The Ten Guardians: Sacrifice©

Chapter Eighteen: Meet Your Maker

“Izreea …” Colson paused, staring past her as he contemplated best to proceed. “I’m afraid Jonathan didn’t make it, or at least I think he didn’t make it. I’m not entirely sure what happened,” he said cautiously, aware that he was mixing bad news with uncertainties and unsure how to address one without the other.

“Just tell me what happened,” Izreea said plainly while biting back tears.

Colson’s reflective eyes met hers, and he cast aside his thoughtful stupor and firmly told her what happened.

“He was dying and tried to put himself into Drock, but it didn’t work. Then a glow seemed to come off his body and move into the wound on Jareth’s back just before he died. Then Jonathan’s body disappeared.”

Izreea looked down at her husband’s sleeping form, then dropped to her knees beside him, putting the scythes back on his body. She immediately scanned the wound again and found nothing had changed, there was still a glowing immobile piece of a stinger in his wound, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not get it to come out. She could not cast anything into his body at all.

Jareth suddenly rolled onto his back, his eyes wide. After a moment, he rushed to his feet, taking a few steps away from Izreea in a clear panic, his arms flung out to keep her away from him.

“Wait, wait, wh-what did you do?” he whispered quickly, but in a panic as if he was on the verge of losing himself. “WHAT DID YOU DO!” he screamed at the top of his lungs while bending forward, his entire body flexing as he bellowed.

Izreea thought he was screaming at her and had never spoken to her like this in the decades they had been married. The words stung, and she bit back shocked tears.

“I, I, was … o-o-o-only trying to help,” she stammered with shock and confusion.

Jareth did not hear her and continued to shout.

“NO! YOU CAN’T BE HERE! GET OUT! NOW!” He violently screamed as his face turned red and his arms thrashed about, grabbing the air and his clothing and ripping at his chest as if fighting an invisible foe inside him.

Then a change came over Jareth, and he dropped to his knees in the dirt as his internal struggle reached a breaking point. He threw back his head and howled in despair as his skin tone altered and his body began to change. His hair started to fall out in great clumps, his muscles became leaner, and his skin became taut against his thin muscles and bones. His fingernails grew to points, and the skin around his skull became slightly transparent. Finally, his eyes became a burning blue. They were not flames like a lich’s eyes but a bright, piercing, unnatural blue with tiny black points.

Jareth’s transformed body stood up, but he was standing several inches off the ground when he did. He was not floating up and down; he was simply standing in the air as if he was no longer grounded to the earth. He looked down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time, then all around him at the others in the group, and a wide smile spread across his face. The gaunt, stretched, transparent skin and piercing blue eyes made his smile look like a corpse’s.

“I’m alive! And I’m human again!” Jonathan’s voice exclaimed from Jareth’s mouth.

“Jonathan? How?” Myrum asked firmly, unconsciously running her hand over her axe blade, which she had picked up from the ground.

“Of course! It’s me! I was dying, and I felt Drock’s body luring me towards it, but when I reached his body, it was as if an echo of whatever had been luring me was no longer there. Then I felt it again coming from somewhere else, and I just rushed at it,” he said in a rush.

His echoing voice was a little difficult to follow, making you wait until the echo was finished before you could respond.

“Ha ha ha, this is amazing! Although I will miss flying, I am so happy to-”

“SILENCE!” Izreea commanded, her scythes held wide and glowing violently with her rage, their whiteness beginning to tinge with red as her anger and loss seethed into them.

“Izreea, it’s me!” Jonathan said with a tone of voice that made her sound as if she was missing that point somehow.

The dirt was beginning to lift into the air in a circle around Izreea as her anger mounted, her scythes red tinge deepening to the color of blood. Tears streamed down her face as the implications of what had just happened began to dawn on her.

“You turned Jareth, your brother, my husband, into a bloody revenant against his will so that you could stay alive, you selfish bastard!” Izreea said with quiet anger that promised terrible things to come.

“No, I didn’t,” Jonathan said, looking down at her as if she was an idiot for suggesting it. “He was not dead, and I am technically not possessing his body. I am inside something else ins-”

“Jonathan!” Colson interrupted firmly.

He turned in the air without taking a step to look at Colson, his mouth opening to speak, but was cut short when he saw what was next to Colson. Colson had opened a water flask and caused the liquid inside to hover like a perfectly flat sheet of water. The reflection on the water’s surface was crystal clear, and the sheet of water was angled perfectly to show Jonathan his own reflection.

Jonathan made no outward reaction to the image of his brother’s twisted and altered body that he was now controlling. He stood there staring at the image for a long time, not moving or saying a word. Then as the full realization of what he had done came upon him, he sat down on the invisible floor he was floating on and started to cry. No actual tears could come out of those eyes, but the emotion was real enough.

“I tried so hard, for so long … what have I done, what have I done,” he whispered between breaths.

Izreea struggled with her anger, with the situation, and with her loss. She felt on the verge of attacking Jonathan, wanting to purge him from the body he was controlling, even if it meant she would be burying a husband and a brother-in-law. Yet there were questions that she could not answer that held her back. She knew there was something unknown about what was happening here. Jareth was alive when Jonathan entered him, which was impossible for any revenant, not even seekers, at least as far as she understood. Then there was the mimic’s barb that she was fairly certain Jonathan was possessing, rather than her husband’s body, but how did that allow Jonathan to control Jareth so clearly against his will?

The brother’s shared body started to change as he sat there crying. The process that had made him appear to be a revenant started to reverse itself. His muscles grew back to their normal size, his skin thickened and relaxed, his nails returned to normal, and his eyes and face became Jareth once again. He was still sobbing into his hands with real tears now as he slowly sank back to the earth. The only thing that did not change back was his hair.

Jareth looked up at Izreea with regret and loss plastered all over his tear-soaked face, and she knew her husband was staring up at her, not Jonathan. Izreea dropped her now glowing white scythes onto the ground and rushed to embrace him. They sat on the ground, their arms intertwined, both confused and uncertain about the future.

“What am I? Am I some form of seeker now? Can we still have a child?” Jareth said softly into her hair and shoulder.

“Shhhhhh, not now, we’ll get answers,” Izreea said soothingly and with more tears of her own.

Colson and Myrum did not know what to say and were willing to stand silently until the couple was ready to move on with their journey. However, they began to notice something happening with Izreea’s scythes. The glowing scythes were still on the ground where Izreea had dropped them, and for some reason, Drock had stood up, walked over to the scythes, and stood over them, staring at them with his dead, lifeless eyes.

The scythes were on the ground in the fertile dirt, free of its suffocating blanket for the first time. Where the scythes touched, there were sprouts of grass and wildflowers beginning to grow. The shoots spread out from the scythes in two overlapping circles, expanding and growing as the vegetation spread. Colson and Myrum stepped onto the spreading grass and flowers as they came to them, and where they were standing was filled in as the sea of life continued to spread.

When the vegetation reached the bodies of the mimics, it seemed to ripple the ground, pushing the bodies ahead until they disappeared into the darkness.

Izreea and Jareth had been oblivious to what was happening until they were suddenly lifted off the ground by a hammock of vines and branches covered with soft leaves, suspended between two small trees as if cradled in their branches. The spreading vegetation stopped a pace from the circle of darkness around them, and a ring of trees began to grow, wide enough that you could walk between them unhindered but protective and peaceful in their circular symmetry.

Hundreds of blossoms were on each tree, and Izreea immediately recognized them as common dogwood trees. The bud in the center of the blossoms seemed to be pulling light from the orb floating in the air above them. Eventually, the orb was gone, and the hundreds of blossoms glowed brightly with power.

The aura of light from the blossoms was significantly brighter and purer than the orb Izreea had created, and it seemed to push against the darkness around the newly created grove. When the darkness gave way ever so slowly to the light, the circle of vegetation expanded just as slowly.

Then standing in the center of the grove was a creature made entirely of light. There was a majesty and perfection about the creature that felt godly, and indeed it was. The creature seemed to move as if looking around, then expanded and stretched as if it had been confined for a very long time and could finally move. After a moment, the light began to alter and change until a humanoid woman stood before them. It was apparent that the form the light took was not her true form and that she could have appeared as any race or creature of her choosing. She wore white, flowing robes with white hair that did not age her. Her eyes were bottomless pits of perfect blackness, and her skin was a deep green. The grass and flowers curled around her feet and legs as if bathing her in their scent. The trees in the outer circle groaned and creaked as they bent slightly, bowing their branches as much as stiff trees could in honor of the woman’s presence.

“Peace, my children, peace,” the woman said while holding a hand in the air.

Her voice was soft and gentle, yet held power as if her words alone could alter the world. The trees bent back to their normal position, and the light of the blossoms intensified as if to show their dedication to their purpose of pushing back the darkness.

Colson and Myrum had moved to stand next to the trees holding Izreea and Jareth in the air, uncertain of what was happening or what would happen next. The entity turned to face the four travelers and opened her mouth to speak when Drock bumped into her from behind.

“Oh, what have we here?” she said with a laugh as she turned around to find Drock standing next to her, content to simply stand there now that he had touched the source of magic he had been trying to reach.

“Oh my, that arrogant fool! No, no, this will never do,” she said heatedly while putting her hand on Drock’s shoulder. “You have been created by one who has no business creating anything without my involvement, as creating life is my stewardship on this globe. You seek completion and purpose, like all life in this world. This is why you seek out magic constantly, to find yourself.”

She touched the ethereal rope and tattered vestment, and they dissolved into dust at her touch. She had the coin purse tied to the end of the rope in her hand as she turned to the rest of the group. The bag floated to their packs on the ground, which had been hastily discarded when their battle with the mimics had begun.

With a wave of her hand, the two trees in the center of the grove, whose only purpose appeared to be holding Izreea and Jonathan in the air, gently put the couple on their feet before they shrank into the ground as if they had never existed.

“I am unable to give him a soul as I did not create him, but the creature here will no longer seek sources of magic as a form of completion, and I have permanently shielded him from detection, so you no longer need the garments and rope he was tied to,” she said.

There was stunned silence from the group, then after a moment, Colson spoke.

“Thank you …” with a long pause and a flourish of his hand, indicating that he wished to know her name but did not want to be rude by asking her.

“I have several names, but the one I have always preferred was Life, as it signified the simplicity of my purpose,” she said with a smile as if she remembered something from long ago.

Izreea gasped and instantly fell to her knees, bowing her head to the earth. She had realized that this was the keeper of nature, creator of the wick, the source of all living things, the Guardian of Life.

“Mother,” she said reverently.

Myrum was beside her, her hand over her heart and eyes closed in reverence. Colson and Jareth exchanged a surprised look, then stared at Izreea and Myrum on the ground, unsure if they should follow their example.

“Arise, daughters. Please, I have been repressed by this darkness for millennia, alone … and I wish to look upon your faces,” Life said.

As the two came to their feet, Life turned her gaze on Colson and Jareth.

“Humans, my most chaotic, productive, and unpredictable creations. Your irreverence reminds me of your ancestor’s deeds which led to my death as a dragon. Thank you for freeing me,” she said with a warm smile, taking the sting off her remarks. “I wish I could speak with all of you for days on end, but I cannot control time like Ultaris, and you still have much to do to save him and this world. I will have words with each of you in turn before sending you to your desired destinations,” she said.

She walked up to Izreea and took her face in her hands, a warm smile of love and affection on her face, and began to speak. No one in the group could understand a word that was said. It was not in any known language; its purpose was to make the conversation private.

They spoke for several minutes like that, Izreea asking questions occasionally, also garbled and censored. At one point, Izreea started to cry, but she smiled and was excited as Life beamed at her warmly. Life put her hand on Izreea’s head as they spoke, and the white clump of hair on her scalp disappeared. Then with a final embrace, they were finished, and Izreea went to take her husband’s hand, a smile on her face. Then Colson was beckoned to approach the Guardian of Life.

Colson’s conversion was similar to Izreea’s in the fact that he asked some questions and seemed sincerely happy about something that he had been told, but in the end, he sat in silence while he was given a significant amount of instruction, much more than Izreea had been given. When Life was done speaking, he only nodded his head once before bowing low and kissing Life’s hand. He had learned his lesson from before on showing the proper respect.

Life motioned for Myrum to join her, and the kanidian strode forward until she stood next to the Guardian, looking down at her humanoid face with all her emotional walls in place. As they stared at each other for a moment, the others noticed a single speck of light appear from nowhere, and the speck of light floated into Life’s chest. The moment the speck of light touched her, she transformed until she stood eye to eye with Myrum as a female kanidian dressed all in white robes. Myrum’s emotional walls came crashing down as she let out a heart-wrenching cry of sorrow and lunged forward into the other kanidian’s arms.

No amount of censoring could conceal that this was Myrum’s mother, who somehow appeared using the body of Life as a proxy. Myrum sobbed into her mother’s shoulder as her mother whispered into her ear. What was said was unknown, but they embraced for quite some time before her mother pulled her away to cup her face as they said their final goodbyes. When they were finished, Life returned to her previous form as Myrum returned to her place beside Colson with a newfound peace in her heart.

Then it was Jareth’s turn to speak with the guardian. As he strode toward Life, an apple tree laden with ripe fruit and a trunk wrapped in grapevines blossomed in the center of the grove next to the adventurers. Alongside the tree was a wooden basin of pure water with several cups made entirely of wood.

“This will take some time. Please renew your strength,” Life said while gesturing to the fruit and water.

Besides Jareth, who had been refreshed recently by Izreea’s healing arts, the group was exhausted. They had fought two back-to-back battles, lost Jaya and Jonathan in one way or another, and were preparing to fight a possible third battle before the day was over. Some food and rest were a welcome sight indeed.

As the others ate, Life waved her hand once before her, and Jareth seemed to blur before their eyes. After a moment, it appeared that two of Jareth’s bodies were overlapping each other, then one separated and moved over until they were standing a few paces from each other. Both bodies were partially transparent, and the one on the right had a glow from its chest. The one with the glow immediately started to transform until the revenant form of Jareth was standing there to represent Jonathan.

The three of them began to converse, Life sometimes acting as a mediator, sometimes chiming in to offer advice for one or both of them. There were intermittent shouting and more than one outburst of anger, mostly from Jareth towards his brother, but in the end, they seemed to come to some semblance of an understanding. Jonathan’s body transformed back into the normal Jareth, and they embraced for a moment as brothers before becoming one body once again.

Jareth and Life spoke now without Jonathan’s physical presence, and they spoke for much longer than the three of them had spoken. This continued for some time until, eventually, Jareth bowed low, following Colson’s example by kissing her on the back of the hand. Jareth returned to his wife’s side, where he was handed some grapes and a wooden cup full of clear water.

Life beckoned towards the apple tree, and a second tree sprouted from the earth next to it. Then the two trees stretched their branches toward each other to form an arch. The arch continued to thicken and grow as Life addressed the group.

“The words I have had with each of you are yours to keep or share with your companions when appropriate. I leave that to your discretion. However, I must now give you some final information before sending you on your way. Pay attention, for our time, is short,” she said firmly.

“Between the loss of his memories and the loss of … me … the Guardian of Time made a horrible decision and tried to turn back the clock of this world to save me from my death as a dragon. With the help of two other guardians, I was able to stop him, but in turn, I was trapped in this dimension. I was imprisoned by the haze of death around me, that is to say, until I heard the sweet words of a dardwain, my most magical creation, calling to me while inside my prison.

“Ultaris, as you know him, is the result of my actions; a twisted, hardened creature focused entirely on resetting time for all of us, including myself, to the morning of my death. Once he is there, he will eradicate the entire human race to stop the few responsible for the battle that ended my life as a dragon. For obvious reasons, this … cannot … happen. Every human that has ever lived and everything they have ever accomplished will be wiped out, and the dragons, including myself, will continue to rule this world in our ignorance, oblivious of our forgotten purpose.

“The boy you know as ‘Sparrow’ is the key to all of this. Sparrow is everything inside of Ultaris that rejected the concept of resetting time and killing all humans. In other words, he is all the good left of my once mate. Ultaris intended to use this part of himself as a sacrifice to power his spell, hoping that the resetting of time would restore him as if he had never made the sacrifice.

“However, my actions interrupted him before he could complete the spell, and somehow he sent that part of himself to an unknown point in the future. He had no choice but to wait for his sacrifice to reappear to complete the spell.

“Now, the vessel here is also a part of this as he appeared at the same moment as Sparrow, but I honestly do not know what role he plays. I cannot imagine Ultaris would ever intentionally put himself into a human body, but maybe that was the best he could do under the circumstances, or maybe his purpose is entirely unrelated to possession. I do not know.

“I charge you with two tasks; keeping Sparrow out of the hands of any who would return him to Ultaris until he is ready to face him and discovering the reason Ultaris created this empty creature.”

She gestured to the newly formed gateway between the two apple trees. The gateway showed the image of a meadow with a slight rise to the ground twenty paces from the gate, which blocked the open expanse of the meadow. The group could see the mountains in the distance and the forest encircling the rest of the meadow.

“I leave you with my blessing,” Life said from behind them, but she was gone when they turned to face her.

Floating in the air where she had been standing were Izreea’s scythes, Myrum’s bow and now empty quiver, and Colson’s sword, all glowing a brilliant white. In front of Jareth, a glowing staff of white, polished wood was sticking out of the ground as if it had grown there.

After a moment, the glow around their weapons faded, revealing glowing green runes of power covering every part of their weapons. As the adventurers gingerly collected their weapons, they each had a private impression concerning their newly enhanced weapons.

Myrum was holding her unstrung bow and empty quiver and felt impressed to think of drawing the bow back. Instantly the bow was curved and taught with a bowstring appearing out of nowhere. The quiver of arrows was still empty, but when Myrum reached her hand towards the opening at the top, a green, rune-covered arrow began to materialize. The arrow became firmer the closer her hand was to it until it was completely whole by the time she touched it. As she drew her hand away without drawing the arrow, it dematerialized and was gone.

Colson was impressed to think of water as he held his sword out, and immediately the blade began to drip with the liquid. Knowing all the things he could do with an endless water supply, from consumption to weaponization, made him smile at the thoughtful gift.

Izreea was impressed to inspect the handle of her scythes and found a round, smooth stone lodged in the handle of each scythe directly next to where her thumb normally rested. Each stone had a matching green rune on it. She touched the stone on each scythe with her thumb and found it could spin if she pushed it to the side. As the stone rotated, a new rune was revealed, and the runes covering the scythes changed to match the color of the rune on the stone. There was green, white, red, and light blue, representing life, light, fire, and lightning.

Jareth had a single thought come into his mind as he inspected his perfectly shaped, rune-covered staff. The thought was “thorns.” He felt he knew what that meant without experimenting and nodded in satisfaction. Jareth felt Jonathan’s thoughts in his mind as if they were his own, something he would have to get used to for the time being.

“May I inspect the weapon, Jareth? I feel as if it will change when I touch it, but I am unsure how it will change,” Jonathan said.

One of the main topics that Jonathan and Jareth had discussed while in their conversation with Life was that Jonathan was a temporary guest in his brother’s body and must always ask permission before taking control, and even then, it should be in the rarest of circumstances. She had also taught Jareth how to repress his brother, just in case Jonathan ever forgot that he should only be a guest.

“Very well, go ahead,” Jareth said out loud, causing an odd look from Izreea as she could not hear Jonathan’s thoughts.

Jareth became the revenant version of himself that Jonathan could control almost instantly. The faster transformation was likely because Jareth wasn’t fighting to stop it as he had the first time. The staff in Jonathan’s hand turned black with deep blue runes covering it from end to end. As Jonathan’s thin hands wrapped around it, cool air began to emanate from the staff, and where it touched the ground, the grass froze in clumps of ice.

Jonathan was smiling when he looked up, and his eyes met Izreea’s disapproving face. She had accepted what had happened, but it did not mean she had to like it.

Jonathan’s face turned to regret at her gaze. “I truly am sorry, Izzy,” Jonathan said softly.

Using her pet name that only Jareth had ever called her sent chills up her spine. It was not a secretive name by any means, but it was not something Jonathan had ever called her before, and the implications made her stop breathing for a moment.

“I prefer ‘Green-eyed-Cow’ from you, actually,” Izreea said reproachfully, intending for him to see the change in his pet name for her since he had taken residence in her husband’s body.

Jonathan seemed to come to the same realization Izreea had about the pet name, and a confused look came upon his already dead-looking face. He immediately retracted his control over Jareth’s body. Jareth seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when he regained control of his body, leaning on the white and green staff as if he was tired from the transformation.

“He called you a green-eyed cow?” Jareth asked Izreea with no small amount of surprise in his voice.

“Well, not all at once. First one, and then the other, but I let him have it with the green-eyed thing, so it’s alright,” she responded with a smile.

“Good, he knows better. Also, I can see and hear everything he does when in control, and I assume it works both ways. I thought you should know,” he said.

The sound of a far-off explosion and the rumbling of the earth could be heard from the gateway, and the group knew it was time to go. They gathered all their belongings together, added some of the extremely rejuvenating fruit from the apple tree and its grapevine to their bags, then gathered around the gateway.

Drock was standing there as well of his own accord, looking around at the group as if he was seeing them for the first time, and then he spoke in a monotonous and lifeless voice.

“The great one gave me the ability to … process. I will follow the group. I will be unseen in battle and then follow the group again.”

Any attempts to ask questions or converse with him caused him to repeat much of the same information, usually broken up and in a different order from the first time he had said it. In the end, they gave up and simply told him to follow them, which caused him to repeat the information. Ignoring him seemed to be the only way to make him stop talking.

The group took one last look around the beautiful garden, which they could see was slowly spreading as it pushed the darkness back, then entered the portal to the meadow with their weapons in hand.