Chapter Text
2nd sun of the 10th moon, Year 3228, by Shambhala reckoning.
The work proceeds. Slower than I would like, but it proceeds nontheless. That is more than I could have said a year ago.
The body holds, along with the other remaining subjects, though they are still far from ready. We can feed them the mana they require- that much we have solved- but supply is not the same as readiness. To pour life into a vessel is one thing. To make that vessel fit to walk, to fight, to be set loose upon the world and to do our bidding, is another matter entirely. The flesh accepts the energy, but it does not yet know what to do with it. Every attempt to rouse them past that threshold has shown me how far the threshold still is. They are not ready. And I fear they shall remain dormant long after we intend to enact our plans.
Our time is running out. Even if we were to wake them tomorrow- even if the years collapsed into days and every subject rose whole and ready- it would not be enough. Against the soldiers of this continent and beyond, against the knights and their relics and their borrowed scraps of the beast that set the Earth ablaze, the subjects would be more than a match.
But not against Him.
Even without the morsel sample we’d been provided, we were able to learn much about our otherworldly guests. I have watched them for six moons now, however through eyes that are not my own and through reports that are never as complete as I would wish. The talking head is a nuisance. He is clever. Far more clever than the Immaculate One realizes and lets the children believe. He is beginning to suspect both of our operatives already. However, he is not the problem. The problem is the other one.
The brigand with the ashen skin- Kratos, he calls himself- is far larger a threat than any could have predicted. He has bested the tyrannic wretch in single combat. He was able to withstand the twisted, demonic remnants single-handedly, and he does so without the slightest inclination of the powers in which he obtrudes- oblivious of the impending doom of extinction he unwittingly shepherds to our doorstep.
The sample is insufficient. Though it is the key to everything that follows, it is not nearly enough to make use of it. There is a Crest in that blood, undocumented and unlike anything She has ever set into her bloodlines, and it is the thread by which I mean to unravel him. But a thread is not the noose in which we bring about his end. To replicate even a fraction of what flows through his veins, we require far more than the few stolen drops now in our keeping. My pawn was told as much. Whether more of it comes willingly, by cunning, or by force, it must come- and soon. For without it, the subjects remain offerings, and the answer to these outsiders remains out of reach.
And if She returns… If the Immaculate One is triumphant and the Fell Star takes form once more… then it will not matter at all.
x-x-x
The first student Mimir had counseled did not go entirely the way he’d expected.
But then again, what exactly was he expecting from the young raven-haired man sitting right in front of him?
Hubert sat across from the head on one of the student chairs, arms crossed and scowling which only added to his already discontented features. His long legs were crossed at the knee, one polished boot bouncing in a slow, impatient rhythm that he seemed entirely unaware of. Everything about the way he held himself made it plain that he considered this a waste of his time, and that he wanted Mimir to know it. The afternoon light came in thin through the window, catching the dust in the air and doing little to soften the young man’s perpetually sour mood. There was nothing nervous about him. Instead, he sat with the rigid stillness of someone enduring a formality beneath their dignity, his piercing pale eyes fixed somewhere just over Mimir's head behind the desk rather than on the head itself.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything at all. Hubert had clearly decided he would not be the one to break the silence, and that whatever was about to happen here, he intended to give it as little of himself as the mandatory nature of the session would allow.
Doh, this is the last I’ll ever offer a student to start only when they’re ready, Mimir thought bitterly to himself.
Who was he kidding, anyway? It wasn’t as if a lad like this one would ever volunteer so much as a word without having weighed it twice over. Mimir had counseled his share of reluctant souls in his long, strange existence, and he liked to think he could read the room well enough to know when patience would pay off, or when it would simply leave the both of them sitting there until the sun went down. This, he was beginning to suspect, was firmly the latter. He could wait Hubert out for an hour, two hours, the whole bloody evening, and the boy would happily oblige him by saying absolutely nothing the entire time, content to let the silence stretch on as proof of how little he needed any of this.
And unfortunately for the head, he didn’t have that time, being that the dark mage was the first of many who would be filing through that door before the day was done.
“So, um, are you sure there’s nothing you wanted to get off your chest, Master Vestra?” Mimir asked with a tut. “Anything at all?”
Hubert finally looks Mimir directly in the eyes, cocking his head with a humorless scoff. “Hmph. I would assume that the ‘mandatory counseling’ has already concluded?”
“Perhaps,” The head replied evenly. “Was there someplace you needed to be?”
The mage offered Mimir what he assumed to be a half smile. But it was the sort of smile that never reached the eyes, one that he was meant to make in conversation and could produce it on command. It vanished as quickly as it had come.
"There is always somewhere I need to be," Hubert said. "That is rather the point of being useful.”
"Aye, fair enough." Mimir conceded. “However, I'd be doing a poor job if I were to let you walk out that door thinking 'useful' was the whole measure of a man.”
“You believe I only think of myself as a mere tool?”
“That depends. You are the high empress's aide, nay? Does it not bother you a wee bit that the whole of your worth, by your own reckoning, rests on what you can do for another?”
The half smile remains, but something in Hubert's gaze shifted as though he was genuinely intrigued by his new professor's question.
“I see now.” The young man sneered. “You are attempting to provoke some manner of confession out of me.” He uncrosses his legs. “But unfortunately, it will take more than a simple line of questioning and provocations to satisfy your inquiry. The Archbishop may have required my attendance, however she said nothing of the sort that also requires my participation.”
Oh, he’s good, thought Mimir.
During his brief interaction with him back in Jeritza’s room, the lad had proven himself to be quite the slippery sort. Even with what the head knew now, Hubert has now made it clear that he has zero intention of giving away that could of beneficial use to him. The boy understood perfectly well that the head had pieced it all together, but that didn’t mean he had any right to more information than what the world’s smartest man alive already had. Mimir had known plenty of secretive individuals in his life, and it wouldn’t surprise him one bit if the student sitting in front of him had known things in which Edelgard herself could plausibly deny.
After a brief moment of silence, Hubert von Vestra shifted ever so slightly in his seat.
“Are we done here, Professor?”
The head sighed. “Aye, we are.”
Hubert doesn’t wait. He rises up, smoothing the front of his uniform with a single brisk motion before turning toward the door, evidently eager to put the whole tedious affair behind him. But before he's even able to take a step forward, Mimir calls out to him.
"Just one more question before you go, lad."
The young man paused, turning his head, but not his body.
“You say that being somewhere you needed to be was the point of being useful,” The norse god continued thoughtfully. “In that case, was helping us find Flayn one of those places? Or did you happen to be useful by sheer coincidence?”
His student was quiet for a moment. “Does the distinction matter? The girl was found. That is the part history will remember- if it remembers any of it at all.” He turns away again. “Farewell, Professor.”
With that, Hubert von Vestra strode silently and briskly out of the classroom, the door clicking shut behind him without another word. But the moment it closed, it opened up again; and Dorothea Arnault leaned in through the gap with a bright, coaxing smile, holding the door wide with one hand.
On the other side of the threshold, Petra had a firm grip on Bernadetta’s arm, half-guiding and half-dragging the reluctant girl across the floor while the shut-in dug her heels in with every step. Both young women wore the same reassuring smiles, the sort one might offer a spooked animal, and together they nudged the jittery noble closer and closer to the disembodied head waiting patiently at the desk.
Halfway there, they stopped. Seeing that she had no other choice, Bernadetta swallowed hard and made a valiant attempt to look composed, squaring her narrow shoulders as best she could. She managed a couple of steps forward on her own, her wide eyes locked directly onto Mimir’s waiting and patient golden ones. For a moment it seemed she might actually make it.
But she stops, and she inhales sharply through her nose, before letting out a squeaked, “Nope.”
She pivoted on the spot to flee- only to find Dorothea and Petra standing cheerfully directly behind her, shoulder to shoulder, and completely blocking the only way out. Before she even had a chance to try and advance through them, the songstress and the huntress each took the purple-haired archer by the shoulder and spun her around to face him again. They escorted her the remainder of the way to the awaiting chair.
After a not-so-graceful bit of maneuvering, they got Bernadetta settled down into the seat, one of them keeping a hand on her shoulder just long enough to be sure she wouldn’t spring right back up again. Dorothea straightened, flicking her rich brown hair over her shoulder, and flashed Mimir her signature diva grin.
“We’ll be outside in case you need us, Professor~” she said, and winked at him before the two girls turned to leave.
They filed out almost like a pair of prison guards leaving their prisoner behind to be tortured or interrogated- and based on Bernadetta’s expression, it certainly came off as though she was. The door swung shut with a soft click, and the poor girl flinched at the sound as though it had been the drop of a headsman’s axe.
They stared into one another’s gaze for an agonizingly long moment (at least from Bernie’s perspective). Mimir simply looked at her as though waiting for her to suddenly burst into tears, and the noble was terrified that to look away was to also invite something dreadful- as though the moment she broke eye contact, the head might lunge, or worse, start asking questions. So she kept staring, her whole body rigid as a fence post, her fingers knotted so tightly in her lap that the knuckles had gone white. Her eyes had begun to water from the sheer effort of not blinking, and still she held on.
My, my, she really is the timorous sort. Though, Mimir wasn’t surprised. Even with the brief interaction with her father back at the training grounds, and the limited amount of knowledge he’d learned about his daughter in the Church’s official records, the World’s Smartest Man Alive knew exactly what had led to this kind of irrational fear. Count Varley, in his pursuit of a profitable match for his house, had set about molding his daughter into the ideal noble bride- meek, obedient, and wholly incapable of refusing whatever was asked of her. And the way which he pursued said goals had been anything but out of love or genuine affection.
The head didn’t even need to imagine the kind of horrible things that had been done to the girl sitting stiffly in front of him. After all, in a world where Crests were treated as the true measure of a person’s worth, a child was rarely seen as a child at all. In most cases, they were assets- bargaining chips to be traded for land, power, wealth, or favors; but oftentimes for all of the above.
Even for some nobles like Ingrid- whom he’d learned was still loved by her father- she’d been forced to use her own Crest for the benefit of her family out of a genuine, if misguided, sense of necessity. House Galatea’s lands were poor and its coffers poorer, and so the burden of restoring the family’s fortunes had been laid squarely on the shoulders of a daughter, who was expected to marry well and marry soon for the good of everyone who depended on her. But this was not done out of malice, however. In fact, in some ways, that almost made it sadder- a father who loved his child and still could not help but see her, in his most desperate moments, as the solution to his house’s troubles.
But if that was the brighter end of that spectrum, then Bernadetta sat at the very darkest. Where Ingrid’s cage had at least been built by loving hands, the girl before Mimir had been shut in hers by a man who felt nothing of the sort. There had been no reluctant necessity in what was done to her, no anguished father wrestling with an impossible choice. There had only been a cold, deliberate campaign to strip a child of her will and reshape what was left into something that could be sold for his own profits.
And so what was Mimir to do in such a delicate situation? Well, the answer to that, as he’d learned long ago, was rather simple.
“My, you seem awfully tense there, Miss Varley,” the head observed cheerfully, as though remarking on the weather.
Bernadetta flinched hard enough to nearly come out of her chair, a tiny squeak escaping her before she could clamp down on it. Her face flushed a deep shade of red, and her eyes went even wider than before, if such a thing were possible.
“D-d-d-do I?” she stammered. “I mean- no! I mean- yes? I mean- oh gosh, is it that obvious? It’s that obvious, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I always do this, I get all stiff and weird and then people notice and then it’s even worse and then I- I-” She sucked in a quick breath, her words tumbling over one another in a frantic little heap. “I-it’s not you! You seem very nice! For a- for a, um, a severed and glowy- sorry, sorry, that was rude, wasn’t it? Oh, Bernie, why did you say that-”
The girl continued to babble on, and the Norse god couldn’t help but smile inwardly. Now that the awful, brittle atmosphere had been shattered, the words came pouring out of her like water through a broken dam, and he had no intention of stopping her. Even if a frightened animal was talking nonsense, talking in circles, or just outright rambling itself hoarse, it was still far better than the frozen, clammed-up creature that had been dragged through his door only minutes ago.
In fact, to his own surprise, Mimir was actually starting to enjoy himself. Not because he liked watching the young noble talk her way out of every self-inflicted pit of apologies and explanations, but because someone else was finally doing most of the talking for him.
It was a rare and welcome novelty, truth be told. Besides Atreus, Kratos had initially been the only other living soul throughout his tenure as a severed head to spend any real length of time in his company, and very rarely did the Ghost of Sparta ever feel the need to say much of anything at all. Sure, the big oaf had learned to come out of his own shell over the years, and the other children had been a much-welcomed addition to his relatively small social outlet. But to have a one-sided conversation with the other side was a form of respite that Mimir himself didn’t know he even needed.
Finally, in the midst of her unending stream of chatter, Bernadetta von Varley suddenly drew in a deep breath, like a swimmer who’d just broken the surface after too long underwater. She held it a moment, her whole body going still, and Mimir half-expected her to launch straight back into another dizzying round of apologies.
Instead, she let it out slowly and, in a small, wavering voice, asked, “Pr-professor? Can I ask you something?”
The head, caught slightly off guard by the girl’s sudden, albeit curious, interest in him, hesitated. It was the first thing she’d said all session that seemed aimed at anything beyond her own frantic self-defense, and he found himself oddly wary of what might follow.
“Yes…?” he answered carefully.
Bernadetta’s fingers twisted together in her lap. Her gaze flicked up toward the top of his head, then darted away, then crept back again, as though she couldn’t quite work up the nerve to let it land. She swallowed.
“Can- Can I touch your horns?”
To say that Mimir was baffled by such a question would have been a considerable understatement. Of all the things he’d braced himself for- another torrent of apologies, some tearful confession about her father, a full-blown panic that sent her bolting for the door- a sincere and rather bashful request to handle his horns had not once crossed his mind. The head simply blinked at her for a moment, his usual quick wit failing to produce anything at all as he tried and failed to work out how, exactly, the conversation had arrived at this particular destination.
“I…” He began, with a look that he could only assume was somewhere between being both honored and bashful. “I am sorry to say, miss Varley, I will have to decline that request.” He then quickly added, “But I must say, I am quite tickled that you of all the students here would ask me for something like that.”
Bernadetta nodded rigorously. “R-right! It was silly of me to ask, I was only curious because- because they look really neat! Yeah! Um, real- really unique! And I was just wondering what they, uh, felt like. Not for any particular reason! Just, you know, general- general curiosity! The normal kind! That normal people have!” She laughed, a thin, unconvincing little sound, and her eyes darted away toward the corner of the room. “It’s not like I was going to write it down or anything.”
Mimir’s brow arched ever so slightly.
“Write it down, you say?” he repeated mildly.
“What? No! I didn’t say that! Why would I say that? I don’t write things down! I definitely don’t have a- a notebook! Or several notebooks! Hidden under my- forget I said that too!”
The head watched her flounder for a moment longer, having already figured out what she was trying (and miserably failing) to hide. But instead of pressing her on it, Mimir decides to shift the direction elsewhere, intent on using the opportunity to learn a little bit more about the girl sitting in front of him.
“So lass, have you… always had this fascination for the obscure?”
The question surprised Bernadetta, and for a moment the reflexive panic didn’t come. She blinked at him, her mouth opening, then closing, then opening again.
“I- I guess so?” she managed. “I mean, I like a lot of- of weird stuff, I suppose. Plants! I really like dangerous plants, especially the ones nobody else goes anywhere near. And- and I like sewing! I make my own dolls sometimes, and, um, painting, though they never come out quite right-” She caught herself, shoulders hitching up toward her ears. “S-sorry, that’s probably really boring, isn’t it? People always say I get too into the- the odd things-”
“Not boring in the slightest,” Mimir encouraged her. “And besides, I am probably the last individual here who will tell you something is too outlandish, or anything of the sort.” He makes a gesture with his eyes as though to indicate his own severed head. “Do you catch me meaning?”
Bernadetta followed the gesture, her eyes grazing over the impossible sight of her- the glowing gold eyes, the horns, the simple fact of a head carrying on a conversation with no body to speak of- and for the first time since she’d been dragged through that door, the smallest, most tentative of smiles tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“…Yeah,” she said softly. “I guess you’re not exactly normal either, huh?”
Now we are getting somewhere, Mimir tells himself, and he offers her a warm smile. “Not even a wee bit, lass.” He then clears his throat. “Now then, what are these ‘dangerous plants’ that you speak so fondly of?”
x-x-x
Edelgard von Hresvelg sat the cot inside her dorm room, knees spread and supporting her elbows as she leaned forward into her knuckles. In front of her, Hubert paced back and forth within the small space, fingers pinching his chin while his brow furrowed in thought. He had been at it for some time now, and the Empress had long since given up on telling him to sit. When Hubert’s mind was turning over a problem this way, there was little to be done but let it turn.
“You are certain he knows everything?” The dark mage said in a grave, hushed tone.
His liege was quiet for a moment, her gaze fixed on some middle distance beyond the floorboards as she turned the question over in her head.
“Not everything,” she said finally. “He knows the Flame Emperor’s identity, and he is at least aware of my partial involvement regarding some of the incidents that occurred throughout the year. However, I cannot say with confidence just how much he has managed to piece together beyond that. Whether he suspects the full extent of what I intend, or merely the shape of it, I have no way of knowing.”
“But he has stated that you both share a similar end-goal.” Hubert reasoned. “If that is to be true, then would the amount of knowledge he claims to possess be deemed irrelevant?”
The young woman shook her head. “Would that it were so simple.” Edelgard leaned back slightly, her expression grave. “A shared destination does not guarantee a shared road, Hubert. Two people may both wish to see Fódlan freed from the Church’s grip and still find themselves bitterly opposed on the matter of what freeing it requires. I have made my peace with the price that must be paid. However…”
Her aide raised a brow, but allowed her to continue.
“What he has offered has given me much to consider.” She let the words settle, her gaze drifting toward the window and the fading light beyond it. “He does not simply ask me to abandon my cause. He claims he can show me another way to reach it- one that does not demand such a hefty price. He has also offered his protection. His and the brigand’s against the very serpents whose favor I have been forced to court.”
Hubert’s pacing slowed. “A generous offer. Suspiciously so.”
“That is precisely what concerns me,” Edelgard admitted. “And yet, I find I cannot dismiss it out of hand.” She stood and walked over the sun-filtered window, hands clasped behind her back as she stared ponderously outside.
“Consider what he is, Hubert. Professor Mimir is a higher being who does not age, and does not die. He has accumulated the wisdom of several lifetimes, longer than any kingdom on this continent has ever lasted. He told me plainly that he wants the same thing I do- to see a world where an individual’s worth is no longer dictated by the blood in their veins. And unlike me…” Her voice dropped, something almost rueful passing across her features. “He is not bound by the handful of years I have left.”
She fell silent for a moment. Then she reached up and took a handful of her snow white hair, holding it up so that she could see the sunlight glinting off of its pigment-less texture.
“But how many more like us must suffer before that world is made real?” she murmured, almost to herself. “Can we really afford to wait even a little bit longer, and allow all of this to continue because our teacher truly believes it is the best course to take?” Her hand fell back to her side, the white strands slipping through her fingers. “But what if he is right? Am I truly so pressed for time, that I am unwilling to see change be made well after I am gone? And will the change that I seek even manifest the way as intended once that terrible price has been paid?”
She was breathing heavily now, and the soon-to-be-Empress shot a sideward glance at her aide, who’d all but remained still throughout her entire monologue while returning her gaze with that cold, calculated and expecting stare. She felt confused. She felt unsure of herself. But why? Why does she suddenly feel torn between the promise of a future she and her dearly departed siblings had already bled for, and the promise of one she had never let herself imagine? Why did she allow a severed head to enter her world and turn everything up on its head? This was not how it was supposed to go. By rights, their existence here felt like nothing more than divine meddling, if such a thing even existed.
And perhaps that was the cruelest part of it. For all her life, Edelgard had built her resolve upon one, absolute certainty: that no one was coming to save her. Not the Church who upheld the very system she despised, not the nobles like her who’d stripped her father of his powers and ability to protect his family, and especially not some god made into flesh who could show her the way. Edelgard, for all her strength and conviction, had long ago accepted that salvation was a fantasy sold to the weak to keep them docile.
But now, it seems, she is the one who has been made to feel weak. And she despised it. She despised how a single conversation with that severed head had reached past every wall she’d spent a lifetime building and set a tremor running through the bedrock beneath them. She despised that some traitorous corner of her heart had latched onto his words and refused to let go. Most of all, she despised that for the first time in longer than she could remember, she wanted something she had sworn never to want again: To finally be understood.
Slowly, she turned to face Hubert again.
“Hubert?” She asked him evenly. “Do you think that Professor Mimir can be trusted?”
The mage did not answer for a good long moment, though Edelgard knew that this was not due to hesitation. Hubert von Vestra was a man who’d only considered the logical- the fine line between what is proven and what is merely hoped for- and he would not insult her with an answer he had not first considered from every angle. He was not a man who’d never once taken morality or personal feelings into account; instead only thinking about the methods in which he can achieve his highness’s goals. Though she would never hear him say it, in a way, Professor Mimir had been correct in his assumption about Hubert from earlier. He was a tool. And he was not ashamed of it. The only shame he felt was when he’d failed to save Lady Edelgard all those years ago, and had been powerless to stop the horrors that consumed her.
In the end, he couldn’t have cared less what the head had to say about him, god or no god. It didn’t matter to him whether Mimir thought him a soulless instrument or a man who had simply chosen his purpose and served it without complaint. Such judgments were weightless things, and Hubert had never once lost sleep over the opinion another held of his character. What mattered- the only thing that had ever mattered- was the question set before him now. What mattered was what the two outsiders could do, what they might do, and which path carried the least risk to the woman he’d bound his entire existence to.
“I think,” Hubert said slowly, “it would be a mistake to make enemies of our long-time ‘friends.’” His pale eyes fixed on hers without a hint of doubt. “However… I also believe it to be a more unwise decision to make enemies out of both our new professors. Wouldn’t you agree?”