The Spark

Chapter 5.1: The Run

"After I add the last ingredient, all you have to do is drip some of your blood and..."

"My blood?" My stomach turned. The whispering seemed to grow louder.

"Yes, yes, your blood! You have to drip it into the basin and say..."

Her words were cut short by that terrible layered scream. The darkness around us came alive with the sounds of snapping twigs and rattled breaths. Luna roared, and her glowing eyes vanished. A black shadow descended on her, and she was sucked into the press of trees.

A scream burst from my lips again.

-You're gonna die.

I was shuffling away then, trying to run, but the pain, oh the pain. It was as if I was carrying ten-pound boulders on my back, and I could do no more than crawl blindly in the dark like a newborn.

-You're gonna die.

"Finish it!" Luna cried, her words morphing into a scream. Something was scrambling right in front of me. My heart slammed against the ribcage, and I could have sworn I heard one of the bones in there crack.

-You're going to die.

The shuffling grew louder. The stench of rotten eggs was everywhere.

I rolled out of the way just as the source of the shuffling pounced, landing right where I'd been. I chocked on a cloud of dirt, and crawled away, till my fingers reached the bowl. Blood, blood, she said it needed my blood.

More screams pierced the air, followed by a flash of light. I shrieked, just as another explosion overtook the treetops. A thin film of orange spread right in front of me, encasing me like a cocoon. The nausea forced me to cough up dirt and phlegm. Behind the film was that terrible pair of black eyes from the convenience store. A woman. This one was a woman.

I tore the bandage from my arm, with a shriek of pain. Blood dripped into the basin from the deep gash on my forearm.

"Finish it!" Luna's roar was punctuated by a wet gurgle of desperation.

"How, how, what do I say, what do I SAY?!" I sputtered. The creature was shrieking again, its mouth twisting to form guttural words.

"Name! Your aunt's name!" Luna's voice was almost drowned out by another round of rasping screams.

"Mildred McNair, Mildred McNair, MILDRED MCNAIR!!"

Crack.

With a burst of light that ruffled the tree tops, four figures materialized in a blink of an eye, not ten feet from me. One of them seemed to be holding a lit firecracker in his hands. When he tossed it, I realized that it wasn't a firecracker at all, but a ball of pure fire. It hit the woman in front of my shield square in the chest, and her muddied clothes were engulfed.

She screamed her terrible scream. The fiery shield crumbled like a sandcastle. Then, mayhem ensued.

Spurts of light exploded everywhere, cutting through the darkness to illuminate the little clearing. I crawled madly away from the bowl, lifting my knees up to my chest to cover myself. Wind howled all around me, violently jostling the redwood branches. It took me a moment to recognize that the shapes above the canopy weren't branches, but birds, flying in mad circles, their chirps full of desperation.

Someone, a man, was shouting, trying to override yet another gale of layered screams coming from the trees. A branch collapsed mere feet from me, kicking up dirt and leaves.

Where was Luna?

Hands pawed at my flesh and I jerked back, my legs kicking furiously.

"Kahlan, Kahlan, it's me, it's me!" a plump, rounded face floated before me. It took me forever to recall who the owner of those whiskey brown eyes was.

"We have to go, now!" another voice, this time a woman, commanded. Her wild blonde hair billowed furiously on the wind as she stood behind aunt Millie.

"Not without the Guardian!" aunt Millie fired back, as another burst of light whizzed to our left.

There, a man was using a flamethrower to bathe the woman creature in a gale of ocher flames. Except there was no flamethrower and the jet was shooting directly from his fingers.

"I can't hold her!" he shouted, his hands quivering against the fire. "We have to go, now!"

"No, we cannot leave..." Aunt Millie shrieked, but her words died on her lips, as two shapes trotted from the tree line.

A redheaded boy dragged a body over to us, all the while shouting something in some gargling language. Terror bit into my flesh when I recognized that long, tanned face covered in a layer of dirt and grime.

"Hold onto me sweetpea, hold on!" Aunt Millie said, one of her arms going around me. The other seized the panting Luna by the wrist, pulling her close as the boy dropped her to the ground beside us. The man shooting the fire stopped and rushed over, sweat beading his olive skin.

A song of screams and terror sounded. The wind slapped the treetops furiously, and yet another branch broke off. The olive-skinned man halted in his tracks, the scream sending him into a shaking fit. The girl's fingers went into her hair, while the redheaded boy dropped down into a fetal position.

"Now Arcadia, now!" Aunt Millie commanded. The girl's face contorted in pain, and she appeared to be fighting against some invisible force vibrating within the screech. She roared and seized Aunt Millie by the shoulder. Two more shapes pounced from the trees-the creatures from the store opened their mouths to join their howls to their sister's. But their song was cut short when the world shattered like glass, and the forest vanished.