mark_asphodel | Fic Update: "Homecomings"

Dear lord, I'm at it again.

WTF, Mark of the Asphodel? You haven't even reviewed all your friends' new stuff yet! Yeah, but I'm going on vacation in a week and expect to be busy thereafter, and I've been working on this since June. Of 2009, mind you.

It's the story that ballooned into the whole "Tales of the Unified Kingdom" project. It's also intended as the last in the narrative series-- though still meant as a stand-alone story. Initially, I figured I'd quickly tire of writing for Fire Emblem, and that this would be my final contribution before signing off. Well, that didn't happen.

Basically, after writing the dystopic one-shot "The Golden Age," I decided to write a positive projection of life on Archanea after FE3. A story in which Marth and friends actually succeed in rebuilding their little continent instead of unintentionally causing further suffering to the people. But this little utopia was merely the backdrop for the final reckoning of one of my very favorite, very screwed-up characters-- Abel, the traitorous Altean paladin. I got so sucked into the world-building for this one that once I'd more or less finished with "Homecomings," I wanted to use that world-template again, and so the "Tales of the Unified Kingdom" was born. Then I had to retcon "Homecomings" to accommodate its prequel ("Forsaken"), its side-stories (like "By Any Other Name") and everything else in the queue.

I filed this one under "Spiritual" for a reason, and have more emotional investment in it than possibly anything else I've written-- as much or more than the in would-be epics "To Freely Serve" and when "Mila Walked the Land." So if people find it incomprehensible, or just plain "not FE anymore," it's entirely my own fault.

Anyway, this is Part One: Guilt. And this is Part Two: Angel. It's done! It's done!

ETA to add that it's DONE!