He stood his ground as strong gusts of wind threatened his balance, blonde strands of hair whipping at half-closed green eyes, momentarily blinding him. The spirits must have been testing him, he guessed, or warning him not to go any further. What lay ahead in the darkness was not for the vaguely aware, nor the faint of heart.
The gusts softened into a breeze, allowing him sight and movement again. He could go on searching—if he dared.
He stopped.
It had come. Whatever it was he was here to find, to see, to take … it was here. And now that he had it within his grasp, he wanted nothing more than to be rid of it. No more did it hold promise of peace and harmony. It carried with it only bloodshed, betrayal and destruction. It felt as nothing else. Hate, evil, a hybrid of all that brought ruin. It could not be understood. It was an impossibility of creation itself, a paradox conjured in the most twisted of minds and set free only to wreak havoc among those that wished to live, to grow, to know happiness. It was the enemy, not the cure as he had thought. He was not to embrace it. He was to destroy it.
Behind him, he could feel its source moving closer. He turned, blinded again by the searing hot winds as he was forced to his knees and held down. He could sense nothing holding him, but he could not get up, nor move at all. He was allowed only to look to his right, where there was a dark line heading west, down by the black, oil-like sea. He judged the line to be a military force; servants of war seeking their next victims, thousands of men marching alongside the many hundreds of armoured vehicles, all sent for no other purpose than to inflict more pain on the innocent.
He lowered his head. It was a sign of the war’s continuation; a sign of which he had wished to remain ignorant.
The wind slowed. The war would be forgotten for now. There was still the greater danger at hand.
He looked to where he had felt the evil presence, no longer hindered by the wind or strange force, yet saw nothing. Vast expanses of dying yellowed grasses, through which he had walked only minutes ago, were all that lay behind him. In confusion, he focused back on the military force, feeling the need to find what he was looking for again. He then scanned the hills to no avail, just more barren fields of grass, and then he looked to the sky. It seemed lit with fire, even without the sun. There was a band of yellow too bright to look upon, stretching from horizon to horizon as it burned noiselessly in the outer atmosphere. His eyes fell to the ground as the light became unbearable and then he felt the blood drain from his face as his heart skipped a beat.
Someone had come.
Someone else was here.
The newcomer was standing in front of him, as if suddenly appearing from the air. Jaden looked fearfully, expecting to see a beast of unimaginable horror, the bringer of doom, but was shocked to see only a boy—a boy with black hair, in tattered gray rags, seemingly of little threat or significance.
Was this boy what he was meant to fear?
With a shake of his head, Jaden lifted himself from the ground, believing now more than ever it had all been a lie, an illusion put before him to make him turn away from a quest that didn’t exist. Whether truth or fiction, one thing was certain; a boy of such an age shouldn’t have been out in the open, not in such close proximity to a military unit. He would take the boy home, if he could find it. Children were often stranded, left alone after being orphaned by senseless attacks. It was a sad thing, and inevitable in these times.
He walked closer to the boy, hoping to discern his origin from his features, but the boy turned before he could reach him.
‘Your home, is it far?’ Jaden asked, not wishing to frighten the boy, but he then realised no words had come. There was no sound, not even the wind dared speak, the grasses now lying in silence. He tried to take another step forward and found even the freedom of motion had been taken from him. Fear had frozen the blood in his veins, as if the child in tattered gray rags had petrified him. It was the same as at the waterfall. Paralysed. He must have been closer than he thought to what he was here to find. He struggled, fighting the invisible bonds to be free again. Anger rose at this relentless, unjust imprisonment, yet it too was unable to surface, trapped deep inside by the ice of what held him still.
He couldn’t let it win, he thought, he had to fight it.
Suddenly the ice in his veins melted. There was a change. Something was different. He had lost all feeling again. He could only sense something around him, behind him. For a moment the spears became stronger and faster, and then they changed too. They blunted, yet were somehow deadlier without shape. They no longer felt like single entities, they felt more like … power. There was no other way to describe it. They had morphed into a power that felt as if an exploding star, in both temperature and proportion, was readying for release as it threatened to destroy all that was before him. It would mean the end; he and the grasses would be reaching their termination well short of their expected destinies. Their efforts would have been in vain. Jaden had to stop it, for the good of those he knew as family. His mind searched frantically for a way of preventing it, to delay it even just for now. He couldn’t let it happen.