Dire Sparks (Song of the Aura, Book Five)

by Gregory J. Downs

  A strong breeze blew past him from deeper in the Grove; it smelled of fresh-cut herbs and strong-sap bark. Cal turned to go, and was immediately confronted with the tall shape of the Brown Aura, striding through the forest towards him. Cal almost stumbled in his surprised haste to get out of the way, but the Brown Aura caught him by the arm and kept him up.

  “The Gray Aura has been summoned,” Wanderwillow spoke in a deep, grating voice. Cal jumped- the Silent One had spoken! “The Last War has come,” continued Wanderwillow, “And you have your part to play as surely as I, Calloway An’South.”

  “I…” Cal fumbled over his words, trying to come up with a response. The Last War?

  “Follow,” the Brown Aura said, and letting go of Cal’s arm, walked away. The boy hurried to keep up with the massive strides of the Aura’s tree-like legs, but he drew strength from the stone beneath his feet… and he followed.

  The Grove faded behind them, and Cal wondered nervously if the Brown Aura intended to confront the approaching army alone. The greenery of his new home gradually grew distant, swallowed by the all-consuming desolation of the war-torn Grymclaw. The rumble Cal had heard grew stronger and stronger, until he could hear as well as sense it.

  Then dust rose ahead. The army was upon them! Cal almost yelped in fear, but the Brown Aura caught his eye and shook his hoary head once.

  No, the glance seemed to say, things are not as they appear. That one look, stern though it was, calmed Cal’s nerves. The Silent One was the Creator’s most powerful servant… surely he would not lead anyone to their death like this. Cal tried his best to make himself look confident… he was safe, wasn’t he?

  Shapes moved in the dust, and all at once the Brown Aura halted, lifting a hand slightly to encourage Cal to do the same. The army stopped, too. Cal shivered. Was something horrible about to happen? Would the Silent One call down heaven-fire on the invaders and kill them all?

  Then Wanderwillow raised a bark-like hand, and that same breeze Cal had felt back at the Grove spread out in a great whooshing gust towards the dust-cloud, scattering it instantly and revealing the people it hid. Cal frowned. If this was an invading army, it was nothing like the ones the Golden Nation had sent.

  In front was a battered battalion of silver-armored men with dark skin, browner than Cal, but lighter than a Coalskin. They leaned wearily on notched axes and dulled spears, and there were huge curved scimitars at their belts. Behind them were men with lighter skin and bronze armor, and scattered throughout were men- and women, Cal was shocked to see- in dirty street clothing, hefting every kind of conceivable blade or bludgeon. All in all, a rather disheartened army. Cal thought they could be beaten easily.

  Then he caught a glimpse of the army’s center, where a gaggle of children and elders were kept, obviously meant to be protected by the soldiers on the outside. Cal now saw that the army had formed a circle around its more vulnerable members.

  These aren’t invaders… he realized. They’re survivors!

  Now the motley army seemed to notice the Brown Aura for the first time, and though he was only one, whispers soon spread through the entire force of survivors, and silence fell over them all.

  Then a man detached himself from the main body of the force, followed by two hulking warriors in silver, and a woman all in black. He crossed the two hundred paces between the army and the Brown Aura slowly, as if he were too tired to go any faster. As he drew close, though, Cal saw that there was a hard fire in his eyes, identical to the fire he’d noticed in the eyes of Gribly, and the beautiful nymph girl Elia. This, then, must be the leader of the survivors.

  Ten paces away, the two silverguard halted. The leader and the woman kept coming until they were close enough for Cal to touch with the end of his staff, then halted and knelt stiffly, sinking down on both knees and bowing until their foreheads touched the ground. Cal fought a cry of surprise: the leader had long, pointed ears that almost cleared the top of his head! Was he a nymph, then?

  “I crave your mercy, O Ninth,” said the man, raising his head slightly in order to speak. The woman stayed where she was.

  Ninth? What sort of title was that? Cal looked to Wanderwillow, and found the Aura looking intently at him.

  Oh.

  “The… the Silent One does not like to speak, much,” Cal hesitantly told the man. He glanced quickly over at Wanderwillow, and saw the faintest hint of satisfaction on his brown face. Thank the Creator… he’d guessed right.

  “I… see,” said the man, raising his head a little more.

  “Tell him what you want,” Cal told him, more confidently this time, “And if he wills it… he will help you.”

  The man bowed his head a little deeper. He seemed to be considering his next words carefully. Then, slowly, he rose to his feet, gesturing for the woman in black to do the same. When both had risen, the man brushed his long, graying hair from his face, and spoke the last words Cal had thought to hear.

  “I am Argoz, Dunelord and Cleric of Ymeer. My companion is Shele, Duneshadow of my army. We come to ask you for aid, O Aura… and to pledge ourselves to you in the Last War, when it comes.”

  The Brown Aura bowed his head silently, eyes glinting with fervor. The Dunelord looked confused.

  “It’s already come,” Cal said quietly. “It’s… here.”

  ~

  The Blackwood was burning.

  In an ashy hollow where once had stood an entrance to the Mortenhine underground, two M’tant were fighting for their lives against one particularly vicious Pit Strider.

  As Avarine watched, the first wood-nymph charged, swinging his halfsword and snarling, desperation written in his attack. The Pit Strider ducked under the swing, punching the nymph in the gut with a gauntleted fist that glowed orange. The M’tant stumbled back, wheezing, doubling over in pain as fire burned into his stomach.

  Then the Pit Strider made a claw with each hand, holding them out from him as if he were holding an invisible ball of air. Sparks jumped between his palms, fizzing unnaturally loud.

  Blast! Avarine thought. I waited too long… But she had to try anyway.

  Before she’d taken three steps, a liquid flame too bright to look at gushed from the Pit Strider’s hands, sweeping the area in front of him. It lasted only for a second, but when it winked out of existence there was nothing left of the nymphs or the tunnel entrance… except a smoking, blackened crater.

  “You’re out of luck, slime,” Avarine murmured. The Pit Strider whipped his head around, looking for the source of her voice.

  “I hear you, infidel…” he said, snarling and rubbing his hands together.

  “But you can’t hurt me,” she pointed out, “Not when you’ve used up most of your power to burn those two to a crisp!”

  It was all a ploy, of course. The Pit Strider spun towards her voice, unleashing a ball of red fire. He was too late; already she was rolling to the side, something hard clutched in her fist. The Coalskin barely had time to scream before she had reached him, slapping him hard in the neck with the object in her hand.

  “Burrower,” Avarine smirked, letting herself become visible. The black thing unwound its curled black carapace and dug into the Pit Strider with startling alacrity. In a moment it had disappeared into his body, and the Coalskin was thrashing on the ground as the burrower made good on its name. “Funny,” Avarine said, “They won’t touch nymphs. We got the idea to use them against you from your very own burrowing golems. Fools…”

  She disappeared again. She liked to let her enemies see her face, but it wouldn’t do to stay vulnerable for too long. As the Coalskin’s spasms grew ever weaker behind her, Avarine stalked further into the hellish remnant of the Blackwood’s southern quarter. Burrowers only worked once, and that had been her last one. There was no time to lose.

  She would reunite her people, now that the M’tant cleric served her and she had extinguished the Understone. There were no Aura to protect the M’tant, and no one else would come to the aid of oath-breakers and
blood-drinkers such as her people had once been.

  Once, but no more. Avarine would remake them… no matter what it took.

  The Blackwood burned, but she would quench the Pit Fires with Spirit, one by one, until she had saved her people. Until she had done what her father could not.

  Oh Lauro, she thought painfully, I need you more than ever…

  Chapter One: Awakening

  Elia felt numb.

  She was shut in a dark place, her mind removed from her body, both protected and suffocated by the wall of shadow that surrounded her. There was pain on the outside of the wall, and sorrow, and a bone-aching weariness… but they did not seem real enough to hurt her. Nothing seemed real, except the darkness. The darkness that numbed her.

  Deeper shadows flitted about beyond the wall. They meant something, Elia was sure, but she could not figure out what. When they suddenly melted away, vanishing, she could not summon enough remorse to care.

  Then a Deepness came. A Deep Black. A Deep Hurt. The dark numbness turned to a blinding dark horror, a pain that would not go away.

  Something was being ripped from her; it felt as if her blood were being boiled and pulled through the pores of her skin. She tried to scream, but no sound came. She tried to move, to fight, to escape… but she had no body that she could feel. She was trapped at the mercy of the horror that was sucking the life from her.

  It hurts… it hurts… it’s going to kill me… I can’t stand… can’t… can’t fight… can’t pray…

  She had always been able to pray. What had she become now? Was this the end?

  Then the last push came; the massive severing that stabbed nails of iron suffering into her heart and mind. Something snapped, or was cut…

  …and Elia screamed.

  ~

  Whatever had changed since that last horrible moment, Elia doubted it was for the best. Every inch of her body burned as if it was on fire. The mind-shadows were gone, replaced with a tangible, waking darkness her eyes could not penetrate. Her head throbbed with unceasing pain, making it too hard to think. Her arms felt raw and bloodless, as did her ankles. She felt as if she was suspended in space, with nothing to hold her up as her body was pulled in two different directions at once. It made no sense, but then… nothing was making sense anymore.

  After an eternity of hazy pain, her senses finally began to clear… and she found that reality was even worse.

  A shivering thread of light fell on her from above; weak, red, and wavering, but enough to give her the vaguest sense of her surroundings. Her wrists and ankles hurt so badly because they were chained, and somehow she had expected that… that was what happened to prisoners, wasn’t it? Whose prisoner was she?

  A cold draft of air whispered down upon her from above, rustling the rough garment she wore. The light grew stronger, if only for a moment. Her headache subsided slightly, and she realized the full gravity- and hopelessness- of her situation.

  She was chained by her wrists and ankles to the walls of a tiny circular chamber barely wider than she was tall. The walls were metal, and ran up infinitely high above her, vanishing into misty heights, and a darkness broken only by a thin sliver of red light. Below her… the walls kept going down, down into the blackness with no end she could see. She lay on her side, perched on a precariously narrow shelf that jutted into the shadows.

  Elia sat up, cringing, trying to scream, but no sound came from her parched throat. She was in the midst of a metal chasm, ready to fall at any moment!

  Her chest heaved as the shock of the discovery took its toll. When it had finally subsided, Elia was morbidly thankful for the chafing at her wrists. The chains bound her cruelly tight, but they also kept her from falling to her death. Still, they were only partial safety… she could’ve fallen off and hanged herself in their coils during the night!

  The red light grew a bit stronger, and Elia realized that it had to be sunlight; distant and removed, but there all the same. That gave her a little hope, and she strained her neck to see what hung below her. Nothing, as far as the eye could see.

  Where in Vast am I? she wondered fearfully. The answer, surprisingly, came to her almost immediately…

  I’m not in Vast. I can’t be. I should be… dead!

  The memories came flooding back, a surging tide of emotions and sensations that elicited a gasp of surprise from her unprepared lips.

  The draiks… my family… the Sea Demon… the ship… Gribly and Lauro… the Reethe… the Grymclaw… almost lost my Swimmer Form… the Swaying Willow… the Aura… Sheolus… Sheolus!

  Those final moments, once recalled, brought a single teardrop down her cheek… her eyes were too dry to cry more. She had… she had sacrificed herself, just as Wanderwillow had asked her to. She had saved Gribly, and died in the process. Sheolus, the dark Legion, had stabbed her in the heart with that bone-dagger… and she had felt herself being ripped apart by light and blood…

  That was all gone, now… and she was here. But where was here?

  She struggled with the memories in her head, trying to bring them up to this point… but nothing came, even as the red light turned to a soft orange, grew fainter, and finally winked out completely. In the darkness, Elia felt too exhausted and muddled to carry on fighting… so she gave up, letting her head droop and trying vainly to ignore the burning pain in her arms as her chains dug ever deeper into her flesh. In vain she tried to find a more comfortable position… whoever had made this place had known their craft.

  The pain grew more intense, then gradually faded as a killing numbness spread from her bonds to the rest of her body. For a few minutes she half-sat half-slumped like that, unable to move or think, unable to gain the blessed darkness of sleep she wanted more than anything else. Eventually, a subtle but constant shivering took hold of her, and her body shook feverishly in the blackness.

  Then the shaking faded… and her mind followed. Sleep came, whispering in her ear, taunting her, coming and going… and finally wrapped her in its embrace.

  Elia faded… and knew no more. Peaceful shadows…

  ~

  When next she awoke, Elia was no longer chained. Her manacles were gone, and she lay on her back, on a smooth, black stone block. She was in a large, shadowy room, lit only by a weak golden light that spilled down on her from above. Everything was deathly silent, and even the sound of her breathing seemed subdued.

  This just keeps getting stranger… she thought, slowly looking around her on all sides, desperate to find any excuse not to think on what she had lost. If this was the underworld, it wasn’t a very intimidating one-

  “Awakening, I see.”

  Elia couldn’t help herself; she twisted on the cold stone, squealing in fright. A tall form in black robes appeared suddenly beside her, laying a clammy hand on her bare shoulder. At the touch, all the horror of her previous captivity poured into her in a rushing torrent of icy pain. Her whole body tensed as if frozen solid, rigid with the lucidity and terror of the experience. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but she was entirely unable to make a sound. She felt she would suffocate… she would die, simply from that awful touch…

  Just as her eyes began to darken, the hand left her skin, and her vision returned. For a moment she lay gasping on the stone, not daring to move more than an inch for fear he, or she, or it would touch her again.

  “A warning only,” the shadowy form spoke, voice reverberating in her ears and mind simultaneously. Her head hurt just to listen.

  “Wh… why…?” she whispered, barely able to speak. It was the first word that came to her, and- she realized- probably not the smartest. The robed figure did not respond immediately, instead walking in a slow, deliberate circle around her, eyes glimmering from beneath a wide black hood. She thought she caught the glint of metal there, too, but wasn’t sure… and it didn’t appear to be a good idea to move for a better view. So she let her gaze drift listlessly to the shadowed ceiling above, gently closing her eyes and offering up a prayer of supplication to the Crea
tor.

  “No!” spat the robed one, halting mid-step and seizing her ankle roughly from the bottom of the stone. The world went white with cold agony, and Elia screamed again and again, begging for mercy, begging for freedom, until it died away again, and the robed one completed its circle, standing haughtily by her head. “No…” it said again, quietly, but with more menace. “Do not pray to Him. He cannot help you, here. The Golden Sepulcher has plans for you, pretty one… I have plans for you. It is too late to pray.”

  No… it couldn’t be…

  “Yes, Sea Strider… you know who I am. You know my power. I, and only I rule here.”

  The Golden One. She was in the lair of the Golden One! He’d stabbed her, so it only made sense… oh, Creator… He could hear her thoughts!