“She is a merchant from King’s City, so bring her to an empty room on the first floor and take good care of her. Without my command, no one is to let her out of the room.”
“As you command!”
“What? No, Your Highness… Please wait,” Margaret suddenly realized what was happening,”I have no ill will towards witches, not to mention that she even is the daughter of SirThunder, I would never tell the Church about this.”
“It is just a safety measure,” Roland interrupted. “Later on, I’ll come to see you to verify if you’re telling the truth.”
…
“Your Highness, she’s woken up,” Nightingale said, after opening the door to his office.
Roland nodded and followed Nightingale into Lightning’s bedroom. There was still steam rising from the bucket beside the big bed, and her drenched clothes hung over the edge of the bucket. The bedside was surrounded by a group of witches, while Wendy was sitting on the bed gently combing the little girl’s hair which until now was still not completely dry. But her previously pale face now had got some of its red color back. Her head laid against two pillows, while her quilt was pulled so high that only everything above her mouth wasn’t covered and her eyes were staring at Roland since the moment he had entered the room.
“What is the situation?”
“She hadn’t received any injury, her coma was caused by exhausting too much of her magic,” Nightingale replied. “Wendy helped her to clean her body, and when she got into the bed, she didn’t wake up for a long time after.”
Roland went to bed and looked at the girl with a gentle smile, “What happened to you, that you would fly back through the torrential rains in so much panic?”
“I found the ruins,” Lightning lowly muttered, “but the Devil was already there.”
Hearing this, all the expression of the surrounding people immediately change.
“Did you enter it?” Scroll asked.
“No,” Lightning shook her head and continued to tell the story, “The Devil stood in the doorway of the basement, and I could hear people crying for help, but I was too scared, I could do nothing besides escape, I didn’t even try to save her.” Her voice shrunk to a whisper, “Am I not qualified to do the work of an Explorer?”
“No, you handled it well enough,” Roland encouraged her. “Good Explorers know how to read the situation and do not take unnecessary risks. When you couldn’t save her, escaping was definitely the right choice.”
“She had to be a witch,” Wendy thought aloud, “nobody else could reach the depths of the Concealing Forest except for another witch.”
“No, even a witch wouldn’t be able to go there,” Scroll shook her head in disagreement, “That is a ruin from four hundred and fifty years ago. Without a map, which indicates the direction one has to travel, the task of finding the location of the Stone Tower in such a vast sea of trees would be extremely difficult, unless…”
“Unless what?” Roland asked.
“Unless someone had already been living there,” Scroll said slowly.
“You mean that they didn’t come from the kingdom and found the tower, but instead they are already living there from four hundred and fifty years ago. One generation, after another, living a life in seclusion?”
Within his heart, the Prince had already rejected this speculation. Living for the whole time in the Concealing Forest, shouldn’t be possible! Besides a variety of terrible insects and poisonous plants, there was no stable source of food… only in case you were Bear Grylls, it would be possible to live for such a long-term in the forest. Not to mention, in that part of the world, they would have several months of snow every year. Also, with the constant threat of the demonic beasts and Devils about, living in the Concealing Forest was simply suicidal.
He once again turned in the Lightning’s direction. “Were there any signs of smoke in the vicinity of the ruins?”
“No,” the little girl shook her head.
“Maybe there exist more than one map,” Soraya offered, “maybe there are other people like us, who are also looking for the whereabouts of the tower.”
“No matter what it is, we cannot help them,” Leaves concluded in disappointment. “Nobody can so quickly reach the Stone Tower, except for Lightning.”
“I’m afraid we still need to know the real situation,” Roland touch his chin, “In short, we have to find a way to insure that we can come back safe and sound. For today the teaching will be stopped, we are all in need of a good rest. When the time is right, the riddle will naturally solve itself.”
Leaving Lightning’s bedroom, he turned to Nightingale and said, “There is still another problem that we have to solve, next.”
“Just let her take off the God’s Stone of Retaliation,” Nightingale laughed, “Then everything will be made clear to me.”