There is so much before that night I wish I could remember. I didn’t think of it then but now I wish I could have spent more time memorizing my mom and dad’s faces. They are just vague blurs now. Over time, they have become silhouettes of people. I can see their outlines but details about them have been reduced to smears of paint; yellow for their hair, brown for their faces, blue dots for eyes. They are too far away now and too far to see clearly, like anything in the past.

But that night, I remember vividly. It was deeply etched into my bones and everything about me is a result of what happened so long ago. I was so young that it’s hard to say that I miss everything that came before it but there are things that came after it I miss as well. What I don’t miss is the sheer terror of waking up into a nightmare by someone shouting that your parents are dead.

After that, it was a downward spiral deeper and deeper into chaos and absolute hell starting from my brother coming at my door with a sword in one hand and blood making his clothes a crimson work of art. I never said it out loud, but there was a small second where I feared he might have been the one that took their lives. It was only the smallest of thoughts and it didn’t stop me from going with him when we needed to flee. I guess all the time he spent with dad paid off because he was able to get us down to the foyer right before the courtyard without getting caught.

It wasn’t a perfect escape because we did, eventually, get caught. Right before we got outside, just as we reached the bottom of the stairs and the first floor of the castle, eight or nine men appeared out of nowhere and surrounded us. Kael tried to fight them off, but they were so much bigger and better equipped than he was; Kael with his stolen sword and simple clothes. Then these iron whips came out of the darkness like the arms some metal kraken, pulling them into the depths of shadow never to be seen again,

Once they were all gone, a man emerged. Tall and dressed completely in black, the stranger hardly said a word and never gave us his name. At least, he never gave me his name. He did tell us that if we wanted to live, we had to follow him. Having no other options and owing the stranger our lives, we followed him. I remember being scared that under those black wrappings and evil looking mask, he was secretly some kind of horrible monster with metal tentacles kept hidden until he lured his prey into a false sense of security. I thought that if I pulled his mask off, he’d have a mouth full of jagged, sharp teeth like a metal trap.

In the courtyard, there were a series of tunnels that lead under the town surrounding the castle that I never knew about. This surprised me because I was sure that as a kid, I had explored all there was of the castle I once called home. I did that to every place I called home. The tunnels had multiple exits, most of which I think either exited out into another part of the castle or somewhere into the town, but we didn’t want to be in either of those places. The tunnel we took went even further. On the outside, there was a horse tied to a tree hidden in the most random of places left there deliberately by our rescuer.

He placed us on top of the horse first before getting on behind us and riding opposite of the fierce battle waging where our home once was. I watched it get smaller and smaller the further we got from it, much like my memory of my one-time home. We rode on through the rain until daybreak, never stopping for anything. I wanted to sleep but I couldn’t. I was afraid of falling off. I was tired, from all that had happened and all it had taken out of me, but I just couldn’t sleep.

We finally arrived on the far outskirts of the kingdom, a place I didn’t remember the name of but would later discover to be the quiet little village of Sonata which rested on the coast of the Alblu Sea. After we dismounted, we were told to wait by the horse while the stranger went inside of a house. It was still dawn when we had arrived so I wasn’t sure if the owners of the house would even be awake. For a moment, I thought he was going to sneak in and do something to the owners but that thought might have been the night playing a toll on my normally sunny disposition; making me see the worst in people instead of the best.

He emerged again with a kindly couple who seemed to be somewhere in their late thirties. The man was old enough to be wise but young enough that he still had most of his strength still in him. Mark Reyes was his name. His wife was named June and she was a black-hair beauty that was refreshing to see so far out in the sticks. She had a curvy body with some decent tone to it and a sweet manner and I could see what Mark saw in her. The thing they had most in common was their kind nature. (That and their loyalty to the Lione Kingdom.)

The stranger took my brother aside while the couple came to talk to me. They introduced themselves and explained what was going on. “Melody,” June began, “something terrible has happened and your home is no longer safe. I’m so sorry for what you have gone through but I want you to know that we are here to make sure that you have a safe place to stay for as long as you need it. Your friend has asked us to take care of you and we have agreed. Would you be okay if you stayed with us for a little while?” She asked as though I was in any sort of state to answer.

That was the first time I had to actually stop and think about what had happened to me. We were far from the carnage that was once our peaceful lives and I had the ability to finally look back. My wonderful life had been torn away and burnt to ashes and I wanted to know why first before I made any attempt to rebuild it. “Why did they attack us?” I asked. Neither of them seemed to know or at least they weren’t sure what answer to give me.

It was the masked man who came to answer my question, returning with my brother. “They were rebels trying to lead a revolution against your mother and father. They believed so strongly that your parents shouldn’t have been king and queen that they were willing to destroy everything and kill many people to change that, including your parents and the two of you.” His voice was flat as he explained it to me, like a book of history reading its own pages. It wasn’t history to me. It was several miles south of us and who knows what became of it?

I looked at my brother and saw that his eyelids were puffy and a bit red. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I knew what it meant for me, that I was crying, but for my brother, he never cried. He laughed on rare occasions, but crying wasn’t something he could do. I wondered what he was crying about, thinking it was probably knowing our parents were dead. I felt my own tears start to well, but I didn’t have the strength to bawl or wail. I only let them streak down my face while forcing words from my choked throat.

“Mom and dad are dead?,” I finally admitted. It was more an assertion of fact but it came out as a question. Mr. and Mrs. Reyes answered with a solemn nod. “We can’t go back to our home,” I continued. Again, they replied with a nod which helped cement the record I was creating in my mind. “We don’t have a home anymore.” That last one was harder to say.

June answered me with words this time. “Sweet princess,” she called me, “you have a home here if you want it. We will take care of you and treat you with love and kindness until you are ready to leave. We will keep you safe from something like this.” More sadness began to lace the edge of her voice. “We cannot undo what has been done and we cannot replace the king and queen as your parents, but we can make sure that you grow up safe and loved.”

It was then that I had a chance to look and see what other choices I had. I couldn’t go back to the castle where the rebels were most likely killing people and stealing everything. I couldn’t go further north without a boat to cross the Alblu and even if I could, there was nothing waiting for me on the mainland. To the east were the great mountains of Bahemos Rest which I knew a pair of children couldn’t get through. Farther south were the vast plains of the Kingsmeet and then the Kingdom of Brace. We weren’t friendly with Brace; I remember that much. The Kingdom of Jellette was also to the east with its back to the mountains of Bahemos Rest but the idea of going there was just as poor as heading to the mainland. We would still be strangers in a strange land.

“I want to stay here,” I finally decided. “Can my brother and I live with you?” I remember being taught to be proper to everyone, regardless of where they lived or what their status was, right up to the point where they prove they don’t deserve the respect you’re offering. A dark, sorrowful expression came to everyone’s face, except for the masked man’s face because I couldn’t see it and my own because I didn’t know what everyone else knew.

Mrs. Reyes knelt down, tucking her skirt under her knees as she came to my level. “Sweet princess,” she called me again, only, this time, it sounded more patronizing like when the servants would call me that while trying to get me to do something I didn’t want to do but my mom said I had to. There was a lot of sympathy in her voice though and she tried her best to be comforting as she took my already broken world and shattered it into even tinier pieces. “I’m sorry,” she began, saying it like it was her fault, “but your brother isn’t staying with you. He has to go with the man that rescued you. He has something very important to do and he can't do it here.”

I still didn’t understand but that heavy sobbing I had put off suddenly became one of the few things I could do. I put my fists to my eyes and cried so hard I was stuck in a symphony of moans while choking back the lump in my throat. I struggled to speak, managing, “Why can’t… *sob* I go… *sob* with him?” It was the stranger’s turn to answer me. “Because, Princess Melody, it is a dangerous place and you would be unwelcome by the people there. Furthermore, it is a secret from the world and few are permitted to know of its existence. By the laws of this place to which we must go, you are forbidden to even see it. I am sorry”

I was getting sick of being addressed as a princess. Being a princess meant having your parents killed, your home burnt to the ground, and your brother being ripped out of your life with no real explanation. “I want to stay with my brother!” I began yelling. Sadness had turned to anger and it soon became the only emotion I could understand.

It was Kael who calmed me down. “I can’t stay with you,” he told me. “You’re all I have left and the only way I can protect you is if I go with him and you stay here where it is safe. The rest of the world isn’t safe, and it’s not safe where I’m going, but I need to go. I can’t, though, unless I know that you are going to be protected and hidden from the people who want to kill us like they did mother and father.”

I was at an impasse with fate. All the pieces had fallen in a row to make a big wall that I had no way of overcoming. So now I was left here, no family, no home, no brother. Even the man who had saved me was leaving me here, abandoning me without anyone I had any sort of emotional attachment to. It was just going to be me and these two strangers. Their kind words and sympathetic tones were supposed to make me feel better but all it made me feel was more appreciative of the life I once had. I wanted to go back, prevent it all somehow. Yet, there was nothing I could do. I was weak and powerless against the cold hand of destiny. This is where it had placed me and I had no choice but to try and forge a good life out of what little material it gave me to build with.

I got to watch the eyes of my brother show all the sorrow of an ocean’s worth of tears never spilled, held back by pride alone. I know he wanted to call out to me and I wanted to call out to him. A hug was all I had to give my brother before he left my life so I could try and make something of it in this tiny town on the border of a burnt kingdom. I had to stand there and watch as the stranger and my brother got back on the horse and left. Making the best of this situation was the only thing I could do to honor the memory of my lost family.

Mark and June were the nicest people in the world and I have yet to meet anyone to prove me otherwise. For far longer than I’d ever admit, I thought they were only treating me nice because of my title or because they had such a fierce loyalty to my parents; that it was not love they were trying to give me, but extended worship meant for my mom and dad. They showered me with so much affection that I would reject in my stubbornness. I stupidly thought they were trying to win my love so that when my brother or I took the kingdom back, they’d have a free ride to fortune and comfort. Each time they’d offer out a helping hand, I’d spit in it. Yet, every time I’d bite at that unconditional love, they’d continue to offer it.

They suffered me and my attitude without any promise of reward. There came a point where they felt enough time had passed that they could share the news with me about what had become of my former home. Mark sat me down with him and his wife and they showed me transcripts of reports that were spread through the kingdom. It was no more and there was nothing left to be gained from raising me and that’s when I realized they didn’t see me as a golden ticket to a better life. They saw me as a daughter.

The details about what had happened to the kingdom were kind of hard to swallow but I never once showed any disbelief. A year had passed before I learned about what had happened and, by then, it was too late to do anything about it. When my dad had taken charge of the kingdom with my mom, he had replaced the royal army with his own army, who were arguably better trained and much stronger than the Sol Kingdom’s army. The leader of the ousted army, General Jouch, didn't like my dad’s rule.

That was the start of a revolution that would consume a small part of the world. The army that was cast aside began plotting over the span of a decade on how to overthrow the Lione family and it involved the murder of the King, the Queen, and the royal children. When that night came, my family was asleep and half the army had been deployed across the kingdom to secure a part of the border being subjected to more frequent bandit activity. What was left was murdered at nightfall, picked off by men they thought to be allies until only a handful remained.

Using the guise of their brothers, the secondary army made their way past the posted security for the castle and one of them found their way into the bedroom of the king and queen. Before they could wake, they were each stabbed in the heart, again and again until there was no chance that the mighty Warrior King and beloved Sun Queen could ever rise again. With the king and queen dead, the next task was to kill the prince and princess and end the line of succession. The agent failed and the children managed to escape somehow. They had not been seen for a year and there was some dispute about what happened to them.

I still didn’t know what had happened to my brother from all that but I was here in Sonata still, growing up in that tiny house with Mark and June as their adopted daughter. The people of Sonata knew who I was but no one said anything. No one was in power anymore. The kingdom was crumbling and General Jouch had tried his best to take control after the revolution but pressure from the kingdom’s neighbors became too much. Everyone thought Brace would be the one to inevitably invade when the power became too much for General Jouch; who never did take the title of king. It was actually Jellette that invaded and took control of the state. General Jouch, who was abandoned by his people, lead them to believe that a great change was what the kingdom needed and when they gave him his dream, it turned rotten in his mouth the moment the burden of my dad’s position became his. He cowered before the greater king of Jellette and the people stepped out from behind him and bowed to King Ashel, begging for him to rescue them from the false savior.

Out of respect for everything the kingdom once was and the great man my dad had been, King Ashel kept the territory named “Lione” but there was no doubt who actually ruled it. We were called Lionens still but we were all subjects of the Jellette Kingdom. King Ashel claimed he was sending people out to try and find the lost prince and princess but no one ever came looking for me. Either they assumed we wouldn’t be still in the kingdom or the king only said he’d look for us as a sign of good faith to the people of Lione.

Even if someone did show up asking about the princess, I doubt they would find any clue about where I disappeared to. No one in the village spoke about me to strangers and I started to look less and less like the princess of a kingdom. I cut my hair short and started dressing like the boys in the town. Small boots, pants, a loose shirt, and occasionally a hat that was just a tiny bit too big for me. Nobody called me princess and people stopped calling me Melody altogether. I was only known as Mel, the Reyes kid, and my entire past became an unspoken thought that slept in the back of everyone’s mind, never even glanced upon unless something were to wake it.

Life in Sonata can be wonderful break from any and all pressures. So small and insignificant, it was never really involved in anything that regarded the kingdom or its people. Mark, as it turned out, was a repair-person. His entire life was dedicated to not only studying and learning about all technology; simple to complex, archaic to modern, but also to help others whose jobs and lives had come to rely on such technology. As a port town, Sonata did see a decent amount of traffic from the mainland but most sailed down to Hope, since it was closer to the other major cities in the kingdom than the remote Sonata. We did see enough traffic though that Mark was able to somewhat keep up with trends in technology and learn about new innovations.

June was a fisher, which surprised me. She would disappear for the better part of a day or two and return with the other villagers with a big enough catch to sustain the village should the crops ever fail. I was even allowed to go with her a few times when they were fishing a spot that was close enough to the village that they didn’t have to worry about losing me. It was fascinating seeing her in action. She could tote and lift as well as the next man and I realized that while I was stuck in the castle, I had gotten the wrong impression about what jobs were and were not meant for women. In the rest of the world, a decent woman did what needed to be done just as a decent man does. Gender really doesn’t matter as much as whether or not you could do what others depended on you to do.

While out on those fishing trips, I would help any way I could by fetching spears or pails or whatever was needed. One trip, though, they ended up pulling up too many fish in their net and it became too difficult to wrestle their catch on board. Just when it seemed like they were going to lose everything they had worked hard to pull up, I grabbed a good part of the net and started pulling. The net dredged up the biggest haul of fish I had ever seen and, with my help, we got it all on board without losing a single one. I got a lot of looks after that, remarking on how strong I was for an eight-year-old. The praise made feel good enough that I didn’t think about where I was and how I had gotten here. I had no ambitions of becoming a fisher like June, but I did feel like I could bring something to peoples’ lives and help them the way I helped the fishers.

Back on land, I did everything I could to help the villagers out in their everyday lives. More often the not, I just ended up getting in the way. Twice I ended up taking something that Mark was trying to fix and breaking it beyond repair. After that, I was encouraged to start exploring the outer limits of the village. I learned about the crops and the farms that provided non-fish related food for the village. That didn't hold my interest either.

Eventually, I started hearing talk about a series of caves along the coast, built into the bluffs that appeared if you traveled far enough along the beach away from the docks. They were called the Hollows and were said to be the refuge of some long forgotten god who had survived the War of the Dark Gods from ages long past. Naturally, I was far too curious about the Hollows for my own good and wanted to see it for myself, but June forbade me from traveling that direction. She said that there were bandits that hid out in that direction and she didn’t want me getting kidnapped and hurt or killed.

It was a sweet thought but it fell on deaf ears. I could haul a fishing net loaded with fish and break apart stone like it was wood. What sort of threat did bandits pose to me? So I did what any kid would do when forbidden to go somewhere. I snuck away when no one was looking and went there anyway. I first asked to come with on a fishing trip and as soon as June was thoroughly distracted with getting the supplies onto the boat, I snuck off. It wasn’t easy because she watched me like a hawk, but there came a point where her attention wavered just long enough that I could disappear on her.

It took a while to get to the caves I had heard about. I knew I was getting close because there were more and more rocks on the coast and they were tearing at the leather of my shoes. Eventually, my shoes gave out and I had to go barefoot. After navigating the edge of the continent long enough, I found the Hollows. I remember thinking I'd find a lost and forgotten god or something. I didn't but I wasn't disappointed either.

They seemed just like any other cave. Peering in, they looked dark and damp and after I got close, I could hear water running in the caves. There appeared to be only one entrance but they way I had heard about them suggested that the caves let out all over the place and stretched on underground for miles. Supposedly, the most openings were in a strange field full of holes that served as outlets for the caves themselves and were referred to as The Hollowlands. I should have gone there instead.

It was at that point that I realized that I had come completely unprepared. I didn’t have a torch with me or anything to light it with had I been able to find a suitable stick. I still wasn’t going to turn back so soon and I decided to explore a shallow length of the caves; just enough of them until I couldn’t see where I was going and the light from outside would no longer be of any use to me.

I made my way over the jagged assortment of rocks that made the cave's mouth and managed to find smoother, softer ground just past the threshold. I began feeling over the walls and taking in how wide the cave really was. It was large enough to build a small boat in and if there was some kind of beast lurking deep within the series of tunnels, it would be big enough to eat me and not scrape the ceiling as it moved. I pushed that thought away. The last thing I wanted to think about was some great, snarling dragon deep within the caves waiting for some stupid, little girl to come poking around in the dark.

June taught me that dragons lived in volcanic mountains and refused to come down for the things humans had done to them. She also said, in all fairness, they had been trying to eat all of humanity long before humanity started hunting them to near extinction. This would be close to the kind of place dragons came from. It was warm and deep despite being on a coast and it reminded me of how Krymm, the titan of fire, took all the great reptilian beasts from the Age of Chaos and put them underground, giving them wings and fire to defend themselves against the other races for when they would eventually burst forth from their hibernation and scorch the land.

I dared myself to search deeper into the depths of the caves. Feeling along the wall, I kept to one side so I could find my way back out in the dim light. The walls were bumpy and wet with some kind of moisture and the inside of the cave got more humid the deeper I got. I felt the cave start to curve to the side while I was moving along and I knew if I kept going, I was going to lose sight of the entrance as well as lose what light I had. Something inside me pushed me to continue and I made the turn.

I was hypnotized by a fascinating glow, decorating the ground along the walls on either side. It didn’t completely light the cave up but it gave me enough illumination to see where I was going. I left the safety of the wall I was moving along and knelt down to look at what was glowing on the ground. It was some kind of fungus giving off a blue luminosity that bathed the expanse of the tunnel in soft light.

With the way lit up, I had no excuse to avoid going deeper and deeper in. I had to be more careful not to step on my light source the deeper in I went because they seem to get more abundant the further I walked. For a moment, I wonder if I could pull a glowshroom from the ground and use it as a not-so-brilliant torch but I had enough common sense that I wasn’t going to bother touching something I knew nothing about. For all I knew, it could glow because of some toxin is secreted.

The tunnel began to dip down and curve again, this time to the other side. I followed it, trying hard not to lose my footing to the sudden incline, only to feel myself slipping anyway. I sat down on my rear and reached behind me, crawling, down feet first and face up, low to the ground, so I didn’t slide down out of control. At the bottom, the cave opened up to many diverging paths and in the middle of it, I could see a gathering of some strange things I didn’t expect to see in the middle of a cave people avoided.

I wasn’t sure what it was at first but when I got closer, I could make out a sort of makeshift shelter made of branches from the beach and a leather hide that had been crudely sewn together then draped over the branches propped up on one another. It could fit someone small like me easily but a larger adult would not be very comfortable. In front of the tent, there was a gathering of smaller sticks that looked burnt in the middle, like a fire had been lit long ago but it had become damp and useless overtime. Inside the tent itself, there were furs laid out to make a comfortable place to lie.

I would have explored it more but I didn’t want to get lost and just as I got close enough to the shelter, I heard the low, guttural growl of something down one of the tunnels. I turned and began carefully, quietly, and slowly making my way back the way I came. When I got out, I moved along the coast until I found my way past the rocks to the more comforting sands of the soft beach. I found the fishing ship completely loaded but half the crew as missing. I found out they were looking for me and when they had returned, I got my worst scolding yet from June. My punishment was a trial of thankless and grueling chores for the span of three weeks but it did nothing to deter me from wanting to explore the Hollows again.

It wouldn’t take long before I could sneak off to the coast without needing to go with June and soon the comforts of the caves became my hideaway. I would disappear for long hikes out to the beach and move along until I found the Hollows again. Each time I would bring a rope so I could tie one end of it to a big rock by the shelter and take the other end to explore one of the many paths. That way I could always find my way back. It became my haven and I wouldn’t know how much I’d need it until chaos came to the peaceful village of Sonata; the quiet jewel yet untouched by the ravages of war that was ever present in the kingdoms of Embre.