Ni'Srilan: The Desert: there is no wreckage ; there is only this, only us ; II

Tey both knew what was happening. Hypatia, at least, had seen it coming. But she didn’t want to tell anyone – kept it to herself like the awful secret that it was. How could she tell anyone? How could she let anyone find out? Her daughter was hardly grown, her people fading with the rest of the Element. She wondered if it was in the water – this feeling of downfall. Or maybe it had come with the destruction of Solira. They all knew that the Stone, the Elementals, were gaining strength and there was nothing left to do.

But Hypatia would fight until her last breath.

She goes to where she knows Kurai will find her, where he came to brag about his son’s untimely and explosive demise. Kail is at her side, resolute and tall. He seemed to grow more, coming almost to her withers now. He is powerful, but is mind is calming.

They both know what will happen. They both saw her dream. They are determined. This is no chance to change the future. For when they do, it simply occurs as they imagined. What she sees will happen. And that is that.

She hears him. Her Relic glitters on her head, beckoning him towards her. She breathes and exhales until his form becomes a shadow on the horizon. And she, she is the sun. Kail begins to hiss, starting as a low soft rumbling that turns into a growl in the night. He is ready. The Naphtha is ready. She is there for Ni’Srilan.

She is the last. The Diadem was the first, and now it stands as the only Relic left. Who is there to stand beside her? (This wasn’t supposed to happen, she thinks, begs Kurai to disappear.) Who is left? Nothing. No one. Her people may watch, but not approach. They see it in the way she stands, they way her body is like a statue and the way her eyes are dark and determined and black.

“Yes, I can.”

But she knows that, by herself, she will not stand against the Nightmare.

His lightning crackles and her Water stands on edge. Even the Fire within her, now coating her in a thick layer of tar, cannot keep her from shivering. (oh, she hates Lightning!) But she does not move, seems to barely breathe, when their eyes connect and the Nightmare gives himself over to the Elementals completely.

Her Relic was a beckon of hope and luck. It was wisdom and guidance. It was the promise of two Sisters. And it was her own promise not to let the Element die, not to let her homeland die. She moves then, the Diadem willingly her too, the last hope left, the last good left in the Element. She is all they have left.

”Fight!” The Sisters scream in her mind, putting their luck, their hope, their past behind her and pushing with their Water. But it is not enough. Flames shot between her and Kurai, reaching up to the Heavens. She reaches towards his mind, flaring herself wide open and hearing the cries of Oceantree and most of all, the power of the darkness of the Element.
It overwhelms her.

For a moment, she understands why the Shard-Keepers are like this. With her mind this wide open, her eyes glowing with the power of her Fire, and this wall separating her from the madness of Lightning, she understands. She feels the lure, the pull, the acceptance of the Shard. She wonders –

And that is all it takes.

Her focus shifts, and the Circle of Fire collapses in her wonder.

Kail jumps in front of her, but even that is not enough. The Lightning encompasses his body, driven by the needed to shatter – no, obliterate – the Diadem, the last remaining Relic of Legend. Hypatia’s focus flickers even more as her eyes scream. Kail flails in mid-air, suspended there for a second by the Lightning, the force of the hit. She hears his mind, the last weak gasps of it within her.

She feels the last remaining pieces of her heart crumble.

Fight, ‘patia… his voice is weak, so weak that even her Water is frozen in shock.

She wants to fight, needs to fight, but Kail is dying before her. It’s another breath, another heartbeat. And that’s it. Hypatia feels her heart stop too.

Tears leak from her eyes, coming out in black waves of tar. She is fury and fire and hatred mixed into everything she’s ever known. But that is what the Stone wants, needs, craves. And as Kail’s body falls to the ground and Hypatia stands there to tear Kurai to shreds as her heart splinters, the Lightning inside him wells and she can feel it.

But it is too late.

It comes towards her and only when it strikes and snaps and crackles just before her eyes does she realize that it’s too late. This is what she saw. This last scene. This last fight.

Her eyes close, but she wills her Fire up and out and surrounds Kurai, the Nightmare, into the hottest, driest desert possibly imaginable. But it is too late, the Fire is too late. The Diadem shatters and the pieces fall onto her face, cutting her shoulders, and the Sisters scream.

She is the last and she let it fall apart. She let it die.

The Lightning screams and Hypatia lifts her head to scream with it but collapses to the earth beside Kail.

The Diadem turns to Water beneath her body.