Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Edelgard had left for Zanado for an excavation, she felt excited at the prospect of uncovering something groundbreaking; understandably so, for an archaeology student in her Master’s program. Being invited to visit and study one of the most important archaeological sites in Fódlan’s history is an honor for her, especially since the expedition is headed by the esteemed Professor Eisner—one of the youngest and yet forefront experts on the War of Heroes and the Church of Sothis. To be given the chance to go on-site and discover something that could rewrite everything they know about the time period? Oh, the honor Edelgard would bring to her name! 

In fact, as she continues to dig through the site with great care and enthusiasm, Edelgard feels the thrill of finding the truth of the existence of crests. The myths tell of the goddess bestowing upon noble men of days past unimaginable powers that brought glory and peace to the entire nation of Fódlan, and the impact this would have had on the continent’s politics and power dynamics has been her research interest ever since she applied to the graduate school of the University of Garreg Mach.

She remembers being nine years old and asking her stepfather what he would do if the stories of crests being real magic were real. He only smiled at her, saying he was glad they weren’t, and told her to go to sleep. Edelgard never understood why.

It became one of the main driving forces for Edelgard to pursue archaeology and history in general. The idea that a large chunk of Fódlan’s past had been lost to time intrigues her to no end. One must understand the past to move forward to the future—and putting together this last piece of the Fódlan puzzle might provide valuable insight to the politics of the modern day.

Maybe she’d finally understand what made her birth father such a vile, corrupt man.

She could be digging herself into a dead end here, but seeing as Zanado has always been known to be a significant place in history, Edelgard believes something of note could be just around the corner. She would’ve expected something like a mosaic that depicted the gifting of Crests to man, or a pottery fragment emblazoned with the symbols that seem to represent the long-lost phenomenon.

What she did not expect to discover was a body.

Inside the tomb is a woman. At this point in time, Edelgard is too stunned to understand just how significantly this event would affect her entire life. The body—an honest-to-goodness living and undecaying body—lies inside the open-faced coffin, wearing a silky white dress seemingly untainted by time, her hands clasping a jagged silver sword, and—the thought comes unprovoked—she is beautiful.

The woman’s green hair stands out against the sandstone of her resting place, her strangely pointed ears sticking out from underneath. And although her form is lithe, the formation of her muscles is perfect. Each limb carries a shimmer of gold from the bracers that protect them, and a crown of wings settles comfortably on her head. Edelgard finds herself completely dumbfounded at the sight, even as she creeps nearer.

She grips the trowel she’d been using to excavate the deeper parts of the tomb, hoping it would ground her in some semblance of reality. She blinks to see if it would reset her worldview, as if this mirage would disappear in the moments between. But the woman yet lives. Edelgard watches the slowed, steady rise and fall of the woman’s chest, breathing too real to ever be a trick of the light, and rushes out of the tomb to call for the one person who could confirm if Edelgard had truly lost her mind.

When she returns to the tomb she’d unearthed with her slightly perplexed professor in tow (as much as Professor Eisner could look perplexed), the ethereal form of the woman remains just as Edelgard had left it. She’s real, and not just a hallucination born of a potential heatstroke. And Edelgard still grips her trowel as if it was the last remnant of her sanity.

Professor Eisner blinks dispassionately at the not-corpse, definitely-alive-if-unconscious woman in the ancient crypt.

“Oh. That’s grandma.”

Edelgard drops her trowel. The trowel falls upon the unconscious woman’s thighs, which jiggle from the impact. Yep. Definitely alive. And it kind of does something to Edelgard that she really doesn’t want to get into right now because there’s a more pressing concern before her: Professor Eisner’s perpetually blank face has melted into a grimace. Professor Eisner is emoting. And she just called the woman who has likely been buried in the rocks of Zanado for centuries her grandmother. What in the actual fires of Ailell.

“I beg your pardon, Professor Eisner?” Edelgard asks as her eyes dart back and forth, trying to process the scene before her, on top of the original conundrum she’d brought the professor in here for.

Professor Eisner puts a hand to her forehead and frowns, closing her eyes. She sighs as though all the world’s burdens have been thrust upon her.

“Oh, goddess,” Professor Eisner whispers. “It’s grandma.”

Edelgard eventually finds herself sitting in Professor Eisner’s office, surrounded by the good professor’s entire extended family, most of whom happen to be school staff or administration. This only worsens Edelgard’s feeling of being interrogated for a heinous crime. 

(If you had to start hauling a body out of a tomb while your archaeology professor walked away with all the valuables on that body’s person… you, too, would feel like you’d just committed a heinous crime.

“Archaeology is just scientifically justified grave robbery,” Professor Eisner had said in response to the grimace on Edelgard’s face, and Edelgard had no idea how to react to that because she was technically correct.) 

In the room with her and the professor is the professor’s mother Sitri, the beloved yet mildly terrifying groundskeeper of the university, her husband Jeralt, captain of the campus guards and who is looking especially displeased at Edelgard for what has transpired, and Flayn Assal, daughter of the dean and at the top of her class at the medical school for being extremely blasé and even fascinated by medical gore and affliction. Fun crowd. At least the dean himself was currently preoccupied with watching over the woman Edelgard had unearthed.

Professor Eisner pinches the bridge of her nose. “On behalf of my student, Edelgard von Hresvelg, I apologize to all of you for what we have inadvertently unleashed upon the world…”

A collective shiver runs through the family, save for the eternally serene smile resting upon the professor’s mother.

“...Grandma,” Byleth whispers with a grimace.

Edelgard wants to retort, saying that she never signed up for… whatever this is. How was she supposed to know what she would’ve found in that excavation? Or that opening that tomb had apparently disastrous consequences? Why is she being blamed for it?

“Before you accuse me of anything potentially apocalyptic, can anyone at least explain to me what’s going on? Preferably regarding the fact that Professor Eisner’s grandmother was buried deep underground for centuries untold, alive? ”

“The good news is that it’s nothing truly apocalyptic,” the daughter of the dean says with a strained smile. “Lady Rhea is… simply a bit much.”

Edelgard has heard stories of Flayn Assal from the medical school. This girl finds necrotic tissue and osteosarcomas cute . Her nonchalance towards the horrific has earned her the fearful awe of students and faculty alike. What could there be about this Lady Rhea that the notorious Demon Doctor-in-Training finds a bit much?

Edelgard finds herself growing irritated at the lack of verbal acknowledgement around their current situation. “Alright, but that doesn’t answer my question about the impossibility of a living person being found inside an ancient crypt twenty feet deep into a mountain. Or how this woman who should be dead and mummified happens to be related to all of you. Why exactly are we all gathered here?”

Captain Jeralt shakes his head. “The answers to your first two questions are a headache. The answer to your last question is to relieve ourselves of an oncoming headache.”

“Jeralt,” Sitri scolds, “that isn’t a very nice thing to say about your own mother-in-law.”

“It’s not nice, but it’s the truth,” Jeralt says, leaning over Professor Eisner’s desk. “You know how she was the last time she was up. If she’s going to wake up to this new world, someone has to either put up with her insistence on being stuck in the past, or we force her to see the new world and meet new people so she can finally let go and we can all move on with our lives.”

A moment of silence passes around them and Edelgard finds her apprehension increasing. The professor’s entire family glances at each other, a meaningful look on each of their faces. While she may not be a mind reader, Edelgard can tell that they have reached a collective consensus. She feels like she walked into someone else’s family drama, and she has, and they’re talking about this relative of theirs who lived hundreds of years ago as if she’d just moved out of town last year, and Edelgard does not enjoy the ensuing migraine at all. 

Sitri’s serene face falters for a moment before it picks back up as she turns to Edelgard.

“Miss von Hresvelg.”

It amazes Edelgard how Sitri could sound so heavenly, like windchimes against the wind, considering how awfully monotone her daughter speaks. Still, Edelgard's attention fully shifts onto her like a moth to a flame.

“I truly apologize for bringing you into our situation. It is… quite more complicated than your typical family squabbles.”

“I could see that,” Edelgard replies dryly.

Yet Sitri’s smile remains radiant. “You see, my mother tends to have trouble adapting to new things, and we truly think that she would benefit from a new companion this time around. If it wouldn’t be too much of a bother for you, would you be so kind as to assist her in her time of need?”

Edelgard wants to refuse. Dear goddess, she should refuse. What they’re asking for is too much to begin with. What they’re asking for within context? Forget being out of her depth, Edelgard would be out of her mind.

The beloved groundskeeper bats her eyes at Edelgard. Her ever present-smile seems to glow even more than usual. Edelgard’s conviction cracks. She wonders if she ever had a chance against this woman. 

“My daughter says you are the perfect person for the job. You are her best student, after all, and perhaps my mother might provide you with greater insight in your research interests. Crests, was it?”

Edelgard sits up straighter. Damned if this woman didn’t know how to get her attention; it’s hardly fair. Edelgard knows she shouldn’t fall for it, but Sitri’s smile only grows brighter.

“We wouldn’t consider asking this of you if you got nothing out of it. I do hope you’ll consider.”

Edelgard rubs her temples. Even with all those tempting points, she doesn’t know where to start. No one has explained anything to her and they’re already thrusting responsibility onto her. She tries to get everything straight in her head first because no one is going to do it for her. 

Edelgard takes stock of what she knows: an impossibly living woman found in a tomb buried deep in the Zanado canyon. Impossibly living woman was called “grandma” by the professor and “mother” by the professor’s own mother. Tomb in which impossibly living woman was found was dated to around the time of the War of Heroes or shortly thereafter, making impossibly living woman thousands of years old and consequently making her daughter just as old. Is Sitri Eisner immortal? Does that make the rest of their family immortal? Hey, don’t some of the Eisners and Assals bear a striking resemblance to the figures venerated by the historical Church of Sothis? Is Edelgard von Hresvelg in the same room as the Saints of yore? Did she have a choice over the matter of the impossibly living woman in the first place, being up against the goddamn Saints?

To rub salt in the wound of Edelgard’s lack of agency, Professor Eisner clears her throat and gives Edelgard a proposition she can’t refuse.

“I will count this as units towards your degree, Edelgard. If you so choose, I can even exempt you from having to write your thesis. I will adjust your academic outputs and workload accordingly. Consider it my apology for pressuring you into this situation.”

Edelgard stares at her professor.

“At least you’re honest about that.”

Professor Eisner’s lips turn down into a small frown. “I truly am sorry, Edelgard.”

Ack. Edelgard is starting to see the family resemblance her teacher has with Sitri. Seeing Professor Eisner look like that one sad cat picture on the internet makes it hard for her to ever say no.

Edelgard’s lips flatten into a thin line before she raises her hands up in defeat. 

“A-alright. Fine. I’ll do it. It’s not like the cards were stacked against me to begin with.”

Said cards look to her with relieved grins. Professor Eisner on the other hand—well, she, too, could technically be grinning, as much as her dead stare could express the feeling of relief.

This is the part where Dean Seteth comes into the room, shaking his head.

“She’s awake. I tried to calm her and tell her that we are currently living in a time of peace, but…”

Dean Seteth lets his sentence trail off without finishing it. He opts to pat Edelgard on the back instead, as if in condolence.

“May the goddess help you, Miss von Hresvelg,” he says, as if he knew that Edelgard had practically no choice in the matter of dealing with the woman she unearthed from the bowels of Zanado. 

“I’m afraid to ask why,” she replies lamely. 

Then a blinding flash of light bursts forth from the outside, followed by the sound of buildings being blasted into rubble, and then the panicked screaming and stampeding of students and faculty alike. A loud, booming voice, monstrous yet feminine in timbre, shakes the very foundations of the campus. 

“WHO DARES AWAKEN THE IMMACULATE ONE FROM HER SLUMBER? WHAT HERETICS AND INFIDELS MUST FALL UPON MY SACRED TALONS AND BLESSED FANGS?”

Dean Seteth’s eye twitches. Edelgard could see the veins bulging in his forehead from his consternation, no doubt already calculating the damages that need to be addressed.

“That is why.” 

Edelgard stands up and cracks the door open, just barely, to better understand what in blazes just happened. A motherfucking dragon flaps its mighty wings aloft the campus, yelling about basking in the blood of the infidel or whatever. Edelgard is too busy parsing the fact that a creature straight out of legend is terrorizing her university in search of heretics to smite in the name of the goddess. Edelgard promptly slams the door back shut. She snaps her head back towards the Eisners and the Assals. 

Dragons. They’re not just saints. They’re motherfucking dragons.

“I thought ‘trace with the wings of the dragons’ in the school hymn was a metaphor,” Edelgard sputters with a brief crack in her voice.

Professor Eisner just shrugs. 

“It still is. But dragons are real. Now you know. Rawr.”