by Chris Miller
“Let you go? What do you mean let you go? I just came all this way to find you. I’m not leaving you…or letting go…or whatever…I’m here to save you!”
“No, you can’t, Hunter. The Author’s plan for me is not yet complete; you have to trust him.”
“I do.”
“Then promise that you will release me. Say it.”
“I…I’ll release you,” I forced myself to say. I didn’t fully understand what it meant but I hated the sound of it just the same.
She smiled softly. “You’re just saying that aren’t you?”
“I just don’t like the idea of losing you again.”
“Nobody said you had to,” she replied, squeezing my hand tightly in understanding. “When it’s over…when I’m gone…you must still believe. The Author gives new hope when we need it most.”
Just hearing her say the words “when I’m gone” caused tears to well in my eyes. I couldn’t stand to hear it again.
“But I don’t want a new hope; I want you. Why do you have to go? I need you…the Resistance needs you. They’re falling apart and you’re…”
“You don’t need me. You must believe, Hunter,” she said again. Her grip on my hand began to weaken, her eyes closing and her voice softer. “Go back to the Veil, and save him…from the fire.”
“Save who?” I asked.
Before Hope could explain, Trista started to scream something, but her voice was cut short. I spun around to see what was happening. Xaul’s hand smothered Trista’s mouth, and the blackened blade of his Veritas Sword was pressed across her neck.
“Put down your weapon,” said Xaul, “or your friend will die!” I looked at Trista, her eyes frightened and apologetic.
“Do it!” Xaul demanded, pressing the sword even closer to Trista’s neck. I released my grip on the sword. The metal hilt of my Veritas fell to the floor, clattering loudly on the stone and echoing off the chamber walls.
“Now, step down from the altar,” Xaul commanded.
I glanced back toward Hope one last time. She nodded knowingly as a tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Torn, I forced myself to turn away and began descending the stairs one horrid step at a time. As I walked down, Xaul stepped up, keeping Trista with him all the way to the top platform, passing me on the way. Once our places had been exchanged, he tossed Trista carelessly aside, letting her tumble painfully down the stairs. Her head hit the last step with a loud thump and her body fell limp. I rushed to her side. She was alive, but unconscious and would be dealing with a powerful headache when she awoke.
Xaul circled the stone table, eyeing the weak form of Hope with wicked intentions.
“Well, what have we here? So this is it, huh? The Codebearer’s last hope. If she dies, everything you believe dies with her.”
“Leave her alone, Xaul,” I pleaded, knowing full well my words fell on deaf ears.
“Why should I?” he replied coldly, “The Codebearers didn’t leave the Xin alone. They deceived my tribe into believing in a false hope as well—an Author who doesn’t exist. Someone so great and powerful that certainly nothing bad could happen to us if we trusted him…LIES!” He shouted the last word.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Of course it’s not simple. My people were annihilated by the very enemy the Author claimed to save us from.”
He raised his sword and pointed it at me from a distance.
“And it would never have happened if we had kept to our Old Ways. We used to believe in an Author of fire and strength who lived within us…the Xin were the Authors and the Author was the Xin. We made our own destiny. We wrote our own story; we controlled our fate through power and strength.”
His words were a series of twisted truths from the pages of the Writ. The Author was with us and at work in all things, but that didn’t make us part of the Author. That was what Sceleris had wanted to be, the Author of this world.
Xaul turned his attention toward Hope once more. The Flame within the medallion she wore held everything he thought he wanted.
“At last, the power of the eternal Flame will belong to the Xin again.”
Raising his blackened Veritas Sword in a slow purposeful movement, Xaul held it over Hope’s heart for a moment. I wanted to freeze time and stop Xaul from killing Hope, but I was helpless.
There was nothing I could do as he took in a breath and plunged the sword deep into her chest, through her back and into the stone table below her. As weak as she was, her body still lurched forward from the pain of it.
I turned away. Seeing Hope die a second time was far too painful to watch. I wanted to cry but the horror of the moment stole all other emotion.
When at last I looked back, Hope’s body lay lifeless on the stone table. No longer was she hovering over it. Her limp arm hung over the side.
Then, even her body faded away, disappearing into nothingness as I had when the Author took my heart. All that remained on the table was the golden medallion and the Flame within it.
The light of the room faded away to only a fraction of what it once was. Even the flowers folded into themselves and drooped low. It was as if Hope herself was what brought life to this place.
Hope was gone.
Chapter 27
Playing with Fire
With a wicked grin Xaul snatched up the medallion and eagerly pulled it over his head. The Author’s mark began to steadily glow on his chest, as it once had on mine. Xaul closed his eyes and breathed deeply, relishing the sense of invincibility that accompanied the Flame.
“At long last, the moment I have waited for has come to pass. The power of the eternal Flame has returned to my people. The Xin will rise again.”
Seeing Hope’s killer wearing her medallion made my stomach turn. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair! Every instinct told me to rush up the stairs and fight to take it, but something else held me back—the realization that Hope had known about this all along. She died willingly, as if it was part of some plan.
I knelt in stunned silence beside Trista, unsure of what to do next. Without the Flame I was helplessly lost and confused. I had failed the Codebearer Resistance—the Flame belonged to Xaul now.
Xaul sauntered back around the altar and kicked my Veritas Sword down the staircase. It clattered near the edge of the pool not far from where I knelt.
“Pick it up!” Xaul demanded.
The weapon was well within my grasp, but I didn’t reach for it. I knew it wouldn’t matter. Even with the sword in hand, I was unlikely to win this fight.
“I won’t fight,” I said, turning my gaze back toward the still unconscious Trista. She showed no signs of movement; only the slow rise and fall of her breathing assured me she was even still alive.
“Oh you will fight all right,” Xaul hissed, eyeing Trista. “Fight, or she will be the first to die.”
“Leave her out of this!” I shouted back in desperation. I had already lost Hope; I couldn’t bear to lose Trista as well.
“Then, FIGHT!” shouted Xaul, lunging forward with his altered sword raised in a lethal attack. I tumbled to the side, recovering my Veritas only a moment before Xaul’s blade collided with the ground where I once knelt.
A moment later we were engaged in full combat. For the most part, I managed to match each lunge and swipe of his blade with exceptional precision. But just as before, he was quickly gaining ground. I needed to take another approach.
Relying on my swiftness training, I darted across the room in search of a better place to hide. Crouching behind the safety of a stone boulder, I waited for any sign of his approach. I needed an edge...I needed the element of surprise.
A moment passed without any sign of Xaul. I began to wonder if I had actually given him the slip. Then he appeared again.
“You’ll have to be quicker than that, boy,” Xaul said, dropping from somewher
e overhead and swinging his sword at my face. I ducked just in time to avoid the edge of his blade across my neck as it singed the stone behind me.
Igniting my Veritas, I stood up and blocked his next two blows, one high, another low. His third attack, however, caught me entirely by surprise because it didn’t come from his sword at all.
Thrusting his palm forward, a blazing stream of fire shot out, knocking me square in the chest and sending me tumbling headlong into the shallow pool behind me.
What was that? I wondered as I lay in pain.
“Behold the true power of the Flame,” Xaul boasted, as if he had heard my thoughts. “The power of the eternal Flame is mine to hold—mine to control.”
“No power is given that does not come from the Author,” I replied, citing the words of the Writ.
“Then let’s see whom the Author has chosen,” he said with a sneer before sending three more painful shots of fire into my body, pushing me back toward the chamber wall with each consecutive blast.
The bursts were hot and painful though they didn’t burn like true fire. Traces trailed down my limbs and off my fingertips like an electrical current. I couldn’t move—the shock of the blasts had numbed my ability to react.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Xaul asked, stomping toward me. “But you’ll get used to it. Who knows, you may even grow to like it before I’m through with you.”
He made his way to where I lay and grabbed hold of my hair. Jerking my head up from the ground, he forced me to look into his face. His hood was pulled back now, revealing the extent of his blackened features for the first time.
“Look at me! Tell me, what do you see?” Xaul said.
His entire head was a dark charcoal, burned and gruesomely scarred beyond healing. It looked like the head of a match after it had been struck and consumed by its flame. His eyes, brilliant silver, seemed to be the only unscathed parts of his body.
“I see a murderer and a thief,” I said weakly, too afraid to ask what had happened to him—to his face.
“Wrong! What you see are the scars of perfection, the skin of sacrifice. Something I wouldn’t expect Codebearers to know anything about.”
He released his grip on my hair and let my head drop to the stone floor. The impact was sharp and sudden, but the pain didn’t come all at once; it came a moment later. A trace of warm blood ran down my forehead, accompanied by a throbbing headache.
“Purify through Pain…” I muttered to myself, recalling the inscription I had seen in the lower levels of the Xin monastery. His people, the Xin, must have subjected themselves to horrible torture in their misunderstanding of the Author and his ways. The prophecy of the Consuming Fire was clearly one of the centerpieces of their beliefs. Only, they had taken it to unimaginable extremes.
“That’s right,” Xaul smiled. “Pain is the only way to achieve perfection. We must earn the right to receive the fire. That is why you could never keep it. It belongs to one who is worthy of its power.”
“No one is ever worthy to be chosen by the Author, Xaul,” I said, applying pressure to my wound, “not on your own anyway. No amount of pain—nothing you do—can ever make you perfect. Only the Author can do that.”
My words angered Xaul even more. After all, if what I said was true it would mean his entire life, all of his sacrifice, was a worthless cause.
“Keep your Codebearer lies to yourself. You call me a thief, but actually the Codebearers are the real thieves. You took what was rightfully ours. The Xin were once the keepers of the Flame long before your people found us. It was only after the Codebearers came that the eternal Flame and its power disappeared from our people completely. And THAT is why I will not rest until every Codebearer is dead.”
Without warning, another steady stream of flames extended from Xaul’s hand. This time, the flames lifted me off my feet and pinned me firmly against a wall, a full twelve inches above the ground. The pressure on my chest threatened to choke the life from me. I wanted to give in, to be taken into the Author’s presence as I had been once before. Unable to move, I stared at the medallion on Xaul’s chest. The three V’s of the Author’s mark seemed so meaningless now.
The Way of Truth and Life? What did it matter? The Author’s Flame itself had granted unimaginable power to Xaul, the Codebearer’s enemy. How could the Author allow it? Was it possible that Xaul had been right about the prophecy of the Flame? Was it really for the Xin all along and not for us?
With no sword, no energy and no hope, I was at the mercy of Xaul. No, I was at the mercy of the Author.
“Help me,” I whispered, feeling a trail of blood slip warmly down my face.
Xaul released the Flame and let me fall to the rocky floor. I collapsed on the ground.
“Help you?” Xaul sneered as he approached with his ignited Veritas Sword. “Who’s going to help you down here? Look around, Hunter, your Author doesn’t care what happens. There’s nothing left for you to believe in.”
Believe. It was what Hope said to do. It was her last word before she died.
“You’re wrong. I can still believe….I choose to hope,” I said boldly.
As Xaul raised his sword to deal another blow, a sharp flash of light crossed the room, piercing his right arm and forcing him to drop his sword. Trista had apparently recovered consciousness and found her bow. Her arrow had found its mark.
Howling in pain, Xaul turned to confront his new threat. He started toward her, but the Flame in the medallion emerged once more and began to circle around Xaul. At first he was unsure, maybe even slightly amused at the ordeal, but as the Flame quickened its cycle it grew into a glowing inferno. Xaul’s confidence quickly faded and he realized that something was wrong. He was trapped in the center of the whirlwind of fire.
Xaul covered his face and fell to his knees. When he looked up at me his eyes were burning with a fiery blaze.
“What’s happening to me? It’s not supposed to be this way. My eyes…my eyes…I can’t see!” he shouted, but the Flame did not slow.
Trista ran quickly to my side, carrying my Veritas Sword with her.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing…I didn’t do anything.”
The flaming cyclone increased in brilliance until it was almost too bright to look at. Then a voice, or rather a series of voices all speaking as one, called out from the fire itself with final authority.
“Behold the fire that consumes!”
Xaul screamed as the fire engulfed him in its flames. When at last the whirlwind of fire thinned into only a sliver of light and disappeared completely, Xaul was gone with it.
Immediately, we scoured the place where Xaul had been, in search of Hope’s medallion. I spotted it first, but it wasn’t the same—the Flame that once lived within it was gone. The metal was cold and lifeless. As I pulled it back over my head, Trista discovered Xaul’s Veritas on the ground.
“Hunter, look,” she gasped, pointing to the base of the hilt where an etching of a name was engraved. “Caleb Brown. Isn’t that your…?”
“My dad?” I questioned aloud.
“But if the sword was your father’s, how did Xaul get it?”
“I…I don’t know,” I replied, confounded by the new revelation, but in my mind I couldn’t shake the thought that Xaul had likely killed him.
I took the sword in my hands and held it close. It was the second item of importance I had recovered of my father’s in Solandria. The mystery of his involvement with Xaul sparked new interest in what had become of him.
A woman’s voice interrupted the silence.
“Well done, Hunter. You’ve made excellent progress today.” It was the Emissary. She stepped out of the shadows and into the open, carrying the glass ball in front of her, covered by a silk cloth. “I’ve been observing you for quite some time and I must say, you’re doing great. I like how you’re wrestlin
g with your ideas.”
“What are you doing here? How do you know my name?” I asked, noticing for the first time that Boojum was perched on her shoulder. “And why do you have Boojum?”
Boojum waved back at the mention of his name; he was sitting beside another white snark, both of them munching on some kind of treat the woman had given him.
“The question isn’t why am I here, or Boojum, or Trista for that matter. The question is why do you want us to be here?” she answered.
“I don’t want you here at all,” I challenged, igniting my sword in defense and holding it out in front of me.
“Oh, but you do,” she said soothingly, “you really do.”
As she spoke my mind grew clouded and fuzzy. I couldn’t think straight.
“You see, Hunter,” she continued, “Solandria IS you…. There is no one else here. No Author, no Shadow, no Flame…only you.”
As she spoke, my vision began to blur and the walls of the room swayed back and forth as if we were underwater.
Trista grabbed my arm and started shaking it wildly to catch my attention. “Snap out of it, Hunter! What’s happening to you?”
I wanted to “snap out of it” but I couldn’t figure out how to.
“Don’t listen to her,” the Emissary added. “She’s not real anyway. When all of this is over none of your friends will remember what happened. They are only here because you want them to be. You make the rules here, Hunter. This is your world; you are in control.”
The Emissary pulled the sheet off of her glass ball, revealing what was hidden beneath it. I heard Trista scream but all I could do was stare at the head that inhabited the ball. This time, it wasn’t Saris, but my own disembodied head staring back at me. Everything around the ball melted away into blackness. All that remained was the glass ball that held my head; then, with the drop of a cloth that too disappeared.
“Well, what do you think?” the Emissary asked, her voice still soothing but much more excited.
I opened my eyes and found myself reclined in a plush chair in the middle of Ms. Sheppard’s Serenity Center. I had no idea how I had come to be there, or why I was there at all.