“Speak again? For my aid you say? What could a powerful foe like you need from me?”

I haven’t been here for what seems like an entire decade, which in reality meant a year or two.

The distinctive symbolism of water emblem spells reignites my memories as I have an urge to learn emblem spells as a kid, and find whether or not I have an emblem or not.

I’ve always had this urge, but father doesn’t allow me to peruse it - saying it’s “dangerous”.

Then I continue back to the old man.

“Powerful? I’m not powerful at all I can’t even cast emblem magic like that!”

“Then how did you break the ice wall?”

Part of his voice jumps at me like one of a crow.

“Regular spells – Versterken...”

“Your no regular person.”

“But – I am…”

I reply, not sure whether this old man is mocking me or not.

“Old man! Do you not remember me? That kid that kept nagging you to teach him Emblem spells!”

He looks at me squinting his eyes and scratching his small hairs on his pointy chin. I lose hope, maybe he hit his head or something. Or more likely his old age was getting to him.

“Oh, you’re that kid? The one that kept coming here every day!?”

“I look at him laughing, of course it’s me-”

“Don’t you dare tell me your here to ask me to teach you emblem magic again!”

I laugh hysterically at the old man.

“You know kid, I placed that active wall there to stop you coming here a few years ago, and you finally broke it.”

“Wait that was only for me!?”

“Perhaps I can’t remember now…”

He laughs.

“Well, I’ve grown up! How about now? I’m seven-teen! Not ten or twelve or fifteen anymore!”

“Has it really been that long since you first came here? Never mind that come sit.”

He dodges my question as I expect him to and signals for me to sit down next to the wall on the opposite end, there’s a low wooden table and a lifeful mulberry coloured clay tea pot.

My arm slowly turns a pale colour indicating the spell’s effect is finishing, and I begin to feel the aftermath of using such a spell in the form of fatigue.

He takes the tea pot and lays it on a stone slab next to him. The slab has a hole in the middle that appears to hold some sort of left over wood below. He reaches his hand into the hole underneath the tea pot as if searching for something.

“Aansteken.”

He calmly recites, and a light glow turns into a small spark, and slowly crackling in his hand to birth a small fire.

He drops the fire as if it was an object down into the pit below the slab and pulls his hand out and wipes his hands together removing some debris.

“You can use fire emblem magic too!? I only thought you could have one emblem!”

I speak in excitement wondering what else is truly possible.

“No, just advanced non-emblem magic you’ll get used to it when your older, although I’m not sure if you can have more than one emblem… It might be possible but very rare.”

A bit disappointed he doesn’t have a dual emblem or something else I quieten down.

“How’s your sister and your father– Arthur?”

He then speaks again this time repositioning the pot slightly. And this time losing the sarcastic tone from the beginning and has a much more delighting voice.

“He’s alright, and Aella is annoying as always – getting me in closer to the grasps of father’s anger which I have yet to witness fully…”

“I’ll recommend you as someone who has seen his rage first hand it’s not something you want to have experienced!”

He laughs and my attention turns back to the tea pot which is bubbling.

“What’s in there?”

“Tea…”

He looks at me like I am an idiot

“Yeah of course! But what tea?”

“Ginger.”

“No wonder your breath stinks all the time, you drink the most random concoctions you can get your hands on.”

In my mind is really reminds me of Rodger and then I linger on the idea if they know each other or not, because they would certainly get along based on making some sort of poison traps.

“Oh! Shut up, try it first then speak for yourself.”

The tea finished and he pulled out two clay cups and slowly poured a reasonable amount in each one before handing me one.

I grab it and the overpowering smell unclogs my nose that I didn’t know were previously blocked.

“So, do you still want to learn Emblem magic Ed?”

He looks at me taking a sip of his tea waiting for a response, his eyes looked like an open adventure. And his words grasp my imagination.

“Of course, I still do!”

‘But Father told me to stay away from it, so I probably shouldn’t’ that exact thought runs in my head but fails to leave my mouth as a voice.

“You are such troublesome young boy… I’ll teach you on the condition that you have to discover if you even have an emblem.”

“And… How exactly do you expect me to do that?”

“For every emblem there are is a minimum requirement to reveal your emblem, or that is if you are granted it straight away from a God. Yet I haven’t heard of that happening in my life span.”

“And what exactly do you mean by requirements…?”

“So, amongst the Emblems each one demands something, for example I gained my Emblem through age, but it can also occur from training and suffering which is also true for levelling up an emblem… And not forgetting some emblems rarely emerge even if you possess them – like the life emblem. Notably one of the hardest emblems to emerge from dormancy.”

He pauses looking at me, his face becomes hopeless and he takes a sip from his cup.

“That’s all I got for you, I can’t see your emblem and I can’t guarantee you even have one.”

“So, what do you want me to do now…”

“Go ahead and explore to find your emblem or something, anything. Also finish your drink!”

Although it probably hasn’t cooled down, I want to rush out of here to give me as much time to find my Emblem.

I take the cup and go to drink it all at once, as it’s in my mouth there was a horrid taste and I had the urge to spit it or gulp it immediately.

I struggle to gulp it all down but eventually end up doing so after it sat in my mouth corrupting my taste buds.

“What was in that!?”

“Some ginger alcohol drink I was experimenting with, but I must say its quiet brave of you to do that!”

He man laughs at me once more, as I get up wiping my tongue from any remaining taste. Not really believing he would do something like that… But yet again he would…

I jump up like a bird and quickly walk to the exit.

“Thanks Jim you old man!”

I say walking right out of the door. I wonder where to start but there’s an infinite number of possibilities awaiting me and I get over-whelmed by it all.

I walk up the slope and I hear my name being called.

At this point I’m thinking that he wasn’t lying about it being an alcoholic drink and it had gotten to me already.

I get onto of the gravel road and look around me, to my upmost surprise there seems to be little figures in the distance waving.

I finally think the fatigue has gotten to me alongside the poison potion I was handed. But the figures get closer shouting my name.

I slowly walk towards them rubbing my eyes in disbelief.

There are four people, one is clearly a girl; she has ambient brown hair that flows behind her and she’s wearing a white dress with some sort of pattern I can’t clearly make out.

There other three people I assume are boys; they all wear tunics; one wearing a blue tunic another wears a yellow one and lastly a smaller boy wears a red tunic. They all also were the same looking trousers as if an iconic fashion around these areas.

They’re features become more and more detailed and I can see all of the boys have messy hair although it seems like effort was put in to style it.

That’s when it became apparent – I knew them. From walking slowly, I start to run and run towards them as I see them walking faster.

“Gaven! Angela! Rob! Jack”

I scream and rejoice with excitement.

Angela has the long hair, small face and resembles much of Evie – her older sister I had just met before.

Rob and Gaven look almost like twins, and you would think so you didn’t know they weren’t related at all.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Both with a dark black shade of hair, long faces, no facial hair.

And finally Jack, the youngest by far, with the messy blonde hair covering much of his face, except for his fat facial cheeks, and small proportions of everything else.

“Didn’t except to see you here Ed what the hell?!”

“Yeah, same here man!”

Rob exclaims and Gaven follows.

“What are you even doing here?”

Angela questions in confusion, I mean after all I don’t think we had been here as a group before, so they thought I was a stranger to this area.

Other than the fact I met Gaven here, so I guess it isn’t too much of a shock to him.

“I was visiting old man Jim.”

“You speak to that man?!”

Angela said in a surprising spring in her voice.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that…?”

I inquire as she looks like she has more to say then she actually did.

“I mean Uncle Jim teaches me my emblem magic; I didn’t know.”

I feel a little bit of jealousy hang in my pool of emotions and I also think I’ve been blind this entire time for not noticing.

“We have a lot to discuss Angelia...”

I state whilst she looks at me rather confused.

“So, you gonna join us, Ed?”

Jack excitedly tells me as he hurries forwards.

“Where to…?”

I mumble a bit in natural response and realise no matter where the answer is going to be a yes.

“Of course!”

I say sprinting towards him, as he runs further ahead.

“Come on!”

I shout to the others as they try to catch up with us.

Jack is a short energetic guy, so I try my best to catch up to him but frantically fail each time. But maybe not this time.

I start running on my tiptoes and tilt my entire body a little bit forward, I push harder off the ground which each. He’s almost in reach of my hand and I barely touch his tunic for a spilt moment. And like a fish he escapes my grasp once more and laughing at me.

I look backwards at the others and they seem to be at least a hundred meters back lightly jogging towards us.

And the river starts to become masked behind a massive collection of lush greenery.

I stand with my back bent almost a full ninety degrees panting like a beast then coughing a bit.

“Jack, you rat! Come here!”

I shout laughing my head off as I go to chase him once more before completely stopping after.

Slowly by each swift step they take they reach us and seem more breathless than I am after running for Jack for a tedious amount.

“I think it’s here!”

Shouts Rob behind all of us and arriving last to what seemed to be a random bush. Angela walks out of the path into a thick bush next to us, it looks like the start of the forest from up close – intimidating and unknown.

Then we follow her as a group, and me and Gaven look at each other with a hopeful and playful look seeking an adventure behind those bushes.

We get past a thin wall of thick branches, sticks and roots then stumbling upon a lake, to the left is the massive river that flows to the village. And this is a sort of lake forgotten about.

We walk a bit downwards onto a rocky path down as the water lay still like a sleeping animal then slowly crept up and down like its lungs inflating and deflating.

“Hey watch this!”

Rob shouts rushing in front of Angela who is in front and grabbing a rock.

“Watch what?”

I laugh at him blissfully; he looks back at smiles before swinging his hips and using his entire arm like a sling shot. The rock glides on top of the water leaving at least twenty ripples before sinking with a bang.

“Woah! Bet I can do better!”

Gaven shouts to him as he bends down to get a rock, slowly he prepares himself for a throw and I can see Angela behind me smirking to herself after she whispered something that I don’t make out.

He thrusts his hand fully back and then violently snaps his arm back as if stretching it and all of a sudden, the rock leaves his hand.

One ripple… Two ripples… Three ripples and so on. It doesn’t seem to stop. Twenty-five ripples… Forty ripples. And it flows far out until it silently drowns

I look at Angela who puts her finger to her mouth and silently hisses at me to shush and laughs afterwards. No wonder it went that far… She casted damn spell! I laugh silently to the point I can’t hold a strong posture.

I look at Rob and he looks defeated but then goes to get another rock. He repeats and as he prepares Angela chants something.

His movements look like an athlete and the moment the rock launches it hits the water directly and sinks without skipping once.

He looks furious rather than disappointed this time.

“Angela! I heard you chant that time!”

He screams walking closer to the water and reaching down to collect water with his hands. He gets back up and splashes the water towards Angela.

“Oh no he didn’t…”

I repeat to myself and laughing to the verge of tears. Jack’s face as well as Gaven’s face become the shape of an ‘ö’. And Angela screams in horror first; laughing afterwords.

“I think you forget what she can do Rob!”

Gaven says blowing up in hysterics.

“Good luck!”

Rob shouts quickly.

“Oh no...”

He responds as if his entire world is crashing down on top of his head, which very much is literally happening.

“Beweging!”

She manages to say after laughing hard. The lake next to us begins to form a sphere right onto of the surface of the water, it soon amounts to a size larger than a person.

The sphere is almost perfect other than how the surface looks bumpy and sort of wrinkly, other than that it curves perfectly and looks like a marble the whilst the light rams through it.

With one arm pointed vertically the large droplet of water followed Angela’s index finger. She slowly raises it upwards then at an extreme speed right above Rob.

Right as she moved the ball of water, he runs towards me and practically hugs me.

“You wouldn’t drop the water if I’m with Ed!”

He shouts with a cunning grin.

The water hovers over above me directly and a shadow formed of a light shade.

“Angela what are you doing…?”

I gulp and look at her pleading for mercy, although I did nothing wrong.

“Sorry Eddy.”

“S-sorry!? What do you mean!?”

She quickly says, and my eyes widen as her fingers stretch apart and the shadow gets ever so smaller beneath my feet.

“I’ll kil you Rob-!”

I scream. Water engulfs my mouth and creates a vacuum for a second. While water fills nostrils completely.

The water feels like an invisible force hitting me with a blizzard of frozen wind and leaving me soaking. The water makes its way back towards the lake and I rub my eyes out and cough.

My senses all come back to me and I can feel the muffled voices of Gaven and Jack trying to simultaneously hold shock and laughter whilst pointing at me then looking back to Angela who only starts to realise what she had done.

“Angela…”

I cough out desperately.

And that’s all I can say, there are millions of things I could have said along with that simple name yet I chose not to even utter a single one.

“I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed… Stop laughing Rob man!”

I stay silent but approach the water.

“You can’t become soaked if you already are soaked!”

I grin to myself; I take off my shoes, and cloak then walk into the water and splash around it and trying to get everyone else who is dry wet.

“Hey! No fair!”

Gaven shouts, running into the water not caring weather or not he had his shoes on, he splashes the water right next to me sending water all over the place and covering my field of vision for a bit until his arms tire out.

Jack soon enough runs into the water almost falling onto the rocks and Rob is reluctant but as he gets into the shallow grasp of the water Angela pushes him forwards and he trips into the water almost banging his head onto the rocky fall but doesn’t actually.

Angela watches from behind. She finds a rock to sit on from the side and casts water spells at us as we try to reach her with water but she’s too far out of reach.

“Our voices probably echo into the villages nearby.”

I laugh.

“I hope they can hear us! Maybe they’ll come join to make a bigger water fight!”

Angela responds, and I keep splashing Rob until enough his body is soaking.

“Come get me!”

Gaven shouts as he swims into the depths, the stops to turn around and look at us.

“I’ll get you! Don’t forget I’m the fastest swimmer out of all of you!”

I shout still feeling a tinge of cold wind hit me.

As soon as I duck my entire body underwater the cold vanishes and I head towards him, he dashes forwards into the middle, it’s deep, and deep enough not to be able to stand in – but not too deep.

The waters rise up and down as I stop to float up in the water to re-gain my sight of Gaven. I feel outdone. He’s right behind me on his way back to shore.

“Oh no you don’t!”

I take one deep breath and force every muscle in my body to contract and release before eventually whilst stroking forwards I barely touch his foot and he gets away.

“Watch out next time!”

Rob then rushes towards me un-expectedly and stares at be blankly, giving me a weird face.

“Oh my gosh… What is that face- “

“Tag! Your it!”

He surprises me while my guard is down, which is something he doesn’t usually do but I guess he has grown out of his more shy habits.

“Oooh Jack, Gaven here I come!”

I hunt them down like a shark rushing after schools of tuna until exhaustion.

The sun slowly glares a duller orange haze onto the blanket of disrupted water. The clouds above disperse from one and other leaving an array of cotton balls covering a semi-blue, semi-purple sky.

“It’s going to get dark soon!”

I say after having just got tagged back by Gaven.

“Oh... Your right.”

Jack says looking up in the sky in amazement everyone else sort of looks at him lost in the sky and decide to look up themselves and come to the same conclusion.

We all slowly get out of water and I look for my shoes, I find them near the water. I shake like a dog would trying to get off as much water as possible before putting my shoes one.

After putting my shoes on, I look up forwards next to me, Angela is still sitting on the ledge of a rock and somehow sleeping in a very uncomfortable sitting position.

“Angela! We’re heading back now!”

I shout to her with my hands next to my mouth directing as much noise as possible towards her. She wakes up slowly and looks like she doesn’t believe she fell asleep.

A red haze glows onto her cheeks as she realises what’s going on and I can’t tell if it was her own body doing that or the sun.

I find out soon enough, when she covers her face after sitting up.

“Emblem spells make you tired y’know!”

She defends herself against silent arguments casted by Jack’s look.

“Sure, sure thing Angela.”

Jack says mocking her in a friendly tone; she gets down from the rock carefully and we start walking back to the main path.

Rob is last to walk out of the bushes and we are behind Angela who walks us towards the Water Village. On the way back I decide to catch up to her and talk about what wise old man Jim had told me, whilst we are ahead of the others.

“Hey Angela.”

I say waiting for her to respond but she doesn’t do so quickly. I look to her and she’s already dozing off back to sleep. I decide to stay quiet and eventually our way she kept catching herself falling asleep then shaking her head to wake up before repeating.

And soon enough.

“Alright then, see you guys!”

I say only just noitcing the bridge.

“See ya!”

Rob, Jack and Gaven follows right before Angela wakes up once more and wishes me a goodnight. I reciprocate her message and start walking across the bride.

It’s darker now, but I can still see clearly but quickly it gets darker as I’m on the path from the village to my house.

I get closer without having to really look from muscle memory and at last I can see the walls of the stable.

“Sweet, sweet yet miserable home!”

I say to myself and wonder what I would say to father about randomly leaving the house for a few hours. I’m at the intersection of the two paths and in front of the door.

I can hear father’s muffled voice and Aella’s high-pitched laughter from outside. I go to open the door and then sniff the air sharply; I can smell something cooking and it fills my stomach with the food I need relinquish my hunger.

I open the door slowly and it makes a stretching sound.

“I’m home!”

I look towards the direction of the voices and I can see father with sister around a small burning fire. On top of it is a large pot bubbling and giving off a smoke as father adds something into the pot.

“Ed!”

He shouts, but not in an aggressive way, but in a rather more loving manner. I sort of walk towards him as he stands up and bear hugs me.

“Oh my! That’s enough gosh!”

I squeeze out softly.

He laughs then right before letting me go he kisses me on the forehead, I can feel his beard rub against my face as he does so.

My attention drifts to Aella and she has her arms crossed clearly envious of father’s attention towards me. As he turns back towards the pot in the corner, I stick my tongue towards here as revenge of what she did this morning.

And she almost seems dumb-stuck until it clicks in her head and she laughs at me.

“Come sit.”

He says to me shuffling over on the floor covered by stacks of hay.

“What’s this?”

I point towards the bubbling pot and smell deeply, the sweet aroma sends me a nostalgic kick, and I look at him as he stirs it with a wooden ladle spoon.

“My one-in-a-kind original vegetable-meat stew.”

“No way! You mean my favourite!?”

I glee with excitement appearing on my face with a big smile.

“I think it’s finished just about now?”

He says un-sure and after tasting it he gives me and Aella a thumbs up and an innocent raise of his eyebrows, he grabs two wooden bowls accompanied with two wooden spoons and pours us each a large serving with a chunk of meat before serving himself.

“Thanks for the meal!”

“Same here, love you dad!”

I say and Aella follows.

“Love you both.”

I take the spoon and rocket it into the bowl and scoup up a chunk of astray meat and a small onion. I blow on it carefully then rush to put in my mouth. I exhale sharply as it’s still hot and I gulp it down after a few seconds of it cooling down in my mouth and slightly irritating my tongue with the heat.

“Where were you today?”

“Umm, I went to the Water Village and went to play in the lake with Rob, Jack, Gaven and Angela. Where did you two go?”

I respond to him mainly missing out the market because it could cause some problems.

“We went to the market to get these ingredients and go to Uncle Richard’s to get something else – which I can’t remember. He also told me to say ‘hello’ to you.”

“Oh.”

I respond blankly not sure what to do, Uncle Richard hadn’t seen me in quite a bit so I make a mental note to actually visit him sometime during the next following days. I am also probably going to help him do things as he has a lot of responsibilities as a solider.

Strange enough although Father and Uncle Richard were brothers, and Father was apparently older, although Richard looks much older.

I move on my thoughts and finish my bowl rather quickly and father looks at me laughs, then proceeds to pour me more after he hears my stomach rumble.

Me and Aella mess around with each other slightly in between eating and father tells us to calmly stop as we’re next to the fire.

After finishing a second bowl I sit back with my feet warming up next to the fire. The day had felt so short, yet so much had happened. I finally open the pocket watch after a full day of not looking at the hands tick.

The hands read eight O’ clock, and the Sun has fully gone down to the opposite side of the globe, and somewhere out there someone was only just waking up.

I feel like this was also the time to tell dad about my thoughts on perusing emblem magic, but I didn’t want him to worry about me, I already knew what his response would be – ‘stay away from emblem magic its dangerous’.

Yet that isn’t all fair when he was an emblem magic holder himself. All I knew is he has the Peace emblem. I don’t see him using it much but on the off chance I did he was healing Aella’s graze after she fell on the ground.

I spent the next few hours messing around with Aella, whilst father went outside to do something after closing the fire. And by around nine or ten rights after father came back, I slowly start to fall asleep on the thick bundles of hay on the opposite area from the door.