"Splendid magnum opus."
The unknown voice echoed and faded away.
In the middle of the night, Va'dia jolted awake. She found herself sitting in an alleyway between what seemed to be two concrete buildings as strange heat seeped in. When the young mercenary tried to get up, suddenly, a throbbing pain stabbed into her head mercilessly.
She pressed a hand against her forehead, coincidentally touching the large quantity of blood that was flowing down. Grimacing as she stared at her dirty bloody hand.
Her gaze slowly went to the left, a cracked wall but ultimately a dead end. Pain throbbing with the slightest movement of her head. To the right, from what she saw was rocky debris and snapped wooden beams scattered everywhere on the brick road accompanied by flickering orange hue.
Slowly standing up with the help of her sheathed sword, she slowly ragged her way out. The temperature got hotter quickly, the radiating heat bit through her dirty leather clothing and heated up her silver arm guards and shoulder guards.
At the exit, she gripped the edge of the wall and looked left. Her vision was like a fog for a few seconds before the scenery around appeared clearly. The houses at the sides were burning! Specifically, the whole kingdom was burning!
There were no emotions on her face except tiredness and ragged breathing. After inhaling as much as she could, she started to walk out. The pain continued to torment her head as she passed through the sea of dead bodies.
Dried blood stained the ground like a paint splatter. The corpses were either sliced in half or burned to a black crisp, the innards of those mutilated bodies were spilled out and seemingly had been cooked by the heat.
Va'dia reached her limit. Her legs wobbled, mind spiraled, and she crashed onto the ground with the sword still clung tight. Sweat trickled down her chin. The brick road felt like a burning hot pan.
"Water…"
She whispered, clinging to hope even though she doesn't know where to go. Through gritted teeth, the mercenary pushed herself up with the last bit of strength, the hot bricks stinged her palms.
On foot, her movements wavered and just a couple of steps later, her eyes closed abruptly. The young woman once again crashed onto the ground, this time joining in the corpses around.
Moments later, there were footsteps approaching the fainted mercenary. Their shadows draped over her, they didn't look human at all, maybe their characteristics could be related to the sliced bodies and burnt bodies.
○◇○
In a blink of an eye, it was quickly two days. The sun hung high and the sky painted in a soothing blue over the grassland. Three horse-drawn wagons moving on the carved path, carrying swords and magic stones.
Small clouds moved by the wind, batches of purple, yellow, red flowers swayed with the grass around.
Inside the kingdom of Brandon, the trees and benches lined streets now littered with newspapers, civilians stepped on them as they passed by. The light-colored yellow stone brick buildings with slight protrutes on their architecture stood clean and unstained.
About the newspapers, it was showing multiple black and white images of the burnt inside of a kingdom. The buildings were now almost exactly like piles of charcoal, and the texts were not anything special, just shocked writings and being clueless.
The people didn't seem to mind, only a few decided to pick them up, skimmed the whole thing and threw them away.
Policemen in white uniform could be seen patrolling around on the pavement, holding in hand a twenty two inch gray metal stick that had a rubber handle and inside its barbed wire cylinder-like head, stood a small magic stone.
It was floating, and from the looks of it, it did seem like an electric variant. Spiky and yellow. The innocent would sometimes wonder how it would feel to be shocked by one of these.
Speaking of the police, there was a big station not too far away. Inside one of its interrogation rooms, Va'dia sat there alone. The green table fan rotated right and left — blowing away the steam from her cup of coffee.
There were dark circles under her eyes as she hollowly stared at the brown liquid, the fan lifted a few strands of her black hair and repeated like that with every turn.
She looked away from the cup and inspected the room. It was pure concrete, simply a gray box, at least they did smoothen the surfaces. The table was made entirely out of steel and there were restraint rings underneath.
Blinking, Va'dia wondered why she was still alive. It was strange, but she had no memory about it let alone creating a mere theory. Surely someone came to save her? No way, how could there be anyone crazy enough to enter a burning kingdom just to save her?
She let out a soft sigh, knowing this was an interrogation room, the investigator should be here doing his job. However, at the moment, the guy was nowhere to be found.
The young mercenary shifted uncomfortably in her chair, not because she was impatient, but sitting in the same spot for a long time was never something she was fond of. Also, to add more, it kind of created a burning sensation on her butt too…
Soon, what she was waiting for came. Barely audible footsteps could be heard approaching from outside. The steel door clicks a few times before opening with a sweep in the air.
Stepping in was a well dressed man, he wore a gray vest and a black trench coat, his hair was brown-ish and had a serious expression on his face.
Instead of being fearful and feeling pressed, her eyes sparkled at his handsome features as the man walked in and sat down opposite her. He reached one hand into his coat and pulled out a pen and a small gray-cover notebook.
Va'dia immediately stopped sparkling when he settled down the items. He sat upright and locked eyes with her.
"We found you laid unscathed at the entrance of Oritha Kingdom. So tell me, did you burn the place down?"
Upon hearing the question, she began panicking. Eyes darted around, trying to avoid eye contact but ultimately failed. She shivered, feeling hot and numb across her entire body.
"W-w-what? H-how could I do such a thing?"
Maybe he thought she was one of those criminals who illegally learned fire magic and burned a whole kingdom. Although it was extremely rare now and almost impossible to happen, history proved otherwise.
"Okay."
With a click of his pen, he began writing. Not even two seconds later, he was done. His expression was undecipherable, whether he treated the answer as a lie or truth was a mystery to her.
"Next question. What is your name and what were you doing that night?"
A sense of relief washed over her, just a little bit. She explained what happened in detail with her name included. Then, lastly:
"A-About why I'm at the entrance.. I-I don't know. Everything just suddenly go black and now I'm here."
The investigator remained serious and unreadable. She just simply hoped that he was convinced and would let her go. After a while of suffocating silence, he exhaled through his nose, glancing at everything he wrote.
Va'dia stared at the floor to her left with a tired look, at the same time budging uncomfortably on her chair. All while forgetting that she didn't drink her coffee.
Suddenly, the man stood up and put both of his items inside his coat. He walked away, the chair was pushed slightly, he opened the steel door and left in a hurry.
She sat there, blinking in confusion, not knowing whether she was allowed to go yet. Before he stood up, she caught a glimpse of worriness in his face. No idea what that was about.
The young woman picked up the cup and chugged down all of the brown liquid, it was already long cooled which made it possible to dump it all down her throat, consequently, the coffee tasted less sweet.
Va'dia put down the cup, wiped her lips, and stood up to get out of here. She grimaced at the after taste, coffee particularly tasted horrible to her in any way no matter if it had any flavour.
Stepping out of the room, she looked left and right then decided to go left. While walking in the hallway, voices could be heard coming from the wooden doors at the sides, they were too muffled and not important anyway.
At the corner of the hallway, she peeked. There was no one around, just some steel pipes connecting from the ground to the ceiling or at each other. With certainty, she moved again.
On the way out, she realized something was missing…
'Where did they take my sword?'
She simply exhaled and lowered her gaze at this question. The young mercenary just doesn't have the will power to find it — mostly out of fear that she would have to open her mouth and talk again, so she decided to assume that her sword was completely lost and there was no point in retrieving it.
After a while of back tracking from hitting dead ends and accidentally going to areas that had a group of policemen hanging around, she would finally see the entrance. However, there was one obstacle.
The lobby.
It was certain that there would be an officer behind the wooden booth. Va'dia continued to fearfully watch him. To the left, he was sitting in a relaxed posture and was looking at the two glass doors in front of him, specifically, the entrance.
The thing she feared and worried the most was actually talking.
'This is ridiculous! Why do I have to do one thing I hated the most just to walk out!?'
She gritted her teeth in annoyance. It was inevitable. She had to confront it instead of stomping in one place. With all of the will power the young mercenary could muster, she walked out of the hallway and toward the entrance, trying to maintain her composure on the way.
"Hey! Who are you?!"
As expected, she got called out. Va'dia turned at him and tried to act as calm as possible. Especially the face.
"C-could you just let me go..?"
The officer didn't answer that question, he was busy finding and putting on his glasses. Then he asked back.
"Aren't you the survivor of the Oritha incident?" He then added, "Could you tell me what Mr. Reyn asked you?"
He seemed like a fan of whoever this person was.
Va'dia would finally calm down. After a long pause, she coldly said:
"...That's none of your business."
The officer's expression quickly turned into disdain, but she had already turned away before that face could appear in her sight. She pushed the double glass doors open and stepped out.
Without any thought of where to go in this unfamiliar place, she just went right — along the concrete pavement. Civilians continued their day.
Va'dia looked at her surroundings.
'Where am I actually…? Had I lived in Oritha before…?'