alright, so she wouldn’t be entirely hopeless if the need for a display of skill showed up. you nod in response, satisfied for now. you may ask her to get a training session or two in so the basics are fresh in her mind, should a display of skill ever be needed in front of the people in grado… but you doubt it’d come to that. still, it never hurts to be prepared for anything.
your first thought is to ask alfonse about a sword, but then you realize that might not be the best idea. he may decide he wants to teach you personally, which… sounds like the entire opposite of a problem when you think about it, but he may also question your intent to “learn” and you’re not sure you can stomach the thought of lying to him. especially not when you have to keep this little excursion from reaching his ears in the first place; of the royal siblings, alfonse would be more likely to veto the foray into a pre-war magvel and meddling in their affairs.
you don’t know eliwood-sama well enough to ask him about it either, but…
“i can talk to marth-sama. i don’t think he’d question me too much about it. but i don’t know if i could get us a rapier; i think i heard someone saying that only nobility or royalty’s allowed to use them. but then… if it’s only supposed to be a prop… maybe you could use magic to make it look like a rapier?”
illusions are a thing, right? not all magic is for combat. when eirika-sama continues speaking, you nod along in agreement. she would know better about how to remain discreet in magvel than you would, and intercepting any messengers shouldn’t be too difficult. and even if it was… you really don’t mind the challenge. your heart is pounding at the thought– despite the danger, you can help someone. there’s something only you can do. and in all the time you’ve been in this faraway land, you’ve never felt more… alive than you do now, just thinking about it.
“we can definitely pull it off, eirika-sama. if this is what you really want to do, then i’ll see it through. i promise.” god, you should probably reign in the enthusiasm, but it’s just so difficult to keep the smile off your face– and you can’t help but laugh at her question. “usually, my group and i would’ve gotten in by now. we’d take a look around to get an idea what it is we’re dealing with, then go from there. any weapons or armor we’d need to buy, we would… and then the infiltration starts. in our case, we… have a bit of preparation before we can even get in.”
you toy with your phone some, wondering if you could access your notepad app. perhaps unsurprisingly, once you exit that first app the screen is frozen once more. you try tapping the app again, and it loads flawlessly. it seems you really can only use your phone to access the metaverse… lame. you would have liked to show off to the summoner a little. in any case, the phone’s returned to your pocket and you simply make a mental note to write all this down so you won’t forget later.
“we need to get into grado first, before anything– i think sharena-sama is our best bet. alfonse-sama… would question why we’d want to go. if we could pass off our visit as you wanting to show me what things were like before the war, we could probably get sharena-sama on board. but… i think it’d only work once, and she’d probably want to come too. is there any spell that could transport people? if we can just find that world with sharena-sama’s help, we wouldn’t need her every time we tried to go… and we wouldn’t just vanish after she brings us the first time– that’d be suspicious on our end.
if we can get that going for us… oh– we also need to figure out how much time is left before lyon-sama starts the war and set a deadline. from there, it’s all just getting into his palace, securing a route to the treasure, and sending the calling card.”
… you feel like you’re forgetting something, and frown as you fiddle some more with your hair.
“there’s something else– oh. right. we’ll need a code name for you, too, but i guess we don’t need to figure that one out just yet. … any questions? i kind of just dumped a lot of information on you. heh, sorry… i’m a little fired up.”
Disguising a regular sword as a rapier... Eirika put a hand to her chin and looked pensive. “A minor illusion is easy to cast... I’d need to mask the magic used to do it so Lyon doesn’t catch on, but that shouldn’t be too hard... he wouldn’t be looking for it, so if I place the rune under the crossguard and keep the release of magic constant instead of in bursts...” she trailed off there, realising none of this would make sense to Hibiki. “...in short, I’ll figure something out.”
His question about transporting people and circumventing Princess Sharena’s curiosity was a bigger problem, and she put her hand on her neck as she considered their options. They definitely couldn’t have her there. She was foreign and her enthusiasm would complicate any stealth missions they would get up to. “Well, teleportation magic does exist. Powerful mages use it to travel from one kingdom to another- even from one castle to another if they don’t care about etiquette. But it’s limited. I don’t think it will take us from one -world- to another. Remember what Prince Alfonse said: travel between worlds is strictly regulated and goes through Zenith, unless both the starting and destination world have an Outrealm Gate.”
And chances were that IF they could use teleportation magic to get in, he would be alerted to it on the spot. Eirika wasn’t stupid, she could see that Hibiki and the prince were growing closer every day. She would not be responsible for breaking up that friendship, especially since they both needed it. No, the Gateway would be their best bet, and that meant they needed a Gatekeeper to identify it. But he was right, Sharena would insist on coming with.
“...sleep.” she frowned nervously. What she was about to suggest was a poor show of gratitude to their guide, but it was the only way. “Magvel has sleep staves. My affinity for them is much weaker than for other magic, but I can use them to put Princess Sharena in a deep slumber. If I can recast it every time we return to the inn to regroup, she shouldn’t wake up until we’re ready to go home... or, well, tour Magvel like we told her we would. It’s... not polite, but it would work...”
“I’ll try and find one here when you go off to find a sword. My curiosity and intent to study and master different kinds and uses for magic is well-known, so it shouldn’t arouse suspicion. We just need to make sure Princess Sharena doesn’t catch on so she doesn’t put two and two together later.”
And then there was... the timeframe.
“Figuring out the deadline shouldn’t be hard, either. I know what Lyon feels like.” She realised that sounded odd to the uninitiated, but Hibiki knew well about her magic. “I trained with him. Studied with him. His magical signature and aura are ingrained in my mind to the point where I don’t actively notice them if I’m not looking for them, but if they change, it will feel wrong. I... I also know what the Demon King feels like...” she shuddered. “That change in him has been burnt into my memory. I will be able to compare Lyon’s current signature to that easily and find out how far the corruption has spread. We can also try and get into touch with Knoll, his attendant, and figure out how far his research on the Fire Emblem has gotten... we have options.”
She shook her head at his apology for dumping a lot on her. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not as if we have never dumped a lot of information on you, either. As for a codename...” her face lit back up a little at that, after the pain of remembering Lyon’s altered state. Call her a small child, but codenames and secret organisations? That was exciting! “Ohhh, I don’t know. Do you think it’ll be necessary, though? I don’t have a costume or something like Arsene,” she waved a little at a point just above Hibiki in case the spirit was listening and watching, just not visible, “So I don’t know if I’ll need one. I’d love to, though! It’d make me feel like a part of things.” Even if she very obviously wasn’t, since this wouldn’t be happening in Hibiki’s world.
