Chapter III

Paradise's Entrance

The sound of bells echoed in Eirika's mind, echoing so loudly that she knew she had to be ill. Against her aching body, she pushed herself up and opened her eyes to reveal a bleary world of reddish colors, rather like flames waving in the breeze. She frowned.

What had happened after she fell asleep? She couldn't remember anything except for a sickly scent she couldn't recall completely.

Nauseatingly slowly, her vision fell back into place and she could see that she was lying amidst a field of flowers, all the plants the same type of red spider lilies, all of them moving melodically to the sound of bells – the source of which she could not see. The field of flowers was surrounded on all sides by a tall forest not too far away, with trees twisted in a horrific sort of manner and, although the flowers were in full bloom, all the trees were leafless and dead.

Was she still asleep? No, she could never feel this sick and sore in a dream. This was real, strange and eerie, but tangible and physical. Eirika stood, and, gripping her pounding head, looked around with warm bile rising in her throat.

One look around this odd landscape told Eirika two things. The first was that she was completely alone with not even her rapier or the Sieglinde at her side, and the second was that whatever this place was had been drastically altered by magic in a way that was disturbing, ethereal, and mesmerizing at the same time.

The sky that looked down upon her was horrific. It was broken, with various weather patterns stitched together in a sick manner. Some parts of the sky were clear blue and sunny, while some were stormy and raining and one section was even fire red and filled with thick clouds of pewter gray. It gave the field a strange mixture of sunshine, moonlight, and darkness that made Eirika shiver.

Where was she?

"Hello misses! Are you lost as well?"

Turning quickly, Eirika found herself looking up into the beaming, smiling face of a redheaded young man. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she recognized the face hidden partially by a black hat, though the adrenaline didn't leave her veins just yet.

"Joshua, is that you?"

He certainly looked enough like the Prince of Jehanna, but there was also the sense of hostility that Eirika had felt before and a dazed, far-away look in his eyes that didn't look normal. What bothered Eirika the most was the smell; the putrid stench of belladonna on Joshua's clothing and breath. The doppelganger cocked his head to the side and grinned widely.

"Possibly, possibly . . ." he said strangely, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet like an impatient child. He went rigid for a moment and snapped his fingers, "I suppose I am! Ironic how you knew my name, misses!"

"This isn't funny," she said, hoping she didn't sound too frightened. Her head was beginning to spin painfully, though Eirika didn't know if it was because of fear or the nausea that turned her stomach. Joshua (or whoever this man was) merely grinned wider and shrugged his shoulders obnoxiously.

"Nothing's ever funny if you don't find it funny," he said whimsically, nodding as if he'd just revealed some important secret. Eirika scowled darkly.

"Where am I?"

"Why, you're in Paradise, of course!"

Paradise . . . Hadn't Alice mentioned something about playing games in Paradise? Was this some sick game? Eirika clutched her aching head as Joshua walked in front of her, his wide strides not disturbing the flowers the way her steps did. She felt around on her belt for the small coin purse she had and pulled out a single copper coin – tarnished and rusty, but hopefully enough to serve her purpose.

"Joshua, would you like to make a bet?" she asked casually, holding out the coin on her palm. If this was the real Joshua, he'd jump at the idea of gambling and if he was indifferent, well, she'd have to find some weapon to defend herself in that case.

The redhead went perfectly rigid and turned quickly on his heels, looking at her in something close to torment. Eirika forced to keep her face straight and voice free of delight as she spoke. So this man was the same swordsman that had traveled with her since Serafew, but under some sort of spell or enchantment.

"If I win, you'll have to stop doing this charade. If you win, you can continue being whatever you want."

Personally, Eirika hated games of chance, one of the many things she shared with her brother. They were too risky and usually the games were rigged in your opponent's favor, but for the moment, Eirika didn't care. She knew now that Joshua was just bewitched from the way he'd acted at the thought of gambling, and it was in her favor if she could snap him out of this stupor.

"Tails," he said quickly, his wide smile fading slowly. Holding her breath, Eirika flipped the coin and watched it spin in the air enviously slow. Finally, it fell right back onto her palm and she looked at the carvings made on the copper surface.

It was heads, in her favor.

Eirika grinned to herself as she slipped the coin back into her purse, but the grin faded as she looked at Joshua. He was swaying slightly where he stood, a dreamy smile on his face. "Joshua?"

"I suppose that is my name!" he said in that same obnoxiously chipper voice and her heart fell. He was still bewitched, or whatever was making him act this stupid, and Eirika said nothing as he continued rambling. "Suppose that's me, Joshua, isn't it?"

Not for the first time, Eirika wished she knew magic. Then she could snap him out of this and she could possibly get answers as to how they'd gotten here . . . wherever here was.

"Where is Paradise?" she asked delicately, being sure to avoid a patch of rain and wincing as her pale eyes looked again at the shattered sky.

"Paradise is in Paradise, of course!" he said again and she scowled darkly in irritation.

"But where is here?"

"In Paradise!"

This conversation was only making her head pound furiously. Eirika looked over at the crooked trees not too far from where they now stood, eyeing the path that cut through the gnarled trunks.

"Where does that path lead?" she asked, pointing.

He turned quickly towards her, snapping his heels together and grinning in that annoying manner that she was growing to hate so quickly. "It leads to wherever you wish to go, misses!"

This was pointless. Eirika stared in exasperation at the dazed face of her former traveling companion in disbelief. "Does the road lead anywhere? To a town, maybe?"

"Maybe, maybe," he said cryptically, "I know! It leads wherever you want it to lead to!" Eirika shook her head, only increasing the pounding pain of her headache, and turned towards the entrance of the forest path. If it did lead wherever she wanted it to lead, then it would show her to a town where she could get some answers as to where she was and what had happened to Joshua.

The Prince of Jehanna followed her still, remaining completely silent unless it was the rare occasion she asked him a question. Luckily, this left her some time to gather her thoughts on the situation, to try and calm the overwhelming sense of fear that she had.

Where was she, since the title word Paradise didn't explain very much? It didn't answer why the sky showed jagged slices of weather and why Joshua was acting so strange. She pushed away low branches of the trees upon entering it, wincing violently at the disgusting smell of decay that hung around the woods.

It was as if nothing had lived in the forest for decades. The trees were twisted and a dead black, and no foliage graced the ground, aside from dead bundles of thorns that had not lost their sharp sting. Everything was bleak, colorless and empty, and filling her with even more panic. Here she was, wandering through woods with nothing but a bewitched swordsman at her side.

She rubbed the spot where thorns had snagged her skin, thin speckles of blood dripping down to the ground. Eirika heard a wince and turned sharply to see that Joshua was looking at her in deep concern, the dreamy look gone slightly from his eyes.

"What's the matter?" she asked hastily, reaching for her rapier out of habit, even though she knew the sword wasn't there.

"I think you angered the trees," he said in a singsong voice. Eirika would have been greatly relieved, if sharp talons hadn't gripped her arms and throat before she could process the thought. Unable to scream in fright or even think, Eirika could only look up with fright in her blue eyes.

The tree had grabbed her, its thin branches moving soundlessly as it lifted her up, its clawish grip cutting deep into her throat and torso so that warm blood flooded her mouth and front. She could see more the thorny vines that adorned the base of one gnarled oak grow rapidly, as if by magic, and begin to snake their way towards Eirika's prison and Joshua's legs.

The swordsman made no sort of stand as the thorns cut into his legs and merely stood, smiling in that blissfully ignorant manner as another tree grabbed the back of his coat. He hung there like a rag doll and turned towards her, still grinning dazedly. "Well, this is a bit of a bother, isn't it, misses?"

She couldn't have answered him even if she had wanted to, because she had no breath to spare. All her attention was, for the moment, focused on the humiliation Eirika would receive if Ephraim could see that she, the Princess of Renais, was at the mercy of a group of trees.

"Hello, Alice; are you feeling well this morning?"

Tobias McArthur forced his lips into a thin smile as he looked at Alice McGee. The girl had recently been moved out of solitary confinement to one of the private rooms, Eleanor having forced the removal though those damnable lawyers of hers. Just looking at her, though, Tobias couldn't see why she had been needed to be kept under such tight security.

Alice had the appearance of a china doll, with pale hair and milky skin that had gone gaunt from the time in the rubber room. Her eyes, a light shade of pale blue that was unnerving, were sunken and surrounded by deep circles. She did, however, smile serenely at Tobias and turn towards the windows of her new room.

"Quite cheery. I've made new friends," she said in that melodic voice that sent shivers up his spine – and he had dealt with a lot of worse cases then Alice McGee's. "They're playing a game with me."

Tobias clicked his pen and began scribbling on the clipboard he carried. It was standard procedure for most of the severe cases to write down anything unusual the patient says. Although, in retrospect, there wasn't a lot of normal things his patients said.

"Why don't you tell me about these friends of yours, Alice? Are they friendly?" he asked, forcing his voice to sound kind and taking a seat at the small table in the room. Alice blinked slowly and tilted her head to the side, still starring intently at the closed window where rainwater dripped down. It always rained in this part of the country.

"Why should you care, you little lapdog of my mother?" she snapped, turning quickly to Tobias and narrowing her eyes dangerously. He was suddenly very glad that she was bound to the bed and free of anything sharp. "Why should you care, you don't believe me anyway!"

"Alice, calm down or I'll have to give you something to make you calm down," he said slowly, narrowing his own eyes and glaring down at her skeletal body. When she had first come to the Radcliff Asylum, she had been of a fine build and now she was barely healthy.

"LIKE YOU CARE!" she snarled viciously, struggling against her bonds, "LIKE ANYBODY CARES! My friends care about me! They're play hide and seek with me! They won't tell me I'm crazy or lock me up because I gave Paradise some friends!"

Tobias looked towards the nurse standing by the doorway, holding a tray where three syringes lay, each filled with a mild tranquilizer. The nurse hurried forward and Tobias took the needle delicately. Alice's eyes narrowed further and she stopped struggling. When she spoke, her voice was a thin hiss of hatred.

"I suppose that you think I'm insane too, don't you, Dr. McArthur?"

What a stupid question. Of course he thought that she was insane, he'd been the one that wrote up her diagnostic, but years of working with the mentally ill had taught Tobias that it was a bad idea to say it to the patient's face.

"I don't think you're insane, Alice," he said calmly, keeping his voice kind and eyes focused on her deathly blue, "Why don't you tell me a little more about all these new friends of yours?"

That brought a thin-lipped smile to her face and a misty look to her eyes. Alice's voice was dreamy when she spoke, fidgeting slightly in her straight jacket. "I have a lot of friends now; lots and lots of friends. But I like Eirika and Ephraim the best. They're the nicest. I've known them the longest. Twelve years, to be in fact."

"How are they nice? Do they give you things, or tell you nice things?" Tobias asked lazily, setting the syringe back on the nurse's tray. Alice pursed her lips and continued in a whisper that he had to strain to hear.

"They play with me. Ephraim likes the things I like, Eirika likes the games we play." Her lips curved in a wicked smile and she fell back onto the pillows of her hospital bed, looking at the gray ceiling tiles. "We guard what is between their Heaven and this Hell. Our Paradise is our Purgatory . . ."

"Did these people teach you that song, Alice?"

She didn't seem to hear him and continued, "We are the guardians of the gate . . . Rubbed clean by the oils of the Queen's belladonna. We guard the gate to Hope."

Tobias thought back to the newspaper articles he had read, when Alice had recently been incarcerated. The story of her trial had listed all fifty people she had confessed to killing. At least twenty of them had died of poisoning and of those twenty; fifteen were dead from belladonna root. It seemed to be her favorite plant, as the house she shared with Eleanor Radcliff had had sprawling gardens of beautiful plants, all poisonous, with belladonna the greatest in quantity.

She shut her eyes and spoke weakly, her breathing slowing down slightly. "The Twins can't escape Paradise. They will play hide and seek with me . . ." She stopped talking and moving.

Tobias quickly pressed two fingers to Alice's neck, pleased to feel a pulse. She had merely fallen asleep . . .

This was peculiar behavior for someone who otherwise fell neatly into manic depression and schizophrenia, but not too disturbing. Instead, he began to write down her eerie little song, trying to discern if the 'Twins' she spoke of in Paradise were her new friends Eirika and Ephraim, or more new friends of hers.

Either way, they were just delusions of her ill mind. They didn't exist; they were just hallucinations.

I do not own Fire Emblem, Nintendo does. I own all original characters.