DISCLAIMER: I claim no ownership of any character, plot idea, settings, or even my own socks. All of the above belong to Nintendo, in conjunction with Intelligence Systems. Except my socks. Those technically belong to my mother. I guess the My Unit technically belongs to me, but only technically. I am a poor college student, please don't sue.
INTRODUCTION: Welcome one and all to my second serious attempt at fanworking! I tend to write fanfiction about things that I'm very passionate about, and I really, really like Fire Emblem. It's fantasy, and fantasy and science fiction have always (and probably will always be) been my cup of tea. So it's time to break out the old metaphysical typewriter and get to work.
That being said, you may consider this an alternate universe/adaptation of Fire Emblem: Awakening from the point of view of the female My Unit. There will be violence, gore, some dark themes, and mild sexual themes.
That being said, this is going to be a long one, so please: sit back, relax, and enjoy a nice cup of tea. I mean, it is in my username, isn't it?
Premonition
Invisible Ties
Thunder was always her forté.
She could just barely recall snippets of her childhood: a wisp of sand in the air, heralding a khamaseen. Sweet dates eaten under the shade of a palm tree. Twilight services with cowled figures, her mother's hand tight on her shoulder as she said the dead words of invocation; fear in her voice, fear in her mothers. Hours spent mouthing words in her mother's tome quietly to herself, as if making the shapes with her mouth would somehow imbue her with their power. True, she had eventually gained a passing mastery of the other elemental magics (only after her nameless, faceless tutor denounced her as a disappointment, barren of "His Gift"), but the magnetism of thunder magic reverberated in her very bones, rattled her teeth and flickered across her fingertips.
'Unchecked hurricane.' That was what her faceless mother called her. A tuning fork for both destruction and creation. Black and white. Life and death. Good and evil. Naga and Grima.
She clenched both sword and tome in opposite hands. Thunder rolled from her fingertips, from her nigh inexhaustible source of mana. The sickly glow of dark magic painted the air purple. Beside her, in counterpoint, a faceless man in blue and white roared his triumph and rose a gleaming broadsword to strike. But the caster of dark magic was there before him, leaping into the air and conjuring an eruption of purple flames. She and her compatriot leapt in opposing directions, away from the magically birthed fire. In response, thunder crackled from her fingertips, striking outward and lancing toward the body of the evil man.
Again, however, he was far faster. The man wreathed in purple was already on the ground by the time her spell made contact with the ceiling. Again, his purple flames dashed outward, throwing her blue compatriot into a support pillar hard enough for his body to shatter it to chips.
Without thinking, mana worming and pooling as her comrade clambered to his feet with the help of his brilliantly gleaming broadsword, she cast one of the more potent thunder spells in her repertoire, let hit coalesce into a writhing ball of energy, and forced its path to intercept that of the dark magic, which was busily making its way toward her felled friend with all the strength of a meteor.
The resulting explosion was enough to throw her, her friend, and the enemy in opposing directions. Moaning, tome and sword forgotten several meters away, she came to a skidding halt almost halfway down the antechamber's length, prostrate upon her back and coughing blood. She heard someone cry out her name, then: "No! This can't be how it ends!" But she was alive. In pain, but alive. The shockwave should have pulverised organs, broken bones, used her as a conduit for loose magic and blown her up. But her resistance to magic had always been notoriously high. She had been lucky to escape it with nothing more than raw, scraped skin and a mouthful of blood from her bitten tongue.
Down the antechamber, where she had begun the fight alongside her friend and ally, the din of metal against metal met her ears. The battle that raged beyond the barrier was soft, muted. She, her friend, and the enemy were relegated in their own pocket universe. This clash of battle was much closer. Propping herself up onto her elbows, she blinked weakly as her friend hacked and slashed at the enemy, and watched in ever mounting horror as his blows were deflected by dark magic, a magic that she feared to call upon.
Her friend noticed her weak stirrings.
"Just... run!" He grit out, deflecting and dodging. "Run while you can!"
What kind of (friend, tactician, wife?) would she be if she abandoned him, her (friend, commander, husband?).
The enemy laughed with glee, renewed his attack with fervor. "Fools!" Thundered the enemy. "Struggle all you want! You cannot unwrite what is already written!" His conjurations of magic exploded over the defence of his broadsword. Her friend's strength was flagging, and she couldn't even pull herself off the ground.
"You can't escape it!" continued the enemy, redoubling his efforts to slay the man in blue. "That's why it's called destiny!"
We're not pawns of some scripted fate. Hadn't she once said those words, denying what the enemy had said long ago?
She could not let the man in blue die and prove her wrong.
Strength gone, mana weakly surging, she struggled to both feet and lurched unsteadily toward the battle at hand, pausing only to pick up her smoking, half ruined tome. True, many powerful sages and sorcerers could conjure magic to do their bidding with only a thought; she believed that she too could hold such mastery with almost childish ease. However, the magic she wished to call upon was beyond her, especially in her addled state. So she was left to drunkenly leaf through her tome, letting the magic of each page guide her hand.
Her friend looked at her, desperation and excitement coloring his face.
"On my mark!" came his war cry, a sentence she felt he had said many times before.
The enemy turned, eyebrow raised, as if he hadn't expected her to rise so quickly from the explosion, if at all. Hand outstretched, mana writhing with magnetism in preparation for the spell at hand, she offered the man wreathed in purple one parting word:
"Checkmate."
The magic literally exploded from her fingertips, arcing forward like a bolt of lighting sent from the heavens. True, the magic was weak (at least, weaker than her previous castings), but it still caught the enemy in his chest, just as her comrade-in-arm's gleaming broadsword caught him through the shoulder, nearly cleaving his raised arm from his body. He fell in two separate pieces, never to rise again. Chest heaving, she stumbled to where her bloodied friend stood, tome tumbling uselessly from weak fingers.
They had won. Against all odds, they had won. She resisted the urge to smile.
"This isn't over."
She looked beyond the man in blue, stared in abject horror at the evil man. He kneeled on the ground, consumed in bubbling, miasmic energy. His body bled, and what little of it didn't, bled of mana. The desperation of a dying hierophant, (Fisher king, whispered her mind, like the first winds of a khamaseen), pooled it into shape. Intent. She knew he was going to cast before he said his own parting words to them:
"Damn you both!"
That amount of mana dedicated to a single spell could only mean one thing. It was as if she had been electrocuted; the charge of his dark magic zapped over her skin, jolted her to awareness and action, made her aware of his intent to cast.
She didn't think. She didn't have time. The dark magic surged toward her comrade in a miasmic flare of purple and black. She lacked the mana to counter with her own spellcraft. So she did the next best thing:
Her shove caught the man in blue by surprise, eyes going wide and mouth dropping in question as her arm caught him in the chest and forced him aside. He had not seen nor sensed the evil man's casting efforts; his back had been turned trustingly to the felled enemy. She let out a moan-turned-scream as the full brunt of the dying hierophant's magic caught her full in the chest with force like a hammer striking an anvil. Again she skidded along the flagstone floor, taking the brunt of the blows with her bony joints and shoulders as she rolled and tumbled like an out of control barrel down a hill.
She didn't know how long she lay there, feeling dazed and battling against the dark as it slid through her blood like slime. She became aware only as the man in blue knelt at her side, picked her up by the shoulders and lifted so that she was half in his lap, head leaning against his breastplate so she could survey the ruined antechamber, the ruined king, who disappeared into energy, body finally spent.
"Are you all right?" he inquired. She couldn't bring herself to speak, so she nodded. Her body protested even that simple movement, but she bit back reflexive wince of it.
His smile was worried, weary and relieved.
"Thanks to you, we carried the day." She looked away from his smiling face to look at her splayed legs, burned and bleeding. If she squinted, she was certain she could see white bone between her charred trousers and the ruined meat of her legs. No vulnerary paste nor elixer could salvage that amount of damage, no matter how good the cleric. "We can rest easy now."
Her whole head throbbed. With little warning, her vision tunnelled, became wrought with crawling red veins of dark. Her friend was still saying things—of comfort, reassurance—but she was no longer listening. It was not for lack of trying; the throbbing in her skull became so powerful that she could barely hear his words. She panicked, grabbed at his hand, the ruins of her pants, praying that it would go away, that she could—would—fight.
That was when her friend noticed that something was wrong. His face entered her line of sight, the light at the end of the tunnel and layered with red. Why was there so much red? Why was her grasping hands beginning to channel mana that she did not have to spare? Why was the voice in her head whispering such evil things?
"At long last." She heard that. She heard the voice in her head incanting. She felt herself stand on legs that, under any other circumstance, would not support her.
"What's wrong?" The question was so innocent. Her hand was thick with mana. The voice in her head was bringing magic to life, a magic she wanted no part in.
She knew that she had the ability to cast magic without a tome. It was too bad that it took possession to cement that hypothesis as fact.
There was apprehension—not quite fear. Not yet—in his eyes as he too climbed to his feet, sweat beading his brow and body lax from the after affects of the battle. Even now, when threatened, he would not attack her. Where did his faith end and his conscience begin? Was he really that good of a man?
Protesting internally, screaming against a voice that would not let her from its grasp, she listened to his panic-fuelled protests, a measly "Hey, hold on—" before she cut his inquiry short with a dagger of thunder to the chest.
Thunder was always her forté. It was only fitting that she killed with it.
Her friend, brother, comrade, a hundred other words, stumbled backward, hand held around the dagger that still protruded from his chest like a macabre flag. Vision clear, head no longer pounding incessantly, voice silent, legs a screaming polestar of agony, she collapsed in a heap, stared dumbstruck at her hand. Her fitted glove still crackling with excess magnetism.
Oh no.
Even dying, her friend was not condemnatory. He looked at her earnestly through fading blue eyes.
"This is... not your—" He collected himself, groaning with pain. "Your fault." Another pause, longer this time. His breath came in ragged gasps. She couldn't find the words in her to call for someone to fix her sin.
"Promise me..." he ground out, fighting death to absolve her, impart further wisdom. "Promise me that you'll escape from this place."
How could she? She had murdered her most trusted ally, the man she put above herself since... since... Forever? As far back as her memories stretched.
"Promise me!" His voice was harsh, full of command. How could she say no to him?
"I will." Her voice was weak, throaty, thick with unshed tears.
That seemed to be what he was waiting for. His smile was more of a pained grimace.
"Please... go."
Those were the last words he ever said to her. The man crumpled to the ground, life extinguished at her hand, as a voice that sounded suspiciously like her own cackled triumph and screamed anguish.