The Eight Walls of Rogar: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Series! (The Lost Kingdoms of Laotswend Trilogy--Book One) Read Online Free PDF Page B

down.  In the morning, he would broaden his search.  There had to be something he was overlooking.  Hopefully tomorrow he would discover what.  Missing the warmth and security of his own bed, he slipped into a restless slumber, heart aching as he pictured the house in which he was born--cedar cottage tucked behind a hill, surrounded by well-tended fields, small stands of oak trees, and clear running streams.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Going Home
     
     
     
    T he first blush of dawn bathed the forest in amber hues.  Dew glittered on the ground like diamonds, refracting the light in a sparkling dance.  Something had woken him, a low snuffling noise.  Focusing his eyes in the direction of the noise, Andaris became rigid with fear, for no more than a few feet away stood a creature out of myth and legend.  He recognized the curving horns and bulging eyes from the stories he’d heard as a child, stories which found their origins in the Shallae.  He blinked, trying to clear it from his vision, but to no avail.  As impossible as it seemed, he was lying directly in the path of a macradon.
    The beast stood over ten feet tall, covered from top to bottom with coarse gray fur, its muscles bunched and swollen, its eyes black as coal.  Andaris had been told that macradons could eat twice their weight in flesh, which, assuming the creature before him was typical of the breed, meant several hundred pounds.  He’d also heard that they were many times more ferocious than any bear, and could, despite their immense size, outrun a deer at a full sprint.  The beast opened its slathering maw in a wide yawn, took in a great gulp of air, and expelled it in a brilliant billow of mist, revealing row after row of jagged teeth.  Andaris held his breath and remained as still as possible, feeling sure it would hear the thundering of his heart. 
    The thing rocked back and forth on its thick haunches, glistening snout sniffing this way and that, eyes darting about as though agitated.  Andaris shrunk against the floor of the opening, staying perfectly still when, to his horror, its eyes met with his.  He felt his blood go cold in his veins, for in those eyes he saw not an ounce of reason.  They were empty, flat, and utterly pitiless.  The macradon tilted its blocky skull to one side, as though unsure what to make of him.
    Go away, Andaris thought.  Please….
    With a sudden thrash a deer bolted from behind a tree.
    The macradon heaved its massive body around and went crashing through the forest after it, moving out of view to the sound of breaking branches and snapping limbs.
    Andaris lay there a moment, stunned, attempting to come to grips with what he’d just seen.  Then a single question jarred him into action—what if it comes back?  Wasting no more time, he stuffed his things into his pack and crept from the hole like a mouse, heading away from the mountains in what he hoped to be the general direction of Fairhaven.  Danger seemed to lurk behind every tree.
    How was it possible that macradons were real?  Their mere existence punched gaping holes in his tidy belief system, because if they were real, what else might be real?  And what about that deer? he wondered.  He couldn’t be sure, for it had darted by in such a blur, but he was almost certain its coat had shimmered like a rainbow, flashing in the morning damp from one color to the next.
    I’m losing my mind, he decided.   I’ll probably end up like poor old Mr. Krandike .  Now long dead, Jovan Krandike had ventured into Fingar Forest in his youth and returned forever touched.  At least that was the polite description.  Andaris remembered him well from his childhood. The eccentric old man had filled his and the other children’s heads with an inexhaustible variety of fantastic tales about distant lands and magical creatures, about knights and dragons, kings and queens, and castles in the sky.
    Andaris had been mesmerized by the stories, even more so than his friends