The Spark

by Taylor Gibson

  In the last days of endless training, weary from the lack of a goodnight’s sleep, I was awarded many regards and praises from the family. When the final day came where I was awarded the credit from Äbaka, I slammed my fists into the ground and shook the very hills around me with a mighty roar. Watching my victorious rage, Sui, Äbaka, Molli Su, Sellina, and Jon all stood in front of me and proudly dubbed me an official mage. My training was complete; the infinite, limitless, endless sea of life was revealed to me in a way I never thought possible. I was now a hundred percent aware that there was nothing impossible out there. A mage had the eyes of the gods. The art of sorcery was finally at my side as a weapon, a tool, and a shield for the woman I loved. Sui and I were both official mages, taught through the wisdom of none other than the legendary Äbaka!

  Sometimes, even to this day, I think back on the training I underwent and how it impacted me. It’s difficult to fully describe what it’s like to be a mage, but I can tell you that it’s worth all the time and effort one must put into learning such marvels as bending elements and transfiguring objects. There was more I needed to learn, much more. A mage’s training is never fully complete as there are positively no limits to magick. The people, places, things, concepts, and everything else that exist in the Fancore, shall constantly birth new ways to use mystic energy.

  And so, I am at a point in my life where the only thing that matters to me is another person; the beautiful woman I love. Sui hid me away from harm, fed me, dressed me, kept me warm and made sure I was feeling well. I knew that being her guardian through all of the carnages of war to come was the least I could do in return. That gold mining job in D’Guños that Sui’s mother spoke of a month ago would still have to wait another day. I could find another way to put a ring around Sui’s pretty little finger and still protect her.

  ***

  I wanted answers at dusk, but I was given another mystery by dawn.

  ~Sui Bane Ozborn

  One night when George was sitting at my writing desk, reading up on diversion spells, I was thinking to myself about Jobik and how horrifying he appeared in my nightmare. The figure of a humanoid brute made of haze and shadow, has haunted me since the night I first saw him. As I sat on the foot of my bed, I stared outside my window. The stars twinkled and shimmered in the black sky. Wonders beyond the world I lived in called out to me in many whispered tongues. Even the world of Imga II was still waiting for me to tread upon her soil. Jobik would soon be unleashed in his full form, and that was when I was to make my move; no sooner, no later.

  “Sui, did Äbaka tell you when Jobik is supposed to rise again? Did he say where?” George asked, breaking my concentration on the stars.

  “No.” I shook my head in dread, “He merely said that it was soon.” I sat there, imagining the horrors that were to follow. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

  “Sui, if you don’t think about it, then it shouldn’t bother you.”

  George stood up from the chair and sat behind me on the bed. He wrapped his arms around me with a warm silence. Worried about what was going through my mind, he caressed my neck with his soft lips, moving his hand down lower until he had it on my hip. I knew what he had in mind, but I didn’t feel that I was ready. There were too many emotions swimming around in my soul for me to enjoy my first time. I pulled away and shook my head. Even though he had a look of dissatisfaction on his sunken face, I could see the understanding and respect that he had for my position. Before we decided to go to sleep, I told him more about the long and realistic nightmare that I had a month ago. He told me all about his vision with the neko demon and what he thought was Jobik. Even in the warmth of February, I could feel the icy weather of a Shimbian winter where that nightmare took place. The horrors of that underground place where Jobik sat upon the bloody bone throne seemed to relentlessly haunt.

  “I try to think of other things like you and me, but the shadow of Jobik continuously clouds any other thoughts. My sleep is disturbed by the enemy on a nightly basis. Peace does not accompany me some nights.”

  “Just try to picture yourself slaying that damn monster! See his blood gush all over the ground and his hideous black head roll around for miles. That should be enough to keep it dead until you fall asleep. If he haunts your nightmares and you wake up again, simply repeat the images in your mind before falling back to sleep.”

  I nodded to him and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. Then I laid my head down on the pillows to rest. George lay down with me, right after he finished his studies and blew out the candles sitting on the writing desk. We kissed goodnight, and together, we finally received a plentiful amount of rest through the long night. My dreams were clean of any impurities such as Jobik, jaqae, goblins, or demons, purging the Fancore.

  In my sleep, I dreamed of a rainbow jutting through the sky in a spiral, piercing the clouds and scraping the mountains from an alien world. The air was so much cleaner than Imga I’s atmosphere. It was a land of pure nature and splendor that I never knew existed. It all came to an end with the rising of the sun. Having been awakened by the sound of wind hitting the chimes outside, and making the conifers on the pines out front sway back and forth, I got out of bed to meet the breeze. I rejoiced since there were no nightmares after George gave me his advice.

  It had been too long since we had winds like this in Rïdeneer. They were not especially common in the south, for some peculiar reason, and most of the people in Rïdeneer feared this strange phenomenon. Something about the wind being abnormally strong puts a lot of us southerners on edge. It leads the farmers to think superstitious thoughts about the crops growing malformed. It is said that strong winds bring stale harvests, but that is debatable among residences.

  The wind passing through my long, flame-colored hair was a spine tickling sensation. All of the nerves in my body were in a state of heaven only few could find in these parts of the world. When the wind blew harder, flapping my tresses around like a fiery flag, I noticed a faint light coming from the yawning south, over where the southern forest lay. The wind seemed to be sucked in by those old, restless trees. It was calling my name.

  I made my way to the forest, following the wind that blustered constantly behind me. Many times I felt I was being harshly pushed by the environment like it was trying to get my attention. My night gown flapped around like a humming bird’s wings as I drew nearer to the southern forest, inhaling the dry airstream. Suddenly, the wind shifted, blowing vertically to the sky in front of me; shooting dirt, twigs, and dead leaves up with it. The green leaves on the trees, and the white, bluish sky peering through them planted an enthralling feeling in my gut. The area where the wind shot up was the exact spot I was drawn to. It seemed like the trees here were purposely planted to form a hole in the center, where the sun could shine fuller. In Rïdoranna, these gaps were called nissles, and they brought good fortune to those who discovered them.

  I slowed my approach as I gazed up to the shifting skies. I was standing there shielding my eyes, staring at the morning sky, until the heavens opened up and sent down a gift. I swore I felt I was in a dream, but alas, this descending ball of light moved unhurried to meet me. When this mass of luminosity came to be about ten feet from the ground, the light faded and revealed a terrific, large, curved, great sword of divine origin. The sword was covered in a stream of magickal energy. It had several glowing orbs circling around it from hilt to tip. The sword gradually lowered itself right in front of me. The magickal hazes around the weapon faded. It was equivalent to the size of my body, but definitely much heavier.

  The tip of the hilt held a light greenish-yellow emerald. It seemed to glow with its own light among the rays of heaven from whence it came. It hovered in front of me for some time, silently imploring me to take it by the thick, long hilt leveled to my eyes. I was mesmerized by how it emerged from the heavens; how it glowed with such brilliance unmatched by any other blade I had ever laid eyes on. It wa
s made of what appeared to be an orange-gold; some other sort of mineral that shined like none other that existed on Imga I. The wind started to circulate all around me again and spiraled up between the trees.

  I took the sword by its broad hilt and pulled it toward me. It was a massive piece of weaponry that seemed to be alive in its own way. A life force drifted around within the core of the sharp, bowed blade and hilt, imploring me to bring it back home with me as a gift. That is what I intended to do with such a treasure. I took it from the light holding it in midair, but I was nearly taken down with the blade as the end of it sunk into the soil. Its mass was far too heavy to lift on my own and I did not know the magick of levitation well enough to lift objects as heavy as this sword. There was only one thing that I could do in order to bring it with me. I’d have to leave it behind for a while and wait till my forefather was awake. He knew levitation spells as well as how to use magickal energy for balancing heavy objects like this blade, which I assumed, weighed about ten and a half stones.

  I knew that I had to find out more about this sword and why it called to me. When I returned home, I sat on the couch and waited many hours for somebody to wake up, but everyone in the house was sleeping in late that day. By late morning, I remember hearing footfalls down the hallway. As I guessed, it was the person I knew couldn’t help me. She came out of her pink and white hued bedroom.

  “Good morning, Sis. How are you this morning?” Molli Su asked with a courteous smile.

  “I’m waiting for someone to help me get a sword out of the South Forest. How can you sleep in this late?”

  “I don’t know… How do you not sleep in so late? I might be able to help you with that sword, though. How big is it?”

  “Ha, it’s too big for you to even lift the hilt if it wasn’t attached to the blade.”

  Molli walked over to the kitchen counter and grabbed a banana out of the fruit bowl. She unpeeled it and bit the top off. With her mouth full, she said darkly, “You have no idea what I can do.”

  I looked at her with a smirk and scoffed. I lay back against the couch and crossed my arms, then said cockily in return, “You want to prove to me that your imagination is starting to get the better of you?”

  “I don’t want to prove anything to you, Big Sis. I just want to help you out. That is what little sisters are for, right?”

  I sighed and gave her the reply she wanted to hear. Even though I was positive she would regret going out there to humiliate herself; I was willing to let her come along for my own amusement. “Fine, let’s go.”

  “Yay!”

  The two of us wandered out to the place where the wind had called me hours ago. The sword was still stuck in the ground. I realized that I was just making myself look stupid by playing with my little sister in such a way, at my age. She was only twelve; I was eighteen, and this sword was incredibly heavy. Spending time messing around with my sister was killing the time I had to remain at home until Äbaka woke up to lend some actual help. Molli ran up to it and discovered that the sword was as tall as me; so, her head only reached the top of the hilt where it met the robust blade.

  “Wow, I’ve got a lot of work to do here, Sui.”

  “And what exactly do you intend to do? You’re not even tall enough to reach the tip of the hilt! What am I doing? Bringing you here to fool about was a mistake. Let’s bring you back home.”

  “No, Sis, I just need a shovel is all! If I get it out of the ground to lay it flat, I can help you hoist it back home. Come on, you want this sword? Well, you gotta cooperate with me.”

  I looked into my younger sister’s eyes. I could tell by the wiggling of her bottom lip and the glassy glare of her eyeballs, peering deep into my soul, that she was serious about this. I could never resist that look and I knew I never would as long as she was young. I rolled my eyes and accepted her offer. The only trouble was getting a shovel.

  “I’m going to have to walk all the way back home to get a shovel, Molli. I need you to come with me. I’m not getting in trouble for leaving you out here.”

  “Awe, but it’s so nice out here!” She whined, “Mum and Dad are still sleeping anyway.”

  “Come on, let’s go!”

  “No. You’re going to have to cover for me or else I won’t help you. Just plant a dummy under my covers ‘n tell ‘em I’m still in bed. I do it all the time when I sneak over to Mandi’s house.”

  “Ugh! You’d better not get eaten by a pack of wolves or a manticore!”

  “I won’t. I know they don’t exist in these woods. Now go!”

  Well, so much for trying to sway her with talk of danger, I thought. The way she acted at times, I swear, I wished she really was eaten by a man-headed lion with a scorpion tail. She was such a brat, even though she wasn’t raised to be one. It was that friend of hers she always snuck out to see. I stomped back home to get a shovel and a dummy for Molli Su’s bed. It was a coconut, covered in blond hair, with a repulsive face drawn that shared a close resemblance to her.

  Thankfully, nobody was awake yet, but I knew there would be someone out of bed before long, so I had to hasten back to Molli Su with that spade. When I returned, I found her sitting up against the blade with her knees arched up and her arms wrapped around her legs. She was humming a sweet tune that we used to hum when we were younger; the one that the jaqae created and masked as a healing hymn. Unable to handle listening to it, I threw the shovel beside her to grab her attention away from the song.

  “Let’s get this thing back home, Molli. We don’t have all day.”

  “You dig; I’ll help you carry it back home.”

  “Fine then, get out of my way so I can work!”

  I dug around the sword until it was eventually released from the soil. The sword fell to the ground and startled both of us with a loud thump that vibrated the ground. Molli looked at the beauty of its design, and her jaw dropped. It was awfully familiar to me; as though I had seen it in a story book somewhere. I took the tip of the blade by both the left and right sides; I had my confident sister hold onto the hilt with both hands. Because it was curved, we were unable to balance it in a congruent alignment. One thing was evident about this sword: it was a colossus.

  “Keep it straight up! Come on, Molli! Use your muscles!”

  Molli Su was being too slow about it and I couldn’t keep dodging trees with the sharp edge pointing straight at my abdomen. Even though I didn’t want to be stabbed against a tree, we needed to keep up the pace, so that I could get it back home before Äbaka woke up. It took ten minutes just make it out of the forest, and Molli Su just kept slugging it along. I demanded her to move faster, but her sweating face just turned red and she showed me her teeth.

  “Molli,” I said calmly, “just drop it for a while. We’ll take a break.”

  As soon as I said that, she dropped it down on the ground and made it slip out of my hands, nearly taking a slice at my thigh before I leapt back to evade it. I checked my hands to make sure I didn’t get cut; fortunately, I was unharmed, besides the painful strain in my wrists and palms. I sat in the grass across from Molli and looked out over the hills to see if anyone had woken up. But the house was too far away to see any activity. We were left out here, stranded, with nobody to assist us. I assumed Äbaka was just waking up. We brought this hunk of metal up far enough. Äbaka would come here and see it.

  “Come on, Molli, let’s go get Äbaka. I can’t hang around any longer to find out why this thing came to me in such a way.”

  I walked back to the house with my sister, so that we could persuade our forefather to help us. When we stepped inside the house, my mother was baking a cake and my father sat at the dining table, reading a novel and sipping a cup of coffee. I interrupted their silence, “Has Forefather awaked yet? I have something he needs to see, and quick.”

  “He’s in the barn feeding the alpacas. George is still sleeping.”

 
“Okay, thanks Mum. Let him know I’ve gone out to talk to forefather about something important. Molli Su, thank you for helping. Stay here with Mum and Dad until I return.”

  She just blankly stared at me for a moment and then nodded to acknowledge me. As an older sister, I was in charge of her well being just as much as our parents were. I nodded in return and ran outside to the large, wooden barn near our house. The doors were wide open. He was feeding oats and hay to his alpacas in the stalls when I walked in and greeted him.

  “How are you, Forefather?”

  “I am fine, Sui, how are you?”

  “Curious,” I said, petting a fluffy red alpaca, “I was woken earlier this morning by the sound of the wind. I walked outdoors and felt the gusts leading me south. I went into the forest and found this huge sword gently coming down from a nissle. It’s too heavy for me to lift. The blade is as tall as me, Forefather. I was wondering if you could look at it, and perhaps teach me how to use magick to carry it.”

  “How big did you say that sword was again?”

  He turned to me with a stunned look, putting my nerves on edge. I wasn’t sure why he was so surprised by my statement, but it was clear that he was startled by something involving the sword. I tried to remember what I said about the size of it; he completely threw me off with that odd expression.

  “Um, about as tall as me; it was curved and golden-orange.”

  “Did it have rays of magick streaming around it?”

  “Yes, it did, but how did you-”

  “Your delivery is here.”