Track 1: Magnolia

I read once that nothing's certain, that no matter how much we prepare there is just so much we can do before something, whether human or not, kicks back. I'm not quite sure myself how it happened, and I prefer not to think too much about it because no matter how hard I try, the fundamentally pessimist part of me prevails and pushes me down into a tortuous road of uncertainty, because I simply could not ever hope to explain how I ended up like this. I often heard, heck, I myself preached and practiced that at times of adversity it's best to make good out of a bad situation, offer the other cheek and move along, because there's so much you can get out of self-inspection and reflection when you instead could be moving onwards.

Yet, whatever superior forces did this to me must be laughing their hearts out at going at it in the most direct, acid, and quite possibly malicious, of ways as if to challenge that notion I used to live by.

Dragons, God, Deities, Cthulhu, Magical Girl, however or whatever sent me here, I hate you.

Anyways, let me introduce myself once and for all.

My name nowadays is Ignis Perdido Cavaliere du Nohr.

Which is just peachy, since I know for certain that isn't my true name. Not only is it corny as all hell, and I seriously want to give a piece of my mind to whoever came with such a ridiculous moniker- er, sorry, current-mother, bless your heart but I hate my name to be perfectly honest; but the most important thing I know for certain is that that name does not belong to my person.

Allow me to explain in detail before I ramble for longer than I already have. I know I have a thing for derailment.

I was, for a lack of a better term, reincarnated in another world. Yes, like many of those stories floating around the various places I know I used to frequent (though the finer details as of actually how I did so remain vague, damn you selective amnesia!). I know I had a name and a life before all of this, because goddammit I refuse to act like a child again and not trust myself when I've literally been self-aware for almost all of my second life. Between haunting and eerily displaced memories, I have an understanding of the world that no 5 year old should have.

There's also the fact that the memories that keep pestering me at every minute sort of click with me, or more like resonate. It's hard to explain in words, but the closest analogy I can think of is that they just seem to meld well together like pieces of a broken glass put together like a puzzle. The original glass is irrecoverable, but it's clear that it had a shape and form at some point, even if putting together the shards is by all means a tortuous and downright convoluted process (and quite possibly impossible, but the optimist in me will keep persevering or I will just break the hell down otherwise), especially since I am still missing key parts of that puzzle, those key parts being actual names and faces to attach to the memories. I know I had a family and a life before this, mostly because I remember going well through puberty and adolescence into adulthood, but for some reason the farther I try to go forward into my life, the more pieces I find missing.

I don't know what happened between my previous life and reincarnation, and it's as frustrating as it can get, but again, I'm working with what I have. It's a work in progress.

One hell of a work in progress, indeed, but one that doesn't stop. Though I'm quite certain, cynicism notwithstanding, that it's mostly because I literally have a lot on my plate for a five year old.

Namely, just surviving the goddamn night.

I guess it is part of the package of being a royal, though "royal" may be a bit misleading. Let's just say that my current familiar situation is… atrocious, to put it generously.

Namely because I'm a goddamn toddler who creeps the shit out of every adult I interact with, including my own dear mother, and about 99% of the adults not named my mother are trying to murder me.

I'm being serious there. There's quite a bunch of sickos running around the halls and rooms of Castle Krakenburg.

Oh joy, of all the settings I could have been reincarnated to, why did it have to be Fire Emblem Fates of all? Why couldn't it be something more… I don't know… dangerous? Hell, I'd have taken a normal dungeon crawler or RPG focused on saving the world with the power of friendship or something- wait, basically this qualifies as that. Hmmm…

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure being reincarnated into 7th Dragon or Etrian Odyssey is much better. Those ones can get surprisingly real, not to mention I don't want to start running into bullshit bosses every other Tuesday.

Ugh, derailed again.

To try to place this trainwreck back on track, I was reborn as one of the many, and I mean MANY children of King Garonstrud Asterios du Nohr XI. I'm not even sure that name was a thing in the games, but who am I to grasp at that kind of straws? I got bigger things to worry about.

Namely, surviving this whole Concubine Wars fiasco.

I have many half siblings across the castle, and let's just say a worrying percentage of them will not quite have the chance of seeing their dreams through, or even form dreams of their own, period, and I understandably don't want to be part of that group. I know, I know, what a shocker. For all of past me being quite a pessimist and downright impassionate asshole, suddenly having the threat of your sunnyside eggs being poisoned, having to stay away from the libraries and halls out of fear for falling furniture and chandeliers, seeing that the nice old maid who used to play with you now looks at you with mirth and jollily hop towards you with a butcher knife in hand, or heck, just being unable to sleep due to the fear of someone laying the killing blow is not how I expected to live my second childhood.

I hate Nohr. I hate this life, heck, I'd be tempted to say I hate this whole family, the other kids can go shove it.

….Sorry, Elise. You still haven't joined the madness, and if canon is to take place, you'll surely be able to grow up without this kind of torture, because that is what this is.

I can't bear to look at my own "mother" in the eye. An average noblewoman from a minor house, she became entangled in this web of deception, destruction and killing in hopes of helping "the honor of her house". I… can't tell if she loves me even, and you have no idea how soul-crushing it is, especially since I have the memories of my other life for comparison.

All the stupidity I provoked and righteous punishments I received cannot be remotely compared to this hellhole.

Why couldn't I have been born later, when all this is over? I don't get it, I don't understand anything of this stupid situation of petty women trying to woo a king who doesn't look at them and instead grieves day and night, unable to do anything for the children he wishes he could cherish between his own anguish for the late Queen Katherina and the power plays that go behind the scenes.

Arete, Azura, I do not envy your positions, and I don't know what to do.

I'm… honest to goodness paralyzed by fear. I can only care for myself. I have to do it, or else I'll break too.

You know, for someone who used to love bashing how shallow and stupid Fates was as a story, the darker elements were always a bit too real. And now I'm part of this truly horrible era of what once was just a pastime to me.

So allow me to pretend for a moment that all my snark and bravado are real. That I will survive this.