Honestly, you don't quite get why young Artemis had wanted to not do what her parents wanted her to. You'd always been quite happy to learn what your father and mother suggested of you.
It's a teenager thing. Erm, an adolescent thing. I guess manakete teenagers are toddlers.
Sometimes, you wonder if he actually knows what he's doing. You shake your head; that's unkind. Artemis trusts him; that should be good enough for you.
'Of course, she's not out here working her tail off on no sleep,' a voice says nastily in the back of your mind.
'Her father wouldn't let her,' you say back to your brain.
'How very convenient for her.'
'She wouldn't lie to me!'
'How do you know that?'
This feels like a bad thing. Maybe it's just Ryza getting tired and grumpy and trying not to
act tired or grumpy, but...something about this feels
more. We should check for side effects of extended half-shifting when we get home.
Should be a question mark here, not a period.
Using gramatically-incorrect punctuation can be a powerful tool for conveying tone. (That said, SoaringHawk
did change it to a question mark...)
Hm. I wonder if the more draconic part of Ryza is perhaps more separate from her than she has been giving it credit for. It certainly seems to be capable of expressing opinions that Ryza doesn't appear to share, at any rate, possibly doing so as it becomes strengthened by Ryza spending more time in half-shape. Speaking as one such "voice in a person's head", if that is the case and Ryza has another autonomous entity sharing her headspace, then I suspect the two sides will need to speak to each other soon and at least attempt to get on the same general page as the other. Life is substantially more difficult if not everyone in the head agrees on what their overall priorities should look like.
My intuition is that Ryza's heart and dragon aren't
separate, so much as different
parts. In Freudian terms, perhaps the dragon is the id and the heart is the superego. The id and superego aren't separate people in the same mind; they have different priorities and focuses, but still driven by basically the same fundamental desires and inclinations.
(Note that I have not actually studied Freud and am probably butchering his ideas. But my understanding is that they've been considered bunk by the psychology community for longer than I've been alive, so who cares.)
The dragon cares about Artemis and Robin and the rest, just like the heart, and probably cares about rescuing Sypha. But the dragon is more emotional, affected more strongly by short-term passions and discomfort than the heart would be.
At least, that's my read on the situation.
That really depends on period and the polity, with things being less standardized the further you go back and the less centralized you get. -snip-
Yes, but Fire Emblem (and high fantasy settings in general) tend to depict kingdoms similar to more centralized, "high medieval" to early modern kingdoms. Less so for the evil empires, of course.
Hiring people is a solution that solves problems we don't have; we don't need more muscle, we're a damn dragon. (Yes, fine, Ryza! A Manakete!)
I'm not sure we have enough data about the situation to say that for certain. Yes, Ryza's presence lets us punch well above our weight class, but our weight class is a quarter-contubernium. Ryza can rout a few dozen bandits, but what about a couple hundred lead by halfway-competent commanders?
The problem as I see it is less that we don't need help, and more that we probably can't get
enough help. Like, the difference between a quarter-contubernium and a full contubernium isn't
that meaningful if we're fighting a cohort.
[X] Go more slowly. You don't feel so good. You want to help, but Artemis wants you to be safe, and you know Father and Mother would want the same. Sypha can hold on for a little while longer, surely.
Part of me wants to hire help anyways; just having another set of eyes would be handy, and new friends to add to the party is always a good thing. (Fire Emblem has taught me to expect mercenaries hired by agents of the good-guy kingdom to be noble and stick around long after they have any concrete financial incentive.) But...I'm not sure it's worth the money, and it's definitely not worth both money
and time.
And we
definitely shouldn't push Ryza. We don't want whatever dragon-stress she's having to get worse when we don't know what the consequences could be. Especially since we're going to go into battle, which will probably involve turning into a full dragon. Others have said it, but I'll repeat it.
