At sunrise we begin walking again, and not long after we come to a large stone wall with large cracks and missing chunks in it, the top of the wall jagged and blackened from what appears to have been a fire.
"What's this?" Aithon asks.
"Why don't we find out." Eron suggests, already walking inside through the opening where a large wooden gate would be.
Everything is blackened and burnt, covered with ash, there are numerous pieces of burnt wood and char where small wooden houses would have been, in the middle of the village is a large circle of water, with burnt and half-sunken boats floating on top of the water, connected to burnt poles.
Everyone walks around, kicking over pieces of wood as I walk over to the other side to kick a burnt pile of wood near the gates where a house used to stand. As soon as I kick it over I see a small bracelet, it's badly burnt, hardly recognizable, but I remember it's beads were a bright turquoise.
"Stagnum." I say aloud.
"What?" Narweth asks.
"This place...it's Stagnum."
"That's impossible."
"No, it's not."
Seven Years Ago
A middle-aged woman with brown hair tucked into a strip of cloth rushes out of a nearby home over to me.
"Don't you have somewhere to go?" She asks me.
"I don't live here."
"Well, what are you doing just standing here doing nothing? Come inside, please!" She grabs my arm and pulls me into the home she ran out of, slamming the door shut.
I stand in a small kitchen, on the other side of the room is a fireplace with a pot hanging over a small fire, in the middle of the kitchen is a rotting table with four chairs around it, in the next room is a larger place and I see four small mattresses with pillows and blankets on the floor. In the kitchen are two children about half my age, one of them a girl, the other a boy.
"Children, shut the windows and cover them, quickly!" The woman instructs them.
"Mummy, who's that?" The girl asks.
"Someone who needs help. Where's Emlan?"
"He went to the neighbors for something." The girl answers.
The woman moves to the kitchen window and bolts it shut before drawing curtains together. She opens the door quickly, leaning out onto the small porch.
"Emlan!" She calls. "Come! Hurry!"
A second later a boy around my age run in with a small sack, the woman bolts the door shut.
"Sorry," He apologizes. "The shipmaster's wife - I was helping them out, she wanted to give us this for my helping them."
"Oh, well that's very thoughtful, dear." The woman says before noticing Emlan look over at me. "Oh, this is-" She looks at me. "What's your name dear?"
"Elektra."
"Emlan," She says. "This is Elektra, Elektra, this is my son, Emlan. She needs a place to stay from the Nightriders."
"Thank you for the offer," I say. "But your family won't be safe here with me," I look through a small gap in the curtains as we hear a scream. "It was a mistake listening to those guards."
"Why?" The woman asks.
"I think they're after me." I close the gap before moving towards the door. "No," The woman moves in front of the door. "I want to keep you safe, too. You are a young girl in trouble, and I seriously doubt the Nightriders are after you."
