The cost of passage through the Gate of Truth is great… but Edelgard von Hresvelg has paid it and then some. Work title from the material component of Legend Lore.
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Open the floodGates
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So, uh, yeah. Plot bunny abducted my muse again. We'll see where this goes.
Some doors bring more with them than just passage.
She wasn't a fool, of course- none of her siblings had taken to the implantation of the Crest of Flames nearly as well as she had, and even she'd had an unpleasant time with the new power burning within her veins.
She just hadn't expected to be the only one of them to survive.
Her younger siblings had been the first to succumb- as was to be expected. The twins weren't old enough to walk properly, surviving brutal experimentation meant to remake their bodies from the ground up was almost certainly beyond them.
Her older sister, Patricia, was the last to linger, save for her. There was some hope that the presence of the Major Crest of Seiros within her body would help balance out the power of the Crest of Flames.
To their credit, they weren't entirely wrong- Patricia's Crest of Seiros had granted her the strength to persist, for a time, but eventually the Crest of Flames overwhelmed the goddess' blessing, and she grew weaker and weaker until she couldn't even open her eyes. After that, the bird-masked mages took her away to what Edelgard hoped was a clean death but some bleak instinct in the back of her mind insisted was a fate far worse than anything she could imagine.
Now, she was all alone, two crests rattling around a too-small body that itself was rattling around in a too-large cell (or so it seemed, with the lack of her siblings).
Of course, just because she was the last survivor didn't mean that her ordeal was over, or that she would live to see its end.
Even absent the experimentation performed upon her by those faceless mages, the Crest of Flames was not an easy burden to bear, shifting within her body and pressing against something she couldn't quite name in a space not quite physical uncomfortably.
Sometimes, the effects were benign, like the week she spent where the thin gruels and flavorless hardtack tasted like citrus fruits, or the strengthening of her jaw to the point where she bit through said hardtack as if it were the most delicate of tarts.
Other times, they were more torturous, like the three days where an incautious movement was more than enough to shatter her bones within her skin, and it was only through the incredible regenerative ability that the Crest of Flames conveyed that she lasted long enough for her bones to toughen enough to withstand her vastly stronger muscles.
When in concert with the experimentation of the faceless mages, though, these episodes were both caused and worsened. Small blessings, inasmuch as anything could be called a blessing nowadays, though, were that any episode she endured at the hands of the mages was mercifully short-lived, lasting only as long as it took for the power of the blood they forced into her veins to burn itself dry (or diffuse into her own blood- she wasn't cognizant enough of the mystical process to actually understand how the process worked).
So, in the end, Edelgard had little better to do than lie in her cot until they came for her once again, trying not to move as her body changed around her. It was good practice for when stillness was truly necessary, at least.
As if summoned by the thought, the cell door creaked open, and Edelgard let the mages lead her off to their research complex, all the corridors blurring together until they entered another one of their seemingly endless white-walled rooms that they so loved to use for this.
Something about today was different, she realized, being strapped down onto a weirdly warm metal table as was standard.
It was the circle, she realized, not noticing until it lit up with an eerie bloodred glow. The circle under the table vaguely resembled a magical circle, the kind that she remembered from the infrequent occasions that they would cast healing magic on her or even dimmer memories of the court mages putting on drills for the delight of her and her siblings, but was full of an unfamiliar script and most of the interior was full of angles, glyphs, and lines.
Crackling blue-white lightning erupted from a trio of glyphs forming a rough triangle in the center, and Edelgard's vision faded out- first to shades of red, and then nothing, not even a heartbeat.
Not that there was much to notice here- it was an almost completely featureless white expanse, save for a person only visible for the almost smoky gray outline around them and a tall stone set of double doors, with an odd treelike pattern carved into the front which was otherwise covered in glyphs and words she couldn't interpret.
"Ah," came a voice with a susurrus undercurrent like scales on a stone worn smooth from years of snakes rubbing against it. "You're… not an alchemist?" The figure's head canted sideways far enough that, had it been human, Edelgard would have suspected it to have broken its own neck before returning its head to an upright position. "No matter. You stand before the Truth of the World regardless, that is a thing that cannot come without a cost. Let's see, from you it should be-"
It froze, not in the sense of a frightened rabbit, but in the sense of a puddle of quicksilver struck by a mage's casting of Fimbulvetr. Pale flesh, paler than even Edelgard's confinement-lightened complexion, erupted into existence, and before more than a heartbeat had passed, clothes appeared too, dark cloth of some sort that she'd never seen before. Hair, at once completely ordinary and stiller than death exploded from the being's head, resolving itself almost as if it had always been there. Two dark eyes blinked open, eyeliner the same not-quite-color as her hair and a curl of that same pigment curling down from her left eye, and as a last touch, a loop with a vertical line bisecting a horizontal line dropped down from a chain around her neck not unlike a simplified Crest of Macuil.
"Sorry about that, kid," she said, the gentle tone of her voice belying the weight with which it seemed to press down on her, very nearly physical in its effects. "Truth is… not the fate for you, I can promise that much, but they saw a target of opportunity and took it."
"I… what is this place?" A chilling thought struck Edelgard and she shivered, unnaturally muscled yet too young arms wrapping around herself as if to ward off the cold. "Am I dead?"
The woman chuckled. "No, not yet. You could have been, but… not something you need to worry over. What you are is very, very far from home."
"Oh." Edelgard thought for a moment. "Do I have to go back?"
The woman sighed, pale hand rising to run through her hair. "Strictly speaking, no. You could, if you wanted to, just… pass on."
The silence after the statement was almost as oppressive as the woman's voice, all but compelling Edelgard to respond. "But if I don't, they keep going. They break… someone else, like they broke me, until they get what they want."
"Just so." The other woman nodded. "Their type always does."
Edelgard firmed the unyielding resolve that had let her survive to the end of these experiments. "Then I will go back. They will get their… specimen, and I will bide my time until I can put them to the sword."
The woman nodded, almost as if she was expecting that. "So be it. Before your return, I have… some things to tell you."
"By all means, my lady," replied Edelgard, bowing her head.
"Please, no honorifics." She seemed to grimace. "Call me Teleute."
"As you say, Teleute."
"Now then, advice, from… a friend of mine." A smile ghosted across Teleute's face briefly. "The Agarthans- these are the ones that took you and your siblings- they have more enemies than you might suspect. In one way or another, those who bear the same crests as you and those who have lost parts of their lives to them all have the potential to be your greatest allies against them, if you let them."
"I will take your friend's advice to heart."
"Good. Now then, a little gift from me… when your Crests come into their own, that's when you'll manifest it. Most users of the Crest of Flames couldn't, but you… well, you have the will for it." Teleute's necklace seemed to glow an eerie greenish-white briefly, and Edelgard glowed in response.
"Thank you, Teleute."
"Don't mention it, kid. Now then, time to go back." Unprompted, Edelgard's eyes snapped to the doors behind Teleute. "That's right. I know the Gatekeeper likes to be melodramatic about this, but I'll level with you. The Gate of Truth is a costly passage, but… you've already paid more than enough. Besides… well, with the Agarthans' connection, what you get from going through, it's not going to hurt."
Edelgard sighed, then nodded. "Will I see you again?"
"Maybe. That remains to be seen. Now then, go forth, Noble Protector. Your destiny awaits you, and who am I to stand in my brother's way for that?" With that, she stood aside, leaving the way to the Gate open for Edelgard. The Gate itself opened of its own accord, revealing both truths too weighty for even the Endless and apocrypha not worth the breath it would take to tell it, and Edelgard fell forwards, through the space that should not be.
Edelgard von Hresvelg's heart started again, and her eyes opened, full of secrets not meant for Fódlan to hear and yet present nonetheless.
She needed the bandits to run off the Professor so she could get Jeritza in place, not kill them, and Professor Achille was well and truly gone, fled like the rat he was. Hopefully, with Jeritza available to obfuscate and run interference with the watchers the Agarthans no doubt had in Garreg Mach, she could actually have a meeting with Archbishop Rhea and confirm that she was the person with the Crest of Seiros who also had good reason to oppose those who had taken everything from her.
The massive conflagration did its job, and the route they'd used to escape the main body of the ambush, drawing off most of the bandits, was closed off with a massive brush fire, which would hopefully burn out soon, and if not, the rain predicted for the next day would handle it.
"Every time I see it I continue to be amazed by your mastery of pyromancy, El," says Dimitri, not even seeming encumbered by the armor he wore over his uniform.
Claude, on the other hand, was visibly flagging, his face covered in a sheen of sweat and chest heaving with his heavy breathing."Yeah… maybe next time leave us a way back? We'll probably have to circle all the way around the forest to meet back up with the Knights, and if these bandits have any kind of brain in their heads, they'll be ready for that."
"At least this way," said Edelgard, cursing her smaller strides mentally as she was forced to move into a full-on run to keep up with their jog, "we can engage them on our own terms and not be run down on horseback."
"A valid point." Dimitri turned back to look at the (lower, but no less present) flames, then slowed down to a walk. "I think we're safe enough to slow down now so we can assemble a plan of attack."
Claude dramatically played up a collapse against a nearby tree, and Edelgard took the opportunity to take a drink from the waterskin she'd been called paranoid over.
"Bet Ferdinand's wishing he had a waterskin about now too," said Claude, uncorking his own waterskin and drizzling a little over his head before opening his mouth to drink from it. "Now then, as far as strategy goes… There's a village nearby, right?"
Dimitri nodded from where he was on the floor, stretching out his leg muscles as if that skirmish and flight were just a warmup. "Remire village, I believe. It's officially Imperial territory, but culturally they're closer to the Kingdom, especially in their relationship with the Central Church."
Claude nodded, the gears in his head almost audibly spinning. "So, what's likely a wall to put our backs to, on top of a logical rendezvous point that Alois would have meant when he said to find shelter if necessary."
"When you put it that way," said Edelgard, "it does sound quite compelling. And if we get there soon enough, I suspect that I might be able to enact some temporary fortifications with magic, given enough time."
"In that case," said Dimitri, pushing himself up from his stretching posture on the ground and landing with the rattling of his chain mail, "let's be on our way."
The three heirs started running again, and with their goal in mind (and Claude to lead the way, since he had brought a map), they arrived in Remire with the bandits nowhere to be seen.
"That's… not quite what I was expecting," said Edelgard, eyes narrowing at the tents surrounding the village within their (admittedly impressive, for a small village) palisade. "Do you think that this is where those bandits-"
"Nah, can't be them," said Claude. "I recognize the insignia on these tents. They're… either Eisner's Band or Jeralt's Mercenaries, I'm not quite sure which name is the official one and which one is the unofficial one. They've done jobs for some of the Alliance nobles before and they're considered generally reliable- we might be able to hire them on to provide protection until the Knights get here."
"I understand. Claude, if you'll come with me, then hopefully we'll be able to explain some things, if you'll be willing to erect fortifications for us, El?"
Edelgard nodded. "I will see it done."
Dimitri and Claude both proceeded past the palisade while Edelgard knelt down in the dirt near one of the sporadic copses of trees in the clearing between the forest and the village wall. Resisting the urge to use Fire to scorch the alchemical circle into the ground, she instead drew the dagger she kept close to her heart and stabbed it into the dirt, using it to inscribe the alchemical circle.
Once that was done, she took a moment to visualize what she wanted: uneven terrain to slow the bandits down, small barriers to hide behind in case any of their mages made it this far and started bombarding the area, even some blank circles prepared in the off chance that she needed to pull out more alchemical techniques than she could with the meager circles she'd prepared in advance. Then, she pushed enough energy into the circle to activate it.
She clearly underestimated the amount of energy a transmutation this large would cause her, and it was only the activation of the Crest of Flames that prevented her from passing out outright as the circle seemed to suck the magic out of her.
Still, when she staggered to her feet, leaning on her axe, she saw a battlefield prepared as she intended, and while she likely wouldn't be able to cast more than a limited amount of healing magic for the rest of the day (let alone use any of the circles she'd thought she might get to use), she knew that this effort would likely skew the scale of the battle in their favor something fierce.
She staggered to the palisade, all but collapsing against it as another wave of weakness overtook her once the Crest of Flames withdrew, and closed her eyes for just a moment…
I've got five chapters of this prewritten, Two and Three will be released within the week and Four and Five are going up on the patron site as of whenever Three goes out if not sooner.
Speaking of which I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Open the floodGatesSome doors bring more with them than just passage.
-----
CW: Unethical medical experimentation that ends up kinda uncomfortable.-----
Edelgard von Hresvelg gazed blankly at the place where the last other cot in the room had been.She wasn't a fool, of course- none of her siblings had taken to the implantation of the Crest of Flames nearly as well as she had, and even she'd had an unpleasant time with the new power burning within her veins.
She just hadn't expected to be the only one of them to survive.
Her younger siblings had been the first to succumb- as was to be expected. The twins weren't old enough to walk properly, surviving brutal experimentation meant to remake their bodies from the ground up was almost certainly beyond them.
Her older sister, Patricia, was the last to linger, save for her. There was some hope that the presence of the Major Crest of Seiros within her body would help balance out the power of the Crest of Flames.
To their credit, they weren't entirely wrong- Patricia's Crest of Seiros had granted her the strength to persist, for a time, but eventually the Crest of Flames overwhelmed the goddess' blessing, and she grew weaker and weaker until she couldn't even open her eyes. After that, the bird-masked mages took her away to what Edelgard hoped was a clean death but some bleak instinct in the back of her mind insisted was a fate far worse than anything she could imagine.
Now, she was all alone, two crests rattling around a too-small body that itself was rattling around in a too-large cell (or so it seemed, with the lack of her siblings).
Of course, just because she was the last survivor didn't mean that her ordeal was over, or that she would live to see its end.
Even absent the experimentation performed upon her by those faceless mages, the Crest of Flames was not an easy burden to bear, shifting within her body and pressing against something she couldn't quite name in a space not quite physical uncomfortably.
Sometimes, the effects were benign, like the week she spent where the thin gruels and flavorless hardtack tasted like citrus fruits, or the strengthening of her jaw to the point where she bit through said hardtack as if it were the most delicate of tarts.
Other times, they were more torturous, like the three days where an incautious movement was more than enough to shatter her bones within her skin, and it was only through the incredible regenerative ability that the Crest of Flames conveyed that she lasted long enough for her bones to toughen enough to withstand her vastly stronger muscles.
When in concert with the experimentation of the faceless mages, though, these episodes were both caused and worsened. Small blessings, inasmuch as anything could be called a blessing nowadays, though, were that any episode she endured at the hands of the mages was mercifully short-lived, lasting only as long as it took for the power of the blood they forced into her veins to burn itself dry (or diffuse into her own blood- she wasn't cognizant enough of the mystical process to actually understand how the process worked).
So, in the end, Edelgard had little better to do than lie in her cot until they came for her once again, trying not to move as her body changed around her. It was good practice for when stillness was truly necessary, at least.
As if summoned by the thought, the cell door creaked open, and Edelgard let the mages lead her off to their research complex, all the corridors blurring together until they entered another one of their seemingly endless white-walled rooms that they so loved to use for this.
Something about today was different, she realized, being strapped down onto a weirdly warm metal table as was standard.
It was the circle, she realized, not noticing until it lit up with an eerie bloodred glow. The circle under the table vaguely resembled a magical circle, the kind that she remembered from the infrequent occasions that they would cast healing magic on her or even dimmer memories of the court mages putting on drills for the delight of her and her siblings, but was full of an unfamiliar script and most of the interior was full of angles, glyphs, and lines.
Crackling blue-white lightning erupted from a trio of glyphs forming a rough triangle in the center, and Edelgard's vision faded out- first to shades of red, and then nothing, not even a heartbeat.
-----
Edelgard wasn't sure how much time had passed between when she lost awareness and when it returned to her, but when it did, everything snapped into focus at once, in stark contrast to the gradual unclouding of her senses she normally expected after a particularly heavy experimentation session.Not that there was much to notice here- it was an almost completely featureless white expanse, save for a person only visible for the almost smoky gray outline around them and a tall stone set of double doors, with an odd treelike pattern carved into the front which was otherwise covered in glyphs and words she couldn't interpret.
"Ah," came a voice with a susurrus undercurrent like scales on a stone worn smooth from years of snakes rubbing against it. "You're… not an alchemist?" The figure's head canted sideways far enough that, had it been human, Edelgard would have suspected it to have broken its own neck before returning its head to an upright position. "No matter. You stand before the Truth of the World regardless, that is a thing that cannot come without a cost. Let's see, from you it should be-"
It froze, not in the sense of a frightened rabbit, but in the sense of a puddle of quicksilver struck by a mage's casting of Fimbulvetr. Pale flesh, paler than even Edelgard's confinement-lightened complexion, erupted into existence, and before more than a heartbeat had passed, clothes appeared too, dark cloth of some sort that she'd never seen before. Hair, at once completely ordinary and stiller than death exploded from the being's head, resolving itself almost as if it had always been there. Two dark eyes blinked open, eyeliner the same not-quite-color as her hair and a curl of that same pigment curling down from her left eye, and as a last touch, a loop with a vertical line bisecting a horizontal line dropped down from a chain around her neck not unlike a simplified Crest of Macuil.
"Sorry about that, kid," she said, the gentle tone of her voice belying the weight with which it seemed to press down on her, very nearly physical in its effects. "Truth is… not the fate for you, I can promise that much, but they saw a target of opportunity and took it."
"I… what is this place?" A chilling thought struck Edelgard and she shivered, unnaturally muscled yet too young arms wrapping around herself as if to ward off the cold. "Am I dead?"
The woman chuckled. "No, not yet. You could have been, but… not something you need to worry over. What you are is very, very far from home."
"Oh." Edelgard thought for a moment. "Do I have to go back?"
The woman sighed, pale hand rising to run through her hair. "Strictly speaking, no. You could, if you wanted to, just… pass on."
The silence after the statement was almost as oppressive as the woman's voice, all but compelling Edelgard to respond. "But if I don't, they keep going. They break… someone else, like they broke me, until they get what they want."
"Just so." The other woman nodded. "Their type always does."
Edelgard firmed the unyielding resolve that had let her survive to the end of these experiments. "Then I will go back. They will get their… specimen, and I will bide my time until I can put them to the sword."
The woman nodded, almost as if she was expecting that. "So be it. Before your return, I have… some things to tell you."
"By all means, my lady," replied Edelgard, bowing her head.
"Please, no honorifics." She seemed to grimace. "Call me Teleute."
"As you say, Teleute."
"Now then, advice, from… a friend of mine." A smile ghosted across Teleute's face briefly. "The Agarthans- these are the ones that took you and your siblings- they have more enemies than you might suspect. In one way or another, those who bear the same crests as you and those who have lost parts of their lives to them all have the potential to be your greatest allies against them, if you let them."
"I will take your friend's advice to heart."
"Good. Now then, a little gift from me… when your Crests come into their own, that's when you'll manifest it. Most users of the Crest of Flames couldn't, but you… well, you have the will for it." Teleute's necklace seemed to glow an eerie greenish-white briefly, and Edelgard glowed in response.
"Thank you, Teleute."
"Don't mention it, kid. Now then, time to go back." Unprompted, Edelgard's eyes snapped to the doors behind Teleute. "That's right. I know the Gatekeeper likes to be melodramatic about this, but I'll level with you. The Gate of Truth is a costly passage, but… you've already paid more than enough. Besides… well, with the Agarthans' connection, what you get from going through, it's not going to hurt."
Edelgard sighed, then nodded. "Will I see you again?"
"Maybe. That remains to be seen. Now then, go forth, Noble Protector. Your destiny awaits you, and who am I to stand in my brother's way for that?" With that, she stood aside, leaving the way to the Gate open for Edelgard. The Gate itself opened of its own accord, revealing both truths too weighty for even the Endless and apocrypha not worth the breath it would take to tell it, and Edelgard fell forwards, through the space that should not be.
Edelgard von Hresvelg's heart started again, and her eyes opened, full of secrets not meant for Fódlan to hear and yet present nonetheless.
-----
"Keep running!" shouted Edelgard, taking the time to turn and cast Fire, in turn activating the alchemical array sewn on the inside of her glove to expand the detonation.She needed the bandits to run off the Professor so she could get Jeritza in place, not kill them, and Professor Achille was well and truly gone, fled like the rat he was. Hopefully, with Jeritza available to obfuscate and run interference with the watchers the Agarthans no doubt had in Garreg Mach, she could actually have a meeting with Archbishop Rhea and confirm that she was the person with the Crest of Seiros who also had good reason to oppose those who had taken everything from her.
The massive conflagration did its job, and the route they'd used to escape the main body of the ambush, drawing off most of the bandits, was closed off with a massive brush fire, which would hopefully burn out soon, and if not, the rain predicted for the next day would handle it.
"Every time I see it I continue to be amazed by your mastery of pyromancy, El," says Dimitri, not even seeming encumbered by the armor he wore over his uniform.
Claude, on the other hand, was visibly flagging, his face covered in a sheen of sweat and chest heaving with his heavy breathing."Yeah… maybe next time leave us a way back? We'll probably have to circle all the way around the forest to meet back up with the Knights, and if these bandits have any kind of brain in their heads, they'll be ready for that."
"At least this way," said Edelgard, cursing her smaller strides mentally as she was forced to move into a full-on run to keep up with their jog, "we can engage them on our own terms and not be run down on horseback."
"A valid point." Dimitri turned back to look at the (lower, but no less present) flames, then slowed down to a walk. "I think we're safe enough to slow down now so we can assemble a plan of attack."
Claude dramatically played up a collapse against a nearby tree, and Edelgard took the opportunity to take a drink from the waterskin she'd been called paranoid over.
"Bet Ferdinand's wishing he had a waterskin about now too," said Claude, uncorking his own waterskin and drizzling a little over his head before opening his mouth to drink from it. "Now then, as far as strategy goes… There's a village nearby, right?"
Dimitri nodded from where he was on the floor, stretching out his leg muscles as if that skirmish and flight were just a warmup. "Remire village, I believe. It's officially Imperial territory, but culturally they're closer to the Kingdom, especially in their relationship with the Central Church."
Claude nodded, the gears in his head almost audibly spinning. "So, what's likely a wall to put our backs to, on top of a logical rendezvous point that Alois would have meant when he said to find shelter if necessary."
"When you put it that way," said Edelgard, "it does sound quite compelling. And if we get there soon enough, I suspect that I might be able to enact some temporary fortifications with magic, given enough time."
"In that case," said Dimitri, pushing himself up from his stretching posture on the ground and landing with the rattling of his chain mail, "let's be on our way."
The three heirs started running again, and with their goal in mind (and Claude to lead the way, since he had brought a map), they arrived in Remire with the bandits nowhere to be seen.
"That's… not quite what I was expecting," said Edelgard, eyes narrowing at the tents surrounding the village within their (admittedly impressive, for a small village) palisade. "Do you think that this is where those bandits-"
"Nah, can't be them," said Claude. "I recognize the insignia on these tents. They're… either Eisner's Band or Jeralt's Mercenaries, I'm not quite sure which name is the official one and which one is the unofficial one. They've done jobs for some of the Alliance nobles before and they're considered generally reliable- we might be able to hire them on to provide protection until the Knights get here."
"I understand. Claude, if you'll come with me, then hopefully we'll be able to explain some things, if you'll be willing to erect fortifications for us, El?"
Edelgard nodded. "I will see it done."
Dimitri and Claude both proceeded past the palisade while Edelgard knelt down in the dirt near one of the sporadic copses of trees in the clearing between the forest and the village wall. Resisting the urge to use Fire to scorch the alchemical circle into the ground, she instead drew the dagger she kept close to her heart and stabbed it into the dirt, using it to inscribe the alchemical circle.
Once that was done, she took a moment to visualize what she wanted: uneven terrain to slow the bandits down, small barriers to hide behind in case any of their mages made it this far and started bombarding the area, even some blank circles prepared in the off chance that she needed to pull out more alchemical techniques than she could with the meager circles she'd prepared in advance. Then, she pushed enough energy into the circle to activate it.
She clearly underestimated the amount of energy a transmutation this large would cause her, and it was only the activation of the Crest of Flames that prevented her from passing out outright as the circle seemed to suck the magic out of her.
Still, when she staggered to her feet, leaning on her axe, she saw a battlefield prepared as she intended, and while she likely wouldn't be able to cast more than a limited amount of healing magic for the rest of the day (let alone use any of the circles she'd thought she might get to use), she knew that this effort would likely skew the scale of the battle in their favor something fierce.
She staggered to the palisade, all but collapsing against it as another wave of weakness overtook her once the Crest of Flames withdrew, and closed her eyes for just a moment…
-----
And that's that!I've got five chapters of this prewritten, Two and Three will be released within the week and Four and Five are going up on the patron site as of whenever Three goes out if not sooner.
Speaking of which I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
reMired in Bandits
- Pronouns
- She/They
Geez, what are the odds of running into a friendly mercenary band?
Edelgard pushed herself upright, dizzy but no longer needing to lean on the palisade. "It is my responsibility to live up to the proud legacy of my Imperial forbears."
"And you have done so admirably," said Dimitri, concern writ large on his face. "However, I must advise you against endeavors of this… this scale in the future, at least until you've had the chance to hone your magical prowess more."
"That's… probably wise," said Edelgard. Then, she noticed the three people who had come out with her fellow house leaders.
One of them was the legendary Blade Breaker, Jeralt, looking no different from the portraits she'd seen in the monastery. He sat astride a massive warhorse, no armor to be found, and in his fist he held a lance that was so heavily enchanted that it set her teeth on edge.
He also bore the Crest of Seiros.
Tearing her eyes from his imposing form, she looked at the other two. One stood a solid handful of inches taller than her, built almost like a swordmaster, with long, purple hair halfway down her back and a surly expression. There were two swords belted at her waist, one a relatively plain workhorse of a weapon, and the other looking to be enchanted as well, with a delicate, almost feathery handguard and a smooth curve to the blade, almost resembling artists' depictions of Blutgang.
The other was… captivating. Standing not much taller than Edelgard herself, with smooth, flowing blue hair, stood a veritable brick wall of a woman. Her armor was sparse enough to reveal chiseled muscles on her arms and stomach, and her tights were (as the name implied) tight enough to reveal similar muscle tone on her legs. Unlike her companion, she wore only one worn but cared-for sword on her hip, her other hip being occupied with a pair of gauntlets that bore similar signs of both use and care.
She, also bore a crest, but instead of Jeralt's Crest of Seiros or any other Crest she'd seen from classmates, she was all but overflowing with ethereal green flame, the Crest of Flames seeming to radiate power in all directions in a way that she couldn't understand how none of the others were noticing until she made the connection that there must be some resonance with her own Crest of Flames, although that didn't explain the strength of the phenomenon.
After a moment, she blinked, forcibly tearing her attention from the presumable mercenary and bowed her head. "My apologies, I haven't introduced myself yet. I am Edelgard von Hresvelg, Imperial Princess of the Adrestian Empire. I take it you've met my companions?"
Jeralt nodded, a brief, jerky thing. "Jeralt Eisner," he bit off, seeming preoccupied.
"Byleth Eisner," said the blue-haired woman, stepping forward. "Jeralt is my father, and this is Shez, my father's… squire, I think, is the best word for it."
"Nice to meet you all," said Edelgard. "Now then, we should have some time before-"
As if to undermine her, a small horde of bandits poured out of the woods, primarily wielding swords and axes, but there were a pair of pale-faced mages near the back of their contingent, visibly scorched about the edges.
"Here we are, lads!" shouted the leader, a beady-eyed man in a dirty, fur-trimmed cape that had been torn quite badly at some point, to the point where it didn't go past the man's rib cage. "We drag these royal brats in, we make one hell of a payday!"
"Ah." Jeralt looked skyward, as if beseeching the goddess for patience. "Byleth, this is as good a chance as any for you to experiment with command."
"Really? Now, of all times? With these prissy nobles, to boot?" Shez' disagreement was both swiftly provided and loud enough for the bandits to hear.
At the same time, Edelgard bowed towards the blue-haired woman. "Where you lead, I will follow."
Claude and Dimitri didn't offer nearly so overt a gesture as Edelgard, but they did turn to look at the young mercenary after unlimbering their weapons.
Byleth nodded once, taking in all three students with what seemed to be all-seeing eyes. "Edelgard, you and I will serve as the breakwater, we shatter their momentum. Dimitri, behind us, take advantage of your lance's reach, and Claude, see if you can't find an elevated position for fire support. Shez, Jeralt, herd them towards us."
She took a moment to slip the set of gauntlets onto her fists, then turned to the three royal students. "Ready?"
In response, they raised their respective weapons into combative readiness.
"Good. Follow me!" She charged forwards, provoking the bandits into a charge of their own, and Edelgard very nearly didn't keep up with her, entranced with how the ethereal flames around Byleth flared up from the equivalent to a torch to become a raging bonfire invisible to all save her.
The Crest of Seiros burned against her bones as she leapt forwards, sending a veritable explosion of dirt backwards to rattle against Dimitri's greaves as she advanced to match Byleth's position.
In the scant seconds Edelgard had been distracted, Byleth had managed to subdue no less than three bandits, broken swords lying near the battered, broken-boned, and bruised men as she deflected the swords of three of the standing men- not able to strike back with their superior reach combined with their coordination, but doing more than enough to fend them off that the closest their blades come to her is skittering off her armor.
Edelgard planted her front foot, using it for a pivot point for her whole body, and slammed her axe into the rightmost bandit so hard that he's thrown bodily into his compatriot, Seiros-granted strength sending the two of them tumbling to slam into a tree and collapse in a pile of bloodied limbs.
Byleth seized the opportunity granted to her, battering aside the third man's sword and, in a flash of the Crest of Flames, slamming a punch into him hard enough to hurl him into the air, landing at the feet of the leader dozens of feet away.
Her fighting style seemed almost counterintuitive, her broad shoulders and well-muscled limbs seeming at odds with the speed and fluid grace she moved with, but there was no time for further rumination in the heat of combat, especially if a pack of six bandits were advancing on them.
An axe wielder advanced out in front of the rest of his group, arm already pulling back for a swing before Edelgard intervened.
In a contest between alchemically reinforced steel against flesh and bone, the human body lost, Edelgard easily lopping off his hand and about two thirds of his forearm. The axe continued its brutal arc, and it's only through the unnatural strength Agatha forced upon her that she prevented it from taking off his leg too. Instead, Byleth casually backhands him on her way to the rest of his pack, sending him reeling and leaving him an easy target for Dimitri's lance.
One of them stumbled back, two of Claude's arrows sprouting from his wrist and his ribs, and again, Dimitri's lance skewered in to drop the man. This cleared the way for Edelgard's axe to take off the leg of the bandit next to him, bashing the back of the weapon's head into his face on the backswing and leaving him laid out alongside Claude's target. As his head thudded to the ground, the Crest of Flames activated, wiping away a portion of the lingering weariness in Edelgard's body like a flood drowning a particularly poorly planned village.
Byleth didn't just stand around idly during that time, diving into a forwards roll underneath the three blades flickering out not unlike snake tongues. She stabilized on one knee, gauntlets punches shattering first knees and then, as the men fell, hands.
From the back of the bandit line came a commotion, and Edelgard looked up to see the violet-haired mercenary carving a hole into the rear contingent, falling upon the bandits like a hurricane on two legs. Elsewhere, Jeralt hit their ranks like a hammer striking particularly poorly tempered iron, the enchantment of his spear briefly sending a spectral double out that let him impale both mages at once with as little consideration (and as little effort) as a normal person would expend to sip from a cup of water.
The leader took in the two contingents that were slowly closing in on him and then snarled. "Screw this," he said, grabbing a hatchet off of his belt and flinging it into the air. "I'm not dying over some kids!"
Edelgard spent too much time looking at the man and watching him run, as evidenced by the shout the blue-haired mercenary let out. Focusing her attention back on the here and now, she realized too late that the hatchet was aimed at her, and she spared enough thought to damn the man for his unexpected final gesture before trying to raise her own axe to intercept his.
Before she could, Byleth hurled herself between Edelgard and the flying axe blade, one gauntlet thrown out in a desperate punch that clipped the axe, altering its trajectory from her upraised other gauntlet to the unarmored patch of skin on her stomach, a vanity choice (more than likely, although the alteration could conceivably have been from consideration of range of movement) spelling her likely doom.
Byleth brought her knee up to try and deflect the axe-
Edelgard jumped back, hand outstretched, and tried to activate the alchemical circle inscribed in her glove to guide the far-too-near (at least, for her tastes) flames away from them. Instead of the feeling of alchemical energy rippling out from her hand, though, she felt the Crest of Flames activate, and the flames covering the floor leapt up and settled in a row of stone braziers along the walls.
"What is this place?" asked Byleth, frowning, "and how did you ignite the braziers?"
"I should be asking the question, considering this is my home!" snapped a young voice.
Edelgard and Byleth turned at the same time, gazing at the speaker, reclining on a stone throne.
It was a short girl, tall enough to probably graze Edelgard's chin when standing upright, with a wild mane of green hair pooling all over the throne she was lounging on. Underneath her pointed ears, braids with red and white ribbons spliced in with the green dangled, and her cheeks and the set of her mouth gave the impression of a permanent pout. She wore a deep blue set of raiments paired with golden jewelry that served to emphasize her literally glowing eyes.
At times, she appeared almost transparent to Edelgard, a reddish sphere pulsating with the glow of what looked like a Crest from within her chest, but it wasn't visible long enough for her to identify it.
"Apologies, my lady," said Edelgard, falling back on noble etiquette in this unexpected situation. "I merely thought we were about to be burned by the flames and attempted to move them. My Crest reacted… strangely."
"What flames? I just saw you push your hand out and then the braziers lit," said Byleth warily.
"Hmmm… so you can see them where she cannot… Interesting." The girl appeared to be lost in thought.
"You don't see them?" asked Edelgard. "When we first met, I assumed you were simply used to them, but now it appears…" She trailed off, then shook herself out of her contemplation. "There must be some other factor in place."
Edelgard turned to the girl. "Forgive me, I have not introduced myself. I am Edelgard von Hresvelg, Imperial Princess of the Adrestian Empire."
Byleth started. "Byleth Eisner, sellsword. Some call me the Ashen Demon."
"Well met to both of you," said the girl, inclining her head regally. "I am Sothis, bearer of the title The Beginning as granted by… how odd. I cannot place it."
Edelgard's eyes widened. "You are Sothis, the Progenitor God of Fódlan?"
"...perhaps. If I do not recall my own name, then I can hardly be expected to remember what I did before I came to be here, wherever here is." Sothis' gaze seemed at once amused, reproachful, and apologetic.
"My apologies."
"There is no need for apologies, it is just a mystery for another time. Now then…" Sothis turned to Byleth. "Are you trying to get both of us killed? Do you truly value your own life so poorly, your life and her skill at arms, that you would throw yourself in the way of a blow she was already going to deflect?"
"I…" Byleth seemed truly lost for words.
Sothis sighed and let her head drop. "No matter. I have halted the flow of time, or so it appears, so your death is not a foregone conclusion."
Byleth pressed her lips together for a moment. "Now what?"
"When time resumes, the axe will tear into your flesh, and depending on how exactly it strikes and the skill of your far more polite companion in healing, you may die." Sothis stood from the throne and walked down to stand in front of the two former combatants, and Edelgard had to force down first the urge to ruffle her hair as she did to the twins all those years ago and then tears as the reminder of her lost siblings broke her heart all over again.
"If you have any suggestions," said Byleth flatly, "then I would be glad to hear them."
An idea struck Edelgard. "If you can halt the flow of time, then surely you can reverse it, no?"
Sothis turned her head to look at Edelgard, a curiously owl-like motion that made her freeze under the intensity. "That is… no, the logic is sound… aha! Yes, that is something that I can do, for the both of you! My power is limited, and I cannot undo all of time, but time enough for this I know I can grant the pair of you."
"Now then," said Sothis, turning her gaze back to Byleth as more of the green-white flames gathered around her, glowing with such intensity that Edelgard had to shade her eyes. "You two, who bear the flames within, drift through the flow of time for the answers you seek!"
The room dissolved in a burst of green light, and the warmth of the flames seemed somehow comforting to Edelgard before the sensation faded.
I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Posting a little earlier than I'd prefer today but something came up and my usual time looks to be out of reach.-----
"Well, damn," Edelgard heard, and she blinked open surprisingly gummy eyes to look at Claude. "When you promise fortifications, you sure don't disappoint, princess."Edelgard pushed herself upright, dizzy but no longer needing to lean on the palisade. "It is my responsibility to live up to the proud legacy of my Imperial forbears."
"And you have done so admirably," said Dimitri, concern writ large on his face. "However, I must advise you against endeavors of this… this scale in the future, at least until you've had the chance to hone your magical prowess more."
"That's… probably wise," said Edelgard. Then, she noticed the three people who had come out with her fellow house leaders.
One of them was the legendary Blade Breaker, Jeralt, looking no different from the portraits she'd seen in the monastery. He sat astride a massive warhorse, no armor to be found, and in his fist he held a lance that was so heavily enchanted that it set her teeth on edge.
He also bore the Crest of Seiros.
Tearing her eyes from his imposing form, she looked at the other two. One stood a solid handful of inches taller than her, built almost like a swordmaster, with long, purple hair halfway down her back and a surly expression. There were two swords belted at her waist, one a relatively plain workhorse of a weapon, and the other looking to be enchanted as well, with a delicate, almost feathery handguard and a smooth curve to the blade, almost resembling artists' depictions of Blutgang.
The other was… captivating. Standing not much taller than Edelgard herself, with smooth, flowing blue hair, stood a veritable brick wall of a woman. Her armor was sparse enough to reveal chiseled muscles on her arms and stomach, and her tights were (as the name implied) tight enough to reveal similar muscle tone on her legs. Unlike her companion, she wore only one worn but cared-for sword on her hip, her other hip being occupied with a pair of gauntlets that bore similar signs of both use and care.
She, also bore a crest, but instead of Jeralt's Crest of Seiros or any other Crest she'd seen from classmates, she was all but overflowing with ethereal green flame, the Crest of Flames seeming to radiate power in all directions in a way that she couldn't understand how none of the others were noticing until she made the connection that there must be some resonance with her own Crest of Flames, although that didn't explain the strength of the phenomenon.
After a moment, she blinked, forcibly tearing her attention from the presumable mercenary and bowed her head. "My apologies, I haven't introduced myself yet. I am Edelgard von Hresvelg, Imperial Princess of the Adrestian Empire. I take it you've met my companions?"
Jeralt nodded, a brief, jerky thing. "Jeralt Eisner," he bit off, seeming preoccupied.
"Byleth Eisner," said the blue-haired woman, stepping forward. "Jeralt is my father, and this is Shez, my father's… squire, I think, is the best word for it."
"Nice to meet you all," said Edelgard. "Now then, we should have some time before-"
As if to undermine her, a small horde of bandits poured out of the woods, primarily wielding swords and axes, but there were a pair of pale-faced mages near the back of their contingent, visibly scorched about the edges.
"Here we are, lads!" shouted the leader, a beady-eyed man in a dirty, fur-trimmed cape that had been torn quite badly at some point, to the point where it didn't go past the man's rib cage. "We drag these royal brats in, we make one hell of a payday!"
"Ah." Jeralt looked skyward, as if beseeching the goddess for patience. "Byleth, this is as good a chance as any for you to experiment with command."
"Really? Now, of all times? With these prissy nobles, to boot?" Shez' disagreement was both swiftly provided and loud enough for the bandits to hear.
At the same time, Edelgard bowed towards the blue-haired woman. "Where you lead, I will follow."
Claude and Dimitri didn't offer nearly so overt a gesture as Edelgard, but they did turn to look at the young mercenary after unlimbering their weapons.
Byleth nodded once, taking in all three students with what seemed to be all-seeing eyes. "Edelgard, you and I will serve as the breakwater, we shatter their momentum. Dimitri, behind us, take advantage of your lance's reach, and Claude, see if you can't find an elevated position for fire support. Shez, Jeralt, herd them towards us."
She took a moment to slip the set of gauntlets onto her fists, then turned to the three royal students. "Ready?"
In response, they raised their respective weapons into combative readiness.
"Good. Follow me!" She charged forwards, provoking the bandits into a charge of their own, and Edelgard very nearly didn't keep up with her, entranced with how the ethereal flames around Byleth flared up from the equivalent to a torch to become a raging bonfire invisible to all save her.
The Crest of Seiros burned against her bones as she leapt forwards, sending a veritable explosion of dirt backwards to rattle against Dimitri's greaves as she advanced to match Byleth's position.
In the scant seconds Edelgard had been distracted, Byleth had managed to subdue no less than three bandits, broken swords lying near the battered, broken-boned, and bruised men as she deflected the swords of three of the standing men- not able to strike back with their superior reach combined with their coordination, but doing more than enough to fend them off that the closest their blades come to her is skittering off her armor.
Edelgard planted her front foot, using it for a pivot point for her whole body, and slammed her axe into the rightmost bandit so hard that he's thrown bodily into his compatriot, Seiros-granted strength sending the two of them tumbling to slam into a tree and collapse in a pile of bloodied limbs.
Byleth seized the opportunity granted to her, battering aside the third man's sword and, in a flash of the Crest of Flames, slamming a punch into him hard enough to hurl him into the air, landing at the feet of the leader dozens of feet away.
Her fighting style seemed almost counterintuitive, her broad shoulders and well-muscled limbs seeming at odds with the speed and fluid grace she moved with, but there was no time for further rumination in the heat of combat, especially if a pack of six bandits were advancing on them.
An axe wielder advanced out in front of the rest of his group, arm already pulling back for a swing before Edelgard intervened.
In a contest between alchemically reinforced steel against flesh and bone, the human body lost, Edelgard easily lopping off his hand and about two thirds of his forearm. The axe continued its brutal arc, and it's only through the unnatural strength Agatha forced upon her that she prevented it from taking off his leg too. Instead, Byleth casually backhands him on her way to the rest of his pack, sending him reeling and leaving him an easy target for Dimitri's lance.
One of them stumbled back, two of Claude's arrows sprouting from his wrist and his ribs, and again, Dimitri's lance skewered in to drop the man. This cleared the way for Edelgard's axe to take off the leg of the bandit next to him, bashing the back of the weapon's head into his face on the backswing and leaving him laid out alongside Claude's target. As his head thudded to the ground, the Crest of Flames activated, wiping away a portion of the lingering weariness in Edelgard's body like a flood drowning a particularly poorly planned village.
Byleth didn't just stand around idly during that time, diving into a forwards roll underneath the three blades flickering out not unlike snake tongues. She stabilized on one knee, gauntlets punches shattering first knees and then, as the men fell, hands.
From the back of the bandit line came a commotion, and Edelgard looked up to see the violet-haired mercenary carving a hole into the rear contingent, falling upon the bandits like a hurricane on two legs. Elsewhere, Jeralt hit their ranks like a hammer striking particularly poorly tempered iron, the enchantment of his spear briefly sending a spectral double out that let him impale both mages at once with as little consideration (and as little effort) as a normal person would expend to sip from a cup of water.
The leader took in the two contingents that were slowly closing in on him and then snarled. "Screw this," he said, grabbing a hatchet off of his belt and flinging it into the air. "I'm not dying over some kids!"
Edelgard spent too much time looking at the man and watching him run, as evidenced by the shout the blue-haired mercenary let out. Focusing her attention back on the here and now, she realized too late that the hatchet was aimed at her, and she spared enough thought to damn the man for his unexpected final gesture before trying to raise her own axe to intercept his.
Before she could, Byleth hurled herself between Edelgard and the flying axe blade, one gauntlet thrown out in a desperate punch that clipped the axe, altering its trajectory from her upraised other gauntlet to the unarmored patch of skin on her stomach, a vanity choice (more than likely, although the alteration could conceivably have been from consideration of range of movement) spelling her likely doom.
Byleth brought her knee up to try and deflect the axe-
-----
Without warning, Edelgard found herself and Byleth in an odd stone room, all but covered in greenish-white flames.Edelgard jumped back, hand outstretched, and tried to activate the alchemical circle inscribed in her glove to guide the far-too-near (at least, for her tastes) flames away from them. Instead of the feeling of alchemical energy rippling out from her hand, though, she felt the Crest of Flames activate, and the flames covering the floor leapt up and settled in a row of stone braziers along the walls.
"What is this place?" asked Byleth, frowning, "and how did you ignite the braziers?"
"I should be asking the question, considering this is my home!" snapped a young voice.
Edelgard and Byleth turned at the same time, gazing at the speaker, reclining on a stone throne.
It was a short girl, tall enough to probably graze Edelgard's chin when standing upright, with a wild mane of green hair pooling all over the throne she was lounging on. Underneath her pointed ears, braids with red and white ribbons spliced in with the green dangled, and her cheeks and the set of her mouth gave the impression of a permanent pout. She wore a deep blue set of raiments paired with golden jewelry that served to emphasize her literally glowing eyes.
At times, she appeared almost transparent to Edelgard, a reddish sphere pulsating with the glow of what looked like a Crest from within her chest, but it wasn't visible long enough for her to identify it.
"Apologies, my lady," said Edelgard, falling back on noble etiquette in this unexpected situation. "I merely thought we were about to be burned by the flames and attempted to move them. My Crest reacted… strangely."
"What flames? I just saw you push your hand out and then the braziers lit," said Byleth warily.
"Hmmm… so you can see them where she cannot… Interesting." The girl appeared to be lost in thought.
"You don't see them?" asked Edelgard. "When we first met, I assumed you were simply used to them, but now it appears…" She trailed off, then shook herself out of her contemplation. "There must be some other factor in place."
Edelgard turned to the girl. "Forgive me, I have not introduced myself. I am Edelgard von Hresvelg, Imperial Princess of the Adrestian Empire."
Byleth started. "Byleth Eisner, sellsword. Some call me the Ashen Demon."
"Well met to both of you," said the girl, inclining her head regally. "I am Sothis, bearer of the title The Beginning as granted by… how odd. I cannot place it."
Edelgard's eyes widened. "You are Sothis, the Progenitor God of Fódlan?"
"...perhaps. If I do not recall my own name, then I can hardly be expected to remember what I did before I came to be here, wherever here is." Sothis' gaze seemed at once amused, reproachful, and apologetic.
"My apologies."
"There is no need for apologies, it is just a mystery for another time. Now then…" Sothis turned to Byleth. "Are you trying to get both of us killed? Do you truly value your own life so poorly, your life and her skill at arms, that you would throw yourself in the way of a blow she was already going to deflect?"
"I…" Byleth seemed truly lost for words.
Sothis sighed and let her head drop. "No matter. I have halted the flow of time, or so it appears, so your death is not a foregone conclusion."
Byleth pressed her lips together for a moment. "Now what?"
"When time resumes, the axe will tear into your flesh, and depending on how exactly it strikes and the skill of your far more polite companion in healing, you may die." Sothis stood from the throne and walked down to stand in front of the two former combatants, and Edelgard had to force down first the urge to ruffle her hair as she did to the twins all those years ago and then tears as the reminder of her lost siblings broke her heart all over again.
"If you have any suggestions," said Byleth flatly, "then I would be glad to hear them."
An idea struck Edelgard. "If you can halt the flow of time, then surely you can reverse it, no?"
Sothis turned her head to look at Edelgard, a curiously owl-like motion that made her freeze under the intensity. "That is… no, the logic is sound… aha! Yes, that is something that I can do, for the both of you! My power is limited, and I cannot undo all of time, but time enough for this I know I can grant the pair of you."
"Now then," said Sothis, turning her gaze back to Byleth as more of the green-white flames gathered around her, glowing with such intensity that Edelgard had to shade her eyes. "You two, who bear the flames within, drift through the flow of time for the answers you seek!"
The room dissolved in a burst of green light, and the warmth of the flames seemed somehow comforting to Edelgard before the sensation faded.
-----
And that's that!I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
aLo(i)ss of Pursuers
- Pronouns
- She/They
Things are cooling down, on the non-intrigue front.
In terms of her more immediate situation, she was standing over the pile of defeated bandits that she had been before Byleth's near-death, with Jeralt and Shez hitting their rear like Agnea's Arrow.
The leader took in the two contingents that were slowly closing in on him and then snarled. "Screw this," he said, grabbing a hatchet off of his belt and flinging it into the air. "I'm not dying over some kids!"
Instead of watching the direction that he and what was left of his force fled, Edelgard flicked her hand out, magical endurance remaining enough that she could cast Fire and use the alchemical technique she'd come to favor to guide the attack to the hatchet, shattering it in a burst of shimmering metal shards and scorched leather.
With that impressive (yet draining, with Edelgard still not having had the time to really recover from altering the terrain of the field and the additional exertion, albeit relatively small, was enough that she felt the need to open the flask of vulnerary she kept inside her uniform jacket and take a swig) show of magical prowess, the rest of the bandits broke and ran, some following their leader but most simply scattering into the woods.
"Nice shot, princess," said Claude, bow already reslung over his shoulder. "Bet you'd give even a dab hand like me a run for my money if we got in a shootout."
"Oh, please," said Edelgard, feeling the praise was at least somewhat undeserved thanks to her alchemical technique, not that she'd mention that. "Anyone could do that, had they the resources and instructors I had access to." True enough for her tastes, even if the definition of "resources" was a little broader than they'd assume.
"Even if anyone could do it," said Dimitri, slowly slipping his lance back into the sling that held it securely to his back, "I don't think very many people would. Your way of handling this kind of thing is… unique, El."
The intensity with which he spoke made Edelgard blush. "Thank you, Dimitri."
"No thanks are necessary."
Edelgard privately thought that this deflection game would have continued for as long as it took them to return to the monastery, but thankfully they didn't have to find out, as both Byleth and Shez approached the group. "You fought well," said Byleth, in that taciturn way of hers.
"Well, nothing. You fuckin' smoked those bastards!" said Shez, eyes primarily on Edelgard. "D'you think-"
Whatever question Shez was going to ask was lost as Jeralt cantered over, lance and right arm bloodstained but the rest of him clean.
"That spell… did you just-" he began, before biting his statement off and whipping his head around to point to the woods as a squadron of mounted knights emerged.
"The Knights of Seiros are here! We'll cut you down for terrorizing our students. Hey, the thieves are running away! Go after them! The students seem to be unharmed. And...who's this?" asked the knight leading the charge, who Edelgard recognized as Commander Alois.
"Oh, great. Why him?" asked Jeralt, eyes once more rising heavenward with exasperation.
"Captain Jeralt?! It is you! Goodness, it's been ages. Don't you recognize me? It's Alois! Your old right-hand man! Well, that's how I always thought of myself anyway. It must have been 20 years ago that you went missing without a trace. I always knew you were still alive!" Alois hoisted himself off of his horse with the strength of a career warrior, face split into a blinding smile.
Jeralt, moving with obvious reticence, dismounted as well, lance still clutched in his fist. "You haven't changed a bit, Alois. Just as loud as ever. And, uh, drop the whole 'captain' thing. I left the knights, and I'm just a traveling mercenary. Speaking of which…" Jeralt turned to the tents his mercenary band was using, not yet lit by the rising sun, and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Pack it up! We're moving out today!" he shouted, loud enough that all three students pressed hands to their ears to block the noise, although Alois and the other two mercenaries seemed unfazed.
"Right, uhh…" Alois took a step back, rubbing at the back of his head with his armored hand, at this, then visibly firmed both his formerly-hanging jaw and resolve. "No, that's not how this ends! My old friend, I insist you at the very least accompany me back to the monastery so we can reward your unprompted defense of these students!"
Jeralt turned his head, and he seemed to almost be a different man- the weary yet genial attitude vanished as something flashed in his eyes, and his fist tightened on his spear briefly, but after closing his eyes and visibly taking a deep breath, it was gone, leaving resignation on the burly mercenary's face. "Well, I suppose something like this was going to happen sooner or later."
Alois' smile seemed to grow even brighter, if that was possible, before he turned to the two mercenaries standing awkwardly with the students. "Ah, wonderful! And how about you two kids? What's your story?"
Without missing a beat or twitching so much as a muscle, Byleth replied with "I'm a bandit."
Alois chuckled ruefully, shaking his head. "You have a sense of humor just like the Captain. And yourself, you with the purple hair?"
"Where this cheery little father-daughter pair goes, I go," replied Shez.
Alois nodded, eyes distant with unspoken thoughts, before he responded. "I see. Well, all the more reason for you to accompany us to the Monastery! You can catch me up on what the Captain's been up to these past few years, and I can tell you some of the stories I bet he never told you! See, there was this one time in Fhirdiad-"
"Don't you have better things to do than tell old war stories, Alois?" asked Jeralt, who had in the meantime walked outside of normal hearing range towards the encampment.
"Ah, right. That'll have to wait, for now," he said. "Now then, we brought mounts for the students, and one of our previously claimed ones has opened up-" Edelgard internally winced, Alois' insinuation that the former Professor Mikhail had died striking deep, but didn't visibly react- "-but that still leaves us short one horse, assuming you two and Jeralt come with us on mounts and your company follows behind with your equipment."
Edelgard cleared her throat. "I would be more than willing to extend my saddle to fit one more person."
Alois clapped. "Excellent! The matter's settled. The mounts will be here soon, and then we can be on our way back to Garreg Mach."
The discovery of the not-actually-dead Blade Breaker, formerly of the Knights of Seiros, on its own would have been enough to leave Edelgard boggling, even setting aside the way that his Crest of Seiros changed the dynamic given the message Teleute had sent her.
Teleute was a mystery, even given all the resources she could tap into both as a result of her own abilities and talents in the mystical realm and her position as Adrestian nobility. The most she'd ever come across was a single testimonial in a misfiled tome of Ylissean history, with the name Teleute used as someone or something to swear to in the testimony of the renowned Archmage, Miriel. Likewise, she'd been unable to find mention of any kind of mystical Gate outside of that same testimonial, with it seeming to be some sort of font of magical energy that was too dangerous to be worth consistently tapping into.
Well, at least she knew that being spiritually present in the same space as Teleute felt not unlike being in the presence of an amnesiac god.
Edelgard was almost completely certain that the Sothis that she had encountered with Byleth was the Goddess that the Church of Seiros worshipped- too much fit for that not to be the case.
The use of the epithet "the Beginning" in combination with the name, the power over time, the green hair and pointed ears, even the vestments matched some of the oldest paintings of the Goddess, and while it was theoretically possible that she was pulling the knowledge from Byleth (whose life was evidently important to her, more so than Edelgard's), the other woman's lack of knowledge of the Church and its doctrine was evident, and Edelgard had more than enough experience with things in her head that should not be there in the wake of traveling through the Gate (she shivered just thinking about it) to know that Sothis wasn't pulling the knowledge from her own brain.
Plus, Edelgard had never seen a Crest so powerful as the one she had seen from Sothis- not even from Archbishop Rhea, even if it was powerful enough to prevent her from identifying it.
"So, about your Crest. You said it acted strangely?" said Byleth, as if prompted by Edelgard's thoughts of Crests.
"One of them, yes," said Edelgard quietly, albeit not so quietly that the mercenary mounted behind her couldn't hear her. "I was born with a minor Crest of Seiros, and later had the Crest of Flames thrust upon me. The Crest of Flames is the one that acted… oddly, altering the flames I saw in the room." Edelgard paused briefly, thinking back to something she remembered from that room and combining that thought with the behavior of the flames since, especially after having the person producing the flames close enough that if not for her hair she'd feel Byleth's breath. "The same kind of ethereal flames that you're constantly surrounded by- it's like something inside you is leaking them. You truly can't see them?"
"Of course not," came the chirpy voice of Sothis, who materialized next to the both of them, hovering at a constant distance to the left. "She can no more see them than you can see the air in front of your face. The human brain is astounding at how it can tune out input it receives at all times…"
"I had nightmares," said Byleth, the quiet of a clandestine conversation replaced by the quiet of a secret never before spoken. "As a child, I dreamed of the world engulfed in fires that didn't burn, and of wyverns that bled swords and spears, and of a man who tore the very stars from the sky. They didn't last, but… that's where I remember seeing the flames in the braziers before."
"The Fell King fell from grace at the hands of Agartha," said Sothis, eyes distant with dreams that could have been memories and memories that should have been mere dreams.
Then, what Sothis said registered in Edelgard's head. "Say that again."
"The Fell King fell from grace at the hands of Agartha." Sothis looked at Edelgard's paling face more closely. "Is there something wrong?"
"Agarthans," said Edelgard, fists clenching on empty air with rage and sorrow in equal measures, "are the ones who tore my family apart, the ones who gave me a second Crest and sought to forge me into their weapon to topple the Church."
"There are stories," said Byleth haltingly. "Stories, whispered of in mercenary circles, of bird-headed mages that marched with the Empire to capture Ordelia, who took the children of their count and returned only one, with bone-white hair and mere years to live, with two Crests. Stories of the bird-headed mages that lured Lambert Blaiddyd to Duscur and slaughtered him, his wife, and his retinue, leaving only a terrified son who cannot remember the death of his father behind. Stories of the last remnants of a civilization that tried to slay gods and was utterly annihilated in return, left with nothing but their own hatred. Stories of a lost land named Agartha, with science far beyond anything we can ever imagine that is lubricated by the blood of unwitting sacrifices. They're supposed to be just tall tales, but… now, I'm not so sure."
None of the three spoke the rest of the way to Garreg Mach.
I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
-----
Here's the third of three chapters that went up on patreon already, four and five should be there today if you're inch rested in a sneak peek.-----
The flames faded into nonexistence, leaving Edelgard feeling like small electrical shocks were radiating off of her in a manner not entirely dissimilar to how she had awoken after her encounter with Teleute.In terms of her more immediate situation, she was standing over the pile of defeated bandits that she had been before Byleth's near-death, with Jeralt and Shez hitting their rear like Agnea's Arrow.
The leader took in the two contingents that were slowly closing in on him and then snarled. "Screw this," he said, grabbing a hatchet off of his belt and flinging it into the air. "I'm not dying over some kids!"
Instead of watching the direction that he and what was left of his force fled, Edelgard flicked her hand out, magical endurance remaining enough that she could cast Fire and use the alchemical technique she'd come to favor to guide the attack to the hatchet, shattering it in a burst of shimmering metal shards and scorched leather.
With that impressive (yet draining, with Edelgard still not having had the time to really recover from altering the terrain of the field and the additional exertion, albeit relatively small, was enough that she felt the need to open the flask of vulnerary she kept inside her uniform jacket and take a swig) show of magical prowess, the rest of the bandits broke and ran, some following their leader but most simply scattering into the woods.
"Nice shot, princess," said Claude, bow already reslung over his shoulder. "Bet you'd give even a dab hand like me a run for my money if we got in a shootout."
"Oh, please," said Edelgard, feeling the praise was at least somewhat undeserved thanks to her alchemical technique, not that she'd mention that. "Anyone could do that, had they the resources and instructors I had access to." True enough for her tastes, even if the definition of "resources" was a little broader than they'd assume.
"Even if anyone could do it," said Dimitri, slowly slipping his lance back into the sling that held it securely to his back, "I don't think very many people would. Your way of handling this kind of thing is… unique, El."
The intensity with which he spoke made Edelgard blush. "Thank you, Dimitri."
"No thanks are necessary."
Edelgard privately thought that this deflection game would have continued for as long as it took them to return to the monastery, but thankfully they didn't have to find out, as both Byleth and Shez approached the group. "You fought well," said Byleth, in that taciturn way of hers.
"Well, nothing. You fuckin' smoked those bastards!" said Shez, eyes primarily on Edelgard. "D'you think-"
Whatever question Shez was going to ask was lost as Jeralt cantered over, lance and right arm bloodstained but the rest of him clean.
"That spell… did you just-" he began, before biting his statement off and whipping his head around to point to the woods as a squadron of mounted knights emerged.
"The Knights of Seiros are here! We'll cut you down for terrorizing our students. Hey, the thieves are running away! Go after them! The students seem to be unharmed. And...who's this?" asked the knight leading the charge, who Edelgard recognized as Commander Alois.
"Oh, great. Why him?" asked Jeralt, eyes once more rising heavenward with exasperation.
"Captain Jeralt?! It is you! Goodness, it's been ages. Don't you recognize me? It's Alois! Your old right-hand man! Well, that's how I always thought of myself anyway. It must have been 20 years ago that you went missing without a trace. I always knew you were still alive!" Alois hoisted himself off of his horse with the strength of a career warrior, face split into a blinding smile.
Jeralt, moving with obvious reticence, dismounted as well, lance still clutched in his fist. "You haven't changed a bit, Alois. Just as loud as ever. And, uh, drop the whole 'captain' thing. I left the knights, and I'm just a traveling mercenary. Speaking of which…" Jeralt turned to the tents his mercenary band was using, not yet lit by the rising sun, and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Pack it up! We're moving out today!" he shouted, loud enough that all three students pressed hands to their ears to block the noise, although Alois and the other two mercenaries seemed unfazed.
"Right, uhh…" Alois took a step back, rubbing at the back of his head with his armored hand, at this, then visibly firmed both his formerly-hanging jaw and resolve. "No, that's not how this ends! My old friend, I insist you at the very least accompany me back to the monastery so we can reward your unprompted defense of these students!"
Jeralt turned his head, and he seemed to almost be a different man- the weary yet genial attitude vanished as something flashed in his eyes, and his fist tightened on his spear briefly, but after closing his eyes and visibly taking a deep breath, it was gone, leaving resignation on the burly mercenary's face. "Well, I suppose something like this was going to happen sooner or later."
Alois' smile seemed to grow even brighter, if that was possible, before he turned to the two mercenaries standing awkwardly with the students. "Ah, wonderful! And how about you two kids? What's your story?"
Without missing a beat or twitching so much as a muscle, Byleth replied with "I'm a bandit."
Alois chuckled ruefully, shaking his head. "You have a sense of humor just like the Captain. And yourself, you with the purple hair?"
"Where this cheery little father-daughter pair goes, I go," replied Shez.
Alois nodded, eyes distant with unspoken thoughts, before he responded. "I see. Well, all the more reason for you to accompany us to the Monastery! You can catch me up on what the Captain's been up to these past few years, and I can tell you some of the stories I bet he never told you! See, there was this one time in Fhirdiad-"
"Don't you have better things to do than tell old war stories, Alois?" asked Jeralt, who had in the meantime walked outside of normal hearing range towards the encampment.
"Ah, right. That'll have to wait, for now," he said. "Now then, we brought mounts for the students, and one of our previously claimed ones has opened up-" Edelgard internally winced, Alois' insinuation that the former Professor Mikhail had died striking deep, but didn't visibly react- "-but that still leaves us short one horse, assuming you two and Jeralt come with us on mounts and your company follows behind with your equipment."
Edelgard cleared her throat. "I would be more than willing to extend my saddle to fit one more person."
Alois clapped. "Excellent! The matter's settled. The mounts will be here soon, and then we can be on our way back to Garreg Mach."
-----
The first couple of hours of the ride were quiet, with both Edelgard and Byleth (who had been the one of the two mercenaries to take Edelgard up on the offer to ride together) feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the events of the morning- or, at least, Edelgard was- Byleth's face remained impassive enough to conceal her thoughts from Edelgard, so the princess couldn't be sure that that was what the blue-haired mercenary was thinking.The discovery of the not-actually-dead Blade Breaker, formerly of the Knights of Seiros, on its own would have been enough to leave Edelgard boggling, even setting aside the way that his Crest of Seiros changed the dynamic given the message Teleute had sent her.
Teleute was a mystery, even given all the resources she could tap into both as a result of her own abilities and talents in the mystical realm and her position as Adrestian nobility. The most she'd ever come across was a single testimonial in a misfiled tome of Ylissean history, with the name Teleute used as someone or something to swear to in the testimony of the renowned Archmage, Miriel. Likewise, she'd been unable to find mention of any kind of mystical Gate outside of that same testimonial, with it seeming to be some sort of font of magical energy that was too dangerous to be worth consistently tapping into.
Well, at least she knew that being spiritually present in the same space as Teleute felt not unlike being in the presence of an amnesiac god.
Edelgard was almost completely certain that the Sothis that she had encountered with Byleth was the Goddess that the Church of Seiros worshipped- too much fit for that not to be the case.
The use of the epithet "the Beginning" in combination with the name, the power over time, the green hair and pointed ears, even the vestments matched some of the oldest paintings of the Goddess, and while it was theoretically possible that she was pulling the knowledge from Byleth (whose life was evidently important to her, more so than Edelgard's), the other woman's lack of knowledge of the Church and its doctrine was evident, and Edelgard had more than enough experience with things in her head that should not be there in the wake of traveling through the Gate (she shivered just thinking about it) to know that Sothis wasn't pulling the knowledge from her own brain.
Plus, Edelgard had never seen a Crest so powerful as the one she had seen from Sothis- not even from Archbishop Rhea, even if it was powerful enough to prevent her from identifying it.
"So, about your Crest. You said it acted strangely?" said Byleth, as if prompted by Edelgard's thoughts of Crests.
"One of them, yes," said Edelgard quietly, albeit not so quietly that the mercenary mounted behind her couldn't hear her. "I was born with a minor Crest of Seiros, and later had the Crest of Flames thrust upon me. The Crest of Flames is the one that acted… oddly, altering the flames I saw in the room." Edelgard paused briefly, thinking back to something she remembered from that room and combining that thought with the behavior of the flames since, especially after having the person producing the flames close enough that if not for her hair she'd feel Byleth's breath. "The same kind of ethereal flames that you're constantly surrounded by- it's like something inside you is leaking them. You truly can't see them?"
"Of course not," came the chirpy voice of Sothis, who materialized next to the both of them, hovering at a constant distance to the left. "She can no more see them than you can see the air in front of your face. The human brain is astounding at how it can tune out input it receives at all times…"
"I had nightmares," said Byleth, the quiet of a clandestine conversation replaced by the quiet of a secret never before spoken. "As a child, I dreamed of the world engulfed in fires that didn't burn, and of wyverns that bled swords and spears, and of a man who tore the very stars from the sky. They didn't last, but… that's where I remember seeing the flames in the braziers before."
"The Fell King fell from grace at the hands of Agartha," said Sothis, eyes distant with dreams that could have been memories and memories that should have been mere dreams.
Then, what Sothis said registered in Edelgard's head. "Say that again."
"The Fell King fell from grace at the hands of Agartha." Sothis looked at Edelgard's paling face more closely. "Is there something wrong?"
"Agarthans," said Edelgard, fists clenching on empty air with rage and sorrow in equal measures, "are the ones who tore my family apart, the ones who gave me a second Crest and sought to forge me into their weapon to topple the Church."
"There are stories," said Byleth haltingly. "Stories, whispered of in mercenary circles, of bird-headed mages that marched with the Empire to capture Ordelia, who took the children of their count and returned only one, with bone-white hair and mere years to live, with two Crests. Stories of the bird-headed mages that lured Lambert Blaiddyd to Duscur and slaughtered him, his wife, and his retinue, leaving only a terrified son who cannot remember the death of his father behind. Stories of the last remnants of a civilization that tried to slay gods and was utterly annihilated in return, left with nothing but their own hatred. Stories of a lost land named Agartha, with science far beyond anything we can ever imagine that is lubricated by the blood of unwitting sacrifices. They're supposed to be just tall tales, but… now, I'm not so sure."
None of the three spoke the rest of the way to Garreg Mach.
-----
And that's that!I'm getting geared up to move in a couple months, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
priesTry Again and Again
- Pronouns
- She/They
Rhea didn't take the loss of the Crest of Flames well, not that anyone else knows.
"Garreg Mach Monastery has been a school for just over 800 years," said Edelgard, uncanny attention catching Byleth's shock somehow in a way that felt more comforting than unnerving, "and the site has been occupied by members of the Church for far longer. Legend has it that Seiros repelled numerous assaults from within these very walls with nothing but her own strength at arms and the Immaculate One at her side before the Battle of Tailtean, and after that it's been used as a defense against bandits many times for various villages nearby over the years. Of course, some of that has to be apocryphal, but still, even if only a fraction of the defenses spoken of occurred, it is still a magnificent fortification."
"Sounds…" like she expects to be attacked. Then again, Byleth hasn't seen that shade of just-barely-green-tinged white hair on anything natural, so it's entirely possible that that is something that she legitimately has to worry about- there's never enough of a shortage of fools who would fail to realize that kidnapping her would bring about an Imperial response. "...defensible."
Edelgard nodded in front of her. "Indeed."
The rest of the hour or so it took to get up to the monastery is spent in a haze of mostly meaningless small talk and other chatter- neither Edelgard nor Byleth wanted to have another heavy conversation like before, and Sothis isn't around to prompt questions about her existence either.
All too soon, Byleth was being pulled away from the three nobles with her father for their private audience with the Archbishop, led up a staircase to a meeting room by a man in royal blue vestments, likely indicating some sort of high-up position within the Church from their richness, whose green hair seemed almost like a darker version of Edelgard's hair.
"Just a moment, Archbishop Rhea will be with you shortly," he said primly, striding confidently out through a side door.
Byleth turned to her father, a look like he'd just been sucking on a lemon on his face. "Is there something I should know about him?"
"Nah, Seteth's an old fuddy-duddy, but he's good at what he does. No, it's just…" His frown intensified for a moment before subsiding. "Too many memories of your mother here."
He could not have chosen a sentence more capable of silencing her.
Byleth had never been able to get answers about her mother from her father. Whenever she tried, he always clammed up, and she wasn't nearly good enough at speechcraft to talk him around to it obliquely, so whenever he absent-mindedly brought her up, Byleth made sure to treasure the scraps of information about her mother (or, as someone less charitable might put it, the mother-shaped hole in her life- she didn't even know her name, for the Goddess' sake!) that she managed to get.
Her own grief over the mother that she never met, over losing out on the connection with her father that other mercenaries claimed they experienced with their own fathers, that on its own would have been enough to strike her dumb momentarily, especially knowing that this was the place where her mother spent her life.
The yawning, empty pit of grief and horror that opened up inside her, the one that she somehow knew came from Sothis, was only the cherry on top.
Byleth managed to cram the emotions down, and when she felt confident that her voice wouldn't crack, she opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the side door that Seteth had left through, and the man himself returned, preceding a green-haired woman. This woman stood a scant few inches taller than her, with hair very similar in its impossibly fine texture to Seteth's (and to Byleth's, come to think of it), with almost impossibly perfect features that scratched something at the edge of Byleth's brain at the mere sight of them.
"Be on your guard," said Sothis, not physically manifesting more than what's necessary to whisper into her ear. "She is not what she once was, all those centuries ago, and I do not think my daughter has endured the test of time well."
Even if Sothis had remained manifested long enough for Byleth to respond, she wouldn't have, too worried about what would have come of her response from anyone else hearing it. She couldn't afford to think about timeless clergy and potentially demigods, not when she had to meet them for the first time.
The archbishop inclined her head to Byleth's father. "It has been a long time, Jeralt. I wonder…was it the will of the goddess that we have another chance meeting like this?" There was something about the way that she said "will of the goddess" that unnerved Byleth- as if she meant it to conceal some machination of her own.
Jeralt bowed jerkily to the green-haired woman. "Forgive my silence all these years. Much has happened since we last spoke."
Rhea waved the apology away as if the silence (and whatever actions he was dancing around) meant nothing to her. "So I see. The miracle of fatherhood has blessed you. That is your child, is it not?"
"Yes...born many years after I left this place. I wish I could introduce you to the mother of my child...but I'm afraid we lost her to illness."
"I see. My condolences." The archbishop turned to Byleth, the woman's green-eyed attention skittering almost nervously over her from head to toe. "As for you… I heard of your valiant efforts from Alois. What is your name?"
"Byleth Eisner," she replies, nerves still all but shot from so much information in one day.
Rhea nodded. "A fine name indeed." She turned back, the almost cloying feel of her focus decreasing as she spread it between Jeralt and her. "You both have my thanks for your valiant efforts in the defense of my students."
Something about the phrasing of that statement strikes Byleth as interesting, but before she can tease the thought out, Jeralt replies with all the subtlety of Bolganone. "Just ask, I know you're still out a Captain for the Knights of Seiros."
Rhea sighed, impossible face not changing otherwise but still somehow managing to convey her disappointment, billowing throughout the room like a cloud of perfume. "I see you're still the same man you always were." Something in her eyes glinted, and her muscles tensed as if she wanted to move forwards, but her feet stayed planted, and after her eyes flicked to Byleth briefly, she relaxed. "Perhaps it would be better if Alois were to make the case for your return- go, talk with him about it, and then make your decision. I have… other matters to attend to, so take tonight to discuss things with your second, think it over, and I shall expect your answer."
Byleth watched Rhea and Seteth both leave before turning to her father. "She's… a good reason to raise me outside the monastery, I think."
The deadpan statement startled a laugh out of Jeralt. "You got that right."
"Everything okay, Princess?" asked Shez, looking at Edelgard with no small degree of concern hidden behind her brash front.
"Not particularly," said Edelgard, this time wincing from the soreness in her legs (she hadn't been able to mold her saddle quite enough to be comfortable for two people, and she was paying for it now), "but it's a chronic issue that I am well used to handling. Your concern is appreciated."
Shez nodded. "Good. It's good to see when people know how to admit to weakness in safe environments. Says good things about their mental maturity."
Edelgard blinked, very nearly stopping in the middle of the entrance hall before remembering the location and hurriedly continuing. "Are you always so blunt?"
"Talking my way around feelings is hard. At least as a mercenary I can use bluntness as an asset in a way clergy and royalty can't." Shez shrugged one shoulder.
Edelgard sighed ruefully. "I suppose I can't argue with that."
Shez opened her mouth, but before she could reply, she felt a chill in the air as a tall, unhealthily pale man stalked out of a shadow. "What are you doing with Lady Edelgard?"
"Escorting her back to her classroom like Alois fuckin' told me to. What's it to you, you Plegian reject?" Shez rolled her eyes, but Edelgard didn't miss how the mercenary's left hand drifted down to rest on her sword's pommel.
"Your insolence is grating and unnecessary," he snapped. "Release Lady Edelgard into my protection or-"
"Hubert!" Edelgard's voice cracked out like a whip, stopping his almost certain threat in its tracks. "It's fine. Alois did ask Shez to escort me back to my class as a personal favor, since he was escorting Claude back to the rest of the Golden Deer and Dedue arrived to accompany Dimitri. Please, do not continue to give the poor impression of Garreg Mach and the Officer's Academy that Professor Achille's cowardice already provided."
Hubert continued to glare for a moment longer, then took two steps, flanking Edelgard on the other side of Shez. "Very well."
"Thank you, Hubert," said Edelgard, walking forwards once more with confident (albeit tired) strides.
The trio continued towards the classroom in a tense silence that was abruptly broken by Dorothea bursting out of the door. "Edie, you're okay! You are okay, right?"
Edelgard smiled at the songstress. "Perfectly fine, Dorothea. We managed to run into a band of traveling mercenaries that we managed to convince to help us repel the bandits, and they've actually accompanied us back to the Monastery. Their leader is currently talking to the Archbishop with his daughter, I believe, and Shez here was kind enough to escort me back to the rest of the class."
"Speaking of which," said Hubert, still eyeing Shez like she was something that he'd seen in the Abyss (and not the relatively civilized parts that Yuri claimed dominion over), "your task is complete and your presence is no longer necessary. On behalf of her Highness-"
Edelgard turned to Hubert. "Enough." She then turned back to Shez. "You have my apologies for Hubert's behavior."
In response, Shez just laughed, a raucous sound with more than a little bitterness buried within. "It's not the worst snubbing I've had from some big-shot noble." She turned her still-mirthful gaze onto Hubert. "Better make sure you're carrying your clown license next time you pull something like that, though, you probably wouldn't enjoy getting dragged off to the nearest circus."
Threat delivered, Shez turned away from Hubert, teeth gleaming in a perfect smile as she rotated to face Dorothea. "Shez Eisner, at your service."
Dorothea flicked an uncertain look at Edelgard in the instants before she bowed, straightening with the mask she'd been forced to to perfect in her songstress days. "Dorothea Arnault, it's a pleasure."
As Shez metaphorically charged ahead, maneuvering Dorothea into introducing her to the rest of the Black Eagles, Edelgard was struck with curiosity at the prospect of how the violet-haired mercenary would interact with Yuri and the rest of the denizens of the Abyss.
When she spoke the thought aloud, Hubert allowed himself to scoff. "They would either rip each other to shreds or become inseparable, and I do not particularly care which would be worse."
"One thing I have no doubt of," said Edelgard, smiling vindictively at the thought, "is that if she was introduced to either Duke Aegir or Lord Arundel, the encounter would come to blows, and that would be worth watching."
I'm getting geared up to move at the end of the month, if you want to throw some help my way on that one, I got me a Ko-fi (Buy Lucifra a Coffee. ko-fi.com/lucifra) and a Patreon (Patreon).
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct answer to, that's another option: Join the The Lucifralorn Forest Discord Server!
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
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No notes here, at least not offhand.-----
Byleth wasn't quite sure what she was expecting from Garreg Mach, but whatever it was, it was blown away by the sight of the veritable mountaintop castle town that they were presented with."Garreg Mach Monastery has been a school for just over 800 years," said Edelgard, uncanny attention catching Byleth's shock somehow in a way that felt more comforting than unnerving, "and the site has been occupied by members of the Church for far longer. Legend has it that Seiros repelled numerous assaults from within these very walls with nothing but her own strength at arms and the Immaculate One at her side before the Battle of Tailtean, and after that it's been used as a defense against bandits many times for various villages nearby over the years. Of course, some of that has to be apocryphal, but still, even if only a fraction of the defenses spoken of occurred, it is still a magnificent fortification."
"Sounds…" like she expects to be attacked. Then again, Byleth hasn't seen that shade of just-barely-green-tinged white hair on anything natural, so it's entirely possible that that is something that she legitimately has to worry about- there's never enough of a shortage of fools who would fail to realize that kidnapping her would bring about an Imperial response. "...defensible."
Edelgard nodded in front of her. "Indeed."
The rest of the hour or so it took to get up to the monastery is spent in a haze of mostly meaningless small talk and other chatter- neither Edelgard nor Byleth wanted to have another heavy conversation like before, and Sothis isn't around to prompt questions about her existence either.
All too soon, Byleth was being pulled away from the three nobles with her father for their private audience with the Archbishop, led up a staircase to a meeting room by a man in royal blue vestments, likely indicating some sort of high-up position within the Church from their richness, whose green hair seemed almost like a darker version of Edelgard's hair.
"Just a moment, Archbishop Rhea will be with you shortly," he said primly, striding confidently out through a side door.
Byleth turned to her father, a look like he'd just been sucking on a lemon on his face. "Is there something I should know about him?"
"Nah, Seteth's an old fuddy-duddy, but he's good at what he does. No, it's just…" His frown intensified for a moment before subsiding. "Too many memories of your mother here."
He could not have chosen a sentence more capable of silencing her.
Byleth had never been able to get answers about her mother from her father. Whenever she tried, he always clammed up, and she wasn't nearly good enough at speechcraft to talk him around to it obliquely, so whenever he absent-mindedly brought her up, Byleth made sure to treasure the scraps of information about her mother (or, as someone less charitable might put it, the mother-shaped hole in her life- she didn't even know her name, for the Goddess' sake!) that she managed to get.
Her own grief over the mother that she never met, over losing out on the connection with her father that other mercenaries claimed they experienced with their own fathers, that on its own would have been enough to strike her dumb momentarily, especially knowing that this was the place where her mother spent her life.
The yawning, empty pit of grief and horror that opened up inside her, the one that she somehow knew came from Sothis, was only the cherry on top.
Byleth managed to cram the emotions down, and when she felt confident that her voice wouldn't crack, she opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the side door that Seteth had left through, and the man himself returned, preceding a green-haired woman. This woman stood a scant few inches taller than her, with hair very similar in its impossibly fine texture to Seteth's (and to Byleth's, come to think of it), with almost impossibly perfect features that scratched something at the edge of Byleth's brain at the mere sight of them.
"Be on your guard," said Sothis, not physically manifesting more than what's necessary to whisper into her ear. "She is not what she once was, all those centuries ago, and I do not think my daughter has endured the test of time well."
Even if Sothis had remained manifested long enough for Byleth to respond, she wouldn't have, too worried about what would have come of her response from anyone else hearing it. She couldn't afford to think about timeless clergy and potentially demigods, not when she had to meet them for the first time.
The archbishop inclined her head to Byleth's father. "It has been a long time, Jeralt. I wonder…was it the will of the goddess that we have another chance meeting like this?" There was something about the way that she said "will of the goddess" that unnerved Byleth- as if she meant it to conceal some machination of her own.
Jeralt bowed jerkily to the green-haired woman. "Forgive my silence all these years. Much has happened since we last spoke."
Rhea waved the apology away as if the silence (and whatever actions he was dancing around) meant nothing to her. "So I see. The miracle of fatherhood has blessed you. That is your child, is it not?"
"Yes...born many years after I left this place. I wish I could introduce you to the mother of my child...but I'm afraid we lost her to illness."
"I see. My condolences." The archbishop turned to Byleth, the woman's green-eyed attention skittering almost nervously over her from head to toe. "As for you… I heard of your valiant efforts from Alois. What is your name?"
"Byleth Eisner," she replies, nerves still all but shot from so much information in one day.
Rhea nodded. "A fine name indeed." She turned back, the almost cloying feel of her focus decreasing as she spread it between Jeralt and her. "You both have my thanks for your valiant efforts in the defense of my students."
Something about the phrasing of that statement strikes Byleth as interesting, but before she can tease the thought out, Jeralt replies with all the subtlety of Bolganone. "Just ask, I know you're still out a Captain for the Knights of Seiros."
Rhea sighed, impossible face not changing otherwise but still somehow managing to convey her disappointment, billowing throughout the room like a cloud of perfume. "I see you're still the same man you always were." Something in her eyes glinted, and her muscles tensed as if she wanted to move forwards, but her feet stayed planted, and after her eyes flicked to Byleth briefly, she relaxed. "Perhaps it would be better if Alois were to make the case for your return- go, talk with him about it, and then make your decision. I have… other matters to attend to, so take tonight to discuss things with your second, think it over, and I shall expect your answer."
Byleth watched Rhea and Seteth both leave before turning to her father. "She's… a good reason to raise me outside the monastery, I think."
The deadpan statement startled a laugh out of Jeralt. "You got that right."
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Edelgard winced, feeling her Crests grate against each other painfully. It had been some time since that had last occurred, and longer than it had been any previous time, so her alchemical experimentation was clearly helping to mediate the all but incompatible energy flows. Hopefully someday soon she'd be able to come up with a set of alterations that would wholly harmonize the two Crests, at which point she'd potentially be able to help Lysithea (she was probably the one Byleth mentioned, who returned home with bone-white hair and a pair of Crests)."Everything okay, Princess?" asked Shez, looking at Edelgard with no small degree of concern hidden behind her brash front.
"Not particularly," said Edelgard, this time wincing from the soreness in her legs (she hadn't been able to mold her saddle quite enough to be comfortable for two people, and she was paying for it now), "but it's a chronic issue that I am well used to handling. Your concern is appreciated."
Shez nodded. "Good. It's good to see when people know how to admit to weakness in safe environments. Says good things about their mental maturity."
Edelgard blinked, very nearly stopping in the middle of the entrance hall before remembering the location and hurriedly continuing. "Are you always so blunt?"
"Talking my way around feelings is hard. At least as a mercenary I can use bluntness as an asset in a way clergy and royalty can't." Shez shrugged one shoulder.
Edelgard sighed ruefully. "I suppose I can't argue with that."
Shez opened her mouth, but before she could reply, she felt a chill in the air as a tall, unhealthily pale man stalked out of a shadow. "What are you doing with Lady Edelgard?"
"Escorting her back to her classroom like Alois fuckin' told me to. What's it to you, you Plegian reject?" Shez rolled her eyes, but Edelgard didn't miss how the mercenary's left hand drifted down to rest on her sword's pommel.
"Your insolence is grating and unnecessary," he snapped. "Release Lady Edelgard into my protection or-"
"Hubert!" Edelgard's voice cracked out like a whip, stopping his almost certain threat in its tracks. "It's fine. Alois did ask Shez to escort me back to my class as a personal favor, since he was escorting Claude back to the rest of the Golden Deer and Dedue arrived to accompany Dimitri. Please, do not continue to give the poor impression of Garreg Mach and the Officer's Academy that Professor Achille's cowardice already provided."
Hubert continued to glare for a moment longer, then took two steps, flanking Edelgard on the other side of Shez. "Very well."
"Thank you, Hubert," said Edelgard, walking forwards once more with confident (albeit tired) strides.
The trio continued towards the classroom in a tense silence that was abruptly broken by Dorothea bursting out of the door. "Edie, you're okay! You are okay, right?"
Edelgard smiled at the songstress. "Perfectly fine, Dorothea. We managed to run into a band of traveling mercenaries that we managed to convince to help us repel the bandits, and they've actually accompanied us back to the Monastery. Their leader is currently talking to the Archbishop with his daughter, I believe, and Shez here was kind enough to escort me back to the rest of the class."
"Speaking of which," said Hubert, still eyeing Shez like she was something that he'd seen in the Abyss (and not the relatively civilized parts that Yuri claimed dominion over), "your task is complete and your presence is no longer necessary. On behalf of her Highness-"
Edelgard turned to Hubert. "Enough." She then turned back to Shez. "You have my apologies for Hubert's behavior."
In response, Shez just laughed, a raucous sound with more than a little bitterness buried within. "It's not the worst snubbing I've had from some big-shot noble." She turned her still-mirthful gaze onto Hubert. "Better make sure you're carrying your clown license next time you pull something like that, though, you probably wouldn't enjoy getting dragged off to the nearest circus."
Threat delivered, Shez turned away from Hubert, teeth gleaming in a perfect smile as she rotated to face Dorothea. "Shez Eisner, at your service."
Dorothea flicked an uncertain look at Edelgard in the instants before she bowed, straightening with the mask she'd been forced to to perfect in her songstress days. "Dorothea Arnault, it's a pleasure."
As Shez metaphorically charged ahead, maneuvering Dorothea into introducing her to the rest of the Black Eagles, Edelgard was struck with curiosity at the prospect of how the violet-haired mercenary would interact with Yuri and the rest of the denizens of the Abyss.
When she spoke the thought aloud, Hubert allowed himself to scoff. "They would either rip each other to shreds or become inseparable, and I do not particularly care which would be worse."
"One thing I have no doubt of," said Edelgard, smiling vindictively at the thought, "is that if she was introduced to either Duke Aegir or Lord Arundel, the encounter would come to blows, and that would be worth watching."
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