"Fire arrows were raining that day."
A memory of the celebrated victory for the Kingdom of Silvera. Their neighbor, Sariel, had finally fallen into their hands.
Elisa Elric ran with her attendant toward the blessed forest of Gaea, barefoot, clinging to the hope that her child would be saved by the enchantress said to be protecting the forest.
"Is it still far away, Nell?" she asked the attendant. "Tell me if we are already near and–aaaaaah!"
Elisa fell on her feet, her ankle twisted. Still carrying the child, she tried to get up but failed.
"Miss Elisa–"
"Don't come near me, you, monster!" Elisa shrieked, still horrified at the sight of Nell's head hanging from the man's hand.
"I was calling you but you're ignoring me. I told you to stop. That's why…"
"Lantis Silvera, I will never be your wife," Elisa said firmly, clutching the baby nearer to her chest. "And I will not let you touch my child."
"Your child is my child, Elisa."
Lantis took a step forward to Elisa, tossing the severed head to the side like nothing.
"You see, Elisa, what's yours is mine and what's mine is yours. I'll make you comfortable–"
"Shut up. You disgust me!"
The leaves rustled in the momentary silence that followed Elisa's outburst. The moon shone brighter than before. In a second, a person, one who was not present earlier, suddenly showed up in between them. Her long hair, flowing freely, caught the silver touches of the moonlight, her dress light and breezy.
Instinctively, Lantis pointed the sword at her, but the sword broke into pieces like silver dust blown into the air.
"Who are you?!" Lantis growled at her.
"Are you the one who spilled blood on my land?" the intruder asked Lantis, not taking her eyes off Elisa and the child.
"I do not ca–"
"And you, did you call for me?"
Lantis, with his sword broken, tried to use brute force and punched the lady, but the lady stopped Lantis' fist with one finger. She tilted her head slightly to the right and Lantis fell down screaming, holding his hand.
"What did you do?"
"It's poison. If you don't get it treated–"
Before the lady could finish her sentence, Lantis ran off back to the place where fire arrows continued to pour, screaming for help, cursing Elisa and the lady.
Elisa tried to stand up again, to bow to the lady. This time, she carefully took her time to put some strength to her limbs.
"You're dying," the lady stated with no concern in her voice. Just a simple fact given to Elisa.
Elisa smiled at the lady. That was the least of her concern now. Elisa offered her two-days old child to the lady and bowed deeply to her.
"Would you please take care of him?" she said in between short breaths, trying to endure the pain she had from her stabbed stomach and injured feet.
The lady took the child and touched Elisa's damp face.
"Name him," she commanded Elisa.
"He's…an Elric. Call him Emrys. Emrys Elric, my son."
After giving a name to her child, Elisa fell unconscious to the ground.
The lady looked down at the dead body lying down on her feet, smiling to the soil.
As a mercy to Elisa, she raised her hand and covered Elisa's body with twigs using her magic. The twigs attached to Elisa and sucked the energy from her body.
"You'll be part of this forest, Elisa Elric. Your lumenites will dance at night and rest during the day. From your corpse, a flower will be born and when the time comes and your consciousness returns, you'll be Elisa no more. This is my blessing and curse to you."
----------------------------------------------------
Fire crackled in front of the boy. The fish that was being smoked danced in the slight sway of air around him when his mother approached him. It has been six years since he opened his eyes to the world.
He eyed the tall lady, Wisteria, his mother who raised him. Her long hair sat elegantly on her slender shoulders, her clothes although long, showed no sign of being soiled by the mud and dirty ground.
"What are you thinking?" Wisteria asked the boy.
The boy paused. He looked intently at the curves of fire playing in front of him. The slight tension with the wind, its flickering and smoke that highlighted its heat.
"Can I lie to you?" he asked his mother. Throughout the years, he picked up his mother's habit of answering questions with another question.
"Are you going to lie?"
The boy did not answer, instead he wrote something on the ground. English Alphabets. Starting from A to Z. Then he looked at his mother's eyes intently.
"What are those?"
"Do you know these?" the boy probed on Wisteria. "If you know this, I cannot lie," he said. Because that meant Wisteria could read his mind while he was singing the alphabet song.
"Why do you keep testing me?" the irritated Wisteria whined.
"Because you're my guardian?"
"Emrys, I may be powerful but I am not all-knowing," Wisteria said as she lay her hand on Emrys Elric's head. "My authority starts and ends in this forest. Beyond that is not for me like how your land will be the same land that will kill me."
Emrys stood up and ran away from his mother. The action was so sudden even Wisteria was puzzled. Then he ran to the creek, jumped on the large stones and when he finally landed on the other side, he made his way to the deepest part of the forest where a cave was located.
Inside her head, Wisteria watched the path that Emrys took, biting her lower lip in anxiousness.
When Emrys stopped in front of the cave, Wisteria teleported near him and held his wrist to stop him.
"Take a step further and you won't be allowed in my forest anymore."
Emrys looked at the hand that was holding him firmly. The icy cold touch of the skin felt like the same as the prison cell that held him before in his first life.
"Then, did you know what happened last week?" Emrys asked, the faint hint of smile in his face contrasted the sadness in his eyes.
Wisteria did not answer, her hand stayed firmly on Emrys' wrist. "Let's go back to the cabin," she just said, going back to her usual cold voice.
"I hate rules, Mother."
Wisteria's eyes narrowed when she heard Emrys call her 'Mother'. She loosened her grip on his wrist and sighed.
"What do you want?" she responded.
"I always think that there is something wrong, Mother. Whenever I hunted, my victims always vanished as if my sins were cleaned up for me. Then I remembered when we first met, Mother. The sword vanished into thin air. I thought that was always the case, but these days, there were trails being left behind. That's why…" Emrys paused.
"What are you trying to say, son of Elisa?"
"You're dying."
Wisteria's eyes turned cold, winds swirled around her, disturbing the once quiet place, the ground shook from her the high concentration of lumenites in the air. The sudden flux of lumenites frightened all the animals in one kilometer radius and made them run away from the angry caretaker.
"I guess, you are not a little boy anymore," Wisteria said after calming down.
Well, in Emrys' head, he was in fact not a little boy from the start. Dying at 26 and getting reincarnated into this new world, made him at least 32 years old now–an old man in the body of a child.
"When an animal kills a hunter, the forest doesn't care. The body will rot and it will naturally merge to the beauty of nature. It's cruel and a cycle. But, you see, Emrys is just a child and as a responsible adult, I need to clean up and dispose of those corpses you made."
Wisteria raised her hand and placed it in front of Emrys' face, startling the boy.
"Aside from that, I also need to keep this forest peaceful."
A small amount of purplish lumenites started to form on Wisteria's hand, tension in the air rose again as the floating lumenites gathered on Wisteria's command.
"But you cannot kill me, Mother. No–" Emrys stopped his sentence. "Let me rephrase that," he said, a distant cold smile flashed on his face. "You cannot kill beings inside this forest, Mother. That's your blessing and your curse."
Emrys then stabbed Wisteria on her stomach with a steel pin he secretly made behind her. The forest darkened as soon as the caretaker of it was injured.
"What's wrong with you?!" Wisteria shouted. She stopped the pain and bleeding with her hand and own magic but failed. Emrys used the void against her.
"But Mother! I need to keep living because I like this life," Emrys cried. "And I need to kill endlessly for me to live. That's my blessing and curse."