make me to rest in the warmest places

Borders are more permeable than any ruler would like to admit. Even softened by cooperation and a shared nation, guards on the Fraldarius-Gautier border work double-time to ensure that no one passes through who does not have the proper authorization; if even Faerghans cannot cross freely, they seem to think, then surely no foreign spy will slip through the cracks.

The Beast, however, is subservient to an older sort of boundary, one that keeps it squarely in the ancestral lands of Gautier, allowing it to venture no further.

Damn, Felix thinks, a curious calm overtaking him. If only I hadn’t had such a late start this morning.

the end of the fiscal year in hades is not so different from the mortal world after all...

sylvain has never really known when to leave well enough alone. when another indiscretion puts his position in his band at risk, he says whatever he needs to in order to get himself out of the danger zone.

“Do you like it?” Sothis had asked, bending down so she could wrap an arm around his narrow shoulders.

“I love it.” Young as he’d been, he hadn’t even tried to keep the awe out of his voice. “Thank you!”

“Of course, darling.” Her hair had smelled like wildflowers; he would never feel safer than in that moment. “I thought it was an appropriate present for my little scholar, right? I can’t wait to read the stories you’ll tell.”

“I’ll share them all with you!”

All around, the members of the Golden Coalition topple, clutching their ears as Dorothea screams. The tires of Caspar’s newest getaway car squeal as he swings around the corner, and with a grin of their own, Byleth slips inside and slams the door shut.

In a thousand alternate worlds, Dimitri does not escape unscathed. Felix knows this as surely as he knows how the sun rises and falls—and not just because he’d received a letter mere hours after the news had reached him, detailing their original plans. It pays to be friends with a man of Duscur, he supposes, or at least it has in this case; Dedue had summoned his countrymen to free the both of them from the Dukedom's schemes , and—against all reason—they had answered the call.

So Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd is free of the grasp of Cornelia, and all of Fódlan knows it. The Faerghus Dukedom’s power has dipped, its legitimacy questionable at best, and the lords who know the righteousness of the man who would be their king fight on in his defense.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy with a head full of clouds. That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t smart—he simply spent his time dreaming up fantastical inventions, sketched out in a crude hand along the margins of his books. He would be a prodigy, he believed, and would reshape the world as he knew it, no burdens to hold him down.

Once upon that same time, however, that little boy had a father who thought himself a very important man, and unfortunately, he had the wealth and connections to make others say the same. Inventions were all well and good, he would say, but no son of his would waste his time on such notions when his future was already assured.

The little boy resisted.

“Come on, beast,” he goads, tasting copper from a lip he did not know was split. “I know there’s fury in you yet.”

He levels a slash at Dimitri’s chest; the boar retreats, if only for a moment. “So you do mean to die,” the boar prince rumbles, but there is more life to it than Felix has heard in years.

“Do you really think me capable of killing you?” The boar doesn’t sound hurt by this, only quietly curious—yet another reason he still isn’t quite right, for whatever value that holds for either of them.

Free hand shifting, fingers picking at the skin around his nails, Felix shrugs. “I don’t know. Which is a concerning answer on its own, you understand.”

Dimitri nods, the movement as sluggish as if done through water. “I see. So why is the professor not here in your stead?”

After the war is over, in this new, united Fódlan, the son of lions and the god of war meet for a dance.

Even after all that bloodshed has wrought, it will be diplomacy that carries the victors past the initial exhilaration of conflict’s end. Regardless of what Felix thinks, this is the path Dimitri has chosen; he will support his king because, even after all this time, he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

The masquerade is lavish—if he hadn’t witnessed the combined force of Sylvain’s wealth and Dorothea’s connections at work, Felix might have wondered how the kingdom could afford such delights. As it is, he keeps his mouth shut and adjusts his wolf mask, skin crawling within the confines of his formalwear.

It’s… odd to be back in Duscur after all this time, even if it’s just the airport. Dedue can admit that readily. It would be impossible to forget the place of his birth, but after so much time away—time with his closest neighbors being from a country apart—it feels more like a dream than the flatlands where he’d picked flowers with his cousins as a child.

Of course, that feeling only lasts until he sees his sister, who’s waving around a sign that must have been decorated by the youngest of his cousins—his name is misspelled and written in a riot of frankly horrendous colors. He loves it more than he can possibly say.

Nami knows she should be crying right now. She had just an hour ago, hadn’t she? Even if there were no more tears left in her body, she should be sobbing or screaming or beating on the thick wooden door of this terrible room. She should be sad or angry or scared or… or something!