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Chapter Text

There was only one thing Bernadetta found more welcoming than the sight of the officer's academy at Garreg Mach Monastery rising over the horizon at the end of a long day of battle and travel, and that was opening the door to her room after a long day and seeing a half-finished book on her desk and a warm bed waiting for her.

Much to her dismay, she couldn’t be in her room right now. She was in the dining hall squeezed into one of the long tables whose far end had been monopolized by the rest of the Black Eagles house because Caspar had insisted that she join them for drinks and a special surprise. And while saying no to him was pretty easy, making sure he heard it was much more difficult.

And so here she was, surrounded by the other seven students in her house, trapped like a rat in a cage, with a cup of slightly-warm apple cider staring up at her while everyone else’s conversations weaved around each other. Despite Caspar’s insistence that she had to be here, she didn’t see why. Everyone seemed to be having just as much fun as they would have if she’d stayed in her room.

“Well, Bernie?” Caspar asked, grinning giddily and running a hand rakishly through his short-cropped aquamarine hair. “Isn’t this better than holing yourself up in your den?”

“Not really…”

“Oh, come on. What’s better than hanging out with your pals?”

Bernadetta went through a list in her head. There was reading, writing, sewing, sleeping… pretty much anything else that kept her alone in a small room for hours at a time…

“Oh!” Caspar leaned out away from the table and waved. “Hey, Professor!”

Professor Byleth Eisner strolled past the table and came to a stop, looking over the gathered students. As far as professors went at the Officers Academy, she was an odd one. Taciturn, laconic, and dry; a corpselike pallor to her face and blank, hazy gray eyes that never betrayed her mood or thoughts; long hair the color of seaweed falling just past her shoulders. No one knew who she was or where she’d come from, or even how old she was (she didn’t look much older than any student), or anything at all about her other than that she was the daughter of Captain Jeralt Eisner. Rumors abounded about her: Dorothea had once claimed that Byleth had told her she didn’t have a heartbeat and it had been impossible to tell whether or not she was joking.

Bernadetta didn’t know how she felt about Byleth. On the surface, when it came to her demeanor and mannerisms, Byleth was everything she found frightening and threatening in an adult, and that was on top of allegedly being a walking corpse. And yet Bernadetta found herself feeling oddly safe around her more often than not. She was a good teacher, attentive to a fault (she invited her students for tea all the time, and she knew everyone’s favorite flavor), and kind in her own way, if a little unsettling at first glance.

“Care to join us, Professor?” asked Edelgard. Her silvery snow-white hair framed a stern, stony face that nonetheless seemed to soften considerably whenever Byleth was around. “I’m sure we can make room.”

Byleth shook her head and declined; she was busy and had just been passing through. Somehow, Edelgard looked disappointed.

Bernadetta couldn’t help but notice Hubert slip a small, innocuous-looking flask from his pocket, surreptitiously uncapping it and with a flick of his wrist pouring a trickle of amber liquid into his cider. It wasn’t hard to assume the worst. Tall, pale, vampire-like, and a keen student of the dark arts, he invited the aura of wickedness that engulfed him. Was he poisoning that drink? He was, wasn’t he? But why would he slip a drug into his own drink? Was he planning on swapping it with someone else’s? She reflexively dragged her cup closer to her, guarding it with her hand.

She wasn’t the only person who noticed. Before Hubert could slip the flask back into his pocket, Dorothea cast a glance in his general direction and perked up at the sight of it. 

“Making some hard cider, huh, Hubie?” she asked. Despite being the only commoner among the Black Eagles, she showed no fear among those of noble blood and seemed to enjoy openly mocking them, making her by far one of the bravest people Bernadetta knew. Sometimes Bernadetta wondered if Dorothea even knew what a dangerous game she was playing by acting like that. She had to, right?

Everyone else perked up as well. Bernadetta felt the table shake as the rest of the students all leaped from the bench as well. She stayed seated, tried to look as small as possible, and wondered if now would be a good time to run for it.

With all eyes on him, Hubert looked up from his drink. “Yes,” he answered curtly, with not even a hint of dissembling in his voice. He hid the flask almost sheepishly. “It’s whiskey. Don’t bother asking me to share; none of you are of age,” he added, almost reveling in the fact that at twenty he was the oldest student in the house, “and besides, there’s far too little for the entire class.”

A ripple of uncomfortable laughter slithered across the table. No one comfortably laughed at anything Hubert said, probably because they were afraid of waking up with a knife in their back.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises?” Dorothea asked, bravely slipping her cup vaguely in Hubert’s direction. “Are you sure you can’t spare a finger or two?”

Scratch that—nobody except Dorothea comfortably laughed at anything Hubert said.

“I didn’t think they allowed booze in the monastery,” Caspar commented, a tinge of awe in his voice.

“They don’t,” Linhardt answered.

“I can trust you all not to… rat me out, can’t I?” Hubert asked, his lips twisting in a wry little half-smile as the one pale yellow-green eye not hidden by a lank black forelock roved around the table. He had a naturally sinister gaze, intensified by the eyebrows he didn’t have. He didn’t have eyebrows. Who knew what had happened to them? An accident while shaving? Burned off with acid? Had he never had them at all to begin with?

“Anyone here can keep a secret,” Edelgard said, crossing her arms. “But I expect you to have that disposed of at your earliest convenience, Hubert. You know the rules.”

Edelgard’s glare was perhaps the only thing that made Hubert wither. “Yes, of course, Lady Edelgard,” he said.

“I will dispose of that for you, Hubert,” Ferdinand von Aegir said, holding out his hand expectantly. It wasn’t possible to tell if he sincerely meant it or if he meant to ‘dispose’ of it with a nod and a wink. He acted the very model of a nobleman, but wasn’t completely immune to flights of whimsy. Bernadetta thought he mostly acted seriously to impress people.

Bernadetta pulled her hood over her head and took a cautious sip of her cider. Oh, Goddess, why did everyone have to be so noisy?

Edelgard’s eyes darted in her direction. “Everyone,” she announced, clearing her throat. “I hope that in all this excitement you haven’t forgotten why you’re here.”

Bernadetta felt a part of her soul shrivel up and die like a leaf falling into a fire. 

The rest of her classmates all sat down. “I remember,” Petra said, raising her cup. “We are giving the toast to Bernadetta for clutching the victory in today’s battle!” As a visitor from the faraway Brigid archipelago, her grasp of Fódlanish was not quite there yet, but her idiosyncratic manner of speaking only added to her charm. She was Bernadetta’s opposite in every way—daring, bold, adventurous, making her way through an unfamiliar world without the slightest trace of fear or anxiety…

As all eyes fell on her, Bernadetta wished she was invisible, or at the very least, small enough to slip under the dining hall table. “N-No,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean—I mean, it was just a lucky sh—”

“Here’s to Bernie-Bear, the best damn archer in Garreg Mach!” Caspar chimed in with raucous aplomb, raising his cup high, then grabbing her by the wrist and forcibly smashing the side of her cup into his.

Best archer in the academy? Best in Black Eagles, more like it, and even then only by default because no one else specialized in it. He couldn’t be more patronizing if he’d called her the best in all of Fódlan, or the best in the whole world. Bernadetta knew when she was being lied to or made fun of, or at least she liked to think so. She pulled herself free and went back to nursing her drink.

“Excuse me,” a student from another house snapped as she passed behind Caspar, “can you keep it down? Other people eat here, too, you know.”

“It’s called morale-building!” he shot back, yelling at the back of her head as she walked away. “Maybe if your house did it, you’d win more tournaments, Lysithea!”

“Bernadetta, it is the custom here to be clinking the glasses, no?” Petra asked, leaning across the table and over Ferdinand’s lap to offer her cup to her. “For health and good luck?”

Bernadetta wondered if she would ever wake up from this nightmare. It all felt like mockery. How could there be anything praiseworthy about accidentally shooting a guy, even if the arrow had gone right through his eye? And being sandwiched between the two most obnoxious boys in the house for this ‘celebration’ just added injury to insult. They might as well have tied her to the table.

She just had to close her eyes, try to block out the outside world, and wait for it all to be over. That was how it always worked. Look within, retreat to her inner sanctum, wait for the danger to pass like a mouse hiding in its hole from a cat. If she could just shut out the noise cascading over her like crashing waves on a beach, she could at least brainstorm some ideas for the next chapter of her story…

No use. When she closed her eyes, she could only see that bandit lying on the ground, spread-eagle, limbs akimbo, the long shaft of an arrow rising from the bloody eye socket under the slit-like eyehole of his helm like a flagpole planted in the earth, a ragged bloody halo circling his head.

She’d shot a lot of people since enrolling in the Officers’ Academy, but never in the head. Mostly in the arms or legs, often in the chest, mostly by accident, always with plausible deniability (she could always tell herself they were playing dead, because she’d read it once in a book that most quote-unquote ‘killed’ soldiers just did that when they were wounded). Headshots, though… there was no getting up from one of those.

“Hey, Bernadetta.”

Her eyes snapped open. Everyone was still here, still drinking, still talking. Mostly talking. She wondered if she could just leave, or if someone (i.e. Caspar) would try to hold her back. It was within the realm of possibility.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey.”

She glanced over her shoulder and found herself looking up at—Oh, Goddess, not him.

It was Sylvain Gautier, Blue Lions house’s resident louse. He was wearing the quote-unquote ‘charming’ roguish smile he always had around girls. “Hey,” he said, his voice dripping with swagger, a hand rakishly running through an expertly-tousled nest of brilliant red hair. “I’ve been looking for you. I, um, found this in the library.” He pulled out a familiar-looking book from his bag and held it out. “I think it’s yours?”

Mortified, Bernadetta snatched it out of his hands and stuffed it into her own bag, her heart hammering a tattoo against her ribs, barely able to stammer out a rushed ‘thank you’ under her breath. He hadn’t read it, had he? She didn’t write her stories for other people to read them!

“I read it!” he said, grinning like a loon and rakishly roughing up his scarlet hair. “And it was really good! You could be a professional writer!” He leaned over and rested an elbow on the table, wedging himself between her and Ferdinand, still with a practiced ladykiller grin plastered on his face.

She found herself wishing that Hubert had poisoned her drink. 

Ferdinand cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, laying a not-so-welcoming hand on Sylvain’s shoulder, “we are busy here. Would you mind not, er, butting in?”

“So, where do you come up with your ideas, anyway?” Sylvain asked, ignoring him. “Your characters feel so real!”

“Bernadetta,” Petra called out to draw her attention away, “I am wondering, tomorrow after class, maybe you could be demonstrating your technique to me?”

“Uh, um… uh… yeah,” Bernadetta answered, so flustered that she momentarily forgot how to say ‘no.’

Ferdinand tugged on Sylvain’s shoulder. “Hey. Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, you tell everyone three times a day.” Sylvain shrugged. “Well, I gotta go,” he told Bernadetta (thank the Goddess he’d gotten the point), “but I’d love to talk with you more sometime. Creative girls are such a rare catch, y’know?”

“I’m flattered,” she said, though she wasn’t. She watched Sylvain leave. Her pulse was still racing; if her heart beat any faster, she was sure she would die on the spot.

“I did not know you wrote, Bernie,” Ferdinand said, impressed. “What kind of things do you write?”

She wanted to say, ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ but couldn’t force the words past her lips. Instead, she just shrugged and pulled the drawstrings on her hood tighter.

He raised his cup to his lips, then suddenly slammed it onto the table and shot up to his feet, his hand slamming against the table, his eyes wide with shock. “Is that Lady Rhea?” he shouted out, flinging out his arm.

Everyone fixed their gaze where he was pointing, all at rapt attention, but Her Holiness, the head of the church, her divine majesty Archbishop Rhea was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, uh…” Ferdinand scratched at the back of his head and sheepishly lowered himself down to the bench as everyone’s gaze shifted back toward him. “I must have mistaken that lamp over there for her headdress.”

As the night dragged on with interminable slowness, Bernadetta took a few more sips of her cider, but as her stomach twisted itself into knots, she found her appetite, or rather her thirst, desert her. Did Caspar have to go into such vivid detail about how many new notches he’d put in the head of his axe this morning? At least Linhardt seemed just as queasy as her.

“I don’t feel so good,” she mumbled, slipping off the bench.

“Alright, see ya in class tomorrow, Bernie,” Caspar said. He sounded so casual and laid-back about it that Bernadetta realized she probably could have gotten away with leaving whenever she’d wanted to.

Goddess almighty, she was an idiot.

Dorothea waved goodbye as she headed out of the dining hall. “Goodnight, Bern!”

“I hope you will be feeling better soon!” Petra chimed in.

Bernadetta waved back half-heartedly and hurried out of the dining hall and into the courtyard. She had barely taken five steps before nearly tripping over a fat orange-and-white cat curled up in the grass. Rudely interrupted from its nap, it hissed at her and scampered off, dragging a limp hind leg behind it.

The last rays of the setting sun bathed the monastery in a soft amber glow, the darkening sky filled with streaks of violet and gold painted across the underside of the clouds. At this hour, the courtyard was empty, transforming it into a welcome sanctuary. A cool breeze whistled through the campus, sending a whispering susurrus through the trees and rustling the tall hedges and thorny rosebushes lining the courtyard. She hadn’t realized how hot and stuffy it had gotten back in the dining hall; the evening air was a godsend. Maybe it would be all she needed to feel better.

No good. She scratched at her forehead as her brain throbbed against the inside of her skull. Now she had a headache, too. And a feverish wave of pins-and-needles rushing under her skin. All signs of some sort of influenza, or maybe something worse…

“Bernadetta, may I have a word with you?”

Edelgard’s voice cut through the air like a knife through butter and struck her in the heart like an arrow. “I’m sorry!” Bernadetta squeaked reflexively, grabbing herself by her own shoulders as if to protect herself. “I-I didn’t mean to leave so early, I just—I’m not feeling okay…”

“I’m not here to accept any apology from you,” Edelgard said, catching up to her. A gust of wind fanned out her long silvery hair behind her. “I’m here to offer you my gratitude.”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta insisted. “I know not to expect forgiveness from you—”

“That isn’t what I meant—”

“Please, Lady Edelgard, if you could find it in your heart—”

Edelgard’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Bernadetta, I said, thank you,” she repeated, her icy lavender eyes boring into Bernadetta’s.

“I’m— what?” Bernadetta asked as her brain caught up to her ears.

“I had a lot on my mind this morning,” Edelgard explained, her eyes drifting and focusing on something far off in the distance. “I was distracted; those bandits caught me off-guard. If you hadn’t taken out their leader, I could have been hurt.”

“It wouldn’t have come to that,” Bernadetta said, knowing full well she was being talked down to. Edelgard was a terror on the battlefield; to say she could take care of herself was an understatement if ever there was one.

“Perhaps, but who knows? Surely you know that one well-placed shot is all it takes to fell even the strongest foe. Who strikes first in battle wins; and you have a unique privilege and talent for striking first.”

Bernadetta nodded. She wasn’t sure how else to act. With Edelgard so close by her, most of her brain had just shut down, leaving all higher functions disabled and nothing but the most basic survival instincts running through her head. Being around her was like balancing on a thin plank suspended over shark-infested waters. One misstep, one wrong word, and unless she ran away she’d be a smear of blood floating on the waves. That was how people like Edelgard were…

Edelgard squinted at her. “You’re bleeding,” she pointed out, gesturing to her forehead.

“Huh?” She lifted her hand to her forehead in turn, brushed aside her messy bangs, and laid her hand on her brow; she pulled it away to find a few stray speckles of blood dotting her fingertips and lining the tips of her fingernails. Funny, she didn’t remember her nails being this long, or—she pressed one against the tip of her thumb, ow— this sharp. “Oh. It’s fine. I must’ve scratched too hard,” she muttered.

The way Edelgard looked at her suddenly seemed more suspicious than concerned.

“A-Anyway,” Bernadetta said, feeling all of a sudden more vulnerable by an order of magnitude, “I should really be getting back to my room.”

With that, she hastily made an about-face and marched off in the direction of the dormitories, slipped, and fell flat on her face. The damp grass was cold against her cheek.

“Perhaps you should go to the infirmary instead,” Edelgard said, helping her to her feet.

“No, it’s fine. I just tripped.” Her heels slid up the backs of her boots. Her bootstraps must have come loose. “I just need to lie down for a bit.”

Now she couldn’t tell whether Edelgard looked suspicious or concerned.

“It’s already haunting you, isn’t it?” Edelgard asked as she helped her cross the courtyard on the way to the dormitories. “I can tell. When one aims for the head, it is never a pleasant sight to behold. Until today, you’ve been pretending the worst you did was wound your enemies, haven’t you?”

Bernadetta kept her pace slow and deliberate, her head bowed and eyes fixed on the ground, partly to avoid meeting Edelgard’s eyes and partly to make sure she didn’t trip and fall again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s only natural. However, as a soldier, you will have to accept that you must fight to kill, not merely to wound.” Even though Edelgard was her fellow student and was only about six months months older than her, she was the head of the house, a position somewhere between student and faculty, and carried herself with an authoritative air and wisdom beyond her years.

“Sorry.”

Edelgard closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please stop apologizing.”

“Sor—I m-mean, okay.” Bernadetta took a deep breath and opened the door to her room, feeling a wave of relief wash over her at the sight of her own little sanctuary on the other side of the threshold, gloomy as it was with no light but the faint trickle of twilight bleeding through the windows. “So… h-how do I do it?”

A sardonic smile tugged at the corner of Edelgard’s mouth. Bernadetta didn’t think she’d ever seen her crack a smile like that before. “Perhaps you could bite your tongue whenever you feel the urge to say it.”

“No, I mean actually killing people.” Bernadetta carefully trudged through the gloom to her desk and lit a candle, driving the shadows to the corners of the room. She immediately regretted keeping the conversation going. Her headache was back, there was an odd twinge running down her spine, there was an ache that went down to her bones, she felt feverish and prickly all over, like there were insects crawling under her skin…

Maybe she should have gone to the infirmary.

“Ah, that.” Edelgard followed her inside. “Think about the man you killed. What was he?”

“A… A bandit?”

“Exactly. A thief. An outlaw. How many people do you think had already died by his hand, or seen their livelihoods in ruins because of him?” Edelgard’s eyes narrowed, her expression cold and merciless even with the soft, warm candlelight falling on her face. “The life you took today is a child tomorrow who will not become an orphan, a woman tomorrow who will not be made a widow, a man tomorrow who will not lose the means to feed his family. The life you took is equal to a dozen, perhaps more, that you have saved.”

“Um… that’s an… interesting way of thinking about it,” Bernadetta admitted. Maybe she could put that into the next chapter of her story. That was one of the fun things about writing. It was a safe place to deal with real-life problems… as long as no one else took a peek inside, that was.

A sharp, hot jolt of pain jabbed itself deep in her sinuses, throbbing in tune with her headache. Reflexively, she clapped her hands over her nose. What she felt didn’t feel like her own face. It didn’t feel like anyone’s face. It didn’t feel like a human’s face.

…Then what, she asked herself with mounting dread, did it feel like?

This was some sort of hallucination, wasn’t it? Someone must have slipped a psychotropic drug into her drink. Maybe something like those rare mushrooms that supposedly made people think they could fly. She knew she should have kept a closer eye on Hubert…

Unaware of Bernadetta’s ongoing break with reality, Edelgard leaned over the desk, idly inspecting one of the hand-sewn carnivorous plant dolls resting on its surface. Leading her here, Bernadetta realized, had been a terrible idea. Who knew what she was thinking, looking at those dolls? She probably hated them. Those weird, ugly plants, of course they were the weird, ugly girl’s favorites.

She felt dizzy and lightheaded, her heartbeat a frantic tempo, the light dimming as color leeched from the room and dark miasma ate into the corners of her field of view. She wanted it all to stop. The day had started bad, the middle had been bad, the end had been bad; saints only knew what was happening to her right now; and on top of that, even though all she wanted to do was hide under a blanket and wait for whatever the hell was going on to stop, Edelgard von Hresvelg, next in line for the imperial throne, was standing in her room and looking at all her stuff with a silent, cold air of judgment.

Edelgard slipped her finger into the felt pitcher plant’s gaping maw. It must have just been Bernadetta’s imagination, but she seemed to have suddenly gotten just a little taller. Everything seemed to have suddenly gotten taller. “But I wonder, what creates those men? Those people whose very existence destroys dozens of lives as they run their course?” she asked sharply. “What brings them to such a lowly state? Is it a fault in their souls, or is there something more to it?”

“Uh…” Bernadetta answered, backing away toward the far wall and uncovering her face just briefly enough to catch a glimpse of it in the little mirror propped up on the stone windowsill. In the dim light, though wreathed in shadow, she could definitely make out what looked like a snout and whiskers.

Edelgard didn’t wait for an answer. If there was one thing that could be said about her with absolute certainty, it was that she had a Vision with a capital V, and once she started pontificating, she could keep going for a long time. “I believe our society is to blame,” she continued. “A society that transforms men into beasts. For the sake of a just and peaceful world, a society like that must be itself transformed. I will be… we will be the agents of that change.” She turned to face her. Bernadetta covered her face again. “Can I count on you and your bow to stand behind me, Bernadetta von Varley?” Edelgard asked.

“Um… yeah, sure,” Bernadetta squeaked, though her head was so thick with fog that she couldn’t make even the slightest effort to comprehend what Edelgard had been saying. Her voice was muffled by her hands, her breath hot and heavy against her palms.

She had to get Edelgard out of here. But how do you tell the imperial princess to get out? She couldn’t just say ‘leave’ to her no matter how many times she said ‘please’ before it!

“I think I’m gonna vomit,” she blurted out instead as the room spun around her and her legs crumpled beneath her.

Edelgard was at her side in a flash. “I’m going to find the professor,” she announced. “She will know what to d—”

She stopped as though her words had just crashed headlong into a brick wall, her eyes widening and mouth hanging agape in shock. And just as everything went black, Bernadetta heard a horrified scream pierce the air.

Bernadetta woke up to the feeling of a mattress beneath her and a blanket draped over her. What a wonderful thing after such a terrible day. She’d had such a bizarre nightmare, though, so coherent and vivid and yet so unreal and terrifying. Edelgard had been lecturing her about society and rummaging through all of her things, and meanwhile it had felt like her body was soft clay or melting candlewax…

“Are you alright, Lady Edelgard?”

That was Hubert’s voice. What was he doing in her bedroom? And Edelgard, too? But if she was here, then didn’t that mean she hadn’t been dreaming?

“I’m fine, thank you. I merely passed out a little.”

“A little. At any rate, it’s good to see you safe.”

“What about Bernadetta? What… happened to her?”

It hadn’t been a nightmare. What a horrible thing to hallucinate, though—that horrible crawling and prickling under her skin, that ache deep down in her bones, that snout—

Trembling with trepidation, she lifted her hand, stirring under the blanket, and cupped her hand over her snout.

Okay. She was still hallucinating.

“Poison, by the looks of it.”

“…Poison did that.”

“Indeed. It’s something I read about not too long ago. An interesting poison, but a cowardly one—one for people who want to make their problems ‘disappear’ but can’t bear the thought of taking a life themselves. She should count her blessings she received such a small dose.”

A small dose? How much longer would she be hallucinating if she’d gotten a small dose? And what did Hubert mean about ‘making problems disappear?’

“A poison that does something like that… Isn’t there a simpler explanation? Could it have something to do with her Crest?”

“I’ll admit I can’t rule that out entirely. But do you really want me to call Professor Hanneman down here and let him poke and prod at her? Do you think she wants that?”

“No, I suppose not. Poison, though… Who would want to do that to her?”

“Who indeed, Lady Edelgard. Who indeed.”

Bernadetta gasped. Oh, Goddess, he’d poisoned her, hadn’t he? He wanted to make her disappear! What had she ever done to him to deserve that? She racked her brain. Had she slighted him at some point? Did he have some sort of animus toward her because she’d told him he was terrifying once? That was it, wasn’t it?

“I’ll find the Professor. I’m sure she’ll be of help to us.”

“Please allow me to go in your stead. I’m certain our mystery poisoner’s intended target was you. Until we find whoever did this, I think it would be prudent to keep a low profile.”

These hallucinations were unnervingly vivid. She could feel so clearly the whiskers tickling her palm and the long, thin tail wrapping itself around her ankle—

She threw off the covers and shot upright with a strangled, hoarse scream, as though she were trying to pull herself away from a roach or spider that had slipped into the bed. Her heart fluttered, her pulse throbbing in her ears.

Hubert turned to face her, the light from the desktop lamp illuminating only a sliver of his face like a waning crescent moon. Even with his face bathed in shadow, though, the sardonic little smirk on his face was evident. He was so creepy when he smiled.

“Ah, Bernadetta, you’re awake,” he said. “The new look suits you, in my opinion,” he added with a sinister chuckle (he didn’t know how to do it any other way).

Edelgard crossed her arms, unamused. “Hubert.”

“But I digress,” he said, heading out the door. “I will fetch the Professor. You two make yourselves comfortable.”

Edelgard did not look very comfortable and made no effort to make herself less uncomfortable. She stole a glance at her and put a hand over her mouth to hide a repulsed grimace. Bernadetta had never seen her so rattled.

Seized with equal parts dread and morbid curiosity, Bernadetta crawled out of bed to the mirror resting on the windowsill. Questions bubbled up in her head like a swarm of ants pouring from an anthill— why was the bed so wide, and why was it so far off the ground, and why did the window seem to loom over her, and why did her clothes feel so loose, and why was the mirror so much bigger now as she grasped it in her hands?

Her reflection answered every question before she could ask it.

Framed by a comfortingly familiar mop of violet hair was a disconcertingly unfamiliar mousy gray face, one that was pointy and fuzzy and whiskery. She brushed her finger against her whiskers and watched them twitch. Touching even their tips was like touching a part of her face. She felt faint again.

This was the ‘new look’ Hubert had been teasing her about? But if he could see it, too, then that meant…

“I’m not hallucinating, am I?” she asked.

Still pointedly refusing to look in her direction, Edelgard shook her head. “No.”

Well, that was that. It was all real. Bernadetta flopped onto her bed and stared up blankly at the ceiling. “Okay.” 

She’d half expected to scream again or start crying. No. Just, ‘okay,’ as measured as a ruler and as empty as her head now felt.

The door rattled in its frame, rudely jolting her out of her resigned malaise.

“Bernie!” Caspar shouted from the other side, his voice muffled. “I heard a scream! You okay in there?” The door rattled again. “Hold on! I’m coming in!”

Edelgard glanced at Bernadetta, her mouth drawn taut in a nervous scowl, and shook her head and mouthed, ‘No.’ Bernadetta nodded in agreement.

“Don’t worry! I’m here!” The door rattled again to no avail. “I’m, uh…” The door rattled one more time. “I’m gonna get the Professor! Don’t panic, I—Oh, hi, Professor, I was just…”

Edelgard relented and opened the door to let Byleth in. The professor strode in, with Hubert looming over her (looming was his natural state of being) as he trailed behind her. Though he tried to shut the door on his way in, though, Hubert was unable to stop Caspar from worming his way into the room.

Bernadetta groaned. This was just what she needed—more people in her bedroom. One was enough, and only when it was herself.

“Bernie!” Caspar fought his way past Hubert, who was making an unexpectedly-valiant attempt to shove him back out the door. “What happened? You’re, uh…” His brow furrowed, his eyebrows knitting together. “…tiny.”

She suddenly realized that she had shrunk so much that the only part of her uniform that hadn’t slipped away from her was her blouse, and she was swimming in it. Or rather, drowning in it.

She couldn’t burrow under the blanket quickly enough.

While this definitely wasn’t the worst night of her life by a long shot, it was bad in a more unique way than any other bad day she’d ever had, and she could only pray it would end soon.

While this was far from the worst night of Edelgard’s life, it was bad in a singularly unique way that she didn’t think could be surpassed, and she could only hope it would end soon.

She didn’t like rodents. No, it was fairer to say she found herself disgusted by them. To be more specific, it was rats she had a problem with, but when one was locked in a pitch-black dungeon, fatigued yet sleepless in the middle of the night, surrounded by the dead and dying, one could hardly be expected to have the presence of mind or the acuity of eyesight to tell a rat from a mouse. (Time and time again, Hubert had gone to the trouble of pointing out to her the physical features that distinguished mice from rats, but it hardly made much of a difference—fears were not rational things.)

And so understandably, watching one of her classmates turn into a mouse, or at least mostly into a mouse, had shaken her. She couldn’t believe she’d actually passed out, though. It was good that Hubert had come to her aid and not someone else—she couldn’t fathom how embarrassing that would have been if, for example, it had been some other student like Ferdinand von Aegir, or Professor Byleth herself helping her back to her feet instead.

Not that she would have minded having Byleth’s arms around her, but it would simply have been unbecoming of her.

Once he’d sworn Caspar to secrecy on pain of torture and death and removed him from the room, Hubert set to work catching Byleth up to speed. She nodded along to his explanation, although the faraway look in her eyes made it seem as though she were actually listening to someone else whom only she could hear.

“…And so, if possible, I would like to keep this… issue between you and the rest of the Black Eagles as needed,” he concluded, glowering in his usual manner. “I smell a rat. We can’t afford to blindly assume that the culprit isn’t among the faculty. Especially if my theory is correct and the intended target was indeed Lady Edelgard.”

Edelgard gripped herself tightly by the arms and suppressed a shudder. The very thought that such an exotic poison had been intended for her disgusted and unnerved her. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to worry about being assassinated (as next in line for the throne and a woman with great ambitions, she had plenty of enemies in high places), nor would it be the last, but never had she dealt with an attempt on her life tailor-made to prey on her most deep-seated phobia.

It had to be a coincidence. No one knew about her rodent problem save for herself and Hubert. All the same, though, that poison would have been a horrifying thing for her to succumb to—inwardly, she doubted she could take it as well as Bernadetta had. 

She wasn’t fully willing to discount the possibility that it was something to do with Bernadetta’s Crest—those things caused such great pain to the world and to humanity in so many ways—but on the other hand, Hubert knew his poisons, and she trusted his expertise to the end.

It occurred to her that this was the second time today that the meek and unassuming girl from the house of Varley had saved her from an ignoble fate. Once again, she owed Bernadetta her gratitude.

Byleth gave the lump on the bed a gentle, consoling pat. The lump let out a muffled whimper. “You want to investigate this yourself?” she asked Hubert.

“Of course, I’ll accept your help if you’re offering it,” he replied with a formal bow, “but yes, I believe we should avoid involving outside help so as to avoid arousing the culprit’s suspicion. Furthermore…” He turned to face Edelgard. “Lady Edelgard, I have a proposition for you, if you will hear it.”

Edelgard took a breath and rebuilt her shattered composure. “I will.”

“It’s possible that our would-be assassin is unaware that their poison reached the wrong target. If you carry on normally, they’ll know that they’ve failed and will no doubt redouble their efforts.” Hubert stroked his chin thoughtfully, an almost-wicked gleam in his yellow eyes. “However, if you were to… vanish, and your room was found to be empty…”

“You want to pretend their plan worked,” Edelgard concluded. “If they believe they’ve won, they’ll be sloppy and overconfident. All the easier to root out and crush.” 

Hubert bowed. “You took the words from my mouth. Of course,” he added, turning his attention to Byleth, “that is assuming our professor doesn’t mind you missing a day or two of lessons…”

“Well, Professor? What do you think?” Edelgard asked Byleth. Hiding wasn’t exactly her style, but Hubert’s logic felt sound to her, and if it was a solid tactical decision, she would gladly set her pride aside. She trusted Byleth to make the right call in the end. She always did.

Byleth nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

Of course, Edelgard mused, Byleth wanted the would-be assassin found before they could strike again. It was hard enough to teach kids. It would be even harder to teach a classroom full of mice.

“So where,” she asked Hubert, “did you have in mind for me to ‘vanish’ to?” There were plenty of nooks and crannies in the monastery, although she couldn’t say she’d relish the thought of hiding in any of them. Besides, if the culprit knew of her phobia, what other secrets did they know about her?

“Well,” Hubert answered, “it just so happens we have a room available. A room whose occupant is already accounted for and that no one would suspect is harboring two people.” His eye darted around the room, settling on the bed on the lump in the blanket that was Bernadetta, and the long, thin pink tail poking out from under the edge of the tangled mass of sheets. “Especially considering that one is as quiet as… a mouse.”

Edelgard followed the path of Hubert’s gaze and clenched her teeth as the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

“Of course,” she said.

Shafts of early morning sunlight streamed in through the windows of the Black Eagles’ classroom the next morning, coaxing out long, skewed shadows from the two columns of desks lining the room.

Hubert waited for the rest of the class, minus Edelgard and Bernadetta, to settle down and for Byleth to close and lock the door behind her. “I’m sure you're all wondering,” he announced to the other five students, “why the Professor and I have brought you here so early.”

Ferdinand held a hand to his mouth and stifled a yawn. “Nothing good, I take it…”

Caspar raised his hand. “Can I tell them?”

“Where are Edelgard and Bernadetta?” Petra asked, surveying the room. “Bernadetta I understand, but Edelgard is never being late.”

“By the Goddess, you finally did it,” Linhardt deadpanned, slinking into a chair. “You killed them. I knew it was only a matter of time.”

Hubert glared at him.

“Bernie’s a mouse now,” Caspar blurted out. Everyone looked at him as though he’d grown a second head, which wouldn't have been that much more insane of a prospect.

How very tactful of him. This was exactly what Hubert needed.

“Well, not a mouse mouse,” he backtracked as the incredulous eyes of every other student in the house drilled holes in his head. “More like a half-mouse… mouse… person.” He looked at Hubert with pleading eyes. “Hey, back me up. You and Edelgard and the Professor were there.”

Hubert sighed, rolled his eyes, and deigned to explain what had happened last night. Mostly. He played his cards close to his chest; there was no reason for his classmates to know everything he knew.

Linhardt raised his hand. “Hubert, I have a question.”

Hubert crossed his arms as if to say, I’m not a professor; you can just ask.

“Are you sure it’s not a Crest thing?”

“Positive.” Though Bernadetta possessed a minor Crest of Indech, such a birthright generally did not cause such odd transformations. Indeed, the only Crest known to have such an effect had been lost to the ages, if it had ever existed at all in the first place.

“But there is precedent for it. You remember what happened to Miklan.”

“He didn’t even have a—”

“And then there’s the cursed Crest of Maurice—”

Hubert nearly laughed. A Demonic Beast was the furthest thing in the world from what Bernadetta had become. “Have you been listening to Mercedes’ ghost stories again? I know about all those things,” he replied snippily. “I also know my poisons.” There wasn’t a single person, student or faculty, who knew more about poisons than him; only Claude von Riegan, head of the Golden Deer house, came close.

“You are telling us a poison did this?” Ferdinand scoffed uneasily, half-laughing at how ludicrous the very thought was. “That is certainly an exotic poison.”

“Indeed,” Hubert replied, already feeling close to his wits’ end. “It is a work just as much of magic most foul as it is of chemistry. The kind of magic beloved by those who slither in the dark.”

He wondered to himself, could they have been responsible for this? Another thing to keep between himself and Edelgard.

“How can you be sure Edie was the target?” Dorothea asked, still rubbing the bleariness from her eyes. “Maybe some other noble family has it out for House Varley.”

“For the same reason I know for a fact that it was poison.” Hubert could feel his fingernails bite into his palms from how tightly he was clenching his fists and forced himself to remain calm. “I saw someone slip it into Lady Edelgard’s drink yesterday evening.”

A chorused outburst of confusion and disbelief filled the room.

“I didn’t see who,” he continued once the uproar had died down, “but I saw a disturbance in her cup and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone had put an additive in it at some point while we were distracted.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Caspar said.

Linhardt shook his head. “Neither did I.”

Ferdinand, Hubert noted, suddenly looked a little paler, a little less as though he were writing this off as an amusing little joke. He had a terrible poker face. “Nor… did I,” he muttered unconvincingly.

“I was not seeing anything, either,” Petra admitted glumly. “We were all being distracted.”

“I spiked my own drink,” Hubert continued, “to quietly signal to Lady Edelgard that I believed her drink had been poisoned and give her an opportunity to dispose of it. However, I became worried that she had missed my signal when she did not use the toast as an excuse to get rid of it. Therefore, at the next opportunity, I took it upon myself to swap hers with someone else’s.”

Incensed, Caspar shot to his feet. “You what?”

“Why would you do that?” Dorothea cried out, disgusted. “What did poor Bern ever do to you?”

“Not as much as what I’m gonna do to you!” Caspar shouted, putting a leg up on his desk and rolling up his sleeves, a fire in his eyes and a snarl twisting his face. Linhardt grabbed him by the arm in a vain attempt to pull him back; Byleth rushed in front of him and held out her arm, though, holding him back without a word or a change in the ever-impassive expression on her face. Still scowling and filled with pent-up rage, but loath to fight his way past his teacher, he stepped off the desk and jammed his fists angrily into his pockets.

“Of course I didn’t give her the poisoned cup,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the clamor. Ferdinand, once again, had gone pale, betraying his usual demeanor. “Or, rather, I didn’t give it to her. Isn’t that right, Ferdinand von Aegir?”

The room went silent. Everybody’s eyes darted between Ferdinand and Hubert, tension so thick it could be cut with a knife blanketing the classroom.

Ferdinand scowled and clenched his fists. “You greasy-haired mongrel—you tried to turn me into a mouse?!”

Hubert returned his scowl with a glare of his own. And failed, unfortunately, he almost shot back. “Rest assured, my aim was not to turn you into a mouse—though I’m certain it would be an improvement.”

Before Ferdinand could explode, Dorothea stood up and held him back. “Wait a minute! Ferdie isn’t… a mouse. How did Bern end up with the poison instead?” she asked.

“Yes, how did she end up with the poison?” Hubert parroted, looking Ferdinand right in his angry eyes and knowing exactly what hidden darkness that righteous indignation was hiding. “Perhaps you noticed that your drink had been swapped, assumed the worst, engineered a distraction—such as, say, pretending to catch a glimpse of Archbishop Rhea—and took advantage of the commotion to exchange cups with her?”

“What? Of course not!” Ferdinand hotly protested, his face now burning as red as his carrot-colored hair. “A true nobleman would never—”

Hubert chuckled darkly, knowing full well the role Ferdinand’s treacherous father (and his own traitorous cur of a father as well) had played in wresting political might from Edelgard's father, the current emperor of Adrestia. “Never is a very strong word, Ferdinand. Are you sure?”

“I did not know my cup was poisoned!”

“Yet you disposed of it awfully quickly for someone who had no idea it had been spiked.”

“I thought Sylvain may have slipped something into her drink when he was flirting with her!” Ferdinand shot back. “I switched cups with her to protect her. I feared it was a drug that would knock her out or render her, er, suggestible, and sought to bear whatever ill effects myself…” He glanced at his fellow classmates and Byleth in turn, his brow furrowing with worry. “You… Surely you all must believe me. Professor, you believe me, right?”

Byleth nodded. “I think you’re telling the truth, Ferdinand.”

Hubert was not so trusting, but it was a moot point as far as he was concerned. What had been done had been done, whether or not Ferdinand had acted out of noble self-sacrifice or malicious self-preservation.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to find our culprit. The Professor and I have already discussed dividing our forces to cover more ground.” He set a notebook on the table in front of Linhardt. “I’ve copied down the ingredients for both the poison and its antidote in this journal. You and Dorothea, visit the apothecary and ask if anybody has bought any of the ingredients. Get what you can for the antidote as well.”

“Ah, yes, I’ll just put it on my tab,” Linhardt responded blithely, opening the journal up to the first page and furrowing his brow at the sight of the lengthy ingredients list.

Dorothea took a peek at the list. “I can’t even pronounce half of these, Hubie.”

Hubert moved on. “Petra, you and I will investigate the scene of the incident.”

Ever the enthusiastic one, Petra made a fist and slammed it decisively on the table. “No clues will be escaping us.”

Caspar crossed his arms. “Well, General Hubert, any assignments for me and Ferdinand?” he asked testily.

“Keep an eye out for anyone suspicious, especially around Edelgard’s room,” Hubert said, “and stay out of my way.”

“With the utmost pleasure,” Ferdinand mumbled.

With Petra trailing behind him, Hubert made for the dining hall. As he stepped over the threshold of the classroom, though, Byleth reached up to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“Hubert,” she said.

“Yes, Professor?” he answered.

There was a dark look in her gray eyes; even though she had to look up to look him in the eyes, her stern glare still dug into him like a knife. Hubert could understand why she had been nicknamed ‘the Ashen Demon’ in her mercenary days. “Don’t poison other students.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Once this is over, you will clean the stables every day after class for the rest of the month. At the very least.”

“Yes, Professor,” he answered with only the barest trace of a sardonic grin. Of course, she very well couldn’t let him off easy.

A shaft of morning sunlight fell across Bernadetta’s face like an arrow, the warm light bleeding through her eyelids and forcing her awake.

What a horrible dream! But thank the Goddess it had only been a dream. She sat up and rubbed the weariness from her eyes with the side of her fist and—

Whiskers.

And worse than the whiskers was the sight of Edelgard slumped over in the corner of the room, head bowed, silver hair spilling over her shoulders, knees tucked against her chest and arms draped over her knees. A flash of pain flickered across her face, her brow furrowing and a sharp grimace tugging at her lip for but a second before fading back to the serenity of sleep. A litany of soft nonsense spilled from her mouth as she muttered in her sleep. Somehow, the red half-cape and tights that were part of her uniform had changed color overnight from a vibrant crimson to a muddy sort of grayish chartreuse.

Once again, reality reared its ugly head and Bernadetta was forced to face the truth. Nothing that had happened yesterday had been a dream. Not Edelgard prodding at her collection of felt pitcher plants, not Hubert breaking into her room to talk about poisons, not Caspar barging in and catching sight of her wearing nothing but an oversized shirt, and most certainly not the whole thing about turning into a mouse.

It was real. It was all real! The whiskers, the fur, the tail, and worse than any of that, the imperial princess herself sleeping on the cold, hard stone floor of her bedroom like an impoverished peasant!

Welp. That was it, then. This was the end. She’d had a good run. No, scratch that, she’d had a very, very bad run, and it had been all her fault. She had to have done something to deserve this, after all. Cosmic justice maybe? Justice for what, only the Goddess knew.

“Edelgard!” she squeaked as she scampered out of bed. She wasn’t totally sure how her legs worked now, but they seemed to work in spite of her. “I-I mean, Lady Edelgard, Your Highness, ma’am, I’m so, so sorry—please forgive me, I should have given you the bed—no, I mean, I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, just don’t hurt me too badly…”

As Bernadetta scurried toward the resting princess, Edelgard’s eyes snapped open and she leaped to her feet with a sharp yelp.

“I mean, you can hurt me as badly as you want,” Bernadetta added as Edelgard stared down at her with wide, wild eyes, her chest heaving. “Just, um… I’ll shut up now…”

Edelgard put a hand over her heart and took a deep breath, glancing out the window. “Oh, Bernadetta. It’s just you. You startled me. Is it morning already?”

“I was just saying you can have the bed; it was stupid of me not to offer it to you; I’ll just sleep on the floor…”

“What? No, I don’t—”

“If the floor’s not good enough and you want me out of your sight, I’ll just crawl under the bed! Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll crawl under the bed so no one has to look at me. Yeah. That’s where Bernie belongs. Under the bed. With the rest of the monsters.”

“Bernadetta.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am?”

“What kind of soldier would I be,” Edelgard asked, “if I wasn’t accustomed to rough sleeping?”

“Um… a bad one?” Bernadetta scuttled backward. “Not that I’m saying you’re a bad soldier! I’m terrible, I’m selfish…”

“What I meant is, I don’t care about the bed—”

“I’m worthless, I’m horrible, I’m—”

“Shut up!”

Bernadetta backed away until she was leaning against the side of the bed. “Shutting up!”

Edelgard leaned against the wall next to the window and raised her hand to her forehead, her fingertips burrowing into her hair and raking her scalp. “I can hardly hear myself think,” she snapped, “for all your self-abasement.”

“Sorry.”

“If you reserved that abuse for your enemies, you’d be unstoppable.”

Yes, Bernadetta knew that, but her enemies weren’t the ones who deserved that abuse.

Edelgard returned to standing awkwardly in the corner of the room, her arms folded over her chest, occasionally stealing a glance at her only to immediately stiffen and look away. She didn’t say anything more.

There was a faint scratching sound at the door and a muffled meow. As quiet as it was, hearing it felt like nails on a chalkboard and sent shivers up Bernadetta’s spine. “What’s that noise?” she asked.

“A cat, probably,” Edelgard muttered.

Bernadetta huddled up and buried herself in what was left of her uniform. She wasn’t sure how much shorter she’d gotten, but it was enough that the hem of her shirt came down to just above her knees, or at least where she was pretty certain her knees were now, which made it into a sort of tunic and at least let her preserve what little was left of her dignity.

This was the end of her life as she knew it. It wasn’t like she could leave her room as long as she looked like this. No more classes at the Officers Academy, no more being around her fellow students; she certainly couldn’t go back to her family. She looked wistfully to the window, lifting her head—

Wait.

She couldn’t leave her room as long as she looked like this! How could she complain about that? To hell with classes and students and her family! She hated all those things! This was the only thing she’d ever wanted from her life!

This could work out. The faculty could just make this room off-limits. She could leave the room at night, when everyone was asleep, and actually enjoy being outside for once. She could be the Monster of Garreg Mach, spoken of only in hushed whispers by the more superstitious students and ignored by any adult with common sense. This could be great for her!

…Although she’d feel a lot better about her situation if her new roommate wasn’t constantly glaring at her and reminding her that she was a hideous monster.

There was a soft knock at the door, jolting Bernadetta out of her reverie. Edelgard glanced at the door, then looked down at her and shook her head.

“Hello and good morning, Bernadetta!” chirped the bright and ever-exuberant voice of Flayn. “I heard from Caspar that you are awfully and indescribably ill and cannot leave your room under any circumstances!”

As the younger sister of Seteth, the second-in-command of the Church, Flayn was the third-most important person in the monastery. And it just so happened that following her abduction and subsequent rescue, she’d insisted on making fast friends with… just about everybody in the Black Eagles house who’d so much as give her the time of day. She’d even been pestering her brother to allow her to officially enroll as a student under Professor Byleth. She was nice to a degree that bordered on saccharine, but she was also so closely watched by her brother, especially now, that one couldn’t risk talking to her without feeling as though they were signing their own death warrant.

Or, at least, that was how Bernadetta felt.

The other weird thing about Flayn was that despite acting so naively and looking like she was no older than fourteen or fifteen, she was extremely cagey about her age in the same way Byleth was, which was why Bernadetta suspected that both of them were actually a thousand years old at least.

“May I come inside?” Flayn asked.

Bernadetta looked up at Edelgard. Edelgard looked down at her and shook her head again.

“I assumed you would be hungry in spite of your terrible illness, so I brought a plate of breakfast!”

She felt her stomach twist itself into knots, so hungry she felt nauseous. She’d had days without food before and this moment brought all of them back to the forefront of her memory. Nonetheless, though, Edelgard crossed her arms and gave her a stern, pointed look that said quite clearly we can’t let her inside without the need for words.

“I was not sure how much food to get, so I made certain I had enough for at least two people!”

Edelgard frowned, her resolve wavering. Clearly, she was just as hungry.

“…Or one person and a very large mouse, I suppose?”

“She knows,” she sighed. “No sense in keeping her out now,” she added as she crept over to the door and slowly pulled it open, carefully remaining behind it so that nobody watching from outside would spot her.

The first thing Bernadetta noticed about Flayn as the young(?) girl sauntered into the bedroom with a plate piled high with food balanced on each hand (how had she knocked on the door?) was that her normally emerald-green hair was the same shade of muddy grayish chartreuse as Edelgard’s cape.

Great. Now she was colorblind. That meant now she’d be even worse at painting. Although at least from now on, Linhardt wouldn’t be able to fault her if she used vermilion instead of crimson. 

Then again, that didn’t matter anymore. That chapter of her life where she had to interact with people no matter how much she didn’t want to was over! What a liberating thought!

Flayn nudged away the cat waiting at the door with her foot and with great difficulty as it tried to worm its way through ahead of her. The sight of the cat filled Bernadetta with the overpowering urge to scurry under the bed. “No, g-get out! Bad kitty!”

Edelgard gave the resilient cat a much more forceful shove with her boot, slammed the door shut in front of it, took one of the plates from Flayn’s hand, and immediately started picking at the food. “Thank you for your hospitality, Flayn,” she said, relieved.

Bernadetta felt her stomach twist itself around her spine as Flayn set a plate down in front of her and the unmistakable aroma of still-warm rashers of bacon filled her nostrils. She picked up a piece and nibbled on it tentatively, not sure what to expect from it. What did mice eat, anyway? Seeds and berries? Did they eat cheese, or was that only in children’s stories?

Flayn sat down beside her, her hands folded in her lap, and looked down at her. Bernadetta realized with mounting discomfort that Flayn towered over her now as much as Hubert had before—she was just more than a head taller now, when just yesterday they’d been about the same height.

To say the least, it was disorienting. To say the most, it was actually kind of terrifying. There was something uniquely and perversely threatening about the sight of such a bright and cheerful face looming over her that Hubert’s dark demeanor simply couldn’t match.

“I suppose Caspar told you everything, then?” Edelgard asked Flayn between mouthfuls, her tone of voice making it clear that if he had, he was not going to get away with it unscathed.

“Yes, he told me everything he knew!” There was a mischievous twinkle in Flayn’s eyes. “Do not worry. He swore me to secrecy and told me that no one else, not even Big Brother Seteth, could know, and I will honor the promise I made with him!”

Bernadetta kept eating. She was so starved that the first few bites actually hurt. Not that she hadn’t gone longer without food before, but perhaps turning into a mouse worked up an intense appetite. The more she ate, though, the better she felt, and the food all seemed to taste more or less the same as before.

“You look like something out of a fairy tale,” Flayn told her.

What was that supposed to mean? Fairy tales were full of grotesque and nasty monsters! “A-Are you saying I look like the kind of creature that could devour children?” Bernadetta stammered through a mouthful of food.

“No, wait…” Flayn backpedaled, thoughtfully tugging on a lock of her long, elegantly-pleated hair. “You look cute, like… hmm… Oh! The Mouse King from Daikonsky’s The Radish Farmer and the Mouse King! Of course, I’ve never seen a ballet before, but Seteth played the songs from it on piano for me on last year’s Winter Solstice Eve and allowed me to look at the illustration on the libretto and I could all but see it in my head… Lady Edelgard, have you ever been to that ballet?”

Edelgard looked startled by the question. “Oh, um… no,” she sharply answered, promptly taking a bite out of a scone and chewing it excruciatingly thoroughly so that she wouldn’t be expected to say anything more.

“I think I will ask Professor Manuela if she has friends in any ballet companies. Perhaps she can invite them to the monastery for a performance this winter we can all enjoy!” Flayn was so giddy with excitement that she was all but vibrating.

Bernadetta was still mentally working through Flayn’s compliment and wondering if it was really all that flattering to be told she looked like a king. What, was she too hideous to be a girl anymore?

She shook her head in despair. Being her was an ordeal. She couldn’t even hear a compliment without twisting it into an insult. No wonder no one liked her. Couldn’t they all just leave her alone?

“May I pet you?” Flayn suddenly asked her.

Bernadetta suddenly felt far too warm for her fur and wished she could pull all of her skin off. “Um… what?”

“It is simply that you look quite soft,” Flayn said, “and it seems that it would help you feel better, since most cats and dogs seem to enjoy being petted. I do not think mice are any different…”

“Um… no?” Bernadetta answered, squirming uncomfortably and mentally preparing herself to run.

To run where?

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Flayn,” Edelgard interjected, glaring at her with cold, pale eyes, “you’re making her uncomfortable.”

Flayn stood up and backed away. “Oh! Bernadetta, I am so sorry,” she said, bowing. “I had no intention of offending you. Please accept my apology.”

“It’s okay,” Bernadetta mumbled, picking at the remnants of her food.

“Um… I will return at noon with lunch,” Flayn added, slowly backing toward the door, her face flushed from embarrassment. “Please do take care!”

The door slammed shut.

Flayn’s absence was like a weight lifting from Bernadetta’s shoulders. One less person in the room, one less intruder in her little sanctuary.

“Thank you,” she muttered to Edelgard.

Edelgard’s frosty demeanor did not soften, but as she sat at the desk and gazed blankly off at the room’s stone walls, she seemed slightly more at peace.

The breakfast rush was long past and the lunch rush had yet to begin, leaving the dining hall mostly empty save for a few stragglers who had overslept or who preferred to avoid the crowds and making the late morning a golden opportunity for observing the scene of what Hubert had insisted was an assassination attempt.

Petra treated the room as just another hunting ground, although she had to admit that here she was at a unique disadvantage. Indoors, unless the floor was particularly dusty or the quarry’s boots were particularly filthy, one could not expect to find even such common staples as footprints on the ground.

But she did not draw back in the face of a challenge. A hunter from Brigid could track any animal, even a person. If anybody doubted it, she would prove it to them.

Hubert walked in an arc around the edge of the table the Black Eagles had occupied the night before. “I was sitting here,” he mused, placing a hand on the table. “And Lady Edelgard to my left, and Dorothea to my right… and Petra, you were on the far end here, weren’t you? Next to Edelgard?”

“Yes. And on the other side of the table,” she said, “was sitting Linhardt, Ferdinand, Bernie, and Caspar.”

He nodded as though impressed by the sharpness of her memory. “And you noticed nothing, despite sitting next to Edelgard the entire time?”

Petra shook her head. “No, I was not seeing anything.”

Hubert stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said, “how our culprit managed to slip poison into her cup with neither of us any the wiser. We were flanking her. Should they have approached from either her left or her right, they would have had to slip past one of us.”

“I do not think our wisdom mattered. It was our alertness we were not having.”

“True. We were caught in the throes of revelry. Yet that is no excuse. If I hadn’t noticed the ripples in her cup, well… A poison like that would be a death sentence with so many cats in the monastery.”

He was correct. One could hardly walk five paces outside without nearly tripping over a cat. Petra couldn’t recall seeing a single rodent within the grounds of the monastery since she had come to the Academy.

Hubert’s expression darkened. “But for a stroke of luck… a flash of paranoia…” he muttered to himself. “I suppose we should ask ourselves who we saw passing by this table.”

“There was Lysithea and Sylvain,” Petra said, “and, of course, Professor. But we are not suspecting her.”

“No, of course not,” Hubert said, although his suspicious squint gave away that he did suspect her, at least a little.

“But…” Petra thought for a moment, then raised her hand across the table. “They all passed by this side. They could not have reached Edelgard’s cup without leaning over all of us. We would all have seen them. So they are not being suspects.”

“No. But they could have been accomplices, unwitting or otherwise. However, that’s a rabbit hole I am currently unwilling to travel down.”

“Of course not. We are not hunting rabbits.”

Hubert’s lip curled in a faintly amused smile, and Petra realized she had misinterpreted yet another Fódlanish figure of speech. “Which brings us, unfortunately, back to zero. Did you notice anybody pass behind us last night?”

“If I had been having eyes in the back of my head, I may have.”

“How unfortunate.”

Petra’s eyes fell to the tabletop and glided to a dark blotch on the wood surface—a stain on the lacquered wood fresher than its long-since dried peers. “Hubert,” she said, “you were thinking Edelgard’s cup had been poisoned. But we were not seeing anything. Why were you having suspicion?”

His yellow eye followed her gaze down to the table. “I saw a ripple in her drink, and…”

“This stain looks fresh,” she pointed out, “and it is where Edelgard sat. I think the roof is taking a leak.”

Hubert’s gaze lingered on the stain. A fresh droplet of water plopped down on it with a barely-audible tap as if to punctuate Petra’s statement. “Then when was her cup poisoned?”

“I do not know. But maybe it was providence of the rain spirit that you were given awareness.”

Hubert chuckled darkly. “Doubtful.”

“I am sorry for being insensitive.” Petra bowed her head. Even in this place, a monument to Fódlan’s religion, she had forgotten for only a moment that the people here did not believe in the spirits spoken of in Brigid’s legends. “I suppose your goddess may have been speaking to you as well.”

“No,” Hubert said, “I simply meant that it wasn’t raining yesterday. Nor is it raining right now. So…”

He lifted his head and looked upward. Petra followed along.

“What,” he asked, “is dripping from the ceiling?”

Petra squinted, focusing on the dining hall’s high, vaulted ceiling. The ceiling towered far overhead, propped up by curved arches and buttresses nearly as regal as those within the cathedral at the far end of the monastery. A gleaming brass chandelier hung over the table, guttering candles lining its perimeter and driving the shadows back to the highest and farthest reaches of the ceiling.

Yet something else gleamed and glittered in the chandelier, not like a tongue of flame but more like the faint twinkling of a beacon to a ship at sea or gold foil resting in the sun.

Petra stepped onto the bench, then onto the table, and reached up, standing on her toes. The lowest point of the chandelier was still far out of reach, though, hanging mockingly just beyond the ends of her fingertips no matter how she stretched and strained her arm. If only she were a few inches taller…

Hubert climbed onto the table. “Here, stand on my shoulders.”

Hubert, Petra thought, was an easy man to misjudge. In fact, he made it easy to misjudge him, as his performance in the classroom had attested. Yet in spite of his sinister demeanor, there was a refreshing earnestness and honesty to his words and deeds. Those he had respect for knew where they stood with him, as did those he did not.

With Hubert’s added height, Petra was easily able to reach the chandelier, though she struggled to steady herself without disrupting it. With the slightest movement, the chandelier threatened to sway to and fro like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, dashing whatever object had caught her eye to the floor and potentially breaking it. The table creaked and groaned ominously under her and Hubert’s combined weight.

It didn’t take her long to spy it. A glass vial resting on its side, short and squarish with a long, thin pipe protruding from its top. An orb of clear liquid as tiny as a single droplet of dew resting on a blade of grass hung precariously from the end of the pipe, quivering, threatening to fall.

She looked down and realized with a twinge of embarrassment that there were people below gawping at her, staring with wide eyes and gaping mouths and unvoiced tongue-clucks; she also realized that her inappropriate behavior, however necessary, called to their minds all of the worst stereotypes of her people as backward, backwater, unrestrained, uncivilized.

Shamed and self-conscious, she hastily snatched the vial up and slipped off of Hubert’s shoulders, landing with a thud on the table below.

Hubert stepped off the table and snatched the bottle from her hand. “Thank you for retrieving this for me, Petra,” he loudly announced to the rest of the dining hall. “I do not know what I was thinking, throwing it at the ceiling like that, but thank the Goddess you were here for me.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “You are a good friend.”

“It was nothing,” she sheepishly answered.

As he and Petra left the room, Hubert kept turning the vial over in his hand, glaring daggers at it and furrowing his brow. “The providence of the rain spirit,” he muttered, his lips curling bitterly.

Petra studied the vial, wondering how somebody could have held that over Edelgard’s drink without anybody seeing them hanging from the chandelier—after all, she had been easy enough to spot up there. And the bottle couldn’t have been set up beforehand unless the culprit had known exactly where Edelgard would be sitting that night… unless Edelgard had not been the target.

She and Hubert had found a clue, and yet she felt no closer to understanding what had happened last night… or who had been responsible.

Keeping an eye on Edelgard’s (empty) bedroom was an exercise in tedium. The second floor of the dormitories didn’t have much in the way of foot traffic save for students in the Officers Academy occasionally entering and leaving their rooms, so the chances of a suspicious character coming through were low.

Ferdinand suspected that Hubert had posted him here with Caspar to waste their time and keep them out of his way, but on the other hand, despite Hubert’s constant insinuations that he was an idiot, he was well aware that the culprit may indeed return to Edelgard’s room.

At least being on such an uneventful stakeout gave him an opportunity to ruminate on the events of the past day. Part of him was still rankled that Hubert had tried to strike such a mortal blow against his character this morning. Of course, Hubert had described what had happened with perfect accuracy, but had told the story in such a way that cast Ferdinand as just as despicable, underhanded, and villainous as himself. Funny how one could be both truthful and a liar at once. Of course Hubert couldn’t conceive of a nobleman actually behaving with honor and dignity.

Yet Ferdinand had to admit that all the same, regardless of the motivations behind his actions, the result had been the same. He may as well have been a gutless, self-centered worm.

Caspar stretched and stifled a yawn. “Ugh. Can’t we stake out a place with more foot traffic? I could fall asleep with my eyes open here.”

Ferdinand barely heard him.

“Hey. Penny for your thoughts?”

“It is nothing.” He shook his head. “I am reflecting on the situation. That is all.”

“Don’t let it get to you. Hubert just needed to cast someone else as the villain before the rest of the class ripped him apart.” Caspar made a fist and drove it into his palm. “Hell, I still might.”

“Language.”

He rolled his eyes. “Heck, I still might. Gotta say, though, I’d never seen you so angry. You looked like you were ready to punch his head off.”

“I tried to exercise restraint. But he did attempt to murder me.”

“Anyway, like I said, don’t let it get to you. You didn’t mean for what happened to Bernie. None of us did. We’ll nab the guy who did this and get everything back to normal soon enough.”

Ferdinand nodded. “Your confidence is inspiring, Caspar. Still, though… my heart aches for poor Bernadetta.”

“Man, you’ve really got Bernie on the brain, don’t you? Does someone have a crush?”

“Most certainly not!” Ferdinand insisted, feeling heat rise to his face. “But… I did know her when we were children,” he added.

“No kidding. Really?” Caspar asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Er… to be fair, actually, I knew of her. She was rather infamous. Other children said she made cursed dolls of her enemies.”

“What, like she turned people into dolls? That’s messed up.”

“No, they were special dolls, and if you poked the doll with a needle, the person it was based on would feel it.”

“So, if the doll’s head got cut off, would the person’s head just roll off their shoulders? Or would it just feel like you’d had your head chopped off?”

“They called her ‘Spooky Bernie,’ and they were all terrified of her.”

“Spooky Bernie, huh.” Caspar scratched his chin. “I think Bernie-Bear is a better nickname. Although I guess we can’t call her that anymore. But Bernie-Mouse doesn’t have the same ring to it. But I mean, it’s not like she was a literal bear before, so…”

“I heard that once, her father tried to set up an arranged marriage between her and the son of another noble family,” Ferdinand said while Caspar mumbled about nicknames to himself, “and the son had nightmares for a week and begged his parents to call off the arrangement until they did.” 

He decided not to mention to Caspar that the noble family had been the Aegir family and the son in question had been himself. Now that he knew Bernadetta a little better, she wasn’t so bad, but all the same, he still remembered those nightmares. Memories like those tended to stick in one’s mind far more tenaciously than good memories or even important memories. He couldn’t remember the first time he’d ridden a horse, and yet…

“Nightmares for a week, huh. Was that one of her powers, too?” Caspar asked.

“Sh—She doesn’t have any powers. You, er… you understand that, right? We called her Spooky Bernie and made rumors about her because she never talked to anyone, never left her bedroom, and kept drawing pictures of plants with teeth.”

“Right. You know, if she did have magic powers, that could explain this whole thing.”

“I simply feel so guilty. I truly did believe that I was protecting her by switching her cup with mine. Instead… what has happened to her is my fault,” Ferdinand lamented. “Poor Bernadetta. Poor Spooky Bernie.” If it had been a lethal poison, he would have killed her.

He wouldn’t be surprised if he had another week of nightmares over this. Another week of Spooky Bernie haunting his slumber.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt her.” Caspar smirked. “What, you think I’d take Hubert’s word over yours?”

Ferdinand laughed in spite of himself. “Ah, thank you, Caspar. All the same…”

“Look, maybe it’s for the best. I mean, think about it. Better her than you, right?”

“Hmph!” Ferdinand crossed his arms, irked. He should have known his charitable feelings toward Caspar couldn’t last. “I cannot believe you. Were a man to draw a sword on a defenseless girl, of course I would leap in front of her! It is simply my duty as a noble.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Caspar said. “I mean, think about it. Bernie likes shutting herself up in her room, right? And now she has an excuse to stay there all the time.”

“Even so…”

“And on the other hand, if you hadn’t switched those cups and had gotten the same dose as her, you’d be, uh…” He held out his hand about three and a half or four feet off the floor. “This big. And I don’t think you’d like that.”

“It is not the size of one’s body that matters, but the size of one’s heart,” Ferdinand insisted, shaking his head and clucking his tongue in disapproval. Despite his noble blood, Caspar most certainly did not act like it. “I would fight just as valiantly if I were six feet tall, three feet tall, or three inches tall.”

Caspar looked up at him, noting the height disparity between the two of them. “Easy for you to say.”

The two of them kept watching and kept waiting, both hoping that something would happen to alleviate this dreadful tedium. Sooner or later, someone suspicious had to walk past.

“Y’know, if you think about it, it’s all Hubert’s fault for not smashing Edelgard’s cup or dumping it on the floor. I hope the Professor nails him to the wall,” Caspar said. He yawned again and slumped into a casual slouch, but stiffened and stood straight as a ramrod as soon as the sound of footsteps began to echo from the staircase at the far end of the hall and a student emerged from downstairs.

The red-haired girl who came to a stop in front of Edelgard’s door was Monica von Ochs, a student of the Academy who’d been rescued from the Death Knight along with Flayn after having been missing for over a year. Caspar peered suspiciously at her. She peered suspiciously right back.

“What’re you doing standing in front of Edel’s room?” she asked the two of them. “Speaking of, have you seen her? We were going to have tea this morning…”

Caspar glanced at Ferdinand. “She’s, uh, sick.”

“Terribly ill.” Ferdinand shook his head. “She cannot leave her room. We are waiting here so that we may bring her food and water, should she ask for it.”

Monica’s brow furrowed with worry. “Oh, no! Has Professor Manuela had a look at her?”

“Well—” Ferdinand started, knowing there was no good reason why Edelgard wouldn’t have been taken straight to the infirmary if she were indeed ill.

“She’s not that sick,” Caspar answered.

“Then maybe I can see her!” Monica smiled. “I’m sure she’d be happy to see a friend…”

“Er, no,” Ferdinand said, at a loss for what to say. Lying and dissembling was much harder work than he’d expected. Or perhaps he simply didn’t have the talent for it like some other nobles did. “You see…”

“She’s got diarrhea,” Caspar whispered to her. “We had to bring, like, ten chamberpots in there. It’s so embarrassing.”

Monica’s smile shrank by a few molars. “Oh, I… I see,” she said, taken aback.

“Yes, it is all quite undignified,” Ferdinand chimed in, sadly shaking his head. “Cholera is a terrible thing. I would like to ask you to keep this to yourself so as not to sully her reputation. You know how quickly rumors can spread.”

“I guess,” Monica said with a hapless shrug. “You know, dehydration is a serious concern for people in her… condition. Are you sure she has enough water?”

“Uh, yeah, we brought her a fresh jug about, uh… ten minutes ago,” Caspar said. “She’ll knock on the door if she needs anything.”

“Is there anything I can bring her? A pillow, a blanket, some reading material…”

“Oh, do not worry,” Ferdinand assured her. “We have that covered.”

“Oh, you two are such good friends to her.” Monica smiled and strode off. “Let her know I wish her well!”

Ferdinand watched her stride down the hall and vanish down the staircase. He couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about the way that red-haired girl smiled reminded him of a knife ready to bury itself in somebody’s back. Every face she made, every reaction she had, they all just seemed far too practiced.

No. He couldn’t cast blame on her just for that. The poor girl had been kidnapped and traumatized, for the Goddess’ sake! If she wore a mask, what reason could there be for it other than to hide her tremendous suffering from the world?

He shook his head. Hubert’s rotten attitude was clearly getting to him. That was the trouble with scoundrels and villains. If one spent too much time around them, one’s soul began to tarnish and corrode.

“I think we just found suspect number one,” Caspar muttered. “Lucky us.”

“We, Edelgard included, saved her from the Death Knight. What reason would she have to poison her?” Ferdinand asked. “If anything, she owes us all a life debt.”

“Dunno. We can worry about the motive later.” Caspar shrugged. “Hey, speaking of luck, I’ve been thinking. Isn’t it weird that Hubert jumped straight to poison before he even had any evidence?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he moved Edelgard’s cup because, what, he saw a ripple in her drink and got paranoid? Even if he turned out to be right, that’s a hell of a—that’s a huge leap of faith to make right there. And Hubert doesn’t really do faith, does he?”

Ferdinand felt an unsettling unease in the back of his mind. “What are you suggesting, Caspar? That he is taking charge of this investigation to distract us?”

Caspar’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head in the direction of the closed door directly adjacent to Edelgard’s room. “I’m suggesting we should sneak into his room while he’s out and do some investigating of our own.”

Ferdinand groaned inwardly. Though Caspar had as strong a sense of justice as any proper nobleman should have, his sense of decorum and restraint was on par with a barbarian.

Scoundrels and villains, the lot of them. He was surrounded by scoundrels and villains.

Linhardt didn’t expect to find even half of the ingredients Hubert was looking for at the apothecary, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere else to look within fifty miles, so he supposed he couldn’t avoid doing the legwork. He suspected that Hubert had put him and Dorothea on this quest to get them out of his way. After all, it wasn’t as if he and Hubert got along. Then again, no one got along with Hubert save for Edelgard.

The sky was clear and blue, the sun was bright, and the town that sat in the shadow of the monastery was lively and bustling. Not just the townsfolk, but off-duty knights and students with free time between their morning and afternoon classes took advantage of the good weather to do absolutely nothing at all. Seeing fellow students nestled underneath shade trees and sleeping like logs with their textbooks shielding their faces from the sun filled Linhardt with jealousy. On a beautiful day like today, any of them could have easily been him.

Instead, here he was standing in the middle of the street dressed to the nines and sweating under the midday sun, resisting the torturous urge to scratch at the false mustache glued to his face with spirit gum; Dorothea stood at his side in an equally ostentatious dress she’d pulled from her wardrobe—a leftover from her days with the opera company before she’d enrolled in the Academy—and her long, thick locks of curly chestnut-brown hair tied back in a luxurious mane of ringlets cascading down her back. He had a sneaking suspicion she’d taken a sadistic pleasure in picking out his ‘costume.’ He felt like he had a broom pasted over his upper lip.

Dorothea peered at the journal Hubert had left them, reading through the ingredients list for the poison. “Lin, what’s this one?” she asked, placing her finger on the page.

Linhardt looked at the item she’d singled out. “That one? I think it makes your tongue swell to three times its size.”

“And this one?”

“Severe tooth decay.”

“Is everything on this list so gruesome?” Dorothea asked, grimacing.

“No, this one here makes you, er… euphoric.”

“Oh, so it gets you high,” she said, seeing right through his euphemism. “I’d bet you know all about that.”

Linhardt fidgeted uncomfortably, tugging on his collar. Yes, he had partaken in certain stress-relieving medicinal herbs from time to time, but… “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

Dorothea laughed. “Oh, please, don’t act so above it all. Do you really think everyone in the Mittelfrank Opera Company wasn’t getting high after every performance we gave?”

Linhardt saw fit to keep his mouth shut.

“Anyway, so you put this all together and you end up with a drink that turns you into a mouse?” Dorothea shook her head. “…I just don’t understand chemistry.”

“It isn’t the kind they teach in school, at any rate.”

“How does Hubie know about it?”

“I’d ask him, but I like being able to sleep at night,” Linhardt said, taking the notebook as the two of them weaved through the bustling town square to the marketplace.

The apothecary’s shop was tucked away in the corner, overshadowed by its neighboring stores so that even on such a bright day it seemed to occupy its own patch of twilight. A glum, ramshackle building, its roof a patchwork of old and new shingles and bits of bare wood and tin sheets like patches on a mended sock, it was a house that had no doubt suffered indescribable indignities.

If one were looking for illicit potions, one could do a lot worse than to come to this shop first.

The inside of the shop was as gloomy as its outside, guttering candles casting faint and flickering lights on dusty and cobwebby shelves loaded with vials and bottles of grease-colored liquids. The apothecary evidently didn’t care much for keeping his store tidy. Surely he must have sold goods of the highest quality for people to ignore such squalor.

Somehow, Linhardt found it easy to imagine Hubert spending his free time skulking around here.

But Hubert wasn’t skulking around here today—the only other customer browsing the shop this afternoon was a young Almyran boy Linhardt instantly recognized as Cyril, Archbishop Rhea’s servant. Cyril was a hard worker who put even the most industrious student to shame. If there was a mess or something that needed fixing anywhere in the monastery, Cyril was never far away.

“Is that Cyril?” Dorothea whispered in Linhardt’s ear. “What’s he doing here?”

“I gotta get the best rat poison you have,” Cyril told the apothecary, standing on his toes to rest his elbows on the counter.

“I didn’t know we had a rat problem,” Dorothea said.

“We don’t,” Linhardt said.

“Rat poison?” the apothecary inquired, raising a caterpillar-like eyebrow. “Why in the world do you need that? There must be a dozen cats at the monastery.”

“Doesn’t keep ’em out of the kitchen. Or Lady Rhea’s room.” Cyril had a blunt, direct way of speaking that belied his age. Most adults were taken aback at first glance, and the apothecary was no exception. “And I think they’re gettin’ too tough for the cats to handle.”

“I see. Let me check in back,” the apothecary said, shuffling off to the shop’s back room, “and see what I have in the pest control section.”

Linhardt peered at a shelf labeled ‘medicine and tonics’ and watched a hairy spider the size of a gold coin creep across the dusty wood. “I wouldn’t trust anything on this shelf as far as I could throw it,” he said.

“I wouldn’t trust the shelf as far as I could throw it,” Dorothea said.

Hardly a minute later, the apothecary returned with a vial of sickly green liquid. The bottle and coin exchanged hands and Cyril headed for the door.

“Hey, Linhardt,” he said as he passed by Linhardt and Dorothea. “If you were hopin’ to pass for an adult, heads up—your fake mustache looks like a broom. See ya.”

“Kids today have no manners,” Linhardt muttered as Cyril strode out of earshot and out the door, self-consciously adjusting the mustache.

“Oh, don’t let him get to you, Lin.” Dorothea smiled. “I think your mustache is very distinguished. And very real-looking.”

Linhardt took the notebook from her hands and carried it through the shop to the counter in front of the apothecary. “Excuse me,” he said, placing the notebook down. “I’m, er, looking for any of the ingredients on these lists and wish to know if I can find any of them here.”

The apothecary stooped over and peered down at the notebook from across the counter, squinting through glasses as thick as windowpanes and stroking a bristly salt-and-pepper beard. After a few seconds, he took the journal in his hands and spun it around so he was reading it right-side-up, then took another few seconds to stare at it.

Well, this was promising so far.

“Oh,” the apothecary muttered in a concerned tone. “Oh,” he muttered in an even more concerned tone. “Ooohhh…” he muttered in a tone so concerned that Linhardt started to worry there was something illegal on that list.

What was he thinking? It was Hubert’s list. Of course there was something illegal in it.

The apothecary looked up at him. He tried not to look suspicious by smiling suspiciously. “Aren’t you a student at the Officers Academy?”

“Pssh. Me? No,” Linhardt said, shaking his head and desperately hoping his false mustache wasn’t askew or falling off. “If I were a student, I would be over there right now in the middle of the day taking classes… or studying… or napping. Or whatever it is students do. I don’t know; it’s been so long since I was one myself.” He hoped the apothecary’s terrible eyesight made the mustache look at least a little less fake.

“Hmm. What’s your name?”

“Oh, it’s Lin… h… hmm…” Dammit, he was terrible at improvisation. If only he’d taken more time to think about what alias he’d use…

Dorothea wrapped her arm around his as swiftly and tightly as a serpent coiling around its prey. “You’ll have to excuse my husband; he has terrible anxiety. Can’t even say his own name without stammering. My name is Manuela… er, Morgan… Morgan Manuel-Miranda. And my husband is Lin.”

The apothecary squinted at Linhardt. “…Lin Manuel-Miranda.”

Linhardt forced a smile. “That’s me.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Manuel-Miranda,” the apothecary said, slamming the notebook shut and sliding it across the counter, “but you won’t find most of these ingredients in this shop. Half of them, you won’t find outside of the Empire.”

“And the other half?” Dorothea asked.

“You won’t find them for sale anywhere. Least of all here.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, resting her arm on the counter and leaning forward, fluttering her eyelashes coquettishly as she surreptitiously tried to lower the neckline of her dress.

Linhardt rolled his eyes. Although Dorothea had tremendous… stage presence, he was fairly certain this old man was too blind to notice her feminine wiles. “Er, Dor—um, Morgan— honey, perhaps we have troubled this shopkeeper enough,” he whispered to her, tugging on her arm.

“Is there a chance you might have sold any of these ingredients in the past?” Dorothea asked. “Or that you know anyone else who sells them?”

The apothecary’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re asking me if I have any ties to the black market,” he spat, “then the answer is no! Good day, Lin Manuel-Miranda!”

With that, he spun on his heel and vanished into the back of his shop with surprising swiftness considering his age and feebleness.

“Wait!” Linhardt called out after him. “Do you have the medicinal herbs, though?”

There was no response.

“That could’ve gone better,” Dorothea sighed.

The two of them left the apothecary’s shop, blinking and squinting as the sunlight assaulted their eyes. Linhardt sneezed.

While they wandered through the town square and pondered their next move, they passed by Cyril once again. He’d gotten trapped in a conversation with Tomas, the monastery’s librarian, who had cornered him to complain about how many mice he'd seen in the library lately.

“…And be very observant around the dormitories,” Tomas cautioned Cyril, laying a hand sagely on his shoulder. “No one wishes to see a hideous vermin scurrying out from under their bed. Mice can fit through holes the size of a penny. Make certain you lay plenty of traps around the students’ rooms, boy…”

“Something wrong, Lin?” Dorothea asked, pulling Linhardt's attention away from Tomas’ lecture. Though he couldn't put his finger on it, something was worrying him.

He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Just... Lin Manuel-Miranda?”

Dorothea laughed. “What’s the matter with that? Aren’t you enjoying roleplaying as someone without a ‘von’ in their name?”

“Never mind,” Linhardt sighed. “Let’s keep asking around. The sooner we can find a lead, the sooner we can take a siesta.”

The only reason Ferdinand accompanied Caspar was to talk some sense into him, but unfortunately, he found that to be a challenge too great even for him. Every word he spoke fell on deaf ears until Caspar planted his foot on the door to Hubert’s room and subsequently fell to the floor clutching at his knee.

“What did you expect?” Ferdinand asked, crossing his arms as he looked down on Caspar. “That Hubert would not lock his door?”

“I mean, I don’t,” Caspar said, wincing as he pulled himself up to his feet and cradled his aching knee.

“That is a bold thing to admit to someone. Count your blessings you told me.”

Caspar inspected the door again, placing his ear near the lock.

“Why do you even suspect him, anyway? Hubert and Edelgard have known each other since they were children. He has never shown anything but loyalty to her for fourteen years,” Ferdinand said.

“That’s what makes him the perfect suspect. What would Hubert say? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Caspar retorted, inserting two thin metal wires into the lock and jiggling them.

“What are you doing?”

“Picking the lock.”

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Ashe taught me. I was talking to him about taking the certification exam for the thief class…”

“Unbelievable. Give it to me.”

“No.”

Ferdinand grabbed Caspar by the shoulders and tried to wrestle him into submission. “Give me the lockpick!”

“No!”

“Caspar, if you cross this threshold, it will be a point of no return!”

“I’ve almost got it!”

“I will call the Professor if you do not cease this!”

The door swung open, depositing both Ferdinand and Caspar on the floor of Hubert’s bedroom. Caspar, who’d clearly been expecting a chamber of horrors, seemed almost disappointed to find a perfectly normal bedroom with a perfectly normal bed, a perfectly normal rug covering the stone floor, a perfectly normal desk, and a perfectly normal little armoire sitting in a perfectly normal corner of the room.

It could have been anybody’s bedroom.

“All that for nothing,” Ferdinand scolded him. “Are you satisfied now, Caspar?”

Caspar wormed his way out of his grasp. “Not yet.”

Ferdinand grappled with him, digging his fingers into his shoulders, jabbing his knee into the small of his back, anything to pin him down and drag him back, as Caspar struggled toward the armoire and flung its door open.

“You shut that armoire, Caspar,” he growled in his ear, “or so help me—”

There were no clothes in the armoire. Instead, a grid of tiny cubbyholes lined the inside, each labeled with the names of poisons both mundane and exotic and each containing its own little glass bottle save for a handful of empty holes, all listed by effect in neat alphabetical order. Poisons to put people to sleep, poisons to induce vomiting, poisons to paralyze, poisons to numb.

Poisons to kill.

And one empty cubbyhole labeled ‘Polymorphus Muridae’ and another empty one beside it labeled ‘Antemorphus Muridae.’

Words failed Ferdinand. 

Words did not fail Caspar. “Holy fuck,” he breathed. “And I thought Claude had a big collection.”

A heavy hand fell on Ferdinand’s shoulder.

“Well?” Hubert whispered in his ear, his voice a sinister, slithering whisper. Ferdinand felt every ounce of breath vanish from his lungs even though he hadn’t exhaled. “Do you see anything that catches your fancy?”

Ferdinand threw Hubert’s hand off his shoulder and whirled around to face him. “You!”

“Me.” Hubert nodded. “Now if you would kindly step away from my collection…”

“You did it.” Caspar glared daggers at him. “That poison was yours!”

“And?”

“…And what?”

“And what does that matter?” Hubert asked. “If you cared to use that walnut rattling around in your skull, you would have realized that the poison is also missing. How could I have poisoned poor Bernie if the poison wasn’t even in my possession?”

“We don’t know when it went missing,” Caspar said. “Maybe you just forgot to put it back!”

“Do I really seem that incompetent to you?” Hubert stepped back to block the door. “Think about who the original target was. What reason would I have to do such a thing to Lady Edelgard? And if I had planted the poison in her cup, then why did I go through the trouble of switching it?” He turned to face Ferdinand. “Besides, aren’t you a far more likely suspect? Haven’t you always wanted to… cut her down to size?”

“Do you think I would ever mean that literally?” Ferdinand asked.

“I know that rivalry, however one-sided, can drive people to do terrible things,” Hubert said with a wicked, smarmy grin. Now he was just goading him. “But rest assured, Ferdinand von Aegir, even if you had succeeded, you would still always be nothing more than an ant to her.”

Ferdinand raised his fists. This was the second time today that Hubert had impugned his character—two times too many. He wasn’t one to give into impulsive behavior easily, but Hubert had more than earned a beating.

Hubert raised his palm and conjured an orb of black and violet misama that flickered and wavered like flames. “Do either of you really intend,” he asked as a chill settled in the room, “to—what? Punch me in the face? Give me a shiner?” Shadows seized the room, blotting out the sunlight filtering through the windows; violet light danced across the contours of his shadowed face, turning the cavernous pockets of his eye socket and cheekbones into abyssal pools of darkness. His sinister chuckling grew to a crescendo of manic laughter. “Do you think you’re capable of that?”

“Let’s find out,” Caspar snarled. “C’mon, Ferdinand. He can’t take both of us at once.”

Before anybody could leap into action, Hubert extinguished the dark flame, allowing light and warmth to return to the room; just as suddenly, Ferdinand felt as though he could breathe again.

“Ah, Professor,” he called out, bowing politely as Byleth stepped over the threshold with a piercing, accusatory glare aimed squarely at him. “You’re just in time. I caught these two breaking into my bedroom.”

“Hey!” Caspar protested. “We weren’t—”

Ferdinand took him by the shoulder. “We were,” he clarified. “Hubert, please accept my sincerest apology on both of our behalf.” A true noble always knew when and why to apologize.

Hubert glowered at them. “I trust they will be reprimanded,” he said to Byleth.

“Wait, we can’t just let this slide,” Caspar said. “Professor, the poison belongs to him!”

Byleth crossed her arms. “Does it?”

Hubert lowered his head in what almost looked like shame or penance. “…Yes, the poison which changed poor Bernadetta is indeed part of my collection,” he answered, a weary and reluctant tone seeping into his voice. “My room was burglarized during our excursion yesterday. I did not realize it until I returned here after we’d had our celebratory drinks. Fortunately, the deadlier poisons were untouched. Unfortunately… the antidote was stolen as well.”

“You should’ve spoken to someone about it,” Byleth scolded him. “We still have plenty of soldiers keeping watch here.”

“I would have liked to,” Hubert admitted, “but I doubt the faculty would look kindly on my little hobby.” He sighed. “I suppose you’ll want me to dispose of my collection now.”

Caspar all but picked up his jaw off the floor. Even Ferdinand had to admit, he was seeing a side of Hubert he’d never seen before—a side of him who respected another authority beside Edelgard.

Byleth cocked her head as though listening to something only she could hear. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “As for you two, Caspar, Ferdinand—”

“Professor! Professor!” Monica’s voice rang out from outside the room, as shrill and urgent as an alarm. Ferdinand, Caspar, and Hubert followed Byleth out of the room and into the hallway where the red-haired girl stood beside the door to Edelgard’s room, doubled over, hands on her knees, panting for breath.

“Monica? What’s wrong?” Byleth asked, rushing to her side and taking her by the shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“It’s… It’s…” Monica gasped for air. “I… I wanted to see Edel, her door was locked, so I… I climbed the wall to her window and… and…” She shuddered and collapsed into Byleth’s arms, her face ashen, her eyes wide. “She’s gone! Edelgard is gone!”

Ferdinand glanced upward at Hubert to see him cross his arms and smile faintly to himself, as though a piece of some inscrutable master plan in his head had slid neatly into place.

Edelgard figured that the cosmos was punishing her. Just a few days ago, she had been wishing that for once in her life she could take a day, just one day, to shirk every responsibility she had—to her schoolwork, to her empire, to her future legacy—and loaf around gorging herself on sweets.

She’d gotten the day she had wanted, albeit sans sweets, and it had been utter torture.

She woke up from troubled dreams as the cloudless sky outside darkened from azure to deep, velvety violet and the last gasp of the setting sun grew fainter, bathing the room in darkness. The dreams were the same as ever—the cold stone floor against her back; the dying words of her brothers and sisters echoing in her ears, gibbered nonsense amid faint pleas for help filling the air; rough hands clamped around her wrists changing to biting iron manacles as she writhed under the searing touch of the surgical knife plunging into her belly; the screams for her father; the feel of tiny claws pricking her flesh and scabby, hairless tails slithering against her skin as she lay on the floor, corpse-like; the stench of vermin stinging her nostrils as rats whose fangs were stained red from nibbling on the corpses of her siblings crawled over her—

But now the dreams were worse. More real, more urgent, more grotesque; on nights like tonight, they felt like an overblown exaggeration of those years of hell that nevertheless felt more real than her actual memories.

She jolted awake sprawled on the floor, her heart racing and pulse pounding, the rug underneath her just a little too thin to guard her against the coldness of the stone floor. However long she’d been asleep, it hadn’t been nearly enough; she felt even more exhausted now than she had been before she’d collapsed.

She couldn’t even remember falling asleep. The last thing she remembered had been cracking open an adventure novel from Bernadetta’s bookshelf after dinner—anything to alleviate the boredom of being quarantined in a bedroom that wasn’t even her own. She remembered reading maybe three or four chapters. It had been the literary equivalent of candy, stimulating but hardly nourishing, which had been fine by her. The book was lying on the floor next to her, its spine bent, its pages fanned out. She’d lost her place.

She pulled herself up and knelt on the floor, still struggling to calm herself. The remnants of the scars traced across her abdomen and wrists throbbed and ached, sinking their leaden hooks deep into her flesh.

She steeled herself and forced herself to steal a glance at Bernadetta. She was curled up in the corner now, her face tucked into her knees, her hood cinched tight over her head.

The hairless, claw-tipped paws, the sharp, furry snout, the pale gray-brown fur, the forest of fine white whiskers, the naked pink tail almost as long as she was tall curling around her like a whip—

Edelgard took in whatever details she could, forced herself to confront them, but couldn’t help but look away and shudder.

It wasn’t Bernadetta’s fault she looked like a grotesquerie hand-plucked from her worst nightmares. And indeed, Flayn had even said she looked cute, and Edelgard had to admit that to somebody without her past and her emotional baggage, she probably did (beauty was, after all, in the eye of the beholder). That stomach-churning, nauseating revulsion was Edelgard’s burden to bear and hers alone, and she hated to think and feel such venom toward one of her own classmates, one of her own comrades, solely on the basis of her appearance. Bernadetta deserved better from her. Any of the Black Eagles would deserve better. Even Ferdinand.

Perhaps not Ferdinand.

She pulled herself to her feet and forced herself over to Bernadetta, forced herself to reach out for her and slip her arms around her, forced herself to lift her up and carry her to the bed—forced herself to ignore the bristling fur and whiskers, forced herself to ignore the tail dragging its tip across her feet, her heart rattling against her ribcage, her blood singing in her ears, her lungs tightening in her chest and freezing her breath in her throat.

Bernadetta stirred, her eyes opening just a sliver. “Ed… el…?” she mumbled, half asleep, barely alert.

Squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth, Edelgard hauled her onto the bed and threw the twisted and churned-up blanket over her, then fell to her knees, as exhausted as though she had run ten miles in full armor, forcing herself to breathe through the rock-hard lump caught in her throat as she leaned against the side of the bed.

That night, she dreamed that her siblings had all transformed into mice, and all of them looked up at her with beady, pleading, accusing eyes.

Glaring at the purloined vial resting in his open palm as he stood in the hallway, Hubert raised his fist and rapped on the door in front of him. The sharp sound of his knuckles reverberating against the wood carried through the silence enveloping the dormitories. It was so early in the morning that the sun’s rays had only barely begun to seep out from beneath the horizon.

The door creaked open, and Claude von Riegan poked his head out. With his noble brow and bronzed, golden-brown complexion, he had a face some would call ‘roguishly beautiful’ (or at least he would). But at this hour his mop of handsomely unruly dark hair, mussed from fitful sleep, resembled more a rat’s nest; his eyes were bleary and bloodshot.

“Oh. Hubert. Awake at this hour?” he asked, flashing a cheery smile nevertheless. “What’s up?”

Hubert quickly slipped the vial into his pocket. “I hear you’re an expert on ‘peaceful poisons,’ Claude. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Claude’s grin widened, his eyes twinkling in spite of his weariness. “Well, come on in,” he said, retreating into his room and beckoning Hubert inside. Hubert shut the door behind himself as he entered. 

As Claude sat backwards on his chair and rested his arms casually over the back, Hubert eyed him with the same sinister, suspicious glare he gave everybody.

“I could use a distraction from all this cramming, anyway,” Claude said, glancing offhandedly at an open notebook lying on his desk beside a guttering candle. He turned his attention back to Hubert and rested a hand casually against his cheek. “So, what do you want to know?”

Chapter Text

Most people outside of other Black Eagles students (and even some of them) were scared off by Hubert’s admittedly sinister demeanor. It was an affectation he had readily and consummately adopted to keep potential enemies on their toes, and it worked well—too well, sometimes.

If Claude was as put off by Hubert’s sinister demeanor as everyone else in the Officers Academy, though, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it. He was all friendly smiles and falsely-twinkling eyes.

“I have a thought experiment for you,” Hubert said, stepping across the threshold into Claude’s room. He wondered if Claude’s genial disposition was as much of an affectation as his. It was almost unsettling in its own regard.

“Alright.” Claude leaned forward in his chair. “Go ahead, take a seat.”

Hubert looked around Claude’s room. The only chair was occupied by Claude himself. The bed was piled high with books and a disarray of alchemical equipment and glass bottles of all shapes and sizes, as was the top of the dresser drawers. “I’ll stand, thank you.”

“Suit yourself. So, what about this thought experiment?”

“You’re expecting to engage an enemy army in battle tomorrow. However, tonight, you know that the general and his top lieutenants will be meeting in a tavern to draw up their battle plans. Your goal is to poison the general to incapacitate or kill him without being detected.”

“Who meets in a tavern to draw up battle plans?” Claude scoffed. “That’s bad operational security.”

Hubert crossed his arms, already frustrated. This, surely, was part of Claude’s strategy. “Imagine a reason for yourself. Here are the stipulations: You can’t know beforehand which table they will be sitting at, nor which seat the general himself will choose, and—”

“Well, that’s easy. I disguise myself as a cook and slip the poison into the general’s drink.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why?”

Though he almost wanted to say, ‘because I said so,’ Hubert instead opted to say, “Perhaps the cook has very distinguishing facial features. That is not important. What is important is that the general and his men are extremely paranoid and will be examining waiters, bartenders, and random passersby very closely to make sure nothing is amiss. It is vitally imperative that you or your agent are not spotted.”

“Okay, okay.” Claude rolled his eyes. “Any other details I should be aware about?”

“There is a chandelier directly over the table. It is a round table, so the general and his men can see in every direction. A direct approach will be impossible.”

“Hmm.” Claude stroked his chin thoughtfully. “This is a really complex thought experiment,” he told Hubert with a suspicious gleam in his eyes, as though he knew Hubert were adapting a real event for this exercise—one that, perhaps, he had had a hand in.

“Professor Byleth posed it to me the other day,” Hubert lied. “I found it refreshingly stimulating and figured you would be up to the challenge.”

And with that, the trap was set.

Claude smiled. “Any details about the poison I’ll be using?”

“Odorless, colorless, tasteless; a… maximally effective dose is just a few drops into your typical beverage.” Hubert had almost said lethal before stopping himself; old habits died hard, but he knew that Claude preferred poisons one could get up and walk away from (albeit rarely comfortably or right away).

“So it’s potent, huh. I’m assuming I can put it into a little flask with a pipette in the cap to more easily regulate the dosage?”

Hubert’s thoughts turned back to the vial in his pocket. A small, squat, squarish glass bottle with a long and thin snout perfect for dispensing its contents one drop at a time. “If you desire.”

Claude muttered silently to himself for a while, as though mentally acting out every possible vector of attack. Despite his casual demeanor and lackadaisical attitude, he was a tactical mastermind with a reputation for schemes that brought new meaning to the phrase ‘out of left field.’

Hubert scanned Claude’s face intently, searching every minute furrow of his brow or tremble of his lip or twitch at the corner of his eye for even the barest hint of a guilty (or not-so-guilty) conscience. It wasn’t that Hubert suspected him of being an agent for them, the people he not-so-affectionately referred to as ‘those who slither in the dark,’ but he could have been an unwitting accomplice. Anyone could have been. Or he could have had his own reasons—as the next in line to rule the Leicester Alliance, he was a clear rival to Edelgard.

“I think I’ve got it,” Claude said at last, snapping his fingers. “I’d have my agent sneak into the tavern, climb onto the chandelier, and drip the poison into the general’s cup from above.”

“It’s a well-lit tavern. The chandelier can’t support his weight. Your agent would be spotted immediately.”

“Well… it all depends on how small he is.” Claude winked. “I was picturing using a trained mouse or rat.”

“A mouse or rat?” Hubert asked, furrowing his brow skeptically.

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Claude retorted. “Mice and rats are intelligent creatures—if you know how to train them.”

Of course. Absurd or not, Hubert mused, it fit all of the facts. And if somebody had both the poison and the antidote, they could temporarily transform themselves or their underlings on a whim…

“Genius? I know.” Claude leaned back and ran his fingers through his already-tousled hair. “I’d prefer using a rat. Rats tend to be more cautious than mice, so they have better survivability rates with traps, cats, and the like. Y’know? On the other hand, the mouse would be smaller, but on the other other hand, a smaller mouse might struggle to carry the bottle.”

Hubert nodded. “I see,” he said.

“Thanks for the brain teaser, though. That was fun. But I gotta ask…” Claude’s eyes darted back and forth as he leaned in and dropped his voice to a low, conspiratorial whisper. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Edelgard’s disappearance, does it?” he asked.

“And why, pray tell, would you think that?”

“Hmm.” Claude stroked his chin in an exaggerated parody of thoughtfulness. “Maybe because her loyal manservant wouldn’t be wasting his time idly sharing logic puzzles while she’s in mortal peril? Unless he was the architect of that peril…”

Beneath his villainous exterior, Hubert bristled at the assertion.

“But if you were,” Claude added, “it would’ve been pretty stupid of you to spoon-feed me the exact method you used to poison her and spirit her away.”

Hubert smirked. Astute as always.

“So, did you come here to accuse me or ask me for help?” Claude asked.

“Either way, you’d be of use to me,” Hubert answered.

“I guess I would, if I were willing to help.” Claude yet out a barely-stifled yawn. “Let me see… the only heir of Ionius von Hresvelg IX missing, plunging the Adrestian Empire into chaos over the question of his successor… power struggles, power vacuums, civil unrest… backstabbing, nailbiting, backbiting, nailstabbing…”

“If you have a point, Claude, please do come to it,” Hubert said, pouring as much sarcastic menace into please as was humanly possible.

“Well, that all sounds like a pretty unpleasant situation to have in the Alliance’s backyard,” Claude finally concluded, “so I think I will help you out. First, why don’t you tell me about that little vial you slipped into your pocket?” He grinned. “Let me guess—odorless, colorless, tasteless, and you found it on the chandelier in the dining hall over where Edelgard was sitting the other day?”

Hubert’s eyes narrowed. He had expected this, of course; nevertheless, the speed at which Claude figured things out was uncanny.

Knowing he’d been found out, he produced the vial. “Polymorphus Muridae.”

At the sound of that name, Claude’s jaw went slack and his mouth hung agape. He stared at Hubert’s upturned palm. “Got a lot of nerve bringing that kinda stuff into a church, Hubert,” he muttered flippantly, belying his shaken expression.

“I don’t suppose you have any in your collection.”

“Of course not. If you have to cast a spell from some moldy old book to make a poison, it’s cheating.” Claude shook his head emphatically. “So… Edelgard got a dose of it and…”

“Yes. Frighteningly potent, isn’t it? If only this vial were full, you could destroy an entire army with it—”

“Nah.”

“What?”

Claude snatched up the vial and jiggled it, watching the meager trace of liquid pooling at the bottom slosh around. “Yeah, I’d never rely on this to take down an army. It wouldn’t work. If you got me with this stuff, I’d simply run up your trousers and bite off your unmentionables.” He handed the vial back to Hubert. “Now imagine threescore or more angry former humans doing the same to your soldiers.”

“Yes,” Hubert told him, “but what if you were to use it on somebody in, say, a monastery filled with cats?”

Claude blanched. “…Oh.”

And then in a flash he threw himself off the chair so quickly he nearly upended it and snatched an amber cloak from the floor, throwing it over his shoulders to cover up his pajamas. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? We have to find her!”

“Er… we?”

Claude clapped Hubert on the shoulders, a manic gleam in his eyes. “Come on! The game is afoot!”

And with that, he rushed from the room, dragging Hubert behind him with surprising strength given his lithe and slight build. Hubert wondered if there was enough poison left in that vial for him.

Bernadetta knew that something was wrong as soon as she woke up.

And no, it wasn’t the whiskers or the tail—after about a day, she’d started getting used to them, or at least used enough to them that they weren’t constantly taking her by surprise. It was the pillow under her head, the mattress under her belly, and the blanket over her back.

“Oh no,” she moaned to herself, pulling herself up and throwing off the blanket. There was no sharp morning sunlight to sting her eyes; the sky outside was a mass of roiling gray clouds that threatened rain. She looked down over the edge of her bed and there Edelgard was, curled up on her side on the floor, the half-cape draped over her shoulder crumpled beneath her. “Oh no, oh Goddess no, oh Bernie, what have you done?”

This was all wrong. She’d gone to sleep on the floor last night, not Edelgard! She’d meant for Edelgard to take the bed instead! So if she was on the bed, and Edelgard was still on the floor, then that meant…

The bottom of her stomach dropped out. She must have crawled into bed in her sleep in the middle of the night and forced Edelgard onto the floor! Edelgard would kill her when she woke up!

Wait. Edelgard was still fast asleep. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage this!

Bernadetta slipped off the bed and onto the floor and hauled Edelgard up into a sitting position, bracing her against her shoulder. The imperial princess’ head lolled limply to the side, her feathery white bangs plastered to her forehead, her hair sticking out at odd angles. “…don’t take me… don’t let them… take me away…” she mumbled faintly, her lips slowly and painstakingly tracing whispers so quiet that they could only just barely be heard and her brow furrowing almost imperceptibly, as Bernadetta propped her against the side of the bed.

She froze, terrified that Edelgard was waking up, but after a dozen frantic heartbeats, the slumbering princess did not stir again, so she scurried back onto the bed, reached down and hooked her hands under her armpits, and hauled Edelgard onto the bed with all her might. By the Goddess, she was heavy—or maybe it was just a matter of size (Byleth had trained Bernadetta enough with spears and javelins that she was usually taken aback by her own upper body strength, but in her current state, she was still getting used to how much more everything seemed to weigh).

“…please… don’t hurt me…”

Once again, Bernadetta found herself frozen in place while Edelgard’s weight strained her shoulders. Those were such familiar words—words she’d heard from her own mouth countless times before—but they sounded more alien than any foreign tongue because she was hearing them in Edelgard’s voice. What kind of horrors filled her nightmares that even she had to beg for mercy?

Her heart still hammering against her ribs, she pulled Edelgard onto the bed and rolled her onto her side as hastily as she could, then threw the blanket over her. Edelgard remained asleep; she even looked placid now. A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she settled into bed, as though the soft mattress and warm sheets had smothered whatever nightmare had been plaguing her.

Bernadetta sighed with relief. Crisis averted. She wasn’t going to be killed today. At least not over this.

She crept over to her desk and set a few books down on the seat of her chair to make up for the height she’d lost. She was adjusting pretty well, in her opinion, to the whole mouse thing; it was really only inconvenient that she was at least a foot shorter now and colorblind. Once she’d gotten comfortable, or as comfortable as one could be while sitting on a pile of textbooks, she rummaged through her desk drawer and took out her sketchbook and charcoals. This whole incident was, roommate aside (it was always hard for her to focus on creative endeavors, especially writing, when there was even the possibility of someone looking over her shoulder), a golden opportunity for her to catch up with her hobbies. Really, she may as well call it a vacation!

She lit a candle on the desk to provide some illumination to the gloomy room and flipped through her sketchbook. Most of the drawings in the first few dozen pages were speculative—sketches of plants and animals she’d only read about, brought to some semblance of life by the (often frustratingly-sparse) prose in the books she’d read describing them. Since arriving at Garreg Mach, she’d also filled the book’s pages with plants from the greenhouse, cats loitering around the campus, and beasts encountered on her assignments with the rest of the class. Here and there were more fanciful things: creatures from mythology, dragons and demons, creatures of her own design, and a few extremely embarrassing illustrations from one of her stories (they were just as good as her other drawings, which was to say they were okay, but if anybody else saw them she would die on the spot).

Turning to a blank page and tapping a thin, fine stick of charcoal against it, drawing a few aimless half-shapes in the corners to get a feel for how much bigger her tools felt in her hands, she racked her brain for a subject. Her eyes eventually fell on the little mirror lying on the windowsill.

She’d never bothered with a self-portrait before (why would she? she had a mirror; she knew what she looked like already), but what better subject for a sketchbook full of strange creatures?

Edelgard knew that something was wrong as soon as she woke up.

It was the pillow resting just barely under her cheek, the mattress settling underneath her, the blanket draped over her shoulder. It wasn’t that she was sleeping in a bed that wasn’t hers insomuch as she was sleeping in a bed at all.

The rain tapping relentlessly with an arrhythmic tattoo on the window chased the last vestiges of sleep from her mind. She groggily sat up, letting the blanket slough off her shoulder and drape itself over her lap as the last vestiges of her dream bled away from her waking mind. Her mussed and disheveled bangs cast a blurry, hazy veil over her eyes; she brushed them aside. What had she done to end up here? Had she been sleepwalking? Had she unconsciously ousted Bernadetta from her own bed while in the throes of the usual nightmare? And after the effort she’d made to carry her there, too…

Poor thing. As though she wasn’t suffering enough already.

Edelgard slipped out of bed, yawning as she stretched the minor aches of rough sleeping from her arms and legs. The blanket followed her and pooled on the floor around her feet. In addition to her hair feeling like an eagle had picked it out for a nest, the tasseled epaulets and ornaments on her blouse were all askew, her cape was in desperate need of ironing, and her tights felt like they had been glued to her skin. The thought struck her that at this moment she’d gladly exchange her claim to the throne for a change of clothes, a bath, and a comb.

She shook her head as if to drive the thought from her head. To have her life confined to a single room again was already getting to her. Even she still had a weakness for creature comforts, and she was feeling especially weak for them now.

Bernadetta was fast asleep, slumped over at her desk with a furry cheek pressed against the open page of one of her books and a mirror propped up against the wall. Though it still made Edelgard queasy to look upon her, her appearance was not quite so frightening in broad daylight. Yet she had to ask herself if she had the fortitude to carry her back to bed instead of taking it as a given. It was almost comical—she could all but cleave a man in half with a swing of an axe or take a shot at a Demonic Beast ten times her size without flinching, but a little furry thing was enough to leave her weak in the knees.

Mice. Why mice? Why not squirrels or ferrets or rabbits? She was fine around those things. If one could make a poison that turned people into mice, wouldn’t any other animal be just as feasible? What if she could transform soldiers into eagles and have them scout out their enemy with no fear of being detected? Or if she could have spies play the part of stray cats or dogs and tail their targets with unparalleled ease? The possibilities were endless.

She would have to ask Hubert about it. Such a poison could be of inestimable value to the Adrestian Empire.

Bernadetta stirred and pulled her head up, yawning and inadvertently baring her long, blunt fangs. “Good morning, Edelgard,” she mumbled sleepily.

“Oh, er—good morning,” Edelgard answered tersely.

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta immediately answered, slamming the book shut and hastily stuffing it in her drawer as though it contained something illicit. There she was again with the apologies. What in the world made her so skittish? When Edelgard had first heard rumors of the reclusive daughter of the Count of Varley, she had been surprised to hear that the count’s child had not inherited his forceful personality.

“Did you, um… did you sleep well?” Bernadetta asked.

“I didn’t sleep poorly,” Edelgard answered noncommittally.

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta said again.

“There’s no need to apologize. I’m grateful that you would host me—”

“I didn’t mean to kick you out of bed, Lady Edelgard, I swear, I must have been sleepwalking and—”

“Kick me out? No, I slept on the floor. Bernadetta, I owe you an apology—”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened, I went to sleep on the floor and woke up in bed—” both Edelgard and Bernadetta said in perfect unison.

An awkward silence blanketed the room as both of them looked at each other, equally dumbfounded.

“I woke up in the middle of the night—” Edelgard explained.

“Please forgive me,” Bernadetta pleaded, burying her face in her paws and muffling her voice. “I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear—”

“No, please—Bernadetta, you aren’t listening—”

“Just—please, if you can find it in your heart—”

“Stop talking over me, Bernadetta,” Edelgard said. “Listen to what I’m saying, not what you’re afraid to hear.” She spoke slowly, as though comforting an injured beast. “I woke up in the middle of the night on the floor—which is where I went to sleep, of my own free will, through no fault of your own—and thought you must have fallen out of bed yourself, so I picked you up and carried you back.”

“I, uh…” Bernadetta uncovered her face and bowed her head in shame, kneading the hem of her blouse. “I meant to sleep on the floor so that you could have the bed. So when I woke up this morning and I was in bed, I thought I’d forced you out in my sleep, so I pulled you back up and…”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

Edelgard cupped her hand over her mouth and nose to stifle her inadvertent snort of laughter. Bernadetta giggled uncomfortably.

“Thank you,” Edelgard said. “That was kind of you.”

“You can sleep in my bed if you want,” Bernadetta told her. “It’s fine. Really. I’m used to the floor. I’ve slept in worse places…”

Edelgard looked down at Bernadetta, and in an instant, she saw something different in her place. Something that called to mind one of Hubert’s many abortive attempts to cure her of her phobia.

‘Look at them,’ he had said to her, gesturing to a wire mesh cage he’d brought her filled with trembling rats all clustered in one corner, ‘and think rationally. See? They mean you no harm. They are more frightened of you than you are of them.’

Though she’d appreciated the gesture (once she’d stopped screaming and he’d begrudgingly set the cage aside and tossed a black cloth over it), she hadn’t believed him. Her first and only thought had been that he had simply tortured the rats to make them seem afraid of her. Here, now, though, those long-past words echoing in her head finally rang true.

“I wouldn’t dream of asking, let alone demanding to take that from you,” she consoled Bernadetta. “Your bed belongs to you. You may keep it—I, too, have slept in worse places.”

She considered offering to her a gentle pat on the head or shoulder and immediately un-considered it. The thought, however brief, still made her skin crawl. She would have to work her way up to that.

“Thank you,” Bernadetta said. “You’re too kind, Lady Edelgard.”

“Did you make these yourself?” Edelgard asked, gesturing to the plants sewn out of felt that rested on the desk. Or, at least, she thought they were plants.

“Uh… yeah. They’re not very good, are they?”

“They’re interesting. I’m impressed with the stitching,” she said, running her finger along a seam. The craftsmanship was much finer than anything she’d accomplished, and she inwardly marveled at how Bernadetta had sculpted such an intricate design out of felt and cotton. “I never had the patience for sewing. These are plants, aren’t they?”

A skilled archer, and on top of that, she apparently had considerable talents in sewing, drawing, painting, and writing? Though her demeanor belied it, Bernadetta certainly was a wunderkind.

“Um… yes, carnivorous plants. That one’s a Duscur pitcher plant,” Bernadetta said, growing steadily more enthusiastic, “and the other one’s an Almyran flytrap. Instead of getting their nutrients from the soil and sunlight, they eat insects! They use acid to dissolve their prey; the pitcher eats them down to the last bit, but the flytrap leaves behind a dried-out, empty husk! I—” She halted, as though suddenly aware she’d crossed some invisible threshold of excitement, and when she resumed speaking, her voice was quieter and more measured. “I’ll shut up now,” she added meekly.

“No, I was interested,” Edelgard assured her. “Do go on.”

“I-I like them. They aren’t the prettiest plants—rather plain, actually—but… I like how they just sit there and let their food come to them.”

“I see. So the two of us have become a pair of carnivorous plants ourselves, then.”

Bernadetta smiled a bit.

“I suppose you wouldn’t have much luck growing something so exotic in the greenhouse here,” Edelgard added. “Did you have any of these at home?”

“Oh, um… no. I’ve only read about them.” Bernadetta began to casually tweak the tip of her tail. The way she projected such nonchalance about her new form both unsettled and impressed Edelgard.

“You’ve adjusted to this,” she pointed out.

“To not having any real pitcher plants?”

“No, to… er… this.”

“Oh, this.” Bernadetta scratched behind her ear. “Well, I’ve always been fascinated by strange creatures,” she said, “and now I guess I am one. And I guess I’ve always, well… I’ve always been sort of been a mouse on the inside, so it’s a natural fit. Maybe I’m a hideous little monster, but at least I’m not plain anymore,” she added with a heartbreakingly self-deprecating little chuckle.

“Anyone else would be frightened in your position,” Edelgard admitted. “I’m… proud of you.”

“Proud?” Bernadetta let out a nervous bark of laughter. “Of me? Y-You’re just saying that.”

Edelgard considered telling her that she didn’t ‘just say’ anything, but it would not only be a lie, but also a pointless thing to say; half of the words one spoke to Bernadetta simply fell on deaf ears as her overactive imagination simply concocted new, far less charitable words to replace them. She decided that if she had any praise for her from now on, she would have to use twice as many words to make up for the deficit.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Hello, Bern? Are you awake?”

This morning, the strong, lyrical voice on the other side of the door belonged to Dorothea, who—like the rest of the Black Eagles—knew full well what was going on in here. Nonetheless, Bernadetta immediately leaped across the room and buried herself under her bedsheets.

There was another knock at the door. Edelgard darted forward to unlock and pull it ever so slightly ajar, then darted behind it. As the door creaked open, she hewed close to the wall so that nobody watching from outside could glimpse her.

Dorothea made sure to close the door firmly behind her before saying anything more. “Good mo—heavens, is it past noon already?”

“Is it?” Edelgard asked. She had no sense of the passage of time beyond sunrise and sunset anymore, and with the sky as cloudy as it was now, even that was nebulous. Had she and Bernadetta both slept through breakfast?

“Well, I hope you and Bern are enjoying your little vacation, Edie. Speaking of, where is she?”

Edelgard gestured to the lump on the bed.

“Oh. Someone’s got a case of stage fright, I see.” Dorothea took a seat on the side of the bed and rested her hand on the lump, slowly and soothingly running her fingers back and forth across the arc it traced under the sheets. “Bern? It’s me, Dorothea. You don’t have to hide from me.”

The lump wriggled and shifted.

“Oh, don’t be so nervous. I’m sure you’re a very pretty mouse, Bernadetta,” Dorothea assured her. “You were pretty enough as a human; I’m sure you haven’t lost any of your charm. Come on. Let me see. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

At last, the lump relented and Bernadetta emerged from her cocoon. “…Hi, Dorothea,” she mumbled, a nervous smile tugging at her mouth.

As soon as she caught sight of her, Dorothea pounced on her like a fox that had caught sight of its prey. “Oh, Bern, look at you!” she cooed, wrapping her arms around her and sweeping her into her lap. “You adorable little thing!”

Bernadetta let out a yelp and squirmed in her iron grip. “Dorothea—please—” she squeaked.

Cowed, Dorothea sheepishly released her grip on Bernadetta, her rosy cheeks growing rosier as she lifted a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” she mumbled. “I mean, Caspar told us all what to expect, but I just wasn’t prepared…”

“I-It’s fine,” Bernadetta said, relaxing and resting her head against Dorothea’s shoulder.

“I’ll tell you what, if I ever somehow turn into a tiny mouse girl,” Dorothea told her, laying a much gentler hand on her head and affectionately tousling her hair, “you can hug and squeeze me half to death. Then we’ll be even!”

“I’ll hold you to that promise,” Edelgard said.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Dorothea said. “Now, I was going to bring you two something special, but Ferdie insisted on taking care of lunch for the both of you,” she added, absentmindedly running her fingers through Bernadetta’s disheveled mop of violet hair and scratching behind her ear as though she were a pet cat. Bernadetta relaxed further, sinking deeper into her embrace and closing her eyes—she seemed much more willing to accept such treatment from Dorothea as opposed to Flayn. It hadn’t occurred to Edelgard that the two of them were friends—that Bernadetta had any friends, really. “He’ll be coming around soon. I think he—Edie, why are you looking at me like that? You seem almost relieved.”

Edelgard hadn’t been aware she’d been looking at Dorothea ‘like that,’ but she had to admit that she was relieved. Dorothea was infamous for her lack of taste. Her guiding philosophy when doing even so much as frying an egg was that all food was the same once it had reached the stomach, so what did it matter whether it tasted good, or even whether it was edible at all?

“It’s just that I’m not very hungry yet, I suppose,” she lied.

“Hmm.” Dorothea pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’re holding up okay? You don’t quite look yourself.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Edelgard replied, feeling grossly inadequate, or perhaps merely gross. Dorothea certainly took great pains to maintain her appearance, from her smooth and clear skin to her neatly manicured nails to the seemingly effortlessly-maintained loose curls her lustrous brown hair shaped itself into; while Edelgard typically put forth just as great an effort to present herself well, that option was not available to her now.

“Just a tic. I’ve got to get something from my room. I’ll be right back,” Dorothea said, releasing her much-lighter grip on Bernadetta and hurrying for the door.

She wasn’t gone long (her room was next door) and returned soon with a bundle of clothes draped over one arm and a hairbrush in her hand. “Ah, here we go. Edie, I know you’re not quite my size, but I’ve got a spare nightgown you can wear here—it might be a little long and a little loose around your chest, but…”

Edelgard was more than happy to take it from her. It was a simple scarlet nightgown, hardly of the highest quality fabric or stitching, but it was luxurious compared to the comfort the uniform she’d worn for two days straight now offered her. “Thank you, Dorothea. I trust you’ll offer me some privacy while I change?”

“Well, of course,” Dorothea said, sweeping the blanket off the floor and holding it up in front of Edelgard to form an impromptu curtain. “Your own changing room, milady.”

It was hardly ideal, but thanks to the Officers Academy’s rigorous hands-on curriculum Edelgard had changed her clothes in far less ideal environments than this; the gratitude she felt once she’d peeled her clothes off vastly outweighed any embarrassment she might have felt. Compared to her uniform, the borrowed nightgown felt as though she were wearing a cloud, even if it was too loose around her chest and the hem dragged on the floor.

“Thank you, Dorothea.”

“I thought you might appreciate this, too,” Dorothea said once she was finished, handing Edelgard the hairbrush. “Feels good to make yourself look presentable, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t have anywhere to go.”

Edelgard went to work on taming her hair. “Thank you. How’s Hubert’s investigation going?”

“It’s… well… it’s going.” Dorothea fiddled anxiously with one of her rings. Few students wore more finery than her—Edelgard wondered if she were overcompensating for her common upbringing. “Everyone knows you’re missing now, so everyone’s searching for you, although the weather isn’t exactly making it easy. Hubie’s keeping his cards close to his chest like always, but he doesn’t seem perturbed by any of this. That’s actually… reassuring, somehow.”

“I see.” As much as she trusted him, Edelgard wondered if perhaps Hubert had bitten off more than he could chew this time. If he didn’t find the culprit by tonight, things might get out of hand. What if news of her disappearance made it to Enbarr while she was still holed up in here? Would the gluttonous nobles who had already robbed her father of so much loosen their belts and ready their plates for seconds?

“What if they search this room?” Bernadetta asked, grabbing herself by the arms. Her claws dug into her sleeves. “They, um… If they see me, they’ll…”

“I’m sure Professor Byleth will do everything she can to direct attention away from this room,” Dorothea said with a wink. “She’s searching the dormitories right now, actually, and I’m sure she’ll search this one extra hard.”

“It would be worse for them to find me,” Edelgard pointed out. “Then we’d have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions about why I’ve been pretending to be dead.”

“Right. Guess it’s stupid for me to worry about myself…” Bernadetta muttered in a way that was at once both petulant and earnestly self-deprecating. “Myopic, selfish Bernie…”

“Oh, Bern, it’s okay,” Dorothea said, gently petting her. “You don’t have to be afraid of anyone finding you! Even if you’re a mouse, you’re still our classmate. We can just take your clothes to a tailor and have the blacksmith make you a smaller bow, and it’ll be like nothing’s changed. There might even be a benefit to have you on the battlefield—you’re too cute for anyone to want to fight you!”

Bernadetta withered a little. Edelgard wondered if she was blushing under her ashy gray-brown fur. A full charm offensive from Dorothea could be overwhelming even to people with stoic hearts, let alone someone as sensitive as her.

If there was one bright side to the ugly weather, it was that it significantly depressed the rest of the faculty’s search efforts, leaving Hubert and Claude especially free to conduct their own investigation.

The grounds of the Officers Academy had been transformed by the heavy rainfall into a slick slurry of mud and grass. Water gurgled down gutters and dripped steadily from the eaves of the old, worn buildings. Anyone who could stay indoors today did.

There wasn’t much investigative work to do outside, anyway—there couldn’t be in this rain, which would so effectively wash away any ephemeral stains, footprints, traces of hair or blood. No, the reason why Hubert was spending so much time in transit through the courtyard instead of traversing the dry and cozy halls to go to and fro in the monastery was to frustrate Claude.

He suspected Claude, but only slightly more than the baseline level of suspicion he reserved for everyone save for Edelgard. He knew that Claude suspected him, too, even though he’d made his innocence clear—after all, who wouldn’t suspect Hubert von Vestra, whose sinister affectation made it so abundantly clear that he planned to follow in the footsteps of his villain of a father?

One of the problems of treating everything like a game of three-dimensional chess, Hubert often thought, was that you started acting as though everybody else was, too. It was a lonely way to live. But if the loneliness was in service of Edelgard, he would grin and bear it.

Claude glided behind him in his wax-treated coat, a thin-lipped scowl plastered on his hooded face. Hubert realized soon enough that Claude was mocking his own perpetual scowl. “Stop that,” he said.

Claude’s scowl shattered into a toothy, winning smile. “Stop what?” he asked innocently.

“Imitating me.”

“I’m just trying to get inside your head.”

“You’re not welcome.”

“Huh.” Claude chuckled. “Could’ve sworn I saw a vacancy sign out front.”

Hubert didn’t deign to respond.

While planning for an opportunity to dump Claude (or possibly incapacitate him), Hubert’s eye wandered across the courtyard, through the sheets of rain pattering on the lawn and rustling the rosebushes, seizing upon the sight of a familiar face staring at him from under the shade of the gazebo. As it happened, the face belonged to someone he was quite keen on interrogating—the odd, fey redhead, Edelgard’s newfound ‘friend’ Monica von Ochs.

Hubert and Edelgard both knew full well that her name was not actually Monica von Ochs. There had once been a girl named Monica von Ochs—a student at the Officers Academy—but she had gone missing a year ago; after a lengthy search that had found not a single trace of her, she was presumed to have run away. In reality, she had been kidnapped and killed by the shadowy cabal of those who slither in the dark, and her doppelganger had slipped into the monastery as an unexpected ‘bonus’ when Byleth and the Black Eagles had rescued Flayn from the Death Knight.

That girl with rose-red hair and blood-red eyes and a smile like a knife was one of the slitherers, an assassin by trade and by birth. She had perfected Monica’s shape down to the slightest detail of her face, but made no effort to replicate her personality. No matter—other students and faculty simply chalked up her odd behavior to trauma from her ‘kidnapping.’

Of course, if Hubert wanted to have an honest conversation with her, there was the matter of his quote-unquote ‘assistant’ to deal with…

“Claude!” he hissed, grabbing him by the arm and pointing off into the rosebushes. “There! I just saw a white mouse!”

“Got it!” Claude called out, bounding across the courtyard, his boots kicking up waves from the muddy puddles dotting the campus. Hubert couldn’t ask for a more eager display and felt very satisfied in himself as he slipped into the gazebo and cornered the girl named Monica von Ochs, backing her into the corner and planting both hands on the railing behind her to pin her down.

“Hello, Kronya,” he growled, looming over her.

Kronya smiled, unfazed by his aura of wicked intent. “Well, well, well, Hubes. Looking for Edel, I take it?”

“Who else would I be looking for?”

“Good question.” Kronya sighed. “Oh, I hope you find her soon. The nobles over at Enbarr are so cutthroat. One could almost think all the power they stole from the Emperor in the Insurrection of the Seven wasn’t enough to satisfy their gluttony. If she stays missing for too long…”

“I take it you have no idea where she is.”

“Of course not.”

“And you wouldn’t know anything about anyone else who might have taken her?”

“Most certainly not.”

“And,” Hubert said, producing his nearly-empty vial from his pocket and holding it in front of her, “this little vial doesn’t look familiar to you?”

Kronya’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a little plain. What’s that in it? Water?” Despite being an assassin, she wasn’t much for poisons, evidently—she prefered well-placed daggers.

“Polymorphus Muridae.”

“That?” Kronya asked, squinting and crossing her arms. She seemed almost offended. “You know I wouldn’t touch that stuff, Hubes.”

“Do I?” Hubert shot back, pocketing the vial. “I hardly know you at all.”

“Why in the world would I leave my targets for someone else to kill? It’s just sloppy work.” She turned up her nose. “But we have been making use of that blend for… other things.”

“Other things?”

“Surely you’ve thought about how poor it is for assassinations,” Kronya said. “Maybe, just maybe, it keeps getting called ‘poison’ so that people who read about it won’t realize what it’s really used for.”

Hubert nodded. He’d suspected there was more going on here for a while now, and now that suspicion was coalescing into something far more concrete. “Infiltration.”

“That’s right!” Kronya gave him a simpering, patronizing smile. “How many, ahem, ‘mice’ do you think we’ve snuck into the monastery?”

“Then why was Lady Edelgard targeted?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Do I look like I did it?”

Hubert conjured a ball of miasma and let it sit in his upturned palm, leaning closer to Kronya and letting the flickering tongues of black and violet flame cast bleak light and deep shadow across her false face. “We both know how deceiving looks can be.”

Kronya rolled her eyes, unthreatened by his display (or at least pretending that she was unthreatened). “Turning people into mice isn’t my job, Hubes.”

“Then whose job is it?”

“Another one of our agents. His name is Vejovis.”

The name wasn’t familiar to Hubert. Not among the student body, not among the faculty, not among the Church of Seiros or its knights stationed here. “His real name, I take it. Whose identity has he assumed?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. I think his name is… von Barlowe. Albus von Barlowe.”

That name didn’t ring much of a bell, either, though it certainly sounded more familiar to Hubert than ‘Vejovis.’

“Nice guy.” Kronya gave him a snakelike smile. “Flammable.”

Hubert wondered if Vejovis might have something to do with this. But if he was a supplier of the poison for the rest of those who slither in the dark, then surely he’d have no need to ransack someone else’s collection. There were still so many things here that didn’t add up. And besides, as much of an uneasy alliance as it was, these shadowy devils and Edelgard were walking on the same path for the time being.

It did establish what he suspected, though. They knew of this poison and were using it here. Surely there had to be some agent among them who had decided to break ranks and go after Edelgard.

After all, he mused darkly, turning her into a mouse would hardly be the worst thing they had tried to do to her.

“Do any among your number have any… grievances against Lady Edelgard?” he asked.

Kronya chuckled. “Do we have all day?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well… how do I say this? There’s been a… schism,” she said. “Some of us are starting to see Edel as a liability—and maybe not quite worth the trouble of working with. Just because the Flame Emperor is Thales’ darling…”

Hubert masked his disgust. He should have expected nothing less from those who slither in the dark. But a schism—an open, festering wound in the organization’s hierarchy, splitting it between those who were only aligned with Edelgard in fair weather and those who openly opposed her—that was worse than he had expected. One or two malcontents, perhaps, but…

“Some of us think if we took open control of the Empire and did away with the Hresvelg line altogether,” Kronya said, “our plans would more easily come to fruition.”

“And are you on that side of the schism?” Hubert asked.

Kronya examined her fingernails. “How about you make a case for me to stick with you and Edel, Hubes?”

Hubert scowled.

Kronya laughed. “Oh, don’t be like that. Smile a little! I’m obviously joking. We’re besties!”

Hubert seriously doubted that. If Kronya had been waving a red flag before, now she had a target painted on her back.

“At least tell me,” Hubert said, restraining himself but channeling just a bit more magic into the orb of black mist hovering in his palm to let her know he was not to be trifled with, “which of your fellow agents here are on the wrong side of the schism.”

“That’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Solon’s still on your side, I think,” Kronya said. “Call it a fifty-fifty chance. Not great odds, but better than zero. There’s one other guy I know is against you, though.” She took a deep breath. “He’s—”

“Hey! Hubert!”

Hubert glanced over his shoulder to see Claude barreling toward him at full tilt through the rain, his hands cupped and held close to his chest. “Hubert!” he shouted out, skidding to a halt at the front of the gazebo as Hubert hurriedly extinguished his dark fireball and turned around to face him. “I found it!”

He all but shoved his hands under Hubert’s nose and cracked them open, revealing a little white mouse curled up in his palms like a pearl nestled in the mouth of a clam. “Is it her?” he gasped.

Hubert was shocked. He had been lying through his teeth when he’d told Claude he’d seen a white mouse, but the madman had gone and found one anyway. Sometimes it felt as though the universe bent to his will.

He snatched the mouse out of Claude’s hands and held it firmly, pinching it by the scruff of its neck and pretending to take great pains to examine it from every angle as it wriggled and squeaked. Of course it wasn’t her, but Claude didn’t know that. He at least had to pretend to figure it out.

“No,” he said after much deliberation, setting the squirming rodent back into Claude’s hands.

“You sure?” Claude asked, his mouth and brows curling into a skeptical frown.

“Give it a closer look; you’ll see.”

Claude did give it a closer look. “Oh. How did I not notice that?” He set the mouse down and let it scamper back into the wet, muddy grass. “Sorry about that, little fella,” he told it. “Hey, Hubert, weren’t you talking to someone just now?”

Hubert returned his attention to Kronya and found himself staring at an empty gazebo.

He had a feeling this would be the last time he or anyone else would see Monica von Ochs.

“Why am I doing this with you instead of Dorothea?” Caspar pouted as he worked the lock to the apothecary’s backdoor.

“Because Hubert told me you can pick locks,” Linhardt said. “Honestly, Caspar, I’m surprised. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Caspar groaned inwardly. Hubert was actively trying to ruin his life now.

He and Linhardt had had a miserable journey into town, to say the least. Halfway there, the faint drizzle falling from the ocean of clouds filling the sky from horizon to horizon had become a downpour and it had stayed that way well into the afternoon, showing no signs of letting up anytime soon.

The two of them hid at the back of the apothecary’s dilapidated shop, still standing in the downpour; their wax-coated cloaks kept them at least mostly dry, but didn’t keep out all the cold. Caspar hewed closely to the door, the minuscule few inches of awning overhead offering meager shelter from the rain; Linhardt was not so lucky.

“Sometimes, to beat a thief, you have to be an even bigger thief,” Caspar said. “That said… I dunno about this. The apothecary’s just some old dude; he doesn’t have ties to the black market.”

“Maybe he does. That’s why we need to check his ledger.”

Linhardt was usually a pretty smart guy, even if he did spend half of his time in class (and out of it) asleep, so Caspar was shocked to hear him say something so stupid. “But it’s illegal to sell black market goods. He wouldn’t just write it down in his ledger!”

“No, not his ledger ledger—his other, secret ledger. He still needs to make money off his business and make sure he’s making enough money. He has to make sure his suppliers aren’t cheating him and his clients aren’t taking advantage of him. And if he’s ever found out, having a list of buyers and sellers to rat out can inspire the Knights of Seiros to be, er, lenient toward him.”

“Uh-huh. And what’s gonna inspire the Knights of Seiros to be, er, lenient toward us?”

“My charm and dashing good looks, of course,” Linhardt said. Right now, he didn’t have much of either; in spite of his cloak’s hood, his forest-green hair was thoroughly soaked and plastered to his skin.

Not exactly heartened, Caspar directed his attention back toward the lock, pressing his ear against the door to hear its mechanisms as he fiddled with the two bent hairpins he’d inserted into the lock. Lockpicking was a delicate art that required a lot of focus and attention to detail. The tiniest noise, the tiniest shift of the tiniest little part of the lock’s tiniest mechanisms could be the key to victory.

“Maybe if you inserted the wires with more of a… downward force,” Linhardt suggested.

“I got it, I got it.” It was hard enough to focus on the lock’s subtle shifting with the gutters gurgling overhead. The last thing he needed was any sort of advice.

“No, no, more downward. Like this.”

Caspar glanced over his shoulder to see Linhardt doing something stupid with his arms. “What, has Ashe been giving you lessons, too?”

“No, I’m just… observing your technique and making some suggestions.”

Caspar rolled his eyes and pushed himself back into his work. Linhardt was always doing this. Telling Petra how to use a spear despite so much as picking one up maybe once in his entire life, giving suggestions about breath control to Dorothea while she practiced her vocal exercises… Caspar was certain that he’d even tell a pregnant woman how to give birth if, Goddess forbid, he ever married.

“Try more downward force,” Linhardt pleaded.

Caspar did so, if only so that Linhardt would shut up, and within half a minute he’d gotten the lock open.

As the door swung open, Linhardt pumped his fist. “See? What did I tell you?”

“Let’s just get this over with. But if we don’t find a secret ledger, you owe me big.” Caspar slipped into the apothecary’s backroom. “Where would he be hiding it, anyway?”

The backroom was a tight and winding labyrinth of shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, with just enough room between the dusty shelves for one person to comfortably slip by; he and Linhardt had to creep single-file through the room, past the rows and rows of bottled tonics and potions and drawers full of dried herbs and mummified husks of insects and other small critters. Cobwebs were everywhere. Worn-down nubs of candles periodically lined the shelves, dripping globs of wax and leaving tiny white puddles on the floor.

“This place,” Linhardt grumbled, his boots squelching with every step, “is a fire hazard. Thank the Goddess it’s raining.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Goddess. Always looking out for us.” Caspar dragged his finger along one of the shelves and left a wet streak on the wood; his fingertip came away fuzzy with a thick layer of gray dust. He wiped it on his trousers. “You sure about this?”

“The apothecary takes an hour for lunch every day around this time,” Linhardt said. “We’ve still got at least half an hour to get in and get out.”

“You’d better be sure about that. So, if you were this guy, where would you hide a secret ledger?”

“Wherever he keeps the not-so-secret ledger. When you find the white market ledger, you won’t think to look in the same place for the black market one.”

“I guess that makes sense. And where would he keep that?”

“At his desk, of course.”

The two of them didn’t find a desk in the backroom—just more tight corridors between the looming shelves—but they did find a flight of rickety stairs leading down to a cellar, and in the cellar they found what could only be the apothecary’s living quarters. There was a bed in the corner, a pantry, a bookshelf, a cluttered and tightly-packed kitchen area, a fireplace, and last but not least, a desk.

“Bingo,” Caspar said, making a beeline for the desk.

“He lives down here?” Linhardt asked himself, illuminating the cellar with a conjured ball of fire. “How does he stand it? It’s so stuffy.”

Caspar pulled open the desk’s drawer and pulled out a little black leather book, its pages filled with names and numbers and sums in tiny, tight handwriting. He had to squint to read it, and the flickering light from Linhardt’s fireball hindered about as much as it helped.

“This is the real one,” he surmised after looking through the items column on various pages and seeing nothing but perfectly innocuous tinctures, tonics, vulneraries, and concoctions. The names were a mix of total strangers from the village and the occasional familiar name from the Church or the academy’s faculty.

He searched the rest of the drawer and pulled out a few spare inkwells, a couple worn and weathered quill pens, sheaves of loose scratch paper, and all sorts of other bric-a-brac, piling it all on the desk until the drawer was empty.

No secret ledger.

Caspar sighed, frustrated.

“Maybe the drawer has a false bottom,” Linhardt suggested.

“Maybe you have a false bottom,” Caspar muttered as he felt around the inside of the drawer for a seam or something. He brushed aside a stray bit of twine lying in the drawer, only to find that it wouldn’t budge.

Aha! He grabbed the twine and tugged on it; just as he’d expected, the bottom of the drawer popped off to reveal another black leather book. “Jackpot!” Caspar cried out, triumphantly slamming the book on the desk and opening it. “Lin, gimme Hubert’s list.”

Linhardt set Hubert’s journal on the table and opened it to the list of ingredients for the poison and its antidote. Caspar scanned the ledger and compared it to the lists. Sure enough, a few pages in, he started seeing matches. He followed the items to the names…

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

Linhardt looked over his shoulder. “What? What is it?”

“The buyer, it’s…” Caspar found a lump forming in his throat. No, it couldn’t be. It was ludicrous. “It’s… von Ochs. It’s Edelgard’s friend, Monica!”

“What?” Linhardt gasped. “But—But she can’t be… Edelgard rescued her, we rescued her—”

“That’s what Ferdinand thought, too,” Caspar muttered darkly. He knew he’d had a bad feeling about her. He shoved the book back into the drawer and replaced the false bottom. “C’mon, we’ve gotta get going. Gotta warn Hubert, and Edelgard too!”

“Edelgard? So she hasn’t gone missing, then,” a rough, raspy voice slithered through the gloom. “How interesting…”

Caspar whirled around. “Who’s there—”

The apothecary strode down the stairs, each step creaking and moaning under his boots. No, it wasn’t the apothecary, but almost the apothecary. He looked nearly the same, down to the wrinkles furrowing his brow, the wild and bristly salt-and-pepper hair and beard, the glasses with lenses as thick as history books, but his skin was so pale it was almost translucent and black runes comprised of sharp and angular lines ran across his wrinkled face. Behind his glasses, his eyes were a pure, blind white.

The ball of flame in Linhardt’s upturned palm fluttered angrily as he aimed his outstretched hand at the apothecary’s doppelganger, throwing flickering amber light against his smooth face. “Out of our way, or I’ll blast you,” he warned.

“You’re too late; we’ve seen everything,” Caspar added. “We know you’re selling illegal goods, and we’re going straight to the Knights of Seiros with it!”

With that, he charged at the apothecary, fists clenched, arm drawn back like a bowstring stretched taut. This old creep may have been blocking the only exit—but not for long!

The apothecary smiled and silently admonished him with a paternal wag of his finger.

A flash of light ignited the air as an arcane circle traced itself in light on the floor. The next thing Caspar knew, something was sucking at his boots, rooting him in place like thick, viscous mud; he nearly wrenched his feet out of his boots altogether from the momentum still carrying him forward as he struggled to pull himself free. Something cold and slick wrapped around his arm and wrenched it backward, grinding the socket in his shoulder like a millstone. He gritted his teeth to bite back a scream as another cold tendril wrapped itself around his other arm, then his legs, then curled around his neck just firmly enough to hurt, but not to choke him. It throbbed with his pulse.

The room was plunged into darkness for a moment, then lit by flickering tongues of amber flame from the candles lining the cellar’s stone walls.

Caspar fought against his bonds to no avail. “Lin—” he gasped, struggling to move anything but his eyeballs. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Linhardt just as bound as he was by slithering black and violet tendrils, sunk up to his knees in a pool of shadow to boot. “Who the hell are you?” he spat at the apothecary.

“Me?” The devilish apothecary cocked his head curiously. “Why, I am the town’s apothecary. What was his name again… oh, bother, I keep forgetting… Albus, I believe? Hello again, by the way, ‘Lin Manuel-Miranda,’” he said to Linhardt. “How nice to see you again. You should’ve brought your wife this time, too.”

“Yeah, you should’ve,” Caspar muttered at Linhardt. If nothing else, then he wouldn’t be here, and also, Dorothea would have probably lightninged this creep to death by now.

“Oh, oh dear, but what to do now…” ‘Albus’ muttered. “Of course, I can’t let you two leave. You’ve… how does the saying go? Seen too much?”

“Well, if you’re going to kill us,” Linhardt said, “you might as well tell us your whole plan before we die.”

“Hmm.” Albus stroked his beard. “No.”

“Someday that’ll work,” Linhardt muttered.

“Besides, I do detest having blood on my hands. I prefer to… what’s the word? Outsource?”

“We’ll never tell you where Edelgard is,” Caspar spat, struggling against the tendrils wrapped around him. His shoulder screamed bloody murder, though, and quickly put a stop to his squirming. The joint was damn near dislocated.

Albus rummaged in the pouch slung over his shoulder for a tiny stoppered vial and an even tinier eyedropper. “We have ways of making you talk. But, of course, we don’t need that—there are so few places she can hide; we’ll root her out soon enough. Now, I believe our mutual friend Hubert von Vestra has been telling you all about a certain potent potable…”

Linhardt gasped. “You’re not working with Hubert!”

“Working with him?” Albus laughed. “Oh, no, of course not! He works for us!”

“You’re lying!”

“I can’t believe it,” Caspar said, dumbfounded. Actually, he could believe it all too easily—it was that upon hearing it, he realized he didn’t want it to be true. Like Ferdinand had said yesterday, Hubert had been Edelgard’s vassal for fourteen years. How evil could he be to betray her after so many years of faithful service? How could anybody’s heart be that black? “Edelgard… Bernie…” His eyes stung and watered; tears, hot and wet, roll down his cheeks. Not only had he betrayed Edelgard, he’d set him and Linhardt up! “Hubert, you dastard!”

Albus chuckled and walked toward him and Linhardt, closing the distance between the two of them. Shadows crawled over his craggy, wrinkled face, cast from the guttering candles whose flames left weak oases of light in the desert of gloom engulfing the room; even the strange sigils tattooed on his face seemed to shift and move like ants crawling on his skin. Though his eyes were pure white orbs, sans irises, sans even pupils, they were no less sharp and alert for lack of them.

“Curse him all you want; I’m afraid he can’t hear you from all the way over here. So, getting back to the point,” he hissed, uncapping the vial and inserting the eyedropper’s long, thin beak, “which of you two wants to disappear first?”

Ferdinand had volunteered to check up on Bernadetta and Edelgard for the day for one reason and one reason only—to apologize to Bernadetta for what he’d done. Most men of noble blood were too proud to apologize to people they’d wronged, unless said people were more powerful than them or had something they wanted. Their schemes and machinations were all about self-interest, and it sickened him. Where were the nobles who stood for kindness, politeness, and morality? Where were the nobles who acted as beacons for the masses to follow? More and more, they seemed to only exist in fairy tales.

Bernadetta was not more powerful than him, nor did she have anything he wanted. Apologizing was simply the right thing to do.

And yet he hadn’t gotten his chance. When he’d come to deliver breakfast, she’d been asleep, and when he’d come to deliver lunch, he’d allowed himself to become flustered in the presence of both Edelgard and Dorothea, spoken ill of Hubert’s ‘plan’ to have Edelgard fake her disappearance (a plan in which he himself was losing more and more confidence by the minute), and gotten himself promptly chased from the room.

This time would be different.

He crossed the courtyard hunched over, a cloak draped over his shoulders to keep both himself and the plate of food cradled in his arms from getting wet. The rainstorm that had swept down from the mountains that afternoon had settled back into a hazy mist that hung in the air and a fog dense enough to blunt a knife, which combined with the rapidly blackening evening sky made it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. He hurried to the dormitories, following the ghostly lantern light bleeding through the fog across the courtyard, stumbling on the stone steps, and ducking under the awning where it was cozy and dry.

He knocked on Bernadetta’s door. “Bernadetta. It is I, Ferdinand von Aegir. I come bearing dinner.”

No response.

He knocked again. “Bernadetta, are you asleep?” He pulled off his hood and leaned closer to the door, cupping his hand to his mouth. “Lady Edelgard?” he whispered, making certain his voice would not carry. “Are you awake?”

The door remained shut.

He waited at the door, knocking on occasion, to no avail. Perhaps they were both sleeping. It surely must have been tiring to be stuck in a room with nothing to do. Or perhaps they were avoiding him.

With a sigh, he slumped over and sat down, leaning his back against the door and resting the plate in his lap. “Bernadetta,” he said. “Perhaps you are asleep, or perhaps you can hear me. I hope you can hear me. I would like to offer you my sincerest condolences and most heartfelt apology for what has befallen you.”

He resisted the urge to pick at the food staring up at him, despite the growling of his own stomach. Even if it got cold, it would still be a welcome meal to two empty stomachs when Bernadetta and Edelgard let him in, whenever they did that.

“That night in the dining hall, my drink and Edelgard’s were swapped, unbeknownst to me. Later, when I noticed that Sylvain was making you uncomfortable, I grew worried and feared he may have…”

He shook his head. The more he justified it, the more he felt as though he was simply skirting the issue.

“The reason I had was my own, and I meant you no ill will,” he said, “but nevertheless, I switched your drink with Edelgard’s. For that, for causing you such trouble, I am truly sorry.”

There was still no answer.

“You need not hide, if you do not want to,” he added. “Garreg Mach is a welcoming place. There are students and faculty from all over the world here—from all corners of Fódlan, from Brigid, from Duscur, from Almyra. This is a place of tolerance. You will be accepted here, no matter what you look like.”

Still nothing.

“And besides, you are a very pretty mouse,” he said.

With that, he sighed, set the plate down in front of the door, and stood up. “Your dinner is right outside the door. I will try to speak to you again later. Please do take care, Bernadetta.”

He took a deep breath, raised his hood, and trudged back into the rain, feeling unfulfilled and oddly empty.

He had scarcely taken three or four steps before Dorothea and Petra both coalesced out of the fog before him. Dorothea had a large handbag clutched tightly to her chest. Still feeling emotionally vulnerable from his unheard confession, he couldn’t hold back a surprised gasp. “Dorothea, Petra. What brings you two out on such a dreary evening?”

“We are going to Bernadetta’s room,” Petra said, “to be having a ‘night of girls.’ Dorothea says it is an academic tradition.” Her long maroon hair, braided in the traditional style of Brigid royalty, snaked out of the hood of her cloak and soaked up the rain like a sponge.

“Ah, well…” Ferdinand glanced over his shoulder. The dormitories had already vanished into darkness and mist. “I just stopped by to deliver her dinner. She didn’t answer. I fear she is mad at me, or asleep.”

Dorothea gave him a look that said without words, well, perhaps if you hadn’t made such an ass of yourself, Ferdie… “I think I can coax her out. Come on, Petra.”

“I am having excitement to see her,” Petra chirped as she and Dorothea headed for the dormitories. Ferdinand followed, but at a distance. There was something in his gut that told him something was wrong, distinct from its growling. A heavy weight that seemed to want to pull his guts all the way down to his boots.

“Oh, Bernie,” Dorothea sang, rapping her knuckles against the door to her room. “It’s us, Dorothea and Petra! We’re here for girls’ night!”

The door adjacent to Bernadetta’s creaked open and Annette poked her head out. “You’re having a girls’ night?” she asked. “Can I come?”

“Sorry, Black Eagles only,” Dorothea said. Disappointed, Annette sidled back into her room and closed the door behind her.

Dorothea turned her attention to the door again. “Bern? You okay in there?”

“I think she is being asleep,” Petra said. “Gloomy days can be making one feel very tired.”

“It’d be nice if we could just bring her the food Ferdie left.” Dorothea sighed. “Poor Bern, missing two meals. She must be miserable.”

Ferdinand nearly leaped a full foot in the air as a gentle hand fell on his shoulder. He whirled around and found himself face to face with Byleth, who stared at him with piercing gray eyes. “Professor! What are you doing out here?”

“Girls’ night,” Byleth answered, heading for the girls with a rain-soaked lantern bobbing in her hand. She was, Ferdinand despaired, impossible to figure out sometimes.

“Oh, Professor,” Petra said. “We are wanting to bring Bernie dinner, but she is not waking. Can you help?”

Byleth reached into her coat and plucked out a ring of keys. As professor, she had spare keys to the rooms of each student in her house to be used in the case of an emergency, which might have unsettled less scrupulous students but didn’t bother Ferdinand at all. “Slip the plate in and be on your way.”

“Thanks, Professor.” Dorothea patted Petra on the shoulder. “Don’t worry; we can still have our own girls’ night if you want…”

The door swung open and the light from Byleth’s lantern spilled into the room. Ferdinand peeked inside over the professor’s shoulder, overcome with curiosity as the leaden feeling in his gut grew heavier and more restless.

The room was empty; books and dolls littered the floor.

“Oh, no,” Byleth whispered, the uncharacteristic tremor in her voice nearly as terrible as the sight of Edelgard’s uniform laying in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor, bloodstains leaving splotches on her crimson cape so dark they were nearly black.

The last thing Edelgard remembered was a flash of light, white with violet bleeding on the edges, and the familiar trappings of Bernadetta’s room vanishing. When the light faded, only darkness rushed in to fill the void left in its absence. She could only make out the faint outlines of what looked like distant wooden shelves and amorphous object suspended in the abyss like phantoms.

Disoriented and sick, she clutched at her throbbing head. She recognized the telltale and transient grogginess that lingered for a few seconds after a warp spell, but there was more working on her than that.

The violent, visceral memory of lukewarm water, tasteless and inoffensive, pooling in the back of her mouth. Struggling and thrashing under the grip of her attacker, coughing and choking and gagging as bit by bit, drip by drip, the water and its invisible additive trickled down her throat.

The poison.

She tried to pull herself up to her hands and knees, but her body gave out and her limbs crumpled underneath her. Her muscles felt like jelly, her bones like soft clay, her flesh like melting wax; a feverish wave of pins and needles washed itself across her skin. The figure looming high above her faded into the darkness, blurring and sharpening in time with the throbbing of her headache.

Edelgard weakly lifted her head, her brain pounding against the inside of her skull, and crawled across the cold stone floor toward them. The darkness whirled around her.

Her body felt as heavy as lead, as unmoving as stone; faint, aching twinges burrowed into her flesh and jabbed at her wrists, knees, elbows, shoulders—striking between the bones with icy, numbing arrowheads. A sharp, throbbing ache ran down her back, skittering farther and farther down her spine with every rhythmic pulse.

Her fist clenched around a scrap of fabric torn from her cape, so hard the nails cut crescents in her palm, so hard that the claws sprouting from her fingertips bit into her skin like tiny fangs.

She lifted her hand, every knuckle aching, clawing futilely at her attacker’s faraway image, which loomed larger by the second yet never seemed any closer, remaining just out of reach like a desert mirage. She could swear they were standing there right in front of her, looming like the towers of the cathedral, but they melded into the darkness like a ghost.

“You… traitor…” she gasped, dragging her hoarse voice through her ragged, sandpaper-rough throat, “I swear on my life… on my crown… I… I’ll stop at nothing… to…”

The assailant regarded her with mild amusement. She fixated on their face, but it wavered and rippled like a reflection in a disturbed pond, the waves sweeping it away.

Thinking was as difficult now as moving. The words Edelgard tried to speak swam through mud as they passed from her mind to her mouth. “I… Edelgard von Hresvelg… will…”

The darkness swallowed everything, and the culprit slithered away into it.

Bernadetta woke up with a head full of fog, struggling to piece together what had happened. She remembered a burst of darkness, something slithering, a knife, the taste of blood filling her mouth, a bright flash of light… was that the right order?

She pulled herself up, shaking the grogginess from her head. “Get it together, Bernie,” she mumbled to herself. She scratched idly behind her ear as she looked around the room. There was little light; just a thin strip of light high above her that cast a faint diffuse glow on the floor that was barely enough to illuminate her surroundings. The floor beneath her paws was hard, cold stone, but there were hilly little lumps shrouded in shadow surrounding her like a little mountain range. It wasn’t her room. Too big. So big that the walls and ceiling, if there were any, vanished into the darkness.

If there were any? “Stupid Bernie,” she muttered. “Of course there’s a ceiling.” Where was this place, though? Was it under the rest of the monastery? This place made the cathedral look like an outhouse.

“Edelgard?” she called out, letting her small voice echo through the vast abyss, so weak that it didn’t even echo. “Are you out there, Edelgard?” No, she couldn’t just call her Edelgard like they were friends just because they’d shared a room for two nights. “Uh… Lady Edelgard? Your Highness?”

She felt her paw catch on something thick, soft, and ropey. She stumbled, but just barely managed to keep her balance, and felt around for the object. It was some sort of very large braided rope, something like… the drawstring of a hood.

She looked up, squinted, and realized that she was standing in the shadow of a hill of crumpled fabric. And beside it was a large swath of black fabric and gold filigree and trim that she eventually realized was her blouse. And it was much, much bigger than her.

More fragments of memories fluttered through her head. Someone… someone else in the room, and they’d grabbed Edelgard and pinned her down and…

“Lady Edelgard!” She ran, falling to all fours to scurry faster across the floor. Running that way felt as natural, somehow, as breathing.

“Bernie…?”

She paused, her ears twitching in the direction of the response, and reversed course at full speed, her heart fluttering as she came to a halt at the shore of another rumpled sea of fabric. “Edelgard?”

“…Is that you?”

Edelgard’s voice was weak, barely even a squeak. But it was enough. Bernadetta hurried across the swath of cloth—Dorothea’s spare nightgown, she realized—and zeroed in on her, trampling the frozen ripples and waves under her paws.

What she found instead of Edelgard was a white mouse nestled among the crumpled folds of the nightgown, a mane of long white fur splayed out around its head like a halo. As Bernadetta approached, it gingerly pulled itself up on its hind legs, clutching at the sides of its head with its forepaws. Its mane spilled over its shoulders and down its back.

“I just had the most horrible dream,” the mouse moaned in Edelgard’s voice, “although… I suppose I always do…”

“L-Lady Edelgard… is that you?”

“Who else would I be?” the mouse asked with an incredulous, imperious tone that without a doubt belonged to Edelgard, cracking open pale eyes. “Ah, but I’m glad to see you, BerniiiieeeeeeeeeeeeEEEE!” With a shriek, she threw herself backward and fell over, her little mousy chest heaving.

“What?” Bernadetta wrinkled her nose and looked down at herself. Before, she had been human enough still, aside from the fur, claws, tail, snout, et cetera, but now what she saw was much more… mousy. Try not to panic, she told herself. Try not to panic, Bernie. You had two days to get used to this…

Edelgard struggled to catch her breath. “My apologies. You, er, startled me. Oh… oh, g—okay. Slightly more of a mouse than before. Bigger. I think we can work with this…” She was babbling. Bernadetta had never heard her babble before.

“Um… n-no? I’m a regular-sized mouse, I think,” Bernadetta said. “You’re the same size as me.”

“Ah,” Edelgard sighed, relieved, “then I’ve merely been shrunk. Hardly ideal, but workable.”

Bernadetta wondered if she should point out the obvious, since Edelgard seemed to be so pointedly avoiding it. But if Edelgard was avoiding it, then wouldn’t she get angry at her if she drew attention to it? She couldn’t have Edelgard angry with her! Not here, wherever here was!

But Edelgard was smart. She couldn’t just ignore all of the signs forever. Sooner or later she’d notice that she was covered in fur, or that she had a snout and whiskers, or that a tail as long as she was tall was dragging itself behind her. And when she figured it out, wouldn’t she be furious with Bernadetta for not telling her in the first place?

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. Bernadetta took a deep breath. “Uh…”

“Hmm? What is it?” Edelgard asked, not quite looking at her.

Bernie, you have to tell her, Bernadetta told herself. If you don’t and she finds out on her own, she’ll kill you…

“Tell me what?” Edelgard asked sharply.

Oh, no! She’d said all of that out loud by mistake! Bernadetta took a hasty step back. “Oh, I, um… I j-just wanted to tell you that… I respect and admire you… as a leader, as a classmate, as a princess, as… um… a mouse…”

Edelgard’s whiskers twitched. “I beg your pardon?”

Bernadetta realized what she’d let slip out. “It’s, um, just that, uh…” She kneaded her paws nervously and bowed her head. “You’re, uh… also… a… mouse.”

Edelgard fell silent. She looked down at her forepaws, then reached up and prodded the tip of her snout, then gingerly pinched her ear, then finally glanced over her shoulder and took stock of the tail trailing behind her.

Bernadetta sighed with relief. Edelgard was taking it surprisingly well, with all of the stoicism one would expect of the proud and noble scion of the Hresvelg dynasty. “I’m so glad you—”

And then Edelgard let out a horrified scream and threw herself into the sea of fabric, wrapping as much of it around herself as she could until she had completely cocooned herself.

And there she remained, silent and motionless save for the twitching tip of her tail poking out from the cocoon.

Steeling herself, Bernadetta took a step toward her. “Um… Lady Edelgard? A-Are you okay?”

What sounded uncannily like a muffled whimper wormed its way out of the thick bundle of cloth.

Bernadetta took another step closer and rested her paw against the cocoon. “Um… you, uh… don’t have to hide from me.”

No response this time.

“I mean… you’re, um… you’re a very pretty mouse?” she offered, trying to channel Dorothea as best she could.

Still nothing.

“No, really, you are. You’re a much prettier mouse than me. You have… um… glossy white fur, and a long tail, and…” She wasn’t really sure what else to say about mice. There really wasn’t much else to them. Ears? Teeth? “And your whiskers are very elegant and refined?” she added. “If a mouse could be a princess, you, uh…”

No, Bernie, you idiot, she told herself. Look what you’ve done! Edelgard obviously doesn’t want to be reminded of any of that! She’s clearly upset, and you just made her feel worse!

The cocoon quivered, and finally Edelgard spoke, her voice muffled and muted. “Bernadetta.”

Bernadetta braced herself. She’d stepped in it now, all right. Now Edelgard hated her. “Y-Yes, Lady Edelgard, Your Highness?” she stammered. This was the end. What kind of life could she possibly lead when the future leader of the Empire personally loathed her?

“Leave me be.”

Bernadetta took a few steps back, then a few more for good measure. Of course. Of course Edelgard wanted to be left alone. Especially when all she had for company was stupid, useless Bernie.

She laid down on her side, resting her head against the soft cloth carpeting the floor. When she tried to take a breath and calm herself, it wouldn’t come; it caught in her throat like she’d swallowed a stone.

She wasn’t one to cry. She’d learned at an early age that making pathetic little noises only made things worse. But she’d never felt so close to crying as she felt now. As hard as she tried to hold it in, her eyes watered.

She wanted to go back to her room. She wanted to go back to her bed. She wanted to be somewhere where Dorothea or Flayn or Petra or Linhardt or the Professor or even Caspar or Ferdinand could knock on the door and say hi, even if she wouldn’t answer. She didn’t want to be lost and alone down here in the dark.

She glanced at the cocoon again. Her sensitive ears could pick up the faintest hint of muffled sniffles from within, although that was likely her imagination. No help from Edelgard. She had her own problems to deal with. Not that she deserved anything from the likes of her.

She laid there, sniffling and drying her tears with her fur, for what seemed like an eternity. All the while, Edelgard hid from her, making hardly any noise, barely moving.

For her of all people to be acting like this was more frightening to Bernadetta than a horde of slavering monsters, or worse, an inescapable social engagement.

She’d broken Edelgard. And now there was no hope for either of them.

Forlorn, she rested her head in her forepaws. What could she do? What did Professor Byleth do to get her out of her room? Besides bribing her with tea, Bernadetta couldn’t think of anything. Not that there was any tea to be found here. She didn’t even know Edelgard’s favorite blend, anyway.

There had to be some way to fix her. Maybe there was nothing Bernadetta herself could do, but maybe if she tried to imitate someone she looked up to or respected…

Trying as hard as she could to quell the omnipresent voice in her head telling her she’d only make things worse, she inched closer to Edelgard’s cocoon, padding lightly across the soft carpet. She knew what she had to do.

As terrifying as Hubert was, Edelgard seemed to trust him deeply. He had been at her side in a flash the other day. If she could act like him and say to her what he’d be most likely to say…

She gulped and swallowed her nerves. “Lady Edelgard,” she hissed, imitating Hubert’s low, raspy growl as best she could. It sounded more like she had a sore throat. “I am here for you. And I am here to tell you… to say that… um…”

Bernadetta paused and tried to recollect herself. She really wasn’t sure what Hubert would say to Edelgard in a situation like this. She just didn’t know him that well, since whenever he tried to speak to her she tended to end up screaming and running away, and she especially didn’t know what kind of things he talked about in private with Edelgard. Would it help if she chuckled evilly? Did he do that around her?

No. She couldn’t overthink this. She just had to say something honest and truthful and hope it made sense coming from him.

“Think, um, rationally about this,” she said. Hubert was a master of dark magic, and dark magic was tied to reason, right? So Hubert must be a rational person. “No matter what you look like on the outside—”

She coughed. She couldn’t keep doing the voice anymore; it was murder on her throat.

“No matter what you look like or how small you are or how furry you are,” she continued in her own voice, “you’re still Edelgard. And that’s who we both need—not another Bernie-Bear…”

She clapped her paws over her snout. Had she really just compared Edelgard to her? Did she have a death wish?

The cocoon unraveled. Edelgard poked her snout out, then the rest of her head, then crawled out of the cocoon. She took a few seconds to get her bearings, her whiskers twitching.

“Lady Edelgard?” Bernadetta asked. “Are you… okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she answered after another moment of hesitation. “I merely needed to lie down for a while and gather my wits about myself. I appreciate your concern. I am fine now.” She paused again, flashing a strained smile. “I am fine now,” she repeated, sounding slightly more sure of herself but in a way that did not exactly inspire confidence.

She plodded away from her makeshift cocoon, picked a loose scrap of cloth and a thin ribbon up off the ground, and tied the ragged swath around her neck to create a makeshift cloak that she could drape over her shoulders.

“Um… what are you doing?” Bernadetta asked.

“Getting dressed,” Edelgard said, as though it was obvious. “Er… Bernadetta, tell me, wasn’t this red before?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Bernadetta answered. “Ever since yesterday, I’ve been colorblind. It all just looks kind of chartreuse to me…”

Edelgard’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “I see. What a shame. Anyway, let us make haste. Professor Byleth must be worried sick about us, and I’m certain Hubert has made good progress finding the antidote by now.”

The two of them began to explore the chamber they’d been trapped in, gingerly making their way through the darkness. Bernadetta was surprised by how much she could see with so little light; even though what she could see was hardly anything, it was more than she’d expected. And even when she couldn't see anything, the subtle currents of the air seemed to catch on the tips of her whiskers to create a vague impression of her surroundings.

As she passed by the hilly lump that was her clothes, or what was left of them, Bernadetta realized that she wasn’t wearing anything and hadn’t been since she’d woken up; her brain screamed at her until she did as Edelgard had done and made her own cloak out of a ragged strip from the hem of her blouse.

“By the way, back there, were you… imitating Hubert?” Edelgard asked her once she’d finished dressing herself.

“I’m sorry! I-I didn’t mean to offend you!” she squeaked, clutching her new cloak so tightly around her that her claws poked through the fabric and dug into her skin.

Edelgard shook her head. “No, no, it was… kind of you. I won’t tell him you did that, though, unless I have good reason to embarrass him.”

“Oh, no… I offended him? That’s even worse! Please don’t tell him—he’d kill me!”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“Of course,” Edelgard said. “Hubert wouldn’t kill you, though. I would forbid him.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“I don’t think I would have to, though. I suspect he has a soft spot for you.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “That’s impossible. He’s so…”

Edelgard laughed. “Oh, it’s all an act. He’s quite sweet.”

“H-Him?” Bernadetta sputtered, incredulous.

“Albeit… intense,” she admitted. “But I digress. That was what he would tell me, were he here with us. ‘Think logically. You fight your battles with what you have, not what you’ve lost, so take stock of what you still have…’”

“Um… and what do we still have?” Bernadetta asked.

“We can still speak. We can still think. We can stand on two legs. That is what makes us human, not the size and shape of our bodies. That is what gives us the power to shape our own fates. That is…” Edelgard let out a deflated sigh, as though disheartened by her own rhetoric. “…better than nothing.”

As the two of them ventured deeper into the vast chamber, Bernadetta noticed that Edelgard wasn’t just wearing that scrap of fabric from Dorothea’s nightgown as a fashion statement. She was hugging it tightly to herself as though it were a security blanket.

“I think we’re in the cellar,” Edelgard said as she and Bernadetta felt their way through the darkness. “There should be a set of stairs we can climb near here.”

Bernadetta looked up. That thin line of light that barely illuminated the chamber could, she supposed, be the gap between a trapdoor and the ceiling. It would lead straight to the ground level of the monastery, likely near the dining hall, and from there it would be so easy to find one of her classmates or Professor Byleth…

Her stomach growled. And food, too.

“Hey, you two, maybe don’t go that way?” a thin, small voice rang out through the gloom.

Bernadetta nearly leaped straight up from shock; Edelgard whirled around in the voice’s direction and fell into a combat stance, fangs bared. “Who’s there? Identify yourself!”

There was an unmistakable sound of a match head striking against the floor; a flickering teardrop-shaped tongue of flame blazed forth, casting a halo of light in the distance. The halo surrounded another mouse, one that also stood on its hind legs and was clothed in ragged robes. It was holding the matchstick like a torch; more unlit matches were holstered at its hip like sheathed swords.

“Hi there. Nice to meet you two. Name’s Matthias,” the mouse said, casually waving a paw as though greeting a friend. He had exactly the kind of voice one would expect a mouse to have—tiny, meek, mild, and genial. As he stepped closer, Edelgard hurriedly backed away in equal measure. “Anyway, like I said, you probably don’t want to go that way.” To demonstrate, he waved his torch in the direction Bernadetta and Edelgard had been headed, illuminating a smattering of spring-loaded mousetraps scattered at the foot of the wooden staircase (Bernadetta barely recognized it as a staircase at first glance, though, because the first step was almost twice as high as she was tall). “See? Those things’ll snap your leg in two if you’re not careful.”

“Ah.” Perturbed, Edelgard crossed her arms. “You have my gratitude,” she said, though from her terse and frosty tone of voice it didn’t seem like he had anything of hers at all, save for perhaps her contempt.

“Hey, no problem. It’s all in a day’s work. Looks like you two are new here, eh?”

“One could say that.”

“So you must be pretty lost. You know, there’s a couple dozen of us back just a hop, skip, and a jump away from here. It’s pretty safe there. No traps, no poisons, no rats, no cats. Just us mice. And food and blankets. You know, creature comforts. For us creatures.”

“That sounds gre—” Bernadetta started.

“Thank you, but we aren’t interested,” Edelgard said. “We have our own destination in mind.”

“Oh, cool. That’s alright. Hey, I can probably get you there, too. Know this place like the back of my paw,” Matthias said, offering his paw. “But we should probably hurry—the Plague Rat’s on his way here, and you probably don’t want to be in the same place as him.”

If Edelgard had looked uncomfortable before, now she looked as though she’d stepped on a thumbtack. “Plague Rat?”

Matthias wrinkled his nose and his brow. “You two really are new here. Yeah, the Plague Rat. Right piece of work he is. He’s the kind of guy who lives rent-free inside your head once you meet him. Assuming you still have one when he’s done with you. Most folks don’t.”

The three of them wandered through the darkness, soon leaving the cellar behind; Matthias’ torch cast shifting shadows across the worn and craggy walls of a claustrophobic tunnel winding through the wall to an adjacent room in the basement.

Matthias skidded to a halt and held Edelgard and Bernadetta back, dashing the head of his match against the floor to snuff it out. “Shh,” he hissed. “I think he’s here.”

There was a sound like steel scraping against stone; Bernadetta felt a curtain of dread drape itself over her. It was a chilling sound, but more than that there seemed to be an aura surrounding it, a subtle musky scent on the air that made her blood run cold.

Matthias struck another match and held it out like a sword, shivering with either fear or anticipation; the light from the guttering little flame spilled across the floor until it reached the ashen, naked paws of an enormous rat.

The rat stood easily twice as tall as any of the three mice. Ragged black fur covered a lithe and sinewy body adorned with a tapestry of naked scars and patches of scabby flesh; its armor was a patchwork of little scraps of jewelry, tiny cast-off plates of armor from a knight’s gauntlet, and loose buttons held in place with cloth and string. A long, ragged cape of black cloth hung down its back. Its head was covered by a macabre helmet—a worn, yellowed skull from an even bigger rat, its chipped fangs curving down from its upper mandible to fill the empty space where its lower jaw would have been. The death’s-head helmet had pitch-black eye sockets that seemed empty save for two cold, glaring pinpricks of light. In one paw, the beast clutched a serrated kitchen knife nearly as long as it was tall.

The deathly rat trudged closer, dragging the edge of the knife against the floor. A low and guttural growl echoed through its helmet. Pinpricks of light—eyeshine slipping in and out of sight—flickered behind it, an amorphous, roiling mass of claws clicking and scraping and tails slithering across the floor in the dark.

To Bernadetta’s shock, Matthias drew a tiny mouse-sized sword—an honest-to-goodness sword with a hilt and pommel and blade and everything—and stepped in front of her and Edelgard. “Oh, there he is,” he said, his chipper attitude unwavering. “Count of three, run for it.”

“Run for what?” Bernadetta asked.

“That’s a sword,” Edelgard pointed out, dumbfounded. Her gaze was fixed on the Plague Rat, so it was impossible to tell if she was referring to Matthias’ inexplicably well-crafted toothpick-sized sword or the Plague Rat’s enormous kitchen knife.

“Three! Run!” Matthias shouted, bolting to the side, his torch bobbing in the air and flashing long shadows across the floor with every step.

“Wait! I thought you were going to count!” Bernadetta wailed, struggling to keep up. She’d hardly taken three paces before realizing that something was amiss, and glancing behind her shoulder, saw that Edelgard hadn’t budged an inch. “Edelgard!” she called out.

She rushed to Edelgard’s side and grabbed her by the arm, struggling to pull her along. It was almost as though she’d been rooted to the floor. “Edelgard, please!” What was she thinking? She couldn’t stay and fight—she didn’t have any weapons!

The Plague Rat took slow, lumbering steps, as though savoring the dread of his prey. He came to a stop in front of Edelgard and looked down at her, cocking his head curiously. “Edelgard… von Hresvelg?” he asked, teasing out each syllable of the name as though tasting a vintage wine.

Edelgard lifted her head to meet his baleful gaze, eyes wide, mouth agape, shoulders quivering like the last leaf on a dying tree.

She wasn’t standing her ground against the beast, Bernadetta realized. She was petrified.

Without thinking, Bernadetta took Edelgard’s arm and yanked her off her feet with all her might and then some, then bolted, dragging her along and following Matthias’ bouncing torchlight. If there was one thing she excelled at, it was running away from enemies that were bigger and stronger than her. Edelgard stumbled behind her as she snapped out of her trance and struggled to keep up, unused to beating such a hasty retreat.

The Plague Rat stood in place, but turned his head to follow the two of them as they hurried after Matthias, a baleful chorus of low and menacing laughter drifting through the air as the darkness swallowed him up.

The first thing Caspar realized upon waking up was that every part of his body hurt. The second thing he realized was that his body had a few distinctly different parts than it was used to having, and they hurt just as much. The third thing he realized was that he couldn’t remember anything that had happened after the apothecary had pinned him down and wrenched open his jaw and held an eyedropper of poison over his mouth like the blade of an executioner.

The fourth thing he realized, putting two and two and two together, was that he really, really didn’t want to open his eyes and confirm what he was pretty sure had happened while he’d been unconscious.

He felt something grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Caspar! Cas! Are you awake?” Linhardt hissed in his ear.

“Gimme the good news first,” he mumbled in response, picking himself up off the floor. He knew there was bad news—he could feel it running down his spine all the way down to the tip of the tail he definitely wasn’t supposed to have. He wanted something that would soften him up for it.

“Well, you saved us both from the apothecary. That’s good news,” Linhardt told him. “Ran right up his trousers and the next thing I knew, he was curled up on the floor crying.”

“…And the bad news,” Caspar guessed, “is that I’m a mouse.”

Much to his surprise, putting the good news first really had softened the blow.

He forced himself to crack open his eyes at long last. The first thing he saw was a mouse just as big as he was standing on its hind legs in front of him and kneading its forepaws together anxiously.

“Well,” the other mouse said in Linhardt’s voice, “it’s a bit worse than that.”

Chapter Text

Every last scrap of evidence in Bernadetta’s room pointed to the culprit. Hubert just didn’t know how yet.

He examined the room with a master sculptor’s eye for detail. Nothing would escape his search. And it was imperative that he examine the room before any of the Knights of Seiros or the academy’s faculty had their way with it at the crack of dawn tomorrow—not just so he could catalog every trace of evidence before they got their grubby hands on it, but so that, if need be, he could remove any evidence that raised too many damning questions.

First and foremost, though, he had to find the culprit and discern Edelgard’s whereabouts quickly. It took two to three days to reach Enbarr from Garreg Mach on horseback, one or two on a pegasus or wyvern mount; that meant he had very little time, especially now, before the Emperor discovered that he was without an heir. And that was when the treacherous nobles surrounding him would draw their knives.

But if Edelgard reappeared soon enough, then a second message proclaiming her safety would be sent in the wake of the first one, and if it arrived soon enough, then each of those traitors to the crown would be caught red-handed—and their day of reckoning would finally arrive. That had been his plan from the start.

But for that to happen, Edelgard had to still be here.

How could I have miscalculated like this? Hubert asked himself as he rummaged through Bernadetta’s room by lanternlight. He had been certain that Bernadetta’s room would be the perfect hiding place. Everybody knew she barely left her room and always kept the door locked. No one should have suspected a thing. She would have been safe while he’d rooted out the would-be assassin, and whatever dark plot was brewing in Enbarr would collapse like a house of cards. But the situation was spiraling out of control; he had made a grievous error in his judgment, and the cost of that error hung from his neck like a millstone.

He left not a stone unturned. He searched every part of Bernadetta’s room, down to the last drawer. (Was it uncouth to violate her zealously-maintained privacy? Yes. Was it necessary? Most certainly.) He made a mental note of everything that had been disturbed.

The door. No sign of stress on the hinges. No sign of forced entry. If the culprit had entered through the door, they had done so in the guise of a friend. The windows—thin, tall slits in the room’s stone outer wall. The mortar holding the panes of glass in place was as solid as ever, and the hinges could only swing open from the inside. The bedsheets heaped on the floor. Disturbed, but not recently. The candlestick resting on the floor, a small pool of dried wax stuck to the carpet surrounding its blackened wick like a halo. Bernadetta’s handmade plant dolls scattered across the carpet, thrown off their perch on her desk. Signs of a struggle. Stray spatters of crusted blood, almost invisible on the red rug and speckling the stone floor.

Hubert leafed through Bernadetta’s journal (the one Sylvain had returned to her the other day), hoping to find in one of its blank pages some sort of scrawled plea for help or the name of the culprit, but found nothing. He checked her sketchbook next. Nothing of interest either, save for an unfinished self-portrait Bernadetta had begun drawing. Though anyone searching her belongings might have simply written off the bestial visage as yet another of the many fantastic creatures sketched throughout the book, he felt uncomfortable taking that chance, and so he ripped the page from the sketchbook (no one would notice; at least half of the poor book’s pages had already been ripped out and crumpled up, victims of Bernadetta’s utter lack of self-confidence), folded it into a compact square, and slipped it into his pocket. She would have it back when this was all over.

The next odd piece of evidence he didn’t want anyone to find was a teardrop-shaped glass bottle that had just barely rolled under the bed. It was a bottle large enough to hold a single sip’s worth of liquid, capped with a cork bound to the glass with a loop of wire. Hubert recognized it immediately. In the Empire, soldiers wishing to bolster their strength on the battlefield used these bottles for easy access to single doses of (often diluted) magical draughts. That, too, he slipped into his pocket.

The uniform was the most curious and incongruous thing in the room, and it was because it drew his eye so strikingly like an ugly wound marring perfect skin that Hubert saved it for last. He knew that Edelgard had changed out of her uniform into one of Dorothea’s spare nightgowns, so why leave the uniform out? Why not stow it out of sight in one of Bernadetta’s drawers or under her bed? It was as though it had been left out as a message. But a message left by whom—the culprit, or Edelgard herself?

The uniform was disturbed as though trampled underfoot. The bloodstains were, compared to what little had made it to the floor, unusually plentiful and large. Was it possible for someone to bleed so much and spill so little of it? Yes. Plausible? Not so much.

His gaze traveled to the torn corner of Edelgard’s cape. The tear in the hem was especially loose and ragged, not as clean as a knife or dagger might cut, as though torn out by a grasping hand. Whose hand? Edelgard, or her kidnapper?

The number of questions in his mind had doubled. But at least now he had specific questions. Wherever Edelgard or her culprit was, that scrap of crimson silk would lead the way to them, if only he could find it.

Do not fear the worst, he told himself. Plan for it, but do not fear it. Yet when he reflected on all the fates that could have befallen Edelgard when she had been depending on him for her safety, he felt a fell wind sweep through his body, exposing himself to a sense of weakness he had not felt so strongly in ten years.

He slipped out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him, and faded into the shadows of the night to continue his search elsewhere. As he left, he felt the weight of a day’s worth of relentless and fruitless searching pressing down on his shoulders.

And the day was not yet over. A lesser man might have let out a heavy, forlorn, put-upon sigh of resignation. Hubert’s emotions were not so difficult to control.

He had barely put a foot down on the grass when something small, yet fast and heavy barreled into him, knocking itself over. Hubert stumbled from the sudden impact, looked down, and saw Flayn sitting on the grass and gingerly rubbing her head.

“Oh…” She shook her head and looked up at Hubert. “Oh, hello, Hubert. I did not see you there.” She stood up, smoothing out her skirt. “I saw your face and mistook your pallid, vampire-like complexion for the moon. I am very sorry.”

“A little late for you to be out, is it not?” Hubert commented, crossing his arms. “Your brother will pitch a fit if he sees you with me. You may end up with a pallid, vampire-like complexion of your own,” he added, almost wishing he had fangs to bare for added effect.

“Truth be told, I cannot sleep,” Flayn said, sighing as she bowed her head and gazed glumly at the dark lawn. “It is truly terrible what happened to Lady Edelgard, and poor Bernadetta as well—and after all we did to keep them safe.”

“Truly,” Hubert muttered in return, not entirely willing to carry on a conversation with her. To tell the truth, he found Flayn irritating in the same way he found coffee with too much milk irritating (for the record, ‘too much milk’ was ‘any’). She was almost too saccharine and precocious, yet so sheltered and childlike, to be real. If she were some sort of golem created by the Archbishop out of animated sugar cubes, he wouldn’t be surprised in the least. If only Caspar and his loose lips had not invited her into this little conspiracy…

“I cannot help but wonder… am I to blame for this?” Flayn wondered aloud. “The other day, when I delivered their meals, I carried them on two plates. Was the culprit watching? Did they discern from that that two people were sharing Bernadetta’s bedroom?”

“It’s possible,” Hubert answered, making absolutely no effort to spare her feelings.

“Oh. Oh, I…” She sniffled and rubbed her eyes, her voice cracking. “I am so dearly sorry, Hubert. If this is all my fault…”

“Whining won’t make things any better,” he said, burying himself in his cloak to ward off the cold, damp air. “At any rate, Lady Edelgard’s well-being is not your concern. Go back to bed… before a horrible fate befalls you as well.”

“Ah, I see,” she croaked. “Yes, I… should retreat before I cause any further suffering. My apologies.”

A lantern bobbed in the distance. “Flayn!” Seteth called out, illuminated by the light from the lantern in his hand as he approached.

Second in command to Archbishop Rhea, Seteth ruled the monastery with an iron fist. He was compassionless, humorless, and dripping with sly guile, with the only trace of any warmth beneath his strictness and severity revealing itself in the presence of his younger sister alone—in other words, a man after Hubert’s own heart. That was to say, if he was even a man after all. As Flayn’s older brother, he was likely as human as she was.

“Flayn, I have been looking all over for you,” he said, sternly clamping a gloved hand on her shoulder. A note of worry and concern played on his face. “Come to bed at once. It is not safe for you to be out and about, especially now.”

His brow furrowed at the sight of Hubert looming in the dark in front of her. Hubert wished for the second time that night that he could have fangs.

“I am fine, Seteth,” Flayn said, wiping at her misty eyes. “I was just… so distressed, and hoped a walk would clear my mind…”

“Sleep will clear your mind,” Seteth said. “Come; I have chamomile tea on the kettle.”

Flayn let out a heartbreaking sigh. “Yes, Big Brother.”

“And you, Hubert.” The stern furrows etched into Seteth’s brow deepened. “I understand you must be distraught, but I must ask you to remain in your room for the night.”

“That did not do Bernadetta much good, did it?” Hubert asked, glancing toward her door.

Seteth’s jaw clenched involuntarily for just a second. “Safer than wandering about at this time of night. There is nothing you can do about Edelgard now, save for making your pleas to the Goddess that our investigation bears fruit. The knights are searching the monastery as we speak and will expand their search to the surrounding area as soon as there is daylight.”

“Hmph.” Hubert scowled. “You may keep your faith in your goddess and her saints. I have faith only in Lady Edelgard. Whatever terrors awaits her, I know she is meeting them with unparalleled strength and bravery. I only wish I could meet those terrors by her side.”

“All the same, you do not want to arouse anybody’s suspicion by skulking around in the dead of night. Somebody may suspect you of something,” Seteth told him. “Now go to bed, Hubert. Just because you resemble so closely a vampire does not mean you do not need to sleep,” he added, a wry tug on his eyebrow the only indication he was attempting to make a joke.

Hubert bowed curtly. “I understand, sir.”

Seteth left with Flayn in tow, the bobbing light of his lantern soon swallowed up by the night and the shadowed walls of the monastery, leaving Hubert to return to his work.

“Hey, Hubert!”

Jolted out of his thoughts, Hubert looked up and found Claude poking his head out of his window on the second floor of the dormitories.

“I found more mice!” Claude called out to him.

To say the very least, Edelgard was not feeling quite herself. It was as though something inside her had cracked, as though a single hairline fracture had formed in the pillar of strength she had spent ten years building up and now threatened to shatter her like glass.

Her thoughts kept circling, circling, circling like the currents of a whirlpool, a maelstrom piercing a black ocean. Kept circling around the claws that skittered across the floor—her claws—the bristling, itchy fur that brushed against cold, clammy flesh—her fur—the whiskers that wagged with a deceptively feathery touch—her whiskers—the teeth that gnawed on dead and dying flesh—her teeth—the tail that slithered in the dark—her tail. All of these thoughts kept circling around one word boring a hole into her mind.

Vermin.

She fought against that word with every fiber of her being.

I am still Edelgard von Hresvelg, she told herself, though the name felt less and less her own every time she did. I am not vermin. I still have my wits, I still have my mind, I still have my reason. I am not a horrid thing that creeps and stalks across the fields of the dead—

She took a deep breath.

She forced herself to look at Bernadetta, who still had an iron grip on her arm as she dragged her along. Though thoroughly mousy from tip to toe, echoes of her human form rang out as though fighting their way out of her body—the sad gray eyes, the hunched and unassuming posture, the messy mop of violet (or, to a mouse’s eyes, more of a dark gray-blue) hair crowning her head.

While Matthias led her and Bernadetta through the darkness, she clutched her makeshift cloak tighter around her shoulders. She could smell the faint odor of blood clinging to it, the blood that had stained the ragged edges when she’d clutched the scrap of her cape so tightly she had bled. She could smell it and knew that it belonged to her. And beneath that was a different, subtler scent she couldn’t describe in any concrete terms but knew beyond a doubt was her own—not the stale, musky odor of a mouse but the reassuring, reaffirming scent of her own humanity.

The darkness gave way to dim light. Tunnels lit by ragged torchlight, as vast to mice as the looming vaulted ceilings of the Garreg Mach Cathedral, dirty and musty. Edelgard had only heard rumors of this place—a network of tunnels spanning wide across the monastery and stretching even into town—but had never thought it had really existed. She had heard of it only in whispers among other students.

They called it ‘Abyss.’

Amid crumbling walls, buried in crevices, an enclave of little lives clung to the stone. Tents made from scraps of cloth, burlap, and canvas suspended over sticks rose from the shadows, lit in eternal twilight by the flickering torches above. Edelgard’s first thought upon seeing the ramshackle collection of tents was of a military encampment, but there were no banners, no cavalry, no stockpiles of weapons, and no soldiers.

The mice scurrying through the camp were clad in ragged cloaks, robes, and tunics stitched inexpertly together from scavenged scraps of cloth and felt, not armor; and those few who met even the slimmest criteria for being armed were wielding spears and axes crudely fashioned from sticks and scraps of metal lashed together with thread and twine and shields made from porcelain and metal buttons. And there were more babies—curled-up, hairless, pink maggot-like little things so young they couldn’t even open their eyes yet—than one would normally see in a soldier’s camp. True, any number greater than zero would be too much, but there were enough here to outnumber the adults by a factor of two at least.

Edelgard had seen entire villages wiped off the map by marauders and bandits before. This camp looked like what was left behind.

“Ah, here we are,” Matthias said, his meek little voice as full of cheer as ever as he led Edelgard and Bernadetta through the camp. “Home sweet home. Just a little farther; we’ve got a little room in back with you two’s names on it! By the way, what are your names, anyway? I’m pretty sure I said mine’s Matthias, but it’s okay if you forgot. Takes me and Zeke forever to get names right, too.”

Edelgard said nothing. She clenched her jaw as she weaved through the crowds, keeping as much distance between herself and the other rodents as possible, clutching so tightly at her cloak that she could feel her claws wear holes through the frayed edges and prick her skin, as if it were a talisman to ward off evil influences. Normally, she would think herself above such superstitious thoughts, but at three inches tall, there wasn’t much she was above right now.

“I’m, uh, Bernadetta, and this is Edelgard.” Bernadetta told him in her stead. “Er, um, I-I mean, Lady Edelgard von Hresvelg. K-Kind of a big deal.”

“Oh, yeah, I can tell. Got an aura of big-deal-ness. Princess or something?”

“I feel more like an ‘or something’ at this moment,” Edelgard muttered bitterly.

Matthias ushered them to a literal hole in the wall covered by a rough burlap curtain, a little chamber made by the empty space where a brick had been chiseled out from the wall. The floor was lined with woven cotton that Edelgard was sure had come from somebody’s sweater; the carpeting was a welcome respite for her bare paws compared to cold, hard stone tiling. A ragged mound of linen swatches rested in the corner. A single lit match stuck into a hole bored in the wall illuminated the room, but only barely. An evil aura clung to the room; Edelgard could feel it pressing up to her chest, tensing her muscles and bristling her fur like an unwelcome chill in the air.

She clutched her cloak in her paws, pulling it tighter both to ward off the chill and soothe the swirling ache in her stomach. She could feel her clawed fingers grasping for her true form, her true self, as though if she could only grab it tightly enough she could pull out more of those echoes of her humanity. Beneath the fur, despite the tail, despite her size, she was still Edelgard, she insisted. There was nothing else she could be.

How many times would she have to think these thoughts before they would sink in? It felt as though she’d been repeating them to herself for hours already. She felt like Bernadetta now, helpless to stop kind and truthful words from sliding off her mind like water off a duck’s back.

“This was Joseph’s room until yesterday,” Matthias said. “Now it’s yours. Hope it’s spacious enough.”

“Why isn’t it Joseph’s room anymore?” Bernadetta asked, nervously clutching the tip of her tail.

“Oh, he died,” Matthias answered with a surprisingly cavalier tone of voice. He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Poor guy. Didn’t stand a chance. Anyway, enough about him. I’ll leave you two to get settled in.”

With that, he vanished behind the curtain.

“Still roommates, huh?” Bernadetta looked around the sparse room. “Lady Edelgard, are you okay? Ever since we ran into that Plague Rat, you’ve been…”

Bernadetta’s voice faded away. Edelgard felt her ribs squeeze against heart, pressing the air from her lungs. The rough stone walls, the blackened corners, the flagging light. No windows, no vents, just stale air. In an instant, nearly a decade of her life vanished. She was ten years old again, she was chained to the floor again, she was surrounded by the dead and dying again; fresh stitches throbbed anew over scars that had reverted to oozing wounds. But this time, though, on top of everything else, she could hear the squeal of sharp metal dragging across stone and menacing laughter boiling the air around her. And just as she had when she’d gazed upon the Plague Rat, inside her mind, behind the icy facade she had built up, she became nothing more than a helpless little girl—the last survivor of eleven siblings—screaming for her father to save her until the slightest breath felt like swallowing mouthfuls of sand.

In her waking moments, those memories were impossible to grasp firmly, mercifully; when she slept, or when the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness grew thin, they flooded back as fresh and vivid as though they had happened yesterday.

This time, her legs gave out. A rush of numbing warmth spread through her body and the sparse splashes of faded color strewn across the room faded to even duller gray; the room spun around her, the shadows encroaching until there was nothing but darkness.

The next thing she knew, she was nestled under a warm blanket. Someone was running a comb through her hair. The gentle scratching of delicate teeth raking across her scalp and the soft pressure of the sheets weighing down on her back were as warm and comforting as an embrace. The teeth of the comb slipped behind her ear and she felt a welcome tingle rush down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail; she shuddered and curled up under the blanket, inviting more of that welcoming frisson.

Before she cracked open her eyes, she felt phantoms hovering over her, the last dregs of a forgotten dream on the cusp of fading away into the ether. But rather than the tormented half-remembered faces of her brothers and sisters, the fleeting images draining from her mind were that of Professor Byleth letting her rest her head on her lap while she raked her fingers gently through her hair.

The dim, bleak world around her rushed in to replace the idyllic vision like water filling a tub, blurred shapes and figures—what little there was to see—sharpening and coalescing before her.

Disappointment washing away her inappropriate fantasies, she stirred reluctantly. A moan squeaked its way out of her mouth as she stretched stiff and aching limbs. “Bernie?” she muttered, fumbling for a coherent thought to cling to.

The clawed fingertips brushing against the backs of her ears pulled away. “I’m sorry!” Bernadetta immediately answered, skittering backward. “I-I didn’t mean to wake you! Please forgive me; I forgot my place—I thought that maybe—”

“It’s fine,” Edelgard mumbled, sitting up and adjusting the blanket draped over her cloaked shoulders. She was filled with skin-crawling revulsion both by the idea that Bernadetta had seen fit to scratch behind her ears as though she were somebody’s pet and by the fact that it had felt good; mingled up with that was the shame that she’d had that split-second fantasy of her teacher doing it to her. She decided it would be best not to press the issue or interrogate her feelings any further at this moment. “Just—”

“I won’t do it again,” Bernadetta blurted out.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. How long was I out?”

“Just a few minutes. Do you feel better?”

Edelgard nodded. “Yes. I think. I’m okay now.”

“Are you sure? Since we got stuck down here, you…”

“Haven’t been myself?”

Bernadetta looked away. “Um… Well, uh, I—I wasn’t exactly going to… I mean…”

“It’s hard to be yourself,” Edelgard admitted, “when you’re only three inches tall.” Then again, though, Bernadetta seemed to have next to no trouble being herself. Perhaps, as she’d said earlier, she had always been a mouse at heart.

Perhaps, Edelgard mused, she was being herself right now—just not the version of herself she’d grown accustomed to being. Her scorched and blackened heart, her iron mask of steadfast determination and guarded emotions, the layers of armor holding back the river of tears she’d long since thought had dried up—perhaps all those were merely artificial and had been stripped away by her transformation. Perhaps she, like Bernadetta, had always been a mouse, but had for so long fancied herself an eagle that she had forced herself to believe she was one.

What if beneath her lies was not the truth, but just another deeper, thicker layer of lies? What if everything she had thought she’d known about herself was self-delusion? What if she didn’t know who she really was at all?

No. She couldn’t afford to think like that. This was all just temporary. As soon as she and Bernadetta were back on the surface, as soon as Hubert had retrieved his antidote, all of this would be over and there would be no question what she was. Edelgard had to keep in the forefront of her mind the hope—the truth—that this was all temporary, all just a bad day. She had a future. A future that would reshape all of Fódlan for the better. She was the flame that would burn down all that was evil and insidious in this land, and she would be that flame again.

“I’m just having a really bad day,” she said.

“You and me both, Your Highness,” Bernadetta said with a little chuckle. “N-Not that I’m saying your day’s been just as bad as mine!” she hastily added. “You’re obviously fainting all over the place and getting paralyzed by f-fear, and—I, um, I mean—Just forget I said anything!”

“Gladly,” Edelgard answered, loath to be reminded of how many times she’d fainted in Bernadetta’s presence over the past few days (even once was far too many times). “I’ve no intention of arguing with you over whose day has been worse. It isn’t a competition.”

“But obviously, your day’s been worse. Just forget I tried to compare the two.”

“I will.”

“I mean—”

“Forget it.” Edelgard sighed. Speaking of forgetting… “Bernadetta, do you remember how we got here?”

“Um…” Bernadetta thoughtfully scratched her forehead, likely relieved by the change in subject. “Matthias led us here from the kitchen cellar…”

“No, before that.”

“Oh. You mean how we both turned into mice?”

“Yes.” Edelgard rested her head in her paws. Just trying to turn the clock back that far in her head made it ache. The last thing she remembered clearly was that she’d folding her uniform to stow it in Bernadetta’s drawer for safekeeping; beyond that was a haze of vague impressions.

“No, I’m sorry.” Bernadetta shook her head. “My head hurts just thinking about it. Someone had a knife, and I remember tasting blood, but…”

Edelgard tried harder to reminisce. “I remember… we were attacked by someone. And I…”

I called them a traitor, she recalled.

That meant she must have known them. Hubert had warned her earlier about the schism among those who slither in the dark and had told her that a faction had been using the mouse poison for its own purposes. That meant it had to be one of them. The only question was who. Kronya? Solon? How many other agents were there in this monastery she didn’t even know about? Had they been closing in around her all along—the jaws of an invisible trap preparing to snap shut?

She stood up with a jolt. Her blood ran cold, her heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings in her chest as several disparate thoughts tied themselves together in her brain. “Come on, Bernadetta. We’re leaving.”

“Are you sure we can’t rest here a little bit?” Bernadetta asked. “It’s late… before we set out, we should get some sleep, and maybe some food…”

It all made too much sense. A plot by those who slither in the dark to infiltrate the monastery by turning their agents temporarily into rodents. The theft of Hubert’s poison and his antidote. A bunch of mice walking around and talking like people—one of which had happened to stumble upon Edelgard and Bernadetta just after they’d been transformed.

This place may have looked like a refugee camp, but it was all just a smokescreen.

It was a trap.

“No. We’re leaving now,” Edelgard insisted.

“Okay,” Bernadetta said, pulling herself up. “We’re leaving now.”

Edelgard headed for the curtain draped over the exit just as it parted and Matthias slipped through, a bundle in his arms.

“Hello, there!” he said, cheery as always. “I have some stuff to give you two, since you’re so sorely lacking in necessities.”

“Thank you,” Edelgard said frostily, “but we’re—”

Matthias slipped a paw into the bundle and pulled out two short lengths of splintered wood. “First things first, oral hygiene. Your teeth never stop growing, so you’ll want to give something a good gnawing twice a day to keep them filed down so they don’t poke through the roof of your jaws and stab you in the brain. Here, you can have these sticks.”

He handed one stick to Bernadetta, then the other to Edelgard. She didn’t take it.

“Your first gnawing stick is a really sentimental object,” Matthias continued. “Mum said I wore through my first one in a week and snapped it clean in two. Then I had two first gnawing sticks, and that was pretty special.”

“Wait, are these your sticks?” Bernadetta asked, nearly dropping hers.

“What? Gross! No! I wouldn’t give you my first stick! You just don’t do that,” Matthias said, scandalized. “Anyway, how’re you two adjusting to the whole mouse thing?” He rummaged in his bag. “I’ve got—”

“We were just leaving,” Edelgard said, pushing past him. How did he know that she and Bernadetta were ‘adjusting to the whole mouse thing’ anyway?

“Already? Why don’t you stay here and rest up a bit first?” Matthias asked. He rested a paw against her shoulder only for her to wrench herself free. “At least come on out and meet the rest of the mousefolk. It’s almost story time for the pups, and I’m sure they’ll be really stoked to meet you.”

The visceral image of a cluster of squirming, squeaking baby mice, pink, tiny, and hairless, did little to calm her frayed nerves. “I would rather—”

“‘You would gladly?’ Great! Thanks a bunch!” he said, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her along.

“Let go of me!” she snarled, pulling her hand away and reaching for the sword sheathed at his belt. She snatched it up, leveled it at his throat, and promptly realized she’d grabbed one of his matchstick torches by mistake.

Could she kill him with a matchstick? Probably, if she tried hard enough.

Matthias gingerly pushed the bulbous head of the match aside. “Okay, a little testy. Look, I get it. You’re a stranger in a strange land. Just calm down a bit and take the time to get to know us.”

“No.”

A clawed paw rested itself on Matthias’ shoulder. The paw was connected to a larger mouse about a head taller than Matthias himself, his fur barely hiding a network of scars. A little eyepatch covered one eye (although, Edelgard reminded herself, it was perfectly normal-sized from a mouse’s perspective), and one of his ears had been whittled down to a nub while the other had a sizable collection of notches in it. “Well, well, what’s all this, then? Someone bullying you, Mattie?”

“Oh, hey, Zeke!” Matthias wormed his way out from under the larger mouse’s grip. “No, we were going to practice swordfighting. With matches. For safety.”

Zeke’s single eye roved over to Edelgard and widened so suddenly that it was as though he’d stepped on a tack. He crouched down a bit and held his paw up to his mouth, then whispered in a much shakier voice, “Think it’s ‘bout time for that story, eh, brother?”

Matthias nodded. “Yeah! Yes, definitely. Anyway,” he told Edelgard as his big brother dragged him away, “you’re free to go, but please stay for story time! It’ll just be five minutes!”

“I think we can stay for five minutes,” Bernadetta told Edelgard.

Edelgard headed down the path winding down the middle of the crowded camp, but found the way blocked as Zeke and Matthias took their place in the middle of the pathway and a mass of mice gathered around them, forming an impenetrable crowd of bodies.

“Looks like we don’t have a choice,” Edelgard muttered as she and Bernadetta found themselves pressed into the crowd, the adult mice ringing the edge of the circle and penning in the younger mice. She was loath to push her way past the crowd—the thought of rubbing elbows with these rodents made her feel ill.

“So there we were,” Zeke said, resting a scarred arm over Matthias’ shoulders, “Li’l Mattie and I, all alone, face to face with the Plague Rat!” The litter of writhing pups gathered around his feet shuddered and gasped. “His slavering maw was dripping with poisonous ichor—”

“Venomous,” Matthias corrected.

“Dripping with VENOMOUS ichor, and his skeletal face was so dead and lifeless that the grass withered around him! And his eyes burned like hot coals, and his great, nasty sword went chop-chop-CHOP—”

He paused for dramatic effect. A hush fell over the tiny audience. Edelgard almost wanted to point out that one did not chop with a serrated blade, but rather sawed, which was much more gruesome.

Her thoughts turned to the Plague Rat before she could stop them, and she felt a shiver run up her spine. It had known her name. How had it know her name?

“Bet ya’ think we died, did’ya?” Zeke asked the audience.

“Um… n-no?” one of the pups squeaked.

“No! We did NOT die!” Zeke boasted. “Know what we did instead? We fought him off, yes we did! The two of us, together, fought him off! We fought him up and down the Tower of the Heavens, ‘cross the Infinite Bridge, through the Field of Giants! We fought him from the crack of dawn to the edge of dusk! And then, when he was tired and gasping for breath, and the dying light of the sun was right in his eyes, we nobly, bravely, VALIANTLY ran away—all the way back down here to the Lair of Wolves!”

The little mice cheered, along with several of the adults. Zeke had the voice and presence of a small town preacher and commanded the same rapt attention from his followers. Edelgard was certain he was embellishing this story (if it had happened at all), though, given how readily Matthias had run away earlier. Then again, she thought with a hint of amusement, that just gave him more in common with the average priest.

“And then my brother—” Zeke gave Matthias a rough, yet playful shove— “had a vision! The sword of Saint Martin gave him a vision!” He gave Matthias another shove that placed him front and center before the crowd. “Matthias, tell ‘em ‘bout your vision.”

Although he was a mouse, Matthias looked oddly human in his discomfort. “Well, um, so after the battle, I was polishing my sword like I always do, keeping its blade shiny and rust-free—”

“Spends a lot of time polishing the ol’ blade, he does,” Zeke said with a sly and bawdy wink, “if y’know what I mean.”

The adults laughed. Some of the little mice laughed, too, but likely only because the adults were laughing and they wanted to fit in.

“Anyway, I was looking at my reflection in the flat of the blade,” Matthias said, “and then I had this vision of a special warrior who’d come to us in our time of need, and the sword spoke to me, and it said that our time in the abyss was over and a savior was on her way—”

“A savior!” his brother roared. “A savior of all mousefolk!”

“And she—well, she’d be mousefolk just like us—”

“A mouse from afar, delivered by divine providence!”

“Except she wouldn’t look like us, what with her white fur—”

“With glossy fur as white as fresh snow!”

“And a long mane—”

“And a silken mane like liquid moonlight!”

“And a cloak that smelled like blood—”

“And a cape stained crimson with the blood of the unrighteous!”

Edelgard wondered how a bunch of colorblind mice could even have the word ‘crimson’ in their vocabulary. Did they just conceptualize it as a particularly dark and deep shade of ugly grayish yellow-brown? She looked down at her cloak and felt a wistful ache stir her heart—her favorite color, and she couldn’t even see it anymore. All the more reason to get back to normal as quickly as possible.

“Um, Lady Edelgard, I think they’re talking about you!” Bernadetta tapped Edelgard excitedly on the shoulder. “This is like something out of a fantasy novel…!”

Zeke gave Matthias another brotherly nudge. “And the savior’s name would be…”

“Edelgard von Hresvelg,” Matthias mumbled. It seemed that the presence of his big brother was the only thing capable of making him shut up for any appreciable length of time.

“‘Edward van Helsing?’” his brother boomed, furrowing his brow. “What in the devil kinda name is ‘Edward van Helsing?’”

“No, no, Zeke, I said ‘Edelgard von Hresvelg.’” Matthias said, raising his voice.

One of the little mice, just old enough to have a thin coating of pale brown fur over its pink skin and wide black eyes, raised its hand. “Um, excuse me, Father Ezekiel?” it squeaked.

“Yes, li’l one?” Zeke said.

The little mouse turned around and pointed at Edelgard. “That mouse has glossy fur as white as fresh snow, and a silken mane like liquid moonlight, and a cape stained crimson with the blood of the unrighteous, and her friend just called her ‘Edelgard.’”

Zeke chuckled. “Why yes, yes she does! Everybody, look!”

Edelgard found every single mouse turning its head to look straight at her, even the blind pups. It was nauseating to feel so many beady eyes trained on her.

“The prophecy,” he boomed, lifting his arms at his sides, “has come true! After countless generations of strife, a savior has come to deliver us from this purgatory! And her name is Edelgard… Van… Helsing!”

“Um, von Hresvelg,” Matthias corrected.

“Edelgard von Rustbelt!”

As a chorus of awed whispers fluttered through the crowd, the urgency that had been pushing Edelgard forward transformed into stunned bewilderment.

“You should’ve seen her back in the cellar!” Matthias called out. “Froze the Plague Rat and his minions in his tracks with a single icy glare! All he could do was laugh in sheer terror as we beat a brave and noble retreat right in his face!”

“Would’ve cleft the devil in twain right down the middle if she’d had a weapon!” Zeke chimed in.

And then the cheering began, and it was all so earnest that it pushed back Edelgard’s nausea and melted the skepticism that had frozen her heart. For a moment, she felt like Edelgard von Hresvelg again, and it felt good. Even if they couldn’t get her name quite right.

“So, uh, a-are we still leaving?” Bernadetta asked, tugging on her cloak.

And then as suddenly as the warm sensation had come over her, Edelgard snapped out of it. Flattery was the most powerful weapon any enemy could possess, and it was clearly being employed in spades here. As though she even believed in such infantile things as prophecies and chosen ones!

“Yes, yes, of course,” she snapped, struggling to part the crowd that had begun to roil around her like an angry sea. The bristling whiskers, skittering claws, slithering tails brushed past her, each feathery touch forcing her to grit her teeth and force back the burning wave of bile pushing itself up her throat. The air was thick and hot, settling like stones in her lungs as her tiny heart throbbed with a hummingbird’s pulse against her ribs.

A chorus of pleas rang out around her. Are you going to help us? Are you going to save us? Please help us! We’ve been waiting so long! Please help us, Edelgard! Help us! Save us! You have to get us out of here, El! We need you! I need you!

El.

No one save her father still lived who called her that. Were the dead calling out to her through this teeming mass of vermin?

Please, El. Please, El. Help me. It hurts so much. I need you.

“No,” she whined through gritted teeth, pushing away the phantoms. The world spun around her, gray and black clouds creeping into the corners of her vision as the plaintive faces wrapped around her bled into an indistinct, monstrous amalgam. “No, no, no, get away, get away! Get away from me!”

“Hey, hold on a minute,” Matthias protested, grasping the hem of her cloak. “Y-You can’t just leave!”

Edelgard wrenched her cloak free of his grip, grabbed Bernadetta by the wrist, and pulled her along out of the camp, hurrying into the cavernous halls. She didn’t look back until she was sure she’d left the throngs of rodents far behind, and with them, the voices of the dead, the last echoing El, please, El, please ringing in her ears as it faded away.

She paused to catch her breath, pressing a hand to her chest to feel her racing heartbeat slow to a steadier pace that was still far faster than what she was accustomed to feeling. She had read once that all creatures’ hearts beat the same number of times, but long-lived creatures’ hearts beat slower and short-lived creatures’ hearts beat faster. Was it an ill omen that even her resting pulse was so high?

“Are you sure we had to leave, Lady Edelgard?” Bernadetta asked. She wasn’t as winded as Edelgard, but then again, she had much more experience running. “They seemed pretty nice to me.” Her stomach growled so loudly that even Edelgard could hear it. “…And they had food.”

“It was a trap,” Edelgard insisted. “Remember, Hubert told us that my would-be assassin’s faction was using the mouse poison to infiltrate the monastery. How else do you think all those mice could walk around and talk like us?”

Bernadetta furrowed her brow. “But all those babies…”

Edelgard gave her a sharp look.

“Nothing! Never mind! Y-You’re right, Lady Edelgard; I didn’t mean to doubt you! We’re safer out here. But… how are we going to get back to the surface?”

“We’re underground,” she said as she led Bernadetta down the halls, through the islands of torchlight illuminating the floor between stretches of inky darkness. “As long as we go up whenever we’re able to, we’ll reach safety.”

“What if we run into a cat?”

“We’ll deal with that.”

“What if we run into the Plague Rat again?”

Edelgard froze.

No. No more freezing. She’d just been caught off-guard the first time. That was all.

“We’ll run,” she said, forcing herself to take another step forward and continuing on her way. “You’re good at that.”

Bernadetta sighed. “Okay.”

“It won’t be long,” Edelgard assured her. “We’ll make it to the surface and find Professor Byleth, and then Hubert will put the antidote together…”

She trailed off as Bernadetta scurried past her on all fours, crossing the hallway at a speed that would make a horse jealous.

Bernadetta realized how far ahead she’d gotten, stopped dead in her tracks, and stood up. “Um… I-I think might be faster to run like this?” she said, flush with embarrassment. Her tiny, timid voice echoed in the vast hall.

Edelgard took a deep, exasperated breath and shook her head. “I will not debase myself like that,” she muttered as Bernadetta waited patiently for her to catch up. If she started acting like a mouse, she would start thinking like one, and who knew where that would lead her? She barely felt like herself as it was already. One little push—and perhaps she would forget it all.

Something slithered in the dark behind her.

Her pulse racing, she whirled around to face her pursuer, felt something slip across her paws, and promptly fell flat on the floor, scraping her palms against the rough stone as she tried to break her fall.

There had been nothing behind her. Nothing, she realized, save for her own tail.

“Lady Edelgard! Are you okay?” Bernadetta called out.

Her tail. A constant flood of sensation stretching out behind her that her mind couldn’t quite make sense of and that acted seemingly of its own accord, an unrecognizable and disobedient part of her body, a constant reminder that she was…

The word vermin loudly interjected itself into her head. The word—

She had to head that thought off before she could think it. I am not a rat, she told herself. This body is not the body of a rat, it is that of a mouse. There is a crucial distinction. She thought back to the many times Hubert had explained to her the difference between mice and rats, the most recent being the evening Bernadetta had been poisoned. Mice are smaller than rats. They have shorter, pointed snouts and larger ears. Their tails are longer. Mice are nothing to fear. Mice did not make feasts of my family.

The thought was little comfort.

As she passed out of the oasis of torchlight and into the pool of shadow stretching between it and the next one, she felt something crack and snap underfoot. Brittle as a dry twig, but oddly shaped. Edelgard felt her whiskers twitch as they discerned the shape of the air around her; she cautiously crouched down and felt around the floor, her paw slipping across the curve of a caved-in skull. She felt around the floor, finding more bones, a swatch of rough fabric, and something made of wood. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she found the details leaping out at her—a rumpled and ragged cloak barely hiding a jumbled mess of a mouse’s skeleton, a cavernous pool of shadow filling the gaping crater in its skull. Disorganized phalanges clutched the hilt of a wooden sword and a brass button.

Edelgard picked up the sword and makeshift shield. The skeleton’s tenuous grip relented without a single protest, and she continued on her way. The weight of the sword and shield in her paws was familiar, empowering—with these, even a little mouse could defend itself.

“It’s okay. You’ll get used to your tail after about a day or so,” Bernadetta assured her when she caught up with her.

“I don’t intend on staying like this long enough to get used to it,” Edelgard answered.

The longer Bernadetta and Edelgard roamed the halls, the more corpses they found in their path. Some clothed, some not; some armed, most not; some so ancient they were nothing but bones, some fresh enough that bits of putrid flesh still clung to the bone, and some so fresh that they still had fur. Some of the corpses were too large to be mice.

This place felt like a giant crypt. Bernadetta had read about ossuaries underneath monasteries throughout Fódlan, the walls literally sculpted from thousands upon thousands of bones, and had been enthralled (a shame there was no record of Garreg Mach having one—even the Holy Tomb had been disappointingly boneless). These skeletal remains, though, were not so fun to see. No one here had been laid to a peaceful repose; from the looks of it, they’d all died in battle.

At least Edelgard was acting more like her old self. With a weapon back in hand, she seemed just as fearless and resolute as she always had, with no trace of the worrying fragility she’d been demonstrating since she’d became a mouse.

Edelgard paused to scavenge one of the fallen mice, tearing its weapon out of bony hands. “Bernadetta, here.” She handed the long, curved length of wood to her; Bernadetta gingerly took it, ill at ease to be stealing something from a corpse. It took her a few seconds to realize it that it was a longbow, or at least a crude approximation of one—long as she was tall with a gentle, if uneven curve to the knobbly wood. The craftsmanship was lacking; it was especially inflexible compared to the composite bows she was used to, and the battered quiver Edelgard handed her next was filled with toothpicks, sewing needles, unlit matches, and hedgehog quills.

“Um… thanks?” Bernadetta said, slinging the quiver over her shoulder. She doubted even Claude von Reigan could so much as hit the broad side of a barn with this thing if he were in her shoes, but it was better than nothing.

“There,” Edelgard said. “Now we can both protect ourselves.” She stifled a yawn. “We should rest for the night. We’ll take turns sleeping and keeping watch. Bernadetta, can you take the first shift?”

“Uh… s-sure, I guess,” Bernadetta said without really listening. She was still thinking about the arrows that corpse had been trying to shoot with. No wonder he was dead now, if that was what passed for ammunition in his army.

“I’m a light sleeper,” Edelgard said, sitting down and leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes, “so you shouldn’t have any trouble waking me when you start getting tired.”

Bernadetta thought back to how she’d dragged Edelgard from the floor to the bed earlier that morning and doubted she was as light a sleeper as she claimed.

Edelgard fell asleep soon enough and Bernadetta settled in for the dull, quiet monotony of the night watch. The torches overhead flickered and guttered, shifting the borders between light and shadow. Bernadetta wondered who kept them lit. Surely not the mice; the torches were too high off the floor. Did people live down here, like all the rumors said? Was there really an entire secret house of rejected and expelled Officers Academy students dwelling down here, shunning the light of day?

Maybe if one of those mole people came her way, she could somehow flag them down and ask them to bring her to the surface. Or maybe they would just trap and eat her. After all, what other options did they have for food down here? They definitely had to eat mice and rats to survive!

Bernadetta shivered. Her stomach growled. What she wouldn’t give for cold leftovers from the dining hall (her usual meal, since she tended to only leave her room for food once everyone else had left, save for when Byleth ‘invited’ her for lunch or tea). Or her own bed. Even just a pillow. Standing out here tonight with nothing to look forward to but the promise of a cold, hard floor to lie down on brought back painful memories.

Of course, though, it had been her own fault she’d locked herself in the cupboard to avoid seeing guests, as her father had reminded her… and she supposed it was her fault she was stuck here now.

“You’ve really done it this time, Bernie,” she mumbled to herself, even though she wasn’t quite sure what it was. After all, there was always an it. There was always something she’d done wrong. That was what her father had taught her; that was what her life had taught her. The only way to avoid doing something wrong was to just avoid doing anything at all.

Edelgard moaned and mumbled softly to herself in her sleep as though in agreement and curled up against the wall, her grip on the wooden sword she’d scavenged tightening so much that her knuckles whitened as her lips pulled back in a pained grimace. Her ears and tail twitched. Then, in a flash, the dark cloud passed over her face, she loosened up, and the pain vanished from her face.

She really was a very pretty mouse, Bernadetta mused. She hadn’t been saying that just to flatter her. As far as mice went, she looked positively radiant, like an angel brought down to the world of mortals. And her fur was so glossy and looked so soft and inviting…

Bernadetta shook her head. No. One time, she had told herself. She had told herself that she would only pet Edelgard once. And she’d done it the last time Edelgard had fainted, and Edelgard had immediately woken up, and Bernadetta had promised her she’d never do it again.

And yet she reached out with her paw, letting it hover just over Edelgard’s head. Just one more. It wouldn’t hurt anyone. Edelgard was fast asleep. She wouldn’t even notice.

No! Bernadetta yanked her paw back. Edelgard was the imperial princess, not an animal! This was extremely inappropriate! People could be killed for less than what she was trying to do!

She tried to clear her mind. She spent what felt like the better part of an hour practicing with her scavenged bow, making sure to collect each quote-unquote ‘arrow’ she shot (who knew where she’d find more if she ran out?). Unsurprisingly, porcupine quills made the worst arrows, though the matchsticks’ bulbous heads weren’t exactly aerodynamic and the toothpicks and sewing needles were bad in their own special ways.

And yet no matter what she did to distract herself, she kept finding herself drawn back to Edelgard. Back to that beautiful, lustrous coat of fur as white as freshly fallen snow and ever so enticing…

One more time. She would pet her one more time, and that would be it.

Bernadetta nervously reached out, slipped her paw through Edelgard’s long, flowing mane, and began to gently rake her claws across the back of her ear. Edelgard relaxed immediately, the tension in her slumbering body lessening, her muscles going slack. She slumped over, sinking to the floor as though she’d begun to melt.

This wasn’t too bad. It was almost as though Edelgard enjoyed it. Bernadetta had never seen her so relaxed. Maybe she was doing the right thing by petting her! And she was so soft, too—petting her was like burying her hand in the surface of a new mink coat. Surely, Bernadetta told herself, Edelgard wouldn’t mind if she kept at it for another minute… or five…

“Oh, Professor…” Edelgard moaned.

“I wish the Professor were here with us, too,” Bernadetta said, still stroking her fur. “She always keeps a level head and always knows exactly what to do. But you’ll get us out of here, too, Edelgard. I know you can.” She sighed. “I’m really glad you’re acting more like yourself again. When you froze up in front of that Plague Rat, I was so—I-I thought I’d broken you! I was so afraid we’d both die…”

Edelgard mumbled softly and slumped further onto the floor. Bernadetta cupped one hand under her cheek for support as she kept scratching gently behind her ear.

“I know you’re having a hard time being a mouse, even if you say you’re fine. You deserve it a lot less than I do. I-I mean, you’re Edelgard, not some timid little wallflower. But see, being a mouse isn’t all bad…”

Edelgard stirred. Bernadetta froze, panicked, and pulled her paw back swiftly. “I’m sorry, I-I don’t know what came over me—I know I said I wouldn’t do it again, but I just couldn’t help myself!” she babbled, stumbling backward. “Please don’t yell at me!”

Oblivious, Edelgard simply curled up on the floor, still asleep. “Don’t go…” she mumbled. “Don’t… don’t leave me down here…”

Bernadetta crept closer. “D-Do you… want me to keep petting you?”

Edelgard curled up tighter, her claws scratching the stone, her tail aimlessly lashing against the floor. “No…”

Bernadetta took a step back. “O-Okay! I understand! I’ll listen to you this time—no more pets!”

“No, no, no…” Still whimpering to herself, Edelgard pulled herself together, raking her claws against her ragged cloak. “No… please… not a… not a rat… not a rat…”

“E-Edel—”

Edelgard’s eyes flew open and she shot up to her feet. “I’m not a rat!” she howled, all but throwing herself into Bernadetta’s very unprepared arms and nearly knocking her over. “I’m not a rat… I’m not, I’m n—” She gasped for breath, her chest heaving and her eyes wide, wild, and unfocused. Bernadetta let out a surprised yelp and immediately dropped her to the floor. “Not a rat…” she kept gasping as she writhed on the floor. “I’m not, I’m n—I’m not, not a rat, please…”

Though she feared another outburst, Bernadetta crept closer, crouched down, and gingerly patted her on the head. “N-No, no, o-of course not,” she assured her, unsure if she was asleep or awake. “You’re not a rat…”

“I’m not a rat,” Edelgard repeated slowly and flatly, as though mesmerized. Her breathing was still ragged, her eyes unfocused.

“It’s okay. You’re a mouse.”

“Not a rat.” Edelgard closed her eyes and slumped over as her breath slowed and leveled out and her spasms ceased. “Not… rat.”

“And you’re gonna be human again really soon,” Bernadetta assured her.

As Edelgard returned to a quiet, peaceful repose, Bernadetta wondered why she seemed to have such a fixation on rats. Was she afraid of them? Was Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to the empire and warrior without equal, afraid of rats, of all things? It would explain her outburst just now, as well as why she’d frozen up earlier…

Bernadetta sighed and sat down next to Edelgard. No wonder she was taking things so poorly. To be afraid of something so tiny and then to be consigned to a world where those things were twice as big as yourself was unimaginable. The people and things Bernadetta was afraid of were already all bigger than her; if they were any larger, she’d die from fright just by being around them. Edelgard was so brave just to still be alive.

She stiffened, a chill running down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail as an unfamiliar scent stung her nose. Every muscle in her body curled up like a coiled spring; her fur bristled. The scent was indescribable, yet somehow—terrifying.

She looked up and saw a torch in the distance flicker and go out, the island of light on the floor below it vanishing. And then the next closest torch winked out, allowing the darkness to swallow up another island. And then the next one, and the next one, plunging the hallway deeper into darkness.

“Edelgard!” she hissed, shaking her by the shoulders. “Something’s coming! Wake up!”

The hallway grew darker and darker as more of the torches were snuffed out. Only a few islands remained between Bernadetta, Edelgard, and the vast abyss of darkness stretching out before them. Bernadetta rushed to grab her bow, fumbled to nock a sewing needle to the bowstring, and aimed it at the darkness, struggling to keep her paws from shaking.

“You can do this, Bernie,” she whispered to herself, pulling back the bowstring. The familiar burn of her muscles as she fought against the weight of the bow and the tension of the string comforted her, although she had next to no confidence in her makeshift arrows. She took a deep breath, steadying her grip and her aim.

The last of the torches up ahead went out.

Seized with cold fear, Bernadetta nudged Edelgard with her foot. “Edelgard, wake up!”

Edelgard snapped awake and sat up. “What’s going on?” she snapped, instantly alert.

“Something’s coming this way!”

She rushed to the wall where she’d left her sword and shield, picking up both. “I’ll engage the enemy at close range, you’ll provide suppressing fire. We’ll break their ranks, then run on my signal.”

Bernadetta nodded. “Got it!” Hearing Edelgard’s commands ring out in her cold, imperious voice was oddly soothing. Everything else might have been upside down, but that was still the same.

Two rats, both standing on their hind legs and towering at least six inches tall, stepped out of the shadows, both holding tarnished and bloodstained silver salad forks in their paws. An eerie, unnatural blue light shone in their beady eyes, and wisps of fog of the same color drifted from their mouths. Flanking them were two mice clad in dark hooded robes with black beaked masks covering their faces. In the center was another rat, this one on all fours with a muzzle tied around its snout, with another mouse riding on its back. The rat-riding mouse was draped in white robes and wore a veil over its face; it carried a long, hooked steel crocheting needle in one paw and held the reins to its mount in the other.

Edelgard faltered, taking a stumbling step backward and tightening her grip on her sword. Bernadetta felt her heart throb so violently it was as though it was trying to break out of her ribcage.

“Survivors,” the rat-rider intoned. It pointed with its needle to each of the standing rats in turn. “Go.”

One rat hewed close to the wall and lunged for Edelgard, jabbing with its fork. Edelgard didn’t manage to rush out of its path until the last minute, barely managing to dash the fork’s blood-darkened tines against her shield. Bernadetta fired at the rat, striking it on the shoulder, and immediately nocked another needle and fired. She could almost feel her Crest of Indech singing through her blood, quickening her reflexes. The second arrow she grabbed—a porcupine quill—only grazed the rat’s thigh, though.

The other rat headed straight toward Bernadetta. Letting out a terrified cry, she scurried backward as its fork dashed itself against the floor where she’d stood only a second ago and fired a needle at point-blank range into its belly. The rat reeled back, squealing.

Edelgard struck the first rat’s paw with her sword, knocking away its fork. “Bernadetta, now!” she barked.

Bernadetta didn’t need to be told twice. She turned tail and ran, with Edelgard bringing up the rear.

The rat-rider was faster, though; in the blink of an eye, its mount had circled around both of them and cut off their escape. Bernadetta and Edelgard were surrounded.

One of the black-robed mice lifted its paw; a circle traced out of light materialized in front of it and a fountain of dark miasma burst from the floor in front of it, shooting up into the air. The torch overhead guttered and snuffed itself out, plunging the last little island of light into the sea of darkness.

Bernadetta felt a fell wind rustle her whiskers and narrowly leaped out of the path of globule of pulsating miasma as it shot past her; as she fumbled for her quiver, she felt a tine from one of the rats’ forks graze her shoulder, ripping through her cloak. She blindly nocked the arrow and fired; she was rewarded with a pained squeak.

“Bernadetta! Matches!” Edelgard shouted out.

Bernadetta reached into her quiver, took one of the few matches jumbled up with the sewing needles and toothpicks, and struck it against the floor. With a snap and a hiss, its bulbous tip blazed to life with a hard, teardrop-shaped flame.

Illuminated by the makeshift torch, Edelgard drove her wooden sword into a rat’s ribcage with a mighty blow to its side just as the rat’s fork swung down on her shoulder. With a sharp, pained cry, she staggered backward, the sword falling from her paw.

Panicked, Bernadetta nocked the matchstick and fired at the rat. Her shot went wide, though, barely even managing to singe a whisker—but hit one of the dark-robed mice square in the chest, lighting its clothes on fire. The mouse went up as though it had been soaked in oil. At once, the blue glow in the rat’s eyes went out; as Bernadetta hurriedly lit another match, she could see it falling to all fours, dropping its fork to the floor, and scurrying aimlessly into the shadows.

“The mice! Target the mice!” Edelgard shouted as she hastily avoided a strike from the rat-rider’s long, spearlike crocheting needle. Bernadetta hurried away from the remaining rat, narrowly ducking under a swing of its fork. Something cold as ice and slimy as congealed fat wrapped around her ankle, throwing off her balance; she fell to the ground and just barely rolled onto her back and held up her bow in time to block a downward swing from the fork. The force of the impact sent tremors through her bones and numbed her fingers.

Bernadetta pulled herself up and ran off, keeping her distance as the rat stalked her, searching for the other black-robed mouse. It blended into the shadows too well, though—

The shadows!

She swiped the match she’d dropped—miraculously still lit—and aimed up, narrowly getting a shot off before the rat’s fork jabbed past her and cut two parallel furrows, both shallow but all stinging, into her thigh. Her aim, to her surprise, was true; the extinguished torch above blazed to life, dispelling the shadows. “I did that?!” she gasped.

With a sweep of its crocheting needle, the rat-rider hooked Bernadetta’s bow and ripped it from her paws, throwing it far away; on the backswing, it caught Edelgard in the stomach and knocked her off her feet, throwing her across the hall.

“Edelgard!” Bernadetta called out as Edelgard’s body flopped against the floor like a ragdoll. She rushed toward her, only to feel the rat crash into her as it tackled her to the floor, spilling the makeshift arrows in her quiver all over the worn stone tile. Staring into the beast’s gaping, drooling maw, she let out a terrified wail and grabbed a needle from the floor, clutching it tightly in her fist and jabbing it into the roof of the rat’s mouth as adrenaline set her veins alight. The rat reeled back, blood mingling with the saliva dripping from its mouth, its claws scraping her skin as it pulled away from her.

Bernadetta had scarcely gotten up when a spike of black light burst from the floor and cut a bloody gash into her arm. The last remaining black-cloaked mouse twisted its paws into arcane sigils, summoning more of the dark spikes. They barely grazed Bernadetta’s nose and whiskers as she dashed out of the way.

The injured rat charged again, and this time the rat-rider flanked it, both bearing down on Bernadetta with murderous rage emanating from them like a baleful aura (or maybe that was Bernadetta’s imagination). She backed away, desperately looking around for anything she could use to defend herself. This was it. She was going to die down here, stuck as a mouse, and no one would ever know! She always knew she’d die alone, but not like this…

A brass disk flew past her head, sailed between the two rats, and hit the black-robed mouse right between the eyes, cracking its beaked mask and knocking it to the floor. The hulking, brutish rat immediately lost its sense of reason and veered off course, falling to all fours and bounding into the darkness. The rat-rider and its mount bore down on her, though, undeterred—

An arrow—a real one, with a proper arrowhead and fletching and everything—buried itself in the rat mount’s shoulder, knocking it off-course as it let out an anguished, muffled squeak through its muzzle.

“Edelgard! Catch!”

A gleaming two-handed axe flew through the air, clattering loudly on the floor in front of Edelgard. She eagerly snatched it off the floor, holding it in her left paw as her right arm dangled limply at her side; the rat-rider circled around her and Bernadetta, spiraling closer to strike a killing blow.

“Bernadetta, get down!” Edelgard ordered as the rat-rider swung its needle-spear through the air. Bernadetta didn’t need to hear that twice; she dropped to the floor as the spear and a rush of wind in its wake passed overhead.

There was a shrill, metallic clang as the metal crocheting needle collided against the head of Edelgard’s axe; she knocked the needle aside, leaving the rat-rider wide open. “I’ll strike you down!” she shouted out, charging at the rat-rider as she mightily swung the axe one-handed in a shimmering, silvery arc.

The rat-rider’s white robes, as well as the fur and flesh underneath, split open, a spray of blood darkening the light fabric as the mouse slumped over and fell from its mount. The final rat, freed from its magical bondage, fled into the darkness.

Silence descended once more on the gloomy battlefield. All Bernadetta could hear was her own exhausted, labored breathing and Edelgard’s. Edelgard dropped the axe and trudged toward her, clenching her jaw and hissing a pained gasp through gritted teeth as she popped her dislocated shoulder joint back into place. The next few steps she took, she stumbled, nearly falling to the floor. A few small, sparse blossoms of dark blood speckled her white fur.

“Well… how was that?” she said, helping Bernadetta up to her feet as she clutched at her badly-bruised stomach.

Bernadetta let out a disbelieving laugh. “W-We won!”

“Of course. Did you expect me to freeze again?” Edelgard asked with a strained, weak smile. She was shivering, though, as though she’d just come out of a snowstorm. Bernadetta hadn’t thought at all over the course of the battle about how frightened she must have been, staring down those rats…

Edelgard. Frightened. Those words felt so wrong together without so much as a not between them.

“Maybe—I-I mean, no, of course not!”

“I cannot help but feel our professor would be disappointed in my performance, though,” Edelgard admitted. “Once again, you have earned my gratitude, Bernadetta.”

“No way,” Bernadetta insisted. “I’d have been totally lost without you!”

“You flatter me,” Edelgard said, resting an arm over Bernadetta’s shoulders. She was leaning on her for support just as much as Bernadetta was leaning on her. “Anyway, to more pressing matters—how are your wounds? Are they serious?”

Bernadetta shook her head, holding her paw to the oozing wound cutting into her bicep. “Hurts, but… I think I’ll live. Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” Edelgard shuddered and drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Although… it’s enough to make one wish Linhardt or Dorothea had been caught up in this madness as well,” she said with a surprisingly-nervous chuckle. Those two were the only Black Eagles with any actual aptitude for healing magic, save for Professor Byleth. “No, I wouldn’t wish this upon them,” she added, shaking her head.

As the two of them caught their breath, two more mice rushed out of the darkness toward them. Edelgard tensed, struggling to stand tall; Bernadetta swiped a sewing needle off the floor to defend herself before seeing who the mice were and letting it fall from her paw to the floor.

“Uh, Zeke? Maybe no more archery for you,” Matthias said to his brother.

“What?” Zeke asked incredulously, gripping a remarkably professional-looking bow in one paw. “Hit the target, didn’ I?”

“You’ve got no depth perception anymore; your aim was way off. You said you’d hit the rider.”

“Details, details. You gotta look at the basic nature a’ things, Mattie! Anyway, it all worked out.”

“What if you’d hit Edelgard by mistake?”

“Ah, von Rustbelt can take care o’ herself.”

“What are you doing here?” Edelgard asked accusingly, barely pretending not to glare at them.

“Looking for you, of course!” Matthias said, pausing to pluck the bloodstained axe off the floor and hand it back to Edelgard. “You dropped this.”

Edelgard took it from his paws and ran her thumb along the long shaft of the axe. “How do you know I use an axe?” she asked Matthias, narrowing her eyes.

Matthias shrugged. “Prophecy said so.”

“I don’t believe in prophecies,” she flatly stated in response.

Matthias nodded. “That’s okay. I don’t think prophecies care much what you think. And they still believe in you, and that’s good enough, isn’t it?”

The four of them headed back down the hall, trudging wearily from one island of torchlight to the next. Bernadetta and Edelgard stayed at each other’s side, for support; the shallow furrows in Bernadetta’s thigh stung sharply with every step she took, and Edelgard winced with every breath and had to use the long shaft of her battleaxe as a makeshift walking stick. Bernadetta could tell that she was uneasy about returning to the camp due to her lingering suspicions, but there was nowhere else to go—with their wounds and fatigue combined, she and Bernadetta wouldn’t last long on their own, especially if they ran into more of those oddly-dressed mice and their pet rats.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Matthias told her. Anyone else might have sounded petulant; he just sounded earnest. He gestured to his brother. “Zeke, give Bernadetta here the bow and arrow.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I’m worried you’ll shoot your other eye out.”

“Oh, n-no, you don’t have to—” Bernadetta began.

Zeke sighed and rolled his eye. “Fine.” He shrugged off the quiver slung over his shoulder and handed both it and the bow to her.

“T-Thanks, uh, Zeke,” Bernadetta mumbled, taking them both from him. She gently bent the bow in her paws, testing the wood’s elasticity, and plucked at the bowstring. “This bow is so well-crafted,” she murmured. It was a proper composite bow, lighter and shorter than the one she’d picked up earlier, and as sturdy as anything a student could get at the Academy. And it, too, made for a good walking stick that let her take some of the pressure off her injured leg.

“Um, Matthias? Why do you and I and Lady Edelgard get real weapons while all those other mice get sticks and junk?” she asked.

“Well…” Matthias sheepishly scratched at the back of his head. “We used to have more of those, back before The End. Now all what’s left is what we’ve got. The rest we just cobble together as needed.”

“The End of what?”

“Oh, you know, everything?” Zeke said. “I swear, it’s like you two were born yesterday.”

Matthias’ paw fell to the hilt of the sword sheathed at his hip. “These here are legendary weapons from the Golden Age, before we lost Lady Rhea’s favor and the cats came. You’ve got the Bow of Warbeak, Edelgard gets the Axe of Guosim, and this here’s the Sword of Saint Martin the Warrior, first of the mousefolk. It’s mine now ‘cause the last guy who wielded it let me hold it before he died.”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta said. “How’d he die?”

“Cat got ‘im,” Zeke said. “Poor Peter. Took ages before it finished him off. Y’know how cats are. First it broke his arms, then his legs, then all the spiny little bones in his tail, then all his ribs, then his neck…”

Bernadetta cringed and clapped a paw over her mouth. “Forget I said anything! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, no, don’t worry, it’s fine. It happened a whole season ago.” Matthias waved his paw, remarkably cavalier about the death of someone who’d likely been a close friend. “That’s like forever in mouse time.”

“So… this bow’s wielder died, too, huh?”

“Yeah, otherwise you wouldn’t be holding it.” Matthias shook his head. “Poor Jess.”

“What got her?” Bernadetta asked, though she dreaded whatever answer she would hear.

“Owl plucked her right up out of the grass,” Zeke said. “Swallowed ‘er whole. Bones ‘n all.”

“At least it was quick…”

“And Mortimer loved that axe.” Matthias turned his attention to Edelgard’s weapon. “Even took it to bed with him. Never took a wife. Always said, ‘who needs an old battleaxe when you’ve got an old battleaxe?’” He chuckled.

“And… how did he die?” Edelgard asked.

“Rat.”

“Plague Rat?” she asked, shivering anew as the name left her mouth. Bernadetta felt her paw, still resting on her shoulder, tighten its grip, her claws digging into her skin with sharp pinpricks.

“No, just a regular rat,” Zeke said. “Bashed his skull open and slurped out his brains.” He made a sucking noise through his teeth.

“Sounds terrifying,” Bernadetta mumbled.

“Well, of course. We’re mice,” Matthias said. “Being terrified of rats is like breathing air.”

Bernadetta glanced over at Edelgard, who appeared to be thoughtfully ruminating on what he’d just said. It seemed Edelgard had more in common with mice than she would like to admit.

By the time the sun had just barely crested over the horizon and edge of dawn had bled over the bell towers of Garreg Mach’s towering cathedral, the Knight’s search for Edelgard had already begun in earnest—as had Hubert’s.

Hubert had been waiting all night for the merchants to set up their shops again. The kiosks and pavilions just outside the front gate of the monastery bustled with life as sellers of weapons, supplies, foodstuffs, and what-have-you hawked their wares. By the crack of dawn, the blacksmith already had a line of students and faculty waiting to have their worn or broken weapons repaired before their next field trips; the light of the forge was already the same dull orange as the rising sun.

“Excuse me,” he asked the one of the traveling merchants from the north. “You wouldn’t happen to know a man named Albus von Barlowe, would you?”

The merchant stroked his beard. “Von Barlowe… I think there’s a von Barlowe in town, but I’m not sure.”

“In town?” Hubert repeated, just to make sure he’d heard right.

The merchant nodded. “It’s just a familiar-sounding surname. But I don’t do much business in town.” He pointed toward the supply merchant’s kiosk. “Ask her. She might know.”

Hubert bowed politely. “Thank you, sir.”

“What’s this about, anyway? Has this von Barlowe guy done something?” the merchant asked, his question falling on deaf ears as Hubert swept past him and turned to his next target.

“Bloody hell, you look like a man who could use a good night’s sleep,” the supply merchant told him, resting a hand on her cheek as she leaned against the counter. “I think I’ve got something for that, if you want me to check in back.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine, ma’am,” Hubert lied, ignoring that every part of his body felt like it was filled with lead and that if his eyes burned any hotter they could cook an egg. “I’m not looking to buy. I’m looking for a man named Albus von Barlowe, if that name rings a bell.”

“Von Barlowe?” The merchant leaned forward. “You mean the town apothecary? That von Barlowe?”

Hubert’s heart skipped a beat. It was an answer he had both expected and dreaded. “The apothecary…”

“I buy a lot of field medicine from the guy. Or, at least, I used to.”

“Why? What happened?”

“All of a sudden, he jacked up all his prices. I’d need a stipend from the Church on top of my profits to afford to stock up from him. And you won’t believe how rude the old git was when I asked what was going on. Said if I didn’t like his prices, he’d slip cyanide into my vulneraries!”

“Did he now.” Hubert stroked his chin. Those who slither in the dark rarely made an effort to copy their targets’ personalities, so sharp shifts in behavior and interest were often a solid indicator that someone had been replaced by an agent. It seemed that Kronya had been speaking truthfully about Albus von Barlowe.

Unfortunately.

The merchant continued to rant. “And the other thing is, he used to have a little wooden statue of Saint Cichol on his counter. I asked him what happened to it and he said he burned it! I’m not a religious woman, but who just abandons their faith in the saints as easily as they were snapping their fingers?”

“Perhaps it was infested with termites,” Hubert replied. “Anyway, thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.” He rummaged in his coin purse and set about two dozen gold coins on the counter. “A token of my appreciation, ma’am, since I was not intending to buy anything.”

The merchant was all too happy to pocket the coins. “Would that all you students were such gentlemen. Anyway, if you see that dastard, give him a right sock in the family jewels for me.”

Hubert laughed darkly as he turned around and headed out. “I cannot promise that, I’m afraid. But I will try to… talk some sense into him.”

“Righto. Goddess bless you. And get some bloody sleep, boy! You look like death!”

As he left the shops, Hubert broke into a run, barreling through the monastery to his quarters. He’d anticipated that the apothecary may have been an unwitting accomplice, but a full-blown agent of them? Caspar and Linhardt had been lucky to escape with their lives; he would have to deal with this rogue agent himself.

He reached his room, began rifling through his collection of poisons to choose a suitable weapon, and suddenly realized two important things.

Firstly, that he hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of Caspar lately.

Secondly, that there was something sharp pressing into the small of his back.

“Hubert,” Ferdinand growled in his ear, “tell me what is going on here—the truth—or else I will have to do something I will regret.”

“And what, pray tell, is that?” Hubert asked slyly, slowly lifting his hands off his collection.

Ferdinand pressed the sharp tip against his back with just a little more force. A part of Hubert doubted the man had it in him to stab him in the back, but perhaps Ferdinand von Aegir truly was his father’s son.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think I’m doing?” Hubert asked.

“Stand up first. Step away from the poisons.”

Hubert stood up and took a step backward, still holding up his hands in a show of cooperation while mentally taking stock of every means for self-defense he had available. “Is this better?”

“Yes. Thank you, Hubert.” Ferdinand cleared his throat. “Now… I think you orchestrated all of this.”

“What do you mean by that?” Hubert asked as innocently as he could muster. Instead, he only sounded more threatening.

“Lady Edelgard’s disappearance. I think you poisoned her cup, then switched it with mine to throw us all off and make us think we were chasing an assassin—and, of course, to rid yourself of me as well. Therefore, Edelgard went into hiding on your recommendation, at which point you sent a notice to the Imperial Palace. But then you realized that as long as Edelgard was still only in hiding, she could show up again and ruin your plan. You had to make her disappear for real. And so you did, and you left her bloodstained clothes out to prove that she was… gone.”

“And why would I do that?”

“To end the Hresvelg family line. Without an heir, Emperor Ionius could be forced to abdicate and leave the last vestiges of his authority to the Vestra family, or any of the other high-ranking nobles in the imperial court. That’s what you want, isn’t it? All those times you spat at me over what my father did to the Emperor, you were merely projecting.”

Hubert felt his gorge rise at the mere implication that he was anything like his father. “Are you trying to enrage me on purpose?” he asked. “The Vestra family has served the Hresvelg family for one thousand years. My father’s legacy is the sole black mark on the ledger lines of our devotion. Why would I carry on in his footsteps?”

“I do not know your heart, Hubert,” Ferdinand said. “Only your wicked ways. Now answer me these questions. What have you done with Lady Edelgard, Caspar, and Linhardt?”

“May I ask a question of you first, Ferdinand?” Hubert asked.

“I believe that’s only fair.”

“What are you planning on doing that you’ll regret?”

The sharp pressure digging into the small of his back slipped away. Hubert looked over his shoulder, spying out of the corner of his eye a blurry, carrot-colored splotch, then slowly turned around to see Ferdinand menacing him with a butter knife.

“Showing you that this is all I have to threaten you with,” Ferdinand answered with a weak, self-effacing grin that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I do not wish to believe what I just told you,” he said. “I wish to believe that the hatred you have for your father’s sins is as great as mine, and that you would not betray Lady Edelgard. Thus, I implore you to tell me the truth.” The look on his face was plaintive and fragile; to a man with less control over his emotions than Hubert, it may have been almost heartbreakingly earnest.

Hubert began to laugh. He couldn’t help himself. It was the kind of laugh that made his shoulders quake and his chest heave and his sides hurt. He had to struggle to contain himself lest he double over and start rolling on the floor.

Ferdinand chuckled in return, his mood lightening. “I had you, though. Did I not?”

Hubert caught his breath and shook his head, still smirking with amusement. “From the moment you caught me, I was already counting up the ways I could kill you, whether or not you had a real knife,” he assured Ferdinand.

He slowly backed away to the door, Ferdinand’s roving eyes and the butter knife gripped in his steady hand following him across the room, and went to close it—only to find Dorothea and Petra glaring at him from beyond the threshold.

“Ah. I see.” Hubert stepped back and beckoned the girls in. “You would have regretted needing backup as well, wouldn’t you, Ferdinand?”

Petra crossed her arms. “So, Hubert, are you ready to be telling truths to us now?”

“Why, certainly,” Hubert said. “You’ve earned it.”

Not all of it, of course, and a liberally sanitized version, but at the very least, a truth that exculpated him. That was all his classmates needed, after all. No need to make things needlessly complicated or raise any uncomfortable questions.

Morning dragged on, and Byleth already felt weary just from running around the monastery, let alone carrying the weight of the two missing students—her own students—on her shoulders.

“Greetings, Professor!” the gatekeeper chirped as she passed by the front gate of the monastery, just as he did every morning. “Nothing to report!” He paused. “Although,” he added, a tinge of melancholy seeping into his voice, “that’s not really a good thing in this situation, is it?”

Byleth shook her head. No news most certainly was not good news.

“I hope they find Lady Edelgard safe and sound. You and the rest of her class must be worried sick. And the Emperor, too… do you think he knows yet? How long does it take news to reach Enbarr?”

“I’m sure Edelgard’s just run off to find some peace and quiet,” Byleth hollowly assured him.

The gatekeeper sighed. “I guess. Being the imperial heir must be really stressful. Still, leaving behind a bloody pile of clothes is a little extreme, isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “If it stops people from trying to find you…”

“Guess you’ve got to look on the bright side, huh?” He mustered a weak grin. “Well, I’ll pray for her safety. And I’ll let you know if I see anything suspicious!”

Byleth wished the gatekeeper well and went on her way. The looming ocean of thick gray clouds threatened rain as they had yesterday, but the air was dry now and sunbeams cut through small gaps in the canopy almost as if to spotlight small portions of the monastery. It was weather that lifted the spirits of the knights searching the area, although most of them admitted that after yesterday’s heavy rain, any evidence that could point to Edelgard being spirited away from the monastery would have been washed away.

“What were those answers?” Sothis asked as she floated at Byleth’s side. “Keep talking like that and they will think you did it.”

Sothis was a fey child of about twelve or thirteen, perhaps, with an elfin face and a mane of curly emerald green hair as long as she was tall spilling out behind her like twin waterfalls. She hovered just a few inches off the ground no matter where she went, never strayed farther than foot or two from Byleth’s side, was completely insubstantial as far as any people or objects were concerned, and could neither be seen nor heard by anybody except for Byleth; and yet if Byleth called her a ghost, she would get an earful and then some. Sothis was most certainly not a ghost by her own admission; Byleth therefore thought of her as either a spirit or a sort of hallucination, though she didn’t dare call her that.

Maybe I did, Byleth replied in her thoughts. While Sothis certainly liked to chat, she herself had no need to speak out loud to her in return. If she did, after all, people would think she’d gone mad.

“What? You did it while my back was turned?” Sothis laid back and rested her arms behind her head as though sleeping in an invisible hammock as her intangible tether to Byleth carried her along. “Were that so, I would be most impressed. Still, though, try to avoid implicating yourself. Turning back time is ever so exhausting.” She yawned. “You were quite foolish to overuse my powers yesterday. And for what? A perfect teatime with Seteth?”

I wanted to leave as favorable an impression as possible for my performance review, Byleth told her.

“I must say, though, if there is something between you and him, then you do have commendable taste in men.”

You think he’s handsome?

“What? No!” Sothis sputtered indignantly, slipping from her repose and balling her fists. “And that is beside the point! If you are going to use my powers to better curry peoples’ favor, then at least do it sparingly! It’s exhausting!”

Byleth considered telling Sothis that she had brought up Seteth, not her, but decided not to push her any further. Fair enough. I’m sorry.

“That is more like it,” Sothis said, the ire fading from her face as her mouth curled in a smarmy, catlike smile. “I appreciate and accept your apology.”

“Professor! Professor!”

Byleth whirled around to find Alois jogging toward her, his partial suit of armor clanking with every step. “Professor!” he called out a third and final time as he caught up to her, resting his burly, calloused hands on his knees and panting for breath.

“Alois? What is it?” Byleth asked. She had reason to be concerned, but Alois was such a genial and pleasant man that he could have easily been asking her to visit him and his wife for tea, so she wasn’t sure what to expect. Infinitely excitable, unwavering in his enthusiasm, relentlessly positive—if ever there was a man tailor-made to lift others’ spirits, it was him. Yet he didn’t sound as though he came with good news.

“We found something in the cellar. I think you should see.”

An icy current of fear gripped Byleth’s still and silent heart as Alois led her to the cellar beneath the dining hall, lighting a lantern at the stairs and leading her down.

The cellar was as large as one would expect for a monastery with so many mouths to feed. Even with the lantern lit, the far walls were still shrouded in darkness. Sacks of grains and oats lined the floor, jars of canned fruits and vegetables lined the shelves, and oaken kegs of beer and casks of wine (while the Officers Academy did not permit students, even ones of age, to have alcohol, brewing and selling beer was a monastic tradition that the Church embraced with open arms).

“Watch your step,” Alois warned as he took a long stride down the last step. “Cyril set a few mousetraps down here the other day.” He chuckled. “They’re better at catching toes than mice, though, I’d say.”

Byleth gingerly stepped around the traps and followed the path of Alois’ outstretched arm and the light from his lantern, her gaze sweeping across the floor and halting on a crumpled scarlet nightgown and half of a student’s uniform.

“Dunno who the nightie belongs to,” Alois admitted, nudging it with his foot as though scared it might bite. “But look at this blouse here.” He crouched down and picked up the black blouse, his rough fingers slipping past the gold thread that traced the uniform’s epaulets. “And there’s a hooded undershirt with it, just like what poor Bernadetta wears! What lecherous fiend would drag her all the way down here and disrobe her?” he asked, shuddering. “I know finding Edelgard takes top priority, but the poor girl must be terrified…”

Sothis peered at the blouse and the nightgown in turn. “Byleth, that gown is the same one that Dorothea let Edelgard borrow yesterday, is it not?”

Byleth nodded. She recalled seeing Edelgard wearing it when she’d done a sweep of the dormitories yesterday afternoon.

“There is something amiss about these clothes,” Sothis mused, thoughtfully twirling a lock of her emerald hair around her finger.

Only half of Bernadetta’s uniform is here? Byleth offered.

“No, no, that makes sense. Ever since the poor thing became the world’s largest rodent, she has been, er… indecent from the waist down.” Sothis squinted. “I cannot put my finger on it, but something does not add up…”

Byleth racked her brain. Now that Sothis had mentioned it, there was something odd about those clothes. She knelt beside Alois and took the blouse from him. “It’s not wet,” she said.

“Hmm?” Alois turned his head, thinking she had been talking to him. “What do you mean, Professor?”

“If Bernadetta was brought here from her room yesterday,” she reasoned, “her clothes would have been soaked by the rain.”

“Of course! And yet her clothes are bone dry,” Alois mused. He clapped Byleth on the shoulder. “Sharp as a tack, just like your old man. I’m sure you can figure out what to make of that. Now, I must get back to searching for Edelgard, but… well, I figured Bernadetta would be important to you as well.”

“All my students are important to me.”

“Oh, of course, of course. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Alois gave her another hearty, meaty slap on the shoulder. “What I mean is… leave the princess to us knights and focus your attention on her. She needs her professor, too!”

Byleth nodded. “I understand. Thank you, Alois.”

“Don’t mention it. You can always count on me to stick my neck out for Jeralt Eisner’s kid!” Alois set the lantern on the floor, stood up, and headed for the stairs. “Feel free to investigate down here as long as you’d like, Profess—ow, ffff—”

Byleth glanced over her shoulder and saw Alois hopping on one leg with a mousetrap clamped around the toe of his boot, his face scrunched up and tomato-red. “I’m fine,” he hissed through gritted teeth, limping up the stairs sheepishly.

“Hmm.” Sothis scratched her chin and studied the cellar. “I wonder what other clues we can find here. Perhaps, for example,” she said, gesturing at a shape in the darkness, “that ladder is a clue.”

Byleth angled the lantern in the direction of Sothis’ extended hand, revealing a foldable stepladder resting against a cask of ale. You mean that stepladder? she asked Sothis.

“What difference is there? A stepladder is a ladder. A ladder is a stepladder.”

A stepladder is on hinges and a ladder—

“Details, details!” Sothis exclaimed with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Trouble yourself not with these trifles and look instead at the basic nature of things, Byleth. And stop judging things based on your narrow-minded cultural assumptions.”

Byleth rolled her eyes.

“I have changed my mind,” Sothis announced. “The ladder is not a clue after all.”

Byleth continued her inspection of the discarded clothes. How could anyone have dragged both Edelgard and Bernadetta down here without getting their clothes wet? Or, for that matter, without anybody seeing them pass through the dining hall and the kitchen?

“Perhaps Edelgard and Bernadetta were never in this room at all. Perhaps the culprit stole their clothes and planted them down here to mislead us,” Sothis said, evidently thinking the same thing Byleth was thinking. “They could have hidden the clothes under their cloak to keep them dry.”

Either way, Byleth told her, they aren’t here now. She lifted the lantern and eyed the rest of the cellar as the faintly pulsing light made the shadows ebb and flow like the tides. There were no doors to any other rooms. Save for the trapdoor above, there was no way in or out. The room was a dead end.

“Yes, that is true. And either way, the culprit must have been truly depraved to strip those girls naked. What kind of perverse, lecherous, skirt-chasing skunk would—” Sothis’ eyes lit up. She gasped. “Sylvain Gautier!”

Byleth shook her head. ‘Skirt-chaser’ and ‘kidnapper’ were rarely synonymous. Besides, the only physical altercations Sylvain’s libido had gotten him into had been very one-sided, and not in his favor—he wasn’t far off from having a permanent handprint as red as his hair tattooed on his cheek.

“Well, we should at least question him,” Sothis pouted, crossing her arms. “He could have seen something or heard something. And who is the girl next door to Bernadetta’s room? She should be questioned as well.”

I agree, Byleth replied. She stood up, raising the lantern higher—

And spied something glittering.

She made her way to the stepladder Sothis had pointed out, the lantern swinging in her hand and casting rippling shadows. “What are you doing?” Sothis asked her. “I was jesting about the ladder being a clue!”

Byleth knelt beside the ladder, reached down, and plucked a small, teardrop-shaped glass vial off the floor.

“I mean, I saw that as well. I was merely testing you,” Sothis clarified. She stifled a yawn with her hand and laid down on the floor, or rather, a few inches above the floor. “I grow tired,” she added, her voice cracking from weariness as she began to fade away. “Awaken me when you have found something else interesting.”

And with that, she vanished, retreating into the depths of Byleth’s mind and leaving her alone.

Byleth headed up the stairs and made her way back through the dining hall—abuzz with students speculating about Edelgard’s fate—and into the courtyard. Next to the gloom of the cellar, the sunlight was garish and blinding; she held up her hand to her brow and squinted as her eyes adjusted.

“Ah! Professor Eisner, I’ve been looking for you.”

Seteth’s voice caught her off guard; she hastily straightened up and did an about-face to meet him.

“Doing your part in the investigation, I take it?” he asked.

Byleth nodded. “Of course, sir. Two of my students.”

“I can only imagine how devastated you must feel.” Seteth shifted uncomfortably. “Alois just spoke to me and said that some of Bernadetta’s belongings were found in the kitchen cellar. Have you been there?”

Byleth nodded again and handed the strange teardrop-shaped bottle to him. “I found this.”

Seteth took the bottle and examined it closely, scratching the emerald green chinstrap beard that traced his regal jawline. “Strange. I will have to see what Professor Hanneman makes of this. Now, I’ve been meaning to question your students, but I haven’t seen a single one of the Black Eagles all morning.” The look in his eyes was stern and utterly merciless. “You wouldn’t happen to know where all your remaining students are right now, would you, Professor?”

Byleth felt her heart drop into her stomach.

If Linhardt had told Caspar once, he’d told him a thousand times—Albus’ ledger was far too heavy for a pair of mice to carry, let alone one, and it would be for the best if he left it behind. Yet Caspar had insisted that they drag it out of the apothecary, slowing their progress to a crawl. All night, counting breaks for food and rest, they hadn’t even made it out of town.

“We aren’t going to bring this all the way back to the monastery with us, are we?” Linhardt asked.

“We have to; it’s evidence,” Caspar answered as he struggled to pull the book out of a rut between two cobblestones. Linhardt had long since refused to do his part, on the suspicion that this was all a plot by Caspar to get him to do weight training with him, leaving Caspar to drag the book by himself. He’d hoped that the fruitless exertion would eventually convince Caspar of his folly, but there seemed to be very little capable of making him do that.

“You don’t think they’ll take the word of a pair of talking mice?” Linhardt asked.

“Would you?”

“If a mouse spoke to me in a human tongue, yes, of course I would listen. Besides, at this rate, it’ll take us days to reach the monastery.” Linhardt yawned. “Did you know that the average mouse sleeps for twelve and a half hours each day?” He was already starting to fade again, though whether that was from hunger or exhaustion, he couldn’t quite tell.

“Wow, you must be loving this.” With herculean effort, Caspar dislodged the books and continued on his way with plodding, elephantine slowness. “Well, this mouse doesn’t sleep for twelve hours—Ow!” He let out a pained yelp as the book slipped from his grasp and pinned his tail to the ground. “Soon as I find something sharp, I’m cutting this damn thing off!” he hissed, struggling to yank it free.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Linhardt said, deigning to lift the book just a little so Caspar could free himself. “Mice, like most animals, need their tails for balance.”

“I’ve gone most of my life without a tail and my balance has been fine,” Caspar retorted. “It’s almost like you like being a mouse.”

“Not necessarily. It’s simply an interesting, novel experience.”

“You hate interesting, novel experiences.”

“Only when they aren’t educational. Anyway, let’s think this through,” Linhardt said, rubbing his tired eyes. “If we’re too slow, Albus might catch us again.”

“That’s bad,” Caspar conceded, scratching at the short, spiky blue fur cresting his head. It really was almost amusing how much he still looked like himself despite being a mouse from tip to toe.

“On top of that, if Hubert really is working for the bad guys, we can’t just leave him alone with the others. A warning isn’t any good if it comes too late.”

“I get it, but, we can’t let that creep get his hands on these and destroy the evidence,” Caspar said.

“Well, perhaps if we hid the ledger somewhere here, then scurried unencumbered to the monastery, and then came back to retrieve it…”

“And leave it where anyone can find it?”

“No, Cas, that’s why we hide—” Linhardt buried his face in his paws and scratched his forehead. All this fur itched. “Never mind. What if we hitched a ride on a wagon headed for the monastery? Then we’d reach the others much faster, and we’d have the book with us.”

Caspar thought for a second, scratching his whiskers. “Huh. That might work.”

Linhardt scanned the horizon. “Here’s one,” he said, gesturing to a wagon looming in the distance. It was ahead just a few… Yards? Furlongs? Distance was impossible to judge when one was three inches tall. It was a building away, he decided, which was trivial for a human but very far for a pair of mice lugging a book behind them to travel.

The two of them inched their way toward the wagon with agonizing slowness, eventually slipping between the mud-stained hooves of its horses. As inconvenient as it was in so many ways, Linhardt had to admit that seeing the world from this perspective was enlightening. There were so many small details—of bricks, of cobblestones, of animals and insects passing by, of bricks and mortars, of machinery and vehicles, that one simply couldn’t possibly notice from a human perspective and that looked so awe-inspiring from a mouse’s perspective. Mice certainly did have their privileges. He wished he could slip under the wagon and stare at its wooden ribs all day, and maybe even do a few sketches.

“Wait a minute,” Caspar suddenly hissed, dropping the book and sticking his head out between the spokes of the cart’s wheels. He let out an elated laugh. “Lin! Look!”

Linhardt hurried to his side and looked out. “What is it?”

Caspar gestured to a pair of oddly familiar boots with his paw. “There! We’re saved!”

Linhardt looked up and followed the familiar pair of boots all the way up to a familiar face framed by a familiar mop of hair that was (probably) as red as a carrot (all other things aside, he wasn’t too keen on the colorblindness). Behind that familiar face were two more faces, equally familiar.

“It’s Ferdinand!” Caspar cried out, scurrying over to the book and heaving it out of the shadow of the wagon. “And Dorothea! And Petra! They came here looking for us! We’re saved! Ferdinand! It’s me, Caspar! Down here!”

Linhardt followed Caspar out, his own spirits lifting just as much as his companion’s, just as a second familiar person stepped out in front of Ferdinand, a cold lunar shadow eclipsing the fiery sun.

“The apothecary should be in the town square,” Hubert said, his voice booming. “This way.”

“Oh, shit.” Caspar’s whiskers trembled. He rushed with redoubled speed and effort toward Ferdinand, abandoning the book. “Ferdinand! Ferdinand, down here! It’s us, Caspar and Linhardt! We got turned into mice! It’s a trap!”

Linhardt panted as he caught up with Caspar. “I… don’t think they can hear you, Cas.” The rest of their classmates loomed over them like titans, just as impassive toward and ignorant of the tiny lives scurrying around their feet as towering stone colossi.

“But I’m shouting at the top of my lungs!” Caspar cupped his paws around his snout. “Ferdinand! Down here, you ass! Hubert’s the bad guy! Dorothea! Petra!”

“Yes, but your lungs are tiny!” Linhardt retorted, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Your voice doesn’t carry; it probably all just sounds like squeaks to them anyway.”

“Squeaks? But my voice hasn’t changed at all, and neither has yours!”

“Perhaps we only think we sound like ourselves. After all, our ears have changed, too. Anyway, we need another way to catch their attention.”

“I’ll climb up Ferdie’s trousers and scream in his ear. That’ll get him. Lin, you distract Hubert. Set his cloak on fire or something.” Caspar took a running leap at Ferdinand, hooked his claws into his pants, and scurried up his uniform like a sailor deftly weaving through a ship’s rigging. It was an incredible feat of acrobatics that Linhardt was sure Caspar wouldn’t be able to pull off as a human.

Hubert immediately spied him and snatched him off Ferdinand’s shirt. “Well, well, what do we have here?”

“H-Hey! Hubie, be gentle!” Dorothea chided him. “You don’t know who that could be!”

“It could be anyone,” Hubert said with a wicked smile as he lifted Caspar up by the scruff of his neck. “It could be, for example, a sinister little slitherer reporting on our actions to its master…”

Linhardt sighed. Well, it looked like he was setting Hubert’s cloak on fire.

No matter how bad things got, Caspar was starting to realize that things could always be worse. But having to stare at Hubert’s ugly mug blown up to the size of a small house while dangling from the scruff of his neck had to be rock bottom.

“…Or,” Hubert added with a wry, shit-eating smirk, “it could be Caspar.”

“You’re damn right it’s me!” Caspar shouted out as he writhed and struggled to wriggle out of his grasp. “Let me down so I can kick your ass!”

“What? How can you tell?” Ferdinand asked, evidently completely oblivious to anything Caspar was saying. Linhardt had been right. All anyone else could hear was squeaking.

“You can’t see the resemblance? He hardly looks any different than normal.”

“Oh, fuck you, Hubert!”

“And he’s just as chatty, it seems.”

The next thing Caspar knew, a much softer pair of hands had wrapped around him; he found himself wrenched free of Hubert’s grip and staring up at a face that was much easier on the eyes.

“That’s enough,” Dorothea said sternly. “I know you’re upset about Edie, but there’s no need to take your anger out on the rest of us.”

“Dorothea is right,” Petra said. “Lady Edelgard would not be wanting you to act like this.”

Caspar sighed in relief. Thank the Goddess not all of his classmates were cut from the same treacherous cloth as Hubert von Vestra. Now he just had to figure out how to make them hear and understand him…

Dorothea’s fingers curled around him; the next thing he knew, she was squeezing him half to death and rubbing her thumb very vigorously against his cheek. “Oh, Cas, you poor thing! Don’t you worry; I’ll keep you safe from mean old Hubert,” she said, speaking to him in the kind of syrupy falsetto one usually used when speaking to cats and babies. “Oh, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now… poor Caspar…”

“Manhandled, mostly,” Caspar squeaked as she smothered him. Any more pressure and he feared his throbbing little heart would shoot right out of his ribcage like a cannonball.

He’d changed his mind. This was rock bottom.

“Dorothea, you are being too rough,” Petra said, lightly grabbing her by the arm. “Animals have thoughts and feelings, just like people.”

“I am people!” Caspar insisted, his words once more falling on deaf ears. But Dorothea mercifully eased up on him.

“That just leaves the matter of Linhardt,” Ferdinand mused, scratching his chin. “If only Caspar could talk to us…”

“I highly doubt that a complete transformation wouldn’t rob one of the ability to speak,” Hubert said. “Perhaps if we gave him a pen and paper…”

“Or you could try listening,” Caspar croaked, his voice hoarse from all the shouting he’d been doing.

“Wait,” Petra said. “I think he is trying to speak, but his voice is being too small. It is hard, but we must be focusing. It is like squinting with your ears.”

Caspar let out a relieved laugh. Who’d have thought that Petra of all people would have come through for him given all the bad blood between their families? “Finally someone gets it! Petra, I don’t think I’ve ever said anything bad about you before, but if I did, I take it back!”

Petra smiled. “I am thanking you, Caspar. Now can you tell us where Linhardt is?”

“Knowing him, I’m certain that wherever he is, he’s sleeping,” Hubert said. “I suggest we—”

He stopped in mid-sentence, tore his black cloak off, and stomped viciously on a smoldering patch of its hem, grinding it into the road.

“Ahem. Excuse me,” he said, picking his cloak back up and shaking it clean before throwing it back over his shoulders. “Somebody has just tried to set me on fire.”

Chapter Text

Edelgard’s sleep was normally fitful and unpleasant, but the night passed her by with little incident upon her return to the camp—what few nightmares had troubled her faded away with merciful swiftness. Matthias had been disappointed that she refused to rest in the room he had offered her and Bernadetta, but had accepted her reasoning with little complaint when she had concocted the excuse that it was safer to sleep out in the open where one could flee in any direction than to sleep in a room with only one exit.

When the last gasps of her omnipresent nightmares bled from her memory, leaving her feeling for the first time in days as though she had actually slept, she woke up huddled under a thick, frayed cotton blanket, her fresh bruises still throbbing. Her ribs, in particular, where that crocheting needle had slammed into her abdomen with the force of a battering ram, pulsed with a warm ache that went so deep that she could feel it in her backbone beneath the rough, heavy bandages wrapped around her torso. Her stomach groaned and growled with hunger as well; it was nearly impossible to separate the two unique pains.

Although the sounds of the already-bustling camp filling her ears had roused her, she did not open her eyes. If she kept her eyes closed, she could pretend everyone around her was human.

As her consciousness returned, she found herself slipping into a contemplative mood. She still felt the last vestiges of the rush of adrenaline she had felt in battle last night. It had been just what she had needed. It had assuaged some of her worst fears. At the moment she’d picked up that axe, she’d felt invigorated, just as she always did in combat. The weapon’s weight had felt almost natural in her grip, and the gentle resistance of her foe’s muscle and sinew as it had parted under the sharp blade had been all too familiar to her. All those feelings rushing through her in the moment she had struck down her foe, the power of her Crests surging through her veins and singing through her blood—yes, they were hers. They belonged to the Edelgard von Hresvelg she remembered being, in spite of her regrettable size and shape.

Satisfied, she pushed herself to open her eyes. As she took stock of herself, she was more than a little disheartened to look down at her hands only to see clawed paws, her pink skin dusted with a sparse brushing of fine white fur. Though she knew better than to hope she was dreaming, it still stung nevertheless to face the reality of her situation.

At least she wasn’t a rat, she told herself.

Bernadetta was curled up by her side, her cheek resting against her shoulder (thankfully, not the one she’d dislocated, which still ached). Dubiously-clean off-white cloth wrapped around her upper arm and her thigh, both stained with blossoms of bloody blotches that had dried to a nearly black crust. Though the throbbing ache of the heavy bruises she’d sustained begged to differ, Edelgard had to admit that as far as injuries went, Bernadetta had gotten the worst of it.

Edelgard found that it had slowly become easier to look at her and touch her without flinching or feeling her stomach heave, though she couldn’t quite understand why. Perhaps it was simply that her growing familiarity with Bernadetta’s new form had slowly starved the flames of her fear of the kindling they needed to burn.

Bernadetta leaned unconsciously into her, her whiskers gently tickling her cheek. Normally, Edelgard wouldn’t accept such an incursion into her personal space, but it was far preferable to being petted, she supposed. Now that she was getting used to it, there was something oddly soothing about that softness and weight at her side. It was like…

She shook her head. If word ever got out that she normally slept with a little stuffed bear tucked under her arm, she would never live it down. Even Hubert didn’t know she had a stuffed animal hidden in her room—and if he knew that the bear was a gift from Professor Byleth, he doubtless would ask her to dispose of it lest she grow too attached to her teacher.

Bernadetta couldn’t have put herself in this situation by choice, Edelgard reasoned. She must have been beyond exhausted to have fallen asleep next to her without every anxious cell in her brain sounding deafening alarms. Nevertheless, those alarms would likely begin to ring the instant she woke up, so Edelgard gingerly extracted herself from under the blanket, careful not to disturb her, and gently lowered her to the floor.

Bernadetta’s eyes fluttered open, her slumber broken by the sudden movement. “Ed… el…” she mumbled wearily. Then her eyes shot open, her body stiffening as she jolted awake. “Lady Edelgard! W-What did I do?” she gasped, shooting bolt-upright. “I’m not in trouble, am I? Are you going to have me killed?”

What an imagination this girl had! What could have happened to this girl, burgeoning with so much talent as she was, for her to be such a nervous wreck in spite of all that? What had been done to her to crush her self-esteem so thoroughly? So long as Edelgard had to rely on her, she had to do something about it.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Edelgard told her. “You looked cold, so I went to adjust your blanket.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Bernadetta sighed, grabbing the corner of the blanket and wrapping it around herself. “Thank you.”

“Why are you so eager to apologize? Half the things you say you’re sorry for aren’t even your fault.”

“I know you don’t like it. I’m s—I mean, n-never mind…”

“You need to have more confidence in yourself if others are to rely on you,” Edelgard told her, pulling herself to her feet and adjusting her cloak. “Perhaps you should start by refusing to apologize to anybody for an entire day. Perhaps… today.”

“A whole day? But—But what if I do something wrong?!” Bernadetta asked, mortified.

“Oh, it’s easy. Simply say, ‘the results of my actions were regrettable’ or ‘I see my behavior has had unexpected consequences’ or something else to show that you were certain of your righteousness in the moment. Moral certainty is the most important attribute a leader can project. You cannot let your subordinates see you in a moment of weakness,” she said, fully aware that in these past few days Bernadetta had seen her in many moments of weakness.

“Um… okay.”

Edelgard felt her stomach crumple under the weight of her hunger. She’d been too preoccupied before to really pay it any mind, but it was so strong now that she felt weak in the knees. “Let us find something to eat… perhaps they have something special in reserve for their ‘prophesied savior’ and her cohort.”

Bernadetta wearily stood up, unsteady on her feet. Like Edelgard, she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch. She nodded.

The other mice in the camp gave the two of them a wide berth. The younger ones and older ones alike stared in awe as Edelgard passed them by—awed by what, exactly, she could only guess. Perhaps her outburst last night had frightened them; perhaps Matthias and his overeager brother had spent the morning spinning a tale of last night’s skirmish that elevated it from a simple struggle for survival to a mythic battle between titans.

Though she still had reservations about the trustworthiness of her hosts, last night’s encounter with those hostile mice clad in such strange garb told her that whatever these mice were, they were no friends of those who slither in the dark. That wasn’t to say, of course, that she wasn’t planning on leaving as soon as possible. As soon as she and Bernadetta were fed and rested, they would cut a path to the surface posthaste. The parochial concerns of these mice were of no consequence compared to the damage her disappearance could inflict on the Empire if she dawdled down here.

She felt her tail slither across the floor behind her and shuddered. It was such an unnerving feeling—that part of her body that just didn’t make sense, that she just couldn’t describe. The more she tried to think about it, the odder it felt. She couldn’t quite control it—it seemed to have a mind of its own, really—but she felt everything it felt, as though it were a passenger in her brain. She had to do something to keep it out of her way, so she took it in her paws, wrapped it around her waist like a belt, cinched it, and started to thread its tip into a knot—

It hurt, hurt as though she’d twisted her own arm. Wincing, she let go and let her aching tail droop to the floor. Much to her dismay, it really was a part of her, as much as her arms or legs were.

“Hello there, Edelgard,” Matthias said, popping up seemingly out of thin air with a load of large, shriveled, vaguely fruit-shaped lumps cradled in his paws. “What were you doing with your tail?”

“Nothing,” Edelgard answered. It felt oddly humbling to admit to herself that unlike all of the mice surrounding her, she was a total stranger to this body she’d been forced to occupy. Even Bernadetta was more comfortable with her tail than she was.

“Ah, I thought you were trying to make a fashion statement or something. Did you sleep well?”

“Fine,” Bernadetta said, yawning.

“Surprisingly, not terribly,” Edelgard said. “Do you have food?”

“Right to the point, huh? Yeah, I bet you two must be starved after last night.” Matthias handed one of the oddly-shaped lumps to Edelgard. “Right. Here you go. Should tide you two over ‘til lunchtime.”

Edelgard looked down at the rocks. No, they were oddly soft and leathery, more like raisins. “These are…”

“They’re rocks?” Bernadetta asked.

“They’re berries,” Matthias said, incredulous. “What, never seen a strawberry before?”

“Oh.” Bernadetta took one of them. “They’re dried out…”

“Yeah, they keep longer that way. You don’t expect to find any fresh fruit down here, do you?”

“I suppose not,” Edelgard said, taking one of the smaller berries and biting into it. Just like any other dried fruit, it was chewy, leathery, and a little tough, but all the flavor was there. Next to the hours of gut-churning hunger she’d endured, it was as sweet as the most decadent dessert; the taste was so overwhelming that she nearly felt dizzy.

“Thank you. We appreciate your hospitality.” Her voice came out as more of a gasp than she’d intended.

“This is so nice of you,” Bernadetta said between nibbles. “Thank you so much!”

“Glad you like them,” Matthias said. “Zeke and I almost lost our tails bringing those down from the surface. First we had to run up there and pick ‘em. Then we had to find a spot to dry ‘em. Then we had to check up on ‘em every day for a few days. Then we had to bring ‘em back down here…”

“Perilous work, I’d imagine,” Edelgard said, nibbling the berry with reckless abandon. Her stomach begged for more. She had half a mind to shove the whole thing into her mouth. It was far from the most dignified way to feed herself (of course, being a mouse, dignity was in short supply all around), but she had to eat.

“Oh, perilous, yes. You wouldn’t begin to imagine the peril.” Matthias led her and Bernadetta away to some secluded corner of the camp so they could eat in peace. “Shame. The surface is such a beautiful place when those great, big, ugly brutes aren’t milling about.”

“Y-You mean those rats from last night?” Bernadetta asked.

“No, humans. And their cats. Mostly their cats.” Matthias sighed. “It’s too bad. It’d be nice to live up there, like my great-great-great grandpa did. We even had those—what’s it called when a bunch of folks live in one place, but they all have their own little buildings?”

“A town?” Bernadetta asked.

“No, bigger.”

“A city?”

“Yeah! A city!” Matthias scratched his cheek. “We had cities. Grand old things tucked away in the forgotten parts of Garreg Mach. A couple on the surface. A couple set up in the catacombs. A couple down here. One way up high in the cathedral, or so they said. Of course, all we really have now are stories my dad heard from my grandpa, that he heard from my great-grandpa, that he heard from my great-great grandpa, and so on, so, y’know, we probably didn’t really have that many, and they probably weren’t that big, and Archbishop Rhea probably didn’t visit us every day and have tea with us…”

Edelgard nearly choked on a mouthful of dried strawberry. “Rhea?” she sputtered. The very image of the archbishop in all her regalia sitting beside a miniature city of mouse-people with a cup of tea held daintily in her hand was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever imagined.

“Your great-great grandpa…” Bernadetta mumbled. “But Lady Rhea looks so… she can’t be that old…”

Matthias shrugged. “I mean, five generations is about six or eight years? And those humans live an awful lot longer than us mousefolk…”

Bernadetta furrowed her brow. “Uh… six or ei—Then how old are you?”

“Um…” Matthias started counting his fingers, then his toes. “Uh… let’s see… about ten or eleven months?”

“You’re one year old?”

“Excuse you! I’m not middle-aged yet!” Matthias took a bite of his meager meal. “How old are you two, then?”

“You said your people lost Lady Rhea’s favor,” Edelgard interjected. “What happened?”

“Well, the way dad told it, we got too big for our britches, so she dumped boiling hot tea over the mayor, then set the city on fire, then the next day brought a dozen cats into the monastery to clean up what was left.”

Edelgard nodded bitterly. That fit for what she knew of Rhea—the immortal beast known secretly as the Immaculate One, who had enslaved humanity one thousand years ago and hidden the truth under layers of historical revisionism and propaganda. The mice had likely stopped worshiping her or paying tithes to her (what tithes would mice even pay?) to earn such callous treatment from her.

“Then again, the way Grandpa told it, she just spilled warm tea on the mayor and brought in the cats. So Dad was probably exaggerating a little,” Matthias said. “But she did bring the cats into the monastery. We know that.”

“That’s awful,” Bernadetta said. “I didn’t know Lady Rhea was capable of such malice…”

Matthias shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe we did something to deserve it. Anyway, so the story goes, we lost half of our population in less than a season, and another half over the next year, and so on and so forth. Bit by bit, those of us who survived ended up down here.”

Edelgard set down the half-eaten strawberry. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “How can you be so casual about that?”

“Well, being mad about it isn’t gonna change the fact that it happened, is it?” Matthias asked. “Better to look to the future than cry over the past, eh? Anyway, things are gonna change soon. We’re gonna escape the monastery, and we’ll never have to worry about rats or cats again!”

“You have a plan to escape?” Bernadetta asked.

“I’ve got something better than a plan,” he said, a smug lilt in his voice. “I’ve got a pro—”

“Mattie!” Zeke’s voice rang out over the background noise of the camp. “Get over here!”

“That’s my cue,” he said, his ears perking up and his whiskers twitching as he lifted his head. “Coming! Here, take the rest of the berries,” he added, shoving the other dried berries into Bernadetta’s arm.

Bernadetta fumbled with the berries and dropped them all onto the floor. “Ah! I’m so—u-uh, I mean, th-that was regrettable!”

Matthias gave her a funny look. “Uh… yeah, I guess. Anyway, you two enjoy breakfast; I’ll be right back,” he said, rushing through his words as hastily as he bounded toward the front of the camp, where Edelgard noticed a small crowd was gathering—hopefully around another ‘savior’ for them to fawn over instead of her.

Bernadetta knelt down to collect the berries. “He hates me now,” she moaned. “I should’ve just said I was sorry…”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t hate you.” Edelgard helped her with the food. “You shouldn’t disparage yourself so readily.”

“Sorry—I-I mean, that’s… regrettable—Dammit, Bernie! You can’t even keep a promise for an hour—!” she squeaked out angrily.

“Now, now.” Edelgard took her by the arm. “There’s no need to flagellate yourself over every little mistake.”

“So—I’ll t-try harder next time,” Bernadetta sighed, moderating her tone. “It’s just force of habit, I guess. I’m used to doing everything wrong. And I still do. I’m just…” She sighed again, shaking her head. “I’m just no good at anything.”

Edelgard couldn’t help but be taken aback. “It seems you’ve come quite a long way since you were ‘no good’ at anything. It’s high time you start taking pride in your abilities.”

Under her fur, Bernadetta might have blushed. She cringed and turned away. “I-I’d like it if you didn’t make jokes about me, Lady Edelgard.”

Edelgard meant to probe further, but Bernadetta busied herself with her meal so readily that it was obvious she was avoiding further conversation. Eventually, though, the both of them ran out of food, and she picked up where she’d left off. “Were you teased as a child? Were other children cruel to you about your interests?”

“What? No, no—not the children,” Bernadetta stammered.

“The adults, then?” Edelgard probed, leaning in closer.

Bernadetta shook her head with violent vigor. “No! No, o-of course not! It’s just that—You just can’t understand, Lady Edelgard: you’re going to rule the Empire, you’ve been perfect since the day you were born, but I—I was just…”

Perfect? Edelgard retreated, running a finger through her snow-white hair. Once, it had been a lustrous light brown—before the experiments. “No,” she muttered, “I was made perfect.”

“I—Sometimes I wish I’d been made perfect.” Bernadetta suppressed a small whimper. “Like my father wanted…” she added, an afterthought so quietly-voiced it was barely a whisper.

“Your father?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Edelgard’s eyes narrowed. She was hitting close to the core of Bernadetta’s pathological dearth of confidence, she could tell. If she could only draw out a little more…

She circled Bernadetta and laid a paw on her shoulder, staring at her with a cold, imperious gaze. Bernadetta winced and stiffened—the shallow scrapes left by a fork’s tines were too minor to have needed a bandage, but stung nonetheless. “Bernadetta von Varley, as the future Emperor of Adrestia, I command you to tell me what your father did to you.” A thousand possibilities, each more gruesome than the last, swam through her mind. She’d heard too many stories of the depraved things men could do to their own daughters—things that made even her blood run cold.

“Nothing!” Bernadetta couldn’t look her in the eyes. “He didn’t do anything. It’s just… it’s n-not like… I mean… it’s my fault I couldn’t…”

“How so? Explain.”

Was she being cruel? The thought had barely crossed Edelgard’s mind before she snuffed it out like an unwelcome candle. Cruel to be kind, perhaps. Bernadetta was her only trustworthy asset down here and Edelgard needed her at her best—and that meant plumbing the depths of her deep-seated weakness, grasping it by the roots, and ripping it out.

“I…”

Edelgard took her by both shoulders. “Look me in the eyes and tell me.”

“Please leave me alone!” Bernadetta squeaked, and with a flick of her tail she wrenched herself free and scampered away.

Edelgard watched her vanish into the camp and sighed. Perhaps she had come on too strong.

She spent the better part of the morning, or at least what she thought was morning, weaving through the camp. Considering how unusual Bernadetta looked compared to the rest of the mice, she shouldn’t have been too difficult to find among the crowds, and yet she’d vanished like a ghost. Edelgard hoped she hadn’t left the camp entirely—who knew what other dangers lurked in those shadowy, cavernous halls? She had no interest in letting one of her classmates die down here.

At last, she tracked Bernadetta down to the room Matthias had offered the two of them the other night. Edelgard reached out to brush aside the curtain and then froze, a chill running up her spine. The room still carried too much evil in it—too many memories of her painful days in captivity. Though she doubted she’d faint like last time if she entered, she had to admit that it was far from an ideal place for conversation. “Clever girl,” she muttered.

“Bernadetta,” she called out, “please come out. I know you’re in there.”

Bernadetta gave no response save for a wordless moan.

“I am not upset with you,” Edelgard assured her. “Nor did I mean to frighten you. I only want to speak with you.”

No answer.

“I was…” She took a deep breath. She didn’t understand why she felt so nervous—so many butterflies in her stomach, like a girl struggling to speak with her crush. “I know what you’re hiding. Bernadetta, I, too, was… mistreated as a child. Speak to me. I will understand.”

There it was. She’d ripped her chest open and exposed her beating heart for all to see. She waited with bated breath for Bernadetta’s response.

The curtain fluttered. Bernadetta slowly poked her head out. “Y-You weren’t,” she mumbled in disbelief.

“I was.”

“But you’re so… strong.”

“Do I seem strong to you down here?” Edelgard reached out for her, but Bernadetta quickly slipped back behind the curtain.

“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m weak.”

“I would have to be a fool to think that after everything you’ve done for me thus far.”

“You’d hate me.”

“I don’t have hatred to spare for my classmates.”

“It was my fault.”

“Impossible.”

This went on and on. Bernadetta had a thousand more excuses; Edelgard punctured them one after another but never seemed to get anywhere. “Enough making excuses for your father,” she snapped as she grew weary of the fruitless back-and-forth. “Tell me what he did to you.”

Bernadetta stopped answering.

“…I know you want to tell me,” Edelgard finally said to her once the silence had become unbearable. “You chose to mention your father. You want me to know what he did to you. I can feel it burning within you, yearning, struggling to fight its way out. I know that you’re desperate to tell someone, anyone, to scream to the heavens for all to hear… if only they would listen. That is why you have such a bad habit of voicing your thoughts aloud. Deep down, you want everybody to know the pain you’ve endured, but you’re afraid that no one would believe you, or worse, no one would care.”

She rested her paw against the curtain.

“But I’m listening, Bernadetta. I believe you. I care.”

At last, Bernadetta stepped out from behind the curtain, worn down by Edelgard’s siege tactics. She carried herself as meekly as ever. “He… wanted me to be a good wife,” she admitted, keeping her head bowed and her shoulders hunched, refusing to meet Edelgard’s eyes. “That’s what he wanted from me. That’s all he wanted from me. A good wife for a rich man and nothing else. He wanted me to be quiet, polite, refined, demure… but I wasn’t good at any of those things.”

“I see,” Edelgard said. Such things were sadly common in noble families—especially when Crests were involved. Still, this wasn’t quite the suffering she’d been expecting Bernadetta to tell her about. Not that she was expecting to hear obscene tales of gruesome human experimentation, but there had to be something more.

“I tried, I really tried. He went to such extremes to teach me. Every dinner was like an exam I couldn’t pass. Every time he had guests over, he’d scrutinize my every move, and he’d spend the night telling me everything I did wrong.” Bernadetta worriedly kneaded her paws, her voice cracking. “He’d even tie me to a chair from dawn to dusk to teach me to be quiet and not fidget. It never worked. Nothing he did ever worked. He’d scold me until his voice went hoarse, but—”

Shocked, Edelgard squeezed her shoulder. “He would tie you to a chair?” Why anyone would have to teach Bernadetta how to be quiet was beyond her—she spoke silence as fluently as Petra spoke her own native tongue.

No. She had been taught that too well.

“And if he caught me drawing or painting or sewing, he’d spend the day lecturing me about how much time I was wasting when I could’ve been following his lessons,” Bernadetta added, the words spilling from her mouth like a waterfall, “and if I left a story I was writing out where he could find it, he would read it aloud to our attendants and force me to listen to them laugh…” She shuddered and fell into Edelgard’s arms, choking back a horrid sob.

“He would tie you to a chair?”

“And if—if I made any friends he didn’t approve of, they’d—I-I met a boy once, a c-commoner, and when my father found out, he—he was—I-if I hadn’t met him, he’d still be…”

“What?”

Bernadetta just shook her head, weeping as she clung tighter to Edelgard’s shoulder. Edelgard felt the still-aching bone throb anew under the pressure, but gritted her teeth and bore the pain.

“So I locked myself in my room—and never came out—a-and eventually, he gave up on me…” She sniffled. “That’s what I am. Useless. Worthless. Hopeless. A lost cause. And i-it’s all my fault… I couldn’t be the daughter he wanted…”

The tears dampening Edelgard’s shoulders couldn’t put out the fire boiling her blood. She had to fight the urge to clench her fists in anger lest her claws rake across Bernadetta’s back. If the Count of Varley were here before her right now, she would strike him down in a fit of pique. Like so many other noble patriarchs who made stud bulls of their sons and cows of their daughters, he had bred her to be no more than mere chattel. And chattel need not aspire, need not dream, need not strive—what an insult to the human spirit!

This was a grotesque symptom of this twisted world’s original sin—the sin the Immaculate One had wrought upon the world one thousand years ago when she had slain the King of Liberation and established the Church of Seiros, binding humanity to a wheel of a cruel hegemony.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. She had to get a better handle on her emotions. Five feet of human pain, rage, and anguish stuffed into three inches of mouse—no wonder it was all leaking out in such unbecoming ways. She couldn’t allow herself to have an outburst in front of Bernadetta—she’d frighten her again. She had to soothe her. She had to…

“Please don’t be angry,” Bernadetta whimpered into her shoulder. “I-I know it was my fault, all of it, but please don’t be angry at me…”

Her heart skipped a beat. Her stomach churned just thinking about it. As much as she’d gotten used to Bernadetta being a mouse, as far as she’d come since she’d been too afraid to so much as touch her, that was still a line she feared to cross.

She would force herself to step across that line; she would throw herself across it if she had to.

She was going to pet Bernadetta.

“Your father never wanted a daughter in the first place,” she said, “he wanted a pet. It is not your fault you were born a human.” Bernadetta had not always been a mouse at heart, as she’d said before. Years ago, long before a twist of fate had made it painfully literal, her father had transformed her into one in spirit. What could she have been, if not for that? What could she have been, if not for her beast of a father?

She choked down her rage and revulsion and forced herself to gently slip her fingers through Bernadetta’s shaggy mop of hair, stroking her claws through her fur like the teeth of a comb, trying as best she could to soothe her in spite of her own turmoil of emotions struggling to fight its way out of her. To her surprise, it didn’t feel so awful to embrace her, now that she’d done it; it was rather like petting a very large cat.

That was the trick with fear, wasn’t it? The mere idea was always more frightening.

Bernadetta sniffled, her voice muffled as she buried her snout in Edelgard’s cloak. “No… I failed him…”

“He failed you, Bernadetta. He stole your childhood away from you,” Edelgard insisted to her. “He was your own family, charged with protecting you and nurturing you, yet he turned your childhood into a nightmare—reduced you to a scared little girl huddled in your room, shackled to the wall of a dungeon, surrounded by the fetid stench of the dead and the dying lying in their own sick and filth while the rats—”

The words had spilled out of Edelgard’s mouth before she could stop herself—as though they had their own wills counter to hers, the same way that infuriating tail of hers seemed to have its own will. She fell to her knees, dragging Bernadetta down with her, suddenly dumbstruck, her pulse fluttering; every breath was like trying to swallow a stone.

Bernadetta pulled away from her. “Uh… h-heh… I-I mean,” she stammered, laughing nervously, “y-you don’t have to exaggerate it like that…”

Edelgard’s breath came out in shallow, ragged gasps, her lungs burning as they yearned for the air she couldn’t give them. She felt faint again, her head as light as her heart was heavy; the world was spinning around her. How could she have let that slip out? She thought she had regained control of herself, that she had reclaimed her strength and composure; why now of all times was it slipping through her fingers again?

She should never have opened herself up to begin with—she’d opened a door that couldn’t be closed.

“Edelgard?” Bernadetta’s paws fell on her shoulders. “Lady Edelgard, what’s wrong? I—Please, don’t be upset for me. I know it—it sounds bad, h-how I said it all, but I don’t deserve—If I’d just tried harder—”

Edelgard made a fist and slammed it against the floor, gritting her teeth against the sharp jolt of pain running through her knuckles. “I’m fine,” she said. “I…” She took as deep a breath as she could, forcing down the lump in her throat, and clutched her cloak for the small comfort it offered. “I am proud of you. It must take great resilience to cling to your passions despite what he did to you.”

“You’re—what?”

“Proud.” Edelgard took her paw. “I understand your resilience. And I admire it.”

“Lady Edelgard…” Bernadetta sobbed, wrapping her arms around her.

The most powerful weapon any leader had was rhetoric and oration; Edelgard prided herself on knowing just what to say to win people over to her way of thinking. Bernadetta’s lasting trauma and the nagging, paternal voice in her head was perhaps the strongest foe she had faced with these armaments, but she had made a breakthrough at last.

“I’m sorry for what he did to you, Bernadetta. Your father was evil.”

Bernadetta clung to her, weeping the last of her tears into her shoulder. “He—He wasn’t an evil person…” she sniffled.

“A tyrant is a tyrant,” Edelgard said, “whether of a nation or a household. And evil is evil, no matter how small. If I had my way—no, when I lead the Empire, no child will ever be treated the way you were. I promise.”

At that, Bernadetta offered her a hopeful little smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“But that future will not come to pass if we languish down here,” Edelgard said. “It’s time we take our leave of this place.”

Bernadetta nodded, choking down the last of her tears. “Yeah.” Her voice was still strained. “We should go home.”

They headed for Matthias’ tent, where his freshly-polished sword lay on a ramshackle wooden table next to the equally well-crafted axe and bow he’d bequeathed to them last night.

“I-Is it right to take these?” Bernadetta asked, her voice still a hoarse and feeble croak, as Edelgard grabbed the axe. “They hardly have any real weapons apart from these…”

“I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Edelgard retorted. “They offered us these weapons. It’s only fair that we do with them as we please. Besides, the needs of the Empire—of all of Fódlan—far outweigh these rodents’ provincial concerns—”

“Edelgard!”

Edelgard’s ears perked up as Matthias’ voice rang through the air. She whirled around, hastily setting the axe back on the table as the mouse and his battle-scarred brother rushed into the tent, the slit in its canvas wall twisting in his wake. “Matthias, Bernadetta and I were just—”

Whatever he might have thought was going on, Matthias didn’t seem to notice or care. “Oh, you already went to get your weapons! That’s really proactive of you! Did you have some kind of premonition?”

“What’s going on?” Bernadetta asked, snatching up her bow and a quiver of arrows from the table.

“Hello, beasts and vermin!” a voice rang out from outside the tent.

Edelgard recognized that voice, too.

Ferdinand watched Hubert pore over the ledger taken from von Barlowe’s study. The two of them, and the rest of the Black Eagles, had taken a table in the local tavern to discuss their findings and plan their next move, commandeering a spot in the corner far from doors, windows, or prying eyes. Just in case he was plotting something dastardly, Hubert was being forced to sit with his back to the wall, with Ferdinand flanking him on his right and Dorothea and Petra on his left. Caspar and Linhardt were perched on Ferdinand’s shoulder, which he would normally find unfathomably uncomfortable, but since they were currently mice, it was only fathomably uncomfortable.

It would have been much less uncomfortable, though, if Caspar wasn’t currently nibbling on a chunk of bread crust very loudly, very voraciously, and right in his ear.

“Caspar, slow down,” Linhardt squeaked. “You’ve been turned into a mouse, not a goat.”

“I’m hungry,” came Caspar’s muffled retort.

In spite of his annoyance with them, Ferdinand had to pity them. Yes, Caspar was an obnoxious loudmouth, impulsive to a fault, and with the ill manners of a street urchin in spite of his breeding; yes, Linhardt was an amoral hedonist who cared more about his own gratification than for the needs and considerations of his peers—but neither of them deserved to be turned into rodents.

“Have you ever seen something so cute,” Dorothea said, “that you go right past wanting to hug and cuddle it and just want to, oh, I don’t know… squeeze it to death… or punch it?”

Petra nodded. “Yes, right now I am knowing that feeling greatly,” she said, punching her in the arm. Dorothea’s face reddened.

Hubert’s eye roved from line to line in the little black ledger book as he did his best to ignore the lovebirds to his left to his right. “Monica von Ochs… I should have known.”

“I knew it!” Caspar crowed. “See, Ferdinand? I told you she was fishy!”

“Yes,” Ferdinand sighed, wincing. Having a mouse shout in one’s ear was hardly pleasant. “Yes, you did.”

“Wow. You knew something even Hubert didn’t know,” Linhardt said.

“Hey… that’s right!” Caspar let out a shrill, triumphant whoop. “I knew something Hubert didn’t!”

“Congratulations,” Hubert said, not looking up from the ledger. “Would you like me to reward you with a morsel of cheese?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Caspar shot back. “But yes, as long as you’re offering.”

“There’s something puzzling about these ledger entries.” Hubert tapped a pale finger on the paper. “I cannot quite put my finger on it without seeing my list of ingredients, but something does not sit right with me.”

“I told you we should’ve brought Hubert’s journal with us, too,” Caspar told Linhardt.

“As if I could carry that thing.”

“Well, I kept telling you to work on your upper body strength! It’s not my fault you’re a slacker!”

“It is not a bad thing if von Barlowe has your journal, is it?” Petra asked Hubert. “You are not keeping secret messages in it?”

“In the journal I let those two get their grubby paws on?” Hubert asked, smirking as he gestured lazily to the mice bickering on Ferdinand’s shoulder. “Most certainly not. I keep my secret messages in a different journal. This one merely has the Professor’s lecture notes.”

Petra sighed. “That is relieving.”

“Von Barlowe may still trust me,” Hubert said, “due to our, er… common employer. I will have to go to him to retrieve the journal.”

“Not alone, you’re not,” Dorothea said sternly.

“No, not alone—of course not. I would be a fool not to have backup on hand.” Hubert closed the ledger and slipped it under his cloak. “However, Dorothea, von Barlowe has seen your face. I wouldn’t risk bringing you along. I suggest we split into groups of two. Ferdinand and I will approach him from the front of the shop—Dorothea, Petra, you will wait in the back in case he tries to flee.”

Dorothea wore a skeptical frown. “Well… as long as you’re being supervised. Good luck, Ferdie.”

They left the tavern and headed downtown to the apothecary, parting ways as they reached the gloomy, dilapidated house. As he and Hubert approached the front door, Ferdinand felt tiny claws prick his skin as Caspar hid under his collar.

“Do not be frightened,” Ferdinand consoled him, gently patting his head with a finger. “Hubert and I are prepared. I even have a real knife this time.”

“What? Frightened? I’m not frightened,” Caspar retorted. “I’m just… kinda worried that you might need me in a fight, and I’m, well… short. Er.”

Linhardt poked his head out from under the lapel of Ferdinand’s jacket. “You could crawl up von Barlowe’s trousers and bite him in his unmentionables again.”

“Er… again?” Ferdinand asked, suddenly feeling very aware of how vulnerable his own unmentionables were.

“And I could throw very tiny fireballs at him if you need me to,” Linhardt added. “I hope it won’t come to that, but…”

“Both of you, cease your incessant squeaking and hide yourselves,” Hubert said, resting his hand on the doorknob. “Von Barlowe will suspect something if one of us is covered in vermin.”

Ferdinand tried very hard to ignore the singularly unpleasant sensation of mice scurrying across his undershirt and inserting themselves into his pockets. “Hubert,” he said, “before we enter this den of sin, I must ask—why do you keep such unpleasant company? These people you call ‘those who slither in the dark’ all seem as nefarious as they come.”

“They offer something Lady Edelgard and I need,” Hubert said. “And we intend to wring them dry until they have nothing left to offer us. Then we will dispose of them.”

“Hmm. It seems they have the same idea regarding yourself and Lady Edelgard.” Ferdinand shook his head. That was no way to live, trapped in a never-ending cycle of double-crossing and triple-crossing. How could one trust anybody? What future could Hubert and Edelgard have together other than the both of them ending up with knives at each other’s throats?

The door creaked open. A bell chimed as Hubert stepped over the threshold and Ferdinand followed.

The apothecary’s shop was dark, dim, and gloomy, with shadows and cobwebs blanketing every corner. Shelves caked with dust made homes for grimy bottles and creeping spiders. Candles cast only faint lights. It was a room wreathed in perpetual night, the perfect abode for a man who slithered in the dark.

Albus von Barlowe stood at the counter, polishing an empty glass bottle with a rag. He looked up, his glasses flashing as they caught and reflected the light from worn-down candles. He seemed to be just a normal old man—hardy a threat, let alone an evil mastermind.

“Hello, travelers,” von Barlowe said, his voice a soft croak. There was a noticeable glint in his eyes and a twitch at the corner of his mouth as his gaze settled on Hubert. “What can I do for you?”

Hubert gently nudged Ferdinand in the side. Taken aback, Ferdinand stumbled forward. “Er… um, I… I am going into battle,” he said, not quite sure which part of his brain was concocting this cover story, “and I need to buy one of your strongest potions.”

“Oh?” The old apothecary raised an eyebrow. “My strongest potions would be too strong for you, traveler. Perhaps I can interest you in one of my weaker potions.”

“It is going to be quite a battle,” Hubert interjected with a sly grin on his face. “I think my friend… Arthur von… Varley is quite capable of handling your strongest potions, von Barlowe. If you wouldn’t mind…”

“Ah, I see. Yes.” von Barlowe set the bottle and rag aside and departed into the back room, the door creaking shut behind him with a pained, oil-starved squeal.

“Varley?” Ferdinand hissed, bristling.

“It is only an alias. Did you think I would give him your real name?” Hubert replied.

Ferdinand crossed his arms. Once again, Hubert was taunting him, reminding him that he had played no minor role in what had happened to Bernadetta and, by extension, what had happened to Edelgard. It was also—though it had to have been unintentional, as Hubert could not have possibly known—a jab at the arranged marriage to Bernadetta which Ferdinand had begged his parents to reconsider out of fear for the girl’s spooky reputation.

“You are an awful person, Hubert,” he said. “I find I quite despise you.”

“One does one’s best.”

“What you still have yet to explain,” he added, sparing a venomous glance at Hubert, “is why you simply did not spill Edelgard’s cider or smash the cup as soon as you suspected it of being poisoned. Were you that keen on getting rid of me?”

“Yeah! For a good guy you sure seem to want us dead!” Caspar chimed in. “You’re the one who led Lin and me into this deathtrap to begin with!”

Hubert stuck a finger gingerly into his ear and grimaced, as though Caspar’s squeaking had damaged his hearing. “I apologize for assuming you and Linhardt possessed some bare minimum of competency; rest assured, I won’t make that mistake again. As for your assertion, Ferdinand, I switched the cups because I feared causing a scene would alert the assassin. Of course, after reading your latest handbill, I did look forward to the possibility that I would not have to read another, and that may have colored my actions.”

“Handbill?”

“You know. The one that read thus…” Hubert coughed into his fist and cleared his throat. “‘Let it be known today, on the eve of the Horsebow Moon, that I, Ferdinand von Aegir, have this past month bested Princess Edelgard von Hresvelg in the following domains: Flower arrangement, dressage, the preparation of the finest teas, archery…’ Need I go on?”

“You snuck into my room to read that! I had no intention of distributing that; I wrote it for my own edification, to keep a record of my progress as I work to surpass Lady Edelgard!”

“A fool’s quest. Even if she has been transformed into a mouse, her spirit and talent still towers over yours. You are no equal to her majesty, and never shall you be her equal.”

“You ought to have switched Lady Edelgard’s cup with your own,” Ferdinand spat. “A rodent suits you more than her, or poor Bernadetta, or Caspar and Linhardt.”

“Please leave me out of this,” Linhardt said, his voice muffled as he rested in the pocket of Ferdinand’s jacket.

“Lady Edelgard needs me,” Hubert said. “But you, Ferdinand, are nothing to her. Know your place.”

“My place is here in the world of humans, standing on two feet and wearing fine clothes,” Ferdinand grumbled, possessed by a white-hot burst of anger, “while Edelgard, wherever she may be, scurries about on all fours, subsisting on nuts and seeds and stale crumbs of bread.”

Hubert clenched his fists so tightly that the veins stood out on his pale skin, grotesquely livid. His mouth drew itself into a furious scowl. “Are you begging me to kill you, you wretched worm? I could reduce you to blackened bones here and now if I so choose—”

The door swung open, letting out a hideous moan of anguish as Albus von Barlowe stepped through it with a small glass bottle in his hand—a bottle Ferdinand instantly recognized as a vessel carried by Imperial soldiers to hold strength-boosting potions. He and Hubert immediately shut themselves up and tried not to look quite so angry. Caspar quickly slipped back into Ferdinand’s pocket, hiding himself from view.

“Here you are, master von Varley,” von Barlowe said, handing him the bottle. “This is a single dose of a fast-acting agility-boosting tonic. This will make you as swift on foot as the fastest horse.”

Ferdinand took it and studied the potion. Four drops of odorless, colorless, tasteless poison suspended in a single small mouthful of water, he suspected—the polymorphus muridae that had caused such strife these past few days. “It looks like mere water,” he said.

“Why don’t you take the potion right now,” Hubert asked, “and see if it works?”

“Such is the mark of a true master,” von Barlowe said with a proud smile twisting his bristly salt-and-pepper beard.

“Actually, I just remembered,” Hubert added, “sir von Barlowe, I, too, would like your strongest agility-boosting tonic.”

“Ah, yes, very good. I will go back and get it.” von Barlowe vanished into the back room yet again.

“Don’t drink that, by the way,” Hubert said to Ferdinand once the coast was clear.

“Obviously not,” Ferdinand said, relieved, as he slipped the bottle into his pocket—

“Hey! I’m trying to sleep in here!” Linhardt protested.

“Ah. Sorry.” Ferdinand tried his other pocket—

“Ow!” Caspar squeaked.

With a roll of his eyes, Hubert swiped the bottle from Ferdinand’s hand and slipped it into his cloak, then crept over to the side of the door, flattening himself against the wall. He looked like a living shadow, his cloak and black hair melding with the darkness and gloom until all that was left was his pale, vampiric face and sallow eye.

“Hubert? What are you doing?” Ferdinand asked.

Hubert held a finger to his lips, then produced a length of wire from within his cloak, pulling it taut between his hands. Ferdinand tried not to stare at him.

After a heart-pounding eternity of silence and apprehension had fallen over the room, the door squeaked open again with another ungodly squeal, and as soon as von Barlowe stepped over the threshold, Hubert brought his arms over his shoulders and wrapped the wire around his neck.

Von Barlowe gagged and choked, eyes bulging, as the wire dug into the wrinkled wattles of his neck, blood trickling in channels down the hollow of his throat and planting crimson blossoms in the collar of his shirt. He flailed his arms and kicked his legs, gurgling and rasping as his face turned livid, his glasses flying across the room from an errant swing of his hand as he drove his elbow into Hubert’s stomach.

“Help me, Ferdinand, you brain-dead dolt!” Hubert hissed as von Barlowe loosed a blast of dark miasma into his stomach and threw him off. His clothes scorched and the flesh beneath seared, Hubert stumbled into one of the shelves, rattling it and knocking over a rainbow of potions, tinctures, and tonics which all shattered on the floor with a cacophonous din.

Freed from Hubert’s grasp, von Barlowe clutched at his bleeding throat, blood seeping through his fingers as the bluish tint faded from his cheeks and lips. Just as fresh black flames licked his free hand, Ferdinand leaped over the counter and drove his fist square into his face. The apothecary stepped back, swaying on his feet, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head as a river of blood gushed from a nose that now resembled a crushed strawberry and stained his wiry, bristly beard. He hit the floor with a loud thunk, unconscious.

Hubert clutched at his stomach and spat a wad of spit and blood out of his mouth, his pale fingers digging into the charred and ragged remains of his jacket and undershirt as Ferdinand rushed over to him and helped him up. Broken glass crunched under his boots.

“You ought to have informed me of your plan,” Ferdinand scolded him as he laid him down on the floor and tried to inspect the wound. “I would have been much more well-suited to strangling him than you and those limp noodles you call arms.”

“Cease the lectures, Professor Ferdinand,” Hubert grumbled, blood dripping down his chin. His voice came out as a strained and quiet hiss.

Ferdinand felt a flash of panic run through his mind. Hubert wasn’t mortally wounded, was he? “Caspar, wake up Linhardt and head around back. Get Dorothea and Petra and bring them in here.”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Linhardt grumbled. “No need to shout.”

“I’m not shouting!” Ferdinand shouted. “Lin, heal Hubert.” He felt the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of two mice climbing down his trousers and hoped to the Goddess he would never be stuck chaperoning any number of talking mice again.

“It’s a mere flesh wound,” Hubert spat through gritted teeth as Linhardt held his paws over the wound and cast a healing spell. His pale hand, now red, was doing a poor job of hiding flesh that had taken on the color and texture of overcooked steak. “It merely looks bad because he hit me at point-blank range. Now find some rope and tie von Barlowe down before he wakes up.”

Claude’s investigation was going nowhere fast. Garreg Mach was simply too big for one man to search by himself, especially when that one man was searching for one specific mouse among the hundreds that must have lived in this monastery. And Hubert, his one lead (not to mention primary suspect) was nowhere to be found. Darkly, he began to wonder if the whole mouse poison thing had just been a red herring—something to keep him occupied while the culprit spirited Edelgard away.

Lysithea yawned, rubbed her eyes, and sleepily ran a hand through her long, wispy white hair as she flipped through a thick, dust-caked spellbook that had been loaned to her by Tomas, the monastery’s librarian. She sifted through the book’s dizzying array of content the way a shark swam through water, but then again, she was a prodigy among prodigies. Top of her class, especially when it came to magic, and that was despite being the youngest student in the academy at a tender fifteen.

“It says here,” she said, “that those affected by polymorphic materials retain their sense of self and some physical characteristics of their human form. That’s what you’ve been doing wrong, Claude. You need to look for a mouse that acts like Edelgard, not just looks like her.” Lysithea had a bad habit of talking down to people outside her area of expertise, due both to the incredible breadth and depth of her knowledge and her desire to seem more grown-up. Anything she could do to make herself feel like the adult in the room, she did.

“That’ll make the search easier.” Claude stroked his chin. “If Edelgard is still self-aware, though, then she should be trying to find us just as hard as we’re trying to find her. Unless she’s been injured… or killed…”

“What I want to know is who could’ve made that poison,” Lysithea wondered as she snapped the book shut. “Polymorph spells are advanced dark magic. You would have to study at a specialized academy for five to ten years to master them. They’re not something you’d pick up here… or most anywhere else. I’m sure less than a dozen people in Fódlan know them.”

“You sound like you’ve put some thought into this,” Claude said, slipping the dusty tome in with the dozen other books piled on his bed, making sure to cover it with other, more innocuous books. Tomas the librarian, who made a hobby out of holding onto material deemed inappropriate by the Church of Seiros, would have been disappointed if somebody like Seteth were to find the book and have it burned. “Planning on studying them after you graduate? I bet you could master them in two or three years.”

Lysithea bristled as though she knew Claude was patronizing her, but nevertheless her cheeks flushed red, lighting up her pale face. “Well, I do like a challenge…”

There was a loud knock on the door. After giving the room a hasty once-over to make sure anything incriminating had been hidden, Claude opened it just enough to glimpse who was on the other side. He couldn’t help but feel a little paranoid—but then again, if a warlock with a vial full of polymorph potion was after him, they’d hardly ruin their tactical advantage by knocking politely.

It was Seteth, fortunately. Usually, there wasn’t anything fortunate about running into Seteth, but in this case, it was better than running into the culprit.

He pulled the door open the rest of the way. “Oh, hey. What brings you here?”

“Hello, Claude. Professor Manuela tells me you’re quite adept with poisons.”

Claude felt a chill run down his spine. “Well,” he said, flashing a roguish grin and winking, “I don’t mean to brag…”

Seteth pulled out a small glass bottle. “Does this look familiar to you?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

Claude tried to keep a blank face. “That? Isn’t that a potion bottle for imperial soldiers? Chemical poisons I know backwards and forwards… but sorry, but I’m not too knowledgeable on magic stuff.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Lysithea. “Maybe Lysie could help you figure out what was in that.”

Seteth shook his head. “I’m aware of your classmate’s prodigious skills, but there’s no need for that. Professor Hanneman has already determined conclusively what this bottle contained.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say, somebody is using this potion to kidnap students in a very particular way. I suggest you be on your guard and be very careful about whom you accept food and drink from.” Seteth pocketed the bottle.

Claude’s eyes narrowed. Polymorphus muridae, he suspected. It must have been found in that quiet girl’s quarters with Edelgard’s clothes. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said to Seteth. “I’ve had people trying to poison me my whole life.” He swiped a little metal flask from his hip. “That’s why I’ve got this.”

Though Seteth never smiled, there was an approving gleam in his eyes. “I see. Very good, Claude. Would that everybody were as cautious as you.” He took the door and swung it shut, then slipped his foot in at the last minute to keep it from closing. “Oh, and by the way, have you seen Hubert von Vestra recently?”

“Not since last night.”

“Nor have I.” Behind the narrow slit between the door and the wall, Seteth’s brows furrowed. “Or any of the other Black Eagles. Be vigilant and look after the rest of your classmates.”

He pulled his foot back and the door swung shut.

Claude yawned, still exhausted. He was used to getting more sleep than he had gotten last night. “Well, I’d better go out there and start looking again.”

“For Edelgard? You’re putting in a lot of effort for your rival.”

“I wouldn’t call her a rival. And rival or not, it would be a shame if someone as formidable as her ended up in the belly of a cat with the Battle of the Eagle and Lion so close at hand—never mind the chaos it would plunge the Empire into. Care to join me?”

Lysithea rubbed at the dark circles under her pale pinkish eyes. “I don’t think I’d be of much help. But I heard from Raphael a few days ago that Marianne can talk to animals…”

Claude’s spirits lifted. It was like he’d poured a pot of coffee right into his veins. “Really? I knew it! I knew she was hiding something! That’s extraordinary! That’s just what I need! Any idea where she is?”

“Well, her best friend’s a horse, apparently, so… the stables?”

“Perfect.” Claude slung his satchel over his shoulder and fished through it until he found something squishy and slightly sticky. “Oh, by the way, thanks for all your help. Here.”

He tossed Lysithea a slightly-smushed cinnamon roll. She caught it, fumbled with it, and eyed it with an unusual amount of suspicion considering how much of a sweet tooth she had.

“Oh, come on. You know I wouldn’t poison you. That’s just bad leadership.”

After giving the treat another, closer look, Lysithea all but inhaled it.

“Although we’d have a lot more order on the battlefield if I started lacing our classmates’ food with mind-control drugs…”

Her eyes bulged as much as her cheeks. She stood up, a ball of black flame flickering to life in her left hand.

Claude hastily made an exit from the room. “Kidding! I’m just kidding!”

He ran out the dormitories and across the monastery and found Marianne exactly where Lysithea had guessed she’d be—in the stables, mumbling softly to a horse that must have been her ‘friend.’ Marianne was a meek, waifish little thing, fragile as a porcelain doll, with pallid gray skin ringing her eyes from lack of sleep and pale skin from a life spent indoors. Her pale blue hair was tied back in a frayed, wispy bun. She was the Golden Deer house’s resident healer, and despite all appearances, she could be quite a holy terror with a sword in her hand, as though some ferocious beast dwelt inside her.

He flagged her down as he crossed the stables. “Marianne! Can I ask something of you?”

Marianne looked up and froze like a deer in front of a hunter. “Oh! Perhaps you’d be better off asking somebody else…”

“No, I think I really need your help today.” Claude rested his hand on the horse’s neck, threading his fingers through its mane. “This is your friend, right?”

“Um, yes…” Marianne ran a comb through its mane. “This is Dorte.”

“Dorte the horse, huh. A good conversation partner, by the looks of it. You’ve said more to him since I got here than you do to everyone else in a day.”

Marianne let a nervous smile purse her lips. “I suppose he is, yes.”

“And you can understand him?”

“Yes. We do understand each other.”

“Great! That’s great to hear, Marianne. That’s just what I was hoping you’d say. I need your help.”

“I—I’m sure someone else would be of more use to you,” Marianne replied. “I-If you need someone who can ride or use a lance, there’s Lorenz or Leonie, or if you want someone who can cast white or dark magic, there’s Lysithea…”

“No, it’s something only you can help me with. You might’ve seen me out and about with Hubert yesterday, looking for mice…”

“Oh, is that what you were looking for?”

“Yeah. You see… Someone’s out there with a magic poison that turns people into mice and now we have to find Edelgard—who’s a mouse—before it’s too late. And possibly some other people, too.”

Marianne stared at him, dumbfounded. Her mouth hung agape, her pale brow furrowed. “Um… what?”

Claude nodded. “Yeah. But you can talk to animals! Instead of catching mice and hoping one of them is her, we can just catch them and pump them for information!”

“O-Oh. No, I’m sorry, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.” Marianne patted Dorte’s snout. The horse promptly licked her palm. “You see, I can’t actually—”

“Please, Marianne. The academy’s in turmoil. Most of the Black Eagles are missing. Even Seteth’s upset.”

“He’s always upset.”

“But not like this!” He took her by the hand. “It’s up to us to find the culprit and set things right. I know you’re not very confident in your abilities, but at least give it a shot!”

Marianne shook her head. “I’ll just slow you down.”

“But you might not, and I’m willing to take that chance. Come on. What does Dorte have to say about all this? I bet he thinks you can do it!”

Marianne looked the horse in its soulless, vacant eyes. The horse whinnied and nudged Claude’s satchel with its nose, then licked his hand. Its tongue and the puffs of breath from its cavernous nostrils were hot and wet.

“He says he’s hungry and there’s something tasty in your bag,” she said.

“See? You can understand animals! Come with me! We’re going mouse-hunting!” Claude insisted, tugging her along. “See you later, Dorte! Give my regards to the other horses!”

“No, I—” Marianne sighed, resigned to her fate as Claude’s assistant mouser for the day. “Okay…”

Edelgard poked her head out of the tent, her grip on her axe tightening, and caught sight of two wooden wagons rolling their way into the camp, both drawn by a pair of rats that had been trussed and bridled like horses. Atop the lead wagon sat three mice—two clad in black robes and beaked facemasks, like the mages from last night, and a third wearing a gray cloak and a tall, peaked hat with the wide brim pulled down over his eyes. Both wagons had a trio of mice armed with crude and misshapen scrap-metal swords waiting in back.

“A little birdie told me you felled one of our raider troops last night,” the one in the peaked hat spoke to the camp’s haggard inhabitants. Mice with ramshackle wooden polearms surrounded the wagons, but rather than make any attempt at pushing it back, they all slowly backed away from it as the rats pulling it along trotted into the camp, as though repulsed by an invisible force field. “That, I’m afraid, will cost you extra!”

Edelgard was dumbstruck. She recognized that mouse.

It was Myson, one of the highest-ranking warlocks in the imperial mage corps and an agent of those who slither in the dark. What was he doing under Garreg Mach? And why was he a mouse?

“That’s what’s going on,” Matthias said.

“Myson…” Edelgard whispered, still shocked to see him down here.

“Huh? Apple fell pretty far from the tree,” Zeke said.

Myson motioned to the armed mice sitting in the backs of the wagons and snapped his fingers. “A dozen ought to be enough for the experiments,” he told them. “Get to it; I don’t want the stench of this place to settle into my clothes.”

The rats reared up and squealed as the soldier mice leaped off their wagons and into the crowd amassed at their sides like rocks through a window; between the hulking behemoths and the armed soldiers, the ragtag mice broke ranks just as easily as glass. Several brave mice, though, charged at the wagon in defiance of their more skittish peers; Myson raised his paw and with a lazy flick of his wrist and a flurry of black flames, a charred corpse fell to the floor and the brave mice, now minus one, promptly changed their minds and beat a hasty retreat.

The half-dozen soldiers waded through the crowd and returned to their respective wagon with tiny, squealing mouse pups cradled in their arms, hauling them to the backs of the wagons. Whoever the pups belonged to didn’t put up a fight, nor did any of the mice standing by to defend the camp move even a muscle to protect them. Fear rolled off them in waves. Edelgard felt a chilly haze sweep through her mind, clouding her thoughts as voices rang in her head.

She could almost feel the cold shackles rubbing against her ankles, scraping away sores and blisters; the burlap tunic scratching against her fair, delicate skin; the moans of the dying, the wailing of the mad, the shining steel knives and tools she couldn’t even describe cutting her open and burrowing through her flesh…

Never again.

She felt something push into the small of her back, snapping her out of her fugue state as she stumbled out of the tent. Matthias came up behind her. “I’ve got your back,” he whispered. “Maybe at a bit of a distance, but I’ve got it. What do we do?”

The loaded wagons began to slowly turn in a wide circle as the soldiers climbed back on.

Edelgard steeled herself. “Bernadetta, ready your bow. Don’t wait for my signal; fire on the mages as soon as you have a clear line of sight. Zeke, Matthias, fan out and attack the wagons from the left and right. While they’re distracted, I’ll lead the frontal assault.”

“You’ll what?” Matthias gasped.

Zeke winced. “Uh, Rustbelt… did you just say ‘frontal assault?’”

“Yes.”

“You saw what happened to the last guy who charged at ‘em, right?”

“I am your prophesied savior, am I not?” Edelgard snapped at him. “Or was that just a fairy tale you told those children?”

“Uh… doesn’t mean yer immortal or anythin’…”

She glanced back at Bernadetta, who’d already nocked an arrow to her bow. “Bernadetta, do you trust me?”

“Um… I—yes, o-of course, just…”

“Are we mice? Or are we Black Eagles?”

“Um…” Bernadetta looked down at herself. “Y-Yes?”

Edelgard nodded. “Precisely. Matthias, do you trust me?”

“Yeah, I’ve got your back! Just… maybe if you had a, um, better plan?”

“My plan is fine. And you, Ezekiel?”

“Nah.”

Matthias glared at his brother.

“Okay, fine.”

“On my mark. The crowds will act as camouflage and hide our numbers.” Edelgard held the haft of her axe with both paws, feeling the comforting texture of polished wood and weight of the axe’s razor-sharp head, tightening her grip as the wagons circled around the clearing in the center of the camp—Myson’s in front, the extra in the back—and presented their backs.

“Now!”

Her cohorts split off from her. She surged forward, pushing through the frozen crowd in her path as Matthias and Zeke slipped through the caravan’s left and right flanks. With Myson in the front, he was ill-prepared to respond quickly to an attack, even with dark magic at his disposal.

As she broke through the crowd, an arrow flew over her head and struck one of the mages in the shoulder. One of the two harnessed rats, freed of its magical thrall, bucked and writhed as the injured mage struggled to reassert his control. The three mice hanging off the back of the wagon perked up, realizing they were under attack, and drew their swords—crude, ugly things, mere scrap metal tied to short lengths of wood.

Zeke attacked from the left, his crude dagger flashing, as Matthias attacked from the right with a swing of his elegant sword; as their blades met those of two of the three mice, the third one leaped from the wagon and bolted, rushing to catch up with Myson. The uninjured mage sitting at the front of the wagon whirled around, aiming a blast of black fire at Edelgard. She ducked, feeling the rippling, cold miasma frost her hair as it sailed overhead, and leaped onto the wagon.

With a single stroke of her axe Edelgard cleaved a canyon in one of the sword-wielding mice from stem to stern, squinting against the fountain spray of blood. Sensing imminent defeat, the other enemy mouse threw himself off the wagon, hoping to avoid Matthias’ blade and Edelgard’s axe, and ran after his cowardly cohort who’d jumped ship first.

Myson’s wagon picked up speed as the runaway swordsmouse leaped onto the back with his cohorts. Another arrow zipped through the air, striking one of the besieged wagon’s two rats between its shoulderblades, and another whistled overhead and stuck in the back of Myson’s wagon. The wagon rocked and rattled in response to the rat’s pained writhing and the mage’s struggles to bring it to heel. Another blast of dark magic cut through the air in response; Edelgard heard Bernadetta’s shocked and frightened yelp ring in her ears, but thankfully, no anguished outcry or scream of pain followed it.

Edelgard dodged a blast of black fire and jabbed the butt of her axe into the mage’s stomach with such force that he flew off the side of the wagon and hit the floor in a crumpled heap. The other mage conjured an orb of miasma, loosing it just as an arrow struck him in the stomach—

The next thing she knew, the world was spinning around her and icy black flames so cold they burned were licking at her cloak. There was a whirlwind of movement for a split second stretched into eternity until she felt her backbone crack against the floor and the writhing, barely-restrained rats tied to the wagon bearing down on her—hot breath, skittering claws, rank odor, slithering tails and bristling fur—

She felt claws bite through her flesh as the rats trampled her, their tails slithering over her body like snakes—she held out her axe in a futile attempt to ward them off, choking down a scream—her heart fluttered like the pulse of a hummingbird, her blood singing in her ears—

When she came to, she was lying on the floor, panting for breath, with one paw pressed to her chest to quell her racing heartbeat and the other clutching her axe so tightly she thought the haft would snap in two. Like last night, she was shivering uncontrollably, icicles running through her veins. She came to her senses, glaring at Myson’s wagon as it peeled off into the hallway and fell out of sight. If looks could kill, he would already be dead, but alas…

“Lady Edelgard!” Bernadetta helped her to her feet, frantic with worry. Other than a smoking, singed patch of her ragged cloak, she seemed unharmed. “A-Are you okay? I meant to hit that mage in the chest before he attacked you! I’m so sor—uh, I-I mean, th-that was, um, u-unfortunate…”

Edelgard pressed a finger to her little pink nose, silencing her. “I’m fine.” She surveyed the site of the battle. The wagon was empty; both of its drivers lay crumpled on the floor, the rats they’d commanded gnawing at their reins as they struggled to free themselves. “We need to follow the other wagon,” she said to them.

“Sorry, but we can’t, uh, ride rats; we’d never catch up to it,” Matthias mumbled, his hands full with two squirming pups. “Here,” he said, handing them to the nearest bystander.

Edelgard nudged one of the unconscious mages with her paw. “These two can.” She turned to Zeke and Matthias. “You two, gather this camp’s best warriors.”

The siblings shared a bemused glance. “You’re lookin’ at ‘em,” Zeke said.

“But Edelgard,” Bernadetta said, “I thought these ‘parochial affairs’—”

“—Are not so parochial anymore,” Edelgard answered curtly. Those who slither in the dark were directly involved here—and they were stealing children. For what purpose? Experiments. What kind of experiments had Myson been referring to? The same ones that had taken the lives of her brothers and sisters? To use the blood of the defiled beast as fuel for their flames, that they may burn even the gods?

“Look, they only took ‘bout…” Zeke counted on his fingers. “Six pups. That’s not too bad. We can just make more.”

Edelgard glared at him.

“What? I made almost that many last night.”

“Zeke!” Matthias squeaked, so embarrassed that his ears reddened.

“Just sayin’, why risk our tails for ‘em?”

“Edelgard’s right. They’re pups. Our pups! We don’t have to let ‘em take them anymore, not with her on our side!”

“Um… m-maybe Zeke’s right,” Bernadetta said. “We—Don’t we want to get back home, Edelgard?”

“This will only be a short detour, and it will allow us to learn more about our enemy,” Edelgard told her. “Ezekiel, you stay here and watch over the camp,” she said to the scarred mouse, scarcely masking her contempt for him. His attitude was inexcusable; when the same thing had happened to her, her father had been beside himself with grief and worry. “Bernadetta, Matthias, you two will come with me.”

Bernadetta nodded and hurried to collect the spent arrows lying around the camp in the detritus of the skirmish; Matthias nodded and went to the wagon; Zeke rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Whatever y’say, Rusty,” he grumbled. “Don’t get my little brother killed, y’hear?”

The two mages began to stir, swaying drunkenly as they pulled themselves upright. Edelgard brought the blade of her axe to the throat of the first one and gestured toward the halted wagon as the rats responsible for pulling it tried fruitlessly to gnaw their way out of their harnesses. “You,” she growled. “Ride or die.”

“I’d rather die,” the mage squeaked, “than betray Master Myson—”

It only took a slight twist of Edelgard’s wrist to slide the blade and slit his throat open. The front of the mage’s cloak shimmered with a growing wet stain spreading across the dark fabric as he slumped lifelessly to the floor.

She leveled the bloodstained axe at the one remaining mage. “You. Ride or die.”

The mage nodded so vigorously it was as though his head were about to fall off, his beaked mask bobbing comically. “Ride!” he squeaked.

“So, what’s this one saying?” Claude asked, holding the sixth mouse of the day up by the scruff of its neck.

Marianne snatched it out of his hand. “Oh, no, you’re holding it wrong. You should put your hand under it and grip it by the base of the tail,” she told him as she softly stroked the mouse’s pale brown fur. “Poor thing. It’s terrified… mice scare very easily.”

“I dunno if we have time to not scare them,” Claude said, frustratedly raking his fingers through his wiry black hair. He’d never expected to find so many mice scurrying around the monastery, not with all the cats around. Then again, the whole faculty was rushing into action to relocate all of the cats, likely to avoid the unpleasant scenario of one of them accidentally eat a transformed student (Professor Manuela had her hands full healing everyone’s scratches and bites, although Cyril wore the angry red scars running up and down his arms like a badge of honor), so now the mice were free to roam the surface without fear of their most dangerous predators.

“Hello, little mouse,” Marianne said softly, still petting it. Her voice was like downy feathers brushing against cotton. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I just, um… need to ask you a question. Are you Edelgard? Or do you know where she is?”

The mouse squeaked.

“Well? What did it say?” Claude asked.

“I, um…” Marianne set the mouse down and let it scurry through the grass. “I don’t think it understood the question.”

“Of course.” Claude tapped his chin thoughtfully and stood up, brushing bits of grass and dirt off his knees. He and Marianne moved on and kept searching.

“Actually…”

“I guess I haven’t been trying to think like a mouse. Now that I think about it, would mice even understand the concept of names?” he wondered.

“Um, Claude… I think I should tell you—”

“We give names to our pets and beasts of burden, but not wild animals. Do they name themselves?” he mused. “Marianne, what questions should we ask these mice instead?”

“That’s the thing. Claude, I can’t actually—”

A flash of movement and a glint of metal caught his eye at the threshold of the Blue Lions’ classroom. “I think I see another one!” he cried out, bounding across the grass and all but leaping up the steps, past the ornate stone columns draped in the azure banner of the Kingdom of Faerghus.

The glint of metal he’d spied was in fact a spring-loaded mousetrap placed strategically on the floor in front of a tiny crevice in the stone wall; the flash of movement had been the iron jaw of the trap snapping shut and catching an unfortunate little brown mouse’s hind leg in its death grip.

Marianne covered her hand with her mouth. “Oh… the poor thing…”

Claude knelt down and picked up the trap, mouse and all. Cats loved to toy with their food, and poison (as he well knew) could be quite ghoulish in its own way, but he’d always thought of traps like these being merciful in their efficiency. Merciful when they snapped the mouse’s neck as intended, he supposed, but this trap had condemned its captive to a slow death by starvation, assuming someone didn’t find it first and drown the poor thing.

As he examined the trap, he noticed that the mouse caught in it had a circlet of leather ringing its torso, complete with what looked like some kind of simple satchel.

A mouse wearing clothes. Strange. And in strange times such as these, only the strangest things could point the way to the truth. This was the best lead he’d found in two days!

Excited as he was intrigued, he pulled a pocketknife from his satchel and carefully pried the trap open, fighting against the vise grip of the tightly-coiled spring until the iron bar pinning down the mouse’s leg lifted up just enough for the injured mouse to slip into his palm. He dropped the trap to the floor, letting it snap shut once again.

The mouse chittered and squeaked in a way that almost sounded gratified. “Heh. I think it’s thanking me,” Claude said with a humbled grin. “I think your talent might be rubbing off on me, Marianne.”

Marianne’s porcelain skin turned pinkish as the faintest hint of a smile tugged on her mouth.

“Hey. I saw that.” Claude handed her the mouse, careful to mind its oddly-bent hind leg, which surely must have hurt terribly. “Anyway, try asking it.”

“Really, Claude, I have to tell you. This whole time, I—”

Claude dumped the mouse into her hand.

“Sorry. Never mind.” Marianne lifted her hand and held up the injured mouse. “You poor thing. I’m sorry you ended up in that trap.” She cupped her other hand over it; a green light shimmered on her palm, seeping through the gaps between her fingers. “There. You should be all better now.”

She pulled her hand away and smiled as the once-injured mouse stretched and wiggled its once-broken hind leg. It gave her another gratified squeak.

Marianne’s eyes widened, her face growing even paler. She nearly dropped the mouse to the floor. “Y-You… What did you say?”

The mouse let out a few more squeaks. “Chatty little guy,” Claude commented.

“O-Oh, I see. My name is Marianne, and the man who saved you is Claude,” Marianne told the mouse.

The mouse squeaked more.

Marianne’s cheeks flushed pink again. “O-Oh, it was nothing. Anyone would have done the same…”

“What’s it saying?” Claude asked.

“She says her name is Cornflower and she’s eternally grateful to us,” Marianne said. “Um… excuse me, Cornflower? You wouldn’t happen to know where a mouse named Edelgard might be, would you?”

The mouse shook her head and squeaked again.

“Ask it—her, I mean—if she’s seen a white mouse that carries herself with an air of reserved dignity and cold formality,” Claude said.

The mouse kept squeaking. “She says she’s never seen a mouse like that, but then again, she doesn’t know every mouse,” Marianne translated. “If there is a mouse like that, she might be in the tunnels beneath the monastery. That’s where most of them live.”

Claude felt another jolt of adrenaline run through his blood. “Tunnels beneath the monastery? You mean Abyss?” He leaned forward. “I knew it was a real place!” He’d learned quickly after hearing the rumors that most people didn’t even know Abyss existed, or simply didn’t care, and nobody who did believe in it seemed to know how to actually find the place, much to his dismay. A whole underworld comprised of the dregs of society making their own home deep beneath Garreg Mach… as dangerous as it sounded, it excited him, too. He wanted to know everything about it!

“She’d like to lead us there,” Marianne said. “She says she’s glad not all humans are big, lumbering brutes.”

Claude laughed. “Well, I’m happy to prove her wrong about us humans.” He patted Marianne on the shoulder. “See? I told you you’d be a great help. You just have to believe in yourself. Talking to animals, though… I’ll have to enlist your help more often. The tactical upsets we could pull off if we had the very forests themselves on our side just boggles the mind…” His head was already full to bursting with possibilities. Birds swooping down and attacking soldiers, squirrels wreaking havoc on their supplies…

“Well, actually…” Marianne took a deep, fraught breath. “The truth is, Claude… I can’t speak to animals. I’m good at reading their feelings and figuring out what they want from their body language, but…”

Claude looked down at the mouse nestled in Marianne’s palm, who was now affectionately nuzzling her finger. “Well, you sure read her feelings. Name and everything.”

“Well, um… the thing is… I didn’t need to understand her language. She’s speaking ours.”

“Uh…” Claude’s mouse hung agape as he let Marianne’s words run through his brain until they sank in. “Sh—She’s speaking Fódlanish?”

Marianne slowly arced her hand over to his side, careful not to disturb its passenger. “You have to listen hard, since she can’t talk very loudly.”

Claude bent down, feeling a little foolish but making up for that with a much stronger feeling of excited curiosity, and closed his eyes, tilting his head to get his ear closer to the mouse.

“Ah! Can you hear me now, too, Sir Claude?” the mouse asked in a voice so squeaky and high-pitched that her words could just barely be discerned, ringing on the upper edge of his hearing. Her voice was like the ringing in one’s ears when one stood too close to a cannon as it fired.

Claude took a moment to respond. For a second or two, he couldn’t quite remember how to speak. He’d never held a conversation with a mouse, after all. “Loud and clear, Miss Cornflower,” he said after some involuntary deliberation. “And by the way, there’s no need to be so formal; I’m no knight. Just Claude will do.”

“Thank you, Claude! And thank you so much for releasing me from that trap! I’d been stuck there all night; I’d thought you’d come along to put me out of my misery…”

“Well, you’re not miserable now, are you?” Claude laughed. “All the same, it was nothing. Lead us to your people and I’ll consider us even.”

“I’d be happy to!”

He cracked his knuckles. “Well, let’s not waste any more time up here! Let’s—”

A shadow fell across him, blotting out the sun. “Claude, what are you doing?”

Claude looked up into the face of Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, head of the Blue Lions house. The sunlight behind him lit up his straw-colored hair, wreathing his face in shadow. “Are you… talking to that mouse?” he asked, his brow furrowing.

“Ah. Hello there, Dimitri, Your Royal Highness-ness.” Claude stood up and somewhat self-consciously adjusted the short amber cape draped over his shoulder. “Yes. Yes I am. Her name is Cornflower and she speaks human very well for a mouse.”

Dimitri blinked. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a long story.” Claude patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I will, if you don’t mind. Is this some kind of novel mindgame? Do you think acting like you’ve gone mad will make me go easier on you next week?”

“For once, no, it isn’t. We’re off to find Edelgard and this mouse here is our best lead.”

“You’re joking.”

Claude shrugged. “If you say so. C’mon, Marianne, let’s mosey. We’ve got a princess to find,” he said, pulling her along as he headed across the campus.

“Wait!” Dimitri called out, trailing behind them. “Claude!”

Vejovis had long since shed his disguise of Albus von Barlowe, revealing under the face of a kindly apothecary a deathly pale, corpselike visage traced with ancient sigils long since ravaged by time. He sat in his gloomy study underneath his shop, bound to his chair by a network of tightly-bound ropes—the handiwork of Petra and her well-honed hunter’s skills. No one knew how better to tie something up than a warrior princess from Brigid, Hubert had to admit.

“Are you ready to talk now?” Hubert asked him, tossing aside an empty vial of truth serum he’d taken from the apothecary’s own stores.

“Truthfully?” Vejovis cocked his head. Crusted blood, so dark red it was nearly brown, cracked like dry lips around his mouth and chin as he spoke in a pained rasp. “Hmm… How do I say this? No, I don’t think I am.”

“How did you find out where Edelgard was hiding?” Hubert asked. “Where is she right now? What have you done with her?”

Vejovis didn’t answer.

Hubert crossed his arms. “I asked you a question. Several questions.”

“Simply because you have given me truth serum does not mean I have any obligation to answer.” Vejovis smiled. “Truthfully, I would prefer to remain silent.”

“Oh, come on. Aren’t you dastardly villains constantly beset with the compulsive urge to make grandiose proclamations about all about your evil plans? I know I am.”

“Give it a rest, Hubert,” Linhardt said from his perch on Hubert’s shoulder. “I tried this with him yesterday. It didn’t work.”

“Hmm. Well… if my theory is right,” Hubert said, taking another look at the ledger, “I have another way to make this cretin speak.” The quantities in the ledger didn’t add up. Kronya had been buying massive amounts of the raw materials needed for polymorphus muridae, but as for its antidote, antemorphus muridae… suffice to say, he had noticed the suspicious absences of quite a few key ingredients.

The trapdoor in the ceiling opened and Ferdinand, Petra, and Dorothea clambered back down the stairs, all empty-handed.

“You didn’t find them, did you?” Hubert asked them. His three classmates all shook their heads. “Not even the powdered Dagdan wormwood?”

“We were not finding them,” Petra said. “What is making these ingredients so important?”

Hubert began to laugh, first a sinister chuckle, then a wicked, full-throated cackle, then a maniacal belly laugh.

“Wh… What is so funny, Hubert?” Ferdinand asked, clearly dreading the answer.

Hubert slapped his hand on top of the ledger, all but doubling over in the throes of his laughter.

“Um… yes… would you care to let me in on the joke?” Vejovis asked. “I’m afraid I don’t… what’s the expression… get it?”

Hubert caught his breath, then pulled the bottle of polymorphus muridae out of his cloak. “You are going to answer me,” he said, “or I will pour this bottle’s contents down your wicked gullet.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Hubert looked Vejovis dead in the eye. “You’ve been making poison like there’s no tomorrow, but you don’t have the ingredients for the antidote.”

“Yes,” Vejovis answered. “So?”

“Must I spell it out for you, insufferable ignoramus? If you drink this, there’ll be no coming back.”

Vejovis smiled. “Yes. It’s true. We don’t have the ingredients to make a proper antidote. Anybody we turn is never going to turn back. And that includes your precious princess and the lazy one perched on your shoulder… and the loudmouth… and the recluse. They will never be human again.”

“Do not listen to him, Caspar,” Ferdinand assured the furry passenger riding in his jacket. “Surely these fiends do not have a monopoly on the antidote.”

Hubert’s fist clenched around the glass bottle, his grip digging into the pages of the ledger. He could feel electricity arcing through his bloodstream, fire and ice squeezing his heart, his teeth grinding against each other. For the first time in his life, he felt not a cold, calculating fury but a burning, bestial rage within him. He wanted to reduce Vejovis to a bloody mess. Him and all of these wretched slitherers!

“But…” he gasped, struggling to rein in his temper. He could tell that he must look frightful, perhaps even demonic, because the rest of his classmates were staring at him with wide, concerned eyes. He cleared his throat. Obviously, Vejovis was trying to get a rise out of him. It wouldn’t work.

“But you haven’t been using this for getting rid of people,” he said. “You’ve been using it for infiltration. You’ve been positioning your agents inside Garreg Mach as mice, preparing to launch a decapitation strike against the Church of Seiros when the time is right.”

“Who told you that?”

“Kronya, in so many words.”

“Ah, Kronya. Yes, you’ve caught us.” Vejovis wriggled his shoulders in an attempted shrug. “Good job.”

“But now they’re all stuck like that,” Dorothea chimed in. “If you can’t make a proper antidote, then haven’t you turned your soldiers into mice for nothing?”

“Why would you be doing that in the first place,” Petra asked, “if you were knowing you did not have the ingredients for the antidote?”

Vejovis looked away, clearly ashamed. “We… had an order placed for the other ingredients, but the merchant’s boat sank,” he mumbled sheepishly. “Now some of them are out-of-season, I’m afraid…”

“What good fortune,” Hubert sardonically quipped through gritted teeth. “Now, answer my questions. One, who was it who poisoned Edelgard’s cup at the dining hall? Two, who was it who stole from my quarters? Three, how did you learn where Edelgard was hiding? And four, where is she now?”

For a moment, Vejovis simply looked up at him, dumbfounded, his caterpillar eyebrows furrowing. “Dining hall? I don’t recall hearing anything about a dining hall. Or about anything from your quarters being stolen. Why would we steal from somebody who was ostensibly on our side?”

“Because I had the antidote, and you don’t.”

Vejovis’ face fell. “…I didn’t know that.”

Hubert was taken aback. The answers were a shock to his system—like a cold bath or a plunge into a frozen lake in the middle of winter, a frigid burst so powerful it burned. Edelgard’s attempted assassination, which had ensnared Bernadetta in this tangled web, and the burglary of his bedroom had had nothing to do with those who slither in the dark? Then who had his antidote right now?

“As for your other questions, those of us who haven’t been turned into mice were delighted to put our plan to take open control of Adrestia into place once we heard that Edelgard had gone missing,” Vejovis said. “And we found out where she was hiding thanks to your loudmouthed friend with the blue hair, who was so kind as to shout two names at me when I captured him.”

Hubert glared at Caspar, who had been peeking out from behind the lapel of Ferdinand’s jacket but quickly hid himself.

“Turning your two friends into mice gave me the idea to do it to Edelgard, although, of course, I had to outsource the job to one of the other agents in the monastery, as I had been grievously injured in a very delicate part of my body,” Vejovis continued. “But you say there was somebody who tried to do that to her first? What a fascinating coincidence!”

“That’s—” Hubert stepped back. His hands were trembling. “This is—What?”

“My agent warped into the Varley girl’s quarters, drugged both her and Edelgard, and took them to the cellars. Where they are now is anybody’s guess, although I heard from one of our regrettably tiny soldiers this morning that a very Edelgard-like mouse was spotted scurrying around Abyss last night.”

“Abyss…” Linhardt murmured. “I didn’t think that place really existed. Fascinating…”

“But I can tell you one thing I know for certain, Hubert,” Vejovis said with a wicked, bloodstained smile, the shallow cut running across his wrinkled throat cracking open and blood oozing anew down his neck as he looked up at Hubert with pure white eyes. “You have little time before the grieving Emperor Ionius, knowing his time in this world is short, names a new successor to his throne in the tragic absence of his daughter. And while the Adrestian Empire transforms into the Argarthan Empire, poor Princess Edelgard will live out the rest of her days consigned to mousehood—alone, hungry, naked, and afraid, scavenging for scraps in the bowels of the church… slithering in the dark. You gambled with her safety and the future of her empire, not knowing that you were betting against a… what’s it called? A royal flush?”

Hubert felt a cold fury seize him. “Dorothea, Petra, Ferdinand,” he called out, “go upstairs and find me the most flammable potions he has.”

“All three of us?” Ferdinand asked.

“All four of you,” Hubert clarified, plucking Linhardt off his shoulder and passing him to Dorothea in spite of his protests.

None of them budged. He glanced back at them. “Now!” he barked.

His fellow students hastily slipped up the stairs and left him alone with Vejovis.

“Ah… whatever could you have to say to me that you don’t want your friends overhearing?” Vejovis asked, still grinning. “Could it be that you are more like your father than you let on? Marvelous misdirection, constantly speaking ill of him to make yourself look like a mere loyal vassal…”

Hubert closed the distance between himself and the old man, looming over him. Vejovis had to crane his neck to meet his eyes. “Choose your words carefully.”

“You have a knack for duplicity, young man. I knew you were in league with Thales, but never dreamed you would take our side in the schism over him. What pushed you over the edge? Was it Lady Edelgard’s incessant bloviating about, oh, what does she call it, ‘equality and fairness for all?’ Or perhaps her boneheaded compulsion to constantly insult and threaten us with death every time we convene for a meeting?” Vejovis smiled. “It really is the most charitable interpretation of your actions, considering that all this happened because of you.”

Hubert forced his hand between Vejovis’ teeth and wrenched the vile man’s jaw open, then shoved the bottle of poison as deep into his mouth as he could force it. “You chose… poorly,” he snarled.

The sound of the old man’s wretched gurgling and gagging rang in his ears for the second time that day as every last drop of the poison drained from the tiny bottle, the muscles of Vejovis’ throat pulsing as the poison ran down his gullet. His bloody hand clamped around Vejovis’ throat, digging into the frail and wrinkled folds of flesh as he gripped tighter and tighter.

“You disgusting vermin,” Hubert spat, tightening his grip on Vejovis’ neck. The vile old man shuddered and convulsed, the tight ropes binding him slackening and his bloodstained clothes hanging looser and looser on his shoulders as his flesh began to melt like candlewax and mold itself like soft clay. “You odious, reprehensible beast of a man. It will be you who dies slithering in the dark and scrounging for scraps—you and the rest of your filth. In the name of Lady Edelgard, perdition take every last one of you!”

He grasped tighter and tighter until he was gripping not a man but a tiny, filthy, bloodstained rodent squirming and squealing in his clenched fist; he kept squeezing, his thumb and forefinger pressing against the delicate bones in the mouse’s neck as it squeaked and scratched and bit at his flesh, nipping futilely at his knuckles.

Black flame engulfed his fist, reducing Vejovis’ fur and flesh to ash and leaving nothing but brittle, blackened bones in his grasp. He threw them to the floor and stomped on them for good measure until nothing remained but a charred smear under his boot.

He stood there in silence, aware only of his ragged breaths straining his lungs. The scent of burnt hair and flesh stung his nostrils.

As despair formed a hollow in his gut, Hubert fell to his knees, feeling for the first time as hopeless and forlorn as he’d felt all those years ago when Edelgard had first been spirited away. He’d been only ten years old, and though he’d managed to escape his father and remain on the run for three entire days before the soldiers had found him and dragged him back home, he hadn’t had a chance of finding her, let alone rescuing her. The sensation of loss he had felt back then had been akin to losing his arms and legs. He hadn’t felt whole again until she’d returned. Now he felt it again—an emptiness, a phantom pain, a lonely and aggrieved anguish.

“Lady Edelgard…” he choked, his voice nothing but a hollow, hoarse rasp. He buried his face in his bloody hands. “Lady Edelgard…!”

Edelgard stared grimly ahead as the wagon sped down the gloomy halls of Abyss, the wind ruffling her fur and whipping through her cloak and her mane. The wagon passed through hills of torchlight and vales of darkness, speeding across desolate wastes and underneath towering wooden beams braced against the walls and ceiling. A looming colossus sped past, slipping away so quickly and towering so high overhead that Edelgard didn’t notice until it had nearly left her peripheral vision that it was a human skeleton.

The stench of the rats pulling the wagon stung her nostrils; the rank, musky odor seemed to slip all the way into her brain, where it lingered as a constant sense of anxiety, a constant expectation of catastrophe, no matter how forcefully she tried to quell it. Perhaps, she thought, this was how Bernadetta felt all the time.

She held one paw over her snout to minimize the stench and held her axe in the other, keeping the blade within spitting distance of her driver’s neck. The hostage mage kept a steady grip on the two sets of reins running from the two rats’ harnesses.

“Hey, Edelgard? Wanna trade spots?” Matthias asked from the back of the wagon. “I can hold the guy hostage for a bit.”

“No, that’s fine,” Edelgard said.

“What about you, Bernie? You wanna hold the guy hostage for a while?”

“Um… no thanks.” Bernadetta shook her head and looked out over the side of the wagon at the floor speeding by.

“Right. Silly question of me. I mean, what would you do, hold an arrow to his throat?”

“Can we maybe not hold me hostage at all?” the mage piped up.

“No,” Edelgard said. She couldn’t help but imagine how easily the mage could catch her off guard if she didn’t have her blade so close to his furry little neck. He could kill the three of them in so many different ways if she gave him the smallest opening…

“Look, we’re in the same boat, Lady Edelgard,” the mage said. “Odesse told us we’d only be mice for a couple weeks. It’s been almost three months now. I just want to taste chocolate again.”

“You would betray your people for chocolate?” Edelgard asked.

“I’d betray my people for a ham sandwich at this point, m’lady,” the mage said. “Being a mouse sucks. It took me a solid week to get used to having a tail. And then there’s the colorblindness! Green is my favorite color! And everything’s so big! And you’re all hairy, and your teeth don’t stop growing, and then there’s the whiskers…”

Edelgard shuddered. “Please don’t remind me.”

“Hey, hold on.” Matthias leaned forward. “You used to be human?”

“Well, yes,” the mage said, glancing at him over his shoulder for a second before turning his attention back to the road. “Didn’t you?”

Matthias stuck out his tongue. “Ugh! Ew! No!”

“Pardon me.” The mage shrugged. “I guess being a mouse might be pretty cool if you don’t know any better. Anyway, Lady Edelgard, as I was saying, I’d gladly join your side if you’d help me become human again. I’m… assuming that’s what you want, too?”

Edelgard pulled her axe a hair’s-breadth away from his throat. It could still be a trick—she couldn’t afford to lower her guard. “What’s your name?” she asked, her words saturated with skepticism.

“Wesper Grahan. I’m not one of those creepy tattooed mole people; I work for Myson. He roped our whole squadron into this craziness.”

“Imperial mage corps?”

Wesper nodded.

“Where do you hail from?”

“Hevring county. But I was stationed all the way over in Enbarr when Myson took me on this mission.” Wesper let out a put-upon sigh muffled by his beaked mask. “Said it’d give me a whole new perspective. Cheeky dastard. If I knew this was what he’d meant, I’d have told him to pound sand.”

“What is he doing here? What does he plan to do with those infants?”

Wesper shrugged. “Damned if I know. I’m just the driver. Nobody tells me jack shit except where to drive. ‘Enlist in the mage corps,’ they said. ‘You’ll become a powerful warlock,’ they said…”

Not entirely convinced, but satisfied, Edelgard pulled the axe away. Wesper breathed a sigh of relief. “You will have your revenge, Wesper. I promise you that—and your humanity as well. And chocolate.”

Wesper bowed curtly. “You had me at ‘and chocolate,’ Princess Edelgard.”

Though she still kept a suspicious eye on him, Edelgard was glad to retreat into the back of the wagon, far enough away from the stench of the rats that her head felt noticeably clearer, and sat down next to Bernadetta as she kept watch.

“Must be hard,” Matthias mumbled, absentmindedly stroking the blade of his sword with a rag.

“Excuse me?”

“Being a mouse when you’re used to being human.” His eyes met Edelgard’s. “I’m sorry.”

Edelgard shrugged noncommittally.

“Well, I think you’re a beautiful mouse.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, humans are these great, big, ugly, lumbering giants, but you must’ve been pretty beautiful for a human if you ended up this pretty as a—” Matthias bowed his head. “Um, I’m gonna… Y’know, just… forget I said anything.” He scurried from the left side of the wagon to the right side. “I’m gonna talk to Wesper,” he decided, standing up and heading to the front of the wagon. “Hi, Wesper. My name’s Matthias. Sorry we killed your buddy. Anyway, y’know, being a mouse isn’t all bad…”

Edelgard leaned back against the side of the wagon, hoping it would catch up to Myson while her rage still burned inside her.

She had told herself that this was about finding out her foe’s intentions first and foremost, but she couldn’t deny that there was more to it than that.

They would die. Those squirming, mewling pups so young they could not even open their eyes. Every single one of them. How could any of those little wretches be strong enough to survive what she alone had survived? And Matthias’ brother had simply replied that they could make more…

What was happening to her? Had becoming a mouse altered her very thoughts? Such rank sentimentality… Her conscience, which she could ignore in so many other areas, simply would not permit her to leave these mice to their fates—yet another part of her that, like her tail, resisted her control.

Her duty to return—for the good of her empire, for all of Fódlan—far outweighed any messianic fairy tales these mice had concocted, and yet…

The wagon made a hard left turn, jolting her out of her ruminations as Bernadetta stumbled and let out a shrill yelp.

“I can see them!” Matthias called out.

Edelgard leaped to the front of the wagon. Down a dusty stretch of forgotten hallway, Myson’s wagon sped onward, five swordsmice guarding its cargo in back. “Bernadetta, ready your bow and take aim,” she ordered. “We have the advantage here: they’re lacking in ranged weaponry. We can pick the soldiers off from a distance without risking a counterattack, then close in to finish them off. Don’t kill Myson, though—I want him alive.”

“Got it!” Bernadetta nocked an arrow and drew the bowstring taut, lining up her shot. “Um… none of these mice are nice like you, are they, Wesper?”

“Nope, they’re all assholes. Fire away.”

“I give the orders around here, Wesper,” Edelgard reminded the mage.

Wesper nodded contritely. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Fire away, Bernadetta.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

The first volley sailed through the air and struck one of the swordsmice in the chest, planting a bloody flag. The sword slipped from the mouse’s hand as he lost his grip on the wagon and tumbled, limp as a ragdoll, to the floor.

“Got’em!” Bernadetta whooped, lining up her next shot. Just as her hand left the arrow, though, the wagon’s wheel hit a stone, and though the rats paid it no heed, the wagon shuddered and rattled with a savage jolt that wrenched her arm and bow upward. The arrow flew aimlessly into the air and vanished into the shadows, striking nothing of importance.

“Keep firing,” Edelgard told her. Though she was fearsome at her best, Bernadetta was exactly the sort of person to suffer from a failure spiral if left unchecked—miss one shot, panic, miss more shots, panic more…

Bernadetta steadied herself against the side of the wagon as she took aim again. “H-Here goes…”

Another arrow, another felled soldier tumbling out of the back of the wagon.

“We should start closing in now that we’ve got their attention. Wesper, tell the rats to go faster.”

“Got it.” Wesper lashed the reins; the rats scurried faster. Myson’s wagon began to loom closer.

“Three more, Bernadetta,” Edelgard said, falling back to stand at her side as the wagon rattled and rocked again.

“Right. Got it!” Bernadetta nocked another arrow and fired. Another soldier fell. “I-I’m doing it!”

“How long will it be before that stops taking you by surprise?” Edelgard ribbed her, patting her on the head. “Two more.”

Myson’s wagon drew closer. Victory was already well within reach. Edelgard felt a tingling wave of anticipation rush through her body—she swore she could feel her fur standing on end. When she caught and subdued him, she would have answers—who among those who slither in the dark had done this to her? What was their master plan? How could she kill them?

And the infants, too—she could save them from suffering as her siblings had…

Bernadetta lined up another shot, but it went wide and sailed through empty space as Myson’s wagon came to a dead stop and zipped past, vanishing into one of the stretches of darkness filling the hallway.

“Huh?” Edelgard whirled around, tightening her grip on her axe. “Wesper, turn this thing around! Don’t let them get away!”

The wagon turned in a slow, wide arc, its rats scrabbling at the floor and kicking up little stones and bits of debris with their paws.

A harsh blue light twinkled in the darkness; Edelgard felt a prickling sensation and an oppressive, earthy pressure around her, like the air before a thunderstorm. “Get down!”

She dropped to the floor of the wagon, grabbing Bernadetta and dragging her down with her just as a crackling burst of blue-white light cut through the air where Bernadetta’s head had been just an instant ago. The air hummed and buzzed like a wasp in the wake of the searing light, an acrid smell settling overhead. Damn—they’d gotten within range of Myson’s mages!

Myson’s wagon peeled out of the darkness, its rats bounding forward, luminous blue smoke pouring from their gaping mouths. As Myson’s wagon slipped past Edelgard’s, one of the two swordsmice leaped across the narrowing gap between them, his crude sword meeting Matthias’ well-crafted blade. Matthias was an amateur, though, in spite of his weapon’s natural advantage—he was put on the back foot within a second. Myson’s swordsmice must have been well-trained, seasoned soldiers before they’d been transformed.

Wesper lobbed a fireball at Myson’s wagon, hitting one of the rats in the shoulder and leaving scorched, blackened flesh. The rat hissed and squealed, writhing and rearing up against its master’s wishes; its unruly behavior dragged the wagon every which way, leaving it pitching left and right helplessly.

Edelgard ducked under a swing of the swordsmouse’s blade and buried her axe in his shoulder, disarming him; Matthias finished him off, burying his blade in his chest and wrenching it free with a spurt of blood. Bernadetta pushed the bleeding corpse off the side of the wagon for good measure.

Another burst of blue-white light lanced through the air, narrowly missing Edelgard’s shoulder but tearing a hole in the side of the wagon. In its wake, the beam left a perfect circle chewed through the wood panels, the edges charred black and glowing with twinkling embers.

“Get closer!” Edelgard ordered Wesper. “Matthias, you and I will board Myson’s wagon as soon as we meet.”

“Y-You’re going to board them?” Bernadetta gasped. “But Edelgard—”

Matthias looked at the damage to the wagon. “No offense, Edelgard—I’d follow you to the end of the world, sure, no questions asked—”

“You’re asking one right now.”

“—but I don’t wanna end up with a hole like that in my tummy.”

“Those mages—and Myson himself—are restricted up close. If we’re in the wagon with them, they can’t use their spells without risking damage to their cargo,” Edelgard explained. “In close quarters, we win.”

Matthias nodded. “Okay. You’re the expert.”

Myson’s wagon hobbled forward; Edelgard’s quickly caught up.

“On my mark,” Edelgard said.

“What do I do?” Bernadetta piped up.

“If you find a shot, take it!”

As Edelgard’s wagon carried itself apace with Myson’s, Myson’s wagon suddenly and violently pitched left, the two wagons clashing together; their wooden frames rattled and Edelgard felt herself lose her footing and slide backward.

The fifth and final swordsmouse scurried from one wagon to the other, his crude sword flashing in a glittering arc; Edelgard raised her axe to parry the blade to no avail; it slipped past her defenses and buried herself in her shoulder. As fortune would have it, it was the same shoulder whose joint she’d dislocated and popped back into place the night before—she gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw against the pain. As the swordsmouse started to slide the blade free, she reached out and grabbed it in her paw, holding it fast; searing pain cut through her fingers as she kept the rough length of scrap metal sheathed in her shoulder.

The swordsmouse looked down at her with a light in his eyes born of equal parts awe and fear, then pain and confusion, as she buried her axe in his side.

“Hey, Edelgard!”

She turned her head just in time to see a magic sigil light itself up in front of Myson’s paws as the warlock grinned savagely—

“Jump!” she shouted out.

A forest of black spikes shot up from the floor, lancing through the rats pulling her wagon and stopping them dead in their tracks, their bodies splitting apart under the sharp blades of dark magic. The wagon went flying.

The next thing Edelgard knew, she was clinging to the side of Myson’s wagon for dear life, her ribs burning and aching, her bruises from last night’s battle inflamed anew from the force of the impact. The other wagon, now rapidly falling behind, had been ripped in half and overturned, its wooden frame bent and buckled, spattered with dark bloodstains from the torn-apart rats still tied to it. She couldn’t see Bernadetta, Matthias, or Wesper—had they been thrown clear of the crash? Or…

There was a sharp, painful tug at the base of her tail. A muffled outcry that sounded vaguely like “Edelgard!”

Edelgard looked down and saw the rest of the wreckage dragging itself along, its splintered wreckage embedded in the side of the wagon. Bernadetta clutched her tail in one paw, clung to the side of the wagon with the other, and held her bow in her mouth. Matthias and Wesper had been carried in the wreckage as well—injured, bloodstained, but alive.

She threw herself over the side of the wagon and onto its floor, pulling Bernadetta along with her. Matthias and Wesper joined her. The six mouse pups she’d come this far to rescue were huddled in a heap in the corner.

“Edelgard von Hresvelg.” Myson turned to face them as his mages preoccupied themselves with driving. “And whoever you three are; I don’t care,” he added, glancing with disinterest at Bernadetta and the others before refocusing on Edelgard. “You’re shorter than I expected.”

“Myson. It’s over.” Edelgard hefted her axe; the exertion made her pierced shoulder scream and beg for mercy. “Surrender and I’ll let you keep your favorite arm.”

Myson tugged on the wide brim of his peaked hat, as though daring Edelgard to make a move against him. “Bold words from a filthy rat.”

Edelgard stiffened. “How dare you—”

“Oh, did I offend her majesty?” he spat.

“Stop this wagon,” Matthias said, leveling his sword at him. “A-And tell us what you were going to do with our pups so I know how mad I’m supposed to be at you! Because I’m already really mad, and I want to make sure I don’t need to be any madder!”

“We have you right where we want you, Myson,” Edelgard said. “Stop this wagon or we’ll stop it for you.” She looked to Bernadetta and Wesper. “On my mark, shoot the mages.”

“Wait!” Myson threw up his paws. “Wait, hold on. I’m the one who has you right where I want you.”

Edelgard steeled herself. He was up to something. “Bernadetta, Wesper, fire—”

Three columns of violet-white light split the air, leaving dancing sparks and spots in their wake; Myson and his two mages vanished. An eerie silence fell over the hallway. The rats pulling the wagon, no longer under anyone’s control, came to a halt and began trying to pull the wagon in two separate directions, irritably gnawing at their harnesses.

Matthias broke the silence. “All right! We did it!” he cried out, pumping his fist in the air. “Oh, sorry about not capturing or interrogating that Myson guy, or really getting any sort of straight answer out of him whatsoever.” He shrugged. “Maybe next time?”

Edelgard dropped her axe and slumped over against the side of the wagon, pressing her paw to her shoulder to staunch the bleeding. “Wesper, take the reins. I don’t want to find out what Myson meant when he said he had us right where he wants us.”

Wesper nodded, adjusted his mask, and rushed up front. “Yes, Your Highness. I don’t, either.”

Bernadetta knelt at Edelgard’s side, tearing off a strip of her cloak and tying it around her wound. “I—I can’t believe we survived that. Are you alright?”

“I’m—”

Edelgard paused. Sniffed the air. Her whiskers quivered, her ears twitching. She looked out into the darkness ahead of the wagon as a chill crept up her spine and her tail reflexively curled itself around her.

Something was coming. Something familiar, something—

She shivered and pulled her cloak around herself.

Something terrifying.

“We have to leave,” she gasped, breathless, “now.”

Wesper snapped the reins and turned the wagon around. As the wagon spun in a wide arc, Edelgard caught a flash of twin lights in the darkness.

And out of the darkness, bounding on all fours, came a giant rat, scarred and scruffy and clad in scraps of tarnished armor, a serrated kitchen knife as long as it was tall tied to its back. It scurried across the floor, its wicked claws scraping against the stone, drawing nearer with every step it took. Twin pinpricks of baleful blue light shone in the eye sockets of the wicked, age-yellowed skull it wore for a helmet.

Matthias screamed. “Wesper, go faster!”

Wesper glanced back as the Plague Rat kept gaining on the wagon, rapidly closing the distance between the two of them. “What the hell is that?”

“What do you mean, ‘what the hell is that?’ He’s on your side!”

“I defected!”

“Yeah, like half an hour ago!”

“I’ve never seen that thing before in my life! I told you! I’m a driver! No one tells me anything!”

While the other mice argued, Edelgard felt her heart pound against her aching ribs, her chest heaving as her breath caught in her throat. She reached out to grasp something for purchase, to anchor her, to keep her sane, and her paw found Bernadetta’s, her fingers curling tightly to grasp it. “Just keep going faster!” she called out to Wesper as the Plague Rat inched closer and closer. “He’s gaining on us!”

Bernadetta let go of her and nocked an arrow. “I-I think I can slow him down!” She stood up and took aim, swaying unsteadily as the wagon rocked and shuddered. She fired an arrow. It missed. The Plague Rat drew closer.

She fired another arrow, her paws shaking, her bow trembling. It missed. The Plague Rat drew closer. She glanced at Edelgard, eyes wide with fear, then nocked four arrows at once and fired them all at the fearsome creature. One missed, two glanced off the beast’s armor, but one stuck in a gap between his armor and stood up like a banner.

Another arrow found its mark, then another. Bernadetta slipped to the rear of the wagon and crouched down, aiming over the back to steady herself. Her next arrow buried itself in the Plague Rat’s eye, extinguishing one of the eerie lights in the eye sockets of his macabre helmet.

“I-I did it? I did it—!”

With an anguished bellow, the Plague Rat leaped forward, digging his claws into the wagon’s wooden frame. The whole wagon shuddered under the force of the impact. Edelgard felt the wooden frame rattle and almost feared it would collapse. Bernadetta skittered backward, struggling to nock another arrow with the Plague Rat bearing down on her.

Edelgard threw herself between the two of them, swinging her axe with all her might. The blade scored a deep gash across the Plague Rat’s bone helmet, the force of the blow knocking him back.

With another roar, the Plague Rat ripped his enormous knife free of its restraints and swung it downward. Edelgard parried the blow; the force of the impact sent a jolt of pain running up her arm and blossoming in her injured shoulder. She cried out and fell to her knees, the serrated edge of the knife scraping against the haft of her axe and leaving a notch in the wood as the Plague Rat drew it back and readied it for another mighty strike.

The beast began to laugh. “Die, Edelgard von Hresvelg! Die!” he bellowed, raising the knife overhead and swinging it downward in a shining arc.

Matthias leaped forward, parrying the knife with his sword. “Get away from her! That’s our savior you’re trying to kill!”

Her breath ragged, her lungs burning, Edelgard pulled herself upright, leaning on her axe for support. She couldn’t die down here—not with so much left unfulfilled. Her empire, her ambitions, her father, her classmates, her teacher…

She felt an arm fall across her uninjured shoulder and a bowstring stretch taut at her side. “I’m sor—I-I mean, I’m already regretting this!” Bernadetta squeaked in her ear. “But I need something to help me aim!”

Edelgard nodded and let go of her axe. “I’ve got you.” She wrapped her arm around Bernadetta’s waist and took hold of her outstretched arm, steadying it as the two of them took aim at the beast together.

For the first time in her life, she realized, she had no idea what the hell she was doing. It was almost exhilarating.

Bernadetta’s arrow sang through the air and buried itself in the Plague Rat’s other eye socket, blinding him; as he reeled backward, Edelgard swept her axe off the floor of the wagon and struck him across the chest, knocking him off his feet and off the wagon. As she watched him tumble and roll across the floor and dwindle away into the distance, she sank to her knees, shivering uncontrollably.

The Plague Rat ripped the arrows from his eyes, tossed them aside, and slinked back into the shadows, vanishing like a phantom.

With the Plague Rat far behind them, Edelgard and her entourage continued on their way through the halls, their battered and beleaguered wagon creaking and moaning as the weary rats pulled it along. A somber silence had settled over the four of them: though they’d been victorious, they had little energy left to celebrate their good fortune.

Edelgard’s wounds still stung and ached, even though Wesper had done his best to heal them. Though it was nigh impossible to tell the passage of time down here, it couldn’t have been that far past noon, and she was already exhausted. Bernadetta clung to her, sound asleep; she’d fainted as soon as Edelgard had let go of her.

“Hey, Edelgard?” Matthias asked as he cradled two of the rescued pups in his arms. “I know this is kind of out of the blue, but mind if I ask you a question?”

“It depends,” Edelgard said, trying not to look at what he was holding. She was glad she’d saved those children in principle, but she couldn’t lie to herself—they were hideous little gremlins and looking at them made her taste bile in the back of her throat. “I will tell you when you ask it.”

“I want your advice. Let’s say, for example—not saying this isn’t hypothetical—you had to do something bad to do something good. Like, y’know, a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ situation. Not saying I robbed someone, but you get the idea. Well, figuratively, maybe. Sort of.”

“Are you referring to killing one’s enemies in self-defense?” Edelgard recalled her conversation with Bernadetta on the same subject just a few days ago. It felt like a lifetime ago already. “It’s simply the way the world works. Our consciences have no room for people who would do others harm.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine with killing bad guys. It’s, well…” Matthias shrugged. “A little more… big-picture than that. More like, say, making someone who’s not bad, just generally pretty decent, er, suffer—sort of, just a little—but what you’d get out of it would be, you know, for the greater good.”

“Is it okay to make good people suffer for the greater good, you mean?”

“Yeah, something like that. Well, not suffer suffer, but… inconvenience? Maybe?”

“How great of a good?” Edelgard asked. The greater good justified so many things. It justified the oppression of the Church. It justified the heinous experiments that had claimed the lives of her siblings and left her permanently scarred. It justified so much evil in the minds of those who committed those acts, and yet it justified everything she had done and was going to do—lies, betrayals, violence in the past and yet to come—to create a free Fódlan. It was her duty to prove that her good was greater than all others.

“Freedom. Safety. Well… everything. The future. That kind of greater good. But you’ve got to do something kind of, well… something that makes you a fucking asshole, as Zeke might say,” Matthias wheedled. “I want to get us out of the monastery so we can start a new life, y’know, but…”

“Well, if the worst you can be is an… asshole, you have little to fear. What are you planning?”

“Oh, I—I can’t say,” he uneasily answered, chuckling nervously.

“Any atrocity can and must be excused in the pursuit of your goals if you truly believe your goals are just,” Edelgard told him. “Should you fail and your ideals prove themselves false, then those atrocities will weigh down the executioner’s blade as it swings toward your neck, but should you succeed—then you were right to do them.”

“Ah.” Matthias fell silent, for once, as he ruminated on her words. “So you’re saying it’s okay to cause good people pain, as long as you win. Sort of a might-makes-right deal. I get it.”

“It isn’t quite that simple. There is nuance.”

“So… you ever done something rotten for the greater good?”

Edelgard had no need to rack her brain for examples. Things she had done, things she had ordered others to do, things that currently only existed as plans drawn in her head but would soon come to pass… “Have you?” she asked in return.

Matthias suddenly found the floor of the wagon very interesting. “Kinda,” he answered sheepishly. “I guess.”

“Why are you asking me about this? Can’t your older brother teach you about morality?”

“Well, because you’re our prophesied savior—”

Edelgard bristled. Not this again.

“—and so you’re kind of, I guess, a moral paragon by definition? I mean, you can’t be the Chosen One and be a bad person. I mean, whatever you do, it’s gotta be right, right?” Matthias asked. “Like, even when you screamed at us and ran away last night and we had to run after you and bail you out, you were teaching us a lesson.”

“Oh? What lesson was I teaching you?”

He scratched his head. “Dunno. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out if I keep thinking about it.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Edelgard said, gazing out at what little scenery there was to see down here in Abyss.

“I’ve got it!” Matthias took a deep breath. “You were teaching us that even our prophesied savior can’t do it all alone! We can only triumph if we work together! Just like we did here!”

Edelgard sighed. “I suppose.”

“You’re an amazing Chosen One, Edelgard,” Matthias said, chuckling. “I swear, it’s like you were made for this stuff.”

“Imagine that,” she muttered, scratching her cheek as she recalled all the times Thales had lauded her as the salvation of his people, born—reborn—of flames to carry on the work of the King of Liberation and cast down false gods.

She would be salvation, but not for him and his ilk. They would meet the same fate as their despised Immaculate One—burned to ash, every last one of them.

And she would start down here.

Beneath Garreg Mach were the catacombs, and beneath those lay Abyss. It was a gloomy place, lit sporadically by torches, the faint sounds of echoed voices bubbling up through the labyrinthine halls. Claude led the way, hardly able to contain his excitement at exploring such a well-kept secret. He’d heard knights around campus muttering about how much they’d like to sweep through this place and rid themselves of all the human vermin supposedly infesting it, if only they knew how to get to it.

Marianne flanked him on his left, with Cornflower the mouse perched in the palm of her hand to provide directions through the subterranean realm. To his right, Dimitri grimly stalked the halls, tightly gripping the shaft of a simple steel spear he’d borrowed from the training hall, and trailing behind him was Annette Fantine Dominic, one of his classmates in the Blue Lions house. She was a cheerful, optimistic, fiery-haired girl who’d nonetheless been extremely rattled when her neighbor had gone missing and Edelgard’s bloody clothes had been found in her quarters without her hearing so much as a sneeze through the wall.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Marianne muttered as a looming shadow passed across her face. “Perhaps I should turn back…”

“Don’t worry,” Annette assured her, patting her on the shoulder. “If anyone tries to attack us, Dimitri here will wipe the floor with them! And I’m good with an axe, too…”

Marianne shook her head. “Thank you, but… that’s not what I mean. You’ll have much better luck without me.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Marianne,” Claude told her. She was of the belief that everywhere she went, misfortune followed, and he didn’t believe a word of it. “You’re not chronically unlucky, and even if you were, it’s not a contagious disease. Or maybe my supernaturally good fortune just outweighs all your bad luck.”

“I’m sorry.” She handed the mouse to him. “But please, just take her and go ahead. I’ll head back to the monastery. I can feel something evil coming this way, and I don’t want to bring it upon you…”

“I’m sure there’s nothing evil down here,” Dimitri assured her.

“Yeah,” Annette chimed in, “just thieves, murderers, assorted villains, and whoever’s turning people into mice. But don’t worry! We’ve got strength in numbers!” She began to hum. “Creepy creepy creepity creep…”

“And besides, even if there is,” he went on, “you’ve got two of us lords down here with you.” He hefted his spear. “And at least one of us came here prepared.”

“I’m more prepared than you might think,” Claude retorted, slipping a hand into his satchel and pulling out his pocketknife.

“Ah, that must be another one of your brilliant strategies.” Dimitri smirked. “If you keep showing me your hand you’ll have nothing left for the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.”

“You’re assuming I don’t still have a whole deck hidden up my sleeve.” Claude began to hum along with Annette’s little ditty. He had to admit, it had a catchy tune and intriguing lyrics, and she had quite a good voice to match it. “Living in a land that's dark and blinded by the frigid cold…” he faintly sang along.

Dimitri rolled his eyes and took Marianne by the arm, pulling her and her rodent guide aside. “Er… Marianne, right? Why don’t we go on ahead of these two? I don’t think I can afford to have another one of Annette’s songs stuck in my head.” He shuddered. “Not after ‘baby shark.’”

The corridors grew darker, the torches lining the walls sparser, the oppressive shadows silencing the search party. Annette lit a fireball in her palm and held it aloft to brighten the gloomy, claustrophobic halls. “You know… I’d always heard there were people living down here.”

“There have to be,” Dimitri said as he and Marianne led the way. “Someone’s been keeping these torches lit.”

“Maybe we should go back and bring some of the knights down here,” Marianne said.

“I have to admit, Abyss wasn’t quite what I expected,” Claude said, brushing aside a cobweb stretching nearly from floor to ceiling. The silk clung loosely to his hand, gossamer strands fluttering as he pulled them away “Or maybe everyone’s hiding from us.”

A sudden chill ran up his spine as something with tiny, prickling claws and coarse fur flew up his pants and into his shirt. With a shocked shout, Claude nearly leaped into the air, as its claws dug the tiniest of footholds up his chest, and all but ripped his jacket open to catch whatever was attacking him.

His hand came away with a mouse clutched between his fingers. This one had pale cream-colored fur and a short, tousled mane of rusty red cresting its head.

“Can this one talk, too?” Dimitri scoffed. Nevertheless, he loosened his grip on his spear, no doubt relieved that no terrifying enemy had leaped out from the shadows.

“I dunno. Let’s see,” Claude said, raising the mouse to his ear.

“Thank the Goddess you found me! Claude, it’s me, Monica von Ochs!” the mouse squeaked.

“Monica? The girl they found with Flayn?” Claude asked. How many students had been turned into mice now? There had been Edelgard first, then Bernadetta—the rest of the Black Eagles’ whereabouts were unknown…

“Ask her who did this to her,” Dimitri said, scowling as he glared suspiciously into the darkness.

“I can hear you just fine, you know!” Monica called out to him, though Claude doubted her voice could carry that far and still be intelligible. “Ugh. It was that dastard traitor, Sol—Tomas! He did this to me!”

“T-Tomas? The librarian?” Taken aback, Claude looked down at Monica as she preened herself in his palm. “Are you sure?” He’d spent so much time with Tomas these past few months—he was so nice, and so willing to share books and other documents the Church didn’t allow the monastery to keep in the library… how could he be the mastermind?

“It couldn’t have been anyone else. I’m sure of it, sure as my name is Monica!” The redheaded mouse shook her head and looked morosely down at her little pink paws. “He’s been experimenting with polymorphus muridae, finding new ways to administer it…”

“Marianne is right. We should pull back and alert the Knights of Seiros,” Dimitri said. “The four of us are in over our heads.”

“Yeah, and I just remembered,” Annette chimed in, “I’m supposed to be on cooking duty today with Mercedes, so we should really get going!”

“Ow!” Marianne slapped the side of her neck. She pulled her hand away; her pale palm was stained black with the oozing remnants of some sort of large insect plastered to her skin. Her brown eyes met Claude’s, wide and full of worry.

Claude felt a sharp sting on the side of his neck, a needle sliding into his skin; the stabbing jolt of pain, brief as it was before fading away, was enough to make his eyes water. His hand leaped to his neck; his fingertips met something slick and chitinous. A foggy warmth blossomed in his chest and in his head as a wave of vertigo swept through him; prickling pins and needles washed across his skin as he stumbled, suddenly unsteady in his footing; faint, aching twinges burrowed their way through his flesh and into his bones, throbbing.

“I’m sorry, everyone… I think I really should have stayed behind,” Marianne mumbled as her legs gave out and she crumpled into Dimitri’s arms.

Claude didn’t believe in bad luck. He wasn’t even sure about good luck, truthfully. Perhaps, though, he thought as the shadows spun around him and all color and sound seeped out of the world, there was something to Marianne’s so-called curse.

Chapter Text

Before he’d passed out and woken up as a mouse, Claude had discovered that the mastermind behind this rash of poisonings was Tomas, the monastery’s librarian.

Or, if not the mastermind, then a key player.

Using strange insects with needlelike proboscises and abdomens filled with poison as a transmission vector for poison was such a novel idea that Claude couldn’t really be all that upset about being ensnared in Tomas’ devilish trap. He had to give his respects to the two-faced dastard, really, the same way that a chess player had no choice but to respect a challenging opponent who’d bested them.

The transformation itself, caught in that instant when he’d been enveloped in darkness, had all felt hazy and muddled—dreamlike, but not in any way a good dream. Dreamlike the way dreams could always feel so vague and indistinct, yet contain such vivid and unforgettable sensations. He had felt as though his bones had all melted like candlewax beneath his flesh and he’d been turned inside out. And he had felt the fur growing in, prickling and sharp like an all-over itch he couldn’t scratch. And as for the teeth—the less said about that, the better. Waking up to find that he hadn’t actually dreamed any of those things hadn’t exactly been pleasant.

And on top of that, being pulled out of a mountain of cloth upon waking by a mouse as big as he was came as a bit of a shock to his system on top of… everything else.

He couldn’t have been more than three or four inches tall, he figured judging from the size of the uniform pooled around him; and the world around him looked wrong, the colors all oddly muted, washed-out, and grayish—the torches overhead took on a cold, yellowish-gray hue, though the yellow of his crumpled cape remained shockingly vibrant.

“Claude!” the mouse squeaked in a shockingly human voice. With a crude scrap-metal knife in her paw, she cut away a length of cord that had become knotted around his arm. “Are you okay?”

Startled, Claude let out a sharp, piercing yelp, staggered backward, tripped on his tail (oh, gods, that was going to take some getting used to), and fell flat on his back. “I’ve had better days,” he answered once his heart had stopped trying to force its way out of his ribcage, “Miss….?”

In a split second between his question and the mouse’s response, he racked his brain for an answer, struggling to find some trace of familiarity in the mouse’s quite ordinarily mousy face.

“Cornflower,” the mouse answered, much to his disappointment. Now her voice was more intelligible than the sharp, quiet squeak from before; it had a sharp, withered timbre, like that of an older woman. “You saved me from the snare.”

Snare. Yes, that rang a bell. He scratched his forehead. Though he was in possession of most of his faculties, everything else took some effort to muddle through. He recalled studying polymorph spells with Lysithea, then finding Marianne, then going mouse-hunting, running into Dimitri, heading down into Abyss…

“Er, Claude, sir…”

Claude snapped out of his musings, a little unnerved to be hearing such a human voice coming from a mouse. “Cornflower! Uh… thanks for rescuing me. Could’ve drowned in my own cape,” he told Cornflower, realizing that she was staring at him expectantly. “I guess that makes us even. Where are the others?”

Before he’d even finished asking, something in the periphery of his vision came into focus. That was another thing—he seemed to have gained just a bit more peripheral vision. That plus the whiskers feeling their way through the air around him made up for the colorblindness, he supposed. It certainly made things more interesting.

The thing in the periphery of his vision was a mouse about his size (maybe a little shorter) curled up on the floor, its fur an ashy grayish-white, a veil of pale blue hair spilling over its hunched shoulders.

Claude recalled what Lysithea had said to him about polymorph spells—that the unlucky subjects retained some remnants of their previous forms, like ringing echoes of their former humanity… or stubborn stains. In this mouse’s case, that hair was unmistakable, even if it wasn’t tied back in the usual braided updo anymore.

“Marianne!” he called out, skittering over to her side. “That’s you, right?”

Marianne looked up at him and immediately looked away, hiding her face. “Claude… is that really you?”

She sounded just like herself. If there were any people in the area, Claude realized, they’d only hear unintelligible squeaks unless they were close enough and focused their hearing, just like he’d had to do to speak with Cornflower and Monica. Yet to his ears, she sounded completely normal.

“In the flesh,” he assured her. “Granted, there’s a lot less of it now, but everything on the inside’s still me.”

“Oh, Goddess,” she mumbled, “why have you cursed us so?”

“I’m sure your goddess has better things to do than curse us,” Claude said to her, grabbing her by the wrist and struggling to pull her upright. Thank the gods he still had thumbs. Come to think of it, he was surprised he could stand upright and walk around so easily. Maybe he’d been dosed with a defective batch of the poison? Or perhaps it was another remnant of humanity leaking out? “Come on, Marianne. Up and at ‘em.”

“This is my punishment,” she lamented. “To be reduced to a beast, to vermin… I am so sorry, Claude, that you have been forced into bearing the burden of my sin with me. Please forgive me. If only I’d turned back…”

“You’d have saved your own skin, but I’m sure I’d still have ended up like this. This isn’t the work of a vengeful goddess, it’s the work of a shifty librarian with a weird hobby, okay? No sense in treating that like a deity.”

Marianne didn’t answer.

“Come on. You’ve got those big ears now; I know you can hear me.”

“Claude?” a voice he recognized as Annette’s called out to him. “Is that you?”

Annette, now a mouse with pale brown fur and a shock of pale brownish-gray hair (Claude assumed that was just the colorblindness), emerged from an ocean of azure cloth; another mouse with tawny fur like a lion’s pelt trailed in her wake, sloughing off the folds of his now preposterously oversize cape like a ship cutting through the ocean waves.

“It’s me, alright,” Claude answered. “Are you two okay?”

“I’m fine,” Annette said, as unflappably chipper as ever. “You’ll be fine, too, Marianne. Just take some time to get used to it!” she told the morose mouse with a gentle, encouraging pat on her shoulder. “What about you, Claude?”

“Give me some time to adjust and I’ll be back to my old self in no time.” Claude crossed his arms over his chest authoritatively. “Well, figuratively speaking, at least,” he added. “And Dimitri?”

Dimitri stared at him with a dour expression (but what else was new?) on his little mousy face and a hard, almost haunted look in his icy blue eyes. “…Claude?” he rasped, squinting.

“I see I haven’t lost my unique charm and good looks, even as a mouse,” Claude answered with a grin.

“I couldn’t recognize you at all until you opened your mouth,” Dimitri retorted, shaking his head. His voice grew stronger with use. “You just look like any old rodent.”

That, unfortunately, wasn’t the first time anyone had called Claude a rodent. He almost wished he could say the same about Dimitri, but a mouse with fur the same golden hue as a wheat field wasn’t exactly a normal sight.

“So we’re all safe and sound?” Dimitri asked. “Annette? Marianne?”

“Present!” Annette chirped, holding up a paw.

Marianne mumbled noncommittally and shrugged.

“And you.” Dimitri turned his gaze on Cornflower. “Who are you?”

“Um… Cornflower, sir.”

“Who?”

“The talking mouse who led us down here,” Claude reminded him.

Dimitri blinked bemusedly, then raised a paw to his forehead as though to soothe a headache. “Right. Were you human once, too?”

“Goodness, no!” Cornflower gasped, laying a paw across her chest as though she’d been horribly offended. “I’ve been a mouse all my life!”

“I’m sure His Highness here meant no disrespect,” Claude said. “It’s just that none of us have met a talking mouse before.”

“I should hope not,” she snapped. “We stay out of your way for a reason.”

Claude felt he knew well enough what that reason might be, so he decided not to further press the issue. Humans treated rodents badly enough, let alone other humans who spoke and looked and thought differently from them, and would probably treat intelligent, talking rodents even worse.

Dimitri's eyes met those of his fellow classmates in turn. “Anyway, it’s good to see you all well, albeit… small and fuzzy.”

“Miss, um… Cornflower, right?” Annette asked their guide. “What exactly happened? Can you tell us how long we’ve been unconscious?”

Cornflower opened her mouth to speak.

“You were unconscious?” Dimitri asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Everything went black,” Annette explained, “and then I woke up like this…”

“I passed out,” Marianne offered, “and… it was like a vivid nightmare…” She bowed her head. “I’m so sorry to have brought this fate upon you…”

Claude nodded. Vivid was right. Dreamlike as it had felt, and although he’d had no awareness of his surroundings, he couldn’t forget the unique pain of the transformation whether he wanted to or not. It seemed that everybody affected by the poison experienced the transformation differently, though. Why? Was it something to do with mental readiness, or strength of will, or some inherent characteristic of the body?

Cornflower opened her mouth to speak again.

“None of you were awake through the whole thing?” Dimitri asked in a tone that very plainly suggested that he had been.

“Y-You were?” Annette stammered.

“I was awake, too,” Cornflower finally managed to butt in. She shuddered. “It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen in my life!”

“It’d be nice if I could say it was the worst experience in my life,” Dimitri said to her.

“Are you okay?” Claude asked him.

Dimitri nodded.

Annette rested a paw on his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

Dimitri brushed her paw aside. “So, is everyone accounted for?” he asked the room, eager to change the subject. His voice echoed in the hall. “We’re not missing anyone?”

A piteous, put-upon moan answered him; without hesitation, he leaped into action, and the others followed.

Claude and Dimitri followed the moan and found a pale mouse sprawled on the floor, limbs akimbo. Though the shock of red hair cresting the mouse’s head had faded to a pale yellow-gray (damn that colorblindness), Claude recognized her as Monica von Ochs, the mouse who’d scurried up his shirt before they’d been attacked.

Suspiciously soon before they’d been attacked, Claude thought. And yet an injured person was still an injured person…

“Monica,” he hissed urgently, dropping to his knees and trying to help her up. “Are you okay?”

Monica winced and flopped onto the ground despite his best efforts, her legs twitching. It was only then that Claude noticed that while a mouse’s hind legs didn’t quite have the same proportions as a pair of human legs, he was fairly certain they weren’t supposed to bend like that.

“You dropped me from five fucking feet in the air,” she hissed at him, spitting out every syllable with anguish and venom. “My fucking legs are broken!”

“Sorry, won’t do it again,” Claude assured her. “Marianne, come over here! I need you to heal her!”

“Oh, b-but I’m a mouse…” Marianne pointed out.

“You can walk and talk, so who’s to say you can’t still use magic?” Annette told her with an encouraging pat on the back. “Can’t hurt to give it a shot!”

With some vigorous encouragement and prodding from Annette, Marianne trudged over to Monica, knelt down, and laid her paws over her legs. A pale yellowish glow suffused them as fractured bones beneath her flesh slid painlessly back into place and glued themselves together.

Once the glow had faded, Monica stood up gingerly, tentatively testing her weight on her legs. “Ah… much better! You’re alright, Marionette.”

“Marianne,” Claude corrected, since he knew Marianne wouldn’t say anything about it.

“You’ve spent a lot of time with Edelgard since you were rescued from the Death Knight,” Dimitri said to her. “Were you down here looking for her, too?”

“Well, of course!” Monica smiled. Somehow, Claude noted, it was an oddly unsettling smile, one he half expected to be filled with razor-sharp, needlelike fangs. “I wasn’t going to let my beastie—er, bestie—get hurt down here!”

A twinge of disquiet ran through Claude’s mind. “How’d you figure to look down here?”

“Oh, well, of course, I—” Monica paused. “I… wasn’t looking down here. I went to Tomas to ask about secret passages, and the next thing I knew, I was down here… and a mouse.”

“Right. You said Tomas abducted and poisoned you,” Dimitri said, scowling. “What horrible manner of fiend is he, to have such evil lurking behind such a kindly facade? I had hoped after Jeritza that we would not have this problem again…”

Claude thought for a moment. Something still didn’t feel right. This whole situation, especially everything surrounding Monica, felt as fishy as a birthday feast for Flayn. Was he remembering incorrectly (everything was still so hazy) or had she been about to say a different name before she’d picked out Tomas?

“Are you sure it was him and not someone else?” he asked, not expecting an honest answer in the slightest. But, then again, the way somebody lied could sometimes be just as revealing as the truth.

“He invited me into his study and gave me tea,” Monica said. “I was feeling a little paranoid—who wouldn’t be—and refused to drink any of it. Then one of those blighted demonic insects lighted on my neck and…”

His memory jogged, Claude sidled over to the squashed remains of one of the insects lying on the floor. It had to be an inch long or more, not counting the long beak protruding from its face. Its iridescent carapace had been split open like the tail of a boiled lobster, revealing soft meat as black as pitch; spindly legs stood in the air at odd angles like dead trees; its long, transparent wings were ragged and bent. Its abdomen was completely transparent, completely empty, and shriveled nearly to nothing.

And there was a very small shard of glittering stone embedded in its ruined carapace between what little was left of its bulbous eyes. Was it part of a crest stone, like the ones embedded in the brows of Demonic Beasts?

“So you already though Tomas was going to poison you when you went to him for help?” he asked Monica, furrowing his brow.

“I thought anyone could poison me,” Monica said. “But, of course, you know what that’s like, right, Claude?” she added with a disarming smile.

He had to admit, he did. Ever since he’d been announced as the heir to House Riegan, he’d practically had to sleep with one eye open. Still, though… something wasn’t adding up.

“We can talk about this later,” Dimitri said. “Like I said before we all turned into mice, we need to head back to safety and alert the knights. This situation is too big for us to handle on our own.”

Claude stifled a chuckle. Dimitri glared at him.

“But poor Edel…” Monica muttered, eyes downcast. “She’s still out there… alone, afraid…”

“I doubt that,” Dimitri said. “Perhaps she is alone, but she is not the type to give into fear. Of her, I know that much.”

“Why don’t we put it to a vote?” Monica asked. “Whoever wants to head deeper into Abyss, raise your paw.” She raised her paw. No one else did. She looked from one mouse to the next, growing more dejected with each pair of eyes she met. “Really?”

Cornflower tentatively raised her paw.

“Well, that was pointless,” Dimitri said. “Come on, everyone. We’ve got a lot farther to go now that we’re so small, so we shouldn’t waste time here.”

“Wait, one more thing before we leave.” Claude ripped a strip of cloth from his amber cape and tied it around his waist to form a makeshift sash. “If we make clothes for ourselves, we’ll stand out from ordinary mice more easily. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get anyone’s attention short of yelling in their ear.”

Dimitri nodded. “Good thinking, Claude.” He hurried off to make himself his own blue cloak from his cape; Annette, Marianne, and Monica did the same with strips of black cloth from their uniforms.

“Have you ever seen a more stylish mischief of mice?” Claude asked them as they gathered around him. “Alright, Cornflower, lead the way.”

“Just one moment.” Dimitri headed for Claude’s clothes and burrowed into the bundle of fabric.

“Hey!” Claude shouted, rushing after him. “You can’t—Those are my—”

Dimitri emerged with Claude’s pocketknife, hefting it atop his shoulder. It was noticeably longer than he was tall and its handle was as thick as a tree truck in comparison to his tiny body, yet he carried it with ease. If there was one thing he was known for throughout the academy, it was his prodigious strength; this was the man his peers called the Boar Prince, and being a mouse didn’t change that.

Cornflower gasped at his display of strength, all but swooning over the prince.

“There,” he said. “Now at least one of us is armed.”

Now that Dimitri was sufficiently dangerous, the six of them set off to where they’d came from. Though they were all retreating, having come no closer to finding Edelgard, Claude couldn’t help but think of this as a win for the good guys, if only in a small way. They’d uncovered a new method for the poison to find its target, found a new suspect—even if the source of the information was, well, suspect in her own way—and found the legendary Abyss hidden in the depths of Garreg Mach.

Most importantly, no one had come to attack or imprison them even when they’d all been at their most vulnerable in the throes of their transformations, which meant that these insects had sought targets on their own. And while that was terrifying in its own right, it also meant that Tomas—or whoever the true mastermind was—might not have been aware yet of the four new mice he’d created. And so, in a way, Claude still had the upper hand… or, well, paw.

And that was good, because this was bigger than he’d expected. Perhaps Edelgard’s disappearance hadn’t been the end goal—but rather only the beginning of something much bigger.

Then again—none of that would matter if he didn’t make it out of here.

To lift everyone’s spirits as they retreated back to the surface, Annette began to sing another aimless little ditty. “Rats… We’re rats… We’re the rats… We stalk at night, we prey at night…”

It wasn’t her best work, in Claude’s opinion, but it was surprisingly catchy for something improvised on the spot.

Monica joined in, stumbling a half-step behind Annette’s improvised lyrics but doing her best to catch up. “I’m the giant rat who makes all of the rules… Let’s see what trouble we can get ourselves into…”

“It’s a shame we couldn’t see more of Abyss,” Claude said as the six of them retraced their steps and headed back toward the surface. “You and the rest of your people live down here, right?” he asked Cornflower. “Can you tell me what it’s like? Are there really humans living down here?”

“There were,” Cornflower said. “About a season ago, their numbers began to thin out. It was quite peaceful for us mousefolk, really, at first, but then…”

“…And the population of talking mice boomed, I’m guessing?” Claude asked. He wondered if Tomas had been using this place as a testing ground for his poison… and for new delivery methods. Three months of research had to have yielded some frightening results.

“Well…” Cornflower’s nose and whiskers twitched. “It did coincide with the arrival of some very strange new mice. Strange… violent new mice.”

“Thieves, murderers, and criminals,” Dimitri mused. “The supposed denizens of this place are a violent lot. I cannot imagine that being transformed into vermin has improved their dispositions.”

“If they’re vermin, what are we?” Claude shot back at him.

“Temporarily embarrassed humans.”

“They wear strange clothes, create black fire that burns cold in their paws, and tame rats the way humans tame horses.” There was a faraway, distant tone in Cornflower’s voice. “They sweep through our homes, kidnapping whomever they see fit, slaughtering anyone who raises a sword against them…”

“I’m sorry,” Annette said, resting a consoling paw on the mouse’s shoulder.

“But that sounds more like an invading army than a band of angry criminals,” Dimitri noted. “Strange…”

“You said they appeared a season ago? So about three months?” Claude asked. That placed the beginning of Tomas’ experiments at around the time of the Goddess’ Rite of Rebirth, when Professor Byleth had repelled thieves in the Holy Mausoleum. “Dimitri, wasn’t that around the time Teach and the Black Eagles ran into that Flame Emperor guy and the Death Knight?”

Dimitri nodded. “And just like Professor Jeritza and the Death Knight, it seems Tomas has a sinister alter ego lurking underground as well. Do you think all these things are connected?”

If it was Tomas, Claude mentally added. He kept that remark to himself; if Monica was plotting something, he didn’t want to tip off that he didn’t trust her. Still, though—The rebellion of the Western Church, the attempted theft of the Sword of the Creator, Flayn and Monica’s kidnapping, Edelgard’s abduction, an army of mice slithering in the darkness under Garreg Mach… Was there a connection between all these things?

“I’m not sure,” Claude admitted. “But I can feel a hunch coming on…”

“Stand up straight,” Monica said. “That’ll fix it.”

Though he made sure not to show it, Claude still kept a watchful eye on her. Something wasn’t right here. Had Tomas transformed her, brought her down here, and simply left her unattended, or had she escaped from him? Why had those insects shown up so soon after she’d run into him? Had they been chasing her? Had she known?

A change in the air stung the tips of his whiskers. Something was coming this way.

Dimitri readied his giant knife, holding it out as though it were a lance, and slipped past Cornflower to take the lead. “There’s something up ahead. Can you feel it?”

Marianne nodded. “I can just about smell it. More mice…”

“Do you think they heard our singing?” Annette asked.

“We should sing louder,” Monica said. “Mice are afraid of rats! If we keep saying we’re rats, maybe they’ll run away! Rats, we’re rats, we’re the—”

“Hold your tongue,” Dimitri all but spat at her. “Annette, you and Marianne hang back and protect the others; I’ll draw out their forces.”

“Say no more!” a voice boomed from the shadows, gregarious as it was threatening. “Consider us drawn out, pal!”

The mouse that emerged from the shadows was so large that he could be easily mistaken for a rat, towering over even Dimitri. Gray fur hid scarred skin; matted locks of jet-black hair crowned his head. He was a mountain of a mouse; the only person Claude could compare him to was his classmate Raphael, who held the honor of being the tallest, widest, and beefiest student in the academy. This guy, proportionally speaking, gave him a run for his money.

In his wake was a cluster of about half a dozen much more average-sized mice. Most clutched wooden sticks that had been whittled and shaped into approximations of swords, spears, and axes; some, though, wielded weapons that looked disturbingly more like something one would find in an armory—miniature weapons for miniature paws, but no less sharp.

Claude drew the others closer. “When Dimitri engages with the big one,” he whispered, “we’ll split up and run for it, flanking their sides, and regroup behind them.”

The lead mouse raised his paws like a seasoned brawler. “Sorry the welcome party’s late,” he said. “That’s me. I’m the welcome party. These guys, too, I guess. But mostly me.”

“And you are…” Monica asked, her paw slowly slipping toward the little leather satchel resting on Cornflower’s hip. The little leather satchel that held that mouse’s crude little scrap-metal utility knife…

“Glad you asked!” the mouse answered. Torchlight glinted off the short lengths of silver necklace chain wrapped around his knuckles. “You’re looking at the Diminutive King of Grappling, Balthus of the Ashen Wolves!”

Cornflower clutched at Claude’s arm “Th-The Ashen Wolves?!” she squeaked, terrified. Evidently, the very name was drenched in infamy.

Claude took the opportunity to slip his paw into her satchel and steal her knife, slipping it into his sash to keep it hidden. There was nothing else in the satchel but a scrap of parchment and a small wooden stick.

“Marianne, Monica, we’ll break off and run past their left flank,” he hissed. “Annette, take Cornflower and break through their right flank. Run on all fours; it’s faster.” He was aware that being a mouse had its advantages. Mice were fast in proportion to their size, excellent swimmers, and champion jumpers and climbers. To put those attributes to use, it was all just a matter of throwing out everything he knew and letting his new body make its own decisions.

Dimitri lunged at Balthus, and at the instant the two of them clashed, Claude and the others split their party in half and flanked him and his cohorts. A burst of magic from the left and right—a flash of light from Marianne, a gust of wind from Annette—threw the mice into disarray.

Balthus’ cohorts were slow and sluggish; Claude figured they must have been transformed recently, since they all seemed so unaccustomed to being mice. One lunged at him; he tripped the mouse up, snatched the wooden sword from his hand, and tapped him on the head just hard enough to knock him out. “Thanks! Dimitri, over here!”

Belying his regal bearing, Dimitri fought on the battlefield with the fury and reckless abandon of a wild beast. He attacked Balthus with a savage, forceful swing of his knife; the sharp blade glanced off the chains wrapped around his foe’s knuckles and coughed up a shower of sparks as Balthus’ counterattack nearly knocked him off his feet. He pressed onward, though, ducking under a swing of the giant’s fist and cutting a deep gash in his side.

Balthus retreated, clutching at his side as blood stained his paw. “Could be worse…” A pale glow shrouded his paw; when he pulled his paw away, there was a bloodstain darkening his fur, but no wound. “But don’t count me out yet!”

His next blow only grazed Dimitri’s shoulder; taking advantage of the near miss, Dimitri broke off and barreled through the disorganized ranks of Balthus’ cohorts, scattering them with a mighty swing of his blade. When he returned to Claude’s side, he nodded approvingly at his purloined sword.

“We’ve wasted enough time here,” Dimitri said, panting from exertion, one paw pressed gingerly against his side where Balthus’ knuckles had left a blossoming bruise under his fur. His blue cloak hung from his shoulders. “No need to keep fighting.”

“Hey! Who said we were finished here?” Balthus shouted out, whirling around to face him. “Happy?” he called out.

“No, I wouldn’t say that I am,” Dimitri answered.

A rat slunk out from the shadows; sitting atop it was a pale mouse with a mane that was either scarlet or green. Seeing the giant beast she rode—or rather, catching its scent—overwhelmed Claude’s mind; the idea of running away sounded even more attractive now, even if it meant turning tail and running deeper into Abyss. Even Dimitri braced himself, as though unnerved by the beast’s very presence.

“No, I’m Hapi,” Balthus’ cohort said. Unlike her counterpart, she spoke with a disaffected, disinterested air that masked a restrained frustration.

“You don’t sound very happy,” Annette said.

Hapi rolled her eyes. “Oh, hey, haven’t heard that one before. What do you want from me, Balthus?”

“I think we’re gonna need a bigger welcome party for these guys.”

“Fine.” She let out a long, loud, forlorn sigh. “Here you go.”

Balthus pumped his fists. “Perfect!”

A shout rang through the air, quickly reduced to a strangled gurgle. A flash in the corner of Claude’s eye caught his attention, whirling him around as though a fishhook had lodged itself in his brain and reeled him in.

Marianne had fallen to her knees, clutching her throat; Annette had rushed to her side. And with teeth bared, eyes wild, and black cloak fluttering, Monica had thrown herself at Claude. He threw up his arm over his chest to protect himself as she lunged toward him and felt a short, blunt length of frayed and well-gnawed wood rattle the bone itself in his forearm—

Monica stared down, dumbfounded, at what she’d probably assumed had been a knife when she’d grabbed it from Cornflower’s satchel. Of course, although she’d known there had been a knife in there, she hadn’t known about anything else, nor that Claude had gotten to the satchel before her…

As Dimitri swung his massive blade in retaliation, Monica leaped out of the way, tossing the useless stick aside.

Claude pulled Cornflower’s knife out of his sash. It was a crude, knobbly, nasty thing—no artistry, no craftsmanship—just a length of scrap steel with one edge slightly less dull than the other, with a strip of leather wrapped around the tang to form a makeshift grip. “Looking for this?” he asked, grinning.

“I should have known you’d show your true colors,” Dimitri spat. “You’re behind this, are you not?”

“You can’t even see my true colors, you stupid vermin!” Monica spat in return, running a paw through her probably-crimson hair as if to demonstrate. “Now, as much as I’ve enjoyed hearing the meaningless conjecture of your puny little minds, we’re done here. Next time we meet, I’ll skin you all alive and make you into little coats!”

“There will be no next time! I’ll have your head, von Ochs!” Dimitri snarled, lunging at her. Unarmed and defenseless, Monica beat a hasty retreat—but at the edge of the island of torchlight, her paws brushing against the shore of the sea of shadow, she skidded to a halt. The sound of dozens of skittering claws scratching against stone and a foul, musky stench filled the air as half a dozen feral rats emerged from the shadows in front of her, their eyes gleaming and shining. Dimitri had nearly caught up with her but halted at the sight of the horde, rattled.

The gleam in the rats’ eyes wasn’t natural—nor were the bridles tied around their snouts or the mice clad in black robes and faceless masks and veils riding atop them like mounted soldiers. Some carried silver forks and knitting needles like lances; others were unarmed.

It seemed this was the invading army Cornflower had spoken of. Sure enough, the mouse was shivering with fear, eyes locked on the line of mounted soldiers that had slipped out of the darkness.

Monica leaped onto the back of one of the rats, laughing. “Thanks for calling the cavalry, you witless worms!” she cackled. “Forward, troops! Rip and tear!”

“Okay, Hap,” Balthus said to his partner as the slavering vermin rushed onward. “Now send ‘em back…”

There was another flash of eyeshine in the darkness, followed by a panicked scream; a lithe mass of liquid shadow poured out onto the cavalry line, breaking their formation and scattering them to the winds.

It was an abyssal cat, a mangy, thin cat, a far cry from the plump and pampered cats of Garreg Mach—an old cat, battered and scarred, with ears worn down to notched nubs, whiskers ragged and uneven, the stark outlines of its ribs peeking through its skin, crosshatched lattices of scars strung across matted locks of gray fur—that loomed as large to a mischief of mice as any fearsome monster.

Claude normally had no problem with cats. But if rats were naturally terrifying to a mouse, then cats were something beyond terrifying.

In the face of that terror, he did the only sensible thing—he grabbed Dimitri, called out to all the others to run, and bolted.

Cornflower pulled out ahead, scrabbling for the scrap of parchment in her satchel and unrolling it. “This way!” she cried out, leading the rest of the mice to a crack in the wall. One by one, they slipped through, the abyssal cat gaining on them with every step. As the last of them slipped through the wall into the adjacent corridor, the cat’s paw slithered into the hole behind them, its claws springing out and glistening.

Claude felt his paws slip against slick, wet stone. He and the others had ended up in what looked like an aqueduct of some kind—the hallways was filled with a giant river, with only a thin shoreline of damp stone on either side to walk on.

He sniffed the air and retched, struggling not to let his insides become his outsides. No, this wasn’t a river—it was a sewage tunnel. “Ugh… What an incredible smell we’ve discovered…”

The paw retreated, slipping back into the dark crevice. Balthus, like most of the mice, caught his breath. “Phew… Next time, try summoning something smaller and easier to run away from, Hap,” he gasped, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of rushing water.

“It did its job, didn’t it, B?” his cohort shot back, equally winded.

“I’m sorry for bringing this misfortune upon us,” Marianne coughed, her paw clasped over her snout to block out the stench. She was still gingerly rubbing her throat where Monica had tried to stab her.

There was another flash of eyeshine in the dark; Claude stumbled back from the wall, slipping on the slick stone, as the abyssal cat’s mangy head squeezed its way through the crevice.

Dimitri grabbed him before he could fall. “What the hell—How?”

Annette threw up her paws in surrender. “N-Nice kitty! We’re not food!”

“Cats can squeeze into any opening small enough for their heads to fit through,” Claude said as the cat wormed its way through, its pinned-down ears springing up as its head cleared the hole. He glanced over his shoulder. “But they don’t like water…”

“Claude, that’s sewage—” Dimitri said.

“As if we’ve got any pride left to lose! This way, everyone!” Claude shot back, throwing both himself and Dimitri into what dubiously qualified as ‘water.’ The cat’s claws just barely grazed his back as he fell through the air. The water slammed into him like a mallet to his ribs, cold enough to force the air from his lungs in a stream of bubbles. In an instant, the current swept him away.

Though the clouds began to break and the rays of sunlight beaming to the ground widened, brightening the grand old stone walls of Garreg Mach Monastery, the brightened air brought no brightness to the mood.

Well into the afternoon, Byleth searched for her students, scouring the monastery with just as much fervor as the Knights of Seiros were devoting to their search for Edelgard. It was fruitless; the rest of the Black Eagles seemed to have vanished as well.

“There must be some place we have not looked,” Sothis mused, floating beside her. “The catacombs, perhaps? That is where Flayn was taken. I wonder if the same culprits are behind this…”

Byleth took a deep breath. She typically didn’t feel any emotions very strongly, but right now, an unusually strong panic had gripped her. Her students were her responsibility. She’d protected them all on the battlefield thus far, no matter how dangerous the missions the church sent them on were, and yet here in the safety of this very monastery they had vanished. Anything could have happened to them. They could have all been killed already…

“Are you listening to me?” Sothis pouted. “You will not find the little ones by catastrophizing. Calm yourself.”

“Professor! Professor Byleth!”

Byleth whirled around, shocked and elated (as much as she could be) to hear a familiar voice ringing in her ears. Ferdinand skidded to a halt before her, crouching down and resting his hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. Beads of sweat dotted his glistening forehead, his auburn hair falling lank over his brow; ashy black smears stained his hands. The rest of the Black Eagles lagged behind, each of them just as winded by the time they caught up. That was, the rest of the Black Eagles save for…

“Ah, we should have known they would find us,” Sothis sighed, relieved. “But the sleepy one and the loudmouth are missing. Oh, dear…”

“Professor…” Ferdinand choked on his ragged breaths. “Professor, we have discovered…”

Petra, far less exhausted than her peers, stepped forward and helped him up. “Professor, we are knowing where Edelgard and Bernadetta have been taken. However, we are having bad news as well.”

Hubert opened his mouth to elaborate, but Byleth cut him off. “Where are Caspar and Linhardt?” she asked the rest of the students.

There were a few shared uneasy glances between Ferdinand, Dorothea, Petra, and Hubert before Ferdinand slipped his hand into his jacket and withdrew it with two little grayish-brown mice resting in his palm. As surreal of an answer to Byleth’s question as it was, it was still a definitive enough answer.

“Unfortunately,” Hubert said, his voice grimmer than usual and eyes haunted, “this is not the bad news.”

Byleth took the mice from Ferdinand; the two of them did not hesitate to climb onto her hand, their tiny claws tickling her skin. Telling which was who proved surprisingly easy, as Sothis demonstrated: “Look!” she told Byleth, pointing a finger at Linhardt and Caspar in turn. “This one has a little green mane, and this one has a patch of blue fur on his head!”

Byleth gave Caspar a gentle pat and scratched at the patch of pale blue fur crowning his head with the tip of her finger. “Hey, cut it out!” he squeaked in protest, which confirmed that yes, he was indeed Caspar.

She let out a relieved sigh. “It could be worse,” she told the rest of her students, feeling her still and silent heart lighten. “What’s the bad news?”

“Professor Byleth!”

This time, the voice calling her name belonged to Seteth, and it was far less welcome to her ears. He strode up to her from across the courtyard, a grim look on his severe face. “There you are. You must see the Archbishop at once. I have more bad—” He paused. “Ah. You found the rest of your students, I see. Thank the Goddess. Er…” He knitted his eyebrows. “Aren’t you missing two more?”

Byleth offered him her mouse-covered hand. “Caspar and Linhardt are right here.”

Seteth looked down at the mice, his eyes widening and his lips pursing into a concerned frown. “Oh. Oh, dear. I was afraid of this,” he said with a sad shake of his head. Though clearly perturbed, he seemed much, much less shocked to find two students transformed into rodents than one would expect.

“If I must be honest,” Sothis said, although nobody but Byleth could hear her, “it may be an improvement.” She put her hands on her hips. “I think they are much cuter that way.”

“Follow me, all of you,” Seteth said, turning around and beckoning Byleth and her remaining students to follow him. “Students, explain yourselves.”

As they hurried to Archbishop Rhea’s audience chamber, Hubert recounted what he and his classmates had discovered earlier that morning. Seteth nodded along, though he made a displeased face upon hearing about the various unsavory acts the class had engaged in. Byleth felt sorry for her students; when this was all over, Seteth wouldn’t turn a blind eye to thievery and violence committed outside of the battlefield and would surely have some severe punishments in mind.

“What happened to this Albus von Barlowe?” Seteth asked Hubert.

Hubert’s face was stony, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward. “He’s been fired.”

“That is… not as descriptive an answer as I was hoping for,” Seteth replied, disappointed. The tone of his voice was the same as when Byleth had told him she was “twenty-ish years old, maybe” and had been a mercenary for “ten years, I think” during her first performance review.

“There was an altercation after I had questioned him,” Hubert elaborated, wiping away a smudge of sweat and ash on his cheek, “and he started a fire. There were so many flammable tonics and tinctures in his storehouse that the shop went up like a tinderbox. We escaped. He didn’t.”

Sothis sniffed the air. “No wonder they smell of smoke.”

Seteth looked disappointed. “A shame. I would have preferred to question him myself. But I suppose it could not have been helped.” He shook his head. “Likely he immolated himself to avoid further questioning.”

Hubert nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”

As the group reached the doors to the audience chamber, Seteth gave the students a disciplinary scowl. “Students, you are excused,” he said, motioning to the Black Eagles with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Look carefully after each other.” He eyed the mice sitting in Byleth’s hand. “That includes those two. And Hubert—”

“Yes?” Hubert asked, matching Seteth's glower with one of his own.

“I have already warned you once to stay out of trouble and leave this to the professionals. Do not make me warn you a third time, or I will have you locked in your bedroom with guards posted outside your door until this peril has passed. Or perhaps longer.”

Hubert bowed curtly. “Yes, sir.”

Byleth slipped the mice into Petra’s waiting hand and watched her students leave down the staircase, wishing she could stay with them. Seteth eased the tall, oaken double doors open and ushered her inside.

The Archbishop’s audience chamber was a cavernous room, large enough to hold a grand audience for anything Rhea may have had to say, with a magnificent arched ceiling held up by fluted columns raised to dizzying heights and elegant ribbed buttresses forming an airy space overhead lit by six opulent chandeliers. Tall stained glass windows lined the walls, illuminating the room with brilliant rays of multicolored sunbeams cutting across the intricate patterns of colored marble tiles blanketing the floor.

Archbishop Rhea sat like a queen on a throne. A gown of white, nearly-translucent silk and vestments of deep navy blue and gleaming gold traced a body as perfect as a marble statue. In the sunlight, her golden headdress shone like a second sun in itself. Locks of pale seafoam-green hair spilled down her shoulders and back, framing skin as white as alabaster and a kind, almost motherly face. The full authority of the church seemed to radiate from her very skin to suffuse every corner of the room.

To Byleth’s surprise, Rhea already had an audience. Professors Hanneman and Manuela, the teachers of the Blue Lions and Golden Deer houses; Catherine and Alois, both Knights of Seiros and spearheads of the current search for Edelgard; and Shamir and Jeralt, mercenaries currently under the employ of the Church. They all formed an arc around Rhea, arms crossed, heads bowed, expressions grim.

“Such an ensemble has been gathered here…” Sothis mused, crossing her arms as though to match the intensity of Rhea’s audience. “All this for your lordling? I must admit, she is of some importance…”

Byleth felt a pit form in her stomach as every eye in the room turned to her. The mood in the room was, in spite of the sunlight, gloomy and somber; Rhea wore a dismal, gloomy face.

Seteth relayed to her what the Black Eagles had discovered, and then repeated what everybody else in the room save for Byleth already knew.

“What?” Sothis gasped, shocked. “The other lordlings have gone missing as well?”

Rhea sat back on her dais, head bowed, hands folded in her lap. She seemed far, far older now than her rather young appearance suggested. “I will draft letters to Grand Duke Rufus, Duke Riegan, and other major nobles throughout Fódlan urging them to keep the faith and maintain order while the knights continue their search,” she said. “Seteth, bring me fifteen copyists and prepare our swiftest couriers. With any luck, we will have already found the missing children by the time the letters arrive.”

Seteth gave a deep bow. “It will be done, Lady Rhea,” he said, hurrying out of the audience chamber.

“Catherine, Alois, continue to search the monastery,” Rhea said. “Find an entrance into Abyss by any means necessary.”

The two knights bowed and departed as Seteth had.

“Shamir, Jeralt, keep a watchful eye on the dormitories. I want no students leaving their rooms tonight.”

Jeralt gave Rhea a perfunctory bow; Shamir barely nodded. The two of them followed the knights out of the chamber.

As he passed her by, Jeralt laid a warm, rough hand on Byleth’s shoulder. She could feel his calloused and scarred skin through her coat. A wan, weary smile lit his craggy face. “I’m glad your other students are okay, kiddo. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.”

Byleth nodded and laid her hand atop his. “Thank you, Father. You, too.”

Jeralt wrapped her up in a warm embrace, his scruffy skin tickling her cheek, then pulled away, and gave her another soothing pat on the shoulder. “And if you end up getting turned into a mouse, too…” He gave her a stern, fatherly look, his brow furrowing and the light in his eyes turning hard and fierce. “I’ll be very disappointed in you.”

Byleth wasn’t one to smile—Jeralt had remarked a few months back that she’d never shown much emotion until she’d started working here at the monastery—but she felt an unusual twitch of the muscles in her cheek that she assumed was probably one.

Jeralt smiled back. “See ya round, kiddo,” he said, following the others out of the room.

With no one else in the room, Rhea stood up from her seat and crossed the floor to meet Byleth next. Byleth met her eyes unflinchingly. She had a look on her face that was wistful, bordering on mournful; a small riddle of a smile that never managed to reach her eyes. It was the same face she wore whenever Byleth was around.

“In your letters,” Byleth asked, “are you going to say anything about…”

“Mice?” Rhea shook her head. “I hope I will not have to,” she admitted. “I sent a missive this morning to the Royal Academy of Sorcery asking them to send their foremost expert in transmutation and polymorphic magic to the monastery posthaste. It should reach them by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Should that not work out, I am sure there is nothing in the laws of the Kingdom, Alliance, or Empire saying their rulers cannot be mice,” Sothis commented. “It will simply take some adjusting to.”

“Edelgard is—” Byleth blurted out before remembering that she did not need to speak aloud to respond to Sothis. Edelgard is not going to spend the rest of her life as a mouse.

“I am simply saying, we must remain open to the possibility,” Sothis said. “Imagine if they make a tiny throne for her. And a little table for her to eat at while dining with nobles in her palace. She could drink her wine out of a thimble!”

“Yes, I know,” Rhea answered Byleth, oblivious to Sothis’ voice. “Edelgard is important to you.” She smiled. “I, too, hope for her swift and safe return. I… my bloodline and the Hresvelg family have always had close ties. She is important to me as well.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to find her,” Byleth said, nodding.

Rhea shook her head. “No, my child. I want you to set a good example for your students and stay out of trouble. For now,” she said, clasping her soft, cold hands around Byleth’s, “allow Edelgard’s fate to rest in the hands of the Goddess.”

Byleth nodded, slipped her hand free, and left Rhea with a respectful bow.

“Ah, well, our work here is done,” Sothis said, yawning as Byleth descended the staircase to the main hall. “Now let us sleep and leave the work to the others. Surely the little ones will have been found by the time we wake up.”

Byleth didn’t respond.

Sothis frowned. “You are going to do as Rhea asked you, are you not?”

Byleth shook her head.

Sothis’ face fell.

For Bernadetta, sleep was usually a welcome escape from the anxieties and pressures of the waking world. But though most nights she found sanctuary in slumber, she wasn’t immune to bad dreams; no matter how far away she was from home, her father could still follow her in spirit. Even here, even now.

When she woke up, jolted out of slumber by the rocking of the battered wooden wagon, the image ringing in her mind’s eye was that of her father looming over her, fist bared, knuckles bruised and bloody—(no, he’d never hit her; the worst of the bruises she’d gotten from him were because of the ropes he would use to tie her down)—a crumpled body, bruised head to toe and curled up to fend off their assailant’s merciless blows, lying at his feet. It was a familiar dream, a recurring dream, a dream that left her wracked with guilt every time she woke from it.

At first, the body had belonged to the commoner boy who’d helped keep up the garden at the Varley estate. He had been Bernadetta’s first friend—gentle, trustworthy, gorgeous (from what little she remembered of his face)—until her father had discovered the two of them playing together. The boy had vanished the next day; she’d never seen him again, only heard rumors that he’d been thrashed within an inch of his life as punishment for daring to lay a filthy commoner hand on the daughter of Count Varley.

Since she’d come to Garreg Mach, the dream had changed. Sometimes it was still the boy; sometimes, though, it was the second friend she’d ever made—her classmate, Dorothea Arnault, herself a commoner and thus deemed unworthy of Bernadetta’s company. And although Dorothea had assured her on plenty of occasions that she had dealt with much nastier men than Bernadetta’s father during her time with the opera company, and although Bernadetta had seen with her own eyes that Dorothea could reduce any man who stood against her to a charred corpse with a magic spell, in her dreams, none of that mattered. In these dreams, her father was invincible and his word was law.

This time, silly as it sounded, the battered and broken body had been Edelgard’s.

As the wagon came to a halt just on the edge of the camp, Bernadetta stirred from her restless sleep, yawning, and realized that somehow, she’d ended up resting her head on Edelgard’s shoulder. Embarrassed, she pulled herself away, only for Edelgard to hold her back and steady her.

Her mind and heart raced. She wasn’t in trouble, was she?

“Quite a battle, wasn’t it?” Edelgard asked wryly. “I can’t begrudge you for needing to rest. You continue to impress me, though; I never would have thought we would work so well together.”

Recalling the feel of Edelgard’s arm around her waist and her steadying grip, Bernadetta felt a little more at ease. That moment of almost calm in the heat of battle had been almost like something out of an adventure novel… or a romance novel…

Bernadetta felt an unwelcome warmth rush to her cheeks, and then to the rest of her body. Romance novel? What was she thinking?

“Th-Thanks, u-um… uh… thank you ma’am,” she stammered lamely.

Edelgard let out a shocked yelp as a tiny pink snout wormed its way under her arm and one of the rescued pups rested its mostly-hairless pink head on her lap. She froze, grimacing, as the pup’s tiny pink ears wiggled.

Matthias glanced at her and smiled. “Aw, you made a friend, Edelgard!”

To say the least, Edelgard didn’t seem very happy to have made a new friend. In fact, she seemed to be wondering how best to get the thing as far away from her as possible. “Does it… have a name?” she asked, feigning interest.

Matthias shrugged. “They don’t usually get names until about two weeks old. Any sooner is just setting yourself up for disappointment. You see, pups can’t really do anything besides sit around and need food until then. When do humans name their pups?”

“Soon as we’re born,” Wesper answered from the driver’s seat. “Why don’t you name it ‘Jerry,’ Lady Edelgard?”

Edelgard looked down at the pup and quickly looked away as though she’d stared directly into the sun. “Excuse me?”

“It looks like a Jerry.”

“I’ll, er… I’ll leave that to its mother,” she said, mustering the courage to grab the pup, holding it the way one would hold a slab of long-past-spoiled meat and setting it at arm’s length. Bernadetta was amazed that she’d been so driven to save these pups from Myson and his raiders, considering how visceral her disgust for them seemed to be.

As the wagon came to a stop, Edelgard pulled Bernadetta to her feet and helped her disembark, seeming quite pleased with herself as the mice milling around the ramshackle collection of tents and huts began to crowd around the wagon, a susurrus of murmurs hissing through the air.

“Allay your fears,” Edelgard announced, raising her voice. “Your children are safe and sound, every last one of them!” There was almost a slight hint of a puzzling emotional tremor in her voice.

Edelgard’s face fell, though, when the mice proved apathetic at best about their children; all anyone in the camp wanted to do, it seemed, was ask her how many raiders she’d slain, and the questions only grew louder and more intense when Matthias let slip that she’d fought the Plague Rat yet again and lived to tell of it.

Visibly frustrated, she grabbed Bernadetta and pulled her out of the crowd while Matthias distracted them by spinning up a grand, epic tale of valor.

“Ridiculous,” Edelgard spat once she’d cleared the crowd. “We risked our lives to bring their children back safe and sound and they couldn’t care less. What ingrates! Isn’t that absurd, Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta reflexively nodded in agreement, even though she had no idea why Edelgard felt so strongly about this. Her guess as to why Edelgard was so invested in the pups’ well-being was as good as any.

“We may have failed to collect any meaningful intelligence about our enemies’ plans and capabilities,” Edelgard huffed, fuming, “but at least we brought their children back. And yet they don’t care.” She was right; the mouse pups were still all sitting in the wagon where they’d been left. When one of the mice finally ventured into the wagon and swept up a few of the pups in her arms, it was less like a tearful reunion between mother and children than it was like a merchant unloading supplies.

“Told ya,” Zeke said, sidling between the two of them. “Wasn’t a big deal. We can always make more.” He shrugged. “I made a few more while you were gone, even.”

Edelgard made a face. Bernadetta, equally loath to be privy to his reproductive exploits, nervously sidled away from him.

“Aw, lighten up! ‘S like you two were raised in a cage all your lives.” Zeke narrowed his eyes. “Say, you two weren’t, uh… y’ weren’t pet mice, were ya? Like, pets for humans?”

“Those pups are your progeny,” Edelgard said. “How can you care so little about them?”

“Well, they’re not my progeny,” Zeke retorted. He scratched his head. “Er… maybe some of ‘em are. Hard t’ keep track. Anyway, look. Most ‘a those pups would’ve died anyway. If the raiders wanna take a few, well, as long as they ain’t hurtin’ us…”

“You call yourselves fathers and mothers?”

Zeke raised his paws. “No need t’ get snippy! Just sayin’. Mattie n’ I, we had close to twenty brothers and sisters between the two of our litters, all of ‘em dead from sickness or eaten by rats ‘fore they were two full months old. That’s just how it works. That’s how it works for everyone. Pups are cheap. Who cares if ya lose a few?”

While Zeke spoke, Bernadetta could see Edelgard’s frustration mounting, her teeth grinding, her nose wrinkling, her brow furrowing, her fists clenching. There was a quiet fury rattling her petite, mousy frame the likes of which Bernadetta couldn’t recall ever seeing in her. It wasn’t the kind of fury she demonstrated on the battlefield, but rather a sort of restrained, impotent rage, like a toothless lion pawing at the bars of its cage.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not sayin’ babies aren’t important. They’re li’l bundles of joy, future adults, emergency food sources—”

“E-Excuse me?”

“Well, how big was your litter, then?”

“I’m an only child,” Edelgard replied, a menacing tremor leaking into her otherwise-level voice.

“Oh.” Zeke nodded slowly, almost sagely. “Oh, I get it. The rest of ‘em died, huh?” He reached out to lay a paw on her shoulder. “Sorry, Rusty. Had no idea it’d be a sore spot—”

Edelgard’s eyes flashed. With a swipe of her paw, she knocked Zeke’s aside. “Do not touch me!” she barked, and with a furious swirl of her ragged cloak, she turned her back on him and stormed off.

Zeke shook his head. “Wherever you two come from,” he told Bernadetta, “ya got a weird culture goin’ on.”

“I-I, uh, I guess we do,” Bernadetta replied, mustering a nervous little laugh.

A paw gripped her from the shoulder. “You there!” a mouse called out to her, tugging on her cloak. “Is it true? Did you shoot out the Plague Rat’s eyes?”

Bernadetta turned around and found herself faced with a crowd of mice all staring her down with beady black eyes.

“Did you really blind him?”

“Did the arrows really go all the way through and poke out the back of his head?”

“Did you kill him? Is he dead?”

“I heard you shot four arrows at once! Can you show me how to do that?”

“Did you shoot out one after the other, or both at once?”

“U-Uh… Um…” Bernadetta stepped back, clutching her tail in her paws. Her heart leaped in her chest. The cacophony was so loud that she could hardly hear herself think; it felt as though there were strings all over her tugging her around, puppeteering her body. She could hardly even breathe. “It—It’s r-really nothing special… I-I had help…”

Zeke looked down at her. “You shot the Plague Rat in the eyes? Damn! You should be givin’ us lessons!”

“W-Well, I mean…” Bernadetta whirled around and ran after Edelgard. “Edelgard, wait up!”

She hurried through the camp, panting for breath, and didn’t stop until she’d slipped into a little tent with proper walls. A nice, secluded little place from the rest of the camp and all those needy mice with all their fawning questions.

As chance would have it, Edelgard was already there, poring over scraps of parchment littering a rough wooden table. It took Bernadetta a second to realize that this was Matthias’ tent.

“Edelgard?”

Edelgard stiffened and whirled around as though guilty of being caught somewhere she didn’t belong (a sentiment Bernadetta felt almost constantly). “Ah. Bernadetta. It’s only you.” She turned back to her work. “I thought Matthias might have a map around here.”

“A map? For what?”

“To get out of this place, of course.” Edelgard continued to scavenge through Matthias’ belongings. “We’ve wasted enough time here.” There was an odd emphasis on wasted.

“Can I help?”

“By all means. Many hands make light work.”

Bernadetta joined her, trying hard to ignore anything that didn’t look like a map, like letters and drawings. It felt wrong to be invading Matthias’ privacy like this, but if Edelgard said it was the right thing to do…

As hard as she tried to resist the urge to snoop, Bernadetta found her attention grabbed by one of the scraps of parchment. There was a figure drawn on it in ink. Fine, unsteady brushstrokes formed the shape of a mouse with a long mane of hair and an ornate axe clasped in its paws. She glanced up from the drawing to Edelgard, then looked back to the drawing. It could have been a perfect match.

“Did you find something?” Edelgard asked, her tone sharp.

“Oh, u-uh, um… n-nothing important, I-I guess…” Bernadetta stammered.

Edelgard looked at the drawing and frowned, a puzzled expression on her face. “…Is that what I look like?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“No, you’re much prettier,” Bernadetta blurted out.

“Hmm. I wonder if I should be flattered.” Edelgard went back to her work. Whatever high spirits she’d had before returning to camp had quickly vanished, replaced with a tense, sour attitude.

Bernadetta gave the drawing another passing glance before setting it aside. There were some strange, yet familiar details on it—she realized that they were the ornaments, embroidered patterns, epaulets from Edelgard’s uniform. This mouse even had a half-cape draped over one shoulder. That was odd. Had Matthias drawn this? How could he have known what Edelgard’s uniform looked like? Maybe there really was a prophecy behind all this.

“We have to hurry, Bernadetta,” Edelgard snapped, and in her ensuing panic Bernadetta all but threw the drawing away.

“Right. Right, right. Got it. So—U-Um, I mean, I regret, uh—”

“If you don’t know what to say, try not saying anything at all.” She let out a frustrated sigh and shook her head. “Don’t tell me all these mice have this place memorized.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Soon enough, Edelgard and Bernadetta had sorted through all the papers on Matthias’ desk to no avail. “It’s no wonder these mice can’t stand up to Myson and his raiders,” Edelgard said. “No maps, no schematics, no battle plans. They have no sense of tactics, no sense of their enemy’s movements. They should have been slaughtered to a man a long time ago. Or to a mouse, I suppose.”

“So if they had a map, and we took it, they’d be slaughtered?” Bernadetta asked.

“We must have overlooked something,” Edelgard said.

Bernadetta glanced around the tent for anything that might look like a map. Something was strange, now that Edelgard mentioned it—

From the outside, the tent had one of its sides flush against the wall, but from the inside, all four sides were draped in ragged swatches of canvas with empty space behind them.

Bernadetta crept to the far side of the tent and brushed the canvas curtain aside, revealing a little alcove just like the room Matthias had shown them last night. A guttering matchstick torch, nearly burned down to nothing, lit the alcove up.

Inside was a mound of blankets, a ladder leaning against the wall leading to a hole in the ceiling, and a jagged shard of mirror propped up against the rough stone wall. For the first time, Bernadetta found herself staring into her own eyes and seeing for herself what she looked like.

She reached up and brushed her whiskers and watched her reflection do the same. She twitched her little pink nose and watched her reflection’s nose twitch in turn, then watched her ears flick back and forth. It was so surreal, watching something that wasn’t her mimic her so closely. She knew she was a mouse and she knew that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her (except that since she couldn’t see purple, her hair looked bluish now), and she’d thought she’d gotten used to seeing such a mousy face over the past few days, but it still felt unsettling and wrong deep in her gut to see it with her own eyes.

Unsettling and wrong, but… sort of cute, too, in a way.

Edelgard’s reflection slipped past the frame of the mirror to join hers. Her eyes widened, her face twisting into a grimace. For an instant, she looked almost afraid. “Is that… what I look like?” she asked quietly, somberly, watching in disbelief as her reflection’s mouth moved in time with hers.

Bernadetta nodded.

Edelgard closed her eyes and held her paw to her forehead. “I suppose it could be worse.”

“You’re pretty cute, actually,” Bernadetta said before she could stop herself. “F-For a mouse, I mean. A-And that doesn’t mean you have to like it—If you hate being a mouse, that’s fine, I-I’m just saying—”

“I appreciate the compliment,” Edelgard said, sounding as though she didn’t appreciate it at all.

“I know you don’t like mice or rats,” Bernadetta went on, still utterly failing to stop herself, “so this must be a real nightmare for you—”

“That’s enough.” Edelgard tore her attention away from the mirror and let out a deep sigh. “Mice aren’t so bad. I’ve started getting used to them. It’s just… visceral.”

“I mean, I like mice, or at least I don’t hate them,” Bernadetta said, “and it’s… it’s still hard.”

“But I digress. I don’t see anything of value in here,” Edelgard said, her gaze brushing past the mirror and lingering on the ladder. “Though it seems Matthias has an upstairs…”

“Um, excuse me,” Matthias asked, slipping between the two of them and resting his paws on their shoulders, “but what’re you doing in my room?”

Bernadetta yelped and tore herself away from him, nearly leaping high enough to crack her skull on the ceiling. Rattled, Edelgard pulled herself free.

“Ah, Matthias. No, excuse us,” Edelgard said, maintaining a diplomatic composure. “We were in your tent looking for a map of this area and wandered in here by mistake.” She bowed curtly. “We meant not to intrude.”

So that was what an imperial princess’ apology sounded like. Bernadetta studied it. Excuse me and I meant not to whatever instead of I’m sorry. Maybe it was just that simple. “Yes,” she chimed in, “we’re very, um… E-Excuse us!”

“Oh, you wanted a map?” Matthias asked.

“Yes. It’s nothing personal,” Edelgard said, “just that—”

“For tactics and stuff, right?” His eyes lit up. “Of course! Zeke’s the one who has the map. Me, I’ve got this place memorized,” he said, tapping on his forehead, “but he gets lost going in a straight line. Hang on, I’ll go get him. Feel free to wait around wherever you’d like, except, uh, I’d like you to not go through my stuff, y’know, although with you being the savior and all, I can’t really do anything to stop you if you want to. So I’m just suggesting.”

“We get it. We’ll leave,” Bernadetta said. She wondered if Matthias was embarrassed about that drawing of Edelgard. She knew she would be. “Excuse us for the regrettable trouble, Matthias.”

“No, no, you two can stay here,” Matthias insisted, “just stay put. If you want to, I mean.”

As the mouse scurried out of the tent, Edelgard patted Bernadetta on the shoulder. “That was a very good statement, Bernadetta. Dare I say, you are getting the hang of apologizing like an authority.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Diplomatic, polite, and assertive. You’ve almost got it. Think about it like this—A proper apology is a show of wisdom, not weakness. If you do it right, the person you’re apologizing to will think you stronger for it.”

“Wow. Really?”

Edelgard nodded. As terse and snippy as she’d seemed earlier, she seemed to be warming up again. “The proper mindset is important. Instead of apologizing to assuage one’s anger, you should be apologizing to ensure one’s support and loyalty.” Edelgard gestured lazily with her paw. “Take Matthias, for example. As he said, I am the chosen savior of these people, and if I wished to continue pawing through his belongings, he wouldn’t be able to stop me. However, by apologizing to him and heeding his wishes, I have further ensured that he will be of help to us.”

“So… you apologize to people so you can use them.” Bernadetta felt something twist inside her stomach—an uneasy feeling in her gut.

“It isn’t so simple. There’s nuance to it. A tactical apology can still be earnest, and an earnest apology can still be employed for ulterior reasons. You cannot so easily divide the world into those who wish you well and those who mean you harm.”

Matthias poked his head back in the tent. “Oh, one more thing, Edelgard. Uh… thanks for your help back there.” With that, he vanished.

As she and Bernadetta waited for Matthias to return, Edelgard crossed her arms and idly twiddled a lock of her mane in her fingers, her mood souring once again. Bernadetta kept noticing her glancing backward at the mirror, hastily averting her gaze every time her eyes met her reflection’s eyes.

Edelgard reached up, then winced and lowered her arm, pressing her palm into the injury she’d sustained in her shoulder that morning. Though Wesper had closed the wound and knitted the muscle back together, he was (of his own admission) far less adept with healing magic than with other spells; the wound still ached, it seemed, and made her right arm hard to use.

“Bernadetta?” she asked. “May I ask something of you?”

Taken aback, Bernadetta could only stammer, “Um, c-certainly, Your Highness.”

“My hair is in a frightful state. If you would be so kind as to brush it…” Edelgard looked down as though embarrassed.

“I-I don’t have a brush or a comb, though…”

“Your claws will suffice,” she said, still looking away, spitting out the words as though she couldn’t wait to be rid of them.

“Um…” Bernadetta didn’t know what to do. The last few times she’d tried to pet Edelgard, it had seemed like she’d hated it, so why was she asking for it now? Was it some sort of trick or prank?

“Please.”

Then again, if her princess was asking for it, then how could she refuse?

With a deep breath to quell her nerves, Bernadetta slipped behind Edelgard and slipped her fingers into her mane, butterflies dancing in her stomach. She began to run her paws downward, letting white hair flow between her fingertips like quicksilver.

“Hair like this needs to be taken care of,” Edelgard said as Bernadetta set to work. “Few people know this about colorless hair: it’s very brittle and fragile.”

Bernadetta’s paw came to a dead stop as she met a hard knot in Edelgard’s hair. Edelgard winced. “S—Whoops.”

“A tangle? Only to be expected. Don’t worry. Ease your fingers through it. Slowly—slowly. Think of it as untying a knot.”

With Edelgard’s reassurance, she kept working her way through the tangles and knots. Edelgard sighed and relaxed, bowing her head. “Not bad,” she murmured.

“I’m doing okay?” Bernadetta’s heart leaped.

Edelgard nodded. “Very good. Now if only something could be done about these vexing flyaways,” she added, hefting a long lock of her hair in her paw and brushing the wispy, frizzy strands with her thumb. “I don’t suppose these mice care much for conditioner, but rosemary oil would work wonders for this. You don’t put much effort into your hair, do you, Bernadetta?”

“No,” Bernadetta answered. “Um—I-I mean, no, but I can start!”

Edelgard shrugged. “To each their own. I suppose your father forced all manner of hair care upon you in his quest for the perfect brood mare.”

Bernadetta nodded. More than once back at home she’d entertained the notion of cutting it all off just to spite him, although entertain the notion was all she’d had the courage to do.

“Ah, but the way it feels once you’ve washed your hair and combed it and treated it with lavender oil and styled it however you choose…” Edelgard sighed. “I’m not sure there’s a greater earthly pleasure in the world.”

“I guess so.”

“It’s a matter of choice, I suppose. Sometimes I feel as though my hair is the only part of my body I can truly control…” she mused as Bernadetta kept working.

The more Bernadetta got used to it, the more relaxing it felt to work through Edelgard’s mane. She’d never thought the princess could be so soft, both literally and figuratively.

“Tell me, Bernadetta, does it itch?”

“Does what?”

“All this fur.” Bristling, Edelgard reached up with her uninjured arm and scratched absentmindedly at the base of her ear. It twitched and wiggled in response. “Subtle, yet so omnipresent it’s almost impossible to notice except in its absence… I think I have newfound sympathy for cats, dogs, and all manner of furry creature.”

“Do you want me to—”

“No! No, no, I’ve got it,” Edelgard hastily insisted, as though embarrassed. She reached for her other ear, but found her reach just slightly lacking. The other ear flicked needily. “Er… Actually, I suppose… if it isn’t too much trouble…”

Bernadetta’s heart skipped a beat. “I-I guess… if it’s okay…” She began to gently scratch behind Edelgard’s ear. It was soft and fuzzy with an almost felt-like texture and twitched eagerly with every scratch and stroke of Bernadetta’s thumb across its velvety surface.

With a deep, relieved sigh, Edelgard slumped into her arms, resting her head on her shoulder. “Ah, perfect. How fortunate that you are down here with me, Bernadetta… I think I’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone else.”

“W-What is it about me?”

“You’re known for your active imagination.” Edelgard rubbed her cheek against Bernadetta’s shoulder. The tips of her whiskers brushed against hers with a gentle, electric tingle. “Should you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you.”

“Oh.”

“I could trust you with any number of secrets. ‘That Bernie sure does like to make up wild stories,’ they would say…” Edelgard yawned. “Oh, this is heavenly…”

Bernadetta felt a tingle run down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail as Edelgard slipped an arm around her and began to lightly scratch at the nape of her neck. Like Edelgard had said, there was a sort of all-over itch, something so omnipresent that she couldn’t notice it at all until it went away.

She closed her eyes. Time seemed to stretch on forever. Being pet and brushed and pampered felt so good…

“I can come back later if I’m interrupting anything,” Matthias squeaked.

Bernadetta’s eyes flew open and she all but shoved Edelgard away in her haste, clutching her cloak tighter around her shoulders as though she’d been caught doing something obscene. Matthias was standing in the tent with a roll of old brown parchment clutched in his paws and his older brother looming at his side.

“No, no, we were—” Edelgard self-consciously fiddled with her cloak. “We were just finishing up, weren’t we, Bernadetta?”

“No, no, I can come back and give you a few more minutes—”

“No, that’s fine.”

Matthias shrugged. “Okay. Here’s the map.” He unrolled the parchment and laid it out out flat on his table.

“Y’know,” Zeke said, “there’s nothin’ embarrassing about some good ol’ fashioned grooming—”

“The map, Matthias,” Edelgard reminded him, rapping her claws testily on the table.

Bernadetta and Edelgard peered over his shoulder at it. It wasn’t like any map Bernadetta had ever seen before. Then again, it wasn’t mapping out the shapes of continents and islands and tracing the squiggly paths of borders along rivers and mountain ranges. This was a map of a place built by humans, blown up to the size of a small country to its tiny inhabitants. The borders were shaped by the walls of Garreg Mach, and within them was a labyrinthine network of roads and tunnels marked liberally with notes on secret passages, cracks in the walls big enough to slip through, locations of other camps (most of them X’ed out), and labels such as Here there be cats and To surface—don’t use. Very few passages to the surface didn’t have Xes through them or little skulls drawn around them. Near the center of the map, there was a little circle with You are here written in tiny letters next to it.

“So, you human folks call this place Abyss or whatever,” Matthias said, “but we mousefolk call it the Lair of Wolves, on account of the Ashen Wolves living here.” He pointed to a corner of the map.

“Haven’t heard from ‘em in a while,” Zeke said. “They sorta vanished like a season ago.”

“One of your mouse cities?” Edelgard asked.

“No, that was a human village.” Matthias said. “Nasty humans, too. Hated mice. Good riddance—No offense. Anyway, we had cities here, here, and here once upon a time.” He tapped on several points across the map. “After the End, we retreated from the surface; they were all we had left. Then things sorta slowly fell apart. This one right here, New Mouseburg, ended up with fifteen governors, and they all claimed to be the real governor and kept passing laws making supporting the other governors illegal. Eventually supporting any leader became illegal. Somehow, it’s doing the best out of the three of ‘em. West Mousebrook over here by the river—” He tapped on a sewage canal— “These guys ended up cannibals.”

“An’ we mean all the time cannibals, not sometimes cannibals,” Zeke said.

“S-Sometimes cannibals?” Bernadetta parroted.

“Get to the point,” Edelgard muttered testily.

“And over here you’ve got South Mousehaven, which despite its name, isn’t such a great haven for mice,” Matthias said. “The raiders wiped it off the map. Except for this one. All the other maps, you won’t find it, but this one? Yeah.” He chuckled. “That’s a little mouse humor. You probably don’t think it’s funny because you used to be human.”

“You used to be human?” Zeke asked, his eye wide with bewilderment as he stared at Edelgard and Bernadetta. Matthias cringed, realizing what he’d let slip out.

Edelgard gritted her teeth. “We didn’t ‘used to be human,’ we are human.”

“Awful small n’ fuzzy for a human.”

“Temporarily embarrassed humans.”

Zeke rolled his eye. “Whatever ya say, Rusty.”

“Ahem.” Matthias gave Zeke an irritated, impotent glare, the kind uniquely associated with little brothers who were being humiliated by their older siblings. “Anyway, the raiders sort of set up camp in what’s left of South Mousehaven, I think.”

There was a spark in Edelgard’s eyes erasing how irritable Zeke’s attitude had made her. She leaned in and tapped excitedly on the map where Mousehaven was. “So this is the base of operations for those who slither in the dark?”

“That’s a weird name for them, but sure.” Matthias shrugged. “More descriptive than ‘raiders,’ I guess, but still. I was thinking of calling ‘em craven, horrible, underground dastards. Or chuds, for short. Those who slither in the dark is like… Twsitd, and how do you even pronounce that? That’s a word that looks wrong backwards and forwards.”

“I’m fine with calling them chuds,” Bernadetta said.

Edelgard shook her head. “Hubert and I often call them ‘slitherers,’ but for now, let’s just stick with ‘raiders.’ Anyway, look at this.” She traced a path across one of the winding roads across the map, skipping along a line denoting a mouse-sized tunnel under the east wall of the monastery. “This passage leads just beyond walls. If you take your people through it, you’ll all be free.”

“Uh, yeah, we know that, Rust,” Zeke said defensively. “We ain’t morons. Just that, uh, there’s the little problem of Mousehaven being there. And all those chuds.”

“Raiders. And that brings me to my next point—you’re going to have to crush their stronghold and retake the city.”

Zeke scowled.“Yeah, that’s, uh… kinda obviously why we haven’t done it yet. But I guess Miss Temporarily Embarrassed Human knows best…”

“If you had a more effective fighting force, you could approach the city from the east and west. It’s a classic pincer movement. Divide their offensive force while taxing their defensive force in multiple points of ingress. What sort of fortifications are we talking about? Walls? Fences? Sharp spikes…”

Bernadetta listened with awe as Edelgard interrogated Matthias and devised battle strategies. Eventually, Matthias flipped the map over and started scribbling notes, enraptured. This was Edelgard at her best—intelligent, charismatic, cunning…

“…That is, of course, what I would do if I had more than a dozen peasants with sharpened sticks at my disposal,” Edelgard concluded, pausing to catch her breath. “Did you get all of that? Do you need me to repeat myself?”

Matthias nodded vigorously. “Got it!”

Zeke crossed his arms. “I dunno. Seems like a long shot, Rusty…”

Bernadetta and Matthias both let out a surprised shout as Edelgard’s paws slammed on the table. “My name is not ‘Rusty!’” she snapped at Zeke. “Nor is it ‘Rust,’ or ‘Rustbelt,’ or ‘Von Rustbelt!’ My name is Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to Emperor Ionius IX of the Adrestian Empire, and I expect you to call me by it, Ezekiel!”

“Oh, we got royalty on our paws here?” Zeke made a deep, mocking bow. “My apologies, Your Grand Royal Mouse-Savior Highness. Lemme just put you in charge, Your Human Majesty! ‘Cuz you humans have got such big heads and such big brains—”

Matthias grabbed Zeke by the arm. “Okay, okay, w-we’re done here! Hey, Zeke, why don’t we, uh, just—M-Maybe let’s check and make sure all those pups got to the right mothers?” he stammered as he pulled his brother out of the tent with all his might. Zeke shared a vicious glare with Edelgard as he vanished behind the ragged canvas curtain.

When the coast was clear, Edelgard slumped her shoulders and let out a heavy, frustrated sigh. “I try to help them, and this is what I get. I rescue their children—” She clenched her fists, then forced herself to relax.

“Are you okay?” Bernadetta asked.

“I shouldn’t have snapped at him like that,” Edelgard said, cradling her head in her paws. “I feel so immature…”

Bernadetta wished she could say she’d have done the same thing in Edelgard’s situation, but knew in her heart that if someone kept calling her by the wrong name, she’d just start going by that name to make things easier.

“I-I mean, he was the one calling you names,” she told Edelgard. “I guess he must really have something against humans, huh?”

“I can’t see why he wouldn’t. Mice and humans aren’t known for cohabitating peacefully. Still, though, after we risked our lives, wasted our morning trying to help these vermin, only for—” Edelgard shook her head vigorously, as though trying to rid herself of a troubling thought. “If my father had had the strength to do for me what I did for those squirming, mewling maggots, I would never have been able to thank him enough! But do we get a single word of gratitude from anyone but Matthias? Their parents?”

Bernadetta slowly backed away. “Um… i-is something wrong? Besides the name thing?”

Edelgard took deep breaths, trying to calm herself. “I couldn’t help myself,” she muttered. “I couldn’t let it happen again, I couldn’t let it happen to them.” She clutched at her wounded shoulder, sinking to her knees. “And they don’t care. They don’t care…”

Bernadetta knelt beside her. “L-Lady Edelgard, can I… help?” she asked, tentatively reaching out to her.

Edelgard shook her head, but took Bernadetta’s paw anyway. “It’s alright. I simply lost my composure. Sometimes I… I seem to have trouble being myself down here. Eagles make for poor mice.”

“I mean… it’s not wrong to expect some gratitude, right?” Bernadetta shrugged. “Especially since we nearly died and everything. You really did care about those—”

Everything suddenly fell into place for her; Edelgard’s tense and irritable attitude made sense. Edelgard had said that morning that she’d been mistreated as a child. Bernadetta had assumed that she’d just been lying to make her feel better, because who in the world would be evil or foolish enough to abuse the princess of the Adrestian Empire? But…

“Were you, um…” Bernadetta swallowed a lump in her throat. “Ever, um, kidnapped as a child? Never mind! Forget I asked! O-Of course you weren’t—I mean—You couldn’t have…”

Edelgard’s grip on her paw tightened, seemingly driving the air from her lungs and silencing her. Her pale eyes were downcast, her face glum.

“I suppose it’s only fair that I tell you my story now,” she said, “since I’d coaxed yours out of you earlier.”

“U-Uh-huh,” Bernadetta mumbled shakily, not sure at all how she was supposed to respond.

Edelgard took a deep breath, steadying her shaking voice. “I was perhaps eight or nine years old at the time of the Insurrection of the Seven. You’ve read about it, no?”

Bernadetta nodded. That was when the leaders of the six major noble houses of Adrestia, including her own, had wrested authority from the Emperor. She’d never really thought about it, let alone asked her father about it—she only knew what she’d learned in school.

Her father had been part of it. She only just now realized what that meant. Did Edelgard hate her for it? Was she hiding a hidden well of resentment deep within her for all of the children of those noble families? But that was nearly half of their class!

“Fearing that the instability could lead to violence, my uncle, Lord Volkhard von Arundel, spirited me away to Fhirdiad,” Edelgard continued. “I remember almost none of my time there; it all passed by in a blur. We didn’t return until the noble families had successfully stripped my father of his authority and taken the reins of the empire in a bloodless coup. I returned to Enbarr to find my father a changed man, frail, weak, and impotent, and my uncle the power behind the throne. Him, Aegir, Vestra, and the other great nobles of Adrestia.”

Bernadetta could hardly breathe. She didn’t know how Edelgard felt about her father, but she could hear the bitterness in her voice when Edelgard had described what had been taken from him. Surely she would hate the Varley house most of all for what the nobles had done to him!

“Arundel flexed his newfound political muscles by having my siblings and me imprisoned in the dungeons under the Imperial Palace,” Edelgard went on. Bernadetta was awed by how flat, level, and even her voice was—as though she were recounting something she’d read out of a history book and not something that she herself had experienced. Yet despite her dispassionate tone, Edelgard’s fingers curled tighter around Bernadetta’s paw as though she would fall without something to grip. “Arundel oversaw our imprisonment and had medical experiments conducted on us, all the while taunting my father as he wept for his children—mocking him for his helplessness as we suffered under his very nose.

“He and his underlings—the very same raiders we faced down here—did heinous things to us in search of new heights of power. Our bodies were violated, our flesh torn asunder, the blood of monsters poured into our open veins. Aside from myself, those who did not die went mad. One by one, our numbers dwindled, until I had only rats gnawing on the corpses of my family for company. Ten brothers and sisters, eight older, two younger; of them, I am all my father has left, the last scion of the Hresvelg dynasty.”

Edelgard’s words painted a vivid picture in Bernadetta’s head—a picture of children languishing in a dungeon, chained to the walls, caked in filth, emaciated, their skin covered with tapestries of scars and swaths of bloodstained bandages. It was a picture that made the minor abuses Bernadetta’s father had inflicted on her seem so petty and insignificant by comparison.

No wonder Zeke’s attitude had rankled her. And suddenly, everything else made sense—the way she mumbled in her sleep, the night terrors that ripped her away from slumber, her aversion to dark and enclosed places, her fear of rats…

“That was why I had to pursue those children,” Edelgard said, her voice at last cracking. “The same villainy back then is in play here, and we must put a stop to it. Those who slither in the dark must be destroyed to a man and their monstrosity wiped from this world…”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta croaked, tears welling up in her eyes. She was so sorry that she forgot that she wasn’t supposed to say she was sorry anymore. How could she be anything but sorry that she’d tricked Edelgard into thinking that their suffering had anything in common? “I’m so sorry, Edelgard—I didn’t mean to act like I had it so bad! I’m just—I’m just so stupid and selfish! You must hate me!”

Edelgard drew her cloak tighter, shaking her head. “No, I don’t hate you at all. The truth is… I understand you.”

“You hate me because you understand me?” Bernadetta took a step back. She wanted to put as much distance now between herself and Edelgard as possible. Why had Edelgard let her cry on her shoulder when she had so little to cry about? Why had she spewed such invective against her father when he was a saint compared to the monster Edelgard had suffered under? Why had she pretended to be so sympathetic? Why was she pretending to like her? What was Edelgard plotting? What was she going to do to her? Was this all a sick joke? “Is this revenge? You want to punish me for what my father did to yours? Is that what this is about?”

“No, of course not!”

“Then it’s because you suffered and got stronger and I didn’t! It must disgust you to even look at me—”

“No, I—Bernadetta, what have I told you about not listening to people?”

“You’re lying to me,” Bernadetta insisted.

“Why would I lie to you?”

“You… made me think my pain mattered, but—”

“It does.” Edelgard grabbed her by the wrist. “Bernadetta, listen to me—”

“You made me think you were like me!” Bernadetta ripped her paw free. “I-It’s some kind of joke, isn’t it? ‘Let’s butter Bernie up and laugh at her! Let’s make her think she has anything in common with Princess Edelgard! It’ll be hilarious!’ That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“Bernadetta, please.” Edelgard reached out to her again. “Cease this ridiculous paranoia and take me at my word—”

“I knew it! You think I’m ridiculous!” Bernadetta all but shouted, knocking aside Edelgard’s paw.

“I do not think you’re ridiculous,” Edelgard said. “Listen to me, Bernadetta. You have a spark inside yourself; you need only to set it alight. I want to help you fan that flame; I want you to burn, gloriously—”

“You want to set me on fire?”

“Of course not! Bernadetta, calm down—” She tried to grab her again.

“I-If I’m going to die that’d be the w-worst—p-please, anything but—please don’t burn me alive, Your Highness!” Bernadetta squeaked, her breath short, her chest heaving, her pulse singing in her ears. She couldn’t breathe. Edelgard kept reaching for her. She had to get away—

“Bernadetta, stand still and be quiet!” Edelgard shouted. She wore the same dark expression as Count Varley did—the same baleful glare father had whenever he had to discipline her.

Bernadetta didn’t bother to listen to anything else Edelgard had to say to her. Half-blinded by tears, she threw herself out of the camp and ran into the shadows, hoping she would disappear within them and never be found.

Bernadetta kept running until she couldn’t anymore, until her lungs burned and her chest heaved and her arms and legs stung and her head ached and her heart throbbed. She didn’t care much about where she was going, as long as she ended up somewhere dark and quiet and as far away from Edelgard as possible.

At last, when her paws ached and her muscles burned and she could hardly breathe, let alone move, she collapsed onto the floor, feeling her heaving chest press against the cold stone as she struggled to fill her lungs.

She’d fallen deeper into Abyss, where the lights were sparse and the faint burbling of an underground river echoed in the distance. It was cold down here—cold, dark, and wet. But at least she was alone.

Alone. That was the way things were supposed to be.

She felt so foolish. To think she had been tricked, if only for a few hours, into thinking Edelgard was anything like her. To think she’d let her guard down enough for Edelgard to lead her along, coax her deepest and most shameful traumas out of her, guide her heart gently out of her chest… and then crush it in her fist.

“Oh, Bernie, you idiot,” she told herself, her voice barely a hoarse croak, the words squeaking past the stony lump filling her throat, “what did you expect? She was probably laughing at you this whole time. Even then. She never really believed you. ‘Spooky Bernie has such an active imagination,’ she was thinking…”

Why would I lie to you? Edelgard’s words rang in her ears. The same dismissive, disingenuous, incredulous tone of everyone who asked her why she always assumed the worst. Why would I dislike you? Why would I find you annoying? Why would I want to hurt you? Why would you think that?

Why, why, why? As if there weren't a thousand obvious answers to those questions! Anyone with half an ounce of common sense must have known as well as she did. But to pretend otherwise, as everyone always did—that she was just overreacting, oversensitive, hysterical—they must have derived some sick pleasure from it, just like her father.

And Edelgard wasn't any different.

Bernadetta thought back to the Plague Rat’s attack, the way her heart had leaped when she’d felt Edelgard’s arm wrap firmly around her waist and her paw carefully steady her arm as she’d drawn back her bowstring and taken aim—how good it had felt—and thought back to how nice it had felt to pet her and stroke her fur—how soothing it had felt—and clutched at her chest. It felt as though her heart had been ripped in two.

It had all been a lie all along, hadn’t it? Edelgard had only been drawing her closer to hurt her. She’d even admitted to her face that she lied to people and used them and like the idiot she was, Bernadetta had still trusted her!

That was how it always was, wasn’t it? She wasn’t meant to have friends. She wasn’t meant to have people in her life who cared about her. Most people who did just faked it, and the ones who didn’t were just going to end up like that poor commoner boy, the gardener’s assistant, whom Bernadetta’s father had thrashed within an inch of his life when he’d found them playing together. It was better for her to be down here, alone—better for her, and better for Edelgard not to have a Bernie-shaped millstone around her neck. This was where she belonged.

Why couldn’t she have ended up down here with Dorothea or Petra? They were nice in an uncomplicated way, nice in a way that betrayed no hidden darkness or ulterior motives. Anyone but Edelgard…

She picked herself up, leaning on her bow as a walking stick, and forced herself forward a few more steps before falling again. What was the point, anyway? She didn’t have any destination in mind. She just wanted somewhere to wallow in alone.

She didn’t notice she’d been followed until she was surrounded.

The raiders, those who slither in the dark, the chuds, whatever they called themselves—slipped out of the shadows as she caught her breath, surrounding her in a loose circle, leering at her through beaked facemasks and veils.

With a surprised outcry, she hastily nocked an arrow to her bow and fired, driving an arrow through the heart of one of the raiders; before she could grab another arrow from her quiver, someone ripped the quiver from her back, snapping the leather bandolier slung over her shoulder in two. Panicked, she swung the bow like a quarterstaff, its supple arc cracking her attacker’s skull and flooring him. But by now it was too late—the rest of the raiders were upon her. She struggled as they pinned her down, but she’d exhausted herself so thoroughly now that she could barely even manage to cry out; the bow slipped easily from her paw.

“Is this one of ours?”

“Just take a look at it. You can see it used to be human.”

“What do we do with it? Bring it back to Solon?”

“Sure. It’ll make a fine test subject…”

Test subject. The words rang in her ears. Were these people the same people who’d done such unspeakable things to Edelgard all those years ago? Were they going to do the same thing to her?

Bernadetta thrashed and struggled, desperate to wriggle free of the claws digging into her arms and shoulders. But the more she struggled, the tighter the raiders grasped her, the deeper their claws dug into her skin.

Were they going to kill her? Was she going to die down here—as a mouse, not even leaving a proper body behind? Her father would probably be relieved. The rest of the students at the academy wouldn’t even notice. They’d all think she’d ran away; the idea that she’d be dead wouldn’t even occur to anyone. Maybe her classmates would miss her, but not for long. They would forget about her soon enough. Even Petra, even Dorothea… even Professor Byleth would get over it sooner or later.

But she didn’t want her friends—what few she had—to forget about her. Not anymore.

“Damn, she’s slippery. Hold her down while I put her to sleep!”

Bernadetta grabbed the nearest arm, her claws raking through its sleeve and the fur and flesh beneath, and bit down on it as hard as she could. She felt her teeth sink into the flesh, the bristly fur stinging her mouth, the strong coppery stench of blood deadening her nose.

“Dammit!” her victim squealed, wrenching his arm free. Blood darkened the sleeve of his robe. “Forget Solon! I’ll kill this rodent myself—”

Bernadetta’s bow slipped over one of the raiders’ necks; he let out a strangled scream and jerked backward, flopping like a marionette whose strings had all been cut, as he was yanked into the darkness.

“Biggs! What the—”

Another scream rang out and was just as suddenly silenced.

“Wedge!” The raider holding Bernadetta down let go of her, backing away. “What’s going on—”

There was a flash of steel, and then another; two more screams rang out and two more raiders fell to the ground. The last one remaining whirled around and held out his hand, a magic circle tracing itself in the air as he prepared to fire a spell.

Another flash, and he too fell.

Bernadetta spat out the blood from her mouth and struggled to catch her breath, her chest heaving. “Th-Thank you,” she gasped as the mouse who’d come to her aid tossed the bow back to her.

He had ashen fur and wore a ragged white cape. Long, straight gray-blue hair framed his face, framing icy eyes. There was an intense look about him—like Edelgard’s, but different, darker somehow.

He wiped his bloodied blade on the slain raider’s robes to clean it, sheathed it at his hip, and looked down at Bernadetta. “Well, well, well… What have we here? You don’t look like one of mine…” He took a step closer. Suddenly too frightened to be grateful, Bernadetta backed away as best she could; her arms and legs felt as weak and limp as cooked noodles. “But you don’t look like one of the raiders, either. What’s your name?”

“U-Uh…” Bernadetta faltered, suddenly realizing what a bad idea it was to give her name to a stranger down here. She was the daughter of a count—what if he decided to hold her for ransom or have her assassinated or worse? “I’m, um… Ber—uh, I-I mean, I don’t have a name!”

The mouse raised an eyebrow. “Indeed,” he responded dryly.

Bernadetta nodded. “U-Uh-huh. M-My parents died before they could name me, a-and, uh, n-no one else gave me a name, so—so that’s it for Ber—uh, m-me. That’s it for me. No name. Nothing.”

The mouse shook his head. “I’ve heard my fair share of sad stories down here in Abyss, and yours is no doubt the saddest. Very well, then. I will simply call you, ‘You.’ Do you mind?”

Bernadetta shook her head. “No complaints from me!” she answered with a nervous laugh. Oh, goddess, what was she getting herself into now? She just wanted to wallow here!

“Okay, You.” The mouse offered her his paw. “Come with me. We’ve got food, water, and shelter not too far from here. You look like you could use at least two of those things.”

Bernadetta took it and let him pull her up, struggling to stay steady on her feet. She used the bow to prop herself up. “A-Are you sure?”

“If you aren’t one of those raiders, then there is a place for you in Abyss,” he assured her. “Try to keep up, though. I won’t coddle you if you fall behind.”

“R-Right. Okay.” As the mouse headed off, Bernadetta hurried to keep close to him. As intimidating has he was, he had just saved her life, after all… “Do… D-Do you have a name?”

“Well, aren’t you in luck? I have more than enough names to make up for your lack thereof.” He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder, his piercing gaze rooting her to the spot. “I am the Lord of Abyss, the Savage Mockingbird—Yuri of the Ashen Wolves.”

Bernadetta stood stone still, frozen. Her heart leaped into her throat. There was something intensely familiar about those icy eyes. Something she couldn’t quite place, but that still flooded her mind with—what was it? Fear? Guilt? Shame?

“Well?” Yuri asked, noticing that she’d stopped. “Are you coming along or not? I wouldn’t stay down here alone and unarmed if I were you.”

“Um… y-yes! Yes, I’m coming,” Bernadetta stammered, forcing herself to keep moving.

“So what brings you to Abyss?” he asked.

“I, uh… got expelled from the Academy?”

He chuckled. “No kidding. Me too! So is Rhea turning problematic students into mice again?”

“…Again?” She gasped. “D-Did Lady Rhea turn you into a mouse? Can she do that?”

“Ha! No, no, it’s not her doing I look like a little flour sack with arms and legs. This is… a recent development. Very recent.” He shot her a suspicious glare. “You must have really distinguished yourself for them to have admitted you to the academy without a name.”

“Oh, um—” Bernadetta bit her lip. Stupid, stupid, stupid Bernie! This whole ruse was the dumbest idea you’d ever had! she berated herself.

“‘Bernie?’” Yuri hissed, wrinkling his brow.

Bernadetta let out a shocked squeak and clamped her paw over her mouth. She’d said the quiet part out loud again! “Oh, um—that’s, uh… a-a nickname. Bernie is a nickname. Short for, uh… w-well, nothing, because I don’t have a…”

“If you wanted me to call you that, you only had to ask,” he told her. “It’s a much better name than ‘You.’”

“O-Okay.”

“So, which will it be? Bernie or You?” There was a note of restless irritation in his voice.

There was something almost gut-churning about hearing her name in his voice. “Um… Uh… W-Whatever you want!”

Yuri let out a put-upon sigh. “Very well, You.”

They kept walking, venturing deeper into the gloom of Abyss. Bernadetta tried to recall the map in her head and place herself on it to no avail; all these hallways looked the same, especially to a mouse, and she hadn’t had any direction in mind when she’d ran off.

“Bernie, Bernie, Bernie,” Yuri said, as though tasting her name like a vintage wine. “I’ve decided I prefer calling you Bernie. Do you mind?”

“Wh-Whatever you want!” Bernadetta squeaked, feeling as though this mouse with his dark aura wasn’t the kind of person she should disagree with.

“I knew a Bernie once. Of course, for her, it wasn’t short for nothing. Her father had had the good sense to name her.”

“It’s a c-common name…” Bernadetta felt something in her chest coil around her heart like a snake—like one of those huge jungle snakes that wrapped themselves around their prey and swallowed them whole. What was it about Yuri that had her so nervous? Maybe he was a serial murderer who only killed people named ‘Bernie!’

“And it can be short for a lot of things,” she added, “l-like Bernard, Bernice, Bernadetta—Why are you still talking, Bernie? What’s wrong with you? Just shut up!”

“You don’t look like a Bernard,” Yuri said while she berated herself.

She shook her head.

“Now, as for the Bernie I knew, she was, well, a little clumsy…” He scratched his chin. “A lot clumsy. Terrified of her own shadow. Had a nasty habit of berating herself, too, and always in the third person, as though someone else was speaking through her. I’m sure some people thought she was possessed, especially given her… darker habits. In truth, you and her aren’t so different. But of course, she had a name.”

“What happened to her?” Bernadetta dared to ask.

“…Let’s just say I never saw her again.”

She slowed to a halt. Her feet had grown heavier with every step; now they were so leaden that she couldn’t put one in front of the other if she wanted to. A cold trickle of foreboding ran down her spine. And forget butterflies in her stomach—there was an entire hive of hornets in there!

Why had she ran away from Edelgard? At least she knew Edelgard!

Yuri kept walking until he realized that she’d stopped following him again. “What did I say about falling behind?” he snapped. “I’ve no interest in coddling you anymore.”

Bernadetta tried to breathe. She couldn’t. The lump in her throat had become a stone; she couldn’t suck a morsel of air past it into her lungs. Her head felt light; the shadows seemed to swirl ominously around her.

“What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Yuri said to her, staring at her from over his shoulder.

“U-Uh… I-I’m just… It’s just that…”

A sardonic grin tugged at the corner of his mouth; his shoulders quaked, and he began to laugh. It was a cold and mirthless sound, almost like Hubert’s evil laughter. Was he really a ghost? Was that how he’d slipped out of the darkness to kill those raiders so easily? Was he a phantom, Bernadetta wondered, come to drag her down to the infinite fires of the underworld?

The most Bernadetta could manage to do was take a single step backward, near-paralyzed by fear. She wanted to run away, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. The bow fell from her paw and clattered to the floor as her grip loosened. Yuri’s ghostly gaze pinned her in place.

“I thought you seemed familiar,” he said, turning around to face her. “Of course, though…” He brushed an errant lock of his hair away from his eyes. “It’s hard for us to recognize each other in the shape we’re in, isn’t it?”

He took slow steps toward her. “And I don’t act quite the same way I did back then… although you haven’t changed a bit, Bernadetta von Varley.”

Bernadetta took another step backward and fell flat on her back, reeling. Her head was spinning. Yuri… knew her? From ‘back then?’ But she hadn’t had any friends before she’d been enrolled in the Academy, except for—

Him.

“Are you here to kill me?” she asked, barely choking out the words. Her father had beaten him nearly to death all those years ago—she’d just assumed he’d died from the trauma. Had he returned as a ghost, or had he clung to life driven solely by a lust for revenge? Would he kill her to get back at her father? Or would he kill her because it was her fault for making friends with him in the first place?

Yuri let out a dismissive bark of laughter. “Kill you? If I had any interest in killing you, I’d have done it already.” He patted the sword sheathed at his hip. “You wouldn’t have even noticed this blade sinking into your back until it was too late. Now how about we bury the hatchet?”

“No… no, no, no…” Bernadetta pulled herself back up and dashed away, throwing herself down the hall. “No! Edelgard! Edelgard, help!”

She had to call out for someone, even someone who couldn’t possibly hear her, who couldn’t possibly be there for her, who was so far above her that to expect her to leap in and save the day was delusion. Somebody, anybody—and somehow, the first name that rolled off her tongue was Edelgard’s.

And somehow, against all possibility, Edelgard’s voice rang out in return, echoing down the dark and silent hallway. “Bernadetta!”

“Edelgard!” Her spirits lifting, Bernadetta picked up the pace, her legs burning. Edelgard had tracked her down! She’d been following her all this time!

Edelgard emerged from the shadows, Matthias and Wesper at her sides. Her pale eyes were wide with worry, her axe gripped tightly in her paw, her chest and shoulders heaving from exertion. She held out her paw, inching closer with every step she and Bernadetta took toward each other.

Bernadetta didn’t care how she thought about Edelgard. At this moment, she was infinitely safer to be around than—

She came to a dead stop as a cold length of sharp steel slid across her throat and Yuri’s arm slipped under her shoulder. “Nobody move, or else this mouse squeaks her last!”

Edelgard stopped in her tracks and flung out her arms to stop her cohorts.

Bernadetta struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. “Edelgard, I’m sorry…”

“Edelgard?” Yuri asked. “As in the imperial princess, Edelgard von Hresvelg?” He chuckled. “I hardly recognized you, milady! Honestly, though, I expected you to be a bit… taller.”

Edelgard bared her teeth, which, admittedly, didn’t make her look very threatening. “Let her go.”

“Your Highness, you’re in no position to be making demands,” Yuri replied. Bernadetta felt the blade push against her throat just a tiny bit harder. One little nudge, one subtle flick of his wrist, and all of her blood would be on the outside; goodbye Bernie, goodbye Edelgard, goodbye Dorothea and Petra and Byleth and Alois and her uncle and anyone else who’d ever been nice to her…

“I’ll spare her life if you set aside your weapons,” he told Edelgard, “you and both your friends, and come with me as my prisoners.”

Edelgard glanced at Matthias, slowly nodded, and let her axe fall to the floor, the clatter of its metal head against the stone tiles echoing through the cavernous hall with the finality of a tolling bell. Matthias did the same, letting his sword slip from his paw. Wesper held up his paws to show that they were empty, even though he was a mage and didn’t need weapons of his own at all.

Yuri nodded, but didn’t remove the blade from Bernadetta’s neck. “Kick them over here.”

Edelgard acquiesced, sliding the weapons across the floor to him. Yuri slowly, furtively crouched down, bringing Bernadetta down with him, and let go of her. She hit the floor like a sack of flour, her heart fluttering against her ribs as she took a deep, grateful breath.

As soon as Yuri had stepped away to collect the weapons, Edelgard rushed to Bernadetta’s side. Bernadetta felt her claws slip gently through her fur, tickling her skin, as Edelgard swept her up in her arms.

“Bernadetta,” she whispered, her whiskers brushing against Bernadetta’s cheek, “I’m sorry.” For all her earlier rhetoric, her words did not come from a place of strength.

As they embraced, the hall erupted into chaos.

Wesper threw a blast of fire at Yuri; Yuri dodged it with the ease and grace of a dancer. Matthias scurried forward, catching the hilt of his sword off the floor and striking at Yuri; Yuri slithered easily past the first swing of the elegant blade and parried the second strike with his own sword, sparks flying where the blades clashed.

Edelgard let Bernadetta go, swept up her fallen axe, and pressed onward, the head of the axe tracing glittering crescents in the air. Yuri weaved around each strike like a leaf in a storm, untouchable. Bernadetta half expected the blade to pass right through him without leaving a scratch when—or if—a hit finally connected.

Bernadetta grabbed her bow off the floor where she’d dropped it, only to remember she’d left the quiver behind. At best, maybe if she snuck up behind Yuri she could choke him with it…

Yuri dodged yet another of Edelgard’s strikes. “Adorable!” he taunted her. “Is this the best you can do?”

With a roar of a battle cry, Edelgard swung her axe again; this time, Yuri was a hair too slow. The blade cleaved him in two—

And Edelgard found herself staring down at gnarled length of splintered scrap wood with her axe embedded in it.

Bernadetta blinked and clutched her useless bow closer as though it were a talisman. Had Yuri… vanished? Or… had he never been there in the first place? Was he really a ghost?

A peal of haughty laughter rang through the air, bright and overbearing, as a pair of leathery wings swooped through the air; out of the shadows flew a giant bat, gliding on its spiny wings like a miniature wyvern. On the bat sat two pale-furred mice; the one holding the bat’s reins wore a pale yellow-gray cloak and had a mane of long, tightly-curled golden hair; the mouse sitting on the bat’s back behind its rider was none other than Yuri himself.

“I cannot believe you left me waiting in the wings for so long, Yuri,” the rider pouted as her bat traced a figure-eight around the cavernous hall. “Have you no respect for true genius?”

“I’ve got it, Lady Edelgard,” Wesper said, taking aim, but before he could so much as summon a wisp of flame, the bat-rider flung out her paw and a searing bolt of lightning fell from the ceiling and struck him, throwing him off his feet with a pained outcry. Matthias ran after him.

Yuri laughed. “Excellent shot,” he told the rider.

“Of course,” she giggled. “Did you expect any less from Constance of House Nuvelle, the greatest spellcaster in the land?”

He stared down at Edelgard from over the bat’s flank as it continued its lazy figure-eights. “Well, Your Highness? I’m ready to accept your surrender. Or will the great Constance von Nuvelle of the Ashen Wolves have to smite you first?”

Bernadetta looked down at her bow. What a time for her to be out of arrows…

“Wesper’s okay!” Matthias called out to Edelgard, cradling the mage’s limp body. “He’s just got a bad burn on his side, you know, the kind that makes a really cool scar but takes a long time to heal…”

Bernadetta scurried over to his side.

“Aw, thanks, Bernie,” he said, “I don’t think I can carry him by myself, especially if we’re being chased by the Ashen Wolves—”

“Sorry, I’m not here to help you!” she blurted out, snatching one of the unlit matches from his belt, striking the match’s bulbous head on the floor, and nocking it on her bow. “Stay away from us!” she shouted at Yuri, aiming at the bat and firing. The match sailed through the air, its burning tip flickering and fluttering, and nailed the bat in the wing.

“Bruce, no!” Constance wailed as the bat screeched and writhed, dropping like a stone and hitting the floor.

Yuri gingerly pulled himself out from underneath the bat only to find the edge of Edelgard’s blade at his throat.

“Alright,” he said, looking up at her, “we’ll call it a draw.”

Caspar paced back and forth across Petra’s desk like a caged animal. The sky outside the windows was turning dark; the air inside the room was little brighter. As night began to fall and time inched forward with all the swiftness of a snail, he all but wore a rut in the wooden surface of the desk, frustration buzzing in every little fraction of an inch of his tiny body from tip to tail.

The rest of the Black Eagles filled the room. Petra sat on the side of her bed with Dorothea at her side. Hubert stood in the corner, brooding and nursing his flask of whiskey. Flayn, who followed the Black Eagles with almost religious fervor whenever she was able to slip out of Seteth’s sight, lay on the boarskin rug on the floor, propping up a book of magic so that Linhardt could more easily read it despite his small size. Ferdinand sat at the desk, one elbow resting on the wood surface; one hand cupping his cheek, the other drumming idly on the wood. The place was about as festive as a funeral, and for good reason.

“There has to be something we can do,” Caspar fumed, stomping across Petra’s desk for the umpteenth time. “We can’t just sit around here doing nothing!”

Ferdinand, who was the only person near enough to make out what he was saying, sighed. “I know, Caspar. But what can we do? None of us know how to find Abyss. If Lady Edelgard truly is down there, she may as well be in Duscur.”

“I think the people who live there can find Abyss just fine,” Linhardt said.

Flayn piped up. “Linhardt says that the people who live in Abyss likely know how to get there,” she repeated for everyone else in the room who didn’t have a mouse’s sensitive ears.

“Which brings up a lovely little paradox,” Hubert grumbled. “How do we ask somebody who lives in Abyss how to get to Abyss, while they are in Abyss and we are…” He took another swig from his flask. “Here.”

“Maybe you should, uh, ease up on the bottle, Hubie?” Dorothea commented. “You’re no good to us drunk.”

“Ah, yes—and I’ve been so useful sober.”

Caspar had never heard such a venomous self-loathing behind Hubert’s voice before. The poor guy was taking this situation harder than anyone else. It was kind of his fault that Edelgard was missing and the Empire was in peril, but still… he almost felt sorry for him.

Dorothea held out her hand in his general direction. “At least pass the bottle around so we don’t all have to wallow in sobriety.”

“None for me, thank you,” Flayn said, idly kicking her legs in the air as she turned to the next page in Linhardt’s book.

“Well—we gotta do something!” Caspar said. “Anything!”

“We should leave it to the Knights of Seiros,” Ferdinand said. “They are professionals.”

Caspar rolled his eyes. “We’ve been leaving it to them for, what, a whole day? Shows how much professionals can do!”

“Besides, if anybody sees us out and about,” Ferdinand added, “they will surely lock us all in our rooms.”

Caspar kicked a quill pen off Petra’s desk. The more he fumed, the more frustrated he became. The fate of the entire Empire, his home, the home of everyone else here, was hanging on a knife’s edge—there could be a coup going on at this very minute! A coup by a bunch of tattooed wizards who could turn people into mice! How could anyone be expected to sit tight and stay calm?

“Easy, Caspar,” Ferdinand cautioned, slipping his hand behind him. Caspar could feel by the tips of his whiskers the fingers closing in around him. “We are guests in Petra’s room. Do not make me pick you up by the scruff of your neck.”

“You do and I’ll nibble your fingers off!”

“If Caspar is saying what I am thinking he is saying,” Petra spoke up, “then I am agreeing with him. We cannot be powerless.” She made a fist and held it to her chest, closing her eyes and bowing her head. “When Edelgard becomes Emperor, I am trusting that she will treat Brigid with equality. I do not have such trust in these men who wish to make an ‘Agarthan’ empire. We must find Edelgard and put the stop to their plan.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” Caspar said, glad that at least one other person in this room was done with moping around.

“I suppose we could put our heads together and figure something out,” Ferdinand said. “I do not want these monsters controlling the lives of our people, either.”

“I am not sure what combining our heads would accomplish,” Petra said, nonplussed, “nor how we would be doing that. Instead, we should be discussing what we can do and creating a plan.”

Dorothea turned to Hubert. “Well, Hubie? Any ideas?”

With a put-upon sigh, Hubert corked his flask and slipped it back into his pocket. “First things first, we need to leave the dormitories without getting caught. Caspar and Linhardt can escape this room rather easily, but as for us humans, we’ll have considerably more trouble avoiding Jeralt and Shamir.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a few seconds. “Flayn, how long do you think you can hold a discussion about fish for?”

Flayn’s eyes lit up.

Hubert watched from a crack in the door as Captain Jeralt made his rounds outside, the rest of the class waiting behind him with bated breath. Caspar and Linhardt clung to his shoulder, their claws pricking his skin.

Outside, Flayn skipped up to Jeralt, her emerald hair bouncing with every step. “Hello, Mister Jeralt, sir!”

Startled, Jeralt all but leaped out of his skin. “Ah! Flayn, what are you doing out here? Seteth’ll blow his top if he sees you out here alone.”

Flayn bowed. “My apologies, Mister Jeralt, sir.”

“Please, just Jeralt is fine.”

“I was in my room and saw you crossing the campus grounds and simply had to talk to you,” she said, slowly tracing a quarter-circle around Jeralt so that he would turn his back on the door. “Professor Byleth told me that you enjoy fishing almost as much as she does!”

Jeralt chuckled. “Did she, now? Well, I’ll admit, fishing is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

“Oh, I agree, sir. What is your favorite fish?”

“Favorite fish?” Jeralt scratched his scruffy chin. “Well, that’s a tall order. Cod and whitefish are such staples, especially breaded and fried in oil, but nothing beats seared tilapia on a bed of wild rice with roasted asparagus…”

Hubert slowly inched the door open, careful not to let it creak. Mercifully, Petra seemed to keep the hinges well oiled. The rest of the Black Eagles leaned forward expectantly as the door swung open. “Last one out closes the door,” he whispered. “Go!”

He took the lead, creeping down the paved walkway that lined the first floor of the dormitories; the others followed. All the while, he kept one eye on Flayn and Jeralt’s conversation.

“Oh, yes, tilapia is one of my favorites, too!” Flayn agreed, bobbing her head. “But I think my favorite seafood must be shrimp.”

“Shrimp? Ah, I fear it’s been a while since I’ve been near the ocean.” Jeralt mussed his ginger hair as though embarrassed. “I haven’t had a proper shrimp dish in decades.”

“Oh, I know,” Flayn said. “It is so hard to be so inland; there is simply no way to get fresh shrimp all the way from the coastline to Garreg Mach. There are crayfish in the creeks in Faerghus, but they are just not the same.”

Jeralt shook his head. “Shellfish spoils so quickly. But that’s enough for now; why don’t you head back to your big brother?”

Flayn’s eyes met Hubert’s, searching for approval. Hubert nodded.

“Like Big Brother always told me, shrimp is the fruit of the sea,” she said to Jeralt, increasingly animated so as to better hold his undivided attention. “Have you ever thought of it like that? There are so many things you can do with it!”

Hubert led the others onto the grass, across the campus, up the stone steps. It wouldn’t be long until they were out of Jeralt’s sight, but they needed more time…

Ferdinand stubbed his toe on the step. “Ow!” he hissed. Hubert froze, glaring daggers at him. If looks could kill, his situation would be so much worse, as he’d have a body to hide.

Jeralt began to turn his head in the students’ direction. “You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it…” Flayn listed, hoping to distract him. “There are shrimp kebabs…”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that,” Jeralt said, focusing on Flayn once again. “That’s an Almyran thing, right? They’re always putting their food on sticks.”

Linhardt sneezed. Hubert suppressed the urge to shush him, knowing that any sound he made would likely carry farther than a mouse’s sneeze.

Flayn nodded. “And there is shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo… Pan-fried, stir-fried, deep-fried… There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew…”

The knot in his heart loosening, Hubert led the others onward. Just a little farther, past Byleth’s quarters, and they could slip out of Jeralt’s sight…

“Shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp scampi, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich…” Flayn tilted her head to look past Jeralt’s bulk. “That is… that is about it,” she concluded.

“Wow,” Jeralt said. “I’d never known there were so many ways to cook shrimp.” He patted Flayn on the head. “Now why don’t you hurry back to your big brother before we both get into trouble? I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy here.”

Jeralt began to turn away from her. “Go, go!” Hubert hissed at his classmates, pointing to the alleyway just past Byleth’s quarters. Ferdinand, Dorothea, and Petra ran ahead as silently as they could.

Jeralt’s ears perked up; untold years as a mercenary had honed his senses to a razor’s edge, in spite of Flayn’s laudable efforts to keep him occupied. “Huh? What’s that?”

Flayn grabbed his hand before he could whirl around and spot Hubert and the others. “Wait! Captain Jeralt, I must ask you something! Could you come with me and persuade Big Brother to take me to the ocean? I would be happy to invite you and Professor Byleth; we could cook shrimp in every different way!”

Jeralt chuckled and rested a meaty, calloused hand on her hair, tousling it. “Oh, Flayn, that’s sweet of you. But I’ve got to stay here and keep watch. Can’t have any students wandering the grounds tonight. How about I talk to Seteth tomorrow when this has all blown over?”

Flayn hugged him. “Oh, thank you, Captain Jeralt! I will not forget your kindness!”

“Oh, it’s no skin off my nose. Now hurry back to your room. No dawdling, and no talking to anyone on the way there, or your big brother will have my head on a pike!” Jeralt said as Hubert slipped around the corner and out of sight.

Ferdinand let out a relieved sigh, leaning against the wall. “Phew. I was certain we’d be spotted,” he whispered.

“Yeah, no thanks to you,” Dorothea said.

“Now it is time to be looking for Abyss,” Petra said. “Hubert, are you having any ideas?”

“Abyss is inhabited by criminals and disreputable sorts,” Hubert mused, scratching his chin, “so to find the entrance, we must find a criminal or man of ill repute.”

“Oh, so you’re saying you already know where Abyss is?” Caspar squeaked in his ear.

Hubert winced from the sonic assault, his ears ringing. “Pipe down or I’ll feed you to a cat, Caspar.”

“Well, you’re not going to find Abyss by asking a noble,” Dorothea said, crossing her arms. “Black market traders use it, right? So there might be a merchant who knows.”

Linhardt groaned. “If we wanted to go to the market, we should’ve run the other way!”

A cold hand fell on Hubert’s shoulder opposite the mice. A chill ran up his spine. Dorothea, Ferdinand, and Petra all fell silent, their horrified eyes fixed on him.

“Hi, Hubert,” Byleth said, stepping past him. “Are you all out searching for Edelgard?”

“Of course not,” Hubert said.

“Yes,” Petra said at the exact same time.

“You’re not supposed to be,” Byleth said, crossing her arms sternly.

Hubert slipped behind her and took out his flask. It was a metal flask and had considerable weight to it even though there were only dregs of Adrestian barrel-aged whiskey left in it. He had no qualms about braining his teacher with it if it kept her out of his hair…

“We are sorry,” Ferdinand said, “but Adrestia is our home, and Lady Edelgard is our princess.”

Byleth nodded. “I know. I’m not supposed to be looking for her either. Let’s look for her together.”

Relieved, Hubert slipped the flask back into his pocket.

Chapter Text

Edelgard’s axe ground against the tines of a battered, tarnished fork, the force of the impact rattling her already-weakened arms and making the damaged muscle and sinew in her right shoulder scream and howl in her head. She forced her foe back and panted, chest heaving, as she switched her grip to her left paw.

The Agarthan raiding party had struck just a few minutes after Edelgard had subdued Yuri and Constance; she and the others been just about to head back to the camp with their new prisoners in tow when the enemy soldiers had surrounded them. In any normal circumstance, Edelgard could have easily dispatched all of these enemies herself, but all this nonstop fighting and running was wearing heavily on her; she felt like she was falling apart at the seams—and her allies weren’t in any better shape.

The fork-wielding rat struck again; she barely managed to dodge the blow. Matthias drew back to her side, just as winded as she was. His sword glistened black with blood. Wesper pushed the other enemies back with a wave of fire and fell to his knees, exhausted, his breath echoing under his beaked mask. Bernadetta fired the last of Matthias’ matches from her bow, striking another rat on the shoulder.

Three enthralled rats, towering six inches tall and clutching forks and crocheting needles like lances and spears, approached from the right; three sword-wielding mice clad in Agarthan armor from the left. Nearly a dozen of their dead compatriots lay at their feet in growing pools of blood.

“Looks like you could use some help there!” Yuri called out from behind them as he struggled against the length of twine that Edelgard had used to tie him and Constance together. “Boy, it sure would be great if someone hadn’t tied us up!”

“Turnabout is fair play,” Edelgard shot back at him. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have—”

One of the rats struck; the tines of its fork grazed her side, drawing blood, and ripped ragged holes in her cloak. She felt the silk tear as she pulled herself free and buried her axe in the rat’s skull. The eerie blue light went out of its eyes as it crumpled to the floor.

Constance stirred and woke up, squirming against her bonds. “Yuri? What in blazes is going on here?”

“Oh, nothing, Constance. We’ve been bested by a bunch of idiots and now we’re all going to die. Go back to sleep.”

The enemy swordsmice’ splintered wooden blades cracked against Matthias’ sword as he fended them off. “Y’know, Edelgard, maybe we should let him go?”

“He attacked us first!”

“Yeah, but what if he’s sorry?”

Bernadetta blocked a strike from the remaining rat’s needle with her bow—the only thing it was good for without anything left to shoot. “He’s not sorry!”

“Don’t make me sit here and watch you die like idiots,” Yuri said. “I’ll have nightmares. If they don’t kill me first.”

The rat swung its crocheting needle and struck Bernadetta in the side, shattering her arm and throwing her backward. “It hurts…” she gasped, sprawled on the floor. “Oh, Bernie, you’re not cut out for this…”

In retaliation, Edelgard ripped the needle from the rat, the power of the Crest of Flames surging through her body, and shoved it into its belly with all of her might. The need’s hooked end ripped through the rat’s flesh, running it through.

Pandemonium engulfed the battlefield. Edelgard was tired. Every part of her burned, down to the tip of her tail. Her ears rang. She could scarcely hold her breath in her lungs. What little color she could still see was bleeding out, gray fog creeping at the edge of her vision. She’d reached the limits of her stamina.

Wesper patted her on the back. Some of the burning aches faded away, but not enough. “That’s it for me; I’m spent. Maybe we should…” He glanced at Yuri.

“Yes, please, listen to the man in the creepy bird mask!” Yuri shouted out.

“I heard you were stubborn, Your Highness,” Constance spat, “but this is ridiculous! I could kill all these vermin with a single spell!”

A wooden sword cracked against Edelgard’s left wrist, shattering it; as the white-hot pain coursed through her veins, her axe fell to the floor. She hastily swiped it back up with her right paw and narrowly blocked the next strike before it could fracture her skull. She was being whittled away bit by bit; every battle she’d fought down here was part of a war of attrition—and she was losing.

“Edelgard, help me! Help me!” Bernadetta cried out. Fear seizing her, Edelgard rushed away, following the sound of her voice—

Right up to where Yuri and Constance were sitting.

“Oh, thank the Goddess you came!” Yuri said in a perfect imitation of Bernadetta’s voice, looking up at her with bright eyes and a wide, innocent smile. “Some axe-wielding buffoon tied me up!”

Edelgard clenched her fist, ignoring how much it hurt. If anything, the pain made her even angrier at Yuri.

“Edelgard, behind you!” Matthias shouted.

Edelgard glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of one of the Agarthan swordsmice barreling toward her with Matthias’ shining steel blade in hand. “Fine,” she spat, slicing through the twine with her axe, “but if you try anything—”

The world lurched and spun around her; she felt like a fish on a hook. The next thing she knew, she was sitting atop a pile of loose twine where Yuri had been just an instant ago and he was standing in front of her.

Yuri swatted aside the enemy mouse’s blade, knocked it back, and flung out his arm, pointing a single finger at it. A pinprick of light flashed at the tip of his claw and with a flick of his wrist, his arm jerked upward and a blast of light caught the mouse dead in the chest. The mouse fell to the floor with a smoking hole in its armor.

“Alright! This party’s getting crazy!” Yuri crowed. “Let’s rock!”

Constance traced a magical seal in the air; as the third rat lumbered toward her, a jagged spear of ice burst out of its mouth, stained red with blood. She laughed as the rat fell to the floor.

Yuri dispatched the remaining two mice just as swiftly as the first, sending their lifeless bodies to join their fallen brethren on the floor. He wiped his bloody blade on his white cape. “There we go. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Constance hurried to the side of her beleaguered bat steed and gently stroked its fuzzy head between its large, pointy ears as it stirred. “Oh, Brucie, are you okay?” she cooed, rubbing the bat’s wing where Bernadetta had shot it. “Is the boo-boo that mean little mouse inflicted on you all gone?” She shot a pointed glare at Bernadetta. The bat responded with an eager squeak and a hyperactive twitch of its ears, poking out a long pink tongue and licking its rider’s cheek. “Oh-ho-ho-ho! I was worried about you, too…”

“I’m starting to think you like that bat more than me, Constance,” Yuri said to her as he knelt at Edelgard’s side and channeled a soft wave of healing magic through her aching wounds. “This doesn’t count as trying anything, does it, Your Highness?”

Edelgard rolled her eyes and held her tongue. This man was almost as insufferable as an ally as he’d been as an enemy.

“Of course I like Bruce more than you,” Constance said. “At least he’s quiet.”

In chess, a player could find themselves in a situation where no matter what move they made, their situation worsened. Not a checkmate, but something worse: a game that was not yet lost, but that had no remaining path to victory. The only recourse the player had was not to move at all—but of course, that, too, meant defeat.

To Hubert, of course, to stand still and do nothing was unthinkable. And with his classmates and his teacher both at a loss to find a way into Abyss, for Edelgard’s sake, he had no choice but to make a losing move.

Solon, the agent in the guise of the monastery’s librarian Tomas, was the only other Agarthan in the Officer’s Academy he knew of, and there was a chance—slim as it was—that in the schism that had divided those who slither in the dark, he was still on Edelgard’s side. If Solon was an ally, and Hubert turned to him and blew his cover in front of his classmates and his teacher, then those who slither in the dark would be effectively removed from Garreg Mach, friend and foe alike—and if he were an enemy, then he would have to be removed for Edelgard’s safety.

Either way, Hubert’s thoughts turned to Enbarr. Thales, whose surface-dwelling disguise was that of Edelgard’s uncle Lord Volkhard von Arundel, was the true seat of power behind the emperor’s throne. Hubert didn’t have the luxury of assuming which side of the schism Thales was on, either. If Thales had decided to throw aside his darling Flame Emperor, he could already be making his move to have a new heir named for the throne. On the other hand, if Thales was still an ally, then the Agarthans on the other side of the schism must have been swiftly plotting to remove him as well, since he was a sizable barrier in their takeover of the empire. Perhaps he’d been transformed into a mouse, too (the image of that fiend reduced to a particularly hideous rodent was a bright spark in the gloomy clouds roiling in Hubert’s mind—hopefully somebody would feed him to a cat or drown him in a basin or simply trample him underfoot).

Either way, Edelgard’s plans were already in shambles. Edelgard could be rescued—Hubert had to believe that—but everything would have to change. Worst case scenario, she would be fighting her war to save Fódlan from the tyranny of Crests and stifling dogma on two fronts, with the Agarthans nipping relentlessly at her flanks all the while—best case scenario, she would be fighting that war alone against the overwhelming might of the status quo, without the Agarthan’s secret connections and advanced technology to lean on.

And it was all Hubert’s fault.

He had been overconfident. He had thought he could hide Edelgard for a day and root out the culprit before any lasting harm could be done. He had thought wrong, and that lapse in judgment had cost Edelgard dearly. But the final cost, when all was said and done, was yet unfathomable.

He didn’t realize how hard it was to breathe until Dorothea laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hubie, are you alright?” she asked.

Ripped from his reverie, Hubert forced himself to fill his burning lungs. Dorothea was probably the only commoner in the academy save for Byleth who was unafraid to lay so much as a hand on him. She’d long since disabused herself of the notion that noblemen deserved any unique respect, having broken too many noble noses in self-defense during her time as an opera star. While Hubert bristled when Dorothea spoke too familiarly with Edelgard, he knew that Edelgard looked at her and saw a vision of the world she wanted to create—one where noble blood meant nothing and nobody was raised above another simply by the accident of their birth.

It wasn’t a world the Church wanted. It wasn’t a world the Agarthans wanted. It was Edelgard’s dream, and like all dreams, it was fading into an ephemeral seafoam as all dreams did upon waking.

“I am fine,” he lied as Dorothea took a seat next to him on one of the benches lining the Black Eagles’ classroom.

“You are looking trapped in your thoughts,” Petra told him, sitting at Dorothea’s side.

“The expression is ‘lost in one’s thoughts,’” he told her.

Petra knitted her eyebrows in concern. “You are not looking lost, though. You are looking trapped.” She mumbled something in a slurry of her native tongue and Fódlanish under her breath, as though searching both languages for the correct word. “And we need you bringing your thoughts out of your head, not letting your thoughts drag you into your head.”

“None of us have a more complete picture of what’s going on here than you, Hubert,” Byleth said, her steely gray eyes boring into his. “You have to share with us anything you know that might lead us to Abyss.”

Hubert nodded. That was right. And that brought him back to where he had started. Would he betray Solon? Of all the losing moves at his disposal, was it the one that staved defeat off the longest?

A loud knock on the door to the classroom disrupted Hubert’s thoughts before they could lead him down another spiral. As Byleth crossed the room to answer it, Hubert lifted his hand to his forehead, hoping his classmates would assume he had a headache from his drinking and think nothing else about it. With Edelgard gone and himself to blame for it, he felt anchorless, rudderless, adrift… weak. He wondered how she must feel without him. He could only hope that she would be strong where he could not be.

Byleth cracked the door open enough to speak to whoever was on the other side but not enough to let them in. It was Jeralt, fortunately; the father and daughter conversed in hushed tones. A few snippets of their exchange drifted through the room—he and Shamir had noticed that several rooms in the dormitories were empty and had gotten worried. Evidently, Jeralt was satisfied to glimpse the remaining Black Eagles over Byleth’s shoulder and decided that as long as she was supervising them, they were safe here.

Hubert had no faith in the Goddess, but if he did, he would thank her it had been Jeralt and not Seteth, who would have certainly refused to put up with this tomfoolery.

“As I was saying…” Byleth said, returning to Hubert.

Hubert made his decision. “The librarian may have information about Abyss,” he said to her, sitting tall and alert.

Edelgard would do anything, sacrifice anyone, to meet her goals. He would do as she would; if Solon had to meet a pawn’s end, then so be it.

“Linhardt says that Seteth censors the library, though,” Ferdinand said, consulting with the mice resting on his shoulder. “Er, yes, Caspar, that is correct. If there was anything about Abyss in there, Linhardt would have certainly read it already.”

“Seteth censors the library,” Hubert clarified. “He has no power over the librarian. Tomas is a bit of an… iconoclast, deep down.”

Byleth nodded sagely. “Tomas? His quarters are near the knights’ hall. Let’s go.”

She led her students out of the classroom and into the rapidly-darkening courtyard. Each student hugged their cloaks tighter as though hoping they could will themselves to blend in with the encroaching shadows engulfing the monastery. Hubert followed close behind, drawing up the collar and hood of his cloak, mindful of what Flayn had told him the other night about how his pale face stood out in the darkness like a full moon.

This was a dangerous needle to thread, but of all the losing moves he could play, it was perhaps the closest one to winning… if he could pull it off right. He would just have to keep a firm grip on his conversation with Solon. If he played his cards right, the power to preserve Solon’s cover or strip him of his mask would rest solely in his hands.

A large shape came barreling toward him in the darkness; thinking it was a knight, Hubert readied a weak flicker of dark magic—not enough to kill or injure, only to stun—but as the figure came closer, he lowered his hand and dispelled the faint embers of black sparks that had been gathering around his palm.

The man who emerged from the shadows before him was Dedue Molinaro, vassal to Prince Dimitri and the only student on campus who towered over Hubert. In almost every way, he was Hubert’s opposite: he had a dark complexion and brown skin whereas Hubert’s skin was pale as milk; he was strong and sturdy whereas Hubert was decidedly lacking in those respects; he had cropped silver hair pulled up and away from his face in a stub of a ponytail whereas Hubert’s longer black hair spilled messily over his forehead.

“Excuse me, Hubert von Vestra,” Dedue said with a curt, polite bow.

The rest of the Black Eagles paused, hesitant.

“Yes?” Hubert said tersely, not knowing what to expect. Dedue was a man of few words even among his own classmates, and until now none of those words had ever been meant for him. He wasn’t sure what to make of him. Many people assumed ill of a man from Duscur at first glance, especially after what had happened to the Blaiddyd royal family. Hubert knew better than to cling to such preconceptions and prejudices. He had just as much mistrust for Dedue as he did for any other stranger.

“May I speak to you in private? It concerns our respective lords.”

Hubert gave a sidelong glance to his classmates and his teacher, nodded, and let Dedue lead him aside behind one of the tall rosebushes partitioning the courtyard. He didn’t feel threatened by Dedue; the bigger they came, the easier dark magic shredded their defenses, and Dedue was as big as they came. Certainly, Dedue could flatten him with a single blow, but Hubert was sure he was quicker.

“I wish to accompany you on your search,” Dedue said.

“Search for what? I am simply getting some fresh air,” Hubert answered.

“Do not play dumb. Your reputation as a man of cunning precedes you.”

“And why search for Edelgard? She is of no import to you.”

“I am searching for Lord Dimitri.”

“And why do you think our paths cross here?”

“I spoke to Sylvain, who heard from Ashe that His Highness was last seen with Lord Claude. I also spoke to Mercedes, who heard from Lysithea that Lord Claude had been searching for Lady Edelgard. Perhaps if we find one of them, we will find all of them.”

“Is that so?” Hubert eyed Dedue. “I see you couldn’t convince the rest of your class to join you,” he noted.

Dedue shook his head. “I bade them to remain so that if I am caught, they will not be implicated in my actions. I considered enlisting Lord Claude’s retainer, but I am not sure he has one.”

“Oh, you don’t know who his vassal is?” Hubert responded with a sly smirk. In truth, he didn’t know either. While Dedue made clear his devotion to Dimitri as much as Hubert made clear his to Edelgard, nobody among the Golden Deer openly played the same role for Claude. Keeping his vassal hidden was exactly the kind of trickery one would expect of the Riegan heir; through observation and guesswork Hubert had narrowed it down to either Lorenz Hellman Gloucester or Hilda Valentine Goneril, but the former was a bloviating idiot and the latter was a spoiled, lazy brat—unless that was exactly what Claude wanted him to think of them.

“But I digress,” Dedue said, clearly wanting to end this train of thought. “Let us set aside our differences and find our lords together.”

The last thing Hubert wanted was to bring an outsider into this. “No,” he spat, scowling, “let us not. Now I would advise you to hurry back to your room before somebody suspects you of committing an atrocity.”

Dedue responded before Hubert could turn his back on him. “I owe everything to His Highness. I must find him no matter the cost. I know you are just as loyal to Lady Edelgard.” As deliberately venomous and insulting as Hubert’s retort had been, Dedue’s own response betrayed no sign of even the slightest irritation or discomfort. “It must weigh heavily on you, too,” he called out after him, barely raising his voice, as Hubert made to rejoin his class.

Hubert found himself hesitating in mid-step. He cursed this maudlin sentimentality that seemed to have infected him since Edelgard’s abduction and put his foot down. “Excuse me?”

“I was in the greenhouse when His Highness went missing. You made a decision that separated you from your liege as well. I know it must torment you. If you truly care about her, you must carry great pain in your heart tonight.”

Hubert glared at him. It felt strange to have to look up at somebody for once. Dedue stared back with a perfectly composed face. His demeanor was an invisible armor in itself: Axes, arrows, swords, spears, cruel words, harsh stares—all of it bounced off his chest without leaving a scratch.

“Another set of skills will not hurt,” Hubert decided, beckoning Dimitri’s vassal onward as he rejoined his classmates on the other side of the rosebushes. If nothing else, he could comfortably hide behind Dedue and use him as a human shield if things got ugly, which he couldn’t say about any of his much-shorter classmates.

Claude had to tell himself that plunging into a canal of frigid, rank sewer water was preferable to being eaten by a cat if only so that he’d eventually start believing it.

His claws slipped against the slick stone shoreline of the sewage canal, desperate to find purchase and escape the torrent that had swept him downstream. The roar of the current drowned out all but the faintest overtones of his classmates’ outcries as they followed him deeper into the bowels of Abyss. Even keeping his head above the water was a challenge. Brackish water, tasting as vile as its stench implied, trickled into his mouth and nose despite his best efforts to keep it out.

He struggled to anchor himself to the land, forcing himself up out of the water. The cold air settled on his fur and skin. The water tugged ferociously on his legs and tail, then half-heartedly, slowly relinquishing its grip as he heaved himself onto dry (or dry-ish, at least) land like a fisherman’s prized catch.

He spat the water from his mouth, coughed it out of his lungs, and sneezed it out of his nostrils, chest heaving, then reached back into the water, keeping three paws perched on the shore. A paw curled around his wrist, claws pricking against his skin, and he yanked it out of the water like a fisherman’s prized catch.

Annette was next, and together she and Claude scurried downstream and fished the others out of the water. Soon enough, everyone was accounted for—Claude and Dimitri, Marianne and Annette, Balthus and Hapi, and Cornflower.

Dimitri shook himself like a wet dog, spiking his sodden blonde fur. His soaked, slicked pelt made him look shockingly scrawny. To say the least, he looked like a drowned rat. “‘Jump in the river’, he said… ‘Mice are champion swimmers,’ he said…” he grumbled.

Claude coughed and tried to dry off. It felt like his fur was carrying half his weight in water. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Dimitri gritted his teeth and scowled at him. “I’m never trusting another one of your harebrained schemes again,” he said.

“You’ve never trusted any of my harebrained schemes before.”

“Then I’m not going to start.”

Annette struggled to suppress a snicker. “Sorry, Dimitri. You just look cute when you scowl.” She was right. Having buck teeth that pronounced really limited how threatening someone could look.

“Well, it wasn’t a total loss,” Dimitri said, eyeing Balthus and Hapi. “At least we can interrogate our hostages now.”

Balthus decisively drove his fist into his palm. “Now you’re speaking our language! Alright, Hap, time to interrogate our hostages!”

Hapi cast a disinterested glance at the other mice, then looked pointedly at Balthus. “Uh… who are our hostages, again?”

Balthus chuckled incredulously. “Uh… these guys?” He waved a paw at Claude, Dimitri, and the others.

“What?” Dimitri bristled. “We’re not your hostages!”

“Sure you are! We captured you, you filthy surface-dwellers!”

“No, we captured you! You’re our prisoners, you sewer rats!”

Hapi crossed her arms. “Well, B and I are the only people with weapons here, so…”

Dimitri wrinkled his nose. “Excuse me? We’re all unarmed!”

Balthus raised his fists. “King of Grappling, remember? And now you’re missing your fancy pocketknife…”

Clearing his throat, Claude stepped in front of Dimitri. “Ahem. My pocketknife, actually, and, well, never mind. The point is, we’re all equal here, so why don’t we all sit down and talk things out like civilized people?” He glanced at Cornflower, who seemed a little less than thrilled to have been tarred with the ‘people’ brush. “Or civilized mice?”

Cornflower stepped back, clasping her paws over her chest. “Please, sir Ashen Wolf, do not harm us! I have four children in my burrow; their names are Stuart, Timothy, Mattimeo—”

Unmoved by either mouse’s plea, Hapi grabbed Marianne by the arm and roughly tugged her to her side. “Oh, hey. Now we have a hostage.”

Marianne may have been a wallflower, but she wasn’t as defenseless as she often came across. Claude had seen her overpower men twice her size with desperate bursts of hidden strength, like a cornered mongoose. Summoning that rare burst of strength, she punched Hapi square in the stomach; Hapi doubled over and took a staggering step backward, her grip loosening just enough for Marianne to slip free.

Marianne’s freedom was sadly short-lived, though—Balthus immediately took hold of her.

“No, no, no,” he said, curling his paw around her fist. “That’s the worst grappling form I’ve ever seen! You’ve got to make a fist like this,” he told her, “with your thumb on the outside between the first and second knuckles on these two fingers. Otherwise you’ll break your thumb. And rotate your wrist like this or you’ll end up with a boxer’s fracture. I think. I mean, it’s a mouse wrist, so—”

“Really, Balthus?” Hapi coughed. “She’s our prisoner!”

Balthus took a step back and proudly put his paws on his hips. “Alright, little lady. Gimme your best shot!”

Bemused, Claude looked haplessly at Dimitri. Dimitri looked haplessly back at him.

“That’s okay…” Marianne said, drawing back. “I’d rather not punch you at all, sir…”

“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be from House Nuvelle, would you?” Balthus asked her. “Anyway, I just got the greatest idea! Why don’t we all sit down and talk things out like civilized people?”

“Mice,” Claude corrected. “I’ll go first. I’m Claude of the Golden Deer house and this is Dimitri of the Blue Lions,” he said, confident that first names alone wouldn’t give away their royal status. There were lots of Claudes and Dimitris in the world. “These are our classmates, Marianne and Annette. And, uh, Cornflower, of…”

“Just Cornflower,” Cornflower squeaked nervously.

“Golden Deer and Blue Lions, eh? Why didn’t you just say you guys were students?” Balthus asked. “Hapi and I are with the Ashen Wolves. We’re students, too!”

“Ex-students,” Hapi interjected, rolling her eyes.

“What are the Ashen Wolves?” Annette asked.

Balthus furrowed his brow. “You mean you haven’t heard of us? We’re the secret fourth house of Garreg Mach!”

“For expelled students,” Hapi said.

“Well, if it’s a secret, is it any wonder we haven’t heard of it?” Claude asked, excited to learn more about Abyss and its inhabitants. “So expelled students get sent down here… Does Archbishop Rhea turn them into mice as punishment?”

Balthus laughed. “Nah, this is a recent thing. Y’see, a few months back, someone slipped some weird poison that turns people to mice into Abyss’s water supply.”

“We caught on pretty quickly,” Hapi said. “Or, well, Yuri-Bird and Coco did. Lots of the other people who live down here weren’t so lucky and got, uh… mouse’d.”

“…And eventually, you and your friends succumbed to thirst and met the same fate,” Dimitri finished.

“Us? Nah.” Balthus laughed. “Plenty to drink down here! We’ve been living on nothing but beer for the past two months! At least, I think it’s been two… It’s all sort of a haze…” He scratched his forehead as though to soothe a headache… or, rather, a hangover.

“It was pretty fuckin’ sweet,” Hapi said with a wistful little grin.

“Then these weird insects bit us, and now, well…” He gestured to his mousy physique, which was the furthest thing from that of the skilled brawler he acted like.

“Now we look like little sacks of flour with stubby arms and legs,” she interjected, scratching behind her ear.

“I see,” Claude muttered darkly. “So Abyss must be a test run for what they plan to do on the surface—they’ve tried poisoned water first, but now they’re creating a plague of locusts that will sweep through the land, leaving nothing but confused rodents in its wake.” But why? As he’d told Hubert earlier, polymorphus muridae didn’t get rid of people so much as it severely inconvenienced them. What kind of motive could Monica and her friends possibly have? He supposed that as a method of disrupting a state and subjugating it, it would be a rather bloodless alternative to war… Was that what this was about? Taking over Fódlan by turning everyone in it into mice?

“Basically, we’re at war with a bunch of mice who turned us into mice,” Hapi said, “and the dastards only now managed to finally cut us down to their size.”

“But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the fight,” Balthus bragged. “The Almighty King of Grappling never gives up!”

Dimitri glanced at Cornflower, who Claude noted still seemed quite uncomfortable to be in the presence of the Ashen Wolves. “And it sounds like the innocent talking mice down here have gotten caught between this little fight.”

“Huh?” Balthus wrinkled his nose. “What innocent talking mice?”

“Innocent talking mice,” Yuri mused, pausing to lap up water from a thimble held between his paws. “I’d never thought there were so many diverse factions of magic mouse people living here in Abyss.”

Edelgard studied her newfound allies—for the time being, provided they didn’t try anything funny—as she held Bernadetta’s head in her lap and burrowed her claws into her companion’s tangled mop of violet hair. The six of them—Edelgard and Bernadetta, Matthias and Wesper, Yuri and Constance (and Constance’s bat, Bruce)—settled down for the night in the outskirts of a human-sized underground village Yuri called Chrysalis Row, huddled in the shadow of ramshackle huts built between two canals of running waste water to make peace. This was the lair of the Ashen Wolves, the so-called ‘fourth house’ of Garreg Mach Monastery’s Officer’s Academy. The shadows writhed and quivered as formerly human mice scurried across them; though Edelgard thought she was doing much better with mice, seeing the shadows move filled her with a cold, spine-tingling unease that didn’t subside until those shadows popped up to say things to Yuri like ‘Hi, boss, great to have you back!’ and ‘Hey, boss, thought you were a goner for sure that time!’

The ragged band of mice that had once been the humans living in Abyss were orphans, vagabonds, fugitives, exiles, heretics of all stripes, all clad in rags torn from their clothing and huddling for shelter in the vast colossi of their former homes.

“If there’s one bright side to all this,” Yuri said as he led the others into town, “it’s that scarcity isn’t so much of a problem anymore. Two dozen of us can sleep on a bed made for one now.”

“Although Yuri, like all sensible people, sleeps alone with a knife under his pillow,” Constance chimed in.

“Well, now that you’ve told them, I’ll have to hide it somewhere else.”

“Wow,” Matthias said to Yuri. “Who’d have thought you’d find out that not all mice are disgusting vermin once you’d been turned into one yourself?” As usual, he took something that on paper sounded bitter and sarcastic and said it completely earnestly and without an ounce of offense meant.

“Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against mice,” Yuri grumbled, “just as long as they stay out of our food. Fresh bread is hard enough to come by down here without you folk nibbling at what little we have. We’ll stop trying to kill you on sight when you find your own meals. Deal?”

“Um… I was thinking we could work out something a little more cooperative than that?”

Yuri glared at Matthias. “What, are you their leader?”

“Um… Not really, officially. No, I guess. Sorta. We kinda don’t…”

Edelgard nudged him in the ribs with the haft of her axe.

“Yes,” he said. “De facto. I guess. Maybe. No one else calls themselves leader, so hey, why not?”

She shook her head. Matthias was helpless.

“Well, then, maybe we can work something out,” Yuri said, though his tone suggested he highly doubted that. “Constance, let’s check in and see if Balthus and Hapi have gotten back in yet. I want to know how much intelligence they’ve gathered on these raiders that have been troubling us.”

“I told you,” Constance retorted, “if you wanted intelligence gathered—”

“Yes, yes, I know, I should have sent you. Are you going or not?”

“Very well, Lord Yuri. Let us see what… intelligence our cohorts have gathered.”

She and Yuri headed into town with their bat trailing behind them. A ragged chorus of mousy cheers rang out from the village. Edelgard felt almost envious, somehow.

“Wow,” Matthias said, beaming. “I can’t believe it. Barely a few hours and you’ve already made peace with the Ashen Wolves. The Ashen Wolves! You’re really going above and beyond the whole prophecy thing.”

“Me? I think this is more your doing, Matthias.”

Matthias grinned sheepishly. He might have blushed underneath his fur. “It’s really—I mean, I’ve got you and Bernie to thank for this. These people have been stamping us out since seasons before the raiders showed up. And now they’re… sorta friends, I guess?”

“Don’t get too used to it. Even the closest of allies can turn on each other. Different factions simply have different needs, but occasionally, their goals align. That’s it. Get what you can from them now and prepare to fight them again later.”

“Okay. Kind of a mood-spoiler.”

“I prefer to think of it as managing expectations.”

“So, uh… that counts for optimism, I guess.” Matthias shrugged, but his good mood quickly reasserted itself.

Wesper went on ahead. “I’m gonna see what they’ve got for food here.”

Edelgard watched the turncoat mouse walk by. He still wore his beaked mage’s mask, which made him look very suspicious (although to be honest, if she had a mask to wear down here, she would wear it all the time, too). “Matthias, follow him and make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

Matthias nodded. “With pleasure, boss. Seeing Yuri and his people living down here like little humans…” He sighed, but it was a wistful, almost happy sigh. “I mean, I’ll be honest, I’m not too fond of humans. No one really is. I mean, they treat us like…”

“Rats?”

“I was gonna say mice, but yeah, humans don’t really see a difference; we’re all dirty little pests to them. But when we had cities like theirs, and we didn’t have to worry about food or traps or slithery raider chuds or being decimated by cats… I gotta imagine things were pretty good, then. Kinda like how they’re pretty good over here.” He wrung his paws. “This is the kind of life I want mousefolk to have, y’know?”

“Hmm.” Edelgard nodded noncommittally.

“Which reminds me, uh…” Matthias sheepishly scratched his ear. “About how Zeke treated you when I, uh, accidentally said you and Bernie used to be human…”

“Like you said,” Edelgard said, “you’re not too fond of humans. I imagine your brother isn’t, either.”

“And it sorta ties into… I’m sorry you didn’t really get the hero’s welcome you expected when we rescued those pups. I should’ve warned you. I kinda tried but didn’t really get the right words out, you know? Most of those little guys are gonna die before they’re weaned anyway. We just… try not to get too attached until then.”

Edelgard bowed her head. That was the natural order, she supposed. Prey animals bred like… well, rabbits, stockpiling a surplus to ensure their bloodlines carried on through even the harshest times. She shouldn’t have been so sentimental about it. Even talking mice were still mice.

“Zeke and I were born to two different litters. He was one of thirteen; I was one of six. All the others died within a month. That’s the odds we’re living with. Things were better when things were more peaceful, when we lived more like… well… you human folks.” He shrugged. “Zeke accepts the world like it is. Me, I just can’t stop thinking about the way things ought, though, or what my dad said things used to be like, at least. A world were we’ve got enough food and only a few people get sick and massacres don’t happen and rats don’t eat us and pups live long enough for us to give ‘em names…”

Edelgard nodded. She understood—she saw the world as it ought to be, too, without class divisions, without nobles lording over commoners based solely on the misfortune of their birth, without stifling religious dogma or obsession with Crests… Matthias’ vision may have been a thousand times smaller, but it was the same as hers, just as the tiny cities his ancestors had built were human cities writ small.

“Y’know, to be honest… the whole thing about escaping the monastery and making new cities, all this prophecy and these daring escapades between good and evil, I dunno if ol’ Zeke even believes a word of it. I think he just tells my stories to the pups to humor me. Like he just doesn’t want to upset me. I know that’s hard to believe, ‘cause he’s always upsetting me just for kicks, but maybe it’s a line he won’t cross.”

“It seems to me he enjoys embellishing your stories enough.”

“Yeah, I know, but I kinda think, I dunno, maybe he likes it down here?”

“Or he can’t imagine anything better,” Edelgard offered. “Not the way you can. He has his dreams, but whenever he faces the truth of just how wide the gulf is between those dreams and reality, he digs in his heels and turns his back on changing society. We are not so different, Matthias. I want humans to live in a better world as well—one where life is less senselessly wasted.”

“Guess you’re, uh… anxious to get back to the human world and make those changes, huh.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I, uh… I hope you stay down here long enough to help us.” Matthias smiled at her. “Pretty, uh… disappointing end to the prophecy, otherwise.”

Edelgard tried not to betray any stray thoughts on her face or with her body language. She had plenty of sympathy for the mice down here, but this wasn’t where she belonged and this fight was not her fight. She had to return to the surface and regain her humanity before all her painstaking planning fell apart. Although, if she could deal a death blow to those who slither in the dark down here and save Matthias’ mousefolk in the process, who was she to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Bernadetta briefly stirred and rolled onto her side, but did not fully awaken. Yuri’s triage work had healed the last vestiges of her injuries, but it took a skilled bishop to dispel severe fatigue, and it came as no surprise that after running for hours straight, Bernadetta was as fatigued as they came. Edelgard was, too; she still wasn’t sure herself how she’d managed to catch up to Bernadetta in the first place.

Edelgard still couldn’t believe she’d snapped at her like that; as soon as Bernadetta’s fear-widened eyes had met hers she’d realized who she must have sounded like. Stand still and be quiet. With those five words, she may as well have threatened to have Bernadetta tied to a chair. For someone who prided herself on her charisma, her ability to convince anyone to follow her, such a gaffe was inexcusable. This situation, as much as she’d adjusted to it, was still wearing down already-frayed nerves; telling Bernadetta about the experiments had done her psyche no favors.

Her fur itched needily, and she found herself wondering if Bernadetta would be too afraid of her now to pet her anymore. She pushed aside those thoughts and tried to ignore them. To think that some part of her wanted to be pet! She was almost disgusted with herself.

Bernadetta stirred again, her eyes flickering open for the briefest of seconds. “Excuse me,” Edelgard told Matthias, pulling herself up and keeping a firm grasp on Bernadetta’s waking body. “Go on ahead without me and see what intelligence you and Wesper can gather.”

Matthias’ eyes lit up. “Yes! Perfect idea, Edelgard! I’d love to know how they protect this place against the chuds. And maybe I can find us more medical supplies, or a place to rest for the night. Oh, and maybe they’ve got a better map of this place than we’ve got! One with more, uh… exits? In case you want to leave?”

“And perhaps you can solidify that burgeoning peace treaty of yours,” Edelgard reminded him. “But keep on your guard. Old rivalries die hard.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll make you proud, Edelgard!” Matthias cried out as he ran off, leaving Edelgard and Bernadetta alone.

As soon as Matthias had left, Bernadetta woke up with a jolt, startled. “E-Edelgard! You—you came back for me?”

“Of course. I couldn’t have you getting hurt…”

Bernadetta grabbed her by the arm. “You have to—” Her eyes darted madly, like those of prey searching for its predator. “You have to help me. Yuri—He wants to—He’s gonna k-kill me…”

Edelgard drew her closer. “Don’t worry about him.”

“N-No, no, you don’t understand; he’s really gonna—” Bernadetta shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut and balling her fists. “Years ago, a—a long time ago, h-he almost died because of me—a-and now he’s back and he wants revenge! Please, don’t let him get me!”

“Shh. Calm down.” Edelgard stroked her fur, hoping it would salve her hysteria, and led her into an alcove where they could talk in private. “Yuri only threatened you to get to me. You have nothing to worry about. He won’t so much as lay a finger on you. I won’t let him.”

Bernadetta pulled away. “Oh. Oh, no. You want me all to yourself, then? Is that it? Why? So you can kill me first?”

“Bernadetta, no—if I had any interest in killing you, I’d have done it a long time ago!” Edelgard felt the words rush out of her mouth bereft of her usual composure. She couldn’t hold them back, couldn’t measure them, couldn’t trim away the rough and ragged edges of her fatigue and frustration. “You’re not allowing yourself to understand me. Just take a deep breath—”

“No.” Bernadetta shook her head. “No, no, of course not. I’m the one who never understands. I’m the one who’s always wrong…”

“Bernadetta, please, once more, listen to everything people say to you; don’t just fill in the blanks with your own preconceptions and wild conspiracies! Just listen to me and think your way through these absurdities!”

“No, Edelgard, you listen to me! B-Because you don’t listen to people, you just badger them into thinking the way you want them to think! I-I mean… oh, you’ve done it now, Bernie…”

Edelgard drew back. “I—I don’t do that…”

“See? There you go again!” Bernadetta clutched at her head as if in pain. “Everything I think is always wrong, and just when I think I understand people it all falls apart, and no one ever takes it seriously! No one ever thinks about how hard it is! Everyone just says, ‘Bernie, just don’t think like that!’ They’re all the same! I’m sorry, but if it was so easy for me to not think the way I do, I just wouldn’t! No one understands, no one wants to understand—they just want me to think properly and act normal, and they think if they just tell me often enough…”

“Bernadetta, for once in your life, calm down!”

Bernadetta trailed off, letting an uncomfortable silence fall in the little alcove as she choked back tears.

Edelgard took a deep breath, trying to calm her fluttering heart and steady her racing pulse. Racing, always racing, measuring out hours’ worth of heartbeats in minutes—she hated it, that sound, the sound of her life spilling through her fingers. She’d lost control, of her words, of her thoughts, of her self, of every part of her life. Here she was, crawling through the sewers, tired and aching, naked save for a ragged scrap of silk tied around her neck, begging a girl frightened out of her mind to just calm down when she couldn’t even ask the same of herself. She couldn’t control herself anymore, Edelgard realized; on the other hand, Bernadetta had never been able to.

“I… I didn’t—I mean… I…” She searched for the right words, but somehow, nothing was coming out right. She thought she knew what to say—she always knew what to say—but somehow it all fell apart when she said it. It never came out meaning what she meant. She’d never felt such a disconnect between her mind and her mouth even when she’d been blatantly lying to people. This wasn’t lying. This was trying to tell the truth and failing.

How could she expect Bernadetta to understand her? Bernadetta was right. She still didn’t understand her. She barely even understood herself anymore. Inwardly, she cursed her weakness, cursed her frailty. She’d always been willing—not just willing, prepared—to sacrifice anything and everything for the sake of her goals. Her health, her happiness, her own humanity, all prepared to burn at the alter of her beliefs. Here, everything she’d been prepared to sacrifice had already been taken from her and she had nothing to show for it.

Bernadetta looked down at her. Edelgard only just realized that she’d fallen to the floor like a knight swearing fealty. It was an image as pathetic as she felt. Here she was again, falling apart, quivering, shivering, forgetting herself, forgetting the eagle within herself, letting the mouse take control.

“Is this what you’re afraid of?” Edelgard asked, looking up at Bernadetta. “Do you think this can kill you? You’re all I have down here.”

Bernadetta knelt hesitantly at her side. Edelgard could tell from the tension in her legs and shoulders that she was ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. “Then you… you don’t hate me?”

“No.”

“Or… resent me for what my father did?”

“If you were more like your father, I might. Thankfully, you two are nothing alike.”

Bernadetta let out a small, nervous laugh. “And you don’t want to kill me or hurt me or…”

“No.”

“Why’d you come back for me?”

“Well, I’d told you my darkest secrets,” Edelgard said, feeling a faint self-deprecating smile tug on her cheeks in spite of everything, “so I couldn’t let any enemies capture you and interrogate you.”

“Oh.” Bernadetta looked away and bowed her head. “I guess…”

“And… I owe you. I didn’t think much of you when you first came to Garreg Mach, but you’ve become something incredible since then. You saved me from that bandit a few days back…”

“I-I didn’t even mean to shoot him in the head; it was an accident…”

“You pulled me out of the way when the Plague Rat attacked us…”

“W-Well, I was just s-scared out of my mind…”

“You’ve been a staunch ally to me down here…”

“When I’m not running away from you…”

“You’re an incredible archer. You’ve become so much more than your father’s small imagination could fathom.”

“I… I guess…”

Inch by fraction of an inch, though, despite her protests, Bernadetta leaned closer and closer to Edelgard. Edelgard felt a flash of cold, not painful but rather almost ticklish, at the tip of her snout as their noses briefly brushed against each other and recoiled with a faint yelp of surprise.

“O-Oh, I…” Bernadetta stumbled backward, clasping her paws together. “I, um. I-I don’t know what… I didn’t mean to…”

Edelgard felt a rush of warmth rise to her cheeks and blossom in her chest. Her heart skipped a beat. “No need to apologize,” she insisted. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

Bernadetta nodded sheepishly.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Edelgard said. “It’s… been a stressful day. I haven’t been able to compose myself. But what I said to you, then and now, was inexcusable. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Well… everyone makes mistakes.”

“I suppose. Even me.” She pulled her cloak over her shoulders. “I wasn’t so different from you once. When I returned from the dungeon, I was… well, I wasn’t quite myself. I had to sleep with a lit candle at my bedside all through the night. I would panic if I found my back against a bare stone wall. Rats, well… the less said, the better. I barely left my bedroom, trading one cage for another, and refused to stay long in any room that didn’t have windows. I didn’t trust people; I couldn’t speak to them…”

Bernadetta sniffled. “Please, Edelgard… no more. If you really think telling me how bad you had it will make me feel better about what I went through…” she croaked.

“That isn’t what I meant,” Edelgard said. What she meant to say was that she understood what it was like to be a recluse, what it was like to fear the outside world, that even if she didn’t experience it in the same way, she still understood crippling fear. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to say it that simply.

Instead of saying anything at all, then, she gently took Bernadetta’s paw and pulled her closer.

Bernadetta was silent for a while, but eventually curled up by her side. “Were you… really afraid to leave your room?” she asked her.

Edelgard nodded. “I was. Eventually, Hubert had to drag me out. Can you imagine him trying to convince someone to go outside and get some sunshine and fresh air?”

Bernadetta laughed. “No way.” She sighed. “It’s… funny to imagine you like that. Especially since you’re so… not like that. At all. You’re nothing like me anymore.”

“Maybe you need someone like Hubert in your life.” It was the only answer Edelgard could give. She couldn’t talk about swallowing all that pain, building a wall around it, shutting it all out until she’d almost forgotten it was there in the first place. It wasn’t a skill she knew how to teach, nor was it a skill anyone deserved to learn. It was a burden she bore so that no one else would have to.

Perhaps it was better that Bernadetta had turned out differently. The only thing that held Edelgard together was ambition; at least Bernadetta could live comfortably as a recluse, even if her mind was her worst enemy.

“I don’t know… maybe someone nicer?”

“Maybe.”

Bernadetta sighed. “Maybe I missed my chance. I’ve only ever had one friend, and…”

“Your father didn’t approve.”

“Almost killed him.”

“And that’s why you think Yuri wants you dead.”

Bernadetta nodded.

“Well… that’s actually not entirely unreasonable,” Edelgard said.

“Oh…” Bernadetta huddled under her cloak. “Oh, no…”

Edelgard had thought Bernadetta would have felt better about having one of her paranoid ideas validated instead of dismissed. “Is it possible that he could have forgiven you?”

Bernadetta’s eyes brightened, as though she’d never thought of that before, but whatever hope she’d felt was immediately quashed. “It’s… no, no, it’s impossible.”

“Is it more impossible than being turned into a mouse? Or less impossible?”

There was a brief smile that flashed across Bernadetta’s face. “Uh… less impossible, I guess.”

“Or, in other words, possible.” Edelgard felt her own spirits lift. “Now consider this. Yuri is right to want revenge, but wouldn’t it make more sense for him to seek it on your heartless father and not you? You never laid a finger on him.”

“Um… I did almost cut his nose off with a pair of garden shears once.”

Edelgard struggled to stifle a yawn and ultimately failed. “That’s a petty thing to want to kill someone over.”

“Yeah, but lots of people kill people over petty things.”

“You’re not wrong.” Edelgard almost laughed. “To be truthful, I don’t trust Yuri either. He’s mercurial.” Mercurial, impossible to pin down. Like Claude, only… darker, less predictable (the idea that someone could be less predictable than Claude almost made her worry). “I give you my word as heir to the Empire that if he means to harm you… he will find me standing in front of you.”

“Really? You mean it?”

“I mean it. Absolutely.”

Bernadetta pressed herself closer. Edelgard felt her cheek rest on her shoulder and her whiskers tickle her chest; she felt her breath hitch when Bernadetta’s tail slipped itself lazily around her own in a loose coil, but as startled as she was, the warm and soft fur weighing on her side kept her surprisingly calm.

She raked her claws gently through Bernadetta’s fur, catching her fingers in snarls and tangles of her hair, and Bernadetta sank into her embrace. Edelgard felt her breath on her shoulder and her whiskers brushing her fur.

“Thank you, Lady Edelgard,” Bernadetta said. “I feel a little better now.” As she snuggled closer, her paw slipped gently under Edelgard’s chin; Edelgard leaned back, lifting her head, as a welcome shiver ran up her spine and her tail twitched happily.

Edelgard couldn’t remember warmth like this, a warmth that numbed the ache in her heart and the throbbing of freshly-exposed emotional wounds. No one else ever had the excuse to get close enough to her, save for the occasional triage situation on the battlefield—Dorothea or Linhardt or Professor Byleth laying hands on her to heal a sprain or fracture or shallow wound—not since…

She leaned in and let Bernadetta’s nose tickle hers again. The last time she’d felt warmth like this, she realized, her siblings had still been alive. And she’d never needed it so badly back then. Not like she had since then.

“El,” she murmured, half-unconscious, her eyes burning with fatigue, her eyelids leaden from weariness, the tension that kept her from falling asleep melting like spring snow. She had a vague inkling that it might not be the best idea to fall asleep here, but she had nothing left to keep her awake.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing. Wake me if you need me, Bernie.”

It was a chilly night; with nothing but a rain cloak over her nightgown, Hilda Valentine Goneril shivered from the brisk northern wind blowing through the monastery and cursed that she had to be out and about at this hour. She was the laziest girl in Leicester, and her only ambition was to grow up to be the laziest woman in Leicester, but even so, she still had her principles—and that was why she was standing out in the cold with Lysithea tonight.

Lysithea eased open the door to the monks’ quarters, gently pressing on the oaken surface to push the door slowly enough that its hinges wouldn’t squeak. “Nobody’s forcing you to come along,” she told her.

“Don’t you give me that,” Hilda snapped as she and Lysithea crept over the threshold into the hallway. As if she could let another one of her classmates go missing after Claude and Marianne had disappeared! Sure, she desperately wanted to be in her room right now, curled up under a warm duvet and sleeping this whole crisis away, but when she’d caught Lysithea sneaking out of the dormitories, what choice had she had?

“What? It’s true. I don’t need your help walking across the monastery like I’m some child,” Lysithea said, pouting.

“Even if you were an old hag, I still wouldn’t let you go out alone,” Hilda said, closing the door just as gently behind her. “This whole situation is such a pain. Do you really think it’s true?”

“Do I think what’s true?”

“The rumors. That whoever’s been kidnapping students is doing some magic and turning them into mice.”

Lysithea held the book clutched under her arm tighter, her pale pink eyes scanning the floor. “…It’s possible.”

Oh, great. So Claude really had gone and gotten himself turned into a mouse! Honestly, if anyone asked Hilda, he deserved it. And maybe it was for the best—maybe that would teach him to stop sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. And he’d probably make a cute mouse.

“There’s really a spell that can do that?” she asked.

“Yes, but it’s difficult magic, and highly regulated, too. Only a few people in all of Fódlan have been allowed to learn it.” Lysithea crept up to Tomas’ room and knocked gently on the door. A few seconds passed with no response.

“He’s probably sleeping,” Hilda said, grabbing Lysithea’s arm. “Let’s try again tomorrow.”

“No. This book is due back today.”

“Due b—It’s not even a library book!” she hissed, remembering in the nick of time to keep her voice down. “What’s he going to do? Charge a late fee? If he is, I’ll pay it for you! Let’s just go back to the dorms. I’ve got some new nail polish we can try out…”

“I can’t let him think I’m irresponsible,” Lysithea retorted, and that was the last word she would hear on the subject. She knocked again.

“Can we leave it with someone else and have them deliver it?” Hilda asked, eyeing the halls. She could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. If anyone caught them out here, they’d be dead! Seteth would nail their asses to the wall! He might even expel them, or worse, make them have to clean the stables as punishment!

“This is part of Tomas’ personal collection. It’s a banned book, so if we let anyone else have it, they’ll just bring it straight to Seteth and have it burned.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” She crossed her arms. “What’re you gonna do if he’s asleep, then—”

Lysithea crouched down and raised a finger, conjuring a single tongue of violet-black flame that sprouted from her fingertip like a claw, teardrop-shaped like a candle’s flame but as hard and unwavering as a knife’s blade; with slow and deliberate movements, she inserted the flame into the door’s lock. Violet sparks shot silently from the hole it bored through the metal, dancing on Lysithea’s pale hand.

Hilda clasped a hand over her mouth. “What the fuck are you doing?” she gasped.

“Returning his book.” Lysithea pulled her finger away and extinguished the black flame with a flick of her wrist, then gingerly nudged the door open. It swung on its hinges as though it had never been locked in the first place.

Hilda nodded. “O-Okay,” she mumbled weakly. It never ceased to amaze her just how much of a prodigy Lysithea was. Raw power, precision, she had it all. In their last training exercise, Hilda had seen her mow through half a dozen armored knights like they were paper dolls. She was practically a baby and had more magical power in her finger than most adults had in their whole bodies. And to top that all off, she was as cute as a button. It almost wasn’t fair.

The two of them crept into Tomas’ room. It was empty. Like any other monk’s quarters, it was unfathomably austere. A mattress resting flush against the floor that was probably only marginally softer than the floor, covered in a thin blanket; a desk piled high with books and parchment scrolls, lit by the guttering light of a worn-down nub of a candle; a chest of drawers no doubt filled with nothing but bland, boring monastic vestments. But Tomas did have some odd luxuries—a table in the center of the room with a kettle of tea and a chipped teacup lit by an oil lamp and a shelf packed with books.

Lysithea went to the bookshelf and slotted her book into an empty spot, nestling it with its kin, while Hilda waited impatiently at the door and kept a wary eye on the hallway.

Something white fell from the bookshelf to the floor. Curious, Lysithea knelt down and picked it up off the floor. Hilda watched her bend down with agonizing slowness and barely missed the telltale creep of lantern light from around the corner of the hallway up ahead. A long shadow swept around the corner in the light’s wake.

Without thinking, Hilda rushed into the room and closed the door behind her. Hopefully, no one would notice the hole Lysithea had burned through the lock. Her heart pounded.

“What’s wrong?” Lysithea asked, looking up from the object she’d picked up.

“There’s someone coming this way. If we get caught down here, we could be—”

Lysithea’s eyes widened in horror, her already-pale complexion turning ashen. “Expelled!” she gasped.

“—forced to do chores!” Hilda finished. “Or expelled. That too.”

Lysithea held up the white thing she’d picked up. “While you’re here, have a look at this.”

Hilda wasn’t the least bit interested, but figured that Lysithea would probably tell her anyway. It looked like a page from a book, but it wasn’t any kind of paper she’d ever seen before. Its edges were crisp and as straight as a broadsword’s edge, and looked just as sharp; it was thin, too, and as white as Lysithea’s snow-colored hair. And on that paper was what looked like a map of a city, but impeccably drawn in a way no cartographer could manage.

“Even a printing press can’t make images this clean,” Lysithea murmured, her eyes fixed on the map. “All the straight lines are too straight, all the curves too curved, and every pen stroke is uniform beyond the dexterity of any human. And the notes written on the map—the handwriting is impossibly impeccable! The outline of this map looks like Garreg Mach, but everything inside is completely unrecognizable… What in the Goddess’ name is this thing?”

The door behind them swung open swiftly enough to creak and squeal. Hilda felt as though someone had shoved a ramrod up her spine; Lysithea hastily folded the map and stuffed it into her cloak.

Tomas stepped over the threshold and let the door swing shut behind him as he extinguished and set down his lantern. “Miss Ordelia? Miss Goneril?” he inquired. A warm smile lit up his face. “What in blazes are you doing in my room?” Somehow, he didn’t sound the least bit angry or irate. His smile reached his eyes, and there wasn’t a hint of worry wrinkling his high forehead.

“Oh, um—B-Brother Tomas,” Lysithea stammered, “I was just…”

“We returned your book,” Hilda said.

“Ah.” Tomas glanced back at the door. “I could have sworn I’d locked the door, but…” He ran a hand through his thinning sandy hair. “Oh, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached. Forgive this old fool for keeping you waiting. Did you find the book enlightening?”

“Oh, yes.” Lysithea nodded eagerly. “I found it most enlightening! The section on polymorphic spells, especially!”

“Oh?” Tomas raised his eyebrows, his smile widening. “Perhaps you’re keen to study them one day…”

“Perhaps,” Lysithea said.

“We’re sorry for the intrusion,” Hilda said, taking Lysithea by the arm. “Let’s just get out of your hair…” She couldn’t believe her luck. Now all she and Lysithea had to do was slip back into the dormitories and they’d be home free!

“Oh, but you came all this way,” Tomas said, gesturing to his tea set. “and it can’t have been easy to sneak out of your bedrooms, given the circumstances. Would you care for a cup of tea to revitalize your spirits? I’m afraid it’s quite cold, but it’s a special blend that is meant to be drunk over ice.”

“That sounds great,” Hilda confessed, only just realizing that she was thirsty. It couldn’t hurt to waste a little more time here, could it?

“Excellent! Both of you, take a seat.” Tomas poured a deep reddish-brown tea into three cups. “I’m afraid I only have two chairs, though… why don’t you two sit down and I’ll stand?”

“Oh, but you’re so old,” Lysithea said.

“Thank you, Brother Tomas,” said Hilda, never remiss to pass up an opportunity to sit instead of stand.

“No, no, take my desk chair. I insist,” Tomas told Lysithea. “I don’t mind standing. This old body has more life yet in it than you know.”

The two of them sat down. Hilda picked up her teacup and sniffed at it. It was stone cold, but still smelled of apple and lemon; the color of the tea was so dark, though, that it seemed horribly oversteeped. She had her doubts it would taste as good cold as Tomas claimed, and inwardly wondered if she could just pretend she wasn’t thirsty after all.

“I’m surprised you have books about magic in your personal collection,” Lysithea said to Tomas, ignoring her tea. “Do you find the subject interesting?”

“I dabble,” Tomas said, “though I’ll admit I have no talent for the stuff. Not like you and your wonderful classmates.”

“Hmph. I’m not talented,” Lysithea muttered, “I just work hard.” She went into a sour mood when people called her talented or said she was a prodigy, as though it erased all her hard work. Hilda hoped that someday, when she was older, she’d figure out that half the fun of being good at something was making it look easy to everyone else.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Tomas said, soothing her, “merely that your hard work makes it seem so effortless. Like Miss Goneril here.”

Hilda blushed. “Me? Work hard? Oh, please. I’m just a delicate flower; I never strain myself.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Tomas took a sip of his tea. “You must exert quite a lot of effort to look so effortlessly beautiful.”

Hilda squirmed uncomfortably in her seat and tried not to cringe. Sure, he was right, but weren’t monks supposed to be celibate? Why was he acting so lecherous? “Th-Thank you…?”

Lysithea took an experimental sip of the tea. “Oh, it’s… sweet,” she noted, pleasantly surprised.

“The sweetness makes it more palatable cold,” Tomas said. “I poured in several teaspoons of sugar while it was boiling earlier today. You must put the sugar in while the water boils so that it dissolves properly, otherwise you’ll end up with a lump of sugar at the bottom of your kettle.”

Deciding she could give the weird cold tea a chance, Hilda took a sip. It was good. Sweet (almost too sweet), with notes of tartness, and deeply refreshing—it could be a hit in the south if someone could figure out a way to keep it cool in the summer.

“Back to the subject of magic,” Lysithea said, leaning forward, “have you heard the rumors?”

“I have. I suppose that’s why you were so interested in the polymorphic spell section.”

“Well, it was serendipitous of me to come across that section. It is a frightening branch of magic.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure.” Tomas tilted the kettle and refilled her cup. “Drink up, Miss Ordelia. You won’t get the full effect otherwise.”

“With pleasure; this is excellent!” Lysithea promptly drank away half of the cup in one swig.

Hilda squinted at her teacup. “Is there some sort of herbal remedy in this? I’ve gotten sick from one of those once.”

“Oh, it’s just a little concoction that helps you start the day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Tomas said with a coy little smile. “I picked it up from the apothecary in town. It’s a tad bitter, which makes the sugar all the more necessary to balance it out. Now, Miss Ordelia, you were saying…”

“I simply meant that the power to alter someone’s body without their consent is… terrifying.” Lysithea shivered. “You could do horrible things to a person.” She sounded oddly glum and sober, and the downcast look on her face matched it.

“Yes. Yes you could. There are many beneficial uses for such spells, but there is a good reason the Church of Seiros restricts the books that discuss such magic. In fact, anybody wishing to learn to cast polymorphic spells must swear a blood oath to the Archbishop herself first.”

“Do you know how many people in Fódlan know this magic?”

“Very few.” Tomas shook his head. “Very few indeed.”

“Well, the Archbishop must be sending for one of them,” Hilda said, “if someone really is turning students into mice. I think I heard that she’s writing a letter to the Royal Academy of Sorcery in Fhirdiad…”

Tomas’ face fell. “Oh… is she?”

Hilda felt an uncomfortable weight settle in her stomach like she’d swallowed a stone. “Uh… I-I dunno… is she?”

“If she is, then I’m surprised the news hasn’t reached her.” Tomas set his half-empty teacup down as though to punctuate his sentence and a hush fell over his soft voice. “Professor Severus Remus Minerva, Fódlan's foremost expert in polymorphic magic… passed away just last month.”

Hilda clasped a hand over her mouth, shocked. When she’d thought that maybe Claude deserved to be turned into a mouse, she hadn’t meant forever! “Well… s-surely there’s someone out there who can undo that kind of magic! Did he have any students or apprentices?”

Tomas nodded. “In all of Fódlan, there is one other person who has such knowledge.”

“We’ve got to tell Lady Rhea, then!” Lysithea cried out, shooting out of her seat and gripping the arms of her chair. “Who is it, Tomas? Do you know him?”

“Well, of course I know him,” Tomas chuckled, his warm and genial smile widening, his lips cracking to show his teeth. “He’s me.”

Hilda felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. “Then you’re…”

“You monster!” Lysithea snarled, black fire wreathing her clenched fists and scorching the arms of her chair.

The flames licking at her pale skin flickered, guttered, and died. Her voice cut short, she looked down at her hands with wide, confused eyes, her lips silently tracing an incantation; then she cried out and collapsed back into her chair like a marionette whose strings had been cut, the leaden weight of her limp limbs dragging her off her seat and onto the floor.

Hilda rushed to the door, but found it as immovable as a solid stone wall—as though Tomas had locked it with magic. Her heart raced; her breath was short and shallow. Had Tomas cast a spell on the tea to poison it? But he’d drank just as much of it as Lysithea had! And what about herself? How much had she drunk? Half a cup? Would it start affecting her, too?

Tomas stood up, contemptuously nudging the writhing mass of skin and fur on the floor with his foot. “‘Monster?’ Me?” he sneered. “I am the savior of this wretched world! What do you have to say to that, vermin?”

Hilda pounded on the door so hard that her palms stung. No use. She screamed. No use. Oh, Goddess, she was going to turn into a mouse and no one would ever find her! Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. And was it just her imagination, or did her breath sound squeakier?

“How I despise you humans,” Tomas went on, pressing his foot atop Lysithea’s shrinking body. “Scurrying about like you own this world, acting like your meager knowledge makes you masters of your domain, thinking you can make yourselves beautiful by draping yourselves in cloth and painting your faces… Howl all you want, you little beasts,” he spat, an evil, toothy grin splitting his face. There was a manic, hateful gleam in his eyes. “I’ve placed a silence spell on this room. No one will hear—”

In her desperation, Hilda snatched the lantern off the floor and smashed it against the side of his head. For all her talk of being a delicate little flower, she was no shrinking violet—when you were the legendary Holst Goneril’s baby sister, you learned how to throw a punch (and a lot of other things, too).

The glass panes of the lantern shattered, littering Tomas’ face with dozens of tiny, oozing lacerations. He reeled back, clutching at his face in pain, his fingernails biting into his skin and tearing it away; where the skin peeled off, the flesh underneath was so white it was nearly blue.

With Tomas occupied, Hilda turned her attention back to the door. It hurt to think about leaving Lysithea here, but she had her own skin to save, and besides, someone had to go and warn Archbishop Rhea and the knights!

She braced her shoulder and charged at the door, recoiling in pain and gritting her teeth as the reverberations from the impact rattled her bones. The door didn’t budge. If only Raphael was here; he could bust the door down easily for her. She scanned the room. What about the window? Could she fit through that? It was just an aperture in the stone wall, no glass…

“Miss Hilda Goneril.” Tomas spat out her name like a curse. In one hand he held the lamp from his table, the fluted glass around the wick glimmering the light of its dancing flame. In the other he held a little white mouse with the scruff of its neck pinched between his forefinger and thumb, the tip of its limp pink tail nearly brushing against the tip of the flame. “Step away from the door.”

Hilda felt a cold sweat settle on her brow. Her nightgown stuck to her back. Something slithered over her foot. Was it just her, or had Tomas gotten taller? And why did her skin feel so prickly? Was the poison taking effect? If only she’d just asked someone else to go with Lysithea… “Oh my God—I-Is that…”

“You’d be surprised how quickly the transformation takes effect when you use the right transmission vector.” Tomas shook the mouse. “Rise and shine, Miss Ordelia. Or are you all tuckered out? Shame on me… I must have given you chamomile by mistake.”

Unnerved, Hilda stepped away from the door. Tomas’ eyes followed her as she nervously circled him. Maybe if he let her get close enough to the window she could throw herself out of it… but what if she got stuck? And what would he do to Lysithea?

“Stop.” Tomas held the mouse just a little closer to the flame. His face hung from his head like a poorly-applied mask. “Move another muscle and your friend burns.”

“Goddess damn you! You’re evil!” Hilda gasped. She was sure she could tackle him and knock him out pretty easily, but not when he was literally holding someone’s life in his hands!

“Evil? Ha! From our point of view, you disgusting human beasts are the evil ones.” He paused, as if waiting to see if Hilda would say or do anything in return, then nudged the crumpled cloak lying on the floor where Lysithea had fallen with his foot.

An iridescent blue insect crawled out, fluttered its crystalline wings, and rose into the air, buzzing across the room and lighting on Hilda’s arm. It was huge—easily an inch long—with a swollen, distended abdomen and needle-shaped tongue. She could almost feel the insect’s prickly legs tickling her skin beneath her sleeve as it crawled down toward her wrist.

Only then did she notice that her hand looked perfectly normal. And so did everything else she could see. No part of her was changing—so if the tea hadn’t carried the polymorph spell in it, then how had Tomas gotten Lysithea?

“We have slithered in the dark for ten thousand years, waiting to reclaim this world from the vermin who usurped it,” Tomas cackled. “The time is nigh when we will teach humanity their own lesson—that those who triumph and crush their enemies underfoot are good, and those who are crushed and killed are evil!”

Hilda watched the insect creep up to her wrist, its little legs brushing against her bare skin as it prepared to sink its dartlike tongue into her flesh. This must have been how Lysithea had been poisoned—not with tea, but with whatever was sloshing around in that insect’s swollen abdomen…

Something slithered across the back of her neck. She bit her tongue to keep from screaming.

“Ugh. Bugs. Whatever that thing is, I’m guessing nothing good’s going to happen to you if it bites you,” a strangely familiar voice squeaked in her ear. “Hold on, I’ll get it…”

A tiny tongue of flame zipped through the air like an arrow in flight, ripping through the insect’s head and spattering Hilda’s wrist with black ichor. The decapitated insect’s lifeless carapace fell to the floor, its legs twitching in its death throes. At the same moment, a little brown mouse leaped onto Tomas’ hand and bit him on his thumb. Keeping a tight grasp on Lysithea, he swatted the mouse aside. It fell to the table and and scurried out of sight.

Tomas’ eyes widened. “What?!”

He was distracted—this was her chance! Mustering up her courage, Hilda socked him in the face so hard that his jaw sloughed off around her knuckles, leaving his face hanging by a thread. The skin beneath was hideously pale and marked with thick, fat, wormlike veins throbbing across his forehead.

The door burst open with a mighty and deafening crack, and Dedue Molinaro stepped over the threshold, blood dripping from his scuffed knuckles. Flanking him was his polar opposite, Hubert von Vestra. Both of them loomed like titans in the cramped confines of Tomas’ quarters. Hilda’s heart leaped. She was going to make it!

A terrifying rictus split Hubert’s pale lips. Black flames roiled around his hands like coils of writhing snakes. “What was that you just said, Brother Tomas? ‘The victor is good, and the loser is evil?’ Then perhaps it’s time somebody educated you.”

Tomas put his back to the window and gripped Lysithea tighter. “Hubert von Vestra, you worm! Another step and I’ll incinerate this Ordelia rat!” He glared hungrily at Dedue next. “Ah, I see you’ve made a friend from Duscur. Tell me, does he know?” He let out another evil cackle, inching closer to the window. “Now, how were you going to ‘educate’ me? What lesson were you planning on teaching me?”

Hubert smirked. “Oh, teaching is the Professor’s responsibility,” he said, his grin widening as a blazing orange whip cut through the air between him and Dedue and struck Tomas across the chest, throwing him against the wall with a mighty enough blow to crack the stone bricks and rattle the bookcase. The table in the center of the room collapsed, the tea kettle and teacups shattering into shards of stained ceramic; the lamp and Lysithea flew from his hands.

Professor Byleth stepped out from behind Dedue and Hubert, her steely gray eyes fixed on Tomas with a merciless glare. She held the Sword of the Creator at her side, its ornately-carved hilt glowing white-orange as its segmented blade retracted and snapped back to its normal length.

“The evil one here is you,” she said. “Do you understand? Or do you need remedial lessons?”

“Fell Star…” Tomas spat, black blood dribbling down his chin. His shredded flesh mask clung to his veiny, corpse-pale true face by a few threads of sinew. With a feral, wordless snarl he threw a blast of dark fire at Hilda before she had time to duck; the Sword of the Creator split apart, lashed out again, and batted the flames out of the air, but in the turmoil, Tomas leaped out of the window and vanished into the night.

Ferdinand von Aegir burst into the room holding a wooden training spear. “Do you have any questions about the syllabus, you vile fiend—”

His shoulders slumped and the fierce enthusiasm vanished from his face as he realized that Tomas had already escaped.

Hilda caught her breath. The nightmare was over. Tomas was gone. What was he? Some kind of demon in human form? Why did he have a face under his face? If he was the only other person in Fódlan who could cast polymorphic spells, then did that mean Lysithea would be a mouse forever? And Claude, and Marianne, and all the other missing students?

“Hilda? Hilda!”

With a visceral shudder to clear her head, she realized that Byleth was crouched in front of her, her ancient sword sheathed at her side, and laying a hand on her shoulder. “Hilda, are you alright?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” she mumbled, still dazed. How could Tomas be the villain here? He was the nicest guy in the whole monastery! “Ugh, gross… I’ve got old man skin all over my knuckles…”

“I cannot believe it,” Ferdinand muttered, surveying the ruins of the room. “Tomas was one of those Agarthans all along? These are frightening foes indeed. If Caspar and Linhardt hadn’t been able to slip under the door, we’d have blundered right in…”

Hubert glared out the window, his fists stuffed into his pockets, his jaw set and his face fixed in a frustrated scowl.

Claude and his new friends set up camp on the bank of the rank river that ran through Abyss, on the outskirts of—much to his astonishment—a mouse-sized town. There were mouse-sized houses lining a network of winding streets stretched from the stone lip of the sewage canal to the far wall of the hallway, bathed in the guttering, bleak light from the torches overhead. Cubbyholes had been carved into the stone walls, draped with curtains made from scraps of cloth and canvas. It was an unbelievable sight. Until one looked up and saw the enormous ceiling overhead, one could forget that this town was underneath Garreg Mach; until one looked around and saw the giant-scale human-made artifice engulfing the town, one could forget that it was a place built for and by (at least, according to Cornflower) mice.

Dimitri kicked open a wrought-iron gate and stepped across the threshold of the village, only for Cornflower to hastily rush in front of him and urge him back. “We can’t go in there,” she insisted, her raspy, age-worn voice low and urgent. “This is Mousebrook.”

“Er… so?”

“Cannibals live here.” She shuddered. “Consummate cannibals. Or so the rumors say. Mousefolk fear this place more than the surface.”

“I don’t see any signs of life,” Claude noted. The town seemed as quiet as a grave. “We could scavenge for supplies here. A town means clothes, tools, food, weapons…”

“No signs of life just means they could be lying in wait to ambush travelers,” Dimitri told him. Cornflower nodded emphatically in agreement. “We should keep an eye on the place for a while, just to make sure.”

There was a rush of warm breeze and the comforting fwoosh of wood bursting into flame. “I’ve got a fire started!” Annette crowed, although to be fair, it wasn’t much of an accomplishment for a spellcaster to start a fire. She shivered and rubbed her arms gingerly, huddling closer to the little campfire and beckoning the others closer.

“Finally,” Dimitri sighed, stepping away from the fence, “we can dry off.”

“So if you mousefolk don’t live in this town,” Annette asked Cornflower as the seven of them crowded around the fire, “where do you live? Are there other villages?”

Cornflower shook her head. “No, no, the towns have been dangerous for generations. We live in traveling camps.”

“And those aren’t dangerous?” Annette asked her.

“They’re less dangerous,” she said, “and it’s easier to move when the raiders find us—or the Ashen Wolves.”

“Yeah, real sorry about all that,” Balthus said. “Won’t happen anymore. I promise.” He sat on his haunches and stared wistfully at the fire. “Y’know what’d be nice right now? If we had some meat to roast over a spit. I’m hungry as shit.”

Cornflower began to gnaw on a weathered twig.

“Hey, if you’re that hungry, I could go out and find something to cook,” Balthus offered.

She gave him an incredulous look, then shook her head as though she had to remind herself that none of the other mice knew mouse customs. “That’s… sweet of you, but no, I’m just keeping my teeth filed down. I had so much trouble teaching my youngest to gnaw. It got to the point where his teeth had grown so much that he couldn’t close his mouth!”

Balthus chuckled. “Kids, am I right?”

Dimitri picked up a stray piece of detritus and looked down at it, studying it with mounting distress reflected on his face as he contemplated chewing on it.

As the fire burned down to embers and left the charred hunks of wood blackened with patches of dying amber light, Claude kept an eye on the town, but he found himself often staring into the fire. Dimitri brooded, Annette chatted with the other mice, Marianne retreated and set to work re-braiding her hair, but Claude studied the fire as though it could reveal some arcane secret to him.

It was hard to stop thinking. Sometimes his thoughts ran in circles. And with the pale, dull-colored embers gently throbbing before his eyes, he found those wandering thoughts slipping back years and years into the past, across the continent, to Almyra.

It wasn’t like campfires were an unusual sight to him now. Being a student at Garreg Mach and having to tramp every which way across the continent from Fódlan's Fangs in the west to Fódlan’s Throat in the east for hands-on lessons meant a lot of nights spent in tents. But those campfires had never reminded him of the ritual bonfires of his homeland the way this one did. He remembered those rituals fondly—singing and dancing from dusk to dawn around the fires, whooping and howling and screaming like beasts. Those nights were bone-chilling and soul-stirring.

Why, he wondered, was this pathetic little bundle of scrap wood set alight awakening such nostalgia? He wouldn’t call it homesickness—Almyra was little more a home to him than Fódlan was, really; he only had one foot in either world, so no matter where he went, he never quite belonged.

No one here quite belonged, either, Claude noted, his gaze slipping from the glowing embers to the faces of each of the other mice in turn. He saw humans who’d been forced out of the world of humans; mice whose human intellects kept them estranged from the world of beasts; people who were meant to live on the surface, in the sunlight, forced into the darkness. No one belonged. Everyone down here was just like him now. And here he and his classmates were, Dimitri’s so-called ‘temporarily-embarrassed humans,’ strangers to themselves, all wrapping their minds around tails that swept across the floor of their own volition, whiskers that felt the air more acutely than skin could, fur that subtly itched everywhere, ears that twitched and swiveled every which way to catch the slightest sound…

“Claude,” Dimitri asked, irritably smoothing out his damp fur in the hopes it would dry faster that way, “I’m not sure I understand why you came down here in the first place. Why search for Princess Edelgard? You two aren’t exactly friends, from what I can tell.”

“No. Far as I can tell, Her Royal Empress-ness doesn’t have any friends save for that vampiric thrall of hers,” Claude answered.

Annette perked up. “Wait, what? Hubert’s a vampire?!”

“Maybe,” Claude said. “Didn’t get a good enough look at his mouth to see if he has fangs, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, if Edelgard vanishes for good and the Hresvelg dynasty falls, the Adrestian Empire falls into chaos, and that spills over into the Alliance’s borders. From there, who knows?” He shrugged. “Things could get a little dicey for me.”

Dimitri let out a dismissive little grunt, as though he saw right through Claude’s altruism.

“Well, there’s that, and… I haven’t told Hubert this, but I’ve been thinking, if I’m the one who swoops in and rescues Edelgard, she’ll end up owing me a royal favor. And I can scarcely imagine all the ways I could cash that in once we’re ruling our respective states… I could get some sweet concessions out of her if I play my cards right.”

“Hmm… so if I rescue her,” Balthus said, “maybe I could convince her to pay off my gambling debts.”

“An emperor’s ransom wouldn’t be enough, B,” Hapi said, elbowing him in the ribs. “You’d crash Adrestia’s economy.”

Dimitri let out a humorless little chuckle.

“Slightly related question… why’d you come down here?” Claude asked him.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, come on. Throw me a bone. It’s my roguish charm and sheer animal magnetism, isn’t it? You can’t resist following me.” He rakishly ruffled his fur. “I’m sorry; I can’t help being such a heartthrob. It’s a curse.”

“Ugh. Listen to yourself. You sound like Sylvain.”

“Will you two just shut up and kiss already?” Hapi interjected with a roll of her eyes. Annette gasped and gave her a scandalized glare, her cherubic face awash with anger on Dimitri’s behalf. “Or nuzzle noses or whatever it is mice do.”

Dimitri awkwardly cleared his throat as a heavy miasma of discomfort settled in the air. “If I have one regret, it’s not telling Dedue where I was going before you ran off. He must be worried sick about me.”

Claude nodded. Dimitri’s retainer was probably losing his mind right about now. As for Claude’s, surely Hilda was enjoying having a day to herself without having to deal with his antics.

Dimitri sighed, scratching absentmindedly behind his ear. “Poor Dedue… I wonder what he’s d-doing right now.”

Claude’s jaw dropped. He wasn’t sure if Dimitri had stuttered just there or if he’d made a joke. He knew it had to be the former, but still…

“What?” Dimitri wrinkled his nose and sheepishly pulled his hand away from his ear as though he’d only just realized what he’d been doing, then stared at his paw with what almost looked like mild horror. “I-I can’t help if it itches. Does it look funny to you?”

“Uh, no, no, I was, uh…” Claude shrugged. “Never mind.”

The fire faded. Claude watched the town for the slightest movement. Still nothing, and even when all that was left of the fire was ash, still nothing.

“The town seems empty,” he pronounced, standing up and stretching his stiff limbs. “Maybe they all ate each other.”

“Well, then, one of ‘em would be left,” Balthus said. “You can’t eat yourself. Or… can you?”

“Let’s head in,” Claude said.

“But stay on your toes,” Dimitri said. “We’ll leave at the first sign of trouble.”

“I’ve never known you to be so cautious.”

“I’ve never known myself to be three inches tall, either. I’m not in a risk-taking mood right now.”

Claude and the others crept past the open gate into the town. It really was just like any other town on the surface, in spite of its size. The houses were fully furnished—tables, chairs, cabinets, beds, even fine china. But massive arrays of cobwebs shrouded many houses’ interiors, the huge size of the wispy gossamer strands so out-of-proportion that they betrayed the town’s true nature.

Dimitri found a blacksmith’s forge that had long since gone cold and a meager assortment of weapons left unattended—he took the first spear he could find that didn’t break when he bent it over his knee (he went through about half a dozen); Claude was lucky enough to find a single bow and a canvas quiver with almost a dozen arrows; Annette armed herself with a little hatchet.

Balthus and Hapi found supplies and clothes, although there wasn’t much that fit around the self-proclaimed King of Grappling’s ample frame. The two of them circled back to Claude with armfuls of robes, cloaks, belts, and satchels. Balthus now wore no less than five belts, only two of which fit around his waist.

Annette found bottles, flasks, canteens of all sorts, and a well to fill them all in; she returned to the group teetering under the weight of a load almost as big as she was. Dimitri was leery about drinking well water, given what Balthus and Hapi had said about the water supplies in Abyss, but Claude couldn’t see the harm in it. After all, what would another dose of the poison do to them? Turn them into mice again?

Marianne found a body.

At the sound of her scream, Claude and the others rushed to her side to find her standing over half a mouse lying on the side of the road, although which half was hard to say. The body had been mutilated nearly beyond recognition; its gray-brown fur was covered in a crust of dried, blackened blood.

Annette retched. Dimitri curled his lip in disgust. “Someone didn’t finish their lunch,” Balthus muttered darkly, prodding the body with his toes.

As Marianne shuddered, Claude let his arm rest over her shoulders and ruffled her fur. Poor thing—she’d have been better off running away when she’d said she should’ve. “It’s alright. Whatever killed this thing has been gone for a long time. We’re safe here.”

That wasn’t the last body they found. As they ventured deeper into the town, they stumbled upon more and more bodies lining the streets and draped over the sills of broken windows. Some were missing limbs, but most, oddly, were whole. Only a few looked like something had tried to make a meal out of them. Claude saw halos of blood surrounding caved-in skulls, spines snapped like twigs, and bodies that had been charred and roasted by what Annette astutely observed had been fire and lightning spells. The largest mass of bodies were all clustered together in the town square, as though they’d all been taken there and slaughtered in a ritual. Buzzing flies—disturbingly large and proportionately loud—circled the bodies like vultures. Claude wondered how long the bodies had been here. The blood was all dry…

“There was a massacre here,” Dimitri observed, his voice more terse and clipped than usual. There was a slight tremor seeping into his voice that Claude had never heard before. The disgust on his face had turned to revulsion; he seemed ready to vomit, or maybe Claude was just projecting. “That’s it, we’re leaving.”

There was a sound of heavy footfalls down the street and the clanking of armor plating. Something was coming—and it was coming from the entrance to the town. Claude’s whiskers picked up something moving—something big.

“Something’s coming,” he whispered urgently to the others. “It’s blocked off our exit. Everyone, hide.”

As the footsteps came closer, joined by the sound of ragged, bestial breathing, Claude and the others slipped into the nearest house. He peeked out of its broken window, his eyes nearly level with the sill, as the beast stalked down the street, breathing with low, heavy rasps.

It was an enormous rat clad in scraps of armor forged from a discarded gauntlet with a ragged black cape hanging from it shoulders. Knotted, knobbly scars crisscrossed its skin, standing out in stark contrast to its matted black fur; its tail slithered behind it like a snake, writhing to and fro and sweeping the dust from the street. A kitchen knife as long as the rat was tall, its blade scalloped and serrated and spattered with blood, was strapped to its back; the rat wore a bleached, scarred skull over its face like a mask, giving it the grim and grisly visage of a reaper of lost souls. Claude couldn’t help but be reminded of the Death Knight, that black-clad fiend who’d kidnapped Flayn last month.

Claude ducked under the windowsill as it approached, sneaking furtive glances at the lumbering beast wandering through the ghost town. His class had gone on assignments to exterminate wild Demonic Beasts before, and if he was being honest, this one looked just like one of them… except there was no Crest Stone he could see embedded in its forehead. Then again, the skull it wore as a helmet could be covering it, he supposed.

“That’s the Plague Rat,” Cornflower hissed to him, tugging at his sash as though to drag him down and keep him from poking his head up above the windowsill as though his life depended on it. “He wanders these halls, killing whomever he pleases… and no matter how much we injure him, he always returns just as strong as before…”

The Plague Rat ambled almost aimlessly, lifting his head regularly to sniff the air; underneath the skull adorning his head, his whiskers twitched and quivered. He stumbled over a rock lying in the middle of the road and fell to all fours, gingerly feeling his way across the empty town’s road. His whiskers waved and probed the air; his naked, scabrous tail lashed back and forth, sweeping across the ground. Claude leaned just a little farther over the sill and squinted; in the gloom, he could almost see two dark stains running under the eye sockets of the Plague Rat’s macabre helmet. There was no light in those eye sockets—not even the slightest glint of eyeshine.

“It’s trying to pick up our scent,” Claude whispered to the others. He sniffed the air, his whiskers twitching. Thank goodness, all he could smell was sewage due to the canal’s proximity to the town. The whole air smelled like that, although the Plague Rat’s hideously sour musk stood out like a wrong note in an orchestra played as loudly as possible. Hopefully, the odor was masking the scent of him and his fellow mice.

The Plague Rat lifted his head and sniffed the air again. “Who’s there?” he growled. The low bass rumbles of his voice seemed to reverberate through the ground; Claude could almost feel them in his feet. “I smell a mouse…”

Claude hastily ducked back under the sill as the Plague Rat turned his head, empty and sightless eye sockets roving past the empty air where his head had been moments before. Maybe now it was time to run—but a hasty retreat would certainly create too much noise.

The Plague Rat took another whiff of the air and stiffened, raising himself up. “Where are you?”

Marianne curled into a ball. “Goddess protect us…”

“Don’t be so impatient, my pestilent friend.” A mouse with dark robes and a peaked, wide-brimmed hat slipped out of the shadows into the street, standing before the beast. “If you wanted to draw me out, you only need to ask politely.”

The Plague Rat sniffed the air again and tilted his head downward. Even with the hat’s added height, the mouse was only a little more than half his size. “Myson…”

Myson bowed. “At your service. Now, what brings you all the way over here? I all but gave you Edelgard on a silver platter. Don’t tell me she got away!”

Claude’s ears perked up. Edelgard really was down here!

The Plague Rat shuddered and snarled, lifting up his helmet to reveal a head just as heavily scarred as the rest of his body. His white, gossamer-thin whiskers writhed like tendrils. As Claude had begun to suspect, his eyes were nothing more than bloody holes in his head. The beast was blind as a bat. He all but threw the skull helmet to the ground. “She took my damn eyes!” he snarled, driving a gnarled fist into the ground with enough force to crack stone. “That accursed Edelgard!”

In spite of himself, Dimitri smirked. “Sounds like Edelgard, alright,” he murmured.

“Oh, dear.” Myson shook his head. “You are in a sorry state. So you lost Edelgard’s trail, I presume?”

Further enraged, the Plague Rat let out a beastly roar and pounded his fists on the ground. “Of course I lost her trail, you oblivious incompetent! You said you would deliver her to me broken! She was not broken!”

Myson shrugged as he stepped closer to the beast. “Well, you know sweet little El’s always been as stubborn as a mule. Mind you, if I had had my way, that’s what we would’ve turned her into—”

As soon as he came within arm’s length, the Plague Rat grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. Myson writhed and wriggled in his grip, gurgling as he kicked his legs and his tail swished back and forth, its tip sweeping across the ground.

“That was a rhetorical question!” the Plague Rat snarled.

Dimitri’s grip on Claude’s shoulder tightened.

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have found it amusing,” Myson choked, “if we had literally made an ass of her—”

“Do not patronize me, Myson,” the Plague Rat growled, tightening his grip on Myson’s neck. “No Agarthan blood flows through your veins; you are no more a beast than I.” He dropped the poor mouse to the ground; Myson picked himself up and rubbed gingerly at his throat. “Know your place. You serve at Solon’s pleasure… and at mine. When you promise to have something done, I expect you to do it.”

“You need me,” Myson spat back at him, his voice so rough and raspy one could grate cheese on it.

“Hah! What can you do that a hundred other warlocks cannot?” the Plague Rat taunted him. “But I am unique. There is only one Plague Rat; only one reckoning for Edelgard von Hresvelg!” He planted a clawed footpaw on Myson’s stomach, pinning him to the ground before he could stand up.

Myson coughed as he tried to squirm out of the Plague Rat’s grip. “I didn’t mean—”

“Next time, I will not fail!” the Plague Rat bellowed. “Next time, I will break her spirit, then her body, then her mind! She will die too afraid to even scream! And I will do it myself, Myson, you useless, sniveling coward!”

Claude had to say, if this whole plot was about putting Edelgard into the path of a murderous rat’s temper tantrum, then it was a really roundabout way to assassinate someone. There was sadism, and there was this.

“Give me new eyes,” the Plague Rat said to Myson, lifting his paw off the mouse and allowing him to pull himself away, “or I will tell Solon that you are shirking your responsibilities. You will see how expendable you truly are.”

Myson bared his fangs and wrinkled his nose, but even in this low light and at such a distance, Claude could tell that he had no fight left him him. “Very well. Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

Myson vanished in a flash of violet light. Wracked with apprehension and dread, Claude felt his breath catch in his throat. His heart hammered against his ribs as seconds stretched into minutes. He could only barely hear the faintest of noises from his fellow mice over the Plague Rat’s heavy breathing. Everyone held their breath. All he could make out was the faint, brisk tempo of half a dozen racing pulses.

“This house has a back door,” Annette whispered to Claude as they waited. “If we slip out the back and keep a low profile, we can stay clear of that thing’s path…”

Claude nodded.

“Or, hey, it’s blind,” Balthus said, “so maybe we sneak up behind it while it’s waiting and spear its heart out…”

“It’ll sniff us out if we get too close,” Dimitri said. “Claude, can you get a clean shot at it through the window?”

Claude took his bow and peered out the window, lining up a shot. He could put an arrow through the Plague Rat’s neck easily enough from this vantage point, but…

“It’s no use,” Cornflower cautioned him. “How many times do you think we’ve tried to kill that thing already? It never dies…”

Balthus crossed his arms. “Bullshit. If it bleeds, we can kill it.”

If he couldn’t land a mortal wound, Claude reasoned, then he’d end up tipping the Plague Rat off to his location if he shot him. Blind or not, that monster wasn’t an enemy to be reckoned with if his bloodstained blade was any indication. “The rest of you, hurry out the back door and head for the gate. I’ll draw its attention.”

Dimitri wrinkled his brow. “You’ve never been the self-sacrificing type before.”

“Yeah, but I’m the only archer I trust here. I’ll be fine.” Claude trained his eye on the Plague Rat and drew back his bowstring until the muscles in his arm burned. He lined the arrowhead up with the Plague Rat’s neck, just under his jawline, then let his aim slip just a little upward, adjusting for the air and gravity…

The Plague Rat lifted his head and sniffed the air, his whiskers quivering, his head jerking left and right, his scarred and notched ears twitching and swiveling.

“Go!” Claude hissed to the others. “You won’t have much of a head start if you’re still here when I shoot!”

The Plague Rat turned his head, the bloodstained and sightless remnants of its eyes boring into Claude’s, and in spite of everything Claude suddenly felt very, very seen. He felt a cold weight settle in his stomach as he quickly adjusted his aim. Now or never…

Just as Claude had been about to release the bowstring and send his arrow flying, the Plague Rat ducked, scurrying away on all fours, low against the ground; Claude barely managed to regain his grip on his arrow. Taking a shot and missing would be more catastrophic than not shooting at all. He had to at least injure this thing. The Plague Rat ambled closer in a meandering zigzag, sniffing the air all the while, as though probing the air for signs of his prey…

A flash of light signified Myson’s return; distracted, the Plague Rat stopped and doubled back, returning to his handler and sitting on his haunches, lowering his head until his bloody sockets met Myson’s beady eyes. As he peeked over the windowsill to observe the scene, Claude hoped to see Myson to lift his paw and cast a healing spell on the beast, but even the dread wrapping icy claws around his heart couldn’t steel him against what he saw instead.

Myson drew a dagger from his robes, and with a flash of steel, he ripped a wet, tumorous mass of clotted blood and congealed aqueous humors from one bloody eye socket, then the next. He tossed the ruined eyeballs to the floor like rotten fruits. The Plague Rat hissed an anguished scream through gritted fangs, his fur bristling and skin crawling, shivering like a baby deer as he lifted his head and choked down a howl of pain. Fresh blood poured down his cheeks and stained his snout a glistening black.

Claude fell back from the window, his bow and arrow slipping from his grasp, and clamped both paws over his snout to hold back a disgusted outburst. His stomach leaped inside him; the bile rose in his throat and stung his mouth. But he didn’t look away. Someone had to see what was going on out there.

As the Plague Rat shivered and moaned, Myson withdrew two glass orbs from his robes. “These come from our top scientists in Shambhala,” he told the Plague Rat, holding one glittering sphere in each paw. “Make good use of them, or Thales will have both our heads.”

He shoved both orbs into the empty eye sockets. The Plague Rat rose to his full height and stumbled backward, clamping his paws over his new eyes as he reeled in pain.

“Is that better?”

The Plague Rat took a deep breath, his chest swelling, and looked down at Myson. Where once there had been dull, black eye sockets filled with the bloody remnants of a pair of eyes, now there were two shining yellow discs as round and bright as the full moon. Satisfied, he swept his skull helmet off the ground and set it back on his head, letting his new eyes shine through the bony sockets. “Clear as crystal.”

Feeling suddenly naked, as though those eerie white eyes could see everything with perfect clarity, Claude dropped to the floor like a stone. Who knew how those eyes worked—whether they were crafted from sorcery or some technology unknown to any part of the world—and what they could see?

“I’m glad you like them,” Myson said, his voice drifting over the windowsill. “Now, I’ve got a nursery to tend to… unless you have anything else to ask of me?”

“Hrrm. Now that my sight has returned, I want you to get out of it.”

“Are you sure? You don’t want to know exactly where Edelgard is right now?”

The Plague Rat’s dismissive mood made an about-face. “What?!” he hissed, enticed. “Tell me! Tell me where she is!”

“Now, now. Hold your horses, my pestilent friend. I want you to thank me first.”

The Plague Rat hesitated. “…Thank you,” he finally said, not sounding the least bit grateful, “for doing your job, as Solon expects from you. He will be pleased. Where is Edelgard?”

“I’ll lead you to her. This way.”

Claude listened to the heavy footfalls of the Plague Rat and the light padding of Myson as the two rodents slipped away, waiting as the sounds faded and all he could hear were his own tense, shallow breaths and those of his friends.

“We’ve got to tail them,” he said to Dimitri.

Dimitri nodded, his grip on the haft of his spear tightening. For a mouse, he looked awfully grim.

Claude looked out the window at one of the corpses lying prone in the street and thought back to the bodies piled in town square, his heart still racing and breath still short. He’d heard a rumor not too long ago that Edelgard was afraid of rats, and he had to admit that from this perspective, they were definitely something to be afraid of.

Chapter Text

The piece of paper Lysithea had discovered in Tomas’ quarters was a map of Garreg Mach the likes of which no one had ever seen—and it was something Linhardt could pore over from dusk to dawn if he wanted to. Although Linhardt had a reputation for sleeping his classes away, it wasn’t so much that he was a slacker than that he found things that didn’t interest him insufferably boring. This, though, held his attention and refused to let go. And being a mouse, for all its downsides, gave him a close-up view of it he’d never have been able to enjoy as a human.

Even the paper it was drawn on was fascinating. It was white, perfectly white, uniform to all of its four corners in color and texture to a degree no printer or bookbinder could achieve, and the ink tracing the map was impeccably laid. No blotches, no blemishes where the nib of the cartographer’s pen had lingered, the lines were perfectly straight, the curves were perfectly curved… And the text! Every letter was perfect, and so small… beyond the capabilities of any set of movable type. This was a work of technology beyond anything possible in Fódlan or any neighboring land.

The map traced the borders of Garreg Mach’s walls, but inside those walls, none of the familiar structures of the monastery—not the Officer’s Academy, not the cathedral, neither the abandoned chapel nor the pond nor the dormitories for the monks and knights, not the Goddess Tower or the Holy Tomb or the Archbishop’s audience chamber. Only a labyrinthine maze of tunnels and passages that could only have been the oft-whispered-of leviathan resting under the monastery, Garreg Mach’s shadow.

Abyss.

Linhardt, Caspar, and Lysithea studied the map up close while the others crowded around them, looming overhead like the cathedral’s statues of the saints. Linhardt tried to put them out of his mind. Hubert and Dedue were intimidating enough without them being giants.

Dedue looked down at the map, stonefaced. “Abyss is larger than I expected,” he muttered, seeming almost sad.

“It’ll take forever to search there,” Hilda whined, voicing what he was probably thinking. “Especially since we’re looking for mice.”

“Hey, is it just me, or does this writing not make any sense?” Caspar asked, tapping with his foot on one of the labels on the map. “It all looks backwards and then there’s this letter that looks like an upside-down four…”

Lysithea looked down at where he was standing. “It’s not Fódlanish. Or anything else. I’ve never seen this alphabet before.”

“Me neither. That means this map was made by someone who doesn’t come from any land we know of,” Linhardt said.

“Phew. Okay, just checking.” Caspar smirked. “Well, I don’t need to know how to read to know what these are,” he said, gesturing with his foot to a cluster of black rectangles littering one of Abyss’ many corridors. He lifted his head. “Hey, Professor! These are troop positions, right?” he called out to Byleth.

Byleth leaned in closer. “Hmm?”

Caspar cupped his paws around his muzzle. “Hey, Professor! These are troop positions, right?!”

If there was one real inconvenience to being a mouse, Linhardt had decided, it was that unless he was perched on someone’s shoulder or standing directly next to their ear, he had to shout at the top of his lungs whenever he needed to make himself heard. He’d figured over the past day that from a human’s perspective a mouse-person’s voice carried maybe two feet at most (though Caspar’s carried about three), and it was so squeaky that a normal human would have to concentrate to make out what was being said. That didn’t bother him so much as it bothered Caspar.

Byleth smiled and reached down, her hand intruding on the mice to tap on the black boxes. “Yes, these look exactly like troop positions to me.”

“I thought those were looking familiar,” Petra said. “They are looking just like the diagrams Professor draws on the blackboard.”

“These crusty freaks have troops stationed under the monastery?” Hilda shuddered, grimacing. “Why haven’t they attacked us yet?”

“Their troops are in, ah, short supply,” Hubert said with a sinister chuckle.

“By which he means,” Ferdinand said, “they turned themselves into mice to infiltrate the monastery, but cannot change themselves back.” He reached down and swept his hand around the map, much to Caspar’s displeasure—he barely managed to jump out of the way. “I do not understand—sorry, Caspar—I do not understand some of these positions, though.”

“He is right,” Dedue said, gesturing to half a dozen passages that were dead ends, but had clusters of black boxes crowding them nonetheless. “Why are troops stationed here? It makes no sense.”

“Yeah, they’re dead ends,” Dorothea said.

“Maybe they aren’t dead ends,” Lysithea said.

Hilda leaned over her. “Huh? Lysithea, did you say something?”

Lysithea let out a frustrated groan. “I said they aren’t dead ends!” she shouted, balling her fists. Her voice cracked from the strain.

“I still didn’t catch that. Hang on.” Hilda reached across the table and scooped her up off the map in spite of her protests. Lysithea desperately tried to wriggle out of her grip like a freshly-caught fish flopping on the pier. “What was that?”

“Maybe you should do the talking for all of us,” Linhardt suggested to Caspar. He’d never thought Caspar’s talent for making noise would be such a valuable asset.

Caspar coughed. “I dunno. At this rate, I’ll wear out my voice by dawn…”

“You’re right, Lysithea,” Byleth said once Lysithea had repeated herself and Hilda had repeated what she’d repeated. “These can’t be dead ends for all the strategic importance they’re being given.” She paused, as though listening to something only she could hear. “What if they’re passages to the surface?”

Petra tapped on the map. “Please be excusing me. This area here is around where the monks live, right? So we are being here.”

“I’m not sure without a map of the monastery to confirm it,” Linhardt said. “But if it is…”

“…Then there’s an entrance to Abyss nearby!” Caspar concluded. “And that’s where Tomas ran off to!”

“And that’s where we have to go,” Byleth said. She pulled a map of the monastery from her satchel and overlaid it atop the map of Abyss, gently brushing Linhardt and Caspar aside. Once she’d lifted both maps off the table, Linhardt conjured a small flame underneath them; the light bled through both leaves of paper to overlay the two maps.

Byleth tapped on the combined maps where the six entrances to Abyss aligned. “Here’s where the entrances are. One path leads from the town square.”

Ferdinand nodded. “Where that vile apothecary lived, I’m sure.”

“One path goes just beyond the monastery walls, in the Sealed Forest. One underneath the abandoned chapel, one near the training hall…”

“That must be where His Highness and Lord Claude went,” Dedue said. “I was told they’d been last seen around there.”

“There’s one just beneath the bridge to the cathedral. And that leaves one last entrance just past the monks’ dormitories… that must be where Tomas went,” Byleth finished. She packed both maps away. “Petra, Ferdinand, go find Seteth and tell him everything we found out here. Dorothea, bring Hilda to the infirmary. Hubert, Dedue…”

Hubert crumpled over and dropped like a stone, falling hard enough to rattle the table. From Linhardt’s perspective, watching him fall to the floor was like watching a woodsman fell a mighty tree.

He always did have trouble knowing when he needed rest, Linhardt thought. At least this time he wouldn’t have to carry him to his room like the last time Hubert had let his sleep deprivation get the best of him.

The Plague Rat and Myson didn’t so much as leave a trail to follow as they did a fully-paved road—the stench of rat stained the floor of the endless maze of cavernous corridors as indelibly as blood would stain fine rugs.

All through the halls, little signs of mouse civilization long-past dotted the floors. A ruin of something that might have been a tent here and there, a few bones shrouded in rags, a few less thoroughly-decayed corpses that bore very rat-shaped teeth marks—some of which were fresh, even when the corpses weren’t.

Dimitri and Claude led the others down these halls, following the Plague Rat by his trail for hours. They never caught sight of him or his warlock retainer, which Claude was thankful for—Dimitri, on the other hand, was growing more and more irritable by the minute, constantly picking up speed and pressing everyone else to go faster.

“We’ve got to rest a bit, Dimitri,” Claude gasped, propping himself up against his bow like a walking stick as he caught his breath. “The Boar of Faerghus may have limitless stamina, but this mouse of Leicester doesn’t…” He paid a glance at Marianne and Annette, both of whom were huffing and puffing enough that it was clear they agreed with him.

“No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Annette squeaked, panting for breath and clutching at a stitch in her side. “Just gimme one minute… or maybe two… or three… definitely not five…” Marianne didn’t complain at all, aside from her near constant mumbling about how sorry she was.

“I can go on for another couple hours,” Balthus boasted, “but… I gotta admit, I could eat a horse right about now.”

“Claudester’s right,” Hapi said. “My paws are killing me.”

“We can’t stop following the Plague Rat,” Dimitri said, shaking his head. “If we aren’t right behind him when he catches up to El—er, E-Edelgard… I fear the worst.”

Hapi smirked. “You’re looking to curry some favors from the princess too then, huh, Didi?”

Dimitri turned on her, clutching his spear with one paw and a fistful of his cape with the other. “It’s not like that!” he hotly protested. “She’s my…” His gaze fell upon Annette. “Never mind. Perhaps a few minutes’ rest…”

“No, really, I’m fine,” Annette protested although she was doubled over and could hardly breathe. “We can keep going. Let’s just keep going.”

“That’s good for you, dear, but some of us aren’t so spry anymore,” Cornflower piped up, leaning on a cane fashioned from one of the many spears Dimitri had broken back in the town. “Listen to Claude. We all need rest.”

“Shame on you, running a mother of four kids ragged like this,” Balthus chastised Dimitri. “She must be… uh, how old are you?”

“Nearly two years,” Cornflower said.

“Oh. And is that… old for a mouse?”

She nodded. “Older than most.”

Balthus gasped. “Prince Dimitri, how dare you! This lady’s on her deathbed!”

“Excuse me?” Cornflower relied, indignant, as Balthus swept her up off the floor.

Dimitri let out a sigh that was half-frustrated, half-resigned. “I see. Yes, I suppose that as long as we still have the Plague Rat’s trail to follow, we can afford to rest up and regain our strength. Cornflower, are there any nearby camps we could take shelter at?”

“And eat at,” Balthus chimed in. “They’ve gotta have food.”

Cornflower looked up from her perch atop Balthus’ arms and studied the hallway, whiskers twitching. “If we keep going this way, then turn right at the first intersection, then turn left at the third, we’ll find my burrow. But I’m afraid we barely have enough food for ourselves there, let alone you six.”

“Well, we wouldn’t like to impose,” Claude said, “especially if Balthus here is set to eat you out of house and home.”

“Perish the thought!” Balthus replied, scandalized. “I can do a lot of things, but I can’t do that to a lady with kids to feed!” He looked down at Hapi. “Say… Hap… What if we camped out right here, and you summoned a monster… and Annie here used her fire magic here to cook it, and then we all ate it?”

Hapi glared at him. “B, that is one of the dumbest…” She paused, her expression softening as her stomach let out an audible growl. “Plans… I’ve ever… h…. Shit, I’m hungry.”

Everyone, Claude realized, was hungry, especially himself. Knowing what hunger felt like didn’t make it any easier to suffer through.

“Didi, if I summon some rats or another cat, do you think you could kill it for us?” Hapi asked.

Dimitri grimaced. “I am not eating cat! And stop calling me ‘Didi!’”

“Okay, Dimmy.”

“‘Didi’ is fine, actually.”

Hapi sighed. “Alright. Let’s hope I conjure up a rat this time.”

“Um… excuse me, Hapi?” Marianne asked, raising her paw as though she were offering to answer a question in class. Her voice was even softer and more whispery than usual. “How… do you summon monsters?”

“I just did.”

“What, by sighing?” Claude asked.

Hapi cast a furtive, wary glance at everyone, as though expecting dirty looks or worse. “Yeah.”

“That sounds like a terrible burden,” Marianne said.

Hapi rolled her eyes. “Save the pity for someone else. It comes in handy… sometimes.”

There was a glint of eyeshine in the darkness up ahead. Dimitri groaned and readied his spear, motioning for the others to fall back behind him. Claude nocked an arrow to his bow.

“If this thing turns out to be a cat,” Dimitri said, “then I’d rather we starve.”

Dimitri stared glumly at a hunk of charred meat skewered on his spear, his downcast eyes glistening in the firelight as he moped.

“What’s wrong?” Hapi mumbled through a mouthful of food. “Roasted rat doesn’t offend your noble palate, does it, Didi?”

Claude gnawed on his own hunk of roasted rat flank. It was earthy and pungent, with a gamey tang and texture to it—and in spite of its toughness and how unevenly it had cooked, he couldn’t really say it tasted anywhere near as bad as he’d expected. Cooked right, he mused, perhaps stewed or braised to make it more tender, you could put it on the plate of any noble in Fódlan and tell them it was rabbit and they’d believe you. “Tastes fine to me,” he said.

As he dug in and placated his whining stomach, he studied Dimitri. The young prince of Faerghus was full of surprises. Surprises and secrets. And there was nothing Claude loved more than sniffing out people’s secrets—and fortunately for him, as a mouse he had a very good nose.

He’d been well acquainted with Dimitri the Boar, Dimitri the terror of the training hall, Dimitri the man who left a trail of broken swords and spears in his wake, but this side of Dimitri was new to him. Particularly, it was the hitherto-hidden side of Dimitri that seemed very, very oddly invested in the well-being of one Edelgard von Hresvelg. Claude wondered, could it be that he was smitten with her? Or was there some other link between the two of them? If there was, it seemed fairly one-sided—standoffish as always, Edelgard hardly ever gave him so much as the time of day.

She’s my— Dimitri had started to say before catching and silencing his rebellious tongue. She’s my what? One-sided infatuation? Childhood friend? Secret lover? Bitter rival? Long-lost sister? Mortal enemy? All of the above? None of the above? Pick two? There were so many possibilities, each one more scandalous than the last!

Claude had thought Edelgard had been the mysterious one, but there was more to Dimitri than met the eye as well. Between the two of them and the Church of Seiros, Fódlan truly was a land of secrets. And of course, when Claude had been revealed to the world as the heir to Duke Riegan, he’d brought plenty of secrets of his own with him to Fódlan from Almyra.

“I have no issue with the taste,” Dimitri said to Hapi. “Does this not disturb you?” he asked Cornflower, who was nibbling on her dinner without a care in the world. “Aren’t you uncomfortable eating rats? Aren’t they just larger, hairier mice?”

“Aren’t you uncomfortable eating apes?” Cornflower asked him. “Aren’t they just larger, hairier humans?”

“Yes. Yes, that thought makes me very uncomfortable.”

“Food is food,” Claude told him. “Mice will eat anything edible.”

“And sometimes things that aren’t, if they’re desperate,” Marianne whispered.

“Anything edible, huh?” Dimitri took another hesitant bite, chewing it thoughtfully, then gingerly scraped the meat off his spear and set it aside. “Truthfully, I don’t think I had much of an appetite to begin with. Cornflower, if your burrow is so close by, you should use this opportunity to return to it. Take as much of our food as you can carry back to your children. I would hate for them to become orphans because you followed us into danger.”

“That is sweet of you, Dimitri,” Cornflower said, patting him on the shoulder. She began to pack up. “I wish I had something to give you all as a token of my thanks. If it wasn’t for you and your friends—especially you, Marianne—my children would already be orphans.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” Marianne said. “I’m just glad I could be of some use.”

“The help you’ve given us is token enough of your thanks,” Claude said to the elder mouse. “Let’s hope we meet again under more auspicious circumstances. And somewhere with proper food for a real victory feast!”

With their goodbyes said, Cornflower slipped away into the darkness. Marianne bowed her head and offered a silent prayer to the Goddess for her protection. Claude realized only after she’d left that he still had a ton of questions to ask her about where all these talking mice had come from and briefly considered running after her to ask all of them at once.

Instead, with just the bare minimum of time to rest, he and Dimitri were back on the trail of the Plague Rat, following the stains of its wretched scent deeper into Abyss. Rats had never bothered him so much before; it must have been something to do with being a mouse that made the rat’s odor so uniquely offensive. If the rumors regarding Edelgard’s… adverse reaction toward rats were true, she must have been miserable down here.

For the second time that night, after what felt like hours carefully maintaining a safe distance from their target, Dimitri found himself and Claude peering at the Plague Rat from afar.

This time, the morbid rat, his warlock retainer, and two rat-drawn wagons each manned by a masked mage, half a dozen mice wielding crude swords, and two rats carrying kitchen cutlery for spears had stopped at what looked like the kind of encampment a traveling army would erect. But Dimitri could tell that there were no soldiers in this camp.

Because all of the dead mice lying on the floor in fresh pools of blood were unarmed.

He couldn’t breathe. He could hardly even think. His heart rattled against his ribs, thumping like it was trying to rip itself free from his chest. Bile bit at the back of his throat. The scent of fire stung his nostrils, the odor of blood and shit, the stench of burning flesh. It filled his nose. He could even taste it on his tongue.

Since that horrible day four years ago, he hadn’t been able to smell much of anything, and could barely taste anything either. Except blood and fire. Those always came back. They’d come back before at the dead town, too—just faint traces, but enough to make him feel ill—and now they were back in full force.

The voices came back, too, creeping into his ears like they always did. His father, his stepmother, Glenn, their voices mingling with the dying. Their voices were the dying, drowning in a sea of blood. In his mind’s eye he saw the Tragedy of Duscur again, and the retaliatory massacres and pogroms that had followed, because he had been there then and he was there again now—

Claude grabbed him. “Dimitri, what are you doing? What happened to not being in a risk-taking mood?”

“Where are you, Edelgard?” the Plague Rat bellowed, his tail lashing back and forth like a whip as he brandished his serrated blade drenched in fresh blood. “Are you so vain now that you cannot show your face to me? Or perhaps you’ve become a coward?”

A battle-scarred mouse stood up amid the others in the camp, clutching a sharpened wooden stick. “Hey! Told ya, your Edelgard von Whatever ain’t here!” he shouted at Myson and the Plague Rat. “Haven’t ya already bothered us once t’day, you chuds?”

“If I can make a suggestion,” Myson said to the Plague Rat, “there’s a better way to draw Edelgard out of hiding. Stop killing the adults. Start killing the pups.” He motioned to the swordsmice waiting in the wagon.

Dimitri hated senseless violence. The thought of killing nauseated him. To think of the number of lives he himself had taken in battle filled him with revulsion.

He hated to add to that number. But his spear was already at his side. His muscles were already tensing like coiled springs. To see a village reduced to corpses threw shackles around his mind and spurred his body onward regardless.

Thank the Goddess that kind old mouse lady hadn’t decided to tag along.

“All of you behind me,” he barked, “flank the enemy and close in on both sides! Don’t let a single one escape! Kill every last one of them!”

By the time Claude could cry out, “Dimitri, have you lost your mind?!” Dimitri had already traveled half the distance between himself and the Plague Rat.

The Plague Rat whirled around, his ragged black cape swirling around him, and parried the first swing of his spear. The spear’s wooden haft rolled and caught on the serrated edge of the massive steak knife. Dimitri used its weight and reach to push aside the blade, then drove his spear toward a gap in the Plague Rat’s ill-fitting, piecemeal scrap-metal armor with a savage two-handed thrust.

The Plague Rat caught the spear in his paw, gnarled and clawed fingers curling around the shaft just under the blade, and brought it to a dead halt. The blade pricked his flesh, releasing a black trickle of blood, but traveled no farther.

“You’re not Edelgard,” the beast spat, disappointed.

“I’ll see to it you die disappointed,” Dimitri snarled. He wrenched his spear free. Swings, parries, thrusts—blade met blade again and again, sometimes biting flesh, often kicking up sparks as metal squealed against metal. Chaos whirled around them. Six against eighteen—not good odds, but the odds were never good. Dimitri didn’t focus much on what the others were doing except for the few times their paths intersected with his, though—he only had eyes for the architect of this massacre.

“Ignore these interlopers!” Myson shouted to his troops. “Ransack this place! Search every nook and cranny and cut down anyone in your path! She’s here! She has to be!”

The Plague Rat struck again and again. Dimitri felt the force from the impacts rattle the bones in his arms as he blocked the blade with his spear. “Out of my way, little mouse!” the rat sneered, spittle spewing from his maw underneath his skeletal mask. His artificial eyes glowed like moonlight. “Run back to your burrow and live another day!”

There was a flash of silver in the periphery of Dimitri’s vision—he leaped out of the way of a bloodstained fork, its tines tearing four ragged cuts across his chest. One of the other two-legged rats, its eyes glowing an unearthly blue and a cobalt mist pouring from its mouth, bore down on him, flanking him from his left.

“Or not,” the Plague Rat chuckled as both rats struck. Dimitri’s feet slid across the bloodstained stone tiles as he defended himself from an assault on two fronts. Normally a fight like this was trivial—he let Felix and Sylvain double-team him in sparring sessions all the time just so he could break a sweat—but these rats set his heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings, as though they were predators and he was their prey. The fork grazed the side of his head and blood stung his eye; he felt his ear burn as though someone had pressed a match against it.

The feral rat reared its head and gaped its jaw, its long and yellowed incisors dripping with drool. There was a swift, shrill noise that cut through the air and an instant later, a quivering arrow protruded from the rat’s open mouth, its head buried in the back of the rat’s throat. The rat fell to the floor, limp and lifeless.

Claude nocked another arrow to his bow (even without his wits about him, Dimitri couldn’t help but notice how few arrows were left in his quiver) and gave one of those maddeningly cocky winks he was so fond of. Dimitri threw his spear at him. He missed by a whisker; the rat that had been creeping up behind Claude collapsed with the spear’s blood-soaked blade poking out of its back.

As the Plague Rat struck again, Dimitri ripped the fork away from the rat Claude had killed and caught the blade’s scalloped edge in its tines, grinding steel against sterling silver. Dueling with a fork and knife. If he had any room in his heart for any emotion besides fury, he would almost find it amusing.

“What’s so important about Edelgard that you have to slaughter innocents to get to her?” he spat, batting the Plague Rat’s blade aside. “What does she matter to murderous vermin like you?!”

Without so much as a wordless snarl in response, the Plague Rat knocked him off his feet and sent him flying. The fork fell from his grasp and clattered to the floor. A split second stretched into an eternity, and a split second later, Dimitri felt his spine crack against the floor and a flood of pain wash through his skull from back to front. The back of his head felt wet. His ears rang. The world swam and swirled around him like droplets of ink in a glass of water.

As he rolled onto his stomach and tried to force himself up, he saw one of the remaining swordsmice charging at him, crude scrap-metal sword held high overhead. His vision blurred and doubled. One mouse became two. Two became four. Two of the mice socked the other two in the jaw and dropped them to the floor, and the next thing Dimitri knew, Marianne’s face had coalesced in front of him. For an instant, there was a dull, almost feral look in her eyes—and then she was kneeling beside him with his head in her paws, muttering a quick prayer to the Goddess as numbing healing magic flowed into his body. The pain in his head faded and the world stopped swirling and melting.

The Plague Rat was already upon him. Two arrows drove themselves into his shoulder, but he paid them no mind as he raised his wicked blade high overhead and prepared to bring it crashing down. Without thinking, Dimitri shoved Marianne out of the way and threw up his forearm to block the blow. The blade cut through his flesh like a knife through rare steak, chewing through muscle and tendon. The pain of the scalloped edge of the knife sliding downward, sawing a shallow gash into his bone, was white-hot, like staring into the sun.

“You’re no Edelgard,” the Plague Rat hissed, “but you’re good practice! I think I’ll throw your corpse at her feet…”

The blade pressed down deeper, pushing Dimitri’s half-bisected forearm with it. Blood stained his golden fur a crimson he couldn’t see—to his eyes, it was just a murky yellow-gray so dark it was nearly black. He felt the blade push gently against his face, tracing a line up his snout from the tip of his nose to his forehead, as he struggled with all his might to hold it back and keep it from doing anything more than break the skin. The blade filled his vision, a blurry black mass splitting the world into left and right, with one of the Plague Rat’s glowing eyes on either side.

If his strength faltered, if the burning muscles in his shoulder gave way, the Plague Rat would cleave him in twain—Dimitri was finally outmatched in strength. He could only pray his boundless stamina would remain so.

A faint spark of lucidity crept back into his mind in spite of the pain. Was this how he would die? Split down the middle by a steak knife? His stepmother, his father, Glenn… how would he avenge their wailing spirits when he himself was among them?

A burst of black miasma struck the Plague Rat in the side of his head, waves of dark magic crashing against the scarred contours of his skull helmet. Disoriented for a split second, his grip loosened and strength failed; Dimitri felt the blade slide away from his arm, drawing new screams and howls of pain from his severed nerves. As the Plague Rat reeled, Balthus’ fist slammed into the side of his head at the exact spot where the blast of magic had struck. A spiderweb of cracks grew across the side of the skull, flecks of bone chips flying through the air.

Enraged, the Plague Rat slapped Balthus aside with the flat of his blade and turned on Dimitri—too late. Dimitri picked up the fork he’d dropped, wielding the makeshift spear one-handed as his ruined right arm hung limp at his side, and buried it in the Plague Rat’s belly with all his might, then stabbed again, and again, and again. He leaped up, planted his feet on the fork’s handle as his monstrous foe fell, and tackled him, blood from his wounds spilling on the Plague Rat’s death’s-head mask.

Dimitri grappled with the beast, kicking, scratching, biting, like a beast; he tasted blood and fire filling his mouth as he sank his teeth into the Plague Rat’s flesh. They rolled across the floor, snarling and spitting at each other, a wheel of fur and fangs and claws. Dimitri ended up on top, and with a ragged scream, he buried his fist in the hollow of the Plague Rat’s throat as deep as it would go.

The Plague Rat’s chest began to quiver; he began to laugh a low, slow, hoarse laugh. Dimitri pressed his fist deeper into his throat to silence him. “Foolish little rodent,” the rat gasped as Dimitri choked the life out of him. “The body is temporary… the spirit is eternal. Didn’t they teach you that… at church?”

“Just go to hell already!” Dimitri cried out, the venom in his words burning his throat.

The Plague Rat’s glowing eyes flashed with a brilliant, star-shaped light; the next thing Dimitri knew, the left side of his face was awash with searing flames and the Plague Rat’s massive, meaty paw was clamped around his neck, claws ripping into his flesh as the beast’s grip crushed his windpipe. He felt the world spin around him and his feet leave the floor, dark mist crowding out his vision as he struggled to suck air through his constricting throat. The world fell away; the Plague Rat’s morbid, monstrous visage fell to the end of a long black tunnel.

Visions floated in his mind’s eye—the only eye he had left to see clearly with. Visions of her lilac eyes, her chestnut hair, the stern and commanding tone in her voice when she’d taught him to dance all those years ago, the dagger he’d given her as a parting gift before she’d left Fhirdiad to return to the Empire.

Cut your own path, El. To the future you dreamed of.

Was this where his path ended? He felt the cold hands of ghosts laying on his body, ready to drag him to the eternal flames. He weakly scrabbled against the Plague Rat’s wrist, his claws ripping shallow gashes in his foe’s scarred and scabrous flesh. His lungs burned, his heart fluttered; the mad thrashings of his legs and tail grew weaker until his body fell still.

“What… does a beast like you…” Dimitri gasped with the last of his breath, “want with El…?”

The Plague Rat’s grip only grew tighter. “What are you to her,” he bellowed, enraged further, “that you dare call her that?”

An arrow ran through the side of his neck and burst out the other side in a shower of gore. The Plague Rat’s grip faltered and Dimitri fell to the floor, greedily gasping for air as Claude fired the last of his arrows into the monster’s throat. Wheezing and hissing, the Plague Rat stumbled backward, scrabbling at the two arrows lodged in an X shape through his neck and ripping them out.

“Wow. Cornflower was right…” Claude gasped, perturbed. Blood matted his hair and fur; fear widened his eyes. His legs buckled under his weight, his body as drained of strength as his quiver was of arrows. “This thing just… doesn’t want to die…”

“Plague Rat! That’s enough!” Myson called out, appearing at the beast’s side in a flash of blue light. To say he looked worse for the wear was an understatement—his peaked warlock’s hat was a charred mess that only resembled a hat in that it was sitting atop his head, his fur was soaked with his own blood, and one ear had been reduced to a ragged stub. Dimitri’s classmates had done a number on him while he’d been preoccupied with the Plague Rat. “Edelgard is no longer here. But we’ve found something else that is of interest. I’ve already secured it; it’s time to leave now.”

All the Plague Rat could do was wordlessly gasp for breath, his chest heaving fruitlessly as air whistled through the holes in his throat. He fell to his knees, blood spurting in streams from his neck like a fountain and oozing from dozens of puncture wounds littering his underbelly. He seemed on death’s door, yet still clung to life.

Dimitri forced himself to his feet, battered and bloody. He could hardly see straight anymore. Myson caught sight of him and began to laugh. “Prince Dimitri Blaiddyd? Is that you?” His gaze turned to Claude. “And you must be the Riegan boy.”

“My friends here call me Claude.” As weak and feeble as he was, Claude raised his bow again and reached over his shoulder to draw another arrow. “But I guess ‘Riegan boy’ will do for you—” He stopped short upon realizing that his quiver was empty. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

Myson placed his paw on the Plague Rat’s bloodstained flank and in a flash of blue-white light, both of them disappeared. Dimitri took two shaky, staggering steps toward where the two fiends had stood just a moment ago, felt his legs give way beneath him, and passed out as the floor rushed up to meet him.

Last night, Edelgard had fallen asleep first; Bernadetta had barely held onto consciousness long enough for Matthias and Wesper to return with news of a safer place they’d found to spend the night in than an exposed crack in a wall—namely, the bottom drawer of a dilapidated wooden chest of drawers that had had a hole cut out of its front and a ragged curtain draped over the hole. She’d barely settled down before all but collapsing into a pile of dusty rags serving as makeshift mattress and blankets, the aches in every muscle dulling until she couldn’t feel anything at all.

She woke up with her snout buried in a pillow. A strange pillow: a fuzzy one, lit by warmth from within, and gently rising in time with—

It wasn’t a pillow. With dawning horror, she realized what she was really sleeping on.

It was Edelgard’s chest.

She thanked the Goddess they were both mice right now, because if they were human, then she would have been nuzzling Edelgard’s—

Before she could pull away, an apology ready to fly off her tongue like an arrow from a longbow, she felt Edelgard’s paw slip under her ragged cloak and gently trace the curve of her spine; and even though frantic apologies came so naturally to her, she managed to completely forget what she’d been about to say.

“Good morning,” Edelgard said to her. “If it is morning, that is. I suppose there’s no way to tell down here, is there?”

“Um…”

“I hope you don’t mind.” She kept stroking Bernadetta’s back as though she were one of the monastery’s many cats. “I woke up not too long ago and needed something to soothe my nerves…”

“H-Happy to be of service?”

“You’d seemed distressed as well. I wanted to help,” she said. “Oh, but I can stop if you’d like.”

“No! I-I mean…” Bernadetta sighed. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. It would just be another game of push-and-pull between her and Edelgard, wouldn’t it? Edelgard would pull her in with sweet words and sympathy and—her paw slipped down her back again and it felt so good that she shivered—this, but then it would only be a matter of time before her mood soured again and she pushed her away. How many more times could Edelgard lose her temper and snap at her before she stopped trying to expect anything better from her?

“I don’t know,” she said, struggling to find the words to describe the thoughts circling her head. “I just don’t know.”

“I suppose you’re still afraid of me.”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

There were gulfs between their words, long stretches of silence, as though they were playing a high-stakes game of chess and had to take the time to ponder each and every move, and in those gulfs all Edelgard did was stroke her fur with careful, practiced gentleness, tracing her spine, drawing lazy, loose circles across her shoulders, raking clawed fingertips softly across the nape of her neck.

“This would be quite awkward if we were human,” Edelgard mused, “wouldn’t it be?”

“Yeah…”

She stopped petting her. “Now that you’re awake, though, I have something to confess to you, Bernadetta.”

Bernadetta braced herself and prepared for the worst. Here it came…

“Since we came down here, I’ve been… missing something. It was something I’ve been long prepared to sacrifice on the altar of my ambitions, but instead, it’s been ripped from my grasp and I have gained nothing in return. Without it, I feel… fragile. Weak. It takes all my strength to hold myself together, and when that strength fails, even for a moment… I break. I can hardly recognize myself.”

Relieved, Bernadetta nodded. She had trouble holding herself together sometimes, too. Everyone knew her as the quiet, reserved recluse who could go entire days without speaking so much as a word to anybody, but when she was pushed beyond her limits, that was when she would explode into panicked hysterics, shouting at the top of her lungs the way she’d always kicked and screamed whenever her father had tried to drag her out of her bedroom. “We really are the same, huh?”

“Yes… Yes, I suppose. That is why… I will try harder from now on. In fact, I promise, as an oath upon the Hresvelg bloodline, that I shall never again raise my voice in anger against you. I’m sorry for my behavior yesterday.”

Bernadetta lifted her head. Her eyes met Edelgard’s. Usually, the princess’ eyes were cold and hard, gleaming with a stern and serious light. But now they were softer and rueful—oddly earnest—and projected a contrite face. They were trustworthy eyes. “Y-You mean it?”

She felt Edelgard’s paw slip across her snout, fingers ghosting down her chin and nestling gently in the hollow of her throat for a blissful instant before slipping away.

“I do,” Edelgard said.

Bernadetta smiled, and before she could stop herself, she said, “That didn’t sound like an apology befitting a princess.”

Edelgard let out a sharp, flustered laugh. “Well, my conduct has hardly been befitting a princess, either, so it balances out.” She tousled Bernadetta’s hair. “I’m not used to asking for forgiveness. I usually simply take it. But… do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Forgive me.”

“Oh. Um…” Bernadetta nestled her cheek on Edelgard’s shoulder. Edelgard’s fur was as soft and glossy as the silk of her cloak—the parts that weren’t crusted with dried blood, that was. “I might if you keep petting me.”

“Is that extortion?” Edelgard scratched behind her ear. “Well, aren’t you a bold one, Bernadetta.”

“Extortion? No, no, I didn’t mean it; I forgive you! No strings attached!”

“Oh, never you mind. That’s an easy deal for me to agree to.”

Edelgard kept petting her. Bernadetta felt like she was melting; the soothing, calming motion of Edelgard’s claws gently raking her skin and the warmth of her body under hers was a balm against every worry in her head.

“I guess I should apologize, too,” Bernadetta said. “I’m sorry for freaking out when you told me what… what they did to you. I thought you were mocking me…”

“True, your torture was nothing like mine,” Edelgard said to her, “but it was still torture. And our pains, though different, still stem from the same source—the world’s mad obsession with bloodlines and Crests. I had no intention of belittling your pain.”

“I know. It’s just… hard to be rational sometimes. I wish I could be more like you.”

“Even I lose my sense of reason sometimes. I suppose I just do a better job of hiding it than you.” Edelgard laughed. “Hah. If only Hubert could see me now.” She sat up and let Bernadetta’s head rest in her lap. “He’s been trying to cure my phobia for years. To think that three days ago I was afraid to even look at you…”

“And now?”

“If anything, I feel safe around you. In fact, last night, I felt…”

There was an odd look in her eyes, a faraway look, wistful and almost nostalgic.

“I have a request of you, Bernadetta—or would you prefer if I called you ‘Bernie’ or ‘Bern?’”

Bernadetta shrugged. “Either’s fine.”

“When we’re alone, I’d—” Edelgard smiled, but her eyes looked nervous. “I, er… Between the two of us—just between the two of us—I think I’d prefer if you called me ‘El.’”

“O-Okay, uh… E—El?” It felt strange, almost perverse, to use a nickname like that for the future emperor, but there was also something thrilling and exhilarating about it.

Edelgard’s smile turned fragile and wobbly.

“Oh, uh… i-if it makes you feel bad, never mind—”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “No, it is fine. I just… I only ever see that name now in letters from my father. I haven’t heard it for over half a year.”

“The—The Emperor calls you that?”

“Yes, but he picked it up from my youngest sister, Hedwig. She had a hard time with my name. With everyone’s name. She had a s-speech impediment a-and—” Her voice cracked. She paused and took a deep breath.

“El…”

“Excuse me. You write, don’t you?” Edelgard asked, sharpening her voice as she hurriedly rushed to a new topic. “I overheard Sylvain praising your work on the night of the… victory celebration.”

“Well—i-if he really liked it and wasn’t just trying to humiliate me, then he just has bad taste.”

“I won’t pry. I suppose everything I’ve told you about myself will make for a fantastic story one day.”

“Yes, I—I think it could. There’s drama, tragedy, double-crossing, trauma—”

“Entirely fictional, of course.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, or historical events is wholly unintentional and utterly coincidental, if anybody asks.”

“Definitely.”

Edelgard leaned in closer until the tip of her snout just barely pressed against Bernadetta’s, her voice dropping nearly to a whisper as her breath ruffled Bernadetta’s whiskers. Bernadetta felt her heart race, her brain boil with anticipation—but anticipation of what? “And—this is very important—in this story, in her ruthless and relentless pursuit of justice, the brave heroine meets—”

“Oh, you’re awake!” Matthias exclaimed as he poked his head through the curtain into the drawer.

“Matthias!” Bernadetta shot up to her feet. “Uh… Y-You, um…”

“You should give advance warning before you barge into a girl’s bedroom,” Edelgard sternly told him, pressing a ragged blanket to her chest as though to cover herself up, even though her fur did a good enough job of that.

“You didn’t hear me knock? I guess I’ll knock louder next time,” he said, climbing into the drawer. “So, how’d you two sleep? I haven’t! Yuri and Constance showed me around the place; it’s amazing! It’s not—It’s not the cities, I mean, but to think that mice could live like this down here! Everyone’s just so… well, um, no one’s really happy about being a mouse due to the whole, well, they’re all meant to be humans, but they’re all well-fed and there aren’t any rats trying to kill them and—and here’s the best part! When the chuds make trouble, they actually fight back!”

Edelgard crossed her arms. “Ah. So that’s what you’ve been doing wrong.”

“Anyway, Edelgard, Constance wants to talk to you. She kept saying things about a house called Nuvelle, which must be a pretty big and important house. Have you been there?”

“Nuvelle…” There was a glint of recognition in Edelgard’s eyes as she pondered the name. “As in ‘von Nuvelle?’”

Bernadetta recognized the name, too, but only vaguely. Hadn’t House Nuvelle been one of the Empire’s noble bloodlines? But unlike the surnames of her classmates, Nuvelle rang no bells.

Matthias shrugged. “I dunno. You humans have too many names. Isn’t one enough? I mean, imagine if I had three names. And why do you all have ‘Von’ in the middle?”

“I’ll explain later,” Edelgard said. “Where is Constance?”

“Right outside waiting for us. I’ll crash here if you don’t mind.” Matthias yawned. “I’m sleepy.”

As Edelgard and Bernadetta climbed out of the drawer, they heard a muffled thump behind them. Edelgard still used her axe to prop herself up, keeping it by her side like a cane—it was no wonder, considering how utterly drained she’d been last night. Restful as her sleep had been (aside from some stressful dreams about home, but that was simply normal to her), Bernadetta’s feet still ached from all the running she’d done, all the fighting notwithstanding.

Constance was, just as Matthias had said, right outside the drawer waiting for them, her paws clasped expectantly behind her back. At the sight of Edelgard, she gave a curt, polite bow. “Good morning to you, Your Highness. And to you, miss…”

“I’m sorry about your bat,” Bernadetta blurted out.

“Bruce? Oh, he’s right as rain now!” Constance let out a haughty laugh. For a mouse, her smile, as well as her face, was sharp and foxlike. “That’s all water under the bridge. Now, Lady Edelgard, I’m sure you’re well aware of the tragedy that befell House Nuvelle…”

“Yes, of course. A shame it had to happen to such a family.”

“An utter shame! Ruination of the greatest masters of spellcraft Adrestia, no, all of Fódlan has ever known! Can you stomach the injustice, Lady Edelgard?”

Bernadetta had no idea what Constance and Edelgard were talking about.

“Not in the slightest. I have great sympathy for House Nuvelle,” Edelgard said to Constance. “After all, yours was one of the few great noble families to side with my father in the insurrection. For that, you have my thanks.” Her tone was measured, as it always was when discussing matters like this, so there was no way to tell whether or not she was speaking honestly. Bernadetta could all but see the clockwork moving behind her face. She was already pondering what use Constance could be to her and what she would have to say to keep her useful. Did she do that with everyone? Bernadetta wondered. Did she do that with her?

“I’m happy you see things my way,” Constance said. “I’m sure someone of your intelligence can imagine…”

Bernadetta tuned their voices out as her thoughts consumed her head. Edelgard lies. She almost didn’t want to remember that, but couldn’t help herself. Edelgard had told her just as much—she said what she needed to say to get what she needed from people. There was no way of really knowing what was the truth and what wasn’t with her. Or had that been a lie? Had Edelgard been lying about lying? Or had she been lying about lying about lying?

Bernadetta shook her head as though to shake away all those thoughts. She could trust Edelgard to be honest to her. The dark past she had laid bare wasn’t a lie. The way she had leaped to her defense time and time again wasn’t a lie. The thing about anxiety was that most of your thoughts were so stupid, and yet you couldn’t stop thinking them.

“…for one, aim to be Fódlan's foremost expert in transmutation magic,” Constance was saying while Bernadetta ruminated, “and my mastery shall surely revolutionize the world and restore House Nuvelle to its former glory and more!”

“Transmutation magic?” Edelgard gasped, her ears literally perking up. “Is there any way you could restore our human forms?”

“I’m afraid transmutation magic is a step below polymorphic magic,” Constance admitted, her face falling. “A very big step. And polymorphic magic alone is fairly limited. It takes an incredible amount of energy, or barring that, a magic circle bigger than a house, to transform one person! The only way to make such an ungainly spell useful is to cast it on a specific herbal concoction that will carry the magic, and that in itself is almost impossible to brew due to how rare, not to mention illegal, most of the ingredients are!”

That, Bernadetta thought, was a very long way to say ‘no.’

“Actually, transmutation magic is far more versatile and useful, even if it cannot, say, turn a man into a mouse or vise versa. It is simpler to cast, requires far less material overhead, and—oh, this is exciting. My latest major breakthrough came just a few days ago, when I transmuted water that was contaminated by polymorphus muridae!”

“You made the water clean?” Bernadetta asked.

“Not exactly,” Constance admitted, drawing her ragged blue shawl around her shoulders. “I transmuted the water into piping hot bergamot tea… that was contaminated by polymorphus muridae. Anyway, as I was saying about my research—” Constance stopped in mid-sentence, wrinkled her nose, and grimaced. “Er, Lady Edelgard… I would love to continue our conversation, but first—by any chance, would you and your friend care for a bath?”

A hot bath couldn’t stop Edelgard from smelling like a mouse, but at least it could stop her from smelling like dirt and blood, for which she was eternally grateful. She was even more grateful for the transmutation magic Constance had performed on the bathwater to make it smell so strongly of lilac.

Of course, there weren’t any mouse-sized bathtubs or washbasins in Yuri’s little shantytown for fugitives and criminals, but a ceramic bowl filled with warm water more than sufficed. Edelgard climbed in and sank into the water up to her neck, bracing her arms against the lip of the bowl to keep herself from sinking entirely, and let the water wrap itself around her in an all-encompassing embrace, pressing gently against every lingering ache in her body.

She felt almost human again, in spite of the fur, the tail (which had to admit that she was starting to get used to having), the whiskers, the teeth, et cetera. It shouldn’t have entirely caught her by surprise what a difference cleanliness made—she hadn’t felt human in the dungeon all those years ago, either—and yet it did.

Bernadetta stared down at the rippling surface of the water, nervously clutching at her ragged, filthy black cloak, and let out an anxious, wistful sigh.

“No need to wait your turn,” Edelgard told her. “There’s room enough for both of us. And if the water gets cold, I’ll have to promise another favor to Constance to have it heated again.” Constance had already made her kneel before her and proclaim the superiority of House Nuvelle’s spellcraft for the privilege of having this bath drawn in the first place, and Edelgard was not interested in finding out how else she would have to debase herself for any more favors. “Just pretend I’m not here, if it helps.”

Bernadetta gulped. “Well… h-here goes,” she mumbled, untying her cloak from around her neck and gingerly climbing over the edge of the bowl.

She slipped and fell in head over heels with a surprised yelp, disturbing the bath’s placid surface and splashing Edelgard in the face. Her head popped up above the water and she coughed and sputtered, soaked thoroughly from tip to tail. “I-I’m so sorry, Edelgard!” she choked out.

“Could you get out and do that again?” Edelgard asked, turning the other cheek. She felt warmer all of a sudden, and she wasn’t sure it was just the water. “I think you missed a spot.”

Bernadetta let out a nervous laugh. “I-It won’t happen again…”

“No, really. I can’t swim, so if I put my head under, I might drown.”

“The water just barely comes up to our necks,” she pointed out.

“True as that may be, in our precarious situation, why take the risk?”

Bernadetta stared dumbly at Edelgard. Edelgard stared dumbly back at her. They both laughed.

“I’m glad it’s you with me down here, Bernie,” Edelgard said as Bernadetta settled into the bath, “and not any of the other Black Eagles.”

Bernadetta shook her head. With her fur and messy mop of hair slicked down, she looked far thinner than before, almost emaciated. Water droplets hung from the tips of her whiskers like dew on grass. “Come on. You can’t be serious.”

“No, I mean it. Imagine what I’d have to go through if Ferdinand had ended up in your place like Hubert had intended.” She cleared her throat and put on her best imitation of the carrot-haired young man. “‘Look at me, Lady Edelgard! I am so far superior than you when it comes to being a mouse! Behold my glossy fur and immaculate whiskers! And look what I can do with my tail!’”

Bernadetta giggled.

“Or Hubert. He may be my right hand, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t annoy me sometimes. He would say, ‘There is no time for such frivolities as baths or sleeping, Lady Edelgard. We shan’t delay a single minute. I shall cut a bloody path to the surface for you.’”

Edelgard coughed. Imitating Hubert’s voice was rougher on her throat than she’d expected.

“Isn’t that exactly what you want, though?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I must say, I’m glad that we can spend a few hours actually wringing some meager sense of enjoyment out of our miserable situation.”

“Hmm…” Bernadetta slumped against the side of the bowl. “What about Caspar?”

“I’d be deaf within a day.”

“Linhardt?”

“He’d be no help at all. I’d be dragging his narcoleptic carcass like a sack of flour all the way back to the surface, and he’d spend every waking moment whining about how he’d rather be asleep.”

“But what about Petra or Dorothea? They’re nice, and strong, and not annoying at all…”

Edelgard wasn’t exactly sure what to say to that, because in all honesty, she would be much better off having one of them down here by her side. “Well,” she began after a long pause, “because in spite of—because I like having you down here.”

Bernadetta slumped even further downward, the bathwater rising just past her chin. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she mumbled. The water bubbled up around her mouth.

“I find I can confide in you in a way I cannot with anyone else. The only people I have told more about my past than you are Hubert and my father… and that was only because they lived through those days, too. And Byleth, as well. I have enrolled you in an exclusive club, though I must say the membership benefits may be questionable.”

Bernadetta laughed.

“Bernie, do you remember what I said to you a few days ago? Before you started turning into a mouse?”

“Huh? A-About killing that guy?”

“About the society we live in. A society that makes beasts out of men. A society that condemns people to walk paths that lead only to despair. A society that controls men’s lives and commands their fates.”

“Um… okay. I-I kinda got that, but I was also kinda busy freaking out over turning into a mouse, s-so… I guess…”

“For our whole lives, a higher power has controlled our destinies. Those who slither in the dark tried to shape me into their perfect emperor. Your father tried to shape you into a perfect wife. We were both given burdens we didn’t ask for which hurt us both more than we could bear, and even now, these people are still trying to force us onto the paths they choose. Even now, we’ve been forced to take the shapes they desire against our will.”

Edelgard reached out, slipped a finger under Bernadetta’s chin, and lifted her head. Their eyes met. She stared into Bernadetta’s sad gray eyes. “Some people say that fate is as inescapable as the ground we’re tethered to. Our souls are weighed down by gravity, but even so, we both still yearn to fly. So I ask you, Bern… do you want to break free of your father’s influence? Do you… want to fly with me?”

She had to admit, being a mouse sitting in a bowl full of water, literally looking like a drowned (ugh) rat, took some of the gravitas out of her rhetoric. She already felt embarrassed about the ‘do you want to fly with me’ part. She really wasn’t bringing her A-game in this state.

Bernadetta looked away. “Well… I’ve always wished I could be more like you…”

“Crippling fear of rats notwithstanding, I’m sure.”

“I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

“Is that so?” Edelgard couldn’t say she was surprised. She’d done enough talking out of both sides of her mouth around her. “Then close your eyes.”

“Oh, um…” Bernadetta closed her eyes. “I-Is this going to be some sort of trust-building exercise? Like, I’ll fall backward, and then you’ll catch me? What if you miss? Wh—”

Edelgard took a hunk of soap from the edge of the makeshift bathtub and started scrubbing her cheek. “Something like that. Keep your eyes closed; the soap will sting.” She worked the soap into a frothy lather, working it into every strand of fur and hair from the neck up. “And hold your breath.”

Bernadetta took a deep breath, her chest swelling. Edelgard planted her palm against the back of her head. “I’m going to submerge you. Are you ready?”

“Um… I-I think I can take it from here, actually…”

“I’ll count to three before I do it. And I will hold you down for no more than five seconds.”

Bernadetta took another breath and held it. Edelgard counted to three, then pressed her paw downward, bending her neck and pushing her head underwater. As Bernadetta’s hair floated in a halo around her head, Edelgard rinsed away the soap as quickly as she could, counting under her breath the passage of each second, and pulled her back up out of the water at the exact moment five slipped from her tongue. “Now open your eyes and breathe.”

Slowly, gingerly, as though expecting the worst, Bernadetta cracked open her eyelids, blinked as though she’d just stared at the sun, and exhaled, gratefully gulping down deep, harried breaths as though to make up for lost time. Her shoulders quaked. Rivulets of water trickled and dripped down her fur.

“Is something wrong?” Edelgard asked, wrapping her arm around her back. “I didn’t frighten you, did I?”

Bernadetta shook her head. Droplets of water sprayed everywhere. “No, no, I—I just… My father never counted…”

“I see.” Edelgard pressed the hunk of soap into her palm. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea for a trust exercise. “I assume you’d prefer to do the rest yourself?”

Although she couldn’t really see it underneath all that fur (and besides, she was colorblind), she could tell from the way Bernadetta squirmed that her face was probably beet-red. “Y-Yes, of course!” she squeaked, snatching the soap out of her paw and scuttling to the far end of the bowl (which, admittedly, wasn’t very far away).

“I’ll turn around, if it helps,” Edelgard said, leaning against the side of the bowl and opting to stare off into the distance at the fading, peeling wallpaper.

“So, um… Edelgard… uh, I mean, El…” Bernadetta began.

Edelgard sighed. Hearing that name made her heart ache, but not the way the rest of her body ached. The nostalgia it carried with it was bittersweet, but it was the sweetness that settled in her chest more than the bitterness.

“I think… the reason I’m afraid of other people is because… well… no matter how nice they are to me, I’m afraid that deep down they’re just like my father. That when I least expect it, they’ll take off the mask and tear me apart. That’s why I ran away yesterday. Were you… like that? After the dungeon?”

“Oh, yes. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

“How did you get over it?”

“Well, for starters… Hubert decided he’d be paranoid enough for the both of us.”

“And that was enough?”

Edelgard shrugged. “It helped. But the enemy we’re facing behooves a healthy sense of paranoia. They can make themselves look like anybody. Their disguises are perfect. They even have agents in this very monastery who have gone years without the slightest bit of suspicion from the church. Their leader killed my uncle and took his face and I never knew the difference until he chained me to a wall. Trust is a luxury even a princess cannot always afford.”

“So you can’t trust people either… What about our classmates?”

“I was wary at first. But Hubert and I have warmed up to them. Within reason.”

“Our teacher?”

Edelgard smiled. She wanted to trust Byleth far more than she knew she should. She knew that Byleth was close to the church in mysterious ways, but also knew that she wasn’t some dogma-blinded righteous idiot like the Knights of Seiros. She was a free agent, a chess piece neither side seemed to fully know what to do with, and that made her both more trustworthy and less. Hubert kept cautioning her not to get her hopes up. But one look into those piercing steel-gray eyes made her desperately hope that in the looming war she planned to wage against the Church of Seiros, Byleth would be her staunchest ally.

She wanted to say, ‘It’s complicated,’ but instead, she just said, “Yes.”

“…Me?” Bernadetta asked.

“Absolutely. We are kindred spirits.”

“But I’m so unreliable… a-and I lie all the time! Like all those times I’ve said I couldn’t come to lectures because I was sick—I actually j-just wanted to stay in my room and work on my embroidery! A-And I’m just as likely to run away as I am to help…”

“No, I don’t think that’s true. I think I’m right to trust you, Bernie.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Why don’t I give you an opportunity to prove it?”

“How?”

“Well, I’ll close my eyes, you’ll count to three…”

“Oh. Y-You want me to…”

“Go ahead. It’s only fair.” Edelgard turned around and closed her eyes. “I’m ready.”

She felt the bathwater ripple around her as Bernadetta crept up to her, and then the smooth, slippery sensation of soap sliding against her face. She didn’t make a habit of being waited on, unlike most nobles who refused out of principle to do anything they could have a servant do instead—partly because she valued her independence, partly because of the way her enemies could abuse such indulgence.

“So… I just rub this soap into your hair, too?”

“Normally, I’d use a special soap mixed with lavender and rosemary oil for shine and volume, but this will do.”

Bernadetta set to work on her hair. “I probably can’t do this as well as you can…”

Edelgard chuckled. “Don’t worry; my standards aren’t very high right now.”

“Mmm. Okay. Um… take a deep breath, and then on three, I guess.”

“Five seconds?”

“Uh-huh.”

Edelgard nodded, then filled her lungs until her chest ached. She felt Bernadetta’s palm press against the back of her head…

In spite of herself, a knot of worry twisted itself in her gut. It wasn’t like she was terrified of bodies of water in general. Rivers, ponds, and lakes didn’t bother her, and certainly not bathtubs. But she’d made herself helpless here. She was at Bernadetta’s mercy.

“One…”

The trapped air started burning in her lungs. She was really giving this girl an opportunity to drown her. If it was all a long con, if Bernadetta was one of them—

“Two…”

No. That was silly. Ridiculous. She’d depended on Bernadetta enough times already. Her trust in the girl should have been absolute. Surely she could extend to her the same trust she showed Hubert.

“Th-Three?”

Edelgard tensed up and steeled herself as Bernadetta pressed down and pushed her under the water.

All sound fell away. Water pressed against her from all directions, faint currents circling her like a constrictor snake lazily wrapping itself around its prey. With the water filling her ears and muffling the sound of Bernadetta counting under her breath to a dull throb, Edelgard counted the seconds herself.

Two seconds passed.

Edelgard feared the ocean in particular because it was dark, deep, and vast. It was an endless, crushing abyss as dark and as stifling as a grave and threatened to be just as inescapable. But she could drown anywhere. With her eyes closed and Bernadetta’s paw holding her down, the bottom of this tiny improvised bathtub could just as easily be the still and silent seafloor, where she would perish alongside the ancient wrecks of storm-wracked ships.

Three seconds passed.

Her lungs were already burning. She hadn’t taken enough air down with her. She tried to calm herself. If she started fighting or thrashing or forcing herself up to the surface, the trust-building exercise would be ruined. Surely Bernadetta would let her back up after five seconds.

Four seconds passed.

Each one felt like an eternity. Her heart pounded. The air filling her lungs tried to fight its way up her throat and out of her mouth. She needed to breathe. How much longer could one second last? One second. Just one more second—

At five seconds on the dot, Bernadetta’s grip loosened and Edelgard ripped herself free of the water, panting and gasping for breath as though to make up for lost time. Her shoulders quaked. Rivulets of water trickled and dripped down her fur. That was a more harrowing experience than she’d expected.

“Oh, no! I-I counted too slow, didn’t I? I’m so s-sorry, it won’t happen again…” Bernadetta stammered.

“No, no,” Edelgard said as she caught her breath. The air was cold against her fur now. “You were on time; I was counting too. I just didn’t take a deep enough breath. I think… this was not the most well-thought-out trust-building exercise. Please accept my apology.”

“No, no, I was fine. Totally fine. It didn’t bother me at all,” Bernadetta said, obviously lying.

“Are you certain? If I’ve caused you any distress…”

“Well, um…” Bernadetta kneaded her paws. “Maybe… don’t try that trust-building exercise? Like… ever again?”

“Duly noted. Thank you, Bernie.” Edelgard patted her on her sopping wet head. “It seems I still have quite a lot to learn. I hope you’ll be as patient with me as our professor is. Now, if I could have the soap…”

“Oh! Y-Yes, of course,” Bernadetta said, pressing the somewhat-diminished hunk of soap into her paw and turning her back.

Edelgard finished washing herself, set the soap aside, and climbed out of the bowl, drying herself off with half of a rough, threadbare washcloth. Bernadetta did the same.

“Wow,” Bernadetta said, looking back at the vacant bowl. The water left in the tub was grayish and almost opaque, its surface dotted with foamy white islands. “We really needed that.” She grabbed her ragged cloak up off the floor and tied it around her neck. “Wish we didn’t have to just put the same old clothes back on, though… I mean, I guess we could wash them, but what would we wear in the meantime?”

Edelgard picked up her cloak. It was in an even sorrier state than when she’d first ripped it off her uniform’s silk cape—ripped, torn, ragged around every edge, dotted with holes, and crusted with dirt and dried blood. It was an ugly dark grayish-chartreuse color, the bloodstains even darker and uglier; Edelgard felt her heart ache that she couldn’t see the cloak’s brilliant red color anymore. Colorblindness was one of the most trivial difficulties about being a mouse, but somehow, it hit harder than anything else.

The scent of blood and filth staining the cloak was even less bearable now that Edelgard had actually gotten clean for the first time in three days, and beneath that scent was the scent of mouse. But beneath all that, she could smell something else. Something familiar, though she couldn’t describe it in words. But she knew that it was her scent—the scent of her humanity, the only real reminder she still had of what she was supposed to be.

A human. A princess. A savior.

She hung the cloak over her shoulders and tied it around her neck. “So, Bernie… I’ll extend my offer to you again. Do you want to escape your father’s ‘gravity?’”

Bernadetta smiled. “If you’re offering, I guess. I—I really do admire you, and I want to like you—I mean, I do, I do like you, really… it’s just that I need to move past how my father treated me.”

“I understand.” Edelgard took her paw, threading their fingers together and squeezing until their palms pressed together. “I want to help you.”

She took her axe, and Bernadetta her bow, and they set out together.

Though she didn’t want to hope, Edelgard had a feeling that the end of her trials down here was close at hand—it wouldn’t be remiss to expect there to be a passage to the surface close to this settlement. After all, they had to be getting their food and supplies from somewhere. Bread required wheat, yeast, and flour, after all, and none of those things were naturally occurring in a city hidden from the sun.

Her time down here exiled to the darkness could end. She would still be a mouse—unless Hubert had recovered the antidote, although she was sure he had by now—but at least she would be on the surface where she belonged, where Hubert and Byleth could watch over her and the threat of the Plague Rat and other malcontents could fade to a distant memory. She’d only ever been so happy about the prospect of seeing sunlight again once before in her life. She’d almost forgotten that sense of elation…

“Edelgard!”

Yuri’s voice rang through the wide expanse of the settlement’s now-oversize cobblestone streets. He strode up to her and Bernadetta from behind with the languid grace of a river in spring, circling around them to face them. “My, my, you two look like you’re in a hurry.”

Bernadetta froze, her whiskers quivering, her eyes wide enough that Edelgard could see their whites. “O-Oh, h—hi, Yuri…” She looked like she was about to faint.

Edelgard gave her paw a firm, reassuring squeeze. “Lord Yuri of the Ashen Wolves. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Don’t mention it,” Yuri said, idly examining his claws. “Well, do, actually. I could have easily left you to fend for yourself out there, and I don’t think you’d have lasted very long.”

“Is there something you want from me in return?”

“Me? Oh, no, but I’m sure Constance has already approached you about what favors you can do for her. Consider her your creditor. I’m sure you can come to terms about how to repay your debt.”

Edelgard’s high spirits flagged, though she made certain not to show it. Constance’s goals were problematic. Restoring a noble house went against everything Edelgard believed in and all of her plans for the future of Fódlan, and the prospect of making allies only to crush them when their goals no longer aligned with hers was not something she could take so lightly anymore. She now vastly preferred the thought of having allies she could trust to the end—perhaps the way her alliance with those who slither in the dark had turned sour had spoiled her appetite for such cutthroat maneuvers.

“Although,” Yuri added, a gleam in his pale eyes, “I can think of one thing you can do for me. You’re expecting to find some antidote or cure for our… condition on the surface, right?”

Edelgard nodded.

“Well, I can only ask that you keep us in mind and let me distribute it among my people, provided there is enough to go around. As you can well imagine, none of us particularly enjoy being mice.”

“I think that’s a fair trade. Speaking of the surface… there’s a path to the surface close by, right?”

“You’re as astute as I’d expected, Lady Edelgard!” Yuri gave her a facetious mock bow. “Of course the surface isn’t far. We’ve got to scavenge all our stuff from somewhere. Why don’t we take a little trip there?”

Edelgard rested her paw against the head of her axe. She had to keep her guard up. This was too good to be true. “I hope you won’t mind if I insist on remaining armed.”

Yuri patted the hilt of the sword buckled at his hip. “By all means. Great minds think alike, don’t they?”

The three of them set off. The little town took a while to cross, but soon the rodent-filled signs of civilization (meager as they were) gave way to the vast corridors snaking through Abyss.

“Goddess knows why they built all these tunnels,” Yuri mused, shaking his head.

“I can see the tactical value. Should this place ever come under siege or be occupied by an invading army, these tunnels could be of inestimable value. The Knights of Seiros could use them to sneak in and out of Garreg Mach past enemy lines, while any would-be invaders seeking to infiltrate the monastery through Abyss become lost in the maze.”

Yuri laughed. “Garreg Mach? Under siege? Invaded? With the Church in charge? By whom? You certainly have an active imagination, Your Highness.”

“I like to ponder impossible things,” Edelgard replied slyly. In fact, she was already beginning to think about how she could use these tunnels to her advantage in a future war against the Church of Seiros. Now that the Agarthans had thrown her to the wolves, she would have to rethink all of her plans from the ground up.

Yuri held up his paw, readied his sword, and stepped forward, staring intently into the darkness of the tunnel up ahead. “Wait. There’s something up ahead. Brace yourselves. Prepare to run; it could be dangerous.”

Edelgard readied her axe. She felt Bernadetta’s grip on her paw tighten. “If there’s trouble, you’ll need both hands to shoot,” she reminded her, gently shooing her away.

Bernadetta nodded and nocked a scavenged arrow to her bow. She didn’t have much of an arsenal left after losing her quiver yesterday, but she’d tried to replace as much as she could.

“Yuri?” Edelgard called out, holding up her axe and shifting into a combat-ready stance, fully prepared to either attack or defend. “What is it?”

Yuri took a few more steps forward. “It’s…” He sniffed the air. His whiskers twitched; his ears pitched forward. “There’s something dangerous here. Yes, there’s something very dangerous… right in front of you!”

The next thing Edelgard knew, a sharp pop and an earsplitting clang ran through the air like a thunderclap; Bernadetta let out a shocked yelp, the floor shook; in the blink of an eye, a wall of steel bars had formed between her and Yuri.

No, not a wall. Four walls. Four walls made of steel bars, thin as wire and arranged in a mesh pattern, forming squares small enough that all Edelgard could fit through them was her wrist; joined at the bottom by a thick steel lip and joined at the top by a solid steel ceiling.

Not a wall. A cage.

“Yuri!” Edelgard struck the cage with her axe. The wire mesh rattled, but held firm. “Yuri, what is the meaning of this?” She knew she shouldn’t have trusted him—if only she’d buried her axe in his back seconds earlier…

Yuri rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and let out a long, loud, weary sigh. “Well? She’s all yours, wrapped up with a pretty little bow, just like I promised,” he called out to the darkness.

And in response, out from the darkness stepped three black-cloaked Agarthan mages with peaked black hoods and beaked black facemasks and a thin, gangly black-and-white mouse with a shock of fiery hair and a wicked, predatory smile, eyes like daggers.

“Well, well, well, Edel,” Kronya drawled, shorn not only of her disguise as Monica von Ochs but also of her humanoid form (Edelgard couldn’t think of a more deserving fate for her than to be reduced to vermin). “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is… what, your second day of being stuck as a filthy little rat? Oh, I love seeing my handiwork… you’re so cute!”

“Kronya!” Edelgard struck the walls of the cage again. Deep down, she’d known, even if she hadn’t consciously remembered, who’d broken into Bernadetta’s room the other night and stolen her away. “You craven traitor!”

“Traitor? Me?” Kronya made a surprised face. “Who’s betraying whom? You’re the one who hasn’t been able to contain her raw contempt for us.”

“Whatever they’re offering you to take their side in the schism, I’ll give you twice—”

“Schism? Ha!” She threw her head back and laughed. “Your dear Hubert told you all about that? Vejovis and I made that story up to mess with him! We’ve all finally decided that the power of the Crest of Flames isn’t worth putting up with your bratty behavior, so our whole organization’s decided to throw you in the sewers where you belong, Edelgard, with the rest of the rats!”

“I’m not a rat—” Edelgard seethed.

“You and Hubert think you’re so smart, but your underdeveloped little animal brains can’t hope to compare to even the dumbest Agarthan! You humans are all so easy to fool and manipulate, every last one of you—oh, wait, sorry, I misspoke. You rats are so easy—”

“I’m not a rat!”

“You sure do look like one. It’s a fitting look for you, really!”

Edelgard clutched her axe so tightly that she nearly felt wood splinter in her grasp. “Prepare yourself for death while you still can, Kronya!”

“Oh?” Kronya broke ranks with her mages and stepped closer to the cage until her whiskers were just barely touching the wire mesh. “Okay, I’m preparing.”

Edelgard struck the cage with all her might. The cage rattled, the echoing sounds of metal clanging against metal ringing in her ears. Kronya flinched.

“Oh, sorry, you didn’t get my good side,” Kronya said with a cruel giggle, turning her cheek. “Can you try again, please?”

Further enraged, her blood boiling, Edelgard struck again and again and again; all Kronya did was laugh.

“This cage is made out of Agarthan titanium.” Kronya flicked a claw against the wire mesh once Edelgard had stopped swinging her axe. “Ti-ta-ni-um. Have you ever heard of titanium, you stupid little beast? Stronger than steel, and lighter, too!”

Edelgard took a step back, her chest heaving and shoulders sagging from exertion, the head of her axe trailing on the floor as her weapon hung from her limp arm. Agarthans had technology the likes of which no one in Fódlan had ever seen, let alone imagined—though those who slither in the dark commanded such scarce resources sparingly and conservatively. Metal so light yet so strong was beyond anything she knew.

“Yuri!” she growled.

Yuri looked back at her and shrugged. “Dreadfully sorry, Edelgard. Kronya and her friends arrived just before you did. Unfortunately for you, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Then so will I.” Edelgard glanced over her shoulder at Bernadetta, who was cowering in the corner. “Bernie!”

Bernadetta snapped to attention. She didn’t look any less terrified. “Y-Yes, Edelgard?”

“Take aim at Yuri.”

Bernadetta fumbled with her bow, drew back the bowstring, and lined up the arrowhead with Yuri’s chest. Her shoulders quivered. Her aim was unsteady. But an arrow could easily fly through the gaps in the titanium wire mesh.

“Yuri,” Edelgard said, “free us, or Bernadetta kills you.” First the Agarthans had thrown her to the wolves. Now the Ashen Wolves had thrown her to the Agarthans. Neither would escape her wrath.

“Really?” Yuri put a paw to his chest. “Bernie… Spooky Bernie… Do they still call you that, by the way?”

“A-Actually my classmates call me Bernie-Bear now,” Bernadetta stammered, struggling to quell the nervous shaking in her paws. “Because I, uh… I n-never leave my den…”

Yuri laughed. “Aw. That’s sweet. Do you really think you could shoot me, though? I mean… I was your first friend, wasn’t I? I don’t bear you any ill will for what your father did to me…”

“Bernadetta, if he doesn’t turn on Kronya and free us in the next five seconds, fire on my command,” Edelgard snapped.

Kronya looked to the mages under her command. “You three. If a single arrow leaves that cage, turn it into an oven.”

The mages all raised their paws, preparing to cast their spells. Silence filled the corridor. For five agonizing seconds, all Edelgard could hear was the rapid fluttering of her own heart. She felt the anger cresting over her heart like waves of a tumultuous ocean. If she could burn down every last one of these monsters and leave nothing behind but cindered shadows…

But she and Bernadetta were little more than rats in a trap. There was nowhere to run if all three of those mages targeted them at once.

Her heart sank. “Put down your bow, Bern,” she said, relenting.

Bernadetta seemed almost relieved to let her bow and arrow both fall to the floor.

Kronya smirked. “I’m glad we could work this out like civilized people. Mages, keep watch over our prisoners. Yuri, our business here is done; you’re welcome to go back to your little village.”

Yuri’s brow furrowed. “But—”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to tell Myson and the Plague Rat about our catch,” Kronya said, brushing off whatever concern Yuri had been about to raise. “I’m sure they’ll be very happy to see our little rat princess again.”

“The Plague Rat? You’re bringing that thing here?” Yuri snarled, his paw falling to his sword. “That was never part of the deal! And neither was—”

“It wasn’t?” Kronya cocked her head. “Funny enough, I remember it clear as day. You wouldn’t happen to have a written copy of our deal, would you? Signed? Stamped? Notarized?”

Yuri scowled. “So that’s how it is,” he spat, laughing bitterly.

“I’m glad at least you can see reason. You’re smart—for a filthy rodent,” she said. She pointed to one of the mages. “See to it Mister Savage Mockingbird returns safely to his fellow sewer rats, okay?”

“Kronya!” Edelgard called out. “You will not get away with this. None of you. For what you’ve done in Enbarr, in Duscur, here, and everywhere else—when I become Emperor, I’ll erase you from this world!”

Kronya grinned. “Hah! What makes you think an animal like you has anything left to inherit?”

“My father—”

“Is already dead. What? You didn’t think we’d leave him alive after you’d ceased to be useful, did you?”

The words hit Edelgard like a punch to the gut. She felt her legs falter. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her father wasn’t… couldn’t be… “Y-You’re l-lying,” she stammered.

Her father, who loved her. Her father, powerless, an emperor clapped in invisible manacles. Her father, clenching his fists until they bled as his children suffered. He couldn’t be gone. They couldn’t have killed him. Not like this…

It had to be a trick. What reason did she have to believe anything that came from these demons’ mouths?

“You’re lying! My father—” Her voice cracked. “You lie!”

“Perhaps,” Kronya said. “But seeing as you’re going to die down here, you’ll never knoooow!”

With that, she vanished in a flash of light.

As commanded, one of the three masked mages broke away from the group to escort Yuri away.

So this was how it ended, Edelgard thought. Trapped like a rat in a cage with no recourse but to wait for inevitable death. And this time, it would come for her. It would not pass her by this time—she would join the rest of her family. She bowed her head and let her axe fall to the floor, her heart heavy. Bernadetta took her paw, but there was no solace to be gained from her warm grasp.

There was a flash of steel and the mage escorting Yuri crumpled to the floor, blood spurting from their neck. At the same time, there was a flash of fire and one of the two remaining mages fell back, his cloak wreathed in flames. Yuri threw his sword, piercing the burning mage through the heart and killing them.

The one remaining mage hurried to the lock on the cage and started fiddling with it. Yuri tapped them on the shoulder and handed them a key. “Here. You’re gonna need this.”

The mage nodded. Another second of fiddling and the lock opened; a wire-mesh door in the cage’s wall swung inward. With a dramatic flourish, they ripped off their beaked mask to reveal a perfectly ordinary mouse’s face underneath. “Kept you waiting, huh?” they asked Edelgard.

“Um…” Bernadetta tugged on the hem of her cloak. “Wh-Who are you?”

The unmasked mage’s face fell. “Oh, right, you’ve never seen me with my mask off. It’s me, Wesper!”

“Oh! I’m sorry! Thank you so much!”

“Oh, no problem. I’m on your side until I get my chocolate, remember?”

“I love that you idiots all wear masks,” Yuri said to Wesper with a devious smirk. “It makes these things so much easier.”

“Excuse me? I went to the Imperial Sorcery Academy and graduated squarely in the middle of my class,” Wesper retorted. “Anyway, let’s get out of here before reinforcements show up. Or that Plague Rat guy. Wherever he is.”

Relieved, Edelgard grabbed her axe and Bernadetta and slipped free of the cage.

“By the way, you’re welcome,” Yuri said to her.

She socked him in the jaw.

At the break of dawn, Byleth led the way into Abyss, lighting the gloomy corridors with the fiery yellow-orange glow of the Sword of the Creator held high. She and the students (and Sothis gliding several inches above the floor beside her) wandered, led only by Tomas’ map, well into the morning without finding anything save for some very tiny barracks and a scattered collection of half-eaten mouse corpses clutching makeshift weapons. Abyss was in some ways as vast as the monastery itself. There was too much ground to cover, she feared, but there was too much danger in splitting up. There would be other teams searching the other five entrances soon, she hoped—sooner or later, someone would find something.

The first thing her search party came across were two separate piles of knights’ armor emblazoned with the Crest of Seiros—and the unmistakable shape of the legendary Hero’s Relic, Thunderbrand.

Thunderbrand, the forked seven-bladed sword with a stone in its crossguard bearing the Crest of Charon; its sole wielder was Catherine, the greatest swordsmaster among the Knights of Seiros.

And nestled in Catherine’s armor was a mangy old orange-and-white cat, its blotchy fur patchy and scraggly, its exposed skin covered in sores and scars both new and old. It purred contentedly, curled up amid the scattered collection of gleaming metal plates.

Byleth could hear Caspar let out a shocked and horrified gasp from his perch atop her shoulder. Thunder Catherine was his idol. “Catherine… sh-she couldn’t have… They got Catherine!”

“And the one she was with, it seems,” Sothis mused, rattled. “Who was that, again? Your father’s friend, the one who laughs at his own jokes, even if nobody else does?”

“Alois,” Byleth said. She felt as though someone had scooped out her heart and left a hollow pit in its place. “Catherine and Alois…”

“How could this happen?” Caspar cried out.

“They must’ve gotten them with one of those bugs,” Hilda said. She cradled Lysithea protectively, cupping a hand over her just in case the cat caught her scent and tried to pounce on her. “Do you think the cat ate them?”

“No! It couldn’t have!” Caspar wailed. “You stupid cat! Lemme down there, Professor! I’ll crack its skull with my bare paws!”

Byleth cupped her hand around him and patted him on the head with her finger. As usual, he tried to squirm out of her grip, no matter how gentle she was. “There, there,” she consoled him, letting her thumb run through his fur until he calmed down.

“The cat must have killed those little soldiers back there, as well,” Sothis noted. “These so-called Agarthan fiends deserve such a fate; my skin crawls simply hearing that name. But your knight friends… I am sorry, Byleth.”

“It would have had to swallow them whole in a single bite,” Hubert noted, a morbid, mirthless smile on his face. “There isn’t any blood on the floor, nor are there any… parts.”

As if roused by the sound of his voice, the cat woke up, stretched, licked its paw, hissed at him, and scampered away.

“Yeah, you’d better run!” Caspar shouted out after it. It sounded like he was about to cry.

“It’s okay, Caspar,” Linhardt assured him. “You know how cats play with their food? Perhaps Catherine and Alois were only gravely injured, but still managed to escape! Remember, they’re just as smart as humans.”

“Thanks, Lin,” Caspar said, though he didn’t sound grateful at all.

“Anyway, um…” Hilda yawned loudly into her hand. “It’s sooo early and I’m clearly just dead weight to all of you, so how about you hand me the map and Lysithea and I head back to the surface and let you do your thing? Or maybe we all head back together and have them send more knights to handle this instead…”

“Yes, by all means, send more knights,” Sothis said, a sardonic scowl playing on her young face. “The last two they sent exceeded our wildest expectations. Byleth, to help you avoid meeting the same fate, I shall scream to alert you if I see a bug touch your skin.”

“We will find our lords if it kills us,” Dedue said to Hilda.

“Uh, yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” she retorted.

“If we let you have the map, we’ll get lost down here,” Hubert told her. “I’ll bet Claude would like that.”

“Fine,” Hilda pouted. “But I’m tired and my legs hurt and I’m still jittery from when Tomas tried to turn me into a mouse, I barely got an hour of sleep last night, and on top of that, my legs hurt! Dedue, you’re big and strong. Would you be a dear and carry me for a bit?”

Dedue stiffened. For once, he showed an emotion on his face, and that emotion was discomfort. “No. If I were to be seen handling you in such a manner, there would be consequences for us both.”

“We’re literally underground and there’s nobody around for—ugh, never mind. Hey, Hubert?” Hilda asked, running a finger playfully up Hubert’s arm. “You’re tall and broad-shouldered.”

Hubert looked equally uncomfortable. “Apologies, but I have wet noodles for arms, apparently,” he said, tilting his head at Ferdinand. “Ferdinand, why don’t you make yourself useful and help Miss Goneril rest her feet?”

Never remiss to be useful, Ferdinand gladly swept Hilda into his arms.

Petra knelt down and picked Thunderbrand up off the floor. Catherine’s discarded armor rustled around it like dead leaves as she moved it from its resting place. Unlike the Sword of the Creator, it didn’t glow in her hands.

“Careful with that, Petra,” Dorothea cautioned. “Remember what happened to Miklan.”

“I will just be holding it for a few seconds,” Petra assured her. She rummaged through the armor for Catherine’s sword belt and wrapped it around her waist, slipping the forked blade of Thunderbrand through its customized holder and letting the mighty sword rest on her hip. “Surely there is not being any harm in keeping it like this.”

“I hope so. If you turn into a giant monster, I won’t be able to bring myself to slay you.”

“If she turns into a giant monster, you won’t have a chance to,” Hubert said to Dorothea. “She’d bring the ceiling down on us.”

“Hark!” Sothis hissed in Byleth’s ear. “Do you hear that?”

Byleth raised her hand. “Quiet, everyone. Do you hear that?”

Everyone fell silent. The quiet of Abyss’ empty halls pressed down on them. And in that vast sea of silence, a faint, almost imperceptible squeak…

“It is coming closer,” Sothis said. “But is it friend or foe?”

Two mice, one a familiar shade of brown and the other a sandier color that was just as familiar, scurried across the floor and came to a stop at Byleth’s feet, then stood up on their hind legs and started waving their forepaws in the air. The blonder one had a scrap of cloth tied around its waist like a little skirt.

Friends, Byleth decided, and she crouched down to get a better look at them.

“Professor Byleth!” the mouse who was obviously Alois squeaked. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”

“See? I told you it was a good idea to stay in this area,” the mouse who was obviously Catherine told him. “I knew someone would come along for us.”

Byleth scooped the knights up in her hand and lifted them up. “Well,” she called out to the others, “I’ve found Alois and Catherine. They’re okay.”

“I hope we didn’t scare you, leaving our armor behind like that,” Catherine said. “We meant to stay there and wait, but then that cat came…”

“It was a pretty hairy situation. If we hadn’t scampered when we did, it would’ve been a catastrophe!” Alois chimed in, chuckling. Catherine crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. It was clear she’d had to put up with his jokes all the way down here.

“I’m so glad you guys are okay!” Caspar cried out, his voice choked with emotion. He scurried down Byleth’s arm to meet them. “I never doubted you were alive for a second, Catherine! Oh, uh… and sorry you’re a mouse now.”

“Don’t worry about it. If anyone can get us back to normal, it’s Lady Rhea,” Catherine assured him. “Have faith, Caspar. We’ll just have to hang in there until she comes up with something. Right now, though, we’ve got some students to find.”

The group continued down the hall. With her hands full, Byleth entrusted the map to Dorothea, who carefully guided them deeper into Abyss.

“Hey,” Alois said. “Catherine, Caspar, I’ve got a question for you two. How are we like the peace treaty between Brigid and the Empire?”

Catherine wearily raised her paw to her forehead. “Goddess, grant me strength…”

“I dunno,” Caspar answered. “How?”

Alois burst out laughing and barely managed to choke out, “We’ve been ratified!”

At that moment, Byleth felt the stone tile under her foot give way and sink about half an inch deeper into the floor. There was a click and a sound like whirring clockwork, and with the squeal of metal on metal and the grinding scrape of metal on stone, two walls of steel bars ascended from the floor on either side of the search party, stretching from one side of the corridor to the other and from floor to ceiling.

“Well, Alois, you’ve finally done it,” Catherine said. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you told a joke so corny that the Goddess herself would punish us for it.”

“Alright, we finally found something,” Linhardt called out, popping his furry little head out over the edge of a hole in the wall. After he and the rest of the mice had slipped through the bars of their cage to search for some mechanism that could lower the gates and returned nearly an hour later empty-pawed, this little crawlspace in the wall of the corridor had been the only other place to check.

“What is it?” Byleth asked, feeling a note of hope stir her still and silent heart.

“There’s some sort of pressure plate back here,” he told her. “I think if we depress it, it’ll open the cage, but my weight, Catherine’s, and Alois’ combined isn’t enough…”

“Huh? What’s that?” Hilda asked, leaning on her tiptoes and cupping a hand around her ear to hear him better. “You need something depressed? If only Marianne were here with us; she can depress anything…”

Caspar’s claws pricked against Byleth’s shoulder through her jacket. “In other words, you need more mice up there! Let me up, Professor! I got this!” Before she could object, he scurried down her arm and waited expectantly on the edge of the cuff of her sleeve, so she lifted him up and let him follow Linhardt back into the crawlspace.

The two mice vanished into the hole. Byleth waited.

After another long pause, Caspar peeked out over the edge. “I think we almost got it! We just need a little more weight!”

Lysithea, then, was up next, but after a few more fruitless minutes (though the bars of the cage faintly shook once or twice, momentarily lifting everyone’s hopes only to immediately dash them), she returned with a forlorn shake of her head.

Alois popped up beside her with the rest of the mice. “One more mouse, though! We swear, that’s all it would take!”

“We’re all out of mice,” Hilda said, frustratedly raking her fingers through her bright pink hair.

“Wait,” Petra said. “I am not thinking we need more mice. If we are lifting someone up so they can fit their entire arm in, perhaps they could reach the pressure plate and depress it.”

“It’d have to be someone with long arms,” Linhardt said. “But I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

“Stand back. I will do it,” Dedue said. “I am the tallest. It stands to reason that my arms are the longest.” He stared up at the hole in the wall, its lower edge barely level with his eyes. “But I need a few more inches,” he mused, “to fit my arm in up to the shoulder.”

Ferdinand knelt down and cupped his hands together on the floor. “Plant your boot here, Dedue. I can lift you up.”

Petra knelt down and did the same, and Dedue stepped gingerly onto their hands and allowed them to lift him higher. She and Ferdinand strained under his weight, their faces reddening and cords standing out on their necks from the exertion. Dedue planted himself flush against the wall, his shoulder braced against the edge of the hole, and squeezed his eyes shut. “I almost… almost…” He furrowed his brow and let a groan hiss through his gritted teeth.

“Almost there!” Caspar squeaked at him. “Just a little more! Just one more inch and you’ve got it!”

“Higher,” Dedue grunted, and Ferdinand and Petra strained themselves to lift him just a few more inches off the ground, his boots teetering atop their trembling grips. Byleth dropped to the floor and planted her hands under her students’ to support them. She immediately felt the full weight of Dedue’s body—every single ounce of it pure muscle, she reckoned—tugging her arms out of their sockets.

There was more than the tension in her arms. There was a tension hanging in the air. A tension of high expectations, thick as fog, hot as a sauna. Right now, everybody’s hopes were riding on Dedue.

Since she didn’t have anything else to do, Hilda started leading a chant.

After what felt like an eternity, Dedue pulled out his arm and stepped off his classmates’ hands. He shook his head sadly as the chanting petered out. “It is no use. If I had but an inch more reach…”

Ferdinand let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose we need one more mouse, then. But what can we do about that?”

A dead silence filled the air. No one answered him.

No one except Hubert.

“All of you, stand back, turn around, and cover your eyes and ears,” he said grimly, drawing a small glass vial with only a shallow puddle of liquid in it from his pocket—Byleth recognized it well as the bottle of polymorphus muridae that had started this whole mess. “I shall use the last of this vial to break us free and find Lady Edelgard. It shall be grueling and humiliating, but I owe it to her as her loyal vassal and retainer—”

Chaos erupted in the cage.

“What? Hubie, are you serious?” Dorothea cried out.

“Serious as a heart attack,” Hubert said, glowering as he uncapped the vial. “This is my solemn duty to my liege—”

“At least wait until you are no longer hungover anymore to make that kind of decision,” Ferdinand said, snatching the vial from his hand. “My wits, on the other hand, have not been addled by spirits. I will take this poison and use it to rescue us and Lady Edelgard. I will be twice the mouse she is—”

“Oh, give it a rest, you blathering fool!” Hubert took the vial back. “If that is what this means to you, then I won’t let you get within a foot of her!”

“This is not just about Lady Edelgard.” Ferdinand grabbed the vial and tried to wrest it out of his hand again. “Do you think you are the only person with friends who are suffering because of these Agarthan fiends?!”

Dedue stepped forward, his hand hovering over Hubert’s shoulder. “Correct. Prince Dimitri, as well, is—”

“This is a matter of dignity, honor, and noblesse oblige. This is about the noble duty to right wrongs and set high examples of morality for all to live by. And this is for atoning for what I did to Bernadetta,” Ferdinand said. “I will rescue her and Edelgard both, and all of us, or my name is not…”

“Yes, yes, Ferdinand von Aegir, we know!” Hubert snapped.

“Listen to them fight,” Sothis sighed as the boys fought, fading into the air beside Byleth. “I fear they will sooner come to blows than realize that there is still enough of that accursed poison for all of them. If they both wish to be mice, then what is the harm?”

Petra stepped forward. “I am offering to do it. I believe every one of us here is willing to be making such sacrifices.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hilda said.

“Well said, Petra,” Dorothea said. “Ferdie, for once put your bloated ego aside. I’ll do it if you two can’t stop fighting.”

Byleth stepped forward and cleared her throat. She knew what she had to do. “Boys.” She held out her hand. “Give me the vial.”

Both Ferdinand and Hubert shut up. Ferdinand sheepishly offered her the vial. “Decide for us, please, Professor,” he said to her as though it was his idea. “But be mindful that only one of us fainted last night.” Hubert scowled at him.

“Hmm…” Sothis stroked one of her braids thoughtfully as she floated alongside Byleth. “The pompous noble is correct. The grim one is still in poor shape, and I doubt he has eaten anything over the past three days. Perhaps you shall give the vial to the tall one?” she suggested, eyeing Dedue. “He seems to have a very level head. Or perhaps the lazy girl could use something to do?”

Byleth’s eyes flitted toward Hilda. Hilda immediately became very interested in prying dirt out of her immaculate and perfectly-manicured fingernails. “Hilda’s good out here,” she said.

“There is also the songstress,” Sothis said, looking at Dorothea, “and the huntress seems eager as well…”

Byleth studied each student in turn. Hubert, both hungover and (still) sleep-deprived, was paler than usual, his black hair a ruffled raven’s-nest, the gray circles under his bloodshot eyes deepening to give his face a skull-like pallor. Ferdinand was run ragged, a tense fury resting in his shoulders and an anguished blend of self-righteousness and self-loathing in equal measures glimmering in his once-bright eyes. Dedue’s stony face betrayed no emotion, but his eyes were careworn and haunted by his failure. Hilda was still faintly shivering from her run-in with Tomas and seemed full of nervous energy. Dorothea and Petra were all but leaning on each other to keep themselves upright, barely able to keep their eyes open; Petra’s blouse was drenched in sweat and clung to her skin. They all said they were willing (except Hilda), but so did every student who risked their life in battle under the church’s watchful eye.

Her fist curled around the vial. Too many students in this academy had tasted this poison already. She couldn’t choose one of her own students, let alone anyone else’s, even if they consented. And so, knowing full well how disappointed her father would be, she lifted the vial and raised her head, opening her mouth.

“Er, Byleth, what in—What are you d—No!” Sothis’ luminous green eyes widened. “No, no! Have you no sense at all?! You have no idea what that will do to us—what it will do to me!”

While she was being berated by her phantom companion, Byleth downed the vial’s contents in its entirety in a single gulp, letting the completely odorless and tasteless liquid trickle down her throat. It seemed no different from ordinary water, but as soon as it hit her gut, she felt her skin crawl.

“Spit it out!” Sothis exhorted her, shaking her fists at her. “Spit it out this instant, Byleth! Please!”

“Professor!” her students all cried out in unison.

“Me dammit!” Sothis swore, clutching at her stomach and doubling over. “What have you done, you fool…?” She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as though in immense pain, her pale face turning a sickly ashen.

“Everybody, turn your backs on the Professor,” Hubert said to the others. “A dosage such as that takes effect immediately… and it is not pleasant to watch. Professor, the effects vary from person to person. Some simply black out; some experience the transformation as a vivid nightmare; some have amnesia for up to half an hour…”

Hubert’s voice faded away as though someone had just stuffed Byleth’s ears full of cotton. She felt the room spin around her; she blacked out before she even hit the floor.

The next thing she knew, she was surrounded by darkness, her bones aching and muscles sore, her fur bristling, and an odd tingling running from the tip of her snout down to the tip of her tail. In front of her was a familiar stone dais lit by an unearthly light, and sitting lazily on that dais was a little mouse with silky white fur and a mane of presumably-green hair as long as she was tall spilling down her back. The little mouse scowled.

“Do you see what you have done, Byleth?” Sothis pouted, resting a paw on her cheek as her wiry, gossamer-strand whiskers twitched and her long pink tail swished irritably back and forth. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“It might be an improvement,” Byleth offered, resting her paws on her hips. “I think you’re much cuter this way.”

Sothis made a squeaky little noise of displeasure in her throat and crossed her arms over her chest, huddling angrily atop her throne as though to hide from her own embarrassment.

“Just wake up and do what you must,” she sighed. “I will remain here and think of what you may do to make this up to me when it is all over.”

With that thinly-veiled threat hanging in the air of the dark netherworld inside her head, Byleth awoke and pulled herself back to the world of the living. As always when leaving this vast abyss, returning felt like trying to swim through fog.

“…don’t understand… warm but… no heartbeat…”

“…is not being possible. Anything that is having life must…”

“…can’t be…”

“…have you done, Hubert? You’ve killed…”

“…shut up! Look! I just saw her move!”

“Do not crowd around her,” Dedue’s voice rang out as though echoing across a canyon.

“For the Goddess’ sake,” Ferdinand added, “everyone, show some restraint!”

Byleth felt the stale air of the underground passageway tickle her whiskers, the dim torchlight press against her eyelids, and the commingled scent of sweat, worry, and desperation sting her nose. Whatever she was lying on was soft and warm, much more so than the cold stone floor she’d fallen onto.

“Professor? Are you alright?” Dorothea called out, her soft and lyrical voice ringing in Byleth’s ears like a trumpet.

Byleth opened her eyes to find Dorothea looming like a grand colossus above her and realized that the warm, soft thing cradled around her were Dorothea’s cupped hands. The other students were all barely managing to maintain their distance behind her, every one of them gazing with astonishment and apprehension over her shoulder.

Ferdinand tried to edge his way past Dorothea. “Professor, please, say something. It must have been fifteen minutes ago that you stopped screaming.”

“It was that bad, huh?” Byleth pulled herself up on her hind legs—easier to stand up than she’d thought—and stretched, trying to get a feel for all these unfamiliar bones and muscles under her skin as they ached and throbbed. It was strange… as unnerving as ought to be with such radically different proportions of her limbs, her torso, her tail, it didn’t feel difficult to adjust to it at all. As though some part of her, buried deep in her instincts, knew exactly how to adapt to a body that wasn’t human…

“It was awful,” Dorothea said. “For a moment, I thought that might’ve killed you,” she added with a nervous laugh. “You… r-really weren’t joking when you told me you didn’t have a heartbeat, were you?”

Byleth nodded and crept gingerly across Dorothea’s hands, mindful of the claws capping her fingers and toes that caught on her skin, and peered down over the edge of her little platform. Five feet below her, the ragged lump of her clothes sat in a heap on the floor; those five feet seemed more like fifty from this vantage point, and Byleth felt herself seized by a dizzying, nauseating swirl of vertigo. Strangely, something seemed to be missing, though her head still throbbed and sifting through her memories felt like dredging her hand through mud…

“What has happened to the Sword of the Creator?” Ferdinand asked, crouching down over Byleth’s clothes and then immediately recoiling as though he’d only just remembered how improper it would be to rifle through a woman’s clothes. “It cannot have just vanished.”

Byleth’s paw fell to her hip. She realized that she’d missed the weight of that ancient sword at her side. It must have fallen to the floor with the rest of her clothes, but as Ferdinand had said, it couldn’t have just vanished!

Hubert shrugged. “Who knows what these relics can do? Perhaps they can just vanish.”

“If you are not minding, Professor…” Petra knelt down and sifted through Byleth’s clothes. “I think I am seeing… Aha! Here!” Her eyes lit up as she pulled a toothpick-sized object out from under the jacket and handed it to Byleth.

Byleth took it from her. To her amazement, it was a miniature replica of the Sword of the Creator, every detail from its ornate stone-carved hilt to its segmented, spinelike blade to the conspicuous hole running through its crossguard true to life and perfectly proportioned to her tiny, mousy body.

No, not a replica. As her paw curled around it, she felt a jolt of lightning run up her arm and a gentle hum rattle her bones as the sword glowed bright yellow-white as though lit from within by an unquenchable fire. Somehow, unlike Thunderbrand, this sword had transformed along with her.

Byleth had no time to ponder any of the church’s other mysteries, let alone this one. Like all the others, it was a mystery for another time, she told herself. Right now, she had work to do.

“Alright, Professor,” Dorothea intoned gravely, lifting her up higher and carrying her to the crawlspace. “It’s all up to you now.”

Byleth pulled herself up onto the bottom lip of the hole; Caspar grabbed her paw and pulled her the rest of the way onto solid ground. “I can’t believe you did that, Professor!”

“I was worried about you for a bit there, Professor!” Alois all but shouted as he swept her up and clapped her heartily on the back. “I don’t know what I’d say to your father if you’d… Well, for starters, I suppose I’d have to shout it at him…”

“We all were worried,” Linhardt told her. “Even nonlethal poisons can kill if the target has certain medical conditions. Not saying you’re anything but healthy, but…”

The first thing Byleth noticed about them was that none of their voices sounded like soft, high-pitched squeaks anymore. In fact, every last one of them sounded exactly like they had as humans. It must have been the new ears, she figured.

She joined the rest of the mice. The tunnel through the wall continued for quite a ways—there was a dull, faint light in the distance—but about a few feet down (just a little farther than Dedue’s arms were long, apparently) was a cold metal plate set into the floor that sank just a fraction of an inch under their combined weight.

“It’ll work this time,” Catherine said. “I can feel it. Now all of us, jump on three—One… two… three!”

They jumped. The plate gave way, sinking about a half an inch down; a rusty scraping sound and the sound of winding clockwork filled the air.

“It’s working!” Dorothea cried out amid a ragged cheer from the rest of her classmates, their voices echoing down the length of the tunnel.

“We did it!” Caspar cheered.

Catherine sighed. “Thank the Goddess we were right about only needing one more mouse.”

“Thank the Goddess we were right about this being a switch for the bars,” Lysithea said, tugging on the little pink bow Hilda had tied around her neck. “What if it had caused the ceiling to collapse? Or the floor to open up and dump everyone into a pit of spikes?”

“Lysithea, you’ve got to learn to respect adult intuition,” Alois said. “Isn’t that right, Professor?”

Byleth saw the way Lysithea’s white fur bristled and her tail irritably twitched and decided not to exacerbate the situation. If there was one thing that girl hated, it was being treated like a child, either by adults or by her peers. She was a bit like Sothis in that respect, although unlike Sothis she didn’t spend most of her time napping. “Lysithea has a point. We were lucky.”

“Anyway,” Catherine continued, “sorry you had to drag yourself into this, Byleth. Now let’s get going—”

A brick fell from the ceiling of the crawlspace and slammed onto the floor with a thunderous crack, sealing the tunnel completely and plunging the mice into darkness save only for the fiery glow of Byleth’s sword and the faint light at the other end of the tunnel.

“Fuck!” Caspar cried out.

“Huh. Didn’t even have to tell a joke this time,” Alois muttered.

Archbishop Rhea was gripping the armrests of her dais so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Are you certain?” she asked.

Seteth nodded. “I am certain, Lady Rhea. They said this was an Agarthan plot.”

Rhea’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t move, save for her fingers more tightly digging into her seat. Her serene composure was gone; the light in her eyes was hard and cold, her mouth drawn in a thin-lipped, tight line; she gazed off into the distance, eyes focused on nothing in particular. The morning light filtering through the windows of the audience chamber lent no warmth to her face.

“Then the passing of Professor Minerva was their doing,” she said. Though it was conjecture, she said it as though it were fact. That was simply how the Agarthans operated. To think that they still existed to this day… Seteth feared to contemplate such things.

“I am… sorry. The news from Fhirdiad did not reach us until just the other day. I thought you already knew.” It was unnerving seeing Rhea in such a state. Seeing Seiros’ cruel emerald eyes set in her face and not the carefully-practiced mask of the Archbishop…

They were all masks, every different face she’d worn, every successive Archbishop she’d been, but she’d had a thousand years of practice wearing them perfectly. To see the mask slip was to know that something was gravely wrong not only intellectually, but on a gut-wrenching physical level as well. This was worse than Flayn’s kidnapping by orders of magnitude.

“Surely there must be some way to restore the affected students,” Seteth said, hoping to pull Rhea’s thoughts onto a new, more optimistic track.

“As I have assured you numerous times these past ten years, I disposed of my stock of polymorphus muridae,” she said to him. “I mixed it with the antemorphus muridae to neutralize it and poured it all into the pond.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.” Rhea raised a pale, slender hand wearily to her forehead, brushing aside a long lock of mint-green hair. “Perhaps there is another way… perhaps if I create empty vessels for the affected students, harvest the souls from their current bodies, and implant their souls into the new vessels… no, no, but that would take weeks…”

“I am certain you will think of something, Lady Rhea,” Seteth said, hoping with all his heart she would come up with a better idea than ‘euthanize the mice and bind their souls to bespoke vessels.’ “I have the utmost faith in you.”

“Thank you, Cichol.”

Seteth stiffened at the sound of his true name and stole a nervous glance over his shoulder to confirm that the audience chamber was empty. To hear Rhea make such a lapse was to know just how unnerved she was by his news.

She cleared her throat and softly coughed into her hand. “Pardon me. I had something caught in my throat. Thank you, Seteth. Now… about the Agarthans…”

“Perhaps we should concern ourselves with the students first,” he said, worried. The grim, single-minded determination of Seiros was a disturbing thing to behold when Rhea allowed it free rein.

“Yes, yes. Of course. All of the monastery cats have been penned away, correct?”

“Yes, for the affected students’ protection. They have been penned away in… I am not quite sure where, myself. The stables, I think. I had Professor Manuela and Professor Hanneman take charge of that initiative.”

“Take the cats and have them brought into every entrance to Abyss.”

“After we have recovered the students, of course,” Seteth assumed.

“Yes. Yes, yes. Of course. After we have recovered the students,” Rhea reassured him, her voice completely and utterly devoid of any emotion that would set his mind at ease. “After we have recovered the students, I want every mouse and rat in Abyss to die.”

Seteth bowed. “I understand, Lady Rhea.”

Myson stood over two bodies: A dead rat, and an almost-dead rat.

“Is it… time…?” The Plague Rat rasped, struggling to breathe, his chest heaving. No magic or science could sustain his body anymore—and not because of the damage it had sustained when fighting that Blaiddyd boy. The rat’s mighty spirit had burned through yet another body.

“Yes. The next vessel is ready,” Myson said, gazing down at the stitched-together corpse to the Plague Rat’s size and mentally apprising the magic sigil traced around its body. Though the Plague Rat had ripped it nearly in half in a fit of pique the other day, the severe damage to its body had been repaired through science and magic and the soul transference process was ready to begin.

“Good… good…” The ailing, wounded rat coughed, blood spilling from his mouth and from his empty eye sockets.

“We only have the resources for one more vessel after this one,” Solon reminded the two of them, looming overhead like a titan with a scowl on his face that made the wormy veins tracing his corpse-blue skin pop. “Our need for decisive, swift victory has never been greater. Our salvation rests on this, Myson. If you should fail our so-called Plague Rat…”

Myson grimly nodded, knowing well the cost of failure.

“Yes… but we have everything we need now. And besides…” The Plague Rat mustered a gurgling laugh that decayed to a breathless wheeze and finally a weak death rattle, punctuating a night spent barely clinging to life with a pitiful ellipses.

Myson watched the Plague Rat die, watched his blood run through the channels engraved in the floor, watched conduits of blazing light trace themselves around the other corpse lying beside it, and watched the corpse open its shining golden-white eyes, pull itself gingerly to its feet, test new limbs and a new tail, sniff the air with a new nose and feel the wind with new whiskers, listen with new ears…

The shape of a nearly unrecognizable fragment of the Crest of Flames lingered on its chest for a second, traced in glittering light, before fading away. The rat took the skull helmet from the fresh corpse lying at its side and placed it over its own head, and with that, the transformation was complete.

“What does not kill you,” the Plague Rat said, “can only make you stronger!”

This was a setback, Myson knew. This type of fleshcrafting was nearly impossible. Only the Fell Star itself had mastered such things; even Solon was by comparison to that abomination a rank amateur, a child playing in the mud. The next corpse would have to be a perfect corpse—a vessel strong enough to contain the strength of this beast’s spirit when resuscitated. They only had one more chance to create that perfect corpse now.

But, setback as it was, the sight of the Plague Rat’s regeneration brought a smile to his face.

Chapter Text

Hubert held two very unfortunate Agarthan mages by their tails, dangling one upside-down from each hand.

“You,” he hissed at them, kneeling at the side of their decimated barracks and glaring down at them, “talk.”

“Sure!” one of the mages said. “Anything! What do you want us to talk about? The weather? Hey, Twenty-Four, what’s the weather like?”

Twenty-Four looked up at the ceiling with great difficulty. “Uh… rocks?”

“What else can we talk about? Sports?”

Hubert shook them to silence their incessant squeaking. “We can start with your names.”

“Like hell are we telling you our names!” Twenty-Four said. “He’s Twenty-One and I’m Twenty-Four.”

“Yeah, you’re Hubert von Vestra. You can hunt us down and turn into a bat and drink our blood if you know our names,” Twenty-One said.

Hubert was taken aback. He wasn’t aware of such rumors about himself, and he was aware of just about everything. “A… bat. And who told you that?”

“Oh, you know, I heard it from a friend,” Twenty-One said.

“A friend of a friend. Wasn’t he your cousin’s roommate back in Shambhala?”

Hubert shook them again to silence them. “Shambhala. Where is it?”

“Do we look like the kind of people who’d know?” Twenty-One asked.

“You live there.”

“Yeah, but they gas us and put black bags over our heads whenever we leave!” Twenty-Four said.

Hubert shook his head. He’d been excited to learn the wherabouts of the Agarthans’ underground city, but that would have to wait. He couldn’t get distracted.

“What’s a ‘Shambhala?’” Hilda asked him.

“Nothing.” Hubert held the mice a little higher up. “Where is Edelgard?”

“Hey, if we knew, do you think we’d be here right now?” Twenty-One asked.

“Myson’s been zipping all across Abyss to find her. I think she was just spotted in Chrysalis Row this morning?” Twenty-Four chimed in. “And she was in that camp with all the babies the morning before that.”

“Ugh, I hate that place!” Twenty-One whined. “Those little babies give me the creeps!”

“I know! They’re like giant maggots,” Twenty-Four said. “And you have to hold them and they’re all gross and fleshy, like one of those hairless cats. Or like Solon’s bald, veiny forehead.”

“Forehead? That thing’s more like a fivehead!”

“That thing makes a fivehead look small. That’s more like a sixhead or a sevenhead.”

“You know, I dared Thirteen to touch it once? He never came back,” Twenty-One said.

“Shut up!” Hubert hissed, giving them another savage shake. He couldn’t take much more of this assault on his eardrums. “Where is Solon? Where is he conducting his experiments?”

“Hey, how do you know Solon’s conducting experiments?” Twenty-One asked him.

“Because he’s always conducting experiments.”

“Good point,” Twenty-Four said.

“He’s set up shop in the big arena,” Twenty-One said. “Needed the floor space for his giant polymorphic magic seal.”

“Just don’t tell him we told you that,” Twenty-Four said, “or he’ll totally turn us inside out!”

“Or use the Forbidden Spell of Zahras on us and trap us in eternal darkness.”

Hubert smiled. He couldn’t help but make it a sinister one. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Oh, crap. You’re gonna kill us, aren’t you?” Twenty-Four asked.

“Do either of you know healing magic?” Hubert asked the two mice.

“Tch. No,” Twenty-One scoffed. “We’re dark mages for life! None of that faith crap for us.”

“Good,” Hubert said, and he stood up, lifted his arms straight above his head, and dropped both mice unceremoniously to the floor. Judging from their pained, faint squeaks, he could tell that both were still alive; judging from how they crawled, he could tell that both had quite a few broken bones. “Dorothea, look on the map for a wide open space, like an arena. That’s where Tomas is. If anyone can tell us where Edelgard and the others are, it’s him.”

Dorothea consulted the map. “There’s one, and it’s not far… relatively speaking.”

“What about the Professor?” Dedue asked.

“She can take care of herself,” Hubert said. In truth, he was almost glad to be rid of her. He refused to trust her as much as Edelgard did—though he deferred to her judgment in all other things, his liege was far more trusting of that walking enigma than she ought to be.

“We’ll keep going forward and take a right at the next junction,” Dorothea said.

“Excellent.” Hubert led the team onward. “Careful where you tread.”

“First things first, you two have to leave now, and you have to leave quickly,” Yuri said to Bernadetta and Edelgard, still rubbing his jaw as he and Wesper led the two of them away from the cage and through the cavernous lair of the Ashen Wolves. Huts and makeshift shelters that had once harbored the weary and browbeaten denizens of Abyss loomed overhead dozens of stories tall and crawled with formerly-human mice. “If Kronya can warp away from here, she can warp to here, and I’m sure she’ll bring the Plague Rat with her.”

“Why is it,” Wesper moaned, “that everyone knew about this Plague Rat guy except for me?”

Yuri ripped a ragged brown cloak off a passing mouse and all but threw it at Bernadetta. “Bernie, wear this. Your little coat there is fine, but you need something to cover your head; that mop of hair is a dead giveaway.”

Bernadetta unfurled the cloak, tossed it over her shoulders, and drew the cowl over her head. It actually felt good—almost refreshing, in fact—to be wearing something with a hood now. Hoods were perfect for hiding in, and that was the most important thing in the world to her right now (or, in fact, most of the time).

“As for you, Your Majesty…” Yuri snatched another cloak and tossed it over to Edelgard. “Come to me later and I’ll reimburse you for it!” he called out to its previous owner. “Now, I’m sure you’re probably not used to hiding your identity—”

“Very used to it, actually,” Edelgard said tersely, putting the cloak on over her own.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said to her. “Hold on a second. What you’re already wearing…”

“Yes?”

“That’s red, isn’t it?” he asked. “Fucking colorblindness,” he muttered under his breath.

Edelgard grasped her cloak defensively. “Perhaps.”

“Yeah, I thought it was red. Colors of Adrestia. Lose it.”

“Excuse me?” she snapped at him, drawing her ragged red cloak even tighter around her shoulders as though it were a security blanket.

“You’re literally wearing a red flag, Your Highness,” Yuri said to her, exasperated. “Don’t you think they’ll be looking for that?”

“We’re all mice; we’re all colorblind,” Edelgard retorted.

“Okay, so none of us can tell red or green apart. That just means they’ll hunt down anyone who’s wearing red or green. Doesn’t buy you a lot of protection.” He held out his paw. “Lose the red.”

“No!”

“What, are you gonna cry without your blankie or something?”

If looks could kill, Bernadetta was certain that the look Edelgard gave Yuri would eviscerate him.

Bernadetta could feel her mousy little heart pounding inside her mousy little chest. Yuri had been right; Kronya could send more of her men here to hunt them down at any moment and here they were, arguing about clothes. “El—Edelgard, I-I think you should just follow his advice!” she blurted out.

Obviously quelling a great deal of rage, Edelgard adjusted her new, drab brown cloak over the old one until every trace of red (presumably) was hidden. “Will this meet your exacting standards, Yuri?” she snapped.

“Yes, yes, yes, oh my Goddess,” Yuri sighed, rolling his eyes. “Just go already.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Bernadetta asked.

“I have my people to look after down here,” he said. “And we don’t want to lose our man on the inside, do we?” he added, patting Wesper on the back. “Find Constance and Matthias and take them with you. Shady Lady can’t do subterfuge if her life depends on it and your buddy is way too earnest; they’re a liability on a good day.”

“Also, Myson will probably recognize him from the wagon, if the Plague Rat doesn’t,” Wesper chimed in.

“Good point,” Edelgard said. “But won’t he recognize you, too?”

“Oh, Goddess, I hadn’t thought of that,” he replied, blanching.

“Don’t worry, if he can tell him apart from a dozen other masked goons, we’ve got bigger problems. Now you’ll have to injure us both,” Yuri said to Edelgard, “so it looks like we tried to stop you from escaping.”

“Uh, wh-what?!” Wesper gasped, eyes widening. “But I—”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Anyway, it’s got to be a debilitating injury, something that looks like we couldn’t follow you any further.” Yuri snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Bernie, shoot us both in the leg.”

“What?” Bernadetta gasped.

“He’s right,” Edelgard said. “It’s the only way they can avoid suspicion.”

“Your Highness, please…” Wesper whined. “I don’t want to take an arrow to the knee!”

“Oh, please. I know healing magic,” Yuri said. “Now put your mask back on so you look like you’re on duty.”

Wesper complied and put the beaked mage’s mask on, then drew up his hood. He looked no different from any of Myson’s other faceless mages.

“They must have gone this way!” a faint voice rang out in the distance. Bernadetta’s heart leaped to her throat. They were coming.

“Anyway, it doesn’t have to be the knee,” Yuri added. “You can shoot us in the thigh. Just be careful not to nick the femoral artery, or we’ll both bleed out in minutes. Can you do that, Bernie-Bear?”

“Yuri! Of course I can’t shoot you!”

“Or just go ahead and beat us half to death if it’s not too much trouble,” he said. “C’mon. You know I can survive that, at least.”

“I don’t!” Wesper protested.

“Beat you—” Bernadetta grabbed Edelgard by the arm, afraid she might be considering it. “No! We can’t do that!”

Yuri looked genuinely puzzled, cocking his head like a dog whose master had just given it an order it didn’t understand. “Why not? Whatever you decide on, just get it over with and make it look convincing! They’re already on their way here!”

“I can’t do that to you! Not after what my father—”

“Didn’t your father tell you why he had me thrashed within an inch of my life in the first place?” Yuri snapped at her.

Bernadetta suddenly found it very hard to breathe on account of the lump in her throat. She could feel her chest heaving, her lungs burning. What did he mean? What was he talking about? “All Father told me,” she said, pulling together her composure, “was that… that commoners were scum, every last one of them, and if any one of them ever tried to so much as speak to me again, he’d… kill them.”

“That’s it?” Yuri asked, nonplussed. “He didn’t tell you anything else?”

Bernadetta shook her head. That’s it? What did he mean, that’s it? That incident had left her permanently scarred! It was the reason she’d never been able to make another friend…

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Edelgard asked, a hard light in her eyes.

Exasperated, Yuri held out his paw. “Okay, Bernie. Just give me two arrows from your quiver and I’ll just stab us both and make it look like we’ve been shot.”

She shook her head again. “I—I can’t—”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Goddess’ sake, Bernie. By the time we’d met, I’d already been working as a mercenary. Being the assistant to your estate’s gardener was just my cover. I was there on behalf of a client who wanted the heir of Varley dead. Your father found me standing over your bed with a dagger in my hand and taught me a lesson I’d never forget. There you go. Can you shoot me now?”

“What?” Edelgard hissed, her eyes narrowing and jaw clenching. She gripped Bernadetta by the shoulder, her claws protectively digging into her cloak.

“Y-You were an assassin?” Bernadetta squeaked. Her blood ran cold. And he’d tried to murder her in her sleep? “And… that was why my father…?”

“It’s really heartwarming to know your father was the kind of man who would nearly kill a man with his bare hands to protect your life, isn’t it? He must have really loved you.”

“But… but… b-but he… I…” Bernadetta felt herself take one staggering step backward, then another, her heart pounding in her ribcage. Nothing made sense anymore. If her father had been right all along, and he cared for her, and he loved her, then nothing made sense anymore. Everything made sense, but nothing made sense. Her father loved her. But he’d tortured her. But if he loved her, then how could he have tortured her? Had it really been torture? Or was she just too sensitive?

“There they are! This way!” the faint voice, now much less faint, rang out again.

“Enough,” Edelgard snapped.

Yuri tapped his foot on the floor irritably. “Edelgard’s right, we don’t have much time. Ready for the shooting now?”

“Shut up!” Bernadetta felt herself shout, and suddenly she had her bow in her hand and an arrow nocked to the bowstring and its head lined up against Yuri’s heart. Her paws were trembling, but her aim was shockingly steady. “I had nightmares because of what happened to you! I still do! I was terrified of, terrified for everyone who was ever nice to me because of what my father did to you! And now you say it was all a lie?”

“Easy, Bernie!” Yuri held up his paws. “In the leg, like we talked about—”

Edelgard cracked him over the side of his head with the blunt side of her axe. His eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the floor like a marionette with all its strings cut. “That’ll do,” she said.

Wesper looked down at Yuri’s unconscious body and protectively clutched his head. “Not the brain, please! I need that for magic stuff! And I have a bad history with concussions and—”

Edelgard drove the blunt side of her axe into his ribcage and he collapsed, wheezing. “I’ve just broken most of your ribs. Hopefully, Myson and Kronya will understand if you can’t run after us.”

“Thank… you… Your Highness…” he gasped.

“Now come along, Bernie,” she said, taking Bernadetta by the arm and pulling her along.

Bernadetta didn’t budge. She was still rooted to the spot, frozen, staring down at Yuri’s unconscious body.

“Bernie,” Edelgard snapped, more harshly this time. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, wrapping her arm around Bernadetta’s waist and hoisting her up over her shoulder.

Lost in her thoughts, Bernadetta hardly noticed the tremors each step Edelgard took sent through her body as she hung limply over the princess’ shoulder, or the fireball that just barely singed her back as it sailed over Edelgard’s shoulder.

“Father…” she sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes and blurring the sight of Yuri’s body behind a veil of mist as his unconscious body and Wesper’s—and the raiders crowding around them—vanished into the distance behind the two of them.

Her father had protected her from him. Her fear had been a lie, the fear she’d carried in her heart for the past two years ever since she’d heard that that poor gardener’s boy had been fished half-dead from the river had been a fear she never should have had. She’d never had any real friends before coming to the monastery in the first place. Were Dorothea and Petra and Alois and Byleth and Edelgard and everyone else who was openly nice to her plotting her demise, too? Were they all just like Yuri?

Her father had protected her. Protected her. Saved her. How could it be? How could her father love her? Was it love? Was it all love? Had it all been love all along, and she’d just been too selfish and self-centered to know better? Was being tied to a chair love? Was having all her interests mocked love? Was being taught how to bow and curtsy and eat with the right fork and do your hair and never speak out of turn—or ever—was that love? Was that caring? Had she been wrong all along?

“I think we lost them,” Matthias called out, and that was when Bernadetta snapped out of her musings and realized she wasn’t lying over Edelgard’s shoulder anymore. She was sitting in the back of a makeshift wagon drawn by a trained rat, squeezed in between a slumbering bat and Matthias as he leaned over the back. How long had she spaced out?

The wagon wasn’t anywhere near as spacious as the one she and Edelgard had commandeered yesterday morning; Constance’s pet bat took up about half of the space in back, leaving little room for any other passengers. Constance sat up front, nudging the rat in the right direction through deft application of magic; Edelgard crouched at her side, axe in hand, her cloak fluttering in the wind as the wagon rushed through the halls of Abyss.

Bernadetta rubbed her eyes. “Where am I?” she mumbled.

“Safe, hopefully,” Matthias said, patting her on the shoulder. “Are you, uh… okay? You were completely catatonic when Edelgard met up with me and Constance! She had to drag you like a sack of acorns!”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she mumbled, curling up and shrinking away from his touch. The bat shivered and wriggled as Bernadetta brushed up against one of its leathery wings.

“Y’know, Zeke had to do that for me once when I was little. Lugged me halfway from Mousebrook to the camp like I was a big ol’ potato, because I was so scared out of my wits by those cannibals! They tried to eat us—didn’t succeed, obviously, although that was how Zeke lost his eye. Anyway, do you think Yuri and Wesper are okay? Yuri, I can take or leave; he seems kinda hard to get along with, since, y’know, he, uh, tried to kill us and everything when we first met him. But Wesper was really nice for a chud…”

Normally, Matthias’ genial ramblings, even when he was talking about things he had no business being genial about, were oddly comforting. But this time, Bernadetta just felt the pit in her stomach grow wider. Was he going to betray her, too?

“Oh, darn, that reminds me!” Matthias exclaimed. “What if the Plague Rat went to the camp looking for you before what’s-her-name tried to trap you? Zeke could be in danger!” He crawled over Bernadetta and the bat to the front of the wagon. “Hey! Hey, Constance! Where are we going? We’ve got to get to my camp! Yes, yes, of course I’ll proclaim the glory and majesty of House Nuvelle to my dying day…”

Edelgard and Matthias traded places, and the next thing Bernadetta knew, Edelgard’s pale eyes were boring into hers.

“I’m sorry I caused so much trouble,” Bernadetta mumbled, averting her eyes.

“We escaped. That’s all I’m concerned with.” Edelgard loosened the cloak Yuri had given her and buried her fists in the red cloak underneath. “That execrable Yuri… it seems your first impression of him was entirely accurate, Bernie.”

Bernadetta didn’t know what to say. Yuri had wanted her dead. He’d tried to kill her. Her father had saved her—he’d cared about her. That meant that everything she had told Edelgard—everything about how cruel and heartless her father had been, everything that had made Edelgard feel the slightest sympathy to her—had been a lie.

She’d lied to Edelgard. She’d made up a false story of her past, a fairy tale, and used it to manipulate her. Surely on some level she must have known that she was being dishonest, but she hadn’t been able to help herself, not with Edelgard coaxing that lie out of her.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled again.

“I can scarcely believe what Yuri said to you back there,” Edelgard said, reaching out to her. “I know you must be struggling to make sense of it all—”

Bernadetta shrank back, curling up tighter and wedging herself into the corner of the wagon between the wall and Constance’s pet bat.

Edelgard’s face fell.

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta said for a third time. “I… lied to you. I don’t deserve your sympathy, Your Highness.”

“What did you lie to me about?”

“My father. I was wrong about him,” she said, choking as she fought back tears. “He… really did care about me. He just wanted what was best for me; I was s-selfish…”

She felt Edelgard’s paws fall to her shoulders. “Bernie…”

Bernadetta shook her head and ripped herself free, trying to burrow as deep into the corner as possible, wishing she could just tunnel through the rickety scrap-wood walls and dash herself against the floor as it sped by underfoot. “No! P-Please, Lady Edelgard, I don’t deserve your pity, I’m n-not worthy of your grace!” she sobbed. “I-I’m a liar, and selfish, a-and ungrateful, and lazy, and—and unmarriageable, and… and…”

Her voice gave out. All she could do was keep sobbing. She couldn’t even fight back as Edelgard leaned closer, wrapping her up in her arms and her cloak. Edelgard was so royal, so regal, even like this, and her fur smelled of lilac from the bath, and she was so much warmer and softer than Bernadetta deserved…

“Let it all go,” Edelgard consoled her. “Let time take these tears from you. I will be here when you’re finished.”

After what felt like an agonizing eternity, she ran out of tears to shed, though there was still a lump in her throat as hard as coal and an empty pit running from her heart to her stomach.

Edelgard began to stroke her fur, and that was enough to get her crying again. Crying only makes things worse, her father had always told her. A good nobleman’s wife doesn’t cry, Bernie. But there was nothing else she could do. The wreckage of everything she’d thought she’d known drifted around her like flotsam and jetsam from a ship lost at sea, and she wasn’t worth clinging to the driftwood.

But instead, the driftwood clung to her.

When at long last she was done, Bernadetta sniffled, hiccuped, and brushed the last of her tears from her eyes. Edelgard was still little more than a ghostly white blur before her, but the strength of her arms was warm, solid, and real.

“Only you can truly understand your own pain,” Edelgard told her. “Others can sympathize or even empathize, but all anyone else can offer are the tears of an outsider looking in. However, with that said…” She sighed. “I understand well the pain of having family who expects you to treat their torture as though it were kindness. I had told you that the man who imprisoned me was my uncle… or, at least, for all intents and purposes, he was.”

Bernadetta nodded.

“After the experiments had run their course and I alone stood as the sole survivor, he cared for my health and well-being. But he did not care out of any sense of affection or empathy—only because I was useful to him, and he sought only to preserve that usefulness until his plans had run their course.” Edelgard’s paw slipped across her cheek and slid behind her ear, scratching gently with her thumb while her fingers raked her scalp. “Someone who has not suffered as we have might mistake what your father did to Yuri for you as an act of love, but just like my uncle, all he cared about was ensuring a return on his investment. That is not love, Bernadetta. Your father didn’t love you.”

“I… but… he…” Bernadetta swallowed the lump in her throat. “I-I guess he didn’t. I guess no one does, then…”

Edelgard held her closer to her chest, her voice barely a whisper as her whiskers tickled her ear. “You said you wanted to escape your father’s influence. I never told you it would be easy. He’s sunk his claws deep into your heart and will not so easily relinquish his grasp. But since you asked for my help, I will give it to you gladly—as much of it as you need. When I become emperor, anything I can do to your father—put him under house arrest, exile him, let Hubert do with him as he pleases—”

In spite of herself, Bernadetta laughed.

“Oh?” Edelgard smiled. “You seemed most amenable to that last one. Perhaps I shall instruct Hubert to tie your father to a chair and leave him be for a few weeks?”

“No!” Bernadetta gasped. “He’s—I mean…”

“I see. You wouldn’t wish Hubert on your worst enemy. Though I don’t agree with you, I can understand your reasoning. Very well, then; exile it is. But where? Sreng? Almyra? Brigid? Shall I leave him adrift in a rowboat halfway across the ocean? Or perhaps send him to Ailell, the Valley of Torment?” Edelgard asked, sounding more like Hubert by the second.

“Anywhere’s fine, I guess… as long as I don’t have to go there.”

“I’ll ask Hubert and have him decide, then.”

A horrible thought occurred to Bernadetta; try as she might, she couldn’t stop herself from voicing it. “But do you really think… Do you think you can still be the emperor?”

“I won’t let these monsters stop me.”

“But if they’ve killed your father, and you’re stuck down here—”

Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s claws dig into her skin as her fists reflexively clenched. “They haven’t—” She unclenched her firsts and shook her head. “They wouldn’t have killed him. They need him alive to appoint a new heir, or else the Empire would be wracked by a legitimacy crisis the likes of which it has never seen. And that’s only if—” She took a breath as though to calm her nerves. “I’ve only been missing for a few days. The news has likely only just reached Enbarr in the first place. That isn’t enough for them to declare me dead; that would take months of searching at least, or at least until they find a body. Even if they aim to kill me down here, they’ll still have need of my father until then. And so once we exterminate these rats—then nothing will stand in my way.”

Edelgard let the words spew out, clearly trying to convince herself as well as Bernadetta.

“So in short, yes,” she mumbled, a little sheepishly, a little self-consciously, as though she was embarrassed to have spoken so freely. “I will be the next Emperor of Adrestia.” Her voice strengthened, taking on the clear and unwavering tone that fit her best. “Not for the sake of those who slither in the dark, but mine, and my siblings’, and my father’s, and yours… and for all humanity.”

“That’s a lot of sakes.”

Edelgard nodded. “I’ve been given a lot of power. I suppose I’ve yet to tell you what those experiments I was subjected to were meant to do.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “No, and—I don’t really want to know if you’re not comfortable sharing. I’ll take your word for it.”

Edelgard almost sounded relieved. “Thank you, Bernadetta. Let me just say that I was intended to dominate on their behalf, rule in their stead, act as a mouthpiece for their twisted ideas and a sword to spread their evil ways and nothing more—but I have ideals of my own, ones that preclude their selfish aims. Those ideals are just like all the passions your father told you were stupid and useless: your writing, your sewing, your drawing and painting. I, too, have been raised to believe that my own desires don’t matter. But my desires tell me to make a world where each and every one of us has the equal freedoms and opportunities to pursue their own passions and be their own people, regardless of class or status. A world where all humans have a chance to seize their own futures and cut their own paths. A world where no one has fathers like yours or uncles like mine; where no one suffers as we have suffered.”

As Bernadetta wiped the last vestiges of tears from her eyes and uncovered the misty veil that had been hiding Edelgard’s face, she was struck by the stern, firm resolve she saw. It was an expression, rigid and resolute, that she had seen on Edelgard dozens of times before—the steadfast, stoic gaze and set jaw of a strong, confident leader—but she’d never seen a mouse’s furry snout and little pink nose and wiry whiskers wear that same face so well, so naturally.

“Wow,” she said. “Th-That sounds like a lot of hard work… Are you sure you can do all that?”

Edelgard gazed at her with soft, warm eyes and gently rested a paw on her forehead, giving her a gentle pat. “Just trust me,” she replied. “You’ll walk with me until that day comes, won’t you?”

Bernadetta took a deep breath and nodded.

Dimitri could hear birds chirping in the sky. He felt a sunbeam lying across his face, warming his cheeks; the light bled through his eyelids and brought a throbbing orange glow to the darkness. And amid the birdsong, the sound of his stepmother’s soft voice weaved through his ears as she gently dragged a comb through his hair. He lay back, resting his head, breathing deeply through his nose to savor the scent of flowers he hadn’t been able to smell for four long years.

“You have to take better care of yourself, Dimitri,” his stepmother whispered to him as the comb hit a snarl of his flaxen hair and tugged painfully on his scalp. With a gentle nudge, the comb worked its way through the knot. “Your hair is a mess.”

“Yes, sorry, Mom,” he mumbled incoherently. He wasn’t really listening—just savoring the moment. His stepmother may have had no blood in common with him, but she was the kindest and gentlest soul he had ever known and was more family to him than anyone else.

The comb slipped down the nape of his neck and began to travel down his back. A pit opened up in his stomach; a tense twinge in his muscles. Something was wrong.

“Goodness, you’re filthy; I’ll call one of the servants to draw a bath. Your fur is drenched in blood…”

His breath grew stale in his lungs, his ribs tight around his heart. His stepmother’s hand rested on his shoulder, but it brought him no comfort as it slid down his arm and curled around his hand.

“And how long has it been since you last clipped your hooves?” Her voice darkened, turning colder and crueler by the second. “Or trimmed your tusks? Four years? Good heavens, Dimitri, I’m beginning to think there’s no boy left under all that beast…”

The sunlight on his face grew cold. Smoke stung his nostrils. Though every impulse fought him, he forced his eyes open. His stepmother stared down at him through hollow eye sockets, her charred-black skin cracking and peeling away from a bleached white skull.

And then he felt his wrists and ankles crack, his kneecaps split, his shoulderblades wrench themselves apart; every column of his spine snapped and popped one by one, as though he was being pulled in two; the scream that ripped itself from his throat was hoarse, pitiful, and mewling as he felt his sinuses explode and his skull rip itself apart beneath his face. He felt the muscle and sinew unspooling from his bones like loose thread pulled from a worn woolen tunic; itching, bristling needles forcing their way up out of his skin to stand on end in the cold air; his head splitting as new teeth, sharp and long, forced themselves out of his jaw.

He snapped awake, darkness and gloom flooding in as the afterimage of the ghastly visage faded from his sight. His chest heaved; his heart fluttered like a hummingbird. He pressed his palm to his chest to steady his pulse. But it brought him no comfort; where his hand fell to his skin, he felt hair. Fur. Fur crusted with dried blood.

“Dimitri? Your Highness! You’re awake!”

He forced himself up onto his feet, stumbling with every uneven, ungainly, aching step; his shallow and ragged breaths struggled to fill his burning lungs. He slipped; his legs crumpled under his weight; his arm screamed bloody murder when it broke his fall—

Don’t try to walk on your hind legs; you’re embarrassing yourself. He could hear Felix’s voice hissing in his ear (he sounded just like Glenn), all but see him looming over him with a cold and disdainful sneer twisting his face. There’s no hiding it anymore. Everyone can see what I see now—

He cracked open one eye. A patchwork of muddled gray-brown blurs resolved and sharpened into the face of a giant mouse staring down at him, whiskers twitching apprehensively, round ears twitching forward.

“Dimitri!”

No, not a giant mouse. A normal-sized mouse. Annette. That was the voice of Annette, his classmate, calling out to him; the mouse’s face even had the same round, cherubic contours. And just like her, the mouse chirped like a songbird. Reality began to trickle back into his fatigued mind. Claude and his amazing talking mouse, Abyss and the Ashen Wolves, the Plague Rat—

He sighed, half relieved, half forlorn. He’d take being a mouse over a boar any day, but a beast was still a beast.

“You were having a nightmare.” Annette rolled him over onto his back. Filthy, blackened bandages wreathed her right arm and circled her waist; black blossoms of dried blood stained her pale brown fur. “But don’t worry! You’re awake now!”

He was lying on the floor in a small, dark room lit by a single matchstick mounted on a hole in one of the craggy stone walls; one wall was a ragged canvas curtain with faint light bleeding through the edges. The floor was carpeted with a blanket made from rough scraps of cotton cloth that kept away the cold bite of bare stone.

Dimitri tried to sit up, but the world started spinning around him and wouldn’t stop until he stopped. His right forearm whined at him until he stopped putting pressure on it. It was wrapped in a long, ragged strip of cotton from wrist to elbow; a scrap of wood for a makeshift splint kept it straight. It hurt to try and move his fingers. “How long was I out…?”

Claude’s voice rang out. “Not as long as we expected, that’s for sure.” He sat in the corner of the room, his long, thin tail curled loosely around him like a length of whip on the floor. A ragged bandanna circled his head, pinning back one ear; a wad of damp cloth was tied to one of his ankles. Marianne lay at his feet, her pale white fur and periwinkle hair lending her a ghostly appearance. Her fur and hair were matted with dried blood. “We thought you’d be out for the rest of the… day? I think it’s day now. Anyway, good to see you among the living.”

“Before you ask, the good news is none of us got killed,” Hapi said, resting her back against the wall. She gestured to Balthus, who was lying facedown on the floor. “The bad news,” she added, “is that your shy little medic gave everything she had to heal you up and left him to handle everyone else.”

Balthus stirred, his tail lashing lazily and ear twitching, and mumbled something about orange slices with a slurred voice muffled by the carpeting.

“You’re all injured…” Dimitri noted, struggling once again to sit up despite the throbbing of his head. He had to turn his head to see everyone; a fuzzy wall of shadow crept in from the left side of his field of view. When he raised his paw to feel out what was wrong with his eye, he felt a band of gauze spanning across it.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’re all just bloodstains, mostly,” Annette assured him, giving him a ginger, wary pat on the shoulder. “We’re all pretty much healed.” The bandages told a different story, but Dimitri felt he’d get nowhere if he tried to argue.

“And our injuries weren’t very serious in the first place,” Claude chimed in, gesturing to the wet compress tied around his ankle, “at least, not compared to yours, so I figured I’d let Marianne tend to you first.”

“I… Thank you,” Dimitri said. He felt his stomach twist and coil itself around a hollow pit. All this sacrifice, all this blood staining his friends’ bodies, all because he’d lost control and rushed in. All this sacrifice, and for what? So they could all see him for the beast he was? So they could see what Felix had seen during the rebellion two years ago? Back then, with the Tragedy of Duscur still fresh in his young mind, he’d torn through the scattered band of rebels with the savagery of a wild boar—and until the haze had vanished from his mind and he’d come to his senses amid the dead and dying, he’d enjoyed it.

That was what he truly was. Everything else was mere deception.

“I’m sorry,” he added. “Please accept my apology, Claude. It’s my fault you all had to rush in after me…”

Hapi let out a scornful little laugh. “Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean the world revolves around you, Didi. B and I could’ve run away if we wanted to.” She clutched her ribs and winced. “Maybe we should’ve. But that’s hindsight for you…”

“We couldn’t let what was happening go on, anyway,” Claude said. “You rushing in like that didn’t make much of a difference, really. And it worked out—sort of. While you were keeping the Plague Rat off our backs, we managed to beat back those raiders and save the rest of the camp.”

That was Claude, alright—he made everything fit into his plans, even things that worked against him. Especially those. Yet his smile never reached his eyes, and this time was no different; but now to Dimitri it looked especially false. Meanwhile, Hapi eyed him warily and Annette flinched at the sight of him.

They’re all animals, but you’re the wildest of them all, the ghost of Glenn hissed in his ear. You disgust them. You’ve failed them just as you’ve failed us. They’re afraid of you.

“I need to take a walk,” he said, trying once again to sit up. The third time was the charm, and emboldened, he picked his spear up off the floor and held it like a walking stick to prop himself up.

“Are you sure?” Annette asked. “I’ll come with you in case you fall down or need help—”

“Alone,” he insisted. His head hurt. It always did when the ghosts started to wail. He clutched the haft of his spear and trudged over to the curtain, shrugging it aside.

The dim torchlight which lit the crevice beyond the curtain was blinding for a second or two before Dimitri’s eyes adjusted. The room he’d left was carved out of a hollow space in the wall at the bottom of a canyon cleaved into one of Abyss’ endless corridors. Tents, makeshift huts of sticks and cloth, clung to the canyon’s walls; mice milled about dressed in robes and tunics made from rags and scraps as they went about their business. Fortunately, none of the mice paid him any mind.

He sat down, leaned against the brick wall, and unwrapped the gauze that circled his head and covered his left eye. A dark splotch of blood stood out in the middle of the grimy ribbon.

He blinked. The black wall pressing in from the left didn’t disappear. He blinked a few more times as though to clear his eyes, then rubbed his eye with his knuckle. Still nothing. With mounting horror, he closed his eyes and reached up and let his fingertips probe around his eye socket, trying very hard to be mindful of his claws. His fingers pressed painfully into the bone circling his eye; within the socket, hidden under his eyelid, he felt the soft, yielding pressure of his eyeball. At least it seemed physically intact. But he couldn’t see out of it.

A pale white snout poked its way out from behind the curtain, nose and whiskers twitching as it sniffed the air. The snout was followed by a set of clawed pink fingers curling around the corner of the stone wall and another pink paw pulling aside the curtain. The rest of the head peeked out and peered around the corner.

“Your Highness,” Marianne whispered, her voice meek and hoarse. Her brown eyes were wide and wet, like a doe’s eyes; the braids that kept her pale blue hair up were frayed, some nearly undone, and her bangs hung over her forehead, sticky with blood.

Dimitri said nothing. He looked away. Marianne crept closer, bundling herself up in the ragged black cloak she’d torn from her uniform. “May I…” she mumbled timidly. “I’m sorry… Prince Dimitri, may I see your eye?”

“I’m fine,” he said to her. “If you have the strength to spare, tend to your own house leader.”

“I have. He insisted.” She knelt down in front of him and offered him her paw. “Please, may I finish my work?”

Relenting, he offered her his right forearm. “My eye isn’t bothering me,” he lied. “But my arm… if you could take another look at it…”

Marianne nodded and gingerly unwrapped the splint. Dimitri winced and hissed as the wrapping tugged on scabbed-over flesh that had stuck to it. There was still a deep, livid gash in his arm. He wasn’t sure if he could see bone at the bottom or if it was just his eyes—eye—playing tricks on him.

“It was worse last night,” she explained to him. “It… I’m sorry… the knife sawed clean through your ulna. It might still be fractured, hence the splint…”

Dimitri nodded.

“I beg your forgiveness, and the Goddess’ forgiveness. If you hadn’t had to push me out of the way…”

“No, it wasn’t your fault,” he assured her.

Marianne placed her paw over the wound, closed her eyes, and muttered an incantation. Dimitri felt a sharp, eye-watering stab of pain almost as bad as the Plague Rat’s blade, but only for a split second before a wave of numbing warmth ran through his arm all the way up to his shoulder. Flesh knitted itself together, sinews and muscle fibers stretching across the walls of the gash and pulling both sides in like thread on a needle working through a tear in his clothing. The scabby crevice whittled itself away, flakes of dried blood falling from his skin; golden fur grew back to hide it.

The warmth and numbness faded and Marianne leaned back and released his arm. Dimitri wriggled his fingers—painlessly—and poked at where the gash had been—painfully. He winced.

“The bone must still be weak,” she said, bowing her head and letting out a ragged, shallow sigh. “I’m sorry.”

He gave his arm an experimental flex. It hurt, but it was usable. At worst, the bone might have been a little bruised, but it seemed structurally sound enough that it wouldn’t fail him in battle. “Don’t worry; I think it’ll hold up,” he assured her. “At any rate, it’s better than it was. Thank you.”

“And your eye…”

“I’ll live with just one for now, thank you,” he said, not wanting to strain her again.

“No, no, please.” She reached up. Dimitri instinctively turned his head to hide his eye from her. “Let me try again.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t waste the effort.”

“But you’re a prince—”

A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “You saw what I am. You and everyone else. A beast.”

“I know. I did. And…I thought I was the only one.”

“Huh?” Dimitri looked at Marianne, studying the melancholy look on her face and droop of her ears, the shame in her hunched shoulders and downcast eyes. He recalled how she’d looked when their paths had crossed in battle—bloodied, crazed, her eyes blank and lacking in any sign of wit or reason save for the most basic feral impulses. She’d looked the way he’d felt.

Marianne sat in front of him and folded her paws in her lap as though praying. “Your Highness, will you promise not to repeat what I say to you here?” she asked, her already-faint voice growing even quieter.

Dimitri leaned forward to better hear her, still gingerly favoring his right arm. “Yes, of course. You have my word.”

“I bear a curse from the Goddess. A baleful Crest which brings nothing but misfortune to its bearers and all who come near them. You may have heard of it. It is the Crest of the Beast.”

He nodded. He’d heard the story. In addition to the Ten Elites whose bloodlines had formed the basis of Fódlan's system of nobility, there had been an eleventh legendary hero who had done battle against Nemesis. But the eleventh great hero, Maurice, had lost control of his powers and transformed into a great monster, slaughtering all who crossed his path. For that, his name had been stricken from history. Officially, his bloodline had long since terminated—he’d left no heirs—but according to legends, there were those who bore his Crest and could themselves transform into beasts.

“You’re a descendant of…” he said. Marianne nodded hastily as though to urge him to be silent. “But how does no one know about it? Surely Professor Hanneman would have—”

Marianne shook her head. “My adoptive father paid a large sum of money to the Church to cover up the existence of my Crest. But no amount of money can purge it from my body. Nothing can quell the compulsion that sings in my blood. That’s why… I try to avoid battle. It tries so hard to come out…”

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said. For so many, including him, Crests were a sign of power, of rightful authority; they were the boons of the Goddess. In Faerghus, to have a Crest and a Hero’s Relic tied to it was to have a noble obligation as a living weapon to defend the kingdom. But he had learned from his fellow Blue Lions classmates that it was more complicated than that. Some people suffered for want of a Crest, like Sylvain’s late brother, who'd been driven mad with jealousy by his younger brother’s good fortune and turned to a life of rape and pillage. Others suffered for having one, like Ingrid, who desperately wanted to be a knight and yet was pressured by her family, as its sole Crest-bearing heir, to simply marry well and be a mother to Crest-bearing children. But what could anyone do about it?

“Unfortunately for me, I can’t blame my… compulsion on the situation of my birth,” he said. “But I do know what it feels like to lose control. I know what it means to be a civilized mask over the face of an animal. I know the shame you must feel.”

Marianne sighed, then reached out for him. “May I please…”

This time, Dimitri relented. If it would make her feel more useful… “Go ahead.” He closed his eyes and leaned in.

She placed her palm against his ruined left eye and a warm, numbing wave washed through his head; when it was done, she slumped over, falling to his shoulder. “Is it… better?” she asked.

He opened his eyes. He could see through his left eye again, but only muddled, desaturated blurs; the torchlight above split into a searing, cross-shaped bar, and black speckles threaded through his vision. It was disorientating, dizzying; when he moved his head to get a better look, he felt a throbbing ache run through his head and a wave of vertigo seize his stomach.

“It’s not an improvement,” he admitted. “I don’t mean to impugn your skills, but it… hurts now to look through it.” As Marianne’s face fell, he took the ribbon of cloth and wrapped it around his eye again, sparing him the discomfort of the half-functional eye. “But I’m sure you’ve made Professor Manuela’s job much easier for when we make it back to the monastery. From one beast to another… thank you.”

Marianne almost smiled.

As important as finding Edelgard was, Claude had a new mystery on his paws that excited him just as much. Before he and the Plague Rat had warped away, Myson had mentioned finding something in this camp that was ‘almost as important’ as Edelgard, and that had his curiosity piqued. What did they want with Edelgard, anyway? It had sounded like all the Plague Rat wanted was to kill her, but Myson seemed to want more from her than just her life. What situation had she gotten herself embroiled into here?

Nobody he and Dimitri talked to said anything about any of their possessions being stolen, although Claude had to admit that most of these mice didn’t have many things to steal. Nobody had seen any of Myson’s forces take anything either outside of a few bags of grain and a couple weapons and tools, so Claude assumed that either what they’d found had been small enough to hide in one’s robes, or Myson must have used a warp spell to transport it.

His search came to an end inside the biggest tent in the camp, not because he found anything in there, but because it was the last place he still had to look.

The inside of the tent was in disarray. Claude had to light a match to get a good look at the place. A table in the center had collapsed, its legs snapped like twigs; scraps of parchment littered the floor. The curtain in back had fallen away, revealing an alcove made from a missing brick in the wall just like the one he and his friends had holed up in for the night. In the alcove was a mess of blankets, a fragment of mirror, and a ladder leaning against one rough stone wall.

Still stepping lightly on the ankle he’d sprained last night (though the power of his Crest had mostly healed it by now), Claude rifled through the pages scattered on the floor. Perhaps what Myson had found had been a document of some kind, like a map.

He ruled out the map hypothesis soon enough, though, because the first thing he found was a map of Abyss. For the first time, he could get a sense of Abyss as a whole—all of its tunnels and corridors, the scattered and winding paths that looked more like an old town than anything else, the secret tunnels and cracks in the walls that mice and mice alone could slip through…

“Abyss is… bigger than I expected,” Dimitri remarked, staring at the map over Claude’s shoulder. He seemed crestfallen by that observation, and Claude couldn’t blame him.

That was an understatement. This place was huge. Its network of tunnels and crumbling ruins spanned the outer walls of the monastery itself, and that was a big enough plot of land for humans. Without any leads, finding Edelgard down here would be like traversing all of Riegan county on foot.

If there was one bright spot to this map, if Claude’s intuition about the monastery’s layout was correct, this camp wasn’t far from the dining hall, and thus the kitchens and scullery—not horizontally, anyway (who knew how far above them the monastery was?). In fact, there looked to be a hole in the wall probably an hour’s walk from here that led into… was it the cellar?

And now that he thought of it, hadn’t he heard a rumor that a missing student’s uniform had been found there yesterday morning? He looked closer and his spirits fell. There was a hastily-scribbled X over the path to the cellar and a warning about cats, triple-underlined, so it probably wasn’t the quick exit he’d hoped for.

Still, he couldn’t discount the advantage this map could give him, so he rolled it up and slipped it into a satchel he’d taken from the cannibal town last night. If Myson hadn’t taken it, that meant he probably had a map of his own; this could level the playing field.

The other documents weren’t really documents, per se… more like doodles. Hasty sketches in black ink drawn with a shaky hand (or rather, paw) depicting a mouse with a long mane, furnished with epaulets and a waist-length half-cape draped over one shoulder, wielding in one paw an ornate axe…

Claude studied the drawing. Those familiar ornaments, the cape, that mane, that axe… It couldn’t be.

“That’s Edelgard,” Dimitri gasped, snatching the sketch out of his paws. His eye lit up. “That’s her, I’m sure of it!”

“Ahem. Can I help ya?”

The voice calling out to him sounded the exact opposite of helpful. In fact, all Claude could do in response to it was sheepishly turn around like a child who’d just been caught sneaking a treat as Dimitri hastily stowed the sketch away.

“I don’t know, can you?” Claude answered.

Ezekiel, or ‘Zeke,’ as most of the camp called him, stepped into the tent, his arms crossed. He was pretty tall for a mouse, about Dimitri’s size, and as crisscrossed with scars as the Plague Rat; one ear was notched, one ear was worn away to a nub, and one eye was covered by a ragged eyepatch. Last night’s battle had left a few fresh scars, though it was hard to discern them from all the others.

“So,” he said to Claude and Dimitri, “what’re ya doin’ in my brother’s room?”

“One of the raiders last night said something about taking something important from this camp,” Claude explained. “I figured I’d do a little investigating and see what was missing.”

“Huh. Sounds like somethin’ a thief’d say.” Zeke let out a derisive little snort and tried to right the table, noticed its legs were broken, and promptly gave up. “Sure made themselves at home, huh? So what’s missin’?”

“A map,” Claude answered with complete honesty.

Zeke squinted at him, while Dimitri gave him a sour, sidelong look, one that seemed to say, ‘Really, Claude? Have you no shame?’

At the very least, it was good that Dimitri was back to his old self.

“I mean, all these documents,” he said, gesturing to the papers littering the floor, “and not a map among them… pretty clear what they took, huh? Assuming there was one to begin with. It sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption to make.”

“Ugh. Great.” Zeke sighed. “Mattie’s gonna chew me out when he gets back. Y’know how embarrassing it is t’ be chewed out by yer younger brother?”

“Oh, yeah. Back at home, I got it a lot from just about everyone, older and younger.” Claude had had a big family back in Almyra, although in the interest of keeping that part of himself hidden from Fódlan folks, he never had much liberty to go into detail. “So these drawings are Mattie’s,” he noted, gesturing to a sketch.

Zeke picked up one of the sketches off the floor. “Oh, he’s gonna be pissed when he sees this. He’s, uh… well, y’know artsy types.”

Claude nodded. That fit one of his classmates to a T. He’d never seen this ‘Mattie’ guy before, but the mental image he had of him was of Ignatz as a mouse, glasses and all. “Yeah, I know artsy types.” He looked down at the scattered pages. About half of what he could see were axe-wielding mice with fluttering capes and flowing manes. “Kind of, uh…”

“Obsessed?”

“No, I wasn’t—”

Zeke laughed. “I mean… yeah. Few months ago, he scurried over to me one night and said he’d just seen the most amazing thing. Fer a while, it was all he could talk about. This beautiful white warrior strikin’ down wicked folks left n’ right. Said it was more vivid than any dream.” His tone grew dour; he took a seat on an intact stool and kicked at one of the sketches. “Was ‘round the time those raiders started attackin’. I figured, yeah, let the kid have his savior.”

“Savior? So he had some kind of religious vision?” Dimitri interjected.

“If ya wanna call it that, yeah. Made for a fun story t’ tell the pups. An’ the adults, too. Kept us hopin’, kept us entertained.” Zeke sighed. “Til she actually went n’ showed up.”

Claude quelled his excitement. So Edelgard had been here! “So what you’re saying is, you and Miss Savior don’t exactly get along.”

“Hah! As if I could get along with that stuck-up, self-obsessed, holier’n-thou, ‘I-know-best,’ thin-skinned, pompous, haughty…” Zeke rattled off a list of epithets.

“Yes, that sounds like Edelgard to me,” Dimitri said.

“You know her?”

“Well… not very well,” Claude admitted. “We’re in the same school.”

“Hmph.” Zeke scowled. “Should’ve known you n’ yer lot were ‘temporarily embarrassed humans,’ too.”

Dimitri wrinkled his nose at the sound of the turn of phrase he’d coined, unaccustomed to having his own words thrown back in his face even if it was only by coincidence.

“Not a fan?” Claude retorted, guarded.

“‘Not a fan?’ ‘Not a fan?’” Zeke rose from his seat, towering over Claude and nearly coming to Dimitri’s height. “You humans spend yer whole lives treatin’ us like pests, thinkin’ you can just trample all over us, and then ya come down here and think you’ve got all the answers! But y’know what? Th’ only reason last night happened was because Edelgard went out an’ did things her way an’ they decided to retaliate!” He punctuated every exclamation by jabbing an accusing finger into Claude’s chest. “If we’d just handled ‘em like we always do yesterday mornin’, I wouldn’t have had a dozen bodies t’ get rid of last night! All you do is bring all yer human troubles with ya, and we gotta put up with it, an’ then you solve ‘em and act like it makes y’all heroes!”

Dimitri grabbed Zeke by the wrist. He must have had a very firm grip, because Zeke gasped and started trying to pull his paw free with a tinge of panic on his face. “That’s enough! I understand that you are angry, but we helped you last night—”

“Dimitri.” Claude tapped him on the shoulder. “Let Zeke go and leave the talking to me.” He wiped the errant spittle from his fur. “Point taken, Zeke. But trust me, we don’t intend to linger. As soon as we find Edelgard, we’re out of your hair. Er, fur. All of us. For good.”

“Huh. Well, I want you n’ your lot outta my fur now.”

“Alright. Well, fastest way to do that is to help us, so where can we find Edelgard?”

“Hell if I know. She yelled at her li’l friend so hard she ran off screamin’ an’ cryin’, an’ then she roped Mattie into runnin’ after the poor doe with her. Been gone all night, so who knows? Maybe they’re dead.”

Dimitri frowned. “Oh. I-I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was such a touchy subject.”

“Touchy?” Zeke rolled his eye. “Yeah, pretty touchy knowin’ yer brother might be dead ‘cause you didn’t tell him to knock off the whole savior shit when you had the chance.”

Cowed, Dimitri bowed his head. “I understand; you have every right to be upset. Please accept our sincerest apologies. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure your brother is in safe ha—”

“No.” Zeke pointed to the tentflaps. “Out.”

“You heard the man,” Claude said, grabbing Dimitri by the arm. “Er, mouse.”

Zeke’s one-eyed glare followed the two of them out of the tent. Claude snuffed out and tossed aside the match he’d been using as a torch before it burned down to his fingers.

Glum, Dimitri tugged at the scrap of cloth that covered his left eye. “I fear we’ve come little closer to finding Edelgard than before. Even with a map, how can we know where she’s gone?”

“Okay, Dimitri. You’ve got to tell me why you’re so concerned about Edelgard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two hold a complete conversation as long as we’ve been at Garreg Mach.” Claude winked. “Does somebody have a crush?”

“I-It’s nothing like that,” Dimitri stammered. Though he cut a fearsome figure (for a mouse) with the bloody bandages circling his head to cover his eye and various other nicks and scratches left over from last night’s battle, and his golden fur certainly lent him a proud and regal air (again, for a mouse)—or rather, it would have if it wasn’t so crusted with brown and black speckles of dirt and blood that he looked like a spotted hyena—he looked adorably innocent when he was flustered. “A crush… Goddess almighty, how your mind wanders to such fanciful things. And how do you know we never talk? Have you been spying on us?”

Claude said nothing.

Dimitri crossed his arms. “…Of course you have. No. No, I do not have a crush on her.”

“The more you deny it without telling me what’s really between you two,” Claude retorted, “the more I’ll just think it’s puppy love.”

“Oh, please,” Dimitri huffed.

“I’ll tell you one of my secrets if you tell me yours.”

“I’m not interested in knowing any of your secrets.”

“Really? Not even something you could use against me in the future?”

“Perish the thought!”

Claude shrugged. “A poor king you’ll make.”

“You are testing my patience.” Dimitri rubbed his forehead, brushing his straw-colored bangs out of his eyes. “Fine. Fine. But you must keep this a secret.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“She’s my… I mean, I knew her a long time ago.”

“Figured.”

“She and her mother came to Fhirdiad about ten years ago,” Dimitri said, “fleeing unrest in Enbarr; she lived in the city with her uncle. She was so lonely… I think I was the only friend she had in all of Faerghus, and for the year she spent there, I would say she was one of my best. At the end of the year, despite how much she disliked living in Fhirdiad, she seemed just as upset to leave. She acted like she was simply trading one prison for another. And so before parting ways, I… oh, never mind.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, it’s… embarrassing.”

“What?”

“I gave her a dagger and told her to use it to cut her own path and live her own life. But that is beside the point.” Dimitri spat out the words like he was trying to shove somebody out a window. He looked down at the floor. “I… I never saw El again until Garreg Mach. In many ways she hadn’t changed, but she seemed so distant and unapproachable, as though she didn’t know me at all; and her hair had turned stark white…”

“You gave her a dagger?”

“Laugh if you must; Felix and Sylvain do. ‘Prince Dimitri woos girls with cold steel instead of flowers…’”

“Laugh? I think it’s sweet,” Claude said. “And I think it’s sweet that you’d go this far for her. And if you ever need some situation engineered to help you two reconnect, I can think of a few schemes just off the top of my head, like I could lock you two in a cabin in the woods—”

If not for the fur (and the colorblindness), Dimitri’s cheeks would have lit up red. “I—That is unnecessary. I… am not the boy she would have remembered anyway, even if she did. It’s no wonder she didn’t recognize me. In light of that, I’m not sure myself why I’m down here looking for her in the first place.”

“So, you said you didn’t have a crush on her, but—”

“I don’t!” he protested hotly. “I-It isn’t like that, Claude.”

“Riiight. You were ‘just friends.’”

Dimitri shook his head and shot Claude an annoyed glare. “She’s my stepsister. There. I said it.”

“Oh.” Claude couldn’t say he hadn’t expected that answer, but it still took him by surprise. “Well, that’s why you’re down here! You’ve got to look after your family—”

Dimitri suddenly looked as though he’d swallowed a lemon whole, and it was then that Claude remembered—while he didn’t know all the details, he knew that Dimitri had lost his parents in a terrorist attack about four years ago. Claude mentally kicked himself for his lapse in judgment.

“Yes,” Dimitri said, speaking in terse, clipped tones. “You’ve got to.”

Claude reached up to give him a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Well, c’mon, Your Great and Majestic Royalness; the sooner we get back to looking for her, the sooner we’ll find her.”

“Right.” Dimitri nodded. “Oh, and Claude—not a word of this to anyone.”

“Well, if you wanted me to keep it a secret, you should’ve agreed to our trade. A secret for a secret.”

He sighed. “Fine. Claude, tell me your secret.”

“Which one?”

“How many do you have?”

“Got a few days?”

“Just tell me one. Any of them.”

“Well, for starters, ‘Claude’ isn’t my real name…” Claude said with a sly little wink.

“What is your real name, then?”

“Oh, that’s another secret.”

Dimitri sighed again. “Of course.”

“Dimitri, Claude!”

Annette came running up to them, breathless, eyes wide. Dimitri grabbed her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“She’s here!” she gasped, placing a paw to her chest as she caught her breath. “Edelgard is…”

The crowd ahead parted and through it strode the most beautiful mouse Claude had ever seen. So unparalleled, so graceful, that even the ragged and filthy cloak and robes hanging from her shoulders couldn’t spoil it. With glossy, sleek, almost silken white fur and a long white mane that fell far past her shoulders and cascaded over her back like a waterfall, piercing and cold lavender eyes gazing from behind a forest of fine gossamer whiskers sprouting from her cheeks, a long pink tail trailing gracefully behind her with every step, and a gleaming and ornate axe resting in one paw, it was easy to tell exactly who she was.

Edelgard von Hresvelg, in the flesh. Even if there was substantially less of it now. She really looked exactly like Matthias’ sketches—eerily so, if he had indeed started drawing them long before he’d met her.

A gray-brown mouse with a tousled mop of dark hair peered out from over her shoulder, so timid that Claude could tell from one look at her that she could give Marianne a run for her money. As soon as he so much as glanced at her, she hid away behind Edelgard.

“Well, well, well,” Claude said with a smirk. “We trudge through sewage to get here, and you come out smelling of roses.” He sniffed the air. “Er… lilac?”

Edelgard’s pale gaze pierced through him like an arrow. Her eyes widened and her mouth hung open. “Claude?” she gasped.

“The one and only,” Claude answered her. “Lady Edelgard, I presume?”

Dimitri cleared his throat and awkwardly bowed his head. “Hello, Edelgard.”

Edelgard merely looked even more confused. She wrinkled her nose and her brow. “Dimitri?”

“We came here to rescue you,” Claude finished. “You’re welcome.”

“Y-You did? Is that so?” Edelgard pulled back her rapidly escaping composure and crossed her arms. “I can’t help but notice that you’re both mice now, and…” She sniffed the air and gagged. “What… did you say about… sewage?”

“Well, yeah, some complications arose,” Claude told her. “I’d explain the whole story to you over brunch, but we’ve just been kinda… evicted, so…”

“I should have expected you of all people would end up like this, Claude,” she said, “but you as well, Dimitri?”

“I was… trying to keep him out of trouble,” Dimitri sheepishly explained.

A short brown mouse in a ragged monastic robe with a sword and bundle of matches at his hip rushed to Edelgard’s side. “Edelgard! Are these friends of yours?”

“No, we just attend the same school,” Edelgard clarified. Claude glanced at Dimitri to see if he could spot any lingering disappointment on the prince’s face.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you two,” the mouse said, darting in front of Edelgard to shake their hands. “My name’s Matthias. I’m sort of the leader of this camp, I guess. When my brother’s out or sleeping, that is. He’s more of the take-charge type. So you’re, uh… Dimitri?”

“He’s Dimitri,” Claude said, pointing at Dimitri. “I’m Claude.” He had to admit, he was a little let down that Matthias didn’t look a thing like Ignatz.

“Right, right. Nice to meet you, Claude! You, too, Dimitri! Now, uh, have either of you seen my brother around? He’s a little taller than both of you, one ear, one eye—kinda like you, Dimitri—got almost as many scars as fur—oh, boy, you should hear how he got ‘em all, each one’s got a story behind it! Oh, and his…”

“So you’re Mattie,” Dimitri said. “Your brother’s been worried about you.”

Matthias’ eyes lit up. “He has? Where is he?”

“Mattie!”

“Zeke!”

Zeke roughly shoved Claude and Dimitri aside and swept Matthias up in a lung-crushing embrace strong enough to make his eyes bulge. “Mattie! Saints be fuckin’ praised, I thought you’da snuffed it out there!”

“Urgh… n-not me,” Matthias squeaked, trying to wriggle out of his brother’s grip. “Not with Edelgard with me…”

Zeke dropped him to the floor, then noticed Edelgard. “Ah. Edelgard.” He sounded out every syllable as though spitting it in her face.

Edelgard glared daggers at him. “You.”

Matthias grabbed Zeke by the arm and tried to pull him away before anything happened between him and Edelgard. “Anyway, boy, Zeke, you should’ve been there! We met the Ashen Wolves! Y’know, nothing special, just our archenemies for the past like forever. But Edelgard and I gave them a pretty good fight and now we’re friends! We had a really nice long talk, or rather I did with their leader, and they’ve totally promised not to squish us or set traps for us or any of the other unpleasant things they’ve been doing, on account of they’re all mice now, too—”

Zeke’s ear twitched. “Whoa, whoa, slow down, Mattie. I caught like two words o’ that slurry of a sentence. C’mon, tell it to me slowly.” With that, he dragged his brother off, shooting Edelgard one last sidelong glance.

“I take it we’ve got a lot to catch up on, too?” Claude asked Edelgard. “Looks like our eviction’s been postponed, so how about we all head back to our place and chat?”

The labyrinthine corridors of Abyss passed Byleth by. Here and there were sparse signs of human habitation—tents, lean-tos, and huts built into ragged alcoves formed in the walls, rooms filled with broken and dusty furniture, all towering over the mice—but no humans. Dotting the floor were the corpses of mice and rats in various stages of decay, some fresh, some reduced to skeletons, some still gripping tiny weapons and clad in tiny cloaks.

“Signs of humans,” Sothis mused from within her head, “but no humans. Has Tomas and his minions turned everybody in Abyss into mice?”

“We’re going in circles,” Caspar moaned. “I’ve seen that exact same torch like five times already!” He threw up his paws.

“No, it’s been a different torch every time,” Linhardt assured him.

“Same torch or not, that doesn’t mean we aren’t lost,” Lysithea fumed. To say she was unhappy about being a mouse, it seemed, was an understatement, and her bad mood seemed to spill over into every other topic under the sun. “We’re getting farther and farther away from Hilda and the others with every step! Professor, are we lost?”

“Of course not,” Alois interjected before Byleth could answer. “Right, Professor?” he asked, giving her an expectant look.

Byleth lifted the Sword of the Creator high and let its bony, segmented blade glow with fiery light, casting its light wider across the vast caverns of Abyss. “Don’t worry,” she assured the rest of the team. “I know exactly where we are.”

“Oh?” Sothis asked. Byleth couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t tried to manifest outside her head at all since earlier this morning, likely because she was embarrassed about being a mouse. “If you know exactly where we are, then perhaps you should inform me.”

Byleth didn’t answer.

“I knew it! We are lost!” Sothis sighed. “If only you had used my power as soon as we had fallen into that snare…”

After you’d scolded me for using all of your power for the day to get through a performance review with Seteth, I’d decided only to use that power in life-threatening situations, Byleth reminded her.

“Yes, but—”

Everyone is still alive.

“You, Byleth, are incorrigible.”

“I wonder,” Linhardt mused, staring up at the glowing sword in Byleth’s paw, “why the Sword of the Creator transformed along with the Professor, but Thunderbrand did not. Perhaps there’s something about the Sword of the Creator—perhaps the conspicuous absence of its Crest Stone? Or perhaps the anomaly is Thunderbrand…”

Catherine sighed. Apparently, Linhardt had been pestering her about her sword for a long time; he had a singular obsession with studying Crests and Heroes’ Relics that belied how little interest he could have in almost everything else. “For the last time, kid—mouse or human, you aren’t getting your grubby paws on Thunderbrand. These things aren’t just objects to be examined and dissected, they’re holy relics that have been blessed by the Goddess Sothis herself. You know the price of misusing them.”

Byleth looked down at the Sword of the Creator grasped in her paw. “I do not recall blessing any of these weapons—not Thunderbrand, not the Lance of Ruin, and certainly not that awful Sword of the Creator,” Sothis said to her, her disembodied voice ringing in her ears. “My skin crawls just looking at that blade. If anything, it is cursed.”

Byleth nodded in agreement. This sword was unsettling at best. And it demanded of her in ways no normal sword did. It was lighter than expected, swifter than one would think given its shape and size, and yet she always felt so oddly drained after using it—a strange hollow sensation that dwelt in her chest as though the sword had scooped out of her body a pound of flesh.

“I hardly think proper research and diligent study constitutes misuse,” Linhardt said to Catherine, completely undeterred. “What offense could the Goddess take in our wanting to further understand these things?”

“An heirloom of the Ten Elites deserves more respect. And that is my final word on the subject, Linhardt,” she scolded him. “Professor, he’s your student; talk some sense into him.”

“Yeah, cut it out, Linhardt,” Caspar piped up, rapping his knuckles on the other mouse’s shoulder. “She’s the greatest knight in all of Fódlan; show some respect!”

“Ow.” Linhardt gingerly rubbed his shoulder. “Point taken…”

“And Catherine, if you let me use Thunderbrand,” Caspar added, “I-I’d decline out of respect, not just because I don’t have the right Crest for it!”

Byleth hid an inward smile. Caspar followed Catherine around the way a puppy might follow its owner; if it wouldn’t have been heresy to do so, he would have probably worshiped her as a goddess. No matter what Hubert said to the contrary, being a mouse didn’t suit him.

Catherine let out a flattered laugh. “That’s sweet of you, Caspar. Speaking of Thunderbrand, though… Professor, are you sure it’ll be safe with your students?”

“Of course,” Byleth assured her. “Petra’s hands are good hands. Of all the Black Eagles, she’s the most responsible.”

“I can be responsible, too,” Caspar muttered.

“Yes,” Linhardt said. “When something breaks, you’re usually responsible.”

Catherine only looked a little less concerned. “I guess I’ll just have to trust you, Professor. Or, rather, I’ll have to trust your trust in your students. It’s not like I could lug that thing around in my condition anyway.”

Something skittered in the darkness up ahead; Byleth held out her arm to hold the others back. Her whiskers picked up subtle motions in the air currents and a musty scent stung her nostrils. “Linhardt, Lysithea, up here with me.”

“Maybe the knights should—” Linhardt began.

“Professor’s the only one with a weapon, and us two are the only ones with magic,” Lysithea reasoned. “We will have to step up front.”

Linhardt sighed. “Please be nothing,” he mumbled as he headed past the knights and flanked Byleth to her left. Lysithea had no complaints as she took her spot at Byleth’s right.

Two mice emerged from the dark, both standing on their hind legs. They wore odd clothing—not odd in the sense that it was unfamiliar, but odd in the sense that it was familiar. One wore a dirty periwinkle dress with a ragged and stained apron and a bonnet perched atop her head that had seen better days; the other wore a slick suit and a tattered overcoat, and a pair of glasses sat perched on his snout, one lens covered in a spiderweb of cracks.

“Hello!” the mouse-woman said.

“Hello, hello!” the mouse-man chimed in, and both of them scurried past Byleth and circled around the group faster than she could react. “Oh, don’t mind us, don’t mind us at all!”

“We mean you no harm,” his cohort said, “no harm at all! You all seem quite in a state, don’t you? Lost even the clothes off your backs! Poor things.” She eyed Caspar up and down, her whiskers and nose twitching as she sniffed the air. “And you… poor thing, you’re so small! Are you malnourished?”

“Hey! I-I’m not small!” Caspar hotly retorted, readying his fists. “And I’m not malnourished, either!”

“But you,” the mouse-man said, brushing a paw through Lysithea’s mane, “what lovely fur! A shame to see you so destitute!”

Lysithea pulled herself away and readied an orb of miasma in her paw. “Get back! Don’t touch me!”

Byleth held her sword to the mouse’s neck. “Do as she says.”

The mouse backed off and coughed into his paw, eyeing the bony blade of the Sword of the Creator warily. “Ah, my apologies. Sincerest apologies. Dearest, grandest, most eloquentest apologies.”

“It has been so long since we have seen friendly mice down here,” the other one said, though Caspar clearly wasn’t being friendly to her right about now. “Not since the Plague Rat ran roughshod through Mousebrook. Oh, but where are our manners? I am Ansley Donner,” she said, curtsying.

“And I,” the other mouse said, taking a bow, “am Landry Donner. A pleasure to make your acquaintances, er…”

“Ah! I’m Alois, and my fellow knight here is Catherine,” Alois said, introducing himself and Catherine. “And here we have Professor Byleth, Linhardt, Caspar, and Lysithea.”

Catherine crossed her arms. “Alois…” she said to him sternly, cautioning him.

“Oh, these two are friendly enough!” Alois assured her. “They’re just eager. Isn’t that right, Mister Donner?”

Landry laughed. “Oh, Mister Donner was my father! Just call me Landry, my friend.”

“And yes,” Ansley said, “we’re very, very eager! When Mousebrook fell, we thought we’d never see a civilized mouse again!”

“You two say you are knights?” Landry asked Alois and Catherine. “You two must be very lean and gamy—er, muscular.”

“What was that he said?” Sothis asked.

“What was that you said?” Byleth repeated to Landry. “Lean and…”

“Muscular, very muscular!” Landry laughed. He patted Alois on the arm. “My, you must be strong, my friend!”

“Hmph. I do not trust him,” Sothis said. Byleth had to agree.

“Poor dears, you’re all so impoverished!” Ansley plucked at the ribbon Hilda had tied into Lysithea’s mane (she had minced no words about how much she hated it, but had to admit that it did a lot to distinguish her from an ordinary mouse) and sniffed the air. “A lovely silk ribbon, though; you must come from wealth! And to have lost it all save for this, poor thing…” She clucked her tongue.

“If it’s not any trouble, can you tell us if you’ve seen any specific mice around here?” Catherine asked, cutting through all the niceties. “We’re just looking for a few in particular. Their names are Edelgard, Claude, and Dimitri.”

“Oh, I’m afraid their names don’t ring a bell…”

“There are other students missing, too,” Byleth reminded her. “Bernadetta, Annette, and Marianne. Do those names ring a bell?”

Ansley shook her head. “Oh, I’m sorry, no. None of those names sound familiar.”

“Wait!” Landry said. “Edelgard… Edelgard…” He ran the name through his mouth as though tasting it. “Can you describe her for me?”

“She’d look something like Lysithea here,” Byleth said. “That’s all we know.”

“You know, I do think I may have seen her!” Landry said.

“Yes, a white mouse with a long mane! I do believe she may have passed us by!” Ansley chimed in. “Why don’t you come by our camp and we can consult our visitor’s record?”

“Er… ‘visitor’s record?’” Linhardt inquired, suspicious.

“We ran an inn back in Mousebrook,” Landry said, beaming. “Best inn in the underground! Service to die for!”

“And it didn’t cost an arm and a leg!” Ansley chimed in, also beaming. “Hospitality is our game, even if we don’t have an inn anymore!”

“We insist on providing nothing but the comforts of home to passersby, no matter our situation!” Landry added.

“In sickness and in health,” Ansley chirped, “in feast or in famine!”

“Hmm…” Linhardt scratched his chin. “We have been walking for a long time…”

“Oh, yes! A safe place to catch a break would be perfect!” Alois said.

Catherine narrowed her eyes. “Hold on. This is a little too convenient. You two are up to something, aren’t you?”

“Us?” Landry gasped.

“Us?” Ansley gasped. “Heavens, no! We’re honest businessmice!”

“Oh, come on, Catherine,” Alois said, giving his fellow knight a hearty pat on the back. “You can always depend on the kindness of strangers!”

“The kindness of strangers is our business,” Landry assured her. “And we’ve depended on quite a lot of it ourselves in these trying times. Come, come! We don’t have much to offer, but…”

“We would love to have you all for lunch!” Ansley said.

At the sound of lunch, Byleth felt her stomach churn and growl. Had it been so long since breakfast?

Evidently, similar hunger pangs were on Catherine’s mind as well, because she relented. “Okay,” she said, “but no funny business, or you’ll taste the edge of my blade—” Her paw fell to her hip, where Thunderbrand usually rested, but met empty air. “Or… claws. Fangs and claws. That’s a warning.”

“No need to warn us!” Landry insisted. “But if it makes you more comfortable, warn us all you like! Come along, come along!” He and his cohort scurried back into the darkness. “This way!”

“I don’t trust ‘em,” Caspar said, scowling, “but man am I hungry.”

Byleth nodded in agreement. “Be on your guard, everyone,” she said, and she led the others after Ansley and Landry.

As Byleth, the knights, and the students wandered through the corridors behind the two businessmice, Lysithea stumbled over a corpse resting on the floor—a mouse clad in black robes and wearing a beaked facemask like an Imperial mage—and let out a shrill shriek. Byleth was at her side in an instant. “You alright?”

Lysithea nodded and backed away from her, even though her chest was heaving and her breath ragged from fright. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said. “Of course I am. I was simply startled. That’s it.”

Alois sighed. “Ah, thank heavens. You sounded like you’d seen a ghost!”

Lysithea blanched, even more terrified. “I—Wh—” She whirled around, her silken white mane whipping around her. “G-Ghost? Where?”

“Oh, um—sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Alois stammered. “Don’t worry; I’d be frightened if I saw a ghost, too!”

“Are you patronizing me?”

“No, no! Of course not! Me, I’m terrified of ghosts! Once, I listened to one of Mercedes’ stories and fainted halfway through!”

“You’re joking.”

“He’s not joking,” Catherine said. “If Alois even so much as glimpses a headstone past sunset, he can’t sleep until sunrise.”

“Well, I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Caspar said, crossing his arms. “If I saw a ghost, I’d punch it in the face!”

“Wouldn’t your fist just go through it?” Linhardt asked him.

“Well—yeah,” he admitted, “but I think my confidence alone would scare it off! You’re looking at one guy who can’t be spooked!”

“Except by a summer storm,” Linhardt teased him.

“Hey! I’m not scared of thunder, I’m just startled by it!”

“Yes, that’s why you always run under your bed like a puppy as soon as you see lightning flash outside.”

“Liiin! Not always!” Caspar let out an embarrassed groan. “Anyway, Landry, Ansley, how much farther ‘til lunch? I’m starved!”

“Yes, and my paws are really starting to hurt,” Linhardt added.

“Oh, not much farther now,” Landry said. “We’ve got plenty of food to share with you… scones, fruit pies, candied nuts, salted meats, lentils, sugared plums, meat pies…”

“We’re well known for our meat pies!” Ansley added. “And we brew our own mead and ale, so you’ll have plenty to wash it all down with!”

Byleth couldn’t help but salivate. “Think with your head, not with your stomach,” Sothis chastised her.

Easy for you to say, Byleth thought at her. You don’t even get hungry.

“Yes…” Sothis yawned. “Is it not strange that I can grow tired, but not hungry? Being incorporeal is simply indescribable to you mortals…”

“Just a little farther,” Landry said, darting ahead.

“Keep up, keep up!” Ansley chimed in, rushing to catch up with him. “Stick together! It won’t be long now!”

The fur on the back of Byleth’s neck stood on end as a cold chill ran down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail. Instinctively, she lifted her head and slashed upward with her sword as a large white mass fell from the ceiling. The Sword of the Creator’s blade telescoped, breaking apart into a dozen wired segments and whipping through the air, slicing a gash in the white mass; but it fell too fast. “Ghost!” Alois cried out.

Just before Byleth could reach out to Sothis to turn back the flow of time, she felt the familiar stench of chloroform vapor clog her nostrils and her throat and her brain, deadening every thought in her head before she could even think it.

Edelgard couldn’t help but think that by coming down here to ‘rescue’ her, Claude and Dimitri had played right into the Agarthans’ hands. Now not only was one future leader of Fódlan missing, three inches tall, fuzzy, and in grave danger—all of them were. The tremors this would send through the land could be seismic. Decapitate the three leading families in Fódlan—Hresvelg, Blaiddyd, and Riegan—throw each of its three countries into chaos, and swoop in whilst the political order falls apart… Thales and his pasty goons surely had to be absolutely ecstatic right now.

If anything, the Leicester Alliance had it easiest of the three states. With its loose confederation of counties, another house could pick up the mantle of ruler—likely Goneril or Gloucester—with minimal disruption. The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus was already fragile, not yet fully recovered from the murder of its king and queen—the loss of the Blaiddyd bloodline’s only surviving heir would be the tipping point from what little semblance of order it kept to chaos. The Adrestian Empire would long for a strong leader to swoop in and reestablish order—and in Thales’ persona as Volkhard von Arundel, they would have it. Doubtless Thales already had someone in place who could do the same in Faerghus, transforming it into a puppet state. Between the two united powers, the Alliance would be crushed no matter how well it survived its succession crisis, and the Church of Seiros would be demolished.

None of those things were bad in essence—Edelgard wanted to see Fódlan unified under a single banner, the Church destroyed, and the existing social order completely and utterly upended—but what really mattered was what would replace them.

The Agarthans would replace old tyranny with new tyranny. Life would not change for the Bernadettas of the world. In fact, things would be even worse for the weakest and most vulnerable.

Edelgard had to be the driving force. Her vision, not theirs, had to win out. The future of all humanity depended on it.

She thought back to what Bernadetta had asked her. Would the Agarthans even let her become Emperor anymore? Almost certainly not. That was why every one of them down here had to die. She had to at least cripple them before returning to Enbarr. They had to either be destroyed, or so diminished in power and personnel that she could wrap them around her finger.

“What do you think, Edelgard?” Claude asked her.

She snapped out of her reverie and found herself staring down at Matthias’ map, though Matthias was nowhere to be seen. She, Dimitri, and Claude were sitting around the map, studying it, poring over the layout of Abyss and what could be gleaned from it regarding the Agarthan forces’ positions.

“My apologies. Can you repeat the question?” she asked.

“I was telling Claude that the abandoned village we found here—Mousebrook—could make a good forward operating base,” Dimitri said. “Were you not listening?”

“There must be a lot on your mind for you of all people to space out like that,” Claude said, resting his chin on his paw and giving her a grin that, in spite of his mousy features, was very Claude-like. “Not taking the whole mouse thing well, are we?”

No. Edelgard had to admit, she wasn’t. Although she was doing better about it, mostly thanks to Bernadetta’s presence. Having someone soft and warm to cling to kept her calm, and having someone in dire need of her help kept her focused.

“That’s none of your concern,” she said.

“You sound cranky. Does somebody need brushies?” Claude chuckled. “Dimitri, does it sound to you like Edelgard needs brushies?”

Dimitri’s whiskers twitched. “Um… no?”

“I do not need brushies,” Edelgard said, though she couldn’t help but think about just how good a comb raking through her fur would feel right now. “If anything, you two could use some decent grooming right now.” A comb was the least of what Claude and Dimitri needed—their fur was caked with filth and blood, bedraggled and haggard and in desperate need of a bath. They both looked like wild beasts.

“You know what, Edelgard? You’re right,” Claude said, nodding. “Since you’re so good at it, then, are you volunteering?”

“Excuse me? Volunteering for what?”

“To groom us, of course. Will you give us brushies?”

“No,” Edelgard said, already at her limit regarding Claude’s impish love of mischief.

“Oh, but look at how much we need it,” Claude pouted, looking at her with hangdog eyes. “Especially Dimitri. Don’t you want to give Dimitri brushies, Edelgard?”

Dimitri’s eye bulged. “C-Claude, please—” he stammered, more flustered than Edelgard had ever seen him

“Dimitri, don’t you want brushies from Edelgard?”

“Please stop saying ‘brushies!’”

“She could pet your tummy or scratch behind your ears or—”

“Enough.” Edelgard slammed her fist on the floor. “If you must know, I was contemplating the future of our countries. Those who slither in the dark have effectively decapitated our ruling families; if we don’t make it out of here and return to our human forms soon, our bloodlines, and by extension the cornerstones of each of our countries’ political structure, will be exterminated. All of Fódlan could be consumed in the fires of chaos, and I fear what dread beast may emerge from its ashes.”

Claude’s air of forced levity vanished from the room. There was no more talk about grooming to be had, thankfully.

“You’re right,” Dimitri said. “Edelgard, at his age your father is unlikely to sire any new Crest-bearing heirs should you disappear; Claude, it is the same for your grandfather. I myself am the only living remnant of the Blaiddyd bloodline. If the three of us di—don’t make it out of here, a thousand-year lineage stretching back to the War of Heroes… the lineage of Blaiddyd, Riegan, and Hresvelg, and the blessings they received from the Goddess… ends.” He sounded more subdued than usual. “I… share your concern. If whoever is behind this has planned on this all along—”

“What was it you called them?” Claude asked Edelgard, leaning forward. “‘Those who slither?’”

Edelgard nodded. “The raiders that have been attacking this place, the Plague Rat… Hubert and I call them ‘those who slither in the dark.’”

“So you’ve met these people before, if they can be called that,” Claude noted, and Edelgard cursed how loose her tongue had gotten since she’d been transformed. It was as though such a tiny body simply couldn’t hold in so many secrets as she was accustomed. Or maybe she’d gotten used to confiding in Bernadetta.

“You’ve been fighting against them already, haven’t you?” Dimitri asked.

Edelgard took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, thankful that what she’d said was true, if only half of the story (they didn’t need to hear the other half; in fact, hearing the other half would likely be counterproductive, to say the least). “This, I suppose, is their revenge.”

“A pretty unconventional revenge,” Claude commented. “This Plague Rat guy seems to want you dead at all costs, but his handlers act like there’s something more to it than that. I just wish I knew what. It feels like I’m eating one of those pastries with a hole through the center, and the mystery is the pastry, and all the clues we’re missing make up the hole in the center.”

“Claude, what are you talking about?” Dimitri asked.

“What, are you saying Mercedes hasn’t ever made those fried pastries for you? What does she call them? Dough-naughts? You’re in her house, Dimitri! How are you not first in line for everything she bakes?”

“I’ve never had much of a taste for sweets.”

“Back to the point,” Edelgard said, tapping on the map. “Matthias mentioned Mousebrook yesterday. He said it was filled with consummate cannibals.”

“Well, when we stopped by there, it was filled with corpses,” Claude said. “Actually, though, Dimitri—don’t you remember that when the Plague Rat came through there, it seemed like he was expecting to meet Myson there? I wonder if they’ve already established a minor presence there.”

Dimitri nodded. “That’s right. If so, we might run into the Plague Rat again…”

The idea of meeting that thing again filled Edelgard with dread, but she pushed that fear deep into the corner of her mind. “We also might run into slitherers we could capture and grill for information. If we secure the town, it’ll be that much easier to crush their stronghold.” She dragged her fingertip southward across the map to Mousehaven. “This, or so Matthias says, is their base of operations. Whatever passes for their leadership down here must be centered here. Since Mousebrook is near a canal, taking it will give us mastery over the waterways and give us an easy route southward.”

“There’s just one problem,” Dimitri said. “There are only about nine of us—us three lords, three of our classmates, and three of the Ashen Wolves. The mice here hardly have weapons and don’t know how to fight. Even if Matthias and Zeke join us, we’re still just shy of a dozen. How can we break through a stronghold like that?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Claude assured him. “Now let’s talk inventory. There’ll be more supplies to stock up on in Mousebrook if we need them, so that shouldn’t be a concern. As for travel, we’ve got the wagon you came in, Edelgard, the two wagons the raiders left behind last night, and one tamed rat to pull each of them, so we’ll be able to get there quickly and without tiring ourselves out—”

A scream rang out from across the camp. Claude leaped to his feet, his ears twitching toward the source of the sound. “That came from Matthias’ tent!” he exclaimed, rushing away and leaving Edelgard and Dimitri to follow him.

They found Matthias in the room behind his tent, his lower half dangling from the hole in the ceiling, his tail just barely brushing against the floor.

“Matthias!” Bernadetta cried out, running into the tent with Marianne and Annette trailing behind her. “A-Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Matthias fell from the ceiling, shivering as he picked himself up. His black eyes were wide, his face stricken with fear. “They… they took it… I can’t believe it… they took it…” he gasped, his chest heaving.

“This must be what Myson was talking about,” Claude said.

Annette crouched down at his side and patted him on the shoulder. “What’s wrong? What did they take?”

“Did they steal your drawings, Matthias?” Bernadetta asked. “I-I know how you feel, Matthias, i-if anyone stole any of my drawings, I’d—I think I’d die of shame!”

“They took…” Matthias gulped down a lungful of air and just as quickly expelled it, his breath ragged. He glanced up at Edelgard, then glanced just as quickly back down at the floor, as though ashamed to meet her gaze. “Something… something important, something very important, something I—it was really, really really important, and—and now it’s—”

“What is it?” Dimitri hissed. “A weapon?”

“Hey! Paws off my brother, you damn fake mice!” Zeke bellowed, barging into the tent and all but shoving Annette aside so he could kneel at his brother’s side in her stead. “Mattie, what’s wrong? You okay? You hurt?”

“I-I’m fine, I’m fine,” Matthias insisted, shaking his head. Edelgard had never seen him so affected. He’d even been cavalier about the deaths of his own friends, but whatever had been stolen from him had left him rattled. “It’s just that—they, uh… took… took something from my upstairs, a-and it’s really…”

“You n’ your upstairs,” Zeke scoffed. Evidently, he wasn’t allowed up there, because he seemed to have just as much of a clue as everyone else regarding whatever had been squirreled away up there. “Well, what were ya hidin’ in there that’s so important? A weapon or something?”

Matthias sat straight up as though someone had shoved a ramrod up his spine. “A weapon! Y-Yeah, I-I was keeping a w-weapon up there! A really powerful one…” he moaned.

“Well, I’d have liked to have known that yesterday…” Zeke muttered.

Matthias shook his head so vigorously that all his fur stood on end. “No, no, we, uh… we can’t use it. But if they get their paws on it…”

A weapon that none of the mice here could use, but someone on the Agarthans’ side might be able to… Edelgard wondered, could Matthias have been talking about a mouse-sized Hero’s Relic, capable of being used only by one with the proper Crest? And if there was one thing the Agarthans knew—she was living proof of it—it was Crests.

“Then we must retrieve it,” Dimitri said, fist clenching around the shaft of his spear tightly enough to splinter the wood. “We’ll have to set out for Mousebrook immediately to gather intelligence.”

Edelgard looked down at Matthias. He still wouldn’t look at her.

Her thoughts turned to her teacher, to Byleth’s mastery of the Sword of the Creator, to the segmented arc of the relic’s whiplike blade cutting deftly through the air like a tongue of flames and cleaving in half everything it met like a knife through soft butter. She recalled that, and the blazing blade of Thunder Catherine’s Thunderbrand, and the Lance of Ruin that had transformed Miklan Gautier into a monstrous beast, and she imagined how terrible it would be for the Plague Rat to command such power.

The thing Lysithea hated most about being a mouse was the helplessness. Then again, she hated that about being human, too. Being a mouse just meant more of it, meant having to depend on humans to carry her and shout to make herself heard and be at the mercy of everything bigger than her (which was almost everything), and on top of that, adding insult to injury, she had people (or rather, just Hilda) insisting on carrying her around and cooing about how cute she was and petting her and marveling at how silky her fur was and laughing about how tiny and adorable she was.

For a while, Lysithea had hated most of all when people treated her like a child, but once she’d been turned into a mouse by that wicked Tomas, she had discovered the one thing she hated even more than that, and that was when people treated her like a pet.

And now, as she struggled back to consciousness, she realized the one thing she hated more than being treated like a pet was being treated like food.

Because when she woke up, she found herself hogtied to a spit and hanging over a pit filled with gray ashes and a pile of wood that somebody was lighting on fire.

Panicked, she wriggled and writhed, trying to squirm out of the ropes tying her wrists and ankles to the spit to no avail. Beneath her, flames slowly licked at the pile of twigs and dried driftwood, acrid smoke stinging her eyes and nostrils.

Above all else, Lysithea hated forced helplessness. To be helpless on her own merits (or lack thereof) was frustrating, but not torturous, as she only had herself to blame for it. But to be thrust into a situation in which she could do nothing by somebody else—it called to mind a past she couldn’t force herself to forget as much as she wanted to, a past filled with knives and ropes and shackles, with the aghast eyes of helpless parents as they stood aside and watched their daughter’s blood pour onto the floor, with the wide and pleading eyes of older brothers and sisters begging her to save them when she was just as trapped and just as powerless as them—

“Now, now, don’t struggle,” Landry said, pushing his glasses up his snout as he leered ghoulishly down at her. “You’ll make yourself tough and stringy.” The lenses of his glasses caught the light and shined, turning into opaque disks for an instant; for that instant, all Lysithea could see was the beaked facemask every single one of the mages who had experimented on her had worn.

She kept struggling. The rope chafed against her wrists and ankles as an uncomfortable warmth prickled the fur on her belly.

Trying not to panic, she looked around to see if there was anything she could do. Ramshackle huts pieced together from scrap wood and cloth circled a clearing filled with several scorched patches of bare stone; atop each blackened splotch was a pile of wood and ash and another roasting spit. Two of the spits were occupied: one by Caspar, who was struggling and squirming even more than Lysithea as fire lapped at his belly, and one by Linhardt, who seemed oddly calm.

She panicked. There was nothing she could do.

“Let them go! Let us go! Take me instead!” Alois’ booming voice rang out. He, along with Catherine and Byleth, were sitting in a wooden cage, their arms tied behind their backs and their ankles bound together. Byleth’s Sword of the Creator lay on the floor just out of their reach. “I can feed you for a week!”

“I told you these mice weren’t trustworthy,” Catherine scolded him. “Though I suppose lecturing you now won’t do any good.”

“You knights are hardly worth being the main course,” Ansley told them, pausing to wipe drool from her chin. “But these young ones are soft and lacking in muscle tone! That means their flesh will be tender and rich, like fine beef!”

“I hope you choke on me!” Caspar fumed, wriggling furiously and staring daggers at his captors. “If you don’t want muscular meat, what the hell am I doing up here?”

“Oh, we’re not picky. A little gamy meat is alright from time to time,” Landry said. “Like venison.”

“Mice can have a little venison,” Ansley said, “as a treat.”

“Well, you’ll never get the tenderness you want out of Lysithea and me by roasting us,” said Linhardt. “What you need to do is cook us for a long time over a low heat until our meat just falls right off the bone.”

“Liiiin!” Caspar cried out to him.

“Linhardt, this is hardly appropriate!” Catherine admonished him. “Professor, don’t you have something to say?”

Byleth simply stared ahead silently, her steely gray-blue gaze piercing and haunting, as though she was focusing very intently on something. Even as a mouse, she had an unnerving look in her eyes—empty and yet full, silent and yet oddly accusing, strangely mesmerizing. She said nothing, just kept staring and blinking at random intervals.

“Or I suppose you could braise us. Sear us over the fire or perhaps sauté us, then leave us to stew in a covered pot for, oh… six to eight hours. But roast?” Linhardt said, arching his back as much as he could against the spit running across his spine to avoid the leaping flames growling restlessly beneath him.

“For the Goddess’ sake, stop telling them how to cook us, Linhardt!” Lysithea shouted at him. “I thought the worst you were was lazy, but you’re just completely incompetent!”

“And that reminds me, why are we still alive? It won’t improve the flavor of the meat for us to be burned alive. If anything, you’ll ruin it. Is living flesh that important? Is this a ritual or something?” Linhardt asked.

“We like it alive, though,” Landry said.

“And roasted,” Ansley said.

Lysithea despaired her lot in life. This was how she was going to die. She’d always known she was going to die, and she’d always known she was going to die young, but she’d never imagined she was going to die this young, and with so much left undone.

Thanks a lot, Linhardt.

“The fear makes it taste better,” Landry added, speaking with a professor’s air of authority.

“That,” Linhardt said, “goes against everything I’ve read about hunting.” As the flames underneath him started to climb higher, he started huffing and puffing and trying to blow the flames out.

“Well, maybe the books you read were wrong,” Landry said. He put his arm over Ansley’s shoulders. “Oh, these three will feed us for weeks, darling!”

Ansley scratched her chin. “Hmm. But I have another idea about the tough and stringy one, dear. What if we chop him up, marinate him, and make jerky? That will keep for months and months; we could keep ourselves fed well into old age.”

“Go ahead and try it,” Linhardt said. “I can personally vouch for his toughness; he’ll make excellent jerky.”

“Lin, you asshole!” Caspar cried out, renewing his struggles. “I thought we were friends!”

“And as you can see, I know a lot about food preparation,” Linhardt went on, “so perhaps I’d be of more use to you at your side than in your bellies. How about it, Ansley?”

“Well… I suppose we could cook one of the knights instead,” Ansley wheedled, glancing at the cage holding the others. “The loud one has just as much meat as these two boys combined, I’d say.”

“Me and my big mouth,” Alois groaned. “Byleth, if you survive here, tell your father I died as I lived—a damned fool.”

“Very well,” Landry said, walking over to Caspar and drawing a knife from his tattered overcoat. “You take the other boy, dear. Now, you—little boy, this will hurt a lot, but only for a moment,” he told Caspar as he held the knife to his throat. “Before I kill you, any requests for how you want us to marinate and cure you? I have a very spicy dry rub that’s simply delicious…”

“Byleth, come on! There has to be something we can do!” Catherine shouted out, scooting to the edge of the cage and ramming her shoulder against the bars. “Byleth! Don’t you give a damn about your students?! They’re going to die out there!”

Byleth simply stared intently at Caspar and Linhardt, blinking rapidly as though she’d gotten dust caught in her eyes.

“What about me?” Lysithea shouted out to Ansley and Landry. “I’m twice as smart as Linhardt! I can be twice as useful!”

“Ah, but I can tell your meat will be to die for,” Ansley said to her as she took a thimbleful of water and poured it over the fire underneath Linhardt. A plume of smoke blossomed in his face, making him cough and sputter. “You have the physique of someone who only eats sweets, and so your flesh will be extra fatty and tender!”

“I am not fat!” Lysithea protested. “I have a very fast metabolism! I just look dumpy right now because I’m a mouse!”

“Oh, my nose says otherwise, dear,” Ansley said, “and when it comes to these matters, my nose is never—”

A bloodcurdling scream and a ragged war cry split through the air in unison, ripping the rest of the words from Ansley’s mouth.

Landry cried out and reeled backward, his bloodstained knife flying through the air; Caspar ripped himself free of his restraints, rolled through the firepit, and pounced on him, flames licking at his fur. With a swipe of Caspar’s claws, Landry’s glasses went flying through the air and a sheet of blood poured down his forehead as he stumbled farther backward.

“Darling!” Ansley cried out, but as soon as Linhardt’s paws were free, a magic seal traced itself in the air and a blast of white light hit her square in the stomach and knocked her off her feet. She went flying backwards, rolling head over heels as she hit the floor, her dress spilling out around her.

As soon as Landry had fallen, Caspar rolled around on the floor in a panic, patting frantically on the smoldering patches of his fur. “Ow, ow, ow, fuck!” he cried out.

“Cas!” Linhardt rushed to his side. “I’ve got you,” he assured him, brushing the embers off his fur and channeling the warm light of a healing spell through his body.

“Goddess—fucking—ow, son of a motherfu—” Caspar spat, gritting his teeth as his burns healed. “Why do these fucking things hurt so much Goddess damn worse when they’re healing?”

“Hey!” Catherine shouted at him. “Language!”

Lysithea watched helplessly as Landry picked himself up off the floor and reached for his knife. Linhardt and Caspar both had their backs to him; neither of them saw him stand over them, a waterfall of blood staining his fur and the front of his shirt, and with Caspar cursing up a storm, none of them could hear his heavy, labored breathing as he inched closer with a crazed gleam in his beady eyes.

“Linhardt!” she shouted, cursing herself, cursing her helplessness, cursing the bound hands that couldn’t conjure a spell no matter how badly she wanted to.

“Linhardt! Behind you!” Alois shouted.

Linhardt whirled around and shot a burst of flames from his paw, striking Landry in the face purely by accident; Landry’s fur alighted, and with an unholy screech, his entire head bloomed into a roiling blossom of fire. The stench of roasting flesh and fur filled the air, and at first Lysithea thought it was his flesh and fur before noticing the searing, agonizing pain spreading through her own stomach.

She screamed.

As Landry teetered around the clearing, scrabbling at his fiery face, Linhardt broke away from Caspar and doused Lysithea’s firepit with a gust of wind. She coughed and gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, gritting her teeth, as a cloud of ash and cold embers stung her face.

Landry tripped and fell over Ansley, writhing on the floor; Ansley pulled herself up, took one look at him, and let out a scream as anguished as though she had been burned. “Darling!” she cried out. She ran into one of the huts. “I will fetch some water, darling!”

Lysithea fell ungracefully to the floor as Linhardt untied her, the impact causing the raw and burnt nerves on her stomach to scream bloody murder until he rolled her onto her back and laid healing hands on the wound. There was a blissful, numbing rush of warmth and the pain vanished; pristine skin and fur flowed across the angry black burn welts until none of them remained.

“That was brilliant, Linhardt!” Caspar said. “I knew we’d pull something off.” He kicked the writhing, smoldering body of Landry in the side. “By the way, Landry, your service stinks, and we’re gonna walk out without paying the bill!”

“Brilliant?” Lysithea hissed. “It was so brilliant that it wrapped right around to being stupid again! Linhardt, how could you have thought your dumb suggestions would lead to them freeing us?!”

“Well, considering they kept us alive in the first place,” Linhardt replied sheepishly as he went to the cage to free Byleth and the knights, “I knew we weren’t exactly dealing with intellectual titans.”

“Considering we got captured in the first place,” Catherine said, glaring at Alois, “what does that say about us?”

“I know, I know,” Alois said, raising his paws. “This was all my fault. We never should have listened to these mice.”

“And don’t think you’re off the hook, either, Byleth,” Catherine said, standing over her with her paws on her hips as soon as Linhardt had untied her. “I can’t believe Lady Rhea holds you in such high esteem! Your students were in mortal peril and all you did was stare! You didn’t do anything for them at all!”

Byleth looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “Did I?”

“Actually, it was because of Professor Byleth that I knew to egg them on,” Linhardt said.

“And it was because of her that I knew if I relaxed my wrists, I’d be able to slip my paws out of those ropes,” Caspar said.

“I already had a plan as soon as I woke up and saw that they were still alive,” Byleth said, rubbing her wrists once Linhardt had untied them. “I blinked it to them using a special code my father taught me.”

Alois let out a riotous, booming laugh. “Ha! That’s Jeralt for you! I never doubted you for a second, Professor!”

“That’s… insane,” Catherine gasped. Lysithea had to admit, she shared her sentiment.

“How could you gamble so much on such a risky plan?” Lysithea asked Byleth, shocked and appalled. “The odds of it working must have been astronomical! How did you know it would work? How could you possibly have had so much confidence in it?”

Byleth gave her a mysterious little smile. “Trial and error,” she said, the look on her face making it very clear that she knew full well how little that answer explained and reveled in that knowledge.

“Darling, I’m coming!” Ansley shouted out, bursting out from the hut she’d ran into with a thimbleful of water under one arm and a hatchet stained black with crusty old blood in her free paw.

Elated that she was free and finally able to do something, Lysithea flung out her arm, the power of the Crest of Gloucester throbbing in her veins, and conjured a wicked spear of black fire.

The lance of roiling miasma ripped through Ansley’s head and tore a hole through the hut. Blood spattered the hut’s wall around the hole the lance made; Ansley’s headless body slumped to its knees and fell to the stone floor, a fountain of blood spraying in the air from the ragged stump carved out between her shoulders. A bloody pool encircled it like a living shadow devouring the cannibal’s body for sustenance.

Lysithea let out a satisfied sigh as Linhardt clapped his paws over his snout and started to retch. It was good to not feel so helpless anymore.

“Good heavens, Lysithea!” Alois gasped. “You struck her down in cold blood!”

“She was going to eat us,” she retorted.

A mouse rushed into the clearing from between two of the huts. Like the cannibals, he too wore fine though tattered clothes. “Landry, Ansley! What’s going on? When’s lunch gonna be ready; the rest of us are—” His eyes widened as he caught sight of the bloody and burned remains of the would-be chefs.

He started to scream; Byleth’s blade telescoped and whipped through the air, its razor tip embedding itself between the mouse’s eyes and ripping itself free, silencing him as abruptly as his scream had begun.

“I think it’s time to leave,” Byleth said, snapping the blade back.

Filling the center of Abyss was a surprisingly magnificent arena—a raised stone platform surrounded by a sandy pit and tiered risers stretching up to the domed ceiling. Gladiators must have done battle here long ago, Hubert mused, long before Garreg Mach had been built. This place must have been well over a thousand years old, and judging from the worn and chipped stone and the conspicuous holes in the walls where precious metals and gems must have been, neither the years nor the thieves who lived down here had been kind to it.

This place was a trap. He could tell right away, judging from the fact that nobody had stopped them from entering.

And so, of course, he made Ferdinand go in front of him.

“If Tomas is down here, I’m gonna punch him in the face,” Hilda said as she and the others hung back in the corridor, watching Ferdinand’s back as he stepped into the sandpit lining the arena. “I feel so gross and sweaty, and it’s all his fault!”

“The sweating is good for your skin,” Petra assured her.

“If sweating is good for you, then why does it feel bad?” Hilda retorted.

After a few minutes (though it felt like an hour, and all the while Hubert was imagining all manner of terrible things striking Ferdinand down), Ferdinand waved the rest of them in.

The first thing of interest to catch Hubert’s eye was what the mice had told him about, which was the massive magic seal drawn in what looked like blood. It stretched to each side of the raised platform in the center of the arena.

“What kind of a spell is this for?” Dorothea asked. “I’ve never heard of a seal this big.”

Hubert scrutinized the writing that ran across every arc and line of the seal. It wasn’t a language he knew, of course. Something older than even the Agarthan tongue, something eldritch. Likely the language of the Immaculate One, the language of the so-called Goddess Sothis and her spawn. “Polymorphus muridae, I’d assume.” He gestured to the cauldron sitting all by its lonesome in the center of the stage. “This is the production floor for that poison. The late Vejovis would supply the herbal components for the potion, and Solon would trigger the seal and imbue the potion with the spell.”

“Does it really take a circle this big?” Hilda asked, nudging the perimeter with her toe.

“Polymorphic spells are notoriously weak, rendering them rather impractical,” Hubert explained. “A circle of this size, drawn in powerful blood, could probably transform two people at most. But bind it to a potent, heavily-concentrated concoction of exceptionally rare herbs, and you end up with a poison that can turn a man into a mouse with but four drops.”

Petra looked down at the seal. “What if we were destroying part of the circle? Would these Agarthans no longer be able to make the poison?”

“Until they redrew the circle, yes,” Hubert said.

“If we tip over that cauldron, it will spill onto the floor and wash away the blood,” Dedue suggested.

“And we know from what Vejovis told us,” Ferdinand said, “that those herbal ingredients are hard to come by. With him indisposed, the Agarthans no longer have a supply chain for the poison!”

“By all means, then,” Hubert said, beckoning him on, “tip over the cauldron.”

“With pleasure!” Ferdinand rushed past him, then came to a dead stop with one foot planted squarely inside the circle. “Wait. Hubert, there is no chance the seal could accidentally trigger once I am inside, is there?” he asked, his face paling.

“Earlier this morning, you were all but begging me to let you turn yourself into a mouse.”

“Yes, but that was different.”

“No,” Hubert said, “there is no chance the seal could accidentally trigger. But it could intentionally trigger.”

That, evidently, was no great comfort, since Ferdinand didn’t look any less uneasy. Hubert had to admit that a part of him was looking forward to the prospect of the seal triggering, accidentally or intentionally, even though the latter of those two options would obviously present a problem for everybody, not simply the pompous son of the Prime Minister.

“Then there we go,” Ferdinand said, stepping gingerly into the circle. “So far, so good…”

Hubert felt a rush of air behind him and saw his shadow throw itself across the arena, lit by a brilliant pillar of violet-white light behind him. Dorothea and Petra shouted out in surprise. Fire wreathed his hands, but before he could whirl around to incinerate the intruder, the end of a sorcerer’s staff drove itself into the small of his back and knocked him to the floor.

He rolled onto his back and found himself staring up into Solon’s black eyes. The Agarthan sorcerer licked his wormy, corpse-blue lips. “Why not join your friend,” he hissed, “Hubert von Vestra?” His staff crackled with dark magic as he lifted it and prepared to bring it down on one of the seal’s ley-lines.

Hubert flung out his hand, but no miasma or fire flowed forth, not even a spark.

But just before the end of the staff cracked against the floor, a dainty, well-manicured hand fell on Solon’s shoulder and wrenched him backward.

“Hey, Tomas!” Hilda snarled, decking him across the face with a shockingly mighty blow. Solon dropped to the floor as unceremoniously as a sack of flour and just as lacking in consciousness, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head. “That’s for making me work!”

Chapter Text

Hubert wasn’t so pedestrian in his thoughts that he would correlate one’s morality to their physical appearance (after all, here he was with yellow eyes and no eyebrows to speak of), but there was something uniquely satisfying, almost vindicating, about how utterly hideous Solon was.

The man who had spent the past eight years in the humble guise of Tomas, the nicest and least-suspicious monk in Garreg Mach, had the same pale, corpse-blue skin as any other one of those underground-dwelling fiends, and like many of his learned brethren, his face was marked with arcane sigils of a kind never seen in all of Fódlan—harsh, thick, angular lines and blocks, all sharp angles. A few wisps of fragile white hair clung to the back of his head, forming a ragged fringe running from the back of one ear to the other and barely managing to creep up his cranium, like the brittle and decaying strands that sometimes clung to the skulls of corpses long after the rest of their flesh had decayed. Bulging veins, fat and thick, looking for all the world like earthworms that had burrowed under his skin, ran up his forehead (which as his henchmen had said, was more like a six- or seven-head). One of his eyes was jaundiced, tinged with yellow; the other was jet-black with only a gleaming white hoop of an iris darting around the inky abyss to show the movements of his eye.

The pale skin was from living underground; everything else was from several lifetimes of immersion in the study and practice of dark magic. Hubert knew that if he himself could live for centuries, he wouldn’t look much better by the end.

Hubert and the others (Hilda had taken to calling him, her, and Dedue ‘the retainer squad,’ which he supposed was vindication of his theory that Hilda was Claude’s vassal, or at least a close equivalent) had dragged the unconscious Solon to his laboratory under the arena and tied him to a chair; when the fiend came to, he was trapped and helpless in his own inner sanctum, surrounded by the enemy.

A harsh white light, almost as bright and blinding as the sun, shone from a glass orb fixed in the ceiling; strange black and red ropes made of some odd smooth material snaked out from it and clung to the wall, running to a contraption in the corner of the cluttered room that let out a low, constant growl like a purring beast. Nestled in another corner was a strange picture frame filled with charts and graphs; the picture glowed with its own light, as though there were a lantern behind it, and the charts were drawing themselves as though by magic.

Agarthan technology. Hubert couldn’t confess to understand it, but he knew better than to let it unnerve him.

“Hello, Solon,” he said. He had hoped this particular fiend would have still been on Edelgard’s side—but events had shown otherwise. He was just as much a traitor to Edelgard as his apothecary counterpart.

“You are going to tell us what vile mechanisms fill this den of perversion,” Ferdinand immediately butted in, raising an arcane metal cylinder resembling some sort of wand. It produced a strange buzzing sound and a cobalt blue light, hard and gemlike, flared to life at its tip. “For starters—what in the Goddess’ name is this?”

“Screwdriver,” Solon said.

Ferdinand looked at it, befuddled.

“I took it from an incorrigible meddler who fancied himself a physician.”

“Look, Ferdie’s never seen a tool in his life,” Dorothea said, “except when he looks in a mirror, but I’m sure even he knows that doctors don’t use screwdrivers. And that is not a screwdriver.”

“Excuse me!”

“In case you’ve lost all sense of self-preservation,” Hubert cautioned the two of them, “don’t let the business end of any of this creature’s tools touch your bare skin. Or your clothed skin, for that matter. In fact, try not to touch anything.”

In direct and immediate defiance of his ‘no-touching’ order, Petra prodded at a small carcass resting on another workbench. “Why are you having a dead rat here?”

“I had to pour some old wine into a new wineskin earlier this morning,” Solon said. “I still need to dissect it to determine why that one gave out so much more quickly than the others.”

“I have no time for riddles and cryptic statements, Solon,” Hubert said. “You are going to tell us what is going on here.”

“Oh, I’m sure you know what has happened to Lady Edelgard von Hresvelg, Hubert. I hear she makes for quite a fetching mouse.”

“Yes, I do. Where is she?”

“And the other lords,” Dedue added. “Prince Dimitri and Claude. You will tell us where they are.”

Solon looked up at him. All the way up at him. He laughed. “Do you think I know the whereabouts of every little rodent scurrying around in this abyss?”

“I’m sure you know more than us,” Dorothea said, crossing her arms.

“Listen to me, Solon.” Hubert rested his hands over Solon’s bound wrists and leaned in until their noses nearly touched. “One way or another, we will find Lady Edelgard.”

“And—” Hilda interjected.

“And the others as well, time permitting. You can either assist us or die here in utter agony. I will do things to you so horrible and painful, so degrading, so humiliating, that you will have preferred that I drag you in front of Archbishop Rhea.”

Solon merely grinned, daring Hubert to make good on his promise.

“Whatever happens, know this—your plot to eliminate Lady Edelgard and appoint a new heir to the Adrestian throne dies today. At least you may save one life—your own.” Of course, though, Hubert had no intent to let him keep his miserable life after what he had done.

“A new heir? Why would we want to go through all the trouble of having the Emperor choose a new heir?” Solon asked, wrinkling his brow. “This entire operation has nothing to do with eliminating Edelgard. Only with… changing her mind.”

Petra gasped. “You are going to be taking someone else’s brain and putting it in Edelgard’s head?”

“No, no, Petra,” Ferdinand said. “It is not literal, but rather another Fódlanish turn of phrase: an idiom. You see, to change one’s mind means to convince them of the error of their ways—”

Solon chuckled. “No, the beast from Brigid has the right idea.”

“I see,” Hubert growled. As Solon had said, old wine in new wineskins. “Lady Edelgard’s body is an achievement you can’t so easily recreate, but you’ve grown tired of her rebellious mind. You can’t replace her the way you replaced Tomas, but…”

“Ingenious, isn’t it?” Solon said. “With our technology and sorcery, we have created a mind capable of moving from body to body like a parasite feeding off its host. Edelgard’s perfect body offers it a lifetime of nourishment and an incomparable pedigree.”

Hilda scoffed. “‘Perfect body?’ Sure, she’s cute, but she’s flat as a—”

“Hold your ignorant tongue, Goneril. Lady Edelgard is of incomparable beauty,” Hubert interrupted. “And besides, that is not what he means by ‘perfect.’” He seethed, reflecting on what these monsters had considered ‘perfect’ and what they had done to Edelgard’s body to make it fit their definition of the word.

“And besides, she’s… a mouse right now?” she continued, giving him a sidelong dirty look. “You can’t put a mouse on the Adrestian throne! It’d be too small… and no one’s gonna want to be ruled by a mouse!”

“A trivial matter,” Solon scoffed. “Actually, it works in our favor. Our little mental parasite can only manage to take the bodies of small creatures… mice, rats, voles, squirrels, the like. When it takes Edelgard’s body, though…”

“You’ll be able to make her human again,” Dorothea finished. She let out a horrified gasp. “No, not her—it… in her body!”

“And the bloodline most beloved of Seiros will become the instrument of the beast’s destruction! Through this,” Solon concluded, “the world is saved!”

“‘Saved?’ From what, you stark raving lunatic?” Ferdinand interjected.

“From this world’s masters,” Solon said, seething. “This world is ours. It was ours. But the Fell Star and its children took it from us—and we will take it back from those beasts and burn this pathetic, stagnant rat’s-nest you call ‘civilization’ to the ground!”

“But,” Hubert reminded him, “you need the antidote, and that is where your plan falls apart. Because your cohort Vejovis was unable to procure the proper supplies.”

“It’s true he couldn’t procure the proper supplies,” Solon said, “but we, unlike you, are not without options.”

Of course, Hubert thought. If they only needed to transform one or two people, then a single polymorphic seal like the one traced around the arena would suffice. All the Agarthans who’d been turned into mice would just have to wait their turn… or languish down here forever. It seemed quite an effective means to carry out a coup, if that was one’s aim.

Dedue stepped forward. “Tomas. Solon. Whatever your name is. I already tire of hearing you speak. But thank you for explaining your plan to us. Now we may put a stop to it.”

Solon laughed. “Oh, please, Duscur ape! Do you honestly think I would explain to you my plan if there was any chance that you and your friends could stop it? I’ve already done it.”

Hubert’s reaction was visceral and explosive; he felt his fingernails stab crescents into his palms as she sought to quell the bile boiling in his heart. “You lie,” he snarled. “You Agarthan snakes are masters of deceit. Everything you’ve let slip from that forked tongue of your could just as easily have been as fantastical as a children’s fable.”

Ferdinand nodded in agreement. “Hubert is correct. You and your ilk hardly have a penchant for telling the truth, Tomas.”

“Yes, yes, that is a good point you two noble whelps raise.” Solon smiled. “But when, or rather, if, you retrieve your precious Lady Edelgard, how will you know?”

Hubert bit back a stream of curses. “I have served as her vassal since I was eight years old. No one knows her as I do.”

“For a gibbering ape, your confidence is almost admirable,” Solon said, chuckling.

“My confidence in Lady Edelgard is unshakable. Mark my words, Solon, with or without her, your reckoning begins today. Lady Edelgard has never forgiven you for what you did in Enbarr, in Duscur, and whatever happens to her, I will see to it that she delivers her judgment.”

“Oh, you do not forgive us? Do you think we will forgive you for this, Hubert? Even if you find your precious Lady Edelgard down here, her dreams die today.”

“I am sure there are agents on the other side of your little schism who still support Lady Edelgard—”

“There is no schism. Vejovis and Kronya made that story up to give you hope.” Solon laughed. “And I see it now fading from your eyes…”

“No,” Hubert said, though shaken by the thought that he’d been so easily misled. “It is a relief to know that Lady Edelgard and I will no longer have to simper and beg at your feet—that we can now kill you all on sight.”

“Oh, bold, bold words, Hubert,” Solon sneered. “Then kill me now.” He waited, expectantly. Hubert stayed his hand; he couldn’t kill this man until he’d extracted the information he needed from him.

“Tell me where Edelgard is.”

“No.”

“Petra, you carry a hunting knife, correct?”

Petra nodded.

“I need to borrow it.”

Solon kept looking up at him from the chair he was tied to. Half defiant, half… amused? A wry smile tugged against one wormy corner of his mouth. Hubert would wipe that smile off his face.

Petra handed him the knife. He took the end of one of Solon’s fingers—the index finger—tugged on it, lifted it up, placed the knife blade side up right under the first knuckle, and tugged the finger downward, exerting a gentle downward pressure on the handle of the knife as well. “Tell me where she is.”

Solon chuckled.

Dedue stepped forward. “Hubert,” he said, “this will not help.”

“Leave,” Hubert told him. He turned to the others. “All of you, leave.”

Ferdinand crossed his arms. “Hubert, the last time we left you alone with one of these fiends, you reduced him to a charcoal smear.”

“Yes, that’s why I had you leave, dolt. You were watching me from the top of the staircase back there, I suppose?”

“I had Caspar and Linhardt keep an eye on you. At that point, we had to know if you were… plotting with him. The point I am making,” Ferdinand said, “is that you are quite obviously going to kill this ‘Solon’ if we leave you two alone. I propose we bring him to the Archbishop and have the Knights of Seiros deal with him. They are the proper authorities. They can question him more effectively than you can.”

Hubert pressed down on the handle of the knife.

Solon let out a scream as the blade of the knife ripped through skin, muscle, tendon alike, parting the gap between two fingerbones. His bloodied index finger fell to the floor, leaving an oozing stump attached to his hand.

“Oh my Goddess!” Hilda squeaked, clapping both hands over her mouth. “Hubert, that’s disgusting!”

“You may leave if you see fit,” Hubert told her. He wiped the blood off the knife on his cloak and waited for the screaming to end.

“Is this your oh-so-vaunted torture?” Solon wheezed, cackling breathily. “Your precious Edelgard endured worse when she was eleven years old. I know. I was there.”

Hubert shook his head and moved onto the next finger. “Where is Edelgard, Solon?”

“Taking one finger did not make him talk,” Dedue observed, clearly disgusted. “Taking another will not make a difference.”

“I didn’t take you for an expert on torture,” Hubert told him.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Hilda said, throwing up her hands and heading for the door. “I’m out.” She grabbed the knob and tried to turn it. It didn’t. “What the—Which of you idiots locked the door on the way in?”

“I would be that idiot,” Solon said, leering at her. “There is a mechanism within the doorknob that instantly locks it should my pulse rise too quickly.” He switched his voice to Tomas’. “Oh, but dear, perhaps if you bring me some chamomile tea, you could calm me down and get that door open. I believe I have a kettle on one of my workbenches.”

“Do not worry, Hilda,” Hubert said, pressing Solon’s middle finger against the blade of Petra’s knife. When he passed out from the pain, his pulse would slow dramatically and the door would open. “I will see to it he opens the door for you.”

Instead, Solon smiled. “You do not understand. You still do not understand.”

“I won’t stop with one finger. I will take the rest of your fingers, all of them, and then your toes, all of them, and then lop off your hands at the wrists, then your feet at the ankles, then your legs at the knees and your arms at the elbows. Then I will cut out your tongue, slice off your nose, pluck out your eyes, scalp you, and castrate you. Your ears… I will leave your ears,” Hubert hissed, “so that you may hear your own moans of agony and the wailing cries of ‘My goddess, what in Sothis’ name is that thing?’ from every mother who passes you by with child in tow as you lie on the streets of Enbarr like so much horses’ excrement. You are at my mercy, and I assure you, I have precious little to spare for the likes of you. Tell me. Where is Edelgard?”

“For the love of the Goddess, Hubert!” Ferdinand cried out, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder. “How is this helping?”

“You have no right to lambast me for my methods!” Hubert snapped at him, shoving him aside. “You do not even care about Lady Edelgard’s fate at all, do you? Day in, day out, all I have heard from you is, ‘I do hope poor Bernadetta is safe and well!’”

Ferdinand drew back, a wounded look on his face. “Hubert, I have always held Lady Edelgard in the highest esteem. If I worry about Bernadetta, it is because I trust Lady Edelgard to take care of herself! But Bernadetta is so fragile, so weak, so fearful…”

“Oh, don’t mind Hubert’s little temper tantrum,” Solon said to Ferdinand, unfazed. “Don’t be too harsh on him; he is only reliving the worst day of his life. Were you this angry and unbridled, Hubert, the day Edelgard was taken?” He looked to the others. “He was ten years old when the nobles revolted against the Emperor and Edelgard was delivered into our hands, you see. He ran away from his father’s estate to find her; it took three days for his father’s soldiers to catch up with him and subdue him.”

Dorothea let out a disgustingly pitying gasp.

“It’s no wonder you’re acting out,” Solon said to Hubert. “Trauma has a way of arresting you primitive apes’ emotional maturity, after all. Deep down, beneath all the sinister affectation, you are still nothing more than a helpless child.”

Hubert could tell his rhetoric had had no effect on Solon. “To the pain it is, then,” he said, and he took the next finger.

Solon’s subsequent howl of anguish became a manic laugh. “Computer, unseal terrarium number six!” he howled.

There was a sound like rushing wind from the depths of the cluttered laboratory and a buzzing in the air; Hubert felt something skitter across the side of his neck.

A swarm of insects—dozens of them, perhaps hundreds—filled the air in the room’s close quarters, iridescent and gleaming in the light, their abdomens fat and swollen with poison.

Hubert slapped the side of his neck and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch and a wet splatter against his skin; he pulled his hand away and found it stained black with ichor. “Solon, you snake!”

Solon simply smiled. The insects seemed to completely avoid him while shouts and cries erupted from the others. A bolt of lightning from Dorothea sailed through the air, vaporizing a chunk of the black cloud and leaving a scorch on the ceiling, but it was like trying to catch smoke in a fishing net—

“Oh, would that I were a snake,” he purred, grinning, “so I could swallow you whole, you little rat, tail and all!”

Hubert prepared a miasma spell, violet bolts of lightning leaping from finger to finger as a black mist rose from his palm. As much as he wanted to use it to hollow out Solon’s insides right now, he had to wait until after this horrendous swarm had been dealt with.

A black cloud burst against the ceiling, scattering harmlessly against the stone as the light flickered and the machinery cluttering the laboratory coughed; the cloud of bugs broke apart, a few scorch marks on the ceiling marking tiny graves for those that had been incinerated. Hubert hit the floor hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

Gurgling helplessly, Ferdinand rolled off of his back and gripped his shoulder desperately, frothy white foam dribbling down his chin as his body reshaped itself from the inside out. Hubert kicked him away. If the pompous oaf was going to turn into a mouse here, then at least he ought to have the decency to do so away from him!

As soon as Hubert hauled himself back on his feet, though, his legs gave out, crumpling underneath him like empty sacks. A flower of pain blossomed in every joint down to the knuckles, blooming in a row down his spine, and as his bones melted within his flesh and a bristling wave of pins and needles marched up his skin, he could do nothing but look up at Solon, who was no longer sitting helplessly on a chair but lounging haughtily on a towering throne.

His vision clouded; a gray mist crept in from the sides; the pain reached a howling crescendo, burning like lit matches beneath his skin. Solon leered down at him, looming larger and larger with each passing second. He struggled to pull himself forward, struggled to clear his mind long enough to cast one more spell. Every inch felt longer than the last; with every passing second, his uniform hung looser and looser on his dwindling frame as though he were a child playing dress-up with his father’s clothes.

He felt Solon’s boot press against his forehead, the pale giant cackling with sadistic delight. With the last of his strength, he plucked a fallen insect off the ground—it skittered and squirmed in his hand, but the thing’s wings had been burned away—crawled closer, yanked on the hem of Solon’s robes, and drove the insect’s sharp, needle-like proboscis into the first patch of bare skin he could see, squeezing out whatever poison was left in its chitinous belly.

Solon’s confident sneer melted away like a snowball on a hot summer’s day, abject fear widening his eyes.

“No matter what,” Hubert choked out, hissing through aching teeth, “Lady Edelgard shall have her revenge!”

As he blacked out, his last thought was that in spite of the pain he still considered it an honor, in a perverse way, to meet the same fate as her highness. At least this way, when the two of them met again, he would not tower over her.

The road to Mousebrook was long, but with three wagons holding three mice apiece (and Matthias), it was hardly arduous—save for the musky stench of the rats which pulled them, which Edelgard was certain she would never become accustomed to. It was an odor that slipped past all of her rational mind’s defenses, not only due to her longstanding phobia but simply due to the nature of being a mouse. And when combined with the stench of sewage, it formed an altogether revolting blend.

Edelgard sat in the wagon with a part of her cloak pressed to her nose to block out the stench. It may have been filthy and bloodstained, and by heaven did those bloodstains reek, and it may have picked up some scent from her fur, but beneath all that she could still smell traces of humanity. Her humanity. It wasn’t a smell she could quite put into words, but she could tell from its odd familiarity that it was the scent of her own human body that clung to her clothes—the soap she washed her skin with, the lavender and rosemary oils she used in her hair, her sweat after a long day of training—and that melange somehow kept her at ease.

She cast an idle glance at Bernadetta, who shared this particular wagon with her, Matthias, and Claude (as it turned out, he had a bit of a knack for managing the rats’ reins and was intent on asking Matthias all manner of questions). Did that black cloak she had ripped from her own uniform carry her scent as well?

Edelgard wondered why she was asking that question at all. What did it matter what Bernadetta smelled like?

“So, this weapon,” Claude asked Matthias from his seat at the front of the wagon, “can you describe it to me?”

“Uh… w-weapon? Y-yeah, it was, um… spiky,” Matthias said, staring firmly off the side of the wagon. He didn’t seem very sure of his answer. “Spiky, and, um, sort of a… sword.”

“Sort of a sword.”

“Yeah, but also no. It had a hilt. And a blade. But that’s kinda where the similarities, uh, end.”

Something was odd about Matthias’ answers. He was never this laconic. Evasive, yes, whenever he was talking about something he found embarrassing, but never so taciturn unless his brother was intimidating him.

“If you had a powerful weapon,” Edelgard asked, “why wasn’t it given to me? I thought I was your prophesied savior.”

“Well, see, here’s the thing,” Matthias said.

A pregnant pause filled the air. “Yes?” Claude asked, expecting him to keep going.

“It kind of, uh, kills you if you wield it.” Matthias stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry. “Yup. Stone dead. Just like that. Alive one moment, skeleton the next. Just, poof, there goes all your skin and fur and all the juicy bits inside. So I didn’t want to, um, accidentally… you know. Kill you.”

“It kills you if you wield it,” Claude repeated. “So what’s the big deal if it goes missing? Let ‘em kill themselves trying to use it. We won’t even have to fight them then! Sounds like my kind of battle, really.”

“Ever the coward,” Edelgard shot at him. “I think Matthias’ concern is that somebody worthy among them will find it. Doesn’t what he’s describing sound like a Hero’s Relic?”

“Huh. It kinda does. Mattie, what’s this sort-of-sword made of?”

“Uh… dunno?”

“Does it have any sort of… ornaments?”

Matthias thought for a moment. “Uh… hmm… Y’know, I haven’t looked at the sword in a long time, so…”

“So it could’ve been stolen a really long time ago?”

“No, no, I-I mean, I kept it wrapped up in a sheet, and the sheet was what vanished. I think it had a, uh… um… an orb?” He looked at Edelgard expectantly. “Yeah. There was an orb on it.”

“What color?”

“Dunno.”

“Right. Colorblind.” Claude sighed. “Did you ever get the sense that it was… alive?”

“What, like did it talk to me? Nah. Not really sure what a sword would have to say, anyway. I mean, this sword that belonged to the great Saint Martin the Warrior showed me a vision once while I was polishing it, but that’s not really the same thing…”

“Did it ever seem to move or pulsate?”

“Pulsate? Oh, yeah, it pulsates like there’s no tomorrow.” Matthias shrugged. “Always just constantly with the pulsating. Day in, day out, it pulsates. I’ve never seen something pulsate so much.”

“Uh-huh.” Claude looked to Edelgard suspiciously. “If these guys do have a Hero’s Relic, this could get… bad. But who’d go through the trouble of making a mouse-sized Relic?”

“We can ask them once we defeat them,” Edelgard said. “Even if they do have one, they only have one.”

As the caravan continued its leisurely journey, Edelgard looked to Bernadetta. She cowered in the corner, curled up and wrapped in her cloak, cowed by Claude’s presence. For an introvert like her, someone as outgoing as him was probably pure poison. And after her experience with Yuri, there was no doubt that Bernadetta could very keenly notice the way his smile never reached his eyes.

Edelgard inched closer to her and silently offered a shoulder to her. She couldn’t be much more overt than that, lest she give Claude something to needle her about in the frustrating way he needled people; she worried, though, that subtler displays of affection might be lost in the noise of Bernadetta’s overwhelming anxiety.

Affection. She couldn’t deny that she felt affection toward Bernadetta. For too long down here, Bernadetta had been all she’d had, and so Edelgard felt she owed her that, at least. But it went beyond a mere transactional relationship now. She was actually enjoying being with her.

“So, who’s your friend, Princess?” Claude asked, giving Bernadetta a false grin.

“This is Bernadetta,” Edelgard said, since Bernadetta was obviously not going to respond. “She’s one of my classmates.”

“Huh… Oh, yeah! I’ve seen you shooting off arrows in the training hall!”

Bernadetta curled up tighter, as though horribly embarrassed to have been seen exercising.

“I had no idea you were in the Black Eagles.” Claude stroked his whiskers. “In fact, I wasn’t sure you were a student at all. I never see you at seminars or in the dining hall or…”

Bernadetta shook her head.

“She’s a bit of a recluse,” Edelgard offered. “She makes it a point to avoid people.”

“What a partner to have down here, huh?” Claude chuckled. “We’ve got a recluse of our own in the Golden Deer, too.” He pointed to Dimitri’s wagon, which carried the prince, Annette, and a blue-haired mouse whom Edelgard had never seen before, either as a mouse or as a human. She sat up front and drove the wagon, whispering occasionally to the rat pulling it along. “Her name’s Marianne. Avoids people. Keeps mumbling about a cursed bloodline. Occasionally mistaken for a ghost. Talks to animals.”

Edelgard thought about Crests. In a way, all descendants of the Ten Elites were of cursed bloodlines—cursed by these so-called ‘blessings’ from the Goddess.

Claude leaned over. “Hey, Dimitri! Does your house have a recluse, too?” he called out to Dimitri’s wagon. “Like, someone who never talks and avoids people?”

Dimitri ignored him. Annette called back, “Uh… no, but we have a Felix!”

“Huh. Marianne, Bernadetta, and Felix. The loners of Garreg Mach. We should set something up between the three of them, get ‘em in a room together, see what happens.”

Bernadetta paled, her eyes bulging, and vigorously shook her head. Edelgard wondered if she’d run into Felix before. She herself had passed by him a handful of times. He was… intense, to say the least. Exactly the kind of person a paranoid wallflower with a raging persecution complex would be terrified around. Then again, if Bernadetta could warm up to her, anything was possible.

“Well, your recluse seems to have warmed up to you, at least,” Claude said with a sly, far-from-innocuous wink.

“Of course. I can’t have my classmates afraid of me,” Edelgard said. “Just as long as yours and Dimitri’s are.”

He laughed off her remark. “I’m learning so much about you down here, Princess. To think the whole ice queen thing was just an act! So you’re sweet as royal icing to all your classmates behind closed doors?”

“Don’t get the wrong idea.”

“You’re making it sound like I should talk to Teach about transferring into the Black Eagles. What about you, Dimitri? Wanna transfer into Edelgard’s class?”

Edelgard wondered why Claude kept singling out Dimitri. She supposed the prince was so polite and stiff that he simply made himself the easiest target for Claude’s ribbing, despite the tales of his fearsome strength.

The three wagons reached the edge of town, where the stench of sewage was omnipresent. Edelgard supposed this was what passed for riverfront property in Abyss. Claude tugged on the reins of her rat and pulled the wagon to a halt; the other drivers did the same.

Dimitri picked up his spear from the back and leaped down to the floor. “This is it.”

“With any luck, all we’ll find here are corpses,” Annette said, joining him and helping Marianne down.

Claude collected his bow and joined them; Edelgard, Bernadetta, and Matthias followed him out. “Speak for yourself. I’m hoping we run into a few slitherers to capture and question. Just as long as the Plague Rat isn’t slumming it up here today.”

At the sound of that name, Dimitri scratched worryingly at his makeshift eyepatch. “I hope he is here; we can finish him off. That vermin needs to pay for what he’s done.”

“Your, uh, optimism concerns me, Didi,” Hapi told him. “Ya that eager to lose the other eye?”

Edelgard looked across the gate and into the little town of Mousebrook. It was surreal to see such familiar buildings writ in miniature across the stone floor, stretching from the rushing canal all the way to the far wall. There was enough space for several dozen, perhaps a hundred or more mice to live with all the comforts of human civilization. A clock tower, its massive hands still ticking, rose from town square. Edelgard felt more relieved than she could have imagined to see the hands inching away from noon; she’d been down here for so long with only her own body’s rhythms to judge the passage of time that to have some concrete measure of it felt like drinking hot tea at the end of a cold day.

“Civilization,” she breathed as she, Claude, and Dimitri led the others through the gates and Constance dragged her drowsy, half-asleep pet bat out of her wagon. Civilization it was, albeit a dead one—it wasn’t long until the first of many ripped-apart bodies came into view. She had to remind herself that the mice here had eaten each other. Was the carnage all from that? How much of it had been that, and how much had been the Plague Rat’s doing?

More impressed than her by the sights of civilization was Matthias. He wandered through the town of Mousebrook as giddy as a child in a sweet-shop, rushing ahead of all the others to gawp at the delights it had to offer.

“Oh, goodness! So this is a town, huh?” he squealed, unable to contain his excitement. “You know, the last time I was here, I barely remember any of it, I was so terrified! All these buildings! These tiny buildings! I mean, normal-sized for us but not compared to all those big human huts we saw in Chrysalis Row and Burrow Street! Windows made of glass! Roofs! Shingles!” He did an ecstatic pirouette, whirling around to take in the town from every angle. “This is amazing! It’s so much more amazing than I expected!”

“We aren’t here for sightseeing,” Edelgard reminded him, hoping to sober him up (since all of the corpses lying everywhere didn’t seem to do anything to his spirits). “We’re here for information-gathering first and foremost, and fighting if need be. Stay close to us.”

Matthias stopped twirling. “R-Right. But sightseeing is sort of information-gathering, isn’t it?”

“He’s got a point,” Annette said.

“All the same,” Edelgard said, “try to keep a lid on your enthusiasm, Matthias.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Matthias saluted. “What’s that big one over there with the round thing, though?” he asked, pointing to the clock tower.

“That’s a clock tower,” Dimitri told him.

“What’s a clock tower?”

“It’s a tower with a giant clock in it.”

“Ah, I see. What’s a clock?”

While Matthias kept asking questions, the party passed by another throng of gore-spattered rodents. A disemboweled mouse wasn’t the most unnerving thing in the world—in fact, in a monastery with so many cats, it was a common enough sight—but the fact that these were about the equivalent size as a human corpse and were wearing clothes made it particularly morbid.

“Should we, uh… do something about all these dead bodies?” Annette asked.

“Yeah, let’s clean this place up!” Balthus chimed in. “Matthias, your camp could live here!”

“We could, but… Abyss is a dangerous place. The whole monastery, really. Too many cats, too many humans. We need somewhere outside to live.” Matthias clapped his paws, his eyes brightening. “Still, I guess this could be a good stopgap, this and Mousehaven! Once we take those towns back, it’ll be a lot easier to relocate! You’re the best, Balthus; I’m so glad we’re friends now!”

“Let’s focus on rooting out whatever vermin remain here first before we start making those kinds of plans,” Dimitri said.

“Aw, let the little guy dream,” Balthus said to him. “Won’t hurt.”

“Even if we don’t find any slitherers hanging around, surely they’ve got a base of operations they’ve left behind in this city,” Claude said. “Who knows what we can find there?”

“So, we’ve got to check inside all these buildings?” Matthias said, his ears and whiskers perking up. His tail twitched eagerly under his robes and before a single word could be gotten in edgewise by anyone else, he headed for the largest building lining the street—which happened to be, next to the clock tower, the tallest building in town—and vanished into the front door.

“Wait, don’t—” Edelgard called out after him. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen before; he and Caspar would get along famously.

“Oh, look how eager he is!” Constance chirped. “He’s so sweet, I could just eat him up! Pardon the expression.”

“If anyone tries to kill you in there, scream and we’ll come get you!” Hapi called out.

“I’m goin’ after him!” Balthus said, and before anyone could stop him (as though anybody could break that behemoth’s stride), he rushed in after Matthias.

The rest of the party approached with much more caution. Claude read the faded lettering on the sign that hung over the front door. “‘Donner Family Inn,’” he puzzled out. “‘Nothing Is Sweeter Than Our Guests—We Mean It.’ Aww, that’d be adorable if everyone here wasn’t a cannibal.”

“Oh, how joyous! An inn!” Constance cried out. “At last, a place where we can rest and relax!”

“We aren’t here to rest and relax,” Dimitri said to her. “We’re here to—”

“Well, when we’re done information-gathering, we can rest and relax,” Claude said. “We’ll need some place to spend the night. If we’re going to launch an attack on those who slither in the dark, it wouldn’t do us much good to do it sleep-deprived… or hungry.”

“What kind of food, exactly, are you expecting to find in a town where every single inhabitant was a consummate cannibal?” Edelgard pointed out.

“They can’t have just eaten people. If they’d only eaten people, they’d have run out of people,” Hapi said.

“Where do you think they got their food?” Annette asked. “Was there some sort of daily lottery to decide which of their neighbors they’d eat?”

“That’s horrible,” Bernadetta moaned, anxiously kneading her paws. “If I lived here, I’d never leave my house! I mean, I already never leave my room, but at least here I’d have a good excuse…”

“Judging from the size of this inn, I’d say this place was a tourist trap,” Claude said. “Literally. Make the town look nice, turn it into a little oasis, invite people to stay at the inn… probably drug your guests and drag them into some dungeon in the basement to hold them until you’re ready to eat them…”

Annette blanched as Claude spun his theories, the skin under her fur paling. Even Edelgard felt a little queasy.

Balthus burst out of the front door of the inn, Matthias trailing behind him with a lit match in one paw. “Guys! Guys! You won’t believe what we found!” he gasped, panting for breath.

“What?” Dimitri gasped. “Is it them? Is this their base?”

“Better than any of that crap.” Balthus shook his head, grinning. “This place has got baths!”

“Never known that to excite you, B,” said Hapi, a wry half-smile brightening her normally dull face.

“Yeah, well, it’s not often we swim through sewage,” he retorted.

Constance sniffed the air and cringed. “Yes, with the exception of myself, Her Highness Princess Edelgard, and little Bernadetta here, you are all sorely in need of baths. I am amazed I put up with your unholy stenches for so long without a word of complaint. You all owe me a debt of gratitude.”

“Wait, I didn’t swim through sewage,” Matthias said.

“You do, however, have the stench of abject poverty about you.” Constance let out a haughty laugh. “But never fear! The baths I shall draw shall make you all the most fragrant mice in all Fódlan!”

“You’re gonna draw baths for all of us?” Hapi said, a rare happy grin crossing her face. “Sounds like a lot of work, Coco. You know… servant’s work.”

“Ah. Well,” Constance replied, flustered, “I—I did not mean I would personally draw your baths for you, merely that you would draw your own baths, and I would cast a spell on the water to make it as aromatic as the finest perfume…”

“If there’s nothing here, let’s move on,” Dimitri said, tapping one foot anxiously on the ground.

“Yes, we cannot forget our mission here,” Edelgard said.

“You know, you two are so alike,” Claude said. “Have you ever thought you might’ve been siblings separated at birth?” he asked, slapping Dimitri on the back.

Dimitri sucked air through his teeth. “S-Simply laughable,” he muttered.

“Perish the thought,” Edelgard said. If any of her siblings were still alive, she would know.

Eventually, they found the house the Agarthan raiders had been using as a base of operations. It wasn’t much—Edelgard figured it was only used for a supply depot, and the only supplies to be found were weapons and armor. The house was rustic and homely, dusty and cobwebby (and to a mouse, the cobwebs were enormous), and all of the little personal touches of its former occupants had been stripped away and dashed against the floor. Some of the walls had been crudely torn down to open up the floor space, and crates and boxes full of weapons littered the floor and stretched from floor to ceiling. A pile of bloodstained human-sized cutlery was piled against one wall lengthwise, stretching along the wall’s length from tip to tip and rising nearly to the ceiling.

“So that’s what happens to forks that go missing from the dining hall,” Annette said, squeezing through what little floor space was uncluttered. The aisles in between the crates were narrow enough that even mice could only slip through in single-file lines. There must have been hundreds of weapons stockpiled here.

As disappointed as he seemed to be, Claude was still eager to refill his quiver. “Well, better make the most of it. Don’t be shy, Bernie—you’re running low on arrows, too.”

“Jackpot!” Balthus cried out, plucking out a double-headed battleaxe from the makeshift garrison.

“Why’s some of the stuff so nice down here,” Hapi asked, weighing a well-crafted steel sword against a crude bit of jagged iron tied with a leather thong to a lump of wood, “and the rest of it so… crappy?” The cruder weapons outnumbered the proper ones ten to one, at least.

“The nice looking ones are remnants from the old times, when everyone lived in these towns,” Matthias explained, rummaging through a crate of polearms. He hefted one of the nicer spears, stars in his eyes as he beheld it. “In the camps where most of us live, we just can’t make ‘em like this anymore! All we’ve got is the stuff we’ve held onto from the Golden Age, and that’s like, five generations old—I wouldn’t have seen this many Golden Age weapons if I’d lived for ten years! I didn’t know the towns still had blacksmiths working…”

“Well, this one doesn’t anymore,” Hapi pointed out. “Wish we’d found this place our first time through, though.”

“I’ve only seen the slitherers carrying junk weapons so far,” Edelgard said, “even the ones accompanying high-ranking personnel like Myson.” She rifled through the collection of axes, though Matthias gave her a forlorn, pleading look as if to say, ‘what, my legendary heirloom battleaxe passed down from the Golden Age isn’t good enough for you?’

“They’ve probably allocated the good weapons for defending their stronghold,” Claude said. “Hey, Bernie, you’ve been down here longer than I—any chance you know how well these fly?” he asked, plucking a pawful of knitting needles out of the arrow stockpiles.

“Oh, u-um…” Bernadetta kneaded her paws. “N-Not so good. Terrible, actually. But not as bad as matches or porcupine quills.”

“Aw. That’s disappointing. Maybe they’ll come in handy if I find some thread to go along with them.” Claude put a few in his quiver anyway. “Wait, did you say ‘porcupine quills?’”

Bernadetta nodded.

He grinned. “Good on you for trying to make those work.”

Constance, who’d been keeping watch outside, burst through the door, Marianne trailing close behind her. “Everybody!” she called out. “We have guests arriving!”

“They just passed through the front gate,” Marianne added. “Four wagons.”

“Can you tell their numbers?” Dimitri asked, testing the durability of one of the nicer glaives by trying to break it over his knee. It broke. He tossed it aside, much to Matthias’ chagrin.

“Six soldiers on each wagon, one mage per cart,” Marianne said, “so twenty-eight… A few rats, too, so about an even thirty. I’m sorry.”

“Must be here to pick up some supplies,” Hapi said.

“Well, they’re gonna get a surprise,” Claude said. “Bernie, you and I are gonna climb up onto the roof and take up sniping positions. Marianne, you’re with us, too. Hang back, keep an eye on the battle with us, and cast healing spells on anyone who needs one. Balthus, Hapi, Matthias, head out and meet them head-on as soon as I give my signal.”

“Alright,” Balthus said, “but you’d better give it soon!”

“We cannot let any of them retreat,” Dimitri said, picking out a lance and opting not to stress-test it.

“Good point,” Claude replied. “Can’t let them get word back to base. Annette, Constance, go through the side streets, flank them, and blow up their wagons. Dimitri, Edelgard, get behind them and cut off their escape route.”

Dimitri looked at Edelgard nervously. “Both of us?”

“You two are our close-quarters heavy hitters,” Claude explained to him with a knowing wink. “C’mon. You two could stand to get to know each other better.”

“No need to be nervous,” Edelgard said to Dimitri, hastily scavenging for a few piecemeal scraps of armor. After the exhausting back-to-back fights that had sapped so much of her stamina yesterday, she was more than willing to act a little more cautiously today. “I won’t be your opponent. Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta looked up from the arrow cache. “Y-Yes, El—Edelgard?”

“Don’t let Claude talk you into doing anything stupid. You take orders from me, not him.”

She nodded.

In the world of tactics, there was an old saying that no plan survives contact. Edelgard had seen that adage play out often enough in training missions and mock battles with the rest of the class to know that even someone as preternaturally skilled as her professor wasn’t immune to a plan going wrong.

Claude’s plan actually survived contact fairly well, in the sense that he and Bernadetta had begun peppered the invading battalion with arrows as the wagons rolled down the street, Annette and Constance had taken shots at the wagons from the alleyways and managed to upend two of the four right away, and just as the battalion had started to turn back, Edelgard and Dimitri had reached their positions in front of the gate to block their path.

In other words, things had gotten off to a promising start. Where that start had stopped had been around the point at which one of the mages had fired off a potent dark magic spell and brought a house down on Constance. One could know an enemy’s numbers ahead of time, but it wasn’t until blade met blade that one could truly gauge an enemy’s strength. And this enemy was strong.

The clash of steel on steel rang in Edelgard’s ears and rattled her bones as she fended off a strike from one of the rats’ forks and leaped out of the path of a soldier’s blade. Dimitri buried his lance in a soldier’s chest, but was thrown back by a blast of fire before he could wrench it free, knocking him to the floor and leaving his weapon buried in the chest of his fallen foe like the mast of a ship. Another soldier attacked him while he was still struggling to get back up, steam rising from a smoldering patch of his fur; Edelgard swung her axe, caught the soldier in the back as he rushed past her, and severed his spine in two, dropping him to the floor.

“Your support is much appreciated, Edelgard,” Dimitri hissed through gritted teeth, picking himself up off the floor as a soft glow courtesy of Marianne’s long-range healing spells wreathed the charred, blackened burn on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“As of right now, it would be inconvenient for me if you were killed,” she said.

“I hope there is never a time when it is convenient.” Dimitri caught another soldier bare-handed, wrenched the sword from his grasp, and cut him down with it.

Edelgard felt a blade clang off the armor she’d bound to one shoulder, whirled around to face her attacker—and found him falling to the floor with an arrow protruding from his forehead.

“We’ll make short work of these fiends yet,” Dimitri added, wrenching his lance free just in time to parry a strike from one of the fork-wielding rats. “So long as they keep trying to retreat.”

The two of them together kept pressing the enemy away from the gate, penning them from behind as Annette picked them off from the side alley and Balthus, Hapi, and Matthias boxed them in from the front.

“Marianne, cast silence on these mages!” Claude called out. “Don’t let them warp away!”

Another soldier tried to run past Edelgard; she swung her axe, but missed, and the soldier grabbed her and tackled her to the floor, claws scraping against armor and biting into flesh as he tried to scurry over her and rush to the gate. Edelgard jammed the head of her axe deep enough into his side to crush all his ribs and threw him off her.

Before she could pick herself up, one of the rats was looming over her, standing tall on its hind legs with its forelegs raised and a silver fork glistening with bloodstains gripped in its paws. Her legs felt slow and sluggish as she tried to pull herself out of the makeshift spear’s downward trajectory—

A razor-sharp gust of wind whizzed overhead and sliced off its forelegs at the elbow; almost immediately afterward, a spike of dark magic ripped itself through the rat’s heart, killing it instantly. Edelgard only barely managed to slip out of its path as it fell forward and collapsed to the floor.

Behind the rat, Hapi grimaced and clutched a bloodstained paw to her side. “Try to steal my kill, will you, Chirpy?” she spat in Annette’s general direction. “Could really use your help keeping my guts inside me right now, Snow White!” she called out to Marianne.

Edelgard felt the floor beneath her grow worryingly warm; before she knew it, Dimitri had wrapped his arm around her and thrown the both of them clear of the plume of fire and half-molten stone that burst up through the floor.

The mage who’d cast the spell traced another seal in the air, preparing another attack, before an arrow struck him in the shoulder and knocked him off from his perch atop one of the remaining wagons. Another arrow glanced off his beaked mask.

Things were turning out to be somewhat more difficult than expected, true, but overall Claude’s plan was—

“Oh, crap!” Claude’s voice rang out through the air. “Edelgard, Dimitri, you’ve got company!”

Edelgard looked up and caught sight of another wagon packed with soldiers barreling toward the town gates at full tilt. “The driver!” she shouted out to Bernadetta and Claude as she and Dimitri hurried to get clear. “Shoot the driver!”

A field of dark spikes burst up from the floor just outside the gate, halting the wagon in its tracks; a split second later, two arrows found their marks in its driver’s chest. Freed from the black-cloaked mage’s thrall, the rat pulling the wagon suddenly became aware of its indentured servitude and began to panic, dragging the wagon around haphazardly as the soldiers riding it leaped to the floor.

Eight more soldiers—six swordsmice, two archers. Now it was Edelgard and Dimitri who were defending from two sides. It was all Balthus, Hapi, and Matthias could do to pick away at the main body of the enemy formation, Annette was dragging Constance out of a pile of rubble, and Claude and Bernadetta were just as concerned with dodging salvos from the remaining mages and archers as they were with picking off the enemy from the rooftops.

Dimitri let out a frustrated grunt as he speared one of the swordsmice and threw the body at the others, knocking a few more of them to the floor. Edelgard shared his frustration. If they struggled this much here, then taking the Agarthan stronghold in the southern end of Abyss would be even more of an uphill battle. If only they had more manpower…

Edelgard felt a surge of warmth and a blossom of pain bloom in her side as a spearhead slipped between her ribs; a gray tunnel collapsed her line of sight as her legs grew weak. Her strength fading fast, she brought her axe down on the haft of the spear, cutting it in two, and with another stroke cleaved the soldier’s head from his shoulders.

“Edelgard!” Bernadetta cried out from the rooftops.

Dimitri brought his lance crashing down on one of the soldiers’ heads with so much force that the haft splintered and snapped in two like a twig; the business end of the lance went flying while he was left holding a short, splintered stick. “The one spear I don’t stress-test,” he growled, jabbing the broken length of wood into an enemy’s throat. “El!”

As Edelgard ripped the spearhead out of her side and fell to her knees, Dimitri’s voice rang in her ears and—what had he just called her?!

Perhaps because Marianne had been alerted by Bernadetta’s outcry, Edelgard almost immediately felt the unique inside-twisting sensation of a long-range healing spell run through her body. The airy lightheadedness that had seized her fell away, as did the gray mist crowding her eyes; strength flowed back into her legs. How much healing magic, she wondered, did that waif have left in her?

“To the eternal flames, all of you!” Dimitri snarled, doing as much damage with the least useful half of a spear as possible (which, surprisingly, was a lot). “Edelgard, are you okay?”

Rejuvenated, Edelgard responded by striking down a mouse who’d been aiming for his back. She must have imagined Dimitri calling her ‘El,’ she decided. It had probably been Bernadetta shouting out for her, and the shock and blood loss had just momentarily affected her hearing.

A knitting needle struck the floor, wedging itself between the stone tiles and trailing a taut length of thread; a split second later, Claude came sailing down from on high, his bow held overhead and sliding against the thread to form a makeshift zipline. He let go, careened into a swordsmouse nipping at Dimitri’s flank and knocked him off his feet, and drew a sword from his belt.

“A pleasure for you to join us,” Edelgard said.

“The pleasure is all yours, Princess,” Claude said. He yawned as he parried a blow that had been meant for her. “Bernie and I were getting a little bored up there…”

“Then perhaps try doing a better job of hitting your enemies.”

Bernadetta cried out again—but this one was a wordless cry of shock and pain; Edelgard looked up to see her fall from the roof of a nearby building and plummet to the street, an arrow protruding from her thigh.

“Bernadetta!” she cried out. The heat boiling in her chest, the heat of the Crest of Flames scorched into her blood, set her veins alight; she charged through each foe between herself and Bernadetta, cutting with mightier swings of her axe than any mortal might could offer and felling each of them with a single stroke.

Bernadetta rolled onto her back, drawing back her bowstring and taking aim as best she could and firing; the air zipped past Edelgard’s ear and there was a pained, gurgling cry from behind her as another soldier fell with an arrow in his throat, his arm still raised and an axe clutched in his paw.

Edelgard set her axe down and knelt at Bernadetta’s side, slipping a paw under her head and helping her sit up. “How bad is it?”

“My leg hurts,” Bernadetta mumbled, looking up with hazy eyes. “Just the one… somehow. I-If I die, I’m gonna haunt you, okay? But, like, the good kind of haunting…”

“I was not aware there was a good kind of haunting. But never mind; you’re fine.”

Bernadetta nodded, then shook her head as though to throw aside the pain that had clouded her eyes. “Can you… help me shoot again?”

Edelgard nodded, then propped her up and helped her nock another arrow and draw back her bowstring. At the same moment, an aura of healing energy swirled around Bernadetta, and Edelgard could feel the strength returning to the arms she was holding steady. Together, they took aim and fired into the crowd.

From this vantage point, she could see the crowd of enemies thinning, the pockets of allies scattered about their ranks working through their dwindling numbers: Dimitri, one arm limp at his side and the other pressed to his shoulder to staunch a river of blood, kicking his enemies aside as Matthias struck them down for him; Constance, leaning on Annette for support, encasing an enemy’s head in a blossom of ice crystals; Balthus throwing enemies from one end of the street to another with mighty blows; Hapi dueling the last remaining mage, their bursts of dark energy crashing against each other like waves against rocks.

“We’ve almost got this!” Claude shouted out, tossing aside his sword and swiftly drawing his bow to pick off a soldier rushing toward Constance and Annette. “Just hang in there that much longer, guys!”

A bolt of white light from Marianne struck the mage in the side, breaking his concentration as he struggled to deflect one of Hapi’s attacks; her dark fire cut into him and left a charred corpse behind. Edelgard grinned. It felt oddly nostalgic to see an ally wielding dark magic; it wasn’t so different from seeing Hubert in action.

It wasn’t too long until the last enemy fell. It was a total rout. The bodies of thirty raiders, mingled with the wreckage of burning and abandoned wagons, were strewn across the street. For a while, no sound filled the air but the sound of popping and crackling flames and a few coughs and sniffles.

“Alright!” Claude held up his paw. “Everyone alive here, sound off!”

One by one, everyone sounded off.

“No casualties on our side? Great!” He clapped his paws. “Flawless victory, everyone! Great work!”

“Hold on, weren’t you gonna keep a few of ‘em alive to interrogate?” Matthias asked him.

As if on cue, a few of the fallen soldiers stirred.

“Ah, there we go.” Claude kicked an errant bit of wood. “Balthus, collect the living ones and tie them up somewhere. We’ll question them once we’ve had some time to rest up and recover.”

“If these scavengers with third-rate weapons give us this much trouble,” Dimitri said soberly as Marianne rushed to tend to his shoulder (so weary she could hardly walk a straight line), “perhaps we should rethink our plan to retake the stronghold.” He looked down at the carnage, seemingly sickened by the number of the dead.

Edelgard helped Bernadetta to her feet and walked her toward the others, passing by the soldier with an arrow sticking out of his throat who’d been felled in mid-swing of his axe and feeling a distinct sense of deja-vu. That made how many times now that Bernadetta had saved her life with her archery skills in the past week?

“Dimitri has a point,” she told Claude. “If your theory is correct, then we won’t be able to outmatch the stronghold’s forces for quality of equipment.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Claude assured her, flashing a devil-may-care smirk. “Our strategy here was about quickly overwhelming the enemy with superior strength from multiple vectors, and the arms imbalance paid off in our favor.” He tapped his finger against his forehead. “But that’s not how you take a stronghold.”

“Aw, man! We missed all the fun!”

Edelgard’s ears twitched. A voice on the wind, carried by the same air that carried the rank stench of the sewage canal into the city. But unlike that awful odor, the voice was as welcome as the clarion call of a royal trumpeter, as annoying as it was, because the voice belonged to none other than…

“Edelgard!” Caspar cried out, and she whirled around and saw her rambunctious classmate barreling full tilt toward her. Except…

Oh, no.

He was just as small as her, and just as covered in fur, and had just as big ears, and had a tail and whiskers and everything else a mouse would have.

He was a mouse.

Other than that, though, he didn’t look much different from the Caspar she knew. “Wow! Is that really you?” He let out a joyous, surprised little laugh as he scurried over to her. “Hey, guys! She’s here!” he cried out behind him. “And Bernie-Bear, too!”

Before Bernadetta could protest, he was upon her, sweeping her up in a spine-crushing bear hug. “Caspar…” she squeaked. “Can’t… breathe…”

“Oh, man, Bernie, it’s so good to see you!” he exclaimed. “Ferdinand’s gonna be so happy when we get back to him! You know, he took you going missing really hard; these past two days he’s just been saying ‘I hope poor Bernadetta is safe and well’ at totally random intervals…”

“Caspar,” Edelgard said, “why are you a mouse?”

“Long story,” he said, finally letting go of Bernadetta only to spy the other mice. “Whoa! Claude, Dimitri! I knew we’d find you guys down here, too!”

Edelgard barely had time to gather her wits about her before Linhardt rushed up to her. “Hello, Your Highness,” he said, just as much of a mouse as Caspar. He and Caspar were both wearing tattered, ill-fitting tunics—unlike Caspar’s, which was just a bit too long, his was just a bit too short. “Glad to see you’re well.”

“Linhardt,” Edelgard said, “why are you a mouse?”

“Same story,” he said. “Hi, Bernadetta. Nice to see you again. Caspar didn’t crush anything, did he?”

Bernadetta gingerly prodded her ribs and nodded.

“Good.” He yawned. “I’m spent. Don’t think I have the energy to do any more healing today.”

Claude clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to spend a little more.”

Linhardt looked to the injured gaggle of mice, then looked down at the bloody corpses littering the street, and gagged.

“Is anyone else from our class a mouse now?” Edelgard asked him, dreading the answer. If the Agarthans had gotten to the entire Black Eagles…

“Well…” he said, taking a deep breath. “Not everyone else, but…”

Almost as though on cue, she felt an oddly familiar paw fall on her shoulder; she slowly turned around, feeling her heartbeat race, and found herself staring into a very familiar pair of piercing, haunting steel-gray eyes—set in a very unfamiliar mousy face.

The mouse had dark gray fur, gray like a very familiar jacket, and had a shaggy mane of dark blue-green hair, deep blue-green like dried seaweed, and sheathed in a crude sword-belt at her waist was a spiny fossil of a sword made from something that more resembled bone than metal with a conspicuous hole bored through its crossguard.

“P-Professor!” Bernadetta cried out. “Th-They got you, too?”

“Professor?!” Dimitri exclaimed, his eye wide.

“Aw, Teach!” Claude gasped.

Edelgard felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach and staggered back. “Professor…” she gasped, her breath hitching as it caught in her throat. “Professor, no…”

Byleth nodded. “It’s not too bad,” she said, scratching behind one ear. She’d scavenged mouse-sized clothes from somewhere as well—a battered tweed jacket was draped over her shoulders. “I think I’m getting used to it.” She motioned to the mice behind her. “Lysithea, Catherine, tend to the wounded.”

For Edelgard, hearing her teacher’s voice coming out of a mouse was equal parts unnerving and relieving. For some reason, all she could do was laugh. It burst out of her, just a single sharp peal of laughter, like a soap bubble popping. “It is… so like you to say that, my teacher,” she said. Yet the horror flooded back all too soon, in spite of that moment of mirth. “Still… oh, Professor, I had hoped that of all people, you would not have met this fate…”

The taller brown mouse at Byleth’s side let out a gregarious laugh. Edelgard vaguely recognized his loud voice—one of the Knights of Seiros, Alois. “Bernadetta, is that you? We’ve been worried sick!” he cried out, sweeping her off her feet and hugging her tight. “Thank the Goddess you’re okay! Oh, and don’t fret—no one ‘got’ your professor; she ‘got’ herself!”

“I don’t understand,” Edelgard replied, dazed, as she continued to stare blankly at the mouse who had once been her teacher.

“We needed an extra mouse to escape a trap,” Byleth explained. “While Hubert and Ferdinand were arguing about which of them would drink the rest of the poison, I stepped in and made the decision for them.”

That only raised further questions—too many for Edelgard to ask at once. Hubert was down here? Were all the other Black Eagles with him, too? Where were they? Were they still human?

“You… turned yourself into a mouse to save them?” She felt her heart flutter with an emotion she couldn’t quite pin down. Respect, elation, sorrow, regret, a contradictory melange roiling within her. That her teacher had come down here to rescue her—that she had willingly sacrificed the very thing that Edelgard had had ripped away from her—made her head spin. So many different emotions tugged at her from every angle; it was as though she were being drawn and quartered. She sat down, because the only alternative was to fall forward and straight into her professor’s arms. “Again… how like you, Professor.”

“It’s a long story, Edelgard,” Byleth said, crouching beside her and laying a comforting paw on her shoulder. “I’m sure yours and everyone else’s are, too. Why don’t we sit down somewhere and tell them?”

With everyone settled into the inn (or, as Claude thought of it, their temporary base of operations) and those who needed it freshly bathed (and by the gods, had he needed it) and their wounds mended, it was time to talk tactics and plan the assault on these slitherers’ headquarters down in Mousehaven (what creative names the mice gave their towns). And so he called everybody to the foyer, moved all the chairs aside—there weren’t enough for everyone, and he didn’t want to play favorites—and had everyone sit in a circle.

“Let’s get something out of the way first,” he said as everyone else settled into their positions. “If we’re going to be working together, we all need a good understanding of our capabilities. So let’s lay it all on the table for everyone to see. Let’s talk Crests.”

Nothing but blank stares from the others.

“Is… that a question any of us need to answer?” Dimitri asked, confused, as he finished buttoning up the adorable little mouse-sized tunic he’d picked up from somewhere in the inn. Everyone here had found something to wear, except for Balthus, who hadn’t found anything in his size, and Matthias, whose ratty robes had somehow gone missing. “For the three of us, at least, our bloodlines are well known.”

“Unless you’re suggesting that one of us is an illegitimate heir,” Edelgard said. She’d found some clothes at the inn and armor at the supply depot, too, but had kept the ragged presumably-red cloak she’d been wearing, which was so dirty that wearing it sort of defeated the purpose of being clean. She wore it like something that had sentimental value. “But if anybody here raises questions regarding their legitimacy, it would be the one of us who appeared out of nowhere last year to suddenly claim his grandfather’s inheritance.”

Claude held a paw to his heart. “You wound me, Edelgard. But you’re right. And of course, I’ve done plenty of research on all of you, so none of you have anything new to tell me.”

He could have sworn he saw a tiny smirk, though not a happy one by any stretch of the imagination, tug on the corner of Edelgard’s mouth.

“This,” he added, “is more for the benefit of—”

As if on cue, Matthias set aside the towel he’d been using to dry the last of his fur and raised his paw. “Er, excuse me… what’s a Crest?”

Claude shrugged and crossed his arms. “See? It’s not just the leaders who need to understand their teammates’ capabilities.”

“Crests are blessings from the Goddess,” Catherine explained to the mouse. “They are a powerful magic bestowed on the Ten Elites one thousand years ago. The descendants of those heroes carry those blessings in their blood as a reminder of the devotion of their ancestors to the Goddess.” Claude could have sworn he’d seen Edelgard roll her eyes at that spiel, but it could have just been his imagination.

Matthias whistled, impressed.

They also made people do crazy things to their children, Claude mused. So many unwanted noble-born children out there all just because they weren’t born with the Crests their parents wanted… and those were the lucky ones.

“How about I go first?” he volunteered. “As the recently-discovered grandson of Duke Oswald von Riegan, I’ve got a minor Crest of Riegan. Sometimes, it kicks in when I’m hurt and speeds up the healing process.”

“So, what your saying is that we can really let you take a beating in combat next time,” Edelgard said, a sly smile crossing her face.

“What I said was, ‘sometimes.’ Anyway, why don’t you go next, Miss Empress-to-Be?” he asked. It just so happened that she was sitting to his right, so he could just say they were going counterclockwise through the group if she accused him of singling her out.

Edelgard seemed even more miffed by his irreverent little moniker than usual. “Alright. I have a minor Crest of Seiros. Sometimes it makes me stronger.” Her tone was clipped, guarded; either she didn’t like talking about Crests at all or she was holding something back.

Claude nodded. “Good to know. What about you, Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta froze up and looked to Edelgard, who gave her a subtle, curt nod. “U-Um… C-Crest of Indech,” she stammered. “Minor. It, um… helps me… react to things faster?”

“So that’s how you pulled off those shots,” Claude told her. Back in the thick of it, she’d been drawing, nocking, and shooting two arrows in the span of time even he would take to fire one. “Thought I noticed something special about you whenever I spied you in the shooting gallery.”

“You… you’ve been spying on me?” she gasped, shrinking away. Edelgard very subtly inched closer to her, as though to comfort her without ruining her icy, stoic image.

“Well, yeah, I spy on everyone. Don’t take it personally,” he assured her. She didn’t seem much assured. “Dimitri?”

Dimitri nodded and ruffled his fur. Now that he’d washed out the dirt and blood, his fur was as lustrous as gold leaf; Claude realized that he really, really wanted to pet it. “I bear a minor Crest of Blaiddyd. It does the same thing as Edelgard’s, mostly. When it activates, my strength doubles. It does so… often.”

“Huh, so that’s why you keep breaking things.” Claude looked directly at him. “Sounds to me like you and Edelgard have a lot in common, though.” He was rewarded by a subtly uncomfortable frown on Dimitri’s face and an almost pleading look in his single eye. “Alright. Annette?”

“Minor Crest of Dominic!” Annette blurted out eagerly. “It makes casting spells easier.”

“Thanks. Balthus?”

Balthus grinned. “Alright, here’s a great story for you guys! See, the history books don’t say this, but there were these four—”

Hapi drove the butt of her axe into his foot. “We’re not supposed to talk about that,” she hissed.

Claude felt a rush of manic energy seize him from tip to tail. Secrets! His new friends had new secrets!

“Alright,” Balthus gasped, sighing in relief as soon as Hapi took the axe from his foot. “I got a Crest. Can’t say who it’s from. It’s kinda like yours, Claude! Except I gotta land a pretty mighty blow for it to work.” He chuckled. “Then again, all my blows are pretty mighty.”

“Ahem!” Next in line, Constance cleared her throat before Claude could call her name. She’d found all the gaudiest clothes before anyone else could and proudly wore them all layered on top of each other. The ostentatious display made Claude glad he was colorblind. “Unlike you with your piffling minor Crests, I, Constance of the once-illustrious House Nuvelle, possess a major Crest of… er…” She glanced at Hapi. “Macuil. Sometimes, when I use magic, it feels like I have expended no effort at all, although I assure you, the results are just as unparalleled!” She leaned back and gave the drowsy pet bat resting behind her a coy little scratch under its chin. “Someday all will know the name of Constance von Nuvelle, super genius! Isn’t that right, Bruce?”

Claude noticed the hesitation in her answer. Another person here not telling the whole truth. He’d deal with that later. He nodded. “Alright, super genius. Hapi?”

Hapi looked even more disinterested than usual. “Yeah, Claudester?”

“Do you have a Crest?”

“Nope.”

Claude had the feeling she was lying. “So that stuff you can do with monsters and critters, that isn’t…”

She glared daggers at him. Claude glanced at Balthus and Constance and noticed the subtle shakes of their heads and the shared looks of may the gods have mercy on your soul in their eyes.

“Okay. No crest, neat power regardless.” She definitely had a Crest, and Claude was going to figure out what it was sooner or later. “Good to know. Catherine, you’ve got the Crest of Charon, right?”

Catherine nodded proudly, thumping her chest. “Yup. Major Crest of Charon. Adds some extra punch to my punches sometimes. And, of course, it lets me wield Thunderbrand! Not that that does much good down here…”

“No Crest for me,” Caspar said as soon as Claude turned to him. He nudged Linhardt in the side to wake him up.

Linhardt snapped awake. “Minor Crest of Cethleann,” he rattled off, the quickness and alertness of his response making it seem as though he’d heard everything, even while asleep. “Makes my healing magic stronger in a pinch. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, though.” And with his piece said, he laid back down and closed his eyes and resumed his cat-nap.

“No Crest for me, either,” Alois offered. “I’m so hopeless at magic, even my blood is bad at it!”

Dimitri snickered. Claude tried to hold back his shock. Dimitri had just… laughed? At one of Alois’ jokes? What was going on?

He moved on through the circle. “Alright… Marianne?” Now she was a mystery. She didn’t hold the burden of her secrets as easily as he or Edelgard did. She kept her secrets, but the pain of keeping them leaked out, even if the secrets themselves never did. “You don’t have a Crest, do you?”

Marianne shared a furtive glance with Dimitri, which Claude found very curious indeed. He’d never seen her talk much to people outside her house. She barely talked to people in her class as it was! And here those two were, the adopted daughter of Margrave Edmund and the Prince of Faerghus, stealing glances like two people nursing a schoolyard crush.

She shook her head. “I don’t,” she mumbled, her voice barely audible. “And if I did… it would just be a burden to everyone anyway.”

Claude observed the rest of the team. A look of sympathy from Edelgard of all people, but it was fleeting.

“And we’re all aware that Teach here has the legendary Crest of Flames,” he summed up, eyeing Byleth. “Now… what exactly does that thing do?”

Byleth’s paw curled around the hilt of the Sword of the Creator. “It lets me wield this. Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure. I think it drains the life force from those I kill. Honestly, I try not to think about it.”

“I wouldn’t, either,” Claude said. He turned to his left. “Alright, Lysithea. You’re last.”

Lysithea stiffened. “Crest of Gloucester. Not like I use it, though,” she scoffed, itching at her clothes. She’d stolen the black robes from one of the fallen masked mages and wore it with a sort of vengeful pride. “I never even asked for it.”

Okay, now there was a lie. A big one.

“Lysithea has two crests,” Linhardt piped up, awakening solely to say that and then immediately going back to sleep.

The circle broke out in an uproar. Lysithea stood up, infuriated; bolts of dark magic crackled around her paws. “Linhardt, you rat! How could you!” she snarled. Claude and Byleth both had to grab her by the arms and force her back down to the floor before she could cross the circle and incinerate poor Linhardt. For the youngest student at Garreg Mach, she was surprisingly strong when she was angry; Claude felt as though pulling her down had nearly dislocated his shoulders. Byleth, he had to admit, did most of the work.

“Thanks, Teach,” he said once Lysithea had been more restrained. “Lysithea, I’m sorry about Linhardt, but he’s got a point. We need to know your capabilities. All of your capabilities.”

He noticed an uncomfortable look from Edelgard to his right. So she was still hiding something. Something big.

“I’ll give you all the candy you can stomach once we get back to the surface if you tell us,” he promised.

“What does it even matter about my Crests?” Lysithea spat, heated. She shook her fists. “So what if I have the Crest of Gloucester and the Crest of Charon?”

Catherine leaped to her feet, elated. “The Crest of Charon! I knew it! I’d always thought there was something familiar about you! Two Crests; what a blessing from the Goddess!”

“Blessing? Blessing? I don’t care about my Crests!” Lysithea shouted at her. “I don’t use them! I didn’t ask for them; I wasn’t even born with them! All they do is hold me back!”

Edelgard looked as though she’d seen a ghost. Her pale eyes were wide, her mouth hanging slightly agape. She noticed Claude looking at her and hurriedly composed herself.

An uncomfortable silence descended over the circle in the aftermath of Lysithea’s outburst.

Claude patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you felt that way. But I’m sure it must feel pretty good to get that off your chest, huh?” To have two Crests must have been an incredible burden indeed; it was no wonder Lysithea had such little stamina in spite of her incredible aptitude for magic.

And she hadn’t been born with them? Who in Fódlan would have given them to her? The church? Or someone else?

She pushed his paw away. “Don’t you start, Claude,” she snapped, still fuming.

Claude gave her his patented ‘I did my best’ shrug, then turned to Edelgard. “Okay, Edelgard? Do you have something else to share with the class?”

Edelgard slowly turned to face him, her eyes steely and jaw set. “Excuse me?” she asked, her voice iron and venom. “I’ve already told you, I have the Crest of—”

“Don’t play dumb. We can all see how you reacted to Lysithea’s revelation. And putting that together with your low stamina in spite of your great strength, just like her… and your unnaturally white hair, just like her…”

Lysithea let out a little gasp. “No…”

“Tell us about your Crest, Edelgard. Not your Crest of Seiros—your other Crest.”

Everyone looked at Claude as though he’d grown a second head. Then they looked at Edelgard with equal parts awe, disbelief, and confusion.

The picture of stoicism, Edelgard said nothing. Bernadetta nudged her gently in the side. She didn’t even react. Edelgard’s eyes bored into Claude’s; a silent fury smoldered there.

“Come on, Edelgard. We have to trust each other if we’re going to make it down here,” he told her. “That means we can’t keep secrets about our abilities. We’ve got to put all our cards on the table, even the aces up our sleeves, okay?”

Byleth stood up and broke ranks, crossing behind Lysithea and Claude to offer a consoling paw to Edelgard. “Tell them.”

Edelgard took a deep breath. Her gaze flitted up and over her shoulder toward Byleth once, then fixed itself forward. Not at anybody in particular—just forward, a thousand yards forward.

“Like my professor,” she said, with not a trace of emotion in her voice, “I, too, bear the Crest of Flames. Like Lysithea with her Crests, it was forced upon me.”

Everyone’s mouths gaped open. Claude couldn’t quite place the look on Lysithea’s face. Sympathy, but also… the shared pain of loss. Grief.

“Who did it to you?” Lysithea asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“The very same enemy we face down here—those who slither in the dark. Too many have been sacrificed on an altar of blood for their twisted aims. We must stop them.”

“Yes,” Dimitri said. “At all costs, we must.”

Claude sighed, emotionally exhausted from all the commotion, and stood up from his position in the circle. “Well, we learned a lot about each other here. When we hit Mousehaven tomorrow, we’ll hit it with everything we’ve got,” he said. “Now let’s spend the rest of the day talking tactics and practicing a few formations, then pack it in and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll all need it.”

Matthias piped up. “So, these Crests. Kinda a big to-do about them, then?”

A long day followed—interminable, like all the days down here—of planning, questioning captured soldiers, quarreling, revising and revising plans over Matthias’ tattered little map, occasionally teasing Dimitri and Edelgard about each other just to see the look on their faces, and practicing, but by the end of it, or rather what he thought was the end, Claude didn’t feel particularly tired. Perhaps it was anxious energy. Mice seemed to have a lot of it, after all—he guessed that was just how prey animals worked.

He preferred to rise and set with the sun—awake at daybreak, asleep by sunset—but down here in Abyss, where there was no sun, it was hard to stick to that schedule, or at least to be sure he was sticking to it. And he couldn’t discount the possibility that turning into a mouse had radically altered his internal clock; after all, wild mice were supposed to be mainly nocturnal. Then again, none of the mice here were exactly wild.

He paced for a while in the bedroom he’d picked out for himself, occasionally looking out the window and leaning over the sill, craning his neck to see if he could catch a glimpse of the little town’s little clock tower. No church bells to toll in a cannibal ghost town, after all.

For the last time, he confirmed that he couldn’t. Surely it was getting late. Maybe he should just go to bed and trust himself to sleep for the next ten or so hours. Or maybe…

He leaned out further, planted his feet on the windowsill, dug his claws into the wooden outside wall to steady himself…

“Claude?”

The sound of Dimitri’s voice, so suddenly intruding on his little sanctuary, made him jump—almost out the window. His pulse racing, he quickly pulled himself back through the window. “Yeah?” he asked Dimitri as the prince stood at the threshold.

He nearly burst out laughing at the sight of him. Dimitri had found a pair of mouse-sized trousers to go along with his tunic now, and all it did was make him look even more adorable. He was a fluffy golden-furred mouse wearing a dapper little ensemble! He looked like something out of a children’s storybook!

“What?” Dimitri asked, furrowing his furry brow adorably. “What is that look on your face for?”

“Oh, nothing.” Claude had to admit that since he’d found a set of clothes of his own, he probably looked just as cute. If only Hilda could see him now… “So… awfully bold of you to choose to room with a scheming, poisoning double-crosser like me. Thought for sure you’d share a room with El,” he goaded the prince, taking a casual seat on the side of his bed.

“She insists on sleeping alone,” Dimitri said (sounding disappointed), closing the door behind him and sitting down on the other bed on the opposite side of the room. “No more secrets, huh? I have to admit, it sounds… hollow, coming from someone who will not tell me his name.”

Claude shrugged. “Do you need to know everything about someone to trust them? My name won’t make much of a difference on the battlefield.”

“Can you please tell me what it is? I told you about myself and Edelgard. I trusted you with that, against my better judgment,” Dimitri said. There was actually a pleading look in his eye that—

Oh, gods. Dimitri was somehow giving him puppy-dog eyes (or rather eye, singular). Most likely without even noticing. He didn’t have anywhere near enough guile to do it consciously.

“Never took you for the curious type.” Claude yawned. “Okay. Let me tell you a bedtime story, Your Princeliness, and if you’re still awake by the end, I’ll tell you.”

Dimitri sighed. “I supposed I have no choice but to put up with your antics.”

“Alright, here goes.” Claude cleared his throat. “Once upon a time, in a faraway place, there was a young boy who came from a despised lineage. His mother was a daughter of the enemy, you see, so the young boy was treated horribly by everyone around him, family and strangers alike… Wait.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you my name after this story. But…”

“But what?”

“Come over here.”

A little apprehensive, Dimitri stood up and crossed the room, sidestepping the giant candle resting in the center of the floor, and sat down beside him. “What do you want?”

“You’ve got to let me pet you, Dimitri.”

Dimitri recoiled. “What?”

“It’s a big secret. You’ve got to do something big for me. Let me pet you.”

He looked up at the ceiling as though praying to the Goddess. “Do I want to know that badly?” he muttered, asking himself aloud.

“Yes, of course you do,” Claude told him. “After all, how can you fully trust someone if you don’t know their name? And besides, this might be something you can tease me about in exchange for the hard time I’ve been giving you and El.”

“…I really dislike you sometimes,” Dimitri said, relenting.

“No you don’t,” Claude said, and he reached out and started gently raking his fingertips down the nape of Dimitri’s neck. The prince instantly melted. Within a second, he looked like he was about to collapse into a boneless mound of fur and skin.

“Alright,” Claude said, “let’s keep going. So this boy, he hadn’t done anything wrong. He tried to be good, he tried to be kind, but everyone hated him simply for existing. He tried yelling at them, fighting back, when being good and kind didn’t work… and that didn’t either. So he ran away from home to the land of his mother.”

He wasn’t sure if Dimitri was enjoying the story, or if being pet just felt that good. But then he scratched the prince’s ear—it was like running his thumb across a patch of warm felt—and if he hadn’t known any better he’d have half expected him to start purring like a cat.

“But in the land of his mother, they treated him the same way, too, for his father was the son of the enemy,” Claude continued. “So he hid. He changed his name, changed everything he could change; buried what was different and hoped one day that he could unearth it. But until then, he was always alone, always mistrusted, always mistrustful of others. And he wished with all his heart that one day, it would not be so. The end.”

With the story over, he pulled his paw away from Dimitri’s head and let him regain his composure.

Dimitri nodded and awkwardly cleared his throat, clearly trying to put the whole incident out of his mind as quickly as possible. “Please never do that again.”

“Aw, you looked like you were enjoying it.”

“I’d rather not be reminded of what I’ve…” he sighed. “…become. Anyway, that was not much of an ending.”

“It’s sort of a story in progress.”

“So you don’t come from Fódlan?”

“Boy, do you catch on fast.” Claude sighed. “I was hoping that story would put you to sleep, especially with how relaxed you looked…”

From the look on his face, Dimitri was probably blushing all the way up to the tips of his big mousy ears. “I’m not usually as heavy a sleeper as I was last night,” he said “What’s your name, then?”

“Well, guess it’s only fair. You solved my ‘stay awake through one of my boring stories and let me pet you’ puzzle, so here goes…” Claude took a deep breath, suddenly more nervous than he had been in years. Dimitri was a pretty nice guy, he told himself, who was fairly earnest and always polite; he could be trusted. But when he told himself that, he also remembered the snarling storm of violence from last night, the furious cyclone of spearhead and claw and fang, and imagined that storm bearing down on him.

Well, if he was going to put the cycle of mistrust behind him, it had to start with someone, didn’t it?

“…It’s Khalid,” he said.

Dimitri gasped, a glint of shock and betrayal, and—perhaps there was even a little bit of hatred—in his eye. “K-Khalid? You’re Almyran!”

“Keep it down!” Claude hissed, grabbing him by the shoulders. Gods, he was still all muscle underneath that fur.

“Are you even related to Duke Oswald, or is that more deception, too? Are you part of some Almyran plot to—”

“I have the Crest of Riegan; of course I’m related to him! Told you that whole story and everything, and still…”

Dimitri seemed to calm down a bit at the sound of his dejection. “Oh, right… right. Yes. Of course. I’m sorry—I got carried away. You did say you were from the land of our enemies, after all.”

“Not that I’m one to throw a pity party, but this is exactly what I was talking about,” Claude said. “This is why I tell people I’m just lucky to have a year-round tan. You say you’re a foreigner, and people immediately assume all your loyalties lie elsewhere. It’s maddening.”

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri repeated. “I was just… shocked. To think you’re Almyran…”

“What, the dark skin didn’t give it away? Or the ceremonial braid? Or my penchant for exotic spices? Now, I’m aware I don’t quite have the first two right now, on account of being a mouse, but still—”

“No, it’s just… so obvious in hindsight. I just didn’t think it was possible. I suppose it explains how you seemingly came out of nowhere.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. People don’t notice the obvious at all, as long as you make sure they don’t think it’s possible in the first place.”

“Okay, Khalid.” Dimitri laid back on the bed. “So—”

“Claude’s fine. Don’t get in the habit of calling me ‘Khalid’; I don’t think it’ll be safe for me to go by it for a while.”

“Right. So… what exactly is your way?”

Claude laid down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, wishing the speckled wooden panels were stars. “We’ve drawn all these borders between ourselves and spurred so much mistrust and hatred. Fódlan’s been so insulated for so many years with all these borders, keeping outsiders out and insiders in. But what are all these borders? Just imaginary lines drawn around piles of dirt, really.”

Dimitri flinched. “That’s not what a—” he started, hotly.

“Am I wrong?”

“My kingdom isn’t a pile of dirt.”

“Well, look at the border between the Kingdom and the Empire. Imagine you’re standing astride it. Does your left side feel any different from your right? And if you take a handful of soil from each side, is the dirt in your left hand really different from the dirt in your right? And the people: is a peasant on the right side that different from a peasant on the left? And if you were a bird, if you flew as high as you could fly, flew past the peaks of the mountains, flew so high that you couldn’t see the people anymore, and you looked down, would you see any borders?”

Dimitri shook his head, though he still seemed mostly unconvinced. “I wouldn’t, but… you know that Faerghus has much poorer soil than Adrestia. Surely you’ve read about it.”

“I’m not saying everywhere is the same as everywhere else, but if you look at where these borders are, you won’t see any difference between the land on one side and the land on the other. Now think about the border between Fódlan and Almyra. It’s imaginary, too. To end the cycle of mistrust between our people, we need to stop using our imaginations so much and see what’s really out there. Open ourselves up. Open up our borders. Show them that they can trust us. Show us that we can trust them.”

Claude watched Dimitri ruminate on his speech. He worried he might have gone a bit too far over the prince’s head.

“I understand how you see things,” Dimitri said. “But people will not so easily change how they see the outside world.”

“Fódlan’s changed plenty of times. The Empire once controlled the whole continent until your kingdom broke free and the Alliance followed. It can change now.”

Dimitri shook his head. “It isn’t the same. The Church of Seiros teaches that other lands are filled with infidels.”

“Am I an infidel?”

“I mean, by definition, yes, you are. I assure you, I don’t mean it as a pejorative or think less of you for it. But opening our borders to all manner of heresies is…” He shook his head, frustrated. “Regardless of what you or I think, the church would never allow it, even with an archbishop as liberal as Lady Rhea. They would sooner put you to death than hear you out. By the Goddess, if Catherine were in the same room as us right now and could hear you, you would already be dead. Unless you could lessen the influence of the church or change its teachings, it would be an insane dream,” he said, laughing at the idea as though it were impossible.

Claude nodded. Then maybe the Church of Seiros and its knights and archbishop need to have their influence lessened or their teachings changed, he wanted to say, but he figured Dimitri might not take that so well. It was always difficult to know how far he could push someone until they encountered an idea that their minds would more vehemently resist. “Well… the insane dreams are the dreams worth chasing.”

“And you forget that when Faerghus seceded from the Empire, there was a war over it before the church stepped in to force a compromise,” Dimitri added, growing more concerned by Claude’s flippant response. “What if you started a war that was worse than the War of the Eagle and Lion over this? Would it not be better to keep things the way they are? We’re living in an unprecedented era of peace—why spoil it?”

“You can worry about war, but what good does peace at all costs do if people just have to suffer in silence for it?”

Dimitri was almost as fierce in his arguing as he was in battle. “Claude, you talk about being an outsider, being hated—but I know what pogroms look like, too. I know how easily people can turn on those of other races. I know how easily innocents can lose their lives to that kind of hysteria and persecution.”

“Then I’ll find a way to do it right,” Claude assured him. Though he had to admit that Dimitri had a point, he felt patronized by the insinuation that he hadn’t gone over these matters in his head a thousand times already. After all, he was Claude von Riegan, and he’d already staked a name for himself as a master tactician here in this school. “Maybe it’ll take me eighty years, but I’ll find a way.”

“You think you’ll live to be one hundred?”

“You don’t?”

In spite of himself, Dimitri laughed. “You’re utterly mad, Claude. For what it’s worth, I hope you find some way to make your insane dream a reality someday.”

Claude laid back. He finally felt tired. “Thanks.”

“But be careful. Be realistic.”

“I think preserving peace is more unrealistic than any of my foolhardy talk.”

“Maybe we can’t have peace forever. But we can have peace now, and we can keep it.” A flame lit in Dimitri’s eye. “As long as we crush evil where it lives and breeds. Starting tomorrow with these slitherers.”

“And we’ll get back home, become human again, and go back to chasing our crazy dreams.”

He laughed. “Goddess willing.”

“So, what do you want?” Claude asked him. “I’ve done my fair share of pontificating; I figure you’ve earned your chance to unleash your inner windbag. C’mon, hit me with your best shot. Tell me what makes Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd get up in the morning.”

Dimitri thought for a moment, staring up silently at the ceiling. “Revenge,” he concluded, seeming almost embarrassed to voice such a thought. “I’m afraid I lack such a high-minded philosophy as yours, Claude. All I want is to root out the masterminds of the Tragedy of Duscur. The true masterminds, the ones who engineered it, not a handful of hapless Duscurite pawns. The ones who killed my parents, my friends… I want their heads hanging on pikes at the gates of Fhirdiad. Yes… then we can have peace. When the dead at last have peace, and their spirits no longer cry for justice, I can have peace.”

He was more complex than he’d seemed at first glance, and yet with that admission, even his hidden dark side seemed so simple. He had one goal and a straight, clear path to it. Claude almost envied him. Set one’s sights low and one was never disappointed.

“Well, I hope you find those culprits soon. What are you gonna do after that, though?” he asked, though, expectantly. If Dimitri didn’t have any dreams beyond that, it would be a little sad.

“I haven’t given it much thought. I can’t really imagine life after it, but I think I would want to make life better for my subjects first and foremost. Life for many in the Kingdom is not as good as it could be. What do you think El dreams of?” Dimitri asked, his tone brightening a bit as he changed the subject. “What do you think she wants for the world?”

“Dunno. Maybe we’ll find out. At the moment, I’m sure her biggest goal involves destroying the slitherers.”

“Then we are in agreement there. What they have done to her is beyond the pale,” Dimitri said. “But beyond that… beyond tomorrow, I hope that whatever Edelgard wants, it’s something we can all agree on. I would like it if we could all work together to make Fódlan a better place.”

Claude grinned. “So what you’re saying is, I’ve brought you around to my way of thinking?”

“Now hold on, I said nothing of the—”

The door burst open and Annette charged through, eyes wide and wild, with a harried Marianne trailing behind her. “Dimitri, Claude, there’s an ant in our room!” she blurted out, panting for breath as she slammed the door shut behind her. “I tried to kill it but I think I just made it angrier and now it’s chasing me!”

After a long day of tactical planning and training drills, Bernadetta had expected the images of Byleth’s infamous diagrams to haunt her for the rest of the night. But instead, she awoke from troubled dreams of an all too familiar sort—one of her father’s servants cruelly wrenching out her hair by the fistful as her father stood by and leered at her, snarling at her to be quiet and stop fighting and let him style her hair properly for tonight’s dinner with Marquise von Vestra—and at first wondered if everything else had been a dream, too. Then she realized that the room she was sleeping in was not her bedroom at Garreg Mach, nor was it her bedroom at Varley Manor. It was a room in the Donner Family Inn in Mousebrook, a tiny town made for mice, and she was a mouse. What reminded her most of all was the uniquely odd sensation of her tail slithering over her ankle.

And there was a short, fat stub of a candle as large to her as a tree stump resting on the floor, its charred wick alight with a swaying yellow flame almost as tall as she was. She’d forgotten to snuff it out before passing out.

She also noticed that the door was slowly creaking its way open, the hallway beyond as black as pitch. Stricken with terror, she drew her blankets over her head and burrowed into bed, trying to hide as much of herself as possible. Was it Yuri? Had he returned to finish the job? He’d come back to kill her, to paint the walls with her blood, and this time her father would not save her, neither for love nor to preserve her usefulness.

She took as deep a breath as she could and tried to calm herself. Could she scream? The inn was full of her fellow students, including Edelgard. There was also Byleth and Alois, both nice people who always helped her, and Catherine, who was scary but always stood up for justice.

Oh, but what if she screamed and they all slept through it? Or what if they were so annoyed at her for screaming that they refused to help out of spite? What if Edelgard was sick of running after her to protect her?

“Don’t come any closer,” she whispered under her breath as she heard the floorboards creak, as though it would help. “Don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer…”

“Bernadetta? Are you awake?”

Edelgard’s voice. It was Edelgard’s voice!

But no, Yuri could fake voices, too, and he did a really good job of it! And why would she think Edelgard would want to rush to her aid again, anyway? She had to be sick and tired of running after her by now! Bernadetta tried to burrow deeper into the mattress. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could dig her way right through it and the floor and tunnel her way to freedom…

A hand fell over her head, pressing through the thin sheets. “Bernie…”

She let out a panicked yelp and threw herself out of her burrow, fleeing the warmth of the bedsheets and pressing herself against the wall, her tiny heart fluttering, her tiny chest heaving.

Edelgard was standing over her, her white fur gleaming like fresh snowfall in the light from the candle. Yuri could fake voices, but nothing else. It was really her.

“S-Sorry, El,” Bernadetta mumbled, embarrassed. “I… I thought you were…”

Edelgard’s eyes softened with concern, her paw hovering over her shoulder. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“I was awake. I just thought you were Yuri.” In spite of herself, she yawned. “Is it time to go fight already?”

“No,” Edelgard said. She sat on the side of the bed. “It is simply that I… well, I can’t sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’ve been having nightmares. May I…”

She trailed off and fell silent, letting the beginning of an uncharacteristic plea hang in the air.

And she stayed silent, fidgeting anxiously with the tip of her tail.

“I… oh, this is embarrassing, but—I usually sleep with a stuffed bear,” Edelgard finally blurted out. “It… takes the edge off the night terrors. Bernie, if I could… May I rest at your side?”

“Y-You want to sleep with me?”

“Sleep? No, no, not sleep. Merely to rest here and… calm myself. We do not have to sleep.”

“Okay. That’s fine by me,” Bernadetta said, not sure if she could really say no. Besides, Edelgard was soft and warm, and the nights in Abyss were so cold…

She slipped back under the covers. So did Edelgard. Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s silky fur slip against hers and her whiskers tickle the nape of her neck. She felt an arm slither underneath her and wrap over her chest, clawed fingertips gently rake furrows in her fur, and the warmth of Edelgard’s chest pressing against her back bleed through her fur to warm her skin. Edelgard’s legs curled around hers and held her in place. Her breath hitched. A tingle ran up her spine—whether out of exhilaration, excitement, or anxiety, she couldn’t tell.

But the warmth was nice, though, and calming, just as it had been last night. It was a warmth she could get lost in; a warmth she could drown in, and soon enough, the anxiety drifted away on the gentle waves.

She was sharing a bed with a princess. A real bed, not a lump of rags in an old dresser drawer. She was sharing a bed with a princess! It was so romantic, so storybook, so ridiculously storybook. And Edelgard wasn’t just resting at her side, she was snuggling her like she was a…

A stuffed bear.

Just like the one Edelgard apparently slept with.

Despite Bernadetta being a mouse, Edelgard had just literally made her a Bernie-Bear. The thought was so funny that Bernadetta couldn’t help but laugh at it.

Edelgard shifted and let her arm drift away. “I’m sorry—did that tickle?”

“What? No, uh—no, you’re fine. I just—thought of something funny, that’s all.” Bernadetta curled up beside her. Edelgard’s heartbeat, steady and strong, pressed against her back. “Does this… usually happen?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you usually need to find someone to lie down with after a bad dream?” The question sounded stupid as soon as she asked it. Who in all Fódlan would Edelgard, supreme among ice queens, go to for help with night terrors? Bernadetta could imagine a little girl begging her parents to let her sleep with them for the night after a bad dream (if only because she’d read about it in stories—heaven forbid she’d ever went to her father and mother about bad dreams, no matter how young she’d been!), but Edelgard was practically a grown woman! “Sorry, that was stupid. I-I didn’t mean to…”

Edelgard’s grip tightened. “What? I—er, n-no. I mean…” She let out a disarmed little laugh. “Usually I merely walk around to clear my mind, but I stopped by your room and I thought…”

Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s thumb run little circles in her side. “So… it was worse than usual?”

Edelgard nodded. “Dreams are where I remember it most clearly. The dungeon. The torture. Dreams are where my scars become fresh and the knives feel real. I remembered my worst day tonight. As the experiments ran their course, my older siblings went first, one by one, elder to younger,” Edelgard said, her voice growing raw and hoarse.

“I resented them at first; in my weaker moments, I even hated them,” she continued. “They were older. They were stronger. They should have stayed to take care of us, but they left us behind instead… I thought I was next, but then I lost my younger brother and sister. We had never really been close, none of us, but in that dungeon, we became each others’ world. As our numbers dwindled, our worlds shrank and shrank… until my world was nothing but me. And then I, the eldest, the strongest, resented myself for failing to follow my older siblings. I ran out of tears that day.”

“I can’t imagine watching ten siblings die,” Bernadetta mumbled, unsure of what to say. “I can’t even imagine having that many to begin with.” She fumbled under the sheets to find Edelgard’s other paw and gave it a comforting squeeze. Edelgard reciprocated, threading her fingers through Bernadetta’s. “How do you do it?”

“If you cannot imagine that, then I am glad for you. Perhaps it would be better if nobody could fathom such things.”

“No, no, I mean—s-sorry, that didn’t come out right.” Bernadetta tried to collect her thoughts. “I-I mean… you suffered so much. But you act like other people’s pain matters, too, even if it’s nowhere near as bad. I don’t understand how you can care about other people.”

“I understand.” Edelgard patted her on the head. “Despite the gulf between us, I can see that your suffering and mine flow from the same spring: an all-consuming greed that permeates the social order of this land. The root of this evil is the obsession that drives the noble class—an obsession with the so-called blessings of the Goddess. Crests are to blame for this brutal, irrational world.”

Bernadetta had never thought of that, but the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Noble bloodlines were propagated by those bearing Crests—even a firstborn son wouldn’t gain his father’s inheritance if a younger brother or sister bore a Crest instead of him. It was because she herself had a Crest that her father had cared so much about how marriageable she was; if she hadn’t had one, he’d have put more effort into fathering another child than tormenting her. It wasn’t much to complain about compared to someone like Edelgard or Lysithea, but…

“It’s sad,” she said, “that we’d take the Goddess’ blessings and use them to hurt each other…”

“Crests give us great power,” Edelgard said, “and as a result, we ourselves are reduced to vessels for that power, to be used by others.” Her voice grew quieter and quieter until she was barely whispering. “They made me to be a weapon for them, a weapon powered by the Crest they burned into my blood. The ultimate emperor, created to dominate Fódlan from its fangs to its throat… for them. But now…” She held her ragged cloak tighter, wrapping herself up in it as best she could while holding Bernadetta tighter. “They’ve thrown me away, just like the rest of my siblings. I knew the long, winding path I walked before, but now, a fog has descended and the path has vanished… Even once we’ve made it through this, I won’t know where my next step will have to take me, or where I need it to take me.”

“But that just means you’re free now, aren’t you?” Bernadetta asked, holding her paw tighter. “If they’ve thrown you away, you’re free from them. J-Just like how here at Garreg Mach, I don’t have to worry about my father, because he’s thrown me away, too. I still do, of course, b-but that’s just how Bernie works. But you, El…”

Edelgard gently nuzzled her neck. Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s legs curl around her own and their tails slowly, unconsciously intertwine. “I wish it were that simple, Bernie. I should be happy to be free, and yet I feel such… turmoil. They were my enemy, but I needed them. I needed their plan to change the world, and now…”

Bernadetta felt that she should hug Edelgard, so she rolled over and wrapped her arms around the princess in return, looking up into sad lavender eyes and seeing someone just as vulnerable as herself behind Edelgard’s stern stoicism and elegant rhetoric. Edelgard gripped her tighter, clung to her, let the tip of her snout rest in the nest of Bernadetta’s tangled mop of hair. Edelgard’s fur still smelled of lilac.

In the dim and flickering half-light cast by the candle, any strong face the princess might have worn was hidden, and Bernadetta could see her as she was on the inside—small, frightened, and wracked by horrible memories that would never leave her, just like herself. She could see the Edelgard who murmured in her sleep, calling out softly for salvation that never came; the Edelgard who twitched and shuddered and writhed as her past revisited her unconscious mind; the Edelgard who sometimes woke up screaming about rats, delirious in her fear and fatigue; the Edelgard whom nobody else ever saw. She, Bernadetta von Varley, a mere speck compared to her greatness, was privileged to see such vulnerability from her.

She almost wanted to pinch herself to see if she was really awake. Could it be possible? Did Edelgard really trust her this much? Or was this just a dream?

“Those who slither in the dark wanted me to act on their behalf to take over the world for their own wicked ends,” Edelgard said, still clinging to her. “I was like a dog to them; they were content to let me snarl and bark and bare my fangs, but if I so much as nipped their hands, it would be the end for me, my father, and Adrestia itself. Hubert and I could only plot in secret to hijack their plans for conquest and turn them to our advantage to create a better future for humanity. At least… that was what I had thought. Now, down here, I realize that every time I spoke out of turn, I was inching one step closer to…” She lifted one arm and stared forlornly at her paw, its black-on-black silhouette nearly invisible in the darkness. “This. The thought is oddly humbling—I had always been under the delusion that I was indispensable.”

Bernadetta understood. She knew full well why Edelgard had formed an alliance with those horrible people after all they’d done to her. She’d had no choice—just like all the things Bernadetta had had no choice in. Edelgard’s uncle—or rather, her so-called uncle, the man who pretended to be Lord Volkhard von Arundel—was simply a worse version of Bernadetta’s father, and like Bernadetta’s father, he demanded from Edelgard her total compliance. But unlike Bernadetta with her father, Edelgard couldn’t scream and shout and stamp her feet and shut herself up in her bedroom until Arundel forgot about her and his cruel doting and ruthless demands cooled to indifferent neglect. Edelgard would be his Bernadetta, groomed for his purposes, or she would cease to be Edelgard. And that was why she was a mouse right now—because she had refused to be his Bernadetta any longer.

She nuzzled Edelgard’s neck. “It’s okay, El. You aren’t gonna be anyone’s Bernie anymore.”

Edelgard smiled and ran a paw down Bernadetta’s back. Bernadetta shivered—not from cold, but from feeling that soft weight ghost down her spine. To think that Edelgard of all people could be so gentle…

“That reminds me. Bernie… er, Bernadetta, it has just occurred to me that when you speak to yourself, you call yourself ‘Bernie.’ You always chastise and insult yourself—is that how your father speaks to you?”

“Um… yeah. Why?”

“Because if I am to allow you to call me ‘El,’ then I should call you a name you enjoy hearing.”

“Oh.” Bernadetta thought about it. Everyone just called her ‘Bernie,’ not just her father, and it was a common enough nickname. Dorothea had settled on ‘Bern,’ but whenever Edelgard called her that, it felt as though she was commanding her to set herself on fire, so… “Bernie’s fine. The name sounds good when my friends say it.”

Friends. She couldn’t believe she was calling someone like Edelgard her friend. What was she saying? “I-I mean, if you really c-consider yourself to be—I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous and call you my friend if—oh, Bernie, just shut up now and stop spewing nonsense, at this rate you’ll never—”

The sharp, cold, ticklish sensation of Edelgard’s nose meeting hers shocked her out of her downward spiral.

“Presumptuous? You might be the only friend I have,” Edelgard told her.

“No way.”

“Name one other friend I have.”

“...Hubert?”

“Name two.”

Bernadetta laughed. “I can’t believe I have more friends than you!”

Edelgard’s face fell. “Oh, goodness. You do have more friends than me! To be a princess dooms one to a lonely enough life as it is… and to be a weapon for conquest is an even lonelier one.”

“I mean, I didn’t make any friends until I was fifteen and I met…” Bernadetta started, but then she stopped when she realized who that ‘friend’ had been.

As though she’d sensed Bernadetta’s thoughts, Edelgard scratched her gently behind her ear to soothe her.

“Did you really only ever have two friends, though?” Bernadetta asked her.

“No, there was another, I think. When I lived in Faerghus, about ten years ago… the year I spent there before I was taken back to Enbarr and the experiments began, I met a boy about my age. I don’t recall much about him, not even his name—I don’t recall much of anything from before the dungeon, really—but… I think I enjoyed spending time with him.”

“If you ever meet him again, I hope it goes better than Yuri and me.”

“That would be nice. Perhaps I will make another friend once we are freed of these reprehensible slitherers and we return to the surface.”

“We’re going home,” Bernadetta sighed, a warm crimson flower blossoming in her chest as she thought about her room, all her stuffed pitcher plant dolls, the greenhouse, real food from the dining hall, warm sunlight… she’d even almost be happy to see another human classmate. She hadn’t even considered that this was the last leg of the journey. The concept just hadn’t seemed real until now. “I can’t believe it, El… we’re almost there!”

“It still feels so far away.” Edelgard sighed. “Since I was little and the Crest of Flames was seared into my blood, I’ve known what I would have to do—both what I would be forced to do, and what I would choose to do for myself. It has been so clear to me for all these years. But if we crush our enemies tomorrow, if I escape them, then the future will loom before me unknown and unknowable, a winding path bathed not in blood but in an abyssal darkness my eyes cannot penetrate. I’ll have to rethink my entire approach. The monument of such labor is… filling me with an odd sense of uncertainty.”

“Is that why you can’t sleep?”

“Well, I did have a nightmare. But… yes.”

“Well… maybe you’ll find a better way now,” Bernadetta offered. She hadn’t thought about it at first, but if those who slither in the dark had wanted Edelgard to conquer Fódlan for them, then that meant her plan must have involved starting that war and using it to take power for herself! It was a gruesome image to let fill her mind—so much blood spilled, so much death and destruction… It would be no time for a recluse like her to live in, especially if Edelgard expected her to fight by her side! “Please find a better way.”

Edelgard laughed. It wasn’t quite a happy laugh—it was bittersweet, tinged with melancholy. “Taking everything I know into account, I don’t know if there is a better way. I’ve thought over and over about it. But I suppose I have no choice now. Or I suppose I have every choice. It’s so strange not to know.”

“You’ll think of something. You’re Edelgard.” Bernadetta let her head rest against Edelgard’s chest, letting the steady and soothing pulse of the princess’ strong heartbeat fill her ear. It was a strong heartbeat. She kept listening to the pulse as it slowed to a languid, soothing tempo; she and Edelgard laid together in silence. “So… if you’re feeling better, I guess you’ll want to go back to your own room…”

She tried to pull away and let Edelgard get up, but Edelgard just kept holding onto her. “Are you trying to kick me out?”

“No! No, of course not! I-I’m just saying, everyone needs a break from spending time with their friends every once in a while, a-and you must be getting bored of hugging me, so…”

“Is it so hard to believe that you make for good company?” Edelgard asked her.

“Yes.”

“But, er… actually, Bernie… there’s a… an ant in my room.”

Bernadetta felt her thoughts leave her brain for a second. “What.”

Edelgard gulped down a lump in her throat. Bernadetta heard her pulse quicken. “There is… an ant. An ant in my room.”

“O-One ant?”

“Yes. Yes, one ant. And because we are mice, it is a big ant,” she continued, flustered. “It is the proportionate size of a very big rat, or perhaps a very small dog. When I left, it had claimed one corner of the room for its own and I feared it may annex my bed next—Bernie, as your future emperor, I come to you for aid and ask you on bended knee—could you kill it for me?”

“Y-You want me to go to your room and kill an ant for you?”

“Yes, I would like you to protect your liege and liberate her bedroom from this scourge. It’s, um, too big to step on, so you may have to get creative. Perhaps get your bow and shoot it to death.” Edelgard took a deep breath. “Or, barring that—because it does strike me as a fearsome foe, and I do not wish to see you injured—I could stay here for the night, and neither of us need worry about it.”

Bernadetta began to giggle. She felt as though Edelgard might have just wanted to stay all along. Surely she had to have made that story up!

“I-It is not funny,” Edelgard insisted, putting a paw over her mouth to stop herself from laughing along. “You—Your future emperor’s life is in great peril from this dread beast; I e-expect you to lend me your aid!” she squeaked out. “Or… you may offer me asylum here, in your bed, which is quite warm and free from the horrible insect scourge that has made my room so perilous.”

“Okay, you can stay,” Bernadetta said, her cheeks hurting from smiling. She pulled away and began to slip out of bed. “You can have the bed. I’ll take the floor and—”

Edelgard grabbed her tightly by the arm. “No, no, that will not be necessary. I don’t mean to exile you from your bed again. Lie down. We can keep sharing.”

Bernadetta laid back down and curled up next to her. “Okay. Goodnight, El.”

“Goodnight, Bernie.”

Edelgard drifted to sleep next to her, and Bernadetta fell asleep soon afterward, wrapped in the princess’ embrace and watching the candle slowly burn itself out.

The dark tunnels of Abyss passed by with dull, silent monotony; the twisting passages were all alike in the way the vaulted ceilings vanished into darkness so completely that there might as well have been sky overhead. Hubert cursed the architect who had designed this hellish place. He cursed Garreg Mach. He cursed Seiros. More than that, he cursed Solon for having made this labyrinth so much more tedious to navigate.

“There is one thing I am not enjoying about being a mouse,” Petra said, trailing behind Dorothea like a shadow. The most strikingly unfamiliar thing about her current appearance was not that she was a mouse, but rather that her mane of brilliant magenta hair (more of a deep, dark, steely blue-gray to a mouse’s colorblind eyes) had fallen out of its intricate Brigid-style braid and simply trailed unadorned over her back and that the distinctive magenta tattoo that traced itself under her right eye was invisible beneath her fur (if it even still remained on her skin at all).

“There are a lot more things I’m not enjoying about it,” Dorothea sighed. Her fur was the same shade of lustrous, deep, oaken brown as her hair; a mane of wavy ringlets spilled over her shoulders. If not for the fur, ears, snout, and tail, she would have looked remarkably like her old self. That was the cruel magic of polymorphus muridae—it left its victim with just enough traces of their former humanity to mock them.

“It is that we are not seeing colors as well anymore,” Petra said, “and Dorothea, that means I am not seeing your green eyes truthfully.”

“Oh, Petra…” Dorothea smiled wistfully at her. “I miss the color of your hair, too.”

Hubert nearly gagged on how saccharine their exchange was. How anybody could flirt at a time like this was beyond even his extensive imagination.

“I wanna go home,” Hilda whined, lagging behind the rest of her so-called ‘retainer squad’ while she fumbled with the little bits of thread she’d used to tie back her long pink hair into her usual pigtails. She was not exactly taking to being a mouse well, and that was the one and only thing Hubert couldn’t begrudge her for.

“What a unique and valuable insight,” he snapped at her. “Your brilliant mind never ceases to be an asset. Truly you are a force to be reckoned with among the Golden Deer. Whatever shall Claude do without you?”

“Everybody, stop,” Ferdinand announced, holding up one paw, his tail held high. If ever there was a man who took to being a rodent well, on the other hand, it was him. He looked as much like his old self as a mouse could, with a crest of carrot-colored hair capping his head. The sharp snout and sandy fur suited him. He had always been an irritating little pest, after all. “Dorothea, set down the map again. We need to get a better sense of where we are.”

“Yes, Sir von Aegir,” Dorothea sighed, her voice sharp with a sardonic, yet weary edge. “Anything else I can do for you in the meantime, Ferdie? Fetch your tea, perhaps?”

She and Petra were carrying the rolled-up map under their arms like a rug, as in its current state it was roughly three or four times longer than either of them were tall. They set the map down on the ground and rolled it out as the rest of the squad came to a halt.

Ferdinand looked down at the map, scratching his whiskers. “Hmm… I would say we are about… here,” he said, tapping on one part with his foot. “Or perhaps… here? Petra, did we take a right turn at the last T-junction, or a left? No—two junctions back.”

Hubert kept going on ahead of them. “Enough of this. Every time we tarry, Solon scurries farther ahead of us. We shall not—”

His foot came down on something soft, sending a jolt of pain all the way up his spine and throwing him off his balance; he fell to the floor with a soft, all-too-embarrassing thud. He’d tripped over his own tail again. Accursed tail! How could anybody walk with one of those things slithering around behind them?

That made fourteen times now he had tripped over his tail since his unfortunate run-in with Solon had given it to him. He hoped nobody else but him had been counting.

“This is the fourteenth time now,” Dedue told him, kneeling at his side and offering a very large paw to help him up, though Hubert didn’t take it. A faint flicker of a wistful smile briefly replaced his omnipresent stern facade. “You are not unlike His Highness. I must always ask him not to push himself so hard and remind him to rest.”

“Hmph.” Hubert pulled himself back up onto his feet himself. Tail be damned, fur be damned, missing six feet of his original height be damned, he wouldn’t let anything slow him down. “If you truly cared about your prince as much as I do about Lady Edelgard, you would understand—”

As soon as he stood up, his knees buckled and he hit the floor yet again.

“If this map is correct, there is another Agarthan mouse battalion straight ahead,” Ferdinand said. “I fear we are not in any position to break through their ranks.”

“And if Hubie keeps tripping over his tail, we won’t have much luck sneaking around them, either,” Dorothea said. “Dedue’s right. We’ve got to rest for the night, or at least a few hours.”

Hubert bit his tongue and clenched his fist. The indignity of it all! Solon would die for this!

“We are needing food as well,” Petra added, laying a paw on her stomach. “What is it you are saying? An army is trampling its stomach?”

“Have you all forgotten the seriousness of the situation?” Hubert asked the others, incredulous. The anger in his blood helped propel him back onto his feet. “These dastards plan to replace Lady Edelgard with a phantom doppelganger and wrest control of the Empire. Do not think they will stop at that, especially if the Riegan and Blaiddyd brats fall into their wretched paws as well. How can you stand here talking of food and rest when we are on the eve of Fódlan’s destruction?”

Ferdinand sighed. “Hubert, forgive me for what I am about to do,” he said, stepping off the map. He walked up to Hubert, placed his paw on his chest, and with a deceptively gentle shove, knocked him back onto the floor.

Infuriated by this show of blatant disrespect, Hubert pulled himself up—or, at least, tried to. This time, his legs barely moved. He simply couldn’t will the strength into them to force them back into service. He glared impotently up at Ferdinand, hoping looks could kill.

“Is it worse to arrive too late,” Ferdinand asked him, “or to perish on the way and not arrive at all? Hubert, I know you have been burning the candle at both ends. I suspect you have hardly slept or eaten these past few days, and hardly drank apart from coffee and alcohol. If you do not start taking care of yourself, I can assure you that you will fail Lady Edelgard!”

“Excuse me?”

“It is as though you are trying to run a race with a broken leg,” he went on, “except the leg is your body and mind! Pushing yourself like this will only slow us down further. I admire you for trying to lead us in these trying times, but you are no longer in any position to do so. We are going to stay here and you are going to rest. Perhaps I do not know Lady Edelgard as well as you do—”

“Correct—”

“But I am positive that were she here right now, she would tell you the same thing.”

“How presumptuous of you to put your words in her mouth,” Hubert spat.

“Then imagine for yourself what she’d say to you down here,” Dorothea chimed in. She let out a derisive laugh. “Come on, Hubie. Is Edie really the kind of girl who’ll wail and scream and cry, ‘Oh, woe is me! Save me, save me!’ like some storybook princess while waiting for some hero to sweep her off her feet and rescue her?”

For once, Hubert found himself at a loss for words. This whole time, he realized, he had been reliving those three years when Edelgard had languished in the dungeons, remembering with vivid horror the first time he had laid eyes on her after her release and had beheld the shock of ragged white hair that had once been such a glossy chestnut brown, the way clothes that had once been tailored to her had hung from her emaciated frame, the scars on her arms, the hollow and haunted look in her eyes.

But that was not the Edelgard of today. She had grown so strong since then—in spite of, not because, of the experiments the Agarthans had conducted to make her their ultimate weapon. Edelgard was strong and fierce, with a mind and will that could never be broken, no matter what she was reduced to. He felt ashamed of himself for wallowing in such morbid nostalgia. He had disgraced Edelgard with his behavior.

Who knew what torment and horrors she was undergoing down in this subterranean hell? All he could know for certain was that she would weather them with characteristic grace and strength. That was the Edelgard of today.

He wasn't sure when or how he had fallen asleep, but he woke up to the crackling and spitting of a small fire and a dry, bitter taste in his mouth.

Petra crouched in front of him, holding in her paws a disconcertingly large insect: a beetle roughly the proportionate size of a chicken, its carapace charred and blackened.

“No happy hunting, I take it,” he rasped, his voice hoarse, as he looked down upon the offering.

“On some islands in Brigid,” she said to him, “insects are fried in oil and eaten with wild rice when the hunting is not good. I am finding no rice down here, unfortunately. We are having no spices down here either, so the taste will be plain.”

Hubert took the beetle from her. At its relatively colossal size, it more resembled a giant crab or lobster than an insect, and perhaps that fleeting familiarity was why his stomach growled so much in anticipation. He wasn’t one for seafood, but at least imagining it as such made it easier to trick himself into thinking it would be edible.

“She is right,” Ferdinand told him, nibbling with great reluctance on the charred remains of a spider. “The taste is plain. The texture and… general experience is far less appealing, though.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to eat the shell, Ferdinand,” Hilda said.

“You know, considering you nobles can afford any food you like,” Dorothea said to him, picking a segmented leg out of her teeth, “you lot aren’t adventurous at all. Sure, the taste isn’t good, but it’s all the same once it gets into your stomach, right? Just enjoy the novelty of the experience.”

That was exactly what Dorothea always said about her cooking (students and faculty tried to avoid the dining hall if possible whenever she was on duty to assist the cooks). Not exactly heartened, Hubert raised the insect to his mouth and dug in, the carapace cracking and snapping under his teeth to reveal surprisingly tender, albeit flavorless meat within. Eating it was like forcing paste down his throat, buh his stomach was so desperate for something to fill it that no amount of conscious revulsion could stop him from eating as much as he could. At first, the newfound weight in his stomach was so unfamiliar and alien that it hurt, but the more he ate, the more revitalized he felt.

“It could use some melted butter,” he said, wiping a few bits of shell from his mouth and setting the nearly-empty carapace aside. He could only hope that whatever hell Edelgard was living through, she was at least enjoying better fare than this. “Shall we depart now?”

“That depends,” Ferdinand said. “Shall you walk?”

Hubert struggled to his feet. His legs were numb, a warm wave of pins and needles still prickling his flesh. “I shall,” he said in defiance of his body.

“You shall not. You should be resting the night,” Petra said, catching and steadying him before he could fall face-first into the bonfire.

“Careful, Petra, I think Hubie’s still cranky,” Dorothea said. “Maybe he needs a scratch behind his ears or a tummy rub.”

“Cease your prattle,” he snapped at her. “Though I suppose I must rest,” he sighed, relenting and lowering himself back to the cold stone floor. The reality of his body—not simply that he was a mouse, but that he was tired, feeble, all but starved (until now), and unable to push himself any further.

“Is it true, Hubert?” Ferdinand asked.

“Is what true?”

“What Solon said about you—that when you were ten years old, you ran away from home for Lady Edelgard. Were you truly pursuing her for three days?”

Hubert nodded. “Three days until my detestable father’s men caught up to me and dragged me back to his estate. After that, I neither saw nor heard from Lady Edelgard for years. During that time, those who slither in the dark did unspeakable things to her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dorothea said, fixing her gaze glumly at the floor.

“I see,” Ferdinand said. “So that is how deep your devotion goes.”

“Sad, yet admirable,” Dedue said, laconic as always. “I understand.”

“I’ll say,” Hilda said. “So you pretty much grew up right then and there and haven’t changed a bit since then, huh?”

Hubert scowled at her; she simply rolled her eyes and giggled. Being a mouse, it seemed, had reduced his ability to intimidate people to a tenth of what it had been, perhaps less. It was the teeth, he figured. Nobody could be sinister with such oversized incisors.

“Hubert, I do admire your devotion to Lady Edelgard, as much as you… constantly irritate me,” Ferdinand said. “I know you do not believe me when I say it, but I can only hope that someday I will prove as valuable to her as you.”

“Is that what you call your seditious prattling?” Hubert responded. “If that is devotion, you have an odd way of showing it.”

“Seditious? By no means! When my father steps down and I become prime minister, I wish to re-establish the cordial relationship the Aegir and Hresvelg lines have had for the past thousand years, just as you wish to repair the damage your father has done to the Vestra name.” Ferdinand smiled. “An advisor is useless if he cannot offer guidance, is he not? And what guidance will I be fit to offer her if I am her inferior in every way?”

This would normally be the point at which Hubert would call him a fool, an idiot, or a simpleton, or string together some far more eloquent expression of his loathing, but as he tried to collect his vocabulary, he found that after the events of the past day, his heart simply wasn’t in it. Headstrong, presumptuous, blathering moron as he was, Ferdinand only wished to help in his own way.

And even if it was a stupid way, Hubert had to admit that his way, in comparison, had not achieved much better results in this situation.

“If there is one respect in which you may be superior to Her Highness,” he told Ferdinand, “it is your relentless positivity.”

Ferdinand let out a disarmed and uncomfortable laugh, his eyes roving away from Hubert. “Ah… er, Hubert, that almost sounded like a compliment. Are you alright?”

“Is the beetle meat making you sick?” Petra asked, kneeling at his side and trying to put a paw to his forehead to gauge his temperature.

Hubert chuckled and batted her paw away. “Rest assured, Ferdinand, I have no intention of lifting your spirits. I am speaking objectively; you have a habit of expecting things to turn out well for you. Perhaps that will serve us well down here.”

Dorothea looked to the others. “Guys, we just broke Hubert. Edie’s gonna kill us.”

“It is an idle hypothesis,” he went on, lying down on his side and closing his eyes, “and I fully expect to be proven wrong once I wake up. Do try your best.”