The Spark

by Taylor Gibson

  “You damn kids! Get off of me, boy! Stop this!”

  Draäm’s explosive rage and struggle seemed endless. It came to the point where I couldn’t control him with the wind anymore, and neither could a bleeding and muscle-twisted George. He had wrestled with the brute long enough. I allowed Draäm to break away from the wind. George fell with him, rolling down a hill when he landed. I ran up to the stone-man and slashed at his arms, which were blocking his mutilated face.

  George got up, crawled away from Draäm, and lay there, critically wounded from the resistance that had crushed him. He lay in the grass about five meters from the mountain spawn, awaiting a healing spell that was best provided by my mother. My father chimed in at the right time to cast restraining spells against Draäm so that I could safely deal more damage and my mother could heal George. While she focused on him, my father took over and relentlessly held Draäm in place. I took my chance to slash at him while he was unable to struggle or defend. I cut off a few hunks of rock from his side and almost broke off his stiff arm. Unfortunately, these thunger beings had a much more solid bone structure.

  I chopped many inches of stone flesh from the thunger, until he broke free from the grip of my father’s spell. Draäm smacked me in the shoulder with his stone arm, sending me soaring over the hills of Crosscc, like a golf ball, to the north. I fell to the dirt like a golf ball too, enduring raw grass burns as I bounced and slid down the hills. When I slowly sat up, I coughed up a little blood, using Soba as a crutch to stand. He perused me without delay, limping quickly and not paying Äbaka or my father any mind, while they chased behind him. My mother was still with George, mending his torn muscles and many scrapes.

  The ground started to tremble again; the sword in my hand started to become hot from the energy I was giving off. I parried and dodged every jab and swipe of Draäm’s sickles until my father and forefather got close enough to fight by my side. My father used his old sword of enchanted steel, to block the golem’s blows; whilst the wizard flung heavy attacks with his staff, encircled with bright lights of magickal energy. The fact that all of this action was tearing Äbaka up inside didn’t faze him. He bled from his eyes, nose, and mouth while becoming increasingly more pale and shriveled. He was practically a corpse at this point, having his eyes sunken in and his cheeks hollow. All of us feared for his life, but he didn’t give a damn. He only cared for the lives of others. In a voice like thunder, Äbaka threatened Draäm with a familiar I had never heard of.

  “Draäm, back down now or else face the wrath of Anima!”

  “Anima?” laughed Draäm, “that thing will kill you before you get the chance to summon it!”

  Äbaka whispered one word to himself while defending my father and I from Draäm’s blows, “Perhaps.”

  Äbaka’s eyes widened in terror. It was evident that this was no ordinary threat that Draäm gave my forefather, but rather a forewarning of inescapable doom. Almost choking on my spit, I shouted out to my forefather, seeing a massive bulge of demonic, dark energy forming behind the golem’s back like a turtle’s shell. After the black and purple bulge grew to half the size of his torso, he looked down at us and deviously grinned. His vile instinct, wrought from his service of Jobik, made him the dark, sadistic killer he was. There was no mercy whatsoever in his following words, directed towards us, and in a way, to Jobik as well.

  “I am the bringer of doom, my lord’s right hand, and the fist of Exitius; Jobik’s union. My darkness feeds on of the death and despair I cause. It is time for the beginning of the end, and this pathetic planet is ready for its downfall. The world of Imga I, my lord, is ready for obliteration and there shall be no hero for her. No hope will hang in the balance of this wretched place they call home. They stand in the dark sands of ignorance and lies, Sui Ozborn especially. She aimlessly listens to the myths and prophecies thought up by an old man who should have been long since dead by your hands, my lord. This girl does not realize the vastness of your power, my lord, and the reality of your cause against the Fancore!”

  His cruel words tore deep inside my heart and drained me of any remaining confidence as I stood there, broken.

  “Sui is weak, my lord. No mere army, let alone some single girl, can withstand your might, The True Lord of the Darkness! Her blade shall be useless; her bow shall be broken; her faith, shattered; and all of which she has learned shall have been for nothing. There is no hope for the Fancore. It is inescapable. It is her destiny.”

  Draäm’s sinister grin transformed into the most terrifying war grimace I had ever laid eyes on. I had bore witness to a great many of these dark expressions in books, on television, and in art; none of which were as cruel as this. I had to keep in mind that I was no longer watching television, admiring art, or reading novels. No, my friend, I was living though this hell that is so often glorified through literature and art. Just before the thunger had the chance to stick his sickle though my chest, George leaped in front of me, bloody and shaking from soreness, and brought out his right arm with a magick shield that deflected Draäm’s strike. The shield faintly stayed intact from such a heavy impact, so when the thunger came in for another blow against George, he splintered the shield away and pushed him aside like yesterday’s trash. My father cut in, and Draäm roared savagely, before blocking off the swings of his sword. I defended my forefather who was slowly losing his breath from slashing and lunging without end. Äbaka had to flee for a moment to catch his breath. My father didn’t back down as his rapid lashes were enough to keep the bloodthirsty rock busy.

  As the battle raged on, I kept my eyes on the black bulge that pulsated like a flickering lantern on Draäm’s back. None of us seemed to know what it was, aside from my forefather, but he was too shaken to speak when I asked him. The mass on his back started to pulsate much more rapidly. He slowly approached me with raised sickles. He was about to unleash a lethal energy.

  “Now,” he said in a brooding tone, with a stare, “die.”

  A heavy voice echoed over the hills toward Draäm, pulling his attention away from me.

  “Be gone! You shall not kill the chosen one!”

  Draäm’s attention was magnetized towards Äbaka, who held in his hands two balls of yellow light-energy, as bright as the sun itself. He planted his staff in the ground, using it as a well to conjure energy from the ground. This tactic was known as a magick well. Draäm completely turned away from me to face the greater challenge first. The throbbing bulge on his back finally dispersed a massive amount of streaming dark energy. It shot around in streams of black; putting craters in the ground, burning the grass, charring the soil, and poisoning the air that it surfed upon, before bruising the land into decay. George was limping my way beside my father, trying to avoid impact from one of those dark veins of destruction. Äbaka threw punches at Draäm, with that golden energy, blocking several whacks and jabs as he approached. The wizard was moving so fast that he was unable to be seen. As he told me after receiving Soba for the first time, “I’m getting too old for this”; my forefather was doing more than proving his words through his worsening condition.

  The tremendous feats he was performing; the berserker rage exploding from within him seemed to hit my eyes like a hammer with every punch he swung against Draäm. Every move my forefather made was spectacular and every time he hit Draäm, a part of the beast fell off in small chunks of stone. It was a battle so intense that every bone in my body shook from witnessing its fury. Seeing as Äbaka had the situation under control for now, my father went back to my mother to see if she was alright. George and I kept our distance until my forefather lightened his rage against the enemy. The chaotic explosions around us, the black fire running through the hills, and the worry it brought to us all; it put us all on edge and made me question whether or not Äbaka was going to make it through this. None of us knew what was going to happen. Draäm was virtually invincible to everything we threw at him. Taking a few minor chunks off his body
would not disburse enough damage to kill him.

  Soon enough, George and I saw that the two fists of energy that our forefather was wielding were definitely paying off against the golem’s hide of stone. Draäm’s flesh was rapidly starting to be stripped away. The light Äbaka wielded was the same energy that caused Draäm’s leg to fully come apart. I could see the golem’s bones poking out from almost every place on his jagged body. He roared louder and louder each time Äbaka removed a piece of rock from him. The old wizard struck at him like the lightning strikes a tree millions of times.

  “I will break you!” roared Draäm, doing all he could to defend against Äbaka’s assault

  My forefather cackled, returning Draäm’s foolish statement with style. “I am already covering that for you!”

  “Aaaagggggghhhhh!”

  Destruction and chaos formed dark hues of smog. The vapor around the wizard and the thunger had built from their manifested hate as they brawled like wild beasts. Neither George nor I could see them anymore behind the twisting of mixed magicks and dark energy dancing around them like a curtain in front of a thrilling stage play. George needed more healing for his wounds; much, much more healing. His skin was not a pretty site at all. His entire body was covered in cuts and bruises from when he was wrestling with Draäm. My mother did what she could, but there was no way she could have healed all his wounds. She was not a master in any form of magick; just an adept in white magick, an amateur in wards and restraints, and a novice in a few forms of conjuration and elemental magick.

  Draäm and my forefather fought madly, while the two of us stood helplessly afar, watching the battle progress into a malicious death dance. I observed the two of them, barely visible through the black and lavender haze, which was pulsating with a bright-yellow glare. I saw that Äbaka’s fighting style was an art form resembling two snakes working together in battle as they held on to a nugget of gold in their mouths. The energies in his fists represented gold, and his fighting style was that of the striking cobra, with a bit of a mix between the mighty tiger and the whooping crane. With each piece of his hide that blew off in the battle, Draäm was becoming stronger. This thunger was neither dying nor dwindling in power; Draäm was feeding off of the wizard’s magick well.

  I couldn’t help but dread what would happen to my forefather out there if he kept this up. At the same time, however, I could also feel that there was some amount of hope for him. He had to make it out of that haze of hell alive. When I looked to my left, I saw George staring at me with his eyes half open and his back slightly hunched forward. It was his life force being depleted from the blood loss! I ran to him and held him up, putting pressure on his open wounds. I tried my best to attempt a healing spell for the man I loved, but to no avail. I simply lacked enough knowledge of restoration magick at the time. He was fortunate that my mother returned. I saw her running towards us from the corner of my eye: I quickly stood up and got out of her way. After all, she was the medic on the field, not me.

  “Stand aside, Sui. I’ll handle him. You just watch Forefather in case something happens! He might-” she paused, squinting through the dark haze, “wind up doing something he’ll regret.”

  I had no idea what she meant by that, but I trusted she knew what she was doing with George, so I stepped aside and decided to watch her handy work while also ensuring that nothing worthy of regret happened to the wizard. He continued to fight, unwavering and able to sustain his body without deterioration thanks to his magick well.

  Looking back at George, it was almost like watching a divine dance, as I saw lights appear from out of the dirt around him. I was a mere eleven feet away when a huge ball of fire lifted out of the ground behind us. My mother was lifting one of The Stars of the Core to heal the brave man. The Stars of the Core were actually the concentration of energy from a series of four cores, deep beneath the layers of Imga I. She was able to replicate a substitute beside the other two of four cores to keep the planet stable by touching the ground and giving off her own energy. Upon watching this ritual, I realized that she was no adept in white magic.

  I couldn’t believe it at first, but everything she was doing totally proved that she was well beyond an adept. She was a master of white magick on a cosmic scale! To do something of that magnitude was a wizard’s level of expertise. I wondered if she was borrowing power from the magick well. Just outside of the core of liquid fire and nonlethal radiation, thousands of orbs, the size of peanuts, disintegrated into tiny specks of golden dust. Brightly hot magma spun underground in a subterranean world called Zohar. The radiance of these boiling spheres was so powerful that just being near one of them induced a refreshing and pleasurable sensation that made one feel cleansed of impurity like the freshest of baths. It was a baptism of wounds and a clearing of the mind’s deepest realms.

  The golden dust brought up from the core floated down into George’s mouth, healing his wounds at a rapid pace, which Sellina could have never achieved without this technique. Out of the thousands of orbs, there were seven that weren’t turned into the dust he consumed. They each had a specific rune on the top of them, about ten feet in diameter. I recognized the runes as the ancient Imgan dwarf runes that were written long ago on the twelfth, and last, Imgan world. They were words that spelled out the final portion of a powerful healing ritual only white mages, like my mother, could handle.

  Being surrounded by the core’s energy put me in a strange sort of trance, where I could see more than what was going on. Alongside the fight, I could see the ghosts of many who had died on the plains, thousands of years ago, and the spirits of animals still roaming Crosscc after death. The sky became clearer to me as I saw the particles in the air revealed. I now knew what air really looked like; indescribably colorful and richly smooth. It was as though being healed by these miniature cores was gifting us the ability to see beyond the façade of our mono-reality, to discover some of the Fancore’s untold secrets. I also had the feeling that we would overcome the assassin before he had the chance to kill me and carry out Jobik’s bidding. Each of the runes disappeared in a certain order, then in a matter of seconds, a beam of light shot straight into George’s chest, renewing all his strength. When the ritual was complete, the core returned to the middle of Imga I with its triplet brethren, and all the apparitions faded away. My mother gave thanks to the cores for their use in the ritual, and fell into the grass, panting in exhaustion. She had expelled all her remaining energy to fully heal George so that he could continue the fight. Not only that, but her physical energy was also drained. I turned my gaze to George, who looked just as shocked as me.

  “Sui!” Dad called out to me with a worrisome tone, sitting on the ground, holding my unconscious mother with her head in his lap. Considering we were all outside of the village now, Rïdeneer was open for attack if any more of Jobik’s assets came. So much for splitting up to defend the people, I thought. My father called out to me again, but this time he was more demanding.

  “Sui, get over here and help me!”

  I kneeled beside my mother to find that she was knocked out cold. She seemed lifeless; as stiff as a bone, she lay there in her husband’s arms, just shallowly breathing, with no expression other than an acute grin of satisfaction that she had done her duty. I touched her forehead, and it was icy cold. She had a heavy, throbbing pulse in her brain, which meant that she was suffering a migraine of atrocious magnitude.

  “Sui, you need to get over there and help Äbaka with that assassin! I’ll take care of your mother. As for you, George, I need you to return to Rïdeneer and make sure everyone is well taken care of, especially Molli Su. Can you handle that?”

  “Yes sir, none of them shall be harmed as long as I draw breath.”

  “Good, then don’t die on us, my son. Go now!”

  George grabbed my arm, “Sui-” he tightly gripped my blistered hand with his, pausing for a moment to stare into my eyes. “I love you.”

 
I stood quietly and stared back into those bright blue eyes of his. I was shaken by emotion; the love I shared for him became my strength. With a cherry blush, I returned his sweet words, “I love you too.”

  We exchanged shy, half grins and moved to carry out my father’s orders. I lifted Soba with my right hand, and with my left, I charged blazing fire energy in the palm of my hand. The flames were to cooperate with the blade in the plan I had of giving Draäm a cruel disadvantage. I ran straight for the vapor revolving around the wizard and the golem. I latched onto the thunger’s neck like a leech, reaching around to his face, to put my flaming left hand below the monster’s thick jaw. I then dug the tip of my sword as far as I could into his forehead. I pulled and tugged with all my might so that I could eventually relieve the demon of his unsightly face. The idea was simple enough, but when I tried to pry it off of his skull, it proved difficult to even chip an inch off of his forehead.

  I then realized the thunger’s eyes were just the same as most mammals. I placed my left hand, covered in burning flames, over both of his eyes, blinding him. I stretched and strained my fingers far apart so that both of his eyes could suffer my pyro magick. With a miserably, deep howl, Draäm continued to, literally, blindly fight Äbaka. Without a way for the enemy to see, it was easy for the wizard to gain the upper hand. Äbaka started throwing harder punches, deadly blows to Draäm’s cracked face, and hundreds of hits that made the golem rapidly fall apart. He threw so many hits that eventually the orb of dark energy on Draäm’s back vanished, along with the vapor encasing them. The burning, black fire, which had spread across the hills, was put out by the dry, blistering winds, swerving about in every direction; remnants of the tornadoes I had created to force the battle into the open hills of Crosscc.

  I continued to fight against the thunger with my sword held high and my faith held higher. There wasn’t any way I was going to let this assassin claim my head. Jobik would never find anyone who could possibly kill me! I sang arrogant boasts in my head, as my forefather and I had the lead in that fight like a chief among a heard of beasts. Äbaka continued to punch and strike while I relentlessly swiped my sword against his stone flesh on the opposite side. I chanted curses and spit spells of destruction every which way, hoping that one would be the last to take him down. Draäm’s fixated desires of ridding me from the Fancore were starting to turn into complete insanity, as his adrenaline increased to an unimaginable level. I soon became unable to block his assaults, as he picked up speed and roared with every strike. It soon became far too hellish for me and my forefather to handle. When the thunger began casting spells that inevitably drained our energy, we knew it was time for a retreat into the distant north, toward the jungles of Matta Shimbib.