((A/N: This is meant to mark the small switch from the plots from my previous two stories, Controlled by Fate and Untold Truths, and the next few stories to come. You will not have to read the forementioned stories, though! That's what the handy-dandy recap below is for.))

{-Alfonse-}

He couldn't think of anything that could properly describe the past five months, besides being a complete mess.

It started when the Order received reports of missing people. Upon closer investigation, though, it turned out to be much more complicated than that; creatures under the alias of "nightmares" had came into their world with an intention of leaving nothing behind. The four of them—Alfonse, Sharena, Anna, and the Summoner, Fauna—spent the New Year's traveling to the home of these nightmares in hopes of stopping them. One night, Alfonse caught Sharena up late and she admitted to having odd dreams that generally left her feeling like she hadn't slept at all (much later she told Anna about this as well, though Fauna more or less stayed in the dark about it until a few weeks after their adventure). When they were finally there, they were confronted with a bit more of an explanation of what they were doing. The world of nightmares had a reputation for toying with the minds of whoever dared to enter…something they found out in the final days of their stay there. They had their first encounter with Natheniel, a boy directly related to the nightmares, and soon after faced the beast of the world—which looked like nothing more than an ink blot—and returned back in Askr. The adventure took two months, and another two months were spent trying to find Natheniel.

Turns out, Natheniel more or less came to them; from what Alfonse had been told, since he was out on his own little quest that week. Natheniel told the girls more about the nightmares and their nature. A few days after arriving, though, Natheniel disappeared—taking the "heart" of the beast from the world of nightmares with him, and leaving his feather necklace as a way for them to know if he was still in their world. About a week later, as they were coming back from meeting Enn (a young woman, whom Alfonse had traveled with while the others were dealing with Natheniel. She was definitely an adventurous spirit, and since introducing the others to her, they'd visited her family quite often as their records and books proved to hold use to the Order), the feather necklace was gone and they knew Natheniel had left.

To add onto the amount of things currently going on, a few days ago, Alfonse and Sharena had uncovered an odd message from a stack of papers he had found on his trip with Enn. What it read as a whole was simple:

'We were told we would be given time, but the only thing they had given us was loss. Tell everyone that we will not stand for this; we shall supply with our own the blood that our god desires. The time of silence is over, and when we are done, only the faithful and the truthful will remain.'

At first it had bothered Alfonse that he didn't know what it was. But now that it was revealed, he was more bothered by how they found it out. Sharena had listed the words, and with very little effort or thought, Alfonse figured out what order to arrange the words in. He didn't know how he did it and the feeling that he should know or that he was just forgetting something was concerning him. Alfonse barely thought about what the message could've possibly meant as he found himself too busy worrying about how he'd figured it out. Sharena just reassured him by saying "You probably just read it somewhere." but he knew that wasn't the case. Only the two of them knew about it, but along with whatever Anna requested them to look into while at Enn's, they tried looking into that as well.

Of course, it didn't help his state of mind any to feel like Anna knew a lot more about the nightmares than she let on. Both Sharena and Fauna had informed him that Natheniel had, in fact, talked to their commander personally and that none of them knew what the two had talked about. Anna was keeping them busy with all sorts of tasks—very few of them seemed to be related to anything that had happened recently. She seemed to be preparing for something but she never gave a straightforward answer as to what it was, and it was growing quite clear she was losing sleep over the situation as well. It wasn't uncommon for her to be like this during a particularly stressful time but the fact that, to almost everyone else, it wasn't necessary and everything was at enough peace as it could be at the moment made it that much more concerning. Of all the times for her to keep quiet about her reasoning, now was definitely not the best.

But besides everything else, things were normal. Sharena and Fauna, at least, didn't seem to completely mind the changes (although the latter wasn't happy that, as a remarkably light sleeper, Anna's late night fussing was resulting in her own lack of rest on their nights sleeping at the Order's castle). Alfonse simply continued doing what he was told and hoped that they'd be given some sort of reason for why they were doing it.

Today was oddly quiet. Less Heroes were out, but that could just mean most of them were still asleep. Fauna was giving out instructions to the few that were awake.

She noticed him as soon as she finished with the Heroes, waving them off before walking over to him. "Morning, Alfonse," Fauna greeted warmly. "You slept better than I did, I hope?"

Alfonse nodded. "Do you know if Sharena's up yet?"

"I think she's still sleeping. She was when I passed by her room, at least." She yawned. "In the meantime, care to join me? I want to get as much stuff off of Anna's to-do list as possible before she wakes up—maybe even the whole thing. Whatever stops her from staying up all night and hopefully puts her back in a normal sleep schedule."

"I'm at your service," he agreed. At this point, it was a bit hard not to agree to help with something that would benefit their commander; her determination to complete certain tasks often disregarded her own health and wellbeing, and while it was quite selfless of her to do so, it was also pretty foolish given her position in the Order.

"Glad to have you!" Fauna began walking and gestured for him to follow her. "I'm also short so it's nice to have a tall person around."

…

They spent a good deal of the morning together in silence. Eventually, Fauna decided to strike up a conversation.

"So…what's your take on all of this? I get it that half of this is apparently normal for you three but it's not for just about everyone else. Thinking about what might be coming…it's freaking me out, to say the least."

"If you're looking for motivation, I'm definitely not the one to be turning to," he pointed out. "I don't know any more of the situation than you do. With any luck, things will calm down soon or she'd finally tell us what's bothering her. Preferably before we're already doing it."

Fauna slowly nodded. She perked up a moment later, waving to someone behind Alfonse. "Good morning, Sharena. Did you have a particularly nice dream or did you just not feel like getting up?" She gave the princess a playful smirk and waved her over.

"Well, it was definitely a dream but I wouldn't call it nice." Sharena shrugged, going to stand beside Alfonse. "Mother was there, Natheniel was there, some weird shadow thing was there… And I think the shadow thing was trying to talk to me but I don't really remember."

The last part caught his attention the most. "It's not a reoccurring dream, right?"

Sharena shook her head. "First and probably the last. Plus, even if it did mean anything, Natheniel's been gone for weeks—he's not coming back."

"But you said it yourself, there's a chance there's still a part of him here," Fauna reminded her. "Who knows when it'll decide to show up and do something."

"I agree with Fauna. There's not such a thing as too careful right now." He could tell his sister did not like his statement, but didn't remark to it.

"So, are we going to Enn's again today?" Sharena asked, turning to Alfonse.

"That was my plan. As long as you're ready and Fauna is willing to finish things up on her own."

"Yup! You two go visit Enn and I'll keep working," Fauna said.

"Well, I'm up, dressed, and I've eaten so…yeah I'm pretty sure I'm ready." Sharena turned around and began walking to the gate. "Let's not keep her waiting this time!"