"Wha- How did we get here? How are we still alive?" asked Chrom, trying to get his bearings. He could still feel the spears that pierced him, and yet he was alive and unharmed.
Rodin's smile widened. "It's all a little somethin' I concocted."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Richter, putting his hand in his whip. Divine creature, or not, this is highly suspicious!
Rodin put the glass down. "All that you experienced." he said in a slightly playful tone "was of my creation, and none of it was real. You were never in any danger." He chuckled as if he'd just heard a joke.
The others stayed silent, not knowing how to react for a moment. After it sunk in what Rodin had said to them, they found their reaction.
They all stood up and grabbed their weapons before making their way closer to him.
"I'll get his arms. Pit, you do his legs. Richter, his neck." Chrom growled.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" asked Rodin, without missing a beat. When they didn't seem to back down, he continued. "Your friend was right before. I am not someone you want to have as your enemy." With that, the room grew dark, with the imagery on the walls of the bar seeming to come alive and close in on them.
Pit, Richter and Chrom stood where they were, not knowing if they should go through with punishing the man for what he made them go through or yield. Despite how overwhelming the man's presence felt, Chrom's blood boiled, and even RIchter was wanted to make him suffer, divinity be damned.
After what seemed like an eternity, Pit spoke, putting his bow down. "Then... why make us go through that? You must've known how hard it'd be on us!"
Rodin raised one of his eyebrows and the room went back to normal. "I wanted to show you that there are fights that you just can't win, and causes that aren't worth giving your life for. That, and that you shouldn't take deals without knowing full well what you're getting yourself into. That's just bad business."
"So all that, just to teach us a lesson?" Chrom stated.
"That's right. So, did you learn it?" Rodin asked.
"You say causes not worth fighting for. You imply that a monster that took out the all powerful Master Hand, destroyed many of our friends and allies and is responsible for scattering the rest of us is a cause not worth fighting for?!" Richter yelled.
"Maybe. Even then, what are you guys gonna do? Charge into a battle with it by yourselves? If you couldn't take down a pack of angels, some of the weaker ones, at that, what are you gonna do against this monster of yours? The one that took out your 'all powerful' friends and allies?"
"What would you have us do, then?! Just lie down and give up?" shouted Chrom. "Let this... thing win?"
Rodin gave a short laugh. "You're a straight idiot without your little strategist friend, aren't you? I never said you shouldn't act."
"I've gotten bored of this little chit-chat. I'll tell each one of you one more thing to each of you before kicking you out. First: you, angel boy."
"Hm?" said Pit, perking up.
"Your dark clone is still your clone. If that's the case, then how is he smarter than you?" He then turned to the monster slayer. "You, Belmont."
"What?" he answered, with his hand still gripping the Vampire Killer.
"The world ain't as black and white as you think. Your friend Alucard could tell you a thing or two about that."
"What do you mean by that?"
Ignoring him, he turned to Chrom. "And you, your majesty. You'll need to learn to lead without having your usual friends around you."
Chrom kept silent. Part of him already knew that. Getting reminded of it didn't help. "Wait. You said you had some information for us."
"Ah, yes." He dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a strange artifact, which he tossed to Richter. Upon closer inspection, they saw it resembled a compass. The strange thing, however, was that the needle wasn't pointing north.
"Some of your friends made it out of the attack, same as you. Follow this and you'll meet them."
"Wait. How do we know we can trust it?" said Pit.
"Good. You're asking the right questions." Replied Rodin with a smirk. "You can trust it because, like I said before, it'd be bad business otherwise. I don't give out faulty equipment. Now leave me."
While still glaring at Rodin, the three slowly got up and made their way towards the door. Once they were out of the bar, they shut the door and looked at the device in Richter's hands. The needle seemed to be pointing west.
"I guess that's the way this thing is telling us to go." Chrom stated.
"I still don't like this. If he fooled us once, who's to say he didn't do it again with this thing?" Pit asked.
"I must agree. It seems suspicious that he would trap us in an unwinnable scenario, call us out on it, point out our flaws, then just turn around and help us." Richter added.
"True, but what other choice do we have? Our only alternative is to wander aimlessly and hope we run into one of our allies at some point. And if we run into more trouble, we can use what we learned to our advantage." Chrom said.
"I just hope you're right about this." Richter responded.
"If not, then when we've found more allies, we can come back to this place and return the favor." Chrom promised.
This seemed to placate the others for now. They looked once again at which direction the device was pointing towards and began walking in that direction.
The trio walked for what felt like an eternity. Minutes, hours, days, they had long since lost track of time. All around them was open field as far as the eye could see.
"We're lost, aren't we?" Chrom lamented.
"We can't be. The device is still pointing this way." Pit said.
"Then, that guy at the bar tricked us. Again." Richter growled.
"Well, great. Now what do we do?!" Chrom shouted.
"Hey, what is that?"
Chrom and Richter looked towards where Pit was pointing. There was something in the distance, but they couldn't make out what it was. Pit ran towards it, with the other two following him.
As they got closer, they started to make the object out. It looked like a titan made of metal. It was massive. As they got even closer, they could see Link near the foot of the titan.
"I guess that guy didn't trick us after all." Richter said in shock.
The trio approached Link as the Hylian did the same to them. Link gave them a smile as they got closer to each other.
"Hello there."