[The Tempest trilogy: Book 2] After the incident in Ostrava's Neoclash arena, Zoya faces dangerous challenges. Nightingale's uprising threatens to destroy the whole Europe, the racist Yeomen movement steps up their campaing against Castaways and Rya...
"The Flicker is like a demon. You have no idea what I've been through. Now I see I kept fighting for too long. See? I'm just a shadow of the person I used to be. I can... [gasping for breath] hardly breathe and I can't move at all. And the pain? It has become so vital part of my life that I don't even regard it anymore. This is too much. I hope you understand me... I can't take this any longer.
Today, I'm retreating from my fight with Flicker before it tortures me to death. But I hope that one day... there will be a way to stop this demon. I know that out there, there is someone able to dig into the very essence of this illness and find a way to destroy it. I'm leaving this world with this thought. Don't disappoint me."
· The confession of Moon Warrior, a famous Champion who was dying of Flicker. This speech was made shortly before he underwent euthanasia.
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I face the young Castaway in front of me. The Castaway who chose a wrong way.
The long years of my life taught me to read emotions from the person's face - and his face truly is telltale. Many scars which healed a long time ago tell me about the battles he went through, but the burn scar which took his left eye seems recent. Maybe not even an hour old.
Maybe Zoya doesn't see what I see. Underneath all that boiling rage, there's uncertainty, a cry for help. Zoya already told me about this man and the past they shared.
Just a while ago, I learned what it's like to be betrayed by someone you called a friend for countless years. Zoya doesn't deserve this. This man is not evil, just confused, directionless. He thinks that serving Nightingale gives his life a purpose. However, she leads him into even bigger chaos which plagues his mind.
"We don't have to fight, Isaiah," I tell him with a calm voice.
"Then step back and let me do what I have to do!" he barks. "Just look at me. She... My task..." He groans and shakes his head like a surge of a migraine struck him. I presume not even his own mind has an idea what to do. Millions of conflicting emotions. I know it very well.
"It was you who betrayed her. She still had faith in you, but in the end, you just tried to kill her because your new mistress told you so. That's not how do you treat friends."
"She's not a friend anymore. She is the betrayer! For some reason, she refuses to see the mess all around her. Refuses to see that she only became a puppet of the Healthy, their trained monkey. She's not the person she used to be. It was her who opened the divide between us."
I raise my eyebrows. "Are you sure about this?"
Isaiah starts to shake, his face turning red. Then, with a deafening battle cry, he charges at me. First, he delivers a hook punch into my jaw and then rains more strikes aimed at my chest and stomach area. My reflexes aren't what they used to be and I take quite a beating before I finally counterattack, still overwhelmed by the fury in his attacks. As he briefly exposes himself, I strike him down with a single crushing punch.
