Fire Emblem Challenge Fest

fe_fest @ 2017-05-06T14:59:00

2017-05-06T18:59:44Z

Good news: Samuraiter has taken over moderating the fest. However, because of the current upheaval on LJ, it's being moved to fe-fest.dreamwidth.org. Right now things like the timeline are being reconsidered, and he's going to make some changes with the prompt list.

Please join the DW community and stay tuned for more.

claimed list

2015-06-30T00:32:59Z

Any gameverse, Tellius preferred - A character is absolutely drowning and lost in schoolwork, and their friend/significant other/whatever (can be platonic or romantic, I don't care) comforts them through their blubbering tears and hysteria (AU or whatever works) (First claim by sarajayechan)
Any f/f pair - brushing her hair (n) (First claim by sarajayechan)
Any f/f pair - throw your arms around me (n) (First claim by sarajayechan)
Any series/any pairing or gen: for the love of knowledge (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE6 - Roy/any, Eliwood, wedding day (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE7, Lyn/Florina - magical girl AU (n)(First claim by sarajayechan)
FE7 - Lyn/Ninian - Gallantly saving the damsel. (n)(First claim by sarajayechan)
FE8, Ewan - "Maybe it's time to stop being a jerk, but I love the faces people make." (N) (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE8 - Eirika/L'arachel - L'arachel's recklessness worries Eirika. (n) (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE9/10 - any pair - sleepy cuddling. (First claim by sarajayechan)
Fire Emblem 9/10: Ike, Ranulf - texts from last night (gen, AU) (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE10, Micaiah/Pelleas - I came apart inside a world made of angry people /I found a boy who had a dream / of making everyone smile (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE9/10: Nailah/Rafiel, a song for you (n) (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE9/10 - Ike/Soren-Picking up a new hobby in peacetime.(n) (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE9/10 - Jill/Mist-Jill tries to return the favor by reaching out to Mist when she needs it.(n) (First claim by sarajayechan)
FE 13 - Lissa/Maribelle - getting married. (n)(First claim by sarajayechan)
Fire Emblem: Awakening - Chrom/Avatar/Sumia, benefits (n) (First claim by sarajayechan)

Any FE, zombie apocalypse AU (n) (first claim by samuraiter)

FE7 - Fiora/Geitz - he joins her mercenary company (n) (first claim by samuraiter)

FE 7, Hector - When bandits attack.(gen) (first claim by samuraiter)
FE7, Hector/Farina, "How much you gonna pay me?" (AU) (first claim by samuraiter)
FE7 - Hector/Priscilla - a sad eyed girl in a tragic story (first claim by samuraiter)
FE6, Dorothy/Clarine -- Let's run away together (n) (first claim by samuraiter)
FE6, Lilina/Wendy -- Convincing Wendy they could be friends was hard enough, but now Lilina wants more (n) (first claim by samuraiter)
FE8, Amelia/Neimi - by the end of the war, they lose count of the times they’ve saved one another on the battlefield (first claim by samuraiter)
FE Awakening, Lissa/Maribelle - "i want to ruin our friendship, we should be lovers instead" (n) (first claim by samuraiter)
FE13, Sully/Miriel—After Miriel reassures Sully over her differences in their A support, Sully returns the favor. (first claim by samuraiter)

Round 5 prompts

2015-06-27T07:35:19Z

As usual, the prompt list is split into het/gen and slash/poly and divided by game from to keep the lists from being unmanageable. However, FE 4/5, 1/3/11/12 and 13 aren't divided this way given that they're too small at the moment.

Usually I mark them with (N), however I refrained this round, considering that I felt it needed more differentiation. However, I didn't figure out the actual method until I'd sorted all the prompts, so next round should have each new set of prompts marked with the round number. Also new this round is the claims will be put on a separate post.

-Comment here saying what you want to claim. Claims will remain open until the round ends on September 24th, so don't worry if you're swamped with finals or something.

-You can claim as many as you want.

-You can claim your own prompts, if you want.

-Art claims are just as welcome as fic claims.

-There is no penalty for defaulting, or late entries.

-There is no limit of how many times a prompt can be claimed.

-You can post it in parts if the plotbunny goes awry.

-The minimum wordcount is 100; there is no maximum.

-You can co-write a claim with someone, just let me know along the way and I'll list you as coauthors.

Also note that if you're shy and want to remain anonymous, you can claim anonymously, and email me at seneai (at) yahoo.com and comment anonymously letting me know. You're also welcome to put it up to ff.net (or AO3, etc.) instead and crosspost it over.

If you have a question about what a prompter wanted with a specific prompt, just ask here and I'll try and PM them (at least, if they were signed in. I'm afraid I can't help with anons.)

The new prompts are listed with an for those people who just want the new stuff. You can just search and find to go through them that way.

As last round, the prompts are sorted alphabetically by het/gen and femme/slash/poly to keep the lists from being unwieldy.

Onto the prompts!

Any/all prompts

Any game, any siblings -- "a bed of roses." (N)
Any game, any character - a character finds Yuuko's shop (from XXXHolic) and is offered a wish at a very steep price
Any gameverse, Tellius preferred - A character is absolutely drowning and lost in schoolwork, and their friend/significant other/whatever (can be platonic or romantic, I don't care) comforts them through their blubbering tears and hysteria (AU or whatever works)
Any game, any character(s), any pairing(s) -- a fantastic bedtime story. (N)
Any/any – a love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak
Any f/f pair - brushing her hair (n)
Any f/f pair - buying bows for her hair (n)
Any f/f pair - lady sings the blues (n)
Any f/f pair - throw your arms around me (n)
Any/any ― band au
Any FE, Civil War AU (n)
Any game/pairing: "Dress up--bexp if characters (gender doesn't matter) wear suits/tuxedos/dresses/etc."
Any/any; Drink up, baby, look at the stars / I'll kiss you again between the bars
Any/any/any (either a true triangle or a V with two loving one person and accepting the other while not loving them), organising their relationship
any/any - "Eternity was in our lips and eyes; Bliss in our brows bent."
Any game/pairing: "Fantasies--a song."
Any series/any pairing or gen: for the love of knowledge
Any game, any siblings -- Frozen AU. (N)
Any game/pairing: "Horse with no name."
any/any - “I took one look at you / that’s all I meant to do / and then my heart stood still..”
Any, any, "It doesn't matter where you come from, it matters where you're going
Any game, any characters, any pairings -- it's time once again for the annual Dead Fire Emblem Parents convention. (n)
Any (,any), "I've always wanted a pet..."
FE6/7: Any characters, any pairing(s) -- "generation gap." (n)
Any/Any (gen or pairing)―Learning about each other’s cultures. (n)
any/any - “Love is not measured by how many times you touch each other but by how many times you reach each other."
Any male/any male, frotting (NO anal)
any/any - Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking."
Any/any - Matchmaker chaos ala Emma by Jane Austen; someone takes to matchmaking another, only to find they've caused an awful mess of things and have fallen in love with (or always have been in love with) the person they've been trying to find a match for.
Any/Any; Modern AU in a boarding school with lots of intrigue and romance~
Any game, any character(s), any pairing(s) -- not another gratuitously indulgent coffee shop/university AU. (n)
Any game/pairing: "Once upon a wishing star."
any, any Pegasus Knights - Robot Unicorn Attack
any/any - the fight / the sharp words splintering the night / how I couldn't be what you need / but how I could make you bleed.
Any royal couple, having a long distance poly relationship with a neighbouring royal
Any/any; Running from the cops/law enforcement/bounty hunters together. AU or not is fine.
Any game/pairing: "Seventh sunrise."
Any game/any pairing, sing for me again
Any FE, space opera AU (n)
Any FE, steampunk AU (n)
any - any/any - steampunk sky pirates
Any/any – Striptease; "I'll get him hot / show what I got."
Any/any – supernatural shapeshifter au with werewolves, fairies and vampires.
Any game/pairing: "Sweets."
Any/all games -- The Badass Ladies with Axes Association. ( n)
Any game -- "that sweet child." (n)
Any/any, "This is a gift/it comes with a price/who is the lamb and who is the knife?"
Any game/any pairing, this time I'll protect you
Any/any – what's a crush to do when he can't get through?
Any/any – you fill my head with pieces of a song that I can't get out (n)
Any/any – you recognized love after the fact / you did what you did / and that was that.
Any game/any pairing, your hair on the floor
any, any (gen) - want your rad bromance
Any FE, zombie apocalypse AU (n)

Archenea (1/3/11/12)

Fire Emblem 2, Alm/Cellica, aftermath (n)
FE2: Alm/Cellica, "I believe in you"
Archanea, Astram/Midia/Nyna—They take her in after everything that’s happened and help her recover.
FE1/3/11/12: Caeda/Marth - "let me protect you" (n)
Archanea, Caeda/Marth/Xane—Letting the trickster god into their marriage, for better or worse.
Fire Emblem : Shadow Dragon, Caeda / Minerva – Amidst all the talk of alliance and marriage, a secret liaison of which nothing is said. (n)
FE 11 - Caeda/Ogma, unexpected
Archanea, Cecille/Katarina—Overcoming betrayal. (Gen or ship is fine)
Archanea, Cecille, Rody—Looking after stray animals together. (Gen)
FE1/3/11/12: Ellerean, it's nothing personal
Archanea, Elise, Marth—It’s hard to let go of baby brother. (Gen)
Fire Emblem : Shadow Dragon, Etzel – He is originally from Elibe, either as a disguised Canas or as the missing husband of Ursula. (n)
Fire Emblem 1/2/11/12, Camus/Nyna - Let's pretend, happy end
Fire Emblem : Shadow Dragon, Horace / Nyna – She had a secret reason for sparing the life of a traitor, that day. (n)
FE3/12 - Jeorge, Gordin, don't let me down
Archanea, Katarina—Learning to live. (Gen)
Archanea, Female!Kris/Katarina—Kris tries to pamper Katarina, who has a hard time accepting it.
Fire Emblem : Heroes of Light and Shadow, Marth – The bittersweet last days of the one who unified Archanea. (n)
Akaneia series: Marth/Sheeda (Caeda), on the wings of something greater
Archanea, Marth/Caeda—He takes a day off to spend with her.
FE1/3/11/12 - Marth/Caeda―Getting used to each other. (n)
Archanea, Marth/Caeda—She is everything he lacks.
FE1/3/11/12 - Marth/Caeda―Trust. (n)
FE 11, Marth/Sheeda - They'll carry on fighting the good fight.
Archanea, Marth, Xane, Tiki—Tucking her into bed and telling her stories so she won’t be lonely. (Xane/Marth as parent figures is fine, otherwise gen)
Archanea, Marth/Xane—Helping Xane to open up and accept affection. (no adultery please)
Archanea, Marth/Xane—Xane isn’t someone Marth has to stay strong for. (no adultery please)
FE1/3/11/12 - Merric/Elice―Growing up. (n)
FE11/12 - Merric/Linde - with a cup of fragrant wine as the moon sets
Archanea, Midia/Nyna—Admiration of each other’s passion and dedication (no adultery please)
Archanea, Minerva, Maria—Watching Maria bloom into an older sister to many. (Gen)
Archanea, Minerva/Palla—Being reunited in New Mystery.
Archanea, Minerva/Palla—Bonding over their little sisters.
Archanea, Minerva/Palla—Post-canon healing and mutual devotion.
Archanea, Minerva/Palla—Showing each other their mothers’ pendants.
FE1/3/11/12 - Minerva/Palla―Devotion. (n)
FE1/3/11/12: Michalis, Minerva - remembering (n)
Fire Emblem : Heroes of Light and Shadow, My Unit (Chris) & My Unit (Other) – There can be only one, regardless of how the world has been changed. (n)
Fire Emblem 11 - Nagi and Marth - the nature of a god reborn (gen)
FE12 - Nyna, Gharnef - A special privilege for the heir of the Holy Empire
FE1/3/11/12: Ogma/Caeda, only second best
Archanea, Palla, Catria, Est—Catria and Est plan a special day for their eldest sister to pay her back for taking care of them. (Gen)
Archanea, Radd/Caesar—Finally helping Caesar’s sister. (Gen or ship is fine)
FE1/3/11/12: Roshea - regrets (n)
Fire Emblem : Heroes of Light and Shadow, Samson – A comedy in which he is oblivious to his own immense sex appeal. (n)
Archanea, Samson/Sheema—A date in the palace town.
Archanea, Samson/Sheema—Training together and admiring each other’s skills.
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, Xane, Marth - Xane deciding to stick around briefly after the War of Heroes, due to the strange faith he has gained in the new human king (gen fic)
Archanea, Xane, Tiki—Xane being an older sibling and worrying about her.(Gen)
Archanea, Xane, Bantu, Tiki—Surrogate family outing. (Gen)
FE1/3/11/12 - Yumina/Maria (gen or pairing)―Royalty. (n)
Archanea, Yumina, Yubello—Sending each other letters while studying separately. (Gen)
FE1/3/11/12, Yumina, Yubello -- Sibling teasing (n)
FE1/3/11/12 - Yumina+Yubello (gen)―Yumina giving Yubello lessons on being a man. (n)
FE1/3/11/12, Yumina, Yubello -- Trying to remain strong for each other (n)
FE2 - Zeke/Teeta - something not quite remembered

FE4, Alec+Noish - "there's a fog on the horizon" (n)
FE4, Aless/Leen - "I could feel your eyes on me...but did you know I had mine on you?" (n)
FE4: Arvis, Deirdre, Julius, Julia - before the calamity (n)
FE4: Arvis & Julia - family reunions (n)
FE4 ~ Fin, anyone of writer's choosing, searching
FE4 - Fin/Lachesis, futuristic dystopia AU (n)
FE4, Finn/Lachesis - memories (n)
FE4: Finn & Leif - resemblance (n)
Fire Emblem 4, Fury/Levin, "I miss you" (n)
FE4, Holin/Brigid - after the end, earn your happy ending (n)
FE4: Julius - alternate continuity, Julius survives and returns to normal postgame (n)
FE4, Leen+Corple - guiding light, Claude as their father (n)
FE4, Levin/Fury - wax and wane (n)
FE4, Levin/Sylvia - skin deep
FE4: Raquesis/Finn - "not what I imagined, but" (n)
FE4: Seliph & Julia - "tell me about our mother?" (N)
FE4, Sety/Tinny - "show me a garden that's bursting into life" (n)
FE 4 - Sigurd/Dierdre, reunion scenes
FE4, Sigurd/Deirdre/Alvis - alternate arrangements (n)
FE4, Tiltyu+Ayra, Azel/Tiltyu, Lex, Holin - college AU (n)
FE4: Quan/Ethlyn - protection (n)
FE4: Quan/Finn or onesided Finn for Quan - (n)
FE4, Yurius - "slip inside the eye of your mind" (n)

FE6/7

FE7 - any/gen - groggy illness hurt/comfort.
FE 7 - any pair or gen - hold me tight and don't let go
FE7, Any morphs -- Reminiscing about their creation (n)
FE7 - Canas, Nino - a quick study (gen) (n)
FE7: Canas & Pent - exchanging letters (n)
FE6: Cecilia, Douglas - "thank you for believing in me" (n)
Fire Emblem : The Blazing Sword, Cecilia & Priscilla – One needed a teacher, one needed a student, and Pent made certain of the meeting. (n)
FE7 - Dart/Farina - trying to one-up each other at treasure hunting (n)
FE7, Dart and Rebecca - maybe a memory, maybe a dream (n)
FE7, Dorcas - something worth fighting for (n)
FE7, Dorcas/Natalie, Vaida, Bartre - Cop AU, celebrating the end of a difficult case with friends and family (n)
FE6, Echidna/Dieck - "together we're a pair of unstoppable badasses" Superhero AU (n)
FE7, Elbert + Eliwood - "before I leave", promises, pride (n)
FE7: Eliwood, Hector - "don't underestimate me" (n)
FE6: Eliwood - grief (n)
FE6/7 - Eliwood, regrets
FE7- Eliwood/Fiora, equals (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Eliwood/Ninian - a sorta fairytale with you
FE7, Eliwood/Ninian - "as we walk in fields of gold" (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Eliwood/Ninian - I just want to make sure you're safe
FE7, Eliwood/Ninian - "when i look into your eyes, i am at the center of the sun" (n)
FE7 Elphin+Percival (gen or pairing): "Shaving."
FE7, Erk+Nino - friendship is magic (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Erk/Serra - shut up kiss
FE7- Erk/Serra, who's looking after who? (N)
FE6: Fa, Elphin - growing up (n)
FE7, Fiora - "i get a little warm in my heart when i think of winter" (n)
FE7 - Fiora/Geitz - he joins her mercenary company (n)
FE7, Fiora, Harken, Legault - There's no forgiving what your friends have done (n)
FE7 - Florina, Lyn - 1930s/Amelia Aerheart AU in which Florina is missing and Lyn scours the world looking for her (gen?)
FE7 Florina – Florina stands up for herself. (gen)
FE7/6, Gale/Miledy - better than flying (n)
FE6 - Garret/Lilina - "I'm not good enough for you" (n)
FE7, Hawkeye + Ninian - "dreams of paradise" (n)
FE6, Heath - Ilian mercenary during the conquest of Ilia (n)
FE6/7 Heath+Gale (gen): "On treachery."
FE7 - Heath, Vaida - having a drink together (gen) (n)
Fire Emblem : The Sword of Seals, Hector – A dying man reflects on everything he could have done for the people he leaves behind. (n)
FE 7, Hector - When bandits attack.(gen)
FE7, Hector, Raven - He's got charisma. Bags of it. (n)
FE7, Hector/Farina, "How much you gonna pay me?" (AU)
FE7, Hector/Farina - AU, trials and tribulations of expectant parents (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Hector/girl!Eliwood, Roy and Lilina is a pair of twins (incest welcome)
FE7, Hector/Farina - he's always defied convention, marrying a mercenary's just another notch on his belt (n)
FE7, Hector/Farina - AU, trials and tribulations of expectant parents (n)
FE7, Hector/Florina - he's just as awkward as she is (n)
Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, Hector/Florina - “Your eyes make me shy.”
Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, Hector/Florina - “You’re starting to look all kinds of cute.”
Fire Emblem 7, Hector/Lyn - some couples never go to bed angry. Their policy is 'never go to bed unarmed'.
Fire Emblem 7, Hector/Lyn - all the sparring keeps things interesting
FE7 - Hector/Priscilla - a sad eyed girl in a tragic story
FE6 Hugh: "Jewelry (blingage)."
FE6 - Idoun - learning love all over again
FE7 - Isadora/Legault - "it was never meant to be" (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Jaffar/Nino - rocking their twins to sleep.
Fire Emblem 7, Jaffar/Nino - she's the only one who sees the kindness within him.
FE6/7 Karel: "Reminiscing."
FE 6 - Karel/anyone - "You remind me of someone I knew long ago."
FE7, Kent/Fiora - 19th century English lit AU (n)
Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, Kent/Lyn - don't let go of my hand.
Fire Emblem: Rekka No Ken, Kent/Lyn - riding bareback (nothing over PG-13)
FE7, Kent/Lyn, smiling through the storm
FE7 - Kent/Lyn - “The romantic embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.”
Fire Emblem 7, Kent/Lyn – "You mean you've never made a grass flute? Here, let me show you–" (No other pairings than this, please.)
Fire Emblem : The Blazing Sword, Kent / Rebecca – She helped him come to the aid of Caelin, and, in so doing, made a real impression upon him. (n)
FE6: Klein, Elphin - "don't doubt me." (n)
Elibe games: Klein & or / Percival - family (n)
Fire Emblem 6, Klein/Tate - he likes to see her disheveled
Fire Emblem 6, Klein/Tate - modern office AU – their office has a strict no-fraternization rule, and despite being by-the-book all her life, for once Tate is thinking of breaking the rules.
FE6, Lalum/Oujay - teasing (n)
FE6 - Lilina+anyone (gen)―Seeking friendship to distract from the war. (n)
FE6: Lilina, Eliwood - mentorship (n)
FE7: Louise/Pent - in the face of danger (n)
FE7, Lowen/Rebecca – cooking fluff
FE7, Lowen/Rebecca – Taking Wolt for his first play date to meet Roy (Eliwood/Ninian is fine, but please no other pairings than this)
FE7: Lucius/any, don't let go FE7 Lucius: "Weeds. "
FE7 Lucius+Serra, healing (gen)
FE6/7: Lyndis, Lord Hausen -- "If I never knew you." (N)
Fire Emblem : The Blazing Sword, Lyn / Pent – Instead of finding the unconscious Mark on the plains, Lyn finds an amnesiac Sage of great power .... (n)
FE7/6, Lyn/Rath, young!Sue - teaching a daughter everything she needs to know (n)
FE 7: Marcus (,Eliwood); knight in shining armour
Fire Emblem 7, Matthew/Leila - AU where she meets his parents.
FE7/6, Murdock - "They grow up far too soon." (N)
FE7, Nils+Ninian - "I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter", "A Glimpse in Time" Nergalbackstory-compliant (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Nils+Ninian - in the end she chose to go home with him
Fire Emblem 7, Nino/Jaffar - just tell me what to do / and i'll fall right into you
FE6/7: Pent, Klein, "I'm not disappointed"
FE7, Pent/Louise - "and i'll tell you something i think you'll understand" (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Pent/Louise - choosing baby names
Fire Emblem 6, Pent/Louise - even so many years later, they still act like newlyweds
FE7, Pent/Louise - grow old with me, the best is yet to be
Fire Emblem 7, Pent/Louise - honeymoon
Fire Emblem 7, Pent/Louise - I will protect you
Elibe games: Pent/Louise + kids - expectations (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Pent/Louise, rulership (n)
Sword of Seals: Percival, Elphin, Klein, vegan food and cigarettes
FE7: Priscilla+Lucius (gen)―An injury to be healed leads them to put passive-aggression aside…for the most part. (n)
FE7: Priscilla, Lyn, understanding (gen or pairing is okay)
FE6/7: Rath -- "I am a stranger in my own homeland." (n)
Fire Emblem 7 - Raven, Lucius, others if you care to - AU in which Raven actually tries to take down Ostia with a slight twist: it's all IN SPACE.
Fire Emblem 6 - Ray/Sophia - oh, the mysteries of me and you
FE7, Rath/Lyn - rain dance (n)
FE7, Rath/Lyn – taking to the plains
FE6 - Roy/any, Eliwood, wedding day
FE6, Roy, Eliwood -- Eliwood tells Roy about his grandfather (n)
Fire Emblem 6, Roy/Lilina, childhood marriage promises.
FE6 - Roy/Lilina―Studying. (n)
FE7 Roy+Lilina (gen or pairing): "Naptime."
FE6, Roy/Lilina, taking her duty as mistress of the house and lady of the land.
FE6, Rutger, Fir, Noah - Kickboxing Tournament AU (n)
FE7 Sain: "On poetic licenses."
FE7, Sain/Priscilla - "without my realizing it, my feelings changed...shifted towards you" (n)
FE6 - Saul/Dorothy―Prayer. (n)
FE7 Serra/Oswin: "A banquet."
FE6, Shin/Sue, you speak loudest when you say nothing at all
FE7/6, Sophia, Igraine - "Come back home sometimes." (N)
FE6, Thany, Tate, Yuno - Role models (n)
FE7, Wil, any cast member(s) - post-game letters to distant friends (any pairings) (n)
FE7 Wil+Dart (gen): "Lucky rabbit's foot."
FE6 - Wolt/Sue - Wolt inherits his mother's baking skills and makes her some apple pie
Fire Emblem 6, Zealot/Yuno + Pegasus sisters - family fluff with everyone cooing over the new baby.
FE7/6, Zephiel, Guinevere - one top student introduces his little sister to the library as she begins to study magic (gen, fluff) (n)

Fire Emblem : The Sword of Seals, Brunya / Cecilia – On opposite sides, but more alike than either is willing to admit. (n)
FE6, Clarine/Dorothy - 10 years post game: every mage general needs a loyal body guard (n)
FE6 - Clarine/Dorothy―Dorothy meets the Reglay family and finds they aren’t what she expects. (n)
FE7/6, Dart/Geitz - "Hey, aren't you supposed to be taking care of me?" (N)
Fire Emblem 6, Dieck/Klein, "let me fight on my own" (n)
FE6 - Dieck/Klein - not a child anymore (n)
FE6 - Dieck/Klein - scars (n)
FE6, Dorothy/Clarine -- Dorothy giving Clarine archery lessons (n)
FE6, Dorothy/Clarine -- Let's run away together (n)
FE6: Dorothy/Clarine - meeting the parents (n)
Fire Emblem 6, Echidna/Lalam - be my hero
FE7, Eleanora/Isadora - "words unspoken" (n)
FE7/6, Elphin/Perceval - after the holy vigil (n)
FE6 Elphin/Percival: "Modern day AU; a day in the life of a supermodel and his boyfriend."
FE7, Florina/Ninian - Figure skater AU (n)
FE7 Florina/Ninian – Florina tells Ninian some of Ilia’s stories about the Ice Dragon to help her sleep.
FE7 Florina/Ninian – Ninian and Florina both learn to accept themselves through their mutual appreciation.
Fire Emblem : The Blazing Sword, Florina / Serra – The only thing more surprising than becoming best friends was becoming more than that. (n)
Fire Emblem : The Sword of Seals, Geese / Lalum / Roy – Is the prince saving her from the pirate, or is she luring both of them into a strange role-play? (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Heath/Legault - a sleight of hand
FE7 – Heath/Legault - Modern AU – Legault is a showy magician who uses his sleights of hand to rob the audience.. Heath is the partner-in-crime and gets relegated to the sparkly, revealing outfits.
Fire Emblem 7, Hector/Eliwood - comforting Eliwood after his wife dies leads to a deepening of their relationship.
FE7 - Karel/Lucius - "Don't treat me like a doll"
FE6/7 - Karel/Lucius - Lucius is the one who cuts his hair (n)
FE7 - Karel/Lucius - taming the Demon (n)
FE6 - Lalam/Echidna―Lalam finding her purpose. (n)
FE7 Legault+Heath (gen or pairing): "Footprints in the snow."
Fire Emblem 7, Legault/Heath - "So how do wyverns mate anyway?"(n)
Fire Emblem : The Sword of Seals, Lilina / Wendy – As a light-hearted parallel to Milady / Guinevere in a world where both pairings can be canon. (n)
FE6 - Lilina/Wendy―Bridging the gap. (gen or pairing is fine) (n)
FE6, Lilina/Wendy -- Convincing Wendy they could be friends was hard enough, but now Lilina wants more (n)
FE6, Lilina/Wendy - Science girl dating the football captain, high school AU (n)

FE7 - Lyn/Florina – As long as you’re with me
FE7 - Lyn/Florina – domestic fluff on the plains, post-game
FE7, Lyn/Florina - first flight (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Lyn/Florina, flights of fancies
FE7 - Lyn/Florina – “I know you better than anyone”
Fire Emblem 7, Lyn/Florina - lying in the grass speaking of dreams and playing the pulling petal game (loves me, loves me not.)
FE7, Lyn/Florina - magical girl AU (n)
Fire Emblem, 7, Lyn/Florina - riding double with Lyn's hands around her waist.
FE7 - Lyn/Ninian―Gallantly saving the damsel. (n)
Fire Emblem 7, Matthew/Guy - "I-I'm j-just protecting you to pay for my oath paper debt. N-No o-other reason..."
Fire Emblem 7, Matthew/Guy - pigtail pulling – literally. Matthew sneaks into Guy's room at night and changes Guy' s hairstyle without him noticing and then takes much glee in teasing him about it.
FE6, Mildain/Percival. "I held your name inside my mouth through all the days of wandering."
Fire Emblem 6, Miledy/Guinevere - breathless to the wall kisses
FE6 - Miledy/Guinevere―Childhood promises of loyalty. (n)
Fire Emblem 6, Miledy/Guinevere - in our bedroom after the war
FE6 - Miledy/Guinevere―Miledy tries to convince Guinevere that she’s a fine queen. (n)
Fire Emblem : The Blazing Sword, Pent / Louise / Heath – A masterless Wyvern Rider finds what he seeks ... and more. (n)
Fire Emblem 6 - Percival/Elphin - atonement
FE6: Perceval/Elphin - disbelief, "I can't believe you're alive" (n)
FE6: Perceval/Elphin - "You’re the one that everyone needs, but I wanted to be the only one you needed" (n)
Fire Emblem 6 - Percival/Mildain - a bet in a game of cards.
FE6: Percival/Elphin, AU, artist's muse
Fire Emblem 6, Percival/Elphin - 'I slept a summer by his side, but he was gone when autumn came.'
Fire Emblem 6 - Percival/Mildain - trying to tease a smile out of him.
FE7 - Ninian/Florina―After Ninian leaves through the dragon’s gate, Florina returns to waiting for the ice dragon on top of Ilia’s mountains. (n)
Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, RathWil, making him laugh
Fire Emblem 7 - Raven/Lucius - brushing Lucius' long, silky, beautiful hair.
FE7 - Raven/Lucius - romancy fluff on a snowy day - pre-canon events?
FE7, Rebecca/Nino - it turns out it's hard to hunt rabbits when you're holding hands (n)
Fire Emblem 6, Roy/Wolt - nothing like you and I (so why do I even try?)
FE7, Serra/Priscilla - "the taste of cherries" (n)
FE7, Sonia/Ursula -- I'll give you every part of me (n)
FE7, Sonia/Ursula -- My perfect being (n)
FE7, Sonia/Ursula -- Ursula has her suspicions about Sonia, but doesn't pursue them (n)
FE7, Wil/Rath - the most he's ever opened up to anyone (n)
FE6, Wolt/Roy/Lilina - playing house when they were kids (nothing over PG-13, please)
FE6, Wolt/Roy/Lilina - Lilina always was the compromising sort. She couldn't stand for anyone to be unhappy.

FE8
FE8 - any pair - fly higher
FE8: Any characters, any pairing(s) -- Mass Effect and/or Space Oddity/Major Tom AU. [Earth below us, // Drifting, falling. // Floating weightless, // Coming, coming home.] (n)
FE8, Amelia - "this is your life, and today is all you'll ever have" (n)
FE8 - Amelia, Duessel - protégé (gen)(n)
FE8, Amelia and Duessel - teaching her the sword
FE8, Amelia and Ewan - trying to hide her discomfort with the many ways in which he kills with magic
FE8, Amelia/Franz - after a brutal skirmish, he helps her clean off the grime and the gore from her armor
FE8, Amelia and Ross - sparring
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Artur/Lute - "This is fascinating..." "That's my arm!"
Fire Emblem 8, Carlyle/Isimaire - This desert rose / Each of her veils, a secret promise / This desert flower / No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Colm/Neimi - I didn't mean to hurt you but you look pretty when you cry.
FE8, Cormag, Natasha - class switch (n)
FE8- Cormag/Tana- any (n)
FE8 - Cormag/Tana - traveling the world to find him (n)
FE8: Eirika - becoming queen
Fire Emblem 8, Eirika gen - "she adapts well, I've noticed"
FE8 Eirika: "ZETTEI UNMEI MOKOSHIROKU."
FE8, Eirika and Forde - posing for him as often as she does leads to long conversations
FE8: Eirika/Innes - accepting her strength (n)
FE8, Eirika/Innes - after marriage, as before, they clash more often than they cooperate
Fire Emblem 8 – Eirika / Joshua, "Excuuuuuuse me, Princess!"
Fire Emblem : The Sacred Stones, Eirika / Knoll – Upon realizing the truth, she does everything in her power to save him from himself. (n)
FE8 - Eirika/Saleh - living a double life
FE8, Eirika/Saleh - she has things to teach him, too
FE8, Eirika/Seth - stolen trysts in the middle of a war
FE8 - Ephraim, Kyle, Forde - close call (gen or paired is fine)
Fire Emblem 8, Ephraim (,any), Indiana Jones AU (preferably gen)
FE8: Ephraim, Innes -- "Rival Innes would like to battle! What will trainer do?" (N)
FE8- Ephraim/Eirika, accidental (n)
FE8: Ephraim, Eirika -- everything that happens in the game stays the same, except the twins are genderbent. (N)
FE8, Eirika and Ephraim - they complement one another
FE8- Ephraim/Eirika, guilty (n)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Ephraim/Eirika - I'll keep you my dirty little secret
FE8- Ephraim/Eirika, never leave me (n)
FE8 Ephraim/Eirika – soul mates
FE8, Ephraim/L'Arachel - aurora borealis (n)
FE8- Ephraim/L'Arachel, healing with sex (n)
FE8, Ewan - "Maybe it's time to stop being a jerk, but I love the faces people make." (N)
FE8, Ewan+Ross - "what do you dream of when you close your eyes?" (n)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Fado, Viguarde and Hayden, drinking games (gen)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Fado, Viguarde and Hayden - playing tricks and pranks on Menzel (gen)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Franz/Amelia - awkward first kisses
Fire Emblem 8, Franz, Forde, – teasing Franz about his first date (gen)
FE8, Forde and Franz - the boy may be one of the army’s best, but Franz will always see him as his little brother
FE8 - Franz+Natasha (gen)―Faith and healing. (n)
FE8 - Franz+Natasha (gen)―Learning about each other’s families. (n)
FE8 - Franz+Natasha (gen)―You inspire me. (n)
FE8 - Franz, Seth - hero worship (gen) (n)
FE8 Forde: "What did I do this time?"
FE8, Forde and Eirika - slowly becoming her right hand as the restoration progresses
FE8, Forde and Ephraim - at times he doubts Ephraim’s plans, but keeps silent and supports him anyway
FE8, Forde/Vanessa - their mounts aren't quite getting along, humor, couple shenanigans (n)
FE8, Forde/Vanessa - the way to a rider’s heart is through her mount, but he hasn’t the slightest clue how to paint a pegasus
Sacred Stones: Forde/Eirika, modern AU. He's a college student majoring in business, she models for his required art elective as her work-study.
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Gerik/Marisa - sparring together
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Gerik/Marisa - the moment which made her fall in love with him
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Gerik/Tethys - dance with me.
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Gerik/Tethys - getting Ewan to call him 'uncle Gerik'
Fire Emblem 8, Gilliam/Syrene – I'd wait for you
Fire Emblem 8, Hayden, Tana, silence
Fire Emblem : The Sword of Seals, Hector – A dying man reflects on everything he could have done for the people he leaves behind. (n)
Fire Emblem 8, Innes – attempting to show affection in the most pompous way
FE8 Innes: "Naval base (historical AU)."
FE8, Knoll and Duessel - considering Grado’s future over tea
FE8, Knoll/Lute - following each other deeper and deeper into magical research
FE8, Knoll and Natasha - helping to heal the wounded after the disaster strikes
Sacred Stones: Knoll/Natasha, vampire hunter AU
FE8: Kyle, "game over" AU (n)
FE8- Kyle/Lute, experimenting (n)
FE8, Kyle, Rennac - spy master vs. spy (n)
FE8 - Innes/Eirika―Ballroom dancing. (n)
Fe8- Innes/Eirika, protection (n)
FE8 - Innes+Tana (gen)―Tana protects Innes. (n)
Fire Emblem 8, Innes/Vanessa - always I wanna be with you
FE8, Ismaire and Joshua - history lessons (n)
FE8 Joshua: "Freelance tattoo artist and erotic novel author." [Pairing optional, but FE8 Joshua/Natasha preferred.]
Fire Emblem 8, Joshua/Natasha - first kiss, just like a drug
FE 8, Joshua/Natasha - She's become pretty good at gambling now, but when she wins she never asks for anything that Joshua wouldn't give.
FE8 - Joshua/Natasha - hurt/comfort after Jehenna
FE8 - Joshua/Natasha - a crown fit for your burnished brow
Fire Emblem 8 - L'Arachel (by herself or including a character of your choice) - "Dear diary..."
FE8, L'Arachel - the aftermath of her parents' deaths and her decision to fight monsters (n)
FE8- L'Arachel/Joshua- heads I win, tails you lose (n)
FE8 - L'Arachel, Rennac - the Queen's (unwilling) confidante (gen) (n)
FE8, Natasha/Anyone - after the war (n)
FE8 - Natasha+Amelia (gen) – Post-war. Her admiration for Natasha leads Amelia to wonder if she should take up healing. (n)
FE8, Myrrh - "dreams that won't disappear when I open my eyes" (n)
FE8: Myrrh -- "Frankenstein's monster." (N)
FE8, Myrrh, Saleh -- Sharing ancient legends (n)
FE8 Rennac/L'Arachel: "Angels we have heard on high--or not."
Sacred Stones: Saleh/anyone, recovering
FE8: Saleh, Gerik, Tethys, like old times
FE8 Saleh/Eirika – Meditation
FE8, Saleh/Eirika - the spirits within (n)
FE 8: Seth, Duessel (friendship); nostalgia
Fire Emblem 8, Seth/Eirika - he cannot recall the first moment that he fell in love, for he has denied it a thousand times or more.
Fire Emblem 8, Seth/Eirika - She's not a child anymore, and she doesn't need his protection.
FE8 - Seth/Natasha―Doing domestic work to cope with relocation. (n)
FE8 - Seth/Natasha―Learning to live for one’s self. (n)
FE8: Seth/Natasha - vows (n)
Fire Emblem 8 (pre-game), Tana, Syrene. learning how to ride a pegasus without breaking every bone
FE8, Syrene/Innes - unconventional (n)
FE8: Tana/Cormag, this is our secret
FE8- Tana/Ephraim, one-sided (n)
FE8, Tana and Innes - admitting she's not just a kid anymore (n)

FE8 - Artur/Joshua - "holy men shouldn't gamble" (n)
FE8, Colm/Rennac - locked in a room (n)
FE8, Eirika/L’Arachel - Eirika sells much of her finery to aid in her country’s recovery, but the ruby, she keeps
FE8 - Eirika/L’arachel―L’arachel’s recklessness worries Eirika. (n)
FE8, Eirika/L'Arachel - Learning to ride (n)
FE8 - Eirika/Tana―Dressing up. (n)
FE8 - Eirika/Tana―Tana can no longer convince herself that the male twin is the one she wants. (n)
FE8, Eirika/Tana -- Tana sees Eirika as a dashing hero (n)
FE8, Eirika/Tana - she rides with Tana one night as the other woman flies recon
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Ephraim/Eirika/anyone - the twins are polyamorous, and whoever they end up marrying becomes for more than just 'appearances', and is added to a menage a trois (or a menage a quatre?)
FE8, Ephraim/Lyon - british schoolboy AU (n)
FE8: Ephraim/Lyon, "I can't remember you"
Fire Emblem 8, Ephraim/Lyon, one last kiss (n)
FE8, Ephraim/Lyon - private school AU, stolen kisses, holding hands (n)
Fire Emblem 8; Ephraim/Lyon, they hear that their relationship almost mirrors the one their fathers had (NO adultery please)
FE8 Ephraim+Saleh (gen or pairing): "Renaissance".
Fire Emblem 8, Franz/Seth, admiration
FE8: Gerik/Innes, journalist AU
FE8, Glen/Saleh - patient/doctor, Glen survives AU (n)
Fire Emblem : The Sword of Seals, Idenn / Sophia – In the eyes of this one, so like she could have been, she found a means of regaining herself. (n)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Innes/Ephraim - he didn't want Ephraim looking at anyone else.
FE8 - Joshua/Arthur - Arthur ends up betting his clothes – and loses.
FE8 - Joshua/Arthur - "I'll protect you, but you'll have to pay..."
FE8: Joshua/Rennac -- featuring tsundere!Rennac and megane!Joshua. (n)
FE8- Kyle/Ephraim, loyalty (n)
FE8- Kyle/Forde, a work of art (n)
FE8, Forde/Kyle - they live to serve, but still find time for each other
FE8, L'Arachel/Eirika - Valentine's Day, AU (n)
FE8, L'Arachel/Eirika - fighting zombies on their wedding day (n)
Fire Emblem 8, L'Arachel/Eirika, wedding
Fire Emblem : The Sacred Stones, L'Arachel / Lute – Night and day, but unstoppable if they joined forces against the darkness. (n)
Fire Emblem 8, Lute/Vanessa, apples
FE8 Lyon+Ephraim (gen or pairing): "A geography lesson."
FE8: Lyon/Ephraim - "I'll drag you down with me" (n)
FE8 - Lyon/Knoll - hurt/comfort while hiding from a storm - pre-demon king?
FE8, Marisa/Tana - Fencing fan meets top fencer, Olympics AU (n)
FE8, Amelia/Neimi - by the end of the war, they lose count of the times they’ve saved one another on the battlefield
FE8, Neimi/Amelia, Pony Tale AU sans the "heroine gives up horses" downer ending and oppressive parents (n)
FE 8, Saleh/Ewan - all grown up.
FE8, Saleh/Gerik -- A visit to a tavern (n)
FE8, Saleh/Gerik -- Lost together in the desert (n)
FE8: Tana & Eirika - flying lessons (paired or gen) (n)
FE8, Tana/Marisa - flying through clear skies (n)
FE8, Tana/Marisa -- Smiling lessons (n)
FE8 - Tana/Syrene―Childhood fairytales. (n)
FE8 - Tana/Syrene―Cooking lessons. (n)
FE8, Tana/Syrene -- Tana teaches Syrene something in return (n)
FE8 - Tethys/Marisa―Dancing lessons. (n)

FE9/10

FE9/10 - any pair - sleepy cuddling.
FE9/10: any, "Something sweet for someone sweet."
FE9/10: any, "Ignorant savage."
FE9/10 –Ike, Psychotherapist!Ike au.
Fire Emblem 9/10 - Any Beorc/Laguz or Laguz pair of different tribes - Interspecies courtship and all the chaos it brings.
FE9/10 - Almedha/Elena―Fated meeting.(n)
FE10, Almedha/Elena -- Almedha finds something interesting in Grado (n)
FE9/10 - Almedha+Kurthnaga+Rajaion (gen)―Almedha’s risk-taking frightens a young Kurth.(n)
FE9/10 - Almedha+Kurthnaga+Rajaion (gen)―Grieving. (n)
FE10, Aran/Laura, because I will always be swayed by you, and fall for you all over again
Fire Emblem 9/DC Comics - Ashnard is a Batman villain
FE9, Astrid and Marcia - girls' day out (n)
Fire Emblem, 9/10, Bastian/Lucia - Your lips are like wine, and I want to get drunk.
Fire Emblem 9/10: Boyd/Mist - Boyd's last attempt at a romantic dinner nearly burned the house down
Fire Emblem 10, Boyd/Mist – awkward dancing
Fire Emblem 9/10: Boyd/Mist - Boyd's last attempt at a romantic dinner nearly burned the house down
Fire Emblem 9/10: Boyd/Mist - holding hands
Fire Emblem 9/10: Boyd/Mist - Ike gives Boyd the 'shotgun talk' so to speak.
Fire Emblem 10, Boyd/Mist, talking to her after the confrontation with Rolf's mother
FE9 pre-canon - Elena, Mist - singing a heron's lullaby (gen)
Fire Emblem 10, Elincia, freedom
FE9/10: Elincia/Geoffrey - "don't throw your life away" (n)
Fire Emblem 10, Elincia/Geoffrey, pegging (n)
FE9/10: Elincia/Geoffrey - power balances (n)
FE9/10 - Ena/Rajaion―Literature.(n)
FE9/10 - Ena/Rajaion―You promised me centuries. (n)
FE9/10 - Ena/Rajaion―A thousand years later, she still has only one love. (n)
FE9/10 - Gatrie, Shinon - idiots don't catch colds (gen) (n)
FE9, Geoffrey and Bastian - apprehension (n)
FE9/10 Geoffrey/Elincia – At home
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Geoffey/Elincia – Geoffrey comforts her on the morning of her coronation with stories of old times.
FE10, Geoffrey/Elincia - honeymoon (n)
FE9/10 ~ Geoffrey/Elincia, kissing in the rain
FE 10, Geoffrey/Elincia - Marrying for love, not for duty.
Fire Emblem 9/10 - Geoffrey/Elincia - “The moment my eyes fell on him, I was content.”
FE9/10, Geoffrey/Elincia, Where it all began.
FE9 pre-canon - Greil/Elena - in our lovely little garden
FE9 pre-canon - Greil/Elena - "He looks like you."
FE9/10 - Greil Mercenary ensemble―Peacetime is harder to get used to than they’d thought.(n)
FE10, Hatari in general - secret paradise in the sands (n)
Fire Emblem : Path of Radiance, Ike / Mia – Neither of them meant for it to happen, but happen it did, and now, it has to be addressed. (n)
Fire Emblem 10, Heather+Gatrie, who can lure the most ladies
Fire Emblem 10, Hetzel - what is right anymore?
Fire Emblem 9/10, Ike+Elincia - she talks to him about Lucia and Geoffrey (gen)
Fire Emblem 9/10: Ike, Ranulf - texts from last night (gen, AU)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Ike, Ranulf - Chuck Norris jokes (gen, AU.)
FE10, Ike and Shinon - "maybe you're okay after all" (n)
Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn - Ike/Titania, friends with benefits, something sexy. AU or whatever, I don't care~
FE9/10 - Janaff, Lucia - they finally go out for that "wild night out on the town" (gen) (n)
FE10, Kurthnaga -- Post-game, dealing the weight of his new title (n)
FE10, Kurthnaga, Almedha -- Post-game, he brings her back to Goldoa and they support each other (n)
FE9/10 Kurthnaga+Ena – Post-RD, Kurthnaga supports Ena as she raises his brother’s child (gen)
FE9/10 - Kurthnaga+Gareth (gen or pairing)―“You wouldn’t really have let me kill you…would you?”(n)
FE9/10 Kurthnaga+Soren – Post-RD (centuries later), Kurthnaga seeks to reconnect with his nephew (gen)
FE10, Leanne/anyone - a kiss is understood in any language
Fire Emblem 10 - Lehran/Altina - "Let no man dream but that I love thee still."
Fire Emblem 10, Lehran/older!Sanaki - finally at peace
Fire Emblem 10, Lehran/older!Sanaki - the beginning after the end
FE9/10, Lethe and Jill friendship, "What do friends do?"
Fire Emblem 10, Leonardo, coming to terms (n)
FE10: Leonardo, Nolan, instruction
FE9/10 Ranulf/Lethe - he knows that teasing her is playing with fire, but he can't resist.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Renning, missing memories
FE9, Reyson and Leanne - "you're alive, that's more than I ever could have hoped for" (n)
FE9, Makalov and Marcia - "I may be the worst person in the world, but I DO care about my only sister" (n)
FE 10 (Meg/Anyone) – Meg as an adorable housewife, domestic fluff
FE10, Meg and Nephenee - girl talk (n) (gen)
Fire Emblem 10, Meg+Nephenee, almost like sisters (gen)
FE9/10 - Mia, Rhys - taking a breather (gen) (n)
FE10, Micaiah - "how far am I willing to go?" (n)
FE9/10 - Micaiah (gen)―Seeing into others’ hearts is both a blessing and a curse. (n)
FE10, Micaiah/Pelleas - "all you did was save my life" (n)
FE10, Micaiah/Pelleas - I came apart inside a world made of angry people /I found a boy who had a dream / of making everyone smile
FE9/10 - Muarim, Tormod - "you've grown up" (gen) (n)
Fire Emblem 10, Pelleas/Micaiah - the fault lies not in our stars
Radiant Dawn: Pelleas/Micaiah, until the very end
FE10 - Soren, Pelleas, the effects of spirit charming
FE10, Stefan - "how do you go on after believing a lie all your life" (n)
FE9/10: Stefan, solitude (n)
FE9/10: Pelleas, spirit charming
FE9/10 - Pelleas+Kurthnaga (gen)―Encouraging each other while in the tower of guidance.(n)
FE10: Pelleas, Sothe, apologies
Fire Emblem 9/10, kid!Mist, Greil Mercenaries -- tea parties (gen)
FE10, Naesala - penance (n)
Fire Emblem 9/10 - Naesala/Leanne - Tibarn and Reyson insist on chaperoning his courtship for the sake of their sister's honor.
FE9/10: Nailah/Rafiel, a song for you (n)
FE10 Nailah/Rafiel – An unconventional wedding
FE9/10 - Nailah/Rafiel―Rafiel choosing to return to Hatari with Nailah.(n)
FE10, Nailah/Rafiel -- Rafiel tells Nailah what the skies were like (n)
Fire Emblem 10 - Nailah/Rafiel - outsiders were unsure which to label the queen of the realm.
FE10, Nailah/Rafiel -- With her, he can fly (n)
FE10, Oscar, Boyd and Rolf - discussing mother (n)
FE9, Oscar/Ilyana - the way to her heart (n)
Fire Emblem 10, Rafiel/Nailah, chapter 4-4 aftermath
Fire Emblem 10 - Rafiel/Nailah - dominance by gentleness
FE9/10 - Rhys/Titania - can't help but worry (n)
FE9, Rolf/Mist - catching fireflies (n)
Fire Emblem 9, Rolf/Mist - now that she can use swords, it's her turn to protect him
Fire Emblem 9 - Sephiran, Sanaki - Sanaki draws her vassals into her plot to prank the heck out of the senators (gen)
FE9/10 Sanaki -- The enemy would regret underestimating her (gen)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Shinon, Gatrie - bad pickup lines (gen)
Fire Emblem 9, Shinon/Titania - "I miss him, too."
FE10, Shinon/Titania - "we both miss him" (n)
Fire Emblem 10, Soren+Goldoa - their connection is realized much sooner
Fire Emblem 9/10, Soren+Mia - "only because you're Ike's friend" (gen)
Fire Emblem 10, Soren+Pelleas - almost brothers
FE 10, Stefan - building a home. (Gen)
FE9 and 10: Soren, Mist, "but I don't know you very well" (gen please)
Fire Emblem 10, Sothe/Micaiah - “I’d like to run away from you, but if you didn’t come and find me… I would die.”
FE9, Tauroneo and Rolf - "I'll be your father" (n)
Fire Emblem 9, Titania+Elena - pre-game, Titania just wants her beloved to be happy (gen)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Titania + Mist, like the mother she's never had (gen)
FE10, Zihark/Ilyana - "let's build a new future" (n)

Fire Emblem 10, Edward/Leonardo - Edward mistakes boyfriend for boy friend. Chaos ensues.
Fire Emblem 10 Edward/Leonardo. modern au where someone is pursuing Edward because of his name in hopes of dating a sparkly vampire. It's up to Leonardo to defend him.
FE10: Edward/Leonardo, the night I found you
FE 10 - Geoffrey/Pelleas, diplomacy and awkwardness
FE10, Heather/any girl - date night (n)
FE9/10 - Heather/Elincia―Elincia invites Heather to work for the castle as a spy.(n)
FE 9/10 - Heather/Elincia, pretending to be an average woman
Fire Emblem 10, Heather/Elincia - while Lucia and Geoffrey were fighting for her attention, a thief snuck in and stole the queen away.
FE10: Heather/Lucia, frustrations
FE9/10 - Heather/Nephenee―Conscience. (n)
FE9/10, Ike/Soren, Mist/author's choice; both of them were branded all along without realizing it (I'm thinking Heron blood from Elena's side of the family for Mist, and some sort of beast or bird branded for Ike's side)
FE10/Super Smash Bros:Brawl, Ike/Soren – because Soren will follow Ike anywhere, Soren joins Ike in the fray. (Maybe as a special attack? Or simply spending his time being cranky and glaring at anyone who he thinks might steal Ike away.)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Ike/Soren - breathing lessons
FE9/10 Ike/Soren – “I don’t care, no I wouldn’t dare/To fix the twist in you”
FE9/10 Ike/Soren – (Modern AU) Ike and Soren watch the original series of Star Trek. “If I were a Starfleet captain, you’d be my Vulcan science officer.”
FE9/10 Ike/Soren – “I took the stars from my eyes and then I made a map/I knew that somehow, I could find my way back”
FE9/10 - Ike/Soren―Picking up a new hobby in peacetime.(n)
FE9, Ike/Soren - sharing body heat (n)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Ike/Soren, sleepless
FE9/10 Ike/Soren – “You are the nighttime fear/You are the morning when it’s clear/When it’s over, you’re the start/You’re my head and you’re my heart”
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Ike/Soren + Mercenary ensemble – superhero au.
FE9/10 Ike/Soren - what makes life are those small, unremarkable acts of kindness and love. (n)
Fire Emblem : Path of Radiance, Ilyana / Mia – A certain attachment to food becomes, to the delight of both, erotically charged. (n)
FE9/10 Janaff/Ulki - double trouble
FE9, Lethe/Jill - 1960s spy AU (n)
Fire Emblem 10, Jill/Lethe - building bridges and learning an alternative to hate
Fire Emblem 10, Jill/Lethe - the trials and tribulations of attempting to woo a tsundere
Fire Emblem 10, Jill/Mist - a kiss for your return
FE9, Jill/Mist - taking her for a ride (n)
FE9/10 - Jill/Mist―Jill tries to return the favor by reaching out to Mist when she needs it.(n)
Fire Emblem 10, Jill/Mist - picking flowers
FE9/10 - Jill/Mist―Sharing old stories passed down in Daein and Crimea.(n)
FE9/10 Jill/Mist – “You make all of my worries go away when you're near me...”
FE9/10, Kyza/Ranulf – flirting for notes on the class he missed (au)
FE9/10 Kyza, Lyre (Ranulf) - They’re Will & Grace-esque roommates and friends until they fall
in love with the same man. Then it's war.
Tellius series: Elincia/Lucia, don't look away
Fire Emblem 9/10, Lucia/Elincia/Heather - fighting for her attention
FE9/10 - Lucia/Elincia―Lucia being gallant.(n)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Lucia/Elincia, “Night and day, you are the one.”
FE9, Lucia/Elincia - welcome home (n)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Mia/Ilyana - "Geez, another dinner date like that and I'll be broke for sure!"
Fire Emblem 9/10 - Naesala/Reyson - black wings always bring black luck
Fire Emblem 9/10 - Naesala/Reyson - forgiveness
FE 10, Nasir/Volug - talking, amongst other things.
Fire Emblem 10 - Oliver/herons - Is it a dream? OR IS IT.
FE9/10: Sephiran/Zelgius, in the years afterward (n)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Sephiran/Zelgius - saying goodbye.
Fire Emblem 9/10, Sephiran/Zelgius - the last time they met.
'Fire Emblem 9/10, Sigrun/Tanith - steadier footing
Fire Emblem 9/10, Sigrun/Tanith - Sanaki's two mommies.
Fire Emblem 10, Skrimir/Ranulf -- "five days since you tackled me/I've still got the rugburns on both my knees"
Fire Emblem 10, Sothe/Micaiah/Pelleas - "we can make it work"
FE9/10 StefanxMordecai – Through Mordecai, Stefan gets more in touch with his laguz side.
FE9/10 - Soren/Stefan - watching the world pass us by (n)
FE10, Tanith/Sigrun, Sanaki -- Balancing duty and family (n)
FE9/10 - Tanith/Sigrun―Sigrun catches the normally brusque Tanith having a tender moment with her pegasus. (n)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Tibarn/Reyson, across the distance
Fire Emblem 10 - Tibarn/Reyson - some have grumbled that Reyson at times has wielded on unfair advantage towards swaying their king's opinion.
Fire Emblem 9/10, Tormod/Sothe - four times they had crazy adventures and one time where they stayed home and just chilled.
FE10, Tibarn/Reyson - hammering out a compromise (n)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Tormod/Sothe - his attempts to get Sothe's attention sort of resemble public vandalism.
Fire Emblem 9/10, Tormod/Sothe - I am convinced we could be friends / we have many interests in common / please don't put your face into your hands /we could be friends
Fire Emblem 9/10, Tormod/Sothe - teaching each other the tools of the trade (Sothe teaching Tormod how to steal, Tormod teaching Sothe magic)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Tormod/Sothe - together they fight crime
Fire Emblem 9/10, Ulki/Rhys - defying gravity
FE9/10 Ulki/Rhys – Sunshine
FE10, Zelgius/Sephiran -- I can't order you to live (n)
Fire Emblem 9/10, Zelgius/Sephiran - university AU

Fire Emblem : Awakening, Anna – Faced by a series of silly DLC episodes, she attempts to break the fourth wall and stop Intelligent Systems from making more. (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Chrom/Avatar/Sumia, benefits (n)
FE Awakening, Aversa/Robin, a different kind of magic
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Cherche, meeting Minerva (n)
FE Awakening, Chrom - he's always had a fear of losing people and being left alone
FE Awakening, Chrom and Lissa - legacy (n)
FE Awakening, Cordelia/Stahl - beautiful music (n)
FE13 - Chrom/male MyUnit/Lucina - Awkwardness is abound when MU is approached by both of his dear friends with confessions of love. (n)
FE 13 - Chrom/Maribelle, Lissa/Maribelle - hurt/comfort after chapter 11 (n)
Fire Emblem : Awakening, Cordelia / DLC Titania – Like looking into a mirror, at first, but far more than that. (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Cynthia/Severa, playing a part (n)
Fire Emblem 13, Emmeryn/Phila, trying to remember
FE Awakening, Gerome/Laurent - "I've always noticed you" (n)
FE Awakening, Gregor - one's greatest failure (n)
FE Awakening, Henry/Ricken, sharing a sleeping pallet
FE Awakening, Henry/Sumia - discussing books (n)
FE Awakening, Henry/Sumia – the magic touch
FE Awakening, Inigo/any - "Yep, Mr. Ladies' Man is a virgin. Go ahead and laugh!"
Fire Emblem 13 - Kellam/Olivia - sweets for the sweet (n)
Fire Emblem 13 - Kellam/Olivia - shy kisses (n)
FE Awakening, Kjelle/Severa - motorcycle AU (n)
FE Awakening, Laurent, alone
FE Awakening, Lissa/Maribelle, flowers
FE 13 - Lissa/Maribelle - getting married. (n)
FE 13 - Lissa/Maribelle - "I'll never leave you, my darling." (n)
FE Awakening, Lissa/Maribelle - "i want to ruin our friendship, we should be lovers instead" (n)
FE Awakening, Lon'qu/any - he really hates the heat
FE13, Lon'qu/F!Avatar - "If you like, we can pretend it's nothing."
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Lucina/any, building a future (n)
FE Awakening, Lucina and her sibling - "I will protect you" (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Lucina, Morgan, sibling bonding (n)
FE13 - Lucina/female!MU - fight what you cannot change (n)
FE13 - Lucina/female!MU - I know you see me the way I was before (n)
FE13 - Lucina/female!MU - please remember me (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Lucina/Gerome, masks (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Lucina/Severa, sharp things (n)
Fire Emblem Awakening, Male Avatar/Spotpass Emmeryn - Secrecy and promises (no one believes in innocent intentions anymore) (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Maribelle/Lissa, dessert (n)
Fire Emblem : Awakening, "Marth" / DLC Roy – Seeking the aid of the Young Lion brought her to the person who best understood her crusade. (n)
Fire Emblem : Awakening, My Unit (Robin) / DLC My Unit (Chris) – Meeting as enemies, they constantly try to one-up each other. (n)
FE Awakening, Nah/Cynthia - schoolgirl AU (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Nowi, Panne, being human (n) )
FE Awakening, Owain and Inigo - college AU, watching stupid YouTube videos (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Owain/Noire, dual natures (n)
FE13, Phila/Emmeryn—Pre-game bonding in private.
FE Awakening, Say'ri and Yen'fay - "you don't know how far I'd go for your sake" (n)
FE13, Say'ri/Tiki -- I forbid you from leaving (n)
FE13, Say’ri/Tiki—If I'm a pagan of the good times/My lover's the sunlight
FE13, Say'ri/Tiki -- Keeping her happy is her hardest task (n)
FE Awakening, Severa/Noire, Noire being the caretaker for once
FE Awakening, Severa/Noire - "you bring out the best in me" (n)
FE13, Severa/Noire—Wanting to always protect Noire while also loving both sides of her.
FE Awakening, Stahl/any, nice guys finish first
FE13, Sully/Miriel—After Miriel reassures Sully over her differences in their A support, Sully returns the favor.
FE Awakening, Sully/Stahl - first meeting as kids (n)
FE Awakening, Sumia/any, motherhood
FE13, Sumia/Cordelia—Planting a flower garden.
FE Awakening, Tharja - her history, her family, the inner workings of her mind
FE Awakening, Tharja/any - she really hates the cold
FE13, Tiki and Lucina - both of them are displaced in time, and it helps them understand one another
FE13, Tiki/Say’ri - even in her human form, she generates a dragon’s warmth
FE13, Tiki/Anna - eventually, she stops resisting her instincts and finally drapes herself across the merchant’s gold hoard
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Tharja, Henry- competition (n)
FE 13 - Tharja/female!MU. - 'I'll kill who you hate, take off that dress, you won't freeze.' (n)
Fire Emblem: Awakening- Tharja/Female Avatar, obsessed (n)
FE 13 - Tharja/female!MU. - 'she's sleeping on my doorstep, she hasn't hurt me yet.' (n)
FE 13 Tharja/Henry - "Look at her. I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss."
FE 13, Tharja/Henry - "Don't torture yourself, that's my job."

game crossovers:

Fire Emblem 9/DC Comics - Ashnard is a Batman villain
FE13/8- Chrom/Eirika, peace (n)
FE8 and 9&10: Eirika and Ephraim meet Lucia and Geoffrey. Pairings, gen, anything is fine.
Fire Emblem 7/8 Forde and Sain - admiring the ladies together while their respective stuffy friends disapprove (gen)
FE8/FE9-10 – Ike+Ephraim, Ephraim meets someone who’s everything he wants to be. Bromance ensues. Bonus points for side sismance Eirika+Mist. (Gen, nothing above PG-13, please.)
FE6/8/9, Lyon/Knoll, Zephiel, Ashnard (any other rulers you want to throw in) - "I'm not certain if dessert, no matter how delicious the pudding, is enough to stop an international war started during the soup course." A recounting of the worst state dinner ever, modern day AU (n)
FE8/Final Fantasy 8 mashup - Force Your Way (bonus points for Ephraim with a gunblade)
FE9/10&FE6 - Herons, Elphin (with Herons/author's choice and Percival/Elphin) Elphin is a branded child with heron blood in him.
Fire Emblem 9/Persona 4 – If a guy this manly said it was okay to wear pink, Kanji figured it was true. (Kanji+Ike gen)
Fire Emblem 10/Marvel comics - Ike/Soren and Peter/Johnny - it'll be too soon if Soren never hears the word 'double date' again.
FE7-10 ~ Ike, Hector, Ephraim, manly fisticuffs
FE 7/10 - Ilyana, ensemble - Heath's Wyvern didn't eat all of Merlinus's food. Ilyana did.
FE1/3/11/12 and 8 - Hardin, Lyon, meeting somehow
Fire Emblem 9/Persona 4 – One short, androgynous, anti-social nerd was already hard enough on Kanji’s poor sexuality. (Kanji->Soren)
FE 8/10, Heather/L'Arachel - "Someone as beautiful as you shouldn't sleep alone."
FE 9/10 crossed with 7 - Reyson, Lucius, wanting to be stronger
Archanea+Ylisse, Xane, Lucina, Tiki—Xane shows up in Ylisse to reunite with Tiki and meets Marth’s descendant. (Gen)
Archanea/Awakening, Say'ri, Nagi (or Say'ri/Nagi) – a stranger with her face

Round 5 prompt post and rules

2015-06-05T01:14:00Z

Prompting
Prompts will be accepted from now until the 24th. There is no need to repost prompts from earlier rounds, as of last round's prompts that weren't written will be reposted and ready to claim this year as well.

You can comment here (or on the DW post) to leave your prompts.

You can also leave them in the ask box on tumblr, but between the limits and tumblr's habit of losing messages entirely, it may not get through.

There is no limit to how many prompts you can make, nor how many you can claim. You also don't need to be a member of the community or challenge to leave prompts. Prompts can be claimed by as many people as want them, and yes, art is very welcome too.

I can't emphasize this enough. The more prompts you leave, the less I have to worry about as a mod, so don't feel bad about leaving tons of prompts.

Now for some examples of prompts:

Fire Emblem 8, Gilliam/Syrene – I'd wait for you

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Geoffey/Elincia – Geoffrey comforts her on the morning of her coronation with stories of old times.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Ike/Soren + Mercenary ensemble – superhero au.

There doesn't need to be a uniform mention in how you label the prompts – either number, game title or universe will do, as they're going to be all sorted by game when I post them anyways.

You can also request no side pairings, or request a pre canonical happening.

That would be like:

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Rolf/Mist – holding hands and first kisses (nothing over PG-13, please.)

Fire Emblem 7, Kent/Lyn – "You mean you've never made a grass flute? Here, let me show you–" (No other pairings than this, please.)

Fire Emblem (Tellius pre-canon), Lehran/Altina – I have seen a thousand sunsets in your eyes.

Pure gen is also allowed, and should be requested like so:

Fire Emblem 8, Franz, Forde, – teasing Franz about his first date (gen)

You can specify certain pairings allowed in your restricted request, but not specify what pairings or types of pairings (het, femslash, slash) can't come in. For example, you could ask for Lowen/Rebecca – Taking Wolt for his first play date to meet Roy (Eliwood/Ninian is fine, but please no other pairings than this) but you couldn't request Rath/Lyn – taking to the plains (No slash or femslash allowed) or Boyd/Mist – awkward dancing (absolutely no Ike/Soren mentions)

If you're especially worried about a certain pairing showing up, simply ask it to be side-pairing free.

You can also ask for any series prompts, a character/anyone prompts and crossovers, whether they involve crossovers of FE centric games or not. They'd go like this:

Any series/any pairing - Hurt/comfort in the rain
FE 6 - Karel/anyone - "You remind me of someone I knew long ago."
FE 8/10, Heather/L'Arachel - "Someone as beautiful as you shouldn't sleep alone."
Fire Emblem 10/Marvel comics - Ike/Soren and Peter/Johnny - it'll be too soon if Soren never hears the word 'double date' again.

Ok, now to clarify on something which didn't occur to me when originally writing up the rules.

Prompts can be combined, within reason. Say I had claimed FE9/10, Ike/Soren - breathing lessons. However, realizing it covered the same ground, I could combine it with any/any - hurt/comfort in the rain. I couldn't however, add FE9/10, Tibarn/Reyson - under the shelter of your wings if there was a minor mention/subplot of them.

There's no limit to how many themes can be combined.

To leave prompts, you can put them in the comments of either the Dreamwidth or Livejournal entries. You can leave them in the ask box on tumblr, but between the limits and tumblr's habit of losing messages entirely, it may not get through.

Content rules

As of four rounds in, there's been no heavy restrictions on content. At the moment, I'll keep it this way unless something happens to push for harsher rules. Of the many entries we've had, there hasn't been a single one which even needed a larger warning. However, if your piece contains non-con, explicit underage, or extreme violence, you should tag it as such. Also NC-17 works in general should either be linked to, be under a cut, or tagged nsfw.

Fanworks

The minimum is 100 words for pieces for writing, and there is no maximum. As for art, having no skill of my own in that sector, I'll leave that up to the discernment of the artist themselves. Whether it turns a sketch, an oekaki-based bit, or a whole multiple page comic, whatever. However, generally doodles on the back of coffee napkins with food stains would be pushing it a bit.

Stories can be as long as the inspiration provides, and yes, they can be posted in WIP format if the plot bunnies get away from you. You don't need to have all of the WIP done by the deadline, and if life gets the better of you and you can't post on time or lose inspiration, defaulting won't bar you from later rounds or besmirch your honor in any way.

When it comes time to post in dreamwidth and Livejournal, here's the format:

Title:
Series (or "Game" if you prefer)
Character/Pairing:
Rating:
Summary (optional)
Word count:
Author's Note:

and then put it behind a lj-cut, or link to a post containing it.

To post to tumblr, you can either post with Fefestmod in one of the five tags, or submit it to the community. The first five tags part is imperative, as anything after that won't show up in tracked tags.

Art on tumblr does not need this header, as it won't be under a cut.

Betas are encouraged, but not necessary as not everyone has one or for those last-minute fics done just under the bar.

Note that if anyone feels particularly shy, you can claim as an anon. You need to contact me via PM or comment on the claims post when it comes up. On tumblr, posts can be submitted anonymously to the community, or linked from anonymous posts on hosting sites such as Archive of our own.

Got a question? PM me, leave a comment or send an ask. Just make sure you're actually set to allow incoming private messages because, had that happen before.

[Fill] Because You Know Me

2014-06-30T22:02:57Z

Title: Because You Know Me
Series: Binding Blade, FE6
Characters: Gale, Miledy, Zeiss, Percival (appearances from Wendy and Lilina)
Pairing: Gale/Miledy
Rating: G
Word count: 4,083
Summary: Instead of staying to find out what General Murdock wanted, Gale purposefully avoided the messenger from Ilia to help a young wyvern rider in danger. (AU)
Prompt: Fire Emblem 6, Gale/Miledy - AU where he defected/was able to be recruited

Gale saw the messenger standing outside his field tent. The colors of gold and purple did not stand out too obviously amid other noble Etrurian messengers in their silver and indigo, but the double headed wyvern emblazoned on his chest might as well have been a beacon of lightning. In the chaos of the command departing from this field camp to the castle proper Gale did not think that he had been seen. He clenched the orders he had so recently intercepted in his fist, and doubled back in the crowd.

This couldn't wait. The General would understand, when it was over. If it ever was over. Narshen and his little child's games might haunt Gale the rest of his career, but he would not allow good wyvern riders loyal to the crown to be caught up in them.

As Gale headed for the wyvern corral, he thought he caught movement from the messenger out of the corner of his eye. A distraction. He must have one. He could go in good conscience, if he never knew what message the General was trying to give him. Once those orders were relayed, however—he picked up his pace, dodging around a contingent of Etrurian soldiers decked out in the deep colors of a noble family close to the throne.

A man clearly leading the contingent stood aside with barely concealed dislike in his eyes. Gale mentally cataloged his trappings, continuing on before the silver lance, the dark colors, and bold Etrurian hair tapped on his hind thoughts. General Murdock had been meaning to interview speak to anyone who had seen Narshen's performance—and Gale suspected, because he was not blind, the king's—at Missur. General Percival had not only been there, he had left at about the same time as Narshen had absconded, according to the reports Gale had read. Those traitorous hind thoughts that reminded him again and again that missions were not achieving the goals they should, and noted over and over that his king was not acting as the leader he had been last year, let alone when he was a prince, and Gale was young and enthralled with his service, pointed out that this was one weapon against the messenger that would surely delay any summons from the General.

“General!” Gale doubled back, much to the surprise of the group. “I am—” for a moment his rank failed him. There had been a lot of deaths as the Lycian army advanced. General Murdock had said there might be another promotion for him, soon. But for now best to go for the title that was most generically impressive— “Flight Commander Gale, aide to General Murdock. My apologies. General Murdock did wish to speak with you, after the incident in Missur. But he has been detained in Ilia these long months. He did send a courier. I saw the man back by the wyvern lords' tents. Even if a meeting is impossible, at least you may communicate by letter.”

Something squirmed in his stomach. He hoped his face remained immobile. He had not actually lied. General Murdock did want to talk to this man. Gale was not, yet, a traitor. And he had not betrayed the man who had taken him in, and taught him everything. That much was important. If he was going to disregard a senior officer's orders, it would be orders that were grossly unjust and made without any respect for the army's needs and ways of dealing.

The Etrurian general's face settled into a skeptical frown. “And why can I not send the message through you?”

That answer was easy enough, and why the army used couriers. “I am currently stationed at this camp, which is about to go into battle with the Lycian army, sir. There is very little use telling me what you wish to say if I am dead in two hours. The courier knows his job well, and will get the message through.”

Gale caught a snort of suppressed laughter, but he was giving General Percival the same respectful gaze he used on any commanding officer he was unsure of, which consisted of looking into blank air about two handspans to the left of the man's ear. It was possible that he had amused one of the men attending on the general with his frankness.

“Very well. Let me see if I can find this messenger of yours before I fall in battle, too.”

Gale took that as his dismissal, and bowed.

Spring rains and the weight of an army division had turned the ground of the camp into a muddied hole, but the day itself was fine, with a light breeze that would lift any wyvern with ease. Gale wished it would lift him, as he strode toward the straw filled ground of the wyvern corral. Not that straw had greatly reduced the mess that a full troop of twenty wyverns could create on muddy ground. Thank goodness Crow was not in the habit of rolling, the way some wyverns were wont to do.

The temporary fence was to keep humans and horses out, and rocked as Gale hauled himself over, trying to land in a clear space that wasn't occupied with sun greedy reptiles. Most of the full grown wyverns had congregated in a pile in the the sunniest part of the huge circle, using their war spines to keep the younger ones at bay if they grew tired of playing in the tree lined shade.

He walked carefully toward the pile, making clicking noises to reassure the lords of the sunny roost. His own giant black comfort lifted a sleepy head to glare balefully at him when he neared.

“Come on,” Gale soothed, walking to the shoulder that would bear the saddle's weight. “We have to keep someone's head on their shoulders.”

Crow lashed his huge tail, but heaved himself to his feet after enough encouragement, and padded after Gale like any well trained hunting hound. By the time they had gotten into their gear, and managed to take Ziess' ground satchel from his tent, the movement of the army advancing upon the castle was clear. Gale leaned forward, digging in his heels.

The wind whistled through his hair, thrilling as always, as Crow zoomed toward the royal palace. Sometimes Gale wondered if he closed his eyes the rest of the world would disappear, and the simple seconds of flight would stretch on to eternity. All the worries, all the losses gone.

Then he spotted Rubley's rare true blue coloration amid the burnt ochres, tree greens, and slightly less usual loamy blacks of the wyvern squad lining up to General Narshen's specifications, getting ready for the coming battle. Crow landed like a charm, claws delicately biting into the grass of whatever royal park was contained within these walls, and allowing Gale to walk him neatly to Rubley's side.

“New orders, sir knight,” Gale addressed the young rider, feeling a sudden pang to realize that he was nearly a veteran. How many battles had the boy been in? The unhappy numbers were in a frozen barracks in Ilia, now. “Come with me.”

No one on the squad protested. Ziess even quailed a bit—unbecoming behavior, but Gale wondered if news of the orders was spreading. It would be just like Narshen to loudly proclaim his scapegoat for the world to hear. But surely, if Ziess thought that his execution awaited him, he would protest, rather than meekly guide his young wyvern after the larger bulk of Gale's Crow.

Searching for what he knew must be there, an example of Etrurian extravagance if there ever was one, Gale found a side door to allow horses into the the castle. In case an honor guard needed to ride up to the throne room, he thought, with perhaps more than the polite amount of sarcasm. As soon as Ziess entered the shadow of the door, he perked up. “Are we planning an ambush?”

“Of a kind,” Gale waited for the wooden door to shut behind them. “Have you seen the latest orders from General Narshen?”

“No—but my wing is one of the,” Zeiss stumbled over the truth of the term 'greenest most inexperienced set of recruits that never should have seen war if not for the recent losses in Lycia and Etruria's south.' “It's newer than most.”

“It is,” Gale agreed. Why had Ziess looked so scared for a moment, there? Well, that was another question for another day, if they both survived their respective fates. “Do you know where your sister is?”

“She is with the princess, I assume, as the king has ordered,” Ziess gave Gale a funny look. “Not to presume, sir, but it is a little irresponsible to take me aside just to ask after the well being of my sister.”

So, Ziess had clearly been given the same official line that the rest of the troops had. In a certain way, given that a commander like Narshen knew the truth, and he was hardly the only attractor of gossiping toadies among the command staff, Gale had to be impressed that the actions of the princess had been kept secret for as long as they had. Who was trying to spare her reputation? Once, it would have been her brother, but recently, the king—Gale cut that thought off as disloyal to all the years he had served Zephiel. Still, as far as Ziess knew, Princess Guinivere was safe, and with his sister, which was, much like Gale's conversation with General Percival this morning, only the bare truth.

“Your sister defected to the Lycian Army in Missur, when the princess was retaken by the Lycians. I cannot say what the reason behind it was. I firmly believe that the princess would never do anything to endanger the future of Bern, and Dame Miledy is loyal to her like no other. We do not know the whole course of events, and what made those decisions the best ones for your sister and the Princess.

“Still, all of this happened, ostensibly, under General Narshen's command. He has been looking for a way to redeem himself in the eyes of the king ever since, and the king, I do believe, is no longer concealing his intent to place General Narshen in situations so beyond him that even the powerful family and friends that he has accumulated will not be able to save him,” Gale stopped himself.

Ziess' attentiveness was always going to be Gale's downfall. Miledy would listen, patiently waiting for confidences with kindness. Ziess had a sucking quality to his open interest that drew in stray thoughts Gale had always hoped to keep private. At this rate, the niggling worries Gale refused to acknowledge even to himself were going to come out.

Gale breathed in, settling his hand on Crow's neck. The side passage to the throne room was dark, and sounds from the other side of the walls were extremely muffled. “The General ordered that you be detained as a traitor, because your sister is supposedly one.”

“What?” Ziess' strangled cry broke his attitude of studious recruit. “But—I would never—Miledy would never—”

Gale tossed Ziess the satchel he had picked up from the tent shared by the recently made knights, forestalling more protest as Ziess fumbled for the catch. “I know that. I pray the King knows that. But there is something very evil happening in our army. You must join the Lycian army. Find your sister and the princess—”

“What about you?” Ziess' wide red eyes glittered with panic in the dim light of the side passage.

What about him? There was a messenger waiting for him in the camp. There was a general who almost certainly needed his aid. There was a war to win for his king. There was Bern, his home, declaring Miledy a traitor, and touching all who had associated with her with that brush, unless they proved themselves.

There was Miledy herself, who had followed her mistress for a reason. There was the princess who must have a very good reason to disobey her brother so, and put herself in such enormous danger. There had to be reasons for everything.

General Murdock had sent a messenger for him. Gale breathed out. “I will stay long enough to see that you are alive and in good hands, Sir. Zeiss. After that, our fortunes must part.”

“But—you cannot mean, surely you cannot mean for me to ally with the enemy?” Zeiss faltered. “I cannot!”

“You do not have to join them. You may surrender yourself as a prisoner of war for all that it matters,” Gale told the boy, immediately regretting the way his voice snapped at the end of the sentence. Zeiss was not the traitor here. He should be allowed his pride, and protected from the terrible decisions that others had made.

Said knight in need of protection bit his lip and stared at his saddle. “Why is this better than fighting together with my flight wing? Even if my family name is dishonored, I can still be at the side of my friends—”

“It is better because you are alive,” Gale told him, swallowing. “If you chose to become a prisoner of war rather than fight your friends I understand that, but all of these options are better than you being executed as a traitor, which will happen if you don't leave, now.”

“Lieutenant!” a voice echoed down the corridor. “A word, please.”

Gale tried to intimate with his best glare that Zeiss should stay still and quiet, before guiding Crow back to the entrance. A group of five soldiers stood there, looking nervous, as far as Gale could tell under the helmets. “Yes?”

The captain of the squad stepped forward, her heavy plate clanking. “Sir, we have orders to arrest a traitor, one Sir Ziess of the Eastern Flight Wing. We understood that you were with him.”

“I was just giving him new orders. What has he done?” Gale tried to wave his hand in a lack luster manner, as though he had sent Zeiss in that direction. His stomach churned at the thought of these people finding Zeiss in the corridor where Rubley's wings were a disadvantage. The soldiers were only doing their jobs. If he was smart, he could misdirect them.

One of the younger members of the squad passed his captain a sheet of paper. She consulted it, running her gauntleted finger down the page. These people were certainly dressed to take on a lone wyvern knight. “Sedition and communication with enemy forces, apparently. Don't worry sir, he is a wyvern knight after all,” the words had that unpleasant curling edge that Gale knew came from too many years of watching wyvern knights receive glory and commendation over any foot soldier, “and young. I'm sure he will just be detained and questioned, and kept from going outside to visit his .”

“Very well. Try to be at your posts when the battle starts, however,” Gale kept his poise in the saddle, back stiff, gaze respectfully beyond the captain's face, the image of a Flight Commander worried only about the coming victory.

The sound of a bugle and a sudden crash of thunder signaled that not only had the main palace entrance been breached, but the side wing where the mages were stationed was under attack. The squad captain signaled to her troop and they clattered off, in the opposite direction, Gale noticed, than the one he had indicated. Maybe, even if wyvern riders were not among her favorite comrades in arms, the captain felt that winning the battle for Bern was more important than hunting down a lone wyvern rider. Gale might ask her before he returned to General Murdock's side.

When he knew the soldiers could no longer see him, he let out a sigh of relief. The clash of arms managed only to be an occasional clink at this distance, but they were well out of it. Time to put on a brave face, and return to Zeiss. Young knights, at least, responded to confidence much better than they did to reality.

Crow whined as they entered the passage again, and Gale patted his war spines in apology. The echoing bangs and clattering from inside the castle were much louder and reverberated through the stone in a way that was surely awful for the wyverns. At the far end, Rubley snuffled noisily. Between his feet Zeiss sat with his head in his hands.

When Gale coughed, the knight jumped to his feet. “I—Sorry, Lieutenant.”

He had been crying, Gale would guess, seeing a slight shine on his cheeks. Of course, here he was with the noise of battle happening a wall's thickness away, in the dark, with an unhappy wyvern and all the certainties of the morning gone. Gale would breakdown, too. How many times during training had the now proud lieutenant of Bern sought out dark corners to curl in on himself and his unhappiness until Miledy had found and sat with him?

Patting Crow once more, Gale dismounted. About to step toward his trainee, a particularly stone rattling impact on the other side of the wall made him fish for a short javelin in Crow's saddle quiver. No reason to let them both be caught without some defense. He stood over Zeiss, looking at a young knight trying to be a knight rather than a young man left alone. If Miledy could have been here—but Gale was the only one, right now.

“It's not betrayal. Not for you. Your pledge of fealty as a knight was to the crown of Bern, and the princess is the king's heir,” maybe these weren't the right words.

“I'm fine sir, re—”

With a crash that set the wyverns to screaming in indignation, the wall exploded, peppering both knights with hot stone.

“Oh Father Sky! There was something behind that wall? Oh no, that noise—someone's hurt! Wendy, is there anyone on the other side? I didn't mean—”

“How could you know, Lady? It must be a secret passage. Here, is there anyone there?”

Through the dust and smoke a helmeted soldier in one of those impossible tin cans Ostia favored approached. Gale knew he shouldn't attack, if only not to make a bad impression for Zeiss, but Crow ceased bellowing for a moment, his nostrils flaring. Then the blocky head rammed over the knight's shoulder and he trilled happily, ignoring the alarmed yells this action caused.

Gale leaped for Crow's reins, yanking him back. Zeiss was running, but Rubley had been further back than Crow and Zeiss couldn't begin his new life by attacking these people. Gale swung himself onto Crow's neck, trying to parry quick lance thrusts coming from the armored knight. His full grown wyvern was already straining against the position of Gale's heels ordering him to stay, and nothing would stand in a small space with a wyvern charging them. He dug in his knees and Crow shot from stone and dust to carpeted hallway in an eyeblink, oversetting the knight and causing the mage to grab her thunder tome with a cry.

“Gale?!”

Crow's head lifted excitedly, and a flash of lightning smashed into Gale's armor, making his skin throb like a wasp's sting. The javelin in his hand clattered from numb fingers to the carpeted opulence of the palace. For a second, in the aftermath of shocks and pain, he thought he saw Miledy, which was ridiculous, as she was keeping the princess safe. He smiled at the illusion anyway.

“Lady Lilina, please hold your fire—Gale, it doesn't have to come to this!”

The words filtered through the ringing remains of his sense. Gale blinked, but Miledy, tall as ever on Trifinne, was real. Her younger brother was in danger. It was only right that she be here. He could return responsibility for Zeiss, admit that he had failed to keep the boy safe. He would then leave, if this group let him, or fight it out.

“I am sorry, Com—Dame Miledy,” Gale began, when Zeiss and Rubley managed to charge out of the wreck, eyes flashing and, sweet Mother Earth, was he planning to use his rucksack as a bludgeon until he got his hands on a spear? Gale wished fervently for the training ground and a less charged atmosphere, so that he could get Crow to take out Rubley's legs without the disaster that two war wyverns shoving each other in a hallway with stained glass could be. “Sir Zeiss!”

It was his teaching voice, taken from careful observation of the best drill sergeants and as hoped it brought Zeiss up short. It also caused the knight picking herself off the floor to come to attention, and at another moment, Gale would have laughed.

Gale focused his attention on the now smudged and generally unpresentable wyvern rider defector, rather than look at the people he should be speaking to. “I ask for a small truce, while I give this wyvern knight into your keeping.”

“Why?” the mage girl managed to force through the stunned silence.

“Sir Zeiss has been falsely accused of treason. I decided it was better that he join you and run the risk of dying in the arms of family, rather than by strangers. Now if you will excuse me, I must return to my duties—”

“Gale,” Miledy's voice was soft. “Please don't—please don't leave it at that. Don't you want to know why I am here, with this army?”

Something stuck in Gale's throat as he unwillingly turned to face Miledy. “To turn against the King? Of course you had your reasons. Good ones I am certain. Ones that made sense. I need no assurance—”

“The war is being fought for the wrong end, against the wrong people, Gale.”

And with her honesty, she cut through the swirling void of uncertainties that clung to him beseechingly. Please don't ask.

“We need to stop our king. I think you have known this.”

There was a messenger waiting for him, surely with instructions. Other people were counting on him. Please stop. Do not make sense. Do not ask. “I must go to General Murdock—”

The finishing blow was as direct as her lance. Miledy knew him better than anyone ever had. The dark secrets of his life were hers, safeguarded for just such a moment, when in the name of righteousness she needed to take him down a different path. “Join us, Gale. You won't be able to help the general when Zeiss' escape and your role in it become known. You know, better than anyone, how to talk to General Murdock. If we are to have a hope, if he is recalled to Bern and in the army's path, we could save so many good men.”

His eyelids itched hot and heavy when Gale closed them against the reasons Miledy provided. “I—” No one knew better than he did that General Murdock would rather die for Zephiel than live for Bern. They could never convince him otherwise. General Brunya was cast in the same mold, and she deserved better than ignominious defeat at the hand of this Lycian Army. The chance that he could reach either of them, his Wyvern Generals, was remote.

But Miledy was there, doing the right thing, standing by her princess, doing her duty. She chose the right path, even if it meant turning against everyone she had cared about. There should have been more like her. Instead, they were cowards too in love with a king who had been destroyed in front of their very eyes.

He would never be able to talk General Murdock out of laying down his life. No reason governed that tie chaining a good man to a dying memory. It was a choice made out of love. “If we both survive this battle, I would like to hear what you and the Princess have to say.”

Maybe he would share the poison of the observations welling inside of him over the years. Or maybe he would just hear them out, knowing that they were in the right.

[fill] Sealed in Silence

2014-06-30T18:51:48Z

Title: Sealed in Silence
Series: Pre-Game Elibe, (FE6/7)
Characters: Bramimond, Roland, Durban, Hanon, Athos, Hartmut, Elimine, Barigan
Pairing: Bramimond/All (asexual, but romantic)
Rating: T
Word count: 7,825
Summary: Bramimond has been walking through the void for longer than they can remember. Probably not before the war began, but certainly for a long time. These are the friends they love and remember.
Prompt: FE7, Bramimond -- Their descent into losing themselves

Warnings: Mention of genocide (of dragons on Valor), not Hasha compliant in the slightest

The first step is taken when a hand reaches out, to help a shaman stand from his seat on the verge of the road. A hood falls off, and several people in the party cry out.

“His eyes!”

“Roland, careful! Even here—he might be a sympathizer.”

“Stars bless us, is that possible? His eyes—has his soul been consumed, Athos?”

“I'm not the right person to ask on matters of the soul, but elder magic leaves other marks than onyx eyeballs. For all we know, those might be—”

“I believe I lost their proper colors due to a spell,” he says, still feeling the palm in his own, ungloved, and he can feel all of the lines and rough areas, and the hand is warm, whispering of a bright flame of compassion and love inside the compact body of flash and bone. “I don't really remember any more. It was a long time ago. But they function perfectly well.”

“Glad to hear it,” and the smile is as dazzling as the sincerity that echoes from this stranger. “Would you like to talk lunch with us? The party was planning on stopping anyway.”

He knew he would take any invitation this hand and that person offered. “Thank you. I am Bramimond.”

“I am Roland, of the New Human Kingdom of Lycia. Well, compared to dragonlands, I guess it's not really a kingdom. It's more like a single village too close to the mountains to be seen from the air, but it's a proud territory.”

“I am honored.” It feels like the right thing to say.

Hanon sights along her bow at the patrol wing flying high in the starlands. Bramimond always wonders why she does that, even though the wings are inevitably too high and far away to hit, even if the arrow could hurt them.

Hanon sings of earth and awareness. Her mind is always awake and roaming among the dreams of the earth that come through the cracks. He finds standing next to her at times to be a little trying, because she is a dream person and he thinks knows more about him, from the secrets that the dreams have whispered to her, than anyone else in the party. It is like hearing an echo of himself, when she thinks about him, and he would rather not be thought of at all.

“They can drop out of the sky, you know. Come in fast and snatch a horse from the middle of the herd,” Hanon says matter of factly, keeping her bow trained of flashes and sparks in the distance. “But if you keep your bow focused, you can hurt them. I took out a young one's eye once.”

“Did it really hurt him?”

“Wounding and maiming may be all we can do. But it's something at least,” Hanon is the voice of the sky, determination and courage. “I would rather kill cleanly. It is horrible to take something so ancient with all of that knowledge and experience from the world, but that is better than losing all your food and being enslaved to their whims like the mountain people.”

She hears him, and tells him by not telling him, that the echoes they sing together are all right. That is the second step.

Athos studies, constantly. He is what Hanon calls a sympathizer, Bramimond thinks. Maybe he is not. He is obsessed with dragons, certainly. With their destruction, perhaps. With their lives, maybe. Athos feels like energy and silver fish, ideas and thoughts spilling around out of his head. Bramimond has taken to listening to the earth far from his presence, lest he be overwhelmed. In the shadows, Athos is raw power.

The third, damnning step is taken one night when the camp fire is low. Bramiond comes out of his nightly trance to hear Athos and Elimine the Terrifying speaking in hushed tones.

“I can pray, you can study, these brave warriors will fight, but it accomplishes nothing, Athos. We must create something. An idea, a future—I don't know, something. Meanwhile, in any place where dragons believe humans are too prolific, fires burn and people die. One day we will circle back around and probably discover that Roland's precious Lycia is as in need as any of these cities and towns that we find over and over again. These pine forests and grand mountains are lovely, and well protected by the ice dragons here, but the entire world is not as lucky as this little corner.”

“And what would you have us build, Elimine? We can't talk to the dragons. They deem us insignificant. Our needs are less important than the least of their children—why should it be otherwise? We will never have half the experience of the world than their babies get from the hatching to toddling. And none of us are orators, much as Roland is charming, or I am learned, or you are charismatic. That is not how dragons value things.”

A whisper in the vast darkness in the earth.

“You could build something the warriors could use,” Bramimond says, waving a hand at their small party.

Elimine with her sun searing soul turns her attention on him. He feels the fear radiate from within, an echo all across the void of earth. “You heard the suggestion, too, then?”

“Just an echo. That the warriors need something to work with.”

“Weapons,” Athos says slowly. “We could make weapons that kill dragons rather than chip away at them and merely make the dragons angry.”

“There is great sin in spilling blood! The stars weep, even for dragons. They remember when the world was new. That is years of thought swept from this world, just so that mankind may be masterless.”

Athos nods. “It is a serious undertaking. But both you and Bramimond arriving at the same conclusion? I do not believe in fate, but I will take that as a sign from your god to my world, lady prophet.”

“Do not call me that and mock me,” her voice quavers with her love for and exasperation with this man of rapacious greed. Bramimond wants to shut his ears against it, but they both are filling him with energy and thought and feelings to the brim until the bright swirling mass will spill right out of his meager vessel and be collected in the hollows of the earth.

In the courts of the mountain kings, uncaring of the human subjects who tend to their needs, they meet another ally in Barigan's austere mold. Bramimond feels too many echoes from him, and hides under the shelter of a tent in the pouring rain. Usually Roland will come along and jolly him out of the stupor. Bramimond does not tell him that the echo of his purity is as welcome as the terrible jokes about all the great tall fellows and that the normal sized folk must stick together. Around Roland, Bramimond can sometimes feel like a hero.

But he cannot tell the knight with his endless love for all living things and codes of rightness that his soul burns so beautifully. He thinks both Elimine and Athos have realized that Bramimond is never entirely in the physical world. He knows Hanon, who smiles at him and calls his advice the Voice of the Mother, knows how deep he travels into the void of dreams, though he doubts she knows the extent to which he functions even while immersed in the whispers of the universe. The rest of the party should never know how far he is from human. Roland will worry. Barigan will be nervous. Durban will be unpredictable. All the others will fear him.

It is not Roland who finds him huddled under the canvas of a tent, however, but Durban. The massive exile stands outside the tent for a moment, and then beckons. “It's not safe, little witch.”

Nothing about Durban is safe. He can not tell friend from foe, when his soul gathers its great tumultuous way of going about the world, and feeds that whirlwind into pure strikes of power. But he has asked Bramimond to leave the tent, in his own way, and Bramimond will accept the invitation.

They stand on an ugly rocky slope covered in scrubby pines not like the stately northern giants, but twisted and grumpy, as though survival has been a chore, rather than a victory. The rain beats down hard enough to make pebbles dance. Thunder growls overhead, and lightning flares pink white against the black sky.

Durban grins down. “See? That is God Sword. It cuts down the tallest, like the trees, that tent, and anyone who sheltered under them. Not safe. Even for witches.”

Another shattering crack arcs through the sky. Something echoes through Durban. The lightning, the thunder. He spreads his massive arms under the rain, and laughs, his soul reaching through his body, through the dreams of the earth and sky, into the very creations of light and power, where everything is one, and everything is insignificant.

Turning from this revelation given to him in utter innocence by the great berserker, Bramimond rushes head long into the forth step, and the way a dragon slaying weapon must be built.

Elimine has always terrified Bramimond. She is a pillar of light and surety that reaches beyond the void, beyond the heavens, and every day she fills her vessel with more of that pure light. In the end, Bramimond believes she will become a sun. It is Roland magnified a thousand fold, and almost too much for him to bear. If you go to the gods for knowledge, that is one thing. It is quite another to ask the gods to come to you and to receive their blessing.

They work together, now. Athos has set up a work space in this Lycian forge and with all of the materials the have gathered, he shapes metal and creates weapons. Gangling and happy with the work he shouts over the clanging steel that he had been apprenticed to the task before his village burned and he was brought to a dragon's university in reparation.

Elimine and Bramimond stand on the rune diagram they have created. Elimine prays, her soul reaching, touching, trying to become like a spirit herself, despite the flesh that imprisons her. Bramimond seeks inward, wading into the void, trying to find the heart of things and the souls big enough to encompass the insignificance and the glory of all creation. Durban is first, because Bramimond knows the storm is there, waiting to be given shape and form. He stands between them, looking more and more worried, as Elimine chants and sings, while Bramimond sinks into whispers.

Bramimond spread through the void, encompassing the bolt of power that is Durban offering. He has found it. He gives the offering to Elimine's incandescent hands. Athos yells suddenly, jumping back from the forge, his tongs looking a good deal more melty than tongs should. Something is taken shape amid the coals and heat. Bramimond can feel spirits of rage, anguish, joy, and blood thirst all battling among the embers. Athos manages to fish out the implement, and toss it into the cooling bucket with hissing water, and then the air setting rack. He looks at the creation, almost distrustful.

“The steel just folded itself.”

The same thing happens with every viable candidate. Hanon's weapon is the most spectacular, as the arrow arrow heads not only reshape themselves, but the shafts of ash materialize out of the furnace when Bramimond gives the collected soul memory of fields and wind song over to Athos. Elimine and Bramimond stare at each other, and allow Athos to be excited for them. Surely, something is wrong here.

Roland's sword does not go out. There is the ever burning flame at the heart of the earth inside the steel and by the second day of work, Athos has to set the thing in the nearby streambed. Several children are scalded by the water, and the washing women herd the villagers higher up the mountain.

Barigan's spearhead is a wicked thing. The justice of his homeland which he had known and loved has become ashy and bitter in his soul now that he sees what it is to live without ice winged protection. The fire blazing deaths of the riders he was training did not make him cold as Bramimond has always supposed, but woken a spring of sorrow in his heart that gushes forever into the void. With that sharp edge Athos will not need to hone, the spear of ice is also one of grief, and Bramimond begins to have an inkling of the danger these weapons bring into the world with them.

Hartmut, newly come into the circle and not a certain ally, is the last to volunteer. He stands, looking at the woman who convinced him that it was better to help the losers of the war, than continue to serve the indolent masters who had been so good to him. After Barigan, Bramimond thinks he is ready for whatever echoes of betrayal the mountain man has in his soul.

Elimine's voice is scratchy now. Her hymns have filled the world for days, as she asks for guidance in making, and the powers of creation. Bramimond begins to drift, walking towards the echoes, and in that instant he knows he is wrong. Hartmut has the pure fire of Roland, it wraps around that overwhelming lightning Durban knows so well, it sings as high as Hanon's proud windsong, and spills out of him like certain sunlight. But at his heart the void with the well of knowledge that it contains slumbers on vast and eternal, reaching out to touch every spirit that he has ever met, holding in it the capacity for Barigan's grief and Athos' joy in creation. He has all their essence inside him, or they were all one with him, and maybe, stretching back to their first breaths, all of them knew him. Bramimond feels the echoes multiply and knows he is going deeper, deeper, ever deeper, and this manifestation of the void would give him the silence, the peace at the heart of things he has needed for so long.

Sunlight and energy, the essence of creation, stab through him like spears and he is back in a black smith's forge, hearing the echoes of Athos' shouting and rather mystified by the sight of Elimine supporting Hartmut's sagging form.

Two long rods hiss in the cooling bucket, one wide and oddly spikey, one slender. Elimine hustles the downed warrior off to the house of the healer. Athos kneels next to Bramimond, pushing his hood back, and feeling his forehead.

“Can you describe what happened?”

“The—he was made to be part of that magic we have been using. Everything is equal inside of him. Everything is significant. Everything is insignificant. Are you ready to finish fitting all of the weapons together?”

Athos sighed. “I am not sure about the large one Hartmut created. It came out of the fire with mechanized parts.”

“Oh,” Bramimond does not comprehend, and Athos heads over to the bucket to look down at the cooling weapons.

“The smaller blade is not even the right size for him. Goodness knows he's half the size of a baby dragon, and he could probably handle the big one with ease, but this little blade,” he tutted.

“We will make of it what we must, when everything is finished,” Elimine says, entering the forge room. She passes Bramimond a book bound in clean vellum, give Athos a second, and keeps the third. “Magic is still the most potent weapon against dragons. Are you ready?” Her eyes land on Bramimond longest.

But he needs to enter the void again. He needs to find that peace once more. It is not even the greed of knowledge that whispers through the blackness. There in the center, there is calm and silence. So Bramimond takes the fifth step at Elimine's instigation, and begins to write, ink spreading black runes over clean vellum.

When they are done writing their souls' worth onto the pages, Elimine takes the new books somewhere, and Athos begins to affix arrow heads to their ashen shafts, and oil down the bow. Magic dies back for a while, and the forge becomes just a forge.

When the weapons are finished, Elimine looks them over with a critical eye, before turning to Athos. “You have knowledge of dragon magic. Both Bramimond and I are practitioners of human magic. I can tell you what I think, but I wish to hear what you think about these things that we have made.”

Athos looks at the new red cover of the tome. He picks it up, smells the pages, and then ponderously returns it to the array. “There is a price for using these.”

“I thought so, too. Bramimond?”

“They are the manifestations of the excess of our spirits, an excess of anything is dangerous.”

Elimine picked up Roland's warmth radiating blade. “I see consequences in this thing, and in all of these things,” her voice echoes with starshine, but Bramimond is no longer afraid. “Bring everyone in.”

Athos calls their soul bright warriors in, one at a time. It is right that Elimine warns everyone, her voice still raw from the days they have worked, and her eyes shining with the future.

“For you, brave knight. Your love will always be the curse of this blade. It will rush to protect everything you value, and in doing so, it will also be the instrument of destruction.”

“For you, wind talking non-believer. This bow carries your pride, and you are cursed never to have your achievements with this bow recognized as anything but an accident after you are gone.”

“For you, kinkiller, and exile. Your destructive spirit made this axe, and it will bear that destruction upon you. Yours will not be a pleasant end—though I think you accepted that long ago.”

“For you, paladin and shield of the north. This spear is cold and deadly, but its doom lies in the sorrow that created it. If you take this spear, and fight the dragons, it will lead you on a path that will cause you to betray people you hold dear. Regret is etched into this weapon.”

“For you,” Elimine paused, and her expression warred with itself for an instant, before settling, “commander and first human king of the mountain lands, we have made two blades. The golden broadsword is the mark of a ruler. This second one,” she paused, and glanced toward Bramimond, “this is a sword of silence. I cannot see much here, due to its interference, but one day, you will have to choose between these swords.”

She moved on, handing Athos his tome. “You, incorrigible mage, have made a thing of power. You believe your knowledge has given you control over these hellfires, and beware, for that knowledge and control will blind you towards real evil, until it is too late. There is more to mastering your own arrogance than simply controlling magic.”

“And you, the shy, tired stranger who has forgotten more of the war than many of us have seen, you made a weapon that could decimate a city, if you were the one to wield it with intent. I see that you who can bring death, and who wish to be taken into the embrace of final sleep, will outlive us all, because of the weapons we have made.”

“And what about you?” Bramimond asked, nodding at the shining tome by his pious friend's side before Roland could be shocked, or Barigan could try to convince him of the joys of life.

“I have made a weapon of holy light when I should have made a totally different thing. I think it will be far too late, when I realize what I should have done.”

The sixth step does not happen because a group of the war dragons attacked Lycia.

At dawn, Hartmut rouses the others, practically pulling Roland through streets to the wooden stockade protecting the area from human monsters, but little else. The mountain people know dragons, and he squints into the distance before frowning. “War dragons. Twenty of them.”

“Exactly what does that mean? I thought dragons found human forms intolerable for travel,” Hanon asks grimly.

“These things can't maintain dragon forms for long. They're little better than sending a squad of wild wyverns against us. Sir Roland, what defenses are at our disposal?”

Roland peers around the gates. “Can they all breathe fire?”

“Of a kind,” Hartmut replies, shrugging. “They're like, like, dragon copies. Not very good ones. They have very little free will. But they can breathe fire, and fly in dragon form. These ones must be new. The ones at the front transformed more smoothly than the last one I saw. Funny, I was told that their creation is outlawe—”

“But they can breathe fire. We must evacuate everyone. This place could go up like a tinderbox.”

Even with the new weapons, the war dragons are definitely harder to deter than wild wyverns. Wyverns can be chased away with enough pot banging and shouting. By the time the last of the war dragons has been killed, the valley is burning. High in the starlands, Hanon sights on another patrol wing flying fast. The human lands around the half circle sea, and the seat of draconic power, are at last due for an extermination.

The sixth step does not happen because they realize that the final day of weapon making came too close to the attack, and decide to plead for justice on the island of Valor, where the dragons sit enthroned. It is a last ditch attempt, one Hanon opposes, and Durban does not see the point of, but the rest decide that whatever human rebellions from the plains to the norther sea the humans who would have peaceful lives under dragon law should not be harmed.

The third day on the island, and they have been told again and again that no one can see them, until they are dragged, unceremoniously before a minor sitting of the dragon governing council. The ruler of the Valor Throne is not even present. Something about a death in the family. The great speakers try to give their side of the story for days. Those not inclined to speech wander Valor, visiting temples and the places of learning.

Athos is troubled about the reports of magical poison in the air. He disappears among the books. Barigan, too, much happier with a horse to train, or something physical to do, wanders with Bramiond, playing the old game of “do you remember anything like this?” Bramimond decides to pretend to regain his memory at one of the libraries, just so that they can go in, and have respite from the pressing heat.

Elimine finds them there, looking impressed at the fact someone managed to get Barigan to put his nose in a book.

“We are enemies of Valor,” she states baldly. “Hartmut, and Athos have betrayed their former masters and broken oaths of service. Hanon was recognized for having taken the eye of a young dragon, barely out of his first adult moult, which had her arrested with the others. I am only at liberty as there are no laws against spreading the knowledge of false gods, but I am asked to appear before a council of learned teachers tomorrow. The ice dragon at the assembly spoke up for you, Barigan, that you were only following the mandate of the great dragons of the north to help the humans in lands on their border, so you are safe. Right now everyone is discussing exactly how much land the ice dragons can claim as their flight territory, but we must get the others out of prison, and off this island! Barigan, are you—”

Hanon the dream whisperer. Athos the energetic mage. Hartmut the carrier of silence. They are imprisoned. Chained. The idea prickles at Bramimond's dry black eyes.

“Remember how Hartmut said he thought War Dragons are outlawed?” Barigan says very quietly, putting down his book. “I'm not the quickest reader, but I think I know how to make them. You take a corrupted dragon and have them perform some dark rites involving a lot of body parts—most used for snacking purposes, I understand—and elder magic.”

Barigan, Elimine, Roland, Durban. They might all be next.

Elimine snatches the book, flipping through the pages. “A corrupted dragon? Dragons have always been fond of separating themselves into ranks and difference but—Moon and stars in his mercy!”

“Doesn't sound good, does it?”

Their disgust echoes and from a long way off, Bramimond thinks he can hear something screaming into the void. But he has thought that before, even without the words Brigan has been sounding out for the last two hours. Sometimes he thinks it is just a reflection of himself. He lets them pull him to his feet. He lets them drag him to the meeting point. He lets the announcements wash all around him.

“The dragons must be stopped.”

“How? We delivered ourselves—”

“Don't be icebound, Roland! Why did we make those weapons? We have the upper hand, even if the dragons do not know it—”

“Barigan, calm down. We have—”

“They are doing an evil thing, Elimine. I know and have served dragonkind far longer than any of you, and this is twisted. We have to act!”

“I am not saying that I don't think we need to investigate the War Dragons, but right now our problem is our friends who have been arrested.”

“That is what we need to solve,” Roland agrees, pushing Barigan back into his seat next to the dark mage, putting all the fear, all the anger in vibrating proximity to him.

Barigan and Bramimond leave the meeting together, and that is still not the sixth step. The sixth step happens at night when everyone is exhausted, and Barigan says: “If it will save them.”

“Then I will do it,” Bramimond finishes the thought crackling in the air between them, and he opens Apocalypse, taking the sixth step into the void, and his final step as a singular human being.

Valor is deserted in the dawn light. Fury fills the vessel, echoing with familiar passion, fire meeting water cool regret, but refusing to be quenched.

The vessel opens its eyes, but they are already open, and there is no need. The guiding spark whispers through the void, trapped, listless, insignificant. It has lost the happiness of silence, that dream of the center of void calm at the center of the earth. Because loss is so achingly icy clear running in streams carving their way through Barigan's thoughts the vessel wants to cry.

“How could you! How could you?” Roland yells again and again and his rage pours into the vessel too, echoing and bouncing in confusion. What is Barigan and what is Roland and as Hanon's wind voice follows the vessel feels uncertainty, feels the fear.

“Mother Earth would have needed a quake to accomplish this much destruction. We were not meant to have the power of gods.”

“Bramimond wasn't allowed to have that power, either.”

“You said he would live beyond us all!”

The voices pile up and around the vessel and it is too hard, too confusing, to catch just one. A heavy hand falls on the vessel's shoulder. “Little witch? You should not breathe while dead.”

Yes. The vessel loves Durban more than anything. Durban and his horrendous power. Overwhelming at close quarters, this is what he needs. “Not dead. Yes? No tears. No death.”

The world is simple, once more. The vessel is an echo, a single clear echo.

Elimine's voice is strangled, and her sunlight is dim. “No, Bramimond. There has been a lot of death.”

“You are sad,” the sunlight is too dim, it can barely stand up to the lightning racing through it. So much confusion echoes along with her. The whispers in the dark war with each other, trying to fill the vessel. “Please, Elimine, explain to me what happened, by the god above, or at least—”

“I should have made a healing staff, not a killing tome,” she laughs briefly, taking the vessel's hands with tears in her eyes. “I told you that it would be too late. And you are gone, Bramimond. Living, but gone.”

Roland and Athos both step closer at once, and the vessel cannot bear it. It wants somewhere dark and quiet, where it can think and be singular once again. Four people is too much. Not enough. The vessel could hold a thousand more.

“But, you survived, you cannot be—”

Fire and lightning and light and energy and it echos off the space inside.

“Listen to him closely, little knight. Whenever he speaks, one of us is speaking through him,” Athos sounds as though he wants to fly away, and his horror is stronger in the void, his whispers of thought all echo with revulsion. The vessel winces.

“Is it uncomfortable?” and the void at the heart of everything touches him. He becomes the still mirror, and realizes that out of everyone, Hartmut asked the right question.

“When there is more than one of you near by, yes. It is easier to be one than many.”

“Then, come, we have to leave this desolate place. Walk with me, or one of the others. We will space ourselves out.”

The vessel knows this is what true friendship is. Walking with through a wasteland of dragon bodies and dead plants with the person that created them all, and might create it again. But still they walked so that the vessel was comfortable.

The dragons are gone. Bramimond has not destroyed that many, but what has happened to Valor rings across Elibe. At first there is fury from the mountains, the final dragon kingdoms uninterested in human rebellions because they have never lost before take wing. Then the world rages in a winter harsher than any have known.

Hartmut captures a war dragon, brings it before the mountain lords, however, and everything is broken. The vessel is not clear why, though Hanon tries to explain in her direct way, that apparently not all dragons knew, and some dragons would have preferred never to have known, while others cannot let the sin stand, and still more defend it. In the end, in the resulting chaos between a mass slaughter, a great crime, and the very sky itself seeming to turn against them, the dragons decide to leave.

A few stubborn hold-outs remain, some believing that they must protect the stranglers, others unwilling to concede defeat. It does not matter. They have found the temple prison at last, and almost all the dragon generals lie slain.

Barigan has already betrayed. Elimine has made a healing staff in secret. Soon other dooms will close upon them.

Now, amid the clamor and clash of too many people in the void, the vessel is filled with rage, pain, and a betrayal too raw to be forgotten. They will kill her. They have to. For as much as she hates the ones who made her, that hate has transformed into a burnt, twisted monster that hates the whole world even more.

Areola cannot hit her. She shrugs off the fires of Forblaze. A lash of her tail sends Durban flying. She nearly cracks the ice spear. Hanon's arrows all fall wide. Roland leaps, but his eagerness sends him crashing into a wall with a buffet of a wing, and redirecting the attack straight to the vessel. Her black magic slams into the vessel before she can raise the tome.

The echoes of the dragon's torment ring across the void right into the vessel. She is at once a girl, young and curious, fascinated with human things, a dragon great and proud, in love with her pretty feathered wings, and a demon, these other shadows ripped away and her loss trailing through the void in dying cries of blood.

They are all doomed, with each part of their souls that they gave up to kill dragons. The last champion standing holds all of her attention. He raises the slim blade that has not left its sheath since it was made.

Everyone echoes pleasantly in concert as they walk away from the temple, discussing the friends they will return to, and the decisions they will make. The unison is relieving, though the vessel still hangs back. They are too close, and the vessel still prefers only to reflect one person at a time. Hartmut is busy being very sick in the bushes.

“You want to give up that sword?”

He turns, looking confused. “I—Bramimond?”

The vessel breathes out, and offers the water skin he knows Hartmut is dying for. “The void at the center of things is where all thoughts fall eventually. I can hear their whispers. All the time, now.”

Hartmut swishes the water around, and spits it out. “I don't think I should be allowed to hold on to something that could revive her. Do you?”

“I don't think so,” but the vessel is not sure whether that is his sentiment or his. At least he is finding it easier to fill himself with the thoughts and personalities of others like that waterskin. He knows who he is, whn he does that. Right now, he is Hartmut, and the buzzing echoes will make him Elimine in another moment, or make her Athos. It no longer matters, really.

“Too many people look to me for guidance, and I am sure that somewhere along the line I could have done something better with my choices.”

“You choose to order people about, though. It's not their fault that they respect you enough to obey,” Bramimond observes, bringing up the terrible ambition of his that Hartmut wants and does not trust.

“What can I do with this thing? That scepter sword we made—I could break its mechanism and hang it on the wall of a kitchen for decoration if I wanted. This thing sealed a dragon in slumber. I just wanted her to stop crying.”

“So, you heard it, too,” Bramimond thinks Hartmut's voice is the best for studied reflection. It sounds better on the air than even Athos' studious excitement.

Hartmut swallows. “What do you want to do, Bramimond?”

“Sleep. Sleep for a long time, in a dark place, and find the part of the void where no whispers or echoes haunt me. I want the quiet.”

“That is exactly what this sword grants, doesn't it?”

“I think so. Elder magic seeks the root of knowledge, but when the root of knowledge is too great, it seals the seeker into the void. Your sword took form from the part of you that resonates in sympathy with the void, where everything is one. It is meant to guard against excess, while your scepter sword is the physical expression of your excess.”

Hartmut nods, curtly. “If you take that sword with you, I will give you that dark place.”

“And that is your choice?”

“One of many. I know which of my temptations are dangerous, after all, dark druid.”

For one of the last times in his life, Bramimond smiles. “We are one, then. But I like Durban's name for me better.”

“True, it makes you sound like a kitten,” Hartmut laughs. “Come then, witch, let us see if there is some sort of feast that we may organize.”

They take the seventh step together.

Sometimes, the vessel wakes in its dark crypt. There are moments it cannot miss, even if everyone else must.

Durban is the first to die, on the rocky shores of his home, where he returned as a hero, his blood debt expunged. The vessel arrives in the pelting rain to see a mountain of a man reduced to a pin cushion of weaponry. The echoes of other friends and battles rage through the void, a tingling energy of life slipping through the cracks. They are too far away, however, to add more to the few drops of urgency that leak through. Instead, the vessel allows the sky to fill it full, until the storm washes everything, blood, dirt, and tears, away. The storm closes sightless eyes, and lays a soft kiss on a hard cheek, because both forehead and mouth have been too disfigured for even a storm to draw comfort from them.

Barigan has battled the ice that over took his home in the ending winter. The task is cold and lonely, and even if he can teach new riders, and even if they can bring in food, he is struggling against the changing times and the turning of the world. The ice dragons, if any are left after the exodus, no longer show themselves. Ilia, the land of peace and prosperity, will never be the same. One night in the snow he collapses into the arms of a cloaked figure. There isn't much else to do at this point, but when Barigan asks for forgiveness, he is forgiven. His sorrow breaks and they mirror their grief and happiness until dawn breaks, and Bramimond realizes he has been holding a frozen corpse for some time now. He delivers the food for the town as Barigan meant to, and requests proper burial in the chamber where they locked away the deadly spear so long ago.

Hanon is drifting the Plains the night the vessel finds her. She laughs a crackling old woman laugh, and invites her into the tent. She was never Hartmut, she says, pouring Bramimond tea. She never needed to lead. But if she would not be allowed to be war chief of her tribe as a woman, she might as well cast off all roots, and do what she must. You're here to do what you must, aren't you?

She grips Hanon's hand as the old woman dies peacefully, but alone. There is still enough of Hanon's life left inside her for Bramimod to dig the grave by hand, and say the right things through a mysterious flood that fills the vessel without a rainstorm. Hanon's spirit leaves gracefully, with a lingering embrace, promising in echoes and reflections, that nothing, even death, lasts forever.

Roland dies in his sleep, as his children bicker over land and his legacy. The healers say that bright heart of his gave out. They do not know that a druid arrived in the bedroom, to witness the last breath, and the last happy chuckle of a man pleased to see beloved friends.

Bramimond forces themself to stay awake for a whole week, as those remaining gather to mourn. Elimine presides over the funeral, and the four of them accompany the body to the same cave system where Bramimond sealed the blazing sword with the life blood of the loyal. The vessel has promised not to cry, as Roland asked, but the world is less bright, and the echoes of the void are dull. They just wish to hold the brave knight with his sagging skin and bright blue traceries of veins once more.

Elimine, white haired, laughs when Bramimond appears in her tower. “Just lead me up these last stairs,” she says, tapping the way forward with her cane. “Roland took far too much effort to bring into that volcano, you know. I intend to be better about it.”

“You could have lived,” Bramimond says quietly. Magic has preserved her body at the age of her great destruction, and Athos has begun to ignore time's pull. She could feel it at Roland's funeral, he had found the point where the body and time were insignificant.

“Why do that, when not every single one of my followers could live?” Elimine has grown more forthright as she ages. “I am not a dragon. Immortality makes you forget the importance of things.”

“You will never forgive them? The weapons were a mistake. You were right.”

“We made those in fear, but we sacrificed ourselves to do so,” Elimine waves her stick under Bramimond's nose. “Their weapon was a child taken and sacrificed in fear, and I do not forgive that. They believed their skins were worth enough for that crime to be ignored, because they were mighty, because they were hard to kill, because they were just. No. Elibe is better off without them.”

“Humans are not so different.”

“You and Hartmut can regret what we have done, I have better things to do,” her voice is querulous, but when she reaches the top of the tower she sighs, and sits with creaking relief on the altar, looking and her beautiful city of stars and water. “Look at that, Bramimond. There is the future, in people and the things people make. I am happy.”

“I find it loud.”

“Yes, there's that, too. And smelly. But it is still wondrous. This is what Father Sky wishes for us to see: the beauty of his creations, lit by the light of our love.”

She sighs her last, and Bramimond waits until they are sure that she is gone, before neatly arranging stiff limbs, and touching one cold forehead to another. A tear splashes in her lap. They do not attend the official funeral.

In the dark they wait, tired and worn. Just two more, and then they can sleep.

Hartmut takes years to die, and he is healthy and energetic to the very end. When a plague finally brings him low, his children erupt in an argument that is worse than the long term bickering that is still tearing at Roland's Lycia. Lady Justina wishes to be named queen, as the one who has served Bern the longest. Her younger brother wants her older brother, a dark lad with a bent for theology and little interest in world affairs to inherit, as he is the eldest. Both of the twins think that it is not a good idea to put a wyvern rider on the throne, but at least Justina wants the job, as opposed to Julian.

Hartmut ignores it all, telling Bramimond that his scholars and soldiers and priests can make the decision. His breathing bubbles through liquid lungs, and he smiles. “I had wanted to outlive Athos, you know. Just to let it be you and me, at the very end.”

They both know Athos finds Bramimond's lack of self too horrible to deal with, even indirectly these days. “You almost did.” But that is a lie.

“Why weren't you at her funeral?”

“We said good bye earlier. The death of a saint would bring too many people.”

“I wanted to outlive Athos,” Hartmut murmurs again, his once keen eyes looking vague. “I wanted to see what happens when the seal finally fails. Promise me, the world will be better, then.”

“It will be different.”

Hartmut laughs. It is so good that they all were the kinds of people who could see the humor of life in their old ages. “I always was too honest for my own good, so of course, you will fling it right back at me. Tell me about my friends. I miss them so much.”

But Bramimond cannot, because, like with Barigan, the sorrow echoes and reechoes across the void between them, wanting solid Durban, determined Hanon, faithful Barigan, certain Elimine, clever Athos, kind Roland, and shy Bramimond with a fierce ache.

They remain together in silence. Sometimes strangers burst into the Kings' chamber demanding audiences. Sometimes the perspectives heirs ask their father to make a decision, but Hartmut just smiles, and says he is done with that. Bramimond wonders if the kingdom built on mountain villages and wyvern caves is going to fall apart on the hour of the king's death.

“The law will be based on primogeniture,” the queen, iron haired and more lined and scarred than Roland or Hanon put together, comes in still in her flying furs. “With an added caveat. The eldest child who has passed through a vigil, and whose spirit can light the gem at your resting place, Bramimond Dark Druid, will be the ruler.”

Hartmut sighs. “Bramimond is not to be disturbed.”

“He will not be. But we all know that the fire emblem reacts to those who have the potential to make divine weapons. There may be a time when those rituals are needed again. There is at least one gate on the Dread Dragon Isle of Valor, and gates can be opened to admit was well as to leave. Father Sky willing, it doesn't happen in our life times, but this is the will of the wyvern riders, the scholars, and the artisans.”

“And my priests?”

“Their circle voted to have the Holy Tower decide the next ruler. The good saint not dead for ten years, and already they are misinterpreting her will. If she wanted her church to have power over kingdoms she would have named herself queen of that bright city of hers.”

Both Hartmut and Bramimond laugh, because the mountain queen is right. She gives them a look that says the synchronicity of their laugh was too unsettling.

“And who do you wish for ruler?”

“Either of our two eldest will do. Damien is too in love with laws. At least he knows he is inflexible and thus supports Julian. The twins do not even know what they want to do with themselves, much less a whole kingdom of goat herders and wyverns.”

Hartmut nods. “That is good.”

In the end, Bramimond does not care who becomes the next ruler of the land. That it the problem of the queen. Bramimond does not care about anyone's problems, once they have kissed Hartmut to rest and let the tears dry on their cheeks.

The next time he is awoken, it is by Athos looking like a sunken old man. He wants to sit and talk with someone about friendship and loyalty and the joy of knowledge. His outlook on life is so bleak, though, that Bramimond only remembers how much he wants other people to be there and how harsh the world outside is, with its many brightnesses and joys.

Athos stops. “You really do not care, anymore, about any of it.”

Because the echoes are disgusted with himself, at his blindness, at his arrogance, Bramimond sneers. “It is not my world, old friend. Why did you ever think it would be?”

When Athos dies in his arms, eyes seeing more clearly than Elimine, Bramimond regrets those words. But at last, they are gone, all of the people who loved them, and they can happily retreat into the belly of the earth where they belong. It is a long awaited end to to the journey he has walked, and the curses were not so bad.

[fill] Searching

2014-06-22T11:14:16Z

Title: Searching
Game: Blazing Sword (FE7) - Alternate Universe
Characters: Vaida, Karla
Word Count: 3,762
Prompt: Vaida/Karla - Coffee shop AU
Summary: Vaida was fired for having union sympathies--which she didn't, she just respected the law. Karla was searching for missing brother--but she couldn't because her car broke down. They met at their workplace and go from there.

There were worse ways to earn money. In the rush of Frappe Hour, tips came in quickly and no one was allowed to stay too long, which meant never having to interact with the customers for more than a few seconds. That was bearable.

Vaida never regretted standing up in the middle of a meeting about where to cut production costs, and told her boss to shove one of the company cars up his ass before cutting into union bargaining rights. There were reasons for unions to exist, after all, just as their were reasons that she had been the head of the legal division. Now there were reasons to make money, advance her law degree into professorship, or something that couldn't be refused at the best of Bern's law firms, no matter which senior partner had played golf with her former boss.

Enough money could get the label 'Black Fang sympathizer' expunged from her employment papers.

Right now, between the noon rush and university afternoon break, she finished glaring at the three students who had asked for chai cinnamon swirl caramels in superior voices, and then chatted with each other about how of course it wasn't actually as good as the real Sacaen tea that was sold three doors down. Vaida had almost snarled that they go there instead, but managed to hold her tongue.

The manager had made that one of her goals this week, in exchange for giving Vaida an opportunity to be a trainer. Her other goals were all customer service related. The manager sighed constantly over Vaida's customer service, but her numbers were acceptable, and she knew how to speak military. It baffled the young woman, but there had been an uptick in visits from the local base since Vaida had begun working at the store. New customers were new customers, and if Vaida wasn't the friendliest barista on the block she had not managed to actively chase any of the old customers away. Merely make them get their coffee and head out of the shop as fast as possible, instead of sitting down and taking up table space for the free wi-fi.

All in all, it was a good deal, and the soldiers who stayed to use the wi-fi always left at busy times with polite “thank you, ma'am”s and basically the manager couldn't complain. Vaida had used the lack of complaints to wrangle a new position with slightly better pay. Since no one new had been hired, she now used her free time to work on her application for a doctorate in law studies, and her resume. The job at Coffee Hut was only mentioned when some where asked about customer relations, and then only obliquely.

As the chattering students went to camp out, smooth white laptops in hand, despite the pointed glares, Vaida gave up, and brought out the mail from her knapsack. Luckily, her apartment was one of the first on the morning route, so she usually was able to bring her mail to work during the slow times, and read it. Today's mail contained more flowery rejection letters, and as she marked the passage of time on the back of an envelope, she decided that six months was too long to expect to hear anything back from two more firms. Even the district court had a polite missive telling her that her application to become a public defender was admirable, but at this time there were no suitable positions for a person with her special circumstances.

Vaida snarled at the polite note, and put reapplication on her to do list. 'Special circumstances' her ass. The timid letter oozed 'we see the word sympathizer and no proponent of the Black Fang can have any contact with the state beyond being on the other side of a set of bars.' If the little shits at the district court were any good they would be eager to be getting a public defender who actually cared if their defendants won or lost.

Still. It would be work, and work for the good of Bern. Work she could be proud of. She underlined reapplication on the envelope list, and flipped the rejection letter into the recycling bin. The last letter was a simple white envelope from Reed and Sons Construction. Vaida stared at it suspiciously. She hadn't seen any legal job listings from them, much less applied for any. She still had her pride, and ambition to get rid of the slanderous charge on her file. Maybe said company actually did construction work—between jobs agitating for workers rights by planting bombs in public squares and extorting money from people like her former boss—and were sending her notice that her building was due for demolition. It was only a step away from being condemned, after all, and it would be just like her asshole land lord to let the construction company deliver the bad news.

“Excuse me,” someone cleared their throat.

Vaida looked up to see that a customer had actually stepped into her sacred domain behind the counter. She put on her most threatening 'you are a health code violation, get out,' scowl. “Service happens on the other side of the counter. What do you want?”

The woman shrugged calmly. “You're the trainer?”

“And if I am?”

“I was told to report to you. Well, the lady in the office said to report to the heinous drill sergeant, but you're the only one here. Is it you?”

What a masterful way with words the manager had indeed. But Vaida had a sinking sensation that her recent promotion was not going to be the cake walk that she had imagined. “Report to me? Are you a new employee?”

“My name is Karla,” the calm smile told Vaida that customer service was not going to be Karla's problem.

Karla's problem was, as far as Vaida could tell, after teaching her the secrets to every order, drilling her on memorization of sixteen different orders at once, and going over cleaning and maintainace, was a head-in-the-clouds vagueness that made Vaida grind her teeth. Otherwise, Karla was a stunning employee. She didn't bring in new customers, but she treated the ones they had with grace and elegance, and everything that the manager had been trying to drill into Vaida for two years without success. After the first three days Vaida saw promotion threatening for Karla, and nothing for her. She buckled down to job applications with a renewed sense of urgency.

As she finished listing her qualifications on a napkin for typing at the public library later on, she felt an interested gaze on the back of her neck. Turning to look, she caught Karla's gray eyes. The new employee smiled, and waved, but then went back to cleaning out the espresso machine.

The next day, Karla paused in mopping while Vaida toyed with the still unopened envelope from Reed and Sons. “Who is that from?"

Vaida brought the edge of the envelope down on the counter with a solid thud. “No one.”

“Oh? You're always playing with it.”

“I think it's a subtle message from my landlord, if you must know. I've interrogated the little asshole, and he swears he's not doing anything that's going to cost him money, but there's no other reason for a construction company to contact me.”

“Ah,” Karla went back to mopping.

Vaida decided to take the results of her earlier sweep with the broom out to the rubbish bins. Zamboni day was the night after tomorrow, and she didn't even close then. She came back to the counter, and waited for Karla to finish under the falsely welcoming glow of the lamps the boss had installed. The envelope made revolution after revolution between her fingers, tapping onto the counter at each quarter turn.

“Is it nice?”

“What?”

Karla wrung out the mop in the squeeze bucket. “Your apartment. Is it nice?”

“It's a roach motel with funny little creaks in the floorboards. Funny in the sense that I'm sure for a joke the third floor is going to come crashing down on me one night, while I visit the first floor by way of the ceiling.”

“Oh. Well, good to know.”

Vaida glanced at the new girl. “Were you looking for a new place?”

“Yes. I've been able to discover that family of mine is up in this area, but finding him is taking longer than I thought. It would be nice to have somewhere more permanent.”

“Where are you now? There's a youth hostel down the road. It's mostly for kids taking time before or after their service years, but they shouldn't object to another few GM a week.”

“I'm in the old station wagon in the parking lot,” Karla's eyes twinkled as Vaida's mouth dropped open. “It broke down when I was crossing the pass, and this is where the tow guy left it. That's why your manager hired me. Part of my pay is rent for the space. I don't suppose you have a couple of thousand on you for a transmission rebuild?”

Well. Vaida managed to close her mouth. Then she frowned. “What kind of station wagon? Is it a Rover?”

“Valorstream 1982, actually.”

“So, a standard Sacaen model, then. I'll take a look at it tomorrow after my shift.”

Karla's skepticism was evident, even as she took off her apron, and hung it on the hook. “Are you a mechanic in your spare time?”

“I did my time when I worked for Mountain Motors,” no need to add that she had gained a reputation for being a unhelpfully too hands on when a company mechanic got sued. “And my service years were to the air force. No Sacaen POS can be more finicky than keeping a fully equipped wyvern bomber in the air,” alright, so she hadn't taken more technical training than any average schmuck on the officership ladder. Damn, if she'd stayed, she wouldn't be in this shitty franchise cafe now, waiting for her chance to lock up, now that counting was done, and clean up had been managed.

There was resistance in Karla's back, but when she turned to face Vaida once more, the calm smile was in place again. “Don't take anything apart if I'm not there.”

Despite the clear distrust on the part of Karla as far as Vaida rummaging around anything where she was living, Vaida had brought her tool box from her service days. In deference to the request, Vaida waited for two hours in the shade of a tree for Karla to end her shift the next day. She had finally tossed the Reed and Sons letter without opening it, but she wished she hadn't now. It would have been something to read. Instead, she had to content herself with examining the car.

Other than the fact that the back seat had been converted to accommodate a mattress, neatly hidden under one of those Sacaen blankets, all meaningful colors and indecipherable patterns on hard wool, Vaida wouldn't have assumed this was someone's home. Even with the mattress and blanket, it still looked more like a respectable mother's car, rather than something for a vagabond in the rough. She kicked at one sagging tire thoughtfully. Well, that was the first thing to go. Lifting up the hood revealed more mess than outward looks would lead anyone to believe, but basically she could probably fix some of it with the right parts and time.

Vaida put the hood down, and went back to her tree, waiting in silence for four PM. When it did arrive she then had to wait several extra minutes before Karla emerged. She was still in the white blouse and skirt from work, but today she was letting down that long dark hair of hers as she walked. Vaida realized with a start that she had never seen Karla with her hair down before. Health codes flashed in her head, and a small piece of admiration, from one woman who had gotten constant demerits for keeping her hair “faddishly short, in blatant disrespect of authority, and convention,” to another with the patience to keep her hair long.

Karla stopped short of the car, peering under the tree, and then smiled that calm smile, and went to lean against the hood. “So, what do you think you can do?”

“Well, change out the flat tire, fix the wiring, and get you new oil. You're still up shit creek on the major stuff, but I can fix the minor stuff. And with enough parts and time I might be able to do something about everything else. I'd still say you've got to pony up for either another car, or that transmission rebuild you were talking about.”

“Ah,” Karla did look a little crestfallen at that. “Things I wish were not happening. I don't suppose you have a magical car hidden up your sleeve.”

“I bike,” Vaida shrugged. “You could get one too, but if you're sleeping here, there's not exactly a secure storage shed at night.”

“Mmm. So, find somewhere to live, save up the money for the fix,” Karla ticked everything off on her fingers. “Well, at my current pay grade and hours, I can probably afford to do one, but not the other.”

“We'll see,” Vaida shrugged again, struggling to rise. “First thing, though, I'm going to change that tire. That shit just offends me looking at it. Have you got a spare?”

“Yes, though it's actually a winter tire. You know, with studs for the ice.”

Well, that wasn't great, but it could be worse. Vaida grunted and opened her tool kit.

They worked through the rest of the evening. Not that the car was hard to jack up, or the tire difficult to change, but Vaida decided now was as good time as ever to make sure Karla at least knew the basics of handling her own car. There was something calming in getting down into the belly of the beast, as it were, and showing Karla with grease stained hands exactly where her break fluid lines went. As they closed up the hood, Karla's hand caught Vaida's turning a resolute slam into a gentle closing.

Vaida noticed Karla's hands had managed to get just as dirty. She knew color from the heat of the day was riding high on her face, and the area between her shoulder blades was slick with sweat. She felt Karla's calm eyes upon her, and tried to match her stoic co-worker stare for stare.

“If you want to come back to my place, I'm fine with that. I don't have a spare bedroom, but there's a couch you could use. And I've got the opening shift. I can wake you up.”

“That would be nice. Thanks.”

They took the blanket and mattress back to the crummy apartment in the end. Vaida knew she should put up some protest, because a relative stranger shouldn't get invited to stay so permanently, and Karla did protest, because she was only staying for the evening.

“It's going to be easier if you're not worried about your shit getting stolen.”

That was how they ended up walking a mattress on their shoulders over sixteen city blocks, Vaida trying to manage her bicycle, and Karla lugging her blanket and other worldly possessions in a bag.

Having the relative stranger in her house didn't change much. Karla woke at four AM every day, no matter her work schedule. Vaida got used to making coffee while Karla did some sort of yoga on the living room carpet. Occasionally, Vaida was awake enough to join her, mostly she was not. She was always awake enough to appreciate the solid lines of the bending body, however.

Karla watched her brushing her teeth and putting in her earrings every morning with amused interest. Everything about Vaida's personal beauty routines became interesting in Karla's eyes, from what Vaida could observe in the mirror. Blood bright lipstick and foundation fascinated Karla in equal measures, though she never used any herself. One night, one of Karla's days off, when she had returned from her mysterious quest dusty and on the verge of tears, Karla drank some of the not so secret stash, and drew diamonds up Vaida's arms in the lipstick.

Sometimes her arts were subtle. She once traced the raised lines of skin from Vaida's spinal tattoo with a delicate finger.

“If the master sergeant can't see it, he's not going to report it,” Vaida's grin was feral as she related her service years. It had still been the best time of her life, yet for some reason she had thought that it would be better to go to university and study law than continuing that path.

“I remember we used to do that in school,” Karla sighed, her finger leaving its contemplations. “The uniforms were terrible and uniform. The elders were trying to keep the difference between the tribal children and the settled children to a dull roar, of course, but they were aggravating. And I actually looked good in them.”

“Mm, I'll bet,” Vaida tugged down her shirt, deciding not to tell Karla about the dragon wings cupping the underside of her breasts.

The mail came, mostly with rejection letters. The last universities were getting around to sending those out, and they came in a clump. Karla made dinner, while Vaida opened envelope after envelope, swore perfunctorily, and tossed each and every one of them in the paper trash. She went to the not terribly secret stash of the good drinks from her old place hidden behind Karla's sofa, and poured herself a glass.

“What did you want to do with yourself?” she growled, pitching herself backward over the arm of the sofa Karla used, and pleased with the fact not a drop of her liquid fire spilled. She still had some talents.

The sound of frozen vegetables popping and crisping in soy sauce filled the little apartment. Karla turned to her, biting the wooden spoon she was using thoughtfully. “What did I want to do with myself?”

“Yeah. When I was a kid, I grew up dreaming of becoming legal council to the royal family. Then I learned you had to make your name being legal council to friends of the royal family. Then I made my name being legal council to friends of the royal family. That name I made was Anti-Social Agitator, by the way, in case you were curious.”

“Well, that's alliterative, at least,” Karla suggested. Her eyebrows knotted in thought for a moment. “I—I think I wanted to be a poet. One of my older brothers liked poetry, and I wanted to write things that he would want to read. And then things went,” she paused, and shrugged. “He was gone, and they put the rest of us in state housing. ”

“Is he dead?” Vaida hated it when people were vague, and her first gulp of brandy was putting fire in he veins.

“No. Just left. I don't think it was easy living with our parents. He always was what you'd call,” Karla stirred the vegetables reflectively, still facing Vaida, and then frowning, as though she realized something. “Or you wouldn't call—you know I don't think it's a phrase Bernian's have? I'd say he was spirit open. You know, someone quick to pick up on the atmosphere. They listen to the spirit of things above the reality of them. Or, that's not really it. But, he had a way of, of, absorbing the meaning and intent of things. Reflecting them.”

“We call that being pansy ass sensitive.”

Karla chuckled. “I'd be interested in what you had to say on that score if you actually knew him. But since you don't, I'm not sure if I'll take what you say to heart.”

Vaida toasted the statement. “Good.”

“Though you know,” Karla continued dryly, “If he got letters from his enemies, he would never open them either.”

“Hey!”

“I saw another one go in the paper trash two days ago,” Karla turned back to the cooking, tucking back her lovely hair. “Or are they not your enemies?”

Vaida growled, putting her drink on the floor. “Have I ever mentioned how much you annoy me?”

“Not when I'm making you food, generally.”

“Tomorrow morning, I'm making breakfast. I'll remind you then.”

“Oh, of course,” Karla walked across the creaking floor, her hand cupped around the wooden spoon. “Here, taste.”

It was a piece of broccoli, and nothing bad or good could really be said about it, one way other other. “Tastes of sauce,” Vaida said.

“It's supposed to,” Karla, slid onto the couch, licking off the remainder of the spoon. “Well, dinner is ready, whenever you want.”

Karla was solid, and Vaida curled an arm around a slim Sacaen waist as she sat up. Her eyes darted to the side, and then down to her drink. It was nice, curled half around another person, enjoying real company for the first time in years. “Want a sip before you eat?”

Karla leaned her head back against Vaida's shoulder. “No. Would you mind a kiss before you eat?”

“Mm. Definitely not,” Vaida mumbled, before realizing that she was being vague and imprecise and all of the things she accused other people of doing. “I wouldn't mind the kiss, that is.”

Unsurprisingly, Karla learned about her other set of tattoos that evening. More surprisingly, she left the mail on the bed when she went to her shift that morning, and didn't wait for the ritual of the mirror and make up. Vaida sorted through the bills, constantly glaring at the envelope that could not be a construction notice. Well, she hadn't ever backed down from a fight, and if this was Karla's way of challenging her, she would accept. With great resolve she tore open the envelope, and considered the job offer inside.

Karla removed her apron as Vaida came in the door of the coffee hut. “Trainer, is there—”

“Tell the manager I have a job interview next week,” Vaida hung her bag on the back coat rack, and put on her apron. “Now, unless you're clocking out, I want to see that apron back on, and your hair up, or I'm reporting you for a health code violation.”

She thought she heard Karla mutter something about Vaida being too predictable, but Karla's soft knowing smile was obstructing most of the words, and Vaida was fine with her girlfriend keeping all cheek at a respectable level in the workplace.

[fill] A Generation Later

2014-06-21T01:08:16Z

Title: A Generation Later
Game: Pre-Game Sacred Stones (FE8)
Characters: Myrrh, Morva
Word Count: 2,055
Prompt: FE8 - Myrrh, Morva - playtime in the Darkling Woods (gen, fluff)
Summary: A human generation has passed since the Demon King was sealed and Morva has his talons full with a recently awakened hatchling.
Warning: Some mentions of blood and gore when it comes to Myrrh's feeding

She wants nothing but food. Morva knows he shouldn't be surprised but he is. She screams and shrieks and chirps and cries for food, and it is all that he can do to keep her tiny yellow belly full. At least she is coming into her scales at last and no longer looks like some kind of abominable pink worm in among the deer guts he hunts down for her.

A month on and suddenly he can see her wings. They are sad stubby little things but the stolen ox drops from his jaws in amazement, and he is treated to the most pleased burble of delight at the bloody offering. Myrrh clambers all over her meal, scrabbling frantically at tough hide and worrying it with soft needles of hatchling teeth. And those terribly proportioned vestigial wings whir like a set of dueling hummingbirds.

Movra sits back on his haunches, bowled over by the fact his horrible responsibility is the most adorable dragon under the sun, and she will never be capable of doing anything wrong.

Then she falls down the broken side of the ox, bloody and cheeping piteously. Morva hurries to shove her back atop her conquest with his nose. Instead of ascending the carcas, though, she runs up his muzzle and nestles among his horns, cooing innocently, as though she had never put her left hind foot anywhere near his right eye. Morva finds himself laughing helplessly, brought low to the ground by a tiny dragonette. He takes advantage of soft bird-like snores, and falls asleep himself, exhausted. Why did no one warn him that hatchlings were exhausting?

The ox lasts two days. Morva starts hunting again while Myrrh smears herself with entrails. She still has a haunch and head to eat if he can't find anything before sunset. At sunrise he comes back with a horse. No one will miss it. Surely, no one can miss it.

The next couple of weeks seal the fate of all the deer in the woods. It will be hard—He knows it will be hard—for the humans near by, but he needs the food. He spears the last buck, far too young and succulent and he should have let it go to make more deer, but the does were all gone and what could he do at this rate? He needs sleep. If Myrrh isn't demanding food, she climbs all over him, or bite his tail or plays her marvelous adorable exhausting games of hide and seek. One day she'll start trying to fly and he won't be able to save her is she doesn't have something to eat now.

A branch snaps. Morva turns in shock, jaws dripping red. Has he been feasting on Myrrh's food? The mess of bones and guts spread over his forelegs suggests—Right, branch. Branch, human.

“So, this is what happened?” she is older now. Much older, in the way humans measured things. The hair is not yet streaked in white, but a decade? Maybe two? She would be gone soon, only a husk.

Something smells too good. Morva sniffs the air. The human cocks her head, and then slings down the dead sheep she has been carrying on her shoulders. “Great One.”

He knows her name. He knows—that sheep smells so good. How many months? Years? He hasn't been hungry in so long.

“Great One!” She repeats again, her eyes flashing. “You must grace me with your human form. You must.”

He breathes in, part of his mind going wild and delighting in the scent of fresh sheep. He loves mutton. He would—oh there was a mutton stew that Latona made him eat and he had asked for seconds, it had been so good. Why can he remember Latona's name, but not his most faithful—right he should be changing. He can change. It is a matter of—that food smells so—distractions. The physical world is one giant distraction.

He settles down on bloody grass, which is bloody from the death that just gave him life, and will let his daughter live long enough to see stars dance in the sky with all of her eager wonder. He concentrates on that, finding those stars in the stone he keeps in his heart, until, finally, he is standing small, and insignificant in grass surrounded by blood. He blinks at Kuya. Yes, her name is Kuya. But—she had died. He remembered that moment with a stinging clarity, having watched skin wrinkle, wither, and fall away into shocking old age. “You are not Nada Kuya.”

“No, Great One. You speak of my grandmother,” the woman looks at him shrewdly, and he realizes that his hands and mouth all speak of his sloppy awful meal. “There have been terrifying stories in the realms of men, Great One. They say a demon dragon haunts the high northern mountains, the demon king returned, to steal livestock and people.”

“Just livestock,” he mutters, but shame is crawling up his insides.

“You don't look well,” observes the granddaughter of the person who taught him the cost of death bare years before Fomortiis took Lagdou. She sits down beside the sheep she brought. “As a human, I mean. Perhaps this is how all Great Dragons look, but I would ask: have you been sleeping?”

“Not often,” Myrrh had awoken almost thirteeth years ago, still young and playful, too young for what passed for childhood among dragons. “I have responsibilities, and—a person to feed. It keeps me busy.”

The human draws an astonished breath, proving that she is as thoughtful as her grandmother at least. “You mean—you are not the last dragon, Great One?”

He is not. The Demon King had been so pleased to destroy Lagdou, to turn it into a den of monsters, to take the sacred land and lay waste to it. The darkness that crawled from the ruins of his hatching space twisted and deformed his happy memories of the bright sun hot world. He, young, feckless, flight mad and totally unready to be anything more than the spoiled son of the city had lost everything. Everything, but one sleeping hatchling left to her centuries of growth slumber in her parent's nursing chamber. No, he is not alone. He is not the last dragon.

She might have to be, in centuries time, when he grows as old and feeble as a human. But he is not the last dragon, and he will keep her from knowing the pain of loss for as long as possible. “There is a hatch—a baby dragon.”

The human nods, looking thoughtful. “We are a small village, you know. We only exist because of the grace of your kind, allowing us to repell the invades. But just because we are small does not mean that we do not know of small things. Are dragon babies loud, hungry things that make a lot of mess?”

He stares at her. “How—”

“Most babies are,” she smiles, and indicates the sheep. “Great Dragon, we are forever in your debt. You saved humanity from the Demon King, and you guard him still. Our village will see to it that our sheep are sent to you. You, in turn, must use the time you would normally use to hunt to sleep and see to the baby.”

“I would need one about every two days, and,” Morva falters. “This state could last for years.”

“Do not worry. We will see to it, somehow. If we are very diligent,” the human leans forward human curiosity and mischief alight in her eyes, “may we meet this new dragon, eventually?”

He is doubtful. The heady excitement of a human's fast paced, inquisitive life pulls at him, and to expose Myrrh to humanity when she is so young will only lead the human part of her to sorrow, while the demonic body that is her birthright will live on for far too long. But, at the same time, when he was young and the world was new and brilliant in his eyes—her immortality is no more significant than this woman's mortality to the vast universe that continued on for both of them.

“When she is old enough to change, honored granddaughter of my friend, we shall see.”

He changes, to bring the offerings to the deep woods and the lair. The human waves as he flies away. Why are they always so like that?

With time, he washes himself. He washes Myrrh. She hates being dunked into streams willy-nilly but it is important that she is not an animal. He begins to teach her the old games. The running water will keep her safe from revenants, when he hunts the monsters in the dark tangled shadows. The baels will cower from even her weak puffs of flame.

She teaches him that the dawn light will make a dew covered dragonette sparkle as she cavorts through clearings and mysterious trails. She teaches him that young dragons do not, in fact, need to be saved from their own test flights. She teaches him that he needs to transform more often in front of her, so she can imitate the action, and learn that human forms do not, in fact have tails and can, indeed, balance with out them. Even when she figures out tails, she can't seem to retract her wings. Or maybe she is too proud of them. There are several months when she just can't get the hang of kneecaps. He's fairly certain it's kneecaps that are tripping her up. Human knees are such a bother.

Also, she has a tendency to ruin her human clothes. He has stopped being embarrassed by asking for new dresses. He even hesitantly follows his new guide to humanity into the village one night. He hadn't really thought of the time, or weak human eyes, the night time just seemed more convenient as he recalled that humans had to be busy during the day in order to feed themselves. He is reminded that no matter how many turnings of the world he lives through, he will never know everything, because shocked elder humans in night dress would not have been his first choice in barganing partners, if he had known that would be the result of the nighttime visit. But he has a dress worn by a beloved and dearly missed daughter in his possession, and it's bright red, which he likes, as it matches his personal taste in colors, but is so much brighter and alive.

He thanks the granddaughter of his friend with a bow at the village gate that leaves her stuttering that dragons should not bow to her. He smiles as he glides away. She does not yet see the white strands in her hair, but he does, and that much warrants respect. He needs to make sure Myrrh is presentable before this human dies.

Miracle of miracles, Myrrh likes her latest dress so much that it only loses one sleeve to a grasping tree branch, and causes her to run back to him, crying over the tattered lost. He gives her a honeycomb, and makes her leave the dress with him when she transforms. With nervous fingers of someone who has not ever had to consider the beauty of a garment when repairing it before, he gets his sewing kit and takes off the second sleeve. He will have to go to the village again to get more red thread.

That evening, Myrrh proudly displays his work. He takes her through the woods, impressed by the way she ducks and avoids brambles. With the sun sinking low on the horizon, they reach a high cliff and look down. “That is Caer Pelyn,” Morva tells his daughter, as she stares down.

“Car Pellin,” her wings flap experimentally.

“No. We will go there tomorrow,” Morva says, censorious, scooping her up before she can try to jump off the cliff.

Myrrh seems to find the name of the village interesting on her human tongue. “Caer Pallen,” she murmurs into his robe. “Caer. Caer. Lair. Home? Da home?”

“No,” Morva hoisted her a little higher on his hip. “But it is a place I treasure as much as your lair, and I will protect, as though it is your home.”

“Home,” Myrrh agreed.

[Fill] Like a Brother

2014-06-06T16:17:21Z

Title: Like a Brother
Game: Pre-Game Blazing Sword (FE7)
Characters: Limstella, Nergal, Kishuna, Renault
Word Count: 2,486
Prompt: FE7, Limstella -- A rare emotion
Warnings: Emotional abuse, casual approach to murder
Summary: Morphs do not have anything that Lord Nergal does not give them. When Limstella witnesses one going beyond what he was given, the sight triggers something new and horrific within the eldest morph.

This new one is an experiment. An intellectual exercise of the lord. An academic question: how well can man create another man (Later Limstella will contemplate Jaffar's existence, and determine that human beings are equipped to create one another very well). ((Even later Limstella will see why resorting to books and formula holds such a sway over those who wish to make others in their own image)).

This new one looks old before his time. Lord Nergal has always made the morphs fully adult so no one will question their lack of age as they go about the world. There is a delicate point in human lives where no change seemed to be occurring. Go too old or too young, and someone will ask why time has not left its mark. This morph, however is a wizened bag of skin and bones, the gold of its eyes gleaming out of desperate hollows shaded by an over large nose.

Limstella, changeless, the first creation, contemplates the frail body as it levers itself off the table under the watching eyes of the elder morph and the lord. Lord Nergal watches the first tottering steps of the latest creation with a hawk-like intensity. Limstella's gaze is as impersonal as a table's contemplation of a newly introduced chair.

The first act of the new creation is to gaze desperately at the small audience its first steps have garnered, and then to clutch at its sexual characteristics to hide them. Lord Nergal smiles at that. “You see, Limstella? This newest one, not a few breaths after awakening, feels shame! I have given him no desire, or intelligence beyond a map of what these feelings are, that they exist, but the process! It is possible to take the memory of quintessence, and graft it onto the body of the creation. Clothe him. I must work.”

Limstella readjusts its thoughts until it is a table contemplating a masculine chair. “Yes sir.”

“Ah, at last. This creation will get to the heart of the matter of the source of Quintessence. The soul. With such free will as you have, you might be the first step towards creating a constant source. And you, Kishuna, shall be the first morph with the ability to feel human emotion,” Nergal gazes proudly at the experiment. Under the intensity of the gaze, Limstella can see Kishuna tremble, the bones and flesh trying to retreat slightly. Is that what it is to experience fear like a human?

A yearning mouth opens, confused and sorrowful. But no sound escapes, only a hiss of air.

“Can he speak?”

Lord nergal waves the question away. “Newborns cannot talk, and he is the first. There were bound to be flaws in the creation.”

(Later standing over a dying raging little sister, Limstella will reflect that despite the uses of spontaneous emotion coupled with the programmed emotions of any true morph in covert agents, Lord Nergal never really worked out the flaws. He merely replaced physical defects with less tangible ones. Certainly, Sonia would have been more tolerable without a tongue).

It goes to obey the order to get Kishuna clothed. Lord Nergal turns to his research. Kishuna remains by the table, hissing piteously.

Newborn is a bad word for Kishuna. He knows many things that humans take years to absorb. He can dress himself if given clothes. He can follow instructions if given orders. He can remember words said about him. Limstella stitches up the first gash from forehead to jaw bone, skipping the deep set eye only by luck of physiology. Kishuna bleeds black like the rest of them. He does not hiss at all, but his eyes fill with tears as he acknowledges the pain of the needle lacing through his paper thin skin, like the furious words that he is supposed to be generating quintessence on his own by now, useless slug. The sadness hangs over him like a thick layer of windless heat.

Limstella does not desire to feel the world raw upon its heart. If Kishuna is equipped with the sentiments of a human, then humans must live lives of constant Hell. Does suffering make a physical being so valuable? Limstella is content that Lord Nergal did not see fit to give it a desire for a state of becoming human. (Later, as other experiments are discarded on the way to creating Ephidel, Limstella remembers this again and again. The longing jealousy of failed morphs seems a difficult existence in the fact of Limstella's constant satisfaction).

Lord Nergal does not notice the wreckage of Kishuna, absorbed in his research, and too pleased with the implications of emotion's connection with soul. Free spontaneity can be reduced to a fractal formula and pulled from the void, he is certain now. He will not have to use the echoes of someone else's dying memories to create the next Kishuna. The formula absorbs time once dedicated to finding proper sources of quintessence, and he does not notice the sluggish air rising out of his creation's unvoiced human feelings.

The absorption lasts several years. It culminates in a trip to Ilia, where Lord Nergal maps sites of power, Limstella following at a distance wondering why the lord chose to make this journey alone—Limstella cannot count as company. Limstella is of no more personhood than a table or a knife. Limstella desires nothing more, after all, it is programed to be satisfied with its master's will. Whatever Lord Nergal found, it left him unsatisfied, staring at a mountain.

When he returns to his workshop, he summons Kishuna, to test the morph's quintessence. There is none, and he breaks into cold fury. Cries of “scum!” “failure!” “disgusting soulless vermin!” chase Kishuna from the altar room. Limstella finds the morph with more scratches on its face and many down its wrinkled arms hiding behind a staircase. Nergal banishes all thought of his experiment from his mind, and gets back to the work of calculating souls. He comes to the conclusion that he needs a human to examine and dissect.

The seventh gash—one of the ones so deep that it will leave a scar across Kishuna's exhausted face—is tended to by the grim man looking for relief from over whelming loss. Limstella notes that the stitching is much better than its efforts. Perhaps there are reasons for keeping the angry human alive besides Lord Nergal's unexpected whim. Perhaps the unexplained trip to Ilia has something to do with it. Maybe the mercenary knows the same sense of human confusion.

The newest stitches make a black line across the prominent chin, and from a distance Kishuna looks as though he is smiling. Still the breathless pain continues to flourish. Limstella wonders if the aura actually comes from Kishuna's body, or if it just leaks from the soundless mouth the way dreams seem to slip out of his head when he sleeps. Limstella has stopped leaving itself open to that invasion. Lord Nergal has not slept for centuries. He gets all the energy he needs from the void.

When Limstella finds Lord Nergal slumped over his desk, the wrinkles of time visible, and faint snores audible, it knows something is wrong. Limstella feels lead weights on its eyelids and realizes in a minor bit of horror that the stuffy workroom is energyless as well as airless. The living pulse of the earth is gone. All the sources of life have fled. It can almost see a red film smothering all trace of magic, extinguishing the sparks of spirits and sentient beings.

As it rouses Lord Nergal, the floor creaks, and Kishuna enters, hissing nervously. The red leaks from his red robe, gathering into a thick gel of physical presence that moves with him. Several of the older experiments left to physical labor when Lord Nergal had no more use for them trail after him. Limstella thinks it now knows why Kishuna has never shown any sign of quintessence despite feeling the world so keenly.

Lord Nergal starts up. “A seal? You dare take magic from me?!”

Kishuna coils back, silenced. In the dead tomb of earth faint images flicker through the air. Desire flows along the foul presence that surrounds the morph. Limstella has the laughable impression that Kishuna hopes that it still might have a use with this growing power.

“Limstella. Kill it.”

Limstella looks at Lord Nergal. “How, my lord? You made Kishuna to be more durable than his outer shell would suggest. And I cannot use magic.”

The argument is valid. Lord Nergal turns to the drudging morphs. “You curs, then, you are strong, you get rid of it. Dismantle it piece by piece, if you have to.”

The morphs do not move. Nergal shouts for the mercenary. Something in Kishuna breaks. The eyes nearly hidden by their dark hollows glisten for an instant, and then Kishuna does what he has always done. He turns, breaking into a run.

Limstella watches him go and is knows it is the Lord's relief it feels knowing the seal on magic will soon lift with Kishuna gone.

“Go after it,” Nergal hisses to Limstella. “If that useless human does not encounter and kill it, make sure that it never returns. I cannot have my work interrupted.”

Orders taken with the obedience Limstella has always possessed (and always will posses. Obedience is the certainty of its life) the elder dashes after the younger. Even in robes and frail bones, Kishuna possesses a speed that would leave a fit human baffled. But not a strength. In the narrow corridor of the half collapsed ruin, Kishuna has run into the bulk of the mercenary, who is all cold eyes and scars from recent rituals straining over muscle. The polishing cloth for the sword usually strapped to his back is in his right hand. The hilt of the sword is in his left. There is something oddly human in that, though Limstella does not know what it is.

“What's the sad guy done this time?” The mercenary asks, looking over Kishuna's cowed and quivering shoulder. “Or are you finally trying to run him down before he near on kills himself, rather than after?”

The disinterest rolls off him in the same wave that Kishuna's terror exudes from the morph's skin. Limstella feels the depth and passion of humanity buffeting it. “Lord Nergal want you to kill him. We cannot right now.”

The mercenary's eyes narrow. He glances once again at Kishuna, looking at the rotten ghostly thing as though he had never seen it before. Limstella, in turn, watches his hand on the sword hilt, knowing that is where the human will show his determination first. It does not even twitch as the mercenary puts his eyes on Limstella one more time. “What's the price?”

“What?”

“For his life. I know what mine is worth. Your master is giving me back a living breathing human, full of the life and soul he should have had, in exchange for my life and body. That's the price I'm paying. Killing scared old men wasn't included in that. What's the price for his life?” Something vicious glimmers in the human eyes. “C'mon now, did you all forget I'm a mercenary? You throw my occupation around like an epithet often enough.”

Kishuna hisses, drawing the cold attention. Sighs and noiseless gapings resolving into something like pleading, something like ranting. Fingers scrabble foolishly for the hem of the mercenary's tunic, just like any human showing submission in human courts fifty years ago. Now, as Limstella has carefully observed, the appropriate way to ask for a hearing involves bowing. But this behavior is an echo of whatever memory had made Kishuna in the first place, something instinctive, or as close to instinct as a morph can achieve.

Kishuna is spontaneous, and will never rely on the inscribed codes that made him.

Some of the morphs, those who go out into the world to act as Lord Nergal's eyes and ears, speak of physical disgust and revulsion for humans, in an all too human way. Limstella has ignored these comments as unimportant. But watching Kishuna mutter, keeping his eyes locked with the mercenary, whose brows are rising and whose expression is shifting to shock, something fizzes overwhelmingly inside Limstella. The feeling rushes through its stomach suddenly a roaring beast like hunger, and a tightness of the lungs. A trembling overtakes it, as the mercenary's sword drops to ancient stones. This is nothing like the distant relief on knowing that the seal would leave. This is a raw irrational pulse and hum of the world waking under Limstella's skin and crackling like a perfectly cast lightning bolt.

“Get out!” Limstella yells, shocked beyond itself, even as the mercenary steps back.

Kishuna doesn't notice. Kishuna is already fleeing into the night air. Limstella breathes out, and sags against the nearest wall. It was Angry.

Later, other rejected discards join Kishuna (Limstella is sure the wretch was following the movements of Lord Nergal carefully). Sometimes Limstella hears of magicians speculating on magic seals as it travels for Lord Nergal. It ignores the muttered rumors of Kishuna's theorized existence, a seal that could wipe out magic for a whole day's march. Obviously the legend has grown a bit in the retelling. Kishuna cannot be that powerful.

Later still, the mercenary leaves, nearly soulless and empty handed (despite having served his purpose, Limstella cannot understand why Lord Nergal did not have him killed). For a while Lord Nergal wants him watched, and silenced if he speaks. The mercenary does not, he settles for a while in one location, usually as a mercenary, sometimes as a weapons smith, or an armorer. Skills thought lost by human memory get reintroduced in some areas by accident. But always, his vicious emptiness shows through, and he moves on, letting his sins pile up behind him.

Limstella does not know if they are real sins, or this is just how the people questioned about the missing armsmaster choose to relate what they have observed. It is not quite sure what a sin is, aside from those that have been clearly defined. Sins are human things. They are Kishuna's problem, not Limstella's. Eventually, years later than Limstella would have expected, Lord Nergal stops caring about the mercenary. A century on, and Limstella suspects that the mercenary has been forgotten (later, when Sonia demands that the filthy morph teach her black magic so that she might be closer to the Lord, Limstella does not mention the fact that much of the Lord has been consumed, memory by memory by the void from which he draws his power. Perhaps it is secretly hoping that Sonia will go the same way, but since that frisson of anger, Limstella has decided not to care).

[fill] What a Good Day Looks Like

2014-05-24T12:36:56Z

Title: What a Good Day Looks Like
Game: Pre-Game Binding Blade (FE6)
Characters: Guinivere, Zephiel, Desmond, Hellene, Brenya, Murdock
Word Count: 5,496
Prompt: FE6 - Guinivere (gen)—Coping with her family situation.
Warnings: Emotional abuse through parental manipulation, isolation, witnessed physical abuse
Summary: One summer Guinivere was invited on a royal tour of Etruria with her older brother.

Guinivere remembered the way the queen's mouth trembled when she called the princess to her on a bright spring day. Since being allowed to move into the Queen's apartments in the royal capital almost five years ago, Queen Hellene's interactions with Guinivere had been more frequent, but brief, lengthening only into deep kindness the week her mother had died. Guinivere still remembered that week, even if the unflinching support while her father raged and mourned and banished Zephiel from Guinivere's side grew ever more dream-like in the face of stern disapproval, and occasional anger.

That day, despite the singing birds rejoicing for the end of winter, Queen Hellene's words were clipped, forced out of her mouth from a jaw that seemed to be held shut by some external force. “My royal husband has determined that you are to come with us on our tour of Etruria this summer, while Zephiel meets his distant cousins. You are to behave yourself—the King of Etruria is much less formal, as a person, than the King of Bern, and he will take your youth into account, but remember, in the eyes of Etruria's court, you are a disgrace, and you must carry yourself with the utmost deference and politeness to rise above that opinion. Your tutors will be giving you proper instruction for the next two weeks, and while we journey on the road. Obey them, and do not be troublesome, child.”

Later, Guinivere heard the sounds of shouting from the royal apartments. Her nurse, as always pretended not to hear. Guinivere breathed in shakily, and asked if she could take her dancing lesson in the East Wing, instead. Just as Zephiel had told her, her tutor, who had been flinching at every high pitched shriek, was only too glad to guide her away.

That night, when Guinivere occupied herself with writing a letter to her brother, she caught her nurse reading over her shoulder, instead of brushing her hair. Guinivere smiled her best smile, the one that she knew made grown ups give her things, and continued to write, careful to praise her father in every line, and say how pleased she was to be going to Etruria this summer. She wanted to let him know that they were going to be traveling together, but so many bad things had happened when people read her letters. Hopefully, when Zephiel returned from his recent posting to the northern mountains, there would be no recriminations about trying to spread his unwanted influence to Guinivere, like last time.

As the royal household began to pack for the tour, a letter arrived from one of the lesser courtier's little sister. Guinivere's father smiled kindly at her as he handed it to her at breakfast.

“My little daughter, so industrious with her lessons to have already mastered good writing. It is sweet of you to make connections,” he told her. “Just remember that not everyone trying to speak with you is doing so to be your friend. Baron Holbruch is a decent man, though. His sister greatly desires to meet you. Would you like that?”

Servants had been cast out due to her temper tantrums when she was seven. At ten, Guinivere knew never to turn down an invitation, just in case she made her father think that she disapproved of the person. She nodded eagerly, and thanked the king for bringing the letter to her personally.

She opened the letter with trepidation while waiting for the eternally late history tutor, worried that if she waited for a more conventional time, her nurse would want to know her reply. If her father's judgment of the Baron was wrong, prevarication on her part might lead to more screaming from behind closed doors.

Baron Holbruch was a decent man. In the folds of his own letter, protected by his wax seal, another slip of paper with Zephiel's elegant calligraphy winked at Guinivere. She hastily scanned it, noting that Zephiel was being detained in his command lessons at the fort due to practical applications of bandits, and would be joining the royal party en route to Etruria, rather than traveling back to the Royal palace on his own. Guinevere's heart was light as she slid the important piece of parchment between the pages of her personal psalter.

For three weeks on the road in early summer heat, Guinevere had that hidden piece of knowledge by her side. Her father remarked delightedly on what a quiet, dutiful girl he had raised, so engrossed by her religious studies. There was talk of finding a new companion for her, one devoted to Elimine, to properly train her as a devout and courtly maiden.

Guinivere ignored this all, knowing that whatever decision was made, it would be made, and she had better endeavor to accept it. Instead she smiled and laughed with other courtiers her own age, trying to judge when it would be best to step back, lest someone believe that she was becoming inappropriately friendly, or when it was essential to push her friendship forward, as her father always had an eye on his generals, and keeping them happy was always of utmost importance.

Zephiel arrived the night before the van reached the border. The land all about was owned by an old wyvern rider family, and they were toasting the King and his family eagerly. One of the queen's guards decided that a little girl was not the right company for a group of nobles being entertained by very military jokes made by a jester, and ushered Guinivere out into the courtyard to watch the sunset and play with the other youngsters in the castle. None of the young ones were her age, all of the sons and daughters of the family having been chosen to go to the hatcheries by at least age nine, as Dame Greda proudly declared to the king. Those that were left were small and mostly couldn't walk without help.

Guinivere had settled down to play a game with acorns that involved keeping the acorns in large squares drawn on the earth, and then stealing other people's acorns with rocks that could move and encounter each other. The striped rocks had different movement abilities, and no matter how she built up the terrain around her boxes, the six year old daughter of the castle always managed to position at least one of her rocks to snatch another acorn.

As Guinivere fretted over her latest loss, leaving her with just two acorns, one of them very small and green, someone adult sized sat down beside her. “May I play?”

Turning on her knees—later her maid and the Queen would be out of their minds with how dirty Guinivere's good feast dress managed to get that night—Guinivere saw her brother smiling and flung herself into a hug. “You can play only if everyone else says you can, and you sit next to me. Oh! And be nice when I lose,” she ordered, glad at last, to be rude as she liked. Zephiel would never tell on her, or allow someone to be hurt because she was being selfish.

“Well,” Zephiel surveyed the group of five children absorbed in the game. “May I play?”

The eldest son, who had a rabbit-like deference towards his sister, even if she was two years younger, looked for her nod before nodding uncertainly himself. “But—we'll have to remake all the castles.”

“Oh no, I'll just take over Guinivere's castle, if that's alright. That way it's not unfair. I came late, so I should start off with a bit of a disadvantage, also,” he scooted closer, surveying the playing board in the the dying sunset light, “she doesn't have too much of a disadvantage. Can any of you tell me what she was doing right all along?”

The current clear winner with her stripey stones and all of the acorns clustered in small groups at strategic points in the map scowled. “She's still got all her stones. Neva and Derry have been fighting it out, while Jossu has been trying to poach from all of us, and keeps losing, and I've lost a few of the foot stones, even if I've kept all my wyverns. I've been swiping from her, but that's only 'cause she keeps moving her stones out of danger.”

“Exactly,” Zephiel's grin was pleased. “You're a real genius at this game, aren't you?”

“Nah. My brother and sister both do that when they're at home. They let us fight it out and then late round us,” the girl replied philosophically. “I just didn't figure the princess knew the strategy to it when she wouldn't sacrifice even a single stone to protect her castle, or gain other castles.”

“Well, now you all know what my strategy would be,” Zephiel told the other children before turning to Guinivere. “Princess, will you let me take on your cause?”

“Yes, yes,” Guinivere agreed, relieved to turn the game over to someone who knew the rules and how to play. She wormed her way into her brother's lap as he conquered castles, and returned the acorns to her castle, gracefully calling for an alliance with the wyvern stone girl when the shadow of the castle walls blocked the game.

Guinivere smiled up at him as the other children ran off to play. “You were excellent.”

“Thank you,” he handed her one of the striped wyvern stones she had kept alive for him. “And how have you been on this journey?”

“Traveling is hard,” Guinivere sighed. “There's so much that I have to learn, and so many new people. I don't want to be troublesome, and I'm tying really hard, but it's so long and tiring every day. I'm glad you're here. Maybe the Queen will be happier now.”

Zephiel's chest moved in a heavy sigh that never escaped his lips. “Maybe. She will be getting to see her family again, and I know she'll like that. I only hope Father can see how good she is when she is happy.”

“He must,” Guinivere murmured, feeling a shade desperate with the pronouncement. “And he'll see how brave you've been this year, and how well I've learned my lessons, so I'll not be a disgrace.”

“You've never been a disgrace, Guinivere,” Zephiel hugged her tightly. “A little too in love with getting your own way, perhaps, but since your way is good, there is nothing wrong in that. Father loves you more than the moon and stars. He will be happy with your conduct in Etruria. He wouldn't have invited you along, otherwise.”

“Have you ever been to Aquelia, Zephiel?” Guinivere asked, never wanting the hug to end, and hoping that Zephiel would not remember to put in an appearance at the feast if she kept asking him questions.

Unfortunately
her ruse was too obvious, as Zephiel was letting go. “No. I've been sent far and wide for the last few years, but never outside of Bern's borders. It will be a big adventure for both of us.”

Guinivere leaned back, looking at the tall surrounding wall, gilded in harsh orange. “I'm so glad you're here, brother. Otherwise, I think I might be a little scared.”

“If you weren't here,” Zephiel promised faithfully, “I know I would be terrified. Being sent off to be reviewed before my cousins, who I have never met? I am so glad I have my little sister to watch out for me, and make sure I don't say anything too brash.”

“You're not brash!”

“Oh, I can be terrible, I promise you. I've spent three years with the army now, and I shock myself, sometimes, with what I deem is safe to say in front of any person. But I have you and Murdock standing right by me, as a reminder not to go beyond my bounds.”

Over Zephiel's shoulder someone coughed. “Your highness, you should be getting to the feast, to make your apologies.”

Guinivere knew that rumble to be Murdock, watching over the prince's duty as always. Sometimes she wanted him to just drop off the edge of the world for always advising caution, and seeing Zephiel as the next king rather than her brother. She knew he meant well, but sometimes she wished no one would ever make Zephiel king one day, just so that the people constantly insisting upon his time would go away.

She rose dutifully, anyway, trying not to pout too much. It wouldn't do for Zephiel to know she felt angry that he had to desert her to be the prince. Zephiel did sigh this time, rising to his towering height. “Yes. Can't let anyone know I was playing child's games rather than sitting listening attentively to the same old jokes. You know what this means, Guinevere?”

“I'm to come into the great hall after you,” the little girl nodded, knowing the old routine. Sometimes she went ahead while he stayed behind. But either way, when the punch and mead was going around, it was safest not to be seen together.

Zephiel stopped to kiss her forehead, and then quickly walked away. Guinivere pretended not to see Murdock look back at her with sad eyes, as she waited patiently in the now lonely courtyard, trying to imagine what Etruria would look like.

It turned out that Etruria looked very much like the lowlands of Bern until the border mountains were a passing thought. Zephiel rode up front with their father, and Guinivere was glad because it looked right, just as her traveling in the Queen's litter also seemed right. Queen Hellene had seemingly forgotten her cloak of constant hard edges as soon as they hit the river lands. She dismissed Guinivere's nurse to the baggage line on the first day, and braided the little girl's hair with ribbons and gems just like any of the young ladies attending upon the Queen. The reverent veils that Guinivere's nurse had been favoring since the king remarked upon his daughter's piety were stuffed into trunks and forgotten.

“That is for mature women who feel the call of Father Sky in their bones,” the Queen lectured when the nurse protested that Guinivere was looking too foreign. “She's a girl, in her last few years of girlhood. How dare you take that from her, particularly here where children are allowed to laugh freely and be happy, in the Saint's sight! Let the princess look like any girl in her station, with hair unbound. A child may braid her hair and wear adornments without needing to fear for her modesty.”

Queen Hellene drew the line, quite firmly, at Guinivere riding with the knights in the train. “You are a noblewoman. Riding when it is not necessary is not seemly in Etruria. Every peasant rides. Every uncouth Bernian and ridiculous Sacaen rides, for that matter. You, however, must be transported as befits your station.”

Even in the hot and stuffy conditions of the litter, Guinivere was glad for Queen Hellene's demands, because they spent the whole day watching the bright sunny countryside of Etruria roll by, and Hellene told Guinivere all manner of secrets and confidences about the land and the people. She had been little older than Guinivere now when she left this place, and its parties and friendships. Queen Hellene had a devious plan to break away from the party while in the capitol, and take the river barges to the southern estate of her cousin. She promised to take Guinivere along.

“She has a young son, maybe half your age. I realize it is not as good as someone who was truly in your age group, but there is no one quite so young at the court at present, and my cousin would adore you so very much. She, at least, is a good mother.”

For a week, Guinivere had a taste of what it would be to be Queen Hellene's daughter. It was almost as good as being Zephiel's sister. They were very similar people, in fact, both being strong and firm in their beliefs. Guinivere recognized the harder version of Zephiel's conviction when his mother spoke of what was proper for a lady of her station, and what was not. Guinivere knew she had taken after her own mother, in respect to conviction. Her father often praised her for being as yielding as his lamented dearheart.

However, when they reached the barge that would take them to the heart of the country over a few days, a messenger waited to dash everything to pieces. Guinivere only caught the deep purple and silver of royal livery when her father shouted something, and stormed away from the man, heading straight for the litter. The queen was taking a nap while the baggage was being loaded onto the barge, and Guinivere was out stretching her legs as she had been told to.

The shout already had her staying well back with the honor guard, hoping the common burnished orange skin of the wyverns would hide her bright red dress, but curiosity prompted her to peek around the snoozing bulk of her chosen cover. Her breath caught in terror as her father wrenched the curtains of the litter open and hauled out the queen by her hair. Then arms scooped Guinivere up, and passed her to one of the wyvern knight guards, probably the rider of the mount she had hidden behind.

“Get her out of here,” the woman handing Guinivere off hissed in a way that drew a rumble from her wyvern.

General Murdock appeared in an instant. “I will take her, Knight Commander.”

“By the stars,” the woman growled, glancing nervously over her shoulder. “Not a moment too soon.”

Her oath only partially cut off the furious yell, “—this insult, you scheming hag!”

General Murdock lifted Guinivere with terrifying ease. Even her brother had to put his strength into giving her piggyback rides. General Murdock made Guinivere feel weightless, holding her to his chest as he strode from the assembled household and royal staff into the fields on the side of the road. It wasn't until birdsong had replaced shouting that he let Guinivere gently down. Far off, Guinivere could see a team of peasants bent over the neat rows of earth in the fields, their backs covered with sweat from the sun and the work, and not with the cold clammy fear that coursed through her.

She bunched her fists in her dress, knowing, without being told, that she had done something. Her father never got this mad at Queen Hellene unless Guinivere was involved. If he started throwing things—sometimes his moods could take him like that, he always apologized, but—Guinivere realized with guilt that her psalter with its incriminating secret letter was in the litter. She should have burned it.

“Here,” General Murdock sank to his knees, offering Guinivere a handkerchief that stank of metal from begin so close to his ever present chain mail.

He didn't tell her it was all right, the way her nurse sometimes did in these situations. He didn't tell her that her father loved her, the way Zephiel always did. He just sat with his huge knees sinking slowly into an Etrurian field and waited for Guinivere to use the handkerchief. Her eyes were brimming, and her nose had closed shut in a hot, damp way, but no tears spilled until the giant man looked at her very seriously, and whispered: “If you need to, please, do cry. No one else dares to.”

He might as well have unleashed a flood. Guinivere tried her hardest to be quiet and not draw attention to it. She tried so hard that she shook, and the hiccups burst forth more loudly that the sobs would have until the wyvern general of Bern scooped her up again in a welcome hug, and let her drown him in his blank canvas surcoat and chain mail.

He didn't let go until she stopped trembling and pushed him away, rubbing at her nose and cheeks with her sleeve, as the handkerchief was now too wet to use. “What did I do this time?” Guinivere asked, sounding thick and phlegmy.

“Nothing,” the wyvern general assured her. “You did nothing. I promise you, Guinivere, out of all of us, you and your brother have never done anything wrong. King Mordred and his house have simply decided to go on a summer tour of the Western Isles this year, so much of the important business that was supposed to occur will not be able to commence. We will still go to Aquelia. You will get to see the sights, and be exposed to the minor court. In a lot of ways, this is better, there won't be so many people trying to get a look at you and pressuring the prince.”

“But—the queen and I were going to see her cousins,” it slipped out of Guinivere in her bitterness over knowing the plan was now just a fruitless dream.

Murdock's face went very still. “So, that was how she was going to get around it,” he murmured, his eyes looking into the far distance. Then he focused on Guinivere again, his expression nothing but understanding. “Well, you and your brother can go out, and see the university and the Holy Tower, and whatever else you two wish to see in the capital. It might not be as comforting as being with friendly faces for a week with no responsibilities, but I will see to it that you have at least a whole day together with no interference.”

He held out a hand. Guinivere took it readily. When someone spoke so seriously, particularly when that someone was Murdock, she had to be able to trust him. He had been keeping her brother alive for years.

When they made their way back to the assembled household everything was on board the barge. It was as though nothing had happened. Guinivere's psalter wasn't even upset. The Knight Commander of the honor guard handed it to her personally, mumbling something about knowing that she was a good girl who liked to sing her graces, and she shouldn't lose such a valuable book, with such valuable contents. The queen was red eyed, but silent at the prow of the barge. Guinivere tiptoed around her, and tried to hold her hand the way she would have to comfort Zephiel, but Hellene jerked away as though she had been burned.

Guinivere searched for Zephiel before cast off, but found her father instead, and spent the rest of the ride with him fussing over the state of her face, demanding to know why she had been crying one minute, and readily consoling her the next, all the while promising vengeance on the sneaking Etrurians who had found his little darling's presence so distasteful that they slunk away rather than give her her honor as a crown princess. Guinivere tried not to cry again, as she realized even Murdock could lie. Everything had been ruined by her not being Zephiel's full sister, and Hellene's daughter.

She did not see Zephiel until their third day in Aquelia. The capital of Etruria was overwhelming. Bern's capital was dominated by the high fort of the royal palace, and surrounded on all sides by mountains, forcing the city to built up in spindly towers. Hemmed in by water on all sides, Aquelia should have been the same, but the city was vast, built all along the waterways, spreading out into the harbor in weird islands and lighthouses, and seemingly running away from the pale gray sculptural beauty of the royal palace and its pure white adjoining cathedral. Guinivere loved to look out at the twinkling sprawling city through the thousands of stained glass windows that the palace boasted.

The King of Bern engaged in negotiations with the Etrurian border lords. The debate occupied him from sunrise to sunset every day, leaving Guinivere alone to wander the halls and hide from curious Etrurian eyes. If this was the palace at a quarter of its capacity, the number of people it must hold when full staggered her.

After breakfast on the third day, she was trying to trace the path of the distant river through the wavey glass when Zephiel came upon her. “Would you like to go out, today, Guinivere? I was hoping to see the university. I met one of the mages studying there at the feast last night, and she promised to give me a tour. I would love for you to come along.”

Guinivere looked away from the greenish bruise on his cheek, maybe it was just the light of the stained glass. In the palace, so far, they all had been safe. But the river she had been studying for two days called to her, and she thought she could see the dome of the fabled school of magic and theology rising from one of the countless islands. “Yes, please, I would like that very much.”

Zephiel kept a firm hold of her hand as they walked through the busy Aquelian streets toward a large square dominated by a splashing fountain. At the base, a young woman in bright red student's robes with an icy blue border waved to them. The salt laced wind from the sea caught her hair and played with the lose curling ends, tossing them in magenta streamers. Guinivere hoped that she would like this young lady who bowed low to Zephiel—a shock to see the proper military greeting after so many fine ladies had been curtsying in Guinivere's direction since entering the palace.

“Crown Princess,” the student mage added, bowing just as deeply to Guinivere, “I am Brenya, also of Bern. I have been studying here for nearly eight years. It has been an honor to be asked to show you both around the university complex. Is there anything that you wish to see most? We have very few students on campus right now, due to summer recess until harvest time, but there are few practicing mages in the remedial lessons. As long as they are just working fireballs, it is quite safe.”

“Ah,” Guinivere squirmed. “Uh. Do you—do you have anything to do with all the pretty glass around the palace?”

The woman beamed, as though Guinivere had said something kind about her hair. “Ah! Yes. It is not my specialty, but I can take you to the glass makers on Market Street. Several magicians work there, putting charms on glass panes to weather proof them.”

She beckoned the pair forward, and began to walk at a rate that seemed unbelievable. Zephiel coughed. “Ah, I have been on a horse for most of the journey, Mage Brenya. It would be easier on my legs if you slowed down. Also, you said at supper that you were an unofficial expert on the history of the Holy Tower?”

Brenya slowed, looking embarrassed, but it allowed Guinivere to catch up with her brother. Everything about this student mage was amazing. Guinivere was not aware that such mature looking women could be so energetic, or so easily embarrassed. “Ah, I suppose so. Though not much of the architecture, if that is the Crown Princess' wish. The windows in the Holy Tower are protected by magic, I know that much. There is some sort of defense mechanism that the tower has—a true mechanism, mind you, like a siege engine—that makes unwarded glass impractical.”

“Oh,” Guinivere wasn't sure how she felt about seige engine mechanisms. That was the kind of thing that called her brother away from the royal palace. It was a different world, one he moved into with ease, abandoning her. “Uh, Mage Brenya?
If glass isn't your area, what is?”

“Combat magic,” the young woman replied with ease. “Specifically the deadly ice spells passed down from the dragons. I wish to return home and enter the army soon. Magecraft is just as much a soldier's trade as it is a scholar's, and if we are honest, only in Bern can a person be both.”

She had been speaking to Guinivere, but her eyes went to Zephiel's at that last part, and she colored, not very prettily, the blush clashing with her hair. Guinivere felt very small and unimportant as the part of her brother's life that took him away most often intruded on their walk.

However, Brenya let the matter drop, and went back to speaking of the reasons for the Holy Tower's construction, which was really interesting. Soon they were speaking of Saint Elimine and her crusade to get people to see the power of Father Sky and Mother Earth above those of other spirits in the world. Brenya confessed to wishing she would have the chance to travel to Sacae and Ilia one day, as they were the last human areas that kept to their pre-Scourging ways.

The glass shops were a wonder. Guinivere watched as smiths poured thick molten liquid into planes and twisted and pulled it to become the stems of delicate goblets. She stood very still in the display room, terrified by the merchant's injunction that children should not touch anything, and it would cost more than they could afford to replace one broken piece. Zephiel's grin was not lost on her as he bent to whisper in her ear that this was very different from home. That much was true. One glance at the double headed wyvern sewn on Zephiel's doublet at home would have had even the most powerful merchant quivering in fear, and looking for wyvern knights out of the corners of their eyes.

They ate dinner from food stalls along the river, Brenya profusely apologizing at every bite for taking them to such a cheap meal, despite the fact that the smell of the hot grilled fish had set Guinivere's mouth to watering and had Zephiel request the stop. As they liked oil and sauce from their fingers, Zephiel asked which libraries Brenya would recommend for ancient history.

She led them to the university archive, and amused Guinivere with previous student research papers while Zephiel browsed the collection of old texts, and came back looking thoughtful. As they wandered lazily back over the high bridge connecting the domed university to the bustling commercial hub of Aquelia, Zephiel paused to ask Brenya if she knew what the “great crime of the dragons” was, as term he had found in some older texts that afternoon.

“As I have understood the Scourging, the dragons themselves were fairly blameless. The humans of the time wished to gain the advantages of territory that dragons were using as their personal grounds, obviously, but we both started the war and successfully drove them from land that had been theirs. I see no real crime on their side, unless we are so arrogant as to believe that wishing to keep one's home and life the same as it was for hundreds of years is a crime.”

Brenya shrugged. “I—cannot say. I have seen that reference when I was doing my research on the early Elimineans, and how they dealt with those who used anima and elder magic. But it only comes up in the oldest work. I would assume it is one of those failed methods for convincing people that dragons were the enemy. 'Dragons eat your sheep, dragons depend on dark magic powers, dragons have sinned.' That sort of nonsense.”

“Ah well, a lost mystery, then,” Zephiel shrugged, and looked down at Guinivere. “Perhaps you can find out for me, during your lessons.”

“Father Grenal doesn't like people to ask questions during his lectures,” Guinivere said quietly.

Both Brenya and Zephiel frowned at each other. Zephiel looked back down at Guinivere. “Well, you don't have to upset him, then. He is rather old, and does not show up on time very often, isn't he?”

Guinivere nodded. One of the most constant things in her life was the fact that her history lessons almost never occurred, let alone on time, these days.

“Mm,” Zephiel nodded. “Well, maybe you might be getting a new history teacher when Father Grenal goes into honorable retirement. You can ask all the questions you like, then. Mage Brenya, thank you for your time. My sister and I will have to head back to the palace now, to have time to prepare for the evening.”

Guinivere smiled shyly, as she turned off the bridge with her brother. It was one of the best days of her summer, and she treasured it in her heart.

[Fill] What We Leave Behind

2014-05-23T13:25:35Z

Title: What We Leave Behind
Game: Pre- and In Game Binding Blade (FE6)
Characters: Guinivere, Miledy, Zephiel, Ellen, Desmond
Pairings: Guinivere/Miledy
Word Count: 1,071
Prompt: FE6 - Miledy/Guinivere—Regrets
Warnings: Drabble Fic
Summary: There was admiration and love between them, but knight and Queen regret the distrust lingering as well.

When her training was diverted from army officer to Queen's Guard, at sixteen, Miledy thought she knew anger. She was top in all of her classes at the hatchery, and every midwinter since she had graduated into the officer's training at the Bern Palace—all two of them, but she knew that was enough experience—she had defeated all comers in the jousts, and only fallen in the foot fighting to seasoned veterans with years more sword work under their belts.

She yelled, pushed beyond anger, at her mentor, who had guided her through two years of officer training that she was the best, and keeping her from having a chance at generalship just so she could baby sit a sheltered noble relative was a disgrace. It was not Miledy's finest day, watching the forbidding lips of Colonel Liara of Mount Grunau thin, and knowing that she had over stepped her bounds. Watching those bounds fall away as she turned, nearly stepped on a small noblewoman and was taken aback by the nervous curtsey. Hearing, in a tone so withering that her ears went red and Miledy wanted to curl into a ball and die, that this was the noble she had to babysit, and the King had ordered her especially because she was the best of her generation, to babysit this one noble girl, Guinivere of Bern.

Miledy bowed stiffly, and Guinivere curtsied again, smiling shyly. Miledy always regretted the meeting.

Seven months later, and Guinivere placed the greatest test before Miledy without meaning to. She had meant for her valiant protector, who had so far fended off some bandits, who had appeared when Guinevere went to see one of the noble women who actually spoke to her in Dame Urasa's summer home, to become an unquestioned fixture before harvest time, the end of the summer campaigns, and the return of the Western Army. However, the adventure with the bandits meant that everyone was still speaking of Miledy by the time the Western Army returned to the palace to be stood down for winter exercises, and Guinevere ran across the courtyard as usual to throw herself into her brother's arms.

The jubilant arc she made through the air as Zephiel swung her around, and the books he piled into her arms when he let her feet touch the ground made her completely forget to be guarded in her answers to the innocent questions about how she had fared that year. Upon word of Miledy's daring rescue, her brother bowed, and thanked Miledy with all sincerity. He then scheduled, with the ease of someone speaking of the weather, a complete debriefing of the incident.

Miledy only managed to escape the interrogation when the Recitations Bell clanged warningly to herald the false dawn. Guinivere always regretted exposing her guard to her brother's close scrutiny in such a manner.

Two years later, after she was named full captain of Guinevere's guard, Miledy was summoned by the King for a congratulatory brandy, as was tradition. She sat gingerly on a too-comfortable chair, and answered dutifully as King Desmond paced between his desk, the fireplace, and the window, mentioning inconsequentials like the speed of the falling snowflakes, and the growth of wyverns this year. At the end of the conference, he reminded his wyvern knight that she had a duty to the crown to give him weekly progress reports on Guinivere's movements, who she saw, and who she spoke to.

Some days in the intervening years, Miledy regretted, deeply regretted, not resigning right there, in that stuffy room. She never regretted having lied to her king, once a week, every week, until he died.

When Guinivere was riding through the night, the jewel from the shrine burning her through the saddlebag, and Ellen guiding their remounts along beside her, she spared a thought for her guard. She had lied to Miledy and Zephiel, betrayed Bern, and worst of all, she had involved Ellen in her schemes. But Ellen could not be left innocent to face Zephiel. Bern could not be allowed to go to war against the whole world. Zephiel—she could make no sense of her brother and his actions any more. And Miledy. Her determined, brave guard. Miledy, who had been better than all the other guards before, still had reported to her father, just like all the guards before, and must report to Zephiel even now.

She still regretted leaving her friend to bear the results of Zephiel's reaction upon learning that the Fire Emblem and his sister had disappeared.

As Guinivere menaced her with a sword too heavy for the princess of Bern to lift, Miledy had to swallow back her horror. She regretted never making her loyalty clear. She regretted ever having left her princess in the dark as to what her father had asked, and where Miledy had stood on the matter. She regretted never having told Guinivere that such orders had never even crossed Zephiel's lips, and probably not even entered that hard, calculating mind, driven as it was towards grander designs.

Heedless of the danger of fear and luck being on a beginner's side, she dared the sword, and babbled her apology, speaking honestly to her princess. She never regretted a single word, or the actions she took after them.

Guinivere did not regret taking her time in the great palace of Etruria, while the army was getting ready to storm the holy tower. She loitered in the sunbeams slanting through the stained glass, waiting for Miledy to finish settling her little brother in with the rest of Roy's band. Her guard found her, bathed in the light of the holy maiden amidst the stars. They walked together in silence for a time, hand in hand, contemplating the mysteries of love and betrayal.

In the end, for both of them, love won out. Miledy still tasted of acrid metal after the battle, and there was another fight coming, but none of it really mattered.

Roy led the frail form of the dragon, of the priestess, of her king's dream toward the lake, to let her rinse off the blood. Miledy watched at a careful distance, her hand on her Queen's shoulder. Guinivere was crying again. Miledy breathed out.

Guinevere glanced up with watery eyes. “It is over, then?”

Miledy nodded, kissing the top of her Queen's head. “Tomorrow, everything else will begin.”

[Fill] A Good Consul

2014-05-22T10:39:26Z

Title: A Good Consul
Game: Post-Sacred Stones (FE8)
Characters: Eirika, Tana, Knoll, Ephraim, L'Arachel
Pairings: Eirika/L'Arachel
Word Count: 4,386
Prompt: FE8 - Eirika/L’arachel—Learning how to mourn.
Warnings: None

Summary: There is too much to do to restore Renais, and Eirika is finding it hard to fit everything in. Luckily, L'Arachel has noticed.

Eirika gazed as the long rusty splotch adorning the rug in her father's room. “I think,” she said very quietly, as though the serving lady hovering at her elbow would break into a thousand pieces if she raised her voice, “we will need to get rid of this.”

“I've been telling everyone that it must happen,” the lady agreed, writing down in her ledger. “That kind of thing shouldn't be in the royal chambers on coronation day. Now, is it salvageable, do you think? The secretary from Grado will want to know.”

Said secretary, a tired looking woman with the black lesions and deep scarring of a badly healed revanant bite, waited like a hungry shadow in the council chamber. Oh, the woman probably went to her own rooms at the end of the day, and compiled the lists of pleas that had to be brought to the attention of ambassadors and other secretaries, and this woman did all of her work dilligently. She just seemed to have become a permanent fixture of gloom in the council chamber. Eirika wished she had more charitable thoughts about her than 'vulture.' She really would have to sit down with the representative and talk to her until she knew the woman's story. Eirika could guess it involved the earthquake, and an attack from the undead bands, and every child in her village slaughtered. Just like every other story out of Grado.

“The rug is salvageable. Has anyone—the sheets on the bed?”

“Not burned, as you ordered, your highness. But we haven't changed them, either. No one wanted to touch them.”

Not even undertakers, Eirika suspected. She did not blame any of the people who had to secure the palace after the true rulers had taken it back from Sir Orson. “Good. The mattress and those sheets should be marked salvageable. The bed curtains, too.”

“Right, my lady. We could bring in priests to do another cleansing, but it's probably best to get rid of the bed and the chairs. I'll mark those—”

Eirika looked at the Queen's vanity, which was painted all the gaudy shades of sea foam blue and green and red that wood carvers in northern Renais favored. The last person to use the chair and the hair brush had black sludge in her veins, and sat there at the pleasure of a man who could not see the reality of her decay.

A good queen, however, would not waste the workmanship of years long gone. Eirika steeled her spine. “Cleanse the paint pots, and put them in with the rest of the goods to go to Grado. Cleanse the furniture, but keep it. We can always get a new mattress and sheets. Just—get rid of everything in the furniture.”

She turned to the windows. Glass planes glittered in afternoon sunlight. She had a beautiful view of the forecourt. Someone should have drawn the heavy velvet curtains, but those had been looted. They looted the curtains but left the bed for Fado's children to look at. As she looked down, she noted a familiar stride heading for the stables, and out by the west wing, long shadows of knightly guards searched for their lost charge. Even with the sun in her eyes, Eirika foresaw another intervention.

The Queen turned a bright smile on her lady in waiting. “The other rugs should be fine. Almost everything else in the royal apartments is fine. Sir Orson and his—Sir Orson was only in here, right?”

“As far as we know, my lady.”

“Then let's get this place cleansed once more, and give what we can,” Eirika's mouth hurt all around her teeth, but they kept on showing. This was peace time. It was supposed to be easier to make these decisions. “You'll take care of it, won't you? Any of Mother's little things that are still around, well, if they were handled too much, we can sell them. The big things, like the furniture, we must keep. And the dresses. They—maybe we can remake them, if they were,” she couldn't keep the hesitation in her voice from making the grisly thought even darker, “used. Make sure those pieces that must be sold, rather than donated, get appraised by Master Rennac. We'll want Carcino prices on them, and he'll know what we should say about, well, wear and tear. I leave it all in your hands. But ask me if you have questions about any of it.”

“No, my lady, I think it's pretty clear,” the lady in waiting bowed. She was a third cousin on Eirika's mother's side. She would know what was useful and what was valuable among the late Queen's things. Eirika's father had only held on to them for Eirika, after all. Now that she would be crowned queen—

Eirkia strode from the room. They weren't hers yet. She shouldn't look at them too hard until after the fealty ceremony. Proper coronations took so much time and energy to arrange. Maybe she wouldn't have to go through her mother's things for another year.

“How was it?” Tana broke away from the honor guard, who stood at attention outside the door, to link arms with Eirika.

“Not as bad as I thought,” Eirika leaned on Tana's shoulder as they walked, trying to remember how they would have talked about this a few months earlier. Tana didn't need to be treated like a lady in waiting just because Eirika only seemed to be allowed to talk to them nowadays. “It's all about doing these things one step at a time. By the way, Rennac is still here, isn't he?”

“L'Arachel said he would be, so chances are he hasn't managed to run off yet,” Tana said, patting Eirika's hand reassuringly.

Well, that was one thing that was easier. “I don't know what I'd do without all the help Frelia and Rausten has offered,” oh shadows and fire, no. She sounded like a courtier rather than the Eirika who was Tana's friend. Eirika revised her words. “I really mean it. You and Innes and L'Arachel—You've helped me and Ephraim so much. Joshua, too.”

Tana's laugh chimed like bells across the ceiling. “We need to pull together now, if everyone's going
to get better. Besides, if we weren't here, you know Seth would try to be in six places at once, and that would only last for a few months before he spontaneously combusted, which wouldn't help anyone.”

“I think you're giving Seth a little too much credit. Between me and Ephraim, we would make him combust in a few weeks, at least.”

Tana giggled. “You'd never drive anyone to combustion. Your brother, well, Innes has been saying that just being in the same room as Ephraim is going to kill him for years. And, of course, that's Innes being Innes, buuuut even I can admit your brother isn't the most tractable person in the world. I can definitely see Seth being driven to distraction.”

“You don't know the half of it,” Eirika grinned as Tana trotted down the main stairs, pulling her along into the sunlit wash of the great hall. “I think he slipped his body guard detail again.”

Tana shook her head. She had been the one to fly after him last time. “Is he still in the grounds?”

“Oh, certainly. I don't think he'd get very far this time, anyway. There is much more to do, and Ephraim can't help himself when given problems. But, um, we should probably get to the stables before my brother tries to ride off again. Just to save time.”

Was that the too-polite, courtier way of putting it? Tana just laughed, and clung harder, making Eirika smile as they sped up, looking just like any other young people heading out of the grand keep. The sun slanting across the grounds was warm in that good tail-end of lazy summer way. Lazy summer was of course a lie, but Eirika found herself wishing painfully for a few free hours to take herself into the royal forest, or find some isolated corner to enjoy.

Tana climbed the fence on the horse paddock with the ease of practice, but her pegasus must be enjoying the free sky, or out playing pranks on the stable boys, as there were no horsey greetings. Just a lot of flicking tails from the war mounts.

Tana pushed into the loose stall that opened between the barn and the pasture. Eirika wondered if it was generally frowned upon for royalty to be in the manure rich darkness of the wrong end of a box stall. Early summer hay hovered on drafts running through out the stables, and the dust coated her as soon as she stepped into the shade. Funny to think that a stable could be so similar to a library, and yet one was intended for the intellectual, and the other was meant for the active. But dust was dust, whether it was produced by books or horse food.

Thinking back on the lengthy trip to the bathhouse this morning, Eirika decided that she loved dust.

Having found the latch, Tana let them both into the main stable, where they stumbled upon the sight of Knoll, engulfed as always by his robes, sitting on a haybale, staring with ill-concealed horror at the reins Ephraim was holding out. Eirika immediately recognized the way Ephraim's mouth had drawn back in a stubborn line, like a mule a heart beat away from tossing the baggage that it was carrying onto the road, and ready to offer defiance to anyone who tried to load it up again.

“You need a horse,” the tone of voice suggested that the King of Renais had said this several times, if not in the same words.

The scholar nodded over Ephraim's shoulder at the two intruders. “Your highnesses.”

Ephraim swung around. “Eirika! Tana! Tana, tell him he can't expect to walk from here to Grado. He should have a horse.”

“If only so the bandits in the countryside have a reason to shoot at me,” Knoll's murmur was almost imperceptible.

Eirika hid a smile at the sharp point. Maybe it was a wince.

He should have run the moment they left the Darkling Woods. She had been the one to catch him that time, furtively sneaking around L'Arachel's tent, the bandages over the healed slash that had nearly taken his eye already coming loose. Because she had been feeling selfish, she had halted Knoll, and asked outright if he knew whether demonic wounds could block healing magic. He hadn't a good answer to that, and she had coaxed and cajoled, tricking the scholar into staying with the return party as far as Renais.

She really shouldn't have, Eirika knew. Knoll wanted to leave the stone cage of the castle more than Ephraim, and she had gotten him stuck here because she had wanted to save someone.

She pulled guilty eyes back to her brother, who was now arguing with Tana—in the weird way that anyone had to argue with Tana when she pleasantly agreed to all decisions and then followed that agreement up with a pleasant, amiable “however” that tore the agreement to ribbons. “Ephraim, if Scholar Knoll has a plan for his journey, we shouldn't stand in his way. What village is your planned first call, this evening? You want to find an inn before sunset, of course.”

Knoll's tired eyes raked over her. “How late in the afternoon is it now?”

“You could probably get to the outer hamlet by dusk,” Eirika felt so helpful.

“Ah. It seems the kingly plan of dogging my footsteps from the library to the stables might have born more fruit than merely pestering me about not leaving.”

“Ephraim,” Tana scowled, far more effectively than Eirika. “Eirika needed help today and you spent the day,” she waved her hands, as though circular patches of air could illustrate hideous plots of courtesy that Ephraim had concocted.

Knoll, however, had the words to add to the motions. “Trapping me in the library with a long discussion about the northern swamps of Grado.”

Tana frowned. “Um—I know you're not exactly Lute, Scholar Knoll, but you weren't a willing participant in that conversation? I can't tell.”

“Fascinating as the habits of the criminals who roam the swamps on the border are, I was more interested in leaving than discussing them.”

Ephraim had a better face for playing Carcino Bait than most. Seth was better, Eirika suspected, but her brother was more than capable of sitting down with his own troops and not losing much in a few hands. However, his hands had nothing to hold right now, and the fingers were jumping like nervous spiders. She watched them steal around behind his back to lock together, and hide any more of his secret cues, but the initial nerves were enough of a giveaway. Ephraim either had an ulterior motive, and detaining Knoll had been done by underhanded means—or he had an ulterior motive, and detaining Knoll was part of that ulterior motive. Her bother didn't tend to ask about criminals without an intention to chase them down.

Maybe, if she headed that one off at the pass—if she gave him an assignment to help out the beleaguered villages in the south, she could make him return on time to give her a report, and that would keep Ephraim on the throne for a few more months before another adventure seized him. Would she have time to assemble a group of protectors Ephraim could not outwit? And there were preparations for the official ceremonies to make.

The official entrance of the stables opened in a blast of light and fresh air that sent more chaff flying. L'Arachel strode in, peering around sharply. “Tana! There's a messenger from your brother. Some nonsense about Frelia needing more troops for the latest monster hunt on the northern coast? He needs you to see what men Renais can spare.”

Eirika felt her stomach drop. More monsters? This was surely Ephraim's territory, but he was drawing himself into Grado. “Tana, please tell Innes we'll draw up the figures—the troops on our side of Fort Mulan could be mobilized. I just—we need the men he loaned us in some key areas, so, please, just let me check.”

“Eirika,” Tana began.

The queen held up placating hands. “No, it's fine. Things are not dire on the Frelian border, so We absolutely can spare some men. I know you all have problems with the nearness of the Darkling Woods. I'll figure something—”

Ephriam actually dropped the reigns of the horse at that. “Eirika, really, this—”

“You have plans for helping Grado, Brother. Trust me. I know. I understand! The people there are suffering. We can't let that happen,” words inflected with more high pitched stresses than L'Arachel proclaiming that she was just interested in dancing lessons, nothing more, backed up against Eirika's teeth. Knoll was staring at her, with eyes hiding a kind of sympathy that complimented the plain astonishment Tana and Ephraim shared.

Someone grabbed her hand. Eirika's mouth finally shut like a trap, as she turned to look at the holy princess of Rausten. L'Arachel smiled brightly. “Eirika, let's go have tea.”

Eirika's heels skidded on the straw covered floorboards as L'Arachel pulled her toward the door. Ust rose in clouds over her boots as L'Arachel pulled her across the forecourt. The gate guard stared at the two women as L'Arachel ordered gates unbarred. Seth—at the head of a group of knights looking very harried—physically paled and stopped in his tracks, as L'Arachel's smile grew brighter than the sun and so full of teeth Eirika had to wonder if there was any true wyvern in the holy princess' ancestry.

Suddenly they were walking down the main street of Renais castle town, alone. People did pause and look, and a few even bowed, before the force of the shining smile hit them and they melted away again. L'Arachel took a turn to the west down one sunset street. “There. Sorry about the sunlight. It does make one tear up, doesn't it? There's a lake somewhere nearby, isn't there?”

Eirika managed to pull herself out of the stupor her apparent kidnapping had created. “Ah—yes, just beyond the town walls. Why would there be tea there?”

“Oh, because of the romance of it. Tea by a lake at dusk,” L'Arachel laughed. “Doesn't it sound grand, watching the sunset together?”

“It's more of a marsh,” Eirika observed, wiping at her cheeks. “But, I'm sure it will be fine. Uh. Why did you have tea brought there?”

“Oh, I haven't. I'm just hoping that some will be there. But if we can't have tea, that's little matter. We can just sit and talk and pretend the tea will arrive. That is the best way to have tea, don't you think? Living in hope for some more. And little sandwiches. One should always hope for little sandwiches.”

It slowly dawned on Eirika that even for L'Arachel, this was patently ridiculous, and they were drawing too close to the west gate to turn back.

“L'Arachel—”

The gloved hand grasping hers tightened slightly. “Trust me—once we're out of this mausoleum, even for an eye blink, it will look different. Everything. Will. Look. Different. You can trust me on this,” the holy princess murmured, waving imperiously to the gate guard.

“I don't understand—” but L'Arachel was ushering her through the gate with a determination that would have put Ephraim at his most mulish to shame.

Then they were out, on the road with dust rising in dry puffs and grasshoppers singing mournfully in the grass. Eirika drew in a breath, looking back, half expecting an honor guard riding after her. But it was just the familiar stone wall, and the open fields. A mile or two up the track, and they would come to the gnarled tree and cascade of broken rocks where the Gradoan wyverns had caught up with Eirika and Seth nearly two years ago.

Something knotted in the back of her throat. Her whole body ached from her neck outward, the royal carriage of her spine suddenly rebelling. She knew her fingers squeezed like a vice on the hand L'Arachel had offered. Everything was coming apart.

Suddenly, L'Arachel yanked on the hand she held, swinging Eirika into a deep embrace. Clever fingers used to channeling healing magic stroked through her hair soothingly. Eirika buried her head in the comfort of a boney shoulder, and hoped that she was not leaving snotty trails on the diaphanous fabric of L'Arachel's chosen gown.

They hung together silently in the middle of the road until Eirika had moved past the hot itchy feeling of her eyes, and the burning exhaustion of her lungs, to the thudding of her heart and the sheer tiredness that filled her. When she let go, and managed to step back, L'Arachel didn't even seem to mind that part of the white gown was clinging a little too wetly to the shoulder she had just offered. Instead, L'Arachel kept tight hold of the hand she had first grabbed.

“Now, do you want to go on a walk?” L'Arachel asked.

Eirika breathed out. “Yes. I think I do.”

“Good,” L'Arachel set off down the road, glancing around with bright interest at the fields. “This is so different from home, you know. Rausten has glorious forests everywhere. And lakes. And rocks. And here the rocks are there, but you have such wide fields, and everyone is so busy with the farming.”

“Yes,” Eirika agreed, seeing the movement of oxen far off. Were they planting? No, surely not. It was too late in the season. Maybe they were setting up a second harvest, though? She had to learn these things. “Do you know everything about logging and,” she wondered what else someone did in forested areas. Most of the forests in Renais were colonized by baels, “Er, forestry?”

“Goodness no,” L'Arachel replied. “I haven't had the time. I am a monster hunter, after all. Like my parents. I mean I'll have to learn some day, but—”

“I don't know what m mother did,” Eirika blurted out. “She was the queen, but—my father handled everything while we were growing up, and I—he never said much about her. I wish I knew what a queen was supposed to do. I'm trying—I know I'm supposed to keep the king on the throne and support him, but—Do I need to know everything my farmers know? Do I need to know all my craftmasters know? And what about diplomacy? Grado is slipping in the south and Frelia needs men, and I—” Erika took a gulping breath, feeling the whole of Renais pressing in on her. “How did my mother do all of it?”

“Probably by not having a brother constantly trying to run away, and monsters arising where they have no right to,” L'Arachel observed tartly, coming to a stop in the middle of the road.

Eirika chuckled shakily. “It's not that bad—”

“You can be angry at him, you know,” L'Arachel said suddenly. “When Mom and Dad were killed my uncle took me in, and saw to my education and made me heir, and I was so angry with him for always doing the proper thing for the people of Rausten, or not doing anything that would avenge my parents, or being there when I needed him, or not being there. I was so angry, and I didn't think I should be.

“But my Uncle sat me down one day, and he told me one of the wisest things I've ever heard. The Goddess made anger as much as she made joy, and we can't just shut off the bad things inside of us, because it shuts off the good things as well. You absolutely can be angry at people even when it's unfair, even when there's nothing that they can do to help it. Whatever you feel should be out there in the world because it's a gift, and as long as you aren't hurting other people because everything is so frustrating, it's alright to be angry at them, or because of their actions.

“So, you can be angry at your brother, you know. Even though he's the only family you've got left, and he loves you. That doesn't stop him from—”

“He killed Lyon,” Eirika interrupted quietly. “There might have been—I want my friends back. I want my father back. I want everything the way it was, and I don't want to be queen. I don't want to be making all of these decisions. I was always supposed to be the crown princess, and Ephraim was supposed to be the King, and I don't think he even wants to do that. He just—wants to run away. I think he'd become a General of Grado, if he could, just so he could make it up to Lyon, and it's all wrong.”

L'Arachel breathed in. Eirika watched her chest rise and fall. “You can love a friend, too. That, too, is one of the gifts we're given. Even if they did something unforgivable.”

“So I can be mad at my brother, and in love with my friend?” Eirika wanted to laugh. She wiped more tears from the corner of her eyes.

L'Arachel shrugged, turning to face her. “You can also love your brother and be mad at your friend. None of this is mutually exclusive, you know. I miss my parents every day of my life, but there are some days when I know if they walked around a corridor I'd scream at them and yell about how much I hate that they decided fighting monsters was more important than me. And other days when I'd cry with happiness.”

It was exhausting, Eirika thought, keeping up with someone who seemed to have all the answers. It was exhausting
trying to do this all on her own. It was exhausting trying to involve everyone who needed to be involved. Was this how Ephraim felt all the time? Or maybe this was constantly boiling under L'Arachel's loose collar, too. Maybe every ruler felt this way.

“Can we run away?” Eirika said suddenly, peering off down the road stretching to the nearest hamlet. “You and I could leave—we could just go out, fighting monsters, and helping people—”

“And having tea?” L'Arachel suggested, looking at the sky innocently, and then rocking back on her heels. “Sorry, no. I'm here on my Uncle Mansel's authority to see to it that Renais grows strong and powerful. And you wouldn't like me very much if we went off to act like hooligans.”

Eirika nodded slowly, the eagerness that had suddenly gripped her dissipating. “Sorry. You're right.”

“We can always save people in our time off,” L'Arachel amended brightly. “But for now, my only duty is seeing to it that you're a strong ruler and your brother is helping you as he should. So, do you want to continue walking, until some tea arrives?”

Eirika gripped the hand she held, and then, recalling a particularly silly etiquette class that seemed supremely apt, she bend and applied a courtly kiss to the gloved knuckles. “Anything for my lady Consul of Rausten.”

L'Arachel laughed merrily, pulling Eirika into another hug, and whispering: “Remember, you can tell me anything. Or I can tell you everything.”

“Tell me about the moonlit princess,” Eirika requested, as they began to walk into the gathering dusk. “I never had time to appreciate her during the war.”

“Oh, she is a paragon of justice and love,” L'Arachel's eyes sparkled at the flattery, but there was something there, Eirika thought, that understood that it was flattery. Maybe it was possible to grow into knowing everything.

[fill] The Secret to Good Taste

2014-05-02T12:58:54Z

Title: The Secret to Good Taste
Game: Post-Blazing Sword (FE7-6)
Characters: Clarine, Erk, Louise
Word Count: 4111
Prompt: FE6 Clarine lectures big brother Erk about how to have as much finesse as Klein. (gen)
Warnings: None

Summary: Clarine has opinions on almost everything, and Erk is sure that he was never like this when he was younger. Still, he has news to bear to the Reglay household, even if that news might disappoint the little girl's ideas of what is proper.

It was a little unnerving to face the intensity of Lord Pent's dedication to research compressed into the form of a seven year old girl and focused entirely upon Erk's sartorial decisions. By the end of the entree course, Erk had begun to regret the visit for more reasons than the bad news he must bear to the household. Now he was being guided back to Clarine's nursery by the young girl and discovering far too many stairs existed between the great hall and the current location of Lady Louise.

Clarine stopped for the third time under one of the lanterns that marked the confused snarl of hallway junctions that were the hallmark of the original Reglay manor. Erk had once mapped out the corridors complete with the secret passages that had come into vogue at the time of one of the expansions of the manor, and discovered that there were several patterns he more normally associated with fire casting rambling through the manor's interior.

Lord Pent had asked him to look into who had designed them that way and why, when he brought this to his teacher's attention, but that had been years ago. Erk wondered if the lines of the hallways had been changed significantly when the current lord and lady had redone the manor to suit their growing family.

“It's not that your coloring is so bad,” Clarine conceded thoughtfully. “It's that you insist upon a shade of red that does nothing to compliment your hair. If you wish to make a statement, gold or a splash of green would serve you much more readily. Your colors are a little too intense for the standard use of light blue on fair skin and warmer tinged hair, but you could look quite striking in black or somber colors I suppose.”

“You are a wealth of information, Lady Clarine.”

Had he said that earlier? Perhaps, for the girl glared at him, and then raised her eyebrows in superiority. “It's too bad my brother has gone off to training just now. He would be able to show you—his complexion suits light blue admirably, but he carries off royal purple just as well. Obviously, you could not get such a shade—”

Erk decided to interrupt as amiably as he could manage. “That would be improper, Lady Clarine, I have not the rank. And Even Lord Pent is a little far from the throne for—”

“But the darker purple favored by the royal knights would do. Indeed, you have the rank to match the lowest of them. But do not go violet. You must not go violet. There is too much blue in your hair and eyes,” Clarine continued as though he had not spoken. At least she continued walking, as well. “Do you know, Brother Erk, what it is that royal knights do?”

“Serve the kingdom,” Erk replied vaguely, surprised by the change in title when he had been Lord Erk through out dinner, or Baronet Petit-Reimi.

The sigh from the little head traipsing ahead of him suggested that Clarine was not impressed by this information. “Well, obviously. I mean, what is it they do?”

Of Erk's many avenues of study—ever expanding, since he decided to take a step into the Etrurian court—the daily routine of the knights who were sworn to King Mordred and his house was basically a mystery. He should investigate that. Perhaps if he saw a guard loitering where he should not be, he might learn something about which factions and which houses had a direct stake in the kingdom's security. At the very least, he might learn how the Prince managed so often to slip out of the castle and have adventures in the rougher parts of Aquelia after the castle curfew began. Only the royal knights or the servants could be letting him out, and since it was the gossip of a few select servants that they saw him returning after the Reflections bell, chances were the knights were housing the true culprit. Or culprits.

“I know they guard the king, and run his messages, and lead his personal troops in battle. Some act as representatives of the king in absentia, and visit estates and manors while the king is busy in the capitol,” Erk mused, hoping this filled the void in Clarine's knowledge. “They are assigned to other members of the Royal house, to preform similar services. When there is a problem with bandits out of Bern, or Ilia, or pirates in the rivers, they are sent out to deal with the trouble. If something in the Northern Plains gets so disrupted that the repercussions are felt in Ilia and beyond, they are usually among the first to investigate, so that the great trade houses of the capitol may prosper. The Royal Knights do lots of things.”

“Oh. They must be very busy, then,” Clarine reflected. “Maybe too busy. I will write to the king, and tell him that when my brother is knighted, he must not be sent hither, thither and yon. After all, we will have done without his company for so long by that point. He has been away at training for every summer for the last three years, and now this latest round has been at least two months now, by my counting. And I am very good at counting. My tutors have praised me extensively in that area.”

She cast a look over her shoulder, as though to see if Erk was suitably impressed. He nodded seriously. If there was one thing about Clarine that he had gathered from the dinner conversation, it was that she was alarming her tutors with the rate of her knowledge acquisition. There had been hints that he might soon be needed, though the local priest, a young man with an eager-to-please smile, had nearly jumped upon Erk's carefully noncommittal answer as a refusal and offered, yet again, apparently, to teach Clarine Eliminean healing practices as part of her theology
lessons. Given the way the household priest glared at the young man, this offer was not universally approved of, though Lady Louise had been nodding right along with her parish confessor.

Still, Erk didn't want to imagine what Clarine's idea of a strict letter to the King would be like. King Mordred was a tolerant monarch, and might even enjoy the directness of the youngest Reglay. His seneschal, however, would probably be offended by the extra work, and find some way to make Klein's knighting ceremony take too long, or worse, disrupt the vigil, and cause rumors to spread through the older courtiers that it was an omen of the young lord's abundant youth, lack of responsibility, or whatever it was that the people who disliked the power of House Reglay wanted to hear.

“I believe the king knows well enough,” Erk managed.

Clarine stood on tiptoe, reaching for a door handle she didn't have to reach for any more. It must be a habit. “Well, if you're sure.”

“What should he be sure of, dear?” Lady Louise called from within the nursery, causing her daughter to readily toss the heavy door aside and dash to her mother's lap.

Erk entered more sedately. The nursery was a thing of soft shadows and dim glows this late at night. Lady Louise had brought the candles close to the fainting couch that took up one corner, blocks and fabric scattered around it like memories of an even younger time. Erk was certain examples of Clarine's work in embroidery were hung on the walls, or whichever aspect of her studies most brightly displayed her talents. Perhaps color wheels by a painting instructor. Or some sort of numerical exercise. But for now, Clarine's endeavors were lost in shadows.

“Brother Erk thinks that the King knows how important Klein is to the realm,” Clarine told her mother from the curl of her lap. “What are you working on? I want to see.”

“I'm trying to come up with ideas for the gift to the King's house at the knighting ceremony,” Louise explained, moving a book that had been resting by her side. “A good house takes into account who they will be serving. You and your brother will mostly serve under King Mordred's heir, so our gift should be something valuable to Prince Mildain, as well.”

Clarine grabbed at the book, and ran her small fingers along the leather. “He's the one who wanted to take Klein away, right?”

“That was years ago, Clarine,” her mother said with more firmness than usual. “And you can't stop Klein from becoming his knight, just as he can't make Klein become his brother. Erk, please sit down.”

Erk eyed the portion of the horsehair couch Lady Louise was patting with distrust. He remembered that couch of old, in Lord Pent's study. It looked plump and pleasant and then slid unsuspecting young mages right onto the floor, when they were ready to sit and read in front of the wide windows. Still, he bowed, and took his spot with care. He knew he looked more like a nervous bird, perching on the edge of a twig that might choose to dip at the wrong moment, and throw him off.

“Brother Erk,” Clarine murmured, peering at the book carefully. “Is a bell book an appropriate gift from a noble family?”

“If it is thoughtfully illuminated,” Erk responded. “It also depends how old the book is, and who has owned it before.”

“I believe this one comes from my husband's mother's family,” Lady Louise smiled. “She was known for her musicality, and there are many devotional songs—and many corrections in her hand. She was very determined that things must be just so. Is that not right, Clarine?”

Clarine flipped the book open, eager to see what her grandmother might have had to say about the rightness of things. “Well, getting things done properly is important.”

“Of course,” smiled her mother. “Speaking of which, Erk, what have you been getting done, properly or improperly?”

“I was recently traveling along the Bern borderland, and went to stay with a friend in the western mountains,” Erk replied. “While I was there, the rumors were confused, to say the least. It seems King Desmond had, at some level, taken steps to disinherit his heir, or at least rename his heir. I am not certain that it can be so easily done. Despite some knowledge of Bern's inheritance ceremony, which we both have, it is unclear if there is serious magic involved, or an appeal to Father Sky. Once a ruler is accepted by the Fire Emblem, can they be disinherited? No one aside from the heirs of Bern have been through the full ceremony, and there have been very few magicians in the royal line to investigate whether there is a magical binding of any kind placed on the heirs. If there is anything more to the inheritance ceremony than spoken word, that secret would rest in Bern. Even if magic is involved,
it could be that Princess Guinevere was also accepted by the Emblem. The throne might recognize multiple heirs.

“The laws of Bern are very strict on the matter: Guinevere is an acknowledged child. She has all the rights of her brother under law, except those that are retained by age and experience. The throne belongs in Hartmut's line, until the line dies out, and there are hundreds of procedures in place to determine which families come next, probably to avoid the exact situation we have in Etruria every few generations.

“I can tell you that as Bern law stands, the heirs to the throne were Zephiel and then Guinevere, in that order. Zephiel had undergone the inheritance ceremony, making him the heir presumptive. Guinevere had not, as far as I know, which made her the heir potential, but not capable of ascending to the throne until the ceremony had been preformed. For each of them, the power and legitimacy of their rule would pass to their spouses, should they be married, and the spouses do not need to take part in any ceremony beyond holy marriage.

“I believe that there is some law barring those not of Hartmut's bloodline from the ceremony in the first place, but that depends upon a reading of the earliest laws of Bern, the oldest of which remain in the original draconic script educated humans of the time used. There is a word which means shame, secret, or sin which is used in the early description of the ceremony, and there is a lot of talk about family duty and the building of countries upon this single word, which, given the contexts that the Bernians of old were using it in, they seemed to think meant inheritance. Either the monks of the time had the same sterling sense of humor that we accuse the general populace of Bern of having today, or they were cobbling together what they had learned from the dragons and trying to make their best attempt with their own illiteracy.

“These documents were written nearly a full generation after the Scourging, while Hartmut lay on his death bed, so that the transition between rulers might be smoother in the coming generations. Draconic script was already being replaced by the vernacular script in Bern, and Ilia, mostly to facilitate trade with Sacae, which had several written forms at the time, and already kept records in their tally writing,” Erk gave a little cough, sensing that Lady Louise' interest had not lessened. To be perfectly frank his forays into the Bernian scholar's library had been the only pleasing part of his trip. For a man of the western mountains, his friend collected extensive records of Sacaen trading schedules, apparently as part of a project to map the rise and fall of various tribes in the Plains over history.

“This is why, according to my friend, the current vernacular script of Bern is known among scholars as Fractur. As it is a fractured script caught between the simple lines of the trade vernacular that is used throughout Elibe today, the draconic flourishes those monks were unable to retire, and a version of the Sacaen numerical system Sacaens today think is outdated. Draconic script lasted in Etruria and Lycia several centuries longer, but when the switch was made to a firm vernacular script, we skipped many of the stylizations that continued in Bern for a version that closely resembles the trade script popular in Sacae.”

Lady Louise nodded. “How interesting, Erk. I see you have not lost your knack for investigating questions to their bitter conclusion. However, you were telling me whether or not Desmond is within his right to disinherit Zephiel in favor of the Princess Guinivere.”

Erk coughed again. As hints went, it had been subtle enough, but coming from Lady Louise, a woman who had once listened to him listing the variations in mint as grown along the rivers of Etruria, organized by river size, longitudinal distance from Aquelia, and distance to magician's workrooms for three hours without complaint, the suggestion to come around to the point was firm. “My friend's library was not as helpful as it could have been with the answer as to whether or not the inheritance ceremony must be performed after Hartmut's family has died out. If the ceremony is applicable only to his family members, it is likely that it is not necessary to have gone through it in order to sit on the throne of Bern. However, my friend believes that since provision had been made for the death of the bloodline, it was unreasonable to assume that the fire emblem was keyed only to those with the right blood, particularly given how diluted that must be. In essence, my lady, I cannot tell you if the king is allowed to disinherit one of his children in favor of the other, particularly if the other has not undergone the ceremony to make her an heir.”

Lady Louise had been given a nature that was more inclined to contemplation behind an aspect of calm acceptance, but Erk noticed her eyebrows drawing together. “There always has been the possibility that Bern's next monarch would be the princess and not the prince. Much as I hate to say it, though, my concern is with my cousin, and not her son. He has, if I understand your reports over the last few years, allies and friends enough within his own country. Hellene's faction is much smaller. So, how is the queen reacting to the news?”

Erk pinched the bridge of his nose, and glanced at Lady Louise. With Clarine curled happily in her lap she made quite the picture of calm and bliss. It seemed a far cry from the chaos of facts and rumors that the various messengers out of Bern had brought within the final fortnight of his travel away from the border. “That I also cannot say for certain. While I was with my friend, information reached us, as it had all friends of the queen, that she was being sent back to her estates in Etruria by her husband. As you instructed so long ago I made the arrangements for servants and guards for her journey, so that she might at least reach her home alive. I left immediately to make my way here, to give you the news, and gain Lord Pent's aid, if at all possible.

“However, as I came into the river country, a messenger overtook me, saying that the queen had been taken as a conspirator and a traitor—though whether she had plotted against the king, or poisoned her own son,” Erk paused, wishing that the horror creeping into Lady Louise's eyes was a trick of the candlelight. He revised the worst of the rumors about the queen's fate. They did not matter now. “It was impossible to get a straight answer out of the man. He did say she was locked in the old Manse pending trial.”

Lady Louise drew in a breath. Erk could see a determination forming, even in the dim light of the candles. If Lord Pent and Lady Louise were not, as far as the Lady of House Reglay was concerned, going to pay a special visit to the southeast, Erk was very much mistaken. He hurried on with the most baffling part of the last three months.

“Last night, a third messenger found me, on his way to the capitol, to say that Duchess Hellene of Etruria was being sent back to her estates in Etruria, after a terrible ordeal that had left her in poor health. The person sending her back was the King Bern, one Zephiel of the line of Hartmut. He will be accepting formal fealty from his holdings in midwinter, as the newly ascended rulers of Bern do, but was requesting a change in ambassadors from Etruria immediately, as the old ambassador had a long standing disagreement with Bern's head bishop, and bringing peace to the court in troubled times was his new goal.”

Lady Louise sat back, and the slump of Clarine's shoulders as she did suggested that despite valiant effort, the youngest Reglay had fallen asleep. “Hellene will still need an escort. And if she has not arrived through the pass by November, we must see that she gets through.”

Erk glanced nervously at Clarine. “Do you think—Desmond might have tortured her? The word of ill-health seemed unfortunately credible. She is Zephiel's mother, and there would be little reason for a messenger sent from Zephiel's court to lie.”

“Or, the former king is alive, and awaiting execution,” Lady Louise said with the same calm she might have used to discuss Erk's choice in cloak, and whether it would be reasonable for the weather. “And Zephiel did not wish his mother to witness that. I understand that in Bern the whole family must watch, barring extraordinary circumstances, like travel time. Or it might be a host of reasons. Perhaps Hellene is not leaving Bern at all. We will only know when we meet with her, either at our border, or beyond.”

Erk nodded slowly. “I do not think I can go with you, my lady. I had a few projects going in the court when I decided to check on the situation in Bern. I would like to check on them, and, frankly, if you go into Bern, it would be suspicious if I came back within the season to visit my friend with the former Mage General of Etruria and his wife along with me. You would be welcomed by the Bishop of Ostienberg—I did make mention that he might be gaining exalted guests, as Lord Pent thought much of his scholarship, and had been meaning to pay him a call for years now.”

“Oh?”

Erk sighed. “His library is one any scholar would envy, even if documents from the century of the Scourging are not the goal of your visit. His interest is not so much for the Queen—though he has certainly valued the Etrurian trade that came with her, and the access to men from the Holy Tower that were a by product of the alliance—but with the former Prince, now supposed King, Zephiel. He will have at least some of the news that you seek.”

Louise sighed, and then gently pushed Clarine on the shoulder. “Is that book acceptable, for the king and his son, do you think, dear?”

“Acceptable,” Clarine repeated muzzily. “You're not still talking about words, are you?”

“No indeed. Brother Erk is going to take you to bed now.”

Clarine slid reluctantly from her mother's lap, leaving the book behind her. “Why can't you do it?”

“Because I will be traveling, soon, and I must pack,” Louise laid a hand on her daughter's long golden hair. Her smile, though gentle, pulled her eyebrows together, and Erk suddenly wondered how much sadness she was hiding behind that simple expression. “Your father and I must go to see friends near Bern.

“But,” Clarine scowled and counter on her fingers. “That is a three week journey to there, and we are nearly five days from Aquelia, even by barge. Klein might be knighted before we get back. We cannot go to Bern! It is unthinkable!”

As if by some unspoken signal, both Louise and Erk crouched, so that they were at eye level with the young girl. Louise passed Erk the family bell book over Clarine's shoulder. “This errand cannot wait, I am afraid. But you will not be going with us. Erk will be presenting the gift in our stead, and you will have to be very responsible, since you will be the Lady Reglay at Klein's knighting ceremony.”

Clarine's mouth puckered into a long pout. “But, Klein will be sad—”

“Not if he sees his little sister, who he loves very much,” Lady Louise said very softly. “And, who knows? Your father
and I might make it back to Aquelia before the ceremony. But even if we do, we are counting on you to be the lady of support and guidance to your brother on his big day. Can you do that?”

The slow nod released Lady Louise to kiss her daughter on the forehead, and rise. Her expression, wistful but determined, reminded Erk of the days when he had a room in this rambling manor to call his own. How often had his own time under this roof been marked by unusual journeys, and had those journeys taken a toll on his childhood? He had always been old enough to travel with the Reglays wherever he was needed, but in Lady Louise's face, he could see the important moments missed because duty to magic and friends always took priority over the family. It hadn't mattered to him, back then.

Erk reached out for Clarine's hand. “Come along. We have several days of preparation ahead of us.”

As he rose, Clarine looked up the line of their arms, and a small smile broke over her face. “You're almost graceful enough to make it all better. This is exactly the way Big Brother Klein would handle this.”

“I take that as a great compliment,” Erk smiled back, leading Clarine toward her bedroom, which he knew had once been his.

[fill] Every Day You Are Alive

2014-04-26T13:29:51Z

Title: Every Day You Are Alive
Game: Post-Binding Blade (FE6)
Characters: Miledy/Guinivere
Word Count: 3187
Prompt: FE6, Miledy/Guinivere -- Guinivere convinces Miledy to teach her to defend herself
Warnings: None

Summary: A queen in an unsettled country going through a major change, and with the kinds of enemies the recent war created, needs to defend herself. The faithful knight commander of her guard is determined to let Guinevere's star shine brightly.

They contemplated the gold circlet with its winking yellow diamond for some moments. It sat on the red velvet cushion of the throne, waiting in judgment for the next person who dared to put it on. Miledy wondered which servant had placed it there. Had some loyal member of the staff plucked it bloody from the king's head and kept it safe until the remaining mercenary companies were finished taking their spoils of war?

The sword of the throne remained where it lay, the carpet around it charred, suggesting that someone had tried to pick it up, as well, and had mishandled that tricky task. General Roy had held the Fire Emblem when he touched it, and had been fine, but Miledy wondered if Exaccus had additional sorceries hidden in its scepter-like majesty, or if it was partially alive. Why had the legends never spoken of it?

It was the only piece of the king's regalia that remained. The circlet on the throne would be remade for Guinivere's head. The hard yellow diamond might go back into the royal treasury, or might return to grace her brow in a different setting.

“What is the value of that diamond, do you think, Miledy?” Guinivere asked softly.

Miledy felt her eyebrows shoot to her hairline, and realized moments later that her mouth was open. “Ah. Um. I'm not sure, my lady. We could ask an appraiser, or maybe Hugh could give us a rough estimate before he leaves tomorrow?”

“At the meeting with the ruling council tomorrow, I want to bring up the subject of selling the royal gemstones before either my new councilors or the Etrurian observer can mention it. I'll need to know how much value I can expect from the collection. It might best be used to hire mercenaries, or maybe it will take care of the war reparations.”

Miledy nodded. “Certainly, my lady. But, won't Etruria object? The former queen's dowry came from their coffers.”

“I have no claim over her jewels,” the hardness Guinivere was trying to build under her skin creaked with tension on these words. “I would only sell what belongs to the descendants of Hartmut. It wouldn't do to be called dishonest, after all.”

Miledy remembered one morning after Guinivere's eighteenth birthday when the usual bitterness in the breakfast hall of the Bern Manse surrounding family visits had erupted into accusations of theft before Zephiel could get Guinivere out of the echoing room. No one would accuse Guinivere of dishonesty now.

“What of your coronation, though?”

“I won't be the first ruler of Bern to have no crown,” Guinivere smiled almost forlornly at the weapon lying in the middle of the throne room, thinking perhaps of its maker. “And I won't be taking oaths of fealty until they place me on the throne in midwinter, in any case. We might have something made up by then.”

She said these things so gently. It was hard to remember that every word had the weight of law behind it now. Miledy saw a wry smile forming in Guinivere's eyes, and met it with her own. “Something simple, say, made in iron, so that you can feel the weight of your responsibility.”

“Oh, such a good idea, Commander Miledy. I was thinking copper, so as to discolor my skin in a proper penitential manner,” the queen replied brightly before laughing. “In all seriousness, though, the lack of crown doesn't worry me. One of my councilors has even suggested that it might be useful, in a symbolic way, to have a new crown made with Ilian metals and Islander gems just to show that we intend to negotiate with countries without interference from Aquelia.”

Miledy's smile froze in place. “My lady, did you remind this councilor that despite the trustworthiness of the royal family, Etruria's crown is subject to the whims of the nobility in a way that no ruler of Bern has ever countenanced, not even from their generals?”

“I said I would consider his suggestion.”

The specters of Etrurian wealth and how that wealth was controlled rose in Miledy's mind. “I will have the guards begin the old assassination protocols, then,” she said dryly.

The words turned Guinivere white as a sheet. There had been no need for those measures in over five years. Miledy didn't even know if General Murdock had left any records of the lengths one had to go to in order to protect a ruler who insisted on heading his own division of the army, and doing everything he could to stay open and approachable. At least Guinivere had that going for her, her brother had been much more difficult to protect.

In months past, Guinivere would have quailed, or changed the subject. When fear sank its hooks into her, it sank with a vengeance, as though to make up for the fact that Guinivere had always been well protected, and kept from dangerous situations. But in the instant she quavered a firmness settled around her mouth, and she straightened her shoulders. This was the Queen of Bern, proud as one of her mountains, if not as tall. “I trust that you will keep me safe, no matter who I anger.”

“This is why I am at your side, my lady,” Miledy bowed.

Guinivere clasped her hands in front of her. Some lords and ladies of Bern's court had the habit of playing with their seal rings when they were flustered. Miledy had always suspected that Guinivere would have been that kind of person, if she had ever owned a seal ring. Even as Zephiel's heir she had never carried one, keeping her seal in a courier case, possibly to keep anyone from noticing such a nervous tick.

“When the castle's guard duty extended to such things,” Guinivere began, hesitant, “My brother and General Murdock spent the dawn in the practice room, working on defense against unseen blades. I too, should continue that tradition, shouldn't I?”

This stymied Miledy. Despite being such a gentle soul, Guinivere had studied combat magic. Even with a simple fire tome she should be able to defend herself, and Ellen said that Guinivere would probably have been able to wield Aerola with the might of the Saint. “My lady, you are already quite capable, as long as you have a spell book.”

“I—I am not speaking of offensive fighting. I know Zephiel studied that as well during those times, however, I m not Zephiel, and am never going to want such knowledge in my head. But I—we've been with an army for over a year, and I know fighting men and women have a physical instinct for protecting themselves that I lack. I don't need to kill an attacker, but I do need to hold them off and disarm them, if necessary. If I am to give my service to Bern, I need to stay alive long enough for that service to be of use.”

It was as though iron bands constricted Miledy's chest as her queen outlined the very necessary reasons for this addition to her schedule. “I—Sir Gale would have been most suited to this task. He could train even the rawest of recruits, my little brother being the last example of his tutelage. But Zeiss might remember enough—”

“Sir Ziess is at the far end of the eastern mountains, establishing new patrol routes, and seeing to mercenary protection there. We all agreed he would be the wyvern lord least likely to come into conflict with the Sacaens in the borderland. I can't withdraw him, without causing the council to raise their eyebrows, and possibly make the Lycian and Ilian observers to turn as hostile as the Etrurian lord, thinking that I am trying to cause small summer wars. Besides, I want you to teach me, Miledy. Starting tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Miledy nodded, biting back any protests that might have been lurking as selfish, feeble worries. “I have taken to fencing in the north court yard in the mornings with the remaining unpromoted wyvern knights. They arrive at the awakenings bell. I would expect to see you at the low stars bell before that. If we draw too much attention, I will look into a more private location, but—It would be good for Bern to know that the ruler still cares for the army, no matter how reduced.”

Guinivere immediately relaxed, enough so that it drew attention to the fact that she had been tensed for a refusal. “Wonderful. What would you suggest I wear to practice? I'm most likely to be attacked while wearing court regalia, but learning to fight—”

“Wear something you wouldn't mind cleaning out an armory while wearing,” Miledy advised. “We can work on what to do while you're being hindered by your clothing after we've taught you how to protect yourself generally.”

Miledy tried not to picture assassins hunting her queen from the shadowed corners of the throne room.

---

Wool and autumn colors clung to Guinivere, who had taken Miledy at her word, and worn a gown that might have come from the winter trunks of one of her ladies-in-waiting. There were two in the court at the moment, and they boasted good enough families that they would have had some embroidery or decoration somewhere. Even though the wool had been woven into the finest, softest cloth possible with the material, and the dye was rich and even, Guinivere's elegance looked austere compared to the extravagant styles of the Etrurian nobility that had been adopted in most places that recognized a monarchy.

Miledy speculated that there was a certain young healer in Etruria who would decry the turn to Ostian sensibility. But Guinivere had always favored single colored simplicity, and looked best in it.

“Where should I stand?” Guinivere wanted to know, peering around the dawn dim courtyard with its compliment of weapons, and chalked placement lines that must be a total mystery
to her.

Miledy had been considering her lesson plan with the terror she used to reserve for the drill sergeant's unannounced inspections. “Today, and until I say otherwise, you will be practicing how to fall. Assuming that they don't kill you with the first stroke, an assassin is going to try to unbalance you to make you an easy target for that killing stroke. You need to be able to fall in such a way that you can get back up, and ready to repel attack. You will have to fall, face forward, and take the impact on your hands, and then push yourself upright. It is not easy—your body is going to do all that it possibly can to not fall face forward. And your hands will hurt, before this is over. Hurt a lot.”

Guinivere smiled shyly. “Which is why you don't get many scribes or musicians attending these sorts of lessons?”

“Exactly,” Miledy agreed. “I'll show you how to do it, and then you get to try.”

Years of learning to fall from a wyvern's back when it was landing wrong, or trying to get rid of its rider gave Miledy more practice at this than most, but it was still a movement more familiar to a barroom fighter than a royal knight. She wished she had someone to help her off balance, but Guinivere wasn't ready to knock anyone's feet out from under them. It was the stiffest fall and catch ever performed, but that was the point. No body wanted to fall.

Guinivere couldn't even get her legs to buckle at first. Miledy thought of dark cloaked assassins stealing down the corridors of the main keep, apologized to her queen, and kicked the back of Guinivere's stubborn knees. Guinivere went down with a cry that wrenched at Miledy's conscience. She twisted naturally as she fell, too caught up on the moment to forcibly take control, and as a result landed heavily on her shoulder.

Miledy reached out a hand to help her rise. “Let's go through that one slowly,” she brought her hands to Guinivere's fine shoulders. “Your knees give,” she pushed down, forcing Guinivere to bend. “They can't bend fast enough to keep up with your upper body. You topple forward,” she pulled Guinivere slowly down. “What happened here?”

“I,” Guinivere paused, frozen in half contorted place by her knight's hands. “I forgot to move my hands?”

“Yes, you did,” Miledy nodded, surprised, because this was not the answer she was looking for, even if it was correct. “Good for catching that. Get your hands ready as fast as possible. But even if you had your arms in the right position, they would be useless. You turned yourself,” the grip on the shoulders gently twisted Guinivere's torso pulling the injured shoulder down, “right here, and this traps one of your arms, and forces at least one of your feet from a swift recovery of balance. Now, are you all right?”

“My shoulder stings,” Guinivere rubbed at her dress briefly.

Part of Miledy wanted to call the lesson into theoretical ground until Guinivere felt better, but she had not said to stop. “Do you want to stop?”

“No! We must continue.”

“Yes, we must. Please stand where we started,” Miledy said, trying not to think to hard about the next kick, or the one after that.

Guinivere fell twenty five times before Miledy called for a break. The queen sat on the smooth flagstones in the pool of her dress, and massaged the wrist that kept taking too much of the falls with the hand that always tried to avoid the pain. Miledy feared to see tears in her queen's golden eyes, but they were dry, as the knight sat down next to her.

Guinivere glanced at Miledy, “You practice doing this every day?”

“No. I practice standing in the way of these kicks that I am administering to you every day,” Miledy replied. “You want, however, to physically protect yourself, not to protect someone else. It's a different study. Is your hand all right?”

“Oh, yes. I shouldn't be signing too many documents, but that is what the royal seal is for,” Guinivere edged closer to the knight commander of her guard. “Is every day going to be like this?”

“For a while. I hope to have you ready for doing tumbles and rolls in three days,” Miledy confessed. “And then next week, we might get as far as disarming a person attacking you with a dagger. You know, there's a Lycian greeting where you clasp forearms just to prove to each other that there are no wrist blades in evidence?”

“No? Really? General Roy never did as much to me,” Guinivere looked thoughtful. “Should I have checked him in such a way?”

“I wouldn't advise it now. It's supposed to be common in Ostia and Araphen, because the families of both cities are often at odds with one another over the direction the Lycian League should take, but it's generally considered a greeting of equals, rather than one queen to a general,” Miledy managed to hide her grin at the idea of fifteen year old Roy of Pherae even entertaining the concept of assassination. Maybe he might now, but not when they had first met.

“Mmm. Ostia, you said? Somehow, I think if Lady Lilina meant me harm, the first indication any of us would have would be the scorch marks where I used to be standing,” Guinivere mused. “Do we even know anyone in Araphen's ruling family?”

She lay her golden head against the sleeve of Miledy's old doublet, still holding her wrist out and running her fingers over the scrapped skin of her palms. Miledy took the hint, and took the injured hand in her own, feeling the heat of irritated flesh and blood. Unbidden, her free hand took it upon itself to wrap around the shoulders she had allowed to bruise for the sake of future survival.

“No, and young Lugh and Chad are too good to consider something underhanded,” the knight's voice came out in a quiet murmur. “I suppose we could suspect Ray of something devious, but what does he care for who rules Bern?”

“We have the greatest military archive in the known world,” Guinivere pointed out, a little defensively. She had always been very proud of the libraries, in her quiet way. “Not to mention the best collection of writing deemed heretical by the Eliminean church. Not even Aquelia's great university has managed to collect such a variety of philosophy.”

“Well, that isn't really fair. The Holy Tower is in Aquelia—they can't very well keep heretical theories lying around where students can look at them.”

“I want to build a university,” Guinivere murmured dreamily. “Something outside of the military academy, I mean. Something those children from Araphen could go to, and learn more about magic and the thoughts of priests like Bishop Yodel.”

“If that is your wish, my lady, you should propose it. Don't we have to institute the reforms to the military academy the Lycians are insisting upon, in any case? Why not find a way to fund a university while you are at it?” Miledy could not believe how daring she felt, just mentioning the notion.

Guinivere turned her head to look up at her knight commander. Miledy's stomach flipped over, seeing the earnestness in the expression she was confronted with. “But, surely the Etrurian observer would object.”

“Perhaps, if he sees it as an attempt by Bern to give people access to that proud collection of heresies our arm of the church is so pleased with. However, he might not see anything sinister in it. And if you made this proposal formal at the summer meeting next year—when, as rumor has it, a new, rather musical king, with sympathy for common people will have taken the Etrurian throne, you might even find an ally that our Aquelian keeper can't argue with.”

The smile Guinivere turned on Miledy was radiant. “I will think about it. You might be right.”

“And I will ensure that you have the time at you need to draw up this proposal,” Miledy promised, deepening the embrace across Guinivere's shoulders, glad that there was no sudden tender finch against the contact.

Indeed, the queen of Bern settled into the embrace with a pleased sigh, rising to her feet only when the sounds of boots and claws announced the young bucks of the remaining wyvern flights. As Miledy cast about for her sword, she was still smiling from the kiss that had brushed by her mouth, so close to the dreams she had, and yet wish so much further to go. Well, that could be saved for other days, and other practice sessions.

[fill] advance notice

2014-04-25T11:33:16Z

Title: advance notice
Game: FE7
Word Count: 2800~
Prompt: Heath/Legault - make plans to steal you away
Warnings: none that I can think of?

Summary: A man's word is his bond, after all.

( fake cut to ao3 )

[fic] A Good Morning

2014-04-23T03:35:34Z

Title: A Good Morning
Game: Post-Binding Blade (FE6)
Characters: Fir, Karel
Word Count: 1723
Prompt: Fir, Karel - the next Sword Saint
Warnings: None

Summary: Fir thinks she's half a world away from perfection, and she certainly shouldn't be teaching. Her uncle believes otherwise.

The birds were singing, the air was clear, and the pale spring sunshine sparkled off the morning dew. Wind whipped unhindered through the long grass carrying horsey scents, but no hooves broke the morning peace. The Plains of Sacae had been awake before the sun got around to chasing away the occasional pockets of frost, but as the fog rose it felt as if the fresh spring day was just beginning.

Fir rotated her shoulders, and cracked her knuckles. That had been a good exercise routine. She had felt as though she was really flowing with the air in the last few movements. Maybe before five years were up she would have found the right rhythm for the sword styles she admired so. Ten years at the latest.

As the realization came crashing down on her, Fir hung her head. “Ah, I'm useless.”

“I don't think so,” her uncle's voice was soft as the morning air.

Maybe that was it. Fir had felt the air of spring entering through her lungs, and had shifted into it. She had become part of the sunlight, the air, the water rising from the ground, and the earth far below her feet. Just like her uncle, she had become all that for a few heartbeats, and that was how her sword had flashed with such ease. Was that how Uncle Karel felt all the time?

She tried to cover her surprise at the epiphany to appear as calm and cool as the sword saint. “Well, you're biased, Uncle.”

“I am at that. Would you like some tea?”

“It's a little early,” Fir ran her fingers along the threading on her hilt. Well, it was early for tea in Etruria and the Isles, where it was used as an afternoon stimulant. Maybe her uncle's morning tea wasn't meant to wake you up as much.

Uncle Karel frowned for a moment. “You didn't pick up the Missuri habit of coffee while you were out traveling, did you? It's very expensive around here.”

“Oh no! Coffee's really,” Fir paused, trying to think of a good way to say 'yucky,' “not my thing.”

“I could get you some water, then. But, well, I was boiling it while you were out practicing. I thought you would have wanted tea.”

Fir glanced at the well that served this ger. It seemed far distant, at the center of the half circle of ruined gers and old grazing grounds. It was really only a short run from the doorway of the forge, where her Uncle was leaning, but it seemed like a day's march through grass that should have been tamped flat by a whole tribe going about their daily business. The well and the forge were the only part of this campground that had survived the war intact.

“I'll take tea, if the pot has already been made,” Fir said brightly, deciding that it was too much effort to get more water from the well.

Her uncle and his latest student had been using it all winter, so if it was going to kill them without having been boiled, if would have done so already, but why bother risking it when she could have a full mug of fresh tea instead. If it ended up giving her too much energy, and the made her feel sick, well she'd know next time not to be so indolent.

As her uncle turned away, she thought she caught a twinkle in his tired eyes. He probably knew how lazy she was being. Uncles were not as easily duped as fathers. “Where's Rutger?” Fir called into the darkness of the forge. “I was kind of hoping that I'd see him.”

“He needed to disappear for a while. I believe he will return.”

Probably left because someone else arrived. Fir felt her mouth work in exasperation. She had once thought Rutger was very like the uncle she half remembered as a young girl, and had half dreamed up from those memories. It figured that Rutger would choose to disappear. The war had ended last summer—was it really almost a year gone now? All those good friends had gone their separate ways, even when she thought she might have caught up with them.

Uncle Karel tinkered in the dark, before returning with two gently steaming mugs. They sat on the wide circular step that made the threshold of the forge. Fir leaned back against the flaking whitewash on the hard mud of the ger. She could see the husks of burned out circles that had once been gers, but the Plains were reclaiming them with a vengeance of grass and weeds.

With the mist rising, it was almost like one of her early dreams. Her mother sitting
in the cool morning light, waiting for the right time to begin her exercises. Maybe it had really happened, or maybe it was a fancy plucked from what her father had told her. Like her uncle, like the plains themselves, when she got down to it, she wasn't certain what was real, and what had been created out of whole cloth.

“You're lucky you caught me. I was planning on moving on,” Uncle Karel broke the silence. “Sometime this summer, I hope.”

Fir glanced over at him, and discovered they were reclined in the same position. “Oh? Where to? Will you be honing your skills in Bern again?”

“No. Not for many years, I think. Too many bandits are interested in picking that country over to give me peace.”

Oh. Fir bit back her offer, but then decided to make it, just in case. It was half-confession, anyway. “You know, even if it isn't good for your peace, those people in the mountains need some kind of help. You could be useful there, if you chose to go. I'm teaching, you know. I mean, people, I'm teaching them how to use swords. I go around to villages high up in the mountains with crews of people to ready defenses and the like. It's not much, but I teach them the basics until the new walls, or whatever needs to get rebuilt gets rebuilt.”

“Well, that sounds as though you have your work cut out for you, then.”

She had half expected mockery. Or anger. She wasn't sure, but in all those stories of master swordsmen, weren't they supposed to get really angry when amateurs like her tried to teach? Uncle Karel just kept his eyes on the Plains, watching the world wearily.

Fir tested the oddly calm waters. “Aren't I too young to be teaching anyone?”

Her uncle raised his tea in salute. “Anyone who asked your father would know you've been teaching him something new about the world almost every day of your life.”

“But—the sword is a serious path, and I've barely begun to walk it. Not really. I mean, I thought I knew what I was doing when I was fourteen, and I didn't know the first thing. I'm not three years away from that girl, and I can't know—”

As dry and soft as a snakeskin in the grass, Uncle Karel began to laugh. It was such a phenomenon, whether for her imaginary uncle or the real one that Fir stopped babbling. As she stopped the volume rose, creaking and vibrating like dead grass in the wind. It didn't sound as though Uncle Karel was very much given to laughter.

“You're not teaching them the way of the sword. You're teaching them the way of surviving from one season to the next, and that is something you've done and know, and can teach anyone. But even if you were to become a teacher of the next person who desires to take your path to being a sword master, even if that were to happen tomorrow, you're no more ready for it, or unready for it than I ever have been, or any teacher who has come before. Just knowing the ways of the sword isn't enough, you know, even if you weren't developing new paths toward that final goal with every swing you make.”

It wasn't exactly comforting. Fir had heard the 'no one ever knows what they're doing' speech before in many different forms. Noah's version was the best, because he always followed it up with 'but I prepare and try to learn from what I did wrong the first time.' She suspected no matter how good she ever became with a blade, Noah would always be a better teacher.

Still, she was glad her Uncle was happy. “Well, at least I can make you laugh. Have you ever just about burst out of your skin with worry that you're doing everything wrong, then?”

Uncle Karel sipped his tea quietly. “No. I remember thinking what a great inconvenience students were, and how much I didn't want them in my life. You're worried about failing them.”

“Hey! And that's funny?!”

“No. The fact that at sixteen, you're this wise, when at twenty five I was so foolish is funny,” Uncle Karel looked across the Plains with misty eyes. “I'm glad that you're better than I ever was.”

“Wait—at teaching, or,” Fir hesitated, “sword work?”

“When you continue to train your blade, both.”

The sun was now two whole handspans above the horizon, and the fog had almost burned away. Still, the air was not yet a warm as the grin that broke out over Fir's face. “I'm going to be the best swordsman the world has ever known, Uncle.”

She had told him that once, long ago, she was sure. Maybe even the same morning she had seen her mother rise with sword in hand. Shin had been shocked by her ambition, she knew Rutger still thought she was foolish, and her dad was so busy trying to find someone to take care of her that he hadn't noticed she took care of herself very well, thank you. Maybe all these reactions came from declaring her intent with such honesty that more complicated people ignored it. Somehow, though, she knew with the next creaking, sadly disused chuckle that her uncle had never doubted her or her goal.

[fill] Because the Stars Do Not Care

2014-04-23T03:22:37Z

Title: Because the Stars Do Not Care
Game: Binding Blade (FE6)
Pairing: Miledy/Gale
Word Count: 1012
Prompt: Gale/Miledy - funeral pyre
Warnings: Boss character death

Summary: It was a long day at the Shrine of Seals. Now the night has come on, and Gale and Miledy watch a funeral pyre burn.

Sparks danced towards the stars.

Miledy tried not to breathe in the pungent odor of a body turning to ash. Next to her, Gale's face was a study in harsh statuary, angles and sheer surfaces picked out by unforgiving firelight. But that was the way he always looked. Father Sky had given him a face most wyvern riders acquired only after years of study in the law courts, all in the hope that they could have the chance to use it on a recalcitrant traitor to the kingdom. He couldn't help it.

The happiest days of my life. Or perhaps he could help it, but knew if he showed any other face he would have given enemies of the crown an opening. Or invited in the enemies who detested his quick rise to high office, his youth, and foreign, possibly not even noble, blood.

“Thank you very much,” his soft voice was almost drowned by the crackling fire, “for making me your prisoner.”

They were close enough to the giant construction that they could not hear the dying cries of the defeated army all around them. They couldn't hear the reinforcements from reluctant Etrurian lords, and indifferent Ilian companies sorting the remains of the Northern Army into the dead and wounded prisoners of war. They couldn't even hear any remaining calls from dying wyverns that had so distressed Trifinne as the afternoon wore on.

“It isn't much of a kindness,” Miledy said, not daring to reach out for his hand the way she would have half a year ago. “Just because Ellen was willing to heal you before the army went into the Shrine—there are a lot of people here who cannot forgive Bern for this war. They will not want you as our prisoner any more than you wish to be our ally.”

“I can't turn on the King. General Murdock,” a long pause filled with too many words that had never been said came between them. Gale managed to finish the thought after swallowing all those tumbled thoughts and observations. “He had nothing else.”

In the heat of the flames, and the crackle of sparks, Miledy could feel the icy shell that ignored every whispered word and saw the world as it really was tremble. She didn't ask how long he had known there was something wrong with their king. She didn't say that she would never ask him to turn on Zephiel because she already had, and even now she was pleading in her head for him to change his mind.

He turned his head suddenly, looking away from the fire he had been contemplating since they heaved the general's massive frame—almost too heavy to lift, even with the plate stripped from him, down to the arming doublet, and Zeiss' help—onto the bier and set it ablaze.

“I'm sorry, for betraying the queen.”

Betraying Guinevere? Miledy looked at him in shock. “She's not a queen.” Not yet. He had never sworn any oaths to protect her—any oaths that protected Guinevere were superseded by the oaths to Zephiel and Bern.

“She will be, though. The next time you have to build one of these.”

The glacier cracked in his voice. His hollow eyes couldn't even look at the bier anymore. Miledy felt her own eyes skitter away from his, trying to draw comfort from the night pressing around them. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He should have been at her side, the good soldier and great general that he was. Guinevere spoke of betraying Bern, and Miledy had done so, too, but her heart had known the right of it, and Gale would have felt the same.

The next time they built one of these, Guinevere would be right beside her, hanging onto her grief for a man no one else in the army would care to mourn. “If she is your queen as well as mine—”

Gale tried to smile, an exercise made more horrifying by the sudden brightness of the dancing flames. “But the general was my commander, and I know what his dying wishes were.”

Miledy nodded, staring back at the flames. She was supposed to watch until the body burned to ash, just to be sure dark spirits did not steal the moral vessel away. Gale had to watch, knowing the damage had been done to General Murdock long before any spirits got there. Maybe the mischief had been done while Gale and she were still in training at the castle, during those three days when their prince had been lost. Or maybe the dark spirits had eaten Murdock from the inside out, over years and years, and they had never known anything but a hollow version of the man.

Gale knew that they had all been traitors, every last one of them. And he still loved them all behind his sleepless eyes, reticence, and unhappiness.

She sought his hand in the dark, and that was the moment when the ice cracked, melting and crumbling into an abyss as Gale drew in a shallow choking gasping breath. At the slightest pressure of her hand, he fell, doubling over in hiccupping sobs that were not covered at all by the snapping branches and popping embers. The work and effort of building the pyre that would burn hot enough, the flight training of the morning, the war on opposite sides, the life in Bern's military, everything that they had shared crashed together, and smashed between them.

Quiet, reasonable, shy, retiring Gale grabbed her surcoat—thrown on more to give some formality to her battle worn arming doublet than because she was at all ready to look presentable and respectable—and cried into her shoulder. Miledy had never seen Gale so undone. She pulled him close to her, struggling with everything else that came with him, as though her arms were enough to protect him from grief and pain.

The flames continued to wheel and dance around the wyvern general of Bern, crackling into the star filled sky.

[fill] do what's good for you (or you're not good for anybody)

2014-04-21T22:30:53Z

Title: do what's good for you (or you're not good for anybody)
Game: Awakening
Pairing: Chrom/Sumia
Word Count: 1327
Prompt: any/any - “I don’t wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone.”
Warnings: None

Summary: In which the pie-baking pegasus knight and the dorky prince have more in common than they realize.

Every day she managed to break her own record of how many times she could trip over her own feet or thin air, watch people frown or hide their giggles or fret over her and wonder how a silly girl like her ever managed to become a Shepherd in the first place. She'd tried to join the royal Pegasus Knights with Cordelia, but the older girls scolded and mocked her when she tripped and dropped her practice lance. She's no good, Captain Phila. Sumia, you'll just have to watch. And Phila, out of concern for Sumia's well-being, had agreed. It was humiliating and Sumia went home and cried and felt sorry for herself, if Cordelia hadn't come over and snapped her out of it she'd still be at home wallowing in pity.

So when she was asked to join Chrom's Shepherds, she made up for her lack of grace by making tea and doing chores and trying to cook for everyone. If she couldn't be a strong knight, she'd be their maid.

"A noblewoman like you has no business doing such dirty work," Maribelle scolded. Sumia didn't look up from the pile of Sully's socks she was washing and smiled.

"It's all I can do. And I really don't mind." She finished the socks as quickly as she could, trying her best not to drop any as she hung them to dry, and moved on to Stahl's tunics. While those soaked, she dusted the empty tables. She didn't feel competent enough to dust ones with important things on them, or anything at all.

The day she rescued a wounded pegasus on the north road, she finally dared to get up in the saddle she'd been denied as a girl. Moments later, she ended up saving Chrom's life. The other knights had been wrong, the air was the one place she couldn't trip or drop anything and the instant bond with her pegasus only helped more. She'd found her place as a fighter at last.

Sometime later, she noticed Chrom seeming more tired and stressed than usual. She caught him tripping over a pebble and forced him to rest. She spent the rest of day in the kitchen trying to cook and gave the first successful attempt at a pie to Chrom. He returned the favor by making her tea despite her protests, and she ended up giving him another pie two days later.

Cordelia teased her about having a crush, but that wasn't the case. No, not at all...she liked him, of course, but he was her captain and she wanted to help everyone, not just him. She still did everyone's laundry, not just his; Chrom's smallclothes were third on the list of everything she'd washed that day. She fed the horses and pegasi and aside from one accident involving some pebbles she was competent enough at that.

But as time went on, Chrom became more and more stressed and she found herself reaching out to him more and more. She kept baking pies, kept doing his laundry, protected him during battles and made sure he rested. Frederick often teased her for doing his job and Cordelia and Sully and Robin teased her about her supposed crush on their captain.

But feelings or no feelings, she had to take care of them. Especially him. Sometimes she would end up exhausted herself, but that was nothing new for her. She was used to trying to do everything for everyone, he wasn't.

One day, he keeled over during a practice session with Stahl. After Frederick rode in like a raging storm and rushed him to Lissa and Maribelle Sumia discovered he'd skipped nearly a full night of sleep to go over the tactics Robin and Flavia had devised. He slept until long after dinner that night, and Sumia brought him a bowl of warmed-over stew and some fresh bread.

"You were so reckless," she scolded the moment she returned. "Honestly, Chrom, can't we take our eyes off of you for one minute?"

"Sorry," he mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "I guess I stayed up later than I thought last night." He took the bowl and spoon from her and began to eat like he hadn't seen food in days, only resting when the bowl was a little more than half-empty. "This is good! Whose turn was it to cook tonight?"

"Frederick's. He's no Stahl, but he's better than half of us." Sumia smiled a little. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah, much. Thanks for bringing it in," he said. "Sorry I worried you."

"Chrom, why are you doing this? I know the war's a big deal and you're our leader, but Robin and Frederick and Flavia are here to help you for a reason," she said. "You're a wonderful leader, but you have to rest sometime."

"I can't. Not until Emmeryn is safe and Plegia's no longer a threat," he said, biting off a big hunk of bread, chewing and swallowing quickly. "King Gangrel's the one who started everything, and I-"

"We." She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing firmly. "I know what you're about to say, and you're wrong. It's not just your job, it's ours. The Shepherds are a team, isn't that what you've always said?"

"Well, yes..." He turned to look at her. "But I could say the same thing about you, Sumia."

"W-what?" Fear gripped her, had she done something wrong? Was she letting her new skills and role go to her head? She'd saved a few lives and won many a battle, but...maybe I should slow down a little and hold back so the others don't think I'm a showoff!

"You're always the one trying to be everyone's maid," he said. "Laundry, pies, feeding the horses, gardening, cleaning, you do it all."

"Oh..." She smiled. "Well, I like doing all those things! I-"

"But you don't have to." He moved closer, placing his hand over hers. "Sumia, we all appreciate your help, but you've gone from helping to housewife! You've got to take care of yourself, too. You're a valued member of the Shepherds, and you always have been." Her heart skipped a beat and her cheeks grew hot, Sumia trying to pretend she was more interested in Chrom's half-eaten bowl of stew.

"Y-you should finish!" He set the bowl down beside the bedroll and shook his head.

"This isn't about stew anymore, or about me. Sumia, we just want you to be yourself. Stop trying to be everything for everybody."

"Chrom..." She sighed. "I know I'll never be everything to everybody, I'm too clumsy and silly for that. But if I can just be something to someone it'll all be worth it." His cheeks went slightly red.

"I know how that feels. But I have to be everything to everybody," he said. "Emmeryn's counting on me to be her next in line. Granted, I probably won't take the throne until I'm an old man but I'm still a Prince of Ylisse. Royalty is born knowing they'll always have to be an example to the world."

"But even so..." She wrapped her arm around him. "You're already doing a wonderful job! You're a great leader, a fantastic brother, a skilled warrior. Everyone trusts you with their lives and believes in you, you don't have to work yourself to the bone to prove yourself!"

"And neither do you." He leaned against her. "We'd still value you and your friendship even if you never washed another sock or baked another pie again."

"I know...deep down, I know that. But I've never thought very much of myself, you know that." She smiled sadly. Chrom took her other hand and squeezed it lightly.

"Tell you what. From now on, we help each other take it easy, okay? I'll get more sleep and stop training every waking moment, and you let other people help with the laundry and the pies." She smiled, absently running a hand through his mussed hair.

"It's a deal," she said. "Thank you, Chrom."

"And Sumia?"

"Yes?"

"You already are something to me."

He picked up his bowl and began to eat again, and Sumia's heart soared.

[fic] love without a voice

2014-04-12T00:36:11Z

Title: love without a voice
Game: Path of Radiance
Word Count: 677
Prompt: Fire Emblem 9/10 - Tibarn/Reyson - as deep as the sky under your skin
Warnings: None

Summary: They're always together. There's nothing Tibarn wouldn't do for him. So it's only natural that this would happen.

He can't remember Reyson ever not being by his side. Even before the Serenes Massacre, he and his father were frequent visitors to Phoenicis. Tibarn would pay his own visits to Serenes Forest, and when they could not be together they would send letters. Sometimes he wonders if Reyson would have come to Phoenicis regardless of the Forest's fate.

It's been years since that fateful night, and Reyson still hasn't forgotten. He still wakes up shaking and angry, but over time he's learned to temper that anger into his own strength; he'll never be able to fight the way Hawks and Ravens can, but his anger is what keeps him moving ahead. Tibarn promises they'll have their revenge for Serenes, and he intends to keep it.

They're always together. They watch the sunrise at dawn, Tibarn helps Reyson comb his hair and they have breakfast. Bugs and meat for Tibarn as usual, fruits and grains for Reyson. Tibarn monitors Reyson's diet carefully after an ugly incident in which the heron tried to emulate him and wound up sick for a week. Sometimes they eat in silence, other times they talk. It doesn't matter, they don't always need words.

Reyson watches Tibarn train with the other hawks, looking somewhere between admiring and envious. "I wish you would train me," he says every now and then, and sometimes Tibarn catches him mimicking the moves he uses in matches. It'd be nice to have Reyson fight alongside him when the time for their revenge comes, but Herons have gifts just as valuable as fighting. Eventually, Janaff and Ulki are able to convince Reyson to focus on his own strengths rather than trying to become a Hawk in all but name and appearance.

It's the same basic thing, day in and out, but Tibarn couldn't ask for more. One night, he tells Tibarn that Phoneicis has become another home for him, and Tibarn feels a spark. It's small, barely noticeable but it catches fire with those words and spreads deep inside. Under his skin, into his heart and the words branded into his memory.

Like my home now.

And he wraps his arm tightly around Reyson, smiling, resting his cheek against silky golden hair. Somewhere inside he'd always hoped Reyson would feel this way. Neither one gives voice to their feelings, not that night, but there's no need.

The first time they kiss, it just happens. It's a bit awkward and Reyson looks angry-embarrassed afterwards but his body language betrays him. It's raining, Reyson leans into him and Tibarn wraps his strong, protective wings around the smaller figure.

"It was bound to happen," he says, and Reyson relents with a smile.

"I know." He leans further into the embrace. "Deep down, maybe I always knew." As deep as the sky, under their skin. Warm and endless. The word itself never needs to be said.

When they discover Leanne among Beorc, Reyson is thrilled to discover another bit of his flesh and blood still alive. Their reunion is sweet and long-deserved, and together they bring the dead forest back to life. Reyson, who'd been about to cast the forbidden dirge to end Ike and his friends, is finally able to let go of the anger he'd kept close to his heart for so long.

"Thank you," he tells Tibarn, even though it was Tibarn who'd encouraged him to hold onto that anger. But that was then, this is now. Tibarn forgives Ike and the other Beorc beside him, entrusts them with Reyson's care. It's the first time they'll be apart in years, but neither feels any sorrow.

"I'll miss you," he says, brushing Reyson's hair away from his face.

"You'll be back." Reyson smiles, squeezing his hand. "I know you too well. And I know you'll take good care of Leanne." And Tibarn grins, knowing that someday Leanne will be his sister, too. They share a brief kiss, Reyson lets go of Tibarn's hand and flies to Ike's side with Janaff and Ulki.

The sky is as deep as the lingering warmth of Reyson's hands, and Tibarn flies home with his future sister-in-law in comfortable silence.

[fill] A Day Off

2014-03-20T03:08:35Z

Title: A Day Off
Game: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Word Count: 1244
Warnings: Smut
Prompt: Geoffrey/Elincia—Letting loose.

Summary: Wherein Geoffrey and Elincia play hooky and get frisky in a field of flowers.

The meetings were far from the worst thing they could endure, and Elincia appreciated them far more than ever now after all they'd had to go through with Ludveck's treachery in the past year. On the other hand, they weren't exactly the most exciting things to sit through either. So while she hadn't yet begun to dread every Wednesday morning, sometimes she would lie in bed next to her husband and wish that for once, she could skip it. Sleep late, go for a ride in the countryside, anything but sit through more questions and answers and occasionally having to silence squabbling nobles.

So of course she was surprised when one Wednesday morning, Geoffrey convinced her to take a ride into the country with him instead of preparing for the day's meeting. They dressed quickly, saddled his horse and rode off into the countryside without a word to anyone, only a note to Lucia.

Elicnia couldn't believe she was doing this, much less without even a token argument as to why they couldn't. It was never a good idea for anyone to skip a Wednesday, but it would be especially bad if the Queen and King were absent. But her heart had overtaken her judgment, something it hadn't done since she was young and naive and sheltered from the world. Yes, Geoffrey, let's ride into the country and pick flowers all day!

It was late morning when they finally came to a stop, far away from the castle and possibly Melior by this point. Geoffrey dismounted, helped her down and took her hand as they ran gleefully into a seemingly endless field.

"We picked the perfect day to skip, didn't we," she said, taking in the vibrant colors and warmth that surrounded them. He smiled, lifting her up and twirling her around a little.

"Perfect," he echoed. "Her Highness deserves a day away from taxes and squabbling nobles."

"And His Highness does not?" She wrapped her arms across his shoulders and kissed him briefly. He smiled, setting her down but not letting go of her.

"I couldn't very well let my lady spend her day off alone, now, could I?"

"And yet, you still wore your armor." Elincia herself had worn a simple blue country dress with little white flowers embroidered into the bodice. "Did you think we would be attacked by rabbits out here?" Geoffrey laughed sheepishly, turning a bit red.

"I suppose old habits are hard to break," he said. "I'm surprised you didn't wear your grandmother's battle gear out of habit."

"At least that's easier to manage than that what I used to wear." Her old orange gown hadn't seen the light of day since her coronation; it was a relic from her girlhood and while she couldn't bring herself to get rid of it, the style no longer suited her as it once had. "Ah, but listen to us, talking about our clothes when we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves!"

"I'll remove my armor at once, Your Highness," Geoffrey said, slowly releasing her.

"Let me help." His armor wasn't as complicated as that worn by a general or a marshal, but it wasn't a simple affair either. Once he was as comfortable as she was, Elincia removed the clips from her hair and let it tumble down past her shoulders.

"Much better," he murmured, taking her into his arms again. Their lips came together in a longer kiss, Geoffrey running his fingers through her unpinned hair and Elincia feeling the soft cotton of his tunic under her hands. Not since their honeymoon had they been able to simply enjoy each other like this, to be just a man and a woman in love. Sometimes, being in charge of an entire monarchy was a bit tiring.

He laid her down on the grass, the soft cool blades tickling her bare arms as the kiss deepened, tongues caressing each other, hands touching and visiting places they'd barely had time to in months. His lips left hers to trail down her neck, his hands unbuttoned her dress as hers tugged at his shirt and belt.

"I want to lay naked with you in the grass," she whispered. "Take everything off."

"Should we? Someone might..." And Geoffrey laughed. "My apologies. I forgot where we were for a moment." And soon their clothes lay strewn around them in the grass and Geoffrey's lips were on her breast, his hand stroking her sides and her hips and her stomach until his fingers brushed between her legs and she gasped, raising her hips.

"Yes," she murmured, closing her eyes and panting as he stroked her. In turn, she caressed his back and chest until her hand settled on his hardness, giving it a teasing graze with her palm.

"Are you ready, my lady?" He would never stop calling her that or any variant of it no matter how many times she insisted or how many times he tried, it was just something she'd come to expect and accept of him. She parted her legs more, guiding him to her.

"Yes."

He plunged in, quicker than his usual careful entry, and started moving right away with quick thrusts, Elincia moaning and crying out his name as her hips rose to meet his every movement. Lips, hands, bodies caressed each other in rhythmic understanding. It was beyond words, beyond description...it was like their honeymoon times ten, almost. Higher and higher she soared until everything burst into white-hot flames around her and she was dimly aware of him shouting her name to the heavens.

When she returned to Earth, Geoffrey was trailing kisses along her jawline, stroking loose strands of hair away from her face. Presently he withdrew from her, rolling onto his back and letting her lie against his chest.

"Do you think they've started without us?" she asked. He smiled, playing with a lock of her hair and resting a hand on her hip.

"Perhaps. Or they could have seen we were absent, panicked and left in search of us...in which case, we should put our clothes back on."

"And I just got comfortable, too." Elincia mock-pouted. "I suppose we should at least be present for part of the meeting if there is one. We'll need an excuse for why we were so late, though..."

"On the other hand, I wonder how well they can manage without us? Your uncle Renning might be a fine substitute."

"Yes, but he's not the King." She sighed. "Such a beautiful day...I'd love to stay out here making love with you until the sun sets. But alas, I'm their Queen and they'll expect no substitute."

"I understand, Your Highness. We'll get dressed immediately and ride back to Melior."

Reluctantly, they separated and put their clothes back on, Elincia helping Geoffrey with his armor. His horse had busied himself munching some grass while they'd been preoccupied, a small bird occasionally stopping to rest on his back before flying away again; Geoffrey let her mount first before settling in front of her, Elincia wrapping her arms around his waist as they rode back to the capital.

They only arrived forty minutes late to the meeting, to stares and whispers from others. They know, Elincia thought, but at least they were polite enough not to say anything. Lucia only smirked, while Bastian nodded in approval.

"I apologize for us being tardy," Elincia began. "But if someone will kindly brief their Queen and King on what they missed, we may begin."

Perhaps skipping the beginnings of meetings wasn't the best of ideas. But, she decided as Geoffrey took her hand under the table, it was worth it.

[fill] Until I Draw My Last Breath

2014-03-14T22:07:12Z

Title: Until I Draw My Last Breath
Game: Fire Emblem 8: The Sacred Stones
Rating: G
Prompt: Seth>Eirika, Eirika/anyone – he remains faithful to his duty as her knight, even as it kills him inside, bit by bit.
Word Count: 898
Summary: A greet cheer went up from the crowd as Eirika and Forde smiled and waved. For a moment, Eirika turned, and smiled at Seth, and his heart plunged into his stomach.

What mattered most was Eirika's happiness.

Seth remembers her wedding day vividly. He had been the one to give her away, in the absence of her father. Exquisite in white, she clung to his arm, eyes shining with happiness.

Her husband-to-be waited for them, shifting uncomfortably in full formal wear. In a way, it would be easier if Seth could have hated him, could have believed he took her for granted and didn't know how lucky he was.

But he had fought side by side with Forde, and though he appeared lax in his duties, Seth knew how deep his feelings for their King and Queen ran, and how seriously he took Eirika's well being.

It could have been the other way around, Seth used to think. If he hadn't been seriously injured in Jehanna and had to abstain from the rest of the campaign, he might been the knight at Eirika's side through it all, and it might have been him who she had fallen in love with.

But in the end, it didn't matter, because it hadn't happened that way.

Seth smiled, along with everyone else, as Forde took her into his arms and kissed her, though his wounds ached anew, and he kept his eyes on Forde's hands, making sure they stayed above the waist.

He rode behind the newlyweds as they came out of the castle to greet the people of Renais for the first time as man and wife. Franz rode beside him, near bursting with brotherly pride.

A greet cheer went up from the crowd as Eirika and Forde smiled and waved. For a moment, Eirika turned, and smiled at Seth, and his heart plunged into his stomach.

Afterwards, Ephraim and Tana congratulated them, Tana kissing both Forde and Eirika enthusiastically on the cheek, Ephraim embracing his sister and slapping Forde on the back.

L'Arachel and Innes are next, L'Arachel already tipsy with champagne and overly affectionate, Innes stiff but sincere. And then there was Joshua and Natasha, the one grinning madly, the other smiling sweetly. Happiness abounded.

Seth shares a tiny room with Kyle in the barracks. There aren't many secrets between them, and Seth suspects Kyle knows of his passion. He doesn't mind, because they aren't so different, Kyle and he. Kyle also chose to serve rather than to settle down, though there were certainly women who looked his way.

Seth hasn't figured out yet who it is that Kyle holds deep in his heart, but he knows that the royal weddings left him less than pleased.

Now Eirika is starting to be great with child, and Forde's remarkable portrait of her hangs prominently in the castle. Seth walks by that portrait every day, trying not to meet the portrait's warm and lively eyes.

He sees her stumble one day, and seizes hold of her before she can fall. And for a moment, it is like it was on that terrible, beautiful night, when she held fast to him as they raced away from Renais in the moonlight. Eirika's breath catches, and her hands move to her stomach, and he remembers that she is carrying another man's child.

"Thank you, Seth," she says softly, as he releases her.

"I am pleased to serve you, my Queen," he replies, and means, I love you.

Eirika's child is born in the fall, when the leaves are just beginning to change color. It is a girl. After some consideration, she is named for Forde's mother.

For all that her father named her, the child bears the unmistakable stamp of Renais royalty on her face. Always, Seth knows, he will think of her as Eirika's child.

He watches them together, month after month, as the little girl grows bigger and more demanding, and begins to teethe. And of course, he watches Forde, as he dangles little charms over her face and laughs as she bats at them. Watches as Forde steals kisses from the Queen and wraps his arms around her as their child yawns.

Seth thought once he couldn't hate Forde, he knew him too well. He doesn't hate him, but he finds himself increasingly unpleasant in his company. Forde has everything beyond his wildest dreams. Seth has nothing but his duty, and even that is becoming more difficult with age.

Eirika's daughter has a little cousin now, a baby boy born of Ephraim and Tana. The future king of Renais, named for his grandfather. Seth knows he will one day serve this boy, but he keeps a closer watch on the young princess. She may not be his daughter, but he would protect her with his life.

Time does not tarnish Eirika's beauty. Lines begin to appear on her face, and she wears her hair up, but maturity lends her a grace that suits a Queen.

"Seth," she says often, "we have so many wonderful knights serving us now, most of which you've trained. You've done enough for Renais. Please, make a life for yourself-- find a loving wife, and settle down in the countryside somewhere.."

"But my Queen," he replies, "this is my life."

[fic] shooting at the walls of heartache (bang bang)

2014-03-11T21:59:55Z

Title: shooting at the walls of heartache (bang bang)
Game: Awakening
Word Count: 1731
Prompt: Severa/Noire, I'll keep you safe
Warnings: Blood, possible bad future spoilers

Summary: Noire's always leaned on Severa, Severa's always let her and both expected it to stay that way forever.

For as long as she could remember, Severa had always looked after her. Defending her when anyone teased her, protecting her when one of the other kids got too rough while they were playing, sitting by her bedside while she was sick. When her father died Severa had let her cry on her for hours, and waited outside the door of her room for her to wake up after she'd passed out from the shock of watching her mother die three years later.

Severa wasn't always the nicest person in the world, even before her parents died. Even Noire wasn't completely immune to her grumpiness, but she always noticed Severa tried harder to keep it under control around her. Likewise, Noire's alternate self never came out to play with Severa.

So Noire grew attached to the other girl, learned to feel safe with her. When she was scared, she crawled under Severa's blankets and clung to her until the shadows passed or the storm stopped. When she was upset, she cried on Severa's shoulder as long as she'd let her. Even after they came back to the past and Noire promised to become stronger and less of a burden, she always found herself falling back into her old habits. Severa, will you walk me to the bathroom? Severa, stay with me while I re-string my bow, please? Severa, please protect me during this battle!

And Severa always gave in. It was just the way things were, the way they always had been and they'd probably never change no matter how much stronger Noire got. There was no reason for them to, really, Severa liked feeling needed and Noire could be just as strong and helpful firing arrows from behind her.

The morning of the first confrontation with Walhart they readied their weapons while Gerome's father obsessively polished everyone's armor until it shone. Severa approved, Noire didn't care much either way. They followed Say'ri and Chrom into battle, listened to Robin's strategy and took their places.

It was like any other battle. Was being the key word; Severa fought up close with her sword and her axe, Noire shot any stragglers that got too close. A typical battle, both girls playing their typical roles.

Neither of them saw the wyvern rider coming at them from a distance, its axe gleaming and headed straight for Noire. Archers were like candy to the enemy on the battlefield, unable to defend themselves from up close it was too easy for them to be surrounded and possibly done in. The whoosh of wings alerted her and she barely had time to nock an arrow before she felt herself being shoved out of the way; the ground was hard under her and she cried out, losing her grip on her bow. Severa fell to the ground moments later, holding her side and gasping in pain.

"No!" Before Noire had time to react Cordelia came flying towards them at near-impossible speed, landing and rushing to her daughter's side. "No, no, no..." Severa tried to say something but was overcome by a cry of pain and Cordelia was gathering her up and mounting again, rushing her daughter off the field and into the medics' tent. And Noire was left sitting beside her fallen bow, watching the battle around her.

She protected me. Blood stained the ground where Severa had stood just moments ago, blood spilled by the enemy that had tried to kill her before Severa...

Noire shook her head, abandoned her bow and dashed towards the medical tent, tears stinging her eyes. She couldn't think, she could barely breathe and as she collapsed outside the tent the image of Severa falling played in her mind on an infinite loop.

-x-

"-deep cut," she later overheard her father whisper when she woke up, "she's in bad shape now but luckily she didn't lose too much blood, she just needs to rest and take it easy for a few days. She'll be back to her old self in no time." Relief flooded Noire, she's alive, she's going to be okay. Cordelia and Gregor spent a few moments watching Severa sleep before going back to their own tent, and when they did Noire shyly approached her father.

"Um...can I sit with her for a while, please?" she asked.

"Of course. She'll likely be asleep for a long time, though," Libra cautioned.

"That's fine." Severa had waited by her bedside more times than Noire could count, this was her chance to return the favor. She sat down in the chair beside the sickbed, watching the other girl sleep. She wore a huge bandage across her middle and she looked smaller without her armor and Noire wanted to cry. It was my fault, she protected me, I'm the reason she's hurt and I would've been the reason she died out there if her mother hadn't gotten to us in time. I was weak, I was scared, she had to protect me. She always has to protect me.

But as time went on, the more she looked at Severa and her bandage and watched blood seep into the white, something inside her began to change.

She's always protecting me...but this time she didn't have to! I had the arrow ready! I could have shot him at a close range! I may be weak and helpless most of the time, but I've always been good with my bow! Severa laid on the bed with a bloody bandage across her middle, a bandage she shouldn't have needed, and Noire clenched her fists. There was no reason for her to get hurt. Anger slowly began to heat her up, not the usual sudden rages that came with her other self but a calm, serious anger at both Severa for being so reckless and at herself for making Severa feel like she had to be.

No more. There was no reason for her to get hurt, but she did. Because of me. No more of this.

-

"Owww..what the hell happened out there?" Noire's head shot up; during the four hours she'd been sitting there she'd only nodded off twice, and Severa's voice had just prevented a third time. Seeing Severa look so tired and out of it nearly melted her anger until she remembered why Severa was so tired and out oh it.

"You got hurt," Noire said, trying to keep her voice tight. "Your mother flew you here before you bled too much."

"Oh, yeah...yeah, now I remember. That guy was coming for you and you would've been mincemeat," Severa groaned. Don't remind me, Noire thought bitterly.

"I had the arrow ready," she said. "Severa-"

"Don't thank me, it's just me doing what I always do." Severa managed a smile. "Just like always."

"No." The word flew out of her mouth before she could stop it. "Severa, this time you were just reckless!" The other girl actually flinched and Noire immediately felt bad but this time Noire didn't apologize. This wasn't her other side talking, for the first time since forever she was in full control. "You got hurt for no reason."

"Ugh, what are you babbling on about?" Severa rolled her eyes. "You're the one who's always asking me to protect you and babysit you, you're just so helpless-"

"I know that!" Noire snapped. "I-I know that," she repeated, trying to keep calm even as her heart pounded at the sight of Severa's blood. "But this time...this time I could've taken care of it myself. I had the arrow ready." She sighed. "And I know it's also my fault. You're so used to protecting me you couldn't help it, but you still shouldn't have done it!"

"Gawd, Noire..." Severa groaned as she tried to sit up, and Noire gently pushed her back down again. "H-hey, knock it off! Come on, it's just a little gash in my side, you're getting way too worked up!"

"You got lucky this time," Noire said, you could have been cut so much deeper, lost so much more blood, you could have died. "Severa, I...I appreciate you trying to help me. But it scared me, watching you fall to the ground bleeding like that." She took a deep breath, feeling her anger start to cool as she took Severa's hand. "I know why you did it. But please..." If you'd died, I don't know what I would do, you're so important to me. "Please, don't ever do anything like that again."

Severa didn't answer. Noire didn't say anything else. Silence suffocated them and Noire couldn't stop looking at the bandage; blood had stopped spreading across the white but there was still a decent amount there.

"Maybe I was kinda impulsive," Severa finally mumbled. "I mean, I guess you could've taken him down on your own. But he was coming right at you and you were struggling to line up your shot, and I-" She sighed. "I panicked. I couldn't let you get hurt."

"And instead you did. I'm not the only one you worried," Noire said. "Your parents, Cynthia, Lucina...they're all going to be so upset with you after they're done being happy you're all right."

"I'm used to them scolding or being mad at me," Severa said with a shrug. "It's you I didn't expect to get mad. I mean, really mad."

"You've never given me any reason to." Noire sighed. "But...I didn't mean to snap your head off, Severa, and I'm sorry. I just..." She sat down on the edge of the bed, and Severa leaned against her side.

"You went easy on me compared to the tongue-lashings I'm gonna get later," she grumbled. "Sorry I freaked you out." Severa's body relaxed against her and Noire felt her heart and her mind calm down. Severa was hurt, but she was safe and alive and she'd recover just fine.

But she didn't want anything like this to happen again. Ever.

"Severa?"

"Yeah?"

"From now on...let's rely on each other," she said softly, brushing a hand through one of Severa's pigtails. "I want to get stronger, and now...well, I've got more reason than ever! I'll never let you be hurt like that again!"

"Heh." Severa nestled a little closer, smiling. "It's about time." Her usual brusque Severa tone was coming back, and Noire had never been more relieved to hear it. Severa would keep protecting and looking after her, but Noire would grow stronger until she could do the very same for the girl she treasured.

Severa began to doze off again, and Noire leaned down to brush her lips against the other girl's forehead. Thank you, Severa. For everything.

[fill] "It's close enough"

2014-02-24T01:34:07Z

Series: pre-FE10
Character/pairing: Haar/Jill
[fanart]
x-posted to tumblr
A/N: aaa this is my first time submitting to here, so I hope I'm doing this right. fanart below the cut. ;orz

[fill] Differences Aside

2014-02-20T04:54:15Z

Title: Differences Aside
Game: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Word Count: 1046
Prompt: Jill/Lethe – “We both hold pride in ourselves, but I…I’m also proud of…you.”
Warnings: Spoilers, established relationship

Summary: The old Jill Fizzart never would have been caught dead living with a pack of beasts, much less enjoying their company.

The reconstruction of Talrega fell on her shoulders, and she knew she had many days and nights of hard work ahead of her. But before she bore the heavy title of Lady Fizzart, she left Talrega in Haar's care and set off on a journey.

The old Jill Fizzart never would have been caught dead living with a pack of beasts, much less enjoying their company. But the new Jill enjoyed Ranulf's sense of humor, Lyre and Kyza's constant teasing of each other, Skrimir's energy and Mordecai's kind wisdom.

And of course, Lethe's...well, she liked everything about Lethe. So much that Lethe was the reason she initially set off on this journey. Lethe had often referred to the others as her family, and sometimes Jill felt a little strange being so deeply involved with Lethe but knowing nothing about the people she cared about. Ranulf and Mordecai she only knew distantly, the latter through his friendship with Mist, and she only knew Lethe had a sister, never her name. Sometimes it felt a little strange living with these people she barely knew.

But Lethe called them her family, and Jill could see why. It was like General Ike always said, even when we disagree, we understand each other. And they did. No matter how much Lyre and Kyza argued or how often Lethe felt annoyed with them or Skrimir tried to sneak the last steak off the platter at dinner, they held a deep and abiding respect for one another nothing could break.

Sometimes Jill felt a pang of envy for never having had much family outside her father and Haar, but whenever Ranulf teased her or Lethe hissed at Lyre for acting spoiled or Mordecai took the time to sit and talk with her, the pang melted away. They didn't say it, but she knew as long as she was here she could consider them her family. And the more time she spent among the people of Gallia, the more she understood about their culture and the more she wished she hadn't missed out on as she grew up believing they were just monsters.

"You still don't understand everything, though," Lethe reminded her when she asked if they'd forgotten to put out forks at the dinner table, or got lost looking for the market before Mordecai found her and reminded her that they'd gone on a big hunting trip earlier that day. Luckily they'd been fairly nice about it aside from Ranulf's teasing, and she was used to that.

"I do appreciate you bringing back all that meat," she said. "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

"Sure. But you're a guest and you're a beorc, so the people here don't expect you to do much," Lethe said bluntly. Jill cringed.

"I guess to them I'm just a spoiled beorc, huh," she muttered. "I know the civillians still aren't comfortable with me, even with the peace General Ike and Lady Micaiah helped establish there's still some tension between the races."

"It's gonna take them a while to get used to it, yeah." Lethe stretched, lying down in the grass beside Jill. "But I'll help them. I'll scratch the daylights out of anyone who hisses or calls you human," she said with a wink. Jill laughed, shaking her head.

"You don't have to go that far," she said. "Just let me help out, let me feel useful. I'm not used to lying around doing nothing, back home I'd be training or running the messenger business with Captain Haar."

"Oh yeah, him..." Lethe rolled onto her side. "Do you ever wish you'd stayed behind to marry him? Not that I'm jealous or anything!" she added quickly, her cheeks flushing briefly. "It's just, General Ike thought you two were...you know..."

"Maybe when I was younger," Jill laughed. "Back when I was a kid I had a crush on him, but he was always more like my uncle, or my older brother. Either way, it would've been awkward." She sat up, running her fingers through Lethe's hair. "He understood when I told him how I felt about you."

"Good." Lethe purred, closing her eyes. "Not that I needed his approval. If he'd objected I would've sprinted you off to Gallia anyway," she said. "But...I'm glad I didn't have to. I'm glad you chose to come with us on your own."

"So am I," Jill said. "After all the stories you told me about your family and the thick forests and the mountains and the beautiful view of the sky first thing in the morning, I decided the first thing I had to do before becoming Lady of Talrega was to come here." She bit her lip. "And now that I have, I wish I didn't have to go back."

"Me too." Lethe lifted her head, leaning against Jill's shoulder. "But I know you, Jill. You'd feel guilty abandoning your father's people." She smiled. "And...Talrega couldn't ask for a better leader than you."

"You really think so?"

"I know so. Jill, you've changed so much since we first met and you called me a sub-human. The first time you shook my hand, I knew you finally understood...I knew you were better than what Daein taught you to be your whole life." Lethe pulled apart from her only to rest a hand against her cheek, her expression serious but gentle. "I'd never been prouder of anyone than I was of you." And Jill closed her eyes, a warm feeling spreading throughout her chest.

"I'm proud of you, too, Lethe," she said; to them, those words were as powerful as I love you, both women still so steeped in their own pride even now. "If I go back to Talrega, I want you to come with me. I know it's not as peaceful as Gallia, but I'll do my best."

"And if you don't, you'll stay here and marry me," Lethe said; though her tone was playful Jill knew she was serious; marriages of all kinds were welcome in Gallia as far as she knew. Even if beorcs were involved. Their lips met briefly before they stood up and headed back into the castle.

Ruling Talrega with Lethe by her side, leaving it in Haar's hands and living in Gallia forever as her wife. Even if either choice meant leaving something behind, she couldn't imagine either being the wrong one.

[fill] In the Morning Light

2014-02-19T00:22:00Z

Title: in the Morning Light
Series: FE 10
Character/pairing: Bastian/Lucia
Rating: PG
Word count: 273
Summary: Bastian feels particularly poetic in the morning.
Author's note: Woop, the first one actually finished! Also, finally a poem from me that is not completely horrible and a pain to hear. Prompt: Bastian/Lucia; in the morning light (My incredible ability to name things is incredible).

A small noise woke Bastian up. He blinked slowly, at first unwilling to leave the cocoon of warmth that was his bed, and turned. In front of the windows stood a person, barely clad. She wore a crown of sunlight; her presence almost blinded Bastian. He shielded his eyes and saw the gleaming blue of her hair, as bright as a summer day’s sky. The air and sun seemed to hug her body tight when she moved around.

"As I open my eyes,

I see only gold and blue,

I thought ’tis the sun,

but it is you."

She startled lightly and turned around. "Bastian?" She sighed through her nose and shook her head. "It’s six in the morning. How can anybody make poetry at this time?" Putting on her white tunic, Lucia strode over to the bed. With the sun in her back and the gleaming white of her clothes, she looked like an angel to Bastian. He smiled broadly.

"How can I not when my muse is here?"

Lucia shook her head again and leaned down to press a lingering kiss to his lips. After she pulled back, Bastian closed his eyes. "Ah, give me a moment. There is a poem in this kiss." He heard Lucia snort with amusement and a second later he had a pillow in his face. Chuckling, he looked at her over the edge of the pillow. She was already walking to the door.

"I have places to go. Save your poem until tonight."

After the door fell close behind her, Bastian sank back into the bed and sighed, his head full of love and rhymes.