More Things Change

I was retreating.

There was no getting around that, every odd that could possibly be against me was being brought to the forefront against me.

Except maybe magic, their healers had jumped to the highest amongst my shit list. Prioritizing them over everyone else, it might have been a war crime, but this wasn't Earth. Not that I'd managed to pick many of them off once things began to kick off properly, at least I didn't have to deal with any more enemy casters. Probably killed enough mages to last a lifetime, and I was glad to be rid of them for this scuffle.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that I don't have a pipe bomb handy.

City boys gotta make do. . . My fingertips cracked with light from magical embers under my nails. Scratching at the trees that passed left singed charcoal husks in their place, setting small fires with my retreat. Recent rain had left the land plenty wet, and while not every mark I left bloomed in full force.

Enough of them did.

Maybe it was because they were spurned on my will alone, or simply lucky to catch fire so much faster with the dried leaves on the forest floor. Glancing back at the devastation that I was leaving in my wake to see a priest forming white runes with his staff, one of my - at his mercy. A gust of snow put out the budding flame.

These little shits!

Anger in my gut boiled over, the careful balance that I'd been keeping to maintain a steady flow of mana for lighting the forest on fire collapsed. The sparks flashed within my fingers, my opposing hand swapped out tomes as the aberrant and unstable spell crackled from within my grip.

Rings of sigils and runes spun to life in front of me, the pages flickering with the wind urged my heart to beat faster. What singed pieces of wood that I had managed to burn froze over in an instant, the temperature dropping more than a dozen degrees as the spell was assembled. For a brief moment the blood in my veins came to stand still, the air cracked as energy snapped to the floor.

Screams were released, half from my targets and the other half from the very ground objecting to having the air condensing into a series of icy glaciers.

The actual dirt and dust that made up the ground might not have shattered forth like it would in a real earthquake, the shards of ice that were created weren't fair off. The veritable hail storm that I conjured going through my initial target, and lodging several icicles into the archer standing behind him. Making sure to execute the Priest before one of the Pegasus Knight's circling above could swoop in for a rescue. The half faded sigils in the air glowed back to life as my magic rode the high in order to cast the spell for a follow up attack, shredding both of my enemies like I had done before to others.

I was going to run out of 'mana' if I kept up this pace.

An idle thought crossed my mind as to whether the difference between methods of casting magic mattered. Whether I was wasteful, if I could afford to use so much magic right now and be left vulnerable later. That reckless part of me became distracted for a moment too long, had I not been buzzing with power and painfully aware of everything as it brushed against unbound mana in the environment.

With a stray arrow sliding past my cheek everything got screwed back into place, the cold air seared my bare flesh. My eyes swung up to zero in on an archer riding atop one of their winged beasts, "Tssskk."

Now was not the time to get off track.

Pushing off an icicle that had formed at the base of my feet I turned tail again, returning to a familiar game of cat and mouse. My Blizzard tome was safely stowed away and replaced by the Firebolt tome that I'd bought from Anna, the pages fluttering until my mind ground my search to a halt.

My insight on the subject of magic was, as always, seemed to be a step behind and below that of everyone else that I'd met. I'd come to rely more on raw power than skill, pushing what I'd gather to be relatively basic spells far beyond what was normal. For a time my assumption had been that magic itself was simply quite deadly.

"Ack! Fucker," I paused my continued efforts to burn Pan's domain that surrounded me, to squeeze the muffled bolt of flame in my hand back into its former sharpened shape to burn a hole right through a Thief's torso. Causing the man to crumble to the floor after he'd managed to land a scratch on my back protected by my cloak. Putting a stop to a potential encirclement that the knights above me had apparently been trying to set up. New flames that I'd started were just now starting to bear some fruit, great trails of black smoke rose into the clean blue sky.

LEVEL UP!

Lv [13]

HP: 34 + 0

Mv: 5

Str: 14 + 1

Lck: 13 + 1

Mag: 21 + 1

Def: 12 + 0

Dex: 12 + 1

Res: 15 + 0

Spd: 19 + 0

Cha: 9 + 0

Oh you think you're clever are you?.

Part of me acknowledged that I might've inadvertently kicked the metaphorical hornet's nest, the part in charge of staying alive bitched at my shortsightedness. The fires I'd given life to cracking off to the side, promising retribution as I charged volleys of ice for any soldier or knight that wandered too close.

Soft pops proceeded a loud snap that rang throughout the burning forest, the trunk of one of the older trees I'd set alight suddenly collapsed under its own weight. A dozen other plants around it caught alight on its way down, a charging pegasus diverted from its course as the failing tree blocked the path forward.

The steed bucked at the burning obstacle that separated the two of us, its rider urged the panicking beast to lift off from ground and away from the billowing flames.

Brief moment as it was my hands swapped out for different spell book of mine, the satchel that I'd kept for my tomes shifting against me every time I took out a new magical text. The shape of lightning striking the ground greeted my eyes as I absentmindedly flipped through the pages.

If the ice had been a cold indignant fury, and fire a simmering hatred just waiting to boil over. The power that drove my lightning was more insidious, an instinctual whiplash of intense emotion with no clear rhyme or reason. Seeing that tendril of light pierce the very heavens shook me down to my core, some part within my rat brain screamed out at the sight. What could only be its closest comparison, rapturous glee filled my mind saturated with raw power.

Something about the sight had brought a sick grin out of me.

A violation of nature, mighty as a pegasus could very well be, stood no chance against a rod cast by God. There was a scream, the look of abject fear spread itself like the wildfire that was surrounding them as they crashed back down onto the forest floor. I caught sight of the knight's desperate look, a glance in my direction before my follow strike finished her off. Her skin rippled with the second bolt of lightning forced her human form to shift back to what I presumed to be her natural state.

I snapped the book shut upon finishing her off, the runes that had sprouted before men shuddered before fading away.

The smoke had gotten thicker, and while the forest fire had avoided catching up to me up til now the flames clearly weren't going to wait for me to have my fights. It had gotten to the point of cutting a line through the woods, pine and birch trees cracking under the pressure. While the land was falling apart my breaths continued to come out with increasingly more effort. My hand responsible for casting buzzed with a familiar numbness, the effect lessened with time and left over mana flowing through the tome held in my off hand.

Loud howls rang out, momentarily drowning out the crackling fire and whistling of arrows for the few knights armed with them.

My ears registered the noise, compartmentalized that some absolute bullshit had warranted enough attention that it distracted some of the knights flying above me for a moment. I focused on returning a bolt of lightning in exchange for the arrow that lodged itself deep in my forearm. While lightning probably wouldn't be as effective against them as wind magic would be, I preferred the chance of a flier falling out of the sky over more damage or something.

The wind could probably do more than mild turbulence, but now was not the time to experiment.

Some lingering ground forces that I thought were long since dealt with turned up in the corner of my peripheral vision, but when my eyes shifted to prepare for a strike. A light brown blur slammed into him, dragging the man kicking and screaming behind a tree out of my line of sight. My traitorous mind filled into blanks to the brutal ripping and shredding being done to the brigand, the sensible part of me slowly stepped away. Keeping an eye on that section of the woods, I searched for the rest of the pack. The brigand's body was launched from its former standing position and into the trunk of a willowy tree, his back releasing a loud crack upon slamming into the hardened wood. but considering whatever had killed one of my potential.

I suppose that such a thing might warrant a bit of actual consideration, if only to keep myself from being snacked on.

Little did I know that I would be the next unfortunate bastard on the menu.

The wolf, fuck who am I kidding this fucking this isn't just a fucking WOLF of all things, that thing stepped into the light spitting out blackened bones from it's mouth. It certainly wasn't a damn gray wolf, the predator that stepped resembled a female lion more than the wolves that I'd become familiar with. Closer to a dingo with an oversized jaw than a modern day pack of wolves. Being a foot shorter than this prehistoric fuck would have done little to calm my nerves at the thought of dealing with wolves, but I'd still prefer that over what I did have to deal with.

Thing's had become Dire.

I need to give up on the puns, it's not worth the trouble.

Who I'd pissed off to warrarent being lynched by a bunch of paleolithic dire wolves, and psychotic humans obsessed with playing copy cat to zenomorphs? At the same damn time.

Seriously, fuck my life.

Something was wrong with it, eyes reflecting an intelligence that I was almost certain that modern science might have a bone to pick with. Of course, reality didn't much care for my complaints. Sending the original dire wolf that I'd crossed eyes after me, with one of his buddies to back him up as the first focused on drawing most of my attention.

The first one tumbled when I hit them with a bolt, breaking their charge to let me deal with them one on one. I'd managed to delay a two pronged assault, but even with the extra oomph that pouring my mana through a tome gave me, they redoubled their efforts. Too fast for me to land reliable hits, closing the distance but pushing and pulling back I'd land the occasional glancing blast.

While I'd not been able to connect any direct strikes, a third canine was creeping up on me whilst I was preoccupied keeping the other two at bay. A significant portion of the nerves in my arm were lit up brighter than a christmas tree when its jaws clamped down on my arm.

Shi-

I let the rapid thing drag me off to the left, lining myself up with the other wolves just as I fell to my floor. My forearm snapped nearly instantly under the bite, the wolf shaking me to and fro in an effort to stop me from getting back to my feet. My lightning tome was likely trashed, too far away to grab even if I wanted to get the dire wolf to fuck off.

A final crack sent me over the edge, the agony spreading up through my left arm blinded me. My right hand shuddered to life, a clenched fist digging fingernails into my skin leaving a crystalized blood in its wake. The next attack I made was instinctual, what would've been closer to an ordinary helpless and useless smack against the wolf's jaw exploded once my hand made contact.

The pain helped obscure what had happened, a magical bomb made of frozen shards turned the animal's flank to shreds. In doing so, the attack released the wolf's vice grip on my broken arm as its own body went limp.

Oh . . . what I wouldn't give for a remington or a sawed off right about now, fucking politicians. If it weren't for the spare vulnaries I'd stuffed up my ass, my arm probably would've been left crippled for life. Instead everything from the shoulder down felt like it had been twisted off with a single twist away from my flesh being ripped clean off the bone.

Chugging the damn thing like it was a Monster was a bit awkward, especially since the other wolves just stared at me. Half glaring at the others flying above me on their pegasi, either way I was fucked should I just wait for them to chip away at me. Count your blessings and all that.

My eyes lingering on the mangled shoulder and arm that had nearly been severed by that demented beast. The healing that these potions could provide fell short, and even if I felt right as rain, that clearly wasn't the case.

Fuck, change of plans.

I turned tail, leaving my back exposed prompted what few wolves that weren't currently busy fighting the inverse humans to chase after me. Holding the ice tome in my dominant right hand, stuck waiting for my mangled side to heal enough to dish out another spell without putting an unnecessary strain on my body.

Not my brightest idea, but this wasn't the brightest of days. My exposed nerves along the frayed edges of my arm protested greatly as I ducked around a tree's roots to line up a decent shot. A numbness seeped into my bones, forcing my muscles to painfully contract even as casting a barrage of ice released that valve of pressure. The little stunt I'd pulled, badly postponed a full recovery of my arm that was knitting itself back together by a few more minutes. The yelps of injured wolves sated me somewhat.

Had I bothered to stop, a fair bit of well deserved admiration for the progress that a single whole vulnerary could make would've traveled down my regenerating arm. The smoke that brushed against the open wounds along my arm brought me to the point of stumbling agony, if not for adrenaline I'd be biting down cries from the ash being rubbed in.

My last regret would probably be if I fell onto the damn thing.

Something that the knights hanging ominously above me seemed to want to bring about, that and maybe to put my head on a pike from the looks of things. There was no good way to put it, I was running out of steam. That being both literally and figuratively, healing my arm from the bones to the skin was exhausting in a manner nothing else had ever reached.

THUNK!

Another arrow got caught lodged in my leg, scraping against my femur before I could lessen the damage done to a mere graze.

The fire creeping along the forest had practically encircled me by this point, even booking it as fast as I had been, such a thing was almost depressing. By the end of the night I'd probably be left with a bad limp in my step in the odd case that I lived, assuming I was lucky enough to get that far. Emphasis on if I managed not to croak before that. My thoughts were. . slower if that could be considered an issue from using so much mana in the short hour I'd been chased and battered to hell.

Still. . .

If I could bait the ones on high, lead them to getting sandwiched between the weird tougher than nails wolves. Well, I imagine that might do some damage.

Part of me wanted to voice some objections, the wolves themselves had split into two groups with one in the other mini pack carrying a trio of pups with them.

Running should've stayed my priority, hunkered down under a tree as I was, the small amount of protection I'd taken from the knights above me wouldn't last for long as the fire raged on. Even so, it was enough to catch my breath.

Large birds wings flapped overhead, a portion of their dedicated archers flew out to cut off the fleeing park of dire wolves. Chasing the creatures out into the more open and desolate plains that Anna had taken the children through. Sunken platou or not, it made returning to the forest more than a minor difficult for animals without much vertical mobility. Essentially trapping the unlucky ones that had decided to, and tried to flee, Arrows rained overhead, corralling the animals back into the forest as they were occasionally able to nail one of them in the leg like they had done to me.

The wolves might be right bastards, but the mimics were just cruel and unfair by comparison. Even the fair folk might've been kinder. That and while wolves might still kill me, the mimic folk would certainly keep hunting for the kids if they weren't stopped here.

A choice was quickly made, summoning up a torrent of unstable winds with my wind tome acting as a crutch for my casting ability.

My assault was cut short, only being able to unleash a handful of turbulent wind born blades before having a spear suddenly buried through the back of my chest. My lungs burned, exploded from the pain in the case for one piece of the paired organs truthfully. Lifted off the ground by the knight with their weapon stuck in the midst of my breast, forcing blood to come up through my nose as the strike continued to impale me. My hands dropped the churning tome for my old switchblade stuffed inside of my coat, the broken blade reflecting back a measure of the sharpened edge that still remained.

It wasn't half the blade it used to be, but it was enough.

What sliver of magic was still in my body, gave purpose to slackened muscles for one last hurrah. More adrenaline pumping through my veins then blood at this point, swinging my own body off of the spear in an effort to tackle the girl that had run me through. Putting the jagged metal through her throat in retaliation, grabbing the reins to the pegasus in the same motion for leverage-

LEVEL UP!

Lv [14]

HP: 34 + 0

Mv: 5

Str: 15 + 1

Lck: 14 + 1

Mag: 22 + 1

Def: 12 + 1

Dex: 13 + 0

Res: 15 + 0

Spd: 19 + 1

Cha: 9 + 0

. . .

Crashing into the ground had been a blur, a painful one at that.

I really wish that I was dead, a significantly less deluded part of my brain suggested that I keep playing dead for a while. Such pleasant thoughts, less so were the teeth nibbling on my ears.

Unfortunately while I was stuck in a terrible, simply agonizing amount of pain that made taking even small breaths seem closer to torture. Hitting the ground with little in terms of cushioning sucked, especially when the pegasus immediately went limp as if its ability to fly had also been cut. Not even- even of the cock and ball sort. . .

My eyes strained against the light, trying to keep the afternoon's blaring sun from scorching my eyeballs. The trusty blade coated a deep crimson was buried under the corpse of the rider and the rider's steed whose death I brought about, the rest of my arm trapped with it. Less said about my legs trapped under them, the better.

Lots of internal damage was guaranteed, the best sort of bleeding is the internal bleeding. . . That's where blood is supposed to be~

I didn't have the will left to drink anymore of the shit, while I had the ability to act, only fumes my combat ability remained. If that. The energy to insist on pushing against the world and changing things was completely out of the question, drained out of me by how such fuzziness filled my mind whenever my senses trailed off into trying to detect the mana in the air.

Bones were on the border of breaking, or had fractured due to falling out of the fucking sky. I did have plenty of ribs to spare, portable snacks. Canada air was still shit compared to what few experiences that I'd had with magical flying creatures up to this point.

Trailing thoughts were something that I was never unaccustomed to, but having to deal with one remaining hand fumble around with a healing potion was. . new. Frustrating too, mostly panic inducing with how my heart felt like it was bound to give out from under me.

More than a tad had ended up spilled all over myself, a half of it was as good as gone down the metaphysical drain. Getting my ass kicked on such a scale wasn't fun, even boring office work would be something that I'd prefer over this.

Yea- yeah I'm out, ugh, this is just going great isn't it. Not every half past noon, and I've already made it to death's door a few times too many. Everybody needs a hobby I suppose.

Digging out the last two vulneraries came easier to accomplish than before, less so because I had more energy or more so that my body had yet to adequately repair itself. Sliding out from under the corpse of the knight took years off my life. The pain making me scream with no other available outlet, "Fuck off assholes!"

Hah, oh I'm definitely punch drunk.

My shouting had sent the things biting my ears into hiding, a second vial of the vulnerary's healing properties was emptied over my chest wound once I tore a fractured piece of the spear's hilt away. I'd not been amused to be turned into a glorified shish kabob, every moment that involved daring to take the lightest of breaths burned. The last healing potion flowed down my sore throat, tightening the fibers binding the weaker ligaments of mine that had been severed back together again.

I'd just taken sparse unstable steps toward the pegasus knights that had landed, themselves assembled in a semi-circle focused on protecting what few archers their forces had remaining. Around a group of two dozen had been reduced down to a pitiful small selection of 7 warriors. Bloodied silver lances swung over in my direction, away from being planted in the hides of lesser beasts that lay scattered in the dirt. The forest's raging blaze painted an orange glow behind them.

In turn, my only possible response was to build up what middling mana reserves of mine remained. The arrow still stuck in my leg made the sensations so much worse, empty loans that I'd promised to cash in the form of energy being forced through damaged nerve endings.

"VOLLEY FIRE," A deep man's voice rang out, several of those that had been focused on finishing me off were suddenly hit by a volley of arrows. The stampeding of hooves crashed against the dirt, more than a dozen cavaliers came riding in from the main road leading into the neighboring kingdom. The dotted line at the edge of the map had rightfully been something important from the looks of things.

Thank the lord.

Collapsing down to a single knee, I let myself breathe in shaky breaths as I praised God for finally stopping his bullshit challenge known as life. It was probably not for the best to let my guard down, but my racing heatbeat objected to further activity. My brain registered words but in large part ignored them with no patience left to try and decipher anything, "Christophe, we have a survivor!"

"Your fight overwhelming odds with your head held up high, mage, that makes us one in the same in that regard. Goddess knows that this world could use another brother in arms against such monsters," A broad shouldered, teal-ette haired man remarked to me. Leaning a hand against his halberg as he looked at the devastation I'd raised in such a short time. Sharing a contemplative look with me before finishing what we wanted to say, "Hah, the very land has been sent buzzing as if you were the great wolf himself. If you weren't foreign born I'd wager that you're trying to emulate the fuhrer's fables."

"I have no idea what you just said, but if you're asking me for a name, that is something I'm sadly unable to give."

"Oh lord of wolves, will you lend me your strength?" The man offered me a sly grin, reaching out to me with his off hand with a sort of understanding for the predicament that I was in. The pups huddled up around me, wary of him and waiting for my next move. He dragged me to my feet with clasped hands on my arm to stop me stumbling, "Take your time, Adolf."

More gibberish, what luck do I have-

I- uh-

WHAT?!

Note: I have a bunch to say about this chapter but this is already long as fuck, I'm making a separate note instead of responding to people individually.

I have a strange real name, part of my reasoning was to choose a strange first name and big H's name fit the bill.

I have more to say, but I'll say that for later. (Man, I overestimated myself so much when it came to how much I'd be able to write of pure combat. It got, so boring so quick that I ended up cutting a lot of it)

God I need to read more comics, I've forgotten all the words they use to represent sound effects.

So, there's alot to talk about with this one. Let's address them in a backwards order shall we?

Adolf? I wanted something short and sweet that the ladies would love. . . pah! Okay seriously it was surprisingly covehent when I started to write the rest of the chapter. Since 'Adolf' can communicate well, and I don't want to deal with a fucking no name anymore. Having a name be given to the SI by someone else seemed like the logical next step, and we we're already in a forest. Forest = wolves, just imply some bullshit about wolves and the name Adolf in the mythological sense, bada-bing bada-boom the SI now has a name that doesn't feel ham fisted. I personally think it's far funnier than it probably actually is, but that's just me.

Dire Wolves: I will start introducing more magical creatures, and thus I bring you uber wolves. Real animals that are now extinct, a lot like sabertooths but with more pack tactics. While they aren't magical enough to cast spells or anything, having a 'touch' of magic makes their intelligence comparable to gray wolves. Like how wyverns are tougher alligators these wolves would almost be deceptively competent, using magic itself as another layer for effective communication.

How much magic/mana does Adolf realistically have access to: Short Answer? As much as I say he needs to make the story interesting, I mention it regularly because the games don't give us jack shit outside of 'tome uses'. Generally I try to keep to a system to gauge fights, with each spell taking up a fracture based on the total uses. Like when I started this fic before making changes to the spells Fire drained 1/10 of my total mana supply. Now Attunement raises that spell limit by a tad, ontop top of how much more efficient casting with a tome makes when you've already learned Fire. The skills are good in a game setting, but putting them in a story only format makes the skill redundant, and as such I replaced them. Slightly retooling the process of Fire Emblem's magic system in the process.

Healing takes on 3 forms, magical healing like from a priest or skill or relic. While administering potions either internally or directly onto open wounds lead to slightly different outcomes. Mostly down to a question of what form of damage that someone would prefer to address.

Damage is . . . annoying to gauge with how sometimes relatively minor wounds can cascade into larger issues, in that vein I'm trying to build more detail into the healing in FE. I have something I plan to implement while I was in the middle of realizing there would a decent amount of spilling mid-combat. I just don't have a good word for 'healing potion' below basic level vulneraries, but I'll figure something out. Probably make for a good chapter to describe that. . . Include smaller vials so that if this happens again it'd be more like I spent 5/3 of a vulneraries that are for more effective for administering of healing effects while in a combat scenerio. This fight however was very expensive if I'm keeping track of stats right.

I think that's everything.

Name: Adolf

Lv [14]

HP: 34 (40%)

Mv: 5

Str: 16 (35%)

Lck: 15 (50%)

Mag: 23 (65%)

Def: 13 (30%)

Dex: 13 (35%)

Res: 15 (50%)

Spd: 20 (55%)

Cha: 9 (10%)

For leveling purposes (all growth bonuses)

HP: (45%) | Mv: 4

Str: (35%) | Lck: (55%)

Mag: (75%) | Def: (30%)

Dex: (40%) | Res: (55%)

Spd: (55%) | Cha: (10%)

Personal Ability: Conscript - Grants Str/Res +4 whilst wielding a mundane weapon, and Mag/Def +4 whilst wielding a magical weapon. (Note: Doesn't activate if wielding a broken blade or depleted tome. Like using a Levin Sword would count as magical even if the damage calculation used strength to then convert to magical damage, the condition has to be met for the bonus to be applied.)

Class Ability 1: Attunement - Increase the max uses of all spells by +20%. (Replacing Fire)

Class Ability 2: [Mastery required] Fiendish Blow - If unit initiates combat, grants Mag+6 during combat. (30/30)

Class Ability 3: [Mastery required]

Ability 1: HP +5

Ability 2: Black Magic Prowess, Lv 2

Ability 3: Knife Prowess, Lv 2

Ability 4: Defense +2

Ability 5: Reposition

Learned Combat Arts: (jack shit, I have to double check the wiki)

Learned Abilities: Knife Prowess Lv 2, Black Magic Prowess Lv 2, Lance Prowess Lv 1, HP +5, Defense +2, Reposition - Moves adjacent ally to opposite side of unit.

Learned Spells: Thunder, Firebolt, Hail

Proficiencies: Reason (It won't come up for a while, but I'm writing it down so I don't forget)

Deficiencies: Faith (If I need to change anything due to my writing not lining up with this, just know that the chapters I actually publish are more canon than this. It mostly just serves as a reminder to myself)

Budding Talent: idk (I totally know)

Inventory: Steel Knife (broken), 0 Vulneraries, a Beginner's Seal, Blizzard tome, Hail Tome, Fire Tome, an Intermediate Seal, all my shit from Earth etc

Currency: 1170 in the form of 1 small bullion, and 170 in spare change. (Small gold bars/plates/bullions are normally 1 kilogram, their worth being equal to their weight in grams.)

For my ff readers, I realize this might be the first time that you're actually seeing stats. Apolocheese, I forgor

Go check out my more active QQ, or stay here for my archive if you don't want to sift through a thread.