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Linhardt had never seen Garreg Mach Monastery so busy. Clerics ran through the hallways hauling whatever holy artifacts they could carry, soldiers marched through the halls, inspecting every window, every door to assess their strength. Occasionally, a child would get separated from its mother and cry out, only to be picked up by another family, and hurried along to the relative safety of the inner sanctuary, where all the families were gathering. That safety grew ever more relative and ever less certain as the minutes ticked on- a dull panic rising in everyone’s hearts.
Garreg Mach was preparing for war.
And yet, despite the hustle and bustle that surrounded him, Linhardt felt that the Monastery had never been so quiet, so devoid of life. Perhaps that was because all of his classmates were nowhere to be found… or perhaps it was because he knew they could soon be found attacking this very stronghold, fighting for their lives against the knights that had once guarded them, the teachers who had once taught them.
“Well, not all the teachers,” Linhardt couldn’t help but think as he passed by Professor Byleth’s empty room, door still ajar from a recent search by Church officials.
Linhardt held no ill will towards his peers for leaving him behind- after all, it wasn’t their fault. On the day Edelgard had chosen to flee the Monastery, Linhardt had been outside the Monastery grounds, wandering around a small outcropping of ruined buildings with an absolutely breathtaking view. Caspar had taken him there once before, insisting that his perpetually drowsy friend would find himself more energetic if he got outside the Monastery grounds once in a while. This had largely backfired, as Linhardt simply took to the place as a particularly well-hidden spot to nap. And indeed, perhaps it was too well hidden. For while his classmates had searched the monastery grounds for him before they left for Enbarr, they were unable to find the sleeping mage. Hubert described this only as, “A strategic set-back,” but Caspar had apparently been more worked up about it, and he hurried wrote a letter explaining the situation which he left in Linhardt’s room. The note made it clear that students of Adrestia would return soon, under Emperor Edelgard’s command and that Linhardt would be more than welcome to join them.
Linhardt, of course, promptly burned the letter. How foolish could Caspar be- to leave evidence of their plans written down, and in enemy territory no less?
Enemy territory… It was a strange way to describe the place he had spent the better part of the last year, and where he still walked around freely. He could only assume that his continued presence in the Monastery led everyone to assume he was still loyal to the Church… or that everyone was simply too panicked to take much notice of him. He had no great desire to fight for the Church, but nor did he have much desire to fight against it. He had heard plenty of Edelgard’s grumblings in their time together, against the Church, against Crests, against really just about everything, and he had never been especially convinced by her logic. No doubt Hubert would scold him for his lack of ambition, or some similar nonsense. Still, it would be a terrible drag to fight against his friends, much worse than fighting alongside them.
So, in the meantime before they arrived, he had best find somewhere to relax. Unfortunately, it seemed that the whole of Garreg Mach was taken up in preparing for the battle to come. Every storeroom was being emptied, every nook was being filled, every cranny reinforced. He thought he might have some luck in his old Black Eagles classroom, but when he opened the door, he found the place being steadily demolished by a disheveled blonde man who was thankfully laughing too maniacally to have noticed Linhardt’s brief intrusion. He quickly and quietly closed the door.
Growing increasingly tired, he trekked off to one of his most cherished spots to rest his eyes- the library. And it was here that he finally encountered a stroke of luck- the place was deserted. Linhardt was surprised for a moment, then shrugged. It made perfect sense after all- no one was much interested in studying with war on the horizon.
Pulling a couple books from their shelves, Linhardt settled himself down into a chair and began reading. However, he realized the fundamental error in his plan almost at once. After nearly a year of perusing these shelves, the Hevring heir could not help but feel that he had read every interesting volume they had to offer, and he had certainly fallen asleep reading several of the less interesting ones as well. It was difficult to be engaged by any of these Church approved books when he knew that Seteth had systematically removed all of, “the good stuff,” ages ago. The old librarian Tomas had always been able to lend Linhardt a tome or two but given his real identity Linhardt didn’t place much trust in him either.
I must now confess, dear reader, that I can’t speak with certainty on what transpired next. Indeed, not even Linhardt’s own account can give us complete insight. This is for the same reason much of Linhardt’s testimony is lacking in substance- because he was asleep. That much we do know for certain. Therefore, all we can state as fact is that at some point before the Battle of Garreg Mach, Linhardt von Hevring fell asleep in the library. What happened after that is all a matter of conjecture, and indeed many a scholar has conjectured on that front over the years. Linhardt’s theory, and it is a good one, is that some remnants of Solon’s preparations for casting the Forbidden Spell of Zahras had been left in the library, and that the magic that resided in them was activated by a large magical shockwave that hit the Monastery during the battle.
Whatever the cause, we know that Linhardt von Hevring’s nap lasted much longer than he anticipated.
When at last he did start to wake up, he found his arms and legs to be incredibly stiff. This in itself wasn’t wholly unusual, he had slept in any number of uncomfortable positions in the past- but this stiffness was of another level entirely.
A harsh light shone down from above, and if he had been less stiff, he might have rolled over to avoid it, eyes still shut. “Come on Caspar,” he groaned, surprised by how hoarse his own voice was, “Five more minutes…” At this, a great deal of commotion erupted above him. Voices, dozens of them, in a variety of languages, were yelling and shouting. Linhardt laid impassively, hoping they would leave him alone to lie here if he ignored them.
Strange, I don’t remember laying down in the library…
His own curiosity got the better of him, and he slowly opened his eyes. Actually, he only attempted to open his eyes, as he found they were unbearably dry. It took a good few minutes of blinking from the young man before he could see clearly. And what he saw perplexed him as much as anything else.
It seemed he had found himself in a hole of some sort. At the very least, he was surrounded by rock and rumble, and his clothes were untenably dirty. Bother… he was sure to be scolded by someone for this- probably Hubert again…
After taking in his immediate surroundings, he noticed that the voices he had heard when his eyes had been closed had now mostly subsided. Instead, he heard only hushed whispers- mostly excited- coming from just beyond the edge of his hole. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, however, and so moved slowly and stiffly to dislodge a truly tremendous amount of dust from his ears. He figured he must look absolutely ridiculous, and he was briefly thankful for the privacy laying in all this rubble afforded him.
I say, “briefly,” because at that very moment, his previously unbroken view of the clear blue sky was shattered by the appearance of a face, popping over the edge of his crevasse. He stared at it for a moment, unable to place it.
It was feminine face, and young too, though clearly marked by both stress and smile induced lines. Wavy Chestnut hair framed the edges of the face, only kept from completely obscuring its owner by a series of haphazardly placed metal clips. Perhaps Linhardt would have been more intrigued by the clips had he not been distracted by his own reflection in what seemed to be the largest glasses he had ever seen. He looked utterly disheveled, and while not usually one to care about appearances, he felt rather uncomfortable. Thankfully, however, behind his reflection, a smile was growing in her eyes just as it grew on her lips.
“Hey there, I’m Dr. Jessica Ikentik.” Her voice was soft, but clear curiosity lay just behind it. As Linhardt didn’t immediately introduce himself, she continued. “Can I ask who you are and what you’re doing in my dig site?” The question was direct, but not hostile.
It was also not a question Linhardt knew how to answer immediately.
“Uh well, I’m Linhardt…” he began, figuring he’d start with what he was most certain of, “And I was… sleeping, I suppose.”
To his surprise, this elicited a laugh from the strange woman. It was not the sarcastic laugh that he so often heard when explaining to someone he was napping where he shouldn’t have been, but a genuine one. “Well, Linhardt, I must say you have strange taste in bedding, if you like to sleep under two tons of ancient cobblestone.” Her amusement faded slightly as she asked another question: “Where are you from, Linhardt?”
And so, Linhardt told her. The Hevring lands, nearest the Oghma Mountains, though he spent much of his childhood in court at Enbarr. He had thought this a perfect reasonable answer- boring even. And yet, as he spoke, the woman’s- Professor Ikentik’s that is- eyes narrowed with intense interest. The moment he finished speaking, he saw her eyes dart away from his face, looking over his body as though she were searching for a particularly relevant passage in a dense textbook.
After what seemed an unusually long moment of careful consideration, she reached down to Linhardt, offering him a hand. Automatically, he found himself taking it, feeling a great rush as he was pulled up and out of the hole. “Let’s go to my office, you can walk, can’t you, Linhardt?” Her tone was far more urgent than before, verging almost on being conspiratorial. Linhardt only nodded in reply, and while he was slightly dizzy, he walked after her.
Once he had regained his balance, and that he could keep up with his guide, (who was walking with great speed despite what Linhardt could now see was her relatively short build) our green haired friend took a moment or two to look at his surroundings. And what surroundings they were! In every direction, there stood great buildings- reaching several stories into the air. They were constructed of a variety of materials, each stranger and more beautiful than the last- dark red bricks, smooth sandstone slabs- and that one seemed to be made of nothing but glass! Had he not been worried about losing sight of Professor Ikentik, he would have stopped to stare in awe. As it was, he settled for breathlessly asking one of the many questions that swarmed his mind. “Where are we?”
“Garreg Mach University,” was the researcher’s reply. She said it without even turning around, instead gushing about how fortunate she was to have an archeological dig site right in the heart of campus, as was her habit. This proved to be unwise, as a moment and a half later, she realized her words were not reaching their target, as Linhardt had stopped walking, at last staring around him in disbelief. His puzzled face hardly betrayed the great puzzle he was only just beginning to solve.
After much pleading and promises to explain everything in due course, Linhardt finally allowed himself to be dragged into Professor Ikentik’s office. For his part, Linhardt hardly noticed the incredible softness of the chair he was pushed into, nor the strange glowing orange substance floating lazily in a lit yellow liquid on the desk that separated him from the professor. And for her part, Professor Ikentik pushed aside several books and loose pieces of paper as she searched for a notebook, nearly knocking over her orange and yellow lava lamp in the process. Once she was properly settled, pen and notebook in hand, she began her questioning.
“Who are you?”
“What? I told you, I’m Linhardt.”
“Right, I doubt there’s been 5 babies named Linhardt in the last 50 years. So, ‘Linhardt,’ what can you tell me about yourself?”
The comment about his name perplexed him. He had always thought his name, as inelegant as it was, was not especially unique. He was reasonably certain someone-or-other’s cousin shared his name, not to mention any number of prior Counts of Hevring. Rather than answering the question, he responded with one of his own.
“Who are you, then? I’ve never heard of anyone named Jessica.” He stopped for a moment, thinking it would be a terrible pain to get in trouble in such a strange place, “Uh… Professor Ikentik.”
But, instead of a lecture or a glare, he simply received another light laugh. “Oh, that’s a fair question I suppose,” the woman began. “Like I said, I’m Professor Ikentik, though you can call me, ‘Jessie’ if you like. I’m a Professor of History and Archeology here at the University.” After taking a beat to ensure her guest was comfortable with this explanation – which it seemed he was – Jessie returned to her original line of questioning, this time with slightly more tact, “What can you tell me about how you ended up in that hole? Please, tell me everything you remember.”
And so, Linhardt told her, about his nap outdoors, about Edelgard’s flight from the Monastery and his subsequent uncertain situation, about his reliance on Caspar’s foolish goodwill, and about his camping out in the Monastery library.
As he spoke, the researcher wrote- and what a pace she wrote at, her pen dashing across the page, hardly stopping when she flipped to the next empty page. Her expression changed from one of casual suspicion, to curiosity, to intense interest and finally to unbridled elation. Hardly wanting to interrupt what seemed to be a happy moment, he kept talking, about the recklessness of Edelgard’s plans and his uncertainty about how he would be received by some of his classmates. It felt good to talk about these things. Still, as he talked on, he noticed more and more how strange this room was. There were a number of mysterious metallic rectangles, both on this desk and the walls, not to mention light coming from places that didn’t make sense- the ceiling and a strange object on the desk.
His own curiosity could not be contained any longer. Taking advantage of a momentary break in the historian’s furious note taking, he stated the most pressing and most terrifying question.
“What year is it?”
Professor Ikentik flinched, as if she had been anticipating this and dreading it. She bit her lip, and slowly put her pen and paper down. “Now, this might be upsetting.”
Linhardt couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well the very fact that you feel something as simple as the year might upset me either means you’re about to tell me something truly remarkable, or you think I’m a terribly irritable person.”
Professor Ikentik offered only a sad smile in response and took a deep breath to steady herself.
“2015.”
If she had expected to get some sort of dramatic response from Linhardt, she was profoundly disappointed. He simply stared at her- an unreadable expression on his face. Behind his eyes, a series of calculations and deductions flashed, but none of the anger, sadness, or shock one might expect after learning the sort of news he just had. It made Jessie feel uneasy. What was with this reaction? Was he okay? Could he even process what she had said?
In due time, it seemed that he did, for he asked only one question, in a cool voice, steadier than it had any right to be, “Do you have any history books?”
It was now the professor’s turn to be shocked, and she took on her new role brilliantly. Mouth half open, she stuttered for a moment in confusion before spitting out a reply. “History books? History books?” She struggled to get out every objection she had. “Aren’t you… upset? Or worried about yourself? Or your friends? You know that they’re all…” She stopped herself, knowing what she was about to say would have been just about the most insensitive thing she could.
They’re all gone.
The professor braced herself, ready for an outburst. She had just yelled at a stranger for not displaying normal emotions after one of the least normal developments in recorded history. Whether she feared his potential sadness or rage more, she couldn’t say. However, she received neither.
Linhardt looked at her plainly, silently, only a hint of sadness in his eyes. The moment seemed to stretch on for as long as Linhardt’s disappearance itself had. At long last, he answered the question she hadn’t dared to finish.
“Yes, naturally, I am sad I will most likely not see my friends again.” Only Linhardt could state the situation so matter-of-factly. Yet it was an understatement if ever there was one. The thought of never seeing them again tore at his heart each moment- especially Caspar. Imagining a future without that fool’s antics was… difficult. Still, he found some small comfort in the fact that the future he found himself in, the future they had fought for, seemed to be rather pleasant. The thought of their valiant struggle, finally over, brought a faint smile to his lips. It was with that smile that he continued his answer. “In any case, it is far too late for me to worry on their behalf. I will make time, in due course, to process this change. But for now, I would just like to know…” the sudden break in his voice surprised even him, but he continued on, “…How they lived the rest of their lives.”
If Linhardt appeared wistfully mournful saying all this, Professor Ikentik looked as though she might be about to drown in her own tears. After taking a moment to compose herself, she nodded and said that, of course, she understood completely. It took some time for her to find a book that covered the most basic aspects of The War of Reunification. This was partially because her bookshelf was made largely of hyper-specific historical commentaries of the war, and partially because she took half that time to stop sniffling. Ultimately, she did find a book, an old copy of A Complete History of Fodlan: From Aegir to Zanado, Volume XIX.
“Here,” she said, holding out the book to the man who was so much older than her despite appearing so young. He took it with a polite and silent nod and began flipping through the pages urgently. Not wanting to interrupt what she realized could be a very intimate moment for her guest, she excused herself, making some excuse about needing to wrap work on the dig site for the day. Linhardt was already so engrossed in the book he did not respond. As she left, another problem to be solved occurred to her. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you a place to stay, too.” This comment Linhardt heard, and gave an appreciative, “Thank you,” for, before diving back into the book.
And what a book it was. Linhardt read about the Battle for Garreg Mach, and about both his and Professor Byleth’s disappearances. He hardly focused on the next few pages as he considered if their situations were related- a question that was answered surprisingly easily when it was revealed that after 5 years, their professor returned to them.
My, I know I’ve never been especially punctual, but this tardiness certainly takes the cake.
Shaking his head, he read on. About the formation of the Black Eagle Strike Force- Edelgard, for all her vision, had never been especially gifted at branding- and their brutal but effective campaign to cut off the Church’s ability to fight back. He read about their return to Gronder Field and felt a wave of sympathy for his classmates- across all three houses- as he imagined what it must have felt like to battle there once again. He read with rapt attention about the final battle, and Rhea’s transformation. He was glad to see there had been some credence to his theory that there was something strange about her and her rule over the Church. He was infinitely more glad, however, to see that Edelgard’s forces emerged victorious, and set about shaping a new Fodlan according to her vision. Reading through the list of notable casualties, Linhardt only recognized one name – his own.
It was an unspeakably strange feeling, to read in a book that you had died a thousand years ago. I very much doubt that anyone else has ever had the experience, and even Linhardt himself struggled to describe it to me. In his words, it was like being told that the experiment you had just completed was entirely unnecessary, because it violated some long held scientific understanding. Still, he chose to wallow not in that strange feeling, but in the much more comforting realization that all his friends had lived full lives without him- none cut short by the brutality of war.
He desired very much to read on, to catch up on everything that he had missed, to learn how the Fodlan he had once known was transformed into the one he no doubt had to become acquainted with now. But despite that desire, within a few chapters, he found himself horribly bored. Names he knew were replaced by ones he did not, cities and towns he had been able to place on a map had their names changed so often he lost track of them more easily than he had ever lost track of his white magic homework. It was somewhere around Caspar von Bergliez III that Linhardt finally closed the book.
He waited patiently for a few minutes, expecting the office’s owner to return. When she did not, he grew restless, and his eyes wandered back to the strange devices that littered her desk. Without stopping to consider the consequences, he started fiddling with whatever he could get his hands on, desperately curious about their function and purpose.
Where does this light come from? How are these black rectangles operated? What is a ‘Starbuck’ and why does it smell like coffee? Why are all these letters arranged in such a strange way?
This carried on until Professor Ikentik returned, a good half an hour later. By that point, Linhardt had already carefully disassembled most of the devices on her desk and was now trying to navigate the mess of plugs and extension cords under her desk. Only the lava lamp remained untouched- Linhardt would later explain he had feared it was alive and did not want to disturb it.
She gave a polite cough, trying not to look too terrified at what was left of her keyboard, its letters scattered around the desk, apparently used to label things. When one cough proved insufficient to pull Linhardt’s attention away from his exploration, she gave another, slightly less polite one. At this, the young man sprang up, looking a bit sheepish, though perhaps not as sheepish as one ought to look when they are discovered destroying a near-stranger’s office.
“Sorry about the wait,” Professor Ikentik said, noticing that her clock had yet (thankfully) to be dismantled. Giving one last look at the carnage in front of her, she shook her head and continued her thought, “I had to make sure we had a dormitory open for you to stay in, at least temporarily.”
Linhardt, who in the brief time it had taken her to look over her desk had already pulled up and begun to inspect the paper shredder, only gave her half a glance. “Thank you,” he said in a polite voice that half betrayed his lack of attention, “But I can’t say I’m especially tired at the moment.”
At this, Professor Ikentik smiled. “Oh really?” her voice grew just the slightest bit amused now, “Well, Linhardt, I also managed to do some reading on you while I was away. You would not believe how hard it is to find information on a 17-year-old who disappeared a thousand years ago.”
Linhardt’s gaze shifted over to the historian, though he did not put down the shredder. With half a chuckle, he asked a question that had been worming its way into his mind for some time now. “Oh? What sort of legacy did I leave then?” He gave a wry smile, “If Hubert had any say in it, I imagine I was portrayed as an aloof genius who, ‘Never had the ambition to match his ability.’”
Professor Ikentik blinked a few times.
That has to be the most accurate impression done of Lord Vestra in a millennium.
Shaking herself free of the historical value of Linhardt’s joke, she smiled back. “Well, Lord Hevring,” she said in as harmlessly a mocking tone as one can take with a new acquaintance, “Let’s just say that beds and pillows have advanced tremendously in the last thousand years.”
Linhardt dropped the shredder to the floor. Jessie winced as she thought she heard it crack.
“I’m absolutely wiped. You have no idea how exhausting it is to sleep for a thousand years.”
And so, Linhardt followed his new professor out of her office and to the dormitories, to get, what was sure to be, a much shorter nap.