In the middle of a Nohrian Army training camp, two young men wearing cheap clothing worked to set up part of the regime's exercises for that day. The taller of the two earnestly finished setting up a group of training dummies before counting to make sure they had the right amount.
"Alright. 26, 27, 28- Asher, did you bring those two other dummies like I said?" Tobias asked. He stood in front of three rows of training dummies, all barely kept together thanks to countless sword slashes and axe hackings. He double counted them just to make sure, tucking his long brown hair behind his ear so he could see clearly.
"27, 28…", Tobias trailed off, "Asher? Where are the other dummies?" He turned around to see his short friend using a broom meant to clean the training grounds in order to strike at two of the missing dummies.
"Hiya! HIYA! Back! Back, I say! Lest you feel the wrath of the almighty Asher!", he swung the broom in a wide, clumsy radius, hitting the dummies multiple times, knocking them down, before falling himself onto the ground and laughing.
"Ugh! Dude, if Xander sees that we haven't set up all the dummies like told us, he's gunna totally flip out!" He bent over to pick up the dummies Asher knocked over. "C'mon dude, help me out here."
"Hey relax man, we still got some time before Cieldora and the rest of the pegasus riders get here", Asher replied casually.
"Wait, you mean the daughter of the famous veteran sky knight, Caeldori is coming here to train?!" Tobias shrieked.
"Yeah, what's the big deal?" Asher asked.
"Uh, nothing! Look let's just get these dummies set up before Xander sees us." Tobias looked away so that Asher couldn't see his face.
The two finished setting up just in time for Cieldora and the rest of her legion of sky knights to arrive, allowing them to find a good place to spectate. They spared no time in getting out their weapons and practicing with their spears. Among the most young and talented was their new leader, Cieldora herself. She was the spitting image of her mother, who at one time had fought for the good of both Hoshido and Nohr. Her style with the spear was graceful and her lean form lent itself to the technique required of those who must remain agile in the sky. Tobias found it hard to look away. He'd become so enamored with her movements and looks that he hadn't noticed Asher tugging on his cheap clothing.
"Dude" Asher whispered, "Xander-!"
"Huh?" Tobias turned, drool slipping from his mouth. His eyes widened to see a tall blonde man towering over them.
"Boys," Xander said sternly and in a deep voice, "What might we be up to?" The two scrambled for an answer until Asher managed to choke up one.
"Oh, haha, we were just um, spectating...yknow?" He laughed nervously while Tobias gulped in anticipation.
"Well, if you two have the time to admire one of our finest soldiers, you surely have time for the best kings Nohr has ever seen." Xander dropped two buckets at their feet along with scrapers and walked away without giving further instruction. Tobias and Asher already knew what this meant.
"UGH, I can't believe we have to do this!" Asher cried, using a scraper to remove bird poop off of a giant stone fist. He used his legs to hug around the arm of a giant statue, allowing for him to clean places otherwise awkward to reach with a ladder. Tobias meanwhile, used his bucket to pour water over the plaque, removing the dirt and revealing the text: KING SEIGBERT.
"Let's just get this done, dude. We've still gotta clean King Xander the first's statue" Tobias droned, trying to scrub a stubborn piece of excrement of the statue's feet. The two worked silently for a while before Asher decided to make conversation.
"Hey, you think Xander the first was cool? I remember hearing his dad was the one who caused a lot of trouble for Hoshido back in the day." Asher asked, swinging off the stone arm as if it was a monkey bar.
"I don't know, all I know is that Nohr and Hoshido are cool now, and that Xander the second can be a real tool sometimes", Tobias answered.
"Try all the time…he wouldn't even let us watch Cieldora for a little bit, they were so cool! I bet you if ol' King Seigbert here were still around, he woulda let us watch", patting his chest, Asher looked up at the old kings face and remembered how much agency they had over themselves before his son became their new boss.
"Heh, yeah..." Tobias instead let thoughts of Cieldora creep into his mind. Asher saw the blissful look in his friends face and laughed a little.
"You like her don't you?" Asher smiled. Tobias immediately tried denying it, which only made Asher's smile grow wider. "Hey man you don't gotta lie to me, I know you."
"Alright yeah, I like her…a lot", he admitted, "but she's a famous sky knight and I'm just a training grounds keeper, what would she want with me?!"
"Aw c'mon don't be like that." His dexterous friend poked his head from behind Seibert's masterfully sculpted head. It hurt him to hear Tobias say that. They were after all, nobodies scraping poop off statues.
"Yeah, whatever."
The two scrubbed and scraped away, careful not leave even one spec of dirt on the memorial structure. It was still early out and as the sun peaked its head over the hills, every scrub became more and more exhausting. As Tobias and Asher finished and were about to pick everything up, a loud and foreboding siren cried out throughout the entire encampment causing them both to drop everything.
"Dude", Tobias looked down at his friend.
"I know" Asher nodded in understanding.
Rows of armor clad, steel armed units stood in formation in the middle of a large and empty field. From archers to mages, from swordsmen to knights, all stood within their respective class groups in front of an ominous portal spewing shadows onto the ground. The sight of this made the soldiers wary and distraught, almost enough to break formation and run. King Xander II, however held his fist to the side, commanding his generals to keep their squadrons in line. One of which, Cieldora, did as everyone else and called for her sky knights to remain steady in the air. Tobias had his eyes focused on her once again, seeing her take command caused his heart to rise and fall. Asher and his friend had taken cover as per usual behind a couple of boulders, far enough from the fight not to get involved.
"Dude!" Asher exclaimed, "Look, the shadows- it's happening again just like last time!" He had tried to get Tobias' attention, so that he could see the figures arising from the shadows on the ground. They twisted and turned, and betrayed the human form before finally taking the shape of soldiers, all fully armed with weapons of their own. The portal continued to birth more and more shadow infantry until it closed with a distinct warping sound.
Without hesitation, a shadow ran toward King Xander II. He looked at the being with disdain before drawing his passed down sword, Siegfried, and ramming it through its heart. It had no reaction and began to swing relentlessly with its sword, despite being stopped. Without a word, the fighting had officially commenced.
One by one, soldiers from both sides fell, first darkness, then flesh, then both. Tobias and Asher watched and Cieldora, organized a valkyrie group attack, swooping in to pierce an enemies with a spear, before flying back up to repeat. Asher watched in awe as mages brought forth the elements from text in books, casting fire and thunder unto enemies literally made of blight.
They both bore witness to their countrymen being slashed at and hacked away, until they were only barely held together by the mortal seams of their bodies. It reminded them of the dummies they had set up routinely every morning. While soldiers on their side fell in agony, despite the efforts of the best clerics, the shadows only fell to rise again until their forms could no longer be sustained and they broke down into a pile of ooze.
The fighting went on, and only stopped once the sun began to fade behind the hills. The remaining shadow soldiers disintegrated, becoming an everlasting part of the dark part of twilight. Xander, Cieldora, and the rest of the legion were seen by Tobias and Asher to only momentarily grieve for those who fell under their command. After every soldier left, the two stood behind the boulder and begun to prepare for the part of war no one talks about.
"I think everyone left, we should get out there", Asher said, taking a large basket and quiver by slinign it over his back.
"Yeah…", Tobias responded distantly. They both walked onto the shadow and blood soaked field. The ground around them was a mixture of red, black, and green twisting into each other but never mixing. The sky above had reached the point of perfect twilight, where the stars were visible in the east and the sunset was glistening in the west. Tobias and Asher walked down the middle and began their work.
Asher came upon the dead body of an archer, whose head had been struck in the side by an axe. He was barely recognizable, but he wasn't checking to see who he was. The only thing he cared about was whether his arrow puck was full or not, which it was. He inspected it, finding it stained with blood and thought no one would care for it. He took the arrows inside and placed them in his own quiver. He gave the body one last look before moving on to the next.
Tobias strayed not too far from his friend and found a fallen soldier with a sword still in her hand. Her long black hair covered her face, revealing nothing of who she was. Tobias was grateful for that, as he moved in to grab the sword. Much to his dismay, her arm would not let go. It was as if even in death, she could not accept her own defeat and held on to her weapon in defiance. He knew better though as he had seen things like this countless times and knew that the body stiffened after death for some. It took a bit of effort but Tobias managed to take the sword from her grip and place it into his large basket.
"Hey, Tobias?" Asher called, standing up after bending down to retrieve a staff off a mutilated cleric. "You know, I think I know how you can tell who was a bad archer from a good archer. If their quiver was empty, it probably means they shot a lot which probably means they hit a lot of enemies. But if you check them and find a lot of arrows, they probably didn't get much action at all. What do you think?"
"What does it matter", Tobias relied, "whatever two archers you're comparing are dead anyways. He picked up a book of Thunder and found multiple stains inside of it, rendering it unreadable and useless. He chucked it aside.
"Well yeah but…" Asher, defeated, stopped talking for a while. He knew that it was pointless to try and talk with his friend on the job most of the time but it was worth a shot. "So, Cieldora looked really cool out there today, you could tell she was Caeldori's daughter just by watching her fight!"
Tobias had just come up on the partnered carcasses of a sky knight and a pegasus. He imagined Cieldora in front of him, dead, squished between the ground and the body of a winged horse. He tried to shake his head of those thoughts, reminding himself how great of a fighter she was. "Yeah, she was amazing. I bet you she'll never die here. She's too great right? I mean she'd never fall here, not like this", he swooned. It made Asher smile that he could finally get his friend to talk about something.
"Don't try to fool yourself, lad." Another voice came from behind the two. Tobias looked to see who it was. From a void rift opening from the ground, a large figure appeared only this time it was no shadow. He wore a long tattered black robe, with multiple books strapped onto a belt running from his shoulder to his waist. On his back he carried a scythe, pitch black but reflective. This was Death, as soon as he fully appeared; he put down the hood over his head, revealing the face of an old man with glowing green eyes and silky silver hair. "No matter how great you are, you fall eventually." He spoke with a rasp in his voice.
"Hey, Death", Asher and Tobias greeted the immortal being.
"You boys don't seem to be done here. I'll just wait and chat for a little if you both don't mind. So what's this, Tobias? You found another girl to swoon over eh? Don't think she'll die?" Death asked, summoning a chair from nothing and sitting on it, one leg over the other.
"No-"
"Yes!" Asher interjected. Tobias shot him a glare.
"Heheh, Don't try to fool yourself on this one, Toby. You know the truth, it's all around you. Everyone, including this little lass you like is gunna go someday. So you know what? Because I know you like to wait and take forever to confess your feelings, I'm gunna do you a favor, I'm gunna tell you when she'll die! That way you'll know just how much time you have to pee your pants and ask her out", Death exclaimed.
"Wait? What! N-no!" Tobias awkwardly stuttered, remembering how many girls he let get away because he was never brave enough to talk to them. It still wasn't enough to convince him to agree to knowing when his crush would die. "I don't wanna know when she'll die!"
"C'mon, it wouldn't hurt you to know would it?" Death persisted.
"Death, that's sick!" Tobias was clearly uncomfortable.
"You pull arrows out of dead people's brains for money. Tell me how what you're doing is not more sick then what I'm about to tell you."
Tobias struggled but successfully managed to wrestle out an arrow from a poor soldiers head, causing chunks of skull and brain to liter the ground. "I don't want to know!"
"For someone so comfortable with Death and not with love, you sure are a peculiar one, Tobias. You remind me of them infernal death overlords. I hear the man down under might have a spot open in about 70 years. I could put in a good word for ya. I don't think he'd want anyone without the balls to ask a girl out though. Haha", Death laughed to himself.
"Look! No! I'm never becoming an infernal overlord or whatever and for the last time, I don't wanna know, okay! Asher and I are done, we'll see you later, Death." Tobias picked up the last of the salvaged weapons and motioned for Asher to come with him, "Let's go Asher." His friend followed him, waving bye to Death as he went.
"Fine, Toby! Just remember that you ain't got all the time in the world, only I do!" Death cried as he saw the two leave for the training camp. "Ugh, what am I gunna do with that boy…" He looked around and took in the sight of all the dead soldiers. He opened up a book from his belt and threw it into the air. It hung there, suspended and then began to violently shake and light up. Suddenly, screaming could be heard coming from the bodies as their souls were ripped from them and sucked into the book.
Tobias and Asher walked back in the dark, carrying heavy baskets of bloody swords and arrows. Just as they were about to enter the camp to sort out the salvaged war supplies, Tobias stopped.
"What's up?" Asher asked.
"I'm going to ask Cieldora out."