Up the River

Each oar stroke another yard. Each stroke another faint protest of his arm muscles, another thud as the paddle bumped against its bracket in the railing, and another gurgle of water. Each stroke another yard closer to the end goal. Against the current for another thirty wyvern miles, and then the bustling docks of Aurelis to the right with their loaded skippers and unprepared guards. On top, each oar stroke gave Ike an excuse not to consider the possibility of failure.

The Silver Stream – once the border between Altea and Sacae, now the Empire's favorite trading route – offered enough pleasant distractions with its gentle stone beaches behind which overgrown larches and pine trees battled for the sun's favors. Ike almost tricked himself into enjoying the trip.

Almost.

"What's on your mind, Ike?" Titania asked from the rowing bank opposite of him. She wore that motherly expression he knew so well and that proved so damn difficult to deceive.

Ike heaved the boat another yard forward. "Nothing."

"I know you better than that. You have been awfully quiet since you picked us up."

Ike brushed the sweat from his bare arms and countered Titania's smile with a grunt. "If Soren had paid more attention during magic class or had bought us a better boat, I would have more breath left for chitchat."

"Did you expect me to bend the winds for a week straight?" Soren asked. He had dismissed himself from oar duty and sat in the shade of the listless sail with his arms casually crossed. A leatherbound tome about spellcasting rested in his lap. "Your understanding of the magic arts is far more limited than I feared. Besides, you spend plenty of hours each day with swinging around this golden sword of yours. Now you can finally put all this training to use in a sensible way."

"And what defined arm muscles all this training earned him." Cherche, in whose vocabulary reserve had no place, abandoned her paddle and used said defined arm muscles as a pillow for her head. Even in this position, she wore her hairband like a crown. "What a shame he only wastes them on swordsmanship."

Ike rolled his shoulders to rid himself of Cherche's advances, but she clung to him with unrivaled persistence. "Less talking and more rowing. Need I remind you that we have a tight schedule?"

"Always a man of duty," Cherche whined and snuggled deeper into Ike's lap. "Never does he so much as think about fun."

He wrestled the urge to introduce Cherche to the fun side of a paddle hitting her head. "I'll make plans for the most over-blown party in history once we kicked Roy from his throne. But, as much as I hate to break it to you, getting there will require quite a bit of work."

"I think I had my share." Cherche threw Oscar a look as sweet and disgusting as a pile of pure sugar. "Oscar, dear, don't you want to take over for me?"

Titania shook her head in dismay. "Please don't. This child has no manners already. The last thing we should do is further encourage her games."

"But I really don't mind, Miss Titania," Oscar said. In a typical fit of chivalry, he jumped forward to take control of Cherche's paddle, even though beads of sweat still glistered on his forehead from his last shift at the oars.

"Good boy." Cherche abandoned her cuddle session with Ike's arm long enough to pat Oscar's hands. "If you had decided to leave a damsel in need hanging, I might have been forced to call Minerva to eat you. Wyvern's, if I may remind you, need an impressive amount of meat on a daily basis."

"Speaking of," Ike said, "where is that oversized lizard anyway?"

Cherche punched his arm. "You might emit a body heat to make a dragon jealous, but your words are freezing cold. Minerva is sleeping back at the undergrowth where we set up camp last night. I will call her after sunset."

"The oversized lizard could at least make itself useful and scout the river for Pheraen patrols."

"Indeed, I am surprised by how little traffic we have encountered so far," Soren said. "If I were to make a guess, the soldiers at the last two border outposts seemed to be on the lookout for someone specific. Their eyes were cast inland."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to trade places with this poor wanted person," Cherche said. "Always looking over your shoulder, never able to get a day's rest while the crown wants your head – what a bleak life that must be."

Ike beat another yard with such vigor that Oscar struggled to stay in sync. "Maybe it's Roy's royal cat that ran off."

They all laughed, but Cherche was the only one who feigned her laugh with enough practice to make it sound genuine.

Ten people huddled in the boat alongside Ike, some of them engrossed in conversation to overpower the constant worry that came with the bounty on their head, others who punished their surroundings with a grim stare because they had learned the meaninglessness of these chats. Ike could tell a story about all of them. The majority he had picked up himself, from the dust-ridden street of an Altean ruin, from the drunk oblivion of a shady bar, or the prison cell before the scaffold. The success of his plan depended on every last one of them.

This fact weighed on Ike ever since he and Soren had rendezvoused with the rest of this merry party five miles up the Silver Stream. And no matter how hard he tried, his mind refused to let loose and concern itself with the rhythmic creak-splash-thud of the oars.

Cherche fished needle and thread out of her bag and began to stich. "Cats as pets are overrated. How can you find anything in these furred bedside rugs when you can have an adorable wyvern instead?"

"I find cat's quite charming," Titania said. "Maybe I will adopt one once the fighting is over."

"Really, you?" Cherche laughed. "That's the last thing I expected. I thought you were already set with adopting Ike."

Ike grumbled. "Hilarious."

"Ike and cats share a likeness in their capricious nature," Soren said, "so, the connection is justified. But, in the case that we survive the fight and reclaim Altea's freedom, I would rather turn my attention to matters other than pets. Many villages will need to be rebuild, not to mention the monasteries of the magic arts."

Cherche waved her stitching in the faces of those unfortunate enough to sit near her. Which included Ike. "Well, I for one will be more than happy to go back to Persis. I have no intention to tag along in improving the world any longer than necessary."

"Do have someone waiting for you in Persis, Miss Cherche?" Oscar asked.

Cherche blushed. "N-no! Where do you get your crazy ideas? Look at what you did, now I made a mistake with the pattern. It's ruined, an entire day's work!" She tossed her stitching across the boat, and Soren narrowly avoided the projectile.

"What do you want to do after the mission, Oscar?" Titania asked.

"Oh, I think I want to open a bakery."

Cherche sat up straight and didn't forget to elbow Ike's ribs in the process. "You can bake? Why do you never treat us with self-made fruit loaf? Or these stupidly overpriced tarts that disappear under a heap of strawberry and cream?"

Oscar threw her an apologetic smile. "I'm not very good at baking yet, I'm afraid. I hope to do this for my brothers. Rolf… always wanted to wake up to the smell of fresh bread."

Awkward silence enveloped the boat, and the oars' creaking boomed in their ears.

"I'm sure you'll improve your skills with the oven in time… yeah." Cherche hurried to retrieve her stitching, and the conversation fizzled out.

Ike and Oscar rowed in silence. Soren, meanwhile, turned the pages of his book, reciting spells under his breath. Like this, the yards between them and the upcoming port shrunk, and Ike pretended not to notice Titania's concerned eyes on him. Thankfully, she didn't force a conversation, so he could avoid laying out his concerns in front of the others. She would approach him again after they set up the next camp, as she did so often, and maybe then Ike would offer her more than a weak excuse.

The river took a sharp turn to the east, as though the Pheraen Empire had cut out and then swallowed a piece of Sacae, and the river had begrudgingly agreed to comply with the theft. The boat moaned as the shift in the current assaulted its side, and Ike's stomach somersaulted. Soren's murmurs gave way to silence.

Then, above the headland, a flash of indigo shot into the sky. An arrow with a blue ribbon. The cloth fluttered behind the projectile like the tail of a dragon. Everyone on the boat followed the arrow with their eyes on its soaring climb until it could battle the winds no longer and plummeted. The blue dragon crashed into the river and swam on the crests of the waves several hundred yards away from where it had come: a village nestled into the bay of the upcoming riverbend.

A second arrow split the air before the people on the boat remembered their ability to move.

"An Altean distress call," Soren said. Although his voice suggested his usual calm state of mind, his hand had tightened around the braided rope around his waist.

Cherche dropped her stitching and stretched. "Well, it's a good thing we're just around the corner to save the day. I'll take any excuse to get from this stinking cockleshell for a bit."

"We have to be careful." Titania rose to her feet and squinted her eyes in search for signs of activity at the village. "There is no telling what or who we will face when we go ashore there."

"We will do no such thing."

The sounds of protest hailed down on Ike at once.

"But, Ike, we—"

"You can't be serious with that!"

"No one but us is going to intervene. You might subject these people to a fate far worse—"

"Ike," Titania cut through the outraged choir, and this time Ike had no choice but to look at her. "Remember what it felt to be powerless. Remember the tremor in your hands while you were forced to cower aside and watch. Do you remember for how long afterwards the rage over your helplessness burned in your chest? These people in the village there are trapped in the same cycle. They will suffer the same as you."

Ike pulled the oar back. "I know that."

"Then why won't your dense head understand that we have to aim for the shore?" Cherche asked, and her eyes sparked with a fury not unlike her wyvern when wakened from a nap.

"Because we can't allow any delays."

Cherche hissed. "Who cares?"

"I care. And so should you."

"Ike, no one here wants to question the integrity of your plan. Or your leadership skills for that matter." Soren narrowed his eyes. The ever-present calm in his voice morphed into a chilling threat. "But I cannot and will not stand aside with the knowledge that I have the means to save these people."

"We can't save everyone," Ike said.

"We can save a few. Is that not enough reason to intervene?"

"It wouldn't make a difference."

"Perhaps not. But with all due respect, I still ask for the permission to try."

"Permission denied."

Cherche jumped to her feet and sent the boat into a frantic tumble. "Easy for you to say. After all, those aren't your people hunted, shot down, and burned on the stake."

"Cherche, that's quite enough." Under Titania's emerald glare, Cherche shrunk a little. But she refused to back down and instead crossed her arms. Titania turned towards Ike. "I understand your desire to reach Aurelis. In the grand scheme of things, we would achieve more there than we ever could here. But you are asking too much of your men."

"He's not asking too much of me." Cherche jutted her chin. "He's just being a brick-head who doesn't understand—"

"We won't ask you to come with us," Soren interrupted before Cherche could make further use of her varied repertoire of verbal attacks. "Whether or not you want to come to these people's aid is your choice. All I ask is to offer us a choice as well."

Ike felt tempted to break the oar in his hand. The outer wood splintered already, and the fine slivers cut into his palm. "Then do me a favor and consider all the factors at play when you choose. Objectively. Eleven people sit in this boat. The plan to take over Aurelis requires eleven people. No more. No less. Now, can you guarantee me that all ten of you will get back into this boat in fighting condition once you're done with that village? Can you confirm beyond doubt that all the scratches and shot wounds you collect there will heal before our arrival in Aurelis? Can you, if nothing else, look me in the eyes and tell me that we'll reach the docks on the Empire's anniversary, when the guards will be busy toasting to each other?"

Soren gave in. With limp fingers, he averted his eyes, and the gusts of wind magic around him subsided. Cherche adjusted her crossed arms, and what had displayed defiance before looked more like an attempt to hug herself. Most of the others didn't so much as dare to look at Ike.

Which was why the voice to his left hit him unprepared.

"As always, you are right in so much that you say, Ike. We and maybe all of the Altean resistance would be better off if we steered past the village. What Soren and the others suggest is the opposite of smart." Oscar smiled, this stupid, warm smile of a man who had lost everything but still had more to give to others. "But the smart way isn't always the right one. At least… it shouldn't be."

Ike fought against a sudden surge of migraine.

Damn it. Damn Oscar. Damn his upbringing and his unwavering moral code, especially damn the kindness in his honest features.

Damn the Pheraen knights who had asked unspeakable things from him when he joined their ranks, who had profited from his good heart at every turn and repaid him by defiling his younger brothers until not even Oscar had been able to tell which bloody pile and broken bone belonged to whom.

"What are you getting at?" Malice dripped from Ike's tongue.

But Oscar saw through the charade. Or rather, he banged his head against Ike's walls until they cracked. "We can bring about the biggest change if we cut off the king's head, that's true. But for the people in this village, it will be too late. If we don't take any chance to protect the lives of those unable to protect themselves, who will be left by the time we've won? You would celebrate your victory with desolate ruins, not the people you wanted to save from the oppression."

The boat began to drift off with the current. But no one thought to move the oars. And no one would until Ike gave the order.

"Please, Ike." Oscar's smile didn't flicker, not for a single heartbeat. "You helped me when no one else did. Let me return the favor to someone else."

Ike squinted to chase away the throbbing in his temples. Then, he lunged for his paddle und injected all his muscle weight into the creak-splash-thud of rowing as though he had never performed a different task in his life. The boat glid above the gentle crests. With course for the village.

"It sounds like the voting results are overwhelmingly one-sided," Ike said. "So you better get a move on."

A few smiles joined Oscar's, and the party breathed a collective sigh of relief. Titania offered Ike a small nod. But the reestablished levity failed to touch him. He knew what he had signed up for. And each oar stroke and each accompanying yard served to fortify the feeling that the decision to go near the village was a mistake.

How bad of a mistake? He was about to find out.

First came the noise. Intangible shouts, some demanding, often interlaced with panicked screams. The calls trailed above the water to nest in their ears, and the men and women at the oars picked up pace. Ike gritted his teeth and pushed against the tide, stroke for stroke, yard for yard.

Someone in the village had to have noticed their arrival because the shouts following the Pheraen protocol grew louder, and the reaction came at once.

People rushed into the river, half submerged by the water fountains they sprayed into the air. Their screams ended in gurgles when they stumbled. Bowstrings whirred, and projectiles darted forward with relentless precision, slicing fabric and flesh alike. Crimson tainted the water, a metallic stench that invaded the nostrils and resulted in nausea.

The fruitless escape originated from the village, and the people hurried down the stone beach between the thatch houses and the oncoming boat by the dozens. Total chaos. Pherae's attempts to wrestle back control brought forth bloodshed, drove the villagers to quicken their steps. The golden eagle glistered in the cover of the village border, on shields and armor plates alike.

"Cease fire!" one of the knights shouted, but his command went under in the buzzing of another volley of arrows.

Ike didn't wait for the boat to run aground. He jumped over the railing with Ragnell in hand, and the splashes left and right confirmed that his comrades followed his example. For one precious second, he allowed the water fountains to confuse his view – and that of the enemy.

Then, he dashed forward.

Another buzzing of bowstrings, and Ike collided with a villager heading the opposite way. He caught himself faster, but couldn't waste time to check whether the man was unhurt. The stones slipped under his feet, the water slowed his movement.

Bodies plastered the last few yards of the beach, and Ike dove for cover behind one of them as the next volley hailed down on the stones. The makeshift shield the dead villager had carried did the trick; Ike still breathed. He climbed back to his feet, deflected a delayed arrow with Ragnell's blunt side, and ran.

A tornado of wind magic struck into the phalanx of knights in front of him, and rendered them blind to Ike's attack. Before they had the chance to recover, he sliced through two of them, leaving them with nothing but a stuttered final breath. Ragnell cut through their armor like a golden flare through the dark.

Cherche appeared beside him and rammed her axe into the face of the nearest enemy. She and Ike nodded to each other before a mountain of a knight drove them apart with a mace swing that split the ground between their feet.

Ike raised Ragnell horizontally, tested his opponent with controlled steps. They began circling each other, and Ike risked a nod in Cherche's direction to signal her to go on ahead. Without her wyvern, she lacked the range with which she usually fought, not to mention the lack of a vantage point. But her oversized lizard would need six more minutes to cross the six wyvern miles they had travelled by boat today. Until then, Cherche was better advised to use the narrow streets between the cowering clay buildings to her advantage.

She disappeared into the shadow of the street, right when the enemy's mace flattened the earth in front of Ike's feet. The shockwaves rippled through his toes and forced Ike to surrender ground.

What had he gotten himself into again? Against hordes of middle-class soldiers, Ike only needed his brute strength to mow down any and all opposition. But one on one, Ragnell's weight proved more of a hinderance than a blessing. Fencing and tip-toeing, these tactics worked for a master duelist – not for Ike.

Unfortunately, with his heavy armor and the six-feet rectangular shield, his opponent demanded this exact approach.

Ike slid forward when the next mace swing aimed for his skull, attempted to reach past the shield. But Ragnell collided with the metal-strengthened edge. The sharp clang reverberated in his gut and disoriented him for a moment too long; mistake, mistake, mis–

The shield hammered against Ike's head with the force of an avalanche.

Stars, fireworks, candleflames, all of them exploded before Ike's eyes at once, and he stumbled backwards. Forget the migraine from before, now the pain receptors in his temples really got going.

And the descending mace would have ended his life right then and there if a timely gust hadn't staggered the Pheraen knight. The helmet concealed his face, but Ike could imagine the confusion and indignation over the safe kill that had slipped out of the knight's hands at the last second.

Thanks be to Soren.

Although he better made sure to keep himself alive with these nifty magic tricks, otherwise Ike would end him with his own hands.

Ike's head was still ringing, and he struggled to draw in enough air, but the nuisance didn't stop him from returning the favor to his opponent. In a downright suicidal move, Ike thrusted Ragnell under the lower rim of the shield. And when he didn't meet the resistance of a foot, he heaved.

The knight, who had already struggled with his balance, reeled as his trusted shield turned against him and collapsed over his head. Ike applied a final strike to the back of his opponent's knees, and the knight dropped under the loud clatter of his armor.

Now, the throat between breast plate and helmet lay there unprotected, a sliver of skin where a racing pulse made the artery throb.

Ike ignored all semblance of pity and rammed Ragnell downward. Blood ran along the groves between the stones. But Ike had no time to dwell. He searched for signs of the Pheraen eagle in his periphery.

The beach was clear for now. The rattling of swords confirmed that his comrades had pushed back the enemy into the nested alleys between the houses.

Four more minutes until backup in the form of an enraged wyvern would descend from the sky. Keep everyone alive until then.

Ike raced towards where the sounds of swordplay echoed from the walls the loudest, but his inattentiveness towards his immediate surroundings nearly costed him his head. The attacker jumped out of the shadows of a crossroad, a mighty two-handed claymore poised for a spine-slicing stroke.

Ike parried at the last second, steel on steel. The stalemate lasted for two heartbeats.

Then, Ike twisted his body, turned the momentum into an uppercut, and shattered his opponent's defenses. A geyser of blood erupted, discolored the walls, and left a crimson line on Ragnell's ridge. The man slumped, dead.

Steps hammered onto the cobblestone. A few crossroads further down the street, Titania dueled two Pheraen combatants at once. Her halberd eclipsed the range of her opponents and thwarted their attempts to advance long before they could deal out damage. Even without the benefit of horseback, her skills as paladin shone in her movements; each attack a deadly chain and every step a dancer's sequence.

She wouldn't be needing Ike's help any time soon. So, he hurried further.

Three more minutes.

The next bend in the street revealed a disaster. A Pheraen commander bellowed orders at the top of his lungs while he dragged with him a young woman. More hostages cowered at the feet of Pheraen soldiers, and while a few of them whimpered, the majority was too shell-shocked to even comprehend what was happening. One of them, a man with puffy cheeks, threw panicked looks in all directions and appeared about to cry. He struck Ike as familiar, but he had no time to think much of it. Cherche and Oscar stood on the opposite side of the plaza with their weapons raised, but they hesitated to engage the enemy.

When he noticed Ike, the furrows in the face of the Pheraen commander deepened. His eyes darted back and forth between the newcomer and the two rebels he had kept at bay so far. The odds began to turn in the Alteans' favor – and the commander realized this just as well as Ike did.

Out of nothing but the air between the fingers of his right hand, the commander produced a glowing yellow sphere. The energy crackled, and small lightning bolts sparked out of the orb. A Mage Knight.

Fantastic.

"We have no business with you, rebels," the commander said. A hint of panic added a shrillness to his voice that overpowered his spite. "You have overstepped your boundaries far enough. These villagers are withholding information and possibly hide a traitor. I would advise you not to intervene."

Cherche huffed out a laugh. "Funny you talk about overstepping boundaries. It looks to me like that's exactly what you've done here. I can't imagine the slaughter of innocent civilians will make for a nice addition on your resume. Or is the Empire now fully embracing mass-murder?"

The commander tightened his grip on the woman serving as his shield. "Hold your impertinent tongue! One step forward, and we will have no choice but to destroy every last one of you Altean scum. Starting with the villagers."

"I wanna see you try," Cherche said and raised her axe.

But Oscar held her back. "We can't risk their lives. Please, remain calm."

Two more minutes.

A triumphant grin spread on the commander's face. "Now that's better. Let us talk like civilized people."

"Civilized?" Cherche spat out. "You guys greeted us with about a hundred arrows if I remember correctly."

"An unfortunate error of judgement. We were merely on the lookout for a wanted deserter, and we have reason to belief that someone hiding in this village knows her location. When you rebels arrived, it resulted in a… disagreement among my men. But that is behind us now. We will make a few arrests and then retreat. None of your heads have to end on a scaffold today."

Ike steeled his grip around Ragnell's hilt. About twenty paces separated him from the commander. He might collect the man's head before he could give orders to his underlings. The woman in his grasp wouldn't make it, but Ike could win the fight in exchange for her blood.

A good trade.

He braced himself.

"If you want to see heads on a scaffold, come and get them," Cherche said and placed a careless step forward.

One of the Pheraen knights kicked a villager into the dust, the woman caught in the commander's stranglehold screamed, and the sphere of thunder magic broke free. The hairs on Ike's arms stood erect, the light blinded him, the forward dash he had planned never came to fruition.

Oscar moved in front of Cherche, and all the enemy unit's attention now rested on him.

No, no, no, Oscar was a mounted lancer, his specialty lay with fast, long-ranged charges, not direct confrontation. If he only waited for Ike and let the hostage die, if he put aside his ideals this one time…

Oscar hurled his lance forward in the same instance that the commander let his magic fly. The lance pierced the commander's skull, and the woman in his grasp stumbled towards freedom unharmed.

Ike ran, stretched out his hand towards Oscar while the plaza vanished in brightness.

The sound of wyvern wings reached his ears.

And then, the sphere of thunder magic exploded and swallowed everything.

Cherche was the only one who cried.

The others had no tears to give. Titania had seen the cycle repeated too many times already, and Soren had mastered the ability to hide his emotions behind an unreadable stone mask. For once, Ike would have been thankful for his lectures on the great mysteries or even a dumb prayer. But only Cherche's sobs filled the beach beyond the town skirts.

A few villagers had gathered to express their gratitude, but Ike had shoved them away so that they could bother someone else. He was the last person these people should thank.

One of them didn't seem to get the memo, however, and the shadow in front of him refused to move. Ike was forced to look up from Ragnell's shiny blade, which he had been cleaning to the point where not a single flake of dust remained on the steel.

A familiar face jumped at him. He had seen these round cheeks with the puffy eyes that suggested the man had just departed a funeral. In Gran. He belonged to Cordelia's group.

"I need to thank you for jumping to my aid," the man said and sniffed. "You spared me a future in the Pheraen dungeons."

Ike leveled his focus back at the sword in his lap. "Would've been a short future."

The man gave a sniffling laugh. "Yes, most likely. I can't imagine they would have been thrilled to find out how little I know about the deserter they're looking for."

"Must be quite the important knight if Roy is sending all his units on a manhunt."

"Yes, she is extraordinary. It's only thanks to her that I could escape Gran as a free man."

"And the others?"

The man fidgeted his hands, and the puffy eyes grew even more puffy. "I don't know. I made a run for it as soon as I no longer had a sword at my throat. Altea is done for, I was lucky to get this far. Listen, if there's a way to repay you with intel—"

"Are you good with a lance?"

"No, but I—"

"Then you have no use to me. If I ever need a coward with nothing better to do than to boast about that time he was saved by a deserter in front of Pheraen knights, I'll know where to look, thanks."

The puffy eyes looked like they would pop an artery any second. All the better. Even if Ike might possess enough restraint to stop himself from pinning this useless chatty-mouth to the ground and decorate his ugly face with bruises, at least he could revel in the man's offended expression.

With a last sniff, the man escaped the reach of Ike's fist and would hopefully crawl into a burrow in Sacae to never see the light of day again. How could a single human collect so much idiocy that he not only let word slip about his affiliation with a wanted deserter but also dragged an entire village into his mess? And because Ike had given into the protests of his comrades, he now had to deal with the consequences.

He scrubbed the crumbled cloth in his hand across Ragnell's blade for the thirtieth time. Cherche needed a while to run out of tears, and now she accompanied her sobs with a string of weak curses directed at the hill of stones in front of her.

But the polished white pebbles they had picked from the beach gave her no answers as to why.

Another shadow moved across Ragnell's golden surface and stopped to address Ike. "It's not your fault."

One of these days, Titania would run out of empathy if Ike continued to drag her along on his vendetta against the Pheraen crown. Then, he would mourn the loss. At the moment though, he could happily do without this motherly concern in her voice.

"Do you think that's what's going on in my head?" Ike asked.

"Considering the way you grind your teeth like you did when you were seven, I have reason enough to belief that you torment yourself with this exact thought."

"Well, you're wrong. It's his own fault. He knew the risk."

"He stood up for what he believed in. Don't you think that's a quality worth admiring?"

Ike rose to his feet and attached Ragnell to his back. "No, I don't. What good does an ideology do if it only gets you killed? He didn't stop once to think about what this could mean for the rest of us."

"He saved the hostages. Those same innocent people for whom we started this fight."

Ike turned away. The Silver Stream hurried south, and its waves lapped against the white stones of the beach in a never-ending struggle to swallow them. The sky could have at least shown its sympathy through a burst of rain. But the water shimmered with reflections of a cloudless blue. A handful of Ike's comrades huddled around the boat, unsure of what to do with themselves.

"He should have let the woman die," he said.

Titania placed a hand on Ike's shoulder. The warmth of her touch failed to reach him through the worn-out linen of his sleeve. "We will capture Aurelis without Oscar. You have overcome worse odds before. This isn't the end of the line, Ike."

"It's not?" Ike glared over his shoulder. "Look at Cherche and tell me she will be back in top condition by the time we reach Aurelis. Look at all of them! This helps to remind us just how outmatched we are, how megalomaniacal this whole undertaking when we don't even have a leader to count on. There's no one who will shoulder the burden and remind us that things will get better as long as we climb back to our feet."

"Then why do you act as though you have to fill that hole? If stoic silence helps you cope, go ahead. But I doubt that's what you need. Or even what you want."

Ike released the tension from his shoulders. He was tired. And no amount of forcefully controlled breaths could chase away the throbbing in his temples, no words from Titania and least of all Cherche's tear-soaked accusations against Oscar's grave.

"What I want is for him to come back and fulfill the mission in Aurelis the way he promised," Ike said, and the gurgles of the river almost drowned his voice. "But it's not gonna happen. He died for nothing."

Titania's fingernails cut into his shoulder, a dull pain that left no mark. "If you could put aside this act for just one moment—"

Ike shook off her hand. "Prepare the troops. We depart as soon as the boat's ready. Ask Soren if he can spare some of his wind magic for the sails. We have to make back some of the time we lost on this detour."

Titania said nothing. But Ike could picture her expression without looking back; this troubled ravine between her brows and the hard line of her mouth she wore whenever she was wasting her energy in arguing with a deaf brick-head of a man. Maybe she and the others needed a few more hours to replenish their energy and retain a level head for the tedious trek against the currents. Maybe Ike could cure the aching in his head with a little sleep.

But if he lay down for sleep, Cherche's cries would catch up to him. The clock was running, and the docks of Aurelis waited. Thirty more wyvern miles and uncounted oar strokes.

So, Ike marched towards the boat and refused to spare the hill of polished stones one last look.

Notes: It's been a while since we checked in on Ike. I've once again loved writing him, although his pessimistic sarcasm may work better in small doses. He will get his time to shine more, but Lucina's journey has been demanding the bulk of the story, and it will stay this way for a while. I nevertheless hope you enjoyed this excursion, even though (or because?) I added another character death to the list. I may have a problem in this regard...