The Arwain Chronicles: Before The Storm...
She was the last one up, which given the fact that she was the last one to rest, didn't come as a surprise to Tatia. She immediately saw it soon as she stepped out of her room. A large crowd had formed around the top of the hill upon which the flame of rebirth was to be found. A crowd large enough that some of them had morphed into their phoenix form and were circling above the heads of those still in their human form. They formed something of a cylinder that reached all the way up into the clouds. Even without being there with them, she could feel the mix of both fear and disbelief that filled most of those gathered. Something was happening.
Without much thought to it, Tatia vanished in a ball of flames. She reappeared facing where she had known the doorway Dan had been working on the previous day, would be. She'd however found herself facing a wall of her fellow phoenix sisters all looking in the opposite direction. She had reappeared at the center of the crowd right beside her queen who was also looking at something behind her. Tatia turned around to find what could have possibly garnered such tremendous interest from the other phoenixes if not for a doorway back to the earth realm.
Tatia couldn't have stopped her eyes from growing wide or her mouth from dropping open if she had tried. The same fear and disbelief that had engulfed the crowd gripped her as she turned around to find Dan standing on the small round platform on which phoenixes were reborn. His eyes fixed steadily and determinedly at the flame of rebirth.
For the first time in as long as she could remember, which happened to be hundreds of millennia, Tatia's brain went blank. Even despite the fact that it was impossible to burn after one had gone through all their burns as the boy already had, the fact that he would even consider trying to be reborn, was nothing short of mad. To be reborn from one burn was torture enough, to be reborn from five burns as he'd managed to do, was a feat that amazing couldn't even begin to describe. To even attempt to be reborn from fifteen burns was nothing short of a death wish! The boy was crazy if he thought he wouldn't come out the other end with a mind that was so torn and broken by pain that all the power in the world could not piece together.
"You have been on that platform for a day now," The mutterings and murmuring from the crowd immediately ceased when their queen began speaking. Her tone was one of patient annoyance. Tatia couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought she could also detect a trace of relief in it. Perhaps a part of their queen had for a second entertained the possibility that the boy might actually get what he hoped to get. A part of her was clearly annoyed that the boy had caused her to actually even consider the possibility of it. Forcing her to be gripped by the very same kind of fear that Tatia was presently in the hold of at even the very thought of it.
"Perhaps it's time that you get down from there so we can actually figure out a plan of how to get back to the earth realm." Despite the fact that she framed it like a suggestion, her tone clearly relayed that it was anything but. The boy however remained unfazed by her tone. His expression leaving them all unsure whether the words had even registered to him. "Did you hear what I said?" Their queen posed in a steely voice.
"I did," Tatia was sure that she wasn't the only one taken aback by the boy's tone of voice. None of them were used to hearing their queen answered back in a tone of voice hard and cold as the one that had proceeded from Dan as he turned to regard her. "But unless you're offering me an alternative to this, then I care very little for your objections," he informed her.
"Well, just so the rest of us know when you are ready to come up with an actual plan, just exactly how long do you plan to stand there?" Ice flowed through the queen's voice as she spoke.
