Title: Only A Heartbeat Away
Fandom: FE9, plus precanon
Character/Pairing: Rajaion/Ena, a tinge of IkeSoren at the end, but pretty canonish/genish in nature.
Summary: As long as he breathed so would she.
Sense: Hearing
All warfare is based on deception.
-The Art of War, Sun Tsu
The Tactics of War is a (quite obvious) allusion to The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Any other quotes or histories are more of a paraphrase than any actual resemblance to real battles.
Since there was a lot of holes in Goldoan culture, I had to fill in the gaps with speculation. Along with characterization. Rajaion has all of maybe one line in the entire game, and I wanted to develop a side of Ena beyond what we see. (I want to pretend that at least one of the dragons has a sense of humor, Nasir and Kurthnaga are the only ones who even cracked a smile now and then.) Also, spoilers for the end of POR, Rajaion's fate and RD spoilers at the end. Because the irony was too great for me not to ignore.
And finally, this is part of a larger arc including a prequel and two-three sequels. I've just got to get down and finally finish them.
.
Even though the miles spanned long and far, she could still hear his heart beating. It is held deep within her, the memories that float on this black primordial ocean. She kept it close, this knowledge that however far away he was, he still lived. As long as Rajaion still drew breath, no matter how deeply confined he was in the dark bars of his madness, As long as he breathed, so would she.
Ena shed her skin. She cut her hair and her loyalty. With each snip snip fell aside all thoughts of king and country. She donned her cloak and put away her morality. She fold away herself until there was nothing but Rajaion and the distance. And then she did what she had always done best: She calculated.
Rajaion loved her for her intelligence, and it was this same cold logic that drove her forward. She had studied in the King's palace itself, had touched her fingers almost every page in those vast libraries in her hundreds of years of study. With Rajaion's interference, she had even been allowed to study the ancient scrolls that told of the very fibre of their world. Songs of Ashunera, accurate tellings of the creation in the original language, sacred texts hidden in a dragon's cavern of wealth far more precious than the lored treasures dragons, jewels and gold and silver armor.
And yet, her knowledge only spanned so far. While more urbane than most Goldoans, as her grandfather had traveled amongst the Beorc a mere five hundred years ago, she only had his assorted stories of it.
Ena knew only a scholarly view on the beorc. They were weak and short lived, but not to be underestimated. Some were full of fury and conquest and would destroy everything in their path, regardless of the consequences. These beorc seemed to thrive on bloodshed, salting crops and cutting down peasants as if they were animals lead to be slaughtered. Even the defenseless innocent ones were not spared, a tactic labeled utterly unforgivable in The Tactics of War.
The books told of honorable beorc, heroes and kings, but she suspected most of those lot had died in the past three hundred years.
She hadn't seen any of this generation of short-lived ones show any of those qualities.
It had taken only one mad beorc king to steal her mate away. The beorc had shamed himself by turning away from his life mate and threatening to abandon their child. He'd proven himself a cruel tyrant, a collection of every dark thought or evil desire in the world around him. The person her almost-blood, Rajaion's sister had cleaved herself to.
And Ena would bind herself close, right under his own eyes.
.
She wandered through lands of beasts and men, passed through them as a wraith. Ena was a spectator, and perhaps on another time, she would've noted the cultures. We'll write our own books. We'll create the next stories Rajaion had said. They had talked of seeing the edges of the continent that they only knew from maps and tales told. He shared that trace of wanderlust with Kurthnaga who would sit with rapt attention every time beorc matters arose.
How many hundreds of years had they planned out? To see the cultures in a thousand years, a time when the war had ceased. Kurthnaga and Rajaion shared that view, of opening the borders once again.
But even for his idealism, Rajaion knew the ways of dragon and men. His suggestions of walls felled were cast far off in the future. A few hundred years passed like days in Goldoa. Perhaps in that time this bitter generation of soft-skinned and hardhearted beorc would have waned. By then, the vicious ones would have killed themselves off and the peaceful survivors would have learned the bitter taste of wars, and what power could bring.
What none of them had foreseen was Almedha, her rise and her passing through their boundaries. None of them guessed this would be the crack to fell the walls of Goldoa once and for all. This time, not of the proposed peace, but of war.
.
One thing that could be said about Daein was that a single soldier could rise through ranks quickly. Hadn't their very king been proof of that? There had been curse of the royal family that had blackened history in the all too recent past, it had caused such an uproar that even the sheltered halls of Goldoa had heard the echoes.
She started in a small battalion as a tactician. The leader was named Grualf and was a tall, scarred man with the wild eyes of a berserker. He had risen to his level by prowess, not leading ability. He was a bloodthirsty man, the kind of man the king cast as the exemplar. Every soldier of Daein should be this willing to throw away his life, while taking down battalions of the other army to do so.
Ena did not lead him to his death, for that was his own doing, his own wishing, even. She escaped unharmed from that lost battalion, but she was one of the few.
Soon, she was assigned a larger battalion, one that had been slated for the conquest of Crimea.
Ena shed what mercy she had, for in the end Rajaion's presence would redeem every cruelty she had to commit as a member of this country. She tried to close her ears to the screams that ripped through the air as Daein ripped through the ranks, taking out innocents and knights alike in their killing frenzy.
The scholar in her admitted the brilliance of these plans, ones that had long predated her service. The life in her reviled it.
But she had always been the composed one, even to the point of coldness. It was Rajaion who dreamed, it was he who would lean over her, his hand up her spine. He'd steal the books from her hands and steal kisses just, without shame at who could be watching.
It was he who had taught her how to smile again after the death of her parents, gentle, teasing lessons that showed that legendary dragon patience. Even as it took her years to submit, he waited for that smile.
And now, she would wait for him, no matter what bodies must be felled for that path or what atrocities it would be paved with.
.
She had to balance how much to give. Being with Rajaion meant everything to her, and yet she felt a desire to be the rot that decimated the kingdom from the inside. Subtle misdirections, forgotten mentions of reinforcements, how many mistakes could she arrange without her loyalty being questioned? She pondered this, the wisdom of each move.
How many moves would it take to dethrone the king? (For hadn't the game shown that the piece to most fear was the pawn, for in every pawn could lie a queen, a force hidden behind a cloak of weakness.)
.
She was called before the king himself soon after her battalion's fall. He was large, for a beorc. His size wasn't as imposing as the sheer presence of him. He was a predator through and through. Ena could feel that raw sadistic glee that seemed to hang in the air around him. The scent of the place left her breathless with revulsion. Bones and blood and flesh, this was what the castle was steeped in. Fury and agony were its decorations.
Wrapped around the throne, a massive black tail twitched in discontent. Thick chains wrapped around to a spiked collar at his neck. Rajaion, her beloved Rajaion was a pet. A dog, turned insane by cruelty, a steed to ride when the chance suited him.
It took all her strength to swallow back the desire to stare, to run to her love. He was mere inches away.
Rajaion rumbled, his claws scraped at the floor, tugged at his chains. She breathed, calculated, forced breaths and dared not turn her head.
The king's eyes were wild, and yet utterly controlled. He knew of his madness and reveled in it, enjoying the sheer deliciousness of every drop.
"You just might be interesting," he said. The king laughed. His face contorted with it.
"Thank you, my king," she murmured.
"Petrine wanted more soldiers. I hear her last tactician died by Petrine's own spear." he grinned, maniac, a madman's smile.
"You honor me, my king," she replied, robotic, her words coming out a pantomime.
But the king had already lost interest in her and had taken notice in Rajaion's increasing furor. The dragon let out a roar, not of anger, but of pain and anguish, though few save herself would notice the difference.
The king frowned and spoke a rebuke to Rajaion, but it did not still the dragon. If anything, he grew more furious and ripped at the chains to unbind himself and win his freedom, or at least the freedom of death.
"Why are you still here? Leave."
She bowed stiffly and walked as fast as she could without running.
The sound of that roar had ripped through her consciousness. It was a call of pain, through the fog of the madness; a cry of a mate to its loved one, a broken call of her name.
.
Petrine was a flame that threatened to ignite at any given time. Her underlings all quivered like reeds when she came around.
The first thing Petrine had done was scoff at her. Ena was almost was surprised that her new commander hadn't spit in her face.
"A child? Of all the useless things to send me, the King sends me a girl barely out of diapers?"
Ena had no question as to what had happened to Petrine's prior tactician.
She'd kept silent, taken those first abuses and all later with only the thought of Rajaion on her mind. Every thought that wasn't of survival was of the past. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night and wondered why the bed was cold. Had Rajaion gone to get a drink during the night? Then the haze of induced dreams and memories rushed over her and she remembered.
But she earned her place in Petrine's battalion with a few well placed strategies. Here, she could afford as much sabotage as she'd enjoyed with Grualf. Petrine would catch her lies before she had a chance to utter them.
Ena gathered her books and set out. A troublesome group had sprung up from the cracked ribs of Crimea. Backwoods mercenaries that had cut through the lesser troops sent to destroy them.
She remembered when they had poured over the books of history and of the great Liuzhan's victory of his small, ill-kempt band over a vast army of the tyrant king Fanwai. She had always thought the story more fable than truth. It was said to be ancient, as old as the goddess herself or even older. The details were too legend-like, the discrepancies too vast to ignore.
"But think of it, a tiny force defeating the king by just one brilliant strategist."
She had to admire their habits of keeping to wooded places, fleeing and advancing, quite unpredictable. She remembered the old adage, a favorite of Rajaion's: even the stinging fly will fell the boar in time.
.
The crickets chirped all night in that tiny alcove. It was a good sign for it meant no one lay in wait. The boy had told his commander to press on just a little further, to a safer place.
In a tent hastily put up, a boy laid down the maps. When sleep eluded him, he planned. He had not chosen this war, with its musty ideals and enemy forces made of the stuff of nightmares. But his commander had, and thus the war became his as well.
Which way to leave with the least casualties... Which way to leave his commander victorious, and yet completely unharmed? He pondered as the clouds began to cover the skies. The crickets chirped on, so oblivious as if they belonged to another world.
The child that Rajaion had given his life to protect frowned at the maps. A plan began to form, and he turned it every which way, a way, like a craftsmen inspecting his work for any mar or imperfection. Perhaps, just perhaps, he had figured a way to take control of this war and win back the country.
Though, the spoils, the glory and the battle were minor footnotes to him. Survival was the only key, and not his own but of his commander. He only valued his teammates lives for the sorrow it would bring on his commander and the disadvantage it might bring.
There was no purer instance of loyalty than his, he would defeat this king merely for daring to threaten his commander's life.
Something like a smile formed on his lips as he closed the maps and placed them away again.
An Achilles heel? Perhaps he'd found it.
And with that, a king's son perfected the plan that would be a king's downfall.