The Gathering Storm

Then he drew in more.

He knew that much power would destroy him. He had stopped caring. Fury that had been building in him for years finally boiled free, unleashed at long last. He spread his arms out wide, access key in his hand. Lews Therin had been right to kill himself and create Dragonmount. Only he hadn't gone far enough.

Rand could remember that day. The smoke, the rumbling, the sharp pains of a Healing bringing him back to lucidity as he lay in a broken palace. But those pains had paled compared with the agony of realization. Agony from seeing the beautiful walls scarred and broken. From seeing the piles of familiar corpses, tossed to the floor like discarded rags.

From seeing Hyena a short distance away, her golden hair spread out on the ground around her.

He could feel the palace around him shaking from the earth's own sobs. Or was that Dragonmount, throbbing from the immense power he had drawn into himself?

He could smell the air thick with blood and soot and death and pain. Or was that just the scent of a dying world, spread before him?

The winds began to whip at him, spinning, enormous clouds above twisting upon themselves, like ancient leviathans passing in the profoud black deep.

Lews Therin had made a mistake. He had died, but had left the world alive, wounded, limping forward. He'd let the Wheel of Time keep turning, rotating, rotting and bringing him back around again. He could not escape it. Not without ending everything.

"Why?" Rand whispered to the twisting winds around him. The Power coming to him through the access key was greater than he'd held when cleansing saidin. Perhaps greater than any man had ever held. Great enough to unravel the Pattern itself and bring final peace.

"Why do we have to do this again?" he whispered. "I have already failed. She is dead by my hand. Why must you make me live it again}"

Lightning cracked above, thunder buffeting him. Rand closed his eyes, perched above a drop that plummeted thousands of feet downward, in the middle of a tempest of icy wind. Through his eyelids, he could sense the blazing light of the access key. The Power he held inside dwarfed that light. He was the sun. He was fire. He was life and death.

Why? Why must they do this over and over? The world could give him no answers.

Rand raised his arms high, a conduit of power and energy. An incarnation of death and destruction. He would end it. End it all and let men rest, finally, from their suffering.

Stop them from having to live over and over again. Why? Why had the Creator done this to them? Why?

Why do we live again? Lews Therin asked, suddenly. His voice was crisp and distinct.

Yes, Rand said, pleading. Tell me. Why?

Maybe . . . Lews Therin said, shockingly lucid, not a hint of madness to him. He spoke softly, reverently. Why? Could it be . . . Maybe it's so that we can have a second chance.

Rand froze. The winds blew against him, but he could not be moved by them. The Power hesitated inside him, like the headsman's axe, held quivering above the criminal's neck. You may not have a choice about which duties are given you, Tarn's voice, just a memory, said in his mind. But you can choose why you fulfill them.

Why, Rand? Why do you go to battle? What is the point?

Why?

All was still. Even with the tempest, the winds, the crashes of thunder. All was still.

Why? Rand thought with wonder. Because each time we live, we get to love again,

That was the answer. It all swept over him, lives lived, mistakes made, love changing everything. He saw the entire world in his mind's eye, lit by the glow in his hand. He remembered lives, hundreds of them, thousands of them, stretching to infinity. He remembered love, and peace, and joy, and hope.

Within that moment, suddenly something amazing occurred to him. /// live again, then she might as well!

That's why he fought. That's why he lived again, and that was the answer to Tarn's question. I fight because last time, I failed. I fight because I want to fix what I did wrong.

I want to do it right this time.

The Power within him reached a crescendo, and he turned it upon itself, drove it through the access key. The ter'angreal was connected to a much greater force, a massive sa'angreal to the south, built to stop the Dark One. Too powerful, some had said. Too powerful ever to use. Too frightening.

Rand used its own power upon it, crushing the distant globe, shattering it as if in the grip of a giant's hands.

The Choedan Kal exploded.

The Power winked out.