The Ten Guardians: Sacrifice©
Chapter Seven: Daydreams
Sparrow was standing outside but could see nothing of the world around him. He could feel no wind and hear no sound, yet the sense of openness was overwhelming. He could feel the soft dirt below his feet, but as he gazed down, he could not see a surface beneath him, only a continuing nothingness as if a black fog was resting over the ground. He felt no fear and felt at home, but his home appeared dull and bland. There was no color around him, only a sense of dim lighting in a circle around his person, which faded into darkness as it receded from him. As he began walking forward with no apparent destination, the lighter gray stayed with him, parting the darkness as he walked. The darkness quickly closed in being him as he passed through it, not oppressive, yet secure in its shadowy form.
Sparrow had no idea where he was going and felt no sense of time as he walked. The nothingness seemed endless and ongoing, but he never felt out of place. He eventually found a bubble in the darkness, and before him was an inviting campfire. The mockery of fire gave no light, cast no shadows, the flames did not flicker and selfishly gave no warmth.
At first, he did not understand why this bothered him so much, especially since he felt so at home here. He did not feel oppressed or dismayed, nor did he feel lost or afraid. Yet the lack of warmth from the fire was a bother in his mind.
As Sparrow pondered his emotions on the lack of warmth from the fire, he realized that the purpose of a fire, to cause warmth and light, had not been fulfilled. This brought him to the conclusion that everything must have a purpose, the sun in the sky and the shadow on the ground … but what was his purpose? He was an entity without a source, a force without direction, and by all rights, he should be very bothered by this notion, yet he was not. He felt secure and at home, regardless of knowing he was no better than the imitation of a fire at his feet. A mockery of what he projected himself to be.
Sparrow sat down on a log by the fire. He could not see the log on which he sat, and the flame cast no shadow of the log, but he knew it was there all the same. He sat staring into those swirls of gray which gave no light … and he felt his mind unnaturally pulled towards the fire. He knew this was his place and felt safe, but he had difficulty pulling his eyes away from the false flames on which he gazed.
A man in tattered clothing with a noticeable limp on his left foot came from somewhere in the darkness behind Sparrow and sat on a log to his right. The man had long gray hair pulled back behind his head and held there with a leather cord. There was an eye patch over his left eye. Again, Sparrow could see no log, but he knew it was there. He sat with a straight back, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. He crossed his arms over his thin frame.
“What can you see, Sparrow?” the man asked.
Sparrow looked at him for a moment before replying. “My name is not Sparrow.” He had no idea who this man was, nor did he care.
Taking a different approach, the elderly stranger folded his hands in his lap and politely said, “My apologies, good sir. What shall I call you then?”
Sparrow did not wish to answer him, he did not know why he was here in the first place, but he supposed the man had asked politely.
“First, tell me how you came to be here?” Sparrow asked.
“I do not mean to add yet another unanswered question to our conversation, but how did you come to be in this place? It is very beautiful indeed, sir,” the man replied.
Looking around, Sparrow could see only the gray, the darker gray, and the false pretense of purpose manifested in a fire that gave no light or heat.
“Beautiful?” Sparrow asked.
“Oh, I’ sir, it’s quite beautiful indeed! I especially like the trees on the rolling hills out in the distance,” the man said as he pointed into the nothingness.
As he looked around, Sparrow felt a sense of loss at what he could not see. He could feel the comfort of it, he could sense its safety and presence, but there was no color or depth in his place. He knew it was a log, not a chair under which he sat, but his vision was restrained.
“Why was this my place? Did I even want it to be my place?” Sparrow thought to himself.
Then his mind returned to the last question the older man had asked. Sparrow repeated the question as if he did not trust the wording without trying it himself.
“How did I come to be here?”
There was a heavy silence in the air, yet Sparrow hardly noticed as he stared into the still gray flames of the fire. He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, supporting his head with his hands.
“I don’t know how I found it. I don’t even know how I got here,” Sparrow stated quietly.
The stranger was silent for a moment before he said, “If you cannot see it, you do not know how you found it … then do you even want it?”
Sparrow thought about it momentarily before saying, “I’m not sure … do you want this place?”
With suppressed eagerness and a visibly surprised look, the stranger said, “It is very beautiful here, sir. I would very much like to stay! Yes, I am asking your permission to remain.”
Sparrow truly didn’t know why he called this place home as he didn’t see what was beautiful about it. He could not see anything except this blasted fire in his face. It was so lifeless but so distracting at the same time. As Sparrow looked from the fire to the stranger’s face, he recognized the emotion of insane desire, quickly hidden as his one eye met his. Sounding as if he had all of the patience in the world, the stranger spoke.
“Let me show you something; it might help you decide.”
As he spoke, a box was suddenly sitting on a third invisible log off to the left. The box had a black border about an inch thick, but inside it, there appeared to be a flat sheet of black glass, but it was dark with no image on the other side to see. The stranger walked up to the sheet of glass and touched a spot on the upper corner, and white light emitted from the glass. With obviously powerful magic, he touched another spot next to the first, and the glass altered to contain the scenery of a forest.
Feeling satisfied with the image, the older man limped back to his log. On the flat glass, there was an image of rolling hills wrapped in leafy trees as far as the eye could see, and the sun was barely peeking over the edge of the horizon on its way to sleep. Green grass covered the hills beneath the trees, extending to the base of the trees. He could hear the sound of wind rustling the leaves and the chirp of birds, frogs, and insects droning in the trees, but the sound was projecting from the black box as if it was the source.
The image seemed to be from the perspective of where Sparrow was sitting and had the fullness of colors and life that was missing in the dull world around him. He could see the fire’s vibrant colors and flames located the same distance from the black box as he was to the dull gray imitation of a fire at his feet. He could also see five logs in a circle around the fire, including the one he was sitting on. The one directly to Sparrow’s right contained the stranger, sitting as he was now. There were two logs to his left, one with the black box and one empty. The remaining log was located on the right side of the stranger and contained Jareth.
In the image in front of Sparrow, Jareth was sitting with the colors of the fire flickering across his face, yet in the endless gray around Sparrow; he was nowhere to be found. Jareth was staring at the stranger with intense curiosity but said nothing.
The stranger finally spoke.
“Well, now that you can see the beauty of this place the way I see it, you see why I wish to remain here. I only imply that since you are unable to take advantage of the view yourself, it would be a shame for it to go to waste.”
Suddenly Jareth chimed in.
“Ask him what he will do with it, but remember he cannot lie in this room … although he is adept at twisting the truth. Also, ask him again how he got here, but don’t let him change the subject this time.”
His voice was emitting from the black box and had a hollow tone, but again the stranger noticed nothing about Jareth. It was as if he was beyond the stranger’s senses.
Turning back to the gray fire before him, Sparrow gazed into its colorless depths a moment before responding.
“What will you do with my place once it’s yours?”
“I wish to put a house here atop this hill so I can always enjoy the view. This way, your place … will become my home,” he responded.
“Ask him to remove his eyepatch!” Jareth said earnestly.
He was not yelling as of yet, but he seemed animated to intervene.
Sparrow was still staring into the colorless flame and barely heard him, and after a few moments, he did as he was requested.
“Take off your eye patch, and I will think about it.”
The stranger was silent and frozen for a few moments. He then quickly looked around to confirm they truly were alone. Supposedly satisfied with their seclusion, the stranger looked back to Sparrow.
“If you promise to give this place to me, I will take off my eye patch,” he said firmly.
Sparrow could hear the man speaking the words, but they seemed to slow down in his head. Everything was moving at such a sluggish pace that he could not keep up with his thoughts. He just wanted to be left alone. Vaguely out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jareth moving toward the glass.
“Do … you … promise?!” The stranger asked again in slow motion.
He was on his feet, appeared to be shouting, and probably repeating himself for some time, but Sparrow’s mind was too sluggish to understand. He was no longer the complacent, submissive old man he appeared to have been, and he was passionately screaming for the requested promise.
Sparrow’s resentfulness of being accosted in his own place slowly gave way to simply wanting to be left alone. If he made this promise, the stranger would leave him alone; he was sure of it, but something in the man’s excitement unnerved him, so he held his tongue.
Whether of his stubbornness or an internal suspicion about this stranger, Sparrow decided to deny the old man his request. Sparrow could not speak if he wanted to, but with great effort, he shook his head from left to right. As soon as he did so, the sluggishness started to recede. His mind cleared enough to realize he was on his hands and knees, staring intently into the false flames of the gray fire. He would have been concerned for his safety if the flames had been real. As it was, he still could not stop looking into its empty depths.
With a splash, Jareth dove through the glass of the black box and landed in front of Sparrow as a torrent of water, completely dousing the fire and shutting out all light. The moment the fire went out, everything vanished into nothingness. The logs, the fire, and the stranger. Sparrow fell to the ground as his log disappeared to find the soft grass had been replaced by the hidden dirt again, which was now wet.
Sparrow was soaking wet, and there was darkness all around him. Coughing and spluttering from the water, he regained his footing and looked around to see endless blackness. As he turned in a circle, he tried in vain to find some source of light in the distance or some indication of what he needed to do next.
After making a full turn, he heard the stranger’s voice in the back of his head.
“Do you promise?”
With his head clear of the influence of the fire, Sparrow recognized the old man as an intruder in his mind.
“Show yourself!” Sparrow demanded as he looked around for the source of the voice.
Suddenly a single red eye, half the size of a man and narrow and long like a cat, opened a few feet in front of him. The eye’s glow illuminated the right side of a snout covered in scales. The scales glistened in the brilliant red which shone from the single eye. A dull sliver of white light came from the creature’s other dead eye, barely visible in the darkness.
“Do you promise, Sarfice?” the voice intoned in his mind.
At first, Sparrow felt fear, but then he realized that this was his home, not the stranger’s, no matter his form. This place represents who he is and where his soul resides. As the old man said, it is beautiful, regardless of whether or not he could see that beauty … yet.
The reassurance of that single fact gave him the courage to stand up to this mighty beast. Taking a step towards the creature, Sparrow raised one open hand above his head and stretched it towards the beast. Taking his newfound courage to heart, he felt words coming to his lips of their own accord, words of some unknown language buried deep within the recesses of his forgotten past. He knew their meaning, and he knew their purpose, even if he had forgotten the language.
“Ultaris! Your trespasses will cease! I banish you from my body!” Sparrow shouted.
The tones from his mouth forming these words were harsh and guttural but brought images of authority and justice to his mind. Additionally, he felt a binding power to the words, as if they included arcane power to bend the will of the person being addressed.
As Sparrow spoke, the darkness around him seemed to bend outward from his body. The eye backed away quickly and silently, then lifted itself high above to stare down in hatred. The red light seemed to burn brighter with its fury, and as it glared down at him, the light glowed upon his skin. Sparrow took another step forward and was rewarded with the creature taking a step backward. Its heavy foot shook the ground below the beast, sending shock waves out in all directions, but the waves dissipated as they approached Sparrow, for they dared not touch the ground below his feet.
The beast spoke again in Sparrow’s mind with endless hatred and frustration. “We are one, Sarfice. No matter where I am, a part of me will always be in you.”
It was then that Sparrow recognized the creature that he had fought within himself when he stood on the auction block. Although he had no visual image to draw this conclusion, he knew with his entirety that this was the same monster.
“Not anymore,” Sparrow said as he took another step towards the beast, his body glowing with power as he prepared to cast the monster out bodily.
Suddenly the eye and the creature it belonged to disappeared, leaving Sparrow to his thoughts. He looked around to find Jareth standing beside him with a smile.
He looked down at Sparrow and put a hand on his shoulder, still smiling like a proud parent.
“Well done … Sarfice.”