Dreamweaver | Fire Emblem Fates

Chapter Seventeen

Dreamweaver - Chapter 17

"I'm not sure I can do this." Siegbert's voice was small, weak, barely discernible over the screams of demons. "I..." He shook his head — his face was pasty and sticky with sweat in the cold starlight. "No, I can't, Forrest. I can't."

The two boys sat a ways from the edge of Anankos's abyss, clinging to each other as if that would protect them from the things they'd seen over the edge. Siegbert's fingers dug into Forrest's arms, and Forrest had a death-grip on his cousin's leg. The presence of his living, breathing kin was a profound comfort to Forrest, a reminder that he was not the only one facing the horrors that loomed but yards away.

Forrest took a deep breath and said, "We don't have a choice."

"The hell we don't." It was one of the few times Siegbert gave in to bad language, but Forrest didn't fault him for it — the current situation warranted it. "There has to be another way out of here. Someplace where we can die bravely and—"

"Forrest is right." Brynhildr was twisting uneasily above the two boys, showering them with mountain-lily-scented mist. "This is it. The final fright. The witches' last attempt at stopping your hearts for good. It's also the back door out of this nightmare. You have to go in."

Siegbert's fear turned into anger. "What you're suggesting? It's suicide! There's nothing waiting for us down there except for a dragon and two million demons who want to rip us into pieces to share amongst themselves!"

"We can do it, Siegbert." Forrest struggled to stay calm, to keep his cousin's fear from infecting him. Nothing will hurt you unless you allow it, he told himself. Don't give in.

"We've made a similar plunge before, and we survived," he said to his cousin.

"That was not the same," Siegbert snarled. "That was jumping from one island to the next. This...this will be jumping into the pit of hell itself. We don't know what's down there, besides Anankos, besides those demons, and...and once we jump..."

He didn't have to finish his sentence. Once we jump, there's no going back. This really was the final hurdle — the final fright and the final death, if Forrest's theory proved false. If they didn't embrace the death, embrace it with the valor of martyrs, then they would never live to see reality again. Forrest knew that, and the knowledge - the knowledge that he was walking a thin line, that there was every chance that he could be wrong as much as he could be right - scared him. And that too, he knew, was a part of the witches' plot. The door's there, but they want me to be afraid to open it. They want me to be afraid every step I take towards it.

He laced his fingers tightly through Siegbert's. "We can do it, Siegbert," he said again, trying to convince himself as much as his cousin. "We have to do it."

Siegbert's eyes were hooded in the gloom. "How do we...how do we even know that this really is the back door?" he asked. "The deathstroke spell's chased us towards this place. What if this is all a trick? What if you discovering how to get out of the dreamweave was intentional? What if they want you to want to jump, and there really is nothing down there but death?"

Forrest felt himself going cold. Siegbert's idea made him feel sick, and for a second, he truly wondered: What if he's right, and this is some kind of bluff? Double bluff? Triple bluff? Then he shook his head, setting his jaw. No. He wasn't going to give in to doubts. He wasn't going to ask himself if the witches had orchestrated the fight with Leo so that he would be hopeful in something that didn't exist. "The door is down there, Siegbert," he said, making his voice as hard as he was able. "I know it is. And I'm not going to let the witches and their determination to kill us stymie me. You and I are going over that edge, together, hand in hand. And when we fall and we get scared, we're going to look at each other and take comfort in our own humanity. And then, we're going to smile when Anankos eats us, smile and laugh because we won and they lost. Because the doorway to reality is somewhere down Anankos's throat, and they thought we'd never think to reach it, but we did."