guardians_song: (Fire Emblem OTP)
guardians_song ([personal profile] guardians_song) wrote2012-11-23 06:12 pm

Accidents (PG-13, Morphs-centric, Angst/Tragedy)

Summary: Nothing was an accident.
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Kishuna, Sonia, Ephidel
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Word Count: 901
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem and all related characters belong to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.


Its creator despised its very presence. Its existence made a ruin of  nature’s most basic laws. Its very being was an abomination.

It was nothing more than an accident which had gone long uncorrected, but now would be wiped away at last.

Kishuna dodged the blades and arrows that flew at it out of instinct, but, with no way to counterattack, its efforts eventually proved futile. It did not mind. This fate was inevitable. It was what its master had decreed.

Go somewhere and rot away into dust.

“Nergal…”
***

It had been an accident that the Angel of Death had been brought into contact with a girl that corrupted his loyalty, eroded his efficiency, and muddled his clear thinking with nonsense about ‘feelings’.

It had been an accident that Zephiel lived, and the girl and Jaffar with him.

It had been an accident that, when she had slain Brendan Reed, she had not moved quickly enough to dodge his final blow.

There would be no more accidents, she promised herself, narrowing her eyes at the brat and the traitor as they approached, already starting on her incantation of the Fimbulvetr spell. She would destroy them utterly, and deliver their surely-meager quintessence to Lord Nergal as compensation for the loss of the Angel of Death. And Eliwood and the rest of his worthless associates would follow them to the grave. 

It was not an accident when Jaffar’s twin blades tore into her innards, and their owner made it away from her spell unscathed.

It was not an accident when Nino’s own Fimbulvetr spell sent spears of ice ripping through her flesh, and her retaliation did not so much as stagger the girl in return.

And it was not an accident that Limstella, accursed puppet that she was, showed up too late to assist her, but not too late to taunt a dying… fellow puppet.

No, she knew before the end, it all resulted from her own errors. Her own… catastrophic errors. 

In the end, as she felt her limbs begin to crumble into sand and the darkness to rush in upon her vision, it came almost as a relief.

Better oblivion than the knowledge of her own imperfection.
***

This plan had been perfect! Fool-proof! How were they to know the boy would come rushing in?

How had the boy even managed to be near enough that, once he sensed the ritual, he could interrupt it in time?

It wasn’t his fault! Ephidel cried desperately. It was an accident! It was an accident of the most stupid, unavoidable sort!

And, as the open Gate collapsed and ripped him and the Dragon from the fabric of this world, he reflected bitterly, with what might have been his last moment of conscious thought, that it didn’t matter that it was all an accident.

He would still pay the price.
***

Nothing was an accident.

Her own empowerment by Lord Nergal was not an accident of nature, but the result of countless centuries of planning and gathering quintessence, now all channeled into one being, who could have battled on an even footing with the mighty dragons of old. Her inevitable decomposition by nightfall tomorrow would also be no accident, but only the unavoidable consequence of magical law. That Lord Nergal, despite his words, had so little faith in her that he had already prepared an army of eight great Morphs and their helpers with which to taunt and torment Eliwood of Pherae when she failed… That, too, was no accident of whatever gods had shaped his inclinations, but the result of over a millennium of disillusionment, disappointment, and dissatisfaction with the yawning chasm between what had been and what should have been. Naturally he expected her to fail. How could her master do otherwise?

The strength of Eliwood’s forces was likewise no accident; they had honed their skills over countless brutal battles, and now brought them all to bear against her forces, their beings almost bursting with quintessence as they charged forth. Were her mind not weighted with the knowledge of her own onrushing death, she would have taken the time to appreciate the exquisite beauty of their power; instead, she watched it dully, and readied herself to claim as much essence as she could for her master before she herself fell. She could do no more.

When the Falcoknights swooped down upon her, the sunlight glinting with painful brightness off their spears, and the trembling scholar stepped forward from the army’s ranks, pulled his hood over his face to cast all his features into shadow, and, as he stopped shaking, squared his shoulders, and straightened his spine, launched into a deep, resonant incantation, the sigil of a crescent moon appearing briefly in the air before him as he gathered the dark energies… those were no accidents, as well

In the end, for all of her effort and all of her power, her failure proved inevitable. There were no ‘accidents’ here - no misstep that she could have avoided, no opportunity that she had failed to take, no detail that, if not neglected, could have carried the day. She had done her utmost, and, due to her nature as a construct,  her failure did not testify to the weakness of a ‘self’ granted by unseen, unknown gods, but only the inadequacy of her lord, master, and creator. 

Yet that did not stop her sorrow.