Chapter 8: Showdown
"Now look what you did!" Jarith said accusingly. "You made Bekka faint!""I did not!" Corinn said. "I don't know what happened to her. Didn't you see her eyes? It was like she was possessed or something...And she's still wrong," he said stubbornly.
"If you're going to act like that, then we're leaving!" Jarith said. "I'm not going to let you be anywhere near Bekka if you're like that. You're upsetting her!"
"As if you wouldn't say the exact same thing," Corinn said. "As if you weren't trying to kill me exactly like I'm trying to kill you."
"Well...I'm...maybe Bekka's right," Jarith said. "I know we've both thought that this was how things were supposed to be, but what if we're wrong? I never really wanted to kill you at first..."
"Of course not. You just wanted to take my universe. 'Just give me half your universe and I won't kill you.' Hah."
"Stop being so...so..."
"Serious? Fatalistic? Realistic? Depressed?"
"No, I was thinking annoying," Jarith said. "You're going to make Bekka go into a weird trance again. So I'm leaving and taking her with me."
"What if I don't let you?" Corinn said. "This is my world, after all." He gave Jarith a really mean look. "Maybe I should just 'accidentally' withdraw my protection from you for a few minutes. It might be fun to watch you die right now."
Jarith took a step backwards. "You wouldn't, Corinn. That would be breaking the rules...you'd be in trouble...the universe wouldn't like it..."
"I can afford to make a few...'mistakes' once in a while," Corinn said. "You shouldn't have come here. Right now, I think watching you die would be worth whatever disadvantage I get in the next life. And it would be very easy."
"Please, Corinn, don't!" Jarith said, a look of terror coming into his eyes. "I came here to help you, doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Nothing matters anymore! I don't ever want to see you again! Thief! Hypocrite!" Corinn shouted. "Die, Jarith!"
Jarith screamed. Corinn had taken off his protective barriers. He was surrounded by darkness...pressing in on him, suffocating him...
"Corinn, stop! Please!" he screamed. "I can't take it anymore!"
"Nothing can make me stop. I will destroy you forever!" Corinn shouted.
"Corinn! Please!" Jarith begged. He could hardly talk now. "Bekka...Bekka wouldn't want you to! Do you want her to hate you the way that you hate me?"
"Bekka..." Corinn said, stopping momentarily. He remembered what she'd said when he first brought her to this world...
I don't hate you for being what you are. If I could ever bring myself to hate you, it would be for what you consciously decided to do, not because of what you are.
"What I decided to do..." he repeated. He turned toward Jarith angrily. "Go, then! Get out of here, and take her with you! I hope you appreciate what I'm doing!"
Jarith stared at Corinn, amazed. He hadn't really expected Corinn to stop.
"What are you waiting for?" Corinn shouted. "Leave, before I change my mind!"
Jarith wasted no time after that. He picked Bekka up off the ground where she had fallen, and in a shimmer of light, the two of them were gone.
"I will get you, Jarith," Corinn said after they were gone. "Nothing in this universe can stop me. It's only because of Bekka that you're still alive right now."
Jarith took Bekka back to the starship. Fortunately, they hadn't been gone long enough for anyone to notice that two of the passengers were missing. He carefully set Bekka down on her bed and waited for her to regain consciousness. It wasn't long before her eyes fluttered open.
"Jarith? What happened? Where am I?" Bekka asked. She tried to sit up but quickly set her head back down. "Oh...I'm so dizzy...What happened?" she asked again.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Jarith asked.
"Well...Corinn was saying that I didn't understand, and then I tried to tell him that things shouldn't have to be like this. Then everything started to go fuzzy and I woke up here."
"You don't remember what you said to Corinn? 'For so many eons I have tried to tell you...'?"
"Did I say that?" Bekka asked. "I can't imagine why. I don't remember it at all."
"You looked almost like you were possessed, like someone or something else was talking through you," Jarith said.
"I guess that makes as much sense as anything else...I don't know why I would have said that," Bekka said. "But then what happened? How did I get here? Is Corinn here?"
"No, he's not," Jarith said. "We had an argument, I guess, after you fainted. He...he tried to kill me."
"But don't you do that all the time?" Bekka asked.
"Not exactly. There are rules. It's like a ritual, almost," Jarith explained. "For him to kill me then, on his planet...the way he said he would..." Jarith shuddered. "It would be completely against the rules. And the look on his face...He didn't just want to kill me, Bekka. He wanted me to suffer. He wanted to watch me die the most painful death possible."
Bekka gasped. "But that's so...that's not like him at all!"
"I know," Jarith said. "I've never seen him like that before. And he was so calm...it was most horrible experience I've ever been through."
"What...what was he going to do to you?" Bekka asked, still looking shocked.
"He left me on his planet without his protection," Jarith said. "His planet is complete darkness, and I am complete light. It would be like putting a human adrift in deep space...or miles under the ocean. You couldn't breathe, you couldn't move, you wouldn't be able to think because of the pressure. It could have taken me hours to die, with Corinn right there, watching, laughing, the entire time."
"That's horrible!" Bekka said, crying. "How could he do something like that? How would he live with himself after-after-"
"It's okay, Bekka," Jarith said, trying to comfort her. "I'm still alive. I'm going to be fine."
"How did you get away?" Bekka asked.
"I'm not really sure," Jarith said. "I said everything I could to convince him not to do it. The last thing I said was that you wouldn't want him to. He must have remembered something you said to him, because he let me go. He told me to take you with me, because he didn't want to hurt you."
"Didn't want to hurt me..." Bekka repeated. She started crying again. "What you're doing can't be right. There must be some other way. There just has to..."
Image Gallery: : Characters: : Theme Song: : Link "Darkness and Light"