The Petrified Dragonling

Black Gold and Green Light song for this story

Fle hummed a gentle, off-key tune as he sorted a fresh harvest of Black Gold. The air in his mine was humid, smelling of damp earth, rich minerals, and the subtle, peppery scent of the finished product. To Fle, it was the purest fragrance in the world. He was content.

His solitude was broken by a frantic knock on the mine’s sealed stone door. Fle grumbled, his ancient joints aching as he made his way to the entrance. He unsealed the door to find a young human enchanter, out of breath and holding a small, polished stone statue of a lizard. It was a dragonling, frozen mid-leap, its scales glinting with a soft, grey light.

“You’re Fle, the elf of the Black Gold?” the enchanter asked, desperation in their eyes. “My name is Elara, and this is Ignis. A rival spellcaster petrified him, and nothing—no potion, no counter-curse—has worked. I saw a rumor in a market that your fertilizer could grow anything. I know it’s a long shot, but… can it grow life?”

Fle scowled. “My Black Gold is for growth, for a healthy bloom, not for curing foolish curses.” He turned to go back to his work, but the way Elara held the stone dragonling, with a mixture of hope and sorrow, stopped him. The gesture reminded him of the love he had for his own work, his own “children” of the soil.

He sighed, the sound like crumbling stone. “It is not a cure,” he said, holding out a hand for the statue. Elara hesitated, but then handed it over. “It is… a catalyst. I do not know if it will work. We will try.”

Fle led her deep into the mine, to a chamber where a small, glowing stream of the sacred river flowed. He carefully placed Ignis on a flat stone. Fle then took a small pouch of his most potent Black Gold, the kind he reserved for his prize-winning luminous moss. He mixed a tiny amount with water from the stream, creating a thick, shimmering paste.

“This will either do nothing, or it will risk destroying the petrified form,” he warned.

With a whisper of an ancient elven chant, Fle began to dab the paste onto the stone dragonling. The moment it made contact, the paste glowed with an emerald light that pulsed in time with Fle’s heartbeat. Elara gasped as a hairline crack of pure green light appeared on Ignis’s stone skin. More cracks spread, like the roots of a living thing. The stone began to soften, its hard surface giving way to a porous, soil-like texture. A faint warmth emanated from it, and a low thrumming sound echoed in the chamber.

Fle continued applying the paste, the glowing green lines intensifying. Ignis’s form began to change, no longer a statue, but a being in transition. The texture of the stone peeled away like a shedding skin, revealing shimmering, iridescent scales underneath. The green glow subsided, replaced by the faint, healthy blush of a revived creature.

With a final, gentle push, Fle removed the last remnants of the petrified shell. Ignis was no longer stone. The tiny dragonling blinked its eyes, a deep, golden color, and let out a small, puff of smoke. It was alive.

Elara’s eyes welled up with tears of joy as she carefully picked up her revived companion. She thanked Fle profusely, but the ancient elf was already walking away, a thoughtful look on his face. His Black Gold was not just fertilizer; it was a restorer of life, a magical substance with a far grander purpose than he had ever imagined. The solitude of his mine no longer felt like a retreat, but a sanctuary where he cultivated not just plants, but hope itself.

The Unwanted Pilgrimage

The Unwanted Pilgrimage Song – enjoy.

The whispers began small, like a rustling of leaves on a quiet day. A week after the young enchanter Elara and her dragonling departed, a single figure appeared at the mouth of Fle’s mine, holding a small petrified child. Then came another, with a stone bird clutched in a trembling hand. Soon, the trickle became a stream, and the stream became a river of human sorrow.

Fle’s peaceful existence was gone. The rhythmic scraping of his shovel against the soil was replaced by the constant, desperate knocking on his door. He would open it to find a sea of faces, all pleading, all holding their lost loves frozen in stone. “Please, wise Fle, just a single scoop!” one would cry. “My son has been this way for a year!” another would beg.

He tried to turn them away. “I am not a healer!” he would bellow, his voice echoing from the depths of the mine. “I am a miner! My work is with the earth, not with your fool curses!” But his words were like water against stone. Their desperation, a raw, aching need for hope, broke through his resolve. He began to work tirelessly, his ancient hands mixing the precious Black Gold not for blooming flowers, but for broken hearts.

As the days blurred into weeks, Fle began to notice a pattern. The petrified victims all came from the same region, a kingdom at the edge of the Whispering Woods. He questioned one of the travelers, a grizzled old farmer whose entire field had turned to lifeless rock. The farmer explained that a reclusive and powerful spellcaster, a man known as Malakor, was responsible. Malakor believed the kingdom was encroaching on the magical wilderness and saw petrification as a form of “rebalancing.”

Fle felt a fury he hadn’t known in centuries. Malakor was not merely a threat to a peaceful life; he was a poison to the sacred balance that Fle had dedicated his life to. His solitude, the quiet joy of his work, and the very purpose he had just discovered were all threatened by this fanatic. He realized he could not simply wait for the world’s brokenness to come to him. He had to go to the source.

Leaving his mine to the care of a trusted few glowing mosses, Fle began a rare journey back into the world. He traveled to the heart of the Whispering Woods, a place of twisted, gnarled trees and silent, petrified animals frozen in mid-flight. He found Malakor in a clearing, a gaunt, angry man weaving a new petrification spell.

“Your methods are a desecration,” Fle said, his voice quiet but firm. “You call this balance? This is destruction.”

Malakor sneered. “They would poison this land with their progress. I am its protector.”

Fle, for the first time in his life, used his Black Gold for something other than a cure. He took a handful of the glistening, dark dust and spread it over the most blighted part of the clearing. The moment it touched the earth, the ground glowed with an emerald light. The sickly, twisted trees began to straighten, their branches unfurling with new, vibrant green leaves. The petrified remains of a deer dissolved back into soft, living soil, and wild grass sprouted in its place.

Fle had not attacked; he had healed. He had shown Malakor that true balance was not about destruction and hatred, but about harmony and cultivation. “The world is not a thing to be fought over,” Fle said, “but a garden to be tended.”

Malakor’s spell wavered. He stared at the newly blooming section of the forest, his face a mix of shock and wonder. Fle’s display had done more than prove a point; it had shown him a better way. With a bow of his head, the spellcaster stopped his work.

Fle returned to his mine, exhausted but a little lighter. The constant knocking on his door would not cease, but he no longer saw it as an intrusion. It was a request for hope. His Black Gold was a catalyst for change, and his mine was no longer just a place to hide from the world, but a place to heal it.