The Spark

by Taylor Gibson

  As I turned the corner into the kitchen, I readied my dagger for impact with the intruder if he or she were to attack me. I saw a shadowy figure standing next to the cabinet, going through our food supply. Before he or she could pick out a box of homemade cookies, I ran up behind and pointed the blade at the back of the interloper’s head. Without realizing it, the dagger was gone from my grip and in the hand of the stranger. I gasped, stepping back. Who was this person and why was he or she here. In a shivering tone I asked, “What do you want?”

  A familiar man’s voice answered, “I want you to learn how to approach an intruder. You never speak to someone who breaks into your home, but I have a key. Do better next time, will you Sellina?”

  After a sigh of relief, I let my nerves free of the tension and grabbed my chest to feel the rapid beating of my heart. The man stepped out of the shadows to reveal a thick mess of pine-green hair and beard. He was wearing a strange set of clothes; a sleeveless white shirt and a pair of light trousers that had been tattered and torn at the knees and bottoms.

  “Abaka, Sui and George are out there looking for you right now! At least, I think they are.”

  “What do you mean you think?”

  “I cannot say for certain, but my heart tells me that they’re traveling elsewhere. It’s difficult to explain how I can feel this, but…”

  “Say no more, I shall investigate.”

  “But you’ve just returned! L-Let Jon, Molli Su, and I come with you. We all want to know where you’ve been.”

  “No, you must stay here to protect Molli Su. She is not strong enough to go out in the way of danger yet. I advise you all to stay here until I return. I shall tell of my experiences once I come back. I promise that I will return them safely. Just please, Sellina, stay here.”

  It didn’t matter how much I argued with him, I was going to have to do as he ordered and stay behind. It was beyond my control; if the wizard wanted me to stay, then I was to stay. He passed me by and went down the hallway to his bedroom, not even entering the other rooms to let Jon and Molli Su know that he was all right. He just went into his room and shut the door behind him. If he was to leave us here, then he wasn’t going to go without a pack of gear for his travels. Sui was out there, and not in the jungle, based on Äbaka’s reaction to my accusation I wished I had never spoken my mind to him.

  My instincts were to be mine and mine alone from now on; otherwise, Jon might want to join him for the search, and I would have to restrain him from going out again. Though I was healthy, I didn’t have enough skills to protect Molli Su from the dark forces of Jobik. When Äbaka came out of his room with a rucksack hanging from the side of his belt, he addressed me with a comforting smile.

  “Sellina, I shouldn’t be gone for long. Don’t tell Jon or anyone else in Rïdeneer that I have stopped by. This is for the two of us alone to know. Sui and George will be back with me when I return. And I promise I shall bring them back so I can scold them. If your feelings serve you right, then I’d say they’re probably heading for another world; I have felt it as well.”

  So it wasn’t just me. All I could think of is how disappointed I was in Sui, and how frustrated it made me that George would not try to interfere with her lies and tell my husband and me what was really going on. With a hairy kiss on my cheek, Äbaka walked outside and made his way to the north, not on foot, but by riding on the back of a summoned familiar. It was a dragon that had an enormous wingspan and a mighty pair of jaws over a long, streaming beard much like his own. It was a green wyvern, and it represented the wizard’s passion for travel and discovery. Somewhere out there, my baby and her suitor were struggling. I prayed to the gods that he’d return them home safely.

  ***

  What is truth? What is reality? Is there a definition for these at all, or is there really no such thing? If anything is possible, then so too must be the things that are fictitious in the eyes of the common person.

  ~Sui Bane Ozborn

  The massive spacecraft was nearly at our destination. Salidiah Pulse was just through a cosmic cloud of pink dust that gracefully danced in the light of a few distant suns. I was asleep for about six hours before I woke up and called my parents, but during the call George rudely interrupted me in the middle of a conversation.

  “Sui, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “George, I’m on the comm device right now, hold on.”

  I had no idea what it was my mother said, but I replied in the best way I could and finished the rest of the conversation. After I hung up, I looked at George and wondered what it was that he wanted to tell me. It took him a few seconds to gather his thoughts that had been shattered by my whispering voice that demanded him to wait. Eventually, it came back to him, “Okay, just before you went to sleep, I overheard Bradel and Larou talking to each other, and as it turns out, they’re actually old friends from Lux Invicta. Do you know what that means, Sui?”

  “Honestly, no, I don’t.”

  “It means that we’ve two members of Lux Invicta, that in itself is a blessing, but listen to this: according to legend, a person or group who is accompanied by two or more organization members will gain the ability to reach into one’s self and find the truth about who they really are.” I sat back and listened to what he had to say as he continued, “Now, I’ve been having this bizarre and reoccurring feeling of déjà vu ever since we woke up from the hospital. Something was saying to me, George, you’ve been in this place before; George, you’ve been in an airship before; George, you’ve been in space before. I realize now, Sui, when you were speechless and shaking after walking out of that house in Xixic, you had a vague vision of the past, didn’t you? Something that happened, but was overlapped with other, perhaps, false memories? Is that what happened? I’ve been thinking; what if we’ve both been mind wiped before and in place of our real memories, we were given memories of an alternate life— a life we thought we lived?”

  That couldn’t have been the case, I thought to myself. If I had been stripped of my memories, then my family would have realized it and retaliated against whoever did it, unless my family members were the ones who took my memories and overlapped them. But this was highly unlikely, I thought.

  George seemed to be a genius for being able to come to that conclusion. The only thing that disturbed me about it was, if it were so, why my parents or his parents would ever brainwash us into thinking we lived simple lives before all of this? It just wouldn’t fit together as much as we thought about it, but we both knew that we needed to find some answers. It was possible that we were just suffering from the poison in our minds. The black brands on our shoulders were starting to become bold by gaining shade around the edges of their figure. The jauish curse was maturing, so we had no time to dilly dally in other affairs. If George’s insights were correct and not just madness, then with Bradel and Larou at our side, we would probably continue to be brought back to past occurrences long forgotten until our full biography returned to us as it was truly written by our hands. I nodded to George and concluded the subject.

  “We will recover our stolen lives if they actually have been taken from us, but for now, let’s worry about our current condition.”

  Agreeing with my attention to the whole picture, George placed his hand on my lap and softly kissed me with his warm lips. We were to be landing on Salidiah Pulse in the estimated time of five and a half hours. The other passengers aboard groaned impatiently when they heard the news over the intercom. To us one hour was longer than we could afford to wait, but that was something that the other passengers were not aware of. You never know how well you’ve got it until you put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s experiencing a far deeper hell. Since we didn’t have the choice to just arrive right then and there, I knew that we had to be patient and occupy our time with the sights of supernovas, nebulas, and distant stars. It wasn’t going to stop the curse inside of us, but it would certai
nly keep our minds off it.

  Some luxuries were unavoidable from the seats; of course, there were televisions in front of every three seats, small books the size of soap bars on shelves next to every seat, and music being played on the intercom for everyone aboard. The only problem with the music was that it had an eerie ambience to it like something you’d hear from a ghostly ruin. I wasn’t quite sure if it was my imagination taking over, but there was certainly something odd about this music’s dark tone. I began to drift out of reality, cuffing my shoulders with crossed arms. With George at my side, I could clearly see that he too was losing consciousness. Was it the curse? I thought about the possibility of our stolen identities before I fell asleep one last time before our arrival.

  In my sleep, my dreams were silent. Without any sound to be heard, I dreamt of images of rough seas, flowing mountains, scorching deserts, and bloody battles being fought around the Fancore. The last image I saw was the woods on top of a mountainous landscape. The forest caught on fire, as black smoke wrapped itself around me and strangled my lungs. The smoke eventually loosened its grip on me and faded into the wind. The fire slowly decayed and a long silence filled the woods, which continued to burn into charcoal and embers with the last remaining flames. My heart rate finally dropped back to a natural pace, but out of nowhere, the face of the demon back in Xixic appeared in front of me with a nerve-tearing roar, causing me to shout at the top of my lungs! I woke up with a panicked jump. George had the same reaction as I did, but I thought it was only because I woke him up so abruptly. To our surprise, we experienced the same exact terror simultaneously.

  “You saw it too, didn’t you, George?”

  “That was Asteroth The Black.”

  Asteroth was the name of the demon I exorcised in Xixic. They both looked the same, but he was red, and the one in the dream was black. I wondered what these colors could possibly represent.

  “That demon comes in many forms. Only two of them are known, but they are one entity. It is said that when they come together, his true form is revealed.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I studied things involving demons and dark entities, remember?”

  In any case, the demon named Asteroth came in many forms that were equally repulsive and sore to the eye. After recovering from that heart-pounding jolt that threw us out of our sleep, George pointed to the circular window. Salidiah Pulse was now at a visible distance and so very vibrant with its greens, blues, browns, oranges, and even touches of violet circulating with the clouds. The faded maroon rings that crossed around the world added an enchanting feeling that it was indeed one of legend.

  During our last minutes on the spacecraft, George and I conversed about what we had experienced with the jauish curse since we had received it in Matta Shimbib, and it was the same exact activity. We were both witnessing strange hallucinations, odd energies following us around, and nasty smells like that of death roaming in the air. George even told me that before we were branded, he could feel the same evil that I could feel following us through Crosscc. It was as though his neko curse had manifested outside his body and continued as a dark spirit wandering around its former host, knowing nowhere else to go. He also admitted that he had seen the masked woman, but not the old man she so oddly accompanied. It was clear that he was as equally unnerved with her as I was. As frightening as it may be, we could be defeated before even confronting Jobik if we didn’t cleanse ourselves of this damnation soon. It had been roughly six days since we had been branded, and yet, we hadn’t even experienced an increase in the symptom’s intensity, as Larou had warned us would happen over time.

  Before we knew it, Salidiah Pulse was ready to welcome our landing. Before we could exit the spacecraft, our weapons and other valuable belongings had to be checked back out from the cargo hold. Thankfully, they were all undamaged and kept safe by the men who were assigned to keep them.

  We had made it! The world of myth and legend was all around us, absorbing all my love for nature and beauty in one swift breath. The green mountains caught my eye first, as they had thousands of green shades reflecting off of the waters below them. The three small suns were setting with a pink horizon that made the sands of the beaches near the spaceport as glittery orange as Soba’s one-of-a-kind holy metal. The waterfalls and the river, shimmering miles away across the valley, could be seen in the light of the sinking suns, reflecting the scenery of the rising stars. I looked behind us and noticed a small village settled far, far, into the distant fields, very similar to Rïdeneer, only without all the hills. We got off with Bradel and Larou who were not as interested in the scenery as George and I were. To be honest, it appeared that they were not really fond of the planet by any means. George and I simply couldn’t get enough of it and its divine beauty that expanded over the surface.

  “How do we get out of this space port, Mr. Larou?” George asked, thinking the same as me. There were no visible exits from out of the docking bay; no doors to enter a gift shop or anything like that, and the people who got off with us congregated near a small shrine-looking construct in the corner of the landing pad zone.

  “That is an excellent question, George,” said Larou, sardonically, “why don’t you have a look at what those people are doing over there.”

  We watched as the two children who sat behind us the entire trip touched the shrine with their parents and suddenly vanished with a wave of violet rings that pulsated from the bulb on the top. It was a sort of magickal teleportation device that had been there for what might have been thousands of years. I didn’t recall teleporting in the past, but I assumed that it wouldn’t be as dramatic as some of George’s old graphic novels would suggest. With a ready mind and a pumped up stream of blood running through my veins, I knew I was ready to face the so-called “fury” of this strange device with open arms.

  When it was our turn, it wasn’t as though we approached the device, but it seemed like the device left the ground it was planted in and came to us. The four of us prepared to touch it as the others did before, and as soon as I laid a finger on it, my entire body was divided into a trillion pieces that swirled though a wormhole at the speed of light. It wasn’t even two seconds before George and I found our bodies whole again and lying on the ground with the most dreadful nauseous feeling overcoming us.

  Standing over us were Bradel and Larou, chuckling at our first reaction to the experience of instantaneous travel. After I upchucked a bit in my mouth and swallowed it back, I looked around and saw the land around us. We were in Talamont. It was like country mixed with city; a landscape just at the top of a green mountain. There were trees and plants that surrounded tall buildings and skyscrapers that shared their space with nature. This city/rain forest hybrid was written about in the legends and books I had in Rïdeneer; but now, I was standing on its grassy sidewalks and gazing at its green, yellow, gray, and white beauty. Larou and Bradel continued to laugh at us.

  “Don’t worry, you two,” Bradel said sarcastically with a smirk, “it’ll all become as ordinary to you as any other form of travel. You just have to get used to it, that’s all.”

  George and I got back on our feet and followed the mage and the gnomish scholar. I had no idea where we were going, and I had no sense of where anything was on this planet. The only thing that I was fully aware of was that somewhere on this paradise world was a cure; a cure that George and I would have our hands on no matter what the case may be. I turned to Larou and asked him where it was that he had found the cure for his own brand.

  “It’s at the base of this mountain we’re standing on; in the Skeldon rat cave where many nilts live.” He said, “They are a primitive but wise bipedal rat and mouse people. They stand guard over The Acolyte’s Treasury because they were chosen by the Talamont Church to do so. The Acolyte’s Treasury holds much of Talamont’s riches, and it’s where they keep the cure I received. These nilts are very cautious about who they let in, so be mi
ndful. You can expect them to react to you as Bradel here did. Riddles again it might be.”

  “How did you know about that?” asked George.

  “We’re old friends,” Bradel admitted, “we met each other a long time ago in a meeting with Lux Invicta. You two must have been children at the time, I presume. Based on the look on your face, you don’t seem the least bit surprised about it.”

  “Well, I kind of over heard some of the things you said about your partnership in the Organization. As old friends, I just didn’t expect you to be talking about recent matters.”

  “Although friends that haven’t spoken are often nostalgic about their good times, we figured it would be best to inform each other about the present. I forget you have grown with very little friends.”

  Right after the gnome said that so coldly, I could see the shame that George felt from living such a secluded life, both with his family and in the wild. It wasn’t his fault, though, and I was sure that Bradel had no right in being so frank with his words. These old men were beginning to test my patience, which was obviously running thin at this point. I was much more irritable than usual with this curse eating away at my brain, so stabilizing my nerves was more than a challenge for me to overcome.

  “Sui,” Larou called out to me as we walked the spiraling trail out of Talamont, “are you feeling alright? You seem distasteful.”

  Well, for one thing, I thought to myself, he was being quite rude along with Bradel. I didn’t want to say it to him in such a vile manor, so I asked him what he meant by “distasteful.”

  “Well, you seem to be silent and closed up to Bradel and myself. At least George is making responses to our compliments.”

  I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.

  “Compliments? Ever since we teleported here, you’ve been mocking us; how could you call those wisecracks of yours compliments?”

  A heavily sore silence filled the air around us. Every one of us stopped on the spiraling dirt road leading to the mountain’s base. The way I had just shouted at the fellow mage was most inappropriate, even if he was being such a cruel joker. George was even looking at me with a turned head; there was something wrong with my ears and how I was hearing things in that moment. I had a feeling that it was caused by the curse within me. The effects were getting worse. I was tired, despite the good amount of sleep I had received on the spaceship. I kept seeing small images in front of my face and hearing disturbing voices whisper in my brain. It was madness, and I wanted it gone right then and there!