Fire Emblem Three Houses: The Colossal King of Faerghus

Prologue

"Hey! A-are you awake?" were the first words Byleth heard as he slowly opened his eyes,  groaning in discomfort as light filled his vision for the first time in... how long had he been asleep for, anyway? The last thing he remembered was plummeting into a chasm while attempting to help Lady Rhea -who was also a dragon, apparently- defend Garreg Mach Monastery from Edelgard and the Adrestian Empire. Shaking his head, Byleth sat up in the bed he was laying in, attempting to regain his senses.

"Where am I?" he grumbled as he looked around the interior of the small house he was inside.

"We're in a village at the base of the monastery," a bearded farmer, who had been sitting in a chair opposite the bed, replied, before getting up and walking towards him. "What are you doing in a place like this?" Byleth blinked his eyes heavily, trying to force down the grogginess to piece together what had happened. It was quite apparent that he had lost consciousness after his fall off the cliff, and this man had taken him in, and nursed him back to health. It was what had happened while he was unconscious that concerned him, at the moment, and the sooner he got answers for that, the better. "I honestly didn't expect to find someone floating away down the river..." the farmer continued. "Garreg Mach is upstream of here, but that place was abandoned." Byleth's eyes widened.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, attempting to get out of bed, only for the farmer to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Huh? You don't know?" The older man raised an eyebrow. "The Church of Seiros isn't there anymore. Though there have been some folks still living there in the five years since... Well, you know. Anyway, I've heard some thieves have been spotted around those parts these days."

"Five years?" Byleth repeated slowly, not sure if he had heard that correctly.

"Um, are you feeling all right?" the farmer asked him, concerned. "You didn't hit your head or anything did you? It's the Ethereal Moon of the year 1185. It's been nearly five years since the monastery fell. Tomorrow was supposed to be the millennium festival, but who's got time to think about things like that?" Byleth brought a hand up to his chin. That sounded so familiar to him, and the more he reflected upon it, the more he remembered why.

"The millennium festival..." he mused.

"Uh, yeah, that's what I said. But with the war and the archbishop still missing and all..." The farmer shook his head. "I doubt there's a soul to be found who has enough blessings worth counting. Hey! Slow down, will ya?" he yelped, as Byleth pushed his hand aside to get out of the bed. "Where do you think you're going?"

"The monastery."

"Are you crazy?!" the older man exclaimed. "I told ya! They say thieves are running amok up there, and there's plenty of other dangers too. I heard a rumor that Imperial troops went up there to investigate and got slaughtered. Every last one! People claim a giant monster made its lair in the ruins, and crushes all who intrude! Come on, I promise I won't say you're a coward. Just forget about going anywhere near the monastery." Byleth shook his head, causing the farmer to sigh in defeat. "You just remember I tried to stop you, got it? It's not on my conscience if you wind up dead!"

"My students are waiting for me," was all the response given.

"Students? You really are crazy, aren't you?" the farmer muttered, watching as Byleth made his way out of the shabby little house. "There aren't any kids anywhere near that place anymore! Unbelievable..."

-FIRE EMBLEM-

The trek back up to Garreg Mach did not take too long. In fact, Byleth arrived just as the sun's first rays began to peek up from over the many hills that surrounded the monastery. If he was honest with himself, it hurt a little bit to see what had once been a beautiful, pristine building fallen into disarray, with a partially collapsed roof and the smell of dusty ash emanating from it. As he approached the front doors of the monastery, though, another odor filled his nose- the metallic stench of blood. Bracing himself for any manner of unpleasant surprises, Byleth placed his hands upon the heavy double doors that served as the monastery's entrance, and pushed them open.

As he stepped inside the darkened entrance hall, the smell of blood got much stronger. And as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw why. Spread out all around him were the corpses of at least a dozen Imperial soldiers. Byleth grimaced as he looked upon the carnage before him. From the looks of their bodies, they had not died well. Some were strewn across the the floor in pieces, while others were bent in angles no body should be capable of bending in the slightest. As he made his way through the hall, Byleth came across something even more grisly. In the center of the room was the bottom half of another soldier, based off of the boots and greaves adorning the legs. The top half was nowhere to be found, though, because it had been reduced to a large, bloody smear that splattered out in a grisly puddle.

"Dear Goddess..." Byleth whispered, swallowing down his nausea. What could have done something like this? In the back of his mind, he recalled the farmer mentioning something about a giant monster taking up residency in the ruins of the monastery. But a Giant Wolf or Wild Demonic Beast would not have been capable of killing this many soldiers without being slain itself. And yet, in spite of that, there was no sign of any remains of such a beast anywhere.

As Byleth made his way out of the entrance hall and through the short walkway behind it, he came across the bodies of four more soldiers. Three of them were strewn around the small gardens surrounding the walkway, but the one that gave him pause was the fourth, which was half-embedded in the wall over the doorway leading into the main building. His arms and head dangled limply from the edge of a decently-sized dent in the stonework that the rest of his body was crumpled within. Doing his best not to look up at the lifeless eyes that stared down at him from above, Byleth made his way into the reception hall, and then froze.

Looming in the darkness was a massive figure. It appeared humanoid, so it was not a Demonic Beast, but it was huge, at least twice as big as Byleth, even in its currently crouched form. One could be forgiven for shrugging the shape off for a statue, if it was not for the fact that Garreg Mach did not have any statues of this size in the reception hall, or anywhere else, for that matter. As he cautiously approached the figure, it suddenly grunted and moved, alerting him to the fact that it had seen him. As Byleth's hand slid down towards his belt to rest upon the grip of the Sword of the Creator, the light of the early morning dawn finally filled the windows of the monastery, allowing him to see the being in front of him more clearly.

"It can't be!" Byleth gasped, as he stared upon the man before him. He was big, much bigger than humanly possible, but there was no mistaking him. "Dimitri?"

The giant grunted, tilting his head as dirty strands of his greasy, blonde hair shifted out of the way from his face. A single, piercing blue eye stared down at Byleth, the other squeezed firmly shut. His clothes, which were now nothing more than tatters, dangled loosely around his body. As he leaned forward to get a closer look, his large hands slammed down onto the floor, shaking the ground so much that Byleth nearly fell over. Still, he managed to keep his footing, and looked up at the face of the giant that was so familiar to him, and yet now so different as well. For a moment, the blue eye staring down at him widened in astonishment, before growing heavy.

"I should have known..." Dimitri lamented, as his huge body sagged and sat heavily on the ground, this time shaking the room so much that Byleth fell to one knee, "that one day... you would be haunting me as well."