Legends: The Folklore Trilogy Book 2

Chapter 32-Where I...Fight?

I slowly began walking forwards. The storm crackled above me, but I hardly noticed. My brain was buzzing perfectly in tune with itself and I was deadly focused.

"I wasn't the nicest person," I said slowly. I wasn't shouting, but somehow, I got the sense that the Destroyer could hear me. "I had no friends. I was awkward and alone, for most of my life."

The Destroyer's eyes narrowed, not sure what I was driving at.

"But then I met these people," I continued, "and since then, I've changed. See, it's easy to be alone and fade into the background. It's easy to keep to yourself and only lash out. It's way too easy to push others away. But that's not what life is for."

The Destroyer sneered. "I don't need you petty speeches. Your empty, clichè words mean nothing to me."

"They're clichè because they've been said again and again, and they've been said again and again because they're true," I said, still walking. My body was beginning to pulse with a strange sort of power I could feel in the pit of my stomach.

The Destroyer clenched his fists. "I'm through with you," he growled. He raised a hand and another chunk of the floor came hurtling at me.

My eyes widened, but suddenly it burst into pebble sized pieces and hit the floor.

An emotion I couldn't quite read flashed across the Destroyer's face. It looked like...nervousness.

I kept walking. My feet felt like lead but I kept moving. "I've been wondering for a while why you did this. Why you destroyed things. And to be perfectly honest, I'm still not sure. But there's one thing I'm willing to bet, and that's that you don't have many friends."

"You are an insolent child!" he roared. The wind swelled to a scream, and the Destroyer began to glow slightly red.

So he reacted. I must be right.

"I know I can't do this," I shouted over the wind, "but sometimes I just wish I could show you. Show you friendship. See how it changes you."

My body was throbbing harder and harder, and I felt energized, more energized than I had in a long time.

The Destroyer's face twisted in rage, and the red glow swelled. I felt a pang of sadness. I remembered what it was like to feel disconnected. To be irritable. And honestly, it was so awful. You don't realize how awful it is until you're reflecting on it, but I had been unhappy all my life.

And I felt bad for this man.

He had never loved anything. And never knowing love was the worst feeling in the world.

I became vaguely aware of a brilliant golden light in my peripheral, but my face was focused on the Destroyer. I focused on the rage in his face.

And then I poured out my soul.

It felt like I had opened a flood gate. The golden light got brighter and brighter. Every inch, every fiber of my being yearned to help this man understand the feeling of love. I wanted to help him. I wanted him to know how it felt.

I lost sense of everything.

I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, I could only feel. Pity for him. Wanting him to love.

I could suddenly feel something else pushing against me. The Destroyer, or at least, whatever that red light around him was. I tentatively prodded it with my mind and immediately recoiled. It was so ANGRY. I remembered Sierra, and how she said Giselle was the embodiment of hate.

Could he be the embodiment of anger?

Something still confused me. WHY was he angry? WHY did Giselle hate so much? I understood Giselle's backstory, but it didn't explain the incredible concentration of hate, so incredible that it oozed out of her as literal magic.