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Felix knew that in the rest part of Fodlan, people viewed fire differently from Faerghus. Especially in prosper metropolitan like Anbarr, they feared it to no end, because it could devour their property in the blink of eye, the property that they accumulated through a whole lifetime’s hard work, and often life itself.
But where he came from, fire is basically the air that could not be inhaled and food that could not be tasted. No one could survive in Faerghus without fire. Without torches, hunters would be torn to pieces by hungry wolves. Without lighthouse, sailors would sunk deep into the treacherous near sea filled with reef, which crashed their boats by the invisible strong hands of winter gale. Without hearth fire, farmers in cottages, craftsmen and merchants in their stone house, lords and ladies in their castles and places, everyone would have been perished in the long and extreme winter.
But here, in the great hall set up as ballroom, with candles lit up everywhere, Felix thought he could not stand the heat anymore, even he just wore a shirt, not the whole uniform. This – the peace -- is nothing but a sandcastle if not downright an illusion, he thought mockingly. War broke everywhere, all the time and for every reason human could and could not fathom.
And he had enough of the sight Byleth being invited to dance by one student after another. So he left. He ran into the Boar outside.
“The Professor is heading to the Tower of Goddess, she says to me.” The Boar smiled charmingly and innocently at him as if he would be fooled by him.
“Which I have no interest in knowing.” Felix was about to walk away but the Boar pulled him to stop.
“But aren’t you watching her all night? You must want to spend some time with her.”
“No. Stop spying on me. And now fuck off.”
In the end, he was the one running away, not the Boar. Does he feel anything special about Byleth? Does everyone know? Does she suspect anything? If his classmates thought he was pinning after the Professor – which he was absolutely not – would they gossip and make jokes about him?
He wandered aimlessly in empty Garreg Mach. Since almost everyone was at the damned ball, he could not even find a single person to spar and let his steam out. Then he was shocked that he was at the foot of the said tower. And a familiar figure was also there.
His heart skipped a beat. But he walked to her nonetheless. She must not be under the illusion that he would want the idiocy called romance.
They arranged a few searching parties after Adrenstian army breached Garreg Mach. But unsurprisingly, they found no trace of her. In some dawns or dusks, he would stare at the sky, with clouds painted to red, pink, golden or purple by sunlight, and wondered if Byleth would suddenly cleave the space with her blazing sword and stand out.
Of course, it did not happen.
As time went by, Felix watched their moral cooled like a hearth left untended – the heat and light died down, until there was only the dim light emitted by the last red ember, until nothing but only grey and cold ash left. Some talked about returning to home, where they were needed by family, and Felix didn’t blame them in the slightest. It was always right to look forwards, not backwards. More so in wartime.
But he could not do the same. He had more places to search, more village people to inquiry before he was willing to give up. To give up on her. Even he would resent so much to see what he found, if his effort did bore a fruit.
Mercedes tried to comfort him. “Maybe she was just struck at head. You know, people lose memory temporarily sometimes in this scenario. And it explains why she doesn’t come to us.”
Felix hated her hypothesis even though it was the most optimistic one and made sense at the same time. Actually, he hated all the deductions about where Byleth is, why she didn’t come to him – to them. And he hated how Mercedes took special care of him as if he was her long-lost younger brother. He had enough of being someone’s younger brother.
But neither thoughts were told to her. And he wordlessly ate all of the special dish she and Ashe made for him. It was supposed to be spicy, but since neither of the cooks enjoyed spicy food enough to know how to make them, it was still too mild to his taste.
The day before Lorenz was leaving, he asked the latter one to a spar with him. Lorenz laughed, a bit too loudly, and accepted. “I cannot think of any farewell more suitable with you.” Lorenz said knowingly.
But Lorenz knew nothing about his true motivation. He defeated Lorenz without much trouble. He knew Lorenz did realize that he didn’t have a big chance to win, especially on foot, but his pride would never let him waiver before Felix. These nobles were so easily to predict, or to manipulate.
Before he disarmed Lorenz, he cut loose the red rose the latter one always proudly wore on his front with his wooden sword. Since Byleth knew that Lorenz was frantic about roses, she had been giving him some from time to time. Though it was not likely that Byleth was romantically interested in Lorenz, more likely she just gave students their favorite flowers without knowing the meaning of each one. Felix didn’t know if the trait should be called careless or ignorant. Or lovely.
Still, something unseen inside he drove him to do this petty and childish prank unceasingly. Lorenz didn’t even notice any abnormality. After all, it was not uncommon to strike for your opponent’s chest in a true combat. After Lorenz bid farewell and left the training ground, he stared at the sandy ground. The rose’s petal all fell from the stem, and littered all round. Some were stepped on to, and liquid inside was squeezed out and tainted the sand to purple.
Felix became one of few that still lingered at Garreg Mach one month after the fateful battle. Sylvain and Ingrid eventually convinced him to return to his father’s dukedom tomorrow. He strode all over this place, feeling he had left off something but could not put a finger on it. Unconsciously, he came to the door of Byleth’s room, and pushed it open.
He scanned the room but didn’t touch anything. He didn’t have the right to do. There were books she borrowed from library. Spare weapons and armors she put neatly in the corner of the room. Inside an open box were all kinds of gifts that had not been given out. But none of the things seem right for him to take.
Then his eye fell on the calendar, which was still in Pegasus Moon page. He remembered she invited him to tea at his birthday, and as far as he knew, he was the only one in her class whose birthday was in the month. He looked closer, and there it was. Her writing of his name and his favorite tea underside the date, among other plans such as field mission or chorus performing. This paper rang a bell in him, and he knew he has found what he was searching. Some memory only belonged to two of them. He took out his dagger and cleaved the page clean at the rim of the calendar. Then he folded it and stored it inside his pocket.
After he returned Fraldaruis castle, his father bestowed him a one-handed sword, which looked majestic. It was no legendary legacy that had the ability to induce people to plot and butch to lay their fingers on. What he got is a sword designed for ritual, with golden lining of his crest on the ball made of obsidian at the end of the handle.
The other day, father dragged him out of bed in almost midnight to the cathedral to formalize his inheritance of their land. Should father fell in this war, he would take over everything directly, and the ritual and all the nonsense would take place after the war was ended.
Or everyone was dead. Which even made more sense if they were going to follow the Boar. But he didn’t say it out. His father was no fool and had no need to be told it right in front of his face. Much as Felix wanted to do.
But he talked about other things with father on their way to cathedral. About military. About the economic of their land. About other nobles of Faerghus, or of Reigan. He resented how he sounded so much like that bloody von Aegir or Gloucester, but father smiled too proudly at him as if he was not talking about common sense but some heroic deeds of his. The dawn had not arrived yet, and the wind of early spring night stung his face hard. He couldn’t tell the look in father’s eyes under the jumping torchlight. He was probably thinking about the Boar, Felix guessed. Which is the reason why he was so happy to listen to my nonsense. At least one of us don’t bring worry to him.
In fact, he became the one to talk because he didn’t want to be the one to be asked. Since father previously showed his unusual interest for Byleth – which he mistakenly doubted whether he was going to have a stepmother who looked the same age as him before – he was afraid to be asked about her again. And worse, what if father asked if there was someone he met in the school he would like to marry? So he talked on and on. And his trick worked.
Later that day in the cathedral, when he became the receiving end of droning, he just stood beside father impassively, killing his time by counting the rough granite blocks on the floor. Suddenly his breath was caught in his throat, for he saw the shinning lines of her crest on the floor. He rose his head frantically, thinking that she was alive and finally returned, that she came to him. He searched her figure across the spacious room, his heart beating wildly. Then he found the owner of the crest.
Nemesis.
Or an artifact about him. There was a window made of colorful stained glasses by the hands of a true master, picturing the epic battle between Seiros and Nemesis, swords crossed and bodies strained, with their crests shinning above. With the sun rising currently, the almost vertical sunlight made a perfect duplication of the crest.
His heart fell and the stained glasses burned his eyes as if he was looking right into the sun. The colors and forms blurred until he could not tell this piece out. He bowed his head and blinked rapidly, lest anyone notice this.
When the whole damn thing was over, he rode ahead of everyone for he was in no mood to talk. If father noticed anything, he didn’t bring up either.
Six months after his returning, father gave him his first mission, to relieve a siege on a stronghold south of their dukedom’s capital.
Two weeks before he was going to set off, he visited the best smith in the region. Days later, he got his sword. This was the weapon of his heart. Perfectly balanced, weight suited his strength, without any decoration to make it less lethal. He thanked the smith and paid her even more generously than what they agreed on.
On the end of dark handle, there was a cylinder of ivory. And craved on it was her crest. He thought about the design before. Nemesis was the enemy of the saint, so he dismissed the ideal of embedding something with color. Only when blood was splashed on it would the crest show. And a lot spilled blood was about to come. He wasn’t afraid of war, of killing or even being killed. But to take her symbol with him seemed to give him more resolve and strength strangely.
Perhaps not strangely.
Felix thought about his ridiculous words, all the way back to night of ball, across half Faerghus to the Tower of Goddess. He said that swords and fighting and blood were the only things that matter in his life. Not romance, not love.
Look at him now. He got exactly what he wished for. He lost – never got – what he said he would never want. Noting more and nothing less. Perhaps the Tower did have some arcane power.
The first winter in Faerghus after his schooldays came. People all said it was a mild one, but he somehow felt colder than ever.
The snow slowed the enemy down, for only the insane would march against Faerghus force in winter, which gave him more spare time. When he was a child, during the endless winter night, he liked listening to the sagas of ancient pagan adventurers who came to this land long ago, sometimes with Glen, sometimes with the Boar or Sylvain and Ingrid. But mostly alone with some bards that father paid to entertain his guests, for all of his friends preferred chivalrous romance than the coarse, hard, bloody fighting of uncultured barbarians. He liked the sagas a lot better than the chivalrous ones, simply because these “barbarians” were cunning and their stories contained more truth about world than people gave credit for, while the well-mannered knights were simply stupid.
When he grew up a bit and Glen died, he always sparred whenever he could find anyone to spar with. And hunting in the snowy woods when no one wanted to spar with him. Father admonished him sternly once and banned for further misbehavior, for danger of going alone in the wild. However, since the Boar’s state was always worse in winter, which kept father with him almost twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, he was free to do what he like as long as he could sneak out and return before father occasionally thought about checking on him.
Or not at all. So he could explore it on his own. Just like the pagan warriors of old times.
Now he was in the woods alone, again. He shot one hare with his bow and set up a small fire under a mountain ridge. He thought he was cold because he was hungry, but after devouring the roasted animal, the cold didn’t leave him. He pulled up his hood and sat closer to the campfire. Then he built a little shelter with tent and wood branches.
Nothing worked.
The snow melted partially and the night shortened. One evening, when he was in father’s study checking the tax and expense in father’s place, a maid servant came in, a tray in her hands, with steaming teapot and some biscuit. He thanked her without his thought leaving the charts and numbers.
“Young master Felix, perhaps you may take rest early. After all, tomorrow will be a special day for you.” She suggested gently.
Felix was perplexed. “Why?”
“Your birthday, young mater.” The maid smiled ruefully at him.
Felix felt a piece of paper in his cloth burned him. Then the fragrance of the tea struck home. Same tea, similar salted biscuit since he hated sweet things. He wanted to tell her to take these back, but he didn’t want to be guessed the reason behind his behavior.
Later that night, he let the snow-covered earth drink the tea. He packed up the biscuit, and all his equipment. He left a note for father saying he was going to check the reconstruction of a castle before he took his horse and rode away.
On his way, he gave the biscuits to some homeless people gathered around a fire at an abandoned warehouse.
With war raging on, more and more fell at his sword. The sword with Byleth’s crest on it. He didn’t know if this was a talisman for him, but everyone admitted that he was extremely good at killing without being killed.
So far.
He also better and better at commanding his people to kill. Practice makes perfect. He wondered if she led a similar life before Garreg Mach. He wondered if this made him closer to her. He thought about a lot of things he never had chance to ask her. But eventually, he always wondered if his foolish declaration at the tower offended her. If this was her punishment for him. If he should give up his hope, no matter how far away it was.
The scene was always same to him, the scene of a battle won. Corpse littered around him and his surviving soldiers. Arrows stuck in flesh, in trees, or dropped on the ground with lances snapped in the middle, shields broken to pieces. Sometimes the ground was covered by green grass, sometimes red fallen leaves, sometimes snow. But in the ends, it didn’t matter, because everything was tainted to a reddish brown by blood and by dirt and smelled like copper.
Blood sunk into the carving of his sword handle. He always washed it clean afterwards, but not before he ran his hands gently across the surface.
Father was stressed these days. But whenever Felix approached him, his frown would cease and a gentle smile would surface at his mouth. As if Felix was a deliverance from heaven, was where father’s all hope laid. Not a aggressive and bitter boy in his adolescence. It was not difficult for him to understand. He knew his weight in this war, counting the enemy he eliminated directly and by the hands of his troop. He also knew father’s courtiers had been praising him more than he deserved.
It was not inherently an awful thing to be regarded like this. But these moments made him long for someone else’s approval even more.
Sylvain came to visit him, once. With him Sylvain brought someone who tried to introduce an unmarried noble girl to him. When Felix had enough of listening to the boasting about the girl’s look and virtue, he cut in to ask the mediator.
“Does she know how to use a sword?”
“Well, she certainly received training.”
“Will she have a match with me?”
The mediator was struck silent for a while. “Her ladyship has many talents, including poetry, music and more. But a hand-to-hand combat is too masculine for her.”
“Then I’m too masculine for her, too.” Felix terminated the conversation, and asked the servants to show him out.
“Why the hell you brought someone like this? You know I don’t have interest in all these. Are you trying to annoy me?”
“This girl’s sister asked me for a favor and,” Sylvain winked, “I cannot turn her down. But you’ve handled it on your own. Come on, let’s have some fun out.”
When they were heading back in the evening, they passed a brothel along the way. “Come in to have your swords played, my lords!” A prostitute called to their way.
Felix doubted if he heard it right. He didn’t drink but it made no sense. Why would anyone –
Then Sylvain was cackling madly. Had he not grabbed Felix’s shoulder for support, he must have slipped down to ground. “Best joke about you,” Another laughter broke out, “I’ve ever heard.”
Oh. That sword.
He grabbed Sylvain and escaped like Adrenstain army was hot on his tail.
“You had it really hard, don’t you?” Sylvain asked him, when they returned. “The professor.”
He didn’t answer. How could Sylvain understand? How could anyone he knew understand, in that matter? Once you let the warmth of fire embrace you, all the fire flies in the world lose their enchanting.
One day an arrow struck into his leg. A prof that he was not invincible. It didn’t touch anything important, and he didn’t bleed heavily. The wound was cleaned and sealed by white magic quickly.
But two days later, he caught a fever. Infection. Father fussed over him like he was about to die. Well, he probably was, but it didn’t change that being babysit was embarrassing. If he had to die, he preferred dying not so embarrassingly. When was the last time father watched him this closely? Probably not after he learned to walk, or took up his first tiny wooden sword, which were around the same time.
He tried to drove father away. And resulted in some talk he couldn’t understand in his current state. He shut up. Father sounded serious and on the edge. Felix didn’t like a quarrel when he could not even talk back coherently.
He fell asleep in father’s chanting of healing spell eventually.
The next day he woke up, feeling a little wobbly, but mostly alive. Father ruffled his hair, dark circles underneath his eyes. “I’m sorry about her. But you shouldn’t give up yet.”
Like you believe the Boar is still alive? He wanted to ask. But the blow was too dirty so he didn’t.
“I need to eat something.” He said. Father tried to ruffle his hair again. This time he docked the hand and left the room. On the way to kitchen, he came across a mirror. With his hair down from long sleep, and stubble grown out on his jaw, he looked like another father. In a few months he would reach an age that Glen never could.
Later, He cut his hair short and tucked it into a ponytail.
One night in Guardian Moon, Felix was sitting on the top floor of a tower, reading with candle burning soundlessly and a stray cat curled up on his shins. Some one came up the floor, and the cat woke up then fled.
Felix cursed. Then Sylvian and Ingrid showed themselves. They wanted him to come to the foolish millennium festival together. Felix wanted to have some physicians to check if their heads were functioning. They wanted to come to a monastery long fallen to war and deserted, attend a festival of a religion that technically nonexistent with their archbishop gone, with classmates being potentially enemy of war. How came it that he be the sole sane person among his childhood friends?
Not to mention the professor would not be there, either. Not that he gave her too much thought as he did five years ago.
“No, I will not go.” He gestured them to leave.
But they stayed. Father showered them with the best food he could manage in these days. And Ingrid was all too happy to help herself.
He was sparing with Sylvain – or beat his ass more truthfully – when a knight told Felix he was needed by father. He came and father was questioning a previously captured imperial mage. As far as Felix saw, the mage was delirious when he spoke.
“Your archbishop was in Empress’ hand!” The mage laughed, “And your king deposed and dead! I’m not the one should surrender but you are. Hail the glory of Adrenstian Empire!”
Felix doubted the merit of wasting their time on such a fanatic. Then the mage shouted again. “Not even the dog of your archbishop – what was her name – can save you now! We killed her too.”
“I’m sure lady Catherina is currently very well now.” Felix said coldly.
“No, no, not this one. Another one, green hair and Nemesis’ sword.” A chilly wind pierced Felix’s chest. “It was my crest monster pushed her into the chasm!”
Felix felt a vein in his head jumped and turned to father. “Have you finished questioning him?”
Father sighed, rubbing his temple warily. “Yes. There is nothing useful from him since he – Felix!” Father yelled and stood from his chair.
But Father was too late to stop him. He unsheathed his sword in a flash and leaped. Just a flick of silver light of blade, and the mage’s head was rolling on the floor, the glassy dead eyes stared them with an expression of utter terror. Felix was so quick in his motion, that the dead body didn’t even fall as Felix stepped back. People inhaled audibly. The blood splashed everywhere, his sword and hands, the floor and the ceiling. A few droops even tainted father’s coat.
He expected father to be angry. But what he got was only a soft sigh, “Felix –” Even father was out of words now.
“I’m going to Garreg Mach with Sylvain and Ingrid.” He blurted out.
Father didn’t ask why he changed his ideal or when would he be back, he only took out his handkerchief to wipe the blood on Felix’s face. “Alright. Take care of yourself.”
“Send me a letter if you need me.” Then he left. Whether what the madman said was true or not, he would never rest until he found the answer.
The monastery nothing other than a ruin from afar, with towers inclined and walls broken. It was still before dawn, but no light coming from any windows. They stared him, like hollow eye holes on a skull.
As they approached it, they heard fighting and decided to take a look.
Then all of a sudden, there she was. He didn’t think twice before he charged right into the battle to help her. He didn’t remember how he fought or when it was over. All he aware was the dawn light on Byleth’s hair and the look in her eyes. Relieved, tender, loving –
He’s body was already in action when his mind was dazed. He kissed her lips, and for a terrifying long second, he thought she was going to push he away, or even punch –
Then her arms circled around his back, bring them closer, urging him to go on. He obliged, and only pulled away to press his lips on her check, on her nose and eyelids. He held her, savoring her warmth.
Felix heard someone cleared his throat loudly. He turned to send this person a murderous glare, only to found Ingrid elbowed Sylvain hard and sent him doubling.
“I’m happy for you, Felix. But your time with our dear professor is up. Now move along. You can always have a one-on-one swordplay time with professor later, right?” Sylvain straightened and smirked at him.