19 Days Left

When one heard the word "war", a lot of images came to mind. For most people, mountains of paperwork would not be one of those images. And yet, Hubert and Mercedes were hard at work trying to keep the paperwork in check.

"I had no idea wars generated this much paperwork," Mercedes said.

"Take it from someone who has helped plan a war; there are a lot of moving parts, especially when the war is taking place on short notice," Hubert said. "Soldiers and auxiliaries need both records to ensure they get paid and a next-of-kin to be notified if they die. Food, weapons, armor, and other supplies need to be purchased, and often they're purchased on credit, so there are payment plans that have to be logged. There's inventory, evaluation reports, incident reports, training documentation, and that's all before the war starts in earnest."

"Right. You would know," Mercedes said awkwardly.

This was still a bit of an awkward topic. "I understand that, our present conflict excepted, you don't exactly approve of war," Hubert said.

"I can't say I do," Mercedes admitted. "I know about the corruption of the nobility. Baron Bartels, Lord Martritz, they're...not good people. But even after everything they've done to me...I would have been willing to take it if it meant saving lives."

"But, at risk of seeming manipulative, what of people like your brother?" Hubert asked. "Having met him, the actions of Baron Bartels drove him to a very dark place mentally. He would have been a disaster of a noble."

"You assume that human evil is caused by tragedy in a person's past," Mercedes said. "It isn't. People do evil things whether they've known tragedy or not."

"Yes, I phrased that argument badly," Hubert admitted. "Yes, tragedy can be one way in which the seeds of evil can be planted, but more commonly, noble children are raised to think there are no consequences to their actions. Or..."

"No, you're still assuming people become evil because of how they were raised," Mercedes said. "There are better and worse ways for children to be raised, but at the end of the day, no upbringing can keep greed, hate, pride, and jealousy from taking root in a person's heart, and no upbringing will force those vices into a person's heart either. Ferdinand's father raised him to be selfish, arrogant, and ambitious to a fault, but for the most part, those lessons didn't stick."

"I'll admit our planned course of action was...less than ideal," Hubert admitted. "Even considering the incomplete and partially-accurate information we had at the time, there were several things we could have done differently that might have mitigated the damage. But the reality is, we recognized that a full-scale war in Fódlan was an inevitability. Even had we tried to prevent it, we would have been able to delay it by a decade at most. We deemed it better to control the direction of the inevitable war. To make sure that however it ended, the root causes of it would have to be addressed."

That still didn't sit right with Mercedes, but she didn't know how to argue against that.

14 Days Left

Ashe and Hapi finished cutting down a group of Malice-infected monsters.

As the free peoples of Hyrule had been gathering their strength for the coming battle, so too were Astor and Wizzro on behalf of Ganon. Where they could, the forces of Hyrule would ambush their "recruits" en route to Hyrule Field and wipe them out, but there were always more, and the monster army's growth had only been slowed, not stopped.

These specific monsters hadn't been their target, though. There had been reports of a Stalnox hiding in the forest on Satori Mountain. That was close enough for it to reach Hyrule Field during the battle, if it ran at top speed the entire way as soon as night fell, or Malice might be able to keep the sun from returning it to its grave. They had come to Satori Mountain to eliminate that threat.

"Maybe you should sigh," Ashe suggested to Hapi.

"What?" Hapi asked.

"Well, you usually don't sight because it attracts monsters, and you would rather avoid them," Ashe said. "But tonight, we want to do the opposite."

"Good point," Hapi said. "I don't actually know if my sighs affect Hyrulean monsters the same way they do the ones back home, though."

"It's worth a try," Ashe said.

Hapi took a deep breath and sighed. Suddenly, they heard a tremendous crashing noise, and a black sphere rolled down the mountain to their feet. Recognizing it as the Stalnox's eye, Hapi held it in place and Ashe cut it in half with his axe.

"Looks like that's that," Ashe said.

"Not quite," Hapi shook her head. "I doubt that eye just fell out of the Stalnox's skull on its own. What knocked it out of its socket?"

Suddenly, the two of them felt a very powerful presence. They turned to see a creature that for the life of them, neither would ever be able to properly describe with words. It was the size of a horse, or perhaps a large deer. It had antlers, but not like those of a deer, but rather more like ferns. It had a mane like that of a lion, and a face like the faces of a pair of barn owls pressed together. And it was a light blue color and glowed.

Ashe stared at the creature, too frightened to move. The creature didn't seem hostile, but its presence itself was overpowering. Hapi, however, despite being afraid, stood her ground.

She came to a realization: her sigh had summoned this monster, not the Stalnox.

Eventually, the glowing creature turned away and vanished into the night.

Over the course of the next few days, Hapi would research Satori the Mountain Lord, which would lead her to a new understanding of her curse.

9 Days Left

Dimitri, Claude, Edelgard, Hubert, and Yuri were looking over a map of Hyrule Field, which would soon be their battleground. The free peoples of Hyrule were outnumbered, but the they and others among the forces of good had come up with many tactics to compensate.

But would it be enough?

The door to the command tent opened, allowing a Korok entrance. Claude recognized him as the leader of Koroks from Korok Forest.

"The Koroks stand with you," he said. "For the first time in ten thousand years, we go to war. All of us. Of the 1500 Koroks in Hyrule, every one of us will fight in this battle."

"Any help is welcome," Yuri said.

"Additionally, the Great Deku Tree provided us with something to help you," the Korok Leader said, as two other Koroks presented a sword.

At first glance, it looked like the Master Sword. But it was subtly different.

"It's an imitation Master Sword," the Korok Leader said. "Functionally, it's a really good but ordinary sword. But Ganon can't tell the difference between this sword and the Master Sword. As long as the real Master Sword remains in is case, Ganon won't know that this isn't the Master Sword. Or that the person using it isn't Mister Hero."

"Wait, really?" Claude asked.

"That's...extremely useful," Edelgard said.

"Quite the understatement," Dimitri agreed. "This actually makes it possible that we might win without having to lose a significant amount of our forces storming the castle directly."

"We do still have one problem," Yuri said. "Purah hasn't cracked the Guardian command code yet. Which means we'll need another powerful opening attack to get an early initiative."

"Actually, now that the Koroks are here to help, Tingle has a great idea!" said the cartographer who had made the map they were using to prepare their battle plan.

Tingle told them his plan, and they all grinned. It was perfect.