Dragons of Sun and Moon (Exalted/Fire Emblem: Fates)

[FieldKeeper]

A/N: Hey look guys, I'm not completely typecast! More seriously, in honor of the recent Exalted Exigents crowdfunding, and my desire to make the Exalted tag on Ao3 less anemic, have this one-shot of a possible future of Creation...that is also the world of Fates. And possibly other Fire Emblem games that are far, far away from this war.

...Three months later after starting it and saving it from accidental deletion, I am amazed it even came out. Development hell is a thing.

Also, my attempt to show how European-themed cultures can show up in a setting as heavily inspired by Chinese and Japanese myth as Exalted.

Note to those familiar with the setting: I am using the Exalted Essence beta here due to it covering more ground when it comes to types of Exalted, so there's references to the new castes for things like Infernals.

To those who are not: I got a huge Under the Hood (and thus, explanation) for general Exalted lore and my own thought processes when making this mini-setting, like the antagonistic Immaculate Order suddenly being a religion the protagonists often cite and are deeply faithful too.. I didn't hide spoilers in there, so I recommend at least not seeing the music I had in mind when writing until you've seen the body of the fic. Also, Exalted fans; keep in mind that this is a possible future of the setting, hence the term Third Age, while canon Exalted is set during the Second Age. This is my homebrew fusion of it and Fire Emblem.

What's more, this was also originally a one-shot...then someone else pointed out it's 44,500 words long, thereabouts. So for sanity, I'm dividing it up into smaller chapters so that people who aren't hyperlexic can read it at a good pace. It's still a lot more summarized than I would have liked to have write things.

Spoilers for Fates, Conquest and Revelations, from here on out!

 

[FieldKeeper]

Dragons of Sun and Moon​

---

The world the Scarlet Dynasty knew ended with both a bang and a whimper.

The bang was the Imperial Manse, the control center for the antediluvian weapon system that the Scarlet Empress, first and last of her hidden name, had used centuries before both to save Creation and conquer it in one fell swoop, being turned on itself. The whimper was the sound of the one who fired it, knowing full well that the attack would destroy him as well (as he was in the Manse he had programmed to demolish), and his composure breaking in the half-second his survival instinct overpowered the knowledge that none should wield that horrible device again, and that the raksha, the ravenous Fair Folk and nobility among the fae who dwelled beyond Creation, who it was meant to stand against had better bulwarks against their oneriovoric gluttony now.

Contrary to later histories, the Realm they ruled had long since died; the Empress did not expect her extended life to end so suddenly, and in her autocratic paranoia had not developed a system of succession, and thus no potential rivals that could fill her throne. Just a succession of holding patterns, especially given how none were able to control the Manse until Tepet Marek Pitaka, the Iron Lotus, the Wonderworker, the Reclaimer, the Cruel, who valued the avenging of his aunt Ejava and the wealth of the Realm far more than the future or his fellow human beings - which to him were other Exalted, to mortals the fact that they were technically of the same species of him barely relevant as trivia. He was a product of the late Realm, when the dynasties of Dragon-Blooded had long since taken "Princes of the Earth" to mean a different species than lowly humans, quietly encouraged by the growing rot and political ambitions of the Immaculate Philosophy, but Marek had not even the care for animals that would prevent him from seeing the Manse as a tool of conventional war. That the geomantic engine that powered the various sorcerous technologies were drawn from the careful balancing of elemental forces, provoking random natural disasters almost beyond what intentional devastation was unleashed by the ancient network. The Realm regained the territory it lost in its first Civil War, and then some - but in the process, became the enemy of the rest of the world, and even Heaven itself grew wroth. No, the Realm, that shining and terrible kingdom of the Dragon-Blooded, had long died, and it was Marek's ambitions wearing its skin by that point.

Fitting then, that its end came not at the hands of the Celestial Exalted, those chosen by the Sun, Moon, and Stars, in defiance of all reasonable predictions. It was a sensible assumption; the Sidereal allies of the Dragon-Blooded who had overthrown the Solars who reigned over the center of the world before them, and then imprisoned their Exaltations to ensure that they would not have successors, assumed that the shattering of the Jade Prison and the renewal of Solar Exaltations as a force would be the death knell of the Realm as the inheritors of old kings carried out vengeance on the new, especially when the shatterers were revealed to be the vengeful Primordials, the Titans the Exaltations had been made to dethrone on behalf of the gods. Fully half of the Solar Exaltations had been captured by the Primordials and remade again, transforming their nature from the holy light of order into the raging chaos of demons and the chivalrous darkness of the dead. But there was only ever 300 Solar Exaltations to begin with, which became 150 heroic Solars, 50 rebellious Infernals and 100 knightly Abyssals. There was simply not enough of them in one spot at any given point to do more than the Realm was doing to itself. They certainly led rebellion after rebellion, but they simply directed the rage already there and turned resistance into revolutions, disgruntled nations into archrivals, outcaste and abused families of Dragon-Blooded into the equals of the Houses of their corrupt cousins.

And it was a mortal scholar, a scribe-slave of Marek, who turned the Manse upon itself, the makers of its vast security not having anticipated a man who had not even quickened his Essence through true sorcery or martial enlightenment could stand there, their last lines of defense made to turn strength upon itself. They did not anticipate that the Solars, their Titan-touched siblings, the many-formed Lunars, and the fate-bending Sidereals would come to feel that the gap between mortal and Exalt was too vast for the good of either, and raise up their brethren - not to their level, of course, but enough to even have the capacity to contest their power in large enough numbers, use their wonders, or dispel their magics if given a chance. That edge was what the man known only as the Last Swordbearer needed to drag himself bleeding through the outer defenses, and drive his sword, a normal katana lighted gilded with golden orichalcum to prove a fair fight creatures of darkness, through the console lest he lose his nerve to remove the terrible legacy of the worst of the First Age from Creation. Thus, the bang and the whimper; a mote of irony, that the First Age had ended with the use of the Manse too, though for its intended purpose of stopping Fair Folk.

Without the Manse, the delusion the corpse of the Realm suffered under was lifted, and the remaining loyalists to the Dynasty scattered to the five winds, assuming they did not surrender in tearful relief, their fear of the Iron Lotus vanishing with his techno-magical lash. It was not a good time, as the badly wounded society of a world damaged by overuse of the Manse collapsed without the fear of the Realm to keep itself together for one more day. But the ground it fell upon was made fertile for new life; the Second Age was an Age of Sorrows, a bitter time marked by fear, regret, and want, as the Dragon-Blooded of the Realm and the Bronze Faction in Heaven that supported them kept on sacrificing hope in the name of the status quo. Where many cultures fell, new ones sprang, and the survivors found a world no longer limited by the stagnating, crushing fist of the Realm. But the Third Age was the Age of Upheaval, as for the first time all Creation knew what it was like to live without a ruler of the Blessed Isle at the heart of the world, the resting place of the Elemental Pole of Earth that anchored Creation against the fae tides of the Wyld. And humanity immediately began to crave stability of a ruler of the center once more.

It was not a thought born of selfishness, it was a desire for safety and stability - and how the nations that most benefited from the fall of the Realm were its client states, especially those brought only reluctantly into its embrace. They had enough autonomy to survive, but they were also positioned to see just how much the Realm had held the world as they knew it together. They did not seek to bring it back into the world - but they did see themselves as its rightful inheritors. In particular, they heard of the Rainbow Sage, the Dragon of Dream; once he was a simple air elemental, the lover of the Last Swordbearer as they did their duties for Marek (the future Sage kept the palace cool). When the Manse was turned upon itself, the Sage and eleven other elementals were infused with the destructive power and the creative intent both, and metamorphosed into dragons instantly, as is the way of mighty elementals. Knowing what his mate had done, the grieving dragon extracted the sword from the wreckage and forged its pieces into five wonders - four weapons of each of the magical materials of moonsilver, jade, soulsteel and starmetal mixed with metal from the edge, but grafted pure orichalcum to the hilt to make it a daiklave, naming the sword Yato, the Emblem of Cataclysmic Fire - a reminder of what a good man was driven to do to stop a worse armageddon. It was said that the family who bared the Yato would be the new lords of the Blessed Isle, and thus the pulse of Creation - and legend bred ambition among the would be inheritors of the Realm.

From North and South, East and West, they came; survivor nations like Prasad and An-Teng, Sijan and Whitewall, and new nations like Cheve and Theca, Valla and Linowei. Only a few were able to erect colonies on the disaster-warped isle, and most of those failed later due to the bandits, internal strife, the monsters left over from the Iron Lotus' reign, or their rivals. But dreams and ambition are hard to kill, and eventually, two great kingdoms, each claiming to be the Realm reborn, and both that would probably horrify the Scarlet Empress if she was alive to hear their claim, took root.

The first was Hoshido, shining Hoshido of the cherry trees and ticking gears, who claimed succession through relation to the Isle's former princes - and unlike so many others, had actual basis in reality. Once, Hoshido was Lookshy, steel jewel of the Scavenger Lands where the ruins and functional ruins of the First Age were common, and thanks to their location in the East where the Elemental Pole of Wood drew generous bounties of the land were quickly retaken by humanity. Before Lookshy was the Shogunate, the last empire of the First Age, built by the Dragon-Blooded after the fall of the Solars, only to be destroyed by the reality-scarring plague of the Great Contagion, and the Balorian Crusade the Fair Folk declared on a weakened world. But one base, one city held, and it became one of the few rivals the Realm had its height due to their military discipline and the technological infrastructure they saved from the invasion from outside Creation. The city survived the Iron Lotus too, but not without giving up part of its past; in the days it became clear Marek had no compunctions against using his most terrible weapon, the Karal and Kirega clans discovered two of their favored non-Exalted scions, one of the greatest sailors Lookshy had ever seen and her technical genius of a cousin had become a Solar and a Sidereal, respectively. By degree of the Immaculates of those days, the Solar should have been executed before her power drove her to the madness of the Anathema, the walking disharmonies, and the Sidereal shipped off to Heaven to be scrubbed of emotional attachments lest the same occur - but the Immaculates had become increasingly associated with a corrupt Dynasty, and the revelation of the Sidereals' existence had revealed how much of the Philosophy was corrupted by the Bronze Faction to serve as a tool of social control. So in secret, a pact was made to two who had never shown anything but patriotism - they would turn their powers to the protection of Lookshy and preservation against the oncoming apocalypse, and the two would be official recognized as Dragon-Blooded. A deception so blatant it barely counted as such, but one that paid in dividends, as by the end, Lookshy was merely devastated while the Realm fell - and when the Dawn Dragon came to seek survivors, the Sun Queen and the Star Sage greeted him, with the Queen's bloodline from then on being fathered by the Dragon of Growing Trees, and his wisdom allowing the Sage to build the new palace of Shirasagi. So was the city-state of Lookshy made Lookshy, capital of Hoshido, the White Night Kingdom, so titled because the light of its first Queen and Sage had kept the darkness away.

The second was Nohr, resolute Nohr of the icy caves and the hidden secrets, who claimed succession through merit, that they were most suited to become Protector of Creation in the Empress' stead - and also unlike many others, had justification to think so. Before, Nohr was Gethamane, the cursed and blessed cavern city of the North, the direction eternally chilled by the Elemental Pole of Air. While it was once also a ruin of the First Age, that was not on the mind of the chieftain Bethan or her tribe of icewalker refugees when they found it; rather, they found the carved and alien ruins were insulated from the snow and frost, and more importantly, they found the Sunken Gardens, a vast complex of edible fungi and moss, giving the nomadic tribe agriculture for the first time. Of course, then they discovered the builders had dug the tunnels too deep; devils from the depths, mistakes of the Primordials, earth-twisting fae, and wicked gods sealed below the earth for their crimes dwelled under the hollowed mountain, chief among whom was Vodak, undying and shapeless, born from the heart's blood of a Titan slain in the initial Divine Revolution. In comparison to the frost and starvation and the fae hordes of the surface, however, the settlers grit their teeth and turned to the path of endurance. When the Iron Lotus came, this endurance served them well, and when a Lunar necromancer-king and his Green Sun Prince bodyguard came to them, desperately seeking allies and a refuge against the mad emperor. Gethamane opened their doors, and in gratitude, the Ghost Moon bound Vodak and forced the creature to reveal the secrets of the deep it had accumulated over millennia of existence, and the Spear Devil conjured forth armies of demons to supplement their forces. By the end, Gethamane had become stranger, harder, colder - but not stonehearted or cruel, understanding the power of the open hand that builds trust and family as well as the closed fist that strikes threats. As a demonstration of the magic they had taught, they forced the chill of their home to warm to merely uncomfortable, which drew the curious Dusk Dragon to the new working of obvious survivors, greeted by the line of Bethan, to whom the Dragon of Hidden Breath offered her services in raising the fortress of Krakenberg within, in return for adopting her own mortal son into the line of Bethan. So was Gethamane left behind, the cradle shed and sealed against Vodak seeking freedom once more, as Windmire was founded as the capital of Nohr, the Dark Night Kingdom, for its people had overcome the hungry darkness below and above them with the shadowy arts of the Ghost and Spear, no longer needing light to protect them.

Over the course of two centuries, the people of both the light and dark kingdom, the lines of Bethan and Karal expanded, becoming powers in the Northwest and the Southeast, before expanding towards the center, eager to claim the title of the Realm's inheritor. Through the power of Hoshidan machinery and discipline, the White Night Kingdom cemented claim to the lands to the East of the Imperial Mountain - the physical form of the Pole of Earth - like the fertile remnants of the Pangu Prefecture, the sacred tombs of the Valley of the Ancients, and even the ruins of the Imperial City itself. Through the power of sorcery and endurance, the Dark Night laid claim to the more mysterious Western half, like the pre-Shogunate ruins of the Myion Prefecture, the remnants of the sorcerous academy of the Heptagram, and the haunted forest of Eseon (though to be more accurate, they claimed the checkpoint to it - nobody could really own Eseon, not even the First Age's kings). And each found two of the sibling weapons to the Yato, making them into icons of their respective royal families - it became clear that whoever would be the new Realm was a race between Nohr and Hoshido.

Perhaps it was how the dark magics and strange traditions of the Nohrians that alarmed the Hoshidans of dark stories of the worst of the First Age and those Exalted that deserved the term Anathema, with their demonic workforces, their ritualistic culture that appeased malign gods of ice and darkness, and their use of necromancy and the corpses of the dead to supplement their infantry. Perhaps Hoshidans reminded Nohrians of generational trauma of the metal legions of the Iron Lotus ravaging the North, and their worship of Solars of the terrible and glorious warlord Yurgen Kaneko, who menaced Gethamane for decades long before Marek was even born. Perhaps it was both, or most likely (and cynically) it was the implicit knowledge there could only be one inheritor to the Realm, and all other empires secondary to its might. But the two never quite enjoyed the other's presence. Both could see memories of the Age-ending war all around them in the Isle, so they kept it to a carefully amicable mutual hate, with occasional border skirmishes and pocket battles, but never a full-scale conflict that brought both their armies to bare. Untenable in the long term? Yes, but neither side saw more to gain than lose in a Creation-shaking war, especially not in a world of Upheaval that would weaken them for rival powers.

And then their mediator of Valla - sweet Valla of the great waves and the golden ships - vanished. Along with the island it was on. And all the trade treaties that kept both their bloodthirsty sides chained, as Valla was no longer there to threaten economic isolation to the aggressor in said war.

The war did not start immediately - both sides were too frightened. But then came an abnormal level of Exalted to both nations, and two princesses with a deep tie to both Valla - and the Dragon of the Twilight Sea.

---

"Therese? Therese? Are you in there?"

If Theresia Corrin Bethan (Therese to those closer to her) was a bit older, she might have had one of her snarky, trying-very-hard-not-to-panic-by-wisecracking moments and said (or hissed) that it was honestly something to wonder about. But she was thirteen, and terrified, and confused.

You would be too, if you found yourself turning into a linnorm one day. And were also thirteen.

She had no idea how it happened. One moment, she was burning the papers she had stolen from that jerk Iago's office, only to find a motherly, silver-eyed woman watching her curiously.

"...is there a problem?", Theresia had asked.

"...isn't that a tiny bit irresponsible of you?", she asked, not kindly but not accusingly, a confused but caring parent not sure if she should discipline her offspring or not.

"...maybe," the middle princess of Nohr said. "But he was going to hurt people."

"I see," the silver-eyed woman had said. "But why now, when you know Iago is your father's agent? You have seen him issue these orders before..."

Something about her tone put Therese in a more...introspective mood. "Because they're my maids' friends," she said after a second. "And they need the money to support their families."

The woman smiled. "Then how did that differ from all the other servants he has released on a whim? Or because you were scared of the servants? They had hungry families too, no matter how they insulted you for being a fosterage."

Therese did not have an answer to that.

This seemed to please the woman. "...the fact that you can't answer is a good sign. It means you're thinking, child. We all make mistakes - the bad just refuse to learn anything that upsets them" she said, before hugging the surprised princess - but not upset, no matter how much sudden touch normally displeased her. It felt like her mother was hugging her to remind her she was forgiven. "And you are always part of my family too, now."

And then she vanished, as if she was never there - except Therese was now also a serpent with a pinniped face and two clawed arms, her tail-body terminating in a fish's sparkling fin and, checking her mirror, a mark across her snout that resembled the scar on her nose. And was also glowing with silver-white energy.

She reacted entirely rationally, really - screaming in a horrible panicked hiss sound and slithering as fast as she could into the caves of Gethamane.

Not that she was difficult to find - beyond the fact that the glow hadn't vanished, Therese did not know, precisely, how to slither at top speed, and linnorms were water beasts; they could do well on land for a while, but they preferred to swim, where their long bodies were more of a help than a flailing drag. And her safe spot was known to her maids.

Speaking of which...

Therese tried to hide her bulk as Felicia Kaneko opened the flap, causing the figure behind her to blanch.

"Erm..." Xander Martialis Bethan, Therese's older brother, looked as if he had suddenly seen both Felicia and his sister on the latrine. "You...are aware of...certain aspects of our etiquette..?"

The maid (and descendant of the legendary warlord that had once menaced her lords' ancestors) smiled. "For once? I know milords are...particular about privacy, but I feel that The-the young mistress needs a friend first, and she...isn't capable of asking for one right now..."

"What do you mean-" Xander saw the cowering linnorm. And the symbol on her forehead, a silver disc shifting through various lunar phases. "Oh."

Xander simply stared at it for a while, before shaking his head in disbelief. "Three of the royals now. Seven including our retainers, eight with Flora. When will this end...?"

Therese made a confused grunt.

"Ah! Stupid-" He slapped himself. "You don't know yet, do you? She does tend to just...drop her gift upon you, little princess..."

The silver tattoos on Xander glimmered, as his form shifted from human to ursine, as the full disc on his head became visible. "See? Remember how I showed you this?"

The sight and the words cut through the panic, as Therese remembered three very important details from playing with her brother and his shifting form.

One, Exalted tended to glow - the power of the Exaltation caused harmless pollution in their anima fields, the zone of energy carried by all life, as free Essence charged them with unique lightshows.

Second, that Luna, Deity of the Moon (usually called Goddess, but Luna was a master of forms; while most of them were female, many others were male, or something else, and it was always the same Luna - one could refer to the Incarna with any pronoun and be correct) always kept silver somewhere in her/their form, if she/they did not wish to hide identity.

Third, that the a gift Luna granted the Chosen of the Moon was a single alternate shape, to give practice for other forms - and as a base to always return to.

Which meant that...

"...I'm like you, brother," the middle princess of Nohr said in awe, not even realizing she had become her human form once more. "A Lunar."

"I am so proud," he said, giving her a strong hug.

They stayed like that for a bit.

Then Therese broke into a grin. "So, when is the third sibling with a wyvern form going to come along?"

(A quick note - neither linnorms or wyverns were created by Primordial or godly power. Windmire needed a functional ecology that was adapted to the cold to be farmed on the surface reliably, and that meant apex predators to prevent prey species from getting out of hand - but in a moment of hubris, Nohr's sorcerers decided to make them intelligent enough to be trainable as calvary and battle beasts, not realizing that giving them intelligence from canid species would result in problem-solving where the reward was "steal food from humans." This led to the description of Nohr as a land of three kinds of bear - the ones that fly, the ones that swim, and the bears.)

---

"Of course she did. Because what we really needed was more doom - now my elder sister literally calls upon death, for...whatever reason," Leo Aodhan Bethan muttered, hands tightening around Brynhildr. "What is even her rationale for playing with necromancy!?"

"Hmhmhm..." Camilla Myaah Bethan, elder sister to both Leo and Theresia, gave one of her distinctly not-especially-comforting motherly smiles, made even less so by the caste mark of a black circle rimmed by emerald stars. "I think the metaphor is rather darling. Ever since she decided to fix her Caste as a No Moon, it was expected she would take up some variety of true sorcery...but dear sister remembered that summoning is inherent to keeping our borders safe from raksha and Hoshidans. And demons, elementals? Those poor dears have only one life to give, not like full gods - disrupt a ghost, and it is simply a bad injury; they may be forced beyond the veil if killed more than twice a year, but that is less casualties overall. My sweet little sister is so kind..." She giggled again.

"I am completely convinced," Leo said, flatly. "I now fully understand how patching the bodies of the dead together and forcing hungry Essence inside them is a step up from having those poor blood-apes be put in danger by the purpose they were literally grown for. But that's not the point!" He pointed at the letter on the table near him. "That's the Abhari notifying us of Elise's Recognition after she drew her Second Breath! Literally all of us are Exalted now!"

"And?" Camilla looked genuinely confused at Leo's panic. "I would have preferred if Elise was a Celestial, it ruins symmetry and I can't help but wonder if she will feel weaker as a Wood Caste, but Terrestrials are still quite capable of keeping up, and she adores medicine anyway."

"And that would be fine, but doesn't this strike you as...unlikely!? She is Dragon-Blooded, Therese and Xander are Lunars, you're an Infernal, and I...well, I have this!" He pointed to the golden necklace with the Twilight Caste's half-sun upon it he had been "gently requested" to wear by the Abhari Creed of the wider melange of syncretic religions that was the modern Immaculate Philosophy. While the time of inherent Anathema for Celestial Exalted and forced social control to select against heroism that might draw the Exaltations of Solars and Lunars to them were as dead as the Second Age, Creation had a long memory for how power-mad Solars could become, especially with the spiteful Great Curse laid upon all Exalted at the end of prehistory; the will of the Primordials that no Exalted would ever find complete inner peace, which in too many led to complete enslavement to their obsessions and darker emotions, and Solars not the least effected. Hence, a "humble" pressure by most Immaculate sects for Solars to advertise themselves lest the Curse drive them to destructive passion without warning.

"...to be honest," Camilla said, catching on as she frowned. "That is strange. There's no set limit on how many Dragon-Blooded can have their bloodlines awake, but even if there's four hundred Lunar Exaltations...there's millions of people in the world, and many of them are worthy. And we have nine Lunars we know? Two of which are Bethans of father's direct family?"

"To say nothing of me, or you, or that Hoshido's royal family have a surplus of Solars, and even one Sidereal among their retainers - there's literally one one hundred of them, and it takes an entire human childhood and up for a new one to express their powers," Leo finished. "This isn't probable. At all. It reeks of something organizing events to provoke many Exalts in the same place, intelligent will or not. Probably intelligent. Cursed sun-scorched Sidereals..."

"You blame everything on Sidereals, my dear baby brother," Camilla said, teasingly. "There's an entire Heaven of people with access to the Loom of Fate and with ideas on what Destiny should be."

"And I don't know why you don't!", he said, exasperated. "Ever since our father...worsened, and Valla was apparently eaten by the sea, there's been no end of omens and other strange events - falling stars have become more common, rivers have changed course, shadowlands are opening more - and just as a war becomes more and more likely, it's leaders start drawing Second Breaths like they were going out of fashion. And Therese, shortly after her adoption, is placed in Gethamane to be 'trained and raised' in the city that is a quarantine zone. I don't like it."

Camilla nodded, crossing her arms in thought. "That...is something upsetting. I would be lying if I didn't feel my power stir a bit when I thought of how...cold Father was being. But, at the same time...I can't help but feel Valla vanishing along with its people-"

Her thoughts were derailed by a piercing siren that quickly became two long wails.

"...Darkbrood, semi-sentient but no major commanders," Leo said, flipping Brynhildr into his hands and opening it to reveal the moonsilver inking. "Shall we discuss this later?"

Camilla smiled, fiercely. "I will certainly calm down a bit after disemboweling a few hruggha. Plus, I have been woefully out of practice with my Devil-Body on the surface..."

The flesh of the elder sister paled as her nails sharpened, her hands turning a dark shade of blue and expanding into grabbing claws. Her purple hair coiled and fused with itself into violet and emerald dreadlocks made of shimmering chitin, and finally her legs merged into a stinger that shone with a scintillation of all the colors of the rainbow - the spitting image of that which had once belonged to the agatae crystal-wasp that had merged with her to anoint her as an Infernal. Her forehead blazed with her caste mark - the mark of a Penumbra, the Fiend Caste and the students of the Ebon Dragon, the Primordial of Shadows and Opposition - as she levitated, a dark goddess of beautiful betrayal.

Leo hummed, his own half-circle golden mark of a Twilight blazing to life as he focused his Essence on sharpening his senses. "Quick question - you already needed to have quickened your anima a bit to use the power of the Devil-Body. How did you..."

"Someone wanted me to make promises to their sweetheart supernaturally ironclad. I obliged," Camilla said with the less comforting comforting smile given her new fangs. "You should have seen the look on the parents of the other one's face when their supposedly not property cemented an oath. They needed to be reminded who is the Exalted here."

"...I will also ask about that later," Leo said, sighing. "Once more, into the breach."

---

Therese nearly collapsed on the Ganglari, breathing heavily while trying not to collapse into an allergic fit in the dust kicked up in the impromptu arena. How did a reception hall gather so much dust so quickly.

This was the fist time she had fought other Exalted in a battle that wasn't a spar with her siblings, Jakob, Gunter, or Felicia, and one with actual stakes of life and death.

She wasn't a fan.

Part of that was the Ganglari itself - it was a fine daiklave, but Garon Julien Bethan evidently did not believe synergy between a type of Exalted and the magical material their swords were made of was critical when forging an artifact weapon. By all rights, it should be moonsilver, like the self-writing living ink of Brynhildr, if she wanted to use it to its peak potential. To add a level of disquiet, the material it was made of was obsidian-black soulsteel; while she appreciated now having a sword that could well be Siegfried's sibling and being more like her elder brother, Therese had always been...nervous about soulsteel, and it only grew after she was fully initiated into the Ivory Circle of Necromancy and she developed a better sense of what it was - because it was just as much of an alloy as regular steel, but to activate the mystical properties of the death-iron ore, the other component needed to be the Essence of unquiet dead. Which is to say, most soulsteel artifacts had ghosts fused with them. It was easier and more efficient to find a willing ghost (and given how ghosts were already obsessive by fundamental dint of existence, it wasn't even hard to find one for any conceivable purpose, just time-consuming), and Gethamane itself had deposits of naturally active soulsteel due to Vodak's power spilling into the world, but now she couldn't help but look at Siegfried and wonder if it was named after who it used to be. Actually using the quiescent mind of someone to hit people with felt like wielding a corpse as a club, and it made her skin crawl far more than any maggot she had to brush off raw material.

For another, it was the purpose this fight was made for.

"...does there seem to be a problem, Theresia?" Garon said from his perch, frowning. "Finish the job."

Therese looked down at the two Hoshidan Dragon-Blooded; Rinkah was still trying to stand up using her tetsubo as a crutch, the stone around her crackling with heat as her Anima tried to reignite, while Kaze laid out spread-eagle in a puddle of swiftly freezing water.

"...they're helpless," Therese replied, confused. "There's no point - Ganglari has already demonstrated how capable it is. A non-resonant Exalted defeating two others after just attuning to it - it's performed well.""

"Yes. Ganglari has." Garon's eyes turned hard. "I meant this as a test of more than the sword's strength, daughter."

More than...?

Her blood froze. "W...what?"

"We are soon to be at war with Hoshido," Iago Krastos Tazar cut in. "As soft as your heart is, sweet Theresia, it is not suited to the business of war. We will be required to kill humans, not barely intelligent colonies of mold, giant centipedes, or Heaven's misdemeanors. It is simply good to work on being able to kill actual dangers."

"...The nerve!", Xander hissed, and Therese couldn't disagree. Respectively, hruggha were voracious parasites that devoured sacred places to make more of themselves and could incubate their spores in human flesh, cthritae were maneaters who struck in swarms of dozens at a time and were prone to even more parasitoid habits, and forbidden gods were among those that Heaven had reason to not just execute for reasons that outweighed rectifying their transgressions; more minor divine criminals were bound in Heaven next to their co-workers, not in a mound somewhere.

"It's..." Therese gulped. "It's...it's not right..."

"Dear daughter," Garon began, a comforting tone creeping into his voice. "I am only doing this because you have chosen to walk the dark path of high magic. You can sense when the demise of others leaves behind enough regret to pull them out of Lethe and into the Underworld. If they do not return, then their souls are at peace, and you are guilty of little. If they do, then you can certainly show respect to Hoshido by helping put them to rest, no?"

"I..." Therese gulped, feeling more uncertain and scared than anything Kaze or Rinkah had been able throw at her, her backup, or her skeletons. "But..."

"Ugh. This is why I take such umbrage with this ridiculous tradition of adoptees being functionally the same as the trueblood of the royal family," Iago scoffed. "It made sense before the founding of Windmire, when are ancestors had to work as a community to live and survive within Gethamane given the food concerns and the constant risk of attack from below. Now? Now we invite weaklings who don't have the skill of said ancestors into the highest bloodline in the land..."

...That stung. Not the least because Therese didn't even remember her original family - seven years of her life was just...gone. She was happy with what she had now - but it was the kind of barb that hit a weak spot in Therese's soul.

Camilla's hand rushed to her axe, a mundane if well-crafted one she used mostly as an augment to her natural abilities. "Would you like to say that again?", she hissed through gritted teeth.

"Wait!" Elise Placide Bethan, youngest of Garon's children, stepped forward. "Uh-don't we get something to say about this!?"

"Elise, dear, this does not concern you," Garon replied, sounding more annoyed than anything else. "You are a healer by profession and nature. You are not required to-"

"Well, no, but for one, Wood Aspects are masters of poison and thorns, so I can't just heal," she interrupted. "But two...uh, isn't Therese going to be part of a team? So, if she doesn't stop one of us from finishing the job..."

Garon looked up, intrigued.

"...Elise, don't!", Therese interrupted. "If I have to do this, I don't want you-"

"She isn't", Leo said, striding forth. "I am. I am to send them beyond this world, do not interfere in their passage," he said, reaching for Brynhildr. "It is something you are good at."

For a moment, the pain worsened, as she thought it was a vicious strike on a path of magic she knew her younger brother had always disagreed with-

And then she saw the particular page he was opening to.

Brynhildr, also known as the Ever-Learning Tome, was made by the Rainbow Sage to be a tool for battle-sorcerers. This did not take the form of war thaumaturgy, witchcraft, or the other lesser forms of wizardry invented in the latter half of the Second Age as Exalted narrowed the gap between themselves and mortals. No, Brynhildr was a device that aided true sorcerers in particular - particularly by absorbing the magic of other sorcerers to protect its wielder in the form of spells on its unicorn-skin vellum pages (as no other animal was such a perfect combination of utter purity and utter malice for understanding the precise manipulations of Essence sorcery by absorbing it and then making it a spell within the book). However, during one especially bad incursion by Darkbrood, led by a knight of the Fair Folk that styled herself a champion of spiders, Leo lamented that true teleportation and manipulation of space was more advanced sorcery than he could perform at that moment, unable to free her prisoners easily. However, necromancy was already something that drew on boundaries between planes, between life and death, meaning that a fairly basic spell of the shadowy path was to bore through the wall between living and dead worlds and create a gate to a safe spot in the Underworld from Creation. Something Therese had used to great effect in that battle, and then had encoded into Brynhildr for Leo's peace of mind.

It took a while and required some minor modification of a book that had been mostly meant to counter the sorcery that manipulated the life of Creation, but the worst effect was turning a particular page an interesting shade of gray. The gray page Leo had turned to.

Thanking the Maidens of Fate that she was in her hybrid form - and thus, her part-linnorm face did not have as readable expressions - Therese sighed theatrically. "I...I understand. I will watch, without intervening."

And she did, expressionless, as black and bloody arms came from the ground and drew the two Hoshidans into a screaming vortex - it just so happened that said vortex was the barrier between living and undead voicing its protests at its temporary wound.

The feelings came back as soon as the group had left Garon's presence, Therese collapsing in relief. "Sweet Luna above...that was terrifying."

"And exhilarating," Leo said, strutting proudly. "That was my first time ever using your bad copy of my art...wasn't so hard."

Elise slapped him with her staff. "Don't lie, big bro! You were nearly drawing blood with your grip until I reminded you of that little trick!"

"...I am going to strangle Iago someday," Camilla said, grimacing. "I'll bet anyone here a jade talent he was the one who suggested that...test."

"Fortunately, nobody was permanently injured. Unfortunately, we need to retrieve them..." Xander turned towards his more death-inclined sister. "Do you need to rest, or...?"

"No. No, I put them in danger. I should rescue them as soon as I can," Therese said, spitting out a small signet ring of soulsteel - a very particular kind of soulsteel, as the spirit within it was in fact a small part of the adopted princess' own, having willingly spliced it off as part of her initiation rite into the secrets of the Ivory Circle. And a very useful ritual tool as well, as she clipped it on, ignoring the brief pain of the thorns on the inside drawing a small amount of blood. "Shall we? It'll be just like below Gethamane, only...bigger. And wetter. And thankfully, warmer."

And so the siblings began an impromptu adventure into the river-riddled world of the dead, to save enemies.

It would be the last bit of fun exploring unknown depths they would have for a while.

---

All wrong.

This is all wrong.

Variations of that phase had been echoing through Therese's head for a while.

The first was at that checkpoint in Lord's Crossing, her first mission from her father - and her first delve into the Blessed Isle. The environment - it was nothing like anything she had ever experienced. Windmire was warm compared to Gethamane, even before one got to its sorcerously-terraformed climate. But it was still chilly; a Nohrian without a coat in any season but summer was insane, supernaturally resistant to cold, or both. It was just more of

an alpine chill.

The Blessed Isle? She initially thought she had somehow caught a fever on the way south, and this was the cooler regions. She didn't remember the last time she had seen a week without at least a flurry of snow, or people willingly bathing in the open sea rather than heated baths or indoor pools. It was a shock, and it took her time to adjust; it wasn't unpleasant, and something about being in the water in human form felt nice.

Then she went to confront the Hoshidan outpost they had set up as close to the border as physically possible - and then Hans, that bald psychopath, attacked without warning, sending his jade axe flying through several nearby soldiers and destroying the bridge. (And some gaggle of gods thought he was worth investing Exigence into!? He shouldn't be in the same conceptual space as Exalted in general!)

So she had been forced to subdue the panicking soldiers - and then he cut the ropes of the bridge she was on, claiming he had his orders from the royal court.

Lilith, sweet Lilith had saved her - and her old stablehand revealed herself to have been a fairy. Not one of the Fair Folk, thank all the Celestial Incarnae and the Elemental Dragons both, but a bit of the Wyld that had absorbed the idea of "fish'' and "caretaking", and taken the form of a dragon-like fish holding a pearl in her hands. Also, that she was a "bird" that Therese had saved from freezing when she was watching a ghost called an ankou go about her day. (Ankou, also known as grim charioteers, were ghosts who pulled the recently risen and their bodies to the Underworld to start their new existences - given how they only minded people who tried to take ghosts and bodies from their cart, there were few better sources of information on recent tragedies and stories that would otherwise be forgotten.) Go figure.

And then she was knocked out by Rinkah and Kaze, but not as a hostage - to take her to the ruins of the Imperial City, and the heart of the Hoshidan Expedition, to meet her mother.

Because before she was Theresia Bethan, she was Karal Kamui Sanjo. Stepdaughter of the later King (or rather, Chumyo) Karal Sumeragi, and blood daughter of his widow, Karal nee Katharo Mikoto. And the adoption was more of an abduction.

Who had come to greet her directly with a hug.

Which wasn't unappreciated, as she needed one after...that reveal.

But while some part of her subconscious recognized the Chumyo as her mother and accepted it, her...first stepsiblings, she supposed? First stepsiblings were almost entirely strangers who seemed far more familiar with her than she with them.

She didn't dislike them (with one exception). Both Karal Ryoma Gotou and Karal Sakura Aoki were both kind and brave, albeit in rather different quantities for both. Karal Hinoka Amaya was someone who mostly reminded her pleasantly of Camilla, what with her spirited, hot-blooded, and caring personality...and somewhat unpleasantly, as she seemed to have Camilla's level of clinginess. Understandably, as Hinoka seemed to blame herself for Theresia being raised a Bethan rather than a Karal. And she was more high-strung than Camilla ever was, as shown by her...unique reaction Therese summoning help with taking down mindless undead that had wandered in from some idiot Nohrian's territory to harass Hoshidans.

(For the love of Moon and the Dusk Dragon, it was a barrow hound. A big dog with red eyes. Only proof of its Underworld nature was being translucent. Therese thought they were cute! And yet, the woman who confidently declared the shambling hulks of unliving muscle "good practice" reared back farther than her own pegasus when faced with a see-through canine. Hoshidans were strange.)

And Karal Takumi Ike? The Night Caste Solar and archer couldn't have made a worst first impression on Therese if he tried, and likely not even then without heroic effort. How were you supposed to respond to "shouldn't you be going back to the Nohrian invaders soon, sister?" As if the Hoshidan Expedition weren't also colonists. Ass.

And the ticking. Therese wasn't unfamiliar with machines, of course; while Nohrians preferred thaumaturgy and hedge magic to clockwork and ironwork, Gethamane had a lovely system of elevators and security systems installed over the years, and Leo was quite fond of his pocket watch. But Hoshido? Hoshido seemed to be paid by the cog.

Gear-powered doors. Gear-powered waterways. Gear-powered fans. Gear-powered dolls that trotted from room to room in the rebuilt Imperial castle, doing menial labor. And they.

All. Ticked.

How was anyone capable of decent sleep here!? Her Lunar hearing was better than most, but come on!

About the only thing that was still familiar was Lilith, and now, Lilith was a fish. A giant, levitating fish with a face like a dragon's. She tried to assume her human form again, but the stable girl just...couldn't. So that was an extra level of uncanny, to have the voice of someone who you recognized coming out of a fae.

And then there was the revelation of a third Nohrian adopted sister (and fifth stepsister overall), a tit-for-tat hostage, she supposed. And Azura Sugawara Bethan was...in a class of her own.

Because while she didn't recognize her sister, her Exaltation did.

It was honestly something she, even in her "harlequin romance is best romance" teenage years, found a little ridiculous. In the immediate aftermath of the Divine Revolution and overthrow of the Primordials, the Solars and Lunars nearly turned their weapons on each other in a war that might have well destroyed what was left of Creation due to it being an even match - Solars had their inherent access to Excellencies, but Lunars were shapeshifters and ideal spies beyond mere ability to enhance their natural skills. Solars did not have any magical material they were not suited to (orichalcum was favored, but that was because Solars found the gold of the sun easier to smith - once made into Artifacts, the full potential of any magical material could be coaxed forth by a Solar), but Lunars had more ability to make both new animal species and raise mortal followers into beastfolk. Solars had the power of holy fire on their side to burn less...acceptable allies of Lunars, but there were 400 Lunars (none of whom were creatures of darkness said holy fire burned more easily), and 300 Solars. That last one is what made the Solars sue for peace first, and result in a mostly fair deal for mutual peace; all 300 Solar Exaltations would be oathbound for eternity, across every future incarnation, to a single Lunar counterpart, a "soulmate" of sorts (that there was 100 mateless Lunars was the concession). Upon seeing each other, the two would recognize the other, and remember their Third Souls' shared history, and become an important person to the other.

Of course, said harlequin romance neglected to mention it wasn't fixed to love; that would have been miserable for all involved, for the simple fact it was political marriages that would be fixed across time. The only thing required was emotional importance and familiarity; one could be best friends, constant rivals, or worst enemies just as easily. That last one was part of the point - every Lunar and Solar (or Solar derivatives) both now had a potential perfect enemy. But Therese liked to think that she would have something a bit more congenial than a soul foe, even as she gradually resigned herself to never meeting hers (and Camilla was quite upset to discover her Exaltation was not Therese's counterpart), if she had one.

And then she overheard Azura, a Zenith Caste, walk into the garden as she sung. And at that moment, Theresia was no longer in the garden.

She was being fished out of a battlefield by a concerned commander, he glowing gold as her silver attempted to knit itself together.

She was a he, naked and basking in the glow of his equally nude princess as his monkey's tail curled around her bronzed leg affectionately.

She was a they, fighting back to back against the largest army of raksha they and their training partner had ever seen.

She was a he again, enticing a blushing young man to dance.

She was holding back tears as the moonsilver dagger sunk into the neck of a woman she had once respected and adored, now tarnished with the verdigris discoloring of someone who had sold most of their soul for power and security to the living Primordials, the Yozi Demon Kings.

And when Azura turned around, the confused recognition had hit her too.

It didn't stop her from thinking it was wrong though. Because as she spoke of her life before her being adopted by marriage into the Bethan royal household, of a country that didn't exist anymore, the Western island of Valla and its magnificent ships - Therese did not feel like she was reminded of how little she knew her sister (and cousin before that - apparently Queen Arete Ananke was Mikoto's own sister). She felt like she was catching up with an old friend.

As if everything was not already surreal enough. Not to mention how said harlequin romances would caste her in a nauseating light in Nohrian terms; any sibling relationship, inborn or not, were a deep level of incest. Cousins were fine(...ish), but a cousin that was also a sister? No. Just no. And yet she somehow suspected that there would be ten "genuine accounts of forbidden love" published by the end of the day the moment news of this got out.

But she thought she could stand it, and possibly contact Nohr after she settled in and confirm some...rather pertinent details about her parentage and history...and things seemed like they could calm down.

And then Ganglari was stolen by a cloaked figure who seemed only partly real, and found through Mikoto's back.

This is all wrong, and I'm not sure they will ever be right again.

 

[FieldKeeper]

In the end, it wasn't bravery, or loyalty, or a need to understand who her adopted father was that led her to that fateful decision. Just ask her.

It was defaulting to what was familiar.

She knew this was a part of her; she didn't like having things that corroded her sense of self and stability. And what in Hoshido didn't?

She succumbed to the Great Curse after discovering Mikoto's corpse; she fully admitted it. She let the linnorm part of her take over, as her human mind retreated to the depths of her id - but she didn't lose her intelligence. Her personality just became one of a wounded animal, seeking out the source of her pain at all costs, and lunging (sometimes physically) at anyone who seemed like they might threaten to impede her quest. (As if Takumi didn't hate her enough..). And in that state, she felt safer and more secure than she had ever done so in Hoshido. She might not know who she was, but dammit, she knew what she was, and she was pissed!

(That was the most fiendishly clever aspect of the Curse, really; it didn't take the form of being unwillingly shackled to your worst nature, but a loosening of self-control, and those who fully explored the urges would learn more about the flows of Essence within their own body by experiencing their inner flaws, a step on the ladder ever higher. The Curse felt like a gift when it had its hands in you, and even as the madness cleared, to have acted without shame or restraint felt good.)

Thankfully, it didn't last long. The Karals quickly realized she had a perfect alibi for the murder of Mikoto, and her first stepsiblings and Azura all knew what the Great Curse looked like from bitter personal experience. But a pall descended over them, and Therese could feel a wall forming between them and herself, especially with the property damage she caused in her "investigative" rampage. Really, all she had from it was a new sword - one that was still not moonsilver, but an orichalcum daiklave was better than no daiklave - and any weapon was better than the sword that had just taken her mother's life.

Which was why when the airships and the agatae and the wyverns came up to the border, with Camilla's "Infernal roar" demanding her sister be returned, she felt relief. Here was something she knew, something she could cling to-

And then a blast of superheated Essence came from a Hoshidan fortification, aimed at the royals' airship. Absolutely none of the Karals knew who ordered that, but the otherwise tense diplomatic incident became the opening battle to a war centuries in the making.

Adrenaline had taken over then; Therese had chosen the path of the No Moon both as a counterpart to Xander, and because they were some of the only Exalted, let alone people, who could become "combat sorcerers" (or necromancers, as the case may be); her Anima could just as easily become a resource for her spells as it grew more opaque with the energy she put into it. And she could fight; Gunter was many things to her, but the most critical was a sensei in White Reaper Style, the thinking man's martial art - because unlike so many, it was one meant for heavy armor, and to make sure the commander was just as effective on or off the battlefield. For in place of speed, White Reaper had scope; a skilled duelist would be able to overcome her easily, against a gaggle of lesser foes (like, for example, most darkbrood), the focus it had on turning the momentum of groups of infantry upon each other through precise strikes and sweeps in their weak points of cohesion was invaluable. As was the fact that it was one of the few martial arts that augmented Anima for use in her spells later.

It certainly allowed her to find the family she had known through what would have been the most difficult path, the field where armies of Nohrian undead and magic-bred beasts clashed with Hoshidan automata and elementals, led by demons on both sides. Where the tide of battle was least likely to remove sapient minds from the world, because once Therese assumed the form of the White Reaper, she was not skilled enough a stylist to not accidentally kill people - Therese was a pacifist. She trained so that if violence was brought to her, she could end it, not merely stop it.

A roaring Faceless was her first major enemy, not recognizing her (or as she would later discover, perhaps one of Iago's agents had made it), undead flesh glimmering with poison weapons. Severing its flesh in twain as she assumed the growling stance of White Reaper Form, like a great cat ready to strike with her new sword held high would gather the Essence its second death for her first halo of Anima, the shining white bands that gave the Style its name.

A tomescu, a clamorous cloud arsenal, was her second, the fog it carried with it barely hiding the dozens of weapons its chitinous green arms were holding. The demon did not seem surprised when she cannibalized the halo from the Faceless in a Bleeding Crescent Strike, the energy going to force behind her sword - which would be unsurprising, part of their bravery in battle was due to knowing the general circumstances of their death from birth.

Enemies three through five were demjen, the mermaid-like quickeners of ores, and the chalcothetes the demons turned unworked metal into as pets and personal escorts. She turned to necromancy for that, unleashing the Scouring Flesh Wave variant of the Death of Obsidian Butterflies spell to shred the organic demjen, forcing them to flee with their creations. Two halos replaced the first, followed by one more as she finished off a wood elemental.

The sixth was the hooded man she was now sure was Mikoto's murderer, who bore a very distinct weapon that spat fiery Essence. He apparently did not know of Flickering Corona Barrier, the technique to turn Reaper halos into temporary shields that stabilized the stylist's stance. He unfortunately escaped as soon as he saw the fire gutter out, pursued by a barrow hound that Therese somehow doubted would catch him

Seventh was an enormous automata, and she had trouble with it - her escort was off chasing a monster, and the clanking soldier was a skilled one-on-one duelist - then Xander tackled it to the ground, just as Ryoma arrived to call it off.

She tried to stop the war. She really did.

"Please don't fight!", she called. "This wasn't Hoshido's doing-"

But neither listened, Siegfried's screaming soul meeting the lightning-wreathed white jade of Ryoma's Raijinto.

Xander was under orders to begin a strike for Hoshido's aggression for kidnapping a princess, and Ryoma had every right to be offended that his sister was now a reason to start a war when Azura wasn't.

So as the battle between the two families began, an overwhelmed Therese went for the choice that had a family she recognized, that did not invade her dreams with ticking gears, that didn't tell her her entire remembered life was a fake. She chose the family she knew, over the family she didn't.

It was as simple as that, in the end.

And as the reunited Bethans devastated Hoshido's more mystical legions, she realized that standing besides her siblings not feel as good as it should have.

It was, after all, Garon's order to save her. Somehow, that did not seem like paternal love any more.

---

"So...it's true then? I really am a Karal..." Therese leaned against the bulkhead of the airship. "I just...I don't know how to feel about this."

The sand-made holographic image of Garon in the airship's communication center looked about as unsympathetic as the real man back in Windmire. "Theresia. Dearest. Your own actions have shown what original kinship you had with that family has long since been erased, as is the proper manner of things. You aren't even related on a genetic level, as noted."

"And yet, I find it odd that she was not trying to escape or slay a noble," Iago's own image interjected. "Perhaps the dead-loving thug has finally learned some subtlety in her assassination, my liege?"

"...accuse me of plotting patricide again, you wretched, inbred excuse for a Lunar," Therese shot back, "And I'll practice it."

"Enough, both of you," Garon cut in. "Even if my daughter hadn't just demonstrated her loyalty to her siblings, it would be overly complex at best to consider a deep cover scheme that involves actively assisting with a first strike against a noted thorn in our sides. So for the moment, I believe you when you say your loyalty lies with Nohr - but I expect no more doubts of it," he said with a pinched glance.

Some part of Therese wanted to immediately beg forgiveness, but she held her ground - a couple weeks with Mikoto had removed the veil her eyes to the obvious manipulation. But she still made a show of looking down "...yes, Father," she repeated. "That was uncalled for; I shouldn't bring my personal issues with Iago here."

"What I don't understand is, how did anyone manage to steal the Ganglari?", Leo said, pacing. "It should have been attuned to her, it would have actively fought attempts by another user to wield it, something a Dragon-Blooded like Mikoto could easily fought off."

Therese revealed the soulsteel blade, kept in a scabbard next to her new weapon. "I was! And yet, it feels like I had never even touched it, it's as naive as the day I received it-"

"Wait." Garon held up his hand. "That orichalcum daiklave...where did you get it?"

"This?" Therese held it out. "That's what I'm wondering! I mean, I suppose I found it when my...fury destroyed a shrine to the old Scarlet Empress, and this was in the wreckage, but-"

"Hold its fuller to Brynhildr's spine and the pommel of Siegfried," he continued, suddenly looking very interested.

With growing confusion, she, Leo, and Xander did, and-

That's when they noticed the markings on all three.

Forming three-fifths of a particular Old Realm rune, the language of gods and demons alike. One meaning "the process by which catastrophe may become necessary for continued survival."

Everyone knew what that was. The Rainbow Sage had made it across the weapons he forged as a creator's mark.

"...this is...!", Xander began.

"The Yato," Camilla breathed.

"...sis got it...", Elise finished. "It was in the Imperial Ruins all along..."

A second, then Garon roared in laughter.

"Anankos' prophecy spoke truth!", he shouted. "The proof of our destiny is in hand! What a glorious day, that Nohr shall be recognized as the true rebirth of the Realm!"

Iago looked as if he was struck. "The Twilight Sea Dragon of Valla? I was not aware of-"

"Because you have not the ear I do, vizier!", he continued. "I simply kept it a secret - I would have told Xander of the proclamation it would only be found in the best-intentioned treachery, and now we possess it at last! Xander, you have new orders-you are to help make sure Nohr's colonies are all mobilized, as we remove these would-be Dynasts from our inheritance!"

The conversation changed to plans after that, as the Nohrian royals traded new plans.

It was after that, however, that Therese remembered a very important detail.

The Yato was not a large daiklave. It was a blade of orichalcum affixed to the grip of a mundane sword, and was stashed in a similarly mundane scabbard. Except for the golden hue of the blade, it looked like a random sword.

Therese had kept it sheathed until Garon noticed it, and unless you didn't know of the broken attunement, it seemed like nothing more than a backup weapon.

So why did he recognize it as a daiklave?

---

The growing unease Therese felt with Garon crystalized shortly after the "peacekeeping" mission to the icewalker camps in Nohr to get them to stop aggressing against their (alleged) allies in preparation for the full claiming of the Blessed Isle.

For one thing, Kilma Kaneko did not seem at all convinced that Nohr was not here to ask him to stop leading raids on trade caravans nicely - he emphasized his point with a blast of icy aimed directly at Therese's face. (And also confirming that yes, Flora's Exigence was inherited from other humans rather than directly bestowed by a god. Good to know.) Too much bitterness had been retained on Nohr's behalf towards his legendary ancestor, too much justification for the contemptuous attitude ethnic Nohrians tended to have for the nomadic ice tribes that had as much to do with them being a convenient underclass.

But things had been planned way too well, and Leo had sent his retainers first; Niles, another Lunar, and Odin, a strange traveler from Ylisse in the distant Southeast who claimed to be something called an "Umbral Exalted", one who drew power from "the divine darkness within his heart"...and given how he spoke like that without bursting into laughter or showing much that couldn't be done by a non-Exalted sorcerer with attunement to a soulsteel-bound tome, Therese had her doubts if that was actually a thing. Useful though, and while they had the downside of Therese learning more about shapeshifting than she ever wanted to know from Niles (and developing several internal theories as to why his spirit shape was a giant squid), they were able to subdue Kilma and Flora without actually killing members of the icewalkers. Enough overwhelming force that they could modulate enough to be merciful.

But it was also from Kilma that part of the reason he was so skeptical was that an Infallible Messenger spell had paid a visit to them, and more or less demanded the icewalkers attack a particularly riches-laden caravan...that also happened to be carrying items that were not at all suited for the mobilizing invasion force. Certainly weapons that looked important, but what Kilma didn't realize was that iron-tipped arrows were meant for anti- fae operations, humans were not particularly vulnerable to the metal and so ammunition for humans was a bit cheaper and sharper. What Kilma did know was that the spell that created the tiny winged messengers only allowed for one-way communication...unless it happened to be a control spell, the first sorcerous technique achieved by any sorcerer upon initiation into a full Circle of knowledge.

Therese happened to know that Infallible Messenger was Iago's control spell. That was part of the reason he was Garon's chief strategic advisor, the man was a walking communications network for quick relay and correction of orders.

But looking at the timeframe, that had to have happened before Garon noticed the Yato. That the taking out of surplus war supply to make the icewalkers think they had drawn a culling force was a deliberate plan in advance...

But she remained quiet, as she was sent back to the Blessed Isle, to remove an early Hoshidan gain in the ruins of the Heptagram, the Scarlet Realm's academy of high sorcery, and supposedly a former resting place of the Rainbow Sage before he moved to the depths of Eseon.

That didn't mean she didn't send Lilith to try and start building a network of spies - just because she found it hard to look human didn't mean she couldn't rustle up some silverwrights to serve as a scout force, the tiny hive-minded pixies able to listen in on all but the most hidden of conversations. But it was a frustratingly small amount she could do before the patrol of the Heptagram.

That's where she encountered two people; a childlike woman who would become a close friend and mentor, if eerie even by her estimation, and someone she swore she would not have seen again except as an enemy...

"Azura!?", Therese nearly spat in disbelief as she recognized the blue hair of her cousin and bondmate.

"...I supposed our fates are more connected than just through our Third Souls," she remarked bitterly, cleaning off an old wound. "I cannot say I am surprised I ended up as a prisoner, I suppose...the moment the war began was the moment Nohrians were no longer welcome in any place in the White Night Kingdom. Now? Now I am a threat who can use the sun to twist noble Hoshidans into traitors..."

"...oh." Therese looked down. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I suppose I have myself to blame, for not seeing it coming..." She frowned. "Though...I was expecting Takumi to help more. The other members of the royal family tried to defend me, but he remained...utterly silent..."

Therese raised an eyebrow. "...with all due respect to the Karals...why is Takumi not defending you surprising?"

"Because for all of his hostility, he judges me based on actions, not appearance. I assure you, that act he said about me not being allowed to address him by name? He came up with that on the spot. And he looked...guilty, about it." She pauses. "Though, for my first question...why is a child being brought along-"

"First of all," the veiled girl in black said, crossing her arms. "I am not a child. I think I'm several decades older than you. Second, my name is dead, but you may call me Nyx, the Ever-Young Final Night Before Her Day."

Azura paled when she heard that title. Everyone in Creation in the Third Age onward knew what a dead name but a poetic title meant.

"O-oh. I...I was not aware you were...er..."

"An Abyssal?" Nyx's forehead blazed with the anti-light of the Void at the heart of the Underworld; a darkness so total that everything around it spontaneously shone to replace the light and color devoured by it. "That I am. Daybreak, sworn to the Silver Prince of Skullstone."

Therese let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. The Prince was a deathlord, an old and mad ghost invested as a vizier of the Neverborn, the ghosts of slain Primordials, but he was also the writer of one of her own grimoires, and knew he was something that was far less of a vassal of dead proto-gods furious over their failure, and more of an amoral king of an island nation he sought to spread the government of to the world; an ancestral cult for all. Moreover - he was a strong advocate for pacifism, an outlook he was extremely keen to impart to students of his techniques. He wouldn't be an obstacle to getting Nyx to help regardless of her loyalty (or not) to him; not as if she was a deathknight of the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears and the mind games she menaced the entire North with.

"I...I see. I appreciate your help, but..." She looked between the diminutive deathknight and Therese.

"She reminds me of a younger version of me with sense, she's immensely polite - and if they find I'm an Abyssal, well, you know fearful of the Underworld they are in Hoshido? If they took me in as a "teenager" on the battlefield, I'd be the subject of a training exercise. For Wyld Hunts. I don't really have a choice in not being Anathema."

---

"...that was not Takumi."

"Eh?" Therese looked up from where she and Elise were patching up Beruka, one of the two elites Camilla had brought with her - and someone who desperately needed it more, being a mortal who had mastered the stealthy Ebon Shadow style. Extremely useful, especially with the supplementary Charms she had developed to sync with her wyvern and become the battlefield equivalent of a shark - but her wounds were not turned inherently aseptic or have the ability to heal nerves that Exalted did. "I seem to recall a self-righteous archer with a starmetal powerbow that happens to have a lot of similar designs to the Yato. Is there more than one?"

The glare from Azura hurt more than a Fate-guided arrow from the aforementioned Fujin.

"...sorry. I'm just..." She sighed. "He led an attack on a fishing village that had absolutely nothing to do with the war because we docked there. These people aren't even Nohrian; they're mostly native Blessed Islanders and Chevois. I am not in an especially charitable mood."

"And that is what was raising alarms for me," Azura said, crossing her arms. "I've seen him even in the throes of the Great Curse; even then, he either becomes utterly harsh about perfectionism, or preachy about what he believes is proper behavior. He isn't the kind to enjoy collateral damage. And, well..." She sighed. "You heard his shouting match. How he 'never trusted me' and the like."

Therese caught on. "...you did say that you expected him to help more with you avoiding being expatriated back to Nohr."

"I did. And I can tell you that 'pushing for Ryoma to exile me harder' - that would have been interesting, because then he would have mentioned me being banished...at all."

Camilla came over. "...really?", she said, her normal smiling disposition having suddenly turned serious.

"It is true. In fact - he was one of the people who first supported Mikoto treating me more as a daughter than a prisoner. He has never been warm, but he was always more of an aloof but genuine friend than a stranger," she continued. "So him saying that...now that the hurt has worn off, I can't say it sounded like him. At all."

Therese finished applying medicine to a particularly deep stab wound, and joined the rest. "...hm. You think that was a body double? A Lunar taking his place while he, oh, conferred with Sidereals or somesuch?"

"No, I'd still recognize his Anima anywhere; it takes supernatural ability to make you think the flame of the soul is golden and not silver, and even then it taking the form of a hawk is all him." She shook her head. "But his personality? It's like...it's like he was an actor who was only told his worst personality traits and told to act paranoid and vengeful. Enough to see elements of Takumi, but not knowing of his more positive aspects and not realizing he should lean into them."

"...you think one of my relatives have been snacking on him?", Lilith said, nervoiusly.

"No - for one, Exalted are resistant to raksha dream-eating, and for another, that's the same amount of rage I've seen from him when he gets going, it's just he's normally in control of it." Azura hummed. "And I've not known him to use the ambush tactics we saw - sniping, yes, but that's it. Sniping. He doesn't try to collapse buildings and hope his troops are safe enough to escape." She paused. "Come to think of it - why didn't we hear those troops...?"

"...I see," Camilla said, suddenly very quiet. "...by any chance, was he complaining of migraines?"

Azura stared at her. "...actually, that seems to be the main reason he personally retreated, rather than ordering his men back while he rained arrows on us..."

"Is there an issue, sister?", Therese asked.

"...there may be, dear," Camilla replied, trying to return to her normal smile. "But...I sincerely hope it is not one. It's the kind of thing that might well be just a coincidence, or evidence of other malevolent powers. But...if I'm right..." She inhaled. "You have my deepest sympathies, Azura."

---

Therese thought she knew the depths of hatred before now. She certainly thought she hated the Fair Folk, the darkbrood, and what undead Vodak's influence made in the depths of Gethamane.

She supposed she did; she hated what they did to people, to her and hers. But it was just hatred; she cheerfully destroyed them, but if they weren't present? She didn't really think about them. She hated them because they tried to feast upon people, flesh, spirit, or both. It was like hating fire; it had a tinge of respect for destructive power within it, and acknowledging that (hypothetically) it could be good, or at least useful.

Iago?

Years ago, Therese had helped Elise with the removal of heart wasp larvae in a poor soldier during a trip to the East. A useless, disgusting white knot of grubs that she knew would metamorphosize into a cloud of eye-licking gnats or the arm-sized queens to inject even more larvae into unfortunates and be devoured from the inside.

Iago was somewhere beneath those grubs in her estimation. The grubs didn't have a choice in being parasites; that was just how life made them.

She loathed Iago now. There was nothing he brought to the world that wouldn't be exceeded by the benefit of his removal from it.

"I wanted to avoid warcrimes today," she said, head in her hands. "I nearly did it. Hoshido walked away...and then..."

Kaze, the soldier Therese least expected to have, walked forward. "You heard him. He was tired of life, and fearing his metamorphosis into an Apocalypse Dragon. The world does not need another Kukla..."

"It didn't need me to be the sword who took the Dusk Dragon's own brother!" She stabbed a wall. "Just - just what is Iago's problem!? Is he so insistent on this dream of empire he's willing to burn down the entire Blessed Isle for it!?"

"Mm." Kaze growled. "I have met nobles like him. Obsessed with their own name, as if it was merit on its own. Speaking as a Dragon-Blooded, we have brought an extremely dark stain to Creation - because our Exaltations are inherited, so many assume merit in general is in the blood. When we need to have our own merit catalyze it; we may not need to be so showy as Celestials, but there's a reason I still have nightmares of my secondary school..."

"Elise told me about that. Her mother never Exalted, but she was desperate to ensure Elise would be able to show worth in comparison to her half-siblings," Therese ruminated. "She said she knew her mother loved her, by how she cried when she sent her off to be taught by the monks at Fajad's Cloister of Wisdom. They don't want to hurt you, but they are...extreme. Truth is, I think she was planning on withdrawing her if she didn't draw her Second Breath in two years; that's why she has Arthur as a retainer. I honestly think he was originally hired to teach her how to use Gunzosha armor, like his own."

Kaze looked up, alarmed. "Isn't that dangerous for mortals?"

"It needs to draw Essence from somewhere to get the engine powered if it's not an Exalted wearing it, yes," Therese says. "You've seen his luck, or lack thereof, yes?"

It was at that point that Kaze remembered said armor glinted of starmetal, and thus, probably could steal fortune from the future. "...I am not sure if that is comforting to him or not. But I suppose the fact he still uses it is proof he only didn't inherit a Solar's mantle is because there wasn't one available. Nor was he unlucky enough to sustain a fatal wound..."

"Arthur the deathknight. That is the amusing mental image, if probably would lead to many sleepless nights on his part," Therese said with a wince. "But...he surrendered, but it was still my sword that cut his heart. Eseon has lost its hermit, and another one of the Founding Dragons gone - the last memory of the Last Swordbearer. Just...gone." She slumped. "I believe I can save Nohr, still - but I fear that he's a cancer grown too deep. Ripping him out, while satisfying, might damage the whole..."

There was a long pause.

"...actually, I'm a bit relieved you are concerned about that," he said after a long while. "Because that implies you actually do care about not simply about getting new leaders, and nothing else; freeing the helots to work under a different master, as a common saying in Lookshy goes. Er, do you need to..?"

"No, I had a lot of time with history books, and I have summoned ghosts who know helots, even if they've been unquiet long enough to forget some of their lives," she replied. "I know why they were abolished; even on a practical level, training literal second-class citizens as soldiers makes it honestly remarkable Lookshy's normal government lasted two Ages..."

"Keep in mind that was before the Great Equalizing," Kaze pointed out. "If you weren't a citizen if you awoke the dragon's heritage, you quickly became one and were promptly bribed into complacency; mortals couldn't stand before you, not really. But that wasn't even the worst. Have you heard of why firewalkers are nomadic despite having an island chain to themselves, and why you haven't seen more of them than Rinkah?"

She looked up. "I know they're sometimes called Ysyri, but not what Ysyr was. Only that it's considered mildly offensive to call one that unless you're adopted into a clan."

"You'd be right - millennia on, it's still a bad memory to be reminded of the day an entire people was enslaved. Ysyr was an island nation, one of the many on the Dreaming Sea," he said, leaning back. "But before then, it was also once a place where the old Solar Deliberative of the First Age placed a wondrous device; a great Manse, made of living rock, that created a place where the Wyld bore through to Creation and made it into a verdant paradise where the ground itself could be made into gold. In time their descendants died to the Great Contagion, at which point a seafaring tribe called the Ys settled in - but the Manse was damaged, letting uncontrolled fae Essence through, and the Ys did not have the thaumaturgic engineering knowledge to repair it. Soon, they started mutating; not enough to lose themselves, but enough to become demihumans like beastfolk or pegalothropes or ogres, if they were lucky - others started to suffer congenital defects. The most lucky developed a sense of their own Essences, and from there, sorcery." He turned dour. "I'm sure you remember the insult Rinkah threw at you in that arena? Tyrant-spawn?"

She caught on. "...that wasn't a direct reference to Garon, was it."

"Nope. For all of the Second Age, and much of the early Third, Ysyr was a thaumocracy; if you were not a sorcerer in Ysyr, you were a slave. And one forced to be hideous at that - only the sorcerers were allowed to be beautiful. And that situation didn't change, because whenever anyone rebelled - it was because they wished to install a hypothetically kinder sorcerer or spread knowledge to those with the potential, not to stop the system. The only change before they finally died was expanding the definition of sorcerer to include Exalted. There were good masters and bad masters, but there were always slaves. Firewalkers are the descendants of those Ysyri who finally realized it would never end and settled on a nearby volcanic chain that emerged during the Realmfall. They vowed that magic would forever be subservient to the people, never mastering it - nor would they put down roots and let decadence fester, as it had before, only building as landmarks on a constant circuit of travel. Trust me, Rinkah was actually relieved when she realized you were a necromancer; your magic has to answer to the ancestors. She'd be advocating putting a mana lockmask and assigning kaitiaki watchers to you even when we thought you'd go back to being Mikoto's daughter otherwise."

"I...am pretty sure I do not want to know what that is," Therese said, paling slightly. "But somehow, I suspect Iago would not be out of place there."

"The question isn't whether he'd be out of place - the question is which High Theurge or unquiet ghost thereof must have tutored him in sorcery, so they can properly insert a stanza about his demise to the right history poems."

---

"You know," Nyx began, frowning. "When we were set at war against Hoshido, I somehow expected more military operations would be implemented against Hoshido. Not...suppression."

"First the icewalkers, now Chevois," Therese agreed. "I suppose that, technically, Scarlet had Takumi's backing - but I suppose that if he knew, he'd tell us, then it would make sense."

"And even if we did...we have no grounds to critique him being underhanded," Camilla gave an uneasy glance at the field where Hans was, who was tearing through the remaining Hoshidan auxiliaries with entirely too much relish. "Peri is a bit unnerved by him. That never happens."

"Honestly, I can see that. Though that may be because she has a sense of being sporting..." She glanced at where the pigtailed Dragon-Blood was poking Scarlet with her spear, desperately trying to get the rebel leader of the vassal state to fight her. Scarlet, being sensible, was doing her best to ignore it. "But I do know she at least needs a reason. However shallow that reason is..."

That was when one of the new additions spoke up. "Forgive me for my impertinence, milord, but...do you normally have such... eccentric retainers?"

Charlotte, the female half of the two guard sergeants that had just been assigned as officially Therese's retainers, wrung her hands in (forced) daintiness and (very real) worry.

"...unfortunately," Kaze began. "We are a regular mess here - Camilla's duo is the sanest, and you saw how Selena rushed that Reina woman after she made a vocal comment on how she was glad she'd hear the death scream of a Ylissian for the first time, given how she was obviously the weakest. We have two warrior princess maids, one butler who seems to think that serving one master means hating the rest of humanity, someone who may or may not be pretending to be an Exalt, the world's unluckiest storybook knight, a deathknight caught in perpetual moody teenagerdom-"

"Greetings," Nyx cut in.

"...an all-devouring bodybuilder who thinks upper body strength is a substitute for glassblowing, one and a half Hoshidan defectors - I'm pretty sure Mozu is a native Blessed Islander who just happened to live under Hoshidan rule - a sadomasochistic bandit, and Peri. Oh, and our stables are run by a fae. And those are the people we like."

"Uh...huh." Charlotte inhaled. "Well...as a simple girl, I am a bit...frightened by your officers, I won't lie. But my pride in my country outweighs my shaking knees. I promise, I will be your aid and guardian spirt - don't mind little old me! Oh, and dealing them must be exhausting, please, let me make you a fine meal to-"

Therese sighed. "Stop this. You're a Black Claw stylist."

The innocent look briefly broke as Charlotte's eyes shrank into her skull. "S-sorry?"

"When Orochi bent Fate to separate you from your axe, you immediately held your hands in front of your face and assumed a defensive crouch," she said, acting it out. "It looked at a first glance you were curling up...but you left enough of a gap in your arms to see and check for attacks. And for someone whose knees were shaking, you were awfully good with a couple precise kicks."

"That is...uhm..."

"In addition," Kaze said, mimicking Therese's not-really-defensive defensive stance, "When your opponents tried to strike you, your, quote, 'ineffective flailing" struck a couple meridians, and coincidentally, your opponent suddenly lost his balance. Like he was afflicted with paralytic poison, or more to the point, toxic Essence. Then, you 'stumbled' towards Takumi's troops, and for someone whose entire current vocabulary is insults towards Nohrians and complaining of migraines, he seemed awfully polite when he told you to get out of the way after you ducked an arrow. Flexing the Emerald Claw, and Torn Lotus Defense inspiring positive feelings through internal manipulation of Essence, respectively."

"Er..."

"And then when you got the axe, you immediately fell back into White Reaper. My fighting style," Therese said. "I understand that a lot of Black Claw is about pretending to innocence, while being extremely calculating about finding potential allies and how to defame your opponents by casting bravery as bullying, but that 'bitten by an evil little elemental' thing? I have a linnorm's hearing, too, I heard the stream of profanity when the fight woke you up. Moreover, my younger brother is the best sorcerer I know - and moreover, he's summoned Mara herself. We've actually seen the founder of Black Claw actually use it, and we know what to look for - even if we didn't, please don't insult my intelligence by pretending you didn't just swing an axe larger than your torso like it was a twig."

Charlotte collapsed, her innocent look abandoned to reveal the soldier underneath. "Shit...I...I'm sorry I lied." She sighed. "I'll...I'll go back to the guard station, I guess-"

"Um, what?", Camilla cut in. "Soldier, my dear sister decided you were going to be her retainer the moment you stepped outside from sleep to full battle readiness in less than five minutes! She outright insisted when she saw your expertise!"

The guard looked up, shocked and...hopeful.

"I take it you haven't been assigned full artifact weapons, or alchemical treatments to quicken your Essence," Therese said. "You've hit the ceiling of human potential without fully awakened Essence. And yet, as far as I can tell, you didn't actually plateau - whether you learned Black Claw or White Reaper first, you immediately closed off your weaknesses in the other style; if you are caught on the battlefield without your sword or faced with enemies you don't necessarily wish to kill, you use Black Claw, fighting many enemies at once and once fighting has broken out, White Reaper. That speaks of both incredible talent as a warrior, and a natural instinct for strategic abilities. Frankly, that is a person for whom being made a border officer, and not even a captain, comes off as a massive failure in our army to not even give you proper resources to master your styles. I may not be the most adept martial artist, my first love is necromancy - but I know a student with unwillingly wasted potential when I see one."

Charlotte just mouthed a bit, unable to comprehend. "I...thank you..."

There was a long pause, before her brow furrowed. "...does the fact that Leo bound a literal succubus to his will have anything to do with how the sadomasochist is his henchman?"

A very loud noise of frustration came from Nyx. "Twenty years. I've never, ever seen that stupid urban legend get less popular..."

"Succubi are not actually a thing that exists," Therese continued. "It comes from confusing Mara with demons often summoned as courtesans, like neomah - except neomah don't drain life. They take small amounts of blood and flesh, making sure not to injure the one that paid them more than mildly, and use them to make new and unique forms of life. Many cultures regard neomah as benign spirits of fertility, as they can use their power to make children of barren couples or homosexual ones, and they are more interested in art than manipulation. The only demon I know of that uses seduction to steal souls is Mara herself, and she's a true Demon Lord, not a species - and we summoned her so we could figure out a way to break the parasitic love a particularly awful raksha forced into the minds of random innocents. And trust me, she's worse than just 'a vampiric harlot', she knows far worse ways to hurt people with love."

"Uh...huh," Charlotte said, obviously not especially convinced. "Still sounds like the younger prince has a thing for infernal chains to me. Just...just warn me if he and Silas are cackling over a summoning circle. I don't want to leave my post one day and find a drunk neomah in my bed, covered in unique fluids."

Therese grinned. "See? We already have so much in common!"

---

In hindsight, she should have expected this, she supposed.

Why else would Hans still be part of the army?

Why would he be lying about being an agent of the crown?

And most importantly - why didn't she plan for this!?

"This is..." Elise dropped her staff.

"Inhuman..." Azura breathed.

Therese's detachment had made camp the day before, and woke up to devastation.

The entire Cheve colony was just...gone.

Burned.

Massacred.

The bodies strung up and placed on gibbets.

Including Scarlet.

"...this isn't fun..." Peri just shook her head. "I just...where's the game? They couldn't plot against us, they didn't have a chance to fight back...what's fun in this?"

"What was the point, Hans?", Jakob murmured. "The rebellion was gone. Their auxiliaries captured, and their leader surrendered. Even at our most sociopathic...this is pointless cruelty. Martyring them, and for what?"

The bald man shrugged, looking completely shameless. "And I suppose that just a few straggling mortals can kill you more than Exalted? I count one Sidereal and one Architect on there, and wasn't Reina even more bloodthirsty than Xander's gladiator mascot? Sounds to me like she enjoyed killing people."

"Even if we're accepting that, that doesn't excuse killing goddamn civilians!" Silas strode over, shifting into his hybrid form, each of his extra tentacular limbs taking out a knife. "Give us one good reason why we shouldn't execute you right now."

"Make it two," Arthur said, the circuits in his armor activating and humming.

"Three," Kaze whispered, the nearby sea rippling dangerously.

Lilith said nothing, simply growling as the sea around her turned the rainbow hues of the Wyld.

"Well, for one, and I think it should count for all - this is direct orders from the king," Hans taunted, revealing a slip of paper from his pocket.

Therese's jaw dropped. "...sorry?"

"You heard me. These were my orders, and you'll find that his personal mark was on this. Iago had proofread it of course, but it was his idea. Second reason - Iago. He knows I am here, and is planning on sending an Infallible Messenger today. Considering he is actively trying to blame Her Serenity here for something dark enough to justify executing her and removing the Karal in the Bethan heritage - do you really want to risk explaining to him why your commander didn't rein her forces back?"

Camilla blanched. "That's...that's true, but-"

"Thirdly - because this is my nature." He spread out his arms. "See this? See all of this? This is war, pure and simple. I am an Exigent of Warfare - more specifically, a raven of Voharun gave his immortal life so I could be a champion of war. For the foriegners in the audience - an angel of the God of Northern War as it relates to survival and defensive war killed himself because I could do a better job. This? This is what war looks like. Consider it a lesson - the winner in any war is the one who has less limits. Moral ones are just stupid."

"If you are kin to the Feaster on the Slain," Nyx said, coldly. "Then you'll know just how much screaming their lower souls are making right now due to your... desecration."

"I'm counting on it." He grinned darkly. "Or did the Abyssal and her pet No Moon forget that it's the higher soul that actually can tell between friend and foe as a ghost? If some of these bodies find their animal parts are steering them around? Have Therese point them at the Hoshidans." With that, he swaggered off, completely confident.

There was a long silence, before Therese screamed in rage, the Yato severing a nearby post. "Fuck it all! I'm going to kill him right now!"

Elise stepped forward. "Big sis, no-"

"I don't care!", she screamed, "This isn't Nohr! We aren't in Nohr! And this isn't what we do! He's a traitor, just like my excuse for a father! TRAITORS DIE!"

Camilla leapt in the way. "Sister, dear, please-"

"Don't 'dear' me, Camilla!" , Therese yelled, preparing a spell. "Or did you forget your sins!? For the 'Lords of Chaos', you're an awful wallflower when it comes to that wretch of a man! In fact, let's try some restitution now-you're the one working with a bloody assassin , I challenge you to a duel right here and now-"

"Milady, please!", Peri said, joining Camilla. "I like this, but it's not you speaking - it's the Great Curse, and then you're going to wake up and be all sad and mopey and angry and you'll be like that for weeks-"

Therese laughed bitterly "And you're lecturing me, you psychopath!? Maybe it is, but then again, maybe I don't like killers! It isn't controlling me and forcing me to think these things, it's real, and for someone who was trying to bait a prisoner into fighting so you could murder her-you want this fight!? Huh!?"

The spell picked up, as she began to scream the incarnation to rip Peri's flesh from her bones-

"And you think acting like this is any better!?", Camilla cut in.

The gathering bone-white light around Therese's ring froze.

Realizing that she had cut through the haze of the Curse, the Infernal grabbed her sister, her face twisted in rage as tears streamed from her eyes. "What father ordered is unforgivable.But-you're the woman who tore out a bit of her soul so that the people she summoned were harder to kill! Do you really think killing a woman who agrees with you is going to make you feel better, Theresia? How is this going to avenge them, and how is this going to stop this pointless war!? You're just going to be betraying Xander's trust because you're lashing out at the pain, too! Sister, please - this isn't you!"

"I..." Therese blinked, as the words echoed in her head, silencing the linnorm's scream that drowned out all other thoughts except rage. "I...I just..."

As the Curse cleared from her mind, Therese collapsed on the ground, curling up as she let herself feel her real emotions - the painful ones. "How...how could I have been so blind? I...I told myself...that it was just Hans under the Curse. That he...that he had something in him, something that...something that wouldn't mean that...father ordered him to...c-cut the..."

Camilla hugged her. "I...I wish I could say. He was always stern, but he's become...different. Colder. Crueler. Like nothing in his life matters but the Blessed Isle anymore..."

Kaze inhaled. "...honestly, this makes me wonder...if the best thing that could reform Nohr is to...speed Xander's inheritance, as it were. To use a term from the Immaculacy of my homeland; the Cycle of Perfection must sometimes be curated."

There was a long pause.

"...I want you to know," Elise began, slowly. "That killing your father is a deep sin. Unforgivable. So I didn't hear any of that, nor am I offering actual help. You'll have to plan away from me, so I am not forced by piety to report on you..."

"Wait," Azura said. "I...I honestly understand. And as he is my stepfather, and I am more Karal now...I do not think my conspiracy would be a sin. But I wish to try something first..."

---

"You know," Therese said, willing a group of nearby corpses to shudder into animalistic undeath. "When I heard this plan to free Garon from control with that song, I didn't expect to be fighting assassins!"

"Less talk, more spells!", Azura shouted back, unleashing a blast of sunfire from her Anima at a clockwork spider that seemed made of shimmering knives. "And I didn't expect this either!"

"Wait, what was that about-" Leo shouted over the din.

"Trying very hard to avoid killing our father!", Camilla said as she send a pair of assassins flying into a wall with a punt from her axe, shadow and green embers flying everywhere.

"Where did these sneaky losers even come from!?", Charlotte screamed, her pitch matching the humming of the White Reaper halos her new jade axe was helping generate. "This standard, Kaze!?"

"Not in Creation or Malfeas!", he said, somersaulting over one of his fellow ninjas. "Assaulting a king in the middle of neutral territory!? Closer to a hostile nation!? With an army!? General Kumagera, what in the Underworld were you thinking!?"

"Orders!", the assassin operative shouted back over the din. "Lord Takumi said there would be no better time according to intelligence!"

"When he was traveling with Exalted numbering in the double digits!?" , Leo said, nearly losing control of the spell he was weaving as he goggled. "What!?"

"We assumed that the songs were a sign of a deep cover agent!", Kumagera replied, vaulting over a warbeast and stabbing it in a single, fluid motion. "I haven't heard of a song that harms people!"

"...not people," Azura said, her eyes widening as she realized something. "That song was infused with holy energies..."

"Can we wait for after the battle for the realizations!?", Therese shouted. "I'm not sure I can-"

There was a rush of a shape that looked like a bull, and the Lunar princess found herself suddenly blown out of her cover, and into the path of Kumagera.

"For what it is worth," he said, lifting his mace. "You fight well."

He rushed forward, as Therese instinctively assumed the form of a tortoise to somehow block a bit of the pain-

And then something that looked like a cross between a bear and a wolf tackled him away.

"What the-" Elise spun to face it. "First-good doggie! Second - um, Leo, I wasn't informed-"

"That isn't mine...", the younger prince said.

That was when the wolf...turned out not to be a wolf. Not entirely. Or even mostly.

"You okay there, you with the...hair and the...gold sword?", the man with a wolf's ears and tail said.

Therese simply...stared at him for a second.

She knew what a wolfskin was, of course; while once upon a time, beastfolk were just people with animal features, and sometimes physical abilities. Sometimes born of the Wyld's touch, other times the children of Lunars, and the children of those children. Ever since the Great Equalizing, some lineages of the demihuman kind had learned to assume animal form, including warforms - just the one animal, not the master of shape of a Lunar or even an Exigent with powers that led to shifting of forms. But it was a leg up, and as shown, could help turn the tide of battle.

She just...

She didn't expect one to be so...

Appealing.

And then she remembered where she was, and also the fact that she nearly died.

Cursing her libido and preferences, Therese returned to human form to slap herself. "Theresia. Nice to meet you...?"

"Keaton. And before you ask, no, I wasn't looking for anything except some nice bugs," he said with a wince. "Right mess I ran into, huh? But I'm thinking you're Nohrian, and you're fighting Hoshidans, so..."

"Welcome to the royal guard, the ceremony will be held as soon as all of us survive!", Therese said with a grin. "Now, onto said Hoshidans..."

---

Therese wasn't sure if this day was good or bad, yet. Perhaps she never would be. It was a parade of good and bad news.

Good news, Gunter turned out to be alive. A little wild-eyed, and she had to subdue him before he realized neither she nor Azura were fae in disguise or other illusions of Eseon, and it seemed he had been there, from his perspective, more than the few months everyone else had. But after he calmed down, the old instructor regained himself, and simply formally requested to join the escort along with Keaton, Nyx, and Lilith (the first for his nose for finding flaws in more tricksy illusions, the second to overpower the significant minority of actual ghosts haunting the primeval place, the third because the Eseon naturally developed Wyld pockets along with elemental Essence reservoirs of Wood, Water, and Earth - her native environment, making her a perfect guide).

Bad news, he had fled into the forest because he overheard forces that flew the colors of Iago's household, and the words "no survivors" were uttered in regards to "that false-blooded Hoshidan brat." So that actually explained a lot of why Iago was so "cautious" about her being a traitor. Moreover, because Gunter was sane, he didn't have the forest as his first choice - and then he was attacked by people who seemed only partly real. In the same way the thief of the Ganglari was.

Good news, Azura had actually found him before; she used the primeval power of the forest's natural Essence and Wyld pockets to help open her senses to things she was not normally capable of, and quested within for secrets wrung from both. Frustratingly, she had not asked Gunter for his name, made even more frustrating by how it was entirely advised when anywhere near fae to avoid giving out your name or asking for one, lest they snatch it while it was being given or taken (using names when everyone knew who everyone else was, though? That was proof fae laws of symbolic magic were insane). Thus, she knew to trust him, and how to will the Wyld to look like long lost Valla as a symbol for "safe place", given the man a place to rest before he completely exhausted himself or was lost to the twisting nature of Eseon's native Wyld. That was why Azura had requested an escort, too - both to confirm some suspicions, and to rescue the friendly hermit from the enemies both within Eseon and out.ut n

Bad news, the half-real men knew what Valla reborn looked like, it seemed. This led to Azura having theories on what kind of creature they were, something bitterly confirmed when the escort managed to subdue one and let Therese and Nyx take a look at one - and found it was indeed an undead form of an inhabitant of drowned Valla. A body whose higher soul was removed and replaced with a fragment of something...strange. Elemental, but not the Dead Forms of the elements, not a fragment of Blood, but of Water. Which meant that the vanishing of Valla was something intentional, and was backed by an incredibly powerful force that dabbled in necromancy - and likely a god or elemental of Creation, as a ghost or living deathmage would have used the abundant Dead Elements that agreed with necromantic workings. Grand.

Good news, it turned out that she wouldn't have to kill her stepfather, and neither would his actual children!

Bad news...because the answer was so much worse.

"Nemissary," Nyx breathed. "The ghost that steals the shells of the dead..."

If Therese herself hadn't been stunned, she'd have made a comment about being a necromancer and thus, had actually summoned nemissaries before as assistants, thanks.

But she only thought that long after the moment passed. She was too busy taking in the image in the Wyld-formed crystal.

"Sweet Luna and Dragons," Elise breathed. "I had no idea..."

"It's the kind of illusion you'd see raksha performing. This is...almost impressive," Lilith added. "My human face was...nothing compared to the sheer power required for a glamour to hide...that."

"...How didn't I see this," Leo said, punching a wall. "I would have been relieved to know this..."

"Well, if I see deer tracks in the forest, I assume deer, not Mara," Keaton said, seemingly the most calm of the group. "She may have deer feet, but it's...well, it's not expected, shall we say. It's not your fault, friend."

"Doesn't mean this isn't..." Camilla swallowed. "Horrifying."

Therese, even with her being used to the rather macabre nature of the Underworld and the marks death left upon ghosts, couldn't disagree.

The "true face of Garon" was...well, she'd call him 'rotted', but that seemed to minimize the full horror. 'Rotted' implied something was left, as opposed to the borderline liquid of what was left of his flesh. It looked like it was only coherent and humanoid thanks to extreme effort of will, and even then it was breaking apart, liquid dropping from his extremities to rejoin the whole.

But the liquid formed enough of his face for everyone to see the animal pain and fear, his higher soul long gone to leave only his terrified animal one, unable to understand what was happening to it.

And his face was not the only one there. Because his skull was a visor as well - leering out between his opened jaw was two piercing green eyes, the most like a living person in the whole monstrosity. A shock of wild red hair flecked with grey grew out and through the bones of the dead king, bits of it tied to every part of his skull to manipulate like a grotesque puppeteer. So was it for the rest of the ghost within the corpse, with the most whole part being within Garon's chest, a svelte but muscular torso that might have been attractive if it was part of a larger body. From that, veins and tendons extended throughout the body, threading through the skeleton like a spider's web - where there was missing pieces, they converged into limbs and muscle, all for the sake of giving it mobility. And behind the jawline, a cold face could be seen - an all-too-human one, pale from death but focused, stern, and alert.

Garon was not Garon, and going by the degradation of his body, he hadn't been for a long time. He was just a mask for this strange body-hopping ghost...whoever he was.

"...I knew it," Azura said, grimly. "The song I sung - it was infused with holy Essence from the Sun. The judgement of solar fire. I meant it to just shine through whatever curse had possessed him, but he would not have noticed if there was no curse to break. But holy power? All creatures of darkness are allergic to it." She turned to Nyx. "Which is part of why I asked you to remain outside..."

"...I accept the pain you put me through as a proper tax for my stubborn idiocy," the Abyssal replied. "You are forgiven, not to mention we have far more deliberately malicious undead about..."

"Who even is this?", Therese said. "I assume a former noble of Nohr, given how I doubt a ghost would pull a years-long masquerade without it being tied to their passions. It's simply not how they work."

That was when Leo, having regained his composure, came over. And then looked between the nemissary's head and eyes, brow deepening.

"...Azura. Can you zoom in anywhere? For example, this cheek?"

She looked at him curiously, and did so, right to the right side of his face, covered by bone.

But not enough to hid a faded, distinctly shaped, tattoo of the petals of a flower stylized to resemble swords.

"...Sisters," he said, quietly. "Do either of you recall what was the hair and eye color of the Scarlet Empress? What was most common among her descendants?"

It took a second to sink in.

Along with who else of the first and greatest queen of the Scarlet Realm's lineage had that, and a very distinct nickname, chosen to mock the politics of the Dynasty by claiming to be a true warrior and mechanical sage risen from the muck of backstabbing and betrayal.

And whose madness and spite nearly destroyed Creation through use of the Imperial Manse.

"...Oh. Oh fuck." Camilla dropped her axe. "Father's body is possessed by Merak."

 

[FieldKeeper]

Xander's reaction was much in the same vein.

"...what have I done?", he asked, sinking into the same debris he had just made in the midst of the Great Curse. "Why did I not even bother to question...?"

"Big brother, it's like Keaton said," Elise said, coming over. "It's not like it's...anything we could expect-"

"Except that you didn't know him before that thing puppeteered his corpse. I did!" He slammed his head against the wall. "Even if I never suspected - I knew that he had grown colder! More obsessed! I just convinced myself it was because of his guilt at having to adopt - to abduct Therese! As if that monster ever regret what he ate for breakfast even before he met the executioner's sword!"

"What is he even planning?", Leo muttered. "Just to rule the Blessed Isle again by proxy? For all of his faults, he was a brilliant reformer to the bloated bureaucracy and was sincerely dedicated to saving the Realm from dissolution. Not so much a general, given how he relied on the Manse instead of his own strategic skill or even his advisors, but he had more goals than simply power for the sake of power...even if that's how it ended up."

"You're forgetting - he's a ghost now," Therese cut in. "They actually do develop these monomanias; it's how they are able to ignore the call of Lethe to shed their memories and be reincarnated or reborn in the next life, or the song of Oblivion for complete dissolution in the Void. It's also why old ghosts are notoriously alien - when your entire existence has been based on obsession for so long..." She shrugged. "But what I don't understand is those half-real people. They're obviously undead, so I assume they're aligned with him...except as a ghost, he has an easier time making the dead walk than whatever nonsense was done to those poor souls. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever is making them built a Liminal accidentally..."

"If there is one, can they please join us?", Azura muttered. "We'd really like to know what in all the Heavens is going on..."

There was a long silence, as the living members of the Bethan family ruminated.

That's when Leo suddenly looked up. "Hang on...there's another reason I don't think they're Merak's forces. Not directly..."

"And that is, brother?", Therese asked.

"Think about it. Whenever one of us has encountered them it's far away from where the general Nohrian forces might be aware of them. And for all but the time that Mikoto's assassin stole the Ganglari - they've only acted to prevent Gunter from rendezvousing with Nohr, and later, to stop Azura's quest into the Eseon for revelations of Garon's nature. Neither of which would be something they'd need to hide from the forces present."

"...that's right," Camilla recognized. "We do use undead on occasion, so being introduced to those...Half-Souls wouldn't be something that would alarm people. Just say they're a new weapon, and people would just give them a wide berth. And given how Iago was already trying to kill my dear sister..."

"Why didn't they join up with his conspirators?", Xander finished. "It's easy enough to retrieve the Yato..."

"...and furthermore," Therese realized. "It's awfully strange to be attacked by assassins sent by Takumi...in the middle of a neutral power...in public...and Garon, their target, is nowhere to be seen. Just after he suffered a pain that hinted at his true identity..."

Azura caught on. "...why would he?", she asked. "If he discovered Nohr was led by a ghost of one of history's worst monsters, he'd crow it from the rooftops. Maybe help get Nohrians to defect..."

"...Azura," Camilla began, gently. "Do you know what an akuma is?"

"...no?"

"Oh dear..." Camilla inhaled. "Sister...we Infernals were not the first time the Yozis learned to transform Exaltations to match them. We are, in fact, the end stage of a long process of experimentation on living Exalted, finishing by changing the nature of our Third Souls to match those of the Titans. Except to change a living Exalted, one must first have permission - in the form of deals with the Yozis. The traditional one being a piece of their free will for the power of demons - and leaving in hooks to entice the subject further..."

Azura paled, beginning to understand. "...no..."

"Tell me - has he ever felt he needed power quickly? And later displayed strange Charms?"

"I mean...he became very stealthy a year ago - learned to cancel sound in his nearby vicinity, but - but nothing large..."

"That just means he was cautious - akuma who retain some self-will usually are." She grimaced. "But if, say, he needed power to hunt down a traitor, and fast...sooner or later, you cease to be you, and more akin to a Demon King's idea of you."

That was when Therese held up her hand. "Just one thing, though; the Neverborn want to merge all of Creation and the Underworld into one great shadowland. A bit of a step up from the bad old days of trying to feed Creation to Oblivion so they could finish dying, but they want something that is fundamentally incompatible with the Yozis, who desire to return Creation to the Time Before Gods, when the dead could not so easily walk. Why would they be coordinating agents, assuming that's what you're getting at?"

Leo hummed. "...who says it has to be the Primordials? Elemental undead...that is something very new...something that might agree with the goals of both."

"Maybe. But..." Elise rubbed her forehead. "What are we supposed to do? It's not like everyone in Nohr is going to believe 'hey everyone, our father is now a meat puppet controlled by one of history's greatest monsters'..."

Azura looked up. "...Actually...I think I might have an idea. Issue is - we still need to win this war first."

She did not look happy with her own suggestion.

"...I'm sorry, what?", Therese said. "...Did I hear you correctly? Because it sounds to me like-"

"I am being serious." Azura inhaled. "Though I wish I wasn't..."

Elise gawked, before her expression turned furious. "Er...Azura, aren't we talking about how to stop whatever he's up to!? Not directly facilitating things!?"

The songstress continued with a grim look. "Elise, Theresia - I want to ask you something honest. What will an open insurrection in the here and now succeed at?"

Theresia immediately opened up her mouth to protest -

...and upon having a flurry of reasons pop up into her head as to why that could be, said reasons were immediately shot down by the cold hard truth of it.

Nohr was divided. Between those who seek to change the corrupt institutions of the new order before it had a chance to set in as rot, and between said rot that Merak was able to slot himself into pretending to be Garon so effectively even his own children didn't notice. It was almost comically apt that a ghost made of of hatred, malice, and the sheer refusal to let go of what once was his, possessed a walking corpse with nary and understanding or care to remember basic humanity, but it almost made sense why it was that such a being would be willing to hire a scheming sociopath and a serial killer as his preferred entourage. But it hurt. It hurt because it made Theresia immediately ask herself if an open insurrection could be done... before the small, logical part of her brain made it clear:

Could it even work?

Garon had the blessings of the Rainbow Sage (thanks in no small part due to Therese herself), and the second they actively attempted overthrowing the king, it ends up becoming a matter of do or die - succeed, or die trying. But Theresia knew that they were the only ones who could disrupt this cycle, and if they fell, Hoshido and Nohr would both fall, one by sword and another through rule by a man who was mad even before death boiled away all but his egotism and ruthlessness, and whatever mysterious backer would be free to work their malevolent intentions. The reality began to sit in that it was a matter of doing what they could have rather than what they were able to... and with that, the reality set in.

They needed to expose this ghost of the past to save more lives than not.

Theresia mumbled half-heartedly, distraught at the implications. "...Does that mean... we have to let so many people die?"

"We can only try not to," the songstress grimaced further. "It's imperative that as few lives are lost from this as possible... But we need to act, and to act, we need to sabotage Nohr's forces from within as much as offer false pretenses of guidance and "support". And to ensure it, the Iron Lotus must be known to the world, to prevent him from infiltrating the royal family of any nation again - because he is a ghost of hatred. We kill his body, he will simply reform himself in the Underworld and wait for his new day with infinite patience."

"Or," Leo cut in. "Sister tracks him down and forced him into Lethe-"

"Leo, that won't stop this mess. It'll only make things worse," Azura spoke calmly, tapping her staff. "We will be regarded as usurpers by half of the nation, and it'll split into a succession crisis without any designated heir, and that'll worsen the bloodshed overall. Unless we show that Garon was long dead by the time we destroyed him, neither Hoshido or half of Nor will listen to our overtures for peace unless we show this war was based on false premises. Not doing so means that rather than an ending, it will set up the stage for the war getting so much worse, one that is liable to devastate both the Blessed Isle and our respective homelands." Her gaze turned harsh. "...And need I bring up how none of this solves the issue of Half-Souls, and a force that seems to have won the favor of both the living and dead Primordials? Need I remind you, Theresia, what that speaks of the kind of attitude towards humanity, the prey of the Titans' world, that implies?"

Therese looked away, ashamed.

What truly struck at her the situation wasn't the emotion in Azura's voice. She was pained.

It was how much she was angry, for they were running out of time.

If things don't improve now, Theresia grimaced in silence. Then so many people would die... because I thought I could fix things in Nohr myself...

...no. It didn't eliminate why she went back. She merely co-opted that motivation to save people after the opportunities presented itself. She went back for a selfish reason; she refused to harm her family who loved her even if it was "right," as it was an unacceptable emotional end to her. She wanted to break this cycle. And all things came to as a result was reality smacking her upright, perhaps for the delusions of grandeur Celestials were known for.

No, it's not that, she thought. It's because I was too weak to wish to turn against my loved ones.

But was it really weakness to be turned into a sword for your family, to try to break of the chains of a horrific regime?

Theresia could not find an answer yet. That pained her.

But she knew what most certainly needed to be done.

Theresia took a deep breath. "...Azura. What's your plan?"

Elise squeaked. "Sister?!"

"You think I want this? Thousands will die because of us... but thousands more will die if we try to cut the serpent's head, and tens of thousands more if we fail at even that," Theresia spoke grimly, before sighing. "You all know as well as I do that almost nobody else in Nohr knows of this deception, but they're split. Nohr is already only coursing through a war it does not want, as a puppet of a higher power that seeks to conquer and destroy. And the only way we can work against this is by working against the clock - I hate that this has to be done, but Azura's right - this goes beyond simply staging insurrection, we threaten bedlam every second we allow them to go unperturbed and even millisecond we pose a risk to Creation's safety. I ask for whatever gods exist for the strength for this, because I can't do it alone. Especially against my own bloodline."

Theresia froze, and looked down. "And... I'm prepared for them to hate me, if this is what needs to be done."

Everyone knew Theresia was lying when she said that, evidenced by her tears.

A long pause later, Camilla grimace.

"What about you, Azura?", a very tentative Camilla cut in, stepping between the two. "What will you do when the Hoshidans turn their ire upon you, sister? The woman who could have stopped this war, but continued it for "the sake of the many"? Even if it's what ultimately is our best recourse of action, there's no easy agreement for which anyone could swallow this."

Now it was Azura's turn to look guilty. "...then I will accept their judgement. What I am planning - it is more than cruel. It is blasphemous. I plan to trick him into defiling atop sacred treasure - because it would go beyond exposing a false pretender, it would expose a malignant phantom of the past. And only by unshackling a false pretender can we end this, with as few casualties as is feasible."

"And if he knows what this treasure is?", Xander said, frowning. "If he knows to stay away?"

"...then we engage with him to strike him down, and accept judgement," Azura said, bitterly. "I wish I could afford a better plan than this."

Azura said nothing, as if passively acknowledging how much this hurt.

There was a long silence, before Xander sighed.

"...explain your plan. And then we will explain it to Kaze and Mozu." Xander spoke, grimly. "It is their country we are sacrificing in this gambit against time, and any provisions we should acquire to sabotage Garon's war effort would be crucial to this as well."

---

Most of the common soldiery weren't informed of "Garon's" true nature, of course. While Therese trusted her siblings, Kaze, Mozu, and the Eseon escort enough to keep a secret, that was already pushing it with how many people knew it.

Plus, for right now, the plan was the same - to establish sovereignty over the Blessed Isle, and to claim the Throne of Natures from Hoshido as a spoil of war and sign of submission. Adding incredible insult to injury, yes; the Throne was a royal heirloom, a promise by its Sidereal makers that when Hoshido ruled the Blessed Isle, they would do so in honesty; it would revert whoever sat in it to their most basic state of existence.

Which, hypothetically, would mean that a ghost would also be forced from a transmuted state back into the base form of a free-floating higher soul in a physical body of necrotic Essence - transmutated states like what nemessaries did to themselves to puppet corpses. If Merak was anything like what the history of the Scarlet Realm said he was, he would be all too eager to showcase his power, and so force him out of Garon's body in public, which would allow the Nohrians to crown Xander and sue for peace in a way both Hoshidans and Nohrians would accept.

...which was assuming that he didn't know what that Throne was. That was a risk, but Therese knew her ghosts; he'd be tempted if he had his ego slathered enough to be convinced it was the prime way to show his power. And then him refusing to take it up even after he demanded it would be suspicious. Hence, why Lilith was no working overtime as unofficial spymaster, having used her silverwrights to find anyone among Iago's loyalists who could be paid into being an agent, all to watch in case Iago or Garon found out and it would be time to flee the Isle. But it was the best plan in the short term.

Relatively short term.

Because there was still a war to be won, and that involved battles in the future.

Including against one backstabbing ostensible ally who was...infinitely overconfident.

"And so," Saizo said, as Kotaro of Mokushu fell. "I owe you a debt, twice over. Do not waste it, Your Serenity."

"How did that even become a title for princesses, anyway..." Therese muttered. "But I sincerely thank you. If I had known what Kotaro did to the windwalkers, I would have never considered meeting with him."

The newest addition to the officer corps coughed.

"I had already stopped considering when I learned of Kohga from Shura, admittedly," she corrected. "Koghans are natives of the Isle, so that was an especially low action - we are colonists who seek to command the seat of the Realm, but this is their home. But I didn't want to start a diplomatic incident until I realized he was already eyeing the small of my back, knife in hand..."

"Mm. I respect your sense of honor, if little else," Saizo admitted. "But do not make this thinks us friends."

"I won't insult you and claim we are," she said. "You can take Kagero home; she has no part of this...feud..."

Her brow furrowed, as she remembered the other half of this mystery.

"...actually. With one of those favors...can I ask you and Kagero to take back a message to the Karals - discreetly? Because there is something...strange about Takumi these days. And I think they ought to know..."

---

Hinoka's reaction to the message was what Kagero had expected, really.

Complete disbelief, bemused laughter - and then the slowly dawning horror as her own education in the various kinds of true Anathema in the world, long learned when she had spent a couple years training with the Wyld Hunt, came back to her, and she remembered certain noteworthy symptoms of an akuma.

"...That's..." The elder of the two princesses swallowed. "That's ridiculous. Takumi - he's...he's wiser than that..."

"Is he?", Saizo said. "One of the things you learn as a ninja is that Lotus Bulb Commerce - my apologies, selling parts of your persona to various demons as stand-ins for the Yozis - is an evergreen temptation, precisely because one can indulge and come out ahead, if lucky and careful. The ability to cancel noise is such a small gift that it probably wouldn't affect Takumi's mind at all..."

"Um," Sakura said, stepping forward. "I hate to interrupt, but how? The very reason we haven't needed to stamp out akuma among Exalted ninjas is proof the knowledge isn't that common..."

"It isn't," Saizo confirmed. "We deliberately destroy knowledge of how to do it personally beyond needed materials for rituals or symptoms, so as to find the Devil-Eaten ourselves. But we don't kid ourselves; some ninjas have indeed indulged in controlled Commerce when there was a long-term ability we could not have. As often as not, that leads to a path that can only end in a Wyld Hunt, or remaining still long enough to be put out of their misery..."

Sakura blanched. "...Did I...hear that right...?"

"Sadly," Kagero cut in. "In fact, the horror of being akuma is that you don't notice your will isn't entirely your own at first. When too much of your soul belongs to the Demon Kings, they don't speak to you directly. They aren't just spirits but the worlds in which they dwell, grass and wind and wave. So instead, they overtake perceptions - you end up only seeing the worlds they are, and thinking as a resident would - in other words, your mentality becomes that of a demon. Still recognizably yourself, but thinking of nothing except what purpose your patron Yozi has in mind for you. And you don't notice - as far as you understand, the world has always been thus."

"So, his migraines aren't a sign of him being possessed? Because he notices them?", Sakura pressed, hopefully.

"...Akumas aren't possessed, sister," Hinoka admitted. "With every bit of soul the Yozis have laid claim to, the less subtle they are. Every akuma is a valuable resource to them, not just an agent that can't help but be loyal, but they also feel an akuma's senses as well - a taste of freedom from Hell, and even that soothes their frustration and pain greatly. The more of their own world-selves invades an akuma's mind, the more aware they are of the Devil-Eaten's senses, and so they dispense with subtlety as soon as they can to see and hear what the akuma does."

"And like someone suddenly turned upside-down, migraines are a symptom of the sudden change in perception," Saizo confirmed. "The akuma still doesn't notice, but migraines are a danger sign; enough perceptions have been corrupted to start inserting the impulse to indulge in more Commerce without needing a tempter. Just to see things that one could become a little stronger for a small price, that you've gained control of it..."

"And then once they have enough, they stop needing to hide the more demonic parts of themselves," Kagero finished. "The akuma starts seeing nothing that the Yozis do not want them to see, hears nothing the Yozis do not want them to hear, and does not even know what they touch if the Yozis do not permit it. It's easy for them to start introducing their ideals, by simply having the Devil-Eaten come up with the beliefs the Yozis have. Surrounded by otherworldly madness that seems entirely natural, to come to adapt to what the world tells you is simply proof you are still sane."

There was a long pause.

"But it's...even if you're right, it's still Takumi under there!", Hinoka said, desperately. "He's still our brother, even if he thinks he's, I don't know, The Archer of Glass and Something-Or-Other!"

"And...that is why I didn't forget my promise," Kagero said, grimly pulling out a letter. "Because I figured that Therese would only drop a favor if she was genuinely frightened of something...and I have my suspicions of what it is."

Dreading, Hinoka opened it, showing it to Sakura.

My Dearest Friend Karal Takumi,

I continue to be incredibly greatful for both you and Vizier Iago's continued patronage. Your assistance in drawing away Archduke Izana while I continued my humble masquerade as His Excellency is beyond all possible favors for me to repay, my lord. I am humbled by the scope of the task I have to even begin to repay your infinite magnanimity.

Your brother is safely within custody, and the trap we have set will eliminate the traitor to both our royal families' easily. Enclosed within is some needed troop movements for you to be 'captured' and in the proper position to strike the cowardly necrophile down. With that, we may hopefully end this false-blooded whore in a single decapitation strike.

I remain in your debt.

- Captain-Mystic Zola

And beneath that was an incredibly detailed plan.

"Odd," Saizo began. "It seems our Nohr-hater seems awfully willing to treat with someone who appears to lick the boots of Garon's supposed right hand for peace. Almost as if he didn't comprehend who he was working with. Or that working with someone you hate utterly to destroy a mutual enemy before beginning your own intrigues was so reasonable an idea he did not see how much cognitive dissonance it carried."

And that settled it. For Takumi was many things, but a hypocrite he was not. That was a betrayal of his very Essence - no matter how much of it wasn't his anymore.

Hinoka buried her head in her hands.

---

"Remind me," Keaton growled as the illusion before him shattered. "What. The hell. Did you see in those two walking slabs of spoiled meat!?"

"I didn't elevate Iago or Zola!", Xander shot back. "Father did! We've always despised them!"

"Excellent! That means I can get creative with the two of them!"

And the negotiations with the Kitsune were going so well. The illusionist beastfolk were understandably skeptical of Nohrians using their village as a stopping point to the main Hoshidan colonies - but they weren't hostile about it. And after Therese received a hurried sorcerous message to avoid Izumo due to the plot against her, it seemed that, for once, a battle might be avoided.

Iago, however, had different plans.

One explosion of some hedge magic that had to have been placed in the Kitsune village in advance and Kaden, the leader, came to the conclusion that this was her plan. That Iago almost certainly read the reports of the "logistics issues" that forced the forces led by the royals to take an alternate route was an explanation that fell on deaf ears.

So now they were facing an entire village's worth of trained militia who were also Wyld-touched demihumans, a local pantheon of gods, and entirely too many illusions.

This honestly wasn't something that would be difficult, if anyone actually wanted to kill the Kitsune, instead of Iago and Zola. So instead, they were fighting an extremely mobile, and tricky guerrilla force, and they couldn't engage in the sweep-and-clear that would be able to easily get the Kitsune.

So they were fighting defensively at best, with the foxfolk stalking them through the shifting world as their gods and elementals pounded on them directly. Fight the spirit, leave yourself open for a swipe from Kitsune. Try to decode where the Kitsune was, the spirits would continue pounding upon direct defenses. Keaton, thankfully, was able to smell the real Kitsune, as were Therese, Xander, and the other Lunars, but there wasn't that many of them, and Kaden quickly adapted his tactics, the Kitsune chief going to trying to overwhelm them with multiple Kitsune, some of which were decoys, and leaving his fur in hidden spots that ambushes would work - a very good discount red herring.

"Please listen to us!", Therese called, the halos of White Reaper swirling around her as she carefully conserved what few victories against the elementals she had. "We are all but in a civil war with the forces that set that bomb! Even if it was me, don't you think someone like me would send ghosts and undead against you?"

"If it is a civil war, then that makes capturing you an even better option!", Kaden's illusions barked back. "Then we can sue for peace with you as a hostage! Or a bounty!"

"...Dammit, fair!", she barked back, raising her soulsteel ring as she focused on a spell. "Fair warning, I can't hold this back once I prepare! Brace yourselves, this is going to-"

And that's when what appeared to be a giant gravehound - a breed of sighthound bred by the mourners Sijan to be able to channel the spirits of the dead - made of words in Old Realm rushed past her, trailing stanzas in its wake, tackling the air - which made a distinct vulpine yelp - next to her.

"What the-AGH!" Kaden's own invisibility dropped as an explosion of water detonated near him. A pair of shapes descended from the trees, a smaller one which quickly shifted into a linnorm with fur to tackle away a god, and a red-cloaked one that took the moment to grab Kaden from behind, hood dropping-

"Hey! Listen to me, you discount dogs!", Velouria barked. "Lay one more of your overly-preened excuses for claws on my mother or father again, and I cut your leader's throat! Back off!"

Relief shot through Therese as she recognized her daughter-

Wait.

Daughter!?

And why was she now sure the other form was her son?

Who, speaking of, was now tackle-hugging her-

"Mama!", the Wolfskin boy she should not be hugging back and she should not know she named Kana murmured, "Gods and dragons...I missed you..."

Keaton, if anything, looked even more confused. "Mama? Father? What the-"

"They don't remember," a third figure said, another cloak in a far more encompassing mantle than Velouria's. "I warned you. We shouldn't even be born yet..."

"Yeah, I know. I wouldn't have this on my head if reality wasn't altered before we were born..." Velouria said, sadly, before looking up, revealing a face that quite resembled Keaton's in shape, obviously thinking about what she would say next, and an Exaltation mark that none there had ever seen before.

A second later, she gave up. "Hey Daddy. I'm your daughter from an erased future."

...

WHAT.

---

"Eseon. It's always Eseon. I wish I could be surprised that apparently, the forest eats causality as well." Leo groaned, clutching his head. "I am going to build a dome around that place..."

"If it makes you feel better, Uncle Leo," Kana said, sympathetically. "It wasn't quite Eseon. It was a warp of the Loom of Fate caused by...something. Even Big Sis isn't sure what."

"Yes, but you apparently were able to time travel with the help of that place. That is literally one of the Three True Impossibilities. No complete resurrection, no immortality without a cost, and you cannot travel to the past." Leo moaned. "Should I survive this war, I am going to write a book. And then promptly retire from life."

Kaden, apparently suffering nearly as big of a migraine as the brand-new parents of a late teenager and younger brother, had finally listened to reason...mostly because of the angry Hound of the Five Winds and the undead army the trio had brought with them glaring at the village.

Which gave the Nohrians plenty of time to discover exactly what new spoor of madness they had found.

"So, to recap," Therese began, rubbing her forehead. "When we were in the forest of Eseon, we were being watched by Merak's backer..."

"More or less, Mom," Velouria replied. "Those Pearl Legionnaires - what you call the Half-Souled? They are made by a minor tear in the Loom. A seam in physics, if you will - the elemental energy that powers them provides actual motility and intelligence, but the only reason elemental Essence of Creation can give bodies undeath is due to a deliberate fraying of how Creation's internal logic is supposed to work. Which is why they all seem only partly real - they are unliving cracks in reality. Sort of like me, except I'm alive, and I'm my own prosthetic for reality."

To emphasize her point, she showed off a cut she had sustained from Kaden - and the tiny little mechanical spiders perched on its ragged edges, curiously observing the people in the room with their host as they knit her flesh back together.

"...do those..hurt?" Elise asked, blanching slightly.

"Not at all. They're simply Pattern Spiders, just like the gods who maintain the Loom - except these live in my bones. I am effectively a living backup Loom, with whatever faults my existence creates being repaired by me - which makes freeing everyone from the Deeprealms much easier, I can assure you. I just need to incorporate their existences into the patches."

"Right. You're a...Getimian Exalted." Camilla paused. "For the love of the Moon and Dragons, how many Exalted types are there?"

"Hey, there's only 64 of Getimian Third Souls - and gods aren't as willing to break Fate 'cuz it's convenient anymore, so there isn't need of them!", Kana chimed in. "But really, it's not fun - because in a sense, our world...never existed."

Therese could feel a headache coming on. "Explain, dear ones?"

"And Daddy wonders where I got the sharp tongue," Velouria replied. "Right then, so, occasionally, the gods - including what I think are the source of the Pearls - see a destiny in the Loom they can't tolerate. A prophecy that leads to their ruin, or less success, or often enough because it impedes their political ambitions in the Celestial Bureaucracy. And so, they decide to avert it not through effort in the mundane world, but to cut the potential for that future free. Except that's an incredibly unnatural warp in the Loom, more so than things like briefly falling up or a demon escaping Hell without summoning. It is declaring what was possible, and probable, to be something that can't happen, and that...distorts the world, creating a sort of 'pocket Creation.' One that resolves the paradox of being something that is both something that can't happen, but also something that could definitionally happen enough to be erased from time, by happening in a parallel world while the true timeline continues anon. That world of abandoned destiny is an Astral Deeprealm, since they manifest as bubbles in the stars."

"Lemme tell you, being in one sucks," Kana said, grimacing. "They're not supposed to exist, so they end up gradually blowing themselves up, 'cause they don't have a real Loom of Fate to keep everything together - just what was thrown out to make 'em. Things can be nice in one, peaceful - but sooner or later, they just...die. Start running out of time, and the Wyld starts eatin' them because numbers don't work anymore."

Therese felt her heart jump into her throat. "So...every time someone makes a decision-"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Velouria said, holding up a hand. "I've had enough existential angst to last my extended lifetime. They're only caused by breaking the Loom badly - most don't even have life in them, because the destiny exiled to make them was something that didn't change Creation all that much, and so people who would have been born in the exiled timeline are few and far between; the fewer people were made impossibilities, the less likely it's anything other than an interesting feature of the sky, because there's just not enough remnants of Fate to support life at all. But mine? Well, let's start with how you had kids - and that I remember something called the Hoshidan Civil War between Emperor Ryoma and the Emerald Daimyo Takumi."

"...oh." Leo blinked. "That is...definitely not a thing that happened in my timeline."

"Nope. And that's why you were forced to flee the Blessed Isle, and then you had us, Mama," Kana continued, before looking sad. "You...you sacrificed yourself to save us from Takumi's pet Wyld Hunt, when he declared all of Nohr Anathema..."

"...he did what," Camilla said, the "barely concealed rage" smile plastering itself on her face.

"Hopefully something that never has the chance to happen," Velouria replied. "But the point is, while my birth was probable, it was also part of the destiny that was forcefully removed, because otherwise you'd have to change tactics to take care of your pregnancy, making it more likely Ryoma would gain control of the Blessed Isle. So, by all rights, a conception that could have happened was declared impossible, and so it did in the Deeprealm."

"...This conception, of course," Leo said with the world's largest stinkeye to the Wolfskin bleeding in the corner. "Was in the Eseon."

Keaton groaned defiantly to one half of the siblings that had beaten him senseless, to which Camilla (the other half) sniffed.

"If you are going to try and defend yourself for deflowering my sister," Camilla replied, rage-smile never leaving her face. "I would appreciate it if your protection was literally anything other than your child out of wedlock being erased from time."

"Hey, don't blame him!", Therese shot back in defense of her lover. "We were camped in an area overflowing with elemental Wood Essence! You know, the element of life and procreation? Even the rubbing of my breasts against my armor was...exciting!"

"And noisy," Lilith cut in. "Did you know how much I had to shape the Wyld of that grove so that other fae wouldn't find the trail you and Keaton-"

"Can we please get back to the story before I hear any more about how my sister was made!?", Kana cut in desperately.

"Please!", an equally red-faced Velouria cut in. "Point is, I never existed in the core timeline - but I did learn well. Helped organize a kingdom of Wolfskins and Kitsune by moderating between both sides - which is why I suddenly woke up one day in Eseon, with my bones made of Pattern Spiders and before I should have been born, because Getimian Exaltations look for mortal heroes in the Deeprealms to merge back into the core timeline. The Sidereals found me, thankfully - explained what had happened. That I was apparently a phantom of a stillborn world, that suddenly quickened back to life, and now found myself charged with merging my world with the real Creation"

"And later, she helped me get back to the core!", Kana said. "We think that's why she was able to time travel - once, back to Eseon. Because the Deeprealm we're from is dying, and so given how Eseon already twists time within it, she was able to pull things from the dead Deeprealm future into the live Creation present there," Kana said. "...or that's how she explained it..."

"I know, it's confusing," she agreed. "Point is - there's something with the power of a god that is wrecking causality itself, and I was reborn into Creation as a part of it. And I think you need our help."

Therese nodded. "And...those memories. Those are from the Deeprealm version of me, right?"

"They are," Velouria said, smiling. "And you have no idea how much of a relief it is to know it works - and that Mom still exists in some way..."

"I can only begin to imagine how sad that is," Elise said, looking away. "To see so many familiar people, who don't know you..."

"Eh, our Deeprealm was kinda crud," Kana said. "But...can we join?"

"...one question," Leo said. "...can you time travel again, or is it just pulling people from the Deeprealm, and you're stuck here in the present with the rest of us?"

"The latter," Velouria replied. "And thank all the Incarna for that..."

"Fully agreed, niece," Leo agreed.

And then turned towards his sister. "But now...I want to make this clear. I like Keaton, but...you've only known him for, what, two, three-"

Kana giggled.

"Excuse me?", Leo said, irate. "Forgive me for trying to prevent losing this war and a chance to avoid any devastation in your own timeline by preventing a third sibling from causing morning sickness at an inoppertune-"

"Oh, it's not that," Velouria agreed. "It's just...well..."

She knocked on the door. "You can come in now!"

The cloaked figure from before did, almost hesitantly, with Nyx-

Wait, Nyx?

...And why was she blushing?

"Are...are you sure that's-" the figure began.

"No better time," Kana said, grinning. "You were made in Eseon too."

The figure sighed, pulling down his cloak-

For a moment, Therese wondered if he was just a deep-voiced girl, given how he resembled nothing so much as Elise with a large amount of curls.

Then she noticed a nose and ears similar to Leo, the curled hair was as black as Nyx's, and a slight red tinge to his eyes plus slightly enlarged canids, the mark of a Ghost-Blooded - a child of the living and an undead being.

Leo noticed it all too. "F....Forrest...?"

"Um...yes," he said, shyly. "Hello father. I...I wish I could make this less awkward..."

That's when Therese remembered - Leo and Nyx were both on that journey into the Eseon. And they stayed in that safe haven too.

Keaton, naturally, was the first to remark, having recovered enough.

"Ssso..." He laughed. "Does this mean you prefer older or younger women, your highness?"

Behind them, Lilith sighed. "Oh thank Balor. Now that that particular vow to secrecy is null and void - Nyx, Leo, I would like to extend my complaints about having to keep your privacy because of Bethan lechery..."

---

"It is not the same, I knew her for months before you ever even saw a Wolfskin-"

"One and a half months," Therese shot back, smirking vindictively. "I asked Jakob to count."

"Um, can this wait?" Forrest cut in. "Beyond how embarrassing it is...maybe it's not good to bicker in front of a general we're trying to impress...?"

Fuga, chief of the windwalker detachment guarding Pasiap's Stair, Sidereal Chosen of Battles, and from Kaze's notes effectively the most important chieftain of the wider culture currently alive, watched the whole bit of sordid relationship drama (temporal paradox edition) play out from over his shoulder with an impassive expression.

"Ahem!" Leo smoothed himself over. "That aside - Forrest, you wanted to explain what you know of the Half-Souls - er, the Pearl Legion?"

"Honestly, I think Half-Soul might be a better name for them," the Ghost-Blood said, tapping his hands together in thought. "They're...patchwork. And more than that, almost deliberately ugly. I had to use my abilities as a seamster mostly for practical purposes in my Deeprealm, but I tried to keep the patches matching - comfortable, if more ergonomic than fashionable. But thanks to Mother's blood in me, I can see how their animal souls were stitched to elementals - made to clash. Like the two sides, the power and instincts of the human not meshing well with the Essence and nature of the elemental is what agonizes the flesh into moving by ripping apart Fate. Each half not truly being a part of the other, and because of that, we have a monster has the skill of a human, but feels nothing except for a desire to stop the pain caused by constantly being tangled in the Loom..."

"Which makes them ideal soldiers for a commander that does not care about them, because they aren't like normal zombies - they aren't bits of instinct left over from the animal soul working off of hunger," Therese finished. "...Which leads to the problem, because this all sounds...massively resource intensive. Even before one gets into high sorcery, even a hedge necromancer can program skill into a zombie, given time; the remnants of a lower soul are intelligent enough to be trained for much cheaper than forcefully binding an elemental to a whole animal soul."

Fuga paused in the ascent up the hewn stairs that gave the mountain its name, to the old Realm battle school where he planned for everyone to demonstrate their true nature in controlled combat. "...Hm." He fully turned around. "...You said they seemed only partly real, correct? My fellows in the Five-Score Fellowship have records of things likewise meant to be wounds in Fate. Part of why I am even considering remaining neutral."

"Why, yes. It's honestly a rather spectacular effect, it inspired me to make some rather nice veils and camouflage patterns."

"I see..." He crossed his arms, thinking.

"...did you ever know," he finally began after a long second. "That the Dawn Dragon once called forth an army of ancestors?"

That was interesting. "Wait, the Dragon of Growing Trees was a deathmage?"

"Not quite," Mozu said, having caught up to the rest. "If I remember right, she willed elementals to join bodies of fallen soldiers to stand against the Demon Prince Munaxes, the Ravine of Whispers, when the sohei Kyodai summoned her to punish the Karals for betraying the memory of Lookshy by changing the laws to forbid helots. Since she was able to trap all that could be known and spoken within her rift-body, so the Dawn Dragon realized she needed a power that was partly unknowable to anyone to avoid her absorbing spoken words of the ritual needed to banish her - somewhere between Creation and what Is Not. So she bound the bodies of twelve willing mortal champions to twelve elementals, drawing on the conflict between the normal and Dead Elements to crack open Fate, becoming something often described as 'half-real.' Sounds familiar?"

That got Leo's attention. "You think this might be similar?"

"The lower soul by itself is far more bestial, and far less tactical, than the Twelve Undying Samurai, I would think," Fuga said. "But if you only wanted them for wetwork and hunting down mortals..."

"So...that's good," Therese said. "We know that there is a technique to do so, and you have studied it - we might be able to save both nations, and get you home earlier with none of your countrymen-"

"I wasn't finished," Fuga interrupted. "There is...something you must know about the Twelve...the reason I am so cautious of the Yato, and what her family's weapons can do in the wrong hands..."

Kaze finished the sentence. "The records of the windwalkers show each bore soulsteel weapons. Normally, only Celestial Exalted can coax a Celestial Exalted level of power out of them. However, the Twelve were made in mind to confront one of the most abstract Demon Princes in Hell on her level, so the Dawn Dragon came up with an elegant solution that both allowed that and for the sentient ghosts of the Twelve to guide their bodies' actions - making sure each soulsteel weapon contained the soul of the Samurai whose body used it."

"And now that we know it wasn't a metaphor - there is a common symptom of a Half-Soul wielding the blades that contain who they used to be," Fuga finished, grimly. "Tell me - that first daiklave, Ganglari. Did you not lose your attunement to it when that Half-Soul stole it?"

"I did, but-" She paled. "...Oh. Oh no. Do not say...what I think you are about to..."

"I wish I could comply, young princess. The soulsteel that contains the ghosts of the undead who wield them instinctively seek being reunited with their bodies. And if someone found a way to suppress the effects said Artifacts have on their mindless bodies..."

Leo caught on. "...that monster."

Mozu looked understandably lost. "Um, I might be dumb, but, why is that an..."

"Because that assassin plot required the thief and assassin to be both intimately familiar with the Hoshidan colony's layout, knew the queen enough to ambush her, and was able to snatch attunement," Kaze finished. "Like, for example, the sword was once someone who lived there."

Mozu realized. "...Sol, father of the Heavens..."

Therese gave a disbelieving laugh. "All this time...I was wondering who Sumeragi was. My blood father, and in comparison to Merak, by true one. Turns out I was playing with him as sword practice."

---

While overcoming Fuga's challenge earned them the right to use Pasiap's Stair as a base to refuel airships, there was still a massive problem at Fort Jinya, the first major chokepoint on the way to the Imperial City.

Literally.

"So that's a warstrider," an awed Therese said. "It's bigger than a mammoth..."

"Mammoth? Try yeddim," an awed Camilla rejoined. "How do you make something that big move so much like a person...?"

While the third princess of Nohr would have to default to her brother's knowledge in the situation, she never having seen the enormous Eastern-native bovines, she had to admit she kind of wanted to now, given how the warstrider would have been easily confused with a national monument if it wasn't moving around, eye-lanterns on in a bright glow as it searched for possible enemies. At their core, warstriders were Gunzosha; a mystical suit of armor with mechanical gyros meant to provide its wearer with both mechanically enhanced strength and battle magic drawn from itself.

Except warstriders provided size as well - because they were more vehicle than armor, more automaton than simple protection. Namely, the smallest warstrider was supposedly twenty-five feet tall. This one had to be twice that height, at least, and what little could be seen of its form in its own lights showed it gleaming with white jade where it wasn't pure steel.

"Behold, Sagacious Killer of the Unknowable. Yukimura's pet project," Kaze said, peering at it through his binoculars. "Prototype for as close as you can get to mass-producing warstriders; it'd still take months to figure out what is possible but the core guts - the pilot harness, the interface systems, and the power core - those are all parts that have a standard template based on Hoshidan principles of thaumaturgic clockwork. He thinks it will be the predecessor to levels of industry and technology impossible since the First Age; the standardized core control system will also allow things like mass-produced agricultural vehicles, environmental suits, scaling down for prosthetics and mechanical enhancements...he's great with a pitch."

"Why is it here though?", Leo muttered. "They have no idea we're launching aerial assaults from the Stair - we didn't until Fuga gave us his challenge - and given the size of that thing, that's an anti-siege weapon. It can probably reach as high as an airship heading down for a bombing run..."

"For one, there's no viable way to get to the Imperial city that does not go through Jinya," Xander replied. "Stationing an anti-siege force here to take out the army, or at least a significant portion, while the rest of the Hoshidans reinforce the second and third makes sense, especially because - well, I'm only going to be planning to disable that, not destroy it. I have no shame in admitting I want it. Which means that it can either retreat if things go south, or be retrieved later if captured - I doubt we have time to restore functioning and figure out how to pilot it before the war ends."

"And given it's Yukimura's? He's probably driving it," Elise finished. "Probably wants to show it off in a situation that isn't too risky to it. But..." She frowned. "If that thing can his people up here...why's he not searching the sky?"

"Like Lord Xander said - he's not expecting a strike from above." Azura frowned. "But that means he's out here for a different reason - he's not one for attrition tactics, but frankly, not having a first line of defense to bloody us from ambushes not only isn't his style, it's dumb - he only shows overwhelming force in a situation he thinks the enemy is already demoralized in. Provoke a surrender or rout..."

"Hm..." Velouria took the binoculars. "On the one hand, I can see why he doesn't want something the size of a watchtower running through the Imperial City streets, and possibly, over the Imperial City, and that's before you even get into what's on its back - that looks suspiciously like a lightning ballista. Might cause some nice fires in the jewel of the colonies even if you hit. On the other hand, the next fort is Suzanoh. That is literally a wall - plenty of open fields to fight in..."

There was a long pause before Camilla cleared her throat. "Say. Didn't we overhear that Iago's detachment was also marching here? And didn't our agents tell us they were excited about a high-value target - joking about a two-for-one deal on weakling aristocrats?"

There was a pause while the others processed what Beruka and Peri had overheard.

And which particular family of aristocrats would provoke that joke, given the fact that their second mother was, in fact, Therese's biological one.

"...Please let us have an excuse for an 'accident' soon," Therese muttered to whatever god would hear them. "Xander, I humbly request that you give the order to warn everyone that there's a Karal in that fort and we need to conquer it before Iago has an excuse to sic Hans on everyone?"

"Far ahead of you, little princess. Azura, Velouria, Elise, fly to Keaton, Charlotte, and Arthur, and inform them the situation has changed - and be honest we're trying to sabotage our would-be allies, I don't think anyone is particularly prone to camaraderie with Iago. Everyone else - it's a new moon tomorrow night. If Yukimura wishes to test his artifice's prowess against something of overwhelming strength, who are we to deny him? I'm debating between Octavian and Stanewald, both of those Demon Lords would be thrilled to test their powers over the ground against a warstrider."

"Is this a vote?", Camilla cut in. "Because, Leo I would prefer Stanewald. My dear sister and her paramour deserve a chance to show their worth in direct battle - and even beyond being a spotlight hog, Octavian is...obnoxious."

---

Somewhere in Mafeas, a ten-foot-tall ogre made of brown muscle with sweat that sizzled as it hit the ground roared, a sound like a volcano's eruption had an unhappy arranged marriage with a landslide and produced offspring raised by a thundercloud with a smoker's larynx. "OUT OF YOUR BURNING SANCTUARY, ALUEVA! COME AND FACE YOUR DESTINY, COWARD!"

A horned woman with red hair and skin that looked more like insectile chitin stumbled out of the front door of her smithy, a place where even the emerald light of Ligier the Green Sun could not penetrate the mantle of shadows in its grounds (though a lantern brought inside it could shine fine, much to her current displeasure), pulling a nightcap up out of her face. "WHAT!?"

"MY HONOR DEMANDS RECOMPENSE, WEAKLING CRAFTER! YOU HAVE MADE THE GREAT QUARTER PRINCE, BREAKER OF HEAVEN, AND EATER OF THE SUN, YOUR SWORN ENEMY FOR THE NEXT TEN ETERNITIES!" Octavian held up an insect which looked to be a cross between beetle, grasshopper, and spider with a surprisingly human expression currently looked rather woozy. "YOUR PALTRY SPAWN STOLE MY WINE!"

Alueva made a chittering growl of frustration, rubbing her temples to wake herself up. "It's a sessejela, Octavian. It needs to consume toxins to reproduce. You specifically asked me to forge one that would breed faster to create a medic corps for the 1842th Glorious Legion of the Earthcracker..."

"YES, BUT IT SHOULD KNOW ITS PATRON, AND THUS, CO-CREATOR! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW CLOSE I CAME TO NOT BEING ABLE TO SUPPLY A GLASS OF AGED BLOODWINE TO LUCIEN WHILE I NEGOTIATED THE TRANSFER OF PART OF HIS PUNY DOMAIN TO MYSELF AND THE EXACT SIZE OF MY VICTORIOUS STATUE WITHOUT RETURNING TO POUR OUT A CUP!? SUCH HUMILIATION! I DEMAND A NEW ONE!"

The Keeper of the Forge of Night briefly considered fetching her human-sized hammer rather than her coffee, but decided it was not worth the effort. It was bad enough to rebuild her smithy after the Bench Pressing The Anvil of Eternity Incident - that was Octavian in a good mood, and drunk on protein powder rather than concussed.

---

Sakura may have been the first prisoner ever to request to join the medical staff of her captors just after the same battle that led to her capture and becoming a hostage.

"You do realize you're trying to help heal people who are going to march against your country, yes?", a confused Leo asked from the other side of the bars.

"Well...yes. Yes I do." She looked up from the peacefully dozing Charlotte, having finished re-setting her arm bones from the borderline shattered state it had been in - the price paid for an ultimately successful gambit to distract Yukimura and divert his warstrider's lightning from Stanewald as she finished her Ninth Efficacious Dance, opening a short-lived volcanic geyser beneath him and knocking him over for the wyverns and other warbeasts to reach melee range. "But...I saw what you pulled with Iago. I know you were trying to stop him and that awful Exigent from finding an excuse to kill us."

Leo grinned victoriously. "For all his low cunning, the man is spineless. When we revealed we reported you were cooperating, along with the peaceful surrender of your remaining troops, he had to face the idea that he would need to admit to Garon and the noble families that he denied an effective strategy just to indulge in Hans' own psychopathy and his own bigotry. Garon might not have cared, but the nobles who despise Iago and want their family as vizier will lunge for any opportunity to humiliate and isolate his influence. He values his status more than his life itself, I think - it's how he's able to simulate bravery."

"...which is something I don't understand," Sakura admitted. "Why didn't Garon just belay that order and order Hans to execute us? I saw how he was sharpening his axe and looking at us...doesn't seem the sort to think that reputation is a bad thing, and I know you can communicate across distances."

"Because we are loyal children - and were able to phrase your capture as a hostage situation." Leo's expression turned devious. "For the record, we are now keeping you as a human shield, along with Yukimura - the Hoshidans know if they attack our base with any more of their wonder weapons, they risk getting you and one of their most brilliant minds in the crossfire. Then, we can supposedly install you as a puppet satrap of the Imperial Ciry after all this is done, and as a sign of our magnanimity, we will return you and the detachment to Hoshido after our victory. For legal reasons, you are being humiliated and mistreated, instead of being given...well, I won't lie and say you aren't a prisoner, but we are keeping you in a cell and chained to a wall instead of a barred room. Be sure to act appropriately terrified and meek."

"I see. And I thank you truly for that," she said with a polite smile. "You helped save a bunch of good people from your own country, and will likely have to deal with a loss of face at best if it becomes common knowledge you sabotaged the king's vizier."

"Honestly, not much loss - I suspect that people will be more prone to laugh at his misfortune," Leo snarked. "You don't win many lethal rivals as a yes man with your lips on the ass of the mighty, but it doesn't win you many friends either. And you should really be thanking Lilith. It's her network she had to pull the strings of in order to delay Iago's forces long enough for us to think of a good reason to make this airship a Hans-free zone."

"Regardless, I'm glad you did fight back with mercy and focusing on demolishing fortifications rather than kill us, regardless of the reason. And stopped a war crime. So I do not feel nearly as devastated by this loss as I probably should be." She politely bowed.

When she came up again, she frowned. "Though...I am curious. As to...why you seem to be hiding things from your father. Or...what used to be him..."

Leo did not react visibly at first. His silence was deafening.

"It is only a theory as yet among the ninjas," she continued. "There was a sudden change in his politics shortly after Elise was born...and it's not really unheard of, just rare..." She paused. "I mean, it's just me thinking aloud, it's not really offensive, is it, but I saw you talking about what you were gonna leave out and-"

"Oh thank Luna, there wasn't a leak," he said, dropping his poker face. "I'm surprised you went for...'imposter' as a possibility, admittedly."

"Wait, I was-ahem!" Sakura smoothed herself over. "Truth is, there's two reasons. One is that as...strange as your ideas of family are, I can't say Nohr doesn't understand the importance of filial piety. Or that your family is lacking in it. So if you're plotting against a parent - something truly dark must have happened."

Leo nodded. "Very astute. And the other one?"

"Because..." She sighed. "Takumi. I...I barely recognize him any more. The three of us haven't gone public with what Therese told us, but...every day, more of my brother is gone...I suppose I...I wanted to believe you knew what it was like, too..."

Leo took a few seconds to think of an answer. "As...sentimental as that impulse is...I think you deserve to know that you are correct. We share that much at least...our intrigue isn't aimed at patricide so much as helping what's left of Father finish dying, and perhaps retroactively clear his name to the extent we can..." He paused. "And I will erase your memory of it if our next step isn't to march to Camilla and make this a mystically sealed oath."

Sakura, who seemed honestly rather too fatigued to be properly shocked, nodded. "I can't blame you. And I won't ask more - I will keep this a secret, though. I'd ask why you aren't sabotaging the war - but then again, you started a rushed invasion of Jinya to sabotage Iago, so I'm going to guess you actually are. Just subtly."

"Rest assured, we have a plan - and if it doesn't work, that's when we start a civil war," Leo replied with a grimace. "I can assume you know why we're going for the plan that involves an invasion first...?"

Sakura's brow furrowed. "If you're looking to me for sympathy when it's my nation that is a pawn in your politics-"

"What? No! No no no no no!", Leo quickly corrected. "This is a confession, not a plead for forgiveness. When it comes down to it, it's not entirely Nohrian lives I'm wagering - all options are very bad. I just...I'm tired of this..."

"Mm." Sakura, mollified, leaned back on her chair.

"...what was he like?", she asked after a minute of silence.

"Eh?"

"What was the real Garon like?", she corrected. "I'm about the same age as Elise, so...I know even less of him than any of my elder siblings do..."

"Oh." It took Leo a long minute to answer that.

"I think...I think his problem wasn't the fact he was stern, or cold, or anything like that," he finally said. "He was all of those things, but he had them under control - he was a lot like Xander, and always was. I think it was the fact that he fell in love too easily..."

"...huh?"

"I know, it's an extremely bizarre critique. And to be frank, if I didn't recently discover that...well, I'll be honest, an impulsive tryst didn't result in a son I was physically incapable of being around to raise." He paused. "Or...well, this me. The me in his timeline was there, but regardless of what Therese thinks those memories aren't ones I made myself - ugh, let me start over before we both turn cross-eyed. But knowing that an act of indiscretion, even if I had every intention of asking Nyx to marry me after this war, resulted in Forrest...well, I can't help but wonder if I inherited some of that..."

Sakura caught on. "You mean the, er, Concubine Wars?"

"Precisely. But it wasn't just romantic love, either," Leo continued. "He fell in love with being a father, his country, his dreams...and the thing about love? It's blinding. You can't see flaws in, what to you, is perfect. It made him a good father, a lot of the time, and if he hadn't been turned into a meat-suit for M-for his impostor, he'd probably have reformed the country at some point. We have a notorious familial corruption problem, and adoption being legally and culturally the same as being born to the family means that pressuring relatives to quid pro quo is even harsher - you adopt someone's nephew, on some level his aunt is your second cousin now. But I digress - Father fell in love a lot, and I think that's why he was so easy to imitate in the end; he never wanted to accept the honeymoon phase of anything was over, so he just...ignored it. Pretended it didn't happen. Which meant he couldn't accept, for instance, that his wives despised each other or that he was grieving over Katerina - Xander's mother. Or that making the Blessed Isle his within his lifetime, without ruining Nohr in the process, was impossible, and it wasn't anyone's fault." Leo shrugged. "He was already becoming cold as he relied more and more on that dream to keep going, becoming distant, and then manipulative as he forced people to kowtow to his private fantasy of dying knowing Nohr would be the heart of the world. All the imposter had to do was act like that was the only love in his life. I like to think the real him would have seen reason at some point...but that was taken from me. I...I never even got to know he was gone..."

"Mm." Sakura nodded. "Sounds...well, sounds a bit like how Ryoma could get; for him, it was more a sense of inferiority, but like I told...like I told him..." Tears began to appear in her eyes. "It'd break him...some day..."

Leo paused. "Do you...do you want privacy or-"

"Actually, no, I'd like to meet you after I do a final checkup on the patients. Afterwards, I...I think I'd like some sake, please. Or other alcohol. Toast to absent family."

"Sounds perfect."

 

[FieldKeeper]

Well, that went about as disastrously as it could before a victory turned pyrrhic.

The next stop on the way to the Imperial City was the Suzanoh Wall, a rather magnificent construction the Hoshidans had added to the grounds surrounding the Imperial City; both a great defensive fortification, and a mark that they had made the Realm's own capital theirs. Actually, calling it a wall was kind of an insult - it was a combination of fortification and machinery, more of a giant dungeon that could be reconfigured on command. Given a single hour, it could literally move the gateways built within it around with minimal difficulty, let alone great siege weapons and eager troops who did not have to march.

Was.

Now, there was a great hole in it, mechanisms sparking with Essence and oil.

Azura coughed. "So, that was the power of akuma..." She chuckled in disbelief, before groaning in pain, a bit of blood dripping out. "I think I understand why Takumi was tempted, now..."

Therese grimaced. "Well, we always knew this conquest wouldn't be easy...at least the ruins are okay to sleep in."

Takumi wasn't supposed to be at the Wall. Given how Iago had superseded the authority over the army with Garon's approval to start a siege only after a suspiciously short buildup, Therese had come to suspect he may have drawn the corrupted prince there; she doubted that Ryoma, knowing just how badly Takumi was in thrall to the Yozis, would have put him in command of Hoshido's main legions.

Not that his retainers seemed to know that. Or maybe part of his deal was to blind them to what he was becoming.

Because the moment she saw him - Therese realized he wasn't quite human anymore.

"Prin....cesssss...." She wasn't sure if he had spoken those words, or if the wind had to his open mouth. "How...I have...dreamed....of thisssss....."

Takumi looked...broken. His stance, formerly alert and perpetually ready, had become limp and animal, more like a stalking beast than a man, amplified by how his nails had turned long and sharp, glittering with glossy black stone. Red gusts of wind were escaping from his mouth and eyes, making it look like he was bleeding evaporating blood. When his Anima flared, the golden flame and shadow creating the outline of a great hawk was gone - instead was a skinny, glaring owl, composed of what looked like molten gold that tarnished green even as it formed, feathers of that same blood-red wind, and the only pure aspect was the eyes made of emerald flame with pupils of dying red stars.

But what was most terrible was the sound. Or rather, the lack of it.

Wherever Takumi was, the world had gone...muffled. Muted. Like sound was dying before it could reach ears. But there should have been, because the wind was also stronger closer to Takumi, blowing rock and people wherever he went - but absolutely nothing blown by his wind made any noise at all.

"Takumi!", she had yelled, trying to be heard over the dying sound. "Please! What you've done to yourself - it isn't worth it! Your sister is worried-"

"SILENCE."

Something in that - part of it sounded like Takumi's wind-voice, filled with rage, but there was something under there - a woman's, more irritated and pained than angered.

Or something her mind interpreted as a woman's.

"You...do not ssspeak...Sakura's name." The wind-voice had become his own voice again. "Ssshe...isss the pain...I will...keep...all others...be sssevered...I will be...beyond tiesss..."

"Pain? Ties? ...Brother, please, this isn't you! This is just what the Yozis want you to think you are!"

"Yo...zisss..." He cocked his head, looking more like a corpse on a puppeteer's string than the prince he was. "...You know. You know...what you...have made me do..."

"I know. And I'm sorry. But please-"

"Stop. Now. You have done enough. I have reached towards enlightenment through you, and for that I am grateful." There was definitely two tones in that - Takumi's wind-voice was bitterly sarcastic, the woman's sounded...genuine. Sincere and kind. "And it is...not the Yoziss...who sent me here. I am here...for revenge...to repay favorssss..."

"Favors?" Azura stood up. "For what?"

"For...your enemy, Azura. The dragon...who ssshowed me...Lotus Bulb. Who gave me...importance. Such a sad state. I was so obsessed with trying to be better than an imagined sister, I lost me in myself. Now I see, this hate was a gift. Thank you. And now it is time TO END THIS SUFFERING!"

And then he had struck.

From seemingly every direction.

There had been five separate Takumis, it seemed, all connected by the red wind. All of whom moved like the wind.

Orders were lost in the silence. The day light up with a false green dawn. Demons ripped themselves out of the wounds of Hoshidans, roaring erymanthoi blood-apes licking themselves clean before charging in, gore-covered demjen singing their fallen hosts' weapons into chalcothetes as angylkae time-harpists cleaned themselves off with their prehensile hair even as their long fingers plucked the fabric of time-space in demoralizing songs.

But that wasn't the source of the hole.

No, that was Takumi seeing where the battle was going - and then pouring the emerald flame of Hellish Essence into an implosion bow mounted on the wall, annihilating it and one of his retainers, Oboro. Along with a significant portion of the Nohrians who had just climbed it.

By the end of the chaos, he was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind a bloodied force that was just as horrified and confused as their attackers, if not more so.

"...That voice." Camilla grimaced. "I knew I had heard that voice before. I may never have been to Hell, but the demon who ferried my Third Soul to me? She was chosen because she was one of the few to hear that voice and live to tell the tale. It was only laughter then - but that was probably how the Silent Wind would sound if she could speak in a comprehensible way to humans."

While demons were not her thing, Therese understood exactly what and who that title meant - it was hard to miss the warnings to fellow necromancers about facing the children of a Yozi known for her love of forced reincarnation, and made ideal anti-undead troops. "Adorjan!? Takumi sold his soul and free will to the Demon Queen of Murder!?"

"I'll have you know, dear sister, that is a grave misunderstanding of her purview. She is the Titan of Motion, Freedom, and Enlightenment," Camilla corrected. "It just so happens that she regards any attachment as inherently limiting and stagnating, so she kills all that she loves with the basalt and obsidian caught in her gales. It is safer to be hated by her, as she feels the very nature of an attachment that you know causes you pain is easier to let go of without death. And that is what she teaches her worshipers - to destroy all that binds them to suffering, even if that is fear for another's safety."

Lilith, watching all this, suddenly looked very uncomfortable.

"So, in other words - she teaches those she possesses to feel better through murder." Therese growled. "I am so happy that a potential heir to the Karal throne now has the cosmos' most homicidal self-help guru in his skull."

"If you want to be technical about it - technically that is not truly Adorjan, or even a shard of her consciousness," Camilla said. "She is both wind and the breathable air of Hell itself, just as the flesh of Malfeas-the-Yozi is its ground, with most palaces and buildings being the hair he grows in great brass architecture. Her instincts are too alien to implant even a portion of herself in someone else - wind does not eat, and it only exists as movement, something animal life does not have to consider. On the other hand, akuma develop an incredibly accurate view of the Yozi who holds them most in thrall, and with as much of Takumi's original Essence has been corrupted by diabolic resonance, it probably would not be hard for Adorjan to use those thoughts to make sort of a living sketch of herself in his brain - that isn't her, but it acts, speaks, and thinks mostly as she would, so he's functionally no longer truly the one at the controls of his thought."

"Metaphysical arguments of consciousness aside - Takumi is truly akuma now," Kaze said, sadly. "Don't get me wrong - I was no fan of Oboro. But he cared about her, even if not to the extent she wanted, and felt as though he was obligated to protect her as well. But if this Silent Wind has so clouded his mind that he literally speaks with her voice sometimes - he probably saw her as someone who was simply holding him back..."

Camilla grimaced. "And the thing is - Adorjan probably thinks she's helping. She feels there is no love without pain, after all - and so, by pressuring him to remove something he cares deeply about, and given how she cared about him to that extent - she felt she was solving two people's problems. Now whatever life Oboro's future life will be, it will not have the sting of unrequited love, and Takumi has one distraction from his goal erased..."

"But what even is that goal!?", Therese finally shouted. "Killing me!? Is that it!? What would be worth destroying your very self for revenge!? What I did was wrong, but I didn't want him to do...this to himself!"

"I don't think..." Azura coughed. "I don't think it's entirely that... truth is, he's always felt...outshone. Even after he Exalted, he was the third Karal to Exalt as a Solar. So he...always compared himself to others. To you, too - I think...I think you were his rival..."

"But I didn't even know him-"

"And that was the issue. You didn't - and he felt like he was always being compared to someone who didn't even exist outside of the minds of his siblings. You can imagine how well he took that." Azura sighed. "So, I'm not actually that surprised that, if offered a quick road to power, he'd take it. And if it outshone the real you, after you abandoned the family he felt neglected due to you - he'd actively convince himself he was selling less of his soul than he was."

"But what I don't know is who told him how to contact demons for Lotus Bulb Commerce," Camilla said, holding her head. "It's - it's literally forbidden lore! Something actively chased down and destroyed, to stop this precise nightmare! Even some demons destroy knowledge of akuma! They think that imprisoning others so totally when their very world is a prison of the gods is hypocritical! And, no offense Kaze, but I somehow think that Hoshido's love of purging influence of the Primordials means-"

Lilith suddenly cleared her throat.

"...If I may interject," she said, looking to the side. "Unrelated comment...did you know all fairies find it physically difficult to disobey a promise? And that doing so is liable to calcify us and turn us into so much raw material for human souls?"

The obvious implication hung in the air a bit.

"...you know something?", Therese murmured.

"I...can neither confirm nor deny. But..." She paused, obviously thinking of what to say.

"...In more unrelated things," she began, carefully. "I'm reminded of a story about a beast who was also a maiden. Born out of wedlock upon a Fair Folk maiden and a scheming sorcerer. For this, she was neither fae nor mortal, and so the silverwrights placed her among a village to be raised by a family of cats. The cats taught her that she was not either of her loveless origins, but they did not know the sorcerer was ruler of the village in which they dwelled, and it was fl-drowned in a tide of monsters." She paused again. "Part of how the sorcerer became a baron was that he seduced a star, and stole the needle he used to make clothes for the Maidens of Fate."

There was a long pause, as everyone processed what she was trying to say.

"...Lilith," Azura began, calmly. "Did this village...happen to be to the West?"

"...possibly."

"And did the baron's men," Camilla continued, dread accumulating in the air, "happen to be blessed so that they could always hide?"

"There is a distinct chance."

That's when Therese remembered something - something she didn't quite commit to memory, given all the events.

A certain dragon praised for his predictions by Merak-In-Garon's-Flesh.

"...This sorcerer," she began hesitantly. "His name wouldn't happen to be Anankos, would it?"

Lilith turned grim. "There are worse names to call him by."

---

There was a lot of questioning of Lilith in the continuing march. Xander had clipped an iron collar around her neck, just in case Anankos had hidden a different promise in another promise, and force her to become an enemy. She didn't really object.

Of course, whatever oath was blocking her from speaking directly of what relation to Anankos meant that she had to speak in riddles and metaphors - one the first things she got across is that she needed to include some lies in her metaphors that would have to be uncovered in retrospect, because otherwise there would be a risk of accidentally breaking the letter of the promise, and thus risk calcification.

But she was actively trying to help solve them. So there was plenty found out in the critical few days in transit to the Imperial City.

First, she was Anankos' "daughter", in a sense - a bit of shed Water Essence from him and abandoned virtue that fertilized a bit of the Wyld, and from that chaos, Lilith came. But she never enjoyed him - she had loved him, and to extent still did, but he saw her only as trusted agent at best, never child. Second, she wasn't aware he had destroyed Valla, not at first - partly because she didn't want to believe, but also because she was far away from him at that point. She had wanted to join the last part of Valla's royal family alive at that point - Mikoto and her blood family. And Therese saving her in animal form led to a bit of favoritism (and some other reason that seemed obscured).

Third, Anankos was also almost certainly the puppeteer - and despite having been born more than an Age after the Primordials were overthrown, was entirely willing to undo the Divine Revolution to the extent possible. Why had more to do with humans than any great love of ghosts or demons or the idea of the Titans; something had soured the Twilight Sea Dragon on humanity's ability to reign over itself permanently, and where there was once fascination and care, now there was only scorn. He would speak often of prehuman races such as the alarun, the nioboroan, the erat'een, the lintha - how their inherent spiritual awareness even without awakened Essence gave them greater empathy with the world, greater memory, and how the world should belong to them, not what was made by the Primordials as a prey species and raw materials for the wonders of things the creators of the world actually cared for. And whose victory was born out of their "domestication" by the gods, nothing more.

That's why he was playing both sides against the middle, in truth - part of it was that either Merak, the soul of a man whose continued existence as an undead would require him to bow to the deathlords and their Neverborn patrons to protect himself from those who would finally force him to abandon his like as an immortal tyrant if he wasn't already a deathlord himself, or Takumi, an akuma whose very identity relied now on the Yozi's voice in his skull, would rule the Blessed Isle, and return the Titans back to sovereignty over Creation. But the larger part was spite - the Age of Upheavals becoming a second, worse Age of Sorrows, as the Primordials used their pawn of an empire to enact their revenge on the gods, which by necessity would involve terrorizing their human worshipers and forceful conversion to ancestral and demonic cults.

The details were mostly vague, still - but they had a name. And from the Ganglari, they knew exactly what horror he would go to in order to enforce his spite on humanity in general.

But then the interrogation had to end, as the City crested over the horizon.

Looking back on it - and having had the benefit of silence to clear her head of the sound of ticking clocks - it was truly beautiful. Still quite clearly the ruins of the Scarlet Realm rebuilt, with old and hoary shells of the buildings that were once there, and great statues of the Scarlet Empress, weather-beaten and with obvious restoration work done, but standing proud regardless.

But where there wasn't a ruin of a long-vanished kingdom, there was what had to be a smaller version of Lookshy itself, she realized. A gleaming modern city, shiny and golden, a living tribute to the power of modern industry and ingenuity.

Of course, that also came with a rather disturbing amount of smokestacks. She had heard that Lookshy was far less carefully managed in its early days after the reorganization into the capital of Hoshido, and while they were far more balanced in their engineering, but there was apparently a persistent smog issue. The Imperial City was far more restrained, but the black smoke sparking with Essence from mystical engineering being pumped out did not look healthy.

(Then again, Nohr had accidentally altered an entire ecology to be far more dangerous out of sheer desire for Windmire to be less bitterly cold. So condemning Hoshido for environmental reasons sounded an awful lot like rationalizations - they actually stopped what they were doing instead of just rolling with it, see Therese's own spirit shape.)

It also had somehow more artillery facing outwards than the Suzanoh Wall did, and pegasus-riding knights were flying the air in formation - one of whom had some distinct red hair.

"Called it," Velouria said, bitterly. "Of course Aunt Hinoka would be leading the first line of defense. I'd probably lose respect for her if she wasn't."

"You know her?", Therese said, surprised.

"In my Deeprealm, both sides of the civil war started hiring mercenaries - ironically, many Nohrians. I did some scout work for her, caught up on you after...well, your death, Mom." She paused. "That will never not be awkward. Anyway - I like her. Bit too enthusiastic for my tastes, but a generous patron. Brave too - as evinced."

Keaton came up. "Any secret Getimian arts that can make her remember you enough to stop fighting?"

"For one - I really don't want to dip into those Charms deeper than I already do, Daddy," she said, shaking her head. "It's already creepy enough that people who are here change when they remember who they were in the Deeprealm - actively forcing people to see things in terms of the Deeprealm strikes me as something the Yozis would do. It doesn't make it better just because it's a human making an akuma with less permission. For another - while I could start drawing out armies from the Deeprealms or other things - even a few true impossibilities - I only Exalted at the exact moment I was yanked to the main timeline. There's only so much I can do...which means rather than thinking an armada into being..."

She glanced disgustedly at a different airship fleet - one decorated in a much more menacing way.

"If there were true justice in this world," Xander muttered, "we would have the ability to shoot upon him without consequence..."

"The moment Iago and his two cronies die is the moment the world becomes a better place," Therese agreed, before suddenly turning sad. "But...we need them. And I doubt we will be able to excuse Hinoka as a hostage, if we have Sakura already..."

The words hung in the air, grimly.

That's when Velouria coughed. "You know," she said, the Winter Caste mark on her brow glowing as she smiled deviously. "Just because I can't create an army out of nowhere - that doesn't mean I can't affect Fate. Because fun fact about being native to a future that never was - I can help tug a plausible future into being. Like, for example, one where Iago doesn't notice that Hinoka isn't dead long enough for her to run. All I need "

Therese spun to face her. "...your plan, honey?"

---

Hinoka waited for the blow.

And waited.

And waited.

And then she opened her eyes, to see Therese...

Watching the sky?

"Three," she murmured. "Two..."

And then, a stray shot from a damaged implosion bow hit the cold storage and butcher shop behind her, spraying raw meat and blood everywhere - including on the animated skeletons near them, which Hinoka had assumed were a rearguard, a way to corner her and hold her down if she tried to leave the impromptu arena her sister had made.

She was right, but not in the way she expected - as the dust cloud blew over the area, Therese whistled, before using his linnorm form's tail to push Hinoka to some of the skeletons, as one covered itself in meat. As she was pulled away, she phased into hybrid form, nearly a beastfolk, and used the Yato to slice off a couple limbs of the meat-covered skeleton, letting it collapse - before falling over, head in her hands, the very image of horror and remorse.

While one of her skeletons made a shush gesture at her as they pulled her pegasus by the reins, ignoring his bucking.

As the dust settled, a flare came from the darker-looking airship, before the sounds of battle still. A great cheer came from the Nohrian invaders, as the retreat horn from her side echoed across the battlefield.

She caught on. "Wait, isn't that the signal for a commander being-"

An undead hand grasped around her mouth, as Therese continued her pantomime of grieving, as a group of agatae descended on the outer ring of the Imperial City, flanking wyverns-

And as soon as the dark ship had descended, ready to land, the demonic wasps suddenly broke formation, and rushed to Hinoka, with a wyvern bearing Camilla not far behind.

"Well. My niece was not being funny, it seemed," the elder Nohrian princess said, hopping off as the agatae began to drone a calming song to the pegasus. "If I was not aware of how Fate was twisted, I would be suspecting something most untoward was happening."

Therese popped up, looking more focused than before. "And now that we had our decoy, we can't assume chance will be as kind. Sakura told us about the refuge, we need to provide a distraction to the South if Hinoka can escape."

Suddenly, why Therese seemed so insistent on cornering and hunting down Hinoka made too much sense.

"...that airship," she realized. "That is one bearing people who wish to execute us - punishments for resisting Hoshido."

"And if we let them," Therese growled, "then this war won't end at the shores of the Blessed Isle. It won't stop until it consumes all Creation, revenge and reprisal - and that thing who calls himself my father won't allow us to spare Hinoka."

She turned to her first sister, taking her direlance. "I'm sorry, but I need proof that you met your end at my Flesh-Scouring Wave. I'll return it if I have a chance - and this war ends."

Hinoka felt herself tear up. "You...you never abandoned us-"

"No." Therese looked down. "I did. I did, and I'm going to be spending the rest of my life making up for that choice and what it did. But...I can start now." She inhaled. "I'm sorry it got this far. But I can begin making restitutions now."

---

Two miracles saved two members of the Hoshido royal family and their retainers.

There was not a third.

Really, she should have seen it coming - Iago, whatever his many other faults, was not stupid, and as he "reinforced" her, he made some very pointed questions about the bloody skull and direlance she brought as proof. Like, why didn't it have any red hair on it, and why wasn't the direlance also covered in viscera if she shredded Hinoka's flesh completely. It was enough to fool him from afar, and convince him to surge in to take the glory - but Fate being twisted to create an illusion didn't stop the ability to second-guess it. Especially after she had gone behind his back to get an excuse to spare Sakura.

It was, however, enough to fool Ryoma. For just long enough for him, Saizo, and Kagero to rush at her and her own escort.

By the end, Kagero lay dead by her hands, and Ryoma realized the truth just soon enough for the fiend pretending to be her father to open a communication channel, and goad her into proving her loyalty at Iago's prompting. Ryoma, realizing what Therese had actually planned, then made one last play to help her stop the increasingly insane Takumi or Garon from inheriting the throne - turning Rajinto upon himself.

Her curled up in hybrid form, head in hands, was not an act this time.

"...Therese? Sister?"

She made a grunt of affirmation at Azura's voice, as her bondmate glided over.

She wasn't the only one, either.

"My lady?"

"Jewel?"

Therese looked up, noticing Kaze and Keaton.

"...I...I'm sorry." She started to ball up again. "I know what you're planning to tell me, and it won't work..."

"Not even if I thank you for avoiding hurting my brother?", Kaze asked. "I understand he was still running interference, so it was a tactical sacrifice to take out only one ninja. So...I appreciate it."

"...Kagero was doing her job," Therese muttered. "If everything was perfect...she'd be alive, too..."

"And...that's what I said," Keaton said, sliding up to her. "We get it. This isn't anything like the Great Curse - this is just you, and we understand. It's...hard. Even if, gods willing, this hunt's going to be over soon - Ryoma didn't deserve to be forced into death."

"Mm..."

They sat there for a while, just...thinking. Mourning.

Eventually, Therese spoke up. "Azura. Can I ask...something personal?"

"Mm?"

"What was...he like, generally? Because...I only knew him for a couple short weeks..."

Azura smiled sadly. "I understand. And...if it were possible, I'd like it if his rule came from the Deeprealm. He would have been an excellent Chumyo. Even if he had a branch up his rear at times..."

---

There was only one reaction universal to Therese's detachment when Iago got his proof of the treason.

Finally.

Really all involved were waiting for the other shoe to drop - that was why everyone had been briefed about where they would be while setting up the garrison.

So when "Elise" had shown up to talk with her sister fifteen minutes after an "early break" in healing - unknown to Iago, the infirmary she was in was on the other side of a thirty minute walk from the impromptu meditation chamber Therese was using - she had silently made surface level small talk to give a silent warning to Kaze in one of the ninja passages about the sudden but inevitable betrayal, and then exposed her back long enough to make the fake try to blast her with Flying Guillotine. The one downside to this plan is that she didn't see his face as she shifted to a mouse form just as the crystalline blade gave that spell its name was forming and flew over her head, harmlessly shattering against the wall.

"Mother-!" Iago's curse was cut short as Therese's linnorm tail lashed out, using the momentum from her transformation into her larger hybrid form to flip over Iago's Elise form, grabbing Yato as she did so.

"Nice try," she murmured, as she dashed to a larger area. "But I know how to steal faces without killing the originals too."

By the time she rejoined her forces and siblings - including the real Elise - the battle was already in full swing.

Iago had already prepared for his scheme to go awry, of course. A competent planner always made contingencies for "contact with the enemy", and for all his arrogance, Iago didn't trust he was simply omniscient. He didn't realize, however, that a lot of what he would do had already been guessed by people who had the misfortune of knowing him for decades - and countered.

Charlotte was ducking and weaving Hans' axe, his fighting style growing uneven as Black Claw affected him with emotions unfamiliar to him, as Peri and Kaze darted in to overcome his defense-focused Charms through precision attacks. Meanwhile, Zola's army of illusions was being spotted by Keaton, Velouria, and Kana, while Arthur and Nyx chased down the weedy sorcerer at the heart of it, blasting through his escort of real demons.

Meanwhile, at the center, three of the other Nohrian siblings were squaring off with a fierce-looking woman with a skeletal dog at her side, and solid blood-red eyes that had colorful stars within it.

"Sondok," Therese said, recognizing the Demon Lord and her familiar, Biyal. "Why am I not surprised Iago summoned a glorified security guard as his diabolic lieutenant..."

"Because she, unlike you, understands the value of loyalty and obedience," a version of Elise's voice with a level of coldness that Therese was sincerely unsure her actual sister was capable of. "She has more of a taste for guardianship, but I was able to convince her defending the social order was close enough for her to feel comforted in her current duty."

"...Can you speak as you, Iago?", she said, turning around. "If Elise sees you being you as her, she's going to have nightmares for weeks. And it's creepy."

The false Elise gave a smug shrug before her form melted and grew, Iago's true form reforming. "Frankly, it is a way to assist her from whatever spell you have put her under. I am not sure how you managed to deceive her or the rest of the Bethans. A cuckoo's charm, I suppose."

...And that one word, an old and deeply offensive insult for a Nohrian adopted under false or invalid pretenses, explained so much.

"...a cuckoo." Therese stared at him. "Is that what this is all about? That I was born to someone who wasn't Nohrian?"

Iago stared back, just as confused, as if he didn't fully understand the question. Or perhaps, confused as to what that was a question to begin with.

"...well, that and Garon is suspicious of you," he said after a moment. "He recognized how insufferably stubborn you have been ever since your true heritage showed itself-"

"And who is to blame for that?", she interrupted, exasperated and frustrated. "Last I checked, only one person killed and soulforged the father worth the term, and sent me out unknowingly using him as a saber!"

Iago grinned. "Ah. So that is the motive for which you finally showed your inherent savagery."

Therese gawked. "...you knew!?"

"I did indeed. I pursue a less tainted art than your glorified necrophilia, but it was I who helped His Majesty track down Sumeragi's wayward soul and turn it to the cause of civilization," he said, grin only turning wider. "Proper, ecologically friendly and humble civilization, as opposed to this smog-infested nightmare. I will be sure to outline my case as how that is-"

"What case, vizier?", Leo said, stepping out from the columns behind him, causing Iago to literally jump.

"L-lord Leo!", the sorcerer said, bowing, "My apologies, but I will have to subdue you, for whatever strange Hoshidan magic this mongrel has-"

"You didn't answer my question," Leo said, a rather evil look on his face. "What case?"

"Why, how she was obviously working against us as shown by her plan to smuggle the current heir to the throne and her surviving bodyguard out of the Imperial City-"

"Funny thing about that," Leo continued, pulling out a distinct scroll. "Just before he left, I called one last favor in from Saizo - to give me hard proof of how he knew your illusion-shitting hand puppet would be waiting in Izumo. I see you select your fellow sycophants well - Zola writes exactly like you."

Iago's jaw dropped.

"I wonder - what sort of man accuses a woman of genetic loyalty to the country of her birth, after leaving an ambush for her with Hoshidan help? And not just any Hoshidan, but one the rest of the Karals have isolated from themselves out of fear of his rabid hate of Nohrians?" Leo's expression turned shark-like. "Why, Garon would have to accept Therese killed him in self-defense after discovering his own backroom deals to assassinate a member of the royal family, no matter his personal biases - if other nobles discovered this, especially given how popular she is for claiming the Yato and our divine right to claim the Blessed Isle...."

Iago just mouthed for a bit. "...I can destroy that," he finally said.

"You will try."

And he did.

It wasn't nearly good enough. The only issue Therese had was that Leo called dibs on decapitating Iago first - it was only fair after she got Hans.

---

The good news: As it turned out, the Throne of Natures was made long after Merak's first death, and was not something he was aware of. When the false Garon arrived, all the Bethans needed to do was act appropriately deferential and ask Kaze and Azura to reveal that the Throne was something Hoshido meant for the new master of the Blessed Isle when Hoshido became the new Realm. So he sat upon it, and immediately screamed in pain as the magic recognized his true nature, black and gray streamers of Essence being forced out of Garon as his glamour melted to reveal the rotten corpse the King of Nohr had been for generations, kept together barely through necrotic slime. The last expression he would ever have would be the purple lights of what was left of his eyes turning calm as his animal soul, enslaved to the nemissary using its body as its own, finally entered into the long sleep and dissolution back into the world.

"...You..."

The bad news: As soon as that happened, the necrotic Essence animated again, and started to flow together into a pool with immediately then began to congeal into a body. First nerves, then skeleton, then muscle, then finally flesh and clothing formed from the tar-like pool, melting in reverse - and one of the first things revealed was a pair of hateful green eyes, wide with disbelief, then realization - and then narrowed with rage.

"You treacherous, underhanded, lying piles of refuse! Anathema is a term too holy for you!"

Now that he was forced into human form, he was...actually fairly handsome. An older, distinguished man, but one who, if he was still alive, would inspire envious talk from men over how the Maiden of Endings clearly warded time from his face. Severe, certainly, and with a cruel, hard expression that gave him an oddly hawk-like appearance, but charming in an intimidating way. Moreover, his Corpus had manifested with his courtly robes, fairly humble for any king, let alone the emperor of the world for his life, but still spoke of sophistication and wealth. About the only thing clearly undead was his pale skin, the slight blue glow in his irises, and the constantly bleeding cut around his neck.

A second later, Charlotte found her voice. "...what the fu..."

"So, this is what you truly look like, Merak," Azura spit. "Though I admit, I am surprised you lowered yourself to using a mortal king as a suit. I would have thought it was too demeaning for the Scarlet Emperor."

The Iron Lotus sniffed, his rage vanishing under a look of kingly disdain. "Perhaps," he says, clasping his hands together to reveal his fingernails had become long claws in the Underworld, but ones that had serrated edges like artisan's tools. "But victory forgives all sins, as they say. Nor do I answer to that name except as a moth recognizes their cocoon. I am the Iron Lotus, now and forever - it was already the name I found preferable."

Nyx grimaced. "So. You did become a deathlord. I would have thought you, of all people, would be unwilling to acknowledge yourself as a vassal of anyone, even overlords as distant as the Neverborn."

"I fail to see the paradox," the Lotus replied, raising an eyebrow in genuine puzzlement. "The Scarlet Realm was a manifestation of the love of the Elemental Dragons for the world. It simply seems obvious that I, as the focus through which that love was expressed, would become a manifestation of the Dead Elements as well, to bring both together in harmony; so I accepted the Ancients' sovereignty as beings of nature."

"That's not how I pronounce 'big asshole who can't let go'!", Elise spat back. "Thanks to you, I never even really knew my own father!"

Peri wheeled around. "Wait, what!?"

"What we discovered on that quest through Eseon," Xander growled. "This monster killed my real father and rode his corpse, running us to the ground in the name of a vanished throne. We only continued this war while we figured out a way to expose him and the false premises of this conflict for all to see - why we acted with unusual mercy while looking for a way to expose him."

"And who is to blame for that?", the ancient ghost retorted. "You claim to fight for kindness, and yet the path you chose cut straight through Lord Ryoma's heart. Your compassion, as always, is a mask for ambition - do you wish to know why I chose Garon's body as my new one? Because your aristocracy is truly something worthy of the title 'inheritor of the Realm' - the same selfishness, and intrigue, and malice, and above all else, greed. Your muck is the same from that from which I sprouted, and requires just the same skills to manipulate."

"...That is...not wrong," Leo said, wincing. "But it won't be you holding the sword. We've shown you for what you are, usurper; even if you slay all of us, I can't help but imagine Hoshidan spies have seen you, along with various civilians in the process of fleeing. They know Garon is long dead."

"And don't think your island-drowning beast of a patron can get you out of that, no matter how much power he has over Fate," Camilla added, eyes glittering with Hellish light.

"...So, you know of Anankos," the Lotus said with an air of frustration. "No matter. The dragon has achieved his goals of reminding humanity of its place; either I will reign, or the Yozis through Takumi. And even if they know..." The emperor laughed. "Humans are a venal species. I will simply show they cannot unseat me...and demonstrate the power of the Pearl Legion."

From the back of the palace, the doors opened wide, and from it, an entire phalanx's worth of the Half-Souls streamed in, flickering in and out of reality.

Including one cloaked man wielding a familiar black sword.

"So that's where it went," Therese muttered, before turning to the ghost of Merak. "Wait. Before we begin...I just want to know one thing."

The deathlord cocked his head. "...I suppose you deserve that as a boon for overcoming my charade. Your query?"

"Why me?", Therese continued, finally letting out the question that had been following her ever since discovering her birth mother. "You killed Sumeragi to kidnap me, you trained me to be your weapon against my birth country, you specifically let Iago be your advisor given his obsession with me - everything you've done has involved me, or trying to torment me, in some way. Are you that obsessed with Lookshy, and if so, why wasn't it any of the other Karals?"

"...To be entirely honest?", the Lotus said, shrugging. "I myself could care less. But your pain was part of my covenant with Anankos. He loathes you, as proof he does not control his mind any more, and a weakness in his judgement of humanity."

Therese's own head cocked, confusion obvious even in half-linnorm form. "Huh?"

"It's rather humorous, in a way," the undead emperor continued. "So obsessed with that waif you call a mother, and trying to discover what happened to your stepfather, you neglected to remember that you had a blood father too. A further irony, that before Valla betrayed him, they would have celebrated you as the get of a piece of their patron."

It took a full second for the implications to sink in.

"...My treasure is Anankos' daughter?!", Keaton said first.

"Not by intention, and not directly. But there has always been a bit of the Wyld in the Twilight Dragon, and what doubt he had infused the remnants of Valla and gave life to a...sort of fae sketch of himself, a bit of his inner doubt and desire for ignorance of humanity's fundamental perfidy given an amnesiac mind. During her flight as a refugee and forest hermit, Mikoto found it wandering in the plains and cared for it - and then its simpering affection for her race wormed its way into her heart, and then under her skirt. Like mother, like child, as I suspect you know," the nemisssary said with a glare at Keaton and Velouria. "That aberration is gone now, reabsorbed into the id where it belongs - but the shame it put inside Mikoto remains. You are an embarrassment, Theresia Bethan. A bit of karma he must bend, break, and hurt to purge himself of passion and reach true enlightenment, free of all attachments."

There was a long silence as the surrounding group processed this.

A silence broken by Azura's bitter laugh.

"So. That's it then. The vaunted Twilight Dragon is ashamed of the fact he has human emotions and the love a father has for his lover and child," said dragon's niece-in-law said. "Because he is a coward."

A bit of ice manifested around the Lotus' robes. "...Would you care to explain that, little siren?"

"Because he cannot deal with the fact that he has doubts," Azura said, all warmth gone from her tone. "Whatever madness he's embraced - no matter what Adorjan believes it is - it's not inner peace or some great understanding about the world. If he did have genuine faith in himself and his ideals, I find it interesting that his so-called attachments took the form of him reaching out to a member of the royal family. Almost as if he felt he wanted their forgiveness."

"Pah! Forgiveness! A word used by the weak to make their inability for restitution seem noble-"

"And yet, your vaunted master wanted it so badly a part of him came to life and sought comfort in Mother's arms," Therese picked up from her mate. "I'm proof of that. For someone as keen on the idea of punishing humanity for abandoning you, you seem to have shackled yourself to a master that so craves approval and acceptance from the species that his truest desire ended up literally marrying it - assuming either could control themselves enough after his confession and they didn't immediately brace against the nearest tree."

That comment had more to do with throwing the rude demeaning of Mikoto back in his face (and speaking from experience that, in another timeline, made Velouria), but enough of he-who-was-once-Merak had become obvious to Therese at this point. Even masquerading as Garon, the man was obsessed with the idea of control and forcing others to live up (or down) to his expectations...and he had built up Anankos as a being as apparently as rational and controlled as he imagined himself to be. To have what he already knew to be disproof against that wielded against him as proof Anankos had a part driven by softer emotions that occasionally conspired with his loins was an expert verbal cut - and targeted directly at how the ghost had willingly bowed to a deal that was effectively erasing the proof of a relationship gone sour.

It worked. With a roar, the deathlord conjured the memory of a long black jade sword with a hilt covered in working clockwork - she recognized it as the shade of Erysicthon, his self-made daiklave - and leapt forward, eager to silence the cousins' insolence.

His first mistake.

The thing about an impulsive attack was that it was hard to feint - it lacked the ability to be telegraphed as much, it being an impulse, but once you saw it, it was incredibly easy to block and counter, especially for a White Reaper stylist. And also got him into close range of both women - unlike his undead bodyguards.

Immediately recognizing the strategy, Peri, Charlotte, and Keaton immediately formed a defensive barrier around Therese as Kaze, Mozu, and Arthus set another up around Azura, swords bared at the charging Half-Souls. The exception was the undead form of Sumeragi, who was stopped in his charge by Xander parrying away Ganglari,

"This isn't your fault, Chumyo," Velouria murmured as her own caste mark blazed to life, reality shifting around her own anima as a giant luna moth took shape from it. "I'd ask for your forgiveness - but given how you're being used as a weapon by your own corpse, there isn't much to apologize for."

Elise joined in the fight against Sumeragi, while Forrest, having kept safely to the back, began conjuring his Hound to safeguard other Nohrians from the rampaging Pearl Legion.

Inside the impromptu battle arena formed by the guard, the Iron Lotus quickly realized his mistake, violent strike being hurriedly pulled into a formal form - Water Dragon Style from the look of the careful probing of weak spots in his two opponents' anatomy. A surgeon's style, one Elise used herself when Wood Dragon wasn't suitable, meant to adapt to any situation through a combination of rigorous endurance training and medical knowledge, giving both raw force to attack and defend, and the medical knowledge of what points were critical to defend or attack. A pacifist's art, meant to disable through precise attacks and pragmatic lunges for any victory - but also a torturer's style and bully's art, as the same precision that allowed a quick disable also allowed the maximum infliction of pain while minimizing risk to yourself as you made your opponent squirm in agony. Somehow, Therese suspected the Lotus picked it up with the latter two aspects in mind.

(Or maybe the Twilight Sea Dragon demanded he learn it. Anankos couldn't be faulted for sticking to a theme.)

Golden light spilled from Azura, as she spun out her naginata into her main hand while her other curled into the sinuous, raised stance reminiscent of a hissing serpent, fitting for the graceful swaying dance of Snake Style. It wasn't her favored one; as someone who desired to be an ambassador, she was more of a fan of the deliberately flashy and defensive Crane Style - but that style was more for protecting others, and right now, trying to help Therese when she was quite competent on her own would have caused more harm than good. Snake, the older (and frankly, less evil) cousin of Black Claw, was more about personal defense, the cobra only showing its hood when threatened - and harshly punishing those who ignored it, easily weaving between blows and reaching out to deliver enervating strikes with incredible speed.

It would not quite be enough against the shade of a man who had literally spent an entire Age training himself for the day he would overcome the failings that led to his first death and alloyed with the Void-born power of the Neverborn. Even Azura began with the Uncoiling Serpent Aura technique to turn her own anima into a weapon, glowing whips of light tainted green with poison Essence following her slashes, the Lotus was already arcing his sword to strike at weak points in the whips themselves. With a sound like shattered glass, the whips were severed as he angled himself so Azura dodged towards Erysicthon, forcing her to awkwardly stop her momentum and allowing the ghost to advance. Therese tried to help, but once again, White Reaper was a style for the open battlefield, and both sorcerers and necromancers needed space to charge their spells - neither of which applied to a squad of troops trying to form a wall against a horde of semi-real pseudo-zombies while two of their commanders fought for their lives in the center.

But White Reaper and Snake were ultimately both styles meant for tactical retreats - White Reaper because it was for outnumbered soldiers and their commanders, Snake because it was a style that began its true Charms with one Serpentine Evasion - literally how to run and dodge with supernatural alacrity. And the thing about retreats was that, performed well, they could easily become traps.

It was Azura who noticed it first; the travails of the battle around them had left Forrest and Nyx closer to her side of the impromptu arena, mother and son trying very hard to maintain space for the other to unleash their necromancies and cut the threads of black magic that kept the elementals bound to the Half-Souls' own decaying bodies, and giving what was left of them a merciful end.

The same kind of necromancies that could severely harm the corpus of a true ghost.

She made a full break for Nyx, turning all of her dodging expertise and Crane ability to turn just about anything into an effective shield to "flee" - and whispered something in the process.

With that, the Solar and the Abyssal switched positions, Nyx showing that while she was still primarily a wizard, with no codification of her style into something recognizable as a martial art, she wasn't bad with a punch dagger, blocking the raining blows from Erysicthon - though she had to wince as splashes of acidic, smoking oil came from the clockwork daiklave straight onto her face.

"Isn't this a lovely irony," the deathlord said, grinning madly as his sword spat out smog like a toxic dragon was laughing. "The deathknight, and representative of the old guard, striking at the new upstart to her master's household. Tell me, how fares the Silver Prince? Does he still plug his ears to drown out the moans of his precious soulsteel armada?"

"I do not claim my lord is anything resembling a saint," Nyx splat back, firing of a bolt of black lightning at a Half-Soul that had slipped through the wall. "But then again, he is not the one who literally made a deal with an insane dragon who is already responsible for genocide to continue said genocide."

"Oh?" the Lotus purred, stomping his feat against the ground, followed by a yelp from Nyx as she was hit by a spike of dark crystal thrusting from the ground beneath her. "I fail to see how that makes him any different from me. He was a Solar, long ago, obsessed with peace and creating a legacy, as I was Emperor and seeking to save my nation. Grading upon that, me asking for help from an unfortunate ally seems a bit more virtuous than forging an entire cultural myth through calculated disaster upon Skullstone to make himself some great and immortal savior."

Nyx, holding her bleeding wound closed, looked upon him silently-

And smiled sweetly.

"Two items: One, you assume that I am offended. No, my lord is objectively terrible, he just so happens to love peace enough to be tolerable compared to you and your particular kind of deathlord," she began. "Second: It is honestly rather heartening to see you remember enough of your life that you continue to make the same mistakes of hyperfocus on the most blatant threat that history says you did as Merak, oh mighty Lotus."

There was a pause, before the nemissary whipped around, trying for form a sphere of earth to shield himself-

But too late, as Therese and Forrest had taken the opportunity to gather their magic together, and both aunt and nephew unleashed a stream of ghost-banishing energy at the deathlord. With a scream, over half his physical body dissolved back into red and grey, not quite forced into the Underworld - but enough of the way there he couldn't effectively defend himself.

"NOW!", Therese shouted.

And her adopted siblings descended upon the weakened Lotus, all at once.

By the end of it, the creature that was once Merak looked nearly as liquid as the wretch he had reduced Garon's body into over years of riding it.

"This...isn't...over," he hissed through dissolving jaws. "I...am...deathlord. Vassal...of the Eternal. Anankos...will...vengeance. I...return...after...always. Will...never...give...Scar..let..thrrrrone...."

With a final hiss, what was left of the last emperor of the Scarlet Realm collapsed into the memory of blood, his soul unable to retain its grip on physical form and drawn to his masters at the lip of the Void to explain his gross failure to beings known for the longest memories in Creation, and an even greater capacity to bear grudges. Around him, the Half-Souls turned slack, no longer having orders.

"...And you can keep it," Leo began after a bit, growling. "We will rule the Isle, but it will not be as the Realm did. We'll be better."

"Should you show your face again, we will be sure to tattoo that upon it - in the end, you'll just be a bad memory." Elise spat on the remains.

"And so, father can rest in peace." Xander sighed. "And victory has never tasted so bitter...we will have to announce this. We must figure out a way to explain-"

Whatever Xander's plan for his coronation was, it was sadly derailed by a simple fact-

There was more than one would-be puppet king of Anankos.

A great explosion rocked the palace as a golden beam tarnished with green verdigris and scarlet wind lanced through the ceiling.

"OUT! OUT AND FACE YOUR DESTINY, SISTER! LET THIS BE THE DAY THAT NOHR'S LAST ATTACHMENT FELL!"

---

Of course Takumi was in a warstrider. It was almost contractually required for the self-proclaimed champion of a civilization that would shepherd the technological heights of the First Age to the Third would stake his final claim to his nation being the true successor to the Realm using the avatar of its promise.

But unlike Sagacious Killer of the Unknowable, a thing meant as a prototype for a design ultimately meant for peace, this strider - which Therese would later discover was known as Bleak Messenger of Restitution - was clearly meant from conception in the design onwards to be a weapon. Gone was the layers of armor that gave Killer an oddly stout and comforting appearance despite its size, the flexible hands that could build as well as destroy, the long legs that could calculate where to step carefully to minimize collateral damage - Messenger was a lean, predatory thing. Smaller, closer to thirty feet than fifty, but what it lacked for in size was made up for in sharp edges and tools of war - its hands were tipped wickedly curved claws of orichalcum, its shoulders and knees capped with long spikes that sparked with lightning, its chest throbbed with the glow of an Essence cannon - presumably the source of the beam. It was a product of the more efficient infrastructure of the First Age, not the Third, repaired and sent back to battle - and an emblem of the madness that led to the destruction of the Shogunate and Solar Deliberative both.

And that was before the Yozis added their own modifications, apparently to remind everyone its pilot was the champion of Malfeas as well.

It was said the most terrible thing about the Primordials was how that, to them, literally everything and everyone was a resource. Raw materials for greater creations and their petty games. It made sense - when you were literally a living city or a wind or an ocean, you literally made tools from yourself long before one got into the abstract notions of creating life as tools to make other tools from you. If said life was sentient, that was either irrelevant or simply provided new avenues of use. Soulsteel was emblematic of that attitude - the metal that literally was partly souls alloyed with other metal. But the pain and humiliation suffered by the Yozis had added an undercurrent of spite to it - the majority of humanity was the ally of traitors and usurpers to the view of the Demon Kings, and so their weapon technology made it clear that the swords of Hell were swords of punishment, vicious tools of bitter justice and purification through pain. Messenger not the least. Perhaps it was once a thing of beauty, hiding that its ultimate purpose was violence behind art, but now the violence was part of the facade. Tubes and chains grafted living demon flesh to exposed areas as organic armor, a skeletal brass mask had been added to the cockpit along with a large sensor array upon it to give the appearance of a manic smile with a great eye in its open mouth, and a pair of great blue mothlike wings had been bolted onto the strider, giving it the profile of a angel of death - as if being reminded of the Titanic loyalist gods that still harassed the distant South and East that had been freed near the end of the Second Age wasn't intimidating enough.

But it was the pilot that was most frightening of all.

For Takumi had become part of the modifications.

"Ahahahaha...there you are," that wind-voice came, quiet but silencing all other noises enough to be heard by the entire battlefield - and with Adjoran's voice layered harmoniously under it. "Do you like what you see, dear sister? I have transcended flesh itself, and become the very symbol of power used to protect the day...what sacrifice have you made for your desires that could compare to this?"

Therese, for her part, was speechless - not through rhetoric, but uncomprehending horror of what Takumi thought, or was made to think, 'transcending flesh' was. For one, he had no cockpit - he was simply grafted to the demon-flesh covering the warstrider's pectorals through tubes and pipes that bore a disturbing similarity to blood vessels and chains. His lower body and hands had been completely removed and/or merged with said flesh, leaving only a knot of wires and clockwork that covered everything up to his ribs, a basalt harness holding his arms to the seemingly literal heart of the machine. Most of his visible human flesh had been carefully flayed, exposing wet muscle protected from the elements by a transluscent crystal exoskeleton made from looked like single, giant emeralds.. The few bits of his skin that still looked human were covered in a form-fitting jumpsuit that pulsed with fluids of unclear implication, except for his face. His face was pale and wan, with visibly tainted veins, a tattoo pattern of a great owl over his face. and panting breath that released puffs of the blood-red wind. Just above him, mounted in the flesh to resemble a demented crown or halo, was Fujin, the powerbow's starmetal having changed its normal rainbow shine to sickly shades of green, scarlet, and grey, infected by the Hellish power of Messenger.

But it was his face that was most disturbing. For it bore the same manic grin as the warstrider's mask, a smile that spoke of a sorrow so great it became joy, or pleasure so extreme it had become agony.

Xander having shifted into the form of a giant bearfolk warrior, shook his head in horror. "If this is the sacrifice day demands, then we would be lucky to kill the sun..."

"Takumi - brother, please!", Therese cut in, hoping there was something left of him that the Yozis hadn't reforged. "Garon is gone! There's no reason to keep fighting! We know how much of this war was based on Anankos' manipulations, not anything else! All you're doing is giving reason to continue the war!"

Takumi twitched, his brow furrowing as he seemed to consider it...and then the optics within the mask glowed, and he returned to his manic rage. "Is that so? Then the time is now to wipe out your heretical nation from existence! I will be everything that my brother wished he could be! The sun shall never set upon us!"

Azura just...sighed. "And he is outright eager to continue the violence. Takumi is gone; he is little more than an extension of Adorjan now."

"...Lord Takumi!", Kaze cut in. "You are aware that Anankos is the one behind this? Hoshido winning is the apex of his obsession, not cutting free of it!"

"As if I care!", the once-human cyborg whisper-shouted back. "Let the Twilight Sea Dragon have his spite - I will be free of all the heretics and traitors, and I will lead my people to true harmony with the world! Let the misery of our enemies be a gift - a tear in attachments through which their enlightenment shines!"

Elise stared. "... Does he even hear what he's saying?"

The Devil-Body form of Camilla buzzed with tension. "The person he was? No, but this is how the Silent Wind thinks - taking up the mantle of his brother, and outshining him as Chumyo, but in a way that brings enlightenment - to her, tyranny is a catalyst to nirvana through suffering, conquest out of kindness. And it's her logic he's running on now."

Leo grimaced. "So...once more into the breach? That thing's flying, but we have to bring it down if we want to get at Takumi or its power source..."

There was a long pause, before Therese inhaled. "I'll draw his attention. I've learned how to fly, and he'll be drawn to me."

Camilla turned to her, alarm in her eyes. "Dear sister-!"

"I get it, but no - this is a way to draw him out of the City. I don't want anyone between him and the ground - and I made him turn to the Yozis for power, however incidentally. I hurt him through my selfishness, it makes sense that I clean my own mess." These grimaced as her hybrid form grew wings preparing to fly up to him. "Besides...since we fought Yukimura, there's been a spell I've been working on. First thing on my mind when I reached the Shadow Circle..."

And as she took flight, she let the dark power of the Second Circle of Necromancy swirl about her, taking the form of a very particular spell - Rattled Bones of War.

The spell to summon her own warstrider from nothing but memory and ivory.

Great bones thrust from the earth, grabbed by the many limbs made of sigils lashing out from her anima, glowing green as they took the form of internal structure of the harness and control mechanisms. The ghostly memory of war spun itself into physicality, becoming the rusty-seeming metallic skeleton of the strider, before bones of extinct Primordial-made races attached to them as musculature. Finally, her soulsteel ring detached and levitated to the center of her chest, where it sprouted an entire Essence circuit system like dark metal vines, the nerves of the great machine, as the Yato became the core of a mass of shadows that solidified into a great scimitar, sized properly for the strider, that bore a distinct resemblance in design to Messenger's modifications - but softer. Born of a time before bitterness and eons of being trapped within themselves twisted the Titans into spiteful demons.

By the time she was at Takumi's elevation, Therese was in her own warstrider - smaller, much smaller, to be certain. Certainly far less powerful too, it was a miracle enough for magic to build it in minutes in the first place. And she could feel it wouldn't last; it was held together by the same magic and will that conjured it, and it wouldn't last much longer than and hour before returning to the grave the raw materials that made it. But it would be enough to protect her body, and to even harm Takumi's own armor in a semi-direct fight at all.

Takumi knew it too, laughing bitterly as he noticed her. "So, the traitor has her own knockoff warstrider, replacing technology with the nightmares of mistakes and those lost in their own karma. I wonder; how much of those bones come from your own crimes and-"

The lecture was cut off by the shadow-scimitar breifly retreating from the Yato to let it shoot a ball of lunar-infused Essence at one of Messenger's wings, forcing it to swerve out of the way. "For someone who values silence," Therese's voice crackled over the necrotech vocal chords her temporary strider used as speakers, "Adorjan seems to have removed your ability to shut up! Nobody asked that! Maybe they should have, but I care more about the fact we're fighting over your city, and you're caring less about collateral than fucking lecturing me! Shut up and fight already!"

The Emerald Daimyo, to his credit, did.

He was still an archer at his core. Messenger didn't fly in, eager to strike her bonestrider with claw and foot. Rather, he tried to blast it with the chest cannon, uncaring of where the beam hit. Too telegraphed - it took a second for the device to fully warm up with a blatant glow and particles of Essence gathered from the air, and her bonestrider was small and nimble. But seeing a building collapse instantly as the beam tore apart the foundations as it missed confirmed to Therese that she needed to take this fight out of the boundaries of the city, fast.

Good news, that was always the plan. Dragging prey and rival predators into the favored environment was how linnorms fought. How she fought.

Bad news, Takumi was the kind of person who did not want, nor need, to move at all to fight, let alone into an area where she had advantage. And a single glance down told her that her allies would be little help - too many demons, streaming in over the walls, and too many Half-Souls coming out from secret caches in the Imperial City. Not a single living human group of troops among them, though. Presumably even the sincere, as opposed to the greedy, Yozi cultists had been driven away by Takumi's akumatized idea of "ascending", as the transcendentalists expected to be able to live in demonic form as opposed to exist. That he was presumably even more antisocial with Adorjan egging him on to cut his ties to everything and everyone certainly didn't help.

Which meant, of course, she had to be clever about this.

Thankfully, this aerial combat actually was a situation where White Reaper could help. The style was based around assessment of the world around you, and long-distance aerial fights were all about judging distance and angle. There was also no shortage of aerial backup for Takumi either - dozens of agatae bearing demonic and Half-Soul riders took to the sky to assist their master, with jellyfish-like khomfai drifted over the landscape bearing gondolas loaded with artillery and archers providing ranged backup, but not a single true Demon Lord was among them. Which meant a perfect situation for generating halos.

So began a long, careful dance. Being partly beast that spent much of its life underwater translated well to three-dimensional maneuvering, but while Therese was able to duck and weave fairly well through the arrows, spears, and Essence blasts, the agatae and their riders were used to being aerial calvary as well. Weaker, yes, but far more numerous, and up here, the advantage necromancy had in being able to turn casualties into quick reinforcements to cover a retreat or needed push was far less pronounced. Demons of the First Circle, agatae and their co-pilots included, left corpses to animate, but the mindless hunger of zombies left their undead forms clumsy fliers who didn't know how to use range. Good for decoys and harassing the far less quick-moving archers on the khomfai so she could focus on the troops in aerial melee, not much else.

And of course, the Emerald Daimyo was his own issue; soon after she began her evasive, defensive strategy, Takumi had begun leading her dodges with more of those damned beams - she was singed more than a couple times, losing function in her bonestrider's tail and attached flail before she figured out how to control her momentum enough to avoid the shots...which still left her open to the crystal wasp calvary, less dangerous comparatively but those stings added up in damage to her armor. To say nothing of how unbelievably fast he was - he didn't seem able to manage the duplication Charm she saw on the ground, but the Silent Wind's power allowed, apparently, for teleportation. Not frequent teleportation, but when any attempt to get close to unleash Bleeding Crescent Sword was met with him suddenly twenty feet away, it was enough.

Then she noticed something. His teleport dodges were always backwards. Straight back.

Her linnorm self smelt blood.

Takumi didn't seem to notice her lunges had developed a bit of an angle, or how she often stayed back to conjure more flying zombies or unleash her Flesh Scouring Wave at particularly dangerous swarms of cavalry over attacking him when he wasn't facing away from the northern border. Five strikes later, his wind-voice crackled to life.

"Are you quite finished yet, dear sister?", he said, both his own and Adorjan's tone sounding cruelly amused. "Not that this isn't fun, but I know the sorcerous version of that spell you ripped off. It only lasts for an hour before it falls apart, and I doubt our dear/my sensei's fallen brethren's shadow version is much different. And we've been up here for, oh, twenty minutes? You must be exhausted, especially with as little damage as you've done."

"You're right. This is tiring, and I'm no strider pilot. If I had a choice, you'd be facing a nerotech mount, not me in this suit," Therese admitted. "Which is why I'm really hoping she'll believe Leo's Infallible Messenger."

If Messenger could blink, it probably would have. "...She?"

"Your big sister."

Right on cue, a golden fireball rushed straight up from the ground, where Hinoka had been quietly hiding with an 'escaped' Sakura. Even with Takumi's Yozi-enhanced reflexes, he wasn't able to stop Hinoka's slash across the plates connecting his torso to Messenger, cutting most of the connection instantly. His screams joined that of the machine's as it suddenly listed, most of its internal balance disrupted along with its demonic nervous system and controls.

"AAAAAARGH! HINOKA...WHY HER?! WHY...WHY DOES EVERYONE ABANDON US?!"

Enough of the golden anima dimmed to reveal both the pegasus and Hinoka herself, eyes red with tears. "Because...neither of us could save you!"

The distraction allowed Therese to close the gap, lopping off one of the wings and causing the great war machine to lose control of its propulsion. Hinoka charged in, abandoning her temporary naginata in favor of a powerful kick to the internal workings of the arm exposed by the wing removed, disabling it. A slash from Therese cut the power supply to the other hand, causing it to sag uselessly.

Step one done. Therese willed the bonestrider back to the earth, it falling apart around her as she retrieved her ring and sprouted wings, using a bit of her own debris as a shield as she glided towards the warstrider desperately trying to compensate for its wing as it fell from the heavens. Both of the Karals noticed, the remaining active arm flying in front of Takumi-

But it was a feint. A flap of her wings sent her lowering a bit, straight towards the Essence cannon as Hinoka dismounted over where Fujin was installed. The one functioning arm tried to flail to block either woman from their course, but without an active hand, there was no capacity for the fine adjustment needed to stop either from landing on the great armor.

Without words, both thrust down - Therese with Yato to the cannon's core systems, Hinoka with her hand into the demonflesh socket of the corrupted powerbow, grabbing its center.

Messenger screeched in a very un-machine-like way as the interior of the cannon sparked and exploded with green fire and golden light, as electricity and starlight surged around Fujin, seemingly trying to resist Hinoka yanking it from the warstrider. A screech that trailed off as the lights within its head powered off, devoid of power source and a critical core component - and with that, the machine hit the ground before either of its conquerers, a great meteor followed by a pure white steed and a winged, seal-faced wyrmwoman.

And said wyrmwoman collapsed to her knees, with Hinoka only not falling off her pegasus because she grabbed its mount.

They sat like that for a second, in the crater and embers, overlooking the Imperial City.

Then, a male voice cracked to life.

"Sis...sisters..."

Therese admitted it, the first reaction she had was annoyance that Takumi did not know when to lay down and let himself die-

But then she saw him. The limbless jeweled corpse the Yozis had made him into.

And then she realized the wind-voice was gone.

"Sisters...please..." He gasped. "S...stay. Don't want...die alone..."

In that instant, Therese realized something:

Trying to overwhelm a White Reaper stylist with weaker troops was a fool's errand. That style was not only meant for a match of one stylist versus many troops, but with every one defeated, the Reaper would gain halos to enhance their power even further. This was the entire point of the style.

Nobody would make that mistake, unless they were a total idiot...

Or some part of them did not wish to continue living in a state that made death preferable.

Rattled Bones of War may have been the main reason Therese finally bit the bullet and initiated herself into the deepest Circle of necromantic power she as a Lunar could access...but if it was the only reason, she wouldn't have bothered. She could just summon bigger ghosts or learn how to take down giants on her own.

The Shadow Circle, however, was capable of two spells in one - Rune of Sweet Passing and Gentle Call of Lethe. It was the same manipulation of the cycle of reincarnation, just faced towards separate directions; Rune was meant as a way to defy reincarnation, drawing a great bee upon the flesh of one still living that would come to plasmic life and engineer connections of Essence between anything the deceased valued in life and their soul, guaranteeing they would rise as a ghost no matter what.

Its sibling, however, drew a cicada, the symbol of rebirth and life eternal - and would instead call forth the Dark Mother, Goddess of Reincarnation and Keeper of Lethe, from her domain beyond the veil, something she would not normally be capable of doing herself, and asked the one favor she never asked recompense for - to ensure that no obsession, dark magic, or even the focused will of the deathlords would stop the deceased from washing away its self and memory for the next life, whatever that might be.

And it was the cicada she drew upon a brother that she realized she never truly new.

"It's okay, Takumi. I'll be here..."

As he breathed his last, in the arms of his sisters - she realized she had never seen him smile before.

---

Well, we won." Therese inhaled. "And true victory has never tasted so bitter."

It was an interesting contrast, having the heroine that led Nohr to the achievement of its dreams and liberation from its hidden tyrant being the most dour person at Xanders dual coronation as King of Nohr and new Grand Duke of the Blessed Isle, Protector of Creation. Not Emperor of the Realm, at this point - it was officially agreed that if the unquiet soul of the last one was still around and bitterly disputed any of the living's name to that title, he could have it until his ghost was hopefully laid to rest forever. Besides, that position having been kept by someone who became a deathlord, and thus literally a vassal to beings who felt everything alive were upstarts against the natural order of things who needed to bow to their dead creators - beyond the religious and philosophical aspects, it seemed a conflict of interest.

(Nyx snarked that someone should inform the Silver Prince of that.)

Nobody doubted why, though. To Therese, it didn't really feel like an ending to her story.

"Mm. Medicine's bitter too, treasure," Keaton said, sitting down next to her, to a slight smile from her. "I doubt icewalkers are going to be disappointed with their new king's edicts that they have full autonomy from the crown. Or the native Blessed Islanders. I'm certainly not plussed wolfskins aren't dependent on the whim of the crown."

"To say nothing of Hoshido," Azura said, still using her naginata as a crutch due to injuries from the last battle. "It came as a pleasant surprise that Xander isn't even demanding reparations beyond a guarantee of alliance, agreeing their colonies won't expand, and request that they send all administrative records and the Throne of Forms to Bittern as the new provisional capital. Even more that Hinoka and Sakura were ransomed back as goodwill."

"Honestly, that's the one thing I'm actually happy with, instead of...not bitter," Therese admitted. "The Iron Lotus may have been exposed and humiliated, but I know the Neverborn aren't prone to execution of deathlords. I know how the First and Forsaken Lion's story didn't end until his own deathknights turned against him. And Nyx told me the Black Heron's actually in a better spot now than in the Second Age. Merak will be back, and he'll never stop reaching for his old throne; he has all the time in the world to scheme again."

Honestly, there were few better political moves. Nohr was now the New Realm that it had spent centuries reaching towards - it was more than advised to advertise it had no intention of being like the Scarlet Realm, and was an empire of diplomacy, mercantile interests, and soft power over the might of legions and satrapies. Especially with the reveal of how close an akuma had become to becoming the sovereign over the heart of Creation, and one whose remaining human feelings were rage and resentment.

Or at least, that was how history would remember Takumi. Even though the new king himself has his doubts that was truly who Takumi was even with his will fully consumed by Adorjan.

Nyx and Leo, for their part, had also taken a break from the festivities, both for their own temperament and not unnerving the guests with the presence of an Abyssal who really did not hide that fact. Leo, had sat opposite to his sister, while Nyx was leaning against a nearby wall. "If it makes you feel better," the deathknight began, "the Heron had successes before her disastrous raid on Great Forks, and the Lion was actively sabotaged even as the most competent general of all the deathlords, even to this day. I somehow doubt the man whose reveal to the quick was followed rapidly by his own defeat will face a less humiliating or sabotaging punishment. He won't be a problem for, oh, at least a century. Someone might have ursuped his seat by then. Even if he manages to completely rebuild in that time, Skullstone will be more than happy to ally against a rival of the Prince who doesn't have the decency to be honest about his ambitions."

"Mm. Not sure if that is especially comforting..." Therese looked at the black sword in her hands. "And that still doesn't solve the last few mysteries..."

"... Like, for example, why you are wielding the Ganglari again?", Leo said, raising an eyebrow. "If anyone would want to pass up that particular daiklave, it'd be you. I mean..." He trailed off, letting the only good father you had is inside it be unsaid.

Sumeragi's Half-Soul form, like most of Takumi and the Iron Lotus' monsters, had not lasted past their defeat. Most of the Pearl Legion had gone catatonic when Merak's ghost wasn't around to order them, and while Anankos had apparently ceded a detachment to the Emerald Daimyo, they suffered the same weakness of a lack of any initiative of their own when Takumi met his end. To say nothing of Takumi's demons - the vast majority of them had vanished back to Hell when his life force no longer supported their sorcerous right to exist outside of the Yozis' prison, and the remainder had fled into the underbrush, apparently not that interested in continuing his or Adorjan's ambition. They were still problems, of course; a swarm of agatae had built a hive in a nearby manse and declared it an autonomous village of devils, demjen were raiding mines for materials to build their friends, and the wilds echoed with the daily howls of wandering tomescu every dawn and dusk. But they obviously weren't interested in much beyond building their alien lives outside of their world, making only incidental nuisances of themselves at the moment.

A shared working from Forrest and his mother had put the Pearl Legion to rest forever, dissolving the sorcerous bindings keeping the elementals powering their unlife by forcing the inverted Living Elements to obey the laws of normal entropy. Sumeragi's ashes were next to Mikoto's...but the one lie was as to the state of his higher soul. And the intact nature of the artifact it was empowering.

"To be honest? It's partly because he's the only genuine father I had," Therese admitted. "In time, I hope to commune with him, learn who he was - and the Yato is a symbol of rule among the living, not the dead. That's why Xander has it now, not me." A bitter smirk came to her face. "Besides, I feel it's fitting if the weapon Anankos forced him to be twice over is what finally kills him."

"Uh..." Keaton blinked. "I...can't say I blame you, but...he is your blood father. Isn't that kind of...dark?"

"If it comes to that," Therese admitted. "But in truth...he's why I'm so bitter. There's so much I don't know about him...why did he make Lilith? What caused him to drown Valla? Why is he working with both living and dead Ancients to punish humanity? How'd he even learn to manipulate Fate so much I'm up two children I never had?" She sighed. "And I can't even say he's that awful, not willingly. Because you heard what that awful ghost said - the Anankos who was Mikoto's lover was made from his lingering love for humans, so part of me wonders if he's even fully sane. Or if I'll end slaying him as a mission of mercy to a dragon in the midst of losing his mind to his inner Apocalypse..."

They sat like that a while, simply thinking.

"Then...what will you do, sister?", Azura asked, softly.

"I don't know," Therese admitted. "I've grown sick of war; I've fought for enough causes I don't believe in twice over, once because I was a coward and second to stop the next war I helped nurture. I'm not like you, or Leo; I can't deal with this whole dance of intrigue any more and tell myself it was all worth it. I think I'll start seeing all the ways it didn't measure up, and I'll become a tyrant to force the world to tell me it was all worth it. Eternally questing for what I know can never be. Sort of like a certain Scarlet Emperor who chose to ascend to a crown to achieve the dreams of his aunt..."

Keaton hugged her. "Sia, you are nothing like Merak."

"I'm not now. But he raised me in the form of Garon for the entire life I can easily remember, and so the potential to become like him - like the weapon he wanted to punish the descendants of Lookshy for taking what he thought was his - is something I fear is there. The Great Curse has unleashed my vindictive side too many times for me to think it isn't there. And I'll be honest - I'm hoping the true Garon left a ghost, even if he was soulforged or otherwise forced to remain where my summoning can't reach. I'd like to know what he was actually like, not some warped impersonation by a ghost who was mad long before he became a deathlord conspiring with a madder dragon. And after my quest is done...well, Therese was trained among Immaculates. Perhaps join a monastery and spend the rest of my life teaching younger Exalted. Younger ones who haven't made mistakes that scarred the world yet. At least teach them how to make better mistakes than thinking there was a binary choice between two sides who obviously did not know what was going on."

She gave a more genuine smile, looking up. "But I can't say I'm sad with how things turned out. Because, now I realize...the reason I'm not sure is that I have a choice in what I am going to be. It's not something I'm used to - and I must say, it's exciting."

Another long pause, before Leo cleared his throat.

"You know..." He grinned slightly. "Vodak didn't disappear simply because you weren't there to scare it. I hear Gethamane has been suffering from increasingly large probe attacks from the underground, and I think as its unofficial warden, you need to train your heirs in how to deal with darkbrood and other subterrenean menaces..."

Therese smiled. "I suspect that Velouria will be over the moon with what we find down there."

And so, the Bethan clan began to make plans for a fun exploration of unknown depths.