Note: This chapter has detailed injury and violence! This whole story will have these sorts of images and themes, so please be aware of such.

Unfortunately, Ricken's fears were realized, as the conflict between Gaius and Henry only worsened over time. The next few days were met with unnecessary fights and conflicts. Half of it was due to a vengeful Henry, who wanted to hurt Gaius in the same way that he had been hurt by him, not quite realizing that he was only making matters more complicated in doing so. The other half of the reason why was because of Gaius, who was just as guilty for perpetuating the issue by responding to Henry's schoolyard taunts and unreasonable curses with swift violence and short tempered intolerance. If he had retained a taciturn, disdainful attitude towards the other, then Henry would have stopped after seeing his taunts go unanswered. But whether due to pride, exhaustion, annoyance, or a mix of the three, Gaius had no choice but to respond in kind.

Henry would always instigate these matters, usually by casting different curses and hexes to torment Gaius in small but inconvenient ways. For instance, he would make Gaius' hair change color, and revel in the laughter that people got out of seeing rainbow-colored hair, or orange hair with green stars and purple dots decorating each strand. Other times, he would curse Gaius to the point where food tasted like straw (which hit more heavily than it should have, considering the thief's reputation with eating sweets and food at the same rate in which people inhaled air to breathe), or temporarily made him blind or deaf. Then he could get away with throwing rocks at his head, spraying his clothes with paint or dirty water, or even zapping him with a light thunderbolt here or there. Close quarters combat always spelled out death for Henry, but from afar, Gaius was fair game.

On the other hand, Gaius wasn't as passive as he tried to make himself out to be (his motto was to live in the shadows, and do all the dirty work while those in the light shined. He never expected a fellow dark dweller to be the source of all his recent troubles), so he couldn't resist in dealing out a little revenge of his own. Whenever Henry zoomed in and out of sight like a roadrunner, Gaius would catch up with his own speed and agility, and give a stern beating when he could. Sometimes he would cut Henry with his daggers—shallowly and swiftly so as not to draw more blood than necessary—hoping that in doing so, he would scare him off for good. But this didn't stop him, so he raised the ante. He got more physical with shoving, pushing, and throwing, if he could—and even tried his hand at supplexing, after watching Gregor and Frederick at work in the training grounds one day.

Whatever he did to hurt Henry, he tried to make it biting, searing, and stinging enough that it would discourage him from interfering with his life again. But the next day, Gaius would be dismayed to find that Henry was unruffled, untroubled, unbothered by whatever punishment he received prior. If anything, the incessant tricks and attacks seemed to rile him up, and Gaius dreaded the oncoming struggle of such a long lived argument.

It wasn't just them, either. Other soldiers noticed their fights, and did their best to stay out of the crossfire. More often than not, people had to check their surroundings, and watch out for a stray curse, or a flying dagger that was meant for someone else. They all knew better than to involve themselves with either Henry or Gaius, and so both of them were avoided at all costs. Only the sturdy and fearless could stomach the possibility of being accidentally zapped and stabbed by either of the two, and so only those people were brave enough to say hello, or be in their general vicinity.

Undoubtedly, this conflict was getting out of hand. The only person that could momentarily placate their anger was the army's tactician, Robin, who happened to call both of them into a mission briefing.

Less than five minutes into the discussion, and things were already bad. "You can't be serious!" Gaius yelled, fingers digging into the parchment covering the table in front of them. He nodded dismissively in Henry's direction. "You want us to be paired together for the next fight?"

"I don't see why not," Robin replied curtly, crossing their arms. "Regardless of your personal feelings towards each other, you two would be great allies in battle. You could cover each other's weaknesses, see. Besides, I'm not putting you two on the front lines. You're only there to off anyone that gets past the vanguard, so things should be smooth sailing."

"Yeah, but still…" Gaius glanced at Henry, eyes full of detestment, before he added on: "This little dastard has been nothing but a pain in the neck for the past few days. I think it's better if we're not near each other, ever."

"Aw, are you scared, Honeybuns? Don't tell me a few tricks gotcha down already!" Henry taunted, wiggling his fingers in fake spellcasting motions. "Guess you're all talk and no walk, huh? Boooooring."

"You watch your mouth! You're a sour, rotten, overbaked little—"

"Stop it," Robin cut in. They burned with indignation and embarrassment, refusing to see this petty argument escalate any further. "Need I remind you that you and I and everyone else here is a soldier? Hard as it may be, we need to put aside personal disagreements in light of a bigger issue. You shouldn't worry about each other so much, not when there's Risen and enemy soldiers to be dealt with. If you find my plans to be too demanding, then maybe we ought to reconsider how much value I place on the two of you."

What started off as a stern and harsh lecture petered out into a disappointed spiel. They sounded less like a commanding officer and more like a discouraging parent, who had been more than let down by their children's antics as of late. Although there was nothing but sheer compassion and care in Robin's words, and the tiny smile they showed offset any true animosity they feigned to have in the presence of Henry and Gaius.

But their words had some effect, after all, because Gaius' shoulders loosened, and his frown lessened somewhat. Henry's smile toned down a few notches, too, going from insufferably bright to annoyingly happy. All in all, Robin's heart and expectations meant more to them than this silly fight did in the moment—at least long enough for them to pretend to be cordial to one another.

"Alright, Bubbles. I'll give it a shot."

"You got it, Boss! I'll make sure that Honeybuns here actually does something useful, for once~"

Robin smiled at their compatriots, and placed delicate hands on both of their shoulders. "Thank you," they said in a tired voice. "Let's pull ahead together, okay?"

"Right," Gaius answered. "Together."

.

.

.

The battlefield was the melting pot of sorry souls. That is to say, during battle, even the most heated enemies could come together in a shared effort to defeat a shared opponent. Two units that despised each other could overlook such sordid emotions, and pit their mental, physical, and emotional strengths into taking down the opposition. When placed in the middle of a raging war, too, it was hard to think about anything else than survival, and putting the bad guys in their place.

Or, as the soldiers all realized, putting the enemies in their place. They were no less virtuous or sinful than any of the Plegians or Risen that they slaughtered. Even as fellow Plegians stood among their ranks, they could all agree that between them and the Risen, they would much rather have them as allies.

And Robin's idea of Henry and Gaius covering each other's weaknesses was a dream come true. Their differing tactics and styles made it so that they could make up what the other lacked. Henry, as a dark mage, was far more suited to long range fights, and his attacks were slow but powerful. He conjured sprays of fire, bolts of thunder, and swafts of darkness to come and envelop the enemies. And when Gaius was too preoccupied with dodging and slicing, Henry swept in and destroyed any stray Risen that got too close for comfort.

Gaius, on the other hand, was infinitely better at close-range fights. Although he was less brutish and abrasive than fighters like Vaike, and even less offensive than the blueblood (and hair) Chrom, his fighting style was based off of evasion. Strength and defense were important, of course, but hefty muscles and sharp blades meant nothing if the hit couldn't land, in the first place. Gaius easily outmaneuvered all of his opponents, who were too clumsy to recover from their missteps (although he supposed being dead did that to a person, or two, or three, or twenty). Whenever his blows lacked sheer force, he more than made up for it in precision and acute deadliness.

He made sure that none of those shrieking Risen soldiers made their way over to Henry, as much as he liked the thought of the other screaming out in pain.

Leave it to Henry himself to cut through the silent, stagnant air with his lilting voice.

"It's too bad that you can't attack from afar, Honeybuns! One day, a bunch of mages will blow your entire head off, and set the rest of ya on fire!"

He cackled, and cast one of his dark spells—Ruin—on a few undead fighters in the distance. They weren't even close to scraping either of them with their sharp axes, but their very presence annoyed Henry to no end. When they fell over shrieking in agonizing pain (one of the few human qualities that remained), their bodies all but dissipated into cloudy purple smoke. Henry always managed to save a limb or two from complete disintegration, however, and he collected these gruesome body parts as macabre trophies of his endeavors.

While he was busy amassing different arms and legs from fallen Risen, Gaius was preoccupied with his own battles. He faced two different undead pegasus knights, and separated the beast from the rider with unmet grace and ease. When both forms fell over in defeated stupors, and faded away into darkness and smog, Gaius called out to the other.

"I could say the same about you, y'know! Magic's good and all, but it can't do everything for ya. Like this—" Gaius grunted as he lifted himself forward, dashing his sword through two zombie mercenaries without hesitation, the steel slicing through their cold bodies like a hot knife through butter. When their unearthly heads rolled off their shoulders and onto the ground, Gaius smirked as his clean (dirty) work, and looked towards Henry smugly.

Henry laughed, of course, and simply continued to cast more spells. "Yeah, but nothing is magic-resistant! Unlike your itty bitty knives, magic doesn't cut skin-deep. It hits you in the core, right down here!" To make an example of his tirade, he shot a bolt of Arcthunder through the heart of an undead cleric, bright yellow and white streaks of electricity cracking like a whip. The cleric slumped over in a useless groan, with its corrupted staff falling out of its unclenched, twice-dead hands.

This need to outdo each other intensified, and the two of them began to spitefully—perhaps unconsciously, but the animosity was too present for that to be a reality—allow enemies to encroach them, and injure one another. Henry could have easily bested that dark mage, but instead he let it scorch the ends of Gaius' cape and back of his legs with a simple Elfire spell. And Gaius, in turn, could have offed one of the fighter Risen, but instead he let the dead man approach Henry—effectively decking him the side of his head with the blunt end of his ax.

He yelped painfully, but quickly countered and set the offender on fire.

At that point, the two of them should have just killed each other to save the Risen the trouble of doing it themselves.

Immediately after this realization, though, the two of them realized that they made a mistake in letting their game go on as long as it did. More and more Risen appeared before them, and allowing as many enemies to remain alive as they did only worsened the situation. Soon enough, the dark mage and the thief had a horde on their hands, and their damaged conditions only meant that it would be that much harder to stay them off.

There was no more time to mess around, and Henry knew this as he tightened his grasp around the magic tomes, feeling their pulsating energy in his fingertips. Even if it meant burning through every last page in his books, Henry would do it as long as it eradicated the Risen horde. He would show them, and Gaius, that magic could do anything.

Although, that was a hard feat to pull off, since his spells were not as effective as he wanted them to be. While powerful and potent, still, the issue was his aim. His body was damaged by several blows already, and that weakened his accuracy and cost several hits of important magical power to miss altogether. If only magic wasn't linked to a person's body and soul, because his physical condition affected the way his powers manifested—even if his soul was as strong and pure as the dawning sun.

Luckily enough, dark mages like Henry were usually praised for their stronger-than-average defenses, especially when compared to normal mages. It meant that he could stomach a swing of an ax or a slice of a sword before things got truly bad. Of course, several axes and several swords at once posed a grave problem—one that not even good defense could mitigate.

He stepped back and assessed the situation during a short break in between enemies. In total, he had brought five tomes in all: Arcthunder, Arcfire, Elfire, Ruin and Nosferatu. He used up Ruin before the horde of Risen even appeared, so that was already an issue. Not to mention that he burned through both Arcthunder and Arcfire like it was nothing, the last pages of both slipping out of their empty bindings as he brought down a particularly menacing Risen Dark Knight. All he had left was Nosferatu, a powerful dark spell with an incredibly limited number of uses, and Elfire, which was meager in strength in comparison to the other spells he had on him. It wouldn't be enough to destroy the amount of enemies still standing—not by a long shot.

Still, it was better to focus on the carnage he could cause, rather than the ones he couldn't. He flipped open his Nosferatu spellbook, and relished in the silver writings glowing and humming beneath his curious fingertips. The binding itself was violet and pretty, very Plegian in nature and very vile. Only those as dark as Henry could ever hope to wield such unpredictable magic, and so he was lucky that he had access to it.

It was, by far, one of his favorite spells. It drained the life of the enemy only to heal the damage of its user, and the best part was that this process happened through definitely-immoral-but-wonderfully-arcane means! The beauty in it also lied in its limitations, however, and soon enough Henry burned through every last page of it.

The good news was that the onslaught lessened considerably. The bad news was that at this point, Henry only had one Elfire spellbook left, and it wasn't nearly enough to be able to defeat whoever remained. Understanding defeat, Henry realized he had to retreat, and that he and Gaius needed to focus on escaping before they joined the battlefield as bodily decorations.

It just occurred to him now that he left his partner unattended to all this time. Hopefully, Gaius didn't die the horrible, bloody death that Henry said he would succumb to, and hopefully his head was still attached to his body. But whether or not any of that was true remained to be seen, because at this angle, the dark mage saw nothing but undead bodies and beasts. He bounded over the battlefield, dodging the melting bodies and splattered blood (curiously thinking all the while about how both his and Gaius' blood were mixed into there somewhere), fighting the urge to stop and take a break, or to steal some limbs as ill-begotten trophies.

When he finally reached the other, everything was as he feared it would be.

Gaius was surrounded by the last Risen, six undead dark mages in all. They all had Nosferatu tomes in their icy, slimy hands, and they bore down on him with unholy magic, circling like hawks who hungered for a kill. Gaius himself was wounded and hindered on the ground, clearly worse for wear. Through the gaps in their formation, Henry saw Gaius' face even more clearly, and he saw the defeated look that overtook his handsome features—morphing them into something shocked, numbed, and tired.

Any minute now, and the Ylissean would join the countless ranks of the other fallen soldiers in this seemingly endless war between two nations. He would be a forgotten memory, left behind as the world continued to spin without him.

How many of Henry's former Plegian allies had suffered the same fate? Vasto, Mustafa, Campari, and so many other comrades, confidants, and allies were cut down in battle—pushed into corners they never came out of. Granted, Henry never truly cared for those people (although it really did suck how they were just murdered in cold blood like that), because past the Risen collection and bloodshed, he didn't care whose banner flew overhead. As much as it hurt to consider enemies as normal people with family, friends, and lives (because it became that much more difficult to kill them in the first place), he knew that was the case for his old Plegian brigade. So he didn't mourn over them as he should have—didn't worry for their loved ones left behind like he should have. He certainly didn't dread the future that would exist without them, or lament about forgetting what their voices sounded like.

But Gaius' voice, among others, stood out well, and it was seconds away from being lost in Risen screams and bloody massacre. His eyes would never live to glare daggers at Henry's face ever again, and his fingers would never move to bake, to kill, to slaughter, to touch anything ever again. There would be no more candies, pecan pies, sharp daggers, or winded lies. If Gaius died right now, there would be nothing left of him except for his lifeless shell of a body, once the dark mages drained him of essence and energy like the evil and undead leeches they were.

Henry had to do something—anything.

His bones were screaming in pain at movement, but he ignored them. His blood boiled under his skin, but he ignored it. His mind was yelling at him to run and hide while he still could, but he ignored it, too! Without a second thought, he shot out spheres of Elfire in their general direction, burning the backsides of the dark mages in an attempt to divert their attention away from the injured thief.

Said thief appeared surprised that he was still alive, because all six of his assailants halted, and turned around to face the new threat.

Henry looked past them and stared at Gaius, with their gazes meeting properly for the first time. Dark violet collided with deep green, and a connection was formed silently—knowingly so. For once, Henry felt like he understood Gaius, and so he called out to him in a playful leer.

"What's the matter, Honeybuns? Tired already?"

He didn't have time to hear the answer, because the offending dark mages were upon him at once. He backed up away from Gaius, and cast out spells like it was no one's business. For a while, he did surprisingly well, but yet only managed to kill four out of the six enemies before the last page of Elfire slipped from the now-empty binding of the book.

And so, Henry was completely defenseless as he no longer had any offensive magic at his disposal. His heart ached hollowly in his chest at the realization, and a sour taste formed in the back of his throat. Luckily, the Risen were kind enough to start the assault right away as they pounded on Henry's weakened body without any hesitation. Each blast of the opposing Nosferatu spell made him grow weaker and wearier, until his heartbeat slowed and his limbs paralyzed, gradually but considerably so.

It wasn't long before he was cornered, back pressed into a large oak tree that he didn't think to notice before, with the two Risen surrounding him at the front. One look into their glowing hands said it all. Henry's chest tightened, and he thought hopelessly to himself.

Well, this is it. It was fun while it lasted!

In that moment, Henry did what he always does best: he smiled. He smiled, smiled, and smiled even more than that. He lacked so much more than other people did, because anyone else would have screamed, cried, or thrashed in a final display of defiance. But he didn't know what it meant to do any of those things, so the only thing he could rely on to get through was his widely fake smile.

The expression became brighter and truer, at some point. Maybe it was because of the righteous sound of metal slicing through zombified flesh, or the sight of the mages falling into dismembered pieces in front of him. Maybe it was because he could feel nothing except for the cold spray of blood and lasting remnants of magic soar across his body, disgracing his image but not hurting him any further.

Henry's smile became very real when he saw Gaius' injured, ragged figure stand before him, with a heavily stained sword in his right hand. It was the same sword he had been using this whole time, as its surface was dyed an unholy color of black and red. The very sword that made mincemeat of Henry's would-be killers, the same sword that Henry was sure could not pierce through magic.

The irony tasted like blood in his mouth.

"What's the matter, Junior?" Gaius echoed the other's words back at him and smiled. "Tired already?"

"You got me," Henry muttered, dropping to his knees out of relief and exhaustion. His vision shook violently before fading into black.

The last thing that he felt before passing out completely was the surface of the soft yet bloodied grass, and the empty Elfire binding slipping out of his wiry hands. Then, the darkness settled in him, and it was all too easy to succumb to the waves of slumber.