Men and women perish wailing, screaming, and silent in the flames of battle as she stands above them from her position at the hillock. She sees several of them brought down at once, a flash of light the color of live embers signaling the use of a Relic weapon as the cause of their demise, and a secondary flash of blue that tells her its wielder.
Dimitri.
Does he even remember the plan? She wonders and watches him carve a bloody path to where she stands. She knows Dorothea and Petra have their concerns, she understands them all too well and has had the same argument no less than eight times with Hubert and Ferdinand. It's futile to argue against her when her mind is made up; she would do this with or without their agreement to cooperate. They know this as fact and yet continue to argue all the same in hopes of an impossible result.
It's why she is fond of them. With their loud, impassioned voices and actions laying in stark contrast to the polished control she and Hubert maintain over themselves.
For a moment, the thought of the dour retainer causes a small smile to appear. She wonders how Hubert would react if she told him she started imitating him and his sense of control to keep herself sane in the darkest hours beneath the castle in Enbarr. What would he say if she told him it was his poise and calm in the face of a crisis along with Dimitri's determination and dagger that kept her from giving into madness during the worst of their experiments?
Would he be flattered? Would he dismiss it outright and state it was her own strength of will that enabled her to live? Would he blush?
A blushing Hubert would be fun to see now that she thinks about it. She's seen him flustered all of… twice. It takes her a few moments to even recall those instances and he hadn't blushed in either one.
Even wielding a gore-streaked blade and the blood of their people splashed across his face, Dimitri is still recognizable as the boy she once taught to dance. The one who gave her a dagger and told her to cut her own path to the future and make it a reality. Words she held on to as tightly as she had the dagger in her possession, still tucked against her side even now, against her breast as she returned home to the Empire as a child.
In another life, perhaps, the two of them may have been on that road together. They may not have been at this battlefield with two Relics howling for one another's blood. They may have even grown up side-by-side happily together before going their separate ways.
In yet another life, her axe would cleave the head from his shoulders in one fell swoop and he would die before her. The Kingdom of Faerghus forever sundered from the Blaiddyd bloodline. She would not weep for him in such a world, Edelgard lies to herself, and would move past him as though he were just another obstruction who needed to be eliminated from her path.
He would die and she would live and that was all there is to it.
In still another life, she would be dead and his Relic would have run her through and eliminated the traitorous heart within her breast that never stopped beating. His path would have lain across her grave and the future brought about by a gentleman who wrestles with his own inner demons bright and kind ahead of him. She would not have died, of course, before bestowing one last wound upon him. A reminder to never let his guard down even among those he has defeated- because Dimitri has always been kind where she is not and his heart will always yearn to believe in the humanity of those around him.
A scar to remember her by and a warning to what lay before him should he lose his way once more.
But this is not her dying moments of reflection or late night wonderings of 'what-might-have-been'.
This is the present with the future not yet set in stone and she is not going to allow herself to die here on this blood-soaked battlefield. Not among the traitors and the vermin. She is Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg and she will not be defeated because of one man's lack of self-control over his own demons.
There is a bitter exchange of words between them. She can't see if he's there or if his vision is tainted, clouded by the spirits of those who weigh heavily on his heart and haunt him the way her siblings' cries haunt her dreams. If he has chosen his path, to cooperate only to give in to madness in just a moon or two's time… there is nothing she nor anyone else can do for him.
At the very least, this will be a convincing enough act to throw her uncle off her trail.
I should have known.
Her feet dig into the soil beneath her and she swings with everything she has in her.
/
There is nothing but the voices of the dead howling in his ears and the screams of the damned souls he cuts through on his way to Edelgard. Areadbhar is nothing more than an extension of his own body, its wicked blade carving through armor and flesh alike as if it is nothing more than soft cheese or soaked paper, as he charges directly toward his intended target. He's lost track of the feeling in his feet, the only heat he feels is that of blood splattering against his face before it too returns to cold, and moves on instinct toward a bird with blood-soaked feathers.
Her head mounted on the walls of Enbarr as a warning to those who would dare try such fool-hardy measures in the future... the skulls of her lackeys, noble and commoner alike, will make a fine accompaniment and grim reminder to the overly ambitious to stay in their place.
He knows she is there, waiting patiently, for him to bring this to an end. Has to have been waiting all this time, plotting her betrayal all the while, and it's only a matter of time before she plays them for the fools they all are. That damned smile, small and smug and knowing, is enough to send his vision red.
All the tears, the promises, the speaking of weariness, and desire for peace nothing but lies.
Their forces split apart and diminished so that she can secure her petty victory and continue her petty little war. Her reinforcements must be hiding in the wings, waiting to surround them and claim their lives with their blades and arrows and magic. Those sent away with Imperial spies and allies… their voices will join him any moment now. They will condemn him too for his part in the betrayal that claimed their lives.
He really should have known better. He will not make this mistake, this fatal error, a second time.
There is the distant register of two people, a woman with maroon hair in an intricate plait and a pale, grim-faced woman with long brown hair, behind that monster. These two souls who cast heated, judgmental stares his way. They can detest him, curse his name all they like, they too will meet their end should they try to interfere.
He spares them a look to remind them he is not unaware of them even in his single-minded purpose. Their blood will join hers should they retaliate.
Edelgard steps in front of them, the Relic in her hands unfamiliar to him and glowing a heated red-orange. She denies her responsibility even now and is willing to take this straight into the eternal flames for which they are both condemned.
The spear in his hand responds to the fury in his veins, pulsing as though alive against his palm to let him know it too awaits the blood of the damned. The words they exchange are bitter, ugly things that burn the throat and fling themselves like embers into the air. She looks at him as though he is a mere insect to be quashed beneath her heel. As though he is the one in the wrong and not her standing there dyed in the color of the lives she has sent to the underworld.
Areadbhar pulses once more in his grasp and Dimitri's feet set themselves apart in preparation for an utterly devastating strike that will cleave her small body in twain. He truly should have known better than to trust a single thing she had said.
He swings with every bit of loathing his has for her, for himself, and for the choir of the dead that continues to scream their names.
/
Neither of them remembers the way the ground gave beneath their feet and tore their weapons free from one another's bodies.
They don't remember collapsing where they stood to the blood-soaked earth below or when exactly the skies changed from the heart-wrenching winter blue to dull, dark grey. Warmth flows from their bodies with each rapid, erratic beat of their heart. Leaves them shivering and cold from within.
There is the distinct sound of footsteps approaching, the breathless hitch of air in and out of someone's throat as they try to find their voice, and a familiar presence. Their senses are filmed over, thick and clumsy, and felt from a distance, as pressure against their throats is felt and gone in the next moment. Vision blurry and unfocused, they know dark and they know pale and light. Features they cannot make out but know as dear all the same.
Their Professor is there.
Light… yes, she knows this light. Her hand is too heavy, too disconnected to reach for it yet again. If only she could see, just this last time, maybe she could accept that this was meant to happen. If she had to fall, it would be at her beloved teacher's hands. That she could accept. That she had prepared for in the end. Byleth was the light she...
Edelgard shudders and her breath leaves her body for the last time.
Dimitri does not go quietly.
His death is an ugly thing full of thrashing and choking. Dimitri doesn't know she's there. If he does, he doesn't acknowledge her. He refuses to allow death to take him without a fight. Nor will he allow the cold, clammy hands of the dead to claim his final moments. The rain that falls upon them is bone-chilling as he curses their names and pleads for forgiveness. He tries to apologize for his weakness, for his failures.
He tries to ask for just a little more time and he dies mid-plea, his face a twisted mask of fury, fear, and pain.
In another life, she knows this would be the outcome no matter what she does. In order for some of them to live, others are fated to die and that too is nothing she can change. She has to choose, as she has in the past, who will live and who will die in order for the future to carry forth. So is the destiny of all living things; to struggle to live, to survive, and avoid death for as long as possible.
Byleth's tears and the rain are connected and have been since she first cried over Jeralt's cooling body. A byproduct of her soul's connection to Sothis as far as either of them were able to determine, the rain falling on the battlefield intensifies and soaks her to the skin. The cold leeches the strength from her limbs and sends the blood in rivulets down the hill.
Both of them are stained red and look so… small. So fragile and unreal.
The Sword of the Creator pulses softly at her side and Byleth forces her cold numbed hands away from the bodies of her beloved students. Two of the most stubborn, uncompromising children she'd ever met in her short life and she wasn't even going to add Claude into the mix. Her eyes narrow as the blade responds to her touch and flares to life. She can almost hear Sothis' voice once more, ordering her to her feet as she had when she'd woken at the bottom of the river bed.
Both sides of time are revealed to you… and to you alone.
The power of what-might-be and the power to change it.
Byleth quietly promises to do better this time and that she will not fail her students yet again so soon after their reunion.
She fought the flow of time five times straight and exhausted her power trying to save Jeralt. Each memory of failure was more painful, more despair-inducing than the last until that final time where she knew it was all or nothing- and nothing was what she received in the end. Fate, Sothis had quietly told her between sobs, was nothing they could stand against and that Jeralt's death was fated if all her efforts had been for naught.
Another three times she had used to try and fight back against the damned cliff. Two of them against the bastard and his magic that cast her over it. The third… Byleth didn't pursue that one any further, knowing what she did and how it had happened. All power comes with a price and each attempt she made drained her beyond exhaustion.
A mortal's body, after all, was not meant to house the entirety of a god's power even if their souls were as one.
Her eyes narrow as she reaches for the wellspring of power within her. The currents of time shine gold beneath her feet as she stands strong, firm, and directs the invisible hands of time back to where she knows she can make a difference. She doesn't close her eyes and look away from Gronder Field and the mess they have made of it. The Sword of the Creator pulses again and a wave of power explodes from around her. The world is viewed through a violet tinted lense, as though scrying distantly from a great gemstone crystal, as the events of the day flows backward. She shivers as the power roars through her veins and through the blade itself, from her hands and body and will alone.
Time is frozen in place on one pivotal moment and Byleth takes a deep breath as she shatters the veil and allows the world to begin anew once more.