Shadows Rising

Chapter Seven The Ripple Effect: Jayson

After the night passed, I woke up early in the morning and realized that Eve's head was resting on my chest. I guess I must have been too tied to realize that she ended up sleeping with me. To be honest she looks so beautiful when she sleeps, so peaceful. I raised my hand over her head and petted her.

"Hey Eve." I quietly spoke trying not to startle her by staying still. "Eve? We uh gotta get going." I shook her body slowly and softly as she began to wake up.

"Hmm?" Her eyes opened slowly as she looked at me. "O-oh?! I'm so sorry Bui." She says getting up.

"No worries Eve." I chuckled and smiled looking at her blush.

"Oh this is so embarrassing." She says covering her face as her tail wags.

She's so cute and innocent. I smiled and stood up grabbing my bag for some food.

"Here we should probably eat quick so we can start heading out to the next town." I said creating a fire to heat up the meat.

After we ate breakfast I pulled out the map and laid it down on the ground for Eve to see.

"Okay so this is where we are right now Eve. We gotta travel through the woods and follow this trail. If we do that we should be able to get to Riverwood pretty soon."

"We probably should buy some more supplies in case things don't go the way we want to when we travel to Celestial City." Eve suggested

"Yes that's a great idea Eve but we shouldn't stay too long in Riverwood. We've already spent a lot of time here camping when we should have been sleeping at the inns in Riverwood. If we can get back on track then we might be able to make it to Draven. Draven should be a bigger town than Riverwood and if we're lucky we might run into an old friend of mine."

After we had breakfast, we started to head out to Riverwood. I wondered if Eve traveled a lot during her years. It's hard to say since her past wasn't really normal or the best. I would ask too but I feel like it would end up being another sad story which I would love to comfort her for it, but as of right now I'd like us to stay focused and positive. Of course I could tell her all my stories of my adventures but there's honestly too many to choose from. Well anyway, I think it's fine this way just because she seems pretty excited and happy to go into another town. Ruining her happiness would just make me feel worse.

It's been a couple hours since we had breakfast and I know we are getting closer to Riverwood, but something felt off. It was too quiet. Riverwood is always busy and loud. You could hear all of the blacksmiths hammering down metal on anvils, the soldiers marching around town or training. I stopped walking and stayed still. I smelled the air for a couple seconds and immediately looked up and could see black smoke in the sky.

"Eve let's go!" I yelled running to the town gates.

I don't know how far Eve was behind me but I knew something was wrong. I made it to the front gates but the gates were broken down. The town was on fire but where was everyone? I rushed inside the town looking for someone to tell me what happened, but I could tell what happened just by looking at the houses and the walls. This was a raid from the bandits. Eve finally caught up to me and I told her to try to stay close but to also look for any survivors. I had to explain to her what happened and that we need to be careful since the attack was pretty recent and the bandits could either be coming back or are still here.

I sprayed down the houses with my water type ability hydro pump. I told Eve to search the houses while I spray the other remaining houses down and if she sees or hears bandits close by then hide. I ran to the other houses spraying them down hoping that there are still survivors. I knew this town pretty well. I just hope that they made it out in time before the bandits started the fire.