Saving Elementals

Chapter 13

"Wow, this is really pretty!" Acid exclaims as we walk up to the small lake hidden behind the trees. There's a waterfall on the other side of the lake where a rocky cliff face lays.
" It's really nice and all but how is this suspicious?" Tornado asks. Waves starts walking and gestures for us to follow her. She walks around the huge lake and over to the rocky cliff face. Up close I can see that it's covered in moss and vines.
There's a rock path that we walk across to get to the waterfall. When we get near it I can't hear anything over the sound of the water roaring beside us. I almost slip on the stones but Ebony reaches out and catches me before I fall, pulling me back towards the rock face.
Waves walks into the waterfall and doesn't come back out. I stand there in shock, staring at the place she was before snapping out of it and walking in after her. The waterfall soaks my clothes and I wrong it out as the others step through.
Waves snaps her fingers and the water slips off of us, going back into the waterfall. I look around the cave and see that there are a lot of different things in here. There's a whole bunch of trash on the floor and some stuff stored in crevices in the rocks.
We keep walking and make it to the end of the cave where I'm surprised to see a man sitting on a cushion. He looks up as we walk towards him and smiles at us. We stand a few feet away from him, watching as he looks us over.
"Who are you?" Waves asks him, looking confused to see him in here. He gets up from his cushion and walks over to us, bowing down. Acid and Kindle look slightly uncomfortable by this but the man soon stands up straight again.
"I am Elder Spring. Come sit," he says, sitting back down on his cushion . We sit down in front of him and listen as he tells us stories of the water and how it was created, as well as the earth and all the other elements.
He leaves once to get a platter of food and bring it back to us. We eat while he tells us more of the stories, sometimes telling ones about his own life before he decided to become and elder and settle down.
"You came here looking for people making trouble?" He says after he finishes one of his stories. I nod and take a bite out of an apple. He sighs and shakes his head, smiling at us.
"No one but me has been here for the past few days. The children you are looking for aren't here," he says. I look at him in surprise, as none of us had even mentioned the children at all.
"Do you know where they are?" I ask him. He thinks for a moment before shaking his head no. We finish the platter of food and he offers to let us stay in the cave for the night. We gratefully accept and he walks into another room, bringing out blankets and pillows.
" I hope this will do. I don't have very many living on my owm, " he says. I nod and tell him that it will be fine and that we can share if we need to. he nods and sits down, telling us a few more stories before pulling out a book.
"May I see the chains please?" He asks, holding us hand out to us. I hand him mine, still somewhat surprised that he knows about everything. He takes all our chains and starts reading a tale from the book, one about how these particular chains were made.
A witch made them and have them to her husband as a gift for his birthday. The husband , who was a wizard, cast a spell on them, making them able to protect whomever carries it around with them. He had lost them one day and then died without ever finding them.
The people of the Water Kingdom has found them in the ocean and thought that they were a gift from a higher being. They put them in temples and worshipped the gods, the chains making the temples a safe place.
"So the whole religion was based of of three chains?" Acid asks him. He nods and closes the book, handing us back out chains. He sets the book down in a pile and stands up, brushing the dust off his pants.
" I'm heading off to sleep. You may leave whenever, don't wait for me to get up, " he says walking across the room and over to a passage way. He makes it halfway down and turns to go into a room.
"Thank you!" I exclaim before he turns the corner. He turns back and smiles at me before walking into the room. I stand up and take some of the blankets, lying them on the floor so we can lay on them.
I put the pillows in the middle of the blankets and we all lay down and talk for a while. Acid talks about the Poison Kingdom and the places that we are going to go check out while we're there.
"There have been people of all ages disappearing in my kingdom," they mention. I frown and lean back against my pillow. Unlike some of the other kingdoms, the Poison Kingdom is usually on top of what's going on there, especially crime wise. I
"We should leave at dawn if we want to arrive at the Poison Kingdom at a decent time," Ebony says. I nod and yawn, pulling the covers up to my chin. Ebony shares a blanket with me, both of us making sure not to take too much of it from the other person.
Kindle and Waves fight over the blanket for a while before finally settling down and going to sleep. Acid snuggles up to Tornado and used his head as their pillow.
I fall asleep listening to the muffled roar of the waterfall outside of the cave.