Jack's Tales: The Great Shield Pt 2

The Great Shield: pt 2'
            Jack tore his gaze from the map, looking down at the canopy zooming underneath Alma’s tendril wings, searching intently for anything that looked remotely like the pictures on the old, yellowing map. 
            “Alma, this looks nothing like the map, are you going the right way?” Jack asked, looking back into the map. 
            “You’re the one directing me Wielder!” Alma calls over her shoulder. “According to you, this is where the map leads us, and the goblin merchant did give us an old map, and the hedge never ceases to move, so it is entirely possible that this ‘Artorious’ person’s grave is either a thousand kilometers away, or gone and long decayed.” 
            Jack put the map away, dropped his shoulders and massaged his neck, “Well, we’ve been flying in circles for hours, find a place to land near that lake down there and we’ll stop for a drink.” 
            The lake was only about a hundred feet in diameter, Alma landed on a gravel shore stretching nearly sixty feet in either direction, and about twenty feet between the water and the edge of the forest. Jack dismounted Alma and sauntered towards the water, removing his axe and satchel he dropped to his knees and dunked his head into the water to wash his face. He glanced over at Alma, who extended a hoof into the lake, unraveled the tendrils of her legs, to soak the water. 
            “This lake is rather refreshing,” Alma looks over at Jack, “and beautiful, is it not?” 
            He took in a deep breath, looking out over the glistening lake, scanning from left to right, lush forest and Thorns surrounding it. “It sure is, Alma.” Jack mumbled, only half listening, still thinking about La Fontaine and the rest of his friends. The growling of his stomach snapped him out of his trance; he hadn’t eaten since he left the freehold. 
            Jack put a hand over his stomach, “Well, I haven’t eaten in a fortnight, Alma can yo-” 
            Alma snapped her leg back, retracting the tendrils from the water. Entangled between the vines are four fish that resemble elongated sun perch, each about the size of a catfish. “Will these do?” she asks. 
            Jack cracked a smile; taking his axe by the handle and uses it to rise from his knees with a grunt; turning towards the trees a few strides behind him. Jack cupped his mouth, “Hey!” He called out to the trees, “If you have any dead branches feel free to shake’em down here!” 
            The mighty trees bent like bamboo and shook violently, dropping enough kindling to last a solid hour or so. Jack gathered the kindling and faced Alma, who has just dug a small hole in the ground with her hooves. He placed the branches into the newly dug fire pit and sat down; taking the newly caught fish in hand and pulled the Woodsman’s Axe to gut them. As he raised his axe in preparation to cleave the heads of the fish, Alma dropped one of his other hatchets next to Jack. 
            She coughed at Jack expectantly, and when he stared at her blankly, she stated, “Wielder, the Almighty Axe was not made to be used as a fish-gutter, use one of the other ones.” 
            Jack rolled his eyes with a sigh and placed the Woodsman’s axe to the ground; grabbed the one Alma planted and, with a pleasant and sarcastic smile towards Alma, cleaved the heads messily off of each fish and lit the kindling. Now a not-so-roaring fire sat in the pit, and Jack placed the fish on stones along the edges. 
            They sat in silence for what felt like an eternity when Alma finally spoke up, “So… Wielder… What do you intend to do when you acquire this shield?” 
            “I don’t know,” Jack stoked the flames, “I’ll probably keep walking around the hedge for a while, maybe go to the Tollta-” 
            “Wielder!” She snapped at Jack with a stamping hoof. “Why do you continue to run? Do you remember why the Axe chose you? To be the strongest in the land! To slay th-” 
            Jack snapped back in a mocking tone, “To slay the giant Cormoran!” Jack quickly stood to his feet. “I get it, Alma! But you know what? Sometimes I don’t feel like the ‘Prophesied Savior of the Forest’! Sometimes I think that I’m just, just-” 
            “Weak?” She asked honestly. 
            “HUMAN!” He bellowed in her unflinching face. “I’m not strong enough to protect the people I swore to fight for! God damn I let you get infected with giant ticks that would have eaten you alive if Rita hadn’t been there! The Thorns, the hedge, and this so called great prophecy you don’t shut the hell up about! I’m not strong enough! I got my ass handed to me by the summer king, and could barely hold my own against Gnoll! Let alone the monstrous Fae chasing me down!” 
            "Weilder..." Alma tried to console him.
           "I! AM NOT! THE GOD DAMN WEILDER!!!" Jack yelled.
Jack kicked the fire, and burned his wooden leg. He yelled in agonizing pain, running towards the water, he stamped his black and ashen foot in the shallow crystal pool. Alma stood unfaltered, watching as the mad tree-man splashed around in the lake. 
He walked back up the beach with a limp and sat in the gravel, taking a cooked fish in hand and angrily wolfing it in two bites, bones and all. Alma stepped towards him as if to speak; when they heard a rustling through the Thorns. Jack rose to his feet, Axe in hand, prepared for a fight. 
            The rustling stopped and a bright red pit-bull, about the size of an adult Great Dane appears, panting. It looks towards the fire, and barked. 
“It appears to be gesturing towards the fish, Jack.” She states. 
“Maybe it’s hungry?” He suggested. The dog barked again, Jack threw a fish at the dog and it wagged its tail as it gobbled it up quickly. It dashed towards the water, and before Jack could stop it, it ran over the top of it, as if there were a bridge. 
Jack looked at Alma; Alma looked at the dog. It barked at them, beckoning for them to follow. Jack mounted his steed to chase after the dog; leaving the fire and the fish behind. 
The lake may have only been about a hundred feet long, but they trotted along the top of the invisible bridge going nowhere fast for about five solid minutes, even though whenever Jack looked back the shore got further and further away. 
Eventually the dog came to a halt and barked at the air. Jack dismounted Alma and started pacing in front of the dog, calling back over his shoulder, “What are you barking about? There’s noth-” Jack hit an invisible entrance, falling into the creaking doorway he fell flat on his face; and the dog jumped over Jack and into the doorway, barking a short ways away. 
Jack pulled himself up from the ground, dusting himself off and walks inside. The room was small and low-lit, the only light coming from the doorway and a small bowl filled with burning oil and a row of torches lined the wall. The only exits were the door outside, and a staircase leading downward. The dog stands next to a tree sapling protruding from a crack in the ground covered in a pink lichen moss resembling chewed gum. It started chewing off the moss and smacking it in his mouth; imagine a dog trying to eat peanut butter. 
Jack and Alma stared at the dog, its barks and breaths slowly started to change into slack-jawed slurs, and slurs into full words. 
“Ah,” the hound snapped his jaw and spit the moss. “Welcome hero six-twenty-six to the graves of stories told, and in this place, the graves of heroes old.” 
“A talking dog?” Jack scoffs. “Now I’ve seen everything.” 
“You ride a plant and control trees,” the dog counters. “How can my speech give surprise, if you please?” 
“Why are you rhyming?” Jack asks. “And what do you mean by ‘the graves of heroes old’?” 
“Of the way I speak, think little of me,” he turns towards the dark staircase “And for your question, follow, take light with thee.” 
“Alma, I…” Jack starts towards Alma. She doesn’t acknowledge him. He scoffs and grabs a torch off of the wall, heading into the darkness with a stranger at his front, and a stranger at his back. 
End of part II
Category:Fiction