Excerpt from The Case of the Ghostly Runners and the Tall Man
Fear and Doubt
Everybody runs. One day panic sets in, a fire is set at your heels, and you run like a scared child, acting out of some primal back brain. It may be in your earliest days, in the summer of your life, or the very last day of your existence. But you run. Everybody runs.
Now it was Sandra's turn to run.
Nothing else was on her mind other than getting away as she ran through the city streets, her entire brain locked down in a fight or flight reaction. Panic, a racing urge to just get away, to run, to flee. As her legs charged forward, she gasped for a breath that never felt like it would come. She opened her mouth to scream, to say something, to let someone know what was happening, but no breath came and she could produce no sound. Despite how her chest heaved, it was as if there was no air to draw, as if she was running through an endless vacuum. She was a breathless mute as she rushed down the streets, just trying to get away from that awful place and the evil that must be following.
Her mad dash happened at night, but not so late that the streets were empty. As she made her panicked escape, she passed a lone person or two walking along the sidewalk, firmly entrenched in their own lives, not knowing the horror that made Sandra run. She did not stop - she could not stop - to try to gain their assistance. None of them tried to help her, their faces just a frozen shock as she ran past them. Despite her inability to stop running, she hated all of them for not helping her. The fear that ran through her was electric and unrelenting, a monkey on her back cruelly whipping her to keep running, to gain speed with every second, taunting her with suggestions of what waited for her if she faltered for even a moment.
Despite the lack of help from others, she did not stop trying to get their attention as she raced by them. Please, she mouthed as she ran toward a man on the street, who paused in checking his phone to stare at her in shock. But once again her hopes were dashed when he didn't help. His jaw dropped as she ran toward him, and while he spun around as she passed by him, he did not say anything or try to catch up with her.
Why isn't anyone helping? she gasped noiselessly as she pressed on, unaware of why people were shocked and staring. She was oblivious to the fact that she appeared to be trailing smoke and steam. She had no idea that the very substance of her being was trailing off her. As she ran, her form became more and more wispy. She was slowly fading away, becoming more transparent with every moment.
She knew none of this, only panic, only fear, only the urge to run fast and run far. She risked a turn of her head behind her, looking to see if she was being pursued and simultaneously not wanting to actually see what might be following her. Had she made it far enough away? Was she safe? Would she ever be safe?
But in turning to look back, she had failed to see the fate that was in front of her. As her head returned to the pavement in front of her, the end reached her. From an alley stepped out a dark figure. This one was different from all the others she had passed. But like all the others she did not stop, starting to veer off and run around this newcomer. But unlike the others she had passed, this was no mere onlooker, no shocked spectator.
This was the end of the road for her.
Sandra, like many others in the recent weeks in New Avalon, was a victim. Evil was festering in the city. Though it was too late for her, heroes were needed to stop this dark cloud over the city. But our heroes did not even know they were needed or that they were even ready. One such hero stood at the edge of the city the next day, questioning himself and his conviction while he simultaneously sought to meet with vastness. He wasn't thinking about saving the innocent, stopping an emerging evil, or becoming someone that others could pin their hopes on. This moment was about a sword that he was told he needed, that he was told he deserved. Heroes needed special weapons, or so the legends go. But Jake didn't yet feel like he was deserving to be part of a legend.
What is a hero? Is it a title or an identity? Can you call yourself that, or is it only through the eye of others that you get that name? Do you earn it by action or by intention? Must you succeed to be called that, or do you deserve it just by trying to do what you must?
Jake stood staring out onto the lake, feeling the whip of the wind and the roar of the waves. The air and the water seemed to block out the world, making him feel alone, even if he was on the edge of a major metropolitan city. This was a place where the land, the sky, and the lake all met. This was Poseidon's Reach, and here there was power. That was why he had come here. The power would boost his own and allow him to do alone what others had failed as a group.
With a deep breath, he reached out his hand toward the lake. It was more than a physical motion, it was a symbolic gesture. With both his arm and his mind, he tried to feel out the power and presence in the lake. With this, he would try to fulfill the next step in his obligations. But because he saw it as an obligation, he was less than certain. For all his steeled nerves and summoned conviction, he was more full of doubt than anything else. This didn't feel yet like his fight, his obligation, his war. He felt like a pretender more than anything. He did not especially feel like a soldier, much less a Champion.
In recent months, Jake had been introduced to a secret war within the city. Though some days it seemed like a fantastic dream, it was a war for the fate of the city and possibly the world. It was the forces of Light versus those of Darkness, but it seemed hokey to even call it that. But it was anything other than hokey or a dream, as he joined this war with very serious stakes. It started when Jake's not-quite-girlfriend Melody had been murdered in his apartment, just minutes before he arrived home. This started a sequence of events that led to Jake finding the killer and stopping a monstrous madman named Redjack who was performing an evil ritual to get the edge in this war. While things had been quiet since then, the war was far from over. And for Jake, the most important thing for him to focus on next in the war was the sword.
A Champion needs his sword, and Jake was very much his side's champion. He had been told the sword was the next step, the next piece of the Champion's regalia. While the necklace was a badge of office, a hidden power, it wasn't directly useful. It was only a key and had some defensive power. It was latent power. The sword was the solidification of a Champion's power. It was action, it was decision, it was protection and destruction. It would allow Jake to go on the offensive.
Or so Jake had been told. And he had been told by his dreams, something many would call him insane or deluded for listening to. But his dreams were far different than most people's. Deep in Jake's mind were weeks' worth of buried memories in which Melody had instructed him on exactly what the war was about, what he needed to do, and how to be a Champion. Those memories had been sealed away, but when they were finally unlocked, they came back in a flood all at once. Without real context or sequence, they were disorganized and chaotic, difficult to even place into order. But worse than all that, they were strangely insistent, the memories seeming to have a will of their own. They clogged his dreams and idle hours, Melody sometimes appearing to comment on his current circumstances with pieces of old conversations, as if there was an intelligence behind them other than Jake's.
The next step was the sword. Dream Melody seemed clear about that, just as her memories reiterated that she was his Guide, the one who would lead him to victory. Of course, she was now dead and guiding him through recovered memories, so Jake wondered when her whisperings would stop being relevant. Unfortunately, so far she seemed to have accounted for every situation, enough to nag him in both his dreams and waking hours.
Melody had tried to pull the sword. Before she died and before she was Jake's Guide, she had been the Champion. During a ritual within Jaffe Park, Melody and her allies had tried to draw the sword. But her enemies had been ready. In a mid-ritual ambush, the villain Redjack and his allies had disrupted the event, killing some of Melody's allies and scattering them. After this event, Melody had lost her nerve. When she met Jake, she had given him her responsibilities and made him the new Champion - without asking him first. That was something Jake remembered every day as Melody's phantom memories urged him ever onward in his role as Champion and soldier in this war.
The sword was powerful enough that the other side, the allies of darkness, would try to stop him from drawing it, as they had Melody. But after recent events, Jake knew that those enemies were scattered and broken. Theoretically he should be able to draw the sword without interference. So said Melody - though Jake was a little disturbed that her phantom seemed to understand this set of circumstances that had occurred after her death, as if she wasn't just a collection of memories, but somehow knew what was going on. Since her advice was still good, Jake didn't question this much yet, but it was something that sat in the back of his mind.
Despite his own allies and the amount of people in New Avalon, Jake stood on Poseidon's Reach alone. A popular spot for tourists when the weather was good, the Reach was a tiny strip of land where the river met the lake at the southeast side of New Avalon. To the north started the seedy docks of Riverside and to the west started the scenic boardwalk of Lakeside and Southend. A tiny peninsula of cobblestone encased by railing, Poseidon's Reach jutted out toward the center of the lake. It wasn't always named after an old god of the sea; once it was simply a scenic overlook. But decades ago Avalon artists had decided to add their own touch to a distinctive Avalon spot. One day a large fifteen foot tall statue of the Greek god Poseidon was found in the center of that peninsula. Standing in all his grandeur, this stone Poseidon stretched his arms out toward the lake, a trident held in one of his hands, his palm open in the other. The Avalon government of the time did not acknowledge the unauthorized art installation or deem it vandalism, choosing to ignore it. When the city government regime changed, the statue was already part of Avalon culture, and removing it would gain the ire of too many voters. And so this feature that many Avalon denizens were fond of became an official statue and the city devoted minor resources to maintaining it.
When the weather was nice, it was a place for doting lovers to meet, for secret and private conversations, or for children to look out upon the lake and pretend they were the great god of the sea. But when the weather was bad, it was a place of cold whipping winds and freezing froth. Even today, with the heat of summer coming on strong, the capricious nature of the Reach overwhelmed the season and kept the air cold and unfriendly. Because of this, Jake was the only one on the Reach, all other tourists kept away, the coat he had worn specifically for the winds whipping behind him.
His friends were not with him. Melody had counseled him that strength came in numbers - a message that Desdemona had shared, though Jake now questioned the advice of the latter. But Jake had come alone. It was a marriage of daring impatience and ill-stated compassion: his friends weren't yet available and he didn't want to risk their safety. And some doubting part inside Jake wasn't positive they would come if he called.
After the decisive battle at the Inferno Room where Redjack was defeated, Jake's friends were distant. None of them had known exactly what to think of what had happened there. Their sudden mentor and Melody's former Guide Desdemona had turned out not to be what they had expected, casting doubt on all her advice. Though Jake and his friends had retrieved Melody's (and now Jake's) necklace and stopped Redjack from proceeding in his ritual, they had also caused some collateral damage. The Inferno Room itself had burned down and there may have been causalities. Redjack, the beast-like man who was darkness's Champion had escaped. Jake hadn't been able to deliver the killing blow. Once defeated, the monstrous murderer had been far different than Jake had expected, looking like a sick patient of some hospital. Jake wasn't sure if he was glad to have not killed another human being in cold blood or if he regretted not defeating his foe and ending the war early.
If Jake, as the supposed Champion, had those concerns weighing on him, it was not surprising that his friends had their own crises of conscience. Eva and Anna had been subdued in their moods and enthusiasm for topics involving the Inferno Room, balancing both the successes and failures in their hearts. Thomas seemed his typical goofy self, but astute eyes could see there was a troubled element to his face when he thought nobody was looking. After the Inferno Room, Nathan hadn't shown up at their familiar meeting place, the Nightowl, for a week. But then he finally started showing up again, though he said nothing about the Inferno Room or what happened there for a long time. No one questioned the absence or the obvious reason for it. They had not wanted to talk about it.
And then a more insidious and time-consuming foe reared its head for all of them save Jake: final exams.
Since he was not enrolled in either Avalon University or Mourningside, Jake was free of finals, but his friends were all students and the semester had come to an end. And so his friends buried their heads in books, engaging in the twice per year honored tradition of trying to learn or relearn their entire semester's curriculum in the scant days before exams. It was the exams and their prep more than anything which kept his friends from joining Jake at Poseidon's Reach - or so Jake told himself. Jake was impatient and felt he was ready to draw the sword based on all he had learned from Melody's memory lessons. He didn't want to wait until after finals, so he went to the Reach alone. His friends had just finished their last exams, and a magical ritual seemed too much to ask even in the days after their tests. They wouldn't have time to run after a sword told to Jake by a phantom memory.
However, Jake had not even asked for their help. This part of his rationalization was less clear to him, a half formed feeling rather than anything he could explain if questioned. It was either doubt or fear. Was it that he wanted to do this alone and not be embarrassed if he failed? Or was he afraid that bringing his friends would have them die just like Melody's group?
The ritual could fail, that much was clear from Melody's teachings. Either from lack of power or lack of technique. That's not even counting the random effect of conditions unknown. Something could happen that neither him nor Melody had even thought of. That part bugged Jake. How do you prepare for an eventuality you can't even know about?
To draw his side's sword, Jake needed to be in a place with a strong energy attuned to the water element. Melody's group had used Jaffe Park where the energies were moderately strong but calm. As a group, they would have been able to shape that power and draw the sword. But Jake was alone in his attempt. So he came to Poseidon's Reach and felt the power. There was a strong water energy here, but it was volatile - very volatile. When he had stood in Jaffe Park, Jake had felt as if he stood above a placid pond. But here on the reach, he felt small and insignificant - like a mote of dust to be blown away in the wind.
"We've trained for this."
Jake looked to his right where a memory of Melody stood. The Melody that spoke to him existed through stitching up different parts of memories into a conversation. He still didn't quite understand how that worked. A quirk of the brain or something more supernatural?
"You wanted me to bring others," said Jake. "But I don't want to do that, no matter what you say. So I'm here alone. That's a little... scarier, I guess."
"The Champion is the essence of his side," recounted a different Melody memory, her image stuttering as it changed between Melody at two different points of time. "His allies bring strength, but the Champion is the unbreakable core. If the Champion can't succeed in his heart, he can't succeed even with powerful allies."
"I already knew I was the weakest link," said Jake with a grimace. "I don't need that reminder right now. Let me pretend to be better than I am."
"You can do this," said Melody with a faint smile. "I wouldn't have chosen you if you couldn't." Then she switched to a Melody from a different day, her arms jumping to a new position. "Now, just like I taught you."
Jake frowned but nodded. He already had enough hours arguing with the memories of a dead girl, he didn't want to get any more under his belt. He stretched out his arm again, just a single hand stretched out toward the lake, only half the gesture of the Poseidon statue behind him. He held it there for a moment, just focusing on seeing beyond his arm, letting something inside him unfold and sense. That was really all the direction he had gotten from Melody on this. She said it was "too intuitive for her to be specific", suggesting that "too much detail would muddy the waters." Which left Jake feeling more lost than prepared. With that vague direction, Jake reached out... and felt nothing. He was just holding his arm out as the wind whipped around him. He wasn't good at this. Why had Melody picked him in the first place?
"Once more, with feeling," smiled Melody.
Jake shook his head in exasperation, as if the shaking would disperse his previous effort like smoke. He relaxed his arm, taking a deep breath and trying to shove his doubts out of his mind, at least temporarily. When he felt ready enough, he stretched his arm out again. While in some part of his mind he expected the same failure, it was different. As he felt all his tendons stretch, the skin of his arm becoming tight, feeling every tiny sensation, this time he was stretching out more than an arm. His mind stretched out too, going farther than the extent of his skin. His mind touched what his fingers could not. His mind felt a light resistance, as if it had come into contact with an invisible mass. First it felt like turbulence, like reaching his hand into a rapidly flowing river. But he had learned from Melody to persist in his action, not letting himself be deterred. So he pushed farther, moving through the twisting and rolling sensations until he reached what was beyond.
It was not easy to push through. The turbulence felt endless, and Jake had begun to wonder if that was all there was, just endless turbulence. When his doubts rose again, he worried that he lacked the force of will to push all the way through, and this would be as far as he got. But before those doubts could ruin his concentration, the turbulence disappeared, as simple and easy as the parting of a curtain. And beyond that he felt something... something enormous.
Something flooded into Jake, filling up his body and his heart. He felt full of feeling, but it was very clear that this great emotion was not his own. It was like the lake itself on a good day - vast, nurturing, vaguely playful. But it was also clear that this was an intelligence, something as sentient as another person. As Melody had taught him, he addressed this presence.
"Hello to you, great... spirit," said Jake to it - no, he corrected himself, to her. It definitely felt feminine.
Jake felt a smile but did not see one. In feelings and images, but not words, he was greeted. The message was friendly, but sleepy, as if sent from a long distance away.
"Great spirit of Avalon, I come to you as a Champion," said Jake. Melody had drilled into him that he needed to be confident, but in front of this vast presence, he felt anything but. She also had suggested this hokey way of talking, but she said it was very demonstratively formal, so it showed off his commitment. Jake thought it only showed off his memorization skills and his ability to keep a straight face when awkward.
There was a sense of a yawn followed by some recognition - someone remembering a far off dream in the early waking hours. He was asked why he had come - then the next part was hard to understand. He was asked if he had not always been cared for by dreams. He wasn't sure if that was the right interpretation, but he was trying to make sense of feelings and images from an intelligence that was so alien to him.
Melody had counseled him that the presence didn't always make direct sense, though she had no personal knowledge of it to work from. Melody's own crusade as Champion hadn't gotten this far. What she knew of it, she knew from her own Guide. So her second hand advice was only this: push on and get to the things you need to ask.
"I have come to draw the sword that is mine by right," said Jake, a little less confidently than he wanted.
The images that returned questioned him calling it a right. He pieced together the next message: The means to decide this conflict have been given as boons, not as rights. He almost began to apologize for his presumptuousness before it continued. It spoke of balance - any gifts Jake received the other side might also claim.
He could have asked about that balance, about the sword, but Jake had a greater question.
"What is the conflict even about?" said Jake. He was going off script, but he felt in the dark. Melody's memories told him some things, but were frustratingly vague on others.
Images and feelings flashed in Jake's mind. A dream... the end of the world. The world ending dream was alien to the presence - inserted, but viral. And then came a strange question whose intent was clear, but the meaning muddied: Have you ever killed a dream before?
Jake didn't even know how to answer this. He didn't understand the question or the context. But he was also dwarfed by the massive alien presence that he needed to ask a favor of, so he wasn't going to say its response made no sense. So he said nothing for a long moment. But then he had the impression that the longer he waited, the sleepier the voice was getting, as if it was barely staying awake for the conversation. So he went back to his original line of questions.
"I have come to get the sword," said Jake, repeating himself.
The presence seemed to nod in acknowledgement. Then the turbulent lake waters seemed to part. Out of this gap came the image of a sword. Not a real weapon, but a shimmering semi-transparent image of one. A shaft of light seemed to fall right upon the sword. It glowed and almost seemed to hum. This sword?
"Yes!" said Jake in awe and joy.
The response sent back to him lacked his enthusiasm. It questioned why he wanted the sword. Why did he ask for it?
"What?" said Jake. "I need it... to win! To stop the other side! To beat them and defeat them completely! I can't win the fight without it!"
The light on the sword diminished and something about the presence seemed to pull back. There was disappointment mixed with negation. No. That came through clearly. Jake tried to understand the next tumble of feelings. It seemed to indicate that if his goal was solely violence, than this was not his sword. Then another strange thought: If that is your desire, then maybe you'd be better suited for theirs.
"I don't understand," said Jake.
Disappointment was relayed to him again. The transparent sword began to fade away, the lake tides flowing back together. The presence he was communicating with seemed to be drifting farther and farther away, as if descending into sleep. The conversation was over.
"But I need the sword!" said Jake. His words fell upon deaf ears, the presence falling deeper and deeper asleep. Of all the ways this could fail, Melody hadn't prepared him for this one. What had he done wrong? What was he supposed to have done?
He was left alone, only the howl of the wind as it whipped past him, the failure and embarrassment of the act sticking to him in his mind.
Beside him, Melody's memory shrugged. "Maybe we need to try something else."
Jake rolled his eyes. After this failure, that was all he got in support? But he knew for all of Melody's apparent situation-appropriateness, she was essentially just a recording. A cleverly edited and adapted one, but still just a limited memory.
As Jake walked away from Poseidon's Reach, the wind whipping his curly hair in odd ways, he saw two figures leaning against a car not far from the Reach. Jake hadn't seen them at first, because they were parked just off the street. But they were in a position where they could easily have seen Jake and his attempt at the sword. In Jake's first conflict with Redjack and the Inferno Room, these men were a major problem, but Jake knew now they were essentially rule keepers, cops in the war of Light versus Dark. Jake didn't know if they were real people or something else, but they all dressed exactly the same and looked almost identical: black suits, black ties, black sunglasses. These were the so-called Keepers of the Sleep.
"Let me guess, I did something wrong," said Jake. He knew they only showed up for infractions of the rules, but Jake was in no mood to be afraid, so his words came out surly. "Because that would be just the perfect cap to this day. Are you going to take me away, or maybe rip me apart like Desdemona? Or do I get just a stern warning?"
One of the Keepers shook his head. "Nope, we were just here to observe."
"Observe what?" said Jake.
"To see if you could do it," said the other.
"And?" snapped Jake.
"We'll be here next time," said the first, with a casual, almost flippant shrug.
Then both Keepers got into their car and drove off as if Jake wasn't there, as if they hadn't just witnessed Jake fail to draw a supernatural sword. The drove off like they were going to get coffee.
Jake's phone jingled, telling him he had a text message. He looked down and read the text. He sighed. Maybe this would take his mind off things.
Nathan said they had a case.
Continued in The Case of the Ghostly Runners and the Tall Man available now!
Fear and Doubt
Everybody runs. One day panic sets in, a fire is set at your heels, and you run like a scared child, acting out of some primal back brain. It may be in your earliest days, in the summer of your life, or the very last day of your existence. But you run. Everybody runs.
Now it was Sandra's turn to run.
Nothing else was on her mind other than getting away as she ran through the city streets, her entire brain locked down in a fight or flight reaction. Panic, a racing urge to just get away, to run, to flee. As her legs charged forward, she gasped for a breath that never felt like it would come. She opened her mouth to scream, to say something, to let someone know what was happening, but no breath came and she could produce no sound. Despite how her chest heaved, it was as if there was no air to draw, as if she was running through an endless vacuum. She was a breathless mute as she rushed down the streets, just trying to get away from that awful place and the evil that must be following.
Her mad dash happened at night, but not so late that the streets were empty. As she made her panicked escape, she passed a lone person or two walking along the sidewalk, firmly entrenched in their own lives, not knowing the horror that made Sandra run. She did not stop - she could not stop - to try to gain their assistance. None of them tried to help her, their faces just a frozen shock as she ran past them. Despite her inability to stop running, she hated all of them for not helping her. The fear that ran through her was electric and unrelenting, a monkey on her back cruelly whipping her to keep running, to gain speed with every second, taunting her with suggestions of what waited for her if she faltered for even a moment.
Despite the lack of help from others, she did not stop trying to get their attention as she raced by them. Please, she mouthed as she ran toward a man on the street, who paused in checking his phone to stare at her in shock. But once again her hopes were dashed when he didn't help. His jaw dropped as she ran toward him, and while he spun around as she passed by him, he did not say anything or try to catch up with her.
Why isn't anyone helping? she gasped noiselessly as she pressed on, unaware of why people were shocked and staring. She was oblivious to the fact that she appeared to be trailing smoke and steam. She had no idea that the very substance of her being was trailing off her. As she ran, her form became more and more wispy. She was slowly fading away, becoming more transparent with every moment.
She knew none of this, only panic, only fear, only the urge to run fast and run far. She risked a turn of her head behind her, looking to see if she was being pursued and simultaneously not wanting to actually see what might be following her. Had she made it far enough away? Was she safe? Would she ever be safe?
But in turning to look back, she had failed to see the fate that was in front of her. As her head returned to the pavement in front of her, the end reached her. From an alley stepped out a dark figure. This one was different from all the others she had passed. But like all the others she did not stop, starting to veer off and run around this newcomer. But unlike the others she had passed, this was no mere onlooker, no shocked spectator.
This was the end of the road for her.
Sandra, like many others in the recent weeks in New Avalon, was a victim. Evil was festering in the city. Though it was too late for her, heroes were needed to stop this dark cloud over the city. But our heroes did not even know they were needed or that they were even ready. One such hero stood at the edge of the city the next day, questioning himself and his conviction while he simultaneously sought to meet with vastness. He wasn't thinking about saving the innocent, stopping an emerging evil, or becoming someone that others could pin their hopes on. This moment was about a sword that he was told he needed, that he was told he deserved. Heroes needed special weapons, or so the legends go. But Jake didn't yet feel like he was deserving to be part of a legend.
What is a hero? Is it a title or an identity? Can you call yourself that, or is it only through the eye of others that you get that name? Do you earn it by action or by intention? Must you succeed to be called that, or do you deserve it just by trying to do what you must?
Jake stood staring out onto the lake, feeling the whip of the wind and the roar of the waves. The air and the water seemed to block out the world, making him feel alone, even if he was on the edge of a major metropolitan city. This was a place where the land, the sky, and the lake all met. This was Poseidon's Reach, and here there was power. That was why he had come here. The power would boost his own and allow him to do alone what others had failed as a group.
With a deep breath, he reached out his hand toward the lake. It was more than a physical motion, it was a symbolic gesture. With both his arm and his mind, he tried to feel out the power and presence in the lake. With this, he would try to fulfill the next step in his obligations. But because he saw it as an obligation, he was less than certain. For all his steeled nerves and summoned conviction, he was more full of doubt than anything else. This didn't feel yet like his fight, his obligation, his war. He felt like a pretender more than anything. He did not especially feel like a soldier, much less a Champion.
In recent months, Jake had been introduced to a secret war within the city. Though some days it seemed like a fantastic dream, it was a war for the fate of the city and possibly the world. It was the forces of Light versus those of Darkness, but it seemed hokey to even call it that. But it was anything other than hokey or a dream, as he joined this war with very serious stakes. It started when Jake's not-quite-girlfriend Melody had been murdered in his apartment, just minutes before he arrived home. This started a sequence of events that led to Jake finding the killer and stopping a monstrous madman named Redjack who was performing an evil ritual to get the edge in this war. While things had been quiet since then, the war was far from over. And for Jake, the most important thing for him to focus on next in the war was the sword.
A Champion needs his sword, and Jake was very much his side's champion. He had been told the sword was the next step, the next piece of the Champion's regalia. While the necklace was a badge of office, a hidden power, it wasn't directly useful. It was only a key and had some defensive power. It was latent power. The sword was the solidification of a Champion's power. It was action, it was decision, it was protection and destruction. It would allow Jake to go on the offensive.
Or so Jake had been told. And he had been told by his dreams, something many would call him insane or deluded for listening to. But his dreams were far different than most people's. Deep in Jake's mind were weeks' worth of buried memories in which Melody had instructed him on exactly what the war was about, what he needed to do, and how to be a Champion. Those memories had been sealed away, but when they were finally unlocked, they came back in a flood all at once. Without real context or sequence, they were disorganized and chaotic, difficult to even place into order. But worse than all that, they were strangely insistent, the memories seeming to have a will of their own. They clogged his dreams and idle hours, Melody sometimes appearing to comment on his current circumstances with pieces of old conversations, as if there was an intelligence behind them other than Jake's.
The next step was the sword. Dream Melody seemed clear about that, just as her memories reiterated that she was his Guide, the one who would lead him to victory. Of course, she was now dead and guiding him through recovered memories, so Jake wondered when her whisperings would stop being relevant. Unfortunately, so far she seemed to have accounted for every situation, enough to nag him in both his dreams and waking hours.
Melody had tried to pull the sword. Before she died and before she was Jake's Guide, she had been the Champion. During a ritual within Jaffe Park, Melody and her allies had tried to draw the sword. But her enemies had been ready. In a mid-ritual ambush, the villain Redjack and his allies had disrupted the event, killing some of Melody's allies and scattering them. After this event, Melody had lost her nerve. When she met Jake, she had given him her responsibilities and made him the new Champion - without asking him first. That was something Jake remembered every day as Melody's phantom memories urged him ever onward in his role as Champion and soldier in this war.
The sword was powerful enough that the other side, the allies of darkness, would try to stop him from drawing it, as they had Melody. But after recent events, Jake knew that those enemies were scattered and broken. Theoretically he should be able to draw the sword without interference. So said Melody - though Jake was a little disturbed that her phantom seemed to understand this set of circumstances that had occurred after her death, as if she wasn't just a collection of memories, but somehow knew what was going on. Since her advice was still good, Jake didn't question this much yet, but it was something that sat in the back of his mind.
Despite his own allies and the amount of people in New Avalon, Jake stood on Poseidon's Reach alone. A popular spot for tourists when the weather was good, the Reach was a tiny strip of land where the river met the lake at the southeast side of New Avalon. To the north started the seedy docks of Riverside and to the west started the scenic boardwalk of Lakeside and Southend. A tiny peninsula of cobblestone encased by railing, Poseidon's Reach jutted out toward the center of the lake. It wasn't always named after an old god of the sea; once it was simply a scenic overlook. But decades ago Avalon artists had decided to add their own touch to a distinctive Avalon spot. One day a large fifteen foot tall statue of the Greek god Poseidon was found in the center of that peninsula. Standing in all his grandeur, this stone Poseidon stretched his arms out toward the lake, a trident held in one of his hands, his palm open in the other. The Avalon government of the time did not acknowledge the unauthorized art installation or deem it vandalism, choosing to ignore it. When the city government regime changed, the statue was already part of Avalon culture, and removing it would gain the ire of too many voters. And so this feature that many Avalon denizens were fond of became an official statue and the city devoted minor resources to maintaining it.
When the weather was nice, it was a place for doting lovers to meet, for secret and private conversations, or for children to look out upon the lake and pretend they were the great god of the sea. But when the weather was bad, it was a place of cold whipping winds and freezing froth. Even today, with the heat of summer coming on strong, the capricious nature of the Reach overwhelmed the season and kept the air cold and unfriendly. Because of this, Jake was the only one on the Reach, all other tourists kept away, the coat he had worn specifically for the winds whipping behind him.
His friends were not with him. Melody had counseled him that strength came in numbers - a message that Desdemona had shared, though Jake now questioned the advice of the latter. But Jake had come alone. It was a marriage of daring impatience and ill-stated compassion: his friends weren't yet available and he didn't want to risk their safety. And some doubting part inside Jake wasn't positive they would come if he called.
After the decisive battle at the Inferno Room where Redjack was defeated, Jake's friends were distant. None of them had known exactly what to think of what had happened there. Their sudden mentor and Melody's former Guide Desdemona had turned out not to be what they had expected, casting doubt on all her advice. Though Jake and his friends had retrieved Melody's (and now Jake's) necklace and stopped Redjack from proceeding in his ritual, they had also caused some collateral damage. The Inferno Room itself had burned down and there may have been causalities. Redjack, the beast-like man who was darkness's Champion had escaped. Jake hadn't been able to deliver the killing blow. Once defeated, the monstrous murderer had been far different than Jake had expected, looking like a sick patient of some hospital. Jake wasn't sure if he was glad to have not killed another human being in cold blood or if he regretted not defeating his foe and ending the war early.
If Jake, as the supposed Champion, had those concerns weighing on him, it was not surprising that his friends had their own crises of conscience. Eva and Anna had been subdued in their moods and enthusiasm for topics involving the Inferno Room, balancing both the successes and failures in their hearts. Thomas seemed his typical goofy self, but astute eyes could see there was a troubled element to his face when he thought nobody was looking. After the Inferno Room, Nathan hadn't shown up at their familiar meeting place, the Nightowl, for a week. But then he finally started showing up again, though he said nothing about the Inferno Room or what happened there for a long time. No one questioned the absence or the obvious reason for it. They had not wanted to talk about it.
And then a more insidious and time-consuming foe reared its head for all of them save Jake: final exams.
Since he was not enrolled in either Avalon University or Mourningside, Jake was free of finals, but his friends were all students and the semester had come to an end. And so his friends buried their heads in books, engaging in the twice per year honored tradition of trying to learn or relearn their entire semester's curriculum in the scant days before exams. It was the exams and their prep more than anything which kept his friends from joining Jake at Poseidon's Reach - or so Jake told himself. Jake was impatient and felt he was ready to draw the sword based on all he had learned from Melody's memory lessons. He didn't want to wait until after finals, so he went to the Reach alone. His friends had just finished their last exams, and a magical ritual seemed too much to ask even in the days after their tests. They wouldn't have time to run after a sword told to Jake by a phantom memory.
However, Jake had not even asked for their help. This part of his rationalization was less clear to him, a half formed feeling rather than anything he could explain if questioned. It was either doubt or fear. Was it that he wanted to do this alone and not be embarrassed if he failed? Or was he afraid that bringing his friends would have them die just like Melody's group?
The ritual could fail, that much was clear from Melody's teachings. Either from lack of power or lack of technique. That's not even counting the random effect of conditions unknown. Something could happen that neither him nor Melody had even thought of. That part bugged Jake. How do you prepare for an eventuality you can't even know about?
To draw his side's sword, Jake needed to be in a place with a strong energy attuned to the water element. Melody's group had used Jaffe Park where the energies were moderately strong but calm. As a group, they would have been able to shape that power and draw the sword. But Jake was alone in his attempt. So he came to Poseidon's Reach and felt the power. There was a strong water energy here, but it was volatile - very volatile. When he had stood in Jaffe Park, Jake had felt as if he stood above a placid pond. But here on the reach, he felt small and insignificant - like a mote of dust to be blown away in the wind.
"We've trained for this."
Jake looked to his right where a memory of Melody stood. The Melody that spoke to him existed through stitching up different parts of memories into a conversation. He still didn't quite understand how that worked. A quirk of the brain or something more supernatural?
"You wanted me to bring others," said Jake. "But I don't want to do that, no matter what you say. So I'm here alone. That's a little... scarier, I guess."
"The Champion is the essence of his side," recounted a different Melody memory, her image stuttering as it changed between Melody at two different points of time. "His allies bring strength, but the Champion is the unbreakable core. If the Champion can't succeed in his heart, he can't succeed even with powerful allies."
"I already knew I was the weakest link," said Jake with a grimace. "I don't need that reminder right now. Let me pretend to be better than I am."
"You can do this," said Melody with a faint smile. "I wouldn't have chosen you if you couldn't." Then she switched to a Melody from a different day, her arms jumping to a new position. "Now, just like I taught you."
Jake frowned but nodded. He already had enough hours arguing with the memories of a dead girl, he didn't want to get any more under his belt. He stretched out his arm again, just a single hand stretched out toward the lake, only half the gesture of the Poseidon statue behind him. He held it there for a moment, just focusing on seeing beyond his arm, letting something inside him unfold and sense. That was really all the direction he had gotten from Melody on this. She said it was "too intuitive for her to be specific", suggesting that "too much detail would muddy the waters." Which left Jake feeling more lost than prepared. With that vague direction, Jake reached out... and felt nothing. He was just holding his arm out as the wind whipped around him. He wasn't good at this. Why had Melody picked him in the first place?
"Once more, with feeling," smiled Melody.
Jake shook his head in exasperation, as if the shaking would disperse his previous effort like smoke. He relaxed his arm, taking a deep breath and trying to shove his doubts out of his mind, at least temporarily. When he felt ready enough, he stretched his arm out again. While in some part of his mind he expected the same failure, it was different. As he felt all his tendons stretch, the skin of his arm becoming tight, feeling every tiny sensation, this time he was stretching out more than an arm. His mind stretched out too, going farther than the extent of his skin. His mind touched what his fingers could not. His mind felt a light resistance, as if it had come into contact with an invisible mass. First it felt like turbulence, like reaching his hand into a rapidly flowing river. But he had learned from Melody to persist in his action, not letting himself be deterred. So he pushed farther, moving through the twisting and rolling sensations until he reached what was beyond.
It was not easy to push through. The turbulence felt endless, and Jake had begun to wonder if that was all there was, just endless turbulence. When his doubts rose again, he worried that he lacked the force of will to push all the way through, and this would be as far as he got. But before those doubts could ruin his concentration, the turbulence disappeared, as simple and easy as the parting of a curtain. And beyond that he felt something... something enormous.
Something flooded into Jake, filling up his body and his heart. He felt full of feeling, but it was very clear that this great emotion was not his own. It was like the lake itself on a good day - vast, nurturing, vaguely playful. But it was also clear that this was an intelligence, something as sentient as another person. As Melody had taught him, he addressed this presence.
"Hello to you, great... spirit," said Jake to it - no, he corrected himself, to her. It definitely felt feminine.
Jake felt a smile but did not see one. In feelings and images, but not words, he was greeted. The message was friendly, but sleepy, as if sent from a long distance away.
"Great spirit of Avalon, I come to you as a Champion," said Jake. Melody had drilled into him that he needed to be confident, but in front of this vast presence, he felt anything but. She also had suggested this hokey way of talking, but she said it was very demonstratively formal, so it showed off his commitment. Jake thought it only showed off his memorization skills and his ability to keep a straight face when awkward.
There was a sense of a yawn followed by some recognition - someone remembering a far off dream in the early waking hours. He was asked why he had come - then the next part was hard to understand. He was asked if he had not always been cared for by dreams. He wasn't sure if that was the right interpretation, but he was trying to make sense of feelings and images from an intelligence that was so alien to him.
Melody had counseled him that the presence didn't always make direct sense, though she had no personal knowledge of it to work from. Melody's own crusade as Champion hadn't gotten this far. What she knew of it, she knew from her own Guide. So her second hand advice was only this: push on and get to the things you need to ask.
"I have come to draw the sword that is mine by right," said Jake, a little less confidently than he wanted.
The images that returned questioned him calling it a right. He pieced together the next message: The means to decide this conflict have been given as boons, not as rights. He almost began to apologize for his presumptuousness before it continued. It spoke of balance - any gifts Jake received the other side might also claim.
He could have asked about that balance, about the sword, but Jake had a greater question.
"What is the conflict even about?" said Jake. He was going off script, but he felt in the dark. Melody's memories told him some things, but were frustratingly vague on others.
Images and feelings flashed in Jake's mind. A dream... the end of the world. The world ending dream was alien to the presence - inserted, but viral. And then came a strange question whose intent was clear, but the meaning muddied: Have you ever killed a dream before?
Jake didn't even know how to answer this. He didn't understand the question or the context. But he was also dwarfed by the massive alien presence that he needed to ask a favor of, so he wasn't going to say its response made no sense. So he said nothing for a long moment. But then he had the impression that the longer he waited, the sleepier the voice was getting, as if it was barely staying awake for the conversation. So he went back to his original line of questions.
"I have come to get the sword," said Jake, repeating himself.
The presence seemed to nod in acknowledgement. Then the turbulent lake waters seemed to part. Out of this gap came the image of a sword. Not a real weapon, but a shimmering semi-transparent image of one. A shaft of light seemed to fall right upon the sword. It glowed and almost seemed to hum. This sword?
"Yes!" said Jake in awe and joy.
The response sent back to him lacked his enthusiasm. It questioned why he wanted the sword. Why did he ask for it?
"What?" said Jake. "I need it... to win! To stop the other side! To beat them and defeat them completely! I can't win the fight without it!"
The light on the sword diminished and something about the presence seemed to pull back. There was disappointment mixed with negation. No. That came through clearly. Jake tried to understand the next tumble of feelings. It seemed to indicate that if his goal was solely violence, than this was not his sword. Then another strange thought: If that is your desire, then maybe you'd be better suited for theirs.
"I don't understand," said Jake.
Disappointment was relayed to him again. The transparent sword began to fade away, the lake tides flowing back together. The presence he was communicating with seemed to be drifting farther and farther away, as if descending into sleep. The conversation was over.
"But I need the sword!" said Jake. His words fell upon deaf ears, the presence falling deeper and deeper asleep. Of all the ways this could fail, Melody hadn't prepared him for this one. What had he done wrong? What was he supposed to have done?
He was left alone, only the howl of the wind as it whipped past him, the failure and embarrassment of the act sticking to him in his mind.
Beside him, Melody's memory shrugged. "Maybe we need to try something else."
Jake rolled his eyes. After this failure, that was all he got in support? But he knew for all of Melody's apparent situation-appropriateness, she was essentially just a recording. A cleverly edited and adapted one, but still just a limited memory.
As Jake walked away from Poseidon's Reach, the wind whipping his curly hair in odd ways, he saw two figures leaning against a car not far from the Reach. Jake hadn't seen them at first, because they were parked just off the street. But they were in a position where they could easily have seen Jake and his attempt at the sword. In Jake's first conflict with Redjack and the Inferno Room, these men were a major problem, but Jake knew now they were essentially rule keepers, cops in the war of Light versus Dark. Jake didn't know if they were real people or something else, but they all dressed exactly the same and looked almost identical: black suits, black ties, black sunglasses. These were the so-called Keepers of the Sleep.
"Let me guess, I did something wrong," said Jake. He knew they only showed up for infractions of the rules, but Jake was in no mood to be afraid, so his words came out surly. "Because that would be just the perfect cap to this day. Are you going to take me away, or maybe rip me apart like Desdemona? Or do I get just a stern warning?"
One of the Keepers shook his head. "Nope, we were just here to observe."
"Observe what?" said Jake.
"To see if you could do it," said the other.
"And?" snapped Jake.
"We'll be here next time," said the first, with a casual, almost flippant shrug.
Then both Keepers got into their car and drove off as if Jake wasn't there, as if they hadn't just witnessed Jake fail to draw a supernatural sword. The drove off like they were going to get coffee.
Jake's phone jingled, telling him he had a text message. He looked down and read the text. He sighed. Maybe this would take his mind off things.
Nathan said they had a case.
Continued in The Case of the Ghostly Runners and the Tall Man available now!
