Notes: Er, this kind of happened from a crack prompt of Knoll and Canas meeting up somehow. It started as a drabble and got a bit out of control. I guess "timeline" wise, it takes place shortly after my last Canas fic (Silence and Motion), but you probably don't need to read that.

I haven't really edited it, but I'm fond of the basic premise, so I thought I might as well upload it. Title is from the FE100 prompt, but I felt like this was too long to throw in there.

Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Ancient Magic

Canas had come across many things in his hikes through Ilia's high gray mountains – animals to study, trees to document, trails to follow – but never before had he found another person. At least, not one lying face-down in the snow, clad in the ruins of garb the likes of which he'd never seen.

Had he not caught the slight rise and fall of the fellow's slender back, he would have thought him dead. His leg was twisted in a direction legs were surely not meant to go, and the snow beneath him was dark with blood. But at the light gentle nudge, the foreigner gave no sign of awareness. There was really only one thing to do.

"Up we go then," Canas murmured to himself and to the motionless stranger, and slowly, carefully hoisted the other man onto his back to make the climb back down.

"Ah, you're awake, then?"

The stranger's eyes opened slowly, carefully, as if unused to candelight. He let out another low groan before turning to Canas.

"Who. . . who are you?"

His words were understandable, but the accent was impossible for Canas to place. He thought he caught a trace of Bernese to the lilt of the words, but it was faint and near lost amidst the other, odder bits.

"My name is Canas. I'm, er, a scholar.

The foreigner's pale eyes widened at the last word. He pulled away, but as soon as he moved his ruined leg, he was halted by his own hiss of pain. "A-a scholar. This isn't. . . isn't. . . where is this?"

"Well, it's my home." The wild stare of the other man told Canas that this was not a helpful answer. "Ilia. At the edge of Verdela." The stare did not cease.

"What is. . . oh. I see." Slowly, the foreigner released his iron-clad grip on the blankets Canas had covered him in, in hopes to relieve the blue tinge at his lips and the shaking of his frail body. "My apologies. I had not expected. . . this."

"Might I have your name?"

Pale hands reached up and grasped at the tattered remains of what Canas thought must have been a hood at one point. "I-it's Knoll."

"Knoll, then." Knoll looked as if he regretted giving even that detail up. "I take it you are not from around here."

"Evidently. . . not."

Knoll could not walk. That much became very evident when Canas found him collapsed by the door in the early hours of the morning, clearly intent on fleeing into the wilderness of the mountains once again. He had said nothing as Canas offered his shoulder to lean on and they hobbled back to the bed together, and nothing still as Canas fetched him a cup of tea.

For a moment, Canas thought of telling him that the mountains were treacherous, that any wayward traveler who set out into them would likely never return. But somehow, as he watched Knoll stare into the dark brew and sigh, Canas thought the other man already knew.

"I was a scholar myself, once," Knoll murmured cautiously after a while. "Certainly. . . not the sort of scholar you are, I fear. Our disciplines are likely incompatible."

"Why, there is no such thing! Every man can learn from another – in fact, I myself am in correspondence with a fellow mage who specialized in the art of anima. Your practices can't be that different."

Knoll gave Canas a long, lingering, half-lidded look. "It is nice that you think that," he said at last, and nothing more.

The wounds, when Canas finally saw them in a cleaner state after some work, were quite unlike anything he'd dealt with before. The only thing that he could imagine causing them were the fangs of a dragon, but even then, it would not have been so ragged and twisted and awful.

Canas was not a very skilled healer, and through his efforts to help Knoll along, it really did show. Rosalind might have been better at it, but she'd taken Hugh to visit one sister or another further south.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly as he saw the bedsheets bunch in Knoll's clenched grip. "I'd brew you something to ease the pain, but I haven't been able to find the herbs I'd need—"

"I've felt worse," Knoll answered through gritted teeth, and pushed the glowing tip of Canas' staff away. "It's fine. Those are expensive here, too, are they not?"

"It isn't too dear, don't—"

"It's enough. Thank you."

"Left untreated, this could kill you!"

"I don't mind."

Knoll was smiling. Canas couldn't stand it. "I do," he snapped. Knoll tried to shrink away, but Canas found himself shoving the other man back down, forcing the staff to the still-broken skin and pouring his magic into the wound.

"I do," he said firmly as the light gave out and the staff fell dim. "I did take you in; you're not going to die on my watch. You're going to heal up, and then I will personally see to it that you make it home. To your family. Your research. Your. . . whatever it is."

The leg was still broken, still bruised and twisted, but the deepest of the gouges were smoothed over scars beneath Canas' hands. Knoll neither looked nor spoke, choosing instead to stare coldly at the window, off into the mountains beyond.

"I have no home to return to."

Canas had not expected conversation. He had expected to come in with a bowl of warm onion stew and go out the way he'd come, just as he had every evening for the past week.

"Hm?"

"You keep saying you'll see that I make it there. There's no need."

"But how is that possible?" Canas could only imagine it – the aftermath, perhaps, of the war he'd faced himself, had they lost. "Even if your home is in ruins, is there not someone left that you could go to find? Anyone at all?"

Knoll shook his head firmly, eyes closed, mouth set into the slight frown Canas had come to expect from him.

Again, Canas tried to imagine it – a world without his wife, his son, his friends. Even more than that – his friends' families, the relatives on Rosalind's side he had yet to meet, the fellow Nino had written to say she was seeing, the pleasant woman in the village who sold the best bread, the children Hugh had been raised alongside. . . .

"I'm sorry."

Knoll shrugged. "My own failure."

"If that's the case, then. . . then you can stay here!" Canas lit up at the idea, hoping, somehow, his smile might be contagious. "We've plenty of room, and I'm sure Rosalind wouldn't mind, and if you feel you must chip in, I'm sure we could find something you could do. . ."

"But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you. . . offer that to me?"

Canas leaned against the foot of the bed for a moment, trying to find the words he was looking for. Finally, he answered, trying not to let his own voice give him away. "I've lost things too, you see. Important things. And since I wasn't alone, you shouldn't be, either."

Knoll was quite right about their disciplines being incompatible. He could read the oldest of Canas' books, even the ones Canas struggled with himself, but the theories he cited were total nonsense. It was as if he drew from a different source entirely, a source he spoke of with nothing but dread. It was not one for which Canas had a name, and by the way Knoll talked, he wasn't sure he wanted one.

He would not show Canas his magic, or try the sort of ancient power native to Elibe, though he noted that it looked different, felt different.

"I'd rather focus my energy on healing, if that's all right," he said, and happily, Canas gave him a staff.

Before long, the village came to know Canas' friend as a soft-spoken healer with a bad leg, a man willing to look at just about anything and see if it could be treated, be it with magic or herbs. If Knoll ever minded being bothered by leaning on a cane or needing help with his supplies, he did not mention it. In fact, if anything, he seemed heartened by the prospect, even smiling, just slightly, when he heard his services were needed.

But he'd whisper cautions to Canas when he heard him at work with old tomes and charts, and it was then that it came out – a subtle sort of terror, a pleading in his voice. "Don't go too far. Please."

Canas didn't know what "too far" meant to Knoll, but he knew better. He'd tasted the very edge of his limits and had no desire to go back. But he could not say as much; he had a feeling just insinuating it would make Knoll come to dread him.

"I have things to stay here for."

At times, when Knoll lingered at Canas' books and touched them with that air of familiarity, Canas thought of asking him what, indeed, his other magic had been like. "Different" was all Knoll would give up, and that was hardly helpful at all.

But every time the opportunity arose, Knoll would excuse himself to do something else – exercise his leg, work on medicines, do some menial chore – as if he knew the question was coming. It was possibly the most frustrating thing Canas had ever experienced.

On occasion he would work the same sort of amateurish anima Canas could manage himself: a bit of a spark to set the firewood alight or heat up a stew, a small gust of wind to set the fires out again when he was finished. But aside from healing, it seemed to be all he was willing to show.

It was for that reason when a small band of Bernese soldiers turned up at the village, far from an uncommon occurrence, Canas was surprised that Knoll grabbed hold of a darker tome and slipped it under his arm before heading out to do his normal work.

"Just in case," he said softly, as he caught Canas staring. "I have no love for war, and if that is what they come for, I will see to it that they suffer." There was a hardness in his eyes that Canas had never seen before, not even in his adamant refusal to speak of the past. He counted himself lucky that he, as well, had no taste for battle.

"Bern seems much like my home." Canas imagined a hostile place, built on strength and savagery. Not a place he would have expected. "I should hope they do not face the same fate we did."

"How did you hear of it?"

"Talk from soldiers. It was familiar. Nice."

Knoll did not relinquish the tome he had borrowed, and Canas did not ask for it back.

Weeks passed. The soldiers came by more frequently, as if scouting the area, and Rosalind's return was not likely to come until the thaw. Canas found himself missing his wife and Hugh less than he had expected. Of course, they were often on his mind, but unlike previous times away from them, he was not alone. He had a companion to sit by the fireside with, one who, despite his own secrets, seemed to understand his passions more deeply than anyone else could have. And though Knoll still could not walk without the aid of his cane, and would probably, if Canas was honest, never be able, he seemed to have softened up at least somewhat since the day he had been found.

"Do you know what it is that Bern wants?"

Canas gave a light shrug and took his usual seat by the fire, watching Knoll's slim arms wrap a bit tighter around his good leg. The wrecked one rested, as always, on the stool Canas kept there, foot bare and flexed to stretch it. "I'm not certain. They surely aren't hostile – they may be looking to hire a mercenary team, or looking for something. . . ."

"But what?"

The words dragons rested at the edge of Canas' thoughts, but he dare not say it. Nergal was gone, and what would Desmond know of such things?

"I couldn't tell you. Truly, I would bet this is just a boast- letting us know that they can come and go as they please. Likely, Etruria will do the same further south until they each remember they can't afford a quarrel."

"Mm."

". . .Did I ever tell you about my brothers?" It seemed a safe subject, despite the ache that still lingered in Canas' gut when he thought of it.

". . .You did not."

"Well, they. . . ." Swallowed by darkness, of their own will. Canas told the story, hoping, if nothing else, it would ease the fear etched on Knoll's features when they spoke of magic together. He finished with their burial, hoping his own fears could remain unsaid.

". . .I'm sorry," Knoll said after a long moment of silence, his voice faint over the crackle of the fireplace. Canas did not turn away from the scrap of wood he had fixed his gaze on, edges finally going fully black and dying out. "I had not thought you had lost so much."

"It's quite all right. You have, after all, lost far more than I have-"

"No. I lost only one person."

Canas turned back, finally, to see Knoll looking almost at the same place in the humble pyre. "But you said-"

"He was all I ever had."

They were quiet for a moment, alone with the low murmur and hiss of the fire and the howl of the winds through the window, until Knoll reached for his cane and hobbled back into the spare room without another word.

Bern was not set on war. At least, it did not seem they meant to be. They instigated nothing, pilfered nothing, challenged nothing. For Canas, that was quite enough, but for others, he thought, it would surely not be tolerated long.

He was right.

He heard the fight had started with harsh words from the patron at a tavern – the exact phrasing changed from teller to teller as Canas made his way to the center of the event, but the essential idea was the same each time. You are not welcome here. The soldier replied in turn, and eventually, someone punched someone else, and some else entirely drew a sword, and from there, it was chaos.

He meant only to put an end to the fighting, as he was sure was the aim of the others who had run to the site, but he carried what he would need if the time came to fight. Magework was not, perhaps, the most effective choice against what he faced, but at least he could do something.

"Stand down." The voice he heard was loud, clear, and most certainly not his own. He stood on tiptoe to see the source and could scarcely believe his eyes.

Knoll had never spoken with such determination, never stood so straight, never held a tome with such purpose as he did in that moment, facing a battered Bernese soldier with sword pressed to the throat of a villager. If the soldier was intimidated in the least, he did not show it. He moved to make the killing blow, and Canas quickly closed his eyes, not wanting to see-

But he heard. A short, strangled gurgle, louder than the quiet murmurs of the arcane. They were not the same words Canas would have used to use that tome, but by the shrieks that came afterward, he knew they had changed something essential.

His eyes opened just as the soldier's – or what was left of the soldier's – closed. The corpse left behind was the same shade of empty gray Canas remembered Elbert's body seeming at the shores of the Dread Isle, but sunken, twisted, hanging uselessly onto the sword in a way that made him want to retch.

He did not intervene when the few sensible villagers grabbed hold of Knoll's arms and pulled him away, and Knoll did not resist, either, but no longer did his bad leg seem to hinder him in the least.

Canas was used to operating by moonlight. There were nights when the candelight was enough to wake Hugh and send him into hysterics, and he knew better than to subject his tired wife to that sort of thing. It made slipping into magistrate's home easier than he might have thought, and finding his way to the makeshift dungeon far from the ordeal he had imagined.

"Do they burn people like me here?" he heard from the shadows. "Or is hanging the custom?"

Canas fumbled in the dark to reach him, and finally found a bony hand to grasp. "Neither of those is going to happen."

"And why not?"

Canas found the manacle around Knoll's wrist and charmed it open, a trick he had learned from the clerics in Eliwood's army.

"Because I am fully aware you meant no malice. You gave your warning."

"No malice? You saw-"

"Don't argue with me. You owe me, do you not?"

He could hear Knoll swallow, and then the rustle of hair as he nodded.

"Then repay me like this."

". . .Where will I go?"

Canas rummaged for the old, worn map he'd taken and pressed it into Knoll's hand, the thick parchment resting between them for just a moment. "Find passage to Etruria, and look for Count Reglay. If you tell his men my name, I'm certain you'll find him."

"And then what?"

"That is up to you."

Canas smiled, though he did not know if Knoll could see him, and stood, his hand still holding the other man's tight. He was unsurprised that he heard no thanks, not even a murmur, as Knoll slipped free of his grip and out into the night, but could not help but feel as if he had ruined something he could not recover.