I Am Lightning

He knows I’m here! He can sense me... should I wait and see what he does? What his motives are? This is what I’ve been waiting for, a confrontation with this darkness... but I have to win this. I have to be smart about this. The rider is dismounting from his horse, moving around towards me. There’s a torch next to me, maybe I should back away slightly so if he goes to stand in front of me, I’ll see him clearly, not the other way around. I trip backwards as a man comes around the corner, walking towards me. I can see his outline faintly, growing clearer as he nears the torch.

He has pale white skin and black hair, dark riding clothes and a sword at his hip. The flickering fire of the torch lights up his face, and I see clearly two deep black eyes staring straight at me. The dark energy I feel is pulsing from this man in steady waves. I can feel my heart racing, the current within me coursing so powerfully through my body. I want nothing more than to lash out as this man, but I don’t know what he’s capable of. But also, I want to know more. I need to know more. Why he did all of this, why he killed everyone.

“They told me to watch out for you.”
What? I look at him, eyes wide. Who is ‘they’? What is he talking about?
“My shadow says you’ve been a thorn in our side for many years now. But you have what we need.”
I just shook my head at him. His shadow? What, it speaks to him? Who have I been a thorn to? I don’t understand...
The man’s eyes, black as they were, had a sparkle to them and his face a deformity which scared me.
“They have chosen me! I will be the one to lead the true, pure element out into the world, to show it for what it is, and to eradicate the last of the ancient elements! I will not fail!”
The orange glow of the fire allowed me to witness what I otherwise would not have seen. The man’s shadow was pulling itself from the ground, becoming solid, substantial, and it came to stand next to him, looking at me.
“We thought for many years that we had killed you with the rest of them, oh Fulgora,” it said with a voice you would imagine from a slithering snake. “But when we realised the source of your power was the same as ours, we went back to every Realm and searched the corpse of every Master, only to discover that their stones were gone. That was when we realised you were not among the dead. And here you are Fulgora, with everything that we need. But wait...” it said slowly, and she noticed it had eyes, black eyes shining at her amongst its grey face, “one of the stones is missing. Where is the stone of fire? We thought you must have it...”

They’re after the stones, and they want me dead. This shadow is only one foe, there are more of them somewhere. My heart beat with an icy fire. This atrocity standing before me is the reason so many innocent lives were cut short! The lives of the elements, the lives of- of my people! The power within me was raging, writhing, screaming. My body was heating up, my hands curled into fists.
“You,” I said, “are going to die for the things you’ve done! The people you’ve killed! I will not allow you to take these stones, and I will not bow down before you today, you snake!”

The shadow rippled slightly, and I realised it was laughing. “Oh my pretty Fulgora, what happened to your face? You were once so lovely. Such an innocent young girl. Just like the servants of yours we killed. Your friends, were they? Oh, how they screamed! Did you know they were calling for you, in their last moments? All of your people, Fulgora... they cried out for you! And it makes sense now... for you were not there to aid them, were you? What have you done? You let them all die!”

Snap.