Description
This confrontation occurs in Chapter 23 of DRIFTER, titled, "Brother Fire." An excerpt from that chapter is here depicted as an animated scene, exclusively for Avatar Holders.
Rahu nodded as if he understood every word only too well. “So you see now why you have to die?”
“I won’t,” I said calmly. “Not for you.”
Elias drew close to my side. I knew that if Rahu made one false move he would have a dragon, a changer, and a Star Kin to contend with. I had never been able to articulate the way I felt, to confront the shadow that followed me. I hoped the truth would help us both.
“I want to eat your life,” Rahu said guiltily.
“You think that will fix things?”
He frowned as if troubled by a memory, as if recalling the centuries of his life and finding them lacking. “I’ve seen everything and done everything,” he said. “Everything I ever wanted. And yet . . . nothing. I used to be a titan. Now I am all in ruins.”
I thought of the little boy I had seen walking beside me in the Fade, the fragment of Rahu’s past. Who was he, really? That little boy had died centuries ago. He wouldn’t remember. Then he surprised me.
“Oh yes,” he said, his eyes remote. “I remember being alive. To have it over again, I’d give anything.”
Elias stood tall and silent beside me, his fists white knots, his eyes searching. I knew that he did not want to fight. He was a man of compassion, a healer at heart. He was trying to understand Rahu. But he said nothing, leaving the talking to me.
I watched Rahu for a long moment. His eyes were as dark as the windows of an empty house. “You’re connected to me,” I said. “You share my thread of empathy. I feel your desolation. The link is making us miserable. Give me time to try and understand it, so I can undo it.”
“There is no time,” Rahu said. “My mistress is not finished with Alta. She is coming. She knows about you, about the hold you have on me. She will break you into atoms.”
“Why do you serve her when you could be free?”
Rahu merely shrugged, summing up his entire life with a gesture. Suddenly I knew what he was. A man after all, but a man who had stared at the dark for too long.
Apparently finished with me, Rahu turned away. He waved his hand and parted the world as if drawing aside a curtain. I saw for an instant the Sunless Vale, the tendrils of the aurora burning down the sky between skies. Then his shadow folded over him, distorting his features, and he was gone.