Light in the Darkness

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. Smoke billowed from the tree canopy and smudged every star from the sky. Ashes fell like snow, leaving a gritty feeling and bitter taste in my mouth. The air smelled like meat roasting over a campfire.

People of the forest city ran passed me screaming, their dirty, panicked faces illuminated by the roaring flames. A mother and her kid fell at my feet. I reached out to help. Fire danced in her fearful eyes as she looked up from the soot-covered ground. 

“Monster! Stay away!” she screamed as she wrapped her crying child in her arms.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said with as calm a voice as I could muster. Bewilderment replaced her fear. She took my hand and found her feet. “What’s happening?” I inquired.

“It’s Ian,” she cried, hefting her child into a sturdier grip. “It’s like he’s possessed! He’s burning everything!”

“Where is he now?” I asked with urgency. She pointed to the center of town. The cobblestone path was packed with screaming people running toward us, occasionally tripping over burning moss.

“Thank you. Get to safety, I’ll take care of this,” I said as I headed toward Ian.

“What?! After what’s happened...Why would you do that?” she asked, eyes wide with surprise.

“Because I am the light in the darkness,” I replied with conviction. I walked away from her and focused on the heat, drawing it inward to my core. Fire spiraled off the ground, trees, and homes in the vicinity and formed a vortex of flame around my body. Not even a smolder remained in the environment, only the crackling of damage already done.

This taming of flames continued as I walked up the cobblestone path. Throngs of people cleared out of my way with mixed reactions. Some screamed and fell off the path, others simply ran passed. The rest stopped and gawked, soaked from head to toe with a mixture of soot and blood.

“Is that Agapi?” one asked.

“How is she doing that?” another pondered.

“Are the monsters going to meet?” another questioned. I sighed out my disappointment at that last comment. Some people just can’t see through their own bias, I guess. Even when their forest city is being saved right in front of them. 

The state of the forest city’s central hub shocked me: entire canopy houses engulfed in flames, the business district all but ashes, and the ground littered with the dead. Several yards in front of me stood a tall, dark silhouette with its back to me, torches in hand. A troupe of city guards, clad in their enchanted wooden armour, are suspended mid-air. Blood pattered the ground like pancake batter as writhing shadow tendrils attached to the silhouette’s body consumed them from the inside out.

“Ian, I presume,” I called out as I absorbed the vortex of flame. My body glowed for a moment as the heat dissipated. Bones crackled as the silhouette craned its neck around at an unnatural angle. Its putrid eyes glowed blood red as it looked right through me and dropped its meals to the ground.

“Ian’s mine,” the Shade growled with an evil smile spread across its dark rictus. Its deep, rusty voice sent shivers down my spine. A shadow tendril cut through the air toward me.

“Illuminate,” I commanded, maintaining eye contact. With an effulgent left hand I caught the wretched tendril mid-air. An elongated mouth repeatedly snapped in attempts to chomp into my flesh with its dagger-sharp teeth.

“Oh shit...an enlightened one,” it grumbled. I sent a wave of heat through my hand. A daemonic shriek pierced the air as the tendril erupted into embers. The torches fell to the ground as the Shade put both hands on its head and swayed in pain.

“What did you do to Ian? What was his vice?” I interrogated. Daemonic laughter filled the air.

“Hate!” it cried out with glee as it turned to face me. “Ian wanted to rage, to hurt those who hurt him, so I set him free.” I could feel the anger as it seethed from this monster.

“No. You tricked him into handing his body over. You trapped him with his own desire by promising to end his pain. But this...” I said, gesturing to the burning city, “...has only spread that pain to others.”

“What difference does it make?” the Shade laughed. “If everybody hurts…” it said with a dark grin and wicked tone, “...no one hurts.”

“The amount of bullshit in that argument is disgusting. Pain is pain, and spreading it just makes it worse. The cycle of abuse stops here, with me,” I proclaimed. The Shade looked at me quizzically before erupting into laughter.

“You? Just look at you girl...” it mocked, “...green skin, two tusks protruding from your teeth...you’re a monster like me, and these aren’t your people. You’re nothing, what makes you think otherwise?”

“People are people, no matter how they look. Unlike Ian, I’m in control of my desire...and my avarice,” I confessed. The Shade’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“You’ll break; they always break,” it hissed. The ground rumbled as it tapped into its endarkened power. A wave of darkness shot a corpse through the air. I caught it in my arms, and sympathy washed over me as I looked at its face.

“Didn’t this one try to kill you? A stone to the base of the skull, if I recall correctly,” the Shade coerced.

“We talked about it, and it’s in the past,” I explained, setting the body down. “He understood where his hatred came from when we were done.” With a clawed foot the Shade kicked a torso in my direction. It slid to my feet.

“This one…” it hissed, “...you caught assaulting a young boy, did you not? Didn’t she make you want to...kill?” it asked with an enticing voice.

“Of course she did,” I admitted.

“Ooooo, do tell,” it cooed, stalking a bit closer. Its knees bent backward, giving it an unsettling gait.

“I helped her see that she was repeating what had happened to her when she was younger, and showed her that she could deal with it without abusing someone else. She was jailed, of course, but was on the path of recovery.”

“What?!” the Shade asked, enraged. “Do you actually believe these people deserve redemption?!”

“They are abused people too, so the real enemy here is trauma,” I said, standing my ground.

“Come now, aren’t you angry? Where’s your hatred?!” it pleaded, arms out and palms to the sky.

“Of course I’m angry,” I admitted, taking a step closer. “Livid, honestly, because these people didn’t deserve this fate. But rage burns like a wildfire, so I won’t let it consume me like Ian’s consumed this city. I wouldn’t be able to think let alone focus, you’d be able kill me, and above all I’d sacrifice my character: I won’t let that happen, so I’ll remain calm...yet dangerous,” I replied with confidence.

“You’ll die,” it said in a low, rumbling voice. It stepped close enough that the light from my body illuminated its true nature, and I felt my fear rise at the sight. It wore black ooze for skin that dripped down its gangling, decrepit limbs which moved in unnatural ways, just like its innumerable dendrites. Streams of crimson blood drooled from its lip less mouth, and it reeked of a thousand putrid corpses.

In a blink, the Shade appeared next to me. I blocked an attack just in time, but found myself careening through the air. I smashed through a burning building and slammed against a flaming tree trunk. I braced with a shield of light as the reverberations caused the structure to collapse.

Once the debris settled, I drew all of the surrounding fire into my body. I let my battle cry roar and teleported dozens of feet above the rubble with a flash of lightning. The Shade disappeared, its laughter echoing from the shadows. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as I teleported around the forest city, hunting the monster until I found it feasting on a small body.

Locked on, I flew toward the Shade like a shining meteor streaking across the midnight sky. My radiant fist crashed into its face with a sonic boom, sending it flying across the forest city. Leaving no recovery time, I followed up with a glimmering roundhouse to its liver, sending it flying once again with a second glowing wound.

“What, don’t I deserve redemption?” it gasped mid-air. I dodged swipes from its tendrils as I flew near.

“Sure. You can stop your abuse at any time, let Ian go, help clean up the city,” I said sternly, maintaining eye contact. It made a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh.

“It’s abusive for you to call me abusive,” it lied.

“Gaslighting won’t work on me. Both you and abuse share the same weakness: awareness,” I challenged. 

“This is my food, I need this to survive,” it coerced.

“Will you stop, yes or no?” I demanded. I dodged a tendril aimed at my gut.

“I’ll never stop!” it proclaimed.

“Thought so,” I said, kicking it in the gut as we spiraled toward the ground.

As the battle raged, I consumed more and more fire, and soon the only light to be found was my own. The Shade grew stronger with the ever increasing darkness, and seemed to become one with it. It took every ounce of courage I had to fight this abyss. The Shade grew to an enormous size and stomped me into the ground with a gigantic clawed foot, which caused me to spit up blood.

“Look at you! Weak, in the dark, with nothing left to give...how stupid you were, thinking that you could beat me! Where’s all of that bravado now?” its booming voice mocked and cackled. I could feel the tendrils beginning to feed on me.

Out of breath and wracked with pain, I looked up to the sky and considered whether I could have done anything differently now that the end was here. Starlight poked through the tree canopy. Hope filled me in spite of the Shade’s daemonic mockery and feasting. With the last of my strength I opened my third eye to draw the starlight in, and my body glowed like a prismatic nebula in the void of space.

The Shade shrieked and removed its foot as starlight scorched the tendrils to cinders and burned my wounds away, leaving healthy tissue in the flames’ wake. My courage flooded the forest city like a radiant strobe light. The monster squealed as it shielded its grotesque eyes. I levitated in the air, breathed in deep, and faced the Shade once more.

“What?! How?!” it asked in shock as it took a step back.

“Virtue: its radiance shines like the stars, burns negativity like fire, and allows its practitioners to break the generational cycles of abuse,” I declared with a powerful, booming voice that echoed throughout the darkness. I teleported behind the Shade as it turned to run. I phased my scintillating hand of light through its chest, separating the shadow’s heart from Ian’s.

Rage flooded from the Shade as it resisted, so I responded with a torrent of peace. Our powerful emotions collided, sending continuous shock waves through the earth. The ground cracked beneath our feet as I stomped forward once, pulling the Shade from Ian’s torso. Darkness and light exploded from us, causing the very air to rumble and rush about with great energy.

“Finish...it…” I heard an exhausted Ian plead.

“With pleasure,” I responded, in spite of my surprise. The Shade shrieked as I stomped forward once more and ripped it out of Ian entirely. It squirmed and squealed, desperate to remove itself from my grip. I crushed its shadow heart in my hand until the beating stopped, and watched as my light burned the monster to embers in a cyclone of emerald flame.

I breathed out my tension as I turned around, just in time to catch a falling Ian. I knelt and laid him down, holding his head in one hand and cradling him with the other. His skin was ghost-white, almost translucent. Deep pain broke out across his ashen face as tears welled up in his dark eyes.

“My wife...my kids...they were the first to go…” he sobbed, avoiding eye contact, “...just like those guards...oh gods, what have I done?!” he wailed to the sky. He shifted, and thrusted a guard’s dagger into the artery of his left armpit. Before I could do anything, he twisted the dagger and ripped it out, crying in pain. My eyes widened as blood spurted from the fatal wound.

“Damnit Ian, I’m not a healer! The open door should never be taken without reason,” I yelled. He met my tearful gaze.

“How could I be allowed to live after what I’ve done?” he said with a weak voice. Dawn broke and illuminated the sweat beads on his forehead like tiny prisms.

“You would have been proof of these monsters. Even if you never saw daylight again, people could have talked with you and learned from your mistakes,” I said.

“We were wrong to treat you like we did. Turns out I was the monster all along. Thank you for saving them...from...me…” he said as the light faded from his eyes. Compassion pushed tears from my eyes as empathy pulsed sobs from my gut.

He just needed help. If someone had taught him to control his anger, none of this would have happened! I kissed his forehead as I rocked back and forth, working through the intense emotions of the horrific night. Bootfalls crunched the ground behind me.

“I think I’d kill myself too if a half-orc touched me like that,” Lord Eislan said. I looked up and saw him approach with his only remaining guard. His clean, regal attire glittered ruby red in the dawn as he kicked over a dead body with disgust.

“Half-human,” I responded, wiping my tears. I gently set Ian down and rose to my feet.

“Excuse you?” he hissed with a glaring tilt of his head. His golden circlet gleamed in the sunlight.

“I’m also half-human; but racists and bigots only look at what they hate,” I said, meeting his glare. He snapped his fingers.

“Kill it,” he commanded. Without hesitation, the guard drew his sword. With a flash of lightning I teleported behind my assailant. My elbow connected to the back of his skull with a clap of thunder.

The guard was out cold before he even hit the ground. Fear overtook Lord Eislan as his eyes circled from where I was, to the guard, and back to me over and over, as though he would find a replay somewhere. 

“You…” I growled, catching his eyes. He gasped and dropped to the ground as he tried to skitter away. With one hand I grabbed him by the expensive collar, and drew him close to my face.

“YOU ostracized me first, YOUR laws encouraged racism, it was the example of YOUR CHARACTER that led to this destruction; if you don’t deal with your bigotry, MORE like Ian will come, and then you will have NOTHING to back up your title,” I said with conviction and unwavering eye contact. He seemed nigh petrified. His mouth opened as if to protest, but no words could form: not even a stutter.

“Now…” I continued as I lifted him with one arm and set him on his feet, “...your guard will need medical attention. I will still do my best to help around here, in spite of everything. I suggest you do the same.” I smoothed out the wrinkles I made in his garment.

“This whole city treated you like garbage: why did you save us?” asked a voice behind me. I turned to see the mother and child from before. She looked the worse for wear, her hair and clothes stained and disheveled. Her child was in stark contrast, asleep on her shoulder and sucking their thumb.

“Two reasons: first, because it was the right thing to do. Second, because these monsters are real, and they hide in the shadows of abuse. People need to know that it’s not hopeless, that they can beat the shadows,” I said.

“How?” she asked with a shake of her head.

I smiled and answered: “Virtue shines like the Sun in the face of negativity. So you illuminate, and become the light in the darkness.”