A Sunrise for Eternity
Lycia drew closer. And with each wyvern mile Roy crossed, he increased his army by another hundred men. The news spread and roared with the might of a forest fire, unhindered by snow and cold and the few loyalists Lucina had stationed along the imperial watchtowers.
The Pheraen king had returned from the dead.
With this message, the soldiers and citizens in Roy's entourage rode through villages north of Satar. In those who had suffered under the reign of the Altean usurper, they found a willing audience. Five-sectioned candles were thrown into the mud and newly built shrines to honor Naga blazed with the fires of the people. The taste of ash never left Roy's mouth as he rode north, but he welcomed it. After all, he had first built his empire on ashes too. He would do so again.
And as Lycia drew closer, Roy sometimes cast a look ahead to where the sandstone walls waited for him. Did Lucina see the fires too? Or had Naga entirely blinded her?
Roy had expected some flickers of resistance. Another desperate charge of Altean rebels against him. An assassin blade flashing in his tent at night, while the Pheraens celebrated the victory they already felt at their fingertips. But nothing happened. Lucina huddled behind the palace walls like a scared child while the flames spread from the fireplace across the carpet and towards her, until the heat enveloped her and she would have no more air to scream.
A child…
Roy pushed this thought aside. It would only slow him.
On a cloudy afternoon, one month after he revealed himself in Thria, he ordered his army to set up camp outside Lycia's walls. A sea of countless campfires illuminated the night and the early morning hours, and their smoke mingled with the aftertaste of the shrine they had set on fire the day before. Maybe Lucina watched from the windows of the throne room. Maybe she felt the end approaching as Roy had felt its claws when he had stood on his balcony while Lucina's little rebel army tore his city apart.
Clouds darkened the dawn. When Roy stepped out of his tent, Lycia waited little more than an armlength away. The towers pierced the sky as tall and triumphant monuments of human achievements. Not the gods had erected these sandstone walls, nor had they carved the three moats into the ground. No, this city, with all its avenues and bridges and archways had sprung from the imagination of Pheraen kings and queens. Brick by brick, one cut of the spade at a time, they had challenged the gods' power of creation.
He longed to pass under the sandstone archways, to walk again through the streets of his childhood, not as a thief but a returning king. But it was not yet time. He would not enter before the people of Pherae let him in. If they still remembered the prosperity he had brought his empire, they would open the gates.
The remains of snow on Lycia's roofs and battlements looked dull in the pale light. But the air was too warm for another snowfall. Unbeknownst to most, spring had reared its head overnight, and beside Roy, three scilla buds trembled in anticipation of the sun. The blue flower had sprouted out of the snow in the lee of the tent wall.
He had no reason to believe in signs from the gods. But perhaps the daring scilla signified that the winter of Lucina's reign would soon come to an end. Maybe then Roy would escape the cold of Johtran seeping through his cape, a cold that followed him wherever he went.
Many of his subjects still believed that he had returned from the dead after his defeat at Lucina's hands. The story made for a popular source of awe, passed around the campfires at the deepest hour of night when the darkness of Lucina's reign ruled with its most oppressive hand.
A story, nothing more. Yet the cold of death clung to Roy's bones all the same, even in the hot light of this spring morning. And no one thought to light his pyre.
Sêl was already awake. A few paces from Roy's tent, she watched the early cracks of sunlight between the canvases and flagpoles. Snow melted under her feet; she moved less like a spirit and more like a human when she walked over to him. Here and there, a soldier paused in sharpening their sword or saddling their horse to throw Sêl curious looks. The resemblance to Naga's burning marble features struck them. Roy's glares convinced them to return to their work.
Nothing moved on Lycia's battlements, and the gates towered in the dimness of dawn. They remained closed. Roy had a few hours to lose. Parading himself around the camp might bolster moral or otherwise suggest a lack of trust in his soldiers' ability to prepare for the battle.
He was still debating the issue when Sêl interrupted his thoughts with a question.
"Will you do me a favor?" she asked.
Roy nodded.
"Walk with me for a bit."
And he did. While the majority of his army still enjoyed the bliss of their dreams, Roy marched through the camp, an armlength behind Sêl. She did not look back to him and instead trusted in the even sounds of his steps. The rows of tents thinned, the neighing of horses grew fainter, but Sêl did not slow. She hummed. And the Binding Blade at Roy's side echoed the melody with a faint pulse.
A plain of dirt had once surrounded the capital, better known by Roy's soldiers as the massacre zone. A tasteless name, but the thousand yards of nothing had ensured that no army would find cover should they succumb to the mad idea of storming the walls of the capital.
This, however, had not stopped Lucina from chucking another one of her shrines into the landscape. Perhaps she had thought the monument would honor the comrades who had died in the mud for her.
Slender archways rose from the dirt and formed a grand circle. From there, a handful of steps led upwards to the heart of the shrine: a seven-feet-tall statue of Naga to mirror the one Roy had destroyed in Terra. He recognized the features carved into the glass from afar. Not because he had ever stepped in front of the real goddess, but because the artist had made no secret of whom he had used as a model. The heart-shaped face, the slender eyebrows angled in determination, the adamantine spark within the crystal eyes – all of it belonged to Lucina.
In this statue, she and her goddess had melted into one.
And Sêl led Roy right to her feet, under the nervous cacophony of countless windchimes. Five-story candles flickered.
Many more candles had been trampled over by the Pheraen soldiers who lounged here. A cracked wine barrel lay between discarded swords, and the smell of a night full of toasting hung in the air. Rather than prepare themselves for the approaching battle, they had wasted the night here, tipsy from the thought that their rightful king rode with them, drunk on the promise of Altean blood on the sandstone. They had chased away the pilgrims who had prayed here; a scarf with a shield pattern lay on the steps. One of the soldiers had neglected to clean the blood from their sword. Roy recognized none of their faces, and in their drunken state the reverse held true also. From their king returned from the dead, they expected a man with a crown.
The soldiers did, however, react to Sêl. The first of them, a young man with an eagle token around his neck, scrambled to his feet. His comrades regarded his antics with laughter before they too noticed the fiery apparition between the glass pillars.
"Why, I'll be damned," the soldier at the front said. "The Altean usurper was right. Divine miracles do exist, and she's coming right our way."
"Divine witchery, you mean."
"Look at the fire she dresses in. What's again what the Altean sheep are preaching?"
"May Naga's fire burn you," the second soldier raised her sword. "But we'll be burned by the Altean wizards and preachers no more. They'll taste the smoke of the pyre soon."
The soldier with the eagle token picked up a stone. "We'll show Naga and her witchery what we're made of. This is our Pherae. We don't share it with the likes of them."
Sêl's flames flickered. Not one word to defend herself against the tirade passed her lips. When she lowered her gaze, it was a human gesture.
But they did not see it.
The insults grew louder, and as they crescendoed, the soldier with the eagle token took aim. Roy stepped forward and snatched the stone out of the air before it hit Sêl.
Her eyes glowed; she had not expected this.
The soldiers wrestled with their drunkenness and slowly looked from Sêl to Roy.
"You call yourselves people of Pherae?" Roy tossed the stone aside, and it clacked down the steps. "If all the people I intend to liberate are like you, Pherae has little left that is worth liberating."
"You got a problem?" the soldier with the eagle token snapped.
But the woman next to him startled. Her drunkenness forgotten and with wide eyes, she looked at Roy. "It's him…"
Roy stepped in front of the run-down assembly of Pheraen soldiers. "I have seen refugees from Tellius work their fingers bloody to earn their stay in Pherae, and I have seen Alteans fight for their belief, no matter how misguided. All of them deserve my respect more than you do."
"What gives you the right to judge me, you—" The soldier had taken a few steps forward, but now he stopped. The whispers of his comrades and his opponent's features connected to spark realization and then shock in his eyes. "Y-your Highness… I didn't know—"
"Your excuses for why you failed to recognize your king do not interest me. Your other offenses should worry you"
Sêl placed a hand on Roy's arm. The flames swirled around her face in darker hues. "Leave them be. They are not the first to throw stones at me. This is my curse. Naga shaped me into this abominable form, similar to a human but too different to walk among them. Even if I no longer answer to her… the stones people throw remain the same."
"And you are content with this?"
"I am who I am. Do I have a choice?"
"Of course you have." Roy turned towards the soldier, whose face had lost all color of intoxication. "Step forward. Stretch out your hand."
The soldier's left eye twitched. He swallowed. But he could not refuse a direct order, and although punishment might await his hand, he held out the empty palm.
Roy raised his voice to reach all the assembled soldiers. "Surely you know the saying 'a sword is only as good as the hand who wields it'. Much reveals itself about a person by how they choose to use their hand. Sêl has done nothing to threaten you, and yet this hand reached for a stone. And for what did you use it last night? Tell me, did you lower this hand to the many people of this empire who deserve your mercy or did you raise it against the forces that oppressed them?" Roy gave the man time for an answer, but he had none. "I have never believed in gods. All I can do is to place my faith in people. This hand has done little to earn that faith."
The boasting and bravery from before fled the soldier, and he flinched backwards. "My family has served in the Pheraen army for generations! We were always pure, always loyal to the crown, we are Pheraen!"
"And for that you have my sympathy. But not my respect."
Roy drew the Binding Blade, the hard sunrise reflected on the steel, and in one swing, he severed the soldier's hand from his arm.
A lump of flesh splattered on the steps.
The soldier dropped to his knees, clutched his stump to his chest, too shocked to cry out in pain. Red spots stained his eagle token.
"I trust that you will put your other hand to better use," Roy said. "Maybe when you have learned, you will deserve to hold a Pheraen sword in it. Now go."
The soldier stared at Sêl before his attention returned to Roy. Once the pain ebbed and bandages closed the blood flow, he would know against whom to direct his hatred. Two of his comrades snuck forward and, with nervous glances, pulled him to his feet and out of reach of the Binding Blade. Roy let them run. He let the remaining soldiers run also.
They all wore the Pheraen eagle, their blood had nurtured and had been nurtured by this land for generations, and when the war horns shook the palace walls, some of them would return. Many others would not.
But even if his entire army deserted, Roy would march forward.
A gust howled through the near-abandoned shrine. Sêl's fire blazed next to Roy, and he didn't feel the cold.
"Aren't you cold?" Tiki asked.
Lucina puffed clouds into the air, even though the snow on the balustrade had melted. Her armor, a relic of her days as a rebel, offered little protection against the advances of this late winter morning, and her cape lay as a folded stack on the throne behind her. It would only get in the way.
"No, it's nothing," Lucina said.
Tiki put a hold to the senseless figures she drew onto the misted glass and hopped onto the balcony. Her tiny hands closed around Lucina's right.
"But you are cold," Tiki said and blew a little warmth into the cave she had built for Lucina's fingers. "It reminds me of Johtran. The ice on the stone and all that. Just a little less lonely."
Lucina mustered a smile. "Yes. Just a little."
Her eyes returned south. Snow glistered on Lycia's countless rooftops, slipping or melting into miniature waterfalls. It dripped onto the pavements below; a constant splashing to keep them company. A little further, the battlements of the outer wall stood abandoned. No one had lit the watchfires tonight. But the fires beyond the city still crackled. Where dawn struggled against the low clouds, the campfires of Roy's army battled the dark and succeeded.
He was there, somewhere between the tents and the banners with the Pheraen eagle fluttering in the breeze. And maybe he stole a look at the palace, and even though he could not make out the two small figures on the balcony of the throne room, he would know Lucina stood there and returned his gaze.
Tiki bobbed on her heels and swung Lucina's arm back and forth to a melody only she could hear.
"I don't like it when it's quiet," she said. "Naga made me her Voice, so I guess I'm supposed to talk often. But I like listening to the voices of other people. It reminds me that I'm not in Johtran or in the catacombs under Seliora. I'm so used to the shouts coming from the training ground and Frederick barking orders at recruits like a big, scary dragon. I think I inspired him. Why is it so quiet?"
"Frederick should have reached Terra by now."
Lucina had both begged and threatened him, and only then had he quit her side to drive away Shanna's Pegasus Knights. Would the ship carry him and Titania into Terra's harbor in time? Would he fight his way back or end as another piece kicked from the board in Lucina's war? She didn't know. Naga offered her no answers.
"He has faith in Naga, he will be alright," Tiki said. "But he could hurry a little… Don't you want me to transform into a dragon? I could swoop over the tents and make it rain fire. It's been a while since I had roasted horse meat."
Lucina shook her head. "Not even you could take on the entire army. Rath promised to gather every available rider in Sacae, but I don't know if he will reach the capital before Roy makes his move. Cordelia is with Ike. That's it. Everyone else has left for another corner of the Empire. Either on my orders or because they realized the hopelessness in this war like Soren did."
"What about the palace guards?"
"They are Pheraen. I doubt they will choose me over the rightful heir of the Pheraen royal bloodline."
"But you have the crown! You can order them to man the battlements and pour oil over Roy as soon as he looks at the wall funny."
The smile tasted bitter on Lucina's lips. "Who am I to enslave the people of Pherae under my will? If they side with Roy, I can't stop them."
"Well, I'm not siding with him." Tiki puffed her chest. "Whatever happens, I'm staying right here by your side. That's what Mar-Mar would have wanted. I wasn't there to protect him, but this time, I will make it right. I'll make him proud."
Lucina used her free hand to stroke Tiki's hair. She responded by throwing her arms around Lucina's waist. And despite the armor plates between them, Lucina felt her warmth, even imagined to feel the fluttering beat of Tiki's heart, and she wondered if she had ever known unconditional love of this kind. Lucina deepened the embrace.
"Thank you, Tiki," she said. "I wouldn't know what to do without you."
Tiki sniffled. "I wish I could make you another pendant. I already have the tears, but Naga won't give me her blessing. She's playing deaf. I told you, you shouldn't have wasted the pendant on Ike."
"I had to. I have abused his strength and his skills so badly in the past months. If there's even a slight chance he will live thanks to the pendant… it will be worth it. At least one choice I made was not for nothing."
"But that doesn't mean I have to like it. If my powers alone aren't enough to protect you, what then? There's only one of me. But there are so many of them."
"It's okay. I have avoided fighting Roy myself for long enough. And, if Rath doesn't return in time, maybe there will be someone else. Someone else who hasn't lost faith in me entirely."
"She may not answer me, but Naga is still with you. Always."
Lucina stroked Tiki's hair. "But will that be enough, I wonder…"
The clouds gathered, and although the minutes flew by, the sun failed to break through the barrier. On other mornings, the early sunrays reflected in Naga's glass statue to create marvelous rainbows visible even from the palace. But today her shrine remained in shadows. Only the fires of Roy's army blazed, and nothing breathed on Lycia's battlements to counter the threat.
"Tell me about Marth again," Lucina said. "Tell me about his favorite food and all the instruments he never managed to play properly. Try to describe his expression when you called him Mar-Mar for the first time."
Tiki nodded. Her voice carried across the balcony while the clouds gathered. And she did not stop until fire instead of the sun brightened the horizon, and Lycia's gates opened.
"Why have you never believed in gods, Roy?" Sêl asked. She did not look at him, instead the eyes of Naga's statue held her captive.
"It is difficult to deny their existence." Roy sat on the shrine step next to her, the Binding Blade in his lap. "You are real, after all. I have merely never found a reason to believe in the gods' benevolence."
Sêl chuckled, but it sounded corrupted, empty of joy. "Then you were wiser than I was. At first I was thankful towards Naga for giving me life. But since then, I have doubted whether this existence deserves the term life when I cannot die. I cannot forget. Every moment, every insult and rock hurled at me will remain as fresh in my memory as in the moment it happened. It is a useful ability for a tool. No detail can ever be too small to escape my memory."
Sêl turned from the perverted image of her creator and towards Roy. "The soldier whose hand you took could have aided you in the battle to come. Now he will paint your judgment as a sign of cruelty, and some of your men will listen. Was he not one of your countrymen?"
"So he was. But my empire spans beyond the borders of Pherae. It took me a long time to realize this, but the flag I ride under includes Pegasus Knights from Talys, refugees from Tellius, misguided pilgrims from Altea – and even a fire spirit. The man who throws a rock at one part of it, damages the whole of it. Whether the man is Pheraen doesn't matter."
"Some of your soldiers will resent you for this sentiment."
"The king who strives for the love of all will in the end serve no one. May they hate me. May they curse my name. At least they will live in a peaceful Empire. Free from the chains of gods. As you are."
"Only thanks to you. I wish they could see it too – the way you are now."
Roy could hardly make for a picture worth preserving in Sêl's perfect memory. Without his crown, without his throne, and with only his hand to reach out to her in friendship. And yet, the thought tempted him. To be remembered, by at least one person. It had never occurred to him. So many of those he had called friends had perished, often before their time, the charm of a sun-kissed Ostian smile snuffed out too soon. The gods had let it happen, and Roy strode forward too urgently to remember. But to live in someone's memory, ever so fondly, how comforting it must be.
From the Binding Blade's spotless steel, Roy's distorted reflection looked back at him. He sheathed the sword and laid it aside. It would taste more blood soon. Hers too.
And despite it all, with the sunrise biting into the glass pillars, he failed to shake the image of a blue-haired girl with scraped knees running into his arms.
"Human memory barely lasts a lifetime. The sweet moments seem all the sweeter for it," Roy murmured.
Maybe Sêl had heard a little of what he had said. She sat down on the shrine step next to him and invited him to continue, to share the thoughts on his mind.
"If your memory is perfect," Roy said after a moment, "you must remember the good moments in their truest form. Untainted by nostalgia. Are they not worth preserving?"
"Maybe." Sêl's smile was bitter. "But when all that remains is the longing for these moments, is that not equally cruel to the hurled rock?"
"What moment do you long for the most? Amidst all the moments in your perfect memory, which one is the happiest?"
Sêl paused for a moment. Then her smile changed, and the light in her eyes grew brighter and yet slipped further away, stars of a different sky. "Hartmut took me to a village with a nearby lake one time. There were flat stones on the shore, and he wanted to teach me stone skipping. I sunk them all. Maybe fifty stones thrown at the lake, the sun was beginning to near the oak trees on the other side, and yet Naga's perfect tool could not manage one decent spin. I was laughing, and Hartmut was laughing, and maybe we were both laughing at the absurdity of it all. Not one decent spin…"
Roy mirrored her smile. "And is that moment not worth preserving?"
Sêl nodded. Her gaze wandered towards the horizon. "So is this one."
The trample of boots and hooves rose from the camp of Roy's army. Harnesses jingled, horses neighed, and orders rung over the snow-covered plain. The air trembled with the anticipation of steel on steel. Soon the second battle of Lycia would capture the sandstone walls. Then the people would prove in whom they placed their faith.
Roy stood and girded the Binding Blade, ready for war, ready for death. After the first few steps, he looked back to Sêl. "When you asked me to walk with you, you already had this shrine in mind, hadn't you? Why this place?"
"One moment."
Sêl climbed the last step separating her from Naga's feet. The handful of candles that had survived the ill-behaved soldiers flickered and died, their flames extinguished by a light far greater than theirs. Sêl absorbed their glimmers and turned them into something marvelous, something entirely hers. Sparks swirled around her like planetoids circling the sun.
Her hand hovered inches away from the glass ankle of her creator. Maybe she waited for an answer that would not come.
Then the flames around her fingertips blossomed. They enveloped Naga's statue, leaping, roaring, and tearing until the glass cracked under the heat. Roy had to shield his face from the temperature, but even then, the heatwaves were gentle kisses on his skin compared to the ice crystals digging into his cheek on Johtran's cell floor.
As Naga's features melted into a clump and the beacon lit the snow-coated plain, Sêl joined Roy's side. Her smile then was devoid of sorrow.
"You showed me that," she said. "In Satar. That I could control my own fire."
"Then it was not for nothing." Roy stroked Sêl's cheek as if to brush aside a strand of hair. "The gods may not be merciful, but in you Naga has created something truly good. When we will reach the throne room, I will count on you."
"I will be right beside you."
They abandoned the last of the shrine steps. The finest covering of snow crunched under Roy's boots and melted under Sêl's feet. What a strange trail of footprints, walking as comrades, as friends towards the same goal.
Confused rather than orderly shouts calling to arms rung out from the cluster of tents ahead. If the soldiers had not connected Roy to the burning shrine already, he would give them the explanation they demanded, but he saw no need for further grand speeches. The people had already decided where to direct their steps, and for whom.
Tomorrow, the throne would have a definitive owner. One of the contestants would write a new chapter into the history books. One of the contestants had to fall. And the one who fell would remain as a memory with the people of Archanea for only a short while. They had crops to harvest, cattle to feed, and children to raise. The memory of a king or a queen did not last long in their world; as fleeting as this sunrise. At the end of the fire, the only one to remember would be the fire itself. With her perfect memory, she could hardly forget.
Roy paused for a moment to look at Sêl. "Can I ask one more favor?"
"Anything," she said.
"When I die, will you light my pyre?"
Sêl did not answer for a long moment. They both knew what the question entailed: a moment preserved for the end of time.
"I promise," Sêl said.
Side by side, they walked towards the rattle of steel and the clatter of Pheraen banners. Clouds gathered. But the two of them did not stop until Naga's burning shrine announced the new day to the citizens of Lycia instead of the morning sun, and the gates opened.
Notes: Yeah, I took a one-week break for my own sanity. And for the fact that I had to rewrite a good chunk of this chapter. (On that note another huge thanks to my beta for all the invaluable tips and for shoving me back onto the right path.) My apologies for the wait. Hopefully the end result is better now. Although I will say, the quiet before the storm is tougher to write than I thought. Next chapter, that storm will break loose, and Cordelia makes a fateful decision.
