EPISODE 3.1
The Lone Knightess and Defender of Ignalia
Creed and Aleph walked deeper into the wooded island for hours, and still hadn't found anything—or anyone. Creed started to feel uneasy, like there was a pit in his stomach or something. Where was everyone? Oh well, this might have been another deserted island, afterall, he thought to himself. However, judging by the geography, flora, and fauna of the surroundings they have been to so far, from the beach up to the woods, it was suitable for human habitation. There should be at least some humans here, right? Or animals.
And there was really none.
"Creed, are you okay?" Aleph asked. "You hadn't been speaking for minutes, and Aleph is starting to worry. Did you suddenly went mute?"
"Come on. Aren't you a little curious why there is literally no one around?" he said.
"Yeah, Aleph knows, we covered that earlier," she said. "But what if the people in this island don't live in these parts? This must be the forest or something."
"There's—not even a small animal in sight."
"I-it could have just been a simple coincidence," she reasoned out. "There is bound to be a town or even a city the longer we walk, right?"
He sighed. "Alright."
He was just probably being paranoid. Well, in the books he had read and movies he watched, a place that is too quiet is suspicious.
But even so, they ought to be more careful. Except for the things Aleph had told him about, he doesn't know much about this world.
Then, he felt someone gripped his clothes. He turned around and saw Aleph's small hand tightly gripping his coat.
"Are you scared?" he said.
She turned to look away. "N-no. W-why would I be scared?"
Creed just shook his head and pressed forward. In ordinary circumstances where he was sure of their safety, like in the island they came from, he would tease her about being scared. But then, it was better for him to stick close in case there was danger around.
They passed through columns of orange orchard, which surprised and worried him even more. Someone farms in this place. This means—
"Look!" he said suddenly, halting to a stop and startling Aleph.
"Ah!" she jumped and pulled on his coat. "What? Why?"
"There's a village," he said.
"Don't scare Aleph like that again!" she scolded. "Where?"
"Up ahead, scaredy cat," he replied.
Aleph's eyes went wide.
About a hundred meters from where they stopped, they saw a bunch of houses made from straw and mud-coated wood. There were even streets, although uncemented and are just dirt cleared to make a way, it was apparent that they were properly maintained.
"Phew! Aleph knows it! This island is full of people!" she said. "Should we go in now?"
"Don't get too excited. We should still be careful. What if they are unwelcoming to visitors?" he said.
"Well, you got a point," she responded, shrugging. "So what should we do now?"
"Just follow along and be alert. We don't want to look like we're here to cause trouble, but we also don't want them to take advantage of us, right?"
"Right."
They entered the small village, expecting to see more people.
To their surprise, however, the village was—empty.
The streets were quiet and undisturbed. There was no one around, not even anyone standing near their homes. Silence hung in the air like death.
"Hello?" Aleph called out.
Creed looked around, his brows furrowed deep. Most of the doors were locked, but strangely, they didn't seem to be locked outside? Does that mean that the people are inside?
However, the more house they saw, he noticed that some of them were wide open. Carefully, he walked towards one of the houses and peeked inside.
The house looked tidy. Unnaturally tidy, as if someone was just there and cleaned everything.
But what confounded him the most was when he saw that on the tables, there were still untouched plates of food. In one house, he even saw a knitting yarn, with a bunch of knitted sweaters and needles on the couch.
In a house a few meters away, he saw a still burning hearth. In another, was a kettle still whistling even when the wood beneath it had been long turned to embers. And then in another, there were scattered toys of children.
It was as if, the owners had left everything in a hurry.
For some reason, the hair on the back of Creed's neck stood up.
"What the hell happened to this place?" he whispered.
"This place creeps Aleph out. Let's leave," Aleph said with a voice that almost broke down.
A sudden thought flashed acrossed Creed's mind that brought chill to his spine.
Did they make the mistake of moving to this island?
"Let's go," Creed said, grasping Aleph's wrist.
Pulling her with him to walk faster, Creed moved towards the direction of the street end, where the village gates stood.
As they started to leave, however, Creed felt that someone was watching them. He turned around to see what seemed to be a little girl and a boy peeking through the gaps of the door on one of the houses. Surprised, he opened his mouth to speak, but then that surprised the children, too. They hurriedly closed the door.
"Who were those?" Aleph said. She noticed them, too.
Creed stopped walking, then carefully walked towards the particular house.
"Hello? Are you—" he began, wanting to ask about the village, but then he was cut off.
"Leave now! Get out!" the voice of a boy screamed from behind the door.
This confused Creed. "What?"
"I said, leave! Don't ever come back to the village!" he yelled again.
"Leave!" another voice, that of a little girl's, chimed in.
"That's mean! We're just passing by!" Aleph replied.
"Good. Then leave, and never return!" the boy called out again.
"Hey, what happened to the villagers—"
But then he heard the door being opened, and the young boy threw something at them. Creed easily jumped aside to avoid it, and pushed Aleph out of the way at the same time.
"Hey! Watch it!" Aleph screamed back. They heard noises from within the house, which Creed could only assume furnitures being pushed against the door. "Those kids are super mean! Let's just leave them."
Knowing that the kids didn't want to do anything with them, Creed and Aleph left. Still, Creed glanced back at the house as they walk away.
"That was weird," Creed said, turning his attention on the road ahead.
"Yeah, weird and mean," Aleph agreed.
"No, no. I mean, the village is empty except for the two children. And they are hostile to people," he observed. "What do you think happened here?"
"Honestly, Aleph was a bit creeped out seeing the empty houses, as if everyone left in a hurry," she responded. "But seeing those two, Aleph guesses the other residents might just be nearby."
"It's just kinda weird to leave two children alone, don't you think?" he asked.
"Yeah, but what if the villagers were out to do a day's work or to gather someplace else in a hurry?" Aleph said.
He sighed. "I guess. Hopefully you're right, though."
Still, it took him a moment to get the thought out of his mind.
Besides the two strange kids, they didn't come across anyone else. As soon as they left the village, they entered a thickly wooded area again.
"Aleph hopes the next time we see a village, there will be a lot of nice people," his companion said.
Creed only pursed his lips and nodded.
But then he stopped for a bit, and looked up the skies.
"It's almost noon. We need to find one as soon as possible, or else we would be camping out in the wilderness again," Creed said.
"How would we even know where to find the next town?" Aleph said. "If Aleph only knows what this island is, then Aleph could have told you about where to go."
"Why? Are you familiar on island geography?" he said.
"Of course!" Aleph said proudly. "It's one of the things that Aleph does best! Well, as long as it's an island or country familiar to Aleph. But without it, Aleph won't know where to go next. Oh! Aleph has an idea!"
"What?"
"Aleph thinks we could follow a river! Aren't most towns built near bodies of water?" she said. "Why not let's try following that river there?"
Aleph pointed at a river not far from where they stood.
"It's big enough, and surely it could have passed through a major town on this island," she added.
Creed was impressed. "Not bad. You are actually smart sometimes."
"Sometimes?" Aleph asked, obviously peeved. "Aleph is smart MOST times!"
He laughed.
"Alright, alright," he said, going off. "Then let's head down that river and see if it will really take us to a town."
"Would you stop teasing Aleph even for a day?!" Aleph yelled, running after him.
The duo walked alongside the river Aleph spotted. The scenery around them was peaceful and calm and bright, with the late morning sunlight seeping through the foliage of leaves.
Not long after, they came across a bridge. Not just one made of wood, but something that was built for vehicles to pass through.
However, as soon as they arrived, they noticed there was actually a tumbled carriage a few meters away from the bridge. Cautiously, the duo approached it, with Creed half-anticipating that there was someone inside the vehicle. But as they should have expected, it was empty—except for a bunch of items strewn on the ground.
"Would you look at that! Clothes!" Aleph exclaimed.
She was right. Among the things on the ground were a bunch of clothing items, and they even looked new. As someone who didn't have a decent piece of clothing the past several months but the strange coat he wore when he woke up, they were indeed a sight to behold.
Aleph started to pick up things on the ground.
"Looks like a merchant cart to me," he said. He picked up a few pieces of fabric and pantry supplies. To his delight, he saw an actual bag that they could use.
"Should we take them?" Aleph asked, looking around. "Aleph means there seemed to be no one around. Who knows where the owners are?"
The carriage looked intact, but the horse is nowhere to be seen, Creed observed. Somehow, he got the sense that the owner seemed to have left the carriage behind and galloped away with the horse. But why? Was he trying to escape from something? Or did he just leave them here?
Anyhow, the owner left it and they desperately need some of these stuff, so Creed said to Aleph, "Just take what we need."
With their survival hanging on the ropes, it would be too stupid not to take the loot.
"Right-o!" Aleph exclaimed quite happily. "Maybe we'll just leave some fruits behind as a thank you to the God of Lost-and-Found Things?"
"There's a deity called like that?" he asked, confused.
"Yeah! They are Aleph's personal patrons," she declared. Upon realizing what that meant, Creed just shook his head for how he nearly believed that.
They started to gather some things: clothes, fabric, and some bags of food. Potatoes, sugar, and packets of some he believed to be powdered cocoa. He also saw some jars, plates, and containers, so he picked them, too. Grabbing the bag he saw earlier, he threw all of those inside and stood up. He wasn't planning to take everything or as much as he could, but rather only what they need.
However, as he was just about to stand up, a glittering thing caught his eye. He crouched down to see what it was, expecting it to be a metal of some kind.
To his surprise, it was—what looked like—a canned good.
When Aleph told him stories about this world, and from what he had seen so far, he immediately assumed this world was in an era similar to the medieval ages back home. However, seeing this canned good made him realize that perhaps, this world wasn't so far behind in technological advancement than what he had previously thought.
He studied the canned good carefully, amazed at seeing one for the longest time, though it looked like it was manufactured in the 1800s. Shaped like a trapezoidal prism, it even had a paper for a cover. Although he didn't recognize the characters on the paper, it must be a preserved food of some sort, and from the looks of it, it was newly manufactured.
He looked around. There wasn't anything besides that one.
He decided to bring it with them.
However, as he was preparing to dunk it to his bag, and just as Aleph was finishing up taking necessities from the ground, Creed felt a sudden change in the wind.
It was as if something or someone was heading towards them.
"Look out!"
Instinctively, he pushed Aleph to his back to cover her. Everything went by like a flash. He took the makeshift spear he slung behind his back and blocked the incoming attack. Then, the strange attacker in armor lunged again, with each time Creed blocking it's slashes. When he tried to push the attacker's weapon back, however, the person struck once more—and broke the flimsy weapon Creed made from the island that was just holding up until now.
The next thing he knew, the sharp edge of a spear was pointed between his eyes, and all he could do was look at it, while covering Aleph behind him with all his might.
"Agh! Please don't kill Creed! Please don't kill him again!" Aleph screamed from behind him.
"What?" was all Creed could hear from the stranger.
"A-Aleph means—please don't kill him. H-he nearly died, so—" Aleph whimpered. "P-please don't."
Meanwhile, Creed's eyes went from the pointed steel to the spear's body, to the holder. And he was surprised to see who just accosted him.
A pretty, brown-haired girl with a ponytail, wearing an armor stood before him. She looked young, not more than twenty, and—quite shorter than Creed.
She glared at him.
"Answer me. Who are you and what are you doing here?