Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem, if I did, I would not need to be telling you.

Chapter Two: A Grave Fate

"Wake up, young man; it's closing time," a voice said.

Soren blinked the sleep out of his eyes and raised his head blearily, taking in his surroundings. Stacks upon stacks of books met his eyes, all piled neatly next to each other in alphabetical order. He was seated at a small wooden desk, his arms folded on its top, where he had formerly been resting his head. It seemed he was in a library; only one of them would have so many books in one place. Someone must've been researching something obscure to utilize so many books. Looking down slightly, he realized it was him that had been reading the books, one open on the desk in front of him adjacent to a large pile of notes.

The last thing he remembered was Yune hitting him and Elincia with that spell, and then… nothing. Wait, where were Elincia, and Micaiah for that matter? He jerked his head up and whirled around, seeking out his companions. They were not there.

The only person in the room with him was a kind-looking old lady with glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She was likely the librarian of whichever library he was in. He didn't remember going into one, but he had been in so many that they were starting to bleed together, so it was unlikely he would be able to recognize any given library.

"Are you all right, dear?" The librarian asked worriedly, wringing her hands slightly. "You've been here all day."

"I'm fine." Soren didn't enjoy the company of others particularly much, but he had progressed past the point of antagonizing them simply for the sake of doing so. It was definitely something he was guilty of in the past, specifically with the Laguz.

Ike had trained it out of him after he had witnessed Soren's rudeness to Lethe and Mordecai during the Mad King's War. Ike… Soren shook his head to clear it, rising from his seat and stretching. His body ached, leaving him wondering what he'd been doing with it prior to falling asleep. He'd long since forgotten what he'd been doing immediately prior to the war.

"I'm terribly sorry to kick you out," the old woman told him, "but we're closing, and I can't let you stay."

Soren waved her apology off and began picking up his notes, sliding them neatly into his satchel. "No matter."

He stopped as one piece of paper caught his eye; a treatise on several different tactical ideas. Many of them had never been used in either war; some even would have been helpful during them, mostly the section about besieging a fortress, which was surprisingly accurate to the numbers during the siege of Fort Pinell. It was possible that he'd forgotten about them in the rush that was their evacuation of the Greil Mercenaries' base, or he'd just left them in the library; both options were equally likely.

There were some other interesting works in the pile, most notably a collection of anecdotes about his early life that he had been planning on turning into a book. Soren's hands shook lightly as he picked up the paper, his heart rate rising rapidly. It had completely slipped his mind that he'd ever made the collection; it had been made mostly out of spite and self-pity, but also partially to open the eyes of the world about the life of a Branded.

He neatly folded the paper and tucked it into a secure place in his bag, placing it in between two books for safety. The treatment of Branded in the majority of towns and cities was abhorrent, very much needing to be fixed. Although it was probably less likely to change than the racism against Laguz, he would still try.

After carefully placing the last sheets of notes in his satchel, Soren shouldered his bag and slid a wind tome up his sleeve. He didn't have any very strong tomes lying around, having not been knowledgeable or powerful enough to use them before the war, but at least he had a weapon. The generic wind tome was laughably weak compared to its equivalents, the fire and thunder tomes; still, it could be used in certain situations by its adepts, Soren being one of them. He'd always loved wind magic over the other types of anima magic; something about controlling wind specifically made him feel free, like he himself was flying through the sky.

The librarian walked in step with him as he strode through the library, surprisingly quick for someone of her apparent age. They first passed the community room of the library, where many people would take their books and take a seat at any of a number of large tables and debate their books with each other. Each table was surrounded by up to eight chairs; many of their seats stacked almost a meter high in books. He supposed this was how a library appeared after it was supposed to be closed down, all people gone except for those that worked there.

Towards the front of the building were the standard shelves that one would expect to find in a library; many of them a quarter or half empty due to the late hour. Adjacent to some of the shelves were a handful of carts, their tops covered in books, waiting to be placed back where they belonged. They would likely be replaced after Soren left the building.

Before Soren knew it, he was at the front of the library; standing before the large wooden doors.

"Good night, dear. I hope to see you tomorrow, " the librarian said as Soren pulled the left door open.

It was likely he would return the next day; there were many things he still wished to study, even after three years of additional learning since the last time he'd been in that particular library. But first things first; he needed to find a place to stay for the night. Soren nodded a farewell to the librarian and walked down the street away from the library, checking his bag for resources as he went.

He was low on money, it seemed, only having sixteen silver coins buried deep in his satchel. Fortunately, most inns only charged one gold per night, which was equivalent to two silvers. That meant he was fine for a short time; hopefully he would not need to spend too long at an inn.

The next thing he needed to know was the date. Yune had said she would get them to a time near the Mad King's War; but not exactly when they would land. The date was especially relevant if he was in Melior, as he thought he was. He didn't want to get caught in the invasion; if he remembered correctly, the Daein soldiers were brutal to the few civilians that were caught in the streets during the attack.

Soren took a street towards where he thought the town square was, hoping the inn was there. It had been some time since he was last in Melior, the last time being a supply run for Ike, so he didn't quite remember where exactly the inn was located. He himself had never been to the inn; he only knew that it even existed due to common sense, and Mia informing him of a time she stayed there.

As he neared the square he started to see more people, all going about their day calmly, unaware of the war that would soon befall them. Several were in a line at a shop that appeared to be selling exotic fruits, awaiting their turns. Soren briefly considered joining the line at the fruit shop—he was feeling more than a little hungry—but ultimately decided it would be a waste of money and continued on.

He kept an eye on his surroundings as he walked, an instinct ingrained into him from his years with the Greil Mercenaries, taking notice of any and all suspicious activities that occurred as he passed them by. Melior was a decent city, so there weren't many. The only one he noticed was a small boy stealing a loaf of bread from a stall. He made no move to stop the boy; he had once done the same.

Reaching the town square, he quickly located the inn, the sign hanging above the door calling it 'The Royal Horseman'. The wait for the innkeeper was several minutes, the inn was quite full and the man was running an entire inn by himself, and Soren quickly acquired a room for two nights. The room he got was not very large—it wouldn't fit any more than one person—but it was reasonably priced, so he would deal with it. He also learned the date from the innkeeper; Daein would be beginning their attack the next day, but it would take them well over a day to reach Melior, giving him plenty of time to come up with plans.

Once he was securely locked in his room, a chair even braced against the door to prevent anyone from breaking in, he dug his notes out of his bag and arrayed them across the bed in an orderly fashion. He was honestly surprised by the amount of notes he'd felt the need to take, but, since he didn't remember what the majority of them were for, decided to place most of them back in his bag.

The ones that he actually read were the few on tactics, and the couple about magic. It seemed he'd desired to learn another type of magic, mainly thunder magic. Thunder magic was very destructive and hard to control, due to the volatile nature of the element. It took a special type of person to become a Sage, the rank earned upon the mastery of an element, and thunder was especially hard to master. It was considered the second hardest type of anima magic to master, ahead of Fire and behind Wind. Wind magic was all about manipulation of miniscule blade of wind, sometimes smaller than the eye could see. Soren had mastered wind magic after the Mad King's War, earning himself the rank of Sage. There were some who had earned the rank of Sage that didn't possess the title, of course: those who spent their lives wandering the continent, never coming close enough to a place of magic to receive the title.

He knew some theory about the other types of magic that were not associated with Anima, Light and Dark magics, due to helping Rhys with his light magic. However, he had no wish to learn more about them; dark magic being exceptionally draining on the user, and light magic not being anywhere near destructive enough for his tastes. Soren had long since come to the conclusion that light and dark magics were unviable for the battlefield. It was a subject he could be incorrect about—Micaiah had been somewhat successful in battle—but he would stay with the conclusion he had made until proven otherwise.

After reading through most of his notes and stowing them away, Soren crawled into bed, finally undoing the wall he had put around his emotions during the final battle. Tears pricked at his eyes as he thought about his companions, each one having met their ends, but he did not let a single one fall. He thought about Ike, his always present ally, who was there whenever Soren needed him. The two had rarely separated in their years as friends, the only extended period being the exact time Soren was in. Soren didn't know what to do without Ike. He wasn't good with people, or feelings; those were Ike's jobs.

Soren was left awake for hours, thinking about ways he could defeat Ashera without losing his best friend, before finally drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, Soren woke at dawn, having long since trained his body to do so. Once fully awake, he splashed some water on his face and took to the stairs, heading to the taproom. He expected it to be packed with people who had also spent the night in the inn, and was not disappointed; every raised surface had a person sitting on it, sometimes two, leaving little to no space for him to sit. A great many of those seated were eating the breakfast they had purchased from the inn, which looked to be eggs and some form of meat.

It took Soren a few seconds to locate a place to sit, and when he did he ordered a meal, considering his plans for the day. He would spend most of his time at the library, learning whatever he didn't know about tactics and strategy. One could never know enough about tactics, as proven against the Begnion army in 648 with the Laguz Alliance. If he could find any information on the Ancient Tongue he would be pleased, but he was not holding his breath. The languages of Gallia and Goldoa were also on his list, as he had interacted with Gallians many times and wondered what they were saying about him behind his back. Goldoan was more of a language he wanted to pick up just to say he had, as it was very unlikely he would actually use it.

Once his meal arrived, Soren dug in, savoring the flavor after the cold rations he'd eaten during their climb up the tower. The last time he'd eaten had been shortly before the final battle, and it had been cold, salted pork, with water; the freshly scrambled eggs and meat tasted heavenly in comparison.

Soren considered the future, and what he could do about it, while eating his meal. There was no way he, one man, could completely halt the Daein army, even if only for long enough to get word to the Crimean army. There were probably ways he could do it, of course, but they would involve more days of setup and planning than he had. He could think of several off the top of his head, but they all were too elaborate for only one person. Any strategies that he would be able to pull of alone wouldn't save enough time to make a difference.

If he had a partner, things might be different; two people could do much more than one for the vague plans he'd created. But he did not; he had no idea where Micaiah and Elincia were. The former was likely somewhere in Daein, and the latter at the Crimean royal family's estate. He had no idea where the estate was; Elincia had rarely mentioned it in the future, only that it was somewhere in southern Crimea. There was no one other than those two that he could trust; Ike he would trust in a heartbeat, but the Ike of this time was not the battle-hardened Ike of the future, and would be unable to help.

Finishing off his meal, Soren paid and walked out of the inn, heading for the library. The walk to said library was relatively short, only a few minutes, through the town square and market. Both were bustling with activity; the early morning being the most popular time to shop for resources. Many of the salespeople were farmers, having come in from their farms to make their sales before heading back out; but he also saw many carpenters and potters, both trades being common in Crimea.

The door to the library loomed in front of him and broke Soren out of his scrutiny of Melior. He pulled the door open and stepped inside, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darkness. The librarian from the previous night was seated at a desk to the right of the door, and he nodded to her as he moved through to the library stack, aiming for the section about tactics.

It was quite impressive for a library to have an entire section about tactics, but Soren wasn't about to complain. They had books by some of the best, including several former Riders of Daein that had died many years prior.

Reaching the shelf he was looking for, Soren pulled down a book detailing the many reasons why a tactician should not besiege a walled fortress. He had read the book before, and remembered most of it, but he wanted to refresh his memory, as well as copy down some notes. The most important reasons could be narrowed down to the massive amount of assets that a siege could easily use, both in manpower and resources. Add that to the fact that besieging a walled fortress could turn into a many year long endeavor, sometimes wasting tens of thousands of men on both the attacking side and the defending side, one could clearly see why many famous tacticians throughout the years hated sieges.

After walking over to a desk and placing the book down on it, beginning a stack of books that would no doubt reach very high throughout the rest of the day, Soren grabbed a second book, The Beauty of Battle by someone with the bizarre name of Hsin Tun. Hsin Tun was one of, if not the, most famous tactician of all time; being the mastermind behind the Gallian's victory during the First War of Gallia in the year 350.

Several years after the end of that war, and its successor, Tun had written a long philosophical treatise about war and his thoughts on the subject. The book wound up being the base of almost every theory of war ever made, quickly becoming the best selling book on tactics of all time. It covered everything one needed to know about war, from troop movements and logistics, to the act of defeating the enemy; it was all there in one simple book.

Soren had read the book a total of four times, and every time he reread he learned a little bit more about war. There were many who doubted the validity of the text, but time and time again their claims were shot down by experts. A great many of his strategies had been crafted using the book as a base, the hand of Tun sometimes visible in Soren's plans. He was aware of how foolish it was to rely on another's work for his strategies, but, he figured, he could easily lure an opponent into a trap using the few holes there were in Tun's plans.

He took a seat and opened the book to the forward, which gave a brief history of the author and the wars he had been in; most notably the First War of Gallia, followed by the second. After the biography, the book listed the history of wars on the continent, which had been updated by other authors as subsequent wars happened. It had been 200 years since the start of the last war, the Tellius Continental War, where Crimea and Daein had allied themselves against Begnion due to the iron grip the empire had been controlling the continent with.

There had only been one revision of the book since the end of the Continental War, the so-called 'Master Edition', which had received an additional commentary that other editions had not had. That was the version Soren found in the library; he had his own copy back in the Greil Mercenaries' hideout.

After the forward came chapter one: Arranging Strategies. The chapter covered the basics of the creation of plans, and the thought process that one would need to use to ensure their success; even including the moral and ethical ramifications of said plans. After a brief philosophical rant about morals, the focus shifted to the inspection of the enemy army, and how to compare your army to his.

The Seven Considerations of War were covered next; notable among them being the comparisons of the abilities of the two opposing generals, and the discipline of the two armies. Discipline was a very important thing to an army; if an army was not disciplined it would fall apart at the seams, ultimately being routed by its opponent. It surprised Soren that the Laguz waged war as efficiently as they did; their discipline being the worst he'd ever seen.

Following the section about the considerations was the one about deception, another vital part of war. One must always appear where they are not, tricking the enemy into breaking their carefully designed formations to counter the supposed threat, and one should never appear to be where they wish to be, lest the enemy forge an iron-clad plan to stop them.

Deception was not something Soren had been able to use very much during the war with Begnion; the Laguz Alliance barely accepted his strategy at all, much less letting him craft complicated deceptions. Skrimir had come around slightly at the end of the war, seeing the success that followed Soren's plans, but not enough for more complicated maneuvers.

The Laguz in general were not very disciplined; their armies barely holding themselves together during marches, their leaders usually not caring about the fractures in their command structure. Laguz valued strength above all else, even brains, causing their generals to be hard-headed fools who would get their armies into inadvisable situations, sometimes leading to their demise. It was a pattern one could see throughout history, beginning shortly after the formation of Gallia. One of the foolish generals Soren could name was Skrimir, the lion having attempted to lead his men to their deaths multiple times. On some occasions the Gallians gained wisdom in their later years, such as Caineghis and even Skrimir, but in many more they fell in battle, handing down whatever horrible situations they were in to their successors.

The most disciplined of the Laguz, if one could say that, were surprisingly the Ravens; they only cared about gold, and following orders got you more gold than not. Soren hadn't seen many of them in action, just their king, Naesala; Vika; and the old one, Nealuchi, who was too old to fight with the speed of his juniors. Even though his love of gold changed his allegiance multiple times, Naesala was a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, being able to compete with Tibarn in raw destruction of the enemy force.

As Soren was analyzing both the book and the Laguz armies, he was jotting down as many notes as he could, placing them neatly in a stack when their ink dried. He'd created a solid six pages of notes while reading, the majority of which would make little to no sense to someone reading over his shoulder; one could never be too careful, especially in a public library. He looked up from his work to the water clock in the corner of the room; it was already well past midday, meaning that both the library and much of the market would be closing up shortly.

Once again Soren packed up his notes and placed them in his bag, taking less time than he had before since he knew what they were. Once he had packed them all up, he took up his bag and walked to the front of the library, specifically the librarian's desk.

"Are any of the books here for sale?" Soren asked the librarian, gesturing around him to their surroundings.

The old woman looked surprised for a moment, like people rarely asked her the question, before adjusting her glasses. "Of course! Just tell me the ones you wish to buy and I will charge you for them."

Soren nodded and moved back through the shelves, pulling books off them as he went. He grabbed a book on various languages that were used on the continent, an extra book on the ancient tongue, and several on tactics. Some of the ones on tactics he'd read before, but didn't own; which was practically a crime for someone as obsessed with tactical books as him.

After taking all the books he wanted, he strode back through to the libraria, placing them down on her desk and drawing his money pouch from his robes. "How much for these four?"

The librarian looked them over for a moment, picking them up and inspecting them to see which ones they were, and what their conditions were. "One silver for all of them," she said, placing the books back down on the table and leaning back in her chair comfortably.

Soren handed the money over and took his books, quickly leaving the library and stepping outside for the first time in hours. The sun was nearing its daily return to the horizon; the shadows of the buildings cloaking the streets in darkness. Many of the shopkeepers had already left for home, and those who remained had lit torches of braziers, lighting small portions of the street near their shops.

A melee weapon was added to Soren's list of necessities as he walked through the stress, most likely a dagger since he was a bit on the smaller side to be using a sword. Daggers could be used in many situations where magic was too loud or impractical to cast; such as killing a lone man in a hallway. There were several advantages that him having a dagger would have, but he mostly wanted one for silent and efficient killing. The only problem was where he would learn how to properly use it; while a dagger was a bladed weapon, so it was somewhat easy to use, it still had a very high skill ceiling that Soren wanted to hit. If there was no one in the Greil Mercenaries who could teach him, he could always learn from a book, he decided.

He stopped at a weapons shop and contemplated which dagger he wanted to buy, before settling on a long-bladed dirk with a plain, leather bound hilt. Simple was best when it came to weapon aesthetics. Jewels on weapons were completely pointless, only adding to the weight and unbalancing the weapon, and usually making them look ugly and gaudy.

Pocketing his newly acquired weapon, Soren walked back to the inn and went straight back to his room. Skipping the evening meal was unfortunate, but worth it since he wanted to wake up well before dawn. After putting his dagger and notes into his bag, Soren settled down into bed for the night and reviewed his plans.

Daein had attacked that morning, easily defeating the lackluster Crimean border guard and striking deep into the heart of the country. They would reach the capital a day and a half after commencing their invasion. That gave him plenty of time to leave Melior and find Princess Elincia, hopefully not long after she wound up asleep on the side of the road.

Soren was reasonably sure that Daein had mostly bypassed Castle Crimea in the past, due to the stronger forces there to protect the royal family minus Elincia. They had likely surrounded the castle and prevented anyone from leaving, then begun their search for the princess, who had fled with her retainers at the last moment. Duke Renning had bought a decent amount of time from holding the castle, but it had not been as much as he wished, since Elincia's escort had been caught by the Daein forces.

Soren shut his increasingly heavy eyelids, and continued to run scenarios in his head until he fell asleep.

It was well before dawn when Soren awoke, having set his internal alarm to do so, and he was up in a flash. He needed to leave Melior before the Daein forces arrived; it would be a bit of time before they did, but one could never be too prepared. He packed up all of the things he'd removed from his bag, during his time at the inn, and quietly exited his room. After dropping the room key in a small slot designed for the purpose, Soren left the inn and moved through the town.

There weren't many people about this early in the morning, and those who were all went about their business quickly and quietly, not bothering any of their fellows. Many of them were small-town merchants, easily identified by their attempts to look more important than they really were. Some were soldiers, spears held lightly in their right hands as they dutifully followed their patrol routes. A small minority of them were children, a number of them with notes clutched tightly in their hands as they ran about; while others caused chaos throughout the streets, laughing merrily.

Soren wished he'd been that happy as a child; his younger days were filled with disdainful looks, harsh words, and an ever present hunger. He'd never eaten a proper meal until Ike's father had taken him in, many years before, forcing him to make do off of nuts and berries in the woods. While it had forced him to be somewhat decent at wilderness survival, he had been quite happy to trade it in for the warmth of Commander Greil's hearth. But he would always remember the gnawing hunger in his gut, the tiredness and weakness from going days without food.

Leather boots stopped clicking against the stone of the road as he stepped off it, switching to the soft crunch of the dirt path leading out into Crimea. He trudged through the wilderness, occasionally passing by small villages that had no idea of the fate that was about to befall them. He estimated it would take him just under ten hours of walking to reach the place where they'd found Elincia; he could only hope she'd be there again.

Hours passed, but Soren never stopped plodding along; his legs started aching after about four hours, continuing only off of sheer will. The forests of southern Crimea did not have many people moving through them; the only sounds breaking the silence were the movement of small animals and Soren's footsteps.

He kept a constant watch throughout his journey, waiting for someone or something to jump out of the trees and attack him. Crimea had a small bandit problem when one was distanced from the capital, but Soren was also vigilant for an attack by the Daeins, who would shamelessly attack travelers for little to no reason. It was something they had done in the past; Soren had heard tales of Daein soldiers brutalizing Crimean farmers during the war. Elincia had worked tirelessly to right the wrongs done to civilians by the Daeins, once the war was over and she had been crowned queen, there was only so much she could do when multiple nobles were plotting against her, however.

It was admittedly doubtful that Soren would run into any Daeins, as they would be distracted with the capital and its surroundings for at least twelve hours, but one could never be too sure. For all he knew, the Daeins already knew where the Greil Mercenaries hideout was and were moving in on it.

There were a couple of minutes during the eighth hour of his journey where Soren thought he was about to be ambushed, nearby bushes and trees rustling furiously, but his fears were quickly abated when a deer sprinted out through the foliage. The lone animal was the only other living thing he saw on the roads during his trek through Crimea.

After ten hours of straight walking, Soren finally neared his destination. The first clue he saw was the corpse of a horse lying prone on the road, its rider nowhere to be seen. A bloody handprint could be seen on the horse's side, just below its shoulder; most likely the rider's attempt to climb back on his mount after falling off. There was a discarded sword lying on the ground a few meters from the horse with its blade half snapped off, crosspiece embedded in the ground.

Soren moved away from the fallen horse and continued walking through the forest, where he was met with more corpses; this time both men and horses. The men were a mix of those clad in the livery of Crimea and those clad in Daein's. Some of them were not even wearing any notable garb at all. The Daeins' bodies lay strewn every which way throughout the field, all of their men laying facing south, where they had chased the retreating Crimeans.

Elincia lay in a bush somewhere around the battlefield, Soren knew, but her exact position had long since faded from his memory. He moved into a clearing, or what he thought it was a clearing until he saw the well-worn dirt road in the middle of it, and found even more dead soldiers. There were more Crimeans than Daeins at the side of the road, many of them obviously run through with spears after they had fallen, large holes in the middle of their chests.

Soren hunted through the woods for several minutes, bent almost double as he searched through the bushes for Elincia. As he lowered himself to his knees to look under a bush, something an odd shade of green caught his eye; not any color the leaves of the season had taken. He pushed some branches out of his view and sighed in relief when he caught sight of Elincia's orange dress; the woman's body sprawled uncomfortably across the ground, her arm lodged under her torso.

Reaching over the distance, Soren shook Elincia's shoulder and received only a small sigh as a response. He doubted she'd been unconscious for long, so it stood to reason that it would be some time until she woke. Soren lifted the princess into his arms and carried her some meters through the trees. He was not a strong person, but Elincia was light as a feather, most likely due to her not having conditioned her body for combat yet; it was something she hadn't done until they'd arrived in Begnion.

Once he'd moved sufficiently far away from the road, Soren cleared a small area on the ground and gently placed Elincia down, setting his bag down on the ground next to her. Next, he moved a small distance into the forest and gathered a large amount of firewood, enough for several hours worth of fuel for a fire. Returning with his firewood, Soren dropped it on the ground and carefully arranged it, propping the smaller pieces on a larger stick that he planted into the ground.

After a minute of preparing the fire, he reached into his bag and rifled around for a moment before pulling out his flint and fire-starting materials. The materials he retrieved from his bag were various types of bark that were extremely flammable, as well as a type of vine known colloquially as 'Old Man's Beard' due to its likeness to a long beard. He strategically placed the barks and Old Man's Beard in the pile of wood, before taking up his dagger and flint.

With a deft strike of flint on his dagger, the wood caught flame, the newly created fire jumping into the air as Soren fed it. He fell into silence after he finished it, only occasionally moving to drink water from his canteen or feed the fire.

It was well past dusk when Elincia began stirring. The princess shifted her body around before opening her brown eyes and letting out a soft moan. She sat up slightly, reaching a hand up and rubbing the back of her head, surveying her surroundings.

Soren poked the fire with a stick, before tossing it in, drawing the princess' attention to him. She was clearly still disoriented, her eyes slightly unfocused and her body loose, even in a potentially hostile situation.

"Soren?" she asked groggily, lowering her arm down to her side.

He nodded, eyes fixed directly on the depths of the fire, not moving even as the princess moved over and sat across the fire from him.

"Where are we? When are we?" Elincia questioned as she settled down next to the fire, taking up a piece of wood and turning it over in her hands.

"Southern Crimea, not too far from Fort Greil," Soren responded. "Daein began their invasion yesterday."

The princess buried her head in her hands, sighing heavily. She had been heavily affected by the first invasion of Crimea, or so Soren had heard from Ike and her retainers, so it made sense she would be a second time.

"I found you at the side of the road and decided to wait until tomorrow to talk to Commander Greil," he continued. "We need to discuss plans before meeting him; the man is incredibly perceptive. A united front will be imperative when we speak to him."

"What will we tell him?" Elincia asked softly. "He will not believe us when we say we are from the future; more plausible tales have been spun by madmen."

Soren nodded. "Indeed. Which is why we will not tell him; nor anyone, for that matter. It is an unfortunate, yet necessary, evil."

He raised his eyes from the fire and rifled through his bag until he found some salted meat, tossing it lightly across the fire to the princess, the meat quickly followed by his canteen.

They fell into silence for a moment, the princess slowly chewing on the meat that Soren had passed her; she was eating with impeccable manners, her long years of etiquette training showing.

Soren drew his dagger out of his robes and started turning it over in his hands. There were several things about the past—or the present, as it were—that he was unsure about: the logistics of how Daein actually invaded Crimea, for one, and how heavily they would guard the border to Gallia if they weren't alerted to Elincia's presence. The border would be guarded—that was practically a given for any strategist with half a brain—but there was little reason for there to be more than a small deployment to prevent anyone from slipping through. Soren himself wouldn't put more than thirty men per crossing, but that was mostly due to his long-standing experience of only having just enough men to get by.

The sounds of the forest filled the air; the hooting of owls, the chirping of crickets, and the rustling of bushes as predators stalked their prey. There was nothing for the Beorc to be afraid of during the night; there were no animals large enough to be a threat, the largest ones in Crimea being bears, which could be easily defeated by a healthy application of magic.

"Where is your equipment?" Soren asked suddenly, a thought occurring to him.

If they could acquire Elincia's sword, Amiti, and her pegasus, she could contribute during the early stages of the war. The princess was a capable fighter, almost matching the most experienced of Begnion's Holy Guard. Her inability to fight during the first half of the war was a sore point for the princess, and something Soren knew she wished to rectify. It might make some people—Greil—easier to convince if she was willing to assist in combat.

She looked surprised at the question for a moment, but quickly gathered her thoughts."General Geoffrey took them from my family's estate shortly after I fled, but I do not know where he would be."

Soren sighed. It had been a decent idea, but ultimately unusable. That meant they would need to take weapons from the Greil Mercenaries' storeroom.

"Do you have any means of identification on your person?" he questioned, turning his head to look at the princess.

Across from him, Elincia inspected herself, quickly plucking a ring off her finger. "This ring holds the royal seal; it should be enough to convince Commander Greil of my identity."

It would be rather difficult for a thief to obtain anything with the royal seal, so it was a surefire way of proving her identity. A good thing too; Greil had gotten rather cynical after creating his mercenary band, only taking certain jobs because Titania had been able to make him see reason. Soren had always been confused about the commander's distrust of people—he always seemed so polite to whoever he talked to—but it all made sense once he'd learned the full story.

Soren leaned forward and rubbed his hands over the fire. "Now that we have a way to confirm our claims, all we need is a plan of attack."

To be honest, this chapter simply exists for me. I'm not particularly happy with it, but I'd rather release it now than spend months trying to make it perfect and wind up never releasing it. Not sure why, it just rubs me the wrong way for some reason.

The website killed my formatting when I copy-and-pasted this chapter, for some reason, so let me know if there are any formatting errors or inconsistencies that I need to fix.

All right, I'm outta here, gotta get back to writing. As a side note, I may be able to start releasing chapters two times a month, instead of one, if I can keep up the pace I'm getting with writing right now. That being said, the next one should be out around this time next month, but anything can change! (Casual Chrom quote)

Oh, one last thing: I will be adding a status update section to my profile shortly, if anything changes that affects my update schedule, I will notify you guys. (I'll also be adding some more personalization to my profile, but who cares about that stuff, am I right?)

See you later

- The guy writing this.