And There's Something Like Rot In My Soul

He doesn't look much like a dragon, this man in blue standing before them. He does not radiate the same power as Naga, doesn't ooze the same cruelty as Grima. Here, skin a bit too pale, voice a bit too light, at best he looks like a particularly sick human.

Then again, Owain thinks, if Anankos's story is true, then he's more of a ghost than a dragon. What else would you call a piece of a person, torn right from their belly? Something dead that thinks it's alive, something dead that doesn't know it's dead.

The dragon asks for help. Pleads, really, if pleading were something dragons could do. Please, you vanquished a dragon once, I need your help. He says, not quite in that many words, but the emotions are there for sure. Please, i beg of you. save my world. 

And what can Owain reply to that?

Of course he says yes. He says yes because he is a hero, son of heroes, and heroes do not just let worlds die when they can help it.

Of course he says yes. He says yes because he has seen the Ylisse on fire and tasted the ashes of corpses as he fled, and he cannot stand idle as others live the same thing.

Of course he says yes. He says yes because he saved a future, but not his future, because he saved a handful of strangers wearing familiar faces, at the cost of leaving his original world to the wolves- with no warriors, no Falchion, his mother was still alive and he left her there like a coward and if there is something, anything he can get out of Anankos to fix this, he has to take it.

Of course he says yes. He says yes because he has never known anything but war, and living in time of peace has been like losing the ground beneath his feet- because, Owain does not know, how to exist as a person rather than a warrior, does not know what to do where to go he does not know how to speak any other language than blood and blades, because walking back into a pyre is ultimately easier than building a house.

Did Grima know? Did Grima know what he did to him, to them all- did he know, as he died, that he was cursing them all? That he's fucked them up so well that the prospect of calm and silence has become unbearable to them? Lucina had vanished into thin air after the war, daring history itself to find her, and Owain is about to follow, to cut himself from anyone he's ever loved for the comfort of a familiar hell.

Please, help me, Anankos says, and Severa says yes, and Inigo says yes, and as Owain opens his mouth to follow them, all he can think of is there is nothing left to ruin in our souls anyway.