She was enveloped in comfort. Like a blanket on a wintry night this warmth pressed snuggly all around her and she could not remember a time when she felt more peaceful and content. Byleth lay flat on her back, every muscle in her body soft and relaxed, pliable to gravity's soothing touch that drew her weight down to settle and rest. All was darkness and she realized that her eyes were closed. She must have fallen asleep. A deep contented sound vibrated in her throat and she wanted to find Dimitri's chest to lay on but her arms and fingers didn't move.
Perhaps she still wasn't quite awake and she was reluctant to rouse herself further from this cozy nest but she really did want to curl against Dimitri's side. Byleth opened her eyes dreamily but where she expected to see the stone ceiling of their room, she found an infinite black sky speckled with white sparkling stars. Surprised, she blinked to clear her vision and tried to crane her neck to look around but she was unable to lift her head.
Panic sparked in her belly as she tired again to move her limbs and her head but command them as she might they would not move. Her breath quickened and she tried to call out but her lips wouldn't open. The sound of her voice remained muffled behind her sealed lips. Her nostrils flared as the panic rushed, fully formed through her unresponsive trunk and limbs. This was different than being bound, someone could wriggle no matter the tightness of the binding. She was completely immobile.
Swallowing the fear in her throat, she focused on her breath which seemed uninhibited, thank the goddess, despite the shake in each exhale. As long as she breathed, she would not give up.
Her eyes were also free though her scope remained limited without the ability to turn her head. She could see the sky. It was nighttime, the dead of night based on the inky color. She was outside, she was certain of that as she could see branches of a great maples near the edge of her sightline and there was snow on the bare limbs. But if she was outside in the wintertime, in Faerghus, why didn't she feel cold?
She could hear her breath and the pounding of her pulse as it raced despite her best efforts to remain calm. Looking down toward her nose, straining until her vision shook, she searched for the mist of her breath but none came. Shutting her eyes and holding her breath, she searched for some other sound, any sound other than the wind and the creaking of the tree limbs as they swayed.
The wind kicked up wisps of snow that swirled above her and battered the tree branches. As a mass of packed snow fell from the branches it's landing muffled by what she could only assume was a snow covered ground. Then she heard a soft crunching sound that could be steps in the snow. The sound persisted. It was decidedly a footfall. Someone was coming.
Taking care to control her exhale, she waited. Adrenaline continued to crash throughout her as flight or fight attempted to take hold but she could do nothing except watch, listen and wait. Whoever had taken her was on their way back.
As they drew nearer and her gaze rolled skyward which, she noticed, had begun to lighten as though the sun were rising. This natural occurrence felt somehow wrong. It happened, was happening, too quickly and within seconds the black midnight sky was a pale, winter's morning blue. The crunching footsteps stopped just beside her out of eyesight and strain as she might she couldn't see who it was.
They stood quietly beside her, just out of eyesight and when she could stand it no more they began... snuffling? The strangeness of this sound so close to her ears was enough to jar her out of the tension that gripped her and, as she continued to listen, the snuffling became… what was that? Chewing? Suddenly there was the sound of snapping wood and a dark cloud of birds took flight in the sky above her.
A thunderous, stomping sound grabbed her attention and just as she looked to the side a deer bounded into her periphery. She winced and tried in vain to turn her head away, knowing in a moment she would feel the piercing hooves sink into her body. She braced herself but the pain did not come then watched in amazement as the hooves crashed across the plain of her face. The booming impact of the hooves shook her bones as they landed and then disappeared beyond what she could see.
Before she could recover from the shock of this, another faint sound caught her attention. It began as a pleasant hum, rhythmic in nature but grew to a roaring thrum that rattled the teeth in her mouth. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for the source of the noise and vibrations as it grew louder and nearer. Soon she realized that the sound had two sources, one to her left and the other to her right and met, crashing against each other where she lay. As the source drew nearer still, the sound became more distinct, drum-like in it's cadence.
But no, it was not a drum. Or maybe a drum made some of the sound produced by the marching of a great number of people. Stomping in unison, these feet approached and as they did the sound became so loud that her ears ached. She wished she could cover her ears and just when the noise and vibration became unbearable, there was silence. Had they stopped?
For a long while, all that she could hear was her own ragged breath in her ears and all that she could see was the soft blue of midday above with wisps of grey clouds passing in the wind. The limbs of the trees had sprung leaves while she was distracted and now turned upward toward the sun in vibrant greens that masked the bark of the limbs beneath. Mingled with the verdant dressings were small white flowers with feather-like petals that seemed to float like the clouds in the sky when the wind caressed them.
Despite the peaceful scene before her eyes, the air she sucked through her nostrils was electric, charged with something like fear or dreadful anticipation.
All at once, breaking the spring's tranquility, the shout of countless voices boomed into the air and the movement of feet once again rumbled against the ground. But where the sound before had been organized and rhythmic, this was chaotic and hurried. The twang of plucked bowstrings loosing arrows heralded countless shafts that rose into her field of vision. She recognized the sound of a charge to the battlefield and the fear of being caught in the middle of clashing forces paralyzed as she was rushed through her veins.
She winced and reflexively tried to turn her head away as shouting soldiers with weapons raised met above and on top of her. Just as the deer before, the soles of boots dug into the earth and bodies were pushed and pulled but she remained unscathed below. Metal clanged as swords of spears clashed against opposing weapons or shields and then the arrows fell.
Pained screams rose to prominence among the din and as she observed someone knelt above her to take cover beneath his shield. She could see his face, red and sweating, nostrils flared with his breath. She couldn't make out the color of his eyes, shadowed beneath his shield as he was but they were wide and wild. Arrows pinged as they struck the metal or thudded dully into the ground beside them.
Another soldier shouted as he ran at them and the man above her looked up just in time to bolt upright with his shield at the ready. She saw the flash of a blade in the sun and sparks flew when it hit the soldier's shield. She followed the soles of their feet until she could see them no longer.
Then the second volley of arrows came, rising to meet another wave of advancing soldiers. Screams pitched again as the arrows fell and her body tensed, motionless as steel tipped shafts whistled and fell unobstructed at her resting place. Fruitless commands to twist her neck and shield her face left her gasping when an arrowhead hit the air above her. The metal tip topped just inches above her eye. She could not look away, no matter how desperately she wanted to.
Among the roaring and shrieking, one voice rang out, reaching her with startling clarity. A man's voice or perhaps an older boy, crying out in pain. It cleaved into her ears as surely as if the arrow had pierced her eye.
Byleth had heard injured men howling before. She'd been the one responsible for eliciting such a sound from her enemies and, in the past, the Ashen Demon was deaf to begging or pleading. She killed without mercy or regard for the circumstances. So why did this one voice cut her so deeply?
The vibrations and pounding footfalls remained ever present but when this boy fell, his knees having likely given out, she felt the weight of his body even without seeing him. Her stomach lurched with a peculiar, intense longing to protect him but she was unable to do anything but witness.
She rolled her eyes toward him, straining to extend her sight lines further. Soon, the labored breath drew nearer and a hand, caked with mud and blood appeared across her face and fell, the fingers shaking as they fisted and clung to the air inches above her face. He was crawling, dragging himself forward.
Careless of the arrows that had previously fallen, he dragged himself further one excruciating pull at a time. Finally, she could see his face and her eyes softened, her vision blurring with the furver of her stare. This boy was hardly old enough to shave. His face, still full and soft from too few days alive, was so dirty that she could not determine his origins. Short hair, matted with dirt and blood clotted and clung to a brutal gash across the plain of his face.
Exhausted from the effort of hauling himself, he collapsed above her and she willed herself to speak, to move, to do something. The piteous sounds he made as tears streamed from his eyes stirred a distant memory where, on the heels of conflict, there had been so many lost and bewildered children searching for someone familiar only to find the hardened faces of strangers and soldiers about. Her stomach twisted as he whimpered for his mother and squeezed his eyes shut as though hoping he could disappear or remain unseen.
"Be still," she thought desperately. "They will think you are dead."
As she watched the boy cower and tremble above her, another figure approached from behind him. Her blood congealed in her veins when she caught sight of him over the boy's shoulder leveling a spear to throwing position.
"Please. Goddess please, let me…" she thought even as the weapon shot through the air to strike the lump of a boy where he lay. His body jolted and his eyes, they were blue or grey or some combination of the two, widened in shock and confusion.
He sat up just enough to clutch at his chest but the soldier fell upon him in an instant. With a brutal shove, he drove the spear further into the boy's body which tremored and jerked as the weapon mercilessly tore through tissue and bone.
The spear tip burst through his chest and blood poured from his mouth and injury alike. She wanted to scream and howl and rage at the scene playing above her. Anger erupted within her, thawing her blood to storm and roil in her motionless limbs.
The boy's eyes, wide and fearful began to cloud and whatever it was he saw was far away from this reeking field and charnel ground. With careless jerk, the soldier pushed the boy's body off of his spear and charged on with a blood thirsty shout, not sparing a lingering thought to the life he'd taken.
Unable to look away, Byeth watched with mounting fury and hopelessness as the life ebbed from his eyes. Other soldiers in her periphery fell, shrieking and bellowing, clad in various colors and signets but, heaped together there was no difference between them. They were all dead. The leaves were falling from the great trees, red and brown to settle atop the growing pile of corpses and the sun was setting the sky ablaze as it too fell.
Through all of this, she remained fixed on the boy.
His blood, thick and black oozed from the hole in his chest to pool beneath him and join with the blood spit from his mouth. The flows ran together, joining and growing and doubling in size until all she could no longer see beyond.
Byleth was not afraid of blood nor the gore of battle but, when it became evident that the blood had begun to soak the barrier between her the boy and that it was beginning to descend toward her, terror began to clutch and claw at her brain. It wasn't just blood. It was his blood. The blood of someone she'd born silent witness to and for the briefest of moments loved. She was certain she had loved the boy even if she could not say why. The agony of his demise and the scent of his blood was enough to drive her mad.
Closer and closer, she could feel the heat from it as it seeped toward her. Wild desperate eyes popped open to dart this way and that but all around her there were rivulets joining and converging until all was red and disgustingly humid. She tasted metal in her mouth and every breath she gasped through her nostrils wreaked of iron.
Panic gripped her as the boy's blood beaded, collecting into a heavy drop that dangled a breath away from her face. Her mind screamed and fractured as it fell, sticky and warm as it dribbled down the peak of her nose.
Every muscle spasmed and flexed as she struggled to move but the blood of the battle field continued in an endless river of butchery. All was red and black and hot, matting her lashes to her cheeks, sleeping into the cracks of her lips, filling her nose.
Hopelessness closed around her, crushing the breath out of her. There was no escape. There was no escape for her, for the boy or anyone.