Chapter 164 - 165
"Alistar," called the upstart cook, "Come and eat! If you don’t, then I can’t promise there’ll be anything left for you!"
"I’m going to stay in the river for a few more minutes," he called back, subconsciously stooping lower as the eyes of the others drifted in his direction.
Oh no... He glanced downward to double check that nothing beneath the surface of the river was visible. What do I do? The sights that he had just seen were too fresh in his mind for him to forget them anytime soon, which posed quite a problem as his body was currently exhibiting the sort of reaction that one would expect from a healthy young lad such as himself.
His body didn’t show any signs of change as the minutes dragged by, so he resorted to drastic measures and opened a long cut on his forearm with a slight exertion of swordsman’s aura that he formed at the tip of an index finger. The pain immediately cleared his mind, allowing for him to calm down as a visible cloud of blood was carried away by the current. Casting a discreet mending spell, he followed after the others as soon as he had collected himself, a bit uncomfortable when he noticed that Lessa and Anice couldn’t meet his gaze.
This awkward air didn’t go unnoticed by some of their friends, though thankfully they didn’t bring it up. All in all, the evening proved to be a very enjoyable one, with everyone going in and out of the Greyline at their leisure while Woods continued to cook a seemingly endless supply of food for them.
Once everyone had grown tired of playing in the water, they cleared the hot rocks from the fire pit’s embers and nurtured a large bonfire around which all twelve of them gathered. No sooner had the flames reached the height of a man’s shoulders than Zech dragged his leather rucksack over to the tree stump where he’d been sitting and pulled out a large bottle of clear liquid.
"What’s that?" asked Emely, eyeing the concoction with curiosity.
"You didn’t..." said Woods, recognizing the bottle almost immediately. "Your parents are going to kill you. Ah, if they find out I was with you, they’ll kill me too."
"What?" said Anice, running her fingers through damp, crimson hair that reached down to her navel. "Did you take that from the tavern?"