Back with a new Chapter, everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying the story so far. Now, before we jump back into the story I thought that we should revisit some polls again but.. i will restructure the questions:
Should Roy marry Lissa later in the story?
A: YES
B: NO
If your answer is no: Who should Roy marry?
A: Sumia
B: Sully
C. Cordelia
D. Tharja
E. Maribell
G. Say'ri
H. other (write in suggestion)
I. Cordelia
Should Robin marry Khanna later in the story?
A. YES
B. NO
If your answer was no: Who should Robin Marry?
A. Sumia
B. Sully
C. Cordelia
D. Tharja
E. Tiki
F. Flavia
G. Severa/Selena
H. other (write in suggestion)
Should Khanna marry Robin?
A. YES
B. NO
if no: Who should Khanna marry?
A. Stahl
B. Frederick
C. Gaius
D. Donnel
E. Vaike
F. Libra
G. Gregor
H. Henry
I. other(write in suggestion)
Those are the Character pairing polls for now! Please PM me or leave a comment on who should Marry Robin, Roy, & Khanna. If you all want, you can even list why,based on what you all know of their personalities so far in the story. Now then without further ado... onto the story!
P.S: I don't own Fire Emblem, Black Clover, Tales of series, DBZ or any of the aforementioned series and their characters. I only own the original characters who appear in this story.
Chapter III: Shepherds and... More Risen?!
---
The Shepherds' Garrison sat a short walk from the palace walls, close enough to matter and far enough to breathe — a practical building, plainly maintained, with the particular atmosphere of a place that has been lived in by people whose primary concern was function rather than appearance. Lissa led her new companions through the door with the proprietary enthusiasm of someone presenting something they're genuinely proud of, arms spread wide.
"Well, here we are. The Garrison." She turned to face them, satisfied. "Go on — make yourselves at home."
The group spread out slightly and took it in. It was simple. Spare. The kind of space that held the memory of a great many meals eaten quickly and a great many nights slept too briefly.
Sarai turned in a slow circle, looking at the walls, the beams, the worn surfaces of communal use. Something in her expression settled. "It's comfortable," she said, and meant it as a compliment.
"Feels like something from home," Odyn agreed, and there was a quiet truth in it that the others heard without needing to say anything.
"What do you think, Robin?" Roy asked.
Robin was still looking around with the expression of a man taking careful inventory. "It's—"
"*Lissa, my treasure!*"
The voice arrived before its owner did, carrying enough feeling for several rooms. A young woman with blonde hair swept into elaborate curled pigtails descended on Lissa from the direction of the far corridor, her pink-sleeved arms gesturing with considerable feeling, her white parasol tucked under one arm with the authority of someone who has never once questioned whether a parasol is appropriate. She was fair-skinned, immaculately presented, and currently expressing herself at full volume.
"Are you *all right?* I've been beside myself! I've sprouted fourteen gray hairs fretting over you, and I am *far* too young for that!"
Lissa's face broke into a wide grin. "Maribelle! Hey!"
Maribelle stopped. Her expression communicated, very precisely, that *hey* was not the greeting she had earned.
"*'Oh, hey'* yourself," she said, with the controlled indignation of a woman who has considered several responses and selected the most pointed one. "I have been imagining every possible catastrophe that could have befallen you since you left, and all you have to say for yourself is *oh, hey.*"
"Well I didn't *die,*" Lissa offered helpfully.
"That is the *absolute minimum* the situation called for, Lissa, and you know it." Maribelle straightened slightly, reassembled her composure in the way a person buttons a coat, and looked at the group behind her friend with the frank, evaluative attention of someone taking a full account before making any decisions. "I see you brought company."
"There's also this!" called a second voice — male, broad, and entirely comfortable with itself.
Vaike arrived from another direction entirely with the easy confidence of a man who has never entered a room he didn't immediately own, or at least attempt to. He was built for the weight class of an axe-fighter and dressed accordingly, with the kind of bearing that suggested most things in the world had underestimated him at least once. His grin was wide and immediate.
"Squirt! You made it back in one piece — good. Where's Chrom? Bet he had a rough go out there without ol' Teach and his trusty axe."
Lissa's grin sharpened with the precise delight of someone who has been given an opening and intends to use it. "Oh, so it's *'Teach'* now, is it? Hee hee. And here I thought people were just born with lacking wits. It can be *taught?*"
"Ha! Never doubt the Vaike! Wait — was that an insult?"
"You'll have to decide that for yourself, Teach."
The third newcomer appeared at Vaike's shoulder without any of the volume — a young woman with long, flowing brown hair and dark eyes and the kind of pale, fine-featured face that artists attempt and seldom capture. She wore bright lavender armor that suited her considerably better than the slightly anxious expression she was currently wearing. She moved carefully, with a habitual attention to where her own feet were that suggested she had learned, through experience, not to trust them entirely.
"Um," she said. "I don't mean to interrupt. But — might you know when the Captain will return?"
Maribelle's expression softened into something sympathetic and faintly amused at the same time. "Poor Sumia. She's been watching the horizon all morning. Her training sessions were — shall we say — creative, in the absence of her attention."
"I was not *watching the horizon,*" Sumia said, in the tone of someone correcting the record while simultaneously confirming it. "I was — he's the Captain. And the Prince. Of course I'd—"
"Of course," Maribelle agreed, warmly and completely unconvincingly.
Sumia turned slightly pink and addressed the middle distance instead.
"Sounds like someone else I know," Lissa said, tilting her head toward Sarai with the precision-timed innocence of a younger sibling.
Sarai, who had been listening with the composed expression of someone who is not involved, became briefly involved. "Oh — no. I'm concerned because he's *reckless.* That's different."
"Sure it is," Lissa said.
"I mean it. Do you have any idea how many times he exposed his back in that engagement yesterday? I counted. On *one hand,* Lissa."
"Mm-hm."
"That has nothing to do with—" Sarai stopped. Pressed her lips together. Looked away. "The point is that somebody needs to make sure he doesn't get himself killed, and apparently Frederick can only manage so much."
"Uh-huh," Lissa said, smiling at the wall.
Sarai decided the wall was beneath her dignity and chose not to argue with it.
It was Vaike who broke the moment, in the way he broke most moments — by simply not noticing it. His eyes had landed on the group behind Lissa with the frank curiosity of someone who has just registered that there are new people present.
"So who are the strangers? Haven't seen them around before."
"Nobody's stranger than you, Vaike," Lissa said reflexively. "But since you ask — everyone, this is Robin, Odyn, Roy, Sarai, and Khanna. They joined the Shepherds. Chrom just made Robin our new tactician, and honestly, you should *see* what these four can do in a fight — it's incredible."
"Oh yeah?" Vaike's grin took on a competitive edge. He drew a breath, positioned himself, and produced a belch of considerable duration and volume.
The group received this in varying degrees of silence. A few moments passed.
"I'm certain I have much to learn in the belching arts," Robin said, with the solemn gravity of a man who has decided that this is simply the territory he is in now. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
Odyn, with the measured courtesy of someone trained from childhood to find something gracious to say in most situations, nodded toward the assembled Shepherds. "Likewise. We're glad to be here."
"*Abhorrent,*" Maribelle announced, with the enunciation of someone pronouncing sentence. She had taken a single step back and was regarding the general vicinity of Vaike with the expression of a person downwind of a problem they did not create. "Must baseborn oafs pollute even the *air* with their buffoonery? And *you,*" — this toward Robin — "don't encourage him. I had hoped you were cut from finer cloth." She turned on her heel with admirable precision and walked.
The silence she left behind was brief and occupied by Sumia, who had the expression of someone waiting for the air to clear.
"Please don't take it to heart," she said, looking at the newcomers with sincere apology. "Maribelle warms to people. It just... takes some time."
"Or burns too quickly," Lissa added cheerfully. "But she'll come around. Just give her a little space."
The door opened again, and Chrom walked in.
The effect was immediate. Sumia straightened. Her expression underwent a complex internal negotiation that ended, as it always did, with the attempt to appear composed and the result of appearing like someone attempting to appear composed. She stepped forward.
"Ah! Captain, you've returned! I was — we were all so very—" She caught her own foot on nothing at all and went down.
The sound of the impact was definitive.
Several people in the group performed the same slight, involuntary wince simultaneously.
"...Noted," Roy said quietly, after a moment.
"Same," Odyn agreed, at the same volume.
Sarai started to say something. Khanna's hand found her shoulder.
"Give it a moment," Khanna said.
Sumia picked herself up with the practiced dignity of someone who has had extensive experience with this process and has made a kind of peace with it. She brushed the dust from her armor without meeting anyone's eyes.
"Sumia?" Chrom had crossed to her with genuine concern, because Chrom's primary response to any situation involving someone being potentially hurt was immediate and undisguised worry. "Are you all right? Those boots again?"
Sarai looked at the ceiling.
*Gods,* she thought. *He's completely hopeless.*
Khanna, reading her cousin's expression with the accuracy of long familiarity, patted her shoulder once.
"Give him credit," she said. "He's trying."
"He's *trying,*" Sarai repeated, in the tone of someone placing a word carefully to examine it from all angles.
"It's something."
Sarai exhaled. "Fine. You're right."
Sumia had recovered her voice, if not entirely her composure. "No, I'm — yes. Quite all right. Thank you, Captain." She did not elaborate on the boots.
Chrom straightened and looked around the room, and his expression shifted into the particular focused quality it took on when he was about to say something that mattered.
"Right. Listen — tomorrow morning, we march to Regna Ferox."
Robin raised his head. "Regna Ferox?"
"A unified kingdom to Ylisse's north," Sumia supplied, and the gratitude of having something useful to contribute seemed to steady her. "Inhabited by warriors. Formidable ones."
"Warriors," Chrom confirmed. "And we need them. Typically, the Exalt would make this request in person — but given the current situation, with Risen appearing across the country and people already on edge, having Emmeryn suddenly leave the capital would only add to the uncertainty. The task falls to us." He paused, looking around. "I want to be clear — this mission is strictly voluntary. If anyone would prefer to—"
"I volunteer!" Lissa's hand went up before the sentence finished.
"Teach is in," Vaike announced, crossing his arms. "Can't trust a delicate mission like this to just anyone."
"I'll go as well." The voice came from Kellam, who was standing directly in front of three people who all appeared to register him simultaneously and with the particular startled quality of people who are fairly certain he had not been there a moment ago.
"We're coming too," Odyn said, speaking for the four of them without discussion, because the discussion had already happened behind their eyes in the two seconds after Chrom finished speaking.
"Although," Roy added, glancing sidelong at his brother, "I don't think Sarai was going to let him go without us anyway."
Sarai looked at Chrom. The look was calm, specific, and contained the memory of every time he had left his back uncovered. "You'll watch yourself this time, Captain." She let a beat pass. "Or we'll revisit our earlier conversation."
Something crossed Chrom's face that was in the neighborhood of apprehension. He had known this woman for approximately two days, and she had already discovered the precise combination of tone and expression that bypassed every instinct he possessed toward confident leadership and replaced it with the strong desire to simply agree.
"Noted," he said.
"Good," Sarai said.
"We'll watch your back," Khanna added, with the comfortable warmth of someone who means it and doesn't need to make it sound larger than it is. "All of us."
Sumia, who had been listening to this exchange with something between admiration and the particular expression of someone connecting several pieces of information at once, cleared her throat.
"I, um..." She hesitated, which was Sumia's default relationship with the beginning of most sentences. "I'm not sure I'm ready for a proper mission just yet. I'd probably only — I mean I might get in the way, and—"
"You won't," Chrom said. "But the decision is yours. If it helps — I'm not asking you to fight. Just to watch, and learn. Some lessons only make sense on a real field."
Sumia opened her mouth, and closed it, and her eyes went to Chrom's face with an expression she was not quite quick enough to conceal before they dropped again.
"If — if that's what you think is best, Captain."
"Stay close," he said, with a simple ease that clearly had no idea of the effect it was having, "and you'll be fine."
"Oh. Yes. I mean — yes, sir."
Sarai turned toward Khanna and made no comment, which communicated everything. Khanna made no comment either, which confirmed it.
As the group began to filter toward the door, Sumia drifted alongside Khanna and lowered her voice to the register of someone who is hoping only specific people hear this.
"Forgive me for asking, but — did something happen between Miss Sarai and the Captain? Before I arrived, I mean."
Khanna looked at the ceiling briefly, with the expression of someone calculating how much of a story to tell. "I'll explain on the way," she said. "It's a bit long."
---
They departed the following morning.
The field outside the capital was wide and green under a pale sky, the air carrying the mild chill of a morning that hadn't yet decided what sort of day it intended to become. The assembled party was small enough to move quickly and varied enough to be interesting: Chrom at the head, Frederick at his shoulder, Robin a half-step behind with his tome already tucked under his arm, then the four siblings and Khanna, then Lissa and Vaike trading commentary at a volume that precluded any pretense of marching in silence.
They had almost reached the road before a voice called from behind them.
"*Wait!*"
Everyone turned.
A young man in green armor was sprinting toward them from the direction of the Garrison with the particular urgency of someone who has just been informed of something they should have known earlier and has made up the time difference in leg speed. He slowed as he reached them, breathing slightly harder than his composure wanted to acknowledge.
"Stahl?" Chrom said.
"Why," Stahl asked, with the measured reasonableness of a man who has decided to approach injustice calmly, "am I the *last* person to hear about an expedition to Regna Ferox?"
Several people looked at Vaike.
Vaike, to his credit, met the attention directly. "The Vaike never forgets. I just... don't always remember."
"He was supposed to tell you," Lissa confirmed, with the tone of someone adding evidence to a case that did not need more.
"That was *one* time," Vaike said. "Maybe twice. But training doesn't count."
"Do you at least have your axe?" Lissa asked. The question had a specific weight to it.
Vaike reached back, located the axe, and presented it with the confidence of a man for whom this is an unremarkable achievement. "Loaded and ready. Glad you could join us, Stahl, buddy."
"I'm glad someone is," Stahl said. He had the good-natured expression of a man who has made his peace with the universe's occasional inconveniences and moved on. Then his eyes found the unfamiliar faces in the group, and his expression shifted into friendly interest. "I heard from Miriel that we had new members. I should introduce myself—"
"We heard your name," Roy said. "Stahl. It's a peculiar one."
"Says the man named Roy," Stahl returned, without malice.
"Fair," Roy allowed.
"I suppose that tells you something about how far we are from home," Odyn said, with the even tone of someone who has gotten better at finding the observation interesting rather than heavy.
"We're all equally strange to each other, then," Stahl said, apparently finding this perfectly satisfying. He looked at the group with genuine curiosity. "We've got a long march. Would any of you be willing to tell me something about where you're from? I'd love to hear it."
"I missed breakfast," Stahl added, almost to himself, "so at the very least, good conversation would help."
"There were muffins," he continued, in the reflective tone of someone processing a genuine loss. "And cakes. I'll tell you about them on the road."
Roy exchanged a glance with Lissa. The glance said: *this one is going to fit in.*
"All right," Roy said. "We have time enough."
The group fell into step, and the road opened ahead of them, and they began.
---
The morning was well along when Chrom's fist came up — the universal signal — and the group slowed.
They had come into a clearing, and the clearing was not empty.
The Risen were already moving when the group saw them. A substantial number — far more than the handful that had come through the sky-wound in the forest — threading between the trees at the clearing's far edge with that particular gait that read as human and wasn't, their red eyes tracking.
"Gods," Chrom said quietly, and the word carried a weight that wasn't quite dismay and wasn't quite surprise. "*Already?* They've spread this far?"
"'Risen?'" Robin said, looking between Chrom and Frederick.
"The council needed a name for them," Frederick said. "That is what they've been given."
"Everyone — remember what we're up against," Chrom said, drawing Falchion. "We have limited intelligence on them and—"
"*My axe!*" Vaike's hand had gone to his back. Then to his side. Then to both hands, patting various locations in sequence, with increasing urgency. "Where is it? I *just had it!*"
No one said anything for a long moment.
"Vaike," Chrom said, in the tone of a captain who has been prepared for this by his entire career. "Fall to the rear. Find your axe. Quickly."
"I *swear* it was—"
"Rear, Vaike."
Vaike retreated. The group watched him go.
"How," Sarai said, to no one in particular, "is any person that oblivious?"
No one had a satisfying answer.
---
The Risen came in a wave.
Khanna went first — which was technically not the plan, if there had been a plan, but the Risen were in motion and so was Khanna, her warhammer already clearing its cloth before Chrom had finished forming the word *wait.* She hit the leading edge of the charge like a stone thrown into still water, the impact scattering the first cluster wide, and then she was through them and among the rest of the press.
Odyn watched this for approximately one second. Then he sighed — the sigh of someone who has been watching this happen for years and is still not entirely used to it — and moved in behind her.
"Shepherds, *forward!*" Chrom called, which was now both an order and simply an accurate description of what was already happening.
The field became something complex and fast.
Khanna drove through the weight of the Risen advance with the practical aggression of someone who has learned that momentum, properly maintained, is more efficient than finesse. She deflected strikes that would have stopped a lighter fighter by simply not being stopped by them, the warhammer swinging in controlled arcs that broke formations rather than singling out targets. When two Risen closed from opposite sides — the lance-variant, with its extended reach and the carrying shields that made direct engagement tedious — she read the geometry of it, tossed the weapon into the air, and followed it up.
She caught it at the top of the arc with the blade already angled.
"*Falling Storm.*"
The pillar of wind that erupted from the impact was narrow, howling, and thorough. The Risen went up inside it and came down in pieces. What remained of the nearest one she finished with the hammer side in a single measured stroke, and turned to find the next problem.
Odyn had taken the right flank, clearing the space between the main Risen advance and the Shepherds' less combat-oriented members with the unhurried efficiency of someone who is very good at their job and has decided to simply do it. He moved between attacks rather than against them, letting the Risen's momentum work against their own strikes, redirecting rather than absorbing.
Three of them converged on him simultaneously. He let them come.
"*Ghost Wolf.*"
The displacement happened in the space between one heartbeat and the next — he was there, and then he was on the other side of the gap he had created, and the technique's cut had already found the first Risen twice before the creature had registered that its target had moved. The smoke rose and curled away. He turned to find the second and third already adjusting, and met them with the straightforward focus of someone who has run out of patience with a problem.
"*Reigning Slash.*"
The debris lifted from the earth. The Risen came apart at the center, dissolved, and was gone.
Roy had found his rhythm on the left side of the field, working in the efficient, precise style that had always been more instinctive to him than his brother's power-first approach. An archer-variant among the Risen had taken a position at distance and was making itself a considerable nuisance, and Roy had spent approximately four seconds deciding to address this before addressing it.
"*Sword Rain: Alpha.*"
The stabs arrived faster than eyes could follow them individually — the technique lived in the space between perceptible movements, each one placed exactly where it needed to be. The Risen dissolved before it had finished reacting, and Roy was already turning toward the next problem.
The second archer drew from further away, which was annoying. Roy squared his shoulders.
"*Demonic Chaos.*"
The cascading energy left his blade in arcs that overlapped and built on each other, the final one carrying enough of the lightning's weight that the archer didn't dissolve so much as simply stop. He rolled his shoulder and moved on.
Not far away, Robin worked with the focused quiet of someone who has found, rather to his own surprise, that the battle makes a kind of sense to him. The spells came where they were needed — *Elthunder* clearing angles when the geometry was right, the sword taking over when it wasn't. His eyes moved constantly, logging positions, reading the field's patterns, finding the shapes that things were moving toward before they arrived there.
When a cluster of Risen angled toward Frederick's flank without Frederick yet knowing it, Robin was already opening his mouth.
"Frederick — your left—"
"Seen." The knight's lance came around in a measured arc that swept the approaching Risen off their feet with the flat edge, and he followed through with the control of someone who has been fighting long enough to make it look simply like movement. He dealt with them and was already moving before Robin had finished processing the exchange.
Nearby, Lissa worked her way through the field's edges — keeping her distance from the thick of it, healing where she could, the staff's light finding the wounded Shepherds and the shaken townsfolk with the calm efficiency of someone who has learned to manage her fear by having something useful to do with her hands.
Roy materialized at her shoulder without announcement.
"Keep moving," he said, not unkindly. "I'll manage the ones that get close."
She nodded, and didn't say *thank you* because she was already busy, and Roy understood that.
Sumia watched from her Pegasus at the field's upper edge, and the thing she found herself watching most wasn't the techniques — extraordinary as they were — but the way the four siblings and their cousin moved in relation to the people around them. They were not fighting *at* the problem. They were fighting *around* the Shepherds — filling the gaps, redirecting the pressure, creating the space that the others needed to work in. They had been part of this group for two days, and already they were adapting to it.
Frederick guided his horse alongside her and let the observation settle for a moment before he spoke.
"Your time will come," he said, and the statement was not consolation — it was simply true, and he offered it as such. "Theirs came through circumstances none of them chose. Yours will find you in its own time."
"I know," Sumia said. "I just..." She watched Sarai move across the field, and the grace of it was difficult to look away from. "I know."
Sarai had reached the point in the engagement where containment had stopped being practical and she had stopped pretending otherwise.
The creature-variants were mixing now — lancers, axe-bearers, archers at the back — and the crowd of them had pressed into a configuration that was closing from three directions at once. She fought through it methodically for another few minutes, dealing with the most immediate pressure and keeping the others off-balance, and then she reached the place where she always reached it, where the math of the situation tipped in a direction that only one answer could address, and she let the fire come all the way.
The hilt warmed against her palm. Not the channeled warmth of an applied technique — something deeper, running from the blade's core outward. She moved, and the calculation gave way entirely to the absolute knowledge of where everything was and what to do about it.
"*Explosive Ring.*"
The emblem flared at her back, and then she was already gone from the spot.
The sequence was not strictly describable in the order that it happened, because the order was continuous and without gaps. The fire-charged arcs were already answers before the Risen had finished forming their questions — the shield-bearing lancers lost their shields to the heat before they understood what had changed, their weapons shattering on the next exchange. The axe variants were disarmed and redirected simultaneously. The archers at the back she approached last, the fire arriving there ahead of her, and then she was leaving the ground.
"*Rising Phoenix.*"
The shape of fire that descended with her was enormous and winged and unmistakable. When she landed, the shockwave rolled outward in a ring that finished what the technique had started, and the clearing went quiet.
Roy walked over. Extended his hand. Sarai met it.
The high-five was decisive.
"Nice work, sis."
"Same to you."
Sully, who had spent the last thirty seconds with her lance at the ready and had not needed to use it, looked at both of them. Then she looked at the field, which no longer had any Risen that required her attention. Then she looked at the two of them again.
"Right," she said, and went to find something else to do.
---
When the last of the Risen had dissolved and the field had gone back to simply being a field, the group gathered at its center with the particular quiet that settles after a fight — not the triumphant kind, just the kind where everyone is checking themselves and each other and finding, with some relief, that the numbers still add up.
Robin exhaled slowly, looking at his hands, then at the clearing. In his mind, the battle was still running — he could see where the pressure points had been, where the timing had tightned, where a different positioning might have produced a better result. He filed it away.
"'Risen,'" he said, testing the word. "It's an uncomfortable name."
"It's an uncomfortable thing," Chrom replied. He was looking at the last wisps of purple smoke dispersing on the wind, and his expression was the one he wore when he was working something through and hadn't finished. "But we've seen them before, and we'll see them again. The road to Ferox won't get shorter standing here."
"Shouldn't be much further now," Frederick said.
They reformed and walked on, the conversation gradually returning as the distance from the fight increased, the Shepherds settling back into their rhythms. Stahl had, somewhere in the aftermath, located a provision of dried fruit and was distributing it with the generous equanimity of a man who considers feeding people simply an appropriate response to most situations.
"There," he said, offering a portion to Robin with the cheerful certainty of someone who has decided that the way to address any problem is a small kindness and something to eat. "You did well back there."
"Thank you," Robin said. "I'm not sure I added much."
"You warned Frederick about his flank," Odyn said, from slightly ahead. He had caught the exchange without appearing to listen. "Frederick handled it perfectly and probably would have caught it himself, but the warning arrived first, and it didn't cost you anything to give it." He glanced back. "That's what a tactician does. You did it without thinking."
Robin looked at him for a moment. "You notice things."
"It's useful," Odyn said, and returned to walking.
Roy fell in beside Lissa, matching her stride. "You all right?"
"Fine," she said, which he accepted, because her voice sounded fine. She walked for a moment and then said, without particular segue: "They're terrifying, aren't they. The Risen."
"They are," Roy agreed.
"The way they look at you. Like there's nobody in there anymore." She turned her staff over in her hands, once. "I keep thinking about who they were. Before."
Roy said nothing, because there was nothing useful to say to that, and saying *nothing useful* was better than filling the space with something that only sounded useful. He walked beside her and let her have the thought.
After a moment, Lissa looked up at him with the expression she wore when she was putting something away. "Thank you. For — earlier."
"Any time," Roy said.
---
The warmth that had been absent from the morning weather had entirely departed by the time Regna Ferox appeared on the horizon, and the landscape had shifted to reflect the kingdom's temperament: harder, colder, the ground more honest about what it was made of. The fortress walls were the color of old stone and built to the practical specifications of people who have been attacked before and intend to make the next attempt expensive.
A guard appeared at the wall above them as they approached.
"*Halt!* State your business."
Chrom stepped forward, Falchion sheathed in deliberate emphasis of peaceful intent. "I am Prince Chrom of Ylisse. We seek an audience with the Khan."
A pause.
"*Sure you are.*" The guard captain's laughter had the flat quality of someone who has heard this before. "And I'm the emperor of Valm. We've had enough of your kind crossing our border with false credentials."
Frederick started forward. "We can provide—"
The whistles of javelins cut him off.
Multiple spears arced from the fortress walls simultaneously, their trajectories converging with purpose.
Sarai was already moving.
"*Blazing Shield!*"
The fire erupted in a half-ring around Chrom's position, meeting the javelins at speed. The intensity of it was enough — the spears dissolved in the heat before they reached their target, and steam hissed where the fire met the cold air, throwing a brief fog across the ground between them and the walls.
When it cleared, Chrom was standing exactly where he had been, entirely unharmed, and looking at Sarai with an expression of complete sincerity.
"That was—"
"Necessary," she said. "Don't make it a habit of *requiring* it."
"Shepherds!" Odyn's voice carried the focused authority of someone who has assessed a situation and arrived at the correct conclusion. "Words haven't worked. We'll need to show them another way."
The fortress gates opened.
What came through them were Feroxi warriors — a substantial number, in the martial tradition of a kingdom that selects its representatives by the criterion of who is still standing at the end of the day. Their weapons, notably, were equipped for restraint rather than killing: blunted edges, wrapped blade-ends, staffs. This was a test, not an execution.
"They're not trying to kill us," Roy observed, electricity already present in his blade. "They're measuring us. Don't injure anyone."
"Agreed," Chrom called. "Shepherds — show them what we can do, but keep it clean! These are potential allies."
The Feroxi hit the line, and the line held.
Frederick's horse cut through their formation with the flat of his lance, sweeping rather than striking, creating disruption without harm. Vaike — who had, in the interim, located his axe — threw himself into the mass of Feroxi warriors with the cheerful aggression of someone who finds this an entirely reasonable way to spend a morning, pulling his swings just enough to communicate that he *could* do considerably more damage than he was choosing to. Khanna moved beside him, her light-channeling attacks scattering the forming lines and creating openings that Vaike could work with.
Sumia, circling on her Pegasus above the field, received a signal from Sarai — a quick glance up and a slight tilt of the head toward a forming Feroxi phalanx on the left — and banked her mount in response, the low pass breaking the phalanx's concentration before it could consolidate.
Chrom and Sarai had found their way to each other's flanks again, which kept happening in battle without either of them making a decision about it. When a Feroxi warrior with a warhammer came at them with the measured confidence of someone who is very large and very experienced, they didn't need to discuss it. Sarai dropped to one knee, her blade horizontal, the fire at its edge creating a barrier that made the warrior adjust. Chrom vaulted over her in the gap that created, bringing Falchion's flat face down in a controlled arc that left the warrior face-first in the snow and more surprised than hurt.
"Show-offs," Roy said, in passing.
The guard captain on the wall had stopped laughing somewhere in the first two minutes. She watched in silence now — the particular silence of someone revising a conclusion they had already formed.
The form of their restraint was as telling as the form of their ability. These weren't bandits. Bandits didn't pull their swings and read their opponents' techniques and adapt in real time. Bandits didn't fight to subdue and demonstrate rather than to injure and end.
She raised her voice.
"Your Grace!" The words carried a different quality now — not mockery, but the formal address of a soldier who has been shown something. "If you truly are Prince Chrom, prove it yourself. Face me in single combat."
Sarai's hand found Chrom's arm before he could step forward.
The touch was brief. The look that accompanied it was not. It carried everything she didn't say — the accounting of every near-miss she had catalogued, the specific and weary concern of someone who cares too much about a person's safety to pretend otherwise — and then she released his arm, because she already knew how this was going to go, and some arguments are made not to be won but simply to be made.
"Be careful," she said.
He covered her hand for just a moment before he stepped away. "I've got a fairly rigorous teacher when it comes to not being reckless," he said. "I'll try to do her justice."
She watched him go, and her expression said several things, none of which she put into words.
Chrom faced the guard captain across the clear space of the battlefield, and Falchion caught the winter light, and the duel that followed was decisive and controlled and ended with the point of the blade a measured distance from the guard captain's throat and not a scratch between them.
The captain looked up at him from the snow and nodded.
"Well fought," she said. "Your Grace." And this time the title was without irony.
---
The guard captain's name was Raimi, and she escorted them through the fortress gates with the manner of someone who has revised their assessment of a situation and sees no reason to be embarrassed about the revision.
The interior of the fortress was exactly what the exterior suggested: built for function, decorated with evidence of previous conflicts, lit for visibility rather than atmosphere. It was warm after the cold outside, and the group felt the welcome of that regardless of the circumstances that had preceded it.
"You'll want to meet with Khan Flavia," Raimi said, as she led them through the corridor. "Though I should prepare you — the situation regarding what she can actually offer you is somewhat more complicated than you might expect."
"Complicated how?" Frederick inquired.
"You'll hear it from her directly." Raimi's expression remained carefully neutral. "I'll say this much: the timing of your visit is... notable."
They arrived at a set of doors that were large in the practical, reinforced way of things built to withstand. Raimi pushed them open without ceremony.
The hall was vast. At its far end, in what might generously be described as a throne — or more accurately as a military command chair that had been assigned ceremonial duties somewhat against its nature — sat a dark-skinned woman in warrior's garb. She had the eyes of someone who makes rapid and accurate assessments of people and has been doing so long enough to find it entirely automatic.
"Well, well." Khan Flavia's voice carried across the hall with the ease of a woman accustomed to being heard. "The Prince of Ylisse, come calling. You've made quite the entrance." Her gaze moved across the group with the unhurried attention of someone who has seen a great many things and is interested in seeing more. "Tell me, young man — how do you feel about tournaments?"
The four siblings exchanged a look. The look communicated several things, none of them articulated.
Chrom took a breath and stepped forward.
---
"And there," Flavia said, spreading her hands in a gesture that managed to express both frustration and a certain enjoyment of the situation, "is your problem. The authority you need — to commit Ferox's full strength to your cause — rests with whoever holds sovereignty. And right now, that happens to be my esteemed colleague in the west." A slight pause. "Basilio."
"Let me understand this," Chrom said carefully. "The sovereignty rotates based on a tournament."
"Once a year. Champions selected by each Khan, competing for the right to speak for all of Ferox." Flavia's expression took on a particular quality — the smile of someone who has lived inside an imperfect system long enough to find it interesting rather than merely maddening. "And as fortune — or perhaps fate — would have it, the next tournament begins tomorrow."
"Of course it does," Robin said, to himself.
"I'll need strong champions, Prince of Ylisse." Flavia looked at him directly. "The Shepherds, as I understand it, are reasonably strong. I hear good things. Would you fight for Ferox's East Khan?"
Before Chrom could answer — before Frederick could produce the measured and necessary caution that was clearly forming on his face — Sarai spoke.
"We need this alliance," she said, with the plain, unargued certainty of someone who has already done the accounting. "Ylisse needs it. Whatever the cost of securing it, that cost is worth paying."
Frederick looked at her. Then at Chrom.
Chrom nodded. "We'll do it, Khan Flavia. The Shepherds will be your champions."
"Excellent." Flavia settled back with the satisfaction of someone who had expected this outcome and is pleased to have it confirmed. "I should mention — Basilio's champion from the last tournament was a formidable fighter. I've heard they'll be competing again." Something in her expression shifted slightly. "As a matter of fact—"
The doors opened.
The figure who entered was the same height, the same build, the same economy of movement as the last time any of them had seen them. The dark butterfly mask caught the hall's torchlight. The silver-and-gold hilt of the sword at their hip caught it too.
The Shepherds felt the recognition land across the group at different speeds. Chrom's hand moved toward Falchion on instinct. Sumia's eyes widened. Lissa's mouth opened.
Odyn, Roy, Khanna, and Sarai went still — all four of them, in the same moment — in the specific way of people who have anticipated something and are now managing their response to its arrival.
"*Marth,*" Chrom said.
The masked figure paused. The head turned toward the assembled group with the deliberate care of someone calibrating their response. And for just a moment — for the space of one breath held and released — something passed between the figure and the four siblings that was too quick to name and too specific to be nothing.
"You know this warrior?" Flavia asked, with the tone of someone who has just found the evening considerably more interesting.
"We've crossed paths," Chrom said. "I didn't expect to find you here."
"The tournament grounds are where I need to be," Marth said. The voice was low, controlled, and carrying something underneath the control — something that was not quite pain and not quite determination, but lived in the neighborhood of both. "When we meet on the field, Prince of Ylisse, it will be in official combat."
Chrom studied the figure — the stance, the bearing, the sword whose hilt sat at a particular angle that he found himself staring at for reasons he couldn't immediately name. Something in the posture was familiar in the way that a thing is familiar when you have been looking at it from the wrong angle and have not yet found the right one.
"I look forward to it," he said, and meant it as a straightforward thing rather than a challenge.
Marth turned without further ceremony and walked toward the side corridor that Raimi indicated, and the room held what they had left behind.
Roy shifted his weight and looked at Sarai sidelong. The look asked a question.
"Not yet," she said quietly. "Some things have to come in their own time. We can't push this one."
Roy accepted this. Odyn, a half-step away, gave no indication that he disagreed. Khanna's expression was thoughtful and still.
"You know something about them," Sumia said softly, appearing at Sarai's shoulder. "All of you do."
Sarai looked at her for a moment. "What we know, and when it's right to share it — those are different questions." She held Sumia's gaze, and there was something in hers that was deeper than the situation immediately explained. "What matters right now is the tournament. Winning it, securing the alliance." A pause. "Everything else will find its moment."
Sumia looked at her. Then at the doorway through which Marth had disappeared. Then back.
"All right," she said.
Flavia's voice cut across the hall, returning the room to its purpose. "Quarters will be arranged for your group tonight. The arena at dawn." She looked at Chrom with the appraising directness of a woman who has been selecting champions for long enough to know what she's looking at. "Get some rest, Prince of Ylisse. You'll want to be sharp tomorrow."
---
The quarters were sparse and functional and warm, and the group settled into them in the way of people who have learned, over the course of a very full few days, to accept comfort when it presents itself without asking too many questions.
The conversation ran lower as the evening moved — not gone, just quieter, the way it gets when a day has been long enough that people are present without needing to perform the fact of it. Frederick walked the corridor once. Lissa found a window and looked at the stars. Stahl produced, from some internal reserve that appeared to be inexhaustible, a small quantity of something to eat and distributed it equitably.
Robin sat with his tome open on his knee and didn't read it, because what he was actually doing was reviewing the day's engagements — the Risen encounter, the fortress confrontation, Marth's appearance in the hall — and arranging them in the mental architecture that seemed to be where his thinking lived, the space where patterns became visible when they were given enough room.
Chrom, he thought, fought like someone who had trained alone a great deal and with a team not enough, and didn't entirely know it yet. That was something that could be changed, given time and the right people. He had the instincts. He needed the habits.
Marth fought like someone who had spent a very long time training with a specific person. Someone whose style was deeply, almost uncomfortably familiar.
Robin filed that away with the rest of what he didn't yet have enough information to resolve, closed his tome, and decided that the patterns would still be there in the morning.
Down the corridor, Sarai sat with her back against the stone wall and her knees pulled up and her eyes on the middle distance, thinking about a masked figure who moved like someone she had known her whole life, and who had come through the same impossible sky-wound that had deposited her and her brothers and Khanna in a field in Ylisse — and who had said, *I was in time,* to no one in particular in the dark behind a tree.
She had almost a complete picture. She was letting herself approach the last piece of it gradually, because some things, when you understood them all at once, changed the way you breathed.
*Some truths need to be discovered in their own time.*
She had said it to Roy. She could hear herself saying it. It was true.
She pressed her forehead against her knees and waited for the morning.
Tomorrow, the field would have answers in it that tonight only had questions.
---
To be continued...
Next Chapter — Chapter 4: Mirror Image — Ferox Tournament vs. the Mysterious "Marth"