The Way Back (1)

"What do you mean by run?" I asked with a bit of fear.

"We were drugged. Before I lost my consciousness, I heard them talking happily about having more meat for their feast when they previously had a shortage." Charles explained.

And of course, the new meat was us. This eleven-year-old had quicker wits than I did.

"Where do we go? There was a person who entered the tent earlier in the afternoon and she said she was bringing dinner for the both of us"

It was almost dinner time as the sun was set on top of the mountains. Charles stayed silent as if he was trying to come up with a plan to get out of this place as soon as possible.

I skimmed through the latter pages of the book from the dimensional library for any clues to where we could go. When I flipped to the last page after my impatience from finding no clues from the earlier pages, I found a map with the latest information.

There was an 'x' in the place on the map with lots of tents. This was probably our current location. I interrupted Charles' train of thought and quickly showed Charles the map as he seemed to form better ideas than I did.

He briefly seemed to question where I got the map from, but soon focused on forming a strategy to get us to a safer place.

"I have a plan to get us to the facility where the people of the other districts reside. But, you really need to listen and follow my instructions carefully Rika." Charles said while looking exhausted.

"I will, what do you see me as?" I said, annoyed.

"My plan is to steal some weapons from this tent and run away quickly as we can to get out of this village as soon as possible. When we're out of the village, there's a cave we can spend a night in."

Charles pointed to the cave on the map and then continued, "After spending a night, we will walk toward these caves next as it will take us more than five days to get to the facility."

"How about food? Without food, there's no way we can survive, especially during the winter." I pointed out a weakness.

"The sixth district has wildflowers that bloom in the winter where its petals are edible. We can pick them along the way to the caves," Charles answered while pointing to the painting of flowers on the map.

I did faintly remember learning about edible flowers in the sixth district from my exam in kindergarten when I had a huge amount of minus points while studying with Luke.

"Well, when does this plan start?" I queried.

"Now!" Charles shouted while quickly grabbing my hand as he prepared to sprint.

We ran outside the tent to the entrance of the village within a few minutes. We used a small amount of mana to speed up even with the lack of mana in the air. However, the villagers chased after us once one of them reported we were almost out of the village.

Unfortunately, the villagers were fast as they were catching up to us very quickly. It was hard to imagine they had the vigor to pull out some daggers while transitioning into a sprint.

"What do we do now?" I yelled.

Charles abruptly lifted me while running, "Throw the arrows!"

With the mana I had left, I embraced my mana into the flimsy arrows and shot the villagers in their arms and legs.

"Capture them! Bring more reinforcements!" The bulky villager yelled, ignoring his comrade's pains.

The bulky villager continued the chase while abandoning his comrades. I shot more arrows to put more space between the villagers and us. However, Charles was starting to slow down as he gasped for more air.

Eventually, we ran out of arrows while the villagers fiercely continued to their chase like they possessed an abundance of energy. Meanwhile, I felt there was no way Charles could remain running at this speed for more than a few minutes.

"Charles!" I pushed him into the snow when I spotted a sharp dagger heading towards his head.

We were now surrounded by the villagers with thick ropes in their hands probably to capture us.

"Come out! Exphaxia!" Charles screamed.

A long sword glowed in Charles' hands. It resembled Alex's katana that he used to carry around when he was younger.

Alex's katana had gold and silver lilies imprinted around the handles. However, Charles' sword was decorated with marigolds while the sharp blade was colored platinum rather than silver.

The villagers that briefly froze from the appearance of the foreign sword began to quickly start to move again.

"Close your eyes and cover your ears Rika," Charles warned.

I got that Charles was trying to protect me but there was no need as I was mentally older than him anyway.

"Why? I'm not scared of blood" I answered.

I wanted to help rather than standing helplessly behind Charles.

"Rika. Listen to me!" Charles yelled.

Fine! I closed my eyes and covered my ears. After Charles lightly shook me a few minutes later, I removed my hands from my ears and opened my eyes. The bright sword was gone and the bodies of the villagers were unmoving and devastated in their pools of blood.

Their heads were separated from their bodies from one swift cut. There was no other injury present on the villagers while I found some scratches on Charles' hands. His lips bled like he had red lipstick painted around his mouth.

"Run Rika! Before the others start chasing after us again." Charles pulled me towards the direction of the cave.

Charles and I ran towards the cave non-stop. When we finally confirmed that we were a good distance away from the village, we started to pick the flowers on the way to the cave.

"What was just that?" I asked Charles when we had the luxury to talk.

"What?" Charles tried to pretend that event never happened.

"The sword that came out from your hand and how you were suddenly able to overpower the villagers," I replied to him to not take me lightly.

"Didn't you ever think it was strange that you suddenly got two new classmates?" Charles asked mockingly once we were inside the cave.

"Well, Luke and I suddenly entered the Abright Institute Academy during kindergarten as well. So, I thought you guys were able to improve your grades drastically to enter this class as well." I responded.

"Well there are those kinds of rare cases too, but didn't you guys have a long introduction because of that to your classmates." Charles hinted.

That did remind me how Luke and I introduced ourselves for the entire day and explained our history to the other partners like how we ended up entering this school.

'Let's welcome Charles and Miliana to our class,' Daniel's voice echoed into my head.

"Your last names! Daniel never fully said your names!" I exclaimed.

"Who are you?" I questioned him intensely.

"I guess it doesn't matter if I reveal myself now. I am Charles de Lumiere and heir to the Lumiere family while engaged to my partner, Miliana Lumiere Ruette." Charles bowed like he was welcoming guests at an elegant party.

"What about your family name? That doesn't answer anything about the sword!" I replied with a bit of annoyance in my voice.

What was with the first district's obsession with family names! Luke, Allan, and Alex all seemed pretty particular about it. Shelly and Ellen also seemed like they were treading careful boundaries when they talked to people outside our inner circle at school.

"You don't know anything, do you? Even though you're a central part of it." Charles scoffed like I was the only one that was missing out on this common information.

"To start off, do you know the top five families in the first district?" Charles asked.

"I did hear that the Roselia and Monete family was part of it?"

"I guess you're not completely clueless. The remaining top five families in the first district is the Lumiere, Nuelle, and Suilett families." Charles continued.

"Your family is very powerful. Since the eldest son of the Roselia family is marrying the heiress of the Suilett family, making Luke the heir to the Roselia family."

Luke had an older brother? I wondered why I had never heard of it before.

"I never heard any of this," I admitted.

Luke knew many things about my family from my constant complaints about my homesickness in elementary school when I tried to slack off. But I barely knew anything about Luke other than the fact he came from the Roselia family.

"You should ask the rest of the information to Luke since it's not my place to say everything when I'm not your partner."

"What about that sword? You can tell me stuff about the sword without the complicated family history, right? I even saw Alex carrying a similar sword around when he was younger." I added to make it seem like I wasn't completely left out on the information.

"Fine, I'll tell you up to this much. Each heir to the top five families in the first district possesses a sword like mine." Charles derisively replied.

"That's barely any information!" I shouted in irritation.

"Just go to sleep Rika and save your energy for tomorrow." Charles just replied.

After eating the tasteless flowers after I woke up, Charles and I quickly set out to go to the next cave. We spent our days in silence since we did not have enough energy to talk from walking excruciatingly long distances without a break. It was unfortunate we needed to get to the nearest cave to sleep for the night.

The most miserable part was how our mana didn't work as easily as the first district. This meant our pace was really slow. We weren't even halfway there to the facility yet.

When we finally reached the midway point, I broke the silence, "Seeing that you're not a jerk as much as the first time I saw you, why were you so mean the first time we met?"

"I heard the rumors about the partner switching incident when I was in the other class. I just didn't want the same things to happen to me so I kind of took drastic measures." Charles squeezed out a reply.

'Drastic measures' I see. What did these eleven-year-olds think of me!

I was seeing a consistent pattern from the actions of Alex and Charles while Allan was just childish in comparison.

"Why did you even transfer to our class? Wasn't our grade always split into two even classes?" I asked.

"Just as you mentioned before, a new pair entered the school in our grade and the school had to decide how to rearrange the classes. Most times in these kinds of situations, the top five families are rearranged to be in the same class and it was decided that Miliana and I would transfer to this class." Charles answered like there was no end to my questions.

"What about Ellen and Allan? They're not included in the list." I voiced my thoughts out loud.

"They're not but their families are pretty powerful and old, but not much as the top five. They're part of the top ten families in the first district." Charles answered as if he was dumbing things down.

"Then what really separates a family from being part of the top five?"

"This is the last question I'm answering because of your constant pestering. It's mana." Charles replied.

No matter how much I continued to pester Charles for more answers, he pretended he was asleep for the remainder of the night. I gave up trying to shake Charles awake since I knew I would have to sleep soon to have enough energy to go to the next cave.

I prepared to go to bed as I covered myself with the fur blanket I stole from the tent.

Click. Clack. Clic-

Footsteps. I heard the sound of footsteps that were getting bigger, which meant that something was heading towards this cave.

"Charles, wake up! Something is heading towards this cave!" I whispered in his ear.

"What!" Charles shouted in surprise as he quickly got up.