Chapter 18

CHAPTER18

Athan’s flame didn’t burn as brightly as it should have. He was still fighting off the remnants of dark and tar worming their way inside his body, and his wings were heavy with sludge.

But he was still bright enough to fight a mere shade.

He had to be.

Athan dove at Callan, sending out a stream of fire. His light cut through some of the void, but Callan was massive.

“I’ve never been afraid of the light,” Callan mocked, sliding from one end of the clearing to the other. “You cast the largest shadows, my dear phoenix.”

“You brought your own shadows,” Athan countered. He flapped his wings to gain altitude, hoping to find where Callan’s real body was. This void was an illusion. The real Callan was small, and desperate. He would have no need to summon his master—he would have no master—if he were truly that powerful.

There, by the altar, where Athan had almost given up. When he’d seen Elric getting consumed… he could only see his own mistakes spiraling around him. But he’d also felt Elric’s sorrow and despair.

Those weren’t the emotions of somebody who wanted to devour the world.

“Elric, get out of here!” Athan shouted. “It’s going to be too hot for you!”

Elric was on his knees, staring up at the two of them. He was still a creature of inky blackness, dripping onto the ground around him, melding with Callan’s shadows. Athan didn’t know if Elric could survive even if he evaded the flame, but Elric wasn’t even moving.

“I’m not letting you die alone,” Elric said. His voice was quiet, hollow, but it carried to Athan’s ears nonetheless.

After what had happened—after how Elric had consented to consuming the darkness—it seemed strange.

“I always die alone,” Athan answered, and some of the darkness pulled at his wings again. “I’ll be reborn. Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who only has one life.”

Callan’s laughter shook the ruins. “How touching. How adorable, and naive. How many times do you have to get your heart broken before you learn the lesson, my dear phoenix? Humans can’t be fixed.”

“There is no lesson to learn,” Athan shouted back, rising higher into the air. “I would rather keep trying than lose myself entirely, like you have. I’d rather share my warmth and light than hoard it.”

Then he dove at Callan again, at Callan’s true body. His beak caught on Callan’s shoulder, and he sent flame through the newly created wound.

Callan screamed and dropped into the shadows again. For a few seconds, the darkness flickered, allowing hints of the setting sun to peek through.

Athan knew it was too good to last, though. Callan appeared again on the other side of the clearing, and he pulled all of his shadows to himself and rose up even taller than before. The dark tendrils flew through the air, straight at Athan.

He dodged, burning away some of the dark, but there was so much of it. Athan’s talons got twisted around one tentacle, and he let out a loud screech as he was pulled into Callan’s embrace.

Maybe he could use this to his advantage though. Athan let himself get drawn in, stoking the flames inside him.

“There are no lessons to learn?” Callan’s voice dripped into Athan’s ear. “You’ll allow yourself to be used, over and over, until you’re nothing more than a husk, simply because you refuse to believe that people aren’t worth saving?”

There was something about Callan’s tone that caught Athan’s attention. The seeping cold, the hatred, the condemnation—and the disgust. Not at Athan, but at himself.

Athan twisted his neck to look Callan in the eyes. “I don’t regret my time with you.” His fire reflected back at him from Callan’s dark voids. “I couldn’t help you, but I don’t regret anything. But it sounds like you do.”

Then he opened his mouth and sent fire straight into Callan.

Callan screamed again, his hold on Athan weakening. Athan flapped his wings, fanning the flames, as he escaped that dark grasp.

It was working. He had to get inside Callan. He had to burn him from the inside out, but it was working.

Suddenly Elric shouted. Athan twisted in the air in time to see dark tar hurtling at Elric.

“No!” Athan dove down and took the full blow, darkness coiling around his feathers and dragging him all the way to the ground.

“Athan!” Elric shouted.

Athan wanted to protest, to try to tell him to run before the dark devoured him, but it was covering him like a net.

Elric swept up the scattered feathers, his fingers glowing as the magic in them lit him up and burned away some of the darkness that coated his hands. Elric crawled toward Athan, a few of the feathers still in his grasp, and pushed the light at him.

“Here,” Elric said, voice distant. “Your feathers. I wasn’t stealing them.”

Where the feathers made contact with darkness, the dark melted away. Athan breathed a little easier, but the feather didn’t rejoin the rest on his body.

“They’re not mine anymore,” Athan said, laughing sadly. “Help me get free of this. I’m going to…” But he didn’t want to reveal his plan to Callan. He rubbed his beak along the side of Elric’s head. “What I said about Callan is true about you, too. I don’t regret spending my time with you. I had fun. I like you, Elric, and I think, even after I’m gone… I think you can be a good person. I think you can heal from all the pain. You could even make amends—”

“Shut up,” Elric said roughly, interrupting him. “Didn’t you hear him? Look at me! I’m a monster! Nothing is worth saving. I’m not worth saving!”

Tendrils of darkness wrapped tighter around Elric, covering the spots the feathers had cleared.

“You are,” Athan said. A tear trickled down his cheek and went up in steam. “Everybody is worth saving, Elric. The rust, the dirt, the dents—it can all be fixed up. It doesn’t have to be me who does it. You can fix yourself. You can save yourself.” He rubbed his head against Elric’s again, before drawing a deep breath and taking to the skies again.

The darkness followed him, lapping at his talons and tail.

He hoped he was right about Elric.

No, he didn’t have to hope. He…. he knew. Elric wasn’t truly a monster. Elric wasn’t this dark sludge.

But he’d been so sure about Callan, too.

“How very, very touching,” Callan commented sarcastically. “Do you just have a thing for the darkness, my dear phoenix? It’s almost a fetish, the way you subject yourself to misery and failure.”

Athan winced at the accusation. “Just because I failed you, doesn’t mean I’m going to fail Elric.”

It was true that Athan found himself repeating the same patterns, over and over again.

He was going to break the cycle today, though. He wasn’t going to let his own sense of guilt prevent him from stopping Callan—from killing Callan.

Athan ached, thinking of what he’d lost with Callan. But whatever Callan was planning, it would bring the rest of the world only misery.

This was all Athan could do, now.

Athan pecked at Callan, sending his flame in where he could, but for every bit of warmth he sent out, he lost some himself.

His fire was going to burn out soon.

As long as he took Callan with him—as long as Elric survived—it would be enough.

“Pathetic,” Callan said, wrapping his darkness around Athan once more. Athan cried out at the shock of cold.

He’d never been cold in his life. This was excruciating. How did humans live like this?

“You think your heat ever stood a chance?” Callan twisted and tightened, dragging Athan to the ground once more. “You’ve never helped anyone. You come in, you ply your trade, and leave only hungry and desperate people behind. Chaos follows in your wake, more chaos than I’ve ever sown.”

It was the same thing the dragon had accused him of.

Tar filled Athan’s lungs. He shook his head and tried to spit it out, but it only rushed back. Dark smoke escaped his nostrils.

“Yet you need me,” Athan shot back, coughing. “You’re the desperate and hungry soul here, Callan. You’ve never found anything to sate you. I’ll give you what you want, now.” He jabbed his beak into Callan with as much force as he could. He would summon lava to pour into Callan, and watch as he consumed himself.

But there was no lava.

There was no flame.

Athan cried out as he realized he’d burned himself too thin, and the darkness was smothering the last of his embers.

Callan laughed and licked Athan’s beak. “I told you. You can’t save anyone.”

“No, he can’t,” Elric said, standing up. The last of his shine had diminished, and only the smallest flicker of light remained inside him. “Leave him to die, Callan. Let me pledge myself to you, as I should have from the beginning.” Elric looked at Athan, meeting his eyes. “Let him suffer.”

No.Athan’s heart stuttered, and more darkness filled him. “Elric, don’t do this.”

Callan laughed loudly, his shadows shuddering with his mirth. “Oh, this is too good. Sacrificing yourself for this sad, pathetic human, and he still only cares about his own power.” Callan himself slid closer to Elric, although his shadows remained tight around Athan. “I’ll grant your wish, Your Highness. Maybe we can both take our pleasure from his dying corpse and smother the life that tries to spring from it while my master and his army finally enter this realm.”

Athan struggled to shake off Callan, but the tentacles wrapped tightly around him and kept his wings useless. “Elric, he’s lying to you! He’s only ever lied!”

“He’s helped me more than you ever have,” Elric answered coldly. “I won’t spend my life wallowing in sorrow, not when I could have endless power instead.”

Athan’s heart, already weakened, shattered.

The embers extinguished, and Athan fell into Callan’s shadows.

He hoped, when he was reborn, that his new life would manage to escape.

Maybe his new life would be more cynical than this one. Maybe the new Athan—whatever name his new self decided to take—would shy away from humanity. Maybe his new self would guard their flame more preciously and live in solitude for thousands of years.

It sounded like a miserable existence, but it would be an existence without the constant betrayals.

Athan blinked out into the unending, desperate, hungering darkness, and shivered as parts of him collapsed into ash.

He closed his eyes.

A sudden bolt of heat lanced through him.

Athan gasped and jerked. Bright explosions of stars appeared all around him, and he heard Callan screech in pain. Each of the stars shot across the dark, plummeting into him, filling him with fire and flame he’d thought he’d lost for good.

Filling him with warmth, and above all, with love.

With the new strength, Athan burned, and burned, and all the dark around him became illuminated in the brightest light, heat so hot it melted everything in the vicinity.

Athan flew up, breaking free of Callan, and only once he was in the air did he stop to see just what had happened.

Elric—still dark, still dripping, but with a bright shining center—wiped his mouth, while Callan lay collapsed, entirely in human shape, at his feet. The darkness around them had shriveled up, replaced by the natural night sky and its many shining stars.

“You got complacent,” Elric told Callan, his voice quiet as fragments of feathers burned and drifted to the ground all around him, singed but pure. “Subtle treachery is easy, after all the practice I’ve had. You took all of my joy, until the only good memories I had were of Athan. You didn’t think to take those, because you didn’t realize what he meant to me.” Tears—clear, running paths down the smudges of blackness on his cheeks—fell as he spoke. Small embers sparked from his lips.

Elric had consumed Athan’s feathers, Athan realized. Elric had been dark and decaying but he’d taken that brightness into himself, and he’d done what Athan couldn’t: forced it inside Callan.

“He’ll burn you,” Callan wheezed, plumes of feathers and wisps of smoke billowing out from his lips. “He’ll burn both of us. You aren’t immune to his flame.”

“Then I’ll burn,” Elric said. “In pain and sorrow. This isn’t a bad last memory, as they go.” He turned his face up to Athan, a faint smile on his lips. “Burn him. Burn us. Don’t give him a chance to recover. As long as I stand here, he’s powerless.”

It would be a terrible memory for Athan. But he nodded and sent his flame out to devour Callan.

“I’m sorry,” Athan said, to both Elric and Callan, even as fire consumed darkness. “I’m sorry I’m never enough to help anyone. I’m sorry it came to this. And I’m sorry—”

Callan screamed in pain. “I won’t… I won’t end here!”

But his body started to crumple and melt into itself, the darkness completely consumed by the light that blinded Athan, making it impossible to see what was left in the wake of the blast of flame.

As soon as he felt that pulsing maw of darkness vanish, Athan dropped to the ground, shrinking back into his human form. “Elric!”

He ran over to Elric, fearing the worst. He could see a mass of blisters and burns, skin blackened and crackling in places.

But—But Elric’s heart was beating. The tar had been burned away every bit as much as Elric’s clothing had, leaving him alive.

Dying, but alive.

There was no question about what he would do. Elric wasn’t going to die here. Athan refused to allow it.

“Hold on,” Athan begged. “I’ll… I’ll fix you. For real, this time.”

Gently, he picked up Elric’s unconscious body and carried it over to soft, ashy earth.