The Burning

  In the dead of night, two children walked through open gates and onto soft sand, their footsteps disappearing one after the other.

  They walked along the path only to find that what lay within was deserted, bereft of any lights or life; yet they continued walking, one leading the other because the first child knew where to go.

  The rest of the walk was not far: they headed into a small building, and then through a door in the back.

  And it was then that they finally saw the light.

  “That’s it,” said the first child, dragging along the second, who was left speechless in its presence.

  “Are you sure?” asked the second child when they finally reached the edge of the light, still holding the hand of the first.

  “Yes,” said the first.

  They both walked into the light and bathed in it until the second child spoke again.

  “I can hear a voice,” they said.

  “That’s the Earth Mother. Come.”

  With the first leading, the two children took a few more steps until suddenly the second child stopped again.

  “They’re angry,” they whispered.

  The first child tightened their grip on the second. “Here, just a bit closer.”

  “N-no,” stuttered the fearful child. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “It’s okay, we can walk slowly. I'll give you my anima.”

  Against all odds, the children slowly made it up to a tree, so close they could touch it.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  “They…they are.”

  “So many people love these trees,” continued to muse the first. “They give the world so much love, so much life. I don’t know what to do. I feel like…something’s changed somehow, these past two days. Something telling me that this is wrong.”

  “You made a promise,” stated the second.

  “I know. I thought I could do it. I thought I could do it for him. Out of everyone…I thought I’d be able to do it for him.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “What happens to all of us if this doesn’t happen?” asked the second child.

  “I…don’t know.”

  “They all said the same thing, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “All magic must be destroyed.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  “…Do you have the spell?”

  The first child wordlessly reached into their pocket with their free hand and produced a small sheet of paper.

  “Ignite,” read aloud the second student.

  The first child finally broke at hearing the name of the spell. “This can’t be right. They can’t possibly call this hope. They must have gotten it wrong. To destroy this would be the opposite.”

  “Do you want to do it?”

  “I…the Earth Mother. I can’t destroy her. I can’t hurt her.”

  “Do you want to do it?” repeated the second child.

  “I want to. But I can’t. It…doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  The first child cowered now, crouching down and closing their eyes, their hand never letting go of the other child.

  The second child took a deep breath, trying their best to chase away the intrusive voices in their mind. “I’ll say it for you,” they said. “I don’t have Ancient blood. I can do it.”

  The first child did not respond.

  “Only if you want me to,” continued the second child.

  “You…I can’t. I can’t give you that burden. Not again,” wept the first.

  “I’ll carry it for you. A thousand times over.”

  It was silent for a very long time. Waiting and waiting, listening to the emptiness, listening to the sound of desolation and despair. To the sound of courage shattering.

  “I’m…I’m so sorry.”

  Without any hesitation, the second student lifted a hand to the tree, feeling the voices grow as they closed in on the bark, and then spoke aloud the words to the spell they had easily memorized, talking louder and louder and louder over the countless voices screaming and screaming and blood and sin and fire and fire, fire, fire.

  A spark was all it took. It began where the second child’s hand was, and then slowly infected the rest of the white, tainting the purity, burning it. Turning it into red, smoldering ashes. Soon it would all be ashes. Everything would turn into red. Their hands, their books, the ground, the skies.

  The second child fell before they could see any of this, and in doing so let go of the first.

  At the first flame, and as if a spell had been finally broken, the remaining conscious child felt a suffocating feeling in their chest finally escape from their lips, snapping out of their dreamlike stupor and recovering quickly enough to catch the falling second child.

  And holding the second child in their arms, the first ran as fast as they could back to where safety was.

  * * *

  Nearing the moonlit beach and the waters, the second child woke up. They said nothing, but was startled enough to cause the first child to trip.

  The second child clutched their head and threw up in the grass by the side of the road, complaining about the voices again, even when they were far away from the sanctuary.

  The first child did nothing but hold them and apologize with tearful eyes.

  The second child recovered after a few minutes of lying on the grass, but still could barely stand, so the first child picked them back up.

  They walked to the edge of the beach, and the first child laid down the other.

  The second child was thankful and felt slightly better as they began washing their face.

  “Try eating my medicine,” pleaded the first.

  At wit’s end, the second lay down on the sandy beach and asked for dreams of flowers as they closed their eyes to rest.

  Happy to oblige, the first child tried to stifle their sobs and knelt over them, lowering their head and placing their hands on the ground like they did that very first time.

  Unbeknownst to the weeping child and the sick child, a third child approached, the only one to hear the words that came out of the first child’s mouth at that very moment:

  “I’m here, Theo. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care if the world burns. I don’t care about which path is right. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill every single one of them until I fix you, even if it means dying. I’m going to fix you. I promise.”

  — End of Volume 1 —

  Scheduling: I will continue pushing out M/W/F releases for the next three-ish months, at which point I will likely change to 2 releases a week. I want to give myself as much room as possible with Volume 3 before its chapters are released, and I only have so much time in the day to write and edit while working a full-time job...aha ;v;

  you were here, and that means the world to this small, anxious hermit.