Chapter Five – History Repeats
We remained in Hrym for an additional couple of weeks taking care of the lingering rogues and helping tear down the burned remains. By the time Felix, Sylvain, and I climbed on horseback to return home, most villages had some semblance of recovery in their future. Houses began the rebuild process, and the threat no longer posed a problem.
"Your Grace." One of the citizens we rescued from a burning village approached me and handed me a woven bag. A young girl clung to her leg behind her, peering at me with large green eyes. "It isn't much, but I hope you know that we are grateful to you. May the goddess bless you."
"You as well," I said with a smile. The mother bowed, then encouraged her daughter to do the same before walking away.
Inside the bag were bundles of carrots. Considering how little these people had now, the gesture was beyond kind. It seemed many could barely feed themselves before… and now… well, I lived in relative extravagance back at the manor. These carrots were not life or death for me as they might be for some here.
I gestured for one of the Knights of Seiros to come over once the mother and daughter were out of sight and leaned down from my horse. "Please see to it that these are used in a meal for the villagers," I told him. He took the bag and bowed, and I watched as he set it down in the provisions tent.
"Not going to eat your vegetables, Professor?" Sylvain asked.
I shook my head. "Don't tell Dimitri."
Sylvain laughed, and even Felix managed a little smile. After these few solemn weeks, it was nice to joke around a little. It felt like so long since I heard Sylvain make one of his idiotic quips—at least to me. I knew he snuck out of the tent at night to go gallivanting with girls because Felix told me as much, but Sylvain hadn't made any inappropriate comments to me lately.
The moments like these I wanted to last forever. To be with friends and laugh and joke. My father would be astounded.
We began our ride back to Garreg Mach, keeping our word to Cyril that we would return on route back to the capital. The morning dew helped settle some of the lingering smoldering, but it set a chill in the air, too, that felt unfamiliar after days in the flames. The further away we rode, the cooler it got.
The mountains to the north proved less problematic than the Oghma range, and we were able to make it in good time to the peak of the hills outside of Hrym. We rested at the top and hopped off our horses to look at the view. From this vantage point, the damage to the Hrym region appeared worse than I thought. Charred black splotches painted the view below us like some horrific disease on the land. Every village in sight save for a few had been burned to the ground.
"What is that?"
I followed Felix's finger to the sky above. It was no bird or wyvern or Pegasus like I might have expected to see in the sky. No, whatever it was, it reminded me of a spear of some sort—but if it was, it would have to be gigantic. It hurtled through the air down towards the earth below, traveling faster than anything I had ever seen before.
It whirred by, and rings of light formed around it. I followed the path of the rings with my gaze, watching as the rings set the path directly into the area we just abandoned.
"What—"
I could not even get my sentence out before the giant object collided where the rings stopped at the ground, and an eruption unlike anything I ever saw burst upon collision. The blast echoed through us so that my ears began to ring, and the explosion bubbled like a mushroom cap in the expanse below us. I shielded my eyes from the light of it with my hand, looking only again once normal daylight resumed.
Turning back time would not prevent the destruction revealed before us. There was nothing I could do to stop that… that javelin of light. Time would not allow me to go far enough back to evacuate all the villages of Hrym that would be destroyed right in front of me. So, it was all we could do to watch hundreds of people die. There was not even ash from the fires left when the light subsided. The world there had been reduced to a pile of flames and rock. Everything in the valley outside the mountains, gone.
"What… what was that?" Sylvain's voice cracked.
"Look at it… it's just… nothing is left." I had never seen such emotion on Felix's face before, aside from his usual annoyance or amusement. His jaw slackened as he surveyed the damage in front of us, his gaze flitting back and forth across the scene. "We were just there."
"We have to go back," I said, turning and hurrying back over to my horse. I just put one foot into the stirrup when a hand closed around my wrist. "Let go, Sylvain. We have to check for survivors."
"No one could have survived that, Professor," he responded solemnly. "But we don't know if there is another one of those things coming. It could be dangerous. Frankly, I think we need to get out of here and report back home with what we just saw. Whatever that…" He paused, glancing back over his shoulder at the remnants of the villages we just tried to save. "Whatever that was, that wasn't just some simple uprising."
Did we have something bigger on our hands? I hated to agree with Sylvain, for fear of believing that this was the beginning of another war, but there was no way that something like that could have been put together by some rogue villagers hoping to cause a stir. Who could have possibly had the resources to create something like that? The gods?
The Valley of Torment. Ailell. Hadn't the legend gone that the goddess passed judgment on humanity there by sending down a pillar of light from the heavens? That was what Gustave once told us when we met Rodrigue's forces there during the war. That was what this looked like.
But… essentially, I was the goddess. I didn't do that.
No, this was something else, which meant that the legend of Ailell could be a farce, as well, like many of the legends of old.
There was no time to dissect the stories from the church now. We had to take action, do something, find out who was responsible for this.
Sylvain released my wrist, and I bit my lip, turning back to my horse and putting my hands on the saddle. He would let me do what I felt was right. All those Knights of Seiros down there… those innocent villagers… none of them survived.
Only we lived.
We need you alive.
I shook the voice out of my head and hopped up on my horse's back. "We make for Garreg Mach," I told the boys. "We need to inform Seteth of this so he can start an investigation. And then we go back home, tell Dimitri about this, and get the go ahead for deploying both the church's army and Fódlan's army. We need to find out who did this to prevent it from happening again."
It pained me to turn my back on Hrym territory. But we had no choice.
We pushed our horses harder than we should have, so by the time we made it back to Garreg Mach, their maximum speed was no more than a trot. Cyril was not here to greet us this time, so we led ourselves to the stables and tied our horses up near the water trough.
Several students still wandered around the monastery, and whispers followed us as we made our way to the audience chamber. I told Cyril I wanted to speak with some of the students, but… now…
"Professor? Why, it is you!" a soft voice cried from a table nearby on our walk down the corridors.
"Mercedes! Looking beautiful as ever," Sylvain greeted.
"Good evening, Mercedes," I said. The woman stood up and bowed at us before walking over to join our small group. She had grown her hair out quite a bit since I last saw her, though it still wasn't nearly as long as it was when we first met. "Do you know if Seteth is upstairs? We need to speak with him urgently."
"I apologize for our professor's poor manners," Sylvain said, stepping in front of me and grabbing Mercedes's hand. "Don't let her frazzled demeanor get to you. The professor is glad to see you, I assure you. But we were just witness to something rather horrific and we need to report it."
"Oh my…" Mercedes put a hand to her cheek and tilted her head, looking at me with concern in her eyes. She always reminded me a little bit of a mother, not that I had much experience with what that felt like. "I won't keep you then. We can reconnect another time. I'll be in the cathedral saying a pray for you should you need me. Oh, and Seteth is in his office, last I saw."
I smiled at her and nodded. "Thank you, Mercedes."
She had been correct; Seteth was in his office. He was bent over some paperwork at his desk, but he had a smile on his face as though he enjoyed it. Perhaps he actually worked on his fables at this hour when he suspected no one might interrupt. I had the pleasure of reading one once about Saint Macuil.
"Sorry to bother you, Seteth." I stopped in front of his desk, and he looked up from his writing.
"Welcome back, Lady Byleth." He stood and bowed to me. Considering where I started in this relationship, I felt I ought to bow to him, too. "How did your campaign go in the Hrym region?"
"The former Hrym region, you ought to say."
Seteth turned to Felix and crossed his arms. "I am afraid I do not understand."
"We stopped the rogues participating in the uprising," I explained. "But when we were leaving this morning, something fell from the sky… like a javelin but surrounded by rings of light. And when it connected with the earth, it exploded, and…" My hands shook, so I curled my fingers into my palms. "Hrym no longer exists. It's another Valley of Torment."
"What?" Seteth hissed. "This is… we need to inform Rhea immediately."
Rhea. How long had it been since I saw her? When she relinquished the title of archbishop to me, she removed herself from the playing field entirely. Her recovery from her captivity in Enbarr progressed so slowly that those around her doubted she would ever improve. Most days during her recovery she spent in her room without visitors, save for Seteth or Flayn. Now, years later, she and Catherine lived far away from here reveling in the peace the new Fódlan brought.
It was months after her rescue that she finally called me in to tell me the truth of everything surrounding the church—though, perhaps, not everything. I suspected all along that she kept more secrets than told truths, but I never cared much about my own history. There was no need to learn all hers.
Still, I knew now that she was Seiros herself and that Seteth and Flayn were Cichol and Cethleann, all children of Sothis. And the role of the King of Liberation? Fabricated into something more positive. My Sword of the Creator was not gifted to him but taken from the remains of Sothis herself. All stories recreated to make the goddess sound omnipotent.
Yet still, I was expected to preach the stories of the church that we mortals knew and loved. I understood, of course, and I respected Rhea all the same. It was just harder to spread lies when you already knew the truth, even when it was for the best.
"I don't think that's necessary," I said. "She doesn't need to get involved in this after all she has been through."
Seteth's face contorted slightly, as though he was fighting some internal battle that his logic was beginning to lose. "There is still much you do not understand, through no fault of your own. Ailell… was no consequence of the goddess's rage. The pillar of light said to have fallen on it was the work of someone outside the church."
Felix and Sylvain, on either side of me, exchanged a glance, but neither spoke.
"I figured as much," I admitted. "Considering that I hold all Sothis's power, and I had nothing to do with the javelins of light, I wondered if Ailell was something else, too. So, the question remains… what was it?"
Seteth walked around us to his office door and shut it. He lingered by the door, one hand still on the doorknob. "Have you heard of Agartha?"
"Agartha?" I repeated.
He removed his hand from the doorknob and looked back at the three of us. "The children of the goddess, the Nabateans, were not the only ones who benefitted from the protection of the Goddess. The Nabateans coexisted with another group called the Agarthans. They shared all their wisdom and secrets, until the Agarthans decided it was not enough. They advanced their technology beyond what the Nabateans created and eventually sought to rule even the goddess herself."
"That couldn't have gone over well," Sylvain said, and Seteth nodded at him.
"Indeed. Seiros fought with the Agarthans and defeated them, but in the process, the land was so ravaged that the Goddess had to return to Zanado to heal after returning it to its former glory," he explained. "And that was when Nemesis killed the progenitor god, while at her weakest following the conflict with the Agarthans."
And that was when the Sword of the Creator was forged from her remains. Following the slaughtering of the Nabateans at Zanado, the other Heroes' Relics were created. Save for the people highest in the church, no one knew this. Felix and his Aegis Shield, Sylvain and his Lance of Ruin. They knew not what they held: the bones of the children of the goddess.
"What does this have to do with what we saw in Hrym?" Felix asked. His tone was short, clipped not out of disrespect but out of genuine confusion. He reacted like that in class all those years ago, too.
Seteth, too, knew much about Felix's rather hard personality, so he did not skip a beat in responding. "The Agarthans were responsible for what happened to Ailell. It was something similar to a pillar of light, but one might compare it more to a weapon falling from the sky… perhaps like a javelin of light?"
"You said they were defeated by Seiros," Sylvain pointed out.
"They were. Most of them," Seteth clarified. "And the rest, well… they were never heard from again. They retreated and were thought to be extinct from this world. But perhaps not."
It was starting to come together. The Agarthans, fed up with the rule of the Goddess, tried to overtake her. Seiros defeated them, causing them to flee somewhere. And all this time, all these many years, were they just biding their time until they finally could seek revenge on the Goddess?
Except… that man… who needed me alive…
No, it couldn't be connected. It was clear he knew who I was. If he was related to the Agarthans somehow, then he would have wanted me dead.
Was it no coincidence that the javelin of light fell only after I left Hrym, then?
"Why now? If they've been around all this time, why now and why Hrym?" I asked.
Seteth looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if hiding something that I just exposed. He was part of the secrets of the church, mostly for his own protection and for Flayn's, so it wasn't as if he always told the truth. But if anything, Seteth only kept secrets about his past, not much more than that.
"Do you recall Tomas? Monica?"
I had no heartbeat, but I could have sworn I felt it for a moment. I put a hand to my forehead as dizziness suddenly set in again, but this time it passed quickly. "Solon and Kronya…" I whispered.
The war… the destruction of Remire, my banishment from this realm of the earth to that which only a god could escape, those mages in the Imperial Army…
"Don't tell Rhea," I told Seteth again. "Do not get her involved. They'll kill her."
Seteth didn't agree. I could tell by the look in his eyes, the way his brow furrowed, the hesitance in his willingness to trust me once again. He would do anything to protect his only remaining family, but then again, Rhea knew how to fight the Agarthans. Still, we could not risk letting her fall.
"And you?" He was not one for physical contact, but he reached out and touched my arm. Was this the first time? "They will kill you, too Your Grace."
I stepped out of his reach and avoided his gaze. The image of the man saving me from the rogues flashed in my mind again. "I wonder…"
"Byleth?"
Just my name? Seteth was concerned. Had I said too much?
"In any case," I said, looking around the room at the men surrounding me, "we need to inform Dimitri about this. If this is bigger than just Hrym, we need to start preparing an army to take out the Agarthans."
"You return to the capital," Seteth agreed. "With your permission, I will begin mobilizing church troops to investigate any suspicious activity in the surrounding areas similar to the events in Hrym. If I hear anything, I will send a messenger to you immediately."
I nodded. "Please do."
What else did Seteth know? What else was connected to this disaster? Like the war, what else had the Agarthans put their tainted hands on?
"Felix, Sylvain." Seteth addressed my former students now, and both boys stood taller beside me. "Ensure that your professor makes it back to the capital safely."
Felix rolled his eyes, and Sylvain grinned, surely thinking something inappropriate. But once their initial reactions passed, I noticed that they had both taken a subtle step closer to me.
Except… I wasn't worried about myself. I had a feeling I was safe—for now.
No, I would have to make sure it was the other way around. I needed to protect those around me. Because if I didn't, there would be no one left to prevent another tragedy.
Author's Note: Remember when there was fluff just a few chapters ago? Ah, how long ago that seems.
