The following day we sailed for what seemed like an eternity, until we saw land. It wasn't the Healing Springs, but it was definitely bigger than the previous island where I found the symbols. We decided to stop by, as it seemed empty.
"Ye think we'll find anything good here?" An unfamiliar voice came from behind me. I spun around to see a tall young man, probably only a few years older than me, with strawberry blond hair and amber eyes staring at me.
"Don't know, sure hope so." I responded, turning back to face the docks. Silence filled the air, not a soul to be seen. Some of us split off to cover a larger area, and I decided to head to the east side of the small village. Each house was built of the same white clay, which the wood foundation shone through. Only the wind swept over the broken rooftops, dragging sand and dust off which floated through the air before hitting the ground. I snuck around slowly, lifting every lid off of every clay pot, searching every house for anything good. There was a large house on my left, which looked more wealthy than the others; its walls were embellished with small pieces of gold, its stairs and roof white marble instead of wood. However, when I opened the door I was met with a strange man dressed in a skirt made of leaves, his face hidden behind a mask with slit eyes and a tube-shaped mouth which had a piece of bamboo sticking out of it.
"Blimey!" I yelled and jumped to the side right as the man shot a sharp object out of the bamboo. He tried grabbing my arm, but I moved out of range just in time and ran in a random direction as fast as my legs could carry me. A broken window caught my eye, and I spotted a piece of broken glass atop a barrel. Quickly grabbing it, I spun around and slashed the man's arm, his blood leaking out at an alarming rate. The scarlet liquid pulsed as I took a few steps back when the man tried to grab me again, but the sight of the blood made us both freeze. I had never seen this much blood at once in my life, nevermind being the cause of it. But those thoughts got drowned by adrenaline when he lunged at me, the light from the sun hitting his mask at the right angle and showing one of his eyes. It was as if life slowed down, the time it took for him to reach me and push me to the ground feeling like an eternity. My head hit the ground, sand flying up into a cloud around us. His hands were on my neck, his blood still spilling out onto my tunic and the ground.
"Get off him, ya skunk!" I heard the strawberry blond mate's voice in the distance as the blood rushed to my head, beating war drums in my ears with every heartbeat. The pressure stopped when I heard a gunshot and saw his eyes through the sliver go wide before falling to the ground. The strawberry blond man came up to me, racing a hand out and pulling me up. My eyes were still wide with shock, but I blinked and shook it off.
"Thank you, I thought I was going to die!" My voice came out as a rasp, my throat in pain. I swallowed, hoping to ease the pain until I got ahold of clean drinking water.
"We need to warn the others, I think it's an ambush." He sounded worried, and ran off towards where most of our other mates went. When we arrived, we saw that they, too, had been attacked, but thankfully they had more experience and outnumbered the strange men. Most of them were young, and ran off into the bushes from fear. Those that remained fought viciously, but in the end lost and were either killed or surrendered and also ran away.
"We're done here, let's leave before more of them come."