by Nichelle Rae
My heart started pounding when I heard horse hooves coming at me again. It sounded like only a single rider now though. I tried to look around the clearing but could only manage to move my eyes. If I was attacked right now, I’d be completely helpless. Without a word from me, my sword and the necklace disappeared in a small burst of white flame. Uh oh. If The White Warrior was hiding them, this wasn’t good.
I kept trying to search the clearing and finally saw the lone rider coming at me from the direction of Triple Peaks, where the Legan’dirs had come from, though the invisible wall was down. I recognized the shining deep red armor and leaf and berry crown on his head as he approached.
“Yarin,” I said in relief as he dismounted his horse. “I’m so glad to see you.”
He looked down at me in the most peculiar way. His face was impassive, expressionless, very unlike the bright shining smile that had greeted me when we first met.
My brows dropped. “What’s wrong?”
Suddenly I realized he was alone. The Gleo’gwyns were not with him. Something was wrong.
I looked up into his eyes. “Where is everyone else?”
Suddenly his eyes filled with a black light that consumed the blue and white of his entire eyeball. He stretched a fist out towards me and a cord of black fire erupted from his knuckles, wrapping around my neck, choking me. The cord lifted me completely off the ground and brought me towards him until I was directly in front of his face with my feet kicking in the air.
I couldn’t…this wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening. I wasn’t ready! I wasn’t crowned! I wasn’t even in control of my magic!
It was Hathum!
I watched with wide eyes as the leaf crown disappeared in black fire and the deep red armor faded into regular black clothes. The rest of him stayed the same. I would have screamed if my air hadn’t been cut off! How could we be meeting like this? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. We were supposed to meet on some gigantic battlefield after I had millions of soldiers in my army. I had no one! I hadn’t even convinced the world not to hate me yet, never mind follow me into battle. Most of the world didn’t even know the White Warrior was back. This shouldn’t be happening like this!
I desperately grasped at the solid current of magic, trying to ease the grip of it, but it was no use. Burning pain filled my chest from the lack of air, but even more terrifying than death was looking into the eyes of Hathum, the deadliest and most powerful Shadow wizard in the entire world. Even the lack of air in my lungs couldn’t compete with looking into his horrifying, evil black eyes. I wanted death to come in this moment, if only to save me from looking into them. He was the Shadow Gods’ very living prodigy, as I was supposed to be the Light Gods’.
The edges of my vision started turning black from no air but suddenly, with a grunt, Hathum heaved me backwards about twenty feet. I hit the ground hard but I was too busy sucking in gulps of air and coughing to feel much pain. Forfirith was in a mad panic. I managed to look at him and saw he was now stuck in a small box of Hathum’s black fire magic. Forfirith was throwing himself into the walls of the black fire and rearing up on his back legs to try to kick it down but it wasn’t working.
Somewhere, somehow I found a little strength. I wasn’t sure where it came from, as weak as I was from my magic use and from nearly being choked to death. Perhaps it was seeing Forfirith continue to struggle and resist his current situation, despite the helplessness of it. Wherever it came from it allowed me to sit up and look at Hathum as he walked up to me. My enemy. The reason I’d been born into this hateful world. The one thing I was meant to destroy.
As he approached me I managed to crawl backwards away from him a little way, knowing full well that it was useless. He stopped in his tracks as soon as I did this and gave me an odd look. “What are you doing?”
I continued crawling backwards, just waiting for him to dive at me and snap my neck in two. I was what he had been awaiting for three thousand years. He’d found me. I didn’t know how, but he’d found me. My sword and I were the only things standing in the way of his total victory over the world. If he killed me and touched my sword, Goodness would cease to exist because my magic and my sword were the source of all Goodness on earth and in the heavens. Goodness wielded by Evil meant Goodness didn’t survive. All of the Light Gods’ power of Goodness was embodied in two simple, fragile things…a sword and a mortal woman.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.
His confusion made me stop moving. I looked at him. “Shouldn’t I be?” I panted. “I know who you are, Hathum.”
His eyes got dangerously wide. “You’re afraid of me?” he screamed in disbelief. He gripped the sides of his head in both hands and fell to his knees. “You can’t be serious!” He let a scream rip through the sky that lasted a very long time and shook the earth beneath me. Dark gray clouds gathered in the sky above him and swirled menacingly, as if an instant tornado was on its way.
After a few long moments he brought his head down to look at me as he finished the scream. He held out both of his fists and a blast of black fire erupted from his hands towards me. In the same exact instant I also saw, from the corner of my eye, a bright white flash. Just as the black fire neared me, a giant and magnificent white horse with white glowing eyes jumped in front of the black flame. I watched in horror and shocked relief as the horse instantly turned to gray stone, frozen as it reared up on its back legs, mouth open and mane flying.
I was panting so heavily that I was lightheaded. I looked to where Forfirith had been caged in the black flame and saw nothing. The white horse had been Forfirith. He was white! He’d even had white shining eyes. More shocking was that he hadn’t been obliterated! How didn’t matter right now. I just thanked the Light Gods he was still here somehow, even in stone.
“I’ve been searching three thousand years for you?” Hathum spat out. He marched heavily towards me, his fists clenched and shoulders up like a hawk about to pounce on its prey. He reached out and took hold on my throat with his bare hand and lifted me off the ground with impossible strength. I was choking again. “You’re not worth the breath it’s taking me to speak to you!” He threw me backwards again and my back slammed into Forfirith’s stone figure so hard I felt something break. I screamed in pain as I fell to the ground in a heap. “I’m not going to bother destroying you. I’m going to make you watch while I take Casdanarus by force. I don’t need your sword if this, you, are the only resistance against me. You don’t have time to stop me even if you did know what you were doing.”
He suddenly looked up at the sky hatefully. “You made a mistake!” he screamed, shaking his fist at the clouds. “What were you thinking giving Your power to a mortal? Especially a pitiful one like this! Maybe, maybe her predecessor could have stood a chance against me, but this female is not worth the energy it’s taking me to look at her!” He looked at me again and spat on the ground hatefully. “Human,” he sneered. “This is for wasting my time.”
With that, unbearable pain shot through my entire body. I gasped at first and then let out a scream of agony rip that put Hathum’s to shame. My throat was bleeding now! Hathum disappeared but I was still left with the pain. It didn’t stop! My body started convulsing violently. I screamed again as another shocking bolt went through me. It was cut off as my throat exploded in so much blood that I tried to swallow it just so I could breathe—but my convulsions didn’t let me swallow. I couldn’t turn to my side either—I was in too much pain—to let the blood dribble out onto the ground. Eventually and thankfully it started bubbling out of my mouth. I could breathe a little.
Then my body was jarred with another shocking voltage of pain! I couldn’t scream this time. I couldn’t even breathe from the amount of pain I was in. It felt as if my life force was being sucked out of my body. It felt like shards of glass were cutting into every inch of it. I felt my bones stretching and popping. My muscles were pulled to abnormal and unnatural lengths and then twisted.
Another wave of pain! More bones popped all over my body, and as if choking on my own blood wasn’t bad enough, now I couldn’t even take a deep breath because all of my ribs felt broken.
I lay there convulsing, choking, unable to move or breathe, wishing he would have just killed me. I didn’t know a human body could endure so much damage from torture and still live. Another shock of pain, raking over my nerve endings like a razor blade under my skin. Some fingers broke then, and a few toes, and my last rib cracked. All I could do was lay there and feel this. Why wasn’t the White Warrior helping me? Why wasn’t she healing me? Why didn’t she stop this? Through my questions and agony I managed to look at the sky and apologize to my father for failing him so horribly, but I was looking forward to hearing how disappointed he was with me when I finally died and got to see him again. It was time.
With that thought, the world went mercifully black.
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