A/N: Sorry about this very un-organized author's note, but I can't add author's notes online with this computer, so this is the only author's note you get! XD

I am quite fond of this chapter, by the way. I just up and wrote it in one marathon session, and I really like it. I had a reviewer read it, and she liked it too, so there you go. Plus, an interesting ending! You'll probably see it coming though.

Oh, and I don't own Fire Emblem. Of course. If you thought I did…you're giving me far too much credit. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems deserve it all.

Nine: The Gathering Storm1

Lilina awoke suddenly, reacting to a severe jolt. "Owww..."

"Relax, Lilina. I couldn't wake you at camp, so I just put you behind me on the horse."

Disoriented, she tried to open her eyes, but was promptly blinded by the sun. When she tried to lift her hands to screen the light, she found them bound.

"Lowen?" she moaned groggily. "Why are my hands tied down? Where are we?"

"We're almost to House Ostia, milady. Your hands are tied so you don't fall off the horse. Your legs are bound to the stirrups too. I'm apologize if it's a little uncomfortable for you, but I was sort of rushed."

"Why's that?"

As if in answer to her question, she felt something whiz over her shoulder. She blinked, and they passed a tree with an arrow shaft stuck in it.

"We're being followed," Lowen said belatedly. "When I woke up, they had me surrounded."

"I see," she murmured. Though it was hard to do, she managed to turn her head over her shoulder enough to see a little of what was behind her. In her range of vision, there were two nomads and a paladin trailing them at a short distance, and–rather distressingly–they appeared to be closing in.

Suddenly, she saw the paladin ready a javelin in his hand and throw it forward, arcing high above her head.

Quickly calculating the angle, Lilina shouted orders to Lowen. "Hard left! Javelin incoming overhead!"

She spun her head around just as Lowen jerked the reins to the left, causing the horse to veer sharply. If not for the bindings on her hands and feet, she would likely have fallen off the horse.

Two more arrows flew over their heads, and a javelin suddenly landed in the center of the road, causing Lowen to make another hard turn to the right. There were many paths through the Great Wood to House Ostia, and Lowen had no doubt been shown many of them. But if they were going to elude their pursuers, Lilina knew that a secret route would need to be used.

"Lowen," she shouted to the cavalier, "do you know how to get to the gold oak?"

"We're coming up to it," he shouted over the rushing wind.

"When we get there, go behind the tree and jump off the ridge to the left."

He turned his head backward, as though he didn't believe what he was hearing. "Are you certain?"

She nodded unnecessarily, as Lowen couldn't see the reassuring gesture. "Of course. Father takes me riding through these woods all the time, and Roy and I have raced through her many times. I know how to lose them."

The cavalier shrugged and dipped his head low again, concentrating on avoiding the projectiles that littered their path at random intervals. He was supposed to protect Lilina no matter what, but her instructions seemed a little shady to him. If he recalled correctly, behind and to the left of the gold oak was a wall of ivy and briars...

Suddenly the shady forest road he had been following broke into a sunlit clearing, in the center of which stood a gigantic, gold-leafed oak tree. They were here.

"Behind and to the left, right?" he asked skeptically.

"Don't you trust me?" Lilina said, rather annoyed at his insubordination. "Just do it!"

As they turned to corner, Lowen was dismayed to see that his memory had served him correctly. A wall of verdant ivy stood tall in front of him, with veins of brown thorns mingled into it. And it was coming closer and closer with every hoofbeat. "Here we go!" he shouted.

Horse, rider and passenger exploded through the wall and landed, five feet down, on a cushion of fallen gold leaves, all relatively unscathed.

"Turn around and go under the ridge," Lilina ordered. "Follow the cave. You'll have to go slower, but they'll be lost as soon as we disappear."

Lowen nodded so Lilina could see that he understood, and reined the horse around. Though it looked as though he was charging straight into a wall of limestone, he did as she said. So far, she had been right about everything...

Suddenly the floor dropped out from underneath him, and his horse was trotting down a rather steep incline. The cavernous passageway seemed more like a hallway to Lowen, and he had keep his head low constantly to avoid cracking his skull on the numerous stalactites that hung from the low ceiling.

Lilina, who had no problem at all with the ceiling, was craning her neck over her shoulder to look behind them. She saw nothing but the light cast by the sun from outside.

"We're all clear," she whispered. "Don't shout down here. The sound will carry back up to the cave entrance."

"But won't the sound of the hoofbeats echo just as bad as our voices?" Lowen asked apprehensively, afraid to know the answer.

"Oh," Lilina said, and let out a low whistle. "I guess I didn't consider that. I've never actually ridden a horse this way, but I thought it would be high enough to work." She cursed her lack of foresight. "I should have thought of that..."

Suddenly, the sound of hoofbeats grew louder. "Are we going faster, Lowen?"

He shook his head, no.

Realizing exactly what that meant, Lilina fearfully looked over her shoulder.

There were two paladins now, and only one nomad on their trail. She could only see them in the faint light let in by fractures in the ceiling, but it looked as though they were still a good distance back.

"Any ideas, milady? We're gonna need 'em pretty quick, if you know what I mean."

"I'm afraid I do know what you mean, Lowen. All too well..." Lilina sighed as she remembered why she hadn't tried this route on horseback before. Ahead a ways and around two bends, she knew, there was an open chamber with three low passageways, far too small for a person on horseback, and almost too small for her to walk down without holding her head down. For their purposes, it was a dead end.

"We need a plan, and fast," she shouted. "There's a dead end up ahead."

"Lovely," the cavalier muttered loudly. "Any ideas on how to avoid this dead end?"

"I'm afraid not," she murmured. She set about thinking of a plan, but every time they crashed through a sunlight portion of the hall, her concentration was interrupted. But, as her eyes were dazzled by another thin shaft of light, inspiration struck.

"Lowen, do you have your lance?" she asked.

"What? Why do you want that?"

"Where is it, you fool! If you don't tell me, we're likely to die in here!"

"It's clasped to the right side, by your stirrup." Suddenly, Lowen realized what she wanted to do, and realized that she was going to be impeded. "Oh, you're going to want your bindings cut, aren't you?"

"Yes, that would be helpful, sir knight," she said icily. "Would you care to hand me your knife?"

"Can you reach it with your fingers?" he asked, knowing she wouldn't be happy with the question. "I really need to steer the horse, so we don't crash into a wall before we hit the dead end."

"I suppose that might be helpful," she conceded. "But how am I supposed to grab it from your belt? If you'll recall, you're also the idiot that bound my hands to the saddle!"

"Oh, yes, well...erm...can you take it in your mouth?"

"WHAT!"

"Yeah, just lean over, bite down on the handle, and pull your head back. Then put it in between the saddle and the rope, and pull it back towards you."

"RIGHT!" she yelled.

"Okay, okay. You don't have to be so loud about it, though–"

"TURN RIGHT!" she screamed.

Lowen whirled around to see the stone wall coming almost to an end, except for the right wall being shorter. He grabbed the reins at the last moment and pulled to the right with all his might.

The horse reacted quickly, turning just as Lowen directed. It was a little overzealous, though, and slammed it's right side into the wall.

As it came away, Lilina realized that her leg bindings had been cut by the rough wall. "Ram against the other wall," she ordered.

Lowen nodded, and pulled the reins left. The horse slammed into the wall again, cutting Lilina's left leg free. She also managed to pull her hands over to the wall, and the rough surface cut the bindings on her hands as well.

"Free yet?" Lowen asked. "The horse doesn't like running against walls so well."

Lilina was about to answer, but a crash from behind interrupted her. She whirled around to discover that one of the paladins had not reacted to the turn in time and had crashed into a wall, horse and rider collapsing onto the dank floor. His companions cautiously stepped over him, then continued the pursuit.

Lilina turned around again to focus on the problem at hand. Reaching down blindly, she felt the shaft of the lance that Lowen had buckled to the side of the horse. Thankfully, it didn't feel damaged from the run-in with the wall.

She tried to heft it out of it's bracket, but couldn't do it. Carefully, so as not to throw herself off balance, she leaned over the side of the horse to survey the contraption. She now saw that two clasping mechanisms held the lance to the saddle. One of them was within her reach. The other, Lowen would have to handle.

She undid the fist one, then shouted to Lowen, "Unbuckle the lance from up there, too!"

The cavalier's golden-gauntlet covered hand reached down and blindly undid the clasp. The lance fell into Lilina's waiting grip. She expertly balanced it, even though she was only holding onto the bottom half. Carefully, she lifted it upward, until she had complete control of the weapon.

She looked up at the ceiling. Even still, further into the ground, there were places where the ceiling had weakened, and now allowed some light to filter through. These weak points were her focus. If she could collapse some of the ceiling with Lowen's lance, they could buy time to escape the dead end.

Just as she was about to attempt this plan, Lowen shouted, "Hold on!" She quickly sat, holding the lance vertical at her side, but not high enough to hit the ceiling.

Abruptly and sharply, they veered left. As soon as the Lowen straightened their path, Lilina switched her feet around and twisted her body so that she sat backward on the horse.

"Wish me luck, sir knight," she joked grimly.

"No need," he shouted, "the gods are always with the children of Roland."

Strangely, the blessing made Lilina smile. Renewing her grip on the lance, she shoved it upward as they neared a crack of light.

The spear point slipped into the crack and broke through the stone separating it from the next crack. Lilina quickly pulled the lance back down. Her wrists were stinging and her hands were bleeding from the impact, but her smile grew all the wider as she witnessed her plan come to fruition.

Where the lance had broken the ceiling support, there was now a wide-open area of sunlight-bathed rock–jagged, broken, and twisted. She resisted the childish urge to laugh and mock the paladin and nomad as they skidded to a halt in the now impassable hallway.

"Very good, milady," Lowen said. Then, to the horse, he shouted, "Whoa! Easy, girl!"

The horse skidded to a stop on it's worn hooves just before a sheer rock face–the virtual dead end Lilina had fortunately remembered.

She and Lowen dismounted gracefully, she more so than he, though he was quite agile for a knight. "So, sir knight," she said with a slightly premature chuckle of victory, "which tunnel will it be?"

They stood before two tunnels. One went left, and one went right, but the right one was bigger. Lowen thought he could probably walk down it without too much discomfort.

"I'll say the right one. Where does it come out?"

"A quarter-league from the east entrance of the House," she replied. "The tunnel itself isn't long."

"Excellent," the cavalier said. Then, with an exaggerated flourish, he motioned to the right-hand tunnel. "After you, milady."

"Thank you, sir knight," she said, and mock curtsied. Then, giggling slightly, she ducked her head and entered the tunnel. Lowen turned back and looked down the tunnel, to reassure himself of their safety. The dust had settled, and the paladin and nomad had disappeared. Apparently, they had decided to abandon their pursuit. Satisfied that he and Lilina were no longer in danger from the rear, he crouched down and began to walk through the tunnel.

The first thing Lowen noticed about the tunnel was the utter blackness it contained. It had the mysterious power to envelope in total darkness in silence. Lowen was certain that Lilina had only entered the tunnel mere seconds before he had, and yet he could hear nothing ahead of him. The second thing he noticed about it was the dank, musty smell, as if nothing in the tunnel had been disturbed since the first Scouring. The third, he regrettably observed, was the slimy growth on the walls and ceiling, which he had the unfortunate experience of touching.

As he continued down the tunnel, he quickened his pace in order to catch up with Lilina. He was becoming increasingly annoyed with the complete lack of sound in the hallway. It was almost as if someone had placed a silence spell on the place...

Suddenly, a horrible thought entered his mind, one that he prayed was only a nightmare. He was on all fours now, scrambling to get to the end of the tunnel, afraid of what he would find there, but knowing that he would have to face it nevertheless.

Abruptly, light and sound both returned to him, and both in a shocking manner. He stood up blinked twice, and came face to face with an enormous shadow. In it's black arms was Lilina's limp body, a tortured look on her face despite her closed eyes.

"Don't worry about her. She'll be quite safe in my hands." the shadow said in a cruel voice, and laughed ominously. It's laugh was like the rumbling of a distant but threatening thunderstorm, and Lowen suddenly felt a premonition, as though this shadow represented the storm that was about to break over Elibe.

"W-who are you? What do you want?" Lowen asked, his voice brave but shaky.

"I have what I want," the shadow said dryly. "As for who I am, allow me to give you a clue before I depart."

Lowen was about to step forward, but he was stopped by the sight of something he hoped was only still present in his all-too-real nightmares of the Second Scouring...

The shadow had burning, brilliant golden eyes. The eyes of a golem.

"Gods..." Lowen breathed. "You're...one of Nergal's abominations. But...you were all dead."

The shadow cackled maniacally, then leveled it's gaze at Lowen, who was quaking in fear. "I am no mere creation of Master Nergal's. I am his apprentice. I am the heir of his bloodline. My name is Bearoth, and, for the sake of my slain Master, I am finishing the work that he started."

"No...you'll never summon the dragons again," Lowen whispered. "Her Highness, Queen Ninian of the Ice, sealed the portal herself."

Lowen's words only caused the shadow named Bearoth to laugh harder and more venemously. "Foolish knight of Pherae! This is not just about the dragons anymore! No, this is something far greater–something you could not possibly comprehend." As he finished his sentence, an arcane emblem appeared beneath his feet and began to glow. "Tell Marquess Ostia that if he wishes to save his daughter, his country must break away from Lycia, and he must exile himself from her. Ostia must be a new territory, and his daughter must rule it. If he does this deed, then his daughter will be his." As his body began to disappear, he whispered, "Tell him, foolish knight. Tell him you couldn't stop me, and he can't either." With that, he disappeared entirely.

Trembling, Lowen fell to his knees and cried out, "Gods! Why have you abandoned your child? Save the bloodline of Roland! Keep her safe, as I could not. Please..."

And as he prayed, the sun disappeared behind a blanket of black clouds, and the rain began to fall over Lycia.