Next three chapters of Mountain Sage and Desert Tiger [FE8]
I've actually been updating fairly steadily--I just forgot that I'd, you know, joined THIS community as well. The first five chapters are here.
Title: Mountain Sage and Desert Tiger
Characters/Pairing: Gerik/Saleh
They've been walking in the desert for about a week.
Saleh doesn't like it much; there is too much sand and too little wind. He's never been in Jehanna before, and he hopes he'll never go this far into the desert again.
"Try not to wander too far," Seth advises the unit (not that they could disobey even if they wanted). "We won't be able to track you down if you get lost."
-
Saleh marks the camp's location in his head--there are a few shrubs and they are close to a sand dune--and walks a short distance to meditate.
It is annoyingly hard to walk a short distance in sand. But after several minutes, with the camp at his back so he knows where to return, he stops near a surprisingly green tree (an acacia?) and sits down.
-
The heat may have spurred him to focus more quickly, or he's just fallen asleep--but either way it has gotten dark.
And there is something pulling at his limbs, so he feels like he is submerged in a lake. It is decidedly not like sand, as there is no stubborn sinking that makes him want to pull his legs out from wherever they got stuck. But he can breathe...
Saleh isn't sure if he likes it better than the desert, because there is no one here.
There is a string in his hand, and the pressure of someone holding the other end, so he follows it--through dark water and fish-like movements and a presence lurking behind him. Or beside him; he cannot tell much of anything here.
But he keeps going because there is someone else at the other end, and he would rather not stay with the presence. He gives up on coiling the string neatly, wrapping it around his wrist once in a while, and continues walking.
And walking.
Yet the pressure never ceases.
I'm still here, says the person. Hurry up!
Now they are close enough that the string can be tugged impatiently if he slows down too much, but there is still a long way to go if he wants to see anything.
We can't both wait, you know.
He is coming to the end of the string. And there, past the swimming fish and glowing string, is someone at the edge of his vision.
You're getting closer, says the person, with the tone of voice that sounds like a smile. But, both of them realize, so is the--
-
"--leh? Saleh! Wake up!"
"But wait, I almost--" He grabs at something in a panic, but succeeds only at falling over. "I was about to find them!"
"Find who?" Comes the familiar voice of Moulder. "Whatever you were dreaming about, you're in no shape to find people right now."
"I meant just one..." he looks around; Moulder is sitting next to him, waiting patiently for Saleh to come to his senses.
Gerik stands a slight distance back, in the shade near the acacia's trunk. Compared to the sunlight, the mercenary is in deep shadow; something gleams in his hand (you are close now)--but it is only Gerik's sword being put back in its scabbard.
"It's not an ideal condition, Master Saleh, but it's certainly not as bad as heat stroke," the priest informs him. "The most you'll need is water and rest."
Gerik tosses a canteen to him, and they head back to the rest of the unit. Saleh, despite not being sure of his footing, doesn't need help and doesn't ask for it.
"Figures you wouldn't ask for help," Gerik smiles, though the rest is less cheerful. "But we couldn't wait forever, you know."
-
Note: The web-comic that inspired this was the gorgeously-drawn HERO.
------
At Castle Renais, they fight to defeat Orson and reach the Sacred Stone.
Things have gone much better than the battle to get out of Jehanna; the unit is well-rested for the first time in weeks, their supplies and weapons are replenished, and it is much easier to fight with neither a blinding sun in their eyes nor shifting sand under their feet.
But then an enemy priest--too far to see clearly and too careful to get in striking distance--raises a staff and sends a spell towards Gerik as the mercenary finishes off one of the remnant soldiers. The ominous red mist puts everyone on edge, waiting either mentally or physically to see what happens. Gerik has never been hit with a Berserk spell before, but he isn’t the fastest among them either.
Instead of dissipating the mist absorbs into his skin like water into sand, and Saleh checks to make sure the Restore staff is there.
“Everyone fall back!” Seth orders immediately, sweeping the area to make sure everyone is out of Gerik’s line of sight. “Master Saleh, do you still have the Restore staff?”
“Yes.” He grips it and takes a look at Gerik--his attacks on the enemy have gained a disturbing rage, underlined by the sudden speed and harshness of his sword swings.
Despite what the name implies, Berserk does not turn someone into a mindless killing machine--instead the person is sent into an indiscriminate rage, with the magic fueling their emotions until the spell wears off or they get killed. But the results are the same, and equally devastating.
With Gerik, it’s unclear which would have shocked everyone more.
He tries to be inconspicuous once he gets within the mercenary’s line of vision; if Gerik saw him, he’d attack before Saleh could even try restoring him. Two soldiers have other ideas, and Saleh kills them as quickly as possible--if nothing else, the noise at least disguises his movement.
But as Gerik runs to kill a few more soldiers in his sight, he spots Saleh and changes course. “You!” He charges over, sword raised and aimed at Saleh’s neck--and Saleh cannot go anywhere but backwards, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible.
The blade sears past his neck as he dodges. Disarming him makes decapitation harder, he realizes, and aims a fire attack just above Gerik’s shoulder.
Gerik dodges contemptuously, but drops the melted sword as it blisters his hand and is too startled to move for a moment. Saleh takes the Restore staff out, but the rage resurfaces and Saleh has to run again.
“You’re not getting away that fast, you stupid mage!”
Get back here! You killed him and I am going to slaughter you!
“I--I didn’t--” Saleh scans the area for enemies--that was how he stayed alive last time.
But they have all fallen back and Saleh doesn’t run fast enough and suddenly he’s held by his throat in a crushing grip.
“Ger…” He struggles in vain to break loose. Wrong, this is all wrong, where’s the bandit trying to attack?
He can’t breathe--
L’Arachel brings her staff down on Gerik’s skull. He crumples, stunned but not quite unconscious as the sage in turn falls back down to earth. Saleh can only breathe raggedly in the first few moments of his release, terrified and unfocused as he struggles to stay in control.
“Master Saleh, are you all right?” She asks, signaling her horse to kneel as she hauls the mercenary onto the back of her saddle. “Master Saleh? Oh dear, you must have had quite a--”
He shoves himself up and runs.
He cannot answer anyone’s startled questions or let them come too close, because if they do he’s going to lose control and he’s already killed one person by accident and everybody is too close--please don’t get too close, I have no control and I don’t want to kill anyone else and I can’t focus, I can’t--
“I can’t--” he stumbles into silence as his panicky speech loses speed, chin locked to his collarbone and shrinking into his cape while something hot runs down his face. “I-I can’t…”
He can’t breathe.
-
Gerik wakes up in his tent, drained and vaguely unsettled; the kind of feelings people get after losing their temper and getting themselves exhausted. And his head feels like it got run over by a maelduin.
Someone’s shadow is near the tent entrance--standing guard?
“What happened?” he croaks out to Seth as he lurches out, the sudden burst of light drowning out most of the colors and making his head feel worse until his eyes adjust.
“You got hit with Berserk in the most recent battle,” the general tells him carefully. “Master Saleh attempted to restore you, but…”
“But what? He’s okay, right?” Saleh’s not as frail as the other mages--but since it was him attacking Saleh, even if he was under a spell, it’s an entirely different thing and Gerik’s not sure whether to dread the answer or not.
Seth pauses, and that can’t be good. “He wasn’t badly injured. But he hasn’t been himself, and he won’t talk to anyone about what happened.”
-
It is far too quiet as he walks through the camp. People don’t avoid him, but they meet his gaze briefly and then look away like he’s done something particularly unsettling.
Well, it is pretty rare for anyone in the unit to get hit with a berserk spell--least of all Gerik, the too-friendly mercenary leader who hardly gets more than annoyed.
“Hey, Myrrh--you seen Saleh anywhere?” He asks her, and she nods.
“He’s with the healers,” she responds, “But he won’t let them do anything. He says he might hurt them if he loses control of his magic.”
“What about anyone else?” He knows the answer, but asks it mostly for the benefit of everyone who’s listening.
She shakes her head. “No. Even if he wanted to talk to someone, the healers don’t advise it.”
“Did anyone see what I did?” He asks more loudly, but notices the weird feeling in his hands as most of them respond in the negative--they feel stiff, but not from using a sword for hours like they usually do.
L’Arachel answers, though. “While you were berserk, Master Saleh destroyed your sword to keep you from stabbing him, but unfortunately he failed to restore you in time--”
“Obviously,” Innes remarks.
“--and when I arrived… you were trying to strangle him.” Her voice shakes the slightest bit as she finishes, and her subsequent cheer is a little too forced. “Thus I was forced to hit you with my staff in order to subdue you, and I apologize most profusely for the headache you may have experienced upon wakening.”
“No problem, L’Arachel,” Gerik tries to smile in the ensuing silence and heads over to the healers’ tent, to the troubadour’s surprise.
“And where are you going?”
“I don’t know--to apologize for trying to kill him, maybe?”
“You can’t!” she insists, blocking his way firmly.
“I know the healers don’t want anyone to stress him out, but--”
“No, Gerik, it’s not just the healers who want people to keep their distance!” she explains, with a strange desperation that strips her usual verbosity away. “Master Saleh thinks he’s going to kill whoever so much as blinks in his direction--regardless of whether he wants to--and someone of his power certainly could! He would be even more opposed to having you there!”
The implications slow him down, but he still doesn't feel like giving it up. “But--”
“Once he managed to say something substantial, it was very clear that Master Saleh was experiencing battle fatigue,” she adds, and that silences Gerik’s protests almost instantly. “I don’t know why it took until now for us to see it, but…”
“He doesn’t talk about it much,” Gerik tells her. “It happened before we met any of you, so you didn’t even know there was something to look for. It’s not your fault.”
“‘We,’ Chief?” Tethys asks.
“Yeah.” He forces a sheepish smile as Innes looks at him.
-
Saleh flinches back into normal life a few days later. There is a not-quite-faded bruise just under his jaw--it’s mostly hidden by his collar, but even the sliver that Gerik can see makes him feel bad.
“Hey there, Saleh.”
The sage jumps, and when he looks at Gerik there is a raw vulnerability in his eyes that Gerik hasn’t seen for a while. Ewan’s teacher is still there; so are the Sage of Caer Pelyn and Myrrh’s guardian. But Gerik’s friend who tries too hard is not--in his place is the kid he met on the battlefield, who lost control in the wrong place and came uncomfortably close to dying.
-----
They’re stranded.
At some point during their run-in with a group of monsters in Renais, Gerik and Saleh got lost in the nearby forest. Gerik’s all right--nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own in a day or two--but Saleh’s more than a little worse for wear.
Which means that he nearly got his arm chopped off by a maelduin. It still looks as bad as it sounds, even after Gerik helped him dump his entire vulnerary on it. He hates it when those things manage to land a hit, because it will never be just a nice, clean, painful gash; those things can break bones without even trying. The darkening roof of the trees above them doesn’t make Gerik feel good. If the flying units are scouting, they might have already breezed right over them.
“We’ll just have to wait it out, then.” His voice echoes in the stillness. Saleh attempts to nod, then winces as something doesn’t move right.
-
The night brings new and even less appealing possibilities: Saleh’s got an open wound, at least a few broken bones, and they’re in a damp and dusty forest. If he doesn’t get an infection, all the blood he’s losing might be letting predators track them right now. Or more monsters.
“See, this is why I hate letting healers get hurt. If I were in your spot, you’d have taken care of it and the most you’d need to worry about is a good night’s sleep.”
“…What about you?” He sounds like he’s just sleepy, but there’s the tell-tale shallow breathing of blood loss.
“I’d be all healed up, remember?”
“Right.” It’s forced out on his exhale like a cough, and Gerik hopes he just imagined the specks of red accompanying it.
“You know, I’ve still got a full vulnerary on me.” He knows Saleh won’t use it; they both know that if Gerik gets too badly hurt and they’ve used everything up, they’re as good as dead. But he offers anyway because something isn’t right--even with half his blood gone Saleh shouldn’t be breathing like he’s afraid to take up space, and his movements are of pain beyond limping.
Gerik’s not a healer, though, and knowing what’s wrong won’t do anything now. “Come on, Saleh--it’ll be faster if I carry you.” The sage nods and winces again, and Gerik tries not to shake him up too much when he picks him up. It’s late enough for the stars to have faded, but he has no choice except to keep going.
-
“Someone’s following us,” Saleh rasps into his neck, and Gerik turns his head to find a light-haired man ambling along a few feet behind them.
His spine prickles--Gerik didn’t see or hear anything before Saleh said so, and now he can feel the power radiating from him. He looks like Saleh; the same gray hair, but longer and unkempt. Lights weave in and out of it, and Gerik doesn’t know if they’re pieces of lightning or fireflies or stars. His eyes are sand-colored, too, and that can only mean one person.
The storm god gives no warning…
But even though he keeps walking and pretends not to be freaked out, the storm god meanders in front of them and the recognition in Saleh’s face is clear as day.
“My boy.” His voice sounds like distant thunder as he smiles, and Gerik can’t tell why he’s getting so defensive.
“Saleh is not Jehannan--”
He puts a hand on Saleh’s wound, and something jolts before Gerik’s body seizes up. He can’t help but drop Saleh with all the magic forced into his veins, but even before he does the sage gives a choking yell and clutches the spot near his wound. Through the magic, Gerik sees the storm god waver like a heat mirage.
“Wait--wait! What did you do to him?!” His skin is burning like the dunes and now they’re both out of action and they’re going to die, they’re going to die because the storm god thinks it’s funny to mess with people and Saleh’s still screaming like someone’s hacking his arm off the rest of the way--
Somehow Gerik manages to pick him up again and run, and all the magic and screaming makes him forget to wonder why Saleh recognizes a Jehannan god.
-
They’ve been found.
It’s been a while later; the sun is halfway over the horizon and Gerik’s legs have given out from so much running. Saleh’s bones have healed up, and everyone’s a little shocked that his “only” problems are blood loss and a really bad gash. Gerik mentions something about vulneraries and good luck, but he’s not letting go of Saleh because the storm god might come again and he won’t give any more warning than he did the first time--
The healers are perplexed that he’s showing the confusion of heat stroke when he was in a forest at night: Even running while carrying someone would overheat him in an entirely different and less malicious way. They chalk it up to a rough night and heal the worst of his burning skin, but the Jehannans are suspicious because Gerik’s not the type to piss off his own country’s main god.
“I think you are confused, Gerik,” Saleh says. “You were tired, and I was injured; those conditions are hardly the best for rational thought. I, for one, mistook that man for my father--”
Oh Stones help him, the storm god was messing even deeper with his head. “He’s a god, Saleh, there’s no other way he could have gotten through both our resistance at the same time!”
“What?” The sudden disbelief stops Gerik as much as the actual interruption, and Saleh speaks like a mentor with a really dense student. “Gerik. That man… looked very much like my father. But he has been dead… for fifteen years.”
The Jehannans nearby shoot him a glance, and suddenly everything makes sense to Gerik. Cloud-gray hair and the stars went out and Saleh recognized him--
-
“What Gerik is trying to say,” Joshua sits the two of them down in a ring of Jehannans (and interested non-Jehannans) sometime after dinner, “is that Saleh happens to look a lot like Jehanna’s most powerful god.”
“Aren’t they immortal, though?” Eirika inquires. “Master Saleh said his father died.”
“For Jehanna? Technically,” Joshua ponders on what to say next, flipping a coin and watching it spin before he catches it. “They can die if someone tries hard enough; they just come back after a while. It’s bad when the storm god dies--the rains were erratic when I was about ten, and it was that much harder for Mother to keep everyone alive and happy. People said it was because the storm god went missing.”
“I would think no rain at all would be worse,” Natasha remarks, to shakes of the head from Joshua and Tethys. (They aren’t letting Gerik talk yet because of the heat-stroke and all.)
“Nope, Sister--as unpredictable as they are, we need the floods. Only a flood would be enough to loosen up a desert’s soil, and that’s why your average Grado drizzle won’t cut it,” Tethys tells her. The conversation goes off on a tangent about the nuances of Jehanna, and Saleh isn’t looking at the others anymore. Instead he stares into the space between Gerik and the forest, as if he can call up the storm god to make him explain things in person.
“Saleh? You listening?” The sage sighs vaguely and he hopes it’s affirmative. “He wasn’t… he didn’t get himself killed so he could pack up and leave guilt-free. He’s a god and all, but he’s not heartless.”
Saleh turns to look at him; Gerik can’t read his expression, but what he says next is scathing in its very calmness. “Well, you are all Jehannan… So I guess you would know him better than I do.”
He stands up and leaves, and his words burn like embers in the air. When they finally fade into the breeze, it’s a few minutes of concerned silence before they all remember just who they’ve been talking about.
-
The time that you may approach the god:
As stars fade into the dawning air,
Betwixt cold night and the morning.
He will appear with nary a nod
And lightning laced through his cloud-grey hair--
For the storm god gives no warning.
-
Gerik’s been kept under close watch by the healers and drinking lots of water to make sure the last of his heat-stroke is gone, so it’s late in the night when he finally gets cleared to fight again. He comes across Saleh at the base of a tree, with a contemplating look on his face--but there is no aura this time.
“What’s the matter, mountain man? Can’t sleep?”
“I was waiting…”
“For me? Aw, you didn’t have to.” They both know that he’s wrong, but he smiles anyway and sits down. Now he knows what Saleh’s looking at: The sky. “He’s not just a storm god, you know. We call him that because no one remembers his name.”
But there is one, hesitating at the tip of Saleh’s tongue. Gerik waits, but he doesn’t say it.
“I keep forgetting to ask you this,” he laughs sheepishly. “How did you grow up?”
There’s always a reason for someone to have turned into Saleh or Marisa, all pointed silences and subtle expressions. It’s hard to remember that they might have been perfectly normal when they were ten-ish or so--just a little quiet.
“He loved her,” Saleh says very, very quietly, in the tone that makes Gerik instinctively promise not to tell anyone. “I don’t know if Mother knew, but… there was always something I couldn’t place about him.”
They are quiet for a long, long time--enough for the stars to vanish into the graying velvet sky. Gerik checks around them, but the storm god isn’t there. He’s like the yearly floods of Jehanna; everyone knows which places to avoid for the first two weeks of fall, but that doesn’t mean they start right then.
“Saleh… He didn’t abandon you.” An eastern wind blows mournfully around the campsite, ruffling Saleh’s cloud-grey hair like a consoling mother. Gerik wants him to believe it, but he keeps staring into the clouds and his face is too composed to really be calm.
For once, Gerik’s glad that both his parents were mortal.
-
Notes: I always wondered why Saleh of all people has silver hair. The Renaitians have true blue/purple-colored hair, and silver is clearly a rare color; aside from Lyon and Vigarde, Knoll is the only one even close to it (very light purple). Lyon, Vigarde, and Knoll are native Grads (two of them are royalty), while our resident sage is from a secluded village in the Renais/Jehannan mountains. Those are hardly good circumstances for random silver-haired Grad nobles to meet up with Saleh's mother. So I drew off Gerik's reference in Chapter 5 about Saleh looking like "the storm god"--I figured Jehannans would hold such a deity in highest regard since they live in the desert, and there's connotations of unpredictability about a storm that you don't get with general rain.
Not to mention that Saleh starts out with a thunder tome, his affinity is wind, and he starts out with an A-rank in Anima, which makes him the most likely person to start using Excalibur after you get it. What has wind, rain, and thunder/lightning? A thunderstorm. Hence, he's the son of the storm god.
To be honest, I wanted to turn Saleh into a badass demi-god. But then I realized that people focus too much on how SUPER-SPESHUL-AWESOME demi-gods are. They never stop to think about how much it would SUCK to have your dad be absent for most of your life--and if he's a god, why couldn't he take a few minutes to explain why he left you and your mother, or how he's alive and kicking again without being an abomination of nature? It would suck even more for people to talk like they know him better than you, even if they don't mean any harm.
-----
Cross-posted to fe-fiction.
Title: Mountain Sage and Desert Tiger
Characters/Pairing: Gerik/Saleh
They've been walking in the desert for about a week.
Saleh doesn't like it much; there is too much sand and too little wind. He's never been in Jehanna before, and he hopes he'll never go this far into the desert again.
"Try not to wander too far," Seth advises the unit (not that they could disobey even if they wanted). "We won't be able to track you down if you get lost."
-
Saleh marks the camp's location in his head--there are a few shrubs and they are close to a sand dune--and walks a short distance to meditate.
It is annoyingly hard to walk a short distance in sand. But after several minutes, with the camp at his back so he knows where to return, he stops near a surprisingly green tree (an acacia?) and sits down.
-
The heat may have spurred him to focus more quickly, or he's just fallen asleep--but either way it has gotten dark.
And there is something pulling at his limbs, so he feels like he is submerged in a lake. It is decidedly not like sand, as there is no stubborn sinking that makes him want to pull his legs out from wherever they got stuck. But he can breathe...
Saleh isn't sure if he likes it better than the desert, because there is no one here.
There is a string in his hand, and the pressure of someone holding the other end, so he follows it--through dark water and fish-like movements and a presence lurking behind him. Or beside him; he cannot tell much of anything here.
But he keeps going because there is someone else at the other end, and he would rather not stay with the presence. He gives up on coiling the string neatly, wrapping it around his wrist once in a while, and continues walking.
And walking.
Yet the pressure never ceases.
I'm still here, says the person. Hurry up!
Now they are close enough that the string can be tugged impatiently if he slows down too much, but there is still a long way to go if he wants to see anything.
We can't both wait, you know.
He is coming to the end of the string. And there, past the swimming fish and glowing string, is someone at the edge of his vision.
You're getting closer, says the person, with the tone of voice that sounds like a smile. But, both of them realize, so is the--
-
"--leh? Saleh! Wake up!"
"But wait, I almost--" He grabs at something in a panic, but succeeds only at falling over. "I was about to find them!"
"Find who?" Comes the familiar voice of Moulder. "Whatever you were dreaming about, you're in no shape to find people right now."
"I meant just one..." he looks around; Moulder is sitting next to him, waiting patiently for Saleh to come to his senses.
Gerik stands a slight distance back, in the shade near the acacia's trunk. Compared to the sunlight, the mercenary is in deep shadow; something gleams in his hand (you are close now)--but it is only Gerik's sword being put back in its scabbard.
"It's not an ideal condition, Master Saleh, but it's certainly not as bad as heat stroke," the priest informs him. "The most you'll need is water and rest."
Gerik tosses a canteen to him, and they head back to the rest of the unit. Saleh, despite not being sure of his footing, doesn't need help and doesn't ask for it.
"Figures you wouldn't ask for help," Gerik smiles, though the rest is less cheerful. "But we couldn't wait forever, you know."
-
Note: The web-comic that inspired this was the gorgeously-drawn HERO.
------
At Castle Renais, they fight to defeat Orson and reach the Sacred Stone.
Things have gone much better than the battle to get out of Jehanna; the unit is well-rested for the first time in weeks, their supplies and weapons are replenished, and it is much easier to fight with neither a blinding sun in their eyes nor shifting sand under their feet.
But then an enemy priest--too far to see clearly and too careful to get in striking distance--raises a staff and sends a spell towards Gerik as the mercenary finishes off one of the remnant soldiers. The ominous red mist puts everyone on edge, waiting either mentally or physically to see what happens. Gerik has never been hit with a Berserk spell before, but he isn’t the fastest among them either.
Instead of dissipating the mist absorbs into his skin like water into sand, and Saleh checks to make sure the Restore staff is there.
“Everyone fall back!” Seth orders immediately, sweeping the area to make sure everyone is out of Gerik’s line of sight. “Master Saleh, do you still have the Restore staff?”
“Yes.” He grips it and takes a look at Gerik--his attacks on the enemy have gained a disturbing rage, underlined by the sudden speed and harshness of his sword swings.
Despite what the name implies, Berserk does not turn someone into a mindless killing machine--instead the person is sent into an indiscriminate rage, with the magic fueling their emotions until the spell wears off or they get killed. But the results are the same, and equally devastating.
With Gerik, it’s unclear which would have shocked everyone more.
He tries to be inconspicuous once he gets within the mercenary’s line of vision; if Gerik saw him, he’d attack before Saleh could even try restoring him. Two soldiers have other ideas, and Saleh kills them as quickly as possible--if nothing else, the noise at least disguises his movement.
But as Gerik runs to kill a few more soldiers in his sight, he spots Saleh and changes course. “You!” He charges over, sword raised and aimed at Saleh’s neck--and Saleh cannot go anywhere but backwards, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible.
The blade sears past his neck as he dodges. Disarming him makes decapitation harder, he realizes, and aims a fire attack just above Gerik’s shoulder.
Gerik dodges contemptuously, but drops the melted sword as it blisters his hand and is too startled to move for a moment. Saleh takes the Restore staff out, but the rage resurfaces and Saleh has to run again.
“You’re not getting away that fast, you stupid mage!”
Get back here! You killed him and I am going to slaughter you!
“I--I didn’t--” Saleh scans the area for enemies--that was how he stayed alive last time.
But they have all fallen back and Saleh doesn’t run fast enough and suddenly he’s held by his throat in a crushing grip.
“Ger…” He struggles in vain to break loose. Wrong, this is all wrong, where’s the bandit trying to attack?
He can’t breathe--
L’Arachel brings her staff down on Gerik’s skull. He crumples, stunned but not quite unconscious as the sage in turn falls back down to earth. Saleh can only breathe raggedly in the first few moments of his release, terrified and unfocused as he struggles to stay in control.
“Master Saleh, are you all right?” She asks, signaling her horse to kneel as she hauls the mercenary onto the back of her saddle. “Master Saleh? Oh dear, you must have had quite a--”
He shoves himself up and runs.
He cannot answer anyone’s startled questions or let them come too close, because if they do he’s going to lose control and he’s already killed one person by accident and everybody is too close--please don’t get too close, I have no control and I don’t want to kill anyone else and I can’t focus, I can’t--
“I can’t--” he stumbles into silence as his panicky speech loses speed, chin locked to his collarbone and shrinking into his cape while something hot runs down his face. “I-I can’t…”
He can’t breathe.
-
Gerik wakes up in his tent, drained and vaguely unsettled; the kind of feelings people get after losing their temper and getting themselves exhausted. And his head feels like it got run over by a maelduin.
Someone’s shadow is near the tent entrance--standing guard?
“What happened?” he croaks out to Seth as he lurches out, the sudden burst of light drowning out most of the colors and making his head feel worse until his eyes adjust.
“You got hit with Berserk in the most recent battle,” the general tells him carefully. “Master Saleh attempted to restore you, but…”
“But what? He’s okay, right?” Saleh’s not as frail as the other mages--but since it was him attacking Saleh, even if he was under a spell, it’s an entirely different thing and Gerik’s not sure whether to dread the answer or not.
Seth pauses, and that can’t be good. “He wasn’t badly injured. But he hasn’t been himself, and he won’t talk to anyone about what happened.”
-
It is far too quiet as he walks through the camp. People don’t avoid him, but they meet his gaze briefly and then look away like he’s done something particularly unsettling.
Well, it is pretty rare for anyone in the unit to get hit with a berserk spell--least of all Gerik, the too-friendly mercenary leader who hardly gets more than annoyed.
“Hey, Myrrh--you seen Saleh anywhere?” He asks her, and she nods.
“He’s with the healers,” she responds, “But he won’t let them do anything. He says he might hurt them if he loses control of his magic.”
“What about anyone else?” He knows the answer, but asks it mostly for the benefit of everyone who’s listening.
She shakes her head. “No. Even if he wanted to talk to someone, the healers don’t advise it.”
“Did anyone see what I did?” He asks more loudly, but notices the weird feeling in his hands as most of them respond in the negative--they feel stiff, but not from using a sword for hours like they usually do.
L’Arachel answers, though. “While you were berserk, Master Saleh destroyed your sword to keep you from stabbing him, but unfortunately he failed to restore you in time--”
“Obviously,” Innes remarks.
“--and when I arrived… you were trying to strangle him.” Her voice shakes the slightest bit as she finishes, and her subsequent cheer is a little too forced. “Thus I was forced to hit you with my staff in order to subdue you, and I apologize most profusely for the headache you may have experienced upon wakening.”
“No problem, L’Arachel,” Gerik tries to smile in the ensuing silence and heads over to the healers’ tent, to the troubadour’s surprise.
“And where are you going?”
“I don’t know--to apologize for trying to kill him, maybe?”
“You can’t!” she insists, blocking his way firmly.
“I know the healers don’t want anyone to stress him out, but--”
“No, Gerik, it’s not just the healers who want people to keep their distance!” she explains, with a strange desperation that strips her usual verbosity away. “Master Saleh thinks he’s going to kill whoever so much as blinks in his direction--regardless of whether he wants to--and someone of his power certainly could! He would be even more opposed to having you there!”
The implications slow him down, but he still doesn't feel like giving it up. “But--”
“Once he managed to say something substantial, it was very clear that Master Saleh was experiencing battle fatigue,” she adds, and that silences Gerik’s protests almost instantly. “I don’t know why it took until now for us to see it, but…”
“He doesn’t talk about it much,” Gerik tells her. “It happened before we met any of you, so you didn’t even know there was something to look for. It’s not your fault.”
“‘We,’ Chief?” Tethys asks.
“Yeah.” He forces a sheepish smile as Innes looks at him.
-
Saleh flinches back into normal life a few days later. There is a not-quite-faded bruise just under his jaw--it’s mostly hidden by his collar, but even the sliver that Gerik can see makes him feel bad.
“Hey there, Saleh.”
The sage jumps, and when he looks at Gerik there is a raw vulnerability in his eyes that Gerik hasn’t seen for a while. Ewan’s teacher is still there; so are the Sage of Caer Pelyn and Myrrh’s guardian. But Gerik’s friend who tries too hard is not--in his place is the kid he met on the battlefield, who lost control in the wrong place and came uncomfortably close to dying.
-----
They’re stranded.
At some point during their run-in with a group of monsters in Renais, Gerik and Saleh got lost in the nearby forest. Gerik’s all right--nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own in a day or two--but Saleh’s more than a little worse for wear.
Which means that he nearly got his arm chopped off by a maelduin. It still looks as bad as it sounds, even after Gerik helped him dump his entire vulnerary on it. He hates it when those things manage to land a hit, because it will never be just a nice, clean, painful gash; those things can break bones without even trying. The darkening roof of the trees above them doesn’t make Gerik feel good. If the flying units are scouting, they might have already breezed right over them.
“We’ll just have to wait it out, then.” His voice echoes in the stillness. Saleh attempts to nod, then winces as something doesn’t move right.
-
The night brings new and even less appealing possibilities: Saleh’s got an open wound, at least a few broken bones, and they’re in a damp and dusty forest. If he doesn’t get an infection, all the blood he’s losing might be letting predators track them right now. Or more monsters.
“See, this is why I hate letting healers get hurt. If I were in your spot, you’d have taken care of it and the most you’d need to worry about is a good night’s sleep.”
“…What about you?” He sounds like he’s just sleepy, but there’s the tell-tale shallow breathing of blood loss.
“I’d be all healed up, remember?”
“Right.” It’s forced out on his exhale like a cough, and Gerik hopes he just imagined the specks of red accompanying it.
“You know, I’ve still got a full vulnerary on me.” He knows Saleh won’t use it; they both know that if Gerik gets too badly hurt and they’ve used everything up, they’re as good as dead. But he offers anyway because something isn’t right--even with half his blood gone Saleh shouldn’t be breathing like he’s afraid to take up space, and his movements are of pain beyond limping.
Gerik’s not a healer, though, and knowing what’s wrong won’t do anything now. “Come on, Saleh--it’ll be faster if I carry you.” The sage nods and winces again, and Gerik tries not to shake him up too much when he picks him up. It’s late enough for the stars to have faded, but he has no choice except to keep going.
-
“Someone’s following us,” Saleh rasps into his neck, and Gerik turns his head to find a light-haired man ambling along a few feet behind them.
His spine prickles--Gerik didn’t see or hear anything before Saleh said so, and now he can feel the power radiating from him. He looks like Saleh; the same gray hair, but longer and unkempt. Lights weave in and out of it, and Gerik doesn’t know if they’re pieces of lightning or fireflies or stars. His eyes are sand-colored, too, and that can only mean one person.
The storm god gives no warning…
But even though he keeps walking and pretends not to be freaked out, the storm god meanders in front of them and the recognition in Saleh’s face is clear as day.
“My boy.” His voice sounds like distant thunder as he smiles, and Gerik can’t tell why he’s getting so defensive.
“Saleh is not Jehannan--”
He puts a hand on Saleh’s wound, and something jolts before Gerik’s body seizes up. He can’t help but drop Saleh with all the magic forced into his veins, but even before he does the sage gives a choking yell and clutches the spot near his wound. Through the magic, Gerik sees the storm god waver like a heat mirage.
“Wait--wait! What did you do to him?!” His skin is burning like the dunes and now they’re both out of action and they’re going to die, they’re going to die because the storm god thinks it’s funny to mess with people and Saleh’s still screaming like someone’s hacking his arm off the rest of the way--
Somehow Gerik manages to pick him up again and run, and all the magic and screaming makes him forget to wonder why Saleh recognizes a Jehannan god.
-
They’ve been found.
It’s been a while later; the sun is halfway over the horizon and Gerik’s legs have given out from so much running. Saleh’s bones have healed up, and everyone’s a little shocked that his “only” problems are blood loss and a really bad gash. Gerik mentions something about vulneraries and good luck, but he’s not letting go of Saleh because the storm god might come again and he won’t give any more warning than he did the first time--
The healers are perplexed that he’s showing the confusion of heat stroke when he was in a forest at night: Even running while carrying someone would overheat him in an entirely different and less malicious way. They chalk it up to a rough night and heal the worst of his burning skin, but the Jehannans are suspicious because Gerik’s not the type to piss off his own country’s main god.
“I think you are confused, Gerik,” Saleh says. “You were tired, and I was injured; those conditions are hardly the best for rational thought. I, for one, mistook that man for my father--”
Oh Stones help him, the storm god was messing even deeper with his head. “He’s a god, Saleh, there’s no other way he could have gotten through both our resistance at the same time!”
“What?” The sudden disbelief stops Gerik as much as the actual interruption, and Saleh speaks like a mentor with a really dense student. “Gerik. That man… looked very much like my father. But he has been dead… for fifteen years.”
The Jehannans nearby shoot him a glance, and suddenly everything makes sense to Gerik. Cloud-gray hair and the stars went out and Saleh recognized him--
-
“What Gerik is trying to say,” Joshua sits the two of them down in a ring of Jehannans (and interested non-Jehannans) sometime after dinner, “is that Saleh happens to look a lot like Jehanna’s most powerful god.”
“Aren’t they immortal, though?” Eirika inquires. “Master Saleh said his father died.”
“For Jehanna? Technically,” Joshua ponders on what to say next, flipping a coin and watching it spin before he catches it. “They can die if someone tries hard enough; they just come back after a while. It’s bad when the storm god dies--the rains were erratic when I was about ten, and it was that much harder for Mother to keep everyone alive and happy. People said it was because the storm god went missing.”
“I would think no rain at all would be worse,” Natasha remarks, to shakes of the head from Joshua and Tethys. (They aren’t letting Gerik talk yet because of the heat-stroke and all.)
“Nope, Sister--as unpredictable as they are, we need the floods. Only a flood would be enough to loosen up a desert’s soil, and that’s why your average Grado drizzle won’t cut it,” Tethys tells her. The conversation goes off on a tangent about the nuances of Jehanna, and Saleh isn’t looking at the others anymore. Instead he stares into the space between Gerik and the forest, as if he can call up the storm god to make him explain things in person.
“Saleh? You listening?” The sage sighs vaguely and he hopes it’s affirmative. “He wasn’t… he didn’t get himself killed so he could pack up and leave guilt-free. He’s a god and all, but he’s not heartless.”
Saleh turns to look at him; Gerik can’t read his expression, but what he says next is scathing in its very calmness. “Well, you are all Jehannan… So I guess you would know him better than I do.”
He stands up and leaves, and his words burn like embers in the air. When they finally fade into the breeze, it’s a few minutes of concerned silence before they all remember just who they’ve been talking about.
The time that you may approach the god:
As stars fade into the dawning air,
Betwixt cold night and the morning.
He will appear with nary a nod
And lightning laced through his cloud-grey hair--
For the storm god gives no warning.
-
Gerik’s been kept under close watch by the healers and drinking lots of water to make sure the last of his heat-stroke is gone, so it’s late in the night when he finally gets cleared to fight again. He comes across Saleh at the base of a tree, with a contemplating look on his face--but there is no aura this time.
“What’s the matter, mountain man? Can’t sleep?”
“I was waiting…”
“For me? Aw, you didn’t have to.” They both know that he’s wrong, but he smiles anyway and sits down. Now he knows what Saleh’s looking at: The sky. “He’s not just a storm god, you know. We call him that because no one remembers his name.”
But there is one, hesitating at the tip of Saleh’s tongue. Gerik waits, but he doesn’t say it.
“I keep forgetting to ask you this,” he laughs sheepishly. “How did you grow up?”
There’s always a reason for someone to have turned into Saleh or Marisa, all pointed silences and subtle expressions. It’s hard to remember that they might have been perfectly normal when they were ten-ish or so--just a little quiet.
“He loved her,” Saleh says very, very quietly, in the tone that makes Gerik instinctively promise not to tell anyone. “I don’t know if Mother knew, but… there was always something I couldn’t place about him.”
They are quiet for a long, long time--enough for the stars to vanish into the graying velvet sky. Gerik checks around them, but the storm god isn’t there. He’s like the yearly floods of Jehanna; everyone knows which places to avoid for the first two weeks of fall, but that doesn’t mean they start right then.
“Saleh… He didn’t abandon you.” An eastern wind blows mournfully around the campsite, ruffling Saleh’s cloud-grey hair like a consoling mother. Gerik wants him to believe it, but he keeps staring into the clouds and his face is too composed to really be calm.
For once, Gerik’s glad that both his parents were mortal.
-
Notes: I always wondered why Saleh of all people has silver hair. The Renaitians have true blue/purple-colored hair, and silver is clearly a rare color; aside from Lyon and Vigarde, Knoll is the only one even close to it (very light purple). Lyon, Vigarde, and Knoll are native Grads (two of them are royalty), while our resident sage is from a secluded village in the Renais/Jehannan mountains. Those are hardly good circumstances for random silver-haired Grad nobles to meet up with Saleh's mother. So I drew off Gerik's reference in Chapter 5 about Saleh looking like "the storm god"--I figured Jehannans would hold such a deity in highest regard since they live in the desert, and there's connotations of unpredictability about a storm that you don't get with general rain.
Not to mention that Saleh starts out with a thunder tome, his affinity is wind, and he starts out with an A-rank in Anima, which makes him the most likely person to start using Excalibur after you get it. What has wind, rain, and thunder/lightning? A thunderstorm. Hence, he's the son of the storm god.
To be honest, I wanted to turn Saleh into a badass demi-god. But then I realized that people focus too much on how SUPER-SPESHUL-AWESOME demi-gods are. They never stop to think about how much it would SUCK to have your dad be absent for most of your life--and if he's a god, why couldn't he take a few minutes to explain why he left you and your mother, or how he's alive and kicking again without being an abomination of nature? It would suck even more for people to talk like they know him better than you, even if they don't mean any harm.
-----
Cross-posted to fe-fiction.