Raven Empire

Chapter 22

     It was then that I remembered her mentioning that she had lived in the City of the Lake. I had never known which lake was being referenced, but now I did. The devastation on the other side was tremendous. I'd heard about the brutality if the Emperor crushing rebellions before, but never to this degree.

     "The drakons and sea serpents still live in the water." Sina said. "Though they did rack up a few casualties a decade, they'd been impeded by the wall. It was knocked down a year ago."

     I saw a ripple in the water, followed by a fluked tail rising and falling.

     "There's one." Sina noted. "The lake is named well. Drakons are pretty much the only thing you'll find, aside from a shoal of fish or the occasional turtle or shark."

     "So they've either chased everything out or eaten it?" I tried to specify.

     "Yes. Except for crocodiles." Sina added.

     "Great. More death lizards." I noted.

    Sina let out a laugh. "That's right." She agreed.

    "What's in this lake that isn't dangerous?" I asked.

    "The rocks." She answered.

    Now it was my turn to laugh.

     "No, I'm serious." She argued, although it was at least somewhat joking. "That's it. Even the lake bottom has electric eels and other things like that in it."

     "How does anyone even live here?" I exclaimed.

     Sina laughed again. "Like I said, the wall-dam thing kept things out of the city. Again, that was until Corvus arrived with his forces. The first thing he did was make them destroy the wall. The city was swarmed, in short."

     I put a hand on hers as a kind of...comforting measure. "I wish I could relate, and I kind of can, but the cliffsides weren't attacked by Corvus' forces."

     "They weren't?" She asked.

     "No." I responded. "Dragons. There's usually a dragon or two that comes into the village at some point. Apparently, the day after I was banished, a pack of dragons attacked. They burned the village down to the ground, or at least a part of it. Most of it was intact."

     "How do you even know that?" Sina asked. "You were banished the day before, how'd you see what happened?"

     "Contrary to what you might think, the barrier isn't actually impenetrable. Humans can go through it freely. Also, security was quite lax the day after, and there were pillars of fire still twirling into the sky."

     "So the dragons just want you out of there?"

     "Probably. They probably begrudgingly allowed the outpost to stay."

     "Outpost?" Sina asked.

     "The Cliffside village started out as just an outpost where a few people could study the dragons. Then it expanded and now the dragons are trying to boot us out."

     "So it's attacked daily?" Sina asked.

     "Weekly." I responded.

     "How much misfortune exists?" Sina asked.

     "Plenty of it." I responded.

     Sina laughed again. "You're a funny person, Makoto." She stated.

     "And you're quite a nice one." I responded, not really sure how to.

     We started leaning in closer, and I did not know why.

     "This is nice." Sina said.

     "I can agree with that." I replied.

     Our faces drew closer. Maybe we were about to kiss?

     We were so focused that we really only heard each other, and we drew closer.

     "Am I...interrupting something?" A voice asked from the trees.
 
     Sina and I jumped approximately 20 feet away from each other (not really, but that's how it felt) and we stared at the direction the voice had come from.

     Seth was casually leaning on a tree, an enormous grin on his face.

     "How long have you been standing there for?" Sina asked.

     "For about two seconds." He responded. "Or minutes. Or days. You don't know. But really it was two minutes."

     "Well this is awkward." I mumbled.

     "No kidding." Sina whispered back.

     "Foods' been caught, but you can stay here for a bit longer if you want." Seth said. He walked back to the camp, lugging some kind of carcass behind him.

     The moment had been ruined, so Sina and I didn't really see a need to stay. We regretfully followed Seth back to where we came from.

     "Where's the firewood?" I asked when we passed the spot where it was.

     "Burning." Seth answered. "Part of the meat's already cooking."

     "You sure some animals haven't gotten to it already?" Sina asked.

     "No." Seth responded.

     "That's reassuring." I mumbled.

     When we did get back to the camp, there was a minor raccoon infestation of the food. Seth went ahead and sent them scattering by firing a few warning shots. Then he threw that chunk of meat into the forest.

     "That was a bad idea." Sina said to Seth.

     "What part of it?"

     "Throwing the food." She answered.

     "I'll just chase them off again." Seth said, beginning to shear the skin off the meat.

     Sina and I averted our eyes as Seth deskinned the the thing he'd found. We heard a few scrapes and scratches on bones and stuff, but that was about it. We turned our eyes back and saw Seth stabbing a spit through it, then hanging it over the fire.

     "How do you not almost barf while doing that?" I asked.

     "I'm numb to it." He responded. He threw some things into the bushes, two of them that looked suspiciously like legs. "It's also all we're gonna get to eat. No non-poisonous berries."

     "Any fruits?" Sina asked.

     "Take a blood vine." Seth said, gesturing at one of those glowing spear-flowers with the axe he'd taken. "If you can actually get to the fruit, that is."

     "Isn't that one of the flowers that sucked the blood out of finger?" I piped up.

     "Yep." Seth said.

     "Then I'll settle for the meat." Sina said, repulsed.

     "Same here." I agreed.
  
     "Well then, you have a few minutes until this cooks."