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He did not often feel fear, but those first few weeks of blindness had reminded him of the sensation.
It wasn’t just the danger. He was used to danger. Danger was preferable to rotting, wretched stillness. Fighting half-blind, fleeing half-blind—those were inconveniences, not horrors.
Rather, the abrupt and painful removal of half of his vision had terrified him mainly because it made him drift even farther from what is real and now and certain.
There is an old story in Faerghus. Blaiddyd the elite, an ancient warrior from the time of saints, had given up his eye and, in exchange, received foresight. Visions of the future.
A revelation, the priests of Seiros claim. Magic , the Faerghus woodsmen who still keep the old ways whisper.
That was the trade. Lose sight of this world, gain knowledge of a world to come. See no longer trees and ground and sky, but instead the days and years to come. Kings should always get a little bit of magic, the old ways said.
When Dimitri lost his eye, he saw only darkness. And a part of him had started to believe that this was the magic. This was the future. His blind right side was the truth—the only thing that lay ahead was empty and black.
A few years older and wiser now, he tries to doubt. He tries. But still, the prospect of undergoing such a thing a second time has proven too disturbing to entirely ignore.
“Then don’t do it,” Felix tells him, harsh and yet entirely un-pragmatic.
They are in his study late one night, as they often are. Felix complains constantly about the abysmal hours he keeps. Never once has he gone home before Dimitri finally retired to his own bed.
“It is a tradition as old as Faerghus. Older than Faerghus!” Dimitri protests.
“So is frostbite,” Felix points out dismissively. “So are plenty of worthless things.”
“If I do not at least attempt the ritual, there will always be room to question my legitimacy,” Dimitri says, trying another strategy.
“You won a war for these people, boar! They’re calling you the savior!” Felix snaps, now sounding genuinely frustrated. “Why are you fighting so hard to persuade me that you must do this when you just said that you didn’t want to do it?”
“Because I—“ Dimitri pauses. His shoulders slump. “Because I hoped you would force me. You’ve always had a talent for… for censuring my worst impulses,” he admits.
Felix’s face turns hard and still. It makes him look less like the spitfire advisor he is growing to be, and more like the warrior he was after 5 years of losing battles. More scar tissue than living flesh.
“Fine,” Felix bites out. “Do it then. Blind yourself and climb the steps down to the Wells of Memory so that some superstitious woodsman will believe you know the future. Please everyone else but never yourself.”
He stands up then and forcibly pulls the quill from Dimitri’s hand. Dimitri, filled with relief and with dread, lets him take it. It is time for rest.
He hesitates for a moment before he blows out the candle. The palace is very dark this close to the winter solstice.
The Well of Memory lies deep in the bowels of Fhirdiad, below even the oldest crypts and treasuries built by the Church of Seiros. It is older than the faith, after all. A more primal place than a cathedral.
Dimitri has never gone before, although he knows that his father did this same trial at his own coronation. It was a space for the King of Faerghus alone to visit and for no living soul to ever see. All that Lambert would ever say of it was that the stairs were steep and that the water was cold. Perhaps there was no more to it than that, but Dimitri remembers how the shrouded expression on his fathers face told another story entirely.
Standing on the steps, Dimitri finds that it looks like the descent into a perfectly ordinary step well, the sort often built for settlements who have moved high onto the cliffs for protection. The air that floats up from the depths is damp, warmer than the bitter chill of Fhirdiad under the ethereal moon. He turns his good side to face it, searching for any clue down in its depths. He finds none.
“Step cautiously, Your Majesty,” Dedue reminds him as the officials and courtiers gather to witness his descent. “Put one hand on the wall. That will keep you balanced.”
“I shall manage, my friend,” Dimitri smiles, but his smile is thin, flimsy.
“Whenever you are ready,” Dedue tells him.
Dimitri glances through the crowd one more time. Ingrid is there, proud and pleased. Sylvain gives him a wink. Annette and Mercedes stand together, beaming at him. Ashe is excitedly chatting with the keeper of the well, clearly interrogating him about its ancient history. Felix is conspicuously absent.
Which is fine. There is no requirement that the entire court witness this—only that he descend, blind; drink, blind; and only face his people again under the sun again once he has drunk the magic that will allow him to guide their course most wisely.
Dimitri checks one more time, just to be sure. Felix is not there.
“I am ready,” he declares. But once the blindfold covers his good side, he does not feel ready. Dedue ties it gently, but tight.
It’s just the dark, he tells himself, focusing on the sounds of the crowd, on the heavy weight of his coronation crown and mantle, on the gentle guiding pressure of Dedue’s hand on his elbow. It’s just like night. In a moment, it will pass. The world is all still there, although he cannot see it. Everything cannot slip away just because he does not see it.
Without his sight, the whispers grow more obvious. They ebb at the edge of comprehension, subliminal yet impossible to ignore. His father’s voice, of course. Today it must be his father.
Dimitri takes the first step. He braces one hand against the wall, as Dedue suggested. Then he takes another step. It takes a moment to find the level plane with his foot, but after the first dozen, it becomes automatic. He knows the depth of the stair and the angle of the spiral down. He can walk without danger.
But the farther he descends, the quieter it gets. The emptier it gets. The crowd above him fades to a muffled dream and then vanishes entirely. The whole world is gone. He is alone. There is nothing else.
Dimitri… come closer. Come down. Come further down.
He pauses. His father’s dry hissing prayer continues.
Further down. Come now. Dimitri… another step lower…
He is blind and alone with the dead and everything else is gone. The future is a chasm. The magic is showing him the end of himself, of Faerghus, of the whole world, and the next step he takes will be into the open void.
Dimitri, come on!
Except… no. No, that was not entirely true. That last whisper had been… it had been Lambert, but then it hadn’t been anymore. It was another voice, someone familiar, someone equally impossible, someone…
“Felix?” Dimitri breathes out.
“Obviously,” Felix’s soft voice whispers back. “Now come on. Keep walking.”
Dimitri gropes with his foot for the next step. It takes a moment to find the rhythm again, but when he does, he feels something brush against his right arm. A weight descends on his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Dimitri asks, still not entirely certain that he has not imagined this.
“What does it look like?” Felix demands irritably, then corrects himself. “I mean… what does it—nevermind. I’m leading you down the stairs, idiot. Someone has to ensure that the new king doesn’t die of a broken neck before he even takes the throne.”
“But that’s not… I am supposed to go alone,” Dimitri babbles out, stunned beyond coherent argument.
“You’re supposed to drink from the well alone,” Felix shoots back. “The ritual never mentions the stairs. I checked. And, just to be sure, I got here early enough that no one saw me slipping down ahead. So hurry up. It’s incredibly boring down here.”
“I… I don’t…” Dimitri cannot think of what to say. His throat suddenly feels very tight. “Thank you.”
“Just keep walking,” Felix mutters grimly.
At first, Felix keeps his hand on Dimitri’s shoulder. It is an awkward way to walk. Dimitri cannot anticipate his motions and their progress is slow and halting. Eventually, Felix sighs in frustration, and takes Dimitri by the hand instead.
In the dark, every other sensation begins to magnify. Dimitri feels the insistent pressure of Felix’s fingers on his. He hears the soft sound of Felix’s breath. He detects the barely perceptible warmth of another body close to his in the tight stair. He even smells the faint smoky odor of sword-polish, leather, and wool.
It takes until Felix makes a slight grunt of discomfort for Dimitri to realize how hard he is clinging to the other man’s hand. With a rush of embarrassment, he loosens his grip. Felix sighs.
“It’s fine,” he grits out reluctantly. “I’ve got you. You’re fine. Just a little further.”
“I’m alright,” Dimitri tries to tell him. “Really. I’m not—”
“Don’t bother lying,” Felix cuts him off.
Dimitri swallows. He hears Felix do the same.
“You must think me a greater fool than ever,” Dimitri breaks the silence a few steps later. “A man of my station, afraid of the dark.”
“It’s not the dark, though,” Felix replies with certainty, as though Dimitri’s thoughts were written on his face in clear, bright letters. “It’s your eye. It’s that… vulnerability. The memory of it.”
“Yes,” Dimitri says, although it is more than that, and more than Felix should ever be burdened with knowing.
“So you should know that you aren’t,” Felix continues, his casual tone belied by the catch Dimitri hears in his breath. “Vulnerable, that is. Because I’m here. You have your shield. You could fight blind in a hail of arrows. I’d be there. I’ll always be there.”
The future is dark, so dark, so empty. Except that, Dimitri suddenly realizes, it isn’t. It has never been. It’s all just a trick of the empty right socket. Even if he cannot see his way, he has eyes beside him who can find a path. If he can just listen, remember, find Felix in the endless black, then maybe he can find a way to believe that there is something yet to come.
“Almost there,” Felix says softly. “Do you want me to stay with you when you drink?”
“Wait for me,” Dimitri tells him. “I can do it.”
At the bottom of the stairs, the air on his face is humid, temperate, strange. It is like he has left the winter behind and fallen into some faraway place. He can barely believe that it is a mere seven hundred steps down below the palace.
Felix’s fingers tug at his for a second when he releases them. He hears a small, tense release of air from Felix’s nose, a subtle sign that he is reluctant to allow Dimitri to leave. It is incredible how he notices these things now without the distraction of his single eye. Perhaps he should have noticed years before.
“I’ll be here,” Felix tells him from the base of the stairs. “I’ll be watching.”
Dimitri turns away. The thought enters his mind that he is about to step off of a cliff, into some vast abyss. Every step forward, closer to the fall.
Felix is watching, he forces himself to believe. Felix is here. He has nothing to fear. There is something up ahead, some ground waiting to catch him when he steps down, down, down, down, down, into—
Water. He is standing in freezing cold water.
This is the Well of Memory. Every King of Faerghus is said to have come here, and what they learn is that the past, when drunk deep enough, becomes the future. To look forward, they look back. To see the path that they must cut for Faerghus, they blind themselves to everything but the past.
Dimitri kneels, cups his hand in the frigid cold, and brings it to his lips.
And what does he see?
Nothing. He is blind. The well water is cold and tastes of minerals and snowmelt.
But behind him, he can hear the faint shift of boots on stone, the slight rustle of a woolen surcoat, the quiet breathing of another living person. The past, his past.
And, perhaps, his future.
Dimitri rises, turns around, and returns to the stair. A pair of gloved hands reach up, brush his face, and the blindfold slips off. Dazzling candlelight floods his vision. Felix is staring up at him, and he is a little too slow in smoothing the lines of worry away from his brow.
“So?” Felix asks. “Do you see anything differently?”
And Dimitri leans forward, cups his chin, and says, “I do,” before he closes the distance.