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Chapter 9
I looked up from the book I was reading. A wisp of wind had blown out
my candle. I reached to close the window, and got a glimpse of the sky.
Huge clouds were coming together. The whole of the atmosphere was dark,
tinged with red.
"It looks like a storm is coming," I told my parents.
My father came quickly to the window. He glared out into the darkness.
"That's no ordinary storm," he said. "Return to your studies, the
weather is not for you to worry about."
Regardless of its potential severity, my father began to mutter
enchantments to protect the house. It was definitely no ordinary storm,
for my father to use his magic so frivolously. It pained him to use
magic, a result of its early manifestation in him. My mother slept in
her bedroom, blissfully unaware of these events.
I couldn't return to my book. The storm was so...ominous. It called my attention to it. The wind grew with such intensity that the howls of
it shook the house. I stared with rapt fascination out the window.
The rain began. Mildly, at first, then with growing volume. Wet rain drops, splashing harmlessly into the cracked and dry soil. The deep red
glow increased. Before my eyes, I watched as the rain changed.
Ignited. Became fire. Burned.
A rain of fire, more dangerous than any hailstorm or tornado. The dry plains roared into an inferno. Tongues of flame swept themselves around
the house, but never touched it. My father crept back to the window.
"Blessed Creator," he muttered under his breath. We watched as the droplets of flame grew to large chunks of flame that blasted holes in
the ground with the force of impact. My father's hands trembled
violently. His face had turned an ash color, and reflected the dull
reddish- orange glow of the storm.
A cold hand clapped itself on my shoulder. My mother's. I looked up at her, and her expression was much the same as my father's. Then she
said something very puzzling.
"The Prophecy!"
Dry thunder clashed through the plains, aftershocks of the lightning of the storm. The wind burrowed its way into the house, heating it
uncomfortably. I was but a child, and didn't understand what was going
on. Just months before, I had encountered the sleeth, and destroyed it
with a scream. I was now being trained in the trade of my parents. The
training wasn't of the kind I needed.
"What prophecy, Mother?" I asked. It was a simple question, demanding a simple answer. Unfortunately, prophecies have an uncanny knack at having complex answers.
Hauntedly, my mother replied.
"Mother, what does it mean?" She still stared out the window. Her
eyes widened, and she collapsed to the ground, sobbing. My father and I
dropped to her side to aid her.
"Stop!" She said between sobs. She raised her hand, and pointed out the window. Her hand shook so much, I feared that it might not be
working right.
As my father tended my mother, I turned and stood, and looked out the window. The conflagration raged outside the house. The wind ripped the
flames apart, and I saw it, just briefly. A bird of flame. Dead. It
was crashed in a heap of feathers.
My heart wrenched. I had to help the bird! I knew it with every fiber of my being. Without consulting my parents, I released the catch and
pushed the window open. I ran out to the bird, it was only a couple
hundred yards away. I could hear my parents screaming behind me, but it
didn't matter. All that mattered was saving the bird.
The rain never touched me. Call it a miracle, call it fate, I took it as a sign that I was meant to save the bird. The flames fell all
around. I finally reached the bird.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Tongues of orange, yellow, and red flame swept majestically from the birds wings instead of
feathers. The heat was intense, but oddly, bearable. I stretched out
my hand, and apprehensively touched its head. The flames did not burn.
Its eyes were closed. Its beak was partly open, its tongue lolled out.
My parent's screams had been muffled by the roar of the inferno around
me.
Suddenly, I was revolted. I knew the bird was dead. Deliberately
killed. Who would dare kill such a beautiful thing? I looked about,
hoping to get a glimpse of the murderer, so that I may avenge the bird.
Nothing. No one was nearby. Except me.
Hate, anger, rage, these feelings built upon each other inside of me. I couldn't contain it. The vehemence of the scream surprised me. I
collapsed to my knees. The inferno pushed back away from me. Far away
from me. I continued screaming, hatred giving me the strength to do so.
Dark flames swept over the bird. It crackled and popped with amazing
ferocity. The air buzzed electrically. The bird's flames died out, and
the bird itself burned to cinders, then blew away on the wind. A surge
of power rushed through me as the last of the ashes disappeared. The
storm abated. I lost consciousness.
Days of delirium followed. In the times when I was conscious, my
father stood over me, mumbling words of healing. My mother sat nearby,
and when she noticed I was awake, was taken by sobbing. "Blessed
Creator," she would say, over and over. I could see, ever so briefly,
that my arms and hands were badly burned, before I fell back again.
One day, I finally was well enough to stay awake. My father woke me, his hands gripping mine tightly. He leaned close, looking into my eyes.
There was fear in his eyes. And tears.
"My son," he began.
"Shh," I whispered. He too began to sob.
"I cannot," he whispered back. "That bird, the one you tried to save, was a phoenix. It came with the firestorm."
A quiet wail came from my mother. Dread crept into my heart. My
father continued.
"Phoenixes are very rare. They are held in great esteem by many
cultures. They symbolize life, and they symbolize death." He shut his
eyes, and spoke again. "When they die, the heat from their wings burns
the body to ash. The ash becomes the egg of a new phoenix. I...I
cannot continue." He turned his head away. His hands trembled.
"This one didn't," I rasped.
"What?" my mother muttered.
"This one didn't turn into an egg. It blew away. Why would that be?" I continued. "Had it reached the final time?"
"That's not possible..." my father whispered. Louder, he added, "The phoenix is always reborn. Always! A phoenix can't...die?" His voice
cracked.
"But this one did, Father."
"The prophecy is fulfilled! The end comes!" my mother interjected. "I am sorry, Jarel. But that it had been any other way!" Her face grew
calm. She looked at me with longing. She pulled out a sharp knife, and
eyed it. "I cannot face the end, Jarel. Only you can do that now.
Only you." Before I could stop her, she plunged the knife deep into her
breast. She dropped to the floor, dead.
I looked in horror from my mother's corpse to my father. He had the same calm, still, expressionless face on that my mother had had on.
"Jaek comes for you, Jarel. You must wait for him without us. I'm sorry it had to be this way." He took the knife from my mother's body
and plunged it into his heart. Shivers went through me as he died. My
parents had just slain themselves, for fear of the unknown, and left me
in a cruel world where the most beautiful of things could die.
I tended to my own body again, healing it with my planeswalker
abilites. I had learned a little of my powers, but not the extent.
Still, a body unmarked by flame scars was a feat no healer could
accomplish, unless that healer was gifted with the power. Power I was
gifted with.
I waited three days for my parent's spirits to become freed from their dead bodies. I then carried their bodies to the site where I had found
the bird, and burned them both. As the flames and the wind carried away
their remains, I heard their voices, together as one.
"A life for life. This is the immutable law."
My parents, for whatever reason, had given their lives for me.
The phoenix gives its life to its offspring. But this time, life did not come.
Chapter 10
The void's inky darkness stared back at me. Elrohir's spell was
finished. There could be no unraveling or reversing the spell. The
World Spell had petered out, half its task completed. The multiverse
was gone now, but instead of one universe, there was nothing. Seductive
darkness. Malevolent darkness. Darkness.
Had I interfered soon enough, I could have disrupted the spell, caused it to fail in time to prevent the total annihilation of everything. I
could also have nurtured the spell, caused it to thrive and accomplish
its task. But I had not interfered soon enough. The spell had to play
itself out.
And it had.
I was alone. I couldn't even assure myself of that. It was impossible to tell myself that even I existed, for I could not see myself. A mind
in the darkness. Loneliness set in. It couldn't end this way! It
couldn't! There was no way I could allow it, but conversely, there was
no way to prevent it.
My brother's memories, Elrohir's memories, danced through my head. I knew what he knew. It was of painfully little use. I allowed myself to
dance with the memories. I saw his walks through time, twisting it here
and there to get the powers he needed to complete the spell. This
caused him to age, for he had "lived" a long time in other times,
learning the information he found so necessary to the completion of the
spell.
Mockingly, it turned out that he was the Elrohir of long ago, during the Atog Wars. When he had disappeared after the third War, he
had returned to the present, to work on the World Spell.
Prophecies, hidden knowledge, wisdom of the ages, hidden from all time, played out in his memories. One was familiar. The phoenix prophecy.
My own memories returned, long locked away in my fragile mind. I
remembered the firestorm. I remembered the breathtaking bird, and how
it burned away. It had fallen dead, and darkness had come. The
prophecy was true. One part, however, did not fit.
"Raises Creator's ire."
Was this my punishment for helping the bird? Did I somehow cause it to die, fulfilling the prophecy? I did not know.
The darkness was pure, untainted. No hint that there was any help
anywhere. Isolation. My thoughts wandered in a daze. Shackretash,
dying under the Brokahren Plateau. Jaek's body incinerating in my
scream. My parent's double suicide. Life wandering amongst the planes.
Planes that no longer existed. Gone through my own inaction.
"You are the Ark of Fire." Forge of creation. Creator. Me? Revelation hit my gut. Memories flooded into me again. The pain, the
violence, the hatred. "Raises Creator's ire." I had destroyed
the phoenix deliberately. Purposefully. The prophecy's meaning fully
realized. I was the Creator.
A life for life. The immutable law. Elrohir died when he ended the world. His life in payment for those he took. Why then was I left? I
had done nothing to stop him. Had offered him my aid even. A life for
life. The immutable law. Therein lay my answer.
I willed with my powers that life come again. It did. In the
blackness it withered and died, marking my failure. I tried again, and
again, but never did it remain. Different forms, humans, elves,
dragons, plants, animals, nothing survived the nothing. Nothing
survived the Void. Except me.
I filled with anger at the failure. Reveled in it. Damn it all, let it remain destroyed permanently! What should I care for a world that
wouldn't even try to exist? My sanity. I should care for my sanity.
Loneliness. How I longed to see another human face, to speak with
others. To marry, and create life. Life.
Time does not exist in the Void. I could start feeble attempts at life every day, and fail, and no one would be the wiser. There was no one.
Just me. Creation took no effort. Keeping the creations alive proved
fruitless. Useless. Impossible. I could not end my own life. It
continued, stringing itself out. Useless. The collected powers of
countless planeswalkers from untold millions of planes. Useless. A
life for life. The immutable law. Therein lay my answer.
The phoenix dies to give life to its offspring. Could no less be
required of me? Must I die for all to live? For the creation of life
to be fulfilled? Perhaps.
I feared death. It had come for everything else. Everything. If I were to die, there would be no more. Nothing. The Ark of Fire, Forge
of Creation. A lie. A mockery. Creator, I could not be. No mortal
could.
Elrohir, the destructor. The older brother. Heralding the end of
life, death. The destruction for the multiverse. Jarel, the Creator.
The younger. Heralding of life, of rebirth. The beginning of the
multiverse. "I cannot face the end, Jarel. Only you can do that now.
Only you." The words of my mother. I now faced the end. No, I saw the
end, but averted my eyes to it. I must face the end.
Peace filled me. It was beat down by anger, hatred at my brother for forcing me to do this. Forgiveness, for I used his powers to do it.
Without them I was nothing.
I screamed.
The electric fires that had done so much for me in the past began to eat at my flesh. The pain made me scream all the more louder. The
power turned me inside out, devoured my being on many levels. I
channeled my life into the scream, an intense howl that came from
beyond. The scream did not end. My flesh curled and smoked. My
non-flesh. I was nothing.
I was everything.
I gave myself to the power erupting from me.
*****
The power became me. I became the power. The Creator. The One who brings All from Nothing. But being the creator has a price. A terrible burden, a sacred trust. The burden of Death. And of Life.*****
I placed myself on a plane at last. My final resting place. A young child came up to me, but I could barely see its face. My vision was waning. I spoke my name.The End
Elrohir, God of Wisdom
General of the 1st and 2nd Atog Wars.