Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 1 of 150

Ben Dover had one day to leave the kingdom of Butter with the first relic, and he had nothing to carry it in. The relic sat on a stone shelf in an abandoned dairy shrine: a small carved mask, bright with painted teeth and jagged points, humming faintly under his fingers. Old stories called it one of seven scattered pieces. Ben had spent two years mapping their rumored places. He had walked here from the coast with a satchel, a knife, and a plan that ended the moment he touched the mask. The hum grew louder when he lifted it. The painted teeth rattled against the wood. He shoved the mask into his satchel, and the cloth strap tore at the stitch. The mask hit the floor. A chip flew off one tooth. Ben picked up the chip. His hands shook. If he carried the relic loose, it would break before he reached the next village. If he carried it in the satchel, someone would hear it howling and take it from him on the road. He searched the shrine. Broken crocks. A dead lantern. Behind the altar he found a wooden box the size of a loaf of bread. The lid drooped at the corners. Someone had carved a sad face into the front, eyes half-closed, mouth turned down. It looked like it had been left here to mourn. Ben pried the lid open. The inside smelled of old cedar. He set the loud mask into the box and closed it. The humming stopped. The rattle stopped. He pressed his ear to the wood and heard nothing. He smiled for the first time in a week. Then he heard the claws. Outside, something moved fast across the stone yard. Ben crouched behind the altar and looked through the doorway. A lean creature stood in the grass, blue-scaled, long-tailed, head low. Its eyes tracked the shrine. It had followed the sound of the mask, and it had arrived a beat too late to hear where the sound stopped. Ben held the box against his chest. The creature turned its head. It could outrun him across open ground in three strides. He knew this because he had watched one take down a goat outside the last village. He waited. The creature paced. It sniffed the doorway, hissed, and slid into the shrine. Ben went out the back gap in the wall while it searched the altar. He ran low through the tall grass, box tight under one arm, until the shrine dropped behind a rise. He stopped only when his lungs gave out. The box sat quiet in his lap. One relic secured. Six to find. And now something in the kingdom of Butter knew his scent, knew what he carried, and knew how to run faster than he could.