Cycle

by RoseWarden

Robin is a young woman who bakes cakes during the day, sleeps at night, and drinks on weekends. She does not wage wars, fight demons, or solve dating issues. Yet, somehow by divine mistake, she's found herself doing just that. Clearly, someone has her confused with another Robin...

56. Chapter 56

Disclaimer – I don't own Fire Emblem. All of its properties belong to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.

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Chapter 56

The first night of my captivity left me sleeping straight through the night and into the next day. Fourteen hours of undisturbed bliss. The next day was easier. Aside from this abhorrent hunger of mine, I slept only twelve hours. The trend remained that way over the next several days. The more I ate, the less I slept. Apparently my body's excessive healing was dependent on rest and sustenance, food being the more important of the two. My heart's pace never felt as if it slowed to a steady, peaceful beat during this time. It was always a hammering constant in the back of my mind, as if my body was continuously at work even if I was grounded in a nest of blankets. I suppose it should be expected considering my body is healing from a mortal wound. Even the twins winced at the massive scab covering my back when they checked on it yesterday.

The only bright side to this is that the mark is regressing, just like they said it would. I won't lie, it's probably the best news I could have asked for. I've handled a lot of weird things, but this physical reminder is a persistent stain I can't seem to ignore. I'm more afraid of the mark than the fact I'm currently under the guard of the Stockholm duo and their twisted ideal of what I may be. That says a lot.

The twins have tried to be amiable. We've gotten along. They pester and prod for attention like starved artists. I've done my best to avoid tipping off suspicion. So far, so good. I can usually distract them if they prove too persistent on matters I'm not comfortable with. They obey anything I say without a word of protest. Incidentally, I don't think I'm the only hiding things. The twins have their own topics they tend to dance around. They hardly ever answer personal questions and never take their masks off. They'll blabber about all the private plans they know of from the enemy, but I can't even get them to tell me their favorite foods. Everything remains professional in my relationship with them, despite them wanting to know everything about me. It's bizarre that the twins are so open, yet so closed off at the same time. I've spent all my waking hours with them over these days yet can barely say much about them.

The same goes for their father. He's been keeping our strange mental relationship a secret from the twins. It's hard to focus on communicating with him when the twins are constantly buzzing in my ear. He's been away from camp doing his own thing. The twins call it reconnaissance. When he returns, he likes to keep his distance and glare a lot. Like, "please get a new hobby and stop creeping me out" a lot. I don't think either of us totally know how to handle the other. It's hard to process.

We've only been together a few days, but it seems like an eternity. Most of the time is devoted to my well-being and recovery, especially the mental part. The twins' primary goal appears to be getting me to remember who I was...am...whatever. They've tried a lot of different ways to do so. Most of it requires trying to trigger familiar elements of my life in order to feel something. They mean well, but these past days have been a nightmare right out of my childhood! Today's presentation, and all the others I endured like it, are driving me mad. God, it's like every class I ever hated! School bored me to death. Everything was easy. It was like getting spoon-fed information, except instead of a spoon it was a slow-drip through an IV. Read it once, quiz me, and move on.

Anyway, moral is...Echo is a terrible storyteller, and today is no exception. I mean, he's clearly enjoying the lecture. Today's tactic is helping the malevolent and all-mighty Grima remember goals of conquest through the inspiration received from our forebears. Apparently a little dragon history on those I emulated best could help reignite my passions. Hearing about the dragons slaughtering humans and traitor clans throughout history would rile up some good ol' blood lust.

Yeah, not working. This pile of metaphorical drool accumulating under my slightly agape mouth is proof of that.

"So as the last of the Ice tribe's warriors descended down the mountain, Balendin enacted his plan. With a great roar, he let out the call for the boulders to be let loose!" Echo exclaims with a mighty shout.

I hide a yawn in the crease of my arm, voice muffled deep and lazy in the cloth. "Rocks fall, everyone dies."

"Precisely!" Echo leaps off the rock he has made his platform. His coat billows around his shoulders and settles in like a stage curtain to hide all but his mask. His eyes glint up at me from the darkness of the eye holes, voice low with the mystery of building suspense. "The traitors of the Ice tribe never saw it coming. The pass collapsed in on itself and brought the walls with it. With no where to go, the majority remained trapped between the walls and rock slide. A great many, some say half the total forces, perished there!"

Echo raises two clenched fists and then throws them up in a grand gesture. The story takes a heroic rise in execution as it reaches its climax. "Carmac was too proud to declare defeat and drove the remaining fighters uphill against barricades and walls. By sunset, even Carmac himself laid slain at Balendin's feet. Without their allies, the humans were forced to flee the lands. And, with such a total victory, no others would stand against him. The plains tribes all swore allegiance to him!"

Echo clasps his hands together. He then bows at the waist and spreads both arms out to his sides with a great flourish. "And so, Balendin became know as 'Balendin the Conqueror.' He was the last great leader of the Fire Tribe to reign during our waning years of freedom."

The last of his speech echoes through the afternoon air, a solitary but crisp note that fades into the serenity of the wood. Echo's hood tips up and I get the feeling he's peeking up to assess my reaction. Literally, the faintest touch of a child-like eagerness makes my stomach flutter in butterflies. Dragging my hands up from my sides, I hold them over my head. The shallow clap of my hands coming apart and together in slow repetition is a lonely sound in this dense forest when following such an impassioned speech. I just can't bring myself enough to care.

One half of a sliced mushroom soars through the air and bounces off of Echo's head. He recoils and stumbles back, clutching at it. The veggie falls to the ground and rolls away amidst the hissing complaints of his sibling.

"Boooo!" Marc heckles through the cone she forms around her mouth with both hands. The knees that were once pulled up to her chest shift underneath so she can sit on them and gain a better angle. Beside her is a bowl of wild forged goods from the woods she's been preparing. She plucks up the tip of carrot and wallops the morsel at her twin. It causes him to duck into the confines of his cloak. "Where's the comedy? Where's the suspense?"

Echo manages to avoid another of the food barrage with a well-timed dodge, following up by slapping aside the next piece aimed at his forehead. The lad rises to full height with arms crossed and a menacing lean toward his other half. "This is a recovery course for Master Grima's lost memories! This is not story time!"

"Well how is Master Grima going to learn anything when your talk is as dry as bone dust?" Marc says.

"If I'm doing such a terrible job, why don't you try?" Echo responds in challenge to her insult.

His sister picks up a new vegetable, a potato this time, and presses her carving knife up to it. Marc uses her thumb to guide the thin blade along the skin, peeling it off into a fine spiral from the top down. "And miss out on watching you make yourself look so silly while boring Master to tears. No way I'd miss that."

Echo's head swings in my direction. "You are far from bored aren't you, Master Grima?"

I jerk out of my daze, my chin slipping off of the hand it rested in. A loud snort erupts out of me before my face falls into the tree trunk I was leaning on. My comedic "Oomph!" is perfectly timed to the crack I can hear spiking through Echo's heart. His body sags forward, arms hanging limply before him with his head tucked right between them.

"Of course I was listening!" I scramble to recover from my social faux pas. My fingers claw into the bark and I force myself up quick enough to almost push myself up and over the opposite side. My finger punches into the air. "Brendan the Squander!"

"That," Marc snickers through her teeth, "is not even close, Master."

"Oh." I slide back down, face burning. Yep, really hate how much this feels like a classroom. This embarrassment is exactly the same gut-churning disappointment that happened whenever a teacher called me out on daydreaming. I want to apologize, but I can't even do that. Stupid evil overlord persona.

"It's alright, Master!" Echo's attempt to comfort me sounds strained. He probably wears one of those fake smiles right now, the ones that shows a hint of tooth with a forehead creasing deeply at the seams from emotional restraint. "What matters is if it helped you remember."

He allows a heavily dramatic pause to hang over us. Even Marc pops up her head and stalls mid churn through the skinning of her vegetable. They both hold their breath in anticipation leaving only a thin whistle of the breeze to cut through the flames crackling in the pit between us. The inhale of my breath causes them both to lean in anticipation for the truth.

"No luck."

There's a collective exhale of disappoint that moves in unison between them. Marc's is an annoyed huff that's forced out of her when she lets her body drop back to a slouched lean against the rock behind her. Echo appears more thoughtful in his disappointment. He steps back and massages the underside of his chin with one hand. He falls into a small set of paces, the crunch of dry grass stirring up the scent of campfire ash and rich earth.

"Not one word has stirred up a thing inside you? Not even a flicker of emotion?"

"I mean, I know what you're talking about. I remember reading about these events in the history books I've come across. Maybe not as colorful as you've painted it," I add with hopes of encouraging his diminished enthusiasm.

Echo scoffs into the back of his hand, shaking his head frantically. "That's all menial scribbles tainted by human prejudices. Did anything you read compare to the majesty of our ancestors?"

He throws his hand over the meager remains of what ancient tomes he could save from ruins he's visited. Graveyards, more like. The dusty novels he's managed to pull up out of ancient dragon settlements are sad excuses. The covers are torn, some clean off. Pages are smeared nearly unreadable in passages from blood, dirt, or other elements. Pictures are faded or vandalized by former treasure hunters.

Even so, I have to admire the care Echo puts in them. He treats them like a beloved weapon. During hours of down time, I've glances of him sitting alone by the light of the fire's embers. He's discovered the art of book repair on his own. He'll rebind the broken spines and lacquer up the peeling books covers. I once found him working with a quill in hand over a book. The next morning when he disappeared with Marc to check their traps, I snuck a peek at what I had thought was him drawing. I found a fresh sheet of parchment folded up inside the book. On it was a replica of one of the passages from the book he had been reading. The paragraph took up the whole page. The letters were crooked and formed whole sentences that tapered off into slanting lines. The handiwork was poor with ink splotches decorating the numerous points the quill tip pressed too hard into the paper. The presentation was poor, but the efforts outstanding. He's teaching himself to write. No doubt he has scholarly dreams of rewriting the passages before they fade away into oblivion leaving precious fragments of his culture lost for good.

"It's not enough. We have to keep trying." The stubborn response is not something I'm used to. The children don't typically use such forceful language given their fear of Grima, but this appears to be an exceptional time. Or, perhaps it's part of their adjustment to my new attitude. While weary in the beginning, it seems my new found leniency has allowed them some sense of release in their stuffy behavior.

Also it was annoying as hell. I told them if they didn't inject some personality back in their routines, I would dismiss them on the bounds of boredom. Who wants to be served by boring sticks in the mud? Not this fell queen wannabe!

Echo's self-made tantrum continues with a quickened pace. His hands wave through the air over his head as he berates himself over his actions. "You aren't worthy of failure, Master. Our worth is nothing if we can't provide for you. What sort of servant would be considered useful if they failed when their master needed them most?"

"Yeah, right," I mumble to no one.

That's hard to hear. I hate it. It's disgusting to hear such a title being thrown at me with such conviction and belief applied to it. But, I can't outright ask them to stop. I was going to, honestly. One of the few things the General advised me of was to just play up my role. They need to believe that I'm Grima. The dragon was a narcissistic fiend. One of the last things that would be expected from my mouth would be a request to stop calling me their overlord and all that. Disturbing as it is, I have to endure it.

"You really care about this history stuff, don't you?"

Echo pauses near his stack of literary treasures and presses a gloved hands on it. He drags the tips of his fingers over it, voice as light and delicate as his touch. "It's all we have."

Marc's sentiments appear to be elsewhere. The snort from her nose comes off forceful and rude to her brother's attempt. She rolls forward and points the tip of her carving knife at me. "We got Master Grima back, right? That should be enough."

"We have a duty to fulfill Master Grima's wish," Echo says. His fingers curl under his palm and he presses down on the cover. He seems burdened by an unseen weight that bows his shoulders inward. "Especially when we're the only ones that remember."

Marc slumps back and works closer to her face. She burrows into the folds of her cloak, silent. All that responds is the rhythmic scrape of her knife over the vegetable skin.

"It's our job to carry out the dream until Master Grima can once more," Echo says.

Marc tips her head to the side and offers a lame grunt of affirmation. She doesn't respond beyond that, choosing to mutter under her breath instead.

"There must be something else we can do," Echo laments to himself. He kneels down and rests on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight between them. He picks up a thick tome with a veridian cover and faded silver etchings on the leather. He thumbs through it in a magnificent fan of pages before dropping into into the dust. He reaches for another. "More stories? No...maybe..."

Marc lets out a deep sigh and puts her prep work aside. She pulls her hood up from the ways it has bunched up over her shoulders. She then adjusts her mask.

"Maybe we're going about it wrong," she says. She presses into the earth for support on one arm and pushes up off her knees. Dusting off the back of her trousers and cloak, Marc walks toward her sibling. She watches his hunched form as he rifles through his library. "Do you think we could trying using something more recent? It might be easier to start with fresh events and work backward. After all, it seems the oldest memories are the ones that haven't recovered."

Echo's head bobs up. The book falls from his hands and he stands to join her. They're exactly the same height despite being fraternal twins. I wonder how long that will last, and whether it would annoy either side if one out grows the other?

My palms start to itch with the budding of perspiration caused by an anxious need. Another strange anomaly effecting me. Like their father, though not as strong, I can catch a faint draft of emotional empathy. It's only when I'm close. The General did admit that dragons share such experiences with each other.

I've come to terms with the fact that I should be expecting weird things from now on. What bothers me is that I first encountered this in Ylisstol. Since then, the same phenomenon has never happened with other dragons I met. Not the other generals or Nowi or Nah. It shouldn't be happening at all, let alone just these isolated incidents with the twins or their father. I'm not a dragon, so what does it mean? It's all frustrating.

"What do you have in mind?" Echo says.

Marc jerks a thumb over her shoulder toward the pile of blankets they consider their shared sleeping space. Marc whispers behind the back of her other hand to her co-conspirator. "You know." I can just picture her unseen coy wink. "The thing."

"You mean the..." Echo hums a low tune between pressed lips.

"Yes." Marc drags the sound through her teeth with and excited hiss of air. "That."

They both turn their heads to look at me. They huddle together a bit longer. Whispers flutter between them, tempting me to ask. I'm just about to succumb when they break apart. Echo darts away and is swallowed up by the brush.

"What is going on?" I finally manage to sputter out.

Marc watches the fire with hands resting on her hips. Her solid posture exudes a confidence I wish I was capable of. "We're trying to fix you."

"That, I know," I grumble under my breath.

Leaves scrape and crackle beyond the dark hedges. Whatever Echo has, he's dragging it closer. Eventually, he pushes through the branches. They spread out and snag greedily at his cloak. His hunched form pulls through the resistance with the bag he's dragging until the bushes snap back into place. He shuffles backward until he passes right before me. Echo releases his grip on the object and leaves it for me to behold.

"Does this look familiar? Maybe bring any thoughts or feelings back?" he asks.

My breathe leaves in a small shudder of delight. I can't believe my eyes. Is this real?

It's... it's my bag. My dumb, anime print messenger bag from high school. I extended its lifetime of use by recycling it as my work bag. All the familiar butter cream grease stains and food dye splotches riddle the bright orange and black canvas. The print is already flaking, not to mention the fraying around the edges. It held up over the years, a faithful companion at my side. Now, it's followed me even here.

How? Why?

"Where did you get this?" My words are a breathy whisper, caught up in the numb awe overtaking me. My fingers trace over the curves and edges of this familiar present full to the brim with my hidden past. They stop and tug impatiently at the pull over flap buckling it together.

"It came with you. We've been holding onto it. But then you ran away and-" Marc's explanation fades away into a busy hum of nonsense. I move through hypnotic motions. I'm detached from the scene but still able to watch it unfold. The buckle comes undone and I peel back the fold over flap with agonizing slowness. I can hear objects inside moving about. The anticipation is making my gut squeeze together.

I shift to rest on both knees and lay the messenger bag open, full and ready to unveil its secrets. Beyond my peripheral vision, the twins swap an unsure glance. Without a word, they move in unison to scramble up before me in sitting position mimicking my own.

I fall into a trench of feelings that swallow me whole into the depths of this time capsule. It's the sensation of opening a trunk of childhood toys left confined in the attic for years. Every splash of color, every texture is a lingering fragment of something I hold dear. It's hard to hold together these feelings inside. I want to yell at the top of my lungs in thanks for this victory.

A shadow falls over me and Echo's inquisitive request snaps me to reality. "Do you see something familiar in there?"

"Yeah." A smile begins to grow and grow until it turns into a mad grin. My cheek muscles are stretching from the efforts. "It's all mine."

Another shadow joins his, smug in nature. "Told ya," Marc snickers.

Echo's hand starts to reach out for the bag, then pulls back abruptly. He presses his palms together, fingers lacing and twisting about between each other with a childish impatience. "What-what is all this, Master Grima?"

What do I say? How do you explain the future to the past? Centuries, maybe a thousand years of advancements toward things they never dreamed of! I suppose...I suppose the only thing I can say is the literal truth. It's blunt enough without requiring too many explanations. Identification for even the simplest of minds.

Both my hands descend into the depths, the first brushes of smooth plastic over my finger pads threatening to bring tears forth. "Treasure from another world."

Marc must be smiling. She exudes a satisfied confidence when she shakes her fist in victory. "I knew it."

So...so many things. Simple objects that mattered little to me before are luxuries I now crave. A working pen. A clean toothbrush. Floss! Goddammit, I have floss in here! What is nothing but typical bag clutter is worth more than gold to me. Everything here feels right. It's proof of home!

I wasn't lying. I was right all along! Home is...home is much closer than was before. God, I wish they could just leave me alone for even a moment to take this in with some privacy. I want to dive head first into this treasure vault. A final, solid clue to the past which has broken away from me in splintered fragments. I mean, just look at this all! My design notebook! Gel pens! Empty bags of candy!

"Wait a sec," I utter in confusion.

"What's wrong?" Echo says.

Empty? That's not right. I never had empty food contents in my bag. It was always filled with something to snack on. I was a serial snacker on the job. Chips, candy, sandwiches...I had it all. There's no way I would have had empty sacks of candy like this in here. That's one nightmare Gaius and I both agree on.

"Where's-" I withdraw the ketchup flavored chip bag and throw it aside. I pull out the caramel cubes and shake it from the bottom. All that drops out are crinkled wrappers. The same goes for the dark chocolate squares. "There's no way this is right. I had a whole stash in here," I whine feeling my soul crushed under the disappointment. I could have had a genuine taste of home. All the phantoms of salty and sweet things dance around my tasteless tongue, laughing and mocking. Such a cruel fate.

"You two didn't see any bags like this, did you? Full ones, I mean." I show them the merchandise. Though they probably can't read the labels, the intent is clear enough. "There was food in these. I should have had others. I swear..."

"Nope. I don't know what you mean." Marc's voice cracks in to a hideous giggle that ignites my suspicions. My palms begin to get scratchy from an invisible layer of sweat. My head goes light with an airy nervousness. Marc is projecting strongly. Don't tell me...

Echo shrugs his shoulder, his gaze cast off in a direction other than me. "I don't know about any candy in the bag."

"Yeah, see. No idea! Maybe whatever you're looking for fell out?" his sister nods with sagely wisdom. Echo joins in making them look like two parrots imitating each other.

I never mentioned candy. Those little liars! My lips twitch with unbidden laughter. The idea of these two kids cramming their faces with candy is too real. I sympathize because that's exactly what I would have done. Drowned myself in a sugar coma. Actually, I'm glad they had the chance to. Much as I would have liked it for myself, I can't imagine the twins ever had anything like candy while working in Grima's employ.

So, I swallow the disappointment and let it go. They're emanating anxiety. The twins watch with an intense burn, equal in diligence for any sign I might take a crack at them. From their sly back-commenting, sounds like Grima was a horror to them. How the hell did they come to admire Grima so much?

I move unhindered by their worries, ignoring it completely in order to focus on what matters most right now. I pull out each piece of my reclaimed past and lay it out in a spread before me. The strong negativity from them regresses, enough to let my lungs free from the restricted squeeze they were stuck in.

As the bag begins to collapse inward from the removal of the goods inside, Marc gives an owlish blink. "There's a lot in there," Marc says.

"I collect a lot of cra- treasures!" I correct myself. "Lots of treasures."

I can hear Frederick's scream in my mind if he were to see this. My perpetual state of controlled chaos is a misunderstood art.

Apart from being a pack rat, some more pieces of the old me stick out. One, I'm frugal as all hell. Something, I think anyway, I got from Mom. Two, I buy discount or second-hand new. Lots of peeled off sticker residue and gently used products litter the scene. Also from my mother. She loved her paychecks, and she loved haggling the most out of it. What I didn't pick up from small business, I got from her. That's not a gut reaction, it's a memory.

---

"You never let the merchant get the final word, Robin. That means you're easy. A pushover. Word will spread through the fair and you'll never get a chance."

Mom's ponytail sways behind her as we walk down the next aisle of the community craft fair. She's dyed it a platinum blonde this time, a color that clashes with the cracked leather of her parka. The badge of her precinct is proudly adorned on both shoulders.

"Uh-huh." I nod mindlessly to her lecture. My eyes are too busy glued to every piece of fudge and decadent candy we pass.

"Always make the last draw. It could be a dollar even, but make it all the same. You have the money, which means you have control. They want what you have, but you can't be easy about it. Make them work for it."

"This sounds like the sex ed talk you gave me," I snicker, my thirteen year old mind still giggly over such new and forbidden knowledge.

Mom stops before a woodcraft stall and I walk right past her. She catches my arm with only the precision a parent could have. Her eyes flit over the merchandise already appraising the craftsmanship. Her face is familiar, but oddly distorted at the same time. It's her, but not. The holes still missing in my memory fail provide total recognition. Two faces at once, neither fully matching.

"The same rules apply. What's yours is yours. Let no one claim it without your total consent and control."

Her hands move to a carved piece at the far corner of the tent. She bites into the tip of her glove and pulls it off. She presses the hand to the polished redwood surface. Her thumb follows the grooves cut in the surface, and an appraising hum follows. Every cut is scrutinized, every curve assessed.

My face burns red with embarrassment when she moves her nose to take in the deep, woody smell. I duck behind the carved totem and try to blend in with screaming fish adorning it.

Her eyes are gleaming with a shark-like hunger. She's found her prize: a coat rack fashioned in the shape of a waving black bear.

"You're seriously going to buy one of those?" My petulant whine hardly deters her path toward the plastic lunch table the artist set up. Poor man doesn't know what's coming.

"Remember Robbie, always get that last word." She cracks her neck, shaking out her shoulders. "Watch your mother work her magic."

---

I thought it was stupid then, but I was naïve to how useful good bargaining could be. As I grew and started working in Jules' family bakery, cultivating such a strong ability turned out to be very beneficial. There's a lot of people who will underestimate a small business owner. A good entrepreneur should have a strong edge when it comes to bartering. If not, have someone who can to maximize profits and minimize product costs for you. It's certainly come in handy for me numerous times. I wonder if I can haggle my way out of this scenario? Ha! One can dream.

Other than the fact I'm a raging cheapskate with hoarding issues, I appear to have been normal. The twins wait silently while I pick apart the outermost layer of this time capsule. Faded receipts and stained napkins remind me of the fast food I consumed on a daily basis before and after my long shifts. My dedication to fish sandwiches is admirable, if not obsessive. Purple is the color of choice on most accessories, from notebooks to a pair of woolen gloves. There's also smaller things: cherry—flavored organic chapstick from Jules, a half-used bottle of mint and vanilla hand lotion I never gave back to her younger sister, and a stack of used gift cards for my DS.

Speaking of, isn't that in here too? I've got several tech-like items. My phone, charger, mp3 player...It'd all be in the front pouch. My hand hovers over the zipper that keeps the compartment closed. I press my hand to the canvas and run it over the general area. Underneath, I feel the material rise and stretch over the hidden lines of several hard objects.

"No way, still here?" I whisper excitedly.

My heart leaps up in my chest. My hands are shaking with nerves making a proper grip on the small zipper extra tough. Once snagged, I rip it across the toothy line keeping it shut. I wet my lips with anticipation, the intensity of this discovery forcing open my eyes. From the corner of my distracted vision, I think I see the twins lean in closer with silent interest. I thrust both hands into the depths and fish around.

What I extract is a bundle of wires and tough shells. My mouth falls open, a smile trying to form around the exhale of disbelief I release. If there is anything, and I mean anything, that would prove my existence from elsewhere, it would be proof of a higher technology. Sitting in my lap is that exact proof. Honest to God twenty-first century hardware.

My DS, a portable gaming goldmine, is slightly nicked at the corners but still shining. Black with gold etchings, the special released Zelda themed DS was a hard fought win on an online bidding platform. The memory card inside is filled with downloaded games. My cellphone is less glamorous, but still whole. The tiny crack in the left hand corner is the only accident it endured having since come under the protection of the bakery themed plastic case hugging its fragile shell. It was a Christmas gift from the old boyfriend before we broke up. The white protector is now an egg shell white with some of the glittering, pastel color pastries beginning to peel.

Ah, and here is the light of my salvation through teenage years. The holy grail of angsty metal for breakups, empowering ballads for workouts, and shitty memes to laugh to. This boring little white mp3 player has seen things. It was the first I ever got and the only I ever carried. It may not be as flashy as the touch-screen monster of the new tech era, but it has hefty storage space and a familiar clicker wheel to satisfy my needs. An evolution of my life is stored in this little device, enough to come along to me even here. I give the wheel a familiar swipe with my thumb for nostalgia's sake.

The screen lights up with recognition, flashing to life with a gleam of eye-burning florescence. I blink rapidly at the sudden shine in my eyes, lips fumbling over words in amazement. "How's this working still? The batteries should have drained ages ago!"

I mess with the controls and it continues to respond to my touch, the light no trick of my mind. My mp3 player is still running on energy! The twins watch me fiddle with the machine. Marc's body has a nervous twitch, head following all the sudden movements of my hands. Echo is nothing but a rock. I swear, I don't even hear him breathing. They're sure curious, if not flabbergasted at the sight.

Just for for my amusement, I hold up the music player and shake it back and forth in presentation. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

"No," Marc responds too quickly for me not notice. Her answer is flat and sharp as a knife's incision. The type of reaction a guilty individual drops to avoid further confrontation.

Echo jumps to life, waving his hands back and forth before him, his head imitating the same in a horizontal fashion. "No! No, we'd never dare to touch your things."

Too fake, too lame. Methinks the battery power in this is a product of someone's meddling. My eyebrows raise up toward my hairline, lips pressing together in a knowing smirk that screams "O RLY?"

The twins look toward each other, then both scoot back just a hair. Echo lets out nervous sets of broken laughs. He meekly looks to the side, fingers picking at grass strands on both sides of him. "I mean, we tried it once just to see if it would help somehow. "

I lower the mp3 player into my lap and lean back. I emit a loud, displeased hum. Marc starts to rub at the back of her neck, playing with her hair beneath the hood that covers it. "Okay, we tried a few times."

"We tried it a lot!" Echo breaks, the truth flooding out under my gaze. "We couldn't not explore it! It defies logic. We knew it had to be something special from this other world. Why would you have it otherwise?"

"It's a magic music box," Marc declares with a dreamy sway. Her hands clasp together by her cheek and her eyes must be sparkling saucers under that mask of hers. "So much music we've never heard before."

Echo leans forward on his arms and tilts his head to the side with inquiry. "It...is music. Isn't it?"

"A whole world's worth," I answer, voice dipping to a soft tremor at the memory. "And you figured out how to make it work. I'm speechless."

"Not in an angry way, right?" Echo asks, the hesitation between breaths a verbal flinch of fear in regards to my future response.

"No, I'm actually pleased with your ingenuity," I say to appease his inhibitions about admitting to their curiosity. Even if I was the fell dragon, I would have to be somewhat impressed that these two figured out how to start and play a technology advanced ages before their own. I scroll through the black text of my play lists and my brain struggles to adjust from one language to another. The phonetic letters of my world are almost an alien language to me after the rune system that Ylisse and other contemporaries use for their writing system. The translations slowly fall into place after I adjust the proper sounds to letters in my mind. It's not a fluid return of literacy just yet, but the transition is falling into place. It makes the mystery of my own natural linguistic understanding to Archaenean that much more a mystery.

Checking the setting, I see the battery life on here is still around halfway energized. This was charged in the last few days at the very least. That's just crazy! I wonder how much time these two put into listening? Just to cement the reality of the situation, I thumb over to the nearest set of songs and land on some good ol' Tchaikovsky. Here goes nothing!

The disc cover of the album fills the screen, a classical portrait of Tchaikovsky sitting beside a table. Underneath, the time begins to count down while the little bobble slowly makes the journey from the left to right side of the screen. The infinite quiet of the few seconds winding up to the first beat of sound is a slow and agonizingly sweet crescendo all building up to the sway of a violin's string.

I close my eyes and disappear into a safer place removed from the madness of dragons and wars. It's not the waning months of summer or the shade of leaves in an ancient wood. The plucky notes of sugar plum fairies dance from note to note on the air in a whimsical display that matches the snow falling outside. The soft, fluffy flakes are a common sight regardless of the holidays at home. They settle in the nooks of the windowsill and over the hedges resting outside the kitchen window.

This song always plays for us. It's upbeat and fun. It tickles Jules in quirky fashion even I don't understand. She'll always have it on while we bake the sugar cookies. There's limited space in the bakery kitchen with the tables and large island in the middle of the floor. However, Jules always finds a way to dance around them. She'd whisk those cookies out of the oven with her big pink mittens stained with the crusty cream blood of past failures. Despite the piping hot pans handled inches before her face, she'd smile and perform her mangled pirouettes around the floor, depositing one tray after another on the cooling rack we had off to the side.

God, I miss her.

I open my eyes again and nearly jump out my skin. The twins are sitting in front of me having now moved since I drifted off. They both rest on their knees and lean over my hands to stare at the functioning device. The light from the screen casts a gleam against the smooth surface of their masks and down into the darkness of their eyes holes.

"The instruments are so vast and colorful. Beyond the sounds of anything conceived by our brethren or the humans," Echo says, voice soft and light. His eyes close and his head nods lightly in appreciation to the sound.

"How long did it take to learn how to use this?" I ask them. I kindle their interests by presenting the mp3 closer.

Marc reaches out toward it, but withdraws her hand before getting too close. Her fingers tap around the air of the frame, mimicking the gestures my fingers make over the device to make it work. "It took some time. We can't read anything. Everything was by trial and error, as you always dictated. We tried one new approach after another and put together what caused reactions for different functions."

Marc's eyes narrow beneath her mask and shine brightly. She's almost glowing with girlish amour. "There's these songs with these males who harmonize together. I don't know who these bards are, but they have such a hypnotic sound. Are they sirens, Master Grima? I heard they haunt the western oceans luring sailors to the depths. The way their voices perform together is so...so..."

Echo reaches out and yanks the front of Marc's hood down over her face. He moves with such force that she pitches over and has to catch herself before hitting the dirt. "Don't bring Master Grima into your odd fantasies."

Does Marc...like boy bands?

Must. Not. Laugh.

I duck my head away and inspect the sounds of ducks honking off in the distance. I hope they don't see the grin I'm trying so desperately to quash. "Not quite."

The song ends and I thrust my thumb along for a different selection. I land on a Eurodance playlist. The low thrumming of bass is overwhelmed by rapid-fire synth beats and the smooth melody of female vocals. Echo stops his slow swaying and stiffens with the change of tempo. He rubs over the material of his hood where his ears would be. "There's such a difference in these songs you have archived in that box."

"I must have collected as much variety as I could," I muse with a wistful sigh to further play off the amnesiac angle. "Does any of this sound like songs I would have liked in this world?"

The twins both pause in their own place of merriment. A heavy sense of unease envelops me, something neither twin seems to be able to withhold from hiding. Echo twiddles his fingers together, speaking with rehearsed precision. "We...we don't know what you like because you never shared that with us. But, we trust you to know yourself. If it's what you like, then we like it too."

I frown. That's not the answer I wanted to receive nor hear from them. "You don't have to like everything I do."

The pause continues, but it feels even more stifling than before. They may not notice always given how comfortable they've become outside of Grima's influence, but I notice that they always clam up when called out on their own individuality. Outside of vocalizing that they enjoy whatever "Grima" does, they never consciously admits to their own likes and dislikes.

"Do you even have your own opinions? Are you different from each other at all?"

"Of course, Master Grima," Echo answers with a detached ease. "I hate strawberries, and Marc hates blueberries."

That is not what I meant.

Before I can press further, Echo leaps into a new conversation to claim my focus. "What is this music box made of? How does it work?"

"I-" My passion to fight tapers off into a dissatisfied shake of the head. I brush back through my hair and breath a long stream of air out the corner of my mouth. I appease his interests for the sake of my own self. "This music box, as you call it, is made up of highly advanced parts. Tiny little pieces that all fit together like gears and run on a type of energy that is very much like lightening magic. It's called 'electricity'."

Marc coos in appreciation for the new knowledge. Echo mouths out the word with some success, then radiates with glee. "I need to learn it."

It's so damn hard not to try and react as positively as I want to. I'd love to encourage their curiosities and actively expand on it, but too much nurturing might make them suspicious. Or, so their father seems to think. God, everything I want to do seems like a loaded gun!

I force myself to take an impassive expression. I answer the ensuing stream of questions with a mental limit to how much and how long each stretch of answers go. Thankfully, my penchant for useless information gathering is a quirk I can appreciate today. I entertain what I can in the long barrage of interrogations that continue amidst the flux of contemporary music settling in the background.

They get so caught up in the science behind this that I'm effectively driven out of the conversation wholly as they spiral into a debate of their own making. In truth, I'm sort of grateful. These kids are a bit much. I'd enjoy a breather.

I find my cell phone and DS haven't had the same affection lavished on them. A quick check of the power proves them both dead. I return my attention to some of the other contents in the bag. A battered spiral notebook with purple and pastel blue polka dots draws my attention, and I find myself reaching for it. The plastic cover is hard and indented from past wear and tear. I pull back the front and reveal a sizable chunk of lined paper left inside, though hanging bits along the inside spine show a fair number to have been ripped out since its first purchase.

"My sketchbook." I smile to myself and draw a fond caress over the paper.

Page after page whisper past. Both sides of each paper are adorned with my messy scribbles in all colors of ink. A veritable rainbow, if you will. Nearly all of it is subtext to the drawing taking up the center. Most are sketches that have been rejected from past cake designs that folks have ordered from me. Lavish tiered monstrosities to humble cupcake towers, all penned with the most delicate of details. It's an amazing feat when I notice that it's all done in gel pen. I was a real professional, wasn't I?

The most recent entry is a four tier cake adorned with a flowing waterfall of flowers. There's only one here, the first draft being a rare acceptance on the bride's behalf. Orchids, hibiscus, and magnolias dot the cascading vines that drape the curves of this decadent pina colada cake. Yes, magnolias are in this tropical dream. Despite it being completely out of place, the bride insisted they be there despite breaking immersion. That's not the worst though. Thinking to make it even more tropical, the groom suggested it be topped by two flamingos, each wearing a top hat and veil respectively. Yeah, that's something special.

"The Bouchard wedding cake." I rub my temples to release the stress ghosting up in remembrance of all the petty demands they issued. If I disappeared with this sketchbook, that means Jules was left high and dry design wise. I had the only master copy. I'm going to owe her a bottle of Chardonnay for this if I ever want her to forgive me.

I set that aside to look at later in private. I feel like anymore reminiscing might threaten some tears to form that I'm not allowed to shed. I force myself away and start to explore what else is left. I find my curiosity is drawn to these lumps of cloth smashed into the bottom of my bag. I can't help but feel a little excited at the thought that this might be an honest to God sweatshirt. The height of comfy. The most blessed of leisure wear. Something I can tuck myself into when habituating that drafty castle!

I pull out the tangle of sleeves trying to sort what's top and bottom, only for more than I though to come tumbling out over the grass. My little eep of surprise snags the attention of the twins who both look over to see a full ensemble spread out around me. I'm left holding a sweatshirt, a college leftover with the appropriate initials and emblem embossed in the middle. Over my lap, a pair of jeans stretch out with one leg still hanging in the bad. They unrolled and allowed several more objects to fall out around it, including socks, gym shoes, and...other unmentionables.

I just let my underwear roll out in front of two kids for their full ogling pleasure. Kill me. Please.

They appear unfazed, the modern designs of underwear nothing like in this world. All the same, my tomato-ripened face squirms into frustration as I snatch up the taboo articles and cram them in the depth of the bobble tipped hat I own. With the mortification slowly ebbing away, new thoughts take hold. A fusion of disoriented recognition makes my sentence both an observation and a question.

"These are the clothes I was wearing when I came here?"

The heated exchange of ideas is forgotten, leaving the twins a pair of silent observers up until this point. When my wondering gaze lands on them, Marc is the one to softly confirms my question. "When the other generals brought you through the Outrealms gate, that's the clothes you had on."

I always wondered...I mean, it was always strange to me. If I had come from another world, where were those clothes? I had no answer since I never could remember how I got here, only the sparse seconds before getting knocked unconscious. "I woke up to a different ensemble with that Grimleal coat and traditional traveling wear. Even these boots," I finish with a gesture to the mud caked pair sitting upright next to my bedroll.

"Marc and I had given you those clothes to change into. After a few days, the garb you came in got dirty from traveling. So, we gave you these hoping it would help," Echo says.

"Also, it was your favorite outfit. You wore it all the time. Said it reminded you of something," Marc adds on to her brother's explanation. "We also sort of...hoped it would help trigger your memories. Seeing your most iconic regal gear."

Goddammit. There's still so much I don't know. All of these missing pieces. It's infuriating! I just want to...Ugh!

Well, the door's open now. Might as well push through and see what I can learn. They have a part of this story that haven't had access to. If I can get anything, even a little out of them, maybe it can help me understand. Something, anything. I just...I just need to know.

I look down at my hand, the brand exposed in plain sight. It still continues to burn despite the deathly cold of my skin around it. The bulging veins are less prominent having recessed back to normal size. Yet, the natural currents of my blood still stand thick and black beneath my ashen skin.

"Marc. Echo," I call out to them.

"Yes," they both recite in perfect tandem.

"Can you tell me how you came to get me from another realm? Why was I there? Why did you need to rescue me when you did?"

"You don't know why you were in that world? Or why you ran from us?" Echo asks me, a palpable dread woven in the concerned twisting of his pant legs between his fingers. "We were hoping you could tell us."

"Shit." My features crumple in disappointment, the curse spitting between my teeth with an angry hiss. I lean back and fall completely among the blankets. My arms and legs collapse in all directions, save for the one thrown over my eyes.

"Truthfully, I would run if I saw Pravitus' face too," I hear Marc mutter under her breath in an attempt for some dismal humor. It's followed by a huff of agitation when Echo shoves her in protest. "It's all his fault anyway, just saying."

"Look," I call out out to them, still sulking on the bedroll. "I can't tell you much. But, you can tell me things. Even if you don't know why, tell me everything anyway. Remind me about my mission. What led me here? Why are we fighting, and how are we going to do it? Just, anything!"

"You know some things. Do you want us to start from the very beginning? Or some modified version?" Echo asks of me.

"Not the very beginning of times cause Master Grima doesn't need to be bored to death by your history lectures again," Marc says. Her snide remark earns a louder smack across bare skin which elicits a return jab. I can hear the scraping of boots and rocks shuffling to mark a renewed tussle of sibling feuding.

"Knock it off!" I yell out with a burst of power coming deep from within my throat. The booming demand causes the grove to run dead silent, each sibling frozen in mid-motion of whatever they had planned to do. I continue to exasperate. "Echo, you can give me a full biography later. Just get to the more recent parts. I failed my first rebellion, bided my time, and came back victorious."

"Okay," the boy utters with the weakest of peeps. Some strength returns to continue his story, but not much. "After your defeat at the hands of the humans two thousand years ago, your servants worked tirelessly to construct a new form for you. It took generations, but your new mortal vessel eventually came. You possessed it and walked among humans for a time to size up their power. You fought against the Plegians, your own servants, to test their worth in serving you."

"They failed," Marc chimes in between his pause of thought.

So they think I was always Grima? Possessed from birth? Interesting...

"Eventually you grew bored and started your war against humans," he continues, then adds the next part with more venom. "In the heart of Naga's own lands."

"I won," I conclude for him. "Obviously."

"Yes! Conquered all and brought the human world to the brink of destruction. It was an easy conquest having placed yourself in the heart of the enemy. You struck at their greatest leaders when their guards were down sending all the human forces into disarray." Echo hops with excitement and delivers a wise quote afterward with a stoic poise and refined speech. "Keep you friends close, and your enemies closer."

I raise an eyebrow and crack open one eye to glare in suspicion. "Soon'zoo. You know him?"

"Echo reads all that stuff," Marc dismisses the fact with the wave of a hand.

Echo ruffles up with an indignant stomp. "J-just out of principal! Not like humans make good strategists. Soon'zoo was the only one with some talent to admire."

I grasp the bridge of my nose and inhale sharply. "Did I bring the generals back to help? Yes, or no?"

"Of course. They fought the first Exalt beside you, so it was only natural. Only their spirits were saved from death thanks to you recovering the phylacteries you tied their essence to. You're still working on the magic to make them whole though."

Sounds like some Medeus bullshit to me. I'm pretty sure that's how he came back in Marth's sequel. Or, was that Loptyr? Maybe both? Whatever. Guess Grima picked up some dark magic tricks from all over the place. No one better to learn from than the grandmaster of villains.

"I am the god of death. Hard for me to make life. That's cramping Naga's style," I mumble out in response to Echo's last observation.

"That not tr-" Echo's current thought is ended with a jab between his ribs by Marc. She raises a finger to her lips causing him to clamp his mouth shut. Instead, he hastily makes for a conclusion of past events. "Anyway, we almost destroyed humanity."

"Except," Marc's fists ball up as she tucks them under both arms. She turns away in a semi-circle and stalks away in irritation. "We failed you in one regard."

Doesn't take a genius to know what they're referring to. The sole figure who remained a wrench in their plans since the first cycle itself. "The princess of Ylisse."

Marc continues to sulk in the far edge of the grove with her back to me. She kicks into the dirt sending a clump tumbling into the thorns of a wild rose bush nearby. Marc hugs tightly to herself, squeezing in the loathing aura as if to embrace it. "Our greatest failure, aside from losing you, is allowing her to escape us. You would have succeeded had the princess not survived and used Naga's daughter to travel back in time."

"You know who she is, don't you?" Marc turns her gaze on me, searching. She implores me with a delicate desperation that forces my chest to seize with unbidden anxiety. "Our enemy? A puppet of Naga? Humanity's protector?"

"I know exactly what she is," I say betraying no emotions to clue them in on how I may feel. Marc definitely holds a grudge against Lucina. Almost to a personal level. "And she returned to the past to undue our work despite all our attempts to stop her and her allies. We followed, obviously."

Marc doesn't appear comforted by my response. She's nothing but a walking cloak, all her features swallowed in the folds of the cloth. Her cowl hangs obscuring even the features of her mask. Her slow gait stops beside an upturned stump positioned near the fire. She takes a place there and absorbs her attention toward the flames.

Echo watches her actions with a palpable sadness before resuming the conversation in her place. "Yes. Somehow, we got separated in doing so. We ended up in different times."

"The same happened to the other time travelers." I sit up, wincing at the protest in my back, and shimmy toward the stacked pillows for support. I would kill for an aspirin or something right now. I force out my interrogation through the pain, the occasional grunt of discomfort breaking my speech. "When did all of the generals appear?"

Echo's mask tips upward in thought. His fingers dance across the exposed skin of his upturned chin, pondering the accuracy of his thoughts. "We were spread out over a long amount of time. Maybe...over the course of one hundred years?"

"What." I sit up too quickly and feel my back muscles spasm from the stress of the movement. I curl into myself and bury my face into my knees, trembling from the wracking pain. Echo flits in to my side. He hovers, ready to intervene if need be.

While I struggle through the stinging sensations running up my spine, Echo responds to my earlier question. "We've been here for forty summers at least. Luckily, Father appeared seven years after us. We stuck together until we heard rumors that sounded a lot like Algidus in the south. When we met up, Algidus and Letum were already together. We searched out the others, then, we waited for you."

Forty years, and they're still so young? That manakete blood is something!

"But, you never appeared," Marc's tiny observation hurts more than my physical pain. It's so pitiful and lonely. Why? Where did Grima go? How did no one come across the fell dragon in one hundred years?

"Where was I supposed to appear?" I say.

"Origin Peak."

The endgame level, how appropriate. That breaks convention though. Up until my arrival, the events have moved liked clockwork. Grima always showed up at the same spot just a few weeks before the tournament in Rena Ferox.

Echo answers before I can say anything else, the look on my face apparent enough. "You kept gloating about a big surprise. You guaranteed that you found a way to fix all your problems and to go to Origin Peak after we went back in time. I don't think you meant for us to appear all over in different time periods though."

"Probably not," I mutter to myself. I lean back to focus with this new information pouring in. There's new possibilities open before me. Did Grima circumvent events totally, or, did Grima not even appear yet? According to Lucina, the last of her friends appeared nearly a year after the Plegian war. Is Grima still incoming? That's a terrifying idea. On the flip side, Grima could already have been here for decades and amassed power uncontested. Also horrifying.

I need more information. What I'm clueless about is where I fit into this twisted equation. "Eventually, you realized something was wrong when you never heard from me. What led you to the Outrealms?"

Marc's voice creeps out from under her hood. "Echo brought up asking the World Keeper."

Echo shrugs to my inquiring gaze, his attitude ambivalent to the person in question. "The red-haired female. There's a lot of them. They really like gold and stuff."

I try not to gape, but it takes a moment to unhinge my jaw from its wordless gasp of shock. "Anna?"

Echo nods. "Yes. The Annas keep the history of the worlds. If there was something happening, this world's Keeper would be the one to know about it. She was involved in its events before, after all."

"One of her sisters is around now. She's powerful and a thorn in my side. I want to know what happened if I need to throw her off our trail. Fighting her outright would draw attention I don't need right now," I say feigning mild interest.

"Yeah, about that." Echo pulls himself up onto the overturned log that provides a barrier between me and him. He rests on one hand, the free one gesturing about. "Well, she's dead, for starters. We needed her powers to open the gates, and she refused. So Pravitus ate her in order to do so."

"Excuse me?" My voice hitches an octave too high in my bewildered stutter, the shock of his explanation a punch in the face. "He...ate her?"

Echo's left shoulder raises, then falls. "It's what he does. He grafts parts of their body to him to absorb their powers. He usually eats the rest afterward."

Oh God. Our Anna. She's...This can't be...

"I've...never heard of that before. What is Pravitus? I thought he was a Mage dragon, but none that I know of can do that," I babble out. I draw my knees up and rest my elbows on them for support so I can cradle my head in thought. My face scrunches into a distressing array of creases, none of this making any sense. Anna is...

Echo points at the sky and makes a circling motion with it. "He's not a dragon from our world. He came through the Outrealm gate injured and alone. You found him and saved his dying body with your magic."

The sulking bump on a log formerly known as Marc shifts just enough to peek out of her cloak cocoon. I can feel her glower from here which is matched only by the deep growl in her voice. "He worships you, ya know. It's irritating."

"He didn't shape-shift before. Somewhere in his original conquest over Valm he encountered a strange human guarding Naga's daughter. Well, Pravitus claimed the human was actually another dragon, but he only fought in human or other forms. It's strange, that one. To live as a manakete but also forsake the natural form all together." Echo shifts in place, drawing one leg over the other. His fingers tap in rhythm to the perplexed state of his mind. "The dragon was an old one, but he was foolish for trying to take us on. He could have joined our cause. instead, he sacrificed all his wisdom and power just to give Naga's child time to flee and meet with the princess' allies. Well, at least Pravitus got those shape-shifting skills from that encounter. It's helped us with espionage more than once."

I feel oddly prickly about the information. I'm more alarmed over the death than I should be. The idea hangs over me like an ominous shroud, though I don't know why this unknown dragon's death causes me such distress. "How much of Pravitus is real, and how much is pieced from others?"

"Almost everything. What you saw in Ylissetol is just a fake skin. He looks different without his mirage up." Marc makes a gagging motion toward her throat and accents it just as loudly. "And he thinks you're going to choose him to mate with someday. Dolt. You already have..."

Marc's train of thought devolves into a string of unintelligible grumbles. She pulls the cloak around her again and huddles into her raincloud.

I stare blankly at them, numb to the core. "So he has the ability to open the gates now."

Echo clicks his tongue with disapproval. He gets up and retreats to his treasure hoard of books. He starts to dig through them, tossing unwanted novels aside with each passing glance. "Not a very good one. He screwed up the delivery of yourself, for starters. The Keeper, Anna, did warn him he couldn't utilize it properly."

Marc spits out her festering thoughts with a sharp snap of attitude. "Pravitus is to blame for your condition. That Anna told him what would happen if he opened the Outrealms and traveled with unprepared haste. It could cause severe complications in a being, including bodily harm and spiritual splintering. There were rituals to do and a time schedule to align Outrealm movements to."

"He killed her anyway." Echo pauses in his search and walks around to the back of the pile. He nudges aside an unmarked sack with his toes, talking back to me over his shoulder. "Now, you have no enemies."

"Anna's strong," I can't help mutter between my hands. My head is throbbing and the circles I'm massaging with my thumbs over my temples are not helping.

"Of course the Keepers are. Anything is stronger than a human, and she was no exception," Echo states as if that is common knowledge. "We only won cause Letum caught her mate. All the Grimleal we traveled with perished against the Keeper. It took the combined efforts of Tantibus' mirage spells and Pravitus' shape-shifting to make her lower her guard."

"That's..." I press my eyelids tightly together. I am not hearing this. "What happened next?"

"Pravitus performed the ritual. All we had to do was wait for the dimensional door to open. It took a few days-"

"Boring days!" Marc interjects.

Echo shoots her a glare before continuing. "-to activate the Outrealm's gate. It was fascinating, Master! A true wonder from the height of our era!"

Echo manages to finally find what he was looking for after another search. He blows the dirt off a nameless tome and opens it. He flips several pages before turning it around to present to me. His gloved finger taps the paper to show off the elaborate reconstruction of an advanced summoning circle. It's a composition I've never seen before. "The gates were created from our finest scientific minds shortly before the fall of our empire. That's probably why there is only one fully functioning one left in this world."

He flips the page again before I can absorb all the details. The next picture is drawn over both sides of the journal. The mural is recreated with painstaking detail. It's a marvelous piece of work. Echo is just beaming under his mask, pride and the wanting desire of acknowledgment radiating off him. "I deciphered it from the history carved into the walls. You must see it sometime. It's wonderful!"

I wipe my hands down my face and hang then between the space in between my knees. "Sure, whatever. Later on. I'm more interested in facts right now. What happened after the gate activated? You jumped blindly in?"

Echo sags with the depressing realization he wasn't going to receive any praise from me over the artwork. He explains less enthusiastic than before, but does so nonetheless. "No, of course not. There's a pedestal there with keys to manipulate the opening, closing, and destinations of the gate. We were able to gather up enough clues from the Keeper before Pravitus got impatient. His hasty devouring of her left the last portion of the procedure up for guessing. We lost access to the primary gate world all Keepers use to travel between. Marc, what was it again?"

"Askr, I think. Or was it Embla? They open to one of them," she says.

"Right! That! We were left having to physically open up tears in other worlds without the ease of transitioning through the centralized portal realm. It made things difficult, and dangerous to navigate."

I'm noticing a pattern with Pravitus. He's got self-destructive tendencies that keep ruining their plans. Worth noting to exploit later, if possible.

"You kept traversing worlds blindly until you found me," I surmise based on the prior facts.

"Yes, though we don't know why you were there in that world, or why the Keeper knew your whereabouts. I had thought perhaps you had convinced her to work with us. But she was not forthcoming with information and grew inhospitable when we pushed for your location." Echo says. "What we put together from the information we could find in her home was that you had used the gate with her full consent and had the gate closed behind you. Why you chose the world you did or what you had intended is only known to you."

"Though," Echo bends down and places an almost reverent touch to the mp3 player lying discarded on the ground. He holds it in cupped palms to offer to me. "Your treasures give us a great idea why."

I take it from him and turn down the volume to a whisper of what it was. "It must have taken years to find me."

"Not as many as it could have. Only ten in our realm. We were lucky," Echo says. "We also had your old dragon stone to search you out. Letum has it now, but it was the key to identifying you."

"It was from your time two thousand years past. The first stone you bonded with to control your powers. A dragon stone glows when near the soul it's bonded to. Letum has it now but..." Echo pulls out his own for reference. The dark stone is a deep color, almost deeper than black itself. The ethereal depths absorb all light and reflect nothing back. Yet, a single ember smolders like a lone sun in the center of its vast universe. Over the smooth surface, one ugly, jagged crack mars its shape. I'm drawn into it. It swirls in a mesmerizing fashion that requires an immense amount of control from me to break away from. "We carried it around and searched for any spark of light. The Keeper made it clear you were living within the same country boundaries as that the established gate resided in. We would search that one location and try a new gate."

He folds the stone away into the nooks of his clothing. "I wish we were there to see the world you were inhabiting. It must have something special to have guided you there."

"What puzzles me is something Letum said. He claimed you were resistant. You didn't want to go with." Echo pauses, unsure whether to press forward on his next thought. With great hesitation, he says, "They had to force you through."

"Yeah, well," I say, "maybe I had a good reason not to go yet."

"Of course, there had to be. Why else would you be in a world of humans?" Echo stares down at my music player. "The technology there is beyond ours, like your music box."

"And this!" Echo comes alive with new energy and fetches something else from my bag. He pulls out my universal charger and carries it by the dangling cords, making me wince. That thing has seen enough damage. Please, spare it an early grave.

"My solar charger," I identify for him.

"So-lar char-ger." He works through the syllables like he's trying to chew through caramel. "Strange."

"Yeah, but we can talk more about that later. I still need to know..." I groan out loud, one long mumble of aggravation. "This is ridiculous! We're right back to where we were."

"One thing hasn't changed," Marc says for the first time in a long while. Her silence almost made me forget she was still there with all this heavy material pressing on me. Her next words don't make things any easier, if worse. "We still have to stop the humans. The princess especially."

I don't comment on that remark. I physically can't.

"We thought you had meant you were going back to kill Naga's daughter. She has proven to hold the power like Naga to open time portals. Pravitus even went to the Mila Tree thinking you were there. You weren't," Echo says.

Holy habaneros! Tiki! Nobody ever did find out what happened to her. The holy tree is nothing but a smoking crater and her disappearance set the religious world into an uproar. The church had sent a pilgrimage of monks and clerics to investigate in Naga's name. They left for Valm far before we even marched on Plegia. We've never heard anything since. Whether the war in Valm is stopping them or they're simply too preoccupied with investigating to respond, the few details we had left us cold.

On one hand, I've finally learned the who and why behind the attack. The problem, this is the worst case scenario that could have occurred! It's not just a Valmese aggressor or even Grimleal dissidents. The attackers are deadly dragons with a blood lust and power to match Tiki's. I don't even want to know the answer, but I need to. Have we lost our our most valuable ally?

I regret the the words leaving my mouth. "Did he? Did Pravitus succeed?"

To my sense of relief, Marc lets out an indignant snort. She falls back to rest on her back, one leg swinging idly over the side. "Probably not. He's kind of a failure, if you didn't notice."

No body, no proof. I won't believe it unless I see it. That's how it goes in these instances, isn't it?

I want to laugh and cry at the same time. The giddy warmth building in my chest is a struggle all of its own to suppress. I pretend to be tired and roll over on my side so they can't see the smile forming. After mouthing out a few silent "Yes!" interjections, I steady my voice to a solemn form of self-reflection. "Killing Tiki would stopped an immediate way of returning to the past. But Naga still exists. Should she be able to reclaim power over time, then the capability would still have existed anyway. I had to have meant something else."

Grima, what did you do? What does it have to do with my world? You had something in mind to grant you the power needed to trump all your enemies. So much so you gloated openly about it. Did something go wrong, or have we just yet to meet you before you come smashing through the dimensional void? What am I to you, and you to me? And, where does the original version of myself fit into all this madness? Where have you gone to, my wayward self?

"What happens after this?" I find myself wondering out loud. "I'm not staying in these unsanitary woods forever. What are you planning for us to do after I finish healing the worst of these wounds?"

Their hesitation is obvious. The twins exchange glances, neither wanting to speak.

"Well?" I press harder.

Echo swallows, hiding deep into his hood. His voice is weak. "We didn't get that far."

"We thought you would have remembered by now," Marc says, equally tired in her own way.

I don't mean to, but a garbled shriek of frustration slips out of me. Luckily, I bury my face into the nearby pillow fast enough to muffle the worst of it. Still, the twins recoil visibly, Marc jumping fully to her feet in reaction to the volatile aggression I exhibit.

"Are you okay?" she asks. The phrase draws an immediate reaction of fear, her hand flying up to cover her mouth.

"Marc!" Echo hisses under his breath, glaring at her in warning before snatching a glance at me.

"Sorry!" she admits, raising both hands up in surrender. "I know. It just slipped out."

I feel the reemerging annoyance dipping down into ire. I deal with this every single day. If they catch themselves being too friendly, and they do it a lot without even realizing it, then the twins devolve into whimpering fits of apologies. Sometimes the other will start a fight with the offender for putting them both in danger of receiving a punishment. Usually I just brush it off or make them do a menial task like chop fire wood for a "punishment."

Today, oh not today. I'm in a sour mood already and this pandering lack of self-worth has finally boiled my last potato. I can already see Echo ready to pounce and start swatting at her. Fuck's sake, you two! Give it a rest!

"Why do you keep panicking about showing concern and just," I grit out through clenched teeth, finally just dropping the question on them, "general emotion toward anything?"

They stare at me like I've grown Naga's head from my neck. Echo's response is an awkward drawl that seems to be in disbelief of his own words. "You don't want us to. We were ordered never to exhibit feelings of possession or positive emotion."

"Again, why?" I exasperate.

"It promotes weakness. Allowing emotion and bonds gives the enemy a way to gain a hold on you in battle."

"And I got mad over you showing general affection for one another even as siblings? Your own blood?" Their slow nod of affirmation is all I need. I roll my eyes, a tisk of disgust flying out uninhibited. "That's petty as hell. You think I had more important things to teach than that sort of backwards-ass nonsense."

Marc cocks her head to the side, taken back by the outburst. "Master Grima?"

I wave her off, sneering in disgust with the whole situation. Was I that pathetic? "Look, as I am, I could care less about that."

I stand up with the help of the tree next to me. My fingers grope along the wood until I maneuver myself in the least painful fashion to my feet. My back remains to them to shield my complex set of emotions from them. My grip on the tree grows tighter, turning my knuckles white. "I have more important things to worry about, so I don't care if you use each others names or say some other stupid mushy shit! I'm trying to figure out where things went out of line so I can get my plans back in order. That requires more thought than I'm willing to sacrifice if you keep freaking out to me about asking whether I feel okay or not. This constant bickering is nothing but a distraction! It makes my head ache!"

I steady myself with a deep breath and turn on them, rage just bubbling to the surface over Grima's sick influence on them.

"Do you know why humans keep surviving despite my best efforts?" I stare them both down causing them to shrink away, eyes averted. "Here's a little tip I've learned in my time with the humans so far. There's power in this thing called 'attachment'. Humans continue to fight even when broken to nothing if they have just one person to fight for."

I step over the barrier between me and them toward the center of the grove. I flinch lightly over the action, a hand crawling to my back to massage it in support. The twins scuttle back and out of my path to hover at the far edge of the camp fire's heat. I watch the low burn of the flames crackle away over the logs that fuel its never-ending hunger. I raise my hand and shift it over the pit to catch a wayward ember drifting off. The magnetic draw of my personal magic draws it in. Feeding off its power, the ember turns into a flame and flares into a small bonfire just over my open palm.

Raising the other, I separate the single flame into two. They are smaller, but burn just as bright. Energy undulates between the twin flames. "Bonds between humans are a magic of its own. All types of the feeling called love are strong. It's an eternal concept that outlives manaketes and humans alike, eternally etched into song and memory. Even if you break that love, a new thing called revenge grows. Perhaps even stronger in power, revenge is a frightening, irrational state of mind that can destroy the most methodical of plans. That includes my own. Bonds can bring down even I."

I let out a harsh, raspy laugh. Bonds did bring down the fell dragon. Every time. Every cycle. Ironic. Grima preached this when it always destroyed the work the fell dragon did in the end.

"What do you think that princess you fear is driven by?" I twist the left flame around and cut the energy again into a fragmented set of twelve. Twelve little stars to revolve around the largest that remains. One to represent each of Lucina's friends and the supports that make up her waning strength. "She survives on the bonds of her past. She's strong not because she pushed away affection, but turned what we thought of as a weakness into a terrible, all-consuming strength."

One by one, the lights burn out until only the last remains. My fingers curl together one at a time and extinguish the final flame. Smoke rises through my clenched fist to disappear into the canopy above. "This strength is one I have yet to quash, based on what you told me. The love of her people and family turn her weak human shell into a unstoppable force. Something that has given me great pause to think on."

Grima is so obsessed with overcoming weaknesses and growing stronger. Combined with such blinding rage over humans, it's no wonder the dragon kept losing. Grima had some genius to them, as well as tactical know-how, so surely the dragon would have eventually realized the personal weakness hampering those efforts of domination. If I can see it, surely Grima did.

If there was a grand plan in place, what was it? How did its conception take place?

"I was so wrong," I find myself muttering in contemplation. My early rage begins to simmer into a cool sense of clarity. "Everything is different. I need to reevaluate things."

Could it be? If Grima had realized something like this, then maybe...

I turn away and press a hand to my lips. Possessed in this false mindset as I play Grima, I wonder if such a thing could have crossed Grima's mind and played into those plans the twins mentioned. Did I intentionally put myself among humans? Did I realize I needed to understand them more in order to stop them efficiently?

"Master Grima?" Echo calls out in concern for me.

"What I thought was strength is wrong. I turned it into my own weakness and now my legacy suffers from that miscalculation."

Maybe, just maybe, I...Grima that is...needed to play human to overcome those weaknesses. Perhaps Grima left this world to reside in others where such a name had no weight to it. Grima could become immersed in human life without ever worrying about being attacked. There's no way of proving such things, but maybe there's some weight to this theory?

"Th-that doesn't change certain things, right?"

Marc's abrupt outburst draws me to her.

"That is, just because you live among them now doesn't change your opinion about our mission," Marc's voice wavers with emotions she is failing to hold back. Something about my words has broken her earlier mood into a full blown panic. "The humans are the enemy still. They aren't worthy of admiration."

"I didn't say that, Marc," I say, caught off guard by the edge in her accusation.

"Marc?" Echo makes a move toward her in question.

"No. No but...Master Grima, you give the humans too much credit! They're not stronger than you. You mustn't think that!" Marc is on her feet, rigid as a board. Her arms tremble at her sides, fists clenched. Her dramatic outburst forces Echo and I to jump in surprise. "They-They're feeding you lies and your weakened mind is suffering for it by falling for such things."

"Marc! What are you trying to-" Echo hisses out with pronounced fear. He seems to realize where she may be trying to take her reasoning and isn't for it.

She backs away from him and shakes her head wild in protest. "No, I need to say this now after what we heard. I have to make sure that...that everything the princess has said isn't influencing Master Grima's conceptions. This talk about the Ylissean princess being so strong and powerful because of what she calls family is all a lie. The very foundation of that family is impossible."

Echo almost jerks out of my grasp when my hand comes to rest on his shoulder. I pull him back and step past him with a firm grip that tells him not to protest further. He obeys.

"Marc, what are you talking about?" I ask. "What conversation with the princess?"

Echo starts to cross his arms in protest toward his sister, only to shrivel under by glare of warning. He backs away and hides his face downward.

"We didn't mean to. It was an accident," Marc babbles in apology. "One day, it simply happened. And seeing how long you've been among the humans and with what we heard, I just can't...I want to make sure..."

Marc builds up her courage with a great gulp of air, then blurts everything out in a continuous stream. "We heard everything that the princess told you."

A hollow pit forms in my stomach. A dizzying wave takes hold of me, fear digging its icy talons in my chest. "Define everything."

"It's just what I said." Marc seems to realize she started on a path she can't return from. Her sentences roll nonstop in a hectic fanfare of words. "We would follow you when you didn't know. It was just a precaution, honest! We just wanted to see you safe among them."

"Marc, stop! We agreed not to talk about this so not to get in trouble," Echo rushes at her, voice cracking in anger. He's too late. Marc drops the final blow.

"Then one day, on the balcony, that princess...She-! She's-! She told you things about a past that never existed. She's lying! You never failed! Not once, or twice, or even five times! It's not true. The humans are not smarter than you! You're not weak. Whatever you heard was just some sort of way to trick you into not believing in yourself. To doubt your powers and sway you from our mission!"

Looking me square in the eye, Marc's desperate exclamation doubles as an appeal to me. She's begging me to dispute the facts, but there's nothing to argue when it's the truth.

They heard Lucina's discussion with me about the past. They're aware of the cycles and her connection to me. I mean, the other me.

"You were eavesdropping on me?" My voice strains high in a whine of disbelief. Echo backs away, head hung in shame. His whole body is bowed in deference. Marc attempts to hold my gaze, but she also breaks eye contact with the sharp jab of my accusation. "How long were you doing this?"

When they don't answer, I snap. How dare they! I've never felt such an empowerment overtake me, but the fear and rage for Lucina's safety pulls out an instinctive turn of emotion I can't suppress. "How long?"

"Since Ylisstol," Echo's meek reply comes out.

Son of a-

"Robin!"

A familiar, if not invasive, mental connection crackles in my subconscious. The metaphorical door is kicked wide open with a masculine anger filling in every crevice of my being. It's so jarring to feel another person molding themselves to my own.

Colors warp in a frantic dance allowing the General to morph into this plane. He emerges in a roar of old metal joints and a rush of dead wind. He carries a lingering darkness on his shoulders that delivers a menacing aura around him as it fades. He's drawn up to his full height in front of me using the bulk of his armor to form a shield between the twins and I. The red of his eyes burns extra bright under his visor, their heat threatening to spill out and overtake me.

"What?" I glare daggers into him, voice cresting in an antagonism I'm not known for. T-that didn't sound like me. I'm often irreverent and sarcastic, but not cruel. I think I...I think I need to calm down.

His echoing voice is a thunderclap that splits the space between my ears. "Leave. Now. You'll regret this if you don't."

"For me, or for you?" I snap in challenge, mostly out of spite. I don't want to fight. I'm just scared for her. I...Lucina...

The anger fades momentarily. I don't know how to describe it other than it's like the General has touched the very core of her name after I think it. His bond goes cold leaving the space between us empty and silent. A ringing void of detachment. Emotions start to fizzle and the staring match we have ends with a sudden resounding sigh from deep in his chest. "Both of us."

"You're talking to each other?" Marc is on her feet, gaping wildly between us. Her bewilderment is matched equally by the look of her twin.

"Out." The command is forceful. Final. No room to argue with. The General points away to the woods beyond.

"Fucking fuck." A sick, feverish sweat forces chills through my whole body. The muscles in branded arm ache with a strain that comes without reason. The intense sensation of vertigo is overwhelming, though not nearly as much as the forceful pressure the General exudes on my mind.

"Whatever," I groan, collapsing my head in my hands. I sink back against a nearby tree for support. The urge for confrontation fades from the exhaustive state of my being, along with my own desire to avoid further confrontation. Grima may be spiteful and vindictive, but that's not me.

I throw my hands up and sulk towards the riverside. My footsteps drag through the dirt leaving a trail behind. My torso is slumped forward allowing my arms to hang extra low and swing with the rhythm.

The General's heavy steps begin to follow, then pause. Along with the squeak of his armor is the crunching sounds of smaller feet. A peek over my shoulder shows the twins nearly under his cape in how close they follow him. Their distance from me is noted, whether out of fear or curiosity I can't say.

He looks down on them, the hue of his eyes nothing more than soft embers. "Tell them not to follow."

I try to control my voice. I can't claim full victory, but I don't sound so cold as I did earlier. I'm more tired than forceful. "Marc. Echo."

The two almost stumble over each other in their haste to stop. They watch me with no sounds. It hurts my heart in a strange way to see them not bubbly and enthusiastic about life. They shouldn't be like this. I only have myself to blame.

"Stay here."

They nod. No further responses beyond that.

Their father breaks into quick strides and passes me. Our eyes briefly connect, then, he's gone.

"I mean it. Make dinner or something." I shake my head, resisting the urge to hit myself. I mutter under my breath while retreating. "Shit."

It's not until I'm past the hedges that they start to speak again. Echo's hushed anger is a force against Marc's leaving them bickering louder than they intend.

"-probably ruined everything we just accomplished!" Echo says.

"She needs to know the truth!" Marc argues. "The princess is trying to make her believe things that aren't true. Made up stories about the past and everything. There's only us, Master Grima, and the future...past, that is. Whatever we had!"

Marc takes a deep, frantic inhale of air. "Why would she believe the enemy? She must know in her heart it's not true. Now she's talking nonsense about human strengths and threats that don't exist."

"We don't know anything about Master's past besides the legends. We never never spoke of such personal things." Echo pauses now, then continues in the quietest of tones. "I didn't even know the mortal shell had a name."

"It...she had a life."

I hear enough. I'm only repeating the same mistakes eavesdropping on them. I march off in the General's direction.

Nothing has changed since I was last here. Birds still call from branches unseen. The river flows with frothy bubbles. Leaves flutter to the caress of the wind. It's a picturesque scene discounting the undead warrior dispelling gloom in the center of it all.

I stomp over to join him. I bat a low hanging branch out of the way only for it to snap back and hit me on the head. I let out an extra obscene curse and rip a few leaves off the attacker, scattering them in ragged confetti strips to the wind.

Marching up to him, a finger juts out in accusation. "You know everything!"

He doesn't deny the fact, shrugging just so.

"How much of this conversation did you hear? Were you spying this time as well?"

"I returned at the height of your conversation. I heard enough to interrupt when your emotions bested you."

"Gods!" My cheeks puff so hard I can feel them turn red from the stress. "What am I supposed to do now? I'm need to be convincing them I'm on their side, not a wimpy human from another world working against them!"

The General's arms remain crossed over his breastplate. His helmet scrapes in a monotonous pattern as it follows my back and forth pacing. "I claim fault. I didn't know they followed me when I found you that afternoon in Ironhold."

A low, sarcastic hiss of laughter falls between the cracks of my crooked grin. "Oh, that makes it so much better."

"The other generals know nothing about this."

"That doesn't help the fact the children do! This could screw up everything before we even try to act."

His lightly burning eyes shift to the view just beyond the foliage that blocks us from camp. His hardened edge softens. "I will not lie, what I heard was...I still attempt to grasp what I heard to this day. I don't fully understand it myself. What the twins heard affected them too, Marc most of all. There are many questions to be asked, and such actions should be pursued with care. I thought them more careful than that, but such knowledge weighs heavily on them. Unbearably so. They're only children, and their emotions are more vulnerable. You are-"

I throw my hands up and laugh again, this time a harsh bark of disbelief. "Their idol? Hero? Surrogate?"

He snorts a puff of air through his helmet in annoyance for me interrupting. Dry leaves crunch under the rapid-fire steps that take me around the riverbank. Soon, they are drowned out by the loamy sand, though it can't cover up my half-hysteric shout. "They worship me! It's disgusting. What could Grima has possibly done to deserve such devotion?"

"At least our mutual opinion on Grima is heartening to hear."

"Even with that devotion, they still do suspicious things like that?" I say. "What aren't they telling me? What's this wall between is? Why do they crave my approval, but still hold things back? They guard their words and affection while blatantly throwing themselves forth on a sacrificial alter for praise. They'd rather spy on me than ask the important questions!"

"Fear," the General blatantly states.

"That's not the total truth. Something else, I can feel it. It's between us, a shared sense of emotions like we have." While a part of me acknowledges the fear and awe they have in regards to Grima, I know deep down it's not the only thing binding us together. I press a hand over my heart, squeezing the material of my shirt tight in my grasp. "Why is that even happening? That's impossible."

"Many things should be impossible. You're no dragon of yore, yet you aren't what you seem to believe. A true enigma."

I turn a pleading gaze on him. "Do you have answers? What is happening? What do I do?"

A dry, gusty laugh wheezes out of him. He rests the back of one hand on his side, his helmet shifting back and forth in thought. "That depends on the questions asked. Like the children, I was left behind and lost as to Grima's machinations."

"I don't even know how I got to where this all began. I don't remember you at all. Just Southtown and waking up under a tree to the Shepherds."

That seems so long ago. It's almost like a dream. Didn't I believe it a dream back then? Who would have guessed I'd end up in this disaster of a plot. Here I thought I could coattail my way through the story or wake-up before the worst of it. In some ways, I wish I could go back to those first few days where everything was new. The weight of this journey was much less heavy then.

The General's eyes close and he looks away. My longing for more innocent times strikes a cord buried deep in him. An ebony gauntlet comes to rest on the pommel of his long blade. The joints creak with the flex and release of his grip along it. After a stretch of silent deliberation, he speaks. "The Generals took you from your world to this one. They were escorting you to Plegia, though you were barely conscious through most of the journey from trauma."

"One eve, I stole you away when the others dropped their guard. You woke under that tree after fainting from some form of fear or stress. Perhaps both."

I try to remember even a little of the events he speaks of. That stretch of time is just one black void of consciousness. My mind has erased the very premise of it. The culprit could also be the very transference from one realm to another thanks to Pravitus. Who knows anymore, I sure as hell don't. Still, my curiosity is peaked with this admission.

"You took me away from them? Thank you, I suppose. I can't imagine how much of a risk that must have been to pull off given even the twins didn't see you do it."

"I would not thank me." His eyes flicker to the side. The General uses his thumb to pop up the tip of his blade so the barest hint of its steel edge winks out at me under a stray beam of sun. "I took you away to kill you."

"O-oh," I squeak as though sucking down helium. I swallow the hard lump in my throat and wait to feel it tangle up in the knot building in my chest. I take an involuntary step back. "I did wake with a concussion and scrapes. That explains some things."

The sword falls back into its sheath leaving no threat lingering. The General moves to walk past me, then, pauses. He lingers so we are shoulder to shoulder. One hand raises as if to brush over the space on my shoulder where one of the worse-off bruises was. He thinks better of the action and withdraws the gesture. "The wounds were self-inflicted. You fell down a ridge attempting to run from me when you worked yourself from my grasp. You rolled to a stop under that tree's shadow."

My own hand comes up to my shoulder and rubs the spot, warmth spreading under the cold clinging to my skin. I force myself to remain in place despite having the urge to run from him. "You hate Grima that much you would go behind their backs to kill me, the vessel, despite my innocence?"

"As far as I knew, you were no vessel." This time he does make contact with me, harshly grabbing my hand. He raises the brand until it is visible between us both, still black and threatening. "You were Grima."

"What gave you pause to reconsider?" I choke, forcing myself to look him straight on.

His gaze roams over my hand, down my arm, then over my face. His irises fade under the narrowing of his eyes. With a huff, he drops my arm and it falls to my side with a heavy weight. "You attempted to throw a branch at me and threatened me with something called 'kung-fu' before cursing me out with various food based expletives."

The idea sounds so absurd. Here was a creature I'd never seen before attempting to murder me and that's how I react? Yet, it feels wholly like what I would do. I find myself even reciting out loud the fantasy battle quotes I would have ushered in some daydream of my youth.

"I'll roll your meatballs through a grinder and feed 'em to ya!" I growl in a half-hearted challenge at him.

He hisses air in disgust over the threat and backs away. "Grima would have taken advantage of the first slip from my grasp to subjugate any further advances with the inborn curse that controls me. Yet, you stood there yelling mindless threats just like that."

"Eventually, you passed out from the fall or the culmination of all the events. Your eccentrics gave me enough reason to pause. Then, before I could decide what to do further with you, others came."

"The Shepherds?" I guess. I'm rewarded with a stoic nod of agreement.

Great. Swell. Not only does this guy seem to hate my guts, he actually did try to kill me at one point beyond verbal threats. This is terrible. I sink back down off my toes and resume the delicate sincerity befitting the situation. With a hesitant look back toward camp, I press him for new action. "So now what? Should I still be watching my back around you?"

"That remains to be seen."

"That is not going to help our partnership!"

His attitude keeps switching from anger to ambivalence. The General just can't keep his feelings in check about Grima. His own identity is a mystery. He holds a coveted status I know Pravitus would die for. Grima clearly had a place for him if the other generals acknowledge that. So, what's his story?

"Why are you so angry with Grima? Aren't you allies? You've helped me more times in what would be the favor of the humans than dragons. They said you were the favorite. I don't blame you for trying to end Grima, but the twins made it seem like you cared for Grima and the dragon cause, which earned you some sort of clout."

"They don't know the-" He balks. In a quick flurry of motion, he is spinning on his heel and advancing away from me toward the far end of the river bank. He presses on my bond with a weighty, withdrawn hesitance. "The more you ask, the more you'll regret. Stay your questions and spare yourself the grief."

I roll my eyes. "I'm well past that, buddy. Trust me."

His back remains turned and his connection goes cold. "No, you haven't. You'll come to regret more if you continue. More than you do now."

"Lies and deceit are why we're here to begin with! I'm trying to avoid that!" I persist, stepping up closer to him.

"An example you set well against your own so-called friends. You identity is-"

Oh hell no.

"Do not bring them into this. You have no right!" I lash out across our mental pathway with everything I have. I want him to know that there is no place to bring up the Shepherds in this. If there is one thing I have done right, it's everything I've accomplished to keep them safe. He will not use them against me like this!

"I have every right to-"

"No. You. Don't." I don't even let him start his reasoning. I shut him down. Instantly. "You can take that opinion of yours and go fuck off elsewhere, cause I will not allow you to use them against me when everything I'm now doing is...is..."

The fires in my belly die to a burned-out husk. I'm just tired of this. So much arguing and distress today. I don't want anymore of it. I just want to curl in a ball and sleep.

I clamp my mouth shut and dodge around him. I lean against the closest tree, my forehead pressed to the bark. "Sorry," I mumble into the wood. As much as I want to fight and lash out, this isn't going to answer all these questions. It definitely won't keep me in the General's good graces. I'm in a precarious situation at best. If he tried to kill me before, and has made low-veiled threats now, I shouldn't be pushing him away.

He's even more broken than I am.

His armor moans under the shuffling he makes around and away from me. He likes to maintain a distance between us. I don't know if it puts him more at ease that way, but I'll let him do whatever he has to. Talking isn't really an issue when everything is telepathic.

"It doesn't matter. Not anymore. My world is gone, as is my right to it." He sounds almost pitiful lacking any fire he previously had. The General approaches an angled rock outcropping and props an arm on it. He looks out into the depths of the forest. "Those children are all I have."

The feeling is mutual. "Yeah? Well, I've got a kid who needs me too. Her and all her friends."

I catch a twinge of something before he shuts down his feelings again. "The self-proclaimed princess of Ylisse."

"One and the same. The only hope for the future that Ylisse, and the human world, has," I announce with a grand flick of my hand.

"This is not your burden to bear, if your story if to be believed. Are you willing to commit to protecting something never yours to do? All this world has given you is suffering. It promises nothing for your future," he asks me suddenly, out of the blue. The General sounds desperate, almost needy for an answer. It's a jarring thing to hear given his brusque nature with me.

Truthfully, it's something I've asked myself often. I've spent many nights ruminating over the answer. It's often different things that emerge as the victorious state of logic. It's differed from selfish to selfless in nature. However, I've come to realize that it's okay to blame it on multiple reasons. None make me any less weak or strong for acknowledge why I fight this war as I do. There are lots of reasons, but two stand out more and more often. My convictions fuel a combination of self-preservation and personal attachment.

"The generals have the power to find me again. They'll never leave me alone if I try to run. I can never live my life in peace while they still live. Besides," I breathe, dreaming up into the sky the numerous faces of people I've come to meet in my time here, "I've learned some people are worth fighting for."

"Beyond Grima's destruction, the children are the sole purpose I still breathe. I won't see them become another ghost of war. Not like myself." For once, we agree on something. It's becoming more and more apparent that the twins are his lifeline. Without them, he has no purpose. He's devoted his entire self, or what remains of it, to protecting them and freeing them from the darkness Grima threatens them with. I can't blame him. I'm fighting something similar for Lucina. It's heartbreaking.

"Consider them saved. I'll add them to my growing list of responsibilities. What's a few more souls to save from Grima's wrath? Gods know they deserve it. After everything I just heard from them..." I trail off unable to finish. The brief glimpses into their lives with Grima portrays something horrifying. It's a wonder they came out as sound of mind as they did. I could bet that their father had a hand in saving them from an otherwise grim future.

The General stares at me for a long time. A thread of emotion seeps in. It pokes about at my insides and wraps around my heart. It's uncomfortable. I want to force myself away, but instinct says I shouldn't. I brave his piercing stare and let him understand that truly, in every way and form, I meant what I said. If that's what needs to be done, then so be it. I'm sick of seeing families torn apart for these stupid reasons. No sins of our ancestors should be seeping through the generations to tear them apart. My mother's own family left her alone in life. It made her bitter and angry. I remember the nights where I would hear her crying alone in her room, cursing them. The family business and traditions broke down her relationship, and her world, with her family. It left me without the joys most kids had with extended relatives. No holiday were ever as full and merry as my friends' were.

My woes are nothing like Lucina's, but in the smallest way I find it relate-able. It's enough for me to fight in her corner, and I'll do the same for the twins if they need it.

We fall into another lull guided by the General's desire to choose whatever he wishes to say next with extreme care. He doesn't change his position, preferring to speak away from me. His energy is a low reserve of what is once was just a while ago when our tempers flared equal in strength. It makes him seem smaller somehow as if breaking him down under the weight of his existence.

"The twins' needs should always have been paramount," he finally utters. "They were always Grima's burden to care for, despite the abandonment. If you are claiming responsibility for your predecessor's actions, then best be prepared for what that entails."

"Gods, don't tell me they're my apprentices or something. I am not teacher material," I admit with a grim chuckle. "I can barely care for a plant."

"They are Grima's children."

"Oh, alright then! For second I was worried-"

I blink. Then, again. And again.

He turns to me with a verity burning pure and bright as his eyes. "You should know that's the truth, deep down. Was it not obvious to you, or was it denial preventing you from seeing it?"

I...

I...I...

I have...children?

The world turns upside down, my thoughts trying to process it all. Among the gray haze overwhelming me, one single thought draws my eyes toward the campsite. Of all the things, one is true. Should I have stayed here, there was always a possibility that one child could be unequivocally mine. Destiny has dictated that Robin would always have one, regardless of the spouse. Could it be?

I-is Morgan alive? Grima still possessed Robin's body. It's possible.

But there's two?

Are there two...Morgans? Just like the game's DLC seemed to hint at?

O-oh God.

"Fuck me," I gasp. Then, all goes silent.

I have no more words to be found.

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A/N: You cannot understand how heavily my heart weeps that I can't get ketchup flavored chips where I live. That is a void in my heart that will never heal.

Anyway, enjoy the angst. :)

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