Author's Note: This is a one shot. No more. Someday it may find its way into a full-length story, but that day is not today. It was very sudden, so the end is… weird. I didn't know where to cut it off. So review and tell me if I did it all right or if I should re-do it!

Enjoy! Review, even if it is a flame!

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            It broke my heart to see him walk away, but it had to be.

            I turned around as soon as he began to walk. It wouldn't do to have him turn back and see me watching him. It would ruin everything. I had to be alone.

            I steeled myself, smothering my tears in a blanket of apathy. If I had to succeed, I couldn't care. That's what I knew, what I had been taught since the day I began to talk. Not that I listened much then, but it had been drilled into my head anyway.

            My pants, so voluminous they looked like a skirt, were light and floated to one side in a gentle breeze. My mage staff was clutched tightly in one hand, the blue jewel at the top glowing softly in response to my resolve. There was a legend about the mage stones, but that is for another person to tell. Nothing I say or think will be passed on. This will be my end.

            "You must be stoic," they would tell me, "for emotion will only cloud your judgment. It is said that 'With a clear mind and a blank heart, victory will be had for all at the cost of one.'"

            I wonder now if that is true. After all, the half-prophecy was many hundreds of years old. Maybe its time had already passed and I was merely fulfilling the wishes of a hundred less powerful men and women. I didn't have a clear mind. Emotion roiled beneath its stifling cover and disturbed the blankness I was trying to achieve.

            Why did I have to sacrifice myself for everyone else? Yes, it was the entire world, but what had they done to me to deserve my life? The few I knew had been strict and controlling. Only he…

            And that was why. To save him, I had to save the world. I didn't want to be a heroine, but it seemed it would happen that way. Too bad I wouldn't be around for the celebrations in my honor. I really wonder how long my old teachers will mourn me. It's much more likely that they will celebrate my death as soon as they learn of it.

            My earth-colored hair was bound back with a simple cord, and the weight of it against my back brought me to my present. Dark blue slippers made little noise as I neared my destination.

            I sensed him not far behind me; standing in the place I had left him. One crystal tear traced a line down my cheek. I shook it off.

            There was one simple, perfectly flat rock inlaid in the ground at the very edge of a cliff. I stood there and looked down. An army was camped there, a very large army. My sorrow was buried beneath disgust as I saw them scurrying around. They had torn up the land behind them and were proceeding toward a goal that would do much worse.

            They would release that which had been sealed for a reason.

            This was what I and countless others before me had been created for. I say 'created' because I was never a normal child. My mentors had molded my mind from the moment I was born. None of my predecessors had had my power or my opportunity.

            I lifted my staff and the blue gem, as big as my fist and perfectly smooth, winked wickedly in anticipation. There was life in that gem. So much life. Where did it come from?

            No time to wonder. I smiled softly, ironically as someone in the camp noted me and sounded an alarm. They had no time, either. My mind cleared and my staff wove designs of light onto the air. Left, right, up, down, my hands moved on their own and I began a dance. Step bow spin straighten. The few clouds overhead grew in strength. Lightening flashed among them.

            Sweat dripped down my back. It felt like his finger tracing my spine lightly, but I brushed that thought away and continued my dance.

            It felt like hours. I was exhausted already.

            To the people in the camp, it was mere minutes. A force had just formed up to try and take me down.

            No matter, anymore.

            Just one more time step spin dip lift the staff very high gather the lightening aim it at the camp.

            I spread my feet for more balance and stared at the blinding brilliance of my staff as a wicked wind conjured by the camp's mage tried to blow me back.

            Too late.

            Lightening exploded from the living gem…

            I saw my body laying not far away, eyes open and staring, arms and legs arranged haphazardly. The sky was clear and the camp was gone, obliterated.

            I had done that.

            I wept. I was so consumed by grief at leaving him that I didn't notice the other life gathering around me. Shades, lit softly by a blue light, surrounded me when I looked up.

            Give up your ties, one said.

            Forget sorrow, said another.

            Celebrate in destruction.

            Live forever.

            I shrunk back in fear and ran up against a clear barrier. I pressed my hands to it and frantically tried to find a way out when I saw him.

            I beat my fists and called to him, apologized to him, but he simply looked at my body and shed a few tears. He closed its eyes and rearranged it to a more normal position.

            Then he looked at me.

            At me.

            No.

            At my staff.

            Which I was in.

            I spun around, remembering suddenly the shades, but they cowered back from him.

            He gasped as he tried to touch the jewel. I think he saw me. Instead he moved his hand down to the wooden staff and picked it up.

            "Good-bye…"

            He whispered it softly, in grief, and by some magic I will never understand the other shades screamed and became a roiling cloud that surrounded one clear bubble where I stood.

            The staff heaved, but I did not lose balance. He brought it down to the ground.

            "I'm sorry," I whispered.

            He stopped the swing, meant to destroy the living crystal, and looked at it, puzzled.

            He tucked it under his arm and walked home slowly.

            I do not know how the wielders of the staff lived in the crystal after death, but they never appeared to me again. I saw them coalesce into human forms, but they never approached me. I saw him, outside, marry and have children, grow old and die. I tried to cry, but grief didn't touch me anymore.

            Eventually I forgot how to talk. The others had not. They spoke amongst themselves and plotted.

            His daughter, nearing womanhood, knocked the staff over while cleaning the house of his belongings. She stared at it curiously.

            I couldn't see it, but I knew.

            The gem winked maliciously.

            She picked the staff up, and I did not know how to warn her against my comrades.

            With her first spell I fell into a slumber so deep that I had no sense of sleeping, of time, of anything.

            I only hope they do not corrupt her as they corrupted me.

            Sometimes that which was sealed away for a reason was sealed away for the wrong reason.

            Sometimes, in giving everything you had to save the world, you condemn it.

            Grief finally reached me.

            I do not think I shall ever stop weeping.