by Brian Simons
Beams of light shot out from the heart of each flower, sending a starburst of blinding whiteness in every direction. The darkness dripped from her clothes like black ink off a raincoat. She stood there dressed in pure white, holding the reins to a light show of white magic in her hands. The Stricken wailed and recoiled, letting go of my limbs and shielding their faces from Nadine’s magic.
Had I eaten the hemlock? Was this my dying vision before I vanished for good? Or was this a lite hallucination, standing with Nadine on the beach like I had so many times before?
She leaned in and kissed me, hard, and I felt all the life come back into my body. I took Nadine’s hand and laced my fingers between hers. This was real. She drew me into her healing aura and breathed new life into me.
She took a step forward, controlling dancing rays of pure light as they swept across the beach. Motes of color came into view on the Stricken’s faces, their clothes. It was too little to transform them but she tried anyway, washing them in an aura of hope and warmth.
Something snaked and hissed between us. Weaving black tendrils rose from the ground, curled up my legs, and coiled around the glowing tree.
Those black magic coils charred and flaked away from the glowing cherry blossom, but they rooted me in place. They began to spiral up Nadine’s legs too, twisting and looping as they crawled up her back and around her neck.
I reached out my hands to tear those evil cords from her body, but I couldn’t pry them loose. She locked eyes with him, continuing to pump pure magic from her palms in an effort to save the other souls he had ensnared.
He stood his ground. A low black fog rose to his ankles and spread out among his army. Nadine’s magic pushed the fog back like a strong wind, but he conjured more, forcing a billowing black smog over us.
Her clothing grayed, but she pulsed white light from her hands and swept the grayness away. I tightened my grip on Nadine’s hand and pressed my forehead against hers in the impenetrable shroud of smoke that smothered us.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my mouth filling with the sour taste of black magic in the air.
“For what?” she asked.
“It’s my fault you came here,” I said, “my fault he found you and did this to you.”
“No,” she said, “it was my body, my mind. I chose to install Ripcord. Seeing you here gives me hope.”
“What good is hope?” I asked. “I spent years hoping for this moment and now it’s slipping away. So many times I thought you might be gone for good, that this place had destroyed you and that I’d never see you again, never hold on to you and tell you how badly I need you.”
“I gave up hope once,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “All of us did.” She waved an arm toward the Stricken, invisible behind the wall of darkness swirling around us. “Seeing you, here. Hope is how I broke free.”
My fingers squeezed as Nadine’s grip started to falter. She squeezed back. “Keep fighting!” I yelled.
“And then what?” she asked. “Let him torture the rest of them? He’ll never stop. No one is safe. We’re not safe. We have to stop him.”
“We can’t save anyone,” I said. “Not unless we save ourselves.”
“Caleb,” she said, taking my chin in her hand and staring into my eyes. Her pupils were starting to overtake her irises now, coating them with a glossy blackness that hid the light within. She blinked twice and it was gone, but I saw how she struggled. She couldn’t keep this up forever. “I can’t run from this. Those people, I know their pain. If there’s a way out, I have to help them find it.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I have to go back in,” she said. “I was strong when he took me. I can be stronger now, now that I know you’re here.”
“That’s insane,” I said. “There has to be another way. Fight him off! We just need time to think this through.”
“Inside,” she said, “I can see his strengths, his weaknesses. I can hear the cries of every harsh memory. I can work as one with the others who are connected to him and begging for release. Inside, I can set everyone free. I know I can.”
She blinked away the blackness again, but I knew she’d run out of MP soon and I had no mana potion to offer her. I couldn’t ask her to abandon the souls he had trapped. Their fates were intertwined now. I swallowed hard. I couldn’t let her go, not again. “I’ll come with you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” she said.
“Would it help?” I asked. “Would we be stronger together?”
“Always,” she said.
“Then don’t ask. You don’t have to. I’d follow you to the end of time.”
I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her, for the last time before we’d walk into his hands. Her lips were warm and firm. I didn’t know how long it would take to tear apart his dark empire from the inside and feel that warmth again. I didn’t want to let her go.
Then the black air constricted. Nadine started to suffocate under it. She broke from my embrace and looked me in the eyes. “Together,” she said.
“Forever.”
The color drained from her skin quickly, her white clothing darkening to gray and then funerary black. I felt her hand pull from mine. She looked at the Stricken and then back at me. If she thought we could save them all, I believed her. I nodded.
I closed my eyes and waited for the sadness to come. Soon I would be lost in the Stricken’s abyss with Nadine. We had done the impossible and broken her away from his grasp once. We sure as hell could do it again.
The darkness receded as Nadine took one step, then two, toward him. I tried to lift my leg, but the black tendrils that snaked up to my knees held firm.
“No,” I said. “No, take me with you!”
“Stay away, green mage,” he said. “I can’t have you both. Look what happens when you two get near. You’d take her away, you’d take them all away. And then who would mourn with me?”
“We will destroy you!” I yelled.
“I have already been destroyed,” he said. “This is my bitter end.” He turned and walked with the bodies of the players he had conscripted, leaving a trail of blackness in the sand.
“You’ve taken the wrong white mage!” I yelled. “She won’t rest until they’re free. I won’t rest!” I struggled against the evil cords that held me in place. It was no use. All I could do was shout after him and watch as he led Nadine and hundreds of other tired souls across the island and toward the opposite shore.
I cried. Harder than I had since Nadine’s death. I cried for the days I had been without her and for the times I gave up hope. I cried for her sorrow and for the time we had lost, but I also cried the tears of a man whose wife wasn’t dead. Tears of hope and determination.
Nadine was alive. I laughed to myself through my tears. Nadine was alive! After years of being lost on Earth, and months of being lost in Ripcord, I wasn’t lost anymore. I had found her. No stray curlynx had taken her down, no harbinger had witnessed her demise, and no black mage had ruined the light and hope she carried inside. I loved that woman, and I would not stop fighting and searching until I had her back.
The Stricken left me here because he was afraid of me. I knew something that he would never understand. The spark that ignites between two soulmates can never be snuffed out.
23
It was late the next morning when I woke up on the beach. I was a little less shaky than the day before. My withdrawal symptoms were lessening with each day that I stayed off lite.
My HP was full, my MP was full, and my heart had a renewed commitment to hunt down the Stricken and release Nadine from its grasp for good, along with everyone else. As much as it pained me, she was right to go back for the rest of them. No one deserves to spend eternity carrying someone else’s sorrows.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and saw someone walking toward me through the trees.
“Where is she?” the woman called. “I know Nadine’s light show when I see it.”
&nbs
p; “She’s gone again, Grisel,” I said. “She was free, for a moment, but it wasn’t enough. She had to save the rest of them.”
“Figures,” Grisel said, wading toward me through the sand. “She’s the all-or-nothing type. And selfless to the point of foolishness.”
“I tried to go with her, but he didn’t want me.” I smiled, which seemed to confuse Grisel. “He’s afraid now. He’s not invincible. We’re going to stop him.”
“Yes,” Grisel said, “we are.”
Then I saw them. More than a dozen other people climbing through the island’s thicket of palms and bushes, most of them children.
“We saw the lights from the mountain,” Timothy said. “We took it as a sign.”
“How did you make it past that sea monster?” I asked.
Grisel rolled her eyes. “By killing it,” she said. “As a dozen mages and archers are likely to do. No thanks to the fighters though, they just sat in the boat.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t save her,” Drew said. “I think, with a little training, we could do it together. These kids are tough.”
“You’d really help me?” I asked. “Against the Stricken?” Everyone nodded.
“You think you’re the only one that wants his head on a platter?” Grisel asked. “He’s ruined more lives than you’ll ever count. It’s about time the people of this wasteland took matters into our own hands. No one on the outside knows what it’s like here except the ones that designed this place, and I don’t see them intervening any time soon.”
“So,” Timothy said, “the harbinger really was lying about your wife. I wonder if that means I could find my mom too.”
“Your mom might still be in Cortina,” I said, “which means we couldn’t find her on our own no matter what. But she’s out there, Timothy. Let’s see if we can’t make Ripcord a safer place for when she’s ready to take the leap.” I walked toward the house and waved for everyone to follow.
“That old thing is still here?” Grisel said.
“Some might say the same thing about you,” Drew said. Grisel gave him a friendly swat on the arm. It was strange, walking to Nadine’s house with all of these people, especially with all of these children, and not having Nadine to share this moment with.
“All this time,” I said turning my head west toward the vast ocean, “she was a white mage. I don’t get it. Her life’s work was with plants. Why come here as a white mage and not a green one?”
“You’re putting the cart before the horse,” Grisel said. “Everything she touched came to life. She always said, ‘Beautiful things only grow in the light.’ She didn’t create plants from nothing like you, she nurtured what was already here. Plants, people, everything.”
“Does it have a name?” Timothy asked.
“Does what?” I asked.
“The island,” he said.
“Alexandria,” I said, gasping after the fact. The name surprised me as it escaped my mouth so effortlessly. I thought of the cherry blossom I had grown and the brilliant light it absorbed from Nadine’s touch. Our magic had intertwined to create something beautiful here. Alexandria was the perfect name for this place.
“I recognize that name,” Grisel said. “It’s a wonderful choice.”
I smiled as tears welled in my eyes. I named this place in memory of the dreams Nadine and I had left behind, and in celebration of the life we still had ahead once we defeated the Stricken for good.
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About the Author
If Brian Simons were an action figure, he would come pre-equipped with a coffee cup jammed into one hand socket and an e-reader in the other. A former barista, corporate attorney, and health educator, Brian has finally started writing down the stories that have bottled up in his head.
Brian’s LitRPG stories are inspired by the never-too-many books and video games he has consumed his whole life. You may find him in a café near his Philadelphia home writing, reading, and worshiping a cup of sweet, sweet coffee.
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Titles by Brian Simons
Travail Online: Soulkeeper (Book 1)
Travail Online: Broken (Short Story)
Travail Online: Resurrection (Book 2)
Ripcord Online
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Table of Contents
Ripcord Online
Brian Simons
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