Symmetry

Chapter Six: Evidence of Things Not Seen

"They're sweet, aren't they?" asked Rennac, leaning over the edge of the cart to glimpse Franz and Amelia, still dozing in the space not occupied by petrified paladin.

"Is that rhetorical, or is your snakelike mind actually not able to tell?" Eirika snapped back, trying to haul the spirit-horse around a bend in the forest road. Her Lunar mount was amazingly strong and fast, but had an irritating tendency to assume that just because it could leap chasms twenty feet across, so could everything it was pulling.

"I know cute when I see it, thank you. They're adorable and you know it, so stop being all spiky. I'm helping you, aren't I? I've been helping you all along, haven't I? And we've still got most of Sir Seth, with plenty of time to beat Arnord senseless and pick up the last twentieth," the rogue summarised.

"It's an important twentieth!"

"I think it's stress, myself. When I finally got back home after our little jaunt to save the entire world, I did some reading on psychology. Studying the mind. I was hoping to figure out if Princess L'Arachel is curable."

Eirika stopped. At least, she froze briefly, whereas the horse kept them moving at close to wind-speed. "That sounds serious. What's she got?"

"She's Princess L'Arachel," said Rennac. "That is an affliction. Anyway, I'm reasonably certain you've got a complex."

"Complex?" Eirika barked. "This is far beyond complex. This is like trying to solve a dwarf's riddle while picking the lock on an iron box made of knotted chains while hanging upside down from–"

"I thought the plan was to hit him until he gave you Seth's head."

"Shut up!"

"See, a casual observer would think that you resist your attraction to Sir Seth because he's your retainer and you've got to maintain distance and decorum and duty and it's inappropriate for nobles to associate like that with commoners…" said Rennac, rolling over on the cart's roof like a self-satisfied cat. "Those same people would probably say that you can't reconcile the whole duty question inside your own head, and so you refuse to admit to yourself that he's anything like important to you, even though you actually know it at a much deeper level."

"You're starting with an interesting premise there," Eirika hissed.

"Well, what can you say? Casual observers are idiots," the rogue went on. "It doesn't take much to see that it's really all about Innes."

"INNES!"

"Oh, don't look so shocked; it's really pretty simple. You've always had repressed feelings for Innes, which reciprocally manifested themselves as your constant support of your brother in all their contests, not to mention your friendship with Princess Tana. You've got Innes surrounded on all fronts, but you demand that he overcome your brother first, and then it does get tricky because of Sir Seth, who thinks you really want him, when your rejections of Innes are really just meant to motivate the prince. Poor deluded Seth, on the other hand, poses a threat to your subconscious plan, because he–"

"That - is - enough!" the princess roared, leaping to her feet on the driver's seat. "Without meaning any disrespect to Prince Innes, I have stronger feelings for a statue of Seth than I do for him, and I will not just stand by and let you – let your demented uncle – let anyone talk about us like that! Look at me! I'm riding north toward the enemy's stronghold with no army, no preparations, and the Sacred Stone of Renais in a bag! Of course I would try to save any knight, but this is ridiculously unsafe! Do you think I would do this for anyone? The man has almost died for me more times than you've spoken with respect! Yes, I love him, and you don't get to create insane… you don't… you… bloody… rogues…" She turned away from Rennac and sat down again. "…I just admitted it, didn't I?"

"Feel better?" he inquired. The princess sat perfectly straight and motionless as she directed them through the forest paths toward the Carcino border. She was steady as a rock, in spite of the rough road, tempting Rennac to start stacking things on her head. "It's not like you said anything I didn't already know."

Eirika shook her head. "I don't know… Have I made a mistake?" Rennac just snorted, all the princess needed to hear to be reminded that he did not, under any circumstances, actually care what anyone's feelings were. Whatever he had just done was about ensuring his own survival, in one way or another. "I meant in bringing the Sacred Stone with me. It does contain the soul of Fomortiis, after all."

"Well, there's an interesting little exercise in absoluteness," Rennac mused. "Were you 'right' to charge off madly with the Fire Emblem in your pocket to save one knight, or would it be 'right' to let him die now that you realise you did it for selfish reasons? First, we'll have to determine whether or not there's such a thing as 'right'–"

At this point Amelia had halfway-clambered out of the window on one side of the cart and shoved him toward the other side, where Franz grabbed him by the arms and hauled the rogue inside.
Complicated scuffling sounds accompanied Rennac's protests, which quickly transformed into muffled yelps. Eirika recalled that Franz carried bolts of cloth in his satchel, mostly for field bandages but more than once used to gag prisoners. The new paladin leaned out the window again.

"Uh… princess?" he said cautiously.

"Yes?"

"I'm with you on this one." An unseen hand gave him a light shove into the windowframe. "Oof. Right. We are with you on this one. …And there are worse reasons to do something than love."

"Like… all of them," Amelia added from within.

"Weren't you two supposed to be asleep?" Eirika asked.

"You were shouting for a really long time," Franz explained, before the hand yanked him back in again. The shadow of a smile flickered around the edges of the princess's lips. Maybe Rennac did have his good points.

At the crossing of the Whisperwash, where the river plummeted over a cliff, splashed down in a spectacularly clear pool, and ran on to the west, the lone bridge guard was having a relaxing morning in his shack, re-reorganising his colour-stained ticket-sheets for a variety of border-crossing infractions. This probably tells you more about him than he would want you to know. But the Whisperwash was an unpopular place to get from Renais into Carcino, and it had been so long since he saw anyone, other than that magely character who walked in the woods, that he had forgotten which government he worked for. On quiet afternoons, he sometimes mused that it might have been Rausten.

He remembered this particular day for a long time afterwards, especially in the middle of night when he woke up hiding under the bed with his blankets packed in around the sides, clutching sharp objects and trying not to breathe. For one thing, it was his last day on the job.

It began with an axe blade, swung with inhuman force through the corner beam, half the north wall, and collapsing enough of the structure to break all the windows. For the first shocking moments, the guard wondered if he was the target of a freak tornado, but then the roof was ripped off and a single blazing eye replaced the sun overhead, set in a face like diseased stone. The behemoth smashed aside another wall, crushed the fiery hot stove underfoot without taking notice of the embers pressed against its flesh, and picked him up with its free hand.

"No!" A flicker of hope gave the guard the strength to shake off his terrified paralysis, but it didn't last long. "Put him down! No! Disobedient cyclops! Bad cyclops! You follow my orders now!" The one-eyed giant froze, cleaver in one hand and guard in the other, waiting for the next thought to arrive. Eventually it put him down with bone-snapping awkwardness and turned to face the summoner standing nearby.

The guard reached a conclusion. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHGGHH!" he screamed.

"I was hoping for a little more subtlety," the summoner muttered to himself. "The sheer power of a cyclops can't be denied, but they're so much harder to control than gorgons…"

"AAHAAAGHAAAHH!"

The summoner looked at him sharply. "Run now," Arnord recommended.

"Ahhaaagh," the guard shrieked calmly, nodded once, and sprinted for Rausten.

"Down to business," said Eirika as she finally forced the spirit-horse to skid to a halt, after long hours on the road. "Rennac, what sorts of defences will your demented relative have ready for us?" The forest glade they had stopped in was rather less peaceful and pristine than it had been before the arrival of a high-speed cargo cart and hooves trampling six times a second, but it was as close to the border as the princess dared get without at least pretending to be stealthy.

She noticed in the moments that followed that no one was irritating her yet. Considering that she had actually invited him to talk, this was a rarity for Rennac. Possibly a small miracle, or at least a freak of nature. "…Rennac?"

"Um…"

"Franz, take the gag off him."

"There's a slight problem…"

"Amelia, if he's asleep, poke him with your lance," she commanded.

"He's gone," the recruit reported.

Eirika tried this explanation out. "…He's what? How? I thought you had shackled him to the- well, the shackles." She leapt down from the driver's seat, came around to the back of the cart, and threw the doors open. The iron rings set into the floorboards had a certain picked look, and the young soldiers standing guard over nineteen-twentieths of General Seth had an accompanying flamingly embarrassed look.

"I'm not really sure when he got out," Franz admitted.

"Let me guess why that is," Eirika said rhetorically, but she softened when she saw the paladin's heart sink so far that it discovered fossils of a dozen species of ancient primal dragons before striking a diamond seam near the world's mantle. "It's not like you were watching an actual prisoner. Don't worry about it too much." I'll handle that several times over. She sighed. "Am I going to be able to depend on you two, at least?"

"Yes ma'am, princess," said Amelia. Franz nodded hard enough to sprain his spine. Despite the pair's over-enthusiastic response, the way they gripped their weapons spoke volumes to Eirika about how determined they were to come through this victorious.

"And no protesting my orders, right?" the princess prompted.

"Yes, ma'am," the said, not quite in unison.

"Including when they may separate you two at a critical moment?"

"Yes, ma'am," Amelia agreed. Franz opened his mouth, then hesitated. A fractional shift caused the recruit's lance to jab him lightly in the foot.

"Yaah!-es, ma'am," he yelped.

Eirika nodded and motioned for them to follow her into the last of the forest, toward the sound of rushing water. Fortunately, without any of them mounted or heavily armored like Duessel or Gilliam, the trio were able to sneak effectively among the trees, well enough that the princess knew - from an abundance of past experience - that few creatures as unsubtle as a monster would notice them.

Twenty minutes later, the trees thinned enough that Eirika could see the cliff ahead and smell the water on the air. This would be the Whisperwash that Rennac had told her about, then, and somewhere around here Arnord was waiting, with Seth's head, a monster, and some kind of trap in mind. He wasn't foolish enough to think Eirika wasn't walking in with a plan. …So, she could get an advantage by not having a plan – the 'no-plan' plan had the advantage that the plan could never be foiled, whereas she was free to trip up Arnord at any moment.

But this wasn't just a skirmish, this was Seth's life on the line, and he only had a day left in his stone form. Could she risk him – and, some part of her mind vaguely recalled, the last Sacred Stone – on a non-plan of pure psychology? All it would take would be another gorgon to petrify Franz or Amelia, and even if she rescued Seth, Arnord would be able to make the same ultimatum again. She would have to scout the area, search for clues to what they were facing.

They followed the forest's edge, never leaving leafy cover, along the river for some distance, waiting to see a hidden tower or even just a campfire, something to suggest that there was anyone except squirrels out here. Roundabout the shattered and lightly smouldering ruins of an old guardhouse beside a rather trampled bridge, Eirika suspected they might have found something.

"…Princess?" Franz asked, when Eirika just crouched in the undergrowth instead of advancing.

"I'm trying to think like a megalomaniac," she replied.

"All right, but I don't think Lute has anything to do with this," the paladin remarked, before realising what he had said and slapping his hand over his mouth. Amelia snorted with laughter, but quickly muffled it. Briefly, Eirika considered scolding him, but this wasn't an ordinary mission. Besides, she hadn't felt like smiling – except in grim satisfaction for what felt like weeks.

Eventually she completed her survey, and cautiously moved out into the open. An inescapable hail of razor arrows failed to shower around her. At Eirika's gesture, Franz darted ahead to the ruins, his hand already on his sword. Hidden explosives very specifically did not erupt from the ground beneath him.

Something was definitely up.

"This doesn't make sense," the princess insisted. "If there aren't any traps set here, then why leave something so obvious smashed out in the open? We know Arnord must be around here somewhere."

"Maybe he didn't mean to destroy it?" Amelia suggested.

"Maybe it was his," Franz offered.

"No, there's no space for a magical workshop. He didn't make that amulet thing in a broom closet," the recruit countered.

"No scorch marks or withered wood – this wasn't destroyed by dark magic, or even anima, if he learned how to use that too. This wall, or at least what's left of it, was broken by an axe, but look, this cut goes for half the length of the side. You can't drag an axe through a house like that. It's got to be a chop."

"Phantoms don't have the arm length for that. And the roof looks, well, ripped. Like that time a hurricane hit the Grado coast and took houses apart. …Or those cyclopes from the southeast."

"And a cyclops' favourite weapon is an axe," Franz added.

"Which is just the sort of thing a freak like Arnord would want with him if he were feeling insecure," Amelia concluded.

"And probably uncontrollable enough that it would destroy a house accidentally, giving away his position before he wanted to!"

"You're going to want a bigger sword," she remarked.

"I think you're going to need to be taller," Franz countered.

"I'll stand on your shoulders."

Eirika stared. "…You two are good together." The young knights smiled at each other with satisfaction. "However, I got there first." She looked down. So did they. The three of them were standing in a single giant footprint. There were rather a lot more of them around the wreckage.

"Those could be meteor strikes," Franz said, not missing a beat.

"Not ones with toes, I'm betting." The princess looked around, but the forest was still unsettlingly free of anything. It would have been much simpler if she could spot a giant grey-green body between the trees, its head lost in the leafy canopy. Any summoner who was sufficiently prepared to hide a cyclops obviously had chosen a well-made battlefield. For all she knew, they were standing on his subterranean lair.

"At last," Arnord sighed, leaning against the stone wall. He had the cyclops in position, and as completely under his control – and that of the amulet – as could be managed with such a tempestuous monster. The other defences were also prepared, and his workshop was ready to begin experimenting with the Sacred Stone as soon as it was in his hands.

"No kidding," said Rennac, resting a hand on his uncle's shoulder. Arnord, who had thought himself alone, jumped away from the wall to see Rennac similarly slouched against it, perfectly still in the shadows. "I've been waiting for ages."

"Where have you been?" the summoner demanded.

"Leading Eirika here. Didn't you realise that she wouldn't know the fastest route here on her own? Seth would have died while they were still on the road, and then you wouldn't be making a deal. You'd be facing up against the combined might of all Renais' armies, plus whoever Rausten and Jehanna sent - and that's if Queen Tana didn't call up a battalion of Pegasus knights," said the rogue, shaking his head. "Honestly."

"That's one thing you never are," Arnord fumed, pacing again. "Where are they, then? Do they know you're here?"

"Of course not. I slipped away to rendezvous with you. They're quite close. Are you ready?"

"I am beyond ready," said the summoner. "You'll lead them into position?"

"Only too gladly," said Rennac, grinning. "And then we discuss my payment for this endeavour. I've switched sides so many times I don't know whether I'm stabbing people in the back or the heart."

"Tragic," Arnord scoffed. "Get to work."

"You've got the flasks?" Rennac double-checked.

"Of course. I am as accomplished an alchemist as any to have walked Magvel in a thousand years." Arnord produced a bulbous vial of some arcane mixture, a sulfuric yellow-green mixture that Rennac could not imagine being healthy for any living creature, but apparently the cyclops would find it an irresistibly offensive thing. The simplistically-minded beast couldn't imagine anything except obliterating anything that bore its scent, which was unlucky for the now-extinct flowers that had once made it naturally.

"And your amulet?" Rennac went on.

"Yes, yes!" the summoner snapped. "It's still somewhat unreliable, since I dominated the brute this morning, but that's what the potion is for anyway. Are you going or not?"

"And if I encounter trouble?"

"What kind of trouble!"

"Eirika's not so slow as to accept every single mysterious thing I do," the rogue explained.

"Just follow the tunnel." Arnord smiled grimly. "It's… well-prepared for visitors who can't follow the rules, and I can listen in from anywhere. At the first sign of trouble, I'll make them terminally uncomfortable."

"A bad plan. She might not have the Stone with her – if it's not on the corpse, we're back where we started, with no idea where she's hidden it." Rennac thought for a moment. "Give me time to find out if she's carrying it or not – unless I'm about to be gutted, don't throw any switches until I say so."

"Bah," Arnord scoffed, but said nothing more of it. "However much I assist you, don't you think that this Lady L'Arachel will object to any suitor who betrayed her friends so many times?"

"Dead princesses tell no tales, uncle."

Underneath the waterfall, Eirika pressed her hands against the stone, shifting her touch, looking for the secret door that absolutely had to be there. "Come on… I know how insane mages think, and this is the best place for a mile around. No one can resist a secret lair under a waterfall!"

"Wouldn't it make more sense to put it at the top of the cliff? Somewhere out of sight?" Amelia suggested.

"Sense isn't something I've had a lot of contact with for a couple of days," Eirika replied. "Now where is the…" A great tremor shook through the earth, as though a giant had picked up the topsoil and shaken it out like a bedsheet. A gratified look appeared on Eirika's face, and she leapt back, waiting for the stone to open.

"Princess!" Franz called from outside the sheet of falling water. "Something's happening out here!"

She rushed out of the spray, practically steaming with frustration, to see that the perfectly clear pool had turned into a raging vortex, from the centre of which a stone outcropping was rising, the water rushing down its sides and outlining a steely inset door. When it was higher than the water level, the storm stopped, and even as the last drops sluiced down its side the door swung down, its edge close enough to the bank to leap across.

"Hurry up!" Rennac called from the shadowy portal. "Hang around any longer and you'll get to find out what Arnord has planned for you."

"What in blazes are you doing here?" Eirika blurted.

The rogue tilted his head sarcastically. "Yes, that's a much better use of your time." He turned away and dropped out of sight, underground. The princess sighed, wondering if Rennac knew how to do anything but exasperate people, and leapt across to the door, beckoning for the other two to follow. Inside the rock spire there was only a tunnel leading down, with slippery rungs bolted to the stone. Eirika flew down them so fast she might as well have jumped into the light-choked darkness below.

At last, staggering with the unexpected impact, she reached the subterranean floor. "I knew it would be something like this. Summoners always think they're so clever."

"We should have brought torches," Franz muttered. "I should work in a torch-pocket for these satchels, just to make sure I've got one in an emergency."

"Sword now, sew later," Amelia reminded him.

"Where did you leave for without telling us?" Eirika demanded of Rennac, or at least the darkness where she guessed the rogue was.

"You're referring to my daring cart escape?" the rogue mused. "I couldn't stand watching those two any longer, if you must know. And I was able to let you inside the workshop, so don't complain." An amber light cut through the darkness as Rennac lit a lantern, several feet away from where the princess expected him. He gestured toward a stiflingly black tunnel. "Ladies first."

The princess hesitated. "I thought you were the one arguing that they were adorable."

"We're right here," Franz and Amelia reminded them loudly. Eirika looked from knights to rogue and back again, shrugged, and let Rennac's light guide her into the dank tunnel, echoing with the sounds of distantly rushing water. It wound around itself for a time, spiralling down until they had lost all sense of their direction on the surface, and the tunnel straightened out. The curved ceiling was uncomfortably low, and more than once Eirika thought she saw gleams of metal in the shadowed crags of the stone.

"Hold," said the princess, stopping abruptly in the cramped space. Slowly, she turned back to face Rennac, innocently quizzical, and Franz and Amelia, whose hands had made a quick and instinctive interpretation of her command. "…This isn't right. This is far too complicated to just be an entrance to a mage's workshop. Who puts a mile between his door and home?"

Rennac rolled his eyes, which gleamed rather sickly in the fiery glow, and leaned against the tunnel wall, letting the lamplight shine in a bright swath across his front. "I told you he was insane. What did you expect? A cloakroom, an umbrella stand, and a Well Met mat?"

For a moment, the air seemed tight to Eirika, like the hum of a bowstring wavering on the edge of release, or crack as a beam buckles under the weight of too great a load. Neither comparison seemed very promising, and she almost ordered them to turn around right there, but she hesitated. Rennac looked expectant, tapping his fingers lightly on the stone wall as the pony embroidered on his jacket seemed to dance in the lantern's flicker. "You're right. No sense turning back now."

The tension eased. It didn't vanish, but Eirika felt less like the shadows were trying to choke the air from her throat. Rennac urged her ahead, not a single gesture of his body suggesting that he knew she had taken them all perilously close to being trapped in a small space full of big spikes. Still Arnord listened, through the sound-channels in the stone, waiting to see how Eirika would die. 'Whether', of course, wasn't even on the table.

At last, a faint light appeared ahead, of a natural shade that suggested reflected sunshine. Eirika doubled her pace, barely caring for the long echoing claps her boots made on the stone. The others rushed to catch up, but the princess was only beginning to wonder why Rennac wasn't cautioning her against racing into unknown danger when the tunnel opened into a great cavern, open at the very top, where grey-blue sky glowed and occasionally droplets of moisture collected and fell. A dull ray of light illuminated a strange bulky shape on the other side of the cavern.

"This is exceedingly unworkshoplike," Eirika said slowly, through gritted teeth. She turned on Rennac, who wore his signature insufferable grin.

"G'day!" he chirped with a jaunty wave, turned, shot between Franz and Amelia – he had to jump their already-rising weapons to do so – and back down the tunnel, which was quickly closed off as long metal prongs shot out of the walls behind him into a razor-sharp gate. It was dark without his lantern, but torches burst into flame on the walls around the room to make up for it.

The cyclops, which had been enjoying its rest in the darkness, responded in the first way it thought of, and let out an earth-breaking bellow.

"Oh, I really don't think I'm tall enough for this one…" Amelia muttered as it came at them.