This light of mine, it couldn’t defeat the horror. It couldn’t fight Jagger.
Not on its own.
It would be swallowed, and so would I.
So, as the jaws closed, I cried out.
I called out to the voice that had beckoned me.
“Please!” I cried. “I can’t. I’m too weak. I’m not strong enough. Help me. Please!”
Ever since I’d become a mine, I’d been fighting. Fighting to save myself. Fighting to save Finn. Fighting for Griff, Justice, Luvic, the world.
But I saw more clearly than I ever had that I wasn’t enough.
The good inside me hadn’t ever come from me. It had been given to me. I’d kept it locked away, but it was from a source that could never be locked up, consumed, or devoured.
“Please,” I whispered.
My light was being ravaged and torn by the horror. I was in the shadow of despair, and my light was nearly gone. The horror tore at it greedily. Jagger laughed. It was a satisfied, gloating sound.
I saw then that the only way to save my light was to give it to someone stronger. To something stronger than me or anyone else. Something stronger than the darkness.
“I give my light to you,” I said.
“Yes!” Jagger cried.
“I give myself to you.”
Jagger laughed gleefully.
But I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to the light that had begun to crest over the darkness. It was only a whisper. A tiny voice. The echo of the sun before it lights the horizon.
But it heard me, and it knew me.
I surrendered everything. I surrendered myself to the light, and in a violent flash, it consumed me.
There are some people in the world who think meeting the ultimate good face-to-face will be a wonderful, soothing, nice experience.
They think it will be full of wispy clouds, dancing rainbows, and gentle love.
They need to think again.
As soon as I surrendered myself, ultimate good struck me like a lion batting me with a giant paw and throwing me to the ground. It roared. And the roar was louder than the boom of thunder or the violent crack of a volcano erupting.
I was swept up in the roar, and my spirit trembled. I was torn apart. My being was searched and sifted, and every part of me was made known. The light shined into the darkest crevices of my soul. It blazed through me, and I was weighed and measured. Every deed, every thought, every feeling that had pulsed through my beating heart was known.
I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t shield myself from the light.
There were things I’d done that I was ashamed of. There were things I’d not done that I was even more ashamed of. There were some things I’d lied to myself about or hidden away—terrible things uncovered that I hadn’t even known were inside of me.
I’d lived in Hell Gate for twenty-two years, and I saw in the brilliant, uncompromising light that it had been twenty-two years of darkness.
I wept.
It’s a horrible thing to realize you are what you’ve always claimed to hate.
A horror.
