Prologue
Professors Adam, Emma, David and Sarah were all milling around the cafeteria when suddenly, an alarm went off. An alarm going off in a top security government facility such as the one they were in meant that either there had been a security breach or the proceedings concerning the experiment they had all been working on for over a month had gone south. The had all left their respective families to come and work on the Rift Project the government was funding, and so far, everything had gone according to plan. At least, it had until now. They were more concerned about the reason the alarm had gone off. They waited with baited breath until – ‘Alert! Alert! Fire in lab six! All related personnel, please report to the Lab immediately!’
For a moment in time, they stood stock still, not believing their ears, their minds working furiously. Then their bodies caught up to their brains. Adam and Sarah dropped the coffee mugs they were holding. The mugs smashed against the floor, spilling their contents everywhere, some of it landing on and scalding Emma, but nobody paid the slightest attention to it. They were panicking and shouting to each other while they dashed out of the cafeteria started running towards the lab as fast as their feet would carry them. Adam was shouting something the system matrix while John was screaming something about a possible mathematical miscalculation, while the others screamed out their own thoughts, creating a discordant and loud cacophony of voices. They almost ran into each other with their momentum propelling them forward, as they came to a halt in front of a thick stainless steel door with words Lab Six stamped across in jet black letters, and the words, ‘To Be Entered By Related Personnel ONLY’ directly underneath it.
Adam pressed his thumb against the fingerprint scanner and the words ‘Access Granted’ flashed across its minute screen. The door screeched open and the four professors were met by a blast of oppressive heat. A month of painstaking research was going up in flames. Leaving their families had only resulted in this. What they did next would have been judged by some as very foolish or by others as an act pure nerve and courage. They all ran into the fire, never hesitating, never looking back, for they knew the dangers of letting their project explode. The results could be catastrophic, not only for them, but for everyone within a hundred kilometer radius. While Emma frantically tried to shut down the ongoing experiment using the only computer that had not exploded due to the heat, the rest of them tried but failed to keep the rapidly spreading fire from the experiment’s vicinity. The computer screen displayed a message that said ‘Alert! Experiment core heating up! Core temperature approaching red zone!’
Adam said "Everyone out now, we can’t save this experiment, we can build another one later. Right now our lives are more important”. His words were met with a wall of protests. “Enough!”, roared Adam, “I am the head of this research team and I agree with David. We all have children waiting for us back home. We might have put together this thing after nearly working ourselves to death every day, but I will not waste my life on something that can be rebuilt, even if we have to start from scratch again. So I will say this one final time. Everybody out NOW!’ As they scrambled to obey, their luck ran out. Fate, it seems, had a morbid interest them. They all heard an indescribably loud BOOM and the last thing they saw was a blinding flash of white light. Anyone and everyone in and around the facility were incinerated to a crisp.
What awaited the first few people on the scene the next morning as they came to replace those working the night shift were piles of blackened rubbish and stone, which was the only proof that there had ever been a solid structure standing there and that something had gone terribly wrong. Far away from this now barren wasteland of a facility, two little boys slept on, unaware that they had lost their parents; that they would soon come to learn of the hardships they would face when when one did not have a family.
Chapter I
My name is Loren Grayson. I never knew my parents. My only recollection of them is a blurred image that I have in my memories. Their smiling faces taunted me in my dreams, reminding me of what I could never have. Sometimes I hate them, my feelings towards them pure venom. They left me, never knew me, never came back for me. There are many times that I remind myself that this was a child’s reasoning; I did not know why they had done what they did; it was unfair to judge them without first knowing why.
The problem was, I couldn’t help it. I had nobody to count on, nobody to reach out to when I needed guidance or help. Of course, the matrons at the orphanage were kind and helpful, but it wasn’t the same as having a family and a place to call home. Not a home to individual members of families that left them behind, like the orphanage, but my own home, a place where only my family and I could reside.
My feelings, dull, depressing and sorrowful as they were, could not however cloud my indescribably resilient desire to know more about why I was alone. I wanted to know why I had no parents, why they had left me behind. I desired to learn my place in the world as how I came to be there. That is how it all began…
Chapter II
Everything started when a strange man visited my in my room at Eddington Orphanage. I was seventeen years old at the time. The matron let him in while I was reading a book. I was reading with rapt attention and their intrusion was not one I appreciated. The man wore and black overcoat and wore a hat that partially obscured his face. He thanked the matron for her help and watched her as she left. After she had closed the door, before speaking to me, he went to the door and turned the lock. It was clear to me that he did not want to be interrupted.
When he finally turned his gaze upon me, I flinched. His eyes were a cold, metallic gray, and they seemed to pierce my very being. I realized at once that this man was not one to be fooled easily. Trying to pull a fast one on him would be a fatal error.
As I tried to size him up and figure out who he was and why he had wanted to see me, I saw that he was doing the same, only he seemed to do so less obviously than I am sure I was and because he seemed to be surveying the room. Finally, he spoke.
“Listen to me, Loren. I don’t have time to elaborate on anything I am about to divulge to you”, he said. “I have information for you about your parents. They didn’t just abandon you, they had no choice. They were working on a Project for the government called the Rift Project. Your father, Adam, was the head scientist of the team that was working on it. He was a very close friend of mine. One night something went terribly wrong. Don’t ask me what it is because even after all these years, I do not know what it was. An alarm sounded and the speakers screamed out an evacuation order. I, being near the gates at the time, did so immediately. If an alarm sounded in a heavily guarded facility like the one we were in, that meant trouble, and a lot of it; needless to say, I wanted to live, so I fled the place.”
He said all this in a rush, barely pausing for breath. It was like watching a dying man trying to get out everything he hadn’t managed to say while he was healthy in the short amount of time he had left. The man was positively panting with the effort required to maintain the speed of his speech. He did not give any indication of slowing down. Moreover, I had innumerable number of questions buzzing around my brain, like a trapped swarm of angry bees.
I wanted to ask him so many things: who he was, how he came to know my father, what sort of people my parents were and many more. However, with sheer will, I refrained. At that moment, I unconsciously knew that interrupting him would cost me the small amount of information that I would be able to glean from the conversation. Since I had no other way of finding out anything else about my parents, I clung to his words and listened with rapt attention.
“When I had gotten a safe distance away from the facility, I turned and looked back. Nothing seemed out of place, except for the faint sound of the alarm that was surely still ringing throughout the facility with great force. So I waited. I had made many friends during my time there, your father being one of them, and I wanted to ask them what the reason was for the evacuation of the premises being ordered.”
“Just then, a sound was carried to me on the breeze. It was a repeat of the alarm, in a volume far greater than that of the previous one. It was asking all personnel related to Lab Six to report there immediately. I knew that your father worked in that lab, and that it housed the prototype experiment his team had been working on. I waited and waited. I had stood there for about five minutes when it happened. The building in front of me, this massive facility, it just went boom. It was like watching one of those cartoons my kids watch. The thing just winked out of existence. That place, made out of brick and stone, its gate and walls being over thirty feet tall, just exploded outwards with such force that I was knocked backwards and onto my rear.”
He paused for breath. Then he said, “That is really all I know, Loren. In case you were wondering, I know your name because your father told it to me after you were born. His face positively glowed when he told me he had a son. Your mother too. She was ecstatic when she came to work after her maternity leave. I’m sorry you didn’t get to know them. I will give you the address of the facility. You won’t find much except debris and broken pieces of furniture, but you will get to see the place, and hopefully be able let go of some of the negative impressions about your parents that the matron told me you had. I know one thing for sure, they didn’t choose to leave you, Loren, they had no choice.”
Chapter III
True to his word, after exchanging a few pleasantries, before he left, the man left me with a crumpled piece of paper on which he had taken the liberty of writing down the facility’s address. At this point I wasn’t sure if believing him was the right thing to do. However, as I had no other leads, I decided to go ahead and confirm what the man had said; I prepared to go to see the facility.
Since the day I conversed with the man, I started poking around. I was careful to stay downwind, though, because immature I might be, but not a fool. My intuition told me that going around asking for information regarding an experiment that had blown up a large facility might not be the brightest idea. Most every bit of information I gathered confirmed the man’s story. I learned nothing new; the people I tracked down who had been working at the facility at the time had done the same thing the man had. They had heard the alarm and fled the place like bats out of hell.
I visited the destroyed site recently, and what I saw matched my expectations. There wasn’t much left to see. Barely anything was left standing. Maybe a few errant pieces of furniture barely holding themselves together, covered in ashes and bearing scorch marks as if they were scars from a horrendous battle.
I, however, found one interesting thing in a hollow of sorts under two falling walls, which met each other at their peaks and formed a sort of misshapen triangle. The space underneath it was obscured by debris piled up in front of it. I found a computer close by. From the space underneath the volatile walls, I extracted a rectangle made out of metal. Just a frame. Nothing more. The only remarkable thing about it was that it was as tall as two men. As dusk was falling, I postponed any further exploration and returned to the orphanage.
I came back to it mere days later. Devils couldn’t have kept me out of that palce. I was determined to find out what had happened that night. The night I lost everything.
After informing the matrons of my trip, I left without preamble. I reached the site at noon after a long drive and started towards the spot I had last been exploring. After reaching said spot, I cleared away the debris, which I had placed in front of the space under the walls before leaving during my prior visit to shield it from any possibly prying eyes, as remote as that possibility was in that place, and pulled out the rectangular metal frame. My eyes caught on something I had not noticed the last time. A thin cable protruding from an edge of the rectangle. It had a USB shaped ending, therfore making it compatible with a computer.I thought of what use a metal frame would be when connected to a computer. No brilliant answer stepped up to answer my ridiculous question.
I, however, needed to find any clues about my parents’ disappearence. The closest computer was the same one I had seen the last time; it lay in precisely the same position. I dragged it to where the frame was, got up, returned to the car I had borrowed from a matron to drive there, took out the battery back I had seen at the back of the car, and using some tricks I learned from a friend, started up the computer. I then connected the wire from the metal frame to one of its ports.
Suddenly, the battery pack, which was touching my arm, became extremely hot. It felt as if its heat was searing my exposed skin. I yelped in pain and retreated from it. With streaming eyes, and now nursing his slightly charred-looking flesh, while cursing the accursed thing, I looked towards it a tad fearfully in case it exploded. What I saw instead surprised me a great deal. What was occurring before my very eyes was not something that I had ever witnessed before. The metal frame was rising slowly from the ground of its own accord. Feeling as if my eyes were deceiving me, I rubbed my knuckles against them and once more glanced at the spectacle before me. Nothing had changed. The frame was continuing to rise off the ground and soon it had righted itself and stood up, facing me, with nothing supporting it.
It stayed, suspended in the air, giving no indication that it was about to come back down anytime soon. Then, I noticed something else as well. The computer screen had a message continuously flashing across it. It read ‘Teleportation System Ready’. Now, I knew that I ought not to touch anything until I was sure of what was happening. After all, metal objects didn’t just start to fly out of nowhere. However, my curiosity got the better of me. I approached the computer, hoping to see what the message across the screen meant, and saw two tiny options of Yes or No below it on the screen. I didn’t know what I was or was not agreeing to do, but since I was looking for information and not trying to hide from it, I chose to go with yes.
I knew at once that I shouldn’t have done so. The metal frame began to vibrate violently, its edges starting to glow bright white. It began rotating on the spot, going faster and faster until it was a blur. A hum seemed to be emanating from it. The glow from the frame spread outwards, seeming to beckon to me. It started to envelop me. I tried to retreat but found that my legs were refusing to obey my will. Looking down, I saw why. There was no ground to walk on to get away from the light. I too was hovering in the air, about two inches off the ground. The sound coming from the frame rose to an unbearable pitch. My consciousness flickered and dimmed and finally went out, like a light bulb blowing.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a space that seemed to be infinite. There were no walls, no visible boundaries. All around me there was a riot of colour, shimmering brightly. They seemed to ebb and flow around me. When I attempted to stand up, I found that I could not. My body would not move. All I could do was lay there and hope for the best, wondering what could befall me next. Finally though, exhaustion took its toll. My eyelids drooped and I dropped off into a deep sleep.
Chapter IV
When I came to, I found myself in a clearing surrounded by a copse of trees. The area seemed somehow secluded and provided me with the mental peace I needed to ascertain where I was and how I got there. I pondered my situation. There was a high likeliness that I would have no idea where I was. I definitely had no idea how I had come to be there in the first place, unless I counted in the fact that the metal frame had had something to do with it. Other than these obvious observations, no miraculous answers presented themselves to me.
Without further ado, I picked my sorry self up and started to explore the vicinity. My surroundings hummed with life. Although, the strange thing was, I didn’t recognize many of the creatures that I saw. The birds seemed slightly larger than I was used to and their colours were not those which I usually saw. I convinced myself that they must have been exotic breeds of the kind I had never before heard of or seen.
As I wondered aimlessly through what was now definitely a forest, not a copse as I had earlier assumed, I came across another clearing. This one had an enormous tree in the center of it, and I, being the overly curious person that I am, approached it, hoping to find some fruit growing in its leafy arms so satisfy the intense hunger I was experiencing. I saw nothing however, a big disappointment as my hunger was reaching unbearable levels…
Then, I saw it… A large nest…. High up in the branches of the tree, safely ensconced in the apex formed by the branch it was on and the trunk of the tree. I found a large stone lying on the ground and picked it up. I took aim and threw it. My friends had always said I had precise aim. They were right. This stone hit the nest squarely in its side and the nest tipped sideways and off the branch. It hurtled towards the ground at a frightening speed. Unfortunately, I didn’t reach it on time. It hit the ground with a muffled thud, and something rolled out of it. I was relieved to find it in one piece as I approached it. It looked peculiar though, as it was easily about fifteen to twenty times the size of a normal egg and it was a bright orange-red with black flames writhing through its center.
I picked it up, almost staggering under its weight, and carried it to the clearing I had woken up in. There, I built a small fire using what I had learned on a coming trip. I pushed a few large rocks onto either side of the fire, and then laid the egg on it, wiling it to cook and not taste disgusting even if it did. After some time, just as my patience was about to run out, I heard a faint tap coming from the egg. Sure that I had misheard, I thought nothing of it. However, when the same thing happened again, I sat up straight and gazed at it, wondering what could possibly be occurring. From the firelight, I saw a hairline-thin crack appear on the surface of the egg. After a few moments, it elongated. Then it split off into another crack, and then another, and another and so on until most of the egg’s glossy surface looked like it had been scarred. The tapping finally ceased, as did the spider webbing cracks. A few moments passed, and then, with a loud crack, the top half of the egg came off. Nothing came out of it though. No slimy substance, nothing. I approached it hesitantly and peered inside; and leapt back almost as fast, since a spurt of flame erupted from inside the egg before I could fully comprehend what I was seeing.
Chapter V
Cursing, and wondering how many more times I was about to have my life put in danger in a single day, I steadied myself. My nose felt a bit raw. My appetite seemed to have quelled itself. When I had finally gotten over my resentment at my misfortunes, I approached the egg once more, albeit a little more cautiously. It seemed to be quivering. I halted a few feet away from it and tried to crane my neck to get a better look at what was inside it. I had hoped to have a boiled egg, but what I got was sure as hell not edible.
The creature I saw inside was definitely a bird; there was no doubt about that. It had a beautiful plumage of gold and orange with black tipped wings and it beak and claws were surprisingly well developed for a newborn. Its tail feathers were long and elegant, like a peacock’s except this bird had a black, flame-like pattern running through each of them. I’d seen what hatchling birds looked like before, but then again, I had to factor in the sad fact that I had no clue where I was, so the unexpected was to be expected.
I knew what the creature was; I had read about it many times in fairy tales, myths and legends, but seeing up close in real life was a bit unnerving. It was a phoenix. Still, it was a bit strange that it had black flames on his feathers; that part I had never known about.
Seemingly tired of its protective prison, the phoenix pushed against the side of the sell and it rolled off the stones and hit the ground, causing the phoenix to tumble out in an undignified manner. It soon righted itself, showing amazing reflexes for one as young as itself, and looked at me with unwavering, beetle black eyes. Its gaze gave an impression of intelligence and the way it held itself displayed it as a noble creature. Then, slowly, without ever taking its eyes away from mine, it started to walk up to me. I, not knowing what to do, stood rooted to the spot.
The phoenix came as close to me as it seemed to dare. Then, it dipped its head, as if beckoning me close. I decided to do so, as I didn’t want another flamethrower shot towards my face any time soon. I had already suffered enough. When I was face to face with it, the phoenix’s eyes bored into mine. Then, after a quick nod of its head, as if it had confirmed something, it touched its beak to my right cheek.
My cheek seared with pain. It felt as if fire was spreading through my body. It hurt… it hurt a lot. My vision flickered, and my knees gave way. I collapsed onto the ground, writhing in agony. After an immeasurable amount of time had passed, the pain released its iron grip on my body. My writhing turned to involuntary jerking, and the pain dulled; it throbbed now, instead of providing me with a never-ending supply of hurt. Through the haze of pain, I felt something warm burrowing into my side. I opened my eyes a fraction and saw that the phoenix was pressing its body against mine as if preparing to go to sleep, which it very shortly did, leaving me to fight through the pain alone.
Chapter VI
After what seemed like hours, the pain started to recede, and then ceased completely. I felt relieved; I had been about to lose my mind. My muscles felt cramped and bruised from all the thrashing I had done on the cold, hard earth on which I lay. Blearily opening my eyes, I saw that the phoenix was still snuggled into my side. I could feel its rhythmic reverberating through my body, and for some inexplicable reason, it calmed me. I knew it shouldn’t, seeing as I had never before seen such a creature, therefore making it an unknown minefield of possible danger, but I could not help but feel soothed by its presence.
Unless I was very much mistaken, the bird seemed to have grown in the short while I was lost in pain. Its length had increased by about 5 inches and its chest seemed better defined and more muscled than it had earlier when it emerged from its maternally protective prison. In a sudden flash, I remembered the reason for my agony. The phoenix had merely brushed my cheek with its beak, but the effect had been far less innocent. I tenderly felt around the general area I thought it had touched. My hand found a slight unevenness in the skin, and I froze, unsure. I was almost certain that nothing had been marring my skin before the contact with the bird.
I needed to see what was wrong with my face. Hearing the trickle of water, I slowly stood up so as not to wake the bird and tiptoed towards the source of the noise. I found a small stream shortly. When I peered at my reflection in the pure, crystalline water, I mind went into shock. There was a flame –like insignia almost branded on my cheek. At that point, all I wanted to know was how it had happened. A tattoo artist could hardly have come up to me while I had been on the ground, moving in and out of consciousness and done this to my face. The mere idea was ludicrous.
Seeing that there was nothing else I could do short of sit there and wonder at the idiocy of everything that was happening to me I returned to the clearing. The phoenix was still there, slumbering as if there were no tomorrow. Stupid, overgrown fire chicken, I thought resentfully. The thing had first almost barbequed my face, and then made me thrash around in pain for a few hours. I had a feeling that was not all it would do to me if I kept hanging around it.
I prepared to leave it, but, incredibly, almost as I was about to step into the thicket of trees surrounding the clearing, it woke up, its eyes and feet steady, as if it had never been asleep. Its gaze seemed accusing, as if I had done something wrong. I berated myself internally for thinking too much about the situation. It was a bird, I kept reminding myself; nothing more.
As I started walking away, making a conscious effort not to look back and see whether it was following me, I heard twigs snap and leaves crunch as the overgrown pigeon blundered after me. Its trailing of me grew tiresome, and, after enduring the miserable sounds it was then emitting, I swung around. Its pitiful cries ceased immediately, and it gazed at me with eyes that seemed to mock me. The damn thing is making fun of me! I thought. I felt enraged. For some reason though, I found myself unable to maintain that anger. After staring at the phoenix for some time, I finally gave up trying to make it walk away and picked it up. I told it not to try anything funny before I realized once again that I was talking to a bird.
Chapter VII
I wanted to name my phoenix. I realized that by calling it mine I had made myself its owner. After shifting through the many suggestions that were milling around my cranium, I settled on one. I decided to call him, for it was a him, I had gingerly and disgustedly checked his equipment, Roniq. He seemed to like it as he shuffled wings and looked at me with what I believed was an expression of satisfaction.
After walking for what seemed like ages, I saw an opening in the seemingly impenetrable wall of trees that surrounded me. I hurried eagerly forward, almost stumbling in my haste to get to the sunlight ahead of me. The sight that met my eyes amazed me. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe after using the dappled light filtering through the trees above me my eyes were not sending the right signals to my brain due to the sudden change in brightness.
In front of me lay a massive city. Except this city was not in any way what I would consider normal. Its inhabitants were all in the air. It seemed impossible. What was even more impossible was that they were all riding phoenixes! The birds were magnificent, streams of flame pouring from their huge beaks while they circled over the city. I could see that many of them were flying off in all directions and large numbers were also flying back, landing on a large clearing at the center of the village. There the riders of the birds got off, unloaded anything that was strapped to the saddle the phoenixes were fitted with and walked them into the maze of houses, as calmly as if they were horses.
I only noticed that I had been walking while pondering this unusual sight when I ran headfirst into something soft. I was jerked to full awareness and looked around wildly before focusing on the face before me. My breath caught in my throat. The face I was looking into was beautiful. It was shaped like an almond, was attached to a long, graceful neck, had high cheekbones and was inlaid with a set of precious, sapphire blue eyes. I couldn’t seem to break eye contact. Every time I tried, I seemed to forget what I was trying to do and I would sink into back into the muddy marsh of my attraction. My heart seemed to be beating away somewhere in the general area of my throat.
It seemed like eons had passed when she deigned to open her mouth and speak to me. Thankfully, she spoke English, even if it was with a different accent.
She politely asked me for my name, so I therefore introduced myself. She in turn told me that she was called Lorana. She then moved on to observing my attire. She obviously found them lacking as she asked me why I was only wearing simple cloth. I realized that she thought I was a part of her world. She didn’t seem to have grasped the fact that I was as new to her world as a newborn babe. I explained to her that I was from a far off place and that I needed her aid to find a way to get back. She smiled indulgently and then asked me to follow her. Not having any other leads, I did so.
She walked through the city, turning this way and that, guiding me through the seemingly never-ending numbers of small paths that spider webbed throughout the city, connecting one area to another. If I had attempted to wonder around the place alone, I would surely have gotten lost. Plus I was sure that if I had waited till nightfall to sneak around the place, its inhabitants wouldn’t have treated me as warmly as they were doing then as I walked behind Lorana.
Finally, as I was beginning to tire slightly, she stopped. We seemed to have arrived at wherever she had been planning to take me. I saw immediately that this house more closely resembled a mansion from my world. It was larger than most of the surrounding houses and it was built very well, with windows set with precious stones and the arch of the doorway having been intricately engraved with two phoenixes crossing in midair.
She knocked on the door and then stood back, gazing at it expectantly. The door was answered shortly after by a large man wearing a black shirt and white pants. For people who lived in a village, they seemed surprisingly civilized and modernized. I hadn’t noticed Lorana’s appearance before, having been too intent on looking at her stunning face, but as I gazed at her now I saw that she was wearing a beautiful lilac gown with skillfully embroidered flames outlining the sleeves.
Lorana spoke to the man. She called him father. I didn’t see the resemblance, but to each his own. Maybe she took after her mother a great deal more than she did her father, I thought. Her father subsequently looked at me, and his eyes widened. I couldn’t understand why before he pointed to Roniq, my phoenix, and then asked in a quavering voice who I was. Not comprehending why he seemed to be so shocked, I told him my name and asked him why he seemed so startled.
He looked at me with something akin to wonder before explaining that the phoenix I had on my shoulder was known as the Emperor Phoenix. It rarely bred and when it did, its offspring rarely if ever came into contact with a human, let alone bonded with one. When I asked him what he meant by bonding, he explained further. He said that there as an elite band of people from the village they were in, who were chosen by phoenixes at birth, to ride them. They were trained as warriors and served to protect and serve their village. This included helping with the rearing of livestock, flying over treacherous landscape, inaccessible by land, to get different food items, and trading with other villages.
He then said that these riders trained for many years before they were given the rank of warrior. They had to show outstanding moral and ethical values, be intelligent, courageous and be ferocious in battle. Their day to day life fascinated me. It was something I had never before been able to think existed, as it would have been impossible for it to exist in my world. Then again, a simple lifestyle like the one they led had its perks. There was more fresh air to breathe than artificially filtered, ventilated air. Its simplicity, when compared to where I came from, also proved to be very endearing.
The man, whom I took to be the chief, looked to me with serious eyes. He told me that in order to reach my full potential, I had to train myself, and my partner, Roniq. He told me to go with Lorana to the Flame Academy to start my training. I, being more than willing to spend my time in the company of the beautiful lady, agreed wholeheartedly.
Before I had taken a step in her direction, however, the man said something that made my blood run cold. In a matter of fact voice, he told his daughter, Lorana, that the execution date for the devils, Adam and Emma Grayson, had been set for two days from then.
Chapter VIII
After taking the chief’s leave, I walked numbly behind Lorana. The prospect of being in her company had lost its allure. For the first time since I had gotten to wherever it is I was, I remembered how it is that I came to be there. I had being looking for clues about why my parents had disappeared. In my fascination at the world I found myself in, I had completely forgotten how I had ended up there in the first place.
I swore to myself. I couldn’t believe that I had been so irresponsible; but lo and behold, my parents, my parent were alive and well. They had been here the whole time, and there was only one way that could have happened: they must have gone through the same experience I had. They must have been sent here by that metal frame.
I still could not grasp why they were to be executed though. The answer to that mind boggling question eluded me. Nervously, and hoping that I didn’t appear too interested, I asked Lorana why it was that they were to be killed. She looked at me intently and then told me how the two devils, Adam and Emma Grayson, had suddenly appeared out of nowhere from a forest a few kilometers away from the city.
They had not been able to explain how they had come to be in the forest. Their lack of memory seemed to have convinced the people of the city that they had been cursed by evil spirits. Their burnt clothes and muddy skin had only confirmed their fears that the pair had come from the very depths of hell.
So they had been bound, gagged and dragged, screaming and kicking like children, except with a lot more force, Lorana said, to the city where they had been locked up ever since, except when they were let out thrice a week to get some fresh air and explore the unfamiliar surroundings.
For some inexplicable reason, Roniq, perched comfortably on my shoulder, dug his claws into me in what I think he thought was a comforting gesture. I looked at him gratefully. He may be a bird, but at least he was on my side. Breaking my parents out of their confinement was no simple task.
After walking for a few minutes, we arrived at a large coliseum-shaped structure. After waving hello to a sentry, Lorana led me inside. There, I saw many teenagers of my own age, with phoenixes of their own, sparring. Many of their birds were in the air, and all I could see of them were scarlet blurs. The ferocity of their attacks almost frightened me. I could hear the snaps of their beaks even from the ground, and the occasional shriek pierced the air as one bird caught successfully attacked another with its powerful peak.
As we entered, all heads turned towards us. Even the phoenixes above us halted their sparring and glided gracefully down to the earth to stand beside their riders. These pairs seemed magnificent. Their splendor amazed me. Then I remembered that I should not forget my goal. In the two days that I had until my parents’ execution, I had to train hard and I had to train fast. To rescue them would be no easy feat, what with all the potential warriors I saw before me, most of them probably having more experience than me, to say nothing of the actual warriors of the city.
A large man with a beefy neck and muscular arms came striding towards us. He bowed towards Lorana and asked, in a rude tone of voice, who I was. After I was introduced, he walked around me in a circle, as if examining a new piece of merchandise. Nodding his head in an approving manner, he told Lorana that she had no cause for worry. He said he would make a warrior out of me in no time.
Before she left, Lorana told the man that that my phoenix was of the Emperor Class and breed. The man blanched, as did many of the students in the class. I could not fathom why this was. Surely, if my phoenix was as powerful as they said, it should have been a good thing? I asked myself the point of being afraid of powerful beings when the whole point of having warriors around was to have them protect you with their strength. Then again, I was in a strange land, with strange people. Their ways of thinking were alien to me.
After Lorana had departed, the man turned towards me, introduced himself as Morgan and then, with a gleam in his eye, told me to tell my phoenix, Roniq, to shift into cambio forma. I know that I wasn’t very good at languages but I was pretty sure that those two words sounded a bit Italian. Not wanting to question him, as I had no information to use with which I could question him, I tried, as politely as possible, to ask him what he meant.
He looked at me incredulously. He told me to look around at the other students in the area and their partner phoenixes. I did. While I had been talking to him, the giant birds had shrunk to the size Roniq was, if not a bit smaller. Morgan asked me if I could spot a difference between those phoenixes and mine. I looked at them for a while until I noticed something. Nowhere on their bodies did they have flame-like patterns like mine did. They had not a trace of black colour on them.
Morgan elaborated by telling me that my phoenix was a special and very rare breed Roniq was in a class of his own called the Emperor class. This was due to their unmatched combat performance and flying speeds. They were also said to grow to be the biggest phoenixes out of all the breeds. They were also extremely selective about the partners they chose, and the last person to have been paired with an Emperor Phoenix had died over a century ago. He had been a legend. He and his phoenix had brought peace and prosperity to the city, which had been in a very unstable condition at the time.
After the information session was over, Morgan taught me how get my phoenix to change its form to cambio forma as he had called it. As it so happened, I could communicate with Roniq using telepathy. That ability proved to be interesting to experiment with. After some coaching, I was able to send clear messages to Roniq, which he understood. Now I knew why I had kept talking to him as if he were a human being. He was as close to my species in terms of intelligence as any other I’d known.
At the end of the day, bearing scorch marks, the only results I could show for my day of muscle-damaging work, I trudged in the general direction of the chief’s house, praying I didn’t get lost in the city’s vast network of pathways. After wondering around for what seemed like hours I finally spotted the carved archway of the door of Lorana’s house. Hoping against hope that she was at home, I knocked on the door. By sheer chance, Lorana answered the door first; I could hear her father retreating back into the bowels of the house, having just missed the surely pleasant surprise of meeting the mud-splattered, battered self.
Taking in my obviously pitiful appearance, she ushered me over the threshold of the house and into a room off the living room area. There, she told me to wait, came back with a pristine white towel, gave it to me, then showed me where the washroom was and told me to take a bath. She didn’t try to hold back. She told me that I was downright filthy and smelled like bird droppings. No big surprise there, I had spent many hours among those overgrown partridges. Comparing the phoenixes to normal birds every time something about them bugged me allowed me to believe that there was still a semblance of normality in my life, although the reality was as far from that as it could get. A sudden idea popped into my head. Instead of waiting for the two days to be over, I thought of freeing my parents that very night and making a run for it. I conceded that I needed a thorough cleansing first. I gagged due to my own body odour, which was coming off of me in waves. I stripped and left my clothes just outside the washroom door, as I had been instructed, and slipped into the bath that Lorana had prepared for me. It was barely warm, seeing as how it had just started to heat up, but it helped dull the aches and pains coursing throughout my entire body.
After half an hour of soaking myself in the bath, looking like a wrinkled prune, I stood up, stepped out of the bath, dried myself and opened the door just a fraction to see a fresh new set of clothes waiting for me. I donned them quickly. I tiptoes across the floor, took a peep through Lorana’s door to see if she was asleep, then did the same with her father and was on my way out when a voice softly asked me where I was off to in the night. Lorana stood behind me, wearing a scowl on her exquisite face. The expression marred her beauty.
Chapter IX
She asked me in a deadly quiet voice full or pure venom where I was off to. She hardly seemed the same person she had been when I had met her. After considering possible lies and alternatives, I resorted to telling her the truth. I told her that I had come here from what seemed like a different world. How I had grown up in an orphanage, never knowing that my family was still alive, until I had been brought here, by some miracle.
A I neared the end of my narration I feared that she would run to her father and tell him that their guest was about to break into the jail and help a couple of criminals escape. She surprised me by not doing so. Her eyes sparkling like a million stars, she told me that she had always suspected, since the moment she had met me that I was not from her world. That he had some connection to her city’s prisoners, as his face bore some similarities with theirs.
She told me to wait for a moment, went back to her room and returned momentarily wearing a black overall. She said it would help them to better blend in with the darkness outside. She motioned for me to follow her and then, opening the front door slightly, she slipped outside, the night darkness slipping around her in a chilly embrace.
I tried to follow Lorana’s shadow as quietly as I could, hoping that I wouldn’t get my foot caught on something. We traversed the breadth of the city for quite a while. The distance to our destination provided me with the perfect opportunity to chat with Lorana. Never having spoken to a girl properly before, I stumbled on many of the words, but I thought that the effort was a good one. I asked her what she did during the day, what she did at school, if there was such a thing there, and, finally, the question that I was almost popping out of my skin to ask, if she was dating someone. I had uttered the question without thinking of the repercussions. I knew it wasn’t polite to ask someone you barely knew about their private life.
Lorana didn’t seem fazed by the question in the least. She turned the tables on me and asked me if I was seeing someone. When I had said no, she positively beamed and before I could say anything, asked me out. Needless to say, this came as a shock, but a pleasant one. I told her that I would take her out when she and I were both not in danger of being caught for aiding in the escape of two prisoners. All in all, it had been a fast process, even judging by the time it took for a person to ask out someone on a movie, but, since the outcome had been the one I wanted, I knew to leave well enough alone.
Shortly after our interesting conversation, Lorana halted in front of a grim-looking building made of granite. Its walls looked impregnable and it had an air of despair surrounding it. She told me that my parents were inside. She produced a set of keys from her overalls, saying she had taken them from her father’s safe, which he had fortunately decided to place in her room, and which also happened to have a broken lock, which obviously defeated the whole purpose of having one.
I thanked Lorana, promised her that if I escaped, I would come back for her, even if it was for a moment, and started towards the entrance to the building. Unable to control myself, I turned right around, pressed a kiss onto her surprised mouth, and then dashed to the door. After fumbling with the keys in my haste, I let myself in.
It was very dark and gloomy inside. Luckily, I spotted a lamp placed atop a nearby table. I crept towards it, making as little noise as I possibly could, and then, once I had reached it, lifted it up and lit it. All around me were cells. I couldn’t see which one held my parents. My question was answered for me, however when a voice called out to me from off to my right. The voice stirred something inside me; it seemed familiar. I turned slowly to face the source of the voice. I then cautiously approached the cage that held in the prisoners.
Two pairs of eyes, exactly like mine, stared at me through the bars of the cage, shining through the gloom that permeated the inside of the cell. The two people inside looked as if they had gone through hell, which they very well might have, seeing as they were prisoners and were about to be executed in just over a day. The two people almost rushed to the bars of the cell. They stared at my face incredulously, their gaunt faces seeming to have lost the use of their muscles since I doubted there had been much use for them since their capture and subsequent imprisonment.
One of the people was a woman. Her face was drawn and her skin looked mottled and pale, derived as it had been of sunlight. She reached through the bars of the cell and placed her palm lightly on my face. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she uttered my name. I did not realize that I myself was crying until the hot, thick, pearly ears were accompanied by few dry sobs from me. Surprised at myself, since I was rarely one to display my emotions to anyone, I steeled myself before looking at the man I knew instinctively to be my father. Our jawlines were similar and our brows both wrinkled in the same way when we trying to sort something out in our minds. It was happening then.
My father was looking at me with undisguised pride and hope. I, being eager to get them out of their confining space, unlocked the cell and let them both out. Before we could rejoice, we had to get away, so I held a finger to my lips, willing them to understand and be quiet, and then led them back through the door to the outside. Moonlight shed its brilliant glow on our surroundings unlike during the journey I had made to the prison.
I called to my phoenix, Roniq, using my thoughts, and asked him to change shift to cambio forma. In a rush of flame, he transformed. In the space where there had just moments before been an eagle-sized bird, now there stood a majestic, towering phoenix strong enough and large enough to comfortably accommodate about five people on its back. I noticed that he had grown even taller since the training session.
After we were all comfortably settled upon Roniq’s back, we took off. As we were flying, we unfortunately came across a warrior and his partner phoenix, out on patrol. They raised a hue and cry and soon the whole city knew something was wrong. I saw fires popping up all over the city, signifying the changes of warriors’ phoenixes into cambio forma everywhere. I knew that we were in trouble. I was a barely trained student, my father and mother were emaciated and my phoenix, as large as he may be, was still practically a newborn. Two warriors flanked us on either side. I urge Roniq to fly fast, and he did, his wings visibly straining with the effort.
I turned around slightly to ask my parents if they had any bright idea concerning how we were going to survive the next few moments. My father, his eyes glinting, told me to fly north. Trusting his advice, I steered us in that direction. Soon, we saw the outlines of many trees, indicating the beginning of a forest. My father told me to fly over it until he told me to stop. Without questioning him, I did as I was told. It felt good, I thought to myself, to have someone from my own family guide me; this was hardly the situation in which to think that, but that was how I felt.
Suddenly, my father told me to get Roniq to dive, so dive I did. We hurtled towards the earth at breakneck speed. When it became apparent that it would be foolish and dangerous to continue our descent, Roniq flared his wings and levelled out our angle of flying. My father, apparently seeing what he had been telling us to dive for, told me to land my phoenix. Only too eager to get to shelter before we were found by the horde of warriors I was sure were hot on our trail, I got Roniq, to dip down gently the rest of the way, and had him land softly on the hard, mud-caked earth below.
My father and mother, as soon as they had set foot on the ground, started walking towards a large, overgrown bush. From it, miraculously, they pulled a metal frame just like the one that had brought me there.
My father, saying aloud that he hoped it had enough power left in its battery to perform one last duty, beckoned me and my mother closer. He pressed a small button on the side of the frame and the thing began to vibrate and glow white. I was prepared for it this time. I simply closed my eyes, pictured Lorana’s face, swore to myself that I would definitely come back, and prepared to be transported back to my world. Finally.
Chapter X
I felt a curious flying sensation, but did not overly concern myself with it. I did not deem it necessary to open my eyes. After a while, the temperature around my parents and I started to rise. A few moments later, with a muffled thump, we all landed, spread eagled, on a sea of grass. We had landed in a park. I looked around and realized that Roniq was not with me. Then, however I felt something prick me, and, looking down, saw him, staring up and me with those intelligent eyes, having reverted back to his normal state.
I got up, dusted myself off, and leaving my parents to take in their surroundings, which they couldn’t have seen for about seventeen years, went to sit down on a bench that was close by. There was already a boy about my age sitting there. I looked at him curiously before plopping my rear down next to him. He was looking off into the distance.
After a while, we got a conversation going. They guy didn’t seem to want to give me his name so I didn’t ask him for it. Somehow we got onto the topic of our most recent accomplishments. I told him roughly of my dimension jumping adventure, my meeting with a phoenix and ending with my discovery of my parents, who I had thought to be dead up until a short time ago. He in turn said that he had killed a couple of guys, set their bodies on fire, and stabbed and suffocated another guy as if he were discussing nothing more than the day’s weather. He seemed nice enough, but any guy who killed someone else was not someone I wanted to tango with. After a while, he got up, and, saying he had to go meet his uncle, left.
I walked slowly back to my parents. They had seen their fill and were waiting for me. I couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm. I finally had a family! After seventeen years of not belonging, I have somewhere I could always return to, people I could always turn to. Thinking of how fortunate I was, walking between my parents, with my phoenix, Roniq, flying overhead, I started walking towards the orphanage, for what I hoped was the last time, looking forward to a bright and dazzling future.
For a moment in time, they stood stock still, not believing their ears, their minds working furiously. Then their bodies caught up to their brains. Adam and Sarah dropped the coffee mugs they were holding. The mugs smashed against the floor, spilling their contents everywhere, some of it landing on and scalding Emma, but nobody paid the slightest attention to it. They were panicking and shouting to each other while they dashed out of the cafeteria started running towards the lab as fast as their feet would carry them. Adam was shouting something the system matrix while John was screaming something about a possible mathematical miscalculation, while the others screamed out their own thoughts, creating a discordant and loud cacophony of voices. They almost ran into each other with their momentum propelling them forward, as they came to a halt in front of a thick stainless steel door with words Lab Six stamped across in jet black letters, and the words, ‘To Be Entered By Related Personnel ONLY’ directly underneath it.
Adam pressed his thumb against the fingerprint scanner and the words ‘Access Granted’ flashed across its minute screen. The door screeched open and the four professors were met by a blast of oppressive heat. A month of painstaking research was going up in flames. Leaving their families had only resulted in this. What they did next would have been judged by some as very foolish or by others as an act pure nerve and courage. They all ran into the fire, never hesitating, never looking back, for they knew the dangers of letting their project explode. The results could be catastrophic, not only for them, but for everyone within a hundred kilometer radius. While Emma frantically tried to shut down the ongoing experiment using the only computer that had not exploded due to the heat, the rest of them tried but failed to keep the rapidly spreading fire from the experiment’s vicinity. The computer screen displayed a message that said ‘Alert! Experiment core heating up! Core temperature approaching red zone!’
Adam said "Everyone out now, we can’t save this experiment, we can build another one later. Right now our lives are more important”. His words were met with a wall of protests. “Enough!”, roared Adam, “I am the head of this research team and I agree with David. We all have children waiting for us back home. We might have put together this thing after nearly working ourselves to death every day, but I will not waste my life on something that can be rebuilt, even if we have to start from scratch again. So I will say this one final time. Everybody out NOW!’ As they scrambled to obey, their luck ran out. Fate, it seems, had a morbid interest them. They all heard an indescribably loud BOOM and the last thing they saw was a blinding flash of white light. Anyone and everyone in and around the facility were incinerated to a crisp.
What awaited the first few people on the scene the next morning as they came to replace those working the night shift were piles of blackened rubbish and stone, which was the only proof that there had ever been a solid structure standing there and that something had gone terribly wrong. Far away from this now barren wasteland of a facility, two little boys slept on, unaware that they had lost their parents; that they would soon come to learn of the hardships they would face when when one did not have a family.
Chapter I
My name is Loren Grayson. I never knew my parents. My only recollection of them is a blurred image that I have in my memories. Their smiling faces taunted me in my dreams, reminding me of what I could never have. Sometimes I hate them, my feelings towards them pure venom. They left me, never knew me, never came back for me. There are many times that I remind myself that this was a child’s reasoning; I did not know why they had done what they did; it was unfair to judge them without first knowing why.
The problem was, I couldn’t help it. I had nobody to count on, nobody to reach out to when I needed guidance or help. Of course, the matrons at the orphanage were kind and helpful, but it wasn’t the same as having a family and a place to call home. Not a home to individual members of families that left them behind, like the orphanage, but my own home, a place where only my family and I could reside.
My feelings, dull, depressing and sorrowful as they were, could not however cloud my indescribably resilient desire to know more about why I was alone. I wanted to know why I had no parents, why they had left me behind. I desired to learn my place in the world as how I came to be there. That is how it all began…
Chapter II
Everything started when a strange man visited my in my room at Eddington Orphanage. I was seventeen years old at the time. The matron let him in while I was reading a book. I was reading with rapt attention and their intrusion was not one I appreciated. The man wore and black overcoat and wore a hat that partially obscured his face. He thanked the matron for her help and watched her as she left. After she had closed the door, before speaking to me, he went to the door and turned the lock. It was clear to me that he did not want to be interrupted.
When he finally turned his gaze upon me, I flinched. His eyes were a cold, metallic gray, and they seemed to pierce my very being. I realized at once that this man was not one to be fooled easily. Trying to pull a fast one on him would be a fatal error.
As I tried to size him up and figure out who he was and why he had wanted to see me, I saw that he was doing the same, only he seemed to do so less obviously than I am sure I was and because he seemed to be surveying the room. Finally, he spoke.
“Listen to me, Loren. I don’t have time to elaborate on anything I am about to divulge to you”, he said. “I have information for you about your parents. They didn’t just abandon you, they had no choice. They were working on a Project for the government called the Rift Project. Your father, Adam, was the head scientist of the team that was working on it. He was a very close friend of mine. One night something went terribly wrong. Don’t ask me what it is because even after all these years, I do not know what it was. An alarm sounded and the speakers screamed out an evacuation order. I, being near the gates at the time, did so immediately. If an alarm sounded in a heavily guarded facility like the one we were in, that meant trouble, and a lot of it; needless to say, I wanted to live, so I fled the place.”
He said all this in a rush, barely pausing for breath. It was like watching a dying man trying to get out everything he hadn’t managed to say while he was healthy in the short amount of time he had left. The man was positively panting with the effort required to maintain the speed of his speech. He did not give any indication of slowing down. Moreover, I had innumerable number of questions buzzing around my brain, like a trapped swarm of angry bees.
I wanted to ask him so many things: who he was, how he came to know my father, what sort of people my parents were and many more. However, with sheer will, I refrained. At that moment, I unconsciously knew that interrupting him would cost me the small amount of information that I would be able to glean from the conversation. Since I had no other way of finding out anything else about my parents, I clung to his words and listened with rapt attention.
“When I had gotten a safe distance away from the facility, I turned and looked back. Nothing seemed out of place, except for the faint sound of the alarm that was surely still ringing throughout the facility with great force. So I waited. I had made many friends during my time there, your father being one of them, and I wanted to ask them what the reason was for the evacuation of the premises being ordered.”
“Just then, a sound was carried to me on the breeze. It was a repeat of the alarm, in a volume far greater than that of the previous one. It was asking all personnel related to Lab Six to report there immediately. I knew that your father worked in that lab, and that it housed the prototype experiment his team had been working on. I waited and waited. I had stood there for about five minutes when it happened. The building in front of me, this massive facility, it just went boom. It was like watching one of those cartoons my kids watch. The thing just winked out of existence. That place, made out of brick and stone, its gate and walls being over thirty feet tall, just exploded outwards with such force that I was knocked backwards and onto my rear.”
He paused for breath. Then he said, “That is really all I know, Loren. In case you were wondering, I know your name because your father told it to me after you were born. His face positively glowed when he told me he had a son. Your mother too. She was ecstatic when she came to work after her maternity leave. I’m sorry you didn’t get to know them. I will give you the address of the facility. You won’t find much except debris and broken pieces of furniture, but you will get to see the place, and hopefully be able let go of some of the negative impressions about your parents that the matron told me you had. I know one thing for sure, they didn’t choose to leave you, Loren, they had no choice.”
Chapter III
True to his word, after exchanging a few pleasantries, before he left, the man left me with a crumpled piece of paper on which he had taken the liberty of writing down the facility’s address. At this point I wasn’t sure if believing him was the right thing to do. However, as I had no other leads, I decided to go ahead and confirm what the man had said; I prepared to go to see the facility.
Since the day I conversed with the man, I started poking around. I was careful to stay downwind, though, because immature I might be, but not a fool. My intuition told me that going around asking for information regarding an experiment that had blown up a large facility might not be the brightest idea. Most every bit of information I gathered confirmed the man’s story. I learned nothing new; the people I tracked down who had been working at the facility at the time had done the same thing the man had. They had heard the alarm and fled the place like bats out of hell.
I visited the destroyed site recently, and what I saw matched my expectations. There wasn’t much left to see. Barely anything was left standing. Maybe a few errant pieces of furniture barely holding themselves together, covered in ashes and bearing scorch marks as if they were scars from a horrendous battle.
I, however, found one interesting thing in a hollow of sorts under two falling walls, which met each other at their peaks and formed a sort of misshapen triangle. The space underneath it was obscured by debris piled up in front of it. I found a computer close by. From the space underneath the volatile walls, I extracted a rectangle made out of metal. Just a frame. Nothing more. The only remarkable thing about it was that it was as tall as two men. As dusk was falling, I postponed any further exploration and returned to the orphanage.
I came back to it mere days later. Devils couldn’t have kept me out of that palce. I was determined to find out what had happened that night. The night I lost everything.
After informing the matrons of my trip, I left without preamble. I reached the site at noon after a long drive and started towards the spot I had last been exploring. After reaching said spot, I cleared away the debris, which I had placed in front of the space under the walls before leaving during my prior visit to shield it from any possibly prying eyes, as remote as that possibility was in that place, and pulled out the rectangular metal frame. My eyes caught on something I had not noticed the last time. A thin cable protruding from an edge of the rectangle. It had a USB shaped ending, therfore making it compatible with a computer.I thought of what use a metal frame would be when connected to a computer. No brilliant answer stepped up to answer my ridiculous question.
I, however, needed to find any clues about my parents’ disappearence. The closest computer was the same one I had seen the last time; it lay in precisely the same position. I dragged it to where the frame was, got up, returned to the car I had borrowed from a matron to drive there, took out the battery back I had seen at the back of the car, and using some tricks I learned from a friend, started up the computer. I then connected the wire from the metal frame to one of its ports.
Suddenly, the battery pack, which was touching my arm, became extremely hot. It felt as if its heat was searing my exposed skin. I yelped in pain and retreated from it. With streaming eyes, and now nursing his slightly charred-looking flesh, while cursing the accursed thing, I looked towards it a tad fearfully in case it exploded. What I saw instead surprised me a great deal. What was occurring before my very eyes was not something that I had ever witnessed before. The metal frame was rising slowly from the ground of its own accord. Feeling as if my eyes were deceiving me, I rubbed my knuckles against them and once more glanced at the spectacle before me. Nothing had changed. The frame was continuing to rise off the ground and soon it had righted itself and stood up, facing me, with nothing supporting it.
It stayed, suspended in the air, giving no indication that it was about to come back down anytime soon. Then, I noticed something else as well. The computer screen had a message continuously flashing across it. It read ‘Teleportation System Ready’. Now, I knew that I ought not to touch anything until I was sure of what was happening. After all, metal objects didn’t just start to fly out of nowhere. However, my curiosity got the better of me. I approached the computer, hoping to see what the message across the screen meant, and saw two tiny options of Yes or No below it on the screen. I didn’t know what I was or was not agreeing to do, but since I was looking for information and not trying to hide from it, I chose to go with yes.
I knew at once that I shouldn’t have done so. The metal frame began to vibrate violently, its edges starting to glow bright white. It began rotating on the spot, going faster and faster until it was a blur. A hum seemed to be emanating from it. The glow from the frame spread outwards, seeming to beckon to me. It started to envelop me. I tried to retreat but found that my legs were refusing to obey my will. Looking down, I saw why. There was no ground to walk on to get away from the light. I too was hovering in the air, about two inches off the ground. The sound coming from the frame rose to an unbearable pitch. My consciousness flickered and dimmed and finally went out, like a light bulb blowing.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a space that seemed to be infinite. There were no walls, no visible boundaries. All around me there was a riot of colour, shimmering brightly. They seemed to ebb and flow around me. When I attempted to stand up, I found that I could not. My body would not move. All I could do was lay there and hope for the best, wondering what could befall me next. Finally though, exhaustion took its toll. My eyelids drooped and I dropped off into a deep sleep.
Chapter IV
When I came to, I found myself in a clearing surrounded by a copse of trees. The area seemed somehow secluded and provided me with the mental peace I needed to ascertain where I was and how I got there. I pondered my situation. There was a high likeliness that I would have no idea where I was. I definitely had no idea how I had come to be there in the first place, unless I counted in the fact that the metal frame had had something to do with it. Other than these obvious observations, no miraculous answers presented themselves to me.
Without further ado, I picked my sorry self up and started to explore the vicinity. My surroundings hummed with life. Although, the strange thing was, I didn’t recognize many of the creatures that I saw. The birds seemed slightly larger than I was used to and their colours were not those which I usually saw. I convinced myself that they must have been exotic breeds of the kind I had never before heard of or seen.
As I wondered aimlessly through what was now definitely a forest, not a copse as I had earlier assumed, I came across another clearing. This one had an enormous tree in the center of it, and I, being the overly curious person that I am, approached it, hoping to find some fruit growing in its leafy arms so satisfy the intense hunger I was experiencing. I saw nothing however, a big disappointment as my hunger was reaching unbearable levels…
Then, I saw it… A large nest…. High up in the branches of the tree, safely ensconced in the apex formed by the branch it was on and the trunk of the tree. I found a large stone lying on the ground and picked it up. I took aim and threw it. My friends had always said I had precise aim. They were right. This stone hit the nest squarely in its side and the nest tipped sideways and off the branch. It hurtled towards the ground at a frightening speed. Unfortunately, I didn’t reach it on time. It hit the ground with a muffled thud, and something rolled out of it. I was relieved to find it in one piece as I approached it. It looked peculiar though, as it was easily about fifteen to twenty times the size of a normal egg and it was a bright orange-red with black flames writhing through its center.
I picked it up, almost staggering under its weight, and carried it to the clearing I had woken up in. There, I built a small fire using what I had learned on a coming trip. I pushed a few large rocks onto either side of the fire, and then laid the egg on it, wiling it to cook and not taste disgusting even if it did. After some time, just as my patience was about to run out, I heard a faint tap coming from the egg. Sure that I had misheard, I thought nothing of it. However, when the same thing happened again, I sat up straight and gazed at it, wondering what could possibly be occurring. From the firelight, I saw a hairline-thin crack appear on the surface of the egg. After a few moments, it elongated. Then it split off into another crack, and then another, and another and so on until most of the egg’s glossy surface looked like it had been scarred. The tapping finally ceased, as did the spider webbing cracks. A few moments passed, and then, with a loud crack, the top half of the egg came off. Nothing came out of it though. No slimy substance, nothing. I approached it hesitantly and peered inside; and leapt back almost as fast, since a spurt of flame erupted from inside the egg before I could fully comprehend what I was seeing.
Chapter V
Cursing, and wondering how many more times I was about to have my life put in danger in a single day, I steadied myself. My nose felt a bit raw. My appetite seemed to have quelled itself. When I had finally gotten over my resentment at my misfortunes, I approached the egg once more, albeit a little more cautiously. It seemed to be quivering. I halted a few feet away from it and tried to crane my neck to get a better look at what was inside it. I had hoped to have a boiled egg, but what I got was sure as hell not edible.
The creature I saw inside was definitely a bird; there was no doubt about that. It had a beautiful plumage of gold and orange with black tipped wings and it beak and claws were surprisingly well developed for a newborn. Its tail feathers were long and elegant, like a peacock’s except this bird had a black, flame-like pattern running through each of them. I’d seen what hatchling birds looked like before, but then again, I had to factor in the sad fact that I had no clue where I was, so the unexpected was to be expected.
I knew what the creature was; I had read about it many times in fairy tales, myths and legends, but seeing up close in real life was a bit unnerving. It was a phoenix. Still, it was a bit strange that it had black flames on his feathers; that part I had never known about.
Seemingly tired of its protective prison, the phoenix pushed against the side of the sell and it rolled off the stones and hit the ground, causing the phoenix to tumble out in an undignified manner. It soon righted itself, showing amazing reflexes for one as young as itself, and looked at me with unwavering, beetle black eyes. Its gaze gave an impression of intelligence and the way it held itself displayed it as a noble creature. Then, slowly, without ever taking its eyes away from mine, it started to walk up to me. I, not knowing what to do, stood rooted to the spot.
The phoenix came as close to me as it seemed to dare. Then, it dipped its head, as if beckoning me close. I decided to do so, as I didn’t want another flamethrower shot towards my face any time soon. I had already suffered enough. When I was face to face with it, the phoenix’s eyes bored into mine. Then, after a quick nod of its head, as if it had confirmed something, it touched its beak to my right cheek.
My cheek seared with pain. It felt as if fire was spreading through my body. It hurt… it hurt a lot. My vision flickered, and my knees gave way. I collapsed onto the ground, writhing in agony. After an immeasurable amount of time had passed, the pain released its iron grip on my body. My writhing turned to involuntary jerking, and the pain dulled; it throbbed now, instead of providing me with a never-ending supply of hurt. Through the haze of pain, I felt something warm burrowing into my side. I opened my eyes a fraction and saw that the phoenix was pressing its body against mine as if preparing to go to sleep, which it very shortly did, leaving me to fight through the pain alone.
Chapter VI
After what seemed like hours, the pain started to recede, and then ceased completely. I felt relieved; I had been about to lose my mind. My muscles felt cramped and bruised from all the thrashing I had done on the cold, hard earth on which I lay. Blearily opening my eyes, I saw that the phoenix was still snuggled into my side. I could feel its rhythmic reverberating through my body, and for some inexplicable reason, it calmed me. I knew it shouldn’t, seeing as I had never before seen such a creature, therefore making it an unknown minefield of possible danger, but I could not help but feel soothed by its presence.
Unless I was very much mistaken, the bird seemed to have grown in the short while I was lost in pain. Its length had increased by about 5 inches and its chest seemed better defined and more muscled than it had earlier when it emerged from its maternally protective prison. In a sudden flash, I remembered the reason for my agony. The phoenix had merely brushed my cheek with its beak, but the effect had been far less innocent. I tenderly felt around the general area I thought it had touched. My hand found a slight unevenness in the skin, and I froze, unsure. I was almost certain that nothing had been marring my skin before the contact with the bird.
I needed to see what was wrong with my face. Hearing the trickle of water, I slowly stood up so as not to wake the bird and tiptoed towards the source of the noise. I found a small stream shortly. When I peered at my reflection in the pure, crystalline water, I mind went into shock. There was a flame –like insignia almost branded on my cheek. At that point, all I wanted to know was how it had happened. A tattoo artist could hardly have come up to me while I had been on the ground, moving in and out of consciousness and done this to my face. The mere idea was ludicrous.
Seeing that there was nothing else I could do short of sit there and wonder at the idiocy of everything that was happening to me I returned to the clearing. The phoenix was still there, slumbering as if there were no tomorrow. Stupid, overgrown fire chicken, I thought resentfully. The thing had first almost barbequed my face, and then made me thrash around in pain for a few hours. I had a feeling that was not all it would do to me if I kept hanging around it.
I prepared to leave it, but, incredibly, almost as I was about to step into the thicket of trees surrounding the clearing, it woke up, its eyes and feet steady, as if it had never been asleep. Its gaze seemed accusing, as if I had done something wrong. I berated myself internally for thinking too much about the situation. It was a bird, I kept reminding myself; nothing more.
As I started walking away, making a conscious effort not to look back and see whether it was following me, I heard twigs snap and leaves crunch as the overgrown pigeon blundered after me. Its trailing of me grew tiresome, and, after enduring the miserable sounds it was then emitting, I swung around. Its pitiful cries ceased immediately, and it gazed at me with eyes that seemed to mock me. The damn thing is making fun of me! I thought. I felt enraged. For some reason though, I found myself unable to maintain that anger. After staring at the phoenix for some time, I finally gave up trying to make it walk away and picked it up. I told it not to try anything funny before I realized once again that I was talking to a bird.
Chapter VII
I wanted to name my phoenix. I realized that by calling it mine I had made myself its owner. After shifting through the many suggestions that were milling around my cranium, I settled on one. I decided to call him, for it was a him, I had gingerly and disgustedly checked his equipment, Roniq. He seemed to like it as he shuffled wings and looked at me with what I believed was an expression of satisfaction.
After walking for what seemed like ages, I saw an opening in the seemingly impenetrable wall of trees that surrounded me. I hurried eagerly forward, almost stumbling in my haste to get to the sunlight ahead of me. The sight that met my eyes amazed me. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe after using the dappled light filtering through the trees above me my eyes were not sending the right signals to my brain due to the sudden change in brightness.
In front of me lay a massive city. Except this city was not in any way what I would consider normal. Its inhabitants were all in the air. It seemed impossible. What was even more impossible was that they were all riding phoenixes! The birds were magnificent, streams of flame pouring from their huge beaks while they circled over the city. I could see that many of them were flying off in all directions and large numbers were also flying back, landing on a large clearing at the center of the village. There the riders of the birds got off, unloaded anything that was strapped to the saddle the phoenixes were fitted with and walked them into the maze of houses, as calmly as if they were horses.
I only noticed that I had been walking while pondering this unusual sight when I ran headfirst into something soft. I was jerked to full awareness and looked around wildly before focusing on the face before me. My breath caught in my throat. The face I was looking into was beautiful. It was shaped like an almond, was attached to a long, graceful neck, had high cheekbones and was inlaid with a set of precious, sapphire blue eyes. I couldn’t seem to break eye contact. Every time I tried, I seemed to forget what I was trying to do and I would sink into back into the muddy marsh of my attraction. My heart seemed to be beating away somewhere in the general area of my throat.
It seemed like eons had passed when she deigned to open her mouth and speak to me. Thankfully, she spoke English, even if it was with a different accent.
She politely asked me for my name, so I therefore introduced myself. She in turn told me that she was called Lorana. She then moved on to observing my attire. She obviously found them lacking as she asked me why I was only wearing simple cloth. I realized that she thought I was a part of her world. She didn’t seem to have grasped the fact that I was as new to her world as a newborn babe. I explained to her that I was from a far off place and that I needed her aid to find a way to get back. She smiled indulgently and then asked me to follow her. Not having any other leads, I did so.
She walked through the city, turning this way and that, guiding me through the seemingly never-ending numbers of small paths that spider webbed throughout the city, connecting one area to another. If I had attempted to wonder around the place alone, I would surely have gotten lost. Plus I was sure that if I had waited till nightfall to sneak around the place, its inhabitants wouldn’t have treated me as warmly as they were doing then as I walked behind Lorana.
Finally, as I was beginning to tire slightly, she stopped. We seemed to have arrived at wherever she had been planning to take me. I saw immediately that this house more closely resembled a mansion from my world. It was larger than most of the surrounding houses and it was built very well, with windows set with precious stones and the arch of the doorway having been intricately engraved with two phoenixes crossing in midair.
She knocked on the door and then stood back, gazing at it expectantly. The door was answered shortly after by a large man wearing a black shirt and white pants. For people who lived in a village, they seemed surprisingly civilized and modernized. I hadn’t noticed Lorana’s appearance before, having been too intent on looking at her stunning face, but as I gazed at her now I saw that she was wearing a beautiful lilac gown with skillfully embroidered flames outlining the sleeves.
Lorana spoke to the man. She called him father. I didn’t see the resemblance, but to each his own. Maybe she took after her mother a great deal more than she did her father, I thought. Her father subsequently looked at me, and his eyes widened. I couldn’t understand why before he pointed to Roniq, my phoenix, and then asked in a quavering voice who I was. Not comprehending why he seemed to be so shocked, I told him my name and asked him why he seemed so startled.
He looked at me with something akin to wonder before explaining that the phoenix I had on my shoulder was known as the Emperor Phoenix. It rarely bred and when it did, its offspring rarely if ever came into contact with a human, let alone bonded with one. When I asked him what he meant by bonding, he explained further. He said that there as an elite band of people from the village they were in, who were chosen by phoenixes at birth, to ride them. They were trained as warriors and served to protect and serve their village. This included helping with the rearing of livestock, flying over treacherous landscape, inaccessible by land, to get different food items, and trading with other villages.
He then said that these riders trained for many years before they were given the rank of warrior. They had to show outstanding moral and ethical values, be intelligent, courageous and be ferocious in battle. Their day to day life fascinated me. It was something I had never before been able to think existed, as it would have been impossible for it to exist in my world. Then again, a simple lifestyle like the one they led had its perks. There was more fresh air to breathe than artificially filtered, ventilated air. Its simplicity, when compared to where I came from, also proved to be very endearing.
The man, whom I took to be the chief, looked to me with serious eyes. He told me that in order to reach my full potential, I had to train myself, and my partner, Roniq. He told me to go with Lorana to the Flame Academy to start my training. I, being more than willing to spend my time in the company of the beautiful lady, agreed wholeheartedly.
Before I had taken a step in her direction, however, the man said something that made my blood run cold. In a matter of fact voice, he told his daughter, Lorana, that the execution date for the devils, Adam and Emma Grayson, had been set for two days from then.
Chapter VIII
After taking the chief’s leave, I walked numbly behind Lorana. The prospect of being in her company had lost its allure. For the first time since I had gotten to wherever it is I was, I remembered how it is that I came to be there. I had being looking for clues about why my parents had disappeared. In my fascination at the world I found myself in, I had completely forgotten how I had ended up there in the first place.
I swore to myself. I couldn’t believe that I had been so irresponsible; but lo and behold, my parents, my parent were alive and well. They had been here the whole time, and there was only one way that could have happened: they must have gone through the same experience I had. They must have been sent here by that metal frame.
I still could not grasp why they were to be executed though. The answer to that mind boggling question eluded me. Nervously, and hoping that I didn’t appear too interested, I asked Lorana why it was that they were to be killed. She looked at me intently and then told me how the two devils, Adam and Emma Grayson, had suddenly appeared out of nowhere from a forest a few kilometers away from the city.
They had not been able to explain how they had come to be in the forest. Their lack of memory seemed to have convinced the people of the city that they had been cursed by evil spirits. Their burnt clothes and muddy skin had only confirmed their fears that the pair had come from the very depths of hell.
So they had been bound, gagged and dragged, screaming and kicking like children, except with a lot more force, Lorana said, to the city where they had been locked up ever since, except when they were let out thrice a week to get some fresh air and explore the unfamiliar surroundings.
For some inexplicable reason, Roniq, perched comfortably on my shoulder, dug his claws into me in what I think he thought was a comforting gesture. I looked at him gratefully. He may be a bird, but at least he was on my side. Breaking my parents out of their confinement was no simple task.
After walking for a few minutes, we arrived at a large coliseum-shaped structure. After waving hello to a sentry, Lorana led me inside. There, I saw many teenagers of my own age, with phoenixes of their own, sparring. Many of their birds were in the air, and all I could see of them were scarlet blurs. The ferocity of their attacks almost frightened me. I could hear the snaps of their beaks even from the ground, and the occasional shriek pierced the air as one bird caught successfully attacked another with its powerful peak.
As we entered, all heads turned towards us. Even the phoenixes above us halted their sparring and glided gracefully down to the earth to stand beside their riders. These pairs seemed magnificent. Their splendor amazed me. Then I remembered that I should not forget my goal. In the two days that I had until my parents’ execution, I had to train hard and I had to train fast. To rescue them would be no easy feat, what with all the potential warriors I saw before me, most of them probably having more experience than me, to say nothing of the actual warriors of the city.
A large man with a beefy neck and muscular arms came striding towards us. He bowed towards Lorana and asked, in a rude tone of voice, who I was. After I was introduced, he walked around me in a circle, as if examining a new piece of merchandise. Nodding his head in an approving manner, he told Lorana that she had no cause for worry. He said he would make a warrior out of me in no time.
Before she left, Lorana told the man that that my phoenix was of the Emperor Class and breed. The man blanched, as did many of the students in the class. I could not fathom why this was. Surely, if my phoenix was as powerful as they said, it should have been a good thing? I asked myself the point of being afraid of powerful beings when the whole point of having warriors around was to have them protect you with their strength. Then again, I was in a strange land, with strange people. Their ways of thinking were alien to me.
After Lorana had departed, the man turned towards me, introduced himself as Morgan and then, with a gleam in his eye, told me to tell my phoenix, Roniq, to shift into cambio forma. I know that I wasn’t very good at languages but I was pretty sure that those two words sounded a bit Italian. Not wanting to question him, as I had no information to use with which I could question him, I tried, as politely as possible, to ask him what he meant.
He looked at me incredulously. He told me to look around at the other students in the area and their partner phoenixes. I did. While I had been talking to him, the giant birds had shrunk to the size Roniq was, if not a bit smaller. Morgan asked me if I could spot a difference between those phoenixes and mine. I looked at them for a while until I noticed something. Nowhere on their bodies did they have flame-like patterns like mine did. They had not a trace of black colour on them.
Morgan elaborated by telling me that my phoenix was a special and very rare breed Roniq was in a class of his own called the Emperor class. This was due to their unmatched combat performance and flying speeds. They were also said to grow to be the biggest phoenixes out of all the breeds. They were also extremely selective about the partners they chose, and the last person to have been paired with an Emperor Phoenix had died over a century ago. He had been a legend. He and his phoenix had brought peace and prosperity to the city, which had been in a very unstable condition at the time.
After the information session was over, Morgan taught me how get my phoenix to change its form to cambio forma as he had called it. As it so happened, I could communicate with Roniq using telepathy. That ability proved to be interesting to experiment with. After some coaching, I was able to send clear messages to Roniq, which he understood. Now I knew why I had kept talking to him as if he were a human being. He was as close to my species in terms of intelligence as any other I’d known.
At the end of the day, bearing scorch marks, the only results I could show for my day of muscle-damaging work, I trudged in the general direction of the chief’s house, praying I didn’t get lost in the city’s vast network of pathways. After wondering around for what seemed like hours I finally spotted the carved archway of the door of Lorana’s house. Hoping against hope that she was at home, I knocked on the door. By sheer chance, Lorana answered the door first; I could hear her father retreating back into the bowels of the house, having just missed the surely pleasant surprise of meeting the mud-splattered, battered self.
Taking in my obviously pitiful appearance, she ushered me over the threshold of the house and into a room off the living room area. There, she told me to wait, came back with a pristine white towel, gave it to me, then showed me where the washroom was and told me to take a bath. She didn’t try to hold back. She told me that I was downright filthy and smelled like bird droppings. No big surprise there, I had spent many hours among those overgrown partridges. Comparing the phoenixes to normal birds every time something about them bugged me allowed me to believe that there was still a semblance of normality in my life, although the reality was as far from that as it could get. A sudden idea popped into my head. Instead of waiting for the two days to be over, I thought of freeing my parents that very night and making a run for it. I conceded that I needed a thorough cleansing first. I gagged due to my own body odour, which was coming off of me in waves. I stripped and left my clothes just outside the washroom door, as I had been instructed, and slipped into the bath that Lorana had prepared for me. It was barely warm, seeing as how it had just started to heat up, but it helped dull the aches and pains coursing throughout my entire body.
After half an hour of soaking myself in the bath, looking like a wrinkled prune, I stood up, stepped out of the bath, dried myself and opened the door just a fraction to see a fresh new set of clothes waiting for me. I donned them quickly. I tiptoes across the floor, took a peep through Lorana’s door to see if she was asleep, then did the same with her father and was on my way out when a voice softly asked me where I was off to in the night. Lorana stood behind me, wearing a scowl on her exquisite face. The expression marred her beauty.
Chapter IX
She asked me in a deadly quiet voice full or pure venom where I was off to. She hardly seemed the same person she had been when I had met her. After considering possible lies and alternatives, I resorted to telling her the truth. I told her that I had come here from what seemed like a different world. How I had grown up in an orphanage, never knowing that my family was still alive, until I had been brought here, by some miracle.
A I neared the end of my narration I feared that she would run to her father and tell him that their guest was about to break into the jail and help a couple of criminals escape. She surprised me by not doing so. Her eyes sparkling like a million stars, she told me that she had always suspected, since the moment she had met me that I was not from her world. That he had some connection to her city’s prisoners, as his face bore some similarities with theirs.
She told me to wait for a moment, went back to her room and returned momentarily wearing a black overall. She said it would help them to better blend in with the darkness outside. She motioned for me to follow her and then, opening the front door slightly, she slipped outside, the night darkness slipping around her in a chilly embrace.
I tried to follow Lorana’s shadow as quietly as I could, hoping that I wouldn’t get my foot caught on something. We traversed the breadth of the city for quite a while. The distance to our destination provided me with the perfect opportunity to chat with Lorana. Never having spoken to a girl properly before, I stumbled on many of the words, but I thought that the effort was a good one. I asked her what she did during the day, what she did at school, if there was such a thing there, and, finally, the question that I was almost popping out of my skin to ask, if she was dating someone. I had uttered the question without thinking of the repercussions. I knew it wasn’t polite to ask someone you barely knew about their private life.
Lorana didn’t seem fazed by the question in the least. She turned the tables on me and asked me if I was seeing someone. When I had said no, she positively beamed and before I could say anything, asked me out. Needless to say, this came as a shock, but a pleasant one. I told her that I would take her out when she and I were both not in danger of being caught for aiding in the escape of two prisoners. All in all, it had been a fast process, even judging by the time it took for a person to ask out someone on a movie, but, since the outcome had been the one I wanted, I knew to leave well enough alone.
Shortly after our interesting conversation, Lorana halted in front of a grim-looking building made of granite. Its walls looked impregnable and it had an air of despair surrounding it. She told me that my parents were inside. She produced a set of keys from her overalls, saying she had taken them from her father’s safe, which he had fortunately decided to place in her room, and which also happened to have a broken lock, which obviously defeated the whole purpose of having one.
I thanked Lorana, promised her that if I escaped, I would come back for her, even if it was for a moment, and started towards the entrance to the building. Unable to control myself, I turned right around, pressed a kiss onto her surprised mouth, and then dashed to the door. After fumbling with the keys in my haste, I let myself in.
It was very dark and gloomy inside. Luckily, I spotted a lamp placed atop a nearby table. I crept towards it, making as little noise as I possibly could, and then, once I had reached it, lifted it up and lit it. All around me were cells. I couldn’t see which one held my parents. My question was answered for me, however when a voice called out to me from off to my right. The voice stirred something inside me; it seemed familiar. I turned slowly to face the source of the voice. I then cautiously approached the cage that held in the prisoners.
Two pairs of eyes, exactly like mine, stared at me through the bars of the cage, shining through the gloom that permeated the inside of the cell. The two people inside looked as if they had gone through hell, which they very well might have, seeing as they were prisoners and were about to be executed in just over a day. The two people almost rushed to the bars of the cell. They stared at my face incredulously, their gaunt faces seeming to have lost the use of their muscles since I doubted there had been much use for them since their capture and subsequent imprisonment.
One of the people was a woman. Her face was drawn and her skin looked mottled and pale, derived as it had been of sunlight. She reached through the bars of the cell and placed her palm lightly on my face. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she uttered my name. I did not realize that I myself was crying until the hot, thick, pearly ears were accompanied by few dry sobs from me. Surprised at myself, since I was rarely one to display my emotions to anyone, I steeled myself before looking at the man I knew instinctively to be my father. Our jawlines were similar and our brows both wrinkled in the same way when we trying to sort something out in our minds. It was happening then.
My father was looking at me with undisguised pride and hope. I, being eager to get them out of their confining space, unlocked the cell and let them both out. Before we could rejoice, we had to get away, so I held a finger to my lips, willing them to understand and be quiet, and then led them back through the door to the outside. Moonlight shed its brilliant glow on our surroundings unlike during the journey I had made to the prison.
I called to my phoenix, Roniq, using my thoughts, and asked him to change shift to cambio forma. In a rush of flame, he transformed. In the space where there had just moments before been an eagle-sized bird, now there stood a majestic, towering phoenix strong enough and large enough to comfortably accommodate about five people on its back. I noticed that he had grown even taller since the training session.
After we were all comfortably settled upon Roniq’s back, we took off. As we were flying, we unfortunately came across a warrior and his partner phoenix, out on patrol. They raised a hue and cry and soon the whole city knew something was wrong. I saw fires popping up all over the city, signifying the changes of warriors’ phoenixes into cambio forma everywhere. I knew that we were in trouble. I was a barely trained student, my father and mother were emaciated and my phoenix, as large as he may be, was still practically a newborn. Two warriors flanked us on either side. I urge Roniq to fly fast, and he did, his wings visibly straining with the effort.
I turned around slightly to ask my parents if they had any bright idea concerning how we were going to survive the next few moments. My father, his eyes glinting, told me to fly north. Trusting his advice, I steered us in that direction. Soon, we saw the outlines of many trees, indicating the beginning of a forest. My father told me to fly over it until he told me to stop. Without questioning him, I did as I was told. It felt good, I thought to myself, to have someone from my own family guide me; this was hardly the situation in which to think that, but that was how I felt.
Suddenly, my father told me to get Roniq to dive, so dive I did. We hurtled towards the earth at breakneck speed. When it became apparent that it would be foolish and dangerous to continue our descent, Roniq flared his wings and levelled out our angle of flying. My father, apparently seeing what he had been telling us to dive for, told me to land my phoenix. Only too eager to get to shelter before we were found by the horde of warriors I was sure were hot on our trail, I got Roniq, to dip down gently the rest of the way, and had him land softly on the hard, mud-caked earth below.
My father and mother, as soon as they had set foot on the ground, started walking towards a large, overgrown bush. From it, miraculously, they pulled a metal frame just like the one that had brought me there.
My father, saying aloud that he hoped it had enough power left in its battery to perform one last duty, beckoned me and my mother closer. He pressed a small button on the side of the frame and the thing began to vibrate and glow white. I was prepared for it this time. I simply closed my eyes, pictured Lorana’s face, swore to myself that I would definitely come back, and prepared to be transported back to my world. Finally.
Chapter X
I felt a curious flying sensation, but did not overly concern myself with it. I did not deem it necessary to open my eyes. After a while, the temperature around my parents and I started to rise. A few moments later, with a muffled thump, we all landed, spread eagled, on a sea of grass. We had landed in a park. I looked around and realized that Roniq was not with me. Then, however I felt something prick me, and, looking down, saw him, staring up and me with those intelligent eyes, having reverted back to his normal state.
I got up, dusted myself off, and leaving my parents to take in their surroundings, which they couldn’t have seen for about seventeen years, went to sit down on a bench that was close by. There was already a boy about my age sitting there. I looked at him curiously before plopping my rear down next to him. He was looking off into the distance.
After a while, we got a conversation going. They guy didn’t seem to want to give me his name so I didn’t ask him for it. Somehow we got onto the topic of our most recent accomplishments. I told him roughly of my dimension jumping adventure, my meeting with a phoenix and ending with my discovery of my parents, who I had thought to be dead up until a short time ago. He in turn said that he had killed a couple of guys, set their bodies on fire, and stabbed and suffocated another guy as if he were discussing nothing more than the day’s weather. He seemed nice enough, but any guy who killed someone else was not someone I wanted to tango with. After a while, he got up, and, saying he had to go meet his uncle, left.
I walked slowly back to my parents. They had seen their fill and were waiting for me. I couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm. I finally had a family! After seventeen years of not belonging, I have somewhere I could always return to, people I could always turn to. Thinking of how fortunate I was, walking between my parents, with my phoenix, Roniq, flying overhead, I started walking towards the orphanage, for what I hoped was the last time, looking forward to a bright and dazzling future.