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Phoenix Cycles
Chap.3
Tears of the Heart.
Last Time
“I am Commander Cathrine, of the mercenaries, Phoenix Blades. My
mages have told me that you friend has tremendous magical potential,
and talent, and if left untrained, it will kill her.”
I turned around and stared at Gemeny, who was staring the Cathrine,
< And if you train her, what do you get back in return? >
She smiled as she looked at me, “I saw your fight with the daemon,
and one of my men told me that you had in fact killed it before, single
handedly. That is no small task. So I want you to join us. You will
work for me, and your friend will be trained on how to control her powers,
deal?”
I don’t know why, but I liked her, but still... I turned to Gemeny,
who nodded weakly. < Deal. >
“Good,” A man walked up behind her, holding something. As
returned to my normal form, he gave it to her. Walking up to me, she
held a leather gauntlet. “All Phoenix Blades’ are required
to wear a gauntlet, the type of gauntlet signifies rank.”
Taking it, I slipped it over my left hand. It covered my arm up to my
elbow, and covered part of my hand, but not the fingers.
With that, she walked past me towards the frightened villagers, “I
request permission from whoever is in charge to let us camp here for
the night.” Staring at her, I wondered what I had just gotten myself
into.
TigerClaw’s POV
I stared at him, “She’s only 19?! And the leader of all of
you?!” I looked around at the camp. There were at least a hundred
men in the mercenary group, Phoenix Blades, and the leader, Cathrine,
was the only female, and I had just been told that she wasn’t even
that much older than I was.
“Yup,” the man turned and spat, then continued polishing his
sword, “Best damn fighter I ever saw in me life, fights like a
she-devil.” He lifted the sword up, and looked at it in the firelight.
We had made camp on the way to some city for the night. Gemeny had been
sent to the mercs main headquarters where she would get the best training,
and for her arm to heal. It had been broken during the first encounter
with the daemon werewolf. The man looked at me, “Ye watch yerself
round ‘er, with your special power, I reckon she’ll be havin’
a lot of fun wit’ ye.”
“And just what’s that supposed to mean?”
{ Maybe it means she’d want to- }
“YOU FINISH THAT SENTENCE AND YOU’RE DEAD!!!” I yelled
before I realized it. Everyone stopped and stared at me. “S-sorry,”
I stammered, getting up and quickly walking away, my face bright red.
* You stupid damned bird! This is all your fault! *
{ I’m not the one that made you yell like the fool you are }
* SHUT UP! * I walked, not caring where I was going, the sound of laughter
fading behind me. I continued walking, the only light coming from the
moon above, when I saw someone on a small hill.
Walking up, I saw it was Cathrine. After a moment, I could see she was
practicing, the two swords she held a barely visible blur as she swung
them again and again. In her right hand was a long sword, and her left
held a short sword, the blades shown in the moonlight whenever they
stopped long enough to be seen.
“What do you want?” She asked, back turned towards me.
“ I, uh, well nothing, really. Just walking.”
She turned towards me, frowning, “Walking huh? That all?”
I stared, not sure what was going on, when I remembered something, something
she should know, “Well, there’s something about me you should-”
“Look here, I don’t care about you, got it? I don’t want
to know anything about you unless you can prove that you can be useful
to the Phoenix Blades. Got it? Good!” she snapped, before I had
a chance to answer, “I recruited you because I believe you will
be useful, but until you are, you’re nothing but extra weight,
and I don’t like extra weight! So until you make yourself useful,
get out of my way!” With that, she walked right past me, shoving
me aside as she did.
What was that about? I thought to myself, staring at her as she walked
off.
{ How would I know? I’m just a stupid damned bird! }
* What did I say about going through my thoughts?! *
{ Don’t remember, I’m just a stu- }
* SHUT UP! * I yelled, this time in my head, while Phoenix just laughed.
Cathrine’s POV
Cathrine walked into her tent and put her swords away. Lighting a candle,
she sat there, watching the flame, deep in thought. All those thoughts
were directed at TigerClaw. She could tell he would be trouble, he didn’t
look like he would be of any help fighting, and they would be going
into battle the next day. For some reason, everything about him just
frustrated her, confused her. He had a different air about him, like
he was foreign to this very planet, but that was impossible. Sighing,
she blew out the candle, and went to bed, tomorrow the battle would
begin. Tomorrow, she would see just how powerful he was.
TigeClaw’s POV
I stared at Cathrine, unable to believe what I had just been told to
do. We had apparently reached our destination, a small city surrounded
by stone walls, and I had been ordered to transform and attack from
the air while her men attacked from the ground.
“But that’s suicide! I’d be mincemeat!!”
“So what? You can’t die, remember?!” she yelled at me,
“We’re just capturing the town, it won’t be that hard,
so quit complaining and get going!”
“But, I-i can’t...” I didn’t know what to do. She
glared at me.
“You killed a daemon werewolf, this should be absolutely no problem!”
“Yeah, I killed some deranged undead monster thing! But you’re
asking me to attack people!”
“No, I’m ORDERING you to!”
“But-” Something was wrong, my gut kept squirming
“But nothing! You will do WHAT I say, WHEN I say, HOW I say, DO
YOU UNDERSTAND?!” But I didn’t hear her as I collapsed, holding
my stomach.
Cathrine’s POV
“But nothing! You will do WHAT I say, WHEN I say, HOW I say, DO
YOU UNDERSTAND?!” Cathrine yelled, furious when TigeClaw suddenly
collapsed, holding his stomach. But before she could do anything, he
got back up and looked at the city. When he turned back to her, she
immediately knew something was wrong. He was smirking.
“So you want me to attack? Right?” Startled, all she could
do was nod. Smirking again, TigerClaw looked back at the city, “Attack
the city, heh, no problem for me.” Even as he said this, he seemed
to melt into a larger form, and Cathrine took a step back in shock at
what she saw, as did everyone else around them. TigerClaw’s hair
was pitch black, except for several dark purple feathers that were in
it. His wings were the same black and purple, as were his clothes. This
wasn’t how she had seen him before, this was, different, evil.
She also knew that it wasn’t TigerClaw.
“Who are you?”
Turning to look at her, the man smirked at her, and that was when she
saw another difference. TigerClaw had worn a mask, this stranger wore
no such mask “Who am I? Tsk tsk. You know, you really should learn
everything there is to know about a person before you recruit them,
never know what secrets they may be hiding. As to who I am, I’m
Dark Phoenix.” At those last words, Cathrine felt her knees go
weak even as several men backed down and one or two fell to their knees.
Despite knowing it was possible, that it couldn’t be true, she
knew that this man was telling her the truth. He turned back to the
city. “So I’m to destroy the city, got it.” he said,
smiling as he started walking towards it.
“No, we’re to capture it, not destroy it! We want the people
alive!”
“Tough shit lady, I don’t take prisoners, but I’ll tell
you what, I’ll give them a quick death.” Laughing, Dark Phoenix
walked towards the city walls.
Dark Phoenix’s POV
Dark Phoenix smiled as he walked closer and closer to the walls, the
small amount of energy he allowed to leak out surrounded him with a
such heat that any arrows fired at him were turned to ashes before they
even reached him. As he reached the gates that led inside, the metal
bars started glowing bright before melting. Now that he was inside,
he stopped his magical heat and looked around. People were glaring at
him from all sides when one charged. A simple punch to the mans mid
section drove his fist through the man’s stomach, and out his back.
Grinning, he pulled his arm out of the man and charged, breaking necks
and kicking people in two. Soon he was covered in blood.
Laughing, he focused his energy into a ball of fire and threw it against
a house, burning it to the ground instantly as the unholy fire burned
black and surrounded it in seconds. It was then that an arrow hit him
squared in the chest as he turned around. Staring at it, he pulled it
out. Looking up he saw a man with a bow glaring at him.
“My family was in there, you monster!” He yelled, charging.
Dark Phoenix simply shoved the arrow through the man’s chest, and
again focusing his powers, burned the man to ashes. Looking down at
the wound in his chest as it disappeared, he glared. < I...Do...Not...Like...Feeling...PAIN!!!!!
> He yelled as he launched himself into air, a ball of light appearing
in each of his hands. < I was going to kill you all quickly, but
you have hurt me, so now you die SLOWLY!! > He screamed high above
in the air as he brought his hands together above him, and threw down
a beam of light that surrounded the whole city. People screamed as the
armor they wore glowed red with heat, burning into their skin, but the
heat created by the light continued to grow until the stone walls surrounding
the city began to melt.
Laughing, Dark Phoenix continued until there was no one left living
in the city. Descending, he looked around at the burning houses, smirked,
and let go.
Cathrine’s POV
Cathrine wander through what remained of the city, corpses littered
the ground, man, woman, and child alike. They had waited until they
could get in without being burned by the heat left over from Dark Phoenix’s
attack. Now they looked for any signs of life as rain began to fall,
drenching them all.
As she came across a clearing, she stopped and stared. There was TigerClaw,
lying with one wing crumpled underneath him. As she walked up to him,
he looked up at her, and even through the mask he wore, she could see
the tears in his eyes. It was at that moment that her heart went to
him. She had seen men cry before, from fear, pain, sadness. From the
sadness of losing their families, or because of battles, but she had
never seen a person cry like this before. It was as if he were crying
because something happened that he couldn’t stop, and there it
was. What he had tried to tell her the night before, when she walked
away from him. The Dark Phoenix was inside him, and no matter how much
he tried, how much he fought, he wasn’t able to stop Dark Phoenix
from killing everyone in the city, and unlike her, he wasn’t able
to turn away so he wouldn’t see what was happening.
Kneeling by him, started trying to pull him up.
< He’s a monster, we couldn’t stop him...we couldn’t...
> he cried, burying his head in her shoulder, weeping. She barely
noticed the voice was coming in her head.
“It’s ok, it’s ok. We’ll find a way to help you,
I promise.”
< Don’t...don’t tell Gemeny, please >
“I promise.” Cathine looked down at him, wondering desperately
how she was going to help him.
((Seems like TigerClaw's the one that needs help this time, doesn't
it? <http://www.hotboards.com/plus/smile4.gif> ))
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