Thorn Rootweaver's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Thorn pressed his palms against the gnarled root jutting from the bog's edge, feeling for the grain beneath the bark. He needed something harder than the pale swamp willows he'd been working with — something that could hold a warrior's weight without bending. His army wouldn't be complete until a thousand men stood at his back, broad and silent, ready to march into the desert and make it listen. Then he saw it. Twenty feet out in the tar bog, a twisted staff of wood rose from the black surface, its grain dark as old blood and wound tight as muscle. Bone carvings decorated the shaft — figures of broad-shouldered men, rendered by hands not his own. The wood was sinking, pulled down by the tar's slow grip. Every hour it dropped another inch toward the depths where even he couldn't reach it. Thorn waded in up to his knees, but the tar grabbed at his legs and refused to release him. He pulled free and circled back to the shore, breathing hard. Near the water's edge, half-buried in mud, he found an anchor hook — rusted metal teeth designed to snag and hold. The engravings along its surface matched the carvings on the staff. He wrapped the chain around his forearm and threw. The hook caught. He pulled, the chain biting into his mossy skin as the tar fought to keep its prize. The staff shifted. Rose. Broke free with a wet sucking sound that made the frogs go quiet. Thorn held it in both hands, feeling the dense grain beneath his fingers. This wood could birth a warrior taller than any he'd made before — a champion to lead the rest. The silence stretched across the water, waiting for him to begin.