Chương 17: [1-11] Lolipopery

"Break to the right!" Hague shouted. This was his true plan from the start. Charging Kaynes was a feint, intended to make Ignez back off. If Hague's goal was only to hold a chokepoint, he could've stayed in the city, but attempting to wall the enemies with his scant resources would never work. That's why he looked to the eastern part of the map, with its narrow bridge across the river that snaked along the right side of the Floating City. That's where his hope lay.

It all came back to Sophia's taunt: You'll see it soon enough, but when you do, it'll be too late. He'd been turning those words over and over in his head. Regardless of her cruelty, she must mean something by that. What about this map was Hague missing, what crucial piece of info couldn't he see? It obviously wasn't anything on the map. He'd checked and double-checked the enemy skills, weapons, stats; no oversights there.

It couldn't be Truth, since Hague clearly knew about Truth, he fucking dragged her all this way for a reason. (Or Gaspar dragged her, same diff.) Maybe Sophia meant something like recruiting Piru-Piru or Ignez, or talking Kaynes into a truce, but those he now knew were nonstarters. Then Hague realized. There was another way to change the map state in Fire Emblem: reinforcements. Like the assassin Bontempelli, who showed up to ruin Hague's day. Most of the time, reinforcements were enemies. But not always.

Sometimes, reinforcements helped the player. On this map, for instance, the pegasus girls might fly down onto the battlefield to fight Kaynes. But they definitely wouldn't be Hague's allies—NPCs at best—and he doubted they'd win the battle for him. Besides, they were so obvious no shot Sophia was talking about them. Who else, then? Then Kaynes mentioned Lady Sieglinde. Signy. Adelheid's best and only friend. Named over and over but yet to appear.

If she was Adelheid's friend, then hearing the wall explode (which anyone anywhere within miles of the city would've heard) surely made her come running, at the very least to assess the situation. The question was, where would she appear? Tuatoru gave that whole story about climbing down the right side of the city. (Hague distinctly remembered he said the right side, because he'd imagined himself climbing down and that was how he visualized it.) Given how much time elapsed in the ruined cathedral, it was almost certain Signy had reached the bottom by now. So if she was going to join the fight, she'd come from outside the city, on the right side. Exactly where Hague directed his soldiers now. To an extent, pinning his hopes on Signy was a gamble. Would she show up where he expected? Would she show up at all? What class was she? Could she even fight? (Based on what he heard, he could at least assume she had the Knack.) Despite these risks, the potential upside was enormous. If she happened to be a healer he won the map right then and there. Even if not, if she brought a single potion his odds increased drastically. Obviously, Hague couldn't rely on those being the case. However! Tuatoru mentioned something else, didn't he? The acting troupe Signy escaped with. They had someone to help them climb down the cliff, right? A mage. And a mage, Hague knew what they could do. Two new units, increasing the size of his army by half.

With Truth, with the pegasus knights, with Tuatoru's Exchange Rate skill, he might just be able to make it work. But he needed those reinforcements to show up first, and he needed them to show up near him, before he got cut off by Kaynes's army. And as an ultimate fallback: Hague still hadn't tried retreating from the map yet. From what Kaynes said, setting the boundaries of the gameboard "trapped" Adelheid, but Hague saw no physical barrier surrounding them. Maybe there was an invisible forcefield, maybe not.

But if everything else went wrong, positioning to the east gave him the best odds of actually escaping if he managed to flee the gameboard, since dipping back into the city would only pen them into a corner at this point. In the end though, his life was on the line. A million worries blitzed around Hague's head, a million ways it could all go wrong, but he needed to take his best percentage shot. If it was going to work at all, it would only work if he committed fully to it. So he committed.

He and Tuatoru performed another rescue chain on Adelheid to move her to the front of their line as they filed along the narrow ledge between the river and the watchtower. Couldn't have Addy falling behind, not with Bontempelli and Piru-Piru breathing down their necks. Adelheid wound up getting dropped on the bridge, a humble wooden arch just wide enough for a horse and cart to pass.

Despite the recently (geologically speaking) diverted river, the bridge could be no younger than 66 years old given how it creaked under Adelheid's feet. That, too, he could use to his advantage. Cross the bridge and destroy it before Kaynes's army followed. Impossible in Fire Emblem, but here it wasn't an immutable terrain tile, just a rickety old bridge. He'd need more firepower than a few swords and an axe to make it happen, though. That theater troupe mage—if they had a Book of Flames like Piru-Piru, then...

"Are you quite sure you know what you're doing, Hague my friend?" Tuatoru asked. Hague didn't have time for repartee.

"Addy, tell him."

"He's sure," said Adelheid. Right now the biggest issue was, ironically enough, his best unit. Gaspar. He lagged behind, chugging in his giant armor, slowed by all the debris. Not a problem this turn, but it boded badly for the next, because the army was almost here. They came clomping en masse over the field, letting Kaynes and Ignez slip to a more defended location behind their ranks. Piru-Piru led the charge.

She pressed a hand to her big witch hat to keep it from flopping off as her eyes riveted to Hague with the same eager gleam as when she talked about snipping off his dick. If she wasn't bad enough on her own, at her back marched line after line of sword, bow, and axe fighters, the unified clamor of their feet a rumble in the air. Are you quite sure you know what you're doing, Hague my friend? Yeah he fucking hoped so. Bontempelli the assassin sidewinded into view like a shadow.

He slid between the clumps of debris, quick, purposeful, a daggerlike glare set on his target. Briefly Hague wondered whether he'd shoot his bow at Gaspar or Truth, both were in range. But he ignored Truth entirely, like she wasn't even there, like he had his orders and gave not the tiniest thought to deviating from them. (Actually with his weak Base Bow he couldn't even damage her Heteromorphite-buffed DEF, which might be the real reason.) His arrow zipped into Gaspar's shoulder and bounced off a shimmer of forcefield. It managed to do a little chip damage; Gaspar grunted. Both Piru-Piru and Bontempelli would be in range of Gaspar next turn. And Piru-Piru, at least, didn't give a shit about his armor, she'd punch right through. Eggman was in serious trouble. Then Truth moved. She moved after everyone else, as was typical for NPCs in Fire Emblem.

Hague previously noticed how units acted with a slight turn-based staggering, but this time it made more than enough diegetic sense: she could barely keep upright, she shambled and swayed, she nearly tripped and fell. She clutched the Heteromorphite to her heart with one hand while her fine white robes tore on the jagged stones around her. She made it only a few steps from where she started, enough to enter the open field.

Kaynes's army, excepting only the doggedly determined Piru-Piru and Bontempelli, hesitated as they stared her down. She might be a loli pope, but she was the pope. That must mean something. If what Adelheid said was true, most of these soldiers weren't cultists, they came from Ulrica itself, knights under the banner of Ignez or the other dukes who sided with Kaynes. Normal dudes, Hague imagined. How many would be willing to cut down their world's primary religious authority?

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The question didn't fucking matter, because Truth held aloft the Heteromorphite and transformed. It didn't happen with a flash of light, like in Fire Emblem. It was more like a ripple wended its way through reality, slicing Truth crosswise.

The air distorted around her, bubbling in heat waves, and the form of Truth's body twisted, tangled, boiled, became an unrecognizable melded mash of color and line, swelling, expanding, directing Hague's eyes higher as she grew twice her height, three times, more, growing, growing. But it was weird, because it didn't seem like Truth was actually changing. It was more like the air around her was what changed, changing the way Hague saw her, like a funhouse mirror. A trick of the light, a Vegas magician's show.

And when it ended, when the ripple subsided, when the air returned to normal, what stood there was not a pubescent girl playing pope but a towering saurian, a lizardlike beast whose wings unfolded out over the plains. A long shadow cast. A tail twisting in slow motion, scraping the dirt before sliding up to whip the air. A Tyrannosaurus maw that released an antediluvian bellow. A dragon.

DGirlLiker: YES DGirlLiker: YES DGirlLiker: YESYESYESYESYESYESYSEYSHFHSYUIUSHKBHSKBHF DGirlLiker: MY DRAGON GIRL IS HEEEEERE Argonautic: @DGirlLiker Let's refrain from keysmashing, okay? foxgirlchainsaw: Why not a fox girl?

Hague spent several seconds staring, not because holy shit a dragon, but because for the longest time he couldn't believe it was real, even though this was Fire Emblem and of course the mysterious little girl way older than she looked was a dragon shapeshifter, like obviously he believed it, he'd even banked on it—he gave her the Heteromorphite after all—but seeing it made it look less real than he ever could've imagined it in his mind's eye.

The way the air rippled, the way it distorted everything, did anything change at all? Had Truth always been this way, only the image different? Of course not. Hague carried her himself, and he couldn't carry that Jurassic Park dinosaur that was for sure. But it nagged at him, what he'd seen, the way it looked. Like seeing the map with his shades. He couldn't say how, but it felt the same somehow. Then Truth breathed fire.

It rolled, rather than sprayed, from her throat, a violent cascade pouring onto the heads of Kaynes's soldiers. A pealing and almost mechanical noise reverberated, made into nonsense by the screaming that followed as seven or eight bodies were trapped in the flames. Hague saw them only briefly before they were consumed. The ground where they stood became a vortex, a spire of thorned red tails rising skyward, so solid and so hard-edged the fire looked like a construct, a building, an architectural form from hell.

The exact opposite of how Truth looked when she transformed, everything about it strikingly and precisely real, and rather than incineration Hague imagined those screams came from the men as beams, supports, steel girders crisscrossed through their bodies. Hague shook the image and looked away. Something was weird about this world but he didn't want to, couldn't think about it right now. Luckily he had something to distract him.

Across the bridge, on the other side of a small patch of cropland, a woman was shouting. Her voice could barely be heard above the grinding semi-metallic sound of Truth's fire, though she was trying her best with two hands cupped around her mouth.

"Heidi!" That was all Hague could make out.

"Heidi, Heidi!" Adelheid stood stock still on the bridge, petrified as she stared at Truth, then instantly whipped her head around. The moment she noticed the woman, her face brightened and she said:"Signy? Oh, Signy!"

"Heidi, hold on! I'm coming!" Sieglinde de Leyosa stepped onto the stage at long last. As she got closer and Hague saw her clothes in better detail it was like Jesus Christ himself picked Hague up and ascended him to heaven. White.

Everything she wore was white, a direct contrast to Adelheid's black, and better yet it was all cloth, no armor or leather, no uniform and not a hint of anything martial, just soft white long and flowing, half-robe/half-dress, and on her short blonde bob cut she wore a white beret-like hat with a pink flower for accessory. She looked nothing like a fighter at all, only a dainty aristocrat, and that was great, that was beautiful, that was exactly what Hague wanted.

The image could've only been better if the beret was a priestly cowl, but it was fine, it was whatever, what else could she be with no weapon on her hip? She was either a mage or a healer. And with the white aesthetic? Healer. Healer! Exactly, exactly what Hague needed, what he wagered everything on.

"I told you!" Hague shouted, directly in Tuatoru's face.

"I told you I knew what I was doing bro!"

"Wha—?" said Tuatoru. Hague turned to the sky, threw out his arms.

"I told you! I told you I'd win this!" Sophia said nothing, dared not show her face. But Hague did see the pegasus girls finally drop out of the sky in V-formation, bugling and swooping over Kaynes's forces to aid the Polymath.

"I told you! I told you!" TURN 3 PLAYER PHASE START It somehow remained noisy even in the gameboard zone. After a few seconds Hague realized the noise came from Kaynes, shouting frantically at Piru-Piru. Who gave a shit about him though. Hague immediately brought up Signy's stat screen. Sieglinde "Signy" de Leyosa Class: Thief Age: 21 Height: 160 cm Affiliation: Kingdom of Ulrica LVL EXP HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 3 0 24 7 1 10 14 8 2 5 5 6 Inventory: Orbitèle Skills: Thieftouch, Reroute Class: Thief.

Class: Thief. Not a cleric. Not a mage. Not even a competent fighter, which at this point he'd gladly take. Not even carrying a potion. No. A fucking thief. Worthless fucking combat class only good for picking locks on a map with zero, absolutely fucking ZERO, locks to pick. A thief.

"Chat," Hague said.

"It's over. It's actually so fucking over."