Disciple of Fire

Chapter 2: The Friend

I wake up in a rundown-looking wooden shed on a small cot made up of a table and some cloth. Rubbing my eyes, I pull myself up and lazily look around. I can see light twinkling in through the little cracks between the boards. Ugh... God, am I in another dream? Why haven't I woken up in the Kingdom yet? I sweep my legs over the side and hop up before my head starts pounding. "Man.. my head hurts," I mumble to myself. What happened last night?

I walk out the door and the sun blinds me for a minute, but as my eyes adjust I see another ring of burnt black grass, much larger than the last one, where the campfire used to be. two of the five buildings were smoldering. Oh god did I blow up again? Is everyone okay? I start panicking and scan my surroundings, spotting the three I talked to all night over by the forest, as well as the old man I originally followed, chopping trees, breaking down sticks, and separating leaves. Oh, thank god, okay. The boy notices me and nudges the old man. He sees me and saunters over.

"That's some ability you've got there," his voice raspy and calm, yet firm.

"Uh... yeah, I don't know how I keep doing that.." my words trail off.

"No worries, little one. These things happen. We can rebuild them." A wave of relief washes over me.

"Can I help?" I inquired excitedly, "It's the least I could do."

"Of course you can, I'd expect nothing less from a strapping young boy like yourself." He produces a crudely made ax, seemingly from nowhere. His reply made me feel warm inside, but it quickly faded. Why was he being so nice to me? I just burned down the buildings and he doesn't want to punish me? This can't be real, right? "I think that young boy over there wishes to speak with you, you should go see him." I nod and scurry off to the others, looking over my shoulder at the old man to see he is no longer there. My confusion takes hold as my body continues moving like an automatic machine, colliding with the archer boy head-on. I trip over his legs as he falls to the earth, barely bracing himself in time to stop injury, stumbling to the ground myself a few feet off.

"Hey now, you need to watch where you're going," The boy speaks as he pulls himself up with a slight groan, walking over and offering a hand up. I grab hold and he effortlessly pulls me from the ground. Wow... I guess you have to be pretty strong to survive out here. On my feet, I meet his solemn face, "Hey... about last night. That was intense, I'm sorry. If I had known you were going to literally blow up I would have stopped."

The memories from last night play through my brain, all the dark and twisted things he described. Yeah, I'm definitely still dreaming. May as well make the most of it. "N-no, I'm uh sorry for burning down the huts," There's a moment of desperation as I expect impact, a hit for my actions, but one doesn't come.

"Nah, don't worry. They weren't too hard to build. Not super sturdy either." His voice almost sounded cheerful. I begin to relax my body. "You know, we spent all night around the fire together, but we never told each other our names." the boy gazing at me, waiting for me.

"O-oh, right... I'm Salem." I answer, "What about you, what's your name?"

"I'm Silven," he points to the middle-aged man, who I can see has long dark hair, and a scruffy face, "That's Joffrey," his finger moves to the red-haired woman, "That's Raina," he glances around, searching for the elderly man, but not seeing him simply states, "The old man is Gontu."

"That's a lot of names to remember all at once." I try to pair their names with each face mentally.

The boy laughs, "We'll let it slide the first few times, but unless you feel brave enough to set out on your own, you're going to be stuck with us. So you should learn them quickly." As Silven talks, I'm watching Joffrey cut down a large tree, but something seems off. There's no way the ax he's using would be working that well against that tree. With ten swings of the ax, I watch as the sixty-foot-tall tree falls.