The Blaze Ignites (48 page)

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.