Where Spirits Dwell

As the world spun into place Jiordano was met with the chilling feeling of steel pressing against his throat.

“Trespassers will rue the day they invade hall of Amrantos. Die now, or fear the wrath of Amiad,” said a disembodied voice as Jiordano’s eyes had yet to have his sight returned to him.

When the world exploded back around him in a dazzle of light, the first thing he saw was the long sword digging into his throat, and the masked man who held it. Just as the man’s words became comprehensible in his mind it was too late, the man was pulling back, tensing to thrust into the all two exposed bits of his body.

An angry flash of red pulsed from the man and Jiordano closed his eyes, too afraid to meet his fate head on. But as he paused for a few moments, he realized that his end was apparently not as nigh as he thought. Instead the masked man lay several feet away, crumpled on the ground, with Skylar, fully materialized, standing in front of him. It seemed she would always protect him, even though all he desired for was a little more strength, just to be less of a burden.

Even as he was thinking of his desire to protect himself two other masked men appeared down the hall they had been warped into. Buzzing red aura’s wrapped about them, they seemed encase the two men, yet were distinctly apart of them. That was the moment when Jiordano realized that this was a gift that he could both utilize, and control.

Skylar, they’re coming to attack us, he warned quickly through their telepathic bond.

Laughter echoed back to him, along with a simple, I know.

It seemed to armed men rushing towards them was a giveaway of an imminent threat. But still Skylar did nothing; she merely stood there, looking as serene and graceful as ever. Her ghostly presence was the only thing that emanated from her, a small chill that could only be felt when one paid attention. The distinct aura and color of the living that Jiordano was just beginning to see and understand didn’t shine from her, no matter how hard he looked. Even as he struggl-

A non-visible blast sent the two men reeling and crashing into the floor, in similar heaps as their previous masked counterpart. But even more replaced them. As soon as they fell more masked men spilled from the hall, too many to count and all was silent except the steady pitter pat of their feet running across the floor. It seemed their fate was to die here, as the angel’s power sent them to where they needed to be.

The stench of death filled his nostrils and crawled across his taste buds for a single horrifying second, then he was gone, his body sent through the same traveling experience he had been through just moments earlier. When he arrived in a dark room his eyes hadn’t fully adjusted to, Jiordano fell gasping and retching on the floor. The rotten, sense busting odor was now gone, but its effects still wracked his body. A foul memory he would not soon forget.

Now only one thought went through the youth whose life had changed so severely in the past few weeks. He had been a boy who had had no experience with magic, a boy who had scoffed at the necromancers and their supposed “power,” a boy who had merely followed the whims of an innkeeper, and his brutish wife. He was a boy whose life had been changed through one horror filled short cut down the alleys of Bedivere.

This boy thought, What have I gotten myself into?