Five Other Futures (Nergal-centric, PG-13, Angst/Horror)
Summary: Five futures Nergal didn't have, but could have lived.
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Nergal; Nils, Ninian, and Aenir mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst for some, probably Horror for others
Word Count: ~1990
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem and all related characters belong to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.
Author's Note: Finally got around to doing this one! AUs (which are separated by dividers) will be explained at the end.
His sole consolations, in these miserable times, were his children.
He taught them well. He taught them about the gluttonous humans and cannibalistic dragons that had turned the very air around them to poison; he taught them about the deceitfulness and treachery of all living beings; he taught them about the worthlessness of good and evil, and the weaknesses that prevented fools from liberating their own strengths.
He taught them that the only thing that gave their lives meaning and value was each other.
They followed in his footsteps as well as any father could wish. He was proud of his children - prouder than they knew. Their mother would have been proud of them as well - she would be proud, when they tore apart the laws of nature to bring her back, and…
(He buried the thoughts that she would be revolted at whom he had become and what he had made of the children; to hide from the searing judgment of his shame, he buried them deep, even as the man he was now gave a bitter laugh. Had not her precious morals killed her in the end?)
…she - she would be proud. He knew she would. They knew she would.
And the darkness, grinning with a thousand icicle-dagger teeth, knew she would as well.
The War Dragons were corrupted quintessence embodied, and the Divine Weapons warped the quintessence of their targets into forms more beneficial to their users. None could guess what would come from their collision, but no one in their right mind should have wanted to find out.
In these insane times, it seemed all the world was bent on exactly that - And so two “sympathizers” had forged a pact: one of them would infiltrate the Dragon Temple in Bern and end the twisted Divine Dragon’s misery, and the other would infiltrate the entourages of the Divine Generals and destroy or neutralize their Weapons by any means necessary.
They knew they would perish in the attempt; they could only hope to die with their goals accomplished. They had once hoped that, if they succeeded in their aims, the two species would be too broken to continue their war, and slip away into an inexorable peace - but that now seemed a vain dream.
As they concluded their final meeting, the human stood and gave the dragon a respectful nod. “I wish, more than anything else, that we had met in a world not consumed by madness. Aenir, do you think that, in such a world… we might have been friends?”
“I… would have liked that, Nergal. I wish it had been so.”
Did you think I’d let you betray me, my dear?
Oh, you’ve escaped me for now. And I have now a certain permanent stiffness to my gait and chill in my bones to complement the wound I received from Athos. May I be forgiven for my sin of expecting some understanding and gratitude from those whom I trusted most. I won’t so err again.
But I know where you’re hiding - and surely you understand that I knew where you were going from the very moment you fled. Ilia, is it not? The only reason I haven’t taken you back is that, as of yet, I lack the power to command you. And it is a yet, my dear. Humans are such a volatile race. There are so many ways to steer them into war.
And once the deaths of thousands have granted me strength, I will call dragons. And from their deaths, I will obtain the power I seek. You will kneel to me; from your mouth will come the words of apology that I am owed.
It means nothing that they will not be spoken of your free will. And it means nothing that, when the children are in my possession once more, their words of gratitude will pour from mouths they no longer control.
I’ve grown tired of thinking beings, you see. And I’ve discovered of late that I rather prefer puppets.
“Nergal, what have you done?”
He made a great show of looking around the battlefield; at the back of his mind, he noted that the sheer quantities of Wyvern Riders implied that none other than Bern had spewed forth this horde of vermin. “Why, I’ve saved us all. Do you not believe your own eyes?”
“You ‘saved’ us by using the foulest of magic!” Athos seemed truly aghast; Nergal hid his mingled frustration and resignation behind an unruffled visage, resisting the urge to slick back his hair from his forehead for the fourteenth time today. He had known from the very origin of this plan that his old friend would not - could not - listen to reason. It was the great madness of pacifists and the pious. But his foreknowledge of this wound only acted to dull the pain as it became reality.
Nonetheless, he had followers to please, and so he was forced to act out his role in this charade. Let them remember that he had attempted reason when any less enlightened man could have seen that, already, words were useless.
“All magic that takes life is foul to some degree, from the feeblest Fire tome to Forblaze itself… Why should this magic be more so than any other of its kind? Indeed, I would call it nobler than the rest - It allows no life to go to waste.” Despite himself, he smiled; Athos jerked back as though struck.
“And you, Sophia?” the Archsage - it was hard to think of him otherwise at the moment, for he looked every decade of his thousand years - beseeched, stretching out a hand to the girl who stood beside Nergal. She looked away, wrapping herself tightly in her cloak. “Did you not use the same magic? Not content with his own fall, he forced you to share in the same depravity-”
“An odd way to describe my relationship with my daughter in all but blood,” Nergal snapped.
“May the gods be thanked that you hesitate to transgress one sacred law!” Athos cried bitterly.
Nergal coughed and indicated the battlefield in one grand, sweeping gesture, so onlookers would be sure to notice. “Now, really, Athos - ought you not to be concerned more with those War Dragons that accompanied those troops? Some transgressions are rather more tangible than others.” He raised his voice. “I have preached for centuries that those beyond Nabata would one day discover us, and seek to destroy us for no reason other than our existence - and so it came to pass. Shall those who wish to survive remain in Arcadia, and await the next assault, and the one after that, and the one succeeding that - until the one that deals the killing blow to us all? Or shall we try our luck in the world beyond, and usher in an era in our own image?”
“What?” Athos gasped, echoed by the murmuring of the dragon elders. “Are you mad?”
Nergal showed his teeth. “No,” he said quietly - too quietly for anyone but Athos and Sophia to hear. “But I rather think I’m the only one who’s sane.”
***
“Sophia,” he said to his apprentice much later on, as their group of defectors - smaller than what he would have liked, but larger than he could have expected - straggled out of the desert. “What do you foresee?”
She bit her lip, looking away. He suppressed a surge of frustration; Ninian and Nils had never been this shy even at half her age, he was sure of it. “I… see… darkness,” she said with great hesitation. “Impenetrable… darkness…”
Oh, he knew what she saw. And he knew the source of the “darkness” as well as the oracle herself. “Yes, Sophia,” he said soothingly. “But what of the outcome? Does success or failure await us on this path?”
Her gaze darted to his face, then away again. “…Success,” she said, sounding as though the word choked her. “And… the fall of Bern.”
Excellent - he could report that to his followers. No point in continuing that line of questions, lest she report anything that his followers might not want to hear. “And the children?”
Sophia was very silent and still. “You will meet again,” she said at last. “And… perhaps a lost soul… will be returned.”
“Now, now, my dear - why such hesitancy over such lovely news?”
She bowed her head and flinched away from him when he clapped her on the shoulder. “Even if they come to no harm… such… darkness…” Her voice wavered and faded to the barest whisper as she continued, “A future… without light…”
He snickered and wrapped his arm around her shoulders in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but only made her flinch away once again. Well, let her be a squeamish child for now - she would lose the last of her innocence before long. “The despair of the many always fuels the triumph of the few, Sophia. It’s a lesson I learned one thousand years ago. And it’s a lesson you’ll learn in the new Scouring to come.”
The humans of Ilia knew their allegiances, and though one of the Divine Generals came from their people, the rest refused to join the war against the dragons. And, in turn, the pacifist Ice Dragons refused to join the others of their species in the war against the humans.
It was not an easy decision. Those who fought in the genocidal war declared that any neutral observers were as good as traitors; raiding parties of both species invaded Ilia time and time again, each hoping to claim the snowy land for their side of the war. Many Ilians suffered. Some died.
But Ilians, humans and dragons alike, held fast to their truce; if border battalions could not repel invaders through force of arms, terrible blizzards crushed the interlopers as they tried to make their way through the mountains. Ice Dragons remained peaceful whenever possible - but were not too kind to kill in the defense of others.
They might have endured as they always had, despite the slaughter consuming the rest of Elibe, if not for the horrors of the Ending Winter. Many of Ilia’s snow-capped mountains became volcanoes under the calamity’s fell influence, and their eruptions reshaped the very landscape; the Ice Dragons, stripped of much of their power, could do little to aid the humans - much less themselves. When the new order of the world stabilized, they vanished into the deepest and coldest parts of Ilia, retreating to places where some vestige of their old power still clung to the land, and from then on vanished from human sight. The Ilians told many tales of strange, chill beings who helped lost travelers to safety, but the serene demigods who stood between blizzards and human settlements, alleviated the worst of the cold, and assisted starving villagers in times of famine became nothing more than myths from a better age of the world.
But it was said that, on the rarest of occasions, a druid might be found traveling through the villages of Ilia, heading deep into the mountains or making his way to warmer climes; and he would need neither sleep nor nourishment, but rather pause on his way only to warm himself by a fire. If asked, he would only say that he worked for a cause greater than himself - for the healing of long illness, and the return of power that had been lost. Was he close to his goal? No… no, not yet. For now, he could only live like any other Ilian mercenary, visiting home only out of love and loneliness and departing to earn his keep. But someday, perhaps… someday not too far in the future, if one took the long view… If those to whom he spoke would be so kind as to wait a little while longer, and keep the faith…
They waited for a very long time.
Author's Note:
First AU: Nergal was never separated from Ninian and Nils.
Second AU: Nergal and Aenir never met.
Third AU: Nergal didn't lose his memory.
Fourth AU: Nergal was never caught in his 'experiments' and so never banished from Arcadia.
Fifth AU: The Ice Dragons were never forced to flee Ilia, and so Nergal never started on his dark path.
(May I note, for the third AU, that Nergal not losing his memory doesn't equate to Nergal not losing his sanity?)
Incidentally, the third AU takes place during alternate!FE6, in case it's unclear why Arcadia was attacked. Leeet's just say the equivalent of the Arcadia chapter went very differently.
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