Man, it was too early for this young, lively light to burn out, but the truth had finally reached the girls and, subsequently, the rest of the members of Blue Pegasus. Daiko Flayme has died… that was the end of the young man’s tale, his journey as a revved Hunter and Takeover Mage donning the mark of Blue Pegasus. Death was the end of one’s mortal life on Earthland, a certain fact that every living creature knew of. There was simply nothing to be done about it… overtime, they simply… s-simply had to move on and accept his demise. It was a fact of life, and they didn’t have to let his death be the main focus of his influence over them.

But it had only been a little while now… not even a day. Daiko’s corpse was still on the bed. Alisa and Sofia had walked away, needing time to really take in the fact that his life ebbed away in their hands.

Only Kerii remained for now.

Daiko’s body looked so calm in death… it was poetic. He had found everlasting peace, certainly because of his good-willed life and countless sacrifices to uphold genuine ideals and morals. He was a gentle man… but there was something strange about his lifeless body.

In front of the blonde elf of the forest, without modesty, his skin began to crack. It was sudden, but small waves of heat began to emit from him like heat fans, while his skin slowly crumbled and turned color. Over the span of a few seconds, heat emerged up in the air and his body crumbled down to mere, red and yellow scales akin to ham from reptiles… or pheasants?

While the ordeal on his corpse must’ve been shocking, the real surprise was the manifestation of an avian entity above the corpse. If Kerii was to raise her gaze, then she would feel the strength of a sun hit her back in the face for a brief instance, before her eyes would adapt the slightest and immediately make out the full form of a pheasant-falcon hybrid. A bird of rapture-like features mixed with the long, colorful wings of paradise… donning cloaks and ornaments of the most dazzling fires. Its heat enveloped the entire room, but it was such calm, calm and peaceful heat that it made not a single noise. It was as if the heat blocked away sound altogether.

“… This is not the Temple of the Sun? Has my mind altered to such a point that I forgot the promised place…?”

WC: 427

The phoenix immediately came to the realization that someone was right next to it, a confused, elven lady of unknown heritage with no relation to the bird of fire… or so, she thought. Things weren’t like that, if reality was unchanged. The phoenix remembered her… she was Kerii. A precious friend of the flying entity. One who had been by his side for very long, who was met along the ranks of Lamia Scale. The phoenix remembered it… and it had quite a lot to explain.

“… I see. You are Kerii, yes,” it spoke to her in a new voice – one that belonged to no other person that the elven beauty had ever met before, “… Mhm, I remember thoroughly. The life I led under the shelter of human flesh and blood… yes, you and Arisa… and Kái too… Shahrbaraz and Aguero… and even Konstantin… give me time, madame, for my thoughts must be allowed the time to allocate themselves in the right order again.” The bird then landed on the bed, right on top of the crusty remains of the shell that used to be Daiko’s body… but what did it mean by its previous words?

Its wide, blazing wings didn’t burn anything. Not a single atom was scorched in its presence, except the auric fuel of ambrosia and energy of life that was the charcoal to its fiery coat. “I… I have lived long enough,” the phoenix spoke up once more, signaled by the sudden dimming of its blazing tongues hugging its wings, “I did not realize that my mortal life would overlap with the promised hour… it beats in the deepest of my chest. It is soon to be the fifth turn of a century. I… I cannot allow myself to stay here for any longer.” The phoenix then turned to face her, Kerii, its friend who made it feel heavy in its core, “Kerii, I owe you an apology. I remember now… you refer to me as a separate entity from your friend, Daiko. You must know that it is not the case; please, believe in what I have to say.”

What the phoenix tried to explain was unheard of, a unique circumstance for a previously thought-to-be general Takeover Mage.

“I am… I’m the one who made him to be. The one you refer to as Daiko… he was me. A mortal curtain of Savannan blood and flesh, so that I may pour life through him – a life born from a hasty promise I made to his grieving mother… y-you must listen now, closely, or I will fly to the Promised Tower in sadness…”

WC: 439
TWC: 866

Kerii… she acted far more recklessly than the mortal boy’s memory bore. Maybe it was due to the sight of her friend having died, for death in one’s close vicinity often brought sour and depressed states to emit to the surface. It was a depressing hour for her, but the bird in her presence wasted little time and continued. Coda might’ve suffered the most from Daiko’s death – as it befitted creatures of pure, instinctual mindsets with raw, primal emotions to stir within them. Creatures, animals, or simply the races beyond the sentient civilizations of man, elf and beastfolk… their feelings were always pure. Purer than sacred water. Purer than a diamond. A man’s tears could be out of a desire to gain favor or to guilt-trip someone, but a creature’s tears were always sincere.

And yet, Coda had stopped crying… for she felt a kinship with the Bird of Fire. It was a sudden turn to a calm state for the friendly raptor, and Kerii would be sharp enough to notice that. Alas, the Phoenix had a story to tell.

“Let me tell you about the young man who called himself Daiko,” its voice echoed, resonating across the walls and bringing a feeling of condensed authority to saturate the air, “And then, you might be able to let me perform my promised mission…”
The Phoenix’ story took place in Worth Woodsea, over 20 years ago. The story was about a settlement of Savannans, and a specific one at that – those who were gifted with long lives among mankind. They had fled from their homeland over a century ago and settled in a few places in Fiore, bringing their endangered culture along with them – a culture that revered the Phoenix as a gift from God and a source of eternal life. Their concrete jungles were houses of exotic but ancient nature and design, decorated with carvings and sculptured walls, ceilings and frames displaying ancient mythos from tales of old. The Phoenix held the most influence in these carvings, and many walls were protected by its wide, spreading wings of stone embracing the rooms.

However, there was a reason why they had fled so many years ago. Their source of long-lasting life… some elders had lived the lifespan of elves, but how come? Simply, the workings of a wrongdoer from old times; the Phoenix had been sealed in a prison, this prison being a large, round stone plate that they took along with them. The Phoenix’ powers of life could be sapped and injected into humans regularly, but it required a link – a bridge of sorts that had to symbolize the lack of their wish and the core of having their wish granted.

Since they wanted eternal life, it meant that they scorned the finite and mortal… they scorned the day when their own blood would wet the ground. And thus, the dead blood of hand-picked individuals were necessary to tap into the seal and drain the Phoenix’ powers, which was covered up as a ‘blessing and test of determination’ and as a chance to become a member of the Clanic Fathers. Yes, they only chose male sacrifices, for women were needed for reproduction, but the nature of the ritual and the lie that covered it up was not something that any sex should ever go through.

In the case that you were chosen, you would be slaughtered on the stone plate. Your blood would then activate the seal, and for a temporary time, the Phoenix’ magic would engulf the settlement. But Clanic Fathers? The notion that the sacrifices were saviors? Lies whose origin had begone to forgetfulness. Even the choosing of the next Clanic Father was based on massless assumption of some clairvoyant ability to choose them out.

In this cultural blood-pool, there was a widow with her newborn son. She had named him Daiko, after the white and large carrots that grew in the northern woods. She held such immense delight and love for him, but what horror a mother would go through if she were told that her newborn child was the next Clanic Father… it led to bloodshed. The mother wanted to save the child, and the shamans wanted to stop her. The child had to die. It had to die, for it was the right thing… wasn’t it?

What was one child’s life for the life of the entire clan? These sacrifices only took place once a decade, and the mother would have plenty of time to raise another. But she was reckless in her approach of her dead child’s remains, screaming in horror… and she did something unpredictable. She broke the stone plate.

A Phoenix who had suffered imprisonment in such a long time would also lose its patience and cool, and thus it unleashed its wings of fire upon the population. Worth Woodsea looked like it was suffering a forestfire, and almost all members of the clan were incinerated. But the mother lived, albeit against her own wishes as she cried: “Burn me away! Kill me! End me! Bring me back to my son! Bring me back to my child…!!!”

The Phoenix realized what had happened. The poor child’s life had been robbed from it. A newborn never got the chance to speak its first word or eat its first meal or drink its first cup of water. How… heart-choking. It felt as if its blood was freezing to ice under carpets of hell and oil.

And that was when the Phoenix decided to, in a way, grant the mother her wish… but its blood could only make the living immortal, not revive the dead. At least… no, it couldn’t revive others so easily, but it could revive itself! That was it! If it merged with the boy’s own dead flesh, then maybe… just maybe…

And that was when the forest fire died out. Not a trace or an ember left… nothing but a confused, teary mother and an infant’s live cries and sobbing…

And now, Kerii knew as well. What Daiko was. What had happened to him long ago. Not even Daiko was aware of this, and the bird of fire made sure to inform her of that. “I am Daiko… or at least, I was for a while. In a moment of desperation and empathy, I decided to become a living human, and thus my mind convinced itself that I am Daiko Flayme… but in the end, I am the Phoenix. I have always been, and my time is almost up. I must give birth to myself once more, and become an egg.”

The Phoenix took a deep breath, because Kerii’s expressions were just as… tearful as the mother’s. It brought sour feelings up from times past. “… D-… Tell me, Kerii, for I must leave soon. I have a world to see, and a life to restore. Every 500th year, I turn back to an egg and undo myself. From the ashes of my old self, I return to life once more, and yet… this heavy feeling in my chest won’t go away. I may be Daiko Flayme, but my mind is not the same as before. Daiko’s mind is not mine, but at the same time, it… is.” It was like an identity crisis, really.

“I… do not want to part. I promised his mother that… he would live. Flying away in this state would be a coward’s act, and I am no swindler… so tell me! Open your heart and proclaim your wish with all your might; do you wish to see Daiko Flayme again?”

WC: 1265
TWC: 2131

Coda heeded hastily to Kerii’s arm, perching on it and keeping her beaked face close to the elf’s, notifying her that the avian companion was… shaking a little. Did Coda understand all human language? Not really, but when it came from the beak of the Phoenix, then it resonated too strongly with the raptor and caused the usually carefree bird to seek refuge in the elf’s company. This story was heavy.

But Kerii had found a path, a string of possibility that could lead this sad day to its undoing. A string that could bring her dear friend back to life once more, and it depended on her answer… and her answer was expected of an old friend of Daiko’s. With that said, the Phoenix had no more qualms against her and began blazing up in flames again. The wheels of fate began to spin…

“Then I will see to it that I resume my life as the Savannan pyromage, the Take-Over asset of Blue Pegasus! But my time is approaching steadily, and I will have to revitalize myself,” it began to tell, suddenly reducing the size of the flames around it until it looked like it had shrunk itself down, “I will enter my egg and gather Ethernano. To revive myself, I must be taken to the tallest point of the Temple of the Sun and build my nest of myrrh and resin there. Then I must be lit aflame, along with an item of Daiko’s memory… and thus, my life will turn to ash. And from the ash, I shall rise once more – not as a Bird of Fire, but as the young man I used to be…”

And on the bed full of vermillion scales lied a deep-red, scaled and head-sized… egg. It was pleasantly warm to the touch, but it was packed to the space between atoms with mana. “Let me guide you down south of the country, for across the waters there shall be an island… and I pray that the temple still stands to this day. It has been 500 years since my last visit…”

WC: 352
TWC: 2483 (END)