I Am… All of Me
Prolouge
It's me, Carnage Falcon, with my second fic ever. If you factor in my first being under a friend's account, well, you have a brand new writer on your hands. Please read, enjoy (or not) and review!
Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem. If I did I could afford to upgrade the junkbox I'm typing this on.
994 Scouring Reckoning
The red-haired Phaeran twelve-year-old ran through the forest, laughing. Lord Helman had allowed him to just go for an explore alone, something his parents never did. He rounded a corner and ran into something. The something – which turned out to be human – and his partner turned to look at him.
"Hey, watch it, kid!" He said, agitated.
"Sorry." The youth said. "I didn't see you there."
"What's your name?" The other asked. They were both adults, big and intimidating to the child.
"Eliwood."
"Eliwood? The Phaeran prince?" The first one said. "A valuable kid."
"High ransom stack." The second agreed.
"Are you going to kidnap me?" Eliwood asked fearfully.
"Don't know yet." The first said.
"Capture you or set you free?" The second added.
"Who are you?" Eliwood asked.
"Nobody you need to worry about." The second said. "After all, we can't kidnap you if we can't catch you, can we?"
Eliwood got the hint and ran. After running as far as he could he stoped and listened. No sign he was being followed. He exhaled and relaxed. What a story he had to tell now!
…as soon as he remembered which way was out.
The two strangers laughed. In a few seconds, they looked very different.
"One of these days, you're going to go too far, Rami." The second said.
"You think I would actually kidnap him?" The first said.
"No, but he could have screamed and attracted guards. We're in a private plantation like one mile square."
"You're right."
"He took off pretty randomly. You think he'll be okay?"
"At worst he'll wander in circles for a couple of hours. C'mon, if you can get out of here okay than anyone can."
"Whatever. Let's go, we're gonna get drilled if the elders get wind of this one."
996 S.R.
Hector looked up at the ceiling. They had some new specialist numbers teach in for this week and if he'd thought normal numbers class was boring, it was nothing on what this stuff could do to the brain. The mathematical figure pi, for instance. Three point something. Used with a circle to figure out the mass of an octagon of something vaguely like that. As if he, as a lord, was ever going to need this. They had mathematicians to do this crap.
Hector toyed with the idea of falling asleep. It wasn't like any of the teachers dared lay a hand on their students anyway. The only one who would chastise him would be Eliwood, who insisted it would bite him in the ass one day. Even if those weren't his exact words. Hector shut his eyes and slipped off into dreamland.
Only to be woken by someone pulling his head up by the hair.
"Do you remember me?" The someone asked.
"What?"
"Do you remember me?"
"No…"
Hector was thrown bodily off his chair. The someone, on closer inspection, was the teacher.
"I appreciate the massive effort involved in showing up to class, but I'd be obliged if you actually stayed awake." The teacher said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Hector growled. How dare a lowly scholar send him sprawling in front of an entire class of lordlings? He got to his feet, then leapt at the teacher.
The teacher grabbed his arm and twisted it behind Hector's back so he was bent over backwards. Hector had the wind knocked out of him twice by surprisingly powerful blows to the chest before being released and knocked over again by a powerful elbow thrust.
"Not even lords can get off with aggravated assault." The scholar said. "You'll be staying after class for four hours."
"What?"
"Five hours."
Hector growled. The scholar made a 'tch' noise.
"Six hours. Open your mouth again and it'll be every weekend for a month."
After class the scholar, suddenly looking a lot younger and a lot more unusual, joined an equally weird counterpart in the woods just out of the campus.
"I've said it before, I'll say it again." The newer stranger said. "One day you're going to cross the line."
"Get off it. What do you think the scholar'll say when he shows up after class?"
"We're not waiting around to find out, Rami, Uther's coming to collect his brother in…" He looked at the sun. "Half an hour."
"Shit, let's go!"
999 years after the Scouring, on the eve on the new century…
Lyndis looked around from her hiding place. Her village was in flames. All around she could smell burning wood, canvas… flesh. The men of the village were being burnt in their homes, some of them alive. But no matter their pain, it would end soon enough.
The same could not be said of the women. The sick, perverted Taliver bandits had found all the women and girls, the youngest no older than six, and were doing awful things to them. Raping them, and often torturing or killing them while they did it. Lyndis had already vomited once and only stopped because her stomach had nothing else to yield. Her only hope of survival was to remain silent and hidden.
A shape passed her hole in a clump of bushes. Lyn whimpered. The figured stopped, then suddenly leapt on her, clamping a hand over her mouth.
"I am not your enemy." A voice hissed. "I'm going to help you get out of here. I'm going to drag you across town. Scream, struggle, but do not break free of me. When I get to the outskirts, I will fall and release you. Run. Run is a straight line and don't stop until you don't know where you are. Take this gold," she felt a weight in her pocket, "and make a fresh start. When you are stronger, you can return to destroy these bastards. But for tonight, run. Do you understand?"
Lyn nodded and he released her. She cleared her throat.
"Who are you?"
"I am all… I am all of me."
Before she could digest this cryptic comment she was dragged out of the bushes. Her fear instincts kicking in to help, she screamed blue murder and started thrashing wildly to get away. Jeering, her 'captor' dragged her through her town, other bandits following. He got to the village gate, which had collapsed into flames.
"Run. Jump. You will make it. Do not stop." Her captor whispered before his hands fell away. Lyn vaulted the inferno and took off, whimpering slightly as the shock of cold, wet grass hit her legs. With one short glance over her shoulder, Lyn took off into the wilderness.
The fake captor ran up an outer wall of the village and dropped outside to meet a companion.
"You said one day I'd go too far." The companion said. "You just caused the biggest inheritance war since the scouring."
"We'd better see it though to the end, then. I can't see you passing up the opportunity to fight."
"Shut up. But you're right. Let's do this."
There you go. The actual chapters will make more sense, I promise. Please read and review, constructive criticism will be appreciated. Also, I am accpting OC submissions, check out my profile for details.
