User blog:GamerNerd i/Trial By Fire? - A New Gateway

I've been meaning to go back to Trial By Fire and Dei et Viri.

And I guess I kind of am with this but at the same time not.

Whatever, if you've been following a game called Dragalia Lost you probably know where this is going.

Frankly, life here gets boring sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s no shortage of action around here. Even if we’re not mobilizing for war, something is always happening. I had to stop a fight between the cats and dogs last week, which is a lot more dangerous than it sounds. But I digress.

Let me get this straight: interdimensional gates are nothing new. I mean, the Askran royalty I serve have the power to open those gates, and their rivals, the Emblians, are the ones who can close them but refuse to (for power, naturally). It’s commonplace to get reports of some new gate becoming active and spewing out more Heroes. At this point, I could probably give you a schedule, but that’s Feh’s job. That bird just knows… Somehow.

This gate was weird for a few reasons. First, it didn’t look anything like the others in Zenith. Second, everyone agreed that it did not exist until at least the night before. Third, it sucked a bunch of us in.

I’m getting ahead of myself again, aren’t I? Alright, let me go back to the day of.

I was brewing some potions as I do weekly to use in battle. Normally people leave me alone for that block of time because the one time someone did interrupt me they almost got their face blown off, but apparently Anna deemed the matter important enough to take that risk. She banged on my door loudly out of nowhere. I managed not to flinch and pour acid all over my worktable.

“Aidan! Get out here! We have an emergency!” Her tone was urgent, but at this point that could mean anything.

“Give me thirty seconds! This is the most delicate part!”

“Can’t it wait?”

“Twenty seconds!” I called back, since I’d taken ten seconds to respond. Surprisingly, she waited after that and I successfully finished the potion without blowing myself up. I opened the door. Anna already had Noatun at her side.

“Please tell me this isn’t another one of your get-rich-quick schemes,” I said.

“Would one of my get-rich-quick schemes cause Embla to get involved?” she retorted.

“Considering that you’ve tried to do some crazy things in the past, it wouldn’t surprise me too much, but that wasn’t the point of that statement.” I grabbed my robe and holstered Breidablik as we made our way to the main hall. “Tell me.”

Border guards between Embla and Askr reported a brand-new gate that appeared seemingly overnight on the boundary. Neither side knew what it was. Word was sent to the royals and, by extension, to the Order -- and to me. No one else knew either, so both nations were going to converge on this thing and figure out what to do with it. Prince Alfonse of Askr and Princess Veronica of Embla, since they had the power over gates, agreed to see if they had any influence over this one. Bruno, Veronica’s brother who has been AWOL for the longest time, and I, having been a reluctant mediator between the two in the past, were to make sure that nothing sketchy was happening. The nations, despite being historic rivals, enjoyed an uneasy peace at the moment since the Order had prevented Veronica from being roasted alive by a pyromaniac god-king who quite literally wanted to watch the world burn.

Alfonse and I wanted to go alone, but the others refused. It wouldn’t look good if a bunch of us showed up as if preparing for battle, but in the end I figured it wouldn’t hurt in case this entire thing started spewing demons or whatever. We managed to settle on a relatively small group for varying reasons. Anna insisted that she had to be there as the commander of the Order and Sharena basically never leaves her brother, so those two were non-negotiable. Fjorm, princess of the ice kingdom Nifl that was razed by the previously mentioned pyromaniac, serves as a reminder of Veronica’s rescue and has been one of our most reliable Heroes. Marth, the Altean Hero-King, is just generally respected between the two kingdoms, so having him there was a power move.

In all honesty, I was a little paranoid that Embla would try to pull something. I couldn’t get my jitters out as we made our way to the border. Alfonse was surprisingly calm… Especially considering that he’d be wide open with all eyes on him and Veronica. That being said, he was also kind of distracted from the task at hand. He had been digging through books the entire morning alongside Robin and Robyn for any sign of what this mystery gate might be. “No dice?” I asked him as we went. Alfonse shook his head. “I’m afraid not, no. Even with the three of us, we could find no reference to something like this. Each gates we use regularly was constructed over months. This one just appeared overnight. We even checked the magic tomes. Construction spells exist for projects like that, but they still take quite some time.” He stared into the distance. “It’s just… Impossible.”

“Ask Veronica as soon as we get there,” I suggested. “She’s more attuned to magic than you. And I’d think that Embla’s magic knowledge would be more… Complete than Askr’s.”

Alfonse gave me a strange look.

“Hey, the two of them haven’t used anything but magic every time we’ve seen them. It’s Embla’s thing, I guess,” I shrugged. “You guys… Sword, lance. Although I guess at that one spring festival Sharena did pick up some magic.”

“Please, don’t mention that,” Alfonse muttered.

I smiled. “Just trying to make a point.” Alfonse didn’t believe me. I wasn’t lying… Mostly.

We saw the gate in the distance. Reports were right; it was nothing like any of the other gates that existed in the world. Those ancient, crumbling structures were nothing like the brand-new rectangular doorway ahead. It was much smaller, but made up for its size in flair. Gems in five colors decorated it, set against clean white marble. Crystals like shattering diamonds orbited around its top. Central to the design was a weird purple stone with yellow energy streaking within it, placed at the top of the gate. I considered for a moment whether the existing gates had looked like this once, but the material couldn’t have matched up.

The entire group stopped riding and stared once we grew closer. The gate, for all its ornate design, was nearly one fourth the size of the regular gates, which were normally large enough to accommodate an army marching through it, including air space for pegasi and wyverns. This one was probably no larger than a civilian home. In our awe, the Emblians surprised us. Bruno and Veronica had come with a substantial force behind them. Understandably so. My fears about overdoing it were swept away and replaced by the idea that perhaps we hadn’t brought enough people.

Bruno and I met first, just to show that we weren’t going to kill each other. I couldn’t stop looking at the gate.

“It’s certainly something, isn’t it?” I began. What I could see of the Emblian prince’s face remained emotionless. He didn’t respond. “You, uh… You okay there? No issues with your corrupted blood right now, I hope.”

Bruno shook his head quickly. “No, no, my apologies… I thought I saw something move… Think nothing of it. Shall we begin?”

I glanced uneasily at the gate again, trying to follow his gaze. It’s kind of hard to do that when the other guy’s wearing a mask. I told myself it was nothing. “Yeah, let’s get on it. Pray that nothing explodes.”

I beckoned to Alfonse. Bruno nodded to his sister. The two of us stepped back and watched the two royals approach each other.

“Princess Veronica.” Alfonse didn’t have a sheath for his sword, but he drove it into the ground, which was pretty much the same thing.

Veronica remained stone-faced, but she lowered her tome. I breathed a sigh of relief as the two began conversing.

As it turns out, I sighed prematurely.

Out of nowhere, a shadowy hole tore open from the gate. Everyone took a step back, but the tear was sucking in anything close to it. Closest to which were, naturally, the two royals.

“What in-“ Alfonse grabbed his blade. “Space itself is being rent asunder!” Folkvangr began to come loose.

“No shit, Sherlock!” I yelled over the vortex, jamming my scythe into the earth. I held out my hand. “Alfonse, here!”

He managed to grip mine, unfortunately, my scythe started to come loose too. “I’m going to assume that this isn’t how new gates usually open up?”

“No, it’s not!” He yelled back. I glanced at the Emblians. Bruno held his sister’s arm. Both appeared to be channeling magic, presumably to close the wormhole. Veronica was slipping. “And this is not my doing, either!”

“Never said it was, but good to know!” I felt a jerk on my scythe. It was Marth, with Sharena and Anna behind him. Falchion has hooked onto my blade, while Fensalir had been driven into the earth. On the Emblian side, Fjorm had grabbed Veronica so Bruno could focus on closing the gate. “All of you, get back! It’s not-“

And the next thing I knew, I was tumbling through the portal.

Ah shit, here we go again.

Trivia / References
Fair warning, this entire thing is going to be laced with Dragalia Lost/Fire Emblem Heroes/personal lore references, although it's mostly FEH at the moment.
 * "I had to stop a fight between the cats and dogs last week, which is a lot more dangerous than it sounds." - The Wolfskin/Kitsune (Fates) were summonable a few weeks ago, and recently the cat Laguz (Radiant) were released.
 * "At this point, I could probably give you a schedule, but that’s Feh’s job. That bird just knows… Somehow." - Feh is the little owl in FEH (yay creative names) and acts as the game's mascot where human characters don't do the job.
 * "I was brewing some potions as I do weekly to use in battle." - Potions referring to the bombs that | Plague Knight uses.
 * "'Please tell me this isn’t another one of your get-rich-quick schemes,' I said." - Anna is kind of the "meta joke" character in Fire Emblem. She shows up as an innkeeper basically everywhere, so her personality has developed into being profit-focused, which has led to some interesting pieces of dialogue coming from her in FEH.
 * "The nations, despite being historic rivals, enjoyed an uneasy peace at the moment since the Order had prevented Veronica from being roasted alive by a pyromaniac god-king who quite literally wanted to watch the world burn." - So basically this is just FEH Book II.
 * "in the end I figured it wouldn’t hurt in case this entire thing started spewing demons or whatever." - Subconsciously referring to the | Dark Portal in Warcraft lore.
 * "alongside Robin and Robyn" - Basically differentiating male and female Robin, respectively.
 * The spring festival is an event where they release Heroes dressed up in bunny outfits. You know exactly where that goes every year.
 * I tried to cram in a ton of Dragalia Lost design motifs into the portal:
 * "Gems in five colors" - Unspoken, but meant to be red, green, blue, yellow, and purple, corresponding to the five elements in Dragalia: fire, wind, water, light, and shadow.
 * "Clean white marble" - FEH tends to deviate toward "warm white" with its yellows and golds, but Dragalia tends toward "cool white" with blues.
 * "Crystals like shattering diamonds" - Intended to be Dragalia's pactstones. I couldn't figure out how to describe them.
 * "A weird purple stone with yellow energy" - The otherworld fragments from Dragalia, which tear holes in dimensions. Because of course they do.
 * "No issues with your corrupted blood right now, I hope." - The Emblians have some kind of blood-based ailment that drives them to murder the Askrans, but only chronically. It's... Not very well elaborated on.
 * "I thought I saw something move..." - He did, actually, but those are | spoilers.
 * "he drove it [his sword] into the ground" - Alfonse's default pose for anything. Blade down, hilt up, like some rich guy with a special walking stick.
 * "Space itself is being rent asunder!" - Pulled directly from the event, which is why it feels so out of place, not to mention being obvious.
 * Yes, I was referring to the meme. Yes, it's relevant. Go back and read the first TBF.