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The Golden Wasteland. Not one of the places I normally visit unless I'm on a mission. The crabs, the krill, the crusty sand between my toes, not for me. But on that particular day, something drew me forward. At Home, the Golden Wasteland's portal seemed to glitter, almost sparking with blue electricity. It called me. And so I stepped in.
The hub, a rocky structure built by the spirits long ago and somehow withstanding the test of time, was busier than usual. A group of people off to the right, preparing to plunge into the Treasure Reef. Some moths straight ahead, eager to feel the wasteland winds beneath their wings for the first time. A gang of friends messing with their hairstyles on the left. Amidst the hubbub, I spotted a new figure towards the back of the hub. A shimmering blue silhouette. A spirit.
I drew closer, ready to meet this new spirit, who seemed to emit electricity just like the portal. The spirit appeared to be masculine, with one foot up on a rock, standing like a pirate. He wore a belt with a jewel where the clasp would go, which looked to be the source of the sparks. His left hand was down by his side, while his right hand was raised up, encased in some sort of gauntlet.
"Fetch me another one of these jewels," he spoke in a raspy voice, pointing at the jewel in his belt and then at the gauntlet. "And I shall reward you. I think you may find one in the caves of the Sanctuary Islands." The jewel sparked, as if excited about the prospect of a companion.
A quick flight later, I stood on the sand at the mouth of one of the caves, watching the jellies' mesmerizing dance. Don't go, they called. Come, stay here and dance with us. I gazed up longingly. They're just jealous , I assured myself. Part of me was about to surrender to their peace when I spotted the spirit's jewel wedged into one of the rocks.
As I approached the jewel, it began to spark, pulling me in. The jellies squealed behind me, but I was too distracted to notice. I reached forward, pulling the jewel out of the stone and feeling its weight in my hand. It was smooth except for the corners, so perfectly sliced that I was worried I would cut myself. The jewel glowed in my hand, pulsing with my heartbeat, although I didn't know if it was matching my heartbeat or I was matching its. I stuffed it into the pocket of my cape and took off, ignoring the protesting cries that echoed back through the cave.
When I returned to the hub of the Golden Wasteland the crowd had cleared. The spirit saw me from across the stone floor and beckoned for me to come closer. I obliged, and I sensed a change in the jewel's heartbeat in my pocket, ready to meet its new master.
"Let me see." The spirit took the jewel and twirled it in his hand for a moment. It sparked wildly. The spirit then raised his right hand, the one with the gauntlet, and inserted the jewel into a slot. The gauntlet lit up, and he pointed it at a pile of rubble in a corner of the hub. He flicked his wrist and the rubble began to subside, revealing a narrow passageway.
"Follow me." He walked toward the tunnel, needing to duck to fit inside. The gauntlet glowed even brighter as we proceeded. After a short while, the passage opened up into a massive room carved out of stone. The ceiling was way up, maybe about twelve chibi-heights tall. The walls were lined with shelves, covered in caged crabs, and jars of jewels, crystals, and many things I couldn't identify. The floor was layered with stone tiles, except for a carpeted platform along the back wall which held a large object I had never seen the likes of: "This is my creation."
The creation somewhat resembled a boat, like the ones used to sail to the Treasure Reef or the Forgotten Ark. But instead of the gracefully gliding oars found on those boats, the vessel seemed strapped with mechanical parts and pieces. Instead of the open deck, the front of the boat had some sort of control panel with four brightly glowing buttons. The spirit gestured at the vessel with his gauntlet, revealing several slots, receptacles for jewels like the one I had just brought him.
"This is why I need you. I am too old and weak to go jewel hunting anymore. If you can find the jewels I need to finish my creation, and bring them back to me, I will teach you my ways and we may grow stronger together."
So it went like that for several days. Every morning I would wake up and dive through the portal to the Golden Wasteland, ready to face the spirit's next quest. He would send me somewhere, to the depths of the Cave of Prophecies, or the peak in the Village of Dreams, or the cool sands of the Starlight Desert. I'd fly off and retrieve the jewel, sometimes with a less-than-warm welcome from the natives. Every afternoon, I'd return to the Golden Wasteland and give the jewel to the spirit, who would insert it into his contraption. It would spark and click into place, and the spirit would explain the jewel's purpose in the machine.
"This one," he explained after a particularly treacherous trip through the Hidden Forest, "is what powers the whole operation. Without it, my contraption will never work. Each part has its own purpose, and if any part fails, the whole thing falls." I sat in a corner, dripping with rain, realizing for the first time that this was the first spirit I had met that didn't seem to keep any candles, neither for warmth nor light.
"I just realized," I said, then thought better of it. Who was I to judge?
"What did you realize?"
"Nothing."
"No, you realized something. Tell me your intelligence."
I thought fast. "I realized that you haven't told me your name."
"Bah, names. You haven't told me yours either. You'll come to know mine in time."
The next morning when I entered the spirit's cave, I sensed something was amiss. The contraption looked different. It seemed to hum a bit, and glow faintly. There were unlit candles on the floor, most of them tipped over on their sides. And oddest of all, the spirit wasn't there. I stood up the candles gingerly, and lit them one by one with my own candle.
"What in the sky are you doing?" The spirit walked briskly through the entrance to the cavern.
"I'm lighting your candles. They burned out. Did you not want them lit?"
"No," he said, walking toward his contraption, his voice getting firmer. He climbed up a ladder at the side, rolling it up behind him, and then sat down in front of the control panel. "For I am the Extinguisher, and this is the Extinguishinator," he roared. Then he pushed the first button in front of him.
The Extinguishinator's hum grew, the jewels sparking, pistons pumping, gears grinding. I heard the scrape of metal against metal as the Extinguishinator lifted off the ground, hovering about a chibi-height above my head. The Extinguisher took hold of a lever and turned his machine to face me. "How's this?"
"That's… um… kinda cool," I told him, taken aback.
"Watch what it can do." He grabbed another lever, turning on a beam of light at the machine's front, not unlike a krill. He flew the thing to the center of the cave, floating above the candles.
Then he pushed the second button. The beam of light narrowed, focusing on one of the candles. The Extinguishinator's bowels hissed as the beam brightened. I watched in horror as the candle I had just lit squirmed, sputtered, and went out in a puff of smoke.
"Did it work?" The Extinguisher shouted down above the roar of his machine.
"Y-you put the candle out. I-is that what you were trying to do?"
"Uh-huh. With the Extinguishinator I will put out every candle, every flame, in all the realms. It starts here, my friend. Will you join me in a new movement of darkness?"
"I'm a Child of the Light," I stomped, growing angrier by the second. "Do you think I'm going to help you with anything related to darkness?" The Extinguisher aimed the beam at another candle and put it out.
"Why not?" The Extinguisher calmly extinguished the next candle in the ring. "I've had enough of this whole Children of the Light nonsense. Why don't you join me and become a Child of the Darkness ?"
"I won't ."
"You stubborn little skykid." The candle in front of me hissed into darkness. "Why don't you show me why light is better than darkness?" He spun the beam around, pointing it at the candle in my hand.
" No! You can't do that! " I shielded the candle with my cape. Unphased, the Extinguisher rotated the beam back toward the other candles.
"Betcha can't get all these lit!" he sneered, putting out the last candle on the floor, until the only lights in the room were my own candle and the Extinguishinator's sparks. I knelt down in front of the nearest candle, being careful to keep it safe from the beam, and touched my own candle to it. The wick glowed for a moment, and then a small, pure flame rose from the wax.
"Oh yes I can," I said triumphantly, moving on to the next candle.
"Y'know I can just put it out again." The Extinguisher turned the beam on again, pointing it at the candle I had just lit. The flame flickered a little bit, but no matter how long he hovered on the candle, it wouldn't go out. "Darn it. I thought that might happen."
"Looks like my light is stronger than your darkness," I teased, lighting the second candle, and then the third. The Extinguisher became angrier with every candle I lit. By the fifth candle, he had flown back to the podium, as if preparing for another attack.
"Might be so. But once I get more skykids on my side, we'll be unstoppable."
"I doubt it." I lit the last candle and turned to see what the Extinguisher might do now.
"You haven't even seen my full power." The Extinguisher hovered back over to me, directly above my head, and pushed the third button.
I looked up to see a hatch opening on the bottom of the Extinguishinator and watch a crab fall out. I backed away just in time, and the crab landed, stunned, on top of one of the candles. It wasn't an ordinary crab. Strapped to its back was some kind of mechanism holding a jewel similar to the ones I fetched, but not quite the same. Perhaps the Extinguisher had other helpers, or wasn't as weak as he claimed. The crab struggled to get up, and I noticed an interesting thing happening to it. The candle it lay on didn't seem to be hurting the crab, but rather melting away the darkness, releasing it from the Extinguisher's bonds. When they had completely melted away, the crab, now a brilliant white, scuttled off, ignoring both me and the Extinguisher.
Getting desperate, the Extinguisher opened the hatch again, letting down a whole barrage of mechanically enhanced crabs. They scuttled over each other, all heading for me, but by some miracle every single one found themself on a candle. Just like the first one, their restraints melted away, leaving them glowing white, and they chased the first crab out of the cavern.
"Shoot. Those crabs took me months to make," the Extinguisher howled. "You'll pay for this. You'll pay for this!" He slammed his gauntlet hand down on the fourth button. The Extinguishinator screeched, rumbled, and then shot up into the air, ramming violently into the cave wall before breaking through in a shower of rocks and sparks. When the dust settled, the Extinguisher and his machine were gone.
I found them not too far off, crashed into one of the haphazard towers strewn throughout the Wasteland. The Extinguisher was clearly dead, and for once I felt no remorse. The Extinguishinator had faired little better, its pieces scattered around the area. The jewels I spent so long collecting were remarkably still intact. I put them all in my pocket for safekeeping. The light crabs scuttled happily around the ruins.
I spent the next few days returning the jewels to where they came from: The Cave of Prophecies, the Starlight Desert. The occupants of the Village of Dreams were grateful for my return, and insisted upon putting on a play about the whole thing at the Village Theater. But perhaps the happiest of all were the jellies on the Sanctuary Islands. They squealed in delight as I flew into their cave, sensing all was to be well again. Come, dance with us . And I did.