Tag Archives: Agla

Jun 14 2010

Chapter 6 – Shades of Gray (Sparks Series, original fiction)

The movers started late yesterday afternoon and had just finished getting all items moved into the house this morning.

Twenty-four hours of constant lifting, pulling, pushing and totting heavy wooden crates? Now that was a long workday.

With the last of the crates finally unloaded from the U-Hall, the largest of the two movers, Corey, hopped out of the truck and pulled the strap on the bottom of the trucks rolling cargo door. He yanked the door closed.

This had been an exhausting job.

After three full loads, from the container docks at the nearest railway, back to the house, then back to the dock again three times over, the work was finally done.

His client was completely moved in and all barely within the twenty-four hour window promised when they bid on the job.

But ‘barely’ counted.

Corey dusted his hands in satisfaction, his mind already planning what he was going to do with his money when he was paid.

Visions of new speakers for his car, and pretty girls, danced in his head.

“You go give the pretty Senorita the invoice, so we can get our money.” Jose told him. He walked quickly down the sidewalk and jumped off the curb.

Jose slapped his best friend Corey on the shoulder as he passed, excited to be through as well. With a smile, he walked around to the driver’s side of the truck and pulled the keys free from his the pocket of his gray mover’s uniform. He flipped them around on his finger and nodded absentmindedly at the sky, but kept moving, “And I will start the truck. I want to get out of here before that storm hits.”

“Storm? It’s not supposed to rain today.” Corey said, watching Jose pass him quickly, almost at a run towards the cab of the truck.

“Well tell that to the sky, Amigo.” Jose called back and hopped into the truck. He slammed the door after him and its resounding echo reverberated loudly in the calm of the early morning neighborhood.

The truck grumbled to life.

Looking to the East, through the heavy thickness of the tree foliage, Corey couldn’t help but notice the sky now.

The sun, recently raised, shone brightly in the heavens; the sky was a crisp clear blue. That is with the exception of a line of the sky just there on the edge. The sky resembled more a coming dusk, than a breaking dawn. An inky black line of clouds formed on the furthest most point on the horizon staining it.

Seemingly bleeding closer as he watched.

Creepy.

Oh, yeah…It was definitely time to go.

Corey reached for the invoice, wadded in his back pocket and quickly pulled it free. Corey waved it rapidly in the air to shake free most of its wrinkles as he walked up the steps of the sidewalk towards the huge house in front of him.

A powerful gust of wind blew cruelly just then and snatched the document from his hand, its power a mere hint of the raging storm which swept ever nearer.

“Damn.” Corey muttered under his breath as he gave chase to the wind blow invoice with a stomping foot, trying to catch it.

Fortunately for him, the wind blew the invoice in the direction of the house and pinned it in place. Tacking it there. The wind had flattened the invoice against a column like pillar that framed both sides of the vaulted covered porch of the once old church, which was now a new home.

He had just reached out to grab it when the huge, heavy oak front door was pulled open and a woman stepped out. She carried a pink coffee cup in the palm of her hand.

Delicately she sipped at it.

Corey’s eyes were drawn to her full rosy lips and once he reached them, languishing there for a moment, only then did his eyes spread outward to study the whole of what she represented.

Unsurpassed beauty.

She was his client. Corey had seen her, talked to her many times and each time he was in her presence, seemingly always resulted in the same reaction from him.

He was dumbstruck.

Absolutely.

She was just that perfectly beautiful. She was so perfect his fingers tingled with the need to touch her, but she was just enough exotically foreign in her perfection enough that he knew he dare not.

Long dark hair, sun-kissed with highlights of varying shades of red and honey which seemed to envelope her in a mix of waves and up-tilted curls. The color should have been an odd mix, but on her, some how it just worked with the overall picture that was she.

Her skin was more delicately sandy, than harshly tanned. It looked to be painted and polished by the most golden of honeys.

And her figure was a wonderful mix of athletically toned and classically lush. She had the shape of a woman a man’s arms ached to hold.

Finally? Her almond-shaped eyes were aged like the finest whiskey a man could buy, so much more so than they were just a mere, average brown.

They were intoxicating.

She was intoxicating, from head to toe.

She looked to be more of an Egyptian princess fresh off the pages of a Persian fairytale, than a real life woman, but the way Corey responded to her mere presence left little doubt that she was indeed just that.

Real life.

She wore a baggy, loose-fitting men’s sweater of steel-gray. A white tee-shirt peeked out from underneath the deep V of the collar. Khaki Egyptian cotton pants were tucked solidly into the soft leather of knee-high brown riding boots.

For all practical purposes, it was a look devised to lessen her attractiveness. A look that should have been anything but feminine, yet somehow she pulled it off in a way that had a man’s imagination working, desperate to discover just what was underneath all the attempted, masking layers.

“Is that my invoice you’re holding, Mr. Lager?” She asked.

“I’m sorry, what?” He shook his head like a dog shakes off water, when wet. Her voice husky and deep caressed his ears and gave him chills.

“In your hand,” She nodded down patiently as if well used to this reaction she caused in men, knowing full well how to handle it too. All it too was a steady hand, “Is that, or is that not, my invoice for services rendered?”

“Yes, yes of course.” Corey stuttered out quickly, holding the invoice extended in his hand. It shook. “Sorry, Mrs. Pope.”

“Not a problem.” She said kindly, patiently, pulling the paper from his hand.

Still sipping from the warm steaming coffee mug, Magdalena Pope held the invoice level to her face so she could read it, in the ray of porch’s light overhead. Her attention however kept drifting almost distractedly up to the sky to her right, past the huge oak tree in her new yard. In consideration she watched as the storm clouds approached. Her gaze then turned over to her left, towards town, where a fog seemed to be sweeping the streets as a cold wind blew in.

Yet she didn’t shiver, she didn’t need to.

This cold wind?

She welcomed it.

Following the direction of her casual gaze, Corey remarked, “Wow, weird that it’s August and we’re getting weather like this, huh. Even for The Fare, its odd and that’s saying something, cause The Fare? Yeah, it’s always odd. It’s almost like The Fare is living in an alternate world in its hole here. Even then, I must say, it has sure gotten chilly here and quick.” Slapping his hands together to generate some warmth, he finished his observations and quickly shoved both his hands in his pockets in an effort to physically stem his trembling, but to no avail. “This front seemed to come out of nowhere.”

“It sure seems that way, doesn’t it?” Magdalena lowered her mug, lowered the invoice and rolled her jaw. Eyes narrowed, she seemed to be waiting for something as she stared intently towards the buildings of downtown.

After a few minutes, and after apparently not seeing what she obviously hoped to see, Corey watched as she frowned.

Deeply.

He followed her gaze.

There were just two little old men, sitting outside the feed store in the downtown district of Pinnacle Thoroughfare.

Heck, they were so far away, he could barely make them out. The only way he knew, without a doubt that they were there, was because they always were.  Always. “Mrs. Pope? Are you alright?”

“Yes, Mr. Lager. I apologize.” She gave him the full wattage of her smile, after a frustrated shake of her head. Her smile was really quite stunning. And she knew it. “You two gentlemen have done such an amazing job, would you two care to perhaps stay. I could have you for breakfast?”

Stay?

God, Corey thought, he would love to stay, but not for breakfast.

Mrs. Pope just smiled down at him as if reading his mind, but something in her look unnerved him. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, however any in-depth inspection of the look from her was brushed aside as a cool chill danced up his spine and sent his whole body quaking.

It felt almost like fear.

Her smile deepened.

“Uh,” Corey cleared his throat, which had grown suspiciously shut at that look. Something about it made him feel the beautiful Mrs. Pope wasn’t exactly being friendly. “No really, we have to get going. But thanks.”

Smart boy, Mrs. Pope thought, smarter than you look;  however she said aloud, “That’s fine. Let me run inside and get your payment. Is it alright if I pay with cash?”

Pfft, duh was his instinctive mental reply, however Corey’s verbal answer was instantaneous and totally customer oriented. After all, it was the business he was in, “Absolutely, Ma’am. Cash is fine.”

With dollar signs and visions of cold hard cash in his head, all thoughts of uncomfortable looks danced merrily away.

A boy had to have his priorities after all.

“Wonderful.” Tucking the invoice under her arm, holding the coffee mug, she turned, reaching for the door. She looked back at Corey, over her shoulder, from the shadow of the archway of the door. Her eyes seemed to glow, “Would you care to follow me in and I will gladly give you what you deserve?”

The horn of the U-Hall blasted loudly behind him and Corey jumped, instantly startled, he spun away from Mrs. Pope, breaking her entrancing gaze. He glared back towards the U-Haul as Jose, raise his hands in the universal sign of, “What the heck are you doing, man? Come on!” in a wave through the passenger window of the truck.

Corey heard the front door of the house behind him close slowly and knew any chance he had of being alone with Mrs. Pope had vanished like a puff of smoke.

The young, hormone driven man in him wanted to felt upset at that deflating realization; however, strangely enough, a feeling of unabashed relief was the only feeling that he could find in him to summons.

Corey snorted off his relief and waved Jose off. His friend was far too impatient.

The front door opened once more behind him and every muscle in his body locked as Corey turned to face her.

Magdalena Pope, stepped out on the porch, minus her coffee mug and walked with a wad of cash that had his mouth dropping open in appreciation.

Intellectually, Corey knew how much money they had coming to them for the job, but fact of the matter was he had never actually seen that much cash at one time before in his life, but in the movies.

It was banded and stacked with nice clean, crisp $100 bills.

A bunch of them.

Next to the amazing Magdalena Pope, that stack of cash was the sexiest thing he had ever seen in his life.

Magdalena extended both the wad money and a hand of thanks towards him.

He took the money first, “Thank you Mrs. Pope for your business.” And boy did he mean that, just as he took the offer empty hand in his other, shaking it enthusiastically.

Almost instantly he was racked with another bout of chills, this time they almost shook him to his knees.

The wind blew in a soft menacing whistle, tickling the hair at the base of his neck. Mrs. Pope’s hand felt so cold.

Dead cold.

Her beautiful smile warmed him little this time and almost desperately he tried to pry away his hand as she so calmly said, “You are very welcome, Mr. Lager.”

He pumped her hand quickly like a car jack, in erratic fits and starts, while he shoved the money in his pocket with the other.

Magdalena couldn’t help but smile at his nervousness, despite the fact that she was awash in disappointment that he refused to allow her to have him and his partner for breakfast. “If you don’t mind me asking, for curiosities sake you understand, that is a lot of money for two young men to be given at one time. What do you plan on spending it on?”

“Girls.” Corey said instantly, finally managing to jerk his hand free. He stumbled back a good foot, all but tumbling down the stairs, but he dare not show her his back, though why he had no idea. Walking backwards down the sidewalk, he waved nervously at her through nervous panted-dry lips. “What else is there?”

Sheer will had him forcing a smile to his dried lips. Lips that almost instantly cracked and bleed.

Magdalena stopped smiling. She took a step forward off the porch.

And with that, like a gunshot, Corey turned and took off.

“What else indeed?” Magdalena chuckled in disappointment, watching as the large young man turned and bolted, running for the truck like a man having just been spared the hangman’s noose. “My, what a smart young man you are?”

She was reasonably satisfied with what she received, but had high hopes for a bit more. Ah, well. Can’t have it all, she supposed.

At least not always.

Yet.

Walking to the edge of her newly refurbished covered porch, of what was once the old abandoned church on Main Street, Magdalena watched the U-Hall pull away.

Thinking of how most normal boys tirelessly spent their days, ever in the pursuit of all things girls and girls related in order to get girls, Magdalena’s mind drifted to one boy in particular who was unlike any boy she knew.

Special.

She stared unblinkingly at the buildings of downtown.

Leaning up against the damask colored porch rail, she stood stone cold in the shadows, watching from a distance as Catherine Fox picked up her bags and slung them on her shoulder as she emerged from the fog shrouded alleyway…

No.

Fog that seemed to be drifting her way from her, like ghostly waves flowing on the currents of the river Styx.

With arms crossed over her chest, a deep rage began to build within Mrs. Pope.

Grimly Magdalena watched as the form of the young girl adjust the bags over her shoulder, after a quick glance around her, only to head up the street at a fast determined pace. Off to school, it seemed…

Alive and well.

Damn.

What had gone wrong?

The girl was never meant to live.

The fog spirited up over the railroad tracks, heading towards her, then up into her yard, and she watched it unconcerned at its rapid approach, with a barely concealed snarl on her face.

She watched as it flowed easily over and around anything in its path, and it began its slow creep up the newly painted porch steps, until it blanketed the wood of the porch, ankle-deep in nothingness.

Nothing stopped it.

Well, apparently almost nothing, Magdalena thought with a sneer.

Something obviously had.

“Leonidas, why is she still alive?” Magdalena snapped, as he stepped up soundlessly behind her. The fog dissipated with a slight wave of his hand. “You were supposed to kill her.”

“I could not.” He said, looking through the English Ivy covered trellis that shaded the end of the porch, he watched Cat with gleaming eyes as her form shrunk with the growing distance she put between them. “We made a mistake.”

“We most certainly did not.” She spun towards him. Her dark hair swirled around her face, her dark brown eyes embered brightly, burning with a strange fire heated with her passion, highlighted with flicks of orange, yellow and blue. Yanking down the shrouding tiaras cloth that covered his neck and head in an expertly wrapped blue scarf, she glared at him. “You did, in not doing your job.”

“You did not see her–Speak to her!” Leonidas pleaded. Turning away from her too knowing, seeing eyes he rubbed his side, where Catherine’s blade had nicked him just underneath his heart with his right hand, just as his left hand slipped into his pocket to touch the red game chip that he retrieved when he had vanished into the fog, which had slipped from her grasp. “I did.”

Catherine Fox could have easily killed him and he would have not have been to stop her, but she did not. That accounted for more than any mere words from him could reflect. Plus, she really took him holding her to knife better than just about any girl he knew. “I saw no darkness within her, and I looked deeply, with every inch of my gift. There was none. Any powers or abilities she may have are learned, not gifted. She is an innocent.”

“Innocent is she?” So that was the way of it, was it? Magdalena thought, crossing her arms. “This morning when she materialized out from the darkness of the shadows, she didn’t look it.”

“That was a misunderstanding.” He waved off her accusations in much the same manner Catherine had waved at him earlier. “You are grasping at straws because it is convenient for her to be the one that I now know she is not.”

“What?” Magdalena asked, astonished at his cavalier attitude. “You mean evil?”

“Evil-evil.” He amended.

“What?” Magdalena snapped viciously at Leonidas, astonished at his cavalier attitude, which was so unlike him.

He shrugged, “Nothing.”

Magdalena stared at the young man before her a good second trying to reign in her temper, before turning back to look at the young woman who walked with confidence down the street now in hurried steps, wondering what in the hell had happened in that alleyway?

What sort of magic did she possess that she could have used so effectively on Leonidas to make him stay his mission?

Magdalena was a smart woman and although she wasn’t certain, she could make a logical assumption. Knowingly, she narrowed her eyes, “She is a very beautiful girl.”

He spun her back towards him with a hand on her arm. His jaw tightly clenched, the muscles working powerfully there.

She got it in one, Magdalena thought with a grimace.

“Not so beautiful it would cloud my vision. I know my purpose. I know my mission in life.” Anger dripped from his every word. The sky rumbled dangerously overhead. The dark clouds twirled above them like a vat of whipped cream being beaten by an egg beater. The air seemed to crackle with energy and prickled her skin with the tidings of his danger.

“After this, how can you have any doubt?” Lightening ripped across the sky as he passed the back of his left hand down the angry red scar that ran the length of the left side of his face. He stared at her coldly, “I loved him too, you know?”

The wind picked up causing her long dark hair to lashed painfully across her face. It whipped at her eyes, causing them to sting.

Of course, that was it…It had to be it.

Magdalena yanked her hair free from her eyes and looked around her.

Dead leaves and dying grass was swept up in a violent vortex of mini-tornado like whirlwinds as the wind angrily churned in all directions around them. And just overhead, a dark funnel cloud began to descend from the heavens.

Wonderful.

“I know you did.” Magdalena stared up at Leonidas unblinkingly even in the face of his wrath, “Now calm yourself, before you do something you will regret.”

“I regret nothing!” Rumble “And I will not allow some pretty girl, as you so call her, to cloud my vision and what it is that I came here to do.” He was nothing, if not adamant, “However I tell you, it is not she who we seek. She is not even a Spark, she didn’t even know what that was…So how could she be Divine?”

The giant oak tree out by the road groaned under the force of the galling winds as they gained in momentum, moving faster now, the storm raging. Its limbs shook and leaves fell free of it like dying brown rain, seemingly trembling in fear.

The porch swing on their porch banged angrily against the side of the house in an unsteady rhythm.

A trashcan, left out on the curb at a neighbors house across the street, tipped over, its lid skidding down the road, swept up by the wind, which were growing more powerful now by the minute.

Magdalena watched the lid travel down the street with a resigned cock of her eyebrow.

Now he was just showing off.

Why now – Now! – Of all times, did he have to choose to become so moody?

And so very, very normal.

Boys!

“Alright.” With shielded eyes, Magdalena looked up to the sky that had grown a thick dark gray, with churning clouds and a growing angry eye in their center. She was a woman after all and one with experience. Smitten boys she could handle. She just needed a firm hand. “We shall see.”

The hairs on her arm, stood on end.

“No we shall not!” Leonidas shouted just as a bolt of lightning, in electric silver-blue split the clouds, crashing into one of the trembling limbs of the giant oak. It exploded, blossoming into fire. Thunder boomed, shaking the ground under her feet. “It is not she and you will let her alone!”

OK. Magdalena silently conceded, maybe a firm hand wasn’t needed. Apparently he was way past that point already.

Boys and their hormones were ever a passionate, unpredictable trial, she mused. Magdalena knew there was no way she would be able to get through to him in his present state. Apparently the girl had worked him into quite the tizzy.

Time to back off… Way off, if but to do nothing else, than to throw him off her determined hunt. A hunt she was far from willing to relinquish just because he said so.

The scent of burnt wood filled the air, and the ground around them was littered now with little burning piles of oak tree rubble as its only remains.

Magdalena Pope was not a foolish woman. She had lived too long and had seen too much, she knew too much, just as she knew this was not a battle she wanted to get into with him.

Especially now, with so much at stake.

Raising placating hands, she approached Leonidas slowly, carefully, showing him she was being supplicant and indeed backing off…

For now.

She gave him a few moments to calm down, while running tender hands up and down his arms. She took a long moment before she spoke again. Once the wind around them began to steady, only then did she dare lay a tender hand on his shoulder, to garner his attention.

Once Magdalena had it, she watched his eyes and in them she saw the storm rage fiercely within as he tried to get himself under control.

Slowly, ever so slowly the atmosphere around them settled, yet still charged. The winds diminished. The clouds, vortextual and swirling settled back up in the sky, and the heavens lost their thunder.

That’s a good boy.

“So you say she is no Spark, therefore no danger to us, correct?”

“I do not just say it, I know it.”

Stubborn is what he was, Magdalena thought. Time to try some logic, “What about her mother, Helena Blavatsky, a Divine Spark of Russian nobility, that would make her so, would it not?”

“We do not know for certain that the Blavatsky is her mother.” Leonidas argued. “We made a guess, a calculated guess for certain since there are so few Divine Sparks left, but a guess nonetheless. The Blavatsky claims that her daughter and husband were killed in a car accident when her daughter was just a baby, yet days old. It could be true, we just wrongly assumed otherwise.”

“Convenient.” Magdalene said, but she was thinking.

He threw up his hands in frustration. Magdalene could she lightning which flashed in the sky through the trees behind him as he shouted, “Why would she lie? The Blavatsky is a Spark. Any children she would have would be a Spark as well, consecrated with the power that comes with such a legacy and with such a legacy would come the danger. Why would The Blavatsky lie about that, attempt to keep that birthright from her offspring? What would be the purpose?”

“There are one or two I could think of.” She said nodding her head out towards the old beat-up black jeep parked by the curb in the road.

Magdalene eye’s drifted over the young man’s face. He stared down at her and with her eyes Magdalene traced the path of the angry line that scarred his skin. Oh, she knew exactly why The Blavatsky would attempt such an act, even as she questioned her mother’s resolve to do what was needed pull it off.

Could The Blavatsky have abandoned her own child – Could The Blavatsky have made such a sacrifice in order to save her child? Or was Leonidas right and they were simply looking in the wrong direction, by looking at Catherine Fox as a Spark, at all?

To be quite honest, at the moment, Magdalene wasn’t sure which possibility she found more terrifying. The fact that they were wrong, or the fact that they weren’t and Leonidas had let her escape.

At her quiet, discomforting gaze, Leonidas turned silently and walked away. He walked down the porch steps, needing some fresh air. The air on the porch was becoming far too stifling.

Constricting.

The only reason, Leonidas told himself, that he was acquiescing to her silent, nodded request for him to head to the jeep.

He needed air. Nothing more.

Magdalene sighed deeply as she turned to follow him, “The Nostradamus astrolabe pointed us here with specific, timed correlations that connected the merging of powerful Divine Spark Blavatsky line with Chata thanks to the emergences of histories past. A past set to repeat here in this present. Their paths intersected a millennium ago and are set to again, at this place, in a time coming quickly. The astrological charts prove it.”

“Correction,” He said turning back towards her, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking of the brass intersecting sphere-like globe that had astronomically predicted so much correctly, desperately hoping that this time, it was wrong. “The astrological charts prove that the Chata will intersect with a Spark of a noble birth, that is all. We assumed it was The Blavatsky, because just how many noble Sparks are there left? Nevertheless, that does not make Catherine she.”

Magdalena shook her head. “We followed the trail of John Fox, who left The Blavatsky service immediately after the supposed ‘deaths’ of The Blavatsky’s loved ones. That cannot be a mere coincidence. He fit the description of The Blavatsky spouse almost to a ‘T’, as did Catherine, her heir.”

Since Leonidas was the one who had pointed that fact out to her at the time, it was only fair now, he supposed, that he disputed the point. “The claim was, as I recall, that John Fox had been a fairly new part of The Blavatsky shadow guard, The Nanren. A group known to have similar coloring and characteristics and as such he was responsible for the protection of her family. After the accident that killed the father and child; however, it was said that he felt he had failed in his duties. After he fled, it was assumed by the Blavatsky house as a whole that Fox simply gave up the distinguished honor of being amongst a Spark’s personal guard and retired here to America, with his daughter in tow.” Leonidas tilted his head and cocked his brow. “Giving the timing,and all involved, we just assumed the rest because it fit. We assumed that she was the one who we sought, maybe for no other reason than it was convenient for us to do so.”

“If you are correct, we made an error and if she is not the one we seek,” Magdalena asked, her voice full of frustration as her own doubts began to set in. He made some very convincing arguments to the contrary. “Then who is she?”

“She is Catherine Fox and not a Spark.” Frowning in frustration, he ran a weary hand threw his hair. He looked back down the road where he knew Catherine went, but the distance had taken her away from his eyes.

He hated it.

Leonidas then looked out around him in the yard and saw the results of the eruption of the out-of-control storm.

And his temper.

He hated that even more.

Loss of control.

The small fires of destruction, it seemed, were everywhere, and they we so much a mirror to his own life, full of death and destruction.

“If it’s not her, fine, in fact that’s quite wonderful. That means the Chata has not taken form – So points for us. It puts us one step ahead, instead of our usual position of having to play catch-up. However it also means that the prophesied vessel, which the Chata will take over, is still here somewhere. Only now, this time, we don’t know who. We know The Chata needs a strong host body. It goes through them so fast if the host is not strong, draining their energy, which is why it needs a Spark. We must find it and destroy it, before The Chata merges with it as the veil of The Betweenness thins, allowing supreme evil to slip through from the supernatural world, into our own.”

“Evil-evil.” Leonidas corrected again, this time with a chuckle of remembrance.

“Ok, why…” That was the second time today. Magdalena threw up her hands, “Why are you saying it twice?”

“I do not know,” He replied with a secretive glint in his eye. “But is does make it seem worse when said that way, does it not?”

“No. It doesn’t.” Magdalena shook her head at the boy, wondering what in the world has gotten into him today? At his careless shrug, she continued hesitantly, speaking slowly so he would be sure to get the importance of her words. “This unexpected delay, if that is indeed what it is, means we have a gift. You do understand that, right? We have been given a gift in the form of a very small window of opportunity to stop the destruction we know will come with the Chata, if it takes a host, before it happens. So saying, we need to make the most of this blessed opportunity and be sure to use it to our advantage.”

He nodded, but Magdalena watched him as he glanced back down the road, his face unsure. Walking to him, she reached out to him with a firm hand and grasped a fist full of fabric at his shoulder.

With a slight pull of the fabric of his navy blue cloak at the shoulder of his arm, she pulled Leonidas into her arms for a hug.

He went hesitantly, but still he went.

Closing her eyes, Magdalena took a moment and just held on.

Knowing that these precious moments, where few and far between, she hugged him tight and inhaled his scent. To her, he still had that puppy dog smell of a dirty little boy after a hard days play. It made her heart ache in memory not only for what he had been, now long gone, but for what he had become and for what, as of yet, he still stood to lose.

Eventually he relaxed, gave her the response she wanted and hugged her back.

Granting her that one small victory.

For now, it was enough.

Magdalena leaned back, smiled up at Leonidas and ran a loving hand down the left side of his face.

Her fingers traced the path of the scar, the way her eyes had caressed it earlier.

He had given so much, lost so much, how much more would be asked of him before his destiny was through, Magdalena wondered? But deep in her heart, she already knew the answer.

Was his life something she was willing to sacrifice? More to the point, was sacrificing his life something she could afford not to do at this stage of the war?

Thinking of sacrifices, Sparks of noble blood and The Blavatsky, Magdalena’s mind began to race with the possibilities.

The smell of charred wood drifted up to her, carried by smoldering billows of smoke that seemed to come from piles of burning wood all around them.

The boy had made quite the mess, she thought as she looked up at him – What a deadly wonder he had become?

And all hers.

Seemingly unable to help herself, Magdalena leaned up and kissed Leonidas on the tip of his nose.

He rolled his eyes, pulled out of her arms and offered her one of his with a cock of his head and a crook of his elbow. Ever the gallant, was he, “My lady, shall we?”

Apparently their earlier quarrel, resulting in the destruction of the tree, was forgiven.

He had such a huge generous heart…

It was truly the only fault she could ever find with him.

Nevertheless, she took his offered arm with a bow of her head and together they walked the rest of the way towards the jeep.

Slowly Magdalena watched the smile on his lips die a slow death as it fell from his lips. He stared at the shadows on the distant horizon. “That is not me.”

“I know.” Just underneath the layer of dark clouds already there, now a darker line lay just at its edges. “That is something else entirely.”

Time was running out.

From every direction you looked around the town, from the depths of the hole in which it was planted, the darkness seemed to encircle them.

Drawing closer.

Closing in on them in like a lid to a pot.

The Chata cometh, it seemed, Magdalena thought, to taketh all away.

A mental ticking began in her head, sounding as a clock would as it ticked down to the detonation time of an exploding bomb in old movies.

Time was of the essence. They had to figure out who the possible Divine Spark vessel would be and destroy them, before the Chata garnered enough strength to break through the veil that separated their worlds when it was at its thinnest.

The Chata would still come, it was predestined, however whether or not it stayed depended on whether it had a host strong enough to house it.

That they could stop –That, they had to stop.

While walking, she contemplated their present quandary out loud, again running through what they did know and most importantly what they didn’t.

“If the Spark is not in Catherine Fox, as we originally surmised, then the principle question still remains…Where is it?” Pulling her keys free of her pockets, she walked over to the passenger side of the jeep, digging the jeep keys out of her pocket, she pulled them free, unlocking the jeep’s door. She pulled open the door for him and she stared hard into his eyes, “Or more to the point, who? Who here attracts the Chata for its upcoming earthly birth?”

“I do not know.”

Magdalena looked leisurely over her shoulder, down to the still burning ruble in the yard, then up to the tree, now viciously vacant limbs, branches and leaves, still smoldering. My, what a horrible temper he had and while she looked at results of his anger, Magdalena couldn’t help but to think that the boy needed to be schooled a bit on the hazards of his temper…

Hmmm, schooled?

The smile that formed on Magdalena’s face just then, was slow, methodical and just a tiny bit sadistic.

A plan formed.

It would serve him right.

Leonidas gave a resigned sigh, automatically reaching out to manually roll down the window of the jeep as he stood waiting. The air didn’t work and even as chilled as it was inside, it was stifling when one was trapped in the interior of the jeep. He needed air, “I take it from the smile on your face that you have a plan on discovering just who it might be, before it is too late?”

“Of course I do, dear boy, it’s a simple two-step plan.” She winked at him. It was all a bit too easy. Why had she not thought of it before? “First step, is to get you enrolled into high school.”

Leonidas’s mouth dropped open. That was the last thing he had expected. “High school – Me?” He rolled his eyes. “You are kidding, of course?”

Magdalena Pope wiggled her eyebrows at him.

Apparently not.

“Wonderful.” He grumbled. Out of all the horrors he had imagined as they traveled here from long, distant lands, across storm-tossed seas, this was not one of them. “High School? Fantastic.”

Magdalena did her best to bite back her smile as a result of the look on his face, but failed miserably. He shot her a particularly dirty look from under his dark slashing, dramatic brows.

It was a look as miserable as any man could give after just having learned he had been sentenced to the gallows, or more to the point, like a boy sent to his room without dinner.

“It will be fun for you.” Magdalena told him cheerily as she all but gently shoved him into the jeep door. He fell into the passenger seat with a silent, very manly, brooding stare. “Once there, you can find out just who is the Divine Spark vessel we seek. And step two?” Slamming the door, she looked at him through the open window, smiling, “You will kill them.” Reaching through the window, she clucked him on his chin with her fingers. “And that my dear, will make all of the horrors you are about to face in American high school worth it, won’t it?”

“Yes, of course it will, Mother.” He gave her a nodding bow, as she turned from the window with an excited clap, heading around to the driver’s side door, having all the details now straightened out in her head, she was back to being her normal, chipper self.

All thoughts of his defiance in not killing Catherine apparently were quickly forgotten.

So quickly in fact, it was rather disturbing. His mother never let anything go that fast.

Ever.

Leonidas felt his suspicions rise like hackles on the back of a rabid dog.

Now, apparently, not only did he have to watch out for the vessel, as well as whatever The Chata would send after him once it realized just who had come to The Fare, but his mother as well. He knew he had to watch his mother else she would harm the innocent, Catherine Fox.

Nevertheless, as bad as he thought her insane plan was, it did have some high points.

It would give him ample opportunity to watch the young woman in question. Keep an eye on her; as it were, and maybe even get to know her a little…

All for the cause, of course.

Leonidas had to laugh at himself, at his own personal little lie. Once again slipped his left hand in his pocket and fingered the red game chip Catherine had dropped in the alleyway, where he had recovered it. He reveled in the thought of being able to be close to her again, so much so that his palms sweated with anticipation.

But no need for Mother to find out.

Oh yes, he was going to go along with this little insane plan of his Mother’s. He merely gave out a loud sigh of acquiescence as she slid into the jeep, in the driver’s seat beside him, in order to let her think he was going along with her plan…

Begrudgingly.

All the while internally, Leonidas silently, dearly hoped that for Catherine sake, she was as innocent as he knew her to be.

He rubbed the nicked spot underneath his rib, he found a hole in his shirt that she had made there. Leonidas pulled his hand back and looked at the slight staining of blood on his fingertips.

He smiled.

She had drawn first blood – What a wonder she was?

And because she was, Leonidas would hate it, after all, if he was indeed forced to kill her. That is, if his conclusions were discovered to be an error of mistaken judgment on his part.

She was such an intriguing bit of a girl, with beautiful long, dark silky hair, sparkling green eyes and skin so soft and smooth it just begged to be touched.

He all but itched to do so.

Oh, yes, if he had to kill her, he would most definitely hate it. He ran a hand again over the scar that ran the distance of his face, Leonidas Pope told himself resolutely, he most definitely still would.

“Darling?” His mother asked from the seat beside him, nodding towards the still smoldering pieces of oak, which burned in numerous little deadly piles on their front lawn. “Take care of that for me, before we go, won’t you? I would hate to burn the town down, before it was absolutely necessary of course.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Leonidas began to roll up his window, with a slight turn of his head, he glanced out as the glass pane that rose to shelter him from the elements, with glowing silver eyes, air be damned.

Eyes, his mother so often told him that were so much like his late grandmother, Agla.

Once the window was secured and with nothing more than a slight blink of his eyes, the heavens opened up. Hard rains began to fall and the smoldering flames were snuffed out, just as the Dark Spark within him decreed of the elements…

And they obeyed.

One form of the storm, it seemed, had arrived to The Fare and it did so in the form of one very worldly, deadly Leonidas Augustine Pope.

A Dark Spark, of the darkest order and as any true Spark would know, an eternal, mortal enemy of a true Sparks Divine.

Yet a darker storm still brewed in the distance.

Coming ever closer

Mar 13 2010

Preface – The Chata Cometh (Sparks Series, original fiction)

In a time not yet now, but then…

Darkness.

It slithered through the gloomy night’s sky like a snake on its belly, creeping towards its prey. Hissing into the chilly wind, in loathing, it pushed ever forward towards that which it stalked like a coming, inescapable deadly plague.

Mortals.

If it would have had a voice, it would have sneered the word. So deep was its hatred and disgust. For now however it was strangely patient & content with its present deficiencies. Uncomfortably so. It knew that the time was quickly approaching where that, and so much more, would be distinctly possible…

Horribly possible.

So down it went, with a steely patience, and one born of thousands of years of experience. It had nothing but time, after all.

Nothing but time.

In and out it crawled down through the trees, towards its destination, just as it circled around them on all quarters, closing them in.

Gauging, watching, waiting…

Ready.

Eagerly so.

The grand oak’s branches danced, shivering with fear, like a teeth-chattering nervous tic, becoming broken and brittle, dying with even the tenderest of caresses of its oozing nothingness. It floated like a black fog down from the stars through the air, engulfing all in its path.

Cloaking them.

Choking them numb.

The moon did not shine, buried behind a shrouding veil of dense, grave-like fog. No stars twinkled, their light snuffed out, dimmed dead. The night was as dark as pitch resin and just as sickly unforgiving.

No crickets chirped. No nightingales sang their melodious tune. No owl stalked its prey, on widespread, ghost-like wings. No frogs bellowed their nightly, cold-blooded dismay at their warty lot in life.

All was quiet this eve, the night deadly still and it rang hallow with it.

The very air seemed stale.

Petrified.

Afraid to move.

Suddenly a scream shattered the quiet; its vibrations titillated the air with energy of painful expectancies, and it carried weightless from the manor just up ahead.

Fate had come a’ calling.

The Darkness rolled with malicious glee and growing anticipation at that much-loved sound, a proverbial tolling of the bell as it were, and the light from the house in the distance glowed like a precious, appealing beckon, directing the way to The Reckoning.

It was Kismet, after all.

The screams were a delicious summons, for it knew what they herald, however it was the light in the house in the end that appealed to its evil magnetism. It tempted the Darkness closer like a seductive, crooked finger of a secret lover.

Irresistible.

The windows of the house shone like bright, pumpkin carved yellow, fire-lit eyes and as a result the Darkness drifted yet lower to stare into their depths, descending down upon the earth, to take its own peek at what lay within.

Needing too.

The closer it got to the light, the further down to earth it went, the smaller it seemed to become.

Diminished.

Light always overcame darkness. Where one existed, the other could not, for it was the natural order of things…The way they were meant.

It hated this most of all.

Detesting the light, still the Darkness was drawn like a moth to a flame, or like a shark to a single, minute drop of blood in the water…Or even like a male Preying Mantis, to its murderous mate.

The Darkness craved the light like a raving, unhinged addict. It thirsted for that very thing in which it wasn’t, and would never be, much less understood.

It feverishly desired that very connection, of the unrelenting opposable force of the unknown and it was this connection which made conflict absolutely inevitable.

Just as was the unavoidable, ever existing need to snuff out that very light, permanently and quite simply devour it all, down to the last tiny flicker or spark.

Consume it all like a rabid dog would raw, bloodied meat.

Utterly.

If the Darkness could have smiled, it would have at the very thought that one day soon, it most would be given the opportunity & it would do all it desired and do it just for the hell of it…

Hence the cause of the titillation from the sounds of the screaming.

Circling the house, in a whirlwind of despair, the cold spiraling air which stirred in its wake, tapped with greedy-like fingernails on the window panes. It was as if requesting entrance from those mortals that lay within.

It need not however be granted, just this second, of this it was true for it could already easily see through the thin, and oh so breakable sheets of glass, that destiny had undeniably dealt the hand it had waited for.

Finally.

The time had indeed come.

Sensing the Darkness and its joy, the night cringed and recoiled on broken whispers of wind.

The moon watched the night, cloaking the Darkness and with a squinted half-eye of moonlit luminousness, it seemed to wince at what it knew to be true of the upcoming horror on the cusp of bing unveiled upon the lot of mankind…

It’s utter destruction and damnation.

Smugly, the Darkness spiraling ever slowly, patiently around the perimeter of the grounds of manor, settled in the blackened winter-deadened rose vines that covered the far battle scared mortar wall near the white cast parapet of the master bedroom.

For a time, as the Darkness peeked in the window there, all that lived this night, seemed to still in anticipation of the battle to come and because of the lines drawn here, in this time, at this very hour…This very second.

Unknown and unrecognized.

Again, the woman screamed in pain and agony and in the deepest recesses of the night, deep in the heart of the darkness, a raven’s caw echoed exultantly in the distance.

A cock crowed, but no sun rose.

And the wind began again it’s slow, insolent tapping on the windowpane, with a steady malevolent, patient beat…

Tap…Tap…Tap.


***********

Life is pain.

With it, life’s a punishing burden to bear, but without it, it’s simply incomplete. Unrealized.

Unfinished.

Pain is needed to appreciate our lives when without it.

We often begin our journey in this mortal coil, fast on the heels of screams of torturous pain and almost unbearable agony and blood.

Life’s blood.

A cursed suffered, they say, as a result of the betrayal in the Garden of Eden, by a woman who was too ambitious, envious, of that which she was never meant to obtain, but went against God’s own command to pursue it anyway.

A fruit.

But not just any fruit, a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the heart of the Garden of Eden. Not to spoil the story for those of you who don’t know it, but Eve, thanks to the temptations of the devil, craved this luscious fruit, not for physical nourishment understand, but for intellectual enlightenment that came with it.

With a mere bite from this fruit, from the Forbidden Tree, divine knowledge was promised.

Supreme knowledge…

Knowledge, in this instant, proved too much was a very dangerous thing.

Nevertheless, despite our banishment from the Garden, humanity since has never wavered in our constant pursuit of it…

The pursuit of divine understanding.

Of this unrelenting pursuit, it is often written about with old adage such as, “Seek and you shall find.” Or, “Ask, and the door will be opened to you.” Of these two adage, both of which by the way are very true, one must also never forget that during your pursuit of knowledge in this life, possibly the most important adage of them all being, “Be careful what questions you ask, in your lifetime, for you may not obtain the answer in which you seek.”

Tonight, in this instant, this last adage proved true.

The bedchamber was filled with comforting warm glow of dozens of pink candles, in groups of three, on every surface available. A welcoming glow of the fire in the opulent hand carved fireplace of burnt oak, gave the room a very majestic ambiance.

Book ruled shelves, from floor to ceiling, lined with books of various of blushes took up the wall furthers from the bed, with antique books seen by a seldom, select privileged few. Gilded mirrors hung on every wall, as well as priceless oils only added to the monetary omnipotence of those residing within its hallowed walls.

The main focus, despite the opulent splendor of the master bedchamber was the intricately carved, highly ornate oak bed that sat on a raised platform, carpeted in the thickest, richest gold.

Gold fit for the most sovereign.

Royally divine.

Divine Sparks.

Consecrated warriors with a divine purpose, to devote their lives against the battle between good and all that wishes to destroy it and for this purpose alone did they exist.

Again, she screamed in agony as she felt the birthing pain spear through, seemingly to her very soul, her very center.

Every muscle locked tight.

Intent.

Hands locked in a tight grip with her husbands, as he braced her shoulders behind her with strength, love and courage. With her last final push, with blood, sweat and tears, her child was finally born.

Here and long-awaited.

The baby’s cries filled the air, and all that heard it rejoiced with delighted laughter, applause and tears of joy.

From the lowliest maid, to the highest appointed present most official, all in response & illustrated their utter joy in their exuberance. They cheered and reveled with this beginning, the birth, of the next generation.

Every room in the huge mansion like structure was busy with hive-like activity in adulation for that birth which was upon them. The news trickled down quickly, from ear to ear like a domino effect, an excited chain reaction to all who craved the reports.

An heir born.

So very beautiful, the loving mother thought fondly looking down at the perfect curly locks of hair of her perfect little baby. The nurse handed the child back to the new mother, freshly cleaned and wrapped tightly in a hand sown quilt blanket with patches of the finest silk, cashmere & fur made just for this very occasion.

Only the very best.

Instant love was a stuttering in the heart. Pride was a crushing ache in the chest, one bursting at the seams, as the mother cradled the infant lovingly closer in her embrace, and the father eased the mother gently back against his chest as he ran one gentle finger down the dewy cheek of the child.

They sat, now a family of three, on the silk covered four-poster bed in the main bedroom chamber, surrounded by family, nurses, priests, staff and guard…

Lots of guards.

The numerous guards surrounding them were highly trained warriors. Their sole purpose befitting their expertise was for those who were a very special brand of royalty, of course, and ones needing to be protected at all costs.

And, yes ok, sprinkled amongst them as well were admittedly even a few scattered, cloaked assassins or two, hidden deep in the shadowed corners of the room – Hired guns trained in the ancient art of stealth, sabotage & secrecy. But given the benefit of the occasion, an extra adage of security was not only to be expected…

It was warranted.

However what wasn’t expected, on the occasion of such a royal birth, was the presence of a dark witch, whose talents lay in the darkest of arts and in a darkness as old as time its self.

Alternately feared and hated, were they and those that were left in the area who had practiced dark magic. Most of which had been subsequently banished, cast out or burned at the stake, a horrendous deed necessary to exterminate those which they believed actively worked against them, cavorting with the recesses of The Chata…

Known as the darkest form of evil, but rarely named for fear it would be called. It is a force that lived corporeal from goodness and was the one thing that existed alone in the cosmic spectrum of all divine and living things, which missed the mark of God.

Entirely.

An abhorrent matter to be sure, seeing to the death of a kind so like themselves, but one had to be ready to squelch the rising of the Dark Sparks and all that which came with them.

Dark Sparks such as herself, most certainly did not attend the birth of such a Divine ranking, however the circumstances in this matter were most unusual and required a special hand…

A possible view into a window to the future.

Whether it be through necromancy or shamanism, it mattered not, here in this instance, the Divine sought knowledge through their chosen fruit of choice…

The dark.

Threat of expulsion from paradise be damned.

That is where Agla the Oracle came in. And she wasn’t happy about it, she thought as her eyes darted around the room with sickly suspicions.

Agla the Oracle, a clichéd wrinkled old prune, with a hunched back, crooked hands with contrasting lustrous liquid knowledgeable silver eyes, stood morosely in the back of the room.

Her dark robes, pulled high covering her face, her shining eyes averted and she shuddered like a dying rat on a trap. Quaking in both fear and aversion at being forced to be in the room with so many of her known enemies.

Those enemies of whom wished to harm her and those, admittedly, she wished to do grave harm in return.

That had so many gifts, but knew not what to do with them. The Spark was wasted on the likes of them, Agla sneered internally.

When divine royalty called however, those blessed with the Divine Spark, and all the prestige that came with it…For those destined to stand as a bright yellow light against the forces of inky black darkness, fated to do so, one was forced to obey lest they run the threat of paying the ultimate price…

Even she, most especially she – A Dark Spark of the darkest order.

When only a smattering of congratulations filled the air, the bulk of them having died off, Agla knew the time for forced performance was about to be upon her.

Slowly, and with great hesitance, those that surrounded the birthing-bed in the bedchamber began to slowly part, all the while watching her with worried, warning eyes and speaking in whispered murmurs behind raised hands.

Their bodies parted like the Reed Sea. They stepped back, Agla could easily see with the newborn nestled in the cusp of protection from its loving parent’s arms.

In the hushed silence, the new parents motioned her forward with a sanctimonious wave of their hands; waving in such a way that only those who knew the power of true dominance could.

Agla cringed at the summons and bit back the instinctive desire to spit at their request as all eyes were on her. A parlor like silence filled the air, to gage her reaction at this most royal command.

Now was not the time, nor the place to rebel against their nature.

A nature which put them on opposing ends of the cosmic spectrum, so she resisted. She resisted her base urge to spit in disgust and revolt, because she quite simply wanted to make it out of the room alive, so she censored herself.

Taking a deep calming breath, trying to still the rapid beating of her heart, Agla took one hesitant step forward, her back leg dragging like a deadened, crippled weight behind her, only to take it quickly back again as protective warriors seemed to converge around her instantly; An instinctive reaction to one hesitant step forward of what they perceived as evil in their midst.

They seemed to lunge at her as one, “Wait!” Agla said panicked, throwing up her hands to shield her already battle scared face.

She cowered and pulled her cloak & robes more securely around her shoulders. Her eyes scanned the swarming crowd. She could see them all, their eyes glowed with hatred. They looked towards her, one and all, and those eyes she couldn’t see – Theirs – she felt even more harshly like hot little needle pricks underneath the skin, coming from the deepest most shadowed areas of the room.

The Nanren – The shadow assassins.

The dark ones themselves, not seen but felt, watched her with murder tainted eyes she knew and she did her best not to shiver under their gaze lest they be provoked.

“I’m just doing what was requested, that is all.” The Dark oracle pleaded. “Please, I mean no harm!” Agla called out, even as she thought the words silently to herself, “Not yet.”

Not yet.

It was a personal silent, vindictive oath, the nine-inch dagger burning her hip on her left side, hidden under her cloak, all but begging to be used.

Here, she dare not pull it free, not now.

Not yet.

Nervously she fingered the medallion of protection. It was a sterling silver scarab beetle, and its eyes glowed a flickering yellow from the eternal flame that burned within.

It burned warmly against her chest.

This powerful amulet hung as a protective talisman around her neck and had since her birth, as first one large warrior stepped up to her, then another on the other side, surrounding her.

Methodically, quietly she quickly began a chant with great anxiety, quickly turning to terror.

The shadows on the wall seemed to shift all around her, closing her in, and so she began to cast a spell of protection around her if but in a weak attempt to aid in her survival this night.

Asking any and all otherworldly beings who would listen to protect her against the darkness in her midst, begging to be taken into its protection, to hide her there, if the dark ones did indeed converge on her, intent on taking her life…

Which, considering her present circumstance, that outcome now was highly likely and could come at any moment.

Her silent, mouthed chant, however and unfortunately did not go unnoticed by the warriors surrounding her flanks taking exception to not only her dark presence, but her darker methods as well.

“See – We warned you this was a bad idea!” The great large man said at her side with a growl, pointing towards the couple on the bed with one hand, he grabbed Agla by the back of the neck with the other huge meaty hand, lifting her off her feet. “The witch is casting a spell against us.”

Agla gasped as terror shook her, but still not once did she stop her chants, only increased them ten-fold in pace, as tears of fear coursed down her worn and withered cheeks.

She rubbed the amulet between her thumb and forefinger, silently mumbling to herself, “I seek to become, that which wishes to harm me, so I might not become undone. To the darkness I call, to the darkness I be; to hence do I come, oh please I beseech thee!”

“I knew this was a bad idea, Sir,” A tall, stout woman said, ignoring the hag’s chants, pushing her way through the crowd to grab Agla roughly as well. “We shall expel her at once and see to her fate.”

“No.” A whispered denial was ordered by the new mother, but it didn’t break through the rising outrage of the crowd that was growing more virulent by the minute.

With two warriors on each side, a third walked straight up to the old hag.

A huge ugly woman, with bulbous green eyes, sneered down at Agla, while gleefully explaining her fate and what was to become of it, “We shall trial her by fire and set her to stone.”

“No!” This time the new mother’s voice whipped through the air – A voice of power, defiance and command. “No, you will not.”

With a shake of her head at her husband, a silent command to not interfere, she handed him their child. The new mother rose from the bed, pulling a robe around her battle tired, child-birthed body and stood warrior proud by the bed on affronted, muscle locked legs. “Release her at once.”

“But Madam—“

“I gave you a command and you will obey it.” Shoulders back, head held high, jaw locked, eyes intent and burning bright, she was a lioness in a room full of cubs. She knew it and so by God did they. “She’s frightened, and you’re compounding it by terrorizing her. Now let her go and back away.”

“But Madam—“

“Back away!” It was a threat laced demand from a warrior secure in her knowledge and her position and it carried to all in the room like a lashing warning. Just as menacing and dangerous as was the sword from the scabbard she pulled free that had rested by the bed. “Or I will make you.”

True dominance demanded submission and granted no quarter.

The three warriors looked nervously down to the frightened old woman in their grasps, then back to the proud, warrior woman behind them, bearing a sword intent on defending her.

They looked next to the new father sitting on the bed, with the newborn in his arms, and a smile for his wife on his face, however when he looked at them, he ceased smiling, and only quirked his brow and they knew instant defeat.

The look was a warning.

And the master was waiting.

Together their mistress and master were united on this front, and no one dared to oppose them either separately, but most assuredly together.

With an apologetic nod to them, the three warriors released the old hag and backed away, genuflecting as they went…

Far, far away.

What whispered talk that had remained died away now to a wind soft hum, assimilating well with the elemental wind that blew outside and together they seemed to condemn mockingly from inside, outside, and all around them.

The air outside tapped insistently at the windowpanes in all directions, seemingly all at once.

Nodding her head in gratitude towards the mistress, once she gained her release, relief clenched tightly at her throat, closing it off, so that Agla’s murmur of thanks, came off more like a croak, “Thank you, Madame.”

Re-sheathing her sword, standing it up, back in its place beside the bed the mistress approached the old woman and with great care, took her fragile arms in her hands, “Agla. That is your name, is it not? Please, come closer. We did not bring you here to harm you, only for your help, as strange as it may seem that we should seek it. You see I am a new mother, but unlike most I, since the day of my birth, have been burden with the knowledge that my existence here on earth was for a preordained, otherworldly purpose…To defend the world against the darkest of evils that seeks to destroy it. Luckily, to date, I have never been forced into performing this ultimate sacrificial act. That fate was spared me, but just as my lot was passed down from my mother and father to me, I fear what I am passing down to my child. Please. Please Agla, I beg of you, for the sake of my child – Our child – Please come closer and tell me what it is of this baby’s future that you see.”

The tapping of the window behind Agla, seemed to mimic the beating of her heart in her chest. A slow Tap…Tap…Tap now, but rapidly picking up pace. The woman in front of her, however, stood resolutely as a calming balm to her terrified fears of enemy retribution.

Unlike all the other eyes in the room, watching her with hatred and contempt, the eyes of the new young mother before her watched her with pleading and fretful eyes, so much so Agla knew she could not deny her, a mother herself.

It wasn’t the Divine that appealed to her Darkness, but one mother’s desperate appeal to another.

However, even knowing this, accepting it, Agla couldn’t help but think, “Be careful what you wish for, my child, you might very well get what you wish and possibly even more than you bargained for in due course.”

The window behind her shook once, harshly as the wind battered it with a punishing fist, only stopping when it snapped free of its lock, cracking open slightly, and the cool night wind drifted in to swirl about the room.

One by one, the candles were extinguished.

Snuffed out.

The fire in the fireplace became smaller, and smaller…Smothered out to a gray, dead nothingness.

All too soon, not even one glowing warmth giving ember remained.

The growing inevitability of what was to come, chilled Agla as the cold settled deeply into the room.

Knowing it was inescapable, Agla nodded sadly at the request, silently granting it.

Destiny waits for no one.

With a tender rub of her hands up and down Agla’s arms in a show of support and thanks, the young mother nodded in return, released her arms with a sigh  and turned back towards the bed.

Her family.

Her husband and her child, were waiting for her.

Crawling back up into the bed, mother, father and child sat at the ready, with expectance.

Agla approached slowly. Lips had gone dry as a result of her frightened, panted breaths. She felt the sheathed dagger inside her cloak secretly tap her side as she advanced.

All occupants still present, everyone in the room watched her anxiously as she made her way towards the bed, as if waiting for her to let loose a rapid-fire burst of prophecy as to what fate held in store for the new little one…The new Spark of life in their midst.

But seldom, if ever, did her clairvoyant gift work that way, Agla mused.

That’s what everyone called her ability, a gift…The gift of divination…Shamanism, necromancy.

Agla, however called it her curse by fate.

Wiping at the spittle that had settled at the corner of her mouth, with the back of one contorted hand, thanks to her earlier terror, cautiously Agla cleared her throat.

Immediately she shivered as a chilled breeze, from the wind forced open window behind her, fingered its way inside her cloak, to claw up her spine with sharp, piercing fingers.

Agla gasped, her breath caught, eyes clenching tightly, suddenly shut as a vision shook her – A vision of utter, encompassing blackness.

Forcing out a breath, Agla gasped and shook free of the vision and forced open her now glowing white liquid silver eyes.

The parents now, eyes intent on her face, watched her with horrific expectance. Holding their child close to them, the parents silently pleaded with Agla for news at what she saw, knowing she had seen something.

Unable to form the words in verbal request – Terror had them firmly in their grips.

They obviously wanted reassurance and peace of mind as to what fate held in store for their precious child, but they couldn’t ask for it…

And god help her, Agla couldn’t give it to them.

Agla’s mouth opened, but no words escaped, no sound broke free. The portends of doom where a hard message to relay, especially to those which held so much absolute power, yet it was that which seemed to culminate here.

Damnation.

The Chata, a very old, very hungry dark pinnacle was on the horizon and was on the verge of breaking through.

The energy here was an invisible & unmistakable…A dark coursing energy and it was pulsing menacingly and cold throughout the air.

It had a blood-like metallic flavor that tainted the air and tormented her tongue with stabs of burning fire.

The baby shivered with cold, as the air in the room turned brisk, and it mewed, exhaling a white ghostly puff.

“Please.” The young mother instinctively cradled the baby nearer, subconsciously, protectively closer to her breast. Once again she pleaded, even if on some instinctual level she already knew how bleak her child’s fate, just from Agla’s reaction alone, “My child, Agla? What has fate decreed for my child?”

Reaching out with a desperate hand, from her perch on the bed, the young mother grasped Agla at the wrist of her right hand.

A sudden pain clutched Agla’s heart, a coldness that seemed to invade her veins from the iron grasp at her right wrist, traveling directly to her heart.

It was like been frozen from the inside out. The pain had her gnarled fingers clasping the fabric of her cloak over her chest with her left hand. Agla’s eyes rolled back white, her head dropped back, her mouth open gasping for air that wouldn’t come into now, almost frozen lungs as the utter coldness of the dark infested her…

And in her vision, Agla saw small sparks of light, in the absolute darkness.

Four small pinnacles of lights, sparks flickering like lightning bugs awash in the nothingness, but then with a burst of arctic wind, crueller than the bitter most blue of the harshest fire, the sparks blew out and all the light that had remained was lost…

Forever.

Agla collapsed to her knees as soon as the vision released her from its grasp. One hand braced on the floor, the other covering her mouth, muffling her sobs.

Agla shook with fear.

If there was anything her life experiences had taught her, it was that seldom did anyone ever want to hear the portends of doom in regards to their loved ones, while divining their fate, and the future always seemed to hold that in it’s hand, in one way or another…There was really no escaping bad news in the future, completely.

But this, this was something else entirely.

This was the end of them all.

Everything.

“Agla?” The young mother, the only kind one in the lot, asked worriedly down to her, from her perch on the bed.

She still held her wrist in her hand and pulled Agla’s hand, covering her mouth, free.

Agla shook her head and looked up, to see that young, strong hand, still holding her’s tight, but not harshly.

And in that determined, strong grip, Agla saw a spark of a chance of salvation for all humanity.

An offering of steady assistance extended by an enemy, to a centuries long sworn enemy, for the sake of a child and with it, Agla saw hope.

Courageously she battled back the tears that desperately wanted to come as a result of what she knew was to come for them all. It reverberated through her, and Agla let the young mother pull her to her feet. “Thank you, Madame.”

Adjusting her cloak, Agla took a much-needed breath as she looked down at the young family and reasoned with herself that which she knew to be true.

In divining the future, no matter how clear the vision, divination and that which one sees is never a fixed entity or an absolute fact.

The future can be changed by the choices we make, the paths we take, or set on a steely course of unavoidable consequences as a result of the very same.

Unfortunately there is simply no way to tell which decision, or choice will set you going in which direction.

Fates own cruel little eternal joke, it seemed.

Only time would really tell if the decision you made was the right one at any given time.

Time and foreknowledge that would hopefully help one on the way to making the right decisions and not the wrongs ones.

Reaching over with her left hand, Agla squeezed the back of the young hand still gripping her wrist.

Agla nodded and knew if nothing else, she could give this honorable young mother the opportunity of time, which in the end might very well save them all.

Her clairvoyance, in this instance was both a gift to be given and a curse to be received.

Smiling sorrowfully Agla nodded and the mother slowly began to unwrapped the swaddling from the baby, for Agla to see and see clearly and to hopefully show her the way.

Agla flinched almost instantly at the sight before her, and tried to step back for as she watched, the air over the child seemed to ripple with dark, foreboding menace.

My god, she actually saw it! Agla inwardly gasp.

But the young mother held tight and wouldn’t let her go.

Fate, it seemed, was determined to see this course.

So be it.

Agla prophesied, “A great beauty I see, of destiny, a child of light and hope. To wit an exceptional force shall command of unimaginable power and of scope…”

The air around the child grayed before Agla’s eyes. Then it turned black.

Horribly black.

The new mother looked down at her child, but saw nothing but her true boundless joy, then up to the old woman, who seemed to look down at her child with fear – And an all-consuming fear at that.

“The striking of the hour, awaits on the horizon of such power; The Darkness looms in waiting, for the time it will consume all with its vicious undertaking.”

With a shaking hand Agla reached out a hand towards the darkness forming over the child, she winced when her fingers touched it.

It was cold.

So cold it burned.

Gasping, she jerked her other hand free of the young mother’s, stepping back quickly, Agla raised her hands as if in defense. Her sobs wracked her already gnarled form, almost bending it in half.

My god, Agla thought, this was the child – The child that would bring about the final battle of humanity against the forces of evil…

It was here.

Quickly, hunched over, Agla retreated backwards from the bed, while studiously averting her eyes from the child.

“Agla, wait!” The young mother pleaded.

Agla almost tripped over her own feet in retreat and with this showcase of fear, no one in the room dared to stop her now, so shocked were they by the all-encompassing terror they were witnessing.

“Agla, please!”

“This once thought child to be the perpetrator of radiance and glory; The babe will be the ruin of us all, marking the beginning of the end of our once thought, perpetual mortal story.” Agla cried, grasping the doorknob to the bedroom door behind her with a flailing hand, she twisted it, yanking it open as she finished on a petrified whisper. “It’s over.”

The windows in the room seemed to implode with glass as a gust of wind seemed to vacuüm the very air from the innermost center of the room. Simultaneously pushing Agla out, throwing her back through the threshold into the hall. The magnitude of the energy sent the wood door of the bedroom slamming harshly against the door frame with enough force that it shook the walls.

The screams of shock in the master’s bedchamber, at this unexpected turn of events, were only drowned out by the screams of Agla as she fled in terror down the hall…

With the knowledge that her time of destiny, and her subsequent doom as she had seen in past visions, was upon her.

Her high-pitched, manic piercing screams shook manor’s walls, from every corner of the grounds as she quickly limped down the stairs, heading unheeded towards the front door, escape as well as her fate.

Tearing at her garments, Agla ran mad as if to bolster her courage to face down that which awaited her, leaving a tattered trail of garments in her wake.

The leather cord of the protective talisman that she had so caressed earlier broke in a winded snap, as she jerked open the front door to see the centermost point if The Darkness whirling in a vortex of malevolence.

She held it in a death grip in her hand, knowing what she must do.

Eyes bright liquid silver, now glowed star bright as she stepped into the dark gusts around her churned with purpose and she pulled her dagger free of her cloak.

Dagger raised, out from the protection of the light in the manor Agla ran, brandishing her dagger like a weapon, but one that she knew could do little to harm her adversary.

She knew she couldn’t kill it, that which knew no life, but she could pin it, tack it in place, if to do nothing else than to offer the gift of time for those that existed to defend against it.

Time.

But such an action, by her, would come at a great price.

With each valiant step she took into The Darkness her already gnarled form became brittle, broken and as the wind blew, clumps of her fell to the ground, exploding into pieces of sand and dried dirt as the oozing nothingness turned her into dust of a long forgotten corpse, from a long forgotten time.

Quite suddenly, deep in the valley of the night, with one last shouted bought of courageous intent, Agla faced that which she feared above all else. Holding her glowing, yellow and orange ember eyed talisman, taking a deep breath, while stabbing the dagger through the air, in a method as old as time itself, she staked The Darkness beneath her ancient whispering blade of the Mysteries, stabbing it into the earth. In doing so, she gave it corporeal form, tacking it there.

She did this, just as she blew out a shaking, frightened breath, blowing out the tiny flame that burned deep inside the talisman silver charm housing in the form of a scarab beetle and so with her last act of valor, Agla met her fate…

As well as her demise and ended her own  long life  with nothing more than a breath of air.

Her screams stopped, as the light went out…

On the barren cold ground, frozen stone hard by winter, a lone dagger remained, stabbed hilt deep into the dirt of the earth, an amulet of pure silver, in the shape of a beetle with black, hollowed out eyes lay strap-broken at its side.

Crickets chirped and a nightingale began to sing a song so beautiful, the night wept. An owl hooted as it swept down from its place hidden deep in the branches of the tree tops, talons barred it snatched up a frog who croaked, disparaging what it made of its warty lot in life, too soon lost.

The fog settled low to the ground, dissipating deep into the soil of the earth. The clouds overhead blew out on a cleansing breath of wind and the moon winked luminously in the nights sky, the stars twinkling brightly.  The dark, unforgiving blue of night, began to change to hues of first purple, then pink, then to red and flaming orange. The sun slowly began to peak on the furthest most horizon as an early morning drizzle began to fall from the smattering of early morning clouds that still remained.

The day broke, and for now, The Darkness was held at bay.