Author's Notes: Hello everyone, hers a new update, slightly faster then the last one atleast. I lost the original version of the document but this version came out much better so I'm quite happy with that. Also for those who follow this story and might have seen this chapter go up earlier, sorry about that there was some serious technical issues with my previously uploaded chapter.

Kukyuo: I am fairly sure alot of people get turned off by the slow upload rate but I don't mind too much at the lack of popularity. As long as people keep reading I'll keep writing.

To all readers: As always feel free to comment on anything you felt was good, bad, or just needed improvement.

Disclaimer: One day I might own Fire Emblem, but that day definitely hasn't come yet.

Chapter 7: Dangers in the Night

I was really starting to hate marching, seriously it was hard enough just to walk all day but to walk all day with armour on and carrying a relatively heavy set of weapons was even worse. The rain didn't help either, making an already dreary march downright depressing.

There was no talking going on, at the most there was some muttered curses when people had to pull their feet out of the mud, or in more serious cases the shouts of their friends when someone fell fully into the mud and they needed to get them out before they night falling fast things were just bound to get worse but it seemed the officers were not planning to slow down.

As the sun set over the trees some units were fanned out to the flanks of the march, keeping watch to ensure that no ambush could get us in the dark. We were one of those units that got stuck on the flanks, and the rampant undergrowth in the forest we travelled through just made the march worse, though the extensive roots atleast kept the mud from swallowing us whole.

Finally, as darkness started to close in around us, I decided to break the hours long silence that had overtaken us, "Hey, did anyone think to get a torch?"

Nephenee muttered, "Do ye think one'll even light in this weather?"

"Can't hurt to try can it? So did anyone bring one?" I replied and looked to the others.

It was Aran that was the one to pull a stick with a blackened end, not that we could really see that in the deeping gloom, out of his bag. The green haired man passed it over to me as I pulled out my own flint and steel. It took a few times to get the thing to light up, but once we did the darkness around us was immediately pushed back, and we didn't exactly like what we saw.

Somehow these Risen had gotten right ontop of us in the few minutes we had spent trying to light the torch, and without a sound. However the hell that happened was not really in our mind at that moment, instead it was more a series of shouts,

"Holy shit Risen"

"What the hell"

"Risen, to arms men to arms"

Our squad wasted no time leveling our spears or pulling out swords at the Risen not more than 10 meters away from us. The undead soldiers apparently realized whatever stealth they had was gone, and charged us with a wordless roar.

The first of them reached us in only a few seconds, and ran themselves on a few of our spears. The issue with these undead remained though, that trying to stab a thing that couldn't bleed out with a spear wasn't exactly the quickest way to kill them. Infact the one that charged me was stopped for only a few moments by the spear sticking out of its chest, almost looking at it incredulously before it just pushed itself further along the weapon.

Letting the weapon stay in the undeads chest I pulled out my sword and struck out again, this time atleast the weapon dug deep and black miasma flooded out of the undead as it crumpled to the ground. Though three more were pushing their way toward me and the still battling other members of my group.

Unlike last time the army around us actually put out a good showing. I am not sure why but it may have had to do with a mix of broken pride and a lower number of Risen. With a whistling sound the charging risen were cut down, multiple javelins taking them and a number other of the undead that were charging out of the darkness around us. The ones my squadmates were battling were cut down either by their own skill or by a wall of spears that suddenly came around us. Well a single spear could only slow a risen down, getting stabbed by half a dozen of them at the same time seemed to overtax the creatures and they would fall apart like others.

As I retrieved my spear from the ground I looked around and saw the rest of the army forming into ranks around us. It looked like due to our position we would be stuck on the frontline of the new formation, but I actually had some trust in the line this time. It looked much more confident, and as I pulled back alongside my comrades we were fitted seamlessly in. Shields were locked and spears were levelled as another wave of the undead charged toward us.

Once again javelins and arrows flew over our head, striking down a few more of the beasts, but for every javelin that claimed a target, three failed either because they missed or because the undead soldiers just shrugged them off.

The Risen reached our spears quickly and this time there was enough of our weapons to atleast kill a few of them. The second row of spears the men behind us were holding at head height did most of the damage, and as the Risen that had impaled themselves on the spears of those in the first row it just made them easy targets for the men behind to stab.

The deaths of their predecessors certainly did nothing to delay the Risen in the rear lines and they kept pushing on. Our weapons being dragged down by the dead already on them an order ran through the first line, passed on by our sergeant, "Prepare swords and brace!"

So I brought my sword out once again, Amelia, Aran and Nephenee doing the same around me, well Edward and Koel just kept using their own weapons and Leonardo was nowhere to be seen. The archer had probably fallen back to provide covering fire.

We locked our shields once again, and braced for the next wave with our swords at the ready. Another wave of javelins, arrows and the spears behind us cut down some of charging undead but many still reached us with the ringing of weapons striking shields and armoured bodies impacting. A sword crashed against my shield and left my arm ringing, but stabbing out with my blade I caught the creature in the neck and nearly decapitated the Risen, causing it to collapse and let the next one get to me.

The next one carried an axe and kept a frightening amount of musculature, and its strike embedded its weapon in my shield. The no small feat was eclipsed when the creature yanked it back out without trouble and pulled me forward. I was unprepared for the pull and stumbled forward before it turned into a roll, which was probably the only reason I survived as the axe buried itself in the ground a few inches behind me. Rolling once more on the ground I slashed one of the undeads legs off and it fell to the ground with me.

Stabbing the Risen in the head was not too much of an issue the real problem was that I was now on the ground and out of the line. The undead were closing in on me quickly and I thought I was fucked. But a fireball from some of the few mages our army roared overhead and roasted many of them, buying me enough time to scramble back up and get back into position. Amelia had taken a rather nasty cut to her arm and the rest of the group wasn't looking too hot either, but there was no time to rotate out as another wave of the undead charged us.

If there is one thing I would give whoever was commanding these undead, it was that they atleast could adapt. Realising they weren't going to break us by mass charging alone the next group of undead to come out of the seemingly unnatural darkness around us were all armed much like we were. Advancing in something resembling a formation with swords and axes out infront and spears behind.

Shield crashed against shield and the battle turned into something resembling a wrestling match on a grand scale. A wrestling match if both sides were armed with sharp pointy instruments of death at the same time as our two lines pushed at eachother. The Risen had the advantage though, their undead strength slowly pressing us further back into the men behind us, but at the same time it seemed that they may be running out of numbers, as their ranks were thin. Trying to stab around the shield of the Risen infront of me, well not getting stabbed back was proving quite difficult. The long fighting was starting to wear down my arms and I gained a few new nicks before Nephenee finished off the creature across from her and used her brief respite to kick my Risen in the shin, shattering the creature's leg and giving me a chance to finish it off as it stumbled.

After that the battle started to wind down, the Risen were infact out of manpower, and no new ones came to replace the losses they suffered, leaving us soon standing on a battlefield littered with the corpses of the undead and our own.

Bending down I pulled a spear from one of the undead and used it to keep myself from falling over. The exhaustion of the fight quickly catching up with me and most of the others around me as the army started to stand down.

"Squad 7 form up," I heard Gilliam shout, evidently he was hoping that wherever Leonardo had gone off to the archer would be able to hear him. That is what I hoped atleast cause otherwise I would have been worried that Gilliam was losing his hearing. The six of us currently present quickly pulled ourselves back to something resembling battle ready stance, worried that there was more risen on the way.

Luckily that was not the case and we were soon joined by our seventh member, who I noticed had a mostly empty quiver which supported my hypothesis of what he had been doing. Our sergeant certainly looked to be in better shape than the rest of us, his heavy armour having a few nicks but it seemed it held in all cases. The rest of us were a mix of muddy, soaked and bloody, and Amelia and Aran were going to be needing some vulenaries to heal the pretty serious wounds they had picked up.

Looking at the former made me feel terrible, I was supposed to be Amelia's partner, and I was so focused on my own fighting that I hadn't even took note of what she was fighting that whole time. It was just lucky that she didn't end up facing off against something she couldn't handle because then I would have had to live with that for the rest of my life.

Regardless there was no point in worrying about the ifs and maybes, and I promised myself that I wouldn't let it happen again. Gilliam didn't seem all that interested in anything other than looking us all over and making sure we were alive, because after only about five seconds of Leonardo rejoining us the knight told us to stand down and prepare to march once again. We all groaned at that.

Immediately I went to help Amelia with her wound, well the others all went to tend to their partners wounds too. Pulling a vulenary out of my backpack I dropped some on the girl's wound and then handed her the rest. As she drank it I asked, "How was that?"

The blond haired girl finished drinking a good dose of the potion and handed it back to me, and responded, "It… It could have been worse, the wound looks a lot worse than it is I think and it was the only hit they got on me. Though… how did they get right ontop of us like that?"

I shrugged and said, "Dark magic maybe?" Seriously how did they get around? They always just seemed to appear whenever they showed up in the story without rhyme or reason, "Regardless they are gone now, we should get ready to move on so let's bandage up that wound to make sure it doesn't get infected."

A few minutes of bandaging later and Amelia was ready to go again, by the time any of us got to safety we were bound to have a full collection of scars to show off. Before we started marching again I had something I needed to do, and I went over to Nephenee, the green haired girl having retrieved a spear of her own and was currently drinking heavily from her watersac. Having planned to give the girl the courtesy of letting her finish her drink I was a bit thrown off when she spoke around the water in her mouth and said, "Ye do't need t' say thanks. Was just helping ya out."

"Regardless," I said, "That fight wasn't going well for me at all so thanks"

"Just d'nay let it happen again," the girl finished with a bit of a wry smile on her lips.

We marched for thirty more minutes, we might have marched through the whole night if the officers weren't terrified of another ambush on the road. Unfortunately their paranoia meant that not all of us were going to be getting much sleep that night.

Doubly unfortunately I was one of the poor unlucky sods that got the long watch. At the very least I wasn't the only one stuck with this suffering, and not five feet away from me stood Aran. The older man blowing his breaths into his hands to ward off the growing chill from the rain.

I was too bored to even do that, the woods around us were not providing anything interesting to look at even with our sight range returned. Though at the very least there weren't any more risen jumping us.

"Soooo, Aran we've been fighting together for a bit but to be honest I don't think I know anything about you," I said tiredly.

The green haired soldier chuckled at that, "Got to admit I don't think I know much about you either. Gilliam's been riding my ass a bit too much to really hang around with the rest of you."

"Let's start with something simple then, why did you join up with the army?"

"Military family," Aran said as if it explained everything, and in reality it pretty much did, "My father was a royal guard, and his father before him. I haven't gotten that far yet but I'll get there eventually."

The green haired man paused for a moment to scratch the back of his head, which looked pretty strange because he had his helmet on, but before I could make a comment he continued, "How bout yourself? Why did you sign up?"

"I…kinda got conscripted now that I think about it," I said after mulling it over for a minute, "I used to work as part of some mercenaries that did guard work up in Ferox and a few other places. Got ditched by them as we were passing through Ylisse and happened to run into a Pegasus knight that pretty much told me to join the army or go to jail with a fair few less words."

Aran's eyes narrowed at me as I went through my explanation, though atleast that was the only sign of any sort of dislike for my 'former profession' that I could sense from him, "Why didn't you just run off then? With all the chaos we've had these past few days you could have deserted at any time."

"And do what? Flee to Ferox or Plegia where the war is also going on? Anyways I don't exactly have anywhere to go, my home is way too far away to ever hope to get back to and I'd feel like a monster if I left you all to deal with this threat by yourselves."

That got the older man to slacken off a bit, though I sensed some more questions were coming. The only reason they didn't come was the sound of a loud crash near us. The two of us jumped on alert immediately and looked in the direction of the noise. With nothing obvious coming our way I said, "Aran, I'm going to go check what that was. If I'm not back in five minutes warn the camp."

When I received a nod I started to slowly step into the woods, my spear at the ready. The woods remained as dark and foreboding as ever but nothing jumped out at me. Instead I reached a clearing and saw a downed pegasus. The horse looking more exhausted then wounded judging by the lack of visible blood. Its rider wasn't immediately obvious until I got close enough to see over the flying animal.

On the other side of the pegasus was a seemingly unconscious Farina. The purple haired girl must have flown to exhaustion, and judging by how she was here I could only guess that the capital had fallen. I could worry about that later though, for now I needed to get the girl some help.

Picking Farina up and throwing her over my shoulders I headed back toward where I had left Aran at a run. Coming out of the underbrush the way I did must have scared the daylights out of Aran because he jumped about five feet in the air when I showed up half shouting to cut off any questions, "Quick she needs help and I had to leave her pegasus behind."

I ran past the green haired man and cut off any further explanation, hoping that he would figure out the situation on his own. I didn't stop till I reached a healer tent, and once there the few healers that were still awake didn't waste any time putting Farina on a bed and getting to work. In only a few short minutes the purple haired girl woke up once again, and by then the General incharge of our army had shown up to ask a single question,

"What happened to the capital?"

The worn out pegasus knight had a bit of a sardonic smile on her face as she said, "Take a guess"