Keeper of Life - NaPoWrMo Entry

Solar ran out into the stilled battlefield, the fireworks overhead now coming to a close as if to cap the climatic battle. The stamping hooves of applause echoed off the walls and Solar flinched thinking it was raining magic. She rushed toward the pile of collapsed rubble and began flinging stone and mortar away. Then the glade called to her like a guiding wind. The dark figure was inside, she had something, she was going to kill The Tree.

“Valor!,” she called running up to the rubble. “I'm so sorry, I'm such a coward,” tears streamed down her face as she pulled rocks off the pile. Yet something stopped her and she looked back. The dark image walked through the stone archways. “I...” she paused unsure. “No,” she said filling herself. “I'm a guardian, and I have a duty. I'm sorry Valor.” She turned toward the opening, The Tree filling her mind with her duty, of what she must now do. “I'll finish this Valor,” she said.

As she pushed power in her legs and stamped toward the glade the rocks tumbled behind her.

The monster made her way up the gnarled roots crushing the small white flowers that grew from the earthen snakes and approached the trunk. She was no more then forty paces away. Against the massive labyrinth of roots, and the monolithic scale of the trunk she looked no more then an ant, but Solar knew better, she would not underestimate her.

With agile hooves Solar leapt from root to root, from each hoofhold to the next with delicate ease and frenzied speed. As she watched the monster pull something from the tube a fire lit inside her. The spear extended and hung in the air above the monsters head glowing softly with an emerald hue. She made to pierce The Tree but Solar wouldn't let her harm it. This was as far as she would get. As air was exhumed from her lungs, in the form of a battlecry, billows of fire lanced out and a thunderous clap sent the monster spiraling away. Her dull form bounced and twisted on the roots as she tumbled and finally stilled. Smoke trailed off her smoldering body, and Solar could hear the crackling of burning flesh. Flashbacks of the cells under the inner wall came back to her, of Valor towering above the creature as it helplessly squirmed under her gaze. She cleared her head and scanned the ground for the dull metal. “There!” she cried.

With heaving lungs Solar approached the spear, a long silver thing filled with barbs. She could see the red lining underneath, a black liquid seemed to pool there, swimming, as if alive. She placed a hoof on it, keeping it still, and raised the other to smash it. “Never again,” she said, “It ends here.” She thrust down.