Title: Wolf Song

Fandom: FE: Awakening

Rating: T

Wolf Song

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I.

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There were still screams ringing in my ears. The harsh grating of metal, the crash of shattering glass, but above all the overpowering feeling feardisbeliefshockpain still coursing through every nerve in my body— as I found myself standing in a dark room, alone.

Dark might be an understatement. All I could see was pure black, no indication of dimensions, or even where wall met floor. It was… disconcerting. My heart continued to beat at an elevated pace, but as the sudden silence stretched, the adrenaline ran out, and the sharp panic subsided. The screams and chaos faded to a muted background. Somehow I felt that I should feel more… concerned? With the fact, but oddly I couldn't bring myself to attach any kind of emotion to the feelings, in itself another concerning fact, but.

There was light shining into the dark… room. A crack off to the side, spilling pure white light from beyond. After a moment of hesitation—I still didn't know what was going on here, exactly— I decided nothing else was going to happen, and moved towards the light with some trepidation.

Some kind of door, though the door was indistinct; just an oddly angled patch of black, and the sliver of light. There was nothing beyond that I could see, as I squinted through the crack, just a whole lot of white and nothing much else. Until, caught in indecision, someone made the decision for me, and called out from beyond.

"Come on in, then," said a gender-indeterminate voice with a small note of impatience, "I might have all of eternity, but there are still appointments to keep and this is the one bit of fun I get every now and then."

…Wasn't sure how I felt about that, but seeing as whoever it was knew I was there anyway… I stuck a foot through the crack and edged nervously through.

The room beyond, if it even could be called that, wasn't a whole lot different from the dark room in that this time it was a whole lot of white and not much else. What it did have was a table, polished wood with velvety top, and an empty stool on my side. On the other side was a… person. I think. It was a person, but an utterly nondescript one, so plain and unassuming that I couldn't really read anything from them, not the style of clothes—robes?— they had on, or the details of their face. They just were.

They were sitting opposite on the other side of the table, shuffling a few papers as I warily approached the stool and, for lack of anything better to do, sat.

"Um," I started, but couldn't say much else as the, person… the… the, Other, reached with one hand and offered something across the table. I held my hand out on some sort of autopilot and they dropped two small items into my palm.

"Go ahead and roll," the Other said— looking down, I saw that I now held a pair of d10's— two ten-sided dice. Presumably. All the numbers were worn away, leaving behind blank facets. I rolled anyway. The dice clattered across the table's velveteen surface, and when they stopped I thought I could see a flicker of something on their surfaces, but then I blinked and all I saw was blank, pale ivory. The Other, though, they hummed and scribbled something down on a pad of paper.

"One of those, huh," they muttered, "Let's see. Go ahead and roll again."

I took the dice, but didn't do as they said right away.

"Where am I?" I asked, and the Other finally looked at me.

"Oh? You're lucid already? Nice," they said, and seemed giddy by this. Then, they were somber. "Unfortunately there's no better way to put this, but… I'm afraid you've been in a pretty bad accident."

I… should have had a reaction to that. Something. Anything. Instead I sat there, feeling numb, with a pair of dice cradled in my hand trying to process the words.

"What?" I said, gratified by the way my voice cracked because I shouldn't feel this calm. Again, faded screams and grating metal in my ears, as well as something new— uncontrollable shivers through my body, there and gone again. The Other shrugged.

"Sorry," they said, "You can't go back. As for your question… well, you're sort of in-between right now, which is the best way I can put it seeing as how knowing it doesn't really mean anything in the long run. Lucky you, though— you're my one in a billion today. Go ahead and roll."

I promptly tilted my hand and let the dice fall again. The Other hummed. "Alright then. So this instance is…" They proceeded to flip a coin that hadn't been there before. Both sides were as worn and featureless as the dice, but whatever side it landed on only prompted more scribbles.

"Am I dead?" I whispered, while the Other just… shrugged again.

"Well… yes. For now."

"I don't… what happened? Why can't I feel anything?" The last bit was with a bit of a hysterical edge, but just as the panic seemed to take hold it was just… gone. Subdued, pushed into the background.

"Because I don't like to be cruel," the Other said, and they seemed almost halfway sad. "I'm not doing anyone a favor letting them live through their last moments, especially the ones like yours."

"But…"

"I've suppressed the memories and emotions. It'll wear off eventually, but at least by then you'll be off and able to come to terms with it."

Whether due to the fact that my emotions were apparently being suppressed, I somehow skipped over the first part of the sentence and latched onto the second.

"Why am I here, then? What's happening? Am I—" I shot a glance at the table, and fixed on the dice in particular with a bit of dawning recollection. "Wait, d10's? Am I rolling a d100?"

"Got it in one! I like getting to talk a bit. Lightens up the monotony. We're just figuring out your placement."

"What, for… for… what?" No, I wasn't really the best conversationalist right now.

"Well," said the Other—they were looking at papers, reference one to another in both hands. "The first was Where. The second was Which. And if you roll again, we'll find out the What, always the fun part."

Okay. Okay. I held off on rolling for a third time despite the Other's tutting, and this time held the dice in a white-knuckled grip. "So, if. If I'm dead, which I'll take your word for seeing as nothing about this seems right, but I'll be 'off' eventually, is this… is this some weird reincarnation thing? Am I… moving on?"

"More like you're getting shuffled around a little," said the Other, "As for reincarnation… well, this is more a twist on it."

"What's the point of all this then?" I asked with a little bit of more panic—that, too seemed to deflate without my say so— "Am I still going to be… me? I'm just going to start over somewhere else, won't I forget all this?"

"Normally that's the case, yes, and we wouldn't be going through this at all. As you say, what would be the point? But," they snagged a third sheet from the pile, "As I said, you're my one in a billion today. Sometimes I look down on the material plane, and think, 'you know, that's just supremely unfair. Someone should give them a second shot at this thing.' So I arrange this. You won't be going back to Earth, mind you. Not your Earth. That chapter is done."

"I…" …felt dizzy. Looking at the dice, though, under the Other's expectant gaze, the sheets of paper, and the velvet table, something clicked, and I forced a laugh as I came to the realization.

"So is this. Is this like DnD? Am I literally rolling to Reincarnate?"

"You play?" They seemed delighted. "That's exactly right."

"Wait, for real? You're serious?"

"Bit of a new method for me. Before I had a spinning wheel from this gameshow I liked, but it seemed to upset folks a tad, so I switched to this. Adds a little more mystique. Only took a bit of modification. Plus, I like the sound of the dice when they hit the table."

"So there's a chance I'm gonna be a dragonborn or something?"

"Not in this case, no," came the casual answer. That said, they looked at my hand a bit impatiently. "Are you going to roll, or…? This is the best part."

"Why? What's going to happen?" I said a little sharply; the Other just rolled their eyes.

"That's for me to know and you to find out, isn't it? Go ahead and roll."

I rolled. My muscles twitched, and the dice fell once more from my hand. The thud as they hit the table felt louder, more ominous than the other two times as they spun and clicked together and… stopped.

"Ooh. That's fun." The pale smile stretching across the Other's face… I shuddered and averted my eyes from the sight. They didn't ask me to roll a fourth time, so the pair of dice lay there in the silence as they finished scribbling on their pad of paper. Nodded, signed some sort of signature on the bottom. I swallowed, licked my dry lips to speak.

"Now what?"

"I'll send you on your way," the Other said simply.

"That's it?"

"All I have the time for, really."

"What did I roll though? There's no numbers. I don't even know what table I'm rolling on—"

"Shh." They held up a hand, tore the paper they'd been writing on off, held it out to me. "Well, here's your ticket. I wish you the best of luck this time around. I drew from your interests for this one, so don't worry— it won't be nearly so foreign once you settle in."

I took the ticket. Couldn't bring myself to do otherwise.

"I don't understand," I said, feeling that I needed to cry, but also finding that the act was blocked by so-called emotional dampers. The Other clasped their hands together, and smiled a sad little smile.

"They never do," they said.

Then they clapped once.

As if a hook had materialized in my navel, my stomached dropped as I felt a very strong pull. The stool was jerked out from under me, and the last thing I saw was the table rushing up to meet my face in a blur of brown and green that. In any other circumstance my face would have smashed straight into it…

Instead everything just went black.

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Crow in my face.

I blinked. We stared each other down for scant moment, maintaining eye contact until suddenly it was gone in a burst of feathers, winging its way upwards into a cloudless blue sky. I stayed still, fighting back what felt an awful lot like motion sickness.

The black and white rooms. The… Other. I couldn't remember a thing, but apparently I'd… died… shoot, if something was still blocking me from feeling anything real about that, it had to be the reason why all I could think of was how I'd rolled dice with a random omniscient being who liked dnd of all things. Instead of the screams from before, now all I could hear was the phantom thud of dice against the surface of the table top and the shuffle of paper as they checked mysterious tables.

…Dungeons and Dragons, Reincarnate… wait, wait, I'd barely given any thought to implications, if the Other had really been inspired by the actual game. Reincarnate was a transmutation spell. It took the soul of a dead being, and put that soul into a new body with memories and age intact, but the catch was that you had to roll on the table for a… new… body…that… wasn't necessarily human…

This time—finally, alarmingly— my spike of panic was very real. I surged to my feet and… stumbled back into the thick green grass I'd been lying in. As I braced my arms under me to steady myself, I found that instead of the hands I was expecting, I found two paws.

Two

Furry

Paws.

…

WHAT.

…is what I wanted to stay, rather what I meant to say, because instead I got a strangled sort of "Whaarf?" in a decidedly not human voice—I didn't have a human mouth. There was a snout down between my eyes instead of a nose. No, no no, this wasn't happening, this wasn't— but it was. On further checking— two paws under me. Swiveling around and struggling to do so, two paws behind me, as well as an entire pelt between front and back. Beyond that, a tail thumped against the ground.

Was I. Was I a dog? What the hell kind of table had I rolled on that included a dog option? Animals weren't even supposed to be an option! It was supposed to be a sentient humanoid race and not… this!

Maybe this wasn't real. Maybe there was still a chance this was a hallucination of some sort. Carefully, on trembling legs, I braced myself and stood. Not being able to stand as nearly tall as I should have, though, well… that cinched it. Standing only a few feet above the ground, this was absolutely not a hallucination.

…that, and phantom height syndrome was a thing, apparently.

Right. So. I was, for all intents and purposes… a dog. Well. Canine of some kind, anyway. I'd be getting a look at myself the first chance I could; right now all I could confirm was that I was definitely a dark furred… something, craning around and trying to take in as much of my new self as I could. Definitely wasn't a golden retriever; my fur seemed too course to be any sort of recognizable dog breed.

I wagged my tail, slowly and hesitantly. Stamped back and forth on my paws, crushing the grass beneath them as I trotted in place, then jumped in a few small circles. Definitely felt, uh, bouncier? And more limber. Well, Reincarnate meant you just took on the skills and traits of the new race you assumed, so... I guess it counted for something that I could even move as well as I seemed to be right now.

Man, I really should be freaking out way more than this.

I ended up sitting on my haunches instead— the motion wasn't even hard, given the entire new muscle groups and nervous system I was running on now— and just… spaced out. Stopped thinking about everything. Just sat there and breathed through my nose, nostrils flaring as I took in the scents all around me… Ah. I was currently experience a much higher sensory range than I had as a human being range right now, alerting me to the fact that not only was I in an unfamiliar body, but that said body was in a very, very unfamiliar place right now.

A meadow. Or maybe some kind of plain, as all the stretched out before me was a wide, wide field of green. Trees cropped up here and there, and in the distance I could see hills. Wind rippled through the grasses, sending up the occasional cloud of dandelion fluff. Little flowers bobbed and weaved, a multitude of reds and blues and yellows— uhh, hold up, should I being seeing those? I distinctly remembered that dogs didn't have the same color range, and I was seeing a whole lot of green and yellow, here. The thought was pushed away— movement ahead. Much further ahead. My nose twitched, and ears flicked forward as I saw the tail-end of a rabbit disappear through a tuft of grass; no, I saw a blob of movement even after that. This was… some yards away, but I could already tell the difference between the rustle of grass in the wind from the rustle of a small body thumping away from me, and in my brain I'd already logged the particular scent of hare.

That was on top of the scent of absolutely everything else. The grass itself, in several different types, the soil it grew from, rich and earthy and here and there with a hint of clay… the dandelions, the sweet scents of the other flowers I didn't know. I could smell just about everything. It was… actually sort of cool.

Maybe… this wasn't so bad, I thought. I mean. I was still alive, right? Whereas before I'd been… dead, right? The sound of bird wings high above brought my attention up, noting the position of the sun in the sky. Squinting from the light I estimated it was probably noon or a little after? As nice as it was not moving, maybe it was time to learn a little more about the world around me. After all… I hadn't had a meltdown yet. Better get everything in before it hit me.

Hoo boy. I wasn't thinking normally at all here. A plan was a plan though, even if said plan was picking a direction and taking off at a brisk yet easy trot.

The distance, I quickly found, was easy to cover. My body was longer, and I was probably? Taking more paces in a minute than a regular human pace. Moving through the field wasn't hard at all, especially since I was lower to the ground and could see everything coming up much easier. The taller grasses I just loped around, no sweat.

As I ran, bits of conversation filtered through in the back of my mind, an undercurrent of uncertainty. The… Other, they'd implied that I would somehow… know this place. I definitely wasn't recognizing this field. But, they'd also implied that I wouldn't even be on the Earth I knew. To quote, not my Earth, but somehow I was still expected to find it familiar? And that meant… what, exactly? A version of Earth where I was born a dog instead of a human? Fifty years in the past? Fifty years in the future? Middle Earth? Khorvaire? Azeroth? No, I couldn't possibly be in some fictional video game world, that was just ridiculous.

A new scent made my nose twitch. Along the way I'd been learning, and putting to memory, each new scent I encountered, a process almost on autopilot it was so easy, but this one made me pause because it'd been smelling little traces it of in patches all around the field, but hadn't found anything to put a name to it. Nothing else to do, so I stopped and sniffed the air for a better sample. Something, something… oh, that was sweat. I remembered that without being a dog.

Wait, sweat? Yes. That was… absolutely human sweat. Never mind how I could pinpoint human sweat exactly, I was more excited that I was sniffing an actual human. This was it! This was a chance to pinpoint things more accurately! I started running again, this time following my nose. There, up ahead, over a little hill.

What I did find was more crows, wheeling about and hopping around something on the ground. They also saw me, probably would a mile away in my haste since I wasn't trying to be stealthy, but the sight of them did bring a stab of panic; the mixing scent of unmoving human sweat and carrion bird could make for a very bad connotation. Therefore, I didn't slow; I barreled directly for them with barred teeth and a very real growl rising up from the back of my throat. Without even thinking it the growl evolved and burst out as a loud and angry bark, and the crows promptly scattered. Feathers flew, they squawked, and I chased them until they were well away, leaving me panting and triumphant. I'd scared them away! Me! All by myself! I was invincible! I was—

Very much acting like a dog without realizing, and had overshot the maybe-human entirely. Whoops. Human instincts returned. Leaving the crows behind— for now, you bastards— I hastily retraced my steps to find a worn path cutting through the grass. This was… a road! A footpath? It was unpaved, smelling like dirt and dust and more mystery scents, but more importantly, the scent that could only mean human was stronger, overpowering the faded patches I'd picked up along the way until finally I stumbled through the other side and found, lying prone in the grass by the side of the road, a person.

A person! A real live person! A… person…

A…

That was…

This wasn't.

Was that.

It was a woman. She was unconscious. She was dressed in a purple overcoat with eyes along the sleeves and gold trim fastenings on its front, and her hair was as white as snow. She smelled like sand, and a tingling scent like electricity, an another scent that I couldn't place. Something cold, something... dark.

I… recognized her. Didn't for a moment, because it brought a strange sort of double memory, one where I was on the ground in her place and looking up, until it clicked and I stopped dead.

This is Robin, said my unconscious thought. A knee-jerk reaction. The name went to the face, the scent went to the catalog, and on a very simple level that's all there was to it. On a much more complicated level, though, was the rational side screaming that this could not possibly be real. Was this… Robin? Was this Robin?

...Was this Awakening?

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/here for Awakening SI and that's that. :)