you'll be welcomed back with open arms."

Flynn's smile didn't look sincere at all, but that was because his right eye was swelling up so he only smiled with the left half of his face. "I sure hope so."


Far away in Halure, Estelle awoke to an explosion, followed by the smell of smoke. Fearing Rita had put food in the oven and then forgotten about it while working, Estelle leapt out of bed and ran to the front room. She turned to the kitchen, but nothing was actively smoking, so she turned to Rita. "Is everything ok?"

Rita turned around with a grin and Estelle saw a patch of water soaking into the carpet and a charred splotch on the wooden worktable. "It's great!"

"It looks like you set your table on fire again, and I don't think that's very great." She didn't even know what time it was, but from comparing how dark it was outside to how long she felt like she'd been asleep, she guessed it was in that blurry area between 'ungodly late' and 'hellishly early'.

"I did it, Estelle!"

Estelle looked to the kitchen again to see if the coffee pot was out. She could have sworn she'd had a talk with Rita about not drinking coffee after dinner. She rubbed her eyes and then covered a yawn. "I'm really glad your experiment worked out, but I think you should go to bed now."

"I can't sleep now!" Of course she couldn't, she probably had caffeine marching through her brain banging cymbals. "Estelle, look!" She clasped something in her hand and then red light flashed in a rune circle around her. Fire burst forth and smashed into the curtains. "I did it!"

"You lit the house on fire!" Estelle grabbed a teapot on the counter, filled it from the sink as quickly as she could, and then threw it on the curtains before it could spread further. "Rita, you need to be more careful!"

Rita, who had clearly been awake for so long she no longer understood the correlation between actions and consequences, just kept grinning. "But did you see what I did?"

Now that she was assured the house wasn't going to burn down, Estelle had time to think about what had led to that problem in the first place and realized the incongruence with the course of events. "But… wait, you really did it?" Rita had been slaving over research to recreate blastia since last summer. Estelle had started to consider it a fool's errand, but here Rita was, standing next to a pair of scorch marks with the most self-satisfied grin imaginable. Estelle's face lit up and she threw herself at Rita in a bear hug. "Rita, that's wonderful!" She pulled back to look at the crystal in Rita's hand. It was blood-red and about the size of a fist. "How does it work?"

"Well, mana is basically condensed air. It's like if aer was steam, mana is water. It's fundamentally the same principle to manipulate it, you just have to adjust the ratios and apply a little extra force, but not too much that it explodes. I did it with the equation…"

Rita babbled on for over a minute, and Estelle kept nodding. She was pretty sure Rita didn't realize she wasn't following a single word of this. The important thing she took away was that it was basically the same as the old blastia, just not as powerful.

"…so now that it's complete I need to write my report." She started to reach for a pen, but Estelle grabbed her shoulders.

"No, you need to go to bed."

"But… I just make a huge breakthrough! I need to record my findings."

"You can do that in the morning." Which was only a few hours from now. She planted her hands on Rita's shoulders and steered her to her bedroom. "Go to sleep. Science will still be here when you wake up." Based on how little she fought back, her body obviously recognized that sleep was still a requirement for functioning even if her brain had forgotten.


Yuri hadn't been to Zaphias since last fall, and new leaves had come to the trees as they approached the gates now. It had been a long flight from Mantaic, and the guild was ready to get some grub at the Comet and then crash. They could worry about the recipient for their delivery job tomorrow. The wooden doors of the city walls were still hanging open, and two knights stood guard. This section of the wall was made of stone, but most of the city was still surrounded by the wooden walls they'd hastily erected after the barriers disappeared last summer.

"Halt," one of the knights said as they started to enter. "Names and reason for visiting."

"Huh?" Karol looked between them in a confusion Yuri shared. Knights were on guard to close the gates if monsters approached the city, not to keep out other people. "Why do you need to know that?"

"There a reason you don't want to tell us?" the other knight asked with suspicion.

"What? No! I'm Karol Capel, and we're from the guild Brave Vesperia. We have a parcel to deliver from a craftsman in Dahngrest." He held up the package wrapped in brown paper in his arms.

"And your associates?"

"That's Judith and Yuri Lowell."

"And Repede," Yuri pointed out. "Seriously, what's going on? I used to live here, and you guys have never bothered about who comes or goes before."

"These are new security regulations," the knight said. "Now, you'll all be fined five thousand gald apiece for attempting to openly carry lethal weapons into the city. Hand them over." He held out his hand, but Yuri pulled his sword tighter.

"Fined for what now?"

"You were told the new rules at Deidon Hold. You'll be given a ticket and you can pick them up tomorrow when you pay the fine."

The other knight approached and Judith gripped her spear with an expression that said, go ahead. Try to take this from me.

"Whoa, hold on!" Karol hurriedly stepped between the knight and Judith before a fight could break out. "No one told us any rules. We didn't come through Deidon Hold, we flew in with an Entelexeia!"

The knights glanced to the sky and saw Ba'ul drifting overhead and exchanged a look. "Huh… well… not knowing the rules isn't an excuse to break them. We still need to confiscate your weapons, but if you really didn't know, I'll let the fine slide."

"You're not taking my sword," Yuri said.

The knight's hand rested on his own sword. "If you resist, I'll have no choice but to arrest you."

"Let it go, Yuri," Karol said. "We don't want any trouble. We can pick them up tomorrow and you can talk to Flynn about it."

Yuri hesitated, but then he sighed and reluctantly held out the blade. "If you say so, boss."

"Thank you," the knight said, while his partner filled out three slips of paper and handed them over. "Take these to the armoury tomorrow morning and your weapons will be given back to you with a pass giving you a one hour window with which to take them to your place of residence."

Yuri snatched his ticket with a scowl. "Gee, thanks. So what exactly is this rule about weapons?"

"No items classified as lethal weapons are allowed in public spaces within Zaphias without an official license to use them for a designated purpose."

"I see," he said icily. He and Flynn were going to have some words.

"All right, go along, have a nice visit."

"I'm sure we will," Yuri sniped as they walked by.

Once they left the gate, Karol looked to Yuri. "What was that all about?"

"I don't know, but something's going on." It wasn't just the guards at the gate that confirmed this. Yuri had spent his whole life in Zaphias until recently, and a non-insignificant portion of that had been spent living on the streets. When you didn't have a roof to barricade yourself under, you learned how to read the tension of the street like a dog predicting thunderstorms. That tension was crackling like static in the air now, noticeable in the way people walked and where their eyes went. It was only early evening, but there weren't many people on the street. Even the vendors had packed up early, though he noticed from the signs posted behind them that food prices here were as high as they were in Dahngrest.

The Comet was quieter than usual, too. It was as busy as ever, but instead of loud chatter, the patrons sat in close circles having serious conversations. The crowd looked to the door when they entered, but instead of seeing familiar Yuri and going back to their conversations, he got a lot of looks that could only be called suspicious. Yuri glanced around the room in confusion; he'd known these people all his life and he'd been out of town all winter. What the hell had he done to get people upset with him?

"Evening," Yuri said to the innkeeper. "What's up with everyone tonight?"

Her smile was tight-lipped. "Oh, you know, lots going on in Zaphias these days."

"It seems like people are upset about something," Judith said.

"Upset?" The innkeeper raised her eyebrows. "Heavens, what would we have to complain about? Do you need a room for your friends, Yuri?"

"Yeah," Yuri said slowly. After how long he'd known her, he could spot a lie a mile away. He was less curious about what the hubbub was about than why nobody wanted to tell him about it.

After exchanging money for keys, they headed up to their rooms. "Man," Karol said as he unlocked the door, "what's going on in Zaphias lately?"

"I dunno." Yuri leaned against the doorway to his room. "But I'm going to find out. You guys stay here; I'll just pop up to the castle and talk to Flynn."

He'd hoped that spending more time in the city would bring clarity to the issues, but if anything he was more confused. He'd never seen fewer people on the streets compared with this many knights. As he was leaving the lower quarter, he passed a group of knights scrubbing some paint off the wall. They were too far along to make out what the graffiti had been, but since when was cleaning part of a knight's duties?

When he got to the castle, the gates were closed and a pair of knights stood on guard duty. This wasn't too unusual considering the sun had now set, but the knights drew their swords when he walked up the steps to their post.

"Move along," one of them said.

"Whoa, calm down." Yuri held out his hands to prove he was unarmed. "I'm just here to talk to Flynn."

"After working hours, you must have a scheduled engagement to be allowed entry. We weren't notified of any evening visitors tonight."

"What? Estelle put me on the guest list over a year ago."

"Be that as it may," the other knight said, "if you don't have a scheduled meeting with the commandant, you will have to return tomorrow."

"Fine. I'll do that." He whirled around and briskly returned to the street. What the hell was going on? Well, he'd never taken a closed door as an absolute before. There was a section of the castle well that was pretty easy to climb, and conveniently close to Flynn's room. He used it sometimes when he didn't feel like talking to the guards at the gate, or when he wanted to scare the shit out of Flynn by showing up in his bedroom.

There was was mansion right next door which let him shimmy up between the two walls, and then use the battlements as handholds to swing his legs over the top, then use a buttress as a bridge over the moat. On the other side, a tree was the perfect aid in getting to the garden. His feet landed on the grass with a thud, and then he brushed his hands on his shirt and headed for Flynn's room. It was on the third floor, but there was a tree outside that made it easy to reach the window to his bedroom.

Yuri walked around a corner to the tree and came face to face with a pair of knights patrolling the other way.

"Hey!" one of them said.

For a second, instinct told him to run. Then logic reminded him that the knights were already less than three feet in front of him and there was no way he had enough of a head-start to climb over the wall again. He braced himself for one of them to tackle him to the ground. There had never been knights patrolling the garden like this before, once again leading him to ask: what the hell?

"Hey, chill out." They quickly handcuffed him. "I was just trying to talk to Flynn, it's not like I'm an assassin."

"Trying to get to the commandant, eh?" One of them held his arms while the other patted him down. After patting him down and finding no weapons, he said, "Well, you're either the world's worst assassin, or telling the truth."

Yuri was about to point out that them not finding any weapons could actually mean he was the world's best assassin, but decided his future would turn out a lot better if he let that comment go unvoiced.

"You're under arrest for trespassing."

Yuri sighed. "Figures. Look, can you just tell Flynn I'm here? All I want is to talk to him."

The shoved him forward to begin a march to what would inevitably be the jail cells. "The commandant is finished with work for today. He'll be informed tomorrow morning."

Yuri rolled his eyes. Great. Just what the hell was going on in Zaphias?