The Forgotten Land of Myria

The first bright dewdrop had just about rolled off one of the leaves of the majestic Cedarbud tree, signaling the morning. As the sun’s rays cracked the horizon, I sat under my shed watching the water’s crickling motions. The waves seemed awfully calm. In fact, life had yet to show presence in the ocean that morning. The few rumbles and riggles were merely the breeze that seemed to dampen some of the creatures who had also scarcely shown heads during the rising of the sun. I felt my muscles tingle as a chill struck the back of my head. It made me anxious. The stillness. The absence of sound or movement.

All the peace and quiet was nerve-racking. The tension and thrill, as if a source of intervention was just waiting for me to let my guard down. Yet, I couldn’t sense anything.

Maybe I just needed a deep breath. Lately, I had been too caught up in these hallucinations and suspicions, which has been stressful, even for a girl like me. As a hunter, I was trained to not succumb to distractions. I took a deep breath, silenced my fertile imagination, and proceeded to sit patiently atop the Cedarbud tree. The Silvergan River ran underneath me, landing small drops of water around my leg. That wasn’t just a tree--it was the tree. Ever since I was a little girl, I would climb up to this exact branch, over this view of the river, and eat berries all day. Sometimes I would even take a small hammock and hang it off the branches.

I picked up a scroll on the Supreme Skills of Taivuti and got back to silent training. A few hours passed before I finally began to hear the rustling of leaves. The wind was growing stronger! I felt my heart racing faster and my blood pounding as the sound grew louder. My emotions were rising and I looked back to find...a flock of birds flying away. I cursed my keen senses of motion. My mind created such vivid imaginings for nothing.

“Well, at least the birds proved that life still exists around here,” I thought. More rustling came along, this time with light steps. I recognized those steps and sighed.

“I know you’re there Kenui,” I said. “You can come out.” Through red blushing cheeks, Kenui peeked his head out of a bush. His honey-hazel eyes flinched as he smiled shyly.

“You’ve got leaves all over your hair, you little mountain man,” I said chuckling. He quickly ruffled his brown curly hair before putting his hands behind his back.

I grinned. “Doing something I should know about?” He giggled, shaking his head.

“Then what were you doing behind the bushes?”

“I-I was just watching you train,” he said in a persuasive childish manner, as I frowned, trying to give the strict adult look. “I-It’s true,” he pressed on. My expression fainted into a smile.

“Alright,” I said, “but you need to be concentrating. Your Rahiti is in two months’ time.”

“I know,” he said. “I want to be in your guild!”

I laughed, throwing him a stash of berries. “We’ll see. Now run along.” He nodded and turned, tripping over one of the tree’s bulky roots. Embarrassed, he picked himself up, and trotted off. I leaned onto my tree branch with my hands over my head. Kenui was the only child able to expose my kind, caring side that way. Not that I didn’t care for the others. On the contrary. I was a sort of inspiring figure to all of them, I guess, for spending part of my day with them as a hunting instructor, but Kenui brought out that “motherly” tone in me. Faintly, I could hear a pair of rails singing a late morning song and figured it was time for me to go. I gathered my parchment, plucked off some more berries and hopped off the tree.

Arriving at the village, I saw a couple of kids gathering things for a midday bonfire. Some hunters were bringing home game. In the village garden near home, I spotted a woman sitting in the grass, cross-legged, performing whimsical movements while humming. The crazy white hair was unmistakable. Aunt Eeva. She must’ve noticed me approaching because she stood up, and waved desperately.

“Safira!” she yelled, “Just in time! I was performing the ancient Luminexium meditation, said to bend light.”

I sighed. “Why do that? You know it’s hardly possible.”

Her eyes widened. “To give the world an extra spark! A burst of color,” she said giggling wildly.

It was something to expect from her. Aunt Eeva was the most unhinged person one could ever meet. Not to mention she’s the biggest “friend of nature”. She would wear full robes of clashing colors and textures along with a tiara made of dried flowers, her white hair sticking out in every direction. Typical of Alyven, the Earth guild. Anyone could spot her a mile away.

Sharing a home with her wasn’t so bad, though, and I’ve had to do so for as long as I can remember.

My mother is extremely ill, a child survivor of the plague. I barely saw her when I was young, and when I did, I took caution not to grow too attached to her, for she was incapable of raising a child. Nowadays, she’s grown too ill to even be seen and time doesn’t permit me to visit her. As for my father, I’ve never seen him. Ever. Not once. He disappeared shortly before I was born. And so, Aunt Eeva was the last trace of family I had, and those traits made her lovable.

“Almost forgot. Here.” I handed her some of the remaining berries I had in my bag. “From the Cedarbud.”

She gulped them down voraciously. In a matter of seconds her cheeks were stuffed and her mouth was smeared with berry juice.

“Yummy!” she said through a full mouth. I smiled. “I should go prepare the fire,” I said.

“Now wait,” she said. “No need to rush. Sit down. Help me perform the Luminexium!”

She proceeded humming and waving her arms until, after about five minutes, a gorble just so happened to pass by and caught her glance. It twitched, flinched, and ran to the woods in horror, failing the spell.

“Oh! nature is just so creative,” she said clapping her hands.

“Well that worked out,” I said sarcastically. “I’m going now, to prepare the fire.” Once again, I was interrupted by Aunt Eeva tugging my leg.

“Why such a hurry?” she asked lying face down on the grass with her eyes closed and arms snuggled around my leg. “Don’t you have any time for my frail self?”

“What? Clearly not!” I said, “I must fix up our meals and--”

Aunt Eeva interrupted me with a heavy gasp. She hastily picked herself up. Her eyes widened, turning completely white, and squinted quickly, towards the horizon. It was a vision. Aunt Eeva had frequent ones.

“What is it?” I asked. “What do you see?”

Tilting her head back towards me she reached out and touched my forehead with the tips of her ice-cold fingers. I felt like my eyes had spun around as I was taken somewhere I did not want to go. An old, not so bright, memory of mine. Of the two boys...

It was exactly twelve years prior to the present day. The Society of Myria had been well reconstructed and the Matahi Chairmen had already been in leadership for around a decade. It was early spring. The fields were covered in purple, red and yellow flowers from the hawthorns and groundsel bulbs that had already sprouted through the melting snow.

That time of year was magical. I would wake up to the song of the nixies and spend all morning eating bog fern berries out of the trillium bushes. I saw myself running through meadows with two boys, who were my best friends at the time.

We grew up together, for the younger boy was born on the same day as me. We had a strong connection, but he was extremely peculiar, shy and closed to his own feelings. He, often times, would wander off alone, absentminded, shut off in his own thoughts and forever surrounded by jujoos, horlusts, bellemoths, creatures of all kind. The older boy was remarkably attractive. He had an uncommon charm, along with a rare beauty and a tender, outgoing personality. As a naive five-year-old I obviously looked up to him and followed him everywhere. He had the charisma of a born leader, something that made most kids want to follow him. They were very different boys; everyone could tell there was something special about them. They had bright futures, but all the attention they got left them exposed. The forces of evil had their eyes on them, too.

That was the problem. Our intimacy with Yihwa made us disregard the existence of an evil source that was on the rise...The same evil source that twisted the minds of the outside world into trying to destroy us forty years ago. The same evil source that introduced the world to violence, corruption, and chaos, and turned them against themselves. Theon. The name behind all the darkness that has attempted to take away our joy.

Although, at the time, us Myrians thought of him as either shy or intimidated, or both, for he had never tried to attack us. What we probably didn’t know is that he wasn’t the dumbest guy out there. Since he hadn’t ever harmed us, all Myrians eventually let their guards down thinking he would never stand a chance against our faith. Sadly, not all Myrians had the faith they thought they had. At that point, he was able to execute his plan that targeted, with no doubt, the two boys who were frolicking with me in the fields that day.

As we were running through the fields playing around, we came across the monument of the Messenger’s Triscepter --his scepter--that had been created by the townspeople and placed at the front entrance of one of the ancient temples to show their gratitude towards him.

As we were staring at the monument, I wondered out loud if some chosen citizen would ever bear the power to wield the Triscepter, and if so, who would it be? As I said such things I looked towards the older boy. He would grow up to be a hero. No doubt. I guess I kind of made my thoughts obvious, because the younger boy, seeing this, grew infuriated and once again, ran off alone, grumbling. He had always been jealous of my admiration towards the older boy. That was his motivation. He did everything to be like him, to get the attention he got.

This time, I decided to run after him and try to talk to him. After much searching, I found him deep in the forest in a place where I think no one had ever been, probably the place he went when no one could find him anywhere. It was a cave under the edge of a cliff where all the forests met. It had four openings with paths that led to the four ends of Musgrave Island. The inside of the cave was abundant, with walls covered in emeralds and flowers sheeting the spots where the sun hit. The end of the cave had an opening at the edge of the cliff with a view of all of Myria.

As he saw me, he turned away, embarrassed. I turned him back towards me and looked straight into his eyes.

“It’s always him,” he said referring to the older boy. “He always gets all the attention. It’s like he’s the best at everything.”

I tried to comfort him, by saying things like, “You’re special too,” but he wouldn’t buy it. I felt terrible for always admiring the older boy and leaving him out. So I stayed there with him for a while to calm him down, and, as we talked, I began to really notice him for the first time. He had a different type of beauty. An inner beauty. It was like no one could figure him out. He was always so mysterious.

He also seemed to know an awful lot about nature, and life, for a 5-year-old. He took me all around the cave explaining (as much as he understood) every single aspect of it. He explained how the emerald coverings were formed and how the cave emitted a sort of green glow all around it. It almost seemed unreal how a little kid figured all these things out on his own. As he talked, I noticed how incredibly intelligent he was, almost like a genius.

I was lead to an entrance that followed a secret path. As we walked toward it, the neon green glow began to fade. The path changed into an emission of colors that even blinded me for a few seconds. It was like strolling on a rainbow road with water rushing underneath us. Up until this day I have never seen anything so beautiful. When we got to the secret chamber he was leading me to, I couldn’t believe what I saw. In front of us was a natural bouquet of the most breathtakingly elegant flowers I had ever seen. The core held a small sphere of the same emerald found on the walls of the cave and the petals were shaded like the colorful path underneath us. A color itself I couldn’t distinguish. It was like a rainbow, yes, but something deeper than that. He said it was called an Englatine Rose. The most unreal thing about it was that it grew upside down from a stem made of what looked like sparkling icicles. The light reflected off the medallion that hung from my chest.

The boy walked up to the bouquet and gently plucked off one of the flowers. He held it in his hands gesturing towards me. He dropped it in my hands and I was speechless staring at the petals of the Englatine Rose as I twiddled it in my small fingers. Not knowing how to react, I leaned towards him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He instantly turned red, blushing with a dismayed look on his face, as if he had forgotten his name. We stood there, smiling at each other, until our silence was broken by a sudden roar that seemed to shake the place around us, knocking most of the Englatine Roses off the bouquet. The boy, in an improvised heroic act, grabbed my hand and we raced out of the cave. I gently clutched the rose in my other hand, running cautiously. We barged through one of the cave’s exits and began to run through the forest. Our innocent minds didn’t know why we were running, but given the falling trees and loud shrieks, it was a natural instinct to run. That’s how our innocence got us into the trap.

As we ran, a giant wild ape came out of nowhere and landed right in front of us. From each blink of its murky eyes a yellow slime dripped down its leathery face, slid over its jagged fangs, landing thickly on the sharp quills that covered its body. It had yellow mucus and needle-like hair that ran from its neck, over its entire back, and to the ends of its arms. Frightened, we turned and ran in a useless attempt to escape, stumbling and falling into a rock pit. Gnarling and roaring, the beast slowly followed us. I began to sob and yell for help, pounding the rocks with my small fists. It came so close I could smell its horrid breath. The boy, in another heroic act, stood in front of me attempting to protect me, but what we didn’t know was that the beast wasn’t after me at all.

To my surprise, it slowly reached for the boy, cradled him in its pillowy hands, turned and walked away. Horrified, I ran after him, again uselessly, to try to save him. It simply disregarded me and pressed on, as the boy struggled to escape its clutches. The beast came to a halt and the screeching noise grew louder as a large flying creature thudded onto the surface, shaking the ground around me. Riding the creature was a man in a dark cloak that covered his face. I hid behind a tree and the boy and I exchanged looks as if it was the last time we would see each other. In a desperate act, I stiffly ripped the medallion off my chest and hurled it towards him. It was my most cherished possession. The only memory I had of my Father --he had left it for me the day he went into battle, before I was even born. He grasped it with both hands and I assumed he got the message.

Suddenly, the boy was lowered towards ground level and placed in the clutches of the cloaked man. He, once again, tried to fight back but the man brought him towards his aerial pet, opening a dark carriage. As he pushed back the curtains, someone else jumped out trying to escape but the man caught him and threw him back in. It was the older boy! They were being kidnapped. I didn’t know it then, but the cloaked man was embodied by Theon himself and was taking them away from Myria so they would never see a future against him.

Without any reaction whatsoever, I stared as the beast disappeared and Theon flew away with the two boys. My two best friends. I looked down at my hands. The younger one held the medallion given to me by my father before he passed. And I held the crumpled Englatine Rose the boy had given me. The most beautiful creation I would ever see. I saw my fearful eyes well up as the image of the invasion began to fade, and I was back in reality, staring blindly at Aunt Eeva through the mist of tears. Had I been conscious I wouldn’t have allowed them to burst out. I couldn’t afford people seeing me like this, so I quickly wiped away the uninvited tears, and recomposed myself.

“So...what does all that mean?” My voice was still shaky. Aunt Eeva’s eyes were locked straight into mine, and I felt her stringency arouse me.

“Bid me, you do know,” she said. “I can see it clearly. Those two dear ones whom you lost at a young age. They are on their way back.”