Time's Tragedies- The Books Of Beginning [2]

55. All Consuming

'Burning or drowning, make your choice. You must embrace the light or the darkness, the good or the evil. Pick a side, be the hero or the villain, but know that both options will lead to your end.'

Lili's feet pounded against the earth, which was crumbling under her every step, crumbling into black, deceptively still, waters. Fire licked at her heels. Burn with light or drown in darkness, whispered a hissing, almost serpentine voice in her ear, both will eat you whole. She bit back a whimper as she continued to run, just wanting to escape the destruction chasing her like a ravenous beast.

Just a little further, just a little further, you're a Wibberly, you can outrun this, she told herself. But alas, she was wrong. The ground gave away in front of her, revealing nothing but a gaping chasm of night waves. The roaring inferno closed in on the other side, trapping her inside of a ring, half water and half fire, half light and half dark. 

If she wasn't so afraid, Lili might have seen the poetic symbolism in that.

'Choose, choose, which path will you take? Which doomed fate will bind you?'

"Shut up!" Lili snapped at the ghostly murmur infecting her ears, "just shut up!"

The girl dropped to her knees. The world was a hurricane and she was in the eye of it. She didn't have a clue what was going on, where this was coming from, all she knew was that she was still a child, unable to cope with the apocalyptic reality before her eyes.

"Mom," Lili pleaded, "dad. Please. Aunt Em? Uncle Michael? Aunt Wilamena? Gabriel? Is anyone there?"

No one answered. Only the babbling of the oceans and the crackle of the flames flooded her senses. Lili felt hot tears leak from the corners of her eyes, "someone, please. Please help me. I can't- I don't- please, anyone..."

More dirt crumbled away into the seas. More grass was eaten away by the fire. Lili choked out something between a scream and a sob, "Abby? Jake? Please, please I need you, please don't leave me, please!" 

The last of the earth fell away. The fire surged forward. Flames and heat hit Lili right as the water did. She bobbed up and down, straddling the line between the darkness and the light, the cold liquid and the burning intensity atop it. It was pain, it was burning and freezing, choking on smoke and choking on water. It was as if the force of all the world's ruination was bearing down upon her. How many ways was she dying? 

"No," she gasped, even as soot and murky loch forced their way into her throat, "no!" 

Her mother needed her, her siblings needed her, her father would be devastated to see her gone. Michael and Emma and Wilamena and Gabriel, Richard and Clare, and all their friends, they would never get the chance to say goodbye. She couldn't leave them, not now, not like this.

Lili kicked harder, but surfacing from the water brought her into contact with the flames. She was stuck between two merciless killers without an escape in sight.

Somewhere in the world, Lili thought bitterly, Robert Lloyd was laughing with pure, unadulterated joy.

That, more than anything, filled her with rage, terrible, endless, hungry anger that pooled in her gut and sung in her bloodstream with her magic, that pounded in time with her heart. She was not going to give that man the satisfaction of her death. Not before she ripped him apart with her bare hands, that was.

Bubbling, rising, she felt the power surge within her. It felt good; it felt like life when everything around her felt like death. 

'Embrace your power,' that soft, invisible speaker cooed, 'you can break worlds to your will. Don't squander that strength by dying here. Use it. Make the choice.'