[FIC] abalation| fire emblem: heroes - metastable; chapters 9&10

[plaidlove]

title: metastable
series: fire emblem: heroes
sub-series: feh originals
characters: all of the feh originals basically
rating: T
warnings: canon-typical violence, fjorm's chronic illness, using in-game items as world building

previously: metastable, chapters 7&8
next; tba

--

Chapter 9

Sharena had been trained to ride first and second on a wyvern - more than once she had taken to the skies with her newfound collection of friends during patrols, or even just for fun - but she was still grateful to have solid stone beneath her feet. Wind bitten from the ride and hike down the mountain, Sharena clapped her hands to her face to get the blood pumping in them again.

Fjorm slid down much more elegantly even though she had been taken hold of a coughing fit midway through. Sharena hid her frown behind her gloves, her fingers curling into determined fists; daunting as their next leg of the journey would be, she knew that Fjorm and Laegjarn would be able to unbind themselves from the dragons.

And perhaps…

A shadow passed and the sun shone brightly in Sharena’s eyes to jar her from her thoughts. She gave her face one last clap for luck. Alfonse would chide her for chasing “perhaps” and “maybe,” but it wouldn’t hurt to study how Fjorm and Laegjarn intended to undo the Rites of Frost and Flame or the temple itself. There was too much history that overlapped with Askr’s to ignore any possibility that the ceremony could be reproduced.

“Empress,” Laegjarn’s guard captain bowed neatly once the empress had dismounted. “The temple has been swept through and prepped for you and Princess Fjorm.”

“Very good. Come, there is no sense in formalities at this point.” Laegjarn extended her hand, and Laevatein took it with a solemn face to guide her up the steps and to the temple’s entrance.

To Sharena, it seemed the two were swallowed up into the dark of the archway where doors had once hung. She could still see the rusted hinges and massive bolts driven in to hold them in place. The burnt red stone had weathered finely for how old it was, and Sharena recognized the cascade of arches and intermingling bands of the older empire that had ruled the realms. Back when even the first king, Líf, was still founding Askr.

Sharena fell in beside Fjorm after the Muspell sisters to squeeze Fjorm’s hand in reassurance and they too fell under the shadow cast by the temple and into the dark.

-

Empress Laegjarn cupped her sister’s face and pressed their foreheads together in brief reunion now that they were all inside. Almost all - Helbindi had elected to keep guard outside with the claim he was better help keeping eye out for bandits than them tripping over broken stone. Surprising herself, Fjorm felt a sudden burn of envy towards Laevatein, it flashed through her heart like the lick of a candle’s flame. Fjorm smothered it, ashamed of herself, and looked away.

Though whether she was jealous of Laevatein’s ability to receive her older sister’s affection or that she herself were not the one with Empress Laegjarn’s hands on her face instead-

Fjorm blinked furiously in an attempt to focus on the Mùspell temple. Despite the milling of the Mùspell guard, it was a neglected and empty place. An old place, and a familiar one. Now that torches and ancient candles had been lit, Fjorm followed the swirling flame relief carvings with her eyes - this was the same temple from when they had interrupted the Rite of Flames ceremony months ago. This time they had come in from the main entrance, but Fjorm knew of the - or perhaps one of - the secret entrance hiding discreetly behind a wall.

It was very alien to be standing inside the temple with her former enemies. Regardless of how much she needed to go farther in and down the stone stairs, the idea was unpleasant as her memories broiled and choked with smoke and the smell of burning flesh.

It did not give her comfort to finally see the temple in all its design. The roping flames and designs that lead up the walls all culminated into a massive dragon that had to be Mùspell. Large jaws cracked open and ready to devour whoever stood upon the platform in the center.

“I feel apprehensive as well, Princess Fjorm,” Laegjarn’s voice was low to not carry in the empty chamber and Fjorm jumped - startled out of her thoughts.

“Yes… the last time we were here… I do not fondly remember it.”

Laegjarn’s head dipped in agreement. “Since that day… even though we have been victorious, I feel death inside of me and it grows hotter with every sunrise.”

Fjorm turned to look up upon Laegjarn’s profile. While the empress could not see, her face was turned towards the raised platform that once held flames eternal. To where she had once offered her entire being to the ghastly fire.

“I feel much the same. Every day I feel more and more as if I will shatter from the inside out.”

Sharena gave her hand one last squeeze and then Fjorm found her fingers intertwining with Laegjarn’s own. Together they both took to the shallow steps and Fjorm could feel the eyes of the guards and Sharena, but her attention was on the furrow of Laegjarn’s brow.

“Let us hope we temper Mùspell and Nifl well then. Are you prepared?”

Once atop the platform, Laegjarn turned to face Fjorm, taking both of her hands in her own. Palms together and fingers laced, Fjorm flushed as she remembered their audience. Despite herself, Fjorm nodded.

“Yes. Let us begin.”

-

The silence was a relief after being so long in a company, even with the jangle of harnesses in the near distance and occasional hiss and snap of wyvern jaws. Helbindi ignored them in favor of looking out over the dry plains and making a perimeter check of the temple’s entry.

It wasn’t that he was avoiding being around Laegjarn. Alright maybe a little , but that didn't eliminate the odds of roaming bandits in the area hoping to snoop through saddlebags or plug up the entrance and effectively hostage four members of royalty, no matter how many guards they had with them.

That and he needed to think.

Drumming his fingers on the pommel of his axe with one hand, Helbindi rubbed at his temples with the other and cursed when the letter crinkled, tauntingly, at him again. Not the time, not the time. Still on the job. He let his hand drag down his face, staring unseeing at a bush and instead thinking of his kingliness sitting down to write his name, Helbindi’s, some nobody, so neatly and with purpose.

He scoffed to himself, imagining Hríd use his personal desk instead of the ones meant for a king to sit at. Would Ylgr have written either? The envelope hadn’t felt too big. Maybe it was only a note from Ylgr, the little scamp. Somehow the idea of Hríd not writing to him made him feel better and worse at the same time.

“You survived.”

In an instant Helbindi swung his axe hard and wide in reflex - a move meant to get his weapon out quickly and forcibly put space between him and the owner of the voice. But the swing wasn’t subtle in the least nor was Helbindi surprised that the stranger easily dodged out of harm’s reach. Not that the stranger would have been even remotely fine had he had Býleistr again, but his old axe was no better than a rock on a stick now that Surtr was dead.

But there was no use griping about it. Helbindi let the light gleam silver off the blade of his axe and rushed at the stranger, unwilling to give this mysterious newcomer a chance to react.

“Get lost or you won’t!”

The stranger was quick on his feet and danced away once more - but not quite fast enough, Helbindi noted when he felt his blade catch and tear the stranger’s dusty cloak. Beneath it, he could see the stranger’s very expensive - and very Emblian - armor.

“Nice mask,” Helbindi growled as he kept up the assault, feeling the letter burn a hole in his chest because he had gotten so distracted to allow the man to get that close to the temple and himself without notice.

A thunder tome hung at the stranger’s hip, untouched. If the Emblian had wanted him dead, then he had had plenty of opportunity. But Embla wasn’t a friend of Askr and Helbindi doubted their moody Princess Veronica thought highly of anyone from Múspell after Surtr had decided he wanted to toss Her Grumpiness into a pyre.

“I don’t have time for this,” Mysterious Stranger said, driven back away from another swing. “I need to get inside the temple.”

“No specifics, no entry!” Helbindi snapped back.

After the last few weeks of having to hear vague retellings of events, roundabout conversations, or half muttered wishes, he was really getting sick of it all.

“You must listen to me, General. I need to see the Rites undone - it is imperative to Embla and Askr.”

Helbindi quit the chase and Mysterious Stranger came to a halt. They were both getting too far from the entrance to the temple and Helbindi wasn’t about to be drawn out into the waste to get ambushed. He hefted the axe head to point it at the stranger.

“If it matters so damn much then ask when they get out.”

It was hard to read any expressions the vagabond had behind his mask and white hair that kept getting whipped into his face by the winds, but he seemed to come to some conclusion.

“Is Alfonse with you, or Sharena? Commander Anna? Please, tell them that Zacharias is here.”

Something pinged in Helbindi’s memory. Of the friend that no one spoke about, or the name that Prince Alfonse had spoken during their time at the Nifl palace. Something must have shown on his face because Mysterious Stranger relaxed.

“Do you recognize me? ...No, I doubt it. But during the battle against Surtr I was there in the palace to seek my sister, Veronica. You had engaged Surtr and were badly burned-”

A ghost’s face. The cold light of healing magic. He had been hacked and burned like kindling, ready to die like the piece of filth he was, and then... Then he had woken up in the Askr medical tent and Surtr was dead.

“I did what I could at the time. As thanks for aiding in my sister’s rescue.”

Son of a bitch.

--

Chapter 10

Far away on the windswept, cold, and abandoned plains of Snjárhof, a sanctuary marred with scorch marks stands. Its entries and halls so packed tightly with ice only one human being had stepped foot in it for over a century.

Within, an empty dais stands in the dark.

-

“Back then, my father had broken a stone,” Laegjarn mimed the action and her fingers curled around an invisible stone and squeezed tightly. “And then the flames of Múspell consumed his body.”

Fjorm felt Laegjarn’s sigh rattle through their clasped hands more than she heard it.

“...At the time I had let myself think he was truly dead and that his arrogance - his arrogance in himself, in his power- had at last been unfounded.”

“But instead…” Fjorm prompted when Laegjarn grew quiet.

“Instead he rose from the ashes, just as healthy as the moment before he had been swallowed whole. From then on he kept Múspell’s flame stoked with other’s lives.

“Or volunteers.” Laegjarn finished quietly.

-

Kiran had gotten Sharena a journal for her last birthday - a beautiful dusky blue dyed thing with a flock of birds painted mid flight on the cover - and she had already filled nearly half the pages with drawings and tales of the heroes and worlds she had met. It was packed tightly away in cloth, so Sharena let her pack fall against her knee to dig it and a charcoal stick from its depths. Whatever detail she could write down might be of help to Bruno - to Embla.

Above, on the platform, Laegjarn’s voice carried down more clearly than before when she and Fjorm had been speaking privately.

“If the stone had a name, I never learned of it. But during the murder of your sister, Princess Gunnthrá,” Laegjarn did not flinch away from the fact, though her tone turned sorrowful, “and before my escape, she spoke the Rites of Frost and the name of Nifl’s stone that had lain in the sanctiary.”

“Snjársteinn,” Fjorm blurted, surprised, and Sharena jotted it down. Tongue between her teeth, Sharena would ask Fjorm for the proper spelling later. Of course! Nifl’s temple had spectres of Askr heroes wandering it, the implications could mean that Askr and Embla had similar stones to undo the curse!

“Precisely. I believe Princess Gunnthrá gave the remainder of her life to spare you an early end.” Laegjarn hummed in consideration. “Perhaps she had known one day that there was a way to reverse the process...

“But while the Rite of Frost helped end the Rite of Flames, neither were completely put to an end. My sacrifice was interrupted, and so I possess an ember of that power still. It does not consume me, without Surtr to receive it, but I believe… I know that this ember may melt your link with Nifl, and yours shall put out the remainder of Múspell’s fire.”

Sharena’s pencil stilled, struck by the tears rolling down Fjorm’s face. She lurched forward one step, ready to dash up the stairs and to offer some comfort, but stopped herself. Not only would she not interrupt the ceremony, Fjorm was smiling.

“I believe so too,” Fjorm said wetly, and cleared her throat at Laegjarn’s puzzled head tilt. “I believe Gunnthrá knew there was a chance for me - for all of us. She… dreamed. Perhaps she learned something from them.”

“Then let us begin.”

 -

The atmosphere in the chamber changed drastically once Laegjarn began the unbreaking of the Rites. Almost gently, the air stirred to life around Sharena, swirling long forgotten dust up, before it kicked into a ramshackle pace. A metallic taste formed in the back of Sharena’s throat, not unlike how it felt to stand in the presence of a Tempest - to even be sure, Sharena looked wildly around for the masked Marth to emerge from the clouds of dust.

But there was no clashing of worlds and time here, no ghosts walking among the present and ready to fight as strongly as the storm howled.

Instead, Sharena only saw Laevatein and the guards braced to the wind and shielding their eyes. Where grime whirled on the outskirts, snow and smoke had formed a dense screen around Fjorm and Laegjarn in the eye of the storm. Sharena lost sight of them soon after.

Denser and faster the storm gathered within the temple, pushing Sharena and the others against walls and to hide, cramped, behind pillars wreathed in stone flames and scales. Before, the temple had seemed massive and cavernous, but now it was absolutely suffocating.

From her relative shelter, Sharena squinted up again to watch the cyclone of smoke and snow turn into swaths of flames and huge flat shards of ice that spiralled in breakneck speeds. Sharena gulped, throat dry, at the possibility of one of those chunks peeling away to hurl itself at someone.

While the beginning of the storm couldn’t have started but two minutes ago but Sharena felt the same twisting sense of time that the Tempest brought - who knew how long it had actually been once - if - it ended.

-

Kiran was mildly envious of Alfonse’s sense of restraint to keep himself from dashing down the mountainside after his sister - even if they knew he really wanted to. Years of responsibility and leadership would do that to you. Briefly, Kiran wondered if they were changing too, and quickly squashed the train of thought once they realized they had been in Zenith for almost two years now. Pondering over home was only asking for a bad mood.

The combined Askr and Múspell forces had made decent progress the closer they got to the base of the mountain, roads had been cleared for their arrival under Laegjarn’s orders, and now they could reach the temple before nightfall.

In the late afternoon, cast in shadow, Alfonse had paused to look back, realizing perhaps his speed wasn’t as restrained as he had hoped. Kiran lifted a hand to jauntily wave at him, but Alfonse’s attention had narrowed in alarm.

“What-”

Kiran followed Alfonse’s gaze to their hip. Hung carefully in a woolen holster, Breidablik and its never melting coating of ice was kept carefully packed to avoid discomfort.

Now, it was glowing. Brighter still once Kiran, frantic, removed it from the holster to aim it towards the sky. This wasn’t the glow of a Summoning, they knew. A summoning event was at random, but the event would not activate unless Kiran activated it. This light refracted spectacularly through the ice and left ribbons of stars and rainbows on the mountain walls.

Breidablik hummed in Kiran’s grip, and they closed their eyes to open themself to its power again. A chaotic open and close that always felt nostalgic and yet somehow a skill to learn- 

-Nifl. Múspell. Nifl. Múspell. Faster and faster images of the land, seas, volcanic activity, frozen tundras, everything ice and fire Kiran had ever dreamed of flew through their head-

-and Kiran pulled the trigger.

-

Fjorm stood safely in the center of their storm. Parts of Laegjarn’s regalia and hair stirred gently in the breeze, but her face was turned upwards. Fjorm looked too.

And then she saw only the eyes of her god. 

Nifl looked down upon her, unmoving - no, slowly drifting as the glaciers in the west do - and unblinking. She felt Nifl’s breath fall upon her, leaving curling patterns of frost on her cheeks and eyelashes. It was suddenly very, very cold.

Nifl did not speak, but Fjorm understood regardless. Through this connection she understood the fractures of a river thawing, knew the drip of water from a branch heavy with snow. She understood that the connection was breaking and that the cold season was over. 

And then the glint of a dagger flashed and Fjorm blinked. Nifl was gone.

There was a woman before her instead; but she was also not there in the temple. The layers of realities shuttered harshly and Fjorm had a headache from it all.

She felt that she knew the woman with the dead eyes and silver hair, but she did not. 

“Farewell, Fjorm of Nifl. ...But not goodbye. We shall meet again some day, and I shall bring you mercy and guide you away.”

Fjorm’s ears popped violently when the woman faded away and she returned to her senses. She could perceive Laegjarn and the temple again, and for a heartbeat she saw the afterimage of a dragon burned into the backs of her eyelids when she looked above Laegjarn’s head.

The storm rushed up and out of the temple, like two intertwined dragons in a mad race to exit and uncaring how many people and ancient monuments they knocked over in their wake.

The vacuum - the vacuum of power, of life, of the storm - left Fjorm and Laegjarn kneeling and clutching the other’s elbows. Laegjarn breathed like she had just run across Múspell in its entirety with Fjorm little better.

But she no longer felt the need to cough. 

“That was… most intense,” Laegjarn said when they could breathe easily again. They were both trembling. 

“Indeed,” Fjorm agreed, her heart light. Laegjarn’s eyes were still unfocused and unseeing, but life had returned to them and to Laegjarn’s smile.

-

“And if I do, so what? I appreciate the patch job but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna bow and scrape and let you pass.”

The thing about magic is that the majority of casters needed a tome - yeah, sure you could write out your runes, or the talented could even imagine them up - but it was time consuming and not worth the risk of having your spell blow up in your face by getting a single line or symbol wrong.

So Helbindi smirked to himself when the stranger finally unclasped his weapon from his hip and held it aloft to burn through its pages.

“If you do not let me pass, I will be forced to make you.”

“The only one forcing you to attack me - which is stupid, I might add - is yourself, pal.”

Even from this distance and with the mask, Helbindi watched the so-called Zacharias’ face screw up in distaste. “I am not your pal.”

Helbindi shrugged his axe off to fall from its place on his shoulder to swing in his hand with deliberate slowness. “And I’m not a pushover.”

The air around Helbindi and Zacharias suddenly went very dry and Helbindi made his move. In Zacharias’ hands, a page of his tome gently rose, buoyant from the heated air, and its edges blackened and curled from the power channeled through it.

Electricity crackled and arched up and around Zacharias, coiling and ready to strike, and he raised his hand at Helbindi to direct it. Had the attack been done earlier in daylight, the waves of thunder and lightning would have been difficult to see in the air; but in the dust and shadows, Helbindi had a decent guess where the strike would land. All he had to do was run a little to the right and-

To the south, in the mountains that separated Nifl from Múspell, a blazing beam of light shot up into the skies with such a thunderous BOOM it drowned out even the rumble of Zacarias’ attack. Helbindi only just managed to dodge the lightning, stumbling in his surprise, but the distant light left a line across his sight.

At the same moment the Múspell temple shook, and dust billowed out from the entrance in dense angry clouds. Helbindi and Zacharias made eye contact in the brief moments their attention met between looking from the ray of light to the Múspell temple.

The dust clouds grew larger and thicker until Helbindi was sure they were no longer dust but something else entirely. He didn’t get to think on it any more deeply, for at once, as if manifested by thought, two massive coiling shapes erupted from the vapors.

Helbindi threw himself to the ground. Like two landslides the clouds-in-shape-of-dragons (it had to be fucking Nifl and Múspell didn’t it, who else could it damn well be) barrelled overhead in a dizzying rush upwards and skybound.

He waited, eyes clenched against the grit, until he could feel the warmth of the sun on himself again. Helbindi cracked open an eye and confirmed, even as he watched two rapidly shrinking figures disappear into the clouds, Zacharias had done much the same.

And that he had gotten back to his feet more quickly, tome in hand and looking as if he were in pain.

Helbindi snatched his axe from the ground, now sprinkled with snowflakes and ash, to close the gap between them. Dragon and weird light be damned, he wasn’t going to let this Zacharias do something stupid.

Bent over his tome, Zacharias pressed a hand to his mask but made no effort to remove it. The air turned dry again and Helbindi stepped within range.

But instead of aiming for Zacharias himself, Helbindi swung early. Human instinct to deflect the blow always took over for people who weren’t soldiers - even the best of mercs slipped up that way - and Zacharias let his tome be his shield. 

Helbindi’s axe bit into the spine of the tome and he hoisted the damn thing up and out of Zacharias’s hands.

The shock on his opponents’ faces were worth it when they realized they had underestimated him - though this one could have done without the mask. 

“Don’t forget who you’re fighting! The name’s Helbindi, and I’m the scum who’s gonna keep you here!”

-

One by one Laevatein, Sharena, and the guards emerged from their hiding spots; Sharena was so covered in dust she felt as if she only had to make a pose to fit right in with the other statues of the temple.

Looking up, she watched Laegjarn and Fjorm throw their arms around one another in a tight embrace - almost as if they feared letting the other one go.

Sharena made her way around one stone claw of Múspell’s image and stopped, one foot on the steps to take her up to Laegjarn and Fjorm. Something flashed between the two. Something round and as luminous as lava.

“Princess!”

Abruptly, the guard who had called had four pairs of royal eyes turned towards her. She did very well hiding her surprised jump.

“Yes?” Sharena and Laevatein, who appeared without a sound, asked as one.

“Princess Sharena, I mean. I do not mean to disturb the ceremony, but Gener- Ser- uh, Helbindi has caught an intruder. The intruder is asking for you.”

“Me…?” Sharena asked, even as she turned and jogged her way back to the entrance.

-

Ghosts wander the temple of Nifl, faces and weapons changing like a flicking candle’s light. Up and down the halls they guard a dias upon which now sits a stone. If they spoke, if they registered anything at all other than their orders to defend, one might have said its surface looked like the frozen water of a lake.