They had won. They had survived.

They'd returned, triumphant.

Well, mostly. All of the above, mostly.

Cordelia cracked into a crate of weapons and sundry that had returned with them and had a brief moment of wondering if there were any to show to Robin. Later, maybe, she told herself.

One day he'd just walk back in and apologize for being late. Until then...

Until then she could wonder why they'd brought back so much. Even with what had been damaged beyond repair, the armory was well-stocked and had been.

Cordelia had already finished a full inventory, so now she'd just need to add in whatever was salvageable from this crate and have the rest hauled off to the smithy.

At the time, it had made sense to grab whatever, in case it was needed. But now- Now there were rusty lances and chipped swords and bows without strings and-

With a soft sigh, Cordelia got to work. One broken sword, one axe with a cracked handle, one lance covered in-

Once Cordelia had put that over there and washed her hands, she got back to work.

Two keepers, five more discards.

And the next lance she pulled out made her pause. She vaguely remembered seeing it but hadn't realized it had been retrieved and packed. Grabbing a brush, Cordelia started cleaning away layers of dirt and grime to find the shine beneath.

Shine, it did. It nearly glittered in her hands before she was half-done and it was all she could do to keep her composure while quietly speed-walking through the castle halls to the library after she'd set it back down on the edge of the crate.

She'd long since learned where the histories were and nobody questioned her presence. But were the Jugdrali Sagas truly fact? They'd always been popular as children's stories, with bright illustrations of the epic battles. But they'd always felt a little too fantastical to her, at least the way they were told now.

Some of the teasing she'd endured as a talented new recruit had been asking where her Crusader Brand was-

Cordelia found the book she was after and grabbed it off the shelf. Of course the illustrations would be part imagination. She knew that. Of course smiths would have tried to make their own versions of the weapons from these stories.

Cordelia knew that, but...

The book's pages were well-worn but the ink had held up, especially the golds and reds.

And then she stared, and, quietly-because-it-was-a-library, called to the archivist that she was just going to be borrowing one book and would bring it right back-

Then she ran back to the armory, getting some curious looks along the way, but that didn't matter.

No smith could fake the age or peculiar presence of the lance, however.

Cordelia compared lance to illustration and while it wasn't exact, it was certainly close enough.

Here would be the test, however. She took the lance in her hands and, after checking the area, went through a series of exercises. Everything felt exceedingly right and Cordelia couldn't help but smile.

It wasn't impossible that someone had carried Gungnir from continent to continent. What had been Jugdral was not an impassible distance away, though not as near as where she'd been in the recent past.

Stories had made it, told so exactingly that they had to be a history.

Oh, but Cordelia was quite sure she did not have a Crusader Brand. As nice as the lance was, as long as she could handle it with surprising ease, certainly as well as the-

Cordelia went back to the book, the lance across her lap beneath the book's worn covers, and carefully flipped through to a part she then read twice.

Yes, she had no doubts to the truth of the story in the book- There had been so much going on at the time that she'd not connected it all but now it seemed like almost too much.

Robin would be able to make better sense of it. That, Cordelia knew.

She'd need to go tell Chrom; that would be her first step. He'd mentioned the Sagas more than once while they'd traveled. He wouldn't be able to tell her more about her sudden Gungnir acquisition than she'd already put together, but-

Cordelia glanced back to the crate. It was still far from empty.

She traded book and lance for brush and cloth and went back to her original task.

And then she found a sword and grabbed for the book again-

It probably should be impossible. It probably should-

Cordelia reached for Gungnir and simply held it in her hands.

She'd show it to Robin some day, too.