Little Red for Mr. Rydding Hood: The Lost World of Agartha 1

Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me. — Ruth 1:16-17 *** The banquet hall of Palacio de Malacañan still reminds Princess Loaisa of last night’s events: her eighteen birthday. The chairs and tables are still there, but the rich silk table cloths were already in the baskets and in the hands of the cleaners. Everyone’s busy cleaning everything from last night’s celebration to put the banquet hall into its original sight. But now there are only three chandeliers lit up compared to the previous night when the countless lights are magical. The workers looked up at her with wide eyes. She purposely used the intricate grand staircase to get a last glimpse of her birthday celebration. A sleek red carpet is covering the steps of the stair from the top to the ground and going straight to the entrance. Everything around her was made of resin, mahogany, and gold. Beautiful and attractive with all its intricate designs and breathtakingly magnificent during every official occasion. Like last night’s celebration. It was a blast, and the Queen’s effort to give her the best birthday ever satisfied her. It wasn’t because all her friends were invited, or the gifts or the people were there to celebrate with her. It was the mere thought of being eighteen. The legality of age in Northumbria. Finally, she’ll be allowed to leave the palace like her brother and sister. As a member of the human royal family, they have to reach the right age before leaving the palace. Her excitement is understandable since she’s been waiting for it the moment she first heard the ancient tales of the relationship of the humans to supernatural beings of Northumbria. She strode down the stairs with her silk morning dress and smiled at everyone. The workers are expecting the royal family to be asleep at this hour because of the tiring party last night. It’s only around six in the morning anyway, so they’re only half from finishing the task. They greeted Princess Loaisa with the bow of their heads, and the Princess cheerfully greeted them back with a proper curtsy before running to the reception hall, where immense frames of their ancestors and family hung in a gold frame; painted with elegance and complete details, they looked like actual photographs. On the floor is a huge rectangular carpet in royal white and yellow, symbolizing the flag of Northumbria. Walking straight ahead, it transformed her into the entrance lounge. By the wall going to the banquet hall are huge paintings of Queen Lorelei and King Alvaro Aethelberht on both sides. The entrance hall is also like the banquet hall. Their floors are both made-up of beige Agartha marbles, but with a straight and wider pathway compared to the banquet hall, which is round and spacious to accommodate hundreds of guests. The hall led to another stair made of resin and mahogany wood;k also covered with red carpet. Downstairs, two guards in their blue and gold uniform stood on duty, bowing to Princess Loaisa as she walked past them. She turned to the left for another spacious hallway where the walls are covered with murals of supernaturals in red, yellow, blue, black, and a little of white colors. And every time she walked past it, her eyes lingered at the huge fur animal with menacing blue eyes. An alpha wolf. The strongest of their kind. When Princess Liliana first told her a story of how wolves fall in love with their mates, it mesmerized her. Princess Liliana hated the thought of being fated to anyone you just met and instantly considers them your life partner until forever ends. But Princess Loaisa admired that kind of love. A genuine love, she believed. With only two choices to take: be with someone you loved, or die without them. Princess Loaisa shook her head to dismiss the giddy thoughts. She’s too young to fall in love! She wants to be good at archery. She wants to take Magellan around the Agartha and finds out which of the tales of her sister are true, and not. She emerged outside the pavilion and leaned on the golden railings to stare at the Northumbrian river. Finally, just like this river, she’ll be able to flow. She’ll be allowed to go where she’s deemed to be; to choose whether to let the wind take her somewhere unfamiliar, or retrieve her own paddle and be where she wishes to go. She enthusiastically waved at the big fishing vessels that looked small from the distance. But she's been in the port, the one beside the fields and valleys, to know they are big enough to fit hundreds of vessels and thousands of people aboard. In the dining hall during dinner, she patiently waited for the kind to announce the news, but they’re busy talking about last night. Princess Liliana had a smile on her face when their father said they had talked to Admiral Ceron Cristobal of Edinburgh from the North Pole, and he agreed to bring his crowned prince here to meet Princess Liliana. But Princess Loaisa knows that look from her sister. She’s disinterested in the wedding being proposed to her. But she will feign her interest. And without a doubt, right after breakfast, she will join the children to tell them stories again. Like not a coming wedding should be her concern. Prince Jofre joined the conversation. “We should invite them during the coronation, Father. I’ll bring a carriage ready to assist them on their trip.” “That’s a nice suggestion,” the King replied, pleased with his son’s opinion. “I expected Admiral Ceron to bring his son last night. But things happened, so he came here alone. I think the coronation will be the best time to announce another celebration. “I wished to meet her wife, too, if she can come, that is,” added the Queen. Princess Loaisa bit the inside of her cheeks to stop butting in with them, but when the silence grew, she failed to suppress her eagerness. Placing down the golden utensils on the perfectly woven placemats, she straightened her body and smiled at everyone. “What about me, Father?” she glanced at their parents expectantly, “can I bring Magellan to Mercia this afternoon?” The King frowned at the ridiculous smile on his daughter’s face. Princess Loaisa usually has a delightful face that brightened up everyone’s mood. His heart was full of how happy she was last night on her birthday. But he doesn’t understand that wide smile and the eager eyes. She looks like she’s ready to pounce on them over the table. Queen Lorelei placed down her glass of water on the resin table and gaped at her daughter. She wiped her lips with a table napkin as she waited for Princess Loaisa to announce she’s just kidding since she loves making surprise jokes. But her wide, innocent eyes blinked as she waited for everyone to answer her. “Did Father finally give you the permission to go out, Loaisa?” Prince Jofre asked in confusion and darted his eyes from their little princess to their father, who deliberately shook his head, afraid to break his daughter’s heart by saying no. Princess Loaisa’s shoulders fell, her lips pointing into a disappointed pout. “But I’m eighteen?” she exclaimed, but it came out like a question. The smiles and congratulations she received last night were because she finally can roam outside the palace, and around Northumbria, right? Everyone’s face made her believe they were as excited as her. Or was she wrong? “Princess Loaisa, I did not give you the permission,” the King said in a careful manner as the smile on her face turned flat. “You’re bringing Magellan?” the Queen asked in a hysterical voice. “The farm and the links are wide enough for you to play with him. We’re not allowing you to go out and definitely not to Mercia!” Princess Loaisa closed her lips and wrinkled her nose. “But I’m eighteen?” she repeated, lost for argumentative words. Well, she certainly has mistaken everything. “That does not give you the right to be out of the palace. You’re still young. Too young to meet with anyone at Mercia,” the Queen added and shook her head as if disturbed with the thought of her daughter going to the central. “But Liliana went there when she was eighteen!” she protested, but in a manner that doesn’t sound disrespectful. Just... Just telling them what she had believed all this time. “That’s when she started twisting plots of children’s bedtime stories,” Prince Jofre added. For everyone’s eyes, Princess Loaisa is still the young princess who is eager and thrilled with everything. It was enough for the King to give her the stallion Magellan to stop her from pressing them to bring her outside the palace. Everyone knew it was a matter of time before she whined about it, and now that she is eighteen, she believes it is time. Prince Jofre was seventeen when she went out of Northumbria to meet with the ruler of the Merchant Royal House. They wanted to see the next king in flesh to make sure the royal blood of humans will continue until the next generations. The Merchant Royal House in the Visayas makes sure they meet the orderly and peacefulness between supernaturals and humans whenever they are trading in the Central. Humans have modernized ways of living. They know how to maintain the Northumbrian River, which contains almost all the primary sources of food for pure humans and half-humans. The full-blooded supernaturals agreed to spare the life of the humans because making them extinct will soon make the whole Agartha empty of any living beings. So for everyone to live in peace, the World of Agartha was divided into three regions: the Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Each region is divided into houses: the Northumbria in Luzon, the Wales and Mercia in the Visayas, the Saxon that is divided into five smaller houses (Wessex, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia) in the South, and the Kent. The largest house is the Kingdom of Northumbria that covers the entirety of Luzon. The Palacio de Malacañán is in Northumbria, the grandest palace in the World of Agartha and the only official home for the pure human populations. It was centuries ago when humans all over Agartha moved to Northumbria, as Próedros, the descendant of Alexander the Great, officially gave the place to the humans. Most supernatural beings, who are yet to establish themselves at that time and build their own houses after close extinction, protested. It was said that eighty percent of the human population traveled to Northumbria before the supernaturals learned Próedros’ plan. Próedros soon told them his exact plan to keep all the races existing in Agartha. Most of the leaders agreed, some didn’t. Even humans who were stranded in the south didn’t trust Próedros’ plan and thought they would be used as bait to be a meal to the demonic beings, so they decided to live in the South. Until time passed by and Northumbria became the only place for pure-humans to live, the rest are considered rebellious and an easy target for the cold-blooded beings. The breakfast disheartened Princess Loaisa. She took her thorough-bred stallion, Magellan, to the farm and listened to the old man’s tale with a long face and pouting lips. She wanted the old man’s story to dissolve her longing for the outside world. She wanted to engulf her eagerness with fear, but just like the first time she heard the ancient tales, it thrilled her. The burst of emotion feels like wanting her to fly past the gigantic walls of the palace and to the south where her mother’s ancestors used to live. “They’re powerless. They surely are all dead by now,” she murmured, lifting her head from Magellan’s back and sitting upright to sigh at the old man. He’s one of the oldest men in Northumbria. They said he was there when the supernaturals were raging, still protesting when Próedros’ died. The humans learned to protect themselves and soon make negotiations with them with the help of the Merchant Royal House. But the horror of the experience remained with the people who witnessed it. This old man lost his mind and became a pauper and homeless. The King gave him a nice place to live, but he is still often seen around the town, retelling the same stories repeatedly, with an audience, or not. And Princess Loaisa likes to listen to him, never cringing with his little black teeth, long white hair, wrinkled skin, and worn-out dress. “There’re lots of prophecies,” the old man started the explanation that was all too familiar to Princess Loaisa that she could recite it in the palace hall only if the Majesty would allow it. “If no humans remain, nothing will remain, the Agartha will vanish.” He waved the hand holding the wooden cane to the sky to make an effect. She couldn’t help but think who among him and her sister is a superb storyteller. “The soul of the humans is in the cursed ones, as to how the heart of the cursed is in the form of a human. That’s the curse of…” “Fate,” she supplied, breaking the old man’s dreamy vision. “My sister said it’s love. To prove to all those who are living in the dark that love is the only light. That’s why there are half-humans outside. Will this world be reunited as one when everyone’s a half part of one another?” “Reunited? No.” He shook his head and frowned, biting on the piece of meat Princess Loaisa brought for him. He hummed at the juicy taste and smiled at the sky. “The world will forever be divided. That’s the curse to Agartha. But one can make a choice!” He pointed his forefinger upwards as if seeing a bright light on the tip of his finger that the princess couldn't. “Each choice is fate.” She sighed heavily and wrapped her arms around Magellan to prevent herself from falling to the ground. She stared at the never-ending field on their left. Mountains from the South can be seen from there, but the vast sea made it impossible to cross it with Magellan. “You mean, staying here in Northumbria until I die is not my fate because… why, this is not my choice!” she exclaimed. “Each choice is a fate,” the man only repeated, and Princess Loaisa turned her head on the other side to watch the highest tower of the palace, wondering if it’s visible outside Northumbria.