This chapter is short and rather AU. It's not written from exactly the same point of view as the others, but it is similar. I decided I needed some kind of chapter to tie it all up, so here it is. Hope you enjoyed this little tale.
Chapter Four: Red
Destroying the snake speaker was not difficult. The red-eyed one understood so little. He understood not the power of love or the power of loyalty. He understood not how three people could stand side by side. One with lightning-blue eyes, one with eyes of the darkest black, and the third with eyes of killing curse green.
He did not understand how, together, they could harness the power inside them. The power of love, of friendship, of bravery and courage, and of loyalty. How they could form the power into something else, something more. Something that channeled not through their wands or the wooden staff on the ground, but through their hearts, through their souls.
And although the boy was writhing on the ground in pain, in agony at the two warring souls, it was clear to everyone except the red-eyed one who would win. The boy's love, the boy's loyalty burst through. Through the darkness, through the pain. Although the screams seemed to rend the boy inside out, he could survive it. And he would survive it.
In the end, he did survive it. He did more than just survive… he lived. The boy became a man; he had children, a wife, a job. He managed to nearly forget those pain-filled days. They didn't even haunt him in dreams: Love, he had been taught, was more powerful than fear.
The companion learned not just of loyalty. He learned of love, of compassion. He met another, one that could mean nearly as much to him as the green-eyed mother of the boy that he had once been prisoner with, the one who had been his first love and his first great loss. The one whose eyes he never saw again.
The savior never demonstrated as much loyalty to any as he did those two boys. The staff remained hidden in the castle, never to be touched again. It belonged solely to him, and would die with his death. Death he was not frightened of; he rather embraced life while he still had it left to live.
Sometimes, blue, black, and green would find each other, seek each other out. Green's fingers would touch the cloth, remembering. Black would smile lightly, more than he had ever before. And blue would twinkle as he always did, but with an almost frightening intensity.
Red never showed itself again.