CHAPTER II

Boxes are piled up on one corner of the room. The highboy beside the bed, used to be overflowing with papers is now neatly filled with Newt's clothes. A political world map is still hanging above the bed rest only without the cobwebs.

The study table without all the clutters and accumulated dust, is placed right where the window is. Lila paces and the wooden floor, still burnished, creaks in a low prolonged way like a joint of an old man. Their grandfather's bedroom has been preserved well.

It is not just in this room. The entire fifty-year old, two-floored house is doing well. Lila could shake Leonard's hand right this instant. What Lila did not know is Leo spent almost his entire life savings just to preserve the house. It is like an heirloom for the Garcia family and Leo directly inherited it since his parents did not want it, neither did Lila's mother who persists on being independent and he is the oldest of five siblings.

She slides all the windows open. Lila smiles at the busy street below, jeepneys and sikads passing by. People scuttles on the sidewalk, students are mostly in front of vendors eating street food while a mess of electric wires jumbles her view of the afternoon mood. Among the polluted smoke, sweet smell fills her nose and she directly spots the panaderia opposite the house where years before they would have piyaya as afternoon snack. She would have the ube and Newt and Leonard would pick the original flavors. Lila feels like a seven-year old again.

She is aware of a heavy weight in her heart. A distant, constant ache that made itself undeniable at this moment. She misses him terribly. Why would Newt give her a letter, two years after he's gone? Why now? If only he was here. If only they never left. If only…

You make things complicated Newt, Lila says on her mind. She scans the room again, the boxes piquing her interests.

Lila explores them one by one. The first two boxes are just full of his old notebooks, school papers, newspapers, school magazines. She brings down the third box heavier than she expected. Albums and old picture frames, Lila mentally notes as she removes them from the box one after the other. The last one is a thick record notebook. One where teachers sometimes write their lesson plans.

Something falls as Lila brings it out. She picks up a 3'4" cutout paper. Flipping, there is a sketch on it: a man in a cloak being blown by an invisible wind, wearing a pointy hat and holding a walking stick. Exactly the same with the drawing in the library.

Confuse, Lila takes the drawing and the notebook to the bed. "What were you doing there, Gandalf?" she says to the sketch. It's not revealing any more clues.

From the neighboring house a radio DJ broadcasts the time as 4:05 pm, now playing the requested song 'Inglesera' by Missing Felimon, her attention directed to her lap.

When she opens it, her eyes caught Newt's name on the last lines below.

It doesn't seem to be a record book. Maybe it's a journal, Lila thought. And maybe, answers await her.

In a surge of curiosity and excitement, she flips to the second page. Without much thought, she reads the single paragraph in it.

Wait…

She couldn't refrain from reading anymore.

No, stop!

But it is too late.

* * *

Freobel was peaceful once. Three kingdoms ruled the land not entirely of unity but in solitude and respect. Centuries and centuries ago, the Aeonnites from the West successfully invaded robbing the locals of their life, land and living. One kingdom incapable of force decided to yield, some to slavery and some in hiding. The second one decided to resist and continues to do so. And the last kingdom forged a bond stronger than walls. Marriage. It earned them a truce and just as it is frail as fleeting, only ephemeral peace would reign for fifteen years.

* * *

Fire.

Smell of flesh burning above others makes Lila's stomach want to empty its contents. Panic makes it hard to breathe. The music she had heard seconds before disappeared. She watches in consternation as she digests the scene before her.

Most of what's left is burning, ominous smoke rising from its surface. Bodies on top one another, pools of blood render the soil black and structures – of great marvel she can imagine – had collapsed as far as the eye can see.

All around her a civilization is ending. Lila looks up to the skies, the darkness slowly creeping as twilight approaches.

Truth finally sinks in.

"No…"

Stepping back as if to run away, she trips on a body with a yelp. Her heart cartwheels into her throat as she sees the blank face witnessing her fall. Viscid blood instantly seeps through her hair and her shirt but she's distracted. Apprehensive, Lila checks the pulse on the guy next to her.

Of course, he is dead.

That makes her shot to her feet. She touches another body, gripping his shoulders. Lila jerks her hand away as a gasp escapes her.

I shouldn't be able to touch anyone.

Lila slinks to a nearby post, scorched but is still standing upright as she leans on it. Her knees threatening to give out. "Breathe," she directs herself. "Okay, finish the story then get out…"

A story that Newt wrote.

"No reason to be nervous." No reason at all.

Lila can tell this war is well before her time. The dead warriors are wearing steel breast plate armor, one that molds with the abdomen snugly and a chainmail underneath. There are capes too, blue and red, colors masked by the blood. It makes her think of Roman panoply or some closely similar. She sure wasn't expecting this to feel so – real.

Others have a different style of armor, metal studs protecting the chest, leather straps – Lila steps closer when she nudges a severed hand.

She twists away, bile rising to her throat, finally noticing those that are not wearing armor. Ordinary citizens, unprepared and were only a mere collateral. The wreckage consists most of them. Swallowing fear, Lila evens her breathing.

Grandpa, you wrote one disturbing story.

Lila marches forward chanting, They're not real… they're not real. She can't shake the truth however as she sees it, as she feels it rattling her joints. Everything is detailed in a painstaking manner, colors lucid not glazed but defined and expressed in their natural state.

And the faces… oh, so random and not. Distinct but unfamiliar, unlike the crowd of a cartoon film where the faces are blank or unfocused.

No, just keep moving. I have to finish this story and find my father, Lila nags on her mind.

Up ahead, she spies a group of men tossing bodies, clearing them out of the road. She ducks to a nearby alleyway to observe them. They are wearing those armor with red capes, tall with expressions of stone.

She sights one in particular, hair of deep blonde it seems silver, hard to ignore, but the eerie calmness of his face is what hooks her attention. Fluid, graceful yet commanding, he ambles in the middle of the road, a naked weapon in hand.

The soldier pauses on one of the bodies, head cocks as if considering. Lila can see the body – a man's, wounded but alive.

In a swift, casual movement, the soldier pierces the man with his sword.

* * *

[The Soldier]

"Captain, it is done."

I nod at my Lieutenant and pull my rapier from a torso. It gives out with a resistant tug from the flesh coating the steel scarlet.

We won.

"No survivors?" I hear myself say.

"Some were…." His words are lost to me. My mind lingers at that face slain on the ground. Does he have a wife perhaps? Or children?

Seven hundred at least, half of them are innocent. We do not care about that, we care about owning the city of Lur. We torched their homes, destroyed their army, beheaded their High Leader. We defeated them on a single day.

Our Aeonnite Kingdom now possesses the seventh city from the Kingdom of Thraine, after centuries and centuries of wars. I should be celebrating.

I wipe the blood on my crimson cloak knowing it will never be clean, my hands will never be cleansed. Some men on our regiment behind Lieutenant Hughes are still tossing the remains to vacate the road. An act of complete disregard for the people they once were.

"But the boy –"

I pivot on my heels to face him. He stands in attention, folding his arms behind him.

"We cannot find him."

"What are you doing talking to me?" I say, emotionless as a rock. Hughes shifts his weight almost imperceptibly but maintains his stoic expression under my glare.

"General Miraz…"

He does not need to say more. From the east, two hundred yards away, I see the General on horseback careening towards us with his detail behind him.

I sheathe my sword as they halt before us.

"Hail Aeon!" Lieutenant Hughes and I salutes, stumping our fists on our armor twice near the heart.

"You lost the boy, Captain Gaviel. You lost Sanim of Lur, heir to the throne of Thraine," the General cuts right through. "If it was up to me your head will be going back without the rest of you."

I cast my eyes at the short but sturdy man on the forefront. He looks down on us through the slits of heavy-lidded eyes, the intent to kill as plain as daylight. Miraz's horse blows his nose breaking the tension.

"The King wants us to return immediately with or without him, by sundown. Finish all of this. Leave that boy to the Anagolay."

The mercenary? Instead I say, "Yes, General."

A screeching scream snaps our spines.

All heads crane to the source echoing on the streets. Eyeing each other, the same thought runs on our heads. We left no survivors here.

Rapiers are unsheathed instinctively like an intake of breath. I speed to the left, in an alleyway, the lieutenant and four others from my unit tails me. The city of Lur have a series of streets and alleys sprawling to the sides like multiple hand from the city center, it blurs as we pass, dismal and ruined.

The air is still as bloods pump. Our senses taught, listening, spying for any movement.

There.

We move as one, turning the corner towards the south of the city. Whoever it is, he is heading where we entered this morning. The gaping hole on the wooden palisade opens to a clearing where our forces and Lur's clashed hours before.

Bodies cover the field as a grass sprouts on a land. Yet no one is moving.

I sign to my men to go and check them and we separate.

My arm idles on a stance, stepping over the bodies, evading the lances and spears that ended them. If it was the boy, then there is only one place to hide.

Plain sight.

A shadow moves overhead with a shrill, cold call that follows. Vultures. The flock circle over us, looming like a skybrewing a storm. I scan the battlefield again. Somehow, I have a vague sense someone is here.

Someone is alive hiding among the dead.

* * *

Lila uproots herself from the alley, sprinting away from the Captain, away from the General.

She takes whatever street she sees first, left, right, straight, until she finds herself on a dead end. She goes back on an intersection.

Lila turns left. And then she screams.

A figure leaps in front of her, pointing a knife. Lila cringes away in fear.

It is a boy of ten or eleven. His face is coated in blood, tears staining it like a spider's web. Bare chest of mahogany reveals a cut at the center. A single earing on his left ear, arms with bangles, baggy trousers that are torn revealing anklets – gold, all of his jewelries.

Wait…

The boy's gaze balks on Lila's clothes, confuse.

He can see me.

Fear grips her entire being.

Travelers are spectators in the background, Lila has been told. They are silent witnesses like ghosts. Seeing all, hearing every conversation, listening to the thoughts but unseen. Book travelers are, though entering the universe of the book, will never be a part of it that's why they are ethereal.

So, what the heck is going on?

Lila paces.

Something's wrong. This is bad. This is, this is–

The boy looks beyond her shoulders. Her color blanches as she realizes what the boy is hinting at.

There are men approaching. Soldiers, five of them. One is the Captain.

Lila jumps a distance ahead but when she looks back at the boy, she slows. He isn't moving.

Come on boy, we're in danger.

Will she just let the story flow? Can she? She shouldn't interfere. Never ever alter a storyline in any way. It goes against all she ever learned about traveling.

He's just a character, not a person.

And yet, why am I stopping?

Not delving, she goes back with a groan, snatches the boy up and runs.

Physical presence of fear. That is how it seems to her. These soldiers are that different. Lila hardly hears or sees anyone behind them yet she feels them breathing down her neck.

She finds herself blocked by a wooden wall, forty feet up. Her company pulls her to the right.

They stay close to the wall, looking for an exit.

Instead of a gate, it ends abruptly in a jagged manner like it exploded. Splinters are everywhere. Stepping out, the vast expanse in front of them offers no cover.

Think, Lila! Think!

An idea pops out.

Lila drags the boy deeper on the field. She drops pulling the boy with her. Shaking, she struggles to insert him between two bodies. She gestures for him to fall silent with a finger on her lips. Their camouflage would be the bodies all around.

Lila dives into another heap, clawing her way until she can see nothing but armored dead.

What pass like dreadful seconds, Lila hears a soft crack.

The soldiers finally reach their way. She tries to breathe shallowly but with the clamoring of her heart, it's next to impossible. She strains her eyes to no avail. That doesn't mean she can't feel them, feel him. She knows the captain suspects they are hiding in plain sight.

Fifteen seconds, a minute, ten minutes.

Her body is starting to cramp, millions of needles sting her muscles but she endures them.

Surely, they must have left. Lila didn't think so. An hour flies by, she can't feel her entire body.

After two hours at most, Lila hauls herself out with little amount of strength she has. Cold, stinking air welcomes her. She gasps, quaff oxygen with greed. Still panting, she splashes someone's face with her semi-fluid lunch until acid burns her chest and throat. Doubled over, Lila wipes her mouth with the backs of her hands only to retch again like her intestines want to get out.

After more moments of nausea and vomiting she glances at the boy, sitting at a boulder on her left.

He walks up towards her, resting a hand on his chest, saying something. The boy repeats the gesture.

"Sanim of Lur."

Lila starts.

"Sa–Sanim?"

He nods.

Holding her temples, the nerves twitch with her increasing heartbeat. Lila feels as if the ground beneath her is a quicksand with tar.

"No, no, no, no…"

I did it. I changed the storyline. I'm stuck here forever.