Rebirth

by Darkbringer

  “And with just about as much remorse.”

  Jess gulped slightly, and then slowly nodded her head to show she understood.

  “And one last thing,” I warned. “You had best hope that the Lord always remains safe. If something does happen to him while he’s still a student at the school, your fate is sealed then as well – whether you had anything to do with whatever happens or not. You know his secret. You might decide to sell it, or pass it on as a favor to someone else, and there’s no way you can be watched all the time.

  “So,” I grinned at her slightly and then slowly pulled my knife back and tucked it back into my beltline before crossing my arms, “we’re not going to watch you at all. We’re simply going to work from the impression that if the Lord’s healer records leak out, or if someone stumbles across his secret and works against him, or if something happens – you were involved. Even if it’s just an unforeseen accident that the Lord stumbles in to back at the school, you’ll suffer a fate twice as bad as whatever happened to him.”

  Tears were slowly leaking down her eyes as Jess stared wide-eyed at me. “I…. I understand,” she slowly croaked.

  “Good! Good!” Slowly I leaned up and hugged her slightly. “Then let’s work well together and be the best of friends.” I gently kissed her on the nose before finally letting go of my embrace.

  “One thing, though, Jess -- you might want to take care of that.” Slowly, I pointed down to where a slight stain of blood was seeping into the front of her dress. “It looks like it might be that time of the month for you. You might want to take those herbs and fix that so the dead don’t notice. And, while you’re at it, you might want to patch that hole in your pants. The boys might end up seeing something you don’t want them too if you’re not careful.”

  Without saying a word, Jess turned to the side away from me. I noticed the tell-tale sign of her working magic to fix the small hole I’d put in her.

  Whistling lightly and merrily to myself, I went back over and sat down and relaxed against my Lord’s side once more.

  There wasn’t any way for me to contact anyone else and let them know that Jess knew the Lord’s secret. There wasn’t an unknown horde of watchers looking out for him. There wasn’t any way that I could carry through with any of the threats I’d made to her. Fortunately, however, Jess didn’t know any of that!

  Just as I was getting ready to lay me head back down in the Lord’s lap so he could enjoy playing with my hair, like he seemed to, he finally blinked and looked around…

  Reproducing a Wonder

  “I think I’ve got it!” After spending several hours feeling the ore which made the circle around the graveyard while waiting for the sun to arise, I finally understood its structure enough to try and replicate it. Or, at least I hoped I did.

  Holding out my hand towards where she was sitting, I told Crystal, “let me see your sword for a moment.”

  Looking a little curious, she unbuckled her belt and then passed the sword, scabbard, and all to me. Slowly, I drew the sword from the scabbard and left the belt and scabbard for her to deal with. Dino came over from where he was playing in the fire to watch curiously what I was doing, but Jess hung back and kept a nervous eye on our surroundings. I guess she’d probably prefer to head back, but she was simply too scared to leave and try to make it on her own.

  “What’s up?” Dino asked curiously. “What exactly do you think you’ve got?”

  “Watch and learn,” I told him with a smirk. “I’ll show you how a real wizard can manipulate earth and steel, with a little bit of practice and focus!”

  “Hah! If you set your hair on fire or something silly like that after bragging on yourself, I’m going to laugh at you forever, you know!”

  Smirking, I didn’t even bother to reply. I was simply in too good of a mood. It’s not every day that I get a chance to learn and do something new with Earth, and I was going to enjoy the moment. Taking a deep breath, I flexed my power a few times just to feel it and ground myself for what was to come.

  Slowly and steadily, I finally started to pull in the power of the Earth from everywhere outside of the ring. I didn’t trust trying to reach or pull any energy from inside the graveyard, so instead I pulled strength from the deep veins of the earth and wound the strands of energy tighter and thicker with each moment.

  As the flow of power around me grew steadily over the next several minutes, Dino’s eyes grew just as large. At first, he stared at me with amusement, as if he was simply waiting for me to fail so he could laugh and make fun of me. Then after a few moments, his eyebrow began to twitch as he stared unblinkingly. Then his jaw slowly started to open, gradually gaping wider and wider with each passing moment.

  By the time I’d pulled as much earthen energy as I could from all around us, Dino was a big-eyed, slack-jawed idiot. Sweat was beading up on his face and dripped unnoticed by him down off the end of his nose. Truly, I found it rather amusing as somehow it seemed as if my magic was pulling more a strain on him than it was on me!

  Taking a few moments to get my breathing back under control, the ground rippled gently around us to match my breaths. Though I hadn’t linked myself to the ground anywhere so strongly since I’d left home on the island, I’d managed to one again connect my spirit to the land here. I was in a true state of affinity with the forest here and with the flows of power in the deep earth below us. At the moment, I felt indestructible!

  Brimming with strength and confidence, I finally turned my attention to the steel sword in my hands. A small tendril of power connected me to it intimately, and I could feel every crease, crack, fold, and striation of the metal with my very soul. Another small tendril of power connected me to the mysterious ore in the ground just as strongly.

  Taking a moment to compare the two, the differences in them were almost too numerous to count – and that wouldn’t suit my wants and needs at all! With a surge of power that erupted like a thunderclap, I released so much energy into the blade in my hand that it exploded and shattered into millions of tiny fragments. The ground shook and rippled, rising and falling several feet in the blink of an eye. Trees toppled and then erupted into splinters from the energy flowing all around us.

  All the trees, shrubs, and bushes within a half mile on this side of circle separating us from the graveyard, simply evaporated under the relentless onslaught of energy pouring up from the bowels of the earth. Moments later, fresh trees grew from the ripped and ragged soil, as nuts and seeds absorbed the same relentless pouring of power. Grow, bloom, grow, expand, explode – and then repeat the process over and over! A dozen generations of tree grew, bloomed, and exploded in the next half dozen breaths.

  The scattered fragments of the steel blade hovered and twirled in a wild cyclone of deep, pure brown energy – but it still wasn’t what I needed!

  Another surge of power flattened then ground all around smooth, hardened it to pure obsidian, and then shattered it into ultra fine sand as I shattered the minuscule fragments of steel again and again. Smaller and finer, I refined the metal until it was as fine as the hairs on a flea’s ass.

  Nothing but a fine metallic powder twirled in front of me now – and now the difficult part began!

  Taking a deep breath, I screamed with effort as I completely released the earth energy and immediately tugged as much power as I could from the sky above.

  The rain stopped instantly as all the energy in the clouds was removed in the blink of an eye. Wind howled and screamed along with me as I struggled to control the power I was pulling from the heavens around us. A cyclone spun and twirled as I ripped the energy from the sky and channeled it into pure electricity and poured it into the metallic dust spinning wildly in front of me.

  Slowly, and with much effort, painstakingly reassembled the pieces of dust together one fine flake at a time, imbuing them with raw energy from the air. Gradually, the dust began to reform into solid electric-blue steel and take on the shape of a sword once more.

  Feeling thro
ugh the connection I still maintained with the mysterious ore, I could tell that something was still missing. With much concentration, I slowly released the power of the sky and let it return back to its natural flows. All I needed was to cause a hurricane or some other natural disaster to deal with right now!

  Once I was satisfied that the sky was returning back to normal, I released my pull upon it and once again grabbed for the strands of earth that I had woven together, before they could all unravel and make my job even more difficult. It took enough effort to gather the flows the first time; I certainly didn’t want to do it again!

  “You guys might want to watch yourselves,” I warned no one in particular. If I lose control on the next phase of alteration, I doubt anyone for miles around would have to worry about trouble ever again. I was using the flows of deep earth energy to connect myself to a different, even more dangerous power – I was pulling on the raw essence of the deep inner fire from the earth!

  Focusing all my concentration, I blocked everything else out of my field of perception, except for the twirling blue blade and a small finger-sized patch of ground beneath it. With a surge of effort, I tightened, compressed, refined, and then pulled the fire energy from deep in the earth. Like threading string through a needle, I slowly forced it out of the bowels of the earth, and, in a compressed beam like a laser, I forced it into the sword as it rotated before me.

  For several long moments, the power of fire mixed and mingled with the amalgam of earth and air altered steel before me. The heat was unbearably intense, scorching my hair and eyebrows. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air, and some fragment of my mind screamed that it was my own flesh trying to melt, but I had to push it away.

  The process of altering the sword was much more difficult than I imagined it would be, and I was weaving strands of magic in ways that were completely new to me. What I was doing was endlessly complex, and was something that I’d never even heard about even in a passing discussion before – I couldn’t stop now!

  Fire. Earth. Air. All three energies flowed together and merged into something completely new and different from the plain steel that Crystal had carried so casually on her hip before – and it still wasn’t exactly right! I could tell that something was wrong, but it was difficult to put an exact finger on what the problem was.

  Cautiously, I eased the flows of fire back to the deep bowels of the earth, and then I slowly unraveled the strands of earth that I’d wrapped tightly. One by one, I released them back to their normal place in nature, and as I did so, I focused more and more of my thoughts and concentration on the ore encircling the graveyard.

  “WAH HA HA!!” I cackled like a madman, as I suddenly understood! The final piece of the puzzle hit me like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky!

  As I released the last bit of earth energy back to its natural flow, I took one last deep breath and steeled my will as much as I possibly could. Finally, I released the energy that connected me to the ore in the ground that formed the barrier and focused all my concentration solely on the link between myself and the now brilliantly purple blade floating before me.

  With one last surge of power, I pulled upon my own life and death energy and slowly pushed it into the blade. A breath of life to weave and hold the essences together. Death energy to rip a small shred from my own soul and wrap it into everything. Life as the internal Yin, Death as the external Yang, and Fire, Earth, and Air to blend together into the steel itself.

  Exhausted, and in agony, I finally reached out and took the sword in my hand and released my energy completely. The process was amazingly difficult, and it required pure life and spirit to complete. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would’ve ever been able to create enough ore to surround a whole area like what was before us.

  All my mind could believe is that somehow people were involved in a mass sacrifice of some sort to empower the ore fully. There’s no way that a single wizard would ever have enough life or spirit to do such a feat!

  The last thing I remember thinking was that the darkness ahead might be even worse than what I had first thought. Dozens, and maybe even hundreds of people had given their lives to stop the spread of corruption!

  And, we were going to brazenly walk forward and into the center of it all!

  Aftermath

  “Wake up.” A soft hand gently shook my shoulders lightly. “My Lord, you should wake up now.” A second, more insistent shake made me finally open my eyes and glance around painfully. The sun was starting to illuminate the sky in brilliant red and oranges, forcing me to squint as I looked up from the spot where I was resting my head in Crystal’s lap. For some strange reason, long hair draped down over the front of my face and I had to push it back to either side to unobstruct my view.

  “What time is it?” I asked wearily. I was still tired, and I had no real understanding of how long I’d been lying there passed out from my exertions. Never when I started my alterations to Crystal’s blade, did I imagine that it’d require so much raw power and effort to change it to match the ore surrounding the graveyard. Glancing around, I noticed that the blade still laid undisturbed on the ground where I’d dropped it when I passed out.

  “The sun’s just risen a while ago, My Lord.” Crystal gently stroked my hair and then leaned down and lightly kissed me on my forehead. “I figured you’d want to go and look for the others now that it’s lightening out.”

  “I do,” I agreed. Slowly, I stretched a few times and then impulsively reached up and back to grope both her breasts gently a few times before sitting up fully. Crystal just laughed slightly and then brushed the hair back and forth from my eyes once again with her hands.

  “What’s up with my ‘do?” I had to ask.

  “Your do, My Lord?”

  “My hairdo. What the heck happened to my hair?”

  “Ah!” Crystal laughed with understanding. “Well, you burned yourself fairly severely doing whatever you were with your magics, My Lord. Jess used her own magics to heal you, and since most of the hair was burned and scorched from the front of your face and body, she regrew it with magic. Unfortunately, it all grew to the same uniform length that it is now, so it’s quite a bit longer than what it was originally.”

  Nodding to show that I understood the situation, I drew in a small trickle of energy from the air around me and then shaped it into a thin, hard line of power. With a single whisk of force, I simply ran it in front of my face, about a half inch above my eyebrows. Instantly, long strands of loose hair fell free and drifted loosely towards the ground.

  I was happy to see that I hadn’t pushed myself so hard that I’d burned out my talent for magic. It happens sometimes, so wizards need to watch whenever they might be overdoing something beyond their capabilities. I’m confident in my mastery of the earth and fire flows, and air I can handle in a pinch, but having to pull my own life and spirit was something I’m not very talented with. The last part of the alteration on the blade used the smallest amounts of magic, and yet it was also the part that put the largest strain on my gift and body.

  For whatever odd reason, I find it easier to create and control a raging volcano than I do to mend a broken bone or some other basic healing spell. I truly don’t seem cut out for the life of a life mage.

  Finally glancing around better, everything had changed. The forest was immensely thick and densely packed with every type of vegetation and tree I could possibly imagine. Trees stretched for hundreds of meters into the sky, with thick ferns and bushes crammed high and dense between them. Even the smallest of bushes were taller than I was – the whole area now appeared to be nothing more than a giant wall of vibrant, dense greenery, with the occasional bright patch of color from a bloom or different plant scattered amongst the thick foliage.

  “Where’s Dino and Jess?” I asked curiously, as I realized they weren’t right here with us.

  “I sent them to collect us some fresh water,” Crystal replied calmly. “If there was anything dangerous on this side of the graveya
rd, it’s not out there now. Whatever you were doing with your magic, the forest turned into a grind mill out there. I doubt there’s a bug, worm, or insect as far as one could walk in a day’s time through that mess – much less anything bigger or more dangerous! It’s taking them a while to get there and back, but I’d imagine that’s just from the effort required to push through that wall. I can’t imagine there’s anything that they have to be afraid of out there for a while!”

  Laughing, Crystal placed both her hands on her hips and then stared, unblinking. “What exactly were you doing? You either frightened or amazed Dino so badly with the energy you were wielding that he fainted. Or just forgot to inhale. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man take a breath and hold it for as long as he did! It was rather amusing in its own way.

  “Jess, on the other hand, I wasn’t watching that closely. All I know is that when it was all over with, she was sitting on the ground back behind us, crying, in a puddle of her own waste. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about her bothering you anymore. I think she now views you more as a devil than a wizard. When I asked Dino to fetch the water, she instantly volunteered to go with him. I think she’s now almost too frightened to even want to be around us, anymore.”

  Frowning, I couldn’t help but find that rather disappointing. “That’s sad,” I said, honestly. “She doesn’t seem too incapable as a healer. Since she already knows my secret, I was kind of hoping that I’d be able to rely on her being one who could help take care of me in case I got sick, hurt, or anything else at the school later. I don’t guess that’ll be possible if she doesn’t even want to be around me now.”

  “I don’t think she’d refuse you, My Lord.” Crystal barked a slight laugh. “Honestly, I don’t think she’d refuse you anything now. I feel like she’s been well tamed. The bite is out of the beast. You don’t have to worry about her, ever again, I don’t think.”