Fire Emblem: Halloween Houses

"... I'm sorry, we are just offering them sugar?" Alyx, one of the people living underneath the monastery asked after a long day of a hunt. It had been a long day for him, considering how far he went to hunt a deer to feed. A deer hunted lasted long with some sun and salt, and would nourish many. Taking has been how the Abyss has been living for so long, but the Harvest Festival approached, and in turn, they were supposed to take the short end of the stick and harvest nothing.

Instead, they were gifted a bountiful feast below ground as fowls of various sizes, handcrafted sweets, and new attires brought forth much joy underneath the surface. The Ashen Wolves joining the Monastery for official education had given them much required leverage they needed to make things prosperous, and it seems that the Harvest Festival was a good excuse. For once, the Abyss had surplus of food, and it reminded them that, despite how they lived like sewer rats, they are human.

"Yeah." Luke, one of the ex-farmers said as he hauled out the last sack. "I mean, none of us eat sugar to be honest. Sure, we kind of use them for painkillers occasionally when we run out of those, but up there? Kids these days like dessert. And if we are good now, who knows what they'll give us at during the Winter Season?"

"Fair point..." Alyx glanced at the unmarked burlap sacks that had been lying around as long as he can remember. Opening one for supplies proved it was sugar, but other than that, he wasn't exactly sure what to think. The Abyss kept rather shady amount of business to keep going, and even before that, the ruins of whatever the Church refused to find still created much shadows that stretched between the halls. While the fine grain of white crystals was probably a good gift, the hunter still felt a little fishy about giving them something that would have spoiled with age a long time ago.

"I mean, it's not the only thing we are giving, and we've had a spoonful or two on occasion, and everything is fine." Loading up the last burlap sack of sugar onto the cart headed to the surface, Luke clapped Alyx on the back as the others saddled the horses. "Now why don't you stop being a worrywart and drink that apple cider? Haven't had a drop of those in three years."

None of them failed to notice a strange glow under the pile of gifts as it headed to the surface. The magic that had long laid dormant was harmless, unable to kill, but it was a curse nonetheless, festering with lost strength beyond the ages. Though the Harvest Festival was days away, today would just be a start where this unnatural ****, with good intentions, started to stretch across the future of Fodlan.