All characters © their respective owners
-SILENTNIGHT.
Akuma: -grumbles- On the fifth day of Christmas my true love wrote for me.
Warnings: Horror and Knoll.
-HOLYNIGHT.
It was the most peaceful of nights. There was nothing that could go wrong.
Eirika and Ephraim's group surrounded a large bonfire while they chatted. Some drank, but that was to be expected in a celebration. Tethys put on a small performance, the men of the group encouraging her graceful dances. Ewan wanted to glare at them for giving such lecherous looks to her, but followed her steps clumsily nonetheless. Marisa tried her best to dance with them when she wasn't tripping over her own feet.
Colm and Neimi were sharing a blanket, the thief blushing slightly while the archer's face was bright red. Ross was talking with his father about making hot beverages the way mother used to. Artur lit his torch staff when he noticed Lute shivering. She would never outright admit that the weather was affecting her. The knights and anyone else wearing armor had put the armor away in favor of warmer clothing.
With such a large group, it would be hard to keep track of everyone. Seth often kept a vigilant head count, but with Eirika consuming so much alcohol, a head count became second priority. Ephraim wasn't in a much better condition than Eirika either, so Kyle escorted the lord to his tent. Well, he tried, actually. Ephraim was rather strong even when under the influence.
In the event that Seth could not keep the head count, the knight appointed Natasha to take over. She was a rather observant bishop, and her immense strength in light magic and staves would allow her to escort any soldier who strayed too far back to the base camp.
And right now, Natasha noticed that someone was indeed missing. Knoll had wandered away some time during the celebration. She thought that maybe he needed to relieve himself, but he had been gone longer than necessary. She watched Seth yearningly before she decided to find where Knoll had gone. Seth didn't even look her way because he was tending to Eirika.
Her task would keep her distracted from her affection towards the older, red-haired knight.
She headed deeper into the forest. She wondered what Knoll could have been doing, and why he decided to wander so far into the forest. He could have been easily ambushed considering he was very unskillful at dodging. Not to mention his clothing did not grant him any sort of protection from neither cold nor weapons.
Soon, she reached a clearing. Knoll was standing in the middle of it. She smiled at the fact that he was unharmed, but as she was about to call out to him, a large glowing purple circle appeared underneath him. It had characters that were normally written in tomes, but these were…
The summoner chanted quietly while an undead soldier rose out of the ground. Natasha cringed at the sight. She never was fond of Knoll's newfound ability, but at least the undead warriors he called were on their side. What she didn't understand was why Knoll needed such a huge circle for when he had no problems calling one soldier with a much smaller circle.
And then, slowly, more soldiers clawed their way out of the ground. One, two, three… Natasha's eyes narrowed at the sight. Was Knoll trying to raise an army? What is this? How was able to summon more than one soldier at a time? She couldn't imagine the strain on his mind and spirit that he was no doubt suffering from.
The summoner then laughed, snapping her from her thoughts. It was an…eerie, almost maniacal kind of laugh. It didn't sound like Knoll. He turned his face towards Natasha, and the bishop could see the glowing red eyes that now gleamed where his knowledgeable amethysts used to be, a sickening smile appeared where his thoughtful frown was supposed to be.
"Knoll…?" She dared to ask. His smile only widened as the undead soldiers turned to look at her.
"AAAaaaaahhhhh!" a scream. Natasha turned to the direction of where it came. That had to have been lady Tana's scream. She was back at camp with everyone else, so-!
"Eirika!"
"Lady L'Arachel!"
"M-monsters!" that was Artur's voice. Did Knoll summon soldiers to invade the base camp? She quickly turned to confront Knoll, only to find herself surrounded by his undead warriors.
Spells were cast. Weapons were swung and shot and thrown. And Knoll's smile never faltered as his soldiers' axes fell.
It was the most peaceful of nights. There was nothing that could go wrong.
-ALLISWRONGTHEREISNOLIGHT.
Akuma: I never did like light magic users in Fire Emblem. And Sacred Stones is my least favorite Fire Emblem. Not to say that I hate it; it's just my least favorite. Poor, unfortunate units… I love dark magic users, though. Such wonderful characters they are. Knoll deserves a lot more attention than he gets in my opinion. The only way to get stronger is to fall deeper into dark magic, but who is willing to make such a sacrifice when they are so sure of the consequences?
Holiday moral: Be careful when letting your guard down.
Akuma: Explaining stuff because someone asked for it.
Fire Emblem 7's concept of falling into darkness was not used because Fire Emblem 8 already has corpses on puppet strings. Knoll summons the undead, he is not undead himself. Also this is Fire Emblem 8, not 7, and fanfiction allows me to deviate concepts. Knoll did not turn evil. He lost control of his summoning and his mind. I was going to put in a scene where Knoll frequently disappeared into the woods to practice his summoning to see if he could summon more than one, but I ran out of time. Well, that, and this is all supposed to be from Natasha's view.
When Knoll's mind snapped, he became interested in how much his work could do. It had nothing to do with, "Oh, I'm betraying you and killing everyone I've fought alongside with blahSUDDENLYEVILATTACK." When Knoll summoned that large army, he wanted to see how strong it was. You won't get any satisfaction from just hacking away at frozen trees. You're going to want to attack things that can fight back.
I thought about doing it from Knoll's perspective, but considering he just turned insane, the page would just be full of incoherent thoughts about "playing" and "questioning" and "experimenting." Natasha was better for realizing what must have happened to Knoll. If you think that I should've written it from his perspective, then all I can suggest is that you write it yourself because I have no interest nor motivation to. I might write another story expanding on this, but I'm not going to now.
One other thing, I didn't describe the scream in a cliche way like "blood-curdling." It was a scream. That's what it was, and that's all I said about it. If it's awkward, then all the better! I don't like writing fanfiction anyway. Also, I'm not aiming for originality. I'm not aiming for people to even like this story. Fire Emblem 8 is my least favorite Fire Emblem, and I didn't even want to participate in this project in the first place.
I know Eirika getting drunk is OOC, but reasonably, I also think that Eirika would've been egged on by Tana and L'Arachel to drink alcohol. Peer pressure is such fun. But I mostly just wanted a reason for Seth to tend to her other than making her sick. The two lords were drunk because it would imply that the undead soldiers won. It's a game over when the lords die, isn't it?
And finally, considering this account wrote two stories in the Fire Emblem section already, we probably won't be returning to this fandom for the rest of this month except for the drawing half.
Akuma: That is all.