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Chapter Text

The car ride out to the excavation site was fairly peaceful.  Roy had correctly predicted that both Elrics would be enthusiastically interested in examining the ruins of Mardonios and would agree to accompanying him with little protest.  Edward’s criticisms of his driving had petered out as they left the city and the road became an empty path bisecting scenic landscapes that both boys idly watched pass by.

“So when did both of you learn Hellenic ?” Roy said conversationally, about an hour away from the site.

“A while ago.” Fullmetal said unhelpfully with a sullen shift in the passenger seat next to Roy. Roy drummed his gloved fingers on the steering wheel in a muffled staccato, he wasn’t expecting that to be the question that tarnished the peace.  Usually Fullmetal jumped at the chance to proudly explain his research.

“Our Father had a few books on it that we read as children,” Alphonse supplied - the mention of the Elrics’ absent father dawning realization over Roy. “And I took up studying it again to pass the nighttime.”

“It wasn’t exactly helpful for getting our bodies back.” Edward admitted bitterly, slumping even lower in his seat. “I learned enough of it to determine that.”

“Yeah. When the Amestrians took over most of the Mardonion texts were lost and what we do have is mostly literature. They have some good plays though.” Alphonse added brightly.

“I’ve seen productions of a few translations of Mardionion theatre, mostly comedies, - those were crowd pleasers with the military.”  Roy smiled wryly at the memory of snickering at blatant innuendoes with a crowd of equally foul-minded young adults.  Edward snorted next to him and sat up in his seat again.

“Well, I hope you’re not driving us out to look at weird old naked statues or something.”

An affronted gasp came from the backseat. “Brother! Don’t be vulgar!”

Roy snickered lightly.  He was pretty sure thirteen was the age when boys were supposed to be at their most vulgar, but Alphonse was always a sweeter child.

“Those are considered artistic masterpieces, but I can see how that kind of culture would go over your head .”

The conversation was demolished by Fullmetal’s angry spluttering and silence reigned for a few miles before Roy remembered that he had actually been asked to go over what was ahead again.

“I already briefed you about this when you agreed-”

“I know, you barely tell me anything bas-” Fullmetal whined and Roy just spoke over him, tone uncompromising.

“With the end of the war, government funding for nonmilitary research resumed, although many of their resources changed.  So we’re acting as consulting alchemists for an archaeological site that believes they found something alchemic and wants it looked at before some idiot sets it off or damages it.  The military also has a vested interest in any old knowledge that can be repurposed to our modern goals. Something I believe is entirely relevant to you.”

“So you think it’s something that could help get our bodies back?” Edward sounded cautiously hopeful, turning to look at him.  Roy sighed and kept his eyes on the road and away from the boy’s gaze.

“I don’t know what we’re going to find at all.  The archaeologist isn’t an alchemist and couldn’t describe it to me beyond basics….Consider this a field trip that could be helpful but may just end up educational.”

“Thank you for taking us along Colonel.” Roy waved off Alphonse’s gratitude and Edward grunted a neutral note.

This really was a sort of field trip.  Granted, Alphonse and Edward’s knowledge of alchemy and hellenic would likely be hugely helpful, but he probably could have managed a sufficient report with just his own alchemic background and the translations of the archaeologist and university scholars. But this was exactly the kind of thing his older sisters would have taken him to in his youth, citing their obligation to ‘enrich his education’ as an excuse to get out of the city for a day.  So with that in mind he was driving hours into the countryside with a portable ice chest of sandwiches and the Elric brothers for some ‘enrichment’.

Finally, Roy pulled the car onto a swath of packed dirt beside a mud splattered truck and Fullmetal was out of the car and stretching as soon as the brakes jerked to a final stop.  He rolled his eyes at the impatience and adjusted his gloves and jacket and skimmed the briefing file one last time before tossing it on the seat and exiting the vehicle himself.

The boys followed behind him as he approached the man stepping out of a canvas canopy to meet them.  Professor Douglas Graves had aged since Roy had seen him last, his dark skin was contrasted by mostly grey hair that was twisted and pulled back, and he walked with a patterned green cane that matched his waistcoat.  

“Roy Mustang, it’s been some time.” He called in a stern tone with a hint of smile.

“Hello Professor,” Roy said a little too quickly, automatically falling back on habit - sounding and feeling nearly a decade younger than he was.  The man laughed warmly and Roy felt faintly sheepish. Moreso with Fullmetal sniggering next to him. He had volunteered to consult for the site when he had seen that the archaeologist requesting it was the same civilian professor Roy had taken elective archaeology classes under during his time at the military academy.

“Please Roy, call me Douglas.  We’re all equals on site.” He looked past Roy at the Elrics, his gaze lingered on Alphonse long enough for Roy and Edward to tense but the smile remained in his eyes. Roy had written ahead, warning that he was bringing two ‘unique’ but knowledgeable and interested alchemists with him.  Thankfully, it was Edward whom he addressed.

“You must be the infamous Fullmetal Alchemist.”

Edward nodded, the slightest smug tilt to his chin, and opened his mouth to reply but Roy cut him off.  Fullmetal would have plenty of time during the rest of the day to disappoint whatever expectations his reputation created.

“Yes.  This is Edward Elric and his younger brother Alphonse.” He waved between the two and paused for the appropriate handshakes.  “They’re the alchemists I mentioned in my letter. They have some knowledge of hellenic and a familiarity with older and uncommon alchemy.  I believe their input will be valuable.”

“Good,” Douglas tapped his cane on the ground a few times and then turned and gestured down a dirt path.  “The site is this way. You boys ever been on a dig site before?”

“No sir”

Roy let the boys go ahead of him, listening as Douglas explained the ground rules of the site to them.  Things like treading carefully because of a mosaic on the floor, what they could touch or not, how to mark the location of something they needed to move.  It was all a refresher for Roy.

After years of petitions and demands from historical and cultural societies and even parliament, the military academy had compromised to demands by requiring students to take their choice of three humanities tracks focusing on cultural preservation.  There had been hopes that having soldiers learn about the significance of material studies would temper their wanton destruction in battle.

Instead, learning archaeology had made a part of Roy long for a civilian life he could have had in some other universe and saddled him with another flavor of guilt when he thought about Ishval.  Not only had he killed its people but he had contributed to the destruction of its culture. He would never know how many tapestries, vases, and artifacts had been charred by his touch. Future monetary reparations could help rebuild structures and plant fields with seeds, but it could not bring back the dead nor reach back into the annals of time to replace history.

He had always liked Professor Graves and an unprofessional part of him wondered how much of the Flame Alchemist’s warpath he had followed and how disappointed he was in Roy for such blatant disregard for everything he had been taught.  He doubted he’d ever have the courage to bring it up.

The trail took them around a large grassy hill to a surprising pathway.  Cut into the long slope of the hill was a notch lined with walls made of huge cut stone blocks and a road of packed earth.  It was criss-crossed with a grid of string and markers and let to a towering entryway.

The opening into the chamber was a rectangle at least twice the height of a man topped by a massive lintel stone.  That flat slab supported the walls of stone on either side that tapered inwards to create an empty triangle over the opening.  The ground and the front of the entry were scattered with remnants of decorative facing - fallen chunks of swirls and zig zags in green and brown stones and facades of columns on either side

“Wow.”  Both boys chorused in awe.  

“This is truly remarkable.”  Roy said sincerely, craning his neck to look up the towering stone walls.  

“Isn’t it?” Graves said happily. “Just wait until you see the interior.”

They clumped just inside the doorway, staring at the huge chamber.  It was made of encircling layers of huge dirt stained stones creating a beehive shaped dome.  The room was about thirty feet tall and broader than that. Off to the side was a small opening to a secondary chamber.

Gloriously filling the floor was a black and cream mosaic.  It was a complex of concentric shapes, with words looping and other patterns filling in every empty section.  The stones it was made from were small and blended together, so that the mortar holding them in place was hardly visible.

“This is insane!”  Edward exclaimed, eyes wide and fixed down as he began pacing around the circle.  

“So this is what you wanted an alchemist for.”  Roy stood next to Douglas, both of them watching Edward mutter to himself in circles.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Alphonse crack open his chest-plate just enough to pull out two thick tomes before walking over to join his brother and hand him one.  

“I brought hellenic dictionaries, so we can translate for ourselves as we go.” Roy was unsurprised but ever impressed at the foresight typical of the younger Elric.

“Be careful not to activate it.” He said unnecessarily, knowing full-well that was the kind of instruction Fullmetal resented intensely but burning with a need to give some warning of caution.  There was so much that could go wrong with an unknown array.

Predictably,  Edward scoffed derisively while Alphonse chimed an acknowledgement.  Roy joined them in walking around the circle, he wanted to see it for himself, even if the alphabet was unfamiliar and the circle’s construction archaic.

“I think we should start by analyzing the general shapes first, then move onto translation.”   Edward was saying.

“Right.”

“Do you have the paper and pen and those alchemy notes?” Edward glanced at Alphonse expectantly, who rubbed at the back of his helmet and gestured slightly at his armored chest.  Graves was watching them now so he couldn’t repeat the subtle open-and-close of his breastplate. Roy made a mental note to talk to Alphonse about getting a satchel instead of relying on his hollow armor when that held such a conspicuous secret.  Riza or Fuery or even Havoc would certainly be willing to take the boy out bag-shopping on one of the days Fullmetal was trapped in boring paperwork or military routine. For now he would assist in an immediate way. He cleared his throat casually.

“Douglas, could you show me what’s in that doorway?  Is it another chamber?”

“Of course, that’s the other significant part of this site!”  He picked up a kerosene lantern from near the main doorway and lit it, starting down the dark hallway.  Roy followed, hearing the familiar faint clang of Alphonse opening his armor to rummage around inside. “Normally, these kind of tholos beehive structures were used as tombs.  The circular chamber was probably filled with offerings or religious paraphernalia, while a small chamber held the actual body of the deceased.  Bones are left behind by tomb-raiders seeking riches so we expected to find some here. But instead this is what we came across.”

They were in a little rectangular room, stone-walled like the rest of the complex, but the roof was only a few feet over Roy’s head.  Instead of bones, along every wall were piles of different powders, coarse chunks, and gravels interspersed with hundreds of pottery shards.  

“Alchemy ingredients?”  He squatted in front of a mound of shiny blackish chips and picked up a piece, rolling it between his gloved fingers.  It left a shiny residue on the white fabric. “Graphite? For carbon.”

He couldn’t identify every element on sight and touch alone, but there was at least a stock of sodium, sulfur, zinc, and antimony.

They worked at their own tasks for a few hours.  The boys on translating and understanding the mosaic circle, and Roy and Douglas on identifying the elements in the secondary chamber.  Douglas examined the pottery shards for painted labels, and Roy performed tests on the actual materials and wrote out a list.

Eventually Graves called a lunch break, and they sat on the grass covered earth hill of the tholos and ate sandwiches and apples, basking in the brightness of a Sun that contrasted the shadowy coolness of the chamber.  Al feigned eating his sandwich, and quickly returned inside to “keep the flow of the work going” and Edward scarfed his food down and joined him soon after.  Roy knew which bottomless pit was likely receiving the second lunch Al “ate”. Knowing the Elrics, it wouldn’t be too long before Al could feel the kiss of summer sunlight on his own tan skin, glowing with it the way Ed did.  

When they reconvened in the larger room, Roy smiled to himself at the boys.  Both were seated cross-legged and surrounded by semi-circles of papers and books and bickering animatedly.  

“It’s a passive participle.” Alphonse was regarding his brother with forced calm.  

“Uh no. I’m pretty sure it’s middle.” Edward, on the other hand, looked ready to lob a book at him.

“And what makes you so confident?

“Why would a transmutation circle be passive?  You activate a transmutation and if it affects you you’re doing it to yourself.  The definition of middle voice!”

“Unless, it’s an ambient transmutation that you are affected by but do not cause.  It’s a matter of agency.”

“Then what activates it?  It’s not working right now.  It just doesn’t make sense to be passive voice, because it’s not talking from the voice of the array.”

Alphonse made a skeptical sound and exaggeratedly turned to his paper, which only served to inflame Ed.

“Any progress, Fullmetal?”  Roy interjected, not bothering to hide the slightest smirk.

“Yeah.  You can read it for yourself when I’m done.”  Edward said shortly.

“We’ve got the gist of most of it. There are a lot of short clauses and participles.  Things being done and concurrent events. It is starting to come together.” Al was far more charitable with words.

“Do you think you’ll be able to finalize it here or will you need time at the university?”  

“Hey this isn’t a dialect we’ve studied so I’d like to see you try” Fullmetal snapped defensively.  Roy glanced down at his sheet. It was a very rough translation, with multiple possibilities listed for some words and arrows reordering grammar.  

Alphonse passed his notes over, handwriting controlled where Ed’s was scrawling.  It was a list of words and translations, Roy could see a second page with the letters copied in the same circles as the floor and covered in annotations.  The top page was the kind of concise summary of relevant words he wanted to see.

“

’ανταιτέω ask for in return

’αποδίδωμι give back

’εισφέρω bring in

‘Αθροίζω collect

Καλέω call, summon

‘υπερβάλλω cross

διαβιβάζω take across

’Αποπέμπω  send away

’Αφικνεομαι  arrive, reach

’Εκατέρωθεν on both sides

’επικείμαι lie opposite to

‘Οίκαδε homeward

’οίκοθεν from home

‘η ‘ώρα  right time, season

‘Ο καιρός precise moment

’αναπλάττω  form anew, remodel

μεστού του του καιρού ‘ήλιου  full of the Sun of the precise moment

“

Alphonse rose and hovered over his shoulder, awaiting the nod signaling the completion of Roy’s initial read-though.  His thick gauntlet finger gestured at the first group of words and then to the floor.

“Each grouping of words corresponds to one of the circles on the floor.  There are three overlapping concentric layers. One is mainly about summoning and collecting, one is about crossing, and one is about home and away and a matched set.  It uses dual number which is very archaic and not covered very well by the books we brought. Linking all of these together is an outer register that references the idea of ‘the appropriate time’ and sunlight and that’s where the month Thargelion shows up.”  

Edward had stood up during the explanation and helped point out the different loops of writing.  Roy paced around the edge of the circle, a hand on his chin and eyes narrowed as he contemplated it from different angles.

“It’s either something more complicated than we understand, or, our hypothesis is that it’s multiple circles overlapped for some reason.”  Ed commented with the slightest of shrugs.

“Are multiple transmutations performed at once?” Roy asked eventually, words slow with thought.  

“Maybe.  Or they could be performed selectively and this is some technique to save space?”

“It would make sense for a ceremonial structure to have multiple rituals performed in it.  They may have performed different transmutations for different occasions.” Roy concluded hesitantly.  There was always some aspect of intent behind transmutation, he especially utilized this, so overlapping arrays would only be a slight stretch.

“The thing I can’t quite work out is the reference to ‘the sunlight of Theseus Waxing of Thargelion’ I know Thargelion was a month, but without calculations from records I don’t know when that is.” Al commented.

“That must be one of the ceremonial dates this site was used on.” Roy sighed and then brightened, he slapped a hand on Al’s gleaming shoulder and let it linger. “You’ve both done good work.” He nodded at Edward,  “You can work with the university’s scholars to perfect the translation, but this is enough for a military report that will make an excellent case for continued research funding at this site.”

While they worked the afternoon sun notched between the swaying branches of two trees, brightness pouring down in a shaft the inched down the entryway and trickled into the chamber.  It caught at the quartz in the granite mosaic, reflecting in shimmers around the floor. Some of the stones’ faces caught it fully and gleamed in shining rectangles.

Professor Graves came out of the storage chamber and ceased his muttering about a notebook to instead squint into the brightness.  He readily jumped at the offer to see their initial translation.

“You’ve got fine minds.”  He said to the Elrics, and Roy felt the secret twinge of pride he always did for the boys.  Both of them fumbled with a mix of humble discomfort and preening at the praise. “After the elements are all identified and any other equipment found, we may be able to understand how this array was used.  We have archaeological alchemists who identify if artifacts were transmuted who are going to take a look at all of our finds.”

“Does that come up often?”

“More than one would think.  Ancient transmutation can only be proven if the context and integrity of the site is irrefutable.  There is also a massive black market of artifacts looted from tombs and sites, especially art like statues and vases.  Broken pieces are mended together or new clay turns one pot’s worth of sherds into three complete vessels. It takes professional skill at identifying stylistic marks to verify if an artifact has been forged or not and even then sometimes it’s impossible to tell.”

“Huh.  I never considered that.”  Ed turned a contemplative gaze to the tagged ceramics clustered near the entrance.

“Yes, there are plenty of careers for advanced alchemists that avoid the military entirely.”  Something flashed in Graves’ eyes that dropped a heavy stone in Roy’s gut. He deserved that jab.

Hopefully Edward would pick up an interest in some research based path to follow as soon as Al got his body back -  Roy knew that was the real priority and that Ed’s limbs came second. Roy could intellectually imagine Edward swimming in a lab coat with beakers, or as a professor lecturing a class, but his mental image of Ed was so short that these pictures carried a comic flavor.  Maybe they would become librarians. Alphonse would be suited to that career, especially with the amount of time he spent in the military library. That was something to look into. Working on those connections now would make slotting a teenaged Al into an internship far easier in the future.

Professor Graves moved on smoothly from the pointed remark, finishing his examination of Alphonse’s notes on the arrays and returning the papers to him.  He dug his own moleskine out of a canvas bag and returned to the side chamber to catalogue the elemental samples.

Roy, Ed, and Al turned back to the arrays.  Now that the words had been dealt with, and the shapes used in the arrays had been broken down previously, it was time to combine the two and try to puzzle out use and purpose.

The sun hung ever lower as the afternoon ticked away to evening and the chamber of the tholos brightened as the shaft trickled into a beam.  Dust motes gleamed in their drifting dances and light caught Ed’s hair turning it molten gold,  Alphonse’s armor was brilliant with it. The floor was a shimmering glitter of tiles and the shadowing chamber became vibrant and beautiful.

Eventually, Professor Graves re-emerged from the side chamber holding a wooden box, he shook it in their direction and the glass vials in it rattled among the wood shavings padding them.  

“I’ve bottled up samples from all of the materials. I need to take these to my truck and pack them for the lab.  Don’t make any breakthroughs without me!” He left with a chuckle and a fading silhouette.

Looking around, the natural illumination made this place special,  Roy could understand how ceremonial this space must have felt if it was used under such circumstances. But the brightness became unrelenting. There was light reflecting in every direction and surrounding them and it was blinding.  A noise came with it, a roaring rush and a crackle and a twist to Roy’s guts as everything went wrong.

He tried to yell and grab for Al or Edward who could not be far beyond arm’s reach from him but his arm would not move.  He felt smashed and pushed and pulled and helplessly buffeted by the light and whatever invisible forces were sucking him into a vortex.  Darkness clouded in to replace the light and he fell onto unforgiving hardness.

Chapter Text

Roy jolted suddenly into consciousness.  Awareness rushed into him with a rattling gasp and before his eyes had even snapped open he was processing the situation.  He was lying on his back on stone - outside, judging by the moving air on his face, diffused light through his eyelids, and smell.  And he wasn’t alone.

His opening eyes met a leering, gleaming skull peering out of a dark mass of hood and robes. If this was the Grim Reaper come to take his soul, he was forty years short of Roy accepting his fate lying down.  Roy had far too much left undone.

He saw three figures, one crouched next to his right shoulder, one by his feet, and another against a crumbling stone wall to his left.  As far as he was aware, the Grim Reaper was a singular entity, which meant this was probably some death cult or equally unpleasant organization.

He slammed bodily into the figure crouching next to him, which let out a deep grunt as Roy surprised him enough to bowl him over. The other figures also started, stepping towards Roy while reaching for their hip, but Roy’s instincts were faster.  He normally would give a chance to unknown parties outside of a war zone, but skull masks after apparent kidnapping suggested a fairly obvious threat.

He snapped twice and orange zigged through the air to burst into twin infernos around each figure.  They screamed horribly - human screams - which, absurdly, relieved him. People trying to kill him was something he could handle.  

The first figure was scrambling to his feet, robes catching on his shoes, when Roy turned back around.  He could imagine the horror on the man’s face under the mask as he watched his comrades struggle in pain.  The man had a thin stick in his hand, gripped like a conductor’s baton, and was pointing it at Roy. A flash of green light flared from the tip and passed with a cold discomfort by Roy’s left shoulder. The stick was some kind of weapon.

Roy snapped and the stick flared with fire and was hastily dropped by the man who let out a string of words that were wholly unintelligible to Roy, but sounded tonally like swears.  He was already lunging to reclaim the now extinguished stick.

It was something to puzzle out away from danger.  Roy needed distance. He snapped again, filling the entire stone enclosure with searing, towering flames and ran into the surrounding woods at random.  There were distant shouts from the ruins but no one overtook him as he pelted through the trees.

Roy woke up that first morning from a sporadic and restless sleep underneath a tree with a headache and his body’s unhappy realization that coffee did not grow on such trees as these and he was due for a rough ride through caffeine withdrawal.  

With Roy’s promotion to Colonel and acquisition of subordinates had come far more days in an office than out of it.  And when he was “in the field” it was structured stints of scheduled hours that let him return to his own bed or a hotel room nearly every night.  It had been a long time since he had slept wrapped in a coat on the softest ground he could find with every sense ready to wake. But at least in Ishval it had been warm and dry.  Not the damp coolness of whatever place he now was.

That was another unfortunate aspect of this experience.  The lack of intelligence information. He had no idea what country he was in.  The second day in this strange land, he stumbled upon signposts and a farm. To his dismay he had not been able to read the letters at all, the writing system had little in common with Ishvalan, Amestrian, or Xingese and beyond that he had little expertize.

Equally frustrating had been what little conversation he could overhear from the farmhouse.  He had hoped that even if the letters had given little away he could at least identify the language family from sound.  It too was unfamiliar, less tonal than Xingese and far choppier than Ishvalan. He did not risk a confrontation with the people.  Instead, after waiting to make sure there was not a guard dog, he waited an hour’s walk away and then crept back under cover of night to exchange a few chicken’s eggs for alchemically repairing the shabby hen house as best he could.  He hoped the gesture would be sufficient.

The third day dawned and the eggs were cooked over a small fire on a pan transmuted from scrap metal taken from what had smelled like a large garbage bin.  He made a mental note to thank Alphonse for teaching him some supplies-based metal transmutation circles. Edward, for all his genius, was difficult to learn basic circles from because of his on-the-fly clap transmutation method that involved advanced mental work.  Alphonse still carried chalk and was eager to fill his time with anything “helpful”. Thus Roy had made a pan and a knife.

Those times he did not come across any farms or houses, he was forced to turn to less-pleasant alternative meals. The squirrel he singed off a tree and cooked sat poorly in his gut.  It reminded him too much of rats and lizards eaten on miserable missions in the war that ran longer than rations supplied for and left them scavenging for vermin in sandy ruins. Kimblee, in his typical awful manner, used to watch his prey writhe for a while before blowing off its head.  Then - and now - Roy managed to keep his meal down. The calories were too precious to be wasted on queasiness from disgust.

He had no trust in his abilities to identify safe plants or mushrooms to eat out in the wild.  It wasn’t worth poisoning himself when he could either guiltily steal from an occasional farm or stick to meat from the forest.  He managed to make a net to catch fish and his traps for rabbits and birds were occasionally successful.

The difficult part was the constant need to continue moving.  With the risk of the return of those masked people, and every farm speaking an incomprehensible language, his safest bet was finding a multicultural city.  

So his strategy was following a large stream.  Eventually it would become a river. And cities were built with access to water.  Which meant either on the river or, eventually, on the coast, he would find civilization.  

And that had set the standard for his time here.  Wandering in wilderness, shadowing the water and trading repairs for morsels of farm goods whenever he failed at hunting.

As far as he could tell, the Elrics had not been transported with him.  Whether they were still back at the archaeology site and only he had left, or if they had appeared at some other location was uncertain.  Underneath the exaggeration-heavy nature of Edward’s anecdote style, Roy had gleaned that he and Alphonse had spent a month in a wilderness survival based training exercise and were far more qualified than he to live off the land.  

He vainly tried to keep from worrying about the Elrics.  However capable Edward was at feeding himself, there were still the people who had immediately attacked him.  He hoped they were together, where Alphonse could keep watch in his sleepless nights, but still. Both of the Elrics used some terrain based alchemy, erecting walls and launching projectiles from the ground, Ed used his automail arm and leg as both shield and weapon and Alphonse threw his bulletproof body around with little regard for damage.  That may work with fire and metal and fists, but Roy had never seen alchemy quite like the multicolor streaks of light before, and they did not seem so easily blocked. It reminded him almost of Kimblee, and his ability to transmute something into its own explosive, blowing up people from their own flesh. He wouldn’t want the Elrics to fight him and he did not want the Elrics facing the masked figures without forewarning.  But there was little he could do seperated and without means of communication.

On the sixth day of his hermitry, his attackers returned.  A whip crack startled the birds from the trees and had Roy leaping from lounging against a tree to a ready position, fingers poised. The dark-clothed, masked figures had returned.

Roy was still fairly certain they were cultists of some sort - no respectable organization would have a uniform quite that intensely thematic.  If Roy had been the superstitious type he likely would have lost his nerve the first time he had seen them, body aching and head spinning, staring up at a cloudy night sky.  Their shadowy robes distorted their limbs and movement and the gleaming skull masks were haunting in low light.

The way they shot colored bursts of light was easier to handle.  It reminded him of his own alchemy and that he could dodge and counter -although the effect was very different.  Rubble had exploded from the wall because of some of the flashes that missed him, others shriveled moss in a blink, or passed as gushes of hot or cold. It was something he puzzled over during his wilderness walks.

That first group he had escaped by lighting the entire space aflame and bolting through a crumbling doorway while the figures he left behind struggled to put out their robes and handle their burns.

He did not expect things to be left at that and every moment spent trekking through hills and forest was in constant paranoia and vigilance.  

The robed figures had appeared, but were merely looking around, apparently unsure of his exact location.  There were five of them, they had brought reinforcements from the original three he had fought. He must be considered more of a threat now.  He was not going to wait for them to notice him and began backing away, keeping to undergrowth cover and stepping as quietly and efficiently as he could.  This worked for perhaps a minute before he heard a voice mutter something and a rush of tingling sparks surrounded him, he wasted half a second marveling at the way they swirled harmlessly around his limbs before a shout from the masked figures shook him from his wonder.  

It was a harsh sound, paired with the aggressive pointing in his direction.  Roy snapped his gloved fingers, a wall of fire flared to life between him and the group and he bolted.  It wasn’t a hapless sprint either. Every nerve in his body was wired, this was the adrenaline of battle.  He had to balance speed and caution, avoiding tripping and damning himself to capture or death. He also had to calculate how often to turn around and send back return fire.  His instincts helped him dodge their fire and he knew from experience that aiming a projectile while running was very difficult.

He knew he had run for too long in one direction when a cloaked figure sprung with a snap from a clearing ahead of him.  He swerved hard, slamming into a tree while a green blast shook the far side of it, sending a snake of fire around the tree in retribution, and darting off in a new direction. His stamina wasn’t at its peak anymore, too much paperwork and too little time for serious running, but it was enough.

Suddenly, tree next to him exploded with a blast of sawdust and wood chips and pain sliced into his face as a shard caught his jaw.  Roy cupped his left hand to the injury and stumbled. His attackers were now closer. The pain was distracting and he forced himself to focus with a mumbled string of curses.  He needed space. The cloth-covered hand he pulled away from his jaw was stained with spreading scarlet - he was down to one ignition glove.

A forest fire would risk even more unwanted attention, but this was a situation of immediate danger.  The time for a drastic measure. Roy preferred using his alchemy in precision shots -the proud product of years of training and skill to accurately send pipes of oxygen snaking through the surrounding air carrying sparks to burst to light on a target.  But at certain times he had been forced to burn wider swaths with far less control.

It was with guilt to the trees that he half turned and snapped his fingers, unleashing the power that was the reason he would be the last flame alchemist.  He jogged away without looking as the undergrowth charred and his peripheral vision turned orange and white and blinding.

The fire raged with a roar of its own and out of that noise came screams.  They were a welcome reminder that his pursuers were also human and he was not defenseless - just outnumbered and nearly outclassed.

He kept at his inelegant run until his arm ached from holding his jaw and his legs tired from their fumbling steps and he could no longer hear anything except birds and creaking trees.  

They did not reappear that night and over the following days Roy tried to settle back into his previous routine.

The deprivation of food, sleep, and any relief from the stress was taking its toll on him.   On the eighth day since he had woken up in this strange place he took his usual midday water break.  

He transmuted a bowl from a piece of a log, and filled it with stream water.  Then he scratched an array into the belly of the bowl, that would separate out only the dihydrogen oxide and form it into a chunk of ice, leaving behind any bacteria or leaves or other elements.  It was a basic array commonly used to make ice for easy food storage. He made a new, clean bowl and melted the water into it, drinking his fill.

But when he went to rise from his brief rest he doubled over, pain lancing his skull.  It seemed the sheer stress he was currently under was rearing its ugly head as a skull-splitting migraine.  He had not had a headache this bad in months, and here there was no Hawkeye to cancel his appointments and shutter the office windows, here he had no lights to turn off and couch to lie on.   

It was all he could do to find a hollow created by the massive roots of a tree and drag a few fallen branches against it to create a lean-to shelter, wrap his rather ragged jacket around his head, and lie there vulnerable and waiting for the agony to fade.  

It was dusk when the pain lessened to manageable and he staggered back to the stream to drink again and hope for fish or small game.  

The next day he took his rest under the swaying boughs of a willow and halfway through a doze bolted upright and turned to stare at the tree.  

Two of his foster-sisters had gone through teenage fascinations with herbal remedies and traditional medicine.  He had avoided most of it, having been threatened with being their practice board for acupuncture after teasing them one too many times, but he remembered a few of the more interesting factoids.  And he was fairly certain that aspirin came from the willow tree. It might have been boiled from the leaves or the bark or the sap.

He took out the transmuted knife and gouged a chunk of bark from the trunk.  It did not leak with sap, which ruled out the likelihood of that hypothesis. The inner pulp of the bark was a pinkish flesh.  He also ripped a handful of leaves off the nearest branch. One did not become an alchemist without some penchant for experimentation.  

He created two vessels with circles to boil the water and put leaves in one and the bark flesh in the other with chunks of ice made from the stream.  He could remember the look and smell of the tea that held the willow aspirin, a hazy picture of his childhood kitchen and his giggling sisters passing around the glass of medicine they had made, daring each other to taste it.  

The leaves brewed to a fragrant dark brown, smelling and looking a bit like black tea.  The willow bark turned its water into a rosy wine color right out of his childhood memories.  He dumped the leaf water, uncertain about its safety as a beverage, but choked down the reddish brew rapidly, filtering the wood splinters with his teeth.  It was bitter and unpleasant but at bare minimum the hydration would help. He cut another chunk of tree bark and then crawled back into his shelter to wait for the tea to take effect.

After recovering from his migraine he resumed stumbling his way along the streambank for two more days.  

It was late on the eleventh day when his intermittent solitude again ended.  He was coming to expect the cracking sound, like the snap of some great dry bough.  

There were five figures this time, but not in the skull masks and hoods of the previous groups.  These had those same thin sticks clutched in their hands but were colorfully dressed in an assortment of styles.  There were three men, two tall and strongly built, but nowhere near approaching Armstrong’s physique. The third man was wiry.  Both women had a stern air.

Again, from their searching gazes and outstretched sticks, Roy got the sense  they were looking for something. And going off his recent luck, that he was the target they were hunting down.  Frustratingly they spoke the same language as everyone else he had come across - something wholy unintelligible to him.  

The exhausted, desperately optimistic part of him wanted to believe that these were the other side of the scales from the cultists, and their civilian dress gave some hope, but he knew that masks came in all forms.  Independence was better than betrayal when working alone.

So when they shouted and moved in his direction, he ran.  

He did not make it as far as he would have liked before he ran into a very unfortunate complication.  He vaulted through a wall of undergrowth only to hear the crack and see the flash appearance of a masked man.  The cultists had found him too.

There were two potential schools of philosophy to approach this situation with.  Either heading towards the Skull Cultists and assuming “better the devil you know” because at least Roy could handle them enough to give himself an opening to run for it and continue his wilderness trek.  Or to assume “the enemy of my enemies is my friend” and hope that the unmasked people who had appeared and immediately began shooting colorful blasts back at the cultists would recognize him as a potential ally.  This could possibly lead to resources and assistance in finding the Elrics.

The two groups seemed quite content to exchange shouts and fire, the air filled with high speed streaks and flashes, colliding in firework displays and exploding bits of trees and mulch.  Roy used the distraction to retreat out of the line of fire and began wending his way towards the eclectic group.

When he re-entered the skirmish he immediately sent a flashy fireball at the masked group.  It was best to establish his allegiances quickly and clearly. There was a startled shout and a quick return to combat.

His selection of potential allies seemed to be paying off.  After a few minutes of volleying bursts of light one of the hooded figures collapsed, struck with a chestful of red.  Another grabbed hold of the limp form and both vanished with the ever present crack. The other masked persons sent a final poorly aimed flurry of green streaks and vanished with a chorus of snaps.  He was now alone with the enemies of the masked figures.

He turned to face them and was met with frowns.  He raised his hands up in what he hoped was a universal gesture of surrender.  If he was going to negotiate aide from them it was likely going to involve a lot of hand gestures and pantomime conversation, and he would prefer calm hosts to misread body language on a battlefield.  All of them were pointing those sticks at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but was greeted with a shout. Rapidly, the same flares of light that had been aimed at the masked figures were volleyed at him.  

He dodged one red streak but only caught a second white flash out of the corner of his eye before it hit him.  His body went rigid, arms snapping to attention and everything locking down to his toes. He fell over into the mulch with an uncomfortable thud and lay immobile, forcing down his mounting panic.  

He was paralyzed, no matter how desperately he strained to wiggle even his toes he could not. And this was not the limp boneless ness of a tranquilizer drug, this was stiff and tense.  Like the rigor mortis he felt in corpses forced upon a living being.

There were hands hauling him upright and locking around his biceps.  He tried to right himself on his feet but still could not move and was dragged foreword, the toes of his shoes raking two lines in the mulch and dirt.  The group clustered around him, voices jabbered rapidly at each other and the people moved around as if responding to orders. Someone tilted him back and he felt uncomfortably close to falling over and a stick jabbed towards him, blaring with brightness. This was repeated with multiple colors and the murmuring increased with each one.

Finally they seemed to have reached some conclusion because the grips on his arms changed and he was balanced again.  There was a crack of a whip and once again the world around Roy was sucked into a vacuum and there was pressure around him that suddenly ended. He felt disoriented and if his muscles could move to do it he would have gagged.

They were in a stone room lit by candle lamps with a massive blazing fireplace taking up much of one wall.  It should have been far warmer in the room than it was.

Out of the blurry corner of Roy’s vision he saw one of the figure approach the fireplace and do something to it that turned it from orange to green.  It had to be copper added then. A voice spoke and the fire flared brighter suddenly.

Then the arms hauled him quickly, his legs jolting as his toes caught on every crag in the floor.  The took him to the fire and began pushing him in.

He would have been screaming.  His mind was roaring with his own fears and with the voices of people he himself had burned.  He knew exactly what it smelled and sounded and looked like when a living person was slowly cremated.  If this was some torture or execution there was a bitter irony to it that he doubted they appreciated.

But there was no pain.  Someone in the fireplace received him and held him flush to their chest as the green flames lapped around them.  The person behind him spoke and the world spun in a sickening twirl of green.