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Y'Zark the Apprentice Ch. 1

By: rexfelis



In the year 13 of what has since come to be known as the Time of Return, when I was sixteen years of age, I went to market one summer day to sell a portion of the crop we had been harvesting the previous day. It always fell to my shoulders to go to the market and do the selling, since I was the oldest child. It was a task I enjoyed, since it was something different. 

Most of my time was spent working on my family's farm, and going to market allowed me to see a change of scenery, meet new people, and discover scarce news about the world around us.

Tarundale was only a few hours away by horse drawn cart, so it was far enough to make it inaccessible to someone as busy as myself, but close enough to be not terribly inconvenient to access if the need did arise. During the harvesting season, I would usually make three or four trips to market over the course of a lunar cycle, which was about how long it took our family as it was to harvest our entire crop. My father and mother and my two younger sisters and myself were the remains of the family that had started out a few members larger, and each of us had to put in some time in the fields each day.

The only exception was mother, who spent her entire day seeing to the needs of the rest of the family in other ways - cooking, cleaning the house, gathering eggs, feeding what livestock we had, and various other chores. Every last one of us was busy the day through.

So it was my pleasure to take these trips to Tarundale each week during harvest, even if I did have to get up and load the cart by myself at an ungodly early hour and then leave before even my father thought of awakening, which was yet a ways ahead of the sun's rise. The early morning air was quiet and still, and there were some pleasant mists here and there along the rutted road that led to the town. 

I had heard stories at a younger age that sometimes, those mists hid spirits unable to find peace in their eternal rest, who would seek out the living and in ways unthinkable cause them harm. Such was not my experience at that time, and I was glad to let the mists wash over me, feeling their faint droplets on my skin.

The air was still that morning, I remember well. Interesting that we never know what experiences of a mundane sort will stick with us, and sometimes not even why, but there are always those seemingly innocuous things we live through that do stick with us clearly for decades to come. 

The ride was not hurried, the horse I had taken walked at a good pace, and the creaking of the wagon distracted me so that it was easy to daydream in this rare period of otherwise idle existence.

And of what did I daydream? Times of old, as the stories told them, when there were wondrous things in the world. Times before the gods had turned their backs on the world, when magic still flourished, when creatures strange and frightful lurked in deep caves, and conquests for fame and glory still happened with regularity. 

I imagined myself alternately a warrior, a knight, a priest, a rogue and a master of wizardry. Of course I knew at best little of each of these, and so my fantastic voyages as each one could be but limited. Still, I reveled in them, for I wished to live a life of adventure myself, some day, instead of being just a farmer, as my father was. 

My father, Realgus, had been a wanderer in his youth, and I suspected that he might have been an adventurer, but he would never talk about it, or the limp he had every once in a while when the nights were especially cold and the air was very dry in the dead of winter. My mother told me once that his wound had been gotten defending her, but more than that she would not say. 

My father had made rare comment of displeasure when he thought he might have to hunt some wild animal causing our farm trouble. I knew that he kept a sword and dagger and a longbow hidden in the loft, but I never dared search for them. So my rare daydreams sometimes featured him, younger, off doing adventurous wonders, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. 

It was a good way to pass the time to market, and instead of seeming to take the two or three hours it actually took, the time was shortened to seem like just a few minutes. I arrived at the town gates, paid my entry fee of two silver pieces, waited for the guard to finish searching my wagon for illegal stuffs, and passed through to the town proper. From there it was a short ways to the market area, where I began to settle up my things. This trip, I was selling corn, as were several other farmers like me, but odd indeed was the sight that awaited my eyes when I shucked a few ears to put out for display. 

Instead of being the usual golden color, or even the white that sometimes appeared, and instead even of being the even rarer mixture of the two, my eyes beheld purple and blue streaks of some sort upon the kernels, making the ear look as though it were a flame of those colors! I stared at that first ear for a moment, then covered it up and tried another, and another, and yet another still, but they all were this way. What in the world was this?!

For a long moment, I was entirely uncertain what to do. Was this some sort of blight on the corn? Close examination revealed that indeed it was not; the kernels were each colored in such a way as to produce this undeniably beautiful pattern that so remarkably resembled blue and purple flames, leaving the tips of the ears their usual yellow color. I broke an ear in half, and examined the cob, but it was as usual. Pulling some of the oddly colored kernels from their places, I squeezed them between my fingers to see if perhaps they were some sort of rotten; they were not. Neither did they smell any differently than any other corn I had ever experienced before. 

After a moment I got up the courage to taste some of these kernels. The taste of this corn was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Sweet as honey, and yet with another altogether different sort of flavor that was absolutely stunningly delicious! 

It being that I had forgotten to eat before leaving the house, I quickly ate the ears I had shucked in my search for yellow corn, and upon observing my actions and the corn I was eating, an old woman inquired as to what was causing these oddities. I replied through a mouthful of crisp sweetness that I was eating breakfast. She laughed, but shucked an ear for her examination, and gasped as she saw it. It was so beautifully colored that it transfixed her for a moment, as it had me, and now I sincerely regretted eating such beautiful corn, but the taste was excellent, and I filled myself with it without the slightest loss of time.

As you can imagine, it was not long before word got out about this strangeness, and it was not long thereafter that I was having a hard time taking the money fast enough. The last couple of bushels, though, people began bidding on, and soon it seemed as though I would be rich before the day was through! 

It was not long before the entire market was present, and the mob drew the guard, who tried to break up their congregation, but there was to be none of that. In short order, the situation had gone completely out of control, and there ensued a riot, with people grabbing desperately for the corn and fighting tooth and nail for every ear! It was the best I could to to hide under the cart, and naturally the horse was frightened and ran off, but not too far, so that when the madness was over I could still see her aways off.

The scene was a strange one indeed. People had crushed and trampled many vendors' booths, and there were a few people too who had been trampled in the madness. Here and there were people nursing a black eye, or a bloody lip, and some worse than that. Corn husks littered the ground all around, along with cobs smeared with blue and purple. The baskets had been crushed underfoot. More and more guards were arriving, along with healers and the curious from other parts of the town, to ask the inevitable questions. And the crowd of people responsible for this madness stood as a group around the town well, seemingly without the slightest clue what was going on otherwise.

Order, such as it was, was restored when the Captain of the Guard arrived and demanded from a lieutenant some explanation. The lieutenant had to ask a sergeant to explain, and the sergeant demanded that a corporal explain. The corporal had in turn to defer to one of the foot guards who had witnessed the entire thing, and it wasn't too long before I was surrounded by these men in their armor and carrying steel weapons, asking very pointed questions of me. I was oddly unable to come to words, and they decided I was trafficking in some form of magic and arrested me.

It was not long before this very strange story was running wild in the rumor mils, and even the other prisoners were abuzz with it. They did not realize it was me of whom they spoke, and I was asked if I had heard various versions of the story. In this one, I was an assassin sent with poisoned corn to bring madness to the people of Tarundale; in that one, I was a wizard who's secret experiment had gone awry and I was trying to make a profit on the results. It was these wild stories that worried me the most, for either of those offenses would have my head removed.

In short order, I was brought before the Town Council and told to explain myself. I did my best to explain the situation as it had happened, but the council beset me with accusations based on the rumors I had heard and even some that I had not. Refuting these claims seemed hopeless, as the council members, who seemed to consist of many of the business owners in the town, were in an uproar as to what had happened, and understandably so: their peaceful town had been turned into a crazed mob who had destroyed hundreds of gold pieces worth of merchandise and killed three people, as well as injuring several more. Events like this simply did not happen in the walls of Tarundale, and they wanted to blame someone for this disturbance: me.

The next twenty or thirty minutes saw not so much of an interest in whether I was to blame or not, but how to punish this unbelievably heinous act of "unprovoked and sordid sorcery". Before long, everyone in the chamber was engaged in this dialogue, and I was the only one who had even the thought that perhaps I was not guilty. So intense was the debate as to what should be my punishment that I was able to slip out of the room and leave the building unnoticed. But outside, I was to bump into a man who would change my life forever.

To say I was startled would be an understatement; I thought I would die of it. And to say I bumped into him is not entirely accurate, either, since it was his Staff that I walked into. I had been looking to see if anyone was coming from the side of the building and did not see him standing right in front of me. Then again, perhaps that is how he wanted it. 

"And just who might you be?" asked this man, who was a good sight taller than myself, and who wore what I recognized as the robes that wizards of old were supposed to have worn. 

I could no more have remembered my name at that moment than I could have flapped my arms and flown. My mouth opened and closed, my lips moved, but there was nothing to say. He leaned down a bit and examined my face for a moment, eventually wiping something away from my chin, looking at it, and then asked me another question.

"Blue flame corn? Is that what you were eating? Indeed... and you do fit the rest of the descriptions as well, don't you?"

"B-b-b-blueflamecorn?" I blurted. Each second, there was a mob of prosecutors coming closer and closer to noticing my absence, and I wanted to be as far away as possible when they did. In an instant of realization, I concurred that such would be an appropriate name for what I had brought with me to market. He half laughed and half chuckled at my state of being. Then he asked me again, what was my name?

"Y-Y'Zark, sir," my mouth finally said before I could think. 

"Y'Zark?" he asked, quizzically. "Are you sure?"

"Yes!" I cried, as I looked behind me. "They'll be after me! I must escape! I didn't do anything!" I cried in desperation.

"Hmmm, blue flame corn, and you fit the description, but your name seems to be a bit off," he casually contemplated. "Are you known by any other names, perhaps, child?" 

My panic was growing by leaps and bounds, and my heart was pounding in my head and leaping into my throat. Again without thinking, I blurted out my mother's secret pet name for me when I was a bit younger. My focus was not even on him anymore, but on the door at the end of the hall I was trying to exit. 

"Aha!" he cried. "It is indeed you! Well, then, Y'Zark, take my hand and we shall be off."

At that moment, the sound of the discovery that I was not in the council chamber burst forth as the doors at the end of the hall spilled open with people looking for me. 

"There he is! Get him!" came the cry, and the rush was on.

Y'Zark the Apprentice Ch. 2



"No no, I've got him, you don't need to worry," said the man calmly. But the mob was mad with lust for blood, and they did not even hear him. He had not even raised his voice. I looked at them rushing toward me, and I looked at him, seemingly trying to reason with them. I looked again at them, and at him, and then my body made the call to run. But I found that I could not, for at that very instant, the world went dark and everything felt so odd, as though things were being turned inside out and back again, all at the same time. And then, in the blink of an eye, my body seemed to pop back to normal and I found myself staring intently at a stone wall in a tower of some sort. I almost fell over from trying to compensate for the residual sensation of being in movement.

It took a moment to sink in that I was looking at a stone wall where there had just been a mob of people about to attack me. And I felt so strange all over, as though I wasn't real somehow. My muscles seemed exhausted all at once, and they responded only as though I were immersed in some sort of very thick fluid. Shortly, this wore off, and I turned to look at him, but he was not there. I was in a round room made entirely of stone blocks about the size of my head, and which were uniformly a dark gray in color. The room appeared too big to have no ceiling supports of any kind, which made me instantly uneasy. Then I noticed that there was a stairway down and a door almost directly across from me on the wall, and he was standing near it, waiting.

"Well, come on!" said the man with a hint of impatience. I was at a loss for what to do, so I followed him. He led me down a corridor of some distance, which seemed to be lighted as had the circular room behind us, but now I took note of the source of the light, which seemed to be small globes of some sort, equidistant from one another, about every seventy paces. These globes were suspended just beneath the ceiling, but by what they were suspended I could not tell, since they seemed to hang there without support.

"Where are we? How did we get here?" came my predictable questions. "Soon enough," came his answer, one that would become all too familiar to me over the years.

We came to the end of the hall, and entered another circular room, this one having a spiral stairway in the center, going up. There were doors at various places on the outer wall around the stairway, and I realized that it was not a room, but a walkway around the staircase. There were five doors I could see. He motioned for me to follow him up the stairs, and I did. This was so strange, I was beginning to think I was in a dream.

Following him up the stairs was a lot slower of an affair than following him down the hall, since his old legs were not as used to the stress as mine were. After a bit, he mumbled something and tapped his Staff on the step, whereupon he rose into the air a few inches and floated along as though it were an everyday occurrence. For him it was, but I did not know that at the time. I was witnessing magic, real magic, for the first times, and I was awestruck. As thought the previous events of the day were not enough!

I followed his floating form up the stairs, around and around, past what must have been seven floors of the same design, some having more or fewer doors, but never another soul. I was getting a bit leg weary when we finally reached the top floor, or what I took to be the top floor, where we entered into a room, instead of the walkway around the staircase. The door here opened to him as he approached, without sound or gesture, as though some unseen servant anticipated him. The door was again of thick, rough hewn oak bound in dark thick bands of iron. On it's face was a series of symbols I was unfamiliar with.

Beyond the door, the floor was no longer of stone, but instead covered in a thick plush reddish-orange carpet upon the entire surface of it. The room housed a massive black stone desk, upon which were a variety of books in different colored bindings, mostly green, and some scrolls and other things here and there. Bookcases stuffed full with books and the occasional scroll flanked the desk on either side, and there were some piles of books along the edges of the desk here and there as well. A larger glowing globe hung suspended in the air over the desk, making it bright, and various things were hung on the wall - here what looked like a map, there a gigantic white wing feather, nearly as long as I was tall. Behind the desk was a window, which was closed, but there was enough light outside for me to know that it was either evening or stormy outside. A silent flash of lightning revealed the which of that. I waited for the thunder, but it never came.

My benefactor made his way around the desk, having settled himself to the carpet by now, and sat himself down in a very comfortable looking and extremely fancy kind of seat, comparable in many ways to a throne. I noticed how quiet it was in the room as rain began to pound at the window behind him and still no sound issued forth. He began looking at a rather large tome in front of him on his desk, and tracing the words with an old finger while mumbling what he read. 

"Ah, here we go," he said, tapping the page. Then he began reading.

"'You shall know The One by not only his personal effects, but by his circumstances as well. He shall be found guilty of many crimes without having been tried, and neither shall he be guilty; he shall be too young to have committed some of the accusations, and too unworldly to have committed most of the rest. They shall accuse him out of madness and fear. And the madness shall be brought to them by the ingestion of blue flame corn, which he shall have inadvertently brought to them, and to have eaten of, by The One himself. But he himself shall suffer no effect.

"'And there shall go out one of you to meet him, and gather him up, and he shall be saved from certain death thereby, being transported with the power of the Staff of Delrhynne to the abode, and there, these very words shall be read by that one unto The One, and he shall be made aware of his place.'" He paused momentarily, and then asked me, "Do you know where you are? Of course you don't, how silly of me to ask... well then let me make you aware of it. Heh. You, young man, are standing in the last bastion of living magic left in this world."

"What?" I replied incredulously. This had to be some sort of dream. Perhaps there were ghosts in the early morning mists after all, and this was how they attacked?

"It is as prophesied over a thousand years ago. 'There shall come a time when magic shall wane, and the world will be without wizards and empowered priests and monsters true, and the races shall run as one.' Aleptoc the Ancient, who was an elf."

"An elf? That's absurd, there are no elves. There is no such thing!" cried I. Exhaustion from my fright and stresses was taking it's toll on my mind, it seemed.

"'...though he will know naught of the elves' existence.'!" Cried the man, tracing his finger along a passage in the book.

"What are you talking about? What is going on?! I must awaken from this haunted dream at once!" 

"'And he shall cry out to his rescuer that his sight is dream, and that it be haunted.'!" he yelled out, then slamming the book closed. "You ARE The One! Y'Zark, it is so good to have found you, my boy, so good to have hope again. I know you are confused, and I shall make things right." He stood, and made his way around the desk again, grasped his Staff where he had left it leaning against the wall, and began his shuffling gait to the door. I followed. Once again on the stone floor, which now felt thoroughly and unpleasantly cold and unyielding through my meager footwear, he tapped the Staff on the stone once again and spoke a Word, and again he was hovering in the air, just a touch off the top of it, and began his gliding descent with me in tow.

I followed him through a different route than we had taken upon our arrival and we were not long until arriving at a doorway which was like the others, but a mite smaller, and it too opened as my benefactor of sorts approached. I realized that I did not know his name.

"Oh my boy, I do apologize for my manners. The brain's a bit fuzzied with age and excitement, you know. I am who was known long past as the mighty Yaaron the Great, but now, few people know of me. My existence, as yours has been, is something of a secret, for the benefit of the world at large." As he finished saying this, he glided through the door and up another spiral staircase, this one much smaller and more tightly wound. I followed.

"And you are a wizard, I can see, but scarcely do I believe my eyes at the things you do!" I replied. "I do not understand why I am here, or what I have to do with this prophecy of yours, or what happened this morning. What is this 'blue flame corn', and where does it come from, and why was I not struck mad by eating it as were the others?" I queried.

"'...though it shall not be his madness upon eating of the corn...' no, you alone remained unafflicted with the madness of the corn, didn't you? Tell me, how did it taste to you, then?" asked Yaaron.

"Well," I began, recalling the experience with wonderment. "It is a sort of mystery to look at, and it smells as corn, but upon tasting it, the whole mouth cries out for joy at it's sweetness, and... and..."

"And what? Out with it, my boy, out with it. We haven't got forever, you know," he said, as we rose once more. I noticed the walls were getting considerably closer to us as we arose to the top of this tower.

"There is another sort of flavor to it that I cannot describe, and it is fantastic in it's expression to the tongue, so that one cannot help but continue eating it until full, and then lament the fullness which stops you from eating more."

"Indeed, as has always been the rough description. Blue flame corn is a strange thing indeed. But useful, no doubt." came his thoughtful reply. 

Higher and higher we ascended, with no stop in sight. I began to grow a bit dizzy with the tight winding of the staircase.

"Useful?" I asked. "How is such a thing useful? And where does it come from?"

Now at this point gentle reader, you may be wondering, how does it come to pass that a sixteen year old farm boy speak in such an eloquent manner? Well it comes to pass because too many years have separated me from that boy, you see, and I no longer recall the exact cadence and particulars with which I surely spoke. So to make it easier for all to follow, I elected to write as I do now, instead of the slang and twang which were my habit then.

"Blue flame corn is a rare thing indeed, and it is so because it signals a strong shift in the magical balance of power in the earth, a shift toward greater strength. Since such shifts are rare, the resulting effects are rare. Different plants react to it differently. Corn, it seems, records some sort of picture in the kernels. We think it shows the proverbial 'flames of the power' rising up again. Did I say 'we'? Egad, I meant 'I'. After all, I am the last of 'us' aren't I?"

"Us who?" I asked. This was getting more and more confusing and fantastic by the moment.

"Us as in we who used to be the Last Council of Wizards, of whom I am all that remains. And as prophesied, it falls to me to pass on this great art before the Coming. But that is not for your thoughts just yet. In good time, in good time."

At last we arrived at the top of the spire, and my legs were aching. I was used to strenuous work, but climbing steps numbering in the hundreds and which seemed in the thousands was not something I was used to, and certain unaccustomed muscles made me aware of their complaints. I stood a moment and massaged them. Had I not been distracted with this confusion, I might have thought to ask a rest half way up.

The landing here at the top was small, barely enough space for two if they were hugging, so I remained on the second to top step. The door here was different from the others, being of dark gray, but shiny metal carved through with characters in some outlandish-looking foreign script. I could read not a single letter at that time, mind you, so it would not have mattered what language the writing was in. This door, which had no keyhole or handle, did not open at his approach; rather, he set his staff aside with a command of "Stay.", and wonder to my eyes, it stood upright without a hand to make it so, as he settled to the floor.

Now he searched his robes for something, and finding scraps of paper or bits of lint or some feathers or flowers long dried, he continued his search until his hand rested upon a key which was fashioned of a metal looking the exact same as the door, and carved likewise.

The key he showed to the door as though it were alive, and said aloud, "Open." And with that, the door swung open in obeyance, and we passed through it onto the walkway around the top of a minaret of such height above the ground that I was unable to look down. 

"This is the top of the tower, the highest man made point in the entire world," he began. "We are gazing across this word from an altitude such that you must look down to see the eagles fly, and some clouds may live below this height as well. Right now the sky is clear, and you see - "

"Wait a minute! The sky is clear! It was raining at the window of your office, and thundering and lightning! How is this?" I cried.

"Ahem, please don't interrupt, Y'Zark. Now then, as you can see, the clouds are gone, as I have commanded, and the world spreads out below us." I hazarded a gaze across the horizon, holding to the impossibly thin golden railing for dear life, though I was nowhere close to being compelled to fall. "This world, at one time, supported a great variety of things that now have vanished, and this is because the magic has waned such that only I am left to keep it's secrets alive. There were other races, elves and dwarves and gnomes and halflings and others, but these were tied to the magic in one way or another, and with it, they died out or transformed. Now what is left is the human race.

"And, too, went the other creatures that roamed the land, living in part through magic. Some fell, some of weal, some walking between, all magical in their way. Life since the magic waned has been very dull indeed, with little to break the monotony of daily life but perhaps stories of the old times, which have come to be nothing more than stories, and no longer the historical accounts they once were.

"The world is dying without magic, because magic is the force that sustains all things creative and new. Without it there is little else but stagnation in the world. How long has it been since there was some form of invention that made things easier in life, Y'Zark?"

I did not know, and promptly said so, as I gazed increasingly bravely at the earth and land below me. Off to my right, an ocean spread out, and crashed at what may have been high cliffs but for their apparent tininess to me. To the left there was desert, and in front of me, a forest like thin green carpeting across the land. Clouds floated by far below, small and wispy, and on occasion I did indeed see a bird on the wing as well, though it was only because they moved so and contrasted with their background that I detected them at all.

"You, though, were seen long ago, you are The One who will take the magic and bring it back to the land. You are the savior of the world in that way, Y'Zark, for without this force, we are all to die faster than we can make up for. The plants grow shorter and less every year, and the crops grow weaker. The ground has little to give after just one harvest, and fallow fields begin to outnumber fields of crops. Lifespans shrink. It is true! All because the magic - the force that empowers life and change - has shrunk from the world. But now you have been found, and I can pass along the secrets to you that you need to know in order to bring it back to the world."

Imagine my surprise at this! I was beyond confusion, almost purely numb with wonder. This new responsibility did not register in my mind for a long moment. 

"My natural life ended many years ago, Y'Zark. I live on through the power of magic, and my skill at gathering and mastering it. I am the last of all wizards, and without your help, not only will I pass on, but the entire world will as well. In the days when magic was here in strength, it would be a full five years that an apprentice would train before being granted official recognition of wizardly status, and then only be able to use simple magics. Time and magic are brothers, it was said, and to know the magic you must know time as well.

"It is as prophesied, though, and my time grows short. I do not have the time left in this world to teach you as I did all the others, for my life comes from the magic itself now, and that will be totally gone before I could finish my tutelage of you. So we must take an alternate course, you and I, and work together in a closer bond than student and master. It is expensive, this necessary action we must undertake, but it's expense is, hopefully, justified. There is no room for error on my part, and there is no room for error on your part. Soon, the fate of the world will rest squarely on your shoulders, my boy, though I would wish it could be otherwise. Fair well anyways, though, because I have faith in you, even though the prophecy no longer gazes into this time clearly."

This speech seemed to have wearied and saddened him, but he stood resolute regardless. I was growing increasingly worried, though, that he might be other than the madman I feared - hoped! - he was.

"Fetch me my Staff, Y'Zark," he said, and I turned to make it so. It was but a couple steps away, an easy jaunt, and but seconds later, my hand closed around it, and the last prophesied action came to pass. 



Y'Zark the Apprentice Ch. 3



My fright was terrible, falling, and unable to breathe except to exhale into this scream that had long ago stolen the last of my breath, and then ripped itself from me still. I felt myself powerless to it. Madness crept upon the edges of my mind, preparing to pounce and claim me completely in one fell swoop.

And then, just as suddenly, I found myself upon the ground, unhurt, and gulped huge breaths of air to fill a need that my lungs suddenly no longer knew. In a moment, I had come to my senses, shaken, but unhurt.  The ground was ashen gray, now, and no plant grew. The sky too was a graying blue, and it was as if the very life force had been ripped from the world and replaced with deadness. I saw Yaaron standing a ways off, and stood to make my way to him. The ground seemed to be covered in fine ash, which crunched softly underfoot.

"What... what goes on here?" I asked, none too sure of myself. Where have we come to be? What is this madness I am continually subjected to in your presence?!"

"Great spells require great amounts of magic, my boy," he said in a now ancient, half whispered voice as he turned to me. He seemed to have aged thirty years in that moment! "As I said before, the magic is what keeps the life, and I have drained this area almost completely of it's life to power the spell I have brought forth. But there is no time for talk now, we must be off."

Yaaron tried to walk toward me, but his form was too weak, and even his two legs and staff did not hold him steady. I rushed to catch him as he began to fall. So surprisingly light was he that I jerked him upright with enough force to jar him a bit.

"Careful! Careful. I have not passed on my secrets just yet," he scolded in a half whisper. I apologized. "I am light with my weakness, now, so take me on your back and carry me. I will not be able to walk or glide here."

I did so, and we were off. It felt odd to have this old man on my back, and odder still to have him there with such ease. He pointed the direction he wanted me to go, and I went that way. As far as the eye could see, there was light gray ash upon the ground, light and finely powdery, so that footprints were extremely obvious, and deep. In places, as we went, there were larger piles of it, and he seemed to mourn each of these as we passed, always saying in a single word what the pile of ash had been in life. Oak, ash tree, bear, horse, deer... At length we came upon a large expanse of what seemed to be gray pudding by it's look and consistency. 

"This was Crystalmist Lake," he intoned. His sadness grew more and more evident as we traveled. "Oh, what have I done? May the gods be merciful on my soul."

Skirting the edge of the new lake of mud, we continued on for quite a ways until I grew too weary to continue. I set Yaaron down. With his staff, he produced a bundle which he unwrapped, and as he did so it became a picnic blanket with a basket in the middle!

"There is still much power in the Staff," he said, "but we must conserve it. No fancy lodgings for us this night."

We ate and drank, the contents of the basket being something similar to a kind of sweet water and flat bread, but they were filling and refreshing, and we continued on. I do not know what distance we traveled that day, or the next, but it was into the third morning when I saw the first hint of anything that was not gray ashes. 

"Look!" I cried. In the distance was the burnt remains of a tree stump.

"We are approaching the edges of the area that was drained of life from my spell," he replied. 

"What was that spell for?" I asked. "I see no other effect than to have destroyed miles of land."

"The spell was to alter a few things about the world, my boy," came his saddened reply. "Not everything is visible to the naked eye, and even those things that are visible cannot be seen at too great of a distance. Just as you cannot know the happenings in many houses at the same time, you are limited in your perception of the world. Worry not, things are as they should be." 

After a moment, I heard him quietly say to himself, "So far." 



Y'Zark the Apprentice Ch. 4



Y'Zark the Apprentice, Chapter 4

As we continued out of the Dead Zone, which would come at another time to be known as the Great Ashen Desert, I found myself growing more and more weary. Finally, I called a halt. 

"Getting tired so soon?" he chided. His voice was different - I turned to look at him. "Yes indeed, as we come back to the magic, my spells of youth are taking effect once again." He smiled. "And of course, I can walk now. Just don't give me too many stairs, eh?"

Walking proved slow, though, so he once again glided while I continued to walk. The ground was no longer ash covered, and here and there grasses survived and green entered the landscape once again. Even the sky seemed healthier somehow. A few more hours trek we started seeing animals again, and trees, and I was gladdened to the point of tears. So desolate had the gray wastes been that I actually hugged the first tree with green leaves.

Presently, we were facing the outline of a great bear up ahead. It wandered out into our path, and then stood on it's hind legs watching us. We stopped, and respectfully waited for it to move on. It eyed us, sniffed the air, and then fell to it's paws and began to make it's way toward us. The distance was not great; perhaps a hundred yards, at most. I began to back away.

"Hold, Y'Zark, we have no reason to fear."

I was not sure what he was thinking that for, as the massive brown bear approached. But it struck me as odd, suddenly, that such a beast should be casually making it's way toward us, instead of ignoring us, or moving away - or attacking! But no, it seemed to be casually approaching, as though to speak with us. I waited, uneasily, but Yaaron simply stood in wait, leaning on his staff. 

In the span of a few moments, the bear had approached to within a stone's throw. It hesitated momentarily, sniffing the air again, and eyed us. My nervousness grew, until Yaaron spoke.

"Come on," he said to the bear, with characteristic impatience. "Get on with it. We haven't got all day, you know."

At this the bear cocked it's head to the side and squinted a bit, in an almost human gesture of question at his words. Then, before my eyes, that bear began to shift and change, until it was no longer a bear, but a man in robes like Yaaron's, but of patches of green and brown!

"What is it, then?" called Yaaron.

"I am Grazebuell, the druid of this land. You are traveling out of the area that has been destroyed in these last few days. Who are you, and what are you doing here? What knowledge have you of this destruction?" demanded the man-who-had-been-bear.

"I am Yaaron, and this is my apprentice, Y'Zark," began Yaaron. "I carry cargo precious to the world."

"Yaaron? Y'Zark? Precious cargo? Of what do you speak?" replied the druid, suspiciously.

"It is the Staff of Delrhynne," came Yaaron's reply.

The druid seemed to pause for a moment, and then turned his face a bit to the side and spoke quietly, as though to someone who we could not see. He never took his eyes off us. Then he came back to the conversation.

"The Staff of Delrhynne is no precious cargo to the world, old man. Make yourself clear."

"The Staff of Delrhynne is indeed precious cargo to the world, my good druid, because it is the last functioning Staff of Power. And with it, my apprentice is going to bring magic back into the world, in full force!" Yaaron was putting a good deal of theatrics into his speech, so that his drawing out the last two words almost made him fall over as he overextended his balance. I saw him start to fall, but he grasped the staff and it held steady while he righted himself.

"I do not believe you, old man. The Staff of Delrhynne is a mage's staff, and requires a wizard to operate it. Mages have long since vanished from this world. That much is common knowledge," 

"It is equally common knowledge that Empowered priests and druids are long since gone, but yet here you are, shifting to human from bear. Explain that, Grazebuell." Yaaron challenged.

After a moment's pause, and apparent consultation with some unseen entity, Grazebuell gave his reply.

"You said your name was Yaaron, then was it? Did you have an epithet, Yaaron?"

"Indeed, I did, when I was known. I was called Yaaron the Great. Not terribly original, but then one's epithets are rarely chosen, are they not?"

"Ah, Yaaron the Great." The lack of enthusiasm in the druid's voice was almost dripping with sarcasm. "Tell me, then, Yaaron the Great, in what year was the Staff of Delrhynne created, and by whom?"

"The Staff of Delrhynne," bellowed Yaaron with renewed vigor, "was created in the year 638 of the Second Era of Magic, when the elves were at their strongest upon the world. It was first ensorcelled by a wizard named K'zamus, who perished shortly thereafter in a magical battle. The staff was claimed by the victor, Mo'erill, and then sold in the markets of Caden to Gareal the Black Hearted, who used it more often than not to beat his apprentices. When those apprentices rose up against him and he was killed, the strongest of them, Hergraff, took the staff as his own, and gave it as a gift to an Empowered priestess, Kaliil, whom he met and fell in love with a few years later. She did not return his love, but he would not take the staff back, so she offered it to her church.

"From there the staff came to be part of a payment from that church to a druid in exchange for dealing with a problem the church was having with a creature known then as the sand shark, sometimes also known as the land shark, alternately known as the G'vuu-tarr by the orcs who lived in the forest of Therilm, where the creature was notably present. The druids ensorcelled the staff to greater power, giving it the ability to turn into a great living oak, which would defend the user. This creature would be better known to you by the name of 'trentenant', sometimes shortened to 'treant'.

"But the staff was lost when the Great Druid who carried it was taken by surprise by a black dragon in the year 716 SEM, and it was ingested along with him. Thus it's distinctive coloring. The magical acid of this dragon, one K'th'huuark'taeluna'strweryn'flaaretnyss by True name, commonly known as BlackShadow by the humanoid races, stripped most of the powers from the staff as it resisted corrosion in the dragon's stomach.

"It wasn't long thereafter that a large contingent of knights from Cadendale did battle with this very same beast, and were slaughtered to a man, but severely weakened it, so that the master thief Tuyundes was able to sneak into it's lair and finish the job with stealth, luck and a good bit of his most puissant poison. Tuyundes somehow managed to bring the dragon's body back to his secret hideout, where it was dissected and the parts sold far and wide for various uses. The staff was discovered in the dragon's stomach. It was washed, polished up, and sold for a ridiculously low sum to a man of little interest, who left it in an inn because he thought it was a normal staff and had no further use for it.

"From there, it was taken by an elf who took a fancy for it. That elf's name was Saeouthis, I believe, and he realized it was magical and was prompt to sell it to an elven wizard, who researched it's history and decided to enchant it to his own goals. Eleven years he worked to enchant it, and when it was finished, he gave it to the Queen of the elves at the time, Delrhynne.

"This is where the staff acquired it's current nomenclature, but it is not the end of the staff's history. Have I shown myself sufficiently knowledgeable to perhaps be who I say I am, or do you require further proof?"

After a moment of pause, the druid smiled. "What was the dragon's True Name, one more time?" he asked.

"K'th'huuark'taeluna'strweryn'flaaretnyss, of course." replied Yaaron, without the slightest hesitation or difficulty in pronouncing the monstrous name.

"Well met, then, Yaaron the Great, and-quite-the-story-teller-indeed, but I do not yet understand how it is that you come from the direction of the Destruction?"

"Ah, the Destruction. The Destruction was caused by the collapse of the magical forces binding the last Tower of Power together. Instead of exploding in a ball of energy, it seems to have been inverted somehow and simply absorbed the life forces of everything in a wide radius. We survived only because I possess this staff, and we had a moment's warning.

"However, if we are able to complete the task we have before us, that destruction will be undone, and your lands will once again know the True Life. You are familiar, I presume, with the so-called Oddysey of Kahlmunar? Or at least his Prophecies?"

"I have heard of the prophecies you speak of, but I have not read them. What importance are they to me?"

"They are of importance because this boy is the One who is come to fulfill them! And I am on my way to a place of safety where I can instruct him safely in what Art he needs to know for his journey ahead."

"This is the K'haal? HIM?!" said the druid with surprise.

"For someone who has not read the Prophecies, you seem to know a lot about them, don't you? Tell me, Grazebuell, how is that?" asked Yaaron, with more than a hint of suspicion in his voice.

"I know some lore of the topic." came Grazebuell's too-calm reply.

"More than some, I would say," came Yaaron's sarcastic reply. "The One is only called the 'Khaal' a single time through all seven hundred eighty three pages of the Prophecy, and yet you know and use this title, but expect me to believe that you have never read the pages? There are only two who would have reason to know the One by this name, and that would either make you one of them, or a minion of one of them. Which is it?"

"Hmmm, a good question, though one I do not see being answered anytime soon. I sense you are dishonest with me about how this destruction came to pass, and I will ask you once more to answer my question. If you do not, and do not answer me honestly, we are going to discover which of us is the better suited to battle. I think it was you who destroyed this area of my land, and I think you did it on purpose. If that is the case, you have committed blasphemy in the eyes of Sylvanus, to such a great extent that I must kill you or perish trying. What is the truth, old man? I grow impatient."

"You shift the conversation in an effort to avoid answering my question by countering with a question I have already answered. If you do not believe me, then use whatever means you have to find the truth yourself. I have little patience with pompous asses who play games when there is serious business to be taken care of." replied Yaaron.

Grazebuell's face flushed a deep, sickening purple with rage at having been spoken to thusly, and in his hand materialized a staff. He raised it up and struck the ground with it, shouting a Word, and the ground began to rumble. I found myself inexplicably pulled towards Yaaron by some unseen force, almost bodily lifed to fly over the ground at breakneck speed, and set beside him. Instantly, we were surrounded by a sphere of glowing light that flashed so brightly that I was forced to cover my eyes or be blinded. There was red, then orange, then yellow, then green, blue, indigo and violet, with the pattern repeating itself at short intervals. Each color flashed once and was gone, replaced by it's successor. Blinded by this light I could not see the goings-on around us, but I could still hear them and sense the rumblings.

Something came out of the ground, and I was trying to see what it was, but the light was too bright, though Yaaron seemed utterly unaffected by it. He simply stood waiting, as though for his opponent to throw himself upon a sword out of sheer stupidity. There was a strange sound, like huge amounts of earth being moved, almost dragged about, and Grazebuell shouted for whatever the creature was to kill us. There was a moment's pause, and the command was shouted again. Apparently this time, the beast advanced, but Yaaron commanded it to stop, and it must have by the shriek of rage that issued forth from Grazebuell. 

"Begone, Elemental of the Earth, your services are not needed here." stated Yaaron almost regally. I heard Grazebuell shouting in a strange language that tickled my ears and sent a furry feeling to the pit of my stomach. About that time, there was the sound of a great mass of earth being dumped on the ground. Grazebuell was shouting so hard that it was as though he was manic, and lost to his mania. 

"Grazebuell, your efforts against me will fail, one after another until your power is drained. Give up this foolishness and stand aside. I yet have no quarrel with you, but if you continue, I will change my mind. Be wise, as druids are supposed to be. Stand aside and let us pass. There is no time for this petty foolishness."

But Grazebuell did not stop his incantation, screaming like a madman the entire time. Remembering it, it's a positive wonder that anything came of his efforts, so corrupted were his pronunciations. I heard then the strange sound of liquid flames turning to cinders and ash as they fell from overhead, burning themselves up and everything else they came in contact with. But there was no effect on myself and my Master, for the flashing sphere held against the onslaught and the strange searing stuff which seemed amost to sing and tweet and mew as it burned up. The two most powerful attacks that he had to use defeated, Grazebuell completely lost his mind and rushed at us intent on skewering us on the end of the spear that had moments before been a staff. But when he tried to run through the sphere, it expanded into seven spheres, each of a unique color, none flashing, and instantly I was able to see again. Through the first he flew, shock written on his face. He seemed to be moving in slow motion now, and realizing his mistake in having rushed through the multicolored defenses Yaaron had erected, but yet could no more reverse the momentum of his body than he could fly without wings. 

I watched these proceedings, as they happened in this slow motion. He passed first through the red sphere, and pain took the expression of madness off his face. In another step, he made contact with the second sphere, and the expression on his face went beyond pain to unmistakable agony. He had begun to try to slow himself, but was carried through the second, orange sphere, into the green third sphere. Here his face contorted such that it was painful to look at him, knowing that the strain of his muscles against the total misery he was feeling must be coming close to pulling them from their anchorings on the bones. Yaaron stood there looking sad, but did not move or speak, as the druid continued his ever slowing traversal of the expanded sphere of defenses Yaaron had brought into being. But upon touching the fifth sphere, his agony, contorted as it was and showing through his entire body, was frozen as he went in the blink of an eye from flesh to a statue of marble. 

"It is sad to have had to watch that, but Grazebuell still retains his chance at life. The question now is, Y'Zark, what shall we do about yon beast?" queried my Master.

Being regained of my sight, I considered perhaps that the sphere would once again collapse onto itself and begin flashing so brightly that I would be blinded, but this did not happen, and I gazed about for what beast Yaaron had spoken of. I saw nothing.


"What beast? I see no beast." I replied.

"Reveal yourself, beast. You should not be here, and I see you plain as day. Reveal yourself, that my apprentice might gaze upon your countenance as well. And tell me, what is it you are doing here?" 

Yaaron seemed alarmingly calm to me as he said this. I kept looking around back and forth from the statue to the area out where Grazebuell had come running at us from. I saw a shimmering form begin to show in the air where there seemed to have been nothing before. The shimmering seemed at first of some sort of vibratory nature, and then as though I was watching some liquid wash off of the beast Yaaron had spoken to. The thing was not what I had expected; as the invisibility dissipated, it became apparent to me what beast we faced.



Y'Zark the Apprentice Ch. 5



Y'Zark the Apprentice, Chapter 5

I had never seen such a thing before, never heard of such a thing, so this creature was as if straight out of a nightmare to me at the time. It was at least twice my height, standing most of the height of a nearby tree, even stooped as it was. Impossibly scrawny, it's arms were far too long for it's body. Portions of it were devoid of flesh, and other parts had wrinkly or baggy skin... it's skull was horrendous in it's lack of proportion to the rest of it's body, huge, carrying four horns arranged almost as though it were wearing a crown. The only flesh there was the muscle that was responsible for closing the jaw. Dish sized orbits held only fiery points of brightness on a field of utter darkness. It seemed to be impossible that such a thing could exist, could stand on it's own, could move, never mind display the monumental strength that it would shortly, but it did.

It regarded us for a moment before taking a step forward. Yaaron seemed to be considering it, and I was growing nervous again. This was the stuff of nightmares and I had had enough of it. But where could I go? This multi-layered sphere might do something to me if I tried to exit it. Would it keep this thing out? I moved a little back away from the advancing beast, but there was not far to go. It stepped forward a couple of steps and then stopped, again considering.

"By what name are you known, fiend? I do not recognize your form." said Yaaron. The thing was silent for a moment, and then in my mind I could hear the response. It's "voice" was alien and ancient, a strange combination of wheezing, whining, and growling.

*My name is not of concern, little human. Your defenses will not last forever, and when they fall, I will clam the boy as my prize and be on my way. If you are cooperative and hand him over now, I will consider letting you die quickly. If you do not, I will take you with me, and spend a decade paining you in ways you cannot imagine before devouring your body and then drinking your soul. It would seem to be a simple choice. What say you?* replied the demon.

"My defenses will last long enough for me to return you to your pit for enough years that you will never threaten the likes of me or my apprentice again before time claims our souls first. It will be my pleasure to send you back whence you have come from, in a moment, but first, I must insist. What is it you are known as? My curiosity is bothering me, you understand. I have read extensively on demons and I have not seen your like mentioned anywhere."

*I will down your defenses, rip off your head and shit down your throat, human! Do as I command before I lose my patience!* cried the demon in a shrill mental voice. It advanced a couple more steps threateningly. Now I noticed the horrible claws it had at the ends of each arm as it raised these in a threatening manner.

Yaaron began a chant that produced an eery sensation through the pit of my stomach and made my skin tingle. Up went the volume, and down. Faster and slower, and the words twisted and turned and I wondered at his ability to pronouce them even as I forgot them as they landed on my ears, somehow.

The beast sent forth into our minds a cross between a scream and a growl and pointed at Yaaron. A black sparkling beam of anti-radiance shot forth, and the red sphere was destroyed. It laughed maniacally inside our heads. Yaaron's chant continued, his arms making passes in strange movements.

*Only six more layers to your defenses, human scum. Can you finish that spell in time to save yourself? Hahahahaha! I'll eat your liver as you watch!*

Again it pointed, and again the almost blinding anti-radiance sparkled blackly across the distance and the orange sphere disappeared with a pop. Yaaron's chanting continued still, his staff standing upright without his help while he worked the weaving of his magic. Somehow, without knowing how much longer the spell would require in casting time, I had the sinking feeling that he could not hope to finish it, and I realized that if he should fail, I would either have to do something or perish. But what to do?

Down went the yellow sphere, pop! Another ray from it's clawed finger and the green one died, pop! Pop, and the blue sphere was gone. Only two left... I was becoming frantic, terrified, my gut telling me to do something, anything, but I did not know what! I knew that running would be futile, but what was I to do against such a thing as this? Yaaron continued the chant, never speeding up his words, though I almost screamed for him to go faster, finish before we were doomed!

Pop, and the indigo sphere was gone, and it laughed maniacally again, somehow knowing that Yaaron still had several seconds of spell casting to work through before the first part of the spell would be in force. It knew the amount of time this spell required to be cast correctly, and it knew that it had plenty of time to bring down the last defense and devour us both. My gut screamed at me, "Do something!", but I was paralyzed, not knowing what it was I could do! It rasied it's hand one last time, and extended that claw-tipped finger. The laugh continued, perhaps more to distract Yaaron from his focus than anything else, but it unnerved me and just as the beam of radiance shot forth one last time, just as the violet sphere was struck, and time slowed to a crawl, I knew what action I needed to take.

The last pop was drawn out into a long sound. I found my feet knew my intentions and leapt to bring me forward to act on them. The sphere came down, leaving us with no defenses left. Just at that point, when it seemed as though there was no hope for us, with Yaaron continuing his spell, pronouncing each word with the exacting precision that it required, I reached my goal. My hands shot out and grabbed the Staff of Delrhynne, and as they closed upon it, I heard in my mind a scream of NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! from the demon. I could think of nothing but stopping the thing from taking further action, but I knew nothing of how to use the Staff. This did not matter, because as soon as I touched it, there shot forth a bolt of energy something like lightning, which passed through the thing and knocked it back a few steps. It screamed in pain and surprise, again inside our heads, and then the pain and surprise turned to insane indignant rage. 

It quickly recovered from the surprise I had brought forth from the staff, and started to rush forth to tear me apart for my insolence. I did not know how I had gotten the staff to produce that effect, so I sort of half pointed it, half shook it at the thing. A few feet away there appeared a huge disembodied hand, and this rushed forward to the forward rushing demon and interposed itself so that the demon was stopped in it's tracks. Another scream of rage in my mind was followed shortly by the thing shouting a Word and the hand popped out of existence. It seemed to move from standing still to full speed run instantly, and was almost upon us inside of a second.

Without thinking, I wildly swung the staff at the creature and missed. There was no time or space left for a second swing; I had blown it. Again that laugh came inside my head, now in high speed as it raised a huge clawed arm against the two of us as we stood there. Yaaron's spell was still being spoken and his gesticulations continued in just as unhurried a manner as he had begun them. I was amazed at his self control and focus, but I wanted to scream at him that his efforts were worthless and that he should run, now, even though I knew it was too late. We would feel the demon's searing claws rip us to shreds momentarily, and it would be no more than one more notch in it's proverbial belt. I felt this incredible sense of dullness, slowing down everything, making me feel hopeless. That clawed hand, so grotesque and skeletal, with flesh covering part of it and shining light through the bones of the rest, swung in slow motion as time seemed to shift speeds to very slow. Instead of seeing only an instantaneous blur, I watched the horrid hand carve an arc through the air towards Yaaron's left side in perfect clarity. Through the hopelessness, I still felt a strong desire to stop this from happening, to save Yaaron from this fate. Somehow I had come from being a scared farm boy to willing to throw myself in the path of destruction to save this man I barely knew, and suffer possibly eternal torment. 

And then, everything stopped. There was no sound, no motion, nothing. Yaaron had finished his incantation, and it took effect. The world was strange, unmoving. He turned to me, and without a word, took the staff from my hand. Then, taking my left hand in his right hand, he smiled, looked back at the demon, frozen just millimeters from having rended Yaaron to shreds, and stamped the staff on the ground. Again the sensation came that I was being pulled inside out and through a small hole. My vision was lost during this period of instant eternity. It began, and then halted, while I felt myself all twisted about. There was no change, yet I seemed incapable of pondering it in what seemed to me the span of a few minutes, and then as fast as it had started, I was returned to my normal sensation of myself and I stood in a corn field, with the sound of wind gently rustling the drying leaves on the stalks all around us.