Author's Notes: Well, I'm terribly sorry about how long this one took. Though this time I do have a bit better excuse, namely that I was trying my hardest to pull myself out of a hole made of failing university grades I put myself in during the fall. Finally got this one out (though sorry its so short), I'm not going to put any deadlines on the next chapter but it has atleast been started and has a bit more meat then this one.

As always feel free to comment on any errors, ways the story could improve, or things you liked about the story.

Disclaimer: Still don't own Fire Emblem, never will, never have

Chapter 6: Hurry up and Wait

The following few hours were less than pleasant. Trying to get any distance with two guys suffering from bloodloss was not fun for anyone, least of all those of us who were wounded. Well the vulenaries had stopped the bleeding and sealed over the wound, they couldn't replace our blood or remove all the pain of the sword strikes.

Oddly enough for me this was probably the first time I seriously thought about home since I got here. Maybe it was the prospect of bleeding out on foreign soil that finally got me to consider how I got here or how I might get back. The issue was that I couldn't solidly answer either of those questions. Last I knew I was fighting on a field in another universe with a bunch of other people who I had known for years. Now that fact and memory only left a few possibilities that made any sense, one was that I was in a coma and this was all a dream, and the other was that I was dead and somehow ended up here.

Neither of those were really good outcomes. For me or the people I was fighting with.

The worst part was that the second one was distinctly possible here, all those spot pass characters were long dead and for all I know I somehow got pulled through that gate and dropped here. That might also help explain why I showed up here with some of my gear, maybe it had 'clung' to my spirit somehow.

Those lines of thought weren't really helping my already rather taxed mind, and with a shake of my head I banished them to be thought over later. Preferably when we weren't on the run from an army of undead monsters.

Though for some reason other than those cavaliers, we hadn't encountered any other Risen, or any evidence that we were still being perused at all. Maybe the creatures weren't 'programmed' to pursue, the intro did have the Ylissian army get absolutely crushed without seemingly a chance to flee. That brought up a good question, did the risen have actual free will? Or were they just able to make slight changes on their 'orders?'

Either way we managed to put a good distance from where we fought the cavaliers, and were closing in on the rally point that we had been directed to what felt like a day ago. Though it had only really been a few hours at most. It was at that point that I got an elbow to the ribs courtesy of the other wounded member of the party.

"Gah," I exclaimed at the sudden impact, which got right through the armpit gap in my armour, "What is it?"

"You looked lost in thought, felt it might be good to bring you back to the real world," Edward said with a weak smirk, "Also needed to thank you for saving my butt."

"Hey we all got to stick together, we aren't those super badass champions that can take on armies by themselves"

"Wish we could get a few more of those, though I do wonder where the Prince is now."

"Probably preparing to lead a charge back into Plegia, though I kinda wish he had brought us along too," I say, if I remembered right he should be heading toward Ferox right now.

"Ya we could have been doing something useful instead of getting our rears handed to us by a bunch of undead."

Suddenly Amelia seemingly popped out of nowhere, her blond hair taking up most of my vision as she leaned into the conversation, "What are you two talking about?"

The sudden entry to the conversation had me jumping again, though this time out of fright instead of pain, "Jeez Amelia can't you make more noise when you walk or something? I didn't even hear you coming."

"That might be because you still have your helmet on?" Amelia responded with a humour filled questioning glance.

"Wait what?" I lifted my hand to my head I realized that yes, I still had my helmet on. How in the world had I missed that? Taking the heavy metal object off and packing it away in my bag I felt my neck loosen in relief. Seriously, how did I miss that?

I was opening my mouth to comment when, "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW."

I ended up leaping out of my skin again as Edward wore a shit eating grin. Which promptly disappeared when Amelia slapped him on the back of the head, "Don't do that, you'll make him go deaf."

I rubbed at my affected ear as I gave a pained thankful smile at the blond, "So, do Aran or the Sarg know how much longer it is till we reach the rally point?"

"No not really, none of us are from this area and it's not like any of us have a map. Though Koel grumbled something about it likely not being much longer."

"Thank the gods, cause I think I am ten minutes away from my legs falling off."

The group went silent and looked to the ground after that. As much as we were trying to avoid acting depressed after that lost battle it was starting to get rather difficult. Though we didn't have much time to worry about the silence before Gilliam turned back toward us and said, "Eyes front! We're here."

Looking up I saw that there were a lot more Ylissian soldiers then I think any of us had any right to expect. A few hundred troops were scattered out across a clearing and woods, sitting around checking their weapons and mumbling. Their unit officers were conglomerating in the middle of the clearing talking with eachother.

Gilliam huffed over his shoulder, "Stay here, I'll be back after I finish talking with the other officers."

That left the rest of us to mill around and we mostly just collapsed to the ground without care. The long walk had left us all exceedingly tired and we just wanted to get off our legs as fast as we could. Lying down on my back I closed my eyes and sighed, it felt amazing to get off my legs after walking so long. Beside me I heard a clash of falling armour and knew someone was sitting beside me, well another crash warned me to another of my teammates sitting on my other side, though I was to tired to really care.

When I started feeling someone poking me though I realized I wasn't going to get much rest, and with a sigh I opened my eyes. That resulted in me catching the sight of the shaft of a spear poking me in the cheek, pushing the poking object away I growled, "Gah can't you guys let me rest for like five minutes without poking me."

A few voices all started at about the same time, but they were all cut off by Koel, who was somewhere behind me if I were to guess, "How bout you look up first before you whine?"

Following that rather derisive advice, and noticed that the sun had moved quite a bit since I closed my eyes, I have no idea when I fell asleep but I could only guess it had been for atleast three hours, pushing myself off the ground I muttered, "...well crap, didn't even feel like I had fallen asleep..."

"You were snoring really loudly," Edward said from his seat nearby rock, Leonardo was resting on the ground beside him.

I waved that off, fairly sure if I had actually been snoring that loudly they would have woken me up long ago, though apparently that thought showed as Amelia chipped in, "We've been trying to wake you for the last hour,"

"Yes if you hadn't been snoring we would have thought you were dead," came Aran's voice, the man having apparently decided to try to emulate me and Leonardo and was lying on his back in the grass.

"I'd say you were loud enough to raise the dead, but they seem to be doing that well enough on their own," Koel interjected back in.

Sighing, I palmed my face, who would have known it would only take extreme physical and mental exertion to get me to sleep like a rock for once, and snore. Well atleast no one outside our little group here seemed to care that much, though that may have been because it was rather hard to hear other conversations over the general muttering and the sounds of the officers still arguing.

A few hours and they still hadn't come to a conclusion over what to do, I half expected that most of them had lost their voice by that point but the argument was still continuing with wild gestures and points at a map. To be honest I couldn't see that argument going on much longer, but who was I to know how the officer corps worked.

"So other then me snoring and the officers shouting, did I miss anything?" I asked, rubbing some sleep out of my eyes.

"Naw much no,"Nephenee responded, "Really I think every'ne took tha time to snooze too."

Apparently my guess was right, as only a few minutes later the group of officers finally finished their argument. A few of them stomped away but most looked like they were moving with more purpose than anger at whatever outcome they had come to, and Gilliam was as always in the 'calm' category.

That still didn't mean the large knight was going to take the time to get all the way over to us before he started barking at us, "Everyone on their feet, I want us moving out now."

A moment to shake the stiffness out of our bones was apparently a too long as our sergeant threw us all a rather frightening glare, and as soon as we had all stood up he did an about face and waited. The rest of us might have asked him a question as to why we were waiting, if it hadn't been for the feeling in the air that if we said anything we would regret it.

It didn't take long to see why we waiting though, as the other units scattered around the clearing were getting to their feet and getting into marching order. We quickly followed suit and formed up into our small ranks as the first groups began marching out of the clearing.

We were one of the last groups to leave the clearing, and when it was our turn we all let out tired sighs and began marching.