Where The Light Resides

Chapter  8: True Potential

“Nastan!” shouted my liege from behind me. I cringed slightly, knowing what he would say already. “How dare you bring that to this battle! I thought we had agreed that you would destroy it before we even came out on to the battlefield!”
I had to think quickly. There must be some explanation I could use that would get me out of trouble for this. “True, but how much more pain do you think it would bring them to see it destroyed in front of their very eyes?”
My lord paused for a second, letting the idea roll around in his head. Slowly, a wicked smile crawled across his lips. “Do it.”
Darkness slowly flowed out of my hands, surrounding the orb in darkness. As the enemies realized what I was doing, they crashed in around me. However, before they could even touch me, I launched up into the air. Held motionless above them all by the wing as they stared up at me, I lifted the orb above my head, preparing to launch it down toward the ground. But before I could throw my arm down, Ossentra appeared in the middle of the crowd. She had disguised herself as a simple soldier, but now she apparently felt that she had no hope but to reveal herself.
“Nastan!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare throw it all away! Don’t you realize what they are trying to do to you?” At these words, images flashed through my mind. I imagined that day when I had killed Ossentra’s father, when I had nearly killed her herself. But… If destroying the light clan was not my destiny, then what was?
Suddenly confusion and rage took over my system, and with a roar I flung the orb toward the ground. Ossentra leaped for it, but it slipped through her fingers. It smashed into the ground, breaking into a hundred pieces that all bounced up into the air. The darkness was once again contorting my mental control, and I shot immense blasts of dark energy at every piece as they flew through the air. I brought my right leg up in the motion of an axe kick, and immediately my wing retracted, and I dropped through the air like a dead weight. I smashed my heel into his skull, instantly killing him, and then pushed off of him towards another soldier. The fighting had started again, and before I could reach the next target, once again, there was Ossentra, and she flung her arm towards my face. I grabbed it, using it as a brake. My legs snapped into the ground in front of me, and I pulled myself into a standing position, lifting her up into the air behind me. I swung her around, once, twice, spinning her faster and faster. And then I let go, and she flew forward, smashing through at least ten of her fellow warriors. I pounced forward, unsheathing the blade on my back, slicing the people on either side of me viciously, beheading this one, removing the lower body from that. I was above Ossentra before she could even react, and I plunged the blade down directly through her skull.
I looked down at her with a malicious grin, watching the life pouring out through every hole on her head. It was coming out like a white mist through her eye sockets, her ears, her mouth, and the hole around the blade. At last it was all gone, and I took a long sniff of the air around me. But there was a slight difference in this smell compared to the others. Her life smelled almost… Stronger then the others.
I turned to see the first of my fellow warriors to die by the hands of a light warrior. “No!” I shouted, pulling in darkness around me, focusing it in front of me, and blasting the light soldier to pieces with it. I flipped around, slamming a back kick through the gut of a man in front of me. “God!” I screamed, punching through the skull of the man to my left. “Dammit!” I finished, flipping forward and cutting the man behind him with the spikes on my leg. I spun to the right, and grabbed the head of the man next to me. I wasn’t even paying attention to which side they were on anymore. I squeezed hard, and his skull fell in on itself. I threw the empty body down to the ground as my mind came back to me. I stood there for a moment as I realized what was going on. I slowly turned around, pointing a finger to my liege. “You.” I whispered. “This. Is all. You’re! Fault!”
I launched myself forward, throwing my fist at his head with all the power I could find. But just before I made contact, he grabbed my hand, preventing it from touching him and locking me in place. “Why have you chosen to betray the darkness, Nastan? This all goes against everything you know.” I looked at him for a second, as the words sank in. And then it occurred to me.
“I haven’t betrayed the darkness. I’ve just found it’s true potential!” I grabbed his arm with my free hand, lifted him up and over my head, and slammed him down into the ground. With a loud roar, I brought my fist through his skull. There was no life that came out of him. He had lost it long ago.
I launched forward, and sliced my right arm straight through the neck of a man. Just before his head fell off, I saw who it was. “Rastel,” I whispered.
I stood up straight, and all the events of the day crashed down on me. I fell to my knees, though the fighting around me had not stopped. Was this really what I had become? Was I really such a cold-blooded murderer? My hands landed on the ground before me, and I realized that I was hunched over. Was I really this much of a minion to the darkness?
Then the thought came to me. I was not truly a minion of the darkness. I was the darkness. I could now decide how the darkness would proceed, what it would do. I was the ultimate darkness being.
I stood up, and stretched my hands forward. Flames extended in front of me, separating the light from the dark. “This is over.” I muttered. And we slid away through the ground into the darkness.