“Don’t be absurd, George; you’ve just lost a lot of blood, but you’ll make it through.”
“Carry me home, Sui. I just-”
“Take it easy.”
I lifted him and carried his limp body over my shoulders beside Soba’s hilt and the top blade of my bow. He was rather cold, and even though we had killed the dragon, there was something about him that made me wonder if the foul beast was the reason he felt so deathly. I began to delve back into the south until something hit Soba, causing a quick clank on her metal surface. When I turned to see what had hit my sword, I found a familiar face. It was someone I did not expect.
***
When in a medical procedure with little to no experience, you should not assume anything. When the only doctor in your neighborhood has locked himself in his house with his family, you understand that you are alone, and must find a way to mend the wounds of your loved ones. This is also true for emotional damage as well.
~Jon Vaam Ozborn
Sellina was not doing so well, even after all my attempts to restore her consciousness and ease her chronic soreness. Even though I gave her potions, fed her broth and curry, made her warm, and checked on her pulse from time to time, nothing seemed to be changing. Her symptoms were becoming much worse, but weren’t unstably changing like before. I kept watching the dying nettles in the window sill, comparing them to my poor wife, just praying that she would not wilt and die like them. I had to ensure that she survived. To have Sui and Molli Su motherless was not an option. I sat in a wooden chair beside the bed, more restless than I had ever been before.
I could not sleep until I had my wife back to full health. My daughter and her beloved had to be back and safe in their bed in order for me to be at ease as well. Äbaka was a wizard; he knew how to take care of himself, so his absence was not as much of a burden on my mind. I watched Sellina as she slept, as stiff as a board; searching for any signs that her pain was numbing down. She continued to have scrunched eyebrows, so I interpreted her expression as a sign of little to no improvement. I left the chair and lay down next to her, gently stroking her cheek.
“Awaken, my darling wife…” I said softly, “awaken, Sellina Jane. I need you to stay strong for our children and neighbors. Do you recall the times we used to play with the kids in the rose park? How they always laughed at me when I said something ridiculous? The smallest things would put a smile on little Molli’s face. Sui, she could never seem to stop reading. Even still, she practically lives in the books Äbaka gave her. When you awaken, you’ll see that once again we’ll be together, lying on the couch and laughing at cartoons on the television as always. We’re just that kind of happy, care-free family, aren’t we?”
Sellina was in a deep sleep that made her appear dead. I leaned over to give her a kiss on the brow and left her to rest. I went to the front porch to inhale the fresh, late-night air. I sat in the rocking chair with a bottle of rum to drown my worried mind as best as I could, without abandoning to the drink. I stared at the empty, silent village in front of me and saw the banners welcoming our western friends, flapping in the wind. The colorful party lanterns shone their light all over the dark village, revealing the broken mugs, shattered glasses, dropped items, and shoes lost by those who fled the area. The stage could be seen sitting lonely and depressed out in the distance with the band’s equipment still scattered on top of it. The loam where the party was wrecked was now a disheartening sight with its emptiness and lack of attendants tugging at my already frail heart.
Everyone in Rïdeneer had retired to their homes and stayed with their doors locked and barricaded, even after the battle had been moved to Crosscc Plains. The westerners were sheltered in other people’s homes until the dawn arrived. None of them asked us to allow them shelter because the assassin was after Sui. Anyone related to her was apparently “bad news”, according to a lot of youngsters scurrying around next door with their misleading voices audible through the walls. After hearing their comments about us, I took another big gulp of rum and limped back into the house to tuck Molli Su into bed for the night. When I walked through the front door, I saw a weeping, little twelve-year-old girl on her knees by the bed, with her hair down and a dress soaked in tears. I kneeled down next to her and tried to console her, “Molli, dear, everything’s going to be fine. Mum’s just sick right now. She’ll wake up eventually.”
In-between sobbing tears and garbled words, I heard my daughter ask, “Whe- whe- whe-When will Sui a-an-and George get home, D-Dad? I-I-I-I want to s-see them.”
“They shall be here soon enough,” I said, holding my head up to display confidence. “I can feel it in my gut, you see. Have you ever had a gut feeling before?”
“No. What is that?”
“Intuition: it’s a thing you feel in your belly when times are tough and things seem hopeless. Most of the time, people ignore it and choose to go down a long, hard path where things don’t seem to have any hope at all. But if you believe in Sui and George, then maybe they’ll be alright. Do you have a gut feeling, Molli?”
“I-I think. But I don’t understand what you are talking about, Dad.”
“Okay, look, all you need to understand is that your sister and George are safe under our forefather’s wing. You’ll understand intuition when you’re older, my child. Now off to bed with you, and chin up.”
I walked Molli Su to her room and she crawled into bed, waiting for me to blow the candles out. In a whisper she said, “I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too, Molli Su.”
I shut her door and walked back to my slumbering wife. Still, after all my efforts, nothing changed, and I was becoming exhausted. I sat back in the chair next to her bed and waited for any sign of her awakening until I couldn’t resist falling into a deep sleep.
***
When a necromancer is on the prowl, so is the distinctive stench of death, maggots, foul creatures, and dark sorcery. It is up to the chosen one to put an end to their sick ways and keep life pure and sweet.
~Sui Bane Ozborn
There was a familiar face before me that I wished I hadn’t seen. Draäm was somehow still alive! Or was he? There was a putrid stench of smoke emanating from the thunger’s skeletal figure. He was dead, but alive at the same time. The assassin was a zombie, just as the dragon was. I had no time to deal with this all over again. I took out my sword with George still over my shoulder, ran toward Draäm, and took a big swing at his scrawny neck bone. But his skeleton was practically indestructible without something like the power of Anima. The zombie tried latching on to me with its gaping mouth, but before he could even get close, I rejected his advance by blasting him with an explosion of flame from the tip of my sword. This distraction gave me a chance to escape; I ran for my life with George hanging half-dead over my shoulder. I had a horrible feeling about what might have been happening to him after the dragon bit him. The blood that came from his arm was contaminated with foul sorcery.
I wasn’t going to lead this abomination to the village, so I had no choice but to head north to the southernmost jungle and pray that George would be okay without the healing hands of my mother. The zombified thunger shambled slowly behind, but fast enough to keep us in his sight. I spoke to George every now and then, making sure he was alright. He just moaned in pain, leading me to wonder if he was transforming into an undead as well.
It took a restless thirty minutes, but when I reached the thirty foot stone cliff topped with trees stretching on for miles upon miles, I looked back and saw Draäm picking up his pace. With an open and hungry maw, the zombie started sprinting like a deiju, the fastest land animal. It was in seeing his incredible burst of velocity that I made the tallest leap of faith. I grabbed the first lump on the cliff I saw, and continued to drag myself and George up the wall. I ungracefully clambered up the wall, stopping periodically to prevent George from slipping off my shoulder. Upon reaching the top, I hoisted George o
nto the edge of the cliff in front of me before bringing myself up. When we crossed onto Shimbian soil, I picked him back up over my shoulder and prepared to continue fleeing.
Before leaving however, I peered down over the cliff to see the zombified thunger prodding his sickles into the cliff wall and roaring irately, slowly climbing his way up to me. I gasped in alarm and quickly turned around to flee north with George weighing heavily on my shoulder. I could barely hold the blade behind my back with the augment incantation any longer. My magick energy had significantly depleted from excessive use throughout the battle. Getting better at magick was like endurance training. It needed to be exercised like all the muscles in the body. I was exhausted; my legs felt as though they were going to fall off. I feared that if Draäm were to have at my flesh, I would become like George. I continued to dodge the trees as I lugged George further north where Shimbia patiently waited. My hair was soaked in my own sweat, and so was George’s, though he was as chilly as a winter stone. I eventually discovered an old tunnel that I could use to hide from Draäm. What was living within the hole however, I hadn’t the slightest clue, nor did I care.
Old dirt and earthy smelling roots surrounded the base of the tunnel, along with a few dead oak leaves. I could hear the heavy breathing of the thunger outside. Along with Draäm’s repulsive breathing, the chirping of crickets and howling of wolves was present. I heard a new, frightening voice with such an evil tenor. It was a male voice and had no life in it at all. The man’s words were too low for me to hear, but I did heed a few of them: “zombie, necromancer, wilds, eaten, and hellfire.” Draäm’s heavy inhales caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand as straight as needles. The breeze hissing through the dying jungle, and the putrid odors lingering on it, caused not only a shudder down my spine, but an unspeakable sense of despair.
Draäm’s weighty and slow footfalls seemed to form into multiple, more various kinds. Prolonged moans and bloody gurgles seemed to grow louder, adding to the horror of new undead monsters come to join the thunger in his mindless search. They were the ancient corpses of men and women who had died in the jungle over thousands of years. I glimpsed George’s ashy face, hanging expressionless and unconscious over my shoulder. I became terrorized by the idea that he might be changing into one of these undead monstrosities that were trying to eat us alive.
The foul voice under the wind became clearer and aggravated with me. Someone was callously calling out to me, “Sui, come out,” called the eerie voice. “I can change your precious George back to his normal state. All you need to do is show yourself!”
At the same time I heard that voice shouting at me, the menacingly tattooed face of a pasty, crusty, repulsive man popped out in front of the tunnel. He smirked at me with eyes wide and dull silver. A brown and rotten grin full of roach guts greeted me. The man startled me so badly; that I felt as though my body had been poked by a thousand needles. He was covered in filth, and markings resembling a skull covered his face. There was a sharp piercing in his septum, two piercings on either side of his lip, and a death amulet centering his bald brow. He reached down with a boney hand, which emerged from his cloak’s sleeve and grabbed me by my hair, dragging me out of the burrow like a badger in a hound’s jaws.
“What is it you think I should do with this one, Lord Jobik? Ring her neck like a hen; slice her limbs off like a bloat frog and let her bleed to death? Maybe I should feed her to my pets?”
The man spoke to the air as there was no one around but him and the zombies anxious to feed. I put my hands on the hilt of my blade and tried to pull it through the strap to win my freedom. But with the menace’s dirty hands holding my hair, I could only serve as his puppet. Yanking me left and right until I couldn’t take the pain, the belligerent necromancer yelled in my ear about ways he could kill me. The mist in the jungles was nothing compared to his foul breath as hot and humid as an elephant’s flatulence. He was detaching my hair strand by strand, torturing me and laughing maniacally.
“Do you see her, my lord? I am the one who will bring you Sui, not this despicable thunger of the mountain! It is time we bring about her death. Wouldn’t want her getting in the way of your resolve now would we, master?”
I could do nothing but kneel under this maniac’s grip and endure the pain on my cranium. The dark robes he wore swayed about in the gentle wind passing by between the trees. The starving undead drooled and held their gaze on me. I was the only fresh-blooded being among the atrocious crowd of zombies. The man released my hair and threw me to the ground with great force. With the zombies encompassing me, I had nowhere to run.
The man ran out of the circle barefoot, and turned to face me with a despicable grin. His pale silver eyes full of excitement and pride stuck to me like an urchin. He assumed he would be the one to do Jobik the favor of moving me out of the way of his plans, but this lunatic was nothing but a necromancer. I dared not move while the undead were watching me. They would have eaten my flesh if I had moved the slightest inch away from where I was sitting. I admit that this horrible dark sorcerer was making me feel more uneasy than when I was around Draäm. One who could take the humanity straight out of a person and bring up their corpse was surely a man to be feared, lunatic or not.
The nameless necromancer returned to the circle and began to cackle fiendishly, rubbing his filthy palms together. He came over and leaned against me, shoulder to shoulder. He shrilly laughed in my ear. In the most evil tone he could make, the necromancer taunted me and did his very best to build my fear of him.
“I insist that you die in the belly of your little boy here. What a pleasant way to die I may add! Hehehehe! Yes, of course! You’ll be chunked up into little pieces running through his digestive tract! Hahahahahahee!”
“No,” I objected, “he won’t eat me. He can’t!”
The wild necromancer got up and ran away from me again, back out of the circle of motionless zombies and licked the air with his worm-like tongue, laughing ecstatically.
“You hear this girl, my lord? She claims he won’t eat her! Haha! Nonsense I say; what say you in this, Oh Mighty Jobik? What is your insight on the probability of this decided death? Will the boy eat her or not?”
I heard George climbing out from the hole in the ground, breathing raspy gulps of the thick, reeking atmosphere. Looking back at him I recalled the horror of his skin so deathly white and his eyes lighter and bluer than a human’s eyes were ever supposed to be. Blackened chapped lips as dry and parched as the desert sands of Imga II, and hair as wiry and dry as the cactus grass within the sands. There had to be a way to cure my beloved from this necromancer’s toxin. A tear streamed down my face with the adrenaline rush of a thousand stomping mares. I had hit my limit of horrific experiences and deadly battles for one night. I was ready to end this!
Though I was not sure what I could do, I prepared myself to let go of everything I loved incase this was the end of my life. George began to groan as he watched me patiently sitting. He was soon to be a full-fledged undead. If there was an antidote on the bastard who did this, I would have to take it from him. I was not going to give up, but I had no idea how quick this dark sorcerer could react if I made a move. Caution and swift strategy was the main key I had to use against him and the surrounding zombies.
“I know, Lord Jobik, I know. But he’s still in mid-transformation; I can’t expect him to eat her yet. He still has some humanity left.”
Mid-transformation, I thought, then I didn’t want to find out what he would look like at full conversion. The necromancer muttered to himself for a bit more, “You’re right, my lord. I’ll keep her “company” for you until he’s ready for his supper! Heheheheha!”
The black-hearted fool came over my way with a slow pace and began to slide his robe off from his shoulders. I knew what his sick deranged mind was planning, and I wasn’t about to go through with it. When he came close enough to revealing his lower body, I was close enough to stand
up and pull out my blade, slicing him through the gut like the swine he was.
The crazed sorcerer bled out like a punctured barrel of wine; eyes widely staring at my red hot face, boiling with fury. His lip quivered and his eyes firmly closed just before he surprised me by fading into a lifting haze of black smoke. Seeing nothing drop from the remnants, no phial or potion bottle that could have the least bit of hope for George’s life, I dropped my sword and glanced at the undead around me. Another tear fell down my dazed face. My entire body froze up; the flesh upon my bones felt as though it was being torn apart by thousands of tiny ice crystals in unavoidable waves. My nerves were being chewed apart by the imminent loss of George. What was even worse, he was not dying, but becoming an undead. I dared not look at him; his lifeless eyes, and the gradual rotting of his flesh. It was unacceptable. After a moment of silence, I heard a desperate shout coming from the trees.
“No! My doppelganger failed!”
I threw my head up, with a grimace upon my brow, and found the necromancer perched up in a tree, staring at me with a malicious scowl. I stood straight up after grabbing my sword, and looked at the zombies around me again. With my fury bottled up inside, I swung Soba at the head of the closest one and decapitated it, not pitying whoever it once was. I then ran around and took the heads off each and every one around me, except for George, of course. With adrenaline and rage coursing through my veins, the neck of Draäm’s skeleton came off just as simply as the rest of them! For what this necromancer had done to George, I was about to make sure he would pay for it with his icy blood!
After I killed all of the zombies, I sprinted towards the necromancer in the trees with a long war cry. I pressed the ground with my feet as hard as I could and leaped up to the branch where the man was squatting. I cut the limb off of the tree and forced him to drop to the ground, where he began to cackle and roll about on his back. As I landed, I charged back toward him and brought my sword down on him as hard as I could possibly swing it.
The Spark Page 13
