The Tragedy of Renya

6.3 Reunite

"Leandra!" Nick shouted and took off as soon as he saw the woman in the library. He took her hands and only then did she seem to recognise him.

"How did you get here?" she asked.

Nick smiled; "Nothing's impossible, remember?"

Alice asked Erica if those two had met before. Erica shrugged. Then she heard footsteps walking towards the door to the library.

"That's my husband!" Leandra said, "hide."

Nick immediately hid behind one of the bookshelves, while Alice pulled Erica along to one of the others.

"Why are you hiding too?" Erica asked. Alice whispered that Mr Hendri Pentel had killed her before, and he'd probably do it again if he found out she'd been in the basement. The door to the library then slammed open and Hendri came in, panting, before shouting at his wife if she'd seen anyone come in. She responded that she had not, and a while later he left again.

Nick snuck over to the two girls and then whispered that they'd have to go. To break the curse of Renya people would have to leave the city.

"Nobody's allowed to leave!" Alice whispered in shock, "trust me, the guards won't allow you through."

Nick laughed and got up.

"We'll find our way out," he said.

A few minutes later Erica and Nick were standing on the bustling streets of Renya. Erica kept looking around and up to see what the city had looked like at its peak, before the tragedy had happened. The history books she'd read on the subject had described the city quite well, she saw, although there was a difference between seeing how the people had lived over a hundred years ago and reading about it. Seeing it was, in Erica's opinion, a whole different story.

At the same time she felt it wasn't much different from the way life went on in the cities around Renya.

"Because the region's still recovering from Renya's collapse," Nick explained.

Erica nodded and looked around the city. The architecture had changed a bit; the buildings of the rich in Ostia were more decorated as per the latest fashion. Still there was a beauty in the simplicity of the buildings of Renya. Not two buildings were the same; each building had been built separately in different eras yet most of them had been kept modern, or what had been considered modern a hundred years ago.

"That girl, Alice," Erica asked, "seems familiar. Is that just me?"

"The brothers in Kresida were her brother's descendants."

Erica nodded and continued looking at the city. She asked if they could enter the large tower dedicated to the goddess, but Nick shook his head.

"That would be sacrilege."

Erica pouted. She'd wanted to see the tower and the ceremonies performed there.

"Don't forget why we're here," Nick said, "it's not a sightseeing trip."

"I know..."

Still she could not help but feel it was one. And as soon as the curse was broken... who knew what would happen! It could very easily all disappear. Maybe, she wondered, it'd be as if the city had never disappeared?

She'd asked Nick before about what would happen if Renya was rescued from the curse, but he'd never answered. She didn't feel like asking again. They'd find out soon enough, anyway.