A big wooden wagon was driving along on a small road in the forest. At the front there were two male figures with spears at their sides, and in the back were multiple steel cages, tall enough to fit more than two adults at once.
The road was bumpy with many holes and somewhat large rocks. It had been made out of dried dirt.
As the two man were driving with their black horses at the front, the wagon had hit a rough bump and the people in the cages went up in the air for just a moment. The sudden movement finally woke Kean from his unconsciousness.
"Oh, so you have finally awoken. You've been sleeping for some time, you know?"
A strong male voice spoke to Kean. The man had a raspy tone to him.
He was a slender but also somewhat muscular man. His vaguely light brown hair reached down to his ears. He had soft and kind eyes, but they also looked tired; a few eye bags were visible.
Kean looked around with a tired and confused expression. He felt uncomfortable and wondered as to where he was. How he had gotten there wasn't really a question to him. He still remembered the hit to his head that he took.
He rubbed his eyes with both of his hands, and then he noticed that something was on his wrists. They were metal chains that restrained him from making any hasty movements. He could not even stretch out all the exhaustion from his body.
As Kean kept looking at his surroundings, he noticed that not only his hand were restrained, but also his legs were as well.
What is this?! What the hell are these people doing? This is not good, I have no idea where the village is located now, or even how many hours it has been since the fire.
He was desperate of having the information about his whereabouts. He wondered to himself about the village and the possible survivors.
Who is going to bury all the bodies in their homes?
While Kean had the respectable thought of honoring the deceased and burying them in their houses, he also kept thinking about all the scattered intestines he had seen. His thoughts ended with the conclusion that it would be a lot of work, and to be completely honest with himself, he did not want to do any of it on his own.
"Hey, are you listening to me, son?"
A strange and unknown voice kept talking to him, but the exact content was not heard by Kean, who at that moment had been deep in thought.
"What? Are you talking to me? Wait... who even are you? And what is this?"
Kean responded to the man that had been speaking to him. Well, at that moment he had mostly been talking to the air.
His answer consisted of multiple questions and no actual response to what the man had asked him.
Kean's interest only lay in the location of the village and the it's people. Talking to some stranger did not seem important to him at that moment.
The man was visibly confused by the sudden silence that he was hit with after all the questions that Kean had asked. He kept observing him while Kean looked around his cage for something.
"It is well-mannered to answer when someone is talking to you, you know?"
The man spoke out to Kean, it had been an attempt to gain his focus. Kean who had both his hands on the bars, took his arms away and looked in the direction of the stranger.
Kean gave him a perplexed look. One eye was still covered with the bandages that he had worn since the burn. It had gotten dirty and soaked in blood, dirt and tears. Looking at it suggested that it had been at least a few days since they had been wrapped around his head.
"Oh... I'm sorry. What were you saying?"
Kean finally responded to the stranger. In the process giving him his full attention.
"I had asked you where you're from. You look like you stem from the northwest. Well, I do know that you were captured in the north by them, but that is about all. you know."
"I am from a village in the far east, deeply buried in the woods."
Kean looked down at the ground as he told him about where he came from. His eyes lost their strength and his breath went shallow.
"In the east? I thought there is no village in the far east. If there were, then it would be in the middle of the Graveyard Forest. You know that?"
The stranger spoke in a haste, he was clearly confused about what he had just heard. In Kean's head, there existed no information about the graveyard forest.
Kean looked up to the man and with a puzzled look asked him:
"Graveyard forest? What do you mean by that? I never heard of something like that."
"Well the graveyard forest is a fierce one. A place that dooms everyone that steps foot into it. I heard that the souls of the unfortunate get dragged into the tree branches, where they spend eternity in torment... That is why I thought that no one would ever dare to bring life there. You know?"
The man corrected his posture as he told Kean about the facts that he had collected from stories and rumors.
He had moved from the back of the cage to the front of it, with both of his hand gripping tightly to the bars in front of him.
Kean's face gesture had changed in just a matter of seconds, and with a faint voice he told him:
"Well... there used to be a village there."
The man looked at him and saw the emotions that he carried with that statement. He let go of the bars and went back into a crooked posture.
It had gotten silent for a good moment and both just stared down at their feet. Then suddenly they heard a sound that resembled someone sleeping.
They both looked on the cage that was beside them, Kean looked to the left, while the man looked to the right.
Both ended up seeing the same thing.
The boy beside them had drooled in his sleep while being curled up like a ball. He looked just like a newborn, even in such a situation. Looking at him made Kean think that the guy probably hadn't slept that well in days.
Kean just stared silently at the guy on the ground. He wondered how old he might be. He didn't seem much younger than Kean himself.
"How did he end up here?"
"I actually don't know. He has been here for a longer time than me, I have only been in these cages for a few days. If you really look at him then you can see that he looks deprived in almost every way. You know."
"So did he ever wake up? Or have you talked to him?"
"Not really, he mostly stays asleep. Well yesterday we were let out of the cages for food and water, i spoke only a little to him then."
Kean and the man were talking for a while about the boy who was still asleep. Both wondered who he was and why he had ended up there.
The man changed his position and went closer in to the cage of the guy, he formed a fist and banged it against the bars. He tried making a sound loud enough to wake the sleeping boy,. He was getting curious for answers.
"I think it's time to wake up now, You know!"
"Hmm...what?"
The boy finally had woken up from his rather deep slumber. He gave a long yawn while covering his mouth with one hand.
He looked at Kean, whom he hadn't seen before and his face lit up with a curious and excited expression.
The man raised both arms and waved to the guy to not do what he was about to say, but it was too late.
"What happened to you? You look terrible."
Kean who had been silent for a moment, started to look down on the ground. He was sure that the guy would probably make fun of how he looked in that state, with all those bandages on.
The man let out a sharp sigh and put both hands on his face. He had tried to stop him from being disrespectful by asking such a question. After all, no one knew what happened to him, or to any one else.
In an attempt to lighten the mood, the man said:
"Come to think of it. I never introduced myself. My name is Jhon and I come from a village in the south. I am also about thirty-four. What about both of you, what are your names. You know?"
Kean lifted his head up, while the boy shifted his attention to the man.
"Oh... Well my name is Levyn Destyat. I stem from the south as well. Ah, and my age is eleven years old."
Levyn wiped the lightly dried drool from his mouth away and looked over at Kean.
Is it my turn now?—Well here goes nothing.
"My name is Kean and I'm uhh... Twelve years old, and as I told old man Jhon, I am from a village in the far East."
"What do you mean old man Jhon?! I'm still a young man, you know?!"
Jhon was suprised by what Kean referred to him to, but at most he felt attacked for his age.
"Wait, the far East, isn't that where the Graveyard Forest lies? I thought there is no village there."
Levyn quickly interrupted old man Jhon.
"I have said the same thing to him, but Kean has told me that there lies no forest there anymore. I was skeptical to the idea of life there because of the stories about it. With the whole being doomed to have your soul stuck in the tree branches."
"Wait what? You said that the souls get stuck in the tree branches?! I was told that the corpses get sucked into the ground and turn into trees of torment. Their faces are supposed to be carved in the trunk."
Both Levyn and Jhon shared about their knowledge of Kean's homeland.
"Oh yes speaking about villages and all that—What kind of E-M do you guys specialize in?"
"Well I can use the fire aspect, but my E-M ability is very weak. You know"
"I posses the aspect of water. When it comes to E-M, I would say, that my full potential still isn't anywhere near my current state."
After that both looked at Kean, awaiting his response.