The Beast of Ten

by Beth Brower

We must be hopeful now, child. While fear is the enemy of all good, faith gives flame to any endeavor.

You can’t fight darkness by creating more darkness, don’t you see? You can’t fight despair with the fear of being broken. What we need is a hope.”

I’ve no idea how the task could be accomplished, but I do know that one candle can dispel an entire room of darkness. I have

“One does not start with denying hope,” he instructs, taking another step, then another, a predator approaching its prey. “You begin by denying value to whomever you wish to destroy. For once they doubt their value, hope simply drains away through their cracked worth. A much simpler way to claim souls.”

This is Satan’s greatest tactic.

and strange—and he takes another step towards me. “Human beings are easily persuaded they are nothing,” he adds.

“Light is the only thing that grows stronger when darkness deepens,”

it feels like the strength of the afternoon on the first day that spring begins folding itself into summer.

choice. It is a transaction between the Light Binder and the Most High; I am a conduit, nothing more.

“It seems that some Being in the vast skies thinks you’re worth saving.”

And I realize I am coming to understand, to a fuller extent, how beauty ministers to the heart in a way nothing else can.

“Lost things can be found. Lost things can be replaced by something of even greater worth.”

“Darkness does not let its former captives go easily. It must try to destroy them first, to pull them once again into oblivion.”

“The man had the gall,” Sperro spits the word out, “to say he forgave me.” “Did you take it,” I whisper, swallowing around the emotion in my throat. Sperro shakes his head and muffles a cry. “I wept.”

what is to challenge hope if not despair? Can we claim the first without battling and dispelling the second?”

“But power is intoxicating. The most insatiable appetite I’ve ever known.”

There once was a Death Bleak who fell into darkness, reclaimed for the Lights by a Virtus Third.