Things are cooling down, on the non-intrigue front.

Here's the third of three chapters that went up on already, four and five should be there today if you're inch rested in a sneak peek.

The flames faded into nonexistence, leaving Edelgard feeling like small electrical shocks were radiating off of her in a manner not entirely dissimilar to how she had awoken after her encounter with Teleute.

In terms of her more immediate situation, she was standing over the pile of defeated bandits that she had been before Byleth's near-death, with Jeralt and Shez hitting their rear like Agnea's Arrow.

The leader took in the two contingents that were slowly closing in on him and then snarled. "Screw this," he said, grabbing a hatchet off of his belt and flinging it into the air. "I'm not dying over some kids!"

Instead of watching the direction that he and what was left of his force fled, Edelgard flicked her hand out, magical endurance remaining enough that she could cast Fire and use the alchemical technique she'd come to favor to guide the attack to the hatchet, shattering it in a burst of shimmering metal shards and scorched leather.

With that impressive (yet draining, with Edelgard still not having had the time to really recover from altering the terrain of the field and the additional exertion, albeit relatively small, was enough that she felt the need to open the flask of vulnerary she kept inside her uniform jacket and take a swig) show of magical prowess, the rest of the bandits broke and ran, some following their leader but most simply scattering into the woods.

"Nice shot, princess," said Claude, bow already reslung over his shoulder. "Bet you'd give even a dab hand like me a run for my money if we got in a shootout."

"Oh, please," said Edelgard, feeling the praise was at least somewhat undeserved thanks to her alchemical technique, not that she'd mention that. "Anyone could do that, had they the resources and instructors I had access to." True enough for her tastes, even if the definition of "resources" was a little broader than they'd assume.

"Even if anyone could do it," said Dimitri, slowly slipping his lance back into the sling that held it securely to his back, "I don't think very many people would. Your way of handling this kind of thing is… unique, El."

The intensity with which he spoke made Edelgard blush. "Thank you, Dimitri."

"No thanks are necessary."

Edelgard privately thought that this deflection game would have continued for as long as it took them to return to the monastery, but thankfully they didn't have to find out, as both Byleth and Shez approached the group. "You fought well," said Byleth, in that taciturn way of hers.

"Well, nothing. You fuckin' smoked those bastards!" said Shez, eyes primarily on Edelgard. "D'you think-"

Whatever question Shez was going to ask was lost as Jeralt cantered over, lance and right arm bloodstained but the rest of him clean.

"That spell… did you just-" he began, before biting his statement off and whipping his head around to point to the woods as a squadron of mounted knights emerged.

"The Knights of Seiros are here! We'll cut you down for terrorizing our students. Hey, the thieves are running away! Go after them! The students seem to be unharmed. And...who's this?" asked the knight leading the charge, who Edelgard recognized as Commander Alois.

"Oh, great. Why him?" asked Jeralt, eyes once more rising heavenward with exasperation.

" Captain Jeralt?! It is you! Goodness, it's been ages. Don't you recognize me? It's Alois! Your old right-hand man! Well, that's how I always thought of myself anyway. It must have been 20 years ago that you went missing without a trace. I always knew you were still alive!" Alois hoisted himself off of his horse with the strength of a career warrior, face split into a blinding smile.

Jeralt, moving with obvious reticence, dismounted as well, lance still clutched in his fist. "You haven't changed a bit, Alois. Just as loud as ever. And, uh, drop the whole 'captain' thing. I left the knights, and I'm just a traveling mercenary. Speaking of which…" Jeralt turned to the tents his mercenary band was using, not yet lit by the rising sun, and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Pack it up! We're moving out today!" he shouted, loud enough that all three students pressed hands to their ears to block the noise, although Alois and the other two mercenaries seemed unfazed.

"Right, uhh…" Alois took a step back, rubbing at the back of his head with his armored hand, at this, then visibly firmed both his formerly-hanging jaw and resolve. "No, that's not how this ends! My old friend, I insist you at the very least accompany me back to the monastery so we can reward your unprompted defense of these students!"

Jeralt turned his head, and he seemed to almost be a different man- the weary yet genial attitude vanished as something flashed in his eyes, and his fist tightened on his spear briefly, but after closing his eyes and visibly taking a deep breath, it was gone, leaving resignation on the burly mercenary's face. "Well, I suppose something like this was going to happen sooner or later."

Alois' smile seemed to grow even brighter, if that was possible, before he turned to the two mercenaries standing awkwardly with the students. "Ah, wonderful! And how about you two kids? What's your story?"

Without missing a beat or twitching so much as a muscle, Byleth replied with "I'm a bandit."

Alois chuckled ruefully, shaking his head. "You have a sense of humor just like the Captain. And yourself, you with the purple hair?"

"Where this cheery little father-daughter pair goes, I go," replied Shez.

Alois nodded, eyes distant with unspoken thoughts, before he responded. "I see. Well, all the more reason for you to accompany us to the Monastery! You can catch me up on what the Captain's been up to these past few years, and I can tell you some of the stories I bet he never told you! See, there was this one time in Fhirdiad-"

"Don't you have better things to do than tell old war stories, Alois?" asked Jeralt, who had in the meantime walked outside of normal hearing range towards the encampment.

"Ah, right. That'll have to wait, for now," he said. "Now then, we brought mounts for the students, and one of our previously claimed ones has opened up-" Edelgard internally winced, Alois' insinuation that the former Professor Mikhail had died striking deep, but didn't visibly react- "-but that still leaves us short one horse, assuming you two and Jeralt come with us on mounts and your company follows behind with your equipment."

Edelgard cleared her throat. "I would be more than willing to extend my saddle to fit one more person."

Alois clapped. "Excellent! The matter's settled. The mounts will be here soon, and then we can be on our way back to Garreg Mach."

The first couple of hours of the ride were quiet, with both Edelgard and Byleth (who had been the one of the two mercenaries to take Edelgard up on the offer to ride together) feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the events of the morning- or, at least, Edelgard was- Byleth's face remained impassive enough to conceal her thoughts from Edelgard, so the princess couldn't be sure that that was what the blue-haired mercenary was thinking.

The discovery of the not-actually-dead Blade Breaker, formerly of the Knights of Seiros, on its own would have been enough to leave Edelgard boggling, even setting aside the way that his Crest of Seiros changed the dynamic given the message Teleute had sent her.

Teleute was a mystery, even given all the resources she could tap into both as a result of her own abilities and talents in the mystical realm and her position as Adrestian nobility. The most she'd ever come across was a single testimonial in a misfiled tome of Ylissean history, with the name Teleute used as someone or something to swear to in the testimony of the renowned Archmage, Miriel. Likewise, she'd been unable to find mention of any kind of mystical Gate outside of that same testimonial, with it seeming to be some sort of font of magical energy that was too dangerous to be worth consistently tapping into.

Well, at least she knew that being spiritually present in the same space as Teleute felt not unlike being in the presence of an amnesiac god.

Edelgard was almost completely certain that the Sothis that she had encountered with Byleth was the Goddess that the Church of Seiros worshipped- too much fit for that not to be the case.

The use of the epithet "the Beginning" in combination with the name, the power over time, the green hair and pointed ears, even the vestments matched some of the oldest paintings of the Goddess, and while it was theoretically possible that she was pulling the knowledge from Byleth (whose life was evidently important to her, more so than Edelgard's), the other woman's lack of knowledge of the Church and its doctrine was evident, and Edelgard had more than enough experience with things in her head that should not be there in the wake of traveling through the Gate (she shivered just thinking about it) to know that Sothis wasn't pulling the knowledge from her own brain.

Plus, Edelgard had never seen a Crest so powerful as the one she had seen from Sothis- not even from Archbishop Rhea, even if it was powerful enough to prevent her from identifying it.

"So, about your Crest. You said it acted strangely?" said Byleth, as if prompted by Edelgard's thoughts of Crests.

"One of them, yes," said Edelgard quietly, albeit not so quietly that the mercenary mounted behind her couldn't hear her. "I was born with a minor Crest of Seiros, and later had the Crest of Flames thrust upon me. The Crest of Flames is the one that acted… oddly, altering the flames I saw in the room." Edelgard paused briefly, thinking back to something she remembered from that room and combining that thought with the behavior of the flames since, especially after having the person producing the flames close enough that if not for her hair she'd feel Byleth's breath. "The same kind of ethereal flames that you're constantly surrounded by- it's like something inside you is leaking them. You truly can't see them?"

"Of course not," came the chirpy voice of Sothis, who materialized next to the both of them, hovering at a constant distance to the left. "She can no more see them than you can see the air in front of your face. The human brain is astounding at how it can tune out input it receives at all times…"

"I had nightmares," said Byleth, the quiet of a clandestine conversation replaced by the quiet of a secret never before spoken. "As a child, I dreamed of the world engulfed in fires that didn't burn, and of wyverns that bled swords and spears, and of a man who tore the very stars from the sky. They didn't last, but… that's where I remember seeing the flames in the braziers before."

"The Fell King fell from grace at the hands of Agartha," said Sothis, eyes distant with dreams that could have been memories and memories that should have been mere dreams.

Then, what Sothis said registered in Edelgard's head. "Say that again."

"The Fell King fell from grace at the hands of Agartha." Sothis looked at Edelgard's paling face more closely. "Is there something wrong?"

"Agarthans," said Edelgard, fists clenching on empty air with rage and sorrow in equal measures, "are the ones who tore my family apart, the ones who gave me a second Crest and sought to forge me into their weapon to topple the Church."

"There are stories," said Byleth haltingly. "Stories, whispered of in mercenary circles, of bird-headed mages that marched with the Empire to capture Ordelia, who took the children of their count and returned only one, with bone-white hair and mere years to live, with two Crests. Stories of the bird-headed mages that lured Lambert Blaiddyd to Duscur and slaughtered him, his wife, and his retinue, leaving only a terrified son who cannot remember the death of his father behind. Stories of the last remnants of a civilization that tried to slay gods and was utterly annihilated in return, left with nothing but their own hatred. Stories of a lost land named Agartha, with science far beyond anything we can ever imagine that is lubricated by the blood of unwitting sacrifices. They're supposed to be just tall tales, but… now, I'm not so sure."

None of the three spoke the rest of the way to Garreg Mach.

And that's that!

I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko (fi) (https (:/) (/) ko (-) fi (/) lucifra) and a Pa tre on (https (:/) pa tre on .com (/) Lucifra). (remove spaces and parentheses)

I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct, that's another option: https (:/) (/) dis co rd dot com (/) NHRUKz8jyy (remove spaces and parentheses, dot to period)

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!