For challenge 009 at the fe_contest community over on Livejournal.
Title: Moment of Truth
Game: Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword
Challenge 009: Terror
Word Count: 674
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Moment of Truth
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He is sixteen years old, newly knighted and ready to face the world. He is the bringer of justice, the slayer of all evils, the protector of the weak and innocent.
This is to be his first battle; they are told that an army is approaching their beloved lands, their goal to kill and steal and destroy all that is good in this world. Their adversary is commanded by a pagan woman of the plains, they are told, her naked body painted with the blood of the men she has slain and her blade made sharp with the blessings of her heathen gods.
"But do not fear," their commanding officer tells them. "She is mortal, she can bleed—she will die."
And so they set out for the battlefield, their bodies already tingling with the thrill of excitement. When they arrive they find the enemy already there—and for the first time in his career as a soldier, from page to squire to finally a knight, he questions his orders.
The group before him is not the horde they were told to expect—they are not even a proper army. He counts the enemy's number quickly: barely a dozen of them, at most. Three of the faces are familiar. The turncoat knights Kent and Sain, and the venerable General Wallace. So the rumors are true.
Why? he wants to ask. Why do you abandon your lord, your land?
Turn back, please—only Death waits for you here.
But all too soon he is on the field, striking at a cloaked young mage here, parrying against an axe-wielder there. He soon finds himself facing a young woman, barely older than he, and without realizing it knows her identity.
This, then, is the imposter to the throne: a young girl, not the barbarian woman he had expected.
And then she strikes.
She moves faster than he can anticipate; the pain in his side is more than enough evidence of that. His mare shies from an arrow directed towards them, and in the confusion he quickly finds himself on the ground.
She approaches him, blade drawn and ready. His own sword has somehow managed to stay in his grasp, but he finds that he cannot move. She is not the savage he expected, the rumored pagan whore with hair unbound and bare flesh exposed, and yet there is something about her so undeniably wild it frightens him.
It binds him there, ice cold against his skin, slowly coiling about his heart and turning his blood to ice. He clutches blindly at the wound in his side—it is so cold that it burns. His fingers are numb, legs refusing to move, and though he knows that he should just get up and run, he finds that he cannot.
Everything seems to move in slow motion; he raises his arms in front of his face, a futile attempt at blocking the inevitable blow. Perhaps he screams—he does not know, he cannot hear any more.
The last thing he sees is a gleam of metal and a flash of red.
He is sixteen years old, and he is dead.
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"He was a boy," she said as she touched the ground almost reverently with one blood-stained hand. "He was a boy who was only doing what he was told, and in the end he died for it."
Kent nodded. "Yes, he was. Both Sain and I knew him, personally trained him and the other new recruits. He would have gone far."
Lyndis stood up and was silent for a moment. "I will kill him," she said. "Lundgren. I will find him and fight him and will make him beg for death, and when he draws his last breath I will make certain that he was right to fear me."
The air was heavy with the finality of her words, and as Kent followed his lady back to camp he could not help but wonder at the way his heart was pounding within his chest.
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Xirysa Says: Because Lyndis would be pretty freaking terrifying if she wanted to be.
Also, keeping this at drabble-length was surprisingly difficult. Go figure.