Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was over. It was finally over.
Laughter and cheers filled the air all the way up towards the bright sky, white clouds dissipating to greet the gleaming sun that warmed the atmosphere around him. His friends smiled at him while they began embracing each other, dancing drunk with happiness and his own heart was filled with the same feeling of relief, knowing it was all over at last: the great evil had been defeated, the world was safe and able to prosper once more. All of this had only been possible through the long, arduous and hard work of himself and his comrades, having overcome so many hardships and horrors they would last all of them for a lifetime.
Everyone looked at him, anticipating some kind of speech thanking them for their combined efforts and all the sacrifices they’ve had to make to save the world, and he was just about to open his mouth to begin the process.

But then, something changed. His friends grew pale, eyes sunk back into their skulls as they collapsed, almost melted, and the happy cheers immediately lapsed into silence. The sun wasted away as if it had never existed at all while a black mist as far as the eye could see engulfed his world, tainting everything there was. The sky, the ground, mountains, fields. Ruins. Bodies.
It invaded the air, even his own self, his mind and body, mixing with a tint of deep red that kept swirling before his eyes while bringing a distinctively iron-like taste to his mouth. His nose, meanwhile, was assaulted by the indescribable yet characteristic odor of decay. And yet, he was strangely calm, as if his mind was so deeply occupied with all of these impressions that it had no time to actually react to them. He knew this should unnerve him, have his heart pound out of his chest, throat knotted to the point of being unable to breathe and yet… it didn’t. He felt no raised heartbeat, no quickened breath. Nothing.

Looking before him, peeking through what clouded his vision in alternating hues of black and red, Chrom found the limp silhouettes of familiar people — friends, family, comrades. Armor broken, limbs torn, weapons shattered, faces frozen in eternal horror before whatever had sealed their terrible fate.
Frederick, Sully, Vaike, Sumia… they were all gone. Everyone was gone.

And all that was left were their mangled remains drenched in blood.

Something nearby broke the deafening silence and Chrom noticed how heavy his body was as he turned to find the source of the noise, yet despite this heaviness he couldn’t feel his head move at all, his body seemed like a wholly different entity that did not belong to him. Yet he could see, as much as it took to adjust his eyes through the darkness of the dead battlefield, that his field of vision changed to the same degree he imagined his body had  turned.
Something was very off, but he had no mind to dwell on it. All he could think about was death — death around him, death before him, death behind him.
But something, no, someone , was still alive.

He looked around as the stench of rot grew, saw a shadow approaching from the burning ruins in the distance while the sky simultaneously grew even darker until it resembled a deep void of nothingness.
Slowly the figure emerged, it seemed healthy and fine, with its slow movement tied to confident grace rather than injury. He knew this figure, had seen this very silhouette hundreds, if not thousands of times before. But once again, something was off about the familiarity of it and even this being was deeply known to him, so much so that Chrom found himself drawn to it, compelled to meet this person. He somehow knew they were the only one left he could confide in. For the first time in what felt like his entire lifetime, words escaped Chrom’s dry lips.

“Robin…?” Even his voice didn’t seem like his own.

As the hooded tactician stood before him, Chrom thought he finally felt something, perhaps relief that his closest friend had escaped whatever had brought this calamity onto everyone else. He couldn’t see Robin’s face, but that was fine for now, everything was fine as long as he was at least alive. 

“Oh my”, Robin began, “what’s the matter? You look so… distressed.”

His calm voice reflected the silence of the decaying battlefield, bringing what should be some much-needed composure to this confusing situation full of sights and smells that would normally be nothing but complete terror yet somehow hardly got a reaction out of Chrom. Instead, however, it was yet another piece of this dark puzzle the Ylissean prince hardly understood.

“Robin… they’re all… What happened…?”

For a moment, he thought he caught a little glimpse of a smile from within the shadows beneath Robin’s cowl. But that couldn’t be true, Robin would never take a situation like this lightly; surely he knew what was going on and how to solve it — that was the only thing Chrom could think about anymore, the foul stench, the dark swirls before his eyes, it all seemed to disappear little by little as long as he kept looking at his friend.

“What do you mean, what happened? They’re all dead, of course.

Because you killed them. ”

Impossible.

He didn’t know how to respond, wasn’t even sure whether he truly had heard those words just now. They couldn’t be real, but at the same time Robin would never lie to him, would he? And yet, it made no sense — they all had just celebrated Grima’s defeat together, nobody had attacked them, especially not Chrom himself. He’d rather die than hurt his friends. The longer he kept staring at Robin in disbelief the more the nauseating malodor returned, those swirls of black and red made their way back into his vision, blood and darkness coming together in a mixture that was already so familiar to him that it felt more like a part of his own body than his limbs did. He dropped to his knees yet felt nothing of the process. The only thing he noticed was an ever growing cold sensation, icy needles running up and down his spine as his own mind kept screaming at him.
This wasn’t true, it wasn’t true, it just wasn’t true. It would never be true!

A gust of wind blew the hood off Robin’s head, revealing a distorted, hellish grin from one ear to the other as the tactician looked down on Chrom with glowing, blood-red eyes that had somehow replaced the golden ones he was so familiar with. But there were other eyes as well — several more in reddish purple adorned his face, running down Robin’s cheeks like bloody tears. When Chrom looked closer, a peculiar aura seemed to dance around his friend, who suddenly appeared equal parts different yet wholly familiar, forming six slender, feathery entities behind him. Above the two, the dark void appeared to move, the eerie silence with which it did almost appearing like deafening noise all in itself. A moment later, more eyes stared at him from the sky, gigantic and hungry for him.
For the first time, Chrom felt something: terror. Terror at how none of this seemed to affect him all that much; the blood, the death, the monster disguising as Robin all felt like second nature to him even though he couldn’t understand why. Finally, his lips moved to form a reply and when they did, it was almost as if it happened without his conscious input.

“Master… Grima…”

The figure that was supposed to be his friend moved to close the gap between the two of them, reaching for Chrom’s face to caress it with his hands. They were gloveless, and Chrom thought he caught a glimpse of something on one of them that reminded him of those additional eyes creeping around Robin’s own face, which looked like they moved all on their own from time to time. The grin persisted, but the tactician’s voice had dropped significantly compared to what Chrom remembered of him, even though these memories quickly began to feel more and more distant. Even what happened earlier, his friends’ happy faces, had begun to disappear from his mind with every second he stared into those glowing eyes.

“You’ve done well for today, King of the Risen — Ylisse is almost gone, even though you’ve only been mine for a couple of hours.”
Robin brought his face even closer, their lips almost touching, yet despite that, Chrom could feel no breath on his face, unsure why that was. Did Robin have none left, or was it himself who couldn’t feel anything? The monster continued.
“I must say I’m impressed. Perhaps I might even reward you…”

Just a moment later, however, Robin — no, Grima — withdrew once again, eyes trailing off to the side while the additional ones on his face instead chose to remain fixed on Chrom, who followed his master’s line of sight. He found another figure that was surprisingly alive, but unlike Robin before was in far worse condition.

“...Chrom… why…?”

Lissa crawled through the mud towards him in small increments, her familiar bright yellow dress long having lost its color to replacements in grayish browns and reds. Her brother couldn’t tell what exactly had happened to her legs, but they looked strange, flopping along after her while the young princess pulled herself across the ground on her arms.
She locked eyes with him, face drenched in a hellish concoction of tears, blood and dirt, yet he could determine no fear in it, instead it practically screamed confusion and worry.
Despite this terrible sight of his own sister, however, Chrom felt… nothing.
But as he looked down, he found his hand trembling, a sword firmly clutched in his fist. The sword, the hand, the arm, something about it was just as off as his whole body seemed to be, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was, or why.
Yes, why… why was Lissa even like this? Why was she here, extending her hand to reach out for him while in this state, obviously crying despite how determined she wanted to be? Who had done this to her?

“Chro…m…”, she repeated, words broken up by rattling coughs, “please stop… that’s not… you… Ru…n… before Gr—”

Chrom saw his own arm move, raising his sword high in the air before letting it crash down in order to take his sister’s last breath, denying her the dignity of a peaceful end. Yet still, he felt nothing. No matter for how long he stared at her body cut in half, blood pooling below, it meant nothing, like a broken toy, a puppet that had never been all that functional in the first place. It never had any worth, just like none of those bodies around had any worth, and would never have it again from here on out. They were meaningless piles of rotting flesh, nothing more and nothing less.

Grima’s puppet approached the scene after watching Chrom end his sister from afar, crushing the core of her discarded staff under his boot with a crunch so sharp it seemed reminiscent of a broken bone. Together, they watched the last of Lissa’s life evaporate from her, taken by the ice-cold wind like fresh powdered snow drifting away in the winter breeze. With every second that passed, her scared, mangled face seemed to change more and more, until Chrom was hardly able to recognize it, began to wonder what her name had even been. He knew he felt nothing about all of this, but… was he even supposed to?

What he did feel instead was a tingling sensation on his forearm, Robin’s hand playfully dancing across his skin while slowly tracing the shape of the mark on his shoulder.
That useless mark which served no purpose anymore, had offered no protection from any of this. Naga was gone… She had never been helpful.
The mark burned.

Without warning, the extra eyes on Robin’s face moved, sharply staring upward towards the sky while the ominous shadow above them roared. Through the blackened clouds a light began to shine, a small glimmer against the oppressive darkness encompassing the world.

“Hm…” Chrom’s master seemed rather interested in this phenomenon that was so unnatural to this dead world.
“Looks like someone else is calling for you… But that is fine; go on to continue your path of death in another world until nothing is left of it. Make it your realm, King of the Risen — no, make it my realm. Go.”

His hands dug through Chrom’s hair while they both watched the light grow bigger, so bright it was hurting the dark prince’s eyes. A silent voice was calling for him, pulling on his very soul that was being wrapped in a warmth which felt familiar and yet so far away from anything he had experienced that he could hardly remember it had ever been a part of his life. He didn’t want it; if he gave in to it, he might lose the only thing he had left in this miserable existence of his: Grima… or Robin? Which of them was it? He couldn’t tell which one he did not want to lose, wasn’t even sure how it would affect him in the first place if he had an order to fulfill. He would just go on as before, wouldn’t he? Destroy and kill, make way for the Fell Dragon. That was his purpose… right?

“Chrom!!”

His head turned, and for the first time in what seemed forever his body moved on his own volition rather than feeling like it was a wholly different entity. Instead of blood-red glowing orbs, he was greeted by the familiar golden eyes he only vaguely remembered but instinctively knew he could trust. This person — what was his name again? — had exchanged the hellish grin for a face full of desperation and worry, screaming every one of his words while Chrom was being pulled away, sucked towards a direction that seemed to not exist in this reality but instead led somewhere else entirely. One desperate hand grabbed his, and for a moment the world, this deep whirl of light and dark, life and decay, appeared to stand still.

“Chrom, go and warn them! Before he will… destroy this other world…. too… Tell them… before it’s too la…..”

The defiant anguish on Robin’s face disappeared as quickly as it had come, once again replaced by the deep red and dark purple that had surrounded this body the entire time and which seemed so much more familiar by now. Somewhere in the back of his head, a feeling of relief crept into Chrom’s mind, immediately chased by the knowledge that he and his master would be separated very soon. Still, Robin’s words lingered in his ears as he stared into those blood-red eyes.

Warn them!

“Hmpf… This little insect really made it back… But it should be gone forever now. Now go and bring forth ruin and despair!”
And with this, the fallen tactician let go. With nothing left to keep him in this world, Chrom was pulled into the light, overwhelmed by the sensation of the unknown warmth as everything around him disappeared until nothing was left anymore — Grima, his friends’ corpses, the bloodied battlefield, all gone. The only thing that remained were those last words of Robin’s, echoing in his ears yet mixing with the deafening, rushing noise of the unknown with every moment.

Warn them!

Warn…!

Wa.. th..

…

Askr, despite its splendor, was like a daylit nightmare all on its own.

Chrom found dozens upon dozens of faces, both familiar and new, stare at him time and again, not always in fear or confusion and instead, mostly filled with pity. They whispered behind his back, thinking he couldn’t hear them wonder what had even happened back in his own world for the brave, strong prince to end up like that. He was an animal, feral and dangerous, that they had no idea how to keep properly, desperately trying to contain this beast in vaguely human form. But he was no human anymore, neither a beast in the same sense that others around the castle were — he was simply a walking mass of shadows, neither dead nor alive, calamity and despair following him wherever he went. A dark, monstrous creature without a place among the living.
Within this shapeless void that time had become for him, Chrom would fight whatever enemy the Askrans pointed him at, compelled to comply even though none of them were his master. He always came out on top, without fail.
And yet, he felt… nothing. No pride, no sense of accomplishment, no fear before those touted as particularly strong enemies, nothing at all — he would kill, just kill, because that was all he had left. It was the only thing he was here for.
Or… was it?

Sometimes, he saw those from another version of his own world, his old friends and family, some of which even wept at the sight of him, yet he could not speak up, could neither explain himself nor express any form of emotion upon their reactions. In fact, he could hardly remember their names, memories fading in and out every time he saw them; he just knew they had been comrades once, and that it was his own fault they were gone in his world, that none of this would have happened if he had been stronger, just like so many other versions of himself existing in this place. Whenever he closed his eyes, their faces would rot and melt and fall apart just like they had back in his own reality, as if this was the state they were supposed to be in, instead of being healthy and happy.
From time to time, he crossed paths with one of those better, stronger iterations of himself and the other Chroms would look at him in disgust — at least he thought it was supposed to be disgust, because that’s what he imagined he would feel for himself in this situation. In reality though, he found it increasingly hard to read faces that weren’t falling apart in pain and anguish. Emmeryn would try to approach and comfort him, but he couldn’t let that happen, knowing what her beloved Ylisse had turned into at his own hands. He had failed them all.
Still, he wasn’t sure what he felt all about this. Sadness? Regret? Fear? None of these words could truly describe what it was like for him to live in this state, surrounded by faces that felt both familiar and yet like complete strangers that shouldn’t be the way they were while his mind continued to play tricks on him that mixed memories with reality until he had a hard time telling which was what. Was this life here perhaps a mere illusion, one to remind him what he had lost due to his own incompetence? Maybe it was a form of purgatory, brought on by Naga herself, who would sometimes watch him from a distance but never approached or even said a single word.
Whatever it was, all he could do was to continue existing within it, without happiness or fear, no sleep or food, only living to fight and kill.

One time, he looked upon one of those poor souls that had crossed his path, saw the soldier writhe on the floor in anguish. The scene reminded him of something, someone, but he couldn’t quite remember why. Regardless, Chrom dismounted the dark horse Askr had granted him for more mobility, a living shadow itself, and slowly approached the figure. He couldn’t tell whether that man’s screams were from panic or pain, but the fear of death was apparent in his eyes even to the fell king. This person seemed so insignificant to him, so tiny and miserable that he couldn’t help but start wondering… What did this insect’s death even accomplish? Why would his master want to see someone this puny dead? Chrom saw no reason to kill him, thought he didn’t want to kill him — it would achieve nothing but add another death to the pile that Askr wanted to keep as small as possible. Perhaps, Chrom began to think, he could just turn around and leave this one to his own fate, whatever it may be.
But he couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t move. Instead, he was stuck staring into those frightened eyes until he noticed that the gap between the two of them became smaller and smaller, only now realizing that he was moving. The legs that before had refused to work now stepped forward almost on their own, his arm reaching towards the lowly soldier. But it wasn’t to help him. The free hand that could perhaps pull the man up just wouldn’t react, no matter how hard Chrom tried; instead it was the other one, firmly gripping his ghastly sword fashioned after one of his master’s own fangs. With all his might Chrom tried to keep that arm down and instead raise the other one, but it was impossible — no matter what he did, the result was nothing but trembles that resembled those he saw in his victim.

The invisible, blood-drenched string that maneuvered his arm raised it high in the air, sword at the ready. All he could do was watch as it cut the soldier in half.
The scene seemed familiar, but… why?
As he stared at the mangled corpse in front of him, he gradually calmed, with every second he more quickly forgot why he had even hesitated in the first place, yet one thought remained in his mind: there had never been a way to change his fate. Neither this man’s nor Chrom’s own.
There was only one entity that could determine what happened, to himself and to this world — Grima.

Yet sometimes he remembered, had this sort of feeling at the back of his head that there was something else he was meant to do in this world but couldn’t really put it into words in order to relay those to someone else. Those bouts of memories came sporadically and were gone as quickly as they had come, but they were there, and every time it happened he just knew there was more, and they were some of the only moments that he truly felt something: fear. Fear that he was failing his friends again, fear that he would never be able to bring it up, fear that it was already too late. He saw his other self spending time with some other iterations of Robin, male or even female, and every time he did so, it sparked memories within him that made him want to cry out. Warn his other self. At any second, it could be over for him, the monster within Robin could overtake the actual person and bring an end to his best friend, his own self and perhaps, even in Askr, the entire world.

Whenever he thought his mind was lucid enough to make the last step, however, he would see another figure emerge from the shadows following him. That figure would look at him with its big smile, devilish and distorted, and silently order him to hush and Chrom, the King of the Risen, had no choice but to obey his master, to stay quiet no matter how much his mind wanted to scream.

All he could do was to watch and wait; wait until this world, too, would end and then perhaps he would finally find his own sweet relief of death.