[Year 344, The month of Flame, day 27]

“Do you see it?”

“I think s- ah, found it. Give me a bit of room and I’ll send it up.”

“Hold on a second.”

After I called down to Geisai I took a few steps back from the collapsed building. Before, it’d been a two-story tall building with a store on the first floor and a small house on the second one, but the fire had brought the whole thing down. We’d spent the last hour or so digging a tunnel through the charred wood and stone.

Halfway down I realized that the two of us couldn’t continue together, and Geisai’s small frame meant that he could go deeper without widening the tunnel too much and risking it collapsing on his head.

“Alright, go for it Geisai!”

A few seconds after I shouted a large rucksack came flying out of the passageway, straight for my head.

“Ahh!”

I ducked my head just before the sack hit me and heard a dull slam as the rucksack hit the ground behind me. Not standing at the tunnel entrance had been the right call.

“Sorry, I’m tried to hold back, but I’ve been having trouble with my strength ever since I woke up.”

Geisai apologized to me as soon as he crawled out of the ruined building. His face and hair were covered in a mess of sweat, dirt, and soot. Moreover, his eyes had turned a dimmer shade of red than normal.

The sack must have weighed thirty pounds at least, yet Geisai had been holding back when he tossed it out of the tunnel. Just want was he fully capable of? That was something I needed to look into, but there were more important things to worry about now.

I stood up and dusted myself off. These were new clothes and I couldn’t have them to falling apart at the seams in a matter of days. After making sure that the rucksack itself wasn’t damaged, I undid the drawstrings.

“How did you know there was a hidden compartment down there, or that the sack would be there?”

“Huh. Ow, one my friends saw the town butcher hide things behind the counter when he thought no one was looking. So, one night we snuck in while he was away and took a look behind the counter. Back then, we didn’t think what we found was all that interesting, but…”

I never realized the value of the small white crystals that filled the rucksack until now. I’d wanted to get it a few days ago but I wasn’t sure I could have dug it out on my own.

Geisai took few crystals and licked it off his fingers. It was kind of funny watching his face scrunch up for a second, like watching a cat flinch away from a bowl of lemon juice.

“Uh, salty…”

“Well, what did you rock salt would taste like? We’ve wasted enough time here, there are a few more places to visit and I’d like to leave before nightfall.”

I pulled the drawstrings closed and struggled to lift the bag. The weight was lifted from my shoulders when Geisai easily hualed the sack up with one hand while carrying the rest of our things with his other one.

“So, where are we going next?”

“T-The schoolhouse. Follow me.”

Overall, we’d a productive day. With Geisai help, I managed to knockout Nonia and Adria before untying their bounds and since then, we’ve been collecting what we’ll need to start our new lives. Some of the things I wanted to get had either been destroyed or not where they should have been, but the items that had been in harder to reach or in hidden locations were relatively untouched by fire or other survivors.

“You know, my mom said that our village was the largest one in the region. She said that when I grow up it would have been a larger city than even the capital.”

For some reason, I couldn’t stop speaking about things that didn’t matter anymore. Even as we walked through the remains of my home, things I’d nearly forgotten about keep coming out of my mouth. Well, I’d been talking at Geisai for days now, maybe I just found it easy to open up around him.

“I remember being really excited by that. The idea of having more places to explore and more secrets to find kept me up that night. I wanted to see it all, and couldn’t wait for the builders to finish the new wall… We’re here.”

I’d been so wrapped up in the past that I nearly walked right past the school. The scorch marks covered the walls of the one-story stone building. Honestly, it would have been hard to pick the school out of its surrounded buildings had it not been for the small practice field full of worn training dummies sit up in the back.

“Let’s go.”

I opened the heavy door with a solid push and started making my way towards the smallest of the three rooms in the building.

“Hey, what’s a school?”

Geisai’s simple question stopped me for a moment, as the full extent of his isolated life finally hit me. He may have been stronger than most adults, but he was practically clueless about how the world worked.

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That was an issue that needed to be dealt with as soon as possible. Only when we reached our destination, did I finally answer him

“ Well, I heard some of the schools in major cities teaches people how to read, write, and do math; but parents or older siblings usually did that here. However, everybody has to come to school once their magic starts to manifest around twelve or so. In fact, that’s the reason we’re here.”

I began to search the shelves as I explained my intentions.

“You see, next year I’ll be twelve, and unless I have the right scrolls and items, my magic could be stuck in an unstable state for months or even years. Eventually, you’re gonna go through the same thing too, so it’s better we take what we’ll need now rather than losing everything we own and have to risk coming back here.”

“I see, so I’ll be able to do things like that invisible blade the strange lady used?”

“Maybe, it depends on what elemental affinities you have.”

When my hand slide over a small leather-bound trunk, I knew I’d found what I’d been looking for. Taking it off the shelf and opening it up revealed a bag full of different colored crystals, worn out old scrolls with instructions written on them, and some metal medallions with weird symbols carved into them.

I had a handful of months to figure out how it all worked hopefully that would be enough time.

“Alright, one more stop and then we can go. How about we take a break first? We don’t want to tire ourselves out in a dangerous part of the forest.”

Geisai thought it over for a while before nodding and sitting our things down.

…

..

.

The sun hung high in the sky as we finally approached our last stop. I hadn’t meant for lunch to take so long, but I got talking about people and other locations in the village, and before I knew it an hour had passed.

Not wanting to overburden him, I took some of the lighter items off of Geisai shoulders and carried them myself. It may have slowed our speed a little, longevity was more important than speed.

“You never said what else we needed.”

“Huh?”

"We have clothes, pelts, food, and items we’ll need to make more of those things when we’ll need them. If it's about water, the cave isn’t more than a day away from the lake, so what else is there left to do?”

“Well, I guess you could say it’s a personal reason. Once we take care of it, we’ll head straight for the main gate. I promise.”

“Alright.”

It was quiet for a while after that, as I ran out of topics I wanted to talk about and wanted to put off what needed to be done as much as I could. However, you could only drag your feet for so long, and eventually, we came upon the bloodsoaked square I’d spent the last few days trying to block from my mind.

The stench of rotting flesh and dried blood still dominated the air, the massive bodies scattered about the area probably being the main for that. However, it wasn’t the heavily damaged buildings or even the bodies that kept me away. No, what kept me away was the memories of what I lost here.

I never wanted to return here, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take care of this. Looking straight ahead, I took a step forward on shaky legs, but Geisai stopped dead in his track all of a sudden.

“What’s the matter?”

When I turned back to him, I saw that the reds of Geisai’s eyes had doubled sizes and he was grinding his teeth so hard it seemed like they would shatter. Something had set him off and whatever it was must have been dangerous for him to react like this.

I tried to seek out whatever riled him up, but I couldn’t find anything. Moreover, Geisai’s line of sight remained focused straight ahead. It took me a second to realize what happened.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ll only me a few minutes. Yesterday, I ran into something called an undead. If my father’s body isn’t taken care of, he could turn into one of that thing, I can’t leave his body sitting there.”

This was a place where Geisai had been badly hurt. Just the memory of the event must have been traumatizing for him. I should have just left him back at the school instead of dragging him here.

“You’re father? That person is your father?”

Through clenched teeth, Geisai asked his questions as he pointed in the direction of my father’s corpses.

“Yeah, that’s him. You may not remember, but he saved us. So saying him from becoming an undead is the least I can do.”

Geisai eyes darted about for a minute or so, but eventually, the reds resided and he let out a sign.

“Stay here, I’ll be back in a moment.”

I turned away from Geisai and started walking towards my father. Every footstep seemed heavier than the last and my stomach started to fall has I drew near him. By the time I could see his empty eye sockets I felt like I was moments away from vomiting.

It took everything I had to pull out the makeshift torch I made this morning and the flint and iron striker we’d found.

After a few tries but I managed to get a fire going, however, even though I knew what I had to do, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I stood there, burning torch in hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to lite my own father on fire.

He gave his life to save me, taught me how to write, and read me bedtime stories. How could I just destroy his body like this?

Just as my eyes became clouded with tears Geisai snatched the torch out of my hands and throw it onto my father.

“Nooo!!!!”

I desperately tried to stop the flames from consuming my father, but Geisai’s iron-like grip held me back. I begged and I cried, but Geisai wouldn’t let go of me. I had to stand there and watch as my father was burnt to a crisp.

…

..

.

I don’t remember the immediate aftermath of what happened after that. All I know is that when I came to my hands and arms felt sore and my nails were chipped pretty badly. Whatever happened in between seeing my father off and now was blank in my memory and Geisai refused to talk about it.

The silence between us was only broken when we neared the destroyed main gate. The rotten stench was so strong here that it became impossible to take a step forward without bile rising in my throat.

“We can stop now and try tomorrow if you want.”

Geisai offered me his hand and a way out, but I shook my head at the offer.

“If we don’t leave now, I’ll never be able to do so later.”

After wrapping thin rags around our faces, we ventured into the killing fields, the village’s new expansion had become. Body parts in various states of decay littered the ground, and the mound of burnt ogre bodies was hard to miss.

Halfway through, my stomach couldn’t handle it any longer, and I wound up leaving my lunch behind me.

Once we finally reached the cliff that overlooked village, I took one last look at the only home I’d ever know. My village was a shell of what it once was, but I’ll never forget what it had been for me.

“Goodbye.”