Purpose

A great wide void stretched around her. Insignificant were her attempts to espy the end of it, and insignificant was she. A small candle within the pure brightness of the sun. How much brighter would she herself shine if she united with this light? After all, she floated as a mere small consciousness in this void. And this consciousness, which may have once carried the name Lucina, longed for guidance. It longed for the voice to lead her out of the void.

"Open your eyes, child. Open your eyes and abandon your fear."

And Lucina did.

Her heart leaped when she recognized the place within the void. After two years of doubts, she had found her way back.

A palace of glass pillars stretched as far as the eye could see. Glass gargoyles poured water into glass ponds, and windchimes played a soft melody. The warmth of Naga's halls enveloped Lucina, and like the loving hands of a parent, it brushed her earthly fears from her. After Tiki's death, she thought she had forever thwarted her chances of returning. The five-story candles she lit had flickered with weak flames, and the smaller the flame, the more doubts Lucina had allowed to reach around her.

But before her, now at last, stood the goddess Naga. A smile spread on her porcelain features, and truly, she outshone all the brass and gold and glass statues forged in her image.

"My champion," she said, "you have done well."

Lucina couldn't withstand the look of Naga's emerald eyes for long. She dropped to one knee, her gaze fixed on the glass floor under their feet.

"I have failed you," Lucina said. "Tiki, your Voice, died under my protection. If I had killed Roy earlier, if I had followed your fourth credo, she would still be…"

Lucina choked on her words. Tiki had deserved so much more. Without her, without her childlike optimism and without her small hand squeezing hers, Lucina would have surrendered long ago. Even in her final breath, she had reassured Lucina that Naga was with her. But without these words of support Lucina had lost the path, and her prayers to Naga had grown infrequent. How foolish she had been.

"My Voices are not created to live forever," Naga said. "Tiki fulfilled her purpose by protecting you, my champion. So it was fated."

"I began doubting you. So often have I wished to speak to you again."

"I was always with you."

"I know I… should have had faith."

Lucina's lower lip quivered. Even the first of the five credos had proven difficult to follow without Tiki's help, and often her hand had dropped before even igniting a five-story candle. Faith in Naga hadn't saved Tiki. Roy had struck her down all the same.

"Let the past not discourage you," Naga said. "Stand with joy now that you have returned to me. For this alone we must be grateful in these dark times."

Lucina followed Naga's order and stood. The lights, stars and souls and maybe entire worlds, drifting around Naga's form still blinded her.

"I thought with the end of the Pheraen Empire, the dark times were over," Lucina said.

"Roy was but one of many who allowed the evil to guide their hand. Archanea is still not liberated, and in the place of the Pheraen king, other shadows are growing stronger. You have seen the first cracks yourself. Thieves invaded your fortress, and they almost stole that which is irreplaceable. It is only the beginning. Fire and darkness will swallow the land if we do not act quickly."

"I don't understand. I made peace with Pherae. The Black Fang is only a small guild, who could pose a threat on the scale you speak of?"

"Earthly steel and fortresses have blinded you, child." Naga gestured to the side, and the crystals on her belt jingled. "Look."

Lucina followed the line of Naga's outstretched arm. At first, only the glass pillars and the white void beyond caught her eye. Then, a great roar shook her, as if from a thousand war horns. A tail with black scales peeled out of the void. Claws the length of a glass pillar cut through the white. And with a second roar, the entire creature came into view.

A dragon. Larger even than the beasts humans had fought in the stories of old. A maw of a hundred crooked teeth opened, and the windchimes all fell silent at once. On wings of shadows and obsidian, the dragon circled Naga's palace.

Lucina trembled. She couldn't speak. The dragon stripped her to her core with each of its six coal-glowing eyes, and its voice, a rumble and a hiss at the same time, assaulted the doors to her mind, violated her thoughts. It knew her weaknesses, and it would tear into her scars and rip the flesh open until nothing of the small consciousness once called Lucina remained.

"That," Naga said, "is Grima. As his dragon form grows here, so do his shadows grow in Archanea. And when he destroys the pillars of this palace, all will be lost."

Grima. Tiki had referred to him as the unspeakable evil. Before today, Lucina had waved the description aside. After she had seen good people beheaded and burned and slaughtered by the dozen, she thought she had seen the most unspeakable of evils. Here in Grima's shadow, however… perhaps she had been wrong.

But she could not shy away. Her kingdom and perhaps all of Archanea depended on her strength. Once more they turned their eyes towards her. More importantly, Ike and Fredrick and all her friends turned their eyes towards her. This time Lucina would not fail them.

Although her voice sounded small, she raised it to Naga. "What can I do?"

Naga smiled. "Not all hope is lost. My power is fading, but there is a way for me to regain my strength and defeat Grima on Archanea's ground once and for all. With your help, I can step into your world in a physical form."

"How?"

Naga's smile widened. She reached down, and her cool fingers cupped Lucina's face. "My champion, I must ask one more testament of your faith from you. The gathering of the five divine spheres. Only through them will I have the power to attain my physical form."

Lucina shuddered under Naga's touch. "The five spheres?"

"They are remnants of the days when I and Grima created the world. It was through them that we shaped humans. He was not corrupted then, but I saw the growing evil in him. Even as we swore to never set foot onto the world of men again, he hungered for it. In the eons since, his hunger has only grown. As a precaution, I left the five spheres in Archanea. I imbued them with my power, and when all five are united, Archanea will prosper under my light instead of Grima's darkness."

"Where can I find them?"

"Remember this: First, there is the Geosphere. It holds the power to move mountains and sink continents. The Lightsphere creates with otherworldly light, while the Darksphere equalizes with darkness. The Starsphere is as undying as the stars above. And the Lifesphere holds the fire of life itself within its red depths. Each of these will bestow a human with unimaginable power. But they are not made for human hands. Remember this."

A stone with the power to sink continents. A tool that could plunge Altea into eternal darkness. Lucina had only studied the magic arts so far as to gain a basic understanding of their use on a battlefield. But this dwarfed her wildest imagination. If someone like Lloyd wielded one of the spheres, the black dragon out there might soon circle the Glass Fortress. And the peace she had built would crumble as easily as her towers under Grima's claws. How were mere human hands supposed to defeat such a darkness?

"The hands of man are weak," Naga said, as though she had read Lucina's thoughts. "Many who know of the ancient secrets have attempted to unite the spheres. All have failed. Your father was the last one."

Lucina swallowed. "When Caeda died, he gave up on the spheres."

"Yes. His attachments made him lose sight of the true goal. Otherwise the war and the tyranny of the Pheraen prince may have never come to pass. Marth was a great champion, but he loved too deeply. With this one mistake, he allowed Grima to spin his dark web across Archanea. Fate did not grant him the chance to obtain more than one sphere before his death."

"The green gemstone in the shield – it's one of the spheres! He must have walled up the chamber with the sphere to hide it from Eliwood's advancing army."

"And so the Geosphere came to you. You will have to search for the others in the east and the west, in the hands of your closest friend and your fiercest enemy. It is a great task. Will you nevertheless do your utmost to fulfill it?"

"I will," Lucina said.

Naga smiled. Her fingernails scratched Lucina's cheek when she pulled back her hands to once more tower before her champion as the center of this universe, bright and beautiful.

"I know you will not fail me," Naga said.

"What must I do when I have found the spheres?"

"They must be united within the Binding Shield. It alone will channel the sphere's divine power."

"Then the shield I touched in the chamber belongs to this puzzle too. This is why I could finally speak to you, just like when I touched Falchion back in Seliora."

"Marth has left you a great burden, but with the Binding Shield, he also left you hope to succeed where he failed. When the end is nigh, the keys must be willingly given. Then, child, you will know neither loneliness nor Grima's shadows."

Lucina had to fight the urge to rub her arms. Grima's presence still unsettled her, surely that explained the cold sneaking through her thin dress. "I understand," she said finally.

"In time you will. Soon you must leave, but heed this advice: Do not love something so deeply that you cannot afford to lose it. Otherwise I fear all of Archanea is lost."

The void flooded into Naga's palace, and the pillars dissipated. Her own realm demanded Lucina back, but she wasn't ready to give up Naga's warmth yet. What if she doubted again when she strode through the halls of her fortress? What if she lost the beacon in the five-story candles once more? Naga's feet already vanished into brightness.

"Will I see you again?" Lucina called out.

The windchimes swung wildly.

A final smile twisted Naga's lips. "I have no doubts of it."

Then she and her palace faded into white, and Lucina awoke on the dusty floor of the hidden chamber. Stone pressed against her spine, but she still struggled to reconnect to her body. That was until a pair of very real, very human hands grabbed her shoulders and shook.

"Never do that again." Ike leaned over Lucina, and the hardness of his glare could cut steel. "Never do that again, you hear?"

Lucina wrestled the dizziness down and pushed herself into a sitting position. Windchimes still echoed in her ears. "It's alright," she said. "I'm okay."

Ike let go of her shoulders, but his expression remained as unforgiving as before. "You passed out on the spot. That's not a sign of being okay."

"Ike, I talked to Naga."

On second thought, maybe Lucina should have packaged this news in a more digestible manner for Ike. He stood up, and without another look at her, shoved the Binding Shield from its pedestal. It clattered loud enough to alarm Grima himself.

"This again," Ike said. "I thought we were done with this. After Roy, you said you would make your own choices. Guess that thought didn't last long."

"You haven't seen what I saw. The danger is real, and it has grown while I wasted time making my own choices for what I thought was the betterment of Altea. The walls we built for the Glass Fortress won't protect anyone against Grima. My people don't need a queen with a glamourous birthday feast but Naga's champion."

Ike huffed. "Naga's champion – no one needs another one of those."

"Please, you have to believe me."

"I believe you. I just don't believe your Naga."

Lucina bit her lip. In this one regard, they would never see eye to eye. And the thought never failed to tighten her insides into a knot. If Naga truly returned to Archanea and reshaped the land into her eternal paradise… would Ike even be allowed to step inside?

On rickety feet, Lucina made her way towards the Binding Shield. Its immaculate face had survived Ike's outburst. The timeless gold promised a world free of wars and Black Fang daggers. When Marth had looked at his reflection on the shield face, had he seen it too? With the Geosphere in hand, true peace had to have seemed so close. Lucina ran a finger across the green gemstone and shuddered.

"I'm sorry," she said when she stood up. In her arms, she cradled the Binding Shield. "I won't bother you with this for longer."

Ike turned to face her. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I cannot ask you to risk your life for the plans of a goddess you can't see and don't believe in. You are entitled to your own faith. Even if that faith includes nothing."

Lucina strode towards the stairway. Her own torch had burned out when she fell unconscious, and unless Ike lent her a hand, she would have to climb the slippery steps in darkness. But if necessary, she would master that hurdle. Marth's attempts to gather the spheres had ended in loneliness too.

"Naga told me to find the four missing spheres to complete the Binding Shield, and that's what I'm going to do," Lucina said when she passed Ike. "Alone if I must."

Ike rolled his eyes. "You wish. You're not getting rid of me that easily."

Lucina stumbled on the first step, even though Ike's torch followed to light her way. "But I thought you—"

"I said I believe you. If you think this is what you have to do, I won't be suicidal enough to stop you. I still carry too many bruises from our training duels for that. But seeing as you will need a voice of reason when your faith in Naga is dragging you to the ends of the world, I might as well volunteer for the role."

Lucina stared at him, half-convinced she saw his face for the first time. Had he always looked at her like that? "You mean…?"

"That means I'm in, featherbrain."

The crowns of two different nations had rested on Lucina's head, and even before, as Roy's ward, people had thought twice before they called her names. The insult came so suddenly that she couldn't contain her laughter even if she had wanted. Despite the weight of the world balancing in her arms in the form of a shield, she laughed until she had to gasp for air. Ike, although, he had delivered his lines with a straight face, answered with a smile.

When she retrieved a semblance of composure, Lucina climbed the stairs with a new surge of energy. Ike followed close behind.

"You do realize that I have as many bruises from our training duels as you do, right?"

"I already signed my allegiance to you," Ike said, "so you don't need to flatter me. But nice try."

"I'm serious. I still have a blue mark the size of an egg." And she lifted her dress a few inches as if to show him.

The smile endured on Ike's face for a moment longer. "Decency, Your Highness, decency."

Together, they scaled the rest of the stairs. Tomorrow, they would search for clues about the other four spheres. They might hide all across Archanea, and Lucina had not even stumbled upon a mention of them in all the books she had read in Lycia's library. But strangely, Naga's task seemed as surmountable as the set of stairs under her feet. Surely her optimism stemmed from her conversation with her goddess. The second pair of steps behind her had nothing to do with it.

Notes: *Insert obligatory comment about how original I am for making the completion of the Fire Emblem a major plot point*

My special thanks to The Parsnips and Dracofighter for welcoming me back, and I must say, it's good to be back. I would have felt bad not sharing all the ideas and storylines I hinted at in previous books. If it wasn't obvious, Naga belongs to that list too. But more on that at a later date. In the next chapter, Lucina searches for answers and finds one of them in a rather unexpected place.