PROLOGUE

Nearly all of us have gazed in wonder at the sight of a firework sparkler gleaming in our hands. Whether you're celebrating Independence Day, Guy Fawkes Night, or the Diwali festival of lights in India, you can't help but swirl them around in the air while spelling out your name or creating hearts and circles and other shapes. They are fascinating. You can watch those tiny little fireballs dancing away from the core of the sparkler like mythical sprite fairies swirling and flying in a mesmerizing dance of light and magic. The sparks bring light to the darkness beyond them and create a world of wonder that fades away back into darkness as their fuel burns out. It all happens in the blink of an eye. From the instant the sparks begin to fly, to the abrupt moment when the twinkling all fades away and die at the edges of the spark field, it takes only a second or two. Suppose we could stretch time like a band of rubber that never reaches its elastic limit; then, we could make that ever so brief period of a spark's life seemingly last for an eternity.

From the time we are born, we're taught to think of time as a constant, ever-moving concept with no way to stop or slow it down. Time waits for no one, time lost is never found again, and time flies are just a few of the adages our parents have so hastily bestowed upon us. But time is none of those things. Time is what we make it, how we mold it, and what our minds perceive it to be. Time is the only thing we have when we have nothing at all. If we could harness the power to slow down time, might we be able to peer inside of those tiny little sparks from that five-cent sparkler and look far into their depths beneath the flames and the light and the haze? What would we see if we could? Are there elements so incredible inside these insignificant bits of fire that they would shatter everything we know and understand about our world and sense of time and space? What if I told you that life abounds inside of each and every spark? That, if we did travel inside of an individual spark, we would see things so fascinating and grand that the words to describe them don't yet exist.

Although we perceive the life of a spark to be mere seconds, the time within the boundaries of the spark is infinitely slower than our own. For every second that a spark shines in our world, ten thousand years pass inside of the spark. During that time, for those inside a spark, love blossoms and grows, battles are won and lost, and mighty empires rise and fall. And while we perceive only the briefest flashes of light, inside the spark, life seems endless. There are entire worlds infinitely smaller than ours living inside the sparks. Worlds full of strange creatures, extraordinary places, and magical abilities well beyond our ideas of what is possible. Worlds where the impossible becomes the everyday and the everyday happens in an instant.

This story is one of a minuscule spark, from one tiny little sparkler, during one seemingly insignificant moment. This, is the story of Argia.

For thousands of years, Argia has shown bright amidst the Dark Beyond. An ever-burning shell of lumorite, the spark element that fuels its light and provides the energy needed by the Life Force inside every being within its boundaries, is known as the Plastron Verge. The Verge, as it is most often referred to, surrounds Argia in a glow of glittering embers, like the dance of countless fireflies forever entangled in their pursuit of romance.

Being a spark, Argia pulses from a time of light when the Verge shines bright and the light rules for nine hundred years, to a time of darkness when the lumorite element must rest for a hundred years to recharge before reigniting to shine again for another rule of light. During the pulses from light to dark and back again, Argia is ruled by two clans, the Brillantians that rule in the light, and the Kuri that reign over the darkness. As the pulses ebb and flow like the tides of our oceans, the clans are renewed, new monarchs are crowned, and the thousand-year cycle begins again with another promise of peace and harmony amongst all Argmians.

Now five hundred years into its ninth pulse, Argmia is prospering in a time of light under the fair and just rule of Mon Solis. As with all Brillantian monarchs, Mon Solis rules over Argia from the Light Tower high above all other places in the spark. Standing atop a hillock in the center of the principal city of Lactica, the smooth, almost metallic walls of the Light Tower resemble a platinum scepter jutting out from the ground as if it had been suddenly thrust up by the hands of titans. At the Light Tower's pinnacle, a nearly perfectly round spheroid is clutched by four long phalangeal extensions reaching up from the scepter. The spheroid's glassy appearance shines brightly and is less translucent than opaque. Hence, it is not possible to see into its interior. However, those within its confines can easily peer out onto the landscape of the principal city beyond.

Within the spheroid are the tower gardens where many rare species of flora thrive amidst the perpetual light of the Plastron Verge. Amongst the vast flora display in colors of yellows, blues and greens are the remarkable Kiyoo flower that grows in no other place and is the rarest plant in all of Argia. Admired for its pearl-like living petals that never wither, the Kiyoo flowers are prized by the Monarchs and are used to produce living Nobel garments meant to protect those that wear them. The garments are made with a thin cloth layer cloth, which is spun from the fibers of the Kiyoo stalks and acts like thousands of individual perches for the Kiyoo petals. The petals themselves are alive with their own Life Force and thus have the very unusual ability to move independently of each other. Much like bats clinging to the top of a cave during rest, the petals can naturally attach themselves to the cloth to become one with the garment. They are less like those from flowers you and I see around us and more like round pearlescent butterflies with the incredible ability to react to the thoughts and feelings of their master. The bond between petals and those who wear them is so strong that they become self-appointed servants for those who wear the Nobel garments made of them.

Yes, life inside a spark is unbelievable, and, as it turns out, a spark is never completely stable. The Plastron Verge occasionally dims a bit from an obstructed supply of lumorite. The causes of the obstructions are not usually investigated since it has not led to any irreparable harm in the thousands of years the spark has shined without failing. Naturally, the obstructed flow will quickly reverse, and the dimming will go unnoticed, ensuring that life will endure in the spark. However, if the flow of lumorite cannot be restored, the dimming will continue, and the Verge will remain unstable. Without a continuous flow of lumorite to the Plastron Verge, the spark can pulse from light to dark far more quickly than would happen naturally. If that occurs, the life of the spark will spiral out of control. Pulses will get shorter and shorter until the spark implodes into a dense dark mass of matter where no light can ever shine again. It will be the absolute end of the spark.