FATA CERVA.

Each crunch of fallen leaves beneath her heels had been a little fracture in the night's peace, every puff of warm breath foreign and unwanted. Poe had, of course, carried her search on regardless, because peace was only valuable when it was predicated on morality. The moment she had realized the lumenthus flowers, each and every one with hardly a petal to spare, were missing, she'd had every reason to believe this quiet calm fool's gold.

And when she had found that tall-eared girl by the river with her stolen spoils, she had been proven right.

Mere minutes after Poe has confronted her is the moment that a tense, two-person standoff increases by the addition of one more witness. The culprit shifts, pivoting half a step on her heel to look in the direction of the newcomer and subconsciously recognizing that she is now further cornered. Her posture is stiff. It has been from the moment that Poe had found her, which had been easy on account of the guilt that she reeked of.

The girl's head whips back in Poe's direction. "Don't think this changes anything," she rebuffs, straightening her back, "Ten more of you could come out of the woodwork to tell me not to, and I'll still do it."

Poe ignores her.

Instead, she turns towards the other woman. "If it isn't Ananke!" she greets, sweet bordering on sickly. The night is dark, but her smile is audible in her tone. In spite of the hour, she has no qualms with speaking at full volume; even had they been closer to camp, she still would. "You must have realized something was amiss too, no? I don't see why else anyone would be out here this far past sundown."

The girl bristles, ears flattening unconsciously. Poe doesn't offer her an opportunity to get a word in edgewise just yet, throwing her a sharpened glance instead.

but the flowers. it's hard to stop looking at the flowers.

the girl scoffs in the way only teenagers can, rolling her eyes. "i don't care about getting off scot-free or whatever. i just want to get rid of these flowers. they're causing such a huge problem ; can't you see it? ugh. they need to go. right now." she's half-turned on her heel, poised to heft the large basket and overturn it into the water, and suddenly all flies into chaos.

"wait! waitwaitwaitwait!" hurrying down the slope, ananke has her staff raised before she's even thinking about it, urgency or some other reason making the head of it glow ; the girl yelps in response when she sees it, ducking with her arms over her head and shrinking away from the basket.

"what are you doing?! what are you doing oh my god——!!"

"huh??" she comes to a braking stop, eyes wide and staring at the girl curled up on the ground as if she'd been about to beat her into submission, tall ears pinned back against her head in terror. "what are you——? i was just trying to——"

"it's the flowers," the girl sobs, and seems to even start to cry behind her arms, which are still covering her face. stock still in the light of her own lantern, ananke can't understand the intensity of the reaction. "they're making everyone crazy. i should've dumped them earlier. i knew it. . . " a few seconds pass. haggard breaths. "i have to do it. . . " painstakingly, the girl uncurls herself and starts pushing up again unsteadily, bracing herself on the basket as she climbs to her feet, deadset eyes on the lumenthus stems making alarm creep up the back of ananke's neck, stirring her into motion again.

what was going on? was she not in her right mind? she tries to move forward, reaching out to grab: "hey, just hold on a second. hold on a second——"

He casts a look towards the bristling student, his gaze summarized with only one word: disappointed. 

“Of course I want them to recover,” Tsubaki says, lips pressed tightly. “Just as much as I want them to understand the severity of their actions. It’s that exact foolhardiness that must be immediately corrected– You knew better than this. Arin. I have not uttered any fact that you were ignorant to. This is painful to us as well, you know:”

The student grits his teeth.

“I know,” an edge of defeat is clear in his voice. His hand lowers back to the sheet, humiliation written om his features. “But none of the professors believe me when I say that its hard for me to read the course materials— Everyone else can and I just– I don't know. Whatever.” 

The student flops back down onto the cot, then covers his face with the sheet. 

“Well, then. I’ll let you rest and we'll talk about the course materials later, okay?” Tsubaki says, then turns to the pink-haired attendant. “You have more to say about this, I presume? It’s written all over your face, you know~ I won't disturb the students, but you’ve ought to tell me what’s on your mind. Let’s have a discussion in the back.” 

…

the closing of the door feels like a finality and a trap. so does his smile, and the way he starts by pointing out how new she is. her eyes stay wide on him, severe and watchful, as she neither confirms nor denies. "my name's ananke. i work in the infirmary and teach healing magic sometimes."

none of that was really important though, and neither was his name and what he did. so without wavering, she gets to it instead:

But if the crest beast has noticed him, it's weird that it hasn't run yet - toward or away from him. He'd killed plenty before this and considered himself to be something of a veteran hunter, so he knows that they're more likely to charge and attack anything that enters their territory. If they even have a concept of that. It was more likely for them to just attack anything that moves on sight, having lost all the more rational senses possessed even by the forest's beasts. This one doesn't move at all until a beacon of light pulses in the distance. Griss stops and kneels down in the bushes to wait.

Whatever spell Ananke had chosen to call on doesn't have much range, and for a second Griss doesn't think that it will be enough to startle the creature into the moment of paralysis he'd been hoping for. But finally it starts to move, slowly the way massive things always seem to, and Griss waits until it turns its back fully to him before he readies an Excalibur spell. He loses track of its head in the gloom though. The silhouette of its antlers lower and disappear, but from this distance, Griss thinks that it's just sniffing at the ground. Getting an idea of what or who Ananke is. Normal animal behavior, that's for sure.

Now came the fun part. Diving through the underbrush to get closer before it can turn around, Griss calls on the wind. Two slices from Excalibur could cleanly cleave a monster's head from its neck if he aimed them right, but unfortunately he can't figure out this one's anatomy anymore. Legs then. That was always safe. Cripple it so he could take his time with the death blow.

"Better not be on the other side of this, pinkie," he mutters but grins like he doesn't really care if he catches her in the crossfire or not. His glassy eyes shine with the faint light of magic that gathers around his fingers, bringing a gale into the woods strong enough to nearly flatten some of the thinner saplings growing underfoot. The crest beast lifts its head then, sensing the change in energy all around it, but it's too late. Griss crosses his arms in front of his chest, and then slices them forward in an X shape. The wind howls through the trees, and soon the massive deer's anguished shriek takes over.

The ground beneath their feet shudder as it falls to the side. Griss had managed to sever one of its back legs, but only nicked the other. It could get back up and bolt if he wasn't quick.

at first she thinks it's his gale still howling, but then realizes that's not the wind——but the monster, writhing in the center of the suddenly flattened grove, vegetation lying flat like toothpicks in a huge circumference all around it. she can see its shadowy form, massive and spotted, kicking and bellowing as it, too, struggles to its feet again, fully visible now without cover. she takes a step forward to engage it, then stops. there are words in the moaning it makes, fragments intelligible: ooon't.... iiiii...

"what. . . ?" was it saying something, or was that griss doing something?

it gets onto its hooves again, four surprisingly slender legs shedding sloughs of shadow like oil ; she doesn't realize it's regenerated just as she doesn't realize griss' initial attack had severed a limb, caught in trying to figure out how to approach or regroup when they're separated. then it rears, front legs kicking out at nothing in the air like spears, and she suddenly realizes that what's attached to the antlers on its featureless head aren't just tendrils, but half-rotted human shapes that seem to scream out in agony:

i don't want to die!!!!

shaken, ananke staggers backwards, legs taking her instinctively as far away as she can as her breath freezes in her throat, the monster stamping and driving its hooves and its twisted, tar-like head madly into the ground over and over, caught in a frenzy that makes it impossible to get close. how was. . . that was. . .

it hurts. . . it huRTS. . . IT HURTS!!!!

the trails of red from those unnatural eyes cut like scythes against the black of its thrashing head. that was her voice.

finally, the grotesque stag throws its head up on distended neck and lets out a rending banshee scream like someone being tortured alive, lynched skeletons jangling in a clamor of cadaverous windchimes. the ground under her suddenly sags, and when she looks down, she can see it bubbling, liquefying, turning to something vaporous and putrid. already, her lungs begin to sting, straining as if they're short on air, and acid eats away at her boots. poison! struggling to break free of the muck, seeing the whole clearing bubbling with it, she manages to fight her way to a drier patch, then, heart hammering, tries to pick her way around to the other side of the beast in a wide circle, doing what she can to stick to grass that isn't yet disintegrating. "griss?!" was he still over there? was he alive?

But here she was, following him. With concern too. He begins to understand why she seemed effortlessly popular with the traveling group now, even with her ears making her stick out like a sore thumb against the majority.

“Thanks for looking for me.” He tries to meet her less evasively at least for that, touched by the gesture, but it's not nearly enough to dispel his worries. Said concerns prevent him from returning her half-smile with one of his own.

so she's glad when there's people like joachim who'll say it when they're not feeling right. matter-of-fact without apologizing: i'm a bit stressed. it makes her smile a little more, like it'd be okay if she were to share how she's feeling too.

"hmm. . . " but that relieved expression falls away when he asks about the count's decision ; she's careful to keep her thoughts reined close, not giving them away on her face. "i don't know. we've been here for a while already, and we're not any closer to finding out the truth."

well. all of the truth.

It's ridiculous, the length some of them will go just for a mere festival. Perhaps she simply doesn't understand the hype: Lucina hasn't attended one before. She's heard and daydreamt about it as a child, hearing tales from her parents. But in her future, there was no festival. No reason to hold one.

It isn't surprising there is no invitation extended to Lucina: as a newly appointed Knight of Seiros and not having any connections, it'll be a miracle if any invite gets extended her way. Not that she minds.

It comes as a surprise to hear her name fall, causing Lucina to turn her head. Facing an unknown pink - haired woman causes a rather surprised look 'pon her visage. " Yes, that would be me. " It is nearly said in a question, but Lucina keeps herself composed. " Oh.. thank you. It's a pleasure, Ananke. I would introduce myself, but it seems there is no need to ", she says in a jest, a light smile tugging upon her lips.

on the other side where it can be opened, garreg mach's seal fastens the whole thing shut. and on the inside, an invitation awaits.

but why would she want to spoil that?

Could love and earnestness alone make up for all she lacks? Well, it'll be the test she faces soon enough. But she can't let herself look nervous here! Not when she'd finally gotten her fellow pink-haired person to agree to her deal!

So she puts on her brightest smile yet, nodding and giving a wave, letting it be the final push.

“No problem! Just enjoy yourself, OK?” Though she gets why accepting something for free might feel difficult, so she ends it with, “And if you really wanna see me after all this, if y'don't catch me later tonight after your fun, I'm usually somewhere around the monastery.”

A silent, If you leave me longer than thirty minutes, that's fine!

“Don't be a stranger, hehe!”

How could Lapis not as someone who puts up a façade herself? Not that she holds it against her fellow peach-colored villager. She hardly could. Lies were necessary in the world, even if they might grow tiresome to wear, each moment building in anxiety for when that lie might be exposed.

If it's to keep the peace, a false smile was hardly a sin. It just made the real ones, the ones that came when one could relax, all the more beautiful.

At least, that's what Lapis tells herself to make her choice of survival in a world not fit for her easier to palate; why she finds comfort in the fact this stranger's smile transforms, for even if she doesn't fully understand, she thinks she's not alone.

But the brief comfort Lapis is afforded by presumption subsides, overwritten by confusion as she is reminded again just how out of her depth she is in this world. Even when she thinks she finally knows enough to fake it, flower language turns out to be a much broader topic for a bumpkin like her to actually fully grasp.

“So long as you actually wanna head out soon!” Lapis tries to fall in step, hiding her blunder. When the other girl seems so pleased by this message, even if it's not the one Lapis had intended, it feels worse to come clean. “Don't wanna guess wrong, heh.”

She gives a chuckle, as if that wasn't already the truth. But as she does so, she gets to thinking, wondering if there might be a way to make her wish come true.

but, was. . . fódlan different? everything she'd seen here so far suggested there was no reason for anyone to offer a gift from one hand while hiding a knife in the other. there was so much to go around: food, supplies, basic needs. she hadn't seen a single starving person since getting off the ship, barely even any beggars on the streets.

could kindness here really just be that? kindness?

well, she can't just stand here staring for the whole night. at first, when words come back to her, she gives the polite reply she'd been taught you were supposed to: "oh, no no, i couldn't ask you to do that. it's supposed to be your night!" commoner or not, it's clear the girl was here to enjoy the ball in a way she wasn't as someone working it ; even if their hair might be the same color, her dress would be a dead giveaway that she didn't belong on this side of the workshop station.

but even as ananke says that, she's shifting her weight from one foot to the other under the table, vainly trying to relieve soreness that wouldn't go away after hours of standing ; even as she says that, a chorus of laughter pours out from the hall where the golden lights shone, and she's so curious. the others who'd been helping with the station had gone inside ; would it be so bad just for her to get a break? bashfully, she looks at the girl again. "well, if you really wouldn't mind. i won't leave you here more than thirty minutes——i just want to see some of the dance demonstrations and what the food's like. i don't think we'll get much more traffic anyway."

"You know, the exams are merely benchmarks for individual progress; they're scaled towards the class average," Tsubaki explains, his tone measured. Before him, a student grits their teeth, knuckles blanching from their grip on infirmary sheets. "How can you expect to be knighted if you can't handle that much? You're from Faerghus, right?"

"Professor— I've been trying, I swear," The student pleads, their voice shaking. "I do well on field missions, I just— I can't score well on written exams, no matter how hard I study. I don't know— I don't come from a lineage of knights, it took everything for me to get a sponsor here and—"

"And so you resorted to magical augmentation," Tsubaki finishes, "You didn't consider how that would effect your academic standing, nevertheless your sponsorship. Your judgment was clouded. I sympathize with that, truly, but you understand that there are rules everyone follows, correct? That your actions have consequences and are a reflection not just of yourself, but those in affiliation with you? It's impossible to debut into honorable society with your current mindset."

"I understand—- I'll take any other punishment, I promise, Professor, I swear— Just— Please don't tell the Duke, please." The teenager's voice rises in desperation; Tsubaki averts his gaze. Sensing the finality of this exchange, the student makes one last feverish gambit: they throw their hand out, grabbing the arm of a nearby, pink-haired staffer. "Ma'am—! Ma'am— You understand me, right? Please— The professors here aren't listening to me…!"

illness, injury, back aches, common colds. . . it looks like even student-incurred complications were on their list of things to treat.

but she wasn't really mad at them, ruined day off or not. seeing them rolling on their sides and breaking out in cold sweats, groaning and straining, she knew most of them had probably learned their lesson. and the professor just getting in the way and lecturing them? well. . . at first, she'd thought he wasn't really wrong. they did have to take accountability for what they did. but the more he went on, started talking about how they could even show their faces in society, the more it bothered her.

and then one of them grabs her arm.

"huh?" aquamarine eyes widen, stare down, then flick up at the red-haired man. everything about him, from the way he talked to the way he smelled, screamed nobility. yeah, of course he'd care more about punishing them.

anyway, it's not like she knew this mayor and his daughter they were celebrating, or really cared, to be honest.

what she's really giving up is the unlikely, even smallest chance that she might find a clue there to what she's looking for. but it doesn't sound like it. just a festival, right? nothing special.

so, she's decided to sign off on this one, and she has to do it before she decides to change her mind. this is the right thing to do, she's sure of it. and when she thinks of who she could give it to. . . well, there's petra, but that could definitely be seen the wrong way ; she wouldn't want her students thinking she had favoritism for one of the eagles. there's. . . that pink-haired girl who'd helped her out at the ball? that could be a good idea. but then realizes she actually doesn't even know where to start to look——she'd. . . never actually gotten that girl's name. wow, that's awful.

it's not until ananke overhears the other infirmary staff chatting about some new foreigners that'd been sworn into the knights of seiros, apparently to help with security leading up to the festival, that a candle ignites in her head. that's it! maybe it's not a great idea to send a newcomer off to a vacation as soon as they got here for the same reason she was worried it'd look weird for her to go, but. . . well, if it's an invitation, it's an invitation, right?

Someone had slipped the note under her door. Scenes from the previous night flashed through her mind--the dancing, the drinks, the fanfare of it all. Had she unwittingly offended some blue-blood so badly that they felt no other choice but to resort to vague threats? She can nearly taste the bitterness on her tongue as she thinks about what coward would dare to leave such a note and not face her directly.

Was it worth entertaining such things? It was certainly not the first time that she had been the butt of a cruel joke. But the timing of it sends a lead ball into the pit of her stomach, and the note continues to sear in her hand.

if that wasn't enough though, the infirmary had finally run out of clean towels. until they could figure out where they all kept disappearing to⠀(⠀were people stealing their towels and forgetting to return them? why would anyone want towels?⠀) ,⠀they'd have to keep running out to buy more. she's sure the artisans in town were getting tired of them always ordering the strangest things.

by the time she gets back from her delivery, it's late in the afternoon and she's barely had time to sit down. and she still has to finish the plans for her own class tomorrow. . .

But the request is so earnest. Petra glances over at the waistcoats and full skirts of the other guests before looking back at Ananke in her humble formal wear. Something akin to familiarity tugs at Petra as Ananke's bright demeanor feels closer to home than she had felt all evening.

there's nothing for it now, that's for sure. no matter what she has to say about it, the show must go on. and by that, she means the festival in some distant place she's never heard of. it sounds like a lot of fun, and at the end of the day, flowers are just flowers ; they die all the time.

so why is she still uneasy anyway?

"there's going to be a lot more to be uneasy about if i don't find them fast. . . " she mutters to herself, searching quick-paced through the stick-shadows of barren trees providing no secrecy from the white winter moonlight. sure steps have crossed almost a mile from the campsite, bringing her all the way out here where she'd seen the girl heading this morning without telling anyone. she hadn't wanted to get into her business at first, but when all the lumenthus suddenly disappeared the same night? she had a pretty obvious first guess.

in the dark, lantern light illuminates a line of fallen petals here, a bloom there. some of them must have fallen off the cart in the girl's careless hurry to get them wherever she was taking them. and the more ananke thought about that, the more her blood pressure rose.

and then, the sound of voices up ahead. her ears twitch. but she doesn't stay frozen in place for long, breaking out from the tree line in a crackle of twigs underfoot because what her nose had caught was the smell of water.

"hey!"

"i'd say you're already doing a good job at fitting in," she replies with a light giggle. "i wouldn't mind being added to your list of friends. ananke, you said? i'm dorothea. i'm with the black eagles."

contemplatively, her gaze flickers back to the other's headpiece.

"i won't keep a pretty lady from her drink, but if you're ever interested, i'd be happy to show you my own collection of accessories someday. who knows? maybe there'll be something that catches your eye, too."

Killing crest beasts and other oversized monsters around Garreg Mach was just a run-of-the-mill job by now. There was never any shortage of them, and Griss liked to pick them up just for the bloodshed, and the thrill of narrowly escaping massive claws and fangs with his life intact, even if his body wasn't always. How in the world Fódlan managed to keep birthing these things wasn't a question Griss cared to ask, not as long as he could keep killing them.

His partner this time - it wasn't unusual for him to have one, but he (and his partner) usually preferred him to finish his jobs alone - was a healer. Or something. Maybe the church had finally gotten sick of him tracking so much blood in through the gates that they sent this chick along just to make sure most of his blood stayed in him this time. At least clean him up before he reached the monastery again. As if the head he'd be dragging behind him wouldn't be even more of a mess.

She did have those weird animal ears on her head though - some kind of accessory? He throws a glance over his shoulder at her and sees them swivel to the sounds of the forest almost like they're real.

"You're gonna distract this thing, got it?" he whispers, or tries. They'd gone over this plan when they'd set off: Ananke would draw the beast's attention and Griss would take it out from behind, quick and easy. "You gotta know a spell that can do the trick. Something bright."

The forest is dusky in the early winter twilight. A flash would blind it, he hopes, and not scare into fleeing. But by now the beast's antlers have stopped moving, and he wonders if it's already gotten wise to their position, but he can't see the direction of its head through the trees. Can't even really tell that it is a crest beast, except for the fact that the many, sprawling prongs of its antlers reach up nearly to the lowest limbs of the canopy overhead. Well, it was now or never.

He nods to Ananke. That means go left. He makes his way right, half-crouched but still swift through the underbrush in a semi-circle around to the beast's side.

as a healer, she'd learn to pick and choose who she worked with. she wasn't like those guys ; she couldn't run in swinging at a monster and stake her life on a trophy, and she couldn't rely on just anyone to keep both themselves and her safe, either. if she didn't make it back, her family didn't eat and they probably wouldn't have a place to live either. and that wasn't even counting how a lot of those guys acted as soon as they were alone with someone like her. so, she thinks it's fair to say that she's seen her share.

and in all of them. . . there'd only ever been one or two like griss.

"right. i'll think of something. leave it to me." these are words she's said she-doesn't-know-how-many-times as she leaves the tattooed mage behind and breaks off quietly to the left, circling around a cluster of trees in the underbrush. at the beginning, it'd been faking it until she made it. now, she at least does know a thing or two, so it's not always pulling something out of her butt and acting like it'd been the plan all along. her steps naturally avoid uneven plots in the ground, she moves instinctively to dodge the low-hanging branches and the thickets. brow furrowed, her gaze stays focused, ears alert. crest beast. crest beast. their job was to kill the crest beast. and half the commission she made from this would be hers to keep.

a couple hundred feet downwind of the hulking shape in the woods, she finds a good hiding spot to prepare to draw its attention. it hasn't noticed her yet, its head still turned back toward her partner, who was more noticeable. taking a deep breath, she raises her staff above the brush-line. . . and gives three quick flashes of magic.

the monster's head turns.

and as it does, it does something strange, twisting unnaturally on an elongating neck that stretches like tar, that can't possibly be made of bone, distorting until it regards her upside-down, unsettling enough to make her skin crawl. something sways from its enormous antlers, but she can't make out what amid the branches. but then the most eerie part: red pierces the hundred-foot distance——seeing her, judging by shape and placement, like looking directly into a lamp in the darkness and having her eyes reflected back at her ; though it's far away, there's no question that it knows exactly where she is.

"I can't believe that worked..." he says, near-breathless and mostly to himself. The earlier claustrophobic feeling has given way to the cold echo of marble walls and for a second he almost forgets that the person he'd defended was still at the other end.

"Are you alright?" His head snaps up to the sight of Ananke absently rubbing her wrists in the same kind of can't-believe-this-is-real daze that made his own legs feel like rubber. The gaoler had hauled the chains off with him when he'd left, but Ronan trots over looking for them anyway. Maybe then this situation would sharpen back into reality.

"Sorry, I don't know if you had a plan or anything, but," he shakes his head and doesn't meet her eyes, "I couldn't just stand by and not say anything. These nobles will just--" This time he stops to find the words, frowning and still shaking his head in half-disapproval, half-disbelief at some distant point between two columns along the corridor. The heads of those gossiping ladies sneer at him from the shadows, then they twist into the heavy features of the guard, before smiling with the subtle hint of personal amusement that he swears he'd seen on the old man's face.

"They don't care about fairness, you know? Not usually... So I'm going to make sure I do everything I can to help clear your name now that they've given us the chance."

Us. Ronan says it without even thinking. The only 'us' had been that of two mercenaries in the employ of the church, contracted to guard a paranoid nobleman. There didn't need to be an 'us' now in the trial of a murderer. Anyone else probably would have just walked away from Ananke; the messes she got tangled up in was her business.

even so, the thought to come clean and tell him the truth never crosses her mind. she had a story she was sticking with, and there were already enough secrets she'd carried ; what was one more?

". . . thanks, ronan. hearing that you trust me like that means a lot." guilt gradually morphs away into a guileless smile, tired but relieved and maybe daring to hope a little bit. "i guess i can't blame anyone else here for not. nobles or not, they don't know us. and strangers are always the easiest to doubt."

besides, no one else had that kind of access to the viscount. paranoid as he was, he'd practically put himself on house arrest, refusing visitors and shutting himself away in a room just when his own servants were at work. but that was probably better for them ; she'd seen the way he treated them when he did see them, sneering at them, blaming every small mistake on some personal shortcoming, as if they'd already been found guilty of his murder or some worse crime. now that he was gone, she doesn't know what would happen to them, but she hopes they'd all gone somewhere else.

maybe it's selfish. but she's glad to hear that it's an ' us ' when she'd gone into this figuring it'd be ' i '. she didn't want to get caught, and. . . he didn't want her to get in trouble either. they could work with that.