Chapter IX

Human Stakes

"Do you gamble, Dr. McArthur?"

It was an odd question to be asked of him, Tobias thought emptily, watching as Alice drew with her crayons and paper. The thick black outlines of the people stood out so painfully against the white of the paper.

He couldn't actually remember a time when he had gambled. Perhaps in college he had, or on a dare once or twice, but never for any high stakes. Scribbling down her question inside the journal he had begun to keep of her (Tobias was sure he'd make a fortune with Alice's story someday), he answered in a kind voice.

"I don't think I ever did, Alice," Tobias said, forcing his face into a smile, "Did your friends ask you to gamble?"

She gave a cold laugh, lifting up the crimson crayon to color in her drawing's long hair. Unlike the other pictures Tobias had previously seen her draw, which all pictured the teal-haired Eirika and Ephraim, this new drawing was of a redheaded man with a pirate-like hat atop his head. He was drawn in the same stick figure style that Alice so frequently used.

"They don't need to ask me; I ask them." She pressed down hard on the crayon, coloring so hard that it snapped cleanly in half. "I've played the games before, and I love them dearly. It's how Joseph died, through my favorite game ever. Only good thing man ever did, methinks."

Tobias thought back to the list of victims of the Red Queen, trying to remember if there had been a Joseph amongst them. Then it hit him, and he swallowed hard against the sour bile that threatened to rise. The only Joseph killed was Joseph McGee, Alice's biological father.

The newspapers had dug up the information that Joseph had lost the custody battle over Alice and hadn't seen her for since she was a very small child, so his death had been ruled as suicide when first discovered – for it was a bullet to the temple. Alice, however, had confessed to murdering her father at her trial to it, along with the other forty-nine names – names including her step-father, best friends, and even a half-sister.

"What game is it, Alice?" he asked again, voice more forced than ever before, pen tapping against his clipboard irritatingly.

"Russian Roulette," she responded simply, a dreamy smile on her face, "One bullet in the revolver chamber is all it takes to play." Alice cast an eye over at Tobias, a sneer curling her lips in a manner and a chuckle passing her lips, "Of course, you'd never try such a fun game."

Tobias pushed his glasses up his nose, forcing himself to keep that smile plastered neatly on his face. "Do your friends Ephraim and Eirika play Russian Roulette with you? Did they ask you to play with them?"

She laughed again, this time an innocent giggle of a laugh that nevertheless sounded sickening. "They don't like gambling. Joshua does. Russian Roulette with them wouldn't be fun." Her eyes, however, brightened as she whispered out in ecstasy, "But sword fighting . . ."

He wrote more in the journal, under the growing column of her so-called "friends". With this new Joshua, that gave him three names and little to work off of. A small part of him wondered how insane it made Alice if she had three imaginary friends, although his greater rationality and common sense told him it mattered not.

"Do you mind telling me more about Joshua?"

Alice ignored him for a long time. She tapped the crayon against the tabletop, looking at him with an odd expression in her blue eyes. Tobias knew from photographs of Alice McGee – the ones prior to incarceration – that her eyes had been bright and beautifully crystalline, an eternally smiling blue.

"Is there something you want to tell me, Alice?" he asked hesitantly, though not unkindly. He had once made the mistake of speaking to a patient harshly and still had the scars from the woman's fingernails and teeth.

"Did you know that in the Middle Ages, the insane were simply stoned to death," she said softly, not a question but more of a demand for knowledge.

"That isn't true for all cases," Tobias explained, glad to know he remembered something from the millions of history classes he had been forced to take, "Monasteries and clerical hospitals would give them shelter and aide."

"Bullshit!" she laughed, raking her fingers through her hair and drawing her knees up to her chest, "Humans aren't kind enough to help others less fortunate, unless they get praise or price themselves." She inhaled a shaky breath and spoke quicker, softer, less sane, "But they're different, all of them. My friends are kind and they don't get rewards for it, but they're special. They can't do wrong."

"Every human does wrong, Alice. Nobody's perfect."

Immediately after he spoke, Tobias regretted speaking at all.

Alice stood sharply, eyes wide and full of such malice and fury that Tobias could see exactly how this eighteen year old girl had killed fifty people for such stupid reasons. Her breath was coming in short gasps, her voice shivering when she spoke, and her words – the words that she screamed out at the top of her lungs – sounded the sanest she had ever spoken in his company.

"MY FRIENDS ARE PERFECT!" she snarled, "EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! PERFECT! PERFECT! PERFECT!"

She lunged for Tobias, grabbing him by the throat, digging her short nails deep into his throat, attempting – or so it seemed – to tear his neck in two. His breath ceased immediately, his body paralyzed from the sudden shock of the attack and restriction of breath so that when Tobias finally attempted to strike back, he couldn't muster the energy.

Why was her grip so strong, so unnaturally strong for a teenage girl that hardly weighed one hundred pounds?

"AND SOMEDAY, YOU'LL KNOW TOO!" she snarled into his face, and for a moment Tobias thought he had seen a flicker of orange in those blue eyes of hers. It was most likely the lack of oxygen to his brain playing tricks with his vision.

Finally, summoning all his might, Tobias swung his fist against Alice's face, knocking her backwards and causing a sliver of red blood to run down her nose. She collided with the metal post of the wrought iron bed with a loud crack and she slid down to the ground in a heap. Her eyes were glassy, but she was breathing evenly enough, blood slipping down her temple.

He gasped for breath, leaning on the chair Alice had sat in, rubbing his throat and wincing as he felt the beginnings of deep brushings on his skin and the trickle of blood down his fingertips.

Tobias might not have been the strongest of men, but he was certain he could have held his own against someone of height and weight and age as Alice McGee – criminal record or not.

Why was it, then, that he could not fight her off?

Eirika inhaled several breaths of stagnant air, shivering as she inhaled heavy scents of lime and rotten flesh. Her eyes darted from Seth's unmoving body – although he looked more like a cadaver than a living person now – to Joshua standing eagerly behind her, blinking whimsically like a child, to Bill before her, smiling serenely.

"That's the spirit!" said Bill with a laugh, his wide eyes never leaving Eirika's face, "Name your second."

"Second?" asked Eirika quickly, her voice higher than she would have liked. What gambling games did she know that involved having a second? Considering she knew little about gambling, she could not name one.

"Of course. In case you lose, someone else should play. Its only fair Eirika and you wouldn't want to be unfair," he said with a dogged nod, looking up at the sky and smiling, "It's beautiful this morning, isn't it?" Eirika could not help but look up at the sky above and immediately wished she had not succumbed to the temptation.

The sky was black as night, the stars pinpricks of red light that somehow managed to ooze burgundy light into the clouds – pewter gray and sulfuric almost, angry and crackling with unnatural lightning. The moon – the moon Eirika could have sworn was a crescent mere minutes ago – was round and full and glittering blood red.

A grim prediction of her oncoming failure, Eirika supposed, feeling pinpricks of cold spreading across her arms and legs. She felt sick, but couldn't faint, not with Seth's very humanity on the line.

"Come on now, name your second Eirika," Bill asked again, "Do I need to do it for you?

"Ephraim," she answered on impulse. Ephraim would be able to deal with him, would be able to comfort and solve all this mess, like he always did when the two of them were little. More confidently, she told Bill, "My brother Ephraim will be my second."

"I'm sorry, but no." He looked down at Eirika with eyes that glimmered with merriment. Eirika's jaw tightened in response to the flood of horror and disappointment filling her. Why couldn't Ephraim be her second?

"Why?" she asked weakly, and Bill, stepping over a grave with a tombstone engraved with the name Wilhelmina Moore, answered, "I said no Eirika."

Eirika felt her stomach lurch and bile flood her mouth. Her fingers flexed for the hilt of a sword, something even to just break that serene woman before her, just to crack apart that wistful smile . . .

"Just tell me, why Ephraim can't help me," she asked coldly, cerulean eyes boring deep into Bill's golden. For the moment, her fear and nausea were gone and adrenaline flooded her, like it did when she was in the midst of combat.

"Name your second."

"Innes." She licked her dry lips slightly before continuing, "Prince Innes of Frelia." Eirika's second choice would have been Seth, obviously due to the knight's great loyalty and unfaltering success, but since she was gambling away his humanity (the thought brought a surge of illness to her), a substitute was needed. Innes would be the next best thing to having Seth, third to Ephraim in her book, but still . . .

"Splendid!" he said, "Now you do know, Eirika, that if you loose I'll have to take his sanity away from him. That's only fair."

"That wasn't part of the terms!" Eirika snarled, more out of horror than anger, her eyes widening. By Saint Latona, please don't let his sanity be put on the line, please don't let her be the one to kill her friend . . .

Bill shook his head. "Don't be snappish Eirika," he said firmly, "I suppose I'll be her second." He gave a long whistle with his fingers, like her father used to do to get the dogs when he took Eirika and Ephraim hunting.

The smell of blood soon filled the air; thicker than the stench brought by Seth's wounds. It was too overpowering, so that Eirika's stomach lurched, and this time she could not handle it. She collapsed to her knees, emptying the meager contents of her stomach onto the ground and breathing heavily.

It was several minutes before she could stand again, as if the smell Eirika had grown accustomed to through war had fatigued her greatly. She stared at the blonde man with as much hatred and strength as she could muster, and her eyes fell instead upon the body lying at Bill's side.

Tana. Facedown, unmoving, skin alabaster white, her arms and legs torn apart by thorns and minor wounds, seeping blood across the ground just as Seth was doing . . .

How long she stared at the unmoving, possibly dead, body of her best friend, Eirika didn't know. How she could even stand, after all of this in such a short time, after everything that had happened since Grado invaded Renais, Eirika didn't know.

For the moment, she was beyond scared, beyond horrified, and her mind so fatigued it was alert and keen and ready to make Bill pay.

"What's the game?" Eirika demanded, her voice low and full of an uncharacteristic order for an answer.

Bill spread his arms wide, his fingers twitching slightly. Eirika stood still, strong despite the fatigue and denial, not really comprehending what was going on. She was barely half conscious, not really seeing the graveyard and its demonic sky and yet . . .

Tana's body began to stir, and something resembling relief spread through Eirika. So she wasn't dead, so Tana could still be tended to by a healer's magic.

However, as the Frelian Princess rose to her full height, she stood at a limp stance, back arched unnaturally, face falling to her chest with hair obscuring her eyes – blank, navy eyes without a hint of life or warmth to them. With a start, Eirika recalled another who had stood like that with a look just like that in their eyes . . .

It had been Orson's resurrected wife, Monica, controlled by Lyon's Necromancy. The misshapen lump of diseased flesh and decayed skin who doggedly repeated 'Darling, darling, darling . . .' and living in the suite of Eirika's long dead mother . . .

"Duel," Bill stated simply.

Tana's hand fumbled before her, brandishing a weapon that had not been in her hands there seconds ago. It was not her silver lance, as she had wielded since accompanying Eirika in Carcino, but a long sickle, a scythe whose blade was smashed and dented and stained with blood.

"Last one standing wins."

This wasn't a game of chance, Eirika thought in panic as she dodged the slicing lunge of the sickle, this was a battle, and battle was something Eirika could do.

Unfortunately, she could not do it against her oldest and dearest friend.

Tana's body moved sluggishly, her head lolling as she swung the sickle around with surprising accuracy. As the Frelian Princess moved, Bill's arms moved in the same manner, fingers twitching spastically, almost as if he were the puppeteer of the marionette that Tana had become.

Eirika ducked behind a headstone, panic rising in her chest and snapping her out of the stupor she had fallen into. Her eyes darted around frantically for a weapon – a heavy stick, a piece of stone from a headstone, anything at all – and found nothing.

"Now don't hide Eirika! Cowardice isn't a virtue!" called Bill merrily and Eirika had to dart out from behind the headstone just as Tana's sickle was thrown into the dirt exactly where Eirika's leg had been.

The Renaitian Princess stared at Tana as she lugged at the sickle, her breathing heavy, wondering what she needed to do. Did she have to kill Tana in order to win Joshua's and Seth's freedom? That was something Eirika was sure she could never do, of that she was certain . . .

Instead, Eirika looked at Bill. He was dancing around as if conducting an orchestra, fingers twitching in time to Tana's movements. When Eirika squinted, however, she could catch faint glints between Bill's fingers and Tana's arms and legs.

Metallic wire. Marionette string. Mind working quickly, a plan began to form in Eirika's mind, and had she not been preoccupied she would have been proud of it. If she could snap the wires Alice was obviously using to control Tana (what other reason could it be?), then Eirika could possibly win the duel without ever having to hurt her.

The thought, however, didn't last long, for her scream rent the air in a second, her blood turning cold.

Tana stood over Eirika with her head lolling to her chest, and, swinging the glaive full-force at the Renaitian Princess, made contact with her side. Had Eirika's breastplate been in place, she would have been spared an injury, but since she'd removed it in Radcliff Manse . . .

Blood pooled from the wound across Eirika's hands, which were rapidly loosing coloring. She fell to the ground, body numbing, clutching at her side where she could feel muscle and tissue and perhaps even her ribs in the wound . . .

Was this how she was going to die? By the glaive held in the hands of Eirika's oldest, dearest friend, in a graveyard with so much at stake? Had she failed Seth, failed Tana, Innes, Joshua . . . that badly?

"EIRIKA!"

Who had screamed? She didn't know . . .

Eirika laid her head on the ground, clutching her side, shivering in pain and cold, the loss of blood causing her vision to fade out in nauseating blotches . . . Although she could not feel the tears, she was sure she was crying.

"EIRIKA! PRINCESS, PLEASE! WAKE UP!"

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