The Circle: The Uniting

by N.D. Bailey

  Meanwhile, crow-colored horses blended in with the black night. Their riders became as one with the darkness. The shade choice was a sacrament of their conversion and the garments mandatory wardrobe.

  Dark riders of Quadar gathered around Pip’s house that sat just off the muddy path. They circled his house for one reason: to call him forth to be their leader. They knew he held the sword; therefore, he held the position.

  Inside, Pip trembled with fear. He had hidden the sword, yet it still summoned him. The sword, it’s mine, all mine. I found it! It had given him what he always wanted: ability, self-confidence, the possibility for advancement and respect. But as much as he longed for those things, he feared them, the sword more than anything. He was acquainted with the stories but now those tantalizing tales were becoming real life and sweeping him into its drama. The problem was that every tale he had read ended in tragedy.

  His breath was strained by anxiety as he peered out his window. Dahk ridahs. Gripped with terror, Pip ran his hands through his red hair and wrung them, feeling qualms with his lustful desire for the sword. What shall I do? What shall I do? He thought to himself as he paced the floor. Meanwhile, his lips kept murmuring, “The sword, I have the sword of powah. Take it up. Be a leader.” Good and evil were warring inside the young knight’s head—inside his very soul. He longed to be brave, bold, and courageous, traits he had never possessed. The sword gave him the power and confidence he had longed for. But the legends drove caution into his innate desire. Peering out the window again, he breathed heavily. “I can’t do this,” he said out loud. “I wish I’d nevah found this bloody sword.”

  Trembling, Pip walked over and knelt beside his bed. Lifting a rug that lay in front of him, he opened a secret door built into the floor of his bedroom. He reached inside and touched the sword again. A jolt of power resurrected his confidence. “Pip! Pip! You are the leader! We will lead together.” The sword seemed to whisper to him. Sweat beaded up on his forehead, as the two voices inside him competed for his soul. His caution was thrown to the wind by the power he felt by a simple touch of the sword.

  No! he thought, I mustn’t. But if I don’t I’m doomed to death. He knew enough of the legends to know that anyone with the sword in his possession and refused to join the Riders of Quadar would be killed. And there was only one kind of death for such a person: the Sword of Power itself would be used to decapitate his head. At least that is what he had always been told.

  Picking up the sword, Pip held it close to his chest. His eyes grew wide with excitement. The pupils dilated and his face became somewhat distorted as he stroked the sword. Yes, yes, this is my sword, he half-thought and half-dreamed. I have all power to rule. He imagined himself a powerful ruler, esteemed by the grand, celebrated by the masses, feared by all. He would be somebody now.

  A robed rider dismounted his horse, his black cape snapping in the wind. With his hand on the handle of his sword, he walked up the steps of Pip’s porch and placed his skeletal black hand laced with decaying flesh onto the doorknob.