The Spark

by Taylor Gibson

  “Were there any survivors other than us? I know Diruiyal survived, otherwise your answer to my previous question would have been much different.”

  With a pause, her beautiful face turned cold and depressed, she told me what I had hoped I wasn’t going to have to accept.

  “I regret to tell you, too few: you, Diruiyal, the student, Jimmithon, and me. We are the only ones who made it out alive. All of the jaqae were slain, fortunately. Sadly, everyone else on our side is dead.”

  Even though I barely knew any of these mages, my heart had been shredded into a thousand pieces, destroyed by their deaths that had been so excruciating and abominable. On the bed, sitting up against the pillows and looking at Espersia, I felt as though something had touched my head and whispered in my ear. The words were too faint to understand, but I believe that they were the spirits of the fallen nine, thanking me for my service to them.

  As soon as I was fully healed, and had the contract with Diruiyal signed and finalized, I went back to meet my family on Imga I. But before I did, I decided that this paradise was worth a few days of relaxing, and time stood still in this place beyond the Fancore. Even if the outdoors beyond the window was merely an illusion, it reminded me of the future. You may foresee certain things to come, but you can never be certain that they will be as they are when they happen; just like dreams.

  Chapter 8

  My quest unfolds to its rising action. You must realize that life itself can be familiarized with almost any analogy. Life has so much detail that it is nearly impossible to understand it all. But under the path of a mage, a scholar, a wizard, or any type of classification utilizing intelligence, it is absolutely imperative for us to study and understand what complexities surround the overall simplistic traits of life. Concepts, theories, philosophies, guided evidence, and unknown phenomena are some of our favorite attributes about life. We search for answers when nobody else cares to do so whether out of fear, ignorance, or betrayal of their own religious and philosophical standpoints. The scholar, the sorcerer, and the theologian never allow these things stand in their way. We embrace our fears and break morality to uncover secrets about the darkest aspects of life. We have rules, however. Do not think us blasphemers, heretics or defilers of blissful ignorance. As the chosen one is vowed to eliminate evil, we are here to pave the road for development of all intelligent species. I am inclined to kill Jobik, as well as clear the fog of ignorance that veils the untold truths of life, death, and life after death. No quest is ever finished after it is started. Life is a quest that never ends, much like our role as the inhabitants of the great story. I was born to preserve that story; the story that is told with each and every passing moment as long as there is life to feed it. The Fancore.

  ~Sui Bane Ozborn

  Our pursuit of the wizard and George’s family had commenced when George and I stepped foot out of Rïdeneer, our home, and onto the Crosscc plains, leaving it behind. The sun was as high and mighty as I felt, being able to go out on an adventure of my choosing, not being dragged into one like with Draäm. Viewing George’s bland brown leather armor was like observing a common soldier on the battlefield. I knew that I had to surprise him with something shinier on his birthday. It was ideal for sneaking and stealth, but not to take on the harsh environments of the world as we were about to do. But then again, I knew his background was that of an outcast living in the wilderness, wearing rags, so I supposed he would be fine.

  The daggers strapped to his belt were so dull they seemed as though they couldn’t even cut butter. Regardless of this, I think we could manage until we reached Shi Shii again. After all, my mother sent us with a fat purse of shii, the Shimbian currency, gold, and valued jewels. Thieves along the road would definitely be interested in stealing it from us, but I knew that they wouldn’t meet a rewarding end if they dared to try. Imga II appeared before us with as much glimmer as ever. Still, I couldn’t wait to go exploring that world, like Äbaka who had been across the Fancore in several locations.

  The plains were teeming with life that day. The groundhogs were peeking out, the zeselemsnores were grazing like the horses they were descended from, and the crossicutes soared in the sky with a divine, simultaneous screech through the clouds. Everything was peaceful. There was, however, something eerily familiar lingering around us. Something I couldn’t sense since the time I fell in love with George. I brushed it off and carried on, admiring Crosscc’s natural beauty.

  Two hours passed as we crossed Crosscc, and still, no sign of my forefather could be found anywhere. George made sure he would leave no stone unturned for me, so I had to make sure I did the same. He cuffed his gaze and searched high and low for the green-bearded old man in the hilly plains. So many white, feathery clouds filled the sky, offering shade from the pounding heat of the sun. There was much to be appreciated in nature; especially, another person who was capable of appreciating those things with you.

  When the stone cliff to Matta Shimbib was visible over the hills of mid-north Crosscc, I sighed and took George by the hand. Because we were not successful in finding my forefather’s location thus far, I was becoming impatient. I asked George again if he knew where his family raised him, just to get some of the stress of helplessness off of my mind.

  “Your family is beyond these jungles, past the capital city, and just south of the northern city, correct?”

  He remained silent, but gave me a warm, cheeky grin of acknowledgement as he wrapped his left arm around my shoulders. He knew that I was getting irritated. We took a break for about ten minutes, then started back on our journey to find the old man.

  Thinking back on the whole battle with Draäm, I recalled that there was a good deal of time spent fighting the necromancer before we returned to Rïdeneer and found Spike. The idea that the zombified Draäm might have silently or telepathically sent Spike to kidnap Äbaka while we were fighting the dragon made my bones shake. George noticed that I had something on my mind, and he thought he knew exactly what it was.

  “Sui, we will find him, but you have to keep an eye out. The more you mourn for him and wonder, the farther he becomes.”

  “I was thinking,” I replied, “maybe that goblin had something to do with it. Maybe Draäm sneakily ordered him to take my forefather’s unconscious body someplace else while we were fighting the dragon. You don’t think he might have been kidnapped, do you?”

  George laughed and assured me with a smile, “No, Sui, he’s a wizard for crying out loud. Do you honestly think that he was really unconscious? Wizards never fully sleep because they’re immortal, they don’t need it. They can only be weakened to the point of immobility.”

  “I know! That’s what I mean. What if Spike took him away when he was paralyzed?”

  “Sui, just calm down; you know what Äbaka would do if someone as annoying as Spike was grabbing hold of him. Do I need to demonstrate?” George poked me as a playful gesture.

  “George, please, I’m not in the mood.”

  He playfully stomped on the ground and got in my face making strange noises, trying to get a rise out of me. I tried to keep calm, but then I realized that he wouldn’t shut up until I retaliated. I slapped him in his chest, knocking him back a bit with a stunned look on his face. He smiled and said to me, “That is exactly what he’d do! Well, actually, something much worse, but, you get the point. Damn, that hurt.”

  Rolling my eyes at him, unable to deny the fact that Äbaka had the quickest reflexes of any person I knew, I nodded. Even when Äbaka was half conscious, he would never allow someone to handle him against his will. Äbaka was not a man with the same emotions as a human. He has demonstrated this many times in his long eternal life. I agreed with George and tried my very best not to worry about where he was, or could have been. I focused on searching for him as we made our way across the land to Northern Shimbia.

  While still on the hills of Crosscc, a random encounter suddenly took place when a
small being popped up out of the ground in front of us. It was a gnome with a strange crown upon his elongated head and tight green leather clothing. He held a jeweled scepter and wore an angry face, with a bit of grief in it as well. I stood back as I looked at this small man and asked myself: why is he looking at us like this? What have we done?

  “You have killed a great many of my men in the gnomish tunnels of Bronthwall with your excessive stomping! Now you must pay with your lives!”

  Five, two-foot-tall gnomes with tiny swords popped up from the ground and pointed their needle-thin blades directly at us with hatred and misplaced bravery. George and I tried to talk them out of attacking us, but they kept drawing near, jabbing at our calves like wasps. The first thing that came to my mind was this, “Wait! I am the chosen one!”

  The cone-headed gnomes suddenly stood down and backed away from us. George looked back at the one with the crown and peacefully nodded, attempting to persuade him to let us be. I looked around at the gnomes with the swords to make sure that they didn’t make any sudden moves. I didn’t want any more of these poor creatures to get killed.

  “She is telling the truth,” said George to the ruler, supposing he was a king based on his fancy headwear. “I am her protector. We are on a quest to find a wizard distantly related to her, and we need as few distractions as possible. We’re gravely sorry for the tragedy we’ve accidentally unleashed upon Bronthwall, honestly.”

  The king scowled at him and began to yell, “Well if you are not the chosen one, then why, pray tell, are you speaking for her?”

  I knew that I had to intervene before he ordered the gnomes to attack us again. With as much kindness in my voice as I could give, I spoke directly to the king and asked him if he would kindly let us be. We didn’t know that there was an underground tunnel where George was stomping. These gnomes had to let us by with some degree of understanding.

  “We had no intention, I swear!” I shouted, “If you kill me, or my guardian, then you are joining the enemy. Don’t join the enemy. We will pay you in rubies if you’d like, just not with blood.”

  “Rubies shall suffice, that is, if…,” The gnomish king took a pause and scratched his scruffy white beard with contemplation.

  “If what?”

  “If you can win a game of ancient gnomish riddles against the best scholar in my kingdom. I proudly introduce Bradel the Wise.”

  Out of the ground another elderly gnome popped up. Like the other’s his head was elongated and had ridges going up his long brow. He wore a crooked edged monocle and a pair of bright red robes. His mustache was as long as his beard, which was halfway down his small, but stout chest. His ponytail gently swayed in the wind as he took a miniature wooden pipe from out of his pocket and lit it with a match. As he smoked his weed, he turned to the king and thanked him.

  “O, King Relgo, you giving me this great honor is most generous.”

  “We shall begin with you, chosen one,” demanded King Relgo. “It can only be an ancient gnome riddle; none of your human gibberish or modern gnomish.”

  I only knew a few of those riddles though, and from what I read about them, there were around two hundred that had been recovered from ancient runes in the deepest gnome tunnels on Imga I. I was afraid that we might have to escape a wild chase from the mini people of the ground if I didn’t ask or answer these riddles correctly.

  I asked Bradel with a nervous tone, “What doth the gold attracting? What doth seeking the gold?”

  The ancient gnomish speech and grammar was different compared to that of many, even in that time. I awaited the gnome scholar to answer me as he inhaled the thick smoke from his pipe.

  “Dwarves,” he answered with a chuckle. “That is perhaps one of the simplest riddles ever. Now, it is my turn to twist your mind. What hath these coils and ne’er convey into a seedling?”

  This one I had heard before, but never understood it. Now was the time that I had to find the corresponding meaning of the conundrum. I repeated the riddle over and over in my brain, attempting to find the obscure answer embedded somewhere within me. With seconds remaining as the king began to count down, the answer struck me like a whip.

  “A para plant; they coil their vines to produce a sap within that fertilizes a great many of the seeds in their pods. They never carry a single seed.”

  “A sharp mind knows no bounds, but can it save you from an assault? Perhaps it could. You need but answer three of my riddles or beat me at my ancestor’s game with one. Now, riddle me again and see if you think I don’t know every one of them.”

  With a devious smile, the cocky, old gnome took another puff of his weed and waited for me to think of a tricky puzzle. While staring into his silver eyes, I couldn’t help but feel as though this small man had a larger life outside of the tunnels below Crosscc. Experience and wisdom flowed in his soul not from studying in the tunnels, but all around the Fancore. I considered using the hardest one I knew, but I decided to use that one as the very last just to build the tension in him in case he was not sure of himself. I then decided to use the second most difficult one I knew to see if I could sweep him off balance.

  “Meaning is there to these words: sand, time, limited restraint, water, space, unlimited strength. What they are?”

  The gnome scratched his hairy chin and pondered on the brainteaser for a moment. In about ten seconds, he figured it out. “Sand and water mixing creates mud, time and space are connected as one, and both of them share the same factors of strength and restraint. The overall moral is that there is nothing too great or too small to be totally different from something else.”

  That one was correct. It seemed that the guards would eventually either try to kill us, or the king would have to assign a rematch. Either way, I was getting quite fed up at this whole situation. George just stood there silently, unable to participate because he had never studied the ancient gnomish culture as I had. This is why reading a good book or two may just save your life one day. But at this rate, I wasn’t so sure that I was going to make it out of this.

  It was the gnome’s turn once again. This time he was going for an advanced one. I could tell by the way his dilated eyes squinted at me over a smirk. I prepared my ears to listen to whatever words were about to come out of his mouth, and cleared my mind of all thought, so that I could concentrate.

  “Is the middle and top, where and what? Bottom is there, or not?”

  Immediately George jumped and looked at me with wide eyes. He knew the answer that I had forgotten for some time. It was in one of my books back home that George had actually skimmed through. Just before I inquired about the answer from him, I looked back to the gnome king and asked, “Am I allowed any help with these riddles?”

  “No, not unless the scholar can have an assistant, I Doubt that he would need any help against a human such as you, though. You know some of our riddles. It is unlikely you know all of them as Bradel. That man cannot be allowed to help you just yet.”

  “Oh, fine then, umm-”

  The riddle festered in my thoughts as I relentlessly tried to find the answer. George began to tap his foot, but I paid him no mind; I was far too busy concentrating on the play of words. He then tapped louder, spinning my train of thought off balance. I looked at him, and at his side, he was giving me a hint with a blade of grass levitating over his hip. There was nothing holding it up but air and magickal energy generated by a living soul. That was when I knew the answer.

  “Levitation,” I said in a rush, taking a blade of grass from out of the ground with levitation, I demonstrated my answer in detail. “The only things under the grass are air and energy. The energy makes it float with no strings attached and the air is what lets the energy manifest. Actually, it wasn’t that hard to figure out, hehe.”

  “You are still an amateur in my book,” stated my competitor with a harsh stare, “if you can stump me with a riddle, then you will have
truthfully proven yourself to be the chosen one. But if I get this correct, you will be hunted down without mercy for blasphemy and lying to our king. Do we have a deal?”

  “But I thought you said I had to fail answering three riddles?”

  “You show promise, so I am altering the deal to challenge you further.”

  I thought about it for a moment and decided that there really wasn’t any other choice I could make. If I lost this wager, then I would have to put them down before they could attack me. If that was the case, then so be it. I wasn’t about to let myself die. I took my chances with the most difficult, far out riddle that I knew and waited for the little gnome to answer me.

  “Teeth, but soaking wet in a tunnel filled with raspberries; seem it not to want to stop from the victim in which ne’er knew it did have till death do them part. Scares children, some adults, but serves a purpose always for your land. The raspberries; purpose they have in your tunnels. They shall sprout. The teeth, the water; monsters are they for a greater good.”

  Choking on the smoke of his pipe, the old gnome was not able to answer the riddle. He gulped and started to sweat. Just as he was about to sputter a guess from between his pursed lips, he yelled and accepted defeat. He had forgotten the answer to that particular riddle, so he crawled down through the little hole he had made in the ground with shame and embarrassment. The answer was storm. I took the rubies out of my purse and gave them to the king. He nodded and gave us his regards.

  “Chosen one and her guardian, you have played the game of riddles gallantly. What has transpired here today is worthy of stories to be recognized within our halls below the ground. For his lack of defeating you two the scholar, Bradel the Wise, shall attend his own public execution tonight in the main square. I do hope you go on safely and defeat the Black Beast.”