The power that came up from the earth was nothing like she expected, overwhelming Nara with euphoria like no other. It was alive with power but also with memories that stretched eons. Time seemed to stand still as images flooded her mind. Scenes from mountains, valleys, and hills across a vast expanse of ages where people walked, where trees dug their roots, and animals burrowed their homes. She felt the presence of other nations across the globe, castles carved from the rock of the earth, homes built from the clay of her riverbeds. The entire world was Nara’s now, a slave to do her bidding, and she held unlimited power, power held secret since the beginning of creation. She could change the course of rivers, raise islands, crush entire armies, or swallow cities. But, at the moment, she had only one goal.
Nara tapped her new source of power, flaring protection and health. Her body repaired itself, just as Kayna threw chaos. It was a mosquito attacking a castle wall. A toothpick against an iron shield. Kayna threw fire, a raging inferno in power and in anger, but Nara didn’t even feel it.
Kayna continued, unrelenting in her attack on Nara, but to no effect. She sent fire and gusts of air. She screamed and screamed, but Nara was untouched. Nara flared the motion rune from several directions, paralyzing Kayna in midair as if she were a puppet.
“It’s over,” Nara said, voice thundering. The confidence in her heart was absolute, the power she bore unlimited. Her voice was a raging river, her words a thunderous mountain. She reached deep into the ground beneath her, summoning the spirit of the rock and the dirt, not asking but demanding the magic that would end this fight. Her spirit surged with ancient power.
A gargantuan fissure opened in the ground, shaking the battlefield below. Avalanches streamed down the slopes of the Twins, and Nara sensed a tremor shaking the Great Land, the Yukan, and beyond. She was one with the earth, sensing its movements, and that which rested upon it. Buildings in Fairmont, Ankar, and Junn shook under the strength of the growing quake, falling into dust with the power of a subjugated earth. The world was unmaking itself.
She sensed the spiked peak of the Twins shift, then fracture as it tumbled down its own slopes. The planet was crying in pain.
Because of her.
Like harvesting a human being, Nara was stealing life she had no claim to. Castle walls crumbled, and children were running from their collapsing homes.
Because of her.
Many would die in this cataclysm. Through the magic of the earth, she felt their suffering. Their panic. Mothers screamed in anguish across the land, their voices silenced as they expired. Castles shattered, libraries and churches burned, and innocent people went quiet. Nara was murdering the world.
It doesn’t belong to you.
The voice was deep but didn’t ring in her ears. It was in her mind. She looked around. Mykel and Sammy were still fighting below on the chaotic landscape, Kayna was paralyzed with a face full of fear, but Nara couldn’t find where the voice came from.
Let it go.
The voice brought clarity, shaking the euphoria that had overwhelmed her. For a moment, she came to her senses and realized what she was doing. She was destroying everything she had tried to protect, embracing violence that gave birth to pain. Instead of seeking Dei and His favor, she had succumbed to pain and anger, embracing not life, but death, overstepping her bounds. She had crossed a line into the realm of the divine, where she had no rightful place. She had the power to end Kayna, right here, but the cost would be too high.
Let it go.
That was His voice. It had to be. So long she had yearned to hear it, and now He came at this moment? To tell her to give up?
Trust me.
A tug-of-war ensued in Nara’s mind. Let go of the power, the sweet, sweet power, and embrace death, or use it to save the Great Land. But she wasn’t saving the Great Land. She was annihilating it.
At that moment, she realized her greatest fear, that she was a dark thing, not born of Dei but choosing the way of Kai. A demon of destruction and death, a bringer of calamity and anguish, much worse than her sister.
“What am I doing?” she said with a whisper that was heard for miles.
The horror of her now complete realization cleared her of the intoxicating effect of the magic. Dei’s words had helped restore her senses, but she didn’t know how long she would retain the clarity.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “This isn’t me.”
Let it go.
Nara let the power go. Back into the earth the magic flowed in an instant, straight down into the soil, the bedrock, to its home, where it belonged. The earth stopped shaking, and Nara fell to the ground as the pillar under her collapsed into dust.
Now free of her bonds, Kayna flared air, coming straight at Nara like a bolt from a crossbow. She flared chaos and Nara’s skin sprouted sores, limbs contorting as the life siphoned out of her body. Horrible pain.
Flare protection. Now. Deep within yourself.
The voice again! Nara obeyed, flaring protection with her last ounce of strength, but it was too late for her body. She flared it much deeper, around her spirit. Cloaked in the rune, she closed her eyes a moment before they turned to dust. The agony faded, growing distant now, as if it was happening to someone else. She felt her legs disintegrate. It was a curious feeling, safely housed in the protection rune as her body gave up its life.
Then the pain stopped, and her spirit was free.
37
History
The pain was gone. Nara floated in a detached state of being, fear and panic a distant memory. She looked about to see one of the Twins as it crumbled in slow motion. Kayna, clothes burnt and visage manic, floated over a slope while she harvested the life of a human being. The person was blackened, shriveled, with her limbs, her skull, then her whole body turning to dust. It was Nara’s own body. She was dead now, but somehow not afraid. Why not?
She looked around again to see Mykel sprinting across the broken field. He had subdued his brother yet again but now raced to save his love. He was too late.
A tug from inside her brought a curious feeling, then the landscape faded away like a waning light. A different light dawned in Nara’s vision, and she felt a rushing sensation as she hurtled down a tunnel. Her progress slowed as the new light grew, welcoming her with a strange warmth, comforting and peaceful.
A heartbeat later, she found herself standing on a beautiful field, high snow-capped mountains visible in the distance. Flowers decorated the field for farther than she could see, in colors she didn’t have names for. So beautiful! The lights of other people walked through the field, but they were far away, and she couldn’t see any details.
Nara stood there for a long time but didn’t know what she waited for. The warmth on her skin was comforting, and she felt she could stand there for hours. A gentle breeze danced through the flowers and grasses as the other lights in the field moved about. Was this heaven?
One of the lights came nearer, and as it did so, the image flickered, the brilliance of it fading until it was a single form. A woman. She was not tall, and neither old nor young. She moved with a glow through the flowers and grasses of the field, gracefully and confidently. As she approached, Nara could see that her hair was a deep auburn, long and wavy, and her face bore large brown eyes and a wide smile.
“Took you long enough,” she said, then gave a hearty chuckle.
It was Anne. She was alive, and so much younger! She carried no cane and wore no patch over her eye.
Nara ran the last few steps and embraced her mentor with all her might.
“Well, now. Look who misses me so much!”
“I thought you were dead!” Nara said, and pulled back but kept a solid grip on Anne’s hand. “On the slope near the Twins, you were bleeding, and I knitted you, but you were pale, and I thought you were dying. It was terrible.”
“You weren’t wrong.”
A wave of knowledge came over Nara, washing away the elation that had clouded her senses. “Oh.”
�
�Yes, I’m dead,” Anne said. “Finally. It took me long enough.”
“And me too, then. Dead.” The realization was clear, but she felt no panic. No fear. “Kayna won. Mykel will die too. We lost. I had the strength to beat her, but I gave up. I failed.”
“Hold up, not so fast,” Anne said. “You don’t have the whole picture just yet.”
“Tell me.”
“Let’s go for a walk.”
They stepped through the field, Nara looking about but still holding Anne’s hand, the warmth of it providing stability in the peaceful, wondrous confusion of this new place.
“This is heaven, then?” Nara asked.
Anne smiled. “Words. They don’t do the real thing justice.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Heaven is a word that men use to describe what they want to happen after things happen that they don’t want to happen.”
Nara laughed. “I can’t believe I understood that.”
“This is what comes now for you. It’s hard to say more than that.”
“But I’m not on earth anymore?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Is Dei here?”
“The Creator is here, but that’s true of any place. He is everywhere.”
“I don’t understand. And you died just before I did, so how can you know these things?”
“Time doesn’t work in this place as you imagine it should.”
“Oh.”
They came near a creek, its water trickling through the rocks and swirling in little pools where the flow turned. Nara let go of Anne’s hand, kneeling to retrieve a rock in the creek. Its feel was smooth and rough at the same time. Through her fingers, she sensed its strength and its calm. It wasn’t like any other rock she’d ever held. Everything was brighter here, purer. And far more complex.
“Teach me everything,” Nara said.
“There is too much to share. And you don’t have time.”
Nara stood and turned to face Anne. “What do you mean? Don’t I have all the time in the world?”
“Because you have more work to do, my dear. Much more.”
“I’m dead. I saw my body shrivel up. Kayna killed me.”
“Oh, look who knows so much!” Anne said, then chuckled. “Dead for a few seconds, and now she knows everything.”
Nara scrunched her face in confusion. “What work do I have to do?”
“You must rebuild it. All of it.”
“All of what?”
“The Great Land. You showed more restraint than I expected but still caused quite the damage. Cities damaged, many dead. Libraries buried or burned. Knowledge lost. You even brought down a mountain. Never heard of that one before.”
Memories came back to Nara, how she stole the essence of the earth, intent on using it for destruction. She had become far worse than Kayna at that moment. “I am terrible. I did all that.”
“Yes, you did. Now you owe a debt.”
“Okay, but—” She stopped.
“But what?”
“I have a question.”
“Go on.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“I’m not sure. All of it. Why the constant struggle, by everyone? The fear and the pain. All of our lives. Build things only to see them destroyed. Love people only to lose them. Why?”
“That’s the best question of all, isn’t it?”
Nara waited for her answer.
“First, I’ll start with fear and pain. It may not be obvious, but fear is actually pain. They aren’t different things. Fear is pain you choose to suffer in advance. Pain you inflict upon yourself, even if the actual pain never arrives. Silly thing, fear is.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“So really the question is, ‘why so much pain.’ I’ll try to answer.” Anne paused as if preparing her thoughts. “Nara, have you ever heard a great story?”
“Well, of course I have. You’ve told me some.”
“What do you notice about stories, specifically, how do they go?”
Nara pondered that for a moment. “Well, there is a beginning, where you learn who the people are. Then they get into some trouble and find their way out. If it’s a good story, they do. If it’s a bad story, they die and the bad guy wins. That sort of thing.”
“Very good. Nice summary. Now let me tell you a different sort of story. You have a beginning, you meet some people, but they don’t get into trouble. They are happy. They are challenged by nothing, never strive for anything, never cry, never fight, and never lose anyone they love. They just live. Happily. Peacefully. The End.” Anne clapped her hands as if she had just given an excellent performance. “What do you think of my story?”
“That was terrible.”
“Exactly. There must be challenges.”
“So, Dei allows pain because it makes a good story?”
“In a way, yes. And history is His-story. His. Not ours. But the story grows us as well. And teaches us. We learn that with power comes responsibility, for one. Power affects many people, and this is a great lesson. Your choices as a young girl in a village mattered little to the Great Land, but think of what you became. How your choices affected it in the end.”
“The more you control, the more you can help. Or hurt.”
“Very good. Think also of the stories that tell us of great heroes who struggle against great foes. The tales are better because of the scale that comes with them. Slaying a dragon is far more inspiring than a grand quest to make a stew, wouldn’t you say?”
“Depends on the stew, I think,” Nara said, smiling.
“Ha! Yes, it does.” She smiled in return. “But stories also teach us that without loss, there can be no gain. If it’s easy to do, it possesses no value. On the contrary, valuable things are such because they are rare. Food is more delicious when we are hungry. Companionship is more important to those who are lonely. Love is precious because there is so much hate.”
“Oh.”
“Love is a special one. Real love is sacrifice. Paying a price on behalf of another without receiving a reward. The Creator is like this. Pure love. The source of all strength and goodness, but in your path, He allows hurdles. Obstacles to overcome as you struggle and grow. Your struggles are beautiful to Him. Everyone’s are. They are part of His story.”
“But he could just take them away. In an instant, he could remove all pain. I don’t understand why He won’t do that. To let people struggle and die seems so pointless.”
“Look around you,” Anne said, pointing out at the fields.
Nara saw the many lights again, although the forms were indistinct. The lights skipped through the flowers, and when one came close to another, they almost joined, spinning, dancing with one another. “They are people. Like me?”
“People, yes, but certainly not like you. This isn’t the only place like it, and they don’t have your path. Few do. But do you see any of these in distress right now?”
“No. They are peaceful.”
“They suffered. Just like you. Like everyone. They struggled, and they felt pain. Some died while still children. Others wasted away with pain for years. But look at them now.”
They looked so peaceful.
“A young child whose mother forces her to eat her vegetables might cry and scream,” Anne said. “Lots of drama and lots of pain. Children have a way of feeling everything quite powerfully.”
“And?”
“The child grows and becomes wise about such things. She learns the importance of doing things she doesn’t like. She stops screaming about vegetables. She learns to exercise, run, even when it hurts, in order to become strong. How did this happen? How does a young thing go from screaming about her dinner to working long days in a field to feed her family? How does a warrior grow up to face enemies and fight for his homeland?”
“Pain makes them grow, but I still don’t get it. Pain that kills you can’t make you grow.”
Anne pointed
again to the lights in the field. “Do they look dead to you?”
Oh. Of course. Like most people, she’d led her life with the assumption everything ended at death. Even when Father Taylor talked about heaven, it was just too far away, and didn’t seem real. But death was real, she’d seen it many times, and the horror of it stuck in her mind long after attending a funeral or seeing someone fall on a battlefield. But now she was here with Anne in some sort of after-place. This wasn’t death at all. Not like she knew it to be, anyway. In fact, that word didn’t seem to work very well. Not anymore. Nara felt vibrant, alive, with senses more alert than she’d ever known and peace more profound than she could have imagined.
“So, if you can see the big picture, death is just vegetables? Exercise? It sounds ridiculous, but I get what you are saying, I think.”
“Exactly!” Anne clapped. “Now take it a step further. Those that can’t see it. Like when you fought against Kayna. You killed to stop the killing. By your own hand, you delivered pain. You weren’t a parent telling your child to eat vegetables; you were a foolish, scared child fighting with other foolish children, trying to prevent pain by causing more. When you buried a soldier in his grave with your magic, it wasn’t just his pain you caused. You caused his wife’s pain because she would be a widow. His children’s pain as they became orphans. His mother would suffer. His friends. One life lost, yet so many suffer. You multiplied your folly, causing echoes through the land.”
“I’m just like her. Every bit of me.”
“Yes, you are. We all are. Every bit of us. We cause pain, we suffer obstacles, we fret, we frown, and we scream at the heavens to save us, angry that the Creator doesn’t seem to care.”
Exasperated, Nara let out a long sigh. “I tried so hard, but I wasn’t good. Not at all. All that work and I was a horrible person.”
Anne put a hand on her shoulder. “Everyone is good, Nara. And everyone is horrible too. We bear the seeds of both extremes within us. Here’s some advice: borrow His perspective in this. Don’t think yourself so wonderful if you deliver a kindness on someone, for the Creator gave you the means to do so, did He not? But also don’t think yourself to be so horrible when you deliver pain. He gave you that power too. He just hoped you wouldn’t use it.”
The Godseeker Duet Page 54
