Ignatz' leg hurt like hell, but he wasn't going to say anything.

It had taken weeks to convince Shamir he was ready. Byleth had told him that once his archery instructor gave him a pass, she'd let him come along.

Shamir had made him run. She'd made him dodge. She worked him until she was satisfied he could survive adequately. And even then, she made him promise to stay in the back of the group. He'd agreed, of course. The Adrestian Longbow on his back certainly wasn't a close-quarters weapon.

The one thing he had not practiced was riding a horse. It turned out that the constant bobbing up and down as the horse trot and ran made for pain.

And after his little teasing of Shamir (not all that little), he knew one mention would have him at Garreg Mach for the rest of the year.

It was frustrating, but Raphael had pointed out that it was care. That Shamir was concerned about him.

At first, he'd rebuffed it. Shamir caring about anyone except Catherine? Lunacy. But as he paid more attention, he saw it.

It made him work harder.

Though for today, he was content to let Raphael set up their tent while he tended one of the fires in the small clearing. It could hardly be called a clearing, it was just an area where a few trees had fallen down. The knights and some of the Deer moved them aside.

"I hope you're ready for a true delicacy tonight," Claude said as he sat down at the fire which had become the Deer's despite the other two campfires being far less populated. "I bring to you squirrel."

Hilda gagged and Marianne looked horrified. Dorothea chuckled at the both of them. Claude rigged up a spit to cook them on, which of course he knew how to do. The man seemed to be filled to the brim with situational knowledge.

"Don't worry, squirrel is good," Leonie said as she took them from Claude, beginning to skin them. "Way better than rat."

"You ate a rat?" Hilda said, jaw dropped.

"You haven't?" Dorothea answered with a smile. Ignatz didn't think she was lying.

Raphael plopped down as Hilda fumbled for words, gazing longingly at the meat that was beginning to be cooked.

Lorenz walked up with his arms crossed. "Claude, there's deer the knights caught. Quit torturing Hilda."

Hilda cheered and Claude sighed. "But Lorenz, it's just so fun."

This, of course, prompted Hilda to smack Claude.

"Ah! Mercedes, Marianne, she has wounded me! Please, I require healing!" Claude called out, hand over his heart dramatically.

Ignatz saw Byleth, speaking with her father, turn towards them and raise an eyebrow.

"How about a nice pat on the head?" Mercedes offered as she just joined them.

Food began to be distributed. Everyone partook of the deer, though the squirrels didn't go to waste as Raphael, Leonie, and Dorothea made sure of that.

"I can never look at the squirrels at Garreg Mach the same," Marianne whispered. "We're eating their friends."

Hilda helpfully said, "I mean, the winter is pretty much here, they probably wouldn't have lived super long through it."

Marianne damn near wailed and every eye turned to Hilda with an incredulous expression, all asking the same question of how she thought that would help. She pulled Marianne away from the fire to go play damage control.

"Those two," Claude chuckled. "Give them to the end of the year, they'll be together."

Dorothea laughed. "Claude, you are so unobservant at times. They clearly already are."

But whatever defense Claude could mount went interrupted by Shamir.

The archer burst from the tree line, haggard and bereft of breath. Her eyes darted around the campsite as all eyes had turned to her, conversation dwindling.

"We're under attack," she said, quietly.

Meals were forgotten as weapons were taken up out of sheer training instead of conscious effort. Jeralt walked to her. "From who?"

"There are these…things," Shamir said. She stumbled over words, hands shaking. Shaking from fear.

Shamir Nevrand, scared. Ignatz felt his blood go cold.

"They look like people, but they're not," she went on. "Their veins, they're black. They tried to kill me out there. I put an arrow in one of their heads and it didn't stop them."

Jeralt put a hand on her shoulder. "Shamir. What are they?"

She opened her mouth and there was a scream. But not hers.

One of the knights was on the ground. He'd had his back to the forest and a man in ragged clothes was biting at his neck, tearing through flesh and muscle.

Someone had the presence of mind to cast, sending the creature back in a spout of flame. The creature wailed, falling off the body and jittering as the flames snuffed life.

Dorothea let out a breath as she lowered her hand which still trailed wisps of smoke. "What was that?"

Howls erupted in the forest, reverberating all around them.

"Form up!" shouted Jeralt. His lance was in his hand, a sword in the other. "Whatever they are, they're around us. Create a circle, casters in the middle! Archers, you too. Take any shot you can!"

The knights and Deer scampered to obey. Ignatz felt himself get pushed into the center of the circle by Raphael, where he was useless. Archers clung to the sides, but their bows didn't require as much room as his did.

Useless.

A woman ran out of the forest on all fours, bounding like a dog. An arrow caught her below the jaw, tearing her head half off. The spurt of black blood landed on the ground, sizzling.

"Watch out for their blood," Claude said as he knocked another arrow. The creature still twitched, but didn't move from the ground.

"Ignatz," Mercedes said, standing next to him. "Stay close to me, I'll protect you."

He nodded, wringing his hands helplessly. There was nothing else to do with them.

Then, they came.

Ten emerged from the woods, slobbering and screaming and shambling in various states of decay as the black veins that were present on all of them had completely encapsulated aspects of them. Arms, legs, even faces; the color of night.

Ignatz felt heat around him as all the mages who could cast fire. With each thing that entered view, they were met with magic. Those who hadn't mastered fire summoned lightning, wind, and Marianne hurled shards of ice.

None of the creatures even made it to the melee fighters. When one slipped past the magical barrage it was met with a hail of arrows or the tip of Byleth's sword, which had a greater reach.

The few healers they had ran back and forth, checking their charges when the creatures got too close.

"Watch—ahhhhh!" screamed a knight as his shield was knocked aside. A monster beset upon him, biting into his nose before Lorenz skewered him. But it left an opening.

Two more ran into the circle, attacking those closest to them. One a Church healer and the other Mercedes.

Ignatz moved.

With his hands, he grabbed the arm as it swung down on Mercedes. Ignatz lost balance as he put weight on his bad leg, tumbling to the ground with the creature. Its claws stabbed into his back, but he grit his teeth and held it down, placing his other hand around its neck.

A sword sunk directly into its septum, causing one last spasm before it stilled. Jeralt barely spared a glance to Ignatz as he reinforced the gap.

The cuts on his back closed as Mercedes' light touch brushed against his skin, her muffled words not penetrating the pounding of his adrenalin heartbeat.

He grinned almost manically.

Maybe not so useless.

Hilda finished off one of the…things as it tried to crawl away. With an overhead chop, she severed its head, careful to avoid the splatter of blood.

Their camp was in tatters as the still standing rounded up the remaining creatures. Whatever had happened to the people, it inhibited their drive to flee. They didn't even try to escape, fixated on a taste for blood or murder or something. That was a better question for someone smart, not her.

The question for her, now that took the form of a blue haired woman staring at one of the corpses. She'd been doing that as the remainders were hunted down. Hilda had been watching her, making sure her despondency didn't get her killed.

Hilda didn't say anything as she walked up, taking a handkerchief out and cleaning the blood off. She wrinkled her nose at the smell and tossed it to the ground. She had more at the monastery.

Marianne said nothing at her approach. Not even when Hilda reached out and squeezed her hand.

"Marianne?" she whispered.

"Oh, hello, Hilda," she said, still not turning to her, not acknowledging her. Her eyes bored holes in the body.

"Are you…hurt?" Hilda asked, unsure how or even what to ask the woman.

Marianne said nothing for a time before shaking her head. "Would you call these monsters?" she finally asked.

Hilda frowned. "I mean, yeah. Once I finally come to terms with what the fuck just happened, I'm gonna have nightmares for months." She said it in jest, but she wasn't liable to forget the jaws snapping in her face before Raphael pulled the creature off her. "Why do you ask?"

"Do you think someone could love a monster?" Marianne asked.

"Mari, you're scaring me," Hilda said, clutching the woman she loved's hand. She knew that without a doubt even if what they were was still cloudy. She was certainly willing to wait for Marianne to come to terms with it.

Marianne turned her head to meet Hilda's gaze and the latter recoiled and the sheer darkness in her eyes. "Can someone love a monster?" she repeated.

Hilda opened her mouth to respond but had no words.

The woman nodded. "That answers my question. I'd like to be alone, Hilda."

Hurt, Hilda nodded, withdrawing her hand. "Is there something I can do?"

"I'd just like to be alone."

Biting her lip, Hilda nodded. "Okay."

Remire, or what was left of it, was burning.

"Dear Goddess," breathed Dorothea near her. Byleth couldn't help but agree.

She and her father had been to Remire plenty of times. It was one of the main hubs of activity before entering the greater Empire. Many people lived there, a delightfully agricultural community that needed help with bandit activity more often than other places. Good people lived there.

Had lived there.

Byleth grimaced as she stepped over a body. It wasn't marred like the creatures they encountered in the woods. Just a normal corpse. Sickening.

"Fan out and search for survivors," Jeralt commanded. "Saving those we can is the priority. If you find anything that might indicate cause, holler."

"Stay in groups," Byleth called out. Jeralt nodded in agreement and their party split into multiple groups.

"Let's search the east, Teach," Claude said as he leaned on his bow. He looked tired. They all did, Dorothea, Lorenz, Ignatz, and Shamir. They'd ridden hard and fast after the attack.

The six of them began their pass of the nearby area. Each body was checked if it looked like it could be alive.

Some had been strung up in a tree, staked to the trunk by lances. Shamir had been the only one to move to take them down. The rest of them were too overcome with shock.

"Dagdans do worse things to their prisoners," she said lightly, but it didn't hide the unease in her voice.

Other bodies had been caught by the flames. Houses either had collapsed in shambles or still burned. The Goddess' grace had overlooked Remire today.

The fire was easy enough to avoid for her, though that didn't stop the sweat pouring down here that had nothing to do with the heat. Her students instinctively moved to handle the scorched and still burning places, saving her from as much pain as they could.

"Help!"

Byleth turned to her right as she checked the pulse of a body. Nothing. But that call, it was a child. Someone living.

Claude was already moving. The cry came from a house, one still engulfed in flame.

"Claude!" she yelled, but there was no stopping him. He leapt through the door over a piece of burning wood.

"Dammit!" she yelled, throwing her cloak to the ground as she followed. Her vision darkened as she got close to the flames, the brightness almost muffling to tiny beads of light. Her body worked on muscle memory, mind no longer functioning.

My student, a voice in the back of her head whispered, is in danger.

She blinked and vision came back as she leapt over the same piece as Claude did. When she did, Byleth was in a house fire. The lick of heat touched at her bare legs and arms as she wildly looked around for Claude.

He was walking down the stairs, holding a little girl in his arms. Claude made eye contact with her just as the stairs collapsed under him.

She ran to his side, reach out to take his hand. He slapped it away and shouted, "The girl! Get the girl!"

Byleth swore and grabbed the child, who was screaming with her eyes shut. She couldn't be more than five. Burn marks covered her arms and the tears evaporated as soon as they were shed.

"Go!" Claude shouted, swearing his own storm as he tried to push himself up from the wood surrounding him. It collapsed under his hands, sinking him more and more into a pile of cinders.

Byleth ran to the door, holding the girl tight. When she cleared the entrance, Dorothea was there looking to jump in herself. She pushed the child into her arms and turned around, back into the conflagration.

Just as the cleared halfway through the house, one of the wooden supports broke above them. Byleth looked up as the roof fell onto them.

"Byleth!" screamed Dorothea. Lorenz grabbed her arm and urged her to wait, but she resisted.

That was their teacher in there! And Claude, their friend!

"Dorothea, let's be smart about this!" Lorenz shouted back, though he'd yet to take his eyes off the collapsed building. "Can you use ice?"

"Dammit," she sobbed. "No."

"A signal!" Shamir said, throwing her jacket off. "Throw up a signal, draw the others here. I'll get them out, but they'll need aid." And she was off.

Dorothea watched one of the bravest women she knew do the stupidest thing she'd ever seen and jump into a burning pile of wood. But it didn't stop her from raising her hand to the sky and snapping her fingers. A singular stream of electricity rocketed to the heavens, a cacophonous boom following its stead.

"Uh, everyone?" Ignatz' quivering voice called from behind them. Dorothea and Lorenz spared a glance behind them.

Two armored titans stood, one familiar and the other not. One, the knight who took Ignatz' leg minus his horse, the one the people had begun to call the Death Knight. His skeletal mask breathed a black mist from its mouth, some sort of enchantment that disfigured the voice.

But next to him stood a somehow more imposing figure. A similarly black armored individual who wore an expressionless mask while holding an axe.

"The professor ran in. But the Alliance boy is in there," their voice said. It was muffled, but resounding around them.

"Let them burn," growled the Death Knight. "Or let me finish them."

Lorenz raised his spear, the hand near the tip licking with flame. "Ignatz," he said, "get behind me." The archer complied, hobbling behind both Lorenz and Dorothea.

"Who are you?" Dorothea asked, raising a hand. Lightning began to tickle at her fingertips.

"I am the Flame Emperor," intoned the one with the axe. "Stand down, there is no need for us to—"

Dorothea didn't wait. The lightning jolted from her hand at the Death Knight, an iridescent streak that exploded into the armor of the skeletal man. With the same hand she brought it back in a fluid motion and snapped her fingers again.

The ground erupted beneath the armored figures, as if it had opened up to swallow them into its burning maw. Dirt and ash flooded back onto the three of them, Lorenz covering his eyes while Dorothea shut hers as tightly as she could.

When she opened them, the breath left her as there stood the same figures, armor a little worse for wear, but unharmed. The Death Knight spun his scythe menacingly and began to stalk forward.

Lorenz wasn't frozen by fear. He drew his lance back and hurled it. As it sailed he clapped his hands together and it ignited with embers, a streak of orange across the air. It crackled and sizzled and detonated upon hitting the Death Knight.

When the smoke cleared, the knight held a gauntleted arm up, having blocked the attack.

"Talented," the Flame Emperor said. "Death Knight, remove them. They're more trouble than expected."

"Finally," the sadistic knight growled. He began to traipse forward, holding the scythe in both hands as its blade began to leak a darkness that sucked in light.

"Lorenz…" Dorothea whispered.

"It's been a pleasure," he said as weak electricity crackled in his hands. "My friend."

She nodded. "Ignatz, run. We'll buy you time." Her hands lit ablaze as the black soldier walked ever closer.

But Ignatz walked up to her side, holding Shamir's discarded bow. He shook his head, staring directly at the man who'd crippled him. "I'm done hiding."

The Death Knight charged and Ignatz fired. The arrow plinked against the armor but Lorenz' bolt of lightning struck the arrow as it impacted, acting the conduit for the electricity to leap to the knight's armor.

The Death Knight roared in fury, his advance slowed but not stopped. Dorothea whistled and the glyphs around her hand began to speed in their rotation. Her hand began to shake as the sky opened up above them.

The Flame Emperor lurched forward, far faster than someone with their armor should, and collided with the Death Knight as the meteor hit them. The explosion knocked the three Deer back and off their feet.

For a moment, silence.

"No…no way," Dorothea gasped.

Standing in the crater were both armored soldiers, the Emperor glowing with a faint brightness that often lingered when someone's Crest activated. They'd survived and were none too worse for wear.

"Kill them, they've seen too much," the Flame Emperor hissed with the first real indication of emotion since their encounter.

"Get the fuck away from my students."

Dorothea looked over her shoulder.

Walking from the wrecked house was an armorless Byleth. All she wore were her tights and crop-top, her skin covered in ash. On one shoulder, she supported Claude who was breathing heavily, but alright. In her other hand, the Sword of the Creator glowed malevolently, just like the angers bleeding from her eyes. Dorothea had never seen such a raw emotion.

Shamir, who'd emerged coughing smoke as well, took Claude from the professor.

"Don't touch my students," Byleth seethed.

"Kill them all," the Flame Emperor commanded.

Byleth reacted instead of thinking. She closed the distance between herself and the two figures. They stood in a crater of molten rock and dirt, pieces of flaming stone around them.

She raised the heavy blade, facing the serrated tooth-like side to the ground. Her opponents moved slow, but began to encircle her. She let them.

"Hmph. Seems like the name Ashen Demon isn't far off for you," the Flame Emperor chided as they spun their axe in their hand. Neither of their weapons were bloodied, so Byleth took it as comfort that her students were unharmed.

"You haven't seen the demon yet," Byleth hissed. The Flamer Emperor was on her left while the Death Knight on her right.

Punish them.

Her sword broke into pieces and she whipped it at the Flame Emperor while moving towards the Death Knight. The whip barely made contact before she pulled it back into its sword form to strike the Death Knight's scythe, blocking its side strike before it collided with her arm. The darkness emitted a cold foreign to winter that leeched flakes of skin from her arm.

Byleth turned, removing her sword to let the knight's strike follow through. He lurched forward with the lack of resistance but raised a hand to catch the toothed edge of the sword. She grinned, slashing into the hand. The teeth pulled on the gauntlet, stripping it from the arm of the Death Knight.

The Flame Emperor closed the distance and smashed her with the butt of the axe. Byleth fell backwards into the boiling ground and rolled the side with speed only made possible by her lack of armor. She leapt up, grabbing the dagger at her belt and throwing it at the recovering Death Knight who easily blocked it. The Flame Emperor's next strike sailed above her head as she struck, taking the same teeth to armor, pulling instead of slashing.

The breastplate of the Emperor bent down before her sword lost its grip, exposing a gap in the plates. But before she could exploit it, the knight swung his scythe in the way a brawler would throw a haymaker: wild. She ducked backwards once, twice, and on the third time brought her massive sword up to catch the scythe, pulling backward the moment it connected and using the scythe's curved head yanked it from the Death Knight's grip.

She swung the blade at the now defenseless man, teeth grabbing the horns of the helmet and pulling like she'd done with the armor before.

The helmet sailed off, revealing the fair hair of Jeritza.

Jeritza leapt at her. Byleth swung but blade was caught by his remaining protected hand, this time him wary of the teethed edge. Instead she shifted the sword, Jeritza now holding a single segment of the whip as he lost his footing without the resistance of the boney blade. She retracted the sword and the shifted it again, raining whips strikes down onto the black armored man on the ground, the red fury in her eyes matching the crimson her blade bled in its vibrant energy.

Jeritza rolled out of the way of the first strike, but the second and third wailed on him. As the fourth rained down, his bare hand gestured towards her as glyphs surrounded it. A weak spout of flame smashed into her, knocking her back more than burning her. She fell to the ground, losing the grip on her blade.

The Flame Emperor walked towards her, hefting the axe. "Pray to your Goddess," they intoned.

A bolt of lightning struck right in front of the Emperor. A warning. They turned around.

The rest of the Deer and Knights of Seiros stood, weapons at the ready. At their head, Jeralt holding both a blade and spear in his hands.

"Get the hell away from my daughter," said Jeralt, his anger far colder and severe than the bleeding hatred Byleth had shown.

"This won't be the end," the Flame Emperor said. Instead of complying, they held out a hand to Jeritza who grabbed it. In a flash of violet light, they vanished as arrows flew past mere moments too late.

Byleth grit her teeth and pushed herself up as Mercedes ran to her side, a healing spell already on her lips.

Editing Notes:
5/3/2021: Minor revising to sentences to reduce wordiness.
8/26/2021: Minor grammatical adjustments.