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[FIC] fire emblem: three houses - saints preserve us; chapter 3
title: saints preserve us - chapter 3
series: fire emblem: three houses
characters: seteth
rating: T
warnings: violence and some body horror/blood
chapter three!!! i know how i want to wrap this up it's just a matter of Writing It Down
previous: chapters one and two
next: tba
--
Chapter Three:
Tales of miracles had been often laid at Seteth’s feet - or rather, the image of Cichol that had risen from man’s legends. Time had warped the actual events, it took one arrow and turned it into a thousand or forced a creek to be a mighty river.
There had been a battle once. Cichol, spurred on by the trust in his brother’s aim, had once led his wyvern and battalion directly into the advance guard of enemy pegasi. The enemy had scattered like seeds from a dandelion to avoid being barrelled into and had left one clear moment for Indech to fire. His brother’s arrow had whistled overhead, and sailed directly into the exposed neck of the enemy general.
His miracles, could they truly be called that, were not of divine intervention but of actively being safe , and to defend. A general (his name carried for generations, only to be smoothed away by the tides of history) had been spared death by Cichol’s spearing away an axe meant for the man’s head.
He had faith. Faith that had kept him and his men fighting tooth and nail to hold their position in another long forgotten battle, another lifetime, for just a little longer because he knew that Macuil had devised a last minute flanking attack.
Cichol did not have Cethleann’s gift to mend a man’s spine, nor the voice and strength that Seiros had. Still had.
So perhaps he could perform one more miracle - and weather his captors’ patience and anger. To have faith in Rhea and Byleth to keep his daughter safe.
-
Any simpleton’s introduction to magic would explain that pulses of energy were not uncommon - especially with large scale magic. Said pulses were even frequent within the confines of their abysmal little research outpost to affect local wildlife with the leftover wastes of leftover magic. So the Lieutenant had prepared for a large backlash - circles meant to siphon excess Nabatean power away for storage, runes mean to dispel lingering effects, the list could go on.
What the lieutenant had not anticipated was the scale of the energy.
The spell had activated flawlessly, linking and building like a greedy beast to dismantle the one they had captured. The symbols, layered and woven expertly, laid themselves into their beast’s back - ah yes, there was the screaming - to take root. Years - decades, centuries - of research into Nabathean physiology would lead to this crowning moment of victory.
And like a tsunami that frequented southern Fódlan and the Brigid archipelago, the backlash began. The spell no longer layered itself over their beast, but was being pulled in. At once, like a crumbling building that had finally given in, the spell fell into disarray and exploded.
The Lieutenant had felt the air - forced faster and faster away from the sudden release of magic - tug at his clothes before he was shoved back, heels skidding as he fought to keep his balance. His mages on the other hand were not so lucky. Combined with their proximity to the epicenter, the activation of the spell had required them to bind their magic to one another - violently and painfully, their control and magic was ripped from their bodies.
As one, they were sent sliding back on their bellies, left prostrate before a monster.
-
an invisible hand - an invisible claw grabbed seteth by the spine. it tore deep inside to his very being, searching. calculating.
wrong
so very very wrong wasn't supposed to bend this way he didn't remember how
it seized him in such a brutal and sterile manner and he could only bear it push away clutch scrape claw at the floor and
-
“-bsolute blithering idiots!”
Seteth found himself prone again, a sensation he had long grown tired of since coming to this horrid place, but did not - could not - move. The new voice, booming and authoritative, made the throbbing between his eyes all the worse.
“Two dead, and for what?!”
“Major-”
“Save your sniveling, Lieutenant, and get that damn monster back into its cage.”
“How-how do we-”
“Cravens! All of you! Grab him and go. Lieutenant, if this is how your staff conducts itself here-”
Seteth was hauled up by his arms and the floor pitched nauseatingly beneath him. Very little remained of the complex spellwork from before. He heard the pained moans and saw the mages lying unmoving-
-before the pain coursed through every fiber of his being and unraveled his soul. He had been consumed, his spine seized by an invisible force, limbs stretching, tearing-
-and the floor around him seemed as if it had been scorched. Did that mean something? Between his racing heart and drowsiness, Seteth felt his hold onto consciousness strenuous at best.
“Your insufferable delusions of grandeur nearly cost us the most valuable prize we have gotten our hands on in centuries. A Crested army could have been nothing more than a dream again-!”
“With the weapon we would not even need an army, Major-”
“IS THIS PATHETIC DISPLAY OF PLAYING GOD THE WEAPON?! I will have you thrown into the deepest refinery pit in all of Duscur!”
Seteth’s captors did not give him the chance to test his legs and he was seized under the armpits and dragged back into the bowels of dark and dim halls. The two guards taking him did not speak at first, but he did see them exchange glances once they had rounded the first corner.
“-ould we clean him up?”
“You may, I very well refuse to.”
“Coward.”
“Shh!”
-
“Seteth, what is your secret?”
He had jumped, as if bit by his surprise, but Seteth felt he had covered it well. Professor Manuela had gestured vaguely, and rather rudely, at his entirety with her dinner fork.
“I am not quite sure what you mean.”
Manuela tapped her own cheek as if that would answer it. “Your skin, of course! I know several people who would kill to have what you have.”
Surely he was indulging in his paranoia too much-
“Truly now?” This time, Seteth could not fully hide the tremor in his arms as he folded them.
“Of course! After, what, ten years working together I have not seen you sprout so much as a single wrinkle!”
Manuela tittered good naturally as she finished up the remainder of her wine. Shortly after she had launched into several anecdotes of her time at the theater and the skin care practices the actors had tried. For the rest of his meal Seteth had tried to calm the furious pounding of his heart.
-
The incessant buzzing filled Seteth’s ears once more as he was shoved back into his little prison. While he was still unsteady, Seteth found his footing long enough to fall into the little chair and press his hands to his eyes. The stark light of the room did no favors for his tender head. He felt wetness and Seteth squinted in the hard light to look down at his hands.
Red smeared his fingertips.
Seteth wiped at his face the best he could without the aid of a mirror. He worked methodically and slowly because if he did nothing else he would panic. Seteth focused on his breathing, on his headache, on what information he had learned.
Bile still rose in his throat.
An hour passed and Seteth realized he had been granted a temporary boon (if there could be such a thing could exist in this wretched prison.) For the first time in days he was able to wander without his body laden by drug. Yes, he was tired and in pain, but his limbs no longer felt disconnected from himself and Seteth’s heart felt lighter with independence. At last he could walk without clutching miserably to the walls.
Seteth felt along where the door should have been, seeking a seam or latch. He even pressed against parts of the wall in hopes that he could slide the door back, or activate an unseen mechanism.
But for all his efforts, Seteth only smeared drying blood on the pristine panels.
-
He dreamed of Zanado sometimes. Of homes wet with blood and the butchered remains of his fellow Nabatheans laid out in the streets. Of what remained of Sothis’s home - Serios had told him in a dull and lifeless tone that she had torn it apart during the skirmishes.
She clutched the hearts of some of their brethren and had hidden them away in the mountains.
“A tomb,” she said, eyes turned to the clouds, but she seemed even farther away. “There shall be a tomb for them. So that they may rest.”
And sometimes Seiros would turn back to him, but her face would warpe into an empty eyed mask and instead of the dead hearts of her friends, family, and neighbors, it was a butcher's blade in the Llieutenant’s hand.
The clouds would be blank empty walls and then the red red red blood of Zanado’s newly painted canyon walls would sluice down and Seteth wouldn't be able to move while the lieutenant painted lines over him.
Somehow, he knew Flayn was dead in his dreams, and he didn’t care to fight anymore.
-
“Good. The idiot did not kill you or damage anything important.”
“You will forgive me for being less than thrilled by the news,” Seteth said back in matching clipped tones.
“A-ha, so you still possess your mental facilities. I suppose there is something to be learned from his project.”
The Major, a tall and square woman, released her vengeful grip on his hair and Seteth refrained from letting his head fall back to the table like an unruly student.
“May I ask what happened? I have never seen such a spell before.”
The Major scoffed, her mask’s beak turning away with a flippant gesture. “A pet project he dug up from the archives. He would have known how inefficient it was had he even bothered to listen to his superiors.”
“What became of…” Seteth’s eyes slid to the blood he had left on the wall.
“The dead? While it would not have surprised me that you would have killed them during your… thralls, it was not. The amount of energy required to perform the damned thing outweighed their combined magic and the activation killed them. Very messy.”
She sounded more disappointed in the lack of research and regulations rather than her fellows were dead.
Seteth looked down at his clenched fists and forced them to lie flat on the table. He felt strangely better. “I see.”
series: fire emblem: three houses
characters: seteth
rating: T
warnings: violence and some body horror/blood
chapter three!!! i know how i want to wrap this up it's just a matter of Writing It Down
previous: chapters one and two
next: tba
--
Chapter Three:
Tales of miracles had been often laid at Seteth’s feet - or rather, the image of Cichol that had risen from man’s legends. Time had warped the actual events, it took one arrow and turned it into a thousand or forced a creek to be a mighty river.
There had been a battle once. Cichol, spurred on by the trust in his brother’s aim, had once led his wyvern and battalion directly into the advance guard of enemy pegasi. The enemy had scattered like seeds from a dandelion to avoid being barrelled into and had left one clear moment for Indech to fire. His brother’s arrow had whistled overhead, and sailed directly into the exposed neck of the enemy general.
His miracles, could they truly be called that, were not of divine intervention but of actively being safe , and to defend. A general (his name carried for generations, only to be smoothed away by the tides of history) had been spared death by Cichol’s spearing away an axe meant for the man’s head.
He had faith. Faith that had kept him and his men fighting tooth and nail to hold their position in another long forgotten battle, another lifetime, for just a little longer because he knew that Macuil had devised a last minute flanking attack.
Cichol did not have Cethleann’s gift to mend a man’s spine, nor the voice and strength that Seiros had. Still had.
So perhaps he could perform one more miracle - and weather his captors’ patience and anger. To have faith in Rhea and Byleth to keep his daughter safe.
-
Any simpleton’s introduction to magic would explain that pulses of energy were not uncommon - especially with large scale magic. Said pulses were even frequent within the confines of their abysmal little research outpost to affect local wildlife with the leftover wastes of leftover magic. So the Lieutenant had prepared for a large backlash - circles meant to siphon excess Nabatean power away for storage, runes mean to dispel lingering effects, the list could go on.
What the lieutenant had not anticipated was the scale of the energy.
The spell had activated flawlessly, linking and building like a greedy beast to dismantle the one they had captured. The symbols, layered and woven expertly, laid themselves into their beast’s back - ah yes, there was the screaming - to take root. Years - decades, centuries - of research into Nabathean physiology would lead to this crowning moment of victory.
And like a tsunami that frequented southern Fódlan and the Brigid archipelago, the backlash began. The spell no longer layered itself over their beast, but was being pulled in. At once, like a crumbling building that had finally given in, the spell fell into disarray and exploded.
The Lieutenant had felt the air - forced faster and faster away from the sudden release of magic - tug at his clothes before he was shoved back, heels skidding as he fought to keep his balance. His mages on the other hand were not so lucky. Combined with their proximity to the epicenter, the activation of the spell had required them to bind their magic to one another - violently and painfully, their control and magic was ripped from their bodies.
As one, they were sent sliding back on their bellies, left prostrate before a monster.
-
an invisible hand - an invisible claw grabbed seteth by the spine. it tore deep inside to his very being, searching. calculating.
wrong
so very very wrong wasn't supposed to bend this way he didn't remember how
it seized him in such a brutal and sterile manner and he could only bear it push away clutch scrape claw at the floor and
-
“-bsolute blithering idiots!”
Seteth found himself prone again, a sensation he had long grown tired of since coming to this horrid place, but did not - could not - move. The new voice, booming and authoritative, made the throbbing between his eyes all the worse.
“Two dead, and for what?!”
“Major-”
“Save your sniveling, Lieutenant, and get that damn monster back into its cage.”
“How-how do we-”
“Cravens! All of you! Grab him and go. Lieutenant, if this is how your staff conducts itself here-”
Seteth was hauled up by his arms and the floor pitched nauseatingly beneath him. Very little remained of the complex spellwork from before. He heard the pained moans and saw the mages lying unmoving-
-before the pain coursed through every fiber of his being and unraveled his soul. He had been consumed, his spine seized by an invisible force, limbs stretching, tearing-
-and the floor around him seemed as if it had been scorched. Did that mean something? Between his racing heart and drowsiness, Seteth felt his hold onto consciousness strenuous at best.
“Your insufferable delusions of grandeur nearly cost us the most valuable prize we have gotten our hands on in centuries. A Crested army could have been nothing more than a dream again-!”
“With the weapon we would not even need an army, Major-”
“IS THIS PATHETIC DISPLAY OF PLAYING GOD THE WEAPON?! I will have you thrown into the deepest refinery pit in all of Duscur!”
Seteth’s captors did not give him the chance to test his legs and he was seized under the armpits and dragged back into the bowels of dark and dim halls. The two guards taking him did not speak at first, but he did see them exchange glances once they had rounded the first corner.
“-ould we clean him up?”
“You may, I very well refuse to.”
“Coward.”
“Shh!”
-
“Seteth, what is your secret?”
He had jumped, as if bit by his surprise, but Seteth felt he had covered it well. Professor Manuela had gestured vaguely, and rather rudely, at his entirety with her dinner fork.
“I am not quite sure what you mean.”
Manuela tapped her own cheek as if that would answer it. “Your skin, of course! I know several people who would kill to have what you have.”
Surely he was indulging in his paranoia too much-
“Truly now?” This time, Seteth could not fully hide the tremor in his arms as he folded them.
“Of course! After, what, ten years working together I have not seen you sprout so much as a single wrinkle!”
Manuela tittered good naturally as she finished up the remainder of her wine. Shortly after she had launched into several anecdotes of her time at the theater and the skin care practices the actors had tried. For the rest of his meal Seteth had tried to calm the furious pounding of his heart.
-
The incessant buzzing filled Seteth’s ears once more as he was shoved back into his little prison. While he was still unsteady, Seteth found his footing long enough to fall into the little chair and press his hands to his eyes. The stark light of the room did no favors for his tender head. He felt wetness and Seteth squinted in the hard light to look down at his hands.
Red smeared his fingertips.
Seteth wiped at his face the best he could without the aid of a mirror. He worked methodically and slowly because if he did nothing else he would panic. Seteth focused on his breathing, on his headache, on what information he had learned.
Bile still rose in his throat.
An hour passed and Seteth realized he had been granted a temporary boon (if there could be such a thing could exist in this wretched prison.) For the first time in days he was able to wander without his body laden by drug. Yes, he was tired and in pain, but his limbs no longer felt disconnected from himself and Seteth’s heart felt lighter with independence. At last he could walk without clutching miserably to the walls.
Seteth felt along where the door should have been, seeking a seam or latch. He even pressed against parts of the wall in hopes that he could slide the door back, or activate an unseen mechanism.
But for all his efforts, Seteth only smeared drying blood on the pristine panels.
-
He dreamed of Zanado sometimes. Of homes wet with blood and the butchered remains of his fellow Nabatheans laid out in the streets. Of what remained of Sothis’s home - Serios had told him in a dull and lifeless tone that she had torn it apart during the skirmishes.
She clutched the hearts of some of their brethren and had hidden them away in the mountains.
“A tomb,” she said, eyes turned to the clouds, but she seemed even farther away. “There shall be a tomb for them. So that they may rest.”
And sometimes Seiros would turn back to him, but her face would warpe into an empty eyed mask and instead of the dead hearts of her friends, family, and neighbors, it was a butcher's blade in the Llieutenant’s hand.
The clouds would be blank empty walls and then the red red red blood of Zanado’s newly painted canyon walls would sluice down and Seteth wouldn't be able to move while the lieutenant painted lines over him.
Somehow, he knew Flayn was dead in his dreams, and he didn’t care to fight anymore.
-
“Good. The idiot did not kill you or damage anything important.”
“You will forgive me for being less than thrilled by the news,” Seteth said back in matching clipped tones.
“A-ha, so you still possess your mental facilities. I suppose there is something to be learned from his project.”
The Major, a tall and square woman, released her vengeful grip on his hair and Seteth refrained from letting his head fall back to the table like an unruly student.
“May I ask what happened? I have never seen such a spell before.”
The Major scoffed, her mask’s beak turning away with a flippant gesture. “A pet project he dug up from the archives. He would have known how inefficient it was had he even bothered to listen to his superiors.”
“What became of…” Seteth’s eyes slid to the blood he had left on the wall.
“The dead? While it would not have surprised me that you would have killed them during your… thralls, it was not. The amount of energy required to perform the damned thing outweighed their combined magic and the activation killed them. Very messy.”
She sounded more disappointed in the lack of research and regulations rather than her fellows were dead.
Seteth looked down at his clenched fists and forced them to lie flat on the table. He felt strangely better. “I see.”