Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem Awakening, all rights to the owners.
Minor: Dark Flier, Immortal, Boxer (Pugilist), Exploitive, Swordmaster, Angry Cinnamon Roll, Tripping, Perpetual Cheer, Chef, Blacksmith, Pegasus Knight, Teacher, Librarian, Masochist, Literal-Minded, Authoritative, Phobia, Thicc, Tsundere, Damsel in Distress, Gangrel's Child, Communist, Bomber, Bear Cavalry, Flying, ADHD, Super Strength, Patriotic, Scottish, Sassy, One Liner, Seamstress, Shephard, Speedy, Cool, Shy, Bookworm, Sweet, Kung Fu, Buff, Lazy, Wingless Flight, Blunt, Elf, Dwarf, Scottish, Melancholic, Punny, Dark Mage.
Standard: Elemental, Deaf, Nurse/Medic, Valmese Tactician, Medusa, Gift from Validar + Evil to Good, Mimic, Emotionless, Crippling Overspecialization (Idiot Savant), Coward, ESP, POW, PTSD, Magician, Mute, Handicapped, Secret Helper, Morpher, Dreamwalker, Twins, Regenerating, Animal Whisperer, Naga/Tiki Assistant, Deadly Touch, Mind Reader, Doppelganger, Arachne, D&D magic, Umbramancer, Dominatrix, Songstress, Kinky, Matchmaker, Androphobic, Illusionist, Attraction Aura, Ring Maker, Teleporting, Crippled, Puppet, Depressed, Slave, Love Curse, Detective, Geokinetic, Trauma, Siren, Changeling, Shapeshifter.
Unlikely: Chrom's child, Minotaur, Paladin, Werewolf, Future Soldier, Bounty Hunter, Weather control, Kleptomaniac, Druid, Steampunk, Shadow Familiar, Magic Augmentation, Lucky, Exile, Piper (Charmer), Gladiator, Witch Doctor, Centaur, Drunk, Demon, Punk, Harpy, Revenant, Luck Manipulation, Demon Summoner, Megalomaniac, Kitsune, King of Plegia, Mood Ring, Reverse Aging, Hammerspace, Prostitute, Demon Hunter, Cyborg, Deadlord, Rebellion, Einherjar, Trap, Yandere, Living Weapon, Size Shifter, Queen of Plegia, Gluttonous, Stretchy, Alchemist, Protoss, Spirit Manipulation, Invisible, Plegian Honor Guard, Mecha, Kryptonian, Creator, Orc, Memory Stealing Respawn, Racer, Khan, Misfortune, Vampire Hunter, Imaginary Actualization, Death, Resurrection, Force, Merchant, Background Music, Variable, Civilian, Natural Disaster, Mental Noise Projection, Hidden OP, Summoner, Cyclops, Teleporter, Cryokinetic, Genie, Judge, Intangibility, Fortune Teller, Serial Killer, Magic Fixit, Drakengard Restoration, Ying-Yang, Childhood Friend, Cyberpunk, Chrom's Mother, Obsessed, Berserker, Phase Shift, Gravity Manipulation, Hallucinating, Bladesoul, Zombie, Double Entendre, Shared Body/Two Souls, Cannibal, Violent, Waterbender, Casanova, Cupid, Undertaker, Master Thief, Guard, Faceless, Shadow, Age Control, Cradle Snatcher, Emo, Nun, Courier, Haunted Knight Armor, Egyptian, Sentient Object, Shit Lord, Court Wizard, Naga's sibling, Mad Queen, Artist, Predator, Cheshire Cat, Radio Host, Chimera, Wendigo, Witch, Symbiote, Hivemind, Hammerspace, Anna, Mother Nature, Psychopath, Stripper, Painting, Grima Parts, Knightmare, Super, Swimsuit, Bunny Outfit, One Punch, Idol, Chef, Rampage, Housewife, Determination, Vessel of Naga, Instant Expert, Time Travel, Hermit, Alternate Dimension 'Twin', Legendary, Resistance, Memory Regain, Umbra Witch, Naga, Aquatic, Hexblade Warlock, Dragon, Demon of Choice, Demon of Temptation, Affliction, Good Samaritan, Gallant, Rosannite Tactician, Leeroy, Dungeon, Apparition, Unwilling, Wildlife Commander, Consistent Kidnapee, Grenadier, Magic Creature, Alternating Mind Control, Sothis in the Mind, Exalt, Unicorn, Pegasus, Alicorn, Star Lord, Slenderman, Bird Laguz, Junk Dealer, Gate Guardian, Shaman, Ghostbuster, Exorcist, King, Soldier, Bird Wings, Failed Vessel, Of the Corn, Valentian, Harem, Car, Incubus, National Personification, Gravity Magic, Kraken, Zora, Kirby, Moon, Quadruplets, Unnoticed, Inventor, Bastilio's Kid, Treasure Hunter, Future, Mind-Swapping, Criminal, Hunter/Tracker, Biker, Gigantic Sword, Miracle, Medium, Warlord, Greater Good, Acrobat, Mother of Chrom, Soul Stealer, Mid War Memory Loss.
Okay, trying this one again for like the seventh time, but with Female Robin instead. Let's see if it makes a difference. Puppet Robin, suggested by Lobotimite. Though I suppose "Puppeteer" is more accurate.
Naga is a farce, as is her faith. That's the conclusion Robin has reached from her twenty years of life. Naga is a false goddess Ylissians like to cling to because of her soothing false promises and the shiny but useless healing magic she grants to her followers.
Robin knows that Naga's magic is false. She's seen it used dozens and dozens of times, from the weakest spell to the most powerful, but it's done nothing to fix her frail body, her exhaustion, or her bouts of paralysis. For all Naga's legendary healing capability, the goddess can't fix her.
Her mother quickly learned not to bring up Naga when Robin becomes a teenager and starts to realize how unfair the world is. Robin isn't particularly inclined to feel kindly towards a deity of false promises, nor her priests who spout those false promises.
No, Robin feels much more close to the god Grima. A god of death, destruction, and struggle. A god who, ironically, values strength, but can actually back up his promises of giving strength to anyone.
And that is how Robin started learning dark magic. It was a bit difficult to do without actual tomes, considering she lives in Ylisse, but the core of dark magic has always been powerful emotions, and Robin has a lot of those to go around. She managed a weak Flux within a few months of her self-training at the age of thirteen, and within a year she moved on to more advanced techniques.
Within two years she started making her own spells. Now, at eight years of training, she has perfected one of her custom spells, and is ready to show it to the world…
###
Libra is investigating concerning rumors stemming from northern Ylisse. In the farming villages near the Plegian border there are tales of monsters. Now that's not particularly unusual, every rural town seems to have it's own myths and monsters that the locals swear on their life are true but of course have no actual proof.
The difference this time is that there is actual evidence that there is some monster roaming the countryside. Livestock was being found slaughtered in the night with blackened, necrotic slashes on their bodies, or sometimes the farmer would wake up to a fire in their animal pens with one of those slaughtered animals being burned. Sometimes there would be trampled crops or broken fences, showing evidence of an unknown invader.
Libra is alone in his travel. Necrotic slashes seem to be evidence of undead, and a war priest like himself is well suited to deal with such a thing. He should be more than sufficient. There is also the issue of the brewing war with Plegia, and so the church cannot spare more than a single priest to such a minor mission.
The best help Libra has on his mission is a map. A map that has small markings on it, showing all known locations of attacks with small bits of added color the older the attack this. With this, and continued reports on new attacks, Libra is slowly able to track the monster's position. The more he does, the more he starts to see certain variables show up. He starts noticing signs of intruders and burned corpses nearly all the time an attack happens, rather than maybe half the time like before.
While Libra can't predict the exact target, he feels fairly confident he can narrow it down to a few villages at a time. The creature seems to be heading south, towards Ylisstol. It takes three failed attempts before he spots the monster, and it's not quite what he expected.
The thing that alerts him to the thing's presence is a creaking noise, and the rustling of corn stalks. Libra, who is lying low in a shed with a generic brown cloak and a cloth covering his axe so the moon doesn't shine off the blade, peeks through the slightly open door to find the creature.
Something emerges from the corn field. In the moonlight, Libra can't quite make out what it is. He can see that it's tall and skinny, but little else is clear. It moves stiffly and awkwardly on what Libra would tentatively say are unusually long legs, though that could just be the shadows playing tricks on him.
The moon reflects off something in the creature's hands. It has to be something reflective then, metal mostly likely, though chitin is also possible should the creature be an insect of some sort.
The thing lurches towards the animal pens at an alarmingly fast pace. Out in the open, Libra can see it somewhat better, and oddly the thing's head is tilted towards the sky.
That's a mystery for another time though. Libra silently exits the shed, keeping the cloth around his axe as he moves. He's slightly slower than the creature, but he's willing to allow the death of a cow or a pig in exchange for stealth.
The creature moves around the side of the barn and out of Libra's sight. A few seconds later he can hear the moan of a cow and a dozen sets of hooves hitting the floor as something startles the herd. A loud rustling noise follows along with the clatter of wood, and Libra turns the corner just in time to see the creature exit the barn. He ducks behind the corner, and to his relief it seems that the thing still hasn't noticed him because its head is still tilted towards the sky.
After a moment the thing enters the barn again, and Libra follows and peers through the door. The thing is not slaughtering another cow. No, instead it is apparently grabbing some of the cow's hay and putting it over the dead body. It then lowers its fingers over the pile and strikes them together, creating a shower of sparks. A few more attempts and the sparks catch, setting the pile ablaze.
With a fire soon roaring, Libra gets his first clear look at the thing. It's a tall scarecrow, with the usual hay stuffing in the chest and the limbs, though where the joints are is exposed, possibly for greater range of motion. The thing also has sharp fingers, and with the firelight Libra can see how it managed to start the fire. One hand's set of fingers is metal, looking pieced together from metal fragments and dagger and knife blades, while the other hand has a number of flint shards tied together. It's hands are literally flint and steel.
Libra has seen what he needs to. He moves in and lets the cloth slide off his axe and makes a heavy swing, hoping to end the threat in one hit.
The creature has better awareness than he was expecting. It bends to the side, making a perfect right angle with its legs and upper body that no physics-abiding being should be able to manage. It then twists it's upper body as if it's on a swivel and lashes out with it's flint and steel claws. Little black wisps of dark magic fleck off the scarecrow as it moves, and to his surprise it opens its 'mouth' and spits a flux spell at his face.
The dark magic spell withers away the front of his cloth robe and burns his collarbone. The creature, despite being simply a magic scarecrow, hisses at him and dashes to the wall. It uses its claws to scramble up uneven wood and out through an open window. Libra dashes out of the barn to follow it, but the thing is long out of sight by the time he makes his way around.
###
Libra's run-ins with the scarecrow monster are frequent from that day forward. With the help of his map and predictions he finds the monster's target locations time and time again, but to his frustration the thing simply won't die. It's too fast, and far too smart. The thing seems to have started to anticipate his arrival. He came to one farm, and thought he saw the thing in the cornfield, only to move out there and find another scarecrow dressed up to look like the creature, complete with flint and steel claws. The actual creature snuck in from the other side of the farm.
That worries Libra the most. This creature, despite looking not much more than a standard dark construct, is intelligent; and an intelligent creature is infinitely more dangerous than the strongest brute.
Oddly though, the creature never makes an attempt to kill him. It will fight back if he attacks it, but even then it prefers to flee rather than stand its ground, and even if they notice each other from a distance it never makes the first strike despite having a ranged attack. It waits for Libra to charge before fighting back.
Then, one day, Libra gets a lot of reports. He usually has three or four per week, but today he gets four… then the next day six, and the next ten. The reports aren't just in the area, they're from all over the areas the monster has already been, and spread out so that it's clear to Libra there is no longer just one threat.
Even strangers are the details the reports mention. Farmers are reporting more attacks… but they are reporting strange rustling noises like leather, and the flap of wings, and shapes blocking out the moon.
The creatures are flying… but the scarecrow doesn't have wings, not from what Libra has seen. Something is very wrong.
Libra asks for more details. He needs to know all the variables. He missed something, that has to be the case. Wings. Wings?
The resulting reports are revealing. It seems that these additional monsters came from the dead bodies of the livestock killed with necrotic slashes. The corpses were buried, but weeks later those graves were found disturbed and dug up, with no signs of the corpse inside.
The corpses that were burned by the scarecrow didn't have that result. Those corpses simply became ash.
Libra has to consider a hard truth: that this scarecrow knows something he doesn't, and perhaps knew about the true threat all along. He possibly spent all this time attacking the wrong creature.
Granted, he thinks he can be forgiven for thinking the animated scarecrow that can spit dark magic and burns corpses was the issue.
Still, if the scarecrow maybe knows what's going on, Libra needs to pay proper attention to the thing. Not to attack it, but to see how it handles the threat.
Once more Libra uses the reports in his area to determine the next probable target, and once again he encounters the scarecrow. This time he pays attention to the thing, how it makes a bee-line for the animal pens, and how its eyes always stay glued to the sky looking for the real threat.
So Libra turns his eyes to the sky. It's dark of course, it's nighttime, but the moon is a canvas on which the occasional black shadow flies across, showing that the scarecrow is not staring at nothing.
The scarecrow is hovering around the animal pens, as it tends to do whenever Libra is late in finding it. The priest keeps his distance this time, and is rewarded with the sight of something swooping out of the sky and the scarecrow leaping into action. Claws flash and black magic is thrown about as the scarecrow lays into its target. It fares well, all things considered. Not having any organs to worry about make the scarecrow deceptively tough.
The lack of light means Libra can't actually see what the scarecrow is fighting, but it is clearly fighting. It comes out victorious, however, as a minute later it exits the barn alone. Libra waits until it is gone before investigating the remains.
Lighting a torch inside the barn, he finds a pile of bones and rotted skin. There's no organs, blood, muscle… nothing. Just bones and skin.
It's not a creature Libra has ever seen himself, but he's been taught in a wide variety of monsters. This creature is one of the rarer ones, but he's familiar with it. It has a few names: Angel of Decay, Rot Bringer, Herald of Pestilence… but it explains much.
One of the rot bringers' most notable traits is how they reproduce. They kill a living creature of appropriate size, infecting it in the process with their claws, and then a week or two later a new rot bringing will be made from the corpse.
That explains the sudden increase in attacks. The corpses the scarecrow didn't manage to burn before have turned into new rotbringers, who have in turn gone on to kill other beings, and now Ylisse is on the verge of an explosion of the things. Once the next cycle happens, and the next round of rot bringers comes, the situation will be well and truly out of Libra's control.
Libra has some messages to write.
###
That blasted priest has finally stopped interfering. Robin doesn't know how many corpses she failed to burn because he got in the way. Now though, now he's gone. Robin doesn't know where he went or why, but she can finally make progress with taking out the rotbringers. She's been using her magic to track them, and she knows there are plenty behind the path her scarecrow has been taking, but she wants to take out these stragglers heading towards the major population centers. If a rot bringer got to a city it could be catastrophic.
Robin might be confined to her bed, but she can operate her scarecrow remotely with her magic. Grima inspired her to help people. How ironic. The dragon must be seething, if he's even real.
She wonders if he would be angry to find out the thing that gave him so much trouble was a sickly girl who is mostly confined to her bed. She'd love to see his reaction to that. The idiot priest kept attacking her, because of course a scarecrow is leaving necrotic gouges across the animals. You know, the scarecrow with flint and steel hands? A zealot will be a zealot: irrational, stubborn, idiotic. The usual priestly traits.
When Robin's mother comes back that day talking about a warning issued to all the villages in the area about burning corpses with odd marks on them, Robin lets out a loud, wheezing laugh that confuses her mother. "So he did figure it out, huh? About damn time. Maybe he's better than most priests."
Weird chapter here. Robin barely appears directly, instead acting through her puppet. Dunno how I feel about this chapter, but it was something new at least. We'll see what you all think.
Half-beastdragonsoul2013: Nope. It was just a general "what would a fight-happy demon with a macabre sense of humor say?" moment. I don't play heroes actually. Too boring, too gatcha, and no support convos. Blah.
RedRat8: I'll throw it on the list.
Bauers374: Bah-dum-tiss
LoveGlutton: I can see how.
Raj8: Yep. That specific female Robin archetype is something I've been trying to tweak to shave off some of the more uncomfortable aspects (or at least make it clear that they're not okay). Doing male Robin for that was… odd, and difficult.
That might be it, but I suspect there are other factors too.
Supermagic had no use of the actual supermagic, and Old involves an OC in Emmet. That's probably why.
Mentoring was interesting for you? Huh. I think that's a bit of an odd taste for this fandom. Also probably why Old wasn't popular. Most people are here for the shipping after all. Also yes, Supermagic probably does end up babysitting a lot of the Shephards' kids.
Aiba: Thanks for the kind words. I think you might have something there. M!Robin affects the world, F!Robin affects the personal. Sounds about right.
Mother of Chrom? Sure, I'll put it on the list.
Reaper of Sadness: Yep. You'll see it again eventually.
Memento Mori - The Truth: Too true.
B1ackAshes: Yeah, I have much the same feeling. Something's off. Don't quite know what.
Darkenss is complete: I too prefer female Robin, though that's nothing new. I'll put soul stealer on the list.
Sonia: Noted.
SyQadelic: You're not missing anything. The name is arbitrary. Joustep is just Robin's father. Random person you're not supposed to know or care about for the sake of the story.
kinigget: Thanks. I put a lot of work into that chapter, as you might expect. It would make for a weird full story though. Might do it eventually, but probably not.