by Reid, Stacy
Another approach, its fire so orange, Xian could not stare at its purity, fearing her eyes would be burned from the socket.
“I am the white Kagutsuchi Phoenyx, the force of life and the guardian of all creation.”
The third being slinked forward with sinuous elegance, its fire a mix of darkness and orange, its eyes black, its skin almost translucent but peppered with a network of dark veins. I am the harbinger of darkness, keeper of the Demonage, the black Phoenyx.
Fear clutched Xian’s throat, and she could not look upon that darkness.
Then fourth entity coated in pure, bright dark red flames sauntered forward with elemental grace. Recognition tugged inside Xian along with awe….and fear.
“I know you….”
I am the red Phoenyx, the undying fire of creation and destruction, the void between death and rebirth, and I am in you.
There was a smile atop the lips, it hinted of mischievousness….and something else unfathomable.
“Xian please, do not leave me!”
She turned to that voice, and her breath strangled in her throat as the battlefield around her became clear. Gavyn kneeled on the blood-soaked earth, and she hung limply into his arms, and her body was clutched to his chest. The blackest of chakra swirled around him, his eyes had shifted to pure black, and the most beautiful wing of blue, gold, and black sprouted from his bleeding back. And on his face…. streaks of tears in the form of blood and fire.
She felt his pain, brutal and unrelenting as if it were her own. Such despair and sorrow and her soul shattered at the unfathomable depth of his anguish. Chakra swirled around him, and she felt the power of the beast in his blood. Xian had expected evil when his dark side would eventually manifest, not this sense of cold, unfathomable power. His face was both terrible and irresistible. The cruel beauty calling to the Phoenyx inside of her.
Gavyn….
She tried to reach across the cosmos where she floated without a body to him, but he did not hear her. Her mind continued drifting through the stars, the Phoenixes hovering, a force she did not understand.
What do you want from me? She gasped, unable to look away from Taryllion and the terrible battle unfolding below.
Hundreds of warriors littered the ground, bleeding or dying, as they fought a brutal fight with warriors from Mevia. A team attacked Gavyn, and he spun with animalist grace, his wing impaling several and tossing them high in the air and slashing their head from their body. He rested her body gently on the earth and faced an advance of more than twenty warriors. He flung back his head, and a deafening roar of fury echoed across the wasteland. A mix of fire and black chakra swirled around him, and the ink on his skin writhed as if alive.
"You'll not have her," he snarled, withdrawing his swords from his hip. With a pulse of power, they were coated in flames, as he stood before her body, a warrior willing to die, so they did not take her body for their experimentation.
Do you wish to return?
All four voices spoke, and her soul hurt at the pure power in the voices. Yet she could not wrest her gaze from the battlefield. Her mate was magnificent. He tore through the force with animalistic grace and prowess. He was both darkness and fire, as he fought with strength and skill.
Pools of darkness rose from behind him, and three Darkans appeared. The sun lowered behind the mountains of the wastelands, their skins twisted, and beasts reeking of pitiless brutality leaped from their skins.
Monstrous beasts—a six pack of wolvyes, three lyons, and a seven-headed hydra. The creatures converging on her love were massive, standing over ten feet tall, savage fangs dripped from their mouth, and the curved claw was as sharp and vicious as swords.
They attacked him in a wave, and she saw Tehdra jumped the fray, her monster leaping from her skin in a scream of raw power.
Gavyn
Xian screamed when one of the wolvyes split over his chest with deep furrows. His dance with his sword and fire was not enough for the four summoned beasts with which he contented. He screamed, dropping to the earth as his back contorted, his bones breaking and a thundering roared echoed from his throat. They charged at him, biting and rending him apart.
No!
Xian screamed his name, slamming against an invisible barrier to reach him, to comfort him, and to kiss him again, to protect him. A piercing agony hooked its teeth in her heart and gnawed with relentless fervor. She howled, beating against the barrier, but it made no difference.
The red Phoenyx wavered in her vision. Something savage emanated from inside her, and she did not shy away from the feelings as she had done all her life. Xian embraced the rage curling through her, and when the fire burned too harshly, she did not flinch but ate the chakra into her being. There was a red haze of madness, a fire sweeping through her, a rage unlike any she’d ever felt. Tipping back her head, she bellowed and allowed the wave of power, the unremitting strength, and pure madness of the Phoenyx to blossomed through her. She hurtled herself through the mire of her deep subconscious, gasping awake, surging into the sky on a spiral of flame, her conscious thoughts and logical mind drowning under the unremitting fury of the red Phoenyx.
Chapter 11
A burst of fire so intense it melted the skin from Gavyn’s bones swept across the wasteland. The attacking beasts which had surrounded him vanished until the ruthless spew of flames. The light vanished and his flesh started to heal, and he acknowledged without the blood of the dark ones in his veins he would have died just now.
A red glow from above had him tilting his face to the sky. The sun vanished behind the mountains of Taryllion, and Xian hovered several feet off the ground, massive wings of the Phoenyx keeping her suspended. Profound almost made his knees buckled.
His mate lived. Her entire body gleamed with her bright, burning flames. Her hair crackled with red fire, and her eyes were pits of fire. Flames of massive wings surrounded her, and the power clocked her form like a living entity. Whatever had manifested her felt ageless, and unlike the force buried in their king. Even their flames were different. Whereas Ajali produced an orange fire….hers was like blood and lava. Gavyn had never seen the Phoenyx manifest in such a raw, provocative form. It was powerful, malevolent, its beauty was enthralling, seductive yet cold and brutal, and the warrior’s factions was arrested by the sight of her in the sky.
The darkness inside of him hummed and reached for its mate. The raw power brushed against his mind, and Gavyn bellowed as a wave of pain and hunger which swept through him. The outside of the Phoenyx burned hot and harsh, but at its core was something cold and malevolent.
He pushed his thoughts at her and met only a churning mass of rage that wanted to devour. The trees in the wastelands slowly darkened from the trunk, turned black and then withering away to ashes. Yet he sensed the power was barely unleased.
Prince Baku dragged himself to his feet, slowly and painfully, one of his hand hung limply at his side, blood pouring from his nose. “She is magnificent,” he breathed, staring into the sky.
And Gavyn heard the awe and fear in his voice.
Prince Baku suddenly jerked, grasping at his throat, his body pulling forward as if controlled by another and he was lifted into the sky.
Bolts of incendiary lightning shot into the air, and the flames roiled around her, a protective barrier against Avendites' powers. With a sweep of her wings in their reaction they started to burn from the inside. Their cries of pain were terrible, but her hold on the prince loosened, and he landed in a roll and flashed toward them.
“She pulled me to her and I could…I could hear her in my head!” The prince’s eyes were wild with fear.
“Impossible,” Ajali said, his voice a gravelly rasp of menace and power. “It is Xian who was controlling his movement.”
“She is showing telekinesis powers,” Tehdra said, echoes of shock in her tone. “Do you have such a power, my love.”
“No,” Ajali murmured. “I can feel the force of the Phoenyx around her and inside her.”
Gavyn jerked. “Eat?”
“The Phoenyx force is hungry, and it will not stop until it has had its fill. If I did not know better, I would think it is a Darkan.”
Xian.
Ajali stepped forward, the chains wrapped around his hands jumping to life, the swords attached coating with fire.
“You dare challenge me?” the Phoenyx spoke, the voice an echo of ruthless, distorted power that they all heard clearly.
“It is in control of her,” Ajali said, walking forward with confidence and deadly grace.
A blast of fire torpedoed from the sky with such speed Gavyn almost missed it. The flames slammed into Ajali, splitting the earth in two. He rolled to his feet the energy of his Phoenyx surrounding him, and before the other three blasts which had been fired in rapid succession hit him, the monster on Tehdra’s skin leaped to life with a roar of rage and dominion. The Dracan, an unholy creature over twelve feet tall with serrated teeth and wings, appeared before Ajali and absorbed the blasts. It spun with predatory grace, launched into the air heading for Xian, spewing black fire toward her.
“No!” Gavyn roared, struggling to control the wings on his back. He leaped into the air and flapped the monstrous appendages. He soared for a few feet before plummeting to the ground. “Xian!” he shouted. “Tehdra call back your demon, it will kill her!”
Xian screamed, the shrieking cry echoing across the wasteland, a piercing whistle of a primeval sound, and a ball of bright red-orange flame poured from her mouth and slammed into the Dracan. It spun in the air, the flames eating it, and with a pulse of dark chakra, it appeared once more on Tehdra's skin.
Xian spun in the air, creating a whirlwind of fire…with such relentless heat Gavyn started skin to melt. Cries of dread echoed from the warriors on the field. The mountains behind her caught fire and started to burn, but not with flames. He watched in trepidation as the forest began to blacken and hundreds of trees simply vanished, turning to black ashes under the wash of her power.
“We must save our people!” Ajali shouted. “Tehdra, take a much as you can in the shadows, and move them to safety.”
She whirled with the shadows to carry out his commands, grabbing warriors and taking them in the shadows towards Nuria. Acheron waved his hands, chanting, creating a barrier of kinetic energy to cover the warriors on the battlefield, spreading until it inched toward Nuria. His eyes swirled with madness and power, as he whispered casting the spell far and wide.
“It will not hold,” Ajali said grimly. “The Phoenyx lives within me as well, but the dreadful power I feel at the center of Xian is something I have never tapped into.”
She flew into the warriors, and in a blink, thousands disappeared under the wash of flames. Men and women from Mevia, Avindar, and Nuria. Thousands started to run, scattered in several directions as the very earth under their feet turned soft.
Gavyn stared into the sky, recalling the many times she had cried on his shoulder, fearful that the power inside of her would one-day rip control from her, and she would turn on innocent people as her mother had once done.
I couldn’t bear it if I killed innocent people, Gavyn.
Ajali stepped forward, his Phoenyx’s wings of flames expanding around him. “I do not know how to contain her,” he said. “A battle between us will be to the death.”
"I cannot contain her," Acheron rasped. "Nor do I have the abilities to summon such might to the bottom of our oceans and hold her there. I could summon the coven of the white witches, but by the time they reach it would be too late."
Nuria would be burning, or Xian would be dead as Ajali did everything to protect his people and kingdom.
Gavyn…
And everything in him reached for her. The flames beckoned, and a wild, terrible rage filled him as he responded to her call. "I will take care of my mate," he rasped, ignoring Ajali's jerk of shock and Prince Baku inane protests.
Gavyn made a sound of disgust, a rumbling growl deep in his throat. He ran toward her, and for the first time since he discovered his origins, he opened his mind to the wash of power and darkness. Violent energy burning through his veins, convulsing his body repeatedly. He fell to the earth as the bones in his back shattered. Instead of resisting it, he welcomed the brutal pain of the transformation which had been ravaging through his body for the last day and a half. Waves of dark energy swarmed around him, bones broke in his feet, and a massive clawed appended coated with black scales replaced his foot.
His body contorted and stretched, agony, bright and hot, almost robbed him of breath. Instinctive knowledge filled him. He felt the fire and soul of the Kagutsuchi dragon rising in him, spreading out to encompass his being. Then with a pulse of power, he transformed into the fire breathing beast, crimson, black, and orange scales first rippling over his body.
He could the enormous increase in his size, his bones lengthen and reshape becoming much harder and denser. The weight of the wings he’d had before tripled as did their width and length. He could feel his nails lengthen, become razor-talons.
Great wings flapped, and he shot with unparallel speed toward his mate. She screamed an inferno of red flames, and when it touched him, he opened his massive jaws and devoured her flames. Fire poured down his throat, clenched around his insides, and filled him with a dark rush of pleasure. Primal emotions filled his heart, and a love so intense the man in the heart of the dragon ached.
Fearless, confident of his dominance, he hurtled toward her, gripping her in his massive talons, careful not to hurt her. The Phoenyx did not fight him. Instead, she enfolded him in her enormous wings, as a wild, unstoppable forcefield of fire gathered around them, the energy at the center of it a pitiless promise of destruction.
Gavyn spun with speed towards the vast oceans of Amagarie. The remorseless fire of the Phoenyx burned through his scales, melting the bones of the dragon. A scream ripped from the beast’s throat, but he did not stop. Mountains beneath them crumbled, the lakes dried.
“I love you Xian. Come back to me. Take control of the force inside you, please, my love, come back to me.”
A burn of intense fire touched his thought as they plunged to the icy depths of the oceans. He could feel the wash of power from Acheron as he chanted, beseeching the powers of the Phoenyx force to sleep.
He burrowed deep in the inky murkiness of the oceans, their flames heating the depths of the ocean. The landed on the floor, and he wrapped his wings around her, holding her to him. He could not stay there forever. He would need to breathe, but Gavyn could not let her go. She was his mate…. his love…his entire soul. Inside the beast, he struggled to come to grips with a storm of fierce emotions he felt for his mate. When the man inside the dragon struggled to rise for breath, the immortal beast took over, obliterating the heart of the man, the very essence of Gavyn so it could stay with its mate, buried under the oceans.
* * *
Eleven days later.
Princess Xian stood in the large courtyard of her brother’s castle, hugging him farewell.
“Are you certain,” Ajali said. “The White Queen has promised to ask the red coven for help.”
She stepped back, lifting dark eyes to him. “I am certain. I will be here when you need me and learning and understanding the powers inside me…it is not here I will learn this. I was buried under the oceans for nine days before I stopped burning. If not Gavyn’s…” her throat tightened. “If not for Gavyn’s love and sacrifice, I would have killed thousands.”
Uriah stepped forward. “Prince Baku is now a prisoner of war, and his father is open to negotiations to free his son. As a show of good faith, he offers an alliance with the crown prince. That—”
“I will not marry anyone but my Gavyn,” she whispered, lovingly stroking the hardened scales of the dragon beside her. “And I just might light you afire Uriah for suggesting othe
rwise!”
Ajali’s eyes cut to the fearsome beast which stood over twelve feet tall, and its wingspan greater than its body behind her.
“I am sorry he is lost to us, Xian. So damn sorry. The witches say Gavyn might never come back to his natural form. He will remain a dragon until the end of his days. Why not stay here with your Dragon. In Nuria? Where if control is lost—”
She flinched. “I am the Tenzu for the red Phoenyx. I am a powerful warrior who will walk on the front lines with our army and defend our homeland. I am learning more and more to control her each day, and I daresay we are becoming friends."
Ajali blinked. “It speaks to you.”
“It does, brother.”
He nodded contemplatively, and she understood he had a different relationship with his Phoenyx.
“Where will you go with him.”
She rested against her dragon’s side. “I do not know. Maybe to the caves atop the Darkans mountains.”
“Why in King’s name would you go to the dark ones?”
“They are his people.”
“They will not understand what he is,” Ajali said gently. “Darkans do not transform into their beasts, Xian. They have inks on their bodies that they summon to a corporeal form, you know that. Tehdra said they had never had a half-blood in their kingdom. How will they help?”
She fought the despair that tried to swamp her. A stirring came in her mind. “You are distress, mate.”
The power within the dragon reverberated in her mind. Even the voice sounded unlike Gavyn’s. “I am well.”
“Perhaps I will travel to Earth at the end of the war. There are rumors that half-blood Darkans on earth are called shifters. That human turned into the beast themselves, but they can return to their human form. Perhaps I will find a way to help him shift back."
“You cannot enter the Earth’s sky riding a Kagutsuchi dragon.”
“I will do anything to bring my love back to me.” She curtsied to her brothers. “Until I see you again.”