The Blaze Ignites

by Nichelle Rae

  He only stared at me in silent shock.

  “Because he’s my little brother and he doesn’t believe you,” Fali said, eyeing Haliser evilly. “You read his eyes wrong, or can’t read them at all. More proof of your lies.”

  I looked back at the young Salynn. “If you want to leave, then leave. I won’t let your brother stop you. But if you stay, young one, I will really regret having to kill you.” Fali started towards me again, so I immediately looked at him and took a firmer stance.

  Haliser suddenly rushed forward and grabbed his brother’s arm, stopping him. “Fali, please don’t,” he begged. “That is what she saw in my eyes. I believe it’s her. Please, let’s just leave her be. I don’t want her to kill any of you. Can we just go? Please?”

  Fali paused for a moment, almost seeming to consider it, but then snatched his arm away. “Get off me, you coward!”

  Haliser looked down. A tear dropped down his cheek.

  “Haliser,” I said gently and his red-rimmed eyes looked up at me. “Go on. If your brother wants to fight me, you can’t stop him. He’s a fool to want to die, but you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Save yourself.” I nodded my chin towards the door. “Go.”

  “Go!” Fali shouted at his brother. “Get out of here! I don’t want you here! I’ll take care of her myself! When you see her spoiled dead body being brought out, you’ll be begging for my forgiveness.”

  Haliser looked down for a moment and I waited. He finally looked up at me, two tears running down his cheeks. “I believe who you are, but I can’t abandon my brother despite his foolishness. Even if it means my life.”

  I was in awe of those brave words. It was a kind of loyalty and courage you couldn’t help but admire. He was going to stand by his brother, even if his beliefs were completely absurd, and the difference meant his own life.

  “You are very noble, young Haliser.” I looked at Fali. “Those are some mighty words he speaks, and what he’s willing to do in the name of his loyalty to you is admirable. If you think him a coward, you’re farther beyond rational help than I first thought. Stay blinded by your own pride and you will never appreciate the pride you should be feeling for your young brother.” I said the words, but I hadn’t thought them up. Obviously the White Warrior was speaking.

  Before I could contemplate that further, Fali was at me. His fist flew at my face. He would have cracked my jaw, had not my hand shot straight out. There was a loud smack and crack as his fist crashed into my palm like he’d punched a stone wall. Fali’s mouth opened in a silent scream of agony and his forehead creased in pain as he looked at his fist, which was practically embedded in my palm.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said.

  He pulled his hand away and stared at me with loathing deeper than any I could imagine. Some serious hatred was driving him on! I could see in his eyes that he knew who I was, but he still insisted on attacking me.

  He came at my face with his other fist. I grasped his arm and turned my body around so my back was against his stomach. I back-elbowed him in the ribs and then up into his face before pulling him over my shoulder and laying him on the floor at my feet.

  I looked down at him with my hands on my hips. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  He smirked unexpectedly. “This.”

  Pain exploded in my head. It was so intense and blinding that I was forced to my knees and then onto all fours. The room was spinning and I felt sick with dizziness and agony. All I could see was intermittent darkness with bursts of color.

  I was so intent on Fali that I’d forgotten I was outnumbered. I seemed alone in the world, alone with the pain that took my breath away and blood that ran through my fingers down my back. If that wasn’t enough, I suddenly felt another blow come across my left cheek. The impact sent me reeling to my shoulder and I desperately tried to hold onto consciousness. Blood flowed out of my mouth and the world was a blur. I couldn’t move, unable to determine where I was or what position my body was in. I didn’t even know which way to roll to get myself up onto my knees.

  Then I heard the laughter. As my vision swam in black, I heard them laughing at me again. When my blurred vision found where the group gathered, I could just make out Fali massaging his injured hand. Another being standing beside him held a dark metal pipe.

  “You know, I think I was wrong,” Fali said. “You could be the White Warrior. You’re a coward just like he was.”

  Coward.

  Coward.

  Coward.

  The word echoed in my ears and my blood began to boil. I felt myself slipping into the memory of when my father died. I hated that word! It had been undeservingly used against him for so long. It had ruined his life and mine! “Don’t give anyone a reason to call you a coward. Don’t make the same mistake I did,” my father had said to me. By the Gods in the Sky and the Depths I would not allow that word to be used to describe me!

  My pain vanished. My sight focused and became clearer and sharper than it had ever been before. The group continued laughing at me. The seams of my sanity exploded as a storm of emotions swept through me, pounding at my insides to be released! It was the White Warrior! This was how she demanded control of our body!

  Suddenly I threw my head back and screamed, allowing myself to be thrown into that detached state where she took over. She screamed long and loud with me, as if that word “coward” was a knife twisting in her gut too. White fire ignited around me and I was lying in a white bonfire, as I had twice before when my sanity temporarily had slipped off the edge. My scream fed the fire until I was completely in my White Warrior form, healed and pissed off.

  As the fire faded, I sat up. My teeth clenched as I got to my feet and turned, glaring at the twenty beings that stared at me in horror. The Salynn holding the metal pipe started to tremble and dropped it. He wet himself as it clattered to the marble floor.

  I eyed each and every one of them that shook in my wake. “Label me what you will—a bitch, a liar, even weak. But don’t ever, ever label me a coward.”

  Panic surged through the entire group and they all went screaming for the nearest exit, pushing, shoving and falling over one another. I glanced at the first open door as one group reached it. I slammed it in their faces with a mere thought. I did the same to another door, then another, and another. When all the doors were shut, they ran to the two open hallways adjacent from each other. I glanced at each opening and suddenly a wall of white fire bubbled up from the floor to the ceiling closing off each hallway. The group all glanced around frantically for another way out.

  “I told you,” I said, making them all jump, though my voice wasn’t raised, “ that if you saw any proof of who I am, I would have to kill you.” I touched my shining white hair with one hand and pulled at the top of my silky white leggings with the other. “You can’t get much more solid proof than this.”

  All of them dropped to their knees, crying and begging for forgiveness. I heard more than once, “It was all Fali’s doing! Fali made us!”

  Where was Fali?

  I suddenly felt a presence behind me and spun around. Fali was standing right at my back, his arms raised and holding up a sword he’d ripped from the display wall.

  I moved to defend myself, but suddenly an arrowhead came through his chest and a shower of blood sprayed my face. I flinched and saw Fali’s fair face melt into shock. The sword slipped from his grip, clattering to the floor. He dropped to his knees before me and stared up at me a moment before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell to his side, dead.

  I looked up to see where the arrow had come from. There stood Haliser with his bow in hand. Even as I watched, though, he started to change. His short blonde hair began to lengthen and it also deepened a shade of blonde, to brown, to dark brown. His face strengthened and matured and he even grew taller. His blue eyes darkened to grey and his shoulders broadened.

  When the change was complete, Reese stood there! I wanted to fall
to my knees in shock, but the White Warrior stood strong and even smiled.

  A corner of Reese’s mouth went up in an amused smirk. “Are you rusty or something, old girl? Fali almost nailed you in your coffin.”

  I chuckled softly. “I’m not rusty, nor old. I just wanted to see if you had any talent left in that bow string of yours.”

  Reese’s brows went up. “I hope I haven’t disappointed you.”

  “Not with your talent as an archer. But, tell me, would it break your fair face if you smiled once in a while?”

  Reese threw his head back and laughed. “I don’t know. I never tried.” Then he jokingly took his chin and turned his face from side to side. “Am I still intact?”

  Now it was the White Warrior’s turn to laugh. “Yes, and just as handsome as ever.”

  Okay, apparently they knew each other. Perhaps the White Warrior communicated with him in that “other world” Ortheldo and Rabryn kept talking about.

  “What do we do with them?” Reese asked, indicating the twenty trembling beings.

  I sighed regretfully and looked down. “I’ve got it covered.”

  Then I looked up towards the balcony and my jaw dropped at the sight—or it would have if I’d been in control. I couldn’t believe what unfolded before me. From behind the stone wall that ringed the balcony stood the rest of the residents of Rocksheloc Mountain. All of them had bows loaded and aimed at the twenty shaking beings. I couldn’t believe it! Had they been up there hiding behind the wall the whole time? What was more shocking was that Rabryn, Ortheldo, Acalith, Addredoc, Thrawyn, and Meddyn were all up there with them. Even Reese loaded his bow again. What was I seeing?

  My head nodded, and then came the sound of over one hundred arrows being launched. They snapped and whistled through the air. Then there came the dull thuds of every single one of them hitting their target. All the beings before me fell to the marble floor with loud smacks, each with about seven arrows in their body.

  When it was over, I looked up at the beings up on the balcony. They were well organized and prepared—and they had saved my ass. I’d had nothing to do with it. The White Warrior did.

  The White Warrior stepped out onto the floor and shook her head slowly. “What a mess,” she muttered to herself sadly. She then looked up at Beldorn and the king. “I did everything I could to try and get them to leave.”

  “I know that, White Warrior,” Beldorn said. “You turned most of them away. For that, you should be proud and grateful.”

  She sighed through her nose and looked at the bodies again. “Sure.”

  I realized she was upset at what she’d done and my heart sank. Maybe all of them could have been spared if I hadn’t pushed her away when I did. I should have let her handle it.

  The White Warrior then took in a deep breath through her nose, spread her feet shoulder width apart and tilted her head back. Her arms were straight down at her sides and white fire dripped from her fingertips like rainwater. The drops collected on the floor and a soft white fire spread along the floor underneath the dead bodies. They glittered faintly with white magic, then slowly faded away from sight.

  The White Warrior blew out a slow breath when they all disappeared and bowed her head. “I put them in your cemetery,” she said. “They’re buried already so I could keep my magic underground so as not to be seen.” She didn’t even lift her head to look back at the king.

  “Thank you, my noble White Warrior.”

  I suddenly felt a comforting hand on my shoulder and Reese stepped up beside me. “You did what you had to do.”

  My head nodded but didn’t look up from the floor. “I’m sorry that Fali got his hands on Sepp. I wish I could have spared your brother for you.”

  Reese looked down, “Sepp needed to die just like the others.”

  “How’s Haliser?” My voice asked.

  “He still can’t believe Fali had anything to do with wanting to destroy you. But after explaining it was most likely Hathum’s work, I think he understood. I saw him on the balcony with the rest, so I think he realized that his brother also needed to die.”

  “You say that so callously,” my voice said a little crossly, but she was still looking at the floor.

  “My apologies, White Warrior,” Reese replied, his voice low and shameful.

  I sighed and finally looked at him. “No, I apologize. I’m not angry with you. You’re right in what you say, but the fact that it’s true is what upsets me.”

  “I understand.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to disguise yourself at Haliser to try and talk some sense into Fali.”

  “I mostly agreed so Haliser could be spared being a part of his brother’s death. They were very close.”

  The White Warrior sighed, “I know they were.”

  “You did everything you could to save him, White Warrior,” Reese gently assured me. “Haliser knows that.”

  She sighed again, “I know. It just doesn’t seem like enough.”

  Suddenly I came back into control of myself. Weary from recent events, I dropped to my knees. Looking down, I watched my appearance fade. My hair turned brown again and my white outfit faded into the blood covered goldish brown shirt and white pants Acalith had given me.

  Reese was squatting at my side, his hand resting gently on my back. “Are you alright?”

  I nodded unconvincingly and stood up. The shame and the questions swimming round me made me want to pull my hair out. For some reason I really wanted to talk to Acalith, but when my party approached me she wasn’t with them.

  As my company approached, I rested my hand on the back of my head. No hole, no bump, not even a scratch. Given the force with which I’d been hit, I was surprised nothing was there. But then again, that’s how it always was. If I was injured, like with my broken shoulder with the Dirty Thirty, I was healed after I transformed into The White Warrior. She must heal me in the process of changing.

  I looked unhappily at them all as they came forward. “Acalith’s gone?”

  They all nodded. I gritted my teeth. I just happened to look at my brother in that moment. I saw something odd in his eyes as he looked at the floor. No, I couldn’t be seeing what I thought I was seeing. My eyes narrowed at him. “I wish she would stick around once in a while,” I said, having questions to ask her, but also wanting to find out if what I saw in Rabryn’s eyes was right.

  He looked up at me. “That makes two of us.”

  I looked at him, trying not to show my shock. I had read them correctly. He liked Acalith. He liked her a lot! It didn’t matter because he was a naive seventeen-year-old. He was too young to think he liked her as much as he thought he did.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at all of them as they stared back at me, rather surprised at myself that I wasn’t happy to see them. “Any one of you care to explain why you left me alone outside, in a place we all had established as threatening?”

  “It was Sepp’s doing,” Reese said, coming to their defense. “He was a part of Fali’s plot, but didn’t want to wait for everyone else. He wanted you for himself first, so he went outside Fali’s plan. He first disguised himself as Wizard Beldorn and told them all to go inside and that he would watch over you. Then he disguised himself as Wizard-Redian Addredoc to attack you.”

  “How in the name of the Light Gods Sanctuary do you know all that?” I cried.

  “When I heard you were coming, I was told to magically link myself to my brother when he started acting suspiciously. I knew his every move from the moment Wizard Beldorn arrived until he was killed.”

  “If you knew all this was going on, why didn’t you try to stop him? Why didn’t you tell me so I could be prepared for this mess? Why didn’t anyone say anything to me about anything?” I cried, my body trembling. I felt overwhelmed. I felt sick and lightheaded. Why did they all let this happen?

  “The White Warrior was calling all the shots,” Addredoc said stepping forward. “That’s why she needed you to sleep so much. She neede
d to coordinate this defense for you. She met with all of us and planned for every possible path this event might take, all in one day.”

  “I can take care of myself!” I yelled, not sure who I was really angry at. Was I angry at them for not telling me about this attack, or The White Warrior for doing all this and making me feel like a pathetic, useless infant who needed to be babysat?

  “She specifically told us not to interfere,” Addredoc went on gently.

  I looked at the floor and pressed both my hands into my forehead. This was a nightmare! She’d set up this organized defense of one hundred people in one day? And they’d all followed her plan, no objections. They just did what she told them because they trusted her. That was leadership I would never have the privilege of knowing. Maybe I was an infant in need of a babysitter. Then a terrifying question surfaced. If I wasn’t the White Warrior, then what were the twenty years with my father good for?

  My stomach lurched. I was so sick and tired of this! Why couldn’t I just go home to the Sky with my family? What in the name of the Light Gods was I really here for? I wasn’t the White Warrior! She was! I could never be her!

  Suddenly I felt very aware of the one hundred sets of eyes on me. I felt every penetrating gaze as the beings gathered around, probably wondering as much about me as I was wondering about myself. Who was I? What was my purpose? I had none. She did. She had a job to do and I was in the way of that. Casdanarus was going to die because I was blocking the White Warrior from freely existing and saving them.

  Unable to take their eyes anymore, I ran. I fled from those eyes that wanted me to be something I wasn’t—their savior, their legendary warrior in shining white armor. They wanted a leader and none was more worthy than the White Warrior…but I was in the way of that incredible power being unleashed. I ran down twisting hallways, and up and down stairs, not caring where I was going as long as I could escape the eyes.