Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

The Stray Children of Light and Sorrow

Written By:

Perenelle Windsor

Act III:

Battle Scars

Scene I:

Black Forest

Something smelled like death. Not in the metaphorical sense, in the literal sense. Even in a half-conscious state, Ephraim could smell something that was a black mixture of rotten wood, blood, and very close, very fresh corpses. He gagged, every inhale another breath of that concoction that burned as it filled his lungs – much like sulfurous, magic-induced smoke.

Why, though, did that . . . stench . . . fill his lungs and not the smoke? Why was the fire gone, as he noticed when he opened his eyes? Ephraim struggled to pull his mind awake and focus it. It was slow and painful process, with every thought a struggle to achieve. Yet a voice in the back of his mind (one that had saved him a number of times all throughout his life) was screaming at him to get up and make good use of the adrenaline thundering through his system.

Ephraim made his eyes work, forcing every bit of his will to come out of its stupor. He pushed his hands behind him, treating his ears to the horrid, squelching sound of fingers being pulled deep, down into muck. Confusion thudded through his pounding skull, mingling with the screaming voice telling him that if he didn't move fast, he was dead.

"Damnit," he snarled, trying to pull his arms out of the ground and failing desperately. The mud clawed at him, pulling him down into its depths. Ephraim felt something wriggle between his fingers, cold and slimy, and very much alive. His eyes widened, though the whole of his vision was taken up by something dark and scratchy – something that smelt of ash and oak. It must have been a tree that the fire had brought down, and it might have been the only reason that Ephraim was alive now.

Fingers, small and thin but not feminine, gripped his shoulder suddenly. Shock pounded into his head and he struggled against the grip purely by reflex. There was a scream above him that reverberated in his ears, and the fingers pulled harder, adding another hand to their endeavor. The mud, though, pulled him back down, not wanting to lose its prey. The tree branches directly above him bit into his face, the ground pulling so fiercely at him that it almost felt that his shoulder would be dislodged.

He kept his tongue between his teeth, his breathing as calm as he could make it. Half his left arm was gone from the mud, which refused to escape his skin when he attempted to shake it off. Yet something else averted his attention.

His left arm was unhurt, but his right arm . . . was twisted, and snapped nearly in two. His eyes widened and his breath hitched. He couldn't even bend his fingers . . . and what was more, his fingers looked thicker, tanner, more calloused than they were supposed to be.

"Is he alive?" The voice was panicked, furiously frightened, and fought to keep composure.

Whoever was helping him get out of the mud pulled harder, gripping his shoulders tighter with a great scrape against the tree. With his good arm, Ephraim pushed deep against the ground, struggling for something to grip onto and pull himself up by. He gripped a rock and pulled, dragging a lower body that was as much dead weight as his right arm. He and his mystery aid got him loose enough from the tree (which he saw had not been burned any time during Ephraim's life) so that he could see the sky.

The faint trace of stars could be seen, blinking in and out through a crown of trees.

With a sick lurch, the memory of his near-death came back to him. Along with it came the return of the feeling of the flames. The horrible torture of the sulfurous fire licking at his flesh, and Ephraim shut his eyes tightly until the feeling that was no more than a memory passed and he was left breathing heavy on the hard ground.

"That's all I can do . . ."

Ephraim's eyes snapped open at once. He sat up, his back cracking and skull throbbing, and found himself staring at the panicked face of a redheaded man and a younger boy with gleaming crimson eyes looked down at Ephraim. He had never seen either of them before in his life, yet both stared at him with concern born of familiarity in their eyes. While Ephraim didn't know them, they certainly knew him.

"Are you alright?" the redhead asked, his accent foreign and voice unfamiliar. Ephraim had just opened his mouth, although he didn't know whether or not he should answer the man's question or ask one of his own. His thoughts were soon interrupted by the frenzy cry from a female voice of, "Look out!"

Ephraim stumbled quickly to his feet in time to avoid being impaled with a sword jabbed straight towards his heart. The soldier with the blade was garbed in armor very different from that which the Grado Army wore, and the man wasted no time in going after Ephraim once he wrenched his sword from the earth. Even as Ephraim dodged the soldier, fiery, all consuming pain shot from his left leg, and it took one glance down to figure out why.

It was twisted, broken for sure like his arm, and a huge gash infected with minute to large splinters had torn apart his pants and flesh. His arms, likewise, were covered in scratches, and it looked like some of his fingers were broken, though the worst of the pain had been numbed by the healer. He noticed, too, he was clad in clothing very different than what he had been wearing when he fell into the fire . . . clothing stained with blood and mud and God knows what else.

What the hell was going on?

The question sounded over his other thoughts as he dodged the various sword swings, his panicked eyes looking for his lance – or just one he could use since if Reginleif was gone. His ears caught the sound of an incantation, quick and whispered words that formed a portion of a magical spell. The mantras spoken were distinctly different from any Ephraim had ever heard before, and he shot a glare sideways. The sickly boy with the scarlet eyes, the one who had helped pull Ephraim out of the mud, had an Anima tome balanced on the base of his hand.

"Elwind!" he shouted, and a vicious gale blew blood up onto Ephraim's face. He stumbled backwards, grinding his teeth together as he put too much pressure on his broken leg, and watched as the magical winds tore into the soldier's flesh, and left him as a dismembered corpse on the soggy earth. Ephraim had seen a lot of men die, and seen a lot of ways that men could die. He'd never had the misfortunate of watching air kill somebody.

Swallowing painfully, Ephraim ran a hand distractedly through his hair, to find it longer and more unruly then before. The thought sent a shiver throughout his entire body, and further pain to his broken leg. As bizarre as it sounded in his own mind, he didn't seem to be . . . himself, or at least a version of him that had been changed in more ways than was subtle.

"Can you walk?"

The question hit him hard and fast. Dazed for a moment, Ephraim looked at the pale face of the redheaded man. He was garbed in white and held both a physic staff and a book bound in white leather; he was a priest, but the garb was dissimilar to the robes of one of the Everlasting's ministers. Tentatively, Ephraim put some weight on his injured leg, but without the adrenaline rush of a man after his throat, the pain was blinding.

"No," he answered, disturbed by the sound of his own voice. The accent was thicker and heavier, the word courser. Trying to see if he could place a country to the accent, he looked at the redhead and continued, "No, I don't think so."

Ephraim saw the black-haired boy narrow his cold eyes and take several steps forward. The prince's eyes traveled from the mage's eyes to the stigma on his brow – an odd symbol that, while blood-red, seemed to be a birthmark. The mage spoke to the priest, even though he kept his eyes locked on Ephraim's face, examining it intently.

"Get to Boyd," the boy said with the authority of a tactician, "If what Ike said was true and he is poisoned, he'll need your attention more."

The priest, after giving Ephraim one last look, nodded and hurried away. Ephraim watched him leave, but found himself examining the fighting around him more intensely. The sight of bloodshed and battle was bitterly familiar to him, although he did not recognize the combatants on either side. He saw a young woman mounted atop a Pegasus swoop down and impale an archer that had been aiming to cripple her beautiful stead, and a man in indigo cut down the soldiers with a katana that moved like lightning, and . . .

Ephraim saw a man as thick with muscle as the prince was tall, with a beast's powerful claws topping his fingertips pull an arrow from his shoulder as though it were nothing, and crush it to powder in his palms. He saw a hawk – larger than any bird that ever sailed the skies over Magval – swoop down and pick out the weakest soldier in a group with a human-like intellect bubbling in its liquid eyes.

"It seems to me that your leg is not the only thing that's injured."

He turned back to face the black-clad mage. The boy's crimson eyes were unnerving as they continued to stare him down, even though he was several inches shorter than Ephraim. His eyes, too, seemed keener than those of a boy his age and, strangely, Ephraim thought of the looks that Myrrh fixed him with.

"What do you mean?" Ephraim asked, pain entering his voice as he leaned on his injured leg. He wondered how extensive the damage to it really was.

The mage's eyes darkened further, and his pale fingers closed around the spine of his tome. "Give me your name," he said, and his voice was frigid. The words in his shut book glowed ethereally. Ephraim shut his eyes for a moment, wincing as he felt his right leg cramping from putting all his weight upon it. The voice in the back of his mind told him that the mage would not be expecting Ephraim's name (especially considering everything of his appearance that he could see did not belong to him), and if the boy was prepared to fight, Ephraim would most definitely loose.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly. He remembered, once, in a conversation with General Drussel, the elder man had spoken about how a mercenary captain had wiggled his way out of enemy hands by feigning amnesia. Ephraim only wondered if the same approach would work for him.

His word's effect probably would have been the same as if Ephraim had spat in his face. The young mage's face twisted into an expression that briefly appeared like hurt before settling into composed anger. He turned around briskly, his long tails of hair snapping behind him, and started eastward.

Without casting so much as a glance at Ephraim, he said, blandly; "Rhys will be able to treat you once he's done with Boyd. Then just stay at the ruins. I'll serve as the guard." After a pause where Ephraim braced himself and started hobbling pathetically after the mage, the boy said, "Soren."

"What?"

"My name is Soren." He seemed to be expecting a response but, when Ephraim did not give any, he fell quiet. That left Ephraim to dwell in his own thoughts, which were frequently punctuated by sharp agony lacing its way through his body from his leg. He examined his hands, taking note of the weathered skin, bloody from cuts from sharp tree branches and the wind Soren had summoned earlier. His clothing was shabby and patched, the sleeves rolled up enough to reveal a series of white scars and a swordsman's knotted muscles, so vastly different from a lanceman's physique that Ephraim's stomach plummeted.

How had this happened, how by the Everlasting had Ephraim lost his body and gotten this one? Had he been reincarnated – never mind how odd the notion sounded, and blasphemous to the teachings of Saint Latona? If so, why did he maintain all his memories of his parents and Eirika, of his old life, and none of this new one? Was it magic, some ethereal power that had granted him a second life, or something more sinister at work?

He was no philosopher or theologian, and had done his best to steer clear of that foggy warzone, so all the questions did was make his head ache and his leg and arm throb in pain.

All the same . . . inquiries and reflections aside, Ephraim knew for certain the flesh he now controlled was not his. That mere conclusion was enough to draw all the blood from his face, and set a cold, numb shroud over him.

"There's the commander!"

The shout drew Ephraim from his stupor – for which he was grateful. He looked up in time to see two men turn towards him and Soren, and turn to charge. Fast as could, Soren flipped open his tome and began reciting in fast tones, barely looking at the pages before him. The way that the mage hissed his spells was quite different from how Ephraim remembered hearing Lute or Ewan speak. They spoke sharper, quicker, while Soren's words seemed to flow into the next.

The incantation was halfway finished and the stenches in the air moving in a synthetic gale before Soren suddenly stopped, his words cut off by the sudden smack with the butt of a lance. His nose snapped as it broke, sending a crimson flood down his face and front.

The blinding feeling of adrenaline finally overtook the Renatian prince. Just as the soldiers turned towards him, gleeful bloodlust in their eyes, Ephraim grabbed a hold of the enemy lance by its end and shoved all his weight against it. The spearhead, which had been pointed away from Soren and Ephraim, shoved itself into the soldier's belly. As fast as he could, Ephraim spun the lance and smashed it against the second man. The point dug across his face and eyes, causing him to scream in pain as he suddenly became blind, and Ephraim let out a bellow of pain himself as the anguish from his left leg returned to him.

"Are you alright?" Ephraim snapped, not unkindly, to Soren. The mage was already onto his feet with a sleeve pressed up as a poor tourniquet to stem the flow from his shattered nose. All Ephraim received in return was a muttered reply he couldn't quite make out. Again, he asked, "Are you alright?"

"Fine."

He felt a bit better clutching the lance and, though he could not fight properly, he could at least use it as a crude walking stick to support his leg as Soren led him towards the ruined remains of what had obviously been something beautiful. Colossal chunks of white marble, scorched by fire and age, littered the ground, and the only real piece of architecture that had survived whatever horror that had scarred the place was an elegant arch. Ephraim could just make out engravings of angels in the stone.

In the shelter of the arch were three people. The redheaded priest, whom Ephraim guessed to be Rhys that Soren had spoken of, was knelt by the side of an unmoving young man weakly clutching a bloody axe and staring with wide, feverish eyes. He didn't need to know a thing about the emerald-haired young man to know he was dying a very painful death from poison, and was probably not going to make it through the remainder of the battle.

The third figure nestled in the shadows was a young girl, curled in the fetal position, either asleep or unconscious. She was probably around Ephraim's own age, or she would have been if she had been human. But she wasn't.

Beautiful golden hair covered her ivory face, but the long locks did not hide ears that were tapered to sharp points. Her tiny form was covered in a gown that looked like silk, the same color of pure white as the wings that were folded towards her flesh. Wide, beautiful, angelical wings that made her look like something that did not deserve this place.

What was she doing at this battleground? Who was she – what was she? The sight of a girl with wings was not unusual to Ephraim, but this girl . . . made Myrrh, with her leathery wings, seem . . . it was different, was all his brain could pull out.

"Is she a Manakete?" he asked, unaware that the question had come from his lips in the first place. Rhys the priest looked up from the boy he was tending to, raising one scarlet eyebrow over his eyes.

"Manakete?" he asked in confusion, but turned back to his patient when the young man gave a lurch forward, his eyes wide and feverishly pale. Ephraim was no healer, but he had learned enough of medicine in the course of the war to tell when someone was seriously ill, and the boy would probably not survive much longer.

"She's a heron," Soren spoke back, casting an odd, unfriendly look down at her unconscious body, "A laguz." His tone was frigid.

Ephraim gently let himself fall onto one of the pieces of marble sticking out of the rock-hard clay of the ground, finally giving his screaming, broken leg a rest. He ran his fingers (only from his right hand, though) through his hair, all the while mulling over questions that were better left for men and women like Moulder and Lute. Blindly, he simply stared at the unmoving body of the winged girl, at the face masked by a veil sunshine-colored hair.

What had happened to him?

Scene II:

Help

"Roy!"

It would do anybody poorly to awaken as fast as Ike had, especially from so deep a state of unconsciousness. His eyes opened in an instant, so fast that the sunlight burnt the back of his eyes, and his head spun with the shock. With a great, sharp grimace, he felt pain siege through his neck and head. He could just barely hear his own thoughts over the staccato pounding in his temples, screaming so that he would have no peace whatsoever. He gagged for breath, breathing heavily and painfully, yet somehow he felt himself give a twisted grin.

That tree hadn't killed him. Ike was still alive.

"Roy! Roy, can you hear me!"

Who was that crying? Gently, Ike pulled open his eyes once more, wincing against the harshness of the sunshine. How long had he been lying on the ground as conscious as a rock if it was already midday? Against the white backdrop, Ike found that a dark silhouette was hovering over him. He strained his eyes to look at it properly. It made his head thud harder, the staccato losing its rhythm and gaining in intensity.

In a few seconds, the shapeless black form defined itself as it came closer to him. The shadow shifted into a girl, young, maybe fifteen – fourteen at least. Her face was white, and her eyes were raw red, but naturally a clear blue. More details, like the hue of her hair or her clothing, he couldn't see. Her face kept blurring before him, whenever she moved too far or too quickly, and Ike frowned darkly at the fogginess of his sight. Not a good sign.

He set his hands on the ground under him and braced himself for the sound of flesh sinking into soft mud. Instead, his fingers scraped against hard ground, and froze when they touched against a heavy layer of snow-covered pine needles. The shock made his breath quicken too fast – and made Ike's chest explode with pain that made him cry out, coughing out blood onto his chin and chest.

"What the . . ." he half swore, but speaking burned his throat and drew up more blood. He shut his mouth quickly and clenched his jaw, biting to keep the mix of blood and bile down in him. All the while, he lifted his head up (making it swim with a nauseous weakness) and looked around. The swampy remains of Serenes Forest had been transformed. The woods were evergreens or leafless, all covered in a heavy cloud of snow and the full blossom of sunlight.

His eyes traveled to something more pressing, the explanation as to why his breathing had gone from poor to an utter struggle. There was a broadsword, the blade an elegant violet color, was impaled into his chest. There was a puddle of maroon by his side – the wound was deep, but it hadn't pierced something too vital, or else he would have been dead sooner.

Ike felt his pulse halter for a moment when he saw the sword. His head pounded and collapsed back onto the soft snow ground, his breathing heavy as he scrambled for air. It was funny how his inhales seemed so much weaker now that he saw that he was wounded that badly. The black humor was far from Ike's mind as he thought of what the hell had to have occurred to slam him in this position. It was winter, yes, but it did not snow so heavily in Begnion (particularly in the west, close to warm Gallia, where Serenes fell).

His thoughts mulled, dripping slowly from one topic to another as he lay there, and settled on an interesting one; what had happened to the tree that had crushed him? Ike clearly, distinctly remembered the feeling of the wood slamming down onto his shoulder and crushing his right arm. That same limb and hand moved easily, but weakly, at his command.

A half muttered swear of confusion passed his lips, and Ike cursed louder in his head when he broke into coughing, spitting out more globs of blood.

"Please, please stop coughing!" screamed the girl, and she hovered further over Ike. Her face came into clearer focus (she was barely an inch from his face by now). He could see her long navy hair was mattered with sweat, and her blue eyes were full of utter fear. A distinct aroma surrounded her, like sulfur, but Ike had spent enough time around mages to know that it was just the residual scent of magic. The girl gripped his arms tightly and dug her nails into his skin. "Please just be alright while I go find Brother Saul! He can help you – I'm sure he c-can!" She rose, but hovered over him, trembling.

Ike's eyes widened. His heavy thoughts had vanished momentarily, filled instead with a long string of curses that he dared not risk speaking out loud. If she left now, he'd bleed to death. That was most certain, given the fact that too deep a breath brought an extreme amount of blood to his mouth. He clenched his fists tight against the ground and summoned all of his breath.

"Wait!" he managed to gasp out. Speaking even one word, however, proved to be a grave mistake. Escalating from where the painted blade pierced in his chest, pain racked his body and with it came a fit of horrible coughing. Ike tried his best not to move as he spat blood, bile, and something that felt disgustingly solid out of his throat and onto his hands. Above him, the girl stopped in her path and turned to look at him. Her face was blurred, and Ike had to strain his eyes to make out where her head ended and her neck began. However, when she screamed in fear, the sound rang very clearly in his head.

"Yes Roy!" she said, falling back to his side. She grabbed his hand tightly, holding it with both her own. Her grip was very, very cold, and shaking, "If you just stay still, I'll go and get somebody to help you! My staff was cracked, I'm . . . I'm going to go find Brother Saul! You just stay there and . . . and don'tdieRoy!"

She couldn't leave his side. The second she left, he'd be gone too. The very last thing Ike wanted was to die a coward's death - bleeding out, unable to do a thing to save himself and impaled to the ground, not when the Black Knight still lived unpunished for killing Greil, when Crimea was still an anarchic mess, when he would have abandoned his first employer and disgraced the mercenary company.

"Wait," he wheezed out, and felt the blood slide up his throat to fill his mouth. His words were muffled and slurred, barely audible to his ears, never mind the blue haired girl's, "Pull the sword . . . pull the sword out."

"Pull it out?" she asked, her pitch shaking just as her hands were, "But . . . if I pull it out, you'll bleed to death! I remember," (she inhaled a deep, steadying breath and choked on it), "I remember, General Cecilia told me. You're supposed to keep a blade in its wound in or else they'll die, and Roy, I . . . we'dbe lost if you died! Don't you remember; you're all we have for hope!"

Even as a second wave of coughing hit him and he seized as, when he moved to keep the blood in his mouth from spraying everywhere, the sword dug through more of his flesh, Ike realized why this girl was calling him Roy. In was an odd thought to arrive upon at that moment, but he did nevertheless. This girl had him mistaken for somebody else and – considering they were in Begnion, despite the snow – it made sense to conclude that she thought him to be someone from the Apostle's army.

His thoughts on the matter were interrupted. His body seized, his neck arching as coughing tore apart his being. The sword in his chest strummed against his internal organs and he just barely kept himself from screaming loudly. The girl gasped and held his hand tighter, yelling out something he couldn't hear.

When Ike's coughing subsided, he managed, somehow, to say to his only company, "Pull it out . . . and make a tourn -" He damned the fact he could barely take a single breath before he was off in another spree of bloody wheezing and hacking.

"Make a tourn . . . a tourniquet? Is that it; you want me to make a tourniquet?"

He nodded weakly, and brought his shaking hands up to his neck. His cape had lost about two feet of cloth during the war so far, with the makeshift bandages its fabric had been used for, and he had no qualms about using it once more. However, Ike's fingers did not slide against the knot that bound his cape around his neck and the coarse fabric of his ancestral jerkin. His fingertips touched against the chilled metal of plate armor and, beneath that, the warmth of a heavier shirt. His hand froze in place its place, falling to rest upon his chest, half due to surprise and half due to another wave of coughing from his meager movements.

Why was he in armor? He could think of no logical conclusion, nothing that made the remotest bit of sense. When he exhaled more blood than air, however, he dismissed the thoughts as best he could and felt beneath the armor for some sort of clasp or knot for a cape or a cloak. Just somethingthat could be torn up to use as a tourniquet until a real healer tidied him up. His fingers found a hook, the metal clasp as cold as he was, but he had no time to try and unhook it.

Instead, Ike summoned as much strength a weak breath afforded to him and barely managed to snap it in half. It left his arm shaking, feeling terribly weak. He did not want to consider how much blood he had lost to become so exhausted from such a simple task.

"Here," he managed to say, feeling behind him to grab a handful of a fur-lined garment. It felt the same as Elincia's rabbit-fur cloak, soft and soothingly warm, velvety beneath the fur. Why he'd be decked in a regal cape, Ike hadn't a clue. It made him grimace at the vanity woven into such a simple garment. The girl grabbed the cloak, moving Ike as she did so, and he fought his hardest to keep himself from shouting. The sword was dragged through his abdomen a little further.

As the sound of tearing fabric rent the air, Ike leaned back into the ground, gripping the leaves and snow without any care to the sticky mess coating his palms. He shut his eyes. It was easier to focus on controlling his breathing and keeping his heart calm. Each inhale was a guttural wheeze, but at least air was entering his lungs. The blue-haired girl, above him, was struggling with tearing the fine material and still sobbing.

"Roy, I-I'm so sorry I c-couldn't fight . . . it's my fault . . . please, p-puh-please don't die!" But too much of her words were lost in hysterics and his attention was pulled back towards his pounding pain. And, even still, Ike fought to find something else to occupy his mind.

He thought of his father, now dead and buried by a small little castle in Gallia's wild forests. Of how when his children – younger, then, as Ike recalled a specific time when he was nine – and they had squabbled over pointless things. Greil had easily separated them and barked about how damn foolish they were being. It usually kept them from fighting. Ike grinned weakly at the memory.

He thought of his mother, whom he could barely remember, but he thought of her soft singing that Mist could duplicate with perfection. He could remember how she had smiled, cerulean hair in her face, when he was a very, very young child . . .

Ike thought of almost unnaturally warm Gallia, of dead Serenes Forest, of the dragons in Goldoa, of just anything and everything that was not the blade pinning him to the ground.

"Alright!" the girl sounded above him. Ike opened his eyes, the world spotted with globs of black, but mind still clear. The girl was a strange, clandestine beacon of navy and scarlet against the bright skyline, her frightful eyes unnaturally visible. Tears dribbled out of them, and she held her lip when she was not talking. "I'm doing to pull out the sword. Just . . . just hang on, and everything's going to be alright!"

Ike gave a nod and moved his hands to press against the place where the sword had pierced him. His fingers were shaking heavily. The cloth and skin encircling the wound were soaked in blood. He found, through the spots of clothing not soaked in blood, that his shirt had been replaced with one made of fine cotton. Ike ignored this disturbing fact again.

Even though putting pressure near the wound sent agonizing pain through his body, escalating from the point of the injury till his jaw had clenched from the pain, he held them there. Ike seized from the pain, his back arching as he fell to the side. His mouth opened, and his body was wracked with agonizing coughing that made the girl scream. He felt her grab his side and rapidly tie the shreds of the fur cape around his abdomen. He gasped for ragged breaths.

All the while, he heard her repeat the mantra stubbornly, "It's going to be alright Roy, it's going to be alright . . ."

It took a very long time for his body to calm down. The pain fluttered, fading into a numb nothing that he was grateful for. The girl clutched for his hand. "Thank you," he said, shutting his eyes and breathing as best he could.

The girl was smiling, he guessed, if the pure relief in words were must to go by. "You just hang on! I'm going to go and get General Cecilia or Brother Saul to help! Just hang in there Roy, you're going to be fine!"

Ike's stomach had knotted unpleasantly each time she mistook him for this other man. He pushed himself up, biting down on his tongue to hold back a shout of pain or violent coughing. When the girl tried to pull away, he tightened his grip on her hand. She spun back down to him. He noticed that she wore a very fine scarlet and white dress, with a golden trim and a scarlet cap in her hair. She was a noble, but in her sorrow, she did not act like one. That was good.

"Make a fire," he muttered out, "Signal them. If . . . if you leave I'll –" He coughed, spitting out globs of red and something flesh-colored onto her boots. The girl turned green and slid her hand out of his.

"R-Right! Fire, okay!" Her words had hitched back into hysterics. She sounded a bit like Mist, after Greil had died. The same hopelessness was in her words. The girl moved away from him, not far enough as to where he couldn't see her anymore, but far enough as to where her fire wouldn't make him worse than he already was. The lyrical sound of magical words – different, though, from how Soren spoke them – floated to his ears.

Between his coughs and the wheezy intake of breath, he managed to confess, "I'm not Roy," but there was no chance that she had ever heard his confession. Hell, Ike had barely heard it himself.

Gingerly, as carefully as he could, he pushed himself up and doubled over. His body screamed with every movement, but it was better, still, than lying down. Some sick sense of pride thudded in the back of his skull. He would rather die sitting up, in grave pain, than lying on his side. His eyes blinked lethargically, but took in the bright, snow-filled surroundings. Each examination made his head thud with more questions.

These were woods, yes, but they were nothing like the dead, barren wasteland that the Begnionites had turned Serenes into twenty years ago. The trees smelt of pine, and powdery snow covered it all serenely. Cold winds nicked at his face, though the cold was leaving as the blue-haired girl made a signal fire. He grimaced, wiping blood from his mouth (and noticing that his metal gauntlets were gone, replaced with once-fine gloves that had lost their fingers), and listened.

Something was wrong. Everything was unnaturally quiet, aside from his own heavy breathing and the girl's frantic attempts. No birds chirruped, no animals squeaked, not even an insect buzzed. The only thing that could mean . . . men were in the woods. The girl in crimson had mentioned a general and a priest – a warrior and a healer.

Battle was underfoot nearby, and she was making a signal fire.

The thought that she was leading an army towards them made his eyes widen in horror, and his breath halt. He lost his careful won hold over it and gasped. His mouthful smattered down onto his boots – finer leather than he would have liked to have worn. Ike clutched his sides, tighter until he had calmed to the point of easier breathing. His vision swam before him again, just as bad as before. His mind snarled out curses.

How the hellhad he wound up here, in this situation? Where were his fellow mercenaries, where was the black muck of Serenes, where was his common clothing, and whywas he dressed as a nobleman prepared to fight with only a bloodied rapier?

At least I'm alive. The thought gave him some comfort. At least that tree didn't crush me. Ike shut his eyes to relish in the quiet and the darkness.

Something horrible rent the air, a knife butchering the quiet mercilessly.

It was a scream, an inhuman, screeching wail that Ike had never heard before and hoped he would never hear again. He pulled his eyes apart, ignoring black spots in all his eyes laid upon, and starred skywards, at the midday sky ablaze with a wintery blue. He ignored the fact that it all spun around him from side to side, sometimes doubling or tripling.

There was shadow crossing the sky, a massive behemoth of white feathers and scales. A half-reptilian, half-avian beast dove for something far on the ground with a scream of victory in its throat. The sunlight made the creature – if it was a laguz, it was of nothing that Ike had ever seen or heard about – glitter like diamond and gold. When it disappeared from the sky, Ike felt the ground shake for a moment. It had landed close by.

"Mister Roy?"

When the girl had stoked up her magical fire, the sulfurous smell stinging the back of his throat and her crying settling down, Ike heard a squeaky voice crack right by his ear. He turned and would have jumped if he possessed the ability. Huge green eyes were inches from his face, belonging to a child of five or six, but with a red symbol on her brow just as Soren had.

"Fa!" shouted the blue-haired girl by the fire, scrambling to her feet, "Fa, do you have an elixir, or – or can you go and find General Cecilia?"

But the green-eyed girl was still starring intently at Ike's face, who looked back with blurry vision and stoicism. Was she a laguz – it would explain the tapered points of her ears, at least? Finally, Fa, which was obviously the child's name, looked up. "Miss. Lilina, where's Roy?"

"What – he's right there, Fa –"

Fa shook her head and Ike pushed himself onto his elbows so he wouldn't remain blind to the circumstances any longer. He shut his eyes, ground his teeth, and cursed just in time to hear Fa say softly, "No he's not. That's not Roy; he just has his body."

Disclaimer:

I do not own Fire Emblem, as the series is copyrighted to the good people of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. I also do not own the opening quote; it is a belonging of the mind of sir Friedrich Nietzsche. However, I do own this story, and all original characters within it.

Author's Note:

Wow, has it really been two years since I updated? Wow.

In consolation, here's a pretty short chapter in return, with a rather out-of-character Ike and a passive aggressive Soren. That makes everything better, right?

Statistics:

(Because I know you care)

Pages – 13

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Lines – 581

Words – 6,580

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Font – Times New Roman

Font Size – 12