Part 6: (Part One, Chapter 3) Wouldn't last a Daein there

Welcome, one and all, back to the REAL save file.





This isn't just a pretty environment, it's the actual location we'll be fighting in. Note the thickets and healhedges; these will in absolutely no way form any part of the strategy for the mission.



I'm sure they are safe and secure, just as I'm sure the abbot got his medicine. I believe in them.

Pardon... Excuse me. Not to pry, but did you know you're bleeding? You've got some blood on your sleeve there.

Hm? Oh, you're right! I've been so distracted, I didn't even notice...

Unfortunately, there are no vulneraries to heal you in this rat hole... Here, try wrapping this cloth around your wound.

Thank you very much. I don't believe we've met. I'm Micaiah.

I'm Aimee. I've been a lucky guest in this dungeon for quite some time. On behalf of myself and my snoozing friend over there, Ilyana, it's very nice to meet you, Micaiah.

...Mm...

If I made a list ranking everyone from Path of Radiance that I couldn't wait to see again in Radiant Dawn, Aimee and Ilyana would be… on a different list.

Why are you two in here?

I wish I knew! I belong to a merchant caravan that was passing through en route to the next market day. When we arrived here, we were brought to this charming prison against our will. Now, we await "the general's pleasure."

I see. Well, that doesn't sound good. How unfortunate.

Um...

So you can talk. You've been so quiet over there, I assumed you didn't speak our language.

...if you wish, you may use this salve on your wound. It's an infusion of olivi grass.

Olivi grass? Hm, I've never heard of it. Are you sure it's safe?

I think I'm either going insane or those last two lines were edited for the EU translation; the version I saw doesn't mention olivi grass, just some generic "medicine". Either that or I just completely forgot about it. In any case, the lines here are from the script. There seem to have been a lot of these fairly substantial but ultimately inconsequential changes made in the "translation", and I've yet to hear a good reason why.

It's unquestionably safe...and effective.

Thank you most kindly. I'll try it.

Well, aren't you the trusting one? Are you honestly comfortable applying a strange medicine to your wound?

I am. I know it will work. Thank you for sharing your medicine.

You're welcome!

I hear something!

Here you are.

Sothe!

Chirp!

Yune! I'm so glad you're both all right!

Sorry it took so long to get here. Hello.

Well, hello! I remember you. You've certainly grown up to be easy on the eyes! I believe I'm a little smitten.

You two know each other?

Somewhat. We crossed paths during the war. Let's get out of here before the guards come. I'll open the door, then we'll find a way out.

I would like to get out of here, too. Like Aimee, I have no idea why I've been imprisoned. May I join you?

By all means!

I thank you much. My name is Kurth.

Well then, Kurth, after you.

Wow! This guy's mysterious! I wonder who he could be? What secrets hide behind that cloak and that suspiciously assumed-name-like name?



Nolan! Edward! Leonardo! It's so good to see you all.

How did you manage to sneak in this far without my help?

Oddly, one of the soldiers let us in the back way.

A Begnion soldier?

Yes, he said, "If you're here to save Laura, follow me."

How strange. Why would a Begnion soldier mention me?

THIS IS IN NO WAY THE FORESHADOWING OF A GAMEPLAY ELEMENT



Surprise, surprise! They found us!

Micaiah, this is for you.

My tome! How did you get it?

I didn't know if it was yours, but I figured you could use it. So at the armory, I "borrowed" it too.

Well done, Sothe. Now I can pull my weight and fight.

They'd totally like us to believe that the writers weren't blindly scrambling to think of some contrived explanation for how our inventory is still here, and didn't completely forget to justify this explanation by equipping Micaiah with fresh tomes after this exchange. Not that I mind, it means we get to keep Thani.

And a staff for you, Sister.

Thank you very much.

Um... I... I can fight too. Could you...lend me that tome?

What, you mean this one? Ilyana, I didn't know you used light magic, too.

Sothe, that's a tome of lightning magic.

It is?

I give up. You just grabbed at random, didn't you?

You know I can't read the old language. The letters all look the same to me! Here. If this one will work, take it. Just like old times, right, Ilyana?

Thank you... And yes, Sothe... I don't want to fight...but I'm glad I'll get to fight alongside you again...

Ilyana? If you're not up to it, don't feel pressured to fight. We can handle the soldiers. You look a little woozy. Are you sure you're going to be all right?

She's fine, Micaiah. She's always like that.

But...

I can fight... I'm...very angry... The food here... It was terrible, and...they gave us hardly any... I...will have vengeance.

This girl takes her food pretty seriously. Interesting.

I see Ilyana is as hungry as ever.

Don't worry about us. We'll carefully tiptoe around you all. The boy and I can't fight, so we'll stay out of harm's way. Good luck, everyone!

I am sorry to impose upon you. Please be careful.

Well, we've certainly picked up a lot of one dimensional characters! Ilyana has already done, almost to the letter, the "classic" returning character routine where she's all "lol this dialogue line demonstrates my single character trait" and one companion says "wow, that person has a character trait" and the other says "yeah i remember that person having this trait before and they still have it now which is funny". She returns from Path of Radiance, wherein she was similarly flat, only at least there she had a load of support conversations that were basically just variations on people making fun of her for being so very hungry; now we don't even have that.

Aimee is a bit more subtle; her "thing" was constantly hitting on Ike. Well, Ike's not here, so she demonstrates her character by sort of hitting on Sothe. And as for this "Kurth" guy… well… yeah.

Before we begin, here's a big table full of numbers.



These are the stats (HP excepted) of all our party members, for anyone curious. This concludes all discussion of dummy save/real save. This is what we've got, and what we're playing with from now on.



And here's the field of battle. There are a lot of red guys! I guess they take prison security seriously here.





Of all the people we've convinced to come along, Ilyana is the only one who's actually going to help us with anything practical. She's a Thunder Mage; she uses thunder tomes exclusively, and if you manage to muddle her all the way to promotion, then maybe she can use some other tomes. She also conforms to the Dawn Brigade Odd Growth standard by having almost as high a chance of gaining strength as magic, and her magic growth is not exactly spectacular for a mage. She has enough skill growth and starting stats to compensate for the relative inaccuracy of thunder magic, but it's just not enough, and to cap it all off, her speed, while good for the time being, will quickly get left behind. She'll be handy to have around for this chapter, but she's a great candidate for the bench and not much else. She comes equipped with a Thunder tome and an Elthunder tome.

(Elthunder is to Thunder as Steel weapons are to Iron ones; heavier, more powerful, less accurate, and requiring a higher rank in the given weapon type)

Ilyana comes with the Shade skill. You won't notice this skill working passively, so I'll tell you straight up; Shade reduces (but doesn't negate) the chances of a unit being attacked by enemies. If an enemy is in range of a unit with shade and another unit, there is a flat percentage (anyone know exactly what it is?) that the Shady unit will be ignored, regardless of enemy AI preference. Of course, it doesn't always work, which is a great argument in favour of not using Shade on Ilyana and instead putting it on a non-tanking frontliner. Of course, we don't have a tank right now, so Shade will remain on Ilyana. If you really need to distract enemies from your squishy units, there are better ways than Shade.

Even if they won't fight, Aimee and Kurth will be right there on the map with us.





Here's Aimee's stats. If she wasn't a noncombatant she might make a decent mage - her magic is capped, so it won't get any higher, but since she won't be fighting after this mission, that wouldn't matter. More importantly, she has just about enough defense to take one hit from one enemy without going down. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.





Here are Kurth's stats. There is nothing at all here to suggest that Kurth is anything other than the simple pilgrim he claims to be. Not one thing.

Also, none of the facts reported on these screens are lies.



Remember when I said the thickets wouldn't be important? I lied.

Standing in a thicket grants a unit +10 to avoid and +1 to defense. Neither of which are shabby.

Nolan takes cover in such a thicket and attacks with his Hand Axe, grievously injuring the nearby soldier. Sothe moves up and immediately recommences Operation Punching Bag.



Here's a new trick we've unlocked as of this chapter; the commander of the current army (so Micaiah in this case) can issue standing orders to either the player army - with Order - or the "other" army - here comprising Aimee and Kurth, who will move in their own phase after us but before the enemy - with Direct. By default, the player army is set to Halt, meaning that they'll stay still unless told otherwise, but if you change their orders, anyone you haven't moved when you choose to end your turn will act automatically according to your orders. For the player army, this is generally a useless function, but for the other team, it's a godsend.

They're currently set to Roam, which means they'll wander around doing their own inadequately defined thing. Let's do something about that.



We select Avoid, which the AI interprets not unwisely as "stay out of enemy attack range at all costs and put distance between self and enemies". Using Order and Direct doesn't take up Micaiah's turn (though you can't do either if you've already told her to Wait). She's going to wait where she is, anyway. Pictured here also is the enemy attack range and our formation for the end of this turn.

The enemies advance, ganging up on Sothe to little meaningful effect. A knight moves to attack MatthewEdward but gets nothing but a sword in the face for his trouble.



Pictured: the aftermath. That fighter on the right is getting too close to Laura; we should probably do something about that.

But! Did you notice? Reinforcements arrived! And… does one of them look a little different to the others?



This guy has both a name and a face. Surely this is significant!



Thanks to our tremendous fortune with random numbers, Nolan is now strong and fast enough to double people with the Steel Axe, as he gleefully demonstrates to this curious fighter.



Sothe, forbidden from combat as he is, finds himself leafing through the enemies' inventories for lack of anything better to do.

You can steal from any enemy as long as;

a) They actually have something to steal (you can't steal equipped weapons and a few specific things)
b) Your speed is higher than their speed
c) Your strength is higher than the target item's weight

If you meet all these conditions, you can steal any one item with 100% chance of success. This is how you get non-red items from enemies. We help ourselves to a Vulnerary.

Stealing also gives Sothe experience, which is fine, because he's not stealing that. This is how we will (slowly) level Sothe without screwing anyone else over.



Ilyana has just enough health to survive magicking this guy at close range. Again, despite her eventual awfulness, she's very good during this mission and can double most of the enemies on this map. This guy drops a Door Key which we won't be using. Door Keys are like Chest Keys only for doors, which, once unlocked, grant not items but access (and sometimes access to items). We won't even be bothering with the door on this map, actually - we'll be taking the "long" way around and if anyone wants to argue, we have our timeless counterpoint; murder.

There is much movement, during which Edward disposes of the fighter previously acquainted with Nolan's Hand Axe. This just leaves the knight. We know what happens to knights around here, don't we?



Ooooh yes.

Business as usual after that; Laura goes healing (and gets a weapon rank in Staves), Nolan goes fighting, Sothe pilfers another Vulnerary. Then I guess some guys attack us or something.



Here's what we look like at the start of turn 3. Aran's gotten awful close; we should probably figure out what to do about him.



The "Unit" screen in the battle menu does many things; primary it just tabulates a load of information about your characters that you should already have a grasp of (the earlier screenshot of everyone's stats came from there). On the last page, however, is a screen unassumingly labelled "Conv". Units listed here can "Talk" to the units shown and maybe thereby accomplish something. Laura is listed as having something to say to Aran. Hey, he must be that guy? You remember, right?

Sadly, she's nowhere near him. So instead, we're going to have to stall. The thing with Aran is that he's still an enemy and will fight as one until we talk to him. If he's anything like these other enemies, he'll get himself killed trying. We don't want that.



Sothe does a maneuver that would probably look hilarious in real life, blocking the soldier's route forward (and also finding himself in the right place to pinch a third Vulnerary).

Laura moves to heal Nolan, and-



Fuck. She's not close enough. Well, I guess there's nothing we can do.

JUST KIDDING. I've waited three entire goddamn updates for an appropriate moment to demonstrate Shove without just shoehorning it into a mechanics tangent somewhere, and now we finally have one.

Ilyana stands (or rather, is already standing) next to Laura. Opening the action menu here reveals our latest tactical option:



Shove, of course, only appears when you can actually shove. You can't always shove just because you're next to someone!



To wit, (shover's constitution + 2) must be greater than or equal to shovee's weight. Confirm your intentions, and…



Laura is sent exactly one square away from Ilyana, without using up her turn. Shove only uses up the turn of the shover, and yes, you can, if so inclined and are able, shove the same person like ten times in one turn before making them move. Shove is, as I said so long ago, situational but invaluable. So, thus shoved, Laura moves to heal Nolan.



Edward finishes off this weakened Soldier, completing our Aran-proof line. We should survive the next turn without killing Aran.



While a soldier tries desperately to somehow harm Sothe, Aran throws a Javelin at Edward and "misses". Maybe "miss" just means "missed his vital organs" or something, but I doubt that this is a no-damage situation. Well, not complaining.

On our turn, we finally get Laura in talking range of Aran. Man, why can't she just shout? The courtyard isn't that big…



Laura!

I knew it! But, Aran, why? Why would any true Daein join sides with Begnion?

"Well, this guy came along and said he was making something called a "videogame", and something about needing someone with the flimsiest possible motivation for joining an invading army, and he went on and on about "getting players used to the idea that you can turn soldiers against their employers with a short conversation" or some such. I dunno, I went along just to shut the guy up."

A true Daein? I'm not sure I still am one... Not since a family of merchants from Begnion took me in... But I could never do anything to hurt you. You've always been like a little sister to me. Get out of here, Laura... while you still have a chance! I'll turn a blind eye.

But what about Micaiah and Sothe? They've risked their lives fighting for the abbot--and for me. I couldn't possibly abandon them now, not even if it meant saving myself.

"What was that story I heard about some unimaginably powerful magic tome going missing?"

"Look, you can't blame them for being pragmatic."

Oh, bother...

What's wrong?

I can't keep lying to myself any longer. I know what Begnion is doing in Daein is despicable, and I can't support it.

"Aran, the fact that you pledged loyalty to an army occupying your country on the basis that you spent some time with some people from Begnion whose entire business is dealing with other people suggests that your problem is not "lying to yourself" but rather is "being a retard". It's no wonder that a short conversation is going to completely convert you."

Then...from now on, I'm fighting for what's right...just like the abbot taught us. Come on. Let's get you--and everyone else--out of here!

Wonderful! Thank you, Aran. I knew it. You haven't changed a bit. You're as considerate as ever. Your family would have been so proud!

Truly, words are the greatest weapon. Well, for converting people with names, anyway. If you're up against generics and bosses, weapons are probably better weapons than words.

The best part of all this is that Talking doesn't use up a unit's turn either, so Laura can still heal Nolan for all of about 3 HP and get some EXP.





Aran, as a Soldier, is all about versatility. Soldiers profess to be reasonably good at everything, and to be good enough at everything so as not to be rendered bad by virtue of not being good enough at anything. Like all Dawn Brigade units, his stat growths are completely at odds with this concept. Unlike the others, however, Aran's growths actually work pretty well in practice. In a few levels, he'll be a joyful bundle of strength, skill and defense, with enough HP to entirely offset the fact that he'll probably be getting doubled a lot on account of his less than satisfactory speed growth.

I never liked Aran that much (and thus haven't used him much) but I'm inclined to give him a chance. Let's see how he turns out.

He comes with an Iron Lance, a Javelin, and no skills besides Shove.



We immediately feed him a kill by having Micaiah weakens the soldier who tried to hit Sothe. Aran's doing… some… damage right now, but we'll be working on this. We might just make a badass out of him yet.

Edward strolls over to the solder on the left and gets a hit in without taking one in return.

Enemy turn, and the soldier repays the favour, hitting Edward so hard that his sword arm ranks up. He's also left on one HP.

Our turn, and Micaiah and Laura get right onto starting up the Experience Farming Train, healing Edward with Sacrifice and healing Micaiah with Heal.



At turn's end, Aran finds himself flanked by two guys. There's also those two knights, but I have it on good authority that they're not going to move off their squares.

Their attempted "attack" leaves one dead and the other easy pickings for Edward, who profits from the experience.



This looks familiar. It's pretty good.



It's time to begin our southward offensive. The boss is down there and he's fairly effective. There are also two guys with Javelins. Before that, there are the knights. They'll be problematic. Though it is extraordinarily tempting to waltz in and open fire with Thani, this will ultimately leave the chokepoint open, and once we start the attack, the enemies will stop holding and start pushing back. So instead, we have Micaiah shove Edward south into the chokepoint and Leonardo shove Sothe towards it, such that he can do his Punching Bag thing in the remaining space. Edward (and Sothe) are both standing in thickets, so he should dodge enough attacks such that he not die.

That's also our formation as of the end of turn six. I've made a stupid mistake here, one that someone replaying the game should really have not done. Those who've done this all before, can you spot it?



A small armory of projectile weapons come hurtling at Edward. The boss does his part, too. Burton has a Wind Edge - which is to our advantage, because Wind Edges are inaccurate as shit and Edward is reasonably good at dodging as it is, and he's standing on terrain that gives him +10 avoid.



He survives - just. If you were wondering what my big mistake is, you can note here the answer; reinforcements have arrived from the north and Aimee and Kurth are still there. We can save them, though.

Leonardo and Ilyana take care of the swordsman. Nolan takes his best shot at the archer, but ultimately can't kill him. Someone is going to take a hit this day.



Notice the formation of the northern units. Leonardo and Nolan form part of a wall, and Ilyana is blocking the archer's progress to his south. When our turn ends, Aimee and Kurth will run behind our wall and be inaccessible, and the archer will attack one of our units. That archer could ruin Leonardo's shit in a fair fight - but he can't OHKO him. We know that, therefore, he will attack Nolan, the only unit who can't counterattack at that range (he's not using his Hand Axe), and the one unit who's best placed to survive the hit.

Aran equips his Javelin and stands in the chokepoint - the better to counterattack the pesky rangers. Micaiah finally commences the Thani-ing. It is glorious. Sothe actually attacks the knight to his left using a Bronze Dagger. We want enemies to attack Aran so he can kill them.



With Aimee and Kurth out of reach, the northern archer defies all expectations and runs away to use a Vulnerary. Fine by me. You might note the yellow circle to the left of the screen; this is me setting a "Target" area for the other team to walk to - you just pick a square and they navigate to it. Quite useful when you want them to go somewhere.



Look, game, I don't know what you think "miss" means…

Ilyana and Nolan continue their pursuit of the northern archer, but he somehow evades their violence. Another turn, archer, another turn.

Back down south, it's rather boring; Micaiah attacks with light, Sothe pilfers an enemy's Steel Lance, and Aran heals in preparation for another onslaught. Micaiah levels up.



Seriously.

Y'know, over in another thread, some guy, in the course of expressing a personal dislike of informative Fire Emblem LPs made a comment referring to LP authors' tendency to despair somewhat when units get bad levels. I was all, like "I should totally make some offhand reference to this comment without calling attention to the fact that I'm directly responding to someone who doesn't like LPs like mine because he probably isn't reading this anyway and I get to make light of someone's slight at me, which is a neat thing to do in any case." That was a week ago. I've been waiting for a terrible level up just so I can say "ARGH HUMOURLESS EXPRESSION OF RAGE" and be all knowingly smug and stuff, but I can't. Such a level hasn't come. Fate just will not let me do it.

What a terrible life I lead.

Oh well. Enemy turn.



Classes that use shields (so soldiers and knights) have these nifty animations where enemy attacks "miss" by bouncing off their shields. If the attack was a thrown weapon, it bounces off and just drops harmlessly out of sight. It's neat.

That one goddamn archer continues his epic struggle with Nolan. Next turn, mate. Next turn.



Guess what? I completely forgot about the reinforcements that are scheduled to arrive at EXACTLY the point I told Aimee and Kurth to flee toward. Oh boy.

Before we worry about them, however, Nolan has a score to settle.



Aaaaah.



Aran moves to hold the chokepoint while Sothe, Edward and Micaiah rush to take care of Aimee and Kurth. However, despite a valiant effort…



They couldn't quite finish the last guy. It looks like Aimee's gonna have to take a hit.

Laura levelled up though!



With Laura, we're satisfied with anything as long as she gets a point in magic. So this is good.

We brace for the inevitable and begin the enemy phase. Aimee survives the hit she's due, and a soldier immediately hits Aran so hard he levels up;



I think I know how I'm getting all this luck. It's being leeched from someone else.

This is followed by a rather uneventful phase wherein Edward murders the guy who hit Aimee and Aran heals himself. How long've we been holding this point for? All these distractions… Everyone moves towards the chokepoint, and we might actually get to maybe actually breaking through this time.



Burton continues desperately trying to hurt us. And failing. Protip: Wind Edges just aren't that great unless you have a monumental amount of skill or have a serious boost to your hit rate. The shockwave is joined by the usual accompaniment of Javelins. Aran survives.



More bloody reinforcements. At least these ones have the decency to show up in a place we're going to anyway. Good news: None of them have ranged weapons, so they don't represent that great an annoyance.



…so we put the Javelin back on Aran, move everyone forward, and wait for them to kill themselves on us. Micaiah throws some light magic over for good measure.

Aran makes progress with the enemies, and-



OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE

Alright. I've had it with this damn map.



Sothe relieves Burton of a nifty item. It's a scroll that teaches one character the shown skill. We'll get to that later.

More importantly, now that I have the scroll, we are done fucking around. Micaiah, waste this fucker.

You! Crawl quietly back to your cell, and I'll spare you. More than that, however, I cannot promise.

Don't be so sure. This isn't our first fight, and it won't be our last.

"To clarify, it won't be our last fight, but it will be yours."

A brave, yet foolish, sentiment. Before the might of the empire, you lowlifes are just cracked dirt beneath my boots!

"Do you even comprehend the fact that the only reason you're still alive is because we could only kill so many of your minions at a time?"





And, naturally…



I can't think of anything else to say about these levels.

Even if you run... There is no place... for you scum... to go...

We're not hanging around here a moment longer than we have to.

Ilyana effortlessly wastes the first of the remaining soldiers down here. Aran puts a small hole in the second. Edward finishes him…



…in the style to which we are accustomed.



The fools to the north continue chasing us, so we send Nolan to… "intercept" them. Their foolish attempts to hurt Nolan leave them on low health, making it easy for Aran and Nolan to murder. Incidentally…



Still got nothin'.

Ilyana and Edward team up to murder the last member of Burton's guard.

Out of a party of a knight, a fighter, a soldier, and three archers, the enemy sends only the fighter, and he can't even get all the way to us.

Edward and Aran are both close to levelling up, so we send Edward to open the attack, and Aran to close it. Results:



…

…

…

ARGH HUMOURLESS EXPRESSION OF RAGE

…

…what a bittersweet occasion.

Anyway,



Aran needs to be shoved before he can get in range of the guy. Also, it was at this moment when I finally realized that Shove is based on (Cn +2 > Wt) and not simply (Cn > Wt). So, yeah.



Not done yet, though; Edward's in the way and the thickets are stopping us from getting into melee range. Aran's too heavy for anyone else to shove, so we just shove Edward out of the way instead. Aran does what he came to do, and gets his level;



…It's possible that my luck may have caught up to me. Since the enemy isn't moving, we let the rest of the gang catch up to us, and prepare to assault the exit. In the course of endless use of Sacrifice, Micaiah levels up yet again;



It's bad that a level up like this feels so very, very, disappointing, isn't it?



We direct Aimee and Kurth a little closer to the exit. And heal a bit more.

On the enemy turn, the soldier decides it's now worth his time to maybe attack us a little.



Nolan decides he's not going to bother taking this seriously anymore. No one else from the enemy has even moved.

The first guy guarding the exit is a knight.



He is dealt with summarily.

The second guy is an archer and is supposed to be a threat on account of the weapon he holds.



We don't get a chance to check out the guy's weapon before Nolan hits him with an axe then hits him a second time.



What do you think happens when two archers try to rush a small company of overlevelled dudes?

Clue: It ends with the entire party slowly and methodically filing onto the "Escape" tile.



Micaiah takes a moment to look back at where the big pile of corpses would be of corpses didn't disintegrate in Fire Emblem.

Let's get the hell out of this map.



Still, coming back to Nevassa, I'm stunned at the terrible state of things. Who would have thought that Begnion would rule with such an iron fist? They run your nation with boundless cruelty, looting the towns and sending your able-bodied men to camps. It breaks my heart.



At least he never tried to destroy Crimea as a country!

What do you mean by that?



And a strong country only exists when its people are strong. As Begnion crushes the citizenry, it slowly destroys Daein.

The dastards are treating Daein like a nation of slaves! If this persists, Daein's strength will be sapped, and the nation itself will cease to be.

Then, what should we do? What can we do to save our country?

There is a rumor. If it's true, there might be hope...



Well, aren't we a merry band of returning characters? Daniel, Jorge and Muston form, along with Aimee, this "Merchant Caravan" we've been hearing about. They have even less personality than Aimee, what with Daniel and Jorge's sole moment of character development in the entire series being that time they asked Ike for advice about a war game that was totally not at all a blunt method of foreshadowing concerning the mechanics of an upcoming mission. Fortunately, it seems they're still capable of actually being merchants.

No, I want to know! If there is a shred of hope for us, tell me.

Well, the rumor is that King Ashnard left an orphan behind.

Really? Is that true?!

King Ashnard had a child? Why have I never heard of this?

It's just a rumor--nothing more. But if it's true, it would be a strike of great fortune for Daein.

In the last war, Crimea used a scion of the royal family to unify its people and rally a liberation army. So could Daein.

And drive out the loathsome Begnion!

So where is this orphan?

According to rumor, he's in the east, near the Desert of Death, trying to raise an army to lay claim to the throne. Shall we go there?

Micaiah, what do you think?



"I'm very sure about what I said because I said it while my eyes were closed. That means I'm using Farsight."

Well, that's it then. We must go to the desert to meet our destiny.

Coming up next time: Characters named Pain and Agony. Seriously.