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Under the stern green branches of dark pines, a young woman crept through the woods. She had no companions, but she knew very well she wasn’t alone.
Marianne pulled her shawl tighter around herself. She shivered, in part because of the damp cold fog, and in part from anticipation. From the day that scholar had appeared to question her, she had been tense. For the first time in her life, however, she did not dread what was to come. Something in her had been worn down to a thread, to some final bitter stand—and she was determined to follow it to whatever truth it revealed.
The forest was infamous for its eerie directionlessness. Yet it goaded Marianne onwards, deeper and deeper into the choking silence. Not even the throaty cry of a raven pierced through the fog. She heard nothing but her own muffled footfalls on leaf-litter, and the thumping of her Crest-tainted blood.
Eventually, she became aware of another heartbeat. She stopped in front of the enormous, monstrous shape looming through the gloom.
“You…Do you bear our Crest?”
When Ingrid had found Marianne’s horse tied to a tree some distance outside the woods, she had realized with some shock that her friend had gone off alone. At least, Ingrid considered her a friend, though she’d heard Leonie complain that it could be hard to tell with Marianne sometimes. It was true that Marianne resented something, but Ingrid suspected that disgust was not directed outwards. Not intentionally, in any case.
Under the Professor’s careful commands, their party trailed along the edge of the woods, listening to distant howls and otherworldly snarls that could come from no ordinary beast. Leonie’s scouting indicated that the forest’s residents were far away enough to outrun—for now. But they would need to head deeper into the woods if they were to find Marianne before the… things did.
Ingrid had not known her well as a girl, shy and reclusive as she was. Now as women who fought together in the same war, she found she still didn’t know much about her. Not enough to understand why she would risk herself—and everyone else—on some scholar’s foolish rumour. Still, she trusted Byleth’s judgement, and they were the one who had brought Marianne into their class all those years ago. She was an ally. That was all that mattered. She dug her heels into her steed’s sides and rode on.
Blood and spell-work were no stranger to Marianne by that point. The strange, empty quietness that followed was, however.
She stared down in silence at the bones laying in the dirt. Dimly, she was aware of a strong hand on her right shoulder; Ingrid’s gleaming red lance had pierced the Wandering Beast’s skull not moments before. The corpse she saw before her was not that of a monster’s, but a human’s. The skeletal fingers, finally put to rest, were still wrapped around a sword.
“Marianne? Are you hurt?”
Marianne looked away from her ancestor’s hollowed eye sockets.
“I’m okay,” she told Ingrid. She met her eyes, and the other woman nodded.
Gently, Marianne bent down to pry the blade from the skeleton’s grip.
It’s over, Maurice , she thought as she passed the relic over to the Professor. You don’t have to carry that sword anymore . You’re free.
And am I free? Marianne wondered. She did not dare to answer that question, not just yet. But she felt a new, tender lightness in her chest.
She struggled with that feeling. With the Professor’s blessing, the recovered sword Blutgang sat untouched on a rack on the wall. They had told her that it belonged to her now. It loomed over her at night like a grim reminder. One she deserved.
But with sorcery and healing to occupy her hands, she allowed her doubts to languish for the next few months. Her new friend made it all the easier.
She and Ingrid often bumped into each other these days. Given how much time they both spent in the stables, Marianne wondered how she’d never noticed the other woman before. Even more surprising was how Ingrid’s face lit up whenever she spoke about the horses; she seemed so serious and stoic on the battlefield. She couldn’t hide a small smile as she watched Ingrid stroke Dorte’s shaggy fur.
Ingrid soon introduced her to her own horse: Goldie, whose lovely golden coat was a perfect match for Ingrid’s own hair.
“I named her when I was twelve,” Ingrid admitted sheepishly. “I’ve never been very creative with names.”
“I think it suits her,” Marianne said. Goldie could be a bit feisty, Ingrid had warned, but Marianne found her gentle enough when she brushed her.
One day following a hard battle, Marianne came to visit the horses just after dawn. The quiet warmth of the stables would give her the comfort she needed to spend her day mending wounds and easing pains.
Someone else was already there.
Ingrid was leaning against one of the walls. She looked up from absently stroking Goldie’s nose as Marianne approached. She looked tired: the circles under her eyes were unusually pronounced.
“You’re up early,” Marianne said a bit reproachfully. “You should be resting.”
Ingrid gave her a half-hearted smile. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Marianne went to stand next to her. She didn’t ask what had kept Ingrid up; she knew many of the soldiers–her former classmates included–were troubled by nightmares they preferred not to discuss. She had her own demons she did not wish to share, anyway.
“It’s been almost ten years since my fiance died.”
She glanced over at Ingrid sharply.
“It was on this day that it happened.”
“The Tragedy of Duscur?”
Ingrid nodded. Marianne, who was better with actions than with words, reached out to squeeze her arm. She tried to think of some comfort to offer–but she knew perfectly well that nothing would. And perhaps Ingrid did not want to be comforted. Others might find that notion odd, but Marianne understood better than most the desire to feel something, even if that was pain. Penance, she had tried to justify it.
“I know I should move on. It’s just…I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to,” Ingrid sighed after a moment.
“There are some hurts you don’t want to stop feeling,” Marianne said quietly. Ingrid met her eyes then.
“Yes, but…” Her friend began to say. She paused and shook her head before continuing. “Another part of me is–well, I guess I’m tired of being the tragic one. Everyone tries to hide it, but I know how they see me. I don’t want to be someone’s abandoned bride. I don’t want to be someone else’s trophy, either, even if that’ll save House Galatea. I just want…”
“To be yourself,” Marianne finished for her. Ingrid blinked and nodded.
“Is that selfish?”
“I don’t know. But it’s what I want, too. I think…being myself is what stops me from being just my Crest.”
Ingrid inclined her head, thinking. All of a sudden, she smiled.
“You know, that actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Marianne.”
She wasn’t sure what Ingrid was thanking her for, but she smiled back all the same.
It surprised her sometimes how slight Ingrid really was under her armour: she was hardly an inch taller than Marianne. As she carefully repaired her latest wound, however, Marianne could feel hard muscle under her fingertips. A knight’s strength was needed to wield Lùin. Whether or not Ingrid could see it, she had already become the ideal she aspired to. She determinedly ignored the warmth that rose in her cheeks at that thought.
“Try to rest this arm for the next few days,” Marianne said as she finished off the magical stitch. “…If you can manage.”
“Mercedes is never this sarcastic,” Ingrid laughed. Marianne could not help but smile, too. That faded when she felt Ingrid slump a little against her touch.
“I’m sorry I keep ending up here,” Ingrid said suddenly. “I don’t mean to worry you.”
Marianne wasn’t used to having apologies directed at her. Her first instinct was to apologize for the fact that Ingrid thought she needed to apologize, but—well, the Marianne who’d made it through a war had a little more spine than the frail little girl who’d first enrolled in the Academy. Or so she liked to think.
“You’re my friend. It can’t really be helped.”
Ingrid gave her a searching look.
“That’s the first time you’ve admitted that we are friends,” she said. Marianne flushed an even brighter pink.
“O-oh. Really? Um…well, I hope that’s…”
Ingrid reached over to squeeze her hand and gave her a bright grin.
“Oh, don’t get all worked up. I’m just happy, that’s all.”
Well, if Ingrid was happy, then she was happy too. She didn’t know quite how to say that, or if she even should say it, so instead she let herself smile, warm and genuine.
The war had been too long and too bloody, as all wars were. Yet Ingrid had survived. She had survived, and so had most of her friends.
The same could not be said for her own house. Galatea was a distant memory now, from which only three pieces now remained: herself, her lance, and her horse. She had once believed that it fell to her to rebuild it. To be a good and loving wife to whichever husband she was arranged to marry, and to bear him with plenty of children with Crests. That was what her father had struggled for.
Struggled. And for what? Why, really, did it all matter? So many families were dead and buried, with no Crest and no Hero’s Relic to remember them by.
She absently adjusted the straps of her saddle, barely aware of the sound of the stable door creaking open.
“Ingrid?”
She glanced up in surprise. Marianne was carrying a heavy set of her own saddlebags.
“Oh, Marianne! I didn’t expect to see you here. Are you heading home already?”
“Um, not just yet. I…need to do something first. What about you?”
It was then that Ingrid noticed the pale, eerie sword tied up among Marianne’s belongings.
“I…honestly, I haven’t decided yet. I might go to Fhirdiad. Or back home, if anything’s left of it.”
Marianne nodded, shifting on the spot.
“You look like you want to ask me something,” Ingrid said.
“Um…I do. Maybe it’s too much. It’s this sword. I need to know if…if I can…if it will…um…”
“You don’t have to use it, you know,” Ingrid said.
“I know. I just…I just need to know that I can. But I don’t want to go alone, and I don’t want to go with just anyone. Um…Oh, no, what am I saying? I shouldn’t—”
A sudden warmth suffused her. Ingrid stepped away from her mare and went to Marianne. Gently, she clasped both her hands.
“Where are we headed?”
Marianne led the way. She set the pace for their mounts as well as Ingrid would have, taking care to slow the horses down whenever they approached rough ground. The knight who had once owned Dorte had perished in the fighting. No one had objected to Marianne formally adopting him. The gelding certainly looked at ease with his new master on his back.
They broke camp a few times along the way. The journey to Margrave Edmund’s lands was not a long one from Garreg Mach, so they had packed light. Marianne was often quiet when they sat by the fire. Ingrid tried every trick she knew to get her to open up, yet as the days wore on, her friend seemed to have withdrawn. It worried her, but she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject—nor how she might dissuade Marianne from whatever she thought she needed to do.
When they again came across the eerie pines, Marianne halted. The forest of beasts had not changed much in the wake of the war. Chilling fog swirled around them both. As they tied their mounts to a small, stunted oak, Ingrid decided to break the silence.
“You’re not a monster, Marianne,” Ingrid told her. “You don’t need to prove this to anyone.”
“I need to prove it to myself.”
Ingrid bit her lip at her friend’s words, how raw and final she sounded, but she nodded anyway. If she couldn’t stop her, then she could at least protect her. She had lost enough people she loved for a lifetime.
It was much easier going with Marianne, Ingrid noted. The other woman seemed to know where to go on instinct. The sea of tall, silent trunks that had once baffled their professor instead guided them onwards into the woods, until they came across the same ivy-covered ruins they had found some months prior. Ingrid found herself fingering her grip on her lance.
Finally, Marianne stopped. She watched as she drew Blutgang from its sheath. The sword looked far too large and jagged for her soft figure.
“Are you ready?” Ingrid asked her. Marianne only stared at the blade trembling in her hands.
“Hold it like this,” she added, reaching over to correct her friend’s grip. Marianne nodded—and a hard resolve returned to her gaze.
Ingrid watched as the relic burned red in Marianne’s hands, as they both knew it would. Her friend’s breath caught. There was only silence—
And then they both whirled around at the sound of heavy footfalls. From behind the ruins crept out the hulking shape of a dark wolf. It must have caught their scent. Ingrid brandished her lance at the flash of ivory fangs in the semi-darkness, ready to strike. The monster was mistaken if it thought these two women would make an easy meal.
But before Ingrid could move, a second beast lunged for the wolf. She leapt out of the way and looked around for Marianne. This could be their chance to get away, but—
Marianne was gone. Her eyes widened when it struck her just who the second beast was.
The beast that had been Marianne howled in pain as the wolf dug its fangs into her flank. Ingrid came to her senses, spearing the wolf through the shoulder with her own lance. That was enough to loosen its grip on Marianne, and she twisted around to land the killing bite on the wolf’s spine.
The first beast sank to the ground. Ingrid and the second beast stared, panting. Neither of them moved until Ingrid looked up.
“Wait!”
But Marianne, last bearer of the Crest of the Beast, had already turned to flee into the woods.
She wasn’t nearly as good of a tracker as Shamir or Leonie was, but fortunately, Marianne’s panicked flight left an easy trail to follow.
The sun cast a red glow over the clouds by the time Ingrid found her very much human again, naked and curled up and at the top of a steep hill. The trees were sparser here, and the fog had started to disperse. Ingrid set her lance aside and approached her, her steps slow and careful. Blutgang had been discarded a few paces away.
“Stay away,” Marianne said hoarsely. “You have to stay away.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ingrid told her firmly.
When Marianne didn’t try to push her away, she sat down on the grass next to her. She pulled off her own cloak and wrapped it around her friend’s trembling shoulders.
“Marianne,” Ingrid said urgently. “Marianne, it was you who told me that we are not our Crests. Don’t you remember?”
No response. Ingrid’s heart sank, but she continued on: “You are not a monster. You can choose to act like one, but you still have to make that choice. It was Maurice’s choice to become what he was, even if he regretted it later. And I know you already made your choice a long time ago.”
A stifled sob came from the figure huddled under the cloak. And then, a frail voice: “Are you hurt?”
“Marianne, please. I’m fine.”
Marianne finally did look up at her then, and Ingrid cupped her tear-stained face. “It’s okay. It’s okay now.”
Warm relief flooded her as her friend, at last, sank into her arms–and that was quickly replaced by concern when she realized the grass under her was stained red. Marianne was still bleeding from the wound she’d sustained. Ingrid glanced up at the sky, and then around herself. It was too dark to risk heading back through the woods: they would have to spend the night here.
The irony of healing magic was that its user could only heal others, not themself. Still, there were non-magical techniques that any good soldier had to know. She tried not to wince too much as Ingrid stitched up the gash along her thigh. It looked deep, but she’d assured her it was superficial.
“That looks good,” she said, nodding at Ingrid’s handiwork. “Thank you. I’m–”
“No more apologizing tonight,” Ingrid told her. Marianne pursed her lips and nodded.
Despite the crackling campfire, she found herself shivering against the gusts of wind whistling through the branches above them. Ingrid seemed to notice; she shifted closer. Tentatively, Marianne let herself lean against her shoulder. She tried, again, not to think about the warmth rising in her cheeks. Nor about the feeling of Ingrid’s warm hand on the bare skin of her thigh: her touch soft, yet strong.
“Ingrid,” Marianne started to say. “I want you to be my knight.”
Ingrid’s grip tightened momentarily. Marianne turned her head to meet Ingrid’s eyes, gentle and a little watery against the heat of the fire.
“You mean it?”
“I…I just want you to stay by my side. If…if that’s alright.”
“I swear it,” Ingrid said at once. “Marianne, I–”
And then, all of a sudden, Ingrid was kissing her, and all Marianne could think about was the warm feeling of her lips. She pulled back just as swiftly.
“I’m sorry, I–” Ingrid gasped. She never finished her apology, though, because Marianne pulled her into another kiss–this one fiercer and more purposeful. She slid into her knight’s lap, and Ingrid’s arms wound their way around her back–as if they’d always belonged there.
The next morning, they limped out of the woods without incident. Ingrid gave Marianne her spare clothes to wear. Dorte and Goldie looked somewhat offended at having been left alone for so long; luckily, the two horses were otherwise unscathed. They stopped at a stream to let their steeds drink, and then saddled up once more.
“Are you ready, my lady?” Ingrid asked her.
“Yes. Let’s go,” Marianne said, as proper and refined as she could manage. But she brushed Ingrid’s cheek as she helped her into the saddle, and Ingrid’s hands lingered on her waist more than was strictly necessary.
When she looked ahead, she did so with a smile.