Through the Eyes of the Dragon

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Encounter

A low buzz echoed throughout a quiet sleeping area, rousing a young man from his uneasy and dreamless slumber. Sensing movement outside his tent, he forced himself to rise, gathering together his minuscule possessions and sitting silently as he awaited his trial.

It had been about a month since the Aerosians found him hiding out on the border between Aeros and Acqua, so all he really had to keep with him were a tattered blanket, a makeshift blade he had constructed from forest rocks, and a small mirror once belonging to his dear mother. In the time that he had lingered within the enemy camp Aeros’s lord, Date Terumune, was supposedly killed by his own men whilst returning home, leaving his eldest son to claim the throne.

Now, instead of having to await jurisdiction from the Aerosian lord himself, the runaway prince of Acqua was to be judged by the so-called One-eye’d Dragon’s War Council.

Swallowing down the dry saliva that had accumulated in his mouth, he continued to sit cross-legged upon his neatly folded bedding, apprehension rising up from within as he remembered his first encounter with the Aerosian soldiers. They hadn’t been as ferocious as he thought they would be, but even so, he figured it was best to stay on his guard in the case that it was all a façade.

The day was chilly and cold, he reckoned, with the sky shrouded in a light grey haze of incoming snow. He had been stumbling about the trees, one hand clamped over an infected eye wound as he desperately searched for food and water. Fatigue and hunger wracked his body as he walked, his bare feet pushing off the uneven ground and sending sharp stings of pain shooting up his legs. He could see opaque clouds puff out in front of him every time he exhaled, the sheer sight of it making him feel colder than he already was. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if, with my current state of bad luck, that the next onslaught of rain will be that of crystal cold…’ he had thought with a weary shake of his head.

It took a while, but soon enough he managed to navigate himself to a small, bubbling stream, its surface not yet affected by the decreasing temperature. Relieved, he knelt by its edge and drank up the liquid quickly, yelping at first when the ice-cold fluid stabbed at his esophagus. He later relaxed when his body became accustomed to its chill, and took in as much of the precious water as he could.

Risking a glance at the clear water, the exiled prince observed his tattered condition via his reflection, recognizing the wild mess of long blond hair, his pained dark blue eyes, the sickly pale of his skin accented against the greying sky above. Had it really been a year since he fled? Or had his mind just over exaggerated his time out in the woods?

Lingering on the thought, he soon forced himself to keep moving, not quite paying attention to which way he went. To him, all the trees looked the same even with their leaves rotting and tumbling to the ground helplessly with every breeze that blew past. So when he began to realize the trees were indeed not thinning out but becoming more dense with each step, a sense of anxiety began to pull at his gut.

No longer was he surrounded by sparse broad-leaved trees, rounded berry bushes, and patches of wild grass, but rather thick pines whose pointed knives poked and prodded him through his thin covering. Seeing as he had no chance of returning to his previous makeshift camp, he shivered violently before taking refuge by the base of a pine, curling up into a small ball in an attempt to preserve his body heat from the fierce winter around him. 

Moments passed as he sat, chilled to the bone, waiting in agony for the dreadful storm to pass. But much to his dismay, it seemed Mother Nature was not quite on his side today. Soon small flakes fluttered down from the darkened sky, tickling his nose and polluting his hair.

Bursting out into a loud fit of coughing and sneezing, the prince shot to his feet and darted forward blindly, nearly praying aloud to God that he not die in the wintery mix. ‘Be it a bullet, a sword, a noose, I don’t care! Just please, do not condemn me to the fate of slow suffering…!’