The Stone of Salazara (Book 1 of Saga of the Stones)

Chapter 12

When we finally faced them, the six of us sat on a long bench in front of them, with Kansans sitting against a wall in the back of the room, where he could still hear and be heard, but he wasn't obscuring the view of the audience, which sat in a semicircle behind us. A hug section of the pews were lit with a silver glow, with one golden glowing blob in the front, where King Lotholian and Queen Lothliona sat. The rest of the seats had some normal people in them, though they held staffs and wands, and I assumed they were wizards and witches. Other seats had dwarves, gnomes, and goblins in them. After facing so many evil ones, it was a relief to find that these ones were sworn to our side. A small row of seats had some people on them wearing clothes that appeared to be made of seaweed and shells. They had legs, but each had a bucket of water at their feet and a small cloth, which they occasionally dabbed the wet cloth on places that were drying up.

The Council itself sat at a semicircle in front of us, and introductions were made. At our far right, sat the elder for the elves. He looked as if he had seen several hundred decades of life. His name was Lasanove. Going to the right along the table were the elders for the dwarves, the goblins, and the gnomes. Their names were Ashdigger (who had a long red beard and a pickax on the back of his chair), Shananaka (who's skin was gray and wrinkly, though he seemed nice enough), and Fabiok (who wore a pointy hat and had a long white beard). In the middle of the semicircle was the representative elder and his vice, Shakan (a dark haired wizard with a beard) and Potolia (a fair haired witch who seemed to be the enforcer of the group) . Continuing right were the elders for the merpeople, the fairies, the elf sprites (noticeably different from elves, as they were considerably shorter and were not immortal, and were sometimes called leprechauns in other countries), and the dragons. Their names were Oceania (who was dressed in shells and carried a trident. Like her people in the audience, she had legs and had a bucket of water and cloth, which she used to wet dry spots as the meeting went on), Faunday (who was small and had a pair of delicate wings and wore crescent moon glasses, her hair in a neat bun), Calen (who was short, and wore a full green and brown outfit), and Winglifter (who was a huge gray dragon that took up a large amount of the room).

Shakan, who seemed to want to get this over with, started the meeting by having us explain our story. All the way through Sir Franklin finding the stone on a shipwreck, giving it to Isabelle, Isabelle meeting me, then Matt finding me and bringing me to find the stone, then us realized Isabelle had it and meeting her again and rescuing Sir Franklin and Matt. It took quite a while, and I was honestly tired of talking by the time we finished.

Then he went through a whole speech explaining how the Sword of Silvander worked, and how as soon as I killed Massadonic I would lose the ability to use its magic- this I already knew. Then he performed a 'ceremony' of naming the sword, though it was really just telling me I could name it for the time that it would be mine. I decided to nickname it SilverBlade, because it was easy to remember and a lot less of a mouthful than the Sword of Silvander. He was going to have me destroy it, but then Lasanove- who apparently had a small gift of seeing the future- said we would need it in years to come. Shakan accepted the reasoning, and tried to prompt Lasanove to tell when we would need it. The elf refused to tell, and only said that an extension of our group would have use of it in the future.

Then came the deciding of if we were to become a group assigned to retrieving magical stones before Massadonic, or if we would split ways and I would be left with Matt to go after Massadonic.

Without even looking at one another, we all cried out that we wanted to stay as a group.

Shakan smiled slightly at the friendship we had begun. "Then you shall be called The Stone Keepers! Now for a place for you to stay..." he thought a moment, conversed with a few people that were behind him, and said, "I do believe there is a large cottage- quite large enough for the lot of you- to live in. It is in Calderhead. The council will pay any expenses of buying it, and you all can make it you home."

We exchanged smiles. I was sure my smile was biggest of all. I didn't have to go back to the orphanage!

Part of me wondered if Sylvia, or any of the other orphans that I had become... not close friends, but friends enough with, were worried about me. It had been over a month... did they care? Had they moved on?

I brushed the thought from my mind as the meeting was ended. We were escorted to our new home, which was the largest cottage I had ever seen. With the help of Levilan's elf friends, and some people from the village, we fixed up the place over the course of the next few weeks. Once the house was finally finished, we bought bran new furnishings and made the house really ours.

A month into living in our new home, Matt proposed to Jem, and she immediately said yes. We had what seemed to be the happiest home in Calderhead.

And I soon found a new myself shipping Levilan and Isabelle. The two were obviously attracted to each other, but it seemed to be that they were both trying to hide it. I didn't say anything about it, leaving them to it, though wishing in the back of my head that the ship would sail.

And so ends my first adventure. I have many more, and I get more friends along the way. I hope you stick around to read them, and hear about our missions to get more stones before Massadonic.

Well... I'm bad at ending stories... so I'm just gonna say;

The End

(of this adventure)