It was a cold, clear night, and heavy frost crunched beneath Soren's feet as he crossed the blackness that blanketed their camp. The hour was late, and the new moon provided little light, but his stride didn't falter - Soren had sharp eyes that could see far in the dark, a fact that many did not know and which he did not care to advertise. Tonight, however, he hadn't even bothered with the pretense of a lantern. He wore a dark, heavy cloak that served the dual purpose of keeping him warm and concealing his identity as he stole away to the forest's edge. The note that bade him there was creased and folded into the pages of a book - a worn Elwind tome that still had some punch left in it - that was in turn concealed in the many layers of his clothing. Soren was many things, but stupid was not one of them, and he knew better than to attend a mysterious late-night rendezvous unarmed.
He reached his destination without incident. It was at the foot of the tallest tree for leagues - an ancient white oak that seemed to curl out of the ground, its trunk as bent and withered as that of an old man. The camp was still in sight, but Soren derived no sense of security from it. The night watch would be changing shifts soon, leaving a fifteen-minute window in their patrols. That this meeting happened to coincide with that exact time had not escaped his attention.
No one was there. He stood casually, trying not to reveal the deadly spellbook he held at the ready. If anyone did mean him harm, it wouldn't do to let them know he was aware of it. All the better to seem innocent and bait out the truth. For once he found himself grateful for his youthful face and slight build.
He tried to count the time while he waited. It was probably no more than three minutes by his reckoning when a figure emerged from the shadows of the forest. A familiar figure, one that matched the name on the note he had received. That much at least had been true.
Soren turned his garnet eyes on the older man. "Volke," he said simply.
The assassin smirked. Soren noted with some suspicion that he wasn't wearing his usual mask. "Good evening," he said, folding his arms and approaching at a casual pace. Everything about his demeanor exuded calculated nonchalance. "Been a while."
"Almost two years now," Soren confirmed. He had been working on his social niceties of late, so he added a compulsory "How have you been?"
Volke blinked for a moment, his eyes glittering in the darkness. Seemed he didn't need a lantern either. "How polite," he remarked with a low chuckle. "They've been training you well."
Soren scowled. He didn't need this. "Fine. You don't like to talk, and I don't like to talk to you. So let's get on with it."
"Now that's the Soren I knew and had absolutely no opinion of."
The sage shifted, adjusting the book beneath his cloak. He still had no sense of whether Volke was friend or foe, and even when they had been traveling together there was no love lost between them. When Ike had told him about the assassin's true purpose, Soren had very nearly torched both of them with the nearest available spellbook. Thankfully there had been nothing in reach but a Light tome, which he had resorted to throwing at his best friend along with a whole lot of very nasty words. As far as he was concerned it was a big waste of money on Ike's part, since if anyone ever raised a hand to him while Soren was around, they'd very quickly find themselves reduced to a smoking crater in the ground. Whether or not they had a previous arrangement was completely irrelevant.
It had been months before they stopped bickering about that one. Soren won, of course. He usually did.
Volke's contract ended with the war, and he disappeared from their lives for nearly two years. So when Soren had found a note from him, scrawled on greasy parchment and stuck under his door, inviting him a secret meeting in the middle of the night, he had some rather understandable reservations. We need to talk, it had said. It's about Ike.
"So tell me," Soren spoke, his voice ringing slightly in the crisp night air, "what you have to tell me. Very soon the guards will be coming around, and I believe they will make far better company than the likes of you."
Volke tilted his head curiously and tugged on a gold chain that peeked out of his fitted coat. The tips of his fingers stuck out of modified gloves - to allow for thieving dexterity, no doubt - and produced an ornate pocket watch. It snapped open and Soren could hear the faint ticking crystal clear in the silence between them. "Oh my," the assassin remarked, quirking an eyebrow in mild surprise. "Seems I was late. Well, suppose I should hurry this up anyway." He snapped the watch closed, but Soren noticed with growing alarm that the hypnotic sound of the ticking clock did not diminish. In fact, it somehow seemed to grow louder, echoing back and forth inside of his head and occupying his every thought. His eyes opened wide as he struggled to move, to make his mouth open and enunciate the words of the spellbook in his hands. No sound emerged.
"Nice, isn't it?" Volke remarked, advancing on the young sage. "One of my most useful aquisitions. It's enchanted, of course. I'm sure you've noticed by now that you can neither move nor speak, and certainly not handle that weapon you're carrying."
Inwardly, Soren raged. It had been a trap. He must have intended to separate Soren from Ike - for all of his planning and consideration, he had never thought of that possibility. His hands quivered in anger, fingers locked around the binding of the Elwind tome. His mind was too fragmented by the enchantment to cast any magic, but through pure force of will he brought himself to speak.
"What... do... you want... with... Ike...?" he hissed through his teeth. His eyes burned like candles in the dark as he watched the assassin approach him.
"Don't worry about Ike." Volke looked almost bored as he produced a thin phial from one of his many pockets and held it uncorked in front of the sage's nose. Soren held his breath for as long as possible before he had to take a gasp of the strangely odorless substance. Immediately, his world grew dim and blurry. He sagged and Volke caught him easily, hefting him up and over one shoulder. The last thing he heard was the rustling of bushes and Volke's mild admonition. "This has nothing to do with him. Nothing at all."
Oh, he thought, as consciousness finally slipped away from him. At least that's something.
"Boyd, have you seen Soren?"
The mercenary stopped hacking at a tree trunk long enough to turn and give Ike an incredulous look. "You mean he's not with you?"
"No, I haven't seen him since last night." Around them, the camp was fairly quiet. The morning was cool but clear, and many of the mercenaries were either out on missions or traveling before the first snow hit. Quite a few had left without much, or any, notice, but Soren's disappearance concerned him. Ike knew better than anyone how particular he was about his schedule. You could practically set your clock by the guy. Not to mention Ike couldn't remember the last time Soren traveled without him.
"Huh," Boyd said helpfully, then hefted his axe and turned back to the badly mutilated tree. A few decisive chops later, a sizable chunk of wood fell to the group with a muted thump. Ike noticed that a pile of similar pieces littered the ground at their feet. "Then I can't help ya. It's like asking where the sun is if it didn't rise. How would I know? It's just... always been there."
"So you see why I'm... uh, worried..." Thwack. Another chunk of wood fell to the ground. "Um. Boyd, what exactly are you doing?"
"I'm carving a life-sized sculpture of Titania into this tree." He beamed and took a step back to admire his work, which if you squinted looked enough like a human to be mildly unsettling.
"I didn't know she was so... angular."
"Hey, it's a work in progress!" he said defensively. He patted the sculpture on something that might have been its butt, or possibly elbows. "Do you think she'll like it?"
Ike sighed and tried very hard not to think about the amorous gleam in Boyd's eyes. "Not really. No."
"Yeah, me too," the mercenary grinned eagerly. "I think she'll love it."
"Boyd, are you even -"
"Commanderrrr!" Ike was interrupted by a sudden call. He looked around, momentarily disoriented, until it came again and he thought to look up. High above them, the long, muscular wings of a wyvern flapped and blotted out the sun. He squinted and held one hand in front of his eyes in an attempt to identify the rider, but it was too hard to see in the midday glare. He made a mental note to follow up on that request to make all the flying mounts wear color-coded vests for identification. Sometimes he was lucky if he could even figure out which side they were on.
"Whaaaaat?" he called out, cupping his hands around his mouth. The rider dipped lower and a flash of green armor identified it as one of the Crimean soldiers on loan from Elincia. Ike squinted and saw that he was waving what looked like a very battered lance.
"What's going on with Soren?" the man called back. "The weapon stock wasn't refilled this morning! I came across two pirates on patrol and my lance broke of all things! First time that's ever happened"
"We don't know either!" Ike shouted. "He must have gone out without telling anyone"
The soldier looked from Ike to Boyd and back again. "Who, Soren? Naaah, impossible! You can set your clock by that guy!"
Ike frowned. He was right. So was Boyd. It was simply unlike Soren to leave without at least some notice. When Ike had stopped by his room earlier that morning, nothing had been out of place, and there were no signs of packing. Either he was close by somewhere, or he was off getting in some serious trouble. Ike decided it was time to figure out which one it was.
"New orders!" he called out. "Collect any flying units still at the base! I want you to spread out and search the surrounding area for Soren, got that?"
The rider nodded and saluted, then jerked back on the reins and sailed up into higher air. The wyvern gave a sharp, keening cry before banking right and heading towards the center of camp. Ike looked back to Boyd.
"Want me to help, Ike?" The mercenary wore an unusually serious expression. "I can move pretty quickly through the forest."
"Not as quickly as the flying units," Ike responded. "I'll give them one hour to see if he's out picking berries or something. If there's no sign of him, I'll put together search parties. Wait until you hear from me." He turned and strode purposefully back into the camp, his hands already working to tighten the straps of his armor.
Boyd watched him go. Ike's sudden upshift into 'commander mode' didn't escape his notice. Boyd was one of few people who understood what Soren meant to him. They had been friends for so long they were like family - like more than family. He didn't particularly want to see Ike after a couple of days without the sage. He remembered what it had been like when Soren went off to study - Greil had taken to going on long missions just to get away from all the melancholy moping around the house.
Boyd sighed and let his axe rest comfortably on his shoulder. His sculpture would have to wait - Titania wouldn't be getting back for several days anyway. Better to focus on the current situation and get it resolved quickly before Ike got it into his head to go and do something crazy himself.
Somehow, he didn't put it past the man at all.