Flame Factor

Chapter 15: Return to Planet Earth

Ruptured.

That was the right word, wasn't it?

Or perhaps... vanished.

No, no. That didn't sound quite fast enough. Not violent enough.

Shredded.

Torn.

Destroyed.

Ripped.

Imploded.

Broken.

Punctured.

Firefly stared at the blade of her sword. No more did it thrum with power or glow when she raised it high. The sword felt just as lifeless as her.

That could be the word.

Lifeless.

Like everyone she grows attached to. Her mother, her father, and Optimus.

Lifeless.

Firefly let go, and the sword fell from her hand, falling, and falling, and falling, until eventually it hit the lava swirling within the volcano below her and then sunk beneath the surface slowly.

Any other sword would have melted, but Firefly knew hers wouldn't. Magic swords tend to do that.

She could remember the last time she'd stood on top of this volcano. It was after another horrible tragedy, when she was far younger.

The day her mother died.

Dærkishman the Outcast had killed her mother and Firefly had failed to protect her. It was that day that she vowed to never let anyone she loved be killed again and asked her father to take her here. The moment she had dived beneath the bubbling surface of the molten liquid to retrieve the sword that had guarded her father as a child, and would guard her for many more years, Firefly became a Blaze.

In a way, this was where she was born.

Now, Firefly relinquished the sword back where it once came from. Her tears followed it, as did the body of her father. She wondered, if this is how her father had felt when his father died, and he had to do this exact same thing.

Firefly turned away, and pulled her father's sword from the ground. The blade was caked in ash from having been stabbed into the volcano, but Firefly didn't bother to wipe it away. The ash seemed symbolic of the moment. Like the ashes of a world where she felt love.

Now there was only darkness.

Firefly's heart writhed as she looked up, her gaze landing on the once proud capital of Zenthara. The city where she'd grown up. She barely recognized it now.

She could not recognize it. Not without the screams of delight and cheer that young, ignorant child usually filled it with. Not with the thick layer of ice and darkness that now coated it, and the rest of her planet.

Firefly fell to her knees.

Her mission... the protection of Zenthara...

She had failed.

"What do I do now?" She whispered, her voice shaking.

"Run."

Firefly's eyes rose to look at the only remaining sun, which was slowly behind blotted out by thick black clouds.

"Maiakashakee." Firefly inhaled softly, "I can't leave."

"Run, child."

The wind seemed to blow a little stronger, and Firefly watched as the last bit of sunlight disappeared, enveloping the world in nothingness.