Astaria Thornweave's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Astaria Thornweave knelt in the ash-dark soil and pressed a seed into the ground, the first of a grove she meant to grow for every wood elf driven from home. She had walked far to find this valley. The land was empty, the water clean, the sun soft. Behind her waited a broad wooden chest, its iron bands catching the light, filled with seeds she had carried for a hundred miles. She had enough to shelter hundreds. She only needed the shoots to live. They did not. A stone troll had settled where she planted. It stood taller than three elves, gray as a boulder, its eyes two hollow pits. It did not attack. It simply walked. Each heavy step drove into the soil and crushed her young shoots flat. She replanted at dawn. By dusk, the troll's tread had ground them to pulp. Her hands shook as she opened the chest again. Fewer seeds remained now than yesterday. Astaria raised her wand and tried to move it. Roots burst from the earth and wrapped its legs. The troll took one step, and the roots snapped like thread. She tried a wall of thorns. It walked through, and the thorns broke against its stone skin. Force would not work. Nothing green could stop a thing made of rock. She remembered a saying from her grandmother. Stone trolls once spoke, long ago, before people forgot how to listen. The old mountain druids still knew the words. She had heard one lived in the high peaks, ancient beyond counting. Astaria climbed for two days. She found the old druid seated on bare rock, still as the stone itself, moss growing on his shoulders. Aldric Stonepeak opened one eye when her shadow fell across him. "You've been planting in a troll's bed," he said. He did not ask. He knew. "It crushes everything I grow," she said. "Teach me to speak with it. Please." He studied her a long moment. Then he taught her three words in the old tongue, low sounds that rumbled in her chest. "Speak them slowly," he said. "A troll thinks in seasons. Give it time to answer." She returned to the valley. The troll stood among her ruined rows. Astaria set down her wand and spoke the three words. The troll went still. Its hollow eyes turned toward her. For a long breath, nothing happened. Then it spoke back, a sound like grinding stone, and stepped aside. The troll walked to the valley's edge and sat. It would not trample her grove again. Astaria wept with relief and opened her chest to plant. But the troll had spoken more than one word. Aldric had taught her only three. She had understood just one of them: a warning. The troll had felt something coming through the ground. Something large, moving toward the valley, heavy enough to shake the stone. And it was near.