1 day after the events of part 2:
Ingrid Brandl Galatea walked through the streets of Fhirdiad, glancing around at the buildings and reminding herself what they used to be. A weapons store where Ingrid held her first silver lance as a child, which she whirled outside until her father took it away and she nearly cried. A toy shop where she got her first wooden knight figure. She still had it back at home in Galatea territory, the paint mostly chipped off by now. And the sweets shop. She promised to go there with friends when they were at the Officers Academy, but when the war broke out she never had a chance to fulfil her end of the promise. It was her, Annette, and…
Mercedes.
Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut. A hand fell on her shoulder, and she looked over at Sylvain, who offered her a smile that was supposed to be reassuring. He couldn't mask the fatigue in his expression, but it made Ingrid feel better that he was exhausted too.
"So many memories," she said. "I wonder which of these places Glenn liked to visit."
"Probably the weapons shop, same as you," Sylvain says. "My favorite spot was the instrument store over in the west part of town. So many shy girls there playing beautiful songs. I remember a redhead with freckles playing the flute and blushing after I applauded her performance."
"I bet she was embarrassed at you making an ass of yourself stepping in on a private lesson," Ingrid said. "Any sign of His Highness?"
"Let's keep going. There's nothing outside the city, so he must be here."
Sylvain was right about the area outside Fhirdiad being a desolate snowfield, but Ingrid wasn't convinced that fact could stop Dimitri from lumbering off to wherever his bloodhound snout led him. For all they knew, he could be chasing after Imperials right now.
After searching the rest of the street, neither of them spotted any sign of Dimitri. A few people were out in the streets, but none of them remarked seeing a man wearing animal fur and an eyepatch barging through town with a relic spear. That meant he was either hiding in one of the side alleys they didn't bother checking, he was outside Fhirdiad entirely, or he was… in the wreckage. The spot where the javelin of light exploded over the city like the world's largest storm of fire magic. But instead of burning, it reduced everything to rubble. No burning like a blaze gambit.
Who launched that attack? Did the Empire hate Fhirdiad so much that they wanted to grind every brick and stone down to dust? Byleth. Edelgard. Dorothea. Ingrid knew them back at Garreg Mach. She didn't want to believe that they launched the light lance, but nobody else made sense. Rhea gave her life trying to protect the city from the exploding lances even after ordering it burned down, and Dimitri didn't have access to that kind of magic. Claude was a ruthless schemer and apparently an Imperial dog now, but he didn't have any more capacity for magic than she did.
"Are we going there?" Ingrid said.
Sylvain nodded. He didn't have to ask where "there" was.
Ingrid walked over to the site of the wreckage, and right before turning the corner into the area where Rhea made her defense against the invaders, she saw it. Dimitri hunched over something she couldn't see, flanked on one side by Annette and the other side by Ashe. Dimitri looked over at her and Sylvain when they approached, his eye narrowing.
"You." His voice was harsh as normal, but strained. "Why did you obey my orders all this time?"
"I… don't you know, Dimitri?" Ingrid said. "I'm a knight. It's my duty to follow your commands. If you wish for me to die for you, I will."
"You are a fool. Look at me, Ingrid. Look at what I have become."
Dimitri took off his eyepatch, and Ingrid could see the scars from where his eye used to be. But he was wrong that the Empire forcing him to be brutal for the sake of survival made him any less of a lord. Any less of a prince. Any less of a king. In Faerghus, only the determined and the strong survived the harsh winters and poor soils. Only the strong were fit to protect the weak.
"And what about you, Sylvain?" Dimitri said. "You must recognize another miserable wretch when you see one. Why follow me into battle? Into this?"
Dimitri gestured around him. Ruins. Cinders. Rubble. The pride and glory of the Kingdom, torn asunder. At the hands of the Empire. At the hands of whoever launched those light lances.
And at the hands of the Knights of Seiros, who were supposed to protect the realm.
"I couldn't let my friend lose to himself," Sylvain said. "Plus, I needed to make sure Ingrid and Felix didn't die stupid deaths."
Sylvain rested his elbow in Ingrid's shoulder. For once, she didn't brush him off.
"You failed," Dimitri says. "You are both worthless."
He rose to a standing position, and as his long fur robes converged around the legs, Ingrid could see what he was kneeling over.
It was Felix's body, eyes open and glassy, blade and Aegis Shield still in hand. The traitor. Ingrid started towards his body, and Sylvain grabbed her arm. When she looked back at him, he gave a curt shake of his head.
"Annette," Ashe said. "Did you find anything?"
"Dark magic," she said. "The kind Hubert and Lysithea use."
"Lysithea is affiliated with the Empire now, right?" Ingrid said. "It must be one of those two."
Annette shook her head. "The signature is different from theirs. But I don't know anyone else who uses dark magic. We don't teach it at the School of Sorcery."
"Cornelia," Dimitri says. "She was on my list of people to crush regardless."
Ingrid exchanged a glance with Sylvain. They both knew that Dimitri escaped captivity after Cornelia framed him for the death of his uncle Rufus, but neither of them had heard the details before.
"You did well," Dimitri said, looking between Ashe and Annette, "To abandon me. See what happens whenever I lead an army into battle."
"And the victories are almost worse than the defeats," Sylvain said.
That took Ingrid back to the bridge, crossing from Alliance into Empire territory. Corpses crushed and mutilated until Ingrid couldn't even make out the shape of a person anymore. Blood and internal organs she had never seen in so much gory detail before. But it was her duty as a knight to keep going forward.
"It's not your fault that Felix betrayed us, Your Highness," Ingrid said. "You must not fault yourself for his death."
"And what about Mercedes?" Dimitri's eye turned on her. "What did she ever do wrong, other than choosing to follow a beast like me? Felix was right. There's no hope in this world for monsters like me. I'm going to Arianrhod to kill Cornelia. Don't follow me."
"Your Highness, please," Ashe said. "There's no reason to go alone."
"Silence." Dimitri glared at Ashe. "You left me to die when I invaded the Empire. You and Annette both. It was the right choice then, and it's the right choice now."
Ingrid noticed that Annette was staring at the ground. Must be thinking about Mercedes. It was Edelgard herself who killed the poor girl. If Ingrid had been in position to help… but no, she did the right thing by staying where she was commanded to be. If knights started to question their lords, the whole system broke down and battlefields turned to chaos.
"You are the whole hope of this broken Kingdom," Sylvain said. "Don't you think you owe it to your people to-"
"I owe them nothing. It's the ghosts that need to be appeased, Sylvain. And now Felix is one of them. Him, Glenn, father…"
Ingrid gnawed on the inside of her mouth. Poor Rodrigue was back in the territories resisting the Empire's onslaught, keeping the last of the Kingdom's lands stable. He was going to have to hear that his last son died a traitor to the throne.
"I am ordering you to leave me alone," Dimitri said. Turning to Ingrid, "If I'm so wise as your lord, then surely I know best now. Listen for word of my death and celebrate when I'm gone. Those are my commands."
Ashe and Annette both opened their mouth to respond, but Dimitri whirled around and started walking away. His bloodstained robes dragged along the cracked stone ground as he grew more and more distant.
"Well, guess that's it," Sylvain said. "Rough life, but we rolled the dice and lost. I'm not about to follow him on a suicide mission."
Ingrid gnashed her teeth together. Commands were commands, but she couldn't let her liege meet his end like this. Not after everything. Five and a half years of bloody war had earned them a starving Kingdom and a shattered city. Ingrid didn't know if she could bear to lose anything else.
"Hey Annette," Sylvain said. "You do magical shit, right?"
"Uh, yeah. Can I help you with something?"
"I wonder if we could preserve Felix's body or levitate it or something," Sylvain said. "I don't want to drag our friend through the streets to give him a proper burial."
"I can get people who can help," Annette says. "Be right back."
"Oh no you don't." Sylvain ran a hand through his hair, grinning. "I'm not about to let a pretty young lady go out on her own in this city of ruins and looters, even if I know you can protect yourself."
Ingrid could see Annette's eye twitch. For all of Sylvain's insistence that attracting girls was a craft honed by years of experience, he only seemed to make women angry at him.
"Fine," Annette said. "But don't slow me down."
"Sylvain," Ingrid cut in. "Is Felix worth it? Can you even call him our friend, after what he did to His Highness? I think we should let him rot."
"Can't afford to be choosey about friends in times like this," Sylvain said. "Be right back, Ingrid. Don't miss me too much."
"Don't worry. That's never an issue."
Sylvain snorted and walked off with Annette. Ingrid looked back down at Felix's body. She always worried in the back of her mind that he might desert if Dimitri's rampages became too much, but Ingrid never suspected he was capable of turning his blade against king and friend. She wanted to ram her spear through his face until she couldn't recognize him anymore, but that was letting him win. She must let duty drown out anger.
"Did you mean what you told Sylvain?" came Ashe's voice. "About letting him rot, I mean."
Ingrid turned to face him. He looked contemplative as he stared down at Felix's body, weary pain in his eyes like a father watching his kids go off to war.
"Sylvain said that he turned on Dimitri," Ingrid said. "Tried to kill him."
"Because of Claude." Ashe looked up at her. "I know, Ingrid."
Claude von Riegan. That man was supposed to be dead. Was better off dead, so far as Ingrid was concerned. It was a shame she wasn't a second faster with her lance when they jousted while Fhirdiad was burning. But how did he even manage to escape the Battle at Gronder alive? Inrgid saw Leonie go down. She saw Byleth capture Ignatz. Yet the man with the golden scheme and the smile that didn't reach his eyes managed to duck out of every scenario. Then he came back and fought for the Empire that reduced his precious Alliance to ruins.
"Do you hate him too?" Ashe said.
"If we all banded up against the Empire from the start, we could have won," Ingrid said. "But Claude only wanted to protect his own. It didn't matter to him if Fhirdiad starved."
"It mattered to him if Fhirdiad burned."
"Why are you taking his side here?" Ingrid narrowed her gaze. "He believes in nothing, Ashe. Same as Edelgard. Same as…"
Same as Dimitri. Ingrid couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Before the fight started, he was trying to evacuate the city. When Rhea ordered the city burned down, he wasn't going to take kindly to that. And he wasn't the only one."
Ingrid looked back at Felix's body. "Neither of them have honor, Ashe. If everyone has a different call on the situation, the whole situation devolves into chaos. Our duty is to follow orders."
"I became a knight to protect people, Ingrid," Ashe said. "And I don't regret what I did. I'm sure Annette doesn't, either."
Before Ingrid knew it, her lance was out and pointed at Ashe. He unslung his bow, grabbing an arrow from his quiver. He looked ready to nock and loose at a sudden movement.
"Are we doing this, Ingrid?" Ashe whispered, looking her in the eye. "Are we getting more people killed today?"
"Traitor. What's Annette planning to do with Sylvain?"
"He was the one who asked to follow along, remember? We don't want to fight you. We only want to protect our city. And if Rhea's the one burning everything down, she needed to be stopped."
"And what about the javelin of light?" Ingrid said. "The Empire annihilated Fhirdiad and all you can talk about is how the church is evil?"
"That wasn't Edelgard's fault."
Ingrid took a step towards Ashe, and he fell back one footstep in response.
"How does her boot taste, so far down your throat?" Ingrid said.
"Byleth was there with us. Annette can back me up on this. They knew the javelin of light was coming, and Claude believed them. That's why we went after Rhea, Ingrid. She was the only one who could stop it."
And this was stopping it? Ingrid took a deep breath, keeping her gaze trained on Ashe. Then she put her lance away. Ashe lowered his bow.
"Ingrid?" he said.
"I'm tired, Ashe. Tired of losing friends. When does this all end?
"I wish I could tell you."
Her gaze went back to Felix. Still the same lifeless body.
"Did I ever tell you what the worst thing Felix said to me was?" Ingrid asked.
"Do I want to know?"
"Back at the monastery. We were talking about a situation where our commander gave us orders that put our hometown in danger. Hypothetical, at the time."
"Ah." Ashe averted his gaze.
"You can guess what my view was."
He nodded. "Duty above all else."
"And that's when Felix told me I wasn't cut out to be a knight. That I should find a husband instead."
Ashe winces as if struck. "That's awful of him to say."
"It was. And…" Ingrid closed her eyes. "I'm wondering if he was right."
"Ingrid, you're a wonderful knight. You shouldn't give up on your dreams to-"
"Not about that. About not following blind orders if it puts people we care about in danger." Her eyes flashed open. "Felix has always been an asshole. I'm not going to weep for his death. I know he wouldn't weep for mine. And I'll never forgive him for betraying me, or his words to me that day. But we can't keep going on like this, Ashe."
"That's right. Annette and I feel the same way. When someone tries to put your city on fire, you stop them."
Even if they're your commander. Ingrid inhaled, letting the icy air coat the inside of her lungs.
"And when someone you care about is walking into a hopeless mission but tells you not to follow, isn't it still our job to get him out of there?"
Ashe examined her expression. She didn't know what he got from her face, but after a second a smile came to his face. A lone ray of warmth in a frigid city too tired to blizzard.
"Absolutely," he said.
Hey, everyone! :) Turns out I finished writing my novel early. Quite a bit early, in fact. I'm (mostly) caught up with work now so I can get back to plodding along at this fic.
This chapter is heavy on Blue Lions/Azure moon references, so for people who haven't played it:
-I think I mentioned this before, but the sweets shop is referenced in canon and holds fond memories for Annette (who loves sweets) and Mercedes
-Glenn is Felix's older brother who died in an incident called the Tragedy of Duscur, where the King (Dimitri's father Lambert) and others died while visiting Duscur. The people of Duscur were blamed, but Those Who Slither in the Dark were the ones responsible. Glenn was supposed to marry Ingrid before he died, and she thinks fondly of him while not really knowing him well.
-Felix's comment about Ingrid getting a husband is a quote from their B support. It, uh, really stuck out in my mind and you can probably see why. Comes out of nowhere, too.
Review Response: Dictator Mags: Thank you! :) There will be more twists and-unfortunately-more deaths.