Chapter Text
The fire crackled in the hearth.
“You could do without eating so much in a day,” Chrom motioned without bite. “There’s only so much gold on me.”
“Do you have enough?” Robin raised his head for a brief moment. Without waiting for him to answer, he lowered his gaze and swallowed half a tankard of ale. “Another mug of mead.”
Chrom waved for the serving girl and she scuttled to the kitchens, bringing a chipped tankard and placing it next to its three empty brethren on the table. Robin took the tankard, brought it to his lips, and the froth sloshed gracefully down his throat.
“Careful with the alcohol.”
“I don’t get drunk.” He teethed out the last word in exaggerated spite, clapping the mug onto the table, hard. “We’re leaving.”
“The night’s still early.”
“I don’t like it when people stare at you.” He said simply, waving for Chrom to wheel him away. As he passed the stairs he turned towards at a dark corner and waited for the serving girl to flinch. She scurried away, clutching the edges of her shirt, but not before smiling at Chrom and brushing away a strand of her hair.
The ale was good, Robin thought to himself, and said no more on the matter as Chrom took him to their inn and brought them to their rooms. Their rooms, separated thinly, stood next to each other. Robin shut himself in in earnest. Chrom hesitated, fingertips cold, and knocked on the door before entering.
Nothing felt off in the room. He sighed in relief, chastising himself internally for the superstition. Still, he paced awhile before sleeping, and when he woke up to the soft tinkering of snow on glass he froze and looked at the night sky.
It wasn’t snow. White wisps floated like rain beyond the windows, drifting along in chase of the breeze. He swore he saw the blackness of a pupil blink at him, attached to one of the tendrils that left a lingering trail of frost on the glass.
He stood up gingerly, took his sword, and as quietly as he could made his way in front of Robin’s door.
Robin answered at the second knock. Hair mussed from sleep, he let Chrom in without explanation and closed the door behind him.
He drew what little was left of the curtains shut, natural as ever, and flicked his tail towards the bed. “Sleep.”
It was a single bed, shoddy, but big enough to fit one and a half. Two if they tried. The sheets were stained from age and wear, roughspun. Robin did not register his complaint. Chrom sat on the mattress and as he was reasoning with himself the moral implications of taking Robin’s bed, caught the bundle of blankets thrown towards him.
The room was dark except for a strip of moonlight painting the walls through the gap in the tattered curtains. He laid unsteadily in bed, drew the blankets over himself, and felt Robin squirrel onto the bed behind him. Immediately, he tensed, but could say no more.
“Sleep.” Robin repeated, the heat of his wings pressed against Chrom’s back. His feathers spilled over Chrom’s waist and neck, but Chrom stayed still and said nothing. “Don’t look. It’ll be gone by morning.”
He flushed. This close, Robin smelt of ashes and rain, and while he barely had the room to squirm in bed he could do nothing but lay helplessly as the smooth texture of his scales glided over his skin, separated by nothing but a thin layer of fabric. His breathing quickened. Was it fear, or something else, he would never know.
Unwittingly, he drifted off, and dreamt of a deep coldness that soaked him to the bone.
Someone tugged on his arm. He rolled over, groaning. A damp, bony thing left his sleepy embrace. When he threw off the covers and saw Robin grimacing at a wet spot on his wing he instinctively wiped at the corner of his mouth.
The sun dashed itself harshly on Robin’s hair, lighting up half of his face as it did the many days before. They had been traveling for over a week now, nearing two. Robin dried his feathers on the soiled sheets.
“Did my wings taste good?”
“…” They did.
Chrom crawled out of bed, spitting a wet plume out of his mouth.
He got dressed in a simple shirt and trousers, put his sword by his belt, and left some coin on the register before leaving the inn.
The sky was clear outside. The horses bickered in front of him and he flicked his whip without strength, watching the clouds disperse in the wind as the carriage shivered over a bump in the road.
“What was it that we saw last night?” He grasped at a butterfly that had flitted its way in front of him and missed.
“Nothing too dangerous,” came Robin’s muffled reply, “as long as you don’t touch them or make eye contact.” After some deliberation, he added. “They taste terrible.”
“It didn’t seem as if the innkeep saw it.”
“Most people can’t. But most people don’t carry the blood of the dragons, either.”
He sat on the coachman’s seat, arse sore from the hard wooden bench. A bead of sweat trickled down from his neck. The sun was high, and baked the dirt into hard, crusted pavement. The carriage rocked as it cluttered its way back to Ylisstol.
“Hey.” Chrom said suddenly. “Do you think we’re blood related?”
“That’s nonsense. You were descended from a divine dragon.”
“It’s not impossible. All dragons were made from Naga’s blood, at least that’s what the maesters teach. We might be distant relatives, don’t you think?”
“Not all.” Robin sprawled between the seats, head knocked against the carriage walls. “In the beginning, there were two. Naga, and…” He tapped his finger against the window frame in annoyance. “His name. What was it again?”
“Grima,” Chrom supplied helpfully. “The fell dragon. The first exalt slayed Him, the creatures of darkness lost their strength and peace returned to the three kingdoms of olde, et cetera, et cetera.”
“No. Grima… That’s not how it went.” He frowned. “…I can’t remember anything. Nothing at all.”
He stared into the sky. At a loss of words, Chrom spurred the horses forward, and took towards Ylisstol.
-
There was a commotion outside the castle gates. Chrom took the lesser known way, hiding Robin behind closed curtains, and snuck him up to his room. Afterwards he shook off his peasant’s tunic for a finer shirt and doublet and hastily went ahead to the throne room. To his surprise he saw his sisters standing at the center. Emmeryn looked troubled.
“All dead. Not even an hour after we locked them up. When I went and checked their pulses, I’d found that they’d been dead for days.” Lissa noticed him and stopped abruptly. “Chrom!”
“What happened?” His story would have to wait. “I saw the prison carts at the castle gates. Brigands, again?”
Lissa shook her head. “Spies for Plegia. We found them smuggling weapons by the Feroxian border. None of them are Plegian by ethnicity, but they spoke only fluent Plegian.”
His sister had been on an expedition with the Shepherds in the months past. He would have led them personally, of course, if Emmeryn hadn’t requested him to stay and satisfy his princely duties. A prince does not romp around in the countryside all year round, Chrom.
Months of leading an army did no wonders on Lissa. She had a faint scar on her left cheek, still pink and leading nastily down her neck. The pads of her fingers were roughened from holding a staff. Not that it would matter. She would be wed by the council to another lord’s house at a ripe age, though Chrom knew she would have preferred a life of soldiery instead.
“Chrom. Are you listening?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t.” He replied apologetically. His sister seemed so far away when she spoke like this. “You brought the bodies back for examination, then?”
“As I was saying.” Lissa pursed her lips. “I’m going to take a better look with the equipment at the castle, so if you want in before I dissect them, now’s the time.” She looked at Emmeryn. “Emm? Are you coming? It might be just a little too gory to your liking, though.”
Emmeryn nodded tiredly. “I trust your expertise.”
“Bro, let’s go.” She twirled her staff in her hand and touched the wound on her face, grinning. “You won’t believe some of the stuff I saw while I was gone. You know, the river in the west…”
He pushed down the urge to ruffle her hair like he always did and followed her down to the healers’ wing. It smelled of ethanol and a mixture of herbs that he didn’t like much or recognize. As he approached, the overpowering stench of decay stung his nostrils, as well as the smell of cinnabar and basil to preserve the corpses.
An apprentice came and fetched the keys to where the bodies were kept. Hesitating between Lissa and Chrom, he settled with handing them to Chrom. Chrom saw Lissa’s expression sour and laughed, holding out the keys to her.
“You’ll be the master of this place when you gain a few more inches.”
She grumbled. “Just open the door.”
The metal key felt unnaturally cool in his hand. He slotted it into the keyhole, drew the bolts aside, and for a heartbeat thought himself outside the kitchen back at the inn, the iron door creaking open with the same, dying rasp.
It wasn’t the same though. They had chose a windowless cellar to remove the bodies from the heat. Despite the effort, the corpses were half rotten. The wounds they had were minor, and they laid stiffly as if their soul had been sucked out while they had been doing the most mundane of things.
A bowl of incense burned to keep the flies out. The smoke snaked up from the crushed herbs and dispersed. Chrom beckoned for Lissa, gesturing for a candle. All he felt was a handful of cold wind, and the only source of light went out in a deafening slam of the door.
His stomach did a nauseating flip. “Lissa,” he called carefully, “Are you there?”
The only thing he saw was the a red dot in the distance, from a hole where the incense burned in its container. It was mesmerizing. His attention was drawn to it, like a moth to a flame, but his body backed itself against the door and found it sealed. The surface was damp with a chilly substance that drew warmth from him.
His vision adjusted to see the slick sheen of mana trail off from the hinges, along the floor, then dribbling cooly from the tables, where the corpses laid. It was exceptionally cold, a cold that inspired a deep, instinctual fear in him. He walked forward, towards the single, red flame that licked quietly inside its holder.
He exhaled, not remembering when he had started holding his breath at all, and without warning a black shadow passed the flame.
Someone had walked past it. He could not see who, in the pitch darkness. It had happened so fast that he had thought it was his imagination, and the quietness that followed seemed to confirm this. Still, a prickling sensation numbed his spine and made his head throb.
Then he felt the wind move on his back. He spun in a pirouette, scabbard and blade making a shrill sound in the silence. His sword arced in a perfect circle, displacing air in an empty whoosh. He didn’t stop and struck again, shuffling a half-step forward, and this time his wrist nearly faltered as it squelched through hard muscle.
He heard something plop onto the floor wetly. There, if there were enough light, he might have seen some dark entrails slither lifelessly from his opponent. He blindly swung upwards and caught what he thought should be the ribs. Robin’s phantom voice crooned lowly in his memory. Through the heart.
It died soundlessly. He pulled the tip of his sword from its chest and let it thud onto its own guts. His boots sloshed in what might have been blood, or mana, or both. He listened for a sign, a grunt of pain, a ragged breath, but a rigid hand grabbed at his left arm and he sliced it clean off at the wrist. Right. Dead people don’t breathe.
He squeezed his eyes shut. His hearing sharpened, he rammed the hilt into the body on his right, speared the one on his left, twisted, and yanked it out in time to avoid a drunken blow to his head. It instead hit his shoulder and he was up again, nailing the corpse through the left lung and kicking it aside.
More came. He sensed them by their movements, running his sword into their skulls, their bellies, searching out their hearts methodically. A body hooked him in the jaw and he responded by drawing a slit from its stomach to chest, but there hadn’t been enough reach. It grabbed him by the arm and threw him onto the floor, another rose from the tables and kicked him below the ribs. Pain flared through his sides. He couldn’t afford to flinch. It took a fountain pen from the desks and aimed. He rolled. It stabbed into the floor beside him.
His neck and back was drenched in slimy, icy sludge. He gripped his sword. The corpse cornered him, a hand grabbing his jaw, the other roughly searching for his eye socket. Before it could dig its finger in he wrenched his sword and it bit square into its neck, lopping the ugly thing off. The body slackened for a blessed second, he got to his feet, and the corpse moved again. This time he sheared its hand off, along with sliding his blade between its ribs. He sensed a fist behind him. Falchion struck it with ease and teased the dead organ out from its chest.
It was over as swiftly as it had started. Or at least he hoped it was, for the sludge that had doused his back was starting to burn in way that he couldn’t differentiate between whether it was numbingly frigid or searingly hot. He slid from the wall to the floor, shriveling into himself, arms hugging his side to keep in the heat.
Falchion was warm, but could not ward off the mana that crawled over him as if it were alive. It rolled from his back to his neck, condensing onto his skin in a thin layer. His mouth tasted like lead. He thought he might have swallowed some.
He tried to get to his feet, but a terrible fatigue overcame him and he could do no further than shrink farther into himself. If he died here… Robin. No, he has to get up. At least, tell Emm, to spare him…
The lock clicked. Sunlight blearily diffused onto his shivering body, and onto the cadavers strewn on the floor. Lissa bursted into the room, blabbering in concern, her staff thrumming with magic. He didn’t pay attention to what she was saying.
“Draw up a bath for me.” He found himself waving at a servant. “I’m freezing.”
“Brother!”
“It’s fine.” He stared blankly into the space behind Lissa. “I’ll explain after I rest.”
She opened her mouth to protest, and closed it. His injuries were minor, anyways. The mana had sapped away his warmth and his strength along with it. In a dreamlike haze, he wandered his way to the private baths and soaked blearily in it, almost nodding off as he scrubbed himself off. Wiping his hair off, he found his own room by autopilot and collapsed onto his bed.
Robin raised his head. “Where’d you been?”
It took him a long time to process those words. “My sister.”
“You smell disgusting.”
He didn’t have the strength to sniff at himself. “Don’t eat her,” he said blearily. “I’m going to sleep.”
He slid under the covers. With his last remaining shred of consciousness, he saw Robin get up and pad to his bed.
“Where were you, just now?”
“The morgue. ’S nothing important.” He yawned. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Get up.”
“I said, it’s nothing important.”
“Sit up.” When Chrom showed no sign of compliance, he pulled away the covers and yanked him to sit irritatedly at the edge of the bed. “Open your mouth.”
Chrom huh’d in response. “Wh—!”
A hand threaded into his still-damp hair to steady his head, Robin had shoved his thumb into Chrom’s mouth and pressed down into his blunt human canine, hard, until a flavorful metallic tang filled his tongue and he unconsciously licked Robin’s thumb as it stopped bleeding.
“Swallow.”
He dutifully did as he was told. As he did, a scorching sensation burned down his throat, followed with a pleasant coolness that swirled in his abdomen.
“Do you feel anything?”
Chrom furrowed his brows. “Nothing. It—”
He doubled over. A sharp pang twisted in his stomach, stabbing in deeper, deeper, spreading like fire to his chest. He tried to speak but couldn’t in his agony. He fisted into his sheets, another hand clutching at his chest.
Above him, Robin clicked his tongue. He knelt so that he could look Chrom in the eye. Chrom looked at him pleadingly, clawing syllables out from his parched throat. Robin drew his tongue over his teeth.
Pinching close Chrom’s nose with two fingers, he leaned into him, near enough for his breath to ghost hotly over his skin, and closed the gap with his lips.