I looked at their hollow faces a moment longer and then I felt the ground hit me as I fell to it and the world became dizzy and out of focus. The sand of the arena touched my face and I watched my bloody fingers move in the sand in front of me. Had it really come down to this?
Had I escaped the arena for a brief season, only to die in it at the end? Soon all the pain would be over and I would be free to go through that door with the streaming light like the Kurt's had done. I was grateful for my season away from the arena anyway. I had learned much and I knew what the next step would be and it was okay, better than okay it was more than I could ever have deserved or hoped for. My eyes were drifting shut and I felt my breathing still.
"Roric."
My eyes opened and drifted upward. A figure of a man knelt beside me, the man from the cliff top who had given me my commission. I smiled; He had come to take me home. Suddenly I frowned.
"I'm sorry I failed you! I lacked faith. Please forgive me!"
A scarred hand reached out and wiped the regret from off my face. "Level no such blame against yourself as I do not. As My Father has written, 'In the weakness of man God's strength is made manifest.'"
"I don't understand?" I mumbled out.
"Your time here is not yet complete Roric. You have much to do and experience yet before you enter the Kingdom and the resting place that I have prepared for such as you until all things are remade in newness."
He rose up from me and left as if He had never been there, but I felt His presence strong inside of me as if He had never left.
The presence of His Holy Spirit moved within me and my lips moved and said words that weren't mine, "From the dust of the ground I made you. From the breath of My nostrils I gave you life. I am the great I AM and there is none other before Me. Rise now son of my creation and stand forth as an example that I Am a God who restores and gives life where there was none before!"
I started to obey even though I knew I must surely be dead by now. My bloody hand in the sand in front of me caught my eye. Grains of sand from the arena floor were trailing up my hand in wispy tendrils. As the traveling rivulets of sand encountered a wound they flowed into me.