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The Riegan manor. Castle Deirdriu. The Lindworm’s lair.
No matter what it was called, the grand mansion was hardly an inviting one. Dim lighting and desolate hallways put Byleth on edge, and paintings leered at her while she waited, but the worst part was a hot, soupy haze that permeated throughout. Its powerful scent, perhaps born from an exotic incense, nearly choked her to death, and its sweltering heat tempted her to rip off all seven layers of her clothes.
Yet Byleth managed to stay her hands, due to some cryptic advice she received earlier, and due to a serpentine figure that slithered forth.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” said the Lindworm. “If you are here, you most likely already know who I am, but for the sake of manners, I am Claude von Riegan, archduke of the Leicester Alliance. May I have the pleasure of knowing your name?”
Byleth didn’t respond at first, not that she couldn’t. Although the Lindworm, Claude , appeared before her as a great serpent with scales that glimmered gold in the candlelight, she would be a fool to mistake him for a mere beast. There was a wariness to his posture, a spark of curiosity behind those verdant eyes, vague amusement in his voice. Subtle signs indicating that not only did he possess a keen mind, he also knew why Byleth was here.
She was here to drive the Lindworm out of the ancestral home of House Riegan. By force, if necessary. Nonetheless, she obliged him with an answer.
“Byleth Eisner.”
“Byleth,” Claude added a hiss that made her skin crawl. “I must say, it’s refreshing to have such a forthcoming guest. Now then, I’m sure you feel dreadfully uncomfortable in all those clothes, so won’t you shed them for your sake?”
She wanted to. She desperately wanted to breathe freely, move freely, reach for the sword hidden under her clothes for their inevitable clash. But once again, she was stopped by the words of a mysterious storyteller, some of which she repeated to Claude.
“Only if you slough a skin as well.”
“What a strange request!” Claude exclaimed. “Very well then. A layer of clothes for a layer of skin.”
When she first heard of Claude, Byleth had wondered how he could slough skin with no hands, but her imagination couldn’t prepare her for this. Underneath his scales, something writhed and bulged until two limbs seemed to unstick themselves. Razor sharp talons sliced a line down his center, as if splitting an invisible seam, and out from his first layer of skin sprang the Lindworm, sporting a new pair of arms.
Now it was her turn. Byleth took off her outermost jacket, unveiling another jacket, and upon sensing no malice from Claude, followed him deeper into Castle Derdriu.
Byleth soon found out that both the mansion’s high temperature and odoriferous haze stemmed from its library. There, voluminous smoke plumes wafted from an army of incense burners and an enormous, barely-contained bonfire roared in a fireplace, causing her to sweat even more.
“Isn’t this a bit excessive?” She gestured at all around her.
“Not at all.” Claude shook his head. “In fact, the mansion still feels much too cold for me. Ah, how I curse Leicester’s weather everyday!”
A smirk crept onto his face. “Perhaps, rather than quenching these flames, you should shed your clothes?”
It would take more than heat and a smug suggestion to lead Byleth astray. With her chin held high, she replied, “Only if you slough a skin as well.”
Once again, Claude chuckled in amusement, and once again, the two of them disrobed. This time, a head of curly, dark brown hair emerged, complete with a small braid that he quickly tucked behind an ear.
Still at the forefront of Byleth’s mind, however, was one of his prior remarks. “Are you… not from here?”
“Why do you wish to know? Do you need another reason to be afraid?”
“I am simply curious, and it will take more than a foreign-born man to frighten me.”
Claude scrutinized her expression, then huffed out laughter. “Have I told you how much I appreciate your honesty? Granted, it has been a long time since I shared my homeland with anyone, and only one of us will remain by the end of the evening, so maybe I will indulge your curiosity.”
And that he did, by presenting to Byleth a grand map of an eastern land, by reading her passages from ornate books, and by showing off treasures smuggled across mountains, the last of which was a board game made of ivory and onyx. Once Claude explained the rules and they played a few practice rounds, he expectedly decided to raise the stakes.
“How about if you lose the next game, you will shed your clothes?”
Byleth leveled a knowing gaze at Claude. “Only if you slough a skin if you lose.”
“Heh. I’ll make sure not to lose then.”
The frantic clacking of stone pieces filled the library until they reached a stalemate. Which meant that, following a fervent discussion, both Byleth and Claude would take off one layer each. As Byleth tossed aside the last of her jackets, and as Claude’s serpentine features gave way to a human face, the smile on his newly formed lips suggested that their draw might not have been a coincidence.
Dinner came and went, along with another layer of skin and clothes. By now, Duke Riegan looked more man than snake, at least from the waist up, and a handsome man at that. So when he asked Byleth to spend the night with him, she did not refuse. Even if she would be heading into the Lindworm’s private chambers, with nothing to protect herself save for her dwindling clothes and the sword at her hip.
“Although I’m not afraid of trying new things, I cannot imagine how this will work.” Byleth eyed his slithering lower half.
“Are you asking me to slough a skin first for once?” Claude chortled.
“Would that help?”
“Only if you shed your clothes too.”
Byleth sighed at the answer she should’ve expected, but she pulled a shirt over her head anyway. In return, Claude pulled a pair of legs out of snakeskin, though his tail remained behind him.
“How do you find me now?” He sat down on his bed and waved his legs and tail at her.
“Better,” Byleth admitted. “But we both still have more to remove.”
“You are a difficult woman to please, Byleth Eisner.”
Despite Claude’s complaint, and for the sixth time today, they shed their layers together, leaving Claude with a veneer of golden scales over sun-kissed skin, and Byleth with a plain black dress that barely hid her sword.
“Ah, so you are here to kill me,” Claude murmured.
“If I was, I would need to take off my dress to reach my sword. Which means you must slough a skin.”
“I don’t have to. I could break the rules of our little game and kill you now.”
“You could’ve killed me many times over, yet here we are,” Byleth fired back. “If you ask me, I think you’re just as curious as I am about what, or rather, who we will find underneath our many layers.”
Silence, then a mirthless laugh. “Alas, even if you’re right, my final skin is cursed and cannot be removed by my own hands. So it looks like one of us will die tonight after all.”
His resignation, a far cry from his usual bravado, stirred something within Byleth’s chest. As she stared into his wide emerald eyes, she realized that it wasn’t just curiosity or lust that got them this far.
Claude harbored an intense desire . A desire to be freed from this curse, a desire to find someone to free him, and a desire that told her what she needed to do.
“It doesn’t have to end like this. Do you trust me?”
There was another bout of silence, more deafening than the last, before Claude gave her the faintest of nods.
As Byleth undid the ties of her dress, black fabric fell away to show bare skin and the hilt of her sword. Claude remained frozen in place, even when she pressed her sword’s tip against his neck and carved a delicate line down his middle. Golden scales cracked and flaked under the blade’s edge, and once Byleth cut a large enough seam, she yanked off the rest of the snakeskin, revealing…
“You,” she uttered in disbelief. “You’re the storyteller.”
“That’s me,” Claude replied, now completely human, as well as frustratingly familiar.
“But you said that you couldn’t remove your last skin. How did you appear before me back then? And why?”
“Now that is a story I have to tell from the very beginning…”
Thus began a tale of a half-Almyran, half-Fódlan prince who was hated for his heritage. He took his grandfather’s place as Duke Riegan to escape his suffering in Almyra, only to find that Fódlan could be just as cruel. Desperate for any reprieve, he donned the magical skins of a Lindworm, said to protect its wearer from all harm, yet its power came at a great cost. The prince became what the rumors painted him as: a venomous, cold-hearted monster, trapped in a prison of his own making.
Only a pure-hearted individual could cut through the Lindworm’s skins and break the curse, but how could he find said person? He had to sow gossip throughout the Alliance and draw in potential curse-breakers with the one saving grace of the curse. On the warmest day of each moon, the Lindworm’s last layer of skin sloughed off by itself, granting him precious time to masquerade as a human storyteller.
“... Then why did you put the skins back on?” Byleth inquired.
“I had to. The Lindworm's curse also made me depend on the skins for warmth, so I would literally freeze to death without them. Although I personally feel that Leicester is still too chilly for me, even now…”
Claude’s fingers inched towards the discarded layer of skin, and would have snatched it up if Byleth hadn’t slapped them away.
“No. I went through all that effort to free you. I’m not letting you get cursed again.”
“But Byleth, I’m cold . See?”
Without warning, Claude brought a hand up to Byleth’s cheeks. He wasn’t lying after all. For some reason, he was freezing . Rather than giving into his whims, however, Byleth pressed her own hand against his, and wrapped her other arm around Claude.
“Then since I’m already here, how about I help you acclimate?”
“I knew I trusted the right person.”
Smiling, Claude and Byleth leaned into each other and sealed their new agreement with a warmth-sharing kiss.