The village of Carne was a small village not far from the Tove Woodlands at the southern edge of the Azerlisia Mountains. The population was about 150. Thirty households was not an uncommon size for a village on the frontiers of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
Carne mainly relied on agriculture and the bounty of the forest, and the only visitor apart from an apothecary who came to acquire herbs was the tax collector. The phrase 'like time had stopped' was an apt descriptor of the place.
The day started early in the village. Villagers generally awoke at dawn. Unlike the larger cities, they didn't have magically maintained Continual Light, so they rose and slept with the sun.
Enri Emmott's mornings began with fetching water from the well near her house. Fetching water was women's work. Her first chore was done when the large pot in her house was full. By that time her mother would be finished preparing breakfast, and the four members of their family would sit down together to eat.
Breakfast was barley and wheat oatmeal, sautéed vegetables, and on some days, dried fruit.
After that, she would go out to work in the fields with her mother and father. Her younger sister, soon to be ten, would gather wood near where the forest started or help in the fields. The bell in the center of town on the edge of the village square rang at noon. They would take a break from their work and eat lunch.
Lunch was brown bread baked some days earlier and soup with bits of preserved meat in it.
Then, it was back to the fields. When the sky began to redden, they would return home and eat dinner.
Dinner was the same brown bread as lunch and bean soup. If a hunter caught an animal, they would sometimes get a share of the meat. After the meal, they would chat as a family and mend clothes by what light remained in the kitchen.
They usually slept around six PM.
Enri Emmott had lived her whole life, from the moment she was born to her current age of sixteen years, as a member of this village.
She thought her uneventful life would continue on the same way forever.
One day Enri awoke as usual and went to fetch water. She hauled the bucket out of the well and filled her small pot. It took about three trips to fill the large one at home.
"Oof." She rolled up her sleeves. The parts of her skin that weren't tanned were glaringly white. Her arms were slender but well-toned from working in the fields—she even had some muscle.
The pot was quite heavy once it was full of water, but she picked it up like usual. If I had a pot one size bigger, maybe I could reduce my number of trips? Oh, but I probably wouldn't be able to carry it. Enri was about to head home when she thought she heard something and looked in the direction it came from. Something set the air roiling and her heart frothing.
Off in the distance, she heard the sound of something wooden being crushed. And then—
"A scream?" It was like the cry of a bird having its neck wrung and yet altogether different. Something cold raced down Enri's spine. No way. It's just my imagination. I misheard. Words to drown out her anxiety bubbled up, popped, and disappeared.
Panicking, she started to run. The scream had come from the direction of her house. She abandoned her pot. It's too heavy to run with. Her feet got tangled in her long skirt and she nearly tripped, but luckily she managed to keep her balance and run on.
More voices.
Enri's heart was pounding.
Human screams. No doubt about it.
Run. Run. Run.
She couldn't remember ever having run this fast. She felt like she was going to trip over her own feet.
Horses whinnying. People screaming. Shouts.
It was all getting louder.
Still quite a ways away, Enri saw an armored figure swinging a sword at a villager. The villager screamed and crumpled to the ground. The sword followed up with a finishing stab.
"Mr. Morger!" There was no one in this small village she didn't know—they were all like family—so of course she knew the man who had been killed. He could be a bit loud at times but was a good-natured person. He certainly didn't deserve to die like that. Enri nearly stopped in her tracks, but she grit her teeth and pushed herself to sprint even faster.
This distance never felt terribly long when she was carrying water, but now it seemed like she would never arrive.
Angry shouts and curses reached her ears on the wind. Finally her house was in sight.
"Mom! Dad! Nemu!" she called out to her family as she opened the door.
Their three familiar faces were frightened but all present, huddled together. As soon as she burst in, their expressions softened into relief.
"Enri! You're safe!" She felt her father's rough farmer hands on her back as he hugged her. And the warm hands of her mother.
"Okay, now that Enri's here, let's get out of here!"
The Emmott family was in a pretty bad position. They didn't want Enri to come home to an empty house, so they'd missed their opportunity to escape. The danger must already be closing in…
That fear soon became reality.
As the four of them were just about to make a run for it, a shadow appeared in the front entryway. Standing there with the sun at his back was a knight in full armor, the arms of the Baharuth Empire emblazoned on his breastplate. In his hand was a naked blade—a longsword.
The Baharuth Empire occasionally invaded its neighbor, the Re-Estize Kingdom, but usually the fighting was centered around the fortress city of E-Rantel; the enemy had never made it as far as Carne.
But now the village's peace had been shattered.
From the icy stare coming through the gap in the close helmet, Enri could sense that they were being counted. She hated the feeling of his eyes moving over them.
A squeak from his metal gauntlet announced that he had tightened his grip on the sword. He moved into the house—
"Yaaargh!"
"Urgh!"
Enri's father tackled the knight, and the pair of them tumbled out the front door.
"Go! Hurry!"
"You bastard!"
Her father's face was lightly smeared with blood. He must have cut himself when he rushed the knight. The two of them thrashed around on the ground, her father struggling to keep the knight's dagger at bay, the knight struggling to keep her father's knife at bay.
Seeing a family member's blood right before her eyes made Enri's mind go completely blank. Should I try to help him or escape?
"Enri! Nemu!" The shout brought her back to reality. Her mother, though anguished, was shaking her head.
Enri took her sister's hand and started to run. Hesitation and guilt made her reluctant, but she had to just run as fast as she could to the forest.
The whinnies and screams of horses, angry voices, the clanging of metal, and…the smell of something burning. From all over the village, the sensations bombarded her eyes, ears, and nose. Where is that coming from? She was frantic to know even as she ran. In open areas, she moved in a half crouch, trying to stay in the shadows of houses.
Fear that made her blood run cold. The exertion of running wasn't the only reason her heart was pounding. The only thing keeping her moving was the little hand clasped in hers.
My sister's life…
Her mother, running a few paces ahead, was just turning a corner when she suddenly stiffened and shrank back. She motioned with a hand behind her back to run the other way!
When Enri realized why, she bit her lip to hold back a sob.
She squeezed her sister's hand and ran to get as far away as they could.
She didn't want to see what was going to happen next.