Chapter Text
The Knights of Seiros served Fódlan and its people dutifully, protecting the Church of Seiros and the Garreg Mach Monastery where the institution resided, as well the Officers Academy that resided within its walls. From squires, to knights, to field commanders and the captain himself, each and every member of the order was dedicated to guarding the well-being of those, whose lives were entrusted to them.
Kyle Ardiau was one of the many faceless soldiers who ensured the peace and security of the monastery proper. Even though he was extensively trained, mostly owning to his own time at the Officers Academy, he rarely saw action nowadays. That didn’t worry the man much, as he was content to be one of the Gatekeepers of the place, taking pride in his position.
In fact, he was one of the best, not that he knew it. When people spoke of “Gatekeeper”, they usually meant Kyle, the friendliest and most enthusiastic of them all. He was by no means a legend, not like field commander Catherine Charon, Thunderstrike Catherine, or the provisional Captain of the Knights of Seiros, Jeralt Eisner, the famed Blade Breaker, who returned to the monastery after twenty years of being presumed dead. Kyle, was an everyday hero, a regular guy without a presence larger than life. While squires could aspire to reach the heights of the likes of Catherine and Jeralt, most of them knew they’d never measure up. Growing up to be someone like the Gatekeeper, however, seemed achievable in the long term. Being noble and courteous, yet at the same time effortlessly stop whatever bandit tried to intrude on the monastery grounds or harass the shopkeepers in the vicinity, that was the cred of the Gatekeeper. Had Kyle known he had such a reputation, he would have been flustered until the end of times. It was fortunate, then, that he was unaware of the fascination he produced.
At the moment, though, the man wasn’t standing guard, but attending a meeting that Seteth, the right hand of the archbishop herself, arranged with some of the knights. All soldiers seemed to be in various states of confusion, unaware of what could be the reason behind such an event. The green-haired man conversed with the interim captain, Sir Jeralt, as well as Sir Alois, the most trusted of the order’s commanders and, as Kyle knew, a part-time teacher, offering lectures and seminars for students on Sundays.
“Hey, kid, d’you know what’s this all about?” a knight whispered at Kyle. That was Raymond, one of the older knights. “One second I was fishing with Alois, and then Seteth came to pull us here.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kyle shrugged, before crossing his arms and thinking really hard about the matter. “Though I did see Professor Prompto running around this morning before right as my shift ended. He was agitated about something. I don’t know if it’s relevant somehow.”
“Prompto?” Raymond’s eyes widened. The man hummed, tilting his head. “That guy’s serene as a rock. It’s gotta be serious if he’s worried about something.”
“Alright, everyone, calm down!” Captain Jeralt beckoned, and the murmurs grew silent, all gazes set upon the legendary warrior. “We have a problem. Does everyone know Jeritza, the general combat instructor?”
Kyle didn’t know much about the man, but he did see him around. He was… odd. Not a bad person, Kyle didn’t think so, but quiet, often kept to himself. He left the monastery on a regular basis and, most egregious of all, refused Byleth’s- Professor Byleth’s invitations to tea parties. The Gatekeeper learned that tidbit of information from the students of what he believed to be the Golden Deer house, girls gossiping about all the latest happenings in the monastery.
“Professor Jeritza disappeared without a trace,” Seteth announced, crossing his arms. “He was absent for today’s general combat lectures, he was not found in his dorm, and the faculty had no contact with the man since yesterday. We have a lot of ground to cover, but we know he must be in the monastery still.”
“You are some of the most dedicated and renowned knights of Garreg Mach, which is why you are the first to know of this mission,” Jeralt continued the explanation. Some brows rose as the knights, including Kyle himself, didn’t expect to be included as ‘dedicated’ and ‘renowned’. “Don’t give me that look, renown doesn’t just come from prowess in great battles. You proved yourself thorough and reliable in your duties and you have great knowledge of the monastery. You’ll do well.”
“When you find the professor or relevant clues, you come to me, Captain Jeralt or Seteth,” Alois added, nodding to Jeralt’s words. The knight clasped his fist dramatically, as he was prone to do. “We’ll also be searching for clues. One way or another, we will find the missing professor and ensure his safety!”
Jeralt quietly covered his face with his palm in second-hand embarrassment.
“So, it was serious,” Raymond quietly whispered to his younger comrade. Kyle nodded absent-mindedly. He was one of the gatekeepers that were stationed last night, and he didn’t think twice when Seteth asked about the comings and goings from the monastery. Now the Gatekeeper couldn’t help but be anxious if something happened to the professor because he missed him leaving or some suspicious individual coming in.
Kyle was already doubting his abilities with all that happened a bit more than a month ago. A group of Western Church soldiers invaded the monastery and defiled the Holy Mausoleum, one of the most sacred sites not just of the monastery, but of Fódlan as a whole. Professor Byleth tried to reassure him that the bandits had mages capable of warping them in, and it’s true that Kyle couldn’t counter that, but the minor lingering feeling of inadequacy remained.
Captain Jeralt and Sir Alois then assigned the knights for search and patrol routes, while Seteth returned to his administrative duties. Sometimes Kyle felt like the green-haired man did all the actual running of the church instead of Lady Rhea, with no offense to the archbishop.
“...Kyle, you’re also patrolling the entirety of the first floor,” Jeralt said, pulling the man out of his thoughts. The Gatekeeper’s eyes widened in surprise. That was a lot of ground to cover. Luckily, it didn’t come without its perks that immediately came to his mind.
“Greetings, Professor. There’s… quite a bit to report today.”
“You’re not on your post,” Byleth rarely showed genuine emotions, but seeing Kyle patrolling the grounds of the Officers Academy was, apparently, particularly noteworthy, so that the notorious Ashen Demon was visibly surprised. It warmed something inside the Gatekeeper.
“Professor Jeritza disappeared, and we’re scouting the monastery, looking for him. Captain Jeralt said that the best were assigned for the search, and, well… I’m surprised I’m good enough for that. I’ll do my best. Also, have you seen Professor Jeritza recently?”
“I can’t say I have,” Byleth replied, cupping his chin in thought. “You might want to ask around the monastery. You’re the first to ask me about that; it doesn’t seem that anyone questioned the faculty or the students.”
“Are you suggesting some sort of a full-fledged investigation?” the Gatekeeper jumped a bit. It wasn’t something he considered, and the idea seemed overwhelming. He wasn’t much of a planner, even if his job demanded extreme perception to suss out the suspicious individuals at the gates.
“If you can leave your post here.”
“Oh, that’s no problem. I’m free to patrol the entire floor.”
“I can help,” Byleth nodded. “We can start with the students here.”
Kyle couldn’t help his blush as the professor led the way. It was one thing to be invited to the man’s tea party, it was another to actually work with him, especially on something as big as an investigation of a missing professor.
“What do you know about Professor Jeritza’s disappearance?”
“It’s troubling that a member of the faculty can be whisked away with no trace left behind,” Manuela said with a frown on her face. The Gatekeeper took down the testimonies of the staff with a quill that Byleth just happened to carry around. The man had a lot of items in the hidden compartments of his uniform, Kyle learned. He knew that those were usually for hidden weapons, but now the professor mostly carried harmless items there. The Gatekeeper was confident that Byleth had at least a dozen of lost items on him at the moment, and he would, somehow, eventually find the possessors of those items.
Kyle’s thoughtful gaze that focused on Byleth did not go unnoticed by the diva, who chuckled lightheartedly.
“Ah, if only I could find a handsome man that would look at me as you look at the professor, Gatekeeper,” Manuela smiled meaningfully, as Kyle covered his blushing face. Byleth tilted his head in oblivious confusion. “Anyway, I can’t say I’ve seen Jeritza since… Wednesday, I think. I was chatting with Basil and Jeritza sat close to us in the mess hall.”
“I did witness him training after hours on Thursday, Professor,” Hubert, the right-hand man of Edelgard, the Adrestian princess, added in his raspy voice, and Kyle was quick to note that down. “I checked in on the training grounds in the evening after hearing odd sounds after the sun came down. The professor was training late. Much ferocity in that man. Interfering would have been hazardous to one’s health.”
“You only saw that, but I saw something else,” Monica, the amnesiac student and Edelgard’s right-hand woman, chimed in. “It was on Thursday, as well. Catherine, the swordplay professor, not the Thunderstrike one, was around the student dormitories and seemed to eye Professor Jeritza when he made his way to the training grounds. I believe that would be while you were still entertaining Lord Claude with the game of chess.”
“That would put it earlier in the day,” the other mage nodded with a sly smirk. “Yet another rematch was a futile effort. Claude did put up much more resistance that day, though. You might want to ask him. He had business to attend to after the game and might have seen Professor Jeritza leave the training grounds.”
“Have you been watching Professor Jeritza closely yesterday?”
“Jeritza has always put me on edge, ever since his arrival at Garreg Mach,” Catherine scowled. It was an odd occasion to find the redhead assassin without her husband nearby on a weekend, and it presented an opportunity.
As Byleth patiently explained, if there were more than a single witness, they could easily mislead the investigator and mix-up the information, obscuring the truth. The mercenary had to perform a few investigations in the course of his profession, so he knew what he was talking about.
“I can’t really trust a man who has something to hide behind a mask. Of course, it could be that he nurses a grievous injury, but that’s no reason to hide your face. Hayden doesn’t. If people can’t stomach it, the issue would be with the people. Not to mention his disposition is… suspicious, shall we say. Anyway, if he left the training grounds, I wouldn't have seen it.”
A sudden cackle erupted from the side, interrupted by awkward attempts to mask it as a cough. Both Kyle and Byleth glanced, to see Claude, writing something down and consulting with a book. He wasn’t the only student in the classroom, but he was sitting close enough to hear the exchange.
“Do you have something to add, sir?” Kyle narrowed his eyes as he finished noting the professor’s testimony. The future duke just waved his hand, still coughing a bit.
“Sorry, sorry. No, good Gatekeeper, it’s just a funny passage. Nothing of concern.”
“We know that you’ve been out on the grounds late in the evening,” the Gatekeeper approached the student, casually dipping his quill in Claude’s ink bottle. The young man looked appropriately astounded with the action. Normally, Kyle wouldn’t even consider such a rude and audacious act, but Byleth did say that the witness sometimes has to be pressured to tell the truth. Was that a proper way to do it?
“Well, yeah. I had my third… no, fourth chess match with that grouch, Hubert. The match I most certainly won with a pure mate, whatever anyone else might tell you. …I can’t say I saw Jeritza. We played in the Golden Deer classroom, and if Hubert went straight to bed, he would have passed by the training grounds. I, however, visited the mess hall for a very late snack, and wouldn’t have gone there.”
“Claude. How did you access the classroom?” Byleth asked in a flat voice, crossing his arms. It was a reasonable question as the heads of houses locked down the classrooms for the night. As the Gatekeeper glanced at the man, it was obvious that Byleth wasn’t amused with his student’s antics.
“...actually, I remember something now!” Claude exclaimed. “I did see a very suspicious individual that seemed to escape underground yesterday! They could as well be connected to the professor’s disappearance!”
Kyle almost dropped his quill, and even Professor Catherine seemed to raise an eyebrow.
“And why didn’t you start with that, Riegan?” the woman frowned, fixing her glasses in a manner that Kyle could only describe as threatening, for some reason.
“Well… I hoped to explore that place in the evening…” the student whistled innocently. Byleth shook his head fondly, before turning to face Kyle, who was, immediately, all ears.
“I will explore that location,” the strategy and tactics professor said. “Will you join me?”
“I… I’d love- like to, but, well, you see- I can’t exactly leave the floor,” the Gatekeeper babbled. “And I’ll have to report it to Sir Alois or Captain Jeralt…”
“Please, don’t! I won’t get to search it-!” Claude whined, before backtracking. “I mean, we’ll lose the element of surprise if we rally the entire force of the monastery and there turns out to be a fight. Teach and I can handle it! …maybe we can even ask other house leaders to join, you know, to improve interhouse relations and all that.”
“Claude has a point.”
“That’s good and all,” Catherine interrupted, before motioning to the classroom that was filled up with students, and not just those of the Golden Deer house, as the Gatekeeper could recognize the Brigid student from the Black Eagles house and the Fraldarius heir of the Blue Lions house. “But I have a seminar to teach. A seminar that you, Eisner, asked me to teach. On a Saturday, no less. And Claude von Riegan, what are you doing here in the first place? You specialize in axes and bows.”
“I’m… expanding my horizons?”
“Could Jeritza have been kidnapped for his crest?”
“I don’t believe so,” Professor Hanneman hummed, observing a faith magic seminar of the Blue Lions from afar. “He does bear the Crest of Lamine, which is unique to an extent, as Lamine was the only member of Ten Elites to establish a bloodline in modern Adrestia. However, her descendants are numerous. I have a cousin with that crest. Even in the walls of the monastery right now there’s Miss Mercedes, in my house, actually, who also bears that crest. It would take a truly desperate or a foolish researcher to take on someone like Jeritza.”
“Now that I think about it,” the crest researcher furrowed his brow. “It would take an outstanding combatant to even overpower Jeritza. And I doubt there are many who could possibly dedicate themselves to combat the same way Jeritza does and dedicate themselves to crest research at the same time.”
“Who do you think could take Jeritza down in a fight?”
Professor Ethan Cigfran, Byleth’s authority counterpart and strategy and tactics instructor for the Black Eagles and the Blue Lions, actually had to stop and think about it. The battle-seasoned veteran closed his eyes and stroked his dark goatee thoughtfully.
“Jeritza is fast as lightning and strikes just as hard,” the man hummed quietly, Kyle had to strain to hear his words properly. “Depending on the equipment he had, not even heavy armor would protect you in close combat against him. So that rules out most of my fellow professors who don’t utilize magic. The only exceptions I believe could be… Hayden, perhaps, since he’s an archer by trade, even if he wields an axe as a secondary weapon. Minerva, too, with her wyvern giving her an aerial advantage. Though I think there would have been signs of a wyvern rider attacking someone in the walls of Garreg Mach. Professor Byleth, you would be the last one. Your speed and strength are unmatched.”
“So that rules out all but two, excluding the magic wielders…” Kyle thought, noting down Ethan’s observation in his papers.
One could say that the Gatekeeper was biased, but the fact was that Kyle knew Byleth to sleep like a corpse. Teaching took a lot of effort from the man, as well as his tea parties, actually. By his nature the former mercenary was introverted and it took him time to regain energy after spending a week interacting with people and getting overwhelmed by emotions. That’s why he was rarely seen on Saturday, mostly for meals and for reports on the Saturday duties he assigned his students.
The Gatekeeper pieced that together from both his interactions with the man, the many gossips of various students and the one time he had to deliver him the midnight summons from Seteth and almost had to break down the door, afraid that something happened with him.
Byleth’s appearance today was a surprise in itself, though it was likely due to the commotion of yesterday’s news, with a professor disappearing from the monastery.
“You would do best to question those two first, if you believe Jeritza to be kidnapped by a member of the faculty,” Professor Ethan said, before igniting a magical flame in his palm and flying it between his fingers in a playful manner. “Of course, had I been the one to kidnap him, I would have ambushed him with magic, be it my own or an ability of my accomplice. But Jeritza deserves an honest fight, in my opinion.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Well…” Professor Hayden blushed, awkwardly fixing his shoulder guard and refusing to look the Gatekeeper in the eye, arousing suspicion. Minerva Awyrgoch, the flying mount instructor, guffawed in response, playfully punching the man in the shoulder. You wouldn’t expect it from her seemingly delicate physique, but her punch actually made the brawny scarred archer stagger.
“Let’s say the two of us were getting really familiar with each other!” the woman laughed. That answer made a blush appear on Kyle’s face as well, though Byleth remained unperturbed, as usual.
“...I invited her for a late-night cup of tea,” the archer said with his deep husky voice. The Gatekeeper chose to write down that version of the events, for propriety’s sake.
“Yeah, and we drank that tea so hard, Hanneman came to us whining about how we don’t let his bright head sleep at night. I say he’s just jealous cause he and Manuela take forever to get there! They’ve been dancing around each other for what? Four years now?”
“I think it’s five,” Hayden hummed. “She arrived a year before the Antirrhinums did.”
“Case in point, you don’t see Basil complaining! His room is just next to mine!”
“Did you see or hear anything unusual last night?”
“Aside from some rowdy noises from my neighbours, I wouldn’t say so, Sir Gatekeeper,” Professor Basil said. The tan-skinned warlock fiddled with the steel-like feather in his hair thoughtfully, trying to remember the details of the last night. “My wife and I shared a late cup of tea in her room… a literal cup of tea, I mean. Then we kissed each other good night and I left for my dorm. There was some commotion, because Hanneman was quarreling with Minerva and Hayden… Poor man, he must have been dying of mortification! Anyway, yes, I think they quarreled me to sleep.”
“And when have you last seen Professor Jeritza?” Kyle asked, taking down the testimony of the reason magic professor.
“Let’s see… I haven’t really interacted with the man that much…” Basil rubbed his chin. “You know, he really makes himself scarce. I should have seen him at the mess hall on Tuesday, maybe. Maybe on Wednesday. Very quiet, very humble, that man. Troubled, I believe, with whatever demons and death that haunt him.”
“That’s a morbid observation,” Byleth remarked, and the Gatekeeper couldn’t help but agree with how eerie that sounded from the lips of the usually bubbly professor.
“We all have things that trouble us, Byleth,” the man said with a wistful smile. “My intuition tells me that Jeritza has more ghosts than most, and I’m rarely wrong in such matters, as it happens. I hope he’ll be found safe and sound.”
“Well, Professor, your idea of an investigation was a fruitful one,” Kyle smiled, arranging his notes with the testimonies from the members of the faculty. “We know that Professor Jeritza trained late into the night before his disappearance, so he must have been ambushed on the training grounds or on his way out, otherwise the kidnapper would have been noticed by Professor Hanneman, Minerva or Hayden.”
“The perpetrator is a magic user or had an accomplice wielding magic. All the magical faculty members are accounted for, so that rules them out. Professor Prompto was assisting with repairing the statues of the saints at the cathedral, and the statue artisan confirmed it. Professor Hanneman was… chastising Professor Minerva and Professor Hayden, and that quarrel was heard by Professor Basil and Professor Manuela. Professor Ethan doesn’t have an alibi, but neither does he have a motive, since he’s reported to actually be friendly with Professor Jeritza, if not exactly friends. He obviously has respect for his battle prowess.”
“You don’t consider me as a kidnapper?” Byleth asked, and the Gatekeeper honestly couldn’t say if that was a joke or a genuine question. Anyway, he shook his head.
“While you could intercept Professor Jeritza on his way out, as your room is adjacent to the student ones, I know that you would have been sleeping tight after a long week, Professor,” the man smiled. “You also don’t strike me as the kind of person to just kidnap people at random.”
The former mercenary nodded wordlessly.
“There’s also that claim from Sir Claude, about a rogue escaping underground,” the Gatekeeper double-checked the statements. “Actually, between what Sir Claude witnessed, and what Sir Hubert and Miss Monica witnessed, I think it’s a good idea to question the student body as a whole. Students are rather perceptive.”
“You can do that,” Byleth nodded. “I will take Claude and investigate the underground.”
“What- you’d rely on me to conduct the investigation on my own?” Kyle was baffled, to say the least.
“You’re capable. My father and Alois chose you as one of the best knights around, that counts for something.”
The praise made the man blush. He was way too easily flustered, especially around the one person he would easily rank the most attractive and enticing man in the whole monastery.
“I won’t let you down, Professor!”