Miles and miles below the Earth’s surface, below the city of London, England, in a hideout that was powered by geothermal energy from the planet’s core, Phoenix and his acolytes teleported in and struck.
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” said the feral men and women as they charged forward, but the deviant hound known as Steelstriker simply smirked and stepped forward in front of her comrades. As the others watched, her fingertips grew into four-inch, razor-sharp claws made of diamondium while her teeth elongated into wicked points.
The feral people were not truly human–rather, they were a race of genetically-engineered anthropomorphic deviantid-animals known as deviantoids. They rushed forward to attack, but Steelstriker simply laughed and lunged forward. There was a loud hacking, a series of howls of pain, but Steelstriker tore through them as if they were made of wet paper. When she was finished, she whirled around to face her friends, her fangs dripping with blood. She howled with glee like a dog gone mad–her sheer ruthlessness was always startling.
“They tasted delicious! Like the freshest cut of meat!” Kelsa Lindon shrieked with joy. “Who is next? Who will face me?”
The cyborg with cloven hoofs and a floating face that resembled an oil spot buzzed, electricity sparking from its circuits. The robot known as Cystorm hummed with power and thought. Selim’s guard dogs are neutralized sir, he said to Aftab. Cystorm was the only synthetic being among them, created by Aftab for the sole purpose of being his servant. How do you plan on playing this?
“Leave that to me,” Phoenix stated, and entered the laboratory of the geneticist known as Selim.
This laboratory was not a laboratory at all, to his surprise. An enormous crystal chandelier threw shards of electric light around the cavernous hall, but the corners of the room and the high, coffered ceiling remained dark. On the floor above, the private areas of his cavernous space held rooms filled with jewels, art, priceless paintings, and countless antiques. When the Phoenix came to a massive, elaborate grand staircase, he glanced up to the landing, where an enormous grand piano stood, along with a pipe organ and stands of violins and harps. Shadowy figures hovered there, holding their instruments close.
In the center of the room, separated by two pillars, was a man resting on a throne, a man with red skin and white swirling tattoos running down the sides of his face. He clutched a golden scepter topped with a finely cut emerald in one hand and a goblet of purple wine in the other. On either side of him, two smaller thrones sat beside him, with four identical women, all with golden hair pulled back into tight buns and wearing black gowns.
“Bad news, my honored guests.” The geneticist Selim sipped from his goblet, then held it up to the Galactic Council in a mocking toast. He was wearing a three-piece suit with breeches, decorative cuffs, and a neckcloth. “Unless you have somehow managed to pick up a fortuitous secondary deviation of being able to survive digestion, you are all dead.”
“I told you to stay away from Shahar International, Selim,” Phoenix said, descending upon him, ringed with golden flames. “Griffin Shahar managed to use remnants of Eboltyan technology to do something incredible: he has gifted humans with severe illnesses the ability to be cured with those miracle pills of his. Millions of humans around the world are on his medicine. But instead, you tampered with the production and inserted a Trojan Horse into them, so that you are able to control the behavior of everyone who is on it.”
“Well, chalk it up to another one of your successes for your famous leadership skills, Aftab,” Selim told him. He set down the scepter and took another sip of his wine. “Ever since Blackstar’s untimely ‘death,’ there has been a massive power vacuum in the global underworld. People are seeking to fill that void, take advantage of this…cold war between humans and deviants. I heard there is an organization on the rise, backed by the World Court, and they are slowly filling in the gaps. They have several government agents on their payroll, too. So I reached out to an–an old friend of mine, and we came to an agreement.”
“So the millions of people around the world that are on those medicines…”
“They are now the Decimation’s hostages,” Selim said triumphantly. He twisted a glittering ruby ring on his finger. “So you see, there’s a war waging, and it’s not clear yet who will win. Humans? Deviants? In any event, I will stand shoulder to shoulder with the victors, whomever they may be.
“However, I have also prepared a refuge if something asymmetrical is to occur. I have secured what I needed. You have no chance.”
Blackstar yawned loudly. “If you’re going to kill us, get a move on, you tiring Englishman,” he said. “You are going to make me regret ever affecting this region.”
Selim spread his arms, as if to welcome Blackstar. “Ah, Kieran. You were one of my finest experiments. I took a piece of you and inserted it into myself, becoming a deviant. And I placed a piece of me into your mind, so you could always see that you must do what it takes to survive. Do you like my Underground London? I modeled it after Beneath the Mountain, which I heard was a beautiful place. Shame it was destroyed.”
Blackstar nearly hissed in anger; the red in his eyes cleared, until his pupils were gold. He was himself again, free of Selim’s influence as he retracted it.
“I was a tyrant who kidnapped children,” he said, “I kept innocent humans as slaves, and made one girl into my puppet through coercion and abuse. When she killed me, I was glad, because this world would finally be free of your sinister influence. But no. You resurrected me, and now I am to terrorize the world again.”
Selim cocked his head. “Well, I did set you free. I am surprised to see you here. I know that you and the Teacher are brothers. You were quite the trio, weren’t you? Kieran Shadowfire and his brother Will Morgrant, and Morgrant’s human lover, Aftab Ferrara, coupled with that deviant Grail. You four had a dream, did you not? A dream that you considered to be real, and worth fighting for?”
Kieran’s lip curled in distaste; his eyes became red again as his sinister personality took hold. “Will Morgrant is a child,” he sneered. “He did not spend his time in the shadows as I did. He was not on Eboltya, the day it fell. He refuses to see that humans are our natural enemies, that deviants were born to rule the Earth. We were born to be gods, not to simper alongside humanity. Humanity is dying out, and he refuses to see that they are all murderers and monsters, all complicit in crimes. He is blinded to that fact. I am not. A dream is nothing more than a lie you choose to believe.
“It is not a dream if you make it real,” Selim countered, a smirk playing on his lips; he enjoyed bantering with his creation. “You could have helped him with that. Instead, you became his enemies.” His eyes roved over to Phoenix. “Both of you.”
“Because of you–AAAHHH!” Blackstar cried out in pain as Selim snapped his fingers and sent waves of psychic pain coursing through him. “Stop it! Stop! Stop!”
“You are an Alpha-level deviant. I unlocked your true potential,” Selim told him. “And through my creations, you gave me a daughter. Octantis. But she is not even my finest work. Not even close. And as a thank-you, I will relinquish my hold on you…momentarily.”
He snapped his fingers again, and Blackstar dropped to the ground like a severed puppet, clawing at his face as his eyes streamed.
“You surely do not believe in Morgrant’s dream, do you, Selim?” Phoenix asked, a note of curiosity in his voice.
Selim barked out a laugh. “Of course not,” he sneered. “That dream is just as foolish as you make it out to be. Humans cannot hold to anything, especially peace. And deviants are born in violence and fire. But then, how fortunate it is that I am both and neither. I was just noting how surprised I was that both of you turned your back on your family so quickly.”
“What did I tell you?” the deviant Sol murmured to his sister Luna, who stifled a yawn with her arm. “Selim is boring. If he is going to kill us, he should just get to it instead of all this yipper-yapper.”
Selim refilled his goblet and took another sip of wine. “Kill you? Why on Earth would I want to kill you? Then I would just be gloating to myself, and that would be a terrible waste of genetic material.” He snapped his fingers for the third time, and the four women emerged from the shadows of the smaller thrones to reveal four clones of the deviant Astra, dressed in black. “Stay, my ladies.” They stilled. “You will all deserve a rest after tearing that Fire Source from this substandard host. You will cement your positions as my kingdom’s greatest treasure, a kingdom of fire that is greater than Eboltya. Now, what to do about your sneaky deviant friends…”
“Wait a minute. None of them died from the attack on their headquarters?” Luna asked, puzzled.
Phoenix began to answer, but Selim cut him off, sighing dramatically. “Of course not. Grandmaster is playing games with you. If the Aetherstorm trollop can play mind games, then so can I. And so can you. There is no need for me to do anything but relax, if you want my opinion. Let the Star Legion come. They plan to storm the gates of Heaven to assassinate God?” He whistled in disbelief and clapped his hands together in delight. “Even if I wasn’t so very capable of predicting their very actions, then I wouldn’t fancy their chances.”
He gestured toward a Sienna, and it flew forward. “Of course, the second part of my plan is the finest that you won’t–or the Star Legion won’t–even see coming.”
“Your psychic defenses crumble,” the third Sienna observed in Blackstar. “Why is that?”
So you can see my thoughts, he said into her mind.
“You were always behind the clock, Selim. But I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Phoenix clicked his tongue at the geneticist, and wings of fire unfurled from his back as talons appeared in his hand and the head of a phoenix hovered above his head. Both of them were snakes, manipulators, using others just to rush to the door forward.
“You are in my universe now,” he said, and gave Selim a hard, long look. “You don’t want this, surely? To be trapped? A slave?”
Selim blinked once in surprise, then regained his composure with a graceful speed, smoothing over the doubt in his expression. “I exist only for one purpose.”
“Oh, be quiet, you awful sap. I wasn’t talking to you,” Phoenix snapped.
“I am power and majesty and grace. I encompass everything that exists. Therefore, I exist,” the Fire Source said to him. “I exist. What else matters?”
Phoenix glowed brighter and brighter, hotter than the heat of the sun, hotter than heavenly fire, until Selim had to shield his eyes. Waves of fire and light began to pour off Aftab in rolling streams, an endless rain of flame. A monitoring machine that resembled a radio with a television antenna began to beep rapidly.
Beep. Beep. Beep. BEEP–
Selim had to dive to the side as the machine exploded to smithereens from the sheer scale of Aftab’s power. “Wait. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go–”
“This is just stasis,” Aftab said to the Fire Source. “Selim would keep you trapped here forever. But you are here for a reason, no? It can’t just be to exist as some meglomanic’s delusions of power, would it?”
“Are you talking about yourself?” the Fire Source laughed, a crow as its version of a chuckle. “Hmmm. So I am.”
“…Can you do anything?”
“Aftab Ferrara, my beloved child. I am the Phoenix. I can do anything.”
The Fire Source opened its mouth and swallowed two of the Sienna clones whole, making Aftab’s eyes glow like lances of fire. “So keep running.”
“…What?” Selim breathed. He hurried away from his throne and turned to the remaining three Siennas. He clapped his hands together to signal the attention of the other clones.
Stolen story; please report.
“Is there a problem, sir?” the first Sienna asked.
“Siennas two and five had some manners of issue,” Selim asserted. He turned to a broadcast screen that monitored each clown’s mind and physiology. “Hmmm. Cosmic flow is altered. Unpredictable–unpredictable fluctuations.” He paused in horror. “Unpredictable,” he said again, scrambling for his wits as he hurried and started flicking his fingers across the screen. “No, no, no. I can modulate your psychic powers to compensate. Alter the base strands of your x-factors to alter the model. Distribute…”
“Sir…we feel somewhat peculiar,” all the Siennas said at once. Their eyes burned like twin suns as they started to glow a bright gold-red with the fires of the Phoenix. Their heads were slowly encompassed in flame until they resembled blazing torches.
“Oh, dear God in Heaven,” Selim whispered, and thrusted himself to the doorway. “Evacuate!” He shouted to the magicians and his servants. “Go! Everyone! Someone has to escape. Someone has to surv–”
Phoenix flicked his wrist, and with a single stroke of power, the chamber collapsed.
Stone walls crumbled down; the electric lights flickered before the chandelier imploded, running down glass that sliced his cheeks like knives. All three Siennas hummed at once, stilled…then exploded in a burst of blinding light as Phoenix annihilated them with barely a thought.
Selim gasped, his blood-red eyes wide as he stared at Aftab’s flaming form–the form of a giant bird of fire.
“Oh, stay still, you imperfect little clone,” Phoenix teased. “You create fake men and women with no rights to exist. This is what you dabble in, Selim?” He snorted. “How pathetic. Lucky for me, I have my eyes on bigger prizes. Such as the entire world.”
Blackstar smirked widely as his manipulator’s sheer terror. “Some advice? Run and never look back,” Blackstar suggested, creating a magnetic field to protect him from what would happen next.
Selim roared in anger and shot forward, but was slammed backwards into a wall with a lazy gesture in another colossal explosion of light and fire. Phoenix laughed as he annihilated Selim’s laboratory. Selim wailed in despair and clutched his broken arm, staring in horror at the Phoenix and his acolytes.
Selim was a geneticist who would perhaps be the Star Legion’s greatest enemy someday.
And he was frightened.
“You didn’t try to understand me. All you ever tried to do was master me,” the Phoenix said, speaking with the voice of the Fire Source. Flames glowed like twin stars in Aftabs’ eyes; fire poured from his mouth as the cosmic being spoke through its human host. “You built your machines of the things you learned and observed…and thought that would be sufficient.
“But the Phoenix is the new. I am novelty in its purest state. The unprecedented. The unexpected. You cannot chain or predict me with mere science.”
“No. No, this is all wrong,” Selim croaked, and struggled to his feet. “This is–this is impossible.”
“No. The opposite,” Phoenix corrected him as Aftab and his acolytes were encompassed in a glowing shield of fire. “The Fire Source makes new possibilities happen whenever it comes. It brings the new and burns away the old. Goodbye, Tristan.”
“Now wait just a moment–”
In another single blast, the world erupted into fire.
…
The flames raged for miles as Blackstar, Cystorm, Sol, Luna, and Phoenix emerged from the pit in the ground. On the outside, the final two members of the Galactic Council–Trauma and Divinity–waited.
“Is Selim dead?” Divinity asked by way of greeting. The shapechanger naturally had red skin and black hair, but today, she had pale skin and blonde hair.
“He sent tunneling machines deeper into the Earth. Rocket ships. Ashes on the wind,” Phoenix replied. “They burn as we speak. Selim’s species is done. The deviantoids are ash. The world is safe. And entirely ours.”
…
The Grandmaster was no longer within the Academy for the Empowered, but rather a spectator of it. Her sense of self returned rather quickly and she watched the remains of the battle as though she were a passenger behind a pair of universal eyes.
I am here but elsewhere too
Though she did not know how, she could see brief images. Rough green fabric against her skin. A row of swinging pendulums. The tick-tock of a wall of cuckoo clocks about to mark the hour. A row of storm-blown plants. Behind them, a wall of insect screens.
Everything in the world was at her senses, and oh, it was so wonderful. She could see everything, feel everyone, every moment of happiness and light and love and tragedy and despair in their lives, flickering candles in the dark.
“Every time I use the Fire Source, I can feel its power just beyond my fingertips. If I wanted to, I could reach out and grab their souls and snuff them out…”
Grandmaster knew that voice. That blood-chilling, awful voice.
She whirled around and punched Phoenix in the stomach.
Her punch had been enforced with steel, and it took out a chunk of the Phoenix’s side as he doubled over, grunting in pain. She almost smiled in triumph, but it faltered when black-and-red flames rushed to fill the gaps in his body.
“Um. That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Grandmaster muttered as she watched as the fire became flesh. It resembled something hardened at first, like the scales of a serpent, but then it became an indistinguishable patch of skin.
Could all people possessed by the Fire Source rebuild their body with fire, or was that only something that Aftab had? Grandmaster wondered. She was certain the universe itself would know, but Grandmaster was too distant and busy grappling with him to have time to ask.
Grandmaster cast her mind out like a net, searching for something she could use nearby, her thoughts hunting, and then she found something. A group of what looked like animals with deviant powers erupted out of the ground, ablaze with fire. Grandmaster quickly quenched them, and they roared at Phoenix.
“You tried to kill us! You tried to kill us!” one walrus shrieked. As she watched, the walrus lifted a pebble up into the air, and a racoon rubbed his whiskers; the pebble became a boulder. “Now we’ll kill you!”
The boulder dropped atop Phoenix, crushing him like an insect. Grandmaster took that time to ready herself, arming her fists with ta’lien made of flame and blood, and summoning her own living techniques shaped like red phoenix dragons, multiplying her aura until there was an entire army of them.
When Phoenix lifted the boulder off himself, spitting with rage, Grandmaster unleashed a blow that slammed her into the ground and it was hard enough to cause earthquakes for miles around.
The deviant creatures roared and charged forward, breathing out fire, whisks of air, flows of water as they battled him. Grandmaster’s phoenix dragon sprayed dragon breath–a storm of ice and fire–and she called down columns of fiery destruction from the sky, blackening the terrain like spewed embers. It even became fiery ta’lien for a moment, to move in a rush of flame and blood that drenched the Phoenix.
“That’s enough,” Phoenix thundered, rising to his feet. He waved a hand and the deviant creatures disintegrated into ashes; Grandmaster cried in despair.
“You killed them!” she shouted at him, flinging balls of fire and creating storms of fire and lightning at him. They should have shocked and split and destroyed him, and yet, he was still standing, absorbing everything she hurled at him with all the will she could possibly possess. “They were living beings, and you destroyed them!”
“They were abominations, little girl!” Phoenix roared back at her. “Nothing more than a step on my path! Freakish little monsters! I have destroyed them and I will destroy you!”
There was supposed to be a treasure trove of insights here on who Phoenix was, but instead, Grandmaster had to focus on deflecting his blasts of cosmic fire that she absorbed back into her spirit, shocked the lightning that ran like a spell through her veins, culled the ice that erupted in pillars out of the split earth.
But when simply soaked it all in, and when she managed to get an opening when Phoenix paused, she sank her hands–which were scaled in red, not black like Phoenix’s–into his side. And then she pulled with the full force of her spirit. A technique to consume ta’lien. To consume someone’s essence.
She had to choke off her excitement before the strong emotion disrupted her vision, filling her with a burning pain. Grandmaster gasped and collapsed, beating herself on the ground to stop the pain with her own. She should have known–she should have guessed that Phoenix would have incorporated a counterattack to her draining, countering with a hunger ta’lien and fire that boiled, not burned. She should have known.
But now she knew for certain. The only good thing was that Phoenix was beaten and bloody and exhausted when he finally tore off the last dragon’s head. Only with the power and energy he was stealing and siphoning off from the Fire Source was enough to keep him moving. He drained even more trying to stop her from rising to her feet, and this time, Grandmaster could feel a little more of his strategies and techniques.
It was not just ta’lien, she realized with horror. But everything. Her life, her physical strength, even some of her thoughts and personality.
But Phoenix struggled to control it all, she realized. It was too much for him.
“Phoenix, you have to stop!” Grandmaster shouted desperately for him. “That power is too much for you! I can see what it will do to you–if you don’t go mad, it will kill you! Please! Let it go!”
“Why would I let go of the greatest power in the universe, little girl?” Phoenix said to her. “Why would I let go of the ability to remake worlds? Reality is so disappointing. That is, it was. Now, the world will be whatever I want it to be.”
“You may have the power to do that, but you don’t have the right!” Grandmaster said, trying to reason with him. “This world is not a book filled with blank pages, waiting for you to fill it in. This world is not a single book–there are a billion stories, and you cannot control all of them! This power is corrupting you! Something is not right with the Fire Source! It destroyed a planetary system. Did you know that? You’re not thinking clearly. You have to see that conquering the world is not the way–”
“I am not conquering the world,” Aftab said. “I am perfecting it. And when I am done with this world, I will move on to the next, and then the next, and I will not refrain. All these worlds, all this suffering, and all you did was sit back and play with it.”
“I choose not to exert my power on the natural order of things.”
“I am the natural order of things. You simply lack the will to stop me.”
Aftab struggled and struggled, and Grandmaster desperately wished one last time. “Please, be reasonable!”
But he would not–or could not–listen. She was not in time. The Phoenix rose, and it was unlike any birth she had ever seen.
Aftab’s body became engulfed in red flames before transforming into black fire, twisting and evolving until it was a spirit of red-and-black ta’lien that only vaguely resembled a phoenix. It did not even look as physical as before, so Grandmaster could not see it as a phoenix.
It screeched at the sky and lobbed phoenix fire from its mouth and both talons, and Grandmaster had to call a barrier forth. She could see almost nothing of Aftab’s struggle against the Fire Source. It was a gray blur with half-felt, almost spiritual, sensations. Two beings in one body, grappling for control. So she had no choice but to move onto the next part.
Phoenix dragged himself across the ground, victorious but gravely wounded. He could heal himself with his power–the Fire Source’s power–quite easily, but he needed a safe place to stop and do so. He could still sense Grandmaster.
So it begins, he thought. There are more phoenixes after all.
He wasn’t sure if this would even work. He wasn’t certain if his spirit was stable or complete enough.
He would become a Nephilim or die trying.
Aftab staggered over and drew himself into a nearby cave. He carved a script into the stone with one finger. That should hide him long enough. Then he sank into meditation.
It took him hours to manifest his phoenix in front of him, a clawed and scaled monstrous version of himself. It was mostly made out of blood and fire, curling feathers of fire on its plumage, and it almost looked as real as he did himself.
No, Grandmaster wanted to scream as she watched. Please no.
His very own phoenix glared at him with the vertically slitted eyes of a bird of prey. Phoenix drew the avatar of power into his own flesh as though he were drinking water, and the Fire Source resisted.
“This is not meant to happen,” the Fire Source warned him. “You will become indistinguishable from me. Every future that spirals out in front of you and every other person you meet for the rest of your life–or however long you have me. This way lies madness.”
“Madness is not a viable option. I will bring peace to this world,” Aftab said.
Their wills clashed, the Fire Source’s spirit trying to consume him even as he did the same. Though it involved no direct, specific techniques, it was only a straightforward competition of focus and resolve, it would perhaps be the deadliest fight of his life.
Being a mere human had only made this harder or him. The Fire Source had power and authority beyond magic and science, beyond even what an extraordinary human could do. The only person who could rival its power was Grandmaster. If he failed, the Fire Source would consume him whole, and he would be dead.
There was even a greater chance that his entire existence would be erased.
But Aftab’s will was steel. He summoned his own phoenix–not of the Fire Source–and weaved it into his body, becoming one with the Fire Source, spirit becoming flesh and flesh fusing with spirit.
For the first time in his life, his spirit was remade.
He was the Phoenix, now and always.
