AN: For FMAWeek2015 Prompt Day 3 – The Promised Day/Parallel World/War... so why not combine all three prompts into one?

Summary: Ishval War AU where the State Alchemists are the Seven Deadly Sins and the Amestrians call the end of the war 'The Promised Day'.

Disclaimer: I don't own FMA

The Promised Day

Chapter 1

Awakening

Ishval 1908

"The Promised Day is almost here."

He could hear the words in the distance as he pushed out of the confusion of sleep. He tried to move but found his body unresponsive and what little movement he could muster was painful. His body was warm, mouth dry and ears were ringing. He couldn't open his eyes.

"We've been hearing that for years now."

"Well, it's true Doc. They have the State Alchemists in the field now and they're bringing this war to an end."

"Young man, please be respectful of the individuals you are sharing this hospital with. They are victims of the alchemist's attacks."

The voices were clearer now and less distant. He chose to focus on them to figure out what side they were on. If he could get his voice to leave his throat he could ask questions. Hospital? But which side's? He felt the throbbing pulse of pain begin in his arm and it made him groan. The voices faded back into the dark as his brain began to withdraw from unconsciousness and return to reality. He twitched his hand and struggled to rationalize why he wasn't in control of his body.

"Urey, our patient is coming to. Perhaps you should give him another sedative?"

"Sara...I have torn stitches over here..."

"I'll get it."

His heart rate quickened as he felt and heard a commotion around him. He struggled to make his body obey his commands, but before he could move more than a finger he felt a stab in his arm.

"Rest now, friend."

Her voice was soothing even if his adrenaline was beginning to surge and flashes of the nightmare that put him in the hospital returned. He felt the drugs begin to take a hold of his mind again, inviting him back into unconsciousness where the pain and panic wouldn't follow...

"What happened to the Rockbells?"

"They met with a fate befitting traitors."

"Colonel Grand..."

"Doctor Marcoh! Do you want to come with me to the front or stay here and continue with your work? The choice is yours, however I need results if you are staying in this research facility."

He knew he was no longer in the hospital, the breeze and warmth of the desert was familiar then...this place was cold and smelled of death and fear. He had been moved.

There was silence as the two people who woke him with their argument ended their discussion. He listened to the sound of boots as they shuffled on the floor and tried to regain control of his senses. His mind was no longer hampered by drugs, he was able to think clearer and his pain was much harder to ignore. Memories floated through the fog in his mind, some clearer than others. Some that were just images, others just sounds and several just feelings that threatened to seize control of his body and elicit a reaction without his consent.

There were things he couldn't remember, mainly names. He felt a ring of familiarity to the names Grand and Rockbell but couldn't place it with anything. It was as if the memory was gone and it hurt his brain to search for it. He remained still, survival instinct kicking in and telling him to remain as quiet as possible to avoid detection while he figured out what he was able to do.

"Doctor Marcoh, how is your research coming along?"

The voice was a woman's. She had a very distinctive tone to her voice, sexy and alluring. He tried moving his hand and found that his left hand cooperated but his right seemed sluggish and also painful to move. He told himself to focus on the voices, listen to the conversations and use that to piece together answers.

"As well as can be expected."

"Doctor, we're running out of time here. Soon this war will be over and with it all the lovely sacrifices we have provided you with. You wouldn't want us to have to start using out own citizens, would you?"

"These are our own citizens, Lust."

"Mmm...but ones nobody will miss."

"I'm producing results."

"The stones are not lasting very long. Kimblee is burning through them a little too quickly."

Kimblee. The name struck a cord but he didn't know why. When he tried to focus on the name all that he produced was a sharp stabbing pain in his mind. Perhaps God didn't want him to remember the names men bestowed upon themselves, perhaps he wanted him to erase those label and focus on exactly what he felt and saw. Nature. Human nature and the earth's nature.

He felt a calm as he focused on one thing he remembered very clearly: Ishvala. His God.

Perhaps he had strayed and his God has saved him by cleansing his mind of these labels and intellectual conflicts. A warmth came over him as he thought about this and let the words of his God flood his mind. They were ingrained in his being, he didn't have to question how he remembered any of it. He felt blessed to remember them and he felt the glow of faith calm him. If he had no memories but those of God, then he could embrace them without distraction.

So now he prayed to Ishvala to tell him what his purpose was. Why he had been saved and what he was tasked with doing. He started to have fragments of his memory come back...the destruction, fear and death. There was also a man, his brother, who sacrificed himself to save him. If he had been given a second chance at life, maybe it was to be a true warrior of God and defend his people from the pain he had endured. Whatever his purpose, he was going to have to get up and leave this place before the enemy killed him again. That was something he felt very strongly about.

He waited and listened, more boots went stomping by and he didn't want to give away that he was awake. Last time that got him drugged and moved. He couldn't afford another lapse of time like that, not if these people were talking about sacrifices. Why he could remember that Amestrians were the enemy and not who Kimblee, Grand or Rockbell were was frustrating. However it helped him maintain a focus on the conversations around him.

"Kimblee's turned on his own commanders. Apparently he has standards after all."

It was a new voice, one that seemed to have a light and mocking tone to it. He had to bite the inside of his mouth to suppress a moan as his right arm shot streaks of pain up and down it's entire length as if a nerve had been struck. He struggled to conquer the pain and remain silent.

"Envy, what are you saying? Did we lose him?"

"I don't know, Wrath is pissed but he's still blowing people up so why stop him? I mean we want people dead...who cares what clothes they're wearing."

Lust. Envy. Wrath. Sins...seven deadly sins. He tried to focus on that to push through the intense pain shooting up and down his arm causing it to feel like it was on fire. Then he remembered the flash of heat and the screams, the smell of pulverized clay, burning wood and flesh and blood. The explosions, the fire...the destruction. Hell on Earth.

The voices of the individuals known as Lust and Envy could no longer be heard, but he wasn't sure if it was because his mind finally allowed him to glimpse fully into the recent past and the horrors that put him in a hospital. No longer flashes of random memories, he saw the entire event play out from the start. The man on the rooftop, the explosions he created with his hands. The flames and smoke billowing in the distance and looming over the rooftops. The screams and the fear drowned out by the explosions and laughter. Death all around him and his eyes looking at a his own body mutilated. If he had survived that hell than it was because of a higher power.

These people, these Amestrians, were the embodiment of sins and their alchemy that went against God. Their 'promised day' that was the end of the the war they started would not come until their blood stained the sands of Ishval. If it was no longer home to his people, then the Amestrians weren't going to return home either. They would pay for their sins, starting with the seven deadliest ones: the alchemists. Clarity had returned, along with anger. His right arm throbbed as his emotions began to rage inside of him and called him to action.

He struggled against a restraint that was keeping him bound to the table beneath him. He needed to see in order to free himself and enact vengeance for the death of his brother and his people. He was able to roll his head and push the bandage that covered his face off his right eye. The bandage pulled at injured flesh and ripped scabs off his face as he freed his face from it. He gritted his teeth and focused on a man in a lab coat. An older man with graying hair that was leaning over a table. This was some sort of lab and there was a pile of bodies in the corner...with dark skin and horror written all over their faces. It triggered a rush of fury a that he could barely control and it was enough to break through the leather bindings that held him to the gurney. Those were his people dead in the corner like they were dead animals. On the floor there was a huge...array. A circle with alchemy runes written in white...alchemy. Damned alchemy. Of course that was the cause of the evil here.

The man in the lab coat turned to him, startled and frozen in place as he walked over and put his hand to his throat. He pushed off the rest of his bandage in order to see this man with both eyes. He remembered it now so clearly as blood dripped down his face from the skin torn from the bandage. He remembered as he tasted his blood on his lips and blinked away the red liquid from his eyes how his life was leaking from his arm thanks to that man up on the rooftop. How his brother saved him by merging his own arm onto his to save him so he could use his research to save their people. This right arm, with the tattoo and pulsating pain and energy that was outstretched before him. "What are you doing to my people?"

Tim Marcoh gasped for air as the incredibly strong Ishvalian threatened to crush his throat with his hand. His intense red eyes demanded an answer and the 'X' shaped bleeding injury on his face made it all the more intimidating. He knew his end was near. He felt no reason to lie or try to save his own life, perhaps in confessing his sins to this man he could buy some peace for his condemned soul. "Making philosopher's stones...with their souls."

He was surprised this man would be honest. He saw the that he knew he was doing something so horribly wrong that he could not justify lying about it. He could see that guilt in this man's eyes, once he looked past the fear he saw a tortured soul. "How can you take souls from the bodies of man...only God can do that. Only God can bestow life with a soul into a body and death by taking that soul from the vessel. How dare you play God...what are you monster?"

"I'm the Crystal Alchemist."

He could tell that the man didn't want these horrors attributed to his real name, hiding behind the moniker given to him by his government. His hand involuntarily spasmed and almost crushed the alchemist's windpipe. He had found his purpose. Not knowing their names would allow him to see them for what they really were. Not humans, but sins. "I shall call you Sloth. If you can so easily ignore the sanctity of God's creation...if you can take something so precious as a soul and re-purpose it...your indifference to God's creation makes you..."

It was then that the man's head exploded in a surge of power from his hand. He watched the body fall as he let go not comprehending what he just did. He looked at his hand and could feel the tingle from the nerves but it wasn't painful anymore, it felt like it had released the pressure and pain with that surge of energy. He had been born again and given a great weapon by Ishvala himself: the right hand of God.

He didn't know how he knew he could summon such energy in his right hand, but it felt like that knowledge was tattooed in his mind as well as on his arm. In another life, he was a good man who lived by the teachings of Ishvala. He was a warrior monk with a brother who dabbled in alchemy and alkhestry, a brother who died to save him. Now he used the gift of this power and his arm to destroy those who took his land and life. It was time to do as his brother wished and use the Amestrian's weapons against them and use this weapon of God to deliver the punishments they deserved.

He never did find out his name.

That little man with the amputated leg, the State Alchemist who could make weapons out of silver he extruded from the Earth. A short little man with a tuft of silver hair on his head and a long mustache that had lost his leg due to an injury in the day's battle. Instead of asking who he was, he gave him the name 'Greed' because of his use of alchemy to extract a precious metal from the ground. The little man's enjoyment of his job had been evident as he watched him that day. The man laughed as he slaughtered innocents, using the earth's precious metals as weapons against the women and children of that village. Ishvala the Earth God's gifts to the people being perverted for use by this misguided man. The Silver Alchemist, Greed, died for his sins and was the second of the State Alchemists to die by his hand.

He was already an outcast, the tattoo on his arm was a sin in itself as his own people did not condone the use of alchemy. His people believe alchemy a sin in itself, a defiance of God as man took creation into his own unworthy hands. Even if he did stop at the deconstruction portion and did not create something new, the knowledge and practice of the art was unacceptable and the elders expressed their disapproval. He might have been a former warrior of Ishval but they would not forgive his dishonorable methods of vengeance. Even in war, they would not resort to such lowly methods to defend themselves from annihilation.

He however never did find out his name.

Instead the Amestrians started to call him Scar, and put a protective detail on their human weapons in their own camps fearing they would have their brains liquefied in the middle of the night. It did little good, he was now standing outside the tent of the man he called Gluttony because of his over-indulgence of all things weaponized and the military might his position allowed him to have. He had been the one to utilize the philosopher's stones in battle, the man who had the doctors who had saved his life killed and was the Colonel in charge of all the State Alchemists in the field. Tonight he would pay for his sins and answer to God for his wrong doing. The Iron Blood Alchemist, or Gluttony, would not see another morning.