Rowana

The little girl moaned to her sleep, with the cords latching onto her body. She cradled to the side and embraced the bough wrapped around her arms. A cracking sound reverberated through the forest. I could only bet that the screeches and the fracturing sounds came from this girl and not from the monsters.

"What do we, Chief Alice?! You told me that human settlements are dangerous. And now that we've found one, what should we do?!" I asked, while flailing both of my cotton-filled hands.

Alice looked at me with disgusted eyes after shifting all responsibilities to her. She was the princess, and I was a mere peasant back in my world. There was no other choice but for me to listen to her desires.

"I don't know! Do I look like a princess that has a plan?" Alice remarked, and insulted herself.

"That's the idea, Alice! You are a princess! Isn't this your forte? How can you rule a kingdom if you don't have a plan?!"

"Ruling an empire and saving a mysterious girl with her family that is going to kill us if they came from Detroit are two separate ideas!" Alice retorted.

We bickered against each other and forgot about the girl in front of us. After we swivelled our focus back to the little lass, thousands of roars echoed throughout the forest. The two of us thought monsters were dormant in these areas.

But we had thought wrong.

"Let's get the girl out of here first, and then we decide on our plan," I suggested.

"Good idea," Alice seconded.

Four arms braced the girl as we carried her above our head like a coffin. But the two of us panicked and did not know what to do. Our only choice was to carry the mysterious girl in the quickest way possible. We cared not for the aesthetics or efficiency of transferring a human being. Alice and I booked it and ran away in a straight line with the speed of a cheetah.

The sound never ceased to stop as we sprung forward. It almost felt like those dreadful voices came beside us. But as we looked at our flanks, nobody was there to greet our eyes. Only the brushing leaves and the swaying weeds welcomed our presence.

I shook my head and expressed my anxious thoughts to the girl running beside me. With the words, "We're going to die!" our marathon became lively as ever.

Alice supported my thought and screamed the exact sentences I mentioned. We continued chanting the depressing line as we raced through the woodland.

However, our feet gave up before we could even say stop. Our movements became sluggish like a snail, forcing the two of us to take a brief break on the sides. The piercing sounds of crunches and growls still accompanied our journey.

But we paid no concern to those voices, since all the running exhausted our bodies. All we wanted was to get out of here as soon as possible. It would be nice if we escaped from those creatures without getting any wounds or killed. We also needed to deliver this girl to a safe place or the people close by.

This girl probably came from a village. If Alice were right, Detroit would never lay a finger on us. We saved their child, and those people would feel obliged to rescue our asses on our way out.

As we resumed our race against these monsters, we arrived at a human settlement. Huts made of woods and twigs greeted our eyes with the worn-out fences made of metals. The place had two sections; on the right, it had the cabins, while on the left, it had a farming station. I thought at first glance that this place had a modern touch of human civilization from my previous world. It had an unruly tractor with almost flattened tires. I doubted that this machinery would still sow the vast land.

Just before we went past the fences, a gunshot fired right at us. But the bullet did not hit our bodies but the creatures still chasing our tails. A wailing sound came afterwards as the monster behind our back fell on the ground. With that gunfire, that bullet pierced the monster's chest, killing it with a shot.

"Stay back, or I will shoot you too." A voice came out from one of the dozen houses at our fore.

The gun's tip emerged from the door as the person who called for us stepped outside. An old man stood in front of us, with his weapon directed at our heads. It was a hunting rifle that had a 4x scope with countless accessories attached. The man wore red checkered sleeves with a straw hut nestling on top of his head. He had a straw of hay clipped between his lips and chewed it as he spoke to us.

"We come in peace. We are not here to hurt you or do anything to you," I said out of defence, hoping the farmer would heed my voice.

"Shut up, lad. Your mask doesn't scare me. I know this place better than the two of you," the man answered, while marching towards us. "Why do you have my daughter carrying her weirdly like that? You two are here to bring trouble in our town, aren'tcha? "

"No, no, no, no, sir! We just happened to meet this girl in the middle of the forest. The two of us saved her!" Alice exclaimed. "We found your daughter and wanted to help her. If we are bad people, I could've killed her already."

She non-verbally instructed me to offer the girl to the man before us. Since the two of us were kind citizens that promoted peace, we did not cast any spells in our defence. All we wanted to do was to save this girl and bring her back to where she belonged.

The man raised an eyebrow at our gestures, but he lowered his guard as soon as we gingerly placed the girl on the ground. He finally understood our words and averted the muzzle of the firearm.

"Rowana, I thought I lost you, sweety. It's going to be okay, pumpkin. Daddy is here for you."

The man's fierce expression turned soft, like cotton. He even shed a tear as that drop fell from his cheeks. The bloke wrapped his hands around the girl and gave her a loving embrace. If I had a functional heart, the scene would have melted it without warning.

The farmer looked at us with teary eyes and lowered his head. He carried his daughter in his arms and picked the gun with the other. Despite the weight of the slumbering girl, the man aimed his armament at our side and blasted the monster away. A splatter of blood echoed in the distance, with the screech of the monsters dying in vain.

"Come with me if you still want to live. I hate having debts with someone I don't know, or someone I know."

The man motioned us to enter inside the ancient-looking barn. Like any other barn, it had a crimson coloured roof with white paint covering each layer. The door also had wooden planks that acted as gates to prevent any intruders from entering the place. As we entered inside, stables and sleeping horses, chickens, and pigs welcomed our eyes. There was also a figure standing in the corner, waiting for us to arrive.

It was a girl armed with a pitchfork gripped by both of her hands. She aimed the tip of her weapon at us and attempted to strike us from the front. But as soon as she met the man's eyes, the girl lowered her stake and gave the man an embrace. The woman-who I assumed was the mother of the child plus the farmer's wife knelt and caressed her daughter.

"Rowana, are you hurt? Are you okay? What happened to her, Clint?" the mother asked, and held her gaze at the farmer, who she called Clint.

The mother averted her gaze from her husband and leered at our figures. She stood up and raised her pitchfork, only to stop by Clint with his extending arms. "No, Lorraine. These people saved Rowana. These strangers helped us find our daughter. It pains me to say it, but we owe them her life."

Lorraine had her doubts, but she finally listened to what the farmer had explained. She gazed at our figures for five seconds before shifting them back to Rowana.

"There are still monsters outside?" Lorraine asked, but it was too late.

The ground quivered and disrupted our balance. Thousands of shafts pierced through the panels, destroying a part of the barn. The tamed domestic animals never made a clamor, despite the noise coming from outside. This event just showed that the two people tamed their animals to react when this situation occurs.

Clint turned around and faced us once more. Alice and I widened our eyes in surprise as soon as we discerned his facial expression.

"Do you have things to do? We need a helping hand to defeat the horde of monsters."