Waking Up

[ravin]

Chapter One: Phoenix


A phoenix. He once called me a phoenix, rising from the flames into a new life. I didn't believe him...I wrote it off as poetic nonsense even though the words had pierced my numb and scarred shell. I would not have admitted it, but I was afraid. The nightmares had followed me since I left Chessenta. Screams of the dying and the roar of flames. I recall it now, and I can still feel the blistering heat of the iron bands around my wrists and neck.
The fire started just before dawn. It must have been several fires--it seemed like every building was ablaze. Like the hells themselves had been summoned to earth. I stared out of the barred window, and, without thought, I began to move. Survival was important...

.live to see the dawn. Fight...always fight...always win.

I strained against the chains that bound me to the crumbling plaster wall. It took what seemed a lifetime, but the bolt finally pulled free. The wooden door, too, fell after some persuasion. To look back now, they must have underestimated me--likely all the women. I looked around the smoke-filled corridor to see that my blade-sisters had all had similiar idea.
The ceiling collapsed a few yards away, killing a blade-sister and the guards who were trying to detain her. Again, I moved. Heat upon heat washed over me, singeing my hair, turning my skin red. Still, I moved.

Never surrender...survive.

Through the corridor into the courtyard, chaos played out before me. Men and animals darted about. Some in effort to escape the grasping fingers of the fire; some already in its grip. I walked, silent, amid men and beasts screaming in pain and fear. Had these men not been the onces to brand my flesh and say, "There is no pain. Death will come. Accept your destiny"?
I continued to walk, and a man stumbled from the villa of Aporos, the master's house, and fell to the ground at my feet. Flames engulfed him. His screams turned to gasps. I knew this one. 'The Beast', they had called him. I had faced him only once in combat. He was a prized gladiator, one of Aporos' best. I had managed to break his arm before he crushed my ribs, but I had one and advanced in rank. He extended a claw-like, charred hand to me a moment before his eyes closed forever. I felt nothing. My eyes turned to the villa. Flames licked out fo the once beautifully arched windows and blackened the pristine columns. Above the screams, above the roar of the flames, I heard a voice. One that, in nine years of captivity, had become ingrained in my mind as the precursor to blood: the Master. Even now, I couldn't say why I entered the villa. Perhaps it was habit. When the Master called, one answered. Perhaps...curiousity.
I walked though the wall of flame, ignoring the searing metal at wrists and neck. The once opulent grand hall was now black and ravaged with flame. The air rippled with heat; the air nearly unbreathable. Yet, the Master called. I found the great Andros Aporos trapped by a fallen pillar. One need not be a healer to see his legs were crushed. I stood above him, and his eyes snapped to look at me wide-eyed. I wonder what he was seeing before he realized it was only me-? His eyes shut tight in pain, he begged me to pull him free. Something in me stirred. For the first time in nine years...I did not obey. His eyes flew open and glared at me with a mixture of outrage and terror. He commanded, threatened, entreated...he cried....and, still, I did not obey. I looked down at the once proud man crushed by his own vanity.
"There is no pain. Death will come. Face your destiny," I said evenly, without malice. His eyes grew wide, as if he once again saw not one of his gladiators before him, but some dread messenger of the other world.
Timber splintered and fell somewhere off to my right, spurring me to movement again. I turned and walked through the hungry flames again. I kept walking. From the emblazoned compound. From the city of Cimbar. And, I thought, from the nightmare I had lived these past nine years.

That dawn, I sat at the edge of a cliff outside the walls with the Sea of Fallen Stars at my feet. My skin was black with ash and soot. The burns about my wrists and neck were raw. My once-long hair had all but burned away, but felt none of this. At that moment as the dawn rose over the great sea, I felt only one thing...alive.

[Mick]

Lovely.

[Ogregrim]

Arise, Arista, Arise.
I love the story.