A/N:

3-13 Sniper: ERK FOR LIFE! NO REGRETS! I use both healers, one for light magic that can heal in emergencies, amd obe devoted entirely to support (you can guess which is which)

Every unit will get their moment. Every. Single. One. (Yes even you Geitz, you who has such a forgettable personality i have to constantly go back and check the wiki just when trying to remember anything other than your class and hair color.)

To the guest who left a review on Nov 13: i didnt know you were referencing sonething because until a week or two ago i had never seen that. Now i get the reference though and i love it (Literal Word of God, also PMSeymour is glorious)

FE Newbie: forgot to mention last time, Varric's jealousy/protectiveness over Lyn both during the Merlinus chapter and in general will be played for laughs. How ironic i mention this in the A/N to this particular chapter...

JP: like I said last chapter, Leonidas and the song Sparta DO fit Varric pretty damn well up to this point, and again i love the imagery of him sitting a corner with emo clouds practically visible above him with Sabaton blaring in his ears. Then again i'm trying to limit his resemblance to me, not crank it up…

And again, funny how you say nothing seems to phase Varric right before this chapter.

NOW THEN, WHO'S READY FOR A BAD ACID TRIP? Or at least the closest I could get to one. Honestly I don't think I'm not very good at these dream sequences. Regardless, as usual it's based on something from a game. In this case it's two things, one each from two games.

Varric stared at his decorated cloak, holding it like it could shatter at the slightest impact. "I'm sorry...I'll be there, but I can't be there now." With a heavy sigh he lay on his side. As worried as he was, Eliwood was right; it took mere moments for him to drift off into a deep sleep.

Varric found himself standing in the center of a lake, fog obscuring anything more than a few meters away. His reflection was perfectly still, impossibly so. "...So, is this it?" He asked aloud. In response, his reflection melted into a swirling vortex of pitch black, growing larger and larger but not breaking the surface. Varric stepped backwards only for the surface to give way just enough to make him fall backwards. In an instant, a massive eldritch hand bigger than Varric shot out of the vortex, grabbing the tactician and dragging him in.

Falling.

Falling…

Falling further still, Varric gained his bearing only to immediately lose them again as the world shifted sideways, and his downward momentum became sideward, sending him rolling a couple dozen meters before he could right himself. No sooner had he stood up then the fog in front cleared, giving him a direct line of sight to what was barely recognizable as Castle Caelin. Hanging from the walls and perched on spikes were dozens of bodies.

Varric's mouth opened but no words came out as he began to choke on his breath. He shakily reached out but the moment he did so, reality glitched in and out of existence and he found himself at the front doors. On each side was a knight, one red one green, a puddle of blood at their feet and a metal spike through their hearts; their bodies were deathly pale as if drained of blood and their eyes white with neither iris nor pupil.

Varric covered his face. "It's not real ITS NOT REAL" He repeated, screaming internally. He heard metal against metal and burst through the doors only to hit the ceiling, his body in agony from the impact. When his vision returned he found the interior a complete mess of gravity and broken physics. Against one wall was Wil, at least a dozen arrows in his torso. Elsewhere was Lucius, a broadsword through his chest. Both bodies were the same deathly white, but that barely registered as Varric sprinted past, only to barge through another door and fall forwards into a hellish cavern, red and black swirling, with unrecognizable phantoms everywhere. At the center of the swarm was Chloe, one arm shattered and her body blackening from literal scorched earth. Even in her state she continued to swing her weapon, each movement visibly paining her.

At last Varric found his voice. "Ch-CHLOE!"

At his voice she turned, opening her mouth to speak. No sooner did she hesitate than she was sent flying against a far wall, before tumbling down into the chasm. All at once the phantoms set their eyes on Varric, and as they closed in reality flickered yet again.

Once more a hand grasped Varric and dragged him down, but this time Varric remained conscious. He took his dagger and instinctively stabbed the hand, only for a deafening roar to echo and leave him tumbling forward, momentum switching again, before coming to a stop in a prone state.

"You… save… us…" A familiar voice murmured, and immediately Varric's gaze shot up. Before him was the the Lady of Caelin herself, her arms shredded from chains dragging her upwards a good few meters off the ground, the chains' origin impossible to determine.

"L… Lyn." Varric rasped, his throat entirely hoarse.

Her eyes and body drained like all the others, Lyn raised her head and looked into Varric's soul before repeating: "You could have saved us…"

The chains snapped and the body dropped. Varric reached forward but the body began to move on its own, before it rose alongside several others, their pupils returning with eerie yellow irises. One by one Varric saw his friends return as morphs.

"You could have saved us."

"You let them waste time"

"You knew what would happen…"

"You still did nothing to change it."

From the center rose a man clad in dark robes, golden eyes glimmering in the dark. With a snap Varric's body burst into blue flames, and he began screaming in silence, before all went dark.

Eliwood burst through the door to find an absolute wreck. The room was covered in cracks as if a giant pinball had been rocketing around, and Varric was at the back of the room on a bed, in a cold sweat and hyperventilating. "Varric!" he cried before running over, several others not far behind.

"Dear gods…"

"What happened?!" Matthew exclaimed, even the typical comedian in utter shock at the scene.

"...n-no…" Varric murmured, staring downward with wide eyes and shaking like it was 50 below.

Rebecca pushed through, visibly panicked. "Hey… Varric?" she reached out to him, but at her touch Varric jolted back and covered his head with his hands. Rebecca recoiled at the sight. "Wh-where's Serra!?"

"Right here." the cleric replied, with a different staff than normal in hand.

The glow of the Restore staff finally faded and Varric lay on the bed, unconscious and murmuring but no longer panicked and breathing normally.

By then the group had mostly cleared out to give Varric space, Dorcas, Serra, and Rebecca being the ones to remain.

Outside Hector wasn't cracking wise for once. "What the hell happened in there? Did his shadow thing go berserk or something? It was a wreck!"

"We don't know much about that tome." Marcus surmised. "Perhaps it has possessive-"

Erk shook his head before interrupting. "No, the tome didn't cause Varric to panic. The reverse, in fact." Even the stoic mage was clearly upset by things. "I only saw him remotely that upset during the Lundgren encounter, what in gods' names did he see in his dream?"

"Erk," Eliwood spoke up, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Could you explain further?"

Erk nodded. "That tome is the type to bind to its user; as in, the tome is controlled repeatedly by the user's will and thus becomes linked to their mental state. That's why it the shadow "went berserk" as Hector referred to it." He frowned. "But still, normally such things only happen when the caster is in critical condition…Which means his mental state was..."

Guy remained silent. "He knows things none of us do. That fact came back to haunt him, somehow…"

"Alright, I did what I could. He should be fine after a night's rest." Serra sighed, worry etched into her face.

"We should all get some sleep." Oswin advised. "And I think it's best if we not bother Varric about this tomorrow; we should let him be the one to speak about it."

Several nodded before heading back to where they were staying. Dorcas leaned against the wall outside the room. "You heard him, Rebecca."

"...You all go ahead, I'll keep watch, just in case." she replied halfheartedly.

Dorcas sighed, before sitting in the outer corner, nodding off on the spot.

Varric awoke, unnaturally calm. "I had that dream, and then… I was screaming. Yeah, I must've waken so many up-" He stopped short in his mind as he realized sitting next to him, head on the bed, was Rebecca, fast asleep.

Varric wasn't sure how to react for a few moments, before smiling weakly. "She's too caring for her own good." He thought, before taking the blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders, then silently making his way out. Varric couldn't help but keep the smile when he saw Dorcas, arms crossed even as he was asleep.

"I'm sorry, guys… thanks." He whispered, mostly to himself.

"Ugh…" Hector groaned, sitting against a pillar, he and Elwood alone in the main hall. "There's no way in hell I can fall back asleep after that episode. Thanks for screamin the castle down, Varric…"

Immediately Eliwood smacked Hector across the back of the head. "For Elimine's sake, Hector! The man looked half dead!"

"Yeah, over a DREAM. What is he, 7? Or is his imagination just as weird as his mannerisms?"

Eliwood looked legitimately upset with his fellow lord. "Hector, do you remember what I told you he told ME?"

"...Alright, alright, I'm sorry, okay? Inform me." Hector muttered, reluctantly acknowledging he was going too far.

"He can't stand violence, not against people he cares about. That's what he told me." Eliwood stared into the wood of the table. "...He purposefully dehumanizes enemies so he can do his job; he can't dehumanize someone he guides, and therefore can't escape the fear of losing those people. I have no doubts that's what is haunting him."

"He's certainly strange." Hector murmured. "By default I would never expect that guy to be the type to lead a brigade, but he knows so many things about… a lot of things, really. You ever hear the guy ramble to himself? He lists off things I'm pretty sure none of us would understand."

Eliwood nodded. "And then there's the fact that he's not even from Elibe. I've never met anyone who isn't from Elibe. Have you?" he turned to Hector. "You've attended Ostian courts, perhaps-"

Hector rolled his eyes. "Yes, a few times I've seen people not from Elibe. A very select few times, and never did I get to talk with them, nor did I want to. It's always an ambassador of some sort. They speak almost as oddly as Varric but they don't speak like him at all… To say nothing of if I know about their music."

Eliwood sighed. "To be honest, the reason I have no doubt in the fact that he's not from Elibe is that music. According to him, everything he plays is simply a recreation of what he's learned; they aren't his own compositions. It's like-"

"Wait." Hector went dead quiet. Eliwood opened his mouth but Hector held up a finger. "...you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Eliwood responded, but before he had even finished he made out the sound of strumming.

"Music." Hector replied before hurrying outside as quietly as he could.

Varric sat on a grassy ledge, formed by a rock jutting out of the side of a hill, lyre in hand watching the stars, speaking aloud.

"It's been so long since… well, since most of what I know got pulled out under my feet…"

The two Lords hid, a ways away but able to hear clearly in the dead of night.

"...You listening up there?" Varric said aloud, and both Lords did a double take.

"Yes, I'm here." Naga replied, heard by Varric alone.

"I guess this is the part where you say "I told you so", huh?" Varric replied. He held back a laugh as he heard the divine sigh.

"You can't carry all these burdens on your lonesome."

"Weren't YOU the one who said there was a surprise to 'keep me in check' or whatever?"

"Yes, but at this rate you'll be long scarred before it."

There was a long pause before Varric spoke again. "...You know I'm grateful, as much as I fear what's to come...I'm glad I got to come to this land. It makes me feel like I truly have a purpose."

"..."

Varric sighed, before going back to playing melodies.

For what seemed like eons a soft melody hummed, before the two lords nearly jumped from cover when the tactician began to sing along to a very slow refrain.

What makes my life worth living?

Who's making real decisions?

Strung up by puppet strings and only I can see them…

In this dimension, crashed in

Wake up and smell the ashes

Living a half life with a dream to see their freedom...

On a dime the melody changed seamlessly into a more soothing yet ominous tune.

[to the tune of several segments of the song "Echoes"]

I know only what I've seen
I fear all that's in between
I've seen them, I've dreamed them, this world where secrets bleed...
Their echoes, I've seen them, the crutch on which I lean...

Am I afflicted? Must be afflicted...
Or am I gifted? I could be gifted...
My world is so far, I'll never reach home, at least I'm guided by the light of their echoes...

Do I trust my senses? Can't trust my senses...
Truth is enlightening, but truth can be blinding...
Form their protection, with my direction...
Why must I hide it? I can't deny it...

Brought in...in this world i'm spawned
Answers sought out from beyond...

Intrude in trials... intruded trials,
No peace in death, there is no death...
I'll stay here for them, I must stay for them,
Give them the best...

Am I afflicted? Must be afflicted...
Or am I gifted? I could be gifted...
My world is so far, I'll never reach home, at least I'm guided, by the light of their echoes…

As the melody continued in the dead of night, Varric losing himself in his music, the two Lords silently left; Eliwood began asking himself how he planned to go about talking with Varric the next day.

Songs used in this chapter: To Be A Free Man (Half Life song by JT Music) and the melody of Echoes (Perception song by Andrea Storm Kaden)