Meadow Whisp's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

Meadow woke to a low ceiling of gray boards. He lay on a cot near a fire. His foot was wrapped in fresh cloth, tighter than he had tied it himself. For a moment he forgot the tunnel, the flames, the glowing lizard. Then he remembered, and he sat up too fast. Pain shot through his leg. He grabbed his sword from the floor beside the cot and held it close. The old man sat across the room, stirring a pot. His frost-white beard caught the firelight. His robe was stitched from faded maps, the paper soft with age. His battered staff leaned against the wall within his reach. He did not turn. "Lie back down," he said. "I set that foot while you slept. Break it again and I won't set it twice." Meadow kept the sword up. "Who are you? Why did I wake here?" "I saw the cave catch fire," the old man said. He ladled broth into a bowl and crossed the room slow, favoring one hip. "I'm glad I was able to help. Not many would walk into that smoke." He set the bowl beside the cot and stepped back. "My name is Aldric Ashe. I read old stones. I've read every mark at the winter camp for forty years." He studied Meadow with sharp eyes. "You carry a sword to bed. What made a boy so afraid?" Meadow lowered the blade an inch. "If I tell you, you'll say I'm mad. Everyone does." "Try me," Aldric said. So Meadow told him. The carved board with the sleeping tree-man. The eyes that opened. The teeth. The pit. He braced for the laugh he always got. It did not come. Aldric's face went still. "The sleeping one," Aldric murmured. "On the stones there's a mark I never knew. It appeared one night, with no carver." He looked at Meadow hard. "You've seen the thing that made it." "You believe me," Meadow said. His voice shook. No one had. Then a dry rasp came from a basket near the hearth. Meadow turned. The lizard lifted its head over the rim. Burn marks crossed its scales, but the orange light still pulsed beneath them. It fixed its blue eyes on Meadow and flicked its tail. Aldric froze. "That came out of the ground with you?" His grip tightened on the staff. "These guide folk through the tunnels. They don't leave them. Not for anyone." He searched Meadow's face now with something new, half wonder, half fear. "It chose you, boy. That changes what you are to me." Meadow set the sword down at last. For the first time since the pit, he was not alone with the truth. "Then help me," he said. "Help me prove what lives in those trees." Aldric explained well you see that Ent Creature is made of mythici wood its rather strange that it appeared here, Its several hundred thousand million miles away from its home, in fact id say its not even from your same universe, Meadow I need your to stay here recover, keep the Lizard at your side he is your Guardian now he chose you, im off to go to the one place that has clues of that creature the Ancient Viking Burial Site forged in ruins of men’s tongue and the forgotten minds of the mystical kingdom that awaits calm as a river yet pulsing as a living soul. Im off to the Ruins, please stay here you will be safe here i have a magical barrier and much much more that will keep you safe, that lizard is very important consider it a gift from me. Then Aldric left for the burial site.