IX. Cordelia's parents usually reacted to her showing off with praise, encouragement, and a warm kiss on the forehead. She expected the same thing when one day she was able to produce a small sphere of pure night in the palm of her hands.

Cordelia was young, but she was intelligent. She noticed her parents' odd reaction to her newest gift. First, they both reacted with wide eyes and a slight flinch backwards. Her mother gasped and stumbled, and needed her father's help to keep her from falling over. When they regained their composure and saw the confused furrow of their daughter's brow, they pasted on smiles and gave her lukewarm praise and kisses.

But what sealed it for Cordelia was her mother whispering, "It is lovely dear, but maybe you should focus on your other talents?"

As Cordelia grew older, she started to see why she'd been dissuaded. Perhaps if she'd made a small flame, a few sparks, a little gust of wind, or a little ball of sunlight, her parents might have been more receptive. They were lower nobility and had grown to accept Anima and Light magic. Her mother was from a merchant-class family and still held some superstitions close to her heart. But like any Ylisseans of their generation, Dark magic put the fear of the Gods in them and reminded them of "the desert heathens" they'd been told bedtime horror stories about.

And as Cordelia found from her own secret training, Dark magic was as easy as breathing for her.

She stayed away from harmful curses, instead working on her little ball of night. She realized that Dark magic was a force of will and of faith– you had to both imagine what you wanted, and believe that you could make it happen and you would make it happen. Perhaps Cordelia was a perfect match for Dark magic; after all, she had no shortage of will or self-confidence.

At ten years old, Cordelia could make a dome of darkness surround her, blocking out the sun. At fifteen, she could make stars appear in her dome. At eighteen, she could make her dome big enough to cover her bunk in the pegasus knights' garrison and make a crescent-shaped sliver of moonlight.

And at twenty-three, Shepard called over her shoulder with a Second Seal in hand, "Cordelia, do you have any magical talent?"

Cordelia replied by turning the walls and ceiling of the barracks into a sea of constellations.

When she donned her sorceress robes, Henry came barreling up to her talking even faster and with more cheer in his voice than she could've imagined. What shocked her though was Henry asking her to teach him how to make her night sky.

Cordelia had cocked her head to the side; "But I thought you knew everything there was to know about Dark magic."

Henry shook his head like a dog shook off water; "Nah, the place I was schooled in was basically just a factory for magical killing machines. I wasn't taught anything that couldn't potentially be used to kill somebody, nya-ha!"

He stopped mid-sentence, put a hand to his chin, then remarked, "Well now that I think about it if you take out the stars and make a big enough area of darkness you could use it to shock and blind an incoming army. Why wasn't I taught how to do that?"

Cordelia suppressed a shudder, but agreed to share with Henry what she'd taught herself. As she showed him how to put stars in his sky, he showed her how to curse a fatal illness into nothing more than the common cold. She took him for a ride on the back of her pegasus, and he introduced her to every single one of his crow companions.

The ring he gave her was inlaid with a band of stars.

X. When she took Shepard's advice and decided to try being a mage, Nowi could only blink owlishly as Miriel and Ricken tried to give her pointers. They talked about fine control of your emotions, about willpower and focus. She'd had no idea humans had such a hard time with casting magic.

Nowi would skim the tomes given to her mostly just to be polite. But when she went out onto the battlefield, her tome remained safe in her pack. Because for manakete, casting magic was a simple matter of Speaking. She didn't need to think about focus– she simply shouted the Words, and the spell was cast.

Her magic fascinated the humans, and Nowi was fascinated by what they couldn't do. Even without her Dragon Stone, Nowi could spit her beautiful fire. With a Word she could produce, fire, lightning or wind. But she could also call ice, water, earth, the elements humans had forgotten. She could call a storm with her Voice, or clear the skies. She could make herself swift or push aside anything that stood in her path.

The closest thing Nowi could do to human magic was use her Dragon Stone– as Light mages would pour their heart into their staves, she would pour her heart into her Dragon Stone, and it would show her as she truly was. The Laguz– Taguel, Nowi corrected herself (these strange mortals and their ever-changing names; at least Manakete had stuck around)– understood that much, and in that way the two of them shared a silent companionship.

Nowi felt apart from the other mages, but that was no surprise. She was apart from most of the army. She tried her best to help Miriel understand her magic for scientific purposes, tried her best to help Ricken learn spells that were similar to her Words, but in the end Nowi's magic was just too different from that of her human companions for her to truly help. They needed to concentrate, control their will and their emotions, control everything. Nowi just Spoke, and it was.

She had thought her magic would remain apart forever. And then, little Nah had come through, understanding little about her own Voice. Nowi had grinned wider than ever.

She would greatly enjoy teaching her hatchling to Speak.

XI. For a long, long time, Libra could barely understand why his parents abandoned him. He would never agree with the decision or truly forgive them for it. Everything that had happened to him ensured that he couldn't. But on an intellectual level he couldn't comprehend why they'd done it. As far as he'd known, he had been a perfectly normal if quiet child.

Then he'd gone on his first missionary journey into rural Ylisse and gotten a stone thrown at his face for healing someone.

As a cleric healed his split lip, he had thought back to his village. It had been a tiny thing in the mountains north of Ylisstol, where men were miners and if a woman cut her hair short she was burned at the stake. Maybe he had showed signs of magical potential, maybe he had just said something wrong– it didn't take much to make folk like that turn sour towards you.

White magic had been perfect for him; first, as a way to turn all his frustration, all his fear and despair, into something positive. And when that was no longer enough, as a way to remind himself that he wasn't empty, that he was capable of feeling the joy, the compassion you needed to make a Catharsis staff more than just a poor bludgeoning instrument.

Yet still Libra felt wrong. Often he would need to force positive emotion up and push anything else he felt back, putting in so much more mental effort than you really needed to work a simple Mend staff. And he was taught never to kill in hatred, so he couldn't put all of those wasted emotions into the swing of his axe.

He was off-balance. Everything was coagulating, festering into something poisonous and potentially dangerous, but he had no way to get rid of it. He was afraid. Afraid that he would hurt someone when this venomous, hazardous mass finally got too big to support its own weight.

Then, one day in the Shepherds' barracks, Shepard came jogging up to him with at least three more tomes than usual and an excited smile straining not to break into anything wider; "Libra! Hey, can I talk to you?"

Libra pasted on a serene smile; "Of course, Shepard. How can I help you?"

Her smile exploded into a beaming grin; "I've been watching you on the field, and I noticed you have huge amounts of magical potential! Like– Miriel and Tharja are two of the most powerful mages we have but you almost outshine them in terms of raw power. So, I'm thinking maybe we should try having you go through some Mage training! See if you can do anything with Anima or Dark magic!"

Libra worried at the inside of his lower lip with his teeth; "I'm… I've been training my whole life as a healer, Shepard. I'm not sure if I'd be suited to offensive magic."

"If you're not comfortable with it, I'll totally understand and not bother you about it again," Shepard replied, "But it couldn't hurt just to try, right? Just like– we'll do some basic stuff with the lowest level tomes I can find, just to see if you've got any affinity. It'll be fun!"

Libra frowned for a bit longer, then gave Shepard a small but genuine smile; "Alright. If this is what you think is best, I'll give it a try."

Libra, it turned out, had enough raw magical talent to overpower his Light affinity and make him not just decent but brilliant with Anima and Dark magic. He let Dark magic sit by the wayside (as a man of God, he still wasn't quite comfortable with it), but agreed to train seriously in Anima magic. And immediately he was finding his balance again.

Anima magic looked at first to be the exact opposite of Light magic– if you tried to fully pour your heart into it, your Fire spell would burn your face off. But it didn't require the suppression of emotions. Instead, it required the tight control of them. It required drawing on the specific feeling, focusing that specific power you needed, pointing in the right direction and letting it go. In a way, Libra had already been doing that for years. Now that he was turning his pettier, uglier feelings into wind, fire and lightning, the kinder ones were easier to find, easier to draw upon.

But he didn't truly find his balance until he was pushed by Shepard into studying Dark magic under Tharja.

As Tharja instructed him time and again, Dark magic would be ruined by emotion. Even the tight focus Anima magic used wasn't enough. If you didn't have complete control over your mind, the consequences would be horrific. She described to him all the times Cordelia had temporarily blinded herself in the middle of battle, all the times Henry had cursed himself into vomiting for hours, all the times she had to get her own fingers reattached.

It was incredibly difficult. You had to empty yourself of all but your willpower and your faith. Libra had feared many times that he was simply an empty shell; in trying to learn Dark magic, he learned that was further than the truth than he could possibly imagine. His problem was that he had too much inside him. Too much baggage weighing him down, too much emotion kept inside so he would appear the perfect monk, and his Light magic affinity encouraging him to feel.

Tharja taught him how she had been taught. She forced him to sit, close his eyes, and breathe. To focus on his breath until that was all there was. Only then would she begin instructing him on proper spells. It took him three full weeks.

He had thought this process similar to prayer, but found himself incapable of doing as Tharja did when his thoughts drifted to the Gods. He tried to put himself in a state of focus as he did with Anima magic, and that only resulted in him creating flame when Tharja told him to create a ball of pure night. He would get frustrated. He would storm out. Tharja would drag him back in and the process would begin again.

On his third week, Tharja began differently; "Libra. Obviously, thinking about this my way isn't working. Thinking about this the way you think about other things isn't working. We're holding everyone up by how much progress we're not making. So we've got to try something new."

Libra had only nodded silently; he was past frustrated. Now he was only humble.

Tharja shifted into a cross-legged sitting position; "Alright, Libra. When you close your eyes this time, I want you to think about your breath in a different way. When you breathe in, think back to a memory. One of your bad ones."

"I have a lot of those, this might take a while," Libra remarked with a raised eyebrow and the ghost of a smirk.

Tharja frowned at him, but continued, "I want you to hold that breath for a few seconds. And when you breathe out, I want you to let it go. Let it go back into your past, where it can't hurt you anymore. And if this doesn't work," Tharja threw her hands in the air, "Then I hate to disappoint Shepard, but I'm done with you."

Libra nodded silently again, closed his eyes, and inhaled.

He thought of the stone that split his lip, of how his kindness had nearly gotten him and his brothers and sisters under Naga burnt alive, of how he'd felt nothing but simmering, impotent rage. Of all the times that scene had repeated in the land that claimed to love all the Divine Dragon gave to them. Exhale– they had all lived, and if the villagers could not accept Naga's gifts, then he would forgive their ignorance.

He thought of every time someone had mistaken him for a woman, of the creeping discomfort in his own skin, of how sometimes he wanted to tear it all off, of the hatred he'd felt at the Gods for making him… like this. Exhale– he knew who he was, Tharja knew who he was, and the Shepherds knew who he was. No matter what others thought when they saw him, no matter if he had to struggle to make his body fit his mind, nothing would change that.

He thought of the scar on his neck. Exhale– He had a true family now.

When he opened his eyes, Libra felt… he had feared that when he truly mastered this, he would be the empty shell he thought he was. But this wasn't emptiness. It was just… calm. Calm, and assurance.

He heard Tharja's voice like she was miles away; "Now. Make a sphere of night."

Between his palms darkness coalesced into a dense ball. Stars erupted to life within, casting faint specks of light on the walls of the tent. A small full moon glowed at its center.

Tharja gave a small smile; "Not bad for a beginner."