Guardian: The Great Beginning

Chapter Sixteen - Darkness Approaches

Chapter Sixteen

Darkness Approaches

Asura let out a gasp as he awoke. He was in chains, for a very brief moment, until the pieces of metal shattered without him doing anything.

Then, more pain followed. Asura let out a yelp of pain, which surprisingly, caught the attention of the Spirits down in the Ritual Chamber.

"Akilah-!" Aoife shouted frantically, as she knelt down beside her sister. Akilah had passed out briefly, but was already starting to get back to her feet. As soon as she heard the second cry coming from downstairs, Akilah stood upright, ready to run in the direction the cry had come from.

"Asura," Akilah said urgently, without providing any further explanation. "We've got to get to the dungeon and check on him. Trust me, there's no time to lose!"

Akilah's siblings decided not to question her order and simply followed quietly. It was obvious that Akilah was in a rush; Asura was hurt, and no one knew how he'd been hurt exactly.

One thing, however, was clear without a doubt: something had gone terribly wrong during the performance of the Ritual.

Akilah rushed down to the dungeon, with her siblings following closely behind. Akilah, ignoring the guards, headed straight for her brother's cell, where, she found her brother lying on the floor, gasping and wheezing for air.

"Asura!" Akilah cried out as she quickly knelt down beside her brother, trying to assess his condition. "Are you alright?" The Spirit Queen didn't even notice her brother's chains had been shattered. There would've been no possibility that Asura could've done that on his own – but Akilah was so concerned with her brother's wellbeing, that she didn't even consider the shattered chains for a fraction of a second.

It took a while, but eventually, the boy managed to muster a careful response. "N-no," Asura sobbed, in-between painful wheezes. "I- I'm not. Def- def- definitely not." He seemed to have returned to his regular self – apart from his looks, which still kept the frightening veins across his face. As Asura kept his eyes closed, Akilah couldn't tell if they'd returned to their original golden colour or had remained solid orange.

"Calm down, Asura," Akilah begged. "Please, calm down. Let me take a look at you."

"Please, Akilah," Asura wheezed, as he allowed his sister to turn him onto his back. "Help. Help me, Akilah."

Brother and sister's eyes met, and Akilah's heart sank.

The Ritual had in fact cleansed the world and had got rid of the Dark, but it had come at a terrible price.

A risk Akilah had considered, but never believed held any merit had become a reality.

The energy that the Dark had spread across Lunaria had to go somewhere, after all. It had to be contained, but during the Ritual, there had been no one around to redistribute the energy evenly. And thus, all the energy the Element had sent out went return to sender, so to say.

That meant that all energy had returned to Asura's soul. The overwhelming amount of energy that now existed within the boy was simply too much for him to handle; the Light and Dark inside of him were at war. It'd be either the one or the other, as there was no more room for both to coexist. This internal battle left Asura in agonising pain – and there was nothing he could do about it.

The battle would end in one of two ways; Asura would die or become a creature of darkness definitively, even more so than he'd been before, and Akilah's greatest fear would once again come true. She had to watch another sibling suffer and ultimately perish under the Dark.