Fullmetal Alchemist: Lost and Bound

Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. Hiromu Arakawa does. I only own the OC characters.

-------

Any sort of trail that the perpetrators had gone west was scant. The only thing that they had come across was a hastily scattered campfire in the middle of a clearing. It was evident that the chimeras were not using normal commercial roads for their journey. It seemed that where they were going had a path that was not easy to find.

The team slowly picked their way across the terrain. Before long, the woods gave way to an open and sparse landscape. Their footsteps kicked up the dust from the dunes. They had only been walking for half of the day before they stopped.

"If we continue any farther, we'll end up at the Cretan border," Hawkeye noted, opening and glancing at a map she had in her hands.

"That means that they would've brought Fullmetal here," Mustang finished. He glared around at the empty expanse of the land. His expression was frighteningly irritated and angry. "So where the hell is he?"

Alphonse had begun to scour the area, trying to find any break in the pattern of sand. He lowered his bulk onto his metal knees, and began feeling around, shifting the particles with his giant leather hands. Coming up with nothing, he shifted his body around to continue his search. After a while of this harrowed investigating, Al stopped in his tracks. "Colonel, come here! I think I found something," he called.

Mustang and Hawkeye quickly came over to the armor's side, looking over his shoulder to where he was bent over. "What is it, Alphonse?" Mustang asked the young boy.

"There's something alchemical here. It's strange, as if out of place," he answered, placing his hand on top of where he could feel the alchemical energy. Without warning, a flash of blue light emanated between the armor's fingers. Al continued to stare in astonishment, until the ground started rumbling.

"Al, what did you do?" Mustang inquired, a little hysterically.

The armor began to panic in embarrassment. "I don't know, I just felt where the energy was coming from and this happened-"

"Alphonse, get back!" The colonel's shout made the armor abandon his sweat-filled (if armor could sweat) and embarrassed tirade, and notice the hole slowly beginning to widen in front of them. Al immediately scrambled backward, but found that the edge wouldn't reach them. Still dumbfounded by the display that unfolded, the suit of armor stepped forward to glance in the hole. "Colonel, look! There it is," He cried hopefully, pointing.

Mustang looked down into the enormous pit, taking in the enormous structure that was just hidden from view. It was amazing how architecture like this was able to hold up underground like that. What sort of mechanisms were used to hide something that stuck out so profoundly? And how had it not been discovered by now?

Mustang straightened, his mind already working to figure out how best to approach the tower. This was no doubt the lair of Ed's captors, and charging in with no backup would not be the best decision.

"With luck on our side, we should be able to retrieve Fullmetal before nightfall," Mustang concluded, his plan formulating in his mind.

-------

Edward woke up slowly. It was hard to tell that he was waking up in reality, since every nightmare that he ever had seemed to appear in the room, and come to life. His brother, Nina, the thing that was supposed to be his mother; they all manifested themselves to torment him. He could do nothing else but take his punishment, since he was helplessly strapped to the chair still. With every beating, he screamed about how sorry he was, that it was his fault that he made them this way. But that only made the nightmares mock him and punish him more.