You are the Avatar of the goddess Sothis, and she is the second coming of the Fell King of Liberation.
Don't ever take
Back your kind hand
Lest precious love
Slip away like time's sand
You have passed out of time, to realms unknown.
Back on the world you left behind, the days and nights continue to chase each other, but nothing is changed or added to your memory, dear and cherished as it might still be.
Your story seems told and concluded, your part in it as fixed and immovable as the contributions of the ancient heroes who forged the foundations that you stood upon in your day, giants so vast you could mistake their shoulders for the hills as you walked on them, barely aware of how they got there.
Through the whims of gravity your broken remains found their way to cold water, there they remained, but the hungry elements hesitate to take back the dust from which you came, as if something higher was ordering the worms and vines to stay away.
Instead, something calls to you, more from within that from without, more a plea than an order and above all, a lament for the ocean of carnage that only you can end.
In the cold dark water, you stir.
Your soaked legs take you down familiar roads whose age-old cobblestones are now choked with weeds.
….
Against all odds you see her standing there among these ruins of her own making, like a single red flower in the darkness.
She actually came…
Just for that instant, a flutter of feelings of takes possession of you.
She's beautiful – you catch sight of her delicate profile in the dim light, locked in resignation as she wonders what she's doing here.
But any levity is gone from her voice, any pretense of being a normalcy evaporated, and this, perhaps, was what was always lurking in wait behind either of her guises:
In her gleaming regalia and ornate, crimson armor, with her hair tied back into a strict, elaborate updo, it is easier to conceive of her as the horned devil that you were always fated to oppose.
Even so, during the year you had spent together, you came to know her too well for you not to note the slight changes in her face as she steels herself for the inevitable, the stings of pain as she hardens her heart and forces herself to move forward.
Her first reaction is almost relief, though you should be nothing but her hated enemy by now.
She sounds angry when she questions where you've been, there's heartbreak in her voice as she describes your long absence, and for a moment, its like the ruins have pieced themselves back together and left you to discuss the matter at hand and concoct a further course of action, like you had done so many times, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like you were doing just the other day -
For you, it was just the other day.
But not for her: the eyes that once again appraise you have gone cold long ago, and her body, in its taut, readied stance, had had lost all softness that she ever bared to you.
She stands at attention, vigilant as one would be in the presence of an enemy, and you recognize her expression for what it often was back when you first met:
Resolute and resigned at once, the look of a lone fighter.
She has only one question left for you, and it is one that you can't answer.
She knows what it means of course; She always could tell better than anyone whether you were lying or telling the truth – and it is this special person with whom you seem doomed to cross blades now.
It is a futile thing all along because whether you kill each other or not, you will most certainly not leave together, and it is here that the passage of time hits you rather bluntly. Her strikes bring the full weight of five years bearing down on you. The gap between your experience has evaporated.
As time has not touched you, she is now technically a couple of years older than you; You are evenly matched, parallel, like mirror images that are doomed to never touch.
Yet you still know her well enough to discern that she's not serious – She hasn't even drawn her axe, and neither of you has the guts to go for the others neck, not here, not now.
Your sword doesn't cut her flesh, but the new, bitter certainty of your long-since diverged paths is lodged in her chest – and you understand it least of all. Not long ago, your place was firmly at her side.
And she would ask herself a long time why she had drawn back her weapon, just as you would come to wonder why you didn't strike her down right then and there when she turned her back on you.
It's a small miracle that you only half-seriously ascribe to the holy ground on which you stand; But both of you know better than to expect for such an absurd anomaly to manifest itself again.
It's just that for a split-second, you did not see your hated enemy, but the blasted ruin of a girl that you once knew, long past, like the golden days that now lie buried beneath the rubble, just as you did for those very many years.
In a way, it was the best year of your life, and also the worst.
It touched you, like nothing in this world had ever touched you before, and before you knew it, you seemed to have become a living, breathing part of a vivid tale that now seems as far away as the age-old yarns in storybooks.
Like the weathered walls around you, you have become a remnant of a bygone age, left by yourself in the wilderness.
The grass has grown over you.
But time wears down some things quicker than others, some of them so slowly that they come quite close to the comforting illusion that is all permanence ever is.
Like the silent eye in this raging storm of days, a pair of familiar faces appears before you, and comfort blooms in your chest like never once before.
It pales before the long-lost arms of your father, of course, but when you see Flayn and Seteth, looking no different than when last you saw them, it almost feels like coming home.
When you tell them where you've been, they're less surprised that such a thing would even be possible than they are that you would slumber in so cold, inhospitable a place.
They might not explain you right away, but nonetheless, they seem to think you quite explicable, for the first time in your life, and at a time where all seems foreign, there is something very comforting about that.
Even so, decisions are to be made
You don't want to fight her, but Seteth reminds you sternly of the war that still rages on outside these walls.
The Kingdom of Faerghus has gone up in Flames; The Leicester Alliance descended into chaos.
All across this land, people more innocent than you and here are forced to fight their own, so how could you alone sit idle?
Sweet little Flayn is disgusted by the fighting, unable to comprehend the mind of one who would willingly unleash such a hell on their home, and Seteth, who not too long was seeking refuge, and had all his hands full just with protecting himself and his own, is now called to rise to the challenge of leadership in his sister's stead, like his mother before him, as it was once his duty of old.
His family, he tells you, has been protecting this land for a long, long time, and this 'family business' now includes you.
As for your enemies, none of you understand them. You can conceive of their goals only in abstract terms and Flayn, who, as you will learn lost her mother to a great war, can't see any reason that might possibly justify one. To her and Seteth your opponent's motivation are just one big garble of vagueness, words words words, which by their very worthlessness prove the low character o anyone who would put them over flesh and blood human beings. The people couldn't possibly want this, Flayn argues, and as for Seteth, he concludes that some lofty rhetoric that they could never understand couldn't possibly be good for them. Though he does not go to such extreme accusations as Rhea, he cannot paint the future she desires any other color than pitch black.
He has always been a cautious man, but a coward he is not. If he must, he will step up: He will answer the pleas of the faithful, he will guide the flock, and he needs you to help him do it.
It doesn't occur to you at the time that whatever Edelgard is or isn't doing, you're not exactly innocent of your own accusation – you're not explaining yourselves either, you're deciding from on high what should be done like it's a literal god-given duty.
You don't think that just because you don't understand Edelgard, that doesn't mean that nobody will – But had someone brought that thought to you right then, you would have dismissed it as exceedingly cynical, you were, after all, doing the best to end the suffering before him with the means at his disposal, and who could fault a man for trying to protect his sister and daughter from those who clearly and vocally wish them harm?
He doesn't know of the misdeeds alleged in her speeches and manifestos, he knows, or thinks that he knows his dear sister, who is after all one of the last few brethren left so him, so the stories must be fabrications; To his knowledge, he cannot explain them any other way.
At least, you cannot argue that Seteth is anything a good, reasonable man, and according to what all of you know at this moment, ending the chaos of this war seems like a good and reasonable thing.
Didn't Sothis tell you to end the strife? Maybe that really is why you're here, why she has given you back your life after you gambled it away by putting your faith in your treacherous pupil – felled by your disciple, and then raised again. How very messianic.
And the rest of your fellowship is not so far behind, true believers, not in the faith, but, as Dorothea once put it, in you.
Seteth finds it fitting – however far Adrestia may have fallen, the wayward children with you carry the blood of saints. Perhaps they were send to you to see to their homeland's glorious restoration to the path of righteousness.
They're all so eager to call it providence. Your coming here, your chance meeting with Seteth and Flayn, as well as the subsequent arrival of most of your former students…
But you're not really sure what to think. It would seem conceited to smile and nod to a claim such as that. For most of your life, you would have noncommittally shrugged at claims such as these.
But with every passing day, you find it easier and easier to call forth the holy light from your fingers.
…
You have little but a pile of ruins and the clothes on your backs.
You must acquire funds and you must acquire men.
Seteth sends for messengers to call back the knights and takes steps to request aid from local lords.
You make plans to go to town to try and find the former monks, and even think of finding and employing former brigands and calling in some of your father's old contacts.
Your little flock of followers is worn and weather-beaten, but they all wish to lend their aid in any way they can.
In many ways you are proud of them. Once they all struggled under the binds of the lives that others had picked out for them without giving them a say in it as well as the weights of the many misunderstandings that had been flung their way because of their shortcomings or even just the very uniqueness that ought to have been regarded as their greatest strength.
Now, cast out from their homeland as they were, they had nonetheless succeeded in carving their own paths.
Ferdinand's hair is long and wild; gone is the sheltered boy who never knew hardship. You learn that though disgraced, he and his house did all in their power to resist the emperor's vicegrip; as a result, he was forced to flee, and only the most loyal of his soldiers and retainers had come with him, but even so, he was willing to led them to your cause.
Petra can't promise you the support of her homeland yet, their situation is precarious after all, but she will do what she can, and nothing in this world would stop her from lending you her axe. Resplendent in her islander garb, she truly looks like the proud, stalwart queen she was always meant to be.
The war has left its marks on Dorothea, but she little orphans she has taken in eagerly volunteer for the chores needed for the monastery's basic upkeep. Caspar has traveled the land as a warrior and made a name for himself, bringing with him his experience and renown. He's a great deal taller, too – you actually have to look up to him now.
Linhardt simply swiped some of his parent's fancy goods, which gives you pause – He hadn't really left the empire until just a few weeks ago. You suspect that he came here chiefly to see you and his other friends, but if he continues to march with you, he will be forced into many of the fights he so abhors… But for you, and for the others, he came, and Bernadetta, for all her easily startled nerves, had done the same and marched here all on her own with little more than her clothes and equipment – but you couldn't possibly be disappointed that she didn't bring anything; If anything you're impressed that she made it here with so few supplies, though you do seem to recall that she had more than a passing interest in Botany. She used to like handicrafts too, and the clothes she wears now seem to reflect that, she's got sweet little accessories, decorative details and hair decorations – Though not particularly attention-grabbing, her getup is cute and distinctive and allows her personality to shine through instead of hiding it away.
Their reunion, however, only serves to underline Edelgard's glaring absence from their midst, the absence of her words from where she would have spoken had she been granted the chance to be here.
Do any of them know just how narrowly they have missed her?
Does she know that her former classmates were so close behind?
In the end, the only one who didn't come was Hubert.
That's so very like him.
At least Edelgard's absence was felt, but no one seems to have missed or mentioned him.
He was implacable, unpersonable, thoroughly elusive like a dark smoke refusing to be held within your fingers, hard to please because he simply did not wish to be pleased, and definitely not here to make friends. He had little patience, consideration or sympathy for anyone, so most people might not have found it hard to imagine that no one should miss such a dour, trenchant taskmaster.
You wonder what he looks like now.
Has Edelgard handsomely rewarded him for bringing her his father's head? Has he been showered in gold, or given power and leeway beyond his wildest dreams? How have the years been treating him?
You don't really hope to find out, because as soon as you did, he would surely breathe his last.
Perhaps, he would be slain by his own classmates; Perhaps you would cut him down so that he wouldn't slay them – you don't particularly expect him to hesitate.
…
You often meet in the ruins below, labyrinthine below the monastery walls, to discuss your plans and confer on your latest strategies.
You're surprised how natural it seems, how easily a vagabond like you has somehow become part of this timeless order, these last, scattered heirs to a vast, ancient history.
You've never truly belonged to any place or community, nor did you think about it much it, maybe because your father was always by your side – but he is gone now, so when you have nowhere to turn, you find yourself turning to Seteth.
On the surface, he seems like your father's total opposite – one cautions and proper, the other rugged and irreverent. But both of them had left behind everything many times and wandered the land as a transient, all to protect their only child – of course shortly before you lost him, your father was beginning to think that there may not have been any reason to flee in the first place.
You wonder what it might have been like to grow up at the monastery, with Seteth as a sort of uncle and Flayn as something like your cousin.
You wonder how many more places like this there are – how many more relics left behind by the people of Zanado… your people, in effect.
…
There's a letter from Claude.
It seems that in your long absence, he had grown to be quite the capable leader.
How did that happen?
Sure, he always seemed both likable and insightful when you talked to him, but at the same time, he always seemed easygoing at best and at worst, downright shifty.
Now, he's the one to meet you with a plan, an army, and an offer that you can't refuse.
You don't like playing straight into anyone's hand but then again you don't seriously think he would doublecross you, and Seteth agrees.
You wonder what he looks like now.
…
Ashe. Lorenz -
You rejected Edelgard's path because you knew that it would be a bloody one, that it would put you at odds with many of those whom you had wanted to protect.
But it seems that you might not be able to avoid that either way.
Ashe was conflicted and apologetic as he strung his bow, torn between his duty to his adoptive father and the voice of his heart, his once messy hair combed into a neat, aristocratic-looking style that doesn't suit him. For the last few years, he had probably tried his hardest to fulfill his obligations as a dutiful son and heir, putting whatever hopes and dreams he had for himself on the backburner. You remember that he has a brother and sister – and it seems like you might have to take their last remaining family.
Were he not your opponent, you would have critiqued him, told him that he mustn't let this situation get to him – It is plain to to you that he's losing his nerve, that he can barely bring himself to fight you. He was pretty much drafted into this, such a gentle boy, trying so hard to do the right thing though he cannot for the love of the goddess say what it is.
And then there's Lorenz. At the academy, he struck you as rather immature and frivolous, not spoiled, per se, and not wholly without a sense of obligations but all in all he seemed like an arrogant twat and you weren't too surprised to learn that he'd defected to the empire.
One look at him, and you'd know everything there is to know about him.
But everything you know is wrong:
There he stands, bravely facing you down to protect his greedy hack of a father who isn't worth half as much as his life. He always wanted to go down in history, no doubt, with grand last words, but all he can manage to mumble out as he bleeds out next to the carcass of his horse is some slurred plea to make sure that his funeral arrangements would be fancy enough.
Bereft of poise or dignity, stained with tears and snot, his frightened face burns itself into your memory, the terrified expression right before you cut him down.
…
They're ALL gone.
Just like that. You had barely begun to process the news that Dimitri had been hiding out in Fraldarius territory – of course he went to Rodrigue! - when you're told that they are all dead. Dimitri, Claude… All of their housemates, and everyone who followed them… more than half of all the people that you lived with on a daily basis back at the monastery...
Perhaps some of them stayed home and did not enlist for the war – but would you stake anything on that hope? You haven't seen Claude's or Dimitri's bodies but deep down you know that you will never see them again.
You had chosen that first, you should do no harm, but you find that even without your action or intervention you can do nothing to prevent the harm that is already being done by others.
You can't fault Seteth for refusing to go along with Gilbert's proposition – your army is small so you cannot afford to take risks. As a general you know this.
But what if you had gone along with the Kingdom and Alliance's joint armies? Or if you had appeared before Seteth alongside Judith or Gilbert, at the head of one of the other territories' larger forces? Would he have added his numbers to your own?
Could the efforts of all three forces working together have resulted in a decisive rout? If you had been there with Dimitri and Claude, could you have saved them?
…
At this time, you see no problem with Seteth deciding what is do be done regarding Fodlan's future; As a guardian of the land, left in charge as such by his mother, he thinks it's best for the remains of the Kingdom and Alliance to rebuild under your banner. He's trying to do the right thing in any way he can, and if that involves using the Church's infrastructure for the relief efforts, well, you can't see the people of Leicester or Faerghus complaining about too much disaster relief.
...
But there is something strange that Seteth says, as you make your way inwards into empire territory, little more than an observation he makes before you were once again surprised by misfortune – you don't get the time to really process it, for a long time, it remains behind in your mind as an unconnected oddity that won't start to make sense as part of a bigger picture for a long, long time.
Edelgard's soldiers – they fought to the last, as if they had far more to fight for than just the cruel orders of a tyrant. The zeal of her followers seems to lesser than that of yours, which makes you ask some things about yourself. Are you seen by others like she is? Untouchable? Sublime?
Is that what others see when they follow you, fervently hoping for the better world they expect yu to bring?
But you're just trying to do your best, to bring back peace, to end the fighting, to continue your newfound family's long watch over Fodlan.
What she wants is still nebulous in your mind, other than that she wants the power to remake the world as she sees fit.
For just a moment, you almost doubted – but you're set straight right away when that terrible weapon is unleashed on Fort Merceus.
You don't know what devilry you just witnessed, or by what whim of the Death Knight's you escape with your life, but whoever would rain down that kind of destruction can only be your enemies.
...
With every day that you spent training her, every lesson you taught her, every tiny correction that you ever made to her technique…
Were you just giving her the tools to wreak all this destruction?
…
Flayn, if you would believe it, was actually born in Enbarr, a long, long time ago, when it was still a holy city and not the decadent, wretched hive of godless heathenry that it is today.
She would likely have been put into whatever class it was to be headed, but going by the normal rules, she would have been destined to be placed with the Eagles.
She, too, had her fair share of memories scattered all over the ancient city that was now the enemy stronghold – before the Opera House, where Ferdinand had spent many fond, inspiring hours, and were Dorothea had made a name for herself, there was the old Church where Flayns' parents had first met; she had known the venerable palaces that Caspar and Linhardt had idly played in while their fathers attended to business back when their stone facades were polished and new, when most of the spires that Petra or Bernadetta would have seen when looking out the balconies and windows from the confinement of their rooms were yet to pierce the skies.
Maybe it's good that you choose the Adrestian students, and that you took them with you – They know the terrain, and they do not love the thought of assaulting their onetime home. Your current plans for invading Enbarr look like a precise, surgical strike; had you come here at the head of a different army, your generals might not have been so considerate.
You're not certain that you would concur with Seteth that it must have been fate or divine intervention, but as he had pointed out the one time he showed you the illustrations that Bernadetta had drawn up for his latest fables, many of them carried traces of saintly blood – So perhaps it was it was only fitting, perhaps their little band of sheltered misfits, disgraced and cast out from their homelands, were indeed chosen to lead the wayward land of their birth back to it's holy origins.
The goddess, supposedly, worked in mysterious ways, and was it not to her credit that she should work through the frightened and the destitute?
Was it not proved that she loved all her children even the weak, the poor or those wandering displaced from their homes, even the ones that were much too soft for this endless bitter fight?
Holy blood had never stopped any of their fathers, nor even Edelgard herself, descended from the great prophet herself – but wasn't it always the brightest morning star that should turn fallen angel, that the paragon should always rebel?
It all sounds neat and good, but though you still cannot bring yourself to believe, even as you draw more and more followers and worshipers to your trail.
You have all the ingredients, but you just can't think of yourself as a prophet any more than your former students can see themselves as continuing the legacy of saints -
At least you're in the same boat
And almost certainly, you must saved them all from a needless death at Gronder Field, where their classmates' bones might still lie scattered.
At least, you understand that, as surely as battle has been your bread and butter.
…
By the time you find yourselves before the palace doors, you've already talked yourselves right into it.
You've psyched yourselves up, you all agree that she has to go, that it's only right and just and the only way for justice to be served -
Saying such things not of some distant inimical specter, but someone you once ate and drank with everyday, someone who fought at your side.
Wasn't all this just as true for her, and did she not cause all this destruction?
You will thwart her reign of terror and put an end to her twisted judgment, turn aside this vague dark future that surely only she could want.
At the edges of perception, there's Linhardt and Dorothea expressing some token glimmers of reluctance to cut down a former friend, but their words don't gather much momentum.
For once, Seteth expresses some honest sympathy for your conflicted feelings, but that's probably because he longer believes you do be in any danger of genuine hesitation.
You've all gone too far to turn back now, and you're not sure if Ferdinand is trying to convince you or himself, but he's right either way.
He surprised you all when he broke formation and rushed towards the enemy commander, not, as he might have once upon a time, to recklessly challenge him and score the kill for himself, but to talk, like the statesman and negotiator he was bred to be, though all his hopes had been dashed long ago.
The dark mage leading the enemy forces was once their classmate – your student – but that scarcely matters to him. He greets Ferdinand with naught but mockery; Even so, the redhead is insistent:
"Hubert. She must leave."
You perceived Seteth's sharp inhale from all the way atop his wyvern – You couldn't possibly have heard the sound that far off, but the parting of his lips does not escape your honed senses.
Did Ferdinand just offer to let his former classmates make a run for it?
You never find out.
Seteth needn't have worried – it would come to blows regardless.
The Minister's face splits open with a grin – hte offer must be tempting to him – if there were any chance that his Empress would listen to it and flee, at least some part of him would surely love to take her and escape, and be it only to spare her the grim consequence of defeat – but would he admire her the same way, if she were to choose her measly life at a time like this?
"Do you think you can make her?"
Hubert knows he cannot – as for Ferdinand, you end up having to step in to save him from a face full of dark magic. You hope that the redhead will forgive you, and that time will heal the bruises of his ego.
But your calculation works out – The moment Hubert spots your green hair in the fray, you have his undivided attention, and any traces of his smirk are gone in a moment.
It's not your first time fighting one of your former students, and since he was in your class, he should have been the hardest to face – but unlike Ashe or Lorenz, he isn't reluctant or even apologetic.
His countenance is trenchant and severe;
There is nothing in his face but icy contempt.
He's making it downright easy; You're beginning to understand why Edelgard would make sure to keep him around, this vile man who couldn't even scrounge up the pretense of sympathy at the death of your father. When you've given up on understanding, the absence of pity is perhaps the greatest comfort you can have.
Yet, his voice drips with acerbic loathing, and bitter, noxious regrets:
"I should have disposed of you a long time ago... "
In an instant, his fingertips blaze with saturnine magics.
"I will rectify that failure here!"
You barely blinked when you cut him down.
"We must place our faith in her Majesty… Her Victory is everything..."
You can't imagine what about that victory could really merit such faith, so you all think him a lackey. Only later will you find that his faith wasn't quite that absolute, his reason, which Edelgard had praised when she introduced you, would prove stronger than his loyalty.
He had a will of his own after all, a will that compels him to ensure that the whereabouts of your shadowy enemies do not die with him and to see how dangerous they are though his mistress had thrown in her lot with them.
Or perhaps you should have expected this pack of rats to betray even their mysterious benefactors, the devils to whom they'd sold themselves for power.
...
But it doesn't make sense.
None of it does.
None of it fits what you know to be true, what you remember from days past, or what you see right in front of you.
She said she would keep fighting you even if you tore off all her limbs, but they're still attached to her body when she realizes that she's beaten.
She was off center the whole time, you know her well enough to notice that -
Some of your soldiers will go back to their homes and, for the rest of their lives, feel chills running down their spines whenever they thing of this battle, their souls forever haunted by visions of her formidable elegance, but as her only equal in power and her former instructor, it is patently obvious to you that you are not facing her at full strength – nay, she barely resembled herself.
When you dueled her back at the monastery, you were evenly matched, and she hadn't even been using her axe.
Now, she kneels gasping and panting in front of you, just barely remaining upright by propping herself up on on her sword – she can no longer even lift her preferred weapon.
Halfway through your fight, her robes were soaked through with blood in places where you never sliced her – She must have reopened the wounds she sustained at Gronder.
You feel like you're picking her off like a vulture, and yet, this measly act will surely be hailed throughout the ages as a heroic feat only you would have been capable of.
Actually, you're not sure that you could have beaten her at her peak, at least, not without another warrior of uncommon prowess at your side.
But when you look at her now, broken and defeated, you can't bring yourself to see a monster with inhuman power, a wicked heart, a false deity, or even a bloodthirsty tyrant -
Only your beloved student as you knew her from sunnier days, your friend, the focal point of these inexplicable feelings of kinship and affinity – and she's bloody, burnt-out and utterly broken.
Whatever she'd meant to accomplish here, she had dedicated her whole life to it, given it all to some abstract ideal that no one wanted and nobody understood; Piece by piece, she had cast away everything she was until there was nothing left but this cold, regal shell, all hopes, dreams and every shred of feeling, and every thought until there was nothing left but complete, single-minded focus.
She used to cherish every moment they'd spent drinking tea in the gardens, you think you saw her smile from the bottom of her heart when she would converse with her friends in the dining hall -
Now, cut loose from the goddess and discarded by the devils to whom she is no longer of use, she has nothing to hope for from either heaven nor hell – she expects no mercy, least of all from you.
And the thought strikes you suddenly that for all her rebellion and fierce rejection of this world and the karmic cycles of its fate, there was always a little repressed part of her that was both deeply fatalistic and utterly resigned, as if she had seen the future and railed against it with everything she had, denying it her surrender to the bitter end, though she could never hope to move the unshakable convictions of that part of her that is still trapped wherever her restless dreams used to take her.
She knows that she cannot win, so she won't even attempt to resist the inevitable.
"Your path lies across my grave..." she says, as if nothing in this world could change this anymore.
Crumpled in a heap, she is the very image of defeat, like she had never expected anything else, never thought it possible since the day of your transformation, knowing that you must be enemies, and vexed that it must be so.
"If I must fall, let it be by your hand..."
Before you is the loneliest girl in the world, heartbroken and abandoned by everyone.
The closest thing she had left to an ally lies splattered before the palace gates.
There is no one she can rely on, no one she can trust, and nobody who understands her.
No one ever did, and no one ever will.
"I wanted… to walk with you..."
Lest the burning feeling rising in your chest turn out to be regret, you strike her down in mid-sentence.
…
"I don't want to kill Edelgard...", is as much as you were willing to admit back when you were push open the palace doors with Seteth by your side. "Don't you think that maybe, somehow, we could walk the same path as her?" He didn't even get offended or scandalized – instead, he regarded you with a fatherly sort of sympathy, the sort you could imagine him giving Flayn if she were speaking of some tragic impossibility, like wishing to see her dead mother.
"She was one of your students. I understand your desire for a path to peace. But she will never bend to our will. You understand that, do you not? We have no choice but to kill her."
You did understand, but against all good sense and rationality, against all that is good and right -
You wanted to walk with her, too.
It must seem so ridiculous to Seteth: You're the hero chosen by the goddess, and she was the harbinger of destruction who worked with the ancestral enemies of your kind. What fellowship could you possibly have with the likes of her? But to the part of you that is not a divine savior, the you that was a mercenary, a bloodied fighter and unflappable leader just as she was, it always felt so natural…
...
If she had been laid to rest in the tomb of her ancestors, some sort of coroner or mortician would have had to strip and wash her for embalming, and if that's what had happened, it might have shed some light on the unholy secrets she held concealed under her robes.
Instead, you hear that her body was dragged out to the streets and burned right then and there.
You're told that Dedue left a long streak of red across the marble floors of the palace.
So much did he loathe the one who had cut down his liege that he pulled her remains along the splintered stone and the pockmarked gravel outside, not deigning to grasp more than the heavy boot around one of her ankles.
Then, where everyone could see, though no survivors of the losing army would have dared to show themselves, he piled on enough kindling fit for a witch-burning.
You might almost think that he didn't trust her to stay dead – why, oh why, do you wonder;
Even Edelgard von Hresvelg is just a mortal, a complex mass of flesh once grown on some mother's bloodstream, that was now bereft of life.
Of course, given the choice, the tall Duscurian man might have thrown her into that pyre while still living, as it was reportedly done with Prince Dimitri's beloved stepmother.
He carried out his errand with all the brutality that his fallen master would have requested, but beneath the steely mask of duty behind which he had retreated to escape the mercilessness of grief and many years of mistreatment, you recall that there was always a gentle young man who wanted little more than to live in peace with his friends – all of them are gone now.
You slew Ashe yourself.
There's nowhere for Dedue to go, so no one knows where he went after that but the last ones to see him all describe the emptied, broken look in his eyes, and wonder fruitlessly if he perhaps went back to the cinders of his homeland.
You even noticed when he discreetly receded into the shadows, you remember making a sharp mental note to seek him out and speak to him as soon as you were able, but you were all worried ragged, anxious to release Rhea from her dungeon -
But in the end, do as you might, you couldn't save Rhea.
If you had chosen a different path, could you at least have saved Dedue?
You're beginning to wish you had.
It's not just that Rhea died, no matter what you did – it's how.
When she first told you about her involvement with the circumstances surrounding your birth, you were inclined to forgive her – it was obvious that she acted out of desperation, and in the end, it seemed like your father's suspicions had indeed been unwarranted, as your mother had actually perished of natural causes. Sure, she had meddled with your life, but if it weren't for her intervention, you would not have had a life at all. And whatever her origins, your mother's life seemed to have been normal enough, if she was able to meet your father like she did.
But then… but then…
It seems that there was quite a lot going on that even Seteth didn't know about.
You've been hailed as the great hero of the church, but it's like you know nothing about it.
You were heartbroken enough just from the realization that you would not be able to save Rhea and were left with no recourse but to put her out of her misery, but to learn that she had apparently made much of the church's upper echelons drink her blood, rendered them connected to her power, so that they were now transformed into monsters so much like the demonic beasts you had been fighting up until now?
Certainly, she could not have known that she would lose control, but could she have done this at any time? Would this same fate have befallen your father, if he were still alive?
You might have lived an unusual and, in some ways, sheltered life, but you've been a soldier. You're not naive.
You see how this looks terribly like a failsafe, a complete absence of trust in her adoring supporters. You see now how any rebels could only have come from the outlying branches like the Western Church, but never the Central Church, and you can't deny that it seems like something she would do – though she surely meant to protect the flock and carry out the will of her beloved mother, you remember thinking that she sometimes seemed… overzealous.
But you could still explain this somehow.
It's another matter when you break her fall in the cathedral, the bittersweet ache inside you when she looked at you with relief, only for that feeling to get skewered right through when she speaks, not to you, but right through you, to the stone lodged in your chest, as if the rest of you is not even there.
Or rather, she never saw you to begin with – When she cared for you after your transformation? When she got captured protecting you from the imperial army? That sheer joy when you were the one who freed her from captivity? When she used her very body to shield you from the Agarthan projectiles?
None of that was for you.
Not once, not ever – and it never will be, because she's dead. You can no longer make her see, you can no longer clear away any misunderstanding, because she's gone.
If you wanted to win her heart, or become a family with her, you would never get the chance.
With her last breath, she calls for her mother, but you're not anybody's mother-
But that's what everyone wants you to be.
'The Arbiter of every soul and mother of all life'
With Rhea gone, everyone is all the more eager to wrap you in ornaments and fancy clothes and elevate you on a pedestal.
You still know next to nothing about this religion – but that's not how a religion works.
You are holy, because you're the one touched by their goddess.
So you do what is required of you, as you did in your days as a mercenary, or as a professor at the academy.
One could hardly believe that you were either; Soon tales tell of your mild, and nurturing benevolence, and perhaps the less awestruck stories will paint you as a legendary conqueror, as a logical continuation of your extraordinary life; On the battlefields of Fodlan, you learned to be a leader and in your time at the academy, you learned to guide and captivate the hearts of men like a good shepherd leading on the flock, a wandering flame stumbling into destiny.
Everyone was expecting you to, so you stepped forward to guide the work of rebuilding, and insofar as it is in your power, you work to bring forth the sort of world that Flayn had dreamed of, one where war is as good as forgotten.
When she and Seteth say that you remind them of Sothis they mean it not like Rhea did, but like a relative comparing a youngling to some deceased grandparent, nor do your followers mean anything other than to elevate you into the halls of fame and legend, but it feels like someone else's life and you're not fully sure whose.
You wonder if that's how Edelgard used to feel, surrounded by awestruck followers, but very few friends.
The thought that you could have anything in common seems absurd now.
But when you're done tending to the altar and warming the royal throne to oversee the realm that now centers on Garreg Mach, as you retire to the rooms that used to be Rhea's, you sometimes remember what it was like to wander the landscape with your father.
At the time, these days hardly seemed to touch you as they passed by without stirring any great feelings in your silent heart, but looking back, they seem like the only part of your life that was wholly your own– but you also understand that the encounter in Remire was probably inevitable, that you were always coming here.
It's been easier to look through time, the longer you'd had to get used to the full extent of your full power.
If anything keeps you anchored at all, it would be the bonds you had formed with your former students, who now constitute much of your royal court.
So here's the final tally:
The war had been ended, and the Agarthan threat that had been tormenting Fodlan since time immemorial had been uprooted once and for all.
If it was truly the flow of time or the will of the goddess that brought you here, you had definitely accomplished what you were sent here to do.
But at what price?
Once you went through your days untouched, but now, this world had surely left its marks on you -
And it was in ruins.
All the nations that had existed in Fodlan just a few years ago, that had been exiting for centuries and centuries, had now passed into history: The Adrestian Empire, the Kingdom of Faerghus, the Leicester Alliance… Each of them is no more.
Their armies, their lords, their illustrious leaders, all of them annihilated each other at Gronder Field.
You whole class… almost everyone you knew, along with their families and retainers… slaughtered on that killing field.
You merely picked up the pieces left by that disaster and rebuilt the continent from the ashes once its charred remains had cooled.
And those three bright young leaders who once turned up at your doorstep in Remire?
Not a single one remains.
You didn't see Claude's or Dimitri's bodies, but you never heard of them again, and you know better than to be foolish.
You think of Claude's letter, lamenting what could have been if you had joined forces;
You think of Dimitri, lost, confused, begging for your guidance, never to be seen again.
You think of Edelgard, inextricably drawn to you though you were her hated enemy.
You remember their younger selves at your doorstep, bright minds, with bright eyes and bright futures.
You wish you could have saved even a single one of them.
…
It's Ferdinand who gave you the idea, or at least planted its seed that time he started musing about what might have become of him if you had chosen a different path – perhaps, if you had picked a different house to teach, or possibly even sided with the empire.
He needn't have worried, really, a proactive, optimistic guy like him? Would always find a way to be fine no matter what the tides of time might fling his way.
Despite all the twists and turns, he still ended up as the statesman he had prepared himself to be, your prime minister rather than Edelgard's.
But there might be some merit to what he said.
Not for him, but for you.
With an unprompted look of determination, you gaze around your chambers.
"Sothis! You owe me one!"
You're not sure if you even really saw him – that memory, or that dream, that feverish phantom of Dimitri's desperate face – but you decide that this time, you won't waste your time on some thankless cause…
This time, you will be there to show him the way.