Remember these? These were a thing.

… A thing so long ago that I had to google my own blog to find out what the tag was called and how I formatted these things. But, um, a thing!

(I’m sorry I forgot about this. I was sidetracked by a lot of other stuff… I’m pretty sure I started this before I discovered the Nindori comics, even.)

As a refresher, this is the translation of a short story available on the official FE13 background website. This one corresponds to Chapter 10.

Link name: Having failed to save Emmeryn, the party flees through the driving rain.

(Also please excuse any tense funniness… Japanese literature has a sense of tense [technically aspect] quite unlike English literature, used to different effects, and I tried to make a compromise between something easy to understand in English, and something that has the flow of the original.)



—-

The rain kept pouring.

You couldn’t see a thing. You couldn’t hear a thing.

It came in torrents like physical blows, shrouding the state of the battle; it erased its screams and angry roars.

“…”

Before Mustafa retired for the evening, he looked out toward the direction of the Ylissean army.

Behind him came the sounds of splashing mud.

Mustafa immediately turned around and held his battleaxe aloft—

“Ah—….”

It was a lone girl in a cloak.*1 Surprised by the sight of Mustafa, she stood petrified.

Mustafa furrowed his eyebrows.

“Girl. Do you serve Ylisse?”

“Um, y-yes… oh! U-uh, no, I… I’m just a traveling dancer. My name is Olivia…”

—The girl in complete disarray quietly stammered her excuses.

Mustafa considered her for a moment, then finally let out a breath.

“Go.”

“What……?”

“This is a battlefield. Go and hide somewhere before you get hurt. This battle will soon be settled. Should your allies be victorious, afterwards we may meet again.”

“! Th-thank you very much…! Umm, what is your name…?”

“Go quickly!”

“Y-yes sir…!”

[the image goes here]

With puddles of water splashing up behind her, the girl disappeared into the rain.

Once more, Mustafa turned to face the front.

Before him was a human figure.

“GENERRAALL! GENERAL MUSTAFA!”

Piercing through the wall of rain, one of his soldiers came toward him in an uproar.

“I have a report…! The situation is… turning against us…! The Ylisse Army… will soon… be…”

His words seemed to fade.

His throat stopped with a wet sound*2; his body shook violently as he toppled forward.

Mustafa caught the collapsing soldier’s thin body.

“Rosso! Hang in there!”

“Forgive me… I can’t…”

The strength left Rosso’s voice.

Fresh blood flowed ceaselessly from his stomach. Mustafa made a sound in the back of his throat*3 as his eyebrows furrowed.

“… You idiot, don’t whine about such a trifling wound. We will all return to our families at home. Wait a moment, we’ll treat your wound immediately—”

“General… I…”

Rosso smiled.

“I was happy… to have been… by your side…”

The light faded from his eyes.

A life slipped out from within Mustafa’s arms… and he felt it fade away.

“…”

He remembers.

His father, a Plegian General, whom he had so admired. He had died.

He had been killed by the Ylissean army.

The army of the Exalt, the Exalt called The Slaughterer*4.

Their soldiers, bragging about how many innocent Plegian citizens they had killed.

“…”

He remembers.

Emmeryn climbing the scaffold.

The Plegian people, who howled their curses at her as if they had lost their minds.

Their fierce gaze, and Emmeryn’s sad eyes.

“…”

He remembers.

I want to be able to make my sickly mother comfortable back home,

Rosso said with a toothy grin.

He should have been able to go home when the war was over. He should have been able to see her again.

“…”

He remembers.

The sleeping faces of his wife and child whom he had left back home.

Every time he left, his wife would always quietly pray for his safety.

His baby son says he wants to become a General like his daddy someday.

He says he’ll protect his country and defeat all of their enemies.

“… Ooohhh…”

Mustafa groaned.

“… Oooh… why… why… why is this…?”

As he sobbed, he lost the ability to form words. He clutched the corpse, unmoving from where he stood.

The rain continued to fall without end.

—-

*1 unsure; kanji is hard to read. guessing 外袞

*2 unsure; “喉がごぼ、と詰まり” — I’m guessing that ごぼ is related to ごぼごぼ.

*3 guessing: ムスタファーはぐ、と顔をしかめた — I believe it’s “furrowed his eyebrows with a ‘gu’ (sound).”

*4 殺戮王 lit. “massacre-king” — I tried to match this up to some term in-game and couldn’t find a similar title appearing anywhere in the localization, so I made up The Slaughterer.