Dreamweaver | Fire Emblem Fates

Chapter Six

Dreamweaver - Chapter 6

Forrest woke up bone tired — his limbs were leaden, barely able to support his weight as he somehow or another clambered out of bed and stumbled towards the vanity. Blinding sunlight filled the room; some fool, probably one of the chambermaids, had inconsiderately left the drapes open, filling the bedroom with a staggering amount of morning light.

Grumbling, Forrest splashed some water on his face from a bowl on the vanity before picking his way over to the curtains, intending on yanking them shut. With some surprise, he noticed that they were thick and fluffy, obviously made from some sort of animal hide. Forrest didn't have such a display of barbarism in his room. He glanced up. In fact...his room wasn't this sparsely furnished: the only thing in this chamber to break up the monotony of castle cobblestone was a standard bed, a desk, and a wardrobe. Whose room was he in?

He spotted the short sword in the cranny between the bed and desk.

Oh. Siegbert! He must've fallen asleep in his room last night, just as he had when they'd been children. But the chamber was empty now, save for him. Where had his cousin gone?

"Siegbert?" he called, opening the door into the hallway. "Siegbert?" He glanced up and down the stone corridor in both directions, but didn't see his friend in any of the receding shadows. In fact...he didn't see anyone at all. Which was incredibly odd, seeing as the hallways were usually bustling with activity during this time of the day. Maids, attendants, royal staff, carrying equipment, delivering messages, taking care of many of the tasks necessary for running Castle Krakenburg... But today, the hall was empty from one end to the other, and the only sound to be heard was the echo of Forrest's own voice, calling for Siegbert.

Forrest retreated back into Siegbert's room, for some reason feeling chilled. Where was everybody? The horrid notion of an emergency evacuation during the night and being left behind swelled in his throat, but he shook his head. If there had been an evacuation of any kind, he would have heard it. He wasn't that deep of a sleeper! And even if he was, Siegbert would've woken him, alert soldier that he was. No, something else was going on. But what?

Forrest hurried back to the window, pulling the curtains apart fully and thrusting the doors open onto the balcony. Maybe he could spot someone to help him down in the courtyard—

He froze as he stepped out onto the chamber balcony. "Great Gods," he gasped.

A bright, nearly abnormally blue sky hung over Castle Krakenburg, laden with the soft, white heaps of clouds. That in itself was not odd, if you ignored the enormous slabs of rock floating in between them, drifting in the same direction as the cloudbanks, seemingly on the breeze. There were dozens of them, some small as carriages, others large enough to be small nations. Some drifted along on their sides, and others floated upside down, the trees and twisted vegetation growing from the surfaces pointing down towards Forrest like daggers. Their bulky forms drew jagged shadows across Castle Krakenburg's eerie, empty bailey.

Any self-respecting Nohrian knew that this was not what Castle Krakenburg looked like on any other day of the week.

Forrest began to tremble, overwhelmed by what he was seeing. Floating islands. Floating islands! Gods, what's going on?  This was not what the castle had looked like when he'd gone to sleep.

When I went to sleep...

A sparkle in the corner of Forrest's eye suddenly caught his attention. The courtyard of Castle Krakenburg, not usually exposed to this much blatant sunlight, was not as empty as Forrest had originally thought. A mass of glowing pink mist crouched near the gates, beneath the stunted, knotted tree that was said to have been planted before even King Garon had occupied the Nohrian throne. Forrest was too far away to be sure, but he thought he could barely see what looked like a silhouette within the depths of the fuchsia-colored fog.