A village to burn

As soon as he stepped in, the burnt taste of the wind rushed to his face and an arrow just barely missed him. All around him, people were screaming.

"What the fuck?" He couldn't believe his eyes. "That little nun is a scam. I'll die here!"

He turned back to the door to open it and escape back into hell's lobby and give the girl an earful of curses. But when he swung it open, the infinitely voluminous hall was gone, so were the line of doors, now replaced by a dim and finitely cramped bamboo hut. "Wha- wher-"

"Please don't hurt us!"

Three pair of eyes stared up at him. The terror in their eyes was unmistakable.

"I didn't come here to hurt you. What is happening?"

A massacre was what's happening. He had closed the door shut but one peek outside and it was easy to tell. People burning huts. People stabbing people.

"Are you from the In-la? I know you are not from here." The lady who was eldest and looked just his age spoke up.

"In-la? Are they the enemies?" A burning arrow sizzled and buried itself in the bamboo hut wih a thunk. Fire began to spread.

The lady nodded her head. "Are you an enemy or a friend?"

"Uh-where are your parents?"

The second eldest who was a boy answered, full of dread, "Outside fighting."

Probably dead already. Timothy peeked again. The natives here wore leather and boarskin. Their adversary were clad in thin seaweed fabric, with a few string of shells dangling on their bodies that made ching-cling sounds as they moved about. Sadly, there were only few leather-clad people left standing. Tim personally witnessed one's neck being slit open. He hoped whoever he was that he was not related to the children hiding inside with him.

Many of those ching-clings were approaching. If they threw open that door, there would be no place to hide. The flames had grown so fast it had consumed the whole roof. The air was sweltering hot. If those men did not barge in here, Tim would still get toasted alive if he just hid here. Sicily and carybdis.

Sicily it is.

Tim reached for the hardest object in the room - a chair made of wood sturdier than the bamboo that constituted the hut. He searched the walls and finally found a weak spot where they probably did their piss at night. He tore it down. Never once athletic, Tim was not that strong but the bamboo wall was already damp and rotting. Although, admittedly, he still cramped his thin muscles in the effort. He made a hole at last to fit himself.

He glanced back at the three strangers in the room and said, "Let's go if you don't want to die here." He first peeked his head out to check that no blade weilders were prowling about. "C'mon!" He let the youngest kid crawl out first. "Stay low. Run for the tree!"

Then the boy who was barely a teen went out next. "Go, go, guard your little sister."

Then the lass, who instead tapped him on the shoulder, "You first," she said, "They're almost here." Indeed, their battlecries could be heard loud and clear, the clinks of their shells resounding with their footsteps.

"Uh-but... you go first. I'm playing the hero here, remember," replied Tim who had second thoughts whether he was making the right decisions.The embers of the roof had filled the hut. It was beginning to get harder to breathe.

"Please survive." With that one word, she crawled out through the hole.

Quickly! Quickly! He prayed.

Tim had so many questions in mind. Is this a whole new different time? Or is this just a manifestation of the hellworld? Their wails and the crackling fire. The macabre scenes outside and the blood they spilled so easily. That seemed like a fitting image of what hell should look like. But as those footsteps came closer, the burning question on his mind right now was: Can I die again? Or am I immortal now?

Tim had never been fond of gambling for his life. He had just started, literally just a few minutes ago. He couldn't quit now. Not yet.

The door flew open with a shattering sound.

"YOU!" One of them called.

Tim was already halfway through the wall. He felt a hand grab his shoes. "No! Fuck you!" He kicked it loose, leaving the shoe for good.

"Run! Go! Run!" He shouted at the three he just saved.

He reached them as they stood at the thicket of trees, watching the flames swallow up their houses.

The little girl began to cry again.

"Shh, shh. We'll be alright," the lass comforted her.

"For god's sake, we have to run now. There is no hope for your village. Your parents...ugh." It's driving him crazy.

"I'll carry her. Mother and father left them in my care. I have to keep them safe."

"C'mon, c'mon, we should be able to lose them."

Tim was not very familiar with the forest; completely aware that large predators might be out and about. Still, humans were a lot more terrifying.

"Not there," he said when the lady kept following desire paths trodden on the undergrowth. "They'll follow these passages. We should get lost so they won't find us. But first-"

Tim stomped on some ferns and broke some twigs to leave fake trails. He took off his remaining half of a pair of shoe and flung it as far as he could into the trees.

They ran the opposite direction, abandoning the more trodden road entirely.

"Are you tired?" He asked the eldest of the siblings. "I'll carry her." So far, they'd covered a couple kilometers of forest floor. They had been ascending for most of the trip.

"Your foot."

His sock was soaked in mud. Originally, it had the faces of Squiward the octopus. Now, it was nothing but soil. It also started to hurt a little.

"Are you okay? Can you still walk?" He asked the boy.

The child answered, not proudly, "My father and I used to walk farther than this just to dig for stones in the waterfall caves. This one," he showed him a string necklace tied around a huge sapphire, "it's my first find. Father was so proud of me." He sounded like he was about to break into tears but he held it like a grown man.

Tim was simply asking if he was fine. No need to be sentimental.

The eldest said, "My name's Aliya, we haven't introduced ourselves. This here is our little Pali and this brave man here is Toug."

Toug interjected, "You insult me. I wasn't brave back there. I was hiding like a coward while father and mother staked their lives."

"Hey, it's not cowardly to survive. If you fought there and died, your parents' sacrifice would've been for nothing."

Toug looked up t him, still dejected.

"Look here Toug," Tim held him fast by the shoulder. "Today we run. But one day, we avenge their deaths. From now on, you have to train, to be stronger, to protect your sisters, understand?"

Toug nodded wordlessly.

"You sound like a wise man," said Aliya as she gently shifted Pali in her arms, "Can you tell me your name?"

"Timothy. But Tim is fine."

"Timothy," she tested the name om her tongue. "It's a foreign name. You must have come from far away. How did you end up in our village?"

"I...-I...uh" He couldn't tell them, could he? This place was nothing like hell, Tim was convinced it was a different time in an unknown corner of the world. "I was travelling. I saw the smoke. And I heard the battle from atop the mountains. I came to help you."

The last part was true. It was his destiny to take them away from the battle. The reason why he appeared there instead of the beach.

"Thank you, I haven't thanked you enough," said Aliya.

After traversing more than an hour on foot, the sound of rushing water reached their ears.

"It's the waterfall. There's a cave there we can hide in." Toug sprinted towards the water as if to prove he wasn't tired. "There, look!"

Aliya's eyes rounded in horror, and pointed down at the water tremblingly, "A body! There's someone there."