Fire Emblem 7 - Lyn's Tale
This was originally supposed to cover all of Lyn's mode, but I got sick of it by the time I finished the prologue. So, I don't know if this will be continued or not. Either way, I hope you enjoy what's here.
A novelization of Lyn's tale with game script starting from Lyn and Mark's first meeting, oh my!
Lyn's Tale (Fire Emblem 7)
Genre: Humor/Drama
Word Count: ~2000
PG-13 for drugs and violence and death and making light of all the above.
Summary: In which I, the genius behind the victory at Caelin, recount our tale. Mark? I see my ruse has held throughout the ages. No, my name is Lyn.
Mark will try to tell you that our first meeting was in my home, that he had been injured by bandits, and that in the moments to follow we bonded over revenge upon said bandits. We may very well let him believe that. He will never remember our true first meeting.
As it happens, I first met him when he was trying to steal tea from my garden.
Yes, it wasn't the first time a Bernese urchin had mistaken the curled leaves of the benign but delicious willow-tea plant for the similar but unrelated herb, Brammimond's Daze. It was a powerful herb used in our remedies, and as objects of power often are, it was a miracle as well as a curse. Some people on the Bernese border had discovered the herb some five years back, found its pleasant and (over time) necessary, and ever since, throngs of men have ravaged Sacae in search of it. Including the Taliver.
The outsiders in search of Brammimond's Daze were one of very few things that made me furious. That was why I considered killing the tea thief and getting it over with.
“Please!” he squealed with his hands in the air, eyes crossing as he looked down his nose at my sword. “You don't want to kill me!”
I'd heard that before.
“I swear! I won't take anything! I'll leave! I'll never come back.”
Like death, but with travel expenses.
“Please spare me!” he begged, bursting out in tears. “Please please please.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“No!” he blurted. “I'm charming! I'm brilliant! I'll make a name for myself! The universe won't let you kill me!”
I considered how easily I could prove him wrong. It was tempting. At the very least, it would be a sword stroke worthy of the tragic realism of the life of a Bernese orphan.
But, no. His namelessness was useful. His arrogance was useful. And most of all, his timing was useful.
With one quick motion, I slipped behind him and struck his head once with the hilt of my blade. He crumpled to the ground, crushing a particularly beautiful growth of willow-tea. I looked down at my poor ravaged garden. I remember first harboring doubts about this at that moment.
And then I dragged him inside, found my cache of Brammimond's Daze, and fed him enough to destroy his memory of the last three hours.
He came to at roughly the same time that a more organized group of bandits showed up, doubtlessly to plunder my garden in a Daze-induced stupor.
The boy blinked twice. I knew that as the Daze wore off his spirit returned to his body in a storm of anger and pain, and he would be particularly unreasonable.
I said in my sweetest voice, “Are you awake?”
He gave an annoyed moan and pulled the blankets over his eyes.
I gave him my planned response: “I found you unconscious on the plains!”
As suspected, he was too preoccupied with his unbearable headache. Nonetheless, as I knew boy was not a title that would endear him to me, I continued, “I am Lyn, of the Lorca tribe. You're safe now. Who are you? Can you remember your name?”
“Mark!” he grumbled from underneath the blankets.
Personally, I was hoping for a Zephiel or a Ephraim or even just the Ilian equivalent of his name, Marth. Mark was a bit plain for my tastes, but a name could be decorated. I could work with Mark. At least it was not Belf.
It was about then that I heard the telltale crunch of my makeshift garden fence crumbling under a crude axe, and I decided that charming Mark would have to wait. So in my best hysterical voice, I told him that there were bandits from the mountains, and I... I had to stop them!
He leapt from his nest of sweaty blankets and proclaimed that he would help. I hadn't expected that, but I was not surprised.
“Well, can you use a weapon?”
“Um, yeah!” he sputtered. “I, I'm a master in the obscure magics of heron monks, but I require the conduit of a Grado stone!”
“So you can't help.”
He went red in the face before he proclaimed, “I ... I can still help! I'm... uh... a tactician! A genius strategist!”
His excuse could not suit my needs more perfectly.
“Very well. We'll go together!” I chirped.
In the ensuing moments, I followed his brilliant orders of “Attack that bandit!” to the letter, trying not to think about how Mark was stepping upon more plants than the bandit was. But in short order I had turned the bandit into fertilizer. I was not seriously injured - the bandit's axe had only struck off a few strands of hair - but I was spattered with his blood and it wouldn't do to give Mark the impression that I was too capable.
“Would you fetch a vulnerary?” I asked him, giving him a wide-eyed vulnerable look. He tripped over himself racing to find a bottle of salve, and took special care globbing it on and wrapping it up, as if he were a field medic with a touch as gentle as an angel's. He took particular interest in touching it, and when it was all done with he stroked my arm and assured me it would be all right.
Even though this was going according to my own plan, might I say that it was incredibly annoying?
“Thank you, Mark,” I said, trying to wrest my arm from his without making my disgust apparent. “Now, let's go get that brigand over by the ger!” and turned to their base.
“Actually,” he said, eyeing the base as something passed across his face, “I think, maybe, um, the tactician's place is behind the front lines, so....”
Later I would confirm my suspicion that Mark had once belonged to this little band of pirates, and preferred not to demonstrate this to me by having a reunion with his boss.
“Oh, I understand, Mark,” I said. “Do you have any advice for me when I go to face him?”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “You should attack him.”
Brilliant, my master tactician. With that I gave him an encouraging nod and set off to the distant makeshift ger. I never did understand why they made makeshift gers in their excursions.
I kicked down his door, letting a shower of splinters and dust drop all about the commander and his brew of Daze. The man sputtered in indignation at the profaning of his teatime.
“Who do you think you are?” he demanded.
“I am Lyn of the Lorca!” I declared, pointing my sword at his throat. But something caught my nose - a delicate floral note, with just the right tone of bitterness. The aroma was unmistakable.
“You think you can stand up to Batta the Beast?”
I considered this. He was clumsy enough to title himself “the Beast,” and yet if he found himself in control of other bandits he was likely the strongest of them. Either that, or simply charismatic. I was not fond of axes cleaving into my side, and so I set about to determine which of the two he was.
“Perhaps not,” I said. “But your willow tea smells wonderful. Before I die, I want to say, I'm sorry for spoiling it.”
“Willow tea?”
“Yes. I have no doubt about it.” I gestured to his cup with my sword. “Brammimond's Daze forms a bitter, scentless brew. But willow tea - willow tea has one of the most beautifully complex scents in the world.”
Batta looked very seriously for a moment from my sword to his cup. He rose to his feet and grabbed his axe, saying only, “I knew it smelled too girly.”
That was when I decided that whether Batta was possessed of that simple overcompensating masculinity that passed for charisma. Since I had that established, it was time to fight.
I sheathed my sword, not letting go of the hilt, and angled my body slightly away from him. “Would you attack a defenseless woman?” I said in my sweetest voice. “Some bandits have honor. Are you truly a man?”
Confusion rippled across his face before he sputtered, “Y-you kicked down my door!”
I suppose I did.
He was caught off-guard when I drew my sword and swung for his neck in one smooth stroke, barely bringing his axe up in time to ward off my iron. My weapon glanced off his with a clang, but though he was not Dazed, his movements were still slower than mine. I cut his right arm while he was still defending himself from the first blow.
Snarling, he brought his left hand to his weapon, as his right arm could not support it much longer. He lifted it above his head, and I expected him to bring it down in the predictable vertical arc, like splitting a log.
I slipped to the left. But I had underestimated him. Instead of completing that cleave, he mustered up the strength to curve its arc, slamming the flat side against my ribs. I relied on speed; I was light on my feet and light on the side of his axe as the momentum sent me crashing against his nearby wall.
I make light of it now, but it really did hurt.
Just as easily as his door had collapsed against my foot, his wall collapsed against my side. Already ill-structured and now weakened with two holes, his ger trembled. Batta and I looked up at the ceiling at the same time.
“I hate it when this happens,” he said with the fateful resignation of a man beyond his intellect.
Ribs aching, I found my feet and dashed out of the ger as the straw ceiling started to lean to one side like a fainting boy tactician. Batta ran out over the broken door, right into the shadow of his collapsing ger.
It fell upon him with the “pomf” of crunching straw.
Mark looked quizzically at me from across the heap of straw.
“He's tough,” I said to break the silence. The pile moved and Mark looked very scared. So Batta was alive. “It all comes down to this next blow,” I assured him. Mark still looked very scared. And if he ran on me I would've put up with his tender, delicate healing touch for nothing. “Mark, if I fall,” I emphasized, “I want you to flee.” However unlikely that was. Mark seemed to get the hint, backing away from the pile of straw but watching for what would happen next.
I crept over the straw to where I guessed Batta lay underneath. As his head emerged from the pile, sputtering and spitting, I seized him by the hair. “What? How... How did you -”
I whispered very quietly in his ear, “It's not a girly smell,” and slit his throat.
To Mark, I said brightly, “Sorry if I worried you.”
Mark looked up at me, down at his dead boss, and back up at me. “I think I should go back to traveling,” he said. To this day I am not sure if he wanted to run free and wild in the world with his imprisoner defeated, or if for a moment he was scared of me.
So I put on my sweetest face, put my hand over my injured ribs, and made a great deal of looking vulnerable as I pleaded, “Would you allow me to travel with you?”
A novelization of Lyn's tale with game script starting from Lyn and Mark's first meeting, oh my!
Lyn's Tale (Fire Emblem 7)
Genre: Humor/Drama
Word Count: ~2000
PG-13 for drugs and violence and death and making light of all the above.
Summary: In which I, the genius behind the victory at Caelin, recount our tale. Mark? I see my ruse has held throughout the ages. No, my name is Lyn.
Mark will try to tell you that our first meeting was in my home, that he had been injured by bandits, and that in the moments to follow we bonded over revenge upon said bandits. We may very well let him believe that. He will never remember our true first meeting.
As it happens, I first met him when he was trying to steal tea from my garden.
Yes, it wasn't the first time a Bernese urchin had mistaken the curled leaves of the benign but delicious willow-tea plant for the similar but unrelated herb, Brammimond's Daze. It was a powerful herb used in our remedies, and as objects of power often are, it was a miracle as well as a curse. Some people on the Bernese border had discovered the herb some five years back, found its pleasant and (over time) necessary, and ever since, throngs of men have ravaged Sacae in search of it. Including the Taliver.
The outsiders in search of Brammimond's Daze were one of very few things that made me furious. That was why I considered killing the tea thief and getting it over with.
“Please!” he squealed with his hands in the air, eyes crossing as he looked down his nose at my sword. “You don't want to kill me!”
I'd heard that before.
“I swear! I won't take anything! I'll leave! I'll never come back.”
Like death, but with travel expenses.
“Please spare me!” he begged, bursting out in tears. “Please please please.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“No!” he blurted. “I'm charming! I'm brilliant! I'll make a name for myself! The universe won't let you kill me!”
I considered how easily I could prove him wrong. It was tempting. At the very least, it would be a sword stroke worthy of the tragic realism of the life of a Bernese orphan.
But, no. His namelessness was useful. His arrogance was useful. And most of all, his timing was useful.
With one quick motion, I slipped behind him and struck his head once with the hilt of my blade. He crumpled to the ground, crushing a particularly beautiful growth of willow-tea. I looked down at my poor ravaged garden. I remember first harboring doubts about this at that moment.
And then I dragged him inside, found my cache of Brammimond's Daze, and fed him enough to destroy his memory of the last three hours.
He came to at roughly the same time that a more organized group of bandits showed up, doubtlessly to plunder my garden in a Daze-induced stupor.
The boy blinked twice. I knew that as the Daze wore off his spirit returned to his body in a storm of anger and pain, and he would be particularly unreasonable.
I said in my sweetest voice, “Are you awake?”
He gave an annoyed moan and pulled the blankets over his eyes.
I gave him my planned response: “I found you unconscious on the plains!”
As suspected, he was too preoccupied with his unbearable headache. Nonetheless, as I knew boy was not a title that would endear him to me, I continued, “I am Lyn, of the Lorca tribe. You're safe now. Who are you? Can you remember your name?”
“Mark!” he grumbled from underneath the blankets.
Personally, I was hoping for a Zephiel or a Ephraim or even just the Ilian equivalent of his name, Marth. Mark was a bit plain for my tastes, but a name could be decorated. I could work with Mark. At least it was not Belf.
It was about then that I heard the telltale crunch of my makeshift garden fence crumbling under a crude axe, and I decided that charming Mark would have to wait. So in my best hysterical voice, I told him that there were bandits from the mountains, and I... I had to stop them!
He leapt from his nest of sweaty blankets and proclaimed that he would help. I hadn't expected that, but I was not surprised.
“Well, can you use a weapon?”
“Um, yeah!” he sputtered. “I, I'm a master in the obscure magics of heron monks, but I require the conduit of a Grado stone!”
“So you can't help.”
He went red in the face before he proclaimed, “I ... I can still help! I'm... uh... a tactician! A genius strategist!”
His excuse could not suit my needs more perfectly.
“Very well. We'll go together!” I chirped.
In the ensuing moments, I followed his brilliant orders of “Attack that bandit!” to the letter, trying not to think about how Mark was stepping upon more plants than the bandit was. But in short order I had turned the bandit into fertilizer. I was not seriously injured - the bandit's axe had only struck off a few strands of hair - but I was spattered with his blood and it wouldn't do to give Mark the impression that I was too capable.
“Would you fetch a vulnerary?” I asked him, giving him a wide-eyed vulnerable look. He tripped over himself racing to find a bottle of salve, and took special care globbing it on and wrapping it up, as if he were a field medic with a touch as gentle as an angel's. He took particular interest in touching it, and when it was all done with he stroked my arm and assured me it would be all right.
Even though this was going according to my own plan, might I say that it was incredibly annoying?
“Thank you, Mark,” I said, trying to wrest my arm from his without making my disgust apparent. “Now, let's go get that brigand over by the ger!” and turned to their base.
“Actually,” he said, eyeing the base as something passed across his face, “I think, maybe, um, the tactician's place is behind the front lines, so....”
Later I would confirm my suspicion that Mark had once belonged to this little band of pirates, and preferred not to demonstrate this to me by having a reunion with his boss.
“Oh, I understand, Mark,” I said. “Do you have any advice for me when I go to face him?”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “You should attack him.”
Brilliant, my master tactician. With that I gave him an encouraging nod and set off to the distant makeshift ger. I never did understand why they made makeshift gers in their excursions.
I kicked down his door, letting a shower of splinters and dust drop all about the commander and his brew of Daze. The man sputtered in indignation at the profaning of his teatime.
“Who do you think you are?” he demanded.
“I am Lyn of the Lorca!” I declared, pointing my sword at his throat. But something caught my nose - a delicate floral note, with just the right tone of bitterness. The aroma was unmistakable.
“You think you can stand up to Batta the Beast?”
I considered this. He was clumsy enough to title himself “the Beast,” and yet if he found himself in control of other bandits he was likely the strongest of them. Either that, or simply charismatic. I was not fond of axes cleaving into my side, and so I set about to determine which of the two he was.
“Perhaps not,” I said. “But your willow tea smells wonderful. Before I die, I want to say, I'm sorry for spoiling it.”
“Willow tea?”
“Yes. I have no doubt about it.” I gestured to his cup with my sword. “Brammimond's Daze forms a bitter, scentless brew. But willow tea - willow tea has one of the most beautifully complex scents in the world.”
Batta looked very seriously for a moment from my sword to his cup. He rose to his feet and grabbed his axe, saying only, “I knew it smelled too girly.”
That was when I decided that whether Batta was possessed of that simple overcompensating masculinity that passed for charisma. Since I had that established, it was time to fight.
I sheathed my sword, not letting go of the hilt, and angled my body slightly away from him. “Would you attack a defenseless woman?” I said in my sweetest voice. “Some bandits have honor. Are you truly a man?”
Confusion rippled across his face before he sputtered, “Y-you kicked down my door!”
I suppose I did.
He was caught off-guard when I drew my sword and swung for his neck in one smooth stroke, barely bringing his axe up in time to ward off my iron. My weapon glanced off his with a clang, but though he was not Dazed, his movements were still slower than mine. I cut his right arm while he was still defending himself from the first blow.
Snarling, he brought his left hand to his weapon, as his right arm could not support it much longer. He lifted it above his head, and I expected him to bring it down in the predictable vertical arc, like splitting a log.
I slipped to the left. But I had underestimated him. Instead of completing that cleave, he mustered up the strength to curve its arc, slamming the flat side against my ribs. I relied on speed; I was light on my feet and light on the side of his axe as the momentum sent me crashing against his nearby wall.
I make light of it now, but it really did hurt.
Just as easily as his door had collapsed against my foot, his wall collapsed against my side. Already ill-structured and now weakened with two holes, his ger trembled. Batta and I looked up at the ceiling at the same time.
“I hate it when this happens,” he said with the fateful resignation of a man beyond his intellect.
Ribs aching, I found my feet and dashed out of the ger as the straw ceiling started to lean to one side like a fainting boy tactician. Batta ran out over the broken door, right into the shadow of his collapsing ger.
It fell upon him with the “pomf” of crunching straw.
Mark looked quizzically at me from across the heap of straw.
“He's tough,” I said to break the silence. The pile moved and Mark looked very scared. So Batta was alive. “It all comes down to this next blow,” I assured him. Mark still looked very scared. And if he ran on me I would've put up with his tender, delicate healing touch for nothing. “Mark, if I fall,” I emphasized, “I want you to flee.” However unlikely that was. Mark seemed to get the hint, backing away from the pile of straw but watching for what would happen next.
I crept over the straw to where I guessed Batta lay underneath. As his head emerged from the pile, sputtering and spitting, I seized him by the hair. “What? How... How did you -”
I whispered very quietly in his ear, “It's not a girly smell,” and slit his throat.
To Mark, I said brightly, “Sorry if I worried you.”
Mark looked up at me, down at his dead boss, and back up at me. “I think I should go back to traveling,” he said. To this day I am not sure if he wanted to run free and wild in the world with his imprisoner defeated, or if for a moment he was scared of me.
So I put on my sweetest face, put my hand over my injured ribs, and made a great deal of looking vulnerable as I pleaded, “Would you allow me to travel with you?”