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I. Lone Moon
As far as class reunions went, the Battle of Gronder Field had to be the worst in history.
Claude swept over a confusing battlefield on Thistle’s back, her wings carrying him past any number of enemy soldiers that he was able to dispatch with a few quick strokes of his bow. The rest of the Alliance forces came up behind him—Lorenz riding towards the enemy cavalry, Hilda making for the entrenched Kingdom forces, while Ignatz exchanged arrows with Bernadetta—the former Eagle’s archer—over the high ground in the middle of the field. In the chaos, Claude had lost sight of Marianne and Raphael, but he trusted they were close behind.
From his bird’s-eye-view, Claude scanned banners and mail in red, yellow, and blue. If he could make some sense of the battle through the confusion, perhaps there was still a chance to rally with the Kingdom.
If they didn’t, it would be a bloodbath.
Then Claude started seeing a fourth force—red ramparts, yellow clothes, blue tunics, and black robes. They cast spells indiscriminately, cutting down soldiers regardless of banner.
Claude’s breath quickened—they were warping in. Not just behind Dimitri, but behind Edelgard.
There were too many of them to be some rogue Imperial force. This was a fourth army, one that was killing them all.
Divided they wouldn’t stand a chance.
In midair, Claude shifted his weight, trying to get Thistle to bank right towards the nearest Imperial general—Bernadetta. Perhaps if he could get word to her, organize the others in the chaos—
Bernadetta saw him approaching her, and raised her bow.
Wyverns weren’t much less spooky than horses, but sometimes they zigged while their riders zagged. In response to the arrow Bernadetta fired, Thistle went left, and Claude fell right.
Claude hit the ground hard.
Even from his perch on the roof of the Myrddin bridge watchtower, Claude didn’t need a spyglass to see that Acheron was nervous. Even in the pitch dark of the new moon, despite his retinue of guards, he kept looking over his shoulder, fidgeting, and Claude could see the whites of his eyes every time he hurried past a lit torch.
It was possible Acheron guessed that Claude was there somehow. Or perhaps he’d just been on edge all month after the death of Count Varley in the Empire. The reports no doubt said it was merely a strange accident, but anyone with an evolved sense of self preservation could probably see the cut cord between the lines. Acheron wasn’t known for being clever or savvy, per se, or having much sense, but he clearly had enough of an idea of what transpired in Adrestia a month ago to be terrified.
Or maybe he was just afraid of the dark. Who knew?
Claude bit his lip, shifted on the roof until his soft shoes found purchase on the tiles, and rose to a crouched position to sneak over to the other side of the watchtower to keep his eyes on Acheron.
On the bridge below, Acheron pretended to inspect some supplies. He hid his shivering by thoughtfully propping his elbow up on his folded arm, looking to be in deep contemplation of a pile of boxes. One of his guards yawned, and Claude’s hand flexed on Failnaught’s grip.
He could make the shot, but he had a better idea.
Instead of reaching for an arrow, he slipped his gloved fingers into one of the satchels on his belt, and drew one of the flat, heavy stones he kept in there.
Claude tossed it off into the dark. From his high position, he got some good distance on it, and he smirked when it collided with a barrel off in the darkness, on another pile of supplies.
Acheron looked as though he’d been struck by lightning. He whirled around to one of his guards. “Did you hear that?!”
“I did,” the guard replied patiently, his eyes swivelling off into the dark. Claude could tell he was a professional—there wasn’t a trace of panic in his voice, and he detected a hint of the familiar, unspoken exasperation that came from having any extended contact with the man he was guarding. Claude hoped they were getting paid enough.
The guard motioned to one of his fellows. “You. With me.”
Acheron frantically turned to the two guards left at his side. “You go too.”
“Sir—”
Acheron shoved his shoulder, and took a step backwards towards the bridge tower.
Claude sighed. He really didn’t want to jinx himself, but—
As he smoothly drew an arrow, Claude propped himself between the gutter and his bent back knee to give himself a more stable platform to shoot from. He watched the point of his arrow fall across Acheron’s exposed spine as he absently stepped backwards, frantically looking around to each of the guards that had fanned out on the section, each prodding at a different spot that could be hiding a would-be assassin. One looked behind a barrel. Another glanced over the side of the bridge.
Claude shifted his aim at the last second and loosed his arrow.
It whistled and clattered onto the flagstones.
The reaction was immediate. Acheron yelled, instantly fleeing backwards, towards the gate that rested between Claude’s nest and the opposing watchtower. The guards turned to react, but not quickly enough to stop Acheron from fleeing, alone, deeper into the bridge and further from help.
As soon as Acheron was clear of the gate in his frantic sprint, Claude yanked the rope sitting next to him—the one attached to the lever on the other side—and he had a moment of fear when the pull took longer than it should have, when the guards were chasing after their charge as fast as they could in heavy armor. He didn’t want one of them to get stuck on the other side—or worse, crushed under the falling gate.
But he heard the lock clatter and the gears give way. The sound of heavy wood and chains grinding together squealed and in the dark, in the quiet, outside of the cacophony of battle, Claude was sure the resounding boom could be heard across the river valley.
Up ahead, the roar died back to silence, save for the sound of Acheron screaming for help.
Claude hurried up over the bend in the roof, the wayward rope still draped over his shoulder as he aimed once more, and let his arrow fly. It was a hard shot, but Failnaught didn’t let him down. The word “help” turned into an unintelligible pained wailing.
Claude looped the rope around the watchtower chimney—a necessity for cold watches on long winter nights, and used it to scurry down the side of the wall. He moved quickly but carefully, arm over arm carefully lowering him down the wall. Even if Acheron managed to hobble a hundred yards before Claude could catch him, the other side of the section was already sealed off, so Claude could afford to take his time and not break his ankle or crack his head open. That would be a shame when things were going so well.
As he hit the ground, he heard the guards on the other side pounding on the door, struggling to figure out the locking mechanism from the outside.
It was a stopgap. An emergency in case of invasion. It would take the guards an hour to get it open, if the speed of its fall hadn’t jammed the works completely.
Claude only needed ten minutes.
He took off at a steady walk down the bridge. About halfway down, he found a trail of blood.
By the time he found Acheron, he was propped against a ballista, breath coming out in pitiful wheezes. In the torchlight, Claude could make out the shine of tears and snot on his face, the places where his wig had gotten frayed or come undone. A dripping arrow stuck through his thigh, and he clutched at it helplessly.
“Hey, Acheron,” Claude said, “Where are you going in such a hurry? I just wanted to say hi.”
“They said you were dead.” Acheron shook his head. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Well.” Claude twirled an arrow in his hand. “I’d say you’re not supposed to believe everything you read. Etcetera, etcetera.”
Tears flowed down Acheron’s face.
“You know,” Claude started, placing his boot firmly on the blood-soaked arrow, “I thought it was weird, when you weren’t at the bridge. It seems to me that if you had sided with the Empire like we thought, von Aegir would have appreciated the backup. You still probably couldn’t have held the bridge but it seems to me,” Claude tipped his boot forward, and under him, Acheron made a gurgling noise, “like you knew what was coming.”
“No, no it’s not true!” Acheron clutched at his thigh.
“You made some new friends, didn’t you, Acheron?”
As he leaned further on the arrow, Acheron finally nodded, and Claude pulled his boot back. That hadn’t been so hard.
“But they didn’t talk to you directly.” The spinning arrow in Claude’s hand ceased, resting at last in his clenched fist as he pointed it at Acheron. “Who was the middle man?”
Acheron shook his head, mouth twisted in an ugly sob. “This cannot be—”
“It is absolutely happening. Was it Count Gloucester?”
Acheron shook his head again, spittle trailing down to his tunic. “No, it wasn’t Count Gloucester.”
Claude knelt down, the arrow in his hand pointed at Acheron’s heart. “You’re going to tell me who.”
“I’m not!” Acheron shouted. “I’m not because I don’t know. None of us ever saw his face.” He let out a wheezing breath, looking a little grayer as his face slowly drained. “Only his eyes. Goddess, his eyes.” He breathed in sharply through his nose. “He wasn’t just a tactician, he was a prophet.”
“What did he promise you?” Claude blinked something from his eyes.
“The Alliance!” Acheron yelled. “Fodlan.” He swallowed thickly. “And an end to the war at Gronder.”
A feeling like a chilled lance went through Claude’s chest. He had known, suspected how deep the treason lay among their elders, but a part of him hadn’t known how much they’d all known, what they had been promised in exchange for selling out their own daughters and their neighbors’ sons. “So you all knew.”
Acheron shook his head. “Forgive me. Please.”
Claude rose to his feet, walked to the outside of the rim of torchlight. Off in the distance, the gate tower raised a fraction and then slammed shut again.
“Of those of us from the Alliance, I am the last survivor of Gronder,” Claude said, voice even, “and I think you know what comes next.”
He notched and drew his bow in one smooth motion. Acheron opened his mouth—to beg, to plead, but Claude had already heard everything he needed to. This time, when his arrow flew, it buried itself deep in Acheron’s forehead with the thunk of a broadhead breaching bone.
And the bridge was quiet again.
Claude stood, heart racing, breath coming out of him in pained waves as his fingers trembled.
As he approached the ballista, he gave a sharp whistle, one that sang across the water, cut through the night. Quietly, to himself, he summoned a series of faces, followed by a series of names.
One down.
Claude heard the beating wings, felt the wind ruffling his hair well before he saw a flash of white scales. Even having spent most of his life with the beasts, Claude still had a hard time believing such a heavy animal could set down so gently. The greeting cluck Thistle offered was almost louder than her landing.
As Claude passed Acheron’s body, he grabbed the bloody wig and pocketed it in his flight bag before swinging a leg over the wyvern’s snowy back and took off into the night. Claude couldn’t see, but he didn’t need to.
A wyvern always knew where their roost was.
In the mountain range north of Garreg Mach, before the jagged peaks rolled down into foothills that themselves bled into the fiery ravages of Ailell, there was a tower of simple construction that had been built to watch for fires in the miles of untamed wilderness between Galatea and Daphnel.
Even before beginning his training as a Wyvern rider, Claude possessed an affection for maps. Being able to see the landscape from the air only cemented his fondness for studying the way one geographic feature could become another. He appreciated the relationships between mountains, plains, and jagged coastlines. When he grew older, he learned to appreciate that every formation had not only a scientific explanation, but also a tactical advantage or disadvantage.
Not that he could see much the night he flew back from Myrddin across a night sky like pitch. As he left the heart of the Alliance, the smatterings of town firelight he saw died down to nothing, and he could only trust Thistle’s memory. It was a flight that made him nervous, but it was hardly one he hadn’t accomplished before, and the wind in his hair, roaring in his ears, was somewhat comforting as they travelled together into the abyss. There was heavy cloud cover in the mountains, and Claude couldn’t even rely on the stars.
At last, one shadowy mountain form passed them, and he caught a little pinprick of light on the opposing hillside. A fire, burning on a stone floor exposed to the sky. It had once been a part of a living area, in the fire watch, but as time and neglect sheared off half the roof it had become a balcony.
As he flew in, he made out the covered second floor and Thistle swooped in under the roof, landing gently on flagstones etched with sigils for warmth. On the cool side of the makeshift roost was a pile of hay and a fresh, bloody deer carcass.
Claude climbed off and stretched. He could do long-hauls in the saddle, and he knew the best ways to prevent soreness, cramps, and clots, but that still never made it comfortable. Next to him, Thistle made a chittering vocalization. She could smell the deer.
Normally, Claude would talk to her as he unsaddled her, but the elation from his successful mission had bled away into the kind of bored, tired state that left him feeling as dense and stiff as a cloud of miasma.
So he unsaddled her and left her to her dinner. The staircase connecting the floors had long since collapsed away, but Claude had put together a rudimentary ladder that he used to drop down to the lower floor.
He wasn’t alone.
He glanced off to the side, into the shadows made all the gloomier by the fire burning off to the right. He saw the glint of the crossbow bolt, not trained on him, merely there, present as it led up to a dark-clad arm and down into the form of long, crossed legs. As Claude’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the edge of a pale jaw over a starched collar and the shine of dark, wavy hair above it.
Claude paused. He was supposed to draw and notch Failnaught, he knew, but he was tired. He sighed. “A warm wind blows over green fields...”
“...where a red carnation blooms.” Hubert von Vestra rose from his seat and stepped into the distant light of the wayfinding fire, one hand disarming the crossbow as he did so. “Welcome back, von Riegan. I trust Acheron is dead?”
Claude reached into his flight bag and stepped towards the table. He produced the wig, torn and bloody as it was, and dropped it on the ground.
Hubert’s lips split into a cruel smile, and from the inside of his coat, produced a curved dagger in a jeweled sheathe. He did not lay it on the ground next to the wig, and instead placed it more respectfully on the table. “Count Bergliez is no more.”
Curiously, Claude reached out to the weapon to examine it. It was beautiful, if recently scorched by some kind of open flame. “This is a Brigid dagger.”
“An old trophy, one that he was very proud of,” Hubert explained. “I can think of no better way of spitting on his grave than returning it to the royal family.”
Claude raised an eyebrow. He would believe it when he saw it, of course, but over the last several months he’d learned that he would be hard pressed to name someone he’d known that was less interested in money, fineries, or the trappings of power. Nor someone who could be so cruel and yet, it turned out, have a fairly strong sense of justice and fairness, at least as it applied to bloodshed. If Hubert said he planned to return it, he likely would.
Claude took a seat in one of the splintered wooden chairs. “How?”
“Let us say…” Hubert absently studied the back of one of his nails. “...spontaneous human combustion. His armor was little help. Acheron?”
Placing Failnaught and his quiver on the table, Claude offered a shrug. “I believe the medical term is ‘trephination’.” Claude let out a heavy breath. “Hubert, we were right.”
Hubert reclaimed his own seat, propping one arm thoughtfully on the table. “Oh? So you were able to have a conversation with him.”
Claude leaned forward, knitting his hands together. “Yes. There was someone else involved with Gronder. I’m sure of it now.” He absently brushed a hand over the back of his head. His hair was getting longer than he liked, and he had a violent flash of someone kindly helping him cut it. With a smile. “Acheron described a person who hid his face, who apparently predicted everything from Myrddin to Gronder, to the takeover of Those Who Slither—as you have thus dubbed them.” Claude looked off to the fire. “Acheron called him a prophet.”
“Genius often looks like magic to the easily swayed.” Hubert picked at a splinter on the table. “But we cannot rule anything out.”
“Acheron said he could see the stranger’s eyes. He seemed pretty stricken.” Claude fought a jagged breath, a crazed laugh because it was too impossible. “Does that remind you of anyone?”
“There’s no way to know until this other player is revealed.” Hubert’s eyes cut across the table. “If we pile the bodies high enough, that is bound to happen sooner or later.”
Claude leaned back on his chair, stretching out a spot in his lower back that was not happy with him. “When did you get back?”
“Earlier today.”
“Thank you for collecting the deer for Thistle,” Claude said.
“There’s no need to mention it.” Hubert made for a pitcher of water across their makeshift living room. “I’ve been thinking about our next task.”
“Me too.” The old task was barely done. Acheron and Bergliez were barely cold, but the mission drummed onwards.
“I believe I will need a second set of eyes. No one knows the Imperial Palace as well as I do, but in order to successfully get out as well as in—” Hubert poured two glasses of water into their mismatched, chipped collection. “We may need to tackle this together. Is that amenable to you?”
“Well,” Claude said as he accepted the offered glass, “I have to admit I hoped I’d get to visit Enbarr.”
As Hubert sat down, his lips curved into a wicked smile. “I assure you, the scenery is to die for.”
II. Great Tree Moon
When Claude woke up, everything hurt. He wasn’t sure what he’d fallen on. He confirmed Bernadetta’s arrow was stuck in his shoulder with a clumsy grip. Experimentally, he squeezed his stinging eyes together and coughed. His tunic was soaked through, heavily sticking to his chest as he shifted—from the smell of it, probably blood. Not his, there was too much there for him to be waking up if it was his. A weight on his stomach made it hard to breathe.
Claude opened his eyes, blinking away the last of the dirt and salt and battle.
The first thing he saw was Lorenz’s face gazing vacantly up at him, and Claude’s body knew what was wrong before his brain did, because Lorenz wasn’t just pale—Lorenz was always pale—now he was gray, cold, and unmoving. Still Claude clumsily reached out a hand to his shoulder to shake him, as if he could stir some life back, and he had to smother the scream in his throat when there wasn’t even the weakest movement in response. A soft “Lorenz?” creaked out of him instead. There was no reply, and Claude found enough of his wits not to say more, even as something irreparable tore in his mind.
In death, Lorenz’s face was relaxed, leaving his eyes slightly open, his mouth gently parted. It only took Claude a second of awkward, sore shifting to find the place where his lover’s throat had been neatly and deliberately slit.
Looking further, he saw Hilda gazing back at him on her stomach, a lance sticking out of her back like a banner. And as tears rolled down his face, Claude wanted to reach for her outstretched hand, but then he saw Ignatz on top of Raphael. Leonie lay dead not far away, and Marianne was curled up around the sword driven through her stomach.
They’d died protecting him.
Claude’s heart clenched up. No. No. NO no no no—
The masked—mages? Soldiers?—were mingling about the battlefield, drifting in patrols between the piles of bodies. It took Claude a half second to realize that they thought he was just another passenger for the corpse cart.
He gathered a couple quiet, wheezing breaths. He needed—he needed to get out. He needed to make this matter—
Near a pile of Adrestian soldiers, one of the enemy units stood. In one hand, he held a long, bloody dagger, examining the purple-lacquered hilt. Absently, Claude felt around for the dagger Lorenz always kept at his side, only to find the sheathe empty.
Another of the enemy troops stood nearby, berating him with a higher voice.
Claude couldn’t hear the whole thing but he caught: “—Idiot—” and “—waste of Crested blood—”
—or maybe Claude just needed to kill that one specifically.
As soon as the commander left, Claude nearly went to his feet, nearly gave away his one advantage just so he could grab Failnaught and drive an arrow into that one’s head. As angry as he was, he wouldn’t even have needed a bow.
Movement in the pile of Adrestians stopped him.
It was small at first. Starting with one body shoved quietly aside, then Claude saw a torn obsidian cape and a mess of bloody hair rising up into a crouch.
Hubert von Vestra crept towards the soldier, who was still preoccupied with the dagger.
Blood covered the top half of Hubert’s face, making his light green eyes all the more menacing against all the drying red. He looked for all the world like a spectre emerging from hell to drag some sinner down into the eternal flames. As he reached the enemy unit’s back, Hubert’s eyes swivelled over to Claude. There was a flash of recognition for both of them, and Claude wondered what he would do.
Hubert raised his index finger to his lips. Be quiet
Claude waited.
Hubert rose to nearly his full height behind the unsuspecting mage, smoothly plucking the dagger from his hands and driving it deep, deep into the base of the guard’s throat before angling the blade and stabbing a second time to the left of the clavicle. As the body fell, Hubert grasped at the robes and retreated back into the pile of corpses where he’d been hiding.
As Hubert had promised, they found folded serving uniforms in their sizes hidden under a trellis of morning glories in the garden. Claude thought it was a risk—he informed Hubert of this multiple times, in tones of voice ranging from sarcastic to legitimate concern. He’d covered the gambit from “oh, I’ve always wanted to be betrayed by random people I don’t know. You’ll have to thank them by name when we’re drawn and quartered” to “this seems a lot like a trap”. But Hubert had faith in his People, whoever they were, and Claude did not expect Hubert to turn on him. Yet. Nor did he expect Hubert to exercise anything but the utmost caution, for the sake of avenging his fallen Emperor if nothing else.
Besides, Claude knew how badly Hubert wanted their next mark dead. Even the most basic version of the story—the Insurrection, and the experimentation on Edelgard and the needless deaths of ten princes and princesses—only hinted at a profound personal loathing.
Claude could see why Hubert wanted him to come along, ultimately. Hate that deep made the perfect breeding ground for a fatal mistake.
So, Claude slipped on a uniform that he had to admit fit him well, and followed Hubert in through the servant’s entrance.
It was late at night and there was hardly anyone coming or going. They walked past a dark hallway leading down to the staff quarters, and through a wash room full of freshly laundered towels.
“How are you going to do it?” Claude had asked, back at their base. “Poison seems fitting.”
Hubert had refused. “We kill him with poison and they hang half the kitchen. No. This requires a direct approach.”
They walked down a dimly lit hallway. Servants were typically on call to prepare food and serve the resident nobles whenever they wanted to be served, and a small crew worked diligently in the kitchens.
At the end of the hallway, a woman waited for them. Short but not small, slight but not frail, and blonde without being stunningly so. She barely even turned to acknowledge Hubert, her shoulders firmly planted on the doorway as she carefully watched down the hallways.
“Glad to see you’re still alive, sir,” she said, without an overabundance of concern that that would not be the case.
“Ashlen,” Hubert said by way of greeting, voice barely above a whisper. “Where is he?”
“His quarters. The old imperial suite.” Ashlen paused. “He’s drinking tonight. He just requested a second bottle from the cellar.”
Hubert glanced back to Claude, a pleasant enough smile on his face. “Well, we’ll just have to deliver it to him.”
She produced a green bottle wrapped in a white cloth and handed it to Hubert. “You’re running late, so he might be angry, but to tell you the truth I don’t think he’ll know the difference very soon.”
“No,” Hubert agreed. “He won’t.” Claude saw Hubert’s expression flicker. “You should—”
“—Leave Enbarr after this. I know.” She turned on her heels, towards the darkened staff quarters. “We’ll be making preparations.” Her mouth flickered. “Careful. He’s crafty.”
“I’m well aware.” He turned to Claude. “Shall we?”
Claude followed Hubert, casting one final look at the spy vanishing back into the shadowed always. He whispered, “I thought you said most of your people died after Gronder.”
“Most did,” Hubert confirmed, deftly folding the white cloth over his bent arm as he gingerly carried a bottle of wine with an aged, worn label. “Not all.”
They continued in silence. Claude experienced a not insignificant amount of concern when they turned down a hallway and saw two guards waiting at a door near the end, but instead of making the corner, Hubert continued straight into another darkened hallway, and Claude followed him out of sight. They came to a shadowed door, and Hubert produced a key. Claude dared a quick glance over his shoulder as the gears and locks of the tumblers clicked, and finding the hall behind them empty, followed Hubert into the chamber. Hubert produced a small magelight in his free hand, illuminating a room packed high with boxes and files.
“They have apparently been using my old rooms for storage.”
Claude nimbly moved between rows of stacked boxes and dusty, ebony furniture. Somehow, if he’d been asked to guess which room in the Imperial Palace used to belong to Hubert, he liked to think he would have clocked this one as his chief suspect nearly immediately. From the sparse wallpaper to the menacing, utilitarian furniture, even covered in detritus, the whole room screamed “Vestra”.
Hubert approached a dusty split in the wallpaper on the far side, and revealed a small keyhole.
“Hey, honest question,” Claude started, “when you open that, is a skeleton going to fall out?”
Hubert handed him the bottle of wine. “Let’s see, I can’t remember where I kept all my desiccated corpses...”
“Very funny.” Claude glanced at the label. Twenty-four years old. “I should go in first. He won’t recognize me and I’ll keep his attention.”
“That will suffice, if he’s as drunk as Ashlen claims,” Hubert said, struggling slightly as the key stuck.
A second later, it gave, and the panel swung open into a passageway between the walls—no decorations, none of the trappings of comfort, just studs and backing, and as soon as Hubert stepped into the hidden corridor, Claude could see how well he fit into the guts of the palace. Hubert bled into the corridor smoothly, as if the light in his hands was entirely for Claude’s benefit. It was like fitting a puzzle piece properly.
Claude did like this kind of thing. He appreciated the silence and safety of stepping around the scenery, behind the grand stage of the Adrestian Imperial Palace, but he still glanced behind him nervously as the panel fell closed. He couldn’t tell if it was locked or not, and like any competent fugitive, he didn’t relish the idea of them not having an escape route. Likewise, he glanced around their boots, at the very dim outer reaches of Hubert’s magelight to see if he could spy rats or mice scurrying to and fro carrying noble detritus—but, save for a little mold, the passageway seemed pest-free.
While Claude checked for rodents, Hubert took sure, quiet steps without the slightest fear. Claude wondered how many in the palace even knew about these passageways, since Hubert seemed to have no fear of encountering any kind of trap. How long had they been there, linking the resident Vestra to their Hresvelg emperor? He knew Hubert and Edelgard had grown up together, but had there been a similar link between their rooms when they had been children? If they weren’t about to kill a man, Claude might have laughed at the mental image of Hubert and Edelgard hiding from their tutors in a spy tunnel—it was, in all likelihood, a fiction. Claude wouldn’t ask and Hubert wouldn’t tell.
It was a nice thought, though.
They came to a dead end, and Hubert pressed his ear to the new wall. After a heartbeat, his eyes darted back to Claude, motioning to his side.
Claude took a deep breath and moved up beside Hubert. Wine bottle in hand, he adjusted the collar of his pressed shirt. He liked to think of himself as a good actor, but if something was going to go wrong, this was where it would. The door would stick, or the table would be facing right at them and they’d have to do this messily. Or he’d be clocked immediately. Or there’d be an entire battalion waiting for them.
Hubert pressed his palm to the door. The last thing Claude saw before he dismissed the light in his palm was intense green eyes watching him, greener in the magelight and almost begging. He’d told Claude what this man had done.
No pressure.
The light went out, leaving him and Hubert in complete shadow.
The panel cracked open, and warm light flooded the dark antechamber. Claude had to blink his eyes to adjust, but Hubert pushed it further open, carefully leaning out to peek around the other side. Upon determining it clear, he jutted his chin out, gesturing to Claude it was time.
Stepping out into the room on the other side was like opening a present in reverse. Claude emerged into a brilliant room lit with a fireplace and lit candelabras, decked on all sides in royal Adrestian red banners and intricate wallpaper in flowering patterns of Aegir gold and cream-white. It had the things one would expect from an Imperial dwelling—writing desk, bed, vanity, and so on—but lined with expensive trim and the finest stain.
Up ahead, a man sat at a table with his back to Claude. It was positioned by the fireplace, and Claude saw a nearly empty bottle of wine first, followed by a half-finished roast and dessert. Claude didn’t know him on sight, but Duke—the former—Duke Aegir had been described to him well enough.
Overnight, Ludwig von Aegir had gone from prisoner and pariah to the Emperor Regent of Adrestia. As Thales—acting as Arundel—had stepped up and pledged to take control of the war effort and bring peace to the conquered Alliance and Kingdom territories, he had elevated Duke Aegir to rule Adrestia in his stead.
Claude stepped up behind him, and lightly coughed. “Your Majesty,” he said, his voice just the right mix of calm, querying, cautious. “I have your wine.”
Ludwig von Aegir turned around sluggishly, and Claude could tell his face was already bright red from drink, his eyes watery and unfocused. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Claude approached the table, holding up the bottle. “The wine you asked for?”
Von Aegir waved a large hand dismissively. As Claude stepped forward to place the wine down, he was well aware that the former duke was watching him. He first tore the foil, then reached into his pocket for—
A wine opener that wasn’t there. With a smile, Claude checked his other pocket, and—
“I haven’t seen you around before,” von Aegir said, words slurring slightly as he intently studied Claude’s features. “You from Brigid?”
—shit. A bit of sweat started collecting behind his shirt collar. No opener. Hubert had gotten them nice starched little spy outfits but no wine opener. Gods of Chaos and Ruin, there was no damn—
“No, sir.” Claude kept his voice even. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Hubert emerge, begin moving past the wall like a shadow on the edge of sleep. “I’m from Almyra, originally.”
Hubert stopped, and Claude didn’t have time to check the expression on his face.
“Hm,” von Aegir said. “How old are you? Twenty-Five?”
Claude’s heart raced. He wished Hubert would expedite his travel— “Twenty-three.”
Von Aegir let out a bitter little laugh, gave Claude a bitter, appraising smile, one that quickly faded. “My son would be about your age.”
Claude swallowed, and very much did not look at Hubert. “Your son, sir?”
The Emperor Regent’s eyes went wet, and something sick settled in Claude when he realized it wasn’t just the wine. “He died in that mad bitch’s war.” He sniffed. “I don’t know if it was the Alliance or those Faerghan bastards, but I blame her. He’d be twenty-four today.”
Claude couldn’t not see Hubert anymore, since he was now standing right behind von Aegir.
“You see,” von Aegir leaned towards Claude conspiratorially, one hand clumsily reaching for the edge of Claude’s vest, “he was my son. My legacy. This—” he gestured “—was meant to be his. If he’d only had a little will, a little damn forethought, a little more bloodlust, he’d still be alive.”
Claude remembered a man like a wildfire who cut through half a battalion, who’d gone for Ignatz before Claude finally had no choice but to put an arrow through his throat. He wasn’t sure if that or the fall off his horse killed him faster, but Ferdinand was well past consciousness before Lorenz was at his side, comforting him without a care for how it would look to the Alliance troops.
“Ferdinand! Just hold on. We can get you a healer, my friend. Just...Ferdinand? There’s nothing here that can’t be fixed.”
Something tight worked into Claude’s throat. He saw the flash of wire in Hubert’s hands. “If he was a soldier, I’m sure he died honorably.”
“If a friendly dog has honor.” Von Aegir pushed Claude away so hard he nearly fell. “You didn’t know him.” He raised his glass and violently sloshed his wine. “And now I’m alone. Without my heir. That was probably her plan all along. Send him to die and make an old man suffer.”
“What a tragic story,” Hubert cooed, “if only you had ten others to replace him.”
Von Aegir reacted slowly. First, it dawned on him that there was someone else in the room. Next, his eyes widened in the reflection of his wine glass, and then he realized that he knew the second speaker. All too late to do anything as Hubert’s garrote slipped around his throat and squeezed.
He was a tall man, but Hubert held tight as the former duke thrashed and his eyes went wide. His glass of wine fell, and he soon went after it, thrashing around on the floor. First he tried to get traction on the wire around his throat, next, he started scratching at Hubert’s viciously taught arms, unable to even draw blood through the thick fabric of his coat. Hubert didn’t need much strength from where he was, but the force lashing through his body held his arms in place.
“This is for all of them you miserable beast.” Hubert’s voice hissed out. “Every prince and princess that should have sat on the throne before you were a hundred.” He squeezed tighter. “This is for Edelgard, who deserved her childhood.”
The former duke’s face was going purple now, his struggle fading. His eyes fell to Claude.
Pleading for help.
Claude opted to watch the door instead until the sounds stopped. He had as much resolve for this death as any—Ludwig von Aegir was, by all accounts, a very bad man and an original source of most everything that had turned Fodlan into a gory compost heap. That didn’t mean he wanted to be begged for help while Hubert exacted his punishment.
When he looked behind him, Ludwig von Aegir was still, the garrote tied off, and Hubert was standing by the writing desk, rummaging around.
“Are you ready to go?” Claude asked.
“Nearly,” Hubert answered, opening a few small drawers in the nest of the hutch. “Where is it—ah!”
Gold glinted in Hubert’s hand, which he quickly pocketed.
When he turned back to Claude, he nearly had a skip in his step. “You’re right. We shouldn’t linger.”
As he passed by, Claude watched him. He’d seen Hubert—ruthlessly efficient, professional. This was something else—not a job well done, but a satisfied grudge.
More power to him, of course.
As Hubert again opened the panel on the door, Claude made sure to grab the wine, as the Emperor Regent would not be needing it.
At least the whole mission hadn’t hinged on Claude having a corkscrew.
Perhaps it was the fact that they'd only been in close quarters after devastating, incomprehensible loss, but Claude didn't think he'd ever seen Hubert so cheery before.
In the weeks since the murder of the—now very—former Duke Aegir, Claude caught hints of a smile in the typically severe cut to Hubert's mouth. He'd never seen Hubert less taut than a poorly made bow, but with Ludwig von Aegir dead it seemed an enormous weight had been lifted from him, so he was less like an amateur's sapling recurve ready to snap. His heels gained a slight bounce to them as he began taking care of little things around their hideout. He reworked the magic on the heated stones in the roost, and Claude even caught him speaking gently to Thistle. On their regular treks down to the river to bathe and wash their dishes, Claude caught him whistling around the roar of the small waterfall in their ears.
Now Claude always could have been projecting. He hadn't been his best after Gronder either—he didn't even know what his "best" would be ever again, but he had until the last name was off his list to figure it out. It was possible he was the frayed bowstring, ready to break. Or maybe they'd both already snapped. Their quest certainly seemed like some impossible, bloody folly when they'd first cooked it up by candlelight and the coppery tang of their healing wounds.
But even at Garreg Mach, he'd never heard Hubert so much as hum a tune outside of what the Professor had required for choir practice. And it wasn't that he hadn't been watching. Claude made a habit of identifying threats, and even if his grandfather hadn't warned him about The Vestras, he liked to think that three seconds in the presence of Edelgard's grim retainer would have told him that Hubert was dangerous, and not in the way of a clumsy cutthroat. Claude always thought Hubert had the cleverness to match his malice, and so he'd watched him.
And he'd never seen him relaxed. Being relaxed would be dangerous, considering all they still had to do.
All the same, Hubert seemed—
Relaxed.
One evening, while Claude's breath still chattered his teeth after a trip to the river, Hubert offered to light a fire, and on Claude’s assent, Hubert got the kindling and firewood sputtering to life on the ancient stone tower.
The offer alone got Claude's attention, and further implied to him that something had shifted. They didn't risk a fire often. Though none would have been able to see the light if they were travelling along the river below. Claude started thinking of other ways to liven up the place a little.
Claude climbed up the ladder to his wyvern's makeshift roost and grabbed something from his flight pack.
From the roost, Claude whistled down to Hubert, who glanced up at him.
"Hey," Claude said, waving the trophy in his hand. "I've been saving this since Enbarr. Wanna give it a try?"
Hubert frowned as the fire sputtered to life in a ring of rocks. "Where did you get that?"
"I, ah," Claude started. As he spoke, he wondered if theft would somehow be a worse crime than murder in Hubert's estmation. "I perhaps liberated it after we were done with the Duke. Thought we could share it."
"May I see it?" Hubert asked.
Claude dropped onto his chest on the overhanging floorboards, grasping the neck with one hand as he lowered it. He took a risk and let the wine bottle fall the final few feet to Hubert, who caught it gently and gave the faded label an appraising look. He’d not investigated it too closely back at the palace.
"He was a bastard—spiritually—and not known for his good taste," Hubert said, "but this was an excellent year. I'll gladly share it with you."
"Amazing what blood money can buy," Claude said as he descended the ladder once more. He went over to the fire to warm his hands over the small flame while Hubert retrieved a pair of chipped, mismatched glasses, as well as their one chair.
Hubert took the chair, and Claude spread out on the deck, resting his back against an old, carved square stone that was almost certainly once a part of the crumbled wall.
"Once," Claude started, "Hilda and I broke into my grandfather's cellar at a party. We got buzzed while the stuffy adults were upstairs playing politics." He ran his finger over the rim, careful to avoid the sharp part. "Can you believe I'd never done that with someone before?"
"I never have." Hubert spoke matter-of-factly—there was no hint that the wine had gone bitter in his mouth. "Edelgard was alarmingly well behaved. Or ill. Neither boded well for youthful misadventures."
Claude frowned, a layer of ash settling in his chest. Hubert told him about Edelgard's regular bedridden bouts, how her hands had shaken as her hair grew out white.
Hubert nodded, swirling the wine in his glass. For a beat, Claude could have sworn it was blood in Hubert's hand, beading and clinging to his lip. "She did...enjoy hiding from her tutors in the library. As a child." Hubert smiled. "Would you believe she was taller than me then?"
Sputtering into his wine glass, Claude tried not to laugh. "I would not believe that."
"It's true."
"You haven't talked about her since we came here."
Hubert took a sip. "That's also true."
"But you can now," Claude proposed experimentally, his stomach warm with wine, "that the Duke is dead."
Hubert eyed him over the fire, pale green eyes evaluating as he took another drink himself. "I suppose that's true. There's much more to do, but if you must know—yes, I believe her soul rests a little more easily now that that tumor has been removed from Adrestia's lung."
Claude let the metallic tang settle in his mouth. He wondered what that would feel like, to believe the dead could be at rest or not at rest, that their memories were hungry and could somehow be sated with the blood of those that had wronged them. It seemed like a dream, a fantasy that plenty more had died chasing. With a thick swallow, he set his glass down, looked into the fire.
"Lorenz and I," he said, "at one point we got separated from the others and our battalions. Fog of war, you know." He smiled. "He hurt his ankle and we had a fire going under a tree to keep the smoke from giving away our position. It was rainy and cold—one of those days where the mist can soak you to the bone." Running a hand along the stone under his hand, Claude gazed off towards the rising half-moon. "I cannot begin to tell you how much he complained."
Hubert made a noise in the back of his nose. Not that the great Count Vestra would ever do something as undignified as snort. "I interacted with Gloucester rarely but..I can imagine."
"It was nice though, after we realized there wasn't anything to do but sit and wait." Lorenz had ended up falling asleep against Claude's shoulder as their little fire burned. It had been warm, nice, together under the blanket as they'd burned off the chill.
"Things weren't great at the end." Claude paused, and he told himself it was the wine burning his eyes. It was the kind of truth that he'd known but never put words to, and the telling of it stung him like a scorpion on his hand. "After Myrddin. He was furious with me. Said we should have done more. That he was sure Ferdinand could have been swayed to join us."
He thought of the terrible, shrouded gray veil that had been their relationship that month. They didn't quite fight their last night together, in Claude's command tent in the forward camp, but only just. Lorenz hadn't responded when Claude kissed him. Instead, he'd only moved away, said he was tired, and that they should talk after the battle.
Lorenz's frigid rage had shaken Claude more than he wanted to admit—born of grief, all he could do without bringing back the dead was hope it would be short-lived. "I didn't expect his anger with me to outlive him."
When he looked up, he saw that Hubert's eyes had gone very cold indeed.
Claude poured himself another glass.
"I didn't know they were friends," Hubert said, finally, as a burning log shifted and sent up a surge of sparks up into the black abyss beyond the tower.
With a shrug, Claude leaned forward on to his seat, wrapping his elbows around folded knees. "I guess they'd still been exchanging letters, until recently."
"He never mentioned it." Hubert's mouth went back to a tight line as he intently studied the dark swirl of his beverage. "Ferdinand and I had been...taking tea together. He grew to trust me, but not, I suppose, with everything."
His voice flickered on words like 'tea' and 'trust me'. Claude had read the reports from Enbarr, of course, but hadn't thought about what they could have meant until that moment when he saw Hubert's hand quivering. Now, finally, Claude felt as though he had enough information to complete the equation, and he felt a sick twist in his gut at the solution. "You cared for him, didn't you?"
Hubert swirled his glass, eyes narrow, hiding something. Anger. His silence, his resounding lack of an answer, a space filled only by crackling fire, was answer enough for Claude. He didn’t need to put words to it. Claude wondered what words Hubert would even use in the quiet of his mind, but it was there, and for the first time in months Claude wondered if Hubert was thinking about murdering him in his sleep.
"Say, Hubert." The night air seemed colder at his back. "We both had people we wanted to avenge. We came up with a list of those we lost and we came up with a list of the people the world could do without and we matched them up, right?"
Hubert nodded fractionally behind his glass of wine.
"But Ferdinand died at Myrddin." Claude tapped a nail against the side of his glass. "We killed him."
"I am aware." Hubert's voice stayed neutral, like a flat string.
"I'm starting to get the sense your list might be different from mine." Claude looked at Hubert over his drink. "Am I the last name on your list, Hubert?"
Hubert went silent—deeper, colder than the daily, companionable lack of conversation between them. The white tendons under his magic stained fingers strained as they worked against the glass in his hands, like bones against rot, and he hid from the fire in the shadow of his bangs.
"Pay it no mind. Whatever grief I hold for Ferdinand is mine alone." He downed the last of his drink and rose to his feet. "It was a childish fancy. Unconsummated and likely unrequited."
From his seated position, Claude watched Hubert very, very carefully.
"Now," Hubert said, "I believe I will switch to water. I suggest you do the same, lest you wish to give the ghost of Ludwig von Aegir a chance for revenge in the morning."
Claude kept an eye on Hubert as he vanished into the living quarters of their gutted tower, which were all the darker after having his night vision burned away by the fire.
III. Harpstring Moon
It was slow going, but the two of them made it across the field.
Some of it was a blur, like Hubert helping Claude to his feet, but Claude starkly and vividly remembered the last look he’d taken at his friends, the way he’d only had a moment to close Lorenz’s eyes and lay him down in the most peaceful position he could.
It hadn’t been a battle. It had been a massacre. That much was clear as the two of them hurried between cover, heading towards the river at the southern end of the field.
When they got there, Hubert finally spoke. “Can your wyvern take two?”
Ah, so that was why Hubert had rescued him. “She can.”
“Good.” Hubert bent low over the water, washing the blood off his face and out of his hair.
Claude found Thistle surrounded by a number of dead enemy soldiers. A couple of her scales were cracked, but one set of arms and legs dangled from her mouth as she chewed angrily on someone’s guts.
Claude stroked her nose, encouraging her to drop the body. She chirped in response as if nothing had gone wrong, as if she was merely dissatisfied that he had taken so long to come and find her.
He went to swing his sore leg up into the saddle, only to see Hubert staring back at the field.
In the distance, past the burning mound in the center, Claude could see that the enemy soldiers had lined up the bodies of their classmates—the crested ones anyway. Felix lay next to Sylvain who lay next to a charred body, who was beside someone Claude couldn’t see, who laid next to Lorenz. He scanned over a few others until he saw what Hubert did.
Dimitri and Edelgard had both been pierced with a hail of spears, arrows, and swords. He seemed to have lasted a bit longer than she did, and the collection was a bit broader, but the result was the same. A few of the enemy mages lingered about, cutting clothes, removing armor. Some walked around with knives and short, sharp saws.
“What are they doing?” Claude asked, his stomach churning.
When Hubert replied, his voice sounded far away. “Collecting the crest stones.”
“Well, that I’m not staying to watch.” Claude took a deep breath. “Hubert...you can’t help her anymore.”
They’d climbed onto Thistle’s back. Claude put Hubert in the saddle, and used some stray straps to hold himself in place at the base of her wings. He’d not ridden bareback in years, and already he felt Thistle’s coarse scales scoring raw spots in his thighs and legs. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting away.
After leaving Gronder behind, they flew long into the night.
Claude scrambled up the side of the ruined castle walls of the castle in Fhirdiad. His fingers found safe traction on firm rocks and windowsills, but it was slow going—only possible by moonlight, but the added visibility made him nervous. In their dark clothes, surely a guard wouldn’t see them. He only needed to go up three stories to the loose, latched window, and while Claude thought a fall from this height probably wouldn’t kill him, the likelihood increased by every anxious handhold. He was already sweating under his black clothes and mask, and needed to blink away drops of sweat that came off his brow.
A couple of the enormous granite cubes wobbled under his weight, and Claude moved on quickly, squirreling higher up towards the shuttered portal.
Once he was within reach, Claude perched on the sill and got out his knife. It slipped in between the panels, and with a little wriggling, a little upward motion, he heard the wooden lock on the opposing side come undone. With a satisfied smirk to himself, he pushed open the shutters. As promised, the armory was empty.
Well, armory was a loose term. That was like using the term “horse” to describe a prized Almyran Thoroughbred. This was more like a museum or a reliquary.
Claude quickly hopped down, only the moonlight behind him illuminating a ring of glass display cases and strong, steadfast mannequins wearing shining, ceremonial armors. After a rapid investigation for alarm or anti-warp wards, he laid down the sigil stone in his pocket. As soon as he’d placed it, he gestured out the window.
Hubert appeared with an almost silent fluctuation of magic—for breaking the natural laws of gravity, time, and space, the only cost was the sound of a burst bubble. He glanced around, then pulled down his matching mask. “What took you so long?”
“Sorry I couldn’t scale the building faster.” Claude stood to his feet and shrugged his shoulders. “Also, I thought I was supposed to be the funny one?”
Hubert pulled his mask back over his head. “Her room should be just down this way.”
“No guards?” Claude asked, slipping alongside Hubert to the door at the far end.
“She believes her magic is far too complicated and intricate to be undone by a human hand.” Hubert rolled his eyes in the slit between his hood and his mask. “She’s an enthusiastic amateur at best, by the standards of Those Who Slither.”
After Hubert got the door open, they entered into a dimly lit hallway, which they traversed in high crouches. Claude carried Failnaught at the ready—so far, they had managed to kill their targets with no collateral damage, and though Claude did not want to break that streak, he was prepared to.
They paused outside Cornelia’s door, etched with a dozen or so markings on the frame and the stones around it. Hubert went to work running over the sigils with his thumb, forming counter spells and mirror spells, and occasionally just creating tiny nicks in the stone or wood that would short circuit the warnings or traps entirely. He made quick work of it, ultimately, and while Claude never possessed much talent or personal interest in magic, he knew enough to be impressed.
Lastly, he picked the lock. The whole process likely took five minutes, even though it felt like five years to Claude. Hubert rose, gesturing to the door as it opened into yet another shadowy room.
Claude stepped in first to let his eyes adjust.
At first, they seemed like fairly normal quarters—sizeable, but not beyond what Claude would expect from a royal mage or trusted advisor. Though she had taken control of Fhirdiad and the Kingdom’s forces, Cornelia had declined to occupy the royal rooms. Claude couldn’t guess at why, but he suspected the bloody Blaiddyd crest stone rumored to be on the throne night and day had something to do with it. She was no queen—she was greater than one, and the people of Fhirdiad would never forget it.
Well, if Claude and Hubert were successful, the people of Fhirdiad could forget sooner than “never”.
Claude made his way out of the column of light from the open doorway. He spied a few things—an odd, staggered and grated bit of furniture in the corner. When he saw movement, he nearly notched an arrow, but as he got closer he saw that the flash he’d seen had come from a family of white rabbits, hopping around, flicking their ears at the intruders.
His eyes were starting to adjust to the moonlight. “She keeps rabbits?”
Hubert didn’t respond, instead closing the door behind him and going over to investigate a low desk covered with glasses, beakers, and papers of various sizes.
Claude’s attention fell to a large box at the furthest end of the room. It was out of the moonlight in the window, so he couldn’t quite make it out, but curiosity was already an irritating itch at the back of his head. It was much too large to be a dresser, and didn’t open from the top like he would expect. The only opening he saw was a smooth sliding door that went from right to left, and experimentally, he pulled the knob.
It slid open, revealing—
an almost entirely empty box. A hot, musty animal smell washed over Claude’s nose, powerful even through the mask. He reached an arm down, experimentally crushing a handful of what looked to be cypress mulch. More rabbits?
A large spade struck out and latched onto Claude’s forearm, squeezing and instantly sinking a hundred fish hooks into the flesh there in a brilliant burst of pain. Claude fell back onto the floor as more and more of its muscular, spindly, lukewarm body spooled out of its enclosure, and already Claude’s blood was pooling into its wide, squeezing mouth. Shining scales flashed in the moonlight, the taught neck twisting as curling muscle coiled around him.
By the time Claude thought to reach for his knife, it was already firmly latched around his chest and one leg.
He cried out, and as soon as he did the snake encircled and tightened over his lungs.
Hubert was at his shoulder, eyes wide and saying something, something Claude couldn't hear. Not that he’d need to—he knew when the game was up. With every move he made, the snake wound tighter around him, impossibly strong, making his ribs groan even as he was able to get in a couple more panicked, shallow breaths. This was it.
“Hubert. Go.” Claude’s heart thundered under a creeping, twisted stomach.
He heard a noise that sounded like a swear, and Hubert was gone from his side.
Stars danced in his vision, and everything burned.
Then Hubert had his hands around the tail on Claude’s foot, he was lifting, and the slightest bit of pressure relieved there.
Claude couldn’t see much of what Hubert did, but he felt the results, felt sure, quick hands working between the snake and his skin, saw the freed tail wrapping instinctively and loosely around Hubert’s long leg as he worked.
“Stay with me, von Riegan.”
Through the fuzzy haze of Claude’s mind, he realized something crucial—Hubert was unwrapping it.
“—don’t you dare—”
Just as his vision dimmed, Claude felt the pressure release, was able to intake a sharp, hungry breath. His whole torso complained, ached violently after the ugly compression, but the air, the air was so sweet, and even as he gasped, as his vision dimmed, he numbly saw Hubert tossing aside fifteen feet of angry snake to get to its head. He had a hook in one hand, which he pried into the stubborn mouth.
He pulled it forward first—and Claude nearly cried out again—before pulling its mouth off properly, first by the root, and then—
He was free.
His blood was already pooling on the ground, as the snake, now that it was not partaking of the easy meal it expected, retreated somewhere off into the darkness.
Claude lay on the carpet, taking in ugly, hungry gasps as Hubert bandaged his limp arm.
He coughed, and Hubert was leaning over him, a palm to Claude’s cheek. “Von Riegan? Can you hear me?” A pause. “Claude?”
Claude swam back to consciousness. “Hubert.”
He saw Hubert smile, his mask hanging like a scarf over his long neck. “You’re alive.”
“Guess so.” Claude coughed again, and already he could name several places where the swelling was about to start. He blinked. “Hey, Hubert. I have a quick question—”
“Yes?”
“I assume there’s a reason why that thing is still alive.” He sat up, making a motion off into the darkness while a bit of true anger replaced the raw, inescapable terror from before. Already, he felt the blood on his forearm soaking through the bandage.
“It didn't attack you because it was angry or scared,” Hubert said, patiently, “It attacked you because it was hungry.”
Hubert held a hand to his lips, then pointed to the rabbits. “This whole room smells like prey.”
Distantly, Claude saw where Hubert was going with this. Back home, in the heated mews of Almyra, it was explicitly forbidden to keep the sheep for the wyverns anywhere near the roosts. Wyverns were intelligent beasts, but not known for excellent vision, and even a well trained animal could too easily mistake their handler for a meal if a whole area smelled like livestock.
A lock turned in the door, and all Claude and Hubert could do was rush to the large window at one end of the room. They moved as quickly and silently as possible, each sliding their bodies behind one of the expansive, wine-dark curtains. All Claude could see was Hubert, who listened carefully, and all Claude could hear was heeled shoes on flagstones, and the sound of blood dripping from his wrist to patter onto the stone floor.
“Oh dear,” a woman’s voice said, “my pet, whatever are you doing out of your cage?”
The snake hissed, and struck, and before long Cornelia—traitor to Faerghus, murderer of Rufus Blaiddyd, and Thales’ agent—was no more.
Claude spent the whole flight back actively not looking forward to this.
Hubert stopped the bleeding in Fhirdiad with pressure, bandages, and vulneraries, but if Claude didn’t want a scar or an infection, they’d have to treat it properly back at the tower. Hubert, to his credit, recognized that Claude did not need to be reminded of that, and as soon as Thistle was blanketed and nestled up in her makeshift basking stall Claude emerged to find Hubert waiting in his shirtsleeves with whiskey, forceps, fresh bandages, and a candle.
Cringing, Claude stripped out of his tunic and undershirt. As he pulled it over his head, he caught Hubert watching him.
Claude might have found it in himself to be creeped out, if they hadn’t been living in close quarters for about a year. And Hubert’s attention never lingered, never lasted beyond the constraints of politeness. Likewise, Claude had only ever seen Hubert make the one expression—as if he’d only been taught a single reason to observe others and his face settled that way on his bony face. As flattered as he’d be if he found out Hubert was eying his musculature, it could have been that, or the job ahead, or murder for all Claude knew.
This time it was most likely the dense, trailing bruise in rings around his body. That was a different matter than the bite. Mostly one of pride. No crushed bones. No cracked ribs. Just the knowledge that he stuck his hand out like some cat pawing at a hot pan and got scalded for it. Claude had to admit, it wasn’t an injury someone got every day, even with the life he and Hubert led right then.
Claude took his seat and let his elbow settle in front of Hubert on the arm of his chair. “Be gentle with me?”
It wasn’t quite a joke, but Hubert could have given him a courtesy laugh. Some bedside manner.
He looked away when Hubert slowly pried the bandage off, careful where dried blood stuck to a hundred shredded pinpricks. He’d say that was mostly Hubert’s fault for prying that shovel of a mouth off by pulling it further into flesh first, except Claude hadn’t known what he’d do beyond—well, die and hope Hubert got away.
He’d lucked out.
Or that’s what Claude told himself before Hubert removed the first pink-stained, translucent tooth from his arm. He hissed, and Hubert dropped it into a small, metal bowl with a gentle clatter. “That’s one.”
“Ow,” Claude emphasized, and made the conscious choice to drain their whiskey supply just a little more by grabbing the bottle and taking a sizable swig. He coughed and his chest ached. “You know, I think the stories are wrong. This absolutely does not help.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hubert’s lips flicker upwards. “I will try to perform this service as expeditiously as possible, Your Grace.”
“That’s a relief.” He gritted his teeth together again as another little needle came out. This one brought a new bead of blood down Claude’s forearm, slipping over raised tendons and veins from his clenched fist. Hubert swiped it away with a clean cloth and held it over the new wound until the flow stopped. “You know I could do this myself.”
“Of course.” Hubert draped the bloody cloth over his knee. “But it will be easier if I do it.”
Claude blinked as he felt his drink settle in his head. “But you don’t have to.”
Hubert flicked another tooth into his bowl. “I fail to follow.”
“I mean, no one ever has to do anything.” When Hubert took a break to wipe off the forceps, Claude slid a little further down the chair. “Don’t have to treat someone’s injuries. Don’t have to rescue disgraced archdukes from hungry pythons.”
“If you have a question, go ahead and ask it.” Hubert dabbed at the bite again. “Or be quiet.”
As much as it shamed him to admit, Claude was used to healers. He’d rarely needed to let pain move in and make itself at home, other than the chronic soreness in the elbow of his bow arm that he needed to keep happy. Now, despite the sudden, sharp pain, he realized how tired he was. “Why save me?”
Hubert’s hands froze, forceps hovering in midair for a beat before he spoke. “What else was I to do? If I’d left you there, Cornelia would have known someone was in her room. The next attempt would be near impossible.”
“Nah. You could have cut her throat while she was distracted by my mistake.” Claude drummed his fingers on his knee. “I know I’m the last name on your list, Hubert. Saving me at Gronder made sense—you needed the ride out and one puppet can’t kill all the puppet masters alone.” Even a very angry puppet with an indomitable will and many, many knives. “But why save me back there?”
“Hold still,” Hubert said, no trace of a scolding tone. “Your logic is sound, except for one thing.”
“Hm?” Claude raised his eyebrow.
“You are correct in your assumption that I have a final name on my list.” Hubert grabbed the bottle and poured a dripping portion onto the cloth in his hands. “However, it is not yours, so you may rest easy. After all the monsters are dead, there will be one more to contend with. One I plan to take care of myself.”
Claude narrowed his eyes to study Hubert’s expression—to observe the tight, preoccupied line of his brow, the shift in the aphid swarm of his eyes that almost looked like hungry, desperate relief—in the seconds before Hubert placed the alcohol-drenched cloth around the wound.
Claude wasn’t proud of the noise he made.
“Besides.” When Hubert glanced up, there was a wicked gleam in his eye, and Claude picked an emotion somewhere in the family of ‘grave annoyance’ from his own stinging maelstrom. “You’ve much more to offer when this is finished.”
As the alcohol dried, Hubert began laying out the bandages. Though the wound stung and Claude was still feeling a little betrayed—gods, Hubert could have at least warned him—he still let Hubert take his wrist in ink-stained fingers and begin the process of properly wrapping the wound.
Claude couldn’t help but notice how cold Hubert’s fingers were, even against parts of his skin that weren’t swollen and raw.
When Hubert made the final wrap, Claude actually caught the tiny, satisfied smile on his face. The smile of a man who would be able to go to bed soon, most likely, but it was still rare and nice to see, like a new hornet Claude had never seen before. “There, all done.”
Hm. Maybe Hubert really wasn’t planning to kill him after all.
Hubert reached past him to snuff out the candle.
Smoothly—and with a hint of madness—Claude caught Hubert’s hand.
“Wait a minute, it can stay lit for a bit.” When Hubert’s breath hitched in but he made no motion to draw his hand away, Claude pressed his palms around the corpse-cold nails. “How do you live like this? Your fingers are freezing. That can’t all be the magic.”
When Claude looked up again, Hubert hadn’t retreated back behind the dense wave of his bangs, slicked against his forehead and cheek by sweat. Nor did he take his hand back, and the candle flickering on Claude’s other side sputtered and dripped wax.
“You wouldn’t be the first to tell me my circulation is wretched,” Hubert countered, though his voice had a wavering unease, a softness Claude had never heard before. Notably, he didn’t pull his hand away. “What do you want, von Riegan?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m warming your hands.”
Hubert’s eyes narrowed. “That’s hardly necessary.”
“Maybe I want to.” Claude sank further into the chair, kept looking up at Hubert through his own bangs.
The faintest shiver ran through Hubert’s fingers, the same ones that hadn’t quivered once over Claude’s shredded skin. “Do you want more than that?”
“I’m not sure. It’s been almost a year. We’ve done a lot together. Killed a lot of people,” Claude replied, speaking from the whiskeyed out hollow of his stomach. “We could kill time too.”
Hubert’s throat fluttered under the collar of his shirt, looking for all the world like he might freeze or flee. He turned his head away completely, his forehead pointed somewhere.
Yet he leaned in, until the smell of herbal salves and the many bitter concoctions he took to train his body against poison overwhelmed the lingering scent of the alcohol in Claude’s nose.
They hovered like that for a minute, Claude watching on curiously, Hubert looking more wan and sick than Claude had ever seen him, his breaths coming out in tight swells against Claude’s exposed neck.
“Look.” Claude sighed. “You don’t have to. If my meaning wasn’t clear—”
Hubert kissed him.
Claude’s breath hissed out of him as Hubert’s lips connected with his. He doubled over, spine curving against the back of the chair as his sweaty skin stuck to the treated wood. As cold as Hubert’s hands were, as hard and narrow as every line of him was, Claude half expected kissing him to be like pecking the face of a marble statue. Instead, his mouth was soft, shaking and gentle and hesitant against Claude’s.
One of Hubert’s hands landed on the arm of the chair, gripping it until Claude felt the old splinters groaning with the tension in his tendons. Hubert’s other hand went first, hesitantly, to Claude’s jaw, where a part of Claude still thought it might wrap around his throat. Instead, all Hubert’s fingers did was cup his neck, gently cooling the space below his ear as Claude’s bandaged arm wrapped up and around Hubert’s shoulders, his palm radiating heat onto the part of Hubert’s shoulder where he’d been sweating under his pitch-colored coat.
When Hubert pulled away, he licked his lips. “All because I said I wouldn’t kill you?” He panted, seemingly unable to look anywhere except Claude’s chin. “You really must have higher standards, von Riegan.”
In response, Claude leaned up to kiss him once more—he didn’t want to ruin the mood by telling Hubert just how high his standards were. Next to him, the candle sputtered, and he almost caught Hubert looking him in the eye.
IV. Garland Moon
They spent the next six months in a run-down cabin, waiting for their wounds to stitch together, and shying away from small talk. Every time Claude tried his words felt like acid on his tongue, and Hubert typically spoke only to the extent that was necessitated for their mutual survival. Claude hadn’t cried since he was a child, but he cried whenever he thought about horses, or wine, food, or oil paints. Roses. It was a bitter time, lit only by the fireplace, which daily ate cords of wood they were barely strong enough to split.
Hubert was as vacant and cold as the coming winter sky. The dangerous, lurking figure Claude had always kept one eye on had been replaced by a man who...breathed, ate, and slept. His movements were mechanical. If he cried once during their stay in that lonely, horrible little cabin, Claude never saw. Then again, Claude never let Hubert see him cry either.
Thus, the gravity of their shared loss remained wordless, the kind of grief someone couldn’t bear all at once.
At the end of those first three months, the mood changed.
The snows were falling, and the air was a bone-chilling cold. Their wounds were healed. Claude half-thought they would go their separate ways—though there was no place left for Hubert back in Enbarr, with Emperor Regent Ludwig von Aegir on the throne, and in Derdriu, Claude was presumed dead (though in this, he saw an advantage). Or, he thought they would turn on each other. Claude would blame Hubert for Edelgard starting the war, or Hubert would blame Claude for being alive when Edelgard was not, and the whole vicious cycle would begin again.
Instead, Hubert told Claude everything.
The truth about Lady Rhea, Edelgard’s past, and Those Who Slither in the Dark.
He admitted their role in that, how Edelgard had thought she could use them to take down the church. In this, Hubert expressed the most regret.
Somewhere during the tale, the endless well of grief in Claude ignited. He let the acid in him spill out, and Hubert matched it. They had all been manipulated. All betrayed.
They started listing out names. First, of those they’d lost. When that was done, they started naming the responsible parties and casting judgement. It was a collection of people that had gotten their power at the cost of an entire generation, or had lurked for centuries in the shadows at the edge of humanity’s memory, waiting for the right time to strike—all were responsible in some way for the massacre at Gronder.
It would take time, and would be exceedingly dangerous, requiring knowledge and skills that neither of them had on their own. But together...
They talked a lot more after that, about revenge mostly.
To A Raven,
First, I applaud you for your continued survival. Though I was convinced you would not live past Gronder if your Lady fell, Our Mutual Acquaintance had other beliefs, and other plans. I’ve been following your work—the resulting chaos and ruin has been admirable. Prolific. You have surpassed our wildest expectations, though I recognize you will not stop until every responsible heart stops beating. It is not my way to hide in my tower, awaiting some silent knife. So, I write with a misunderstanding, an offer, and a challenge.
First, a misunderstanding. Namely yours. While you witnessed the destruction at Gronder, I was stationed at Fort Merceus. Caspar von Bergliez and Linhardt von Hevring were there with me. Shortly after the battle, you likely reasoned that my loyalties had shifted. It would follow that I was ordered to kill them, to help make the destruction of your class complete. You would be correct—I was ordered to kill them. However, these executions were not carried out.
They are alive. I presume you were not aware, as you have not attempted to rescue them. You are cold, Carrion Eater, but not, I think, that cold.
Next, my offer. Von Bergliez and von Hevring have been granted this stay as a compromise between a heart too gentle for a wicked mind and the wicked mind that often rules his hand. We agreed that, should our master’s plan come to pass and you survive, you would not be able to leave them to their fate. There would be no better way to draw you from the shadows, so they persisted until now.
Lastly, my challenge. Meet me at Garreg Mach in one week’s time, when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. I will be in the open space overlooking the graveyard. Von Bergliez and von Hevring will be held secretly nearby, and all you must do to learn their location is defeat the Death Knight in single combat.
If I wait longer than an hour, I will assume my hostages do not have the value I thought they did.
This letter was dictated to von Hevring and is in his script. Surely that is proof enough, as it would be a shame to break up the set.
Eagerly Yours,
Jeritza von Hrym
and the Death Knight
Claude had never wanted to come back to Garreg Mach.
It was little more than a ruin now, of course. Abandoned shortly after the Empire’s initial, symbolic seizure of it, buildings rapidly fell into disrepair. Part of this was due to the damage sustained during repeated assaults, and part of it was the result of a thousand years of steady maintenance no longer being performed. The forces of nature reclaimed the seat of Rhea’s church as rapidly as they would a new corpse.
As far as Claude was concerned, it could all rot. Even with the weeds overgrown in every mismanaged green space, every former marker of joy and life, there were too many memories there, and each one was written into his bones like the acts of a tragedy. As Claude crept through the pathways, covered with weeds and detritus, he may as well have been walking through a mausoleum. He passed the large rooms where each house had received their lessons, and though he was on a mission, Claude couldn’t keep himself from stopping in the old Golden Deer hall.
Hubert was counting on him. That was his new house. It was small and made from a gory pact, but he couldn’t help himself from remembering the old.
He spotted the place where he used to lay on the grass with Hilda. He found the compartment on Raphael’s desk where he’d hidden snacks—not just for himself, for anyone who hadn’t had time to grab food before coming to class. Claude then ran his fingers over the remains of the little mural Ignatz had painted with the permission of the Professor—a deer with a crown of vines and flowers. On the moldy, mossy bookshelves, Claude glimpsed a book on tidiness. Perhaps if he’d looked longer, he could have found an artificial flower, but Lorenz had been too neat, too careful with his things to leave any indication that he had ever lived at all. In the classroom, anyway.
So Claude left.
He traced around the outside, keeping to the shadows as much as he could with Failnaught drawn and ready. He came across more places—gardens where he’d taken tea with Dimitri and had conversations with Edelgard that were about politics without being about politics. They’d talked in circles around each other, Claude saw now. In trying to avoid Rhea’s watchful eye, they never got to learn if they had common ground or not. Well, even without Rhea, neither Claude nor Edelgard had been born to trust others. That came too late for both of them.
Once, they’d all gone walking together, and a part of Claude had almost thought they were all just sensible and good hearted enough not to wind up dead on a battlefield somewhere. Like an idiot.
Claude moved past the rest quickly. The sun would be in the sky soon, and his scan of the monastery had thus far come up empty. He expected Jertiza was holding Linhardt and Caspar closer to the site of the duel, but he’d wanted to rule out other options first, after he and Hubert had investigated the cathedral and Rhea’s former quarters.
He rounded a pillar near the old Knight’s Hall, and caught sight of the area overlooking the graveyard.
He saw a figure in jet black armor, shining in the sun like someone had dipped it in oil. Alone. Waiting. A trail of blond hair led up to an exposed head, and Claude’s fingers flexed against the arrow in his hand, the draw of Failnaught’s string.
There was wisdom in him and Hubert ambushing Jeritza together, but they’d mutually decided against it. If Jeritza didn’t know Claude was alive, if he thought every assassination had been Hubert and only Hubert, it was possible his master did as well. It also meant losing Linhardt and Caspar, which they decided was not a desired outcome.
So Claude would find them first, and Hubert would face Jeritza. Hopefully he’d be able to keep him talking for a bit before the fighting started.
Claude watched as Hubert appeared from behind the side of the building. He hadn’t seen Hubert in his full Imperial uniform since Gronder, his black-on-red cape trailing behind him in the wind as he strolled into a duelist’s position. Claude had also not seen Hubert on a battlefield since Gronder—and he recognized it now. The smooth, determined steps, the space he commanded and took up as if stepping onto a stage. All pomp and villainous intimidation, or so Claude had thought.
Though he couldn’t hear what was being said, Claude guessed some kind of repartee was taking place.
It was a shame Claude was missing it. He was great at repartee.
He crept down the hallway towards the Knight’s Hall. The old entryway remained open, though Claude needed to maneuver around some fallen rubble.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw the dead fireplace and the moth-eaten bookshelves—though they were in a better condition than the ones in the Golden Deer classroom. His gaze fell across some scattered weapons, half-rusted and somehow left behind when the rest of the monastery had been picked clean.
Then, tied to the old training dummies, he saw them.
Even in the dim lighting and the passage of time, Claude recognized the shades of their hair, the short broadness of Caspar’s shoulders and the slouching, lanky slightness of Linhardt’s drooping head. They were both gagged, and as Claude entered, Caspar was the first to see him, and he started shaking his head, trying to talk around the lump of cloth on his tongue.
Claude paused, this was too easy. Why weren’t they guarded?
Carefully, he lunged forwards, pulling at the gag in Caspar’s mouth—
“—Trap! It’s a trap.” Caspar managed, voice ragged and dry as Linhardt steadily awoke next to him. “Jeritza isn’t alone!”
Claude held up a finger to his lips, and Caspar broke off into a cough, which gave him time to pull the gag from Linhardt’s mouth. “Claude?”
“In the flesh. And yeah, kinda figured it would be.” He started sawing away at the bindings on Caspar’s wrists. “How many does Jertiza have with him?”
“At least ten.” Caspar was already reaching to untie the bindings around his ankles.
A sick feeling sank from the top of Claude’s head to the bottom of his stomach. They’d known to expect a trap—Jertiza’s letter had practically had the word “trap” written in invisible ink on the front of it.
“Can you fight?” Claude stepped away as Linhardt gently massaged his wrists, looking as stunned and faraway as ever.
Caspar was up and holding an old, rusted iron axe. He gave a couple experimental swings. “Yeah. Yeah I can definitely fight.”
“Linhardt,” Claude addressed. “Can you provide support?”
Without looking at him, Linhardt dimly nodded.
Without waiting for another confirmation, Claude turned to bolt out the door. He heard Caspar’s heavy boots behind him, and could only trust that Linhardt was close.
Claude felt the magic in the air before he rounded out of the hall to see it. Next he heard the crack of thunder and the sound of spikes striking the ground.
For a terrifying moment looking on at the battle, he couldn’t pick Hubert apart from all of it. There was a haze of miasma, and a crowd of masked mages in dark cloaks. Some were already on the ground, still, and over it all the Death Knight’s scythe arced overhead, falling backwards, in preparation for a killing strike.
Only then could Claude pick Hubert out from the others, by following the trajectory of the blow. He was crouched on a fourth fallen mage, hand on the hilt of his dagger, which was planted firmly in the dead man’s chest.
Claude’s chest clenched. He wouldn’t get there in time. Not again. Not again.
“Go!” Linhardt said, and Claude barely registered it before Linhardt’s palm slapped into the back of his shoulder blade and reality missed a stitch.
In the most disorienting blink of his life, Claude was fifty or so feet ahead, near the furthest corner of the Knight’s Hall. He still had the momentum from his run, and needed to fall forwards into a roll to keep from losing his balance. He carried it with him as he came up into a crouch, drew his arrow back, and barely had time to think about the Crest of Riegan humming through his chest before he fired.
The arrow thunked into Jeritza’s back at the height of his strike, and the scythe glanced harmlessly off the ground. Opposite him, Hubert was already up and moving, using waves of power and miasma to skate across the ground, move further and more fluidly than he otherwise could as he spun and hovered near two more warlocks, both of which formed deadly-looking spikes overhead, all aimed at Hubert.
Reality missed another stitch. Caspar appeared behind them, his axe striking a mage in the head with a crack so loud that Claude could hear it from where he was. The second mage glanced over, hesitated for the second it took for Hubert to send a wave of deadly miasma careening over her. She dropped nearly instantly, clutching at her throat before going limp.
Jeritza reached for his back, for where one of Claude’s arrows still stuck out between the blackened plates of his armor. His hand wrapped around it—
—and snapped off the fletch.
Claude’s stomach churned at the sound of snapping wood, muffled at one end by being imbedded in Jertiza’s back, but he didn’t have time to fire off another before Jertiza rounded on Hubert again.
Hubert was ready this time. He neatly dodged back, and drove a spike of dark magic into Jeritza’s shoulder.
Claude was up, running. He paused before firing a shot that took down another attacking mage. And when the last one rounded to Claude, a gust of wind came from behind, lightly catching Claude’s cowl but picking up the last mage and slamming him violently towards the ramparts. The sound of multiple bones breaking at once reverberated through Claude’s chest, as much as it was a noise that he heard.
Jeritza gazed numbly at the bodies of the mages he’d brought with him. All still. All dead. Hubert and Caspar turned to face him, and Linhard readied a spell behind Claude, completing their semi-circle. As always, he seemed simultaneously distant, yet keenly aware.
“It’s over, Jeritza,” Claude started, glancing around. “You have to know you can’t take on all four of us.”
“Claude von Riegan.” His name tumbled from Jertiza’s mouth. “I thought there may be another, but he didn’t tell me you would be here.” He blinked, vacantly. “Did he want me to fail? I didn’t ask him if that was part of the plan.”
“Who?” Hubert’s voice rasped from him as he took a step towards Jeritza, a coil of black and blue magic already gathering in his palm. “Tell me, and I will grant you the death Her Majesty was so cruel to deny you.”
“Who else but the one who has control over the flow of time?” Jeritza seemed to drift, sway until he toppled backwards to the rampart, his head cradled between the break in the wall. From behind him, a pool of red blood grew. “Who pulled back the thin veil of reality for my eyes alone? Surely you’ve guessed.”
Claude narrowed his eyes. He must have hit something vital, after all. That Jertiza could have kept fighting with a wound like that…
It just showed how far gone he was.
“I was taught the true nature of things, and I have been a teacher in turn.” When Jeritza spoke again, he wasn’t addressing Hubert. Nor was he addressing Claude. Instead, his gaze was fixed intently on Caspar. “I’m proud of you.”
Caspar screamed and lunged forwards even as Hubert reached out a hand to stop him. Off to the side, Linhardt flinched away, holding one arm up so his sleeve could block his view.
The old axe Caspar took from the Knight’s Hall had a blunted edge, and the first blow didn’t quite sever Jeritza’s neck. He went still on the second, and on the third his head finally rolled free from his shoulders. Caspar tossed aside his bloody axe, and fell backwards into a seated position. He buried his face in the crook of his elbow, his shoulders shaking in weak sobs.
Claude looked to Hubert, though he didn’t know what he expected. As this display played out, Hubert stood still, if his wide eyes were deeply uncertain. Claude didn’t know them, but he supposed Hubert didn’t know them anymore, either. Or maybe it was just that comfort had never been what either of them did best.
Caspar...Claude didn’t know what to do there. Alternately, Linhardt was on his knees, demurely losing his guts in a patch of weeds a few feet away. That seemed a little easier, so Claude made his way up behind him, he considered a camaraderie shoulder pat, but thought better of it.
“That got a little intense,” he said, glancing back to Caspar, who Hubert had taken a couple half-steps towards. “Are you okay?” He stopped, anxiously licked his lips. “What did Jeritza do?”
Linhardt sat up, swiping at his mouth. Tears flowed down his cheeks, and Claude had no way of knowing if they were sad tears or because his nose was burning. “He protected us.”
Hubert interviewed Caspar and Linhardt separately—he asked them the kinds of questions that only they could answer, and Claude largely kept his distance. He didn’t know them or their backgrounds well enough to pick out a body double planted by Those Who Slither, and he was too tired to do anything but trust Hubert. Once Hubert’s questions had been satisfied, thus began the long, messy practice of getting everyone back to a hideout built and designed for two.
Hubert and Linhardt made preparations to travel via a series of long-distance warps, and Claude awkwardly fashioned a second seat out of his flight bags for Caspar, who stayed deathly silent the entire way back. The extra load slowed Thistle slightly, but with a few extra rests they made it back to the hideout with time to spare. It wasn’t too far from Garreg Mach.
Hubert and Claude made space in the small room they’d been sharing for months. They had some extra blankets from when the winter got so cold they shared a bed for warmth, and made extra sleeping places out of pillows and bedrolls. Linhardt had collapsed into his as soon as it was ready, facing the wall. Caspar laid down next to him, one arm around Linhardt’s waist as he buried his nose deep in his hair.
Claude got the feeling he was witnessing something deeply intimate. He didn’t need to be there for this.
As he stepped out, he heard Caspar whisper, “We’re safe, Lin.”
Claude needed some fresh air.
He descended the tower through a series of old rotten stairs and quickly-made ladders. After fighting with the stuck main door, he was greeted by the sound of birds singing in the forest, and the sight of the green, bubbling pool in the river that ran alongside the base of the tower, cutting through what used to be a little courtyard. In time, it would probably bring down the whole tower.
It didn’t matter. Claude wouldn’t be making his home there much longer. There was only one job left to do.
When Hubert approached from behind, Claude instantly recognized the cadence of his footsteps. Steady, quiet, and catlike. Heel first and deliberately loud, grinding dirt and snapping twigs so as not to startle him. They were both good about not startling each other.
From his crouched position, Claude tossed the stick he’d been fiddling with into the river. “You too, huh?”
“I will admit, it’s feeling a little crowded up there.” Hubert had done away with his cape, though he was still in his bloody Imperial uniform. “Though I’m relieved to learn they still live, I had grown used to your presence and yours alone.” He reached up to loosen his collar. The jeweled pin fell to the side as Hubert loosened his tie. “It matters not. Thales has retreated to Shambhala.”
Claude’s throat tightened. The last name on their list. “It’s almost over.”
He lifted his face up into the breeze.
“Before he died at Gronder, there were rumors that King Dimitri could hear the voices of the dead speaking to him.” Hubert had his face in the same wind, staring up at the river as it snaked its way down the mountain slope. “I have at times wondered what I would give for such a delusion.”
Claude watched Hubert’s face for any sign of sarcasm. “Why a delusion? Why not wish for the real thing?”
“Because it is not possible. I have no faith that the dead can do anything of the sort. Speak. Ascend. Burn.” He took a deep breath. “Yet...if their voices could be preserved in my mind, then at least they would be unforgotten so long as my wretched bones drag along the earth.”
“If Hilda were here,” Claude started, “I’m pretty sure she’d be saying ‘Gosh, Claude, why the hell are you working so hard? You’re alive. Enjoy it!’” His voice hitched at the end.
Next to him, Hubert’s shoulders shook in what he realized was a low chuckle. “A masterful impression.” The river roared gently. In the pool, a fish swirled. “You know, I’ve grown somewhat fond of your voice.”
“And yet,” Claude responded, turning closer to Hubert, “we still haven’t talked about how you kissed me.”
“An uncharacteristically terrible segue,” Hubert folded his hands tightly behind him, but didn’t shy away. “I apologize. With two men such as us in close quarters, it was bound to happen, but I didn't mean to introduce a complication so close to the end of our journey.”
“Didn’t I imply that I wanted that complication?” Claude asked, trying to ignore the little ping of disappointment. “If we’re so close to going our separate ways, what could it hurt?” He lightly tapped Hubert’s shoulder, and once more, Hubert didn’t shy away from him. “Hey, look on the bright side. We might both die in Shambhala, then we won’t have to talk about it ever again.”
That earned a crooked laugh. “Look at us. Our humor is wasted everywhere but a gallows.”
It was Claude’s turn to laugh. And slowly, carefully, he reached out for the break in Hubert’s shirt. His fingers clasped around the open collar, just under the sweaty dent at the base of his long throat. As he’d come to expect, Hubert’s skin was cold to the touch where exposed to the air, but this time he felt a radiating heat coming up from under his shirt, welcoming Claude’s hands as he ran his thumb against the skin there. Soft. Enticing. It was as much a question as it was an invitation.
This time, Hubert moved closer, an arm encircling Claude’s waist experimentally. Hubert always had a kind of restrained energy to him, and Claude felt it now like electricity and heat between them, in the flush to his cheeks, his body telling him that he hadn’t imagined how he’d felt when Hubert kissed him last time. There was no illusion born of desperation there, nothing consigned to the aftermath of a near-death experience, fit only for the safety of their tower. No, with Hubert holding him Claude felt his heart start pounding and his stomach ache and gods, it had been so long.
Claude reached up, grabbing Hubert’s face and bringing him down for a kiss. Hubert shuddered into him, his grip on Claude’s hip tightening until they were flushed together. It was the loneliest kiss Claude had ever had, because it really could have just been the two of them left alive in the world right then, surrounded by miles of forgotten nature. He jutted his tongue out into Hubert’s mouth, and Hubert lightly bit his lip. At the same time, Claude couldn’t ignore the heat between them, the friction of their hips where Hubert clutched his waist like a life raft. He canted his hips forward, already hard after a year of near total abstention.
The next thing Claude knew, he had Hubert up against a tree. He was tearing at Hubert’s coat, pulling his shirt up and out of his pants as Hubert grabbed for Claude’s sash, tugging it free and grasping for his hardening cock. Claude’s hand trailed over the narrow lines of Hubert’s hips, tracking up his height and sinews until Claude started pawing at Hubert’s flat chest, eliciting a high whine that felt unnatural vibrating from Hubert’s throat. It had been a long time for him, too, Claude was sure of it, because Hubert twisted like a wire in his hands. Claude thrust, his teeth lightly dragging down the long line of Hubert’s throat. Hubert’s breath went hot, heady as Claude felt a matching arousal against his thigh. He tried to return the favor—grasping clumsily at Hubert’s fly, but Hubert gently clutched his wrist, drawing him away.
“Please,” Hubert said, his hand squeezing at Claude’s tailbone, “allow me.”
At Claude’s quick nod, Hubert dropped to his knees.
V. Blue Sea Moon
Claude and Hubert stood in the ruins of the structure at Shambhala’s heart. Fallen, decorative pillars lay around them in cut, shattered stone as the walls hummed with lines of iridescent blue light. The body of Thales lay before them, choked with magic and pierced with arrow after arrow.
After a year of longing and toil and mourning and rage and struggle, finally, Thales was dead.
Then why did Claude feel sick? Why was there a buzzing behind his eardrums like a voice he almost remembered? Why did this place, this subterranean city of impossible lines and rigid spires seem so, so familiar?
A cut on Claude’s forehead bled badly, dividing into channels down his brow and nose, somehow missing his eye and keeping his vision clear even as the rivulets rejoined and drained down his neck to soak into his undershirt and tunic.
Hubert took a half-step forward, towards the open, square doorway carved in perfect lines as if from obsidian. He stumbled, his injured ankle catching as he stared at the abyss beyond the archway, into an absence of light so deep and profound that Claude thought it might pull Hubert towards it and never let go.
He swallowed, throat tight as his bow hand shuddered on Failnaught’s grip, not just in the aftermath of adrenaline, but in a current of swirling, sickening fear that he could not place the source for.
“Hubert,” Claude said, beads of salty sweat dripping onto his tongue as he spoke, “we could leave. We don’t have to go down there.”
When he looked at Hubert, he saw the whites of his eyes, saw his staggered breaths as he took each shaking step and shook his head. “It’s not over yet, Claude.”
Claude swallowed, surging forward after Hubert until his hand fell on his shoulder. With his other hand, he shoved a vulnerary into a shredded kidskin glove, and Hubert downed the contents without once taking his eyes off of the archway before them and the inky depths beyond.
The stories of Fodlan said that hell was hot like Ailell, with burning ground and bubbling pools and eons of torture beyond the sight of the goddess. Almyra’s faiths and folktales had their own versions, and although Claude preferred them for himself, he didn’t put much stock in anything he couldn’t see with his own eyes.
He’d never before seen a place on the physical earth that looked so much like he imagined death—a cold and shadowed void that robbed identity, memory, and suffering in the same moment it took breath away.
“What are we going to find down there?” He hated the way his voice shook.
“I think we both know.” Hubert seemed ready to tremble apart into dust under Claude’s hand, but still he would see this through. Still they would see this through. “Let us not linger in ignorance when there is one more horror left to understand.”
Claude couldn’t help but agree, and felt as though he already knew and always would have.
Together, they slowly made their way down the stairwell, feeling along the cold, stony walls. Claude could perfectly hear Hubert’s strained breathing in the enclosed space, despite the sound of his own heart thundering in his ears.
Finally, the stairwell gave way to a large domed room, deeper underground than Claude could imagine, even as the thickness of the air made him sway at Hubert’s side. The dim, ambient light bolstered him after their trek through the nothingness.
At first, Claude thought the shape in the middle of the chamber was a statue. Panels of armor stretched down a humanoid back in a material that Claude couldn’t identify as being metal, stone, or flesh. The figure stood before them with odd proportions—long legs under the coat, long arms ending in slender claws that arched up towards a stretched neck braced with more chitinous growths under a mess of short, cerulean hair.
“I knew it.” Hubert’s voice dripped with gory agony as it carried across the chamber. “I knew it was you, Professor.”
Byleth Eisner—or whatever had become of him—turned to face them.
“No.” Claude couldn’t stop himself. He laughed. “No, no. This isn’t real. This has to be a joke, right?” He faced Hubert, and even to him his echoing laugh sounded disconnected, unreal. Then he stopped, his shock draining from him as readily as it crept towards the predatory, cherry red of Byleth’s eyes. “When the Deer—when my friends, your students—came back to Garreg Mach, I thought we would find you there.” He gulped. “Remember when we promised we would meet?”
“I remember.” When Byleth spoke, his human voice ground and boomed and cracked around each syllable, like the softest roar a lion could manage and make human words. The sound reverberated through Claude’s chest, and now he felt like he was the one who was going to break apart.
“I trusted you!” Six years of rage billowed up through his throat. “They all trusted you. We loved you. How could you do this?! What did you possibly have to gain by siding with your enemies, with the ones who killed Jeralt? Your father.” Tears mingled with the blood on his cheeks and he couldn’t care less. “I woke up surrounded by the bodies of everyone I trusted. Everyone I loved.”
“Professor,” Hubert started. “I told you once that I would kill you, did I not?”
“You did,” Byleth responded, his face as full of sorrow as it was inhuman. “Many times. I have been counting on it.” His eyes fixed on Claude. “And I was counting on you to find me.”
Claude shook his head. “Hubert, what are you talking about? You barely spoke to each other at Garreg Mach.”
Hubert did not take his eyes off of Byleth. “I have only suspicions.” He tilted his head down. “I believe the truth will die with our Professor, however.”
“No,” Claude said again. This time firmly. “There has to be another way.”
“Everyone else we have killed thus far were merely the builders and organizers of the massacre at Gronder.” Hubert’s voice had gone smooth, focused, and deadly. “We are standing before the architect.” His gaze swiveled upwards. “Do you deny it, Professor?”
A chuckle. A shift in a monstrous visage. “I do not.”
He took one step, then another, each limb fracturing and falling smoothly into place like the gait of a marionette.
“I have made terrible mistakes.” Byleth raised one hand to clutch at his heart. “Ones that should have been mine alone to bear. I’m so proud of you both, for carrying them as you have.” He closed his eyes. “My students—my friends—please. I grow tired of this dark and twisted timeline.”
Hubert rose to his full height, a pooling force of miasma lifting him from the ground as he extended his arms. “This is goodbye then, until, I suppose, we meet again.”
Claude took a breath, and when he did, he saw a thousand images—ephemeral voices and moments that would fade the second he was no longer in the room, the second he could tell himself they were imagined. Not memories. Because how could they be memories?
Instead, his mind settled on what he knew to be real—what it felt like to wake up to Lorenz lying on him, face like marble as blood had drained out of the cut on his throat. What he’d thought looking into Hilda’s blank stare as a lance stuck out of her back.
What it felt like when Hubert kissed him, how they’d guided each other to this moment.
Most living things could not continue living with an arrow sticking out of their unprotected hearts. Claude notched one and let it fly.
It hit as truly as a stack of cards falling to the ground.
VI. Verdant Rain Moon
The late summer sun beat down on Enbarr, her famous harbor glittering like so many bright sapphires as Claude watched the Almyran ship make preparations to set sail. It wouldn’t be leaving until around sunset, in order to catch the last fast, warm winds of summer to help them glide out to sea.
A few days ago, Claude had completed his final tour of Fodlan. He’d stood in the rain leaving flowers on graves in Faerghus before their own civil war sparked. After that, he visited hometowns. Leonie’s family had commemorated her, but Raphael and Ignatz had no stones, no markers. Claude had money for both causes, and when he left Leonie’s family had coin and Raphael and Ignatz had memorials. Lastly, he’d exchanged tense words of condolence in Derdriu with Count Gloucester and Lord Goneril. Once they understood he no longer sought to lead, they graciously accepted them.
They were bastards, too, Hubert noted, but Claude had no desire to leave the Alliance in the chaos Faerghus was in.
Last was Enbarr, where Hubert had been working with Linhardt and Caspar to bring about some semblance of government. Between Edelgard’s purge, Thales’, and Hubert’s, there weren’t many nobles or officials left that were competent enough to be threatening. Hubert’s letters assured that Bergliez’ war trophy had been returned to Brigid. In doing so Hubert had learned Petra lived as well and ruled as queen there. The aftermath of the chaos left not only Brigid free, but Duscur as well.
Claude couldn’t say for sure that Fodlan was a better place than when he’d arrived, but it had certainly been changed.
The last stop on his journey had been to visit Edelgard’s grave in Enbarr. With no body to entomb and her lack of popularity among the nobility, she’d been denied a proper state funeral. Hubert made sure it was done.
He’d exchanged a few words with Hubert that morning, and they’d said their farewells. There wasn’t much more left to say. They did not praise themselves for a job well done. They had righted wrongs and balanced the scales, nothing more. Nor did they talk about the nightmare in Shambhala, or how immediately afterwards they’d both begun showing their very first flecks of gray hair.
All that was left for Claude was to get on that ship and go back to his first home.
Yet...he didn’t. Not yet.
Though they’d always agreed their paths would diverge at the end of their road, something didn’t sit right with Claude. Maybe it was how Hubert’s letters had become more and more terse as the weeks crawled on, or how all of the ruthless energy Claude had come to admire seemed to drain away the longer Hubert stayed in Enbarr. At Edelgard’s ceremony, he’d seemed tired, distant, so much so that Claude had asked him about it in his makeshift office afterwards.
“Pay it no mind,” Hubert had said. “Merely the knowledge that a job is at its end.”
Cryptic, but it wasn’t unusual for Hubert to be cryptic with him or vice versa. If there was anyone still alive to tease him about it, Claude may have been forced to admit that he’d started to enjoy the back and forth.
Waves beat against the dock. Claude sighed.
Damn it. He couldn’t leave things like that.
Instead of going down to his ship, Claude found himself wandering back up to the high point on the hill, towards the Imperial Palace and the nearby graveyard, lined with mausoleums, headstones, and tombs.
As he’d expected, Claude found Hubert standing by Edelgard’s grave.
Hubert had one hand on the corner of her marble tomb, and seemed to be in deep contemplation. He was back in his full battle uniform—all blacks and grays, with that same grim cloak that had to be insufferable in the sun. Not far away, on the flat surface of Ferdinand’s grave, a teacup steamed.
Next to it was a green vial.
Claude’s speed increased. He took loud, deliberate footfalls, so Hubert wasn’t shocked when he started speaking.
“How did I know I’d find you here?” Claude asked.
Hubert didn’t turn to face him, but his gloved hand did clench over the smooth surface. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
Claude went to investigate the teacup. It was completely full. The scent of a southern Fodlan orchard drifted up to him—but something was off about it. Something vaguely nutty was mixed in with the dried fruits. Next, Claude turned to the vial, plucking off the stopper and taking an experimental sniff.
He glared at Hubert.
“I never liked tea,” Hubert announced, still facing straight ahead. “I always considered it a weak drink.”
“The hemlock will add a kick to it.” Claude gently placed the vial back down. The sunlight shone through the empty green glass, leaving a spot of emerald light on Ferdinand’s tomb. Unlike Edelgard’s, it was very much occupied.
“I told you,” Hubert said, “when all the monsters were dead, there would be one more.”
Angrily, Claude grasped at Hubert’s shoulder, forced him to turn and face him. Hubert let him, his arms ragdolling as Claude fisted a hand in his shirt. He wanted to yell, instead, he let go of Hubert’s shirt, let him fall back towards the white stone. Goddess of Death take Fodlan.
“The last name on your list was Hubert von Vestra. I can’t believe you.”
“Is it really so surprising?” Hubert said, still not looking at Claude, his voice tightening like a wire.
“A year and a half.” Claude spat out each word. “That’s one hell of a long game, Hubert.”
Claude hated it. He hated all of this. That one of the most brilliant men he’d ever known meant to drink poison in a graveyard like the world’s most tragic lost poet. He gasped in a breath. “Don’t do this.”
“Why? There’s nothing left for me here.”
“Then don’t stay here.” Claude took a step towards Hubert, his voice breathless, almost desperate sounding. “Come with me.”
Hubert scoffed. “So I can be your assassin? Your spymaster? Does the future King of Almyra need a shadow behind his throne?”
“You could be that, if you want to. There’s no one alive I’d trust more.” Claude let his arms slap down to his sides, frustrated. “Or work in the library for all I care. We have the biggest one in the hemisphere.”
Hubert shook his head. “You expect me to believe Almyra is without trouble?”
“Of course not.” Claude worked at a painful lump in his throat. “But there’s a life past all this death. You have a choice.”
He sucked in a breath of hot summer air. The tea wasn’t steaming anymore.
Hubert stood firmly, beads of sweat trailing down his brow. “Are you going to stop me?”
Claude let out a bitter, torn laugh. He should knock that cup onto the ground, should hold Hubert down and call for help. Should—
He squeezed his eyes shut. They stung, and not just from the sweat in them.
“I’m leaving, Hubert.” Claude sucked in a breath, swiped at his eyes. “A ship is waiting for me in the harbor, and I’m going to get on it, and it’s going to leave at sunset. If you want, there’s a place for you there.” At my side.
“If you don’t expect me to be your agent, I can’t imagine why you would offer this short of sentimentality. I don’t need your pity,” Hubert snapped. “I’m not a good man.”
“Maybe not. You’re brilliant and devious enough to keep up with me, after all.” Claude stepped into him, palm flat against Hubert’s chest. “But you’re a better man than I thought.”
Claude took a haggard breath. He couldn’t do this anymore. Fodlan just kept taking, taking, and taking. Hubert said nothing, his hand shaking as he hid behind his long bangs.
He turned to leave. “I hope to see you there.”
Claude expected parting vitriol—some venom spat at his back so the viper wouldn’t be missed, but Hubert let him leave without a word, the silence crawling between the crypts to follow Claude as he began his walk back to the harbor.
The sun sank low in the sky, and there was no sign of Hubert. Falling sunlight painted a thousand ships in red and gold, and turned the bright cream and eggshell blue paints of the Almyran ship into a canvas of peaches and greens. Thistle was already in her spot, catching the last heat from the day and gnawing on a mass of red meat not far behind the captain's wheel. From where he was, Claude could see her experimentally stretch her wings, the white of her scales nearly matching the canvas of the topsail.
Claude had a seat near the bow, his hand lightly clutching a rope on the starboard rigging. He searched the faces travelling down the dock. Just an hour earlier, hundreds had been going back and forth, finishing up their business for the day. Now, he had a clear view down the way.
He didn’t recognize anyone.
“Sire?” The captain appeared at Claude’s shoulder with a polite salute. “We are ready to depart on your order.”
“Understood.” The sails were out and checked. Their supplies for the journey had been loaded. The prince and his wyvern were on board. There was no real reason to linger. All that was left to do was lift the anchor. “Just a few more minutes.”
He looked back at the sweeping city of Enbarr. He couldn’t see much of Fodlan beyond it, but he knew it was there, behind the red brick buildings and intimidating walls of the Imperial Palace. He took one last look at the continent that had been his home for most of a decade. It had been a teacher, sharpened him like a blade against a stone. He’d made friends and found a family. It was where the man he’d loved—maybe two? he didn’t want to think about it—had lived and died. Lastly, it was where he’d gazed into the abyss, and he barely remembered what it said in return.
Claude opened his mouth to say he was ready.
But he cast one final look down the docks to see a tall man with dark hair walking towards the ship.
Hubert no longer wore his Imperial fatigues, nor did he wear any of the plain, dark clothes Claude had grown most accustomed to. He had traded all of them in for a simple white shirt and dark trousers, with a pair of fresh boots and an olive-green bag slung over his shoulder. He did not walk slowly, nor were his steps hurried.
The captain nudged Claude in the shoulder. “Is that him?”
Claude smiled.
When Hubert reached the side of the ship, he tossed his bag up to a sailor who nimbly caught it. The gangplank was already up, but Hubert warped the short distance to Claude’s side, causing a few men to jolt at his sudden appearance.
The last of the sun burned a deep red, and in the lighting, it was easy to see those early flecks of salt in his hair. Claude placed his palm on Hubert’s cheek. Hubert let his head lean into Claude’s hand, the barest smile gracing his lips.
“So, I guess you do want to live?” Claude did not try to hide his relief.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Hubert replied. “But I do want to see this library you mentioned.”
At Claude’s invitation, Hubert bent to kiss him. As the ship detached from the dock and started making its way out to sea, Claude reached a hand up to the base of Hubert’s freshly clipped hair and pressed their foreheads together. They’d done so much—so many wicked and terrible things. He had no illusions—their relationship, this sickly little thing they had, it would never be perfect. There was too much blood for that. But for better or worse, they understood each other, the depths of what they missed, and the truth of what they’d done.
It was time to live.