Outside My Comfort Zone (Original/Reuploaded)

Chapter 18: Fueling the Fire

Finally posting the rest of the old version yay!
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Holy moly you guys BLEW UP Aquaphobia. Thank you so much it makes me so happy to see one of my chapters having that much success.  Your support is hugely appreciated.

Also, I'm so sorry for the wait. I had writer's block and I had to play catch-up with school work, aka making this a pretty tiring week.  But anyways, here it is and I hope you enjoy!

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Lloyd POV

I was so tired after the assault.  My eyelids felt so heavy that I often found myself unintentionally dosing off for a couple seconds, or maybe even longer. But the thing is, I knew I couldn't sleep. That was Kai's job at the moment. I laid him in his sleeping bag and gave him my flannel to use as some kind of padding for a pillow. He's sleeping peacefully right now, which is good, but I can't stop my eyes from constantly closing no matter how hard I try.

We aren't safe, if that wasn't obvious enough already. Recently we've been a little careless with our safety — actually, correction, I've been careless. I'm the ninja here, I have to keep Kai safe. That's what I was hired for. So, right now I'm staking out to keep watch for those goddamn snakes. I swear if I even see one of those stupid suppose-to-be-legless-lizards ever again I will not hesitate to chop it's arm off. Is that a little overkill? Yes. Do I care? No, because I'm too exhausted to care about anything right now.

It's been many hours since the battle, and I'm so anxious to get out of this forest the desire is killing me. It's clawing at me from the inside and threatening to tear me apart.  I often find myself shifting uncontrollably on the ground, my muscles begging for me to move and my instincts screaming at me to just get out, but Kai's in no condition to travel right now. He was clinically dead for almost ten minutes, and that— that can really do a number on someone, from both perspectives. In fact, every five minutes I find myself double checking that he's breathing just to make sure.

I want to sleep so badly, just let drowsiness take over me and put my mind to rest for at least a few hours, but my anxiety is heightened and I couldn't relax even if my life depended on it. I feel like a group of vermillion are going to pop out of the trees at any moment and try to kill us like last time, and I can't seem to stray from that thought. Every noise the forest makes puts me on high alert, and don't even get me started on the distant twigs snapping from animals walking on them.

There's only one thing that's keeping me rooted to the earth, painfully clenching my fists around my swords so hard my hands are cramping up. One thought that's kept me from grabbing Kai and booking it from this hazardous place, and that's the thought that the vermillion think we're dead.

It makes sense, right? We weren't under the water for that long, were we? Surely if the snakes were smart enough to ambush us, set up an invasion plan, and almost kill the prince then they'd know to check, right? But, then again, that one snake— Bludgeon or whatever— said that I had gotten on the bad side of his "masters". Maybe they're the ones who set this whole thing up?

I finally pry my right hand off of my sword, a wave of sharp pain washing over my arm. I managed to stitch up my right arm with some medical supplies Mistaké had packed for us and put gauze on it. After that, I stitched up Kai's eye and taped a gauze pad over it with thin strips of medical tape. I swear that prince is way too damn lucky to be alive. He not only got revived from drowning, thanks to yours truly, but he also managed to dodge Blunch's sword just enough to keep his eyesight and probably have a pretty cool scar after he get's the stitches out.