Then I saw her house. It looked different from her past two houses. While the first one conformed to the design of the other houses in the little village, and the second one was a cottage hidden in a forest, the third was surprisingly different. It looked like a mansion, albeit a modest and old-timey one. However, it fell into the design of the other buildings in the tiny town while remaining unique and solitary.
When we entered, I knew this was the real Basil. She was immediately ready for action. She explained to me that the Basil that we had seen in the forest was a faux copy of the original, made using the advanced technology Basil had access to. It was used as bait to test and see if the campaign was burning down everything, or just areas with human life.
Her experiment also featured a second forest fairly close to the one her copy had occupied, while still the same size. Only the inhabited one was burned down. The Judges weren't burning down the environment, but just the dwellings outside of the capitals. This is what was believed before, but the Judges' intentions are becoming foggier every day, according to Basil. Raven was in on her plan the entire time.
It was also explained who she really was. After the village had been burned, Basil had moved to a town that refused to burn. She set up post and started preparing for a rebellion against the Judges, which she hoped would turn into an all-out war until the Judges had been disposed of. According to her, she had more numbers than the Judges would be able to scrape together. The Judges kept a small army, but not enough to protect themselves from a war. Raven and I's job was to do two things: First, we would head to Seventh City, the capital of the capitals, and send in a letter to the Judges. The Judges were forced to go through all letters sent in by the citizens during the meetings, but there never were very many from what I've heard.
The letter would be a proclamation of war. This would give both sides ample time to get as many warriors as possible. Basil, of course, gets the advantage, as she has been gathering forces, and will continue to do so until the Judges' army begins the war officially. Secondly, we were taxed with doing the impossible: Basil said that to make the war proclamation real, we had to kill one of the Judges. She said any would do, so long as we don't kill the Judge of Seventh City. That would be overdoing it. It would happen in time however, she assured us. Or me, rather. Raven certainly knew all of this already.
Essentially, the entire world had been decimated. Before the cataclysmic event, there had been hundreds of billions of people, but afterward, the number had dwindled to the low millions or even into the thousands as the world scrambled to rebuild.
What they made were tiny villages where major cities had been. But these cities grew. And grew. Government was eventually put into place. It was welcome at first, but soon enough, it was questioned though. But not aloud. That would earn you a hanging. Consequently, citizens moved out of the cities and created settlements for themselves. The government wasn't going to extremes at that point, however.
Time passed, and the government created the Judges. More time passed, and the Judges created the campaign, although they eased towards it, after several events that were a bad influence to the welfare of society. Basil said she often wondered what happened to the few lost souls on the small landmasses that hadn't joined together. Where were they now? Lost in the ocean?
Day passed into night and Basil began to give us ample supplies to make the long journey from her current sector to the Seventh City. We slept, although Raven kept a silence that unnerved me. I thought back to the times in the past when he had gotten very close to me. His wonderful dreams of grandeur, and his delightful disposition. It was all gone now.
In his sleep, I heard him mutter a word. My name. I smiled, my heart warmed. "Claire.."
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