Meadow Whisp's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The torch bloomed into a monster of its own. Flame raced across the oil-slicked floor and climbed the walls in a sheet. Heat slammed Meadow's face. He turned and ran, dragging his broken foot, the pain lost under terror. Fire chased him down the tunnel. He did not know the way. He knew only that the flames were faster than he was. The lizard appeared ahead, scales flashing orange in the firelight. It darted left, then looked back at him. Meadow understood. It was showing him the path. He lunged after it, half-crawling, choking on smoke. The little creature led him around a bend where the air felt cooler. For one breath, he believed he would live. Then fire caught the oil along the lizard's track. A ribbon of flame rolled over the creature. It shrieked and thrashed. The sound cut through Meadow worse than the heat. He threw his coat over it and smothered the burning oil. The lizard went still, then slumped, legs folding. It had fainted. Meadow knelt and looked at it. Its scales were not just scales. Thin cracks ran through them, glowing. Tiny seams of orange light, like lava under a crust, pulsing brighter with each moment. He had never seen a living thing like it. For a heartbeat he forgot the fire. Here was proof the world held things no one in his village believed. Things with teeth. Things with fire inside them. The flames around the lizard died, starved of oil. But the fire behind Meadow surged forward and wrapped the walls on every side. He was ringed in. Smoke poured into his lungs. His head swam. He pulled the lizard against his chest and tried to stand. His legs would not hold. The heat pressed him down. His strength drained out of him. He sank to his knees, then to his side. The roar of the fire faded to a dull hum. His eyes blurred. Through the blur, at the edge of the flames, a shape moved. A tall figure, slow and certain, stepping into the smoke where no person should be able to walk. A frost-white beard. A battered staff tapping stone. A robe stitched from old, faded maps. The old man raised the staff, and the fire bent away from him like water around a rock. He looked down at Meadow with sharp, unsurprised eyes, as if he had expected to find a boy and a glowing lizard here all along. "Hold still," the old man said. "You've found something you weren't meant to find." Meadow tried to answer. No words came. His gaze fixed on the figure's pale hat as his eyes slid shut. The last thing he felt was the lizard's warmth against him, and the strange relief that someone, at last, had come. He then awoke in a strange new place a Dull seemingly abandoned house