13The Tellius Tourist
A/N: Welcome to my story! This is genuinely the first thing I've actually published here in a long while, and the first thing I've published since changing my screen name. It's... kinda nice to be back. Sadly, this doesn't mean I'll be finishing any of my older stories. They're well and truly dead at this point. I apologize to any readers who were following them. Anyway, about this story. It was inspired by Metallover's own SI story (which I edit for him, it's great go check it out). I thought I could do something in that vain, and picked Path of Radiance, mostly just to stand out a bit from the many Awakening SI's I know of. Fair warning, there are some dated pop culture references, since I actually wrote this in spring of last year, so be warned for that. Obligatory disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem. With all that out of the way, enjoy!
Chapter 1: On the Experience of Getting Isekai'd (Spoiler alert: It sucks!)
Day 1
Ah, grogginess; my typical morning companion. I'm the type of person who doesn't fall asleep or wake up very quickly or easily, so I tend to be groggy and dim-minded whenever I wake up. The solution is pretty simple. I grab my blanket, shift it around a bit, roll over, and head back to sleep. I have an alarm to let me know when I need to be up for work, so catching a few more z's isn't really that big a deal.
Except this time, when I reach for my blanket, my hands find nothing. I groan a bit in annoyance, and move to roll over anyway. The tickling sensation along my arms sends jolts running through me, and my eyes snap wide open as I shoot into a seated position. My eyes blink rapidly as my brain attempts to register the signal it's receiving. That can't be right. I reach my arms up to my face and vigorously rub my eyes. Nope, still there. I've gotta be dreaming, right? I pinch myself. No change.
"The actual fuck?!" I say out loud to no one in particular.
Instead of the foot of my bed, my TV, and bookshelves to either side that I should be seeing, my eyes are seeing grassy meadow and trees. And I'm not in my nice, comfy bed. I'm in the fucking dirt and grass. No sign of my nice, soft, warm blanket, my comfy pillows, or anything like that. Just hard, wet dirt. That's when the next sensation makes itself aware to my brain. It's not freezing or anything, but it's far colder than I'm comfortable with. Especially considering that all I'm wearing at the moment is a black T-shirt with a neon Godzilla print on the front and thin pajama leggings with an anchor pattern. As soon as that realization sets in, I immediately begin shivering.
Going by the ambient light, the color of the sky above me, and the approximate time of year (if that still applied), it's maybe 6:30 in morning. Roughly. I don't have my phone or a clock on me to check. In fact, as I look around, I start panicking, looking for anything of mine besides the clothes on my back. It takes me a second in the dim light, but I do spot something. My black running shoes are sitting about two feet away from me, a single pair of my gray socks stuffed into them. Without hesitating, I reach over to them, rapidly pulling on the socks, and then the shoes. Not being barefoot helps to mitigate the cold at least a little. My brain asks the logical question, why are these here and nothing else of mine? but I file it away to think about later. I have more pressing concerns.
Like where in the unholy fuck am I?!
I live in west Texas, a place renowned for having absolutely nothing in terms of terrain; just flat scrubland, full of oilfields. It even goes full desert further west. Trees? Meadows? Maybe in east Texas, but that's a solid 300-400 miles from where I live. Is this somebody's idea of a prank? What kind of asshole kidnaps a guy in his sleep, drives six hours in the middle of the night, and dumps their victim off in the middle of a meadow? With his shoes? And no jacket?
The question of how this happened falls to the wayside as my stomach growls, and I suddenly became highly aware of my dry lips and mouth. I'm a reclusive, anti-social, nerd in the middle of nowhere, and I'm hungry and thirsty. Shit. How the fuck am I going to survive this?! My survival skills are practically non-existent! I'm a decent shot with a gun, but I've never been taught how to hunt. And even if I did have my pistol with me, I've been too lazy to go get ammo for it, so it wouldn't be anything more than a pathetically short ranged club. Certainly nothing I could hunt with. If I even knew how to hunt in the first place.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Yeah, I'm panicking. More than a little bit. I'm normally pretty even keel, but I have a harder time than most people when dealing with change. And this, whatever this is, is a massive, massive change. I'm not really prone to panic attacks, but this bizarre, inexplicable scenario was driving me to it.
Stop! I yell at myself internally. Stop, compartmentalize. Figure out what's important. Deal with the other shit later. What's the most important thing right now?
…
Water. Yes, that's it. That's what I need to find at this moment. I latch onto that thought and focus on it with a single-minded determination. I'm in a forest. There has to be water somewhere reasonably close. That's the first step to surviving this. Slowly, I unfreeze my body, willing it to motion with the animalistic need to cling to life. All other concerns are secondary at this point. Whatever problems crop up from this situation, I can deal with them later. Right now, all I need to do is focus on the bare essentials. And water is right up there at the top of the priority list.
I stand, still shivering from the morning cold. I can see that the sun is nearly ready to rise, the pre-dawn sky growing lighter by the minute. I gauge the direction of the sun to the best of my ability, roughly estimating which direction it was rising from. I close one eye and stick my long, skinny arm out for reference.
"West is… roughly… that way," I confirm to myself, forcing my voice to stay even.
I'm not really sure which way to head. I'm lost in a "middle of nowhere" that I don't recognize at all. The best I can really do is pick a direction and start walking. Best case scenario, I run into somebody before my needs become an issue, and figure out what I can do from there. Worst case… I can't think of that. If I allow myself to mentally travel down that road, I will freeze, deer-in-the-headlights style, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I settle on what I hope to God is North, and then just start walking.
The first couple hours aren't so bad. The repetitive motion of placing one foot in front of the other and trying to avoid running headlong into any trees are decent enough distraction. But the monotony soon sets in, and my mind begins to wander. I force it to stay on track. If I let too many concerns in, I'll freeze up completely, not deal with the issue, and most likely end up dead. I can't allow that. I will myself to robotically walk forward and keep my mind empty. As the day wears on, though, the lack of food and water begin exhausting me.
Day 2
The whole first day, I didn't find jack shit. Due to my weakened body, I had to take frequent rests, but I still like to think I made decent progress. The hardest part was keeping my head clear. I'm the kind of person who usually lives in their own mind, jumping from one thought to the next, constantly ruminating. Occasionally, it even gets to the point where my surroundings fade to the background. Given the situation, I found it difficult to avoid doing that over the course of that first day. I knew that depressing thoughts would cloud my mind if I let myself ruminate on anything in this situation. And for the first day of walking, at least, I was moderately successful. After a fitful night of half-sleep and unpleasant dreams, though, the second day would prove itself to be much harder.
I can't speak for everyone, but for me, walking gives me time to think. I can just be in my head, and let my brain wander where it pleased. There was a time in my life when I took daily walks, and they helped me sort through a lot of shit. That predisposition to engage in thought as I mechanically move my legs is making this particular walk far, far more difficult than it needs to be.
My brain kept shoving thoughts into my head to fill the relative quiet, thoughts that I had to push to the side before they could take hold and turn to brooding. But, my growling, empty stomach and parched body are draining me, and I don't have the mental fortitude to keep my anxious thoughts under control any more. The first thought to take hold was of my family. What were they going to think when they didn't hear from me at all today? Would they go to the apartment I share with my uncle, enter my room, and find it empty? Would they start a search? Hold a funeral? I'm already greatly missing their support. The oldest of my younger sisters is a great conversationalist, able to talk about all sorts of things with me. Frankly, I feel like she's more mature than me most days. I'm missing our frank discussions, and her easy advice. I'm missing my mother's guidance, which she gives freely, often without my asking. It had done so much to help me navigate through my young adult life. What I would give to ask her for advice right now. I try, so hard, to squash these thoughts down, but I can't, and the feeling of tension and anxiety only builds as my mind moves on to other concerns.
I think of the online community I'm a part of. A collection of assholes who all joke around and have fun together on a friend's discord server. It's a self-insert and fanfiction community, and I'm already missing my simple interactions with them. I'm dearly missing my friend Ben, who started that community around his own self-insert, which I've been editing up until today. God, he's going to think I'm dead too. The depression deepens.
I think of my old friends, whom I am slowly falling out of contact with, due to distance. Regret bubbles to the surface as I realize that I may not get to rekindle that connection now. For all I know, I could be on another planet. I don't think that's likely, but the hunger, thirst, depression, and stress are all setting in, and my brain's going loopy. It makes me miss them. I wish I had put in the effort to stay in contact over the past few months.
Even the less important things in my life begin to bubble up as disproportionately large concerns. I'm not going to be able to see Avengers: Endgame anymore, despite dropping almost $20 on an advance IMAX ticket. I'd been looking forward to that since Infinity War came out, and the thought of not being able see to it piled on to my depression. I wouldn't be able to see the Code Geass sequel set to release in the U.S. in May. I was nervous for it, as Code Geass didn't need a sequel, but I still wanted to see it. I look down at my shirt, and hardest one for my nerd heart makes itself known: I'm not going to be able to see Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That last one physically hurt me. That may seem insane, when stacked against not being able to see my family or talk with my friends, but as a lifelong Godzilla fanboy, this realization spikes the decisive blow into my brain, and I fall into a full, pathetic spiral.
I stop walking. Everything. All of it hits me at once. My family. My friends. The things I may be missing. It's too much. I collapse to my knees, not caring for the pain flaring in my right knee by landing on the tendon wrong. With no one else around me, I didn't even try to hold back. For the first time in years, I let myself just break down emotionally.
I don't know how long I let myself sit there, just sobbing. It's been quite a while, I'm sure. My eyes are probably red, my cheeks stained with tear tracks. The dirt beneath me is wetted in a pretty significant radius. I slowly raise my head, and take a deep, refreshing breath. All of my problems are still there. Nothing has changed. But that had been cathartic. All this emotion building up, and, with no one around to see, I was able to let it out freely. My head's now slowly clearing, and I feel a bit more centered. Yeah, I'm alone, hungry, thirstier than ever, and in the middle of nowhere, but I'd just let a lot out that I'd probably been holding back for a while. Despite the desperate situation, that had felt good.
As I come back to a full awareness, my ears catch the sound of something I'd been desperately hoping to hear: running water. All these miles of walking. All this time stuck in my brain. All the physical pain of my slowly deteriorating body. Now, it's finally paying off. I stand as quickly as my weak-ass body can manage, desperately turning my head in the appropriate direction, praying that it's not my dehydrated brain playing tricks on me.
As I walk, the sound continues to grow louder and more distinct, confirming that yes, I've actually located a source of running water. I stagger forward, a gleeful smile splitting my tear-stained face. Yeah, this situation is the suck, but, finally, at long last, something's going my way. It brings an immense joy to me that actually surprises me, considering it's over something as mundane as water. I guess a day and a half of genuine hardship can shift perspective that way. God, what a sheltered, soft, spoiled child I am.
After a few minutes of shuffling past more of the goddamned, samey-looking trees, I finally see it. It's a small creek, hardly more than a foot deep. But the water is clear, sparkling in the sunlight in a way that makes it look gloriously appealing to my thirsting body. I waste no time in dunking my head all the way in, gulping down the stuff like a fish, microbes be damned. I keep going until the burning in my lungs forces me to rise back out of the creek with a massive gasp.
I roll over to my back, basking in the refreshing feeling as the water begins to seep into my system. I heave a deep sigh of refreshment. I'm nowhere near out of the woods… heh… but this is a start.
My relief is short lived, as my empty stomach rudely interrupts the moment by making itself audibly known. Shit. Right, that's still a problem. I haven't eaten anything in nearly two days, and have walked quite a distance in that state. Even though I'm in a forest, I hadn't seen anything that looked edible as I was walking. I saw some mushrooms once… but I didn't want to take the chance of them being poisonous, so I gave them a pass.
I force my tired body into a sitting position. Even though I know I know it's pretty hopeless, I have to look for something, anything to put in my stomach to keep me going just a bit longer. I know intellectually that the human body can actually last quite a while without eating, but coming from a spoiled, suburban life, I had never actually gone this long without food before. It sure feels like I'm starving. My limbs are all heavy, and I have this distinct… hazy sensation in my stomach. Like it's gnawing at itself. Despite my aversion to the taste of mushrooms, and my fear of consuming something that could have some… negative repercussions, I find myself slowly rising and scanning the forest floor along the creek for some of the damned things.
After a few minutes, I spot some along the dirt, not far from the water. I trudge over to them, carefully bending down to inspect them. They look… normal. As far as I can see. Simple brown color. No distinct patterns. No bright colors. By every metric of my, admittedly limited, knowledge, they look safe to eat. They also look disgusting, but that's a minor issue next to the gnawing in my gut. With not a small amount of trepidation, I pick one out of the ground. I inspect it closely, daring it to do something, even though I know it won't. I even sniff it, and it smells like any normal mushroom. Finally, I take the leap, pop it into my mouth, and swallow.
It was at this moment that he knew… he fucked up.
That quote. It describes me at this very, exact moment. As soon as the little bastard hits my stomach, the organ lights on fire. Not literally of course, but it may as well be, for how fucking painful it is. A reaction this instantaneous has to mean serious trouble. I drop hard to my knees, my breath already becoming shallower, closing in on hyperventilation. My eyes widen, my hands snap to my stomach, and the pain continues to burn. It intensifies rapidly, hurting me more than I think anything has in my life so far. I groan in increasing discomfort as the pain begins ballooning out across my body. Whatever that fucker was, it was not safe to eat. Finally, I can't keep a lid on it anymore, and I scream out in pain, my loud, resonant voice filling the forest all around me.
As my consciousness begins to flicker, I wonder if my scream disturbed any wildlife. I wonder if any of them might have made a good meal. Not that I can hunt, skin, butcher, or cook an animal anyway, but it's a thought. I'm dimly aware of the sensation of falling, of the thud as my torso hits the ground. This is it, huh? I'm going to die like this. Right after having my hopes resurrected, too. Great. What a way to go. Dead to a poison shroom. Mario would be proud. The last thing I'm aware of is the rhythmic sound of foliage crunching under… something.
Day ?
Huh. I'm not dead. That's nice. I feel like shit, so I can't be in heaven. But it's not excruciating, so I can't be in hell either. Logical conclusion, I'm still kicking. Yay. At least something's going right for me. My body feels shot to shit, though. Everything aches in a dull way. I couldn't even twitch a muscle if I want to. My eyes feel incredibly heavy. I want nothing more than to just go back to sleep. So I make the attempt.
…
Goddamn it, this isn't going anywhere. I don't know how long I just tried to lie there in stillness, but it was plenty of time to fall asleep, so I simply conclude that sleep isn't going to happen. Well, fuck, I guess I have to try to open my eyes. They completely ignore my attempts to will them open. But, if I'm not going to sleep, I'm not just going to lie here with my eyes glued shut, either. It takes a lot of effort, but the muscles to finally respond to me.
The lids slowly slide open, showing me a simple, wood-boarded roof. I can see the thick support beams holding it up, so I can immediately tell there's no attic. I can't really see much else, and my body's not really up to moving anything besides my eyes yet. Great. Instead of lying here with my eyes closed like an idiot, I can lie here with my eyes open like an idiot. What an improvement.
"Oh, you're awake," a soft, but distinctly male, voice calls from somewhere to my left. "I was worried. When Ike brought you here, you looked like you were at death's door."
"Ugh," I manage to groan out. "Sure felt like it."
"You're actually very lucky we found you when we did. Yunian mushrooms are very poisonous."
"No shit, Sherlock," I roughly bark out, not caring that I'm swearing in front of a total stranger. I'm also annoyed by the fact that I still can't turn my head to see who's talking.
A brief silence falls, as the man apparently has nothing to say.
"How'd you know what it was I ate?" I manage to croak out.
"Ike said he found you near a patch of them," the voice replies.
"Who's this Ike guy?"
"You'll meet him soon, but you need to focus on rest and recovery. The poison probably hasn't fully left your body yet."
I try in vain to sit up, straining all the muscles I can. I don't want to lay here uselessly. There's people here. I can finally figure out what the fuck is going on. Hell, maybe I can get a phone and call home. Let my family know that I'm ok, at the very least.
"Easy, easy, easy!" the voice gently admonishes, gentle hands extending from a white robe coming into view to push me back to the… bed? Cot? I'm not sure. I can't really move enough to find out. "Give it another day, at least, before you try to move."
"Right," I groan. "How…" I stop to collect my thoughts a bit. "How long was I out?"
"It's been two days, so far."
(Amendment: Day 4)
"That long, huh?" I finally say, after processing this new information. "Great. Do you have anything that might help me get back to sleep? I… I don't fall asleep very easily."
"Hmm," the voice mumbles in thought. "I don't know any spells like that…"
Spells? The fuck's he on about?
"Hold on," the voice states. "I think I may have an herbal mixture that might work. I'll be back in just a moment."
The pattering of feet fills the room, and it's followed by the sound of a door opening and shutting. Well, I guess there's nothing for it but to just wait here for this mysterious person to come back. Come to think of it, I probably should have asked his name. Eh, whatever. Names are the least of my worries at the moment. I'm still wondering what the actual fuck is going on here. There's a rustic ceiling above me, a dude wearing a white robe, and talk of spells and herbal mixtures instead of, you know, medicine. Just how far out in the boonies am I?
The creak of a door signals the mysterious man's return. I still can't turn my head to look at him, so I just have to listen to his footsteps as he returns to my bed(cot?)side.
"Here it is," his soft voice calls from beside me. "Drink it slowly. It's not going to taste very good, but you can't drink it too fast, or it won't work right."
I can feel one of his hands tilt my head up while a cup full of a foul-smelling green liquid appears in front of me. I part my lips a bit as he tilts the cup upwards, allowing the liquid into my mouth. Yeah, it's every bit as nasty as it smells, and I almost spit it out on reflex. As though he's anticipating my reaction, the cup is retracted as I begin to swallow. The nasty flavor coats my throat uncomfortably, and I can't suppress the urge to cough. After coughing profusely for a minute, my caretaker returns the cup to my lips. Mentally preparing myself for the disgustingly bitter flavor, I take another drink. It's just as bad as the first time, but I'm able to keep from having another coughing fit. Slowly, steadily, the drink disappears.
I can feel it enter my system almost as soon as I'm done drinking it. My brain immediately clouds over in drowsiness, and my eyes easily slide shut. The feeling of sleep washes over me so quickly that I almost don't have time to think about how nice it is to quickly fall asleep for once. With a final yawn, I pass out once again.
Day 5
The process of waking up is not nearly as slow this time as it was the previous day. I yawn a bit, and find that my arms respond to my mental command to stretch. It feels like I'm moving my muscles through molasses, but I can move, which is a notable improvement. Opening my eyes reveals the same simple ceiling, but now I'm able to tilt my head a bit to get a look at my surroundings.
I'm in a small room, not much bigger than the average bedroom. Across the room to my left, there's a simple door that I'm assuming leads outside, given the light streaming through the seams. I can now confirm that I've been laying on a cot this whole time, a realization that barely has time to set in before my back complains of the stiffness that naturally comes from sleeping in a cot for… what was it? 3 days? 4, maybe? Nah, I think it was 3. Well, nothing for it but to move.
Agonizingly slowly, I sit up. My back protests the whole way there, cracking and popping as I rise. Just the simple motion of sitting up stretches the muscles in it to an almost uncomfortable degree. Before I can go any further, I decide that I probably should do some intentional stretching before trying to get out of the cot. As I set about performing some upper-body stretches that I know from working out with my sister, I come to the realization that, while my body is incredibly stiff from the lack of movement, I'm not in nearly as bad a condition as I think I should be. Whomever was taking care of me did a surprisingly good job.
I take a better look at the room I'm in. The floor is made of simple wood boards, spaced unevenly and a bit dusty, but otherwise clean. There are racks of plants that I don't recognize on the wall across from the foot of my cot. There aren't any windows, but sunlight still streaks in through the little seams in the door. The walls are mounted with… are those candles? Who the fuck uses candles for light?
The creak of the door opening alerts me that I have a visitor. I immediately turn my head back to the door, thinking that I might finally be able to put a face to my caretaker. So, of course I'm rather surprised when the person that walks in isn't my caretaker at all, but a young girl, no older than 13 or 14, in a simple, but pretty, yellow dress with a light blue scarf. Her hair is a light brown, practically glowing with the sun striking it, and her eyes are captivatingly blue.
"Oh, you're awake!" she says in surprise as she sees me sitting up. "It's so late, we were getting worried!"
"We?" I reflexively state, still a bit confused and probably not fully awake.
"Right, you haven't really met anybody yet," she answers. "I'm Mist. It was my brother Ike who found you, and our friend Rhys who's been taking care of you!"
Her voice is incredibly sunny, and her attitude is almost sickeningly positive. It's a pretty big contrast to how I'm feeling right now as the pieces are fitting into place. Talk of spells? Rustic décor? Woods that should be nowhere near where I'm living? And now, there's this girl standing in front of me, calling herself Mist and claiming that her brother's name is Ike? It couldn't be…
"You said your name is Mist, right?" I ask tentatively. She nods in confirmation, still smiling cheerfully. I swallow nervously, trying to get the lump in my throat to go away. "Where… where am I?"
She looks at me in confusion.
"You're in the headquarters for the Greil Mercenaries," she answers. Then, as if she's not sure if that's what I'm asking, "We're in the heart of Crimea."
My brain shuts off. Yeah. This is too much. This isn't happening. There's no way. No FUCKING way. It's totally impossible, right? Shit like this doesn't happen in real life! It happens in bad anime. And fanfiction. Hell, I should know, I make money off of editing self-insert fanfiction. But that's all fantasy. It doesn't actually happen to people! That's horseshit!
"Are you ok?" I'm barely aware of the girl asking.
"Mist?!" a masculine voice calls from somewhere outside. "Where are you?"
"In here, brother!" she calls out in response, her shrill voice hurting my ears a bit.
The door opens again, and in walks a man. Well, not quite. He looks to be 16 or 17 years old. He's not overly huge, but a single glance at this guy tells me that he's strong enough to wipe the floor with me. He's wearing a blue tunic, white pants, and a leather shoulder guard. But the feature that stands out the most to me is his deep blue hair. I've never seen blue like that in hair before. It's so complete and with not a hint of brown in it that I'm certain it's not dyed. Then, if this girl in front of me is Mist, if I'm in Crimea, in the headquarters of the Greil mercenaries, and this is her brother, whose name is Ike…
"Holy fuck," I whisper. "Did I get Isekai'd?"
A/N: Yep, I've got another one of these down here at the end. Don't worry, it's only for this chapter. They'll exclusively be at the end from here on. I'm adding this second A/N down here to say that I actually have the first four chapters of this written at the time of this posting. I'll be releasing them once a week over the course of the next month or so. After that, expect some serious slowdown. I write slow, this is something I've come to terms with about myself. Anyway, enjoy.
If you all want to hang out with me, I'm actually on Discord. I spend most of my time in Metallover's server, since I edit for him, and play an active role as an admin. You can find me there if you want to say hi. Here's the link, just pull out the spaces: discord . gg / / RnGPQxX
