The Weight of the Crown
Roy's fingers tensed around the knobs and decorations carved into the armrest of his throne. He looked up like a man who had lost unspeakable treasures and at the end of the road of deprivation faced death, a death that took the face of his dearest friend.
Lucina stared back at the man who had shaped her world like no one else. Everything beyond his silhouette blurred. Windchimes rang in her ears. As though a fever had taken control of her body, her breath rattled when she raised the Divine Sword above her head.
She had longed for this moment, the chance to purge Grima's influence and reclaim what was hers. After all the failed attempts, after all this time, the string of fate had fallen back into her hands. The true belief would light her creation once more. His death marked only the beginning.
Yes, the Pheraen house would die with him. A small sacrifice for a world free of Grima's evil.
The Divine Sword aimed for Roy's neck.
Before the weapon struck true, Roy lunged forward and drew a sword out of the depths of the armrest. Gone was the fear and submissiveness in his face, and he wielded this new weapon with a finesse that far exceeded his previous display of skill, almost as if the sword itself completed him. His backhanded slash cut into Lucina's forearms, where the bracers offered no protection.
The searing pain snapped her back to reality, but she had no voice to scream with. Lucina stumbled, clasped her wounds, tried to fight back the fog and the dizziness. What had happened? Her thoughts moved with a sluggishness akin to a serious hangover, and the events of the last few seconds refused to become clearer.
But Lucina had no time to dwell.
In his hand, Roy wielded the Binding Blade, his true weapon of choice. The red stone embedded into its cross guard glowed and emitted the same mystical aura as Falchion, a trembling of the air and a crackling of energy that put the works of seasoned magic users to shame. As though it were alive. Fire enveloped the steel, hissing and flickering and tasting for flesh. With the Binding Blade, Roy could slay dragons.
And his eyes were set on Lucina.
What had before looked like an excellent exchange of fencing techniques devolved into a merciless hacking and slashing. Lucina fell back, sidestepped, twirled, and parried, but Roy pursued her further. His blows came twice as strong, his uppercuts and thrusts found their target with twice the precision.
Lucina quivered under the assault. At the last second, she saved herself from a mortal wound by raising Falchion. It and the Binding Blade locked themselves into a stalemate, edge to edge, cross guard to cross guard. The heat kissed Lucina's cheek as the flames around their swords surged.
The blood running down her forearms boiled, the skin under the bracers seethed, and with an agonized scream she pulled back. She clutched her sword arm, but the pain wouldn't fade, she still felt the flames licking at her skin. Fire instead of blood coursed through her, and it hurt, it hurt like hell, like dying. Her fingers threatened to let go of Falchion.
So weak. After all the talks about her status as Naga's champion, she was still too weak to win a fight by herself.
A whimper escaped her lips.
Roy's expression softened. "Stop fighting it," he said. "I can make this painless. Just like for the fanatics at Terra, this can be over before you feel the fire."
Lucina thought the boiling pain in her arms would tear her in two. Even when she stripped herself of the half-melted bracers, the echoes of heat robbed her of her breath.
But she held her head high and glared at Roy. "You have no right to speak of them! Of the people you murdered!"
"Very well. Marth also wouldn't die with the first stroke."
And the two swords met anew.
Lucina's spirits wavered, and every now and then she lost focus and only managed to dodge Roy's hits by a hair's width. The Binding Blade's flames etched themselves into her vision, and its sparks exploded in her sight even when Roy withdrew to catch his breath.
The battle waged before the gates of Lycia's palace, and the same battle waged in the sandstone vastness of the throne room. What had started as a war between Pherae and Altea had transformed into a clash of ideals, and the universe seemed to hold its breath to see whether the naïve desire to save everyone could defeat the sober cruelty of life experience.
Each minute Lucina didn't win, another one of her rebels paid for their faith in her with their life.
Each minute the price for the far-off victory escalated.
Lucina shut everything out. Only the next step and the next slash existed, her self seemed to dissolve, became one with Falchion and with her training, lost herself in a trance filled with the distant thuds of wooden swords, a sound from way back when Roy had placed the first toy in her tiny hand.
Roy's eyes widened.
Although her body felt like it stood in flames, Lucina lunged forward. Their swords crossed; fire and steel, the taste of burnt flesh, and the stench of sweat.
The force shoved Roy back. He wanted to retreat. But Lucina had planted one foot on his boot.
As Ike had done on a nameless hill in Sacae, Roy reeled.
The Binding Blade's fire devoured the tips of her hair, but Lucina pushed further, screamed as the heat scorched her fingertips, and with one final exertion, she whacked the Binding Blade out of Roy's hand.
The steel clattered on the tiles and skidded out of reach.
They both struggled to breathe.
Lucina's heartbeat refused to slow, and at any moment she would pass out, or so she thought. But she wrestled down the fever that had overtaken her before. With a trembling hand but a strange clarity to her thoughts, she raised Falchion to Roy's throat.
"You're defeated," she said.
Roy swallowed, and beads of sweat dropped from his chin onto the blade poised inches away from his skin.
"Then kill me," he said. "After your father took everything from me, it's only fitting that you take my life to end it all. Finish his work!"
It would be so easy. Lucina only had to extend her arm a little, and Falchion would pierce the soft skin of the man who had lied to her all her life. The man she had wished to call father.
It would be so easy…
Lucina gave into the heaviness of her injured arms and lowered Falchion. "I won't kill you. That's not the reason why I came here. I may be naïve, and a part of me may scream to strike you down. But to see you die is not the reason why I fight."
The trembling of her arms subsided, and Lucina stepped behind Roy. Falchion hovered in front of his chest as she dragged him towards the balcony.
"If you rob the Pheraen Empire of its leader, you will plunge the lands into terror and chaos," Roy spat out, but he had no choice but to stumble where Lucina directed him. "Is that what you want? A weak, leaderless nation is a dead nation. How long until the Black Knight penetrates our border? How long until Renais or even Leonster seize our watchtowers and villages and fertile soil? Will you and your Altean fanatics be happy when fires cover everything?"
Lucina denied him the satisfaction of an answer. She didn't know what to reply. Despite the lies that had coated so many of his past exchanges with her, his words now contained truth. Pherae and Altea were vulnerable without a leader. The idleness and the internal quarrels of the Lorca had proven all too clearly what became of a people without guidance.
But she couldn't leave Roy to continue his tyranny either.
So remained only one path forward. Perhaps this path had been the only one all along.
Lucina shoved Roy out onto the balcony. Raindrops beat against her face and cooled the burnt skin of her arms. A hundred yards ahead, beyond the courtyard that had seen countless executions of fanatics, the soldiers of Pherae fought back the rebel invaders. The tall, iron-strengthened gate had splintered in places, and the rows of archers on the battlements had thinned, but the defenders didn't yield. The law of Roy's kingship, loyalty or death, chained them to their positions.
Countless Alteans and Lorca lay scattered like broken toys outside the palace.
Lucina elbowed Roy to the balustrade. "Tell them to lay down their weapons," she said.
The combatants had yet to notice them. The rapture and the horror of killing had infected them all.
Roy craned his neck to look at Lucina and smiled. "And then you will kill me afterwards? Forget it. I told you, I won't leave my Empire to you so you can smash it."
Lucina yanked Roy's head forward by his collar, over the edge.
"You have nothing left to lose, your reign is over," she said. "This is a senseless waste of lives! Tell them to lay down their weapons."
The smile remained on Roy's lips. "No."
Lucina kicked the back of his knee, and as he groaned, she fastened her grip around Falchion. The steel hugged his throat, ready to draw blood. With a shout that travelled far above the palace walls and distinguished itself from the hammering and rattling of war, Lucina gained the attention of the soldiers on the battlements. The first few halted, and from them the message spread, and the fight paused. Each man on the wall as well as their opponents below raised their eyes up to the balcony where Lucina stood.
She felt the weight of these eyes. Always.
"Knights of Pherae!" Lucina shouted. "You fought bravely today. But your king is defeated, and with him, the tyrannical regime you served stands on the brink of ruin. Some of you might have never realized the cruel hand with which your leaders treated your neighbors and your brethren, and how this hand has bled them dry to increase Lycia's wealth. For those who couldn't or refused to see, let me tell you of the Pegasus Knights of Talys who have lived as slaves. The only future they know is to die in the military of the very nation that conquered their island. Let me tell you of the refugees from Tellius who are shot down at the Black Wall for trying to escape the shadows that have befallen their home. And lastly, let me tell you of the hundred innocent believers of Nagaism who were put to the fire at Terra."
Lucina counted to ten and breathed. In the absence of her voice, only stunned silence and the pitter-patter of rain sounded on the walls.
"All this ends today," she resumed. "Your king has no living relatives who could wear his crown with honor. But some of you might now me as a ward who he raised in these very walls. I fought alongside some of you. I trained with you. I believed in King Roy, as you believe in him, and I was happy to devote myself to his cause. Until I learned the truth about his Pheraen Empire of oppression, a truth that we cannot ignore for longer."
Pheraen soldiers and Altean rebels had their eyes on Lucina, ghostly faces stared at her through the milky windows of the mansions outside the palace, and from somewhere far away and yet right beside her, Naga watched.
Lucina's hand wandered to her collarbone. But instead of the wound, her fingers only found the creased surface of her father's letter.
"I am the daughter of Marth and the sole heir to the kingdom of Altea," she shouted, and never had this title felt so right on her lips. "And with Naga's blessing, I hereby declare myself Queen of the Pheraen Empire."
Thus concluded the battle of Lycia, and Roy's eighteen-year-long kingship was washed away by the rain.
Notes: Curiosity is killing me - what do you think?
The direct aftermath will follow next week, so please, look forward to that.