NERA

Chapter 2

   "Nobody back here either!"

   I could hear Ro's voice echoing from down one of the hallways to the academy, opposite to the half I had volunteered to search, a strong sense of underlying disappointment in his tone.

   "Same on this side!"

   About a half an hour had passed since we stepped foot in through the entrance this morning, still, we found no signs anybody had been there before us.

   "This is strange man! Freaky even!"

    Our words bounced between shut doors to empty rooms, the way Ro and me had decided to mark if we had already gone through them or not.

    "You got that right!"

   Dimly lit from a few open windows at the far end of the room, the dull, blood-colored rugs that laid between the walls of books in our library gave the appearance that somebody had been stabbed to death and dragged out of the building. A detestable ambiance to say the least, given the circumstances.

   "Nasty."

   I run my fingers along the spines of old books on one of our libraries many massive shelves, a place that laid home to all the history of our town and to the bordering cities as well. Filthy, old dust-covered books, nobody took the time of day to really look into, let alone clean them.

   "Coming in!"

   Making himself known, Ro knocks on the wall upon entering the room, likely aware we were both a little on edge at this point.

   With a loud thud, I turn quickly just in time to see him nearly tripping on one of the rolled up corners of the entry rug, catching himself on a stand-alone table.

   "So, uh— where haven't we looked yet?"

   Ro jumped right into conversation, trying to play off his fumble as naturally as possible.

   "The sparring yard, lightroom, knighting garden, food hall, medical room and... I think the armory still too."

The list seemed short, but the two of us knew it would take a dedicated amount of time to search each area from corner to corner, if anything were even to be found.

   "No, I hit the armory already."

   Figures that he would, predictable, a small grin manages to cross my face.

   "Alright, just the others then. Should we split up?"

    Ro shakes his head, swiftly disagreeing with my request.

    "No way, not with everyone else already gone. At least together we can talk, it won't be such a boring search."

   "That's true. In that case, let's go start with the food hall then."

   "Got it."

   Gently, I push a few out of order books back into place as we trail our way out of the library, making sure to shut the door firmly behind me.

   "Hello!!"

   Knowing already deep inside that nobody was going to answer, I shouted alongside Ro, hoping maybe that I was wrong and somebody would call out to us.

   "Is there really nobody here!?"

   I admired his enthusiasm, but I hated being right. All of his yelling fell short on solid stone.

   "Food hall, here we go."

    Through the lobby, down to the furthest end of the hall Ro had looked through the rooms of, we round a corner out into a large open area. One large wooden table, relatively worn down at first sight, amassed itself at the center of our food hall, twenty or so just as old chairs stretching along the room length behemoth.