Dragons' Blood: A Fire Emblem Awakening Novelization

Chapter 20: Lucina

"Elysa!"

She sat limply on the dusty road before the palace, as grey clouds began to gather overhead.

"Can you hear me? Elysa?! Gods, damn it all..." Chrom scooped her up in his arms, tossed her across Daisy's saddle, and swung up after her. Elysa felt heavy, as if she could sense her own deadweight on the pegasus's back.

"Milord," Cordelia was wide-eyed and shaken by the rapid progression of events that had just unfolded, but her composure persisted. "Do we turn and fight?"

"No," Chrom tightened his grip around Elysa, wrapping one arm around her and taking up Daisy's reins in his free hand. "Make for the border, as quickly as you can – we shouldn't fight on their turf."

"Chrom, it's nearly an hour's ride to the nearest crossing onto Ylissean land," Sully protested. "Best we don't let these bastards run us—"

"It's not up for debate," Chrom snapped. "Go!"

Elysa lurched in the saddle as Daisy took off, hooves pounding on the road. Her uncertainty with Chrom at the reins made her hesitant to leave the ground, but the lack of responsiveness from her mistress gave her little choice but to move.

The dull, rhythmic thumping of the horses and pegasus sprinting down the road blurred with the sound of Elysa's heartbeat, steadily beating like a drum. With each reverberation, she felt colder and emptier, even as the shadows of the Plegian palace began to diminish into the distance.

It was a hollowness that she knew, one that she had felt before. The overwhelming sense of déjà vu sought its source, and she saw, in a flash of memory, a grassy field under a barely clouded day. The scene was replaced with a rapid sequence of still, obscure images: a battle of some sort, Validar flying through the air, a massive explosion of purple lightning, Chrom's body laying prone on the ground... and then the scent and soft sensation of grass all around her again. Then Grima's voice purred in her mind.

Let me in, my child.

In a massive flood, her memories came back to her. Everything as Tharja had told her of her mother, the journey away from Plegia in her youth – it surged back as if she were breaking through the water's surface to come up for air. She remembered the day Chrom and Lissa had found her, wandering the countryside as she sojourned away from Tharja, seeking her freedom, and encountered the dark figure cloaked in her own visage.

Clever girl. It comes back to you. I have tried once before, to take you under my wings; but you resisted, foolishly. The damages to your mind are of your own doing, don't you see? You would not take my consciousness — our consciousness, so you lost your own...

No, she thought, no, you took it from me. And now you've taken Lucina away from me.

To be empty is to be receptive; impartial. Your destiny is far greater than any mortal bond that you could possibly forge.

"Get out of my head!" she screamed, aloud, without realizing it. She shook herself violently, and Chrom tightened his arm around her, pulling her to his chest.

"I have you," he said firmly, "I have you, and Grima will not take you, you hear me?"

She clung desperately to the sound of his voice, which finally reached her ears. She reached back, taking a fistful of his cloak in her hands, and looked up at him, fighting to stay rooted in reality and peel herself from the shadows.

"She's gone, Chrom... she's gone."

"She's not gone," Chrom swallowed, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. "But she's safe, safer than she could ever be anywhere else." Elysa pressed her face to his chest and stifled her tears.