Playing with Fire

Playing with Fire- Chapter Fifteen

Finally, the humble little shack came into view. We sprinted past the light of a streetlamp, giving the halo of yellow a wide berth. The door was still as shabby as it had been the last time. Mossy stones glowed orange in the light from the red lantern, water dripping down the outside walls to leave them glistening in a way that was almost magical.

 I rapped my knuckles on the door, picking up the same coarse grumble from within. "Great, they've woken me up again. Better have a damn good reason for interrupting me at this hour." Hayden's eyes crinkled in laughter.

The same pair of distrustful brown eyes glared at the two of us from the open door. I gave him a small wave, shaking my hair off to the side so he could see the silver tattoo winding up my cheek and forehead.

"Oh," he grunted, opening the door with a sour expression on his face. "It's you. Don't ya think you could knock on the door when I'm not in the middle of sleep?" We slipped past him into his home, waiting for him to close the door behind us before Hayden dropped his knapsack carefully onto a precariously stacked tower of books.

"We brought you the Sacred Dragon Pearl," Hayden said, crossing his arms. "And Reiara was almost killed in the process." The old man waved it off, crouching down stiffly and opening the folds of Hayden's bag.

"Beautiful," he croaked, holding it up into the flickering candlelight. "Even more special than the paintings of it." He turned to us, eyes wide in appreciation and reverance. "Do you know what kind of metal this is?" His brown eyes flashed to the multicoloured Dragon. "This is Biànzhí, the rarest material in the world. It is any piece of metal that is blessed by every single Dragon, and will only change colours if there is a Dragon Master in proximity." He sighed softly, eyes locked on the statue.

"That's wonderful," Hayden drawled, twin spheres of ice glaring at the old man. "But we're kind of in a hurry here. In case you hadn't noticed, Lee Derran was taken from the Dragon Isles last night and we'd like to find whoever is doing this before he gets..." The old man rolled his eyes, glanced at the Pearl one last time, and then hobbled into an adjoining room.

We waited in tense silence for several minutes before he finally appeared with a scroll clutched tightly in his grizzled hands. He unrolled it carefully, almost caressing it with his fingers as they brushed dust from the paper.

"I believe this is what you were looking for, correct?" His eyes glanced at us slyly before he snapped his head back down to read the scroll. "Said to be the most dangerous information ever to be recorded, the Shāyán de xié'è, or Sandstone of Evil, has been lost for centuries. The exact information it held is unknown, only that it caused death and destruction of massive villages. The ancient sandstone has been reported to be found somewhere in the Black Lake Mountain Range, but the exact location is a mystery. A riddle was found on the base of a goblet, but the information has never been released to anyone except the readers of this scroll. The riddle apparently indicated where the Shāyán de xié'è can be found, but nobody has yet deciphered it:

At the edge of the darkest mirror, on the side where the sphere of light begins its journey

There lies a field of grand proportions, the birthplace of the three eyes

The eyes act like those of a human, sensitive to the same as our own

At the end of one revolution the eyes will stare to an abyss

Through the abyss one must travel, without fear of what may be inside

In the dark there is a light, a glow that leads to an untimely demise

Once past the black, the path is clear

The way is shown if you follow the element of truth