Fire Emblem 1. Distant Travels

Surprised that these never became the new "tactician" fics in terms of sheer ubiquity. Not crossovers per se, but when Ike skips town it basically gives you a blank check to take it wherever you want! Greener pastures! New horizons! Exploits weird and wonderful! Encounters strange and spectacular! Semi-justifiable gratuitous self-insert OCs! (No, I won't do this). Anyway, I'll try not to bore you with unnecessary A/Ns. There are just a few points worth mentioning:

- Yes, FE6/7 are half SRPGs, half army kid dating sims. I chose the pairings I did to best fit the story and not my personal preferences (far from it, actually)

- POV skipping abounds, but not within chapters, and it will only focus on a few central characters.

- I won't hide the fact that this is largely the answer to a score of questions that begin with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." It's very visceral, fangirl/fanboyish fare. No, I have no shame!

- Post FE10 and FE6. Will somehow manage to throw out more spoilers for FE7 than FE6, 9 and 10 combined.

- Bad jokes.

- Even worse titling gimmick.

That said, I hope you enjoy.

(And I am loving how FFn's getting bugged to hell and back. I picked a good day to write things.)

* * *

Distant Travels

He must have been drunk. A sickening flutter whirred at the back of his eyes; no matter how hard he squeezed them shut, that swaying sensation persisted unabated. He heard snatches of his sister's voice, perhaps from within or outside his head—"_why would you do this to us?_" in what sounded to be exasperation. He must have done something tasteless in his sister's company. Her words fell into a string of mutters before a low chorus joined her in collective disapproval.

Mud clung to his cheek. It smelled fetid and sweet at once—fertile, almost. Mist's whispering died gradually, as gradually as the fog cleared from his head; now all he heard was a deep, protracted sigh. He struggled to lift himself, sucking in cold air to combat the upsurge of nausea. Opening his eyes, he was met by a towering cliffside swinging overhead as he fell back onto his stomach, limp as a beached fish. His ears thumped with coursing blood as it rushed back into his head. Throbbed against his eyelids, his temples.

By the time the overwhelming sickliness subsided, he'd gathered that he'd been washed up on a shore somewhere. The looming seaside cliffs obscured half the sky, another half veiled in a thick layer of cloud. There was the quiet stretch of confusion, then, as he pushed himself onto his knees, a flash of panic. Memories flooded back too quickly to process all at once.

The gray-green ocean swelling with the wind, thunderheads mounting on the horizon—"_we shall evade or withstand the storm, no differently than the others"—_the rigging snapping and collapsing like a tower of twigs, sails tearing from the spars, spray whipping onto the deck and into their eyes, the floor beneath them lurching with a painful groan. He remembered the certainty of his own death, and the subsequent calm. A talon-like, trembling vice on his arm—"_I am not afraid"_ shouted over the angry tempest, his voice as shaken as his hands—"_I will follow you"_, before their vessel began to capsize, and they threw themselves over the side. Plunging into the belly of the sea, they clung to each other like the frightened children that they were, because for all their insistences that they would face death with dignity, at that cusp between consciousness and unreality, time and time again Ike felt his courage waver. He opened his eyes to an icy void, burning saltwater, and their ship sinking, falling apart and into the murk as if swallowed by the chasmal, toothless mouth of some deep-sea leviathan. That was his last memory.

So. Was he dead, then? He drew himself to his feet, dizzily, as his legs and head had not accustomed themselves to solid ground.

On either side of him, the shoreline snaked in the shadow of the mountainside—a soaring, endless vista of rock and mineral. No birdcalls, no human voice, no reassuring whispers from his heavenly observers. Barren but for the wash of waves and sloping sand, dimmed with the overcast. He had no time to contemplate the horrible weight of this isolation, nor the chafing from his soaked, salt-starched leggings, nor the inevitable fate of starvation that awaited him, for it was then that he'd come to aching realization: he had lost his friend.

* * *

How long had they been at sea, he wondered, eyes fallen to his feet as he dragged them through the wave-wetted sand. It had been all the same for about an hour now—the water mild, but the air cold, the glossy coastline yielding to his heavy, waterlogged boots. For all the endless expanse, he felt imprisoned. He lifted his gaze to the horizon; a crack of light escaped through the cloud sheet, like daylight through a prison wall. He'd only had fleeting experiences with prisons, but thought the comparison apt.

Pungent piles of kelp and sediment littered the shore; he sank his foot into one, raising a cloud of insects that swirled about his ankle. His staff officer—no, they no longer belonged to the company—his navigator had once told him of a people said to live many lives over, at times reborn as snakes and worms and other such objects of their contempt. His companion dismissed them in the same breath he'd mentioned them, yet the notion staved off Ike's loneliness for the time. He trudged from heap to buzzing heap, mindless of the approaching stormclouds as they crept inland. The sand darkened ahead of him, and his thoughts turned again to his friend.

Dead? Weren't they both? Perhaps Soren had survived their trial by water, and he had not. This was death: a singular, endless path with no destination or egress. A lonely, soggy march through oblivion.

His sodden shirt chafed him enough to remove it in spite of the chill, though he kept his trousers. He would soon have to forgo this restrictive adherence to modesty, but decided against it; he'd tried once they were out at sea, but his companion would have none of it. And once he woke from this oppressive dream—or reached the light-crowned gates to the afterlife, or whatever—Soren would reward him for his restraint, though Ike was unsure whether souls were bound to the same corporeal appetites as the living.

In any case he had determined himself to be alive, if only for a time. His stomach felt cavernous; he placed a hand to his gut as his eyes roved the weedy crests for a flicker of life. They had a deadly smell about them, but he would have rather died stuffing his face than starving. As he knelt and dug his fingers in the heap, he studied the dotting of refuse ahead. Subtle enough to slip past his notice, a pile heaved, as though an animal had nested itself in the seagrass. Then it settled, and Ike took notice.

He stood and advanced slowly, breathlessly absorbed, watching for a telltale twitch of life. It shifted again. Perhaps it was the wind, Ike considered, but it was not compelling enough an idea to give him pause. His pulse flitted in his throat, beating harder with every step; he could not contain the sudden burst of adrenaline and the dulling of his senses as he crashed to the ground beside the shape. It blended with the bed of kelp—his hair took on the color of moss in a certain light, after all, his garment dark, but the pattern of the fringe and lining were unmistakable. With a trembling hand, Ike slowly turned his companion onto his back. The insects that had made their home in the hair and robe scattered like a spray of dirt.

"Soren?"

In that moment of dread, that thick, hanging stillness, his friend was completely lifeless. Though a part of him was in denial, too frightened to ascertain his death, Ike reached out to touch his face, then just behind the jaw. It was warm to the touch; blood throbbed beneath his fingers. Against his better judgment, he moved closer anyway, feeling along his neck, and then taking his hand and pressing his thumb against the artery there—and then against the arm, and then his chest, his stomach, the soft depression between his hips. There he felt a sort of ridge beneath his robes; a knife in its scabbard? As he began to undo the sash to investigate, the body underneath him stirred. There was a groan, then a pregnant, breathless silence as the both of them were caught unawares.

"Ike?"

He was overcome with the swelling urge to gather him against his chest and crush the breath out of him. The voice was familiar as ever, cracked from thirst and tinged with irritation, his eyes a bold contrast against the black-gray muddiness of his kelp bed, but rather than persist, Ike sank back into a sitting position. Soren struggled to rise and meet him, but it was a labored, fruitless effort. His clothes and hair had soaked through, weighed him down.

"Take it easy, there." Ike swallowed back the merriment bubbling up in his chest, but a single, incredulous laugh escaped. They were alive. He was grinning like a madman; it hurt his cheeks.

"How long have I been asleep?" Soren muttered, closing his eyes; then, upon opening them: "where is your shirt?"

In lieu of a proper answer, Ike leaned in to brace Soren with a hand on his back. Their surroundings would speak for him; he could not endeavor to do the same. He lifted his navigator, seaweed dangling in clumps from his back, and gave him a moment to let the sudden rush of blood settle. He seemed to relax in his arms, took one look at the ocean, and closed his eyes once more.

"Are we dead?"

His voice carried not a hint of disquiet.

"No." Ike surprised himself with his own hoarseness. "I don't think so. I hope not."

"Why is that?"

The way he asked it so readily should have been cause for concern, but neither were thinking straight at the time.

"I'm starving."

Just as he spoke, he became aware of the cold droplets prickling along his broad back; the rain was closing in. He also felt Soren quaking against his chest with what could have been quiet, rumbling laughter at his answer—barely perceptible, almost catlike in that it could only be felt and not heard. Or he was going to vomit, but he appeared to have spilled the contents of his stomach long before.

"I see," Soren finally answered, and with a trembling hand on Ike's arm, motioned for them both to stand. His sea legs hadn't left him, but he found his poise quicker than Ike had expected. Straightening himself, he examined his robe and disdainfully peeled away a weed.

"Where to now, navigator?"

"Where is our ship, captain?" Soren came back sourly.

More silence. By now Soren appeared thoroughly disgusted with their filth and their situation, but Ike reveled in the company. At length, he spoke again, this time with a scoff.

"I see. Which direction did you come from?"

Ike nodded to the faint trail of footprints that followed him; the wash had almost filled in his tracks completely.

"Very well. Then let us continue."

"You're the boss."

Soren did not return him so much as a glance, but Ike felt that he was smiling.

* * *

"Say, I've been meaning to ask you something."

For all the menace of the stormclouds that loomed overhead, they were met with no more than a drizzle and some distant, angry mumblings that warned of a storm that would never reach them. The savage torrents that had carried them here likely passed as quickly as they arrived. At least, that was what Ike liked to believe.

"What is it?" Soren spoke through his teeth, as he often did when interrupted mid-thought. Though his more ill-tempered habits were beginning to resurface as the reality of their situation sank in, there was also a visible effort to restrain himself. In an act of surprisingly routine generosity he had given Ike his outer cloak, which fit around snugly and came up to his calves. Though it was soaked through, as was everything else that they wore before the sea spat them up, Ike gladly accepted the little protection it offered.

"I was wondering whether it's possible to cast magic without, you know, tomes."

"For some reason I feel I've explained this to you before."

Ike responded with an expectant silence, as though urging him to continue. Soren fell quiet for a moment as they continued onward, with Ike trailing behind; he stopped abruptly.

"How do I describe it… think of tomes as containers for an immense concentration of energy from which you draw. The incantations serve as a means of opening the container—they allow you to call upon the magic at will. It's for this reason that tome-making is a very exacting, laborious pursuit. The sheer mass of the energy far exceeds the scope or dimension of the pages, yet to here is where you store it, and from here is where you refine it. Does that make sense?"

More unsure than impatient, he glanced back for affirmation.

"Sure, but that doesn't answer my question," Ike said. Soren bristled and resumed their trek down the coastline.

"Conjuring without a tome would require an enormous reserve of magical power," he continued, spreading his hands as to gesture the immensity. "Moreover, one must possess _intimate knowledge _of the incantations; one must be able to recite them from a vast, exhaustive lexicon that very few humans would naturally acquire over the course of a single lifetime. He himself becomes keeper of an arcane lore… and the vessel to a volatile, treacherous might."

His words sunk like a great weight in the air; they went on in silence as Ike watched his back contemplatively. Finally, he spoke up.

"So, can you do it?"

"Possibly." He frowned, seemingly to suppress a smirk. "But I would avoid any situation that calls for it. Do you fear for our safety?"

He stopped and turned this time, drawing his narrow robe closer around his chest. Ike could see the outline of the scabbard on his hip. They were otherwise unarmed; with the weight of Ike's broadsword, it sank like a stone and had surely been lost to the sea. The stockpile of tomes that Soren had insisted upon bringing had disappeared with the wreckage as well, and were he and Ike to somehow fall upon them washed along the shore miles away, they'd been drenched beyond salvation.

"Don't worry," Soren said quickly, leaving no room for response. "We'll find us something to eat, somehow. If it comes down to it, the herbs in my satchel are edible." He thumbed the pouch sewn into the lining of his robe. "They're little more than pulp now, but they're edible. And those cliffs—" He indicated them with a nod. "Those are home to a host of seabirds. They may fly down to feed, which will be good for a time, but if we can somehow force one to hunt _for _us..."

"Soren. I'm not hungry anymore," Ike reassured him. "My stomach's gone numb, if I had to describe it."

Soren wordlessly accepted this, but as they pressed forward, his gnawing hunger came to be replaced by a faint nausea, and the very thought of food only sickened him further. He wondered how long the both of them had been unconscious. At length, he began distracting himself with idle conversation.

"Rain's coming in harder," he observed.

"A windfall in more than one sense," added Soren, though he hardly seemed pleased with the weather.

"Why's that?"

It had grown darker now. The sun burned on the rim of the sea, scattering shoots of light across the cloud cover and cliffside. Their shadows stretched up the face of the dunes, hunched and deformed and fading with the light.

"We'd sooner die of thirst than chill or starvation. The latter two can be avoided easily enough, granted you've a friend who's willing to share himself." He slid Ike a sly smile. Gallows humor—or suggestive humor, but Soren tended towards the first. Ike wasn't sure which he preferred. Dismissing the thought, he tipped his head back and let the rainfall gather on his tongue. It tasted "raw"—purer than drawn water, shimmering in the dying, seaward sunbeams. It woke him from his heady numbness.

They didn't know when they would next come upon a source of fresh water. Their reserves were gone: both the water and the wine. They'd benefit little from falling upon their wreckage, aside from validation that they had certainly survived the storm—a pouring squall that, ironically, could rescue them from imminent thirst. Ike wondered why Soren hadn't mirrored his small bid for survival and drunk from the skies.

"Ike."

A subduing arm brought him to a halt; he looked down at Soren quizzically, then ahead.

"Is that—"

Its jagged outline stark against the fading light, Ike saw a set of wooden stairs that led up an outcropping—on which a cottage perched, a looming silhouette that overlooked the sea. Ike did not trust his own eyes, but he trusted Soren's. His heart swelled with the hope he had felt when he stumbled upon his companion, as well as a dormant but perceptible trepidation. He sensed it in Soren as well; they gathered close together in their cautious approach, close enough that Ike could feel him stiffen with uneasiness.

The house was squat, raised on an abutment and stilts to avoid the rising tides. A faint, orange light flickered from a single window, dashing down and up the staircase that connected to the wooden deck. Chimney smoke twisted and disappeared against the shadowy backdrop. _There was a fire. _

They stood at the foot, drenched, benumbed, chests tight with anticipation.

"So… Someone's home," Ike said at last, before the hiss of rain enveloped the sound of their breathing. "What are we so afraid of, anyway?"

Perhaps it was the surreality of their situation; from the moment he woke Ike had felt detached. His limbs were great, hulking weights rather than live extensions of himself, and he was suspended amidst an endless cloud; his conversations with his companion had been lucid, but just hours afterwards he could only vaguely recall what had been said between them. There was something dreamlike even in the landscape in all its infiniteness, its indefiniteness, its indifference. He needed food to clear his head.

"I don't know." Soren's eyes were fixed on the window; his irises caught the light with a strange, shimmering glow. Though it was no choice of Soren's, Ike found his eyes eerie at times. He appreciated their rarity, but there were moments—at the edge of sleep, his last waking sight a heap of black robes and a red, tired slits—moments when he could not shake his beorc conditioning: red was demonic. In the eyes of the simple homeowner, though, perhaps _they _were the demons.

Distant memories of the Gallian border revisited him in snatches. He remembered the day the company first crashed through the Sea of Trees, a jungle enshrouded in secrets and thick, oppressive humidity. Rationally, he had known the laguz were not man-eaters, but when one stumbled into unknown territory with an undefined, desperate purpose, imaginations tended to run amok. Before, he was inclined to fear the worst when faced with the unfamiliar. But now, the exoticism surrounding the laguz had thoroughly worn; he no longer feared the revered, the tyrants and the divine, the travelers from distant lands, the mystics and criminals, bearers of darkness as well as the light, those who espoused different ideals, those who called his own morality into question. Whatever lived here, he'd likely faced worse.

Besides that, there was a sort of charm to the cabin— a squat, earth-crusted cabin, thick with overgrowth and warmly alight, it almost blended with the craggy slope. It hardly seemed the home of choice for maneaters or cultists or deranged murderers or whatever beasts their silly waterlogged heads could dream up.

"We'll go together. I've always felt more confident with my words when you're around."

Soren bowed his head, partially in affirmation, partially to hide his smirk. But as they mounted the noisy staircase, his hand found its way to his hip, and the smile faded. Ike noticed and stopped midway.

"Soren, we can't take over a household at knifepoint. I'd rather not be murdered in my sleep."

"It's not a coercive measure, Ike. It's precautionary."

"Look, relax, alright?" He put a hand over Soren's and felt it slacken. "We're not a couple of rogues. Worst case scenario, they turn us down and point us to the nearest village. We'll get cleaned up and figure out where to go from there."

Soren was still for a moment.

"Whatever happens, we've been through worse," Ike reassured him.

He seemed to accept this as an answer, and silently complied for the remaining few steps. With the door just within reach of his knuckles, Ike balked.

"But you're going to have to let go of my hand. It'll look a little weird."

Soren mumbled an apology and dropped his hand. While any other man would have taken that moment to ease his breath and steel himself, Ike did no such thing. He reached out and knocked—hard. Soren winced.

The downpour's roar had a muting effect—they strained their ears for footfalls, creaking floorboards, and heard nothing but the din of rainfall and the hollow splash of runoff flowing into a rain barrel. Finally, there was a bump, the noise of something groping at the door—and then, with finality, the grating resistance and click of a lock releasing.

The door swung open, throwing a sudden, hard light over their unready eyes. In the door stood a woman, older, plump in the face and stomach. Startled, she mouthed a question that was most certainly lost to the wind.

"We're sorry to bother you," said Ike, raising his voice over the barrage of rain, "but we're travelling mercenaries, and we lost our vessel and supplies to a storm. If you could give us a place to stay, we'll repay you to the best of our abilities. If not, well… some directions would be nice. Maybe to the closest inn? Any job openings, if it comes down to it?"

He paused and realized that woman's expression remained fixedly dumbfounded. She held her gaze level with his, wordless and unmoving.

"Excuse me? Ma'am?"

Suddenly, she twisted her head and shouted into the house. Then came a man's voice from within—it sounded pleading. And then when the woman responded with a near-shriek, a fiercer edge to her rapid spill of words, Ike came to a sickening realization, and one glance at Soren told him that they both knew. They could not understand this woman.

"I can't believe it," Soren murmured. The woman's attention snapped back to them, and a man, presumably her husband, joined her at the door. He gave them one good once-over before posing a question. At least Ike perceived it to be a question from the rise in his pitch. A lengthy silence followed.

Ike tried to affect the most pleasant grin he could manage, but a part of him knew this would do nothing to temper the couple's bewilderment.

"So, do either of you speak Common?"

To his surprise, the man laughed—his (presumable) wife shot him a reproachful glare. His next question was directed towards the woman, and the conversation shifted between them. Their words were nimble, cadenced. They spoke with a lilt, particularly the man, but it was easy to discern the irritation in the woman's tone.

"This is ridiculous," Ike heard Soren hiss, recapturing the couple's attention. They turned to them and the man tried to initiate conversation once more, immediately arrested by a lash of the tongue from his wife. He stepped back to make way as the wife ushered them inside.

She indicated to the discarded boots in the corner while the man crossed the room to a large fireplace. The fire seemed to have been burning some time before their arrival, the room diffuse with a warmth and the familiar aroma of woodsmoke. They watched as he threw on a splintered log before removing the cauldron from the flame, passing them with a nod, and heading out the door.

They removed their boots upon the woman's urging and allowed her to lead them to what was undoubtedly their kitchen; she turned to them with an almost imploring smile. She then asked a question, and though Ike suspected she did not expect to receive an answer, he responded.

"I didn't understand that. Sorry." He placed a hand to his stomach, and the woman's eyes lit up. They were seated at a small table near the stove and the woman left them to themselves, retreating into what was likely their larder. Before they could gather their wits enough to find words for each other, they heard the front door fly open, the husband's scraping footsteps, water sloshing as he put the pot on to boil. He'd likely drawn water from the cistern Ike saw earlier.

"This is ridiculous," Soren murmured, breaking the air of astonishment between them.

"Look, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth."

Soren seemed to mull over this for a moment, but the woman seized both their attentions as she returned carrying a loaf of bread and a glass jar. They were served bread and jam, which Ike devoured readily and Soren eyed with suspicion. The couple was making a concerted effort to appear agreeable now; the woman did not betray her disapproval when Soren offered his food to Ike—after a taste to ascertain that it hadn't been poisoned, of course—and only ate upon his insistence. Though it wasn't enough to tide Ike over—in fact, the little morsel, however inoffensive, only served to stir his appetite—he followed the woman when she motioned them to stand and led them back to the entrance. Since she had her back to him most of the time, Ike came to study her hair more carefully than her face. It was knotted into a frayed, bushy braid, faded olive in color; it came loose at the end, as if she'd been in the midst of undoing it when they arrived on her doorstep. The man, who met them again to remove the heated cauldron from the fire, was brunet and round, with cheerful eyes and a sort of lightness to his gait. They took them to a cramped, barren room—barren but for the deep, wooden tub in the center and the row of vials lined up against the wall. The woman had lain a fresh change of clothes by the door while the man filled the tub; they scuttled away quickly thereafter and granted them their privacy, though it took some time before either registered what was expected of them.

"This is ridiculous." Soren slumped against the wall, expressionless as ever, while Ike seized the opportunity to shuck off his leggings and toss them aside with his companion's cloak.

"It never occurred to me how awful we'd smell after enough time at sea."

"Didn't it?" Soren asked tersely. Ike ignored him and lowered himself into the water. It seared him, but with a welcoming heat. He reached towards the line of vials and chose one at random—larger, prism-shaped with blue-tinted glass, presumably containing some fashion of oil—and a slab of soap.

"Here," he said, pressing himself against the side of the tub, "there's room enough for both of us."

"I don't think that's a wise idea. Hospitality in itself I can understand. But this? We're lost in every sense imaginable. We don't know this language, never mind the country or its _location on a map._"

"Come on, I'll even wash your hair."

"Ike." Soren finally crossed eyes with his, but only for a moment. His gaze quickly fell to the far corner of the washroom. "We are unfamiliar with their customs, and they ours. And if I may be honest," he said, meeting Ike's eyes once more, "you seem entirely nonchalant about our situation."

This gave Ike pause, if only for a moment.

"I don't know. These are questions I want to ask tomorrow, when we're clean and fed and rested. Then we can orient ourselves," he said, then laughed, "Just get in. It'll be like when we were kids."

"Awkward and conspicuous. I'm not convinced that would make it any better."

"Then let me phrase it differently. In the spirit of _efficiency, _it would benefit all parties involved if you spared these nice people the trouble of reheating another batch of water lest they feel too inconvenienced to bother with us." He stopped to catch his breath, and then added, "We'll do it quickly if that's the only way you'll have it."

"That's still poor phrasing on your part," said Soren, but he stood and obeyed regardless, loosening his sash.

They lacked the time or energy to discuss the matter any further, as exhaustion took over by the time the steam had spread into a calming haze, and their thoroughness dissolved to languor—and wantonness, to Soren's chagrin. Neither were strangers to the taxing whims of the environment, and Ike hadn't seen a mirror since the outset of their voyage, but he assumed he fared no better than Soren, who seemed more weather-beaten than usual. His gangling limbs had taken on some definition from all of the exertion that travel entails, but he was still startlingly thin without the bulk of his robes, and there was an almost comical contrast between the tan on his hands and the paleness of his back. Their time at sea was marked by the rare clear sky between darkened days; they had both toughened, but not baked to a leather.

Running his fingers all the way through his companion's hair became an arduous task, and they both gave up once they were suitably clean. The couple had provided them with two sets of house clothes: thin pairs of hose, a white chemise and an oversized undertunic that certainly belonged to the husband. It was clear which shirt had been intended for whom. They left their discarded clothes scattered about the washroom and crept back into the entrance lounge, where the homeowners awaited, nestled together beneath a woolen blanket before the fire. Ike could see by the window that night had fully descended, and by the frost at the edge of the windowpane, so had a terrible chill.

The wife rose and, after her husband shot them a glance and a cheerful word, led their guests up the stairs into a darkened hallway. There a room waited for them, a single bed, a cold, frosted window, a rug with a pattern they could not discern in the dark, a nightstand with a washbasin, a closed, wooden trunk.

The woman said something softly in her own language and closed the door behind them. They waited for the fading footsteps as she left and descended the staircase, then the murmur of voices as they resumed their conversation below. Then, before Ike or Soren had thought to speak or move, there was complete silence, but for the drum of rain on the rooftop and their shallow breaths.

It was easy enough to locate the bed in what little illumination the clouded moon offered; Ike collapsed into the heap of fabric, limp as a beached fish. Every one of his muscles slowly worked itself loose, as if the fibers that held him together were coming undone. His mind and body were untwisting, untangling like Soren's once matted, sweat-oiled hair or the woman's braid, falling apart as it swung side to side up the stairs, a rhythmic pendulum.

He reveled in the softness of the sheets, his clothes, his skin and hair fresh anew, before giving way to sleep. The last waking sound was that of rustling behind him. There was a hot flutter on his neck, and a voice.

_"I was not afraid."_


	2. Quiet Days

Quiet Days

The worst of the storm had passed. But the harsh weather was never that much of a bother to them.

It was on these clear, cool days—in the wakes of storms and transient fog—that their house breathed with life: it sighed with the wind, bowed and groaned to the pounding rain, blinked its glassy eyes to a sharp winter morning. Mornings were her favorite. She preferred to keep the door open at these times, propped by a bronze horse statuette that she'd received as a gift at court—an awful, gaudy novelty that she loved dearly, more than it had any right to be loved. Her husband had once feigned pitching it into the ocean, and joked that some distant, overseas people, if such a people existed, would sooner think it cursed than merely mystifying in its hideousness. _"Save them the trouble of sending it back our way."_

From where she stood in the kitchen, she could see a thin slant of light spilling into the lobby from the doorway; through that same doorway, she could feel the chill of a particularly forceful gust. The pages beneath her flapped to a different recipe. The rafters creaked, her apron billowed, and in an instant all was calm again.

She considered curbing this fanciful wont of hers as a courtesy to their guests. Elimine knows her husband's shared his thoughts on it. _"The fire is blazing but the door is wide open—does that not seem a tad impractical?"_

Perhaps they'd be more appreciative of the bit of early air to greet their morning; the ocean breeze hadn't yet worn of its novelty, and no length of time by the sea would come to change that.

She _then_ considered that she knew nothing of these guests—nothing of their preferences or desire or their standards of comfort. Her decision to feed them bread was less of a calculated judgment and more the aftermath of some panicked groping through the pantry. Years as a nanny had taught her well: a man's tastes are his own, and cannot be determined at a glance, but a hungry man is a hungry man is a hungry man. And those men were hungry, urgently hungry, however gravely she'd offended them with last night's meager offering.

Too meager? She pressed the last bit of pork into a ball of dough and rolled it in her palms. Dumplings and onion soup with cheese: they were more substantial than bread and preserves, at least. She knew nothing of these people nor their tastes, but she thought back—far back, to her tumultuous stumble into womanhood—to memories of a stolid man without passion but for the passion of war… and dumplings, she found. No, it hadn't been her girlish charms, nor her stunning beauty, nor her sunny disposition (_"Alone,"_ her husband would quip) that coaxed a flicker of a smile from this man. _No_, she thought triumphantly, plodding barefooted to the fireplace to retrieve her bubbling pot, _it was the dumplings_.

As she bent over to remove it from the fire, she heard footsteps from the washroom; she waited, feigning inattentiveness, and felt arms slip around her waist.

"Alone at last," her husband murmured into her hair. She lightly elbowed him in the paunch—years of comfort and contentment will thicken the lithest of marksmen and markswomen—and lifted the pot from its hook.

"Get off of me you big oaf."

"Alright, alright!" Wil raised his hands in surrender and stepped away. "But it's true, you know. I've been washing all morning and haven't heard a peep from our visitors. It's like they grabbed what they needed and just... took off! While we were sleeping!"

"Look at the hour!" Rebecca laughed, heading back into the kitchen while her husband tailed her. "Did you even _see _them? The poor babes, too exhausted to mind the cold."

"Too exhausted to speak properly. And eat, for that matter."

Rebecca returned him a scowl; her husband was far from unsympathetic, far far from it, but his flippancy tended to grate in certain situations. Like in the midst of battle. She dropped her dumplings into the boiling pot and let it sit; she feared she would soon be forced to interrupt their guests' much-needed rest, but perhaps they would sleep through the rest of the day afterwards.

"So," she said. She turned to face her husband, who now reclined against a countertop, "what have we determined?"

"What's that?"

"Their clothes, of course." She noted his hands and forearms, wet and raw from scrubbing. "What manner of clothes are they?"

"You saw them as clearly as I, my dear!"

"I was not _thinking _clearly!" Her lips were pressed into a wide frown. "Hardly clear enough to meet their eyes one moment, refrain from staring the next, let alone study their garments. Would you say they've got a Sacaen look about them?"

Wil paused, contemplated.

"It's difficult to say, but in my _extensive travels_…" He shot his wife a simper, and received a crisp snort of disapproval—all affected in jest after all these years, but never forgotten. "I had come across many a Sacaen. Young, old, man, woman, horse, whatever. Now, they're a hardy, robust people, but if there's one characteristic that means life or death to a nomad, it's speed. They're a slim, nimble bunch. And our Grant, here—"

"Grant?"

"Yeah, big one's Grant, short one's Remiel. What are we going call them, 'Big One' and 'Short One'?"

"Their _actual _names, I would think."

"Hey, if you can get a name out of them, that's fine." Wil shrugged good-naturedly. "To me, they sound like barking dogs. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's nothing Sacaen about it either. Ever heard the Kutolah language?"

Reminiscence, his wife thought tiredly. Wil tended to overexcite while reminiscing.

"Truth be told, I couldn't tell you," she said to humor him, before returning her attention to the rolling soup. By now, the aroma must have awakened their guests, though Rebecca heard no telltale creaking from Wolt's room (it was the guest room, really, but he was the most frequent guest). She brushed Wil away from the counter to reach their stacks of earthenware.

"That long, eh?" he continued, mindless of his wife's frustrations. "Well it sounds nothing like… _that_. Sacaen lingua franca, right out the window, second only to our good tongue. "

"'That long'?" She retrieved four bowls, large enough for a hearty portion each. "I know the nice silverware is reserved for guests, but I have a feeling ours care less for such amenities. What do you think?"

"Ah, save it," Wil said dismissively. "And yes, that long! You know, the days of Eliwood's Elite? Rath of the Kutolah?"

He grimaced, stone-faced, but could not maintain the mimicry for much longer after a bowl of steaming soup and dumplings were set on the counter before him.

"Of course I do. What about him?"

"Well, Rath and that… whatshisname, Guido? He was part of the Kutolah tribe too. I'd overhear them talking from time to time, see. 'Gab gab gab Lyn, gab gab gab all right, gab gab wait up, Rath!' It was the funniest thing. But nothing like our friends Grant and Remy or their language."

"… How many times did you eavesdrop on Rath and Guy?"

By then, Wil had already delved into his breakfast.

"Delicious as ever, my dear!" he said between mouthfuls. "Are you just going to stand here? We can take this into the other room."

"I'm waiting on our guests."

Wil swallowed, set the bowl down, brow scrunched pensively.

"Remy _could _pass for Sacaen if you ignore the eyes and clothes. Those robes could be of Etrurian make, but I honestly can't say. And those eyes?"

He fell quiet. Rebecca noted, with confusion, that he appeared distant. Contemplative, for once? But she felt it too, whatever it was—from the depths of her memory, she felt an itch, some long-forgotten secret, or perhaps the early onset of senility.

"What about them?" she urged.

"I…"

Wil trailed off, shut his mouth, then seemed to stew with his thoughts.

"Well, see for yourself," he said.

"What?"

She followed his gaze, turned, and started as an apparition gazed back. He was noiseless in his entrance and noiseless in their encounter. Wolt's chemise drooped from his form like the tattered rags of some castaway's vengeful spirit; it fit remarkably nicely, all the same. He appeared to glower at them. Or perhaps his face was simply set in this manner—expectant, probing, lips pressed tight. Rebecca was staring again.

"Oh, good morning!" She approached him and he did not flinch—he simply watched from the hall without a sound. It would only follow that they should save their breaths with one another; their words carried no meaning, and they had no grounds to infer meaning.

And yet she still found his silence unnerving.

"Hungry?" Chilled to the bone, she offered her warmest smile, her politest nod, and turned to ladle in his serving; she felt his burning gaze on her back and shuddered. It was utterly alien. It was calculating. She was paranoid.

He seemed to comprehend when she left his bowl to sit, alone and unguarded, on the table. He glanced at her, then the bowl, then after a slow pause, crossed the both of them to take his seat. He did not touch his food.

She was staring again. The mark on his forehead caught her eye; a body painting of some sort? Sacaens were known to decorate themselves in such a manner, though there was no semblance of pattern or symbolism here. Then there were his eyes, lowered to his bowl as he reluctantly took his spoon and prodded a dumpling.

"I'm sorry," she said, approaching him, "is that not—"

His eyes darted to her and he growled a sharp syllable that may have been a word—a biting, terse word. It was the first time he'd spoken to her, and it was only now that she took note of the nature of his voice: forceful, throaty, and far too mature for his young face. There was a thud and then a scrape up above; both Rebecca and the stranger glanced up, then back at each other. Then he began to eat.

Pounding footsteps, groaning floorboards. How could they not have heard the first one? It was certainly the difference in bulk; "Grant's" alerted them to his presence from the moment he woke, and he carried it with a great deal of forwardness. The foreigners were equally imposing: one in size, and one in manner.

"You're both up early," remarked Wil as his "Grant" ambled into the kitchen. This one spoke to them—Rebecca wished to think he sounded genial as he eyed the bowl of soup in her hands, and he made a sound similar to his companion's, but more agreeable. His voice was deeper, suiting his stature, but clearer. Amicable… she wished to think.

Much more talkative in the very least. Somehow the language barrier did not seem to deter him or her husband from striking up a conversation.

"The name's Wil," he said, placing himself in the seat beside the guest. They kept around enough chairs and dinnerware to accommodate at least four, though company had grown scarce through the years—and the wars. Wolt didn't visit as often as they liked.

"Sheesh, you look like you could snap me like a twig," Wil exclaimed. "I mean, if I can call myself a twig nowadays!"

Though the man was visibly far more invested in his breakfast than speaking, he humored Wil with the occasional sidelong smile and a word in his own language.

Unfortunately, Rebecca was left to take "Remiel's" side; he ignored her, instead warily fixated on her husband. He was similarly wary when he regarded his food. From the corner of her eye she watched him closely; he ate with care, splitting apart a dumpling with the end of his spoon and examining the contents within before eating it. He chewed slowly and exchanged very few words with his companion, who instead had thoroughly absorbed himself with his own meal.

"I take it neither of you are of the Kutolah tribe?" asked Wil.

They carried on eating—not a flash of recognition.

"So you're not Sacaen at all then?"

"Grant" lifted his head and grunted in what sounded like… well, neither could rightfully tell. He'd cleaned his bowl and, after a fleeting glance towards his companion, hesitantly nudged it forward.

"You want more, I take it," Rebecca said. He sheepishly returned her smile.

"Well, they're not Kutolah. What are you, then?" But the man was engrossed by his wife as she stood to refill his bowl; he "thanked" her profusely, though for all she knew he might have just cursed their family to a century of misfortune

"And what are we going to do with these two?" Wil waved her over to retrieve his bowl.

"How do you mean?" She obliged, and took it.

"They're lost: that much is obvious. As to who they are, let alone how they wound up _here_, of all places… you've got me beat."

Though Rebecca was loathe to admit it, her husband's suspicion was well-grounded. Why _here_? Why at what many of their friends had jokingly referred to as the south-easternmost point of Lycia? North of them, a quiet fishing community, and north of that, Pherae. South of them, uninhabited coastline and mountain range.

"From which way were they headed?" she asked, though she knew neither of them could answer, let alone the guests themselves. "It couldn't be northbound; as far as I know, there's nothing down there, and they couldn't have circumvented the entirety of Bern from Sacae."

"And if they're headed south then they've absolutely no sense of direction." Wil nudged the man with his elbow. "Say, Grant, you had a Wallace in your family?"

The man glanced up, appearing confused, and returned to his soup.

"He looks like he's taken a few tips from the Manual of Knightly Prowess, anyway."

"That's not out of the question," Rebecca suggested. "It's possible they landed in the port and are destined to Pherae—they may just be confused."

"It's possible," agreed Wil, and again to the man, "you two headed to Pherae?"

"They can't understand a word you're saying, Wil. You're bothering them."

"Am I bothering you two?"

Exasperated beyond response, Rebecca observed that the quieter guest had finished; he appeared to be studying their household effects, the layout of their kitchen, the earthy upholstery, anything—he just appeared to be studying _them_. When she took his bowl, their eyes met and she froze. He was assessing her. She knew it. But to what end? What ulterior motives could they, an aging couple by the sea, possibly serve? Paranoia seized her once more.

Then he growled again—Wil was right, they did sound like quite like dogs, or some similarly snarling beasts—and his gaze fell. Before she could react, the other man set down his spoon, swallowed, and repeated his companion.

Then she finally understood.

Without thinking, Rebecca smiled and said, "You are welcome."

* * *

"Well, my question still stands."

The company had received their clothes and were sent back upstairs to change; having cleared up the aftermath of their haphazardly planned breakfast, Rebecca had taken it upon herself to make note of their food situation. When expecting company, the couple generally minded to keep their larder full; if it wasn't, they would amend it with a visit to the northern village and a laden trip home.

"_Why don't you just return to Pherae?" _Wolt had once asked them. _"Master Roy loves you dearly, and you'll never be in want like a simple hermit. Everything you could ever need is all within reach—all the food, all the people…"_

"_Perhaps we'd like to want," _she had responded.

Though what they once considered a wistful retreat to simplicity was now becoming a thorn in their side.

"Rebecca?"

"Hm? Oh, what question?"

There was a shortage of every meat but fish. They were similarly in need of garlic, cinnamon, and marjoram, as Rebecca tended to over-spice—to her husband's liking, of course.

"Of what to do with them. Besides 'feed Grant before he eats us'."

"You jest now, but we're distressingly low on beets. One of us is going to have to stock up soon."

And by "one of us" Rebecca meant "you, Wil".

"Well, besides that," he said. "We're not just going to _keep _them—"

"We're going to keep them as long as we need to."

She cut in quicker than she had meant to, and perhaps more tensely than she would have liked Wil to sense.

"Hey, don't misunderstand me, we definitely shouldn't _abandon _them."

"Agreed. You're hardly the type," Rebecca replied coolly.

"Oh come on, those barbs are getting old. What I'm saying is these young men are lost, and the best we can give them is a shove in the right direction. Wherever their destination is, it's someplace that isn't here."

She feigned ignoring him, lifting a bag of flour to assess its weight, but finally relented with a tired heave.

"I was only teasing you," she conceded, dropping the bag in a white puff. And then, facing him, "But you are right… on both counts. For all I care, those years are a nightmare. They never existed." Kissed him on the corner of his mouth. "It's that long passed. And as for the boys, I'm inclined to agree. Once it's clear they've found their bearings, we'll take them to town."

Having thoroughly made note of their scarcities, they crept into the front hall and checked for any signs of their guests. None at all; not even footfalls from Wolt's room.

"Just one thing," Wil said, breaking the short-lived silence. "Grant's hardly a boy. He's a _man_." He dropped onto the couch; Rebecca sank beside him.

"All men are boys at heart," she laughed. "Ah, but do you know what we can do? Pay my brother a visit; he's far worldlier than either of us. Doubtlessly he's familiar with a language such as theirs."

"You're going to have to bribe him."

"Again," she raised her voice, "I don't intend to simply _drop them _in the middle of a foreign country, least of all in my brother's care. Perhaps Dart knows more about their customs—their diet, or maybe their religious practices. Etiquette, social conduct, anything to better understand them."

"Ever so accommodating." Wil grinned. "He'd better know. It's impossible to tell between the two of them. Outcasts of their society, eh? I wouldn't be surprised if we're a stop on the road to some secluded fugitive sanctuary. Doesn't help that these ones can murder us with their bare hands."

"Wil!"

"I'm kidding, but it's true. If they're looking to hide, then there's no better place than our little abode. It occurred to me that taking them to Pherae might not be in their best interests." Not a moment after such solemn reflection, his face cracked into a grin. "Besides, doesn't that kind of sound exciting? I never thought we'd play hosts to a couple of refugees!"

Before Rebecca could answer—or simply formulate an answer, as this would pose quite the predicament, and it wasn't too outrageous of an idea—she became aware of their guests filing downstairs cautiously, as though to slip by her notice.

She saw that the Sacaen-esque young man had donned his entire garb now, including the cloak that they had—admittedly foolishly—believed to belong to his cohort. The other simply hadn't removed Wil's tunic.

"Finally, you're finished!" With some effort, Wil pushed himself off the cushion to greet them. "It can't have taken you _that _long to change out. Unless you've been discreetly pilfering from my son's room all this time."

He eyed the surly one.

"Maybe you both could stand to get a little fresh air. Some sightseeing, some greeting... and a new shirt for you, Grant. Something befitting of a handsome rogue such as yourself."

Though they remained silent, the uneasy glances they traded were telling enough. Rebecca's thoughts turned to a proper bribe.


	3. Ships and Homes

First chapter that wasn't predominantly written on a train, wow. That doesn't seem like much, but you have no idea how much of this stupid thing I've turned out (i.e. a ton of stuff from the Tellius dudes' POVs) while strangers talked to me about their at-home businesses.

This is about as silly as it'll get, so bear with me. I'm also sorry for the on-and-off piratespeak (internally justifiable) and the alteration between "the foreigners said something!" and "*actual foreign word*" (not so justifiable; I just don't want to dump my language doodling onto a single chapter, or any of them, ideally!)

* * *

Ships and Homes

The foreigners lingered a constant distance behind them, as if drawn by an invisible lead. Wil would occasionally slow his pace and walk abreast of them, making gentle conversation to ease them from their reservedness.

Perhaps as aware of the silence as Wil, they would occasionally indulge his incessant questioning—a short laugh from Grant, a snort or a quick syllable from Remiel.

"So Sacae doesn't ring a bell. Kutolah? Djute? Lorca? Couldn't be." He murmured the last bit to himself. The remainder of the Lorca had all but died out, its residual existence trickling down a Lycian bloodline that itself was nearing its end.

"I'm convinced that this is an exercise in futility," Rebecca groaned from the head of the group. She carried a basket of honeycakes off her forearm and wrapped herself in a cold-resistant cowl. "More to the point, I think you're irritating them. If they wish to talk, they will talk."

"How about Nabata?" He continued as though his wife never objected. "You've got the… build of someone from Nabata."

Grant scratched at one of his bandages in what Wil wanted to interpret as one of his people's idiosyncratic method of response, but it was likely the sting of the ointment his wife had applied. With some patience—and some ineffectual gesturing—they had gained his unspoken consent to dress his injuries, of which there were few, and examine his scars, of which there were many. Remiel had repeatedly shrunk away from their touch, and they eventually left him to his own devices; Wil had determined them to be self-sufficient enough to lick their own wounds, and likely lovely conversationalists were they not utterly unintelligible.

So he persisted with their uneven exchange for the entirety of their trek while his wife stomped crunching impressions into the damp sand ahead. Wil noted with amusement that Remiel eventually walked in step alongside her, as though in a silent exchange of complaints.

"In any case, we're just about there," he assured Grant, who simply shot him a sidelong, weary grin. "My brother-in-law is a little barmy—you know, in the head—so try not to spook him, alright?"

"_Hvor._"

He appeared to shrug.

The growl-like words, the rumble in his throat, the stony faces, the scars—Grant was almost certainly a warrior of some fashion. Hawkeye of Nabata again came to mind; there was that foreignness, that calculating reservation, those wary eyes, that sun-beaten complexion.

"I definitely think they're Nabatan," Wil declared as they began their ascent up a sanded, overgrown slope to the initial steps onto a dirt and pebbled path.

"I think that's yet to be determined," replied Rebecca without sparing him a backwards glance.

"No, see," he began, breathlessly catching her up, "I think it makes sense, given what little we know about the place. Maybe… maybe they were magic'd out of their homes in some spell gone awry. Can you imagine? Dropping off on some empty shore, frightened and lost, and all these strangers see when they look at you is a world-weary pair of vagrants, cloaked in seascum and mystery."

He was winded again, took a swig from his gourd and then a deep breath before resuming.

"It's a little sad, when you think about it."

"I thought about it, and it's a ridiculous assumption to make. Nonetheless…" Rebecca turned to Remiel, whose eyes were about level to hers. Lowering her voice, she told him, "I am afraid we're not accommodating for you as well as we'd like to. You would try to tell us if there is anything you need, yes?"

Rather than respond, he simply dropped his eyes. Nabatan eyes? Wil was afraid to broach the subject. More pressing matters were at hand.

Rebecca then faced Grant.

"We'll lunch before meeting with my brother, if it can be helped. Then we'll find you something to keep you warm... something that does not belong to my husband."

The shirt Wil had given him sufficed for the time being, though it was somewhat ill-fitting below the shoulders. Perhaps he would grow into it; for all their trouble, parting with some old clothes he never wore was the least Wil could do.

"It looks good on him," he countered, but the three had already started off towards the town's edge, leaving him to gather his breath and, though he was rarely wont to do it, reflect. Something in the air set him at unease; perhaps it was carried in by the storm.

* * *

Built around a modest coastal inlet, the settlement distanced itself at the edge of Pherae's territory, just barely within the young marquess's jurisdiction. Disentangled from the blood-crusted intricacies of state affairs, the people turned their concerns instead to the entanglements of fishing nets, the welcome challenge of self-sustenance, wear from the tides, the daily haul, companionship, and drinking. Truly, Wil believed, they had ascended the trappings of politics and rank, removed themselves from the overindulgent asylum of affluence, from the toilsome surfeit of servitude, and focused instead on the nourishment of their spirit, not unlike the grim-faced ascetics of an obscure Elimine sect, cloistered within the hallowed, labyrinthine confines of their abstruse inner enlightenment.

… But there was nothing quite so grim nor quite so confounding about this cheery fishing village. Wil especially enjoyed the drinking. It however embodied, in its reclusion, the spirit of independence that Wil and Rebecca had aimed to seize in the wake of two wars—the tides would sweep away the mark of battle from their memories, and the winds would sweep from their fingers the ghostly sensation of a bowgrip. Wolt lived away, yes, but he was always within reach. Wil looked forward to their next visit.

Grant and Remiel regarded the empty, sand-paved streets with apparent wariness, perhaps fascination, until two figures rounded the corner ahead and hailed them.

They were met by a pair of girls carrying armfuls of barley—barkeep's daughters, friends of the family. The younger set down her bundle as she greeted them, fumbling in her apron pockets while her sister bit back her frustration with a bitter smile.

"Good day Sir Wil, Lady Rebecca!" She addressed them in a vigorous effort to distract from her sister's fumbling. "What brings you to town today? And who might these two be?"

"Good day, Clyte. They're visitors," Wil answered vaguely, kneeling to retrieve the dropped bundle. "Do you need a hand? We were planning to drop by your father's for a bit."

"Oh Sir Wil, there's no—"

"Found it!" The girl fished out of her pocket what looked to be a necklace of smooth, bean-shaped shells and held it out for Rebecca to examine. "I ran out of berries and thought you might be sick of them anyway, so I strung you this instead. They bring good luck to whoever wears it or… something like that. And children, but you already have enough of those."

She made a snorting laugh into her sleeve.

"You made this?" Rebecca reluctantly accepted it, somewhat exaggeratively astonished; their foreign guests stood stiffly apart from the scene, busying themselves with the townscape sights and avoiding the strangers' watchful eyes.

"Oh Sedna, it's stunning!" she went on. "Did you gather these yourself? They're almost as elegant as your weaving."

"Aren't they, though? And yes, I—"

The eldest interjected with a clearing of her throat, giving Sedna a start; she then saw that Wil had taken her bundle.

"Oh, don't trouble yourself with that, Sir Wil!" she laughed, brushing past him to retrieve it. "We're—"

"Already quite tardy and should be on our way. Excuse us," interrupted the eldest once more. And then, to the foreigners, "I am Clyte, and this is my sister, Sedna. We work for the tavern here, if you have not already gathered." The barley rustled as she shrugged. "We can talk along the way."

With that, she began to lead them down another turn in the street, slowed, and stopped.

"I didn't catch your names," she said over her shoulder.

"This one's Grant, and that one's—"

"Yet to be determined." Rebecca stepped in. "Pardon them; they're lost and a bit confused, so do not mistake their reticence for discourtesy."

"Lost," repeated Clyte.

"We suspect they were headed to Pherae from the west and were swept off-course," Wil explained. "But that's also yet to be determined."

The girl regarded Remiel with suspicion; he regarded her the same.

"So you're mute, then?"

"Oh no, they're foreigners," Wil said glibly.

"So…" Sedna spoke up. "That means… they cannot understand us?"

"Erm, that's yet to be—"

"Goodness, that was downright horrifying!" she laughed. "The moment I saw them, I thought they had you at knifepoint! Just their whole look, and their—his size— and their faces… wherever did you find them?"

"They found us," Rebecca answered hesitantly. "At our doorstep. Sedna, dear, while they cannot understand you, we've made a point not to speak ill of them in their presence."

"Oh! My apologies, then."

Wil checked back and saw that Remiel had lost interest in their conversation, or was at least affecting indifference.

"I don't think he minds. But Grant… Grant strikes me as the empathetic sort. He can _feel_ he's being slighted."

"Anyway," Clyte resumed, gathering the barley against her chest, "you said you wish to see my father on this matter? Because you're as likely to find answers in a week-old bowl of porridge."

"Clyte!" exclaimed her sister.

"Not exactly," Wil said uneasily, grateful that Wolt did not speak so poorly of him during his absence, even in affection. At least he wished to think so. "We were hoping to find Dart there, seeing as that's where he… usually passes his days."

"Yes. I know." Clyte sounded dispassionate.

"We thought he might know something of their language, possibly where they're from."

"Sacae, maybe?" she offered. "Are the Sacaen even seafarers?"

"No, no, we've ruled Sacaen out. And that's a good question that never occurred to us, so it's ruled out doubly."

"They don't have the squint-eyes," observed Sedna. They returned her scrutiny with a mix of confusion and wariness.

"Or the face shapes," Clyte added. "I'd say they're halfwits, but they seem entirely conscious of our inspection of them. Perhaps uncomfortably so…"

"Clyte," interrupted Rebecca, "Did you say you were in a hurry?"

"Oh, excuse me. I felt the situation was arrestingly unusual and demanded consideration."

"Arrestingly good-looking, if you get past the fierce countenance. Is that speaking ill of them?" laughed Sedna.

"Yes, it only serves to accentuate the exquisite intensity." Clyte was markedly unimpressed. "Oh, I should mention that you may not find Dart frequenting the tavern as per usual. He's taken his antics to the wharf, and… you know how it goes."

Wil looked to his wife, whose expression mirrored his nervousness.

After a pause, he told her, "I can fetch him."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Take the boys to eat and get outfitted. Meet me there afterward."

Rebecca seemed to reconsider their agenda, but relented.

"Good luck."

Painfully aware of the foreigner's presence—as well as the girls', though this he did not mind as much—Wil leaned in to snatch a kiss from his wife, then jerked away.

"Good luck, then," Clyte echoed, proceeding to lead them down the roadway. "Brace yourself for the barrage of questions, Lady Rebecca."

As though on cue, Sedna jumped in.

"What do they sound like? Are they very nice? Were they more talkative at first?"

In a lapse of thought, Grant's attention lingered on Wil; he seemed confused. Smiling, Wil waved him off. Though visibly hesitant, Grant smiled back before he rejoined the group.

* * *

Wil encountered a few more familiar faces as he winded his way to the docks, following the sounds of seaspray and laughter; he greeted each acquaintance with a quick hello and a hurried goodbye, as he tended to succumb to distractions easily and could not afford to stop and catch up. He felt along the uneven alleyway walls, cast in a cool shadow that caught the shimmer from the waterfront as he emerged onto the wharf. For a panicked instant, he realized that the docks were empty save for a few run-down vessels, and that the others had likely left port long before. He sincerely hoped Dart had not been experiencing one of his drunken flights of fancy, or if so, the fishermen denied him from boarding before taking off.

The faint sound of shouting to his right confirmed his initial suspicions; a pack of children surrounded a single, seated figure, some beside him on the bench, some taking their spots on the bollards, others on the planks below. Wil pressed himself against the shadows of the row of storehouses and edged closer, until his brother-in-law's words were clear within earshot. He sounded relatively sober, much to Wil's relief.

"Think of a storm. Think of the biggest storm that ever came to port!" Dart growled.

"Yesterday's was a right monster," noted aloud one girl.

"Bigger 'n that, darling! Have a look over those mountains, yonder."

He indicated it with a tilt of the chin in Wil's direction, and for a moment dropped his fierce façade.

Only for it to return.

"Hoy, Wil! Step up, you bilge-sucking blaggard!"

The children followed the direction of his fingers and were on him all at once.

"Sir Wil!"

The more boisterous girl collided with his stomach, unable to wrap her arms all around his middle.

"Tell us about the dragons!" a boy said over her head.

"What are you doing in town?"

Oh dear, the dragons. He decided to address the easier question.

Smoothing her wind-frayed hair, he said, "Running errands for some unexpected guests."

"Is Wolt home?"

Her eyes lit up.

"Wolt is in Pherae... where he's very much needed. The visitors I brought are off with Rebecca right now."

She eased off him, vaguely disappointed. Dart shot him a gap-filled, languid grin.

"You heard 'em. Tell 'em about the dragons."

"Dragons?" he laughed weakly, as another child surrendered his seat on the bench to him. From here the smell of drink was strong and pervasive; Wil's heart sank as Dart humored the children's demands.

"Aye, great scaly beasts, all sword-toothed and ruby-skinned. Have a look at those mountains, and imagine a wyvern a-clawing over that yonder ridge like a crab over a stone. Bigger 'n a fleet of galleons, hot as a sun with a rash, louder 'n the storm we spake of—"

"I ain't seen a wyvern afore!" shouted a boy.

"Bloated gulls if y'ask me," Dart snorted dismissively. "Got the voice of a harpy at moontime. Nothing like a dragon, who'll sink a ship when he sneezes! And Wil, here—"

He clapped him on the back with a broad, leathery hand, briefly winding him.

"Wil here stepped right up, and the beast swung down its head like the swing of a boom when helm's a-lee, opened its jaws wide like a grouper's, like a cave with teeth, and Wil here looked it right in the eye, bigger 'n that—bigger 'n that house, over yonder—"

With a flailing gesture, he indicated the sea-battered storehouse they were taking shade under.

"It was not _nearly_ that large," Wil countered, though as with every time , this did nothing to deter his brother-in-law.

"Even bigger, and it tossed out its tongue like a flaming carpet, and—"

"And I made the _smart decision _and—"

"—and out sprung another mouth!" Dart went on. "Like an eel from its bloody lair. And my mate Wil just kept staring at 'im straight in the deadlights, 'an afore he could even blink…"

Prodded his good eye with a thumb and dragged it across his face.

"Arrow shot right through an' out the other end!"

Wil could not decide which dismayed him more—the visible cringing, or the absolute, unflinching absorption.

"An' it shrieked like a great thunderclap an' shattering rock, and I stormed up, madder than a grog-addled swab, an' I lifted me axe and told 'im…"

He let it sit for a moment, sweeping over the faces with a maddened, bulging eye.

"And told 'im, '_blimey, you're loud!'_ And I chopped off his tongue."

Up surged their chattering bewilderment and hushed approval. As per usual.

"And I kept it," he said, leaning back into his seat. "Afore I threw it overboard, that is. Sharkbait, proper."

He took a deep swig from his tankard; rum dribbled down his wiry beard.

"Is it true, then?" asked another child. Wil realized he had directed the question towards him.

It was always the same: each time he came into town, Wil found himself having to answer for every one of Dart's tall tales, no matter how overblown. With lies he could tactically evade or deny; half truths were stickier business.

"Not quite as I remember it," he laughed. "There definitely was a dragon, and it was very large, and very red. Erm, speaking of, Dan."

Dart peered up from the rim of his mug.

"I've got something semi-important to talk about with you."

Without responding, he downed the remainder of his drink, and set it between his knees with a breath.

"You heard 'im, urchins. Run along."

"That's it?"

Up surged the chorus of protests. As per usual.

"Nay, that ain't half o' it, but it's enough for the day. Tomorrow, mayhaps, when I ain't nursing a head-wound."

He scrunched his forehead, and with some reluctance, the circle of listeners broke up and began to scatter. The girl from earlier gave Wil one last glance and called to him.

"Sir Wil, please tell Wolt to come home soon!" And with that, she was off. They waited for the skirt of her dress to disappear around the corner of the storehouse before Dart finally spoke.

"Addlepated, lovelorn lass." His laugh sounded more like a cough. Then, turning to Wil, "You could be a legend to 'em, you know that?"

"Oh god, what have you been telling them?"

"Quit your blubbering. I told 'em what you and I both saw." He bared his dirt-lined gums in a grin.

"I can't recall _shooting an arrow through a dragon's skull_!"

"Eh, a catch is a catch. You can be a bit foggy on the size." Dart looked him up and down and grimaced. "Though I wouldn't've guessed just by looking at you."

"What do you mean by that?"

Another burst of gravelly laughter.

"You're drawing quite a poundage, I mean," he coughed.

"Right, but not nearly enough to shoot through a—_hey_!"

Dart's guffawing resumed once more; he was risking his health at the expense of Wil's ego. Eventually, the laughter subsided, and so did Wil's tension. He let out a deep heave.

"The years are catching up to me," he finally agreed. His nerves settling, he reclined in the bench and caught a sunray with an outstretched arm. "But it feels good. I'm warm, and fed—"

"I'll say."

"—and happy, and my son is safe," he continued absently, "and I live by the sea with my two best friends, just like we always did. I never wake up so uncertain of my future, or Wolt's, and… he always insists that we should return to Pherae and live comfortably, but I can't say we're ever in want anymore. I'm satisfied."

"Reached yer peak, you say?" Dart asked wryly. "Gone be the days of gold and glory?"

"I don't mind gold, but I'm spent with glory. If glory was a tangible, legitimate medium of exchange, I'd be throwing it out on the streets like a deranged glory philanthropist."

"You've got it backwards, mate. Gold can rot in the ground, but what's a man without his glory?"

Wil detected that tinge of irony in his smile.

"You should know, pirate king." A breeze of spray fluttered against his cheek; he closed an eye and felt the wetness tickle his skin. "I feel like I'm letting them down, somehow. The children, I mean." He sat up. "Like I'm falling short of someone's expectations. Who am I trying to impress, anyway?"

"A pack of urchins," Dart muttered, setting his tankard down and straightening in his seat.

"It's like that feeling I got while at court—like I should be aspiring to something grander than, well, _this. _When you tell those stories, I feel as if I were destined for something greater, and..."

"Don't talk to me about greatness, you whelp!" The fisherman shot to his feet. "Now stand and deliver, your glory or your life!"

"Wait, what? What did I say?"

"_Stand _you windless lardlubber!"

He obeyed, and Dart clapped him on the shoulder with an uproarious laugh.

"Was that a flinch, mate? You're a man's man, Wil! You live for your family, and in my eyes, there's no greater way to live! You're so brimming with greatness that it rolls out onto the streets!"

"Look, we've gotten _way _off subject here and I'd like to reign it b—"

"At attention, sailor! Let's see if you're just as slippery!"

"_What_?"

In lieu of answering, Dart reeled back his arm and threw a hard, sloppy punch that grazed the side of his arm; it was only until after he jumped out of reach that Wil realized what had happened.

"What the hell, Dan!"

"Still got that spring in your step, I see!"

He hurled another punch; reflex took over, as though the air from his blows were providing momentum. Dart's fist whirred by his ear, withdrew with a wide step forward, and then by his shoulder before he pulled back a third time. A choke caught Wil's mouth when he tensed to dodge again, Dart's lurching, drunken stumbles painfully slow, yet unpredictable. He held his breath in his chest and strained his muscles and winced at the resounding clap of fist on flesh.

Dart let out a ragged curse and struggled to wrench his arm out of the strange man's grip.

"Wait, _wait_! Don't, um, hurt him! Either of you!" Wil forced himself between his friend and Grant, who relaxed almost immediately and stepped away; Dart was not so peaceable.

"What in Han Gak's name do you think you're doing, you rat-eating scum-boiled whoreson!"

"_Wait_, I said! This is a misunderstanding!"

Ushering Grant back from the seething seaman, he spotted his wife and Remiel looking on from the sidelines, uncanny in how they seemed to mirror each other's expressions of disapproval.

"Rebecca, help?"

Though he could not hear it, he saw her huff as she assented, dragging her feet and unceremoniously thrusting the offering of honeycakes into her brother's chest.

"Channeling Sir Wallace's Secret Training Regimen, are we?" She shot Dart a meaningful look, but thankfully seemed to remember the purpose of their coming, and bit back her tongue just as it coiled for a lashing. "There is my welcoming gift. Where is mine, then?"

Staggered, Dart was slow to disarm, and dumbly accepted the gift.

"That's _exactly_ what he was doing," Wil exclaimed, "Right down to the unprovoked attempts on my life!"

Ignoring him, Dart threw an arm over his sister's shoulder and pulled her into a firm hug. Wil would have gladly skipped contact with Dart's sweat- and rum-stained shirt, though Rebecca accepted it without complaint, and diffused his odd fit of energy better than he could ever hope to accomplish.

"Right, now that _that's _blown over, I should introduce you to our new houseguests."

Rebecca pulled away from her brother with a glare of mixed reproach and curiosity.

"You didn't tell him."

"We were very sidetracked!"

Dart's suspicions once more shifted back to the intruder, and then, once he became aware of him, the other young man watching from afar.

"Well, blow me down," he murmured. "How are you called, lads?"

"This one's Grant, and that one's—"

"Yet to be determined," Rebecca interrupted.

"... Remiel."

"Where'd you find 'em?"

"They found us," She answered tersely. "Last night. And their names are _not _Grant or Remiel, and if they are, there's no way of telling."

"It's anyone's guess," Wil agreed with a shrug. "I thought it sounded better than _grsh _or _einthr _or whatever cluster of sounds you can pick out of their conversations. Just grit your teeth and blow."

He studied their faces for a flicker of reaction; they simply stared him back, dumbfounded, until Grant finally spoke up, hoarse from his daylong silence.

"Ha?"

"Foreigners, eh?" Dart scratched his beard, deep in thought.

"I believe so," said Rebecca. "We were hoping you'd know something of their language, or at least their homeland. They just… appeared on our doorstep, soaked to the bone, and started _babbling_—"

"They ain't plainsmen, are they?"

"What? No, I can tell you with absolute certainty," Wil cut in. "I've never heard the language in my life… or at least to my recollection. We were hoping something about them would ring a bell."

"Never? How should I know? I never used _words, _mate! Pirates speak with their axes!" He made a theatric swoop with his fist, and noticed Grant stiffen in the corner of his eye. "Ha, at ease, sailor!"

Grant froze, expressionless. Wil saw his fingers curling; he knew the reflex all too well.

"Well, here's the way I sees it," Dart went on. "Either you got yourself a couple of castaways whose skulls were knocked around _just right _that they can't understand nothing but the other. A cuff or ten upside the head should do 'em," he laughed darkly. "Or you got yourself a couple of maroons. This one's got that salty look about 'im. Pirates ain't beyond press-ganging savages into their crew 'til they get out of hand, you know."

"You'd know better than I would, Dart," said Rebecca, "but he's—they've been nothing if not sweet-natured. They don't strike me as savages… or pirates."

"And what is meant by that, missy?" Dart snorted. "Forgive an old seafarer for his fogginess. I can't tell you nothing you don't already know, but I know this one's no guttersnipe... he's got a look about 'im. How long are you holding 'em?"

"As long as we need to." She shot Wil a glance. "We were planning to take them to Pherae, actually. With luck, there may be an interpreter there who may be at least passingly familiar with their language."

"If not, then there's Wolt," Wil added. "I'm anxious to see him again. In any case, if there's anyone who can handle this situation better than we can, they're in Pherae."

Dart sucked in a lungful of air through his nose, looking from one friend to the other.

"Very well, then."

"Very well?" stammered Wil.

"Alright, mate! Scrape the sponge from your ears," he barked. "I'm aiming to join you lot!"

Rebecca seemed relieved. "Wolt would be pleased. It's been some time since you last saw him, hasn't it?"

"Aye, I've been counting the days," Dart said flatly. "Just let me fetch my axe."

He said it with such a nonchalance that it took Wil a moment to register.

"Wait, your _what_?"

"My axe! How else d'you call it?"

"Yes, but why?" Rebecca bit her lip. "The road is clear, and... it's only an overnight trip and_—_ "

"Is it the boys?" Wil gave his words more weight than he intended, and he instantly regretted it.

To his relief, Dart merely grumbled into his shoulder as he bent to retrieve his tankard.

"It's a precaution," he shrugged, inspecting the container and remembering, with dismay, that he had already finished the last of his rum. "Should take care of this too." Wobbled as he stood again; he still had his sea legs, he would say, though Wil knew for a fact that he was simply drunk.

"Word has it some trouble's been stirring in the countryside. Where there ain't trouble, some whelps'll stir it, after all."

"You mean like bandits?" pressed Rebecca. "Highwaymen?"

"I mean a rumor," Dart said firmly. "Don't fret over arming yourselves. If there's a pack of ruffians roving about, they're no concern of ours. Too much fight 'n us yet." He leered at the foreigners with a single, sharp eye. "But one can never know, eh?"


	4. A Hint of Things to Come

Google tels me at least two other people have put this hideously generic title to use, but it came down to a choice between "hideously generic" and "hideously generic + pretty much already established" (i.e. "The First Fight" OH SNAP SPOILERS NOBODY SAW THAT COMING) so screw you guys I'll be the third!

Also, Soren's figural narration is much more concerned with the weather and much less with his broader state of existence than Ike's was in the first chapter. This is completely unintentional and I find it hilarious.

* * *

A Hint of Things to Come

After two days spent slogging beneath seaside overcast, the midday glare was freshly intense as it buffeted his head, searing through his eyeballs and knotted brow. He massaged them with the knuckles of one hand, only vaguely aware of his indiscretion.

"You're really tired, aren't you?"

He squinted at his companion between his fingers before dragging his hand away.

"I can carry you if you want."

Deciding not to answer, he centered his glassy-eyed stare on the trio of locals who led from a safe distance ahead.

"I'm joking, of course. Hey, Soren? Are you listening?"

"Hm?"

They had been on the road from the moment it was visible—that dim-lit, dew-studded blush before it flared into the foul and oppressive heat that plagued them now. Though it broiled Soren to an uncomfortable slickness from the collar downwards, it was the least of his worries.

"Did you sleep at all last night?" asked Ike. Despite his best intentions, his irksome concern was yet another bother atop the pile of bothers that shored up their expedition of increasingly severe demands. Soren swallowed back the bite in his own responses.

"Why do you ask, Ike?"

"Well, you look a little… haggard." Ike caught himself and quickly added, "I mean you look good! Just tired, is all. I was joking about the manhandling, but you can lean on me if it'll help."

That sounded even less pleasant. Ike's newly bought shirt clung to his side in damp patches, his arms glossed with perspiration and his face flushed. He had taken it upon himself to shoulder the villagers' belongings—all but the axe, Soren thought irritably—and though he showed no signs of tire, Ike was capable of discomfort as anyone. Damp, sticky, suffocating discomfort. Soren summoned a faint smile of reassurance.

"It's fine." He nodded his head towards the foreigners. "They'd take notice, anyway."

"Hey, that's not a bad idea. They might get the message and let us rest for a while. It's gotten kind of hot, you know?"

…Said Ike, clothed only in the bare minimum to be considered decent, and nothing else. Yes, he knew very well. Soren wouldn't have minded lending him his cloak again.

"Consider that we may not want them privy to our vulnerability," said Soren. "Predators are opportunists; the lame fawn is first to fall prey."

"…Soren, you were up 'keeping guard', weren't you."

"I've spent nights doing worse," he retorted, rubbing his fist against an eye.

They had stopped at a little roadhouse the night before, the sandy-throated, foul-smelling, likely-drunk fisherman in tow: the armed, blustering, drunken, reeking, _armed_ fisherman with whom Ike and Soren were arranged to room. Had Soren's bouts of fitful vigilance not kept him awake for their stay's entirety, it would have been the fisherman's unsettling and ceaseless snores. He'd grown accustomed to Ike's—fondly, almost, though seized by the occasional urge to clog his windpipe with a rag—but the fisherman's wet, knotty spluttering would set him on edge with each sporadic growl or mumble, rousing him from the threshold of sleep whenever he had so much as nodded his head against a wall. He had kept the knife in his lap all through the night.

"It's not like I haven't considered it," said Ike. "It's just a funny assumption to make."

Soren narrowed his pulsing eyes.

"How do you suppose."

"I mean, look at them. It's a wife and her husband and I'm guessing a drinking buddy." Though Ike seemed less than certain about the circumstances of the fisherman's company; they had simply agreed that "fisherman" served its purpose for now as a half-affectionate epithet. "They've been nothing but hospitable and… I guess, to me at least, they just seem like a sweet couple of villagers."

There was a noticeable lull in the foreigners' conversation; Soren watched them closely, delaying his own explanation.

"That could very well be, Ike." He chose his words with care. "They could have nothing but good intentions, and we'd _still _have cause for worry."

"Huh."

"Perhaps it's customary," he went on, "in receiving a guest, to take them into your home, feed them, clothe them, and provide for their basic needs."

"Seems about right."

"Perhaps it's also customary that you thereafter lead them out into empty countryside and axe them to pieces."

Ike fell dumbstruck for a moment.

"I… what?"

That caught the husband's attention. He grinned back at them and mimicked the sound. He had taken to mimicry, lately.

Soren ignored him and continued.

"That 'drinking buddy' could just as well be an appointed executioner."

"Soren, you don't really believe—"

"Personally, I don't," he interjected. "My point is that morality is not so simple as a set of principles for everyone to abide by, of which, I suppose, you've previously been made well aware."

Ike may have heard the traces of bitterness in his steady intonation; bringing himself to relax, Soren sought for an clearer way to convey his anxiety.

"Perhaps they do not value sentient life as we do. Perhaps guests are to be fattened on pork and beer and then eaten, per the teachings of some ritualistic cannibal god; it's certainly horrendous for _us _to consider, but then again, our practices may seem similarly monstrous to the likes of, say, a heron."

He intended this to be the seed of unease that would take root in his mind; Ike mulled over the notion while Soren, satisfied, returned his attention to their guides. It was not until he looked back up that he found that his companion had taken his consideration unperturbed.

"You know," Ike grinned. "It's hard to tell when you're being sarcastic. To me, it sounds like you're throwing out the most ridiculous scenario you can think of on the fly."

"Right. But you don't know that it's not true."

Despite his best efforts, the air of tension had all but been dispelled.

"Come on, Soren, that doesn't give us license to jump to wild conclusions."

"Suppose they don't extend us that courtesy," he persisted.

"It doesn't seem that way."

"They've had their eyes on us for the last minute or so."

With a nod towards them from Soren, the foreigners quickly looked away and resumed their hushed exchange.

"Huh." Again, he hardly seemed perturbed. "Well, I say we have every much of a right to talk amongst ourselves as they do." Ike shrugged and rolled his sack from his shoulder to the crook of his neck. "They probably think so too. You never know, right Soren?"

He answered flatly, "Right, Ike."

And he did not press him further. Ike had fixed in his mind a much clearer, purer philosophy on the nature of human virtue—a simplistic artlessness Soren may have taken to (mistakenly) projecting upon his companion to justify his own overprotective tendencies. He knew for certain, though, that in a world of cannibals, Ike's convictions would send him down a road of unerring, aggressive vegetarianism, convention and ceremony be damned.

On second thought, Ike might prefer martyrdom by starvation.

The unfettered sunlight had finally melted away his capacity for sound judgment; Soren relented and unclasped his cloak, folding and draping it over his arm. The lining of his undershirt still wiped against his stomach in a way that was both abrasive and awkwardly slippery, but giving it thought only aggravated his discomfort.

"You could go without your fourth or fifth layer, while you're at it." Ike's cheeks crinkled with his smile.

"Ha."

"You are so weird," he laughed and took his cloak for him.

Caught between indignation and something close to sheepishness, a response bubbled up his chest, and Soren gulped it back; his throat felt thick and gluey. He fumbled for his gourd while Ike looked on in vague amusement.

"Try to relax, Soren." Again, that laugh. "I'll, uh, keep an eye on these fiends for you."

He took a measured sip and let the water wash over his parched tongue before swallowing. Ike took this as a sign of irateness.

"Really, I will. I'm not going to throw myself at them for looking at us funny or anything, but I don't want you to think that I'm leaving my guard down. For all we know, the gang sizing us up over there could be a bunch of highwaymen."

"That what?"

He followed Ike's line of vision—far ahead, at the point where the road vanished into a shimmering, blazing likeness of a puddle, a hazy apparition arose in the distance. Soren shielded his eyes from the sun and picked out a group of heads; it was certainly a group of many, and they were certainly men. They appeared to halt upon sighting them, and for that brief prelude of contact, Soren could not tell a greeting apart from a threat.

The husband bade them halt as well, resting his hands on his hips as the second party drew near. Soren could soon make out their features in spite of the midday glare; a young man at the lead hailed them with a whistle and a wave. Perhaps a salute. The fisherman, whose fingers had been hovering over the grip of his axe, dropped his hand and shouted back in turn. There was at least a passing familiarity, but it did little to cool Soren's suspicions. He bowed his head and studied their boots and leggings as they mingled with their escorts and gave their regards, the wife clasping arms with what he presumed to be their leader. He was beginning to develop an unsavory aversion to contact; he had already rejected the foreigners' unwelcome outreaches numerous times, as he would most anyone from Tellius, but he had taken to lowering his eyes in strange company and waiting for the marveling stares to pass—given his disinterest for any real station during his days as an "official", such abject displays of submission were unfamiliar to him. He could feel their eyes now, their prying examination; he busied himself with the burrs on his robes. The adolescent girl had regarded them with no less scrutiny, yet Soren attributed his then more forthright conduct to his _profound diplomatic acumen_; it would certainly place the lot of them at a social disadvantage to sneer at an armed group of men as he had to some patently arrogant little snip. Cowardice played no part in his decision.

Soon they were walking again, this time at a pace that better allowed for conversation. No introductions were made.

Focusing on a stray tree further down the path, he counted six men on the edge of his vision. The one who spoke with their convoy appeared to be around their age, lean, with an air of confidence about him. His hair reminded him much of Ike's; equally unkempt, though Ike's situation excused him from sedentary hygiene practices. The leader and the fisherman walked shoulder-to-shoulder up front, caught in each other's web of conversation.

Soren had begun to hear patterns in their speech after enough words had been exchanged between their garrulous host and Ike, who had simply held up his end with compliments of their household effects. There were recurring sounds, but they all crashed together in a rapid, tireless flow that Soren struggled to dissect into any intelligible structure.

He narrowed his eyes as the fisherman leaned in to whisper something in the man's ear; he pulled away in shock, and burst into laughter. The husband and wife exchanged disapproving glances.

"They've got a really nice laugh, don't you think?"

He was aware of Ike's closeness, yet it still gave him a start after they'd gone so long without speaking. He felt eyes fall upon them once more.

"Would it be wise to speak so boldly in this company?" he asked quietly.

Ike glanced over his shoulder at the line of men—armed men, _very_ armed in face of their withering fisherman's axe and Soren's knife—and shrugged.

"This wasn't an issue for you earlier today. It's not like they can understand us, anyway."

When the mood struck him, Soren would communicate his frustration by drawing from a number of backhanded means to mock someone he did not particularly care to harm, such as Rhys or Mist; with others such as Boyd, the butt of his staff usually sufficed. But he could not bring himself to employ either in Ike's presence— least of all the strangers' presences.

"Yes," he said calmly as he could manage, "that is precisely my concern."

"I think I understand. If it'll keep you from whipping out that dagger of yours…"

_That you cradle in your sleep_, Ike perhaps intentionally left unspoken.

The leader of the band craned his neck and twisted them a lopsided grin. He had heard them and acknowledged them, but did not show particular interest in disrupting their conference.

"I am not so foolish, Ike."

Just then, he could feel the others closing in—slowly, subtly, while their leader's attention and focus returned . Two walked abreast of them, on either side. The other two shadowed them. Soren held his gaze steadily ahead of him, but curiosity quickly overtook, and in the flicker of a glance he gave to the man to his left, he saw him grinning.

He directed a question toward them; Soren ignored him, and the others rumbled with laughter. There was nothing lovely about their laughter. It sounded like sandpaper on wet, rotting bark to him. They had that smell about them, too. Sweat, hot leather, metal—and someone behind them, something sharp and pungent, an overpowering, unpalatable spice. The source of the stench hung in his peripheral vision, lingering behind his companions, eyes hardened and downcast, though young. His hair was vaguely the same color as the wife's, but lighter. Rolf's came to mind, where the wife's shade fell closer to Boyd's or Oscar's.

It was difficult to comprehend the scope of the distance between their bearings and the brothers. Soren stopped distracting himself from the incipient danger at hand.

"Ike," he whispered, pressing against his side.

"What?"

"Don't look at him, but if that man makes any sudden moves, I want you to get behind me."

Always easier said than done. The first time he'd tried to absorb a magical blow it was without the luxury of warning or foresight—they had both fallen crashing into some roadside underbrush, which quickly thereafter caught fire. Although he needed far less food to maintain it, which mitigated the common hardships of travel, he sometimes bemoaned his woefully impractical stature; he made a pitiful human ward.

"You think that's a mage?"

"Of some fashion," he said. "I smell it."

"…You what?"

It was just so that the woefully impractical side of his stature would rear its head. Soren scanned the road ahead for a place to duck away, and glanced towards Ike.

"I'll be back shortly. There's no need to wait for me."

Ike's leave would have been enough, but the first time he had strayed from their little procession, the fisherman had followed him and hurled a number of forceful, gurgling orders that Soren did not care to humor; now that they had established a sort of system of basic gestures, all he needed was to wave, and the foreigners presumably understood. He raised a hand to the husband, who nodded him off.

Without warning, he brushed by the man who had taken his side. He spluttered a protest in their odd lilting language but gave him berth to pass.

"Excuse me," he said quietly, and hoped that would suffice before descending into the underbrush.

He deliberated over the snatches of observations he could make of the mage, his form indistinguishable beneath folds of dark, musky broadcloth.

Did magic operate on the same principles here as in Tellius, he wondered as he waded through the thicket, lifting his robes to avoid a snag. It must have: magic was an immutable, universal constant, as true or inevitable as falling, drowning, birth and death. They had departed from Tellius, but not the laws of reason that governed it... however shoddily. He sheltered himself inside a copse of oak and listened for the faraway chatter of his party. He had removed himself well enough from their reach.

_Casting _magic was another matter entirely. He fumbled with the laces of his pants while the flood of questions tormented him.

Staves, tomes, powders, weapons—while the possibilities may have been virtually limitless, Soren could not conceive of a medium or instrument that approached the beorc ingenuity of the tome or the elegance of the staff, excepting maybe the muddling, enigmatic craft of the herons or dragons. But he had yet to see a staff or tome or heron or dragon in this country, so what could it be? Wielded with wands or quills or specifically-designed contraptions yet to be beheld?

He heard a crash through the undergrowth further within the forest. He stiffened.

Likely an animal. Still cause for concern. Soren stilled and listened— listened from the most inelegant, compromising position imaginable, but he was nevertheless alert.

The noise stilled as well, and he forced himself to relax; soon he could hear nothing but songbirds, faint foreign prattle, and the shivering leaves he had absently made his target. The clatter resumed before he could finish, and he clinched up like a trap as it crashed away into the deeper wilderness. His stomach twisted as the noise did not return, and, hesitating, he brought himself to finish. It was gone, so far as he knew. He began his cautious return to the group.

The dark-haired man greeted him—or perhaps cursed him because _they did not know_—upon his emergence from the brush, and signaled his entourage to continue their march. Nodding seemed to carry the same meaning for these people as it did on Tellius; it would be a useful link in communication could they give Soren something intelligible to affirm. He fell back into step by Ike's side.

Fixated on the broadsword strapped to the leader's back, he alerted Ike with a tug at his sleeve.

"What is it?"

"Cause for concern," he muttered.

He almost expected an exasperated "Soren, you can't"—"Soren, you couldn't _really think_"— "Do you even hear yourself?" though that was not in keeping with Ike's marked sincerity.

Instead, there was a simple "I heard it too."

"Off the road, yes," Soren urged.

"What? No, listen."

He listened.

The fisherman's lone blubbering had subsided into background noise by now—he listened closer, through the birdsong and the clapping of leather and footfalls on the march.

He listened to the whispering behind them. Self-doubt crept to mingle with the ever-present suspicion; he heard a voiceless, sharp string of mutters that by all accounts he should not have been able to recognize. It was likely his imagination taking clusters of sounds and grasping for some intelligible approximation—like seeing faces in a cup of used tealeaves. Or…

_Ezakonihsakum_

Or…

_Urekumatakoimim_

He strained his ears— indeed, it must have been his imagination, recollecting whispers of a familiar incantation. Yet when the urge to look consumed him, swelled within him in an agonizing bid for release, and when he turned his head to abate that urge…

_Inekakiboyon_

The young man's jaw was pulsing, as though he were chewing something, very quietly, very inconspicuously. His eyes flickered over words unseen, cloaked deep beneath folds of cloth and shadow. There was an intent there. There was…

"Wait. _Wait!_"

"_Ihsata_aaaiek!"

The last of the incantation eked out in a cry as Soren caught the words by the man's throat with one hand and the end of the book with another. A resonant swell of energy bored up through his bones, flashing white before his eyes for the moment it entered him, and forced itself back down in a rattling blast of discharge. Smoke surged and billowed into an enveloping haze; Soren caught his bearings and clutched the depleted tome to his breast, staggering backwards amidst the sounds of shouting and weapons drawing. _Spent, _he thought between fits of sneezes. It was _spent_. The mage came pitching toward him while he groped for his knife; with the man barely upon him, he abandoned his search and cracked the book across his face. Whether he'd injured or startled him, Soren did not much care, but he disposed of the useless artifact by shoving it into the mage's chest and making his escape.

He whirled and was immediately met by a sword raised high overhead, poised to fall upon its bleary-eyed, panicked mark before another shadow overtook it. A hand caught the blade mid-swing, and Ike's charging bulk followed, blindsiding both the swordsman and Soren.

The smoke burned with spice and choked with ash. Though he could scarcely see more than the shadow of his targets, Soren knew the shock had not worn off. One swordsman was bent with convulsions of ragged, wailing coughs—even as the miasma began to lift—the other stirring from his stupor quick enough to ready his sword; Ike, abandoning his fallen target, flung himself at the man before he could assume his guard. Ike slammed him to the ground and swung round to face the leader.

Soren had barely arrived to Ike's aid before the fisherman howled and charged into the fray, glancing away the sword of Ike's returned assailant. The woman shrieked as the young leader seized her arms and bellowed an order to his men. A sword steadied at Ike's back froze, but did not drop. He froze with them. Soren thought to seize this opportunity and incapacitate the remainder of their enemies, break the suspension of hostility and sink his knife into the leader's eye.

But he refrained, pursuant to his _profound _diplomatic acumen.

The woman wriggled out of the leader's grip, clouted him hard in the mouth, and rushed Ike's and Soren's side.

Ike took the distraction as a chance to finally address Soren.

"You should get back— "

A swordsman promptly silenced him with a sharp bark, only to be shouted down by the sharper-tongued woman. Soren ignored Ike's orders and snatched his wrist—blood dribbled between his fingers from the slice across his palm.

"Don't hang your hand like that," hissed Soren, holding it level.

"Never a bad time to scold me, huh." He grinned as Soren pressed his cloak into the gash; the points of the swords raised to their throats had fallen now, and the argument between the leader and woman persisted, punctuated by the occasional fling of spittle from the red-faced fisherman. Blood gushed from the split in the swordsman's lip and chin, but his hands were occupied as he attempted and failed to assuage them. The first man that Ike had thrown aside—the man with the only bloodied sword—dragged himself to the ring, and said something only his companion next to him seemed to hear, before they grunted and readied their weapons once more.

Soren responded to their looming advance by sinking into Ike's chest, just out of the woman's reach; he felt a curiously even heartbeat. The wife glared round one last time and remained by their side in spite of the formation tightening all around them. After a word from their leader, they gathered their belongings and resumed the march. He turned to the woman and offered what seemed like an apology while her husband fell back to join them.

She responded by slipping an arm through Soren's; he had no room to pull away.

"I guess we have no choice," Ike said lowly. "She's vouching for us, and I feel partially responsible for all… this. Whatever 'this' was."

What was "this", then? Before he'd been tossed aside like a discarded apple core, he remembered dealing the first blow. Or was it the first? That tome had been spent, he remembered, and not only that…

"Soren?"

The men had begun to disperse now, but the woman clung fast to him all the same.

"You're trembling."

The mage stomped to the front of the procession, his complaints muffled behind a rag as he nursed his fractured nose. Soren saw that he had not discarded the book. He returned Soren's contemplation with a blood-glazed snarl.

"Soren? What's wrong?"

The woman squeezed his arm; Soren drew a shaken breath and acquiesced to the touch. The road stretched ahead in an endless blaze, the air thick and steamy from their belabored pants and sweat-drenched armor, yet Soren felt strangely, inwardly chilled. He welcomed the heat of the bodies that braced him on either side, as well as the semblance of rest as he closed his eyes.

"It's nothing, Ike," he said.


	5. An Unexpected Caller

8000 word exposition. Oh my god. I was going to split this up into something that made more narrative sense, but I can't because... this is already the result of the splitting up of a huge chunk.

Dropping canon characters and kids of canons and canon kids on you like a bag of cannonballs, so here's a comprehensive summary of FE6 for the uninitiated: "Eliwood's son and Hector's daughter totally kick Bern's ass and then some dragons before proceeding to consolidate the Lycian Alliance into a united and prosperous nation, except everything's in shambles, so good luck girlfriend. Also, Roy can marry everything."

There, there's your background.

And for the people who _have _played it, sorry if the characterization is questionable. Some traits, whether they were overtly confirmed or maybe briefly insinuated, have been exaggerated to the nth power and I'm going to glibly handwave it with "They're somewhat older." Compared to even those in other games, minor FE characters are pretty barebones, and while that might lend itself well to _nuance _and_ forging new depths based on implications that the developers may not have intended to make_, I certainly don't.

... Actually, I think in my old old old fanfic of Melee, I portrayed Roy as this fiery, boisterous loose cannon (!) with little regard for tact or etiquette. FE6 would be a much different game if Roy's personality followed the bizarre fanon consensus that I hope still exists.

* * *

An Unexpected Caller

A duo of Pheraen knights were holding a performance in the courtyard below. The exact nature of the performance was still something of a mystery to the group who presently occupied the upper sitting room, a trio steeped in stagnant air and thoughtful silence. They had previously left a window cracked to coax in the spare breeze, but the hollers and percussion had proven too distracting, and they did what they could to muffle the din. A steady drum beat broke into a thundering roll, then a crash as someone punted the stack of instruments across the stone terrace. The esteemed Mage General of Etruria, chin in hand, regarded the display from above with that wry look she had begun to favor with the passage of years. Marquess Pherae knew it very well from the afternoons spent under her instruction; he would catch the flicker of doubt cross her face as they suffered through his magical studies, the grimace that, as she scraped up restraint from her bottomless well, would spread into a grin.

"Two of your own?" Cecilia broke the silence.

"That they are," Roy's retainer answered almost too hastily. While Roy welcomed these prolonged moments of reflection, it perturbed Wolt in such eminent company; at the same time, the general could have rolled in on a barrel while conferring in squawks and still intimidate him with her presence. Roy had insisted that he attend the "very pressing conference" earlier that afternoon, though it was more of an informal reunion and, at least politically, served no specific purpose—he merely preferred to keep his closest friend involved in these affairs. In Cecilia's arduous efforts to repair relations between Etruria and the various cross-continental powers, particularly within Etruria itself, her concern with Pherae was more that of a friend's than an ally's. At the same time, it did not preclude valuable discussion, and this is where Wolt's counsel came of use.

"Our soldiers have become idle in peacetime," he explained, his back self-consciously erect in the stool across from the cushioned window seat that Roy and Cecilia shared. "They've shown… extraordinary resilience during the reconstruction, but now they've elected to pursue, erm, more imaginative ventures."

"I see. This is certainly unique."

"They are very talented as soldiers," Roy cut in. "But it is my sincerest hope that they remain… doing this, whatever it is. And that there will never come a time that we must call upon their strength."

Cecilia looked him over, plainly reading his expression. The painful truth was that politics, or Etrurian politics, in any case, did not leave much room for forthrightness; its Mage General had much practice, in that respect.

"How is your father? Or your wife, for that matter," she asked. Roy had been dreading this question. "I've not seen nor heard sign of either since my arrival."

"My father is away on personal business," he said. "And my wife…"

His throat felt dry as he searched for the words. _Is shivering in a nest of bedsheets while the rest of us roast in our chairs. _

"My wife has been feeling unwell, as of late."

Cecilia's eyes lit up.

"Does that mean—has she taken—"

"Has she… no, oh no!" Heat rose to his face and he tried to disperse it with laughter. "No, General, not unwell in that sense."

"I see. She is truly ailing then, yes? "

Some rattling instrument, like a cascade of metal balls scattering over a stone floor, made its finishing flourish. A wave of applause followed. This did nothing to help Roy's small headache that had been brewing since noontime.

"I hope… I mean, she hasn't made it quite clear," Roy admitted. "I would like to think she simply caught cold from that storm, but… it's rather sudden."

"If it were a premonition, she would certainly tell you."

"Of—of course she would."

"You're clearly worried." She switched one leg over the other and resettled against her cushion.

"Concerned," he corrected her stiffly. "But only as any ruler should be. No matter how peaceful the country, wrongdoing, burglary, petty theft… that will never leave us entirely. It would be foolish to insist otherwise."

Cecilia encouraged him with a sympathetic nod.

"Nonetheless… even if it's a simple scattering of bandits, and my wife's simply caught cold, as well as… slower to, erm—"

"Make fruitful," offered the general.

Wolt buried his face in his hands. He had yet to accustom himself to his master's more outspoken discourse.

"I've nothing to say on that," she laughed. "Your dedication is admirable; some noblemen are known to take a mistress until they've secured a proper heir. On another note entirely, Roy, you do know that if you ever find yourself in need, I will do everything in my power to assist you."

Roy wondered if her vast diplomatic work had conditioned her to tell him this; as a critical agent of the reconstruction, she must have felt obligated to redeem its reputation from the ineffective, splintered, extravagant cesspool of corruption that lesser lords had come to describe in whispers, with no shortage of envy. Cecilia endeavored to anchor an alliance with a budding kingdom; Roy endeavored to dispel her possible fears, however skillfully concealed.

"Etruria has much larger concerns than my favor, which you may consider guaranteed for the time; our present situation is bothersome at worst, and great progress has been made in the way of restoration. Compared to the struggles for reform—why, not even a territory away, in Araphen, Pherae's are insignificant."

"Exactly," Cecilia exclaimed, though she appeared to sag in her seat. "That these problems, in all their insignificance, are the _most _of your worries—that is the mark of a great leader, is it not? You've straight priorities, but you've simply eliminated the most pressing issues first."

She let him ruminate over this. He did so.

"In addition," she said in the meantime, "with the consent of the marchioness, I would like to repay her kindness at Misul. It may not be as much, but I could perhaps provide her some relief."

"We would both be grateful, General, but understand that you owe us nothing."

"Roy! I do understand." She frowned and straightened. Her robes rustled as she shifted, deep violets and blues against damp, heavy hair. With those colors, she reminded Roy of a peacock. A female peacock, somehow.

"It's a friendly offer to colleagues whom I can consider in every respect my equal," she said. "While you do not have to indulge my offer, you can perhaps humor me in this: there's no need to invoke rank or titles between us."

His first reaction was to decline; it did not feel too "familiar" per se, as he had once been General, and she the soldier, but it came off to him as somewhat disrespectful. After all, one could not ignore position entirely. But with a look towards Wolt, he caught a flash of guilt. Roy remembered that he did once disregard position.

"If you insist," he said at last. Then he laughed once more, but in truth, this was not a comfortable avenue of conversation for him.

A knock at the door provided a welcome disruption. Wolt rose from his seat to answer almost too eagerly, but Lance entered on his own volition before Roy could call him in. He at least gave the courtesy of a warning—Roy's general mindlessness towards privacy had conditioned him so, though the lady of the house provided a stark opposite in that respect.

"There's been an unexpected arrival, Master Roy." He appeared thankful to have found an escape from the commotion in the bailey. With a glance to Wolt, he added, "Your parents are here."

"Wait, they are?"

"Strange," Roy said, leaning forward. "It's not in their nature to visit without first sending word. Are they here now? May we go and meet them?"

"They are. They are presently recuperating in the foyer." Lance silenced further questions with a curt nod; his hair was neat, trim, and stuck flat with sweat against his forehead. Some days Roy imagined he would catch a trace of white creeping up his temples, but Wolt would insist it was his occasionally icy disposition—or the cool, almost appetizing, minty color of his hair—that gave the impression.

"Their accompaniment is with them as well," he added after some time.

"…They brought my uncle?" Wolt looked feeble.

"They did. And a band of mercenaries, as it happens. Lady Rebecca claims to seek your counsel on a matter of great interest, my lord."

She "claims to", Roy thought, as though her intentions were so dubious. Lance would quite readily announce his dissatisfaction with the marquess's methods of rule and attempt to provide him with another direction. While Roy preferred brutal honesty to Wolt's odd, doting servility, he would catch Lance in his less forgiving moods, when some of the suggestions came off as barbs.

It stung at times, but Roy understood the occasional frustration. Nearing a decade on the throne, his dependence on his retinue of seniors was beginning to feel like overreliance; he knew that Lance placed great faith in his judgment, but he did not spare empty compliments as readily as others.

That is what Roy's intuition told him, at least.

Wolt offered a hand to bring the marquess and general to their feet, straightened their chairs in their wake, and before Lance could usher him out with an impatient glare, let the window open to ventilate the room for future use.

Roy and Cecilia resumed the lighter end of their conversation as Lance led them down the stark, twisting staircase. On the second landing, they heard music, which grew louder and heavier as they approached the ground floor.

"You seemed relieved to escape all that noise," Roy observed as they stepped into the great hall. A few servants regarded them with a nod of greeting and returned to their tidying, undoubtedly of which Lance would busy himself with overseeing as an excuse to remain indoors.

Lance simply snorted. "It would seem that way, I suppose."

They crossed the massive hall in silence, Cecilia hanging an easy pace behind. The soles of her boots reverberated against the bare floor like an addition to the ensemble of percussion outside. Upon reaching the door to the entrance hall, Lance appeared to hesitate. His shoulders tightened, then fell; he was struggling, Roy could see, with a knot of words as they fought to surface.

"And I suppose, after all of it," he said uneasily, "this frivolity, even in these times…"

Before finishing, he proceeded to open the door and let the creaking hinges cover his silence. Roy suspected he did not have much of a thought to finish in the first place.

"You may continue to attend us if you wish," he said with a smile.

Before Lance could obligingly declare his intent to tend another matter, he was knocked aside and the double doors flung wide open. Roy was snatched and jerked into a crushing hug; round and soft and familiar, but also sturdy—the arm muscles locked against his ribcage were startlingly forceful. It felt as if she could lift him off the ground, and for all he knew, she still could.

"I was not expecting you," was all he could managed in his surprise, belatedly returning the embrace. Rebecca smelled sharply of sweat and dirt and something fainter, like cooking spices and ocean spray. He did not mind the sweat, surprisingly, or the heat, or the asphyxiation, but he would have to address it.

"Forgive me for imposing myself so suddenly," she began as she eased away, and her voice flattened.

"Here, you." She motioned her son over with a single, tensed finger.

Wolt shuffled meekly to her side and accepted her one-armed pat that quickly dissolved into another embrace.

"You both feel as if you're wasting away, and it worries me!" she said into his hair, a lighter, summery contrast to hers. "I could just pick you up like when you were younger. Do I have to feed you like a child, too?"

There was clearly a host of questions on the edge of Wolt's tongue, though the most he could manage was "Does that mean you're staying?"

"If you did, you would never have to impose," laughed Roy as she relinquished her son. He took her hand in his. Chipped from labor, hard, fleshy, a surprising grip. "There is much to tell you."

A country woman from the outside-in, sturdy-hearted, a pillar of strength to cling to, a wellspring of motherly love—Roy could not articulate how much her imposing meant to him just then. Not now, at least, not here.

"And Lowen will be overjoyed to hear that you have returned."

When he realized that Wil had not come forward to greet them, he realized that something was amiss, or he had simply wandered off. He peeked over to make sure, and found not Wil, but two familiar faces, nonetheless. Two familiar, bloodied faces. Bright, springtime hair and darkened, humorless eyes. An imposing, hardened physique, and a candid, nervous smile.

"I should say the same," said Rebecca. She greeted Cecilia with a nod while Wolt edged by to attend their guests.

"Ah, hello!" he exclaimed, more in surprise than cordiality. Unexpected accompaniment, indeed. This must have been the mercenaries of whom Lance spoke.

"Forgive me," said Roy, directing his full attention to them. "It has… been some years now."

They had taken their seats at the far end of the hall; one stood immediately upon Roy's entrance, while the other remained seated. The one on his feet had always been a mercenary as far as Roy knew him, under Ostia's employ when they first met. "_He's ridiculously nice. Ridiculously!" _Lilina had said once, but she said that about a lot of their men.

He noted the changes, first—more scars and sinew than he remembered, and more noticeably, the red-stained, ruptured mouth. Royal hair, as Merlinus used to call it ("_Deep, royal hair such as my own!_") though this one was the furthest from royalty.

The other, a young druid he recalled unknowingly recruiting in Jutes. The thief, the orphan, had introduced him; the druid had glowered at Roy, said few words of introduction. They had only spoken when necessary. Twin brother of the mage from Araphen, the other orphan, who was by far more talkative, and generally free of the perpetual state of anger.

He remembered that his wife spoke of him often; he had no real excuse for forgetting which name belonged to whom, but could not fathom why any mother would burden her near-identical twin sons near-identical names. Or whoever named them. He decided it would be safer to address the mercenary first.

"Ogier," he guessed aloud. The name itself was unmistakable; it was beginning to gain some renown in Lycia, particularly around Ostia, as Lilina had informed him in one of her letters before they tapered off into an infrequent chore.

Roy was simply slow in making the connection between the name and the deferential young man who now knelt before him. "Well met."

The mercenary quickly flattened.

"I am unspeakably honored that you would deign to receive us, my lord, and in such a state as mine."

An uncertain smile was the best he could come up with in response. Lilina had certainly been right.

Nodding to the other, he began, "And Lugh—"

"Do you see him here?" he sneered.

"Lleu! My deepest apologies," Roy said genially. "What brings the both of you to Pherae? Is there any way we can accommodate you?"

He heard the doors swing shut behind him. Rebecca and Wolt were watching from the back.

"Please, Lord Roy, I would not have you trouble yourself. But please, if I may explain our condition," he said breathlessly. "You see, Lleu had joined my company in Badon, and earlier today we were traveling down—"

"We were attacked," Lleu butted in. Roy's stomach dropped. "And for accommodation, you could maybe have a washcloth brought in," he continued. "And a staff."

"Lance will call in a nurse at once," said Roy, steadying his voice. Could this have been the premonition? Bloodshed? And was this the extent of it? More creaking as Lance slipped out to fulfill his orders.

"I would much rather myself, marquess." Lleu spoke with an unflattering nasal that Roy did not remember in what few words they had exchanged back in the war with Bern.

"Very well, then." He was far too distracted by his worries—and the sudden resurgence of the headache, pulsing against his temples—to properly address his undue disdain.

"Got close enough to break your nose, did they?" Cecilia asked in Roy's stead. A flicker of surprise—and embarrassment—crossed Lleu's face when he noticed the general. Ogier's kneel deepened.

"I was effectively unarmed," he said, clutching his nose to hide the dried, blackened eruption of blood. "They absorbed and misfired from a spent thunder tome and… used the discharge to throw the group in a state of confusion."

"Oh? How many men?"

Lleu fell silent. He shot a quick glance towards Ogier, who, mid-crouch, hid his face with a hand.

"I suppose you were caught in the cloud as well?" she asked the mercenary. "I can clean your face up a bit, if you would like. "

Ogier cringed.

"I should…" Rebecca began, and stopped. "I take the blame for Sir Ogier's injury. And… Lleu's, at that."

"Lady Rebecca, please do not impute yourself for my sake!" he cried, scrambling to his feet.

"You are too kind, Sir Ogier, and I mean that in the most admonishing manner I can muster. What you did you did in my defense."

"And I was more than overly rash in my reaction!"

"Through no fault of your own!"

"I should say the same, Lady Rebecca! Yours was mere reflex, and—"

"From what I can gather," Cecilia spoke over their exchange. Rebecca and Ogier quickly quieted down. "Ogier, obscured in smoke, sought to protect Lady Rebecca, and she mistook him for an assailant. Is that correct?"

"I suppose I'll tell them," Lleu said at last. "It isn't as if I have a reputation to agonize over. There were _two _of them. Two attackers."

"Lleu, dear, perhaps I should—"

"Oh, you may say your piece as soon as I've said mine, so you can blindly jump to their defense once more," he snapped at Rebecca.

Roy turned to his caretaker; she seemed apologetic, in a way, but she refrained from spitting out her explanation at the slightest provocation. She would give Lleu that courtesy.

"Go on, then," Roy prompted the druid.

"Right. As Ogier said, I met his group in Badon and—well, offered to join their excursion for a little gold on the side. And he's still nice enough, even as an employer."

"Th-thank you, Lleu."

"We were traveling down the southern strip, passing right through Pherae, where I thought I'd, erm, visit your… well anyway, not far outside the city, we come across Lady Rebecca and her lot."

"Speaking of," Wolt timidly mumbled to his mother, "Where is father? Or Uncle Dart, for that matter."

"Outside, and don't ask because I'm g_etting _there," Lleu snarled. "_Anyway_, the commander here is apparently somehow on familiar terms with your mother."

"He's been down to the port once before!" Rebecca declared with a widening grin. "His men helped us with repairs once after a particularly nasty storm. They're really quite a handy group."

"You are far, far too kind, Lady Rebecca."

"Right, and they were traveling with two men who _nobody_ seemed to recognize, and—"

"Oh God, Mother." Wolt blanched. "Did they—"

"And of course they did nothing to your mother; they're like dogs!" Lleu tried to breathe from his nose, and it made a wet, labored sound. "Nasty, brutish, stupid, and you know, they _talked _like dogs too. "

A young nurse's assistant had ventured in, clutching a staff beneath his arm.

"A couple stray beasts pawing at their door who would never bite the hand that feeds them," he stormed on, "Give them a few scraps and they're at everyone else's throat but your own."

"Lleu," Roy interrupted. He glanced up, and stiffened as the apprentice passed the rod to Cecilia, who then strode to his side.

"Keep going. I'll take care of this for you," she said. "You don't seem in much of a state to concentrate."

For a moment, Roy feared that Lleu would retaliate with venom at her perceived condescension; to his relief, he merely dropped his gaze and spoke to the far corner.

"They were bringing them to Pherae," he said, having calmed. "And I suppose I should mention that I've taken to exploring the language contained within anima tomes, which is… what any magic user would have chiefly acquainted themselves with until you start delving into its more archaic forms. Elder magic is particularly fond of those." His tone had lightened into something close to admiration. "Really, people will tell you it's a frightening sounding language having never _heard _so much as a syllable of it; if people weren't so fond of their unfounded assumptions, my work would be reduced to half of what it involves. But I digress."

"I actually find this interesting," said Cecilia, cupping his chin with a hand and tilting the head of the rod close to his nose. She had once told Roy, in their quickly abandoned magical studies, that the smaller and more delicate the wound, the closer you had to mend it, but he suspected she had said this to steer his boundless energy to the grip of a sword.

She mouthed a quick incantation, and the stone affixed to the head blushed with a faint flicker. Lleu sniffed again, but did not speak until the staff dimmed.

"Thank you," he said. The nasal had not left.

"That should clear up within the day," Cecilia reassured him. "I find it endearing, anyway. You were telling them about the language in tomes?"

Again, Lleu ignored her patronizing in favor of the explanation.

"Right. You already know this, but it should be obvious to anyone that different branches of magic concern different subjects, and I thought I would sink into a book I'd picked up in Badon and broaden my familiarity. So I did just that. No issue there; I'm the farthest from disruptive and will readily set aside my studying when called upon. Is that not true?"

"You've been very helpful," Ogier attested.

"Imagine my surprise, then, when committing one of the incantations to memory, one of the dogs _throttles me_, snatches the tome away, and _apparently _attempts to fire the spell himself, resulting in a backlash. A fairly massive one, too."

"To clarify, your tome was toothless," said Cecilia. She had picked up the task of questioning, for which Roy was grateful.

"Exactly," he exclaimed, "that's an excellent way to put it! Used rags sold for cheap that you can study without setting the room on fire. Ineffective in even such puissant hands as mine, but in those of a brute, it can be applied with great force."

"So he was a mage?"

"Well, yes, he _reeked_ of anima magic, but he was evidently too stupid or spiritually congested to detect the warm and savorous musk of a practiced druid who would sooner _bash you_ _across the face with the book itself_ than 'use' it. That is to say 'never', because the very idea of it is preposterous."

"Ha, that would be quite a sight."

"You'd be seeing stars if you were on the brunt end of it, General."

Cecilia began to speak, and the words caught in her throat. There was that grimace again.

"That's to say he—you—"

Though laughter finally escaped, and though Lleu hardly seemed amused, he tolerated it with surprising patience, enough to allow her to finish.

"You laugh now, but be frank with me: the thought itself took you off guard."

"I'll grant that," she grinned. "And then what happened?"

"I was shoved to the ground in the middle of a smoke cloud, so I only saw the _result_. We had them at sword's point, and Lady Rebecca appealed to our forbearance by punching the commander in the mouth and joining her pets at the other end of the blade."

The way Rebecca buried her face in her hands very much reminded Roy of her son.

"Here, Ogier, let me tend to that too," Cecilia said, closing in on him with the staff extended.

"I terribly regret the inconvenience, General," he spluttered, "but I would never decline to bask in your kindness, here or on the battlefield."

"I've done this enough and you've thanked me enough. But you're always welcome."

The light from the rod glowed against his face as Ogier began his account.

"To add to Lleu's relation without… contradicting it, what happened is the other… the non-mage— well, I didn't see _all _that happened and it was all a bit sudden, so forgive me, Lord Roy, for my muddy account—but the non-mage was quite reactive once the magic had set off, and he… well, I hate to make such a dubious claim, particularly in the presence of the Marquess of Pherae and Mage General of Etruria…"

He laughed nervously.

"… But he effectively overpowered my men, almost certainly in his compatriot's defense." And then, in a meager, hurried whisper, "Unarmed."

"I'm sorry?" Cecilia lifted her head and the light in the stone died.

"He threw them into the ground with his bare hands," he admitted. "Lady Rebecca made to enter the fray with the mind to stop it, and rightfully so, and I foolishly restrained her out of fear for her safety."

The light resumed when Cecilia's concentration returned to her, but only just; it came back fainter, and there was no obvious change when she stepped away. Caked in blood, smeared with dirt, but restored somewhere underneath.

"And I foolishly struck you," Rebecca continued for him. "Please forgive me, as I could have expressed my disapproval without resorting so quickly to violence. And you owe us nothing, General, so do not feel obligated after hearing these accounts, but… during the skirmish, one of the young men had his hand injured, and he's yet to receive any real medical attention."

"You mean to say you brought them here?" asked Roy. It was a pointless question, he realized a moment later, because Rebecca and her husband were the last people to resort to abandonment. They were either dead, or they were in Pherae as they spoke.

"They are in the courtyard." Lance's voice startled him; it was crisp and sudden and closer than he remembered Lance last standing. Roy thought that he had wandered off after sending in the staff.

"With your brother and uncle," Lance added to Wolt. "Sir Wil wanted them to see the performance, but by the sound of it, our men seem to be settling down. Shall I fetch them, Lord Roy?"

"If you would please."

He nodded, and made his wordless retreat once more.

"You would receive them so readily?" Rebecca sounded incredulous.

"Because I am confident you did the same without the benefit of an explanation."

"Oh, yes! Then allow me to give mine. Lleu, in his passion, may have conjured a very unfortunate image of the travelers, and that is his right."

Lleu snorted, making to test the the pain or feeling, but likely in derision.

"And I know very little of magic users and their tendencies and commonalities and such," she said, "so I have little to add on that, but I… my husband and I have taken both of them by the hands. One is a swordsman."

"You know this?" Lleu was skeptical.

"Of course I do!" she cried. "Perhaps the distinction is harder to make while you're on the march, but even in caring for Roy as he studied swordsmanship… the mark of a swordsman is very obvious. Sir Ogier would have recognized the feel immediately. And that young man injured himself not by mishap, but by catching a sword by the blade to protect his companion. He could have disarmed the man and taken his sword there, but he did not, and I am certain he could have killed every one of us if he were of the mind."

She was not quite shouting, but her words gradually grew louder, more forceful, until she heard it herself; Rebecca fell silent, and Cecilia turned to Roy.

"Your thoughts?"

_Caught a blade_. It pressed upon him just now. His aching head was slow to gather the full implication behind what he heard. Caught a blade. Injured hand.

"I think," he started, hesitated, abandoned the line of thought. He could not let the silly shadow of an omen cloud his judgement. Started again: "I think, in this instance, I should see them for myself before drawing erroneous conclusions."

To his surprise, no one as much stirred in response to this. They seemed to be thinking. Perhaps they were as bogged down in their own deliberation, their own aches and anxieties.

Perhaps this was true for the rest of them, but not for Wolt.

"Forgive me, for this is mostly irrelevant to the topic at hand," he weakly began. "But I've always heard magic users allude to some sort of… 'smell', and I've always wondered whether it was simply a figure of speech, or…"

His digression broke off with a jolt as the entrance doors flew open, and with it followed several voices.

"What do you think, Sir Wil? I managed to crack _Sir Marcus _once, years ago. Sir Lance, too!"

"Is that meant to imply humorlessness on my part?" Lance asked, turning to the thickset woman with a frown. "Not to myself imply that Sir Marcus, himself, was humorless."

"Of course not, Sir Lance!" the knight reassured him. "One might make that assumption, especially given your nigh-unwholesome fixation with charts, but your humor is not absent… just subdued. "

He blinked impassively.

"My 'fixation'?"

"It's hard to believe," Wil panted, dragging himself from behind, "you're your father's daughter. Aside from the death-grip, maybe."

That was three of them; Dart was nowhere to be seen, and neither were the foreigners. Roy rubbed his eyes raw in an effort to wipe away the ache. It was slowly beginning to diffuse. Pervasive, but thankfully dull.

Upon seeing his son, Wil threw his arms over Wolt's shoulders in what seemed like a hug, but it became clear that he was also using him as a brace.

"Maeve has been trying to—" He slumped and caught his breath. "—to get Remiel to laugh and… dragged me into it."

"Who?" Wolt pulled away, but continued to hold him upright. He surpassed his father in height, but could not support his weight without quivering from the strain. "Father, are you well?"

"One of the foreigners," Maeve said, looking on with a hint of satisfaction. "They're both back with your uncle helping Celen with the drums, which is nice and everything, but I'll be damned if I can't get a grin out of that one."

Roy heard Cecilia make something of a choked noise behind him; he wondered if she had caught back laughter or a scoff.

"The language barrier renders jokes fairly useless, never mind subtle wordplay and witticism!" she went on. "I'll make do with what I have."

They didn't have the warning of a knock before Dart burst through the entranceway, shouldering three sacks that sat on his hunched back like some beast's misshapen humps.

"Wolt! This way, you git!"

He shoved his luggage into his nephew's chest and straightened; the two men that followed stopped just short of behind him, evidently disgustedly fascinated by the individual cracks of his vertebrae.

Roy first noticed the hair—"regal" hair, choppy and thick, then the dark, sleek, pliable hair of a Sacaen. They were immense. Or not, but Roy could not think of a better way to describe it; their enormity pressed into every corner of the room, deadening the onlooking crowd who took to studying them. And he could tell that they were painfully aware of it.

"Is that them?" Roy asked Rebecca as the doors closed on their back. She nodded, and coaxed their attention with a wave.

"Come here, please," she said, enunciating and dropping her faint country accent that had been trained out of Roy from an early age. The foreigners obeyed without a word.

"Do they understand you?" he asked.

Dogs, indeed. Lleu noted as much with a snort.

She shook her head. This appeared to confuse them. Already, Roy was beginning to pick up on the strange differences in their carriage; they seemed watchful in their approach, but steady. There was none of the usual groveling or toadying or the simple acknowledgement of the marquess's importance. The larger man held some bunched-up article of clothing to his right hand. Roy estimated him to be around his own age. As for his friend…

Younger, but Roy was not a good judge of that. Roy had been told that he had a young face, and it was possible that this one did as well. Their eyes met once, and he quickly dropped his gaze. Something about him evoked a strange, visceral reaction within him. Not an intense, sudden upshot of aversion, but it was too senseless and confusing for him to examine just then. Strangely, he could feel his headache, but it did not hurt.

He considered proceeding with the formalities, but realized how ineffective this would be.

"My name is Roy," he said, extending his right hand to the man. He glanced to his own wrapped palm, peeled off the cloth, and exposed his palm for Roy to examine. It was stained pink around a wide, flayed gash, where the blade must have sunk in.

Then, he reached across with his other hand.

When he spoke, it sounded all like one word to him. "Heitnemnereik."

Roy took his left hand and reluctantly squeezed. Well met, Heitnemnereik.

"I can take care of that gash," Cecilia offered from behind him, approaching the man with the rod. "Has he seen a staff bef-"

_"_Vaktmen, otte!_"_

Cecilia drew away with a flinch as the foreigner feinted with a half-lunge and a snarling threat. Or, at least, Roy thought it was a threat. There was no real telling.

"Is that the mage?" she asked, allowing him a wide berth.

"Yeah." Lleu drew himself from the chair; like a startled animal, the foreigner's gaze locked into the druid, who answered with a bitter, strained grin.

"_Ih, usamer_... ah, _amerust_!" he snapped unevenly. The grin had disappeared. The foreigner's face darkened, and he spoke through his teeth.

"_Aynasano_."

"Haha, what was that?" spat Lleu. "_Otnesuk etos_. Listen to that accent, General!"

"You weren't entirely clear, in all fairness," said Cecilia, in a calmer reaction than Roy would have expected. "_Ete amokak._ But I think he already knows that."

"Wait," Rebecca cried, "he can _understand _you?"

"On a very rudimentary level, yes." She idly chewed on a knuckle while she thought of an explanation. "A lot of magic involves rote memorization, if you're like most people; we can invoke the spells with, at most, the faintest idea of what we're actually saying. There are people like Lleu here who have taken an interest in the language itself, which is a noble pursuit, but it comprises a fairly impractical branch of academia that many rightly ignore. I'll withhold my judgement, but you can glean that this dog is at least somewhat educated."

The foreigner seemed to react in anger to this.

"Sja, _urus iyakir_! _Otok usayi?_"

"An impatient one, too."

"What is he saying?" Rebecca demanded.

"He's frustrated with my absence of immediate commitment to our dialogue," said Cecilia.

"All of that in four words?"

The Pheraen's patience had sapped all in that instant, and Cecilia's slow, orderly approach appeared to grate on her.

"Well, no. It's implied."

The mage continued in that same language, increasingly agitated

"Slow down, I can't understand you," she laughed. "_Ureyati—_wait, no, _uramusish_. His accent is certainly strange!"

"_Akusedo bokigora nen_, has? Has svalden? Vetki?"

Cecilia let him work himself into a calm this time, and straightened her face. Once the stranger quieted, she responded in full. His shoulders fell, as well as his voice. They continued their hushed, jerking conversation, until Cecilia took a look around the room, and stopped at Roy.

"This is really inadequate," she told him. "The first words he could finally make sense of, as far as I know, were threats. The rest was mostly a confused back-and-forth; he thought he was being mocked. Which is true enough, on Lleu's end."

They noticed that the foreigner had started whispering in his native tongue to his accompaniment. He was likely relaying a similar translation.

"Well… this is progress, isn't it?" Rebecca's voice had taken on a barely perceptible tremor. "We were hoping to find someone who knew _of _their language at the very least but this… I think this may be better?"

"In a sense." Motioning over the swordsman with a flick of the staff, she muttered a few words to his companion; the swordsman held out his injured hand. The mage spoke in the old language again and Cecilia laughed heartily this time, to his apparent chagrin. She did not answer him proper until the gash had scaled over.

"He says_—" _She drew away to examine the injury, which was truthfully just as ugly to behold. "That they have many questions. He phrased it like a riddle, and I don't think it was on purpose. Any extensive interrogation would be more tedious than enlightening right now, so I would suggest we settle in before making an attempt."

Roy took this as an excuse to clear the foyer; Wolt gathered his father and uncle and led them out into the corridor to one of the guest chambers, though he could hear them conversing with vigor just outside the door. He held Rebecca back while Lance and Maeve escorted the mercenaries to their bunks, and, once they had left, told her that he wished to speak to her later. Needed to, he thought. He was no stranger to oddities that appear at the most inopportune of times, but it would not hurt, he told himself, to unravel himself before a friend, or a mother, or something like it. It would not hurt to feel dependent for that day.

"May I make a suggestion?" Cecilia startled him from his murky absorption. "When your wife is well, maybe she would like to have a hand in this effort. "

Roy held his breath, and nodded. Released the lungful of air quietly, through his nostrils.

"I will see if she's feeling well enough for supper," he agreed. "Perhaps she's recovered over the course of the day."

* * *

But Sophia was not well enough to sup with them that evening, so Roy had a meal sent up to her private bower. They were seated in the private drawing room—Roy, Cecilia, Wolt and his family, the mercenaries, and at the edge of the table, the foreigners. The mage was last to touch his food; Roy soon made the uncomfortable realization that he had been watching him eat. And when Roy returned the stare, he lifted his spoon_—_lifted, carefully contorting the shape of the grip so that it matched Roy's own, and lowered it into his bowl. The imitation unnerved him.

Cecilia agreed to alternate with Lleu as interpreter, in the interest of furthering his studies, and the druid accepted. Begrudgingly, Roy could tell, and he could see how the offer could come off as patronizing.

She had been correct when she said that any appreciable communication with these people would be no small undertaking. They would try anyway, or at least try to push the basics aside.

As a courtesy to the foreigners, they let them open up with the questions. Start small, she stressed. This appeared to cause a disagreement in what constituted a "good" question, as they would converse in their own tongue for minutes at a time, and then the mage would pose a question to Cecilia. The arcane tongue was quite flat and measured, some syllables drawn and slow as he fumbled for the right phrasing; it did not take the rising tone of a question, but perhaps that was simply a personal habit of the mage.

Roy saw the interpreters' reactions before he could hear the translation. Amusement for Cecilia, confusion for Lleu.

For their first question, they wanted to know what to call them.

"Lady Rebecca and her family, I presume," she informed them. "There was repeated mention of fish. And villages, I think."

Introduce yourself. Roy could see how Cecilia would find that funny, given the mage's usual behavior up until now.

They went round the table. Dart. Wolt. Lleu. Roy. Wil. Cecilia and Rebecca enunciated their names carefully. Se-sil-i-ah. Re-beck-ah.

The swordsman seemed pleased; he grinned, and repeated Rebecca's name. His grin did not leave him when he supplied the next question to his countryman, who hesitated to pass it to Cecilia. When he finally did, she burst into laughter once more, and he protested, forcefully enough that even Roy, who knew little to nothing of the language, could discern his heavy accent.

"He—goodness, these are the strangest people. Did you get that, Lleu?"

Lleu's mouth stretched into a taut line.

"I might be wrong," he began tentatively. "The big one wants to know how to express gratitude. Not, uh, like 'which way should I splash pegasus piss at the altar', but the word for 'thanks'."

He turned to them, his expression unreadable.

"Thanks," he said.

The mage was quick to respond before he turned away.

"Wh—you ungrateful piece of shit!"

This is the most Roy could recall ever hearing Cecilia's laughter—genuine, somewhat ungainly laughter—in a day, let alone an hour.

"He doesn't believe him," she said.

Roy could see the humor in this too, but he could not bring himself to attract the mage's ire.

Cecilia vouched for Lleu and provided her own answer while the mage listened in silence. Finally, he turned his head to his companion and whispered the word. He nodded, and imitated as closely as his habituated tongue would allow.

"Tenke" is what they came up with. That worked for now.

"You're welcome," said Rebecca warmly, and Lleu attempted to hurry along the questioning, because they had finished dinner and what scraps had been left had gone cold and they were only two questions, two very _inconsequential _questions, deep.

It was ironic, then, how next wave of questions caught them so off guard. Start small, Cecilia had said, but they must have misinterpreted her to mean "simple". These were too simple.

Where is this? Who are you? Why use the book, Leit? While Cecilia contemplated a proper, succinct answer that could be conveyed by their limited means, Lleu jumped on the easier question. I wasn't! It was practice! Cecilia stopped translating the argument as quickly as it escalated, and stilled them both with a sharp word.

They went with the simplest, barest, most obvious answers first.

You are in the home of the Marquess of Pherae.

Where?

The southeasternmost region of the Lycian League.

Where?

A union of territories that comprise a country in the center of the continent of Elibe.

Where?

A continent in...

You don't know?

Perhaps they had a different word for their continent and country and territory. Perhaps, Cecilia suggested, their inadequacy in this area—she had taken to studying the tongue out of casual curiosity, and Lleu's knowledge drew from an almost entirely different set of vocabulary—was beginning to come through.

It was growing late. Their interpreters had worn themselves down with discussion, repetition, frustration.

Anything else, then?

We tire. _Tenke._

Fortunately, the foreigners could sympathize.

Cecilia told them that they could begin with their own questions, but that they would have to be small, again, and that they could not drag for too long.

"Only one," Wil said, and he turned to them in full now, with the hardest, most intent scrutiny he had ever aimed their way.

"What are your names?"


	6. The Cogs of Fate

This absolutely goes without saying, but it's being said anyway. None of these characters are speaking English, so when ~the foooourth waaaall translaaaation~ carries over grammatical screw ups, eccentricities, etc, just suspend your disbelief and assume we're seeing the conveniently analogous English approximation. This probably sounds lazy as hell but it's also a lot more fun. Ancient language italicized—along with the usual emphasis, and you should hopefully be able to tell the difference—with foreign language and foreign casual woofing left intact.

And yes, the above does imply that there is _more talking_, wow "WET NOODLES"! It'll pick up soon, promise.

* * *

The Cogs of Fate

Her steward had dragged a stool to her bedside, holding a steaming earthenware mug between her knees. The back of her hand pressed cold and smooth against Sophia's brow, and when she leaned over to adjust her bedding, the coarse, sandy ends of her hair tickled her chin.

"Your fever seems to have broken," Celen concluded levelly, pulling away. Dim morning light crept from the far end of the bower and cast the side of her face in a pale gray. "But I cannot say. Do you feel unwell?"

In response, marchioness of Pherae turned her cheek against her pillow and closed her eyes. Sleep eluded her. The shapeless darkness, the garbled, animal noises—she wished to see that dream to its conclusion and the unspeakable "wherever" it would take her. As much as her husband, she craved hopeless finality over this distressing incertitude.

Precognition was never quite so fulfilling.

"What is that drink?" she asked Celen, propping her back up against the headboard. Her hair had gotten caught under her body, and in her sickly languor, she could not find the energy to extricate herself.

"Sir Lowen's labor of love," said Celen. Anyone else—Sir Lance, or Lleu, mostly—would have taken care to to apply no shortage of humorous derision to their answer, but Celen lacked the capacity for sarcasm… and humor, at that. Quiet and infinitely patient, her distant nature suited her well to the marchionesse, who could abide the heavy, frequent stretches of silence between them. She had taken up the task out of a sense of familial responsibility; her mother had been steward to the previous Lady, and the one before that, and her father a knight in Pherae's service. Celen seemed to have inherited her personality from neither of her parents, aside from the placidity. Maeve, a fellow knight, had once implied that they had been switched as infants, though she was some years her senior, and by the looks of their physiques it seemed unlikely.

Sophia accepted the mug and brought it to her lips, the steam moistening the tip of her nose. It was a familiar smell. Sir Lowen's labor of love—he had spoken of this once before.

_Broth of a cock, beaten, flayed, and quartered, roots of fennel parsley, chicory, leaves of violet, borage, currants, whole mace, anise seeds, scraped licorice, rosewater, white wine, dates, half a pound of prunes, left to sop overnight in an earthen pipkin. _

_Pour and serve to the sickly Lady each morning; pray for her enduring health. Grovel. _

It rolled a warm trail down her throat and trickled into the cavity of her chest. She imagined this to be where dragons stoked their flames. Maybe lower, a blaze at the pit of their bellies, a spreading warmth at the gut. She would have asked Fae about it, but she never wondered so much about the dragons when she had lived among them, and slept and ate and shared so many of life's mundanities. Perhaps she could ask this one, once they were afforded the chance to speak.

Soothed by the concoction, her thoughts turned to the dreams. At times she found it difficult to discern a prophetic vision from the commonplace, troubling dreams that accompanied an upset stomach.

But these recurring dreams plagued her nights like a vengeful spirit, though she could never determine the source of the dread. First the stony confines, sunless and ancient-smelling; cold waters would start to pool at her feet—her ankles—her knees, her elbows as she squatted and sloshed about the murk, groping for the leak. It would rise to her stomach and as she looked up, the ceiling would have lowered, no room to stand again. Then her shoulders, her face, and into her lungs; as she drank from the air of her musty chambers and called out to the placid nights, the fading growls in her dreams would answer.

She confided in none other than her husband when a new dream would appear; anyone but him would have said that the message is quite straightforward, but precognition was never quite so straightforward, either.

Sometimes her intuitions would yield answers of unnerving accuracy, but they were by far of the least consequence. Where is my husband? Unburdening himself onto his childhood caretaker, head cradled against her breast as he speaks of the unrest in Araphen. Where is my friend? Hidden away in a remote corner to rid himself of the unwanted company. A book is all he needs, he insists to himself. Lleu feels lonesome. How was the cock that supplied this broth killed? A proud father, and not without a fight.

Once she had begun to feel the dragon's icy presence, a calm had come over her—not because the pulsing had driven away the dreams, but because his coming rekindled her desire for answers, for a dragon's wisdom, and with that, finality.

It was certainly a he, she had learned with delight as Celen described the outlanders' arrival. She would have been delighted had he been a woman too—every detail unraveled gave her a small thrill. These answers were of much more consequence to her, however impassively Celen relayed them. How do they look? Tall, frightening, disconcertingly sharp and youthful, some say, royal hair and bloody eyes, other say. Dogs. They speak in snarls and barks—and the arcane argot of saints and scholars. How did they conduct themselves? Very cooperative, said Celen, could carry the whole set to the storehouse with great ease. Marveled over the adufe. Maeve tried to sneak them wine, which they declined upon sniffing.

"She said I would be needed later today," Celen said once her peer's name entered the conversation. "If you are still unwell, I will set it aside for another time."

By all rights, Celen should have been restless. Sophia had long since given to the leisure of not only a noble, but a noblewoman. Everything—the lifting, the cooking, the cleaning, the gardening, the fighting, and in due time, the childrearing—was carried out for her. Days abed no longer perturbed her.

Bent over a stool, confined to a bower and choked in its stench of sick, carrying a chamberpot down flights of stairs to empty in a ditch—this was no place and these were no tasks for a knight of Pherae, however even-tempered.

"I grant you my leave," said Sophia. "Should you come upon Lord Roy, you may tell him that my condition has been improving."

Though as Celen left, Sophia knew that she would seek him out specifically, and that Roy, in the midst of whatever pressing business then occupied him, would abandon his task and rush to her side, confirm the knight's words for himself, and…

Sophia was not sure, but she saw that Roy had taken extra precaution when he crept in with a basin and a washcloth hanging from the crook of his elbow.

"I've been feeling better," she told him as he dampened the rag and pressed it, so gently that his hands trembled, against her forehead. His eyes were tired and sunken, his hair askew, his mouth firm and set. But upon hearing this, he drew it into a faint smile.

"Is that so?"

He seemed panicked by her sudden movement as she pushed herself upright. After two bedridden days, it was a dizzying ordeal, but no less a triumph. Roy steadied her with a hand on her back and choked a word of warning, his breath quickening.

But it was liberating, touching her feet to the ground, pressing the weight of her body onto her bare soles. It was cold and stony and stirred her from her dragging fatigue.

"If I may, my lord," she said, pulling herself up by his arms until their faces hovered a hair's width apart, "you seem to be the one in need of rest."

Sometimes, when they were very close, she could feel Roy's pulse. Not the heartbeat, but the blood itself—the tiny tremors, the vibrations, the dragonish ripple through the air. Their noses almost touched, and Roy's breath stilled. He could feel it too.

Sophia brought a hand to his brow and felt a shiver. That was not Roy the dragon, but Roy the marquess, fearful and uncertain with his tangle of nerves and hesitant reach.

"I expect the headache will leave you soon." Roy froze, stopped just short of returning the touch.

"How do you come to know this?"

Because in time, if they are always nearby, they will become a part of you, and you will become numb to their outpouring of presence. Just as I did to you, and you me.

"Intuition," she said. This would always calm him. He sat beside her, careful and gentle as to not disturb the bedding arranged around her form.

"What else does it tell you?"

Wielding foresight, however unclear, was delicate business. If the visions loomed heavy and foreboding, they could drive a high-strung lord to crippling agitation. The opposite fared no better; come clear skies, come slothfulness. And what if they were inevitable? What if the act of prophesizing itself fulfills the prophecy?

Sometimes, Sophia settled with the most obvious answer, and relied on her keen yet mundane sense of judgment.

"That jumping at shadows will take us nowhere—that Lycia's wounds will heal, and you are not the sole bearer of the staff—"

"Marquess Ryerde has fallen to illness," he said abruptly. Sophia fell silent; she could not retroactively claim to have foreseen this, as it surprised her enough that she could not summon any immediate words of comfort.

"I received word from Ostia this morning."

Roy's eyes were drawn to the curtains, the windows latched closed unless Sophia requested otherwise. The prospect of a drafty room seemed to frighten him.

"I… that is regrettable. He seemed quite young." Truthfully, Sophia had only seen him once, during a conference at Araphen that she had agreed to attend. He had said very little, and the other lords said very little to him. "I will pray for his family."

"As will I," said Roy. "What little there is, anyway. Marquess Ryerde's child is… scarcely of age. Five years."

They both had a very hazy sense of the concepts surrounding age. Another decade, and you can lead an army. Another century, and your hair may lengthen, but not fade. Another millennium, and you may finally grow to full height.

"There is word that the marquess would have abdicated rule to another territory," continued Roy. "And that is where… it's clouded. House Laus appears to be pressing itself upon the regent 'with disturbing zeal', as Lilina worded it. And for Laus to annex Ryerde would make most sense, one would think. The ruling lords were very close. And yet…"

"They would not be so insistent if they had no larger agenda," Sophia finished for him. "Expansion, possibly, and not simply unification. Their intentions are yet unclear, however."

Quite like Araphen and its relations with the lesser territories that were crushed on the Sacaen front. There was no outright avarice in their endeavors, but there was an unsettling ambition—come peacetime, come growth, and come growth, come ambition.

"It seems to me that Marquess Ostia is in the decisive position," she said. "It's simply… delicate."

At times she wondered which would prove more falsely illuminating—the gift of foresight, or a network of intelligence too vast and too deep to altogether appreciate. Spies on every corner of the continent, in every city, in every court. Roy might have suspected that the foreigners were Ostian spies themselves. It would have spoken to nothing if not Lilina's shrewdness rather than a newfound distrust in her friend, though Sophia could not say the same of her advisors.

"'Delicate'. Yes, I would say that's exactly the case," said Roy. "And that if my intervention should one day become necessary… for what we know, that may be the distant future, if not never. It is not a question for today."

"Precisely, my lord."

She could hear his breath return to its familiar steadiness. They had believed the most difficult part to be over. Roy had made a fearless general and a moving speaker, but he grew up into a fairly artless politician. He could discern falsehoods from truths, as he had shown so cannily with Prince Mildain—or so Sophia heard, at least—but beyond that, Roy was at a loss.

With this in mind, Sophia moved onto lighter subjects. How is Lilina, otherwise? Doing much better than Pherae can ever hope to claim, commanding the respect of neighboring territories and countries alike. Seemed a bit curt in her letter, and her penmanship has vastly improved. How are the visitors? Rebecca and her family are well. Ogier has agreed to keep his men close at hand these next few weeks—he is being furnished properly, as a respectable guest. Lleu is—

"Oh, I was hoping to see him sometime during his stay," said Sophia.

"I think he feels the same." She could tell that Roy found their friendship somewhat perplexing. "He hasn't made any attempts to speak with the… newcomers, not since last night. "

_The newcomers_. He could put it in such gentle terms. The guests to Elibe. The guiltless visitors. Sophia had not yet told him of her extrasensory observations, not because she feared for his or the dragon's safety, but because the notion of another dragon visiting, the question of his purpose, the reason for his arrival—Sophia herself found it a tad overwhelming herself, and she was seldom overwhelmed these days.

She had already been informed that one of them, undoubtedly the dragon, spoke the language of the tomes with relative expertise and seemed to understand most of the questions Cecilia managed to convey to him.

Though her knowledge was not quite as extensive as her mentor's, Sophia felt that she could do justice to Athos's teachings. Perhaps this dragon too studied under the archsage; perhaps he had come seeking out a fellow student, a fellow halfbreed who had been inadvertently raised to the seat of power. Perhaps, she thought, he came bearing hope for the paradise Athos had so long envisioned. Perhaps the dragon's arrival was, in truth, the portent of change and harmony.

Or perhaps Sophia was drawing erroneous assumptions out of nothing.

It was because of this uncertainty that she quite readily expressed interest in meeting them. Roy reluctantly agreed, and made to leave her to her privacy before Sophia urged him to stay, insisted she would not take long.

Though that was not exactly the case when Sophia dressed and Roy provided a brief distraction; it was later in the afternoon when Celen was sent up to take note of her condition. Livelier since she'd last seen her, her steward must have observed, with a healthy tinge.

Sophia did feel fitter after working out the knots in her muscles and crossing back and forth over the bower floor. Roy still insisted that she take his arm when Celen led them into the stairwell, and Sophia deferred to his heightened sense of concern.

The foreigners had slept through most of the morning, she told them as the three of them made their descent. Lady Rebecca had claimed "custody" over them, and that was about right; they were often content to follow her or Sir Wil, despite the enduring language barrier. General Cecilia had been interpreting here and there, but it seems, according to her, that the burning questions only seem to come up in her absence.

"Last I saw," Celen said at the junction of a sunlit, red-rugged corridor, "they had joined Lady Rebecca and Sir Lowen in the kitchen. You may rest in the drawing room while I fetch them."

"I'll go as well," Roy volunteered. He must have not finished his discussion of sorts with Lady Rebecca—Sophia decided to leave him to that. Rebecca was as close as it came to a mother-in-law—without the complicated legal bindings—and she regarded her as such.

"Very well."

She saw them off, and as their footsteps faded, so did her vision. It was one of those prolonged, infrequent waves of dizziness—Sophia did not know if they were a byproduct of her clairvoyance or dragon blood or simply an occasional lapse in sense, because she would often continue her task in spite of the faintness, and nothing she did seemed idiotic until after the fact. A bit like inebriation, if Sophia had ever been acquainted with such a sensation. Here, though the blood and woolly lights flushed up before her eyes, she felt the cold handle to the drawing room doors and it fell away from her; each staggering step forward felt groundless as though she were floating. Or swimming, almost, but the water was warm, and pulling her down with a tether was a great, sunken anchor. Something quick and worried snatched her by the arm before she could fall, and the giddiness dispersed.

"Sophia?" came the cry.

Her vision cleared and her eyes refocused on the pair before her face, steel-blue, sunken, bloodshot and bewildered. Overgrown, ruffled hair that reminded her of the woods with its smell and its shade, a lean, young face, tired yet alert—Sophia wrapped her arms around Lleu's thin trunk and he went rigid like a board.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"You grew," she said weakly.

_You grew a little. The child's lips were set firm in a frown—said so detachedly, as if unsure of what to make of it. _

"Of course I grew," he sneered. When she said nothing, his face softened, and he eventually shifted into the awkward embrace. Quieter, now: "God, you're exactly the same."

She shook with noiseless laughter, resting her forehead on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "I feel a bit dazed, still."

"Yeah, I heard about all that. Come on, let's sit."

Against her attempts to right herself and carry her own weight, he led her to the sofa directly thrown under a beam of sunlight; the morning overcast had long since burned away.

"I haven't heard from you in some time," she said as he took his seat beside her. "It was… worrisome."

"Shit, I'm sorry. Wait, sorry, you're a noble now, too coarse. Forgive me—" He didn't realize how stiff that sounded until he heard himself, and made a sort of embarrassed wince. "Look, I tried to keep up with the letter-writing, but it's hard when you're always moving around, and the courier's _profoundly_ incompetent and can't track you down, and I guess… I figured you would, I don't know, prophesize that I haven't died yet?"

"Precognition is not—"

"—'quite that straightforward', yeah, I get it," he interrupted. "Well, with any luck I might end up sticking around this side of Lycia for some time."

"Is it your brother?" she asked.

Lleu furrowed his brow, and appeared to study her for a moment.

Eventually, he said, "What did I tell you? I hope you don't use your weird mind shit while entertaining guests."

"It was a guess." Sophia smiled. It was a bit of a dissemblance; Lleu had warned her similarly once before, during their time spent in the campaign against Bern, and she took it to heart more than she was willing to reveal. She was considerably less forward about her perceptions with the visiting Lycian nobility of other houses, even to those who took a keen interest in her abilities. Particularly to those ones. _It is said that a man's nature is only as good as his deeds, but when you read my heart, milady, what is it that you see?_

_An adulterer. _

"You care deeply about him," she said.

"Yeah, well, we'll see if he'll actually take me in the first place. Hey, that reminds me," Lleu said hastily, "you probably want to hear about the barbarians, right?"

"…Is that what we're calling them?" All the same, her sudden responsiveness must have betrayed her enthusiasm. Lleu appeared to notice.

"Can't be bothered to remember their names," he said casually—too casually. It was a lie. "One of them's a real _asshole_. See my nose? That was him."

That was the truth. Lleu was easy to read once certain patterns made themselves apparent, but Sophia found that dragonkin were exceptional at picking up these nuances—they were observant, empathetic creatures, sensitive to the subtlest of intimations. She saw it as much in Roy. _Sophia, you are incessantly stroking that strand of your hair; would you like a drink?_

"He's the one that speaks the magic language semi-proficiently," continued Lleu. "Or, I don't know, I thought I'd let you be the judge of that, since you probably know better than everyone here combined. To be honest, General Cecilia isn't… as good as I'd expected. I mean, she's better than most, but you'd think that the _Mage General _would—"

"Lady Sophia!" Cecilia entered without first announcing herself, and Sophia could see why—in either arm she cradled a bowl of dried figs and almonds, and by the briskness of her pace she seemed impatient. The general carried the bowls to the long, flat table at the center of the room and set them down, and Sophia caught a glimpse of a shadow looming in the corridor. Most of all, though, she should feel it. But it was not as she expected.

The pulses were pounding, now—waves from dragon blood to dragon blood meeting with ferocious vigor, calcifying in her chest like stony whitecaps, hardened ripples in the earth—and they stung, somewhat, like the twitch of an inflamed muscle. It was that iciness again, and it felt as though the room had frozen over; the sunlight beat feebly against the back of her head, and she would have burrowed herself into Lleu's robes if decorums allowed it.

Cecilia knelt before her and took her hand.

"I trust your health has taken a turn for the better?"

Sophia mustered a thin smile.

"I've completely recovered."

"Most excellent news," she exclaimed. This was honesty. She placed her free hand over Cecilia's.

Visibly surprised by the gesture, the general continued, "Your husband is attending to some important business as we speak. I've appointed myself to preside over this 'interrogation', as it were, unless milady objects."

"You brought the guests?" She released her hand, and Cecilia drew to her full, impressive height.

"Ah, yes. I suppose we shouldn't keep them waiting." Craning her neck, she shouted the old language's word for "_come_" out towards the corridor, and Sophia heard stirring from beyond the ajar doorway.

There was a quiet growl: "Hjald fa."

They filed in without another word, one slowly after the other, and Sophia was fervent and eager in her inspection. Was this the dragon? No, he was the swordsman. This was the image of the barbarian that others had conjured for her. He was shockingly young—no older than Roy, though he hardly seemed it given Roy's "leisurely" pace of aging—and intimidating. His bearing, enormous, his aura, searing. Sophia could not read a man's character at first sight, but she could gather a fair impression, and this one was ablaze. But simple, initial sensations were not so telling. The warmth she had felt emanating from Lleu had not been an adolescent's anger; Roy's calmness had not been detachment, nor were his dragonish flutters a phantom sensation, the manifestations of Sophia's loneliness.

Here was not warmth, but a furnace. Intense blue heat, like the heart of a flame.

Behind him slunk the other, hair pulled loosely away from his face with that Sacaen sheen and off-black greenness. The angle hid his downcast eyes before they lifted to meet hers. It felt as though the blood rushing through her ears had congealed, her heart benumbed and its pounding weak and labored.

Here was a creature born of man and dragon, as she was. "Youthful" failed to describe it, but she would say he had the proportions of someone a bit younger than those bloody eyes betrayed. Just a bit. This one was young—older than his countryman, but young, young, young, with wizened eyes and a bitter curl to his lips, something more than a mage. Dragon, do you feel these? Do they twist you on the inside as yours do mine?

Most of all, she felt the frost creep along her guts, and gathered that this one was half ice dragon, and maybe half Sacaen, though she had nothing but the hair to judge by. While he did not _feel _like an ice dragon aside from the superficial "chill", the ice dragons she had encountered possessed those keen, crimson eyes, beautiful and piercing in whatever form they chose to take; she wondered if he owned a dragonstone. Thinking it over as hard and exhaustingly as she did helped settle her feverish nerves.

Soon, her body would acclimate, and these painful pulses would sink by unnoticed like waves in a deep ocean chasm, as natural as breathing.

They sat down, and every one of their movements deeply affected her. Even as the dragon rearranged the cloak under him, or as the swordsman reached to take a fig, she found herself in awe. She had not even begun to study the mark on the dragon's forehead in silence—she was seized by the sudden, painful urge to ask about it.

"They took a liking to the figs, so I thought I would bring some in," said Cecilia. She had already taken the foreigners' presences as a matter of course. Sophia could not imagine how—how she did not collapse beneath their sheer _enormity_. Perhaps this was simply her inflated expectations spotting her vision like the dizzy spells, and with that, her intuition.

Meanwhile, Lleu seemed similarly unaffected, or reacted to their enormity with a different kind of fierceness. He leaned forward to greet them and bared his teeth in a false, sore grin.

"_Where the master, dam?_" he laughed in the old tongue.

The dragon was picking at a hangnail when he spoke, and even his voice amazed Sophia. So developed, so heavy and thick, such strange, exotic articulation, such precision.

"_You make no sense."_

"_Dam? Bitch?" _Lleu pressed him._ "Pup? _Cayn, cayn?_" _He mimicked the sound of a whining bark, but the foreigner reacted with no less perplexity—or total disregard. _"I ask where your human, but you cannot understand I see. At least you haven't book, eh?"_

"Soren, has vinng sen?" asked the swordsman, turning to him.

The mage, the dragon shrugged, and pulled his attention away from his finger. Not a dog, but a dragon. Sophia had never heard their language before in her life.

"Vof," he said to his companion, who responded at first with confusion. "Vof."

And then rumbling laughter.

"Voff voff _voff,_ voff vuff!" he replied.

"Vau vuff, sja?"

"Eng, vuff _vau_—"

"_Enough_," snapped Lleu. "_You mock."_

Sophia felt that he was not quite so sure.

"_No, our tongue," _the foreigner explained levelly, with the thinnest of a toothy grin, "_we talk dog only; you talk hen."_

Lleu drew back at this, and Cecilia seemed on the verge of laughter.

"See, they're impossible ingrates!" he exclaimed. The swordsman snorted as his accomplice translated.

"This is _encroachment_, they _attacked _us, and to address guests and nobles of Pherae with such _insolence—"_

"Hys Leit, _I cannot make bird tongue to dog,_" interrupted the mage.

"_Please calm down, Lleu_," Sophia urged him.

Lleu had prepared another tirade, brewing in the pit of his belly like dragonfire, before he choked it back.

"Wait, can we keep the side conversations to ourselves?" he asked in clear agitation.

"_This is practice, yes?"_

She heard what may have been a snicker from the dragon. Lleu silenced him with a glare, and expelled the inner storm with a heavy, prolonged heave.

At last, he said, "_I can make_." He could acquiesce to it, albeit begrudgingly. These conversations relied on body language as much, perhaps more than the words themselves.

That is why it did them good to have two dragons present.

"_You know this language very well," _she told the foreigner, appealing to his greater sense of civility. He had barely acknowledged her since their arrival, and once she drew his attention, he appeared… either mildly annoyed, or deeply disturbed. She would consider either a normal, expected reaction—he must have felt her dragon half, or perhaps she had been bearing down too intensely with her staring. Lleu had told her once how off-putting that could be, and to have him there beside her in bitter docility served as a reminder.

He translated it to his companion, and he responded, much to Sophia's confusion. It was not a compliment directed at the swordsman, and she could not imagine what he would have to say in response. She could not read minds, unfortunately, and she was reluctant to make any assumptions as to the nature of the pair.

When the dragon finally returned to the old tongue, he avoided meeting her eyes and stared at the figs. "_What are you called?"_

This relieved her and discomposed her at the same time; they were expressing desire to communicate, and Sophia did not want to undermine their efforts with her clumsy tendency to stutter or mumble.

"_My name is Sophia."_

"_No," _he said. _"What are you."_

Her heart skipped a beat, and it was a deflating moment when she realized that they were interested in titles now.

"Marchionesse Pherae."

Neither of them attempted to repeat it.

"_You are wealth? Command? Your husband, also."_

Another twinge of hope died like a fading note. It was a remark on their apparent affluence and an inquiry into the extent of their political authority. Cecilia—or someone, using Cecilia as an interpreter—must have thoroughly briefed them on what manner of conversation they would be entering. She wished they hadn't.

"_We govern Pherae, yes."_

"_May I see."_

"Come again?" Cecilia shot her a quizzical frown.

His frustration was palpable. He reached with his arms, fingers spread wide, and smoothed his palms over the table.

"He wants a map," Sophia said. _"Is that it? Would you like to see a map?"_

"_Yes," _he said, settling back against the seat,_ "may I see."_

"I'll fetch one," Cecilia volunteered before Lleu could disinvolve himself from the ordeal, and took her leave. They watched the door as it closed after her, and did not turn back until Sophia caught their attention with a small, feeble noise from her throat.

"_May I ask questions?"_

He translated, and his companion shrugged.

"_Yes, go."_

Said quick and expertly before the dragon reached for an almond; he did not eat it.

"_What should I call you?"_

"Soren, Ike," he said impatiently. _"I am Soren."_

"_Yes,_" Sophia urged,_ "but what are you?"_

He seemed on the verge of answering, but he interpreted to Ike. He laughed, and Soren continued in what Sophia assumed was an explanation.

Then he turned to her and repeated: "Soren, Ike."

It dismayed Sophia to find that they were not so forthcoming—never quite so straightforward, just as her prophetic visions—but it hardly surprised her.

"_Where do you come from?" _she asked.

"_The sea," _Soren answered in an instant.

It did, however, annoy her.

He had no other reason to be so obtuse—he regarded her with intense, irrational distrust. Sophia wished to say she understood, or that she sympathized, but she would not deny the truth biting at the back of her mind: it frustrated her, but even more, it hurt, just a bit, to realize that her dragon had once been very hurt himself.

"_Where do you live, I mean?"_

"_Nothing," _he said. Nowhere.

"_How did you come here?"_

"_An unforeseen, savage tempest."_

"_What is your language?"_

"_Common." _No, he realized, that was not quite right. _"New."_

Ike was speaking to him now; he had been left out of the conversation. Sophia let them talk among themselves, and Lleu took the opportunity to get a word in.

"See? Like I said, they're impossible."

Sophia did not respond, but she did not reprove him either. Instead, she contemplated stirring the foreigners from their stubborn reticence, whatever amount of recklessness it would take.

"_In their place_,_"_ she told him, _"I would feel more than fearful."_

This immediately caught Soren's attention. The conversation stopped, and he listened without interpreting.

"Don't start this, Sophia." Lleu was warning her, she realized—he legitimately felt the need to warn her. "This weird mind shit—they're already easy to set off."

She would appeal to his ice dragon side, if such a side existed.

"_The cold ocean spray has left them awash—crusted—cloaked them in ice—"_

"_What was that," _asked Soren.

"_But I feel that there is a warmth there,_" she said, _"at their core, in this cold encasement. And if I can somehow have you trust me—" _She leveled her gaze to Soren's.

This had been the wrong decision. His eyes hardened, and he bunched the robes in his lap with taut, long hands. The curse he mumbled may have been in the old tongue, but it may have been their own language.

"Soren?"

"Hann ut meinsk."

He stood and Lleu recoiled, as though anticipating another blow.

Looking to Sophia, he said stiffly, "_Another time, the climes permitting."_

Without another word, he left—Ike seemed, and Sophia knew him to feel, as dumbfounded as they were; he watched him out the door, and did not face them again until it closed behind his countryman.

"Ig… ah… _s-so…"_

"'_Sorry'?" _prompted Sophia.

"Haha, jos! _Sorry_!"

The accent was most evident with Ike's untrained tongue—Soren had managed to abandon it quite well, in comparison.

But that Ike would know any of the language whatsoever confused her more than anything—without magic, and with no native speakers, he would have no incentive to learn it. It may have been a pet interest of his, yet when she stilled him with a _"what did he say?" _as he reached to grab a handful of figs, he misinterpreted this as a reproach and left them alone.

"Tenke."

This was more likely a reflex than a true response; he awkwardly rose from his seat and headed away, shooting them a backwards glance as he hurried out the room to catch his companion up. The door closed again, and the footsteps beyond it faded. The foreigners had retired early.

Lleu was first to break the ponderous silence.

"That was really strange."

Sophia could not help but laugh at this.

"What is it?"

"That you would find it strange," she said. "And be my friend. Besides that, I feel that we may have arrived to some understanding with the visitors."

"What was that about, then?" And then, quickly in the old tongue, _"Let an omen be absent." _

She heard the irony in his voice, yet at the same time, it sounded to her like the invocation of a prayer.

"He wishes—Soren, at least, wishes to speak with me again. Sometime later, if circumstances allow it."

But she knew what it was. He had crumbled under the weight of her searching eye—he did not want to be read, not before these strangers, and perhaps not before Ike. Although, she could gather that they were not on less than friendly terms. Did his countryman know? Did he know, himself?

Of course he knew. One could not withstand the oddity of their existence for a quarter century and have it—that defining, intrinsic anomaly—escape his notice.

"I would have guessed so," said Lleu. "I think… I think this will do, as far as my association with him goes. I don't want to and don't need to get through to them, and I wouldn't do it as well as you anyway."

"Perhaps." Sophia leaned across him to pick up a bowl. "If you would prefer, you can imagine that you've arrived in Pherae under a much different set of circumstances. And we are here to visit, and you will catch me up on your travels as I offer you figs."

She took one herself, and wondered if fig trees grew where the foreigners hailed. She would have to ask Soren.

"Well, mind you I was going to visit anyway, all right? Consider this other garbage purely incidental. So, how does it feel to be the—you know—"

"Top of the peck order?" Sophia offered, handing him the bowl.

"I—" The thought hung on the end of Lleu's tongue, and he decided against loosening it. It pleased Sophia to see him having calmed since earlier.

Cecilia returned just then, detectably confused and empty-handed.

"Excuse me, milady," she said, sounding a bit winded, "I needed to speak with your husband on the matter of my departure, and it took a great deal of asking around to procure a _proper _map."

"Where is it?"

"With Soren. I ran into the foreigners who were presumably returning to their lodgings, and he seemed to imply that you had dismissed them early. Is that so, milady?"

"Yes," Sophia said before Lleu could answer in her place. He slumped against the back cushion and submitted to her passive authority. "I had hoped you would meet them on the way back. Thank you, General."

Cecilia did not seem entirely convinced.

"Were they a bother, milady?"

"No. They appeared to tire and struggled to respond, so I have given them more time to prepare."

Accepting this for the time, the general strode over to the sofa opposite them and took the seat that Soren had formerly occupied. Sophia wondered if he had truly left it warm, or just the opposite.

"It's a shame they're so agonizingly slow to adjust," said Cecilia. "In Etruria, they would be accosted by—or rather, drowned in droves of hungry scholars, not a thought spared for their health. And I must confess now that I expressed intent to Lord Roy and the foreigners', erm, 'custodians', to receive them at Aquleia."

Sophia would have objected immediately, had she not known that the matter was outside Cecilia's hands. They belonged to whomever they chose to follow, and before Soren traveled elsewhere, there was a conversation he had yet to hold, a meeting between brethren he had yet to see through.

"You are leaving so soon?" Sophia asked. "Your stay has been regrettably short, for all the good it has done us."

"Agreed; it is certainly regrettable," she said. "I would have overstayed my welcome if pressing business in Etruria did not tear me away from your gracious accommodations."

"So you're going to drag them up to Etruria?" Lleu cut in. He seemed dubious, and from what Sophia could tell, fearful.

"No. That will not be me, in any case. Lleu." She smiled, but it stuck Sophia as peculiar—a forced smile, the white of her teeth flashing in a small, tight grin, her eyes nervous and humorless.

"I have a proposition for you."


	7. Reminiscence

Reminiscence

They were allowed very little time for rest, despite Rebecca's insistence that comfort be made a priority.

They had been given a cramped, narrow room on the ground floor with bunks spaced so closely that Ike could sit on Soren's and use his own as a footrest—and not at all vice versa, which would lead to some undesirable consequences. Little luxury, but more than he was accustomed to.

Their window faced the wooded edge of a castle garden, and though it offered a pleasant view, they had taken to keeping the curtains drawn during the castle's active hours. This morning they settled halfway, left the window cracked; Ike liked to feel the early dampness creep in through the open air, and more than that, he enjoyed the liquid, quivering song of a bird, which Soren identified as a thrush. When Ike asked if the thrushes here spoke the same language as the ones in Tellius, he only wrinkled his nose in response.

Soren had long since abandoned his map that he had snatched from the interpreter in passing, left it rolled up between them where they sat. His bunk was pushed against the wall, so Ike could rest his back as well as stretch his legs, and it reminded him of one of those dramatic, reclining sofas featured in every guest chamber of the Crimean palace.

"You know what's weird?" Ike said.

"Hm."

"This place reminds me of Crimea, sort of. I mean, the royal court."

"And you find that strange? This is the reigning nobility, after all."

Something like a duke in Begnion, Soren had explained to him, though he had felt the need to add that these were tentative answers, _as impossible as it is to piece together the sensible purport of their scant, grisly tatters of coherent thought_. They spoke with an atrocious accent, according to Soren, and after his short-lived language lessons with Volug, Ike could hear the difference.

"I don't know. On the surface, this comes closer to our first stay at the Mainal Cathedral. Completely new place, people talking funny—even if they don't all seem as uptight, we still have to walk on eggshells to avoid slighting someone by mistake."

In hindsight, their escorts had gone through pains to mitigate some of the culture shock. Begnion had held them as newcomers to lofty and often unstated expectations, whereas the Wil and his family were almost overly eager to pass on the conventions of Pheraen etiquette. Rebecca had spent nearly an hour teaching them a certain greeting—a clasp of both hands, with the fingers interlocked in a certain position and grasped in a certain shape. Another was to lock arms with a person, and yet another was to kiss a knuckle, but Rebecca had only tried demonstrating this once with her husband, and let it pass when Ike and Soren did not follow the example.

Soren still hadn't answered him; he took that as a gesture to continue.

"On the other hand, I get the impression we're mostly kind of a novelty to them."

Or at least Soren had given that impression with his incessant griping, bent over the musty, indecipherable map as he explained their new situation. _They expect us to leave—from Pherae, which is here, to… right here, and to give you a sense of scale, we "landed" around here—undoubtedly to subject ourselves to more ridiculous demands._

Soren simply grunted, "It's mutual, in any case."

"That's right. And you get used to it, after a while."

"Get used to what?"

_Yes, this is _the _General Ike; this is the man who singlehandedly—yes, my dear, singlehandedly in the most literal sense, as in with a single hand—agreed, it is, without question, nothing short of extraordinary, and this is the sword Ragnell, mind you, and it is _just _as large and undoubtedly _much_ heavier than that brazen replica at Sienne—_

"People talking about you like you're not there," Ike said. Then he gave a weak laugh, and it sounded hollow even to himself. Court life was draining, it seemed, no matter where it found them.

"Or likening you to animals, I imagine."

Ike almost added _"Now we know how the laguz feel", _but while he mostly favored honesty over tact, he could distinguish between "blunt" and "unkind at best".

"Yeah," he said instead. A group of children had ventured out into the courtyard, silencing the lone thrush with their own shrill, birdlike cries.

"Ets gosos a corestad!"

Soren did not drag himself from the bed to the window, but he craned his neck to see if they had wandered anywhere near their immediate area. They were likely playing around the fountain on the garden's edge, which Ike had marveled at until he realized that he was repelling some of the less familiar servants from the courtyard but attracting their stares.

"Cor ver a nasca!"

Their ears had been flooded by the language long enough to make something of the structure, distinguish some recurring sounds and tones and pauses, but to the extent of their understanding it was good as gibberish.

"That might just be that one guy," Ike resumed. "I mean, with the dog comparisons."

By now, the children may or may not have been talking about them—sound carried far and clear through the open courtyard, and since their arrival the younger members at court had been unsurprisingly reluctant to approach them.

"We never really did apologize to him."

"I don't think he needs an apology from us, let alone the benefit of the doubt," said Soren. He had feigned apathy towards the dog insults; even with Ike, he maintained a steeled pretense of indifference, but the woman's prying had been sharp and precise; she needled at the tender foible of his façade, and Soren had reacted in the most civil manner he knew of. She was not the duchess, or Roy's wife, or Sophia, as she had insisted they call her, but a nonsensical, presumptuous girlish defective fountain sputtering out fits of baseless accusations, who smelled of vomit masked by a miasma of perfume. Ike didn't disagree with the last bit.

"As it stands," Soren continued, "our best hope here lies in learning their language. They are… all but one of them are woefully inexpert with the ancient tongue. Nuances are lost, and many concepts are incommunicable when at least one party doesn't understand them. To—to address your concern, I will say this much."

He faced Ike now, picking up the map to hold it against his lap.

"You would find much more use in a voice than a sword or an axe. The difference in treatment you'll receive is startling, to say the least."

It took a practiced ear to detect it, but at times Soren would bow his head and stew in his own roiling worries, and less often than not, Ike could hear it. The words would come out constricted—not tense or stiff, but in that exerted, practiced calm, as though he had been planning to say them some time ago, but didn't know when, or where, or if they should be heard. He would take measured breaths through his nose and go taut at the back and shoulders, though this was hardly peculiar with Soren.

But Ike was only barely aware of these observations himself, and he could not articulate why it unsettled him as much as it did. As if by instinct, he took the map and set it aside.

"Soren."

"What? All I meant to say was that we should make learning the language a priority."

"I know. Just come here."

Three knocks startled Soren to his feet, and the woman barged in without waiting for their permission. To most of these people, warning was luxury enough.

It was the one who reminded Ike of Sigrun—there was the calming voice with the edge of authority to it, the kind eyes pinched at the corner with wrinkles of worry, and more than any of that, the gentle acceptance of their all-around foreignness. She was not quite as permissive or lax as Rebecca, but she could appreciate their difficulties.

When he responded, Soren was forthright with his anger this time, which seemed… somehow right to Ike. Before these last few days, he had seldom heard him speak the language outside of battle, and during battle he never spoke it so much as he forcefully invoked it, or muttered it in a fluid stream of curses, or snarled it, or spat it out with the blood that lined his teeth.

"Today's the day," he told Ike, smoothing the edge out of his voice when he returned to Common. "She wants to know if we'll have further need of her assistance before she departs, since as far as interpreters go we are otherwise restricted to the druids."

"Woah, wait, those are _druids_?"

"I'm not translating that. _Sumakide za ono uruka… _ah…"

The woman cut him off with a laugh. "_Seida yorumu, _hehe!

"A nice laugh", indeed. Soren was incensed now—Ike could see it in the curl of his fingers, heard it in the stiffness of his translation. While Soren had never reveled in his prominence as the Greil Mercenary's tactician, he had commanded some degree of respect, and possibly very secret adoration if one looked hard enough; by the end of the second war, very few challenged his judgment without drowning their objections in deference and self-doubt, and whenever he deigned to speak, he was not to be interrupted. The luxury of renown had turned itself on its head here.

"I asked how long we're meant to stay here," Soren said.

"What did she say?"

"Literally, she just repeated part of an incantation to a wind spell." He turned aside to Ike. "She meant something along the lines of 'free men', though I suspect she's merely eager to fit a chant into general conversation, because I'm not entirely convinced of our—"

"Heis isona! Na fierdo quare guin a fada!" the general barked to the window. Ike realized that the children from earlier had been gravitating just on the edge of their purview, snatching what glimpses they could into their unintelligible conversation.

"Fed ese!" a girl shrieked from the garden. Ike guessed that meant _"Oh no, those men weren't aware of our snooping, or more likely didn't care all that much until a high-ranking visiting official drew their attention our way; we should probably think of an excuse!"_

They heard the crunch and rustling of leaf-littered grass as they fled, dispersing in all directions at once. Ike could still hear some of their voices in the distance, and then that of a chiding adult. Probably a caretaker. He doubted the kids would have come within a field's length of them if the attendants could help it.

Cecilia turned to Soren and continued in the old tongue.

"She apologized for the children," he said. "They're… scaled? I highly doubt that was the word she wanted."

"Huh. I was covered in scabs as a kid, I guess."

"She invites us to join her, and the rest of the group, presumably, for a late breakfast. Enjoy the full benefit of her interpretation services while she's here, I suppose."

"Maybe so." Ike pushed himself onto his feet and saw Cecilia—some officer, Soren had told him, a general—take a step back. "I wouldn't mind grabbing something to eat."

This needed no translation.

* * *

"Ike, ste morzars ime milos a ceral?"

That was one habit of Wil's that Ike could recognize from the night they had appeared on his doorstep; he looked him straight in the eye and addressed him directly with his questions—not either of the interpreters—and it was a welcome gesture, even if Ike couldn't understand a word of the language. Cecilia translated for Soren, and Soren said nothing for a while, hardly acknowledged that he had been spoken to, as he examined the untouched food set before him.

"I think," Soren began diffidently, "he is asking if their cuisine bears any similarities to that of Tellius."

"That's… a big question."

"Those seem to have become a matter of course."

Soren's eyes flickered to Rebecca, who had been watching him with a quiet, intense deliberation. As if compelled by some imperceptible signal, he pushed his spoon into his cake until it met the plate with a hard, tinny _clink_, but he did not take the bite.

"But really," Ike said, "I mean, in Phoenicis, breakfast is just meat—like those huge goats, elk, yaks, and then this weird chocolate bark drizzled with berry syrup—"

"Ike."

"Daein's locked in a, I don't know, a 'who can brew the strongest drink' competition with Crimea, because the stuff they serve in the morning could make you sick—I mean the general 'you', not to call you a lightweight or anything—and can breakfast be pretentious? Because _Begnion_—"

"Ike." Soren did not raise his voice, but he was curt with his translation to Cecilia. "_Kunino ku iroi_."

"What'd you say?"

"Our breakfasts tend to the savory side. Phrased unambiguously for their sake, 'more meat'."

This appeared to worry Rebecca, who asked if they would prefer that their cooking incorporated more meat, which Soren denied before he passed the message to his companion. Ike could understand the concern; Rebecca and the cook, a nervous-sounding older man with thick, woolen whiskers, were accommodating to a fault. Would Ike suggest he liked more spice and substance, Soren would likely starve than submit himself to their excessive redressing—or venture out into the woods to forage.

The breakfasts at the court were sweeter than Ike was accustomed to, and much sweeter than what Wil and Rebecca could provide for them on sudden notice. This one was a cake, round, glistening, firm, and buttery, with an orange-tasting glaze and a side of grapes that seemed partially decorative. Their breakfasts were light enough for Soren to finish off, though he'd yet to see him ask for seconds.

To Soren's chagrin, Cecilia intended to keep them at hand for as long as the opportunity presented itself—it only served to remind Ike of the sheer vastness of information they were expected to eventually absorb. The other day, they had tried to work them over slowly, going fact by fact.

Elibe—that was the continent. Lycia, the country, Pherae, the territory. That was easy enough—they could locate themselves on a map at last.

But when it came to the history, of the country or the territory or the people, it had been slow coming.

Soren had given him an impromptu briefing the other night—he was much better at putting the pieces together than Ike.

_From what I can salvage from that woman's conflagrant wreckage of an explanation, we have found ourselves amidst company of some renown and a period of some significance, but knowing next to nothing of this country, my sense of scope of these matters is vague at best. The ruler here had served as general in a campaign against the country… here. Our "assailants" contributed in part to the effort. The interpreter, a high-ranking general in the country… here… also participated, which is why I find her incompetence with the language so baffling. _

_Then again, she was the one to provide all this information; perhaps I am giving her less credit than she deserves. Even though her work on your hand had been next to useless. _

Ike had to admit that while his hand didn't hurt, it was more than a little hideous to look at, with a gaping split and crumbling crust and splotches of discoloration. That was one disadvantage of staff-induced healing over "traditional" methods: the tissue did not repair itself instantaneously, with various, unpredictable reactions to the magic. If a healer took especial care, it would make a clean recovery—but more often than not, it would warp. The disparity was purely cosmetic.

Soren typically concerned himself with Ike's injuries in one way or another, but held off in what might have been a courtesy to the Pheraens. Ike balled his fist—felt the sandy, abrasive sensation in his palm—and tried to remember.

There was more to remember—from what had Cecilia seemed to imply, it was their utter lack of reverence that betrayed their ignorance. They had crashed and tumbled, loud and clumsy and stupid, into an eminent assembly of conquerors. It had surprised even Ike to learn that Wil and Rebecca had been accomplished warriors who fought in the war previous to Roy's, enlisted under his father's command. Both rulers, from what Ike could tell, were regarded as heroes.

He wondered if they ever crumbled under the weight of their own renown.

He never wondered for long, since whenever they had been allowed enough time and peace to reassess their surroundings, Ike's mind would wander to his more immediate impulses.

Cecilia's last talk with them was blessedly simple. The leader of the mercenary troupe accompanied her at the entrance hall, where they had summoned the pair; they had been allowed little time or chance to speak with him, and Soren was having trouble parsing his meaning through Cecilia's flawed translation.

"Im eplara maser e socrar," said Ogier, wringing his fingers together, "hos cessitas im palle a monda indec resperde, esss… ess, ess, es dace minerto a serre."

Cecilia silently absorbed this, contemplating a simpler rendition of what sounded, from what Ike could tell, to be pleading. Then she turned to Soren.

"_Nego nego nego nego."_

"He…" Soren's mouth closed tight into a frown. "What._"_

"How'd she get that out of what he said?"

"How the hell, indeed," he said, and Ike almost laughed, because even mild profanity was surprising to hear in Soren's voice. "_Yuido wa ta sudeni ko." _

It was likely a question; Cecilia chuckled in response.

_"Senma riake washimo ta… ehh… _ _nakidega," _she said.

"_Yanodo. _Since you may be confused, it was essentially 'sorry' over and over again," explained Soren. "Because subtleties such as deference are absent from the ancient language."

"Really?"

"No. Would you like to tell him anything?"

"Uhh…"

Ike looked to Ogier and startled him with his sudden attention; the mercenary flashed a quick, nervous grin in response. He seemed nice enough, and Ike regretted what little disruption he had caused to his company; not only was it a terrible inconvenience, but he suspected the Pheraens' perception of them would have been far more forgiving had they avoided the skirmish in the first place.

"I know we didn't get to talk much, and that's a shame," he said, following Wil's example and maintaining eye-contact. "This must be weird coming from me, but I have a lot of respect for what you do. We're still a little lost, yeah, and it's too bad I can't tell you this directly, but Soren and I… are pretty handy, I guess you could say. If you need a little more muscle in the group, figuratively I mean, you'll know where to find us? It might be the other way around, actually. Anyway, I'd feel a lot less useless than I'm feeling now, so think about it."

For a moment, he was worried he had given Soren too much chatter to work with, until he realized the apparent deliberation had been a ruse.

_"Sude bo su de bosu debo_._"_

Ike wasn't sure because Soren's mannerisms were as hard to interpret as the language he was speaking, but that might have been his way of playing around. Cecilia took it well, and she appeared to understand when he managed to come up with a legitimate, albeit clipped translation of Ike's offer. He probably added that they wouldn't do it for free; though that hadn't been policy for the Greil Mercenaries, every lost, teary child returned to its parents might as well have been a knife in Soren's gut for all the complaining he'd do. He was always the one to draw these cases to their attention, however, and though Ike never disclosed his suspicions, he had a hunch: Soren regarded his generosity as a weakness to be guarded.

Ogier seemed inclined, maybe a little overeager, towards Ike's idea, held out his forearms, and when Ike could not think quickly enough to respond, took both of his hands in his own.

"Doarte am sento a velle."

Ike inexpertly repeated; Soren was much better at memorizing these formalities, but no one apart from Rebecca, Wil, or Dart expected he put them to use.

As a handful of Ogier's men caught him up at the entrance hall and crowded him out the door, acknowledging Ike and Soren with little more than a few grunts, Cecilia remained behind.

"Soren." She raised an eyebrow. They pronounced their names oddly, particularly Soren's—they narrowed their lips and purred at the "r". Ike used to think that was only a Gallian thing.

"Hm?"

_"Sutomo."_

One more thing.

Though with all her wavering and deliberation, it rather seemed she had too much to say and too few ways to say it. Free men, she repeated. Broken land. The scars are healing over, and she is one who holds the staff. They are busy, in other words, but the foreigners are welcome to Aquleia once the mood strikes them. Learn much, rich city, rich, gay, grand, broken land.

You will be inspired, Soren translated with the usual edge of doubt. You are not beasts. Etruria is mages, scholars, men of cloth—we will see that. Even the prince will see that.

Lleu is learned, more with this language than I, and a Mage General is chosen for his wisdom. He will grant you a safe journey.

_"Runa tokoha ni," _said Soren. "You—she will pay him handsomely."

_"Sunedi kata." _Cecilia laughed. "Ehh, _rui tegata deyaro."_

You are smart, but suspicious.

He is a mercenary, countered Soren.

Talk to Sophia, then. She is wise and safe.

Soren thought she had confused a word or two somewhere, and he was reluctant to convey the message to Ike as it was told. But the Etrurian servant who had been attending the minutiae of Cecilia's departure had come in to inform her that all was ready; a train of escorts had been prepared for her, and final farewells were in order.

Cecilia nodded, stepped to close the distance between them and took Soren's hands before he could flinch away. Nodded again. He simply rubbed one hand with another when she released him and gave Ike the same respects. Roy was to come down to see her off, and likely the bulk of his retainers would flood in and follow. In times like these, Ike and Soren took to either withdrawing to their room or to the shelter of the seaside villagers. They decided they had spent enough time in their room.

* * *

Cecilia had left, and Lleu was nowhere to be found. Ike had gotten used to the language barrier by now, and Soren must have appreciated the excuse not to talk. Rebecca seemed to similarly dismiss it, and the chef was already acclimating to their presence. He was mixing a sauce now, and let Ike swipe a finger over the flat, dripping spoon to take a taste. It was pungent, spicy, strongly aromatic.

Ike enjoyed this leisure more than any other part of their "cultural instruction and cultivation", and he enjoyed their chatter, their mutual bursts of excitement, their passionate disagreements. In watching them interact, he was reminded of his sister and Oscar.

The chef even shared Oscar's shade of hair, except it was far overgrown, and Ike couldn't see Oscar growing a beard—or a stomach.

For some reason, it struck him in an odd place to be thinking about them. He stopped thinking.

Maybe he would talk to Soren about it, he thought.

But Soren was occupied. Wil had now wandered into the kitchen with the thickset woman whose name Ike forgot, in spite of her fondness for throwing herself into the center of their attentions. She was the one with the theatrics, the one they assisted in the carrying and hauling with Dart, and Soren did not like her much at all.

This time, Ike appreciated the distraction. When Dart was the last to intrude, and when they urged the three of them out into the courtyard, Ike easily complied, and because Soren rarely left Ike out of his sights in loud company, he followed as well.

The procession at the gatehouse had not cleared, and he assumed Lord Roy—and his wife, hopefully—were still preoccupied with the formalities of Cecilia's departure. Somewhere, he thought he heard a wyvern. Soren raised his head to the sky and confirmed it. It was a single beast headed towards the gatehouse, hind legs outstretched and wings drawn back as it reached for solid ground. Though it was hard to tell from this distance, there appeared to be a rider. It seemed that greetings were due as well as farewells.

Behind them, in the flat, grassy clearing where they had settled, the woman disrupted their absent gazing with a barking fit of laughter.

"Heis, So_rrr_en. Ike. Sare viuda es zuda!"

They turned and saw the fisherman emerge from the storehouse, sagging from the weight of the weapons slung over his back. Ike realized what they had planned for the afternoon.

"Ehh, leca e boc." Wil shrugged from where he sat. He had taken shelter beneath a tree—and archery target, it seemed—his wife knelt at his side with what dignity she could maintain while they squatted in the cutting grass. Wil tilted his head as a signal for Ike to join them. They were to be spectators.

One habit Ike had taken to in lieu of real comprehension was inventing a meaning behind the foreign gibberish. It staved off some of the isolation, and he had found from his lessons with Volug that he was not too bad at it.

So the knight might have been drawing their attention away from the wyvern, maybe asking if they've ever seen one. She had brought them to a horse before and waited expectantly for a reaction; she had apparently misread their confusion as astonishment. Cecilia had to be dragged in to confirm that yes, there were horses in their home country. There were wyverns here, apparently, but they had yet to see a pegasus. The climate here would have bothered them, Ike supposed.

His imagination, unbridled, started to stray into odder territory, but Ike let it flit away from his grasp; he humored himself.

Rebecca sounded exasperated as Dart and the knight distanced themselves from each other, assuming their positions. "What is this meant to accomplish?" she may have asked.

And when Dart tossed the sleeker axe the knight's way, falling to the bald patch of earth before her feet with a thump, she may have said, with some effort as she hauled it onto her shoulder, "What do you think?"

A swing of the axe, a triumphant swell of the chest.

"Dart! I challenge you!"

Dart drove the curve of his axe into the ground and leaned with that bent, beastly hunch over the shaft.

"Haven't had enough, have you? Tell me, girl, what'll make this time so different from the last?"

Out from round the storehouse corner emerged a figure swathed in robes and trembling apprehension. Even from this distance, it was clear that he had been made to preside over the bloody duel that would unfold; Ike could see it in the brisk pace, the visible agitation. The knight tossed her head to Lleu and called to him. Yoo-hoo! Or the Pheraen equivalent Ike guessed.

But Lleu was not nervous, he suddenly realized—he was _storming, fuming_, and once this became clear, the fabrication was torn out from over his eyes. Lleu was growling something to Rebecca and Wil now, and when Soren stood to allow him wide berth, the druid lunged to catch him.

"Atata—_heis_! Agh, turiguante rieta a colo_—"_

Lleu yelped when Soren seized him by the arm, and howled as he dug his fingers into the gap between the bones.

_"_Don't touch me," he snarled, and released him with a shove. Stumbling back a safe distance away, Lleu clutched his arm, shaken, and pressed on with his tirade.

"Exado a _ti sheku gojino ka ru_, es lace uscarule en_—"_

_"_I _did not." _As Soren took one step forward, Lleu took a huge, panicked spring back. _"Deshi sen to desa__—"_

_"Remadane! _Rea e ciota!"

_"Omite sho masa__—_"

"Heis!"

Once more, Rebecca had wedged herself between the mage and an attacker, and her argument with Lleu had overtaken Soren's in pitch and force. Ike tried to get his attention—or comfort him or something, he was not quite sure—with a hand at his wrist, which Soren reflexively drew away.

"What is it?" Ike said quietly.

"Aceste divolo is tejadore," spat Lleu, "Sophia _ta shi tanao jonoka. Rideaki yowabo o ni. _Na puete manca quej ede!_"_

His panting was harsh and ragged; Ike heard him swallow his spit, his glare affixed to Soren despite Rebecca's efforts to break apart the hostilities. Soren folded his hands and watched, faintly amused, as Lleu flinched at the movement.

"It's that girl," he told Ike coolly, calmed in Rebecca's shadow. "She's relapsed, apparently. And she wishes to speak to me."

He edged closer to Ike, presumably to remove himself from the conflict as much as possible. The duel had been interrupted, but not called off.

It took a practiced eye to detect it, but Soren was nervous.


	8. Waves of Discord

Everyone who's played the Elibe games: "TL;DR!"

Everyone else: "Gee dragons are pretty weird."

But yeah, this lays it on thick, and I'm pretty sure this is the closest we've gotten to, um, evidence of a plotline. Writing this is like crack to me at this point and I wouldn't be surprised if it were finished before I go back to school next fall.

For anyone still confused about how language is done: if the character understands it, it's rendered in English. Ike doesn't understand the Ancient Language, so we see it as "gibberish"; Soren and Sophia are bilingual as hell, which is reflected in chapters from their POV. Ancient Language italicized no matter what because it's pretty (convenient).

* * *

Waves of Discord

"Fala is tega vic bacce."

Soren ignored the escort, peering down at the bustle of maids and servants from where he stood on the mezzanine.

"Na mim noregne."

"I don't understand you," he told her, backing away from the railing. The attendant nodded, gestured him over with a gloved hand, and headed across the platform to the next flight of stairs. Soren could admit to himself that, compared to the others—all of them, if he gave it any thought—this one was tolerable. She rarely spoke, never touched, and seemed about as eager to engage in these strained, awkward interactions as he was.

He studied the artwork as they passed. Paintings, mostly—of men, likely former rulers, hounds on the hunt, ports, the seaside—and sculptures, ugly little bronze horse statuettes, pottery and metalwork. What gave him pause was not a painting, but a wall, bare but for what appeared to be a series of tapestries. He stopped to study the first, ignoring the servant's spiritless objections.

A border of knots and spirals, like seashells. A bath scene: a chute pouring into the pool, spreading ripples, doughy, overindulged women draped in white, rolling their white bulk out in a reclining pose, fingers laced in heaping curls, contended faces, legs outstretched into the foamy water, dragons, floating petals, a foggy, mountainous backdrop—

"Wh-wait."

The servant waited.

Nose dipped against the unbroken water, neck arced and gleaming like a swan's, tendril-like pinions folded tight to her back—and behind her, slender and bulky and curved, slumped and erect, heads raised to the sun—and more yet, webbed wings outstretched, blots fading into the landscape. A thousand flowers.

Soren almost touched her, the dragon in the foreground, to know for himself that it existed, and that someone had woven this. He stared so hard that he might as well have violated the lounging women with his grubby barbarian paws.

"Sti anado forer esperi?"

"I—_speak this?"_ he tried, facing her and tempering the edge of desperation._"No?"_

She stood there, impassive and unimpressed. Of course not; she was no magic user.

"You're useless," he told her in the way he might say to a spent tome or a broken knife. Returning to the wall, he stalked up to the next tapestry.

A border of coils and cruel vines. These were crudely rendered, the flames descending in jagged red thorns, spears awkwardly raised, blood dropping in round, darkened clumps. Arrows stuck in their neck, like quills or hackles, swords sunken in the smooth, scaly bellies deep enough that the guard met flesh. Poor sense of perspective: it was more a flat tower of slaughter than a battle scene, and on the bottom the men crumpled with wide eyes and comically wooden expressions. Above them reigned, stomped, plunged, gnashed the dragons, and none of the fat-bodied plumaged brothers made their languid appearance here. Lips drawn, teeth bloody and bared, snout wrinkled in a snarl, blank, reptilian faces—their eyes were woven with the deepest dye, against the dark and muddy inferno, a bright, ugly, bloody red.

The attendant behind him said nothing as he moved onto the final tapestry; lighter, almost faded colors, the same oddly skewed perspective, and this time, the dragons had been crowded to the bottom, merging with the twisting, curling border like a nest of wriggling, infant snakes. Above them humans—the beorc—triumphed, weapons raised to herald their impeding, righteous judgment, the mouth of heaven gaping wide in a grin to their backs, flowers blooming above at the border, birth, life, fertility, renewal. Soren knew little of this culture, but he knew of the beorc, and the beorc loved to echo their features in crude iconography, with lips and protrusions and swirls and knots, imbue their image with permanence, holiness. The demons were dispersed.

He had been studying the beorc figures for some time now before he realized that the attendant had moved beside him, regarding the tapestry with dull indifference. A myth passed to children, Soren guessed. A familiar cautionary tale, maybe. Never bathe with dragons or they will fly into a rampage and extinguish the human race, unless your name is Ike.

"Alright," he told her, which she must have understood as "I'm finished" and proceeded down the rest of the corridor. Soren did not pay much mind to the artwork after this. He would likely need an escort to guide him back to his room from here, because his mind had blanked, and he remembered very little layout of the castle they had just navigated by the time the woman led him up the last flight of stairs. They came to a small hallway, and the attendant stopped at the first door, and knocked.

Nothing, for some time. Then a thin, shaken voice.

"Che sti?"

"En sitanto," she answered.

"Is puo virre donen."

The woman pushed open the door, and immediately Soren was overwhelmed by the stench of perfume and unmoving body. The girl sat up in her bed and greeted her attendant with a small smile; they spoke shortly in that quick, infuriating tongue, and the woman was presumably dismissed. She gave Soren a small nod on her way out, and when the door closed behind him, no words were spoken for some time. He could hear the girl's ragged breathing, scratchy like dead, withered leaves. He felt the onset of a headache.

_"You may leave if you wish," _she finally said, taking him by surprise.

He stood there, dumbly, and searched inwards for a retort.

_"If you do not feel comfortable—"_

_"What do you want," _he interrupted. From across the room, he could see the pained stirrings of a smile, and the struggle as she indicated a stool with a nod.

_"You may sit."_

_"Answer."_

Defeated, she sank back against her pillow.

_"Nothing."_

_"What?"_

_"I want nothing from you."_

She looked out at her window. From where she lay, most likely, she could only see the blank sky.

_"And if you want nothing from me, you may leave."_

Soren checked behind for the door, reassuring himself that it had not disappeared, that this was not a trap. That the cannibals would wait for now, specifically, to strike.

_"I will tell them I dismissed you," _she continued as he began his slow approach, _"just as I did the other day."_

Defeated, he sank into the stool, and avoided her eyes.

Sophia rose to his level, to meet him, and though her breath was harsh and labored, her elation was obvious, shameless. Her sickening, cloying elation. This was the closest they had been.

Just as the smell assaulted his nostrils and her demeanorassaulted his patience, so too did the pulses—stinging, hardened an invasion of the senses that he tried best to put out of mind.

_"Is there anything you would like to ask?"_

She sounded… excited now. Or panicked. Soren had trouble distinguishing with her, but her words and breaths were shallow, her bedding balled in her fist; the illness may have been unhinging her.

He paused to think, and then said, _"The story."_

She tried to read him. Perhaps literally, he thought, just as that Daein meddler had endeavored years ago before he smacked her with chunks of frozen swamp.

_"Whose story?"_

Perhaps not. More likely, she was humoring him, "sensed" his aggravation. Provided the illusion of ignorance.

_"On the wall."_

_"The dragons, you mean."_

He did not answer.

_"There is more than those tapestries," _she said thoughtfully, pushing herself upright and watching him curiously.

_"More story. But you saw what most are told. I will not bore you." _

The affectionate grin she tried only looked unsettling and out of place with her.

_"Unless you like to hear the happy parts."_

_"You mock me,_" he growled.

_"I do not know enough to mock."_

Of course you don't, he thought.

_"Tell me all the parts."_

_"Very well." _She settled back against the headboard and into more comfortable position. Relaxing her neck, she reminded Soren of those reclining women in the tapestry, pale and youthful and somewhat nauseating.

_"In the beginning, man and dragon live together. They share the earth, and the oceans, the beasts, the bathhouses—"_

Again, the uncanny smile, this time to herself in that drowsy, enveloping haze of comfort.

_"Forge friendships, share knowledge, wisdom, peace. All that ends when man attacks in a sudden onslaught—"_

_"Why."_

Startled, Sophia opened her eyes and frowned at him.

_"What?"_

_"Why did the humans attacked."_

She studied him carefully, and he could see his silhouette reflected in her glassy, moistened eyes. He may have been the first to ask this; she deliberated for some time, and answered slowly, uncertain.

_"Man likes to declare himself… the perfect image of wisdom and reason. Unparalleled in his faculties, perched atop the pinnacle of sentience, molded in God's image and replete with His favor. But… but Soren, I will admit to a conviction I have always held fast, that perhaps you and I both share."_

She leaned closer now, and Soren had to scrape the stool back to escape the touch of her breath.

_"Humans are reasonless, covetous, fleshy sacks of giblets, entrenched in the despair of their own mortality. And the dragons pitied them."_

Soren's throat closed on itself—some of it he did not quite grasp without conscious effort, but he felt her meaning like a blade of ice in his chest, and he was too benumbed to ascertain her words.

_"And loved them. And rather than fight, many—the most powerful of them all—flee, to where they might coexist in peace with the humans. This leaves the others… severely outnumbered. What is also often omitted from the story," _she said with an eerie, phlegmy chuckle, _"is that the dragons did not have the same capacity… or rather, the same drive to procreate as the humans. They were like swans. Does your country have swans?"_

Soren did not answer immediately. She explained.

_"They are water birds who have one mate their entire lives."_

_"I know what are swans," _he snapped.

_"Good. Dragons were faithful, but not as fertile. It takes… took many attempts to—"_

_"This is important?"_

_"No. _Eihhh, _what is important to know, though, is the dragons knew a way to create fast. But it was a secret, and the dragons who knew guarded it jealously. Because that is dangerous,_ _no? An infinite army? They were wise dragons, and they knew everything must have a limit. Everything ends. One who knew the secret was captured, but… she refused to make the war dragons. So they destroyed her. Not what the wall tells you, _da?"

_"Not enough wall," _he grunted. Sophia laughed again, and it was sandpaper on wet, rotting bark to him, but sicklier.

_"I like it when you talk," _she said. _"You should talk more. In your language, too, because it is pretty. But yes, you saw what becomes of the dragons. Eight heroes rise, and these heroes have many other stories of their own you may see on many other walls, but all you must know now is that their weapons… sacred, unbelievably mighty… cause such a calamity that it disturbs the elements around them, and threatens the continent. The dragons are drained, and are forced to contain their remaining energy to a dragonstone—whereupon they take a human shape. They cannot survive in the conditions the weapons cause, and they flee through a portal, never to be seen again. The heroes seal their weapons away, and peace returns to the continent. And there the tapestries end."_

That sounded enough like a story to him. A vengeful earth, natural disasters, senseless fighting—he knew it all too well.

_"What is that tell?" _

_"What?"_

_"When it is told," _Soren said impatiently, _"why? What is learned?"_

_"Do your stories always have a lesson?"_

_"Yes."_

He avoided her gaze, but it clung to him like an unfettered, glaring sunbeam.

_"'Obey'." _

There was a wet, whimpering noise as Sophia sniffed back the loosened mucus—deep in thought, he observed with disgust.

_"I see," _she said thickly. _"It depends on who is telling it, and how it is told. I will tell you more, and afterwards, you may choose to stay or go. Or you may do so now. Are you… are you bored?"_

_"Please. Just go."_

_"Forgive me. I will spare you the details."_

He noticed that her hands were shaking, but perhaps they had always been this way. Her illness must have been maddening her, just as she maddened him. That is how it spread.

_"It is a story of how the dragons and humans__—the ones who _escaped_—_come to live together. There are… many versions of this story, so do not put much stock in mine… but, it starts in… in the middle of nowhere. One of the heroes, Athos, _and his friend, a druid, come upon the dragon refugees… and out of kindness and wisdom, they create for them a sanctuary. They live there, and they learn their secrets. But after many years, the druid becomes twisted. It… it happens to us—to—it happens when we are tempted."_

_"What?"_

She groaned with exhaustion and mouthed something in her own tongue.

_"It is a long story," _she said slowly,_ "and I abridge it for you. He is twisted and tempted, and he uses the secrets in many perverse ways, because no matter his age or his power, he is very… he is very much human. No matter what they may claim, humans are… are prone to such fits of absurdity. And at last, he wishes to… to open portal and bring back the dragon. But before… he can succeed, he is brought down by the descendant of another hero, and… his legendary sword. The dragons the druid tried to… call… return to their homes through the portal… and all is well."_

_"That is it?"_

_"Some… I am sorry. Some other time. I will tell you the whole story some other time. I am sorry, Soren, but I am feeling ill."_

_"But why did the druid—"_

_"One last," _she said abruptly, _"and you may leave. It… it is a known one. You will hear it again. You just… should know what becomes of that captured dragon. The descendant of another hero, Hartmut, goes mad. He is… a powerful king. Wielding the command of his lineage, he… unseals the dragon and… endeavors to use her… I'm sorry, I do not know what came over me."_

Sophia rubbed her face and inched back into a lying position. Her voice was fading.

_"He… unseals her…"_

Closed her eyes.

_"To bring them back… to use the…"_

Soren could not understand the last bit, incomprehensible mumbling.

_"What?" _he whispered.

A groan. Sophia rolled over, turned her back to him.

"Ustrado as in… a chintessa."

Soren waited. She no longer stirred.

Though the very notion flew in the face of reason and his superior faculties, her bedsheets were bulky and piled over her form, and he could not see nor hear her breathing. He leaned over, taking care not to touch her, and lowered a hand before her mouth.

He felt the hot moisture against his skin, and withdrew his arm. It had likely been infected, he realized.

_"Are you awake?" _he tried.

Though he did not expect to rouse her with his pretty language, it gave him a small tingle of satisfaction to call her useless at her sickbed.

It must have given the attendant pause when she slipped in, his barbarian tongue loosened and his voice low and bitter. Dispassionate as ever, she said nothing of their position nor of her lady's condition. She simply strode over to inspect the body, nodded to Soren, and led him away from her silent form.

Later, then. Perhaps they would stay in Pherae. He did not want to talk to Lleu.

* * *

He found Ike exactly where he had left him. They watchers had relocated to the shade of the storehouse—evening had set in, and the shadows had turned. A shrill, raucous call announced his arrival.

"Heis, So_rrrrrr_en!" They liked doing that. "Vena ce-los a traga!"

The knight had taken her seat between Ike and Dart. Out in the sun stood Rebecca and Wil, and their son, whose name Soren could not remember. Rebecca waved, and turned back to her son, straightening the bow held taut in his hands.

"What happened?" Ike whispered as Soren ducked to join him in the shade. With a note of irritation, he saw that the knight was listening closely, and in a way she must have thought inconspicuous.

"I could ask the same," said Soren, eying the young man's release, the whizzing shot, the _plunk _as it planted itself deep in tree bark.

"Target practice. Soren, they're actually pretty good. I mean, really good. It's like they're intentionally trying to breed superior archers."

"Uh, Ike."

"That just sounded really weird, didn't it."

Rebecca accepted the bow from her son, withdrew an arrow from the quiver on the ground, and strode some distance back from his position, which Wil estimated by following her with careful, even steps. She tested the air with a finger, leveled the bow to the target, deliberated, looked to her husband and then to the foreigners, drew, tilted at an angle, aimed, released.

It blurred past, stuck the heart of the makeshift target.

"Eheih, is ainda senco a millore," laughed her son.

"I wonder how Rolf's doing."

That was a bit too abrupt for Soren, but Ike tended to speak his thoughts when they came to him.

But Soren lacked an answer in such immediacy, because after enough time he had started pushing the thoughts away—the birthdays, the baskets of flowers and bread, the tears and snot, shins shaved bloody and raw when Mist and Rhys were not around to tend to them—pushed away to a distant memory, like a dream he and Ike shared and would occasionally recall.

"Very well for himself, if he manages to avoid the toxic influences of his elders."

"I bet they're—the brothers—are doing this. I mean, family archery practice. Rolf is probably playing teacher to them. It's too perfect."

Soren decided not to answer.

"How old is he now?" Ike went on.

"He should be around seventeen."

"Damn. My sister is twenty. Or close to it, anyway."

The silence that followed was either dumbfounded or thoughtful; neither of them really believed it.

"So, you never told me what happened back there," Ike finally said.

"Oh, yes." Soren almost preferred the change of subject. "I have something to show you before we leave. I doubt you're in the mood for another lecture."

"Eh. You usually find a way to make those interesting."

"Heis, ornrar ise viat?" shrieked the knight over their heads. Silhouetted against the rich, cloud-darkened sunset, the figure halted. Soren did not get a clear look at his face until he passed under the outstretched shade of the building, but he could identify his shape almost immediately.

"Damn."

Ike snickered.

"It's funny to you, but _I _have to speak with him directly."

Lleu was no longer raging, and he acknowledged the others with a few words in their language before setting his sights on Soren. He knelt before them, his expression unreadable and his voice flat.

_"You went to Sophia?"_

_"I did," _Soren answered impatiently.

_"How she did?"_

He sounded more worried than forceful, and Soren would have rather seen him off than indulge in his petty paranoia.

_"Tired. She fell asleep."_

Lleu's face hardened, and he muttered something in his own language that the knight, unfortunately, caught.

"So_rrrrrrr_en, is altemente ose copata!"

"Heis, da na!" Lleu snapped at her. She cackled and stood, bending to help Dart to his feet.

"Dige ossos ca neca e ronta a prasar," she said. "E prasar, arbarbs!"

She flew a backwards wave to them, and another to the archers before disappearing around a corner. Lleu did not sink out of his uncomfortable squat, and he did not look back.

_"She is the gutted hen with ten beaks," _he said, and to Soren's profound astonishment, he found himself in agreement.

He continued: _"I make to leaving tomorrow, so decide now. You know where north: we go there. Araphen_. _You will be care for."_

_"Who?"_

_"My brother. Lugh, not Araphen. Araphen is the place. From there, we see. Or you stay, I still go."_

_"But your pay."_

_"I am the beast now, doing for money," _Lleu cried in mock despair, _"I shall bring you on back like the horse, no pay. But no, you decide if you stay. I can make."_

_"Now?"_

Lleu pushed himself to his feet. He looked fat-chinned when Soren looked up at him from the ground, because he could not be bothered to rise to his level.

_"Now or tomorrow, dog."_

With that, he turned and the hem of his robes swept along the prickly grass in front of them.

_"Oh, and dinner soon, so when they come to you, you follow," _he said, indicating the archers with a nod.

They watched him as he left in the same direction as the knight and Dart, and then returned to their practice, what valuable moments they could snatch in the waning sunlight.

"You know," said Ike. "I didn't understand a word of that."

Soren looked at him sidelong, and tried his best to sound dispassionate like the escort.

"You'll be glad to hear that dinner is ready soon."

* * *

Their candle had melted to a nub, and the sounds of footsteps passing in front of their door had long before ceased. Their newfound ritual—shared observations, speculation, pondering, and whatever may happen in between—had since ended.

But Ike had not begun snoring yet. Soren didn't know if he had truly fallen asleep, or merely stopped responding; Ike had humored him by giving him his hand to examine, which he had worried with his thumb so many times over that he may have worsened the blemish. He felt along the bump, the hot, granular crack where the skin had sponged and hardened with the taint of magic; he pressed against the warm creases and folds and calluses. Sometimes, when Ike would lie there almost worryingly still, he would feel for the bloodflow beneath his palm, and then maybe the inside of his wrist, and if Ike did not stir, he would reluctantly reach to the hollow of the neck, behind the jaw, and then urgently to the bicep, his heart, stomach, too thick with muscle, useless, and then inside the hips; and sometimes Ike would wake and misread his intentions, and Soren would pretend, disguise and deny his fits of absurdity.

The wound was not a wound, but a mark, and his fear was not a fear, but a reminder.

The herbs had been long discarded—uneaten, thankfully—and he had no vulneraries on hand. Lleu would certainly bring a staff. He was not _that _vacant, Soren tried to reassure himself. Dipping his head, he felt the pull of sleep urge him down, to the bed, the floor, any flat surface; he could likely rest upright, as he had done many times over during their campaigns, but he did not like the prospects of toppling over Ike and disturbing him. Reaching over to blow out the candle, he crawled the short gap to his bunk and collapsed, prone, over the bedding.

Crickets screeched in their shrill, metallic discord, an owl cried to another, cold wind spilled into their unlit room, and Soren's headache returned to him with a vengeful vigor. He clutched the pillow over his head and waited for it all to subside. They had been offered more of that sickeningly rich wine, and Soren was beginning to regret his decision to abstain.

The moon moved at a crawl, crickets shrieked in the trees, owls copulated at their window, and Soren sat up when he heard footsteps pass the door, and then stop.

They had no conceivable reason to send in an assassin—perhaps Lleu did, just to rid himself of the burden of escorting them—but Soren erred on the side of caution, withdrew the sheathed knife from his pillowcase and fastened it underneath the robe.

It was a useless precaution and he knew it was useless, because he knew exactly who this intruder was, and as far as he knew, it was not an assassin. Ike had taken "some" of the wine, but drink had never deterred his constant alertness; Soren crept to the door, and before he could see the person on the other side, hissed, _"What do you want."_

She stood before him in a bulky robe, eyes downcast.

_"I have something to give you," _she said. Her voice was trembling.

Soren waited.

_"Please, outside," _urged Sophia.

_"Why."_

_"Ike may wake."_

_"And?"_

_"Soren, please. If there are questions, you can only ask tonight."_

It was disruptive, suspicious, and it seemed a little dishonest. Soren knew he could overpower her—or best her in a knife-fight, if by sheer coincidence she happened to conceal a dagger on her person—but he doubted Lleu could as willingly or thoroughly provide answers like Sophia. He glanced back at Ike, and then nodded, easing the door shut behind him.

He only then realized how truly small she was: the cloak bundled around her figure like swaddling, and she was nonetheless cold, shivering and seething through her teeth, to the point that Soren would have sooner laughed than pitied her. She stopped at the end of every hall to catch herself from collapsing into a breathless, dizzy heap—for a moment, it seemed as though she was going to use his arm for support, but thankfully abstained, and by the time they reached the courtyard, she had found a bench to slump into.

_"I needed fresh air," _she breathed. _"Soren, you can sit."_

He remained standing.

_"Very well. I don't think I… finished… the story."_

_"Stop," _he said coldly. _"No story."_

_"Wh-what?"_

_"You think I am child. Tell what happened."_

_"But… we are both children," _she insisted. _"Look at us."_

_"Stop. I am not." _It came out louder, more forceful than he intended, echoed in his ears. Good. He tried to burn a hole through her with his glare—through the cloth and infuriating enigma and the forceful desperation that dripped from her every word—and she lowered her eyes.

_"You are not," _he added, as though delivering a command.

Soren expected some shaken retort. He waited, folded his arms with a premature sense of fiery righteousness.

_"We stopped him." _She resumed the story instead; she avoided his questioning glare. _"But you knew this. You have been told, and you will be told again. Roy took up the sealing sword and slayed the king. And the dragon… the girl… she rejoined her kin. She is scarred; she is healing, like the rest of us. I… I did not return with her."_

She dug into her cloak; Soren tensed as she produced a dagger.

But it was not a dagger. It did not even take the shape of a knife. It was a pale blue, jagged, weighty by the looks of her handling of it.

_"Soren," _she said,_ "I will tell you something. Something that not my husband knows."_

She smoothed her hands around the gem.

_"First, though, what is known already: I can see things, but I cannot know. I feel shapes… touch, formless, pressing on me, but senses can lie. I am wrong as often as I am right. I am all too human."_

Finally, she met his gaze with hers, and her eyes were moister, redder than he remembered from that evening. Sickly, itchy redness, bold against her milky, pale irises.

_"I do not know what you believe about the sight. Perhaps you believe it is foolish. That wit and wisdom alone can best the sharpest of intuitions. And you may be right."_

_"Yes, you do not know me," _he snarled. _"You do not know how I think."_

_ "I… I do not. And I do not know how I think, sometimes. Sometimes I feel two ways… that I am to either drown or burn, or be split and pulled apart from where my legs meet. Like the little fork-bone in a bird." _She made a snapping motion with her hands. _"What my husband does not know is… my sick, I feel… dread. That something dreadful may happen. I feel a storm."_

She squeezed her eyes shut, hugged the layers of robe closer around her chest.

_"I do not want you or Ike to go," _she croaked. _"I fear for you. I fear for Lleu, and I wish to hold him here, sate his thirst for knowing. But… he has someone he holds dear. He may seem unkind, but… Soren, I feel you and he are very much alike."_

The well of his indignation had run dry, and she was a dog scrabbling at the muddy bottom. He only snorted and affected as much derision as his exhaustion would allow.

_"I am done," _he said hoarsely, hoarser than Sophia.

And she accepted this. With a slump of the shoulders, swaying unsteadily to her feet, she looked him over with shy, watery eyes.

_"You will not stay," _she said—declared, stated as fact—and though it had been said meekly, Soren sensed the defiant intentions behind it. "I know this," she was saying. "I know this as well as you do."

And before he could turn to leave, because his word had been final, she snatched his wrist.

"Unhand me!" he snapped in Common, too startled to translate, and the stone was planted firm between his hand and hers. It felt as though she had pushed it into his flesh, sunken in like seeds in pliable soil, and it did not hurt because the shock was burning away the nerves of his palm.

Her grip did not tighten, yet held firm. She tilted her head down, peered up at him with shadowed eyes as a numbness settled over; had she poisoned him? He thought to pull away and retaliate, but his fingers were too sluggish. Nausea swept through his system, and dispersed. He could hear his own breaths, the ragged panting, maddeningly loud between his ears. He could hear his heartbeat.

It slowed and grew louder, bursting like a kickdrum against his ears—Sophia's hands seemed to keep him upright, from sinking through the flagstone and into the earth. Their shadows joined, clashed together on the wall behind her, tall and ugly, monstrous. They pulsed at the edge, and Soren realized that this was not unlike the creeping onset of inebriation.

"Soren."

He was slowly enveloped by the sickly warmth, and the bitter compliance, and that incessant pounding. She had wrapped her fingers over his by the time his head cleared, but the pulsing continued to ripple through his body. It tore, bore through him, like the rush of magic. In, out, to, fro, back, forth, wave after wave tugging his sodden corpse.

_"I do not know if you will go," _she said weakly, and he wondered if the swaying was her, or within his head. _"I do not know."_

She held the stone against her breast, and with it Soren's useless hands. The feeling was not so much like magic anymore—magic drilled through you, followed the turbulent path through your bones, ripping, suction, expulsion. These glided through him now, up his fingers and arms and past his eyes in little shoots.

_"This belonged to my father."_

She loosened his hands, and he found himself clutching the gem with his own fingers.

_"I do not know," _she repeated, as though desperately convincing him. _"I do not know what you will do, so I ask you this. I ask that you think on what you will do. And if you leave, please keep this, and… return it to me. If you think circumstances shall… make this impossible, come back, return it to me immediately. You are both always welcome here."_

_"Why are you doing this," _he demanded, refusing his urge to examine and pocket the stone.

But he knew the answer. Both of them.

Belongingness. And then reassurance. To make him stay, to have him indulge her petty paranoia.

She turned her head and looked up at a glowing window. Soren had not noticed it until now.

_"My husband is awake," _she said dreamily. Soren jerked away from her. She noticed this—and a flash, just a flash of amusement crossed her face. _"He is more worried of the cold."_

He had wanted to return to his room alone, but Sophia accompanied him half of the way. Accompanied with that slow, halting wobbling, that long, dragging hair, sweeping behind them like a trailing broom, until they reached his corridor. And he looked down at her with a practiced, subdued sneer.

_"I will think about it."_

A rustle, a sniff. She did not show her face.

_"Goodnight, Soren."_

He left her without a word, did not glance behind to see if she watched him off. Only when he reached the outside of their door did he turn his head, and Sophia—the shadow, the floating apparition, sister demon—had vanished. His fingers grazed the handle, and he listened through the wood for Ike. Deep, even, heavy, reassuring breaths.

He opened the door with care, and shut it with care. Crickets chirped, owls hummed, and the moon had lifted in an arc over the castle, throwing a deep, peaceful shadow over the garden and trees beyond. Soren's headache passed. His heart tightened, and the words swelled at his throat, and his hand trembled above Ike's shoulder, and the desire to wake him ached and throbbed like a gaping hollow in his chest.

The stone weighed heavy in his palm. He squeezed his fingers over it, tried to crush it into a dust, but it was hard-edged and sharp and he stopped.

Ike would not disappear in his sleep. Ready ears, comforting words—they would always be at hand.

Reliable. A constant.

Soren resigned to his bed, slumped with his back to the ceiling, his arms in his face, and the scabbard and stone pressing hard into his belly, boots sluggishly kicked off his feet, one and then the other. Words later, sleep for now. They would need their energy.


	9. Stalking Menace

Being _sick_-sick sucks, and so does being sick in the desert heat, and so does trashing a bunch of writing (read: chatter, rumination, OC bullshit, etc) to avoid complete plot stagnation. Okay the last one doesn't really suck, it's more of a necessity!

* * *

Stalking Menace

Lleu had hoped to make an early departure. The Pheraens had made certain to foul up the simplest of plans.

"There is potential for danger," Roy had said. "I don't mean to alarm you, but I could not, in good conscience, see you off unaided. Lance and Allen are headed north, anyway, so there's no trouble at all."

Well, it was no trouble for them, but it meant more waiting for Lleu.

He doubted Roy would have shown such consideration if it weren't for his company. The question was whether they were protective measures "for the goods" or "from the goods". Lleu had been admittedly very thoughtless in agreeing to General Cecilia's ill-conceived offer, however handsomely it paid; every movement from Soren felt to him like a burst of aggression, a pursuit quickly abandoned. If nothing else, Lleu would come out of this journey a skittish mess and his hair some shade of gray.

Rebecca and the chef had seized the advantage of Lleu's ensnarement and baked an overabundance of cakes and buns and sweets to encumber their packs and their stomachs. She was loosely arranging a batch over a thin cloth as the chef waxed lyrical about the hallowed recipe-collection, speaking in low tones that trembled under the weight of his awe. Lleu then regretted abiding his time in the kitchen.

"Just as the texts of Elimine," the chef began solemnly, then paused, separating the dough into fat ridges with flour-coated fingers, "are the province of holy men—" Molded them into rounds. "Just as the law—justice, and the sanctity of each individual's wellbeing—is the province of the knights who uphold it—the _recipe book_…"

His hands slumped to his sides, and he gazed up to the high window and stream of late-morning sunlight—as far as Lleu could tell, at least. With how his hair hung over his eyes, it was more likely he did very little gazing.

"The recipe book is province to the chefs—the men and women, keepers to a noble, time-tested doctrine, and guardians to the secrets therein. There is poetry to the pages, you know."

The realization struck that the chef was not speaking to Rebecca, his companion, nor to himself, but to Lleu.

"A symbolism beyond the dimensions of mere instruction! Just as the fabled spells that did not harness the elements, but were harnessed _by _the elements—"

"Fabled? Antiquated," Lleu corrected with a snort, but the chef ignored him.

"—such as the scraps of parchment one was to toss in the fire to sear away a malady, or other such nonsense—the recipe book's _wear_, its _mark _from the elements, serves as testament to the vitality of the recipes themselves—the longevity, the potency, and you might say the _magical properties_—"

Lleu was conflicted yet grateful for the sudden entrance of his less favored Pheraens.

"Hope there'll be enough for two more," interrupted the repellent soldier, pressing her bulk against the edge of the counter. She was not dressed in the usual tunic, but a loud, red brigandine, and even worse, Lleu could see the handle of an axe protruding from over her shoulder.

"Wait, the marquess is sending you too?" he asked.

"Sending me? I _want _to go. Consider my curiosity piqued by these newcomers."

Lleu tried not to think about it. From behind her, he saw Sophia's caretaker, unnervingly still and aggravatingly wooden. Held against her pale, emerald-green breastplate, a tome, and on her hip, a scabbard.

"What the hell are _you _doing here?"

"I will be accompanying you to Araphen."

"No, you won't," Lleu said with the force of an order, and Rebecca and the chef stilled their work entirely. "Because Sophia needs you to care for her."

"Lady Sophia said the same of you when I received my orders."

"Oh my god."

He squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the wrinkled bridge of his nose.

"Can you not practice a _little _discretion? Would you poison her drink if she said she liked the taste?"

There was no answer from the knight.

"We must do that which we are able," the chef offered, hesitantly returning to his work—the booming gravity had left his words. "That which is our duty."

"Did my father tell you that."

"He did indeed!" he cried in sudden agitation. "He's instilled quite the sense of commitment in you, too! It is said, after all, that devoutness—and our calling, ultimately—runs through the blood."

The silence that followed betrayed her lapse in thought, her expression unchanging.

"That may be," she said at last. Then to Lleu: "And I have seen to it that no harm shall befall Lady Sophia in my absence."

Pressing the argument any further would have only made a scene. He had another duty-bound dog at his heels, but to decline—forcibly reject—Sophia's aid would have upset her more than having to abide with other servants, god forbid her doting husband.

"In addition," the steward continued, "Lady Sophia has seen to it that you will not part from her assurance without ample preparation."

She held the dark-faced tome flat before him as though presenting a platter of hors d'oeuvres. Lleu cursed when he accepted and nearly dropped it.

"It is suggested that you handle the tome with care unless circumstances necessitate otherwise."

"This is heavy as shit," he grunted, locking it stably against his chest. It was going in a saddlebag once they brought one of the horses to him, preparedness be damned. "Where did she get it?"

"It has been held in storage for the duration of her residence in Pherae."

"If I can borrow this, then why is she sending you?"

"Presumably to carry it."

It could have passed for humor, though it was more likely that the concept was beyond her, Lleu thought. She accepted the tome and agreed to load it up when he made the "suggestion", and only then did he see the use in her boundless compliance.

They had baked more than enough to accommodate for two more travelers; as he struggled with the weight of an overstuffed packs of goods, Lleu realized Rebecca had overcompensated for Ike's sake. Despite the druid's insistence that they would replenish their necessary supplies in Khathelet, Allen and Lance hitched the packs of needless delicacies to their mounts and suited up for travel.

Lleu soon found himself practically alone in the entrance hall but for the occasional fleeting servant; the other "house guests" were due to depart with him.

Then the foreigners walked in empty-handed and thankfully unarmed, until Lleu remembered that this wasn't enough to deter the chance burst of violence. Roy, Wil, and Rebecca had come to see them off, and Lleu thought he was free to leave until Roy nodded him over.

"Please tell them that they are welcome to return here whenever the need or desire strikes them," he said. "My wife and I extend that offer to you as well, Lleu."

He placed his hand over his shoulder, but seemed to change his mind the moment before touching him.

"Uh, thanks. Thank you very much," he said, drawing the marquess's hand in a loose clasp before quickly dropping the gesture.

Soren watched from aside, making no effort to hide his impatience; Lleu could tell by the word he muttered in his language, undoubtedly some vulgar and aptly boorish epithet. He turned to the foreigner.

_"He wants—"_

_"I know," _he interrupted. _"The sun is high and still we are here."_

_"I woke before sun and still I am here," _hissed Lleu. _"You whine like the dog too."_

_"I never woke."_

"He says they're indebted to you." Lleu abandoned the argument while Soren continued to complain like a dog in their growling tongue.

"Hanne ir en gar stovhul."

"Vamnem sottir?"

The others were skeptical—skeptical was too generous, they simply did not believe him—but continued with farewells. Disregarding courtly formalities and the foreigners' outstretched hands, Wil clapped them both on the shoulders and spoke as though they understood him, which was not impossible, Lleu supposed.

"I won't be there to keep an eye on you, so do it for each other, alright?"

"Aum… yes!" Ike grinned. "Yes."

When her turn came, Rebecca joined hands with them, a ritual they had clearly practiced. Lleu almost laughed at Soren's unease when her thick fingers squeezed around his, but he had not expected her to step closer and embrace him, pinning his arms to his sides and pressing her crown against his jaw.

"Be safe."

He did not return it and Lleu could tell he did not enjoy it.

"Thank you."

But he did not expect him to tolerate it so readily.

"And do eat!" she whispered before she moved on to Ike, who was far more receptive—he had the benefit of a warning.

Lleu did as well, but it still came as a surprise when she reached him and scooped him against her chest. He was inclined to shove her away and storm out, but he had likely already put the castle guard on alert from one too many outbursts.

Instead, he managed an "um".

"Forgive me," she laughed, releasing him. "You… reminded me of someone. Thank you for humoring my folly."

And then, looking through him with smiling eyes, "You really are as bright as I've been told. I trust you."

Lleu dropped his gaze to the floor; the nobility favored such fine, distracting footwear.

"Th-thanks. I need to make sure everything's in order," he blurted quickly, and before he turned to scurry out through the entranceway: "If you need anything else, I'll be in the front."

He did not look back.

* * *

Until some days after his departure, it did not follow him. It was not until the dead of night—in pitch-darkness, somehow, that his Shadow returned.

That was the name Lleu had given to his delusions.

Fellow druids were a rare find in his travels, and Sophia had thankfully spared him from magic talk during his visits, but Lleu theorized it was a repercussion of his studies—that the darkness manifested itself to varying effect, and how appropriate it was that his should stalk him at the periphery rather than swallow him head on. _Get it over with_, he almost wanted to yell at points, into the void of the treeline and empty fields. _You've sized me up plenty; just do whatever it is you want with me._

But Lleu fancied himself an exceedingly rational young man. Lleu, who had never been afraid of the dark—that was Lugh. Lleu, who at times harbored secret doubts in God's existence—Lugh would have heard none of it. Father Lucius would have been disappointed, maybe.

Perhaps it was Father Lucius's ghost hanging over him to prove a point. Except Father Lucius never "proved a point"; upon hearing his blasphemy, he would have made some tea, taken him aside, dispensed gentle reassurance: _"I understand that you are searching for answers; I will not lie and tell you I am pleased, because above all else I treasure our relationship of mutual trust and respect, and that obliges honesty—both as your caretaker and as a fellow adult, because, Lleu, you are of a very adult disposition. And in all honesty I can say that God loves you, I love you, and your brother loves you, because you are wonderful no matter where your searching may take you. And that will never change."_

Lleu detested his vulnerability, his overreliance in his brother's generosity, but Lugh and Father had always been so patient with him that to imagine otherwise almost hurt. And then Lleu would berate himself for the absurdity and sentimentality, which for all he was concerned were one and the same.

It was also absurd to be thankful for his bloated company of knights and foreigners, because they were a burden and a nuisance more than whatever use they presented. But they liked to entertain themselves, and they provided a lasting distraction from the Shadow—as well as a refreshing sense of security, because while Soren still put him on edge whenever he wandered off the road or reemerged from the trees, it was at least a _tangible _threat.

Ike almost endeared to him, though he had no reason to admit it to anyone. The more talkative knights had unburdened Lleu by taking on the task of instruction, however woefully inept their efforts. Beyond basic courtesies and greetings and niceties, the foreigners had memorized some phrases that they would find practical in everyday interaction—_I do not understand _or _may you repeat that_—but above all, apologizing had become a reflex for them.

The knights took to teaching them the names of objects as they passed, which only worked for the lesser part of an afternoon. Maeve, the fat one—sturdily-built, she insisted—was particularly eager to impart her useless knowledge. Look! Trees, rocks, hoof prints, flowers, clouds, foothills, vineyard, caravan, uh, what are those flowers, Sir Lance? Snapdragon, thistle, amaranth, oleander, alkanet, goldendrop. Move on to anatomy, far more important.

Shoulders, bosom, wrists, hand—hey, Ike, how _is _your hand?

Then lesson ended for the day when Soren wedged himself between Ike and the prying woman and claimed ignorance when she protested. He apologized and shrugged.

By evening, the lessons resumed as they found a flat, empty plot of grass to set up camp. Bedrolls, breastplate, bread… firewood, kindling, tinder, fire… fire…

Making a rumbling sound in his throat that may have been a word, Soren snatched the rock from her hands. Lleu nearly shot to his feet when he steadied her hatchet and struck the flint against its blade, Maeve helplessly clinging to its handle all the while.

Their fire had caught, and though the night was mild, everyone instinctively moved a little closer.

Sky, moon, stars—she turned to Lance and asked whether he could identify the constellations, to which he declined. The essentials first.

She paid this no heed, and had Lleu ask if they knew any lullabies in their language.

Yes.

Will they sing one?

No. Lleu didn't even ask; he already knew the answer.

Then the "unmentionables" would come up time and time again—the questions that the foreigners hesitated to answer, often raising questions of their own, or abandoning the focus like a couple of disobedient hounds.

Family? Occupation? Age?

Well, age was unmentionable in Soren's case, and Lleu figured he did not know the answer himself; not every child learned their birthday. Ike was twenty-two, a revelation that both surprised and shamed Lleu. Barely a year his senior, and he could easily snap him in half. Not that Lleu's teenage years had not seen such reminders of his inadequacies, but he was past those, and past the point of shifting blame on his age. He was a man now: thunder spells rolled off his back like rain on canvas, and thunder tomes leveled him like a tempest through a structure of twigs.

The knights pressed on.

Occupation? They were jobless now. What were they doing when they came this way? Looking for jobs, obviously.

Allen asked if they had siblings.

Soren's answer made no sense to him, at first. Lleu wondered if he could, in time, learn something of the regional differences in the language, but now was not that time.

He settled upon _"I was the only child."_ Turning to Ike, he "translated", though Lleu suspected there was more to it than that. "Vil skerr aug leja ofr sje duher eng vangar."

Predictably, they avoided the question. Soren told him that there must have been a misunderstanding, and Ike gave his goodnights in his garbled accent before settling into his bedroll.

They established everyone's shift for watch: Lleu's would come last, near the edge of dawn, and Lance urged him to sleep soundly.

The knights briefly considered allowing the foreigners to cover for at least part of the night and lessen the duty's burden on everyone, but Lleu quickly shut down the idea. He wouldn't be able to sleep with that knowledge, anyway. "Might as well give me their shifts."

Lance conceded to this, bade him goodnight.

Lleu willed himself to sleep well, to no avail. Uncertainty plagued his night; creatures would set upon him, Death in its dusty druid robes would cup his chin and caress his useless form, and he found himself repeatedly waking to a low fire and the unconcerned, comforting face of whoever had taken watch, the uncanny stillness of the foreigners' bodies. Then he would sleep again, and again, dream of waking—dream of impeding threats, of forest imps and devil snakes lurking in the thickets, dragging a flickering shadow as they swept through camp. He dreamed, and his legs were great weights, and his arms boneless, and the elder tome just within reach, fastened to the earth. Materialized over the fire as the Shadow engulfed it, face agape and vacant. He dreamed—and again woke with hard earth pressing against his cheek, and wound up like a snake when Soren rose to his feet, muscles snapping with the dying flame, and cast him a suspicious glance before retreating into the woods to urinate, and Lleu would not rest until he returned. It had been Celen's shift then; she regarded him with an impassive once-over, and he trusted that she would not mention his panic-stricken idiocy the next day.

When Lance finally woke him, he felt as though he had slept very little. The foreigners were asleep by then, from what he could tell, and his face must have betrayed his exhaustion, because Lance offered to take up his shift as soon as he was lucid enough to understand.

Lleu thanked him and declined. He was not so weak or ineffective.

He regretted his decision once Lance's breathing settled, joined the collective of snores, and their breaths joined the eeriness of the darkened wilderness. After gathering up his courage, Lleu retreated from the safety of the embers to rummage through Allen and Lance's saddlebags for the tome, which was easy enough to locate given its size. He hauled it back to his station and sat cross-legged, in the style of the nomads, so he could lay the book open in his lap.

Having stoked the fire, he could make out the words on a given page, but the complexity of the structure strained his head, and in the dimness, the twisting script strained his eyes. He closed them and rested his face in his hands.

"Hello."

Lleu jumped out of his half-sleep when the Shadow spoke to him and prepared to scream awake the others.

Until he noticed Ike watching him from across the fire, propped up by an arm and strangely alert.

"Oh, hey." He breathed in slowly, shut the tome louder than he had intended. "Did you want something?"

"Uh… yes."

Ike sat up, taking care that the bedroll did not rustle with his movements. Then, stilling, he eyed him warily: "You sleep?"

"Huh? No, it's my shift."

"Ha?"

"I'm watching," he said slower, pointing to his eyes.

"Ah. I can watching?"

_Ah. _Lleu drew his knees up and rested his chin there; it was going to be a long day.

"No, it's fine. You ought to sleep."

Ike only shrugged, cracking the stiffness from his neck and rolling his shoulders back.

"You, uh…" He stopped. "You… hm."

"Do you need to wake Soren?"

"Uh."

"Wake him up." He spoke slower now, his patience wearing thin. "I mean, have him talk for us."

"No, sorry. No sleep." Ike nodded over to the motionless bundle beside him. "Uh, it do nothing. Sorry."

"It does nothing? Wait, what does nothing?"

"Ah, it does nothing. That… sorry."

"It's… fine. Uh, goodnight."

But he did not lie down again, nor did he say another word; Ike's eyes rested on the fire, orange and moistened, the tip of his nose glazed with sweat and the shadows of his hair boldened by the contrast. Lleu realized that his unquestioning nature made him the most tolerable company of the lot, and a small part of him was ambivalent, but grateful to share his waking hours with some outlander who could disarm a band of Ogier's mercenaries if the mood struck him. Lleu thought himself an exceedingly rational young man, but he was not immune to human folly, or else he would have foregone the shift entirely.

He returned his fading attention to the pages of the tomes, and had thought Ike asleep until he reached over to feed the fire with the fuel Maeve had left in a pile beside them.

"Lleu," he tried hoarsely; it struck Lleu as odd for the foreigner to address him so directly, but he feigned apathy.

"Huh."

"Do not you brother?"

Lleu peered up from the book.

"Do I what?"

Ike rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand, apologized.

"Soren tell me."

"Oh. I'm not sure what you were trying to say there."

Ike raised an eyebrow. Somewhere in the forest, a lone robin warbled to its sleeping kin.

"Yeah. I have a twin brother," Lleu continued. "Twin. We were born at the same time."

He raised two fingers, as though that would explain it any better.

"Yes."

"And… he's a really nice person. You'll like him. It's impossible not to."

No response. Lleu carefully eyed the sleeping forms of their party; most had turned their backs to the fire or hidden their faces in their sheets, but he could tell by the even rhythm of their breaths that they would not be so easily roused. When no one stirred, he continued.

"He's too nice, actually. I sort of… dropped everything and abandoned him. On multiple occasions. Most people'd disown me out of anger, and honestly, I'd prefer that. All Lugh does is worry, and it makes me feel like even more of a piece of shit. Selfish, right?"

When he gave a sheepish smile and Ike returned it in kind, he ascertained that the foreigner could barely understand him.

"So as far as brothers go, I'm probably the worst. Though it's funny; being away for a while gives me a clearer idea of what I want to do with myself. And if everything goes smoothly, I might have the means to make it up to him and the little ones. Guess I've got you to thank for that! You and whatever compelled you to wander all the way out here, that is."

Ike said nothing, and Lleu was grateful. They both settled into a long, pensive silence, and despite his avowed indifference towards the foreigners' affairs, he found himself wondering what, if anything, gave Ike cause to be pensive.

Soren woke while it was still dark and seemed more surprised than anything by the sight of them awake. Ike immediately straightened, almost self-consciously, and greeted him.

"Bittes vos."

"Good morning," his companion responded—corrected—in practiced, but accented Common. Ike imitated him to sloppy effect. Lleu had expected them to retreat behind the barrier of their barbaric tongue, however it inconvenienced them and their escorts, but perhaps they realized that it came off as uncouth.

Or so Lleu thought, until their conversation continued.

"Ig en fekkst ash endlig sov."

"Has at visk mepvi?"

Ike laughed at this, then stood and began rolling up his bedding. It must have been an insult at Lleu's expense.

_"He thought there was thunder," _Soren said over his shoulder, kneeling to gather his own bedding.

"Thunder? _Snore?"_

The mage turned, regarded him with cold, steady scrutiny.

"Yes," he said in Common, drawing Ike's attention as he waded a path into a thicket. And then, in the old tongue, _"I have been accustomed to that."_

* * *

After some empty days—empty roads, empty skies, empty stomachs as Lance pushed their breaks to later and later in the evening—the knights tired of the language lessons, and the foreigners tired of the prying that then ensued, some of which they entertained until Soren's attempts at both tongues degraded to incomprehensibility, a fairly transparent ruse that the Pheraens nonetheless accepted.

What little information they supplied was infuriatingly vague—it only provided fuel for speculation. Their lands were arable and their waters brimming with fish, their courts lavish and their animals fearsome. That led to dreams of abundance, wealth, luxury, and to Allen and Maeve, particularly bigger meat dishes. That would have explained Ike's appetite, in the very least. Theirs was an alluring exoticism, however invented.

Ike was "almost undoubtedly royalty of some sort", intentionally affecting stupidity to lower their guard. Soren must have been an adviser, perhaps a steward, since the occupation apparently lent itself well to humorless young women. The question of siblings that Ike had avoided the other night? He had a brother, of course. An elder brother, first in line to the throne. Now Ike's "crime", the reason for his "exile", became a point of contention. Allen shrugged and said that he seemed decent enough; in this fantasy scenario, should the elder brother be killed, Ike would serve as the perfect scapegoat for the assassins. A tragic hero, of sorts. Maeve maintained that under some circumstances, fratricide could be justified, in a purely romantic sense. Perhaps his brother was a tyrant, cruel and overindulged, cold, methodical, merciless. Perhaps he passed his nights in barns and stables. _Perhaps their culture allowed that sort of depravity. _

No one even mentioned Soren's mark; it was taken to be an emblem of his people, like the designs or piercings or serrated lips of some tribesmen in Sacae, and if Soren wanted to disclose the meaning, it would happen on his own terms. Clearly a tribesman whose clan of mystics had been captured and slaughtered under the orders of Ike's brother, spared for his proficiency in the magical arts, though this was a point of the theory Lleu contested. No, spared by Ike, because that was far more heroic. Naturally, per the customs that they made up on the spot, Soren would become his slave, and a fast but unlikely friendship would form over the arrangement.

Another favored, less extravagant theory: religious exiles. That Soren would possess such an extensive knowledge of the old tongue lent credence to the idea, Lleu had to admit—here, Elimine's flock was known to butt heads with the animistic and elder schools, but for all he knew, magical studies could have been outright banned in their country. They could have been apostates; reticence may have been a way of life to them. It comforted Lleu to think this, especially over the notion that he had agreed to accompany a pair of notorious thieves, murderers, rapists—escaped slaves, with a murderous grudge against decadence. Let alone perverts.

But even speculation grew tiring, and as they drew nearer to the city of Khathelet, they—again, Allen and Maeve—took to exchanging jokes. Allen ran out of jokes at the second round. Incidentally, his grated on Lleu the least.

"Two men, one from Etruria and one from Lycia, are holding a conversation—of boasts, mostly—at a tavern."

From the corner of his eye, he saw her slide a knowing glance. Translate, it said.

"Says the Etrurian: 'Our country, she is the mother of mathematics and philosophy.'"

No, he replied, by obscuring his line of sight with his manuscript and refusing to acknowledge her.

"'We gave the world the finest drinks,' argues the Lycian."

The "spell" dated up to, perhaps, the turn of the last millennium. The language was entirely outmoded—it had been this way since man had claimed the continent as his turf, and theirs the mother tongue. But deciphering this particular piece had proven nightmarish. More so than his typical examinations.

"'Eh, yes, but we gave you magic, and enlightenment in the form of Saint Elimine's word.'"

Not only the language, but the matter of the "spell" itself discouraged him: when that witch had entrusted it to him when they parted, it somewhat disheartened him to realize that she had left him a "poem" to study.

"'The minds of our strategists are unrivalled, even by those of Bern,' the Lycian declares."

He had set it aside out of embarrassment for years, until years later, a reexamination of the structure revealed to him that it might not have been even a poem, but a recipe—perhaps a mundane procedure, because in the ancient ages, to a young and naive scholar of the modern era, in structure, in variety of usage, in complexity, the different forms were nigh indistinguishable.

"The Etrurian, now impatient, says, 'Yes, well, we invented lovemaking.'"

The nature, the meaning, and the purpose of the piece was a mystery that Lleu had made it his personal quest to solve without the aid of others, least of all Sophia, who appeared to have abandoned her own studies upon settling down. He would have been mortified to disclose such a shortcoming to his friend, but a part of him feared she already knew.

It was a recipe in language so archaic and winded that it rendered a procedure as simple as what appeared to be _boiling water _an incomprehensible mess that defied years of tireless studying and revisiting. Lleu liked to attempt to decipher it as a reminder of his worth as an individual, because when he could call upon the history of man and sentience at will, he slowly came to comprehend his dearth of knowledge, of ability—that his studies, his life and his death were of little consequence to this universe and the laws of reason that governed it, however shoddily.

_You can't read a goddamn soup recipe if it's old enough. You're just like the dogs, and you've always been a dog._

"The Lycian thinks on this for a while. And then he says, 'You are right.'"

_You're worse than them. They piss on your soil, piss on your Shadow, then throw your book in your face. You whine, they growl, and you retreat to a lady's lap like a self-soiling pet too soft and too stupid to live on its own._

"'And _we_ introduced it to women.'"

Allen chuckled heartily; knights were so prideful.

"We _are _going to be at an orphanage," Lleu butted in at last, breaking away from his loathing self-reflection. "Keep that tongue in your head if you don't want it burned off."

"Sorry," laughed Allen. Lance acknowledged them by briefly raising his head, then returned to his map; the foreigners hung a length behind the rest of the group, where they spoke among themselves in hushed, growling tones. It was just as well, because their language was distracting and Lleu _knew _they were speaking ill of them.

"Who's 'we'?" Maeve asked. "Celen and I are heading right on back once we've delivered your precious cargo. Hey, it's too bad you've stopped translating. I think they would have liked that one."

"What makes you think that."

She grinned.

"Nothing, I mean who wouldn't? Oh, that reminded me. Sir Lance! What is the difference between an orphanage and a brothel?"

"I do not know," he said absently, without glancing up.

A gasp of mock horror.

"You _monster._"

"… Oh."

"Desse fyr er lega far stov kur."

Soren's voice climbed to a sharp bark, sharp enough to catch Lleu's notice.

"Ha?"

The foreigners stopped some distance behind the group, and when Lleu checked back, they stood stock still.

"What is it?" he demanded. Soren squinted at the wooded roadside, taut and alert like a startled deer.

"We are follow," he said, and everyone was too busy drawing their weapons to correct his mangled Common. Panicked, Lleu thought to reach for a saddlebag and retrieve the tome, but found himself wedged between Celen and Allen, the latter of which stepped forward to cover his unarmed, unarmored back.

Instantly, flashes of the dream returned to him, the Shadow, skirting at the edge of their perception, driving barbarians into a brutal frenzy. He wasn't sure where to face, the foreigners or the sounds from deep within the forest, crashing nearer and nearer until the figure sprung into view, sword drawn.

"Woah, wait!" Maeve shrieked, close enough to shatter their ears as cleanly as a hammer.

It was a young woman, Lleu realized, vaguely familiar—at her hip, she sheathed a Sacaen sword, but her stance remained guarded.

"Sir Allen, Sir Lance!" she cried from the shelter of the undergrowth. "Maeve, erm—"

"Fir?" exclaimed the knight, ducking her face away from the sun's glare. "That's you, isn't it?"

"From the Western Isles?" Allen said to Lance, who nodded.

Maeve came forward first, laying her axe on the ground before rushing down to meet their pursuer.

"It _is _you," she laughed. "What the hell are you doing, sneaking around us like that?"

"I—forgive me," panted Fir, giving a wide berth to the watchful foreigners. "I saw your group from a distance and… mistook you for someone else."

"What?" Maeve halted in her tracks.

"Someone of whom we should be aware," Celen inquired quietly behind Lleu; no one seemed to hear her.

"Well, you should know." Fir's guard did not drop as Maeve came within a pace away from her, nor did she flinch—unlike Lleu, who nearly yelped when she caught a punch from the knight.

She laughed, and he realized that they were grasping hands in greeting.

"I'm pleased to see you, even under these circumstances," Fir said.

Their fingers stayed interlocked. It was not until Lleu noticed the tremor in Fir's arm that he realized that Maeve had seized her in a grapple.

"It's mutual. But really," she said through a grin, or gritted teeth, "you're being awfully vague about these circumstances. Am I seeing this right? A young lady like yourself?"

Her own arm trembling, she pressed Fir's wrist further backwards with every question.

"Traveling alone? In these times? Barely armed?"

"I will not scorn your suspicions," Fir grunted, applying her own force, "but I will not be so easily cowed. I am meeting with someone in Khathelet. It's a manageable journey from Tania. And as you can see, I've been exercising adequate _caution_."

Her voice strained with exertion, she twisted Maeve's arm to the side.

"Had you been a pack of bandits, I wouldn't have revealed myself." They were deadlocked again. "I had planned to pass you by, but my hesitation had proven _groundless._"

"Good god, yes, I know!" Maeve slackened her hold, and Fir limply wrenched her hand away. "I just wanted to test your grip, that's all."

"I see." She narrowed her eyes—narrower, distinctly Sacaen, Lleu noted with some disdain. "That's something my father would say. To… your father."

"Yeah. We have it backwards, I think."

Fir rubbed her knuckles and finally regarded the remainder of the party, a half-circle of baffled spectators.

"Erm, Sir Allen! Sir Lance! Well met," she laughed, dropping her arm and approaching them.

"Well met, Fir," Lance said with a nod.

Her Sacaen eyes trained over Lleu, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence as she dredged up names. Sacaen, but not Sacaen, in the same the dragons had been humans not human; a half-breed, he could tell by her features, and by the faint memories of her decidedly un-Sacaen father.

He wasn't sure where his discomfort with the nomads had originated; his brother harbored no such sentiments, and Araphen had been hub for Sacaen trade for as far back as he could remember.

"Lleu," she said at last. "The druid. You are with Pherae now?"

Despite Lleu's initial discomfort, Fir's memory warmed him up to her more easily than he would ever admit.

"I'm not. They've been ordered to accompany me to Araphen." He deliberately neglected to mention Ike and Soren's part in it. "But… your, uh, appearance is the closest we've brushed with danger."

"That seems sensible," she said, strangely cordial as she nursed her aching wrist. "There's… seven of you? And the attacks were rumored to happen in pairs; you don't strike me as the most opportune of targets."

"Pairs? The first I've heard of that," Allen muttered.

"Given especially your prowess, I'd imagine there's little cause for worry," she continued. The foreigners clearly hadn't escaped her notice, but she considered them carefully, and spoke just as Lleu prepared to introduce them.

"Pardon me; I don't believe we've met. Are you Pheraen knights as well? My name is Fir."

She extended her hand towards Celen, who took it in her own.

"I am Celen, and I am a knight in Pherae's service."

"Well met. I fought in Lord Roy's campaign against Bern alongside Sir Allen and Sir Lance, and Maeve is a family friend," she explained, before moving to the foreigners.

"Ike."

He clasped her hand without hesitation; it might have been the abrasive sensation of his wound, or the strength of his grip over her crushed, but Fir seemed uncertain, uncomfortable, and her smile a weak concession to etiquette. Her hand lingered on his, however, and he had to step away before she faced his companion.

"Soren," he said, taking her fingers gingerly, and releasing as though the touch burned him. To Lleu's dismay, he continued in rehearsed, stiff Common: "We are not Pheraen."

The accent—the heavy, dragging consonants, the garbled pronunciation, the _wrongness—_tipped her off immediately.

"Well met," she said uneasily. "Where are… where are you from, then?"

"The accent doesn't sound familiar?" Lleu cut in and seized the conversation from Soren's hands. Despite the foreigner's apparent capacity for understanding, Lleu had grown too accustomed to speaking as though he could not hear him, let alone comprehend his words.

"Should it? Are you from Sacae?" she asked Soren, enlivened and eager.

"Fir knows shit about Sacae," Maeve explained with a grin.

This appeared to chafe Fir, but she confessed regardless.

"My mother didn't talk a lot about Sacae, or the tribes or languages. I couldn't give you an informed opinion, myself. Oh, forgive me!" she said, painfully aware of Soren's attention. "I'm being rude."

"Don't worry about it," Lleu said, again in Soren's stead. "I was just curious if you knew that accent; it's got nothing to do with Sacae. They're barbarians, not plainsmen."

Not that one excluded the other, he thought to himself.

To seal off that line of speculation, he added, "Besides, it's not like they can really understand you."

To his relief, neither of the foreigners contradicted him.

"Erm… I see. Where are they from, again?"

Soren's lack of a reaction seemed to unsettle her. There was a heavy silence, and within Lleu a small twinge of regret. They very well understood him.

Maeve broke the silence with a clap, startling him to attention.

"That's for another time, then! So, Fir! I guess that means you're stuck with us until Khathelet?"

"Not if it's any trouble," she said firmly, as relieved by the subject change as Lleu, from what he could tell. "I've been getting along fine on my own for some time now, so don't feel obligated to drag me along if it's out of some misplaced sense of protection."

"Right, you're goddamn niece to the Saint of Swords."

"I am not only _that_! I believe we are more than the—"

"Fine, I get it," Lleu interrupted her. "It's just to Khathelet, right? Come aboard. If only you were here last night."

She seemed taken aback by his forthrightness. Never again, he thought.

"I understand. Thank you, Lleu."

An idea had struck him before, but it was too ridiculous a notion for Lleu to entertain—it was, however, _verifiably_ ridiculous. There was little chance that Fir had chosen to, for whatever reason, stalk their group like a herd of game, and if that had been the situation, she would have little reason to reveal herself to them now. It was illogical, but it would have comforted him more to have his Shadow bare itself in the shape of an old ally, a young, clear-eyed woman.

"Um, and Fir?"

"What is it?"

"You said you're coming from Tania, right?"

"Why? Has something happened to Tania?"

"Oh, no, I was just… wait, you'd know, wouldn't you?"

She averted her eyes to the empty distance, sheepishly hesitant.

"I've—I'm not always as aware of my surroundings as I ought to be."

"I see."

"Alright! We get to catch up." Maeve grinned and slung an arm around her shoulder, to Fir's obvious discomfort. "Before you showed up, we were passing the time with jokes. Know any good ones?"

"Jokes?"

"Yeah. Maybe a Sacean one, even though you, again, know shit about it."

Fir drew away, coolly indignant.

"That's a very presumptuous way to put it."

The foreigners fell behind as they resumed the march. Part of Lleu would have secretly indulged in fantasies of "taming" them, but he knew better now. Any display of submission, any act of deference was a calculated effort to lull them into a deceptive tranquility.

It occurred to him that they could have genuinely resigned themselves to their status—that at their most dignified, they were mere curiosities, subjects of study to some pampered Etrurian schoolchildren—but that would have been too easy, and life was rarely so kind to Lleu. He told himself this. This was certainly not compunction that he felt, but reasonable suspicion.

"But there's one I remember from my mother. A man is so rich that he has a cook, but one day he must fire him. His friend says, 'That was a good cook. Why did you fire him?' The man replies, 'Every morning I have two eggs, one boiled, one fried, but that cook was always frying the wrong egg!'"

She chuckled quietly to herself. The rest continued their trek in silence.

"That, uh…" Maeve stared at her boots. "That was your mother, huh."

"It was close as she came to a joke. Erm, Maeve. How is your family?"

Lleu took that as an opportunity to fall in step with the foreigners and leave the knights to their prattle; while he hardly sympathized with the barbarians, he sympathized less with the Pheraen's personal affairs.

Even so, as he glanced Soren's way, and Soren acknowledged him likewise, he considered explaining himself—not apologizing, because that was certainly unwarranted, but perhaps illuminating to the foreigners the purpose behind their "mistreatment". But he chose to refrain, because such mistreatment was certainly nonexistent.

Soren was first to speak.

_"How more longer," _he asked quietly.

_"This night, then another day. Be wait, be a good boy."_

It had been intended as a barb, because such barbs had come to form the meat of their communication, but Soren's response was more quizzical than angry.

_"Very well."_

Having goaded Celen for a contribution, to little avail, Maeve checked over her shoulder and tried to nod them over.

_"What do they want."_

_"Joke, maybe," _Lleu said. _"From your home."_

Soren's eyes flickered over his, and though his expression remained unchanged, Lleu expected a scoff, cold silence. Instead, he looked away, and Lleu only then noticed that, when the sun hit his hair at a certain angle, it took on a greenish sheen. Soren spoke again.

_"In our country, sages fought with books. Here, they fall to books. There needs no joke."_

The speakers of the old tongue were no strangers to humor themselves, and as a student of their language and culture as well as the elder arts, Lleu had encountered a wealth of witty invective that he could have drawn upon in response. Savages and ingrates, the both of them. He said nothing and rejoined the Pheraens up front; behind him, Soren's translation sounded unduly curt.


	10. Comfort's Call

This story has or will become the magic user-equivalent of a sausage fest.

(I love mages.)

* * *

Comfort's Call

Before even lighting the fireplace, let alone drawing the morning's water or putting the kettle to boil, he did another close inspection of the residence ground floor. They were expecting guests—the exact day of their arrival remained a matter of uncertainty, but Lugh left nothing to chance, maintaining a fervid cleanliness from the moment the courier appeared on their doorstep. That had been near a season ago.

Both letters had been eerily identical in their vagueness, the wording careful and noncommittal; their handwriting too shared a sort of businesslike sharpness, with tight, erect loops, nothing like Chad's relaxed slant.

His brother's message had been especially brief.

_"My travels have bound me en voyage to westernmost Lycia. Given the political temperament of Araphen and its neighboring territories, there is a chance I may afflict you with my company, if only to ascertain your security…"_

He was no less self-deprecating in person, but at least then, Lugh could dissuade his habits. In the bottom corner, a tiny _"Please take care"_ had been scrawled; he imagined Lleu agonizing over every stroke of ink, groping for the tact he reserved for loved ones, casting wadded drafts into a fire, a luxury Lugh hoped his brother afforded in his time away.

Fire, he thought. A crisp wind greeted him as he headed out the door, across the torn, grass-patched plot of earth that had gone near bald from the stray lick of flames. In the must and immured heat of their storehouse, Lugh stepped around fallen tools and stray scraps of projects that Chad had abandoned and since dismantled.

He retrieved a bundle of seasoned firewood from the stack against the far wall; Igor, the older gentleman who lived on the edge of town, concerned himself with the chopping and handiwork, a sort of benefactor to their operation. His sister would also offer her hand as a maid, though Lugh had been less in need of her services as of late. Good souls abounded, eager to lend their aid to the cause—the bakers with their scraps and leftovers, the donors from the church, and then that rich Etrurian envoy who had taken an especial interest in the children's efforts.

Lugh remembered that Igor had promised to fix their back fence, and wondered if he would trouble himself with it today. Something crept up behind him.

"Morning."

Lugh spun, heart stopped, and saw that it was Chad. He was as noisy as their ratter on the prowl.

"Oh, good morning!"

His friend regarded an unfinished carving that lay sorry at his feet, his lips pressed with a hint of disgust. Two pails of water were slung over his shoulder; he had just gotten up.

"The less time spent in here, the better. Let's go."

He turned to leave, and paused in the doorway; the morning light framed his figure.

"You alright?"

"Wh-what?"

"Dunno. You just look a little high-strung."

Lugh joined him out the door, and they proceeded to cross the yard, supplies in arm.

"It might be the cold," he suggested. A series of bizarre, northerly winds had been sweeping through their corner of Lycia, confining the children to their quarters. That, coupled with their propensity towards magic, led to some creative means of restraint.

"Speaking of plant-killers," Chad said.

They halted at the foot of the stoop.

"Something got in last night and had fun with our herbs."

"You mean it broke through the fence?"

"Yeah."

"Ah. Igor said he would fix that, but I think the weather's been holding him off. It's perfectly understandable."

"It gets to the best of us," Chad said with a shrug as Lugh pushed the door open. Then, passing him, "Father Reuben's got an excuse to be even more of a useless layabout, not that it makes a difference."

He closed the door and traded Chad's water for the wood, before registering what had been said.

"The Father's served us well for many years now!"

His friend only smirked and crouched to toss a log into the fireplace.

"Once _you're_ old and ailing," Lugh continued, "I promise I'll take care of you, without so much as a grumble!"

"Few people share your infinite patience. We mortals can only aspire."

Chad struck up a flame, and waited there for it to catch; as Lugh knelt beside him in anticipation of the heat, Chad avoided his gaze.

"But you're right," he said. "He's old and ailing, and as such, no longer as serviceable."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm saying I'm not at all looking forward to God taking him back, for the children's sake. They're fond of him."

A faint scratching sounded at the base of the door.

"Speak of the devil," Chad groaned and stood to answer the call. Cold air fluttered through the open entranceway and against the skirt of his cloak; a beast soon followed, sluggish and gray, and brushed itself against Chad's pants leg.

"I guess you're still at it," he said as he closed the door. "Else you wouldn't be so heavy."

"There's not a better ratter on this end of Araphen: that's how you can tell." Lugh grinned, and stood to fetch the kettle. He noticed that Chad hadn't moved, and stopped midway across the room. His friend stared at him.

"What is it?"

"Uh. You alright?"

"Yes! Why do you keep asking?"

"This time? You're gonna rip your face apart with that smile." The floorboards gave a deep groan as he approached him, scratching the blond stubble on his jaw in thought. "Do you know how long it's been since we got those letters?"

The smile faded.

"What are you meaning to imply, Chad?"

"I'm—alright, what I'm saying is that… you're a very hopeful person. And when you've got an idea in your head, or you're looking forward to something…" The wood creaked again as he uncomfortably shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "You hang onto it. For a really long time. And you pour a lot of energy into it, and… I'm saying that it's going to wear you down eventually."

"I don't…" More creaking, but this time from above. Someone had woken. "You're telling me to stop believing in Lleu and Hugh?"

"Hugh? Come on, he's got a pheasant's sense of commitment, he's a moneylender. Lleu's your brother, and I'm not going to try to dissuade you from thinking what you want about him 'cause… I know how it is."

"That he truly cares for us and the children's wellbeing?"

Chad stopped short of answering, breathing loud through his nostrils.

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe today'll be the day. But right now, breakfast."

He grinned and Lugh grinned back, but he felt Chad's may have been a dissemblance. He followed him regardless and retrieved the kettle, with Father Reuben ambling at his heels. Most days, Chad took up the kitchen duties; he had always been cleverer, and Lugh was more prone to torching foods by mistake. The old maid was not much of a cook either, though she had tried before, and it endeared her to Lugh almost immediately; they had little else but their incompetence in common.

Boiled beef was typical fare, rye bread, and then water or tea. When Edgar came around to inspect their operation, they scraped up what funds they could and bought sweets, delicacies of the city, as nobility were known to favor. Though the Etrurian involved himself mostly with the children's studies—the magical cultivation of young minds—but social refinement and developed palates seemed to fall under these concerns.

Serena was first to venture downstairs, per habit, and though Lugh preferred to wait for the rest of the children, Chad served her first.

"How did you sleep?" he asked as she picked apart her bread and stared into it with wide, sunken eyes.

"I slept good," she said with a tremor. "Um… Chad?"

"What is it?"

"Plainsmen don't eat _children, _right?"

Chad choked on his water, in what could have been laughter or anger. When he set his cup down and looked at her, he appeared undecided between the two.

"Come again?"

"I… I mean unless they _had _to? They go for older people, right?"

"When did this become a fact at all?"

He shot Lugh a bemused glance.

Serena dropped her gaze.

"I—I heard something outside, last night, and Tom said—"

"Yeah, it does look like you haven't slept," Chad cut in, drawing a wince from her. "You've been eating up more of Tom's nonsense, is what happened."

In what could have been a feeble nod, she bowed her head.

"You said you heard something?" Lugh pulled out the nearest chair and sat, unconsciously shielding her from Chad's scrutiny. "What all happened?"

"I heard a sound… like something was coming up to us from below. And I didn't want to look, so I woke up Tom—"

"When you should've woken us," said Chad. "It was an animal getting in the garden. Could've chased it off had we known."

Lugh leaned in to squeeze her shoulder and heard her apologies before reassuring her—and rectifying Chad's sternness—in the only way he knew. Mr. Igor will fix the fence, Tom is telling fibs to excite you, and there is nothing out there that wants to hurt you, lest of all plainsmen! Is Ila not Sacaen, and would she ever do you harm?

No sooner than her mention did Ila descend, strangely quiet and sullen. The girls struck up reluctant conversation as the rest of the children followed. A dozen in all, almost twice that the orphanage had accommodated before Bern "disestablished" it, and even in those times, the necessities were spread thin.

Chad kept them in line with a firmer hold than Father Lucius had ever administered. For all his pheasant analogies, he reminded Lugh everything of a mother hen, gathering and feeding his brood with an agitated haste. So hasty, in fact, that some children were close to finished with their portion before Lugh thought to say grace; God probably appreciated the gesture, however rushed and near-forgotten. Lugh was a devout follower of Elimine's church, but the furthest from organized.

They broke their fast and Chad went about appropriating their chores for the day. Today was a day of rest and not of work, but whenever the children were free from instruction, Chad pressed particularly hard on them with his bidding.

Then Lugh would task them with smaller requests. "Any studying done will be at your leisure," mostly, "but please, keep each other from trouble."

One of the eldest, Corbin, he sent to Igor to report the state of their fence. The young man, recalcitrant as ever and scowling all the while, insisted that he had planned to devote his vacant day to studies, and that another child would be better suited to the effort. He dug in his heels until Chad needed to intervene, and when he did comply, he left them with a few choice words Lugh was certain he hadn't picked up from anyone on school grounds.

Aside from the schoolkeepers themselves, he was the last of the orphans to have lived under Father Lucius's care, and as he matured, his temperament towards them had soured.

They hadn't been afforded the leisure to brood or chase girls or balk at authority, whatever it was that normal boys did at that age. Chad had understood this as the reason for their woeful ineptitude with adolescents; they had learned through painful trial and error. The realization hadn't completely dawned on Lugh until the day one of the older children had bled out her skirt—a wound that no amount of staff-flailing could stanch—and a midwife had illuminated for him the depth of his cavernous ignorance.

That child and others had since married, or taken up apprenticeships, or studied to become followers of Elimine and servants of God. Though he fared much better with younger students, Lugh couldn't help but feel the smallest hint of pride.

Later that afternoon, Lugh joined Serena at the front deck upon her request; a basic wind tome lay flat on the table between them. Her fingertips rested over the open page as he cradled her wrist, eyes closed in concentration, and felt for the subtle ripple of magic. It quivered, just like her voice as she repeated the incantation.

_"Runaderu ori ni fu kyowa."_

_"Rune-runadera_—_"_

"Relax." He stroked her hand and decided against launching into a lecture. _"Relax or something may explode" _would only excite her further.

"For a moment, just concentrate on the tips of your fingers. It's like a heart, or a pulse; be aware of the flow of the energy."

The child drew a shaky breath, and settled; Lugh felt the current strengthen, an even, steady stream.

"You're doing wonderfully," he whispered. "You're—"

"Something's coming!"

A yelp and a blast of cold wind in his face shattered his complete absorption. Serena was agitated now, but he needed to release her to wipe the chilly tears from his eyes and pry the book from her trembling grasp.

"Very good," he told her as he stood to face the source of the cry. Corbin leaned against the railing of the deck, bent with exhaustion and glowering beneath hanks of matted, dirt-specked hair. His freckled arms were scraped with blood and mud, and for a fleeting second Lugh panicked and wondered if he had been attacked.

"Who's coming?" He took a step towards him, and the young man drew away like a cornered animal.

"Knights." He panted, then swallowed as he recaptured his breath. "I saw them as I was heading towards town. They were coming the opposite way."

"How many? What crest do they bear?"

"I don't know. I didn't see."

"Did they see you?"

"No."

Thank goodness, he thought. The boy must have kept himself hidden, though Lugh knew that Corbin wouldn't have volunteered this information.

"Why aren't we telling the others?" Serena had latched herself to his pant leg, close enough that he could feel her breathing as hard as he could hear it. "We need to go!"

"No, don't do that!" Lugh cried, stilling her with a hand on the shoulder. When he looked at Corbin, he appeared tensed to flee.

"Please. No group of knights has any ill business with us. Corbin, may you kindly instead find Chad in the storehouse and bring him to me?"

"What if they're here to attack?"

"They're not."

"What _if _they're here to attack?" Serena repeated in a squeak.

"They are _not_." That was more force than Lugh had intended to use. "We've done nothing to provoke anyone's ire, least of all any knight in Lycia. There is cautiousness, and then there is silliness."

Corbin's face scrunched as though from the stench of magical backfire, and Lugh could practically see the words hanging on the edge of his tongue. He cut them off before the boy could even speak.

"Please, go."

_Father Lucius had done nothing either, _he said with his eyes. He turned and stalked away.

Father Lucius could exercise his authority whenever the need struck—at times he could even be stubborn. Fast to his principles. Lugh wondered if self-doubt ever entered his mind, let alone plague him quite as persistently.

Serena fastened to his leg like an amorous mutt, and though it would have been safer to send her inside while he ventured out to meet the supposed threat, he didn't want to leave her stewing in her own nerves; even worse, he didn't want the other children, mages-in-training with access to a variety of dangerous weaponry, on alert. He took her hand and led her down their patchy field, onto an unpaved path at the mouth of the wood.

"I want a tome. Um, please," she said as they stopped against a tree. "To protect myself."

Lugh tried to respond in the gentlest terms. "You are a very good student, and very bright. If you were to accidentally hurt yourself, I don't think I could stand the guilt."

He didn't know what had gotten into everyone. Dear Elimine, what manner of oppressive effluvium has impregnated these virgin hearts and minds to arouse such suspicions! Black clouds of distrust have swept a cynical veil across their wide-eyed, guileless gazes!

Though he did tense a bit at the sound of voices in the distance, and tightened his grip on the tome when what looked to be a troupe of knights halted round the bend of the path, studying the sign that Chad had sloppily driven into the root-matted earth, carvings of recognizable iconography for the illiterate passersby: a lightning symbol, a swirl, an inappropriately intricate flame.

It wasn't until they passed under a shaft of sunlight, armor gleaming green and red, that Lugh recognized the dark-clad figure in the front. His head was turned down beneath the hot glare, his hair bright and most likely filthy, the storming gait, the shameful, sagging posture unmistakable. It was no wonder Corbin seemed to regard him as something of a role-model.

"Lleu!" He released Serena's hand and nearly tripped over his own robes when he broke into a faltering run. Beneath the rush of blood in his ears he thought he might have heard the shout of his own name, then some sort of demand, then a painful gasp when he clapped into the visitor with enough force to knock him off balance.

"You've come back!" he panted, hanging hard onto his brother as though he might float away.

"…Lugh," he choked, strained and breathless. Lugh loosened his crushing grip, but lingered in the embrace.

"I knew you'd return," he said into his shoulder. Lleu's hair had grown out, stiff and bristly like a dog's, and he smelled pungent, either from the magic or the refusal to remove his robe on the hottest of summer days. "I never doubted it."

"I wouldn't up and _abandon _you guys," Lleu laughed nervously, prying him away. "I mean, what kind of brother would you have to be…"

It wasn't until Lleu had gotten some breathable air between them that Lugh became conscious of the surrounding knights; his brother had always been keenly aware of his peers' prying, searing, questioning, curious, apathetic, unconcerned, inattentive, sleepy eyes. Their most mundane interactions had been rendered matters of utmost confidence; Lugh had resigned to sharing sweets in the canvas-thin secrecy of their tent. To witness someone regarding Lleu with any more than antipathy at best—it would have caused quite the scandal!

He nonetheless humored his brother's misplaced abashment for now; he knew that Lleu would return the favor by humoring Lugh's own frivolities.

Sir Allen and Sir Lance, whom he subsequently greeted with enthusiasm, did not appear as invested in their public displays of sentiment as Lleu seemed to fear. They had no real business in Araphen, Lugh learned—or they _had _had business, but had seen to it just now. Araphen, they claimed, lay en route to their ultimate destination, the location of which they neglected to impart. Lord Roy, in all his wisdom and foresight, had furnished Lleu and his knights with a favorable arrangement—and Lleu emerged from it intact, thank Elimine. Lugh would give his regards, somehow. His brother was a competent fighter, but the fabric of his robes did not provide a very good shield against axes.

On another day, in different company, Lugh would have somehow enticed the Pheraens into staying at least the night. The promise of food, cold water, comfortable floors, anything. But Lleu was here, and his mere presence demanded his unflagging attention. He hardly noticed the two other knights, both women, clad in the traditional red and green, until they gave their own dismissive farewells. The Marquess Pherae needed them, they said. As they turned to leave, Lleu seized the wrist of the blonde, dour-looking lady, and made his spluttering, profanity-laden entreaty. I swear to "carnal knowledge and all that is holy", I would ask that you please return your "hindmost regions" to Lady Sophia's aid and stand guard against whatever "dribbling fundaments", "recklessly flagellating, indecent parcels of male anatomy", "bulging, pendulous pouches of human waste" or "excessively pampered solicitors with aberrant and debauched motivations" that endeavor to do unto the Marchionesse "unspeakable injury".

That was only Lugh's very rough approximation of what his brother had said, because when he tried to turn a deaf ear to his brother's obscenity, the remaining Pheraens caught his eye; they kept a wary distance from the rest of the party, but somehow, Lugh sensed they had no intention of leaving with them.

He also sensed another magical presence. A strong one.

The men were distracted by Lleu's theatrics long enough for Lugh to get a good look at them. They were close together, and sometimes that made it harder to determine which was the mage.

That is, if one disregarded all the somewhat justified conventions that surrounded magic users. But there was no _law _that said a mage musn't be musclebound or that less magically-inclined men musn't wear robes for comfort's sake—though that heavy, dark, hooded cloak hardly suited the midday heat, and the person who wore it seemed appropriately displeased. That might have been the way his face was set; his presumable companion's mouth was downturned and his eyes hardened under the sun's glare, and in truth Lugh found his stature imposing, despite the absence of armor or crests or weapons. His shirt was thin and darkened with sweat, and when he crossed his arms and gave Lugh the slightest glance, he immediately dropped his gaze. They watched the Pheraens leave, but did not give their own farewells.

"Oh yeah, I forgot," Lleu said unconvincingly. "I'm traveling with these two. Ike, Soren. Figured we'd stay in an inn somewhere instead of imposing like this."

Lugh tore his eyes away from them and smiled to his brother.

"Really, I would host the Pheraen barracks if I needed to! I can make arrangements for the both of you; it's no trouble at all."

Neither of them spoke, and though Lugh would have addressed this with most strangers—he rarely hesitated to note an eerie silence, and this rarely resulted in anything worse than a sneer or a derisive laugh—for whatever reason, he felt addressing them so forwardly would be cause for some offense, somehow.

But it needed to be asked.

"Which one of you is who?"

No answer. But the larger man did crack a smile, maybe sheepish, maybe apologetic.

"Ike," Lleu repeated, pointing to that one. "Soren. They, uh, don't speak Common, so don't mind them."

And that somehow made it worse for Lugh. He couldn't muster the forthrightness to ask whether they could understand them, though Lleu seemed to imply that they didn't. If they did, then the question could strike a nerve. He decided against it.

"My name is Lugh," he said carefully, gesturing towards himself. Soren's eyes met his for the first time, and Lugh could not help but examine the symbol, some sort of tribal emblem, dyed upon his forehead.

He muttered something incomprehensible, but Lugh somehow heard it as "we know".

* * *

Lleu had been overeager to see the children and urged Lugh away from the newcomers, as much as they fascinated him. Thankfully, Serena had retreated back to the schoolhouse—rather than to her excitable peers—where she found Chad. As he emerged onto the deck with her, Lugh called for him to make another pot of tea.

From the distance, he thought he heard an exasperated "You're _kidding._"

While Lugh adhered strictly to Elimine's model of compassion, charity, and clemency, Chad saw fit to stop at the first two. And when he and Lleu reached him at the doorstep, he spared some very unkind words towards his brother that Lugh could not bear to repeat. Serena was still there, however, and Lleu was too kind to her to openly berate. Chad stalked inside to retrieve the empty kettle, and the group followed while Lleu spoke to the child.

"Hey, I remember you," she said, brow wrinkled in concentration. "You were here before."

"You do? I was?" he said playfully. "I remember you. Serenity, was it?"

"No!"

"Sepphora?"

"No!" she laughed.

"Stella?"

"Serena, go outside," Chad said, entering the room with kettle in hand. "The adults need to get a few… boring issues sorted out."

She seemed reluctant at first. It surprised Lugh that she took such an immediately liking to his brother—the last time she had visited, she regularly avoided him. Then again, young children were as honest as they were ignorant. And arcane magic, to the ignorant and knowledgeable alike, was frightening to behold. Maybe now she saw it in a different life. It pleased Lugh that he had raised a child who could reserve her hasty judgments.

"Perhaps later you can show Lleu what we've been practicing," he gently urged her. "I think he'd like that."

"I would like that very much," his brother agreed. His grin looked entirely out of place, yet somehow nostalgic. And endearing.

Maybe now she could separate the man from the magic, because Serena did not flinch or draw away when Lleu mussed her hair. But she gave a small start when the two strangers, who had been standing stiff and quiet before the doorway, shuffled aside to allow her passage. They turned their heads and watched the fire at the far end of the room, as though they could sense the girl's fear and were shamed or repelled by it.

When she left, Lugh seated them in a pitifully torn common area, the rug worn and threadbare, the cushions of the seats rough and patched from overuse. Chad had brought out some old earthenware they reserved for guests, particularly during Edgar's visits. Otherwise, it was a rare occasion.

"We've got a lot of catching up to do," Lleu said.

Chad grunted something unintelligible in response as he poured the newcomers' tea. Their eyes settled over their cups, and Ike eventually brought his to his face without drinking. Then he said something to his companion—very low, very quiet—and though Lugh could make out nothing distinct, it was clearly a world away from the common tongue.

Their language was strangely rhythmic, with a subtle lilt. While they spoke, Chad sat besides Lleu and watched him expectantly.

"It's a long story." Lleu breathed into his tea. "I was traveling with this mercenary band, Ogier and his men."

"Ogier?" Chad said. "The same one we fought with? He's still around, huh."

"You'd be surprised. I was. But yes, I was working with him by pure coincidence, like everything else that's been happening. But, uh, we found these two…while on the road. Took 'em to Pherae, and the Mage General of Etruria was there."

"She was?" Lugh exclaimed.

Having fought under General Roy, the allure of nobility, of power, and of brushing with a world leagues above their own—it had since worn with the onset of familiarity. Yet his memories of General Cecilia had ripened in his young mind, the luster of her majesty fresh and vivid and her human mundanity long forgotten. He would have to make Lleu recount his experience in Pherae to the children.

"Yeah, but she was just about to leave when we came by. Said she wanted to see them in Etruria to do God knows what with them, but didn't drag them along or 'overwhelm' them, whatever she meant by that. Here's where it gets interesting."

He leaned forward and they huddled in closer, as though disclosing a secret of national importance.

"She asked for me to take 'em. Offered _ample _compensation."

Chad drew away.

"Wait, really?"

"Yep."

"No offense, but…what? You haul in a couple of confused foreigners and she decides to sign their lives over to you?"

Lleu scowled.

"You act as if she's never seen me on the battlefield. Could it be that she trusted me to deliver them safely, having once witnessed my budding talents?"

"That wasn't my point, but alright, I'll humor you: she thought _they _needed an escort?"

Ike appeared to react to this, but Lugh liked to think that he had sensed something in Chad's inflection, and they were not doing them any grievous ill by speaking of them in such a manner.

"When I said 'safely', I didn't specify who'd need protecting." Lleu paused to think, brow creased, then added: "Idiot."

Lugh realized that somewhere back at his inception, God had seen fit to entrench him forever in the company of children. He was strangely content with the notion. Their petty quarrels hadn't been worn of that comforting nostalgia.

"But no, that's not why she wanted me," Lleu said, regaining his composure. "The _real _answer is far more interesting."

Then he raised his head and looked Soren, who was rubbing his thumb along the rim of his cup, straight in the eye. "Hey! _Suhana shide ta daiko wa."_

That certainly wasn't Common, but it wasn't the language of their guests, either. Lugh recognized it immediately, but not its significance.

"Is that—is that an incantation?"

"Not exactly." His brother grinned. "You've heard it from me countless times: that people've _had _to have spoken that language at one time or another. That by understanding it, we can gain a better understanding of the past, of magic and the people who used it. But I didn't know my studied would pay off like _this_."

His almost predatory settled on Soren, whose expression remained unchanging. Lugh and Chad said nothing, their breath caught in their chests, tight with anticipation.

The stranger set down his cup, folded his hands, and examined Lleu intently.

Then he sat back, turned his head, and said something quietly to Ike in their own language. Lleu's smile faded.

_"Tokai, rusumadike ta kare! _I know you can understand me."

"Ha?"

A low, slack syllable; a twitch at the corner of his lips. Perhaps Soren was confused.

"He can?" said Chad.

"Yes!" Lleu snapped. "He made it abundantly clear that he knows the language you see in tomes, so General Cecilia's called on my _expertise_ as an interpreter as well as, I'm sure, my strengths as a druid_._ For whatever reason, though, he hasn't been cooperating lately."

"Sorry, what you say?"

Soren's voice was huskier than Lugh would have guessed at first sight. Ike's sounded richer, but aside from the incomprehensible language, much clearer.

"I say you don't have to keep up this evasive bullshit when everyone here can see through it," Lleu growled.

"_Toko sana_, I no speak. Make say slowly?"

Lleu complied, but what he told Soren was nigh blasphemous, so Lugh quickly shushed him and they abandoned the effort.

"So, yes," said Lleu, again regaining his composure. "You get the idea."

"I really don't," said Chad. "So you're getting paid to escort them to Etruria? And teach them basic communication while you're at it, I guess?"

"General Cecilia is paying money for them, yeah."

"And you decided to drop by us instead?"

"What are you getting at?" Lleu sounded exasperated. "I figured, the times being what they are, I could maybe lend you a hand. You know, once this is all done."

Oh. _Oh._

Somehow this had caught Lugh completely off-guard; to anyone else, Lleu's intentions would have been clear from the beginning, but at the moment, Lugh couldn't imagine any other motivating factor than the pleasure of their company. The offer humbled him, but his attempts to express this only left him flustered.

"Lleu, that's too much! I don't think I could accept."

"I never really thought of it as my money in the first place, anyway. Figured it should go to someone who actually needs it."

"I understand… but really," Lugh said. "That you're here now—I could ask for nothing more. This visit alone is worth more, to me, than any amount of gold."

Chad didn't seem entirely convinced, and Lugh understood; he tended to exaggerate during one of his moods.

"Maybe so." Chad shrugged. "Money's great, but it can't raise a child, let alone twelve. Hel—heck, look at our sponsor."

Lleu froze, peering over the rim of his cup.

"Your what?"

He set it down without taking a drink.

"Ah," said Lugh, "you might be very interested in meeting this one! In recent years, a _very important Etrurian _has set his sights on our operation…"

Lleu seemed less impressed than he'd hoped, but it was to be expected. His brother—and Chad, at that—seemed to hold the Etrurian nobility in some level of contempt, though Lugh couldn't imagine for the life of him why. If Etruria were the birthplace of art and education, surely the Etrurians were its stewards.

"Be more specific?"

"He says his father studied under the former Mage General, Pent of Reglay himself," Lugh said, beaming. "And that he—his father, that is—was offered the position, but declined in order to further pursue his _very important studies._"

Here, he could tell Lleu was interested.

"And his mother is said to be of noble breeding," he continued. "And very beautiful, too!"

"This'll be apparent when you meet him."

Chad did a poor job of hiding his disdain for Edgar—even in Edgar's presence. Lugh decided to change the subject.

"I would almost feel more secure if you used that reward for yourself. Whenever you're gone, I cannot help but worry for your safety…"

Though Lleu again hid his face behind bottom of his cup, Lugh continued.

"You don't owe us anything. That you're here now—I think the children could ask for nothing more."

There was a long silence as Lleu studied the dregs of his tea. Father Reuben stalked into the center of the room, dragging his round torso against the sides of the seats, and eventually one of the newcomers' legs. Ike said something in their language and, though Lugh could have been mistaken, he chuckled—it was a low sound, as though he was restraining himself.

"Well," Lleu said at last. "General Cecilia's paying money for them. Didn't say it had to be me."

"Wait, what are you saying?"

Both Chad and Soren sat up in attention at this, which clued Lugh in that the latter understood much more than he let on.

"I don't know. It's a thought. I mean, I could've headed straight for Etruria if I didn't want to be here. I just didn't know how you'd react to…all of this. And I didn't know you had some reliable backing—"

"'Reliable'?" Chad interrupted, but Lleu ignored him.

"I just want to do what I can to help, whatever that ends up being. Right, you say I don't owe you or the children anything, but… hey, will you stop looking at me like that? It's unnerving."

Lugh realized that his brother had been talking about him, and smiled sheepishly. Chad seemed far more tense than he had been at the start of the conversation, and in the meantime, Ike had picked up the mottled-fur Father while his companion edged away, to the far end of the couch. This was a argument to be held another day.

Chad was the first to speak again.

"Where're we keeping these two?"

He gestured limply to Ike and Soren.

"There's the shed," Lleu suggested. The two visitors returned their attention, gleaning that the discussion had shifted back towards them.

"Hardly any room there," said Chad.

"They don't mind the ground either."

"Plenty of room there."

"Would your workroom suffice?" Lugh turned to Chad, steering the conversation elsewhere—somewhere less needlessly inconsiderate. "It's comfortable enough for you to sleep in."

"Yeah, I sleep in chairs all the time, but that doesn't make it comfortable."

His eyes flickered to the men across from them, namely Ike, who said something quietly in his own language while scratching the cat's ear. Not quiet enough that Lugh couldn't make out the syllables, the lilt. Deg-_mit-_mi-_ne-_ran-_ulf_. He growled on the _r_.

"But for our purposes," Chad said, "it'll work. Don't have much choice, otherwise, unless they could put up with a room full of children."

He watched for a reaction from the strangers. Chad liked to exercise a healthy suspicion with most guests, though he was rarely so forward about it.

"There's a pallet in there that can probably fit two, uh, normal-sized adults. That work out?"

Again, no response.

"You wanna show them?" he mouthed to Lugh.

"Right now? I suppose I could."

Though Lugh had been called naive, he was not oblivious. Chad needed a brief aside with Lleu, man-to-man, with no mitigating parties. Lugh understood it as a ritual, a painful necessity that every friendship as scathing as theirs must undergo.

Ike and Soren understood him easily enough when he crossed over to retrieve Father Reuben and gestured for them to stand. Ike said something quietly to the cat as they left, and there was a huffing noise from Soren, but it didn't sound like a "word" as such.

Lugh felt a twinge of regret when he led them into the empty workroom, sequestered to the southern edge of the schoolhouse and chilly from disuse. Soren seemed to note the thin layer of dust on some of the tarps that shrouded the scattering of projects. In the corner lay a large pallet, discarded by a nearby church and probably large enough to hold the both of them. At least Lugh _thought _he understood its purpose—a large, unobtrusive sleeping surface tucked away in the privacy of Chad's "office"—but he'd never been led to believe it had seen such uses. Thank Elimine. It would now serve a higher function.

Soren's sudden, jarring Common caught Lugh by surprise.

"You do magic," he said, and though his accent was still thick, he was perfectly intelligible.

"Why yes, I do!" He whirled to face the mage. "Like you, I practice anima magic, as well as teach it."

Soren looked up at Ike, said something in their language.

"You…" There was a lengthy, deliberate pause. "Your brother say th—he says that, yes."

"But I'm afraid I can't speak the magic language as he can! Lleu's been studying it all his life—that you can understand it is truly amazing. And, erm—I suppose you are a scholar like him?"

It occurred to Lugh that he had been speaking too fast for his guests to follow. To his relief, Soren understood—somewhat.

"I'm sorry; a scholar?"

He tried speaking slower.

"Do you study for a living? Learn many things?"

"Vil… ehm, is not for everyone?"

That made far more sense than it had any right to, but Lugh knew he was simply terrible at explaining specific concepts.

"You read many books?"

Soren snorted, but it might have been a word in his language.

"You do magic? Without reading?"

He then turned to Ike and spoke, but Lugh couldn't read either of their faces. Maybe there was the briefest flash of amusement.

"No, but I—I imagine you're tired," he said. "We will be eating soon. You may rest in the meantime; if you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask."

"Thank you," Soren said over his shoulder.

Though the two preoccupied themselves with their own discussion, Lugh could feel eyes on his back as he retreated from the den.

* * *

Lleu had scrubbed himself raw that evening and borrowed a smock to sleep in; the visitors had not shown any inclination towards bathing and Lugh had been assured that they were content with the clothes on their back.

"I mean, you don't give meat to that ratter of yours," Lleu said. "He doesn't need it."

The druid sat hunched on the end of his bed, his features obscured by the dark. Chad had gone to ensure that the children were had settled—and, though no one acknowledged it—take note of any loosened objects should they disappear overnight. Secure his works. Lugh would have found it silly that two fellows who had not even mastered their language would appreciate their less comprehensible art, but after his conversation with Soren, he had his doubts.

"But Father Reuben is a cat, so it's different. And yes, sometimes we do give him meat."

He heard shifting fabric as his brother peered in his direction.

"Not to imply—yeah, alright, implying that your cat's luring you along the ball of sympathy yarn—"

"What?"

"Sorry, I don't have a good way of saying this. Like, I've been working it over in my head and I can't phrase it in a way that doesn't make me slightly nauseous, but you don't care. Actually…"

A slant of moonlight caught the side of his face for the moment he leaned under it, resettling into his slump.

"That's kind of your thing. You're way too good of a person, and if I weren't here now, I'd be up gnawing my fingers off over the thought of some crook taking advantage of that. And then I realize _I'm _the guy in your clothes and bed with your food in my stomach—what did Elimine say about hypocrites?"

"Lleu," he said weakly, reaching out to touch him and catching a heap of fabric. Though his brother shrank from most contact, and though as young men they had far, far outgrown these expressions of concern, Lugh let himself prey on his brother's guilt and pulled him into a stiff, boyish embrace.

"I could've dropped a couple of criminals on you, too," he groaned, tilting his head back. His hair almost smelled like ash, to Lugh—faint, smoky, like the remnants of a fire. Ghostly, nostalgic. He remembered the man with heavy boots and a dark cloak, the crunch of leaves underfoot as he led them down a wooded path, the crispness of the fabric as he held them against his chest. He remembered the lady with the soft hands, perched on her lap and nestled in the crook of an elbow—

"They seem nice," Lugh said. "If you wanted to ransack someplace, the Pheraen palace seems more ideal than a little school for orphans."

"What makes it more ideal? The armed guards?"

Lugh said nothing against this, letting his eyes rest shut.

"I had… a theory about the two," Lleu continued. "Not like a stupid one, which was a game the Pheraens loved playing to pass the time, so I've probably heard it all. Killers on the run, partners in crime, sexual deviants—I mean, I guess they could be. Fit right in with those Etrurian creamhorns; might want to keep them away from the kids."

"Is—is that your theory?"

"I was being facetious, though that doesn't make it any less true. But no… I, uh… remember what I told you last time I visited? About elder magic and I guess what you can call my paranoia?"

It was what Lugh least wanted to hear then. He pulled away and tried to read his brother's expression in the thin strand light.

"It's been on-and-off on a whole since I've left, but then again, 'on a whole' accounts for how many years? It got sort of awful at a point in Badon—I mean, I couldn't sleep without a few lit candles in the room—which is why I threw myself with Ogier's lot faster than he can say 'thank you' over and over again. And it was good for a while, because I'm just as weak as those Etrurian creamhorns and need to be surrounded by well-muscled gentlemen to feel secure."

"I know you're not serious, but the belittlement of Etruria strikes me as unkind. Our main benefactor is Etrurian, and so was Father Lucius, you know."

Lleu laughed—louder than Lugh had expected, too.

"He was, wasn't he? I'm sorry," he said. "I'm terrible."

Though it had been said with another laugh, it rang sincere.

"You're not terrible!"

"Lugh, let's not do this. Sorry I brought it up."

Lugh fell silent.

"It got… bad. That day," said Lleu. "It might've been a lack of sleep or something, because I felt like I was going insane. Something was following me. And then those people come along, Wolt's family and… you know. I have a thunder tome I've been studying to keep myself occupied and try to ignore them, but goddam—I mean _goodness_, I _knew _it was an anima mage and I was convinced there was something dangerous about those two, like they signified something. And when he—Soren, I mean—went off to take a leak or whatever, I f_elt it _again, like whatever was out there, he was a part of it, or calling it."

They heard Chad's footfalls up the staircase, dragging and heavy.

"So I started reciting the incantations to myself. Like I was trying to perform an exorcism or something, but mostly to keep myself calm. It was a spent tome anyway, so there was no danger. But he heard, acted accordingly, and that's what happened. I got a bent nose for a day. Everyone was being a stupid, paranoid wreck, myself no exception."

Though Lleu attempted to pry himself away upon Chad's approach, Lugh squeezed him into another embrace.

"You're safe here," he quietly assured him, and before returning to his side of the bed: "There's nothing out there that wants to hurt you. And Lleu?"

He went still.

"Yeah?"

"Whatever you choose to do, I'll be happy. You're here now—I'm happy already."

Lleu did not speak again until Chad slipped in, sparing them a languid glance, though it was hard to tell in this light.

"You two still awake?"

"Yeah," said Lleu.

"Oh good, Lleu. So, those guys. What's their deal?"

"Which deal."

"Thought you'd know," Chad said, massaging his brow. "Came down to make sure they were alright, which is, you know, what hosts do. I ask, 'anything I can get you'? They just stare at me. I try again: 'do you want anything'?" Chad drew out the words as though speaking to the visitors themselves. "The, uh… well, they're both interesting, but the creepy-interesting guy just looks at me. And I think he nodded. So I say, 'can I get it for you'? And he says no, like a 'go away, I'm tired and scary' no. And I didn't know what else to say, so I sort of just left them."

He felt his way to his bed and took a seat on the edge, facing the brothers.

"What's your interpretation, interpreter?"

Lleu stared at him for a moment, and then slumped flat along the length of the bed.

"Nothing to interpret," he said. "Wanted a weapon, knew he probably wouldn't get one. Bring a tome to him tomorrow as though you were gonna hand it over and watch for a reaction; we'll see how right I am. We can even hold bets."

"I'm not betting against you. Can't afford to bet," Chad said grimly. They both were silent for some time, and if Lugh hadn't known them any better, he would have mistaken them for asleep.

"The children are always excited to see magic in practice by experienced users… you'll give them a demonstration, won't you, Lleu?"

"I've only got two tomes with me," he mumbled. "A basic one, and one from Sophia. It's heavy, old, and probably scary. But sure."

"I think they all would love that."

He waited for a grunt of affirmation. Nothing.

"Maybe Soren would like to give a demonstration as well. I wonder how his techniques differ from ours?"

Lleu didn't speak again for the rest of the night.


	11. Binding Ties

Binding Ties

Lugh had made a habit of waking early since they had been expecting guests, but he seemed to abandon it overnight. Chad was first to wake, and he couldn't bring himself to disturb Lugh from his long-deserved rest. Together, the brothers looked strangely serene—Lleu's face buried beneath a pillow, Lugh sprawled like a boneless ragdoll—so Chad took care to shut the door softly on his way out, and skipped over the steps that he knew to creak the loudest. Chad could still be stealthy when it suited him.

All the while, he outlined the day's agenda in his head. Breakfast, school, Igor, guests, Edgar—

Shit, he thought. Reaching the foot of the staircase, he halted at the sound of shifting from the sitting area, the wall obstructing his view; he reached for a knife at his hip that was not there. Then, steeling his nerves, he strode out to the center of the room to face the intruder.

Soren glanced up from the scroll he had been studying, seated in the very same spot he had taken the other day. He had an almost businesslike importance about him, his back erect with no one there to correct him, one leg crossed over the other and his hands folded in his lap.

For lack of any better ideas, Chad dropped his shoulders and gave a weak wave in greeting.

"Hey."

"Good morning," Soren said evenly, with that slurring accent.

"Sleep well?"

"Very well. Thank you."

"Where's, uh, Ike? Was it?"

"He is sleeping."

He communicated startlingly well.

"Probably exhausted, huh."

"Hm."

"Well, uh." Chad couldn't tell if he had just been dismissed, or if Soren had simply cleared his throat. "We're gonna get working on breakfast soon, so… stay put, I guess."

"Yes. Thank you."

He returned to his reading. Chad was seized with the urge to ask about the scroll, but he decided against prying and headed into the kitchen. From there he heard light footfalls descending the steps, and then—before he could rush back and retrieve the newcomer—a boy's voice. Too loud and shrill for this hour. It was enough to make Chad cringe.

"You're Lleu's friend, aren't you? You didn't come to dinner last night!"

Goddammit, Tom.

"They told us about you. Are you the mage?"

_Goddammit, Tom. _Chad returned to the sitting area and Soren's eyes flickered over him as he responded to the child.

"Yes."

"Woah! You sort of look like a mage. I'm a mage too. Is that mark on your forehead magic?"

"Hey."

Tom gave a start and twisted to face him, face contorted with guilt.

"Mind your own business, Tom."

"Sorry."

His voice had dropped to a near-whisper. Chad commanded that sort of respect in children.

"Better yet, mind me and fetch some water while I get a fire started."

"Yessir."

For all his fibbing, though, and for all of Chad's goading, Tom was one of the better-behaved children. Chad had to grant him that.

"Thank you," he said.

Chad then followed him with his eyes until he was out the door, before returning to the foreigner.

"Sorry about that."

Soren glanced back at his scroll. The conversation should have ended there.

Some sick compulsion drew Chad back into it.

"Uh, so the children here learn the applications of anima magic—"

"Yes," he said. "He tell us."

"Lugh did?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Well, they get really excited when there are experienced mages around," Chad explained.

Soren set the scroll on his lap.

"So, uh, sorry in advance for that. You're not obligated to demonstrate or anything, but…"

"Excuse me?"

"You don't need to show off for us." Chad rephrased, slowly this time.

"Ah."

He picked up his scroll and unfurled it again. The conversation left some threads hanging in dead air, but Chad didn't care to pick them up. Instead, he went to fetch some wood and trusted no one would burn the house down in his short absence.

To his surprise and subsequent relief, Igor and his sister came around earlier than expected, catching Chad on the trip out of the shed. Chad had meditated on a question before for at least a minute—the question of whether to first inform Igor of the guests or the fence. He judged the visitors a matter of more pressing importance, and told the two as he stood in the center of the field, sleep in his eyes and a pile of logs crammed against his chest. He told them first that Lugh's twin had finally returned, that he had brought a couple of friends, but he did not delve into much detail concerning their eccentricities.

Igor took the news well, flashing a dirt-lined grin.

"Did I ever tell you that I had a brother?" he said, securing the bundle of wood in his muscular, leathery arms before they proceeded back towards the house.

"What? You serious?"

Chad looked to the maid for a reaction. She blinked blearily into the distance. Igor did as well. His hair had gone pale, though not quite white. Periwinkle, maybe.

"He was a fool," he said. "More than that, he was delusional. He denied God. It is good, then—"

Igor watched him sidelong and grinned again.

"—that Lugh's brother does not suffer the same fate."

It sounded almost ominous. He guessed it was a habit with elderly people, dispensing warm, provincial nuggets of wisdom—they just didn't convey them so well.

"I don't know about that," Chad said.

Igor's chuckles were rough, gravelly, and mildly unpleasant.

"I should like to meet him."

"You, uh… they're both asleep now. He and Lugh, I mean." Chad stopped at the foot of the stoop, and the siblings stopped with him. "You'll meet one of the other guests first, and he doesn't speak… fluent Common. So you might have to talk slow."

Igor and his sister, surprisingly, didn't seem to question this. They waited a fair distance behind him while Chad cracked the door to see if the foreigner had moved.

To his relief—or distress—he found Serena and Ila awake and chatting in the sitting area, Soren's chair as empty as if he had never been there. For a moment, Chad imagined how his mind could have simply fabricated the conversation, and how the foreigners could have been ghosts or otherwise supernatural entities, emitting scentless, phantasmal fumes to drive mortals to mental unsoundness and glut themselves with it.

"Where'd, uh—"

"Soren?" Ila said. "He left."

Of course he did; to assume otherwise would have been silly. Chad fancied himself of unerring faith, compared to Lleu, at least, but not so superstitious. Maybe Lleu's paranoia was contagious.

"Did you chase him off?"

"Maybe. I introduced myself. Soren's an odd name."

"What's wrong with his eyes?" Serena said.

"He's not from here," Ila answered abruptly. "What I want to know is what the symbol's for."

She centered her gaze on Chad, as though prying for hidden answers. He scoffed and looked away.

"You guys are way too snoopy for own good."

"Maybe they're too shifty," she retorted.

Chad returned her hard stare.

What annoyed him most is that he didn't disagree.

"Mister Igor's here," he said, stepping in to make way for the elderly duo. The man stretched his scarred, leathery cheek into a smile while his sister took a seat. They were both looking tired—growing older every day, as they said. Like Father Reuben, who Chad hadn't seen yet, but he hadn't seen any rats either.

Lugh came down to greet them while Chad went about the business of breakfast, and soon most of the children followed. He could hear their eager chatter from the other room, discordant and continual as a stream flooding over.

"He looks exactly like you!"

"Except the hair is longer…"

"Are you gonna cut it?"

"It could stand to be trimmed," Lugh said, and Chad briefly wondered if the foreigners had gone into hiding at the outpour of screeching questions from volatile young mages. Better for them, he supposed—he was still leery of keeping them around the children.

He heard Serena again: "So what _is _wrong with Soren's eyes?"

And of course, most of the children hadn't seen him, and of course most of the children were compelled to ask, and of course, one answer rang loudest above the others.

"They're red, like fire, 'cause he took a fire spell in the face!"

God_dammit_, Tom.

"You'd go _blind _if that happened," said Ila.

"Not if you're a _mage_. It's like how you can absorb magic without getting burned, 'cept he did it with his eyes!"

"Let's not spread falsehoods, Tom."

Lugh brought an end their tall tales before Chad could march in and do it himself. Instead, he called them to breakfast. They said grace proper this time, though afterwards the visitors remained the topic of conversation, Lleu no exception.

"Why isn't he here?"

Tom was certainly loud enough to rouse the druid sleeping straight above the kitchen table, so Chad began to wonder himself.

"He's very, very tired," said Lugh, and they left it at that. A few more questions, and Chad told them to be quiet._ Can twins be a boy and a girl? Why aren't you a druid? Do the other guests even eat?_

He reminded himself that they'd instilled a healthy sense of curiosity in the children—a form of self-consolation. Once that had all calmed, Chad slipped in a mention of the fence. Not too damaged, just a minor concern. Igor agreed to look at it and lend a hand.

Afterwards, Lugh and Ila offered to clear up the kitchen before class. That left Chad with two options: wake the foreigners, or return Lleu his clothes.

He told Lugh not to worry about it, and headed outside to retrieve the robes off the clothesline. They were still slightly damp and smelled too floral, however faintly, to belong to Lleu. He slung it over his shoulder, haphazardly folded on his way back inside, and took care to sink his weight into the loose, creaking steps on the trip up. Opening the door, he heard the hiss of a body resettling into the sheets. Lleu had definitely been awake for some time.

"Hey." He tossed his clothes at the foot of the bed and watched as Lleu stirred beneath his pillow. "You missed breakfast with the kids."

"Shit, I'm sore," he groaned. "Could've slept a while longer."

"And I thought I've gone soft." He shut the door behind him.

Lleu cast him a sleepy glower, then threw both legs over the side of the bed.

"What is it."

"We're having company today, so look sharp," Chad said as Lleu began to undress. Modesty was not a luxury that most orphanages could afford.

"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" Lleu slipped into his undershirt, and then gathered up his robe.

"I want to talk about our benefactor for a bit."

"What about him," he grumbled, lurching to his feet.

"First off, know that at least one of us here gives two shits about Lugh's well-being, and this isn't an easy job. You're bound to make hard decisions and live with hard regrets."

He froze with one leg in his trousers.

"What the _hell _are you talking about?"

"So when you realize Edgar is an irredeemable asshole, consider this before you go off condemning my sinner's soul to everlasting damnation."

"You're seriously worried about that?"

"And cut the skepticism bullshit around Lugh. Goddamn, listen to me; your sermonizing must be contagious or something. I can't even get to the point."

Lleu narrowed his eyes.

"Then get to it, Mother."

"Alright, with pleasure: Edgar is going to say some things and it's going to piss me off. I mean you. It's going to piss you off and you're going to want to make him sit on a sword, but don't act on it. Lleu, look at me."

He turned around, his cape slung sloppily over his shoulder.

"_Don't act on it_. You're going to say 'this is General Roy all over again and you're a toady kissass' and sure, say what you want, but we weren't financially dependent on Lord Roy."

"Yes we were."

"Alright, we were, but he wasn't a petulant brat with abandonment issues so _don't_. Lleu! _Don't,"_ he said, lowering his voice for emphasis.

"Alright, alright! Good God, man."

"And don't use God's name in vain around Lugh."

"Holy shit, you're the biggest hypocrite."

True, but Chad was more satisfied that he could hold Lleu's attention without threat of violent retort. Mostly because he had just fallen out of bed. He finished dressing, then took another look at him.

"I had better tell Soren," Lleu said, almost conclusively.

"Wait, what's there to say?"

"That he's going to make children suffer if his more brutish tendencies leak into social obligations."

"What 'brutish tendencies'?"

"Believe me, they're there."

"Why _should_ I believe you? I haven't seen any evidence that leads me to believe such a thing exists."

Chad grinned, but Lleu seemed markedly less impressed. Lugh would have chastised him for making light of his brother's "fall from God's path".

"Shut the hell up."

"Anyway, why do you have to tell him? It seems like his acts of willfulness are largely provoked by the way you're treating him. I mean, we held a pretty lucid conversation this morning. He's not a child."

"Children are capable of a lot more than people give them credit for. But those two are barbarians."

"Didn't look that way to me. He was studying some kind of scroll when I talked with him, which isn't something I imagine barbarians commit to in their spare time."

Lleu snorted.

"Yeah, that's mine. It's a recipe, or something stupid like that. Gift from Niime; basically wanted to give me a hard time. A lot for him to chew over, eh? Look like he was having trouble?"

"Alright, this isn't working." Chad massaged his forehead. "Just… finish up. Find Lugh when you're done. I'll take care of it."

"Where—"

"Probably in the schoolhouse. Don't interrupt him if there's a lesson going on, and for the love of God don't butt in if you get the lecture itch. Alright?"

He waited for an answer while Lleu fumbled with his clasp, silent but for the occasional grunt of frustration.

Finally, he nodded his head "fine".

Just out the door, Chad hung back and watched him grope around beneath the bed for the boots that had been kicked in.

"Thanks, Lleu."

The druid grumbled in response, and Chad liked to hear it as "you're welcome" as he pulled the door shut behind him.

When he checked his den for sign of the foreigners, he found the room abandoned and only remnants of their stay, including Lleu's "recipe scroll". They seemed to travel light, which was more than he could say of Lugh or his brother—at least during their time spent with Roy.

He took a close inspection of the affairs around the room for signs of tampering, pilfering, or otherwise molesting his personal affairs. Thankfully, the foreigners seemed to comprehend the concept of ownership, which Chad learned long ago was not a universal, innate instinct among all people.

Satisfied, he sought them outside, heading first towards the site of the broken fence.

He found them with Igor and his indolent sister. Ike and the gentleman knelt in the soil of the garden, inspecting the uprooted fenceposts. Nearby, the maid hunched quietly over some kind of game spread out over a stump—Chad had seen it around camp during the war, a part of a knight's training according to one of the Pheraens, but it seemed to appeal to the lonely sensibilities of bored old biddies as well. It couldn't have been a fair game, but perhaps Soren caught on quickly.

"How's it look?" he asked Igor, who squinted up at him.

"Looks like it couldn't have done much against an animal in the first place," he said. "Something must've run it through… or tore it down. Ike's offered to help, bless his soul, so it shouldn't be a hard fix."

Ike seemed only faintly aware of the conversation, but perked up at the sound of his name. Like a well-loved pet… bless his soul.

"Did you need anything?" Igor continued.

"Just uh… need to steal Soren from your sister for a bit. You can keep Ike."

"Steal?"

Oh. He had been paying attention. Ike drew himself to full, impressive height, and Chad decided that gambling on miscommunications would be unwise.

"Need to talk about magic stuff for a bit with him."

"Ah. I understand."

"Yeah."

The maid glanced up at him dispassionately, and Soren stood without another word to her.

"Yes?"

"Hey," Chad said, passing him to draw him out of earshot, though he doubted Igor or his sister cared all that much; Soren followed nonetheless.

"Uh, Lleu tells me you don't like people who pry into your business."

"Hm?"

"Nosy people." He stopped, and tried to think of something simpler. "Do you understand what that means?"

He couldn't read the expression on Soren's face beyond vague impatience.

"Yes," he said.

"We're going to have a visitor like that, who's also very rich. Do you—"

"_Yes._"

"You get where I'm going with this, don't you? It's really important that you… appease him. Tolerate him. Put up with him. Nobles don't like back-talk."

"Yes." He checked over his shoulder at Ike and Igor. "We know. We were with them."

"Oh yeah, Lord Roy had you for a while."

"Yes."

"Except Lord Roy's pretty special in that he treats everyone with—"

"Is this all you wanted tell me?"

This conversation had been the opposite of reassuring.

"Yeah," Chad said. "Sorry, I was just giving you a heads up. He's really interested in magic users, so I figured… he might bother you."

Soren did not answer, but gave him a brief nod before making his return to Ike and probably his certain loss at a game. Chad wondered if he had done more harm than good with his meddling, shrugged, and headed in the opposite direction—before he met Lugh rounding the corner of the house.

"You look excited. What's going on?"

"Lleu's going to show the children a bit of elder magic! I thought the others might like to join us."

He could see the tome tucked underneath Lugh's arm and, though he wasn't exactly familiar with matters of magic, it didn't look like an elder tome.

He knew what was coming. Against his best sensibilities, he went the other way while his friend gamely proceeded to offer a stranger a deadly weapon that he had been trained to wield almost certainly to kill. For instructive purposes.

Their targets were often crude, improvised, and submitted to an array of unbridled abuse. For some of Chad's less satisfactory projects, it was a favored method of disposal.

Today's was a puppet, the godless spawn of a commission that had since fallen through upon the patron's untimely, transparently self-inflicted demise. By the looks of its grotesque, wistfully hollow frown, the abomination seemed amply prepared, almost relieved to join its master. With those empty eyes that have borne witness to countless atrocities—warfare, rejection, betrayal—it silently pleaded for its long-due deliverance, stripped nude of its child-sized mage hood and dignity. They would bring it to God, its maker's maker.

Actually, Chad detested the sight of the thing and had kept it tucked in the furthest corner of the shed until Lugh dragged it out one day and drove Serena to tears with an impromptu performance. Though Chad always felt uneasy about using the human likeness, however gaping and bug-eyed and malformed, for target practice.

Lleu kept the children occupied with their questions, tome in hand. He always seemed encumbered by those books, even now. They were all kind of scrawny for veterans.

Lugh soon joined them with foreigners in tow, but Soren had not received the tome. Probably, hopefully, thankfully, he seemed to decline a demonstration.

The druid readied himself, but did not neglect to state the obvious.

"Keep clear," Lleu said over his shoulder, holding the tome open-faced and flat in his hands.

"Better yet, don't hit us?"

Nonetheless, Chad took care to station the children a good length behind him. He couldn't take magical blows as cleanly as Lugh, but he figured he had more experience with it than most of the orphans. Despite his efforts, Corbin stood too close to the druid for comfort.

Lugh waited behind him, breathless with anticipation. From the start, Chad knew he'd be treated to a running commentary.

First, the chanting. Lleu projected his voice, most likely for the student's benefit, but he also gave it a dramatic flair that Chad had never witnessed on the battlefield. He jutted out his chest, enunciating the words with vigor and purpose—he attempted a weighty, grave effect, but it only sounded as ridiculous as he looked.

But then a drone joined it, so low and close to imperceptible that Chad first mistook it for the ringing he'd occasionally hear in his inner ear. He could certainly _feel _the vibrations, rattling in his brain and behind his eyes and through his teeth. It underlaid Lleu's chanting, clinging to his words like a second voice, and that is where it became frightening.

He is gathering the will, the energy, Lugh babbled excitedly, or something vaguely to that effect—Chad didn't care. It was a hideous sight.

Lugh continued to cheerfully detail the process as it unfolded.

His shoulders convulsed, as though shaken from the inside-out. It is entering him! His eyes squeezed shut, snapped open—his teeth gritted, his eyes blank and sightless like those of a corpse. Now he is wrestling with the forces of darkness as they threaten to feast on his consciousness like wolves to a stumbling fawn! This is exciting! Tendrils of smoke twisted, snapped off his hand as he flexed the joints. Shadows are emanating from his form, weaving through his pores like sparks along a blackened, smoking corpse in the wake of a well-aimed thunder spell…

Chad spun on Lugh. _"What?"_

The mage was too absorbed in Lleu's conjuring to answer; the druid threw his arm towards the target, pointing at it as though in accusation. It shuddered, distorted behind a lens of shadow, and jerkily rose as he lifted his hand. It writhed and Lleu's chest jerked, and _Chad he's releasing it! _Like a strip of paper submerged in water, it twisted and dissipated and it made a noise, like the sound bending all around them, or an unearthly, metallic cry ripping from the puppet's nonexistent throat as its father took small pleasures in its horrific death.

Lleu's shoulders fell as the darkness folded into itself. In its wake, it left what appeared to be sawdust sprinkled over the ground.

When the buzzing ceased, the ensuing silence felt strangely empty and lacking. Then Lleu doubled over with hacks, bracing himself with his knees.

"Stunning! Marvelous!" Lugh applauded him as he coughed out whatever poison the darkness had burrowed into his chest. It must have been some time since his last casting.

The children all fixed their eyes to where the puppet once sat, folded over in resignation to its sentence.

"Is that practical on the battlefield?" said Ila. "Does that leave you vulnerable during the, uh, accretion?"

"If you're—" Lleu cleared the roughness from his throat and started again. "If you're out on the battlefield, you're not going to be spellcasting out in the open; realistically speaking, that episode would really only be serviceable for breaking up tight form—"

"What does that do to people?" Serena interrupted him; she had asked the question on all of their minds, but she lacked the nerve to hold it in.

That's when they determined it best to move onto the next demonstration. Corbin was upon Lleu immediately, his mouth fixed in a tight, uncertain smile.

"That was really amazing," he laughed, and it sounded nervous and admiring all at once. "It's, uh, different. It's not weak."

Chad could've sworn he saw a flash of concern cross Lleu's face.

"Yeah. That's what some people find very attractive about it."

"If that's true, I don't know why it's so less popular than the other kinds."

"It's _hard_," Lleu said with a grin. "It's difficult to master. Plus, it can look downright frightening. There's a lot more to it, but I think an anima mage might want to bat some leaves around for us before I go into another lecture."

Chad could tell he was struggling to mask his disdain for the foreigner. Corbin seemed more disinterested in them than anything else, compared to the other children. Chad stepped up between them, putting a hand on Corbin's shoulder—which he shrunk away from—and nodded to the remains of the puppet.

"Is that good to touch?"

"Completely safe," said Lleu. "Scatter it around the garden and an orchard'll pop up."

"Uh-huh. I guess I should dig something out of the shed for next time."

"Right—next time." Lleu took a step forward. "For now, that won't be necessary."

He indicated over to the mages standing side by side behind him, and Chad could've swore Lugh clutched the tome a little tighter.

"Elimine forbid any such misfortune befall them, but I think it would behoove the students to observe the resistance of a magical blow… from one practitioner to another."

His eyes hardened over Soren and his tone curdled. He sounded far too much like Edgar.

"Oh. Oh no, I don't think we're doing this." Chad jostled himself between the two, unconsciously separating them.

"I agree that it isn't necessary," Lugh added with a pleading smile. "I could never even aim a spell in your direction, and Soren hasn't shown any—"

"I can."

Lugh started, as though a ghost had just slunk up and tapped him from behind. He turned to Soren.

"I'm sorry?"

"It is… not kill." Soren glanced at Lleu. "_Sudesho-tujukuga nakite_, ah…"

"Yeah, it's a basic tome, is what he's _trying _to say." Lleu smirked knowingly. "Fine for a friendly demonstration."

Their eyes met, and Lugh reluctantly transferred the tome to Soren's hands. His fingers curled over the edge with what Chad read as possessiveness, and he opened it to examine the contents.

"Good?" said Lleu.

"Yes."

With a small, sly nod to Chad—which he returned with a scoff—Lleu strode, tall and proud, into the center of the lawn, a foot on the dissipated wooden remains.

"Though the destructive potential is lesser, I advise everyone keep a safe distance from the caster, as the force of the recoil might propel him backwards and bump some elbows. Now…"

He flashed Chad a grin large enough to see from a distance. He was putting on airs.

"There's no 'correct' way to go about this, but generally if you are in a fight against a mage, you would try to keep your vitals out of the direct line of impact, like thus—while it presents the risk of injury to my shoulder and side, casting necessitates little more than a mind and a voice. Knights may value their sword and shield arms, but we are vastly more versatile."

Spoken like a true educator.

Soren had said nothing yet, but when Chad checked back at him from the side, something in his eyes struck him.

It was the first time he could describe him as seeming "relaxed", but in a cool, assured way. Like the feel of the page beneath his fingers soothed him. Maybe it was the familiarity, like Chad felt with the grip of the brush or chisel. Or hilt. It almost alarmed him. When he looked back to Lleu, he saw the realization dawn as slowly as the rising, stricken sun.

"Imagine yourself pushing outwards, as though _forming an invisible barri-_"

His shriek was swallowed by a roar, and his cringing form by a twisting, icy gust, buffeting Chad's hair and eyes and forcing him to turn his face away. Lleu was sent hurling onto the grass and rolled onto his side, the wind shaking a ripple through the treeline. Soren's strands of Sacaen-esque hair fell back to his shoulders, frayed and askew.

Chad heard an "Oh my God!" from a child and a hush from another, and Lugh was kneeling by his brother's side before Chad could wheel on the students and quiet them with a box to the ears. Corbin had his eyes on Soren and looked about ready to flee, or kiss his boots or something. Corbin was hard to read, though Chad wasn't as good at reading people as Lugh in general.

Lugh came back with Lleu slung over his shoulder, but the druid wrenched away from him once he could make out his onlookers' expressions. His cheek and lip were sliced open, the cuts clean and shallow. Though Chad didn't touch him, he felt a chill emit from his skin.

"Drat," Lleu said tersely, but his eyes were saying something else.

Chad mustered up a smile and said, "You hurt?"

"Been worse," Lleu muttered, and then, in his louder, scholarly voice, "Incantations for wind magic typically run shorter than that of other spells, which leads to quicker and more frequent casting. Its effects, in turn, are comparatively less damaging—shoving, superficial cuts, maybe a little chilliness at worst."

He left a gap for the audience's laughter, which they filled with horrified silence.

"Having said that, I must stress that this _is _magic," he continued, "and it can easily kill a man without sufficient training—even in the hands of a relatively unskilled caster." His eyes trained over Soren. "What's that face?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you! Do you have anything to add, dog?"

What did he call him? It sounded forced, almost, like Lleu was playing the part of the scornful noble in some tired Etrurian tragedy and failing horribly.

Soren's eyes fell on the tome, and he closed it.

"It is weak magic."

Then he took a step forward, book in hand, and Lleu nearly stumbled back. Soren held it at arm's length, and after a breathless beat of uncertainty, Lleu snatched it away.

"I'll get a staff." Lugh broke the silence.

"No, I got it," Chad said, pulling the druid aside. "It's nothing big, and you ought to get back to class."

By that, he meant "we had better diffuse this situation before the children get too excited". Lugh appeared to understand.

"I'll join you in a bit," Lleu added, with a weak, bitter smile.

They watched them retreat to the schoolhouse together, foreigners in tow. Unsurprisingly, Igor and his sister had taken to watching on the periphery of the building; Chad could understand the fascination. He waited for them to clear from the area before turning back to the druid.

"Kids are gone now. You alright?" Chad repeated. This time, Lleu's shoulders fell, and his head tipped against his hand. He felt along the rivulet of blood as they started back to the house.

"I only have one face, and this guy's fucking it up," he muttered.

"I'm not worried about your face. Women love battle-scars. Too bad those are practically nicks."

"They sting like shit, in any case."

Chad fell back behind Lleu as they stepped onto the porch, examining the wet stain running down the length of his robe from where it ground against the grass.

"Sweet Elimine on a goddamn oak stump, Lleu."

"What is it?" He whirled back around, his sweat-moistened skin pale against the red heat of the scratches.

"You're like a green skunk."

This rightfully annoyed him, but Chad laughed anyway, and drew him into the front room.

"Go sit and I'll grab you a rag."

"You're all acting like I've been impaled by a frozen tornado or something. It's ridiculous."

Chad stopped midway towards the kitchen, wiping the sweat off the nape of his neck.

"Yeah, I guess we are. Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," Lleu mumbled. "I was just caught off guard. By the attack, I mean, not the…just, don't worry. I'm alright."

"It surprised me too," Chad said with a shrug, finding a washcloth in the kitchen and wringing it over a bucket of water. "I was looking at him, then listening to you, and it all…hit, all of the sudden. I would've said something if I saw it coming."

"He was obviously trying to sneak one in." Lleu leaned into the back of the sofa, his back tight and drawn with indignation. "I mean, he'd have probably killed me if he could."

"Well, come on."

"What?"

"I think it was a cheap shot, but I've taken plenty hits from mages, your brother included. I'd probably get torn up a bit, but that wouldn't have been able to incapacitate, let alone kill me."

Before Lleu had a chance to argue, a forceful, persistent series of tapping choked his protests.

Chad knew that knocking all too well.

"Ah, shit. Stay there, alright?" He took one step towards the door, balked, and rushed the washcloth back to Lleu. "Clean your face," he whispered, before attending to the newcomer, growing louder and increasingly more agitated with each pound.

He swung the door open, and beneath its frame stood the full, perfumed, oiled-haired, embroidered-clothed image of their benefactor, leering at Chad in his languid, faintly disdainful way.

"What took you so long?" Edgar sneered without fanfare.

"Sorry. My hands were full."

"Full of _what._"

"Cleaning supplies. Couldn't just drop everything in the middle of the floor."

Edgar considered him for a moment, with those _deep antique __fuchsia bouquet_ eyes. Then he said, "You clean this place?"

Chad imagined that delicate, slender, tip-tilted nose crunching beneath his fist, one knuckle at a time as it slowly and painfully cracked, and he replied with a passionless laugh.

"Is there anything I can get you before—" He looked back and saw Lleu twisting his torso so that he could watch the visitor from over the back of the sofa, pressing a cool rag to his bleeding cheek. Too late: Edgar jostled past him.

"Lugh?" Chad thought he saw Lleu visibly cringe. It was the most strident, ear-mutilating voice known to man, dragon, and God, overly-sweet when it suited Edgar and startlingly shrill when it didn't. "What on earth happened to you? Are you bleeding? You look—" He halted just halfway across the room. "I must say, those new robes look rather drab on you, and scarcely _new_ at all. Has there been a death in the orphanage? It certainly _smells_ as though there has been."

"Sir Edgar," Chad said.

"What _is it!_"

Edgar faced him impatiently, as though to strike him out of exasperation.

"This is Lugh's brother, Lleu."

"Oh." He regarded Lleu once more. "The druid. How silly of me."

His expression scrunched into something more severe and restrained.

"He neglected to specify that you were his _twin_, or am I mistaken?"

"We're twins. Yes." After a terse pause, Lleu added, "I'm sure he's neglected to mention a lot about me."

That's when Chad knew to step in.

"Lleu's gotten a little cut up over a demonstration today," he said. "Took a hit from a wind spell."

"Oh?" He eyed Lleu again, who fell obediently silent. "I may be of some assistance. You know, my mother served on the front lines as a healer _as well _as a fighter in Lord Eliwood of Pherae's campaign against Bern and that cabalistic band of worms—"

"Yes, sir, he's been told," said Chad, although this was a lie.

"It is to her that I owe my inborn pulchritude as well as my bottomless, gilded vessel of generosity from which you imbibe. Why, if it were not for her urgings, I would not even _be here_."

"Yes."

"Against my fellow Etrurians, the Lycian patriciate here are hardly a fashionable lot. And such dismal theater! Hundreds of playwrights scrambling to pen the _one true portrayal _of Lord Eliwood's endeavors, of that legendary, tactical brilliance, and not a one manages to capture the enchantment and turmoil of my parents' blossoming rom—"

"Yes." Chad realized how he had begun to sound like Soren, and cut Edgar short there. "Lleu prefers to treat his own minor, personal wounds, but we're grateful for the offer. In the meantime, Lugh and the students are currently in the schoolhouse, as well as two other guests. I think he would like to see you."

"Two other guests?"

"Friends of Lleu," Chad lied.

"Druids as well?"

"A mage," said Lleu, shooting Chad a grimace. "The other one does not wield any sort of magic."

"I see." The mention of a mage seemed to rouse Edgar's attention. "I'll leave you to your…efforts, then. I will see you shortly," he said with a nod to Chad, before taking a dainty, affectedly whimsical step towards the door.

It nearly caught the flowing, silver-fringed hem of his cape on the way out, but Edgar managed to clear without such lowly hindrances. Lleu fell quiet, fixated on the door, and said nothing until he and Chad met eyes.

"Holy shit."

"No, shut up while I get you a staff." Chad looked down from his dumbfounded, fiendishly gleeful grin and passed him on the way to the storage closet beneath the stairs.

"_You weren't joking_."

"Lleu, please."

"That voice is piercing enough to impale an adult human male."

"Just—"

"In full plate armor!"

"He could have been eavesdropping at the door, you idiot."

"And his hair looks so _appetizing_."

Chad paused with his fingers on the handle of the door.

"I…I think it's a point of pride to them," he said. He braced for an avalanche of cleaning tools as he pulled the door open, but he was only met by a faint must and the sight of a thick-legged spider scuttling down the length of a rod.

"Uh, the more little prongs around the stone, the better, right?"

"Are you serious? Just get me a basic staff."

Chad shrugged and picked up the one that the spider had crawled over, watching it lowering itself off the bottom as he carried the staff to Lleu.

"Thanks." He grabbed it, held it straight, and leaned in, resting his cheek against the stone. Eyes closed, he muttered, "You sent that guy to the barbarians."

Chad ignored him.

"So that was Edgar," he said. "Here's my problem. Assuming you don't intend to run off with that reward money."

"I don't even know how much I'm getting," Lleu sneered, lifting his head. "She said it's gonna be negotiable. 'Had to fish them out of rapids full of flaming debris, that'll be one-hundred-thousand'."

"Assuming it's something reasonably generous, then: Lugh would probably rather you stay here. That's no secret. Hell, you'd probably prefer to stay, and I…uh, anyway, it's up to you. I know people who'd kill for an offer like General Cecilia's, so that's not an issue. It'd just leave me with a conflict of interests."

Lleu set the rod flat along the ground. He was listening.

"Every time I see Edgar…" Chad began. "I feel this overwhelming urge to prowl up to him, and take him by both shoulders, and run my fingers down the exquisite silk of his cape, imported fresh from the Western Isles; I want to softly inhale the oakmoss and labdanum of his sickeningly strong and sensually complex perfume."

"Wait, Chad?"

"I want to back him up against the wall, so close that I can smell the goddamn sprig of mint on his breath. I want him to look me in the eye; I don't want him looking _at _me or _over _me or _through _me like he always does, like I'm worth less than dirt, but _in _me."

"What the hell."

"Then I want to study the twitch of anticipation on his flawless brow before I knock his goddamn skull back so hard that there's a _dent in the wall_. And if that happens, that probably means we lose a valuable benefactor."

He took a seat next to Lleu, who shrank away.

"Compared to what Father Lucius had to put up with," he continued, "we live in relative comfort. We're not hungry. Winters can be rough, but we pull through. Plus, we've got a much better-behaved lot."

Lleu did not laugh.

"And we don't have to care for them on our own, like he did. I mean, aside from his friend, it must've been lonely for an adult out here, don't you think? Lugh and I put our full weights into this operation. I bet it's ridiculously easier on us."

"I don't understand what you're getting at."

"Just taking the pressure off you. We don't have it nearly as bad. Hell, I bet the Father would've loved someone like Edgar ordering him around like a slave-driver. This is something Lugh would say, but you're not under any obligation aside from the familial crap you hold yourself up to. Basically, I can't afford to inflict physical violence on a benefactor; I'm content with that, and you should be too."

Lleu paused and seemed to consider this, his brow furrowing.

"Alright; if you say so."

"'Alright'? For once I tear my stone-cold, hardened heart open and give you a glimpse inside, and that's all you can say?"

It had been meant in jest, but Lleu still did not smile. He waited for an answer of any sort, mostly derision. Lleu stared at the blackened, empty fireplace as the foreigners had done the other day.

At length, Chad said, "I should probably make sure Edgar isn't taking a switch to Serena for flinching."

"I'll go with you."

Lleu stood with an eagerness that his listlessness belied and reached down to help Chad to his feet. He groaned and allowed himself to be led out the door.

* * *

Though no one had gone looking, Father Reuben had finally been found that night—a heap of fur and flesh against the side of the shed, sleeping beneath the tall, yellowed weeds. Except when Chad knelt down to rouse him, he knew that something was amiss when he failed to react to his presence.

And when he reached down to nudge him and the cat stiffly rolled, yielding and warmthless as a log, it left no room for doubt.

It had been odd to see the foreigners listening in the back of the room as he broke the news to the children, tried to bring them to terms with it. _He was old. Animals grow old quicker than we do. It's sad, but it's God's plan. _

_It's unfair, _someone had cried. It could have been over anything: their poverty, their parents' absence, the cruel changes in weather. These were all God's plan too.

"Told you they'd be trouble," Lleu said that night, while his brother consoled the children and put them to bed. There had been no previous mention of "they", but the word had come to take on a specific meaning when Lleu used it.

"That's paranoid and idiotic. If you paid me to think of a reason for a couple of guests to leave a dead cat in their host's yard, I couldn't do it."

"Soren kept making a face at it. Probably looked at him the wrong way."

"I think that's his normal face," Chad said, leaning his back against the headboard of his bed. "And I don't know, I haven't spent so much time confined to the open wilderness with them, but they don't seem all that vicious."

Lleu snorted. That was always a weird habit of his. Chad wondered if he realized how unattractive it was.

"Particularly vicious or not, dogs are dogs."

"You know, I'd think you and Edgar would get along, for all the dramatics."

"Oh God."

"You're gonna see him a lot more now. He kept his mouth shut today, but I can tell when he's interested in something, and he was interested in your little friends."

"Yeah. I'm not excited about it." Lleu turned his back to him, flat on the bed and facing the wall. "Goddamn Etrurians."

"They can be annoying, but they're not all that bad."

Lugh soon returned and informed them that the children had been put to bed. He sounded tired and probably would have cried if he had no example to set. When he settled into bed next to Lleu, the druid apologized—for nothing in particular, or maybe for everything. Chad felt like he was intruding on an intimate confession somehow, though no words were exchanged afterwards.

Even long after their breathing leveled and their restless shifting ceased, Chad strained his ears and listened for sounds in the floor below. He could hear the door to his den open, then shut soon after. Soon after, he heard a faint scratching noise; probably the house settling. Or rats.

* * *

...

I know I've fallen into a bit of a pattern here (endless exposition, 5-8k-word chapters erratically bouncing from one Elibean perspective to the next) buuut just a heads up, it's probably going to change soon, e.g. shorter, more frequent chapters, more consistent setting(s), etc. Hopefully it won't be too jarring!

Also this might be in bad taste and unnecessary at best but whatever, while I love reviews, criticisms, complaints with the story, etc (seriously I'll openly admit that they make me super smiley and bashful like an idiot, even if they're complaining about the lack of gratuitous mansex), the review page ain't for personal gripes, as much as it pains me to say. I will readily bare my eager flesh to a sharp, well-deserved verbal flogging, but keep it to PMs. THANKS LOVE YOU GUYS HAPPY possibly belated LEFT HANDERS DAY (southpaw supremacy)


	12. Dreaming of Home

Dreaming of Home

He woke to the sight of Soren's belt and undershirt, and lap, and atop that, his own hand. Soren noticed his stirring and set down the scroll that had been dominating his free time. And sleeping hours.

"Hi," Ike said, pulling away his hand. Weird: it was scatheless, even though he could have sworn it was this hand, or why else would Soren have taken it? He rolled over to examine his other hand, and—

"Huh."

"What is it?"

Ike sat up and held both palms in front of him. Calluses on both, especially around the webbing of his sword hand and the bases of the fingers, creases, and no sign of injury to speak of.

"My hand's completely healed."

"Of course it has. It was healed a good while ago, however sloppily."

"Yeah, but the warping's suddenly gone."

"That happens, with time."

"I don't know. I got sliced pretty bad; I mean, nothing was severed, but it looked like something that'd leave a mark."

Soren studied his face for a good moment, and Ike tried to study his, but he was harder to read on some days than others.

"I admit," he said, "I found it odd as well, but it came as a relief. What concerned me most was the potential for infection; my fears have proven groundless."

Though Ike couldn't place why, he sensed a hesitance there.

"Everything alright? You sound a little tired, not that it's anything new."

Soren answered with a light shove to the chest and a knee on either side of him as he was forced back down into the pallet. Some methods of communication were more efficient than others.

Except when Ike's leg went numb from the shin jabbing into his thigh and he had to ask Soren to move, and when they heard footsteps nearby and decided to cut it short. Count Bastian would have said that urgency stokes the flames of passion or some other such empty platitude, but it mostly made Soren do up Ike's shirt like a finicky mother before standing and leaving.

Soren always sat at the far end of the couch, taking up so little space that at least two men could squeeze between them—no one did, of course. While Chad poured them tea and Lugh chattered on, he focused on the bits of their language that he knew, tried to string them together into something sensible.

You-something-help-teach-_at? of? with?- _children.

Whatever he said, Lleu vehemently disagreed with the suggestion. As usual, his tirade—or what sounded like a tirade, at least—fell upon Soren, whose patience wore thinnest in the early hours.

Even in his mocking caricatures, Soren was subdued and impassive at his calmest. Na, na, na na mi escerti?

No, no, I no understand. Ike didn't know, but by the way Chad's face twisted to suppress a laugh, it must have been fairly awful to a native ear.

Sometimes he would mix both languages in jest, although this always deteriorated into his own ill-disguised tirade against the druid.

"Na mi escerte how one with such a dim appreciation of nature's principles could be entrusted to wield a craft as recklessly potent as yours…"

"Da _na_!" An exclamation, the meaning highly sensitive to context. Quit fooling around, shut up, screw off, not true! When Lleu said it, it might as well have been all four.

"What?"

Lleu mimicked the syllable and that was when Ike knew that Soren had accomplished his goal—and when Chad came around from behind and cuffed him upside the head, like a child.

It was impossible to understand them when those two argued, they spoke so rapidly. It reminded Ike of Wil and Rebecca's arguments back during their—comparatively brief—time together.

He didn't dislike this current company, per se, but he would have liked to spend more time with the others. For a bit, past the confusion and lostness and ocean fog, their home was almost idyllic.

Somehow this got him thinking about Rolf again as he crammed himself with Soren at one end of the table—then the brothers, then his own sister, bandaging Rolf's knee while he cried and cried, and she hummed, paused for a calming gulp of air, distracted both of them from the blood.

A nudge at his hands woke him from his reverie. One to his left—that was Lleu. All around the table, the children had joined hands, heads bowed. On the right sat Soren, and on his right an older girl, the one with the sleek hair, the folded, catlike eyes.

Ike felt Soren's fingers dig into his palm and hoped he spared the girl his vice.

They both mimicked the rest of the table, bowed their heads in listened to Lugh's long and winding grace. Somewhere within the prayer, their names were mentioned; Ike lifted his head to find Lugh beaming in their direction.

Still couldn't understand what it was he had said. Lugh closed the prayer and the children echoed his word, and they set into their bowls and bread. Soren caught Lleu's eye behind Ike's back, and Ike suddenly felt as though he had landed in some invisible, magical crossfire.

_"Katashima onina re…"_

Lleu's answer was clipped, abrupt.

"Well wishes," Soren muttered. He did not sound satisfied with the answer. The girl was asking something now—something to Soren. How long? How old? How little were you? Ike couldn't exactly tell—something along those lines. How long have you know magic.

Years.

She laughed. Kids were weird.

Why, she asked. Ike understood that much. Soren ignored her, and by the sound of it, Chad reprimanded her. She retorted, and again, that exclamation. Da na!

The youngest were unquestioning and unwary, and Ike liked that. Less questions that he couldn't answer yet, and less that he didn't want to answer.

The oldest did a lot of staring, so Ike tended to avoid him.

After breakfast, Lugh invited them to sit in with another lesson; as with students anywhere, the mages devoted much of their days, as well as leisure, they were informed, to study.

Soren seemed to balk at the prospect. Ike had a hunch about that, but didn't pry.

We're going to walk, Soren said.

In response, Chad supplied them with a set boundaries that befitted a pet. No digging through the storehouse outside, through the strong-smelling garden in the back, past the sign in the woods—he made his meaning known with wild gestures, pantomime.

Yes, yes, yes, thank you. They slipped away when the first opportunity presented itself.

Woodland enveloped the sun-heated plot of the schoolhouse, smelling of sun and soil and something that he imagined distinct to mages, though Ike still never learned whether mages could literally _smell _the presence of their peers.

"They're going to set this forest on fire," Soren said, staring up the towering trunk of an oak tree, as though tracing the path of the flames with his eyes.

"Can mages actually do that?"

"As easily as they can set either of us aflame."

"Not you." Ike grinned. "I bet you could pass through Hell like a stroll through the woods."

"I may just."

Ike wasn't sure how he would take his flattery, but he hadn't been expecting that, and he had the faintest idea of how to respond.

"Uh… I doubt that." He changed the subject. "Watching all these other people spar, like with that fisherman and whatsherface and you and—"

"That wasn't sparring."

"It's making me restless," Ike continued over him. "It's like Sienne all over again, except it's even harder to understand everyone."

Soren's face fell somewhere between exasperated and stupefied.

"Learning to speak a language isn't nearly as easy as understanding Begnion etiquette."

"And I managed to screw that up pretty bad, too. Anyway, it's not like I'm not trying, it's just that you're sort of a genius. It's a lot to take in all at once."

Fortunately, this piece of flattery seemed to affect him more favorably.

"You're right; it is." And then after a thoughtful pause: "And I suppose we could try our hand at it."

"At what?"

"Sparring, of course. Hand-to-hand."

"Uh, no." Ike stepped back and raised his hands in defense. "I don't even know how that would work."

"Are you accusing me of frailty? How do you think it would work?"

"Hit me?"

"As the phrase 'hand-to-hand' would helpfully imply, but there's no need to patronize me."

"No, I'm telling you to hit me." He dropped his arms, leaving his front unprotected.

Soren eyed him for a wary, careful moment.

"I am perfectly capable of striking you if the situation demanded it, which you very well know."

"Well, yeah, but that's—"

"In truth, I see these circumstances as no different."

"Wait, no, I've sparred with my sister, this is the worst justification you've used for anythin—"

"Are we going to spar, or are you going to blubber your protests like the mewling, doe-eyed daughter of a duke?"

"Neither!" Ike insisted, but the rest of his blubbering protests were cut off by a swift, sharp punch to the gut, stealthy and unpredictable enough to have come from Soren. He skipped back on a reflex, every muscle in his body tensing for battle, and by the looks of the way Soren's hands balled so hard that his knuckles stood out like knives, he was ready too.

Ike broke the standstill with a swipe, loose enough to just graze Soren's shoulder while he twisted and glanced his arm away. For such a small person, he put a surprising burst of force behind his shove.

And his sharp elbows cut _hard _into Ike's ribs, the blows however soft with restraint, and when Soren caught him by the wrists and twisted them to his back, Ike allowed him. He even allowed himself to be driven backwards against the oak trunk, partially on a whim, partially because Soren had him in an interesting grip and noncompliance would probably hurt.

"Your surrender is overearly and unsatisfying."

"Uh, thanks for that."

"But to the victor go the spoils."

At this, Ike jerked Soren inwards at an attempt to wrest himself away and their noses squashed together so hard that the air smelled different, and he could taste the tang of that morning's tea; he needed to crane his neck at a kind of painful angle, but he held it there and steadied them with a hand against the tree, the bark scraping into his palms and leaving red little impressions.

They drew in ragged breaths through their nostrils and Ike felt something clumsily pawing for purchase at the widest part of his arm, and then a shove as the back of his skull knocked into the trunk, and then the air tasted cold and thin again while someone shouted afar in a language he could only faintly understand.

"Se nace fac osta?" Lleu snarled, and Ike recognized it from one time he had found a sturdy stick on the road and grabbed it on a whim; he flashed his palms in surrender, just as he had done then.

"Na diullo a ver riguarde."

None of your business. Or maybe that wasn't literally what Soren said, but Ike could read it in his body language.

Nothing he added could have made that situation look any better, but Soren tried again.

"Sti andande?"

Lleu still did not answer, and Ike couldn't tell how embarrassed or worried he was supposed to feel until just then. There was a burning on him, a culpable itch that he willed with all his mind to fade away.

But when he finally did speak, Ike recognized the word for "company", because they had been using it a lot around them.

"That man from yesterday is back."

"Which one?"

"Hair," was all he said, because despite their deepening understanding of the language, they never quite tired of the epithets.

And that man did have appetizing-looking hair.

Lleu made a "hie!" sound, which Soren explained as the druid's rudimentary attempt at wordplay—it sounded almost like the sound they made to grab someone's attention, but closer to the sound they made while mimicking a squealing dog.

Except Lleu sounded strangely dull when he did this, and led them back towards the schoolhouse without another word to or towards them.

"That was stupid," Soren muttered.

"I feel better now."

Truthfully, his guilt had swallowed up the restlessness. He mulled it over for a while, and then drawing closer and lowering his voice, whispered, "I'm sorry."

"Relax."

This wasn't exactly reassuring, coming from Soren. But when he shot Ike a small smile, that managed to help.

Once they reached here was hair, deep, vivid hair, but not _their _Hair. It was darker, closer to a color Ike had seen on some ravens, but without the sleekness, loosely pulled back away from his face. He was taller than Lugh and Chad, thin, clad in what looked to be a traveler's robe.

The man turned and greeted them with a clasp of the hand, and again he reminded Ike of Naesala from the one time they joined hands—it was a firm, eager, clever grip.

He seemed… older, but not far older than the rest of them. Around the age that Soren should have looked. Again as with Naesala, his eyes were sharp and inquisitive, and he spoke so nimbly that it seemed like his tongue should have fallen off from the wear. Ike couldn't understand a word of it.

The man stopped and drew back, a hand stroking his chin in thought—perturbed by Ike's unresponsiveness, clearly. He put an emphatic hand to his chest.

"Hugh."

Lleu interrupted Ike's reluctant response with a string of clucking in the Old Tongue, brow knitted with impatience.

"Is he trying to pass on a secret message? Or something?" Ike asked while his companion responded in similar low tones.

"Disparaging remarks, yes."

When he turned to Soren, the man introduced himself with special consideration. He drew each syllable out to painful lengths.

"Ohhhhh…sonnnnne…ehhhhh…fuocccccce…annemassssss."

I am as well, Soren answered in their language, briskly, with deliberate enunciation.

Some exclamation of esteem—or flattery—Ike didn't really understand what the man next said, but he seemed like the type to favor flattery.

Another mage, then. There must have been a word for a congregation of mages. "Coven" didn't seem quite right.

Like the _other_, other mage, Hugh took a friendly interest in the classroom—as well as the Sage from the Outlands or whatever Soren would come to be called among those four—and _unlike _the other other mage, he expressed his fascination with a conspicuous fervor.

The schoolhouse consisted of one room, bare, the floor gritty with dirt and the air thick with charcoal. Lugh used charcoal to draw the symbols on a strip of bark—he would pronounce it, a complicated, foreign-sounding syllable, and the children would echo it as they had done with grace, seated on what looked to be pews that they had simply repurposed for the classroom.

And in the back, where they listened in their chairs, Hugh would ask questions. If he could truly _understand _the ancient language. Then he tried the language himself, and Soren curtly humored him.

It surprised Ike that he would indulge him at all, in his state. His fingers clamped around his seat, boney and bloodless with tension. His breaths through his nose were loud and deep, and his eyes restlessly surveying the room—searching for an escape?

He'd seen him in similar moods, before. When someone had stolen from the reserves. When Skrimir had dismissed his weak, adorable little beorc strategies in favor of brute force. When he had fought General Petrine during the Mad King's War. There were many other times, but it wasn't until the battle with Petrine that  
Ike had begun to notice it.

Hugh wanted to know their word for "mage".

Soren provided an expletive and stood, quietly excusing himself in the other language. Lugh acknowledged him from across the room without a halt in the lecture, and Hugh's smile never broke.

"Shit," the man said, pronouncing it with such an odd, squeaky pitch—and indicating to the students with a meaningful nod—that Ike nearly burst into laughter, but instead excused himself the way Soren had, and quickly followed him out the schoolhouse.

"Pretty sure they're not going to make you do anything you don't want," Ike said, catching him up.

"Of course not. And I don't feel like I have to justify myself to them."

"Well, they probably figure you have to piss or you got bored or some combination of both. I wouldn't worry. And, uh—"

Soren stopped and faced him now, and the words Ike had planned to say dried in and wilted in his throat. He tried again.

"I'm not going to claim I know all what's going on, but… you know you can always talk to me about it. That much hasn't changed."

His friend went silent for some time, his eyes fixed on a distant point behind Ike—watching where the flames might spread, maybe—until he brought his gaze to Ike's.

"You too. I won't… give two figs, as they say."

His mouth twisted, as though he had just bit into a rotten fruit, but it was the closest he had ever approached to words of comfort.

* * *

_I'm starting to have regrets._

It had been skulking in the back of his mind from the very first day.

_Why _would _I do that to them? She lost her mother, her father, everything until we had nothing but each other; she's probably come to resent me by now. _

_Would she believe us if we told her about all this?_

Except he didn't tell Soren; he agreed to help the leathery, pale-haired old man with the woodchopping, and because Soren was not well-acquainted with the application of an axe—which was his way of saying he detested manual labor—he occupied his time with the maid instead, with their game that had become a source of great frustration for him.

Pure trial and error, he'd scoffed. My opponent is so vacant and unhelpful, and the loss all the more humiliating. The rules are arbitrary and unintuitive; the wench insults me with this mere parody of strategic engagement.

They had managed to miss Hair when he came around that day. There was a dispute between him and Hugh. An _explosion_, as one child phrased it. Or it seemed that way, by the way he made a bursting motion with his hands.

Something about teaching methods, techniques, Lugh's competence as an instructor. Hugh's a good friend, Chad belatedly informed them. It was a veritable reunion.

"If we're lucky, maybe they'll duel to the death," Soren said that evening.

_Bring in a staff user! It'll go on as long as they need. _Ike continued to carve out his piece of wood in a strained silence.

He could smell the food and heat drifting from a far window, the chimney smoke twisting and dissipating into the blood-and-orange sky, and lastly the tang of tea, soured over the day, as Soren leaned in and turned Ike's wrists out to inspect the piece in his hand.

"What are you whittling?"

"You'll see," Ike said.

"Is it what I think it is?"

He decided not to answer.

_Are you starting to get regrets too? _

He decided not to ask.


	13. Urgency Drives Us

Urgency Drives Us

Hugh returned to the school grounds early that morning, with bundle of books stacked in a sling and a determination in his eyes that Lleu could discern through his sleep-bleary lashes.

It came as a surprise how the years had calmed him; there was no petty arguing, no condescension, no patronizing pats on the head, no tortuous allusions to his amorous conquests.

Except when Edgar had surprised them with an unheralded visit, some tranquil influence within Hugh began to corrode.

Lleu wondered if mages were always so impetuous as the spells they casted, though it had been his brother to throw himself in the rapidly heated, verbal crossfire, however much of the argument concerned him and his teaching methods. His _looseness_. Their _slowness_. Lugh's _negligence_. Somewhere or another, there was an _impediment to progress. _

Hugh had spat out a remark concerning Edgar's "pig's ass hair", and that had been that.

Whereupon Lugh had quickly removed the both of them from the schoolroom, leaving Lleu to keep watch on the children.

"Is Sir Edgar always like this?" he had asked, in lieu of anything better to say.

"He takes discipline very seriously," the Sacaen student had responded. It hadn't taken much time for her to endear to Lleu.

"He desperately wants… an apprentice. I think for the same reason he wears gold-plated buckles and doll necklaces."

The entire classroom had gone quiet in wordless assent.

So for Lugh's sake, as well as Hugh, Lleu and Chad agreed to keep the moneylender company the next day. Because the foreigners had found more worthwhile pursuits to occupy their time, Chad made their newest guest the highest priority; Hugh had bought a sweets from a bakery in the city, producing a few to share among themselves, and setting aside the rest for the children. They ate their portion on the front deck, facing outwards to the sound of birdsong on the edge of their clearing, and the sight of a figure crouched beside the wall of the shed.

Lleu had lost his appetite for pastries some time ago—and not because he lacked the means for it.

He stared down into his seed cake, and a mournful face seemed to stare back at, until he took a bite.

"They're a couple of the most interesting people I've ever met, and I've only known them for around a day," Hugh marveled; Lleu followed the path of his eyes to the person beside the shed—Ike hunched on a cutting stump, shavings and seemingly discarded hunks of wood scattered at his feet.

"If I were in your place, I'd just… observe them. No tampering with their day-to-day business. You could learn a lot."

"I guess. I've gotten more comfortable with letting them loose and, you know, entertaining themselves," Chad said, breaking off the end of his tart. "Close enough, right?"

Lleu's chewing slowed, and he willed himself not to comment. He had his own piece to contribute—_"hey, Soren's reading this scroll that your grandmother gave me"—_but his thoughts drifted elsewhere.

_Entertaining themselves_. The druid had been making an active effort to scour out that image that had so seared itself into his brain—the pawing, the growling, tree-clawing, the _so much like animals trading various juices in various places_, he could've sworn he heard something wet, like a squelching between them—

"Hey, wake up." Chad brought him to with a light pat on the cheek.

"Knock it off," Lleu growled mid-swallow, swatting the hand away. "What the hell is he doing, anyway?"

Chad shrugged. "Carving wood? Who knows, maybe he was a sculptor for a living."

"Nah, not nearly scrawny enough," Hugh said playfully, setting his pastry aside and standing.

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

But Hugh ignored Chad, passed him by, and headed out towards the shed. After shared glance of uncertainty, Chad and Lleu rose to follow him.

Ike glanced upwards once upon their approach, but did not set aside his task.

"Hey, Ike." At one time, Chad might have taken on the tone he used with some of the smaller children—here, Lleu saw his demeanor as almost too casual.

"Hello."

"Hi. Don't mean to pry or anything, but, uh… what's going on?"

Ike glanced down at the carving knife and block in his hands, as though wondering how they even arrived there. On one end, it had been whittled into barbs—maybe in the likeness of a crown, Lleu realized.

"I can show you."

He stood, brushing dust of wood from his pant leg, and set the piece down.

"It is game, like the one who, ah… like Soren do," he tried, his brow creasing as he searched for the right words. "But more people."

Lleu caught a glint of uncertainty in the corner of Chad's eye; they both bit back a grimace.

"I get it. He's been pretty occupied with that game, hasn't he?" Chad said.

The suggestion here seemed to confuse Ike as much as it discomposed Lleu. Fortunately, Hugh stepped in before anyone could notice.

"Are you going to teach us, then?"

At this, Ike smiled.

* * *

Lleu wondered how his brother accomplished any actual instruction when he would pull the children out of class at the smallest of distractions. It's a learning opportunity, Hugh argued. But to Hugh, everything that concerned the foreigners, their country, and their day-to-day loafing presented a learning opportunity.

Chad sauntered up behind the druid, affectedly impassive, and tugged at the hood of his cloak.

"Go grab Soren, will you? I think he's in the den."

"Hell no," he whispered, just quietly enough to avoid Lugh's notice.

Chad's scoffed, a single, abrupt laugh.

"You afraid of him or something?"

_No, because God knows how he passes the time on his own. _

"Not in the mood to deal with him right now."

This passed as reason enough for Chad, who simply shrugged and left to fetch the foreigner. While Ike drove four stakes into the soft training grounds—clumsily informing them to "not pass" until they understood that he was marking the dimensions of the field—he would lift his gaze to the door from time to time, in what Lleu read as nervousness or impatience or both.

Soren emerged from the house without much delay, with Chad trudging out in his wake.

"Ig _dette_ hvilk sem hafr verr ash vinne!" he snapped, balking at the foot of the stoop.

"Bar gamm!" Ike stood and waved him over.

It was the first time Lleu had heard their language in any capacity for some time, but not the first time he could glean some understanding from the tone, Soren's scowl, Ike's simper and weak laughter.

"Skrul halde den stutte."

After a clipped, he mage strode to the other end of the "field", taking a position defiantly opposite to Ike.

"That's amazing," Hugh was saying behind Lleu, more to himself than the druid. "Man, I've never heard anything like that language before."

Chad shot him a puzzled look.

"When'd you get so… curious, I guess? Scholarly?"

Before Hugh could answer, Ike beckoned them closer with a brisk gesture.

"You, uh, use these." He handed Lleu a baton-like stick, thin and crudely carved. Then he picked up one of his own.

"You throw betspinnar to hausbolten."

"The sticks?" Chad said, and nodded towards the blocks lined upright on either side of the field. "To those?"

"Stick—taktsgren, yes," he clarified, perhaps painfully aware of Hugh's proximity behind him. "We call these betspinnar, and those…" A wave to the treeline. "Taktsgren. If you want to know."

Hugh tried the word himself, emphasizing—Ike either did not hear him or pretended not to as he assumed position across from Soren.

From what he could glean from their demonstration, the game amounted to "knock down the blocks, and then the king", which Lleu found suitably simplistic.

Except the rules were much more demanding than Lleu had initially imagined. For the practice match, they would stop at times and bicker across the pitch—the sticks needed to be thrown a certain way, taking a certain spin in the air, and whenever Ike tossed a "hausbolten" and it skidded, there was a short dispute over where it had "landed". At least, Lleu imagined this to be the root of most disagreements.

They did not play through an entire game before Ike stopped and waved them over.

Lleu, in truth, wanted no part in the frivolity. It was Lugh who pulled him to the side of Ike's field, and Hugh eagerly joined them.

And Lleu, in truth, did not expect Corbin to take part in the game either. And he especially did not expect the slight pang of betrayal when the youth rushed to Soren's side and grabbed a baton.

Chad muttered something about piling up against children, and crossed to Soren's team.

Lleu could understand Chad's concern; even when Tom and Serena joined Ike's end, Lleu was slightly unsettled by the ratio of children to adults—here they had Ike, who likely surpassed Lleu's weight in muscle tenfold, and there they had Soren, who scarcely seemed an adult himself… and Chad, who was _Chad_, and Corbin, Ila, and two much younger children who were not aware enough to develop any sort of sensible aversion towards the mage.

"This is a little embarrassing," Hugh said.

Ike may have sensed his apprehension, or, to Lleu's surprise, understood.

"Soren is very good. But you can make shorten, in one side—then they do not throw betspinnar so far! For children."

"Verr bevohen ik atte korta feltler," Soren barked across the field.

Ike nodded, and mustered a grin.

"… But we will not. It is for amusing."

And so it was. Although it was a little disheartening to find that the foreign mage—as well as Corbin and Chad—could fling the batons much more force than Lleu knew he could summon, and Soren was strangely accurate. When their turn came around, Ike's motions were assured—Lleu couldn't quite place it, or the mesmerizing flex of his back and biceps as he tossed and _goddammit stop. _When Lleu's turn came around, he cleared his head and aimed for a "hausbolten" that Soren had tossed near the center of the field, and grazed the side of it with his baton.

He heard a short, gruff laugh from Ike as the centerpiece—the king, Lleu supposed—toppled.

"Very good," Ike said.

"We won?" Lleu checked over his shoulder, incredulous.

"Ah, no. They do." He nodded over to the opposite team.

"What? How?"

Soren's voice in the old tongue—something he had come to hear less and less—carried clear over the pitch.

_"You turned over the king before the rest. That is loss."_

"How does that even make sense?" Lleu exclaimed, to no one in particular. "You lose when you kill the king?"

He felt the eyes of his team fall upon him—including Ike's, who was perhaps simply caught up in the moment.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and a soft, stilted chuckle from Hugh.

Soren and Chad and winners or losers aside, however, the opposing team had been made of children, and he could not fault them for his own incompetence.

"Congratulations, then," he told them with a weak smile.

Lleu turned his back to the cheers of the children, as well as those who watched on the sideline, and braced himself for an admonition from Hugh.

But the mage's first question towards Ike concerned the game's origin. Chad crossed the field to join him, laying a smug hand of false comfort over his shoulder.

"Good game?"

"Piss off," Lleu said quietly; Ike's explanation caught his interest now, and he didn't feel the need to entertain Chad's conceit. And _he _had been the one to claim moral high ground, Lleu thought.

"There is story that we used, ah…"

Ike's eyes flickered down to his grip on the baton.

"No wood. But it is story."

"A story?" said Hugh.

"It is in the history. But, uh, it does nothing."

"Doesn't matter?" Lleu tried. Anything to distract them from their loss would suffice.

"Yes. Ah, no?"

"Don't worry about it," said Chad. "Thanks for showing us. Although now it's going to be impossible to get anything done around here."

Again, his brow creased.

"Ah…sorry."

"I'm joking, Ike."

"Ha. Oh. I understand."

By the end of it all—and despite his relative idleness—Lleu's sleeves clung to his underarms, and for the first time, he considered the advantages of lighter wear during peacetime. Soren did not seem as affected by the thickness of his garb, though his face was flushed from the heat, and as he wordlessly passed Lleu towards the house, the druid caught scent of his sweat. And then his thoughts drifted again, and Lleu willed them to stop, silently pleading to a fictitious construct that he would at any other time refused to recognize.

During that time, Hugh had softly come up behind him, though his focus was clearly drawn towards Ike as he and Lugh collected the scattered blocks.

"Hey, Lleu. Think you and Chad can step inside? I've got something to show you."

* * *

"So, after that altercation yesterday." Hugh pulled up two chairs at the kitchen table, and indicated for them both to sit. "An idea started to form in my head. And I figure he's the right kind of guy for it."

"What do you mean?" Chad said, leaning over his empty seat.

"Just check it out. I think… instead of telling you guys my idea upfront, I thought I would present my organized thought-process that contributed to its conception."

He set a book on the table's surface, open-faced, and crossed his arms in unspoken pride. Lleu and Chad crept closer to take a look.

"Oh my God," said Lleu.

He couldn't quite put into words how he felt about the page, which looked to be a list of titles.

_"Ike—plain, amiable, evokes sense of familiarity and trust, unsuitable for fresh entrants. May lend itself well to creative, morale-boosting chants._

_The Noble, Alluring Romantic—Rodrigo Hunter of Fortunes, Maldet the Rogue, Rodrigo the Anything, Really_

_The Warparched Bloodluster—Urm-uskeld the Beastslayer, Bel'gar the Bold, Elmuntenth Smasamskel_

_Ambivalent, Consult Fellow Investors—Volnash Moatskull, Bicelord Godwrath"_

Chad appeared to read through the list of aliases many times over as he lowered himself into the chair_—_gingerly, and almost tranquil.

"What I'm feeling now is… some sinking sense of dread and confusion," he said.

"I would think it'd be obvious," Hugh sniffed. "So, you're funneling funds from this man's loony of a mother, which may be _passingly _acceptable for the most infantly vulnerable of businesses—"

This drew Chad from his state of absorption.

"The school is not a _business._"

"Either way, any wise investor will tell you that too much rainfall will drown the crops, or something like that. We need to pry it from that teat."

"Hugh, that's a really confused metaphor, and in all likelihood this is going to be a really terrible idea."

"It's sound advice! Humor me, alright?"

From his coat pocket Hugh produced a small pair of spectacles that Lleu did not recognize from the time they had spent together during the war, or the time they had spent together since. He suspected that they were reserved for dealings with his more sophisticated clientele, if there were such a thing in Hugh's life. The entire time, he never wore the spectacles; he simply wiped the lenses with the fabric of the sleeve.

"Lugh is a dear friend: almost like family, and has a lot more to show for it than any goddamn relative of mine. He practically _saved my life _once—"

"What?" Lleu was confused now. "When?"

"I was grievously wounded, and—"

"No, I remember that," Chad cut in. "Didn't you scrape your elbow or something?"

"Yes well _anyway_, the least I can do for him is give him a little shove in the right direction using the resources he's got! _Human_ resources. Fighting in an arena is a bit like mercenary work, which is what I'm most familiar with—you beat people down and in the end you're getting paid. Now, I have no clue how our friend passed the time in his country, but he looks like he can deal a good beatdown, and you're providing him food and shelter, aren't you? Wouldn't you say those two owe you some sort of return for the roof and _convenient_ mattress?"

Chad ignored the suggestion in Hugh's tone and slow-spreading grin.

"Are you telling us to throw Ike in the arena?"

"It wasn't obvious enough?" Lleu snapped, almost too quickly, to hide the fact that he shared Chad's hesitance.

"It doesn't take much thought, but think about it!" Hugh said. "To get in the upper tiers, you need to give a good pitch for your combatant. The audience needs to _crave _him. They're _paying _to see his matches."

"Alright. Look." Chad reached forward and withdrew Hugh's book, slapping it shut it in his lap. "I like money as much as you do. Everyone does. At the same time, I'm confident that in Ike's case, his _survival _would be stipulated by the Mage General's agreement."

"That's probably true, but you've always got a spare!" A brief silence passed before Hugh realized that Chad would not indulge him. "I'm kidding. C'mon, Chad, take a bad joke. Ike's not a familiar face here, so he'd be put up against some combat-virgin to test the waters. I'm a _master pro _with anima magic, and I'd sooner piss myself than risk going toe to toe with that kind of muscle."

"What the hell would he do? Throw sticks at you?"

"Look, I _took his hand_. I have shook hands with lots of warrior-type guys, and he's sure as hell got the make of one. You're not stupid, Chad, and _he's _no combat-virgin, so don't pretend otherwise!"

"Hugh, this is painfully idiotic."

"That aside, isn't it much easier than what you have now?"

"Yeah, I've taken the easy way out lots of times. You two might've been raised differently, but it's not a great way to live. Even if you're desperate."

_You two. _Lleu bristled, but withheld the retort on the edge of his tongue.

"It's different," said Hugh, pocketing the spectacles. "First of all, there's a difference between dishonest work, and getting people to do honest work in your place. The mercenary life, you know?"

He tried laughter, but again, Chad did not indulge him.

"Hey, thanks," he said instead.

"Alright, I'm serious now. If you want my honest opinion? I don't think he's stupid, just ignorant. You might find my idea painfully idiotic, and that's fine, but _he_ might not feel the same way. Keep in mind, I have no personal stake in this decision. But if you want my _professional _opinion, I think the worst thing you can do to a man is underestimate him, and while Ike isn't a Lycian, he's definitely a man."

Hugh's smile had faded and tightened into a firm line; it wasn't until then that Lleu had time or inclination to study the creases around his mouth, on the forehead. He was not particularly old, but the man had certainly aged.

Strangely, though, Lleu did not feel much younger than him. He looked from Hugh, to Chad, from there and back, and swallowed back the contentious remarks bubbling up in his throat.

Opposite of the mage, Chad folded his hands against his mouth and drew in a noiseless sigh.

"We'll talk to him," he said decisively. "And if it turns out I'm right, again, then you'll be the ones facing the consequences. And I'm serious too."


	14. Dark Traveler

Dark Traveler

For once he woke long after dawn. The air was filled with breakfast smells and distant chatter and late morning light. Faint smoke and dust itched his nose. Soren felt a cool, unfamiliar emptiness at his back; he reached behind for Ike's sleeping body, and caught the air instead.

"Hey, you're up."

He sat up to find Ike sitting at the foot of the pallet, dressed for the day and holding the scroll—Soren's scroll—in his lap.

"You seemed pretty out of it, so I figured I'd let you sleep in. I hope you're alright with that."

In response, Soren shrugged and dipped back into the covers. His head pulsed against the pillow, so hard that he could hear his own muffled heartbeat through his ear. He felt fingers curl around his bare ankle.

"How's your hand," he mumbled into the fabric.

"Uh, you don't remember?" The hand idly slid to his calf, the palm freshly smooth against his skin. "Completely healed. You'd think I'm Rhys with the way you've been fussing over it."

The hairs on his leg prickled under the touch—and from the chills that traveled down his body. _It was not an illusion._

"Hey, do you miss Titania?"

That was sudden. Soren turned his face towards the wall opposite from Ike, closing his eyes.

"I trust she's doing well for herself," he said.

"Well, that wasn't my question. I'm not worried about her well-being. I'm just saying, since you two…"

Soren pulled himself upright to face Ike once more.

"You know. You practically ran the company together."

His smile was faint, and vaguely rueful, if Soren didn't know any better. Familiar. He had seen it often during the wars.

"It's what you would expect," Soren said. "After working alongside anyone for a fair amount of years, you grow accustomed to their presence."

The smile gave way to a restrained, but genuine grin.

"I think that's a 'yes' in Soren-speak."

Soren did not return the grin—he pretended to busy himself with the robe on the floor beside him.

"It's a 'yes' in Soren-speak," he said.

"I bet she misses you too."

Before Soren could steer the subject away, Ike cut him off.

"Oh yeah, I've been meaning to ask you something." He held up the scroll, and it unfurled onto his knees.

"About that?"

"Yeah! It must be saying something pretty interesting, right?"

Soren considered him a moment, then crawled over to retrieve the scroll.

"'Interesting' is subjective, Ike."

"I understand _that_. Just, how about you show me how boring this is?"

"Is that supposed to be a proposition?"

"Uh, I guess so? I'm genuinely curious."

"Still?"

"Wait…oh."

Ike's grin came too late, and Soren ignored him to trace a finger along a tight coil of script.

"This word… carries many meanings, the further back you go. I've understood it, in its broadest usage, to signify some sort of receptacle—a vessel, if you will. Be it a sponge or a stomach…it holds a general 'something'."

_Pressed snug against his stomach, warm with that glowing residue—_

"This one's even worse in its vagueness. Entity. Soul. Man. Animal. A 'something', highly sensitive to context, that may or may not have once been alive in one sense. It could just as easily refer to a dragon as it could a flayed fish."

_Stiff-limbed and long-furred, cold to the touch, but the essence had still been there—_

He felt Ike nod beside him.

"This word? Draw? Drain? Store? Transplant? Soak? Drink? It's the act of manipulating some unspecified substance—conducting, rather—from one place to another."

_It had left the body at his nervous calls with such resistance, seeking instead the soft glow of the stone—_

"And this… good health. Vitality. High spirits. Longevity."

_And from there, had sunken so easily into the wound._

He held his breath as Ike leaned in closer to examine the word.

"With this in mind," Soren said, "surely you can infer the nature of this document's intended purpose."

"Uh, not really."

The breath locked in his chest escaped him all at once, as though carefully deflating. He felt like collapsing back into the pallet.

"It sounds like either your scary 'this is how we store magic' lecture or instructions for a broth."

"I'm leaning more towards the latter. Hypothetically, if this were magic, the principle would be the same, but…"

He stilled at the sound of footsteps passing before the door. Someone may have been eavesdropping, if they could call it such.

"These discoveries can sometimes leave one feeling… underwhelmed. No matter how grandiose the writing, recipes were surely preserved, and people certainly fell ill. In the most mundane sense."

"Well, that's a relief. The way you were studying it, it seemed like…well…"

"Like it prophesized the signs of an impending cataclysm?" suggested Soren.

"Yeah! Something like that."

"No. We're through with those."

Ike laughed and placed a hand on his head as he stood.

"Probably more fun than just loafing around here all day, anyway."

"That is the idea," Soren said.

"It just seemed like you were getting restless, you know?"

"Funny. I'd gotten a similar impression from you."

When Ike failed to respond with the faintest of affirmation_—_or protests of chuckles or anything_—_Soren began to worry again.

"I'm going to dress," he said, furling up the scroll and setting it to the other side of the pallet. "Save me a plate."

"They're always going to have a plate for you, Soren."

"Of course. You know what I mean."

Ike still did not leave.

"I'll catch up," he added with a quick glance over his shoulder. He felt Ike's stare on his back, heard a small grunt of assent. Footsteps. The door scraping shut behind him.

Soren doubled over, limp against the hard mattress, and muffled his heave with a pillow.

* * *

"Devomos prodeme," the woman croaked from the base of the front deck, a wooden box tucked beneath her arm.

Shall we go, she asked. Soren nodded.

A slow dip of the head towards the side of the schoolhouse—around the back, towards the garden, their usual locus—a heavy sigh that whistled through her nostrils, and Soren understood. They needed no words.

She turned to shuffle away, muddied green cloak cinched tight over her shoulders. Soren followed.

Where the others chirped and trilled in their songful tongue, she groused—weakly, as though every breath spent would be her last. Soren was not expected to answer. Loose folds of skin sagged over her eyes. Soren was not expected to meet them.

These quiet sessions presented the rare opportunity to occupy his thoughts with something engaging and suitably strategic. Something distanced from his newfound bundle of doubts and anxiety.

There was always the occasional reminder—the stone pressing against his stomach when he sat, echoes of Ike's concern, of children sniffling into Lugh's cloak. Nothing that couldn't be drowned out by his inward seethes of disgrace and frustration.

The game was more complicated than he had surmised at first glance. He had only learned the rules through observation and the woman's short, quiet corrections in a language he understood on the most elementary level. Then he had begun to pick out patterns; like games of Tellius, there seemed to be a common counter-strategy for everything, as well as common counter-counter-strategies and counter-counter-counter-strategies and the veritable knots of predictions and guesswork coiled up within each other until Soren's final move; he had trapped her main piece from close to every end. No egress.

Captured her commander, he liked to think.

He didn't like to think about the number of matches it had taken him to do it.

"A mulo ani," the woman rasped, quietly surveying his formation.

He'd heard the phrase before. A form of congratulations. He nodded and began returning his pieces to their starting positions.

"You are very clever."

His fingers stilled on the tip of the commander figure and his breath caught in his throat. If that had been the Lycian—the Elibean language—then he had finally gone mad.

He slowly brought his eyes level to the maid's; her dried, flaking lips were cracked into a smile at one corner, and her hands were folded on the table. There was an awareness in her eyes that Soren had never noticed from any of their games before—a knowing glint.

"Unless I am mistaken, or senile. Perhaps you are as stupid as that boy would have us all think."

He saw her lips and jaw move this time, and he knew he was being spoken to in Common. Or perhaps dreaming it.

"Will you play me again? Or will you continue to savor that rare victory?"

"You're from Tellius." Soren had gone too numb inside for his pride to sting.

She exhaled a sharp, dry bark of a laugh, nearly a scoff.

"No. Not as you are. If there is one particularity we share, it may be wanderlust."

Her accent carried the same lilt, the same trills on the _r_'s, the same sing-song pattern of emphasis as the Lycian's language. Soren accepted the possibility for now.

"…Your Common is remarkably clear, then."

Another laugh.

"I lived there for quite some time. Longer, in fact, than I have been on Elibe since my return. But for all this land knows of yours…my residence had amounted to little more than an unusually scopious delusion. And perhaps you and your friend are remnants of that—specters. May I touch you to be sure?"

Soren's hands withdrew into his lap, and she sniggered—softly, entirely through her nostrils.

"It was Crimea where I found myself," she continued. "In the care of a noble house, just west of the capital. The count had a flair for dramatics, but it is to him that I owe my acclimation… and my sympathy, concerning your situations. I hear you are reluctant to talk about yourself, but humor me, perhaps. The count took in frequent visitors from other countries—he familiarized my ear to many voices. But this is too familiar. You speak with a Crimean's accent."

His mouth felt dry and tasted bitter; he nodded dumbly, then swallowed down the thick knot that threatened to choke his words.

"We lived in West Crimea," he said evenly.

"I am very good, see?" She flashed a yellowed smile. "I think it is beautiful; such a beautiful accent and language, for such a beautiful land. I knew you were Crimean as well, because you are sensible. They are such a sensible people. Diplomats. And for once, a king with his wits about him! Creatures of myth, here."

Soren bit back the palpable truth on his tongue: _much has transpired since you left._

"You were no common soldier, were you?" she said.

"I was a mercenary."

He immediately regretted the choice of tense.

"And your friend?"

"He's a mercenary as well."

"He is, or he was?"

Soren changed the subject.

"Why did you choose to speak to me now, and not before?"

She sank her back against the chair, hands folding in her lap.

"What good would that have done me? So you could best my shriveled old wits even quicker?"

"In other words, you were wasting my time."

The woman made a clicking noise with her tongue. Soren had come to understand it as an expression of impatience from these people.

"Let me try again. What good would that have done you? You are a… unusually quick study. Who am I to interfere?"

"I don't know," he said snidely. "Who?"

"Bored, tired, and getting along in her years. Life's been little more than a cycle of tedium since I returned to Elibe. Until I found a new opponent, that is."

Soren ignored the gloating edge to her words.

"Then why are you here?"

Her smile faded.

"Homesickness. Family obligations. Shouldn't I be asking the same of you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, spare me the runaround, child. We have words for that sort of behavior. _Enscela—_cheeky and evasive!"

He cringed inwardly. _Child_.

"We have words for you too," he said. "'Disingenuous', for one."

"Ha, I like that. No, but I understand. Your reasons are your own. A word of friendly advice, however. When you are so obviously reluctant to volunteer such information, people tend to assume the worst of you. Sometimes rightfully so."

"That's their prerogative. Why should this matter to me?"

"Why should it matter?"

Her next laugh was incredulous, and loud; Soren nearly flinched.

"Perhaps you have not realized yet. Allow me to expound the virtues of travel—those that you may see as difficulties, at least! Whoever you once were before—whoever you were, be it a Crimean peasant or a Goldoan noble…"

She paused.

"Do Goldoans have nobility? I would ask my ward time after time about the dragons and their culture, but he was pointedly tight-lipped. Anyway."

Soren held back the next palpable truth on his tongue: an emphatic _yes_.

"However you passed the time on Crimea means as much as dirt here. Slaughtered a small village? Deny it all you please! Wanted to get familiar with your cohort?"

"What?"

"Proceed along to Etruria!" she snickered. "But I jest. Lord Roy is said to be one of the gentlest, most evenhanded men of his rank. The guests of Pherae are treated like kings—I would have endured their company, myself. Perhaps because I am bored and tired. I would gladly trade dignity for comfort."

She slowly scratched her head from beneath her hood.

"But not everyone will treat you like royalty. Even if you had once been royalty, which is what some have come to believe. I can understand them. In a way, your carriage is quite dignified! Yours and Ike both. In the very least, I do not believe that you two were common mercenaries."

"We are not—"

He stilled at the sound of a soft rustle behind him; Soren checked over his shoulder for an eavesdropper, and saw a bird of some sort take off from below a shrub.

"Don't worry," she assured him. "The others are occupied. You see, that is why I chose to speak with you now. Had I been afforded such an opportunity during my stay in Tellius, my head would positively burst with questions! There can be no room for distractions."

"Occupied with _what_?" Soren demanded.

"Oh! You do not know, then. Ike and the others went to town."

His chest tightened and his chair nearly toppled backwards as he shot to his feet.

"According to Igor, at least," the woman sighed.

"They _what_? Why?"

"They did not tell us. But Soren." She idly picked up a game piece and set it in her box. "I do have a hunch. Since I see that you would rather not sour today's victory with a fresh loss."


	15. A Battle and a Beginning

A Battle and a Beginning

The arenamaster had a casual, listless look about him as he carefully stacked what looked like a handful of coins on the rough, stony surface of the counter. Aside from that, it was mostly unadorned but for a thick ledger and what looked to be a bell. He set the gold aside upon their approach and looked them up and down, but Chad could tell that Ike most caught his interest.

The roar of a crowd carried far through the stone gallery that surrounded the arena—a low, rumbling chorus, ghostly and detached. A match was in session.

Lower-tier on these days at these hours, Hugh had said. A veritable free-for-all. If there were no fresh entrants, they'd use prisoners. Bouts between higher-ranked fighters were advertised weeks ahead of time—more public support, more revenue. Some entrants rightfully saw it as an escape from poverty, and in face of the less dignified alternatives, Chad could see the appeal.

But for now, Ike's name was not a question.

"Combat experience?"

"We don't know," Chad said.

The arenamaster considered him for a moment, then directed his question to Ike.

"Combat experience?" he repeated.

"He doesn't speak Common," said Lleu. "Your guess is as good as ours."

"I wouldn't bet on it," the man sighed, before dropping from his seat and coming around the counter. He stood so close to Ike that the foreigner needed to edge away to keep eye contact ; though the arenamaster stood taller than Chad or his friends, he reached Ike's chin at the most.

"Touch your nose."

Ike blinked and looked to Lleu and Chad for explanation.

"Touch your nose," the arenamaster repeated, bringing his index finger to his face. Ike hesitantly mimicked the gesture.

"Right-handed, stupid, or both. Take my hand."

This time, Ike caught on and clasped the arenamaster's extended palm in both of his.

"Swordfighter, alright. Now hit me."

At this, Ike took a step away.

"That better be for a running start, son."

"I don't think he wants to hit you," Chad said.

"Too bad. That attitude'll get him nowhere in the arena."

For whatever reason, the assuredness in the arenamaster's tone struck a nerve with Chad.

"You're _unarmed_." Dumbass, he almost added.

"So is he," the arenamaster said with a shrug, and then, taking a casual step towards Ike: "Here."

There was a pause, unnaturally quiet but for the distant hum of cheers, and Ike shot Chad a puzzled look. Then the punch came so swiftly and so abruptly that Chad almost jumped between them, but Ike had caught it with a fluid ease.

"Tight," the arenamaster noted. "Firm. We've got a good match for him coming up. Axe-user. Didn't say much either. Cel!" he barked down the long, shady corridor. No answer. He pounded his fist against the stone wall, missing the bell. _"Celestine!"_

A potbellied man soon emerged, with tufts of muttonchops and eyebrows slanted in a way that suggested perpetual anger. He seemed to give a start at the sight of the newcomers.

"Erm…"

"Sword," said the arenamaster.

"Oh, right. Follow me."

Though he hadn't been informed of the specific entrant, he nodded towards Ike. Like he's the only swordsman here, Chad thought, though he supposed that was accurate.

They reluctantly followed him the man further back towards the rumble of the audience, and then took a sharp turn to walk along the corridor. Chad fell to the back with Ike, studying his face:

"Uh, Ike."

The foreigner nearly started at the sound of his name. The stone-ribbed walls carried Chad's voice too well. He decided not to care.

"What that man said is true, right?"

"Ha?"

The "ha" was almost infectious. Chad caught himself slipping it in conversation from time to time.

"You know what a sword is?" Chad still kept some back home—hidden from sight, out of reach and long out of use. He hadn't shown them to Ike and questioned Lugh's sanity when he had gone the other way and tossed a deadly weapon Soren's way.

"Yes," said Ike. "In Pherae."

"Did they let you use one?"

"No."

"…Do you know how to use one?"

"One?"

They were interrupted by a grunt as Celestine cleared his throat. They stopped at a heavy door as he fumbled for the loop of keys around his belt, half-obstructed by his overhanging stomach.

"You're on the heavier side," he said with a nod, fitting the key into the lock. The door creaked open with some resistance, and he ushered the four of them into a darkened room. It didn't take long for Chad's eyes to adjust.

It was hot, windowless, smelling sharply of oil. They stored the swords with only the loosest semblance of order; on the wall across from them, some hung as though on display, while some had been stuck in bins, others shelved.

"Does the fighter get to choose his weapon?" Hugh said.

"Nope."

Hugh clicked his tongue in exasperation.

"How's that determined, then?"

The man was turned away from Hugh, but even in the shadows of the room, Chad could see that he was studying him.

"You know how to use a sword?" he said.

"Anima magic."

"Well, then." The man sounded amused. "You go ahead and pick for 'em."

"What? Really?"

From behind Hugh, Chad saw half a broad smile spread over his cheeks. He crossed immediately to the largest weapon on display. A greatsword. Two-hander. Not Chad's favorite. Its weight seemed to surprise Hugh as he removed it from the wall and held it flat across his spread hands. The blade was etched and nicked all down the edge, discolored with age, and if the tremor in Hugh's arms was anything to go by, horribly unwieldy.

Ike considered it for a moment as Hugh held it out.

"Take it!" he urged with a nod, eager and strained all at once.

Reluctant, his hand hovered over the hilt, then grasped and steadily lifted the sword away. Hugh's arms fell to his side.

"Good choice," said Celestine from where he stood in the doorway. "Don't see that one in the ring too often. Impractical as hell, but it's a crowd-pleaser."

"It looks beat-up," Chad said, running a finger down one of the marks as Ike held it obediently straight.

"Arena weapons. They've all got stories to tell." The man fell quiet, as though waiting for a response, then glanced down the corridor, the way they had come. "Follow me, then."

Chad took one last inspection of the sword, then fell away and complied. As before, Lleu lingered behind. Chad wondered if he was beginning to regret this already. If not now, then later.

Past the ingress for new registrants, they came to what Hugh would call the heart and heat of the arena, if he hadn't gone mostly dumb upon arrival. Before them was the entrance gate

"Uh, usually," Hugh said, gesturing vaguely to a hatch to the side. "They keep the contestants underground, and there are shafts that lead up to the surface for quick access. There are cages too, for bears and the like… you know, there are some very old, old accounts of this beast who could take six men out in a swipe. Like, a beast-man. You nervous?"

It was a rich question, coming from Hugh. It was clear that Ike hadn't been listening.

His hand curled over the grip, molding to the shape—a practiced pliability that Chad knew from years of feeling it himself.

"Ike." The foreigner tensed when he placed a hand on his sword arm to lower it.

"If you're hurt and feel like you can't fight anymore, throw your weapon down. Alright?"

Ike's eyes flickered to the sword in his hand—as though committing the feel to memory.

"Look," Chad said. "Sometimes backing off isn't the same as losing. Do you get that?"

"Yes. I…" For the first time, it became apparent that Ike had more to say than he let on. "I understand."

Hugh hadn't caught on to his hesitation, or he simply didn't care.

"Just go at the other guy until he gives, alright?" He patted him on the shoulder.

"Is for fun," Ike said—clarified.

"Exactly!"

As though all the din had been sucked out of the arena, a gurgle and weighty _thud _marked the sudden silence. Though Chad had his back to the entrance gate, Lleu's stricken expression was telling enough. Chad gently took Ike by one arm and guided him away from the ring.

A swell of astonished chatter followed them back down the corridor. Indistinct, ringing echoes. Murmurs.

"Sounds like they're having fun, doesn't it?" Hugh offered, taking Ike's other side. "They'll like you. Really, _intimidation _is an art all its own."

"Ha?"

"You'll be fine!" the mage laughed.

From behind them, Chad heard Lleu say, "Try not to kill him."

It was the first time he had spoken in a while. Chad shot a quizzical frown over his shoulder, but Lleu had occupied his attention with something in the far corner.

The cheers fell to an indistinct drone. The arena was not so full today. Chad knew this because he had passed it by before, during more important matches, and the were so deafening that he had cleared past the block as quickly as possible. The similarity to a wyvern's screech, a flock of them, was almost uncanny, and it agitated Chad at times. He considered that, as with Serena, he was simply inventing phantoms to flee from.

A horn sounded from a seat box far above, only to be swallowed by the ensuing clamor.

"That's you," Celestine grunted, gripping the crank besides the entrance gate.

The hatched shadow slowly lifted away from Ike like a curtain, and soon he stood in nothing but the shaft of sun from the open-air ring. He glanced back at Chad, sword held flat in both hands as though he was delivering it.

"You can still turn back if you want."

"You can't," Hugh and Celestine said in unison. Though Chad wasn't eager to start a brawl with someone twice his weight, he could afford Hugh a sharp jab in the side.

Despite his rising dread, he watched in silence as Ike stepped into the ring. The gate's mechanisms began to shift into reverse; with nonchalant ease, Celestine lowered the gate behind him.

"Kick his ass!" Hugh needed to raise his voice over the resurgence of cries, and Chad wondered if the encouragement had been lost on Ike; the foreigner smiled back anyway before proceeding to the center of the stage.

"We've got two of a kind in the ring," Celestine remarked, stepping away from the grate and folding his arms. Chad didn't catch his meaning until a moment later.

"Wait, what?"

"Another dimwit. Ain't too rare in the arena, though. Really, what else are they good for?"

Oh. A misunderstanding. Chad had shared similar suspicions about Ike, anyway.

"Yeah."

He could not concern himself with correcting the man; he turned his attention to the ring as Celestine backed away and left, undoubtedly to tend to more routine affairs with the arenamaster.

They could catch glimpses of the other fighter behind the opposite grate; mostly flickers of movement, hidden behind a shadow within a shadow.

The scraping sound of the gate lifting cut across the clamor, strident with rust and age.

The berserker dragged the axe along the dirt, approaching his position with a careful haltingness. Barefoot, hunchbacked, slack-faced in a way that struck Chad as uncannily familiar.

For the second time, Lleu spoke: "Shit."

As the axeman shambled to the center and emerged from the shadow cast by the wall at his back, his features came into definition. The heavy brow. The beady eyes. The gaping mouth—

"Wait, I see it," Chad said. "Is that—"

"Gonzales, wasn't it?" Hugh interrupted him. "Same walk. Same _clothes_. I can't believe it. Shit."

Lleu and Chad echoed his sentiments like the closing to a prayer; Lleu took a step towards the grate and brought a hand to it.

"Getting Ike pulled apart wasn't the deal," he said, turning to them. "We might have to call this off."

Hugh seemed coolly amused by his agitation.

"Sure, we can do that—let's just see how he does, first."

"Hugh," Chad started gravely. "It's your money, but it's Ike's goddamn _life_."

"Or Gonzales's," Lleu added.

"Gonzales can take care of himself fine," Hugh said. "And we can't call this off. _They _will call this off when they're tired. Everything's going to be alright."

They had already taken their positions. It had been out of Chad's hands as soon as he agreed to as much as entertain the idea. He was powerless.

Though Elimine would surely cluck and chide him for his spiritual inconstancy, Chad secretly invoked her protection, and when that did not seem like enough, he turned his frustrations towards Hugh.

"You're a shithead."

Hugh didn't argue with him.

Ike assumed his stance—squared, both hands on the sword as he held it forward like a beacon. An invitation? The axeman kept stood his ground from a cautious distance.

Then Ike _nodded_.

Such an assured, casual gesture, but not immodest. Ike had never struck Chad as immodest.

The cue registered slowly with the axeman, who took a slow, dragging step forward, and then stopped.

Another.

A pause.

And then another.

Watching this was torture.

Hugh jostled next to Chad and cupped his mouth with his hands, his cry piercing through the din.

"_Don't wait for him!"_

It carried well enough for Ike to stare back at them, an axe raised aloft towards his bare, unprotected neck.

_"Shit, look out!"_

"Hugh, _shut up_," Chad snarled.

The metal clattered and shrieked as Ike twisted and glanced away the blow with one hand, the other thrown back for balance. Gonzales staggered away and regained his composure, bearing low to the ground as the crowd broke out into eager shouts. The sun at his back, his face darkened; Gonzales remained crouched like this as he circled Ike, the point of his axe dragging a groove in the sand, like the tail of some stalking predator. He lunged, and Ike caught him, shuffling backwards under the axeman's massive weight—

"Wait, he's still fighting _one-handed_," Chad blurted, coming slow upon the realization. Neither Lleu nor Hugh answered; they could have fallen asleep for all Chad knew, but he wasn't willing to tear his eyes away from the scene.

"That's not a one-handed sw—"

"_We know_," said Lleu. "Shut up."

Gonzales charged with flailing, shaken swings, heavy and unwieldy as a panicked horse, and Ike slipped just out of his reach—with that nimbleness, the practiced fluidity that Chad felt stirring within himself. With a trained eye he followed the direction of each stroke, the weight of every step, the slow arc of the axehead as Gonzales veered onto Ike and missed, and the swordsman had circled behind him. The muscles of his legs tensed and demanded him to dodge; his fingers curled through the grate, as though over the hilt of a knife. Part of him fancied that he had taken magical influence over Ike's actions, lending his battle-honed reflexes.

Or Ike was simply much, much faster than Chad could ever imagine.

He remembered that there was no side to cheer for when Ike ducked forward and scraped their weapons together with a shearing shriek that rattled Chad to the core. Their weapons locked overhead, standing tall and chest-to-chest, Gonzales arched his back and attempted to bend Ike beneath his weight. Ike spread his legs to brace himself for the load, sword arm quaking as he bowed back, and finally threw the bandit off.

The crowd's response was so loud that Chad dismissed the echoes of babble as his imagination until the chaos reared up behind him.

"_Hey! You can't go back there!"_

Both men beside Chad were too absorbed to meet the foreigner's approach until a blur of cloth and shadow collided with Lleu, knocking his forehead into the grate hard enough to break skin.

"Bera hanne hrokva anarr en ognan!"

Gonzales was leaning his weight on his axe, his arms trembling and knees threatening to buckle. When Ike glanced over his shoulder towards the source of the call, the axeman made a visible effort to right himself, lurching forward to seize this rare advantage.

"E aptr ver—"

Lleu jerked Soren away from the gate with a curse—all Chad caught was a flash of feverish eyes and bloodied face before they toppled back, a tangle of robes and flailing limbs. They rolled and Soren slammed the druid into the ground, growling in a tongue that Chad realized was not his own.

"I can't understand you," hissed Lleu.

_"Rui teshioni nawata-na," _Soren repeated.

Lleu breathed in raggedly, and answered with a wad of blood and phlegm to the face. The crowd hissed in protest, as though bearing witness to the unforeseen altercation; Chad belatedly realized, upon glancing back towards the competition in the ring, that the match had come to a premature end. Ike had abandoned his weapon and grasped at the entrance grate empty-handed.

Returning to the brawl, Chad saw that the arenamaster had intervened, appearing from the ingress to pluck Soren away from Lleu while another servant restrained the druid.

"I lose," Ike said breathlessly. _I quit, let me in._

Soren nearly broke away upon the sight of his companion.

"Ike! Has ervu ash gerre eya boff ten kjore—"

"Ig err lette! Fyiresvolette!"

"What's this all about!" the arenamaster snarled, wrenching Soren's arms behind his back for a more secure hold. Soren thrashed back and managed to escape his grip once before Celestine seized him by the other arm.

"Soren, eg berjarn eg!"

"Sjald berjarn eg!" he hissed.

It was difficult reasoning with the arenamaster over the foreigners' increasingly agitated arguments, but as Hugh's wits had all but abandoned him, Chad took it upon himself to try.

"Look, we're sorry for the trouble, but he's not a—"

He stopped. _He's not dangerous? _That wouldn't have worked.

"What in the hell are they saying, anyway?" the arenamaster growled. "Where'd you say that one's from, again?"

"Ig err saying let go me and okke eg mun deyja—"

"Please," Ike interrupted his countryman. "We are sorry."

"There was a misunderstanding," Chad said. "Can't you let them go for one goddamn minute?"

"I'll let 'em go when I get an explanation first!"

"On the contrary, you will unhand that person _at once_!"

The voice was more piercing and offensive to the senses than the stab of any rust-scraped arena weapon. Edgar arrived on the scene with much aplomb, heal staff in hand and not a pig-ass hair out of place.

Both captives stilled their struggles; Edgar gave a cool, disdainful nod towards Soren.

"That one, at least."

"Are you responsible for this boy?" the arenamaster said, jerking Soren straight as though to offer a better look.

"That _boy _is a prospective apprentice of mine, and you would do well to check your this graceless handling that can best be described as mistreatment. S_ir_."

"That a yes?"

"I would advise against that _tone _as well, if you value the _enduring survival _of this boorish establishment."

The arenamaster did not respond, but he seemed more amused than intimidated.

"And as you are _apparently _in need of elucidation, that is indeed a 'yes'. To put it plainly for your sake, I accept full responsibility for the lad's misconduct."

The arenamaster peered down at the mage hanging limp beneath him, then back at the sidelines where Chad, Hugh, and Ike looked helplessly on. For a moment, there was nothing but the fading din of the audience outside, and Chad could no longer bring himself to care about their loss.

"He's yours," the man said at last, releasing Soren with a light shove. He nodded to the man with Lleu, who followed suit; the druid seemed poised to lunge again, but instead slinked back to join his companions. Chad tried to placate him with a hand on his shoulder, though Lugh had always been better at this. He felt his neck tense, his back slowly rising in a sigh.

"Oh, and that there was a loss," said the arenamaster.

He turned to Hugh and held out a leathery palm.

"Pay up."

* * *

Chad wanted to speak with him. He had his entire side of the conversation worked out in his head, broken down into short, simple declaratives. _You're a fighter. Or were. I was too. So was your opponent. He's strong. We had fought together. You were stronger. Ike, you're weird. I'm convinced there's more to you than you're letting on. People want to know who you are._

And then a question.

_Who the hell are you?_

It would have failed as a word of comfort, or a demand for explanation, so Chad decided against broaching the subject. Besides, Soren hung close to Ike with the guardedness of a threatened animal; no one would have been able to get a word in. Before now, the dog comparisons had never seemed so apt to Chad.

He hadn't even thought to ask how he—or Edgar, for that matter—managed to find them.

Edgar turned them into an empty backstreet to stop and rest—and heal, he revealed, as his generosity truly knew no bounds. He sat Lleu on a filthy crate to examine his injuries, stepping back as though to behold a tattered portrait. He wrinkled his nose.

"My mother was a healer under Lord Eliwood of Pherae's command, you know." Edgar knelt and cupped Lleu's jaw, turning his head to the side. "My father as well, yes, but it was Mother's area of expertise. They say she served as a soldier as well as a pillar of support—that men would venture as far to inflict injury upon themselves to simply draw near her words of comfort."

The druid winced as Edgar ran a finger along the edges of the wound.

"It's a testament to her willpower. She does detest the sight of blood, even to this day. This is quite the untidy gash, by the by. Ah, it's a rupture—torn frightfully asunder. Blunt trauma. You are quite fortunate that your nose had been spared, however. Though you and your brother are of no noble blood to speak of, your noses have quite the stately shape about them."

"Sir Edgar," Chad interrupted him. "Is this palaver part of the healing process as well?"

Despite all his restraint, he could not disguise the snideness in his tone.

And Edgar had noticed.

"Chad?"

His tone unreadable, he slowly rose to his feet.

"Why is it..." He smoothed out the front of his finely-embroidered tunic. "Why is it, _Chad_, that you feel the need to volunteer your ill-founded presumptions on every little matter beyond the scope of your limited understanding?"

"I don't catch your meaning."

"Of course you don't," he sneered. "Take magic, for instance. Take the education, or even the general welfare of the students into consideration. You operate under this grand delusion of authority that's at best worthless towards a child's intellectual growth, and at worst, harmful. What do you know of the art of magic, let alone magical _instruction_?"

The rest of the group had fallen silent.

"Or _art _itself, for another example. Lugh is fiercely insistent upon your 'clever hands', and I am compelled to wonder."

"Excuse me?"

"Feign innocence all you please! Elimine has words for young men of ill-repute and their chosen line of 'work'. While 'alley rat' is not among them, I find the term quite appropriate."

Lleu shot to his feet. The foreigners had been drawn out from their one-sided squabble, confused and enraptured in equal measure. Hugh had been struck dumb for the entirety of Edgar's presence, looking on in silent discomfort.

"Sit the hell down," Chad told him.

"No, you stand the hell up! Do _you know who we are?" _Lleu hissed in Edgar's face. "Do you? I'm sure you don't, because if you did, you'd know we don't give a _shower of stony wyvern shits _about where you come from, or what your parents have done!"

_"Lleu—"_

"We don't! A _firebreathing dragon _could lumber down the street and jam its head into this alleyway, and we _still would not give a shit. _It will yawn in our faces and treat us to an odorous glimpse of _hell_ in the pit of its throat, and we will _yawn right back_."

"Lleu!"

"So this is where you've run off to!"

The fire on Lleu's tongue all but died. Framed by the light just at the mouth of the backstreet, a woman faced them with a wide, familiarly confident stance, arms folded over her leather-clad chest. Before any of them could summon up her name, a figure lumbered behind her, eclipsing her shadow with his own. Gonzales greeted them with a bashful wave.

"Chad! My God, is that you?" She stepped into the alley, and at that short distance Chad could make out the traces of aging that lined Echidna's face.

"You've grown! And _Lugh_? When'd you get so tall, anyway?"

"Uh… Lleu."

"Shit, even better! What have all of you been up to?"

It was clear that she wasn't looking for an answer, as her eyes found Ike and her point of interest became apparent.

"Good God. Is that one yours?"

No one responded; Chad had almost expected Soren to jump in and answer in their place, but their dumbfoundedness must have spread to him.

"You, swordsman." She nodded to Ike. "What's your name."

"Ike."

"Ike? What was that all about? Taking pity on Gonzales, here?"

"Ah… what?"

"You're pretty good! He's pretty good too—" She gestured to the man behind her. "I mean, _really _good, but you had him on his last legs."

From her satchel she produced a small bag. Shook it once.

Gold.

"I don't feel as though we've earned this."

"Wait, Echidna," Chad said, finally finding his words. "That's Gonzales's, isn't it?"

"Is it? Do you think we won?"

"No, I mean, is it really yours to give away?"

Echidna smirked.

"You tell me."

Chad opened his mouth to answer, but found himself at a loss again.

Realistically, he knew that the burden of guilt shouldn't have fallen to him. And that this oppressive silence should not have plagued them as persistently as it did.

Fortunately, Echidna filled it for them.

"Care to introduce me to your other friends?"

Though two other newcomers stood in their midst, Echidna's focus was clearly fixed upon Ike. She finally looked to Edgar, however, and appeared to study his clothing.

"That necklace..." she said. "Ostian, right?"

"Excuse me?"

"I've seen them around. They were an Ostian trend way back when."

"Well, I don't know what falsehoods those Ostian trollops have been spreading about as of late, but this is an _heirloom_," he huffed, clutching the tiny doll strung around his neck. "From my mother, an _Etrurian_ noblewoman."

Echidna studied him for a moment, with the hint of a smile in her eyes.

"Etrurian, huh. What house?"

"Pardon?"

"Family name? Where are you from?"

"Well…" he began with a bristle, smoothing his front in a manner that Chad realized to be a sort of nervous habit. "My mother is the daughter of a count who… underwent quite a storm of family turmoil! While we have cast aside the name of our kin, my parents are still very _prominent _figures at Aquleia."

"Nice. Fibernia, here." She gestured to the axeman behind her once more. "Stationed at Jutes, but we've been getting around lately."

"Fibernia…"

"Could've guessed, right?"

"It's… it is hardly a surprise, to say the least." Edgar narrowed his eyes. "Is this how the colonies fund themselves?"

Echidna laughed.

"As a country, the aim is more or less self-sustenance. We can stand on our own legs without this paltry sum of gold."

She traded the bag from one hand to another to demonstrate its lightness.

"Raiding mainland trading vessels will suffice for you people, wouldn't it?" Edgar went on.

"Dunno, ask your parents."

"Beg pardon, wench?"

"Many of the raiding groups continue to work under Etrurian employ," she said absently, rolling the bag from palm to palm. "Reform is slow. Old secrets die slow. And if you ask me, Etrurian nobles can be quite slow as well. Don't you agree, Gonzales?"

She looked up to the axeman, who met her eyes, but did not respond.

"Insult my family once more," Edgar hissed, "and I shall be obligated to defend their honor."

"I've no doubt."

"I would have eagerly done so earlier, had the distance between our respective stations not rendered it so degrading."

"It would be a disgrace, indeed."

"I've had enough of this," Edgar finally said, affecting his best grimace of disgust. "Come. Lugh is waiting."

To the outside observer, it must have seemed as though the group had fallen in line with Edgar's authority, wordlessly following him as Echidna and Gonzales shifted aside to make way for them.

Mostly, Chad worried for Lugh, almost as much as Lugh must have worried for them.

"Chad."

Echidna caught him just as he stepped out the alleyway as the others passed.

"Hm."

"You still doing what you're doing?"

Her voice was low.

"Come again?"

"You know. Intelligence."

Realization dawned slow and hard; Chad swallowed back a sharp protest. Intelligence.

"I'm not a thief," he said darkly.

"Hey, that's not what I said. But I'm happy for you." She paused to consider him for a moment. "I'll venture a guess and say you don't know what's going on at Araphen."

"What?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Echidna grinned.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Doesn't look like a good time or place to get into that," she said, nodding towards the others as they rounded a corner ahead."You live in this city?"

"… More or less."

"Move around a lot?"

"No. We're just outside Araphen."

Aside from their occasional brushes with each other, all he knew about Echidna he had learned about her from afar. The passage of years did little to soften the blow of this encounter—she intimidated him, still. But he had nothing to hide anymore.

"I work at an orphanage of sorts," he said.

"Aha. This is where Lord Roy found you, isn't it?"

"Look, I don't really have time for this. I didn't tell Lugh where I was headed, and that's part of the reason why we ended up losing."

Before he could jerk himself away, Echidna had seized his hand with hers, the bag of gold clasped between them.

"The more you talk, the more I'm convinced Ike's earned this. Pass it on."

"Take it," Gonzales agreed. His voice surprised Chad; he couldn't recall hearing it outside of battle, but it was as clumsy as his gait. Guttural, but soft-spoken.

"You sure, Gonzales?"

"Yes. He did good."

He must have been speaking with the foreigners too much, because the answer sufficed for Chad.

"In exchange for one thing," Echidna said, her hands clamping over his before he could pull away.

"Where's this orphanage of yours?" She let him go. "We should drop by sometime. Catch up."


	16. Shadows Materialize

Whoops, month-long delay! Besides real-life obligations, I'd actually had this chapter finished weeks ago, lost it, and put off retyping it for the _longest time. _My bad! I still love you, can we go back to how the way things were? :( :( :( Et cetera.

Anyway, couple things:

_Dark themes _this chapter (i.e. explicit violence) so be warned.

And, uh, this probably shouldn't need to be said, but I have anonymous reviews enabled so that people could complain without fear of recourse! Please take them there and not to the Anon Meme at LJ because seriously that's just weird! Don't be weird!

* * *

Shadows Materialize

Father Lucius had taught them that everything would fall into accordance with God's plan, no matter what misfortune may follow. It was his answer to everything—from a poor crop, to broken chairs, to Lleu's coldness—and Lugh eventually came to adopt it as a philosophy of sorts, though Chad had called it godlike optimism. Lleu's behavior was simply a product of hardships, a safeguard of his brimming generosity that would have otherwise left him vulnerable. A poor crop can inspire a new appreciation for the bounties God granted them, broken furniture meant visits from Mr. Igor, and Lleu…

Lleu was also part of that plan, and deserved to be loved no less than any other of God's creations.

Lugh had once suggested, after the war's end, that Father's death had not been in vain—that without Bern's involvement, they would not have met Lord Roy, who would in turn reunite them, and all the experienced shared and friendships gained had been a natural consequence of their loss.

Chad and Lleu were not so quick to accept this explanation.

But when Chad told Lugh to expect a visit from fellow compatriot under General Roy's banner, this was the very explanation he used.

"She didn't tell us what they're up to in Araphen," Chad had told him that morning as they plucked laundry from the clothesline. "But she said they'd be interested in stopping by for a chat."

"Hugh, Lleu, his friends, and now Echidna and Gonzales—it's certainly been strangely abuzz around here, hasn't it? A bit strange."

Chad shrugged.

"Strange, unless you don't believe in coincidences."

"Are you suggesting an act of divine intervention? Or…" He took down a child's blouse and smoothed it against his chest. "That perhaps it was fated?"

He could not mask the teasing suggestion in his tone. Chad simply glanced sidelong, then ignored it.

"Well… I think we're maybe overdue for a reunion."

That had been enough explanation for Lugh. As he considered devoting the earlier half of the day to tidying their affairs, the question of the children's lesson remained.

Fortunately, Lugh knew the perfect candidate for a substitute.

Though Lugh had come to assume that the foreigners were simply private by nature, or simply slow to adapt, he would overhear them from time to time as he passed by the door to the den, muttering in their strange little language—and even rarer, speaking Elibe's own common tongue.

And though he hadn't recognized it at first—resisting the urge to focus beyond the glimpses of conversation that would drift by him in passing—it became clear that they were exchanging instruction. He paused a short distance from the door and rested his head against the wall, straining his ear to the _ within.

"Sorry." It was Soren's voice, clearly enunciated but pronounced in a way so odd and so foreign that Lugh found it quaint.

"Sorry," Ike repeated, devoting the same heavy, deliberate emphasis to every syllable.

"I am spoken for," Soren said. Still so outlandishly droll that Lugh didn't think twice of the meaning behind their words, or where they could have learned the phrase; besides that, he suspected it was the same for them.

"I am—ha?"

Ike stopped.

"Oslajaktu eptar em—you say after."

There was a pause, before Ike came in again.

"I know not what is you say!"

"Eg herrka in vilnem, Ike."

Ike laughed. Ike never struck Lugh as particularly expressive, so this took him aback.

"Dette eg ash mun eiglindjar."

"Ig vita eg dette sigja."

"Ig alska sem?"

There was pause, and more laughter—from Soren, Lugh realized. Strange and alien and almost worrisome, like a purring wyvern.

(A sign of indigestion, Miledy had once told him.)

"Ig vita eg dette hildur."

Another pause. No laughter.

"Sem vitte, Soren."

And then there was nothing but silence, and Lugh concluded that his eavesdropping, however harmlessly ignorant, was eavesdropping nonetheless; though Elimine had said nothing of this vice, she would most certainly frown upon it.

(Past incidents with some of Chad's more colorful guests had taught him similarly.)

When the foreigners' conversation had come to a seeming end (an agreement? An argument?) Lugh stepped forward and knocked.

There was an immediate rustling and a bump as someone rose—chances were that they had perhaps just woken, or indulging in those lazy, early hours by feigning sleep. The children had done so at times, though unlike Father Lucius, Chad had no patience for layabouts.

Soren was the one to answer, and he still hadn't changed out of Chad's overlarge smock, confirming Lugh's suspicions.

"Good morning, Soren!" he chirped.

The mage seemed taken aback, like a sickly mongoose too long accustomed to the soft noises of its burrow.

"Was I interrupting something important?"

"No," he said.

"Ah, good! Then, Soren, this might seem to you an odd request… but may I ask a favor of you?"

Soren studied him for a moment before answering.

"Yes."

"Would you be interested in giving a lesson to the children as I tend to other affairs?"

Lugh braced himself for a refusal, but instead found Soren hesitating, his quick eyes flickering to the corner of the hall.

"I…"

"Perhaps for only an hour or so at the most," Lugh breathlessly interrupted, "though I would ultimately leave the length and content to your discretion. Lleu could help with instruction, but I feel someone with such an excellent grasp on anima magic might be better suited for the task, and although Hugh is certainly capable…"

He trailed off, his focus drawn to the mark on his forehead.

Though Lugh had seen similar brands, he was not willing to jump to any drastic conclusions.

"Your…background… may lend more to a, erm, broader learning experience."

"I do not speak the language," Soren said.

"You speak it very well, on the contrary!" Lugh laughed; there was a subtle flinch from Soren as he laid a hand on his arm. "Moreover, you speak the language of the very tomes we use to cast spells—as Edgar had said, the ancestral language that shaped our understanding of magic, and how it, in turn, shapes the world around us! "

"Lleu does also." Soren did not sound impressed.

"My brother is a brilliant druid, but anima magic is not his area of expertise. And not to mention that the children adore you—"

He noticed a slight grimace cross over the mage's face.

"But if you would rather not, I understand. It's a lot to ask of a stranger, never mind a guest!"

This time, there was no hesitation in his answer.

"Sorry," he said.

"Please don't apologize." Lugh smiled. "But I meant to say, Soren—although, from what Lleu tells me, yours is to be a tragically short stay… you are nonetheless guests! Perhaps your customs of hospitality are far less… familiar, but here, guests are to be treated as friends. You are not strangers to this household."

For a moment, Lugh worried that he had spoken too quickly, in his nervousness, for Soren to parse, or used the wrong words. Then, Soren nodded in acknowledgment.

"Thank you," he said at length.

"But that means eating at the table with the rest of us, mind."

"Of course."

Lugh tried to slide him a knowing grin, which Soren did not return. An ensuing silence settled between them, before Lugh finally remembered the purpose of his proposal.

"You met Echidna and Gonzales the other day, haven't you?"

"Excuse me?"

"When Chad and Hugh brought the three of you out to town? A light-haired, sturdily-built woman?"

"…Yes."

"They might stop by for a visit later today. I thought you should know, considering how hectic things have been."

Soren eyed him warily.

"I see."

"She's very…barefaced," Lugh continued. "Should she say anything to cause potential offense, you are… under no obligation to humor her."

Lugh heard rustling from within the room as Ike presumably got to his feet. Soren paid him no mind.

"Yes," he said.

"Has vinng sen?" Ike said as he ambled up behind his countryman. Then, with a nod to Lugh, "Good morning."

"Good morning, Ike."

"Sen behandlig okke ad gamnem ash fyrirgja utlengsins," Soren muttered.

"Per dagnen? Hvor?"

"Ig vita eg dette hildur."

Ike grinned, and despite his own ignorance, Lugh beamed as well. He considered it a that they felt enough at ease to converse in their native tongue, in spite of Lugh's presence.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you," he said. "I'm going to wake my brother, so if you need him for any reason, I can pass it on."

They exchanged puzzled looks.

"No," he said, turning back to Lugh. "Thank you."

"Very well!"

Before he could speak any further, the foreigners had retreated back in their room to ready themselves.

* * *

The last several years had treated Echidna well enough; faint creases of age lined her face, her mouth pressed thin and tight. She seemed more amused than annoyed, however, when Lugh greeted her with an embrace, and even deigned to return it with a few pats to the shoulder.

Gonzales, on the other hand, remained virtually unchanged. Not even his distinct odor had faded.

And he was far more receptive—crushingly eager, in fact—to a hug, and faintly affronted when Chad declined to one before leading them inside. Echidna halted in the doorway, surveying her surroundings with an air of regard.

"This is where General Roy snatched you up, isn't it?" There was admiration in her tone as she studied the rafters—undoubtedly appreciating their workmanship, Lugh concluded with misplaced pride.

"In a sense, yes." Lugh beamed and showed them to the sitting area as Chad set the pot to boil. "This was the site of the orphanage where we lived, before Bern soldiers came through and destroyed it."

For a moment, Echidna's smile faded.

"I wouldn't have guessed, myself. Nice place you've got here."

"I know! Lord Roy had been most generous with our compensation—it more than covered the initial expenses."

"I'm not surprised at all. He's a good kid." She followed him for two steps, then froze in place. "Good God, how old are you now?"

From there, the conversation proceeded as pleasantly as Lugh could expect.

Lleu and Chad joined them in the sitting area, but it was Lugh who mostly spoke. He spoke of the building of the school and its upkeep, of what little he knew of the political climate of Araphen, of eastern Lycia—but mostly, Lugh spoke at length about the children. The hardships of raising them, his pride as their teacher, their guardian, their spiritual advisor, the satisfaction he derived from watching them bloom into capable, intelligent, and most importantly, individually autonomous young adults.

He perhaps spoke too much about the children, because if he managed to sustain Echidna's interest for that long, she did little to show for it.

When the foreigners emerged from the den, Echidna slid to the far side of the couch and gestured for them to sit.

Reluctantly, they joined her. Gonzales seemed to go taut upon their arrival; when Lugh looked to him, he noticed a small thrumming at his throat. Dry swallowing—the axeman washed it down with an inelegant gulp of his tea. And whenever Ike's eyes would wander to his general direction, he would cast his gaze to the ground and hold it there as though in intense, fervent prayer.

Lugh had never known Gonzales to be this shy. Then again, he knew very little about Gonzales to begin with.

Finally, Lugh turned the conversation over to Echidna.

"What brings the two of you to Araphen?" he said.

"Business." She took an affectedly dainty sip from her tea, watching him steadily over the rim of her cup; Gonzales clumsily imitated the gesture.

"Ask us about the reconstruction effort," she said, punctuating her invitation with the knock of her mug onto the table.

Lugh was taken aback.

"Erm…"

"It's going swimmingly," she cut in with a grin. "Our ally in the Etrurian court has proven… most valuable."

"Pardon?"

"Oh, the lot of you don't know," she said dully. "Prince Mildain has lately been concerning himself with the Western Isles' forthcoming autonomy. His gaggle of courtiers aren't entirely sympathetic—in fact, I've been hearing about this two-faced undercurrent of dissent, recently. But you know what? I'll tell you later. I want to hear about your friend."

Chad glanced at the foreigners.

"These two?" he said. "What, are you going through a recruitment craze again?"

"No, no, although I'm perfectly willing to take them off your hands. I mean that Etrurian friend of yours."

"'Friend' is stretching it."

"Acquaintance?"

"Benefactor."

"Oh!" she laughed. "That makes a lot more sense than what I had in mind."

Lugh didn't catch her meaning, but nobody seemed to question it.

"What manner of nobility is he?" Echidna continued.

"Ill-mannered," said Chad.

"Let me rephrase that," she snorted. "What is his business in Araphen?"

Here, Lugh spoke up.

"Scholar's mission work."

At the sight of Echidna's clear bemusement, Lugh simpered and dropped his eyes to his lukewarm tea.

"It's what he calls it," he said, "metaphorically, of course. He's a… private tutor as well as a prospective mentor to our students. And his presence is greatly valued."

"He'll let you know it too," Chad added. "Would've done Ostia, 'cultural oasis' that it is, but he figured he'd do us backwards brutes in Araphen a favor."

He trailed off into mumbles.

"Biggest city this side of Laus. Culturally bankrupt."

Echidna ignored him, her sharp eyes darting back to Lugh.

"You say his parents sent him here?"

Lugh nodded dumbly.

"What do you know about them?" she pressed. "Names? Station? I imagine his vagueness was deliberate when he spoke to me."

"That's Edgar," Chad shrugged. Lugh shot him a disapproving frown.

"They are magic users of some renown," he said to Echidna. She quirked a brow. "He claims that his father had previously been offered, and subsequently rejected the position of Mage General."

At this, Echidna's eyes lit with intrigue.

"You serious? Think General Cecilia would have something on them?"

"She was just in Pherae not too long ago," Lleu spoke up for what felt like the first time that day. "We… er, caught up."

"Damn, guess I missed her. So they've got to be in high places."

"He'll tell you as much," Chad said. "I don't get what you're driving at."

Echidna's brow furrowed, as though deep in thought, then looked to Soren.

The foreigner returned her stare with a muttered word in his own language.

"You sure these aren't spies, right?" she said at last.

"Spies of who?" Lleu burst out, nearly spilling his tea onto his rag-turned-placemat when he set it down a touch too vigorously. "Agents from their little island? Or kingdom, or wherever they're from?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of Lycian or Etrurian spies."

"Do they _sound _Lycian to you?"

"Hey, they could be very good spies!" Echidna took another look at the pair who pressed themselves against the edge of the sofa. "For all we know, they could be speaking a very sophisticated code-language right now—no chance of interception, after all. Anyway, what were they doing in Pherae?"

Lugh tried to think of a diplomatic way to call the very subject of their discussion to her attention, but Lleu answered before him.

"Wolt's parents found them and brought them in." He shrugged. "Off the shore, out in no-man's land."

"Wolt! How's he doing?"

"Could you get to your point first?" Chad cut in. "What's with this interest in Edgar?"

Echidna settled back against the cushion, her smile subdued.

"I have in good confidence that something rotten's amiss here in Araphen, and that it may be in some way connected to the more… motivated dissenters back in Etruria. A little worrisome, and definitely worth checking out."

"What do you mean?" Lugh said.

"That's what we're here to find out! And if you ask me, a blueblood straight out of Etruria would make for a great lead, don't you think?"

"Doesn't sound like you've got much to go off," said Chad. "'Something smells rotten' is incredibly vague, and he's not the kind to cozy up to baseless accusations."

"Accusations?" Echidna smirked. "I just figured I'd…I don't know, ask him a bit about his parents. Their politics, things like that. Then we could go from there."

By the way Chad's face fell, Lugh could tell that he had readied a response that would no longer see any use.

"Oh, well…" He trailed off. "You shouldn't have any trouble with that, I guess. I still don't see much coming of it."

At this, Echidna's mouth broke into a yellowed grin.

"Would you consider passing it on, in any case? Maybe we can arrange a chat over drinks, if he can stomach it. Oh, and that reminds me, before I forget."

She turned again to the foreigners.

"While we're here, perhaps Gonzales and Ike can follow through with their earlier engagement?"

"What?" Lugh said.

Chad gulped down his tea mid-sip.

"She means that—"

"The game," Soren interrupted.

"Right," said Chad, with a vigorous nod. "Didn't you say you'd show him how to play?"

And in his excitement, Lugh didn't think much of this either.

* * *

Late that night, he was roused by a soft rapping at the bedroom door. The hour was unknown, but by the evenness of their breathing, Lugh knew that Chad and Lleu had both fallen into a sound slumber. Lugh rose to answer the call, taking care that he did not disturb his brother as he slid out of bed, and treading lightly over the groaning floorboards as he crossed the room. He pulled the door open as softly and carefully as he could manage, and on the other side, a downcast Serena greeted him with a bashful, apologetic smile.

It had been some time since she had last approached him for such an infantile purpose, but Lugh would still indulge her, despite Chad's complaints. _Just don't give her any water past noon_, he had said, and Lugh still couldn't tell how much of it had been teasing. He took her hand and they crept down the hallway, stopping at the door of the children's room to listen for any signs of stirring. Fast asleep, as far as he could tell. Serena tugged him insistently onward.

At the head of the stairway, he could see a flicker of light thrown against the wall. The foreigners were most likely awake, Lugh assumed_—_he had caught Soren reading by candlelight in the main room once before, so this seemed the most likely case. Serena must have deduced this as well, yet all the same, each creaking step of their descent drew her closer and closer into Lugh's cloak. She started at every inexplicable sound, balked at every odd shadow, and made no effort to conceal her disquiet when they reached the main room to find it completely empty but for a lone, low-lit candle. Perhaps one of the foreigners had gone out to relieve himself, or perhaps they simply neglected to snuff it. Lugh left it burning as they passed, wrapping his cloak tight around Serena's shaking form as they stepped out into the chill night air.

His hand passed over the railing, wet and cold to the touch. By the droplets collecting against his fingers, the softness of the grass and smells of the earth underfoot, a small shower must have come through. The moon hovered just above the treeline, tracing the edges of the silhouettes and scattered clouds with a pale glow. They reached the privy at the edge of the wood, and to Lugh's relief, Serena was willing to detach herself from her anchor long enough to head in alone. It meant progress, to Lugh.

Though the longer she lingered, the more convinced Lugh felt that simply accompanying her would have proven easier. He listened to the trickle of moist vegetation, the trill of insects, the gentle nature-songs as comforting as they were familiar. Yet_—_dwarfed here by the looming shadows of the treeline, standing before the precipice between the knowable and the unknown_—_it felt somehow oppressive. As though the forest might swallow him if he drew any nearer.

Lleu might have reveled in the feeling, Lugh supposed. Perhaps he would have wandered in. That's what worried him about his brother.

An animal at the wood's edge rustled through the underbrush, catching him off-guard in his ruminating. Thankfully, it was just then that Serena emerged from the privy and latched to his side with the grip of a drowning cat, and they retreated together back to the safety of their home.

The candle had been left burning, but neither of the foreigners were to be seen. Lugh decided to leave it.

When they reached the foot at the staircase, Serena tugged at his sleeve with a grunt.

"What is it?"

She wordlessly indicated to the door across the room; he saw that he had neglected to relock it.

"Of course," he said with a reassuring smile.

There was a rattling sound as someone tried the door from the other end. Serena tried to break away up the stairs, but Lugh had gone numb from surprise, holding the child firm to his side.

Beneath the doorway stood Soren, hood raised and glinting with a thin sheen of rain. But when he raised his hand and spoke, the voice was strange and feminine—and the words familiar.

_"—suma shiari okusu pano ekugoji—"_

Some long-dormant reflex within Lugh took control as he dropped to the floor, gripping Serena tight to his chest as the last syllables tore from the woman's throat.

_"—rusuka kie oenho nokite!"_

A surge of heat rushed up the tight curve of his back and engulfed them. Eyes squeezed shut, he exerted his own concentration—the flames beating at his back, the tiny body trembling against his chest, the magic squirming through his skin, the swirling inferno in his mind, the vibrations running like a rockslide down his arms, quaking so violently that he may have crushed the girl between them—

And then the stream let up and Lugh rose and rose, dispersing the flames with an instinctive sweep of his sleeve. There were two bumps and a crash as a shadow knocked the invader onto the floor, tumbling over an end table mid-leap. An earthenware vase shattered over their thrashing forms as it toppled over, the sound of Serena's sobbing was lost in the din.

Heavier footsteps followed from the dark, and a shout from Ike.

"Ver engerlig!"

Light from the candle and the smoldering ring that surrounded Lugh caught flashes of the brawl—Soren tearing her hood away, pushing a hand to her face and raising a dagger to her neck—until she was pinned fast between his knees, breathing so raggedly that Lugh could hear it from where he looked on from the far, smoke-filled end of the room.

Only during this brief respite did he notice the group of spectators that had gathered at the foot of the staircase, a pile of children corralled behind Lleu and Chad as they tried, and failed, to usher them back upstairs.

Serena tore away to the safety of their numbers, where Lleu caught her and pulled her back. She must have taken him as an acceptable substitute for Lugh and buried herself into his smock. Lugh returned his attention to their subdued attacker, who was lifted roughly to her feet by the foreigners, arms pinned back like a ragdoll.

Her head and knees hung limp as she went uncooperatively deadweight. Soren snarled something in the foreign tongue and pressed a dagger against the woman's throat.

"No, please don't!" Lugh cried. The murmur behind him fell silent, and Soren grimaced.

"There are children present." His voice was softer, the tremor more controlled. "I hope to resolve this peacefully."

He worried that the foreigners were in need of further explanation that they could not afford to give; however, Soren's knifehand relaxed and their grip on her arms tightened. Soren muttered something undoubtedly disdainful to his companion in their tongue, but Lugh ignored them.

"Please… what is it that you want from us?" he said to the invader. "This doesn't have to end in bloodshed."

The woman lifted her chin on her own accord. Her face was young—not much older than Lugh or Lleu—gaunt with hunger and streaked with dirt. By the weakness of her spell, she could have been a common thief pushed to desperate means.

"Can you tell us? If you'll speak, we'll hear your story."

Her head drooped against the knife, matted clumps of hair falling against her face like a curtain of seaweed. Then her jaw moved, almost imperceptibly, and Lugh could catch bits of what sounded to be hoarse whispers.

"I'm so sorry…" Lugh took a cautious step forward. "I didn't catch that."

"Shield their eyes," she croaked.

And then she thrashed forward with a sudden burst of strength, seizing Soren's knifehand and driving the blade into the side of her neck. From there, all of the sounds and sensations that came Lugh's way reached him, one by one, like distant echoes in a fathomless cavern: a child's sobbing gasp, the wet, bubbling gurgles as the woman was dropped back to the ground, and the one thought that rang through his ears like a pleading refrain:

_Staff, get a staff._

He found the storage closet and groped for the first rod within reach, mindless of the make or the quality, and rushed to the woman's side.

And as he dropped his knees hard against the floor, staff in as he summoned the words to the incantation over the din of wailing sobs and foreign barks and _Corbin—Corbin! Get them upstairs—you fucking listen to me, Corbin—_

And as all these sounds and her life slipped away like a brook passing through his fingers and no matter how he flicked, swung, whipped the rod above her sundered windpipe, her breaths hollow and wet and dying _just like Father's were, but here was Father and Father's gone, and no one but God can help him now_—

It felt all too familiar, he thought, as his incantations fell apart into broken snatches of prayer.

_O Elimine, attendant of my wretched soul—_

The voices were further now, a pattering of sobs and footfalls as the shaken spectators were herded away, retreating to the shattered safety fo their quarters.

_Forsake me not, Heart of Elimine, once in agony, have mercy on the dying, shelter me in this present night, O Elimine, intercede with the Lord on my behalf, and accept my feeble and outstretched hand and deliver me to light…_

Ike was knelt across from him, listening intently.

Their eyes met, and Ike said nothing—he must have noticed Lugh's crying before the mage realized it himself.

His brother watched, alone now, from the foot of the stairs, his expression unreadable from where Lugh knelt, before slowly rising to his feet. The staff slipped from mage's grasp with a thud and a roll, and Lugh would have joined it had Lleu not scrambled over to catch him. They sank to the floor together in an ungraceful as his knees gave way and crumpled beneath him.

"Ike." Lleu's voice was thick and cracked, tenuously steady.

"Could… could you please take her away? Just—out. Anywhere."

Neither foreigner said anything for some time, though they must have agreed somehow, because Lugh could hear them.

He heard he lurch of a great lifting from the floorboards, the sickening dribble—_rainwater, just droplets, water off the children who were caught in a storm_—the creak of hinges, the thump of _a heavy, wet sack of potatoes _against the doorframe as the foreigners clumsily hauled it out, closing the door hard behind them.

The witnesses disposed of, Lleu's embrace tightened. Lugh buried his face into his shirt and his thoughts turned to the dark-cloaked man; he focused on this memory, blotting out every sensation but the arms around him, averting his attention from the sharp tang of blood for the smell of autumn, smoke and ash, trading the ache of his shaken sobs for the crisp crackle of twigs—

"Lugh."

Lleu's hands smoothed down the back of his shirt in a stiff gesture of comfort.

"Look, she was trying to get to you. It's hard, but don't honor her efforts."

Lugh could only manage a choked _why_.

"Just a burglar caught in the act," Lleu said. Lugh could feel him shrug. "Trying to spite her captors, I guess."

Lugh did not answer. Chad's voice drifted down through the ceiling from the room above, firm and gentle without a trace of tremor, subduing the audible whimpers of the younger children.

"Lugh, you were always soft." His hand found Lugh's hair this time. He did not stroke it quite like the lady with the soft hands did, but Lugh found comfort in the touch all the same. A soothing old gesture for a reopened old wound.

"You just have to remember that we've seen worse."

Lugh's eyes shot open.

_We_.

He pulled his face away, ignored the strand of snot and the ache in his temples as he met Lleu's frown.

"We?"

_It's not the same. _

"Uh… I mean, when you all found me, that is."

_You weren't there_. It tore at his throat, rose to the tip of his tongue like bile. _It's your fault and it's my fault and it's not the same—_

_Bern killed him, they deserved to die. Father had done nothing against Bern._

Lugh calmed himself, and drew a steady breath. He shook his head.

"The children haven't, Lleu," he said. "It's something no child should have to see, and… I hurt for them. Surely you can understand that."

This silenced him—long enough that Chad returned to them before another word could pass.

"They're cooperating, but I doubt anyone's planning on sleeping tonight. Can't blame them."

Lugh no longer cared about the streaks of tears and snot and how Chad could see it clear from across the room—he turned his head towards the flickering candlelight and bared the mark of his shame.

"They may… stay with us here, if they wish."

Chad considered him with what Lugh recognized to be sympathy, then looked away.

"I… don't think that's happening."

Lugh followed the path of Chad's eyes to the puddle of blood that began to seep and stain into the grains of the floorboards.

"It's unbelievable," he groaned, bringing his knuckles against his throbbing eyes.

"Yeah, if you've ever…" Chad began, then stopped. "If you've ever… uh, seen someone's throat get cut open... it's a lot of blood. If you do it right, I mean."

"Really not helpful," growled Lleu, "Shut the hell up and help me."

"Whatever." Chad stepped down. "Shut the hell up and grab a rag."

Lleu rose, and Lugh stood with him, still clinging to his arms for support. Finally, they broke away. Lleu and Chad agreed to attend to the mess if Lugh was willing to stay with the children, a task he had steeled himself for the moment he found his legs.

He gave them the talk that the Elimean priests had given him so many years ago.

_I'm so very sorry that you were forced to see that._

_This was a creature born into a world of suffering, and in all of God's mercy, may be delivered to a land of everlasting bliss. _

_You must feel confused now, or angry, or scared, but one must remember—God has a plan for every single one of us, and everything will fall into accordance with that plan. Our job is to find it. _

Though no one voiced their contention that night, Lugh could feel it—from Corbin, mostly. _Bullshit_, his eyes said. _Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. _Lugh knew it all too well.

Lugh remained with them until they settled back into a convincing sleep. He knew it would not come easily for most of them.

He too knew this all too well.

The foreigners did not join them that night. He could hear them lurking downstairs, creeping back to their place in the den like rats to a cranny. But when Lugh left the children to examine the mess—to indulge his morbid curiosity that he at times shared with his brother—he had not expected to find Soren in the main room once more, reading by candlelight.

"Oh, Soren… you startled me."

The mage's eyes flickered up as he set the scroll aside.

"Sorry," he rasped. Lugh expected more—hesitation, an apologetic frown, as though to say _I am sorry I can think of nothing to say_.

But it seemed like a polite reflex like any other. A sign that he was to leave Soren to his business. But Lugh did not want to grant him that just yet.

"No, Soren," he said. He stopped to gather his thoughts, then took a slow, controlled breath.

"I'm sorry. You've entrusted your lives to us, yet… peril seems to throw itself at our doorstep, doesn't it?"

Whatever Soren had to say to this, he was either too exhausted or too ignorant to compose a sufficient response. He nodded dumbly.

"But you and Ike saved our lives. Heathens or no, God will smile upon what you've done for us tonight, and if there is any way for me to repay you, please give the word."

Another nod. Lugh caught a glimpse of the darkened stain at the entranceway, and his stomach turned. That would be dealt with tomorrow, he decided feebly.

"But, for now," he said, "I sense that you'd like to be excused."

"Yes, please."

"Of course, forgive me. Goodnight, Soren."

"Goodnight."

Soren left without another word; Lugh headed up the opposite way.


End file.

Fire Emblem, Adventure, Drama