Chapter Text
“Ashe, we need to go! We can’t be here any longer! Oh, you really screwed up this time.”
A strong pull on his shirt.
A tug of his hand.
But he couldn’t go.
Finally, the world came back to him, all it took was a blinding slap to Ashe’s face.
He shook his head, trying to slow down the rush of thoughts running through it. Chaos incarnate, as he liked to call her, was right in front of him, shaking his shoulders to get him to pay attention. She was vivid, a flurry of red and yellow fabric shaped into eccentric shapes. He finally tuned into what was happening right as Anna was raising her hand again.
“Woah woah woah! I’m here. I’m… sorry.”
“There’s no time for that!”
She pulled him up and began to race down the alleys of, where were they, Arianrhod? They had only been bumming here for a few days, but Anna, with her sharp wit, had memorized the alleys and where they lead to. In this case, this alley led to the secret tunnels under the fortress city.
Home sweet home.
Ashe couldn’t even think straight, so his current partner-in-crime had to shove him down a secluded staircase. He couldn’t blame her. Anna was just trying her best to keep them alive.
She lurched forward into the darkness of the tunnel. Ashe felt her grip tighten on his hand. She was telling him she was there. Even though Ashe had been forced to grow up faster than any 10-year-old should, he was still scared of the dark. In the past, he would have had his parents, but know that they were gone,
It was best to not think about it.
Ashe and Anna only had each other now.
The sickness swept through Faerghus quickly and powerfully, leaving countless orphans wandering the streets. The lucky ones were taken in by the church to live at Garreg Mach. Some of them would even have the chance to go to the Officers Academy, including his brother and sister.
It had all happened so quickly, on a hot summer day in the Garland Moon. Ashe had been scrounging up money to buy their first meal in three days. His siblings were sitting in the former family restaurant, trying to stay cool in the heat. Gaspard was a hard town after the sickness, and with the drought running through Faerghus (the goddess must have been particularly scornful in those few moons), people were hoarding their water and barely giving the orphans the water they needed to live.
But that one day, the one day Ashe was off trying to pick pockets in the hamlet nearby, the almighty Church of Seiros came through Gaspard. They came with water, food, and money. Ashe wasn’t there to see it. He made the journey back to Gaspard. He could have made it there before his siblings departed if he wasn’t so dehydrated, malnourished, and discouraged by the meager amount of money he stole.
The last thing he remembered was stumbling into the marketplace, panting and nearly delirious. If he hadn’t collapsed then and there, he would have been able to see his siblings being taken in by the church.
~~~
Archbishop Rhea had many things to do, but her top priority was getting these children back to the monastery for proper treatment. After having what was probably their first meal in days, nearly every child had fallen asleep.
She carefully checked on the children while they slept. She had been looking for months, ever since she heard whispers of a taciturn child mercenary fighting alongside Jeralt the Blade Breaker.
She frowned. None of the children asleep in the carriage resembled Jeralt or Rhea’s dear Sitri, but more importantly, she could sense that they all had pulses, weak and tired, but still beating like drums.
She stepped back into her carriage, noticing a slight commotion in the marketplace. Two young women with red-violet hair were hunched over something. Rhea dismissed it. The child wasn’t in Gaspard. She had other places to look.
The future of her mother depended on it.
And so she signaled the driver to go, pensively humming a thousand year old tune on the road back to Garreg Mach.
~~~
Anna was a different story. Fourth daughter of a pair of lucrative merchants, she was always on her feet and ready to bargain. That day in the Garland Moon, she was helping her family run a stall in the market. Anna never had the same manic frenzy about commerce that her seven sisters had. She dreamed about being an adventurer, traveling the realms fighting thieves or raiding lords. She liked to be on both teams, she just couldn’t pick a side.
At the age of thirteen, she had resigned herself to her fate of becoming one in an army of Annas. The more sisters that could keep up the ruse of the Secret Seller, the better.
She was tending the stall with her older sister. The Anna of all Annas. Oh why did their parents give them all the same name? Her sister was 19 at the time, and already comfortable in her position as the main Secret Seller. She was a thief, but also a amateur philanthropist. She was perfect.
Anna hated her guts.
The sisters were in the middle of a curt and cordial conversation when the orphan stumbled into the market. Anna saw him and she was instantly fascinated. What was his story?
She would later find out that he was Ashe Ubert, her partner in crime and only family. The day she finally met him was the day she decided she wasn’t going to do this charade anymore. Anna was a deceiver by nature, but she was done fooling herself about her wish for her fate.
~~~
Ashe’s view of the slightly interested eyes and the blaring sun was unpleasant. He couldn’t breathe, he was just hacking up whatever he had left in his body.
The shadow of someone’s head came over his weary eyes. He could see them better now without the sun in his face. Dull merchant faces, wondering whether the boy collapsed in the street would be bad for business.
A faint brush of something caused the sunburn on his pale face to twinge.
He must have reacted with what little energy he had left, because the moment he cringed, the shadow shifted to avoid brushing him again.
“Oh! I’m sorry. That was an accident. Do you need any help?”
He followed the magenta ponytail up to the stranger’s curious face. She was looking at him so warmly. Ashe had a feeling he might finally be okay.
Three months later in Arianrhod, Ashe and Anna were on the third stop of their tour of Faerghus. They didn’t have anything to sell, but with their empty hands, they could steal what they needed to survive.
Tales of near-master thieves had spread throughout the fortress city, but no one suspected a 10 year old and a 13 year old could be the master pickpockets.
Ashe and Anna were perfect together. His speed and her skill were no match for even the most prominent lords of the Kingdom. They had even stolen cufflinks from Rodrigue Fraldarius himself. (The man did eventually find out and gave the duo both money and the stolen cufflinks, but that was their secret)
In Arianrhod, they messed up.
Specifically, Ashe messed up, and they both had to deal with the consequences.
At midnight on the day they rushed into the sewers, Ashe and Anna finally found the perfect spot to hide.
The streets were never safe. They had been running for nearly two days straight. Dirt and scratches covered their weary faces. They rarely slept at the same time, but tonight they just couldn’t resist.
They were finally somewhat safe on a rooftop in the fortress city. There was a cacophony of noise in the streets below, but the two exhausted kids couldn’t be bothered.
Anna knew about Ashe’s nightmares. He would never tell her what they were about, but in the six months since teaming up and leaving Gaspard, Ashe had too many nightmares for a ten year old.
There were the ones where he screamed until his voice broke, the ones where he would thrash around violently, and worst of all, the ones where he would just beg for people Anna didn’t know. Ashe would spend hours whispering names of people that he would never tell her about.
That night in Arianrhod, Ashe’s usual yelling took place. Anna was so tired she nearly slept through it, but she finally woke up just as the owner of the building they were sleeping on stepped onto the roof.
~~~
He couldn’t breathe. He was back in Gaspard, cowering in the main street. It was silent, but the smell of death in the air made up for the silence.
The air was horrible. Hot and pervasive, filled with the illness that took everyone he loved. He could finally open his eyes, which he nearly always kept closed during this particular nightmare.
He knew what he would see, but it was always jarring. Bodies were piled up in the street, packed like sardines. Even though they were dead and rotting, Ashe could feel their eyes on him.
He did the only thing that he could do, he screamed. He screamed for help, he screamed for the Goddess, he screamed for Anna.
He bolted awake midscream. Adrenaline was rushing through his body. He tore off the thin blanket that he slept with and jumped up. He was sleep-deprived from the nightmares, from running, from everything. His mind was painting images onto the bare rooftop. Ashe had dealt with hallucinations before, but this didn’t feel like one at all. It was too real. The rooftop, their first safe spot in so, so long, was covered in the putrid bodies from Gaspard.
One of the bodies stood and started shuffling towards him. In the stories his parents would tell him, the eldritch monsters, called Risen, were products of dark magic and could be dispatched with a sufficient amount of force.
Risen were from another world, one with exalts and dragons and hierophants, but the one stumbling towards him was incredibly real. He backed up. He heard Anna yawn behind him. He had to protect her.
The Risen opened its mouth to speak. Nothing but purple smoke came out. Ashe rushed forward, baring Anna’s dagger like she showed him. He needed to keep her safe. Anna was the last person Ashe had. His entire family was gone.
The dagger, one that Anna had lifted off of an Almyran merchant, was impossibly sharp. It pierced the shuffling corpse, sinking deep into its thick flesh.
Flesh? No.
Risen were akin to scarecrows. Cutting through them was like blowing a candle out, that’s what all the tales said.
Ashe looked up, expecting the beady red eyes of an eldritch monster. Instead there were soft brown eyes staring right into him.
“What-?”
Anna grabbed his shoulder, causing Ashe to draw the dagger out of the very alive man. The man stumbled backwards, his brown eyes staring at Ashe. He stumbled just far enough, and fell off the roof silently.
The firewood below cracked loudly when the man’s body hit. Ashe saw candles being lit in windows. The entire neighborhood probably heard.
Anna was gasping behind him. He knew she was hyperventilating, trying to wrap her mind around what just happened.
Well, they were doing that together.
She pulled him down the ladder that they climbed to get up to their hiding spot.
The moment his feet hit the ground, he collapsed. Did he just kill someone? Ashe curled in on himself. He couldn’t think, see, or breathe.
He was trying to protect Anna, but instead he put her in worse danger than they’ve ever been in.
So there they were, two kids in Arianrhod, suddenly running for their lives.