70

Damien stood before the glowing effigy of a young man, confused as to what was happening for longer than was usual for him. He wasn't often clueless and could usually solve any issue with a speedy bout of mind reading.

The mind of this bright creature was irritatingly quiet. He switched to reading the minds of the companions—Scarlett and Riley—but didn't find a lot more information there.

'Whatever,' Damien thought. 'Whatever he is... I'll destroy him.'

The others had yet to see his full monstrous size—they didn't warrant it—but with this new threat, he was taking no chances. Stretching himself, he became three times bigger but then took off into the air as if weightless. He rose a few feet before drawing breath, ready to blow them all away.

In the blink of an eye, the golden shining boy vanished.

'How is it possible he moved so fast?' Damien wondered.

With enhanced vision, he scoured the surrounding land but saw nothing.

Then he felt it: a small fire burning inside his chest cavity.

It was a small nuisance at first but grew increasingly painful as it persisted.

'I'll just make myself small again and crush him,' Damien thought with a snicker.

He descended from the sky, aiming to decrease his mass as he landed.

'What's wrong with me?' he thought, hitting the ground in behemoth form. He tried again to shift but there was no use. His body simply refused to listen to him.

Using a projection, he did the strangest thing he'd ever done... and entered his own body.

Pain struck as he walked the path along the firm flesh of his diaphragm. The boy stood at his heart, hand raised and burning bright like magnesium, almost blinding.

Rushing over, Damien raised his fist. He threw a punch and almost fell face-first into his own organs as it faded through the boy.

It took him a couple of attempts at attacking before he let the obvious truth sink in: he couldn't stop this boy. Couldn't stop him from destroying his heart and couldn't shift into his smaller form.

"Stop it!" he cried in desperation.

The boy did not stop. Had he honestly expected him to?

"STOP!"

He shouted at the top of his lungs but the boy ignored his cries, continuing to burn away his heart. Almost all of the left atrium was charred to dust, and the pain was like nothing he'd ever felt.

He couldn't regenerate. Not even slightly. If his entire heart was lost before he could rebuild it, he would not survive.

'I'm dying,' he thought.

Fear took over.

He phased through the boy, stopping when the pair were face to face.

"Please stop," he asked. "I promise I won't hurt any of you. I—I'll stop. I'll do whatever you want—"

As he spoke these words, words he'd heard a hundred or more times, their futility dawned on him.

His heart was almost gone. He had only seconds left to live. Spending them on pointless pleading was not how he wanted to go.

Transferring his consciousness to his larger form, he looked out at the blue sky, and further at the rolling green hills and lakes of the countryside.

'This world is quite beautiful,' he thought. 'Why have I been so hell-bent on destroying it?'

His vision spun as he fell from the sky, and as it faded out, he saw her. Sienna looked up at him, eyes wide and... sad?

'Is she sad?' he wondered. She had definitely loved him. He knew that much.

He watched her raise her palm into a wave and tried to return the gesture as best he could with his dragon claws.

Everything sparkled and danced, blurring into a fractal kaleidoscope until he was no longer a part of their world.

It wasn't the end of him. He realised that much. He was simply...

He smiled.

'... I'm someone else's problem now.'

###

Sienna pulled her hand to her chest.

He'd waved goodbye to her. She hadn't expected him too

She didn't quite know why she'd felt the need to wave. Some part of her still clung to the feelings she'd had for him. Or... not for him so much, but the way he'd made her feel. Before revealing it was all a lie to crush her, he had made her feel special, valued... whole. Like she didn't need a male to validate her... as much as she wanted him at her side.

'Deep down, underneath it all... did he have goodness inside him?'

His form turned to black dust as it fell, covering them in what looked like coal.

She turned to Adrian and smiled, remembering how he'd tried so desperately to save her.

He shimmied over and placed an arm over her shoulder, squinting up at the sun where the monster had been.

'Only clear skies ahead now,' she thought, but the faces of her friends told her differently.

"Come on." Adrian nudged her. "I don't know about you guys, but I need a drink."

###

Scarlett trudged after pack, trying to shake off some of the black dust. They looked like a group of 1940's coal miners or an even earlier gang of Victorian chimney sweeps.

'But we're alive,' she thought.

Jake looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her. He'd been amazing.

He was... amazing. She had no other words for him.

'And he will make a perfect leader for our pack.'

She looked over at Riley, who wouldn't meet her eyes. Things between them hadn't been the same. They both felt it. But now that they were safe and free to be together, surely everything was going to be okay now?

She skipped a little to catch up to him.

"Hey." She smiled. "Are we... I mean... are we... okay?"

"We're alive, aren't we?" Riley replied without smiling.

"I mean... you know what I mean," Scarlett pressed. "I'm talking about us."

"You must feel it," Riley said. He stopped walking and turned to her, looking her in the eyes for the first time. "I'm not your destined mate, and we've all felt it since the second we got into that car."

"Whaa?" Scarlett sputtered and laughed—an awkward-sounding choke of a cackle. "What? No... you don't mean?"

"You and Jake are supposed to be together. Not yet, obviously... but eventually. In a few years. Damien was right... about that at least."

Scarlett stopped and shook her head, feeling the sting of tears that she refused to shed.

"No, you're wrong..."

She trailed off, knowing he wasn't wrong. She just didn't want to admit it.

But as she had watched him transform into the being of light—seeing the adult form he would grow into; Scarlett had been mesmerised. She couldn't get the image of him out of her head. The annoying boy would grow into that man, and she would be honoured to be by his side.

"So... we did all this for nothing?" she asked nobody in particular.

"Are you mad?" Jake asked with a frown. "There was no way I was going sacrifice our first born to that thing."

He said it with such certainty. They would have babies. Babies that would grow up to be strong and happy and their own people—free to live out their destinies, as would Scarlett.


End