Rockstones Scene 4: Reality

 Charlotte tilted the glass of coffee over to pour it into the pottery cup made of braided flowers. She sighed as she eyes around, making sure Ian Foster was no longer around. She was caught yet again. The vords will surely punish her.

She let the sound of the pouring distract her, but she knew it was simply an illusion. She would be killed soon. She simply hoped her sacrifice was not in vain.

Charlotte gasped as she heard voices coming through the steel door which lead to the tables. It was the sound of Mungulas and Ian talking. She wanted to eavesdrop by pressing her ear by the door to understand what they were saying but decided against it. She did not have much time.

___

Jared lifted his fork to eat his potatoes. He glanced at Greg, who had his hands out over his food. “Right,” Jared cleared his throat as he let the awkward feeling sink in. “He’s blessing the Gods,” Jared said out loud.

“Only but the power of the one God,” Greg smiled. “It made the food. It needs to be thanked.”

Jared still didn’t get how that worked, why would this all-powerful force, if it existed, care about mortal humans? He let that slide though, he wasn’t concerned about that. He needed to focus on why he was here.

“I never understood how you could live like this, as a keeper,” Jared waved his hands around, allowing sparks of light to emanate through his hands. “Nobody taught me this, yet it drives me crazy. It drives me crazy.” Jared said with tears in his eyes.

Greg was silent. He tapped on the table as he thought. Suddenly Jared felt a vibration in his pocket. His phone was buzzing. He looked at it and saw who was calling. Jared’s heart pumped fast. After all this person had done, could she be trusted?

“Don’t pick it up,” Greg said suddenly.

“I know we can’t trust her.”

“No,” Greg shook his head. “We can, but she’s trying to reach us.”

“I don’t understand,” Jared bit his lip. He knew something strange would happen soon. It always was like that when Greg was around.

“Throw the phone,” he commanded.

“What?”

Greg jumped from his seat, flipping in the air. He grabbed the phone as he flipped backward, allowing his hands to spring out while his feet almost touched the ceiling. He grabbed the phone, and flipped again, reaching the top of the room and smashing the phone on the stylophone ceiling.

A flash of blue shot out around the room, and Greg started to fall down. Jared stopped him, breaking his fall. Jared started to fall back from the weight, but then he felt himself catch his fall, almost like a third foot had allowed him to retain his balance.

“That wasn’t you,” a recognizable voice said behind Jared.

“Charlotte? How?”

Greg got up from Jared’s feet and wiped his pants. “You used the cookie jar?” Greg asked Charlotte, out of breath.

Charlotte laughed. Jared was as confused as ever.

“No,” Charlotte said, “I used an earthenware mug.”

Charlotte looked at Jared. “Deneeta’s after you,” her face turned serious.

“Deneeta? Does she have to do with Urunk?”

Charlotte nodded slowly. “Urunk knows. I tried to help you, but I might have made this more dangerous for you.” Charlotte looked like was going to leave as she headed for the front door. Voices began to emanate from the roof as she did so.

“Wait!” Jared said he looked up. Blue flashes were coming from the ceiling where Greg smashed the phone. A sound that was like the bark of a dog rose from the blue light. Suddenly, a black mist descended from the light, heading towards them.

“The vords,” Charlotte yelled.

“They're looking for Jared!” Greg yelled.

Jared ran to the door, but the black mist went out between him and Charlotte. The mist split into five figures with white faces that had a shape of a mouth with jagged teeth descending from their lips. One of the figures opened its mouth. “A new leadership has taken place,” it spoke. “Deneeta is no longer in power.”

For some reason, this creature of black mist sounded … comforting. Perhaps now everything would be okay. If this creature, this vord, spoke the truth, maybe Urunk was not in power. Who would be though? Deneeta? Dorem? Whoever it was, perhaps that meant he would be able find some answers. Maybe this vord had answers.

“Go!” Charlotte told him, holding out her hand. The vord turned to face Charlotte, it snarled and opened it’s wide fangs. Jared tried to grab her hand, but the creatures fangs dug deep into Jared’s flesh.

Jared screamed and fell to the ground. The other four vords surrounded him, opening their mouths and swooping down to bit into his throat. Jared yelled and grabbed one vord. The vord yelled and it’s eyes glowed yellow. black powder shot out of it’s eyes, and Jared rolled over to avoid it, but he open his eyes to see more vords in front of him by his side.

“They’re everywhere,” Jared tried to say, but his voice was muffled over the black mist. The vord growled and tried to bit on Jared’s head, but somebody grabbed Jared and brought him to the door. It was Charlotte.

“Just stay calm,” she said. “Let me concentrate.”

“Kinda hard to do,” Jared said as two vords flew towards them.

“Do as she says,” Greg yelled. “The vords will try to attack us, but they can’t get far.”

“Why?” asked Jared.

The vords charged at Charlotte, who held up her hands. Somewhere a few feet away, a pipe burst from under the cabinets beneath the sink.

“Oh great,” muttered Jared.

The water didn’t flood the floor though, instead, it went towards Charlotte, formed a barrier around them. The vords hit the barrier. Water surrounded them. The water turned light blue, then green, the vords shreiked.

“Quick!” hissed Greg.

“Right,” Charlotte nodded. “Run,” she pointed to the door. They all ran to it, but no impact came. Instead they were surrounded by a bright white light which surrounded them all.

“Welcome to sparkwitz,” announced Greg.

___

The room was surrounded by bookshelves. Some where on the walls, others on the roof. The room was full of tables, lecterns and stools. Some tables where by the floor, others where floating a bit above the floors, forming three more vertical rows of desks.

On the first row from the floor, in one of spread out desks, was a green coach. It’s end protruded upwards and sometime downwards. Sometimes it was green, other times it was yellow. Either way, sitting on it was a man in orange scales. He had a snake curled around his arm, and a fish with three eyes and around a foot long, lay on his lap.

“Gruem,” Nova said as she rushed into the room. “It’s Ethan, I feel he needs us. He remembers us.”

Gruem looked at his wife. He moved his hand, and the snake left him. It swam off to a small gap in between the bookshelves. “Bleth, find me the Intellik Realm, Sodak Keem.” The fish squeaked and sawm around the bookshelves to fetch the lituriture.

“Nova, I wish you were right,” Gruem said as his wife swam up to the couch. The couch turned orange now.

“Ethan went off hunting that day, it was three years ago, wasn’t it?”

Gruem nodded.

“Then Forem told us the Urunk’s forces captured him. We never heard of him, he probably isn’t even alive.”

“There is hope,” said Nova.

Gruem laughed. He glanced behind him and saw the Bleth came back with the book in his hands. He nodded at Nova, who swam up to a desk on the top level, and snapped her fingers. A bag of stringy flowers appeared by the desk. Nova took some out and Bleth rushed towards Nova’s hands to eat it.

“Over here, there’s a chapter about extraction of elements. You know what that is Nova.”

Nova nodded, she swam down towards her husband. “When there is limitation in accessing powers from sparkwitz. But what does that have to do with vordish forces?”

“Whenever a spell is produced, elements are taken away from the land. They need to be replaced by our life force.”

“Yes,” Nova agreed. “Death is the response to magic, but every mortal deals with that.”

“Not Urunk.”

Nova paused. “Are you saying that Urunk extracted … no, it can’t be.”

A tear came from Gruems eyes. “I received word from the One that his body was found by the terriner land.”

Nova shook her head. “I felt him. You remember that you talked about how sparkwitz users can sometimes interact with lower levels of reality?”

“Yes,” Gruem nodded, “they can intercept signals from different realities. Including, ones higher then theirs. Which is why I’m not so certain our son is still with us.”

Gruem went closer to Nova and hugged her. “intercepting signals requires that you leave your body. Not much people can handle leaving a body and coming back.”