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Edelgard is popular. She doesn’t act like it, she doesn’t ask for it, and she doesn’t even seem to appreciate the attention—but she is popular. Classmates flock to her. Professor Byleth pays her careful attention, guiding her axe swing as if she is forging the next Adrestian Emperor herself. Professor Manuela embarrasses Edelgard with a drunken cover of the Adrestian national anthem in the dining hall one evening, and the rest of the Black Eagles join in despite her growing fluster. Edelgard waits for them to finish and politely claps over her dinner and invites Manuela to perform at the imperial palace, someday. Edelgard keeps to herself. Edelgard shirks the chaos of broad monastery events but spares quiet, singular moments with her fellow students. She has well-forged inherited armor but there are soft spots thinned within it. Dorothea-shaped divots in her breastplate and Lysithea-laced catches in her chainmail. Petra lies in her thoughts and Bernadetta lies in her arms. She makes time for Constance, offers a hand to her to climb from some cursed, foreign darkness and into the sun. She is rewarded with loyalty. Edelgard is well-liked despite her best intentions and worst schemes. Edelgard is beloved despite everything. When Edelgard goes, people follow.
Before Edelgard goes, the halls are laced with laughter. Classmates babble and cheer, bright with the potential their academy offers them. Hilda shines in her element, here. She plays coy and delicate. She is showered with love letters and tripping suitors. She offers smiles and friendly jabs at her meek, but trying, best friend. She braids jewels into Marianne’s hair and slips rings onto her fingers and even pierces her ears, one night. That fateful night she holds a tearful Marianne’s face for hours, apologizing for the pain, assuring her the holes will close if Marianne has changed her mind. Marianne tells her the earrings are not what she is crying about. Marianne embraces Hilda and cries and, when Hilda gifts her hair ribbons for Dorte the next week, finds herself unable to stop. Hilda dries her tears and teaches her how to weave a friendship bracelet. She tells Marianne she will make a matching one. She makes a matching one.
Leonie pays the two of them and their dramatics little mind. She is pragmatic and active and feverous with hope for her future. She spars with the boys and eats alongside the girls but her eyes are set higher than her Golden classmates. She watches the knights with longing. She lingers at the edge of the training grounds, tracing the arc of Shamir’s lance as the former mercenary spars against Catherine’s broadsword. She sneaks around the knight’s hall, and watches a young priestess summon Shamir to kill a spider climbing up a bookshelf. Catherine gets a good laugh out of the arachnid’s assassination. Catherine smacks Shamir on the back for her effort and pours her a tall tankard. Shamir politely pushes it away. She catches sight of Leonie, lingering past curfew. She invites Leonie to join them. She lets Leonie sip at the tankard. Catherine recalls a wild story of striking down some giant, mechanical automata in the shape of a woman. The machine had stuttered to life in an ancient graveyard and attacked her, she claims, during a quest for Lady Rhea. She stands and swoops with the action of the narrative. Leonie laughs. Shamir smiles, and shifts away from the crowd that has formed around her partner.
Later, in the hall holding each of their personal quarters, Shamir compliments Catherine on her fervor. She notes that it is earlier than the two of them usually head to bed. She invites Catherine inside her room with a disinterested, non-committal expression. Catherine smacks her on the back, again, and accepts.
In the morning, Catherine leaves a bedroom that is not hers early in order to collect her weekly assignment. Lady Rhea hands it to her on rolled parchment, and touches her cheek, and tells her to fair well.
Catherine departs and Rhea stands alone in her office. She speaks, softly, to her mother. She speaks distant, indecipherable words in a language long-forgotten. When Byleth arrives to collect her monthly allowance, Rhea greets her with the warmth of family. She asks after Byleth’s students, of Edelgard’s potential, of Flayn’s transition into academy life. Byleth speaks of a young, bright girl beloved by her classmates and Rhea laughs when Byleth relays an incident of Flayn fishing from atop a pegasus for better access to the center of the monastery’s pond.
Byleth exits with her coin, and Sothis comments something about her growing chatty in recent months. She warns to not let it get excessive. Byleth nods, affirmative, to the girl hovering in her thoughts, and Sothis chides that she should hurry along, now. She will be late to her own class. Edelgard will be waiting.
When Edelgard goes, her classmates follow. Bernadetta leaves her room. Lysithea leaves her known reality. Constance leaves nothing. Constance has only one thing left to lose, and that one thing explains that she has little else to do in the cramped underground they have made their home. Constance follows Edelgard, and Hapi follows Constance. They go, together. They lose nothing.
When Edelgard goes, Byleth follows. She grows quiet, again, but trusting in her ward’s grand ideals. In five years time she will wake from a heavy sleep and kiss an Emperor's hand and they will conquer, together, in the name of Fodlan’s new dawn.
When Edelgard goes, she is not alone.
Dorothea pieces together notes as the war unfolds. They are tragic, sporadic and wracked with emotions yet to be fully processed. Manuela is moved to sober tears and speaks of costume choices and choreography but mostly Dorothea, of Dorothea, alive and bright on a stage that does not exist in the midst of mass tragedy. Dorothea sings to herself on the front lines. Dorothea sings to herself when she thinks she is alone, in the quiet of war tents, where Petra’s trained ear can still strain to hear her. Petra offers her unfamiliar tunes and foreign rhythms. Petra offers her coarse sea salt and impossibly large flowers, and a throne. Edelgard kisses them both on the cheek when it falls time for them to set sail. Edelgard grants Petra unquestioned freedom. Petra returns to her homeland as its rightful ruler, long gone but so very far from forgotten. Dorothea holds Petra’s hand as they walk across the sand of their home, old and new. Dorothea allows herself to be lulled by the peace of post-war. Dorothea reaches out towards a gentle horizon, and embraces it.
In the chaos of pre-post-war, the insurgence unto Western Faerghus is inevitable. Annette watches little, bronze-casted figures of enemy horses and knights cluster on her war map. They settle thick around the shell of Garreg Mach, around the school they all attended together so many years ago. Annette creases her brow as she works over numbers in her head: calculating soldier headcounts and Faerghan losses and guessing wildly at the composition of the Adrestian army.
A hand is placed on her shoulder. She looks up, and sees Mercedes has returned to their shared tent from her healer shift. Mercedes reminds her that it is late, and that she must be tired. Mercedes tucks a frazzled hair behind Annette’s ear and tells her about a girl she once called her little sister, who would get so caught up in her magical work she would not sleep for days on end. Mercedes notes that this habit made her quite the dramatic spirit, throwing herself into fits when frustrated and proclaiming each starburst of magic as proof of her inevitable glory. Annette laughs, and takes Mercedes’ hand in hers, and promises that she will sleep soon. Mercedes takes both her hands, and squeezes, and says she will sleep now. She extinguishes the candle on Annette's worktable and leads Annette to their little cot in the corner, across from the other, undisturbed one. They lie beside one another in the dark. They promise that no matter where their paths lead them, no matter the fate that befalls Faerghus, they will die happy. Together.
Arianrhod stirs with activity when the Empire’s assault begins. Blood has already tinted the water and Ingrid is angry. She has fought, furious, for five years. She has shorn off her hair and the weight of her responsibilities to Galatea’s progeny. She stands as a true knight, haloed in the light of the Faerghan sun. She embraces the visage. She rides her pegasus across the cobbled, stone floors of the Silver Maiden in all its impregnable glory. She issues stern orders to the battalions beneath her command. Rodrigue wishes her faith in her divine duty. Felix wishes her strength. Cornelia says nothing to her at all.
Ingrid takes point at the northwest tower. It is away from the bulk of the action, but a necessary failsafe in case the Fraldarius front line is destined to fall. As it will, as it is fated to. Felix and Rodrigue are slaughtered like Glenn before them. Ingrid does not see the details from the air. She only sees her enemies, draped in reds and blacks and blood, marching towards her.
She screams out a battle cry and her troops charge to meet the coming onslaught. She steadies her lance. She wounds the Adrestian Emperor, there, at the northwest tower, slicing a sharp blade into the conqueress’ side. She punctures the red-plate armor with a thrust from Luin and a timely procuration of her crest. She dodges a weak counter attempt. She grins. She thrums with bloodlust. She flies. She falters, ever so briefly, when Dorothea belts out a scream of distress.
Dorothea raises her hand and a green, bright stream of magic shoots from it. Edelgard grips her side and Ingrid watches all her violent efforts be knitted up into new, raw skin. Edelgard grits her teeth. She shuts her eyes in visible pain. When the magic flickers out, her body relaxes, and she calls back a grateful thanks to Dorothea for her support. Healed.
The battle rages on. Ingrid fights blind and feral, desperate and shivering with Faerghan knighthood. She does not give in. She cannot give in.
An arrow pierces her body. It passes straight through the wing of her steed, catching on a few feathers before imbedding itself in her chest. In the split second before the pain registers and the impact sends her falling to the cold, barren stone below, she recognizes the sniper that fired the arrow as Bernadetta. She remembers Bernadetta. She once kicked down Bernadetta’s door. Bernadetta had never been very close with her, she remembers. It’s a simple, fleeting thought as Ingrid’s body is thrust backwards and her vision is overtaken with the sight of the great, vast, blue sky above. A second arrow catches her shoulder. Bernadetta had never been very close with her. Bernadetta had never been very close with her at all.
If anything breaks when she hits the ground she is too far gone inside a state of shock to feel it. Her head rolls to the side. Crumbling, jagged rubble bites into her cheek. Her horse lies collapsed and struggling atop her leg. Her vision darkens around the edges, and she knows she is losing blood. She knows, all at once, that this is the end. She thinks of Glenn, and then of Dimitri.
She coughs out some shaky confession that maybe she has become like him. Too much like him. It’s a weak, trembling final toll. Death creeps closer. It’s Dorothea who steps forward for the final blow. The others are beginning to move along, towards the central square. Towards more pressing goals than a dying woman crushed under the weight of her own horse. Dorothea keeps her distance. She raises an arm. Her fingers course with magic intended to kill rather than heal. Dorothea apologizes.
In the blurred-blacked haze of her vision Ingrid thinks of the ocean. It smells of salt, and impossibly large flowers. Dorothea stands before it and its great, vast blue. Dorothea raises a hand out to her. Ingrid thinks of a story she once overheard Professor Byleth tell, of the time Flayn borrowed a pegasus from the monastery stables to cast a fishing line out over the water. Ingrid wonders, in her final moments, if that would be an effective method.
Hours later, great beams of light strike down upon Arianrhod. They reduce the Silver Maiden to a pile of boulders on a cracked foundation. Ingrid’s body is incinerated in the impossible, foreign heat blast that roars over the land for several radial miles. She is presumed dead in the reports that reach Fhirdiad. She is presumed to have died alone.