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Soren plummeted, wind whipping at his useless wings and battering at his long tail, the whistle created by the speed of his descent taunting him with the knowledge that he was probably going to die here.

He pushed these thoughts away as quickly as he could. Ike was all he was concerned about; it didn’t matter if he himself died in this fall.

The commander had managed to slit the throat of the laguz that had tackled him, and he now kicked the corpse free and let go of the knife he’d held, free-falling through the air towards the ground that waited far below. He had yelled at first, but now he was pale-faced and silent, knowing that screaming would get him nowhere.

“Ike!”

The young man twisted sharply in the air, dark-blue eyes widening at the voice. “Soren?!” he gasped as the dragon swept in close. “Wh-What are you doing?! I tried to save you! You weren’t supposed to just fall over with me!”

“You have saved me, Ike.”

The answer was quiet, but strong enough to be heard in the wind wailing around them.

“Time and time over again, you’ve put your life on the line for me. Now I’m putting mine up for you.”

“Soren, I’m too heavy! I order you to back off and fly away!”

“Sorry, Commander,” the black dragon said with the smallest of smiles. “But as your friend, I’m gonna have to disobey.” His crimson eyes gleamed with a brilliant, fiery light before he swept in and latched his paws around Ike’s torso, holding on as tightly as he could.

“Soren!”

“Trust me, Ike!” the dragon said with a deep hum in his chest. “I refuse to lose you again!”

The pure conviction in his tone was enough to give Ike pause, staring up at the noble profile of the sleek black dragon bound on his protection. Finally, with tear tracks and blood alike still drying on his cheeks, Ike found that all he could do was place his trust in Soren as he wished he’d done from the beginning and lower his head, pressing his forehead to the branded’s warm chest, holding on with everything he had in him.

Soren closed his eyes for only a moment, then let them shoot open, pupils nothing more than thin black slits.

Now was the time. He knew that to save the life of the friend he held in his arms, he needed nothing short of the miracle that had been denied him from the first moment he had become a dragon.

Flight.

Soren threw his wings open, flailing them wildly in a series of disconnected flaps that only sent the two spinning more crazily in the air. The ground was approaching all too fast; the once-mage had to do something fast or else he and Ike’s lives would end abruptly and far sooner than either had ever expected.

He had to give in.

He had to put his trust in the side of his blood that he’d always hated, always despised, and allow it to guide him completely. He had to accept what he was for the first time in his life, had to let the natural instincts within him takeover. He’d experienced the start of it up in the forest, and then the darker side of it on the edge of the cliff.

Now, he had to conquer it.

The dragon closed his eyes, growing utterly still as he tilted his head back, sinking deep within himself even as he felt his blood churn and his heart pump, heard the soft snap of his leathery wings as they caught the air, ready to carry him and his dear friend away to safety.

When he opened his eyes again, he once again found himself staring straight into the gleaming crimson eye of a huge black dragon.

“Ah, the mighty little branded returns,” came the deep, scathing voice as the huge eye blinked once. “Have you come back to plea for my help now, little worm? Now that you have denied yourself and your own core?”

Soren merely stared straight back into the huge crimson eye. He felt no fear this time, not like he had before when the feverish nightmare of dragons and blood had swarmed over him, overwhelming his senses of reason and logic, his sense of who he was.

He calmly lifted a hand and brushed a long strand of his hair from his eyes. Here, deep inside himself, he was in his old form; the figure of a young, pale, skinny boy with deep crimson eyes and long black hair, complete with a brilliant red symbol resting in the center of his forehead. “I am not afraid of you anymore,” Soren said quietly, voice steady and even, never wavering or faltering.

“That is where you are wrong,” the voice snarled, and Soren only now realized that it was a twisted and warped version of his own voice. This huge beast was him, spurned and neglected and shoved back into the furthest reaches of his consciousness. “You DO fear what you really are, deep in your heart! You fear that you cannot control this side of your blood, the power and emotion that comes with it! You are the weak, pathetic side of us that will never fully accept who you are!”

The flow of blood started up again, sloshing thickly around the mage’s legs, slurping at his robes as the wave climbed higher and higher, past his ankles, knees, hips, rising ever-steadily towards his face.

Soren lowered his head, letting his long black hair slip forward to cover his expression. It was true that the thought of losing himself to this darker side of who he was frightened him deeply, made his heart ache and his soul burn.

But the thought of losing Ike terrified him to no end, made his heart break and his soul shatter.

“Yeah, part of me still fears you and probably always will,” he said, raising his voice and head in the same moment. “But I am no longer afraid.”

Immediately, the flow of blood threatening to overwhelm him froze, drifting weakly in circles around his chest. He threw a hand forward, sending spikes of wind forth to slam into the dragon, blasting the huge creature backwards into the ocean of blood around them. When the dragon side of Soren rose again to battle his will, he was ready.

With a thunderous roar, the dragon lunged for the mage, bellowing its hatred.

With a roar just as powerful and equal in its ferocity, Soren leapt straight at the dragon in return.

A single slicing motion with his hand was enough to send wind screaming down to bowl the dragon over, slamming down into the blood still sloshing dangerously below them. The dragon merely used this momentum gained to curve back around, coming straight at Soren.

But the mage attacked in a different way, now. Even as the dragon charged him, fire leaking from its jaws and hatred burning in its eyes, Soren remained utterly calm, lifting a single hand, palm-forward, to the thing that had tormented him for as long as he could remember.

Wind raced to his call. It bent over the giant black dragon, forcing it to slow to a halt despite violent protest, driving the creature’s head all the way down to the hand ever-raised against it.

Soren placed this hand gently on the dragon’s nose, closing his eyes. “You are me, and I am you. I can’t deny what I am anymore. I accept the darkest parts of myself, the happy moments, the times in my past that I pray I could forget and the ones I wouldn’t give up for anything.” He lifted his gaze even as the wind released its hold, allowing the dragon to face Soren with that single, burning crimson eye.

Soren just smiled, placing his hand on the deep ebony scales.

“I am Soren, branded tactician to the Greil Mercenaries, shadow and dear companion to Ike Greil. And I am a dragon.”

The giant crimson eye widened ever so slightly, then slowly closed as a deep sigh echoed throughout the darkness. The dragon glowed for a moment, then shattered into thousands of shards, all of them spinning and whirling around the mage in a frenzy before fading inside of him.

He closed his eyes, and when he next opened them, he was once again falling to his death in the guise of a dragon with his best friend clutched, wounded and bleeding, in his arms.

But this time, Soren was ready.

His wings shot out and caught the air powerfully, snaking the dragon and his passenger out of their steep nosedive and into a spiraling twist into the sky, sailing up towards the clouds. With skilled flaps of his wings, Soren carried them up, arching into the sky with all the prowess of a noble dragon.

Because he was a dragon, but also a beorc. He had stopped warring with himself, stopped hating what he was.

He was no longer afraid to be what he was meant to be.

I am meant to be a branded, a mix of two bloods. I am meant to be at Ike’s side, protecting him from the shadows and on the battlefront, defending and fighting for those we both call family.

The dragon smiled widely, then turned his muzzle and bumped the back of Ike’s head with his snout, saying “Why, Commander! You’re missing quite the view up here! What, didn’t trust me to save you?”

Ike, who had remained tightly curled in his friend’s grip, jerked his eyes open and twisted in order to see the land of Tellius stretching out below them like a huge, beautiful map. His expression quickly twisted from shock into exhausted joy as a laugh managed to make its way past his bloodied lips. “Soren, there’s nothing you can do to make me stop trusting you. I’ve learned that now.” He turned back against the dragon, holding on tightly and pressing his forehead against the warm black scales.

“I missed you…so much…”

Soren knew he was weeping, and that knowledge hurt more than anything else. In answer, he tilted his wings, heading back to the edge of the cliff where Mist stood waiting, tears of joy pouring down her face, illuminated by the light of the brilliant morning sun beaming down on them all. When the black dragon landed, exhaustion hit him like a brick wall, causing him to crumple in a heap, Ike still curled against him and refusing to let go.

Never again would either let go of the other. Never again would they force themselves to watch the other fade away into nothing.

Mustering the last of his strength, Soren lifted his slender skull and spoke to Ike in little more than a whisper.

“Without you, Ike…I was nothing.”

And then darkness claimed the branded’s mind, forcing him so deeply into unconsciousness that even Mist’s best efforts went wasted. But his friends weren’t concerned.

They knew that when he woke again, dragon form or not, he would once again be that loyal person they knew so well and cared so deeply about.