Chapter Text
The next day, Edelgard spends most of the morning rifling through the remaining archives of Hanneman’s research.
When he had left the monastery, Hanneman had donated several bookshelves filled with his work to the library, insisting that it would be useful to have a selection of crest-related information available for the diverse public that visited. After speaking to the librarian, Edelgard learned that they quickly ran out of room for his donations, and several boxes still remained untouched in his office. What had begun as an early morning curiosity was now becoming something of an all-day research project, with the newly formed sliver of hope that she might come across information that could help her understand what was happening to her.
As she reaches over to open another box from her position on the floor of his office, she pauses to peer out the window. Sheets of rain now replace the familiar torrent of white, and she doesn’t need to stand to visualize the sheen of crystalized ice outside.
She sighs and stretches her legs out as she continues sorting through tomes and bundles of research. Edelgard was now becoming increasingly familiar with the chicken scratch of Hanneman’s handwriting, and is amused when she occasionally finds scraps of pages and footnotes from who she imagines might be Lindhart or Lysithea, likely from when the three of them began working together and consolidating their notes towards the end of the war. It’s truly shocking how disorganized they are though, and the books themselves lack clear chronology and appear to be sorted through completely inscrutable means. Edelgard squints at a page of scribbles, glyphs, and equations, only to groan when she realizes it’s a list of instructions for how to prepare a perfectly steeped cup of honeyed fruit-blend.
She leans back against the table behind her and wonders if this might not be the universe’s way of hinting that she was in dire need of a tea break. Edelgard had sorted through four whole boxes already, and truthfully, a cup of bergamot for her efforts (failed or not) is beginning to sound well deserved.
Just as she’s about to rise and head down to kitchen, a figure walks past the door of the office. The whip of green hair is enough for her to place who it is, and when Edelgard stands by the door to peer at Rhea’s figure as she descends further down the hall, she cannot help but notice the hurried pace of her gait.
How curious.
She closes the office door and follows quietly. Thankfully, her body is in better spirits today, and the careful stretching she’s done in the morning almost lets her believe there was never any lingering ache or upset in her bones, no phantom pain of fire across the nerves. Rhea turns another corner and takes the stairs down, and Edelgard waits for her to reach the bottom before following suit. She keeps a careful distance between them and raises an eyebrow when Rhea sidesteps the entrance hall to instead head towards the dormitories outside. In a quick motion, Rhea pulls her robe tighter to her body and pulls up a hood, protecting herself from the heavy rain as she steps out into the courtyard.
Edelgard curses under her breath, off-put by the thought of getting drenched. She’s got half a mind to leave Rhea to her own business and return inside for a cup of tea when she notices a bundle of dark fabric by the foot of the door. It’s a cloak, perhaps left behind by one of the clergy to help shield a passerby or monastery staff as they moved from building to building. Edelgard swiftly wraps it around her.
It’s not hard to catch up to Rhea again, and while she’s more noticeable now in the open like this, Rhea seems too focused on her task to think of turning around to check for followers or passerby"s. She holds the cloak away from her eyes as she watches Rhea step into the dark entrance of Abyss, and pauses for only a moment before following suit.
Abyss is as dark and damp as she remembers, and the sound of pattering rain echoes throughout the labyrinthian tunnels. There’s no time for her to wipe the stray splatters of water off her shoulders and cheeks, as Rhea does not pause in her continued descent into the underground world. She draws more distance between them this time, overly aware of the way her heels might clatter against the stone ground if she’s not careful. As they travel upon the winding paths of Abyss, Rhea raises a hand to illuminate the torches that line the walls with an ease that belies a certain familiarity—it reads as the habitual move of someone who knows a space and route like the back of their hand.
Rhea finally stops at a stone wall. Edelgard hovers several paces behind, tucking herself carefully behind the nearest corner.
She watches as Rhea lifts a hand to her mouth, or more accurately, a thumb to her lips. She bites down, and a trickle of blood dribbles down. The thumb presses soundly onto the surface of stone, and Edelgard almost balks when the wall begins to rearrange itself, peeling backwards to reveal a new path forward.
Rhea steps into the dark hole, and when Edelgard hears the stones begin to shift and move back into their former position, she hurries quickly to make it through the threshold before they lock into place.
The room is void of light for only a moment before an orange glow fills the space. In Rhea’s hand is a flickering ball of fire magic. She stands still, seemingly lost in thought. Edelgard’s mind races, trying to piece together where she is and what Rhea is planning to do when suddenly, Rhea steps to her left to begin lighting the torches that line the walls. The fire is enough now to begin revealing more of the room, and when Edelgard takes a tentative step forward, she realizes that she is in front of a long table. It is filled with beakers, jars, scattered papers, small knives and sheets of glass. As tongues of flame lick against the walls, Edelgard sees the light reveal a neatly arranged tray of scalpels and magnifying lenses before her. Beside it are a bundle of herbs and crushed sediment in a mortar and pestle.
Edelgard’s breath hitches. She can feel her thoughts pick up speed as she clocks the familiarity of the tools before her and the latent realization of what this space is meant for. At first, the theorizing is noiseless in her head but it doesn’t take long before it swells into a gnashing static. The sensation and flood of remnant sensory memories block her from noticing how Rhea is getting ever closer to her, and how she’s bound to notice her now as the room is lit enough to reveal her slightly sodden form.
“What…” she finds herself whispering, “…on earth is this place?”
“You…!”
Edelgard finally breaks her stare to face Rhea, who is frozen before her. Her face is white, ashen in shock.
“You should not be here—"
Rhea steps forward hurriedly as if to literally push her out of the space, and Edelgard duly registers the way her dress billows, swishing widely only to catch on the heel of Rhea’s foot. There is a breathless gasp when Rhea slips backwards, and Edelgard moves without thinking. Her hand shoots out to catch her arm, and she pulls the woman forward to keep her from falling. The sudden momentum brings them uncomfortably close, and the small of Rhea’s back is warm against her other hand. For an absurd moment, Edelgard is struck with how bizarrely fragile the ex-archbishop feels against her.
Rhea rights herself and peers at Edelgard, clearly still rattled. Edelgard releases her stiffly and steps backward.
“…you followed me.”
She narrows her eyes, feeling uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Rhea’s statement lacks the bite she was expecting. In it’s place is what Edelgard can only describe as a defeated surprise.
“What is this place?” she tries again, grasping for a measure of sternness and finding only anxiety.
A tense silence stretches between them, and Edelgard barely suppresses a shiver when she feels the cold air creep past the thin, wet fabric of her cloak. Rhea sighs then, eyes indecipherable. She lights another candle on the table before bending down to pull out a crate. She rummages through it for a moment to lift out another cloak, this one noticeably dryer, and extends it to Edelgard.
“I won’t have you waste the efforts of my healing just so you can catch a common cold.”
Edelgard blinks, caught off-guard by the gesture of kindness. The unpleasant dampness of the cloak clinging to her frame sends another chill down her spine, and with it, a measure of stubbornness gives way.
She unclasps the wet cloak and reluctantly dons the offered one.
“…you haven’t answered my question. Or should I simply assume this place is exactly what it appears to be?”
Rhea moves again, this time to the back wall towards a hearth. She lights it, and Edelgard feels the icy air begin to slowly thaw around them. She approaches the other woman, staring cautiously at the slope of her shoulders as she stares into the crackling flames.
“This may be the first time you’ve ever asked me anything rather than directly assuming.”
Rhea’s voice is soft and the words lack steel. Her eyes roam towards Edelgard, and the orange flames paint her green into a darkened rust. Discomfort rises in her body, and Edelgard fights the urge to pick at the frayed thread of her cloak sleeve. To her relief, Rhea continues speaking, gaze returning to the wavering flames.
“For many years, I used this place to try and return what was once lost. I wished to bring the goddess back. To reunite with my mother. I dedicated my life to this cause.”
Edelgard narrows her eyes at the lack of clarity in describing how, but grabs what she can within the information.
“Byleth wasn’t your first then…?”
This prompts a weak laugh, and as the sad timbre of it fades into the din of the disused lab, Rhea looks so incredibly tired.
“No, she certainly was not.”
A tiny part of her is almost afraid to ask, unprepared to deal with the pain of imagining even more lives of those who lived through inhumane experiments. The greater part of her knows she must though: to remain unflinching in the light of atrocity was to meet the bare minimum, and she would never turn away from this.
Voice hoarse, Edelgard forces out, “Who else then? What did you do to the others?”
Rhea worries her lip, and the vulnerable action disorients them both. Edelgard watches her face shift through uncertainty and regret, and finds herself unable to place where exactly she lands when she turns to face Edelgard again.
“They were…it was…”
She falters, clearly unsure of how to conclude her thought. She closes her eyes, grief written plain.
“I did not steal them from another life to be part of this. They were made for this. They were…vessels, so to speak. They lived as full a life as I could give them, but ultimately, we were not meant to create in this manner—only the goddess could ever…”
Rhea trails off, suddenly distant and overtaken with a sorrow that somehow disarms Edelgard’s burgeoning outrage.
“…I so loved her, you must understand. Despite knowing Sitri could never succeed in becoming what I originally wished, I cherished her anyways. I did not let her suffer.”
Edelgard doesn’t know what to make of the wet sheen in Rhea’s eyes at the mention of this woman, or the way her mind seems to be jumping between decades of grief in mere moments.
Tonelessly, Edelgard speaks, and hears her voice as if it’s coming from another body.
“Even if I were to believe that, it doesn’t make it any less of a horrible act.” She pauses and bites at the inside of her cheek, withdrawing momentarily to clamp shut the door in her mind that carries all the textural memories of being strapped down to a table. Distantly, she can feel her scars itch. “Lives aren’t meant to be experimented on. There is no excuse.”
Rhea tilts her head, the ghost of an empty smile on her lips.
“At the time…I truly believed the ends would justify the means. I thought that if I could just bring her back…everything would be alright. Sothis herself would lead Fódlan as was always intended, and she would make everything right again. If I succeeded, I would have my family back. I would have my mother again.”
She hesitates, expelling a small, cold breath before finishing.
“Some part of me wondered if she wouldn’t be able to turn back the hands of time: to return us to before the spilling of blood, to before the massacre of my people. To a time stripped clean of the cruelties and horrors, to a place that was unblemished and safe.”
Edelgard can’t stop herself from interrupting.
“Surely you knew this was impossible? A utopic dream, at best?”
“Many a crime has been committed for the sake of a utopic dream. You should know this well yourself, little emperor.”
She stiffens at the implication. Was her desire for a Fódlan without the governing rule of the church or a crest-based society really so comparable in its loftiness to Rhea’s dream of a life with her mother? Though they look so wildly different side-by-side, she cannot ignore the familiarity of Rhea’s ironclad belief that the ends would justify the means. And while she never condoned human experimentation in her rule or during her war, she knew better than anyone just how much of the scarlet of her dress was of blood. What were they equally ready to sacrifice in the name of the better good—of a future worth living and striving for?
Rhea peers at Edelgard with a knowing look. “Grief carried in the body corrupts the mind with ease. It can drive you to the point of madness.”
Against her better will, Edelgard considers this. Where would she have ended up if Byleth never resurfaced after those five long years? Did Rhea come to this as a desperate result of carrying centuries of grief and loss alone? Could she have ended up similarly distorted over time without the guidance of her comrades and professor…? The thought feels impossible to consider for long. There are too many variables—but she also cannot ignore the sense that truly, she would have done anything if she believed it would bring her a step closer to the future she envisioned. She was ready to sacrifice so much to make her dream a reality. Why was it so difficult to imagine that Rhea might be the same?
Instead of continuing to drown in the sudden flux of comparisons between herself and the woman before her, she chooses to cling instead to the one idea within Rhea’s confession that she knows in her bones to be untrue.
“Why do you so believe Fódlan needs the goddess to be led well? Humanity deserves the chance and the ability to govern itself. We are not…pets.”
Rhea smiles wryly, humorless and ever so tired still.
“I cannot describe to you the pain I felt and still feel when I see how easily humans deal in senseless wars. Since time immemorial, I have watched blood be shed for so little. To trust that a society can function well with such dark impulses…felt impossible. I tried everything in my power to establish a system that could allow for sustained peace and order—“
“—you cannot mean the crest system?”
“Yes. If there is a narrative the people can believe, and an institution that can support and create the infrastructure for it to sustain itself—there can be order. There can be agreed upon conduct. Society can thrive. It was not perfect, I understand this, but I could not sit back and let more blood be shed when the goddess left the world without a leader. After the war, I needed to ensure the Agarthans would not rise again or manipulate humanity behind the scenes. With a crest system, there would be a sanctioned way to keep track of potential threats and those who had power in society. I wished to do everything in my ability to prevent another Red Canyon…”
Edelgard mulls over her next words before realizing there is no way to change their bluntness. “Your trauma and paranoia impairs your judgement,” she declares.
“And yours does not?” Rhea fires back.
A taut silence descends upon them. The familiar thrum of irritation starts coursing through her bones, but this time, Edelgard can recognize it for the impulsive and immature reaction that it is. Worst of all, she cannot deny the suggestion that she too, in so many ways, is deeply colored by the pain of what happened to her. Rhea turns away, signaling the end of the conversation.
She moves towards a nearby bookshelf, hand reaching out to vacantly skim over the spines of dusty books. “There is a reason I returned after having abandoned this place years ago. As you have already insisted upon intruding here, then you may as well assist me in locating the tome I mentioned to you earlier.”
Edelgard stares at her, unsure if she’s ready to let the conversation shift but also not confident she’ll be able to keep her emotions at bay if they carry on. Simply remaining in the space without retreating into those darker thoughts is challenging enough as it is.
She sighs, facing the opposite side of the room where another wide bookshelf stands, filled to the brim with books and scrolls. Who was she to say no to the possibility of finding a document that may very well help her with her current ailment? If there was no success to be found in Hanneman’s office, perhaps there could be in Rhea’s unholy laboratory.
“…very well. What does it look like?”
After Rhea describes the look and front cover of the tome in question, the two set out upon their search. While the room is still bathed in large swaths of darkness due to its cavernous size, the nearby torches provide enough light for Edelgard to make her way through the various books. Their topics range wildly, jumping from herbology, human anatomy, lunar calendars and even detailed graphics and metrics of changing weather conditions over the past few decades. She’s itching with curiosity about what exactly connects all the disparate threads—what theories or overarching concepts can make one need to access such wide-ranging information? Despite this, she also does not know how to proceed in asking Rhea more about her experiments without upsetting them both. They continue on in silence, each by their respective bookshelf, and eventually their own piles of crates and boxes of surplus books when they realize the tome is not on either shelf.
“I have a current theory,” Rhea muses aloud. Edelgard almost doesn’t hear it, too lost in thought as she’s peeling through the first few pages of a book filled with fables she’s never heard of.
“I won’t know if it has any merit until I found the tome to confirm, but based on my examinations of you, I have an idea about what is happening with your crests.”
Edelgard puts the book down, ignoring the puff of dust it makes when it lands on the table. She assesses Rhea for any signs of cruelty, mines her face to reveal any hints of sadistic trickery. Her profile reveals nothing of the sort, and Rhea meets her eyes without malice.
“I believe…” Rhea pauses, turning a book over to examine its front before placing it back in the box. “…that the crest they implanted inside of you is rotting.”
“Rotting?” Edelgard repeats numbly.
“Well, it is either rotting or spreading, not unlike a tumor. From what I’ve seen, the crest stone they implanted in you is an artificial one, is it not?”
“I…”
Rhea waits for her to finish, hands stilling in their search.
“I believe so, yes.”
“The tome will confirm whether or not what I’ve seen is the shape and pattern of a crest stone decaying within its host or of one mutating malignantly.”
“How could you possibly know what that looks like?”
The question robs the room of all its air, and for a moment, Edelgard is confident she’s shattered whatever tenuous truce they managed over the past hour.
“To this, I can admit, the research is not completely my own.”
“If not yours, then who?”
“Who else deigned to conduct such experiments?” Before Edelgard can react, Rhea resumes searching through the box before her, speaking lightly as she does so.
“Many long years ago, after the war, Seteth and I spent considerable effort in understanding how the tragedy at Zanado came to be. While we did not succeed in routing all the monstrous beings responsible, we did come upon scattered tools and research from the Agarthans.”
She watches Rhea pull out a thin yellowed notebook and turn to a random page. She holds it up, and though Edelgard is not close enough to see the illustrations and diagrams clearly, she can tell the written language underneath is not that of Fódlan"s.
“It seemed irresponsible at the time to leave them behind, especially if an ambitious, power-hungry soul might find them useful. Burning them seemed equally dubious, as while their actions were vile, there was possibility that perhaps their knowledge and technology could be used one day to better society…”
Rhea flips the book around to stare at its contents before shutting it and returning it to the box.
“In the end, I brought them here. They became…the way I realized it could be possible to bring her back.”
“So, an ambitious, power-hungry soul found them useful after all?”
Edelgard winces, realizing belatedly that she’s lobbed what her brain registered as a casual quip only for it to sound very much like an assault when spoken aloud.
To her surprise, Rhea laughs.
“I suppose so,” she admits. The humor is self-effacing, and Edelgard shifts, made uncomfortable again by the sudden strangeness of their dynamic.
They both quietly return to their sorting, and as Edelgard turns over book after book, she tries to collect all the different theories presented to her in the past by Linhardt, Lysithea, Hanneman and Manuela. They were all able to see that her issues stemmed from a crest failure of some kind, though the prevailing notion was that her body was not strong enough to survive the demands of operating two crests. The notion that her symptoms were not of her body’s particular failures or limits but of the crest’s malfunction was an intriguing one—and though the concept of something possibly decaying inside of her was gruesome, there was a macabre twinge of relief at the idea that it wasn’t her own biological failing.
Until today, she didn’t know it was possible for a crest to die. Though perhaps that said more about the artificial nature of the Crest of Flames inside of her—and of the botched science of those who slithered in the dark.
Her fingers skate over the tattered spine of an olive green tome. She pulls it out, and the symbols on the front look oddly familiar.
“Is this it?”
She tilts the book so as to have the cover better illuminated, and from across the room, Rhea’s eyes alight.
“Yes, give it here.”
Edelgard approaches, and together, the two of them hover over the book once placed on the nearest table. Rhea skips through the pages until she reaches the middle.
“If I recall, it was somewhere here…” she mutters distractedly, slender fingers parsing over the unfamiliar text as she focuses on the page before here. Edelgard watches warily, switching her gaze back and forth between the book and Rhea, unable to cleanly ignore the way her body heat radiates from this close a distance. Rhea’s cloak has long dried from the rain outside, and while the lab itself smells mostly of dust, cleaning material and long-dried ink, the aroma of crushed flowers is just barely detectable from the other woman.
“Here it is.” Rhea taps her finger on a particularly lengthy wall of text, and while Edelgard cannot read the foreign scribbles, she can take apart the strange drawing beneath it. A spider-web spread of lines spread out from a vaguely circular mass, and the distinctive tapering of the criss cross marks is immediately familiar. Her face jerks down to her arm, and a clammy hand peels back the cloak to confirm her suspicions.
Rhea makes a displeased sound, and before Edelgard can ask her to explain the meaning of the text, she skips forward a handful of pages. Both are quiet as Rhea reads, and Edelgard tries hard to wrangle her thoughts. Could there really be something within that tome that could offer them a viable means of survival? Could she and Lysithea possibly survive this after all…?
Rhea’s hand falls away from the page, and she regards Edelgard with an uncertain furrow in her brows.
“Well?” Edelgard prompts.
Rhea’s lips purse, and she knows that whatever the other woman is about to say, she is not bound to like it one bit.
“I was right to think it was one or the other. It appears your implanted crest is decaying. The text…and your unique situation suggest that there is a possible spell and technique that may work to amend this situation.”
“Can you possibly speak more vaguely?”
Edelgard is too distracted and keyed up to reign in her sarcasm, and Rhea greets the familiar sound of it with an aggrieved sigh of her own.
“You will not like what I have to say.”
“Of course I wont. Out with it, then.”
Rhea folds her arms and leans back. “It may be possible to have your blood-borne crest absorb the artificial one.”
At the risk of appearing dense, Edelgard sputters. “What?”
As if equally disconcerted by the information, Rhea squints into the distance before staring holes into the book before them.
“It will need to be made stronger in order to truly absorb the other rather than being subsumed or infected by it. It also must happen fairly fast as the process becomes less likely to succeed if the decay spreads further within your body.” She tilts her head then, reflecting almost to herself. “I suppose in that sense, it would function akin to a booster for your immune system…a means of better equipping your body to fight off the infection.”
Edelgard rubs at her temple, mulling over the information while trying to keep herself steady.
“…okay…and how would this work? How do I make my crest stronger?”
Rhea blinks and straightens her shoulders, as if preparing herself to deliver bad news. The action surprises Edelgard into straightening her own posture, and she braces herself for whatever the other woman has to share. She’s survived this long being able to handle whatever life threw her, what could Rhea possibly say to her that she wouldn’t be able to take on?
“A simple blood transfusion and spell-work to fortify the exchange should be enough to allow your body a fair chance of absorbing the implant. You have my crest, do you not?”
Edelgard freezes. It takes a long moment for her to speak again, and when she does, they leave her mouth in a hot rush.
“No, I will not. I cannot. There’s no way I would ever again allow—“
The rest of the sentence catches in her mouth, tangled by the sudden need to breathe. Rhea reaches out tentatively, hand grazing by her shoulder. Edelgard shoves it away, and Rhea pulls back as if burned.
“I will not partake in blood experiments. There must be another way.”
Rhea frowns, serious and measured as she handles her next words.
“There is no other that I know of.”
“Then so be it,” Edelgard concludes.
The change in Rhea’s eyes is like lightning. The calm evaporates into irritation, and Edelgard cares not for the glittering green eyes that reproach her.
“You are quick to give up.”
“Don’t speak as if you understand me.”
“After half a decade of war against you, I can claim to at least understand the strength of your ridiculous willpower. How is it the first thing you surrender now?”
Edelgard snaps, fists balling by her side. “It is no business of yours what I choose to do with my body.”
“Perhaps not, but to see that you are this quick to give up is embarrassing. Is your life only worth living when it comes to waging more war? Are your ambitions so complete now that you see it appropriate to wither away?”
She does not know what to do with the sudden wave of Rhea’s righteous anger other than to gnash back. Her blood pumps, and for a moment, she sees red. This, at least, is familiar.
“Silence, I will not tolerate this from you.”
“I don’t need your permission to speak, child. Too much has been lost for you and your cause to exist as they are, and it incenses me to see you throw it away so carelessly.”
Rhea shakes her head, a flash of judgement across her features. “But you are not ready to die, are you? You cannot fool yourself, and you certainly cannot fool me.”
Edelgard realizes she is panting, breath labored by rage. Rhea seems equally agitated, and the heat of her eyes feels like a physical weight on her chest.
“Now is not the time to get squeamish. I refuse to accept that I lost to an emperor with no will to survive in this world. Or that the world itself changed to fit her vision.”
Rhea shuts the book before them and slides it closer to Edelgard. She sizes her up one final time, eyes tinted still by frustration before she turns to leave. Edelgard listens to her footsteps recede, and the tattered tome before her stares back at her as if she might be the one to hold all the answers after all.