| | | | I was new to Marleybone, but still I had managed to get to one of the first instanced areas there. After getting my ticket from the dog-woman Amy Castleton at the ticket counter, I headed to the entrance of the Ironworks. “Rowan!” I shouted to my sister across the Spiral using whisper chat, “Come here! Since I helped you with the Ironworks, you promised you’d help me.”
It took a while for her to answer, but finally I heard a sigh and she said, “I’m coming.”
I didn’t know much about the Ironworks, mostly because I had never been there. I just hoped it wouldn’t be too hard. To reduce that chance, I wanted to take as many people as possible.
I then wondered who else I should bring. I had asked Liam, since I was trying to get to know him better because he was a Seeker, but he was busy. I also asked Seth, but for some reason he wouldn’t answer me. Hunter said that he was battling Sydney in the duel arena, and Jasmine was in a boss fight. Even Mark was engaged in a against some strange MooShu monster that I had never heard of. The only one left that was available was Victoria.
I could only hope that she was a higher level than I last left her. An Apprentice wouldn’t be much help in a Marleybone level.
I let out a sigh of relief when Victoria turned up in Adept clothes. She had leveled up a lot more since last time.
The Ironworks turned out to be extremely easy. I probably could have done it by myself. Victoria, honestly, wasn’t much help, but I was glad she came anyway because I had someone to talk to.
I was rushing to finish up the quest when Liam teleported to me.
“Hey Sierra,” he said obviously excited, “you won’t believe what just happened!”
“What?” I asked.
“I turned level 42!”
“And that is important… how?”
“I get to learn the last balance spell, Hydra!”
“Oh.”
“What, you aren’t excited?”
“I guess…” The truth was I didn’t really care.
Liam looked disappointed. “I wanted someone to come with me. It is a huge moment for me, so I wanted to celebrate with someone.”
“Sure… I guess I’ll come…”
Liam brightened up again. “Great! Come on, this way!” He began pulling me by my arm away from Digmoore Station, which I looked at over my shoulder in exasperation. Victoria was watching me helplessly as I was dragged away from her. I supposed that completing the quest would have to wait.
Liam dragged me into Krokotopia. Then, when we arrived in the Oasis, someone teleported to me.
I saw that it was Mark. Before I could say anything, Liam exclaimed, “Hey Mark! Guess what. I’m level 42 now! I can learn Hydra!”
I looked at him in surprise. “You know each other?” I questioned.
“Yeah, sure we do. We met a long time ago. Our parents are best friends, so naturally we are too,” Mark explained.
“That makes things a lot easier. Now I don’t have to introduce you to very many of the Seekers.”
Liam looked confused. Since I didn’t want to have to explain myself yet again to someone who wasn’t aware of what the Seekers of Light were, I quickly changed the subject before he could say anything. “So, aren’t we going to the balance school?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Do you want to come, Mark?”
“Sure, I guess so. I don’t have much left to do in MooShu anyway. I am supposed to fight Plague Oni, but I have to do a bunch of stuff I have to do first. I don’t want to right now, so I’m pretty bored.”
“Is he the one in Crimson Fields?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Have you beat Wavebringer?”
“You’re talking about that guy known as the Great Water Spirit? I haven’t fought him, but he is in the same place that I’m supposed to go to.”
I had absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
“I guess we should start going,” Mark said, noticing my bored expression. “Sierra doesn’t look like she wants to wait much longer.”
“I’m sorry, I just get a little carried away when I’m talking about MooShu,” apologized Liam. “I miss there. It was so bright and colorful and pretty.”
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just board the ship that takes us to the Krokosphinx, okay? It looks like the captain is about to leave, so unless we want to wait for the next boat we should hurry over there.”
We got on the ship and came up to the hole with the balance school inside. I peered down. As usual, it was dark inside so that no one could see in. Liam began to climb down the ladder, with Mark following. But about halfway after I was climbing down the entire ladder began to shake. At first I thought it was just because it was unstable, but when I fell off of it because of the movement, I realized that the ground was shaking too. I groaned, worried about this.
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” Mark muttered.
“Because when you’re a Seeker, earthquakes always mean bad news,” I replied, remembering the time that in Dragon’s Mouth Cave or when we fell into the death school.
Suddenly, right before our very eyes, the ladder leading up to safety disintegrated. Yes, it completely vanished!
“What the-” began Mark, but then matters only became worse. Someone from above rolled an impassable stone over the entry to the balance school. Mark angrily turned to me. “Sierra, what did you do!” he screamed.
“It wasn’t me!” I yelled innocently. It was very hard to hear now, for rocks that were luckily not the size of the one over the entrance were falling around us. Was the school going to cave in?
“Come on,” ushered Liam over the volume of the crashing rocks. “Let’s go ask Alhazred, the teacher, what’s going on.”
Rushing into the balance classroom, Liam cried out in disappointed surprise. I think we all did. For now, much to our dismay, the balance school now resembled the death school. It was completely in ruins. Desks were overturned and scattered out of their usual neat rows. It looked as if some of the teacher’s desk had crumbled away. The room was a total mess. And where was Alhazred?
“Oh no,” sobbed Liam. “What will become of us? The classroom is destroyed, Alhazred is nowhere to be found, and now we are stuck here!”
“To get out of here we can construct a makeshift ladder from the remains of the desks,” I suggested.
“No, the boulder is still there, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, recalling the mysterious person who rolled over the stone.
“And teleporting doesn’t seem to work either,” Mark reported, demonstrating by making the motion to teleport with no result.
Liam whimpered and Mark sat down worriedly. I wanted to do the same, but as the leader of the Seekers I felt compelled to get us out of this mess.
I took a deep, calming breath. Then I began, “Ok guys, I think I have an idea. Let’s try to blast that rock out of the way.”
“What do you mean?” inquired Mark.
“We should combine our strength to hit the rock at the entrance with the force of our magic. Once it is out of the way, we can call for help. What do you guys think?”
Mark only shrugged, but Liam burst out saying, “That’s a perfect idea!”
I grinned. “Good, then come over here.”
We ambled to the entrance of the school. “Ok,” I started. “Are you guys ready?”
They only nodded.
“Alright, on the count of three. One… two…”
“Stop!” yelled a voice.
Irritated, I spun to face the two boys. “What?” I asked angrily.
I studied their faces. Mark looked terrified, but Liam just appeared awed.
Now I was confused. “Seriously, what are you guys staring at? It is creeping me out!”
“As it is to me, as well,” said another voice, different from the first one. I now saw that this voice was from neither of the boys in front of me. Instead, it was emanating from behind me.
Slowly, cautiously I turned. Now, in front of me was a giant Hydra.
“Agh!” I screeched, diving back into the balance classroom to hide.
“Please don’t be shy,” said the blue ice head of the Hydra. I had never heard his voice before, so it must have been the storm and fire heads that had spoken. “We are here to awaken Liam Griffinbane, the powerful balance Seeker of Light!”
I faced the Hydra again at the mention of “Seeker of Light,” but I still kept my distance and refused to go close enough for one of those three heads to reach me.
Mark followed my example and stepped back a few feet. But Liam strode right up to it. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “You’re amazing! Is this for another spell quest?”
The fire head beamed, and the storm head said “No, as we said before, we are here to awaken you.” He was the one who had first spoken.
“Awesome!” Liam yelled. “How do I do that?”
“Just watch and pay close attention,” said the red head.
“Seekers of Light must defeat the Spiral’s evil. Though other generations have just defeated normal monsters and enemies, you have a special task. You must kill Malistaire. Liam, team up with the six other Seekers to finally destroy the evil man once and for all!”
“So wait a minute,” said Liam. “We have special powers, right? Who are the other Seekers?”
“There are seven Seekers of Light, one for each school. So far Sierra Winterbreeze, the leader, has awakened fire Seeker Sydney Jadehammer, storm Seeker Victoria Ravensmith, death Seeker Mark Darkcrafter, and myth Seeker Hunter Thundershield. And now they have come for you, if you shall accept your task.”
"Amazing," he breathed.
"Wait a second," I interrupted. "Before I forget, did you say other generations?"
"Yes," replied the Hydra's purple head.
"So there are other Seekers?"
"There were," it corrected, "but none of them are alive anymore. You are descendants of them."
"Does that mean my parents are Seekers of Light?" I asked excitedly.
"No, it skips a few generations in between. But that is why siblings, like Sydney and Hunter, are usually both Seekers."
"So, Liam, do you understand?" questioned the fire head.
"I think so," Liam replied. "But what are we supposed to do? Defeat Malistaire? But how can we do that? We're nothing compared to him!"
"You'll find a way," smiled the blue head.
"Now you must find the life Seeker," instructed the fire head.
"I thought it was storm," argued the purple one.
"No, I’m pretty sure it was balance."
"The balance one is right in front of you!"
"I thought he was death."
"But then-"
"Um, guys," I said, "can we please just go home?"
All three heads turned to me. I felt uncomfortable in their gaze. “I guess if you want,” the fire head finally said.
“How do we get out of here?” asked Liam. I was wondering the same thing.
“Don’t worry, we can handle that.” With that, the ice head joined its friends raising its head. Then, they let out an obnoxious, noisy, piercing scream that made us all cover our ears. Then, suddenly, we were teleporting.
We staggered out right beside the balance school’s hole. When we all realized where we were, Liam shouted, “Wait! I didn’t get to learn Hydra!” Then he hurried down the ladder which had somehow reappeared. Mark and I looked at each other, and then we burst out laughing. Liam just couldn’t hold his excitement.
But then, I realized that we had missed something vitally important. “Uh, Mark,” I said worriedly.
“Yeah? What’s up Sierra?” he said, looking at my solemn face in concern.
“Did you happen to catch the next Seeker’s name?”
Mark gasped, finally comprehending how crucial that information was. “I didn’t! We have to go back down there!”
But when we hurried down into the depths of the balance school, we found everything in the exact order it was supposed to be. The desks were in neat, even rows, and Liam was at the front of the classroom with the balance teacher in front of him, who must have been instructing him how to cast Hydra.
Since the Hydra that had awakened Liam wasn’t there anymore, Mark and I waited impatiently for Liam to learn his newest spell. When he was finished, I came up to him. “Liam, did the Hydra tell us who the life Seeker of Light was?”
He only shrugged, which made me angry. “Don’t worry, it isn’t important,” he said, starting up the ladder.
“No, this is very, very critical! We have to know!”
“Relax, we’ll find him.”
That just made me even more frustrated. Didn’t he understand why we needed this? “Liam, perhaps you didn’t quite grasp the concept of being a Seeker. We must defeat Malistaire, but we can’t do that unless we have all the Seekers together. If we can’t find the life Seeker, then the Spiral is doomed!”
He looked at me skeptically. “Maybe you didn’t get it, Sierra,” he said in annoyance. “We wouldn’t stand a chance against Malistaire at our current levels. We need to become at least Masters before we can fight him. So that gives us plenty of time to look for the next, uh, whatever they are called.”
“Easy for you to say!” I shouted back. “For your information, they are called Seekers, and if we don’t hurry, then Malistaire will destroy the Spiral before we can get to the next one.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think we can beat Malistaire anyway.”
“You are just so… so… infuriating!” I screamed. Then I stomped away without taking even one glance backward, though I continued to hear Mark’s worried voice calling my name.
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