Dire Sparks (Song of the Aura, Book Five)

by Gregory J. Downs

  “I said NO!”

  The Golden One seized her head in both hands, moving so quickly that his hood fell off. Elia screeched and clawed uselessly at the Legion’s iron fists, as icy horror invaded her mind and body, taking control and shaking her until she thought her bones would rattle free of her skin. The pain… the horrible, searing pain…

  And then it was gone, and she lay quivering on the stone; her body limp, the black garment she wore plastered to her with sweat… yet still she felt cold. So cold…

  The Golden One, Sheolus, was gone.

  She had not seen him go, but one memory stayed etched fresh in her mind. His face, ravaged by his duel with Gribly and Traveller… had been totally repaired. It had been metallic gold, but shaped more sharply than before, with fewer lines, no beard, and longer hair.

  Was their enemy immortal? Would he keep her here until he had murdered everyone she cared for? Had her sacrifice even mattered?

  Elia shivered, too weak even to draw her limbs in to huddle against the stone. The bone-numbing cold seeped into her, and she began to weep silently, tears slipping down her cheeks to splash on the smooth stone beneath her.

  I have plans for you. It is too late to pray…

  The horror of her life, and she could not even pray. What in the heavens and the blazes was she to do?

  When her body grew too numb even to shiver, and the blessed darkness came again… she was almost thankful.

  Almost.

  Chapter Two: Breaking

  The next time she woke, Elia was once more chained precariously in the deep chamber. There was no light, and though her pain had lessened somewhat, it was still the most she had ever suffered at one time. Life was a haze of throbbing hurt and painful thoughts. Escape, or resistance, never even occurred to her. She would survive, she would continue, but that was all.

  This time, when they came to take her, she was still awake.

  The red light from above had just begun to shine again. She knew now that a full day could never have passed; so the light was not sunlight, as she had thought. It seemed to be mocking her, that light… showing her what could not be, what she longed for but would probably never have.

  With a liquid rumble, the metal wall directly in front of her and somewhat below shifted. It rippled and twisted like water in a current, then tore with a high-pitched shriek that made her wince and wish she could plug her ears. Quickly, violently, the tear was ripped wider, melting to every side as it did. Soon an oval-shaped opening had been torn in the wall, revealing a dark, empty hole or tunnel beyond.

  The shifting stopped, and soft footsteps from down the tunnel broke the perfect silence of Elia’s captivity. Someone, or something, was coming for her. She closed her eyes, casting her thoughts heavenward in a plea she hoped was not detectable by her captor… but to her surprise, the voice that spoke next was not that of Sheolus.

  “I know you’re awake, Nymph. Don’t make this harder for me than it already is.”

  Gramling.

  Elia opened her eyes. The Pit Strider stood at the opening, hooded and cloaked in black, arms crossed and face hidden. But it was him; Elia felt a lurch in her heart, un-called for hope that Gribly had come, replaced instantly with despair at meeting his corrupted twin. No one else would pull that feeling from her. It was Gramling.

  “Nothing to say?” The Pit Strider asked, raising his chin slightly. Elia thought she saw a scar there, but her throat was too parched to respond. She felt as if she had walked the desert for days without drinking. “Going to be stubborn?” Gramling surmised, and threw back his hood. “You can’t win that game, pretty one. It’s already lost, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Elia gasped, in spite of herself. Gramling’s face, so close in likeness to Gribly’s, was crisscrossed with scar after scar, many still crusted from recent bleeding. His eyes were bruised and swollen, and a mysterious black liquid seemed to be seeping out from their corners. The wounds reached down his neck, and she wondered fearfully if his whole body was scourged so.

  It was like seeing a corpse… Gribly’s corpse.

  “I’ve paid the price for my failure in Vast,” Gramling said darkly. “My next task is… harder… but I shall not fail.” He paused, smiling grimly, and met her eyes again.

  “Why are you here…?” she managed at last, disgusted with how weak and hoarse her voice sounded.

  “I think you know,” he said, smile fading. “I’m here to break you.”

  Elia felt a chill settle inside her… an inevitability that made fear seem harmless and obsolete.

  She made no response, and Gramling did not yet speak again. Instead he waved a hand, and the metal beneath his feet stretched and morphed, flowing outward from the wall in the way wax flows down the sides of a candle. In seconds, it had formed a floor several feet beneath her. When he had finished, the young Pit Strider waved his hand again, and the metal solidified. He stepped slowly forward, testing it with his weight, and smiled again. Elia shivered… she felt too cold for words.

  Then Gramling entered her prison, standing on the newly-formed floor, and pacing slowly back and forth. The confined space seemed not to bother him at all. Elia crouched not far from the floor, her slight frame meaning that Gramling could almost look her in the eyes, despite not being very tall himself.

  “Well,” he said at last, facing her again, “Aren’t you going to talk? Pleading for mercy, perhaps, or calling me a villain and spitting in my face? That’s what the women usually do, when I’m questioning them…” he laughed cruelly. Elia forced herself to retain her composure… Whatever he looks like, he’s NOT Gribly. He’s evil. Remember that. I have to remember that.

  “You talk to women?” Elia said, ignoring her sore throat. “Brave.”

  Gramling closed his eyes, smiling a little wider. “I apologize, then. I was wrong… this won’t be so hard, after all.”

  Then he struck her across the head. Her vision went white-red as her neck snapped back and she rocked on her chains. The blow felt like she’d been hit with a rock, and she could feel blood pooling in her mouth and trickling down her cheek. Hair fell across her face, and she couldn’t brush it away.

  Fingers jabbed her as Gramling grabbed her jaw and forced her to stare into his eyes, inches away. He was wearing gauntlets like claws, that punctured her skin and burned like fire.

  “Now,” he hissed, “you will tell me everything.”

  Elia closed her eyes.

  Gramling grunted. Then his hand burst into flame, bathing her face and neck in black heat. She howled, high-pitched, as it seared her. He held her, and she could not move away.

  “What did the Brown Aura tell you?” Gramling snapped. “What did you and your companions learn from him? Tell me!”

  Despite the heat, despite the burn, despite the tears, Elia managed to shut her mouth and jerk her head away. Gramling snatched her by the neck so hard she bit her tongue.

  “TELL ME!” The flames intensified, and her body shook with involuntary convulsions as Gramling Pit Strode.

  The pain awoke something primal inside Elia. Something… strong. It was as if the white knife of flame had pierced her nerves, shooting lightning through her veins in a last-ditch attempt to escape the pain. She screamed even louder, throwing all her weight forward instead of away, head-butting Gramling right where his face-scars were worst. Something slipped away…

  Gribly’s twin stumbled back, swearing abominably, blood streaming down from a re-opened wound, and through the haze of heat Elia realized there were small studs of frozen water impaling his face. She wondered what it could possibly…

  …No. She’d just Sea Strode, hadn’t she? Those studs had been her tears, and her anger had driven them into her enemy, frozen with the power of her fear. But I didn’t move my arms, she thought, so… so I can Stride with my mind! I’m not helpless!

  It was too much to take, in the middle of her distress. Could she use the water in her body to Stride, and break free? Did she dare, dehydrated as s
he already was? Could she summon the mysterious flames that Wanderwillow said marked her as the Halanyad? She strained her mind willing herself to Stride again… but nothing came. The chains would not let her get close enough to strike again, even if she could.

  Gramling had fallen back into the tunnel, clutching his face and swearing. Now his hands glowed orange, illuminating the dark for a split second, fading away the next. When he slowly rose, he had become deathly silent, and his eyes glowed with fury. Elia squirmed, trying to dislodge her manacles even a little bit, but it was no use.

  He stepped up to her again, and she stopped struggling. His face, where his hand had touched, was entirely repaired. If he could do that, why hadn’t he…

  “See?” he whispered, smiling coldly, “Even swallowed by the Shadow, I can still heal any injury. I’m learning… so could you, if you let yourself bend.” His eyes narrowed. “But you’re not going to let that happen, are you? So I’ll have to break you. Burn you. And heal you. And break you again. Do you want that… Elia? How long is it going to take?”

  He roared the last word in her face. She shut her eyes, quivering. His hand touched her cheek, stroking it carefully, and then…

  “I’m sorry.” It was a whisper, so low she almost thought she’d imagined it. His voice changed just that fast… and he did not speak again for a long time.

  He tortured her. She screamed, and pleaded, but told him nothing. He had blades with him, and he could make things out of fire and metal she never would have thought even a demon could invent. It went on for an eternity, and before he had finished the shadows overtook her.

  So he healed her, covering her injuries in a flow of sparks that sealed her injuries and replenished her strength just enough to wake her with the pain again. And again he burned her, and again she resisted until the darkness claimed her. Healing. Waking. Screams. Pain. Heat. Dark. Healing. Waking… it went on and on, and throughout it all Gramling never said a word.

  Then came a time when she lost consciousness, and was not healed. Her mind faded, and drifted on stars of her last happy memories… before the pain, before the quest, before her family’s death…

  ~

  For a moment, she was free again, swimming in the icy waters of the Inkwell, One with the waves in the way only her Second Form allowed. Her mother joined her, and her father, and her whole family… they swam, and dived, and made the sea their servant. They were perfect together, and knew no other life but this.

  Then the sea became furious. It stormed and frothed, tearing her family away so quickly she couldn’t react. She was swept away, swept under, and in seconds the dream became a nightmare. She was drowning, swallowing water, choking, dying…

  …and then the Inkwell simply washed away, leaving her gasping on the wet sand of an open, blinding hot desert. Soon the wet became dry, and the waves of the water were nowhere to be seen. Elia lay on her stomach, unable to move from the pain, as the sun blazed overhead, searing her back.

  Then she began to steam. She screamed, trying to push herself up, trying to crawl away and hide from the sun as it burned her. Hot mist rose from every part of her, and with rising panic she finally realized what was happening in this demented dream-world.

  She was losing her Second Form. It had almost happened before, but she had had Gribly to protect her. Now…

  …the most important, most glorious part of her being was leaking away, and she knew that once lost, she could never get it back.

  So she tried to crawl away, crying, unable to stop the loss of water through her pores or her eyes. Steam rose, and dissolved in the hot air, and she crawled on, eyes too blurry to see anymore… until she hit something large and hard, and touched it to make sure, and tried to see through the film over her eyes; tried to crawl beneath the shelter she had found…

  …but a spiked boot pressed her down hard into the sand, burning her with heat gathered from long miles walked in the desert. It felt like hot pokers in her back, and she gasped in pain.

  “Not so easy,” said a voice. Gramling. “I can reach you even here, Girl. Even in your dreams.” Elia shivered despite the heat, as a cold rage gripped her heart in its talons. “The things you could learn, if only you would try…”

  She was losing her Second Form… she was losing it! The rage melted away under sheer, naked fear.

  “The Aura…” she whimpered, pressed under his foot. “Wanderwillow… told me… if I wanted Lauro to be redeemed… to find the sword that could kill the Legion… I had to sacrifice myself. If I wanted Gribly to love… I…”

  She stopped talking. How could I betray him? How could I let this monster know? The boot pressed down harder on her back, and she felt the last drops of herself seep away into the hot sands. “Tell me more!” Gramling nearly shrieked, sensing something change in her, driving his foot down harder.

  But she was numb, and did not feel it. There was nothing left for her to lose. Her Swimmer Form… was gone. Totally. Irrevocably.

  “NO!” she shrieked, twisting so violently she dislodged Gramling’s foot and kicked his other leg out from under him. The Pit Strider fell as she leaped up, hands swinging in Stride-claws toward him as he scrambled back, shocked at her sudden move.

  No water came… but fire did. She brought her hands together in a cup, and pure-white flame shot out at Gramling in a flowing torrent of soul-searing power, obliterating everything it touched in a storm of pale ash-dust.

  “Die…” she whispered. “Just die… forever…”

  She felt so dry. Like a fish forced to breathe air; like a vine with the water sucked out. Hate, and fear, and pain all racked her, until she felt sure she would fall apart… but she did not, and the fire kept flowing until her exhaustion returned in such force that she dropped to her knees, head bowed, unable to cry, as the flames died out.

  Gramling stood, singed but unharmed, where he should have been burned to a crisp. His hands were crossed in fists in front of him, and he wore a strangely awed look.

  “So… powerful,” he breathed, and she looked up. He walked slowly towards her, black cloak billowing, but Elia made no move to fight or flee. She was so tired…

  Gramling came and knelt in front of her. She stiffened, expecting torture, or a painful awakening from this deathly dream, but he did nothing of the kind.

  “Look at me,” he said. She looked away. “Look at me,” he said again, and again she ignored him. “Look at me!” he said urgently, and for a moment he sounded so exactly like Gribly she had to look. It was a mistake.

  He didn’t just sound like Gribly… he looked like him. In this dream world, he could probably look like anything… but to look like the one person she loved, the one person she wanted to embrace in her pain, and kiss… and… No… she pleaded silently. Don’t hurt me like this. I can’t take it.

  But again she misjudged the Pit Strider. He did not hurt her, only met her eyes. No matter what she tried to make herself think, she saw none of the evil in those eyes that would have driven him to torture her in the metal chamber… She could only see Gribly, and not Gramling.

  Only Gribly… not Gramling.

  He stood up slowly, and drew her up with him. She felt too weak to stand, and evidently he sensed it, keeping hold of her to stop her from falling.

  “Why won’t you bend…?” he whispered.

  Then he pulled her close, holding her as she’d always hoped he would. No! Not him… Gribly! What was… why… He held her, and stroked her hair. He encircled her with his arms, protecting her, making her strong… but it wasn’t him! She had no strength left to struggle, especially against this… but she tried. She struggled in her mind, trying to wrench her heart away, trying to believe the truth…

  He. Was. Not. Gribly.

  “I love you,” he whispered, and she heard only Gribly’s voice.

  And Elia broke.

  She told him everything. She whispered, she wept… but she told him. He had hit a wound she could not heal. When she was finished, she stayed silent, r
esting against him, hating herself and hating him, hating Gribly for opening this hole into her heart in the first place… but she could do nothing. Nothing.

  Gramling stayed silent until she was done, and then he stepped back, holding her by the arms and gazing into her eyes with an expression between desire and laughter, love and contempt, humility and arrogance.

  “I knew it,” he said quietly. “I knew you could be moved.” Then he smiled, that same cold smile that would make him different from Gribly, no matter what he looked like.

  “I hate you,” Elia spat, but she did not and could not move away.

  Gramling shrugged. His eyes grew misty and distant…

  …and the dream faded.