Farnath: The Frozen Heart Read online

  “Traitor!” he said and ran aggressively against him.

  “Time to do the right thing. Better late than never!” Roy answered and attacked too.

  The two colossal robots met and clashed violently, making thunderous metallic noises as they hit each other. Ivorin’s robot, which was bigger and stronger, pushed Roy’s and he would have thrown it down if Roy hadn’t avoided the full force of his opponent by taking a small side step. Ivorin then turned and repeatedly hit Roy’s robot on its shoulder and face with his enormous hands, while their machine guns were shooting each other ineffectively. Farnath decided to help Roy and rode Felix, trying to get closer when two cyber robots appeared and grabbed Felix by his wings and he grabbed them with his claws and beak and the three of them start falling uncontrollably to their death. Andria watched them, horrified, falling in flames when Arthas appeared with his cyber and grabbed one of the enemy cyber robots and threw it away, shooting it lethally at the same time. Then he grabbed the second one and tried to release Felix’s wing.

  “Arthas, let it go, you will die!” Farnath shouted at him as he was trying to keep hold of Felix.

  “No way! We will make it!” he shouted back.

  The three of them disappeared from Andria’s sight behind some tall trees and a blast sounded. Andria ran towards the crash where smoke was billowing up and she started to lose hope, but Felix suddenly soared upwards again leaving a trail of grey smoke behind him. Andria felt relief when she saw Farnath alive, but she didn’t see Arthas flying along, so she continued running to the crash site where she found the two cybers, broken and in flames, still holding each other; and Arthas lying outside, badly injured. She gave him first aid and placed his head on her legs as she knelt next to him.

  “What were you thinking, stupid? You almost killed yourself out there!” she said with mock anger in her voice.

  “Did this girl just speak to me or was it just my imagination?” he said without opening his eyes and they both smiled, remembering their first meeting.

  “The girl just spoke to you, it’s time to wake up. It’s not polite to keep a girl waiting.”

  “But I like this dream, I don’t want to wake up,” he said and opened his eyes.

  She felt touched by his words and stroked his hair. Ivorin was still beating Roy, who was losing the battle against his superior opponent. The head of his robot had taken a lot of hits and Roy was in it. He didn’t have much time left, soon he would be destroyed.

  “You betrayed the wrong guy!” Ivorin said furiously.

  “I know, I killed him in front of his own daughter!” Roy replied, determined.

  He turned his cannon towards his opponent’s chest and Ivorin did the same with his double cannons and they both fired at each other and kept firing until both robots were utterly destroyed. The robots collapsed to the ground, exploding and damaging even more robots around them with flying bits of shrapnel.

  The last colossal had a hard time fighting the two dragons while a group of five cyber robots were also flying around trying to help. One of the dragons dug its claws in the chest of it trying to burn the head with fire from its mouth, but the robot managed to grab him with its right hand and with the other it fired and killed it. The other dragon then did a sudden dive directly at the robot’s face, where the pilot was, and tried to burn him, but luckily he grabbed the dragon’s neck and squeezed it to stop the fire from coming out. The dragon, breathless, emitted just a puff of smoke and the robot threw him onto some trees. The pilot with the beard and the long hair sighed with relief.

  “That was close,” he said to himself as he watched the injured dragon on the trees from his broken cockpit.

  The moment he said that, he felt a sudden cold breath around him. The robot’s legs stuck to the ground frozen, the systems switched off and the ice spread upwards to the head of it. The robot was frozen and the pilot felt an unbearable cold inside him as he was looking around his cockpit at the unstoppable ice.

  Everyone was looking around, questioning the strange phenomenon. Nobody could explain it. Behind the colossal-robot everything was frozen, dark and empty.

  “What is this Farnath?” Andria asked, puzzled.

  “Well, this is … my mother,” he answered in a mysterious tone.

  Behind the robot an enormous creature appeared, a dark blue spider three times the size of the frozen colossal robot. The spider then hit it with one leg and shattered it into thousand pieces of iced fragments. The easy destruction of the colossal robot terrified every human being and they ran away from this unnatural enemy. The spider noticed Farnath and Andria, but ignored them. She focused on the last two dragons who tried to escape but she launched an icy web and trapped them in it. They tried to melt the ice, but she created more web faster than they could melt it dragging them to her feet and mummifying them until they were unable to move. Then she launched a huge ice web on the walls and start climbing from them towards the surface.

  “Oh no, she’s climbing to the surface, she will freeze everything! There are people there!”

  “I won’t let that happen,” he said determined and climbed on Felix’s back.

  They flew to the huge spider and fired a few fireballs at the ice web from which she was hanging, melted some parts of it and making her lose her grip. Realising that her enemy was succeeding, she launched numerous ice web balls trying to hit the bird, which dodged them while Farnath was shooting more fireballs at her web to destroy it completely. She fell to the ground, but landed deftly. She was angry then and started throwing ice webs everywhere, more than before, making the area a huge spider web, and the ice around her was spreading faster and faster toward the forest, freezing everything it touched immediately. Andria found herself in a dangerous situation. She should run to escape or she would been frozen, but she couldn’t leave Arthas who was injured and too heavy to carry. The ice came closer giving her no time to think and Farnath couldn’t approach her because of the thick ice that was surrounding them and Felix was trapped and immobilized completely.

  “Andria, leave now for God’s sake, save yourself!” Arthas shouted.

  She didn’t answer, but she was looking for something around her that might help.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I need fire! Hot fire!” she answered without looking at him.

  “Take this, it’s Farnath’s lamp. It gives the hottest fire you could find,” he said and gave her the device. “What are you going to do with that?”

  She took out her magic perfume that she had kept all that time. “Sorry, mom, but I don’t need this anymore,” she said and sprayed a circle around them.

  ”Perfumes contained alcohol and this one is enchanted as well, so let’s see what will happen if we light it with Farnath’s magic fire!” She set fire to the circle and blue and red flames surrounded them immediately just before the ice reached them.

  The unstoppable ice wave couldn’t harm them at all and just surrounded them and continued its way, freezing any tree, robot or man in its path. Farnath, seeing Andria surrounded by flames and in danger of being either burnt or frozen, got very angry. He whispered to Felix, who was desperately trapped in the thick web around him.

  “Felix my old friend, I need your help now. Andria is in danger!” The bird made some sound of understanding, but its wings were still stuck in the web. “Try harder Felix, we must go to her we can’t disappoint her!” Felix tried even harder and screeched as the spider started climbing towards him. “Felix, do it, break the web! I love her! I can’t lose her!” He said from inside his soul, with all his strength.

  In the sound of the last words, Felix broke free gloriously, making a bright fire wave with his wings that melted the ice web around him.

  “Yes! That’s it! For Andria, for love!” Farnath shouted excited.

  The phoenix then gestured at the spider that was approaching, hanging from her webs and dived towards her at an extremely high speed until they surpassed the materialistic limits of their bod
ies, became light and penetrated her body. The spider stepped back as she couldn’t understand what was going on. Suddenly sunlight came out from several parts of her body until they became so many that the spider exploded from inside, hit by a huge, magical wave of fire, ice and light which travelled for one mile around her. The explosion created a thick cloud of smoke around them and when it cleared, the spider and the phoenix had vanished, the ice stopped spreading and Farnath was lying on the ground. Andria and Arthas were still alive protected by their magical fire, but also trapped. A few meters away, a woman in black was also lying on the ground. Her skin was pale white, her hair black, she had blue eyes and when she stood up they realised that she was impressively beautiful. Farnath stood up too and saw relieved that Andria was still alive.

  “Farnath, my boy! Come to your mother!” the woman said, in a charming voice.

  He looked at her waiting with open palms to show him that she didn’t want to hurt him.

  “Look at you, how you grew up. You became a real man!” she said again.

  Farnath had a fireball ready in his hands unsure of how to react.

  “I’m proud of what you have done. You punished all these people for hurting you and your mother,” As Indringth said this, Farnath made the fireball disappear and started walking towards her slowly.

  “No, Farnath, don’ go!” Andria shouted, unable to move.

  Farnath stopped for a while between the two women, unsure of where he should go as he was in love with Andria, the girl that heated his heart, but also he had always missed the mother’s affection. Could she give it to him even then, after all the pain she had caused him? Could they make peace and be like mother and son? He wanted to try as he couldn’t go on in his life if he didn’t give her a chance to change.

  “No Farnath, don’t trust her! Please don’t go! She cursed you, she never came to find you, and she’s only cared about herself! Farnath!” Andria was screaming as she tried to find a spot between the flames to jump through, but the magical fire was too hot.

  “I always cared about you, my son, and what I’ve done to you was not a curse, and you shouldn’t see it that way. It was a blessing so that nobody would ever be able to hurt you as they hurt your mother! The world is full of wolves and I wanted you to have the sharpest teeth!”

  Farnath was torn, but he came closer to his mother, looking back at Andria from time to time.

  “That’s it my boy, don’t be afraid of your mother. She loves you,” she said innocently.

  “Mother?” he whispered as he got nearer.

  He opened his arms to hug her. Andria was screaming and Arthas, unable to move, watched the scene in agony. The wizard hugged his mother slowly, but she felt his palms burn her sensitive, cold skin on her back and suffered it silently.

  “Where have you been all these years?” he asked her.

  “I was waiting for you my love, to come and rescue me from the dark hole that I was trapped in,” she whispered and she slowly moved her hands to his neck, “because of you and your stupid obsession to find love!”

  Her hands spread ice to his neck and her breath came frozen on his face.

  “Let mommy give you a nice kiss now,” she said maliciously as he was struggling to free himself from her grip.

  “No, Farnath!” Andria shouted and jumped through the fire, burning her skin badly and setting her clothes on fire, and ran towards them to try to save him.

  Farnath dragged his hands from her cold body, leaving dark burns from his palms on her skin and tried to grab her hands and warm them, but they were too cold even for him. She made him kneel as she stared into his eyes emotionlessly.

  “You are not different from other men. You are not different from your father who abandoned me, you are not different from my father who…”

  “I’m not like any of those men, you cold witch!” Farnath interrupted, struggling to speak. “I AM FARNATH!” he shouted with all his strength and his hand became illuminated with fire and he drove it inside her heart.

  She looked at him, surprised by the pain, and the sunlight came from inside her spread around her and came out from her open mouth, her eyes and the top of her head. Andria was still running, still aflame, when an explosion blasted from Indringth’s body and threw Andria far away into some bushes that caught fire from her. Arthas was screaming, he couldn’t do anything to save her. Andria, still alive, but unable to stand up, saw Farnath and Indringth lying on the ground. Farnath looked at her with disappointment in his eyes and then transformed into ashes with his last breath, and was gone with the wind, while his mother became water and got absorbed into the Earth.

  Epilogue

  A fter the battle in the Forbidden Forest, most of which was burnt or frozen, the rest of the kingdoms realised that they couldn’t stay under the surface anymore, only relying on one forest. Instead they should recreate nature from the remains of it, on the surface. Then something unexpectedly good happened that saved humanity from extinction. After Farnath’s death, Andria cried and her tears had magically watered the ground, creating a flower, a white lily, before she lost consciousness.

  When she awoke from her coma she was inside a tent alone. She opened her eyes and looked around, but she didn’t see anything familiar. She stood up and when her naked feet touched the dry ground, grass started to spread around her and flowers appeared. When she came out the tent that was in the middle of a huge refugee camp, the grass spread everywhere she could see and a lake was created and trees and bushes. Her energy was vast and she healed everything around her, while animals and birds appeared, any illness and disease disappeared, except her own burning skin. People looked around them happy and they named her Mother Nature of the new world and knelt in respect. She had been unconscious more than three months, but her sadness from her loss was still fresh. She searched around her, knowing that she would never again see the person that she had loved and wanted to spend her life with. She touched her face and felt the burns from the last fight. It wasn’t smooth anymore, she felt ugly.

  “You are still beautiful, like a white lily, my Queen,” a familiar voice was heard from behind her.

  She turned and saw Arthas, totally different from how she remembered him. He was well-built, attractive and with a confident look and she put her hand on her forehead, as if to try to see clearer.

  “Is that you, Arthas?”

  “You still have the smell of the perfume.”

  “Can you smell it?”

  “I always could, since the first time I met you. I tried to tell you but …”

  Andria remembered the moment when he was sniffing the meat at the buffet and then her. She was wondering how it was possible that he smelled it if Farnath could smell it too.

  “It seems that we don’t have only one soul mate in this life,” he said smiling.

  She didn’t say anything as she was still grieving for Farnath, but she looked up the sun and felt its warm light on her forehead. “I will always have you inside me,” she thought relieved.

  The people celebrated the new beginning and a red phoenix bird the size of a sparrow flew around making a grey tail of smoke in the shape of a heart before it flew far away.