zephia.

…Well, she wasn’t prepared for that. (She isn’t certain she ever could’ve been.) Her only reply is an attempt to stand tall, stay focused, and to think through the logistics of everything that would come to pass.

“They could be escaping as we speak,” she retorts, and it is with, perhaps, the only proper strength she’s had all morning. If they do not scour the area, the killer could escape—and they would have very little cause to come back, especially with the scene as littered with evidence as it already was. The only reason Selena can imagine for not alerting the whole of the house immediately would be to make the killer believe the viscount was actually still alive.

…Maybe that was possible, considering how many stab wounds it took to take him down. Perhaps he had a cleric on staff that could mend those.

(If Selena were more trained in faith, she recognizes, perhaps she could’ve done something herself.) Though staves had been a part of her domain in Magvel, they had never been her specialty, and with such skills being a use-it-or-lose-it sort of thing–

Zephia is implicating herself again, and the line draws Selena from her present thoughts and hurls her into infinitely worse ones. Her mouth opens to speak before falling shut, nothing emerging in that time. (She should be choosing to trust in her companion, however difficult it was proving to be.)

“…What if no one turns up?” she says at last, the question only seeming reasonable and fair. “And the rest of the viscount’s family will wish to check on him at some point, not to mention—”

Well, his blood was currently all over the kitchen floor. Furthermore: his body was atop all of that blood.

Well. They must be terribly anxious, the poor thing, waiting to hear news of the viscount's death. After all, if no death is announced, then that must necessarily mean the man is alive—and if the man is alive, he'll very likely be able to identify the individual who so brutally stabbed him four times. Who would be able to sit still with that risk hanging over their heads?

"...I'll leave the choice up to you. You don't look nearly as shocked as I'd thought you would—" at least, not by the death itself, "—so you must have quite a bit of experience handling the passing of someone you were meant to protect."

"We're leaving." It's not Zephia's voice though. Zephia isn't here. She won't be for quite some time. His parents turn their backs on him, holding their gold like it's more precious than life. More precious than the son they'd left black and blue and bloody. Griss wants to go with them.

Wants to go with her.

But the old priest repeats Stay as if commanding a too-eager dog. The grasp tightens, it pulls, and Griss digs in his heels because he doesn't want to be abandoned a second time a third time. But that old resignation creeps in like the cold: he would never be good enough to be loved.

"We're leaving." Without him. Thrown away again. The chains tug roughly at his wrists and he staggers after the old man.

"We're leaving." Louder now than the whispered Stay. Close enough to encompass him within it. We. Not abandoned, saved. Brought into a new family's arms. Zephia has his hand. She wouldn't leave him here.

The forest, dark as it, swells in blindingly. Griss squints up at her crescent halo like he's just come out of a long dream. All around them, the trees screech with some disembodied voice and the water in the spring roils until it's muddy.

He grasps her hand with such force that she can hardly even flex her fingers. Had it been anyone else—even traitorous Mauvier, who would never hold onto her like this to begin with; even wretched Marni, who would cling to her now and flit away later—she would have crushed their fingers in turn. But it's Griss, her darling Griss, all flesh and blood and alive, and so:

"There's no need to yell, Griss. I'm here."

She gives her one and only warning for him to ease his grip with a brush of her thumb against his skin. (See? She has always been terribly patient and accommodating to those she loves. She spoils them so.)

"Why?" It's the same voice that bid them to stay, trembling and sweet, drifting all around them as if it is the fog itself that speaks. "You're here. Why won't you stay?"

And how awful, to hear that. In a way, she understands.

—but she is not one with an open and bleeding heart, letting in all those who might commiserate with her. She might have, once, before she was hurt and hurt again until she finally learned not to. Lightning gathers in violent sparks within her free palm, and without further warning, it arcs off her hand to crash through the fog and into the trees. It is more miracle than not that it doesn't spark a fire, but she doesn't seem to care.

Instead, she gives Griss' hand another pull, dragging him if she must down the path she's opened.

With so many threats around them, she is hardly in the mood to pick at old wounds while she is at risk of new ones, so she does not comment on the word any further. Her expression, however, does become a bit more dour as she follows along behind the strange professor.

(Is it truly coddling she is worried about, or is the professor simply not capable in the way she wants them all to believe? Who knows. Not her, not right now, not unless she is interested in seeing temporary ally turned to foe.)

The hallway before them is…odd. As they make their way along, Mitama rests her hand on the wall and lets it drag along beside them. There is no thrum of magic behind the walls of the house, but the distant vibration of something far more mundane. Mechanical.

Who builds a house like this? Some people should really invest in different hobbies…

"If I must…" Which clearly, she must as the woman seems so uninterested in advancing. Rather than walk forward, Mitama turns to her side so that she may keep one hand braced and ready.

"...But no, very likely not. I'll have to find another way through." Which necessarily means retreating and finding her way past those awful swinging blades again. She'd destroy the entire contraption if it didn't risk Mitama being stranded, should her path lead to a dead end.

"Will you be alright to proceed on your own? If it's too scary for you," she smiles, "I can wait here and talk to you until you're through."

And surprisingly or not, she does mean it. Truth told, she's quite tolerant of children like Mitama—the resourceful kind, the capable kind. It's just too bad she lacks the kind of hunger-need-yearning that would push that tolerance to fondness.

   Wordlessly, he nods, and the facade of his well-being drops in full, pain contorting his face as though it were an ugly portrait finally revealing itself to the room. Chrom began to wonder in earnest just how someone could step with such ferocity, and so many times in tandem. Yet all concern of Zephia doing so intentionally washes away; her concern was clear, and it had been the sign of an individual that meant well. 

   But one that just could not back that up in song and dance. 

   “Thank you…” he breathes, and as Chrom finds himself growing ever comfortable in his seat, he bends, going to massage his feet. A quiet “damn!” escapes his lips, as he tries to alleviate the sting. But he cannot be rude, so after a few moments, he sighs and looks back up, trying to continue idle conversation. “Ah, yes! The Ball. Do you have any in mind, as a potential partner? I imagine you are rather popular amongst the faculty here, I would be impressed to see you unattended.”

"Must I go with anyone?" she asks, seating herself beside him. "I heard that it will be an event where individuals are free to request dances from just about anyone, so I don't see much of a point. If I did bring a partner," a pleasant smile, soft-tipped and soft-edged, "I think I might grow horribly upset if they strayed from my side for even one song's worth."

And so, she won't deign to lay her expectations on anyone. It's nothing new.

An honour to be a hero. Praised for doing what anyone should do.

It's sickening and invasive. It doesn't matter if there was a shred of himself that agreed to any of this, Ike hadn't. As he stands now, he wouldn't agree to this unsightly immortalisation. Even if there was a part of him that accepted the title of hero, there can't be a single part of him that asked for this.

He has no plan. All he has is brute force. Maybe he can take them all down. Wild blue eyes look around at the other statues - how many of them are just people?

"Stop!"

The word doesn't reach Ike's ears. He keeps pushing, and he can feel the stone crack. It's coming down, one way or another.

Then Ike cannot move. He can't pull away, but he can't push, either. He tries to speak, but his mouth remains still, frozen in a twisted grimace. Do the people who have stopped him even know who Ike is?

Does he see, now, how wretched it is to become a hero? It's a cruel lesson, but a necessary one—and one that she hopes the Divine Dragon will learn sooner rather than later, too. Time, worship, love, faith—the sweeter they taste, the faster they rot.

"I wouldn't jostle him too much, if I were you," Zephia finally steps in, attracting the wary gazes of the acolytes who are every bit nervous to be where they are and doing what they must. "You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for his generosity and valor. Isn't that right, Mr. Hero?"

"But..." one of the acolytes swallows thickly, trembling hands still holding onto Ike's arm to keep him from defacing his own statue, "...this is... I'm..."

Fingers slide against Nel's cheek. (It would be easy to cut into skin, to drag nails along soft flesh until she bled.) Drift to her jaw. (Crack it. Break it. She would look every bit like the fool that she is when she dares to bare her teeth at her betters.)

Zephia smiles, perhaps because Nel most certainly does not.

"What's wrong, darling?" she drawls, saccharine and slow. "We won't be fooling anyone if you remain so tense. It's simply touch."

—touch that drifts low, following the natural slopes and curves to land at the Fell Dragon's nape. Zephia's hand rests there, too warm and too gentle. She knows how deeply it unsettles Nel; it's precisely why she does it.

"You aren't thinking I'd do anything as dreadful as snapping your neck, are you? That would be terrible." She thumbs at the jut of bone, and her smile grows. "After all, I'd hate to have you think I'd let your death be anything but slow."

she looks up at zephia with not the fell eyes of her father but the kind eyes of her mother.

"how many times do i have to say that i don't want to do that for you to understand that i'm not.. i'm not going to kill you!" fell dragon shouts back, frowning fiercely.

For an extended moment, Zephia looks disappointed—but she's really the fool for feeling so, when so much of what Veyle has done is disappoint her. (Yet here she still is. Again. One more time. Still. What does that say about her, that she would find the child so terribly lacking and yet extend opportunity after opportunity to make something of the way their lives were so messily entangled?)

"Oh, of course," Zephia replies dryly. "I should have known you were simply waving that little knife around for theatrics. You were never very good at shedding blood."

And so, she had been deemed to not be good at anything at all.

Not even a glance is spared to the two dying men. The magic was effective, he couldn't help but admire it for that at least. Naturally a professor would have to have some skill to be employed at the monastery, at least one would hope, but seeing it on display was always an intriguing sight on it's own. It also helped that just from how she spoke, he highly doubted she was a member of any faithful.

Hearing the cries of alarm, Berkut meets the professors gaze and does nothing to hold back the cruel smirk that crosses his face. "It would be my pleasure professor." Striding forward to take the point, Berkut holds the javelin in front of him and prepares. Listening to the shouts, there had to be a half dozen or so guards coming to aid the two sentries that had shouted.

It would be easy enough work on his own, let along with the professor and her magic at his back.

A throw impales one man, straight through his gut and leaving him breathless, unable to whine in alarm. Hearing the footsteps, Berkut draws one of his daggers and approaches the other sentry. A clumsy axe blow swings his way, and Berkut brings up one hand, catching it before plunging his dagger straight into the mans eye and yanking it out.

The cave enhances the violent sounds of their approach. Each scream, each clash, each crack of magic—all of these reverberate throughout the space and echo much louder than they would have elsewhere, giving plenty of notice to those who still remain. Unsurprisingly, the warning is more effective than their strength; what pirates remain have clearly decided to abandon their stations, because the further that she and Berkut make it in, the emptier it gets.

"Pity," Zephia says. "I would've liked to see how well you handled your lance in tighter quarters."

Another time, perhaps. For now—

"—ey...?! Hey! Who's there?!"

Though hoarse, a third voice echoes towards them. It's pointless to wonder who it could be when the answer is obvious. The pirates with sense had left; those without had already rushed the intruders and hardly lasted long enough to regret their choice. Leaving...

"...I'm a student at Garreg Mach! Please, save me! Those brigands have all left!"

Zephia holds back a sigh. "...Rather loud for a duckling, isn't he?"

It helps, at least, in locating him. They follow crooked paths down until they come to the pirates' camp, hastily abandoned with food and drink still strewn about everywhere. Tucked away towards the far wall is the student they were sent to rescue, bound and bruised but very much alive. The boy's eyes light up the moment he sees them, and he squirms against his ropes as he struggles—and fails—to stand.

But no matter how Nel cries out, only the waves crash against the shore in answer. And when all grows quiet and still, Zephia finally huffs a laugh, far too soft to fit the gore around her. Fell blood marks the beach a deep maroon, and even the salty sea breeze can't hide the bitter tang of blood and sharp odor of burnt flesh. No one would be able to say much if Zephia simply left now. She'd saved the wretched woman from death's door, and left it in nature's hands—fate's, if she were to joke—to determine if the seagulls flying high above would find a Fell Dragon, felled and fallen, appetizing enough to pick at and devour.

Zephia considers it. Delights in it, even, because she can imagine the way Nel's beloved companions would snap and snarl if—once—they knew what transpired.

(And then she would say: but where were you when she needed you most?

And then she would laugh: yours has always been such a shallow and performative love.)

She nudges Nel's side with her foot, the tip of her heel digging just above charred skin to turn Nel over. No other wounds, it seems, which is a shame. So Zephia stands fully.

(Considers, again.)

"...Tsk."

(Considers, and considers, and considers—)

—and bends low to grab an ocean-soaked collar to drag the woman further into the isle. Nel will wake, and she will recover—though when she does, she'll find herself all alone on the island, with no trace of where Zephia has gone or even how.

"I don't know if I would consider it a miracle," Zephia muses, gaze drifting to the ears atop the boy's head once more. The word sits strangely on her tongue, like it's something foul and foreign despite witnessing—despite living—several herself. "Power will always draw two kinds of response: obedience, or fear. When someone tells you that they feel neither, and that they are simply happy to coexist peacefully..."

She nudges her cup away, finally, and returns her attention to a gaze she understands now to be a little pitiful. Had they met sooner, in a different land and under far different conditions, she thinks that this would be a lesson he knew from the bottom of his heart. After all, if he did not have ignorance as an excuse, that would be very embarrassing for him, would it not?

"...well. I'd say it's obedience dressed very nicely, or fear wearing a more comfortable name. After all, people will always lie to themselves more readily than they lie to others."

Like—

(—a little village of dragons, whose blood was thick with magic and flesh burned all the hotter for it. This is incredible, Zephia. How unprecedented, Zephia.

We love you, Zephia.

See? Fear in all its lovely, meaningless names.)

It's the sort of thing Fenris would want. Even if Zephia wasn't seduced by shadow, she's surely touched by its consequences all the same.

(In this way, perhaps he and her weren't so different.)

To this supposed revelation, there's nothing he can find himself able to say to counter it— only that he wishes he could. But before he can find a way, she shifts the topic as if to guard herself.

“Prince Fogado? He sounds familiar...” Could he be the man with the stars in his eyes who saved him when he first got here? “Ah, I'll go look for him when I can then. But I won't involve your name.”

As he pities or perhaps empathizes with her, he feels it only right to respect her wishes and not disturb her peace. Though a part of him does hope she finds a way, someday, to be less on guard.

To one day be no longer quite so marred by the shadows that cling to her at every corner.

“Thank you for helping me, heh.”

His voice is deathly grim, as he points not at the well-kept Rat Scroll, but rather to an object seemingly not kept at all: an empty stand above the case, with a plaque reading Iron Tome beside it.

"…What even is an Iron Tome…?" Shigure wonders aloud, brows furrowed. Of course, it could be a normal spellbook, but a book literally made of leaflets of iron would be like a stack of shurikens, certainly sharp enough to cut through skin. Or perhaps it is just the Viscount's dark sense of humor? To name a regular blade an "Iron Tome?"

Shigure shakes his head, mystified. "We must find out where this weapon has gone. Excuse me." Nodding to the swordswoman, he turns for the exit.

The servants hurry to and fro in the hallways, making the whispers about the state of the body nigh impossible to escape. But though a slit throat is lethal, it cannot kill a man who is already dead by some other means. So as Shigure passes through the dining room and kitchen, he tries to think — what in this household could be so deathly, yet less obvious than an open wound?

Well, there are many possibilities. First and foremost, however, is the contents of the cabinet by the far wall. As a bard, Shigure had been hired to perform for dinner night after night, and it is only... professional, to check every nook and cranny of the space to ensure the best quality of sound.

"Looks like you might've gotten under that one's skin," he sneers and starts ambling toward one of the doorways out to the branching hallways. "Everyone was real quick to run out and cover their tracks, huh?"

There's no particularly reason to go join the others - wherever they've gone - but Griss mostly just wants in on the fun. If they're tampering with evidence, then he'll relish in watching 'em squirm when they realize they're being watched. Or maybe they think he's the one who did the viscount in - who's to say he didn't - so his eyes on the back of their neck might raise a few hairs. They could be next, after all. The first rule of any good assassination was to leave no witnesses.

Speaking of which-- Griss stops in the hall and turns back to wait for Zephia.

"Hey, you know that weird mage?" (it took one to know one) "The bookish girl. Last time I saw the dead guy alive, she was there, too. Don't know what she was trying to do. She went rushing outta the library like he might've been after her, but when I looked, he was still in the library... waving one of those fancy decorative swords around. Cut himself real good on the arm 'cause I'd bet the man's never learned a sword stance in his life."

Setting his hands on his hips, he watches a pair of maids bustle down the hall toward the room the body was in.

But then there is much in this world she hasn’t heard of, she is well-aware... And so it does not occur to Ayra that the moniker “Iron Tome” could be owed to nothing more than the victim’s sense of humor.

“Whatever this Iron Tome is, I agree we must find it.”

Without further ado she follows after Shigure, no matter that he excused himself. The silence is welcome: All the easier to look for this “Iron Tome” without anyone talking her ear off. While he heads for the kitchen, though, Ayra stops short. Two of the maids are coming this way.

“Some guards you people are!” The first says hotly. “The murderer got in while our Viscount was in the master bath — of all the places to die...!”

Ayra does not think the place where one dies (or is killed) makes a difference, having been killed in her brother-in-law’s dining room herself. She bites her tongue on that.

“I take it he had one of us standing guard just outside the bath if you’re saying that,” she answers coolly. “He might have wanted some privacy.”

There is, of course, a very real possibility that Griss had been the murderer—but she trusts that he'd tell her if so. (And as for her—well, she has never been the one particularly open about her motivations with her Hounds back when they were four instead of a measly two, was she?)

"The viscount chases poor Ophelia out, swings his sword about… why, if you were him and you wished to learn how to wield a blade, you'd ask the one person in our group who hasn't been subtle about her proficiency in it, don't you think? And now that I think about it..." Zephia trails off. "Just after dinner, I believe I saw her escorting the viscount out of the dining room. It almost makes you wonder where she'd brought him, when neither you nor I saw him since then."

They're about to round the corner, but pause—immediate, silent, held in place by single lifted hand. Two maids brush by, one followed by the other, their steps hurried. "The nerve of that woman," the younger of the maids huffs. "No shame, none! To hold her head up so high when she's failed at her job! Our poor viscount, no one deserves to die in the baths like that…!"

"I don't know," the other responds, then lowers her voice—even if it's not quiet enough, still, to avoid being overheard. "Don't tell me you haven't heard the rumors that he was actually poisoned, and that it was the food—"

She stops abruptly when she notices Zephia and Griss. Zephia smiles, pleasant enough, and motions for Griss to follow as they pivot into the dining room. There, Shigure stands with what looks very much not like liquor, taken from the liquor cabinet. It certainly can't be water, and she doubts a viscount would have so cheap a drink that it would come in so plain a bottle.

"Oh, what a dreadful find," Zephia says, in a tone that suggests it's anything but. "And here, I'd thought that our lovely viscount had only one attempt on his life."

It can't be. Ike, Celica, Micaiah - these are all just people. He feels sick. His head is spinning. Had Ike ever been just a guy?

He's not bothered by it. He is not. The blood rushing through his veins isn't rage - it's something else. Ike can't decipher the feeling. He grinds his teeth together. Should he speak to the kid? Should he just leave? Why is he here in the first place?

She's sure that she can already hear the Divine Dragon's annoyingly pitched voice, asking what happened and why Zephia didn't do anything—as if she could ever have either the requisite respect for the Ring Vault or the desire to see it maintained to warrant stepping between a stone statue and a vaunted hero.

...even if that very hero seems to be very displeased with his promotion, immortalized for all to see.

"Steel might fare better than your bare hands," Zephia suggests pleasantly, as if she was suggesting what color shirt would better suit him instead of how he could further desecrate his own likeness.

She was not a helpless damsel – and if he lost his horse he would be at a disadvantage. 

Politesse was not the instinct he need call upon today – his martial instinct was. 

"She will treat you in the same manner that you treat her. Elyos, is it? You mistake me again, I'm...not well familiar, but I know enough of the people who have come from there." 

The tone of her voice was easy to ignore for the familiar content of her words – regardless of any disdain she felt or did not feel, or her dismissal, he did know whence she'd come, and the mention that her countrymen would have been equally apprehensive sparked his interest. 

She'd think it enviable if she simply didn't know any better. Strangers, and allies, and even her treasured family—they all leave in the end, short-lived and short-loved. The only difference has ever been how tightly she decides to close her fist around them, as if the few extra days-months-years have ever been worthwhile.

(And so: Emblem Sigurd. And so: the Holy Knight. And so: Sigurd of House Chalphy, Sigurd the mere man.

Disappointing like the rest.)

"...Well, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. Your sort has always been rather quick to forge shallow bonds," she hums, and finally looks up at him. The horse is a noisy one beside her, and antsy besides—every bit the kind of beast she dislikes. She's certainly killed far greater creatures for much less. But not being here to make friends doesn't necessarily mean that she's here to make enemies, even if she is terribly disappointed and utterly heartbroken. Truly.