Chapter Thirteen - Betrayals

When Lysithea first told me about the experiments they endured from the mysterious mages holding her family essentially hostage, I never understood—truly understood—why she would let them. Lysithea watched her siblings die and still did not fight back against these people, knowing very well that she could die, too.

And then it came out that she was not the only one. Edelgard, too, was victim to the experiments of these people. For me, an outsider, I couldn't wrap my head around the idea.

But now I did. I understood exactly why both Lysithea and Edelgard allowed themselves to be part of these experiments because I was about to do the same. When it came down to it, it was about making ourselves martyrs. We would protect our families if it meant sacrificing ourselves, because at least if the Agarthans went after us and were successful, we could potentially prevent them from going after our families in the end.

I was the only one with the Crest of Flames, meaning that there was no one left to bother if they were unsuccessful, anyway. Yet there was no guarantee that they would leave my family alone if they failed. Maybe they would go after my children just in case they carried a trace of my power.

After allowing my family and friends to go free from their prison here in Shambhala, Adonis led me to a new location in the same building. He took me on yet another moving mechanism that brought us lower still, the pressure building above us.

"You said that you plan on taking my crest, but how do you do that?" I asked.

Lysithea bore two crests, meaning her second one came from someone else. Adonis seemed to think that taking my crest could kill me, meaning that in their experiments, not only did the recipient of the crest die in most cases, but the person who lost the crest also perished in the process. That Lysithea survived was hope that the process to take the crest away might also not be fatal.

Except… well, my heart didn't beat. If my crest was the only thing keeping me alive, the only thing keeping blood pumping in my veins, then I probably couldn't survive.

"We've harvested many crests in our time," Adonis told me. "Thales had been the expert in that field. His magic was unmatched. He could pull a crest from a body as easily as pulling out a piece of hair. It took but moments." Adonis sighed and glanced over his shoulder at me as if to make sure I still followed him. "Our mages now struggled for years to figure it out. It is not nearly as painless as it had been when Thales did it, but it has been managed in all cases but one."

"And the one?"

"The body was fragile. You needn't worry about that."

If the person died anyway, it seemed an inconvenience to them more than anything that it didn't work. I wondered how many innocent people had suffered at the hands of these people. One would have thought that, given the rarity of crests these days, we would have heard of nobles vanishing.

During the war, though, they did. Nobles vanished all the time. And since the war concluded, nobles continued to renounce their titles, some out of fear of retribution from Dimitri, and some because they wanted more from their lives than whatever life had been given to them prior. And we never thought a thing of it.

"We have a surprise for you, Byleth," Adonis announced as we continued down a long hallway. There were doors on either side of us, all shut tight, but I could hear tinkering beyond them. Perhaps there were more victims in there, people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, who became lab rats for the people who could not let go of a grudge unrelated to those who existed today.

I was not pleased to hear of a surprise because it surely was not a good one. I noted, too, that Adonis referred to me by my name this time, not as Sothis as he had been doing. Whatever the surprise was, it was meant for me, meant to hurt me. And like the others, I was mixed into a family drama I never should have been part of. It all seemed so unfair.

Near the end of the hall on the right was a door left open, and Adonis held a hand out to allow me entry. I steeled myself for whatever was inside, but not enough time or preparation in the world could prepare me for what—or who—I found inside.

"Didn't anyone ever tell ya not to trust the Almyrans?"

Cyril.

I stepped forward and reached for his hands, but he took a step away from me with his lip curled in disgust. "Don't touch me, you cretin. You're no better than a maggot."

No. He was always so sweet. Such a hard worker. Sure, he was a little rough around the edges, but that didn't mean he wasn't a good person. He didn't deserve an end where someone else played his part. No one deserved that.

"You monsters," I hissed. I spun around and knocked the Sword of the Creator from Adonis's grip, latching onto it midair and pressing the blade against the imposter's throat. I pressed him backwards until he hit the wall, and he sneered at me in a way I never thought Cyril could.

"Careful, Professor. Ya know Lady Rhea would be upset if ya killed me."

"You're not Cyril," I countered, pressing the blade harder against his throat. A trickle of blood slipped down his neck.

"No," the imposter agreed. "But he's been a lot of fun. For a teacher at the monastery, though, you would have thought he would have put up more of a fight. The poor kid practically let me take his life. And how predictable a life he leads. I've been playing his role for several moons now, and no one suspected a thing. Even you were out there second-guessing all your friends and probably never once did Cyril even form a doubt in your mind."

"He's not even involved in this!" I shouted.

"Well, certainly not anymore." Cyril's hand reached up and pushed the Sword of the Creator down, and I almost let him for a moment, forgetting myself and who this really was. I twisted it slightly, hitting the man's palm and forcing him to let go.

"He got involved the moment he devoted his life to Seiros," Adonis said, coming up from behind me and grabbing my shoulders. He pulled me down, knocking me back into a chair and doing some quick magic to lock me in. With me immobile, he slipped the Sword of the Creator from my hands and wiped it clean. A smear of the imposter's blood was left on the cloth Adonis used.

"And we kind of need her dead," Cyril's voice said. "I was hoping that he would be able to get to her, seeing as he's practically her little dog. But no one seems to know where she is. So, if we're going to finish what we started a thousand years ago, we're going to need a little bit of help."

Adonis positioned the Sword of the Creator directly above my thigh, the tip just centimeters above. "I tried to warn you, you know. I told you that there was someone among your ranks who wasn't with you, and you chose to ignore my warning. You wouldn't be in such a state of shock right now if you only listened."

He thrust the sword down, piercing through my skin and straight to the bone. Immobilized in this state, I could not scream, but tears still dripped from the corners of my eyes as my body reacted to the pain. He pulled the sword back out, looking at the blood that pooled at the wound with narrowed eyes.

"Everything looks normal," he told Cyril.

"Not quite," a third voice said. A woman came into view, her face veiled with a large cloth that covered her entire head. She made a noise as if she was sniffing the air and the walked to my side, putting one hand on my stomach. "She's with child."

What?

The fainting spells… the dizziness… they weren't related to the Agarthans at all, were they?

"Oh?" Cyril laughed. "It's kind of uncomfortable to think about my teacher getting busy."

"She's not your teacher," Adonis snapped, and then he looked at the woman. "Are you sure?"

The woman waved a hand over my leg where Adonis stabbed it, and the pain immediately ceased. "I can feel the presence of another crest."

"Another Crest of Flames?" Adonis asked hopefully.

"All I know is that there is another crest, not which one it is. Crest of Flames, Crest of Blaiddyd… I cannot tell." The woman put her hand back on my stomach and sniffed once more. "If you were to try to remove the crest from her now, you could risk the life of the child within. You must refrain from performing the experiment now."

Adonis's hopeful expression faded quickly, and Cyril's imposter crossed his arms with a huff.

"Who cares? We only need one Crest of Flames," Cyril argued, but Adonis held up a hand. For a "mere" descendant, it seemed he had a great deal of power here.

"If we fail, having a backup could be beneficial," he said.

No… no, they weren't going to have the both of us. They could torture me all they wanted, but they were never going to be allowed to torture my child.

"So, what, now we have to babysit her for the next… seven, eight months? She's not even showing," Cyril pointed out, and all three stared down at my stomach as if expecting something to pop out of it. "The longer we wait around, the more opportunity she has to fight back. She's a mother—she's going to put that baby first, regardless of whatever else we hold over her head. Humans are like that." He sighed. "We should've just waited after all. What a pain."

I bent my toes inside my shoes. The spell was wearing off. I needed them to keep talking, to think about what to do with me.

"We don't need to babysit her," Adonis said. "Just throw her in a cell and lock her up."

"She needs proper exercise and nutrition if the baby is to come to term," the woman countered.

I could feel the tips of my fingers against my sides. A little bit more.

"Women are such pains. I have to tell you, I was positively elated that this Cyril kid didn't have a girlfriend or anything. Lots of the female students threw themselves at him, which was flattering, don't get me wrong." The imposter rubbed Cyril's chin. "But they're such a hassle. Constantly asking for extra help and making me tea. I hate tea! I wanted coffee!"

Adonis was ignoring him now, moving to the other side of me to stand next to the woman. The Sword of the Creator was beyond my reach now, but if I could get my arms to move, I might be able to grab something.

"What do you recommend?" he asked the woman as Cyril continued to ramble to no one.

"Let her stay. Let her be here. She has no weapon. If she tries to leave, we kill her other children when they return from Almyra," the woman said.

I reached up, breaking the charm, and grabbed my silver sword from the sheath around Adonis's waist. My limbs didn't function correctly still, but it mattered not. Adonis was so taken by surprise that he never saw my sword coming towards his neck, and he was dead before his body hit the floor.

The woman vanished, fleeing from the room before I could take care of her. But the man in Cyril's body fumbled with his hands, trying to figure out what exactly to do as I turned on him.

"I'm sorry Cyril, but I guess you're dead anyway," I whispered, and swung the sword across his chest.

The blood pooled on the dark floor, and I stepped across the bodies to leave the room. I could feel my shoes slipping on the floor with each step, the traction worsened by the blood seeping into my soles. I let the blood drip from the tip of the sword, then dropped it in exchange for the Sword of the Creator.

I probably didn't have a lot of time. The woman would have gone ahead to warn the other Agarthans, maybe shut down whatever she could. Sure enough, the floating platform that would have brought me back up wasn't moving, leaving me stranded here without a way out.

No, there had to be another way. They wouldn't have a single way in and out.

I opened the door closest to the moving platform, revealing not much of anything. Another room like the one I was in, empty save for a chair used to confine their victims.

The tinkering behind the doors I heard was not the sound of experimentation, I discovered as I opened more doors. There were all sorts of devices behind several of the doors in the middle like nothing I had ever seen. They released flickering blue light that faded until it was completely gone by the time I made it to the last such room. And when that light died, so did everything else.

Suddenly I was left in pitch darkness. I put a hand to the wall, feeling forward until I found the doorway to leave the room. No matter what direction I faced: darkness. I could hardly remember which way I came from, which doors I already opened. Was I really trapped down here? How long before the Agarthans found me? Or were they already after my family in the outside world?

I breathed in and out slowly, centering myself for some magic. I lit a fire in the palm of my hand, providing soft light that allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness around me. I wouldn't be able to keep this up long. I needed to find a way out before anyone else found me.

Somehow, though, I ended up moving in the wrong direction and ended up back at the moving—now stationary—platform. But as I got closer, I noticed something odd. There was a barely-noticeable blue light coming from the platform now that I got near, and the closer I stepped, the brighter it got.

I extinguished my flame, and the light on the platform vanished, too.

Was their technology powered by magic? My fire magic wasn't powerful enough to power the platform, but maybe I had some other trick up my sleeve that was…

If I tried this and it failed, I wouldn't have enough energy left to light another flame. But it was the only trick I had.

I stepped onto the platform and took several deep breaths this time. I didn't like to use Ragnarok, as it exhausted me given my preference for the sword and my lack of practice with magic, but it was the most powerful spell I knew, and I could use it successively enough to hopefully power this thing back up to the top.

But we had taken another lift back to the entry level of this building… well, hopefully I could conserve enough energy to manage it.

I put my hands palm-down towards the floor. The burst of fire exploded from my hands, nearly sending me tumbling over, but it was enough to power the lift. It rose and rose and rose, sending me higher through the building before slowing down and halting altogether. I tried again—I never realized how far we descended in this place—and still I was not at the top.

No… I didn't have enough in me to make it to the top of this section, never mind a second one.

Have I taught you nothing?

The voice startled me. It had been a long time since I heard it, but even so, I couldn't figure out if it was my mind playing tricks or the real thing. Was I imagining what she would say? Chastising me yet again for not figuring out what I should have by now?

But real or not, I knew what I needed to do. How long had it been since I entered this place? I needed to go back far enough to let my friends escape but not too far back that I was still this far down. In fact, I could make it so the power was still on.

I focused my attention once more, but it was a different sort of magic than the type I casted. This was magic that was within my being, not so much magic as utter control.

Time shifted. The world around me warped, as if I was being stretched and compressed simultaneously, and when I next blinked, I found myself back in the room with the glass cell. Dimitri and the others were already gone, but Adonis's hand was still pressed against the glass.

He looked back at me. "A deal is a deal, is it not, Sothis?"

Teach him what it means to cross a goddess.

In one swift motion, I kicked his legs out from under him. He fell back, hitting his head against the glass and sending the Sword of the Creator flying. I didn't have time to go get it. Instead, I pulled my bow up, the bowstring catching around his neck. I could hear the crack of his neck as I twisted it, and any fight that Adonis still had in him was extinguished.

I walked over to the Sword of the Creator and picked it up.

"Sorry," I said to the body on the floor, "but I guess I can't uphold my end of the bargain."


Author's Note: Hello! The surgery went quite well, and I am back in action. Thank you for all your well wishes. They are much appreciated! Enjoy the new chapter and let me know what you think.