Chapter Eighteen – Strategic Planning
I left the underground Abyss with a new weight on my shoulders. Dimitri and Dedue stood waiting at the entrance and looked expectantly at me when I arose from below. How was I to tell Dimitri that I lost in the battle of wits? Theron was a step ahead of me, as promised, and I feared that his threat that they would always be was correct. The only consolation was that, as far as I knew, we were no longer being spied on.
Still, I would fight with the information we learned, despite how little it was: Theron remembered the past when I used Divine Pulse, he knew about my child bearing the Crest of Flames, our magic didn't seem to affect him—and perhaps the others—the same way as each other, which…
Which meant that they really were a step ahead. If they could see through our magic, did they know that Annette put that tracking spell on me back in Shambhala? Were they planning the entire time on giving up Shambhala? Was that why the people didn't try harder to stop me—merely used me as a test for their mechanical beasts? They wanted me to leave… but why?
Why go through the effort to capture you and then let you leave? Sothis wondered. Still, I doubt they expected you to successfully kill Adonis and the witch lady.
This all made less sense than it did at the beginning. Maybe I was overthinking it. There was no way they could see that far ahead. Annette cast the tracking spell before they knew about the crest baby, and that was the only reason why they might have let me go, to allow the baby to be born before harvesting the crest. Yet even so, the woman—Sybil, the imposter said—wanted to keep me in captivity until he was born. There was no indication that they wanted me to leave.
I put a hand to my forehead and rubbed the bone above my left eye. My head hurt…
"Are you all right?" Dimitri asked, dropping down a couple of steps to meet me halfway.
"Just a headache," I assured him.
He put a hand to my cheek. His hands were gloved, yet I could sense the warmth of his hand behind the leather. I hated the idea that I might have let him down by letting Theron escape, but it would be impossible to keep the truth from him.
I grabbed his hand and removed it from my face, lowering his arm and then dropping it back by his side. I brushed past him and climbed the remaining few stairs, stopping when I reached Dedue. He stepped out of the way, bowing slightly to allow me to pass him, but I shook my head.
"Theron is gone," I informed them.
"What?" Dimitri snapped. He did not often get angry with me, but I had a feeling his rage was about to be directed at my incompetence. "Did you let him go? What do you mean he is gone?"
"Of course I wouldn't let him go," I retorted, turning back on the top stair towards my husband. Even a couple of steps up, we were only eye-level now. "Do you really think me such a fool?"
His eye widened, and he lowered his gaze from mine. "No." Then, gathering his bearings, he looked back up at me, his eyebrow lowered. "But please explain how a captive man bound by magic and metal could possibly have escaped our custody while you were down there with him. The one hope we had at understanding what the Agarthans wanted, and you let him escape."
"Dimitri…" I warned. I didn't think this conversation would go well, but this was surpassing my expectations.
He laughed, bitterly cold like ice. "Do not use your professor voice with me."
"You're not giving me an opportunity to explain!" I yelled. I could feel Sothis getting fired up within me, too, which only magnified my own emotions. "You say to explain, but you won't give me a chance to speak. You merely make judgments."
"Your Majesties," Dedue said calmly from behind me, and I turned to look at him with a glare meant for my husband. "Perhaps it would be best to find a different location to speak."
"No, I'm going down there," Dimitri responded, and my gaze snapped back to him. I turned so quickly that my foot nearly slipped from the step, but I managed to catch myself before making a fool of myself any further.
"You don't believe me?"
He didn't say anything more. He retreated into the darkness below us, and I watched him disappear. A hand clasped down on my shoulder, but I did not look back at Dedue. Instead, I stared at the darkness that engulfed Dimitri, wondering if I should follow him in so that I might finally have a chance to explain myself. This was too reminiscent of our political meetings.
"He is worried about you, Professor."
Professor. Dedue only called me that these days in private. Never my name. I doubted Dedue could ever bring himself to call me by name out of concern that to do so would insult Dimitri. But I knew nonetheless how much Dedue cared for me and for Dimitri.
I crossed my arms. "He has a funny way of showing it…"
"While you were down there, he paced back and forth up here and wore a groove in the grass." I could picture a small smile upon his lips, but I still refused to look back. "He fears both for you and for the safety of your children, and it upsets him that you continue to put yourself in danger despite his concerns."
"It's not his decision to make."
"He understands that, which is why he relinquishes when you tell him that you will continue to fight. He respects your autonomy, Professor. But please consider that at the end of the day, he is simply a husband worried about his wife."
I turned to Dedue this time. He had the tiny smile that I pictured still on his lips, but his eyes were sad. Dimitri confided in him about this. There were things they shared that Dedue would never be able to tell me, the fears that Dimitri shared that could never be repeated. Dedue was not only the shield of the king, but he was also his confidant in a way I never could be.
"I cannot promise that I will withhold myself from the danger when it expressly involves me," I said quietly. "But I'll try to be more understanding of his feelings on the situation… and to be more careful."
Dedue nodded. "Now, I recommend that you go to him so that you may explain yourself fully."
"Thank you, Dedue."
I followed his recommendation and returned back to the holding cell. Dimitri was examining the metal bars from every angle, looking up and down at the ceiling and floor, apparently trying to make sense of something that wouldn't from just looking.
"The magic didn't affect him," I said as I approached. Dimitri, who apparently was so lost in thought that he hadn't heard me approach, jumped. I fought the urge to laugh, realizing this was not the moment, and bit my lip.
"If it didn't affect him, why did he stay?" he wondered.
"He wanted to speak with me." I stopped beside Dimitri, looking into the cell that once held Theron. The iron bars still crackled with magic. "He revealed his true self to me. His name is Theron. He told me that he can remember the past when I turn back time, so that was how he knew I'm pregnant. And he also knows that the child bears the Crest of Flames."
I could see from the corner of my eye that Dimitri looked over at me, but I still looked within. There were pieces of food untouched against the back wall. The warp tile within the cell had been deactivated long ago, but although it did not glow, the intricate pattern remained: the symbols of the Crest of Gautier and Goneril. I never did figure out why those crests appeared here.
"The Crest of Flames…" Dimitri repeated. "Do you ever think Alexi might be the lucky one?"
I smiled. "Often."
"Why would this Theron person reveal all this to you? For what purpose?" He sighed, then shifted entirely so that he faced me now. I turned, too, and our gazes met with some discomfort. "I apologize if I offended you before. I am afraid I didn't want to believe that one of them had slipped through our fingers again. It means you will continue to be in danger."
"Then we should figure something out. Together." I held out my hand to him, and he took it. "Let's call everyone together."
Everyone agreed to a meeting the following morning. Dimitri and I agreed that it would be best to fill everyone in on everything that had happened so far, meaning that we would lay it all out there. No more secrets. If there was another imposter within our ranks, so be it. We needed to work with our allies, and that meant trusting them. It was all we had for now.
But before we could tell our friends everything, there were two people who had to be filled in first.
Katrina would have gotten along well with Lysithea. She loved sweets more than anything, particularly cake. Sugar was easier to come by these days compared to during the war, but we still only saved it for special occasions. And what occasion was more special than this?
In other words, I expected her to be angry, and maybe cake would placate her.
Alexi, bless him, told me that he wanted a tomato for his treat. I wondered what I had done wrong as a mother, but I knew I ought to consider myself lucky.
The four of us sat in my bedroom. It was a bit of a squeeze for the four of us, especially given that we were all sitting on the floor beside the bed so it wouldn't be a big deal if Katrina spilled her cake.
"We have some big news to share with you both," I started. Katrina didn't look at me. She was staring at her cake, waiting for one of us to give the go-ahead for her to eat it, and practically drooling. "Katrina, you can eat that now."
Alexi was sitting in between Dimitri and me and had his elbows on each of our knees. "Mommy, can I eat mine, too?"
I smiled and nodded at him. He picked up his tomato, looked at it curiously, and then bit down into the whole thing. It squirted tomato juice every direction, including in my face, but Alexi seemed perfectly satisfied by his dessert.
I could picture Sothis cringing in my head. What a strange child…
"So, right… the big news…" I tried again. "Alexi, you remember what we told you when Katrina was born?"
He furrowed his brows, racking through his brain to pull out the information, but he shook his head. "No."
"We told you that you had to be a good big brother and always take care of your little sister. And you've done a very good job. I think you might be able to handle being a good big brother to another sibling, don't you think?" I asked him.
Alexi thought again, apparently not making the connection about what I said. "I guess so."
"Katrina, do you think you could be a good big sister?" Dimitri tried.
Katrina looked up from her cake and glanced between the two of us. Then, she looked back down at her cake and shook her head. "No."
"No?" Dimitri repeated.
"Don't want to."
Sothis laughed. Oh my.
Dimitri looked at me, clearly relinquishing his role. He'd tried. We'd both tried. What if we just didn't actually tell them and just… let it happen naturally?
No… no, that wouldn't do.
"Well, um, Katrina. And Alexi." I watched as Katrina shoved half the cake in her mouth with her hands, forgoing use of the utensil that she didn't work well. "You're going to have a new baby brother in a little while, and I hope that both of you will be good older siblings to him."
This got Alexi's attention. "Brother?" he repeated. When I nodded, he put his unfinished tomato down on the floor and pushed himself in front of me. "I want a brother."
"Sister!" Katrina announced.
"No, Katrina, you're going to have a brother," Dimitri said.
"Is he in there?" Alexi asked, pointing to my stomach. I nodded, and he reached a tiny hand forward to touch it. "Hello, baby brother."
"Katrina, you want to say hi?" I asked.
"No." She licked her fingers and then grabbed some more cake. "Want cake."
The girl knows what she wants. You must respect that, Sothis joked, and I sighed.
Alexi didn't want to leave my side after all that had happened, and I had a feeling the news made him both a little excited and nervous. So, he sat on my lap playing with a handmade doll from Mercedes during the war council meeting in the cardinals' room the next day. Katrina played with some blocks that Seteth had scrounged up over in the corner of the room, but she kept looking up every now and again as though she was perfectly aware of everything going on. Sometimes I wondered what went on behind those glass-like eyes of hers.
"And that's basically what we're dealing with," I concluded after explaining everything I learned so far. Given the fact that everyone now knew, thanks to what happened two days ago, both that Cyril had been an imposter and that I was pregnant, there wasn't much to hide. So much for the "need-to-know" basis.
Maybe that was part of Theron's plan, anyway, to spill all the secrets we kept. But if he planned to shake our bonds, he failed. Though there seemed to be some annoyance that we had withheld information from the others, in general, the consensus was that we did what we had to do. That was the reality of war. We were used to this sort of thing by now.
"I'm so sorry." Annette folded her hands together and spoke into them instead of looking at any of us. "This wouldn't have happened if I was a better mage."
"Annette, you know that's not true," I said.
"But if I was better, he wouldn't have gotten away!" she countered. Felix, seated beside her, looked increasingly uncomfortable, as if he couldn't think of what to say to convince her otherwise. Mercedes, on her other side, put a hand on top of hers.
"He called it ancient magic. We just don't have the ability to fight against something that's a thousand years old. None of us could have done any better," I assured her, but she didn't look particularly reassured. She sniffled, pulling her hands from under Mercedes's to wipe her nose.
The door to the room opened suddenly, and in a room full of war veterans, surprise wasn't exactly… safe. Several of us stood with our weapons aimed and ready, the idea in our mind that everyone who needed to be here was. The only person who couldn't make it was Seteth, as he had a prior engagement with several of the church clergymen to prepare for an upcoming holiday.
But when we saw who it was, we all sat back down with out weapons sheathed. Hilda put her hands on her hips and glanced around. "Why didn't anyone tell me we were meeting?"
"Hilda?" Dimitri frowned. "We thought you were leaving this morning. The stable boy informed me that Tulip was flight-ready."
"Oh, right." Hilda walked over to an open seat beside Ashe and sat down. "Well, I decided that my services would be best used here after all. With Claude out of the picture for right now, I'm the next best thing. My authority as queen of Almyra is sufficient for getting you whatever you want in terms of support. And you know no one is as good as me at getting others to do whatever I want."
There were a couple of awkward chuckles from others who had fallen prey to Hilda's ways. She had a point.
"Just think of me as the liaison between Almyra and Fódlan. I am a Goneril, after all. Our family has been the guardians of Fódlan's locket for generations, meaning that we have always had the strongest connections between Fódlan and Almyra. If I learned anything from my brother, it's how to talk to Almyrans!" she continued.
"Didn't your brother mostly just fight them?" Sylvain asked.
Hilda waved him off. "Beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that Claude will mobilize the Almyran army here, and I'll serve as their commander until he gets things settled back home. And since I'm allied with you guys, you'll have the entirety of the Almyran army at your disposal."
"That certainly is helpful, considering our losses as of late," Dimitri said. "Thank you, Hilda."
"Oh, you know you can count of me!" she said with a wink.
"That doesn't solve our problem of knowing where to direct those troops," Felix pointed out. "If you're so sure about them abandoning Shambhala, then we're back to square one. And just like that Theron idiot told you, they'll always be one step ahead of us because of it. We're here like sitting ducks, and they have all of Fódlan to use as their hiding spot."
Well, he had a point. Not knowing where the enemy was or would be was a serious disadvantage, considering that they knew exactly where we were. And luring them to us hadn't exactly gone well last time, but what other option did we have?
"We have the Kingdom army and the Almyran army… the ranks of Knights of Seiros are low, so I'm going to be withdrawing most of their support and reinstating them at their usual locations," I said. "But given the fact that the Agarthans hid successfully for so long tells me that it wouldn't take much for them to do so again. We would be wasting our resources to go out looking for them."
"So, what, we wait for them to destroy us like they did Hrym?" Felix asked.
I shook my head. "I don't think they'll be able to. I'm guessing that they had all their offensive resources tied to Shambhala. By giving up on that location, they also gave up on the javelins of light and most likely the mechanical beasts, too. They must feel confident in their own abilities if they're preparing to fight us head on…"
"Then what do you suggest?"
I looked at Dimitri for this one, and he frowned. We had been discussing our options all night after putting the kids to bed, and still we hadn't reached a perfect conclusion. But there was some semblance of a plan in the works.
"Theron gave Byleth a hint by telling her that he could remember the past when she changed it. That would mean he would be aware every single time she used her powers to turn back time," Dimitri explained. "The times that she has had to use it multiple times in a row were for serious battles and life-or-death situations. What if we trick Theron into thinking something is wrong by using her powers to our advantage?"
"You want to bring them to us again?" Ingrid asked.
"Yes, but this time, we will have the Almyran army and our army to back us up, and they won't have their javelins of light. We know what to expect of their magic this time, and with our huge numbers, they won't be prepared to deal with all of us," Dimitri continued. "If Theron suspects something is wrong with Byleth, who they need for her crest, or the baby, who they want for something else, then he'll come investigate, most likely with a group if he thinks it's the result of a battle."
"There are some serious 'if's there," Hilda pointed out. "But I think Claude is rubbing off on you. I like it."
Dimitri looked specifically away from Hilda, scanning the room to stare anywhere but at her. "We will figure out the details once we hear from him. Have you sent a messenger telling him of your intention to stay?"
"Just a couple of hours ago."
"Then I think we can adjourn for now. We are under the assumption that we have a little bit of time considering that Theron just left yesterday and will need to reconnect with the others to formulate their next steps. Thank you, everyone." Dimitri stood, and the others did as well. Some of our friends filed out of the room—Mercedes and Annette perhaps to chat about the latter's feelings, Ashe maybe to the greenhouse—until only Dedue, Dimitri, Ingrid, Felix, Sylvain, the kids, and I remained.
"A problem?" Dimitri asked, directing his question mostly towards Felix but sending it in the general direction of both he and Sylvain.
"Not so much a problem…" Sylvain responded.
Dimitri crossed his arms. "Then… what?"
"Professor, the three of us have been talking," Ingrid said. I didn't particularly like the sound of that. When the three of them talked, bad things usually followed.
I scooted Alexi off my lap and whispered in his ear to go play with his sister. He didn't seem interested but ran off nonetheless, plopping on the ground next to Katrina.
"About what?"
"Well, technically I'm a knight in service of the king. And Dedue also serves His Majesty, as well. Much of that privilege extends to you, and you essentially have the support of Seteth when he's around…" Ingrid began tentatively, rubbing her hands together as she seemed to think it through and simultaneously say it. "But we were thinking that you need a more stable set of hands."
"We're all used to going on missions together, Professor!" Sylvain joined in. "And you know I would die for a pretty woman like—"
"What he's saying," Felix interrupted, "is that the two of us are volunteering to be in your service for however long you need us."
Sylvain nodded. "Even though we're not knights like Ingrid, we still would like to help."
I felt a lump in my throat. What was that?
"You mean the two of you won't leave me alone?" I joked, and Sylvain laughed. Felix merely rolled his eyes, even though I could see the flicker of a smile on his lips. "Thank you. That's kind of you."
Given that Felix and Sylvain held their own positions of power in the unified Kingdom, they couldn't technically swear themselves over to me the way Ingrid, as a knight, did. Still, all the same, the thought that they had sat down and discussed it all together was… sweet.
Still the favorite teacher, I see.
Well, maybe. But the Blue Lions, too, were still my favorite students.
Author's Note: Katrina knows what's up. I mean, girl, same. Between babies and cake, gimme the cake.
