The Spark

by Taylor Gibson

  In a flash of green light, the dark sorcerer pulled out a stylized rod resembling the skull and elongated spine of a demon, blocking my reckless attack. He held my blade away from him with all his might. Even though I pushed and pressed as hard as I could, he held his grip on the rod rejecting my throbbing vigor. I pressed my teeth against each other and opened my lips, using all the muscle and energy I had, but alas, it was not enough to break his resistance.

  “Ahahahahahahahahaha! Sui Ozborn, you need a lot more force than this to beat the all mighty Jobik. This will never do, no; you need much more power, much more hatred in your blood if you’re to win against him. If you kill me, that won’t prove your worth. You must grow and learn, little mage. You know nothing of magick; sorcery is not on your side yet. What you have experienced thus far in your training is only a taste of the knowledge you have yet to uncover! What you have forgotten, even that is not enough. You are but a flea about to face a bear. You can never hope to be triumphant!”

  “You know nothing of me, scum!” I shouted, “I want George back, you bastard!”

  The necromancer smiled deviously and peered into my scowling eyes, “You’ll have to kill me first.”

  I had no problem with that option; however, actually doing it proved difficult, as he never let up. He held his rod against me and continued to hold my blade back away from his hideous face. I tried and tried to press harder and more violently, pouring out all of my frustration, but all of the melting anger slipped through the cracks. The necromancer was far too powerful for me to break through with sheer force alone.

  As I held my blade against his carved rod, I knew what had to be done to take his life. If my strength could not best him, then surely my wit would. The large arrow behind my back was the only hope I had in killing the evil monster below me. As I kept my blade tightly pressed against his demonic skeletal rod with one hand, I silently slipped the arrow out from the strap around me with the other and swiftly, stuck it in the nameless necromancer’s sweaty neck.

  The blood pouring out was not at all the color of human blood. It was a greenish black color, so hideously thick and smelling of foul death. When he died, I searched his robe pockets and found a small glass bottle holding a thick grimy-yellow sap that had a label reading: Bring me back. I knew right then and there that this bottle was for George; I ran over to him so he could take a sip. He was lost somewhere deep within his mind, so I had to force it down his throat.

  Due to his consumption of the elixir, George eventually returned to the realm of the living, and so too did his body. After his hair retook its natural golden-blond color and his skin tone was restored to the way it was supposed to be, I laid my hand on his cheek and softly kissed him on his lips to moisten them up. As he kissed me back, I felt warmly relieved that such a miracle had happened. The look in his eyes was the same as mine: relief.

  “Come on, George, we still need to be inspected for any diseases or wounds aside from those we received in battle. I don’t wish to become a zombie like you almost did.”

  “I am rather hungry,” he said.

  “Not for human flesh, are you?”

  “Not anymore. You solved that problem with the elixir. It holds a serving of liquidized human flesh in it. It’s used to appease the demon of necromancy through the process of rejuvenation. It is said that once it is consumed, the demon allows the zombie to be brought back to life without any side effects, a blessing, if you will. It’s a sacrificial ingredient to pay for the privilege of allowing life back to the consumer.”

  “George, how do you know such things?”

  “I was an alchemist in Shimbia before I met you, Sui. I thought I told you this already?”

  In my nightmare, he had told me, but I didn’t recall him telling me otherwise. I looked at him with a grin and pretended to recall his allegation, “Yes, I remember now, but we must return to Rïdeneer. I want to know what happened to my forefather and see how my parents are holding up. You might be unable to walk straight, so I advise you to stay close to my shoulder, George.”

  “Ha, are you going to hold me up when I fall this time?”

  I looked up at him as I walked toward the necromancer’s body to retrieve my sword and arrow, “Baby, I can catch you just as fast as you can move that sly mouth of yours.”

  We laughed, and when I came to his side, I held his hand while we ventured south, using the ancient stairs to the east. Though I was helping George stay on his feet, I seemed to be having trouble staying awake, after all of the action that night. A thunger, being one of Jobik’s assassins sent to kill me; an undead dragon, nearly killing all of us who fought it; and the necromancer, who was definitely the one who had resurrected the dragon and Draäm. George and I didn’t have any difficulty walking eastward to the ancient stairs. The jungle’s various trees, muddy dirt, red grass and fungal organisms no longer seemed under the oppression of a necromancer’s deathly magick. The jungle was, in any case, free.

  Sometimes, the hardest thing you do after a battle is to pick yourself up after all the bloodshed. Äbaka once said these words early on in my training, and my, were they true.

  What is it like to live in a world where magick can be utilized? I don’t know how to answer that question, because I’ve never actually lived in a limited world such as yours. Though all I can say is, it’s got its ups and downs, like all things. Obviously, it can be quite atrocious when a bunch of creatures come out of the blue and cause earthquakes, maelstroms, and necromantic crises to try and kill you.

  The world I live in is a remarkable place with its supernatural majesty, and though I have lived on Imga I for my entire life, it’s difficult to say whether I truly like it or not. It’s even more difficult now that I am a mage and know more of the truths behind it. Ignorance was bliss when I didn’t know that a magick trick was made through channeling energy. I didn’t have to know that everything I saw, touched, and breathed was from someone’s mind and stemmed into a life of its own. To live simply, as I had seemed to have more meaning. And now that I was a mage, revelation had taken over my insight, for better or for worse. I thought about all this for hours while George and I made our way to the eastern side of the cliff, where the ancient stone stairs waited for our tired, trembling feet.

  As we walked down the stairs to Crosscc, I had to consider the words of the necromancer just before I stuck the arrow in his neck. He strictly stated that I required further strength and knowledge in order to defeat Jobik for good. How much more training and preparation would I need to kill him, and how was I going to obtain it before his resurrection? If anything, I was going to have to learn more than the average mage, and become something completely new in the array of sorcery, even past the level of wizard. My skill with a sword was fair, and my talents in offensive magick were ideal for how long I had trained, but despite my prowess, there were still many more lessons needed to be learned before I could fight the ferocious Lord of Evil. I continued to speculate on what knowledge was needed to stand a chance against Jobik. Every thought I had fell back to my failure to study the art of white magick and many other things, but I knew it was more than that.

  It was six hours later when George and I had at last made it to Rïdeneer. We exchanged sighs of relief when we saw the quaint, wooden houses and cottages over the hills, and the crop fields stretching out in front of them. We were just making our way down the last hill that reached the general goods store, when all of a sudden, a short, revolting, green creature jumped in front of us with two daggers in either hand! It was a goblin, wearing armor that symbolized allegiance to his tribe. This little one was far from his home, and well out of his league; the way he daringly approached us at only four-foot-two. The goblin threatened us in a laughable tone, “If you dare take another step, it’ll be your heads on the ground, it will!”

  George crossed his arms and cheekily asked the creature with a smirk on his face, “Who are you to order us around, if
I might ask?”

  The goblin answered immediately, with great confidence, “Sergeant Spike, I’m the one in charge of kill’n ya! Come any closer, and my job’ll be complete, do ya hear!”

  “Spike? Where had I heard that name before?” I whispered to myself.

  George came back at him, “Do you really think you can stand against us? This woman here beside me: just killed a zombie dragon, a thunger, and a necromancer. Get lost!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The goblin sneered with a hiss, dropped his daggers, and leaped up on my back before I could take out my sword. He clutched onto me like a monkey and grabbed my face with his jagged claws. George picked up the tiny daggers like shanks and stuck them in the goblin’s sides like corn skewers, pulling him back until the greenskin was forced to release me. Screaming in pain, Spike fell to the ground and yanked the daggers out from his sides. Cursing, jumping about, and throwing his arms around like a maniac, he started absorbing energy around the area to fuse it into a spell against us.

  “Kill them, dark spirits!”

  The goblin pointed at both of us with his fingers posed in an unorthodox reversed grip on his daggers. I took out my weapon, unsure of what was about to happen, and waited for any danger with Soba at the ready. George magickally engulfed his fists with ice-cold water that would shoot out like a razor-sharp spear at anything that dared to approach us. He aimed his water magick toward the sky to see if anything was to fall down upon us, as I watched every move the goblin made.

  Spike began taunting us by jumping around and singing the classic goblin-songs of his tribe, in the Imgan goblin-tongue. I waved my sword at the goblin, trying to intimidate him and make his wretched voice stop. I would have struck him down where he stood, if I had known what was going to happen next. He kept up his strange performance until; at last, we were ambushed by the notorious miasma specters of Imga I! These evil entities were hooded and cloaked like reapers. They were known to radiate a dark-blue haze and murder randomly in the latest hours of the night. They grabbed us by our apparel, disarmed us, and threw us against the ground like disobedient children about to be disciplined.

  Everything was happening so quickly that I couldn’t count how many of them there were. Their hands were as cold as dry ice and burned my skin through my armor. They began hitting us, slapping and punching with no remorse, and all we could do was lie there and take it. Some kind of pressure magick was holding us down. I tried casting numerous spells, but I couldn’t release any of them under the pressure magick these dark ghosts were using on us.

  In this helpless moment, a new energy formed above us, conflicting with the miasma specters’ forces. It was odd, but in a mysterious and uncanny way, it reminded me of George. A howl echoed through the wind, as a dark creature appeared over the murky specters. It raised a huge fist and smashed all of them in one single blow. It stood over us with a red glow in its eyes and a smile on its reptilian beak. It was an anthropomorphic turtle with powers as dark as the night’s foulest monstrosities, yet as benevolent as the most glorious heroes.

  As soon as I saw the beast’s razor sharp claws come down to me, I panicked. But George was quick to assure me that the creature was his familiar, Pandemonium. I quickly realized that it was just putting out its hand to help us off the ground. I ran to get Soba, which had been knocked out of my grip, as George prepared to fire his icy water spell at Spike. The little menace laughed at us and swiftly ran to the north. Despite his diminutive size, we were now aware of his ability to summon legendary specters. He was too dangerous to be allowed to roam free. George sent his familiar to chase him, but Spike was too fast for the giant reptilian being. Focusing on the distance, George shot a blast of ice cold water at the goblin. Despite his efforts, Spike escaped over the hills.

  George’s familiar faded back to the dimension from whence it came, after venturing too far from its summoner. There was only one thing left for us to do before we returned home. Despite how exhausted we were, it was clear that something had to be done about Spike. I turned my head to George with an expression of determination; he acknowledged my plan, through silent agreement, and I reluctantly nodded. We both pursued the sergeant over the hills and through the mists of the dark, early morning. The danger of battling Jobik’s wicked allies was not yet over for the night. I had a feeling that Spike was another member of Jobik’s band of villains out to get me. No mere goblin could know such incantations, even if he was the leader of his tribe.

  ***

  A wife, two daughters, and a man to call your son someday; I wanted it all back. I couldn’t be certain that I would ever see them again. Life disappoints, but it can also satisfy. Those were my own words to my children, but I wasn’t so certain about the latter anymore.

  ~Jon Vaam Ozborn

  After a long and excruciating procedure, my wife was starting to regain her natural hue at last. Molli Su had only come out of her bedroom four times; to use the bathroom, check on her mother, and to see if Äbaka, Sui, and George had returned home. On the fourth and final time she woke up to check on things, I sent her back to bed with the good news of her mother’s recuperation, and continued to tell her that her sister and George would be alright with forefather at their side. Speaking of which, those eleven mages, wh came to our house earlier that night looking for Äbaka dropped something on the doorstep. I found it lying on the porch floor when I walked out a few hours later. It was a small red-violet gem that was in the asymmetrical shape of a dragon or bird of prey flying in the sky.

  I took it to the dining room table and left it there in case they returned for it. There were a few luxuries I used to pass the time that night. I played strategy board games by myself, and it was quite entertaining, actually. Okay, I’ll admit it, there’s nothing you can do that is entertaining when you don’t know for sure if a loved one is alright. I couldn’t find anything to take my mind off of Sellina, Sui, George or Äbaka! I was just as afraid as my own twelve-year-old daughter was.

  After so much time sitting in the chair next to the bed where Sellina lay, I noticed that she was beginning to mumble words in her sleep, as low as a whisper. I tried leaning in to see if I could understand her, but everything she was saying was too low under her breath for me to even make a guess. After a moment she stopped, leaving me wondering what was going on in her slumber. What was she dreaming about? After a brief minute of silence, she clearly said two words, “Sui’s safe.”

  “Sui is safe?” I asked, “well, I hope you’re right about that, I hope you are right.”

  I looked out the window; again seeing the dying nettles, gently wave in the soft winds of the early morning. The sun had not yet risen, but there was still enough light out for Sui, George, Äbaka, and those other mages to make it through the night. The way the nettles didn’t rot completely, and how Sellina slowly regained her health, made me believe everything was well balanced and that the three of them were safe out there, putting my mind at ease. I went to my bedroom and kissed my darling wife on the forehead.

  “Everything’s going to be alright. Sui’s safe. I love you, Sellina.”

  Chapter 6

  I could see the fear through the very souls of those around me. It is natural to fear, but even more natural to be feared.

  ~George Gibson Goodwill

  When Sui and I trailed Spike over the plains of Crosscc, I began to fear that we were chasing our own demise. Seeing that stunt he had pulled with the evil spirits back there, I had no doubt that he could utilize plenty more traps hidden up his sleeve. Do you know what it’s like to pursue someone, not knowing what they can do to you? That feeling was running through my veins as I followed my instincts and continued onward, as I knew he couldn’t be allowed to live. Without a second thought about what Spike would do once we caught him, I followed Sui, so that I could protect her.

  The feeling of having no plan was exhilarating, but the fact that we were ignorant of w
hat awaited us, made it one of the most terrifying things to face. It was as though we had jumped off a cliff; not knowing if we would land on silk pillows or stone thorns. At least it wasn’t as frightening as my earlier experience of being part-zombie. I cannot fully recall what the incident was like, but I vaguely remember an unpleasant sickness engulfing me mentally, physically, and on an emotional level; it haunted me.

  I was really starting to resent that goblin; picturing his wrinkled face in my head as we continued to trace his footsteps. For nearly two hours, Sui and I kept on Spike’s tracks through the Crosscc Plains, until we caught him against the cliff wall, below the Jungles of Matta Shimbib. It was unfortunate for him that he didn’t know about the Eastern Stairs that lead to the jungles. He wiggled his entire body in cowardice and began pleading for mercy.

  “Please, Sui! Give me a break here! I don’t have but one master; he gives me food, a place to rest, and a nice wall and roof to protect me! I’m only doing this because I have no others to turn to for protection!”

  Sui pointed her blade at the goblin’s throat and without a bit of pity asked, “Why should we believe you, fiend; you’re a servant to Jobik, and my place in the world is to dispose of evil creatures like you. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut off your swollen head from where your scrawny neck holds it.”

  She pressed Soba closer to him when he didn’t answer her. Spike began to cry, but as pathetic as he presented himself, I sensed something in him past all the thick clouds of fear and pain. Something about how he was portraying his emotions was unbalanced.

  “Because I know where Jobik is.”

  Sui turned her head in shock. Hell, even I was skeptical about this goblin having any real knowledge of Jobik’s location. Coming from the mouth of a sergeant of the monster himself, no less; this fool was leading no one into a trap.