Chapter 2 – Meeting
Beta'd by A.O. Talmidge
"Thank you for your patronage!"
Anna reflexively slipped into the universally patented 'cute shopkeeper' pose, her index finger poised on her chin while she strained out her best customer service smile.
Which immediately dropped into a dejected sigh as soon as her latest customer regrouped with his caravan and was down the path, out of sight.
Gold, way less than what the markup on her last elixir should have cost, was carefully slipped into a safe on her cart. She sighed, "Looks like I need to restock on medicines in the capital."
No reason to complain, right? After all, business was business, and the Anna quality guarantee didn't come cheap; she could practically have her own trade empire by now!
Or so her family always told her.
A frustrated groan escaped her as she collapsed into a heap, her head leaning up against to the back left wheel of her cart.
"Ugh, why am I so bad at this?" She clutched her head, hands covering the sight of the world she didn't want to deal with right now.
Her audience snorted and she heard him stamp his hooves in place, unimpressed at her antics. She sighed, her arms flopping to her sides.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. 'I can't just give up because one sale went bad.'" Actually, it was the last four, not that she was counting. "Or maybe, 'Annas are never quitters.'" She turned to her equine companion. "Something like that?"
Her horse, Aden, nickered before he abruptly pulled the cart forward a few feet, making her flail a moment before the back of her head landed hard against a rock protruding from the ground.
Her head throbbed as she quickly sat up, and she rubbed her hand on the aching spot a moment before glaring at the offending animal. He glared back in a short standoff before snorting again, turning his gaze to the path ahead.
Anna rolled her eyes as she stood. She brushed off the dirt sticking to her dark maroon cloak before walking up to her companion.
"You know, you're lucky I need you to pull the cart, right?" She glared a moment longer before stroking his snout, earning a soft neigh of contentment. In return, he forcefully nuzzled her, nipping at the end of her ponytail.
She huffed, turning her head so her red hair was out of the way. "No, sorry, I can't afford give you treats every time you cheer me up. You should know better than that by now." She vaulted up to the cart's drivers seat and settled in.
"Come on, there's a good place to camp not too far ahead, and we need to get there before it gets dark." She snapped the reins.
Aden refused to move despite her continued urging.
Grumbling, she reached towards her pack in the cart behind her, bringing out one of her last apples. She hopped back down and stopped before him.
"You're spoiled, you know that?"
He simply stared at the apple. Rolling her eyes Anna extended the fruit and his tongue lashed out to grab the treat. Even once she was back on her cart, he refused to move until finished.
He shook his mane, making a smug neigh as she snapped the reins, setting off in a trot.
She was so lost in her own thoughts, that it wasn't until she was frantically trying to calm her horse that Anna realized she had nearly ridden over someone lying near the middle of the path.
She quickly hopped off her cart, a flurry of apologies flying from her mouth. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't watching where I was going and…and, um."
The person below her didn't respond. She crouched down, inspecting them closer.
"Are you…okay?" No response.
Wait.
Anna's heart rate spiked, and she stood straight, eyes darting around even as her hands drew the sword strapped to her waist, gripping the it tightly. Young though she might be, she liked to think she wasn't naive.
Didn't this reek of a classic setup for an ambush? A cart or concerned traveler would stop to check on a 'distressed' or 'unconscious' traveler, but in return for their concern, would be jumped by reinforcements, mugged, and in extreme cases, killed, before their goods were stolen.
And she had just waltzed right into it.
Her eyes darted around, expecting to see bandits swarming around her and her merchandise, but...nothing happened. A long tense minute passed, before she chanced a glance back at the man in the path, her horse practically right on top of him. He was face down in the dirt, hand clutching a few water skins, and he neither moved to attack nor cried for help, or did anything for that matter.
Actually, now that she got a better look around, the open expanse of the field around her offered barely any cover for an ambush. A nearby stream burbled.
She swallowed. Were bandits really becoming this bold just half a day's ride away from Izumo's capital, or was she freaking out for no reason?
The wind picked up and a noxious, burnt odor assaulted her nose, making her cough. Her horse let out a panicked neigh and she turned sooth him. Before she could do anything, however, he reared up and she backed away, realizing only as she fell that the person was now behind her. With an undignified yelp, she crashed into a heap, her sword spinning from her grasp. She was surprised, though grateful, that her awkward landing was soft.
Until she untangled herself and realized with horror that the softness was due to the now very obvious corpse underneath her.
A previous victim? But from what?
Realizing she was still on top of him she rapidly jumped up and shifting away from the body in disgust. She tried talking down her frazzled nerves, even as she slapped her cheeks.
"Pull yourself together, Anna. I mean, look at the bright side! At least you weren't the victim. That's something, right? Eheh, heh…" All the while that horrid smell still invaded her nose. A shiver crept up her spine, but not from the cool spring air.
She coughed again. Covering the lower part of her face with her left arm, she attempted to soothe her horse before picking up her sword. She did this all while looking for the source of the stench, even as her instincts were screaming at her to climb back on her cart and run.
Morbid curiosity won before she could, however, as she spotted smoke rising into the air over a small hill in the field some distance away on her left.
Anna soothed Aden as best she could, and despite her trepidation, began the small trek towards the source of the smoke. As she walked closer, another shiver crawled up her spine, and she slowed and went more carefully. Crouching the rest of the way, she crested the small hill.
Her eyes widened as she stood, stealth forgotten.
The still forms people and animals surrounded a fire pit, which spewed the black smoke she'd spotted earlier, belching out the burnt remains of a meal. Their bodies were collapsed in unnatural angles. With growing horror she spotted the man to whom she sold the elixir earlier; his form was slumped backwards over a log beside another person, a woman. Both had lifeless glassy eyes staring at the sky.
This was the caravan from earlier. This…this had happened recently.
She barely succeeded in fighting off the urge to vomit. Even so, she wiped her mouth and focused her attention back to the scene. Something was…wrong. Wrong even beyond the horrid sight in front of her now. As she carefully trod down the hill towards the former caravan, realization hit her.
There were no wounds on any of the bodies.
No slashes, arrows, burns, or anything that would indicate some form of attack. It was as if one moment they were alive, and the next they had just…died.
Anna' arm began trembling involuntarily, her grip on her sword shaking in tandem. The horror before her made her forget to watch her step, and she tripped over a branch. Hopping to regaining her balance, she spun to face it, and in her panic pointed her sword at the offending stick.
Her blade was carefully lowered when she realized what she was looking at. The 'stick' was an arrow protruding out of a cloaked man's body; one of many, now that she took another look. After a moment of nearly throwing up again, her eyes scrunched in confusion.
Compared to the surrounding scene, the arrows made no sense.
If the unearthly chill in the air was any indication, the attack on the caravan was the result of some powerful dark ritual…thing. But then, why bother using arrows at all, if instant death was the result? Had the man been a guard, spotted the offending mages and rushed to engage them, only to meet the defending arrows of archers? A sacrifice?
No, it didn't add up.
Curious, Anna crouched down to get a better look. Unlike the others, his clothes bore signs of battle, some of it recent. The tattered black cloak was in a design she didn't recognize had sustained heavy damage, both from the arrows, and other previous unknown attacks.
She lifted the material and felt it between her fingers: the inside was softer than she expected while the outer layer felt more durable than it looked. If not for its shabby appearance combined with the blood stains around the protruding arrows, it must have at one point been very nice cloak, even if the design was strange. Who would want to stitch representations of eyes on the sleeves of a cloak?
If he had been, well, alive, she would have asked the man where he got it.
Letting go of the material, her eyes were drawn to a scar on his chest which showed through a hole burnt through his shirt. She traced the damage with her hand, recognizing it as the brunt of some dark magic attack near his heart, possibly confirming the involvement of dark mages in the caravan's attack. Regardless, whoever this guy had been, he'd gone through the wringer more than once. She felt his chest move up as he breathed-
Her thoughts ground to a halt: he was breathing.
Didn't that mean-
Was he alive?
Anna floundered a moment before she checked for a pulse. The beat was faint, but there.
"H-hey, can you hear me?" There was no reply.
Even when she slapped him, he made no response.
She stood and frantically looked around; the dead-eyed audience surrounding her was not encouraging. She wasn't a healer! Even though she sold healing rods and staves, she couldn't actually use them. And, she had just sold the last elixir in her stock to-
Her gaze met with her customer from earlier.
She glanced back to the probably dying man. "Uh, hold on a second!"
She dashed over, doing her best to ignore the fact she was passing by both people and animals that were very much dead, and rifled through her previous customer's pockets.
She growled in frustration. "Come on, where is it?"
There! Her hand met the familiar shape of the bottle that not less than half a day earlier she had sold from her stock. For a moment she paused: was it really okay to just take this? Maybe she didn't know these people, but mere hours before, they had been alive.
She shook her head. No time to think.
Quickly unstopping the mixture, she hurried back to the maybe nearly dead man. Tilting his head up, she opened his mouth and slowly poured the potion in.
The man reflexively swallowed. For what felt like an agonizing minute, nothing happened. Weren't elixirs supposed to work quicker? Anna worried that in her haste she'd messed something up.
His eyes snapped open and he took a huge gulp of air, one hand immediately going to his neck as he gasped in and out for air. His eyes darted around frantically, unfocused.
"Whoa, whoa, easy," she murmured, trying to assuage some unknown fear. The man's eyes locked on to her so suddenly it made her pause. "Uh, are you okay?"
Internally, she berated herself; of course he wasn't okay! He'd probably been teetering on death's door for who knows how long now!
"…Anna?" his voice croaked.
Her mind reeled. He knew her? How? She racked her brain trying to place his face, but came up blank. One of her sisters, then?
It wasn't until she felt the man go slack in her grip that she noticed his eyes roll up into his head before he promptly passed out.
"No, no, stay with me!" His only response was a groan, even after she slapped him again.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. This was getting surreal. A dying man who might know her in the middle of a caravan of corpses. Whatever the case was, he owed her for what she was about to do, big time.
After snapping the shafts of the arrows off, Anna awkwardly half carried, half dragged the man back to her cart. She shoved aside merchandise to make room, before she was able to get the man situated inside.
Glancing at the setting sun, she tried to judge how much longer she had until she would reach Izumo's capital. The area around the capital city should have been relatively safe, even at night. But this attack, or, whatever it was, severely shook her confidence.
She went back her horse, who neighed worriedly as she approached. He looked very eager to get moving again.
"Yeah, I'm spooked about all of this too, Aden." She stroked his mane and glanced back towards the unconscious man in her cart. He needed medical attention, far more than she could hope to give. Thankfully, she knew a good healer.
Turning back to the path ahead, she patted her horse once more before boarding her cart. "Looks like we'll be going further than I thought today." She snapped the reins. "C'mon. Let's go."
For once, her horse complied without complaint.
A/N: Anna has no idea what she's getting herself mixed up into. She's also unintentionally genre savvy, since if this was an actual Fire Emblem Game, there would have been bandits.
That being said, wow. I wasn't expecting quite the response I got from last chapter. Thank you all!
Also, though the story will make it clear before too long, to answer one question from one of the guest reviewers, no, this story won't be following any of FE Fates "paths." It's been done before by other authors, and I don't want to just insert Robin into Fates' existing story.
