Google tels me at least two other people have put this hideously generic title to use, but it came down to a choice between "hideously generic" and "hideously generic + pretty much already established" (i.e. "The First Fight" OH SNAP SPOILERS NOBODY SAW THAT COMING) so screw you guys I'll be the third!
Also, Soren's figural narration is much more concerned with the weather and much less with his broader state of existence than Ike's was in the first chapter. This is completely unintentional and I find it hilarious.
A Hint of Things to Come
After two days spent slogging beneath seaside overcast, the midday glare was freshly intense as it buffeted his head, searing through his eyeballs and knotted brow. He massaged them with the knuckles of one hand, only vaguely aware of his indiscretion.
"You're really tired, aren't you?"
He squinted at his companion between his fingers before dragging his hand away.
"I can carry you if you want."
Deciding not to answer, he centered his glassy-eyed stare on the trio of locals who led from a safe distance ahead.
"I'm joking, of course. Hey, Soren? Are you listening?"
"Hm?"
They had been on the road from the moment it was visible—that dim-lit, dew-studded blush before it flared into the foul and oppressive heat that plagued them now. Though it broiled Soren to an uncomfortable slickness from the collar downwards, it was the least of his worries.
"Did you sleep at all last night?" asked Ike. Despite his best intentions, his irksome concern was yet another bother atop the pile of bothers that shored up their expedition of increasingly severe demands. Soren swallowed back the bite in his own responses.
"Why do you ask, Ike?"
"Well, you look a little… haggard." Ike caught himself and quickly added, "I mean you look good! Just tired, is all. I was joking about the manhandling, but you can lean on me if it'll help."
That sounded even less pleasant. Ike's newly bought shirt clung to his side in damp patches, his arms glossed with perspiration and his face flushed. He had taken it upon himself to shoulder the villagers' belongings—all but the axe, Soren thought irritably—and though he showed no signs of tire, Ike was capable of discomfort as anyone. Damp, sticky, suffocating discomfort. Soren summoned a faint smile of reassurance.
"It's fine." He nodded his head towards the foreigners. "They'd take notice, anyway."
"Hey, that's not a bad idea. They might get the message and let us rest for a while. It's gotten kind of hot, you know?"
…Said Ike, clothed only in the bare minimum to be considered decent, and nothing else. Yes, he knew very well. Soren wouldn't have minded lending him his cloak again.
"Consider that we may not want them privy to our vulnerability," said Soren. "Predators are opportunists; the lame fawn is first to fall prey."
"…Soren, you were up 'keeping guard', weren't you."
"I've spent nights doing worse," he retorted, rubbing his fist against an eye.
They had stopped at a little roadhouse the night before, the sandy-throated, foul-smelling, likely-drunk fisherman in tow: the armed, blustering, drunken, reeking, armed fisherman with whom Ike and Soren were arranged to room. Had Soren's bouts of fitful vigilance not kept him awake for their stay's entirety, it would have been the fisherman's unsettling and ceaseless snores. He'd grown accustomed to Ike's—fondly, almost, though seized by the occasional urge to clog his windpipe with a rag—but the fisherman's wet, knotty spluttering would set him on edge with each sporadic growl or mumble, rousing him from the threshold of sleep whenever he had so much as nodded his head against a wall. He had kept the knife in his lap all through the night.
"It's not like I haven't considered it," said Ike. "It's just a funny assumption to make."
Soren narrowed his pulsing eyes.
"How do you suppose."
"I mean, look at them. It's a wife and her husband and I'm guessing a drinking buddy." Though Ike seemed less than certain about the circumstances of the fisherman's company; they had simply agreed that "fisherman" served its purpose for now as a half-affectionate epithet. "They've been nothing but hospitable and… I guess, to me at least, they just seem like a sweet couple of villagers."
There was a noticeable lull in the foreigners' conversation; Soren watched them closely, delaying his own explanation.
"That could very well be, Ike." He chose his words with care. "They could have nothing but good intentions, and we'd still have cause for worry."
"Huh."
"Perhaps it's customary," he went on, "in receiving a guest, to take them into your home, feed them, clothe them, and provide for their basic needs."
"Seems about right."
"Perhaps it's also customary that you thereafter lead them out into empty countryside and axe them to pieces."
Ike fell dumbstruck for a moment.
"I… what?"
That caught the husband's attention. He grinned back at them and mimicked the sound. He had taken to mimicry, lately.
Soren ignored him and continued.
"That 'drinking buddy' could just as well be an appointed executioner."
"Soren, you don't really believe—"
"Personally, I don't," he interjected. "My point is that morality is not so simple as a set of principles for everyone to abide by, of which, I suppose, you've previously been made well aware."
Ike may have heard the traces of bitterness in his steady intonation; bringing himself to relax, Soren sought for an clearer way to convey his anxiety.
"Perhaps they do not value sentient life as we do. Perhaps guests are to be fattened on pork and beer and then eaten, per the teachings of some ritualistic cannibal god; it's certainly horrendous for us to consider, but then again, our practices may seem similarly monstrous to the likes of, say, a heron."
He intended this to be the seed of unease that would take root in his mind; Ike mulled over the notion while Soren, satisfied, returned his attention to their guides. It was not until he looked back up that he found that his companion had taken his consideration unperturbed.
"You know," Ike grinned. "It's hard to tell when you're being sarcastic. To me, it sounds like you're throwing out the most ridiculous scenario you can think of on the fly."
"Right. But you don't know that it's not true."
Despite his best efforts, the air of tension had all but been dispelled.
"Come on, Soren, that doesn't give us license to jump to wild conclusions."
"Suppose they don't extend us that courtesy," he persisted.
"It doesn't seem that way."
"They've had their eyes on us for the last minute or so."
With a nod towards them from Soren, the foreigners quickly looked away and resumed their hushed exchange.
"Huh." Again, he hardly seemed perturbed. "Well, I say we have every much of a right to talk amongst ourselves as they do." Ike shrugged and rolled his sack from his shoulder to the crook of his neck. "They probably think so too. You never know, right Soren?"
He answered flatly, "Right, Ike."
And he did not press him further. Ike had fixed in his mind a much clearer, purer philosophy on the nature of human virtue—a simplistic artlessness Soren may have taken to (mistakenly) projecting upon his companion to justify his own overprotective tendencies. He knew for certain, though, that in a world of cannibals, Ike's convictions would send him down a road of unerring, aggressive vegetarianism, convention and ceremony be damned.
On second thought, Ike might prefer martyrdom by starvation.
The unfettered sunlight had finally melted away his capacity for sound judgment; Soren relented and unclasped his cloak, folding and draping it over his arm. The lining of his undershirt still wiped against his stomach in a way that was both abrasive and awkwardly slippery, but giving it thought only aggravated his discomfort.
"You could go without your fourth or fifth layer, while you're at it." Ike's cheeks crinkled with his smile.
"Ha."
"You are so weird," he laughed and took his cloak for him.
Caught between indignation and something close to sheepishness, a response bubbled up his chest, and Soren gulped it back; his throat felt thick and gluey. He fumbled for his gourd while Ike looked on in vague amusement.
"Try to relax, Soren." Again, that laugh. "I'll, uh, keep an eye on these fiends for you."
He took a measured sip and let the water wash over his parched tongue before swallowing. Ike took this as a sign of irateness.
"Really, I will. I'm not going to throw myself at them for looking at us funny or anything, but I don't want you to think that I'm leaving my guard down. For all we know, the gang sizing us up over there could be a bunch of highwaymen."
"That what?"
He followed Ike's line of vision—far ahead, at the point where the road vanished into a shimmering, blazing likeness of a puddle, a hazy apparition arose in the distance. Soren shielded his eyes from the sun and picked out a group of heads; it was certainly a group of many, and they were certainly men. They appeared to halt upon sighting them, and for that brief prelude of contact, Soren could not tell a greeting apart from a threat.
The husband bade them halt as well, resting his hands on his hips as the second party drew near. Soren could soon make out their features in spite of the midday glare; a young man at the lead hailed them with a whistle and a wave. Perhaps a salute. The fisherman, whose fingers had been hovering over the grip of his axe, dropped his hand and shouted back in turn. There was at least a passing familiarity, but it did little to cool Soren's suspicions. He bowed his head and studied their boots and leggings as they mingled with their escorts and gave their regards, the wife clasping arms with what he presumed to be their leader. He was beginning to develop an unsavory aversion to contact; he had already rejected the foreigners' unwelcome outreaches numerous times, as he would most anyone from Tellius, but he had taken to lowering his eyes in strange company and waiting for the marveling stares to pass—given his disinterest for any real station during his days as an "official", such abject displays of submission were unfamiliar to him. He could feel their eyes now, their prying examination; he busied himself with the burrs on his robes. The adolescent girl had regarded them with no less scrutiny, yet Soren attributed his then more forthright conduct to his profound diplomatic acumen; it would certainly place the lot of them at a social disadvantage to sneer at an armed group of men as he had to some patently arrogant little snip. Cowardice played no part in his decision.
Soon they were walking again, this time at a pace that better allowed for conversation. No introductions were made.
Focusing on a stray tree further down the path, he counted six men on the edge of his vision. The one who spoke with their convoy appeared to be around their age, lean, with an air of confidence about him. His hair reminded him much of Ike's; equally unkempt, though Ike's situation excused him from sedentary hygiene practices. The leader and the fisherman walked shoulder-to-shoulder up front, caught in each other's web of conversation.
Soren had begun to hear patterns in their speech after enough words had been exchanged between their garrulous host and Ike, who had simply held up his end with compliments of their household effects. There were recurring sounds, but they all crashed together in a rapid, tireless flow that Soren struggled to dissect into any intelligible structure.
He narrowed his eyes as the fisherman leaned in to whisper something in the man's ear; he pulled away in shock, and burst into laughter. The husband and wife exchanged disapproving glances.
"They've got a really nice laugh, don't you think?"
He was aware of Ike's closeness, yet it still gave him a start after they'd gone so long without speaking. He felt eyes fall upon them once more.
"Would it be wise to speak so boldly in this company?" he asked quietly.
Ike glanced over his shoulder at the line of men—armed men, very armed in face of their withering fisherman's axe and Soren's knife—and shrugged.
"This wasn't an issue for you earlier today. It's not like they can understand us, anyway."
When the mood struck him, Soren would communicate his frustration by drawing from a number of backhanded means to mock someone he did not particularly care to harm, such as Rhys or Mist; with others such as Boyd, the butt of his staff usually sufficed. But he could not bring himself to employ either in Ike's presence— least of all the strangers' presences.
"Yes," he said calmly as he could manage, "that is precisely my concern."
"I think I understand. If it'll keep you from whipping out that dagger of yours…"
That you cradle in your sleep, Ike perhaps intentionally left unspoken.
The leader of the band craned his neck and twisted them a lopsided grin. He had heard them and acknowledged them, but did not show particular interest in disrupting their conference.
"I am not so foolish, Ike."
Just then, he could feel the others closing in—slowly, subtly, while their leader's attention and focus returned . Two walked abreast of them, on either side. The other two shadowed them. Soren held his gaze steadily ahead of him, but curiosity quickly overtook, and in the flicker of a glance he gave to the man to his left, he saw him grinning.
He directed a question toward them; Soren ignored him, and the others rumbled with laughter. There was nothing lovely about their laughter. It sounded like sandpaper on wet, rotting bark to him. They had that smell about them, too. Sweat, hot leather, metal—and someone behind them, something sharp and pungent, an overpowering, unpalatable spice. The source of the stench hung in his peripheral vision, lingering behind his companions, eyes hardened and downcast, though young. His hair was vaguely the same color as the wife's, but lighter. Rolf's came to mind, where the wife's shade fell closer to Boyd's or Oscar's.
It was difficult to comprehend the scope of the distance between their bearings and the brothers. Soren stopped distracting himself from the incipient danger at hand.
"Ike," he whispered, pressing against his side.
"What?"
"Don't look at him, but if that man makes any sudden moves, I want you to get behind me."
Always easier said than done. The first time he'd tried to absorb a magical blow it was without the luxury of warning or foresight—they had both fallen crashing into some roadside underbrush, which quickly thereafter caught fire. Although he needed far less food to maintain it, which mitigated the common hardships of travel, he sometimes bemoaned his woefully impractical stature; he made a pitiful human ward.
"You think that's a mage?"
"Of some fashion," he said. "I smell it."
"…You what?"
It was just so that the woefully impractical side of his stature would rear its head. Soren scanned the road ahead for a place to duck away, and glanced towards Ike.
"I'll be back shortly. There's no need to wait for me."
Ike's leave would have been enough, but the first time he had strayed from their little procession, the fisherman had followed him and hurled a number of forceful, gurgling orders that Soren did not care to humor; now that they had established a sort of system of basic gestures, all he needed was to wave, and the foreigners presumably understood. He raised a hand to the husband, who nodded him off.
Without warning, he brushed by the man who had taken his side. He spluttered a protest in their odd lilting language but gave him berth to pass.
"Excuse me," he said quietly, and hoped that would suffice before descending into the underbrush.
He deliberated over the snatches of observations he could make of the mage, his form indistinguishable beneath folds of dark, musky broadcloth.
Did magic operate on the same principles here as in Tellius, he wondered as he waded through the thicket, lifting his robes to avoid a snag. It must have: magic was an immutable, universal constant, as true or inevitable as falling, drowning, birth and death. They had departed from Tellius, but not the laws of reason that governed it... however shoddily. He sheltered himself inside a copse of oak and listened for the faraway chatter of his party. He had removed himself well enough from their reach.
Casting magic was another matter entirely. He fumbled with the laces of his pants while the flood of questions tormented him.
Staves, tomes, powders, weapons—while the possibilities may have been virtually limitless, Soren could not conceive of a medium or instrument that approached the beorc ingenuity of the tome or the elegance of the staff, excepting maybe the muddling, enigmatic craft of the herons or dragons. But he had yet to see a staff or tome or heron or dragon in this country, so what could it be? Wielded with wands or quills or specifically-designed contraptions yet to be beheld?
He heard a crash through the undergrowth further within the forest. He stiffened.
Likely an animal. Still cause for concern. Soren stilled and listened— listened from the most inelegant, compromising position imaginable, but he was nevertheless alert.
The noise stilled as well, and he forced himself to relax; soon he could hear nothing but songbirds, faint foreign prattle, and the shivering leaves he had absently made his target. The clatter resumed before he could finish, and he clinched up like a trap as it crashed away into the deeper wilderness. His stomach twisted as the noise did not return, and, hesitating, he brought himself to finish. It was gone, so far as he knew. He began his cautious return to the group.
The dark-haired man greeted him—or perhaps cursed him because they did not know—upon his emergence from the brush, and signaled his entourage to continue their march. Nodding seemed to carry the same meaning for these people as it did on Tellius; it would be a useful link in communication could they give Soren something intelligible to affirm. He fell back into step by Ike's side.
Fixated on the broadsword strapped to the leader's back, he alerted Ike with a tug at his sleeve.
"What is it?"
"Cause for concern," he muttered.
He almost expected an exasperated "Soren, you can't"—"Soren, you couldn't really think"— "Do you even hear yourself?" though that was not in keeping with Ike's marked sincerity.
Instead, there was a simple "I heard it too."
"Off the road, yes," Soren urged.
"What? No, listen."
He listened.
The fisherman's lone blubbering had subsided into background noise by now—he listened closer, through the birdsong and the clapping of leather and footfalls on the march.
He listened to the whispering behind them. Self-doubt crept to mingle with the ever-present suspicion; he heard a voiceless, sharp string of mutters that by all accounts he should not have been able to recognize. It was likely his imagination taking clusters of sounds and grasping for some intelligible approximation—like seeing faces in a cup of used tealeaves. Or…
Ezakonihsakum
Or…
Urekumatakoimim
He strained his ears— indeed, it must have been his imagination, recollecting whispers of a familiar incantation. Yet when the urge to look consumed him, swelled within him in an agonizing bid for release, and when he turned his head to abate that urge…
Inekakiboyon
The young man's jaw was pulsing, as though he were chewing something, very quietly, very inconspicuously. His eyes flickered over words unseen, cloaked deep beneath folds of cloth and shadow. There was an intent there. There was…
"Wait. Wait!"
"Ihsataaaaiek!"
The last of the incantation eked out in a cry as Soren caught the words by the man's throat with one hand and the end of the book with another. A resonant swell of energy bored up through his bones, flashing white before his eyes for the moment it entered him, and forced itself back down in a rattling blast of discharge. Smoke surged and billowed into an enveloping haze; Soren caught his bearings and clutched the depleted tome to his breast, staggering backwards amidst the sounds of shouting and weapons drawing. Spent, he thought between fits of sneezes. It was spent. The mage came pitching toward him while he groped for his knife; with the man barely upon him, he abandoned his search and cracked the book across his face. Whether he'd injured or startled him, Soren did not much care, but he disposed of the useless artifact by shoving it into the mage's chest and making his escape.
He whirled and was immediately met by a sword raised high overhead, poised to fall upon its bleary-eyed, panicked mark before another shadow overtook it. A hand caught the blade mid-swing, and Ike's charging bulk followed, blindsiding both the swordsman and Soren.
The smoke burned with spice and choked with ash. Though he could scarcely see more than the shadow of his targets, Soren knew the shock had not worn off. One swordsman was bent with convulsions of ragged, wailing coughs—even as the miasma began to lift—the other stirring from his stupor quick enough to ready his sword; Ike, abandoning his fallen target, flung himself at the man before he could assume his guard. Ike slammed him to the ground and swung round to face the leader.
Soren had barely arrived to Ike's aid before the fisherman howled and charged into the fray, glancing away the sword of Ike's returned assailant. The woman shrieked as the young leader seized her arms and bellowed an order to his men. A sword steadied at Ike's back froze, but did not drop. He froze with them. Soren thought to seize this opportunity and incapacitate the remainder of their enemies, break the suspension of hostility and sink his knife into the leader's eye.
But he refrained, pursuant to his profound diplomatic acumen.
The woman wriggled out of the leader's grip, clouted him hard in the mouth, and rushed Ike's and Soren's side.
Ike took the distraction as a chance to finally address Soren.
"You should get back— "
A swordsman promptly silenced him with a sharp bark, only to be shouted down by the sharper-tongued woman. Soren ignored Ike's orders and snatched his wrist—blood dribbled between his fingers from the slice across his palm.
"Don't hang your hand like that," hissed Soren, holding it level.
"Never a bad time to scold me, huh." He grinned as Soren pressed his cloak into the gash; the points of the swords raised to their throats had fallen now, and the argument between the leader and woman persisted, punctuated by the occasional fling of spittle from the red-faced fisherman. Blood gushed from the split in the swordsman's lip and chin, but his hands were occupied as he attempted and failed to assuage them. The first man that Ike had thrown aside—the man with the only bloodied sword—dragged himself to the ring, and said something only his companion next to him seemed to hear, before they grunted and readied their weapons once more.
Soren responded to their looming advance by sinking into Ike's chest, just out of the woman's reach; he felt a curiously even heartbeat. The wife glared round one last time and remained by their side in spite of the formation tightening all around them. After a word from their leader, they gathered their belongings and resumed the march. He turned to the woman and offered what seemed like an apology while her husband fell back to join them.
She responded by slipping an arm through Soren's; he had no room to pull away.
"I guess we have no choice," Ike said lowly. "She's vouching for us, and I feel partially responsible for all… this. Whatever 'this' was."
What was "this", then? Before he'd been tossed aside like a discarded apple core, he remembered dealing the first blow. Or was it the first? That tome had been spent, he remembered, and not only that…
"Soren?"
The men had begun to disperse now, but the woman clung fast to him all the same.
"You're trembling."
The mage stomped to the front of the procession, his complaints muffled behind a rag as he nursed his fractured nose. Soren saw that he had not discarded the book. He returned Soren's contemplation with a blood-glazed snarl.
"Soren? What's wrong?"
The woman squeezed his arm; Soren drew a shaken breath and acquiesced to the touch. The road stretched ahead in an endless blaze, the air thick and steamy from their belabored pants and sweat-drenched armor, yet Soren felt strangely, inwardly chilled. He welcomed the heat of the bodies that braced him on either side, as well as the semblance of rest as he closed his eyes.
"It's nothing, Ike," he said.