Author's note: I do not own the Fire Emblem franchise, nor any of its characters.

Prologue - The Lonely Girl in the Plains

The tavern was lively. I counted at least three dozen patrons, including the bartender and wait staff. A man announced the entertainment for tonight: a boy and a girl, both with pale blue hair, and eerily pale skin, as if neither had seen daylight in their lives. The boy was ten at the oldest, while the girl was in her teens. The boy, holding a flute to his mouth, started playing, the girl followed with a complicated dance that I doubted I would ever understand. Strangely, watching the children's performance created a sensation of rejuvenation within me, and, glancing around to see the reactions of the other patrons, I noticed it was having a similar effect to them. Whatever these children's spell was, I decided it was nothing that I learned in my studies in the Academy in Lycia. I turned my back to find my drink on the counter behind me, took a sip, and put it back, pondering the origin of the entertainers, deciding that I had to interview those two after their performance was over.

I was still waiting for the Saecean mercenaries (outcasts of some tribe or the other, from what I heard) to join me in my first expedition as a military force's sole tactician. From what I was told, I was expected to spend about a day here before moving on with the mercenaries to deal with some local bandits that killed almost an entire tribe a few fortnights ago.

While I was lost in thought, I didn't realize the two children had finished playing and had already exited the tavern. I swore, took another gulp of my drink, and exited as well, hoping to find the children. I started feeling groggy, weird as that was, I had only had half a pint, and surely I could hold more alcohol than that. I felt someone grab a hold of me, but at that time, I had almost lost all motor function. I felt myself being lifted up onto something that felt like a saddle, and I felt my arms being tied as I lost consciousness.

"Are you awake?" A voice, clearly a woman's, asked.

I groaned, it felt as if thousands of needles were stabbing my head. "What came over me?" I muttered, apparently just loud enough for the woman to hear. I opened my eyes to reveal a surprisingly young (and beautiful, I added to myself) girl to be living in apparent solitude.

"I found you unconscious on the plains," she said, in a tone that I knew meant I was under no harm from her.

"The plains? How far away are we from Bulgar? For that is where I was last time I was conscious." I replied, the memories of the night before were coming back to me slowly. The strange children at the tavern escaped before I could question them, and I was supposed to meet the mercenaries near that very tavern this morning.

"A few days on foot, you were heavily bruised when I found you, are you sure you're well enough to travel?" As she said that, I felt the pain all over my body, I must have been strapped on to a horse and driven off into the plains, but why? I went through all of the reasons why someone would want to kill me in an inconspicuous manner, but that produced little results. I was near Bern, so maybe one of their agents mistaken me for their real target, I was, after all, a relative of Roland, through his blood does not flow in me.

"I guess you're right, who are you? Do you live here?" I asked, I could pretty easily guess the answer to the latter, but I was hoping to know more of why she was alone.

"I am Lyn, of the Lorca tribe." I winced; I assume she noticed, because she frowned a little. This was the tribe that the bandits I was sent to kill attacked. I heard there were survivors, but I never thought I would meet any of them.

"Pleased to meet you Lyn, I am Lukas." I said, getting out of the makeshift bed that Lyn had made for me.

"Lukas, that is an odd name, where are you from Lukas?" My stomach audibly growled, "Oh, you must be hungry, here, I have some leftover meat." She grabbed a fairly sizable amount of cooked of, from what I could tell, pork.

"Thank you, Lyn of the Lorca, Sacean hospitality is indeed not just a rumor." I heard of the hospitality of course, knowing better than many of the ignorant people who believed rumors that the people of Saece did nothing but dance around fires, eat people, and talk to horses.

She gave a brief smile, and remarked that she will look outside for the weather. After a few moments, she ran back in, "Bandits! You can stay here, I can take care of them!" She said, taking a sword that was standing near the door.

"No, I will go with you, Lyn." I quickly replied.

"You can handle weapons?" She asked, with a genuine look of surprise.

"Not skillfully, I am a tactician however, I can guide your actions if you want."

"Ah, I see… So you're a strategist by trade? An odd profession…" We headed out of the ger, which is what the nomads of Saece call their huts.

I saw only two bandits, though neither were aware of our presence. I guided Lyn to duck under a nearby boulder as I threw a pebble at the closer of the two bandits. The pebble did its job sufficiently and the man raised his axe and charged at me. I ducked behind Lyn, and whispered "on 3…1,2,3, attack!"

She sprang out and cut a diagonal line from the bandit's left pelvis to right shoulder. Blood spurted out from the wound as the bandit fell over. He would be dead within a few minutes. The other bandit was almost to the duo, so I knew there would be no element of surprise this time. I knew the advantage Lyn had as a sword wielder to the axe wielder, she also had the advantage of agility. The way he ran allowed me to infer that he was clumsy at best, and Lyn should be agile enough to dodge any swing from the axeman. "Just meet his charge, avoid his attacks as your first priority," I instructed.

Lyn merely nodded, and went to face the bandit. "I am Batta the Beast! No one bests me!" yelled the bandit, and took a large, clumsy swing as he almost tripped. Of course, Lyn had easily dodged the swing and, seeing the opening Batta had left open, swung down on the back of his neck, breaking it, but not quite severing the head. From his studies of the human body, he knew the bandit was already dead.

The two bandits dead, Lyn exclaimed, "We did it! Thanks Lukas for your help!"

I was a little surprised at the girl's reflexes, though her swordplay was rough, it was perfect for dealing with simple bandits. "Good job with those bandits Lyn, I have to say I'm impressed by your swordplay at your age, did your parents teach you?" I realized my mistake immediately as her head turned downward and she looked like she was about to cry.

"My parents…they were taken from me two months ago by bandits…" Tears were almost welling up in her eyes.

"…I'm sorry, Lyn. I didn't know…" I lied, hoping she didn't read my reaction when I first heard which tribe she was from.

"It's okay, Lukas," she quickly tried to change the subject, "didn't you mention Bulgar earlier?"

"I did, I was supposed to meet a mercenary company there this morning," I replied, I wonder what kind of fate had me drugged and dragged to the middle of the Saece plains only to be rescued by this girl. Whatever fate it was, my gut feeling was telling me that this was to set off a chain of events, however odd this might be.

"Well, you are already late, but I can travel with you to there if you want, I need to resupply myself anyways," Lyn had pretty clearly put the memory of her parents behind her already, such strong will.

"Thank you, I believe I'll have to take you up on that offer, considering I have no idea where to go!" I laughed, it was after all, this was my first time in Saece.

"Well, we should get going!" She was pretty enthusiastic about a simple trip to a town, though I guess most nomads don't spend much time in the urban areas of Elibe.

I've never seen greener plains, the only blemish on the landscape the occasional boulder, likely rolled down from the neighboring Bernese mountains. Though I suppose I don't need to be gawking at the scenery, I need to reacquaint myself with my training. I've never been trained to have just one soldier under my command, but I suppose Lyn was one the optimal specimens in this situation. While she didn't have much strength, she does have great agility to make up for her armor, making her an ideal one woman army. Her main weakness, of course, was numbers: I doubt we would be able to fend off any more than two hostiles.

"You've been silent," noted Lyn.

"I've been thinking about tactics, I have never been trained on commanding just one soldier…" In reality, I've never been trained in any tactics with groups under the size of thirty.

"You did fine back there against those bandits."

"That was against two, a number I'm sure we won't be lucky to face again…" I started, "but against, say, ten well-trained soldiers, we are dead."

"Nonsense! Just treat the ten soldiers as five groups of two." To her credit, the basis of her argument – divide and conquer – is highly effective in any size of force, though I still doubted I could succeed against the likes of trained soldiers with just Lyn.

"I think our best hope is to simply avoid conflict at all. At least, I could pray for such. Say, I've been meaning to ask you, why did you choose to help me?"

"I could never leave a stranded man out in the plains like that! But for helping you get to Bulgar, I needed supplies and something to do, or a tribe to join…"

"I can easily imagine why you want, or daresay, need to join a tribe, but I have to thank you. You saved my life, peerless warrior."

"You're welcome, master tactician!" We both chuckled, and noted the setting sun. "I guess we should set up camp here."

I nodded, and my thoughts drifted back to the past two day's events.

Author's Note:

This is my first work, so any kind of criticism would be nice (if this is all total garbage, please, don't refrain from telling me so). The entire story will be from Lukas' point of view in the first person, and will take place through all of FE7's storyline, while also adding some side stories/battles that are not present in the game. I have pipe dreams of extending this into a trilogy if I decide I can write well enough. And finally, thanks for reading this little prologue.

-S