all things considered, i think the blue lions ending is the “true” ending and at least the happiest of endings... we’ll see when the dlcs come out tho
spoilers under cut
THE TEA IS SIPPETHED
it’s literally the only ending in which dimitri lives and becomes the “savior king” and saves the continent and creates a new democratic government to fix the broken old noble/chest system.
edelgard dies but like. she did that to herself by LITERALLY STARTING A WAR AND KILLING THOUSANDS OVER 5 YEARS. like that bitch had it coming. she may have wanted a better future by getting rid of a corrupt church but fuck that bitch honestly she coulda gone about it in a better way
idk about the golden deer route, i havent seen much on it, but eh dimitri still dies and i think so does edelgard so it isnt much better. just slightly better than the black eagle route. church route is also in the same boat.
idk man dimitri and the blue lions literally did nothing wrong. the kingdom did nothing wrong, they only ever acted out of self defense. so fuck the empire honestly afjsafnjaksfajksfjaks for as wack as dimitri gets it ONLY happens because of MASSIVE ptsd, depression, and anxiety caused BY the empire, his step mother, and edelgard. like his step mom had his whole family killed in front of him, blamed it on duscur to destroy them, then she got killed by edelgard i think or smth. his dad LITERALLY was beheaded in front of him and people/buildings were burned too. like holy fuck he’s just a KID goddamn
anyways, the empire is literally the invading imperialistic army so. yeah. no. edelgard can’t just be like: “aw ur in the wrong dimitri!1!! you are a bad person to keep fighting back and killing more people!!111!! even tho i started all this shit and killed thousands of innocent people to begin with!1! i burned a whole village mother fucker!”
“UR A DELUSIONAL PRINCE FOR DEFENDING YOUR HOMELAND AND CHURCH ALLIES”
before killing him. like fuck. that. bitch. UGH.
like he didnt even know it was his step mom that did it until later when he finally takes the throne. it’s bullshit, all he knew is some bastards like the flame emperor were behind it, that’s all. he wanted Rightful revenge for the murder of his family, the destruction of garreg mach and the “death” of his teacher, AND the 5 year war that butchered the continent and his homeland.
dimitri is valid as FUCK for being pissed at her and the empire. wack. it’s all wack. he’s the best boy and the only route that leads to a good ending for him and the kingdom overall is the blue lions route so there.
he gets all crazed but honestly who wouldnt. dont gaslight the man for having a super fucked up life and stressful from like age 10 and on. he deserves peace for all he’s been through and he does a fucking fantastic job once he gets his shit together.
edit: based on all the likes i’ve been getting on this i can probably just assume that I Am Right About This
sorry i dont make the rules nsfjanfjannfjnnjk
also all the shit edelgard wanted? dimitri went and did anyways. he got rid of the bullshit nobility and made things more of a democracy. like all she did was kinda pointless and made a lot of enemies.
sure, byleth still has that thing in their chest but who GIVES A FUCK. they still live their life just fine like damn. rhea retires the fuck away regardless. so she aint being a tyrant anymore. byleth is in charge. like damn all the “good shit” from the black eagle playthrough is IN THIS ONE PLUS DIMITRI LIVES AND MORE PEOPLE LIVE AND HAVE GOOD LIVES.
so yeah
also also: empires always ALWAYS crumble as nations desire their independence. in a few decades after edelgard leaves you can BET your ass someone will wanna revolt from their control. imperialism never works forever folks. look at all of human history for that example. the other nations in fodlan should remain free.
i think by the end dimitri rules all the lands in fodlan? mainly bc the empire just got dethroned and they are destabilized (the alliance is also destabilized but i think they are mostly ok), so it makes sense he would rule/join the two (empire/kingdom) together for mutual growth. but they are still at least sorta recognized as their own territories. they aren’t just wiped from history like edelgard did ffs.
ALSO. ANOTHER THING (sorry i keep editting this bc i have so many thoughts)
THE FINAL FUCKING CUTSCENE OF BLUE LIONS
AFTER FUCKING EVERYTHING HE OFFERS EDELGARD HIS HAND. EVEN AFTER THE WAR. AFTER SHE TURNED INTO A FUCKING DEMON AND TRIED TO KILL HIM. AFTER. FUCKING. EVERYTHING. HE STILL GIVES HER ONE LAST CHANCE
HE FUCKING MEANS IT TOO, THIS AIN’T SOME BULLSHIT PLOY.
BUT NO, SHE FUCKING STABS HIM WITH THE KNIFE HE GAVE HER ALL THOSE YEARS AGO. SO HE HAS TO KILL HER WITH HIS LANCE. HE ISN’T STARTLED OR SURPRISED. JUST HURT.
STONE COLD AFTER BEING BETRAYED BY HER OVER AND OVER AGAIN. HE JUST RIPS THAT SHIT OUT AND DROPS IT ON THE FLOOR. HE’S DONE WITH HER AND NEEDS TO MOVE ON.
BUT! BUT! BYLETH LOOKS BACK AT HER AND SO DOES DIMITRI, BUT BYLETH STOPS HIM. DON’T LOOK BACK. MOVE ON. THE FUCKING HAND HOLD. LIKE DAMN. BEST BUDS FOR LIFE. THEY GOT EACH OTHER’S BACK LIKE NO ONE ELSE.
AND THEY MOVE ON INTO THE LIGHT TO THE CHEERING CROWDS BECAUSE AT LONG FUCKING LAST THE WAR IS OVER AND THEY STILL HAVE THEIR INTEGRITY.
after all the bullshit, they still have the highest moral ground and actually fix things. even after offering their enemy peace.
----------------------------------------------
after the cutscene!! the epilogue!!
LIKE MOTHER FUCKER, THIS IS ALL THE PROOF YOU NEED THAT HE IS THE BEST BOY AND HAS THE BEST ROUTE FUCK OFF
DEMOCRACY: CHECK
HELPING THE DISADVANTAGED: CHECK
LISTENING/HELPING TO MINORITIES/FOREIGNERS/DUSCUR: CHECK
CORRUPTION FREE: CHECK
BYLETH IS FINE AND IS THE NEW ARCH BISHOP FOR A BETTER CHURCH, RHEA JUST PEACES OUT: CHECK
MOVING PAST HIS MENTAL ILLNESS AND PTSD FOR THE BETTERMENT OF HIMSELF AND OTHERS/THE KINGDOM: CHECKITY FUCKING CHECK
THE ABSOLUTE LEGEND HIMSELF, DIMITRI
edit edit: also look at the murals specifically, i’m gonna point out some shit real quick.
first, dimitri’s:
It’s in nature. Birds and trees and leaves. Calm and harmonious.
Children are playing and smiling, food is being passed out by the soldiers to the people. they are thankful.
byleth is addressing the people, writing out reforms and decrees, making sure things are aright.
the people of duscur are literally at the side of dimitri, the king.
looks like people from the alliance are on the far left of the mural, they are carrying gifts but they dont seem unhappy about it. just. normal.
dimitri is lower than everyone on the canvas besides a person on their knees asking for help and literal children. he is seated down at THEIR level, smiling AT them and doesn’t mind the kid pulling at him and playing. very relaxed. he’s sitting on just a regular ol’ tree stump. no throne. no opulence. just him, bc that’s all that’s needed.
NOW, LET’S LOOK AT EDELGARD’S OOHH BOY:
she is the tallest above them all, next to her is a divine figure, she is holding a staff as well. she is power. she is above all other peoples. she is STEPPING on a national flag with impunity. she doesn’t CARE she is the one in charge and no one can stand against it.
everyone from the other nations are bowing their heads and being submissive, but they certainly dont look happy. they look anxious as hell. their kingdoms are literally being trampled by the emperor. she is in her grand castle, gold and red and opulent. power and riches and rule.
the common folk, however look up to her. they see her as a second saint seiros. a better one. hence the divine figure next to her. she is like a god to them. not ideal. they seem happy, but no. they are looking to her for guidance in a troubled time caused by HER actions.
let’s not forget the mage in the back holding a knife. things are far from peaceful.
the two very different moods of these pictures say all. one is true peace where everyone seems to be thriving with a compassionate ruler.
the other is domineering and crushing in presence. people are anxious about the future with violence still on the horizon.
yeah, no. blue lions >>>> black eagles.
(i’m currently playing through golden deer which is looking p good so far, def better than black eagles and then im gonna do the church route. we’ll see how THAT goes anfjanjfnnfasjns)
edelgard stans dont interact
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I'd love to hear a director's commentary on La leggenda di Niccolo please :D Have a star as well ⭐
HA! Okay well, I’ll talk about the sections that I actually wrote so here it comes:
Chap 1
Engulfed in the never ending masses of water, he reckoned one should feel intimidated. No ground under his feet, only limited amounts of air to his disposal, and the uncertainty of what lies within the darker corners of the ocean should normally frighten you. And yet, he never felt more at peace than when he was floating so freely in the sea, almost as if gravity and the world outside didn’t exist
the fucking IRONY of me writing this while being deadly afraid of deep water. its honestly like “yeah,,,,, lemme list all the things i personally hate about deep sea…. and lets add ‘well, but theres something good too about that for sure,,,i guess,,,, ”
But what was more important for me was this contrast to what Ermal dreams about, his lowkey fantasy - and where he is irl, the icy south pole. I’m rather fond of opposing things/contrasts.
The soldier breathed heavily in and out, but there was no time to rest as the next blaze of fire was aimed at him.He countered and evaded but his opponent was more forceful, his flames harsher, faster until the soldier’s back hit the cold railing. He was caught, and when his opponent mercilessly stroke once more, he knew he had to save himself by escaping into the cold water.The man remaining on the top deck smirked. Ah yes, he’d almost assume those new soldiers were just too easy to take on even if only for practice reasons, but it pleased him more to say that he still got it.
i really hope this introduction just tells you everything you need to know about Renga’s character.
How much sooner the war could have been won had it not been for the Poles!
While actually reflecting on the universe, i realised, it must be incredibly difficult for firebenders on the poles. like, I just assume they really, really arent fit for the cold which would make invading incredibly difficult for them. also lol, renga hates it at the poles obviously.
Shaking so hard that kids ran towards their mothers and the watchtower fell over and when the fog cleared up, Ermal felt his stomach drop. ”No.”
Nothing, absolutely, nothing in that universe is more frightening than seeing the Fire Nation military pull up to your doorstep.
Also, lmao, love to imagine Rinald quietly going “oh nooo my watchtower D:”
Ermal pushed himself through the crowd until he was right in front of everyone, until he was the last barrier between the Fire Nation soldiers and the village.
Ermal has Strong Opinions™ about the Fire Nation, with reasons of course, and seeing them here is the absolute nightmare to him.
“You mean the Avatar that disappeared off the face of the Earth? The one that nobody has ever seen and that was probably never even reborn? That Avatar?”And if his cockiness gave off a certain invitation to smash his face in, then this was perhaps a little bit Ermal’s fault.
to quote the Smiths: Bigmouth Strikes Again!
“B-but he’s- he’s so young? I swear to the Fire Lord, if this is yet another trick then-”
Chap 2
Niccolò had always been in awe of the Fire Nation’s advanced industrial sector. The machinery that originated from the Nation had always had cutting edge quality which no one in the world could quite imitate nor match. This ship however was beyond anything Niccolò had ever seen. This ship was fully steam-driven with the powerful motors roaring under his feet. And those weren’t the only novelties.Steel processed so professionally that it makes impenetrable walls and doors which opened and closed only through quite sophisticated lock mechanisms. It all looked so modern, it all looked so futuristic.
so the idea was, since Nic had missed an entire century, the ship looked super modern to him. while its a canon fact that the FN is quite advanced with machinery, the ship itself is just to an up-to-date standard. But to Niccolo personally it seemed futuristic. i like the idea of him being amazed at things he has never seen in his life just to find out they’re pretty common in the current timeline.
There was not much time left, Niccolò had to think quickly. Extremely convenient how his nose started tickling right in that moment.The powerful sneeze that followed had two consequences: One, the guard in front of him was catapulted straight into the metal door of the cell, rendering him unconscious.Two, Niccolò and the guard behind him were also forcefully pushed back to the other end of the corridor, crashing into the hard wall.Well, at least the guard did. The young airbender was spared that fate, by that nice pillow the guard turned out to be, so he quickly got onto his feet and ran as fast as he could with his hands tied behind his back.
so yeah ngl, this was just copied from the OG ep
Now that his hands were freed, he opened the first door that presented itself to him, but in front of him, he simply saw the quarters of General Renga who stared at his now roaming prisoner in shock. Okay, time to turn around, it seems.
listen, i just love the thought of overconfident General Renga being so shellshocked to see his prisoner escaping that he just gapes at him. And ofc Nic slamming the door shut immediately jsfkld
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Niccolò cursed as he evaded a burst of fire that was aimed at him before taking the next corner “Where’s the exit?! Where’s the goddamn exi- AH!! A DOOR!!” He pulled it open to reveal a startled guy sitting there just minding his own business. An unexpected sight, with an even more unexpected odor following. “Oh? uhm- Sorry man! Just- just take your time! Also, perhaps light a candle when you’re done. Bye!” The young Avatar swiftly apologised as he closed the door of what was most definitely not an exit.
Fav OC so far! That simple FN dude was just trying to take a dump in peace but who would have known that all hell would break lose and the goddamn Avatar of all people would walk into him smh. Also, I really enjoyed the thought of while this is all hectic and dangerous, Nic still being human enough to go like “oh, my bad! sorry dude!” at this random soldier. Who knows, maybe we should bring that one back some time later. And i kinda wanted the whole escape to be funny, since its Nic’s POV, and it just wouldnt suit his carefree spirit to make this super serious (yet).
“I’ll give you that, hiding for so long was sort of impressive.” Niccolò heard Renga’s voice behind him as the General had caught up with him.
almost wrote “century” there but then remembered nah omg he can’t know yet
A piece of ice may or may not have also hit Renga straight into the face but nobody would complain about that anyway.
yeah i just love the thought of this super dramatic scene of Nic entering the Avatar State and then theres a chunk of ice knocking Renga unconscious lmao get fucked, dude
“Nic!” Ermal ran towards the slowly decreasing water pillar to catch the unconscious airbender in the last second, dropping to his knees in the process. That was beyond anything anybody of that age should normally be capable of. That was beyond what any waterbender could ever be capable of. And yet, lying in his arms, Niccolò looked so exhausted, so weak. Just like any other kid. Not a trace from the sheer force that was unleashed moments earlier.
I think this was really the moment Ermal started feeling real responsibility over Niccolo. Just seeing him do all these crazy things and yet being reminded that this huge burden of being the Avatar is literally thrusted upon a simple kid. Also, this is the first time he called him “Nic”
Various noises and sounds buzzed through the air that afternoon: The loud shoveling of snow from the bow, the quieter crackling emerging from the hands of the firebenders who were melting their frozen compatriots, the fast steps rushing left and right over the ship. All these different sounds were heard, but none of them were chattering. Nobody dared to chat. Not after this disastrous defeat. What a disgrace that had been, General Renga thought grinding his teeth.
Everybody on this goddman ship is just scared shitless that Renga will roast them if they so much like whisper. they know he moody, they know he’ll blame them for the avatar’s escape. so lets all just work and repair shit and keep quite.
When he found consciousness again, he was left with not only one horrendous purple bruise on his face, but also with a half destroyed ship.
jdsfksajfklf OK SO YEAH, my first intention was “lmao let a piece of ice hit him” but then i realised “oh wait he’d have a bruise afterwards” and then “LMAOOOO he’d be like Zuko, how perfect is that” ok so granted, unlike our dear fire prince, Renga’s bruise is only temporary, but i really hoped someone would pick up the connection to Zuko
Whatever had happened to the Avatar earlier, it left a colossal mark on the ship, and secretly, on Renga personally too. He might have gotten fooled once, but he wouldn’t get fooled again.
basically, he feels personally insulted about being beaten by a kid. what a loser lmao
“Martino!”
“Y-yes, General?” stuttered the lanky assistant with the askew glasses, clenching his hands around his writing board. One would think you’d get used to Renga’s harsh tone over time, but that was simply not the case..
rip martino but renga absolutely needed a poor anxious assistant whom he could terrorise
“We need the best of the best to defeat him. And I just know the right choice for that job…”
heeeeheeee ….. no comment ..for now. but im curious to what you guys think about that
Thank you so much! this was a lot of fun to do ! :)
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chapter 11.5 -- okay, 12, it’s chapter 12, fine, fine. I should stop trying to predict how long my chapters will be. I’m always wrong. the Fae AU keeps escaping all my predictions. it’s fine. it’s cool.
[Beginning] [Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]
It is not, as Apollo expects, the worst road trip he has ever been a part of. Trucy likes to sing along to the radio – she has a surprisingly good voice – which stops Clay from starting up his usual road trip tradition of bellowing out “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and seeing how much he can get through before someone slaps him. Trucy claimed shotgun, as “the woman with the magic map”, meaning Apollo is shunted to the back with Ema, who upends her bag on the floor to pull from it a jumbo-sized pack of Snackoos and offer a handful to him.
“None for us?” Clay asks, pouting in the rearview mirror.
“Backseat privileges,” Ema replies.
Trucy cranks the radio up as a familiar guitar riff begins.
If it’s extortion, it works; she and Clay have not finished the first verse, Trucy’s almost-operatic interpretation running up against Clay’s off-key warbling, before Ema is shoving the Snackoos up between their seats, offering a trade of chocolates for an end to the car-vibrating force of Guilty Love.
“Not a fan?” Clay asks.
Ema groans. So does Trucy. “Don’t get me started,” Ema says.
“Yeah, please don’t,” Trucy adds.
“He’s a pretentious fuckin’ diva who—”
Trucy begins yelling out the chorus to the song over the second verse emitting from the radio.
They are all still arguing – Ema berating Clay’s taste in music while Trucy moves into an attempt to sing My Boyfriend is the Prosecution’s Witness to the tune of Guilty Love and Apollo tries to turn the volatile atmosphere anywhere else – when the song ends. Trucy shushes everyone, violently, smacking Clay on the arm and then flailing back at Ema, and turns up the radio. A DJ is in the middle of saying something.
“—announced today on their social media. While fans are disappointed, no one can say that the break-up comes as a surprise, after the sentencing of guitarist Daryan Crescend for murder in July, and the three months of, ahem, radio silence that’s followed. And earlier this week, leader singer Klavier Gavin’s brother was indicted on a second count of murder – I can’t say I blame him for maybe wanting to duck out of the spotlight. Gavin’s brother was previously charged in April, for—”
Trucy changes the channel. A commercial for a local furniture outlet doesn’t help break the awkward spell fallen over them. “Yeah,” she says, after a full minute, during which time they discover their new channel is a country music channel. “No real surprise.”
“Brother and bandmate,” Clay says quietly. “Hell of a year.”
“Hell of a six months,” Apollo says. And he was there for all of it – he was there for more of it than Klavier ever was. Klavier wasn’t there in April, not when Kristoph fell, not when any of them could have had any idea what was ahead. How much magic would surround them.
“If my older sister had been convicted of murder, I was gonna crawl into the dirt and die,” Ema says, “so I’m with the fop on that one, actually.”
There is a worrying lack of hypotheticals in the second half of Ema’s scenario. No “would have”s. Like she was where Klavier is, but the trial had a different outcome, and the frozen expression on her face, her eyes gone blank, she looks like she has caught up with her own words. Said too much. Apollo doesn’t know much about her as a person, her life before failing the forensics exam, how it was that she knew Mr Wright, but he can sympathize with that fear of having given away too much, turned the conversation down a path that should stay blocked off.
“You have a sister?” Trucy asks, turning around in her seat. “You seemed kinda ‘only-child’ to me.’
“Yeah,” Ema says quietly. “Older sister. Her name’s Lana. We don’t… talk much.”
Apollo doesn’t know why the name feels like it strikes something in his brain, the way Ema’s did when she first introduced herself.
“Oh.” Trucy visibly wilts. “Sorry.”
Ema shrugs, slumping back against her seat, her arms folded. “It happens,” she says. Her eyes are glazed over, settled in Clay’s direction. Her mouth quirks in the beginnings of a smile. “She took me to the Space Museum once, not long after it first opened.” The wistful smile has grown a little larger. “Back when I didn’t know what kind of scientist I wanted to be, so I wanted to go everywhere, and she was like ‘Ema I’m not taking you to the fucking tar pits again, how about space?’, and—” She shakes her head. “Sorry. Your jacket got me thinking. Do you work there or something?”
And that is the question that Clay most likes to be asked, that or literally anything else ever about space, and that is the end of any of them getting a word in edgewise – but while Apollo’s heard it all before, Trucy has questions galore, and Ema sits forward, slowly losing the pretense of not being enraptured.
-
They have driven for over two hours by the time Trucy directs them to pull of the highway at an exit that tells them there is nothing for them that way but another 38 miles until Kurain Village. “Is that where the Fair Folk live?” Ema asks dryly, in her voice none of the nervousness that people tend to have. Apollo hasn’t spoken much with her about magic, doesn’t know what she thinks – but, well, she knows Phoenix. That’s clue enough that caution comes secondary.
“Not really,” Trucy says. “They just named it that. It’s part of our world. Sometimes some of the fae do show up and hang around, I think – Maya tried to convince Daddy to move out here, once, apparently, but he wouldn’t leave the office.”
“Who’s Maya?” Apollo asks. Sometimes he realizes how little he knows about Phoenix’s personal life, too.
“Daddy’s friend. She’s – wait, stop! Here! Turn down this road here!”
“This is not a road,” Clay says, hunching over the steering wheel. “This is some dirt, off the road, not even in the shape of a dirt road.”
The car groans as Clay turns it off of the asphalt into the dirt. Trucy pops open the door and stands, holding herself between the door and the car roof and turning her face to the sky and the no-longer-distant mountains looming above them. She says something, muffled, and points into the trees. “We’re close,” she says, ducking back inside the car. “Let’s park and go – we’re close.”
“Park right here?” Clay asks, raising a doubtful eyebrow.
“Barely anyone comes this way,” Trucy says. “Like, one bus, except I’m not even sure if this is on its route. It’s fine.”
“I’m more worried that this is some sort of sacred ground that we’re stomping on,” Clay says, but he turns the key and then smacks his head against the top of the wheel. “How much are we going to regret just walking out there?”
“Probably we won’t,” Trucy says. She flings the door open and jumps out, stretching her arms up into the air. “C’mon already!”
“So what are we doing now?” Ema asks, crumpling the Snackoos bag back into her bag and tumbling forth from the car like a liquid spilled. “Just walking into the woods until we find treasure or a bear?”
“We do have a map.” Trucy waves it at her. “But yes. That’s what we’re doing.” She lowers the page halfway to her side and then stops, tilting her head back. “I’ve been here before,” she says. “Grandpappy and I – sometime – sometime after my mom died.” She takes a few slow steps toward the treeline, her movements uneven, as in a daze. “It was just the two of us. And we came here, and we buried—” She spins around, eyes wide, looking at all and none of them. “We buried his grimoire.”
Without another word of warning, she dashes into the woods, sending them scrambling to catch up to her. It’s colder here than in the city, though Apollo didn’t think they went up too far in elevation. Leaves thickly coat the ground; do they hide rings of flowers beneath them or do those in their magic break through? They finally reach Trucy when she, focused on her map, walks straight into a tree and takes some time to properly reorient herself.
“Do you know why here, of all places?” Apollo asks. “Is it because of the mountains, and he was…?”
He stops. Does Trucy know what her grandfather was? Phoenix didn’t say. Of course he didn’t.
“He said this is where he landed,” Trucy replies, crunching a leaf beneath her foot. “He said he fell, and this is where he landed.”
“Was he—” Clay’s sense, that question that they all know they shouldn’t ask, that question that Apollo has asked again and again anyway, wars against curiosity, against more than wanting to know – needing to know, to understand what is Trucy’s family. “Was he, erm, one of – Them?”
He can’t even bring himself to offer up one of the epithets. This close to the mountains, Apollo isn’t sure that he could bring himself to speak of them plainly like he has learned to.
“Yeah,” Trucy says. “But I’m human. Don’t worry.” She flashes a grin, one of her usual grins, but it is tempered by the speed with which is vanishes from her face again, replaced by a frown of concentration. “I think we must be close, but not quite yet.”
“Hey, Trucy?” Ema asks. She pushes a branch out of the way and it snaps back to nearly strike Clay in the face. “Not to pry, but – if your grandfather was one of the Fair Folk, are you the changeling, or was it your mother?”
Trucy stops.
“Wait,” Ema says. “Not a changeling – that’s the fae child. The human kid, the one swapped out. Is there a word for that?”
“I don’t think so,” Trucy says. She hops over a log. “I don’t think there’s a name for people like that.”
She doesn’t answer the first question. Maybe she doesn’t know, either.
“When you say you buried it,” Apollo says, aware that there is nothing subtle about this lifeline he is throwing to pull her away from questions best left avoided (am I a child stolen away, raised by the fae? Did they take me from the life I should have had?), “have we come all this way to be foiled for want of a shovel?”
“Oh fuck,” Trucy says.
“Hey!” Ema barks, her sharp rebuke the manifestation of that urge Apollo feels to scold her for that. “Language, young missy!” She folds her arms across her chest, her glare a fond one. “Where did you learn that?”
“My daddy’s a card shark,” Trucy says, countering Ema with a smug grin of her own.
“I thought he was a piano player,” Clay says.
“Only because you’ve never heard him play,” Trucy replies. “Easy mistake to make.”
“Considering it was all magic that hid the map,” Ema says, with nary a pause to acclimate everyone to the idea of throwing the conversation back past that latest sharp turn, “wouldn’t it be magic to hide it again, logically speaking?”
“Where’s the logic here?” Clay asks. Ema snaps a twig off a bush and flicks it at him. “And I mean, if it’s just covered up with some illusion, couldn’t anyone stumble into it?”
“Maybe it takes the map, too,” Apollo says. “Or maybe only a Gramarye can unveil it.”
He steps up onto a tree stump, like the extra five inches can grant him some kind of special insight or a better view in the forest of brown. Then he is falling, the wood rot giving way beneath his foot, a sharp jolt running up his leg from the twist of his foot. “Shit!”
Trucy winces. “Ouch. Poor Polly. I—”
“Apollo,” Ema says, very seriously, but somewhat muffled by her hand over her mouth. “Move. Move right now.”
“What?” He sits up, dislodging his foot from the stump, and looks about himself. The forest floor of dead leaves has cleared, as though by a strong, concentrated wind, revealing browned dead grass encased by a perfect circle of blue flowers. “Oh. Oh shit.”
Without an ounce of grace, still on his hands and knees, he scrambles and rolls his way out of the faery ring. “So according to the map,” Trucy says, and above his head Apollo hears the flutter of the paper, “I think we found it.”
“Only a Gramarye, huh,” Clay says dryly.
“That was only supposition!”
“So who’s gonna stick their hand in a rotten tree stump?” Ema asks, producing a flashlight from her bag and shining the beam down into it. “I volunteer Trucy, because she’s wearing gloves, and is our Gramarye.”
Trucy kicks up the leaves on her approach, searching for hints of another ring around the stump, more than just Apollo’s that sits adjacent to it. “If I get bit by a squirrel and get rabies and die, it’s your fault,” she says, kneeling down next to the stump and brushing her hair back to peer down into it.
“Statistically, your chance of getting rabies from a squirrel is negligible,” Ema says. “That shouldn’t be your worry.”
“What should I worry about, then?” Trucy asks. “Can you bring the light a little closer?”
“Bats, racoons, foxes, feral cats and dogs, and right now, probably non-rabies Fair Folk curses, since we’re fucking around by a ring.”
“I’m still concerned about bears,” Clay says.
“I’m not,” Ema says. “I’ve already got my plan, which is to trip you into its path.”
“General ‘you’, or me, specifically?”
“You specifically. Nothing personal, though. I just know Trucy and Apollo better than you.”
“This is way heavier than I thought,” Trucy says, falling off-balance and dropping something dark and rectangular. “Oof! Okay. Okay. We got it!” She lifts it up onto her knees, a thick book with a black cover and a character emblazoned in flowing purple script on it. “I knew I remembered this.” Her voice is quieter as she opens the book and flips through the rough-edged pages. “Grandpappy’s grimoire.” She closes the cover again, reverently, and keeps it balanced on her legs as she turns back to the stump. “Light again, please. I thought I saw something else.” Trucy has her head nearly in the hole, which can’t help her with her light situation, and she sits back and plunges her hand in again. “Yep! This is a – a funny-looking magatama?”
She holds it up, the blue stone sparkling in the flashlight beam, but also seemingly with its own interior glow, and Apollo gasps.
Three sets of eyes turn to him.
“That’s a mitamah,” he says, and to his own ears he sounds like he’s choking, but he feels like he’s choking too, and maybe the others don’t notice but he doubts it. “That’s someone’s soul.”
Trucy drops it into the leaves.
“What?” Clay looks suspicious – Trucy looks horrified. “How do you know?”
(“There’s no reason to give away your soul,” Dhurke told them, sternly, the sternest he ever got. “Never.” And then they tried to argue, to come up with reasons, because of course they did, and he hugged them both close. “You’ll make great lawyers someday, always looking for reasons and other ways, but this one – promise me. Nahyuta. Apollo.” He prodded each of them in the chest. “Don’t let someone else get their hands on your soul.”)
“The tail of it is different.” Apollo picks it up, brushing off the dirt and leaf particles that cling to it, and points to the longer, squiggling protrusion that extends from the loop. It doesn’t fully connect like a magatama, either, more like a hook than a circle.
It feels warm in his hand, humming through his fingers and up into his ears. It reminds him of the office – familiar, but disturbing, because there is no reason that it should feel so familiar and comforting.
“Could it be your grandfather’s?” Ema asks.
“Wouldn’t that mean he’s still alive?” Clay asks. “Is that possible?”
“It couldn’t be,” Apollo says. If he stares at the mitamah he thinks he can see flecks of gold within the blue, like stars on a constellation chart. “The Fair Folk don’t have souls like we do. They can’t sell them or manifest them like this.”
“Is that why they want human souls?” Ema asks.
“How do you know?” Clay repeats.
Apollo’s heart has stoppered up his throat.
“It makes them stronger,” Trucy says softly. “When they buy names, or souls, it makes their magic stronger. But this – this can’t be that.” She hugs the grimoire up to her chest. “It can’t just be that.”
“Should we just… put it back?” Ema asks. “Someone’s probably looking for it, right?”
“It’s been seven years and no one has come before us,” Apollo says. The humming isn’t as steady now, seems more like a song, and familiar, damned familiar. “No, we can’t just leave her here.”
In the silence, even the song seems to stop. “What?” Apollo asks. Their three sets of eyes are on him again, even more piercing, Trucy’s wide and Clay’s narrowed and Ema’s narrowing too.
“‘Her’?” Ema repeats. “Why ‘her’?”
“I…” Apollo swallows his heart. “I don’t know, but I… I know?”
“I don’t think you should be holding that in your bare hands,” Clay says.
But the alternative seems to be dropping her in the dirt again, and Apollo’s fingers curl tighter around the stone. He can’t do that, either. Trucy unties her scarf from around her neck and silently passes it to him, letting him wrap the stone up in the red fabric and then cradle it close again. The song thrumming in his ears ceases. “I guess we should take it to Mr Wright and ask him if he knows what to do,” Ema says. “He’ll know what to do with it. Her?”
Trucy’s gaze is unfocused, her head slowly drifting away from the horizon back toward the stump. “Trucy?” Apollo asks. “Are you okay?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” she says. “Just buy up someone’s soul all for himself. He wouldn’t. There had to be some other reason. It wasn’t just power, there had to be a good reason.”
(“There’s no reason,” Dhurke said. “Never.”)
“He gave me magic, as a gift,” Trucy says. “He was a good man.” She looks up at Apollo, blinking her blue eyes furiously. “Wasn’t he?”
-
It takes them another forty-five minutes to stumble out of the woods and find Clay’s car again. Ema makes everyone nervous talking about the odds of them stumbling across a body decomposing in the undergrowth – “I have zero desire to ever get caught up in one of your murder investigations,” Clay says, picking up a branch from the bushes and brandishing it like a baseball bat – and bears. The two of them are at least doing a good job of filling the silence left by Trucy, uncomfortably quiet, walking in a trace. Apollo tugs her by the arm out of the way of trees. He could put the mitamah in his pocket but hasn’t, has kept it held close to his chest.
The story that Phoenix spun of the Gramaryes is gnawing at him. A woman, on the bad end of a deal with Magnifi – Apollo doesn’t want to think about the possibility.
(Trucy must be thinking about the possibility, mustn’t she?)
She crawls into the back seat of the car, depositing the grimoire in the middle, and Ema makes a mad dash for the front seat, leaving Apollo to sit on the other side of the grimoire, separated by it from Trucy. The only time she speaks is to call Phoenix and ask him if he is at the office – he is, because she directs Clay to go back to the office.
It is a long, quiet ride home, some subdued conversation between Ema and Clay about their fields of science rising over the country music still on the radio. Trucy taps Apollo’s hand and beckons him to hand her the mitamah. She takes off one of her gloves and weighs it in her hand with an ever-deepening frown until she wraps it back up and passes it back to Apollo.
Ema shouts “Yellow car!” and hits Clay on the shoulder. He hits her back and tells her that she needs to specify no punch-backs next time.
-
Phoenix is sitting on the floor leaning against the couch with two notebooks and a stack of papers spread out in front of him, the coffee table shoved to the side, a pencil in his mouth and another tucked behind his ear, when they stagger into the office. Apollo is mediating an argument about the merits of Eldoon’s for a late lunch – Ema does not want to brave it, while Clay wants nothing more than to do so. Phoenix does not look up.
“Hey, Daddy,” Trucy says wearily.
His head snaps up, dislodging the pencil behind his ear. “What’s wrong?”
“You always complain about your back hurting, and now look what you’re doing.” Trucy’s words sound forced through a smile. Phoenix’s frown deepens. He watches Trucy walk past him to deposit the grimoire on his desk.
“We went looking into the envelope you gave her the other day,” Apollo says. “The real last page.”
Phoenix doesn’t look back from Trucy right away. “A full expedition team, huh?” he asks, raising one eyebrow as he looks over Ema and Clay. “Who’s this?”
“Er, oh, yeah. I’m Clay Terran. Apollo’s roommate.” Clay points with his thumb at Apollo, even though they all know there is only one Apollo that they know. “You’re Mr Wright, yeah?” He doesn’t do a good job of feigning enthusiasm.
“I know that look,” Phoenix says, standing with a wince and an audible crack of some of his joints. “That’s the ‘I’ve heard about you and it’s nothing good’ look.” He lets Clay splutter for a full two seconds before he grins crookedly and adds, “That’s fair.” Almost immediately, his expression flattens out to something stern and almost entirely foreign. “Trucy,” he calls. “What’s wrong?”
“We found my grandfather’s grimoire,” she says, sitting on the desk and holding it up, only for it to slip from her hands and crash to the floor. “And Polly has the other thing that was with it.”
Apollo unwraps the mitamah.
Has he ever seen Phoenix surprised? The man spent seven years an unbeaten poker player, and this past half-year absolutely inscrutable to Apollo’s eyes. There is nothing controlled in his reaction; his mouth falls open and his eyes go wide, turning blue immediately and staying blue, horror apparent in how they linger on the mitamah. “Oh,” he breathes. “That is – yeah.”
He reaches forward with trembling hands and scoops up the scarf spread across Apollo’s hands. He holds it cradled close, too, his free hand cupped beneath the one holding it, prepared to catch the stone should it slip, but still not having touched it with bare skin. “So,” he says. “The ‘source’ of Magnifi’s magic – that grimoire, and this soul.”
“But,” Trucy says, “that…” She stops. She chews on the inside of her cheek. Mr Hat, the wisp, is visible, bobbing frenetically around her shoulders. “It’s…” Her shoulders slump. “Do you know what to do with that, Daddy? Is there a way to know what person a soul belongs to?”
“Not from looking only at the mitamah,” Phoenix answers. His eyes still hollow blue when he turns them back to Trucy. “I am not particularly familiar with mitamahs, honestly, but I’ll look into it and see what I can do to get it back to her.” He takes the stone in one hand and offers Trucy her scarf back. “If the fae who has possession of a soul is still alive, they can just give it back – not that many are willing to, mind – but since he’s dead – well.” He shakes his head. “Thank you, though. For helping Trucy, and bringing this back.”
It’s a firm end to the conversation, not that Apollo knows what more to ask about a soul. Ema, though, is frowning, her arms crossed, her mouth twisting like she is puzzling out something. “We were gonna go get noodles at Eldoon’s,” Apollo says. “If – if you wanted to come, Trucy.”
“Oh!” She looks surprised, like she hadn’t expected to be addressed. “Um.” Her heels bounce against the desk. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”
Her hands, curled around the edge of the desk, shine red. Apollo doesn’t even need that to know she’s lying.
-
“We all agree she’s not okay, right?” Clay asks.
They were silent for a block down from the office, Ema not even complaining about losing the Eldoon’s battle. (Apollo was prepared to tell her that she didn’t have to come, but she had attached herself to them without a cursory protest.)
“Definitely not,” Ema says. “I guess she doesn’t want to believe that her grandfather was the double-dealing type of Folk – which, I’ve read the case file on his death, I’d believe that about him in a hot second. There’s nothing worse than a blackmailer like that. Also.” She plants herself firmly in the sidewalk. Apollo and Clay both bump into her. “None of us referred to the mitamah as ‘she’ or ‘her’, right? Like you were, Apollo.”
“None of us but Trucy even talked about it,” Apollo says. Clay nods. “Why?”
“Because Mr Wright did.” Ema’s forehead creases. “He said he would ‘get it back to her’. He wasn’t even touching it, was he?” Apollo shrugs. Ema shrugs too. “He knows something. More than he said.”
“He always does,” Apollo says.
They reach Eldoon’s, and Ema says that it’s weird to see the stand without a corpse attached. The look that Clay gives her makes her and Apollo both laugh. Once they have their noodles, they walk another few blocks to People Park and find a bench not far from where the noodle-stand crime scene once stood. Apollo has learned to be grateful for the mouthfuls of broth that taste of so much salt to sting. It feels a little more like safety, like salt across a doorway.
He starts to say what he’s thinking, that Trucy might be worried that the mitamah is her mother’s, or at least he is, but the words die on his tongue, shriveled by the salt. He doesn’t feel right to tell Clay and Ema about Trucy’s mother’s death, when he has no idea if Trucy knows or not. Phoenix has made him the guardian of family secrets that aren’t his and something about that feels wrong. Maybe necessary in some way, to understand the case, to understand what happened with Kristoph, but still wrong.
Instead, he helps Ema explain to Clay her earlier comments about Magnifi and blackmail. You can’t refuse, and we both know the reason why – Trucy can’t know he did that. She seemed to idolize him. What a hard way to fall.
He’ll text her tomorrow, Apollo decides. Check in, see how she’s doing.
(There’s probably someone else he should check in with, too, the events of this week all considered.)
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