And so it begins… The alternate universe in which A) (*SPOILERS*) Ceniro lived (*END SPOILERS*) and B) Pent and Louise didn’t get away as cleanly as they did in the game. Funtimes ensue!
This prologue sort of assumes that you’ve already read the entire Tactician and the series, since basically in the final battle the same stuff happens but with Ceniro. I may add detail but I didn’t want to bog down in things that people presumably already knew. Also I have a new title for the story, huh? I suppose that since this is set in Elibe, that technically makes the Tactician series a quintology, but… I decided I wanted to go with a different formula for a different type of story. (A blatant actual anime series in text, lol.) So. This chapter will get you caught up on things you already knew. Working on Episode 1 and Episode 2, if all goes well it will be done in a couple hours. Although my cat is demanding attention today so we’ll see. I’d like to write two episodes a day until the end of NaNo, that should get me finished this, but of course I can’t promise anything.
Let’s go!
Prologue: Alive
Suddenly, he felt like someone or something punched him in the chest. Curious, he looked down, and saw about a foot and a half of arrow protruding from his chest, just under the breastplate Hector had once given him.
He blinked at it, and in the space of that blink, somehow he was staring at the sky. His whole body felt numb. Shouldn’t it hurt?
He heard Eliwood screaming. That was silly, he was supposed to be the one screaming… There were two red-heads in his vision, Eliwood and… Priscilla? That was who it was, right? They both looked terrified.
“I have to take the arrow out,” Priscilla said; he could hear her dimly, as if through a layer of glass. “Hold him still.” Eliwood turned his head and shouted an order to someone else; there was a distant, murky response.
He wasn’t going anywhere… The sky was a real pretty grey. There was a jolt through his abdomen, and suddenly his body flooded with pain. He shrieked and bucked against Eliwood, but his friend pinned him down with arms and knees, murmuring soothing – if frightened – reassurances.
Delicious coolness washed over him, and blue light, and the pain faded, replaced with a dull throbbing ache. “You can let him up now,” Priscilla said, her face white as paper, but relief in her voice.
Ceniro began to shake uncontrollably, as if a giant had picked him up. More embarrassingly, tears were filling his eyes, both from the now-vanished pain and from… from… he didn’t know.
“Get him warm,” Priscilla ordered, pulling his cloak tightly around him. Eliwood took off his own cloak and wrapped it around the shivering tactician.
“I- I-” Ceniro tried to say something, anything, but between the shaking and the… he wasn’t sobbing, was he?
“It’s all right,” Eliwood said, pulling him close and letting him lean on him. “You’ve never been injured in battle, have you? Although, for some people, they always have this sort of reaction… It’s perfectly all right. You’re in shock, it’s normal.”
“B-b-b-u-”
“Shhh. Just relax. Everything’s fine, the battle will take care of itself for a few minutes.”
Ceniro wasn’t in any state to argue, going completely and utterly to pieces where he huddled against Eliwood. He had never been so humiliated… Which didn’t matter; battles were not about dignity, and certainly not about his own ego, but he just wished… he could stop… crying…
Of course, Eliwood was sort of right – although he’d been fatally injured before, and brought back, this time just… came out of nowhere. The last time he’d been bracing for it, terrified, but half-expecting it. This time, everything had been normal one moment and the next – there was an arrow sticking out of his gut.
He tried to tell Eliwood that, somehow, with stammered words and broken sentences, his voice cracking like a rusty gate, and the lord nodded.
“You just need rest,” Priscilla said, though the anxiety in her voice reminded him of other things.
He needed to be directing the battle. There was still a super-powered morph out there. There could be other potentially-lethal situations unfolding on the battlefield as he slowly got his hyperventilating under control. Of course, reminding himself of that only made it worse again.
“Don’t worry,” Eliwood said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I want Lyn,” Ceniro said in a tiny, stuttering voice. “But she can’t leave her place. I could have her trade places with Karla but it would take at least 30 minutes for the switch… That’s too long.”
Eliwood chuckled. “You’re still thinking.”
“I n-need-”
“You need to take a break.”
“Th-the b-battle won’t s-stop until Limstella’s d-defeated, and th-then there’s the d-dragons to worry about…”
“You’re not in a condition to get up in either case.”
“Hey!” came a yell from the farseer. Lyn’s voice. “Ceniro, are you all right? Will someone answer me?
“Yeah,” said someone else. Hector, Ceniro thought. “What’s going on over there!?”
“L-l-lyn, H-hector,” Ceniro began.
“Ceniro’s taken a severe injury,” Eliwood said calmly. “He’s all right now, but he’s in shock. Can you hold your sides of the battlefield for now?”
“I can do that,” Hector said. “Wait- what was that?” His voice was suddenly hard to make out.
“Return … magic seal,” said Pent. “Not … much use … right now.”
“Right. So, let’s …”
“Hector?” Eliwood asked. “Hector?”
There was no answer.
Ceniro struggled weakly under the cloaks that were bundled around him. “I need to…”
“You want me to keep leading the northern side as well, or shall I get Florina to fly me over?” Lyn asked. “I can get Wallace or Kent to take over.”
“Can it be Kent?” they heard Sain ask.
“I think that would be a good idea, to head over here,” Eliwood said. “Perhaps Florina can take Karla back north when she returns?”
“H-h-hey,” Ceniro said.
“Hush,” Eliwood said. “Everything is fine. Just wait. Everyone knows how to fight. You taught us well. We’ll all be careful, and maybe we won’t take the kind of chances that you know how to take, but we’ll stay alive, and we’ll get closer to our goal. We can do it, just have faith in us.”
“I-I-I d-do. B-but…”
Lyn landed just as he started the hiccuping stage. “How is he?”
“He’ll be all right,” Eliwood said quietly, and didn’t let go of him until Lyn’s arms were around him. “I’m going to go back to fighting. With Marcus, we’ll handle the tactics for this valley. Don’t even let him touch the farseer until he’s recovered some more.”
“I can do that,” Lyn said with a little smile.
“W-wait,” Ceniro said. “J-just a moment. If th-there’s a magic seal to the s-south, H-hector will p-probably send the mages n-north. We sh-should send some f-fighters s-south to help.”
“I’ll do that,” Eliwood said. “I’ll tell them to keep an eye out for the magic users and protect them until they can defend themselves again, and then go help Hector directly. Will that work?”
“Y-yes. Th-they should be… well…” He pointed at a spot on the farseer’s screen. “S-sort of around here was where they were wh-when I l-last checked.”
“Understood,” Eliwood said. “Leave it to me.”
“I-I’m s-sorry,” Ceniro said to Lyn.
She hugged him tighter. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”
“Th-then whose f-fault is it?” Ceniro said, trying to be angry, trying to regain some kind of control over himself. It wasn’t working. “I j-just want t-to…”
“Ceniro. Take some deep breaths. We’re going to do some Sacaean meditation, all right?”
“O-okay…” Anything to stop the trembling, or the slow leak of tears now that the initial storm had passed.
“And turn the sound on that thing off,” Lyn said, pointing at the farseer. “It’s only going to distract you and make you tense up again. Come here. Focus on me. Breathe in… Breathe out.”
After a few minutes, he started to feel like a human being again, instead of a ragdoll.
“I think I’ll be okay now,” he said, after another minute or two just to make sure.
Lyn fixed him with a severe, but fond glance. “If you’re sure. You still have to take it easy until we find an occasion to sleep.”
“I don’t know if we have that luxury,” Ceniro said, sitting up and looking towards the north-east.
“I know your giant brain is going to keep going, but I need you to stress about it less. We all do, but I do most of all.” She looked him in the eye, and he knew he could never refuse her. “No one thinks less of you for taking a wound in battle. In fact, I’m pretty sure half of them are going to congratulate you on it.”
“Well… it’s not the first one I’ve had, even for me.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Can I turn the farseer back on yet?”
“All right, I’ll risk it.” Lyn crossed her arms, pretending as if she could stop him. Well, actually, she could. All she had to do was ask nicely, and if that failed, she could always pull out her sword at him, or take the farseer.
He turned the sound back on. “Eliwood? What’s the situation?”
“You sound much better,” Eliwood said. “So I would say the situation is good. Actually, Hector managed to defeat the magic seal once and for all.”
“Thanks for sending those fighters our way,” Hector said. “Really made a difference.”
“What about up north?” Ceniro asked.
“Enemies are mostly neutralized,” Kent reported. “Not very elegantly, but neutralized nonetheless. No casualties.”
“There’s only a handful of enemies, I think, clustered around the Dragon’s Gate ruins, and of course Limstella,” Nils said. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“I wanted to get your opinions as well as the contextless facts that the farseer presents me with,” Ceniro said. “I’m… not going to say very much for a while. Lyn’s orders. Carry on. If I have ideas, I’ll tell you.”
“Will do,” Hector said. “Take it easy, buddy.”
“I feel guilty,” Ceniro complained to Lyn.
“Why?” Lyn asked. “You think Wil felt any less guilty when he had to be taken to the back at Castle Ostia, no matter that he saved Rebecca’s life?”
“Right.” Ceniro managed a smile. “It’s not about my ego. It’s about keeping everyone alive. Including me. And if I try to take charge while I’m not ready, I’m endangering everyone.”
“That’s useful logic,” Lyn said. “Let’s walk in the direction of the Dragon’s Gate. How do you feel about that?”
“Kinda shaky. But I can manage walking, I think.”
“Up you get.” Lyn gave him a hand, and they began to walk towards the distant ruins hand in hand.
At the ruins, Limstella unleashed the daunting power of Excalibur, the wind spell, on them, but was defeated by Matthew placing Ceniro’s mine under her feet and then she was taken out by the pegasus sisters. The group took stock of their situation while Ceniro and Lyn arrived. Pent and Louise immediately came to check him over, and most of Ceniro’s other close friends as well.
It was decided that Lyn would go with the rest, while Ceniro would stay with Merlinus and monitor the developments from outside. Renault, the bishop who had joined Kent’s group a few minutes ago, would also stay with them, and Matthew, whose arm was in a sling after his encounter with Limstella. The rest would go inside. Eliwood wasn’t too sure about some of the others, particularly Nino and Rebecca, but they begged on the power of their weaponry, and Ceniro promised he could look after them from his distant vantage point.
Eliwood, Hector, Lyn, and Athos confronted Nergal, who brought up eight last morphs in the forms of people who they had fought before, but now apparently stronger. The battle following was messy, and Ceniro almost relapsed when he realized that he was making mistakes and getting people hurt. Matthew offered an occasional off-hand comment that kept him sane for the time being.
When Nergal fell, the injured began appearing at the entrance to the Dragon’s Gate. Only then… the dragons appeared.
Ceniro was by now eerily calm, his emotion finally spent, and he could only manage a tired smile when Ninian appeared with Bramimond, now alive again. He could direct the battle against the last remaining dragon with much more equinamity, although it wasn’t so much that he had regained control as that he was just too tired to react properly to anything.
The dragon fell, and Nils made the startling suggestion that Ninian stay with Eliwood, and he return to the dragon world alone. He had a few words for Ceniro, too. “Thank you for taking care of us so well. You never hesitated to let us help, but you never let us fall into danger, either. Thank you.”
“Thank you… for being with us,” Ceniro said in return. It was all he could think of. He could imagine Nils’ bright, boyish smile.
The final portion of the army trailed out of the Dragon’s Gate, led by Hector and Lyn. Lyn rushed over to him as soon as she could, and hugged him with great joy. He could see Eliwood kissing Ninian, and several other people doing similar things with their own lovers. He wrapped his arms tightly around Lyn, like he would never let her go.