by Dreagen
“Well, go ahead,” said DayKar. “What are you waiting for? You came here to save her, so save her. Be the hero.”
Rex burst into flame and charged towards LemaRes, who with a flick of her tail sent him flying back the way he had come. Rex shook off the blow, leaped to his feet, and charged again, only to be subdued once more. Looking down from where he lay, he saw drops of red fall to the ground. Licking the inside of his mouth, he tasted the rich iron flavor of blood. Spitting it off to the side, he rose to his feet again, and proceeded to power forward for a third time.
With a snort of condescension, LemaRes shot a ball of fire from her mouth, which slammed into Rex, exploding on contact. The TyRanx felt as if all his strength had suddenly been pushed out of him, and he collapsed to the ground, expelling ragged breaths. LemaRes was surprisingly much stronger than most of the other DraGons he had faced, mirroring DayKar’s power more than anyone.
With a laugh, DayKar stormed over, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and lifted him to eye level. “Not terribly impressive, I must say,” he taunted. “Then again, she is a Templar knight, so it is to be expected. You know, when this all started back up again, I wondered time and time again if killing still came as naturally to you as breathing. But now I see you’re just all talk!”
He carried him over to DiNiya, bringing the two face to face for the first time since she had been taken. She was unconscious and he could see dried blood and fresh bruises on her. It was her tear-stained cheeks that made his heart sink, however. “DiNiya,” he whispered. “What have they done to you?”
“What we’ve done?” DayKar repeated. “You think this is our fault?”
“You took her!” Rex fired back, his voice now cracking with emotion.
“And who let us do it? Who just stood there and watched as the person they claimed to care for was taken away? Against their will, no less?”
“No, we tried,” Rex protested as he attempted to break free of the DraGon’s grip, but he was still too weak from the heavy blows he took from LemaRes. “I tried!”
“You failed! That is what you did, Rex, and that is the only thing you could ever do! You act as if you are so very strong, like you can take anything anyone can throw at you, but the truth is you just love playing the part of the victim, don’t you, Rex?”
“No!” Rex shouted. “You’re wrong!”
“I’ll call you Rex now because the Doom Bringer at least knew what it meant to have a sense of pride, of dignity! He would have never walked around with his head hung low, begging for sympathy!”
“I’m not begging for anything,” Rex cried out as he continued his futile struggle to get free. “I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me!”
“Oh, but you want someone to, don’t you?”
“No!”
“You think you’ve suffered enough to be called a victim? Think you’ve lost enough to carry the title?” Tightening his grip around Rex’s neck, DayKar brought him closer to DiNiya’s face. “Take a good look at her, boy, because believe it or not, this is the face of someone who actually cares enough about the people she says she loves to die for them!”
Rex stared at her, unable to speak. DiNiya, the beautiful girl with a radiant smile that somehow managed to breathe life back into parts of him that he thought had long since died. Killed by a world of people who no longer seemed to cherish or hold dear anything of any substance, of any real meaning, but instead would remind him time and time again that their lives were better spent denying him a moment’s peace rather than aspiring to see beyond their own small, narrow-minded perception of life. It was like being born anew the day he met her, like his entire existence had been reset that morning when he awoke and saw her sitting in the window, bathed in the morning light. Now here she was, that same soft and gentle face that was full of conviction, battered and bruised, and worst of all, defeated. All because he stepped into her life.
“She may have been ripped from her home, taken against her will, and subjected to both physical and mental torture, but in the end she still wanted to die the martyr rather than the victim. Unlike you, who traveled all this way, put yourself and the lives of your friends at risk just so you can be here now and cry about how hard you’ve had it! Poor little Rex who has no mother, no father, and doesn’t even know who he is.”
“Enough…I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Rex said in breathless voice.
“The poor little orphan boy cast out from his own world and marooned on some backwater planet where he was doomed to live as a freak for the rest of his days.”
“I said stop it.”
“Must have been like a cruel joke when you found yourself back here and realized that there were others like you. But at least you were still different, right? The boy with the red flame. Still looked at like something different, like a freak. Must have been an easy role to slip into for you, considering you had plenty of practice by that point. Oh, but just when you thought that you were safe and could continue feeling sorry for yourself, there she came along. DiNiya, the girl who had more of a reason to be sad, to loathe her herself more than you ever did. Must have torn you up inside, didn’t it?”
“No!” he cried angrily. “I would never judge someone for something they couldn’t help! I would never do to anyone what was done to me!” He could feel the pain of the past fifteen years welling up inside. How much had his father sacrificed to keep him? he often wondered. What kind of life could he have had, had he just left him lying on the floor that night in the museum over fifteen years ago? The pain of wondering of the life he might have robbed him of always tore a hole in his heart and made him despise himself every minute of every day. Yet, despite that, he could never bear the taunts and teasing of the others. Never could just look the other way when their voices carried over and filled his head with words designed to make him feel worse about himself than he already did. But the reality was that no one could make him hate himself more than he made himself. Because no one knew as well as he did just how much he did not belong. And if you don’t belong, you’re just taking up space, he would always tell himself.
“Must have made you so angry that there was actually someone in all of the cosmos who had it worse than poor little pathetic Rex!”
The pain now cut too deep, and he felt himself slipping away into the only thing that ever felt familiar, the one feeling that protected him from the pain that inevitably followed all the others: anger. With a spark, then small flicker of fire, Rex exploded into a ball of flame that sent DayKar and LemaRes sailing in opposite directions and skidding painfully across the platform.
Rex now felt alive as only he knew how: with rage flowing through him like a river that would not stop until the very last drop ran its course. It was these moments, those where he snapped and was released from the burden of self-restraint that he truly knew what it was like to breathe the sweet smell of life into him. The price he paid, however, was that someone had to suffer for it, and today someone would have to die.
DayKar awoke to the sound of his ears ringing and the feeling like he had been beaten and battered all over. Straining to regain his bearings, he glanced up and saw the blurred image of a pale shape moving towards him. He shook his head, and his eyes refocused just in time to see Rex spread his jaws and lunge for his face. Reacting on instinct, DayKar brought a wing down on his attacker and slammed him hard into the ground. Wasting no time, he quickly rose to his feet, just as he felt his wing being forced up despite his effort to keep it down.
Rex felt his strength increasing as he pushed the muscles in his legs to rise despite the immense force bearing down on them. “I’m going to get you, DayKar,” he said. “I’m going to make every bit of you hurt so bad, that you’ll be begging for me to just let you burn.”
“Spare me?” DayKar said, slamming his tail into Rex. With a loud pop from the joint in his left knee, the DraGon rose to his feet, grabbed the young TyRanx by the back of the head again, and proceeded to slam his face as hard as
he could into the ground.
Rex felt as if his entire head was being smashed open before it began to go numb. Every time his face was lifted upward, he caught a glimpse of DiNiya hanging lifeless from chains around her arms and legs. The sight of her like that seemed to last an eternity every time his face was lifted before being replaced with the ground racing back up to him. The cycle was repeated to the point where he could not remember when it even started or how long it had been going on. Eventually, his vision began to blur and he felt his entire body go numb, like he was slipping into warm bath water.
With one final slam into the ground, DayKar swung Rex over his head before letting go and sent him sailing through the air as blood trailed from his head before he hit the ground and slid to a stop in front of the altar.
Rex felt his uncontrollable rage slip from him to be replaced by a feeling of being broken and beaten. He could feel broken ribs when he tried to shift his weight, and his jaw held itself slightly off kilter after having been repeatedly smashed into the ground. However, his physical injuries were far from the worst of the damage he sustained. His will, the burning fury within that always made him pick himself back up in a fight, was gone, and in its place resonated DayKar’s words. Is it all true? he wondered. Am I really just some lost hopeless child looking for pity? The very idea crushed his will worse than the blunt force trauma did his bones.
“Rex?” came a fragile voice. “Rex…is that you?” He slowly and painfully managed to raise his blood-covered head and look up to see DiNiya looking down at him with eyes half open. “Am I dreaming?” she asked in voice that was barely audible yet weighed heavy with longing.
“No,” he answered raggedly, slowly pulling himself up to her on trembling legs that felt as if they would give out or simply snap at any moment. “You’re not dreaming.”
Her eyes widened ever so lightly and the edges of her mouth painfully curved upwards into a half smile before dropping back down again. “You…should have…stayed away. Should not have…come…”
“What do you mean?” he asked, gazing up into her eyes as he slowly took a step onto the altar towards her. “Why…would you say that?”
With a great deal of effort, she angled her head down and gave a look of horror when she got a better look at him. His body was now covered in blood, and his right eye was swollen shut with more blood running from his nose and lower jaw. “What happened…to you?” she asked in a weak and trembling voice.
“Tripped and fell on my way up,” Rex managed to muse before coughing up blood, feeling lightheaded.
Tears now freely streamed from DiNiya’s eyes as she took in the sad sight that was the broken form of the person she had come to care so much for over the past year. The one person who had made her feel for the first time in her entire life like she was a part of the world instead of apart from it. Though his appearance was dramatically different, it was his flame that she felt, the very same that she knew she loved. “I’m so sorry, Rex,” she cried in tiny voice. “If I had only stayed away, left you alone…then they would never have taken me.”
“No,” Rex said.
“Then maybe I would have died back in KaNar the night of the attack.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Then you would have never come! Then you would be safe.”
A dark shadow loomed over them. “Well, isn’t this touching?” DayKar said. “Wouldn’t you agree, my love?”
“Personally, I find it revolting,” LemaRes said, stepping behind DiNiya. “Filthy animals, believing they have the capacity to feel love. Sacrilege!”
“How easy it would be to simply believe so,” he replied thoughtfully. “How much simpler if we could just to reduce them as mere flameless beasts in our minds and not have to think of them as sentient beings.”
LemaRes gave him a look of almost horror. “After everything that’s happened, you still persist with the notion that they are anything that comes close to being equal to us?”
“LemaRes,” he said, looking into her eyes. “They have lost their memories, so lying to them may give you some solace when you burn their lives away, but lying to yourself is just foolish.”
“Is that right?” she replied with silent fury.
“It is. We both know it to be true, because unlike them we were not blessed with the good fortune of forgetting everything that happened.” He looked down at the two seemingly lifeless forms lying on the edge of death, so close to each other, desperate to feel the other’s touch yet unable to clear the final, small distance that now felt like a chasm between them. “Everything their lives could have been—the memories they could have created and enjoyed in their final years after having grown old together—oh, well, better them than us.”
LemaRes reached down, picked Rex’s limp body off the floor, and set him on the altar with DiNiya, his body lying next to hers. “We need both their flames to initiate the firing sequence.”
“Is that supposed to be some sort of revelation to me?” he replied sarcastically.
LemaRes furrowed her brow before replying slowly so as to not lose her temper. “No…my love. However, in case you haven’t noticed, they are too weak now to ignite their flames.”
“Ahh, but you forget. These two carry the red flame: the flame of sheer will itself. And we both know what that flame responds to above all else.” With a swift motion, DayKar raised his tail and drove the longest of the three dagger-like spikes at the end of it through Rex from behind. Rex’s eyes shot wide open and he unleashed a horrific cry of pain before having it cut short by the torrent of blood that filled his throat and overflowed from his mouth. “That’s it, Rex,” DayKar whispered. “Feel it. Feel every excruciating moment of it. Let it fill you. Consume you. Then…just do what you do.”
Rex continued to writhe, convulse, and choke on his own blood, right in front of DiNiya, who now began to slowly open her eyes. No, Rex thought. Not like this. I don’t want her to see me like this! It’ll break what little of her is left!
DiNiya could hear the distant sound of someone in great pain. So far was it that it felt like it was coming from another time and place. She felt disconnected from life now, removed from its grip and slowly fading away into blackness. So soothing was it, the feeling of all her fears and apprehensions floating away into the nothingness, that she believed it to be oblivion. It came as a jarring shock when she saw the image of Rex—the young man she had met on that beautiful morning—suddenly standing before her. Rex…what are you doing here?
Funny, the ghostly image replied, as it was joined from behind by the dark red-eyed cloud, which spoke with him in unison. I was about to ask you the very same thing.
DiNiya opened her eyes and was immediately shocked to see the terrible sight of Rex impaled in front of her. His sickening wet gasps were replaced by clearer, more audible grunts and growls as faint red wisps of flame began to dance around him.
“That’s the spirit, Rex!” DayKar cried with enthusiasm. “Never say die!” He then gave LemaRes a silent nod, which she understood to mean it was her turn to deliver the final incentive for Rex. With the same action, she drove the claw on her right index finger through DiNiya. In that single moment, it was as if someone had breathed every bit of life she had lost back into her, for no sooner had the deadly tip come through her back and out her stomach did she cry out with such a ferocious wail of pain that every muscle in her body contort and flexed.
Rex, taking in the sight of DiNiya being brutally tortured and killed, was at the final breaking point. His flame pulsed erratically in an effort to regain a single continuous burn. Harder and harder he pushed his body despite the incredible pain that surged through it. No matter what happened, no matter if it killed him, he would not stop, could never stop. Not as long as the visceral image of DiNiya writhing on LemaRes’s claw persisted before him.
For DiNiya, seeing Rex bleeding and dying in rage was now too much to bear. It was at that moment that she felt the same sensation that had become oddly famili
ar to her during the course of her time on the tower. A fury that had been buried so deep but now was rushing to the surface, climbing higher and higher the more she took in the sight of Rex’s broken, bleeding image. Then, just when she thought she could take no more of his horrid, bloody gasps and roars of pain, DayKar forced the elongated spike all the way through Rex, showering her in his blood. It was at that moment that something truly snapped within both of them. Rex’s mind went under, turning him into a crazed, burning savage on the end of the DraGon’s tail. So violent was his thrashing that DayKar had to hold him with both hands.
DiNiya watched Rex reduced to his most basic biological mechanics, reacting solely on the signals being sent to his nerves from the pain, completely stripped of any dignity or grace. It was this image that triggered the one of GoroTy, lying on the verge of death, screaming for his mother. “He was scared,” she said in a trembling voice. “Scared and wanted his mother because she was the only one who ever made him feel safe…because I failed to save him…I can’t let it happen again. I WON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!”
Without warning, there was an incredible blast of red fire from the altar. All the DraGons circling in the sky above shrieked as they were blinded by it, diving and slamming into each other in their blind attempts to escape the scathing light.
DayKar could feel a presence he had not felt in a very long time. It was one that he had longed to see again, and one he knew he had been successful at resurrecting. As the brilliant light subsided, he lowered his arm and opened his eyes slowly. There, standing proudly atop the altar, chains melted into puddles at her feet, was the image of the past—a young female TyRanx with glowing red eyes and red flame burning off her. “At last,” he said in a hushed tone.
