Consuming Darkness

Sunlight asphyxiated on the smoke and ash still hanging like death in the air, staining the sky a sickly orange. The silence creeping amidst it was heavy as it pressed deep into every crack and crater. It was happening again. The peace that had been so begrudgingly agreed upon had only lasted twenty-two years. This was the beginning of something unimaginable.

The crunch of charred bark beneath careful feet broke through the silence. Had there been anything left alive to hear it, it would have betrayed the presence of a young woman. She froze, the hammering of her heart drumming up memories of the last time she had seen the forest like this.

She'd been no more than a few years old, left behind in the wake of something that had been building for centuries. No one had called it a war. Perhaps it was because there were no clear sides, nowhere to throw blame. No, it had been insidious, building so incredibly slowly that very few ever noticed until it was far too late.

Yet, nature had noticed. It had held out a hand over and over, pleading, only for it to be batted away. First, it sent messengers, creatures of grace and beauty and kindness. Those few who returned arrived home with a growing emptiness inside them. Hopelessness.

When nature's sweet children were sent back sickly and hollow, it reached out in kind. Nature sent locusts, plagues, disasters. Anything to quell the darkness taking hold in the hearts and minds of those who lived in their cozy, little cities. That, too, failed. The darkness only grew.

When the fires came, when the trees were burnt black, when nature's sweet children were written off as casualties, something awoke.

The dragons had seen this darkness before. Thousands of years ago, they'd torn it asunder, wrent it from the very souls of those who had created it, and they'd paid for it. So few survived that when the darkness returned, only one rose to fight it. The rest had deemed those in their castles and carriages and little homes not worth the cost. Better to let them burn themselves up until all that was left was the hint of a memory.

He alone had been no match for the darkness. He knew. So he had taken something born of the darkness, abandoned by it. He'd taken a girl, small and frail and covered in ash.

Now the fires were back. The trees were burnt and broken. Nature's children were gone, either dead or fleeing. Even the dragon was gone, off to snuff out a flame of discontent before it became a raging wildfire, before this same thing happened there too.

The young woman made her way to the edge of what had once been a lush forest. There was only more devastation, spread out to the horizon. She had seen this before in small doses, battles fought in the names of kings, or of gods. She'd watched it twist and grow, swallowing up others as well. The apathetic. The ignorant.

She'd watched it grow into the same darkness she had been saved from. Peace is destined to be a short-lived thing when those who invoke it do not truly believe in it.

The woman did not understand much of the language of those she had been saved from. She understood better the tunes of birds, the howls of wolves, the snarls of dragons. Yet, she understood something deeper. An inherent connectedness.

She was susceptible to the same darkness as her blood kin. She knew where in her heart it might make its home. Yet she feared it not. She knew, in a way she did not know how to articulate, that she would be an unfit host for it. She had escaped its grasp as a small child and it would never dig its claws beneath her skin again. There was no one to teach her how to let it in.

She made her way to town, the one she believed she had once lived with parents she could not remember. It was a terrible sight. The only things still standing were the charred bones of buildings, harboring shaken survivors.

She caught a glimpse of a huddled form in one of the ruins as she passed by. She didn't know the words to ask what had happened. She didn't know how to ask what they needed. Out of instinct, she extended a hand through the collapsed beams.

"Help," she said.

The figure turned to look at her. They spoke, too quickly for her to pick out the words she understood. With no response to give them, she stretched her arm farther into the ruined house.

"I can help."

After many long moments, the figure moved toward her, a shaky, soot-covered hand reaching forward. Their hands clasped firmly, the woman helped the other past the fallen debris. They were injured.

After some protest, she placed a hand over the deep gouge in their thigh and hummed quietly. She could feel the skin drawing together beneath her fingers, feel the pain ebb away. It was something her blood kin had once known, one of many gifts given by nature. A gift corrupted and coveted until it became a currency with which to hold others down. A gift used to choose who lived and who died.

She knew the person was thanking her, but there was no time for that. Others needed her. She moved between ruins, pulling some from wreckage, healing those who needed it. Those she saved slowly set to work, helping others still trapped or injured, or scrounging for remnants of food and water.

They could all feel the darkness still there, surrounding them on all sides. Yet, it lurked at the edges of the devastated town, not daring to show its twisted face among them again. At least, not yet. If it waited long enough, if they did not work quickly enough, it might find its way in.

Nature, however, knew its tricks. It knew how the darkness laid its traps, and so it had armed its warrior. It would no longer fight fair.

The young woman could feel it. Her weapon. A plague of sorts, but not the kind nature had tried in the past. It did not attack. It did not rot. It did not kill. It slept, nestled deep within the mind of those it infected. An ember amid the darkness. It burned, licking at the darkness, consuming it, fueled by it. Growing. Always growing. Until there was no darkness left to burn away.

It was something akin to hope. Something akin to love. Something that looked an awful lot like the young woman's own heart and mind.

Nature did not tell her if she would survive this, or if the plague would give every last grain of her until there was nothing left and she wasn't much sure she cared.

She would always be there, a minuscule piece of her, burning away inside each of their minds, consuming the darkness until there was nothing left.