The First Spark

by T J Trapp

  The second reserve column turned the tide of the battle, and the Alder force pulled back. It had been close, but the fortification had held. The battle was done for the day. Gott and her allies were not yet defeated.

  Erin could stand by no longer; she led Alec onto the battlefield. Bodies of riders, Alder soldiers, Gott allies, and trogus lay sprawled across the open area; singed grass sent a pungent smell across the field.

  “My Princess,” a man moaned, crawling from under a fallen trogus.

  “Ferd!” Alec shouted. “Are you … okay?”

  “Yes, just winded from falling under my mount. She is gone, but she saved me from a worse fate.”

  Erin and Alec stayed on the battlefield with Ferd, attending to the dead. The cost of the charge had been high. The enemy dark energy user had taken more lives in a few minutes than Erin had lost in the rest of the campaign. If Alec and Erin had not been able to counter the dark energy foe, they would have lost most, if not all, of their force.

  “Look,” said Alec, turning over one of the dead bodies. The dark energy user had created a fist-sized rock that had punched through the man’s heart. “Very effective and a very quick death.”

  Probably much easier than my approach, he mused. If the killer missed their aim slightly, then the rock they created would smash some other organ, or the ribs, and would probably disable any person they didn’t kill.

  Erin stared at the gaping hole in the dead man’s chest.

  “They have a Black Wizard,” she said solemnly. “A Black Wizard of death and destruction.”

  “Only our combined ability to move the dark energy’s focus outside the body saved our other riders,” Alec said, reaching for her hand.

  ✽✽✽

  That afternoon General Mawn called all the allied officers together.

  “We are going to take the war to the enemy tomorrow,” he pronounced. “Our carpenters have made four more attack wagons like the ones from Theland. We will use them tomorrow to neutralize the Alder’s other death rod encampment. Then we will mount a general attack up the center of the pass. I don’t think the enemy believes we will counterattack so we might be able to break their lines.” The old General motioned towards his aides. “Get your assignments from my orderlies.”

  Major Voy was waiting for Erin and Alec with their assignment.

  “The General wants you to be available if needed in the assault on the death rod emplacement, but he wants it led by the first Gott battalion. He thinks they need to learn how to counter this threat without your wizardry.” He cleared his throat and glanced at Alec nervously.

  “As soon as the emplacement is down he wants you to circle behind the enemy and attack them from the rear. The General thinks if this goes well we may break the Alder tomorrow. He thinks the Alder are too cocky and too dependent on the death rods. Without the death rods, their soldiers are not as good a fighting force as we are. If the death rods are taken away, they will not be much of a threat.”

  A cockerel sounded at the first light of day – Erin already had her riders moving. They rode silently to an assembly point several hundred arns behind the death rod emplacement. The Gott troops pushed their four wagons forward. A few bangs! rang out, splintering wood on the wagons. Alec took advantage of his vantage point to destroy two death rods. The wagons pushed up to the Alder emplacement. General Mawn had sent Gott’s finest troops; they poured out around the wagons with precision and took the fortification. There were no signs of additional death rods. Even Erin was impressed with the discipline and the effectiveness of these troops.

  Erin had her riders quickly on the move. The Alder guard post at the bottom of the pass was almost deserted. Only four troopers with no death rods remained at the post. Erin watched the quick fight between her riders and the guards with studied interest. The four guards appeared to have been assigned guard duty because of their limited fighting skills. The riders quickly dispatched the guards and secured the post. They rode past the guard post into the Grasslands at an easy pace, preserving their strength. Alec and Erin kept their thoughts to themselves. They would probably encounter one or more dark energy users, and they needed to be ready. The sounds of battle continued all around with unabated fury. The riders moved into position with what seemed to Erin to be an agonizing slowness.

  Erin ordered her troops to advance towards the Alder camp. They could see the reserve columns of Alder troops waiting to be thrown into battle. Erin decided they would be her target and her riders charged towards them. The sounds of paws beating the ground was the first warning the Aldermen received. They attempted to turn to face the charge, but the trogus were among them before they could prepare, and death was on all sides. Teeth, claws, and spears all did their damage.

  Now that Erin’s riders were through the first reserve column they headed towards a second Alder column. This group had more warning time and had put up a partial pike line to stop the charging animals. Erin’s riders raced towards the line, and then at the last second swerved right and left and entered the Alder ranks from the sides. Again claws, teeth and spears served their purpose.

  With the Alder reinforcements scrambling to defend themselves against Erin’s riders, the unreinforced main line of the Alder broke into small-scale fights as the troops started to fall into disarray. The Alder commander needed his reinforcements to support his main line; he sent a smaller, determined-looking contingent toward Erin’s riders.

  As the Alder contingent neared, Alec could feel dark energy swirl and start to coalesce as a rock inside one of the front riders. He smoothed the energy lines. Now proximity was on his side. Several more times dark energy clumped, and he smoothed it. Now the Alder force was only arns away, and the riders defending Alec and Erin engaged the approaching Alder soldiers. The dark energy lines twisted again, and a fire broke out around Alec’s bresta. Alec straightened the lines, and the fire turned to white puffs of steam blowing into the air. Erin could see that the Alder weren’t going to win the fight against the riders if Alec could continue to negate the Black Wizard.

  Alec felt an intense clumping of energy and knew the focus was on him. He tried to smooth the fields, but the amount of energy kept increasing faster than he could work.

  Help me, his thoughts cried out to Erin.

  Erin could feel his mental struggle and took his hand. Alec could now sense the dark energy field but couldn’t feel any way to unclump it without creating an unstable point and destroying both himself and Erin. With Erin’s ability assisting him, he could sense a little further along the swirl of dark energy. The energy kept increasing – it felt like a silent roar within his head.

  “Focus!” Erin exhorted.

  “I can’t. It’s not working.” Alec grimaced with the effort.

  If I can’t stop it, maybe I can dam it up, he thought to himself. He let the dark energy continue to build and then pushed the focus point to where Erin’s senses told him the origin was. He fed his energy into the coalescing dark energy and let it continue to build.

  And, with a sudden explosion, Alec could feel the snapping of the dark energy lines. His arm flew back involuntarily, losing the grip on Erin’s hand. He felt the Black Wizard’s medallion overload with the addition of his energy and felt it burst into fragments. A huge rock appeared a few paces from them and settled into the soft ground with a dull thud.

  That was meant for us! he thought.

  Air whipped around in a brief windstorm that knocked Alec from his mount and caused Erin to almost lose her balance. Erin slipped off her trogus and ran to Alec.

  “Are you, all right?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Help me up! I must be ready for the next fight,” Alec answered.

  “We have succeeded, Great Wizard!” Erin exclaimed. “We have beaten the Black Wizard!”

  The field suddenly seemed eerily quiet. Although a few of Erin’s riders were still actively engaged with Aldermen, they seemed far away. Most of the Alder troops were retreating into the Grassland.
>
  Alec could sense which body was that of the other wizard, sprawled on the ground along with the dead and dying Alder soldiers. Alec walked towards the body, Erin a few steps behind him. The wizard lay face down; Alec reached the figure and stopped, Erin right behind him.

  “The Black Wizard is a woman!” Erin exclaimed in surprise.

  23 – The Black Wizard

  Alec was stunned. The Black Wizard was a woman. But – somehow – maybe I knew that…

  The woman was dressed differently from the other Alder soldiers: instead of their coarse dark blue uniforms, she wore a form-fitting black garment with blue reflective stripes. Almost like the runner’s tights I used to wear back home, Alec thought.

  The Dark Wizard stirred, and then rolled over. He could see blood and a ragged hole in her chest where her medallion must have been. One of her arms was bent at a broken angle, obscuring her face.

  She doesn’t have long to live, Alec thought, kneeling beside her.

  “Alec?” she said.

  He gasped, taken aback. Her voice was one he hadn’t heard in a long, long time, but yet so familiar, even through her pain. He rocked back on his heels, in shock and disbelief.

  “Alec – I should have known … Alder always suspected you survived.” Wincing, she moved her broken arm from her face. The snub nose, the cropped hair, the fulsome mouth, came into view.

  “Sarah,” Alec whispered.

  “I should have known that the rogue user would turn out to be you.”

  “Sarah.” He gently touched her face – the face that he had once held so close, that he had once loved. She looked older than he remembered; even though it had only been – what? – A year or so since he had arrived in this strange place. Older, and somehow, harder.

  “Sarah – what are you … how … how are you here?”

  “I am here to assist our colony, of course.”

  “Your colony … you mean, the Aldermen?”

  “Yes! Alder’s men!” Her face twisted in pain.

  Alder’s men?

  “Dr. Alder? At the Institute?” What?

  “Yes, Dr. Alder. His colony here.”

  “Colony? What colony? How can he have a colony …”

  “Of course he has this colony. He’s worked on this for years, to establish a foothold on this planet.”

  Alec shook his head. Of all the things that he might have expected, this was a total befuddling mystery.

  “You are dying Sarah. We need to stabilize you.” Alec took her hand and coursed a small thread of dark energy through her. “Erin and I can probably heal you,” Alec said, wondering if he was truthful, given the enormity of her wound.

  Sarah looked at Erin for the first time.

  “So that’s how you beat me,” she said bitterly. “You had help from a cross-breed! Keep away from her! The Elders warned us that cross-breeds are as evil as the elves!”

  Erin looked at Alec, her dark eyes filling with tears, and backed away from Sarah.

  “You are one of us! Stay away from the cross-breeds!” Sarah gasped, her breath becoming shallow. Her eyes rolled up, then closed.

  Alec kept pushing dark energy into Sarah to keep her alive, at least until she could accept help.

  ✽✽✽

  After some time, Sarah seemed to stabilize. It could have been a few moments or a few hours: Alec couldn’t tell the difference. Some color came back into her face, despite the hole in her chest, and she opened her eyes.

  “Sarah … Sarah, can you tell me what is going on?” Alec said softly. “How did you get here?”

  “I came through the transporter, of course. Alder sent me. I am surprised to see you, Alec. You still look … young. On Earth, it has been over four years since you left; time flows more quickly there than here, since Earth does not have as much dark energy.”

  Four years? “What portal?”

  “In your time with Alder, did you ever know that this was his project – his purpose – or hear anything about setting up a dipole on another world?” Her eyes searched his face.

  “No! I never heard of any … project. I came to work with Dr. Alder because he was a renowned expert in the field of dark energy! I was lucky that he chose me to work with him!” Alec replied, surprised at how much he suddenly missed his former mentor.

  “Huh,” she said, “Did you really think it was an accident – luck – that he picked you? It was because of your work – your brilliance, really – in understanding how to use dark energy. He thought you could be useful to the project.”

  “But you say he kept secrets from me.”

  “Alder never really trusted you; he always felt like something wasn’t quite right about you. You always had some sense of … wanting to help people too much. Wanting to do what you thought was ‘right.’ That’s why he had me get close to you. Date you. To see what you were really made of.” She smiled at him, grimly, through her pain. “But I was always Alder’s girl; even when I was with you, I was Alder’s.”

  “You and Dr. Alder? Really?”

  “Yes, long before you came along, Alder and I were together. But you were my little assignment – to get to know you better, to make sure that you could be one of us. Alder didn’t like it when I started sleeping with you, but I told him it was part of getting close.” She let out a little laugh. “You were the better lover, and I didn’t want to break up with you. I have always been very fond of you – I did love you, you know; I loved you, Alec.” She tried to reach out, to touch him, but her broken body failed her and she couldn’t. Alec squeezed her hand tightly, bringing it briefly to his lips. Then he fell silent, again feeding a pulse of dark energy into her body, keenly aware of Erin, standing behind him.

  “All I wanted, all through grad school, was to work at the Institute, with Dr. Alder. Now you’re telling me that my work there was for a hidden purpose, and your interest in me was only to get information for Dr. Alder.” His mind was spinning. “But you said you needed to know that I was okay, that you could trust me to be part of your secret project. You said ‘one of us.’” She nodded slightly.

  “What do you mean, ‘one of us?’” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “Oh Alec, there is so much you don’t know!” Sara sounded exasperated, even though she was very weak. “Our world and Nevia – this world here – are part of a million-years-long battle between the elves and the orb. The war has been going on across the multiverse since before anyone can remember.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alec wondered if Sarah was going mad from pain.

  “The Elders explained it to me, like they explained it to Alder. Long ago, millions of our years ago, the elves were the only race in the multiverse. Then the elves created another race: the ‘orb,’ as the elves called them. They needed to have another class of people – beings – to take care of work tasks and be expendable. The orb look like elves but do not have all the mental powers that elves have.

  “The elves turn some of the orbs into compliant drones. Drones have no self-will: their only desire is to please their masters, the elves. The elves use the drones to do everything for them and run all aspects of their society. They treat all their drones and the orbs like expendable, inferior animals. But, since the elves created the orbs and drones in their own image, they sometimes cross-breed and create creatures like your girlfriend here.” Sarah paused to catch her breath.

  “A million years ago some of the orbs escaped and established their own societies on other worlds. Many of the outposts became isolated from the homeworlds; they went rogue and lost all knowledge of their past. Then after awhile the elves realized that the orbs were competitors. The elves started a campaign to eradicate the orbs, and a war between the two has raged across the multiverse ever since. Many worlds have active hostilities, but most of the multiverse consists of outposts and guard stations.”

  “How do you know all of this?” asked Alec.

  “Because the orb Elders told us! They came to our world and contacted us. How do y
ou think Alder found out about dark energy? Did you think that he just magically ‘discovered’ dark energy one day in such a dark energy back-water as Earth? How do you think anyone made the first tricrystals? Our world is just an isolated orb outpost.”

  “So you are saying that there are …’orbs’ … on Earth?” Alec asked, incredulously.

  “Yes, Alec. Yes. There are orbs on Earth. You are one of them. I am one of them. We are all orbs! All humans are orbs – part of the great orb culture that spans thousands of worlds across the multiverse!”

  Alec looked at her in total disbelief.

  “We are orbs,” Sarah repeated, earnestly. “You need to understand that. About ten thousand years ago the people on Earh lost touch with the orb culture. Our unstable civilization is the result. And now, things are getting worse.”

  “How?” asked Alec, still not choosing to grasp that he was something called an ‘orb.’

  “The elves are active on earth and plan to domesticate us and eventually turn us into their drones. They always need more drones and Earth would be a good source. Twenty years ago, an orb scouting party reconnected with Earth and discovered the elf plan. They looked around for people who would be able to understand how dark energy works, and found our Dr. Alder. Alder is a key contact for them. He is a part of a secret organization on Earth that works with the orb to oppose the elves. They showed us about dark energy; but Earth is a low field for dark energy. We don’t have much of it. Not like here, on Nevia. It is strong here.

  “Because we don’t have much of a natural background of dark energy on Earth, our orb Elders do not think that the elves can be defeated when they rise up against us and that time may be coming sooner than we thought. The Elders think that Earth has no chance to win against the elves. They recommend taking our best ideas and people and flee to another world before the elf domestication starts and all the humans on Earth are turned into drones, or worse.