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Chapter Seventeen: Shadow's Fear, Shadow's Heart

The finale chapter, by the way

She woke up next to Phil that morning, wondering what had happened that night. So delusional, so confused. She shook her head as she looked outside, putting on her shirt and skirt. She walked over to the window, the sky...was blue. Michelle was nowhere to be seen...

A familiar song ran through her head, and the last line rang for several seconds...

'...As I turned to sand, you took me by the hand, and declared, that love prevails over all...' (before you ask, it's the last line of the chorus in System of a Down's 'Ego Brain')

He had saved her, like she had saved him...Michelle was being fought off by their subconscious bond.

Lying in the sand, Michelle stirred. Her plans has failed. She had lost her spirit energy, she felt weak inside. A large gash leaked blood, it was clotted somehow overnight. She couldn't move her legs, they felt broken, as if she had fallen miles and miles...she never saw the demonic figure that took her to Hell...

'So...I wonder...what's next for us?' Rita said, sitting with Phil at the helm of the Shadow Fire.

'It won't be difficult, now...look outside, Rita.' Phil said, gesturing towards the window.

A revolt was in progress on the streets of Tolbi. Suppressed people took to violent measures to overthrow the vicious reign of Iodem and his accomplices. They weren't blind after the attacks all over the world. They had lost so much, they had lost their families, jobs, everything, all for some stupid cause...it never came to be. The streets erupted in a blaze of napalm, you could hear the screams of the Tolbians, dying in mortifying pain. Skeletons once again lined the streets. There would be no more pain.

Iodem laughed in his office...gasped, and fell dead. A knife-wielding assailant, from a distant land had felled the vicious leader. Then...it began again.

Tolbi was never the true root of the world's evil.

Thirteen years later...

Rita and Phil just sat on a swing outside their home in Mikasalla. Their daughter, born shortly after the incidents thirteen years before, had just been granted her Psynergetic powers...and was showing the grandest of prowess. Her parents, of course, were still some of the most powerful Adepts of their Clan, and this is where she drew her power. Her parents had grown up and matured since those days, they were now in their early thirties...she never had a younger sibling, and was angered at her parents for thier newfound want for another child...

A telegram came for Sara, from the town of Contigo...telling what came next...

[END OF SHADOW FIRE 1]

Expect the sequel sometime over this fall.