Spirit Speaker

I lay awake in my room, waiting for Rowan to fall unconscious. It didn't take long. 

Once I was sure he was asleep, I got up, got dressed, and grabbed Ilargia. 

I hopped out the inn window, and flew over the city, looking for the shrine. 

I needed answers. 

I found it and flew to the entrance. 

The trees and vines grew together, thick and tangled. A natural barrier that explained how the shrine had been lost. 

I put my hand on the wall of leaves and focused for a few moments. 

A query, a challenge, a denial of entry, a trial to prove my worth. 

"I was here with the goddess," I said. "Let me in."

Denial. 

"I'm a Master Mage of the Academy. Let me in."

Denial. 

"If you don't let me in I'll set you on fire?"

Amused denial. 

Damn. 

An idea struck. One that had been forming from my first interaction with the goddess. 

"The Twisted Weave demands entrance."

The thick branches and leaves shuddered and shook, and parted. 

"Thank you."

I ran in, not sure how long that would last. 

The branches shut behind me. 

"I could have just flown in from above," I muttered, looking at Ilargia. 

I put him in front of me, leaning against the broken-down statue that the Weaver and I had been resting our backs against earlier in the day. 

"Now. We're going to talk." I said, sitting a few feet from him.

Ilargia straightened and floated a few inches from the ground.

"What happened today?"

Ilargia didn't respond. 

I sighed. "I can force you to answer me Ilargia," I warned. 

- No, you can't. You would never do that. The response was smug. 

I sighed. The staff was right. I'd never force him to do something he didn't want to do. There were mages that chose to dominate their focuses, and I was determined never to be one of them. That was a major sign that a mage was on the path to darkness. 

"I want to understand, Ilargia. I need to understand. What happened at dinner?"

Silence. 

"Was it the food?"

Silence. 

"The company then."

His staff flickered for a moment before it went dead. 

Something about the company. 

I went through the list of guests. 

Nothing. 

"Something we said then."

I thought back to the conversation. 

"It was Elra," I said. "The elf."

Sparks. 

"We can sit here all night, Ilargia."

- We can sit here all year, Lukas.

"You knew Elra." 

Another spark and the crystal began to glow a dull red. Irritation. Anger. 

The staff went black. Rage. 

It began to shake and hover. 

"Tell me."

Black, red, blue.

Anger, rage, fear. 

No…not fear. Shame. 

"I will not leave you, Ilargia. No matter what happens, you'll stay by my side to the end of the world, just like you did before."

Red, blue, gold.

Anger, shame, hope. 

Self-loathing. The staff hated himself.

I felt something brush my mind. 

Blue, gold, green, gold, black, 

Conflict, confusion, hope, anger. 

Though the anger wasn't at me. 

"I will not leave you, my friend," I promised. "How could I? You and I fought together at the end of the world."

- You don't know that. You don't know what I did. What I was. The response. 

Blue, green. 

Fear. 

"I brought about the end of the world. There is nothing you could have done that is worse than that."

- I killed her. 

I blinked. "What?"

- Elra. I killed her. 

The staff fell to the earth, clattering loudly on the stone. 

The white stone that was sealed at the top of the staff floated a few feet above it. 

It began to shine. 

- I killed her, Lukas. She was my teacher, and I killed her. 

"How?"

The last thing I saw before it all went black was Ilargia, the stone, fly right at me. 

*

I stood in a grey space, no walls, no ceiling, just grey as far as the eye could see. 

Ilargia floated beside me, though he wasn't a stone. 

He was a man. An elf. Mortal.

"I was her first apprentice," Ilargia said. "And I fell to darkness."

Images flashed. I watched as Ilargia, then an elven child, sat in wonder as his master, an ancient elf, grey-haired, and wrinkled summoned a spirit before him. 

More images flashed, he grew quickly, and he was praised sincerely when he succeeded and punished harshly when he failed. 

The punishments far outnumbered the praise. 

I watched resentment build. 

I saw him finish his training. I watched him throw the old elf to the ground. I watched her smile brightly as she stood, and embraced him. He'd passed.

I watched him swear to never use magic again. 

I watched him leave, and wander the world, a vagrant, a husband, a farmer, a smith. He lived hundreds of years without ever so much as speaking to a spirit. 

I watched his village burn around him. 

I watched him reach for the spirits to save them. 

I watched him fail to summon enough to douse the fire. 

I watched him collapse into magical exhaustion. 

I saw him wake, days later. 

There were casualties, of course. His entire family numbered among them. 

I watched the resentment that had festered for hundreds of years begin to show itself. 

I watched him rage against his master. I watched him rage against the spirits. 

I watched him hate himself. 

I watched him miss his family. I watched him fall into despair. 

I watched an idea form in his head. 

I watched him reach for more power. He was going to bring them back. 

I watched him summon a spirit. And then another, and then another, and another. 

Nothing worked. 

They just didn't give him enough power to revive them. 

He knew they had it, they just held it back from him. 

He summoned another spirit. Pure, sweet, innocent, kind, gentle. 

And he directed his hate, his anger, his rage, his shame, his misery onto it. 

I watched the spirit break. 

I watched him fall. 

Time passed. I watched his village crack and decay. I watched the very ground beneath him writhe and die beneath his feet. I watched him twist and break into nothing more than a shell of his former self. 

He discarded spirit after spirit, but nothing worked. He could not bring the dead to life.

He could only raise them. 

Eventually, he stopped trying. 

If his family couldn't live, no one else could. And he would make sure of it. 

I watched him summon the dead in their hundreds, and turn them loose on the unsuspecting villages around him. 

I watched him revel in their screams. 

For decades he spread his darkness, he spread his anger, his hatred, until there was nothing left to kill. 

I watched him fall into himself. 

The only thing left that deserved death was himself. 

He raised his knife and drove it into his own heart. 

He didn't die. 

He couldn't die.

The Pale Queen wouldn't take him. 

No one would claim him. 

I watched him rage against the heavens in desperate misery. 

Time passed. 

I watched as spirithealer after spirithealer came against him. I watched him slay them, then raise them again, as servants. 

And then I watched him shiver. I watched him shudder. I watched him convulse. 

I watched him stare into the horizon. 

She had arrived. 

She had come to kill him. 

She had come to end his life. 

He shook and shuddered. 

The resentment began to surface. 

I watched him challenge her. 

I watched him fight her. 

I watched him overcome her. 

I watched her lose. 

I watched her fall to the earth. 

I watched him approach, dagger in hand. He was going to do it himself. He was going to savour it. 

I watched him plunge the dagger into his master. 

I watched her reach out for him. 

I watched her take him into her arms. 

I watched her speak to him. She whispered.

I heard the words. 

I wept at the words.

I watched his darkness rot and shake off of him. I watched him fall into the despair of the damned. 

I watched him convulse and wail at the body of his master. 

I watched him shake and shudder. 

I watched the ground around his master's body heal. I watched as three spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, took her body from him. 

I saw him quake in fear. 

I watched the spirits remove her soul from her. 

I watched as the Pale Queen appeared before them, and took the glowing spirit, the soul, into her arms. 

I watched her turn to Ilargia. 

I heard the words she said. 

I wept at the words. 

I watched her leave. 

I watched the spirits advance on Ilargia. I saw them raise him to the air. I saw them crush him. 

I saw them keep him alive as they tore him to shreds. 

I saw the broken, tattered, shattered weave they ripped from his skull. 

I watched them condense it, and condense it. I watched them purify and punish it. I watched them burn and destroy it. 

I watched them recreate it. 

I watched them raise his master's body. 

I watched it shrink. I watched it crystalise. I watched it turn into a white stone. 

I watch them put the broken, shattered, but gently glowing weave that was once Ilargia into the stone.

I watched as each of them cast a curse on the stone. I watched as each of them cast judgment on the stone. 

I watched as they took the stone, and discarded it in a grove of trees. 

I watched the trees embrace the stone.

I watched the spirits of the forest gather around the stone. 

I watched humans find the grove, and make their residence nearby.

I felt the stone wake. I watched the stone watch the residence.

I watched the residence become a village. 

I watched children explore the grove. 

I felt the stone's joy.

I watched the darkness become replaced with light. I watched the evil become good. I watched the hate turn to love.

I watched the black mage die. 

I watched Ilargia wake. 

I watched his birth rock the grove. 

I watched as three spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, lifted Ilargia, and study him. I watched them crack the stone. 

I watched them pull out the soul. 

I watched it glow as a sweet, kind, innocent, warm, joyful spirit. 

I watched the three spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful sing with joy. 

I watched them lift their curses. I watched them revoke their sentence. 

I watched them form an elven body. 

I watched Ilargia refuse the body. I watched Ilargia request to be returned to the stone. 

I watched the three spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, raise the stone, and return Ilargia to it. 

I watched the three spirits mighty, ancient, powerful, rejoice. A new spirit had been born. 

I watched the three spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, place Ilargia into the stone. 

I watched one of the spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful take a branch from his body and set Ilargia on top of it. 

I watched one of the spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, carve and smooth the staff. 

I watched one of the spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, take Ilargia in his arms, and return him to the forests of his birth. 

I watched one of the spirits, mighty, ancient, powerful, summon a mage, and give her charge over Ilargia. 

I watched the mage take Ilargia into her arms. 

I watched Ilargia shine. 

The grey faded, and I stood in darkness. 

Ilargia, the elf had faded, replaced by the gentle, kind, sweet, innocent soul that was Ilargia the spirit. 

There was silence. 

I reached out to the spirit and took him in my hands. I raised him to my lips, and uttered the words his master once said to him. 

And I willed myself awake.