Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem, only my characters and place names. My first story guys, so please R&R, and enjoy I hope!

Chapter One: Insufficient

The continent of Zelena is divided into seven nations; Jasale, the desert kingdom; Epesa, the great plains, housing numerous nomad tribes; Norvard, a consulate of ice and snow, far in the frozen northlands; Tebra, a country of scholars, where magic reigns supreme; Moadu, the most powerful military force on the continent; and the growing expansionist empire known as Kallra. Kallra has already subjugated most of the wilderness bordering Jasale to the west and Epesa to the southeast. However, the ruler of Kallra, Emperor Dahal, is beginning to find that insufficient…

Trotts Ivaar of the Crimson Cross tribe strode out of his home. Today was going to be the best day of his life. Today, his sixteenth birthday, his Nameday, was when he would finally be recognized as a man, his cheeks painted with the red crosses of his people. And today, he would be given his Crimson Cross sword. He checked the one at his hip. It was a fine weapon, of stout iron, and had served him well in his training, but he knew that it was not a patch on the mens' weapons. He had sparred his father often enough to have gotten a good look at the Nameday blade his father had received at sixteen. That long, slightly curved, single-edged blade was light as a feather, and never dulled. His father, however, had been Weeping Winds tribe before marrying his mother – the white teardrops painted on his face made that apparent enough – and excellent as those blades were, the Crimson Cross swords were legendary even among Epesans. In fact, his older brother Temperon's sword was as superior to their father's as Blackhawk Ivaar Windweeper's was to Trotts'.

He came to the square, as he had been instructed – they still called it a square, though it was round – and slowed. As in all Nameday ceremonies, the women of the village who had had their Namedays already, fourteen and up, were lined up on either side of him, with the youngest at the centre of the square and getting older the closer they got to him. As he strode slowly down the row of women, each pair kissed him on either cheek. As he got closer and closer to the podium at the centre, where the unmarried, un-Promised women stood, the kisses were accompanied by more and more giggles and smiles, and a couple of them even pinched his butt! Determined to keep his cool, he stepped up on the raised platform, where his mother, Kelesea, chief of the Crimson Cross, stood facing him.

"Trotts Ivaar, give me your sword." Trotts handed her his sword with a twinge of regret – he'd been to enough Nameday ceremonies to know what came next, and his sword wasn't a bad weapon. Wheeling her son's sword over her head, she drove it into the stones of the platform. The blade snapped six inches from the hilt. Kelesea held out her hand, and Blackhawk handed her a sheathed sword and belt. Buckling it on her son, Kelesea continued the ceremony. "Your clan gives you this sword, for your protection as well as theirs."

The Crimson Cross chief took a small jar of red paint and, dipping her finger, she drew a cross under each of his eyes. "Your clan welcomes you, though they know not your name." Somewhere nearby, a wyvern shrieked. "Trotts Ivaar, what is your n-"

Kelesea's voice was cut short as a green-and-black armoured wyvern knight's lance pierced her back and drove her to the ground. Blackhawk pulled free his sword, white blade gleaming in the sunlight. Six more wyvern riders flanked the one that had killed Kelesea, dropping torches on any building that struck their fancy. Not far behind them, cavaliers, great knights, and paladins charged into the village, killing any in their path. Trotts vaguely heard bows being drawn, but everything seemed so far away. He just stood there, paralysed, unable to draw his sword, unable to run, to do anything at all. The green-and-black knight loomed in front of him suddenly, raising his lance. Blackhawk ran in front of him, sword bloody, and shoved him out of the way. As he fell from the podium, his head hit the stones of the square, and the world disappeared.