FFQ IV 2007 Quarter III
Due date: October 1, 2007
Style: Short Scene / slice-of-life
FE: 7
A/N: The FESS Fan-fiction Quarterly challenge this time was to write how different a game would be without a character.
"Hurry up! There are men sniping at us from the woods!" a teal-haired young girl called, before slipping into utter silence and stealthily moving closer to the said men. Her prowl was refined; she could have blended right in with the wind.
"Lyn!" a pegasus-riding girl with long lavender curls gasped. Her best friend, Lyn, could be so reckless sometimes, charging into battle alone. The Pegasus knight gulped; the arrows of bowmen were the bane of her – or at least her pegasus's – existence. They targeted the vitals of pegasi much more easily than melee weapons, and if her Pegasus went down, she went down as well. She glanced sideways at her sisters; they looked fierce and deadly, gripping their lances. Was she really related to them? Little Florina's elder sisters resembled neither the other nor herself. Odd. It was definitely more likely that they were related to each other than to Florina; they had none of Florina's timid manners.
Florina sighed and dived in for an attack, her sword ready. A skilled bowman could definitely predict her trajectory, but she needed to join the fight lest she allow her comrades to die. Her eldest sister Fiora followed, and then Farina, though not without yelling vulgar, obscene words at the foes.
Close behind the Pegasus sisters was a boy in his late teens, swinging a heavy axe, adrenaline rushing from the excitement of battle, and several knights on sturdy stallions, focused and at home on the battlefield. A number of spell-casters trailed behind the fast-paced gallop of the steeds. Hugging the trees were the furtive and dexterous nomads from the Eastern lands, as well as their own archers who needed the shelter as protection when they loaded their arrows and aimed.
A distraught young man with fiery red hair watched his companions with resignation. They were all loyal and eager to prove their worth, yet all of them went about the battles their own way. There was no unity. These nights were sleepless ones for the prince of Pherae, Eliwood. Having been the main reason for dragging all these civilians along, he felt the hairs on his head turn white every day out of guilt.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Ilian Pegasus knights fight with other Ilian Pegasus knights as well as the dragon knights of Bern. It must hurt to fight with friends they had possibly known once, especially if they must fight to death; he knew that. And the dragon knights, Eliwood had two on his side. They had friends, supporters, knights who still loved them but placed loyalty to their country above their reason. Those "enemy" knights were good people too – most of them anyway.
As Eliwood hurried to join the fray, he saw enemy archers doing their best to strike Florina, Fiora, and Farina down first, as the dragons were tougher to slay, and leaving not unskilled mercenaries for hire to do in the rest of his friends. Eliwood bellowed at his bow-users, not out of unkindness but out of concern for the sisters, "Wil! Rebecca! Rath! Lyndis! Shoot those snipers out before they kill the pegasi!"
Promptly, alarmed for her friend's safety, Lyn quickly dispatched a sniper to the next world with her already bloodied sword. Without a moment's hesitation, she re-sheathed her sword and drew her bow. She hit a bowman, though not mortally; she had barely a second to move to reload before an arrow from her kinsman Rath flew by her head and split an enemy arrow aimed at her neck.
The spell-casting Lucius reached the sniper Lyn had wounded. He took the arrows out of the enemy archer's quiver and snapped the bow before healing his wounds. The man was surprised, and then sulky.
"I dun get paid 'less I kill at least THREE o' you," he spat, knowing that his best chance to add to his scoreboard would never be; he could not hurt Lucius and live with the remorse. His bow was broken and he certainly could not get close to another of Eliwood's friends. He looked up at Lucius again; the mage did not seem to have considered that the built mercenary could easily strangle him.
Eliwood breathed once, and then found himself short of breath again. Rebecca and Wil, the Pheraean archers who were childhood friends, were aiming at the enemy's flying mounts. Rebecca's last shot, however, strayed far too close to Fiora's mount. Wil noticed too, for the next second, he was yelling at his friend instead of aiding his allies.
Eliwood sighed. The shy Florina had warmed up to cheerful Wil as she had to no other man, and he was an archer no less. Wil seemed to reciprocate her feelings too. However this caused internal strife among his "army". Fiora did not yet trust Wil, and Farina found him a poor match since he was no prince. Rebecca, who had been just recovering from old feelings of abandonment, opposed the match with a burning fury. She felt it very unjust that a girl he had known for such a short time could steal his heart when he had not looked at her with anything more than brotherly love once in their fifteen years of friendship.
To make up for the lack of attention the enemies in the sky were getting, Eliwood pleaded with the mages Erk and Serra to retreat to the forest where they could aim their powerful spells unseen. They went along, Serra annoyedly and Erk indifferently save to the idea that he would be stuck with garrulous Serra.
With a swift cut of his sword, Eliwood felled a brigand to let Erk and Serra escape. At least the Pegasus girls would be getting some support now, or so he thought. Lyn and Rath had done their best to clear out the enemy archers, but Rath had taken a hit, and their focus was on dressing his wound. Serra was not being productive; she bothered Erk as he tried to cast magic. The result was blasts of fire that shot up too close to the mounted knights, nowhere near the sky.
The Pegasus girls finally felled the enemies in the sky and swooped down low to support their allies. As Florina slashed her sword into the heart of an enemy nomad, an arrow hit her Pegasus, and both she and her mount fell. Florina's leg was broken, but she did not cry as she tended to her Pegasus.
Wil was screaming angrily at Rebecca. He had already taken away her bow so that she would not get any ideas in the heat of battle when her judgment was unclear. However, she had responded furiously by taking an arrow and thrust it as one would a dart. Rebecca's arm and aim were well-trained, as the Pegasus had been hit surely and deeply.
Lucius finally left the shelter of the forest to help heal Florina's Pegasus and then her leg. Meanwhile, her sisters guarded her intensely so that none would be hurt in the process. Farina muttered a reminder to herself to slit Rebecca's throat later.
Running to join the youth with the axe, Hector, Eliwood called to him, "Déjà vu, huh, Hector?" Hector wasn't listening; the blue-haired warmongering man disliked conversation while there were heads to decapitate.
Eliwood sighed. Indeed, there they went again. No one listened. Few even tried to work together, except as they saw fit themselves. There were never any plans or strategies. They winged it, and managed, with luck, to survive without too much pain. Eliwood knew all too well that if he died, it would more likely be from the anarchy of his army's fighting "tactics" then from a foe.
A/N: All right, I know. I cheated; I took out the tactician. I thought it would make a bigger difference. So there's no teamwork, the whole battlefield's a mess. And, uh, it's more or less just a scene, without a proper storyline. A glimpse into what it might have been. No real point...