Endgame

The azure haired prince staggered backwards, clutching at the gaping hole in his chest that an electrical bolt had bored into him. With his strength fleeting, he collapsed onto one knee as he struggled to push air through his lungs. As the corners of his vision beginning to fade, the prince realized that he was nearing the end; with that realization, he looked up at his comrade standing across from him, "I understand... it seems fate had different ideas for us in mind. We fought to alter our paths... and failed. My friend, I should of trusted you when you needed it most."

Barely finishing his words, the prince proceeded to cough blood and spasm as his body went into shock from the trauma. The entire time this went on the purple haired tactician in front of him had been stock still. His only movement being his eyes staring at his hands, and then his friend before him, and back again. Once the prince had begun to fall forward from his wounds however, the man was finally shocked from his rigor and rushed forward catching him with but a moment to spare.

The purple haired tactician laid his friend gently down onto the cold stone floor beneath them; as he did so the prince began coughing up more blood, shooting some of it onto the tactician's face. The prince opened his eyes and looked up at his friend for what would likely be the last time, "Sorry about the blood, ha, it seems we finally ran out of luck" coughing as he tried to speak with the tactician. The prince noticed the blood on his friend's face was the exact color as his eyes, I wonder if it is even him, no, it is. This is the same doubt that got us into this situation. Could this have been avoided if we had acted differently? A question for another time I suppose.

Looking down at his friend, the tactician again found himself unable to do anything. Even though the tactician had been in countless battles that had very nearly cost him his life, he was uncharacteristically stunned into near paralysis. Listening to the prince's ragged attempts to continue breathing, he felt as though the room was spinning around him; beginning to feel ill from the speed of the motion, the tactician grabbed his head in a feeble attempt to halt the spinning. What was far more effective than his hands however, was the cessation of the prince's breathing; not only did the room come to a screeching halt, but time itself seemed to have frozen in order to take note of what had happened. The tactician began to violently shudder as the realization sunk in, the prince was dead, and he had killed him.

Sinking backwards, the tactician tried in vain to process what had just happened, I... I... had no choice, he tried to kill me; what else could I do? With his mind set on this repeating train of thought, time passed him quickly until finally he looked at the body, looked around himself, and shattered the silence with a wail of agony.

After what felt like hours, the tactician slowly crawled towards his friend's body. Despite not being but ten feet from his former friend, it seemed as if he was crossing an expanse miles long as weights were attached to his feet in order to reach him. Collapsing down to his knees next to the body, he stared in silence at his friend.

I can't leave him, especially not here of all place, Thought the tactician bitterly to himself.

Being as gentle as possible, the tactician began to close his friend's cloak and pull his arms over his chest. As he pulled his right arm into place, the tactician jolted when he heard a loud clang of metal on stone; his head spinning in pursuit of the source, he realized that the lord had never let his grip loosen on Falchion. Falchion... the blade of the Exalted Line, and it had fallen from his hand and sat on the stone next to its previous owner.

The Tactician paused, He would want her to have it, I can do that much at least, thought the tactician as he recalled his dead friend's daughter back in the castle. Thinking further on her, he recalled that it would soon be her 12th birthday in a few weeks, "Happy birthday princess, I bet you will always remember this one, and for all the wrong reasons." Smiling bitterly as he attempted to avoid lapsing into self-loathing once more, the tactician bent low to pick up Falchion; any thoughts or regrets he had at the moment were quickly silenced as his eyes went wide at the sensation of his hand feeling as if it was on fire. Shrieking from the searing pain in his hand, the tactician immediately released his grip of the blade while clutching his twitching palm within the bowels of his coat.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at that happening, I wonder if this is a recent development though? The tactician kept his glare fixed to the blade as he recalled the fact that he had never actually handled the blade before. Wrapping his hand in several layers of his coat, he was able to grasp the blade despite the heat he could feel quickly building back up on it; before the sensation overwhelmed him though, the tactician was able to maneuver it into its scabbard before its displeasure became too noticeable.

With his friend's body ready, the tactician slowly lifted him from the ground and began to make his way out of the grand altar. Slowly walking towards the chamber's exit, the tactician dragged himself and his friend forward as if the weight of the world were upon his shoulder's. Making his way out of the room, the tactician cleared the archway separating the altar room from the hallway outside only to freeze immediately after rounding the corner; for sitting directly in front of the tactician was the hallway's main reflection mirror.

Looking into the mirror, the tactician took stock of what had undoubtedly driven his friend to attack him; his normally pale complexion had reached the point where he was practically a white sheet, which was in pointed contrast to the small patches of what seemed to be obsidian scales on his skin in random splotches. Next he noticed that the mark of Grima, normally a dull purple, had begun to glow with a sort of internal light; also, it seemed that purple lines crawled upwards from his hands into his arms. Removing his coat and pulling his shirt up, the tactician saw(to his horror) that the lines converged into a much larger sigil of Grima on his chest. Looking back up, he finally noticed what had to be the most prominent feature of his change, his eyes. Where before the tactician had dark brown eyes, now he couldn't tell if they remained so since his irises glowed a bright blood red.

Taking into account everything he saw, he looked back at the the reflection, not with the initial shock and horror he felt, but now with a hate and loathing that had been slowly building inside of him. He saw in that image everything he didn't want to be, everything that had embittered him over the years, everything that had brought him agony, and everything he hated. Staring himself in the eyes, he felt the anger and loathing towards himself build and build; finally when he thought he saw the image leer at him he snapped and could no longer tolerate the monstrosity that was before him and threw a simple fireball at the image as it continued to mock him. As the smoke cleared and the ringing in his ears ceased, the tactician saw that the fireball that should of shattered the glass and scorched the wall, had instead left a gaping ten foot hole, collapsed the adjoining room, and threw him and the prince's body back a good twenty feet. Once the ringing finally ceased, he could of sworn that he could hear himself laughing all around him.

Pushing himself up to a sitting position, the tactician looked around himself at all the carnage he wrought with what should have been a simple spell. Covering his ears with his hands, the tactician thought of his short past with his friends. Looking again at the remnants of the wall in front of him, the tactician pondered how after all they had done it had come to this; that Validar had succeeded in his plans, and yet aside from the prince's death and his own visual changes nothing theoretically had changed. Finally, surrounded by his own cackling, the tactician gave life to the truth he had first suspected months ago in Valm, that Grima, the ancient dragon he and the prince had sought to stop, had been him all along. Looking at a shard of glass to his side, he again saw his eyes, and finally accepted that no matter what he did, nothing would change that Robin was always the lie, and that he was always Grima.

AN: So, my first story here, don't really know what to type here except that I hope anyone who reads this enjoyed themselves. I do want to thank Metallover and Dane Namor though; they really helped me out a great deal in refining myself to this point and if you haven't read Metallover's Invisible Ties or Dane's Tales Through Time you are really missing out on some of the best Fire Emblem work here on FF. So if you are reading this and haven't seen those two stories, rectify it(you won't regret it). With that please leave your thoughts on the work and the story so that I can continue to get better and hopefully make stories that everyone can enjoy in their free time.