“I’ll be back in a bit,” said Hector.

Lyn took a few steps towards him. “Where are you going? Lord Athos said we need to go soon—”

“I know, I know. There’s just something I have to do.”

He didn’t look back to see what Lyn’s reaction was. For some reason, he didn’t feel there was enough time to explain to her that he was going to get Snowy the horse from where all the mounts were gathered at the camp. Goodness knew he was going to need to use whatever time he had on hand to fight the beast anyhow.

Hector hated that horse. Always had, since years ago. Since the time they were fifteen, and Eliwood received Snowy as a “you’ve almost come of age but not quite” present. They were fast friends, much like Hector and Eliwood were to each other when they first met. Of course, the horse seemed to think of the red-head as his only friend. No sooner had Hector reached over to pet Snowy, the blasted beast tried to bite his hand off.

“I think he’s just shy,” Eliwood had said.

“I guess so,” Hector agreed at the time.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of him so he won’t try to bite anyone else’s hands off.”

Except apparently, “anyone else” didn’t include Hector for whatever reason. No matter the time of year or the place, if he was within Snowy’s personal space, the horse would try and gobble his hand. It was especially bad because Snowy somehow got it within his damn horse’s head to hide his vicious actions from Eliwood. That, in turn, just got Hector into more trouble when Snowy’s rider and staunch supporter came to check on all the commotion, and that led to arguments. He knew that horse was laughing at him behind his back at those times.

One day, when he was seventeen, Hector just snapped. His scream was loud enough to wake the whole of Castle Ostia. “Damn your horse, Eliwood!”

“Don’t say that!” Eliwood immediately began to pet the horse behind his ears. “Snowy’s friendly. He’s just playing around, is all.”

“The horse wants to eat my hand! How can he be just ‘playing around’ for two years straight?” Hector shook his fist toward the skies. “The next time Hoofbrain tries to eat my hand, I’ll kill him!”

Eliwood’s gaze was an inferno. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“It’s just a horse!” cried Hector. “A blood-thirsty, hand-eating horse!”

“Snowy isn’t any of those things, I’ll have you know. He’s a wonderful companion. I wouldn’t want any other horse.” The red-head softened his gaze, turned to Snowy and kept rubbing his ear. “Don’t mind him. Hector’s just had a rough day.”

Hector had wanted to add, No thanks to your horse, but he kept his mouth shut and smoldered quietly.

He tried his hardest to drop the subject. Saint Elimine and her goddess both knew nothing was going to change anyway. Still, Snowy’s teeth always seemed at the ready every time Hector looked at him. And he was sure, absolutely sure, that Snowy didn’t give that look to anyone else. He had no idea why, and it just made him hate that horse even more.

He didn’t even do anything to that horse, and yet the hate was mutual. Hector couldn’t remember a single time when he actually hit Snowy; he always made sure to hit something else. For that matter, he couldn’t remember the last time he actually called Snowy by name. It was always “Horse,” “Beast,” or “Hoofbrain,” and when Eliwood was nowhere in sight, “Ass Head.” Hector saw no reason to call the horse by name. That was just a faster route to losing his hand for all he knew.

He used the term Ass Head a lot a few days ago. Eliwood had to look for someone who had gotten lost on a woodland path, and he couldn’t bring Snowy with him due to the awful terrain. So he did the one thing Hector wished he hadn’t done.

Eliwood asked him, “Can you watch him for me?”

Hector felt his eyebrow twitch. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking? Why don’t you ask Lyn instead? She’s great with horses.” That was the truth, and everyone knew it; there was no one better at treating a horse than someone from the Sacae Plains, like Lyn. It was only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize that Lyn was nowhere near them. He stamped his foot on the ground and thought, Damn it.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon, I promise.” There was something almost pathetic about the look in his blue eyes as he spoke.

Hector sighed. “Fine, fine. But you better be quick!”

“Thanks.” With that, Eliwood took off.

Once he was out of sight, Snowy wasted no time. He craned his neck so that his teeth would be close enough to clamp down on Hector’s gauntlet.

“Knock it off, Ass Head!”

Things got a little dicey after that. It took a force of three men, two women, and eventually Eliwood, which brought it to four men, to stop both man and horse from fighting each other in mortal combat. And yet, in spite of that, the red-head thanked him for watching Snowy. Hector didn’t understand it at all, and he still hated that damn horse.

And I’m going to see Ass Head anyway? He’d asked himself that a few times since he left the place where the wounded were, since he left Lyn. If nothing else, it reminded him of where he was at present.

Off in the distance, Hector caught sight of one of Bern’s greatest monuments, the Shrine of Seals. Its massive size was greatly reduced by distance and perspective. Even so, it only made him remember of what happened just two hours before.

The journey that brought him, Eliwood, and many others to the Shrine of Seals had been long and perilous. When one was part of the sole group of people who knew of a dark druid’s mad plans of obtaining power at the cost of the world, one was compelled to stop the threat before it set foot. Hector and Eliwood had set out to do just that, though it didn’t look like it at first. It all just “happened.” That was the quickest way Hector could think of to describe it. It felt like they had gone from searching for his friend’s father to preempting a worldwide threat in the span of a few days. Somehow, that brought them to many companions and many battles for days on end. One of those battles was within a short distance from the Shrine of Seals.

It was sometime after the battle, after meeting a crippled legend, when the dark druid appeared. It started with Ninian, one of their many companions, and one who had grown particularly close to Eliwood. The druid’s presence alone was enough to stall the six of them who were closest to the Shrine—Hector, Eliwood, Lyn, Ninian, her brother Nils, and Archsage Athos.

She approached the dark druid and said, “If I go with you, will you leave the others alone?”

The dark druid, Nergal, seemed very amused by the proposition. He sneered in a way that made the wrinkles on his face pull away to reveal an ill-cared for set of teeth. A chuckle escaped his awful grin. “I will. I’ll leave them be if you come with me… and if they don’t move.”

“No, Ninian! Don’t!” The cry came from both Eliwood and Nils.

Ninian closed her eyes and took a deep breath and approached. Hector and Lyn took a step forward, but Ninian halted them with a cry. “Don’t move! Please, for all your sakes… let me do this.”

There was little else to do, and Hector hated it more than he’d hated anything. Nergal’s grin, in the meantime, got wider. Just as Ninian reached Nergal, Nils broke from the group, overcome by desperation. Eliwood broke from them soon after just the same, and both of them called her name.

Nergal moved very fast for an old man. He shoved Ninian behind him when she was within his arm’s reach. In the same motion, he used his other, bony hand to launch a dark spell at Nils.

Hector and Lyn broke from Athos and rushed forward, but they were too late. Eliwood grabbed Nils by the arm and threw him to the side… only to take the blast in the chest himself. He flew back passed the rest of the group and skidded to a stop on the grassy ground. Hector heard many screams and shrieks, but Ninian’s was the loudest by far, and it lingered in the air even after Nergal teleported both himself and her away. Everyone’s attention went straight to Eliwood.

Hector ran to his friend’s side. He dreaded the worst when he saw traces of black smoke emanate from Eliwood’s very still form. When Hector finally got to his side and rolled him onto his back, the sight of the dark burn mark almost broke him cleanly in half. The part of him that retained some semblance of sense shook his friend and called his name, but the latter didn’t wake.

Athos was next to Eliwood by then, and he used a staff to heal the wound as fast as he could. After some long, tense, agonizing moments, Athos withdrew the staff and let out an exhausted breath. At the same time, a cough burst from Eliwood, feeble at first, but subsequent ones were a little stronger.

“We need to get him back to the camp,” said Athos. “He’s breathing for now, but I cannot heal this wound alone. If left alone for too much longer, he won’t survive.”

All Hector did was nod and carry his friend to their camp, which felt like it was miles away. All he could do, once there, was set Eliwood down somewhere while Athos and his student, Pent, went to heal his severe wound; the other healers were at work tending to the other wounded. All he could do after that was sit outside the very crude tent with Lyn and hope with every fiber of his being that Eliwood would live. It was maddening to have to sit and wait, sit and wait, and sit and wait some more when he felt he could be doing something instead.

But then, about two hours later, Athos stepped out of the tent. The old archsage looked very tired, but the focus in his eyes was strong.

“How is he?” asked Lyn.

“A little more work must be done, but he will live. He will live” Athos looked down at the ground. “Even with the work we’ve been able to do, he will not completely recover. I don’t know how much he will be affected by the remnants of the wound in the future.”

“I see....” Hector released a frustrated sigh and stared off into space. At least his friend would live. “Thanks, Graybeard. This means a lot.”

Athos gave him a small nod.

Lyn knelt beside Hector and patted his shoulder. “He’s going to be okay. That’s a relief....”

Their attention went back to the Archsage when he addressed them again. Athos said, “There is something you two must do, and you’re going to need my help.”

“What is it?” asked Lyn.

“It won’t be long before we confront Nergal again. You will need something that will act as both your weapon and your shield in order to withstand the power of his magic. Hector, I intend to take you first to the resting place of Durban for this,” the archsage said. He went on to explain the rest of his plan to Hector and Lyn, and how he would put Eliwood through the same task once he recovered enough. Lyn didn’t know if it would be all right to send the red-head off on that task since they had no way of knowing how he’d be once he awoke. But time, they all realized, was not going to give them much of a choice.

Hector knew they had to move quickly, but it was soon after agreeing to the plan when he suddenly felt there was one thing he needed to do before he left with the archsage. Without thinking twice about it, Hector headed straight for the place where the army’s mounts were kept, and to where Eliwood had told Snowy to go just before he, Hector, Lyn and Athos went into the Shrine of Seals. That, of course, was when Lyn asked him where he was going, and he needed little effort to recall how that brief conversation went.

Every step closer to Snowy was a reminder of how much aggravation that horse caused him over the years. The hand eating, the rough nudges, the hoof kicking that always missed, thankfully.... It all came back to him, and it made him angry and it made him grumble. But it didn’t make him turn back.

He had to admit that Snowy was a good horse. Snowy, despite the innocuous name, was a horse built for war charges. In that case, Snowy was brave, just like his rider. Also like his rider, Snowy was fierce on the battlefield—and to Hector—but kind everywhere else. He could see why Eliwood didn’t want another horse. If he had a horse that willingly put itself in danger to protect him, that knew what to do with little instruction, and seemed to just know its rider, Hector wouldn’t want to abandon the horse, either.

Along those lines, he began to realize something. As willing as Snowy was to stand in front of his rider to protect him, Eliwood was just as willing to stand in harm’s way to protect Hector, or Lyn, or Ninian especially… or, as he demonstrated earlier, Nils. He’d done the same for Snowy, too.

Why so willing to do that? Not that Hector wouldn’t do the same, but there was a certain frantic fanaticism to how Eliwood did it. Why? he asked himself again.

He recalled then, almost randomly, that his meetings with Eliwood were fairly scarce. They only met when they were about ten, and at twelve, they started to meet each other on the regular basis of once every two months. Prior to any of that, according to Eliwood himself, he hadn’t known anyone his own age. If Hector recalled right, it took him a year or two to get Eliwood to be more open about himself.

It got him wondering what Eliwood did before he met Hector, before he met someone his own age he could call “friend.” He told Hector once that there were things he felt he couldn’t talk to his parents about, and things he didn’t feel would be appropriate to bring up to the knights. “Frequent illness kept me in the castle for a few years,” he’d said. When he was closer to ten, though, that little problem had faded away. Did he have anyone into whom he could confide during that first decade of his life?

The pieces started to come together. Hector nodded to himself; he could see it then. Before Eliwood met Snowy, him, Lyn, or Ninian, there was no one. For Eliwood, Hector realized, a friend, human or horse, was a friend all the same, and thus someone worth his life to protect. He had few of them, so of course he’d be crazy about protecting them. He must’ve confided a great deal to his horse when there was no one else around. After all, Snowy wasn’t going to judge. Hector wondered if Eliwood knew that. Perhaps, without understanding it right away, that was the reason why he felt the urge to get the horse.

By the time he finished thinking through all of that, he was just a few steps away from Snowy. As usual, the white horse looked ready to pounce as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Hector kept his eyes on Snowy and approached, then reached out to grab the reins. Snowy jerked his head forward.

Hector pushed his open palm in Snowy’s face, but didn’t make contact. “Hey, hey. Not now.” He struggled a bit to tame the horse. “Calm down, damn it! Eliwood’s hurt.”

Snowy went still for a moment, then lowered his head a tiny bit. For once, the horse calmed himself very quickly.

“Come on,” said Hector. “We’re going to go see Eliwood. So just settle down and come with me, all right?”

It was the first time Snowy complied to something he said without the red-head around. Hector led the horse back to the tent where his friend was still recovering. Lyn gave him a questioning look as he passed by, but Hector decided he would talk about it later.

The tent resembled a merchant’s stand more than a traditional tent—it was constructed in a hurry—so Snowy was able to go in without much obstruction. Pent kept healing despite how exhausted he looked. He cocked an eyebrow when he saw Snowy enter, but he didn’t ask about it. Hector was thankful for that; he wasn’t sure he could explain his thoughts clearly. For the moment, he stayed near one of the tent posts.

Snowy very lightly nuzzled Eliwood, who groaned and finally awoke. He looked surprised at first, then smiled, all through an ashen and weary face.

Before he could speak, Pent told him, “Don’t talk and keep still. Save your strength.” As if to assure the horse, he added, “He’s going to be okay.”

Eliwood made eye contact with Hector for a moment before he turned his head away, breathed deep, and closed his eyes. The horse kept his muzzle near his rider’s head, while his eyes showed both concern and relief. Both of those feelings, Hector realized, were running through him right then.

He sighed and patted Snowy’s back. “Hey, Hoofbrain… I’d stay and watch him, but I have to take care of something soon… and Eliwood could use a little company. Can you watch him for me?”

He got up to leave, but stopped when he heard Snowy make a soft, worried neigh. Somehow, he could tell his friend was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Both of them seemed to have the same question in mind.

Understanding, Hector nodded and managed a smile for them. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”