Dan's Awakening
By DarthMarth
Chapter the Thirteenth—"Escort Mission: The Plight of the Defenseless Villagers", or "A Deathless Evil Reborn"
As the assembled Shepherds ate breakfast in the mess tent, Chrom stood on a barrel, stooping awkwardly to avoid the canvas ceiling, and addressed them. "Valiant Shepherds! By my reckoning, we should reach the site of our next battle today."
"Finally!" Lissa exclaimed from a spot by his feet, drawing stares. "What? There's no way I'm the only one who's had several lifetimes' worth of sand in the last week!"
"Be quiet and eat your green eggs and sand, Lissa. Frederick would probably say it builds character." He turned back to the group. "Everyone ready yourselves for a grainy—er, gritty...I mean, gripping battle. My other announcement: a certain source has informed me that a massive, magical intruder was spotted last night, within this very camp!"
"Oh, my, whatever shall we do?" Maribelle said melodramatically.
"Fear not, beauteous damsel!" Virion said. "I, the archest of archers, will allow no one else to—huuuah!" He was sharply cut off as Sully jabbed him with the butt of her lance under the table.
"It's true!" Gaius said, jumping to his feet. "He was huge! And monstrous! Built like a gummy troll, with a nasty beard like licorice strings and foul—"
"That's not true!" Ricken said, standing up to face him. He noticed the Shepherds staring at him. "Uh...I mean… I saw him too! And he was really, really cool and handsome and mature and good-smelling and stuff! But also scary and tough! But in a cool, kind of approachable, everyman action...hero...I'll just sit back down." He did so, willfully ignoring Lissa and Maribelle's giggles.
"It is everyone's responsibility to defend the sanctity of our camp. If anyone sees this enormous mage, they are to engage and slay him on sight, without mercy!" Ricken gulped loudly; the girls' laughter ended instantly. "And, hm, it seems Dan has one more announcement for us."
"Uh, yeah, sorry everyone," Dan said, standing next to Chrom. "I missed a paralogue. Our next battle is actually in the village of Woodham, in eastern Ferox. We march in half an hour."
"What!?" the Shepherds all said as one.
"It's only two, three hundred leagues from here!"
"Dan, have you lost your mind!?" Chrom yelled. "We'll have to march all the way back out of the desert, across the whole blasted continent, and back again when we're through! I've trusted your crazy plans time and again, but this is going too far! You are clearly as foolish as you are blind; a mere child like Ricken here would have a better grasp of strategy and logistics than you!"
"Hey! I am not 'mere'!"
"But it's to save some defenseless villagers!" Dan protested.
Chrom instantly calmed down. "Oh, all right then. The call of a Shepherds' duty is not constrained by distance or terrain, however sandy it may be. Everyone ready yourselves to march!" The desert air was filled with agonized groans.
Two months later
The ragtag band of Shepherds trudged through the swirling snow in a single-file line, those who still had strength in front packing a path down for their weaker companions. They wore every tattered rag that hadn't yet fallen apart, yet it still wasn't enough to keep the cold from entering them like a knife thrust between ribs. Chrom shivered under a fur cloak; Lissa was slumped over on a pack mule next to Maribelle; Ricken had been feeling too sleepy to eat for the past few days and was lying in a wagon. Even the mighty Vaike was having trouble staying warm and had gone as far as to wear a warm scarf and a pauldron on his other shoulder.
"So...cold…" Lissa whimpered.
"Can't...keep walking...much further…" Chrom mumbled, his speech slurred by numb lips and hypothermic stupor.
"Can only...talk...like this…" Cerk said, pulling his robes tight around him.
Dan, as usual, was leading the way; whenever he lagged the rest of the Shepherds always seemed to fall in directly behind him. "Almost...there...almost…"
Suddenly everyone jumped up, feeling warmer and better-fed than they had in weeks.
"Hooie!" Donny exclaimed. "Ah feel like a sprung chicken!"
"I thought the expression was 'Spring chicken'," Dan said.
"Naw, mah uncle Powzer used to imprison chickens fer laughs."
"Marvelous…I feel completely refreshed!" Chrom said. "Some kind of pervasive enchantment?" He felt his chin. "I guess we still look disheveled, though."
"Yeah…" Vaike said; like Chrom, he was sporting several weeks' worth of beard. "Maybe I should have shaved on the way here."
"Wow, mine's gettin' pretty scruffy too!" Donny exclaimed.
"Aw, fish paste," the clean-faced Ricken said dejectedly.
"Maybe when you're older," Vaike said. He turned to Fiora and did a double take. "Hey, why do you have one?"
"For warmth."
"Everyone ready yourselves!" Dan said. "The mass healing means we've finally reached our next battle!" Weak cheers. "Get ready to save some defenseless villagers!" Weak cheers from everyone except Chrom. "Our goal is to save as many—hey, wait, they're going already!" He pointed across a snowy valley, where the villagers were blindly sprinting into danger. A Risen emerged from the snow and savagely mauled one of them. "Cavalry and pegasus knights, fetch and protect them!" He turned to Chrom as the mounted units churned up clouds of snow with their hasty departure. "Oh, and Chrom, go check out that village."
"Right."
The cavalry and flyers soon caught up with the surviving villagers who, though sprinting, were still not very fast. "Stop!" Cordelia shouted down to one of them. "Stop running that way, it's dangerous!" She landed her pegasus and galloped alongside the woman. "We're trying to help you! Please stop!" She reached out and laid a hand on the woman's shoulder, instantly prompting her to snarl and start biting it. "Aaah!" she screamed, drawing back in shock.
"What's wrong with them!?" Sumia said, similarly struggling with a ferocious old man.
"They're as savage as the Risen!" Sully said, charging down a young man who was on all fours.
"Well, we have to protect them, somehow!" Phila shouted from above. "From the Risen, and from themselves!"
Chrom was back in a quarter of an hour. Dan noticed he had a woman in tow, cloaked and bundled up.
"The dastards in that town shut their doors to me just as they did to the villagers we're saving," Chrom said grimly. "All they gave me was the services of this wandering healer. Without being asked, actually."
"Strange, you'd think they'd be eager to keep her around in the face of such a threat." He turned to the healer. "What's your name, madam?"
"You'll never guess whoo-ooo!" came a familiarly obnoxious voice.
Eliwood recoiled as if he'd been struck and hid behind Dan. "Aaah!" he cried, shaking with terror.
Serra lowered her hood and waved cheerfully. "Hiii! Didja miss me?"
"I-impossible...I killed you with my own hands! And an animated, self-guided, auto-killing sword!"
"Really? Funny, I don't feel dead at all. Now, slave, I'm feeling a chill for some reason. Ready me a cozy bed and a hot water bottle, pronto!"
"Noooooo! This can't be happening!"
"How can this be!?" Sainzilla asked Cerk in a hushed voice. "She was definitely dead...we both saw what the Kill-Kill Blade did to her!"
"Maybe Nergal resurrected her as a morph to exact revenge on us for killing her!"
"But Nergal is also definitely dead! Ran through from behind by an unseen, unknown figure!"
"I'm sorry, miss, but slavery has been illegal in the Halidom of Ylisse for over four hundred years," Chrom was saying to Serra. "...although I don't know the corresponding Feroxi statutes. In Plegia you'd have a strong case."
"Maybe Nergal resurrected Nergal as a morph to...all right, I have no idea how she's still alive."
"Neither do I," Dan said, suddenly next to them.
"Aaaah!" Cerk exclaimed. "Nothing...we were talking about, er, nothing..."
"Whatever. She won't be alive much longer." He turned back to the seemingly immortal cleric. "Serra! Your orders are to head west and distract the Risen from preying on the defenseless villagers!"
"Okay! But that bed had better be waiting when I come back!"
"She totally won't come back," Dan said, watching her go. "Well, that was easy." He noticed Chrom staring at him, horrified. "She's also an enemy spy, just like that paladin. Future knowledge."
"That's a relief," Chrom said, massaging his temples.
Phila stood over the ring of tied-up, struggling villagers, nodding with satisfaction at Stahl and Cordelia's handiwork. "Good, these villagers should be safe now. Cordelia and I will guard them; the rest of you, seek and destroy the Risen threat!" She suddenly turned and pointed at a running figure a furlong away. "Gods! We missed one!"
Sully, Stahl, Sumia, and Fiora hastily mounted back up and took off after the last villager. As they drew closer, Fiora looked closely at her pink hair and robes. It can't be… It is! "For Lord Eliwood! For freedom! Yaaaah!" she cried. Her mount burst forward like a thundercloud as she skewered the hapless cleric on her lance. She turned to see the others staring at her in shock and disbelief. "Sorry… I'm clumsy sometimes. At least we saved the rest of the villagers, right?"
"Well done, Shepherds!" Dan said. "We rescued the sweet, harmless, defenseless villagers! We begin our march back to the border sands in half an hour." He ignored the groans and approached Fiora. "Has the...problem been eliminated?"
"Yes, Tactician Dan."
"Excellent. Though I would dearly love to know how she—"
The air was suddenly rent by ear-piercing, atonal shrieks. "LAAAA-LaAaAaA-laaa-laa-laaaaaa-LAAAAAAaAAAA!"
"Elimine's beard!" Dan yelled, clutching his ears. "What was—AUGH!"
Serra waved enthusiastically at them. "Hiiii! I was just practicing my singing voice!"
"How the... She's still an enemy spy; get her!"
The confused Shepherds charged at Serra again, but it was Lissa who reached her first. "This band is only big enough for one plucky, pigtailed healer!" She brought her staff down hard and Serra crumpled.
Dan sighed with relief. "Phew. She's definitely dead this time. Now, let's—"
"Hi, everyone!" Serra exclaimed, somehow in their midst once more. "EEEEEEK!" The baffled Shepherds clutched their ears in pain again. "She doesn't look so good!" Serra ran over and, surreally, knelt down to tend to her own corpse. "She's dead...I was too late. She must have been so beautiful when she was alive!"
"What is going on..." Dan moaned, his head spinning.
"Every time we kill her, she just casually reappears… The very integrity of the Shepherds as a fighting force could be compromised thanks to this spy..." Chrom lamented.
"This is really the worst day of my life..." Eliwood said.
"I believe the scientific term for this phenomenon is autoanastasis automatus," Miriel said, pushing her glasses up. She noticed Dan and Chrom looking at her expectantly. "Did you expect me to explain how it works? I'm just as baffled as you."
What is Serra's secret to immortality? Will they ever be rid of her? How far would Chrom go to save defenseless villagers? Why were these ones so eager to meet the Risen? Is Fiora really a bearded lady? Find out in the official Dan's Awakening Companion, with over six new full-color illustrations, available now for just $19.99 on Amazon while supplies last!
Look at that, I wrote another chapter in just a few days! Hopefully the next one (i.e. the one I originally intended to write) will be almost as quick.
Serra: Slave! I require libations! Bring me a bottle of the finest Ostian wine and a bag of snack cakes from that confectioner in Badon, on the double!
Eliwood: No, Serra. I was born again the day I killed you. I serve you no more!
Serra: Bad Eliwood! I guess I'll just have to practice some singing…
Eliwood: Aaaah, fine, I'm going, I'm going! ...where am I going?
Chrom: We choose to go to the moon and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because there could be villages full of defenselesss moon-men to protect!
Dan: While we're at it, can we leave Serra there?