In a certain part of the Underworld, a barren, scorched plain with burning trees and rivers of molten lava weaving a glowing tapestry across the landscape, stood a castle. Its towering walls, burnished with a sunset orange upon the deep crimson red brickwork stood like a mirage upon the horizon.
In the courtyard, were perfectly trimmed trees with the tips of the branches burning with a golden flame, with picture perfect hedges of some variety of blood red shrubbery fenced up around them in circles, forming an unnervingly beautiful pattern that left all who looked upon it simultaneously awed and subtly ill at ease.
Further inward, the palace glowed with regality, all gold rimmed and rich red furnishings, the colour almost bleeding into your vision as you stepped into the great hall, with its many twinkling chandeliers upon a cream sandstone interior, with a sweeping set of staircases leading into a grand gallery, where every piece of furniture lining the walls lay studded with real gold and rubies, reinforced with a pulsing wave of enchantments, mystical and charming, and front and center a tapestry with a sigil, a firebird curled upon itself like a feathered ouroboros.
It had an aura of authority and extravagance to it. Yet if one were to walk in today, they would find it hard to admire it all, amidst the screeching moans of pain echoing across the estate. And the cursing, loud and irate.
"Satans damnit Rain, just do it already! I'm dying here!" Lady Phenex snapped at her husband, as her hands, already morphed into claws dug into the plush uplhostery, tore it apart in her struggle, "Or should I ask Ruval, my own son, to help deliver his brother?"
"Rubela, dear, patience. I'm just drawing up the lines. Its important." Lord Phenex cajoled her, carefully finishing up the markings upon her stomach, before capping the sharpie. "You'd think by the third time you would have gotten used to it."
"It doesn't get any less painful the third tim-fuuuck! Motherfucker!" She groaned, the bed frame cracking under her grip, "Hurry up already or I'll crush your balls, Rain."
"Now, now, keep talking like that and we might just have a fourth one on the way soon enough." He flirted back, with a soft chuckle.
"Satans no. Never again."
"You said that the last two times too, and yet here we are. So is it really so bad?"
"It's like getting kicked in the balls, only a hundred times worse."
"That can't be true. Women are always wanting more children. I've never heard a man say 'please kick me in the nuts again!'." He laughed jovially, and finished taking a measure of her stomach as his hand morphed into a ruby red claw, its tip burning red.
"You're sleeping in the guest bedroom till next year!" She glowered, her immaculate face scrunched up like goblin- something he adored deeply- between deep breaths and muffled gasps, flames rising at the edges of her mouth in tiny plumes.
"With how you've left the bed frame, so will you." Lord Phenex teased, before he steeled himself. Raising his clawed hand, and with one smooth and precise motion he sliced apart her stomach, ripping through her guts and entrails like a hot knife through butter. Blood and viscera spewed forth everywhere, staining the now not-so-pristine white sheets red.
And yet as she bled, flames sprung up at the edges of her wounds, and they began to rapidly close, regenerating at a visible pace.
"Oh no you don't~" Lord Phenex whispered soflty, as he dug his arms straight into her womb and tore it apart like a stoner with his third pack of chips mid buzz.
With a swooping motion he reached into her, wiping away the womb lining to reveal a milky white cocoon. An egg.
A curious feature of their bloodline, a holdover from having descended from true phoenixes, that all pureblood members of their bloodlines were born in their mother's wombs as eggs, something utterly incompatible with their now humanoid reproductive system.
If it hadn't been for their immense and near immortal regenerative powers, their clan might yet have gone extinct, for it was no small feat for a devil to conceive. Even they, in all their 600 years of life had managed to have but three children, and not for a lack of trying. This was a miracle in and of itself, for he had seen more than half of the Goetia go extinct in his time, from sheer lack of fecundity.
For the third time, as he watched his beloved wife writhe around in pain, he felt the desire to curse his creator, the first Satan Lucifer, that dead bastard himself, for the shoddy conception of his line.
He pulled it out of her, swaddling it closely, before placing it in a nursery, before letting out a relieved sigh as he watched and waited for his wife to recover, leaving the egg unhatched. Satans forbid he make that mistake again. The last time she had given him the cold shoulder for a full eight months because he dared to hatch his son before her.
He smiled fondly, looking upon his wife and child lovingly, soaking in the little moments of domestic bliss that he cherished with all his heart.
----------x----------
(??? POV)
Consciousness came to me gently, yet with the prickling intensity of a beam of sunlight sniping you through the curtains at the ass-crack of dawn on a nice Sunday morning. I began to wake, groggy, half asleep still with my eyes glued shut, and yet something felt… unfamiliar.
My wits took their time returning to me as the sensations became clearer. I felt all warm and wet, and sticky …what was that I was feeling? Was that uncured jello? Did my #$^%&% prank- wait…my who? My …my…who am I? No, no. I know who I am…I …wha-
I tried opening my mouth to yell out in terror only for the jello to flood in.
Bruagk-
I tried hurling but somehow the taste of it …the….jello….was I dunked into a vat of…..vat…what
A dizziness, soft yet comforting like a lullaby began to set in and I could almost feel my memories washing away, slipping through my hands like sand.
No! I don't want to forget, no please nononononono-
I clung onto my memories like drowning man to driftwood, begging, pleading, clawing with all my mental might against the dizzying whirlpool tearing them away.
At the same time, something changed, as if an instinct guiding me towards the light.
Escape, it screamed. Go! OUT!
But I refused. Not without my memories. Not without my…me. My identity….my personality. What made me who I was.
I Refuse!
My mind battled against instinct, man against beast, until finally, it split into two, and both sides lost. One clutching at the pearlescent remains of who I was, the other fumbling outward, escaping whatever cage it so despised, even as the ground seemed to cave beneath it, shifting like a surfboard on quicksand, until at last….
Air. Fresh, blazing burning dry-
PAIN!
@#$^&
My mind stuttered, Man and Beast, Rational and Irrational, faltering both as it registered.
PAIN.
Lungs burned, kvetching for a gasp of air that never came, from a mouth clod shut, and a throat drowned in amniotic fluid and yet every inch of me burned. Pain like no other I had felt before wracked through me.
Burning pain.
BURNING.
BURNING?!
INDIGNATION!
Something stirred deep within me, something raw and primal. And it seethed with fury.
BURNING? ME?
INDIGNATION.
INDIGNATION!
Instinct overtook thought.
White hot fury began to replace the pain as the flames of primal rage stoked something within me, like a bellows to the still lit embers of a primordial forge.
INDIGNATION!!!
I. DO. NOT. BURN.
I AM FIRE. I AM FLAME.
I AM THE EVER BURNING GLORY OF #%$^&&*
My body spasmed, tremors flowing through it like a tsunami and my eyes shot open, burning with a radiant, guzzling flame.
I AM ….I AM...
A suction force like the eye of a storm built up within my throat and the air rushed in, blowing it open.
I AM-
Screeeeeeech!
----------x----------
The stained glass windows of the castle trilled in harmony with the shrill cry, threatening to shatter, as the sound rang out throughout the castle grounds. Storm winds buffeted the courtyard outside, battering the trees and shaking the shrubbery like a thousand dull maracas. An unholy symphony heralding his birth.
Lord and Lady Phenex looked on proudly, as their son made his foray into life, albeit with much more flair than his brothers had in their time. Yet, it was heartening to see him so hale, yet born. They smiled.
"He truly is" / I AM-
A Phoenix.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Author's Note
Hey guys. I'm back and participating in fanfic fiesta with this book. So if you like it please add it to your library. Also, donate your powerstones to it too, it motivates me to write more!
Thanks for your support. Hope you like it. Tell me how you feel in the comments!
Happy reading.
Cya~